Ask Dr. Notebook

By Melissa August, Amanda Bower, Matthew Cooper, Steven Frank, Macabe Keliher, Ling Minhua, Ellin Martens, Michele Orecklin, Julie Rawe, Sora Song, Josh Tyrangiel

Q. I know it can be hanging, dimpled, swinging or pregnant, but why on earth is it called a chad?

A. Etymological debate is raging even as you read. Chad was the most looked-up word on merriam-webster.com last Friday. One possible derivation is from chat--small, white pieces of rock produced in lead mining. But what rock and paper have to do with each other (particularly without scissors) is unclear. Another theory, advanced by the New Hacker's Dictionary, is that chad stems from the "Chadless" paper punch, thought to be named after its inventor, that keeps the little pieces off the floor--ergo the pieces must be chad. "There is a legend that the word was originally acronymic," the dictionary adds, "standing for Card Hole Aggregate Debris, but this has all the earmarks of a backronym."

Q. But it's not fair. I'd never heard the word before last week...

A. Stop whining. The American Heritage Dictionary editors nearly deleted chad from the latest edition because they felt it was obsolete. And take pity on the poor foreign-news outlets as they try to translate "pregnant chad." Parlo.com a languages website, offered suggestions: in Cantonese, dye toad tsee (big stomach paper); in German, schwanger Stanzabfall (pregnant punch waste); and in Russian, beremennaya confette (pregnant confetti).