In this week's bonus, we continue our discussion with Roger Kreuz from the University of Memphis about false etymologies, the word origin stories people pass along even though they aren't true. We look at why "tip" isn't an acronym for "to ensure promptness" and why "rule of thumb" has nothing to do with wife beating. Then we look at what false etymologies have in common with conspiracy theories, why "flutterby" tells a better story than "butterfly," and why Roger stopped flatly correcting people and started looking things up with them instead.
In this week's bonus, we continue our discussion with Roger Kreuz from the University of Memphis about false etymologies, the word origin stories people pass along even though they aren't true. We look at why "tip" isn't an acronym for "to ensure promptness" and why "rule of thumb" has nothing to do with wife beating. Then we look at what false etymologies have in common with conspiracy theories, why "flutterby" tells a better story than "butterfly," and why Roger stopped flatly correcting people and started looking things up with them instead.
Find Roger Kreuz on his website, RogerKreuz.net.
Save the date for Grammarpalooza — The Game Show: Thursday, September 24 at 5 p.m. PT / 8 p.m. ET.
A hearty thank-you to our Keepers of the Commas and one Immortal on Patreon. We appreciate your support!
🔗 Share your familect recording in Speakpipe or by leaving a voicemail at 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475)
🔗 Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing courses.
🔗 Subscribe to the newsletter.
🔗 Find an edited transcript.
🔗 Get Grammar Girl books.
| HOST: Mignon Fogarty
| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.
| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.
| Grammar Girl Social Media: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook. Threads. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon. Bluesky.
[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon Fogarty: Greetings, Grammarpaloozians. Thank you so much for your support and for being here. I am here today with Roger Kreuz from the University of Memphis. He's a frequent contributor of language articles to Psychology Today and The Conversation. In the main episode, we talked about looksmaxxing and slang suffixes like that, and what they mean culturally, and whether we should take them seriously or not. It was a great discussion. Look for it in your feed if you haven't listened already. But now, in this segment, we are going to talk about etymological conspiracy theories. We're going to get into the woo-woo, so it is going to be interesting. So Roger, thank you so much for being here today.
Roger Kreuz: Thank you.
Mignon: It's not really woo-woo, but this is such an interesting piece you had in Psychology Today that language is filled with stories about etymology that aren't true, but that people believe. Can you talk about what some of these false stories are to sort of orient us?
Roger: Yeah, I was thinking about this in terms of my experiences in high school, and this is way back before the internet, in the Stone Age. And people through word of mouth would say, "Oh, you know what that phrase really means?" or, "Do you know what this actually refers to?" So there are phrases like, you know, "tip" isn't just a word; it's actually an acronym for "to ensure promptness." Or people saying, "Well, 'posh' actually dates back to the British steamships going to India, and the side of the ship that you wanted to be on going out and coming back," port out, starboard home, that kind of thing.
So these are very common, and even words where you wouldn't think there would be any kind of confusion, like "news," because that's obviously from "new." People say, "Oh, well, it's north, east, west, and south." And people say, "I didn't know that." And so you feel like you possess this secret knowledge, and I think that's what really is attractive to a lot of people, the idea of knowing things, being on the inside compared to people who don't know these things. I think that's very attractive to a lot of people. That's true for things in general, but it's also true for language.
Mignon: Yeah. Another one that surprised me was "rule of thumb." I had heard the… What was the false etymology behind that?
Roger: Yeah, the false etymology is that you could beat your wife with a switch as long as the switch wasn't thicker than a man's thumb.
Mignon: Right, but that's not true.
Roger: No. And I've used that phrase in teaching, and I've had students in the class become upset with me and say, "You shouldn't use that term. It's this very sexist term." And I have to say, "Well, the research doesn't really support that claim," and they still don't believe me, so.
Mignon: It's kind of tricky too, because if enough people think something, then you do have to be kind of careful, right? And you've pointed out that these beliefs that people have about etymology, they share a lot of features or reasons with the other kinds of conspiracy theories that people believe. So, how did you… And I never thought about that before. So how do they line up with these other things that make people believe conspiracy theories?
Roger: Yeah, so we are living in an age when people kind of distrust authority, unfortunately, and as a result, people I think are more prone to believing things that may not seem like they're the official story to explain something. And I think there's also a great deal of emotional appeal, this idea that "rule of thumb" somehow has to do with wife beating, and the fact that society once was extremely misogynistic. People can resonate to that. It also tells a good story, because there are some false etymologies that actually make more sense than the real thing.
Mignon: Like what?
Roger: In my article, I talk about "butterfly," and that is a very strange term to refer to the insect because it's not the color of butter, at least in many cases. It's not obviously a fly. And so this belief that somehow "flutterby" was the original source that got kind of mangled over time, that seems perfect. "Flutterby," what a perfect name for a butterfly. So it really does seem like it can create a more narratively coherent story for where a term comes from than the original story, which is usually quite mundane and not very interesting at all, as it turns out.
