Author: Arika

We have many reasons to love dragonflies. They look cool, eat mosquitoes—and have some nifty nicknames across the U.S. In our continued partnership with the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), we bring you 25 dramatic dragonfly designations from around the country.

1., 2., AND 3. DEVIL’S DARNING NEEDLE, DARNING NEEDLE, AND SEWING NEEDLE

Devil’s darning needle, darning needle, and sewing needle are just a few nicknames that come from the way dragonflies “fly back and forth over the same area as a needle travels when darning socks,” according to Hawaiian Nature Notes.

Devil’s darning needle is a chiefly northern term, while darning needle is mostly used in the Northeast, Inland North, and the West. Dining needle, a variant of darning needle, might be heard on Long Island; Spanish needle in Nebraska; stitcher in California and Massachusetts; and sewing needle in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Massachusetts.

Dragonflies are harmless but somehow gained a nasty reputation. A belief was that the “devil’s darning-needle [would] sew together the fingers or toes of a person who goes to sleep within its reach,” according to the 1899 book Animal and Plant Lore. It would also “sew up the mouths of scolding women, saucy children, and profane men,” “sting you to death,” and “enter the ears and penetrate the brain of a person.” Animal and Plant Lore isn’t the only place these ideas pop up: In The Insect Guide (1948), author Ralph B. Swain writes that “it was once popularly believed that [large dragonflies] sewed up the ears of truant schoolboys,” while a 1967 quote in DARE says “it would sew up your mouth if you told a lie.”

4., 5., 6., AND 7. EAR CUTTER, EAR SEWER, EAR NEEDLE, AND EYE STITCHER

Want kids to behave? Make up scary stuff about insects. The term ear cutter comes from the myth that dragonflies “will cut the ears of children who lie,” according to DARE. Synonyms include ear sewer and ear needle, the latter of which is probably a blend of ear sewer and darning needle. Eye stitcher comes from the frightening idea that dragonflies “will sew your eyes shut if you don’t behave.”

8. SCHNEIDER

Pronounced sneeder or snyder, this Wisconsin moniker comes from the German word for tailor and also refers to the daddy longlegs and other insects.

9., 10., AND 11. SNAKE SERVANT, SNAKE GUARDER, AND SNAKE HEEDER

A Pennsylvania term, snake servant apparently comes from the belief that dragonflies warned snakes “of approaching danger, and aided them in the acquisition of food,” according to the Journal of American Folklore.

Also in the Pennsylvania German area were snake heeder and snake guarder, according to A Word Geography of the United States. The latter term is a loan translation of the Pennsylvania German schlangehieter, while the former is a partial translation of the same word, according to DARE.

More snake-related nicknames include snake waiter, especially in Maryland; snake peter in Wisconsin and New Jersey; snake feeder in the Midland and Plains States; and snake charmer in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Montana, and the Northeast.

12. SNAKE DOCTOR

While dragonflies might be the stuff of bratty kids’ nightmares, they were apparently a boon to snakes. Snake doctor, chiefly used in the Midland and South, comes from the idea that dragonflies could “cure snakes” or snakebites. According to the 1893 book Some Peculiarities of Speech in Mississippi, the “two bumps sometimes seen on the [dragonfly], just behind his wings, are called his saddlebags, and in them he is reputed to carry medicine for the snakes.” Meanwhile, an Alabama resident told DARE dragonflies “picked off the gnats that would gather in a small cloud around a sunning snake.”

Other doctor epithets include witch doctor, especially in the South Midland, and mosquito doctor, probably a blend of mosquito hawk, another nickname for the dragonfly, and snake doctor.

13., 14., AND 15. DEVIL’S DRAGON, DEVIL’S RIDING HORSE, AND DICKINSON’S HORSE

Dragonflies were considered devilish in some regions, with devil’s dragon quoted in Tennessee; devil horse and devil’s horse in Wisconsin, Alabama, and Mississippi; and devil’s riding horse in North Carolina. In Iowa you might hear Dickinson’s horse or Dickinson’s mare where, we’re speculating, Dickinson might be a variation on Dick, Dickens, and other old-fashioned names for the devil.

