1212. This week, we look at fossil words — old words like "kith," "beck," and "hue" that survive only inside phrases like "kith and kin," "beck and call," and "hue and cry." We also look at listener follow-ups about the game "huckle buckle beanstalk" and the "Nimrod" mascot of Watersmeet, Michigan, plus a familect about "lawn motors" and "underbrellas."
1212. This week, we look at fossil words — old words like "kith," "beck," and "hue" that survive only inside phrases like "kith and kin," "beck and call," and "hue and cry." We also look at listener follow-ups about the game "huckle buckle beanstalk" and the "Nimrod" mascot of Watersmeet, Michigan, plus a familect about "lawn motors" and "underbrellas."
The fossil words segment was by Karen Lunde, a career writer and editor. She writes I'll Go First, a newsletter where she shares her story, then hands you a writing prompt and a metaphorical pen. Find her on igofirst.org.
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Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and this week, we'll talk about fossil words like "kith," "beck," and "hue," and then I have some great listener follow-up stories about topics from some recent episodes.
by Karen Lunde
At a friend's birthday celebration recently, she told me she was "delighted to be surrounded by kith and kin." And suddenly I was thinking less about the charcuterie and more about that strange phrase. What does "kith" — that's K-I-T-H — mean, anyway? And why do we never hear people talk about just "kith" by itself?
Some old words get trapped in amber. Not literally, of course. We're talking about a sort of linguistic amber. When my friend said "kith and kin," she was using what linguists often call a "fossil word."
Fossil words may be mostly extinct, but they survive as part of a phrase that's become fixed in our everyday language. Merriam-Webster defines them as "an old word or word element preserved only by idiom." And, just a little nerdy side note, some of these phrases are also what we call "irreversible binomials." That means their word order sounds wrong if it's reversed. You'd never hear someone say "kin and kith"; it's always "kith and kin." We talked about more of those in episode 864 back in 2022.
So, let's look at a few phrases that contain fossil words, starting with the example I just gave you. In the movie "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," Clark Griswold gets sentimental about being surrounded by "kith and kin." And in this context, he meant "family" — he was with his immediate family cutting down their Christmas tree. But it turns out my friend used the phrase more correctly, at least where the fossil word is concerned. According to Merriam-Webster, "kith" means "familiar friends, neighbors, or relatives."
"Kith" goes back to Old English, and it used to have an even broader meaning. Originally, it also included a sense of knowledge and familiarity, especially related to a person's native land, along with the familiarity of relatives and neighbors. Etymonline dates the phrase "kith and kin" to the late 1300s, when it originally meant country and kinsfolk.
And here's another fossil word! If friends needed your help, you might assure them, "I'm at your beck and call!" It means you're always ready to do what someone asks. But have you ever used "beck" alone in a sentence? Probably not.
Originally, "beck" was a verb that meant to signal someone with a nod or gesture. Which makes sense when you think of summoning someone to do your bidding. The noun followed sometime in the late 1300s.
A little side note: Occasionally, you'll see someone write "beckon call" using the word "beckon" — B-E-C-K-O-N — instead of "beck and." But that's an eggcorn — a misunderstanding that seems to make sense. The correct idiom is "beck and call."
And then there's "hue and cry." You might hear a teacher say, "The kids raised a hue and cry when recess was rained out." The idiom "hue and cry" is often used to describe an uproar. We tend to think of it as a bunch of people making a fuss, but originally it would have been more about one wronged person shouting a rallying cry.
"Hue" comes from the Old French for "clamor" or "public outcry." When this word first came into use in the 1200s, the kind of organized police force we have today didn't exist. In the English common law system, the task of fighting crime and seeking justice often fell to citizens. So, if someone stole your coin purse, you might yell "Stop thief!" And anyone who heard your "hue and cry" was expected to join the pursuit.
Today, of course, you usually don't hear the word "hue" — H-U-E — except when it refers to color. It's the same spelling, but a completely different word with different origins. The word you might use when you look at something freshly painted and say, "That's a beautiful hue" comes from Old English rather than Old French.
Now, if you've just given your home a deep cleaning, you might say everything's "spick-and-span." You're describing your space as extremely clean, fresh, and tidy. At least until the kids or grandkids arrive. But the phrase originally had more to do with something being new than freshly cleaned.
The older form — the first known use was in 1579 — was "spick-and-span-new." The first word of the phrase — S-P-I-C-K — is an obsolete word for "spike." The second part was originally "span-new," with a hyphen between "span" and "new." It meant "brand-new." Etymonline puts this wonderfully concrete image behind it: something "new as a recently made spike and wood-chip." So, the phrase once reminded people of things like fresh materials and new construction. Imagine something not yet worn down by use, with untarnished metal or clean-cut wood.
