American English

Fun Facts About English #93 – Cock

01/31/2021 by admin

According to Merriam-Webster, the term “rooster” originated in the United States in the mid- or late-18th century as a euphemism to avoid the sexual connotation of the word “cock.” The noun is derived from “roosting,” the bird’s habit of perching aloft to sleep at night.

The appearance of “rooster” in the written record signals a cultural and linguistic shift as Americans became more persnickety when speaking about their bodies and carnal natures. “Cock” was no longer acceptable for genteel and pious New Worlders in the late 18th century because of its close association to the male sexual organ. In the early 19th century a religious revival of born-again Christianity swept the United States. During this time, the proverbial axe came down on any vulgar associations to a phallus:

cockhorse – riding horse
haycock – haystack
weathercock – weathervane
shuttlecock – birdie
drain cock/stop cock – drain valve

Even suggestive surnames were subject to this lingual henpecking party. For hundreds of years, family names suggested their history with the domesticated fowl, like Hitchcock, Handcock, Wilcox, and Alcox. The father of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, changed his last name from Alcock to Alcott in the early 19th century out of “professional concerns” during his teaching career.

The Bird and The Organ

The word “cock” is from Old English cocc meaning “male bird” and appears to be of German origin. Cocken and cocky were Old English slang for “one who swaggers or struts like a cock.” By the 17th century, “cock” was a general term for a “fellow, man, or chap,” as in “an old cock.” Age-old idioms and classifiers that include “cock” abound:

cock one’s hat – an aggressive or fighting attitude
cocked ear – to listen carefully
cock of the walk – a dominating attitude
cocksure – arrogantly confident
cock and bull story – an unbelievable tale
cockpit – cock-fighting ring
gamecock – hell-rooster, hell-kite; a fierce fighter
cocker-spaniel – a dog bred to flush woodcocks
cocktail – the high standing tail of a bird; docked tail of a pedigree horse; analogous for an alcoholic beverage in high society
billycock – a type of felt hat similar to a derby; from bullycock – to cock one’s hat in a swashbuckling fashion

The first two lines of the popular English nursery rhyme “Cock a doodle do!” first appeared in 1606 in a murder pamphlet (lurid accounts of gruesome murders, confessions, and executions, similar to our own genre of “True Crime” detective stories). The full rhyme was recorded in London in Mother Goose’s Melody in 1776:

Cock a doodle do!
My dame has lost her shoe,
My master’s lost his fiddlestick,
And knows not what to do.

Commercial business using cock — Click to make larger

The earliest allusions to the penis is pillicock, attested from the early 14th century in the Anglo-Irish The Kildare Lyrics, a poem complaining of the effects of old age:

“Y ne mai no more of loue done; Mi pilkoc pisseþ on mi schone” (I may no longer make love, my cock pisses on my shoe).

There’s also Middle English fide-cok, where fid means “a peg or plug.”

The reasons why “cock” became so closely associated with “penis” are numerous but speculative at best. The common traits of “rising in the morning” and the euphemistic “choking the chicken” for masturbation are humorous but not definitive. The rooster’s aggressiveness, its virility, the upright curvature of its neck with hackles that flare when excited, not to mention its pendulous wattles, are some of the ideas people have asserted for the cultural connection. Regardless, it’s a lot of conjecture considering a cock doesn’t even have a penis. (Through testes located high up in the body, sperm transfer occurs by cloacal contact between the cockerel and the hen known as the “cloacal kiss.”)

No matter how sheepish Americans might be, the word “cock” has been synonymous with “penis” for a very long time. Though “rooster” is a perfectly fine word, the original intent to disappear “cock” is prudish hogwash. The British, with a clearer grasp on context, still use the word without offense or fear of being vulgar. In the end, the animal has crossed with our culture to become not only an enduring symbol of our farming past but continues to be one of our most valued sources of sustenance. Like pigs, pussies, and asses, cocks also provide a wealth of reflections on our own undeniable human behavior.

If you enjoyed this bit of history, you may also enjoy learning about (NSFW) expletive infixations, the strange adjectival order of “Big Bad Wolf,” or why some words become fossilized!

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If you’re not using task cards in class, you’re missing out on an excellent center or whole class activity that turns repetition into fun! Check out all the task cards available in Donald’s English Classroom!

