Shingles (the roof kind and the illness)

Photo by Austin Walker on Unsplash

A friend of mine came down with the painful ailment known as shingles last week. All her friends commiserated on Facebook and wished her a speedy recovery.

I, meanwhile, heartless as usual, was thinking:

1. What does that have to do with the shingles on my roof?
2. Is "shingles" singular or plural?
   

Actually I did wish her well too! Shingles is a horrible affliction.

First question: What does that have to do with the shingles on my roof?

Well.... nothing.

These are two entirely different words.

The roofing shingles, like so many architecture words, apparently came into English from French after the Norman Conquest, though no such word now survives in French. It is thought that it came from Latin scindula, a later form of scandula ‘a split piece of wood’.

There are a couple of idioms associated with this word:

hang out one's shingle
(apparently only North American, though I did not know this before)

• Begin to practise a profession.

  ‘a license to hang out their shingle as a financial adviser’

And the ever inventive Australians have come up with

a shingle short
Australian informal

(of a person) stupid or slightly mad.

The malady "shingles", on the other hand, which also came into English in the Middle English period, comes from Latin cingulus (a girdle or belt), because the red rash caused by it looks like a belt around the torso. This description can be better detected in the modern German name for the disease, Gürtelrose. The medical name for the condition also includes this idea of a girdle: ‘herpes zoster’ comes ultimately from Greek zōstēr ‘girdle, belt’, and herpēs, literally ‘creeping’, from herpein ‘to creep’.

2nd question: Is "shingles" singular or plural?

As you can see, the "s" at the end of "shingles" is not etymologically an indicator of a plural; it's just the "s" in the Latin cingulus. So technically "shingles" is a singular noun, and treated as such.

shingles is a painful, blistering skin rash that affects more than 1 million Americans every year

It can be plural when the emphasis is on the resulting blisters rather than the illness itself (The shingles were extremely painful), although I don't think it's possible to create a singular "shingle". But most of the people on my friend's Facebook post referred to the disease in the plural, no doubt influenced, as we English speakers are so much, by that final s.

One good result of this: it reminded me I was due for the booster on my shingles vaccine, so I hustled off to the drugstore to have that taken care of.  I wish it hadn't taken her coming down with it to give me that nudge.

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Going through a phase

Wait, is this a phaser or a fazer?

  Which of these sentences is spelled correctly?

1. But nothing fazes Richard, so he'll be up for it.
2. But nothing phases Richard, so he'll be up for it. 

Did you say "phases"? If so, you were WRONG (ok, I admit it, it gives me a little thrill to be able to say that occasionally). Nothing fazes Richard.

The word meaning "disconcert, trouble" has nothing to do with "phase".  FAZE is a very old word, derived from Old English fésian (to drive away), which by the 15th century was also being used to mean "frighten, alarm". Like so many words that have died out of Standard British English, this one survived in North America, and by the 1830s had taken on the meaning "disconcert, disturb". It was subsequently revived in British English.

The homophone PHASE comes ultimately from the Greek word designating each of the aspects of the moon or a planet, according to the amount of its illumination. It is a mere stripling compared to "faze", having entered English in the 17th century. Very quickly its use was extended from the strictly astronomical sense to mean "a distinct period or stage in a process of change or development".

And then, GUESS WHAT??? It BECAME A VERB. 

First, in the early 1900s, in electrical engineering:

To adjust the phase of (an oscillation, alternating current, etc.), esp. in order to bring it into phase or synchrony with something else.

and then, in the late 1940s, more generally: 

To organize, carry out, or introduce in phases. Freq. with in (or out): to introduce into (or withdraw from) use, operation, etc., gradually or in stages.

Remarkably, people were unfazed by this function shift. As they should be.


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Please forbear from using "forebearer"

It seems that Wordlady is in a schoolmarmy reproving sort of mood in time for back-to-school, so once again I am writing about a - gasp - language error.


I have recently seen several instances where people used the word "forebearer" when what they meant was "forebear" (an ancestor or predecessor).


Although the famously inclusive Merriam-Webster dictionaries have an entry for "forebearer", and even the famously judgemental American Heritage Dictionary acknowledges that this variant may soon be acceptable (but not yet), most American and British dictionaries and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary consider "forebearer" to be a mistake.


It is not really surprising that people make this mistake, because you would think, looking at the word "forebear", that it comes from "fore" plus "bear", i.e. that these were the people who were born before you. But astonishingly, this is not true. The word was originally "forebeer", nothing to do with ale, but simply a noun "be-er", that is, someone who was before you. It was originally a Scottish term, which explains why the vowel was pronounced more like "bay" than like "be".


