Chapter 5

The office

For many people the place of work is an office, a word which originates in Latin officium, referring to an act of service—comprising the words opus ‘work’ and facere ‘to do’. In the fifteenth century, if you were very effective at carrying out the duties of your office you were considered officious—it was in the sixteenth century that this word developed pejorative (from Latin peior ‘worse’) connotations, suggesting someone who was interfering and pompous (originally meaning ‘magnificent, splendid’, this word has suffered a similar downgrading). If your office is particularly posh it may be termed a bureau. This is a borrowing of a French word for the baize cloth that covered a table, especially one used for accounting or writing. From this, bureau came to be used of the writing desk itself—as it still is in French—and subsequently of the room in which the desk is found.

If you share an office with your co-workers, your colleagues are your chums and comrades, since both words originate in the idea of co-habitation. Chum is a shortening of chamber-fellow; it first appeared as a slang term for a room-mate among students at the University of Oxford. Chamber is ultimately from Latin camera ‘vaulted ceiling’, via the French form chambre; from this same source we get comrade—originally used of soldiers who shared a tent. Some offices are open-plan, while in others workers are distributed into individual cubicles. If you are fortunate enough to occupy your own cubicle, you should feel at liberty to assume a reclining position and perhaps catch up on a little sleep—cubicle, from Latin cubare ‘to lie down’, was originally a bedroom. This sense survives in the word concubine ‘mistress’—literally someone you lie down with.

Getting too intimate with your colleagues, however, can lead to cronyism—the practice of making appointments to positions of responsibility based upon friendship rather than merit. This word, and the related crony, are from khronios ‘long-lasting’, referring to friends that you’ve known for a long time. This Greek word also lies behind chronic—a chronic illness, therefore, is strictly speaking one that has lingered for a long time. But today the word is used more loosely to describe a complaint that is simply ‘bad’ or ‘unpleasant’, much to the chagrin of those who like to keep their Greek etymologies intact. Related to cronyism is the concept of Buggins’s turn, referring to an appointment made by rotation, and therefore based upon length of service rather than suitability for the position. This is not to be confused with muggins, originally a term for a fool and now employed jocularly to refer to oneself, in situations like: ‘Who do you think ended up doing it? Muggins!’ Appointing a relative to a post is known as nepotism, from Latin nepos ‘nephew’. The particular focus on nephews, rather than some other family member, derives from the word’s original use to describe the special favours that were granted by popes to their nephews, who were often in reality their illegitimate sons.

Attempts to ingratiate yourself with your boss in the hope of advancement risk your being accused of being a toady, or a sycophant. The word toady is a shortening of toad-eater, a seventeenth-century term for the assistant to a bogus physician selling dubious concoctions claimed to cure all ills. These charlatans (from Italian ciarlatano ‘babbler, prattler’) would attempt to convince prospective customers of the efficacy of their wares by getting their assistant to consume the remedy and then eat (or at least make a pretence of eating) a toad—thought at that time to be poisonous. The parallel term sycophant has an equally colourful etymology. It originates in a Greek word used of an informer, literally meaning ‘one who shows the fig’ (from Greek sukon ‘fig’). There have been a number of attempts to explain the connection between fig-showing and sneaking. One possibility is that the term arose from the practice of informing on those who illegally traded in figs. Perhaps more likely is that it refers to some obscene gesture known as making a fig, similar to giving someone the finger, or (in Shakespeare’s day) biting your thumb at someone. Because of the way in which informing on someone (also known as snitching, grassing, and dobbing in) can be used as a means of ingratiating yourself with a boss, the term sycophant developed its modern sense of flatterer. To kowtow, describing the obsequious and servile behaviour demonstrated by some towards their bosses, is from a Chinese word meaning ‘knock the head’, referring to the practice of prostrating oneself so that the forehead touches the ground, as a demonstration of submission and respect.