16., 17., AND 18. HORSE DOCTOR, MOSQUITO HORSE, AND HORSE STINGER

Horse-related idioms are another variation. You might hear horse doctor in Tennessee, Texas, and Arkansas, where one resident said it might be “bad luck for ‘horse doctors’ to fly around near the fish pole.” Mosquito horse might be heard in Mississippi and Georgia. In Nebraska, horse stinger comes from the old-timey belief that dragonflies stung horses and even sucked their blood, according to the book Hill County Harvest.

19. AND 20. MULE KILLER AND BEE-BUTCHER

Similarly, mule killer comes from the incorrect belief that dragonflies killed mules, and not-so-similarly, bee-butcher from their true habit of eating bees and other small insects.

21. FOUR-EYES

Not just a schoolyard taunt, four-eyes might be a dragonfly designation in Illinois, referring to its compound eye, according to DARE. Sarah Zielinski writes at Smithsonian that “nearly all of the dragonfly’s head is eye, so they have incredible vision that encompasses almost every angle except right behind them.”

22. AND 23. HELICOPTER AND AIRPLANE

Then there are the regionalisms related to how dragonflies move. According to Zielinksi, they’re “expert fliers” and can “fly straight up and down, hover like a helicopter and even mate mid-air.” So it’s no surprise that the dragonfly is known as a helicopter in areas like Indiana, Pennsylvania, and the Upper Midwest. Meanwhile, over in California, Delaware, Washington, and South Dakota, the insect might be called an airplane, airplane bug, and airplane fly.

24. GLOBE-SKIMMER

According to Hawaiian Nature, a particular species of dragonfly known as the globe-skimmer takes “advantage of any little puddle of water in the lowlands to breed,” which is why “this species is so abundant, even in the driest localities.” The species migrates 11,000 miles—the farthest of any insect.

25. LONG-ASS BUTTERFLY

And if you’re ever in the Buckeye State, be like one Ohioan jokester who referred to a dragonfly for what it is: a long-ass butterfly.

According to the most recent publicly available U.S. Census data from the year 2000, the five most common last names in the United States are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, and Jones. But what are the regional variations? While the Census Bureau breaks out each last name by race and ethnicity, it doesn’t provide a count by state. There are other data sources, however. In 2014 Ancestry.com ran the numbers from their own database, and compiled the top three most common last names by state. With the exception of the Southwest states and Hawaii, the top few names nationwide tended to also dominate the state-specific rankings.

However, another way to uncover regional differences at the state level is to calculate the most distinctive last name by state. Using a methodology similar to the “Most Distinctive Obituary Euphemism for ‘Died’ in Each State” map, I calculated the difference between the state and national prevalence of each of the top 250 last names nationwide, based on Social Security Administration data. The highest value gives the last name that is most distinctive to that state.

By and large, the results are reflective of each state’s demographics and immigration history. In New England and Appalachia, Irish and English names dominate (Walsh, Sullivan, Payne). In the Midwest and Mountain States, German and Scandinavian names are common (Jensen, Snyder, Carlson). In California, Florida, and the Southwest, it’s Latino names (Lopez, Hernandez, Gonzalez). New York and New Jersey’s Jewish communities also show up (Cohen, Schwartz, Hoffman).

To see the top five names for each state and for more about the methods and sources used to create this map, visit this post at SimonKnowz.com.

Charles Dickens captured Victorian society from the finest drawing rooms to the filthiest gutters, and his primary tool was language. As Bryan Kozlowski, author and member of the Dickens Fellowship puts it in his new book What the Dickens?!: Distinctly Dickensian Words and How to Use Them, “Dickens wallowed in words like no other.” Kozlowski has collected 200 words used by Dickens, some of them drawn from the life around him, some of his own invention, and puts them in the context of 19th century England and Dickens’s body of work. Here are just a few of the delightful offerings discussed in the book.

1. MARPLOT

“A meddlesome, though well-meaning, person who unwittingly spoils the plans of others.” This word, used in Our Mutual Friend, was based on the name of a character from an 18th century play who exemplified those “meddlesome” qualities.

