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Etymology and the Origins of Words & Expressions
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Ken, Moderator
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Sep 08, 2009 01:50PM
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Irish Alzheimer's: you forget everything except your grudges.
Newengland wrote: "Re: Mormons. Isn't the key to that church's success the fact that each member must fork over 10% (is it?) of their personal income?Ka-chinggggggg!"
Isn't that true with all Christian faiths. To give a 10% tithe to the church.
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My husband had a patient once who insisted that she couldn't be pregnant because her husband always used condominiums.
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Puts a whole new spin on the baseball phrase "bringing the mustard."
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Meaning
That which is deserved. A reward for what has been done - good or bad.
Origin
Deserts, in the sense of 'things deserved' has been used in English since at least the 13th century. A citation in which it is linked with 'just' comes from 1599, in Warning Faire Women:
"Upon a pillory - that al the world may see, A just desert for such impiety."
With this phrase it isn't the origin that is interesting though, but the spelling. I am often contacted by people pointing out that 'just deserts' is misspelled. They go to great lengths to explain why it should be 'just desserts'. They are wrong, but perhaps understandably so.
- Deserts is now almost always used in reference to desolate and arid regions of land. Its use to mean 'that which is deserved' is now largely limited to this single phrase.
- Desserts - the last or sweet course of a meal - is widely used and is pronounced the same way as the deserts in 'just deserts'.
So, when hearing the phrase with the pronunciation like 'desserts', people think it must be spelled that way too. The spelling might be more intuitive if we thought of the phrase as 'what you justly deserve'.
Most of the correspondence pointing out the 'error' comes from Australia. That may be coincidence, although it could be that, living in a hot, English-speaking country, Australians have more exposure to hearing the word deserts with the stress on 'des' than the rest of us.
I like Gabrielle thought it was spelled dessert. So thanks for the lessons.
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Also, for those who care: I like the linguistic origins of a words, as far back as one can safely trace it. The word desert in the two usages in English are derived from different Latin roots. The more common usage comes from the Latin deserere, 'to forsake'. Thus, a desert is a forsaken thing (the perfect participle of deserere is desertum).
A just desert, on the other hand, comes through French from the French verb deservir, 'to well deserve'. This, in turn, is a sort of perversion of the Latin deservire, 'to well serve' that has become, more or less, reflexive.
The past participle of the French entered English as desert; but, because it is French, we pronounce it with the accent on the final syllable, as our word dessert. This word, oddly enough, comes from the same Latin root as the just deserts. The French verb desservir means 'to serve well' or, in modern French, 'to clear the table after a meal'. Deservir, on the other hand, comes from a Latin word meaning the same as desservir. Neat.
A just desert, on the other hand, comes through French from the French verb deservir, 'to well deserve'. This, in turn, is a sort of perversion of the Latin deservire, 'to well serve' that has become, more or less, reflexive.
The past participle of the French entered English as desert; but, because it is French, we pronounce it with the accent on the final syllable, as our word dessert. This word, oddly enough, comes from the same Latin root as the just deserts. The French verb desservir means 'to serve well' or, in modern French, 'to clear the table after a meal'. Deservir, on the other hand, comes from a Latin word meaning the same as desservir. Neat.
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I'll never look at the Desert or my Desserts in the same way ever again!Thanks Logan!
Like they say the desert is like the Mojave, and dessert is what you eat. That is my own coinage on the matter.
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"Going to hell in a handbasket", "going to hell in a handcart", "going to hell in a handbag" and '"sending something to hell in a handbasket" are variations on an American alliterative locution of unclear origin, which describes a situation headed for disaster without effort or in great haste.
Its first use recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary is in a historical work of 1865 by I. Windslow Ayer entitled The Great North-Western Conspiracy in All Its Startling Details, with the quote: "Thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would ‘send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket.'"
