Word Histories

patsy

When Kentucky passed a generous tax-incentive program to attract new businesses last summer, other states quickly came up with programs of their own. “Ohio can’t stand by and be a patsy,” one Ohio senator said. The history of the Americanism patsy (a person who is ridiculed, deceived, or victimized) is not certain. One source suggests that patsy may have its origin in an unfortunate family of fifteenth-century Florence named Pazzi. The Pazzis attacked the powerful Medici family—an act ridiculed to this day for its recklessness—and for their temerity were murdered. A simpler and less fanciful explanation is that patsy derives from the Italian word pazzo (crazy), which is, according to Italian dictionaries, probably from the Latin pattens, “one who is sick.” Brought to America by Italian immigrants, pazzo was Americanized to patsy. Another strong possibility is that patsy comes from the common Italian name Pasquale, which after waves of Italian immigration was Americanized. Patsy then came to be used as a generic name for an immigrant Italian greenhorn—a person who presumably could be easily duped. Some say the sense of an innocent victim also derives from Pasquale’s root meaning (Pasqua= Easter). Interestingly, patsy also means “good.” This meaning may come from the Irish-American Patsy, an affectionate nickname for Patrick— hence, “one of our boys,” “a fine fellow,” and, finally, “fine, good.”

doom

For forty-eight long hours last November two cameramen trapped in a crater of Kilauea, the Hawaiian volcano, despaired of ever being rescued, owing to dense steam and noxious fumes. “I knew they weren’t going to get any helicopters in, and after the rope attempts stopped, I was starring to feel doomed,” one of the men later said. Doom (a sad fate) derives from the Indo-European root *dhe- (to set or put), the root sense being “that which is set or put down.” This yielded the Old Teutonic *domoz and the Old English dom, “a statute or decree,” because a written law is set down on paper (“Thys synd tha domas the thu him taecan scealt” [These are the laws which thou shalt take to them]—Ælfric, Exodus, ca. 1000). The Doombook was a book of dooms, or laws, compiled by the great King Alfred (ca. 849-899). When a doom was applied in litigation, the result was a judgment. In the popular mind, law and judgment were so closely associated that the Old English dom or doom soon came to mean “a judgment or sentence formally pronounced,” a meaning that did not survive much past the eighteenth century (“O! Partial Judge, Thy Doom has me undone “—Tatler, 1709). This sense was retained in the English words doom-settle (judgment seat), doomsday (judgment day), and doomsman (a judge). Because a judgment was often irrevocable and adverse, doom came to mean the unhappy end itself. Doom’s early sense of “statute” also yielded the meaning “legal jurisdiction,” then “domain, realm,” and finally “condition, state.” This meaning survives today in the suffix in words like kingdom, wisdom, and freedom.

cad

The talk-show host Dick Cavett rankled some women at last spring’s Vassar College commencement when he told an anecdote from his own undergraduate days involving photos of nude Vassar women. In a letter to The New York Times responding to their criticism, he denied being a “cad.”Cad (a fellow of ungentlemanly behavior, especially toward women) is ultimately from the Latin caput (head), which gave rise to the diminutive capdet (little chief) in the dialect of fifteenth-century Gascony. The Gascon capdets, who served in the French court, were usually the younger sons of nobles. Capdet then came to mean both “a young gentleman in military training” and “a younger son or brother.” Adopted in England as cadet in the seventeenth century, the word brought with it both meanings. The French pronunciation, ka day’, became in Scots English ka’day, or caddie (“The gentry are no doubt philosophers enough to bring up their bairns like sheep to the slaughter, and despatch them as cadies to Bengal and the Cape of Good Hope”—David Moir, The Life of Mansie Wauch, 1828). Caddie soon came to mean “an errand boy or oddjobs man,” and in Scots “a golfer’s attendant. In England caddie was abbreviated to cad by students at Oxford and other elite schools, who applied the term contemptuously to the lower-class local townsmen, who presumably were often employed to do odd jobs (“If I should chance to run over a cad/I can pay for the damage if ever so bad”—Arthur Clough, Dipsychus, 1859). From the earlier meaning of “not a gentleman” came the more recent meaning of “an ungentlemanly fellow.”