Who Put the Butter in Butterfly?

by David Feldman

  Submitted by Tom and Marcia Bova of Rochester, New York. Thanks also to Robert J. Abrams of Boston, Massachusetts.

  Why Is Redistricting to Gain Political Advantage Called Gerrymandering?

  Elbridge Gerry was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. A rabid Jeffersonian and anti-Federalist, Gerry, governor of Massachusetts in the early nineteenth century, was not beyond being party to a little questionable manipulation to realize his goals.

  Gerry had a large map of Massachusetts on his wall. For the 1812 election, Essex County was redistricted by Gerry’s party to favor Jeffersonian candidates. The resultant district was so contorted that someone (various accounts name newspaper editor Benjamin Russell or painter Gilbert Stuart) likened the appearance of the new district on the map to a salamander. Gilbert, supposedly, added a wing, claws, and head to make the outline of Essex County look even more like a salamander on Gerry’s personal map.

  Gerrymander, then, is the combination and elision of Gerry and salamander. Ironically, the gerrymandering was of no help to Gerry himself. He certainly couldn’t find a way to gerrymander Jeffersonians from neighboring states into Massachusetts—he lost in his reelection bid for governor. Gerry was rescued from obscurity, however, by becoming James Madison’s vice president during his second term. Gerry died while serving as vice president, in 1814.

  Gerry’s name was pronounced with a hard “G,” so although most Americans pronounce it “Jerry” mander, “Gary” mander has the original pedigree.

  Why Is an Angry Uproar or Mob Resistance Called a Hue and Cry?

  The cry comes from the French crier (“to cry out”). The hue has nothing to do with color but with another French word, huer (“to shout”). In England in the Middle Ages, being a good Samaritan was not voluntary. If one heard the scream, hu e cri, it meant either that someone was being victimized or that an officer needed help apprehending a criminal. In either case, if a bystander didn’t help solve the problem by offering his assistance, he was subject to punishment. Hue and cry statutes existed for hundreds of years; in fact, the last statute was repealed as late as 1827.

  Why Do We Call Seizing a Child or an Adult Kidnapping?

  Etymologically, kidnapping has a mundane story. Kid has meant “child” since ancient times, and nap was a seventeenth-century variation of nab.

  But the historical tale behind the origins of kidnapping is a grim reminder about early American history. The early colonies in the New World were in desperate need of unskilled farm labor and apprentices to skilled craftsmen. There simply weren’t enough bodies available in Jamestown and other colonies, so the only way to recruit needed labor was to lure the downtrodden in England.

  The colonists offered Britishers the enticement of indentured servitude. The owner received seven years of free labor from the servant. In exchange, the servant received free passage to the New World (although not in QE II-type accommodations), and a modest payment after the seven years of service, usually in the form of clothing and tools of the servant’s trade.

  Indentured servitude worked relatively smoothly in the seventeenth century until the colonists ran out of volunteers. Americans had used professional recruiters in England, who were paid on a commission basis to lure away able-bodied laborers. These recruiters were called spirits, and they sold the soon-to-be servants to ship captains. The spirits, then, were sort of human wholesalers, never directly in touch with their New World customers. Indentured servants were worth about five pounds sterling in the early eighteenth century, and the spirit, sharing with the ship captain, would receive only a fraction of this price.

  As potential recruits increasingly expressed the sentiment that indentured servitude was an offer they could refuse, spirits became desperate to gather “merchandise.” Bereft of volunteers, unscrupulous spirits spirited away (yes, that is the genesis of this expression) innocent and often unwilling children. Kidnapping originally referred specifically to the abduction of children by spirits.

  Kidnapping became such a serious problem that in 1682 the London Council passed a law specifying that no child under fourteen years of age could be indentured without the consent of his parents.

  Submitted by Phyllis Diamond of Cherry Valley, California.

  Why Is a Woman’s Allowance or Personal Expense Reserve Called Pin Money?

