Rounding up this week’s mystery words
image courtesy of gumdropgas @ flickr
Nothing specific this time around, word fans. More a collection of bits that have blipped on my radar recently. I’m going to have to stop talking to Mrs Joad, as she invariably says something to the effect of “hey, word man – what does (insert one of the many things I have no idea about) mean?” I am sent scurrying to my reference books and the good old internet in order to find an answer but luckily, that also gives me something to write about.
Tad: My first semi-failure of the week, and a direct result of one of those queries by Mrs Joad. Apart from being recognized as a diminuitive form of Thaddeus (or Thaddaeus), there is very little known about the roots of this word, generally accepted nowadays to mean ‘a small amount’ or ‘a little piece of’. My etymology resources (including the OED) are all of the same opinion, that it is a shortened form of tadpole. The only thing that really supports this theory (though fairly tenuously) is that the word tadpole comes from Middle English – tadde meaning toad, and pol meaning head. It’s sketchy, but it’ll have to do.
Jonesing: One that will be familiar to my American readers. I’m glad it’s familiar to them, because nothing I’ve read can shed a lot of light on this. The context in which I have always heard it has been that someone is badly craving something “Boy, I’m jonesing for a smoke”, for example. There are some theories that it comes from the popular expression keeping up with the Joneses, in that you need a bit more to keep up, which sounds plausible, but I’m not sure. More likely is that as Jones was old slang (circa 1930s US) for heroin, the idea of jonesing for more is somewhat more believable. One final (but unlikely) theory is that it comes from the Grateful Dead song Casey Jones. Sure, the songs’s about cocaine (this is The Dead, after all) but that’s really where any similarity ends.
Not a prayer: I know, it’s a phrase, not a word. Indulge me. This is something else pointed out by Mrs Joad. It’s an expression I’ve used for a long time, but nobody else I know seems to have heard of it. It appears in my thesaurus as a valid phrase meaning not a chance or not a hope in hell, but any documentary evidence of the origin of this phrase is, as far as I can tell, non-existent. Feel free to chip in if you have any information on this or anything else on the site.
Until next time,
Tom
Hey Mr Joad, of course I’ve heard of the term ‘not a prayer’ or ‘you haven’t got a prayer’ – and used it. It’s right up there with ‘a snowball’s chance in hell’. I guess it’s just a shortened version of a stated opinion that “not even a prayer will help you with this one, mate”. Best I can do after only one coffee….
Tom, Jonesing indeed relates more to addiction and the old slang for heroin. This theory might also be reinforced by the drug induced Jim Jones mass suicide of 1978.
The phrase has evolved and I should also add that we Americans, with our silly us of words like “New Year’” and “on Christmas”, also use Jonesing as a current state of mind. For example: “I’m jonesing right now”. To say, “I’m tripping out”. But most often it is followed by “for”, as you cited above, and thus indicates a craving or desire for something But it doesn’t have to be drugs. “I’m Jonesing to read the next issue of Together, for a bad example.
Hi Tony,
Yes, I guessed it was something like that, but I’m always irritated when I can’t find *any* corroboration written down somewhere. Mrs Joad already thinks I make a lot of this stuff up!
Hello Kimberley, welcome to Word du Jour
Thanks for expanding on the “jonesing” theory. I hadn’t even considered the Jonestown Massacre as a likely suspect, although it does fit.
So jonesing is also tripping out now as well? I suppose it’s logical. I do wish you Americans would slow down. It seems like every other day there’s yet another expression I haven’t heard of. Still, I suppose it keeps me off the streets.