It may be that, despite all this toadying and sycophancy, your boss is surly towards you. This word was originally spelled sirly and literally meant ‘like a sir’—a reference to the overbearing and pompous behaviour typically displayed by someone who was a sir to the lower orders, and could therefore lord it over them. The tendency for those of the higher classes to look down on their inferiors is also captured by haughty, a well-disguised form of Latin altus ‘high’ (via French haut)—the silent ‘gh’ was added in the sixteenth century by comparison with caught and taught. The Latin word for arrogant and haughty was superciliosus—the root of the English supercilious. This word is derived from supercilium, the Latin term for an eyebrow (from super ‘above’ and cilium ‘eyelid’)—the idea being that raising the eyebrow is a means of communicating disdain. This association is also captured in the phrase raise an eyebrow, an expression referring to an understated demonstration of mild surprise, scepticism, or disapproval. The idea that a person’s character is reflected in the face is apparent in the word highbrow, referring to someone who is highly intelligent and cultured, or to something intellectually challenging; the term originated in a literal reference to a person with a considerable distance between the eyes and the hairline. Should you feel under attack from your boss or colleagues, you might choose to fight back by casting aspersions about them. Originally referring simply to the sprinkling of water around the place (from Latin spargere ‘to sprinkle’—also the root of disperse and intersperse), this phrase later came to be used of sprinkling other less welcome substances, such as mud or dung; from this developed the association of the phrase with ruining somebody’s reputation.

While no doubt many of us work principally for the enjoyment and satisfaction of a job well done, there is the additional incentive of an emolument (originally a payment to a miller for grinding corn, from Latin emolere ‘to grind up’) or pay cheque. The word salary is derived from Latin salarium, the term for the payment received by Roman soldiers. This word has its origins in sal ‘salt’—not because the soldiers were paid in salt, but probably reflecting how the money was spent. The connection between providing a service and being rewarded in salt lies behind the expression to be worth one’s salt—to be efficient and reliable. Those who demonstrate particular integrity may be described as the salt of the earth, after a Biblical usage recorded in St Matthew’s Gospel (from Old English god ‘good’ and spel ‘news’). The word wage is a Norman French borrowing, a dialectal variant of the Central French gage, although it is ultimately of Germanic origin. Its original meaning was ‘pledge’ or ‘security’; it is related to another Germanic word, wed, which initially referred to any kind of pledge or promise, but now refers specifically to a marital pledge (from Latin maritus ‘husband’).

Money

The word money was borrowed from Old French moneie, itself from the Latin word for money, or a mint—the place where money is coined—moneta. Moneta was the name of a pre-Roman goddess who came to be identified with the Roman goddess Juno; the name was used of Roman currency because it was minted in a temple dedicated to the goddess Moneta. The word coin is from Latin cuneus ‘wedge’, a reference to the wedge-shaped die with which the coins were stamped; from cuneus we also get cuneiform, the name of an ancient Sumerian writing system in which wedges were carved into clay tablets. The engraving tool or die-stamp used to mark impressions upon coins was known to the Greeks as kharakter, from which we get character—initially used to refer to an identifying token or feature, it subsequently came to signal the distinctive trait of a human personality. The purse in which you keep your loose change is from Greek bursa ‘ox hide’, and is the root of bursar and purser. Larger sums might be stashed in a box, Latin capsa, which is the root of cash. The importance of animals to financial security is reflected in the origin of Latin pecunia ‘money’ in pecu ‘flock, herd’; pecunia is the source of English pecuniary, ‘relating to money’, and impecunious ‘lacking money’—also known as fundless, unpennied, skint, stony-broke, strapped, on the beach, and oofless. The slang use of oof for money explains the nickname of the P. G. Wodehouse character Oofy Prosser, the wealthiest member of the Drones Club. A similar link between livestock and money can be traced in chattel, an archaic word meaning ‘wealth’—preserved in the legal phrase goods and chattels, the collective term for personal possessions—which is from the same root as cattle.