  We tend to think of pins, staples, and paper clips as natural resources, found objects. But the pin wasn’t invented until the sixteenth century in France, and they were hardly throw-away items. Early pins were made of silver and thus very expensive. In England, a monopoly under grant from the crown had exclusive right to manufacture pins, and they chose to produce a small amount and charge dearly for them.

  Henry VIII’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard (1520-42), popularized this French invention, and her subjects were clamoring for pins. According to Neil Ewart, the general public could buy pins only once a year, during two days at the beginning of January. Husbands gave their wives money to buy the pins; thus the origin of pin money as a private stash of cash for women.

  Eventually, pin money became an inherent right of wives. In divorce suits in England, women often sued to collect one year’s pin money, as much as two-hundred pounds a year. Pins are one of the few household items that have undergone great deflation over the years.

  Why Is the Left Wing Liberal and the Right Wing Conservative?

  The world wide epithets for “liberal” and “conservative” come from the European tradition of legislators placing conservative parties to the right of the chair and liberals to the left.

  Perhaps the seating was originally random, but we suspect that since right-wingers tend to come from a higher social background than their more radical counterparts, they were given the favored position. Just about everything right in our culture is “good,” and everything left, if not bad, is a little strange. The aristocrats of the conservative parties got the “better” seats, just as they tend to in restaurants these days.

  Why Does Lucre Always Seems to Be Filthy?

  Lucre is not merely a synonym for money; it is tainted money, loot, obtained by dishonorable deeds or intentions. Many languages have an equivalent word. Ours is derived from the Latin lucrum, which means money without any negative connotations. But Sanskrit has lotra (stolen goods) and Hindu lut (loot).

  Although most of us associate “filthy lucre” with the dialogue in bad Westerns, we borrowed the phrase from the Bible. In Timothy, Paul describes the qualities necessary in a bishop: “Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre.” Paul also warns of deceivers who are “teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.” Christ drove the money changers from the temple, demonstrating his disdain of economic exploitation. Many other religions have strictures against usury.

  In A Browser’s Dictionary, John Ciardi notes that from the inception of money, most cultures held strong convictions that “true value consisted of land, crops, and livestock, and that minted money upset a natural balance. Money was proverbially said to be “the root of all evil.”

  With our strong cultural heritage of ambiguity about money, no wonder the word “filthy” was chosen to modify tainted money. If any readers would like to rid themselves of the pestilence of filthy lucre, please send said filth to the address at the end of the book.

  Why Is a Murder as a Form of Vigilante Justice Called a Lynching?

  Captain William Lynch, of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, author of the infamous lynch laws, will forever be linked with vigilante justice. Lynch felt that he and his neighbors were too far from lawmakers and sheriffs to punish properly the vandals and robbers terrorizing his rural area. He encouraged his fellow citizens to sign a declaration he drafted, announcing the intention “to take matters into their own hands”: “If they [criminals] will not desist from their evil practices, we will inflict such corporeal punishment on him or them, as to us shall seem adequate to the crime committed or the damage sustained.”

  Although
the death penalty was not always exacted, in most cases the punishment turned out to be hanging. A certain amount of doubt and guilt among the lynchers can be ascertained by Captain Lynch’s technique for hanging criminals. Rather than stringing up the condemned on trees (the preferred method of subsequent southern lynchers), Lynch and his cohorts practiced a form of passive hanging. A rope was tied around a tree and the condemned man placed on a horse with the other side of the rope strung snugly around his neck. The criminal was killed not by his captors tightening the noose but by the whim of the horse. When the horse moved far enough away from the tree, the rope choked the neckless horseman.

  Why Is an Independent Person, Especially a Great Person, Called a Mugwump?

  Mugwump is one of those unusual words that can be used earnestly or facetiously. Some would love to be called mugwumps; others would prefer so calling their enemies. The history of the word is equally ambiguous.

