FOOT FEATURES

You must keep on your toes if you don't want to be caught flat-footed! In this case flat-footed does not refer to fallen arches but rather to the condition of a race horse's feet. If all four are on the ground (standing instead of prancing) when the gate rises, the horse will get a slower start. If you are caught flat-footed you may be forced to cool your heels while waiting for another opportunity. In the seventeenth century  "to cool your heels" replaced an earlier phrase, "to cool your hoofs", a reference to a horse that takes advantage of a break by lying down. "To kick up your heels" on the other hand, refers to a horse frisking about in the pasture after a hard day's work.

An inexperienced person is known as a tenderfoot which once again originally referred to horses. In the seventeenth century an unworked horse was called tenderfooted. The first application to a person was around 1850 and was popularized by miners in the California gold rush.

While on the subject of horses a herd of horses can also be called a drove, and a group of horses racing is called a field of horses. A group of young colts are sometimes called a race, rag or rake of colts. A herd of mules can be called a burden or barren. Donkeys (or asses) also come in droves.

Neatsfoot oil used to be applied to shoes, so a guess at its origin might be that it is an oil to keep one's shoes or feet neat. Not so. Neat formerly meant oxen. The lower legs including the foot bones but not the hooves of oxen and cattle are still used to make neatsfoot oil. An interesting discussion of making a similar product from elk bones can be found at  https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/paleoplanet69529/self-made-deer-foot-oil-t22162.html.

Moving from feet to hooves brings us to a hoofer or a dancer like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. We apply the term paws (as in "dirty paws") to hands, probably because animals with paws can use their feet more like our hands than hoofed animals. Similarly we use the term hooves for feet. People who make noise with their feet like tap dancers are known as hoofers. We also say that we have to hoof it when we have to walk someplace from the same root word.

Although not as well represented in slang as the feet of livestock, cats' feet deserve some mention. To pussyfoot around a subject means to carefully avoid answering it directly. I've never seen my cats mincing around anything except maybe once when one flushed out a combative mouse, but presumably the fastidious nature of cats led to this expression. To be made a cat's paw means to be used for the advantage of another. According to a story from the 1500's Pope Julius II owned a monkey and several cats. One day the monkey was observed trying to get a chestnut out of the fire. After burning his fingers he grabbed a nearby cat, hauled it over to the fire and used its leg to rake the nut out of the fire. I find this an implausible story since any cat I know would protest violently such ill usage. If the monkey were small like a Capuchin the cat could easily overpower it. If it were an ape, say a baboon, the cat would surely scratch it badly since declawing was not in vogue at the time. A chestnut is hardly worth bloodshed. But slang doesn't depend upon veracity for usage, just repetition.

My foot itches. Does that mean it's time for a trip? I hope so!

WATCH OUT FOR WOLVES!

When our son William was four, he delighted in scaring us with false alarms. I told him about the shepherd boy who cried "Wolf! Wolf!" for the fun of watching the villagers scramble. When they came to help him he just laughed at them. He tried it a couple of more times and each time the villagers grew angrier. Finally they just ignored him so that when a real wolf attacked his flock they didn't come to help him and he lost most of the flock (he probably lost his job because the sheep belonged to all of the villagers!). After telling William the story on a couple of different occasions, I asked him what the story meant. He thought a minute, then answered, "You gotta watch out for wolves!"

While not precisely what I was trying to impress upon him, he does have a point, particularly if the wolf is in sheep's clothing. This is another saying that dates back about 2500 years to Aesop who may or may not have been a Greek slave who may have died by being thrown from a cliff (details of his life are unclear, but his stories are still beloved by many). In this fable a wolf gained entry into a flock of sheep by wrapping himself in a sheepskin.* By pretending to be harmless he was able to devour several unsuspecting lambs before the rest caught on. Aesop's fables were well known in the early western civilizations, and this fable was probably the source of the passage in Matthew 7:15: "Watch out for false prophets; they come to you looking like sheep on the outside, but they are really like wild wolves on the inside."

If someone has fallen on hard times we say he must fight to keep the wolf from his door. The wolf is a feast-or-famine predator. It wolfs food down until its belly is bulging, but when the carcass is gone it usually spends many lean days hunting. In earlier days people didn't often see the wolf in its peaceable, digestive state, but rather when hunger drove it into towns and villages. The wolf became a symbol for fierce hunger and want. In 1457 John Harding wrote in his Chronicle, "Endow him now with noble sapience by which he may the wolf ward off from the gate."
The Latin word for wolf is lupus.  In medical circles lupus (the full name is systemic lupus erythematosis) is an autoimmune disease. An often-occurring symptom is a butterfly-shaped rash across the face, sometimes caused by exposure to the sun - hence perhaps the early belief in werewolves. The origin of the term for the disease may be that it resembles another condition lupus vulgaris or facial tuberculosis which is typified by ragged lesions which resemble the bite of a wolf.   










The state flower of Texas is the bluebonnet, a member of the pea family. The bluebonnet is a type of lupine, a word possibly from the Latin root lupis. They are pretty pink, white, purple or blue flowers that someone long ago called a wolf pea. Does the flower somehow resemble a wolf's nose?  It has been argued that the root word is the Greek lupe, which means grief because the seeds are very bitter and eaten only in time of famine.

