Author: Arika

Vanity is more visible than ever in these selfie-saturated days, but being a preening peacock or conceited coxcomb has never been out of style. There are many older, out-of-use words for people who can only be pried away from a mirror with the jaws of life. So please use these words next time you have to describe a self-obsessed huff-snuff.

1. HUFF-SNUFF

The Oxford English Dictionary defines this rhyming word as “a conceited fellow who gives himself airs and is quick to take offence; a braggart, hector.” The idea is that the person is huffing and snuffing in an exaggerated fashion with their nose in the air, outraged by any affront to their precious person. Like all reduplicative words—including namby-pamby and higgledy-piggledy—huff-snuff is awesome.

2. GLASS-GAZING

A glass-gazing ninnyhammer is always looking in a mirror. Shakespeare used the term in damning fashion in King Lear, describing: “A whorson glassegazing superfinicall rogue.” Ouch.

3. AIRISH

This word has had several meanings, mostly related to the weather, but in the late 1800s airish joined words such as blowhard and bloviate in the gaseous lexicon of invective. Mark Twain used the term in an 1874 letter, writing “I shall be as uppish & airish as any third-rate actor whose name is not made loud enough in the bills.” That’s about as uppy and airy as it gets.

4. NOSE-WISE

The image of a nose in the air is hard to beat when it comes conceit, but this type of conceit is specific: It has to do with an overestimation of one’s intelligence. But this word has some other meanings that are less insulting. A nose-wise person sometimes simply has a quick wit. Other times they have a superior sense of smell.

5. PAJOCK

No less than Shakespeare used this term—in Hamlet—via the memorable noun phrase “a very very pajock.” This word for a peacock or popinjay isn’t used much, but it’s usually an allusion to Shakespeare. Back in 1954, C. S. Lewis asked a very good question: “Have we no more gravity among us than to be so chafed by the taunt of a pajock?”

6. VAUNTY

A Scottish word, the jaunty term vaunty has been around since the 1700s, describing vain varlets and boastful buffoons. Vaunty springs from an out-of-use sense of vaunt as a verb meaning to brag, and it’s related to vaunted.

7. AND 8. SKIPJACK AND PUPPYISH

Though skipjack sounds like an unreliable lumberjack, it has a slightly less rugged meaning that is worth quoting the OED in full: “A pert shallow-brained fellow; a puppy, a whipper-snapper; a conceited fop or dandy.” (Fun fact: Puppy has sometimes been a word for an attention hog. Novelist Frances Burney used the term in a 1775 letter: “He is conceited, self-sufficient, and puppyish.”)

9. BIGGITY

This is a term from the U.S. south for someone who has gotten not only too big for their britches, but too big for the whole britches store, figuratively. The biggity are big-headed.

10. GET ONE’S SKULL SWELLED

Speaking of major-league melons, Green’s Dictionary of Slang lists this vivid variation of the idiom “have a big head.” This massive slang dictionary includes an 1886 use in The Policeman’s Lantern by James Greenwood: “Strange how some men get their skulls swelled when they get on the force.”

11. SIDEY

This term plays on older meaning of side as referring to arrogance and general full-of-yourself-ness. People would say an arrogant jerk was putting on side. From there, you could say the vain or puffed-up are sidey.

12. SNIPPER-SNAPPER

This sibling of whipper-snapper has a slightly different sense. Both words are dismissive of youths, but snipper-snapper also has a suggestion of conceitedness, as seen in a definition in an 1854 glossary compiled by A.E. Baker: “Snipper-snapper, a small, insignificant, effeminate, self-conceited young man.” This term is apparently a little older than whipper-snapper, but it hasn’t fared as well in the Darwinian lexical race.

Most Americans don’t need to fly across an ocean to immerse themselves in the French language. There are millions of French speakers just to our north in Canada.