2. SASSIGASSITY

This word for “audacity with attitude,” which was coined by Dickens for the short story “A Christmas Tree,” never caught on. Which is a shame.

3. CONNUBIALITIES

This “polite euphemism for marital arguments” comes up in Nicholas Nickelby when Nicholas changes the subject “in view of stopping some slight connubialities which had begun to pass between Mr. and Mrs. Browdie.”

4. JOG-TROTTY

This word for boring was used in Bleak House to call something “jog-trotty and humdrum.” Kozlowski explains that it comes from “jog-trot, the slow and steady trot of a horse.”

5. UGSOME

Already an old fashioned word for “horrible and frightening” when Dickens used it in his literary periodical All the Year Round, ugsome goes back to Old Norse ugga for “to dread.”

6. CAG-MAGGERS

Cagmag was slang for rotten meat. Hence this term Dickens used in Great Expectations for “unscrupulous butchers.”

7. SLANGULAR

A perfect invention of Dickens’s own, it shows up in Bleak House in discussing one character’s verbal “strength lying in a slangular direction” or leaning (at an angle) toward slang.

Get a more comprehensive tour through linguistic Dickensiana in What the Dickens?! including specific sections on Words for Making Merry, Words for Bleak Days and Bad Company, Street Words and Slang, Words for the Rich and Ridiculous, and Vocabulary for the Smart-Sounding Victorian.

Let me put this right up front. The headline to this post is slightly misleading, but not dishonest. For the origin of the word slang indeed has been found, just not recently. It has been found for more than 100 years. The occasion for bringing this fact up now, and for the misleading headlinese, is that people still persist in presenting the origin as disputed. Anatoly Liberman, a highly respected etymologist who is in no way averse to hedging when warranted, tries to put the practice to rest in a recent Oxford University Press blog post titled “The Origin of the Word SLANG is Known!” That important exclamation point says not “exciting discovery!” but “Sheesh! Stop acting like it isn’t known already!”

As Liberman explains, it goes back to an old use of slang for “a narrow piece of land running up between other and larger divisions of ground.” It’s related to Scandinavian terms having to do with free movement and wandering, and the word’s “route was from ‘territory; turf’ to ‘those who advertise and sell their wares on such a territory,’ to ‘the patter used in advertising the wares,’ and to ‘vulgar language’ (later to ‘any colorful, informal way of expression’).”

Liberman has made his life’s work the thorough investigation of words marked “origin unknown” in etymological dictionaries. Though the explanation of slang laid out above appeared in his 2008 dictionary and is often credited to him, he gives credit to John Sampson, who set it forth in 1898. It was overlooked at the time, and Liberman laments,

“Few English words of disputable origin have been explained so convincingly, and it grieves me to see that some dictionaries still try to derive slang from Norwegian regional slengja ‘fling, cast’ or the phrase slengja kjeften ‘make insulting allusions’ (literarally ‘sling the jaw’), or from the old past tense of sling (that is, from the same grade of ablaut as the past tense of sling), or from language with s– appended to it (even if the amazing similarity between slang and language helped slang stay in Standard English, for many people must have thought of some hybrid like s-language). All those hypotheses lack foundation. The origin of slang is known, and the discovery made long ago should not be mentioned politely or condescendingly among a few others that stimulated the research but now belong to the museum of etymology.”

If you’re still not convinced, read the more involved explanation in his blog post or dictionary.

Some words are just perfect for shouting out in exasperation. These oldies will make you feel better the moment they pass your lips.

1. ZOONTERS!

This one got a little play in the 18th century as a minced oath—a swear that was modified to avoid being offensive. It’s a further mincing of zounds, which was itself a mincing of “his wounds,” as in Christ’s. Keep it handy in case you stub your toe in church.

2. OONS!

If zoonters is pushing it too close to the edge of blasphemy, just cut it down by a few more sounds. Oons was another minced oath formed off zounds.

3. DODGAST!

Much in the way that familiar forms like dagnabbit and doggone are ways to avoid saying God damn it! and God damned!, dodgast takes on the burden of God blast it! and makes it safe for children.