Over time, the "new" part dropped away, but the idea of something fresh stayed. "Spick and span" came to mean something so clean and tidy that it looks new. And that's some fossil word magic! The idea of fresh building materials faded from everyday use, but they're still tucked into a phrase you might use after you've just deep-cleaned the kitchen.
Karen Lunde is a career writer and editor. She writes I'll Go First, a newsletter where she shares her story, then hands you a writing prompt and a metaphorical pen. Find her on igofirst.org.
Before we get to the familect this week, I have some wonderful follow-ups from listeners about items from previous shows.
First, multiple listeners wrote in to comment on Holly's phrase "huckle buckle beanstalk" as something to say when you find something you're looking for. It turns out that it's based on an old children's game.
Joyce said she played the game in fifth grade in southern Connecticut where four students would leave the room and they would hide an eraser. And then the students would return and when they found the eraser they would say,” huckle buckle beanstalk” and go to the blackboard and the first one at the blackboard would win!
Priscilla said when she was young, her mom would play a similar game with art students while waiting for their parents to pick them up. In this case, the first person to yell “huckle buckle beanstalk!” won the game and the privilege of being the person to hide an item.
And Daniel said "huckle buckle beanstalk" is what you say when you find the thimble in the traditional game, Hide the Thimble. In his version of the game, when you find the item, you look somewhere else before saying “huckle buckle beanstalk,” to keep the other players guessing, because they have to keep looking until they find it. There are many variations, and sometimes the person who hid the item will call out "hot" or "cold" as the searchers get closer or farther from finding it.
Wikipedia says the game predates Victorian parlour games and also goes by many other names, including Huckleberry Beanstalk, Hot Buttered Beans, Find the Object, and Find the Key, and is played in many countries.
As for where it got the name Huckle Buckle Beanstalk, nobody really knows, but that name is newer and more common in the United States than the name Hot Buttered Beans, so one theory is that the "beans" part carried over from Europe and that it somehow became entwined with the Jack and the Beanstalk tale.
Next, Daniel also sent a link to a funny College Humor video that makes all the situations in Alanis Morrissette's song "Ironic" actually ironic — like "It's like a no smoking sign on your cigarette break — at the RJ Reynolds Tobacco company." I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
And finally, Michelle wrote in with another follow-up about the word "nimrod," which is turning out to have all kinds of interesting little tidbits associated with it. She said:
"I loved your recent podcast episode mentioning the word 'nimrod.' Like many, I grew up hearing the term in cartoons, but it caught my attention again when I was touring colleges.
On the drive to Michigan Tech in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we passed through Watersmeet, Michigan, which proudly displays a sign reading, 'Home of the Nimrods.' I ended up attending Michigan Tech, where I occasionally saw students wearing Nimrod t-shirts.
While I initially assumed it was a small-town gimmick, I eventually learned that the mascot dates back to 1904. It actually refers to the biblical figure Nimrod, who was described as a 'mighty hunter,' reflecting the area's heritage.
I thought you might find this history interesting! You can find more information on the school's website: https://www.watersmeetschool.org/."
So that website says, "In 1986, ESPN’s Sports America Show named the Nimrods the third-best high school sports nickname," so I had to see what the first two were, and they were the Cairo, Georgia, Syrupmakers and the Brush, Colorado, Beetdiggers. Frankly, I think the Nimrods were robbed! Thanks, Michelle.
And this week we have eggcorns in our familect too. This one is from Paul:
"Hello, Mignon. This is Paul from Joplin. You had asked for some more familect stories, so I thought I would briefly share three. These are all words that my son used when he was little. And we just found them funny and they, they just stuck. The first two are eggcorns. For the word 'lawnmower,' he would say 'lawn motor.' And instead of 'eyeballs,' he said 'eye bulbs.' And you have to admit that like most eggcorns, they do make sense in a way, at least in a kid's mind. And the third one, I don't know if it's really an eggcorn, but his word for 'umbrella' was 'underbrella.' And you have to admit again that that makes sense because when you use it, you stand under it. Anyway, keep up the good work. Thanks. Bye."
Thanks, Paul. That's so great, and those all strike me as eggcorns too because they all make sense. What a clever child. And if anyone is wondering about eggcorns, we talked all about them in episode 711 back in 2019, and you can still find that on your podcast feed.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Nat Hoopes; Morgan Christianson; Maram Elnagheeb; Steven Schapansky; Holly Hutchings; Dan Feierabend; and Rebekah Sebastian, who has been to Africa twice.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.
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