1. CANADA IS OFFICIALLY BILINGUAL (AND THE ONLY NAFTA COUNTRY WITH ANY OFFICIAL LANGUAGE AT ALL).

Not every country in North America has an official language, but Canada has two. The U.S. and Mexico don’t have official languages, meaning that while everyone realizes that English and Spanish, respectively, are the de facto languages of the countries, there are no government edicts declaring any particular language official. Canada has declared both English and French official, which does not mean that all citizens must speak English and French, but official government documents and services must be available in both English and French.

2. CANADIAN OFFICIAL BILINGUALISM IS WHY COMPUTER TRANSLATION OF FRENCH IS SO GOOD.

Automatic translation tools like Google Translate perform much better on some pairs of languages than others. For example, translations between Chinese and Spanish are less smooth and accurate than those between French and English. Part of the reason for this is that the algorithms that support automatic translation are created by training on large collections of already translated texts. One of the biggest such collections is the Hansard French/English Corpus. It contains over 1 million matched French/English pairs of text passages from Canadian parliament records.

3. THE WORST POSSIBLE SWEARS IN CANADIAN FRENCH ARE INNOCENT-SEEMING RELIGIOUS WORDS.

The most offensive swear words in languages are usually drawn from the domains of sex and bodily excretions. Swears from the domain of religion, like hell and damn, once had stronger force, but are now considered pretty mild. Not so in Canadian French, where the most offensively profane words are tabarnack (tabernacle), calvaire (Calvary), and calisse (chalice). Use with caution.

4. THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT MAIN DIALECTS OF CANADIAN FRENCH.

When you think of French in Canada you probably think of Quebec, and most of the French speakers in Canada do live there and speak what is known as Quebecois. But there is another dialect, Acadian French, which is largely spoken in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The two varieties differ in accent and certain words and phrases. Acadian French uses more terms derived from seafaring, and a number of old words now obsolete in France. The two varieties developed differently as the languages of separate 17th century French colonies (Canada and Acadia) with separate administrations.

5. CANADIAN FRENCH IS LESS ACCEPTING OF ENGLISH BORROWING THAN FRANCE FRENCH.

Both France and Quebec have institutions dedicated to encouraging the use of French words instead of borrowed English expressions. For example, instead of du snowboard, the Académie Française recommends de la planche de neige. Instead of le binge drinking, the Office Quebecois de la Langue Française recommends l’hyperalcoolisation rapide. According to a study by Olivia Walsh, the French versions are much more likely to be actually adopted by French speakers in Quebec than they are in France. Language purism is stronger in Quebec than it is in France—so much so that, while in France stop signs say STOP, in much of Quebec they say ARRÊT.

6. THERE ARE STRONG PROTECTIONS FOR FRENCH IN QUEBEC THAT SOMETIMES GO OVERBOARD.

While all federal proceedings are mandated to be bilingual in Canada, provinces can set their own language rules. The official language of Quebec is French, and the Office Quebecois de la Langue Française can enforce the use of French in public institutions and businesses. In 2013, the OQLF warned an Italian restaurant in Montréal that their menu contained too many non-French words, such as … pasta. The restaurant owner posted the warning letter on social media, initiating a backlash of eye rolling, joking, and genuine frustration at overzealous language policing. The president of the OQLF was forced to resign, and pasta stayed on the menu.

7. FRENCH SPEAKERS IN NEW BRUNSWICK ARE CREATING A NEW FRENCH/ENGLISH HYBRID.

While there is a lot of English resistance in Quebec, some of the Acadian French speakers of New Brunswick mix English words into French syntax in a dialect known as Chiac. The dialect is looked down upon as bad French, but younger generations have begun to take pride in it, claiming it as a mark of a unique Acadian identity. See some of the musicians and artists working with dialect in their expression of this identity in this piece from Public Radio International.

The red car is fast, the blue one is faster, and green is the fastest. As you may recall from grammar class, these three words make up the positive, comparative, and superlative forms of the word fast. But there is a handful of words in English so common that we’ve forgotten they were formed using these -er and -est suffixes. Like upper, which literally means “more up” (up plus -er). But this word has become so familiar that we no longer think of it as the comparative of up. Here are 15 other such words whose origins are hiding right under your nose.

