Learn English – the origin of ‘Gosh’

Hack job has an interesting history. The sense of hack in play here probably originates with the oldest uses of the word as meaning "to cut irregularly or inexpertly." That usage dates back to Old English haccian, and thence to the mists of antiquity. It's not hard to see how the other senses of hack, many of which carry connotations of poor quality or amateurishness, would have emerged out of this definition.

Hack job begins to appear in the literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. Most of the early uses are from the 1920s or later, although I find one fascinating example in a book review published in 1837:

There is a freshness and talent about this unpresuming production which has exceedingly captivated our fancy. There is not a hack line in it : what a treat for a reviewer ! and a reviewer in these days, when one hack job succeeds another with such unremitting activity, that it almost seems, at the end of the season, as if we had read only one huge hack work.

As with most of the other early uses of hack job that I have found, the sense of hack being used here is that of the hack writer, who produces large quantities of mediocre writing because of the money it brings in, rather than because of inspiration or talent. Interestingly, this sense of hack is apparently completely unrelated to the ancient cutting/chopping definition: the OED relates it to an obsolete use of hack to mean a horse that draws a hackney cab, another form of drudge work. (Hackneyed, meaning trite or clichéd, is also related.)

Throughout the 20th century, the use of hack job to mean mediocre written work predominates. It takes on an interesting sub-definition around the middle of the century, when I begin to see the hack job label applied specifically to works that (in the opinion of the writer) constitute severe and sustained attacks on a person, belief, etc.--what we might otherwise call a hit piece. This usage pretty clearly borrows from the older, unrelated use of hack as meaning clumsy, violent cutting: the hack writer is hacking away at his target.

It is not until the 1990s that I begin to see hack job used to refer generally to quick, shoddy work in contexts that have nothing to do with writing or the creative process at all:

The Chinese sometimes cut a chicken into chunks, bones and all, before cooking it. It's a true hack job, like Kentucky Fried Chicken, but remember that the bones add to the flavor.

The broadening of hack job in recent years has no doubt been influenced by the senses of hack popular in computing, meaning variously "to break into a computer system" and "to write computer code for pleasure, or to derive pleasure from writing computer code." This is supported by the appearance around the same time of the phrase hack together (roughly meaning "to create or assemble quickly or inexpertly"), which was initially used only as hacker jargon but is today, I'm sure we would all agree, understood by a wider audience.

That hack job came to exist as an idiom was probably inevitable: woodcutting is a job, being a hack writer is a job, so it's hardly surprising that the term would arise eventually, and in fact it has probably been coined multiple times independently. The evolving use of hack over the years has unsurprisingly contributed to an evolution in the way we use hack job as well.

Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (2000), offers a surprisingly detailed account of the early days of condom:

condom. Condom derives from either of two real names. [Johann] Proksch in his Prevention of Venereal Diseases [1872] traces condom to a London doctor in the court of Charles II named Dr. Conton and insists that the contraceptives should thus be called "contons." Dr. Conton's invention is said to have been made from lamb intestines, dried and well oiled to make them soft and pliable. They immediately became popular, and Casanova is on record as buying a dozen, though he called them "English caps." It was only in 1826, Proksch claims, that a papal bull by Leo XIII damned Conton's discovery "because it hindered the arrangement of providence." Dr. Conton probably did improve upon the condom, but an equally reliable source traces the word derivation to a Colonel Condum of Britain's Royal Guards. This authority notes that the colonel devised the "French letter" early in the mid-17th century to protect his troops from the French. (The French, chauvinistic, too, called condoms "English letters.") In 1667, three English courtiers—Rochester, Roscommon, and Dorset—even wrote a pamphlet entitled A Panegyric Upon Condom, extolling their countryman's invention. ...

Fans of the Rochester School of randy verse can find the full-length "A Panegyrick upon Cundums" in Poems by the Earls of Roscomon and Dorset; the Dukes 0f Devonshire, Buckingham, &c., volume 2 (1739). A note in this edition attributes the name of the prophylactic to Colonel Cundum:

Hail, happy Albion, in whose fruitful Land

The wondrous* Pimp arose, from whose strange Skill

In inmost Nature, thou hast reap'd more Fame,

More solid Glory, than from NEWTON's Toil;

-------------------------------

*Colonel CUNDUM who invented them ; call'd so, from his Name.

