Word Stories: whet

Steve Taylore-Knowles looks at the stories behind the English language.

This month’s e-mailbag brings a query from Vicky Loras, who, together with her sister, runs a private English school in Ioannina. She writes:

I would like to ask you some questions about words, as I find your section in ELT News very interesting. Everybody can understand that something delicious ‘whets your appetite’ but what exactly does ‘whet’ mean? In dictionaries, they only give the whole expression.

Thanks for complimenting the column, Vicky – flattery is definitely one of the key ways of getting your query into Word Stories. The other is to ask an interesting question. You’re right that whet only really survives these days in the phrase whet your appetite, which is why most dictionaries don’t bother to define it as a separate element. It means ‘sharpen’ and in the past had a literal, as well as a figurative, meaning.

Imagine yourself in 15th Century England. One of the key tools that keeps everyone fed is the scythe (a handheld tool with a long handle and a large curved blade, used for cutting wheat, grass, etc). Now, a scythe is only as good as its sharp edge, so you have to whet it occasionally. You probably do this by rubbing it against a whetstone (a smooth stone used for sharpening metal edges). Perhaps because of its ability to ‘add an edge’, the whetstone was sometimes hung around the neck of a liar, and was used in the phrase to lie for the whetstone (to be a great liar). Whet was also used as a noun, meaning ‘the interval between sharpenings’.

It’s an easy extension from the idea of sharpening metal to the figurative meaning of whet. Although now it’s usually applied to the appetite, it’s also possible to whet someone’s wits, interest and curiosity, amongst other things. I recently read Joseph Andrews (1742) by the early English novelist, Henry Fielding. Writing about the hero and his lover, Fanny, Fielding describes them as:

…examples of the truth of that physical observation that love, like other sweet things, is no whetter of the stomach.

If there are any aspects of English words you've always wondered about, drop me a line at [email protected] and I'll see if I can come up with an answer.