tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8739449777996898882024-03-12T21:14:26.791-06:00The Logophile FilesA lover of words investigates the origins of the words he lovesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.comBlogger188125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-69203708162469642102023-07-11T11:24:00.000-06:002023-07-11T15:52:00.618-06:00Case File #023.07.11: GNUIt is often claimed that <span style="white-space: nowrap">German-born</span> naturalist and travel writer Georg Forster, whose many journeys included Captain James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific, gave the word <i>gnu</i> to the English language when he published his book <i>A Voyage Round the World</i> in 1777. Yet he used the form <i>gnoo</i>, not <i>gnu</i>, and because of this, a growing number of etymologists are now cogently arguing that Forster simply Anglicized the Dutch <i>gnoe</i>, that language's term for the African wildebeest, and thus does not deserve credit for coining a brand new word. So then, you ask, what's the skinny on the Dutch word? Well, the Dutch <i>gnoe</i> first came into use in the <span style="white-space: nowrap">mid-seventeenth</span> century, initially appearing in the patois of Dutch explorers who had just returned from Africa. The explorers derived the term from the Khoikhoi word <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>t'gnu</i></span> (sometimes transliterated <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>i-ngu</i></span>), which speakers of that African language used in reference to various types of antelope, and so popular were the explorers' stories about the Dark Continent's flora and fauna that by the early eighteenth century, <i>gnoe</i> became the common Dutch word for the wildebeest. When Forster introduced his Anglicized version, <i>gnoo</i>, in the late eighteenth century, English speakers in the scientific community readily adopted it as a term for the African antelope. But the word's spelling fluctuated during its first several years of use, and for reasons not completely understood, the current <i>gnu</i> became the conventional form circa 1786.
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-36916335976859816732023-06-21T09:54:00.000-06:002023-07-11T15:36:48.838-06:00Case File #023.06.21: HUSSYIn the era of Middle English, <i>hussy</i> was merely an informal variation of <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>housewife</i>—the</span> latter was spelled <i>husewif</i> back <span style="white-space: nowrap">then—and</span> had no negative connotations whatsoever. The two words remained synonymous into the early years of modern English, but sometime during the first half of the sixteenth century, <i>hussy</i> came to be applied to any woman or girl whether married or not. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the upper class adopted <i>hussy</i> as a derogatory designation for women of lower rank. And by around 1800, the word had generally come to mean “a woman of low moral values,” though it was often used, as it is today, with an air of jocularity.
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-58326990816199145332023-05-24T11:22:00.000-06:002023-05-24T14:18:31.284-06:00Case File #023.05.24: SEERSUCKERLike many people in the <span style="white-space: nowrap">English-speaking</span> world, you've probably at least heard of a seersucker suit. And you may even know that the suit gets its name from the striped and intermittently puckered cloth out of which it is made. But do you know where the cloth itself got the name? Well, the word <i>seersucker</i>, which first appeared in the English lexicon circa 1735, is an Anglicized borrowing of the Hindi word <i>sirsakar</i>, which means “striped cloth” and is itself a borrowing and phonological attrition of the Persian <i>shir o shakkar</i>. Yet even though the Persian phrase is also commonly used as the moniker for seersucker material, it literally translates as “milk and sugar,” and it is likely meant to allude to the way in which the alternately smooth and puckered stripes of the material resemble, respectively, the smooth surface of milk and the bumpy texture of sugar.
