baker's dozen

Medieval bakers at work, detail from a 13th century, Belgian psalter, Los Angeles, Getty, MS 14, fol. 8v.

12 May 2020

A baker’s dozen is thirteen of something. But why thirteen? The short answer is that we don’t know for sure, but we do have a pretty good guess.

The practice of adding an extra loaf of bread to the purchase of a dozen is widely believed to date to a series of medieval English laws, the Assizes of Bread and Ale. These laws strictly regulated the price and weight of loaves of bread that were to be sold and assigned punishments to bakers who shorted or overcharged customers. The first version of these laws was promulgated in the twelfth century during the reign of Henry II, but there were a number of them in succeeding years through to the early fourteenth century and the reign of Edward II. The most famous of these is the 1266 law promulgated under Henry III, but that is not the first nor only one.

So, the explanation goes, bakers began adding an extra loaf gratis to each dozen for two reasons. The first is that it prevented them from accidentally selling an underweight loaf and potentially being subject to punishment, but bakers often produced more than the local community could eat, and the excess was sold to hucksters who would resell the bread elsewhere. Since the law prohibited raising the price of a loaf of bread, the free loaf enabled the hucksters to make a profit.

The phrase baker’s dozen, however, doesn’t appear until long after these medieval laws were enacted, so there is no record that connects the phrase to the older laws, and the earliest known appearance of the phrase has nothing to do with baking. From Thomas Nash’s 1596 Haue Vvith You to Saffron-Vvalden:

Fie, this is not the fortieth dandiprat part of the affectionate Items, hee hath bequeathed on your mysterie, with fiue thousand other doctrinal deuotions, hath he adopted himselfe more than a by founder of your trade, conioyning with his aforesaid Doctor Brother in eightie eight browne Bakers dozen of Almanacks.

The phrase also appears in John Cooke’s play Green’s Tu Quoque, or the City Gallant, which is first known to have been performed in 1611 and was published in 1614.* In the play, a group of men are gambling at dice and calling out their bets:

Spend. For me, six.
Omnes. And six that.
Sta. Nine; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8: eighteene shillings.
Spend. What’s yours, sir?
Scat. Mine’s a Bakers dozen: master Bubble, tel [i.e., count out] your mony.
Bub. In good faith I am but a simple gamester, and doe not know what to doe.
Scat. Why, you must tell your money, and hee’le pay you.

From the use of the phrase in these two works without explanation in a context that has nothing to with baking, it’s pretty clear that baker’s dozen was a well-established term by the early modern era.

But while we can’t say for certain that the medieval laws are indeed the origin of baker’s dozen, it’s not an unreasonable guess.

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Sources:

“The Assizes of Bread, Beer, & Lucrum Pistoris.” Medieval Sourcebook. 1998. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/breadbeer.asp

Cooke, John. Greenes Tu Quoque. London: Iohn Trundle, 1614. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Nash, Thomas. Haue Vvith You to Saffron-Vvalden. London: John Dante, 1596. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. baker n.

Photo credit: J. Paul Getty Museum.

* = The OED dates Greene’s Tu Quoque to 1599, but this is probably an error. The OED entry hasn’t been revised since being written in 1885.

pandemic

Red Cross workers removing the body of an influenza victim from a home in St. Louis, Missouri, 1918

11 May 2020

Pandemic, epidemic, and endemic are three words that are most often used to describe the prevalence of a disease in a population. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a pandemic as “the worldwide spread of a new disease,” and it defines an epidemic as “the occurrence in a community or region of cases of an illness, specific health-related behaviour, or other health-related events clearly in excess of normal expectancy.” In contrast, an endemic disease is one that is normally found at a given level in a population. While all three words come from the same root, their paths into English have been different.

The oldest of these three in English is epidemic. It was borrowed into English from the French épidémique, which in turn came from Latin, which got it from Greek. The Greek ἐπί- (epi-) means on, over, or at, and δῆμος (demos) means people. (In contrast, an epizootic disease is one that has an outbreak among non-human animals.) The word appears in the form epidemy as early as 4 November 1472 in a letter by John Paston found in London, British Library MS Add. 43491, fol. 18 (the collected letters and papers of the Paston family are a rich source of historical data for that period):

And men seye that ther is many off the sowders þat went to hym into Bretayne been dede off the fflyxe and othere ipedemye.

(And men say that there many of the soldiers that went to him into Brittany are dead of the flux and other epidemics.)

