Script for August 27, 2001
 

Back on this date in 1859, just outside the city limits of Titusville, Pennsylvania, a man named Edwin L. Drake drilled 69 feet into rock and struck oil. Although Drake's drilling techniques spread throughout the world, the driller had failed to patent his invention and he went broke before eventually being pensioned by the state legislature.

The anniversary of the first successful oil well—and the life story of its less-than-successful inventor—reminds us that the history of the word derrick has a similar boom-and-bust cycle. Here's its story.

Drillers know derrick as the name for "the framework or tower over a deep oil hole that supports the tackle for boring and for raising and lowering drilling tools." Oil drillers borrowed the term from the derrick that names "the useful, gallowslike hoisting apparatus employing a tackle rigged at the end of the beam."

The description "gallowslike" gives a hint as to derrick's origin. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, an executioner named Derick became somewhat notorious. As a contemporary street ballad had it, "Derick beheaded Robert, the second Earl of Essex, after the Earl had saved his own life."

Although aristocrats were beheaded back then, commoners were hanged, and throughout the 1600s, both the gallows and the hangman were nicknamed derrick. That meaning has since died, but not without leaving descendants in the other derricks that survive into today.

Provided by Tarjomeh.com from  Merriam-Webster Website