The famous French museum the Louvre means castle on the wolf field and the lyceum, the forum where Aristotle lectured, was named for the temple of Apollo next to it, the Lukeion, which meant wolf-killer. "Wolfgang" (as in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) means way of the wolf. Wolfe Tone was a famous Irish revolutionary in the late 18th century. The British should also have watched out for Wolfes!

*Ewes identify their own lamb or lambs by odor, so if a lamb is stillborn and the ewe is otherwise healthy, a shepherd can quickly put the skin of the dead lamb on a live lamb and the ewe will often accept it as her own.

SNAKES ALIVE!

Reptiles and amphibians have never been as popular for pets as their furrier cousins. They aren't very popular as farm animals either. The only reptiles that I know of that are raised on farms for food are alligators in Florida and California. There are no true "working" reptiles or amphibians, although pythons are sometimes kept near West African homes to keep down the rodents, and black snakes are often allowed to live near corn cribs in the U.S. But popularity aside, for exotic impact reptiles can't be beaten!

The word, reptile, is a derivation of the Latin word, repere. Repere means to creep, which one does if one has very short legs like most reptiles. The major exception to short legs are the serpents. Serpere means to glide in Latin, which is what one does if one's short legs have become completely internalized or non-existent. A snake isn't all tail, incidentally: the cloaca or excretory opening marks where the tail begins.

Eden had an important snake in the grass, but we owe this expression to the Roman poet Virgil (70 - 19 B.C.), who presumably had never heard of Eden. Latet anquis in herba found its way into a 13th century political song in England, and finally made it into the English language in 1548: "But the serpent lurked under the grass, and under sugared speech was hidden pestiferous poison." (Edward Hall's Chronicles). The French have the snake under a rock: guelgue anguille sous roche.

"Deaf as an adder" comes not from Eden but from the Old Testament: "The wicked ... go astray ... Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear." (Psalms 58:3-4). The "her" refers to the adder. In Biblical times it was commonly believed certain snakes could protect themselves from snake charmers by sticking their tails in their ears and pressing the other against the ground. It was probably considered female at the time because many cultures associate snakes with fertility. Another possibility is that they were considered seductresses.

A saying that was around even earlier than grass snakes and deaf adders was "to nourish a viper in ones bosom." Aesop around 600 B.C. wrote a fable about a farmer who found a frozen snake. He felt sorry for it and put it inside his shirt to warm it up. As soon as it revived it bit and killed him (the snake probably refroze in the inclement weather). According to Aesop, the moral of that story is "The greatest benefits will not bind the ungrateful." A secondary moral, considering what probably happened to the snake, is "Don't bit the hand that feeds you!" I once put a garter snake in a box in the garage to take to my son's kindergarten class the next day. It got quite chilly that night, and the little snake was sluggish the next morning. When I held it to show the group of children, it warmed up and was very grumpy. It struck at but didn't bite one of the five-year-old's - very odd behavior for a garter snake!

"Snake juice" is Australian slang for whiskey. Imbibing snake juice probably made one snakey, which means bad tempered (like my garter snake!). You also might see snakes, which was a popular accusation around 1900 for people with delirium tremens.

The closest thing to a complimentary saying about snakes is "snake eyes", which is a descriptive throw of one pips on each of two dice. Snakes deserve better. They actually do quite a bit of good by keeping down the rodent and insect populations. Some snakes even keep down other more harmful snake populations. In fact the closest thing to a compliment that I could find about any other reptile was "lounge lizard", which is defined by Partridge (Smaller Slang Dictionary) as "a sleek adventurer frequenting lounges in the expectation of women, their money and caresses". Some people might consider that a compliment. It was first used in the United States in about 1925, but became obsolete in the 1960's.

A chameleon is a small lizard. Its name comes from Greek and means "dwarfed lion". Maybe they were fiercer back then! The Greeks also believed these little animals could live on air for long periods of time. Perhaps that is because they have very long, fast, accurate tongues that dart out and back quickly with their prey attached, too fast for an observer to see it eating.

"Polliwog" is another interesting name, but more fitting to the creature who bears it. Five hundred years ago the name was polwygle or poll, head, plus wygle or wiggle making it wigglyhead. Another name for the larval stage of frogs and toads is tadpole. The derivation is similar: tadde ("toad") and poll ("head"). 

A pollywog turns into a frog and if it lives long enough it may become the biggest frog in the puddle or pond. A person described as such is the most important person in a very small spot, but like his namesake usually makes a lot of noise advertising his presence. This expression has been around about 100 years. A derogatory term for Frenchmen is froggies, not because of their voices but rather that they are reputed to eat frogs (British sailors are sometimes called limeys because they used to eat limes when sailing to prevent scurvy). To give someone a frog's march is to carry out a drunken person face downward by four people, usually to jail. Such a person may be described as "drunk as a newt". Newts, being amphibians, can absorb water through their skins, which might have led to the expression. On the other hand it could be its sleek skin made it look tight, which is another slang term for drunk.

A close relative of the frog is the toad. From toads that often live in damp environs where mushrooms also grow, we get the term "toadstool", which was once "toad's hat", and padlocks. Toads were called pads in fifteenth century England and early padlocks probably reminded someone of toads.

I've come to the end of my first blog post. In medieval times, the crocodile was reputed to shed tears while devouring its victim, so crocodile tears refers to hypocritical grief. Is anyone weeping?