1116. This week, we clarify the origins of the word "Schnauzer" and why it may mean "snout," "growler," or "mustache." Then, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, we look at the true origins of the word "scallywag," which, believe it or not, isn't from pirates but may be related to Shetland ponies. Then, we look at why we use both "used to" and "use to" and how they differ in questions and negatives.
1116. This week, we clarify the origins of the word "Schnauzer" and why it may mean "snout," "growler," or "mustache." Then, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, we look at the true origins of the word "scallywag," which, believe it or not, isn't from pirates but may be related to Shetland ponies. Then, we look at why we use both "used to" and "use to" and how they differ in questions and negatives.
The "used to" segment was written by Natalie Schilling, a professor emerita of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and who runs a forensic linguistics consulting firm. You can find her on LinkedIn.
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, we're going to talk about Schnauzers, scallawags, and the phase "used to."
by Mignon Fogarty
But first I have a correction from the recent show about how dog breeds got their names. I said “Schnauzers are a type of terrier … and their name means ‘growler’ in German.” But a listener named Priscilla who breeds schnauzers wrote in to say that "Schnauzer" actually means "mustasch," which makes sense if you've ever looked at a Schnauzer with their cute mustaches! And since Priscilla is essentially a Schnauzer expert, I figured she probably knew what she was talking about!
But at first I was confused because I double checked my source, and the Online Etymology Dictionary, which I've always found to be reliable, does say that Schnauzer first showed up in English in 1923 and that the word comes from German "Schnauzer," which literally means "growler," coming from "schnauzen," which means "to snarl" or "growl," which comes from Schnauze meaning "snout" or "muzzle."
Plus, the American Kennel Club website also says the breed name comes from "schnauze" meaning “snout” or “muzzle,” going back to that same origin, but leaving out the seemingly middle step related to snarling or growling.
But then I checked Google Translate, and it told me that “Schnauzer” in German does, indeed, mean “moustache.” So what is going on?!
Well, the Oxford English Dictionary finally pieced it together for me.
It also says the dog name comes from German “Schnauzer,” that was a name for the dog going back to at least 1767, and that it did mean "snout," … BUT then it also has a note that says, "With the use to denote a breed of dog perhaps compare also German 'Schnauzer' moustache."
So it seems that a lot of people think "Schnauzer" comes from a German word for snout or muzzle, and that maybe there's an intermediate "growling" meaning, but that the word can also mean "moustasch" in German. At this point, I'm not sure anyone really knows the ultimate origin of the name, but it does all go back to their distinctive snout area in some way.
And finally, one more fix while we’re here. Priscilla says that only Miniature Schnauzers are in the Terrier Group. Standard Schnauzers and Giant Schnauzers are Working Group dogs — they don't go to ground like earth-dog terriers. Thank you, Priscilla, for that helpful note.
by Mignon Fogarty
Next, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is coming up on September 19, I want to tell you about the origin of the word "scallywag" because, believe it or not, it's related to Shetland ponies.
First, although I think of "scallywag" as a pirate term, it actually isn't. Or at least it wasn't in the Golden Age of Pirates from the 1650s to the 1730s when Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, and Captain Kidd terrorized the seas. "Scallywag" is actually an Americanism that only became a word in 1839 according to Etymonline, which makes it more like "roughneck" and "loon," which are words that emerged as American colloquialisms around the same time.
A roughneck was a rowdy troublemaker, and a loon was someone who was a lunatic — foolish, unintelligent, irrational, or out of touch. That word comes from the ancient idea that people who aren't mentally well are under the influence of the moon or the moon's phases. It's the same root that gives us the word "lunar" for things that are related to the moon, as in the "lunar landing."
But a scallywag is a good-for-nothing, "a man who won't work," according to the OED.
But here's the fun part: although the origin is ultimately unknown, one story is that it goes back to the group of Shetland Islands in Scotland, which is also where Shetland ponies originated. Apparently, people were keeping small work horses there as far back as the Bronze Age. The Scottish people called rustic farm servants "scallags" after Scalloway, which is one of those Shetland islands. "Scallag" might have been combined with "wag," meaning a habitual joker, to give us "scallywag" to refer to a bad person. But it's a little confusing because another early use was to describe a scrawny worthless animal and could just come from the place name, Scalloway.
But either way, presumably Scottish immigrants brought the word to America where it was first recorded to mean a bad guy.
Then, for a period during the U.S. Civil War and after, a scallywag was a specific kind of bad guy in the Confederacy. They used it as a derogatory term for white Southerners who supported Reconstruction.
But never fear! You can still have fun with this word on Talk Like a Pirate Day because despite its non-pirating origins, "scallywag" does appear in many modern pirate stories. You'll find it in "Pirates of the Caribbean" where Jack Sparrow talks about keeping the "scallywags at bay," and a quick search of Google Books turns up a bunch of pirate-themed children's books such as "Scallywag on the Salish Sea," "Princess Scallywag and the No-Good Pirates," and "The Scallywags of Nobody's Island."
by Natalie Schilling
Did you ever use to wonder when you’re supposed to use “used to,” with a “d,” or “use to,” without it? Maybe you’re just used to not really knowing? Let’s see if we can clear things up, so that from now on, you’ll know which form should be used to make which types of meanings, in which types of sentence constructions.
On the surface, there seems to be a clear division between “used to” and “use to”:
“Used to,” in the past tense, is used to mean “accustomed to” or to refer to something that existed or habitually took place in the past but no longer applies. For example, if I say, “I drive in traffic every day, so I’m used to it,” I’m using “used to” to mean “accustomed to.” And if I say, “I used to drive in traffic a lot, but now I don’t have to,” I’m using “used to” to mean “formerly.”
