Word origin myths
17 popular stories about where words come from, each set beside what the dictionaries say, with an honest verdict: false, disputed, origin unknown or partly true.
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posh False
The story
It is an acronym of “port out, starboard home”, for the shady cabins that wealthy passengers booked on ships between Britain and India.
What dictionaries say
There is no evidence for the acronym. The origin is not known for certain; the most likely source is Romani posh ‘half’, through slang words for money such as posh-kooroona ‘half a crown’. A slang sense ‘dandy’ from the 1890s may also be related.
golf False
The story
It stands for “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden”.
What dictionaries say
English took the word in the 17th century from Middle Scots golf, gouff. Its deeper origin is uncertain; the most likely source is Middle Dutch colf, colve ‘club’. Nothing in the word’s recorded history points to an acronym.
sincere False
The story
It comes from Latin sine cērā ‘without wax’, because honest sculptors did not hide cracks in marble with wax.
What dictionaries say
It comes from Latin sincērus ‘genuine, pure’; Wiktionary states plainly that it is not from sine + cēra. The deeper history of sincērus is a scholarly reconstruction, not a certainty.
rule of thumb False
The story
An old law let a man beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb.
What dictionaries say
The phrase is recorded from 1658 and its origin is uncertain, but it most probably refers to using the thumb as a rough measure. Wiktionary calls the wife-beating claim erroneous and notes that it may come from a 1976 book.
news False
The story
It is an acronym of North, East, West, South (or “Noteworthy Events, Weather, Sports”).
What dictionaries say
News is simply new used as a noun, Middle English newes, ‘new things’. Wiktionary describes the acronym claims as erroneous.
SOS False
The story
It stands for “Save Our Souls” or “Save Our Ship”.
What dictionaries say
It does not stand for anything. The Morse pattern · · · — — — · · · was chosen because it is easy to remember and send; the letters S, O, S are just how that pattern is written.
OK Disputed
The story
It was coined from “Old Kinderhook”, Martin Van Buren’s nickname (or from a Choctaw word, okeh).
What dictionaries say
The origin is disputed. The best-supported account is that OK abbreviates oll korrect, a joke spelling of ‘all correct’, first printed in The Boston Morning Post on 23 March 1839 during a craze for such abbreviations. Van Buren’s 1840 campaign, with his “Old Kinderhook” nickname, helped make it popular. The Choctaw okeh explanation was common in dictionaries until the 1960s but is now less favoured.
cop False
The story
It is an acronym of “Constable On Patrol”.
What dictionaries say
Cop is short for copper ‘police officer’, from the verb cop ‘to seize, catch’, in reference to arresting criminals. Wiktionary calls the acronym an erroneous folk etymology.
marmalade False
The story
It comes from French “Marie malade” (‘Mary is ill’), after the jam given to a sick Mary, Queen of Scots.
What dictionaries say
It comes through French marmelade from Portuguese marmelada, a quince paste, from marmelo ‘quince’. The Mary story is a false folk etymology.
snob Origin unknown
The story
It comes from Latin sine nobilitate ‘without nobility’, written “s. nob.” next to the names of common students.
What dictionaries say
Snob was late 18th-century dialect for a shoemaker, of unknown origin. Early uses had no link to the Latin phrase; the modern sense was popularized by Thackeray’s The Book of Snobs (1848).
pumpernickel False
The story
Napoleon called the dark bread “pain pour Nicole”, fit only for his horse Nicole.
What dictionaries say
It is a Westphalian German word, from Pumper ‘fart’ and Nickel ‘rascal’ (a form of Nicholas), perhaps first an insult from outsiders. The Napoleon story is a false folk etymology.
female Partly true
The story
Female is male with fe- added in front.
What dictionaries say
It comes through Old French femelle from Latin fēmella ‘a girl, young woman’, a diminutive of fēmina ‘woman’. Middle English femele was respelled and re-pronounced to match male, which is otherwise unrelated. So the look of the word owes something to male, but its origin does not.
history False
The story
History means “his story”, the story told by and about men.
What dictionaries say
History comes through Old French and Latin historia from Greek ἱστορία (historía) ‘learning through research, inquiry’. The his- has nothing to do with the pronoun; herstory is a deliberate play on words built on that misreading.
butterfly False
The story
It began as “flutterby” and the sounds were later swapped.
What dictionaries say
It goes back to Old English buterflēoge, butter + fly. Wiktionary says it was not derived from flutterby. Why butter is not known: the name may first have been used for yellow butterflies, or reflect an old belief that butterflies stole milk and butter.
the whole nine yards Origin unknown
The story
It refers to the length of a machine-gun ammunition belt, or the cloth in a kilt or a sari.
What dictionaries say
Research summarized on Wiktionary finds no single origin: it grew from a vague use of yard as an amount, later fixed with whole and a number, and was long a regional American phrase before it spread in the mid-20th century. None of the popular explanations is supported.
mind your Ps and Qs Origin unknown
The story
Innkeepers kept tallies of pints and quarts, so customers were told to watch their Ps and Qs.
What dictionaries say
The origin is unknown. Wiktionary, citing the Oxford English Dictionary, calls the pints-and-quarts story a folk etymology and notes that the common ‘mind the letters p and q’ explanation does not fit the earliest uses either.
sabotage Disputed
The story
Workers threw their wooden clogs (sabots) into machines to break them.
What dictionaries say
Sabotage is from French saboter, from sabot ‘clog’. The clog-throwing story is often told to explain it, but Wiktionary marks it as disputed.
How to check a word story yourself
Be wary of acronyms. Words such as posh, golf, news and cop attract tidy acronym explanations, but very few older English words began as acronyms. Look for the date a word or phrase was first recorded: a story set in the 1900s cannot explain a word that was already in print in the 1880s.
Go to a dictionary that shows its working. Wiktionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary give an etymology with dates and say when an origin is unknown. “Origin unknown” is an honest answer, not a gap waiting for a good story.
Use the search to find a word or a detail of a story (acronym, Napoleon), and the Verdict filter to see only myths that are false, disputed, of unknown origin or partly true.
Questions
What is a folk etymology?
A popular but mistaken explanation of where a word comes from, usually a neat story or an acronym invented after the word already existed. The term also covers words whose spelling changed to fit a mistaken idea.
Why are acronym stories usually wrong?
Making words from initials became common only in the 20th century, and most acronym stories are told about words that are much older. When an acronym explanation shows up, check when the word was first recorded.
What does origin unknown mean?
That the evidence does not settle the question. Dictionaries list the earliest uses they have found and say where they stop being sure. That is more useful than a confident story with nothing behind it.