4. ADOD!

Yet another obsolete way to get the satisfaction of a swear without the taking of the Lord’s name in vain, this minced oath from the 17th century stands in for oh God. Its sibling egad! survived longer.

5. CRIVENS!

This one is a creative mashup of Christ! and heavens! It’s put to good use in this line from the 1935 book Shipbuilders: “Holy crivens, I nearly broke my flakin’ back.”

6. I SNORE!

Once you go a little bit out of your way to avoid some blasphemy, no reason not to keep going even further. The exclamation I snore! was an early American way to avoid even saying the word swear. In 1790, the Massachusetts Spy reported that “in one village you will hear the phrase ‘I snore,’—in another, ‘I swowgar.’”

7. BY SNUM!

If snore or swowgar isn’t far enough from offensive for you, there’s also snum. Snum came from vum, which itself came from vow. 

8. BYR’LADY!

Not to be confused with beer lady!, this one was formed from “by our lady.”

9. RABBIT!

You’ve probably heard of drat! And rats! They started as God rot!, but before that, it was rendered as rabbit—as in “Rabbit the fellow!” from Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews.

10. WHAT THE RATTLE!?

There’s only one citation for this one in the Oxford English Dictionary, but it’s a good one, from 1790: “But what the rattle makes you look so tarnation glum?”

11. BONES OF ME!

This 16th century exclamation could show up as bones of me! or bones of you! The bones are the part of the body with the most staying power after death, so the expression has a force akin to “over my dead body” without the “don’t you dare” part.

12. GOOD LACK!

In addition to good God! And good heavens! There was good lack! Related to alack! and a sense of lack meaning fault or moral failing. It was used to express dismay at a state of affairs.

13. LOVANENTY!

An exclamation of shock and surprise, it’s probably from the phrase Lord defend thee. It also showed up as lockanties, lockintee, and lokins in Scotland.

14. MEGSTIE ME!

Another expression of surprise, it might be related to mighty. Other forms were megsty, maiginty, and megginstie, or meggins for short.

15. STAP MY VITALS!

This one probably started with Lord Foppington, a character in the 1697 comedy Relapse, who had a problem with pronouncing o as a.

16. SUPERNACULUM!

An obsolete exhortation to drink, this was a jokey combination of Latin and German. There was a German phrase auf den Nagel trinken or “drink to the nail,” meaning “drain your glass to the last drop.” Naculum was a play on what Nagel would sound like in Latin. Add super- or “over” to it and you’ve got supernaculum, which you can cry out as you turn your glass over to show you’ve chugged it all.

Sarah Tubert is captain of the National Deaf Volleyball team, which recently won gold at the World Deaf Championships, but athletics isn’t her only talent. Here she performs her ASL translation of “Alexander Hamilton” from the Broadway musical. If you’re a Hamilton fan, you’ll appreciate how she manages to convey the complex verbal syncopations in the rhythm of her delivery—and even if you’ve listened to the song 500 times, you might discover something new in this translation to a visual modality.

By some accounts, the average person owns 19 pairs of shoes. But it’s not just our closets that are overflowing with sneakers, loafers, pumps, and wedges. It’s also our vocabulary. Here are 10 words hiding a secret, etymological shoe obsession.

1. SLIPSHOD

In Middle English, if you wanted to say something was “wearing shoes,” you would say it was shod. Shod simply means “shoed.” This old past participle form of the verb to shoe has largely been worn out in the lexicon, but it does survive as a compound in some familiar adjectives, like slipshod. Slipshod literally means “wearing slippers.” Slippers are loose-fitting, which is how slipshod eventually came to describe something “sloppy” and “careless.”

2. ROUGHSHOD

When horseshoes are roughshod, the nails aren’t yet worn down. This helps keep the horse from slipping, but it also does a number on the terrain, hence the domineering disregard associated with the idiom to ride roughshod.

3. SCRUPLE

Someone who rides roughshod over someone else’s ideas or feelings certainly isn’t a very scrupulous fellow. Scruples, which niggle one’s conscience, derive from the Latin scrupulus, literally a “small pebble.” The famed Roman orator and statesman Cicero used scrupulus as a metaphor for a “cause of anxiety”—something that worries you, like a little stone stuck in your shoe.