English use of the modern form can be found as early as 1603 in Thomas Lodge’s A Treatise of the Plague:

An Epidemick plague, is a common and popular sicknesse, hapning in some region, or countrey, at a certaine time.

Pandemic was formed within English from Greek roots, presumably modeled on the example of the earlier epidemic. The Greek παν- (pan-) means all. So, a pandemic is a disease that affects all people, not a specific population. The word appears as early as 1666 in Gideon Harvey’s Morbus Anglicus, but not in the modern sense. Harvey uses it as a synonym for endemic:

Diseases; which instances do evidently bring a Consumption under the notion of a Pandemick, or Endemick, or rather a Vernacular Disease to England; that is a common disease owing its rise to some common external and perennal cause of a Countrey; as a Consumptive Air, or a Consumptive Diet. viz. eating much Flesh, drinking Hopt drink, &c. And beyond this denomination the disease may not improperly be stiled Epidemick, that is, surprizing many at a certain season of the year.

The modern distinction between endemic and pandemic was being made about a century later. From Richard Brookes’s 1754 An Introduction to Physic and Surgery:

Diseases are likewise ENDEMIC and PANDEMIC. The endemic are proper to certain Places, and as it were Inmates, and arise from the Air, Situation, common depraved Diet, and bad Water. The pandemic affect the People in general at one and the same Time, with Regard to Sex, Age, Condition, or Temperament; such as pestilential Diseases.

But Brookes’s usage of pandemic is still not in the present-day sense, as he uses it for what we today would call an epidemic. The present-day sense of pandemic is in place by 1883, when Lyon Playfair uses it in speech in the British House of Commons in reference to an 1871 outbreak of smallpox:

This epidemic became pandemic; for it not only devastated Europe, but invaded both North and South America, as well as the South Sea Islands.

Finally, as we have seen above, endemic makes its English appearance by 1666 when Harvey uses it. As with pandemic, the word was formed within English from Greek roots. The Greek ἐν- (en-) means in. Endemic is also used in contexts other than disease, specifically to denote plants and animals native to a region. This particular usage is a nineteenth century borrowing from the French endémique.

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Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. epidemic, Appendix of Indo-European Roots.

Brookes, Richard. An Introduction to Physic and Surgery. London: J. Newbery, 1754. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Harvey, Gideon. Morbus Anglicus, 1666. Early English Books Online.

Letter, Sir John Paston to John Paston, 4 November 1472. The Paston Letters, A.D. 1422–1509, vol. 5. James Gairdner, ed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1904, 157.

Lodge, Thomas. A Treatise of the Plague, London: Thomas Creede and Valentine Simms, 1603. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership.

Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s.v. epidemie, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. epidemic, adj. and n., and endemic, adj. and n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2005, s.v. pandemic, adj. and n.

World Health Organization. “Emergencies Preparedness, Response: What Is a Pandemic?” 24 February 2010.

World Health Organization. “Humanitarian Health Action: Definitions: Emergencies.” Accessed 31 March 2020.

Photo credit: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1918. 

bailiwick

11 May 2020

In the United States today, a bailiff is an official who is charged with keeping order in a courtroom and who often acts as crier, announcing the opening of proceedings. But in England the title is used for any number of administrative magistrates or officials. The English word comes to us from the Old French, one of the administrative terms introduced to England by the Normans, and that in turn is from the medieval Latin bajulus, meaning carrier or supporter, and by extension governor or minister. The English word is in place by about 1300, as in this example from the life of Thomas Becket contained in the South English Legendary (Oxford, Bodleian MS Laud Misc. 108):

Al-þei it þoruȝ treuþe were: þe playdinge scholde beon i-brouȝt
bi-fore þe kinge and is baillifs: and to holi churche nouȝt.

(Although it was the thorough truth, the pleading should have been brought before the king and his bailiffs, and not to the holy church.)

A bailiwick is originally the area of jurisdiction of a bailiff, and by extension it has generalized to mean a person’s area of expertise, skill, or authority. It’s a compounding of bailie, a form of bailiff, and -wick, an Old English word for town. So, a bailiwick is literally a bailiff’s district. The word is in place by 1431 when it appears in the chronicles of Durham Cathedral Priory (York Minster Library, MS XVI.i.12):

Ye shall doo all your payne and diligence to destroye and make to cese all maner of heresyes and erroures commonly called Lollardnes with in your baillifwyke.

(You shall make all effort and do all diligence to destroy and cease all manner of heresies and errors that are commonly called Lollardy within your bailiwick.)