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Posted by Bob Gray on March 08, 2004
In Fairford church, Gloucestershire, the great West window (installed before 1517 AD) shows the Day of Judgment in stained glass, with the innocent going to heaven and the guilty going to hell. Among the latter is an old woman in a wheelbarrow, being pushed to her doom by a blue devil. So the idea of "going to hell in a handcart" is a good 500 years old.
And this....
First occurs in print in The Trenton Times in 1895:
"Let me tell the gentleman that I am not talking today to men who believe in going to hell in a handcart instead of to heaven supported by truth."
Variants are 'hell in hand basket' which may simply be an amusing derivative. The idea of sinners being barrowed off to hell occurs in medieval illustrations, but the description of hand cart doesn't seem to appear in print until the 19th C. These days a phrase beloved by The Daily Mail, I'm told.
'Going to hell in a wheelbarrow' doesn't have quite the same 'ring' to it, does it?
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Altho what exactly a handbasket is, I've no idea.
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Could the handbasket be an ancestor of the purse?
Same as Ruth and NE too.Here is another take on it...
Q From Brian Walker: Can you please tell me anything about the origin of the phrase going to hell in a handbasket?
A This is a weird one. It’s a fairly common American expression, known for much of the twentieth century. But it’s one about which almost no information exists, at least in the two dozen or so reference books I’ve consulted. William and Mary Morris, in their Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, confess to the same difficulty. A handbasket is just a basket to be carried in the hand (my thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary for that gem of definition). The Dictionary of American Regional English records to go to heaven in a handbasket rather earlier than the alternative, which doesn’t appear in print until the 1940s (Walt Quader tells me that Burton Stevenson included a citation in his Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases from Bayard Kendrick’s The Odor of Violets, published in 1941). But DARE quotes a related expression from 1714: “A committee brought in something about Piscataqua. Govr said he would give his head in a Handbasket as soon as he would pass it”, which suggests that it, or at least phrases like it, have been around in the spoken language for a long time. For example, there’s an even older expression, to go to heaven in a wheelbarrow, recorded as early as 1629, which also meant “to go to hell”. I can only assume that the alliteration of the hs has had a lot to do with the success of the various phrases, and that perhaps handbasket suggests something easily and speedily done.
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I had always heard to hell in a handbasket also
Perhaps it started as '...to hell in a handcart...'and then evolved. One day some basket case got it wrong and then...
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c.1200, hwarfore, from where + for. Cf. Du. waarvoor, O.N. hvar fyrir, Swed. varfor.
Pronunciation enPR: wâ(r)'fô(r)", IPA: /ˈweə(r)ˌfɔː(r)/, SAMPA: /"we@(r)%fO:(r)/
enPR: hwâ(r)'fô(r)", IPA: /ˈʍeə(r)ˌfɔː(r)/, SAMPA: /"We@(r)%fO:(r)/
[edit] EtymologySee where, fore, and for
[edit] Adverb wherefore (not comparable)
1.(conjunctive, archaic) Why, for what reason, because of what. [quotations ▼]
"Job", Holy Bible King James Version, 21:7: Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?1595, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Romeo, O Romeo. Wherefore art thou, Romeo?
2.(conjunctive, archaic or formal) Therefore.
[edit] Usage notesA common misconception is that "wherefore" means "where"; it has even been used in that sense in cartoon depictions of Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, the meaning of "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?" is not "Where are you, Romeo?" but "Why are you Romeo?" (i.e. "Why did you have to be a Montague?").
breeze comes from old Portuguese briza[read: bree-za] (now spelled "brisa")
To take something "with a grain of salt" (inspired by Newengland's group title ^_^)...In Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia...he wrote up an antidote for poison, "with the addition of a grain of salt" for improved consumption. The more figurative use comes up later, thought to be influenced by scholars' study of texts like Pliny's. John Trapp's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1647) notes, "This is to be taken with a grain of salt."
To try to "teach grandma to suck eggs"...
The notion of offering advice to someone already knowledgeable and experienced. Found in John Stevens' translation of Quevedo's Comical Works (1707): "You would have me teach my Grandame to suck Eggs."
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Language & Grammar
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