Maricopa County Sheriff's Office controversies. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) is a law enforcement agency in Maricopa County, Arizona that has been involved in many controversies since 1995.
It was then used to mean 'a sudden state of activity (or inactivity) or state of mind', as in this early example, taken from William Warner's Albion's England, 1586: His seruants fear his solemn fittes.. The phrase 'fits and starts' is somewhat tautological, as both allude to sporadic activity.
The term faggot or fagot, meaning bundle of sticks, shows up around 1300 in English. It almost certainly came from Old French, possibly going back to Greek phakelos. Since those bundles of sticks were mainly used for fires, it's not surprising that the term came to mean burning sticks.