By now there were two dozen kids, each in possession of a cell phone with a distinct cry. The place buzzed, rumbled and hiccupped like an earthquake in a cuckoo clock factory. But I was still intently batting around words related to bat.

What about battle? Sure enough: it comes from late Latin battuĕre ‘to beat.’ It dates from at least the 13^th century. I’ll skip the boring quote from Robert of Gloucester and note that in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales Chaucer tells of the knight, “At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene.”

• Grandes Chroniques de France – Morgan Library M536

Battalion didn’t enter English until the 16^th century. According to the OED, we got it from the French bataillon, which came from Italian battaglione, “augmentative or diminutive of battaglia, ‘battle.’” So which was it: big or little battle?  The OED editors may still be battling it out, but the folks at the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5^th ed.) are going with “augmentative.”