Coming, Going, and Out in Droves

What is a drove, and why do people come out in them? If you didn’t know any better, the way the word is used might lead you to think it’s a kind of conveyance (“They came out in droves. Have you ever tried to park a drove, let alone 15,000 of them? It was a nightmare!“). Or a fashion statement (“They came out in droves but their neighbors went with a more casual look: shorts and polo shirts.“).

This one was on my mind after hearing it used in a questionable sense by a non-English speaker in a radio interview. The dicey non-idiomatic use, coupled with the accent, caught my attention and after hearing several others use it over the next few days I thought it worth a closer look. Sometimes I learn something on these mini research efforts—maybe sometimes readers do, too.

First off, let’s distinguish the two main uses of drove: we’re not talking about the past tense of the verb to drive: “She drove from Boston to Altoona without stopping.” For this discussion, verbs are off the table.

We’re looking at drove as used in the phrase in droves, which colloquially means a flock or a herd or a crowd: some sort of loosely organized mass movement, primarily of living things, generally concentrating in one area. It’s most often used in contemporary
contexts to describe consumers rushing out to buy something, voters turning out to the polls, or protesters or fans of some sort showing up at an event. But you’ll encounter it applied to many crowd or mass gathering situations.

And that’s about it. You’re rarely going to see drove or droves—as a collective noun—show up in any other sense in modern English. It appears to be something of an idiomatic fossil, a word that might have once been used commonly but has settled into a single niche in one last expression.

Drove is a very old word, with it’s origin purely in Old English. There’s no direct connection to any of the usual suspects that English has borrowed so many words from (Latin, Greek, medieval European languages). Some form of the word was probably in use in England by no later than the 7th century (although there are few written sources to support this). Drove as a noun meaning herd or flock can be found in the written record from at least the early 12th century, when English was barely recognizable as the language we use today. By the middle of the 16th century, most modern speakers would have been able to “get it” as far as both the use and spelling were concerned.

In droves turns out to be a fairly old construction. It wasn’t always applied to a literal flock or herd, even early on. By the late 16th century the figurative sense was in use, but not necessarily common: a 1596 citation mentions creatures returning to their country in droves (the author was writing about salmon in Scottish rivers). He tags the description with “as it war” (“as it were”) because he’s using it in a figurative sense: he doesn’t seem entirely comfortable using droves (“draues“) to describe fish, or in using “their awne cuntrey” (“their own country”) to describe their native river. (This history courtesy of the OED; the closer reading of “The historie of Scotland” courtesy of The Internet Archive.)

How common has this phrase, in droves, been? Surprisingly, it seems to have become popular only in recent history. According to our good friend Google Ngrams, the phrase is nearly unheard of in the written record until near the end of the 17th century. Early references (before about 1750) lean toward actual flocks or herds (of animals) but include people. For the next couple of hundred years, use of the phrase is not particularly frequent, and continues to be split between animals and humans. (One 1793 source disparagingly references Gypsy pickpockets who “in droves” swarm through crowds, relieving others of their possessions.)

Something happened around the middle of the 20th century to give its use a bump. I haven’t been able to put my finger on what—which is typical of English trends—but it caused a usage peak in the 1940s not seen before (and not matched until the mid 1990s; that pushed on to a new peak in 2003). The current use trend is uncertain (Ngrams fails after 2008), but my assumption is that use is still fairly steady, especially since it’s normal to run into the phrase on at least a weekly basis.

In droves, by the way, doesn’t seem to have one sense you might assume it would because of its connection to drovers (herders, or those who drive flocks). There’s very little (if any) sense of being driven when something is mentioned in droves today.

While most use is in the form of “they came out in droves” a few similar forms are also used, most frequently the slightly truncated reference to something “coming in droves” or “going in droves” (without the “out“). Both are far behind the full “out in droves” form: combined, they’re used less than half as often. “Out in their droves” is a much less frequent variant (it’s somewhat more common in British English; overall you’ll run into it about once for every 40 uses of the other phrasings). Citations suggest adding “their” is both newer and leans to the pretentious.

Staying away in droves (or a similar twist) gets used occasionally, mostly for the humor. The meaning (one hopes) is obvious and the joke clear, even though the use is illogical: a drove being a herd or crowd, it doesn’t strictly make sense when used this way. A crowd can’t stay away in a drove, because then it wouldn’t be a crowd, unless that crowd goes to another specific location instead. Do you follow? A crowd isn’t a crowd if it’s a bunch of individuals doing their own things in their own places. You can move (or show up) in droves, as a crowd, but you can’t stay away as a drove because a ‘negative drove‘ isn’t a thing. That’s part of the joke.

I hope the above makes some sense. It’s not the kind of post that will bring readers out to this blog in droves, but I’ll take what I can get.

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Vocabulary: What is a bollard?

A quick post today from the vocabulary files. This one’s about something that most of us see many times every day, but don’t know the word for. In fact, most of us don’t know there’s even a word for it. These objects are so common and unobtrusive, they just blend into the background—we don’t consciously register them unless they become an inconvenience.

The object and the word for it is bollard.

A small minority of people already know and use this word. Many sailors are familiar with it. Anyone who works in traffic control or road work probably knows it, as will many architects and security specialists. Outside those fields and a few others, this isn’t a term people encounter much in American English (although in British English the word is significantly more common).

What is a bollard?

