Whiling or wiling?

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

A Wordlady reader has asked what we are doing during our enforced isolation.

Are we

whiling away the hours

or

wiling away the hours.

Since ever fewer people pronounce initial wh- as "hw", these two verbs are perfect homophones for most English speakers.

Knowing that the noun wile means

A crafty, cunning, or deceitful trick; a sly, insidious, or underhand artifice; a stratagem, ruse [think Wile E. Coyote],

you might think that you are warding off boredom with cunning ruses and that hence, "wile away the hours" is the right choice.  

Indeed, many people have thought this over the last two centuries, including Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, who wrote in Oliver Twist: "I was reading a book to-night to wile the time away."

But let's be serious. I don't know about you, but I'm not that cunning in finding ways to pass the time. Cuddle cat. Check. Watch TV. Check. Cuddle cat again. Check. Write Wordlady post. Check. Back to the cat.

Thankfully, in the early 1600s English speakers turned the very old noun "while" (dating from Old English and meaning "a portion of time") into a verb meaning "to pass the time". So we can (and do) while away the time/hours etc.

Maybe as this isolation wears on, we will have to find more cunning ways to pass the time and we really will be wiling away the hours, but for now I think we are just whiling them away.

By the way, you noticed, right, that both verbs while and wile are derived from the related nouns? Of course you know I would never miss an opportunity to point out a noun-verb conversion! 

Looking for a good way to while away the hours? Why not read some of the over 600 blog posts on Wordlady? And, hey, share (oh hey, there's another verb that started out as a noun) a few on social media for your friends who are also looking for ways to while away the time. All you have to do is click on the "Wordlady" at the top of this page and you will be able to access every post.

A fun noun-verb/verb-noun conversion quiz

MacMillan Dictionaries has created this fun quiz on my favourite subject, functional shifts, better known as "Is it OK to use a noun as a verb or a verb as a noun?" The answer is YES, by the way. You can read my thoughts about it here:
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2010/09/verbs-its-ok-to-do-this-really.html
For many other examples that I've written about, you can click on the "nouns as verbs" tag.

Here's the quiz:
http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/nounings-and-verbings-quiz

I don't think the point of the quiz is to see how many you get "right", actually. I think it is to show how very embedded these conversions have become in English, so we no longer have any notion that "Well, that's really a NOUN; it shouldn't be used as a verb". Or vice versa.

Oh, and by the way, if you're tempted to quote Calvin and Hobbes "Verbing weirds language" as someone always does when this topic comes up, please don't. Verbing enriches the language, and it's perfectly normal. Not weird at all. 

This post has been thoroughly vetted

https://youtu.be/ZpCl5O6tTv8
 
There is much talk in the news these days of the "vetting" of refugee claimants.

Does this have anything to do with that friendly medical professional that Minkus and Papagena so love to visit?

Surprisingly, yes. The word "veterinarian" (derived from Latin veterīnus: belonging or pertaining to cattle) came into English in the 1600s, when we LOVED borrowing Latin words. Admittedly it's a mouthful, and by the mid-1800s it was shortened to "vet". 

A few decades later, the inevitable had happened: the noun became a verb, "To submit (an animal) to examination or treatment by a veterinary surgeon":

Of the 73 stallions..only 39 came back for a second inspection after they had been ‘vetted’

Almost at the same time, in slang, the verb took on an extended sense: "make a careful and critical examination of (a plan, work, candidate, etc.)." By the 1950s, this sense had moved from slang to the neutral register of the language.

The other "vet" was shortened from "veteran", also in the mid-1800s. "Veteran", which we borrowed from French in the early 1500s, ultimately comes from the Latin word vetus (old).

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The dossier on "dossier"

A thick dossier

This week, according to Merriam-Webster dictionaries,

Lookups for 'dossier' spiked after the news that U.S. investigators had confirmed portions of a dossier on Trump's ties to Russia

Why do we call a collection of documents about a person or event this? 

The French dossier comes from the word for "back" (dos); a bundle of documents on a particular subject was called this because it had a label on the back. We borrowed "dossier" in the mid-19th century, although we had the perfectly good "file" already (more about that later). Of course English has never been reluctant to acquire more synonyms for words it already has. 