Fun Facts About English #92 – English Rhoticity

01/28/2021 by admin

Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the rhotic consonant /r/ by speakers of certain varieties of English. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words hard and butter as /ˈhɑːrd/ and /ˈbʌtər/, whereas a non-rhotic speaker “drops” the /r/ sound, pronouncing them as /ˈhɑːd/ and /ˈbʌtə/.

English dialects that use a hard /r/ include South West England, Scotland, Ireland, and most of the United States and Canada. Non-rhotic dialects are found in England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In the U.S., non-rhotic varieties depend on an array of factors such as region, age, social class, ethnicity, or the degree of formality when speaking.

In England, the loss of the hard /r/ began sporadically during the mid-15th century. By the mid-18th century, though /r/ was still pronounced in most environments, it was frequently dropped. By the early 19th century, the southern British standard was fully transformed into a non-rhotic variety. Colonization of countries like Australia and South Africa happened after England had become more fully non-rhotic.

In the British Council clip below, Shakespearean actor, Ben Crystal, presents two readings from the opening monologue of Romeo and Juliet – one in the accent of contemporary British English (Received Pronunciation), and the other in a simulated accent of Shakespeare’s day; the same accent that began arriving on North American shores in the early 1600s. Take special note of the hard /r/ in the latter. The comparisons begin around 1:40 in the six-minute clip.

During America’s early history as a nation, the loss of rhotic /r/ in British English influenced eastern and southern American port cities that still held close connections to England after the Revolutionary War. This caused America’s more established, upper-class pronunciation to become non-rhotic while the westward-expanding U.S. remained rhotic. Non-rhotic varieties are most apparent in the Boston, Rhode Island, and New York accents, as well as the southern accents of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Louisiana.

American non-rhotic varieties shouldn’t be mistaken for an accent known as the Trans-Atlantic or Mid-Atlantic accent; a largely cultivated manner of speaking most noticeable in Hollywood films during the 1930s and 40s. When one listens to the speech patterns of America’s old East Coast moneyed class – Franklin Delano Roosevelt, William F. Buckley, and Katharine Hepburn – it doesn’t sound like a typical American accent, but it’s not really British either. That’s because it’s fake. The “accent” or “diction” was taught in elite boarding schools and acting studios to affect a mix of American and non-rhotic British pronunciation. The result was a posh-sounding American accent no one naturally used unless “educated.”

After the Civil War, centers of wealth and political power shifted with fewer cultural connections to the old colonial and British elites. This included a cultural movement toward rhotic speech that accelerated after WWII. In the world of entertainment, the Trans-Atlantic accent fell out of popularity and film actors like Katharine Hepburn mysteriously lost their upper-class accents mid-career. This was also reflected in the national standard of radio and television where popular TV hosts like Johnny Carson hailed from the Midwest. In the eastern United States, the accent trend is reversing where rhoticism has re-asserted itself resulting in the cultural loss of distinctive accents familiar to many older Americans.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in learning why Americans say /zee/ instead of /zed/ for the letter Z, how rebracketing changes a word’s pronunciation, or the history of Johnson’s Dictionary published in 1755.

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Trends: Business and Culture Reports, Books 1 & 2, bring you sixty topical Business Reports that will entertain, inform, and prompt your adult intermediate and advanced students toward lively discussions. Utilizing charts, graphs, puzzles, surveys, discussion activities, and more, these Business Reports invite students to explore and compare cultural, business, and language matters.

Fun Facts About English #86 – The English Language Academy

12/19/2020 by admin

Kinney Brothers Publishing English regulators language academies

To the chagrin of some and the pleasure of many, English is lacking in any authority to direct its ever-expanding use and lexicon. L’Académie Française, based in Paris, is in charge of overseeing the French language. For Spanish, there is the Real Academia Española. German has the Rat für Deutsche Rechtschreibung. There has never been an equivalent academy for the English language anywhere or at any time.

Historically, there have been a number of outspoken and clearly distressed men of letters who believed that English, with all its unruliness, desperately needed a formal academy.

In the mid-17th century, John Dryden, a poet laureate of England, chaired a committee to create such an academy. Unfortunately, as Dryden was attempting to organize, the Great Plague struck London. A year later, the Great Fire of London razed central parts of the city. These events resulted in an equally great exodus from the capital and any hope for an academy was lost.

In the 18th century, Jonathan Swift, best known for his prose satire, Gulliver’s Travels, lobbied the crown for an academy. He stated, “Our Language is extremely imperfect… its daily Improvements are by no means in proportion to its daily Corruptions (and) in many Instances it offends against every Part of Grammar.” Queen Anne supported the idea but passed away before any formal decisions could be made.