1. LATTER

Etymologically speaking, latter just means “more late.” It comes from the Old English lætra (slower), the comparative form of læt, (slow) and source of late. Lætra also carried the sense of our modern later, but the latter word didn’t actually emerge until the 1500s.

2. LAST

And if you’re “most late”? You’re last. Last is the superlative form of læt. Way back, last was latost, and was worn down over the years to last.

3. LEAST

Last isn’t always least, as they say, but both words are superlatives. Least—lǽsest in Old English and meaning smallest—is the superlative of lǽs, itself a comparative meaning smaller.

4. LESSER

The Old English lǽs gives us less. But if we’re sticklers, lesser is technically a double comparative: “more smaller.” Legendary lexicographer Samuel Johnson couldn’t care less about lesser, calling it “a barbarous corruption of less, formed by the vulgar from the habit of terminating comparatives in -er.”

5. INNER

Inner may just make you facepalm: It’s “more in.” The Old English comparative of in (or inne) was innera; the superlative was innemost, now inmost. With use and time, inner became its own positive form, now taking inmost and innermost as its comparative and superlative forms, respectively.

Now, most comparative forms are followed by than, as in “the green car is faster than the blue one.” Curiously, inner stopped doing this in Middle English. For instance, we don’t say “the kitchen is inner than the foyer.”

6. NEAR

The end is nigh: we usually explain that crusty-sounding nigh as near. But near already means “more nigh”: In Old English, near was the comparative of nēah, now nigh. Over the centuries, near went off on its own and is now no longer felt as a comparative, just like inner. And so near is the modern nigh after all.

7. NEXT

As for the superlative of nēah? That would be nēahst, “most nigh,” which we now call next. But why the x? In Old English, the h in nēahst would have sounded something like the ch in Scottish loch. Follow that guttural consonant with an s and you eventually get the x sound.

8. UTTER

Historically, utter is just outer, or “more out.” Old English had the word út, meaning “out.” Its comparative was úterra. By the early 1400s, utter had shifted to its modern meaning of absolute. Also emerging by this time was the verb utter, literally “to put out (goods, money, statements),” in part influenced by the adjective utter.

9. OUTER

When utter moved on and lost its association with út/out, it left a gap in the language. Outer, meaning “more out” and formed by analogy with inner, naturally filled it. But like inner, outer has become its own positive form, taking outmost and outermost as its comparative and superlative. The original superlative of út/out would have been utmost, which moved on to mean extreme.

10. FURTHER

At this point you may be wondering, is further …“more furth”? Yes, it’s just that we’d recognize furth as forth today. This makes further “more forth” or “more fore.” And all that business about reserving farther for physical distances and further for abstract ones? Cockamamie. Farther began as a variant of further—and both of them ousted the normal comparative of far, which was simply farrer. Oh, could English go any farther, er, further to make things complicated?

11. FIRST

If further corresponds to “more fore,” then what about “most fore”? That would be first, the “fore-est,” if we gloss over some vowel changes that happened in English long, long ago. It’s a sensible construction: That which comes before everything else is indeed first. Today, “fore-est” answers to foremost.

12. AFTER

Everything else is after what comes first. Is after “more aft,” then? Not quite. It’s more like “more off” in the sense of “farther behind” or “more away.” The af- in after corresponds to off (as well as of), the -ter to an ancient comparative suffix. But we’d have to travel back thousands of years before we’d find any speaker would register after as a comparative.

13. RATHER

It’s rare now, but English once had the adjective rathe, meaning quick or eager. (We might think of being rathe as the opposite of being loath.) So, if you are “more rathe”? You’re rather. If you’d rather watch paint dry than finish this article, you’d “more readily” do so. Or, rather, you’re the type who finds this arcane trivia edifying. This adverbial rather has the sense of “more properly”; you more truly do something if you carry it out willingly. And if you have your druthers, or preference, you have playfully contracted I would rather.

14. ELDER

Literally speaking, your elder is just someone older than you—but you better not say that your grandparents. Elder and older are both comparatives of the Old English (e)aldOlder did not show respect for its elder, supplanting it as the common comparative around the 1500s. The Old English ald, meanwhile, hangs on in the auld of “Auld Lang Syne” (for Old Times’ Sake) and alderman.

