海角大神

Which team do you root for? It鈥檚 a strange question, when you think about it. What does supporting a sports team have to do with the underground parts of plants, fundamental causes, poking around, or any of the other things the word root can mean, as a noun or verb?

A prominent folk etymology takes its cue from the 1908 song 鈥淭ake Me Out to the Ball Game.鈥� Its famous chorus contains the lines 鈥淟et me root, root, root for the home team / If they don鈥檛 win it鈥檚 a shame,鈥� linking the idea of cheering for one鈥檚 team to that of home, the place where a person 鈥渉as roots.鈥澛�

Or perhaps the fan is 鈥渞ooted鈥� to the team itself, as Paul Dickson reports in his 鈥淏aseball Dictionary鈥�: People popularly believe that 鈥渢he term comes from the notion of a fan who is so close to his or her team that he or she is 鈥榬ooted鈥� to it.鈥澛�

These explanations make a lot of intuitive sense, but are unlikely to be true.

In his 鈥淪tudies in Slang,鈥� etymologist Gerald Cohen proposed instead that the definition of root meaning 鈥渢o cheer鈥� comes from the rooting 鈥� digging up the ground in search of food 鈥� done by pigs and other animals.聽

An 1889 New York newspaper makes this connection, describing how a fan 鈥渞ooted more energetically and with twice the freedom of a Yorkshire porker.鈥� As the quote reveals, rooting was conceived of as a highly physical activity when it was first used this way in the 1880s.聽

Mr. Cohen speculates that rooting would have involved clapping and stomping the feet 鈥� perhaps with so much force 鈥渢hat one is visualized as digging a hole.鈥�

Merriam-Webster suggests that our term comes not from digging done by pigs but from loud mooing done by cattle. In dialects in the north of Britain and in Ireland, the verb rout (often pronounced so as to be indistinguishable from 鈥渞oot鈥�) refers to making a lot of noise 鈥� such as a bull bellowing, as well as, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, a person crying out, roaring, or shouting.聽

Today you can root for a team, or for a person, quietly at home, without any cheering or stomping at all 鈥� the word can simply mean 鈥渟upport鈥� or 鈥渉ope for the success of something.鈥澛�

Unless, that is, your home is in Australia or New Zealand, where root is an indelicate slang word.聽

There, you鈥檇 say, 鈥淚 barrack for Geelong鈥� (an Aussie rules football team) or 鈥淗er only fault is that she barracks for the All Blacks鈥� (the New Zealand national rugby team).聽

Barrack has nothing to do with pigs, cattle, or military barracks, for that matter. It鈥檚 simply another word meaning 鈥渢o root for,鈥� or 鈥渃heer on,鈥� your team. 聽 聽