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-71246916225883498482023-05-09T11:20:00.000-06:002023-05-09T11:23:58.745-06:00Case File #023.05.09: NERDAlthough there is evidence that the slang term <i>nerd</i> was used by members of the American <span style="white-space: nowrap">hot-rod</span> and surfing subcultures of the 1950s, the earliest examples of its current senses of “an intellectual but socially inept person” and “a <span style="white-space: nowrap">single-minded</span> expert in a particular pursuit or discipline” date back no further than 1965. Prior to that, a nerd was simply somebody regarded as foolish, stupid, or crazy. Now, while most word nerds are in agreement about this timeline and semantic shift, there is a minor controversy over the term's ultimate roots. Some lexicographers and etymologists claim that <i>nerd</i> was coined by <span style="white-space: nowrap">Dr. Seuss</span> (nom de plume of Theodor Seuss Geisel) in his children's book <i>If I Ran the Zoo</i> (1950), and this is, in fact, the etymology proffered by the tenth and eleventh editions of <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary</i></span>. But even though <i>nerd</i> is indeed uttered by a character in Seuss's book, it is used merely as a nonsensical word, and in no way does the context suggest that the author intended anything even remotely related to the now familiar slang. So instead of buying into the hypothesis of the Seuss source, a majority of etymologists believe <i>nerd</i> actually developed as a variation of the earlier 1940s slang word <i>nert</i>, which means “a stupid, eccentric, or crazy person” and was itself derived from <i>nut</i>.
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-84075257099889521382023-04-24T12:32:00.000-06:002023-05-24T12:56:09.152-06:00Case File #023.04.24: JUGGERNAUTIn the Hindi language, <i>Jagannath</i> is a title for Krishna, the eighth incarnation (or avatar) of the god Vishnu. A compound formed from two Sanskrit <span style="white-space: nowrap">words—<i>jagat</i>,</span> which means “world” or “universe”; and <i>nathas</i>, which means “lord” or <span style="white-space: nowrap">“master”—the</span> term was also once used as a name for the large cart or wagon upon which an image of Krishna is carried during certain Hindu festivals in eastern India. In the fourteenth century, European missionaries returning from the Indian subcontinent recounted tales in which they described how the god's devotees, caught up in the religious fervor of the festivals, would sacrifice themselves to him by jumping in front of the Jagannath wagon and getting crushed beneath its massive wheels. While such stories were likely exaggerated for the sake of drama and Christian expediency, they were nonetheless quite popular in England, and <i>Jagannath</i> soon became a somewhat informal English term for anything deemed to be both compelling and destructive. By the time the nineteenth century rolled around, however, English speakers had long since forgotten the word's connection to India, and circa 1840, the word was Anglicized to <i>juggernaut</i> and took on its now familiar sense of “an overwhelming and unstoppable force or object.” In contemporary Britain, <i>juggernaut</i> is also a designation for any large commercial truck, a usage that dates back to the 1940s.
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-67296177684515957392023-04-05T14:30:00.000-06:002023-04-05T14:31:03.164-06:00Case File #023.04.05: ICONSay the word <i>icon</i> today and people immediately think of those little squarish pictures they tap or click in order to launch an app on their phones, pads, and computers, but that meaning is relatively new, having originated not long after the advent of personal computing in the late 1970s. <i>Icon</i> actually has its roots in the ancient Greek word <i>eikon</i>, which meant “portrait” (as with a painting) or “reflection” (as in a mirror), and when it first appeared in the English lexicon circa 1572, it meant “visual likeness” and was used in reference to paintings and statues and such. More than two and a half centuries would pass, however, before the word would start taking on the other nuances of meaning with which we contemporary English speakers are familiar. In fact, it wasn't until 1833 that certain Christian sects first used <i>icon</i> in reference to religious devotional images and artifacts. Just a few years after that, though, the word was already being used ironically to refer to anything that people “worship” with uncritical devotion, and by the 1860s, <i>icon</i> had become a synonym for <i>symbol</i> or <i>emblem</i> and had also taken on the sense of “highest example” or “paragon.” It was then another century or so before <i>icon</i> finally became the moniker for the little app launchers that reside on the screens of all those electronic gadgets people currently worship.
