star

January 5, 2022

5 January 2022

(Revision, 6 January: made mention of the PIE root.)

Sometimes the answer is obvious. Why are celebrities of stage, screen, sports, and other pursuits referred to as stars? Your guess is probably right.

Star has a very straightforward etymology. Our present-day word comes down to us from the Old English steorra, which in turn comes from a proto-Germanic root, and before that a Proto-Indo-European one. The Old English sense, of course, is usually that of those fiery balls of incandescent gas in the night sky (although while fairly sophisticated in astronomical matters, the people of early medieval England didn’t know what stars were made of).

An example of the Old English word can be found in Ælfric of Eynsham’s De temporibus anni, an astronomical primer penned c.998 CE. This line follows a discussion of the sun:

Eac swilce ða steorran ðe us lytle ðincað · sind swiðe brade · ac for ðam micclum fæce þe us betweonan is hi sind geðuhte urum gesihðum swiðe gehwæde.
(Likewise, the stars, which seem little to us, are very large, but because of the great distance that is between us they seem to our sight very small.)

But star could also be an appellation for a person who provides inspiration or guidance. For instance, the Virgin Mary was often dubbed Star of the Sea, or in Latin Stella maris. For instance, there is this line from an Old English hymn:

eala þu steorra sæ hal wes þu halig moder godes & mæden symble & gesælig gæt heofonan
O Stella maris, ave alma mater dei atque virgo semper et felix porta cęli.
(O, you star of the sea, hail to you holy mother of God & perpetual maiden & blessed gate of heaven.)

Star began to be applied specifically to actors in the mid eighteenth century. For instance, we have the following two uses that make the metaphor explicit. From the dedication to the 1751 dramatic poem Bays in Council to the actress Esther Bland (fl. 1745–72):

That you may rise to the Summit of your Profession, that you may Shine the brightest Theatric Star, that ever enliven’d or charm’d an Audience, is the sincere Wish of,
MADAM,
Your most Obedient,
and humble Servant,
HARRY RAMBLER.

And there is this from Benjamin Victor’s 1761 History of the Theatres of London and Dublin about actor David Garrick’s rise to fame in 1741:

In the Winter Season, before the shutting up new Playhouse in Goodman’s Fields, there appeared a bright Luminary in the Theatrical Hemisphere. A young Man appeared there in the Character of Richard; and the Fame of his extraordinary Performance reached St. James’s End of the Town; when Coaches and Chariots with Coronets, soon surrounded that remote Theatre. That Luminary soon after became a Star of the first Magnitude, and was called GARRICK.

And by the opening years of the nineteenth century, we see actors referred to as stars without the metaphor being explained. From the Monthly Mirror of May 1808:

The star, however, of this company is Mr. Bradbury. His person, judgment, and genius, in the part of Athelwold, are remarkably effective, but powerful as he is in a ballet of action, his clownery, in the new pantomime of the Farmer’s Boy, is certainly more extraordinary.

At around the same time, athletes also start to be dubbed stars. From Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 3 August 1811:

JAMES BELCHER—This once celebrated pugilist, and a formidable champion of England, died yesterday, at his house, the Coach and Horses, Frith-street, Soho, in the 31st year of his age, after a lingering illness, which had reduced him to a mere skeleton. The deceased arrived in London from Bristol, his native place, as a pugilistic star of the first magnitude, when only eighteen years of age.

And we have star being applied to any exceptional person within a decade or so. From Gerald Griffin’s 1829 The Collegians:

On that night Hardress was one of the gayest revellers at his mother’s ball. Anne Chute, who was, beyond all competition, the star of the evening, favoured him with a marked and cordial distinction.

That’s it. A straightforward and simple etymology and metaphor.

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Sources:

Ælfric. De temporibus anni. Heinrich Henel, ed. Early English Text Society OS 213. London: Oxford UP, 1942, 12.

