Who Put the Butter in Butterfly?

by David Feldman

  Of course, Magellan had no idea he was sailing on a body of water that spans sixty-four million square miles, an area bigger than all of the land on Earth combined. Traveling through the Pacific, one will also encounter the most violent storms of any ocean. But Magellan encountered only the edges of the mighty Pacific. What he didn’t see didn’t hurt him, so our largest ocean was given a name to indicate its supposed serenity rather than its enormous size.

  Why Does Someone Who Swears “Apologize” by Saying Pardon My French?

  Pardon my French is simply another of the many American and English expressions that equate anything French with sex and obscenity. French postcards, French novels, and French kissing, just about anything French but French salad dressing, connotes raciness and anti-Puritanism. Come to think of it, you can’t find French salad dressing in France, anyway.

  Pardon my French started circulating on both sides of the Atlantic around 1916 and so almost certainly stems from the World War I escapades of American and British soldiers.

  Submitted by Jean and George Hanamoto of Morgan Hill, California.

  Why Are Identical Twins with Bodies Congenitally Joined Together Called Siamese Twins?

  Although Chang and Eng Bunker were far from the first Siamese twins, they were the first to be so named. Born sharing a liver, Chang and Eng were exploited by P. T. Barnum and became stars on the sideshow and carnival circuit of the early-and mid-nineteenth century.

  Ironically, although the country of their birth provided the name Siamese, they were actually three-quarters Chinese. The Bunkers were able to enjoy a long (1811-74) and relatively happy life. They married twin sisters and fathered twenty-two children between them.

  Why Are Many of the Underdeveloped Countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America Called the Third World? Who are the First and Second Worlds?

  Third World originally referred to nonaligned countries who chose not to be a satellite of either the Communist world (the Second World), or the Western bloc (the First World) on the non-Communist side of the Iron Curtain. This explains why Japan, China, and South Africa, although on the “right” continents, were never called Third World countries.

  Originally, Third World did not connote any negative baggage regarding economic privation, but it gained such an image in the 1960s and 1970s. Third World is an apt term because it implicitly acknowledges the pecking order; although Third World countries might provide swing votes in the U.N. General Assembly, they have neither the political nor the economic clout of those countries firmly tied to either of the first two “worlds.”

  Submitted by Jeff Burger of Phoenix, Arizona.

  Eponyms: Their Names Are

  Legion

  Who Is the Tetrazzini in Chicken Tetrazzini?

  This dish, once illustrious, is now less likely to be served at a swanky dinner party than thawed and cooked in a microwave oven. A jumble of diced chicken, spaghetti, cheese, and mushrooms baked in a casserole in a sherry-spiked cream sauce, it was the favorite dish of an Italian diva, Luisa Tetrazzini.

  In the early twentieth century, Tetrazzini was world-famous for her portrayal of Lucia di Lammermoor. Luisa was a walking (or, more accurately, a waddling) testimony to the high caloric content of chicken Tetrazzini. The massive soprano evidently didn’t stop at Stouffer-size portions of her favorite food.

  Who Was the Benedict That Eggs Benedict Were Named After?

  Rest easy. You aren’t unpatriotic if you enjoy this brunch specialty. It wasn’t named after Benedict Arnold.

  However, eggs Benedict were named after a more benign person, a ne’er-do-well member of New York café society who made few, if any, other contributions to our culture.

  One morning in 1894, Samuel Benedict staggered into the Waldorf-Astoria and ordered an antidote for his hangover. Charles Earle Funk reports that he ordered “bacon, buttered toast, two poached eggs, and a hooker of hollandaise.” The maítre d’hótel, the renowned Oscar, decided to improve on this new dish by substituting ham for bacon, and an English muffin for toast. Oscar honored Benedict by naming the new breakfast after good old Sam.

  Why Is a Book of Maps Called an Atlas?

