Right now, I'm facing a huge backlog of work: tall stacks of papers to grade, long lists of emails to read, and big, circular blocks of oak firewood to split and stack (thank you, October snowstorm).

That wood, in fact, harbors a clue to the origin of "backlog." In colonial days, Americans did all they could to keep the fires in their cavernous fireplaces burning overnight. This way they wouldn't have to waste precious matches to relight the fires the next morning.

So a householder would place an enormous log, as much as two-feet thick, into the back of the fireplace. This "backlog" would burn all night, providing embers to rekindle the fire the next morning.

This practice led to household conversations with a surprisingly modern ring:

Prudence: Henry, can you take out the garbage?

Henry: Sorry, honey. I'm all tied up right now, trying to deal with this enormous backlog.

By the early 1900s, when people started heating their homes with central furnaces, the original meaning of "backlog" had begun to fade. But the term soon took on two metaphoric meanings: "a reserve supply or source" and "an accumulation of unfinished work."

Another common term related to heat is "hotbed." It's funny; we use this word so often (a "hotbed of revolution," a "hotbed of terrorism"), but few of us ever think about its origin. Because "hotbed" usually implies something dangerous or intense, you might guess that it's derived from hot coals or flaming beds.

Surprisingly, it comes instead from the relatively cool and tranquil enterprise of gardening. A hot bed is a framed bed of earth enclosed in glass to provide seeds or seedlings an early start in the spring. The young plants are kept warm, not only by the glass cover but also by fermenting manure.

"Hotbed" soon took on the metaphoric meaning of "a place that provides a fertile environment for the rapid growth or expansion of an idea or enterprise." While "hotbed" occurs most frequently in negative contexts ("a hotbed of extremism"), a quick search of recent citations turns up some positive connotations as well: "a hotbed of comedy," "a hoops hotbed," "a jazz hotbed."

Last year, Wall Street Journal writer Dave Shiflett made a nice play on the usually negative meaning of "hotbed" (and the double meaning of "bed") when he slyly noted that Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner shunned "standard domesticity, that hotbed of monogamy."

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to [email protected] or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254