Case File #014.01.29: CRIB

The noun crib has been around since the era of Old English, only back then it was spelled cribbe and was used to mean “manger” or “trough.” When the noun passed into Middle English during the twelfth century, its form changed slightly to the now familiar crib, but the word also took on the additional senses of “a stall for a stabled animal” and “a wicker basket.” Believe it or not, the contemporary and now primary sense of “a small child's bed, usually one with high barred or latticed sides” didn't appear until circa 1650, and this most likely came about due to the frequent use of crib in reference to the manger where, according to the New Testament, the infant Jesus was laid. At about that same time, the sense in which crib is used to mean “a small crude hut or dwelling place” also came into use, and it is from this that English speakers derived the informal senses of “thieves' hideout” in the early nineteenth century and “one's home or apartment” in the twentieth. And the word's association with thievery, informal though it may be, eventually led to the current but less common noun senses of “a small theft” and “plagiarism.” From its earliest days, crib has also been used as a verb, and considering the original meaning of the noun, it's not too surprising that the original verb sense was “to eat from a manger or trough.” As Middle English passed into modern English, though, the verb came to mean “to confine or restrain, as if in a crib,” and at about that point in the nineteenth century when the noun acquired its informal association with thieves, the verb acquired the related informal senses of “to steal or pilfer” and “to cheat or illicitly copy.”

©2014 Michael R. Gates

Case File #014.01.08: JEJUNE

When English speakers first started using the word jejune circa 1610, it meant “lacking nutritive value,” and this makes sense when you consider that the word derived from the Latin ieiunus (sometimes transliterated as jejunus), which meant “hungry” or “fasting.” But in less than a decade, the English adjective took on the additional sense of “dull or uninteresting”—more than likely, the idea was to suggest that something is lacking in intellectual “nutrition”—and this quickly became the word's primary meaning. Then during the last half of the century, jejune also took on as a secondary meaning the related sense of “simplistic or puerile,” thus relegating the original nutritional sense to its current tertiary slot in the word's semantic hierarchy.

©2014 Michael R. Gates

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