Chapter 18

Staying in

If engaging in cultural stimulation or heavy drinking sounds too exhausting, you could just stay in and watch the television. The name of this newfangled invention—a compound of Greek tele ‘far off’ and Latin visio ‘sight’—was derided by the journalist C. P. Scott: ‘The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it.’ Radio (from Latin radius ‘ray’) is a shortening of radio-telegraph—a reference to its use as a means of communication without the need for the connecting wire employed by the electric telegraph, in which messages were tapped out letter by letter using Morse code. We are so accustomed to associating the word broadcast with its modern meaning, referring to the way a radio or TV programme is disseminated, we can forget that the word originally described the scattering of seed widely over a surface, rather than in neat rows. The word disseminated shows a similar metaphorical extension, since it was originally used to refer to dispersing seeds (from Latin semen ‘seed’). This metaphor goes back to the origins of radio programming; it was adopted for the name of the British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation) by its first managing director, John Reith, when it was founded in 1922. A radio or TV series comprises individual episodes; this word takes us back to Greek drama, where it referred to a section of commentary between songs performed by the chorus in a Greek tragedy.

If there’s nothing on the radio or the telly you could choose to watch a film, or binge-watch the latest box set—that is, view numerous episodes in one sitting. Binge-watching, a jocular formation based on the pattern of the more serious indulgences binge-eating and binge-drinking, was introduced in the 1990s, but reached its peak in 2014 when Netflix released the entire second season of House of Cards simultaneously. The word binge was originally a dialect term from the Midlands meaning ‘soak’—the idea of a heavy drinker being someone who absorbs alcohol lies behind terms like old soak and sponge. The use of binge to refer to a heavy-drinking session originated in the slang used by students at Oxford University.

If you fancy an activity that is more cerebrally challenging, you could challenge a friend to a game of chess. Although the game may be viewed as the domain of grandmasters, child geniuses, and computer boffins, the language of chess has infiltrated everyday parlance in a number of ways. So, even if you know little about the game, you can speak the lingo without realizing it. For instance, any game that ends in a draw may be said to have resulted in a stalemate, while check can refer to any form of control or restraint. Endgame, used to describe the final stage of a chess game, can refer figuratively to the denouement of any competitive encounter. The phrase opening gambit, from the Italian gamba ‘leg’, refers to an opening move in which a piece is sacrificed to gain some other kind of advantage. Sacrificing a pawn for tactical gain gives rise to the idiom pawn in the game, popularized by its use as the title of a song by Bob Dylan. Another word which began life as a chess term is jeopardy, from Old French jeu parti, meaning a ‘divided game’—one which is so even that it is unclear who will win.

Chess

The word chess was borrowed from Old French eschès (the origin of modern French échecs). From this same root comes the word check, which refers to a position in which the king is unable to make any legal move; the ultimate origin of both words is the Persian word shah, meaning ‘king’. When the game was adopted by the Arabs, the phrase shah mat ‘the king is dead’ was coined to refer to the capture of the king; this is the origin of our word checkmate. While the names of the pieces used today are mostly of obvious origins, the rook—an alternative name for the castle—is more obscure. It has nothing to do with the bird of that name, but instead derives from the Sanskrit word ratha ‘chariot’, the legacy of Indian sets in which this piece was represented by a chariot, or a pair of stylized horses. Another word of Persian origin which is now obsolete is fers, from Persian ferzen ‘wise man’, an Old French borrowing used in the Middle Ages to refer to the queen. Also of French origin is the word pawn, from Anglo-Norman paun ‘foot soldier’, ultimately derived from Latin pes ‘foot’. Yet another French borrowing is stalemate, referring to a game with no possible winner. In its earliest form, this was known simply as stale, from Old French estale ‘position’; in the eighteenth century stalemate was used alongside the alternative patt, whose origins lie in an Italian term for a tied vote.

Chess’s widespread popularity has led to the coining of phrases from a variety of languages. French idioms such as en passant and en prise can be used alongside exoticisms like fianchetto, the diminutive form of the Italian word fianco ‘flank’, to refer to the movement of a bishop onto a long diagonal. German terms include Zugzwang, a compound of zug ‘move’ and zwang ‘obligation’, used of a position when a player is forced to make a move to his disadvantage, and the still more intimidating Blitz, or ‘lightning’, chess—this is also the root of the term used of an intensive military attack (originally Blitzkrieg ‘lightning war’)—especially the air raids on London in 1940. A rich collection of wonderfully abstruse terms describe elaborate chess strategies and formations—the Sicilian defence, Alekhine’s gun, the Philidor position—which remain the province of the initiated. One such term which deserves wider recognition is Kotov syndrome; named for the grandmaster Alexander Kotov, this refers to a decision made after long and hard thought but which turns out to be a total disaster. Although we may not know the term, I suspect all of us know the feeling.

