Nick and nook and cranny

I skip a lot of commercials, so I am late to the game, having seen the Swiffer Duster Kit commercial “No Jump Needed” (from December 2025) for the first time last night. After some successful cleaning, there’s this exchange:

“It looks like you got into everything.”

“Every nick and cranny.”

Uh, no. As any eater of Thomas’ English Muffins knows, they’re called nooks and crannies.

I can think of several possible explanations for this mistake:

~ It’s a meta element, recalling a February 2019 Swiffer Heavy Duty commercial, “Nick’s Cleaning Confession.” I like meta , but I think this explanation is unlikely.

~ It’s deliberate, a ploy to get people who are second-screening to pay attention and then talk about the commercial and the product. See? It worked. This explanation’s more likely.

~ It’s just a mistake. Likeliest of all, say I.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the origin of nook (c. 1300) is unknown. The word has a wide variety of meanings. Here, of course, it means “any small corner or recess” (c. 1400 or 1450). It’s been paired with corner since about 1593. From Christopher Marlowe, Edward II :

Make seuerall kingdomes of this monarchie,
And share it equally amongst you all,
So I may haue some nooke or corner left,
To frolike with my deerest Gaueston

Nook has been paired with cranny since 1873: “He explored the whole neighbourhood, looking into every nook and cranny of it” (P. G. Hamerton, Intellectual Life ).

As for cranny (c. 1440), “a small narrow opening or hole; a chink, crevice, crack, fissure,” the origin is uncertain:

Apparently related to French cran (in Cotgrave cren ) “a notch, cleft, niche, or jag,” a crack in metal, a transverse fissure in strata, etc.; but the etymology and form-history present many difficulties.

Nook and cranny and nooks and crannies are instances of what’s called an irreversible binomial. That’s all I’m going to say: I’m keeping it short and sweet.

And I’m going to leave nick in the commercial, where it does and doesn’t belong.

[Randall Cotgrave: an English lexicographer.]