Most dictionaries accept "forbear" as a variant spelling of "forebear", but my advice would be to keep "forebear" for the noun and "forbear" for the verb, now very formal, meaning "refrain from doing something", e.g. "She forbore from commenting."


You can see this verb's slide into oblivion on the Google frequency chart below. The apparent post-2000 uptick is due to dictionaries and recent editions of 19th-century books being loaded onto Google Books. It is clear that the verb "forbear" is in its death throes. "Forbearance" has always been healthier than the verb from which it derives, but even it is not what it once was.

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Chomping at the bit: bridle vs bridal

Just when I think there are certain homophone confusions no one will ever make, I come across ... "bridle party" instead of "bridal party". 

Admittedly, it's not that common a mistake (most of the examples on the web are journalists making puns in headlines about the horsey set), but some people do make it. And it's one you really don't want to make, as apparently the term is also used for a sexual practice that Wordlady doesn't want to get into. That is, she doesn't want to get into explaining it! Well, actually, neither does she want to... oh, never mind.

Back to my staid etymological persona!

Bridle goes all the way back to Old English, derived from a Germanic root bregdan (pull or twitch), which is also the origin of the word "braid". The -le ending is what is called an "instrumental suffix", meaning "something with which the root verb can be done"; for example a handle is something which you can take in your hand; a girdle is something which girds you. So a bridle, the headgear of a horse including the bit and the reins by which it is controlled, is literally a tool used for pulling.

Bridal, which also goes back to Old English, has a very interesting history. It was originally a noun, literally meaning "bride ale". It used to mean the banquet and other festivities associated with the wedding, when, of course, the Anglo-Saxons would quaff a lot of ale. I guess wedding receptions haven't changed much in 1500 years. But by about 1600, people started to think that "bridal" was an adjective meaning "of a bride". They were influenced by that -al ending, more typically used in adjectives (nuptial, mortal, fatal...) than in nouns.

Remember, using the wrong homophone is something that your spellchecker cannot identify or correct!

PS: some readers have commented that they think the correct expression is "champing at the bit". Please check out my other post about this, Breakfast of... chompions?

Photo by Demetrius Washington on Unsplash

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Spelling mistakes: Piqued by peeking at a peak

An extraordinarily common spelling mistake is "sneak peak". Since a peak is a mountain, it would be pretty difficult to sneak one anywhere. What people mean is "sneak peek". I know they are being influenced by the -ea- in "sneak" (and truly English spelling is sadistic in cases like this), but that's no excuse. Whenever you find yourself using this phrase, STOP! and think about the spelling.

What is the difference between peak, peek, and pique?

A mountain or something that looks like one (whipped egg whites, for instance) or a metaphorical high point is a peak. It can also be used as an adjective, as in "peak condition", and a verb, as in "athletes train to peak for the Olympic Games".

A quick look is a peek. This can also be used as a verb, as in "he peeked around the corner". If you have a hard time remembering that it's spelled with a double e, think of other words that have to do with seeing things: see, seek, peer, even leer if that helps (hey, whatever it takes...)

If you're angry or resentful, you're having a fit of pique. If something makes you interested, it piques your interest. This is a fairly old word in English, coming from Middle French pique a quarrel, resentment, which in turn came from piquer to prick, pierce, sting.

It is apparently quite common for people to misspell "pique" too, writing "it peaked my interest", possibly thinking that the phrase means "bring one's interest to a high point". But it doesn't mean that. Perhaps thinking of the etymologically related word "piquant" will help. Food that is piquant stimulates your appetite for more, just as something that piques your interest makes you want more.

So if taking a quick look at a mountain makes you want to know more, you could say your curiosity was piqued by peeking at a peak!

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Waiter! There's a gun in my salad!

 

















Just reading a newspaper article about edible flowers which has the following flower-prep recommendation: "Remove the stamens and pistols from most flowers". Always good advice! I agree it's not that appetizing to find a gun in your salad, but really what they meant was "pistil".

Pistil is derived from a diminutive of the Latin word pilum (a pestle; one of those small club-shaped implements used to crush things in a bowl).
Above is a picture of a pestle and one of a pistil. You can see how one was named after the other.

Pistol (a handgun) is derived, unusually for English, from Czech. In Czech, the word píst'ala (a whistle, pipe, flute) was apparently first applied during the Hussite wars to a weapon with a barrel and a clear-sounding shot.