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-5776426039458393212023-03-08T09:05:00.000-07:002023-03-08T09:44:48.805-07:00Case File #023.03.08: EGREGIOUSThe Latin term <i>egregius</i>, which meant “outstanding” or “extraordinary,” was derived from the earlier Latin phrase <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>ex grege</i>,</span> <i>ex</i> meaning <span style="white-space: nowrap">“out of”</span> or “above” and <i>grege</i> meaning “flock or herd.” Thus, <i>egregius</i> literally meant “that which stands out above the herd,” and when English borrowed the term as <i>egregious</i> circa 1535, the English word initially retained the Latin's basic sense of “distinguished” or “noteworthy.” Around 1570, however, an antithetical meaning developed when <i>egregious</i> was used ironically in reference to people or things that were notably bad or flagrantly offensive, and this pejorative sense rapidly supplanted the original and has remained the word's meaning to this day. So when Pistol calls Nym an egregious dog in the second act of <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>Henry V</i>—penned</span> by the venerable Bard of Avon circa <span style="white-space: nowrap">1599—you</span> can be certain that Pistol is accusing Nym of being a notably bad dog indeed.
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-8194040316733823882023-02-22T08:49:00.000-07:002023-05-24T14:06:48.182-06:00Case File #023.02.22: VOCATION<i>Vocation</i> came to English via the Latin <i>vocatio</i>, a noun that meant “calling” and was itself a derivative of the Latin verb <i>vocare</i>, which meant “to call or summon.” It's not surprising, then, that when English speakers first started using <i>vocation</i> in the early fifteenth century, the word meant “a spiritual calling.” This meaning became secondary in the early sixteenth century, however, when the more worldly sense of “a strong inclination towards a trade or occupation” came into popular use. And during the latter years of the century, that secular meaning of <i>vocation</i> evolved into the noun's contemporary sense of “one's primary profession or career.”
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-39356155056510384322023-02-07T09:30:00.000-07:002023-02-07T09:43:17.587-07:00Case File #023.02.07: NEIGHBOR<i>Neighbor</i> is a true purebred, one of those rare contemporary English words that can be traced back directly to the <span style="white-space: nowrap">Anglo-Saxon</span> period. Its Old English ancestor was a compound formed from two components: <i>neah</i>, which meant “near” or “nigh,” and <i>gebur</i>, which meant “dweller” or sometimes “farmer.” Thus, to the old <span style="white-space: nowrap">Anglo-Saxons,</span> <i>neahgebur</i> simply referred to another farmer who dwelled nearby. When the word passed to Middle English, it transformed into <i>neighebour</i> and then became the more familiar <i>neighbor</i> (or <i>neighbour</i> for you Brits), but all the while it retained its original meaning of “nearby dweller.” It wasn't until some time after the late fifteenth century, when the variant <i>neighborhood</i> was formed, that <i>neighbor</i> also came to mean “something immediately adjoining or relatively near something else” instead of only being used to designate a nearby dweller like the one whose music is always too...damned...loud.
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-27627511855899884342023-01-09T12:08:00.000-07:002023-01-09T12:17:44.872-07:00Case File #023.01.09: CRONYWhen <i>crony</i> first appeared in the <span style="white-space: nowrap">mid-seventeenth</span> century, it was a slang term used mainly by university students and simply meant “a longtime friend or close companion.” It was derived from the Greek adjective <i>khronios</i>, which meant “lasting” and itself came from <i>khronos</i>, the Greek word for “time.” (For the record, <i>khronos</i> is also the ultimate source of other English <span style="white-space: nowrap">time-related</span> words such as <i>chronology</i>, <i>chronicle</i>, and <i>chronic</i>.) The derogatory sense of <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>crony</i>—that</span> is, “a friend or acquaintance with which one engages in some unscrupulous <span style="white-space: nowrap">activity”—didn't</span> develop until around 1900, probably as a semantic <span style="white-space: nowrap">back-formation</span> from <i>cronyism</i> (“political or economic favoritism to friends and associates without regard to their merits or qualifications”), which came into use about fifty years earlier.