Gneuss, Helmut, ed. “Ave maris stella.” Hymnar und Hymnen im Englischen Mittelalter. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1968, 66.1., 349. London, British Library, Cotton MS Julius A.vi, fol. 57v.

Griffin, Gerald. The Collegians, vol. 2 of 3. London: Saunders and Otley, 1829, 103. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“London, August 1.” Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 3 August 1811, 2. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2016, modified September 2021, s.v. star, n.1.

Rambler, Harry. Bays in Council, or a Picture of a Green-Room. Dublin: 1751, 4–5. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

“Royal Circus.” The Monthly Mirror. May 1808, 405. NewspaperArchive.com.

Victor, Benjamin. A History of the Theatres of London and Dublin, vol. 1 of 2. London: T. Davies, et al., 1761, 61–62. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Image credit: NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, 26 October 2014. Public domain image.

square / square meal

January 4, 2022

World War II-era poster from the US Office of War Information about meat rationing. The headline reads: “For the Square Deal and the Square Meal Share the Meat.” An image of Uncle Sam, in a butcher’s smock, cutting a large slab of beef.

4 January 2022

A square meal is a substantial, nutritious one. The phrase is an Americanism dating to the 1850s, but it is based on a much older sense of the adjective square.

Square comes into English by the late fourteenth century from the Anglo-Norman esquarre. An early example of the literal meaning can be found in John Trevisa’s translation of Ranulf Higden’s history titled Polychronicon. Trevisa’s translation is from sometime before 1387:

Babylon was i-build as a castel, and i-walled wiþ foure walles square al aboutes; eueriche wal was fifty cubites in brede, and four tyme so moche in heiþe; þe lengþe of euery wal from oon corner to anoþer was sixtene myle.
(Babylon was built as a castle and walled with four walls, square all about; every wall was fifty cubits in breadth and four times as much in height; the length of every wall from one corner to another was sixteen miles.)

Higden’s Latin reads paribus per quadrum (equal by means of a square).

But even as early as this, square had a figurative meaning of thick, solidly built. In the anonymous poem Sir Gawain and Green Knight, written about the same time, we see the word being used in the passage describing the Green Knight’s appearance in King Arthur’s court:

Now wyl I of hor seruise say yow no more,
For vch wyȝe may wel wit no wont þat þer were.
Anoþer noyse ful newe neȝed biliue,
Þat þe lude myȝt haf leue liflode to cach;
For vneþe watz þe noyce not a whyle sesed,
And þe fyrst cource in þe court kyndely serued,
Þer hales in at þe halle dor an aghlich mayster,
On þe most on þe molde on mesure hyghe;
Fro þe swyre to þe swange so sware and so þik,
And his lyndes and his lymes so lone and so grete,
Half-etayn in erde I hope þat he were,
Bot mon most I algate mynn hym to bene,
And þat þe myriest in his muckel þat myȝt ride;
For of bak and of brest al were his bodi sturne,
Both his wombe and his wast were worthily smale,
And alle his fetures folȝande in forme, þat he hade
ful clene.
(Now of that meal I will say no more, for each and every person knows well that there were none there that wonted. Another very new noise suddenly drew near, so that the prince might have leave to start eating; for scarcely a moment after the music had ceased, and the first course in the court properly served, there appeared at the hall door a dreadful master, the greatest on the earth in measure of height; from neck to hips so square and so thick, and his loins and his limbs so long and so great. I deem he was a half-giant on the earth, but in every way I deem him most handsome, and the best of his size that might ride; for his body was massive in back and in breast, both his stomach and waist were slender, and all his attendant features were finely formed.)

Despite having been written at about the same time, Sir Gawain is more difficult than Trevisa’s text for the present-day reader as it is written in the Cheshire dialect. Trevisa wrote in the London dialect, from which standard Present-Day English descends.

