Case File #013.12.23: NICE

The history of nice is arguably one of the most circuitous of any word in the English language. Ultimately, the adjective's roots wind back to the Latin nescius, which meant “unknowing” or “ignorant.” When the Latin word passed into Old French during the twelfth century, however, its form quickly changed to nice and its meaning shifted slightly to “stupid or foolish.” Middle English borrowed the adjective directly from the Old French in the late thirteenth century, but during the early fourteenth century, English speakers started using it to mean “shy or timid” instead of “stupid,” and by 1380 it had come to mean “finicky or fastidious.” Less than thirty years later, nice was being used to mean “dainty or delicate,” and in the early sixteenth century, that meaning gave way to the sense of “careful or punctilious.” It was around 1770 that the word took on its now familiar secondary meanings of “fine (as in well-executed or well-made),” “fitting or appropriate,” and “pleasant or agreeable,” but it took another sixty years or so for the adjective to finally acquire its current primary meaning of “kind, caring, or thoughtful.”

©2013 Michael R. Gates

Case File #013.12.05: PAVILION

The word pavilion came to English via the Old French paveillon, which meant “tent” but was sometimes used to mean “butterfly,” and the French itself came from the Latin papilio, which meant “butterfly” in the classical era but came to mean “tent” in the era of Medieval Latin. (According to some etymologists and linguists, the use of a word meaning “butterfly” in reference to a tent was probably meant as an allusion to the way that some tents resemble the unfurled wings of butterflies and moths.) When English speakers borrowed the French in the late twelfth century, they Anglicized it to pavilun—it was sometimes spelled pavilloun or pavillioun—and initially used it to mean “a large elaborate tent or awning.” Then around 1300, the word's form changed to the now familiar pavilion, and at about the same time, it took on the additional noun sense of “a group of related structures forming a building complex.” The verb sense of “to furnish or cover with or as if with a pavilion” didn't appear until the end of the fourteenth century, though, and the now common noun sense of “a light and sometimes temporary roofed structure used at parks or entertainment facilities” is an even later addition, first coming into use circa 1680.

©2013 Michael R. Gates

Case File #013.11.27: TURKEY

English speakers started using the word turkey circa 1541, but back then they applied it to the guinea fowl, a domesticated bird imported from Madagascar by way of Turkey. When the American bird we now refer to as turkey was introduced to England in the latter half of the sixteenth century, the Brits mistook it for a variety of guinea fowl not only because it somewhat resembled the other bird but also because the Spanish were using the same Turkish trade routes to export the animals from Mexico to England via Africa. By the time 1575 rolled around, however, the American fowl had become England's most popular main course for Christmas dinner, and it was about then that it also became the sole bird to which the moniker turkey was applied. Much newer are the senses of the word in which it refers to a failed artistic endeavor, such as a play or movie, or to an inept or stupid person. Both first appeared in American English during the early twentieth century, presumably coming about because the turkey was perceived as an unintelligent and rather docile animal. The bird's reputation for stupidity and tractability is also behind the neology of the phrase turkey shoot, which is used in reference to a task that takes little effort to accomplish.

©2013 Michael R. Gates

Case File #013.11.25: MEAL

Here in the Western world, we English speakers have a time-honored tradition of getting together with family and friends at holiday time and indulging a large, extravagant meal. Even older than this tradition is the word meal, which can be traced back all the way back to the time of the original Anglo-Saxons. The word's Old English form, however, was m æl, and it meant not only “an act of eating a portion of food” and “an appointed time for eating” but also “a portion or measure (especially of time).” When Old English gave way to Middle English in the mid-twelfth century, the word's form became meel (also sometimes spelled mele or mel), and a century or so later, its spelling finally changed to the contemporary meal and its association with measurement was ultimately jettisoned. (Remnants of the noun's sense of “a portion or measure” are still around today, though, in both the adjectival and adverbial senses of the word piecemeal.) But the sense in which meal refers to ground grain has an entirely different etymological family tree. It ultimately traces back to the Indo-European root mel-, which meant “related to grinding” and later became the basis of several Proto-Germanic verbs and nouns. The Anglo-Saxons borrowed one of these Germanic words—etymologists and linguists do not all agree on the specifics—and used it as the basis for the Old English noun melu, which meant “ground grain” or “flour.” When melu passed into Middle English, its form initially changed to melewe (sometimes spelled melowe) but later became meale (sometimes spelled maile), and when Middle English gave way to modern English in the late fifteenth century, meale became the now familiar meal.

©2013 Michael R. Gates

Case File #013.10.21: TARANTULA

For many people, the mere utterance of the word tarantula raises goosebumps aplenty, most likely because it conjures up mental imagery featuring a vast array of giant arachnids both real and fictional. But when the noun first appeared in the English lexicon circa 1591, it referred not to just any eight-legged terror but only to a specific European wolf spider, Lycosa tarentula. Now, this info probably doesn't surprise you if you're already aware that the English noun is a direct borrowing of the Medieval Latin, that the Latin derived from the Old Italian noun tarantola, and that the Italian evolved from Taranto, the name of a seaport in southern Italy where the aforementioned wolf spiders are commonly found. However, you may be surprised to learn that it wasn't until the late eighteenth century that tarantula was first used in reference to Theraphosidae, the family of large hairy spiders native to the tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. And its use as a generic term for any monstrous spider is an even more recent phenomenon, having first appeared in American English around the middle of the twentieth century.

©2013 Michael R. Gates

Case File #013.10.17: GHASTLY

Although ghastly means “intensely unpleasant, horrible, or terrifying” and is even occasionally used to mean “pale, pallid, or otherwise resembling a ghost,” it has no palpable etymological relationship to the word ghost. The adjective is actually a descendant of the Old English verb gæstan, which meant “to frighten or torment,” and when it first came into use at the end of the thirteenth century, it was spelled gastlich or sometimes gostlich. The form evolved to gastli within a scant quarter of a century or so, but the current ghastly didn't show up until 1590—its first published appearance was in Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene—which was also around the time the word's adverbial senses (“in a macabre, gruesome, or terrifying manner” and “with a deathlike quality”) came into use.

©2013 Michael R. Gates

Case File #013.10.10: FREAK

Now, don't freak out over this, but when the noun freak first appeared in the English lexicon circa 1563, it meant “a capricious notion or a sudden change of mind.” And not only that, but etymologists are freakishly divided over the word's possible antecedents: some believe it descended from the Old English verb frician, which meant “to dance”; some claim it evolved from the Middle English noun frekynge (sometimes spelled freking), which meant “impulsive or erratic behavior”; some think it grew out of the Middle English adjective frek, which meant “eager, bold, or zealous” but was also sometimes used to mean “fast or speedy”; and still others argue that it came from something else altogether. But whatever the case, by 1785, freak had come to mean “an eccentric desire or whim,” and by the mid-nineteenth century, it had acquired its now familiar and primary senses of “a thing or occurrence that is notably unusual or irregular” and “a person, animal, or plant that is physically abnormal or grossly malformed.” The sense in which the noun refers to an ardent enthusiast—as in, for example, nature freak or sports freak—dates to around 1910, and the informal senses of “illicit drug user,” “member of the counterculture,” and “sexual deviate” are even newer, all having first appeared around the late 1950s. The common but informal contemporary verb sense of freak, which is often followed by out and means “to act or cause to act in a distressed, irrational, or uncontrollable way,” is also relatively new and first came into wide use during the 1960s, yet the less common verb senses of “to fleck or streak randomly” and “to alter or distort” date back to the early seventeenth century.

©2013 Michael R. Gates