Mignon: So like "news" is from "new," but for a lot of the ones that some of these false etymologies come up, we don't know where the word came from, so then it's especially appealing to make up a story because we don't know anyway, right?
You know, thinking about "flutterby" and "butterfly," that is a way that words change over time, that the pronunciations can get flipped too. So it's not outlandish to think that a word would be formed that way.
Roger: Exactly right.
Mignon: Yeah. When it comes to, like, more dangerous conspiracy theories, you have to be careful how you try to correct someone, or you can make them dig in more. Is that a similar problem with language? When you hear someone giving a story that isn't true, do you have a certain careful way that you correct them?
Roger: Yeah, I probably 20 years ago would just go ahead and flatly correct somebody, and that wouldn't help at all. Nowadays, I think I would say, "I don't know. Let's look it up together and see what we can find online or see what we can find in like the OED or a dictionary, a reputable source." And I think that process of discovery with somebody else, acting like you don't know everything, is actually really helpful because it shows that your mind is open to considering other kinds of outlandish things that people might believe in.
Mignon: Interesting. Well, it was a really interesting article. I'd never thought about the connection between conspiracy theories and false etymologies, which do come up all the time, so that was fascinating. Thank you.
Roger: Thank you.
Mignon: And then to finish up, we're going to do my favorite part, which is to get your three book recommendations.
Roger: Yeah, I loved being asked this question because it got me to thinking about the kind of work I do and the kind of person I've become, and what books have played an important role in that process. And I've got a couple things here that are really nerdy, but that's okay, because that's part of my persona. But I'm going to start with "The Return of the King," J.R.R. Tolkien's in conclusion to "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Obviously, it's a great story. I read it in high school, but what fascinated me were the appendices at the end of that book.
Mignon: Oh.
Roger: Because it goes into the languages that he developed for the characters in the books: Elvish, Dwarvish, all these different kinds of languages he created. And Tolkien was a linguist, so he actually knew what he was doing when he invented a grammar and a syntax and a vocabulary, phonology for these languages. I had never thought of the idea of making up a language, and so of course, I immediately started working on my own language. I didn't get very far with it, but I got an alphabet, I got some vocabulary. But I was just really entranced by the idea of creating a language of one's own, and obviously, in the case of "The Lord of the Rings," using it to great effect in that series.
Mignon: Wonderful. Oh, that's fascinating.
Roger: That's my first book. The second one was a book I read in high school called "The Codebreakers," and it's by David Kahn from 1967. I discovered it in my high school library, and as the title might suggest, it's basically a history of cryptography and cryptoanalysis, how people create codes and break codes. And it was my first experience with the idea that you can treat language as a statistical phenomenon, not just words, but actually you can talk about word frequency, you can talk about transposition of language. And once again, that was very mind-expanding for me, the idea that you can think about language in multiple ways and use it to conceal or to reveal things. So that also was really influential.
Mignon: Nice.
Roger: I noted that when Amazon went live 30 years ago, it was the very first book that I ordered for myself because I hadn't been able to find it any place that I could. There was this website online that can order books for you. I thought that was great. So one of the very first books I bought online was "The Codebreakers."
Mignon: Neat. You know, it's funny because as you were saying that you found it in the library, I was thinking that's something that I miss is going to the physical library and just discovering books on the shelf, and that's something we've kind of lost in the digital age. But then the flip side or the good side of the digital age is you can go buy a book that you can't find anywhere else. It's much easier than that used to be, so pros and cons there.
Roger: Those were the first two, but the last book I'm going to recommend is actually a collection of short stories, and this dates from my first year of college. I was taking an English course, and we read a couple of stories by somebody I'd never heard of before, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. And the stories just blew me away. They're very short. It's almost like philosophical science fiction, I guess you could say. And I said, "I have to read more of these." And the university bookstore actually had a collection called "Labyrinths," and I bought it and devoured it. And over 40 years later, I still pick it up occasionally and read through these stories because they're so mind-expanding. The fantastic kind of intellectual games that Borges plays in these stories and taking really kind of bizarre ideas and just kind of expanding them I found really attractive and very interesting. So Borges has always been one of my favorite authors as a result.
Mignon: Wonderful. Oh, those are great recommendations. I think they're things that people will find interesting and maybe haven't, at least all of them, haven't read before. Thank you so much.
Roger: You're very welcome.
Mignon: So Roger Kreuz from the University of Memphis. Where can people find you, and what writings do you have available?
Roger: So I've written a number of books on language and communication, and information can be found online at rogerkreuz.net. So that's R-O-G-E-R-K-R-E-U-Z.net. And I also am on Bluesky, I'm on LinkedIn, so I'm relatively easy to find online.
Mignon: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being here.
Roger: Thank you so much, too.