Word of the Week

It's been a while since we've had a Word of the Week. By now it's turning into Word of the Month. Guess I was

Playing Hooky

Yup. That's the word--words--of the week, folks. 'Cause that's what I've been doing. And 'tis the season for doing it.

We all know what it means. Did you ever think about where the phrase comes from? I mean, what IS hooky? Is it a game? How do you "play" it?

First off, the phrase is associated with skipping school. Which means it only came into use in the 19th century, around 1848, after education laws made public school attendance compulsory. Tom Sawyer "plays hookey," so we know the expression goes back that far.

Hard to imagine a time when you didn't have to go to school, but evidently we had hundreds of years of it. And, of course, once you're forced to do a thing, finding ways to escape it suddenly appear.

So...is hooky a compression of the phrase "to hook it," which, according to one source, is a 14th century term that means to make off or escape?

Or, is it a version of the word "hook" an old slang term that means to steal--kids stealing time from school.

Or maybe it's related to fishing, and the "hook"(school) is the thing you get off of, the way a fish can.

Several sources think the most likely derivation is the Dutch "hoek," which means "corner," and the game "hoekje spelen"--hide and seek--played by boys in 17th century New Amsterdam around street corners. So "playing hooky" could have become connected with school because kids who skipped school must be off playing games like hide-and-seek.

I found a couple more theories, but I'll leave them for another time. The important thing is the play itself. I'm writing this. What do you do when you play hooky?

Word of the Week

In honor of the 80th birthday of The Oxford English Dictionary, I'm doing a word a week (or whenever I get around to it). For more info on the OED, check out my first WOW.

This week's word represents a state in which I often find myself:

HAYWIRE

The dictionary specifically links this expressiong to us good ole Americans (and, I assume, that includes the Americans north of the lower 48, too, among whom I have many relations). By that, they mean to distinguish it from, let's say, British or Australian English...

According to my sources, the expression derives literally from the wire used to hold hay bales together. My husband, who's of an age and background to remember this, vouches for the difficulty and care one had to take when using it. In fact, before the advent of nylon cord, he says you used to see hay wire draped over fence posts, left by farmers who opened bales for feed. If the same location was used year after year, lengths of wire would accumulate on the post. Being a city girl, I had to ask why the farmer didn't just take the wire with him and throw it away, and my husband had to explain patiently that the poor guy was in the middle of nowhere and there were no trash cans around. Duh...

As language goes, I guess this is a relatively new expression. It dates from 1905 and originally meant “poorly-equipped or makeshift." Turns out this wire was particularly popular in New England lumber camps where it was used for jerry-rigging anything and everything. The phrase “haywire outfit” came to mean a camp that was ill-equipped and always short of supplies.

The word developed its current meaning because the wire was springy and difficult to control us the sense of “go haywire” or, as I often do... go crazy.

So...any of you gone haywire lately?

Word of the Week (end)

I’m a writer, so words are important to me. It’s not unusual to see me staring off into space when I’m writing -- often searching for just the right word to express whatever I’m trying to say.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Oxford English Dictionary, that most definitive resource on the English language.

It was first published in sections called “fascicles” beginning in 1884. Here's a picture of James A. H. Murray, an early editor of the OED, in his "scriptorium" around 1880.

The “complete” OED was launched in 1928 after 70 years of research and compilation. The 1928 edition contained 415,000 words.

Today the number of volumes has doubled, and the 20 volumes weigh 137 pounds!

In honor of this seminal event, I thought it would be fun to feature a word a week here (or, OK, every other week, or once a month, or whenever the whim hits). This week’s word is (ta daaahh)....

POSH

According to the World of Words section at AskOxford.com, linguistic mythology traces the origins of ‘posh’ to the seafaring acronym Port Out, Starboard Home. These indicated the best cabins (shade side) on the trip between Britain and India—port side for the outward trip, starboard for the trip back. But no documentation using the initials P.O.S.H. has ever been found, so the dictionary suggests a more likely origin: nineteenth- century slang for a “dandy” which in turn derived from thieves’ slang for money.

“That posh got ‘imself a lot of posh," says Posh Spice.

So...how about you? Got a word you'd like to talk about?