Notwithstanding Hendrickson's detailed presentation, Glynnis Chantrell, The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories (2002), seems deeply skeptical of Dr. Conton:

condom {early 18th century} This is often said to be named after a physician who invented it, but no such person has been traced.

Nigel Rees, Cassell's Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (2004) is noncommittal as well:

condom. This name for a prophylactic sheath does not derive from the town of Condom in south-western France. Indeed, early eighteenth-century use of the term tended to be in the form 'cundum' (or 'condon'), suggesting a different source. No 'Dr Condom' who prescribed the method of contraception has been discovered either, A Colonel Cundum, while courtier to King Charles II, is also said to have introduced the sheath into Britain.

Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1788), has this entry for cundum:

CUNDUM. The dried gut of a sheep, worn by men in the act of coition, to prevent venereal infection ; said to have been invented by one colonel Cundum. These machines were long prepared and sold by a matron of the name of Philips, at the Green Canister, in Half-moon street, in the Strand. That good lady having acquired a fortune, retired from business; but learning that the town was not well served by her successors, she, out of a patriotic zeal for the public welfare, returned to her occupation; of which she gave notice by divers hand-bills, in circulation in the year 1776. Also, a false scabbard over a sword, and the oil-skin case for holding the colours of a regiment.

A later entry for "MACHINES" in the same reference work identifies them as "Mrs. Phillips's ware. See CUNDUM."

The spelling condum appears in Daniel Turner, Syphilis: A Practical Dissertation on the Venereal Disease (1717):

The Condum being the best, if not the only preservative our Libertines have found out at present ; and yet, by reason, of its blunting the Sensation, I have heard some of them acknowledge, that they had often, chose to risque a Clap, rather than engage cum Hastis sic clypeatis.

The legend of Dr. Condom (as opposed to Colonel Cundum) goes back at least to 1857. From Robley Dunglison, Dunglinson's Medical Dictionary, fifteenth edition (1857):

CONDOM. Armour, (F.) Baudruche, Redingote Anglaise, Gant des Dames, Calotte d'assurance, Peau divi[n]ae. The intestinum cæcum of a sheep, soaked for some hours in water, turned inside out, macerated again in weak, alkaline ley, changed every twelve hours, and scraped carefully to abstract the mucous membrane, leaving the peritoneal and muscular coats exposed to the vapour of burning brimstone, and afterwards washed with soap and water. It is then blown up, dried, cut to the length of seven or eight inches, and bordered at the open with a riband. It is drawn over the penis prior to coition, to prevent venereal infection and pregnancy. It received its name from its proposer, Dr. Condom.

Colonel Cundum and Doctor Conton have their adherents; but for skeptics of the eponym theories there is at least one an alternative explanation that includes an early historical reference. From David Lindsay, House of Invention: The Secret Life of Everyday Objects (2002):

The word condom was first used to describe a contraceptive device in 1705, when the Duke of Argyll is recorded as having entered the Scottish Parliament with a device made of animal intestine, which he called a "quondam." The following year, Lord Bellhaven wrote a poem containing the word Condum—the first example of the word in print. The word became officially equated with a person in London in 1708, when the play Almonds for Parrots included a character named Condun, who was said to have invented the device. By 1724, the whole business had already become something of an urban legend—so much so that one Dr. Daniel Turner could only speculate that "Dr. C----n" was probably the inventor.

Why the Duke of Argyll used the Latin word quondam ("once") for the device is left unanswered in Lindsay's account.

With regard to the Etymonline observation that condom was omitted from the original OED, I note that it is also absent from Ernest Weekley's generally very thorough An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (1921).

Perhaps the most amusing early denunciation of the condom appears in Pye Henry Chavasse, Man's Strength and Woman's Beauty: A Treatise on the Physical Life of Both Sexes (1879):

Another resort of the voluptuary is the use of the condom. Nor is this more safe. Their very fragility renders them unfit for the prevention of conception. Should they be made of such material as would not rupture, they of course annul sensation. They may then be dismissed with the words of Madame de Stæl : "The Condom is a Breastplate against Pleasure and a Cobweb against Danger."

Conclusion

All of the popular explanations of the etymological origin of condom are appealing in one way or another, but none is completely convincing. Fortunately you don't have to believe them to enjoy reading them. For me, the most accurate answer remains, "Origin unknown."