In the early seventeenth century, the adjective square started being applied to substantial portions of food and drink. From Randle Cotgrave’s 1611 French-English dictionary:

Vn ferial beuveur, A square drinker, a faithfull drunkard; one that will take his liquor soundly.

And there is this scene from John Fletcher’s play The Tragedie of Bonduca, written c.1612 and published in 1647, about Boudica’s attempt to oust the Roman occupiers from Britain. In the scene, the notion that good soldiers eat heartily is put forth:

Hen[go]. Good Uncle tell me,
What's the price of a couple of cramm'd Romans?
Car[atach]. Some twenty Britains boy; these are good soldiers,
Hen. Do not the cowards eat hard too?
Car. No more, boy.
Come, I'll sit with you too; sit down by me, boy.
Jud[as]. Pray bring your dish then.
Car. Hearty knaves: More meat there.
1. Soul[ier]. That's a good hearing.
Car. Stay now and pledge me.
Jud. This little piece Sir.
Car. By——square eaters,
More meat I say: upon my conscience
the poor Rogues have not eat this month: how terribly
they charge upon their victuals: dare ye fight thus?
Jud. Beleeve it sir, like devils.

The phrase square meal itself, however, does not appear until the 1850s. Here’s an example from Sacramento, California’s Democratic State Journal of 29 August 1856 in an article about a political speech:

The learned and eloquent counsel was throwing himself away, trying to convince the bystanders that the only hope we had, or have, of saving the Union, building the Pacific Railroad, or doing anything else, depended on the election to the seat once filled by Washington, of that distinguished warrior, and gigantic explorer, John Cattle Fremont. He succeeded only tolerably, though I must say that the perfectly organised band of clappers present earned the price they are to be paid, and I sincerely trust that it is large enough to enable them to again enjoy a luxury not known to them for some time past, of a four cornered or square meal.

And a few months later, on 15 December 1856, from that same newspaper:

THAT BULKHEAD.—The Sun is down upon the project “like a lunch-eater on a square meal,” and devotes a column to its denunciation.

It is also recorded in 1865 in the lyrics of a song sung by Black Union soldiers captured in South Carolina during the US Civil War. One source credits a Sergeant Johnson of Company F, Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry, a Black regiment, with writing the song:

When I enlisted in the army,
     Then I thought ’twas grand,
Marching thro’ the streets of Boston
     Behind a regimental band.
When at “Wagner” I was captured,
     Then my courage failed;
Now I’m lousy, hungry, naked,
     Here in Charleston jail.
CHORUS.      Weeping, sad and lonely,
                             Oh! how bad I feel;
                      Down in Charleston, South Car’lina,
                             Praying for a good square meal.

The idea that square meal is nautical in origin and refers to meals being served to sailors on square plates or trenchers is false.

The Phrase Finder website https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/square-meal.html claims an 1804 citation from a Wisconsin newspaper, the Republican Journal. But I cannot find any such paper, and it’s unlikely that there were English-language newspapers in Wisconsin that early. Furthermore, the Republican party, for which the paper is presumably named, was not founded until 1854. The Darlington, Wisconsin Republican Journal was founded in 1856, and the alleged citation may be from a 1904 issue of that paper, although I do not have access to issues that far back.

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Sources:

Abbot, A.O. Prison Life in the South. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1865, 107. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://www.hathitrust.org/

Andrew, Malcolm and Ronald Waldron. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, fourth ed. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies. Exeter: U of Exeter Press, 2002, 212–13.

Armitage, Simon, trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007, 28–29.

Babbington, Churchill, ed. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, vol. 1 of 9. London: Longman, et al., 1865, 1.13, 96–97. HathiTrust Digital Library. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Christ Church MS 89 (Higden), Cambridge, St. John's College MS H.1 (Trevisa).

