Humans have long been fascinated by mythical figures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and even Santa Claus. If you’re familiar with the phrase “nervous Nellie,” you may wonder if there’s truth to Nellie’s existence as well. Given there have been tens of thousands of Nellies throughout history, odds are any number of them struggled with anxiety. But was there one particular Nellie who was so apprehensive that she served as inspiration for this now-common phrase? The short answer is yes and no: The phrase was coined for a specific person, but their name wasn’t Nellie.
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The term “nervous Nellie,” which Oxford English Dictionary defines as “an overly timid, cautious, or fearful person,” dates back to the 1920s. When it was coined, it had nothing to do with a real “Nellie”; rather, it was a moniker given to Frank B. Kellogg, a former U.S. senator and secretary of state under President Calvin Coolidge. Kellogg was known for using extreme caution when making decisions, and in the early 1920s, several newspaper articles described him as a “nervous Nelly” or “Nellie.” The unfortunate nickname became commonly used by those he worked with: A 1925 piece in the New York Herald Tribune described how Kellogg “was labeled ‘nervous Nellie’ by those who were irritated at his maneuvering during the League of Nations flight.” So it was a combination of internal trepidation and his anxious physical tics that earned Kellogg this unique sobriquet.
But why “Nellie,” out of all the possible names? “Nellie” was indeed a popular name at the time — it was in the top 100 U.S. girl names from the 19th century until 1925. People also love their alliteration, and the prevailing theory is that Nellie probably seemed like a perfect verbal pairing for “nervous.” Thus, the phrase entered the common lexicon, and before long, “nervous Nellie” was used to describe anyone exhibiting timidity and caution.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
How Did Real Languages Influence J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation of Elvish?
If you’re a fan of “The Lord of the Rings,” you know many dialects of Elvish play a part in creating the rich fantasy world. Author J.R.R. Tolkien was inspired by several real-world languages to create new, complete languages.
From Klingon to Dothraki and whatever dialect “bazinga” comes from, popular culture has given us entirely new words and languages that didn’t exist before the 20th century. Among the more fascinating and complex examples are the Elvish languages, which were developed by fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. To create the language spoken by the Elves of Middle-earth, Tolkien drew inspiration from real languages he studied and admired, including Finnish and Welsh. While entire treatises can be written about Tolkien’s genius, let’s take a quick look at some of the inspiration for the Elvish languages.
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The Elvish language family contains a variety of dialects, the two most popular being Quenya, the language of the “High Elves” used primarily for poetry and ceremony, and Sindarin, which is more commonly spoken. There are many other dialects — including Telerin, Noldorin, Silvan, Avarin, Vanyarin, and Valarin, each of which serves a specific purpose in the LOTRuniverse — as well as the writing systems Tengwar and Cirth.
Having taught English language and literature classes at the University of Leeds and Oxford, focusing on Old and Middle English, Tolkien had the academic chops for this work. He also worked for the Oxford English Dictionary for a time. But that doesn’t mean the language construction was fast or easy. The author began creating Elvish long before he published The Hobbit in 1937 and the Lord of the Rings series in 1954 and 1955. In 1914, he penned The Story of Kullervo, a tale that was heavily inspired by the Finnish mythological poetry collection Kalevala. According to the BBC, Tolkien “liked the long vowel sounds of Finnish and the umlaut accents.” He borrowed many Finnish grammatical concepts and words while developing the Quenya dialect. They’re not identical, but Quenya avoids large clusters of consonants and relies heavily on frequent vowel usage, which are also features of Finnish.
Sindarin, meanwhile, was more directly inspired by Welsh. The Guardian notes that Tolkien enjoyed Welsh for its sound, citing an essay in which he said that Welsh “pierced [his] linguistic heart.” Both Welsh and the created Sindarin dialect use consonant changes to express grammar, demonstrating Tolkien’s influence. This is just the tip of the iceberg for Tolkien’s linguistic creations, of course — you could teach entire academic courses about the creation of Elvish (and they exist!). But if you listen to Elvish and Finnish or Welsh side by side, you’ll notice some striking similarities.
Featured image credit: Magnus Binnerstam/ Shutterstock
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
Going on a big night out is sometimes described as “painting the town red,” but the origins of this phase might have been more literal. When is it appropriate to use this expression?