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Hurtling over hurdles

I just read a posting for a job which required candidates who could "find creative solutions to hurtles that arise". What they meant was "hurdles". These two words are pronounced the same in North American English.

"Hurtle" is a verb meaning "move wildly at a dangerous speed". A car can hurtle down a street. Something can hurtle through the air.

"Hurdle" is first of all a noun, one of those fence-like objects that runners leap over. The word is also used figuratively, as in the sentence in question.

Originally hurdles were portable rectangular frames of woven wicker, used on farms as temporary gates or walls of sheep pens. As is typical with English nouns, a verb developed out of this meaning "jump over a hurdle".

Perhaps a way to remember that hurtle is spelled with a t is that if your car is hurtling down the street you are likely to get hurt.

Photo by Andrew McElroy on Unsplash

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A racket of racquets

Thwock. With the opening of the Rogers Cup tennis championship tomorrow, there will be a racket of racquets at York University. The implement used by tennis players got its name from an Arabic word, rahet (the palm of the hand), the ball originally being batted around with the hand. No doubt having one's hands bruised to a pulp quickly lost its charm, so the stringed bat was invented. The other racket, designating a din or uproar, or also a scam, is, alas, of undetermined origin.

Florist on a bike: a pedalling petal peddler

I was just up at a resort on Georgian Bay where I got some exercise with a pedal boat -- or, as the spelling-challenged resort called it, a peddle boat. Pedal and peddle are two different words. Where feet are involved with pushing a lever (as in a bicycle, or an organ, piano, sewing machine, etc.) the spelling is "pedal". It derives from a Latin word meaning "foot", pes, which became ped- when it combined with a suffix. It also turns up in "pedestrian".

When you're talking about selling something, possibly door-to-door, often drugs, or even more notionally when you are trying to promote an idea, the word and spelling you want is peddle. This seems to be what we call a "back-formation" from the noun "pedlar" (usually spelled "peddler" in North America). Unfortunately we don't know the origin of this word for sure.

For speakers of North American English, there is a third word in this series of homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently): petal, the part of a flower (which comes quite boringly from the Latin petalum meaning the same thing).

So, how to keep these straight if you keep mixing them up?

Here are a couple of mnemonics (memory devices) I have thought up. Do let me know if they help!

Pedal (foot thing). Think bicycles (the thing that comes first to most people's minds when they think about pedals). Have a really vivid image in your brain of Albert Einstein riding a bicycle (or if you know someone called Al, you can put him on the bike in your mental image). Slap a T-shirt on Einstein with his name, AL, in big letters on the back. Those of you who like acronyms can try the following Tour de France-inspired one: Practically Every Day Armstrong Leads: P.E.D.A.L.
With either of these mnemonics you associate "-al" with bicycles, and thus with other foot-controlled things.

Peddle (sell). We don't really have old-fashioned peddlers with their vans full of assorted goods anymore. When we use the verb "peddle", we're more likely to be speaking of someone peddling heroin. Who peddles? Drug dealers. Perhaps this alliterative compound with a double D will help you remember that "peddle" is not for bikes, but it is for selling (although it probably won't be an approved mnemonic for use in Ontario schools).

Petal (flower). Think of other flower-related words: stem, plant, leaf, flower, (if you're really into botany or want to show off, you'll know stamen and pistil, anther, calyx and styles as well, but if you can spell them already you're probably not having difficulty with "petal"). Do you see a letter D anywhere? Nope! And in fact, what letter does turn up in a lot of these flower words? Yes! T! So, if we're talking flowers, it's petal with a T!

Now, what about that word "soft-pedal" (or is it "soft-peddle"?) meaning "tone down, go easy on"? It is in fact "soft-pedal", the image being of a pianist using the pedal that reduces the volume of the note being played.

As for the resort, a further complication in the case of those boats that you propel with pedals is that they are also called "paddle boats" (presumably because you paddle about in them). In most North American pronunciations, short e's and short a's are very close together, so that "paddle" is a very close homophone of pedal, peddle, and petal.

But whatever they are, they aren't "peddle boats"!

Poring or pouring?

If you read a book intently, you don't pour over it, but pore over it (unless you at the same time douse it bizarrely with a liquid). Perhaps this mistake is so common because we don't know either verb's origin. “Pour” (which used to rhyme with “hour”), might be related to the word “purée”. But the verb “pore” is a mystery. The pores in the skin, from a Greek word meaning a channel in the body, are unrelated. Nonetheless, thinking of how closely you have to peer at pores to see them may help you to remember how to spell the verb meaning “scrutinize intently”.

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! If you are not already subscribed, you can either:

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