Cotgrave, Randle. A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London: Adam Islip, 1611, s.v. ferial. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Democratic State Journal (Sacramento, California), 29 August 1856, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Fletcher, John. The Tragedie of Bonduca. In Comedies and Tragedies Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. London: For Humphrey Robinson and Humphrey Moseley, 1647, 2.3, 55. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Glazier, Willard Worchester. The Capture, the Prison Pen, and the Escape (1865). New York: R.H. Ferguson, 1870, 152. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. square, adj.

“That Bulkhead.” Democratic State Journal (Sacramento, California), 15 December 1856, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image Credit: Office of War Information, c.1943. Public domain image.

squaw

January 3, 2022

3 January 2022

In English usage squaw is a pejorative and harmful term for an Indigenous woman of North America. In Algonquian languages, it is a neutral term, but in English squaw has a misogynist and racist connotation and is best avoided, especially by non-Indigenous speakers. It was first borrowed into English from the Massachusett squa, meaning a young, unmarried woman, but it has cognates in other Algonquian languages, where the root has the more general meaning of woman.

Squaw first appears in English writing in William Bradford’s 1622 account of the initial years of the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts in a description of the meeting with the chief of the local, Indigenous community:

The Sachim, or Gouernour of this place, is called Obbatinewat, and though he liue in the bottome of the Massachuset bay, yet he is vnder Massasoyt. He vsed vs very kindly, he told vs, he durst not then remaine in any setled place, for feare of the Terentines. Also the Squa Sachim, or Massachusets Queene was an enemy to him.
We told him of diuers Sachims that had acknowledged themselues to be King IAMES his men, and if he also would submit himselfe, we would be his safegard from his enemies; which he did, and went along with vs to bring vs to the Squa Sachim.

John Winthrop also uses it in his journal entry for 23 March 1631:

Chickatabot came with his Sanopps & squaes, & presented the Gouernor with a [hogshead] of Indian Corne. after they had all dined & had eache a small cuppe of sacke & beades & the men tabacko: he sent awaye all his men and women (thoughe the Gouernor would have stayed them in regard of the rayne & thunder) himselfe and one squa and one Sanoppe, stayed all night, & beinge in English Clothes, the Gouernor sett him at his owne table, where he behaved him selfe as soberly &c: as an Englishe man.

Chickabot was the sagamore (i.e., chief) of the Massachusett Indians living south of Boston. A sanopp is a married man or warrior. The manuscript is difficult to read, and James Savage’s nineteenth-century transcription of the journal records the word beades as beer.

But by the mid nineteenth century, squaw was being used in English as a term of abuse. For example, there is this in John Beauchamp Jones’s 1849 Wild Western Scenes where the word is used to refer to an Indigenous woman, and then the word is taken back because she is young and beautiful:

“Why, hang it all! Was there nothing running after me but this squaw?” asked Joe, who had ventured forth again unobserved, and now stood beside Glenn and Mary.
“Silence!” said Glenn.
“Oh, don’t call her a squaw, Joe—she’s more like an angel than a squaw,” said Mary, gazing tenderly at the lovers while tears were yet standing in her eyes.
“I won’t do so again,” said Joe, “because she’s the prettiest wild thing I ever saw; and if Mr. William don’t marry her, I will.”

The word has also been used to refer to an effeminate man, especially in Indigenous contexts. For example, there is this from Zebulon Pike’s account of his first expedition into the American West. The entry is from 14 September 1805; it was published in 1810:

Met the remainder of the war party (before noted) of the Sacs and Reynards, returning from their expedition against the Sauteurs. I directed my interpreter to ask how many scalps they had taken, they replied “none;” he added they were all squaws, for which I reprimanded him.

So, if you’re tempted to use the word, you probably shouldn’t.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Bradford, William. A Relation or Iournall of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Setled at Plimoth in New England. London: J. Dawson for John Bellamie, 1622, 57–58. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. squaw, n.

Jones, John Beauchamp [Luke Shortfield, pseud.]. Wild Western Scenes. Philadelphia: Grigg, Elliot, 1849, 237. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2019, modified June 2021, s.v. squaw, n.

