Factotum Gets New Duties in Washington Wars
A seldom-used word for a dutiful servant is enjoying wider employment these days: “factotum.”
On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper had a contentious interview with White House senior adviser Stephen Miller on the show “State of the Union.” Just before Mr. Tapper abruptly ended the interview, he implied that Mr. Miller was only trying to impress his boss, President Donald Trump. “I get it,” Mr. Tapper said. “There is one viewer that you care about right now. And you’re being obsequious, you’re being a factotum to please him.”
As the video of the interview went viral, Dictionary.com reported a more-than-tenfold spike in online searches for the word. Merriam-Webster similarly noted that “factotum” had rocketed to the top of its lookups (along with “obsequious”).
“Factotum” dates back to the 16th century and derives from two Latin words: “fac,” the imperative form of the verb “facere,” meaning “do,” and “totum,” meaning “all.” The combined word referred to someone who could do everything—or at least someone who claimed to. The term entered other languages, like Italian: A famous aria from Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” is “Largo al Factotum”—“Make Way for the Factotum.”
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Over time, “factotum” declined in status, becoming chiefly applied to a domestic servant who was expected to perform all sorts of household tasks. When the term makes an appearance in modern times, it typically gets used for an employee who obediently carries out whatever jobs the boss requires. In politics the word has taken on a more disparaging tone, something like “lackey.”
The avant-garde writer Charles Bukowski titled his second novel “Factotum” in 1975. The loosely autobiographical tale revolves around Bukowski’s down-on-his-luck alter ego Henry Chinaski, a jack-of-all-trades who will take on any menial work. Matt Dillon starred in the 2005 movie adaptation.
One contemporary writer particularly enjoys the word “factotum”: Michael Wolff, author of the blockbuster new book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” “Factotum,” in fact, appears three times in the book. Communications director Hope Hicks, for instance, is termed “a kind of Stepford factotum.” And in a Hollywood Reporter piece published in advance of the book, Mr. Wolff refers to “Donald Trump’s small staff of factotums, advisors and family.”
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Reached by email, Mr. Tapper acknowledged other influences beyond Mr. Wolff’s predilection for the word. “I would credit Charles Bukowski and SAT prep, in that order, for introducing the word into my lexicon,” he said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/factotum-gets-new-duties-in-washington-wars-1515772262
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Factotum more or less equals "dogsbody" in the Trump administration.
Used in a sentence: "Sarah Huckleberry Sanders is Trump's press dogsbody."
