rob Peter to pay Paul

Stained-glass window in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Central City, Kentucky, depicting the apostles Paul (left) and Peter (right)

16 October 2026

To rob Peter to pay Paul is a proverbial phrase used to mean to right one wrong by committing another or to pay off one debt by incurring another. A modern example might be using one credit card to pay off another. The use of the names Peter and Paul in the phrase evokes the apostles, but it’s not a reference to any event in their lives. Rather, it’s just using the names as stand-ins for generic persons, as if to say to rob John to pay Jane.

We find this pairing of Peter and Paul as generic names in a late fourteenth century translation of Lanfranc of Milan’s Science of Cirurgie, a medical textbook. It appears in a section on poultices and ointments for reducing swelling:

In þis maner if þou leist coold þingis to a place, & ne hast not þi purpos þerof, þan pou schalt leeue þe coold medicyns, & make medicyns þat ben competent to þe same complexioun / for sum medicyne is for peter þat is not good for poul, for þe diuersite of complexioun. & al þis teching you miȝt fynde generalich in þe tretis of enpostyms. / ffor if peter be of complexioun hoot & moist, & poulis complexioun be coold & drie, oon repercussioun wole not serue hem boþe in oon point.

(In this manner, if you place cold things on a place, & you do not know the reason thereof, then you should leave the cold medicines & make medicines that are appropriate for that complexion; for some medicine that is for Peter is not good for Paul because of the diversity of complexion. & all this teaching you can generally find in the treatise on inflammations. For if Peter is of hot & moist complexion, & Paul’s complexion is cold and dry, one anti-inflammatory will not serve them both at the same point.)

And by the mid fifteenth century we see the proverbial phrase as we know it today. It appears in Jacob’s Well, a treatise on confession of sin:

Cesarius seyth þat a ryche man of fals getyn good schrofe hym on his dede-bedde, wyth full sorwe of herte, to an holy Abbott, & sayde, “Abbot, all my good I ȝeue þe & to þin hows, þat þou & þi bretheryn pray for me, & answere for my soule.” þe abbot seyde: “To robbe Petyr, & ȝeue it Poule, it were non almesse but gret synne.

(Cesarius says that a rich man of ill-gotten wealth confessed with great sorrow in his heart on his deathbed to a holy abbot, & said, “Abbot, all my wealth I give to you and your house, so that you & your brothers will pray for me and answer for my soul.” The abbot said, “to rob Peter & give it to Paul, would not be alms but a great sin.”)

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Sources:

Brandies, Arthur, ed. Jacob’s Well, Part 1. Early English Text Society O.S. 115. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1900, 138. HathiTrust Digital Library. Salisbury, Cathedral Library 103.

Lanfranc of Milan. Lanfrank’s “Science of Cirurgie,” Part 1—Text. Robert von Fleischhacker, ed. Early English Text Society O.S. 102. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894, 331. HathiTrust Digital Library. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 1396.

Middle English Dictionary, 28 July 2026, s.v. Peter, n.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, December 2005, s.v. Peter, n. & int.

Photo credit: Nheyob, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

hissy / hissy fit

1862 caricature of Christina Rossetti throwing a hissy fit after having read a Times review of her poetry; drawn by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The handwritten text reads: “‘Miss Rossetti can point to work which could not easily be mended.” Times.

14 October 2026

A hissy or hissy fit is a slang term for a tantrum or angry outburst. As an adjective, it means angry or in a bad temper. The origin is somewhat uncertain, with two leading contenders for the underlying metaphor. It could be from hysterical, or it could be echoic, referring to a hissing sound.

What we do know is that the terms started as regionalisms in Texas and Oklahoma in the 1930s, or perhaps somewhat earlier, before spreading to the rest of the United States. And of the two, the plain hissy is older.

The earliest use that I’m aware of was uncovered by Garson O’Toole and is found in Texas’s Austin Statesman of 7 April 1931:

And another letter from J. W. Reid Jr., which I’ll have to get to later as I’m running late and Ed Davenport will by having a hissy about getting in the editorial page on time.

Another early use with quotation marks, indicating the term would be unfamiliar to readers, is from Oklahoma’s Seminole Producer of 2 December 1932:

It might interest the “Pore Old Prorated Oil Field Boy” to know that two city people threw a “hissy” over his letter, calling down the wrath of all the gods there be on his anonymous head.