In modern use, a bollard is a device used for traffic control. More precisely, they’re used to prevent motor vehicle traffic from entering a specific area. You’re most likely to encounter them as metal posts about one meter high, but they come in many shapes and sizes. Some are concrete only, some are steel-reinforced concrete, some are concrete sheathed in steel. Some aren’t even posts, and might take more decorative shapes, perhaps also serving as planters or trash cans. Those big red concrete spheres in front of most Target stores? Bollards. Some are even plastic, and can be moved quickly and easily: you’ve probably seen this style at road construction sites—tall, skinny, orange
posts with reflective bands.

Some bollards aren’t terribly tough. They’re meant as a deterrent to keep drivers from veering into a work zone or parking on the sidewalk, or from taking their vehicles down bike paths or into pedestrian-only areas. Simply by having some form of obstacle (a bollard), most drivers will get the message, even if a lot of those bollards wouldn’t stop a vehicle with a determined driver. But increasingly, much more serious bollards are being installed.

These devices are sturdy—strong enough to stop a car at speed. In fact, many of them, especially the ones meant for high security areas, are able to stop large trucks (if you want to see just how effective these are, google “bollard truck test” and browse the images; this very short video of a test is also revealing, although if you’re more of a “greatest hits” person, try this one). They’re typically made of some variety of structural steel and, when properly installed, very little on wheels will make it past them. They meet rigorous standards for impact (at least one of ISO IWA 14-1, BSi PAS 68, or ASTM F2656-07, if you’re interested).

I’ve had reason to get to know bollards, at least passively, because some editing and writing work over the past couple of years has led me off into traffic safety. My first (incorrect) impression was that the word was most likely old, but obscure. I suspected it was probably a British import to the US (correct), possibly from French (incorrect).

It turns out bollard is a fairly recent word in English: the OED cites a first print use only from 1844. At that time it was a nautical term, indicating the large post on a wharf used as the point to tie up ships. Of course, these posts were used long before that, they simply went by other names (“posts” being one, “knights-heads” another, “bitt” possibly another). Bollards could also exist aboard a ship, not necessarily in the same form but serving a similar purpose (securing ropes and lines). The specific etymology of the word is unknown; it branches off (no pun intended) from the same Middle English word that became bole (the trunk of a tree), which might have come through German from Old Norse—but this isn’t definitive (no matter how many times you see it online).

Traffic bollards are (probably) the later innovation (and certainly a later word usage). OED lists a first use in this sense from 1948. But objects serving that purpose, known locally as Amsterdammertjes, were in use in Amsterdam possibly as early as 1800. Images included in the Wikipedia entry for bollard show them in contemporary illustrations from 1742 and 1766, proving that the idea—if not the name—existed before then. That Wikipedia reference (trust it at your peril) suggests that the concept was being used in London by no later than 1721. To blow a little more fog over the term, Merriam-Webster
claims a 1763 first use for the word (but doesn’t provide a citation: their online dictionary is deficient that way). That’s 80 years earlier than the OED’s reliable citation.

This is one of those situations where it would be useful if an American dictionary included the first known American use of a word as a data point. Did the word skip right across the Atlantic into the specialized vocabulary of traffic engineers as early as the 1950s? Did it seep in during the ’80s or ’90s? Or was it only recruited after 9/11, when anti-vehicle security became more of a concern? Determining that will take more research than I have time for.

Now that you know about bollards, you’re going to see them everywhere…like standpipes and the fnords. It’s not just you, though—there really are more of them out there everyday.

i.e. and e.g.: You’re not writing in Latin, so why are you using them?

i.e. and e.g.: What are they? Why do we use them? What do they mean? And why don’t we just get rid of them?

Has “Jumped the Shark” Jumped the Shark?

A specific (mis-)use of language smacked me upside the head (…figuratively…) recently and it deserves coverage here.

Do you know the phrase “jumped the shark?” Many of us do. But someone apparently doesn’t, because he used it to mean something entirely opposite its accepted meaning.

Were they really enabled to be able to say that?

It’s only June, but I’ve already come across a clear front-runner for this year’s “worst sentence to make it into print.”*

Cooper said Massachusetts law and regulation prohibit retailers from passing their bulk buy discount to consumers, and that Total Wine & More will “seek a change in both statute and regulation to be able to enable all retailers to be able to pass those discounts on.”

This comes to us via the State House News Service in Massachusetts and appeared in several local newspapers, but we can’t hold the publisher responsible. This seems to be a direct quote from some kind of press release.

It’s nice to take the bull by the horns, and work to put yourself into a position where you’ll be able to enable someone to be able to do something. But in this case, I think we could have hoped for much simpler phrasing, perhaps along the lines of:

will “seek a change in both statute and regulation enabling retailers to pass those discounts on.”

For that matter, I think “allowing” would be a better verb choice. All that abling and enabling is just legalese and doublespeak, quite literally (or is it triplespeak in this case?).

But that’s no surprise as the source is part of a lobbying effort for not just a single industry but a single business, unhappy with existing laws. They might have a point that certain aspects of current regulation need updating, but when their goal is gaining the ability to sell alcoholic beverages below cost, their efforts need close scrutiny. Being able to see through murky language to understand exactly what’s being said is part of how you do that.

(*I don’t actually keep lists of things like “worst sentence to make it into print” but no one’s keeping score.)