Unless you’re a professional painter who was hired to create a giant mural of Elmo (let me know how to get that job!), the expression “paint the town red” is figurative. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the phrase means “to enjoy oneself flamboyantly” or “to go on a boisterous or exuberant spree.” But why do we use the verb “paint” for this? And for that matter, why red instead of blue, neon green, or a glittery silver?
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Legend has it that “paint the town red” was inspired by an 1837 event that took place in the English town of Melton Mowbray. The story goes that the Marquis of Waterford — who was a noted hooligan — got a little too rowdy with his friends and splattered red paint all over several buildings throughout the town. While it certainly seems like a plausible tale, the etymological origin for the phrase is difficult to confirm.
While it certainly seems like a plausible tale, it’s difficult to confirm as the etymological origin for the phrase. “Paint the town red” didn’t appear in print until nearly five decades later — the March 10, 1882, issue of Stanford, Kentucky’s Semi-Weekly Interior Journal includes the sentence, “He gets on a high old drunk with a doubtful man, and they paint the town red together,” in an article about bribing elected officials. In 1883, TheNew York Times used the phrase in a political context: “Mr. James Hennessy offered a resolution that the entire body proceed forthwith to Newark and get drunk… to ‘paint the town red.’” Many of the early uses appear to be political in nature and to refer specifically to drunkenness.
Over time, the phrase came to be less inherently associated with politics and booze. Now “painting the town red” is used to describe any form of unbridled revelry, whether real paint is involved or not.
Featured image credit: Poravute Siriphiroon/ Shutterstock
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
Singing your A,B,C’s is one of the first lessons learned in pre-school, but this 26-letter song couldn’t have been solidified until the final letter was added in the 17th century — and it wasn’t “Z.”
Some late-stage additions can really tie things together in an unexpected yet positive way. For example, the zany Mork character appeared in a later-season episode of Happy Days, and was so popular that he got his own Mork & Mindy spin-off. It’s hard to imagine Robin Williams’ comedy legacy without Mork’s distinctive “Na-nu na-nu” greeting. As another late-stage heavy hitter, we have the letter “J,” which was the final letter added to the Latin alphabet (the standard 26-letter alphabet used by most modern Western languages). It was missing a special something until the final letter filled the linguistic void in the early 17th century.
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Origins of the Latin Alphabet
The modern Latin alphabet evolved from a combination of Anglo-Saxon runes and the ancient Latin script. In the fifth century, the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the British Isles and brought with them an alphabet that formed the basis for the Old English language. Later, in the seventh century, the Latin script, which is more reminiscent of the alphabet we use today, was introduced throughout the region,.
Latin and Old English were used concurrently for several centuries until the latter evolved into Middle English circa the early 11th century. Around this time, a hybrid alphabet emerged, consisting of 23 of the standard letters we still use today, plus three runic symbols to represent the sounds “th,” “wy,” and “eth.” The runic symbols eventually fell out of use, and the letters “U” and “W” were added to the Latin alphabet in the Middle Ages. Finally, in the 1600s, the 26th and final letter was added: “J.”
How “I” Begat “J”
In ancient Roman numerals, swash symbols were used to denote the end of numeral sequences — the number 13, for example, sometimes appeared in text as “XIIJ” instead of “XIII.” But this “J” shape was solely for visual purposes, as there was no distinct “J” sound.
During the Middle Ages, the English language slowly incorporated sounds that were more similar to the modern “J” sound. People who wrote in classical Latin often used the letter “I” as both a vowel and a consonant, the latter of which was pronounced with a “Y” sound. Around the 14th century, the symbol of a “J” began appearing in text to specifically denote the consonant “I” that sounded like a “Y.” And throughout the late 15th and early 16th centuries, many scholars proposed the idea of formally adding “J” to the alphabet for this explicit purpose.
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“J” Achieves Recognition
“J” was still rarely used by William Shakespeare’s time (1564-1616). In fact, first-edition copies of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet from 1597 were titled Romeo and Iuliet. What’s more, the 1611 edition of the King James Bible featured “Iesus” (Jesus) and “Ioseph” (Joseph). At the time, it wasn’t called “the King James Version” yet, just “the Holy Bible,” so the cover or title page didn’t include a “J.”
In 1629, the Cambridge edition of the King James Bible became the first modern English text to print “J” as its own unique letter. This ushered in a new era of English printers using the letter “J,” which only became more popular with writers in the following decades. By the start of the 18th century, “J” had become a full-fledged member of the standard Latin alphabet.
