A Couple of Folk Etymologists

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        Last week, when I was sitting in a restaurant, there were a couple
of Folk Etymologists at the next table.  Unfortunately, I did not
realize this at first.  They seemed to be mainly talking about
movies, and I tried to keep their nattering from intruding upon my
accustomed semi-stupor.  I first tuned in to their discussion in the
middle of a sentence.  One of them was talking about a bridge
collapse, I didn't catch where or when, but, he said, it was a major
disaster, killing some 100+ people, and the engineer who had designed
the bridge was a man named Botch (Boche? spelling?)  Hence the word
"botch" for a badly conceived or executed plan.  His buddy followed
this with the story that "the real McCoy" came from the name of a
Prohibition bootlegger who was famous for providing good stuff and
not rotgut.  This is very familiar, but I have never heard the
"botch" story before.

        Both these stories suffer from the fact that the phrases they
explain are much older than the era in which the explanatory story is
set.  I didn't catch the date of the bridge collapse, indeed, and
couldn't think of a way to ask him to repeat the story for the
benefit of scholarship that would show the savoir faire expected in
New York.  But I doubt that the story is that this bridge collapsed
in the Middle Ages, but "botch" has been traced back 400 years.

GAT