Tag: Fun Etymology

Tuesday! And you know, this particular Tuesday is a little bit better than other Tuesdays (if that’s possible), because today, this writer gets to go home from a long work trip (which has been lovely, but not quite as lovely as being with my husband back home). Anyway, that’s nice for you, but what’s your point, you ask? Well, I’m feeling rather giddy and figured that that would be a good word for today! So “giddy” it is!

From Old English “gidig”, a variant of “gydig”, from Germanic “gudo(m)”, this little word originally meant literally “possessed by a god” (I wonder which one I got!), which according to the OED was likely its primary sense. In Old English, it had developed to referring to the insane, mad, or stupid (starting to feel like I insulted myself) while, in Early Modern English (ca. 1560), we find the meaning “having a confused, swimming sensation”, perhaps comparable with what we mean when we say “dizzy” today. The meaning “elated” came about during the 1540s, so you can clearly see that there’s been a significant semantic change throughout the centuries for this Germanic word!

And that’s our Tuesday fun! I’ll be back on Thursday with a bit of an announcement for you all! (Aren’t you curious? Well, you’ll simply have to wait!)
Until then: have a lovely day, everybody!

Tuesday! Boy, time flies.

Today’s word is “tattoo”!

From a Polynesian noun, like Tahitian and Samoan “tatau”, Marquesan “tatu”, meaning puncture or mark made on skin. The Tahitian word might be the most likely direct origin of the English word, as it was first attested in English in the writings of Captain James Cook in 1769, around the time when he was on a journey to watch Venus transit over the sun, a journey that took him from Great Britain to, you guessed it, Tahiti!

While tattoos are certainly quite popular today (even some of us here at the HLC boast a few), attitudes to them used to be totally different: in 1902, Century Dictionary described them as found on “uncivilised” people or as a sentence of punishment, but that’s a very different understanding than the one we find during the late 17th century, when the term “Jerusalem cross” could be used to indicate tattoos (specifically those on the arms of pilgrims to the Holy land).

That’s it for our Tuesday fun!

Tuesday! Isn’t it a marvellous day?
Have you ever been told to always read the fine print of a contract before signing it? Yes? Good! Because it is in that small text that you might find any loopholes in the deal you’re making, right? But where does that word come from? Let’s explore!

A compound from Middle English, this word consists of two parts: loop + hole. Let’s start with the latter.

Present-Day English “hole”, meaning something like a hollow place in an otherwise solid surface, is a Germanic word, found in Old English as “hol” with much the same meaning (it also has cognates in most Germanic languages: in Swedish, for example, you find “hål”), from Proto-Germanic *hulan, from PIE *kel, meaning to cover, conceal or save. Quite a long history there, but what about the first part of our word for today?

Well, “loop-“ comes from Middle English “loup(e)”, which actually referred to a narrow window or slit opening in a wall. You’ve probably seen these, in movies if nothing else, when there’s a massive battle going on, because these small windows were primarily for the protection of archers when shooting (though also for light and ventilation when there were no battles going on). This little word came to English around the beginning of the 14th century, probably from a continental Germanic source, like Middle Dutch “lupen”, meaning to lie in wait, watch or peer.

As is often the case, the modern meaning of the word is a later development, being recorded from around the 1660s.

And that’s our Tuesday fun!

Another Tuesday comes our way, and so does your regular FunEty!

Today’s word is “lukewarm”, meaning something that is neither hot or cold, but a bit tepid.

This little compound (of the adjective “luke”, meaning tepid, and the adjective “warm”, meaning… well, warm.), came to English around the late 14th century but that is about as much as the etymology will tell us. It’s origin is unknown, but two prominent hypotheses have been put forth:

1. It’s a borrowing from Middle Dutch or Old Frisian “leuk”, meaning tepid or weak

or

2. It’s an unexplained, unattested variant of the Old English word “hleowe”, an adverb meaning warm.

Both “leuk” and ”hleowe” find their origin in Proto-Germanic *khlewaz from PIE *kele-, meaning warm (it’s a bit hard to tell where the unknown form comes from).

Now, we’re a bit wary about explanations that include the word “unexplained”, yet, the OED tells us that it appears etymologically impossible to connect the first element of this compound with modern Dutch “leuk”, though it doesn’t expand very much on that so we’re not entirely sure on why that is so, and suggests instead a transformation from a (unattested) Old English verb *hlíewcian.

The OED entry doesn’t leave us any less wary of unexplained developments, though it should be kept in mind that it is certainly possible as only a limited number of Old English texts survive today and most of them are written in West Saxon.

Tell us what you think – borrowed or native (or perhaps a combination)?

Tuesday! Time for some etymology, don’t you think? Well, we do!

Today’s word is pamphlet!

This word for a small, unbound treatise comes to English from Anglo-Latin panfletus, a popular short form of Pamphilus, seu de Amore, which means “Pamphilus, or about Love”. Now, why would it be called that?! Well, you see, panfletus (or pamphilus) originally referred to one specific work: a Latin love poem called, you guessed it, “Pamphilus, seu de Amore”!

Very popular during the Middle Ages, the work was widely copied and circulated on its own. The name eventually underwent a semantic broadening, coming to refer to any brief work issued by itself without covers, which typically deals with current interests, during the 16th century (kind of like how “Hoover” came to refer to many different kinds of vacuum cleaners, not just the vacuum cleaners by the brand Hoover).

