Q & A: Scallywags used to be much worse

Why is a mischievous youngster called a "scallywag"?


That meaning, which is affectionate and even grudgingly admiring, is quite modern. Until well into this century the word was applied to distinctly undesirable characters and the Oxford English Dictionary lists citations from America (where the word originated) meaning a disreputable, good-for-nothing person or a political intriguer.

It was bitterly used (sometimes spelled "scalawag") after the American Civil War by southern whites to describe those of their kind who collaborated with the northerners in the postwar reconstruction.

The OED speculates that a meaning, first cited in 1854, may be the original one: it was applied to undersize or ill-conditioned cattle.

Why a crowbar?


Because it looks like a crow - or used to. The tool was called a crow because one end was sharpened to a shape which recalled the beak of a bird common in medieval England.

It was not just a lever but an agricultural implement; a 16th-century book on husbandry instructs the reader to "get crowe made of iron, deepe hole for to make" but an earlier citation talks of using "long crowes of iren to lyfte great burdens."

Why is a car's engine block cooled with water, which is corrosive, instead of oil, which is not?

Bob Lewis, the general manager of technical services with the AA, says that transmission fluid is sometimes cooled by a radiator system in vehicles which are under the heavy demands of towing. But oil would not do as a coolant for the engine block for several reasons. Not least of these is cost: a car's cooling system capacity is at least 5 litres. Try knocking on a farmer's door in the middle of a hot summer's day and asking whether he can spare you five litres of oil.

And imagine if it needed cleaning out or leaked through a cracked hose onto a busy road.

Mr Lewis makes the point that modern cars, unlike yesterday's old bangers, use "coolant," not water. It contains anti-freeze which also prevents corrosive electrolytic reactions with aluminium components.

I get irritated by signs at entrances to sports centres or public swimming pools which ban consumption of food and beverages not bought on the premises. Is that legal, particularly when you have to pay an entrance fee and the food on sale is often unhealthy?


Peter Sutton, assistant chief executive of Consumers Institute, sympathises but says the law is on the side of the sign. These are private premises, not public property, and if the owners wish to require that all people who enter stand on one leg, they may do so, though it's unlikely to do much for turnover. It is illegal to bar entry to people only if it is done on specific grounds (race, gender, religious belief etc) mentioned in human rights legislation, but any business can set dress codes, for example, or ban body piercing.

It's easy to see why a cafe won't let you eat your own (or someone else's) food at their tables. Establishments such as sportsgrounds and swimming pools have the food rules to protect their concessionaires' (or their own) businesses. But Mr Sutton says that most proprietors will overlook the family chilly bin, particularly when you explain that you are bringing your own food because you can't afford or stomach theirs. If they get picky about it, you have the choice of taking your business elsewhere.

*John Dallow, of Green Bay, a keen amateur thespian, always thought the wish that a performer might "break a leg" came from the wish of the principal performer's understudy that ill fortune would really befall the principal, so that the understudy might get a run. No reference book we have consulted includes that suggestion which we find improbable since the formal appointment of an understudy is a relatively modern theatrical concept - and the "break a leg" wish is ancient.

*On the question of what the "black book" might have been that Andrew Prangley's grandfather "held" for several months in 1936, Brenda McLeish, of Kerikeri, sent us a page from an English local history book which refers to the "Black Book Men" who would "wait each day hoping to be picked for casual work" in the port of Avonmouth. "Port of Bristol outside staff were known as Green Book men and inside staff as Purple Book men," the book says.

The black book thus appears to have been a sort of union card. When Mr Prangley's ancestor "held the black book" for several months, perhaps he was out of work and seeking casual day labour on the wharves.

Several medics have told us that, whatever the Concise Oxford might prefer, most of the profession pronounces "cervical" not to rhyme with "critical" but rather with the stress on the second syllable and the "i"as in "high." We defer.