And we get it again without quotation marks nearly a year later in the Dallas Morning News of 26 November 1933:

A Dallas lad who asked his sister in Arkansas to send his Dallas girl something for him, had a hissy when sis wrote she had sent the girl a very handsome quilt of her own fabrication.

Hissy is documented in the February 1934 issue of American Speech, where the correspondent claims oral use from “eight or ten years” before:

Hissy is probably provincial slang. I have heard it for eight or ten years. He threw a hissy or He had a hissy means that the person in question was very disturbed and very angry. People who have adopted the word “couldn’t do without it”—so I am told.

And the earliest use of hissy fit that I’ve found is from Oklahoma City’s News-Review of 25 November 1943:

Rev. Mathes thinks some of the old shell-backs that have hissy fits every time the younger generation have a good time have the same complex as those old timers who stoned the prophets and burned the witches in Salem. They also forget that they used to kick their heels pretty high when they were young.

(There is potentially a use of hissy fit in a 1939 book titled Contrasts,  Presents Tomorrow's Authors, but I am unable to find a copy, either print or scanned.)

Perhaps the oddest use of hissy fit that I have found is in an analysis of international, great-power politics that appeared in the Houston Post of 27 February 1978:

Iraq is a semi-psychotic Soviet client state with an outlet on the Persian Gulf, and the Soviets have poured arms into Iraqi depots to degree which gives Iran a hissy fit and should give us one, too—if we were paying attention.

The Iranian Revolution would overthrow the Shah a year later, and Iraq would invade Iran in 1980, kicking off the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. A bit more than a hissy fit.

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Sources:

Bryson, Artemisia B. “Homely Words in Texas.” American Speech, 9.1, February 1934, 70–71 at 71. JSTOR.

Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. 2 of 6. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1991, 1021, s.v. hissy, n.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 24 September 2026, s.v. hissy, n.

J. M. V. “Back Talk.” Seminole Producer (Seminole, Oklahoma), 2 December 1932, 2/3. Newspaper.com. (The page is labeled “Two,” but is the eighth page. There seems to be a missing section designation as page numbering restarts with the seventh page, which contains a full-page ad and no page number.)

Morris, Donald. “Vital Iran Deserves Closer Attention.” Houston Post (Texas), 27 February 1978, 3C/3–4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

O’Toole, Garson. “Re: hissy (1932), hissy fit (1943).” ADS-L, 24 September 2026.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2003, s.v. hissy fit, n.; s.v. 1976, hissy, adj. & n.

Richardson, Vivian. “No Indian Givers These, but Plenty Wild!” Dallas Morning News (Texas), 1, 26 November 1933. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Shapiro, Fred. “Re: hissy (1932), hissy fit (1943).” ADS-L, 24 September 2026.

“Town Talk.” Austin Statesman (Texas), 7 April 1931, 4/1. Newspapers.com.

“The Windjammer” News-Review (Oklahoma City), 25 November 1943, 2/2. Newspapers.com.

Image credit: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1862. Wikimedia Commons. UK National Trust Collection. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

nonesuch

The south frontage of Nonesuch Palace, Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel, 1568

12 October 2026

A nonesuch, or nonsuch, is something that is unparalleled, without equal. The word, rare today, dates to the sixteenth century, although the use of a negated such, as in no such, goes back to Old English.

The nominal use of nonesuch stems from Nonsuch Palace, a grand building whose construction was started by Henry VIII in 1538, but which was not completed during his lifetime. The palace, intended to showcase the grandeur of the Tudor dynasty, was located in Nonsuch Park, which straddles the border between greater London and Surrey.

We see reference to the 1538 construction project in the crown’s payment records for that year:

Sir Fras. Bryan, on warrant of 17 Nov., “for taking of one thousand quick deer within the divers the King’s parks, for the replenishing of the parks of Nonesuch and Kinton,” 166l. 13s. 4d.

And use as a general noun, albeit as an open compound, dates to 1589 when Robert Greene uses it in his Menaphon:

Beleeue me shepheard, her eyes were like the fierie torches tilting against the Moone: this paragon, this none such, this Eaw, this Mistres of our flockes, was by a wily Foxe stolne from our foldes; for which these shepheards assemble themselues, to recouer so wealthie a prize.

And we see it in Nathaniel Fairfax’s 1674 A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvidge of the World, where it is used to denote the earth and creation:

Though the thing we are upon be so a Nonesuch, that there is no other thing in being, or can be, to which we may fully liken it, yet some things there are by our looking unto which, the understanding, I think, will a little the better cope with this.