For a brief period of time, “J” wasn’t actually the last addition to the Latin alphabet. The “&” symbol, now known as an “ampersand,” was a curious and temporary case, as it was briefly taught as the 27th letter. The symbol dates back to the first century CE and is used in place of the word “and.” It was taught as a letter of the alphabet beginning around 1835, primarily in England, where “&” appeared in alphabet books and was taught in schools. However, the symbol’s time as a member of the Latin alphabet was brief, and it was largely removed from books as well as the English school curriculum before the end of the 19th century. Since then, the standard Latin alphabet has remained at 26 letters.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
Today, the idiom “under the weather” describes a mild, temporary illness, but a few centuries ago, seasick sailors used it more literally to describe their weary state on the high seas.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “curse like a sailor,” but what about using their idioms? Not all nautical lingo is crude. Case in point: “under the weather.” This polite expression discreetly conveys minor discomfort or a general sense of malaise, as in, “I called in sick today. I’m feeling under the weather.”
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Technically, we could all be “under the weather” — whether it’s clear skies or thunderstorms overhead — but the idiom leans into a negative interpretation from the late 18th century about seasick sailors facing their ailments on stormy seas.
The idiom’s most widely accepted origin theory is explained in Salty Dog Talk: The Nautical Origins of Everyday Expressions (1983) by seaman-turned-journalist Bill Beavis and marine historian Richard McCloskey. The original phrase was “under the weather bow,” and as a maritime expression, it referred to seasickness due to bad weather. During storms, the ship’s front (the bow) should face the storm to minimize the risk of capsizing. It’s from this practice that the phrase arose, as seasick sailors would head for shelter below deck, placing them, literally, “under the weather bow.”
Eventually, the phrase shifted from literal to figurative usage. One of the earliest idiomatic uses comes from Memoirs of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1808), discussing a mechanical seed-sowing method invented by Jethro Tull: “The drill husbandry is much in vogue again in England; though Tull had been long, as sailors term it — under the weather.” (Yes, the 19th-century agricultural inventor was the inspiration for the name of the rock band.) The farming diary shows that by the early 19th century, the expression had outgrown its nautical roots and blossomed into a versatile turn of phrase.Around the same time, “under the weather” evolved into a euphemism for intoxication, first appearing in the early 19th century. In his 2020 memoir, The Answer Is…, TV host Alex Trebek used the phrase to describe his father’s state after one too many drinks: “[M]y dad had managed to consume a bottle of rye and greeted me at the train station a little under the weather.” So perhaps this phrase isn’t devoid of crude behavior after all. In any case, whether you’re battling the winter sniffles or nursing a holiday hangover, the use of this expression carries on a time-honored piece of maritime history.
Rachel is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer. When she's not writing, you can find her wandering through a museum, exploring a new city, or advocating the importance of the Oxford comma.
Despite their name, they’re not a very spooky problem, but they do plague all dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary includes an 1887 reference calling them “mere coinages due to the blunders of printers or scribes… or blundering editors.” Imagine a manuscript with a typo or misprinted text. An untrained editor or printer may assume that the word was added by the original writer for a reason, and thus will let it slide through. Only after the work is finally published will the mistake become apparent, as the newly printed “ghost word” is accidentally thrust into the collective lexicon.
One of the earliest known examples of a ghost word is “dord,” which showed up in Webster’s New International Dictionary from 1934 to 1939. According to Snopes, an editor mistook the abbreviation “D or d” — meaning “density” — for the single word “dord.” The ghost word spent a few years in the dictionary before it was spotted and finally removed.
Sometimes the ghost word gets adopted by the public and enters the lexicon. That’s exactly how we got the word “syllabus,” which was originally a misprint of the Greek sittybos(meaning “parchment label” or “table of contents”). The mistake went unnoticed during the editing process, and “syllabus” was being used as a new word by the 1650s.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
6 Ways To Improve Your Communication Skills This Year
Whether you have a goal to stay in touch with old friends, or add new words to your vocabulary, we have some easy ways to boost your language and communication skills.
It’s a new year, which means it’s time to set a few lofty resolutions that will likely be forgotten about before the end of January. Look, we understand how hard it is to keep those commitments. Going to the gym every day seems daunting, and eating healthy isn’t always easy — especially on Taco Tuesdays.