The early quotation that Merriam-Webster gives is

I may, however, mention from high legal authority, that the President laboured under a mistake when he demanded the displacement or even communication of the “dossiers” (legal papers) of the Boulogne and Strasburg affairs.
—Freeman’s Journal (Dublin, Ireland), 11 Jan. 1849

Various criminal cases in French-speaking jurisdictions were reported on in English newspapers, and the Dreyfus affair at the end of the 19th century gave the word a bit of a bump in English as journalists reported on the scandal. Perhaps the fact that French was the language of diplomacy contributed to the word being borrowed in government circles.

DOSSY-ay or DOSSY-ur?

It seems that "dossier" first entered English through print rather than speech, because the OED's entry, written in 1897, gives as its first pronunciation not the French "doe SYAY", but rather the anglicized "DOSSY uh". But, while a very few people still do say this (or its r-ful North American variant, "DOSSY ur"), with English speakers becoming more familiar with French, we have, over time, ended up with a hybrid English/French pronunciation: "DOSSY ay" is now overwhelmingly most common in all varieties of English.  A very small number of anglophones do, however, pronounce this word "DOE see ay".

FILE

Now, what about file? (Thank GOD everyone pronounces it the same!)

In Latin, the word fīlum meant "thread". This came into Old French as fil (pronounced "FEEL"), and it means "thread" to this day in French (as well as "wire" and other extensions of meaning). 

But English went a different way with "fil" after we borrowed it from French in about 1500, using it for a very specific kind of thread: a string or wire on which papers and documents were strung for safekeeping and reference. From there it was just a short step for "file" to refer to the papers themselves, and then to other methods of keeping and organizing them, until in the 21st century our "files" are made of electrons.

A CANADIANISM!

Here in Canada we have our very own extension of the word "file":

• 4. Cdn issues and responsibilities in a specified area, considered collectively: what progress has the prime minister made on the unity file?

Oddly enough, this is a context where other varieties of the language might use the word ... "dossier"! In fact, I suspect that this is a usage that arose as a loan translation of the French dossier in Canada's bilingual federal public service.

OTHER FILES

The "single file" sense of "file" is also ultimately derived from the same Latin word meaning "thread". The file we use on our fingernails is a different word, dating all the way back to Anglo-Saxon.  

And of course, all of these "files" have, quite naturally, generated verbs. Yes, more of those. No sign of "dossier" being used as a verb yet, but it's a fairly new word in English so it may be only a matter of time.

Meanwhile, please do not consign this blog post to the "circular file" (a term celebrating its 50th birthday in 2017)!

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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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Would you enjoy talking about words with Wordlady over many, many glasses of wine? Why not check out my trip to Bordeaux and Toulouse in July 2017. Unlike most of my Tours en l'air trips, this is more about food, wine, and sightseeing than about ballet (though there is some of that too). BOOKING NOW, SIGNUP DEADLINE SEPTEMBER 20. More info here:
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Who knew you could go whaling at Costco?

In an incident that gives the lie to Canadians' smug belief that we are always the epitome of politeness, a brawl broke out over a parking spot at a Costco in a Toronto suburb on the weekend. You can see the edifying spectacle here:
https://youtu.be/58spiamEcfY


The person who filmed it was quoted by CBC as follows:

"I was just doing some shopping," the real estate agent told CBC News, "and all of a sudden there was a lot of screaming and yelling." The participants moved their cars, he said, and then "they came back to the middle of the parking lot and started again. It wasn't long before they started wailing on each other."

Now, although the high-pitched screeching of one of the participants could put one in mind of wailing, the correct word in this instance is, perhaps surprisingly, "whaling". But this whaling, meaning "beat, strike, thrash" has nothing to do with Moby Dick, or possibly only tangentially. It is a word of obscure origin that cropped up in the late 18th century. One theory is that it derives from the practice of beating someone with a whalebone riding whip. These did indeed exist, but the first mention of them is later than the first mention of whaling on someone. 

The whale which is the source of whalebone was originally in Anglo-Saxon a hwal, one of many English words where the hw- got switched around to a bizarre wh- in the spelling. Although the hw- pronunciation still survives in some varieties of English (Scots, Irish, American), in Canada the hw- pronunciation of these words is now almost dead, making "whale" and "wail" homophones and resulting in the kind of spelling confusion we have in this article. 

(By the way, the noun "whale" became a verb meaning "hunt for whales" in the late 1600s. Just thought I'd mention that.)

"Wail" seems to be from an Old Norse word related to the word "woe". 

