Wordorigins.org

Paparazzi, plural of Paparazzo, comes from the name of a character in Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita. In the movie, Paparazzo was a photographer who would go to great lengths to take pictures of American movie stars. From Time magazine, 14 April 1961:

Kroscenko...is a paparazzo, one of a ravenous wolf pack of freelance photographers who stalk big names for a living and fire with flash guns at point-blank range.

And the plural from the same issue:

When Katharine Hepburn passed through town recently, the paparazzi mounted Vespa scooters...to waylay her at Fiumicino Airport.

Paparazzo is an actual Italian surname. Fellini said he came across the name in an opera libretto and it “suggests...a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging.” It has also been suggested that Ennio Flaiano, who co-wrote the film with Fellini, may have contributed the name. In the Abruzzi dialect, native to Flaiano, paparazzo is a clam, which is metaphor for the opening and closing of a camera lens. The -azzo suffix also has pejorative connotations in Italian. Or the name may have been taken from George Gissing’s 1909 By the Ionian Sea, which was translated into Italian in 1957. Gissing used the name in his novel and took it from a real person he had met in his Italian travels.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

Pandemonium was coined by Milton in his 1667 Paradise Lost:

A solemn Councel forthwith to be held At Pandæmonium, the high Capital Of Satan and his Peers.

To get the word, Milton combined a couple of Greek roots, pan meaning all + demon, with the Latin -ium ending. So pandemonium is literally the place of all demons. While pandemonium is a relatively modern invention, the word demonium, meaning abode of demons or hell, did exist in classical Latin.

Within a century or so, the word was being used in extended senses, referring to things akin to a real hell and eventually to the modern meaning of confusion, tumult, or uproar. From the 1755 M—cki—n’s Answer to Tully:

As I had at the Beginning...waggishly term’d the Audience my Pandemonium; a Hiss was the most proper Token of Applause.

The term does not derive, as is often thought, from the name of the Greek god Pan. Nor does its origin have anything to do with the excitement over the arrival of Pandas at the National Zoo in Washington in the 1970s (although I’m sure many journalistic wags overused the term “pandamonium” in describing this event).

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

The word pale dates to the 14th century and comes to us from the Latin palus, or stake, via French. The original English meaning was the same as in Latin, a stake, particularly one used to make a fence or border marker. You can still find this sense in the modern paling fence or palisade. From Wycliffe’s c.1382 translation of Ecclesiastes:

In þe wallis of it he is picching a pale.
(In the walls of it he is building a pale.)

From the literal sense of a fence or boundary line, the metaphorical sense of boundary or limit developed by the 15th century. From The Brut, or the Chronicles of England, c.1450:

Al þe cuntre þat was of þe Englisshe pale shuld come and bring...thaire goodes, and breke doun theire houses.
(All the country that was of the English pale should come and bring…their goods, and break down their houses.)

By the late 15th century, the word was also being used metaphorically to mean a domain or field of knowledge, influence, etc. From Caxton’s 1483 translation of Voragine’s The Golden Legende:

The abbote...and xxi monkes...went for to dwelle in deserte for to kepe more straytelye the professyon of theyr pale.
(The abbot…and 21 monks…went for to dwell in the desert for the keep more straightly the profession of their pale.)

The phrase beyond the pale makes its appearance in the 17th century. From John Harrington’s 1657 poem The History of Polindor and Flostella:

Both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale To planted Myrtle-walk.

Over the centuries, various specific uses of pale to mean a specific region have been used. It has been used to refer to the regions of Ireland ruled by the English (16th century) or to the areas of Russia where Jews were permitted to settle (19th century). The phrase beyond the pale is not from any of these specific senses, but rather from the general one of boundary or limit.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

The English word pagan is from the Latin paganus or someone who lives in a rural district, or pagus. In Latin, the word meant a villager or rustic, and was also used as an antonym for miles, or soldier. So when applied to a person, paganus means civilian.

The word makes its English appearance in the 14th century. The original English sense is the same as we use it today, meaning someone not belonging to society’s dominant religion, specifically a non-Christian. From Thomas Malory’s Morte Arthure, probably written sometime before 1400:

I sall...euer pursue the payganys þat my pople distroyede.
(I shall...ever pursue the pagans that my people destroyed.)

How it made the transition from the Latin for rustic or civilian to the English meaning is uncertain. Generally, one three explanations is proferred.

The first is that the English sense is a development from the rustic sense. As Christianity spread in the cities of the Roman empire, in the countryside the worship of the Roman gods continued for much longer. So those from the countryside were less likely to be Christians.

