Case File #023.07.11: GNU

It is often claimed that German-born naturalist and travel writer Georg Forster, whose many journeys included Captain James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific, gave the word gnu to the English language when he published his book A Voyage Round the World in 1777. Yet he used the form gnoo, not gnu, and because of this, a growing number of etymologists are now cogently arguing that Forster simply Anglicized the Dutch gnoe, 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 gnoe first came into use in the mid-seventeenth century, initially appearing in the patois of Dutch explorers who had just returned from Africa. The explorers derived the term from the Khoikhoi word t'gnu (sometimes transliterated i-ngu), 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, gnoe became the common Dutch word for the wildebeest. When Forster introduced his Anglicized version, gnoo, 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 gnu became the conventional form circa 1786.

©2023 Michael R. Gates

Case File #023.06.21: HUSSY

In the era of Middle English, hussy was merely an informal variation of housewife—the latter was spelled husewif back then—and 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, hussy 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 hussy 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.

©2023 Michael R. Gates

Case File #023.05.24: SEERSUCKER

Like many people in the English-speaking 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 seersucker, which first appeared in the English lexicon circa 1735, is an Anglicized borrowing of the Hindi word sirsakar, which means “striped cloth” and is itself a borrowing and phonological attrition of the Persian shir o shakkar. 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.

©2023 Michael R. Gates

Case File #023.05.09: NERD

Although there is evidence that the slang term nerd was used by members of the American hot-rod and surfing subcultures of the 1950s, the earliest examples of its current senses of “an intellectual but socially inept person” and “a single-minded 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 nerd was coined by Dr. Seuss (nom de plume of Theodor Seuss Geisel) in his children's book If I Ran the Zoo (1950), and this is, in fact, the etymology proffered by the tenth and eleventh editions of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. But even though nerd 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 nerd actually developed as a variation of the earlier 1940s slang word nert, which means “a stupid, eccentric, or crazy person” and was itself derived from nut.

©2023 Michael R. Gates

Case File #023.04.24: JUGGERNAUT

In the Hindi language, Jagannath is a title for Krishna, the eighth incarnation (or avatar) of the god Vishnu. A compound formed from two Sanskrit words—jagat, which means “world” or “universe”; and nathas, which means “lord” or “master”—the 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 Jagannath 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 juggernaut and took on its now familiar sense of “an overwhelming and unstoppable force or object.” In contemporary Britain, juggernaut is also a designation for any large commercial truck, a usage that dates back to the 1940s.

©2023 Michael R. Gates

Case File #023.04.05: ICON

Say the word icon 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. Icon actually has its roots in the ancient Greek word eikon, 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 icon 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, icon had become a synonym for symbol or emblem and had also taken on the sense of “highest example” or “paragon.” It was then another century or so before icon finally became the moniker for the little app launchers that reside on the screens of all those electronic gadgets people currently worship.

©2023 Michael R. Gates

Case File #023.03.08: EGREGIOUS

The Latin term egregius, which meant “outstanding” or “extraordinary,” was derived from the earlier Latin phrase ex grege, ex meaning “out of” or “above” and grege meaning “flock or herd.” Thus, egregius literally meant “that which stands out above the herd,” and when English borrowed the term as egregious circa 1535, the English word initially retained the Latin's basic sense of “distinguished” or “noteworthy.” Around 1570, however, an antithetical meaning developed when egregious 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 Henry V—penned by the venerable Bard of Avon circa 1599—you can be certain that Pistol is accusing Nym of being a notably bad dog indeed.

©2023 Michael R. Gates

Case File #023.02.22: VOCATION

Vocation came to English via the Latin vocatio, a noun that meant “calling” and was itself a derivative of the Latin verb vocare, which meant “to call or summon.” It's not surprising, then, that when English speakers first started using vocation 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 vocation evolved into the noun's contemporary sense of “one's primary profession or career.”

©2023 Michael R. Gates

Case File #023.02.07: NEIGHBOR

Neighbor is a true purebred, one of those rare contemporary English words that can be traced back directly to the Anglo-Saxon period. Its Old English ancestor was a compound formed from two components: neah, which meant “near” or “nigh,” and gebur, which meant “dweller” or sometimes “farmer.” Thus, to the old Anglo-Saxons, neahgebur simply referred to another farmer who dwelled nearby. When the word passed to Middle English, it transformed into neighebour and then became the more familiar neighbor (or neighbour 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 neighborhood was formed, that neighbor 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.

©2023 Michael R. Gates

Case File #023.01.09: CRONY

When crony first appeared in the mid-seventeenth 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 khronios, which meant “lasting” and itself came from khronos, the Greek word for “time.” (For the record, khronos is also the ultimate source of other English time-related words such as chronology, chronicle, and chronic.) The derogatory sense of crony—that is, “a friend or acquaintance with which one engages in some unscrupulous activity”—didn't develop until around 1900, probably as a semantic back-formation from cronyism (“political or economic favoritism to friends and associates without regard to their merits or qualifications”), which came into use about fifty years earlier.

©2023 Michael R. Gates