Steve Grutzmacher: Fun (At Least To Me) Words And Phrases

After besetting you a few weeks ago with all those sales tax numbers, I believe we both need something a tad more lighthearted. So this week I am sharing the stories behind a few words and phrases found in our English language – some still prevalent and some that have fallen out of common use. Pick one or two of your favorites to memorize and then share them in those awkward conversation lapses that will invariably occur when you are out enjoying the many festivities and events this weekend with your family and friends.

Scot-Free

 The temptation here is to assume that the scot here is the shortened reference to someone from Scotland, when in fact; it holds an entirely different meaning in this context.

Here the word scot holds an antiquated meaning of a tax or levy. It seems to have originated some time in the 16th century and is an alteration of an early term “shot-free.” For example, in 1792 John Wolcott wrote “Scot-free the Poets drank and ate/They paid no taxes to the State!” (Odes of Condolence). Interestingly, this use of the word scot is recorded as late as 1921, when minutes of a U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing record “he is scot-free at 40 cents an hour.”

When we use the term today, though, it has a more common meaning of getting away with something that one shouldn’t have been able to get away with (i.e. without punishment). The Oxford English Dictionary records this meaning as early as 1528 and, in his 1740 novel Pamela, Samuel Richardson wrote, “She should not, for all the Trouble she has cost you, go away scot-free.”

Cuppen

 I have written, in previous columns, about how our language evolves and one way I have documented is through elision. This term, which refers to a cow pen or enclosure is a classic example – cow pen becomes cuppen.

Putting one’s nose to the grindstone and grinding to a halt

 Both of these originate with milling operations. Millers would peer closely to check the separation between two millstones to check the coarseness of the grain being ground between them, hence putting one’s nose to the grindstone. When the miller was satisfied that the grain was ground fine enough he would stop the stones from grinding, hence grinding to a halt.

Today, putting one’s nose to the grindstone has come to mean “getting to work and/or working hard,” while grinding to a halt has come to mean, “coming to a stop with concerted effort or, slowly coming to a stop.”

Fiddler’s Green

 This is an interesting one in that the generally accepted meaning refers to a “sailor’s heaven or Elysium.” Unlike “Davy Jones’ Locker,” where sailors who die at sea travel to, a sailor who dies on land, according to legend, enters Fiddler’s Green, a place of “wine, women, and never-ending dancing and music.”

And this is where it becomes interesting, folks. At some point this legend was co-opted by entrepreneurs in the real word, who created “houses of entertainment” that were advertised by the presence of a fiddler playing out on the street. In case you haven’t already figured this out, these “houses of entertainment” or “Fiddler’s Green” were actually brothels.

Stepping on Bears’ Paws

You probably will only hear this in the southern part of the United States, but I love this one. This is the term used to describe someone who drives too close to the outside of the road or ventures into the shoulders of the road.

Sleeping Policeman

 Another of my favorites and related, subject-wise, to the phrase I just listed above. In the Caribbean this term is used to describe those tiny reflectors embedded in the roadway to denote either the shoulder-line or center-line of the road, while in this country it more typically refers to speed bumps.

And finally, we come to the kerfuffle about curfuffle.

 The question here is how this word is spelled. In recent years in this country the kerfuffle spelling has become prevalent, with the Merriam-Webster Dictionary listing the first known use of this word, with this spelling, in 1946. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) traces the word back to 1583 under the spelling carfuffle, and goes on to trace the alternative curfuffle spelling. In particular the OED cites the following line from the 1823 book Petticoat Tales: “Ye need na put yourself into ony carfuffle about the matter.”

And, in case you were wondering, the word (in whatever spelling) means “to put into a state of disorder; to ruffle” or “disorder, flurry, agitation.”