Alphabet Soup №1
The English language is a soup of ever-evolving vocabulary, idioms, and meanings. I’ve decided to start keeping ongoing notes on the idiosyncrasies of the language that I love to explore.
Alphabet Soup
Definition: “ ‘incomprehensible or confusing language, typically containing many abbreviations or symbols’. ORIGIN: early 20th cent.: alluding to a kind of clear soup containing pasta in the shapes of letters.”

“Chip on one’s shoulder”
When I first heard this expression as a kid, I thought it might literally refer to a form of bullying in which fat people were forced to walk around with potato chips on their shoulders as a mark of shame.
The expression is actually from 1750’s English dockyards when aggrieved ship-builders carried home leftover chopped lumber (chips) as a form of protest against their management. Hence its current meaning, “To have a chip on one’s shoulder refers to the act of holding a grudge or grievance that readily provokes disputation” and not “the act of being forced to carry a potato chip on one’s shoulder until one becomes annoyed enough to lash out”.

‘Decadent’ is not actually very positive
Whenever I come across the word“decadent”, it tends to be followed by words like “chocolate”, so I automatically assume it’s being used to describe something delicious and “good”.

Turns out as an adjective it means “characterized by or reflecting a state of moral or cultural decline”, rooted in “medieval Latin decadentia ; related to decay”.
Next time a “decadent chocolate cake” catches my eye on a menu, I might be more guilty than enthusiastic.
Flagship
“Flagship” products and lines are announced all the time in marketing-speak, but the original term was used less generously.
To call something a flagship in old nautical terms was a big deal; the flagship was “the ship that carries the commander of a fleet and flies the commander’s flag”.

Motherlode
This word baffled me for two reasons when I was younger.
One, I was confused by the usage of “mother”. At the time, I thought the similar word “motherfucker” was an insult that implied the recipient was fucking their own mother. It turns out that is not actually the basis of the word, though that misconception was plausible enough for Slate.com to acknowledge it in its article on the usages of this word. The “mother” part of both “motherlode”, “motherfucker” , and other similar words like “mothership” and “mother of all evil”, just means something is the principal or major thing in a group. “The major fucker”, if you will.
Two, I at first heard “load” and not “lode”. But “lode” means deposits, and I learned that “motherlode” is a mining term that means “ a principal vein of an ore or mineral”.

Octopi? Octopuses? … Octopedes?
Let’s acknowledge up front that you have to be a word nerd or an insufferable pedant (or both) to care about this question. But, theoretically, if one did care… what would be the correct way to pluralize ‘octopus’?
I used to be the pain-in-the-ass kid that would say: “actually, it’s octopi”. The word sounded exotic and secretly correct.
Alas, “octopi” has no etymological basis and came about due to a mixup between Latin- and Greek-rooted words, and so “octopuses” is actually technically correct. That said, “octopi” is “old enough and common enough to be considered an accepted variant.”
Ten-year-old pedantic me can breathe a sigh of relief.
Pass Muster
“To pass muster” (sometimes misheard as “to pass mustard”) means “to be accepted as adequate or satisfactory” and hearkens back to 1570's militaries: “From pass (‘to undergo successfully’) + muster (‘military assemblage or review’)”.
However, the similar expression “cut the mustard” means “to suffice; to be good enough”, which is basically the same meaning. It remains unclear whether this is a misquoting bastardization of “pass muster”, or if it refers to something that has a strong enough taste to match the taste of mustard.
Pinch Hitter
I once suspected that the terms push hitters, pull hitters, and pinch hitters were some series of far-out metaphors only baseball geeks understood.
I eventually learned that the former two refer to the side of the field a batter hits the ball, based on the mechanics of the swing. The latter doesn’t refer to a pinch-like swing (what would that be?) but is a separate term to refer to a relief hitter, someone you call when you’re in a pinch (a tight spot).
Restive and restful are antonyms, apparently
Restive: “unable to keep still or silent and becoming increasingly difficult to control, especially because of impatience, dissatisfaction, or boredom”.
Restful: “ having a quiet and soothing quality”.
So, if someone’s getting restive and antsy, they might just need a restful break to relax.
Reticulated pythons, if able to speak, might also be articulate
“Reticulated” is defined as “ constructed, arranged, or marked like a net or network”. Hence, the patterning on both reticulated architecture and reticulated pythons.


“Articulate”, meanwhile, makes me mostly think of an articulate speaker, but can also mean in a more literal sense, “having joints or jointed segments”. Both meanings convey agility and effectiveness. Hence, both “an articulate speaker” and “an articulated crane”:

Shellacking
“Shellacking” can mean “to varnish with shellac” (based on the resin secreted by the lac insect which was harvested to make varnish), or, mostly in North America, to mean “defeat or beat decisively”.
Is thrashing someone really akin to applying a fine varnish? I don’t see the connection.
Turns out, everyone from BBC to NPR has had the same question, and nobody can find a definitive answer.

Supercilious
Whenever I hear the word “supercilious” (which to be clear, is pretty rare), I imagine a super-silly Roman centurion called “Super Cilius”, à la Biggus Dickus from “Life of Brian”.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever be uncouple the word from that vivid image, but “supercilious” actually means “ behaving or looking as though one thinks one is superior to others”, “from Latin superciliosus ‘haughty,’ from supercilium ‘eyebrow’.”
I wonder if the Latin expression for “looking down one’s nose at someone” was “looking down one’s eyebrows at someone”?
Suspension of (dis)belief?
When I’m watching an over-the-top action movie, am I suspending my beliefs in the laws of physics, or am I suspending my disbelief that something like that could actually happen?
The expression is “suspension of disbelief”, and is defined as “to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment”.
Honestly I still get this one confused. And usually, after I use it wrong people give me a weird look… like they can’t believe I made that mistake, or like they’re in disbelief.

Skin and plant grafts + political graft
You can graft skin from one patient onto a burn victim, and you can graft a branch from one peach tree onto the trunk of another peach tree so that it will eventually grow into a single variegated tree. But “graft” also refers to “practices, especially bribery, used to secure illicit gains in politics or business; corruption”.
In all examples, something is remove from one location and used somewhere else where it was not originally intended. It could mean a skin transplant, a peach branch, or when funds intended for public use are intentionally misdirected to benefit private interests.

Rack vs. wrack (in the context of one’s brains)
I’ve always been uncertain about the correct spelling of “(w)racking my brains”, which under either spelling is defined as “make a great effort to think of or remember something”.
“Wrack”, as in the archaic term “wrack and ruin”, can be used as a verb that means “to wreck”, specifically when talking about ships. “Rack” can mean “cause extreme physical or mental pain to; subject to extreme stress”, as in the rack device used in things like the Spanish Inquisition.
So, as I write this section, am I racking my brain as if by putting it in a medieval torture implement, or am I wracking my brain as would happen to it in a shipwreck?
Though there are vocal proponents on both sides, this is a rare easy case where it’s generally accepted to use either variant.
Unleashed and Unbridled
“Unleashed” and “unbridled” are both often used figuratively to describe relatively benign things (“unbridled enthusiasm”, or “unleashed curls” as below), but they’re literally based in some pretty powerful imagery of dogs and horses released from their restraints.

That’s all the soup I can eat for now. Until next time.