The generalized sense of bailiwick is an Americanism that is in place by at least 1837, when the New England Farmer and Horticultural Register of 13 December includes:

“Let every one keep within his own Bailiwick.”

We like above motto, and believe the observance of it would be wholesome and profitable to farmers. We are fond of seeing a man stick to his own occupation; keeping on “his own side of the hedge.” If we all were to follow this good rule, surely agriculture would be no loser by it. Time was, when a farmer was obliged to be “jack at all trades.” But this was when mechanics were few, compared to the present times.

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Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, bailiwick, n.

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2017, s.v. bailliff.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. bajulus.

Garner, Bryan A. ed. Black’s Law Dictionary, 11th edition, 2019, s.v. bailiff, bailiwick.

Historiae Dunelmensis Scriptore Tres, by Geoffrey of Coldingham, Robert Greystones, and William de Chambre. London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1839.

Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s.v. bailif, n. and bailif-wik, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. bailiff, n. and bailiwick, n.

quarantine

U.S. President Nixon greeting the crew of Apollo 11 in quarantine upon their return from the moon, 24 July 1969

10 May 2020

A quarantine is a period of isolation, especially one necessitated to stop or slow the transmission of a disease. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) differentiates the word from isolation:

Isolation and quarantine help protect the public by preventing exposure to people who have or may have a contagious disease.

Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.

Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.

Quarantine comes to English from medieval Latin, both directly and via French and Italian. The medieval Latin quarentena is a variation of the classical Latin quadraginta, meaning the number forty. Quarentena had a number of senses dating from the twelfth century in Anglo-Latin texts, all relating to measurements involving the number forty. It could mean a furlong (i.e., 40 rods) in length or an area measuring a furlong on all four sides (roughly ten acres). Or in could refer to a period of forty days in various religious, legal, or diplomatic contexts. It could also refer to the location in the wilderness where Christ fasted for forty days and nights.

This last sense is the one used in quarantine’s first appearance in English that is recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary. From the description of Jerusalem in the Itineraries of William Wey, c. 1470, found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodl 565:

By yonde ys a wyldernys of quaren tyne,
Wher Cryst wyth fastyng hys body dyd pyne.

(Beyond is a wilderness of quarantine,
Where Christ with fasting his body did pine.)

Quarantine’s connection with disease probably comes to us via Italian, specifically from Venice, where, in the early fourteenth century, ships from plague-ridden ports were required to ride at anchor for forty days before putting into the port. This sense appears in English by 1649, when the newspaper the Moderate Intelligencer published this report from Toulon:

Our Gallyes which were upon the point of finishing their Quarantaine, and entering into this Port, have been hindred from it by th'arrival of three others that were out a roaming.

In less than fifteen years, the word had lost its specific association with forty days, as recorded by Samuel Pepys in his Diary of 26 November 1663:

The plague, it seems, grows more and more at Amsterdam; and we are going upon making of all ships coming from thence and Hambrough, or any other infected places, to perform their Quarantine (for 30 days as Sir Rd. Browne expressed it in the order of the Council, contrary to the import of the word; though in the general acceptation, it signifies now the thing, not the time spent in doing it) in Holehaven, a thing never done by us before.

The verb to quarantine appears in the early nineteenth century.

In current use, quarantine is also used in politics to refer to a diplomatic or economic isolation of a country. This sense appears as early as 1891, when France severed diplomatic ties with Bulgaria, as reported by the New York Times on 16 December of that year:

The future will throw light on the question of how the rupture will affect Bulgaria and those in power at Sofia. When a great power establishes diplomatic quarantine against them it is well not to go too far on a course on which they appear to be embarking with a light heart.

More famously, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his “Quarantine Speech” on 5 October 1937 in which he advocated for strong but unspecified, presumably economic, action against unspecified aggressor nations, presumably Germany, Italy, and Japan. Roosevelt did not specifically label those actions as a quarantine, instead he used a medical metaphor:

It seems to be unfortunately true that the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading. And mark this well: When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease. It is my determination to pursue a policy of peace and to adopt every practicable measure to avoid involvement in war.

As reported by the New York Times the following day:

Nobody at the State Department today professed to know what the President meant in his Chicago speech by suggesting an isolation of the world’s treaty-breakers by “quarantine,” or by his offer to join “positive efforts to preserve peace.”

On 22 October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy used the word with more specificity in his announcement of a naval blockade of Cuba:

To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

The word is also used in computing to refer to isolating a computer virus, as in this 21 March 1988 use in the journal InfoWorld:

Also included is Canary, a “quarantine” program for use as a sample to test for a virus by pairing it with new or suspect programs.

