Gaffes

Writing several weeks ahead I sometimes have to predict the future. Is our society at last emerging from the nightmare of Social Distancing, reversion to natural hair colors and....Tiger King?*  Let's hope so.  And if that is happily the case we should be well into the process of looking back and figuring out who actually knew what they were talking about in real time.

In the current parlance, if someone you generally disagree with says something wrong it is a lie, or at least an error.  If someone you generally agree with says something way off target it is referred to as "a gaffe".

But why?  Gaffe is an odd looking word and its use in this context is most peculiar.

Strictly speaking either gaff or gaffe refers to a large hook you use to help land fish.  Oh, not delicate little trout and such, great big whoppin' fish that would probably break and or bite off your arm if you just reached down and nabbed 'em.  Up in Alaska we used a gaffe to haul in halibut.

I know, this is not a halibut.  Halibut are gross looking.

With that terminal e you'd figure Gaffe to be of French origins and you'd be correct.  It is a middle French word (circa 1300) meaning boat hook, possibly from an earlier Germanic root word meaning "to seize".  If you have a boat hook sitting right there and you are lucky enough to have a gigantic fish on the line, well, it makes sense to use it.

But the sense of gaffe as a "blunder" or "clumsy remark" is much newer and the connection to maritime hardware is said to be "obscure".  

The true origin, or perhaps just a sound alike word that tilted the meaning, could be elsewhere.  

Gaff as a word meaning "talk" is recorded as early as 1812 and according to the Oxford English Dictionary might derive from an Old English word "gafspraech" meaning "blasphemous or ribald speech".  Which might have wandered north into Scotland and become gaff meaning "loud rude talk".  Many of the Scots I have encountered in pubs are probably engaging in this.  Loud for sure.  Rudeness is harder to judge and would require my understanding more than 50% of what they say.
---------------------
* If rumors are true that Nicolas Cage is going to play the Tiger King in an upcoming film adaptation......the Bad Times may not be over yet.