  The original mugwumps were a splinter group of the Republican Party in 1884. Refusing to support the presidential nominee of their party, James G. Blaine, mugwumps supported the Democratic Party’s nominee, Grover Cleveland. They were dubbed mugwumps by their Republican rivals. Mugwump means “chief” in the Algonquin language, and the word spread among non-Indians, especially in Massachusetts. Obviously, the original non-Indian use of mugwump was sarcastic. The party regulars were accusing the dissenters of self-righteousness and delusions of greatness.

  Yet, the mugwumps themselves took the epithet as a badge of honor, a term indicating their integrity and independence. Others have used mugwump to designate a turncoat. But in its narrow, more precise definition (“one who stays within the arms of one party but doesn’t vote for the party’s candidate”), a mugwump is unlikely to make anybody very happy and is likely to be the butt of ridicule. As Albert Engel defined a mugwump in 1936, “A mugwump has his mug on one side of the political fence and his wump on the other.”

  Why Is a Ten-Dollar Bill Called a Sawbuck?

  A sawbuck is a kind of sawhorse, one whose legs form a cross pattern as they project above the crossbar. The pattern of the four protruding crossbars looks like an X.X, of course, is the Roman numeral designation for ten, and since the Roman numeral X appeared on ten-dollar bills at the time when sawbuck was first recorded (1850), it isn’t quite as strange as it first appears that we should get our nickname for a ten-dollar bill from a carpenter’s prop.

  Why Do We Say That Someone Who Has Appropriated Someone Else’s Ideas or Future Remarks Has Stolen Thunder from the Victim?

  I had always assumed that this expression must have Greek mythological roots and perhaps was a reference to Zeus. The true story is much more prosaic.

  John Dennis, an English poet and playwright, wrote a tragedy called Appius and Virginia, which was produced in 1709 to less than rousing commercial success. Only one element of the production stirred the audience: thunder sound effects more realistic than any heard before on the stage, effects that Dennis himself created.

  The play failed, but the theater’s next production didn’t. Dennis went to check out a successful production of Macbeth and was more than a little upset to discover that his sound effects were used in the storm scenes of Shakespeare’s tragedy.

  Different sources vary slightly in describing what Dennis exclaimed upon hearing “his” thunder help promote the new production, but they are all variations of Stuart Berg Flexner’s quote: “See how the rascals use me! They will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder!” I’m sure that Dennis would be even more embittered to learn that the only phrase of his that has gained immortality is his expression of sour grapes.

  Clothes Make the Word

  Why Does Hoodwink Mean “to Fool” or “to Blindside”?

  The original meaning of wink was “to close one’s eyes,” with no implication that the closing was voluntary or a kind of signal to another. In the sixteenth century, when cloaks were a fashion must, cowls or hoods were attached to the cloaks.

  When one was hoodwinked, then, one was literally blinded by the hood. Cognizant of the phenomenon, industrious thieves preyed upon unsuspecting suckers whose peripheral vision was extremely limited.

  Why Is a Nude Person Said to Be Wearing His Birthday Suit?

  Although some etymologists insist that this expression stems from a custom of English kings of buying a new suit of clothes for his retinue on the royal birthday, we can’t agree. Why would an actual suit come to mean “no clothing at all”? More likely, the explanation for the genesis of birthday suit is considerably more prosaic: It describes exactly what one was wearing on the day of one’s birth.

  Why Is a Riding Costume Called a Habit?

  Habit is a Middle English word. Originally it referred to any dress or costume, then to any dress worn “habitually,” such as a uniform. Habit was also applied to certain costumes worn only for certain occasions, such as a riding habit or a fencer’s suit. All of these meanings precede our primary contemporary use of habit as something done automatically and often involuntarily.

  The word “custom” had a similar history. Originally custom meant “costume” but now has much broader applications.

  Who Was the Jean That Blue Jeans Are Named After?

  This early-sixteenth-century word, which originally described the cotton material rather than the garment it made, was not named after a person but after a city. Jean is a derivative of Genoa, Italy.

