caucus [M18th] Every four years during the process of selecting American presidential candidates the world caucus becomes prominent, but we have no clear idea where it comes from, other than that it is an American word. Various suggestions have been made, such as the Algonquian caucauasu ‘elder, adviser’ or the post-classical Latin caucus ‘drinking cup’, perhaps used for a drinking club, but this is a rare word, and both suggestions are weakened by the fact that the early spelling was often corcus; nor is there any evidence to support these suggestions. To confuse things even more, there is a slightly earlier record of a ship called New Caucus sailing from Britain to Nova Scotia, but again we have no idea why it was called that. The word has been adopted into British English for a committee or group within a political party [E19th], but for many Britons the primary meaning comes from the satirical caucus race in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), where all the racers have to run in circles and everyone is a winner.