crotchety

If you’re crotchety, you’re a bit cross and fed-up. Not full on angry, but definitely somewhere in the middle of the pissed-off scale.

‘Crotchety’ comes from an Old French word, ‘crochet’, which dates back to around the 12th century, and meant ‘a little hook’. That in turn comes from the Latin word ‘cruciculus’, which is a diminutive (i.e. a word that conveys a smaller or lesser version of something) of ‘crux’, meaning ‘cross’. (I don’t know why the smaller version is much longer and more complicated than the short version, sorry.)

My whole life, I’ve had an irrational fear of getting a fish-hook caught in my cheek.

Around the 16th century, we stuck a ‘t’ in ‘crochet’ to create ‘crotchet’ in English, which still meant ‘small hook’. And that’s where we get ‘crotchety’ from – probably due to the idea that crotchety people’s minds get ‘hooked’ on small, trivial annoyances. This association didn’t become common until the early 19th century (maybe people were just super-chilled before then) which is when we get the first recorded use of ‘crotchety’ in print. According to the OED, the earliest known use was in 1847, in some writing by Benjamin Disraeli, UK PM and novelist.

The musical crotchet (i.e. a quarter note in British English) also shares the same linguistic root – this is due to the hook-like symbols used in early musical notation. And of course, the name of the craft of ‘crochet’ comes from the same place as it involves a little hook (one which I cannot master, despite trying really hard. The last time I tried, I ended up throwing it across the room, where it landed in the dog’s water bowl.).

I got extremely crotchety with ChatGPT while writing this article, as it contradicted itself four times while I was trying to get the facts straight on this etymology. So the moral of this crotchety story is, don’t rely on ChatGPT to write factually accurate articles – hire me to do that instead.

(It did then help me with a particularly complicated knitting pattern though, so we’re friends again now. Not a crochet pattern though, sadly, because I CAN’T DO THAT.)

mooch

‘Mooch’ has two different meanings depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on. In British English ‘mooching’ is pretty relaxed – it means to wander or loiter aimlessly, often with no particular purpose in mind. We often have a mooch round the shops, for example. Across the pond, however, ‘mooching’ is a bit more sinister. In American English, it refers to someone who takes from others without giving anything in return, AKA a freeloader or sponger. (We do use it in this way over here as well, e.g. ‘he’s mooching off his friends’, although probably not as often...?)

A man, mooching

Whether you’re British or American, ‘mooch’ has been about since the mid-nineteenth century. It’s believed to originate from the Middle English word ‘mocchen’, which meant ‘to loiter or slink about’. This itself likely comes from an Old French word ‘muchier’ or ‘muscher’, meaning ‘to hide or lurk’. There’s also a possible influence from a Dutch word ‘mutsen’, which means ‘to sulk’ or ‘to dawdle’.

I asked ChatGPT why this change happened and it said that people in America have ‘a strong emphasis on self-sufficiency and individual responsibility’ which we Brits don’t. RUDE. So now AI is not only sexist (see previous word of the week, misanthrope), but also xenophobic. That bodes well for the future.