One thing is for sure: Saturday shoppers whaling on one another over a parking spot is definitely a decline in civility worth bewailing.

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Tailing off or trailing off

A Wordlady correspondent writes as follows:

A student in my copy editing class was browsing the second edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary and came across "tail off." Its meaning is very similar to that of "trail off," and she's asked me if one is essentially a bastardization of the other--and which is "more correct."

It warms the cockles of my heart to hear that someone is browsing my dictionary! 

Browsing a dictionary: the best people do it

But indeed the dictionary is not as helpful as it might be:

trail, v.

• 5. [intransitive] [usu. foll. by away, off] peter out; tail off.

tail off (or away) diminish gradually; decrease in intensity, output, production, etc

These two phrasal verbs seem to have arisen at about the same time in the 1850s. They are simply based on words that are very similar in form (tail, trail) and, coincidentally, both evoke images of something that gradually diminishes in size. One is not a corruption of, or less correct than, the other. 

(By the way, I can't help pointing out in passing that the verb "tail" started out as a NOUN). All right, off my hobbyhorse now...

Despite their similarities, these words are not used interchangeably, of the same types of activity. If you consult Oxford Dictionaries online, which is a free resource (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com)

and, being online, has more room for examples from the real world than a paper dictionary like the Canadian Oxford, you immediately notice the difference:

• The discussion gradually tails off as the wiki entry now represents the shared knowledge of the community represented by the discussion participants.
• For normal papers, the rate of citation peaks in the second to fourth years after publication and gradually tails off thereafter.
• But if the upper speed limit tails off more gradually, then other factors are more likely responsible.
   

• He felt the magic start to fade and the voices trailed off.
• Her voice trailed off as she disappeared around the corner, headed for the children's bedrooms.
• ‘My God, it could happen to any of us,’ and her voice trailed off.

This very close association of "trail off" with the sound of a voice is something most native speakers of English would understand intuitively, if given some time to think about what sorts of things "trail off". Dictionaries intended for native speakers often don't make these things explicit.

But even native speakers sometimes lose their intuition temporarily, especially if they are editors, confronted day in and day out with English that sounds not quite right (or even terribly not right), or translators, suffering from interference from their second language.

If you are one of those and need a "native speaker intuition" boost, I can recommend the following tools:

1) Oxford Dictionaries online, which will give you three sample sentences, taken from a corpus of authentic English, for each meaning

2) A dictionary for ESL users (even if you aren't an ESL speaker). These also give more information about typical collocates (what words/concepts are likely to associate with the word you are looking up, and the circumstances in which it is used) than native speaker dictionaries do. Oxford Learner's Dictionaries also have a free online version: http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ Here, for instance, is its entry for "trail off/away"

trail off  trail away

(of somebody’s speech) to become gradually quieter and then stop His voice trailed away to nothing.

+ speech ‘I only hope…’, she trailed off

 This dictionary also suggests that "tail off" is especially British, but I am not sure it is right. Also bear in mind that learner's dictionaries focus only on the most typical usages in the language.

3) Online corpora. If your word isn't in either of the dictionaries listed above (ESL dictionaries tend to have much smaller word lists than native speaker dictionaries), you can also use a free online corpus. Here's a huge collection of corpora: http://corpus.byu.edu/ If you use the KWIC search function (keyword in context) you will see the patterns of language use emerge in brilliant colour.

 Time for me to trail off now...

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Nonplussed about nonplussed

Friends of mine recently had a facebook discussion about the meaning of "nonplussed" (also spelled "nonplused" by Americans). One thought it meant "confused" and the other "unperturbed".  There is indeed cause for confusion, because this word is used with both these sometimes contradictory meanings. 

Although "so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react" is the original meaning of "nonplussed", the second, "unfazed", meaning arose in North America in the 1960s. It has become so pervasive that, in Canada at least, according to the surveys we did for the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, it has become the dominant meaning of the word. Indeed, many Canadians we asked were not even aware that there WAS a "confused" meaning of "nonplussed". When matters reach this point, it is clear that the word has changed its meaning, and no admonitions that "this is not standard" (as found in many dictionaries) can stop it.

However, because of these very divergent senses, I would recommend that you avoid using this word in writing unless the context makes the meaning absolutely unambiguous.

