Tag: Fun Etymology

Hello good (and not-so-good, we don’t judge) people!
It’s Tuesday and it’s time for our appointment with the history of the English vocabulary.

Today’s word is “planet”.

Everybody in the modern world knows of planets, whether it be from astronomy classes in school or science fiction, and we all know what a planet is, right?
Well, it turns out that amongst astronomers, the actual definition of “planet” is still a bit controversial. The currently accepted definition is the following: “an astronomical body massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity (which excludes asteroids), not massive enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion (which excludes stars), and which has cleared its orbital neighbourhood of planetesimals (i.e. small rocky bodies)”. The addition of this last clause to the definition famously resulted in the “demotion” of former planet Pluto to “dwarf planet”, or “Kuiper belt object”, a decision that was made firstly because of its very small size (it’s smaller than Russia!), and secondly because the cascading discovery of similar objects would have made the Solar System have thousands of planets. You don’t want to memorise thousands of names at school, now, do you?

To the ancient Greek, though, the definition of planet was very simple: it was a star which moved instead of staying still. This is why they gave them the name “planetes”, which in Ancient Greek means “wanderer”, and from which our modern word “planet” comes.

Hello, my smart followers!
It’s Tuesday and as (somewhat less than) usual, it’s time for our weekly Fun Etymology!

Today’s word is “concert”.

When we think of concerts today, we mostly think about music. Whether it is a roaring rock or metal concert, or a refined classical concert, most of us have probably taken part in and, hopefully, enjoyed at least one of two.
The story of the word, however, is pretty curious, and at one point its meaning even flipped 180 degrees.

The word “concert” ultimately comes from Latin “concertare”, from “cum”, ‘with’ + “certare”, ‘fight’. The original meaning was ‘fight against’. How did it go from that to a music get-together? Well, in medieval Italian, the meaning of the word unexpectedly flipped to mean ‘to work together’, the exact opposite of its original meaning! We don’t really know how this happened, but the most likely explanation is that the first switch happened due to confusion between the two meanings of Latin “cum”: ‘against’ and ‘together with’. The word would then have switched from meaning ‘fight against’ to ‘fight alongside’.
From there it moved to English in a musical context through the influx of Italian musical vocabulary that accompanied the formalisation of musical theory in the late 17th century.

Hello, my sweet, sweet followers. I hope you’ve been well!
After a rather baffling two-week hiatus, we bring back what you’ve all been craving for: our weekly instalment of Fun Etymologies!

Today’s word is “paper”.

Paper is a wonderful material. Invented in the 2nd century by the Chinese Han imperial court eunuch Cai Lun, this humble wood fibre byproduct has revolutionised the world.
Thanks to paper, writing became immensely easier, no longer being dependent on laboriously curated animal skin, or fragile clay, or intractable rock. And writing is just one of its uses: it can be used for cleaning, packaging, art and much much more, and it ushered in the paper money revolution.

The word “paper” comes to English from Old French “papier”, itself derived from Latin “papyrus”. That’s right: the same as the modern English word “papyrus”, the name of a plant native to Egypt whose fibres allowed the creation of a material very similar to paper, which made the Egyptians the undisputed masters of ancient writing.
The origins of the word “papyrus” itself are uncertain.

So next time you find yourself writing a letter, or an essay, or a novel, or whispering your most intimate secrets to a padlocked diary, remember to stop and appreciate paper, that most versatile and useful of materials.

Hello fantastic fellows!
P1: If it’s Tuesday the HLC posts a Fun Etymology.
P2: It’s Tuesday
C: The HLC posts a Fun Etymology

Today’s word is “electricity”.

It’s hard to overstate the revolution electricity brought about in the course of human history. Our entire civilisation runs on it: I’m using it to write this post now, you’re using it to read it, and we’re all using it to keep warm, to have light at night, to cook, to pump water in our houses, to drive our cars, and millions of other things. And to think that just a century and a half ago it was nothing more than an academic curiosity!*

It is a testament to the capacity of the human mind to get used to just about anything that we wake up every day in a world in which people move from one continent to another in giant metal birds powered by the chained might of lightning and we still manage to be bored.

The discovery of electricity goes back surprisingly far in history, to the time of our favourite nerd-jocks: the Ancient Greeks. They discovered that when you rub a piece of amber on a rough cloth, it develops the property of attracting other materials, including water. This is due to what we today call static electricity or the triboelectric effect. It has to do with electron exchange, look it up! It’s really cool.
In Ancient Greek, the word for “amber” was “elektron”, so this property was called “electricity”, the property of being amber-like. This name was given to it by the English scientist William Gilbert, who first brought electricity to the academic world in 1600. Fun fact: in his “His Dark Materials” trilogy, Philip Pullman gives a different etymology to the word “electric”, which becomes “ambaric”, directly from “amber” (which comes from Arabic ‘anbar. Double etymology!)

It took millennia before someone discovered this property of amber was the same thing that made lightning work, when Benjamin Franklin famously tied a key to a kite string and let it fly in a lightning storm, demonstrating that lightning is electrical because it grounds itself through metal.
Don’t do this at home kids, it’s a miracle he survived.