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©2023 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-45535406218189776702022-12-29T10:38:00.000-07:002022-12-29T11:30:27.963-07:00Case File #022.12.29: FACADEThe principal meaning of <i>facade</i> is “the front or face of a building,” and it's therefore no surprise that the word is a descendant of the Latin noun <i>facies</i>, which meant “face” or “appearance.” But English wasn't the Latin's immediate heir. Italian was actually the first in line, using the Latin as the basis for the word <i>faccia</i>, which means “face,” and in turn using that as the basis for the noun <i>facciata</i>, which means “the face of a building.” The next beneficiary was French, taking the Italian <i>facciata</i> and keeping its meaning but changing its form to <i>façade</i>. Finally, English became a heritor when it acquired the French word in the <span style="white-space: nowrap">mid-seventeenth</span> century, and while this was pretty much a direct transfer, most English speakers today slightly Anglicize the word's form by replacing the <i>ç</i> with a <i>c</i>. By the way, the figurative use of <i>facade</i> in which it means “an often deceptive outward appearance” is relatively new to the English language, having first appeared around the close of the nineteenth century.
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-50689022505770377772022-11-24T12:50:00.000-07:002022-12-29T11:54:45.961-07:00Case File #022.11.24: CRANBERRYEtymologists, lexicographers, and linguists are not one hundred percent sure about the origins of the word <i>cranberry</i>, though most believe its lineage can be traced to the Low German <i>kraanbere</i>, a noun literally meaning “crane berry” that is itself a compound formed from the Low German <i>kraan</i>, which means “crane” (the bird, that is), and the Middle Low German <i>bere</i>. So now you're probably wondering how the berry got associated with a bird like the crane, right? Well, the experts aren't sure about that either, but the most common belief is that it's because the flower of the <span style="white-space: nowrap;">plant—especially</span> that of the European variety, <i>Vaccinium</i> <span style="white-space: nowrap;"><i>oxycoccos</i>—resembles</span> the neck, head, and beak of a crane. Regardless of whether that theory is true, however, one thing is certain: the English noun <i>cranberry</i> first appeared circa 1650, when settlers in America began using it in reference to the North American variety of the plant, <i>Vaccinium macrocarpum</i>, and its berries. And because the European and North American varieties of the plant are so closely related and similar, not to mention the fact that there were both German and Dutch among the American settlers, it's not difficult to accept the predominant idea that <i>cranberry</i> is essentially an Anglicized version of the Low German <i>kraanbere</i>.
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-48238222774424645742022-11-11T09:15:00.000-07:002023-05-24T13:38:50.193-06:00Case File #022.11.11: CORN<i>Corn</i> is an old word that has been in the English lexicon since at least the eighth century. In the Old English era, however, it didn't denote a particular grain but merely seed grain in general, and in modern times, the specific grain to which the word does refer depends on where you happen to be. In England, for example, <i>corn</i> usually refers to wheat, whereas it refers to oats in Ireland and Scotland and to rye in many of the European countries where English is the <i>lingua franca</i> of business and academics. It was in the <span style="white-space: nowrap">mid-seventeenth</span> century that European colonists in North America first used <i>corn</i> in reference to maize, the large yellowish cereal grain indigenous to the New World, and this not only became the word's primary sense in what would later develop into the United States but also caught on in New Zealand, Australia, and most of Canada. Now, some of you out there might this very moment be rubbing your sore feet and wondering about the sense of <i>corn</i> in which it refers to a hard, thick spot on surface of the skin. Well, that word has nothing to do with botany or agriculture and has a different etymology altogether. First appearing in the English lexicon around 1425, that <i>corn</i> was derived from the Old French <i>corne</i>, which meant “<span style="white-space: nowrap">horn-like</span> growth” and had itself evolved from a Latin noun, <i>cornu</i>, that meant “a horn, tusk, hoof, or claw.”
