WordsWordsWords

Intrepid Reader Brenda of Ponte Vedra Beach, FL, writes WordsWordsWords, asking: “Why do we use the word John for the toilet?  I recently learned that Thomas Crapper was actually the person who popularized the modern toilet, hence the word crap.  If that is the case why do we say going to the John rather than going to the Tom?”

Dear Brenda,

First, we need to clear up this Crapper thing. It is a persistent folk etymology that is almost certainly not based in fact. Some things just take on a life of their own and are repeated so often that everyone thinks they’re true. This is one of those things. The Online Etymology Dictionary says of the word crap, “Despite folk etymology insistence, not from Thomas Crapper (1837-1910) who was, however, a busy plumber and may have had some minor role in the development of modern toilets.”

Crapping, in the sense of evacuation of solid waste, dates back to 1846, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. While I’m sure Thomas was a good man, the idea that he had reached such excremental renown by age 9 that this basic human function should have taken on his name is quite implausible.

Rather, to find the origin of “crap,” we have to reach all the way back into middle Latin, where crappa meant “chaff.” Up it came through Old French and Middle French into Middle English. By the mid-15^th century, it had come to refer to the grain trodden underfoot in a barn, as well as chaff or siftings. We all know what else is underfoot in a barn, so it seems unsurprising that the word should come to be associated with dung. I’m sure the farmer’s wife was hollering the Middle English equivalent of “Wipe your feet before you come in here!” and I’m just as sure it was not because Mr. Farmer had chaff on his boots.

Now on to the john portion of your question…the Online Etymological Dictionary dates the first use of john as a term for the crapper to 1932. They say that it probably comes from “jack” or “jakes,” which had been used as slang for the toilet since the 16^th century. Since Jack can be a nickname for John (e.g., Jack Kennedy), the process apparently worked in reverse in this case, and “jack” became “john.” I guess “john” won out, because I have never heard the loo called the jack.

When I was growing up, I didn’t hear “go to the john” much. My dad’s preferred terms for the WC were “the batcave” and “the library.” There’ve been no sailors in our family, so no one calls the lav “the head.” As a reminder, remember when in Canada to say “washroom” rather than “bathroom.” It sounds much more civilized, and it will delay for a few minutes their realization that you are a foreigner.

Wow. This is fun, Brenda, but if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the little girls’ room.

This just in.

“Face palm” seems to be the new It Girl of cool expressions. This phrase refers to an act of stupidity. Today, I even saw “double face palm.” Presumably, this expression is twice as cool. The action itself of hitting one’s forehead in this manner has been around for a long time. But the Urban Dictionary‘s listing that notes that a speaker actually says “Face palm” rather than literally palming his face, was only added on 10/31/10.

I have almost, though not quite, resigned myself to the death of the distinction between less and fewer. I just saw a car ad that had a note at the bottom of the screen: “Less CO² emissions…” So, too, who vs. whom, and the use of “me” in the expression that now commonly reads, “just between you and I.” (The latter is a change due to hypercorrection .)

I am trying to comfort myself with the knowledge that this is how language evolves over time. I’m a descriptive linguist, after all, not a prescriptivist. And historical linguistics is my favorite thing—I’d have nothing to study in that regard if it weren’t for these changes! Some of today’s “errors” are tomorrow’s accepted variations, and some of those variations are the “correct” usage of the future. Did you know, for example, that the use of “don’t,” “won’t,” and other contractions was at one time considered to be crass and unlearned? That’s the nature of language change, and anyone who tries to fight it has lost the battle before she begins.