  Atlas, one of the Titans who tried to overthrow Zeus, was given a rather strange sentence for his offense. He had to spend his life supporting the pillars of heaven on his shoulders. Not being a complete fool, Atlas went to the high mountains of North Africa to do his job, since the peaks were closest to the heavens and he would have less of a burden to bear.

  The Flemish geographer Mercator, a pioneer map maker, published his first collection of maps in 1595. Mercator drew a figure of Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders on the title pages. No pillars were to be seen and no explanation for the drawing of Atlas was provided. Although Mercator’s opus was not the first published collection of maps, it was the first to be called an atlas. Mercator later followed with his most famous collection: Atlas; or a Geographic Description of the World.

  Who Was the First Hector to Bully Someone?

  Hector, the Trojan warrior and costar of Homer’s Iliad. Poor Hector has gotten a bum rap. In the line of duty, he slew Patroclus, a friend of Achilles. This wasn’t Hector’s smartest move. Achilles slew the brave Trojan in revenge. Hector had never done anything but distinguish himself as a soldier or human. He just happened to have killed the wrong guy, yet he has been saddled, in eternity, with a verb named after him that means “browbeating” and “bullying.”

  In the early seventeenth century, a London street gang chose to name themselves the Hectors after the Trojan hero, who, of course, wasn’t around to argue about his name being debased. The Hectors’ belligerent behavior is responsible for the verb hector.

  Why Is a “Take It or Leave It” Proposition Called a Hobson’s Choice?

  Lexicographers love eponyms. When a word or a phrase clearly stems from one fictional or real person, there is none of the ambiguity that marks most etymologies. Hobson’s choice became a catch phrase when Harold Brighouse wrote a comedy of manners by the same name, but there was also a real Thomas Hobson, who was born in 1544 and who lived to a ripe old age, who clearly was the prototype for this phrase.

  Hobson owned a livery stable in Cambridge; he would transport passengers and university mail from Cambridge to London and back. But much of Hobson’s business consisted of renting out horses to university students, most of whom were already accomplished horsemen and who had a tendency to overwork the animals. Hobson developed a logical but autocratic system: Regardless of customer preference, a renter could select only the horse nearest the stable door (i.e., the horse who had run the least recently). Hobson’s choice is often incorrectly used to describe a dilemma. A choice of a wide array of wonderful horses would be a dilemma; a Hobson’s choice implies the appearance of a difficult choice that is, in reality, no choice at all.

  Hobson became quite a celebrity in his time. It certainly didn’t hurt that so many of his Cambridge customers became powerful figures and literary giants. Hobson continued to work at his livery stable well into his eighties. When he was forced to retire and died soon thereafter, John Milton wrote a humorous epitaph to immortalize him. It read, in part:

  Ease was his chief disease, and to judge right,

  He died for heaviness that his cart went light;

  His leisure told him that his time was come,

  And lack of load made his life burdensome.

  Why Do We Say That Someone Who “Has It Made” Is In Like Flynn? Was There a Real Flynn?

  There sure was. Ed Flynn headed the New York City Democratic Party machine in the 1940s. Based in the Bronx, Flynn was a consummate dispenser of patronage. Once you got into his good graces, Flynn could get you elected, get you a cushy job, and maybe even get your trash collected.

  Submitted by Leonard of New York, New York.

  Why Do We Say That Someone Who Was Rescued at the Last Possible Moment Was Saved in the Nick of Time?

  In the Middle Ages, wooden tally sticks were used for many
purposes that would now be served by paper or by computers. The three most common uses were as ledgers, as records of attendance, and as scoreboards. Until 1826, England used these tallies to record loans to and from the government. The stick was split lengthwise: one side recorded the status of the debtor; the other side, the sum owed the creditor.

  In the nick of time probably refers to the practice of schools and churches notching a mark when a student was present. If a young person was running late and just managed to arrive at the classroom as attendance was being taken, he would have been credited, literally nicked (i.e., notched), just in time.

  Why Is Joking Around or Fooling Someone Known as Joshing?

  Unfortunately, not even eponyms can always be clearly traced to one source. Joshis one such example.

