Mooching about

 

I went up to the shops today to have a mooch around, which naturally led to my need to know the etymology of “mooch”. Google led me to Wiktionary which gave me this: “From Middle English moochen, mouchen (“to pretend poverty”), from Old French muchier, mucier, mucer (“to skulk, hide, conceal”), from Frankish *mukjan (“to hide, conceal oneself”), from Proto-Germanic *mukjaną, *mūkōną (“to hide, ambush”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mūg- *(s)mewgʰ- (“swindler, thief”).” Isn’t it fascinating that a simple word used to describe a very ordinary stroll around the local shops goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, the earliest language as far as I know to have been described, although the meaning of mooch is now innocuous.

Then I remembered the song called“Minnie the Moocher”…

She was a “lowdown hoochie coocher.”

“She messed around with a bloke named Smoky
She loved him though he was cokey.”

 

Originally a song by Cab Calloway, it was much later taken up by The Blues Brothers. Down the etymological rabbit hole I went again to find out that “hoochie coochie” was a lecherous style of belly dancing!

This again took me to a bizarre song snippet my mother used to sing (without I suspect having any idea what it meant) which I may have told you about already but I think fits nicely with Minnie the Moocher whose boyfriend apparently used cocaine.

“I’ve been from Broadway down to Maine

Looking for a guy who sells cocaine …

So honey have a (make sniffing noise) on me

Honey have a (sniff) on me”!

 

Words are such glorious things. Take antimacassar for instance. It’s a piece of fabric, sometimes ornate, which hangs over the top of a chair or sofa. Its purpose was to stop the greasy brilliantine with which men smoothed their hair staining the fabric of the armchair or sofa. So that explains the “anti”.  The other part of the word comes from macassar oil, supposedly imported from the district of Macassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. This product was commercially advertised from 1809 as a men's hair tonic "infallible in promoting an abundant growth and in maintaining the early hue and lustre of the HAIR to the extent of human life".

 

I came across a reference the other day to a haversack, a word I hadn’t seen or heard for a long time. We call these useful bags backpacks

The word haversack is an adaptation of the German Hafersack and also the Dutch haverzak meaning "oat sack", (which more properly describes a small cloth bag on a strap worn over one shoulder and originally referred to the bag of oats carried as horse fodder).

The French was havresac, from Low German hafersach "cavalry trooper's bag for horse provender”, literally "oat sack," from the common Germanic word ...

Haver is a German, Dutch and English surname. In Germany or England it refers to oats and is used as an occupational surname for a grower or seller of oats. In the Netherlands it is an occupational surname for a wood or stone cutter, not close at all to the oats derivation. The verb “haver” is defined as to talk in a foolish way, or to go back and forth on a decision. An example of haver is to waste time talking instead of working or to waiver back and forth on a decision, to vacillate. In Scottish English, haver (from the Scots havers (oats)) means "to maunder; to talk foolishly; to chatter"; in British English haver means "to hem and haw; to be indecisive", a slight variation of meaning.

In the course of wandering down the rabbit hole of all of these words and meanings (from Alice in Wonderland of course …), I found a series of letters to the editor from the British Guardian newspaper about the meaning and derivation of some common phrases which the correspondents thought were named after real people. In like Flynn for example, was in some mysterious way referring to Erol Flynn. Happy as Larry apparently refers to Lawrence Olivier who was extremely happy to leave Brighton after a season there. And life jackets came to be called Mae Wests after the buxom film star.

The phrase “gone to ground” presumably comes from fox hunting but “gone for a burton” is more interesting. My family used this for tripping over and falling. But apparently it’s a British WWII airforce expression for someone gone missing or dead, with the burton referring to going for a drink as most of Britain’s beer was made in Burton on Trent. So apparently the comrades of a missing or confirmed dead comrade would say “he’s gone for a burton”, meaning he’s gone off for a drink but really meaning he wasn’t coming back again.

And one more word which tickled my fancy is cagoule, in British English a lightweight, hooded, thigh-length waterproof jacket. We call them windcheaters and the Canadians use windbreakers.

And naturally, I had to look up “tickle my fancy” and got the following:

“This idiomatic expression is used when something pleases you or strongly engages your interest, though it can also be used as a euphemism for sexual pleasure or attraction. If you break down the phrase, tickle is used to mean 'to excite or stir up in a pleasing manner' (think of the smiling, laughing reaction of a person being physically tickled), and fancy as a noun that means “a notion or whim, a fantasy”. Dating at least from the late 1700s, tickle your fancy's original definition may have originally been closer to our modern euphemistic approach. After World War II, British English speakers began using it in a rhyming slang expression that associated a “nancy” (a male homosexual) with tickling your fancy (arousing you sexually or performing sexual acts with you). An alternate version is found in strike your fancy.

And a tip from my friend Carolyn from last week’s White Elephant. She checked Wikipedia and found that there really was a white elephant so the phrase also had a meaning of unique and special as well as referring to bric-a-brac.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

From US journalist Earl Wilson: “If you look like your passport photo, in all probability you need the holiday.”