word origins

Mugwumps, Bailiwicks, and Pregnant Chads: The Vocabulary of Politics

Niall O'Donnell 13 Comments

Today is Election Day for my neighbours across the Irish Sea (not to mention a day of infamy for Donald Trump as James Comey testifies), and it looks like child’s-drawing-of-a-parent’s-description-of-a-nightmare-about-Margaret-Thatcher Theresa May will win. Not too surprising though. What was surprising for some people though was when Foreign Secretary and rejected-Monty-Python-sketch-character Boris Johnson called Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a mutton-headed mugwump early on in the election. By mugwump, Johnson meant someone who remains aloof or independent from party politics. The term has a long history, originating from a Massachusett Native-American word for war leader. The term was applied to Republican Activists in the 1884 American Presidential Election who supported the Democrat nominee Grover Cleveland. They were rejecting the political corruption of Republican candidate James G. Blaine, and were ironically nicknamed mugwumps to imply that they were sanctimonious in their removal of themselves from party politics. Mugwump is just one of the many interesting words associated with the world of politics and elections, such as:

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Colourful Surnames

Niall O'Donnell 26 Comments

Black, White, Grey, Green, Brown, Gold/Golden. Niall, I hear you ask, why have you capitalised all those colours!? Surely you’re not going to tell us that there’s some obscure English rule that says that you have to use capital letters with colours, and we’ve all been doing it wrong all this time? God I’d love to, but no, those words are capitalised because, yes, they’re colours, but in this case I’m using them as surnames.

I’ve written before about surnames, and what they mean. Most of them have fairly mundane origins, describing people’s jobs or their birthplaces. This is because in the grand scheme of things, surnames are fairly new. Many of the earliest English surnames were attached to people to differentiate them from other people in the village with the same first name (e.g. that’s John Miller the miller, not John Taylor the tailor). If you think about a lot of common English surnames, it’s probably not too hard to imagine where they came from. But why is it that colours are so common as surnames?

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Boot or Trunk? Hood or Bonnet?

Niall O'Donnell 13 Comments

One of the strangest areas of difference between British and American English is that of cars. In many ways, the general differences between words in both main forms of English are small and superficial. Things like removing a U from a word like colour, or swapping an R and an E around at the end of a word. Other differences are based on old uses and forms of words, and are understandably caused by 200 years or so of drift. And there’s sports.

But cars are such a relatively new invention that it always seemed strange to me that American and British English would have such different words to refer to their different parts. Specifically why a boot in British English is a trunk in American English, and a bonnet is a hood.

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Quick on the Draw!

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

The verb to draw is quite a useful one, isn’t it? There’s the obvious meaning of draw a picture, but consider how many other ways we use it:

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Elbow Grease and Snipe Hunts

Niall O'Donnell 7 Comments

Elbow grease. This is a term that’s long bugged me. It never really seemed logical. How exactly could it relate to hard work or effort? The grease I can kind of understand as a metaphor, because it could make a job easier if it involved moving stubborn parts. But why elbow?

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Red Herring

Niall O'Donnell 2 Comments

A red herring is a piece of information designed to distract or mislead one. It’s most often found in murder mysteries, specifically of the whodunit variety, in which the primary interest lies in figuring out the identity of the murder. A red herring in such cases is usually an apparent clue designed to make you think that someone apart from the actual murderer is the killer. All well and good, but what does any of this have to do with herrings? Continue reading →

Lemur

Niall O'Donnell 2 Comments

Lemurs are pretty cute, aren’t they? With their big eyes, long ringed tails, and cheeky little hands: what’s not to love? Interestingly enough though, the story of their name is not so cute. Continue reading →