Pike, Zebulon M. An Account of the Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi. Philadelphia: C. & A. Conrad, et al., 1810, 19–20. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Winthrop, John. The Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649. Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1996, 47.

Winthrop, John. A Journal of the Transactions and Occurrences in the Settlement of Massachusetts and the Other New-England Colonies. Hartford: Elisha Babcock, 1790, 24. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Image credit: Charles Bird King, 1842; Lehman and Duval, lithographers. DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University. Public domain image.

spud

December 29, 2021

29 December 2021

Spud is a slang term for a potato (cf. potato). The word comes from the name of a digging implement used to uproot them, which in turn is from a term for a short knife or dagger. The ultimate origin of spud is unknown.

Text describing and an image of a spud, from Markham’s 1613 The English Husbandman. The text is quoted in the article. The image depicts a staff with an iron blade at one end. — Text describing and an image of a *spud*, from Markham’s 1613 *The English Husbandman*. The text is quoted in the article. The image depicts a staff with an iron blade at one end.

The earliest known use of spud, in the sense of a knife, is from c.1440. It appears in the Promptorium parvulorum, an English–Latin dictionary:

Spudd: Cultellus Vilis.
(Spud: inexpensive/cheap knife)

Spud also appears in a play from about the same period, c.1450, The Castle of Perseverance:

Therfore, Mankynde, in this tokenynge,
Wyth spete of spere to thee I spynne,
      Goddys lawys to thee I lerne.
Wyth my spud of sorwe swote
I reche to thyne hert rote.
Al thi bale schal torne thee to bote.
      Mankynde, go schryve thee yerne.
(Therefore, Mankind, in tokening of this,
With the point of a spear I move rapidly to you,
      I teach God’s law to you.
With my spud of sweet sorrow
I reach to your heart’s root.
All your torment shall turn you to comfort.
Mankind, go confess quickly.)

But by the early seventeenth century, spud was being used to refer to a digging implement, a sharp blade, mounted on a staff or handle, for cutting through clots of soil and through roots. From Gervase Markham’s 1613 book The English Husbandman:

Now you shall vnderstand that there is one other thing belonging to the Plough, which albe it be no member thereof, yet is it so necessary that the Husbandman which liueth in durty and stiffe clayes can neuer goe to Plough without it, and it is called the Aker-staffe, being a pretty bigge cudgell, of about a yarde in length, with an Iron spud at the end, according to this figure:

Spuds were also used to dig up root vegetables, like potatoes. And by the mid nineteenth century, the word was being used to refer to potatoes themselves, an example of the form of semantic change known as metonymy. We can see this in Edward Wakefield’s 1845 Adventure in New Zealand:

Then every article of trade with the natives has its slang term,—in order that they may converse with each other respecting a purchase without initiating the native into their calculations. Thus pigs and potatoes were respectively represented by “grunters” and “spuds;” guns, powder, blankets, pipes, and tobacco, by “shooting-sticks, dust, spreaders, steamers,” and “weed;” A chief was called a “nob;” a slave, a “doctor;” a woman, a “heifer;” a girl, a “titter;” and a child, a “squeaker.”

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Sources:

The Castle of Perseverance, David Klausner, ed. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010, lines 1395–1402. Washington, D.C., Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.a.354 (5031).

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. spud, n.3.

Markham, Gervase. The English Husbandman. London: Thomas Snodham for John Browne, 1613, sig. C1-r. Early English Text Society (EEBO).

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. spud(de, n.