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-3140282548211997392022-10-28T11:20:00.000-06:002022-12-29T11:08:56.728-07:00Case File #022.10.28: INCUBUSAs you may already know, an incubus is a mythical male ghost or demon that purportedly descends upon sleeping human females and has sexual intercourse with them. What you may not know, however, is that the English noun <i>incubus</i> itself descended from the classical Latin verb <i>incubare</i>, which meant “to keep watch (over)” and “to lie on or sit on.” The Latin word is also the source of the modern English verb <i>incubate</i>, and while that fact may not be too surprising in and of itself, it does raise an interesting question: how did a word associated with incubation, lying and sitting, and keeping watch also come to be associated with sexually active ghosts and demons? Well, a long time ago, many people believed that nightmares were formed when a malevolent demon or spirit sat on the chest of the person sleeping. Sometime during the Late Latin era (a period that spanned roughly from the third century to the sixth), Latin speakers decided there should be a word for those <span style="white-space: nowrap">nightmare-causing</span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">chest-sitters,</span> and from their verb <i>incubare</i> they derived the noun <i>incubus</i>, which they used to mean both “one who sits or lies on a sleeper” and “nightmare.” Many English speakers of yore also believed in the <span style="white-space: nowrap">chest-sitting</span> spirits and demons, and on top of that, the poor sexually repressed bastards imagined that some of these ghostly night visitors took more liberties with their sleeping hosts than just sitting on them. So around 1350, English speakers who were educated (that is, they knew Latin) but were also superstitious and horny decided they needed a term they could apply specifically to those night spirits they fantasized were diddling human women, and to that end, they borrowed the Late Latin <i>incubus</i> and simply altered its meaning. By the way, the English word <i>succubus</i>, which means “a mythical female ghost or demon that has sexual intercourse with sleeping human males,” followed a similar etymological path. It is a semantic alteration of the Medieval Latin noun <i>succubus</i>, which meant “promiscuous woman” or “prostitute” and was itself derived from the classical Latin verb <i>succubare</i>, meaning “to lie under.”
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-72610729085377690772022-10-12T10:31:00.035-06:002022-10-12T15:27:43.518-06:00Case File #022.10.12: EERIEThe word <i>eerie</i> descended from the Old English <i>earg</i>, an adjective meaning “cowardly” that itself evolved from either the <span style="white-space: nowrap">Proto-Germanic</span> adjective <i>argaz</i>, which meant “unmanly” or “fainthearted,” or the <span style="white-space: nowrap">Proto-Indo-European</span> verb root <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>ergh-</i>,</span> which meant “to tremble or shake.” So it's understandable that when <i>eerie</i> first came into use during the late thirteenth century, it meant “fearful or timid.” The <span style="white-space: nowrap">eighteenth-century</span> Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns was the first to use the adjective in its contemporary sense of “strange and mysterious in a way that inspires uneasiness, fear, or dread,” and since it was through his influence that this became the word's primary meaning throughout the <span style="white-space: nowrap">English-speaking</span> world, it's a wee bit ironic that the Scottish still often use <i>eerie</i> in what is basically its original sense of “frightened or unnerved.”
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-18912011031051967802022-09-22T10:31:00.017-06:002022-10-12T14:34:45.866-06:00Case File #022.09.22: AUTUMNThe roots of the noun <i>autumn</i> wind all the way back to the Latin <i>autumnus</i>, which meant “harvest time.” The Latin passed into Old French as <i>autompne</i>, and in the late fourteenth century, Middle English borrowed the Old French term but altered its form to <i>autumpne</i>. Then around 1590, roughly a century after Middle English gave way to modern English, the word's spelling again changed to become the contemporary <i>autumn</i>. The synonym <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>fall</i>—now</span> used primarily in the United States and there the preferred term for the harvest <span style="white-space: nowrap">season—came</span> about in the <span style="white-space: nowrap">mid-seventeenth</span> century as a shortening of the phrase <i>fall of the leaf</i>, itself an obvious though somewhat poetic alternative to <i>autumn</i> that had been in common use since circa 1540.