The second is that it is a development of the civilian sense. Christians called themselves milites, or soldiers of Christ. Pagans were the opposite.

Finally, again from the rustic sense, it came from the idea that those in the countryside were not part of urban society. They were a people apart. The metaphor was applied to religion as well, a people apart from the community of Christians were pagans.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

The origin of the phrase mind your Ps and Qs, meaning to be careful of one’s behavior, is not known. Explanations for the phrase abound. Some are plausible, some are not. Let’s start with what we know.

The phrase dates to at least 1779 when it appears in Hannah Cowley’s Who’s The Dupe?:

You must mind your P’s and Q’s with him, I can tell you.

Four times a year, American television viewers are subjected to sweeps periods. The sweeps are when the A.C. Nielsen Company measures the audiences in all 210 US television markets.  Nielsen continuously measures national programming, but local audiences are only measured in November, February, May, and July-August. The ratings gathered during these periods are used to set ad-rates and to make decisions about local programming. During sweeps months, the networks schedule new episodes of programs, specials, original productions, and other shows that are likely to draw a larger-than-ordinary audience. In non-sweeps months, viewers get a lot of reruns.

The measurement of these local markets was not begun by Neilsen, but rather by a competitor, the American Research Bureau, now known as Arbitron. By 1961 Arbitron was measuring every television market in America at least twice a year. It comes from the metaphor of sweeping up or gathering the data. From Newsweek, 30 November 1970:

There is a temptation to look one’s best during sweeps, but the practice of “loading,” or temporarily beefing up programming, is specifically forbidden by Federal unfair-competition regulations.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

There is a legend, stemming from ancient myth, that swans sing an exquisitely beautiful song just before dying. There’s no truth to it, but that’s the legend and the origin of the phrase. From Ovid’s Metamorphoses (14:426-430):

ultimus adspexit Thybris luctuque viaque fessam et iam longa ponentem corpora ripa. illic cum lacrimis ipso modulata dolore verba sono tenui maerens fundebat, ut olim carmina iam moriens canit exequialia cycnus.
(Tiber was last to see her, as she lay down, weary with grief and journeying, on his wide banks. There, she poured out her words of grief, tearfully, in faint tones, in harmony with sadness, just as the swan sings once, in dying, its own funeral song.)

In English, literary allusions to the legend date back to Chaucer’s Anelida and Arcite, c. 1374:

Þe swane...Ageynist his dethe shall synge his penavnse.
(The swan...against his death shall sing his penance.)

The phrase swan song itself appears in the early 19th century. The English phrase is a calque of the German Schwanengesang, which was the name of a posthumous collection of Franz Schubert’s music, published in 1828. The English phrase first appears a few years later in Thomas Carlyle’s 1831 Sartor Resartus:

The Phoenix soars aloft,...or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame.

(Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Ovid, Metamorphoses (Kline) 14: 397-434: The Fate of Canens, the Ovid Collection, Univ. of Virginia E-Text Center, University of Virginia.)

This term refers to a car big enough to haul people and luggage to and from a railway station. Originally, station wagon referred to horse-drawn carriages. From the Hub News of 23 May 1894:

Business has been fairly good this spring...Traps are in most demand, next come buggies, cutunders, and business rockaways or station wagons.

By 1904 the term was being used in reference to automobiles. From Motor World of 21 January of that year:

The station wagon is a new model exhibited the first time this year.

The British equivalent of the term, estate car, is much more recent. It only dates to 1950. From Motor Industry of July of that year:

Latest car price list...Standard...Vanguard saloon...Estate car.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

What is a stool pigeon? Does it refer the bird’s habit of defecating on statues? Does it have something to do with furniture?

Stool does not refer to the piece of furniture or to dung. It is a variant of stale, meaning decoy. It comes from the Anglo-Norman estale or estal, a decoy bird used to entice a hawk to fly into a net. The French word probably originally derives from the Germanic steall meaning a place or standing position, or in this case a stationary bird. The root is also the source of the modern stall. From the c.1440 Anglo-Latin lexicon Promptorium Parvulorum Sive Clericorum:

Stale, of fowlynge or byrdys takynge, stacionaria.
(Stale, of fowling or birds taking, stacionaria.)

This term arose in engineering circles. The earliest known usage is from 1910, in H.H. Suplee’s Gas Turbine:

It has therefore been thought desirable to gather under one cover the most important papers...In the present state of the art this is all that can be done.

There is a somewhat older use of status of the art dating to 1889 in Anthony’s Photography Bulletin:

The illustrations give a good idea of the present status of the art in the various methods of printing.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)