It's an odd word, isn't it?  It comes from classical Latin nōn plūs (not more, no further). In the 1500s, when English speakers just adored making English more Latinate, we made this Latin phrase into an English noun, "non plus" (a state in which no more can be said or done; an inability to proceed in speech or action; a state of perplexity or puzzlement; a standstill). You could be at or in a nonplus, or reduced to a nonplus. As is usual with English, it didn't take long for this noun to be turned into a verb, so that by the 1600s, people who were paralyzed by perplexity were "nonplussed". 

What does "nonplussed" mean to you?

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Be a pet

Your pet is watching you

A Wordlady correspondent has inquired whether the past tense of the verb "pet" is "petted" or "pet". This got me wondering about the origin of the word "pet", which is so unlike the word for our little furry or feathered darlings in other European languages:

• French: animal de compagnie (companion animal)
• German: Haustier (house animal, no companionship guaranteed!)
• Italian: animale domestico (domestic animal)
• Spanish: mascota (mascot)

But the Scandinavians have the best names:

Swedish: sällskapsdjur party animal  

with the all-time winner being the 

Danish  and Norwegian:kæledyr /kjæledyr

literally, cuddle animal  or pamper animal (apparently, but I will have to check this with my Danish cousin)

So where on earth did English get its word from? 

In Medieval English we have some examples of "puppy" (derived from the French word for "doll") being used for a pet dog, and even the delightful "gentilhound". Cats, caged birds, squirrels, rabbits, and even badgers were also kept as pets, but there was no word in English to describe the relationship.

But in the 1500s, English acquired from Scots Gaelic and Irish the word peata, which designated a tame animal, especially a lamb reared by hand (maternal sheep mortality probably being not uncommon on Scottish crags).  By the 1700s, the word was being used of other types of animals kept for pleasure:

1710   R. Steele Tatler No. 266. ⁋2   The other has transferred the amorous Passions of her first Years to the Love of Cronies, Petts and Favourites [a dog, monkey, squirrel, parrot].

And we find that animal lovers in the 18th century were as unable to resist a cute beastie as they are now:

1788   B. Sheridan Let. 22 Oct.  v. 127   He is..playing with a Dormouse he made me a present of... Tho' not desirous of keeping any more Pets I could not refuse him.

How many of us have uttered words like those! 

At the same time, still in Scotland, the word took on the meaning of "a person or child who is indulged, spoiled, or treated as a favourite", and also, less negatively, as a term of endearment (fans of the British TV series Vera, set in Newcastle in the north of England, will notice how often the eponymous detective addresses suspects as "pet", usually before she throws them in the slammer).

Already by the early 1600s "pet" was being used as a verb (again, this was originally a Scottish usage). Yes, it's one of THOSE. I know I rant about this a lot, but I will keep ranting until the "you shouldn't use nouns as verbs" myth is eradicated from this earth. Like all other verbs derived from nouns, it is regular, so its past and past participle are "petted", not "pet". If anyone uses "pet" as the past tense, they are probably being led astray by the similar three-letter verbs "set", "bet", and "let", which are all irregular.

By now, some of you are thinking about the sexual sense of "petting" (I know you are). For that you can blame the Americans, the Oxford English Dictionary's first evidence of the term being from F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1920.  

For the origins of the word "tabby", click here.
For "marmalade", click here.
For "ginger", click here.
For "Tom", click here.
For "calico", click here. 
For "tuxedo", click here. 

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How do you pronounce "schedule"?

SKED or SHED? The pronunciation of the word "schedule" is something that provokes quite virulent debate, with some members of each camp feeling that only theirs is "correct". Why people get so dogmatic about these things, I don't know.

So what's the scoop (or is it the shoop)?

The word came into English legal and official language from French in the 1300s, at which time it was written "sedule" or "cedule" (plus other variants) and meant "a slip of paper containing writing". The first syllable was pronounced the only way it could be pronounced: "SED". In modern French cédule is still pronounced this way, and most European languages other than English followed suit, adapting for their own particular phonology (s, ch, ts...), with no intrusive k sound:
Provençal cedula, cedola
Spanish cédula
Portuguese cedula
Italian cedola
German Zettel 
Dutch cedel 
Swedish sedel
Danish seddel

Why did we English speakers mess things up? French had acquired this word, like most of its vocabulary, from Latin, and this was the root of the problem. In Latin, the word was  scedula (in medieval and modern Latin also written schedula), a diminutive of Latin sceda (medieval Latin also scheda), a page or a strip of papyrus. This was probably a back-formation from schedium (an impromptu speech) in turn derived from Greek  schedios (casual);. In Latin, the first syllable was pronounced SKAYD. But in the passage from Latin to French, the "K" sound had fallen out of the word.