Another game of strategy whose origin can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when it was known as playing at the tables, is backgammon. The modern name was introduced in the eighteenth century; it derives from the Middle English gamen ‘game’, and is so called because of the way the pieces can be obliged to return to the beginning. As well as backgammon, tables were used for playing draughts, whose name describes the act of drawing the pieces diagonally across the board (from a word meaning ‘the action of drawing or pulling’). In the USA this game is known as checkers, a variant spelling of chequer—from Latin scacarium ‘chess board’. In the fourteenth century it was known by its French name jeu de dames (‘game of queens’)—also the name of a strategy used in chess involving the queen; in Scotland, draughts has been called dambrod since the nineteenth century. Dominoes takes its name from a French term for a type of winter hood worn by priests, originating in the Latin word dominus ‘lord’; although the connection remains unclear, it may reflect a similarity in colour.

Also popular since the Middle Ages are various games of chance involving the throw of dice. Dice, originally a plural form of the singular die, is from the Latin word datum, meaning ‘something given’, in the sense of an outcome that has been determined by fortune. Today, the chancy nature of certain activities may be likened to the roll of a dice—as in the phrase dicing with death, and dicey. The Turkish word for a dice, zar, is the origin of the English word hazard, originally the name of a game of chance played with dice for financial stakes. This is the root of haphazard, which includes the Old Norse word happ, meaning ‘luck’ or ‘fortune’—the source of English happy; its earlier meaning is preserved in hapless ‘unlucky’ and the idiom by happy chance. The expression The die is cast, referring to a decision that has been made and cannot be changed, is a translation of alea jacta est—the words attributed to Julius Caesar on crossing the Rubicon, a river in northern Italy, and embarking on a civil war against Pompey and the Senate. This event also gave rise to the expression crossing the Rubicon, another phrase referring to the taking of an irrevocable step.

The face carrying the single spot on the dice is known as the ace, from Latin as, the name of a coin. It was probably the use of this coin as a stake in gambling that led it to be transferred to the name of one side of the dice. Since the ace was the side of the dice with the lowest score, it was also used to signify bad luck and worthlessness. Even worse than rolling an ace was the ambs-ace, from Latin ambas as ‘both ace’, where both dice turned up a one. Now obsolete, ambs-ace was for a long time an expression signalling misfortune, as in this quotation from Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well: ‘I had rather be in this choice than throw ames-ace for my life.’ This use of ace was transferred to the equivalent in a pack of cards; although, when aces are high, the ace becomes the card with the highest value in the deck. This is the root of idioms such as to hold all the aces, describing someone who has the upper-hand in a particular situation, or to have an ace up one’s sleeve, referring to an advantage that has yet to be made known. This is also the source of the use of ace to describe something that is excellent, or someone who excels in a particular field—an appellation that was especially associated with the daring pilots, or flying aces, of the First and Second World Wars. It’s tempting to imagine that this usage lies behind the use of ace to describe an unreturnable serve in tennis; in fact this goes back to the association of ace with a single unit—by serving an ace the player has earned a point.

Additional names for the double one are snake’s eyes, and crab’s eyes, from which we get the name of the dice game craps. A throw of two ones was also known as deuce, from the French word for two—the origin of modern French deux. Because of the unlucky associations of this roll, which is the lowest score one can achieve with two dice, the word deuce came to be associated with bad luck and even with the devil—as in old-fashioned expressions like What the deuce. Since the Middle Ages dice have also been known as bones, a reference to the material from which they were carved.