  At first blush, the derivation of Josh seems clear. An extremely popular humorist of the nineteenth century, Henry Wheeler Shaw, wrote newspaper columns under the pseudonym Josh Billings. His columns, starting in the 1860s, were full of wordplay—puns, malapropisms, misspelled words, and intentional illiteracy stated in a generic southern dialect. He was to Mark Twain what the Ritz Brothers were to the Marx Brothers. Without a doubt, Shaw’s kidding around in his columns helped spread the current meaning of josh. But as hard as we try to attribute the coining of this expression to Shaw, it doesn’t fit. For josh had been cited in print, with the same meaning, in 1845. So where does josh come from?

  Our usual “reliable source,” the OED, is notably mum on the subject. But theories abound:

  1. Josh is a contraction of joke and bush.

  2. Josh is descended from the Scottish word joss, meaning to jostle or push around.

  3. Josh was slang for a man from Arkansas (this expression gained favor during the Civil War, so it is unlikely to be the genesis of the current meaning).

  4. Josh is related to the English joskin, meaning bumpkin, a good description of the kind of characters Josh Billings wrote about.

  Why Is Straining to Live in the Style of One’s Neighbors Known as Keeping Up with the Joneses?

  This phrase was not named after a real Jones, but it was created by someone with an unpleasant experience of trying to keep up with the neighbors. Arthur R. Momand, an artist earning an impressive six thousand dollars a year in the early twentieth century, left New York City for the tonier climes of Cedarhurst, Long Island. He soon found that his neighbors’ average income was double his, and his attempt to match their standard of living was leading to frustration and drastic depletion of his bank account. Momand and his wife moved back to the Big Apple.

  Any artist worth his salt is willing to make a buck out of adversity. Momand saw that his attempts to accommodate to Robin Leach life-styles on a middle-class income was rather silly and great fodder for a comic strip. Momand decided to draw a comic strip, Keeping up with the Smiths, based on the theme of futile social overreaching. At the last minute, Momand decided Joneses sounded better than Smiths. The strip was an instant success and spawned a musical comedy, two-reelers, and book anthologies.

  In England, keeping up with the Joneses didn’t become a catch phrase until well after World War II. The phrase caught on when a “commoner,” Anthony Armstrong-Jones, had the “audacity” to marry Princess Margaret. In England, then, keeping up with the Joneses implies social climbing, while in United States it refers more to trying to mimic the outer trappings of affluence, a rather accurate barometer of the importance of class and materialism, respectively, in the two countries.

  Who Was the Newburg That Lobster Newburg Is Named After?

  Lobster Newburg wasn’t named after a Newburg. This rich dish, made with a sauce of sherry, heavy cream, and egg yolks, was originally named lobster Wenberg. In the 1890s, customer Ben Wenberg, a shipping magnate, showed the chef at Delmonico’s (New York’s most elegant restaurant) how to prepare a similar South American dish he had sampled.

  Like the Benedict who lent his name to eggs Benedict, Wenberg was far from an angel. In fact, Delmonico’s was forced to expel Wenberg after a particularly ugly drunken brawl and decided not only to banish the patron, but his name from the menu as well. The first syllable of Wenberg’s name was transposed and Lobster Wenberg was rechristened Lobster Newburg.

  What in the Heck Is a Love Jones?

  I’ll never forget the first time I heard the song by Brighter Side of Darkness, Love Jones. A young, male voice with a startling falsetto sang a standard plaintive ballad of longing and loss. But the insistent refrain “I’ve got a love jones for you” was the hook. Nobody who heard the song could fail to understand the meaning of the song: This poor boy really loved this girl. But what the heck is a love jones?

  Cheech and Chong made fun of the song with their wonderful Basketball Jones, yet it is the innocence, earnestness, and intensity of the original that sticks in people’s minds. When I’ve done radio shows promoting Imponderables, I’ve frequently been asked, “What is a love jones?”

