ArcaMax

If you've ever been "on the spot" in a "kangaroo court," I'm glad you survived the ordeal to learn the origins of these two phrases:

-- on the spot: Inquisitors have used a variety of brutal tortures to elicit confessions from suspects -- the rack, the whip, crushing by stones, forced viewings of the movie "Ishtar."

By the time the 1800s rolled around, governments in civilized countries had prohibited most of these physical abuses. But then some inventive police interrogators devised a new method of intimidation.

They would draw a square on the floor and force suspects to stand on that mark while they badgered the poor souls with questions, accusations and commercials for Liberty Mutual Insurance. The police referred to this procedure as placing someone "on the spot," and soon this phrase entered general parlance, meaning to be in a difficult or dangerous situation.

-- kangaroo court: During the late 1700s and early 1800s, European sailors returned from Australia with tales of a strange, fantastic creature that bounded around on two legs. Funny, but I didn't realize Elon Musk was around back then.

This animal seemed so unusual that "kangaroo" became a general term for anything that was weird or odd. In 1835, for instance, a stuffy British magazine sniffed that an oddball equestrian held his steed's reins with "kangaroo attitude."

Around 1850, the term leaped to popularity in the United States too, often to describe an ad hoc assemblage. During the Reconstruction era, for instance, one political gathering in Virginia was described as a "kangaroo convention," a characterization that was immediately denounced by marsupial rights advocates as an insult to kangaroos.

Soon prisoners picked up the phrase to describe their raucous jailhouse tribunals where inmates were "tried" for everything from filching to flatulence. Soon any irregular or sham court was being called a "kangaroo court."

Some believe the term jumped directly into American English from Down Under, where such farcical proceedings flourished among the many convicts there. But the evidence for this conviction, like the evidence for most convictions in kangaroo courts, is rather flimsy.

Others say the term was never used in Australia. Instead, they speculate, it comes from the California gold rush, when kangaroo courts were so called because they were convened to try claim "jumpers." But that explanation also requires a leap of faith.

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Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to WordGuy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

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