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-75179253707170364992022-07-26T08:39:00.001-06:002022-09-01T15:39:27.145-06:00Case File #022.07.26: WOEBEGONEHave you ever wondered why <i>woebegone</i> seems as if it should mean “no more woe” or “the woe is gone” when it really means the exact opposite? Well, turns out it's a homonymic issue. That is, even though the <i>begone</i> in <i>woebegone</i> looks and sounds exactly like the contemporary imperative that means “leave” or “go away,” it's actually a different word altogether. Still confused? Okay, perhaps it will help if we go back to the beginning. The beginning for <i>woebegone</i>, I mean. You see, it all started in the late twelfth century and with these two words: <i>wo</i>, which meant “sadness” or “grief,” and <i>bigon</i>, which meant “to beset” or “to overwhelm.” Thus, the Middle English verb phrase <i>wo bigon</i> meant “to be overwhelmed with grief.” When, during the thirteenth century, the spelling of <i>wo</i> changed to <i>woe</i> and <i>bigon</i> became <i>begone</i> (sometimes spelled <i>begon</i>), the phrase <i>wo bigon</i> naturally followed suit and became <i>woe begone</i>. Yet the meanings of the words didn't <span style="white-space: nowrap">change—the</span> poetic imperative <i>begone</i>, which means “go away,” wasn't coined until the end of fourteenth <span style="white-space: nowrap">century—so</span> when the phrase finally contracted into a single word circa 1300, it became <i>woebegone</i>, the now familiar but seemingly misleading adjective that means “full of woe” or “sad or miserable in appearance.”
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-46459408184609637172022-06-23T08:51:00.002-06:002023-05-10T15:11:19.142-06:00Case File #022.06.23: QUASHWhen you quash something, you generally crush it in a figurative manner rather than a physical one. But as the pedigree of the word <i>quash</i> reveals, it was once the other way around. The original form of this English verb was <i>quaschen</i> (sometimes spelled <i>quashen</i> or <i>quassen</i>), and when it first came into use sometime during the thirteenth century, it meant “to smash.” It was derived from the Old French <i>quasser</i>, a verb meaning “to break” or “to damage” that had evolved from the Latin verb <i>quassare,</i> which means “to shake apart” or “to shatter.” Furthermore, the Latin <i>quassare</i> is itself a variation on the older Latin verb <i>cassare</i>, which means “to make empty” or “to destroy.” So <i>quash</i> is clearly the progeny of a long line of vandals and wreckers, and it wasn't until around 1380 that it finally veered a bit from the familial path and took on its current and less violent sense of “to void, extinguish, or suppress.”
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-25857694923287039892022-05-18T08:57:00.001-06:002022-09-01T16:05:56.073-06:00Case File #022.05.18: CARNATIONIf you wanted to use etymology to demonstrate the ethnocentrism of <span style="white-space: nowrap">sixteenth-century</span> Western Europeans, the history of the word <i>carnation</i> would be a good place to start. When it found its way into the English lexicon circa 1540, <i>carnation</i> originally meant “the color of skin.” This definition makes sense when you consider that the noun was borrowed from the Middle French <i>carnation</i>, which meant “complexion” and was itself derived from a classical Latin adjective, <i>carnosus,</i> that meant “fleshy” or <span style="white-space: nowrap">“flesh-like.”</span> Yet sometime during the <span style="white-space: nowrap">1590s—an</span> era when most, if not all, English speakers were <span style="white-space: nowrap">Caucasian—the</span> English <i>carnation</i> came to be applied not to skin pigmentation in general but to a specific rosy pink color and a naturally pink flower (<i>Dianthus caryophyllus</i>), and if a semantic shift from “skin color” to “rosy pink” isn't an indicator of <span style="white-space: nowrap">sixteenth-century</span> Caucasoid conceit, nothing is.