In the U.S., a bill for the incorporation of a national language academy was introduced in congress in 1806 but was unsuccessful. During Quincy Adams’ presidency two decades later, an American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres was proposed and then abandoned after receiving little political or public support.

So… whatcha do?

Language references like the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and style guides such as the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage are what many people consider to be at least semi-authoritative. Dictionaries are generally descriptive in that they reflect the organic usage and evolution of English but don’t set out to dictate how the language is to be used. Style guides, on the other hand, are prescriptive; an approach that recommends how the language should be used when composing documents.

Style Guides

A style guide establishes standard style requirements to improve communication by ensuring consistency within a single document and across multiple documents. A style guide may set out standards in areas such as punctuation, capitalization, citing sources, formatting of numbers and dates, and table appearance. A guide may outline recommendations in language composition, visual composition, orthography, and typography. For academic and technical documents, users often reference guides for best practices in ethics such as authorship, research ethics, and disclosure. In pedagogy, users look for guidance in exposition and clarity, or compliance, both technical and regulatory. Of course, all this will depend on the register of the user.

Register, in a general sense, refers to the language used by a group of people who share similar work, research, or interests, and the degree of formality of the language used when creating documents. Document requirements, though they often overlap, will differ by necessity between different groups, such as doctors, lawyers, journalists, and scholars.

English language style guides Kinney Brothers Publishing

For British English, style guides such as H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage and Sir Ernest Gower’s Plain Words: A Guide to the Use of English are very influential. The Modern Humanities Research Association Style Guide (MHRA) is mainly for writing theses. Judith Butcher’s The Copyeditor’s Handbook is a reference guide for editors and those involved in preparing typescripts and illustrations for printing and publication.

In the U.S., The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook contains commonly accepted journalistic standards most U.S. newspapers, magazines, and broadcast writers use as their go-to style guide. The Chicago Manual of Style is used by writers, editors, and publishers in fiction and nonfiction and often put to use in the arts and humanities for academic papers. The Modern Language Association’s MLA Handbook is mostly suited to the academic world. The Elements of Style is a writer’s companion and considered to be the grandfather of all style guides.

For those looking for humorous and unapologetically opinionated voices on the English language, there are many authors more than willing to assert their preferences, bemoan the inadequacies of our current authorities, and thoroughly berate speakers of the language. They include the Dictionary of Disagreeable English: A Curmudgeon’s Compendium of Excruciatingly Correct Grammar, The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker, and Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (a popular book that was excoriated for its grammatical errors when first published).

For a fascinating look at the gargantuan effort of documenting a language, you may enjoy The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in reading why Pikes Peak is spelled without an apostrophe by law! Check out the reason the U.S. doesn’t have an official language or how English became the official language of the sea and air!

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Craft activities can be excellent hands-on learning tools! Whether you teach very young newcomers or secondary ESL students, Donald’s English Classroom has a variety of activities that your students are sure to enjoy. Check out the Seasons Tree Stand or House Activity Set for your younger students. For students learning community places, you’ll love using the Community Places Activity Set that includes game boards and flashcards. For older students, building Wall Maps are excellent activities to bring students together.

Dude! An Awesome History

11/15/2020 by admin

Although this blog post was part of my weekly Fun Facts About English in October, the history is so culturally rich, I thought it worth publishing as one of my monthly educational posts.

On a sunny summer day in 1965, I was in the front yard with my twin brother, Bobby, playing on our identical red tricycles. I said to him, “Lookit how fast I’m peddlin’, man!” Bobby suddenly dashed into the house like he had to poop. A few moments later, my mother sternly called out to me through the open living-room window, “Donnie! Stop saying “man!”

Yankee Doodle

The tune of Yankee Doodle is far older than the lyrics, is well known across western Europe, and has been used in Holland for centuries as a children’s song. The earliest lyrics we know come from a 15th-century Middle Dutch harvest song. Though some of the words may seem familiar, the English and Dutch mix is largely nonsensical. The cadence, however, is unmistakable:

“Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther.”

The word doodle is derived from either the Low German dudel, meaning “playing music badly,” or dödel, meaning “fool” or “simpleton.” Yankee is recorded in the late 17th century as a nickname; perhaps from the Dutch Janke, a diminutive of Jan (John). Finally, dandy is thought to be a shortened form of 17th-century Jack-a-dandy for “a conceited fellow” and a pet form of the given name Andrew, as in Dandy Andy.