Another characteristic of the evolution of language is that often, when some sort of dual usage (like who/whom) contains an aspect of redundancy, one of the two forms wins out and takes the place of both. It’s happening with who/whom and less/fewer. Even though I could teach a lesson on the difference between who and whom, I have to admit that “whom” is starting to sound antiquated and just plain silly to me. Have you ever read a sentence where “who” or “whom” was misused, and as a result, you were unable to understand what the sentence meant? (Provided that you could even recognize such misuse.) “We didn’t know whom was coming” sounds goofy, but you’d know what the speaker meant if you heard it. Same with “The woman who I saw talking on the phone was tall”—not confusing at all. In both cases, who/m is misused, but the meaning is clear. That means the little “m” there is redundant. Grammatically, its function is to show whether the noun it is replacing is the subject or object of the clause. But the structure of the sentence and the conceptual context (what the sentence says) give you enough information that you really don’t need the two different pronouns to differentiate between a subject and an object.

I spent good brain cells learning the difference between who and whom, less and fewer. But alas. “More” serves for both count and noncount nouns with no confusion (more money, more jobs). I suspect we will survive with “less” (less money, fewer less jobs). Good thing, considering the economy.

p.s. And don’t even get me started on its/it’s. That’s just a stupid, problematic spelling convention. Read more here if you’re interested.

Do you have one of those words that no matter how many times you see it, no matter how many times you look it up in the dictionary, you simply can NOT remember what it means the next time you see it?

For me, that word is “laconic.” At least it was until recently, when a friend of mine shared with me the interesting etymology behind this word.

It’s always seemed to me that laconic meant something like “limp” or “lackadaisical.” I believe that somehow it got convoluted in my mind with the word “languid.” So I would see “laconic” and think it meant “languid,” while at the same time realizing that my thinking was wrong, and knowing that I had no idea what it actually meant. Frustrating! Thanks, P.M., for sharing with me the following.

The story goes that the adjective comes from “Lakon,” a Greek word referring to a person from Lakonia. The Lakons were known to be people of few words. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, Lakonia is “the district around Sparta in southern Greece in ancient times, whose inhabitants were famously proud of their brevity of speech. When Philip of Macedon threatened them with, ‘If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta to the ground,’ the Spartans’ reply was, ‘If.'”

Isn’t that awesome? What great self-confidence is condensed in that one-word reply! That I could be so succinct.

I’m a Spartan myself, but laconic I shall never be.

When I was writing yesterday about sophistication and other related “soph-” words in English, I purposely omitted discussion of the name Sophia. I decided to wait so that I could write a post about the Social Security Administration’s Popular Baby Names search engine. The girl’s name Sophia, which is Greek for “wisdom,” was #4 on the SSA’s 2009 list of most popular girl baby names in the U.S. The #4 ranking is a bit misleading, though. Sofia was #36 and Sophie was #65. If we combined the stats for the different forms, they well might beat out Isabella, Emma or Olivia for one of those top three spots.

The SSA’s baby name page is really fascinating. You can do two types of searches, by date and by name. I pull up my birth year, for example, and find that the top five names are Lisa, Mary, Susan, Karen and Linda. So it’s no surprise that I dated a Lisa, that I’m married to a Susan, and that at one time I had among my coworkers all in one department a Mary, a Karen, and a Linda, all similar in age to me. While the birth year function on the SSA site gives you a snapshot in time of what was popular, the name search is much more interesting to me. Enter a name, and it will give you the name’s annual rank as far back as you’d like to go within their 130 years of data (default is ten years if no date range selected).

Coming in at #118, Sophia was fairly popular when the data begins in 1880. From there, it had a steady decline until the mid-’50s. It reached its nadir in 1956, with a #923 ranking. After that, it trudged slowly back up the popularity path over the years. Since 1997, it has appeared in the top 100. Since 2006, it has been in the top 10. Our dedication to wisdom must be increasing!

You’ll enjoy spending some time poking around this site. Discover interesting facts like this: The top girl name over the last century, Mary, has 3.76 million instances, over twice as many as the #2 in that category, Patricia, with 1.57 million. However, the top two boy names, James and John, are very close—4.87 million and 4.77 million respectively. See tables of top names by decade, top names by state, top 5 names over a period of time, popular names for twins. There are all kinds of possibilities. Enjoy!