4. SABOTAGE

Saboteurs aren’t deterred by any rocks in their footwear. Instead, they deliberately ruin—or sabotage—something with their boots. Way back when, in French, a sabot was a “wooden boot,” which inspired saboter, “to make noise with sabots.” Such clomping was employed as a metaphor for malicious destruction. Sabotage concerned a very specific destruction when English adopted the word in the 1910s: workmen destroying company property while on strike.

5. CIABATTA

Italians love their shoes and Italians love their food. Fortunately, they’ve found a way to bring those two loves together. Ciabatta literally means “slipper,” whose shape, as the story goes, lent its name to the Italian bread. The word ciabatta is related to Spanish for “shoe,” zapato, from the same root that gave French the sabot in sabotage.

6. CALZONE

The Italians don’t just eat their slippers. They also eat their trousers. While calzones can feature all sort of tasty fillings, etymologically the dish is stuffed with calzoni, “drawers” or “hose,” as the folded dough resembles folded clothing. The Italian calzoni is fresh out of the oven of calceus, the Latin for “shoe.” Discalceate, also from calceus, is a very fancy way of saying “take off your shoes.”

7. CAUSEWAY

One would think causeway, like the famed Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, is a simple compound of cause and way. But the word actually joins causey and way. Causey is an obsolete word for “embankment” and might trek back to the Latin calciare, “to tread” or “stamp with the heels.” This verb is related to that same calceus, “shoe,” a word further grounded in calx, “heel.” A variant of Latin’s calx may also yield caligula, “little boot,” which became the nickname of the Roman emperor Caligula, reputed to have accompanied his father in war as a toddler, dressed in a military uniform fitted for his small size, including the boots.

8. BROGUE

Some think that this term for a distinctive, Celtic accent is named for “the speech of one who wears brogues,” or shoes. Brogue is from the Old Irish broce, “shoe,” from the same ancient root that gives English the word breeches.

9. REVAMP

Today, when we revamp something, we “renovate” and “improve” it. But if you revamped something before the early 1800s, you were providing a shoe with a new vamp. A vamp makes up the top part of shoe between the toe and heel. The word originally meant “stocking” or “sock” in Middle English, from the French avanpié, “the front (avant) part of the foot (pié).” Musicians will vamp when they are improvising, “patching together” a part on the spot much like a cobbler revamped an old, worn-down shoe.

10. WELT

Shoemakers will also be familiar with welt. Most of us probably think of welt as a swollen mark on the flesh caused by a lash or blow. But going back into 1400s, welts were strips of leather sewn above the sole of a shoe. Such strips were thus likened to the raised, ridge-like welts left on the skin. Ill-fitting shoes can cause blisters, but welterweight boxers cause welts, one theory for their name.

We all have one friend who, when the bill arrives, is MIA. That friend, if they can ever be located, doesn’t believe in tipping either: They’re a true skinflint who holds their money in a death grip. Though skinflint and tightwad are terrific words, there are quite a few synonyms and adjectives sprinkled throughout the history of English. Even when the subject matter is parsimonious, the lexicon is always giving and ready to buy another round.

1. DRY-FIST

Many stingy words mention the hand or fist, and this one equates dryness with cheapness. The Oxford English Dictionary examples include mentions of “filthy dry-fisted knights” and “dryfisted patrons.” Today we’d talk about cheap bastards or miserly garbage people.

2. MINGY

This unpleasant-sounding word rhymes with stingy and may be a blend with mean. Mingy has been around just over 100 years and is used in an absolutely juicy insult from a 1912 letter by poet Rupert Brooke: “I called you a mingy and coprologous Oxford poetaster.” Rarely, mingy can also be a noun, as seen in a reprimand from 1939’s To Love and to Cherish by Michael Egan: “Don’t be a mingy, father; they only cost a shilling.”

3. NARROW-SOULED

Of course, narrow-minded is a common word for someone with a one-track mind, but this word applies to someone with an unusually svelte soul. Narrow-souled has referred to various types of pettiness since the 1600s, including penny-pinching. At times, narrow all by itself has also meant stingy, if you’re looking for a new euphemism for an embarrassing companion.