  Denim similarly derives from the city of Nímes, France. The material originally was called serge de Nímes.

  And yes, there really was a Levi Strauss. Strauss, a San Francisco merchant during the Gold Rush days, added rivets to the corners of the pockets, making Levis a handy as well as durable pair of pants.

  How Did the Pea Jacket Get Its Name?

  The pea in pea jacket has nothing to do with the vegetable or the color of the vegetable. Nor is pea short for the p in pilot. In fact, the first pea jackets were not pilot jackets at all, but short, double-breasted coats worn by Dutch sailors in the fifteenth century. As they were made of coarse cloth, they were ideal for use in rough weather.

  So why the pea? The Dutch name for the jacket was pijekker (“coarse cloth”), and when the English adopted the style, they shortened the Dutch word to a more manageable size.

  How Did Those Beltless Hawaiian Dresses Ever Get Named Muumuus?

  Muumuus were created not by Sergio Valente or Bill Blass but by Christian missionaries sent to Hawaii who were horrified by the natives’ tendency to parade around unashamedly in the altogether. Despite the way they make the average woman appear, muumuu has nothing to do with cows whatsoever. Muumuu means “cut off” in Hawaiian, so the name seems to stem from the dresses’ lack of a yoke; a muumuu is so shapeless that it seems arbitrarily “cut off” at the neck. Now that it is more than thirty years since muumuus were all the rage, brace yourself: Muumuus are likely to reappear before Halley’s Comet.

  How Did Sideburns Get Their Name?

  Sideburns are named after General Ambrose Everett Burnside, a man of undoubted charisma but questionable staying power, whose lasting contribution to our culture was lending Elvis a good grooming gimmick and providing Civil War buffs with something to argue about.

  Burnside first made his mark by inventing and manufacturing the breech-loading rifle, which he called the Burnside Carbine Rifle. The weapon worked, but the business venture failed. Undaunted, Burnside joined the Union effort during the Civil War, quickly rising to the rank of general.

  Unfortunately, Burnside presided over two of the Union’s most crushing defeats in the War, at Fredericksburg and Petersburg. Critics contend that his charges were ill-planned and hasty, leaving his forces vulnerable. Burnside was removed from his command.

  A failure at business and in the military, what was left for the poor guy? You guessed it: politics! Burnside became governor of Rhode Island and later a U.S. senator. After the war, Burnside, a bit of a dandy, sported long growths of thick black whiskers on his face, what
we would now call “muttonchops,” and they became a fashion fad in his time.

  Why were they called sideburns rather than burnsides? Actually, they were called burnsides at first, but by the twentieth century were uniformly called sideburns. We have yet to find a convincing explanation for the change and can only speculate that the fact that burnsides appear on the side of the face must have influenced the changeover.

  Why Is Somebody Obviously in Love Wearing His Heart on His Sleeve?

  Two charming, outdated customs are responsible for this phrase. In the days of chivalry, knights would wear the scarves, kerchiefs, or favors of female admirers on their sleeves. Since this gesture indicated that the knight reciprocated her affection, he was said to be wearing his heart (i.e., his true feelings) on his sleeve. Some historians are far from sure that this practice ever existed, but it is often portrayed in legend.

  We do know for sure that in sixteenth-century England, Valentines were exchanged. If a man was truly smitten by a woman, he wore the heart-shaped Valentine of his beloved on his sleeve, which presumably was more convenient than wearing it on his femur or tibia.

  How Did the Zipper Get Its Name?

  Zip was used as a noun and verb in English as early as 1850 and seems to have an echoic origin. Zip was probably first used to describe the hissing sound of a speeding bullet. Zipper was similarly taken from the sound made by the fastener, and the word was trademarked by B. F. Goodrich in 1925. Zippers helped make Goodrich’s overshoes waterproof. Soon the technology was spread to many other applications, especially in clothing. The zipper became so popular that it became a generic term, and Goodrich lost the trademark on the word except for its zippered boots.