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Sources:

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. quarentena.

Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s.v. quarentine.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2007, s.v. quarantine, n. and quarantine, v.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Quarantine and Isolation.”29 September 2017.

Photo credit: NASA.

apron strings, tied to

Cover page of sheet music for “Your Mother’s Apron String,” a song by John Hogarth Lozier, 1891

9 May 2020

To be tied to someone’s apron strings is a metaphor for being unduly attached to or dominated by a woman, and it connotes immaturity, foolishness, and impotence. The metaphor is rather obvious, since traditionally it would be a woman who wore an apron.

The phrase dates to at least 1791 when it appears in George Colman’s play The Jealous Wife. In the opening scene, the character of Mrs. Oakly accuses her husband of being unfaithful with a number of women, and he replies:

Oons! madam, the grand Turk himself has not half so many mistresses.— You throw me out of all patience— Do I know any body but our common friends?— Am I visited by any body that does not visit you?— Do I ever go out, unless you go with me?— And am I not as constantly by your side as if I was tied to your apron-strings?

Colman’s use is in the sense of literal proximity. But by 1823 the sense of the phrase we’re familiar with today was in place. From the Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany of July of that year:

The doating gowk, aye seen to hing
Tied to his dearie’s apron string.

There are, however, some older uses of apron-string to refer to women and that hint at their dominance over some men. An apron-string hold/tenure is when a man controls a property owned by his wife but only during her lifetime. Nathaniel Ward in his 1647 The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America writes:

I have observed men to have two kindes of Wills, a Free-hold will, such as men hold in Capite of themselves; or a Copy-hold will, held at the will of other Lords or Ladies. [...] And I am sure, a King cannot hold by Copy, at the will of other Lords; the Law calls that base tenure, inconsistent with Royalty; much more base is it, to hold at the will of Ladies: Apron-string tenure is very weak, tyed but of a slipping knot, which a childe may undoe, much more a King. It stands not with our Queens honour to weare an Apron, much lesse her Husband, in the strings; that were to insnare both him and her self in many unsafeties. I never heard our King was Effeminate: to be a little Uxorious personally, is a vertuous vice in Oeconomicks; but Royally, a vitious vertue in Politicks.

And there is William Ellis’s use of the term in his 1744 Modern Husbandman which equates having an apron-string tenure with foolishness:

There may happen some particular Cases, which may oblige a Person to transplant Trees even in Summer-time; as when he is forced to remove them in that Season, or must destroy his Fruit-Trees, if he cannot carry them away, and transplant them safely in another place; which very likely would answer better than what one of my Neighbours did, who, being possessed of a House and large Orchard by Apron-string-hold, felled almost all his Fruit-Trees, because he every Day expected the Death of his sick Wife.

Richard Brathwaite in his 1640 Ar’t asleepe husband? writes:

For a kind natur'd wench will see light thorow a small hole; yea, and with twirling of their Apron-string, have as ready an answer, if at any time taken napping.

And there is this, from the anonymous 1649 play The Rebellion of Naples or the Tragedy of Massenello, in which the main character Tomaso is speaking to his wife:

Now the hand of providence hath cal'd me to hold the Scales of Justice; now, to be President of a Councel of State; by and by, President of a Councel of War: Do you think Women are sit Creatures to be consulted with? Must the affairs of State hang upon an apron-string? Look to your dishes, and see that your rooms be well swept, and never think to teach Tomaso what he hath to do.

And a century earlier, Nicholas Udall in his 1542 translation of Erasmus’s Apophthegmes, includes a note in which he equates a mother’s apron string with foolishness and stupidity, perhaps a metaphor of an immature child:

euen of old antiquitee dawcockes, lowtes, cockescombes & blockheaded fooles, were in a prouerbial speaking said: Betizare, to be werishe & vnsauery as Beetes. Plautus in his comedie entitled Truculentes, saith: Blitea est meretrix, it is a pekish [i.e., foolish] whore, & as we say in english, As wise as a gooce, or as wise as her mothers aperen string. So a feloe that hath in him no witte, no quickenesse, but is euen as one hauing neither life ne soule, Laberius calleth Bliteam belluam, a best made of Beetes.

So. the phrase tied to apron strings dates to at least the eighteenth century, although it may be older in oral use. And the association of apron strings with female power is much older.

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Sources:

Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. apron-strings, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. apron-string, n.

Photo credit: New York Public Library.