In 18th-century Britain, the term “yankee doodle dandy” implied a fashionable man who goes beyond the pale of reasonable dress and speaks in an outlandishly affected and effeminate manner.

The song Yankee Doodle was written around 1755 by British Army surgeon Dr. Richard Shuckburgh. It was sung by British troops to mock the disheveled and disorganized colonial “Yankees” with whom they served in the seven-year French and Indian War (1756). In defiance, the American soldiers co-opted the song, added verses to mock the British troops, and by the time of the Revolutionary War (1775), turned the insult into a song of national pride.

FYI: The multi-award-winning musical film, Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney (1942), was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Bonus FYI: The state of Connecticut designated Yankee Doodle as the official state song in 1978.

Doodle to Dude

Recent research of the word dude is owed to Barry Popik and Gerald Cohen who have been combing through 19th-century periodicals amassing the world’s largest collection of dude citations. Cohen’s journal, Comments on Etymology, lays out a solidly supported account of the early days of dude.

In the vernacular of the American cowboy and popular press of the late 19th century, the diminutive dude from doodle emerged as a derisive word, like dandy, for an extremely well-dressed Eastern city slicker who knew little of the rugged lifestyle of the new American West. The verbed version of the word is still familiar in the cowboy phrase “all duded up” for getting dressed in fancy clothes.* Dudedom, dudeness, dudery, and dudism are all recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as terms used in the late 1800s to ridicule our foppish friends. In the early 20th century, dude ranches sprang up in many western states catering to wealthy urbanites wanting to vacation in the “cowboy lifestyle.”

In the 1960s, dude began appearing in surfer culture and the Black community with the meaning “fellow” or “guy,” much like bro in the 1970s. Dude continued its creep into the jargon of young Americans in general throughout the twentieth century.

One of the first known references to its contemporary use is the 1969 film, Easy Rider. In the clip below, Peter Fonda explains to Jack Nicholson the meaning of dude, giving us a marvelous linguistic marker in American pop culture:

From “dandy” to “regular guy” to “cool,” dude was further popularized in American films of the 80s and 90s, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Wayne’s World, and Clerks. The ultimate dude, based on the personality of Viet Nam war activist Jeff Dowd, was played by Jeff Bridges in the 1998 cult film, The Big Lebowski. Bridges’ character, The Dude, inspired Dudeism, a new religion that promotes a rebel-shrug philosophy and the mantra, “Just take it easy, man.”

Dudeism’s objective is to promote a modern form of Chinese Taoism, blended with concepts from the Ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, and presented in a style as personified by the character of Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski.

In 2008, the beer company, Bud Light, aired an advertising campaign in which the dialogue consists entirely of different inflections of “Dude!” without ever mentioning the product name.

As we move further into the 21st century, the female equivalents dudette and dudess failed to acquire any linguistic legs and have fallen out of use. Among many young Americans, dude is now considered a unisex term in much the way guys is used to address a group of men or women. Studies reveal that, though dude is used today in every possible gender combination, it is not used by men to address women in their intimate relationships.

I’ll finish with this Millienial-age gem I found in my research:

“I call my mother ‘dude.’ She doesn’t like it.”

*Not to be confused with the word duds, as in “I got my best duds on.” c. 1300, dudde “cloak, mantle,” later, in plural, “clothes,” especially “ragged clothing.”

Fun Facts About English #79 – The Letter Z

10/24/2020 by admin

In most English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Zambia, and Australia, the name of the letter Z is zed, pronounced /zɛd/. Zed takes its name via French and Latin from the Greek equivalent, zeta. In American English, its name is zee /ziː/. Zee is thought to have originated from a late 17th-century British dialect and influenced by the bee, cee, dee, ee pattern of much of the alphabet.

This British dialectical form was likely what the English Puritan minister and author, Thomas Lye [Leigh, Lee], was drawing from when he published his New Spelling Book in England in 1677; the full title of which is:

A New Spelling Book, Or, Reading and Spelling English Made Easie: Wherein All the Words of Our English Bible are Set Down in an Alphabetical Order and Divided Into Their Distinct Syllabls

At the time of its publishing, Britain was home to a variety of dialectical pronunciations of the letter Z that included zed, zod, zad, zard, ezod, izzard, and uzzard. Samuel Johnson, in his highly influential Dictionary of the English Language published in London in 1755, referenced izzard as the name of the letter. In King Lear, 150 years earlier, Shakespeare had used zed.