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If there’s one resolution worth keeping, though, it’s trying to improve your communication skills. The ability to clearly articulate your thoughts or feelings is essential for healthy relationships and successful collaboration. If you feel like your written and verbal skills could use a bit of a refresh, here are six ways to level up for 2025.
Send Handwritten Thank-You Notes
Thank-you notes are a great way to show your loved ones just how much you appreciate them. You could send a quick note via email, but some of the personal touches may get lost, and the words may fail to convey your true feelings. Handwritten thank-you notes, meanwhile, are an excellent alternative. Writing a note by hand takes time, so you can really ruminate on the positive sentiments you want to convey. Say goodbye to impersonal emails and start to communicate your gratitude on paper.
Use Salutations in Emails
When you do write an email, don’t neglect salutations, which can help set the tone of your message. An opening salutation such as “Dear” or “Greetings” can establish positivity and camaraderie, whereas going straight into the message without any introduction may come off as curt or rude. The same can be said for closing an email — writing “Best regards” or “Thank you for your time” is an easy way to communicate respect.
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Talk Over the Phone
For all its benefits, texting can be impersonal. All of those emojis and acronyms are handy shortcuts but can fall short in expressing a complex sentiment. If you need to talk to someone about something important, pick up the phone and give them a call instead. Having regular phone conversations keeps your communication skills honed in a way that texting doesn’t. While you can let a text sit for hours before responding, phone calls require quick responses to keep you sharp. Phone conversations are also more personal than a text message, so forgo those winky faces and “lols” and start talking over the phone.
Subscribe to Word Daily
If we may offer a suggestion for a sister publication, Word Daily (a word-of-the-day email) is an effective and convenient tool for broadening your vocabulary. If you’re tired of using the same old words in conversation, a (free!) Word Daily subscription is the perfect remedy, delivering a new word right to your email inbox each day. You’ll instantly start to broaden your lexicographical knowledge with fresh terms that make your sentences more interesting. Rather than say that someone is happy, you can describe them as “gemütlich.” Use “derring-do” when talking about an act of heroism. And instead of noting that something is “third to last,” bust out the term “antepenultimate” to wow your friends. Sign up here and you’ll begin to improve your vocabulary in no time.
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Write in a Journal
A daily journal is a powerful tool for articulating and processing your feelings. Putting your thoughts down on paper each day is almost a rehearsal for the real world; the more you can understand your own perspective, the easier it’ll be to grasp the perspectives of other people. A journal also gives you a space to flesh out your thoughts in writing before you weave them into a future conversation with someone else.
Public speaking courses provide a plethora of benefits. Not only do they teach you how to be concise and express your viewpoints in the most effective means possible, but these courses also help you effectively construct arguments that resonate with others. They can even teach you how to analyze a person’s body language while talking — gestures that often say more than words ever could. Finally, a good public speaking course will leave you with more confidence than before, which is a critical skill for leading any conversation.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
Writers love the em dash — you’ll find them scattered liberally through books and articles, pushing commas and colons out of the way. When should you use this special punctuation mark?
“Em Dash” would be the perfect moniker for the female equivalent of Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt (hint for any expectant parents eyeing the Summer Games in 2044). But in writing, an em dash is an advanced-level punctuation mark that can be used in lieu of commas, parentheses, and colons. Visually, em dashes look like long hyphens, and they generally take up the same amount of space as a capital “M” — hence the name (that was an em dash preceding “hence”). The exact meaning of an em dash changes based on how it’s used, but the usual purpose is to draw attention to — and emphasize — a specific portion of text.
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Grammarians often use em dashes in place of commas to make sentences more readable and to highlight a certain block of text. For instance, “When Catherine arrived at the airport — two hours late — she was told her flight had already departed.” In this case, em dashes are used on either side of “two hours late” to emphasize just how late Catherine was.
When deciding among parentheses, commas, and em dashes, it matters how subtle you’re trying to be. Parentheses are more useful when subtly adding details: “Cameron had a lot of chores (that he was procrastinating on) and little time to do them.”Grammatically, parentheses should be used only if the information within is not necessary to understand the sentence. The information might add color, but it’s not required. If the information is relevant to one’s understanding of the sentence, commas would be the appropriate choice: “Cameron had a laundry list of chores, most of which would be quickly accomplished, but he was procrastinating.”