As regular Wordlady readers know, Latin messed up our spelling big time the 16th century. Scholars of the time looked at the original Latin and Greek words from which many English words were ultimately derived and said, "Hey! We should spell our English words like that too [so that people will know I'm really smart and know Latin]!". So, sensible old "sedule" had to be changed to "scedule" or the even more popular "schedule". People still pronounced it "sedule", though (much as we still pronounce  "debt" as "det" despite that interloping Latin "b"), until well into the 19th century.

This is the point at which the SHED/SKED schism (SHIZZM? SIZZM? SKIZZM?) took place. Noah Webster convinced his American compatriots that the pronunciation should reflect the Greek origin of the word, and follow the example of similarly Greek-derived "school" and "scheme". In Britain, however, the SED pronunciation morphed into a SHED. 


We Canadians? Of COURSE we have to have both pronunciations. When we surveyed people for the Canadian Oxford Dictionary on this question, we found that more Canadians said "SKED" than "SHED", but that both pronunciations exist. The "SHED" crew tend to think that the "SKED" lot are traitors to Canadian nationality, having adopted an American pronunciation. This is quite a ridiculous attitude to take, as we don't feel the same way about the vast majority of Canadians who say "toMAYto" like Americans rather than "toMAHto" like the British. I say "SHED", by the way, but am unperturbed by those who say "SKED".


The now most common meaning of "schedule", a timetable, is a fairly recent development, dating only from the mid-19th century in the US. From being an official piece of paper in the Middle Ages, "schedule" came to apply to tabular listings of figures (which is why we have "schedules" to attach to our income tax returns). With the coming of the railways, it was a handy word to use for tabular timetables. 

Another thing that happened to "schedule" in the 19th century as a result of the railways was that it started to be used (here comes my hobbyhorse) as ... gasp... a verb. Noun-verb conversions, what would we do without them? Indeed, having now finished writing this, I am moving my cursor over to ... schedule it for publication.

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Voting or polling?

After our recent municipal elections, a friend posted this picture to facebook,

Photo: Gael Spivak

commenting, as a fan of Plain English, that  the unambiguous wording "voting place" was much better than the more traditional "polling station". Polling stations are more commonly "polling places" in the US, but the latter term was also used in Scotland's recent referendum. Incidentally, I noticed on all similar pictures in Google Images of Ottawa signs that they were affixed with the same blue tape, which makes me wonder whether democracy in Ottawa is being held together by duct tape, but I digress.

It's "polling" that's the issue. Since the word "poll" took on the meaning "conduct an opinion survey" in the early 20th century, that has become by far its most common meaning. The "record votes in an election" sense has been replaced altogether, surviving only in these compounds, "polling station" and "polling place". So there is an argument to be made that "polling station" is now misleading, or at least not helpful, especially in a society like Canada's where English is a second language for many.

"Voting place" seems to be catching on in official communications from the elections authorites (though Elections Canada still seems to prefer "polling station"). However, in newspapers, the favoured word is still overwhelmingly "polling station", by a factor of 10 to 1.

Here in Toronto, whatever we call our venues, our signs went for a very efficient, space-saving, bald command (or maybe, in view of the ghastly four years of municipal politics we've just endured, it was a plea?):



I wonder if anyone has done a study on whether a verb lures more people to vote than a noun does. I know there have been studies showing that using the word "please" persuades people to act, so maybe in future our signs should say "Please vote here".

Where did "poll" and "vote" come from?


"Poll" arose in the  13th century, possibly borrowed from Dutch pol (top, summit), and originally meant "the part of the head on which the hair grows, the top of the head". It soon came to be used as a verb meaning "shave the hair on the head" and, after a couple of centuries, this verb was being used to mean "establish a head count" (a much more recent expression dating from the early 1900s). By the 1600s, "poll" was being used to mean "count votes" and, later "cast or record a vote".

"Vote" comes from the Latin vōtum (vow, wish), a past participle of vovēre (to vow, desire). Like many words borrowed from Latin, it came into English at the Renaissance, but was used only by the Scots until the 17th century.
 

So, if it hadn't been for the Scots, those Toronto signs would say "POLL HERE".