Today's Broadcast

Topic: Carpool

We heard from a longtime listener with a number of questions. We've only time to tackle one today but promise to tackle her other questions on a later program.

Our correspondent has children; coincidentally or not, she also has a question about the story of carpool.

The earliest car pool was a two word phrase, dating to the early days of the second world war, when it named either an arrangement by which a group of people commute together by car or the group entering into such an arrangement. Two decades passed, and by 1962, carpool was a single word verb, meaning (what else?) "to participate in a car pool."

There's no doubt where the car in carpool fits in, but what about the pool? Forget the watery pool, which dates back to before the 12th century. The aggregate sort of pool didn't appear in English until the early 18th century. This pool comes from the French word for hen; the French poule also has a non-fowl sense naming "stakes in a card game." When it first splashed into the English lexicon, the French-based pool named "an aggregate stake to which each player of a game has contributed." What's the connection between hens and shared stakes? Perhaps it comes from the idea that a hen can contribute an egg—its own stake—each day.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.