# How does someone get to be an etymologist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 23, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792 "2011-08-23T16:04:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/1 "2011-08-23T16:04:18Z")
Calling SamClem. What qualifications does one need to be able to study the origin of common words and phrases? What makes SamClem’s theories on the origin of words better than mine? That’s a genuine question, and not a sarcastic remark, Sam. It’s something that interests me, which I might like to do one day. And, incidentally, is this the origin of “The Full Monty.” This phrase is of obscure origin, with previous speculation on the subject including such speculative origins as Montague Burton suits, and full breakfasts enjoyed by Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery. I believe I have found a very early use of the phrase which makes its meaning and origin clear. From OVERLORD: D-Day and the battle for Normandy 1944 By Max Hastings 1984. Chapter 2, section 3 ‘Invaders’ > [@](#): > > But at the beginning of 1984, all the senior officers were abruptly removed and replaced by others from quite a different mould who began training and excercising the regiment to the very limits of its endurance. “We suddenly knew that we were going to be put through the full Monty treatment” [1] For hours and days at a stretch they shivered in their tanks on the hills through endless mock attacks and deployments The quote is attributed to Lieutenant Andrew Wilson of The Buffs, a flamethrowing Crocodile tank unit of 79th Armoured Division, in an interview with the author. The Monty in question certainly refers to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2011, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/2 "2011-08-23T16:55:56Z")
It’s the same answer as to the question: How do I get to Carnegie Hall? “Practice, practice, practice.” I’ll let Sam go into it for himself, but from my perspective it’s like any other art or science. You study the basics, in this case linguistics, and all the surrounding subjects. Then you read a lot. You start developing a feel for how people in different times and places and levels of discourse used words. You build up correspondences and timelines. You run them by other experts to see if they can shoot holes in your theories. And you read a lot more, especially in places that haven’t been searched over time and again. You acquire a large capacity for boredom. Same as everything else, really. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2011, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/3 "2011-08-23T16:59:05Z")
**samclem** isn’t an etymologist, I don’t think. He’s a guy who has a subscription to an enormous publication database. When a “how long has this word/phrase been around?” question comes up he can search his database and find the earliest record of that word/phrase in print and everyone here rejoices! AFAIK he is not employed anywhere to be an expert on word origins and does not professionally study word origins. He just is clever and is good at using the tools he has. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/4 "2011-08-23T17:54:28Z")
The etymology crowd is a community and I’d bet that 90% of them are amateurs. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone said 95% or even 99%. And Sam is cited in various books for his researchs. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/5 "2011-08-24T00:18:19Z")
One tool for etymology is Google Ngram, which searches through the texts of a vast number of books: [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/) I tried putting “the Full Monty” into this. It’s clear that the phrase is very rare before the movie came out. There are a few cases where it was used in British slang in print several years before the movie. You have to be careful in using this tool. The pages of a book are scanned, so sometimes the sloppiness in this procedure will mean that something close to the phrase will get scanned in wrong and be included among the possible citations. Also, appearances in periodicals are sometimes dated to the time when the periodical was first established, not to the date of the issue of the periodical where the phrase appeared. I’d offhand say that it’s unlikely that a phrase that originally referred to an event in World War II would only appear in print in the 1990’s. It’s the same as the claim that “the whole nine yards” came from World War II U.S. Air Force slang but didn’t appear in print until 1962. This sounds like a lot of false etymologies. Somebody wants to create a cute source for a current phrase, so they make up a story about something that happened decades (or sometimes centuries) before and then claim that this is where the phrase arose. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/6 "2011-08-24T00:44:26Z")