15. ERSTWHILE

Finally, erstwhile is a snazzy word for former, often seen in the expression erstwhile enemies. But what is the erst in erstwhile, anyway? Old English had ǽr (soon, before), which you’ll recognize as ere from your Shakespeare. Its superlative was ǽrest, or “most ere,” hence erst.

Looking for a way to spice up your love language? Snuggle up with these 14 idioms, slang terms, and sayings from the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) on how to get it on all over the United States.

1. HOTTER THAN DUTCH LOVE

Used in the North to mean hot weather or a hot relationship. Also used, according to quotes in DARE, in regards to coffee or “when somebody can’t figure out what is going on at a neighbor’s house, for a gathering that looks hotter’n Dutchlove.” Why Dutch love is particularly passionate isn’t clear. There’s also the inexplicable Dutch kiss, which involves holding onto either both ears or an ear and the nose of the kissee.

2. CUPID’S CRAMP

A term that means amorous infatuation. According to a 1961 book called The Old-Time Cowhand, “If there was a pretty daughter the whole range would soon be sufferin’ with Cupid’s cramp.”

3. BETWATTLED

Yet another way to say infatuated. Betwattled also means “confused, distressed, bewildered, stupid.” A 1927 quote describes it as an “excellent and common term” that refers to when a person is so in love he or she is “unable to use good judgment.” Still more terms for “infatuated” include beany, cranky about, struck on, and case, as in “to have a case on someone.”

4. DROP ONE’S WING

This saying meaning to make affectionate advances or to flirt with may be heard in Georgia. Comparable is to wing down, which is British English dialect and means to court or pay attention to.

5. FEIST

In the south Appalachians, flirting might be called feisting, which also involves strutting and moving “so as to draw attention to oneself.” Feist may be related to the energetic and excitable feisty, which comes from the American English feist, a small dog.

6. GALLANT

To gallant in the South and South Midland means to court or flirt, or to escort (someone). According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), an earlier adjectival sense of gallant is gorgeous or showy, and comes from the Old French galant, meaning “courteous.”

7. HONEYFUGGLE

Engaging in some public display of affection? You’re honeyfuggling. Some might say it means to make “too much of a show of affection in a public place.” Honeyfuggle has a slew of other meanings as well, including to swindle or dupe; to flatter; to “snuggle up to”; and to lure or entice. The term might be a variance of connyfogle, an English dialectal that means to hoodwink or coax with flattery.

8. LOLLYGAG (AROUND)

Another term for out-in-the-open hanky-panky, as well as to neck, flirt, or gush. To lollygag around can also mean to loiter or chatter idly. As a noun, lollygag can refer to nonsense or idle talk, and can also be used as a term of disparagement. The plural, lollygags, means “airs, affections, love-making.”

9., 10., AND 11. QUAKER FIP, DUTCH NICKEL, AND YANKEE DIME

All terms for kisses, and all based on old-timey stereotypical beliefs about thriftiness. It was believed Quakers, the Dutch, and Yankees (that is, northerners) were so frugal, they’d rather drop a peck on the cheek than respectively, a fip (which is a small thing or trifle), nickel, or dime.

Fip, by the way, is a shortening of fippenny bit, a six-cent coin “that circulated in the eastern U.S. before 1857,” according to DARE. For Quaker fip (also called Quaker nickel) DARE has quotes from Illinois and Ohio, and for Dutch nickel, Texas, Kentucky, and Missouri. Meanwhile, Yankee dime is primarily used in the South and South Midland, especially Alabama.

12. BUSS

This kissing word is chiefly used as a noun in the Midland states and as a verb in the South Midland. The OED describes a buss as “a loud or vigorous” kiss, and says it might be imitative in origin.

