• caboose •
Pronunciation: kê-bus • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. A ship's galley. 2. The last car on a freight train for the use of the crew. 3. A follower, someone who brings up the rear. 4. The buttocks.
Notes: Here is a word referring to the last, usually red, car on a freight train. It could be used figuratively to refer to the end of anything. It is a lexical orphan with no derivational relatives.
In Play: As trains move on down the ladder to extinction, cabooses are the first to go: "While the freight train moved, the railway crew sat in the little red caboose, smoked, and played poker." However, most anything bringing up the rear may be called a caboose: "Rodney is a loose caboose, always the last to arrive."
Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed in the mid-1700s from either Middle Dutch kambuis "ship's galley" or closely related Low German kabhuse "cabin on a ship's deck", Moden German Kombüse "caboose". The origin of kab- is a mystery. It seems related to Late Latin capanna "hut", source of Portuguese cabana, Spanish cabaña, Italian capanna, and French cabane "cabin" and cabine "(plane) cabin, officer's quarters on a ship", whence English cabin. That is as far back as the history of kab- is known. Huse, today Dutch huis "house", has Germanic cousins in Danish and Swedish hus, German Haus, and English house. Pokorny, grandfather of PIE etymology, claims it shares a PIE origin with hide, (s)keu- "to cover, conceal", source also of Sanskrit skunati "covers", Greek keuthein "to cover, hide", Latin cutis "skin", Lithuanian kiautas "shell", and English hide and hut. (Now an e-ovation and "welcome back" for prodigal son Jeb Britton, III, whose last suggestions came in 2013, for today's funny Good Word with the complicated history.)
