Question: Do you know the origin of the word "haywire"? My grandmother insists it really has something to do with hay.Answer: Your grandmother is right. "Haywire" is an Americanism that gained its current meaning of "out of control" or "crazy" in the early part of this century. But the term derives from a type of thin wire used on farms to bale hay.
The wire was apparently a common article on farms and whatever wire was extra was put to uses other than baling hay. The numerous repair jobs requiring a farmer's attention would often receive a quick fix with the use of the wire. Because the makeshift repairs gave the farms the appearance of being roughly made, "haywire" acquired the extended meaning of "hastily or shoddily constructed."
The "crazy" sense of "haywire" may have been suggested by the difficulty of handling the springy wire. The first printed use of the phrase "to go haywire" so far discovered appeared in an October 13, 1929, newspaper: "When some element in the recording system becomes defective it is said to have gone haywire.".
Question: Recently friends visited us from Holland. I happened to use the expression "talking a blue streak." They asked what it meant, and we all wondered how it originated. Could you help us?
Answer: The original meaning of "blue streak," dating from at least 1830, is "something that moves very fast" as in "He ran like a blue streak." You of course were using the phrase to mean something along the lines of "a constant stream of words."
The expression comes from implicit comparison to a flash of lightning, a literal "blue streak." In its earliest use, "blue streak" described the speed of horses and coaches that seemed to move with the quickness of lightning. This idea of rapidity led to the phrase we use today.
Question: I was born in the Bronx and was wondering why we don't put "the" in front of any of the other boroughs of New York City.
Answer: Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a clear-cut answer, but we can explore some possibilities.
The land called "Keskeskeck" by American Indians and now called "the Bronx" was sold in 1639 to the Dutch West India Company. In 1641, Jonas Bronk became the first white settler in that region when he bought 500 acres between the Harlem River and the Aquahung. At this point, versions of the story diverge. One version is that the Aquahung lost its original name and became known as the Bronk's River; then the area was named after the river and the borough kept the definite article before its name. Another version claims the land belonging to Bronk was simply referred to by visitors as "the Bronks'," short for "the Bronks' place." Either way, the name of the borough retained the "the" as it came to acquire its present-day spelling.
Another possible explanation has to do more generally with place-name usage in the United States. If a place name retains the definite article, that indicates a uniqueness associated with the place. Whether this was enough to influence the retention of "the" before the borough name, we cannot judge.
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. Merriam-Webster Inc. Dist. by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service