It is also true, however, that most British people hearing the name “Monty” will think first of the Field Marshall. (Well, I guess I should not speak for the current younger generation, but certainly this was true long after Montgomery’s own time.) He is regarded as a major war hero in Britain, known by the nickname, and anecdotes about him were common in the post WWII generation. The makers of the film could not have been unaware of the associations their title would have aroused. Note also that Peter Morris’ quote comes from 1984 (recalling events in 1944), so it is certainly not a ‘folk etymology’ of a movie title from 1997. It seems to me that it is quite possible that this phrase was known amongst a small group of people who had actually interacted (directly or indirectly) with Montgomery in the army, but did not break out into the culture at large until the movie picked it up. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/7 "2011-08-24T01:09:08Z")
It’s not at all clear that the citation that Peter Morris gives from the book published in 1984 is using “the full Monty” as a phrase meaning what it currently means. It appears that the person who’s quoted is saying that Montgomery often put men under his command through a harsh period of training. People would apparently sometimes refer to this as “the Monty treatment.” Someone who wanted to emphasize this would refer to a particular case as “the full Monty treatment.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that it became a standard phrase with “treatment” dropped. Just one appearance of this phrase is suspicious. It’s like the fact that there is one example in print of “the whole nine yards” during World War II. It’s clear there that it was not an example of the current phrase. Someone was talking about nine shipyards and said “the whole nine yards” to refer to all of them. Incidentally, it seems that Peter Morris introduced a misprint when he typed the quotation from the book into his post. The quotation starts with “But at the beginning of 1984”, but I presume it must actually be “But at the beginning of 1944”. That’s the only way I can make sense of it. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/8 "2011-08-24T01:19:21Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Incidentally, it seems that Peter Morris introduced a misprint when he typed the quotation from the book into his post. The quotation starts with “But at the beginning of 1984”, but I presume it must actually be “But at the beginning of 1944”. That’s the only way I can make sense of it. You are correct. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/9 "2011-08-24T03:49:36Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > **samclem** isn’t an etymologist, I don’t think. He’s a guy who has a subscription to an enormous publication database. When a “how long has this word/phrase been around?” question comes up he can search his database and find the earliest record of that word/phrase in print and everyone here rejoices! > > AFAIK he is not employed anywhere to be an expert on word origins and does not professionally study word origins. He just is clever and is good at using the tools he has. If I"m an “etymologist,” it’s only as an amateur. The pros get degrees and do it for a living. They’re the best of the best. Actually, I have a bit more than a subscription or two to a newspaper database. I have a five-foot shelf of books on word origins/linguistics/etymology/phrase origins, quotations and slang dictionaries. I do subscribe to the American Dialect Society Mailing list, and there are dozens of full-time professors who post there, full-time linguists. I learn quite a bit from them. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/10 "2011-08-24T07:30:38Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > One tool for etymology is Google Ngram, which searches through the texts of a vast number of books: > > [http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/) > > **I tried putting “the Full Monty” into this. It’s clear that the phrase is very rare before the movie came out.** There are a few cases where it was used in British slang in print several years before the movie. You have to be careful in using this tool. The pages of a book are scanned, so sometimes the sloppiness in this procedure will mean that something close to the phrase will get scanned in wrong and be included among the possible citations. Also, appearances in periodicals are sometimes dated to the time when the periodical was first established, not to the date of the issue of the periodical where the phrase appeared. I’d offhand say that it’s unlikely that a phrase that originally referred to an event in World War II would only appear in print in the 1990’s. It’s the same as the claim that “the whole nine yards” came from World War II U.S. Air Force slang but didn’t appear in print until 1962. This sounds like a lot of false etymologies. Somebody wants to create a cute source for a current phrase, so they make up a story about something that happened decades (or sometimes centuries) before and then claim that this is where the phrase arose. Perhaps that’s a failing of Google labs, because the phrase full monty was really common before the movie. However, it would have been used mostly orally and informally by working-class people, not written down or used by the people most likely to write articles and books, so it would appear rarer than it really was. Of course, my only proof that the phrase was common is my own memory, plus some logic that the film title wouldn’t have worked very well if the phrase were very rare. But I think it is important to remember that searches of written resources do not represent all sectors of society equally. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/11 "2011-08-24T07:57:05Z")