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

Promptorium parvulorum. Mayhew, Anthony Lawson., ed. Early English Text Society 102. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1908, 430. London, British Library, MS Harley 221. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wakefield, Edward Jerningham. Adventure in New Zealand, vol. 1 of 2. London: John Murray, 1845, 319. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Markham’s 1613 The English Husbandman, sig. C1-r. Early English Text Society (EEBO).

duck, duck, goose

December 28, 2021

28 December 2021

Sometimes you search and search and come up with nothing. Such is the case with the origin of the children’s game Duck, Duck, Goose, or as it is called in Minnesota, Duck, Duck, Gray Duck. While I can find references to the game going back to the 1920s, I can find nothing other than speculation as to the origin or why the game has different wording in Minnesota.

The earliest mention of the game that I have found is in the Oak Park, Illinois weekly paper Oak Leaves for 26 July 1924. The paper also gives a succinct description of the game:

The girls had tired of “Last Couple Out” by this time, so I entered “Duck, Duck, Goose!” the chosen “it” runs around the outside of the circle touching the heads of those of the circle. He names about three “Duck.” But, on touching the fourth and saying “Goose,” he is immediately pursued around the circle. This is but a variation of “drop the handkerchief” without the hanky.

The choice of goose is probably due to that word’s long use to mean a fool or simpleton. The duck was probably chosen simply to contrast with the goose. We can see just such a use of goose in an anonymous sermon from 1547:

If I be euil reuiled, shall I stand stil like a goose, or a foole, with my finger in my mouth? Shal I be such an ydiot & diserde, to suffre euery man to speake upon me, what they list, to rail what thei list, to raile what thei list, to spewe out all their venyme agaynst me; at their pleasures? Is it not conuenient, that he that speaketh euill shoulde be aunswered accordingly?

I found a 1936 reference to the Minnesota variant, duck, duck, gray duck, but no clue as to why the wording is different. From Foster and Headley’s Education in the Kindergarten:

Duck, Duck, Grey Duck
Formation: Circle.
Action: The child who is it runs around the outside of the circle. As he passes the children he touches certain individuals and says “Duck, Duck, Grey Duck.” When he touches the child and says “Grey Duck” he starts to run, and the child tagged follows in pursuit trying to catch him. If he is caught before he returns to his place, he must go into the middle of the circle, and there he must stay squatting like a duck until the game is over.

Both Foster and Headley were Minnesotans who had taught kindergarten and were professors of education at the University of Minnesota. But they give no explanation for why gray duck rather than the standard goose.

I have seen suggestions that a similar game in Sweden is called Anka, Anka, Grå Anka, which is literally Duck, Duck, Gray Duck, and that Swedish immigrants brought that version of the game to Minnesota, which has a large Nordic population. Such variations in children’s games is common (cf. ring around the rosie), so the explanation is plausible and could very well be correct, but I have yet to see any actual evidence to support it.

An innovation in the Minnesota version of the game is to use a variety of colors, such as red duck, blue duck, green duck, gray duck, and when gray duck is spoken, the pursuit begins. But as can be seen from the 1936 version listed above, this is a relatively new addition to the game and can’t explain what gray duck is doing there in the first place.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), 2013, s.v. duck duck goose, n.

“An Homelie Agaynst Contencion and Braulynge” (1547). Certayne Sermons, or Homilies Appoynted by the Kynges Maiestie, to Bee Declared and Redde by All Persons. London: Rychard Grafton, 1547, sig. Y2.v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Foster, Josephine C. and Neith E. Headley, Education in the Kindergarten. New York: American Book, 1936, 244. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Macalus, Austen. “Why Are Minnesotans the Only Ones to Play Duck, Duck, Gray Duck?” Star Tribune (Minneapolis), 26 April 2019. https://www.startribune.com/why-do-minnesotans-play-duck-duck-gray-duck-instead-of-duck-duck-goose/502474351/

“Playground Venture.” Oak Leaves (Oak Park, Illinois), 26 July 1924, 43. NewspaperArchive.com.

Strickler, Jeff. “The Game Is Duck, Duck Gray Duck. Or Is It?” Star Tribune (Minneapolis), 26 March 2014.

Photo credit: Sage Ross, 2007. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.