13. SCHMUTZ

While schmutz might be more known for its Yiddish or German meaning (dirt or filth), in the Pennsylvania-German area it means to kiss. According to a book called Ferhoodled English: Curious and Amusing Pennsylvania Dutch Talk, while “‘Knoatching und Schmutzing’ may not sound very romantic to us,” to the “young folks in the Pennsylvania Dutch country it means hugging and kissing.” Schmutz meaning to kiss comes from the Pennsylvania-German schmutze, “to kiss,” while schmutz meaning dirt comes from the German schmutzen, “to make dirty.” It’s not clear if the two are related.

14. GUMSUCK

This rather old-fashioned—and revolting—idiom for kissing might have been heard back in the day in Kentucky, Tennessee (“coupled with neck-sawing,” whatever neck-sawing is), and Georgia. In John Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms (1877), “a friend” informs the editor that “he first heard it at Princeton College, in 1854, and thinks it may be a Jersey word.”

Running out of ways to say you’re feeling vexed? You’re in luck. We’ve teamed up with our trusty pals at the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) to liven up your livid language. From the Big Easy and New England to the Appalachians and Hawaii, here are 13 regional idioms for “angry.”

1. FÂCHÉ

PO’d in the Bayou? You can say you’re fâché, which translates from French as “angry.”

2. HAVE A BLOOD RUSH

Another Louisiana term. According to the wonderfully titled Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales, “He’s havin’ a blood rush” means “He’s getting angry.”

3. HUHU

This Hawaiian term meaning angry or to become angry is also spelled hou-hou. “No Hu Hu” is a popular song, according to a quote in DARE, and has “appeared on road repair signs” to mean “Pardon the inconvenience.” According to Pidgin to Da Max, an illustrated dictionary of Hawaiian “pidgin” words, the haole or non-native Hawaiian phrase “Relax. Don’t get upset” might be translated in pidgin as “No huhu, brah.”

4. JUMP SALTY

African American vernacular meaning “to get angry,” or to respond “in an extreme or unexpected manner.” Despite its awesomeness, jump salty seems to have died out in the 1970s. From James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk (1974): “He warned me if I didn’t take my hands off him we might never get uptown and then my Daddy might jump salty.”

5. BURN THUNDERWOOD

If you’re raging in Georgia, you might say you’re burning thunderwood. Thunderwood is another name for poison sumac, known for its angry, itchy oil.

6. GET ONE’S CHIN OUT

Nettled in Nevada? You could say you’ve gotten your chin out.

7. ALL HORNS AND RATTLES

This wrathful Western term refers to cattle’s horns and snakes’ rattles, according to DARE. As Western Words: A Dictionary of the Old West puts it regarding someone in an all-horns-and-rattles mood, “Maybe don’t say nothin’, but it ain’t safe to ask questions.”

8. ON THE PECK

Another Western saying, on the peck means irritable, angry, or ready to fight. Peck probably comes from the sense to nag or scold. According to some of the quotes in DARE, on the peck also refers specifically to a bad-tempered cow.

9. CHEW FIRE

Those feeling cross in Kentucky may say they’re chewing fire. The term is a blend of the aggressive idioms “chew nails” (as in a hammer and nails) and “breathe fire.” While the latter means to express oneself angrily, the former, according to DARE, refers to “a very mean person”—in other words, someone “mean enough to chew nails.” Other “mean” sayings involving masticating hardware include “chew twenty-penny nails,” “chew nails and spit rust,” and “chew nails and spit submarines.”

10. CHEW ONE’S BIT(S)

Those storming in the South and South Midland might be chewing their bits. This could be related to the horsey idiom, champing or chomping at the bit. To chew one’s bit also means “to argue or talk too much or too loud,” according to DARE.

11. HAVE KITTENS

This Northern phrase similar to have a cow means to lose one’s composure or become agitated or angry. Variations include get kittens, have a kitten, and pass kittens. A cat fit is a “burst of joy or (more often) anger.”

12. BUST A HAME STRING

To bust a hame string—where hame string is an alteration of hamstring—means “to make a sudden great effort,” with a transferred meaning of “to become excessively angry.” Usage is scattered throughout the U.S. with DARE quotes from the Appalachians, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and New Mexico.

