June 25, 2013

Case File #013.06.25: BUMPKIN

Etymologists and lexicographers are split over the ultimate source of the word bumpkin, though all agree that it first appeared in the English lexicon circa 1570 and is probably of Dutch origin. Some believe it was derived from the Middle Dutch bommekijn, which meant “little cask” and was often used as a humorous moniker for tipplers with beer bellies, while others believe it came from the Middle Dutch boomken, which meant “shrub” or “little tree” and was sometimes used as an epithet for people who were small in stature. (The latter theory seems the more likely if you consider the nautical sense of bumpkin, which first came into use around 1632 and refers to a short spar that projects from the deck of a ship. As I'm sure you'll agree, a bumpkin of this type resembles a short tree more than it does a cask or barrel.) But regardless of the word's origin, upper-crust English speakers originally used it as a disparaging term for any gauche emigrant in their midst, and it wasn't until the eighteenth century that bumpkin lost its xenophobic connotations and became a designation for unsophisticated yokels both domestic and foreign.

©2013 Michael R. Gates

June 24, 2013

Case File #013.06.24: ENTHRALL

The Old English noun thrael essentially meant “servant,” but when it passed into Middle English during the twelfth century, the spelling changed to thrall and the meaning changed to something more akin to “serf” or “slave.” Thus, when the verb enthrall was formed in the early fifteenth century, it meant “to make into a thrall” or “to enslave.” Sometime during the late sixteenth century, however, English speakers began to use enthrall in the more figurative sense of “to fascinate or spellbind,” and it wasn't long before this became the word's primary meaning. In fact, the connotation of literal slavery is now considered archaic or at best passé, and it generally shows up only when enthrall is used in period pieces or poetry.

©2013 Michael R. Gates

June 20, 2013

Case File #013.06.20: ZILCH

Although the roots of the word zilch are difficult to trace with any genuine certainty, they seem to wind back to Joe Zilsch, a slang phrase that was coined by college students in the 1920s and meant “an average person” or “a nobody.” In the 1930s, the humor magazine Ballyhoo poked a little fun at college-student patois by using the popular slang—the spelling had by then changed to Zilch—as the name of a recurring comic-strip character who was never seen but always undoubtedly present. Despite the fact that the cartoon character was literally made of nothing, however, the now common use of zilch in which it means “nothing” or “zero” didn't show up until the 1960s.

©2013 Michael R. Gates

June 13, 2013

Case File #013.06.13: FOMENT

Foment first appeared in the English lexicon circa 1425, but it originally meant “to bathe a part of the body in hot liquids, especially for medicinal purposes.” It was derived from the Old French fomenter, which meant “to apply hot compresses to a wound” and was itself ultimately a derivation of the Latin fovere. The Latin term, however, actually had two meanings: “to warm or heat” and “to foster or encourage.” During the sixteenth century, educated English speakers who were cognizant of the Latin roots of foment began to sometimes use the word to mean “to encourage or promote,” and by about 1600, this had taken over as the word's primary sense and the thermic meaning had become secondary. The now familiar use of foment in which it has negative connotations—that is, “to instigate or stir up trouble”—was first recorded in Francis Bacon's The History of the Reign of King Henry VII in 1622, and not long after, this became the verb's only meaning and thus its sole semantic connection to any type of hot water.

©2013 Michael R. Gates

June 4, 2013

Case File #013.06.04: DUNCE

When dunce came into use in the early 1500s, it was originally spelled Duns. The word was derived from the name of John Duns Scotus, a thirteenth-century Scottish philosopher and theologian who had once been revered in intellectual circles but whose writings and ideas were dismissed by Renaissance thinkers as fatuous sophistry. Thus, any scholar in the early sixteenth century who still upheld the works of Scotus was often derogatorily referred to as a Duns man (sometimes spelled Dunsman), though the label was quickly shortened to just Duns. Around 1575, the spelling changed to the now familiar (and uncapitalized) dunce, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century, the term had lost its association with Scotus and had come to simply mean “a dim-witted or stupid person.” The conical dunce cap, however, didn't start showing up on the heads of slow-learning grade-schoolers until the mid-nineteenth century.

©2013 Michael R. Gates