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Oct 6, 2025
This week’s themeWords with a bossy past This week’s words 
The Flowers of Edinburgh, 1781
Artist unknown. Image: British Museum Previous week’s theme There is a word for it 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargWhat would you think was going on if you heard these commands being given: Sit! Fetch! Heel! Perhaps you would think someone was showing off their dog’s obedience training. But maybe not. Maybe a dizzy soul is being told to sit down before they topple over. Then, a friend is being dispatched to fetch Oral Roberts. And when he shows up, well, he gives the order to heal. Welcome to the world of imperatives! An imperative is just a fancy grammatical label for a command. A related word is imperious. This week we’re doing imperatives, but we are not bossing you around. It’s just that imperatives are hidden in the etymology of these words. These are terms we have borrowed from French, Latin, Hebrew, and Hindi. As it often happens when we borrow a word, the meaning changes. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. The part of speech often changes too, and all of this week’s selections were imperatives that later became nouns in English. So sit, fetch yourself a cup of tea, and heel to curiosity. gardyloo
PRONUNCIATION:
(gar-dee-LOO)
MEANING:
noun: A warning cry.
ETYMOLOGY:
Phonetic respelling of French imperative gardez l’eau (mind the water).
Earliest documented use: 1771.
NOTES:
If you lived in old Edinburgh some 250 years ago and heard someone
shout “Gardyloo!” from an upper floor, your best bet was to run for cover
or risk getting baptized in eau de toilette of a very different kind.
The city was overcrowded. Tenements rose up to 14 stories. No electricity,
no running water, no indoor plumbing. The simplest disposal method was to
simply toss your waste out the window. The thrower, at least, had the
decency to offer a verbal umbrella. The so-called Nastiness Act of 1749 regulated when the airborne deposits could fly, between 10 pm and 7 am. In modern times, MV Gardyloo was the cheery name of a sewage dumping ship (1978-1998) that ferried Edinburgh’s waste out to the North Sea. Over time, gardyloo broadened into a general warning. Next time someone shouts it, you may still want to duck, just in case. USAGE:
“Now here’s the warning, the gardyloo you must not ignore.” Harlan Ellison; October Country; Los Angeles Times; Oct 7, 2001. “Derrick heard a faint gardyloo but couldn’t even bring himself to look up and see if it might affect him. He wasn’t at all surprised to find it had. He looked down to see sewage dripping down his left arm, but he was past caring.” Lynn Kurland; Roses in Moonlight; Jove; 2013. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It's said that "power corrupts", but actually it's more true that power
attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things
than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has
limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable,
implacable. -David Brin, scientist and science fiction author (b. 6 Oct
1950)
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