13. FEATHER WHITE

This New England term refers to both an angry sea and an angry person. Maine Lingo: A Wicked-Good Guide to Yankee Vernacular says that a “wind-whipped sea, all whitecaps, is said to be feather white,” and hence, “some degree of agitation in a person: ‘He came all feather white to give me a piece of his mind!’”

Admit it. You get it wrong sometimes. I don’t care how many degrees you have, how steeped you are in the highest register of formal discourse, how vicious you are with the red pen, how many children’s wrists you have slapped with a ruler. You sometimes write there when you mean their or they’re.

Yes, you. You may catch it every time, correct it before pressing “send,” but you do it. The language just makes it so easy to do. Not only are these three words pronounced exactly the same, they are all constantly in use in everyday discourse. Wait and weight or flour and flower just aren’t as frequent. Most people aren’t going to mix those up. So there’s no reason to be especially proud of not mixing them up, or to make smug memes about them. But there/their/they’re is a cleverly laid, dastardly trap. To tout your mastery of this trio is an act of pride in your ability to skip over the trap.

So who set this trap? We did, of course, which is to say all the English speakers who came before us. First, in the earliest stages of Old English, we had the word for “there,” which was then spelled þǽr (thǽr). The word for “their” was hiera, so there was no problem telling them apart. But when Scandinavian settlers starting coming over around the year 1000, we started borrowing a few things from them, including their word for “their”: þaire (thaire).

Now we had two words with somewhat similar, but still different pronunciations and spellings. The following centuries brought a huge upheaval in English pronunciation through the Great Vowel Shift and the development of Middle and Modern English, while at the same time the spread of the printing press and literacy brought stable spelling conventions into being. Through all this, there at one point or another got the spellings thar, thaire, ther, yar, theer, thiar, and thore. Their went through its own changes with thayir, thayre, yaire, and theer. Sometimes they overlapped and had the same spellings, sometimes they didn’t, but when the dust settled and the final habits had been established, we were left with one pronunciation and two spellings.

The latest entry into the trio was they’re. People didn’t write contractions of this kind until the late 16th century, though they did say them before then. Writers began to use the apostrophe to stand for missing letters, as it does in ’tis or o’er. It couldn’t be helped that “they are” shortened into a word that sounded just like their and there. The same thing happened to I’ll/aisle and we’ve/weave, but aisle and weave didn’t show up often enough to turn the similarity into a trap.

It didn’t have to be this way. If things had gone differently, we might have ended up with one spelling for all of them, or at least for the first two. This is what happened to rose (the flower) and rose (the past tense of rise), or rock (stone) and rock (to sway). Those came from totally different words that began to be pronounced the same, and then came to be spelled the same. (Chaucer wrote of “the son that roose as rede as rose.”) Those words don’t cause any confusion, and neither would a word like ther, if that’s what we had somehow ended up with for all members of the trio.

But that’s not what we ended up with, and so we add there/their/they’re to the long list of things that make writing harder than speaking, things to keep track of, double check, and correct, lest you fall into ther traps. Ther everywhere.

See Also…

Why Does ‘Will Not’ Become ‘Won’t’?
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Why Is It ‘Eleven, Twelve’ Instead of ‘Oneteen, Twoteen’?
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Why Isn’t ‘Arkansas’ Pronounced Like ‘Kansas’?
*
Why Is There an ‘R’ in Mrs.?

“The Star Spangled Banner” is a notoriously difficult song. Not only do singers have to contend with its octave-and-a-half range, but at the Super Bowl, they have to deal with the auditory feedback bouncing around a giant stadium and the pressure of live TV. Since 1992, there has also been a simultaneous American Sign Language performance of the anthem. For Deaf performers, the issues are different, but no less difficult.

In this video, comedian John Maucere describes what it was like to sign the anthem at the 2013 Super Bowl alongside Alicia Keys. He hilariously describes the method he used to keep time with the singer—an interpreter signaling him to speed up or slow down—and what happened when it all threatened to go wrong. (Be sure to turn the sound off on the video for captions.)

[h/t DPAN.TV]

Banner photo courtesy of Getty Images.

