Human head louse (male), Pediculus humanus capitis
11 September 2023
A louse is an insect of the genus Pediculus that feeds off a variety of animals. And species of lice are often specific to their host species or even parts of the host species. For instance, Pediculus humanus is the species that typically infests humans, comprising two sub-species: Pediculus humanus humanus (body lice) and Pediculus humanus capitis (head lice).
The word louse comes from a common Germanic root, and in Old English its form was lus. We can see the word in one of Ælfric’s sermons, written in the closing years of the tenth century, in a passage about the plagues delivered upon Egypt prior to the Exodus:
Ða sende se ælmihtiga tyn cynna wita ofer ðam ðwyran cyninge. and ofer his leode. ær ðan ðe he þæt folc forlætan wolde; Moyses, ðurh Godes mihte, awende eal heora wæter to readum blode, and he afylde eal heora land mid froggon. and siððan mid gnættum. eft mid hundes lusum, ða flugon into heora muðe and heora næsðyrlum.
(Then the Almighty sent ten kinds of plagues to the perverse king and to his people before he would release that people; Moses, through God’s power, turned all their water into red blood, and he filled all their land with frogs, and then with gnats, afterward with dog’s lice, which flew into their mouths and nostrils.)
The verb to louse, meaning to infest with lice, dates to the mid fifteenth century. But in American slang in the early twentieth century, the phrase verb to louse up, came to mean to spoil, to mess up, a metaphor of degrading something by infesting it with the insects. We can see the transition from the literal to the metaphorical in the early 1930s. The following passage, from a story about a World War I veteran returning home in the Kansas City Star of 8 March 1931, in uses louse up literally:
“But listen,” he said, lowering his voice. “I feel lousy. I feel as if I’d louse up the whole place. Wouldn’t want to do that. I’ll get out of this uniform tomorrow and burn the damned thing.”
Three years later we see the metaphorical use in a baseball column in the New York Daily News of 23 July 1934, written by novelist and sportswriter Paul Gallico:
I do not see why I should louse up Prof. Frick’s interesting and beautifully written column with any further comment of my own. It contains more information than a week of my own. Stet!
And entertainment reporter and impresario Ed Sullivan used the phrase in a 1938 gossip column:
The Milton Berle–Jack Oakie feud rumors in “Radio City Revels” are a publicity gag … They’re the best of friends … Oakie sent him a box of golf balls for a present with this notation: “Hope these louse up your game.”
That’s the noun and the verb, and the adjective lousy also dates to the medieval period. It appears in the latter half of the fourteenth century in both literal and metaphorical senses. We see the literal in William Langland’s c.1377 poem Piers Plowman, in a passage describing the appearance of the character Covetousness (a.k.a. Sir Harvey):
And thanne cam Coveitise, I kan hym naght descryve—
So hungrily and holwe Sire Hervy hym loked.
He was bitelbrowed and baberlipped, with two blered eighen,
And as a letheren purs lolled hise chekes—
Wel sidder than his chyn thei chyveled for elde;
And as a bondeman of his bacon his berd was bidraveled;
With an hood on his heed, a lousy hat above,
In a (torn) tabard of twelf wynter age;
But if a lous couthe lepe, (leve I), the better.(And then came Covetousness, I cannot describe him—
So hungrily and hollow Sir Harvey looked.
He was bitter-browed [i.e., grim] and thick lipped, with two bleared eyes,
And his cheeks hung down like a leather purse—
Well below his chin they trembled from old age;
And like a serf his beard was beslobbered with bacon;
With a hood on head, a lousy hat above it,
In a torn cloak twelve winters old;
But if a louse could leap, I believe, it would be better off.)
About a decade or so later, Geoffrey Chaucer uses lousy in The Friar’s Tale. His use of the phrase marks the transition from literal to metaphorical; the “lowsy jogelour” can be read as either (or both) infested with lice and unskilled. The passage is a conversation between a summoner and a demon:
“Ye han a mannes shap as wel as I;
Han ye a figure thanne determinat
In helle, ther ye been in youre estat?”“Nay, certeinly,” quod he, “ther have we noon;
But whan us liketh we kan take us oon,
Or elles make yow seme we been shape;
Somtyme lyk a man, or lyk an ape,
Or lyk an angel kan I ryde or go.
It is no wonder thyng thogh it be so;
A lowsy jogelour kan deceyve thee,
And pardee, yet kan I moore craft than he.”(You have a man’s shape as well as I;
Have you then a definite form
in hell, where you are in your usual condition?”“No, certainly,” said he, “there we have none;
But when we like we take on one,
Or else make it seem to you that we are so shaped;
Sometimes like a man, or like an ape,
Or like an angel I can ride or proceed.
It is no miraculous thing though it be so;
A lousy illusionist can deceive you,
And by God, yet I know more craft than he.)
We don’t see the original, literal meaning of lousy so much anymore. That’s probably because in our modern, ultra-hygienic society of disinfectants, soaps, and regular bathing, lice, except for the occasional outbreak among schoolchildren, aren’t that big of a problem. But because the spelling of the word has remained the same and because the metaphorical meanings haven’t strayed too far from the literal, the etymology of the word is still easily recognizable.
Sources:
Ælfric. “Dominica. In media quadragesime.” Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series. Malcolm Godden, ed. Early English Text Society S.S. 5. London: Oxford UP, 1979, 111.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Friar’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales, lines 3.1458–68. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website.
“Compensation and the Home Fires.” Kansas City Star (Missouri), 8 March 1931, C1/8. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Gallico, Paul. “Prof. Frick on Umpires.” Daily News (New York), 23 July 1934, 36. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2023, s.v. louse up, v. lousy, adj.
Langland, William. The Vision of Piers Plowman (B text, c. 1377), second edition. A.V.C. Schmidt, ed. London: Everyman (J.M. Dent), 1995. passus 5, lines 186–94, 71.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. louse, n., louse, v., lousy, adj. and adv.
Sullivan, Ed. “Hollywood.” Augusta Chronicle (Georgia), 8 January 1938, 4/6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Image credit: Gilles San Martin, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.