The main unit of English currency is the pound—a Germanic word borrowed from Latin pondo, meaning ‘by weight’—a reference to the way that the weight of the coin reflected its actual value. The Romans used pondo as an abbreviation for libra pondo ‘a pound weight’; this was misunderstood such that the word for the weight was borrowed into Germanic with the meaning ‘pound’. As a consequence, the Germanic languages use variants of the word pound, as in German Pfund and Dutch pond, while Romance languages employ forms derived from Latin libra—as in French livre and Italian libbra. But while English did not adopt the Latin libra, it does employ an abbreviation that is taken from this word, since the symbol ‘£’ is based on a capital ‘L’; this replaces an earlier usage in which a lower-case ‘l’ was added after the amount. This origin also helps to explain why the use of pound to refer to a unit of weight equal to twelve ounces is abbreviated to lb—another abbreviation of Latin libra. In England the pound was originally a pound weight of silver, represented by a gold sovereign, and equal in value to 20 shillings or 240 pence. The word penny can be traced back to Old English pæning, which probably represents a base followed by the ‘-ing’ ending signalling ‘belong to’, or ‘possessed of the quality of’. The meaning and origins of the base are unclear; it may be a borrowing of Latin pondus, or is perhaps related to pan, the modern English word for a metal cooking vessel, or pawn, a borrowing from Middle French pan ‘pledge, surety’—the origin of modern English pawnshop and pawnbroker. In the pre-decimal age penny and pence were abbreviated to ‘d’—based upon the initial letter of the ancient Roman coin known in Latin as the denarius. English currency is sometimes accompanied by the further descriptive term sterling. This word is of uncertain origin, but the OED offers the plausible suggestion that it derives from an unattested Old English word steorling (from Old English steorra ‘star’) meaning ‘coin with a star’—since this was a feature of some of the early Norman coins.

English is rich in slang terms for money; these include nicker, bread, dough, moolah, spondulicks, and quid. Quid can be traced back to the seventeenth century, when it was used with reference to a sovereign; its origins may lie in the Latin quid ‘what’, used in this context to refer to financial means. This use may owe something to the earlier phrase—still in use today—quid pro quo ‘one thing for another’, implying the kind of exchange that is involved in purchasing something using money. This idea of exchange, and of money flowing from one party to another, lies behind the word currency—originally referring to anything that flows (like the current of a river), ultimately derived from Latin currentem from currere ‘to run’.

To thrive in an office environment you will need to speak the lingo (from Latin lingua ‘language, tongue’, originally used of a language that sounds strange or unintelligible)—that is, be able to decode and employ the jargon and buzzwords that are liberally bandied about during any business meeting, or when working through any agenda (a Latin word meaning ‘things to be done’). The whole point of such terminology is to sound as if you know what you are talking about when you don’t. This function is implicit in the etymology of the word jargon itself, which is from a medieval French word used to refer to the chattering of birds, and subsequently to speech that is nonsensical or unintelligible.

Business Jargon

One function of business jargon is to make the mundane and frequently uninspiring world of the board room seem more exciting and enticing. To that end it imports phrases that originate in other, more glamorous contexts, such as the world of sport. A major decision might be termed a game-changer—originally a US sporting term for a player who decisively affects the outcome of a game. To touch base, now used of a short meeting to catch up with someone, originates in the baseball term for making contact with the base during play. Also from baseball is the now ubiquitous phrase step up to the plate. A baseball term meaning ‘enter the batter’s box to take a turn at batting’, this has come to refer to the assumption of responsibility for some particular challenge or crisis. Drawing on the pivotal role of the quarterback in a game of American football, quarterbacking is an increasingly popular term for the process of directing or organizing an operation. Analysing or critiquing a process in retrospect is known as armchair quarterbacking. A particular area of responsibility may be called a swim lane; perhaps it is from this that the importance of getting one’s ducks in a row—ensuring one is well prepared—emerged. Elite athletes who have trained and practised so rigorously that they can respond to any situation in a game without having to pause to think is the source of no-brainer—now an idea that is sufficiently self-evident as to require no discussion.

Another fruitful source of business talk is the metaphor of the ball game—your boss may bowl you a curve ball, play hardball, knock the ball into your court, expect you to be on the ball, get the ball rolling, play ball, and keep the ball in the air. In order to ensure fair play you need to maintain a level playing-field. If you find yourself getting irritated by discussion of some particular issue, you could employ another sporting idiom and kick it into touch—thereby postponing the pain to some later date; for an even more effective deferment, you might prefer to boot it into the long grass—with the added benefit that it might get forgotten altogether.