4. PARTAN-HANDED

Partan was originally a word for a crab in the 1400s, and in the 1800s it evolved into an insult for people who were a bit, well, crabby. From there, it spawned a variety of insults such as partan-faced and partan-handed, which suggests a rather specific sort of closed-fistedness.

5. PURSE-BOUND

The idea is that your purse is so tightly wrapped—perhaps with ropes, chains, and crazy glue—that it’s never opening again. The first known use, by playwright James Shirley in 1653, includes a preview of the next term: “I may Tell you, my Father is a little costive, Purse-bound, his pension cannot find me tooth-picks.”

6. COSTIVE

The first uses of costive, from around 1400, refer to a constrictive state of affairs far beyond the scope of this list: the costive are constipated. By the 1600s, this word for hard, unyielding bowels had spread to vicious, close-fisted tightwads. Costive could also refer to any type of ungenerous behavior, as seen in a 1606 use by George Chapman in the amusingly titled Sir Gyles Goosecappe: “Is your Lorde Costiue of laughter, or laxatiue of laughter?” Apparently the bowel-y origins of this word were not forgotten.

7. SAVE-ALL

This mostly self-explanatory word has had a few meanings over the years, but in the 1700s it meant the opposite of a spend-all. Poet John Keats used the term in an 1820 letter that offered an unflattering description: “There is old Lord Burleigh, the high-priest of economy, the political save-all.”

8. AND 9. CHINCHERD AND CHINCHY

Today chintzy is still used as a synonym for stingy, but there are some older relatives with similar meanings: chincherd (a noun) and chinchy (an adjective). They all derive from chinch, an adjective for tight-fisted behavior since the 1400s.

10. SNUDGE

In the 1500s and 1600s, this was a common word for a miser. Snudge can also be a verb: You’re snudging if you’re holding your wallet tight in the manner of Ebenezer Scrooge. This word demands a revival. When someone stiffs us on a bill, we should say they snudged us or acted like a total snudge.

11. AND 12. CLUSTERFIST AND CLOSE-FIST

First found in the 1600s, clusterfist can refer to a few types of disappointing individuals. In one sense, cluster means clumsy, and a clusterfist is a type of oaf or boor. But cluster can also mean closed, and this is a synonym for another tightwaddy term, close-fist. This 1655 use by Charles Sorel describes a disgusting lack of generosity in the important realm of cake: “My owne cakes..of which he never proffered me so much as the least crum, so base a Cluster-fist was he.”

We all have one friend who, when the bill arrives, is MIA. That friend, if they can ever be located, doesn’t believe in tipping either: They’re a true skinflint who holds their money in a death grip. Though skinflint and tightwad are terrific words, there are quite a few synonyms and adjectives sprinkled throughout the history of English. Even when the subject matter is parsimonious, the lexicon is always giving and ready to buy another round.

1. DRY-FIST

Many stingy words mention the hand or fist, and this one equates dryness with cheapness. The Oxford English Dictionary examples include mentions of “filthy dry-fisted knights” and “dryfisted patrons.” Today we’d talk about cheap bastards or miserly garbage people.

2. MINGY

This unpleasant-sounding word rhymes with stingy and may be a blend with mean. Mingy has been around just over 100 years and is used in an absolutely juicy insult from a 1912 letter by poet Rupert Brooke: “I called you a mingy and coprologous Oxford poetaster.” Rarely, mingy can also be a noun, as seen in a reprimand from 1939’s To Love and to Cherish by Michael Egan: “Don’t be a mingy, father; they only cost a shilling.”

3. NARROW-SOULED

Of course, narrow-minded is a common word for someone with a one-track mind, but this word applies to someone with an unusually svelte soul. Narrow-souled has referred to various types of pettiness since the 1600s, including penny-pinching. At times, narrow all by itself has also meant stingy, if you’re looking for a new euphemism for an embarrassing companion.