It can be hard to remember passwords, so people often turn to things they feel passionate about for inspiration. In honor of the upcoming Super Bowl, RoboForm dug into a list of millions of passwords to see which NFL teams had the most passionate password following. The Philadelphia Eagles claimed the top password spot, with this year’s competitors—the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons—coming much lower down the list (at numbers 17 and 24, respectively).

For more analysis of the list, check out the breakdown at RoboForm.

Just because you’re tired doesn’t mean your language has to be. With some help from our friends at the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), we’ve come up with 11 “tired” regional idioms for the next time you’re feeling all-gone, dragged out, done in, or just plain dusted.

1. ALL IN BUT ONE’S SHOESTRINGS

A phrase that means totally done in or hanging by a thread. Variations include all in but one’s shoelaces and all in but one’s bootstraps. This term is chiefly used in the North with quotes in DARE from Wisconsin, Vermont, Illinois, New York, and Washington.

2. POOHED OUT

This North Central and Upper Midwest expression means “to fail, grow weak or tired, come to nothing.” DARE notes that the “pooh” part might be a corruption of poop. Poop (out), meaning to break down or stop working, originated in the late 1920s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The sense of “to tire, exhaust” is from about 1931. The earliest quote in DARE of pooh out is from 1930 when the saying started as college slang and was particularly “common at Oberlin.”

3. WAGGED OUT

While to wig out means to freak out or get overly excited, to be wagged out or waggy is the opposite. This phrase is especially used in Maine and Massachusetts. A quote from 1877 says it means to be tired or worn out, “as if finished wagging.” A quote from 1968 suggests that waggy is more akin to feeling “mental or physical distress, agitation, discomfort, or illness,” and is similar to streaked, a term used chiefly in New England.

More weary out combos include beat out (especially used in New England), given out (used in the South and South Midland), pegged out (with quotes from Maine, Vermont, Arkansas, and Maryland), and puckered out, which is an alteration of tuckered out.

4. COOPERED UP

The next time you’re stiff, unable to move, or just plain exhausted, you can say you’re coopered up. A 1959 quote from Vermont History says the term is “from the days of barrel making or coopering.”

Other enervated idioms that use “up” include gone up, with quotes from Illinois, Iowa, Georgia, New York, and the Mississippi Valley, and janted up, with a quote from Kentucky.

5. AUSGESPIELT

Ausgespielt is the past participle of the German ausspielen, “to play out, play to the end.” In addition to meaning “very tired,” it might refer to something “finished” or “broken,” whether literally (“The potatoes are _____” or “My sewing machine is _____”) or figuratively (“If a man loses interest in a girl and stops seeing her,” the relationship is ausgespielt), according to quotes in DARE.

6. SHABBY

If you’ve got a touch of the blahs, you could say you’re feeling shabby. This term you might hear in the South is Scots in origin, says DARE, while shabby—meaning dingy, worn, or faded—might come from the German schäbig, meaning, you guessed it, “shabby.”

7. GOOPY

You could also say you’re feeling goopy, another term for general ickiness. It could also refer to something sticky or smeared, or weather that’s unpleasant. Another meaning for the word goopy, according to the OED, is stupid or “fatuously amorous.”

8. LIMBER

Limber doesn’t just mean flexible. In the South and South Midland, it might mean limp, weak, and exhausted, and is often used in the phrase limber as a dishrag.

9. FLAXED

You might get flaxed out from flaxing around. To flax (out) means to become tired or weary, while flax (around) means to hurry and bustle. Flax (out) has quotes from New England and Ohio, and flax (around) is chiefly used in the North and especially New England.

10. WHITE-EYED

White-eyed, meaning exhausted or worn out, might mainly be heard in the Appalachians. A quote from the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English says the phrase “began as a description of one who became faint from fieldwork in the sun and gets pale around the eyes and mouth.”

11. SENT FOR AND COULDN’T COME

Feeling indisposed? Out of sorts? Exhausted? You could say you’re feeling like you were sent for and couldn’t come. Used especially in the South and South Midland states, one 1993 quote likened the phrase to “what younger people nowadays call ‘a bad hair day.’”

