Tacks Day

It's tax time, and having reflected on taxes a bit, I found myself drawn to tacks, tack, and tackiness.


As my fourth grade teacher was fond of saying (and this was when Ross Perot was going around doing his shtick), flat tacks don't work. It's true, tacks need a point. A tack is something that fastens one thing to another thing using its sharp point. All sorts of small fasteners have been called tacks. Nowadays, we tend to think of the little ones we use on cork boards. 

Because my postings tend often to have something to do with ships, it is important to note that one particularly important kind of tack was used on a ship: one kind of "tack" was a rope, wire, or chain and hook used to secure to the ship's side the windward side of the lower square sails of the sailing ship in certain circumstances. "Tack" thus came to refer to the "lower windward corner of the sail" where such an attachment was fixed. 

From this we get the verb "to tack" which I remember learning at summer camp when we had sailing lessons. (I wasn't exactly a sailing master). It means to move in a zigzag way, keeping the boat in a 90 degree relationship to the wind, alternately on the port and starboard sides of the vessel. From this maneuver comes the more figurative sense of the verb: "To change one's attitude, opinion, or conduct; also, to proceed by indirect methods."

Tack is also something that sailors might eat on a ship. Hard tack, that is. This sense derives from a more metaphorical or abstract use of tack to mean "strength" or "sustenance," and thus came to be used to refer to foodstuff in general. Hard tack, or ships biscuit, was used from 1836 in opposition to "soft tack" which meant bread. 

Tacky in one sense means "sticky," that is, having the quality of sticking onto something. This usage is mainly attested in the 20th century. But the more common sense of this adjective now is different: "Dowdy, shabby; in poor taste, cheap, vulgar." The origin of this word, which is older, is obscure, and seems to relate to a 19th century usage of the word to refer to "A poor white of the Southern States from Virginia to Georgia," which in turn came from a use of the word to mean a "degenerate broken down horse." Its relationship to the sticky or fastener sense of tack is unclear, and there may not be a connection. 

How should we celebrate Tacks Day this year?