heckle

Today, I think probably everyone thinks heckling is a thing that happens to people on stage, mostly comedians. But it has genuinely surprising origins. And they involve… sheep. Scottish sheep, to be precise.

In the early 14th century, ‘heckle’ (then spelled ‘hechel’) was a noun that referred to a comb for flax or hemp. It came into English from the Middle Dutch ‘hekelen’, which itself is from a root meaning ‘hook’ or ‘tooth’, a nod to the rows of sharp teeth on the combs. The verb followed soon after around 1350, meaning to comb out fibres before spinning them into linen.

Although flax was the main thing being heckled at this point, the same process of combing applied to wool, which is where my sheep come in. Farmers and spinners would literally heckle wool fibres into shape before weaving them into cloth.

So how did it go from combing to shouting at gigs? Come with me to 18th-century Dundee. This was the local centre of the wool trade and therefore full of hecklers, skilled workers employed to comb out wool. These hecklers had a reputation for radical politics, forming themselves into what we’d call a union today, and bargaining for better salaries and perks (mainly booze, apparently). At public meetings they’d bombard politicians with awkward questions, ‘combing through’ their arguments just like they did with those tangled fibres. And by the 1790s, ‘to heckle’ had also come to mean challenging or interrupting a speaker. Fast forward to the 19th century, and the textile sense of ‘heckle’ had pretty much faded away completely.

There you go. From pulling fibres apart to pulling people on stage apart in less than 500 years.

winnow

If you’re one of the many (including me) people who’ve read the adult fairy-tale series (and by ‘adult fairy-tale’ I mean dirty, dirty soft porn) ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’ by Sarah J Maas, you’ll be very familiar with the verb ‘to winnow’. It’s not filthy, sorry. In the books, winnowing is the ability to transport yourself to a different location using magic. Only some of the Fae in the series can do it, as it takes lots of concentration and strength.

Winnow is a real word, although it doesn’t have anything to do with teleportation. If one of us non-Fae folk winnows, it’s much more mundane, I’m afraid – it means we’re separating grain from chaff using a current of air. That’s a fancy way of saying that you chuck it in the air and let the wind do the hard work, blowing away the lighter chaff while the heavier grain falls back down.

Figuratively, ‘winnow’ can also mean to separate the valuable or desirable part of something from the crap bit, or to sift through and choose stuff that’s useful or valuable. So it’s basically a much quicker way of saying ‘separate the wheat from the chaff’.

‘Winnow’ has its origins in Old English and Old High German. The Old English verb ‘windwian’ meant ‘to fan’ or ‘to blow’. That’s related to the Old High German word ‘winnan’, which means the same. And that word has roots in Proto-Germanic and ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *wē- or *weh- which means ‘to blow, to move air’. So it’s actually a pretty good verb for a fictional process that involves moving yourself through the air really fast.

PS I realise I sounded a bit snobby when I referred to ACOTAR as ‘dirty, dirty soft porn’. I didn’t mean to – I actually really enjoyed all of them, and leant them to both my mum and my sister (is that weird?). I’m not alone either. The series has sold over 13 million copies, is a New York Times bestseller and has been optioned for a TV series adaptation. (They are super filthy though – especially ‘A Court of Silver Flames’. So if you decide to read them, don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Apparently this is a ‘book trailer’. I didn’t know this is a thing, but I’m here for it.

bellwether

A bellwether is ‘an indicator of trends’. Here’s a very egotistical (and patently untrue) example:

‘Emma’s family and friends often look to her as a bellwether of fashion.’

Bellwether can also mean ‘one that takes the lead or initiative’, which is also not true of my fashion sense.

Nowadays you’re most likely to see the word ‘bellwether’ in political or economic commentary. Here’s an actual example from the Washington Post:

‘Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain and considered a bellwether for the industry, is just the latest to shake up its print offerings.’

So what do trendsetters have to do with bells or, indeed, wethers? Well, to answer that, please come with me to… a sheep farm.

All flocks of sheep have a leader. And shepherds and farmers have traditionally hung a, you’ve guessed it, bell around the top sheep’s neck. A ‘wether’ is a word for a male sheep (nowadays the term specifically means a castrated male sheep) – so the leading sheep is called a ‘bellwether’.

This term for the sheep prime minister has been around since the 15th century. And over time we started to use it to refer to anyone who’s the leader of the pack (or flock), who takes initiative or who establishes trends that are then taken up by others.

If you’re wondering how the sheep choose their leader, they either do that themselves, by letting the most dominant one take the lead, or the farmer does it for them. Why does the farmer want to rig the sheep election? Well, they might do this because one sheep is particularly good at navigating obstacles or familiar with the terrain, and can therefore keep the rest of the sheep on the straight and narrow. Who knew? (Well, all the sheep farmers, obviously.)