4. PARTAN-HANDED

Partan was originally a word for a crab in the 1400s, and in the 1800s it evolved into an insult for people who were a bit, well, crabby. From there, it spawned a variety of insults such as partan-faced and partan-handed, which suggests a rather specific sort of closed-fistedness.

5. PURSE-BOUND

The idea is that your purse is so tightly wrapped—perhaps with ropes, chains, and crazy glue—that it’s never opening again. The first known use, by playwright James Shirley in 1653, includes a preview of the next term: “I may Tell you, my Father is a little costive, Purse-bound, his pension cannot find me tooth-picks.”

6. COSTIVE

The first uses of costive, from around 1400, refer to a constrictive state of affairs far beyond the scope of this list: the costive are constipated. By the 1600s, this word for hard, unyielding bowels had spread to vicious, close-fisted tightwads. Costive could also refer to any type of ungenerous behavior, as seen in a 1606 use by George Chapman in the amusingly titled Sir Gyles Goosecappe: “Is your Lorde Costiue of laughter, or laxatiue of laughter?” Apparently the bowel-y origins of this word were not forgotten.

7. SAVE-ALL

This mostly self-explanatory word has had a few meanings over the years, but in the 1700s it meant the opposite of a spend-all. Poet John Keats used the term in an 1820 letter that offered an unflattering description: “There is old Lord Burleigh, the high-priest of economy, the political save-all.”

8. AND 9. CHINCHERD AND CHINCHY

Today chintzy is still used as a synonym for stingy, but there are some older relatives with similar meanings: chincherd (a noun) and chinchy (an adjective). They all derive from chinch, an adjective for tight-fisted behavior since the 1400s.

10. SNUDGE

In the 1500s and 1600s, this was a common word for a miser. Snudge can also be a verb: You’re snudging if you’re holding your wallet tight in the manner of Ebenezer Scrooge. This word demands a revival. When someone stiffs us on a bill, we should say they snudged us or acted like a total snudge.

11. AND 12. CLUSTERFIST AND CLOSE-FIST

First found in the 1600s, clusterfist can refer to a few types of disappointing individuals. In one sense, cluster means clumsy, and a clusterfist is a type of oaf or boor. But cluster can also mean closed, and this is a synonym for another tightwaddy term, close-fist. This 1655 use by Charles Sorel describes a disgusting lack of generosity in the important realm of cake: “My owne cakes..of which he never proffered me so much as the least crum, so base a Cluster-fist was he.”

Lynne Murphy is an American linguist who has been living in the UK for 21 years. For 10 of them she has been writing the blog Separated by a Common Language, detailing the many ways, both subtle and obvious, American and British English part ways. No one is more of an expert on the UK/North America differences, so you can imagine her shock when she realized that all this time, the people around her had a completely different understanding of the word frown. For her, the locus of the frown was the mouth. For the Brits around her, it was not the mouth, but the brow that made the frown.

She discovered this fact through an old blog post by Michael Wagner, a linguistics professor at McGill University, where he tells the story of how he found out that frown meant something different to him (he is British) than to his Canadian friend. They were looking at a piece of abstract art at a museum when his friend asked, “Do you think this is a frown or a moustache?” Wagner was confused because,

Whatever ‘this’ was, it was clearly below the eyes, and also, the facial expression was sad—so how could it be a frown? My understanding of frown was what I later found in Webster’s online dictionary:

1 : an expression of displeasure
2 : a wrinkling of the brow in displeasure or concentration

When I expressed my puzzlement, I learned that frown, in fact, also means the opposite of smile: a downward facing mouth expressing sadness, and that this is in fact the most common/salient meaning of the word, at least to some.

What is a frown? A look of displeasure, made with the eyebrows? Or a sad face, made with downturned mouth? Informal surveys performed by Wagner at the time and then six years later by Murphy both revealed the same result, which can be summed up as “Wait! OMG! THAT’S what you think it means? I had no idea!” And “Oooohhh, so that’s why Americans say ‘turn that frown upside down’!”

So what’s a frown to you? The opposite of a smile or a furrowed forehead of concern?

Check out Wagner’s original post, and read the very interesting ensuing discussion at Separated by a Common Language, which suggests there may be age and regional effects influencing your decision.