An em dash is a great choice if the information is supplemental, but you’re trying to hammer home certain details: “Cameron had a laundry list of chores — three pages were given to him by his mother — but also little time to do them.”
In another usage, em dashes can replace a colon at the end of a clause in order to emphasize a conclusion. Here’s an example: “Jenny studied hard for the test and achieved her goal — a passing grade.”
This punctuation mark is useful visually and in writing, but it doesn’t change the way you communicate verbally. An em dash sounds the same as a comma or a colon if you’re reading aloud — it’s a simple pause.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
If you’re one of the millions of audience members (myself included) who have seen the new musical film Wicked, chances are, its catchy tunes have been stuck in your head for weeks. Good news: This soundtrack also allows us to brush up on some key grammar concepts, specifically direct and indirect objects. Perhaps you’re having unwelcome flashbacks to English classes, but give me a few minutes of your time. I’ll try to clear up some confusion about these fundamental building blocks of many sentences.
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Consider a line from Galinda’s signature song, “Popular”: “I’ll show you what shoes to wear.” Here, we encounter both a direct object and an indirect object — “you” is indirect, and “shoes” is direct. There are a few rules of thumb for quickly deciphering which is which. Objects in a sentence (nouns or pronouns) receive the action of the verb, either directly or indirectly. A direct object answers “What?” or “Whom?” by receiving the action directly. The indirect object answers “To/For what?” or “To/For whom?” because it indirectly receives the action. So, what is being shown? The shoes (direct object). To whom? You (indirect object).
In the song’s line, “I’ll teach you the proper ploys,” the verb “teach” acts on two objects. To decipher which is which, ask these questions: What is being taught? The proper ploys (direct object). To whom? You (indirect object).
Of course, direct and indirect objects extend past musical lyrics into everyday conversation. Consider the sentence, “Mary threw the football to Mark.” She threw what? The football (direct object). To whom? Mark (indirect object). This can get confusing when sentence structure isn’t as straightforward: “Mary threw Mark the football.” However, the questions are still answered in the same way, and the object classifications remain the same. Not all sentences feature both direct and indirect objects. Take the lyric, “Follow my lead” (from “Popular” again). Here, “follow” is the verb, and “my lead” is the direct object. There is no indirect object because no one is receiving the action for something. In the signature lyric, “You will be: Popular!” there is no object at all. Since “be” doesn’t convey an action performed on an object, no direct object is needed. Sentence constructions without objects are actually quite popular: “She ran,” “The sun is shining,” and “The cat meowed.” These verbs don’t require a direct object to understand the meaning of the sentence.
Rachel is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer. When she's not writing, you can find her wandering through a museum, exploring a new city, or advocating the importance of the Oxford comma.
Quiz time! In which of these situations is it appropriate to say “dressed to the nines”? Is it when someone is wearing a fancy tuxedo or floor-length ballgown — or when a lazy friend wears the same stained sweatpants for nine days? If you picked the elegant affair, you’re correct. In the latter situation, it’s time to burn those sweatpants, and take your friend shopping for new clothes ASAP.
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“Dressed to the nines” means someone is going all out with their outfit, often in the form of elaborate or lavish clothing. The phrase is believed to come from the Scottish saying “to the nines” — meaning “to perfection” — often used to describe impeccably performed actions. At first, there was no inherent connection with clothing, as people used “to the nines” in a variety of circumstances.
While it most likely comes from a Scottish phrase, how the idiom got to Scotland is unclear. One prevailing theory relates to nine-pin bowling, a popular European game likely invented in the Middle Ages. Knocking over all nine pins with a single ball is a perfect throw, and the Dictionaries of the Scots Language speculates the phrase could be derived from that game’s rules.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first published use of the saying came in a 1719 poem Epistle to Ramsay by William Hamilton: “The bonny Lines therein thou sent me, / How to the nines they did content me.” The exact phrasing appeared in 1837 in TheNew York Herald: “One evening a smart young mechanic, ‘dressed to the nines,’ … might have been seen wending his way along Broadway.”
Today, “to the nines” commonly describes a situation where someone has gone all out, clothing-related or otherwise. Someone in a tux is “dressed to the nines,” a lavish wedding venue can be “decorated to the nines,” and a layered wedding cake may be “stacked to the nines.” Essentially, “to the nines” is a synonym for “to the nth degree,” and you can use it as such.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism. He is also a freelance comedy writer, devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
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