We can even use “used to” in both senses in a single sentence, for example, “I used to hate driving in traffic, but now I’m used to it.”
“Use to,” in the present tense, is for when we’re using the verb “use” in its primary sense, meaning “to utilize or employ,” as in “What can I use to get stains out of white clothes?”
So where does the confusion come in?
For one, when we’re using the verb “use” to mean “utilize,” we might need to use it in its participle form, to make a passive construction. For example, to answer the question about stain removal, I might say, “Bleach can be used to get stains out.” That’s passive voice, because I’m not saying who’s actively using the bleach but just indicating, in passing, that bleach could be used by someone. So that’s a case of “used to,” with the -ed ending, being used to mean “utilized,” not “accustomed to” or “former.”
Another reason the forms are easily confused is that, although they look different in writing, they’re basically pronounced the same in everyday conversation. We have a natural tendency when we talk to want to alternate consonants and vowels, which is one of the reasons why babies’ first words are often things like “mama,” “dada,” and “baba” (for “bottle”), each word a series of consonant-vowel, consonant-vowel. Our tongues don’t like having to pronounce too many consonants in a row.
So it’s hard to pronounce the final “d” in “used” when it’s right next to the “t” in “to,” and we whittle it down to “use to,” making it easier on our mouths but a little harder on listeners, because now past-tense “used to” sounds like it’s in present tense. And it’s even harder on writers, because when we hear, and say, “use to,” with no final “d,” for “used to,” we tend to want to write it that way. And so we write “I’m not use to driving in traffic,” when we really should be writing “used to,” with a “d.”
And there’s a third wrinkle: What if I want to ask whether someone formerly did something, or I want to deny that I did? Technically, in these cases – in questions and negation – “used to” with a “d” should be transformed into “use to,” with no past-tense ending. For example, if I’m asking about your driving habits in the past, I should say, “Did you use to drive in traffic a lot?” not “Did you used to?” And similarly, I’m supposed to say, “I didn’t use to drive in traffic,” not “I didn’t used to.”
It's not uncommon for people to keep the “d” on “used” in cases like these, and some sources suggest that it may now be somewhat acceptable to do so. There’s something about “Did you use to” that sounds funny to our ears. It’s also possible that we keep the “d” on “used” even when we’re not supposed to because we’re a little nervous about mixing up “used to” and “use to,” and the “fully pronounced” “used to” form, with a “d,” sounds more correct – even though it’s not.
So why does the “d” in “used to” disappear in questions and negatives? Well, it may seem illogical, but it parallels what we do with most other past-tense verbs. In English, but seemingly few other languages, when we form questions and negatives, we add an extra word to the sentence – a form of “do.” For example, we don’t say, “Drove you home last night?” but instead, “Did you drive home?” And we don’t reply with, “No, I drove not,” but with “No, I didn’t drive.”
Notice what happens to “drove,” the past-tense form, when we add “did”: it turns into “drive,” present tense, even though we’re still talking about the past. So where’d the tense marker go? It’s now on “did,” the past tense of “do.” If we said, “Did you drove home last night,” we’d be double marking the past, and we don’t need to, so it’s “Did you drive?” The exact same thing happens with “used to”: It turns into “use to” when it’s used with “did”: “Did you use to do it?” “No, I didn’t use to.”
Interestingly, before the 15th century, it was perfectly acceptable in English to say and write things like, “Drove you the oxen?” and “I drove them not.” But then, for some reason, people started forming questions and negatives with “do” and “did,” a phenomenon historical linguists call “do-support.” After a long period when it was optional whether you formed your questions and negatives the old-fashioned way or with “do,” the “do” and “did” forms eventually won out. That happened by the 18th or 19th century.
There was even a brief time, somewhere around Shakespeare’s era, where you could add an extra “do” to affirmative sentences, as in “I do drive” or “I did once drive.” We have a similar thing today, where we add “do” for emphasis, but back then, you could add it with no additional meaning. “Do” was just a popular word. Which reminds me, if you add “did” for emphasis with “used to,” that’s another case where you need to drop the “d”: “Yes, I did use to love driving” – “use to,” not “used to.”
In short, in English, while we used to be able to ask about and deny things without using do-support, we’re now used to “do” and “did” – in fact, a form of “do” must be used to form questions and negatives. And we can’t forget to move the tense marking from the main verb to “do.” You might be tempted to say, “Did you used to drive?” or “I didn’t used to go,” but to be technically grammatically correct, you need to use “use.” This may sound strange, but you’re just gonna have to get used to it!
That segment was written by Natalie Schilling, a professor emerita of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and who runs a forensic linguistics consulting firm. You can find her on LinkedIn.
Finally, I have a familect from Mimi.
Hey, this is Mimi. I have a funny one. So my niece was in a wedding, and you know, nerves can run high, and you've got the bridal breakfast, and you've got the rehearsal dinner and all the family inner workings, and somebody was relating later that the bride and her sister had a big screaming argument at the bridal breakfast, and the friend was trying to just sink into the woodwork and not be noticed. And she said, "I just ate my cheese grits." So whenever something happens where you just wish you could fade into the woodwork and nobody noticed you, that's what we say. We say, "I just ate my cheese grits."
Thanks, Mimi. That's funny.
If you want to share the story of your familect, a word or phrase that you only use with your friends or family, leave a message on the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL or leave a voice message on WhatsApp. Be sure to call from a nice, quiet place, and if you want that number or link later, you can always find them in the show notes.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Dan Feierabend in audio; Morgan Christianson in advertising; Holly Hutchings, director of podcasts; Rebecca Sebastian in marketing; and Nat Hoopes in marketing, who thinks ADHD is his biggest superpower.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip a day book, "The Grammar Daily." That's all. Thanks for listening.