CAVEAT: If you’re not a word lover, or even a word liker, you might find this column more tedious than tantalizing. If so, I’ll understand you’re not reading it.

NB: I’ll understand, but doubt I’ll forgive.

Anyhow, it’s obvious I’m a lexiphile, and have been as long as I can remember. From earliest childhood I was fascinated by what could be done with words — rhymes, puns, riddles, jokes, palindromes, puzzles, you name it. To me, words were my toys, things to amuse myself with, of and by themselves.

And they still are. For example, signs. Though they’re meant to be straightforward, and usually are, to a word maven like me, they can sometimes be seen as something else. Off the top of my head, I recall my two favorites. One is on some doors in the hospital that say, “Patient Toilet.” I saw that and immediately thought of a talking crapper saying, “Hey, no need to hurry. There’s no one rushing you and I’m not going anywhere either, Bubba.” (Not only a talking loo, but a good old boy besides.)

The other one was in front of St. Luke’s church and on it was writ: “Large Lutheran Church Ladies Sale.”

I had all I could do to not go in and ask if the gals were being sold by the pound or the unit. Luckily, I managed to keep my mirth to myself.

Then there are eponymous names, which I also get a kick out of. My friend and fellow faculty member at PSC, Michael Garnish, was appropriately enough, a chef. I was in the Navy with a guy named Sailor, knew a carpenter named Wood, and an auto mechanic named Carr. Charley Green was a beloved SL green grocer; I once saw the shingle for a dentist named Payne. My rave fave came to me via My Brother the Doctor. He worked with a pathologist named Graves. And if that’s not entertaining enough, how’s about this: Graves’ wife was named Robin.

In the Wonderful World of Words, my specific area of interest is etymology — word or phrase origins. Ultimately, it’s a great form of armchair exploration, tracing a word as far back as I can, to hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of years, to cultures and language groups I’d never known existed.

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Saying Vamoose! to scurvy

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It should come as no surprise that in addition to having a fairly good selection of language books, I belong to a bunch of Facebook language groups. Usually I read the postings and comments and say to myself, “Yeah, sure, ho hum,” and then move on. But a few days ago I ran across one that actually made me sit up and take notice, not because I learned something new, but because it was so far off the mark.

It was in a British word group and the word was Vamoose.

Vamoose a Brit word? Yeah, sure … about as much as cricket is The American Pastime.

A bunch of peeps gave its definitions (the statement, Let’s go, or the command, Go!), but none of them mentioned its origin. I imagine folks my age heard it aplenty in the cowboy flicks of our youth, which was only appropriate since it’s a corruption of the Spanish word, Vamos, which means, Let’s go. The Lexicographer’s Lover, the Oxford English Dictionary, has it as colloquial English, originating and mostly used in the good ole US of A. So take that, Limey malaprops!

And speaking of Limey malaprops, a brief explanatory aside:

The word malaprop (meaning someone who uses words incorrectly) seemed to originate in a play by a Brit with the very Brit name Richard Brinsley Sheridan in 1775. In the play was a character Mrs. Malaprop, who never seemed to find the right word … and with hilarious results. But that said, the word “malapropos,” meaning “in an awkward manner,” was found in print in 1630, which in turn comes from the French term “mal a’ propos,” and which means “inappropriate.”

As for Limey? That of course is a universal label for Englishmen (note I did not say Brits, because British peeps include the Scots, Welsh and Irish, who would all rather be six feet under than to be considered Brits). It’s origin has a perfectly English flair, since it started in Her Majesty’s Navy. Though we use the term Limey in a lighthearted manner, it came about due to a serious issue — scurvy.

Scurvy is a condition caused by lack of vitamin C, something we almost never experience, but was a curse, if not a plague, in the Royal Navy. Lack of vitamin C on long voyages led to horrific sickness, and all too often, death. It’s documented that one navy cruise started out with 2000 sailors, of whom only 700 returned. Long story short, a Scottish naval surgeon named James Lind figured out though a series of experiments that limes prevented scurvy, which then became mandatory on English ships. And — Voila! — Limeys. Similarly, the German navy used sauerkraut for their source of shipboard vitamin C, hence the label Krauts.

And now back to Spanish-derived Americanisms…

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Good guys, bad guys and bovine buddies

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A bunch of other Spanish words entered English (though in corrupted form) and I learned them from the Saturday matinee horse operas at the Pontiac theater. Since they were straight-up morality plays, The Good Guys (in white hats and clean-shaven) always triumphed over The Bad Guys (in black hats, with stubble and/or mustaches). And so the baddies were shlepped off to the jail, or in their parlance, “the hoosegow.”

Hoosegow? Yup. It’s a corruption of “juzgado,” the Mexican term for jail. It literally means “jug,” and referred to the city hall, and since jails were in the city halls, the term was used interchangeably both of them.

Ever wonder about what a 10-gallon hat has to do with water? Well, I’ll tell you: It has nothing to do with it. Gallon is also a corruption of the Spanish word, “Galo’n,” which means “braid.” Those braids were wrapped around the hat’s crown, a hat band of sorts, and if they were stacked 10 high, then you had — Ta DA! — a 10-gallon hat. You might also wish if you did, you weren’t an example of that famous Texan term of derogation, Big hat, no cattle.

And finally there’s my favorite — Buckaroo.

So what’s a buckaroo? While it has connotations of being some kind of Southwestern wild man, it’s really just a cowboy — literally. It’s a mangled version of Vaquero, which comes from the word Vaca, which means Cow. So a Vaquero is a man (wild or mild) who rides herd on cows.

Oh yeah, and speaking of cows …

The Latin word for cow (from which the Spanish word derives) is Vacca, and it led to the word Vaccine, thought up by Edward Jenner, who discovered the smallpox vaccine. You might now ask what cows have to do with the smallpox vaccine? If you did, read on …

Jenner (1749 — 1823), a doctor and scientist, observed that milk maids who caught something from the cows called cowpox didn’t get smallpox. This was no small deal because until the vaccine, smallpox was a horrific scourge. It’s estimated that in 1700s Europe, smallpox killed 400,000 people per year, and that one-third of of all blind people were struck with smallpox. And it wasn’t just some plague from Way Back When: In the 20th century, around 300 million people were killed by smallpox. Survivors had all kinds of problems, the most noticeable of which were facial pockmarks, which happened in about 75% of the survivors.

Fortunately, due to Jenner’s discovery and a massive inoculation campaign, smallpox is the one human disease that’s been completely eradicated (by 1980, if you like to keep count of such things). Everyone my age has that telltale scar on their arm or leg from their smallpox vaccination — something that I’d bet only puzzles young people, if they notice it at all.

And now it’s time to bid you goodbye, and keeping in the Southwestern theme, I’ll say, “Adios.”

By the way, Adios literally means “to God,” which implies, Go with God.

If you think that’s an odd way to say goodbye, don’t. Why not? Because that’s exactly what all of us say, since Goodbye is a word combined from “God be with ye.”