Beginning in the 1600s, zee and other British pronunciations made the voyage across the Atlantic to colonial America. By 1883, British historian, Edward Augustus Freeman, noted that zee was mainly found in (formerly Puritan) New England, while zed was the accepted form in the American South. Areas such as Philadelphia vacillated between the two. He also noted that not a few Americans still used izzard, a fact that tickled his British funny bone.

Nonetheless, by the 19th century, zee became firmly established in the U.S. with several important developments. New England born, Noah Webster, published his own American Spelling Book in 1794 with the letter “ze.” In 1828, Webster also published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language asserting the pronunciation of the letter Z as “zee.” Finally, “The Alphabet Song,” copyrighted in 1835 and published by Boston-based music publisher, Charles Bradlee, rhymed Z with “me.”

FYI: The tune of “The Alphabet Song” is based on the 18th-century French song “Ah, vous dirai-je, maman” and popularized by Mozart. The melody is also used in other children’s songs such as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.”

It’s worth noting that, like zee, Webster also defined the standards of American spelling for words like theater for theatre and honor for honour,” spellings that were not invented by Webster himself. These were spelling variants in use in the English language, including in Britain. Webster simply chose to institute one variation as a standard.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Britain was undergoing a similar change, namely a push-back against izzard and its variants. Sticking with the etymological legacy of its French origins (zéde), zed became enshrined as the proper name of the letter in British English.

Finally, it’s important to remember, unlike most major languages in the world, English has never had a regulatory body that governed its use – anywhere nor at any time. As for slinging tired arrows at the U.S. for its “unilateral” divergence from British English, let’s reflect on the idea that even today, in a country the size of Louisiana, England has over 40 dialects (compared to 24 in the whole U.S.) and a long legacy of myriad spelling and pronunciation variations. Over several centuries and 4000 miles apart, the notion of a culturally freeze-dried, correct language and orthography simply didn’t exist, on either side of the pond.

You might also be interested to learn why North Americans pronounce R differently than the British, why rooster is the preferred euphemism in American English, or why English has no language academy!

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I Have/Who Has are excellent exercises in reading, speaking, and listening! Click here to see how you can make this simple activity walk across the room! Check out all the I Have/Who Has activity sets in Donald’s English Classroom.

Fun Facts About English #74 – The Awesome History of Dude

09/21/2020 by admin

On a sunny summer day in 1965, I was in the front yard with my twin brother playing on our identical red tricycles. I said to Bobby, “Lookit how fast I’m peddlin’, man!” Bobby suddenly dashed into the house like he had to poop! A few moments later, my mother sternly called out to me through the open living-room window, “Donnie! Stop saying “man!”

Yankee Doodle

The tune of Yankee Doodle is far older than the lyrics, is well known across western Europe, and has been used in Holland for centuries for children’s songs. The earliest lyrics we know come from a 15th-century Middle Dutch harvest song. Though some of the words may seem familiar, the English and Dutch mix is largely nonsensical. The cadence, however, is unmistakable:

“Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther.”

The word doodle is derived from either the Low German dudel, meaning “playing music badly,” or dödel, meaning “fool” or “simpleton.” Yankee is recorded in the late 17th century as a nickname; perhaps from the Dutch Janke, a diminutive of Jan (John). Finally, dandy is thought to be a shortened form of 17th-century Jack-a-dandy for a “conceited fellow” and a pet form of the given name Andrew, as in Dandy Andy.

In 18th-century Britain, the term “yankee doodle dandy” implied a fashionable man who goes beyond the pale of reasonable dress and speaks in an outlandishly affected and effeminate manner.

Yankee Doodle Dandy Kinney Brothers Publishing

Doodle to Dude

In 2008, the beer company, Bud Light, aired an advertising campaign in which the dialogue consists entirely of different inflections of “Dude!” without ever mentioning the product name.

I’ll finish with this Millienial-age gem I found in my research:

“I call my mother “dude.” She doesn’t like it.”

If you enjoyed this post you may also be interested in reading about words recognized used all over the world, what the word jaywalker actually means, or the incredible history of American spelling bees!

See the previous or next Fun Facts About English.

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*Not to be confused with the word duds, as in “I got my best duds on.” c. 1300, dudde “cloak, mantle,” later, in plural, “clothes,” especially “ragged clothing.”