balls to the wall / balls out

An aircraft throttle assembly with ball grips.

13 May 2020

The phrase balls to the wall refers to an all-out, maximum effort. The metaphor underlying this meaning isn’t clear until you understand that it got its start in the U.S. Air Force. The balls in question are the round caps on the throttle of many aircraft, and when they are pushed all the way forward, close to the front wall of the cockpit, the aircraft is generating maximum thrust.

The phrase is first recorded in William C. Anderson’s 1965 science fiction novel Adam M-1:

That’s the attitude, Captain [...] No more anxieties. Balls to the wall!

Anderson was a retired U.S. Air Force officer who had served from World War II through to the Vietnam War.

It also appears in Frank Harvey’s Air War: Vietnam from 1967:

That first Doomsday Mission (as the boys call a big balls-to-the-wall raid) against Hanoi.

There are claims that the term was in use as early as the Korean War. While these claims are plausible and even likely to be true, no one has yet produced contemporary evidence of the term’s use prior to 1965.

P-47 Thunderbolt fighter plane with nose art of a charging bull with the words “balls out,” flown by Capt. Milton Thompson of the 509th Fighter Squadron, 405th Fighter Group, 1945.

Of course, the term also carries a connotation of the male genitals, and this undoubtedly contributed to its appeal from the start—and its omission from early published sources—even if it isn’t the metaphor originally underlying the phrase. In this respect, it’s related to the phrase balls out, which also means unrestrained, completely committed. This phrase probably got its start as a play on all out that includes a reference to the testicles.

Balls out also got its start in the U.S. Air Force, or more accurately the U.S. Army Air Forces, but it’s older than balls to the wall. Its first known appearance is in 1945 on the nose of a P-47 fighter flown by Captain Milt Thompson.

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Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. balls, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2007, s.v. balls-to-the-wall, adj. (and adv.), balls-out, adv. and adj.

Sheidlower, Jesse. “Balls in the Air.” Slate.com, 10 February 2006.

coronavirus / COVID-19

Transmission electron micrograph of a coronavirus, 1975.

12 May 2020

Coronavirus is the name for a genus of viruses that infect mammals—including humans—and birds and can cause gastrointestinal, respiratory, and neurological disease. Corona is the Latin word for crown or wreathe, and the surface projections of the viruses resemble a solar corona when viewed under an electron microscope. The name was coined in conjunction with their classification as a separate genus in 1968. From the 16 November 1968 issue of the journal Nature:

In the opinion of the eight virologists these viruses are members of a previously unrecognized group which they suggest should be called the coronaviruses, to recall the characteristic appearance by which these viruses are identified in the electron microscope.

The coronavirus that started the global pandemic in December 2019 is called SARS-CoV-2, for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, CoronaVirus-2, the second coronavirus that causes SARS. (The first one being the 2002–03 outbreak.) The disease it causes is Covid-19, for Coronavirus Disease 2019. These names were in place by 21 January 2020.

The virus is also often referred to as novel coronavirus, which simply means that it is newly discovered. Novel can refer to any new virus, as seen in this quotation from a July 2004 article in the Journal of Medical Virology about the 2002–03 SARS outbreak:

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a newly emerged human disease caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV).

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Sources:

Chan, Paul K.S., et al. “Persistent Infection of SARS Coronavirus in Colonic Cells in Vitro.” Journal of Medical Virology, 74.1, July 2004, 1–7.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. coronavirus, n.

Sheikh, Knvul and Roni Caryn Rabin. “The Coronavirus: What Scientists Have Learned So Far,” New York Times, 21 January 2020.

“Virology: Coronaviruses.” Nature, 220, 16 November 1968, 650.

Photo credit: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) / Dr. Fred Murphy, 1975.

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.