I’ve come to the keyboard to blog about Halloween. But I’ve been distracted.

Is “blog” a verb?

 It’s a new word, “Blog.” Its use is credited to Jorn Barger, an American computer nerd who sported a sizable beard his mother had to hate. He created a web-posting called “Robot Wisdom.” In December 1997, Jorn described his work as a “weblog.”   

Noun, right?

English words are regularly subjected to change. Here, a favorite of mine: “Bully.” A good many years ago, an English suitor would whisper, “You darling, sweetheart, my bully.”

That’s just awful, we say, not realizing the lost meaning of awful.

Awful is no longer what it once was. Nor is bully. A bully was a sweetheart, a darling. Our language is elastic. Meanings change, nouns become verbs.

  In 1999, another computer nerd, Peter Merholz, cleverly broke Jorn’s single word, “weblog” into a phrase: “We Blog.” Nouns become verbs. One can blog a blog. We can go to Google and google it.

Peter thought what he did was funny. Ha-Ha!

 But wait!

As I said, I was researching Halloween when I fell for being distracted by the word, “Blog,” and by Peter’s Ha-Ha. I opened my massive 1997 Quality Paperback Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins. Surely, something about Halloween could be found there. Surely not.

But get this—on the very first page under “H” was this entry: “HA-HA;” the very exclamation voiced by Peter Merholz when he messed with Jorn Barger’s creation: “Weblog.”

  “Ha-Ha,” say we when something surprising, unexpected, and ultimately humorous catches us. We laugh. “Ha-Ha.” Even the ancient Greeks used the term.

But wait!

The 17th century English took “Ha-Ha” to a new level. They turned a verbal exclamation into a noun. This deserves notice. I’ll share the definition, and with that I will relieve you of my adventurous distractions. I’ll return to my serious hunt for why witches ride brooms.

 “HA-HA” English. 17th century usage.
A ‘ha-ha’ is an obstacle interrupting one’s way, a ditch behind an opening in a wall at the bottom of an ally or walk.

It is used in English gardens as a boundary that doesn’t interrupt the view, and can’t be seen until you come very close to it; it is a sunken fence.

The point of the ha-ha was to give the viewer of the garden the illusion of an unbroken, continuous rolling lawn, while providing boundaries for grazing livestock.

When these ditches, or fosses, were first used extensively in the 17th century, etymologists tell us that people out for a stroll in the country were frequently surprised to find a sudden check to their walk. Their exclamations expressing their surprise, “Ha Ha” became the name of the ditch or sunken fence.”

Words are nothing short of wonderful.

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