The word pamphilus is actually also about love: from Greek pamphilos, meaning “loved by all”, from pan-, “all”, and philos, “loving, dear”.

So go out there and love all those little pamphlets! It is all there in the name!

It’s certainly late again! Today, though, it’s kinda appropriate, because today’s word is curfew!

While today, this word means a certain time when movement is restricted somehow – usually the time a kid has to be home from the really fun thing that they definitely wanted to stay longer at (but occasionally something more serious like curfew during wars, threats to society, or serious emergencies) – this word used to refer to something quite important: the time when hearths should be banked and lights extinguished to prevent unattended fires during the night! As you can probably imagine, a fire could be catastrophic in a village or a town during the Middle Ages (which it would be today too, of course, but we tend to not use fire as much in our daily lives) and banking the fires was likely a very important part of someone’s nightly routine.

This meaning is actually reflected in the word’s etymology: from Anglo-French coeverfu from Old French cuevrefeu, meaning literally “cover fire”! When it came to English, during the early 14th century, it was curfeu and referred to a specific signal, like a ringing bell, at a fixed hour, a decent reminder to cover the fire up and not burn the entire neighbourhood down. A somewhat important thing to do, wouldn’t you say?

That’s it for today! We’ll be back with more etymological fun next week! See you then!

A bit earlier today than last week!
Our apologies for that – our schedule has been crazy lately!

Speaking of crazy, today’s word is “lunatic”!

When it came to English, during the late 13th century, it meant something like affected with periodic insanity which was dependent on the phases of the moon while, today, it’s mostly used, by laymen obviously, to refer to someone who is mentally ill, regardless of the phases of the moon of course.

It came to English either from Old French “lunatique”, meaning insane, or possibly from Late Latin “lunaticus”, meaning moonstruck, which of course comes from Latin “luna”, meaning moon (which explains the phases of the moon idea). We also get a derivative noun, that is, “a lunatic”, referring to a crazy person. Originally, though, this word actually also referred to someone who had lucid intervals in their madness, while later it became a legal term (that’s right, we said legal term) for a person of an unsound mind.

That’s it for today! Next week, we’ll have more FunEty for you, of course, and hope you’ll join us then to learn more about the (sometimes) rather crazy origins of some English words! See you then!

Goodness me, we’re late, aren’t we?!

Wouldn’t it just be tragic if we forgot FunEty?! Well, we didn’t (we’re just running very late) but today’s word is tragedy!

During the late 14th century, this word came to English from French “tragedie”, from Latin “tragedia”, meaning simply a tragedy (in the theatre sense), from Greek “tragodia”, meaning a dramatic poem or play in formal language with an unhappy ending.

Literally, though, this Greek word actually means “goat song” (which, admittedly, sounds rather tragic if you have to listen to it, especially late at night)! From the word “tragos”, meaning goat, and “oide”, meaning song, and from which modern English “ode” hails, we now get “tragedy” meaning any unhappy event or disaster, a meaning that developed during the 15th century.

That’s it for today’s FunEty! More fun to come next week!

It’s Tuesday! And here we are with your weekly dose of FunEty!

Today’s word is “war” (have you noticed our little trend with violent words lately?)!

From Old English “wyrre” or “werre”, meaning a large-scale military conflict, a word that was, as many English words are, borrowed from Old North French “werre”, Old French “guerre” meaning difficulty, dispute, hostility, fight, combat or war.

A pretty standard etymology, right? English borrowing from French? Want the twist?

Well, here it is!

While the Old English word was (supposedly anyway) borrowed from Old North French, French actually borrowed the word from Frankish (also known as Old Franconian) *werra, from Proto-Germanic *werz-a-, which, surviving cognates suggests, originally meant something like “to bring confusion to”.

Isn’t that an odd twist of things? French borrowing from Germanic languages for a change! But French isn’t the only Italic language to borrow a word from Germanic to mean war, in fact Spanish, Portuguese and Italian also did, which suggests that there was something about the Latin word that made them try to avoid it – after all, borrowing is typically made because of necessity, not sheer whimsicality.

Anyway, the Latin word for war was “bellum”, but see, the word “bello-“ meant beautiful. It had therefore been suggested that the ancient speakers of these languages looked to Germanic for a.. suitable word to indicate this violent undertaking to avoid making it sound like something pretty (although, I suppose, war is often “made” to seem beautiful in some ways in stories and such so perhaps it wouldn’t be so unsuitable after all).

That’s it for today’s FunEty – and wasn’t it fun? French borrowing from Germanic for once!

We’ll be back with more FunEty next week! See you then!

Gosh, you guys, the HLC seems to have lost track of the days!
We’re sorry – here is your longed for FunEty!

Yesterday’s word was “demon”!

This word came to English around the beginning of the 13th century and refers to some kind of evil spirit, incubus or devil. Interestingly, the Latin word from which this word derives, “daemon”, means simply spirit and the Greek word from which that derives, “daimon” even means guiding spirit (or deity, divine power, lesser god or tutelary deity, sometimes also the souls of the dead)!

From PIE *dai-mon, meaning divider or provider of fortunes or destinies, from the root *da- meaning to divide, the malignant sense we see in English is because the Greek word was used in Christian Greek translations and Vulgate for god of heathens, heathen idol and unclean spirit, while the usual Ancient Greek sense is attested in English from the 1560s and is sometimes written daemon or daimon to distinguish it from the evil feel of demon.

So there it is: one day late, but better late than never, your FunEty of this week! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!