Perhaps more stimulating than rolling dice is playing one of the many games making use of packs of playing cards. The word card is from Latin charta ‘papyrus leaf’—also the origin of charter and chart. We’ve already seen how the ace was transferred from dice to cards; the origins of the other numerical and royal cards are all straightforward—the exception being the question of what to call the lowest value picture card: jack or knave? The earlier term is knave—from an Old English word meaning ‘page, attendant’; jack, probably deriving from the widespread use of the personal name Jack to refer to any young man, became more common in the nineteenth century. The OED suggests that the preference for jack over knave may have been encouraged by the introduction of letters and numbers on the corners of individual cards; the use of ‘j’ for jack thereby enabled a distinction to be made between the knave and the king. Although it is now the more usual term for the card, jack was initially associated with lower-class usage, as is apparent from the scornful way that Estella greets Pip’s use of the word in Great Expectations (1860–1): ‘He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!’ This use of jack is the origin of jackpot, which was originally a poker term for the pool of money (or pot) that mounted up until one player was able to play two jacks, and thereby begin the bidding.

An important feature of all card games is the ability to bluff—the practice of attempting to mislead others into thinking your hand is stronger than it actually is, in the hope that this will prompt them to fold rather than to continue bidding. The word bluff is from a Dutch word mean ‘brag’ or ‘boast’; it originally described a blindfold worn by a horse, and then any attempt to hoodwink or trick someone. A player who elects not to fold, but rather to meet his opponent’s stake, is said to call his bluff—thereby requiring him to reveal the true value of his hand. The idea of bragging probably lies behind the name poker, which is thought to originate in the German word pochen ‘to brag, boast’; it is also preserved in the name of the closely related game brag. Ensuring that your opponents are unable to guess the contents of your hand requires the development of a poker face: a deadpan expression that conceals your true emotions. This expression also lies behind po-faced, which has now acquired the connotations of humourlessness and disapproval.

While bluffing is a legitimate way of attempting to win a game despite being dealt a poor hand, actual cheating is frowned upon. One way of reducing the possibility of players replacing their cards with others was to insist on their hands being visible—above the table. This is where the phrase above board originated (board being an early word for a table). If your hand is particularly strong, putting you in a commanding position, you are said to hold all the cards. But to succeed in this game you must never give away the contents of your hand, or lay your cards on the table; instead you should be careful to keep your cards close to your chest. If you play your cards right, this might just be your lucky night. If things don’t go so well, you might find yourself being given your cards, that is, getting sacked; this isn’t a reference to card games at all—here the cards refer to the documents held by your employer on your behalf and returned when your employment is terminated. If something is likely to happen, it is on the cards—a reference to the tarot cards used by fortune tellers to make predictions about the future.

Card games that involve betting usually begin with an ante, from Latin ‘before’, referring to the stake that is put up before the cards are drawn. If another player wishes to raise the stake, he is said to have upped the ante—an idiom that is now used more widely to refer to any action that is designed to increase the seriousness of a situation. It is unclear where this use of stake originated; one theory is that it derives from the practice of placing an object that was the subject of a wager on a wooden post, but this neat suggestion lacks firm evidence. In a game of poker a marker, known as a buck—perhaps because it was the handle of a knife made of buckhorn—was used as a reminder of whose turn it was to deal the cards. When the responsibility to deal was passed to the next player, so was the buck—hence the expression to pass the buck. Since the new dealer now took over the responsibility, the related expression The buck stops here also emerged. A number of games involve selecting one of the four suits to outrank the other three, known as trumps—a variant form of triumph. From this we get trump card—something that confers a particular advantage—and turn up trumps—an eventuality that turns out successfully, deriving from the method of choosing the trump suit by turning over a card.

For a more modern form of entertainment played at the table, you could try a board game. In their simplest manifestation, board games involve moving counters around a board at the throw of a dice. Examples of this kind include Ludo, whose name simply means ‘I play’ in Latin, and Snakes and Ladders, with the additional twist that counters may climb up ladders or slide down snakes. In other games the counter is replaced by a meeple—from a blend of my and people—where the playing piece is styled to resemble a person. A long-standing family favourite is Monopoly, devised in the USA in the 1930s; monopoly, ‘exclusive right to supply a commodity or service’, is from Greek mono ‘single’ and polein ‘to sell’. For a test of your general knowledge you could try Trivial Pursuit. While trivial now means ‘of little significance’, it originates in the more serious academic context of the university curriculum of the Middle Ages. The Trivium (from tri and via ‘three ways’) was the lower of the two divisions, consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and logic; the upper division was termed the Quadrivium—initially a crossroads, where four roads meet—comprising arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Together the Trivium and Quadrivium make up the seven liberal arts.

