Every Word Tells a Story

Ever wondered who’s Monty in "the full monty"? Or how a simple techno-head evolved into a nerd? Wonder no more – but the meaning of some weird and wonderful phrases lie in unexpected places

Bastard: In the past, bastard was the standard term for an illegitimate child, but now the word is mainly a term of abuse. It probably derives from ­the medieval Latin bastum for a pack­saddle (a horse’s saddle adapted for cargo) – the French equivalent was fils de bast or "packsaddle son". The reference was to a loose-living mule driver who used a packsaddle for a pillow and the next morning was off to the next town (and girl).

Full Monty: In the 1997 comedy The Full Monty, a group of British steelworkers become male strippers after being made redundant. The film popu­larised the phrase and highlighted a specific sense, "a full strip or total ­nudity". It may come from the full Montague Burton, which was a complete three-piece suit named after a tailor producing made-to-measure clothing in the early 20th century – the full monty in this case was the complete opposite of total nudity.

Another suggested source is the full English breakfast that Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (nicknamed "Monty") insisted on each morning. The trouble is that the expression is recorded only since the ’80s, and none of the other suggested theories about its origin is supported by reliable evidence. As with many phrases, we may never know the truth.

Laconic: The Spartans or Laconians of ancient Greece were known for their austere lifestyle and pithy speech. When Philip of Macedon threatened to invade Laconia in the 4th century BC, he wrote to its governors in an attempt to frighten them into submission, saying that if he entered Laconia he would raze it to the ground. They are reported to have sent a one-word reply – "If". Since the 16th century, ­laconic has meant "using very few words".

Nerd: Originally an American term, nerd in the sense of "boring, ­unfashionable person" was first recorded in 1951. The word appeared the previous year in If I Ran the Zoo by Dr Seuss, who seems to have invented it: I’ll sail to Ka-Tro And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!

Dr Seuss used the word in nonsense verse as the name of a kind of animal, and there is no connection with the obsessive computer fan we are familiar with.

Another theory links the word with Mortimer Snerd, a dummy used by the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen in the 1930s.

Plague: The late 14th-century translation of the Bible supervised by John Wyclif introduced the word plague to English. Its root is Latin plaga meaning "a stroke, wound", and "a blow" was one of its first English senses. It was also used in reference to the ten plagues of Egypt, described in Exodus. ­Although these included boils and the death of firstborn children, they were mainly not medical conditions, but ­afflictions like hordes of frogs and swarms of locusts. Nevertheless, by the late 15th century people were applying plague specifically to infectious diseases and epidemics, such as bubonic plague (from the inflamed swellings in the armpit or groin called buboes).