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-26491301367072740642022-04-14T12:08:00.033-06:002023-05-09T12:23:39.885-06:00Case File #022.04.14: YOLK and YELLOWThe yolk is the yellow part of a bird's egg, so it's not too surprising that the words <i>yolk</i> and <i>yellow</i> share a common ancestry. Linguists tell us that <i>yellow</i> ultimately traces back to the <span style="white-space: nowrap">Proto-Indo-European root</span> <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>ghel-</i>,</span> which meant “yellowish” and was used to form the names of colors that fall in the range of yellow to yellowish green. When Old English inherited the <span style="white-space: nowrap">root—probably,</span> say linguists, via the <span style="white-space: nowrap">Proto-Germanic</span> cognate <span style="white-space: nowrap"><i>gelwaz—</i>it</span> became <i>geolu</i> (sometimes spelled <i>geolo</i> or <i>geolwe</i>) and meant simply “yellow,” and from this Old English speakers derived the word <i>geolca</i> (sometimes spelled <i>geoloca</i> or <i>geolelca</i>), the meaning of which was literally “the yellow part,” and used it as the designation for an egg yolk. Sometime during either the eleventh or the twelfth <span style="white-space: nowrap">century—linguists</span> and etymologists don't all seem to agree on the chronology <span style="white-space: nowrap">here—the</span> spelling for <i>geolu</i> changed to <i>yelowe</i> (or sometimes <i>yelwe</i>) and <i>geolca</i> became <i>yelke</i>. At the end of the fourteenth century, <i>yelowe</i> was finally transformed into the <i>yellow</i> with which we contemporary English speakers are all familiar, but at the same time, <i>yelke</i> received only a minor facelift and became <i>yolke</i>. The form <i>yolk</i> didn't make its first appearance at breakfast tables until the early fifteenth century.
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-67901419002020607872022-03-16T09:17:00.003-06:002022-03-28T11:35:42.741-06:00Case File #022.03.16: HOOSEGOWDuring the final quarter of the nineteenth century, a lot of people came up from Mexico to work on farms and ranches in Texas and the American Southwest, and as you might suspect, these <span style="white-space: nowrap">Spanish-speaking</span> workers had a little bit of influence on the tongue of their <span style="white-space: nowrap">English-speaking</span> employers and coworkers. Not all of the Spanish words borrowed by the Americans came across unadulterated, though, and the English slang word <i>hoosegow</i> is a case in point. Like their American coworkers, Mexican ranch hands sometimes got a little rowdy during their time off and therefore ended up spending a day or two in jail and missing a little work, but when the <span style="white-space: nowrap">Spanish-speaking</span> jailbirds were later asked by their employers to account for the absence, they would often say not that they'd been to jail but that they'd been to court. Instead of using the English word <i>court</i>, however, they used the Spanish word <i>juzgado</i>, and since the Spanish <i>j</i> is aspirated like the English <i>h</i> in <i>hotel</i>, the <i>z</i> is pronounced like an <i>s</i>, and the <i>d</i> is soft like the <i>th</i> in <i>thousand</i>, many <span style="white-space: nowrap">nineteenth-century</span> gringos thought the word sounded like <i>hoosegow</i> and, aware that the workers had been incarcerated, assumed it meant “jail.” By the turn of the century, then, <i>hoosegow</i> had become common American slang for <i>jail</i>. Incidentally, the original source of the Spanish noun <i>juzgado</i> is the Latin verb <i>judicare</i>, which means “to judge” and is also the source of the English word <i>judge</i> and related terms such as <i>judgment</i> and <i>judicial</i>.
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-42790239141254025532022-02-17T07:58:00.000-07:002022-02-17T12:49:04.698-07:00Case File #022.02.17: KEENHere's something really keen: In the era of Old English, the adjective <i>keen</i> was originally spelled <i>cene</i> and meant “brave” or “daring,” but sometime during the eighth century, the spelling changed to <i>kene</i> and the meaning shifted to “skilled” or “adroit.” The senses of “sharp” (as in the edge of a blade) and “enthusiastic or eager” came into use circa 1200, which was also about the same time the spelling changed to <i>keen</i>, yet it wasn't until the <span style="white-space: nowrap">mid-fourteenth</span> century or so that the senses of “intense” and “mentally alert or intellectually shrewd” first appeared. Interestingly, the verb <i>keen</i> (“to lament, mourn, or complain loudly”) and its associated noun (“a loud wailing or lament”) are etymologically unrelated to the adjective. Both verb and noun were actually derived from the Irish Gaelic verb <i>caoin</i>, which means “to grieve” or “to weep in mourning,” and neither entered the English lexicon until around 1810. A little more than a hundred years later, American teenagers developed the informal usage in which <i>keen</i> means “wonderful” or “excellent,” but alas, the majority of today's hip youth aren't all that keen on the slangy word.
