Nanny State

Learned Vol. 6, Issue 12

As it turns out, there is a word in English that means, "mom, just not my mom." It's nanny. And there are few words that can bring up such odd and disparate images as Mary Poppins, Terry Pratchett, and Margaret Thatcher. Okay, maybe those concepts are not so far apart after all.

But let's back up. In last week's issue, we talked about the word ma'am and how I, at one point, thought it was another word for mom. It's not. But, while researching that, I came across nanny, thinking it might be a word for mom. And, well, see the preceding paragraph.

Nanny comes to us from the late 1700s, although sources seem to differ as to when exactly it first appeared. However, they all seem to agree that it most likely derives from baby-talk and that that use is the second incarnation of nanny. The first incarnation, from several decades earlier is as the diminutive form of Ann. To which Etymonline adds:

which probably is the sense in nanny-goat "female goat" (1706, compare billy-goat)

So. There's that.

Baby Sitter; Photo by Dakota Corbin on Unsplash

None of my go-to dictionaries mark the distinction, but to me, nannies are a distinctly British thing. Mary Poppins was a nanny; the kids in Paddington had a nanny¹. But we American kids never had a nanny. We had baby-sitters. In fact, for a lot of my generation, baby-sitting ranks fairly highly as the first job we ever had, whether we got paid for it or not².

As I got a bit older, several of my cohort graduated from baby-sitting to becoming an au pair, a French term meaning, uhm, nanny. The distinction between baby-sitting and nannying is a little blurred, but in general, it’s a matter of time spent with the children and possibly the age of the children. But, there are exceptions.

Like Nanny Ogg. Terry Pratchett, in his third Discworld book, introduced a trio of characters that would remain fan favorites all the way through the end of the series, some 40-odd books later. Of the three, the main pairing were two old witches who were best friends as long as they didn't have to spend too much time together - Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.

As becomes clear very early on in the novels, Nanny Ogg has a marching band's worth of children and grandchildren. Why then, is she called Nanny and not Granny³? Aside from the obvious rhyming of the two words, I suspect that Terry Pratchett was playing with the idea that as a successful and sought-after midwife, Nanny Ogg often filled a role similar to that of a by-the-book nanny, e.g. a not-mom who looks after the kids on occasion.

Nanny, by MidJourney and once again, I am reminded that I should not be making these things after dark.

But all of this is prelude to the real word on today’s agenda: nanny state.

Nanny state dates back to 1987⁴ and Margaret Thatcher. Now, I'm going to preface this by saying that, in 1987, I was 12 years old and knew next to nothing about American politics, much less the British variety. Still, I had a vague idea who Thatcher was and that she was not very popular.

Per the Cambridge Dictionary:

a government that tries to give too much advice⁵ or make too many laws about how people should live their lives, especially about eating, smoking, or drinking alcohol

The Oxford Learner Dictionary, on the other hand, presents nanny state as a mere idiom:

a way of talking about government which shows that you do not approve of it and suggests that it is too involved in controlling and protecting people in a way that limits their freedom

Back at the start of this ramble, I said that nanny means “mom, just not my mom.” That’s becoming less true though. In fact, in this one specific instance, mommy may be becoming synonymous with nanny. Witness this example from the opinion pages of the Economic Times circa 2013:

The basis for the mommy state’s moral puritanism is a vile assumption of human behavior: that we cannot control our own bestial greed and libido, therefore the state must do that for us by banning alcohol and gambling.

At the moment, mommy state appears in the major corpora far, far less than nanny state, but it’s an interesting extension of the metaphor; I’m not sure if the implication is that we are even less capable than we thought and therefore need our mommies even more than we needed our nannies, or if it’s simply a reflection of their being fewer full-time nannies in the mode of Mary Poppins⁶ anymore.

Which is a shame, because as a nanny, Mary Poppins was the G.O.A.T.

The Pitch

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What We’re Reading

Normally, this is where I’d mention a book I’m reading or interested in, but, uhh, I’m behind in my reading.  So, until I get caught up, maybe next month, maybe in ten years, I’m going to take a different tack and recommend three news stories I’ve been following more closely than perhaps I should.

• Aliens Exist - I’m sure you’ve seen this by now: The Debrief has a story claiming that a whistleblower has found evidence that the U.S. government has been hiding evidence of non-human intelligence. Cool. Beam me up already. (Here’s a skeptic’s breakdown at The Conversation.)

• Orcas Are Fighting Mad - If you had aliens on your 2023 bingo card, I’m pretty sure no one had this: Orcas are teaching each other how to sink boats. We always knew they were smart, I don’t think we have any idea how smart they actually are.

• New Dialect Just Dropped - Ok, here’s some actual linguistic news. Linguists have identified a new dialect of Spanish and English that is distinct and separate from Spanglish in Florida. It’s a cool and timely reminder that English is always changing and in ways we can never quite predict.

1. I think. It’s been a minute since I’ve read Paddington.

2. A lot of us got volunteered to baby-sit younger kids at our parents’ parties. I have very clear memories of our neighbors inviting every adult on the block over for cocktails and dinner - “bring the kids along” was a clear code that meant, bring the kids so they can watch the other kids while we forget for a moment that we have children.

3. If you're familiar with the witches, we can leave it as read that the only person who should call themselves Granny in Granny Weatherwax's presence is, in fact, Granny Weatherwax.

4. It’s actually much older than that, it turns out, but its most recent surge in popularity can be traced back to Thatcher and her policies.

5. For what it’s worth, “giving too much advice” gets my vote for overly-optimistic euphemism of the week.

6. There’s a thought I can’t quite articulate here, mainly because it’s been decades since I read the books, but Mary Poppins in the books was quite the merry prankster, not as stern as her movie counterpart and quite a bit more magical. I think I remember things like breaking off two of her fingers to add sugar to the tea…if so, there’s an idea in there somewhere that the nanny state and actual nannies are somehow opposites…