Writing from a Dublin hospital and asking for anonymity, a nurse would like to know the origin of the word tent as used in medicine. Tent she describes as a roll of gauze that increases in size when wet, used to dilate an opening; it was also used as a probe for searching or cleansing a wound.
My friend wonders if the word is related to the word for the movable shelter made of canvas and supported by poles.
The medical tent came to use in the 14th century from Old French tente, from tenter, to try, to examine. It meant a probe, and its ultimate origin was the Latin temptare, to try, to test. And so it's related to tempt, to allure, to attempt to persuade to do something.
Shakespeare, in Troilus and Cressida, has: "Modest doubt is call'd the beacon of the wise, the tent that searches to the bottom of the worst."
He also uses tent as a verb meaning to probe; in Coriolanus he wrote: "Well might they fester gainst ingratitude and tent themselves with death." But the word also meant to cure, to heal to him; again in Coriolanus he has: "For 'tis a sore upon us you cannot tent yourself."
The canvas tent is from Old French tente, from Latin tentorium, something stretched out, from tendere, to stretch.
J. Taylor from Sutton wonders where the slang word honcho, the boss, comes from. He (or is it she?) knows Spanish and, having failed to locate it in Spanish dictionaries, wonders if it is some South American dialect word.
The word is American soldiers' slang and is no older than the Korean War. But it is not Korean in origin, but Japanese. Han is what we in Ireland would call a meitheal, a number of friends or neighbours who would take on such jobs as saving each other's crops. The word was transferred to military work units. Cho is a leader. Hence hancho, or honcho, the leader of a work unit.
And lastly, my guess as to what figairey, a whimsical notion or fancy, comes from, I think it's a dialectal variant of vagary, ultimately from the Latin vagari, to wander. It's not confined to Ireland as the EDD would have us believe; Chris Renton, who lives in Blackberry Lane, Delgany, has it from his native Yorkshire. Monica Ryan from Limerick asked about it a few months ago. Sorry for the delay.