The tabletop football game Subbuteo took its name from the scientific term for the bird of prey Falco subbuteo (from buteo ‘hawk’). The reason behind this apparently strange choice of name is that the game’s inventor, Peter Adolph, was not granted a trademark under his preferred name of The Hobby, prompting him to switch instead to the Latin name of the bird of prey known in English as the hobby. A similar story is behind the naming of a well-known German car manufacturer founded by German August Horch in the early twentieth century. Discovering that he could not brand his new company Horch, since it was already registered as a trade name, he decided to translate it into Latin; since Horch is the imperative form of the German verb horchen ‘to listen’, the company was named using the imperative form of the Latin verb audire—Audi.

Finally, it is time to turn in, go to bed, or ascend the wooden hill to Bedfordshire—an expression that is first recorded as early as 1665—perhaps armed with a cup of cocoa (an altered form of cacao, the seed from which chocolate is made) or Horlicks. Named in honour of its manufacturer, William Horlick (1846–1936), it is unfortunate that the brand name is now widely associated with the phrase make a Horlicks of, to refer to any disastrous attempt to achieve something, probably originating as a polite alternative to bollocks. The mattress upon which we lie down, recline (Latin reclinare ‘bend back’), or recumb (Latin recumbere ‘to lie down’) comes from the Arabic word matrah ‘carpet, cushion’, or more literally ‘place where something is thrown’. Pillow is a Germanic word that was originally borrowed from Latin pulvinus ‘cushion’. Since the Romans were particularly fond of reclining in comfort, they had words for a variety of cushions: coxinum ‘hip cushion’ is the source of English cushion. A bolster was formerly a soft cushion, but is now more specifically a hard pillow placed underneath a softer one on which the head rests, as well as a verb meaning ‘give support to someone or something’. An eiderdown gets its name from the fact that it was originally stuffed with the down of the eider—a northern sea bird, whose name is of Old Norse origin. An alternative term, quilt, originates in the Latin culcita, meaning ‘stuffed mattress’. Duvet is simply the French word for ‘down’, adopted into English in the eighteenth century—hence the retention of the French pronunciation. If you’ve spent the evening over-indulging, tomorrow may turn out to be a duvet day—one spent in bed recovering, usually with the tacit approval of one’s employer.

Having pulled on your pyjamas (from an Urdu word meaning ‘leg clothing’, referring to loose trousers worn by men and women), or perhaps a nightdress, or negligée, from a French word meaning ‘neglected’ or ‘given little thought’, it’s time to go to sleep, or catch some z’s—an American slang term drawing on the use of ‘z’ (if pronounced zee) to represent the sound of someone snoring. Since ‘z’ is the last letter in the alphabet it may also be used allusively to represent the end of something—as it is in the idiom from A to Z, as is the Greek letter omega (literally ‘great o’, in contrast to omicron, or ‘little o’). Having travelled from A to Z, or from dawn to dusk, this is a fitting moment to end this day in the life of the English language.

All that remains is to say goodbye, a contraction of God be with ye, or Adieu, from French à Dieu ‘to God’, an abbreviated form of a phrase commending someone to divine protection—a similar origin lies behind the Spanish Adios. The Latin Vale ‘be well’ has been used at leave-takings since the sixteenth century; alternatively you might express the wish that someone fare, or ‘travel’, well. The many expressions used by and to children include Da-da, TTFN (ta-ta for now), Shake a day-day, and See you later alligator, with the expected response In a while crocodile—popularized by a Bobby Charles song of 1955. If you are feeling pessimistic about the likelihood of a future meeting, you could employ the Japanese sayonara, a shortening of sayo naraba, ‘if it be thus’—similar to the ‘if I’m spared’ added by gloomy souls to put a dampener on future plans. More upbeat options include Cheero, Cheerio, Cheery-bye—drawing upon the much earlier greeting What cheer? The 1920s gave us several more or less ludicrous formations based on the verb toot—Toodle-oo, Toodle-pip, Pip-pip—perfectly acceptable if you want to sound like Bertie Wooster exiting the Drones Club, but riskier in other social situations. In an attempt to appear more sophisticated you might turn to the Italian Ciao—which may be used when greeting or parting—though be careful who you say it to, since it literally means ‘I am your slave’ (from Latin sclavus ‘slave’). Perhaps more appropriate for this particular farewell is an alternative Italian salutation, Arrivederci, meaning ‘until we see each other again’—used to express affectionate good wishes in the expectation and desire of meeting again at some point in the future.