  The answer is simple. A jones is a habit, usually a reference to a serious drug habit, and although the term started among heroin users, it spread to black slang. The fervor with which the boy in Love Jones longs for his girl approaches that of a junkie for his needle. Nobody seems to know who the Jones was who was given the dubious honor of lending his name to this expression.

  Submitted by N.T.B. of Oakland, California.

  Which Tom Was the First Peeping Tom?

  Leofric, earl of Mercia and lord of Coventry, a nobleman in the eleventh century, acted more like a 1950s situation comedy husband than an ancient autocrat. He imposed a heavy tax on his citizens, and his wife protested. “O.K.,” he said, “I’ll abolish the tax under one condition: Ride around the town nude on a horse.”

  “No sweat,” said his better half, who was Lady Godiva, by the way. So, according to legend, Godiva ordered the citizens to stay inside their homes and cover their windows. Everyone obliged except for one Coventry tailor named Tom, who couldn’t resist a little peek.

  Poor Tom. His punishment was severe, much worse than a tax. He was struck blind for his little indiscretion and has lived forever as the symbol of voyeurism.

  Which Nick Lent His Name to Nickname?

  No, it was not the Nick from “just in the nick of time.” Nickname goes back to the Middle English (1303) ekename (“additional name”). Evidently, nickname was formed by slurring the n in an. If you notice, saying “an ekename” is awkward indeed.

  Ekename also was the source for eke (not what you yell when you encounter a mouse, but the word that means “to supplement”—especially to supplement income).

  Submitted by Pete Eisenhauer of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

  Who Is the Peter Responsible for Failing or Tapering Off in the Expression Peter Out?

  If there was one real person responsible for this aspersion on all Peters, it was the Apostle Peter. When Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter, at first, attempted to reclaim Jesus by force, but eventually not only gave up attempts to rescue his teacher but also denied “three times before the cock crowed” that he even knew Jesus. Petering out usually implies this kind of deterioration of effort, but the expression did not become popularly used until the nineteenth century, raising great skepticism about the apostle’s failures as the source.

  We do know for sure that peter was a popular term in North American mining camps in the mid-nineteenth century. There were two techniques to obtain gold: superficial panning, called “placer mining”; and deep mining, involving explosives. These explosives contained saltpeter. After a seam of a mine was depleted of all possible gold, it was referred to as “petered out.” The miners then went somewhere else and exploded a new seam.

  We would be derelict in our responsibilities if we didn’t add a third theory for the genesis of peter out, and it is more plausible than the first: Our word might be a direct descendant of the French word peter, which means “to fart.” One could hardly ask for a word that better connotes “fizzling out.”

  Was
There Ever a Problem with un-Real McCoys?

  One of the hallmarks of a folk etymology is remarkably similar stories with similar payoffs occurring in geographically disparate parts of the country (or world) at about the same time. We may never know for sure where the real McCoy comes from, but on one thing all agree: This cliché has nothing to do with the feuding McCoys of “Hatfields and McCoys” fame.

  The real McCoy was first recorded at about the turn of the twentieth century. Most etymologists agree that the McCoy referred to was an eminent boxer of the era, Norman Selby, whose ring name was Kid McCoy. McCoy was a phenom in the 1890s, quickly becoming the world’s welterweight champion. One story, which reeks with improbability, posits that McCoy engaged in a barroom brawl with a boisterous patron who refused to believe that Selby, no giant, could really be the famed ring terror. As he picked himself off the floor, the victim realized that Selby must be the real McCoy.

  Far more likely is that Selby was beset by McCoy imitators. Much as occasional bogus groups masquerade as genuine 1950s doo-wop acts in oldies shows, barnstorming pugilists in Selby’s time used to “adopt” the names of famous boxers to entice larger box office. Elvis Presley might not begrudge the slew of his imitators, but none of the clones bills himself as the King. There were so many boxers named Kid McCoy on the barnstorming circuit that, so the story goes, Selby had to rename himself “Kid ‘The Real’ McCoy” to differentiate himself from his simulators.