Question: Someone recently referred to a friend's new home as his new "digs." Can you tell me where that expression originated?
Answer: "Digs" is apparently derived from the earlier term "diggings," which shared the same meaning, "living quarters." This sense of "diggings" first appeared in Britain in 1838, and Charles Dickens used the word in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit in 1844. "Digs" itself was first spotted in print in 1893, and it seems fairly certain that it is a shortened form of "diggings."That still leaves us with the question of where "diggings" itself came from. Some theorists have asserted that the word in its "living quarters" sense arose during California's gold rush, but that clearly can't be true, since the gold rush began several years after the 1838 first appearance of "diggings" in this sense. It is worth noting, though, that as early as 1538 "diggings" was being used in Britain to refer to a place where mining was taking place. This use continued through the last century and appears to be the most likely source of "diggings" in its "living quarters" sense, although exactly how the sense development may have occurred is not clear.
Question: What is the "pot" in the expression "go to pot," meaning "to deteriorate or be ruined"?
Answer: Most authorities agree that the allusion is to leftover scraps of meat thrown into a pot to make stew or hash. Literally "going to pot" is, of course, the most humble fate that meat can meet.
The expression dates back at least to the early 16th century in England. It seems to have carried its modern meaning almost from the beginning, though at that time the usual phrase was "go to the pot."
There were other meanings as well in early usage. A number of writers in past centuries made a connection between "going to pot" and cannibalism or, less literally, death. One grisly passage, dated 1613, reads "They had eaten sixe of his fellowes, and the next day he must have gone to pot too." Another, from 1680, reads, "Poor Thorp, Lord Chief Justice, went to Pot, in plain English, he was Hang'd." Later, according to at least one 19th-century writer, the expression carried yet another specific meaning: "to become poor."
Whatever different senses "pot" has had in this phrase throughout the centuries, one thing has remained clear: it is not a happy ending.
Question: Is it true that President Harding invented the word "bloviate?" What's the story?
Answer: We define "bloviate" as "to orate verbosely and windily." A slang dictionary published in 1897 called it "a made up or factitious word, which has been used since at least 1850, and is perhaps older. It is irregularly used to signify verbosity, wandering from the subject, and idle or inflated oratory or blowing. . . ." President Warren G. Harding did use the word, but he obviously did not originate it, and in fact, he apparently employed it in a different sense. In his biography of Harding, Francis Russell explains that "it was a word . . . current in Ohio, meaning to loaf about . . . and enjoy oneself. Outsiders later credited him with having coined it." Even so, the association of "bloviate" with Harding, which no doubt was influenced by his own talent for long-winded oratory, did help to bring this old Americanism out of obscurity.
This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. Send questions to: Merriam-Webster's Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, MA 01102. (C) Merriam-Webster Inc. Dist. by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service