The Etymology of Pet Peeves

Returning to yesterday's post, the phrase pet peeve is an interesting one and I started to wonder how it came about. The word peeve actually started out as peevish, meaning ornery or ill-tempered. Some references date the first appearance of the word peevish as occurring in the 1300's and some in the 1500's. Either way, it was through back-formation that the verbal form peeve meaning to annoy or irritate came about in the early 1900's. And it was not long after that the word pet was added to form the phrase pet peeve. As for pet, it is actually a shortened version of petty meaning trivial or minor. Hence, a pet peeve is a minor irritation.

The Age of Pet Peeves

I have a very dear friend who has, what I consider to be, an odd pet peeve. It drives her crazy when a person responds to the question, "How old are you?" with "Almost twelve," or "Just about twelve," or anything similar in nature. Her view is that, if a person is almost twelve, they are not yet twelve so their response should be a simple "Eleven." I, personally, find the former responses to be more semantically informative. However, as the person responding to the question, I suppose it does depend on how old you are and how much you want to reveal about your age. I certainly would not respond, "Almost forty," though my thirteen-year-old son would proudly say, "Almost fourteen."