rut

Two quite different histories are hiding inside this short, blunt word. The track sense probably grew from Middle English route, “a road,” although the Oxford English Dictionary considers that connection improbable; by the 1570s, rut meant the trench a wheel carved into the earth. That image soon became wonderfully portable: a face could have “deep ruts,” and by 1839 Thomas Carlyle was using a rut for the dull groove of a monotonous life. The animal sense took another road entirely, passing from Latin rugītus, “a roar,” through Old French rut—a reference to the bellowing of creatures in mating season. So when a stag enters the rut, he is not merely having “heat”; he is announcing it noisily to the forest. Remember the word as two grooves crossing: one worn by wheels, the other thundered out by a lovesick animal.