How would you explain what it means to think? This act, though central to our very humanity, is an incredibly abstract process. Behind many of our thinking words, however, are some concrete Latin etymologies, and they show how we like to understand our mental activity through very physical metaphors.

1. PONDER

The origin of ponder is the Latin pondus, “weight,” used even in Ancient Rome as a metaphor for something of importance and influence. Pondus is related to the verb pendere, “to weigh,” which is why a pensive thinker really seems weighed down.

2. DELIBERATE

The metaphor of thought as weighing different matters appears in deliberate too. The ultimate root of deliberate is the Latin libra, “a pair of scales” or “balance.” A deliberate action, then, is one well weighed before undertaken.

3. CONCENTRATE

When we concentrate, we are bringing our mental efforts towards a “common center,” as the verb joins Latin’s cum (together) and centrum (center).

4. FOCUS

The central place in many homes was once the hearth or fireplace, called focus in Latin. Mathematicians and scientists used focus for a point where various phenomena (e.g., rays of light) converge, an idea later extended to thinking.

5. RUMINATE

When you ruminate, you are literally (or figuratively) chewing on something. The verb derives from Latin’s ruminare, “to chew cud,” which is ultimately why strong-stomached mammals from cows to wildebeests are known as ruminants.

6. MUSE

While the classical Muses may have caused poets to muse, the two muse words are etymologically unrelated. The absorbed-in-thought muse comes from an Old French word mus, referring to a muzzle. As the theory goes, a dog sticks its snout into the air to sniff about, to muse, for a scent. Late Latin picked up this mus as musare, “to stare” or “waste time,” which helped make the word’s way into English.

7. CONSIDER

Our noses are also skyward when we consider. According to some etymologists, consider fuses Latin’s cum (together) and sidus (constellation). The idea, here, is of an astrologist divining human affairs from the stars.

8. CONTEMPLATE

Ancient astrologists weren’t the only ones looking for answers in the sky. In Ancient Rome, augurs tried to predict the future in various natural events, especially from the flight of birds. To do so, they would mark out a special space, called a templum, with a staff to observe the sky—hence the Latin verb contemplari, “to gaze attentively.” Templum also gives English its sacred temples.

9. COMPUTE

Centuries before laptops, compute simply referred to calculating. Its root verb, the Latin computare, features that same cum (together) and putare (to think). In a much older Latin, putare actually meant “to prune,” this act of trimming back likened to “clearing up,” thus counting, final amounts. Impute, repute, and putative also feature the root putare.

10. REFLECT

Reflect’s Latin root, reflectere, involved the physical act of bending or turning back. (Re- means “back,” and flectere means “turn” or “bend,” also showing up in words like deflect, flex, and inflect.) In the late 16th century, English turned this reflect into “turning one’s thoughts back on the past.”

11. SPECULATE

Mirrors reflect our images back to us—and in Ancient Rome, the word for a mirror was speculum. This speculum, as with speculate, goes back to the Latin specere, “to see,” making speculation an act of looking more deeply at some phenomenon.

12. CONJECTURE

To conjecture, in Latin, literally means “to throw together” various bits of facts and information in coming to an explanation. Forms of its base verb, iacere, also appear in eject, interject, reject, with different prefixes specifying in what direction, exactly, something is being thrown.

13. COGITATE

To cogitate is also a kind of “tossing about” in the mind. The verb derives from the Latin cogitare, blending co- (a form of cum) and agitare (to put into motion), source of agitate.

14. MEDITATE

Deep meditation is good for the body and soul—and making a careful decision, if we look to its etymology. The base of meditate, from Latin’s meditari, is an Indo-European root med-, “to take appropriate measures,” related to me-, “to measure.”

15. SAPIENS

Anthropologists call us, modern humans, homo sapiens, or “wise person.” But sapiens (“wise”) comes from a base verb, sapere, literally meaning “to taste.” For Julius Caesar, apparently, in tasting there was sense, discrimination, understanding, and, ultimately, wisdom.