Another fashionable source of business jargon are terms borrowed from new technologies; a way of making us feel we are part of the hip world of Silicon Valley, or—more cynically—a company’s way of treating its human workforce as if they were machines. In response to an excessive workload someone might complain that they don’t have the bandwidth to deal with it, while a discussion to be continued outside a meeting might be taken offline. For those who are less up to date with the technological references, there’s always the phrase it’s on my radar, used to describe something of which one is aware. Radar, incidentally, began life as an acronym—it comprises the opening letters of radio detection and ranging. Also from the world of aviation we get push the envelope—a phrase which derives from the use of envelope to refer to the combination of speed and altitude within which a plane can safely fly. To push the envelope is to stretch this to the extreme of an aircraft’s capacity. A group of experts brought in to advise on a particular problem may be referred to as a SWAT team—originally a term for a group of elite marksmen summoned to deal with the most dangerous situations (from the initial letters of Special Weapons and Tactics), but in a corporate context more typically a collection of middle-aged men in suits.

Brainstorming meetings are ones in which a group attempts to solve a particular issue by floating spontaneous solutions—a key principle of such forums is the dubious assertion that ‘there’s no such thing as a bad idea’. An anxiety concerning the political correctness of this term, which was considered potentially offensive to epileptics, led Tunbridge Wells Borough Council to ban it, requiring its staff to replace it with the term thought-shower. An attempt to enhance such interactions using comfortable and colourful surroundings is known as a right-brain meeting—a reference to the association of the right hemisphere (Greek hemi ‘half’) of the brain with creativity. In such environments blue-sky thinking is encouraged. This phrase, first recorded in the 1920s, was initially employed in the strictly negative sense of ‘fanciful’, ‘hypothetical’, ‘not practical’. As it came to refer to thinking that didn’t necessarily have any immediate pay-off or definite commercial goal, it came to be used positively to mean ‘creative’, ‘visionary’, and ‘unconstrained by conventional applications’. Such meetings also encourage thinking outside the box, an idiom that refers to creative solutions that go beyond the limits of conventional and orthodox approaches. This phrase is first recorded as thinking outside the dots, referring to a puzzle which requires the solver to connect a series of dots set out on a square grid with continuously drawn straight lines; to solve the puzzle you need to literally think outside the box—since the lines must be drawn outside the edge of the grid.

Perhaps you have avoided office life entirely, and instead engage in some form of manual (from Latin manus ‘hand’) labour. Farming used to be known as husbandry—from an archaic sense of husband to refer to someone responsible for the management of a household; this term survives mostly as animal husbandry, referring to the breeding and care of animals. The word farm is connected to firm—both ultimately go back to Latin firmus ‘constant’. From this, medieval Latin firma came to be used of a fixed payment, which was used in English to refer to a set annual rent paid by a farmer in exchange for the right to till a piece of land. Land is divided up by the acre, from an Old English word for a plot of cultivated land, or a measure of land based upon the extent that could be ploughed by a yoke of oxen in a single day. Acre has cognates in many Germanic languages and goes back to the same root that lies behind Latin ager ‘field’ and agere ‘to act’. It is also the source of the word acorn, which originally referred to any fruit that grew in open land or forest. Its meaning was subsequently narrowed to refer only to the fruit of the oak tree; the shift from æcern to acorn was the result of a popular association of the word with the oak—further apparent from additional recorded spellings such as ocorn, oakehorn, and okehorn.

Plumbers get their name from the Latin plumbum ‘lead’, since the pipes that carry water, heating, and sanitation used to be constructed from that metal. This word is also the origin of the chemical symbol Pb, as found on the Periodic Table. Someone who works with wood is known as a carpenter, a word that goes back to the Gaulish word carpentum, meaning ‘wagon’. The term electrician is from Latin electrum ‘amber’; since rubbing amber was observed to produce static electricity, electric was used to refer to objects that showed similar properties. A janitor is now a caretaker tasked with maintaining the upkeep of a building, especially a school. But originally it described a door-keeper or porter—as is implied by its etymology, since it is derived from Latin janua ‘door, entrance’. Latin janua is related to the name of the Roman god Janus, the gatekeeper of heaven, whose image was traditionally placed over doorways, with a face on both the front and back of his head. The month of January is also named after Janus, since he watched over the beginning of the new year. Fireman has now been replaced by the unisex firefighter—a term that goes back to the early nineteenth century, when it replaced the colourful alternative fire-quencher, and the French borrowing pompier (from pompe ‘pump’).

Since there are many different forms of gainful employment, the following chapters will focus on just a selection of these, covering a variety of jobs within the police and armed forces, the law, the Church, politics, and the health services. Although not many of us are called to be admirals, bishops, or judges, most of us find ourselves interacting with these professions at some point in our lives.