Yeah, I should have said, “very rare in print.” What can you tell us about your memories of the use of the phrase? When did you first hear it? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/12 "2011-08-24T08:19:49Z")
Same as for **SciFiSam**. Really, I have no idea when I first heard it. I was born in the late sixties. When the movie came out, it wasn’t an obscure title. I well knew that “the full monty” meant the full or whole or most extensive version of the thing under discussion. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/13 "2011-08-24T09:18:28Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Yeah, I should have said, “very rare in print.” What can you tell us about your memories of the use of the phrase? When did you first hear it? I have no idea. TBH, for common words and phrases, I don’t think I can remember a first time for any of them - I only would for unusual words and phrases that I learnt later in life. I can say it was common on greasy spoon cafe menus as a way to describe English breakfasts that had all of the possible options (eggs, sausage, etc) on one plate. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/14 "2011-08-24T11:35:38Z")
Yep, definitely existed concering food at least by the 1980s. > [@](#): > > Earlier currency is app. implied by the following names of fish and chip > shops: > 1982 Yellow Pages: Manchester North 264/3 Full Monty Chippy The, 30 Townley > St, Middleton..Fullmonty Chippy, 61 Radclyffe St, Chadderton.] From a discussion on the American Dialect Society Mailing List. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/15 "2011-08-24T13:46:09Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > It is also true, however, that most British people hearing the name “Monty” will think first of the Field Marshall. (Well, I guess I should not speak for the current younger generation, but certainly this was true long after Montgomery’s own time.) He is regarded as a major war hero in Britain, known by the nickname, and anecdotes about him were common in the post WWII generation. The makers of the film could not have been unaware of the associations their title would have aroused. He’s remembered by Sicilians too. My people had him over as a guest for a few months in 1943. I hope he enjoyed his visit. We gave him a… warm… welcome, one might say. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/16 "2011-08-24T14:37:28Z")
samclem, do you have a link to the discussion of “the full Monty” on the American Dialect Mailing List? If you can’t link to it, can you quote from it and tell us more about the discussion there? Are there other places where the origin of the phrase is discussed? Can you link to them or quote from them? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2011, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/17 "2011-08-25T04:06:47Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > samclem, do you have a link to the discussion of “the full Monty” on the American Dialect Mailing List? If you can’t link to it, can you quote from it and tell us more about the discussion there? Are there other places where the origin of the phrase is discussed? Can you link to them or quote from them? Not sure. I think I can read the Mailing List, but not sure you can from a link. Probably doable from Google. I’ll try in the morning if I have time. ---
**Author:** ![jbaker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/59ef9b/32.png) [@jbaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jbaker)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2011, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/18 "2011-08-25T15:07:17Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > samclem, do you have a link to the discussion of “the full Monty” on the American Dialect Mailing List? If you can’t link to it, can you quote from it and tell us more about the discussion there? Are there other places where the origin of the phrase is discussed? Can you link to them or quote from them? You can search ADS-L yourself, or join the list if you are so inclined, at [http://www.americandialect.org/index.php/amerdial/ads\_l\_the\_american\_dialect\_society\_email\_discussion\_list/](http://www.americandialect.org/index.php/amerdial/ads_l_the_american_dialect_society_email_discussion_list/). The most detailed post on the subject is at [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0909D&L=ADS-L&P=R2596](http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0909D&L=ADS-L&P=R2596). The poster, Stephen Goranson, quotes the discussion from the OED and then presents the information from the 1984 book that began this thread. ---
**Author:** ![T.Slothrop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3e96dc/32.png) [@T.Slothrop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/T.Slothrop)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2011, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/19 "2011-08-27T07:02:49Z")
So I should stop studying bugs ? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2011, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-get-to-be-an-etymologist/593792/20 "2011-08-27T15:33:29Z")
> [@T.Slothrop](#): > > So I should stop studying bugs ? Your fetishes are none of our business.