Often it is difficult—even impossible—for a later generation to understand their ancestors. Although Noah Webster tried to determine the sources of words included in his dictionary of the English language, a hundred-odd years ago, he went far astray at times. And this term, rarely used in America but formerly common in England, was an instance. It is the name of the wide, very loose breeches worn in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The intrepid Webster said that the name came about because "these trowsers were first worn by the Gallic Gascons, the inhabitants of Gascony." But it is really a greatly perverted form of Old French garguesque, which meant, "after the fashion of the Greeks," referring to a style of a Greek nether garment.
Not too long ago, an inept actor or group of actors might have been driven off the stage by being pelted with an assortment of fruits and vegetables thrown by the disgruntled audience. If the play were a satirical one, the object of the satire would, figuratively, also have been the recipient of the barrage, for satire is indirectly derived from the Latin lanx satura, "a full dish"—that is, a dish composed of several sorts of food, a potpourri. Dropping the dish (lanx), satura came to have the meaning of a medley, or more specifically, a short play with a great variety of subject material. Along the way, the spelling became satira, and the play developed into a critical commentary. Finally, with the same meaning, the word was adopted into English with its present spelling.
The television medium offered a logical career move away from low-budget movies, keeping them quite busy and in demand.