Nonsuch Palace stood until the late seventeenth century. Charles II gave it to his mistress, Barbara Villiers, the Countess of Castlemaine, who had it pulled down starting in 1682 and the materials sold off to pay her gambling debts. Demolition was complete by 1690.

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Sources:

Fairfax, Nathaniel. A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvidge of the World. London: Robert Boulter, 1674, 175. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Gairdner, James, ed. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, vol. 13, part 2. (London: Stationary Office, 1893). Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1965, 536. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Greene, Robert. Menaphon, London: Thomas Orwin for Sampson Clarke, 1589, sig. Ir. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary Online, December 2003, s.v. nonsuch, n. & adj.; 1915, s.v. such, adj. & pron.

Image credit: Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel, 1568. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

Black Death

c. 1353 illustration of the citizens of Tournai burying their plague dead, from the Tractatus quartus by Gilles li Muisit

9 October 2026

The Black Death was a pandemic caused by plague (Yersinia pestis) that raged through Europe and the Middle East from 1346–53. In that brief period it killed as many as fifty million people, that is around half the population of Europe and a third of those living in the Middle East. (Exact figures are debated by historians, but all agree that the numbers were huge and devastating. The cause of the pandemic was debated in the past, but recent genetic analysis confirms that it was caused by Yersinia pestis.)

But the moniker Black Death does not appear until some four centuries later. Its first appearance is a calque of the Danish sorte død, and subsequent uses may have stemmed from this use. The Danish term was also calqued in other European languages. Use of black to refer to fourteenth-century pandemic does not occur in any European language prior to the sixteenth century, although the color black has been long associated with death in general, for instance in the classical Latin mors atra (black death).

The first appearance of Black Death in English is in a 1755 translation of Erich Pontoppian’s The Natural History of Norway:

Norway, indeed, cannot be said to be entirely exempt from pestilential distempers, for the Black death, known all over Europe by its terrible ravages, from the years 1348 to 50, was felt here as in other parts, and to the great diminution of the number of the inhabitants.

And later the text reads:

Many considerable colonies have gone away at the latter end of the fourteenth century from hence, as well as from other countries, and a great many were carried off by an epidemical distemper that raged at the time, which the Norvegians called sorte dod, or black death.

But the Danish term, which dates to 1603 in that language, was not the first. The Swedish swarta dödhen appears in the sixteenth century. And the phrase black plague predates Black Death in English. Sampson Price’s 1626 Londons Remembrancer uses the phrase to refer to a recent outbreak of disease in London:

Let not the Merchant burthen his memorie only with his Creditours, nor the Lawyer with his Clyents, nor the Landlord with his Rents, nor the Husbandman with his Cattell, nor the Captaine with his Souldiers, nor the Physitian with his Patients: but let all keepe a Register of this blacke Plague in red letters, in the Ephemerides of their memory, and the staying of it.

And the 1680 English Atlas uses black plague to refer to the fourteenth-century pandemic in a passage about Greenland:

But what the Norwegians conquered, or possessed in this Country, was an inconsiderable corner of that large Continent. Themselves mention a Nation, whom they call Skrelingers, to have inhabited in the middle of the Land, but what they were we know not. But whether their paucity exposed them to the mercilesness [sic] of the Natives: or whether it were an Epidemical disease, which they called the black Plague; which swept away, not only most of that Nation in Groneland, but also the Merchants and Mariners in Norway that maintained that traffique: or whether it were some other reason, which is now forgotten; so it is, that since 1349, little intelligence hath descended to us concerning Groneland, till seeking the North-west passage to China, occasioned more knowledg [sic] of it.

So the specific use of Black Death in English to refer to the fourteenth-century plague comes to us in the eighteenth century from Danish, the association of the color black with plague, and death in general, is older.

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Sources:

The English Atlas, vol. 1 of 5. Oxford: At the Theater for Moses Pitt, 1680, 10. ProQuest. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2011, s.v. Black Death, n., black plague, n.

