Q Please resolve a “seasonal” point of contention in our household. My wife and I call those beautiful red and white flowers that so wonderfully symbolize Christmas “poinsett-as.” Our know-it-all college freshman daughter, however, insists that our pronunciation is wrong, and that we should be saying “poinsett-ea.” Well, I don’t know anyone who says “poinsett-ea” and I feel funny saying it. Can you help? – B. T., Keene, New Hampshire

A: Yes, there are commentators who, like your daughter, decry the “-ta” pronunciation of “poinsettia” and consider acceptable only the “-tea” pronunciation, which, of course, more accurately reflects the word’s spelling. But you’re right: the “-ta” pronunciation is at least as common as the prescribed pronunciation, and in fact appears to be the choice of most current speakers.

We also have abundant backing for a pronunciation in which a “t” is added to the first syllable, making it sound like “point.” According to our evidence, all of these variations are established, and you shouldn’t feel at all funny saying “poinsetta” – most other people are saying it too.

Q How is “aught” different from “ought”? – T. B., Washington, D.C.

A: The simplest answer is just that these are two separate words. “Ought” is an auxiliary verb (it’s used in conjunction with another verb) which dates to at least the 12th century and derives ultimately from “owen,” the root word which gave modern English “owe.” “Aught,” on the other hand, although it has been around just about as long, is a pronoun that derives from “awiht,” an Old English word meaning “anything.” “Aught” is now most familiar in old-fashioned expressions like “for aught I care,” in which it means “all” or “everything.”

Students of the classics may be most familiar with “aught” from Shakespeare, who used it fairly frequently. (“For aught I know, my lord, they do,” answers the Duke of Aumerle to a question from his father in Richard II.) Plenty of other literary lights have also found “aught” to be a useful term over the years. Writers living today may be less likely to employ “aught” than were their predecessors, but the pronoun does continue to turn up occasionally. “Aught” can also be a noun meaning “zero,” and although in recent years the phrase “the aughts” had been bandied about as a proposed label for the decade that began in the year 2000, the suggestion does not seem to have caught on.

Q Years ago, my father-in-law used to say of his neighbor “he doesn’t know sickum.” More recently, I’ve been hearing this expression in the form of “he doesn’t know sickum twice.” What on earth does this mean? Did it come from England, as did my father-in-law, or is it an American concoction? – H. L., Jackson, Mich.

A: The expression you’ve heard is more often written as “doesn’t know sic ’em,” and it is in fact an Americanism. No one is sure exactly how old it is, but “sic ’em” in this context means “anything.”

The expression derives from the command of attack given to dogs, which is a modification of the pronunciation of “seek (th)em” or “seek (h)im.” (The command is 150 years old or more.) When people say that someone “doesn’t know sic ’em,” they are, in effect, proclaiming that person to be as ignorant as a dog who doesn’t recognize the command “sic ’em,” or perhaps as shiftless and lazy as a dog who doesn’t respond to the command. Including the word “twice” at the end of the saying merely serves to emphasize the meaning of the insult, indicating that the person is like a dog who doesn’t understand the command even when given it twice. Other variations we’ve seen include “doesn’t know sic ’em from come here” and “doesn’t know sickum from biteum.”

Q I’m a little confused about the word/name “Mahatma.” I always thought “Mahatma” was Gandhi’s first name, but someone told me recently that I’ve got it all wrong. My friend says “Mahatma” is just a word that means “great man” or something like that. Which one of us is right? – V.C., Amarillo, Texas

A: Your friend wins this debate, but don’t feel bad. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the great figure who led India to independence in 1947 with his widely renowned policy of nonviolent protest, is so often referred to “Mahatma Gandhi,” or simply “the Mahatma,” that it’s easy to see how you could mistake “Mahatma” for a given name. In truth, however, “Mahatma” is not so much a name as it is a respectful title. It derives from an old Sanskrit word, “mahatman,” meaning literally “great-souled.” The title was reportedly first conferred on Gandhi by the poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1915.

It was readily embraced by Gandhi’s many admirers, but interestingly enough, not by Ghandi himself.

According to spiritual leader and author Paramhansa Yogananda, Ghandi never referred to himself as “Mahatma,” and in fact, “made some humble, and witty, protests about the title.”

In contemporary English, “mahatma” is also sometimes employed as a general, uncapitalized noun referring to any great or prestigious man or woman, especially someone who has distinguished himself or herself in a particular field of endeavor. An example of this extended use in our files describes a leading businessman as “mahatma of finance.”

This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. Readers may send questions to Merriam-Webster’s Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, MA 01102.

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