WORDNOOK
By the editors of Merriam-Webster
NOUNS VS. VERBS Dear Editor, My wife and I know that the past tense of widow is widowed. We also know that a man who has lost his wife is a widower. But what is the past tense of widower? B. E. Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey Widower doesn’t have a past tense because it is only used as a noun, not as a verb. Widow can take verb endings because, in addition to its noun senses, it has a verb sense meaning “to make a widow or widower of.” Therefore, widow can be applied to a surviving spouse of either sex. The past tense used to describe a man who has become a widower would therefore be widowed, as in “He was widowed several years ago by an automobile accident.”
THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA Dear Editor, When my dad used to get angry or irritated with something, he would say, “That really gets my goat.” I never
understood this expression. What do goats have to do with it, anyway? J. S. Portland, Maine The phrase get one’s goat originated in American slang in the early 20th century. Exactly how it came to be isn’t known. Some theorists have suggested a connection to an older French phrase, prendre la chevre, which translates literally as to take the goat. The difficulty with this explanation is that the French phrase is actually used to mean “to take offense,” and it’s not at all clear how this French idiom might have been adopted with an altered meaning by the purveyors of American slang. Another theory ties get one’s goat to the practice of placing a goat in a stable to exert a calming influence on high-strung racehorses. The idea is that unscrupulous gamblers would make off with the goat before a big race, getting the goat of the horse’s owner and causing the horse to run poorly. Unfortunately, this appealing explanation is not supported by hard evidence. In fact,
no connection at all to the world of horses is suggested by the earliest examples of get one’s goat, which include this passage from Pitching in a Pinch (1912), a memoir by baseball player Christy Mathewson: “Lobert . . . stopped at third with a mocking smile on his face which would have gotten the late Job’s goat.”
BIRDS OF A FEATHER Dear Editor, I read crime novels and sometimes see the term stool pigeon used to mean “an informer.” It is often shortened to stool or stoolie. Can you tell me where the term stool pigeon comes from? R. F. Santa Fe, New Mexico Now used to refer to someone who informs on wrongdoers, stool pigeon is believed to have originated with a practice used in hunting. In early years, when hunters were on the lookout for pigeons as targets, they would often capture one pigeon and then tie the bird to a stool so that it could not move. (The stool
in this case most likely refers to a tree stump, not a piece of furniture.) When the bird struggled in its attempts to free itself, it would attract several more of its own kind, thereby giving the hunter more to shoot or trap. The live bird served as a decoy that would lure its fellow pigeons to their own demise. Stool pigeon acquired the figurative sense that we recognize today in the early 19th century. Playing on the notion of bringing down one’s fellow man, now the phrase can refer to a person (such as a member of a crime syndicate) who reports his or her fellow criminals to the authorities, or to a person who is sent by police to act as a spy within a group of criminals and to report back useful information. The shortened form stool first appeared around the turn of the 20th century, with stoolie following shortly after.
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