Pontoppian, Erich. The Natural History of Norway. Andreas Bethelson, trans. London: For A. Linde, 1755, 24 and 236. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Price, Sampson. Londons Remembrancer: for the Staying of the Contagious Sicknes of the Plague by Dauids Memoriall. London: Edward All-de for Thomas Harper, 1626, 20. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: Pierart dou Tielt, c. 1353. Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, Ms. 13076 – 13077, fol. 24v. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

gnarly

A gnarly wave

7 October 2026

The history of gnarly is one of changing forms within English. The adjective gnarly appears in the mid nineteenth century with a sense of covered with protuberances, knotted, twisted. It was formed from the older gnarled, which dates to the early seventeenth century and which also came in the forms knurled or nurled. These adjectives come from the noun knurl or nurl, meaning a protuberance, knob, nodule, etc. This noun, in turn, developed from knur or knurr, which dates to the early fifteenth century, and which means a growth or swelling in flesh or on the trunk of a tree. Beyond this the chain becomes murky, but the word is almost certainly an inheritance from Proto-Germanic as cognates appear in many Germanic languages.

Gnarly and its predecessors all carried literal meanings, or at least figurative ones that did not stray far from the literal meaning of a bumpy or knobbed. That would change in the late 1960s when gnarly was adopted by California surfing culture.

By 1968, gnarly had become surfing slang for a rough wave, one characterized by a surface that wasn’t smooth and hence was difficult to surf. The earliest use of this slang sense of gnarly in print that I’m aware of was by Dewey Schurman, the surfing columnist for the Santa-Barbara News-Press on 24 August 1968:

A small, rocky point marks the southern end of the best surfing area, a point with the friendly name of Tarantula. The waves there are even less friendly. On big south swells, Tarantula often shows a big, gnarly left wall. Almost any hollow left tube nowadays is described as “just like the Banzai pipeline.”

Schurman, who would later become the city editor of the News-Press, used gnarly in a number of subsequent columns. Bonnie Taylor-Blake, who discovered Schurman’s use of the word, also found 1968 references to a Southern California rock band (one speculates that it was a surf rock band) named the Gnarly Beasts, sometimes rendered as Gnarley or Knarly.

From this surfing sense, gnarly would acquire extended, and often contradictory, senses. It could mean risky or dangerous, as attested in a 21 September 1978 glossary of skateboard slang in the Los Angeles Times:

GNARLY: Crazy, like Rad; used for outstanding daring feats or outstanding wipe-outs.

Skateboarding culture overlaps with surfing culture, but that same year gnarly would start to be used outside of those milieux when Stephen King’s novel The Stand used the word twice:

“Hang loose” meant don’t get upset. “Rad” and “gnarly” were ways of saying a thing was good.

And:

“Hey, boy,” The Kid said flatly. Then one of his doll’s eyes closed in a solemn wink. “Don’t tell me—I’ll tell you. How’s that beer? Pretty fuckin gnarly, ain’t it? Hits the spot after ridin that kiddy-bike, don’t it?”

“It sure does,” Trashcan Man said, and took another big swallow of warm Coors. He was insane, but not yet insane enough to disagree with The Kid while he was driving. Nowhere near.

And it could also mean something unpleasant, as in this passage from Joseph Wambaugh’s 1981 novel Glitter Dome in which a woman who is offered a part in a porn film uses gnarly to describe her past work as a sex worker:

I mean, I was getting antsy around here in the house all the time, with her working so much and all. I wanted my own money and it seemed better than going back to those gnarly massages. Eight thousand for three days?

Gnarly reached a wider audience with the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where, in a memorable scene, the surfer character Jeff Spicoli, played by Sean Penn, utters, “Oh, gnarly!” while witnessing an autopsy.

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Sources:

Crowe, Cameron. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (film). Amy Heckerling, dir. Universal Pictures, 1982.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 12 September 2026, s.v. gnarly, adj.

King, Stephen. The Stand (1978). New York: Anchor Books, 1990, 662 and 728. Archive.org.

Middle English Dictionary, 28 July 2026, s.v. knur, n. (stub entry).

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1900 (2003 addition), s.v. gnarly, adj., gnarled, adj.; 1901, s.v. knurled, adj., knurl, n., knur | knurr, n.

Schurman, Dewey. “How to Avoid the Malibu Crush.” Santa Barbara News-Press (California), 24 August 1968, C-3/1–2. Newspapers.com.

“‘Taking a Burger’ Isn’t Meal to Skateboarders in the Know.” Los Angeles Times, 21 September 1978, G16/1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Taylor-Blake, Bonnie. “Gnarly (surfer slang; slight antedating, 1968),” ADS-L, 19 August 2026.

Wambaugh, Joseph. The Glitter Dome. New York: William Morrow, 1981, 249. Archive.org.

Image credit: Faypearse, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.