tattoo

Two quite different stories are hiding inside the spelling tattoo. The older English sense was a military evening signal, borrowed from Dutch taptoe—literally something like “tap shut,” because tavern barrels were closed and soldiers were summoned to quarters; by the 1680s, the word had marched into English barracks. Then came a second tattoo, borrowed from Polynesian languages such as Samoan tatau, meaning “tattoo” or “to tap, to strike,” a wonderfully tactile name for repeatedly tapping pigment into skin. The drumbeat sense appeared by 1755, which explains why a military tattoo is still a ceremonial musical performance rather than an appointment at a tattoo parlor. Its semantic cousins are equally surprising: Latin pingere, “to paint,” is linked with the ancient idea of cutting or marking, while Greek stigma began as a puncture or brand before becoming our word for social disgrace. So one tattoo closes the tavern, another marks the body, and a third makes an entire parade march in time.