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-17658502237236526482022-01-12T09:35:00.003-07:002022-02-17T13:52:49.588-07:00Case File #022.01.12: OXYMORONDid you know that the word <i>oxymoron</i> is itself an oxymoron? True story. First appearing circa 1657, the English noun was derived from the ancient Greek adjective <i>oxymoros</i>, and though the Greek means “markedly foolish,” it was formed from the roots <i>oxys</i>, which means “keen” (like the edge of a knife), and <i>moros</i>, which means “stupid.” So in an etymological sense, an oxymoron is a sharp dullard.
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©2022 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-27922369606684319792021-12-17T07:51:00.000-07:002023-05-11T13:23:53.696-06:00Case File #021.12.17: ICONOCLASTThe noun <i>iconoclast</i> is an Anglicized form of the Medieval Latin <i>iconoclastes</i> and literally means “image breaker.” The Latin was derived from the Late Greek <i>eikonoklastes</i>, itself a combination of the Greek noun <i>eikon</i>, which meant “portrait” or “image,” and a <span style="white-space: nowrap">past-tense</span> form of the Greek verb <i>klan</i> that meant “to break.” During the eighth and ninth centuries, the Latin term was used as a designation for certain radical members of the Eastern Orthodox Church who believed the veneration of religious imagery was a form of idolatry and therefore sought to destroy such objects. And when <i>iconoclast</i> became a part of the English lexicon in the late sixteenth century, it was used in reference to extreme Protestants who, like the Eastern Orthodox radicals before them, vehemently and sometimes violently expressed their opposition to the use of graven <span style="white-space: nowrap">images—and,</span> for that matter, to any vestiges of papal <span style="white-space: nowrap">practice—in</span> churches and religious services. The now more common use of <i>iconoclast</i> in which it means “a person who attacks or seeks to subvert traditional or popular ideas and institutions” is relatively new, having first been recorded in the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning circa 1842.
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©2021 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873944977799689888.post-24203972205448338752021-11-21T11:16:00.007-07:002021-11-21T19:13:15.914-07:00Case File #021.11.21: NOVEMBER<i>Novem</i> was the Latin word for the cardinal number nine, and to this the ancient Romans added <span style="white-space: nowrap;"><i>-bris</i>—a</span> suffix meaning <span style="white-space: nowrap;">“month”—to</span> form the word <i>Novembris</i>, which literally meant “month nine.” Probably due to a bit of apocope, <i>Novembris</i> soon became <i>November</i>, though this formal shift didn't affect the semantics and the word remained the designation for the ninth month of the year. But <span style="white-space: nowrap;">wait—isn't</span> November the eleventh month of the year? Well, yes. Now. The original Roman calendar, however, had only ten months, with March as the first, December as the last, and November thus the ninth. This calendar was based on a lunar cycle rather than a solar one, though, and it turned out to be off by about <span style="white-space: nowrap;">sixty-one</span> days. So around 713 BCE, Numa Pompilius, the reputed second king of Rome, tried to compensate for the error by extending the calendar with two new months: <i>Ianuarius</i> and <i>Februarius</i>, which we English speakers now call, respectively, <i>January</i> and <i>February</i>. Since Numa placed these new months at the beginning of the year (that is, in front of March), November was pushed from the ninth spot to the eleventh, and despite some later tweaking by Julius Caesar and Pope <span style="white-space: nowrap;">Gregory XIII,</span> this has remained the month's place on the calendar ever since. As for the word <i>November</i>, it passed into Old French as <i>Novembre</i>, carrying over the adjusted Latin meaning of “the eleventh month of the calendar year.” Middle English borrowed the Old French circa <span style="white-space: nowrap;">1200 CE—it</span> replaced the Old English <i>Blotmonath</i>, which literally meant “blood month” and was so named because it was the time of year when animals were slaughtered in preparation for the coming <span style="white-space: nowrap;">winter—although</span> it took a couple of centuries for the English word's form to shift to the current <i>November</i>.
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©2021 Michael R. GatesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00090409729701112567noreply@blogger.com0