Q. Recently, I came across the word "haha" in an 18th-century novel. Then I found it used in a book about landscaping. The dictionary says that a haha is a sunken fence. Can you tell me how the sunken fence got the name "haha"?
A. A haha or sunken fence is a ditch with a retaining wall. This setup creates a barrier in the form of an abrupt shift in ground level, effectively separating one area from another. The advantage of using a haha instead of a traditional above-ground fence is that when viewed from the higher ground level, the haha is all but invisible.
A haha was and still is used when a barrier is needed but an uninterrupted view is desired. With a haha, pastures can be separated from formal gardens with no break in visual continuity, since the haha is unnoticeable from within the garden. The result is an expansive and uninterrupted view.
When studied landscaping and gardening became popular in England in the 18th century, the haha was often used because it served the practical purpose of confining animals and it allowed the favored uninterrupted view. Genteel nature lovers could enjoy a walk in the garden with a view of animals grazing at a comfortable distance and without the possibility of those animals coming closer.
"Haha" as the name for a sunken fence is more common in British English than in American English. It has appeared in several forms, including "ha-ha," "ha!ha!," and "hawhaw." The first recorded use in English is from an early 18th-century English gardening book where it appears as "Ah, Ah." According to this source, a person could be having a leisurely walk through a garden and suddenly see the ground about to drop away because of a strategically placed haha. While teetering precariously, one might gasp "Ah! Ah!" in surprise. With a little shift in spelling, the sunken fence came to be commonly called the haha.
Q. Can you tell me who first came up with the term "litterbug"?
A. In 1947, the New York City transit system commissioned a series of "etiquette posters" by the artist Amelia Opdyke Jones, the very first of which featured the slogan "Nobody Loves a Litterbug" with a cartoon-style drawing of a man strewing litter in his path. (The following year there was a poster discouraging the "gumbug" - you can probably guess what that was.) Jones herself claimed to have coined "litterbug," borrowing from the name of a then-popular dance, the jitterbug. So what if the "bug" in "litterbug" had an altogether "pesky" connotation, not at all like the "bug" of "enthusiasm" in "jitterbug"? The term was catchy, and right away it made headlines: "47,000 Subway `Litterbugs' Pay $107,000 in Fines in 1946 Drive" announced the New York Herald Tribune early in 1947.
The term was popularized in the 1950s by various anti-litter campaigns throughout the country, especially one launched by the organization Keep America Beautiful Inc. in 1953. It was this campaign that created the ugly bug emblem that appeared on posters, bumper stickers and playground signs with the forthright admonition, "Don't be a litterbug!" Those early years also saw the origin of a ditty that probably remains somewhere in the subconscious of every American baby boomer: "Please, please, don't be a litterbug, 'cause every litter bit hurts."
Not everyone has subscribed to the bug image. The Saturday Evening Post titled a 1953 article on littering in Yellowstone National Park "Tourists Who Act Like Pigs" and didn't used the term "litterbug" in the article at all. New York Mayor Ed Koch tried using "litterpig" when he launched a new clean-up campaign in 1984, explaining that "litterbug" did not "truly convey the disgust I have for these people." "Litterpig" hasn't caught on the way "litterbug" did, though one journalist did refer recently to "turnpike litterpigs" in an article about a recycling education center, finding "litterbugs" to be "too cute." Actually the emblem of the litterbug propagated in the 1950s was of a vile, refuse-strewing, thoroughly reprehensible character - and anything but cute.