*Which reminds me of something that really grinds my gears: when people disparage pure theoretical research as useless. “Why do we pour so much money in smashing particles together when we could spend it on hunger relief?” Well, if people in the 1800s hadn’t poured resources in useless (at the time) stuff like electricity, our modern civilisation wouldn’t even exist, and with it, all the benefits that it brings. Including hunger relief!

Hello, good people of the nets! It is Tuesday and in the best HLC tradition, I bring to you today’s Fun Etymology!

Today’s word is “gym”!

The gym: some weird people love it. As an academic, I find it an unsettlingly hellish mire of sweat and uncomfortable clothing where people go to voluntarily subject themselves to torture through astonishingly inventive implements. Though I’m told it’s actually good for you. Personally, I prefer a good long walk in the countryside, or, if you have them, mountains.

Oh well, no accounting for taste, I guess. Or, as Caesar used to say, “de gustibus non disputandum est”.

Speaking of classical antiquity, do you know who was REALLY into gyms? The Ancient Greeks, that’s who! In fact, they invented them!
The ideal Greek was at the same time a philosopher and a sports person, busting once and for all the myth that nerds and jocks are incompatible categories. In fact, many of the most famous Greek philosophers started their careers as sportsmen: Plato, whose real name was Aristocles, was a wrestler, and his nickname means “the broad-shouldered”; Chrysippus, one of the founders of the Stoic school, was a long-distance runner; and Eratosthenes, the man who first measured the size of the Earth, was a gymnast.

Our modern word “gym” is the abbreviation of the word “gymnasium”, which comes from the Ancient Greek “gymnasion”, from the verb “gymnazein”, literally “to train naked”, from the word “gymnos”, “naked”.
This reflects the attitude the Ancient Greeks had towards physical exercise, where clothing was seen as an impediment and a shameful covering of the athlete’s body.

Thank Zeus that’s not the case in modern gyms anymore!

Hello, followers of all ages and none (timeless entities welcome)!
It’s Tuesday and your internal calendar has probably adjusted to our schedule enough by now that you don’t need me to tell you it’s time for another Fun Etymology!

This week’s word is one of my favourites: “museum”!

Museums are temples. Temples to knowledge, to curiosity, to discovery. There are no bad museums. Even small or impossibly niche museums are beautiful and important, yes, even the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, or the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum.
All knowledge is precious, and none deserves to be lost.

Which is why it’s sad to see so many museums around the world close or be forced to sell part of their collections because money more readily flows towards “important” stuff such as making weapons or paying politicians.

None understood the sacredness of museums better than the Ancient Greeks, from whom the word actually comes to us. The word “museum” comes from the Ancient Greek “mouseion”, which indicated a school, an exhibition or a place of learning, but, most importantly, a temple to the Muses, from whose name the word actually stems.
The Muses were the ancient Greek goddesses of art and science, daughters of Zeus and the goddess Mnemosyne. Their name comes from the PIE root *men- “to think”.

Traditionally, there are nine of them: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (music and song), Erato (love poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (hymns and agriculture), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy).

So, next time you go to a museum, remember to treat it like the sacred space it is, and soak in the decades of learning and curiosity that went into its making.
It’s one of the best things we humans have.

Well met, followers all! It’s Tuesday, and the Ancient and Sacred Texts mandate that we write a Fun Etymology for you, our lovely audience.

This week’s word is a favourite: “beer”!

Ah, beer. Beverage of the gods. Loved by all Germanic peoples everywhere.
This fermented barley drink is the oldest recipe known to humanity: it dates back to the Sumerians! Some scholars even believe agriculture was invented because of a pressing human need to produce more booze.
Before the 18th century, beer was the primary beverage for most of Europe, because water was far too dangerous to drink. When the first techniques of water purification were invented, it was such a novelty that the rich hosted parties where they would invite other posh people to taste water.

The word itself is of uncertain origin. It has a cognate in German “Bier”, but in no other Germanic language, where the original Germanic word, cognate to English “ale”, is ubiquitous.
Some linguists think the word was borrowed by West Germanic monks in the 6th century from the Latin word “bibere”, meaning “drink”. Others trace its origins to Proto-Germanic *beuwo-, meaning “barley”.

When Germanic tribes invaded what was left of the Roman Empire, the word was borrowed back into Italian and French, where it survives as “birra” and “bière”, respectively, supplanting the Latin word “cerevisia”, which survives in Spanish “cerveza” and, to a limited extent, in Italian “cervogia”, now mostly used jocularly.

Hello, good followers! It’s Tuesday, and you know the drill by now: it’s Fun Etymology time!
Today we’re doing a word we should have done a long time ago: “Viking”! Considering we have two in our staff, this is an unpardonable oversight.

The word “Viking” comes from the Old Norse “vikingr”, meaning “pirate, raider”. As you can imagine, this was not the name they gave to their people, as it was not exactly flattering, but it was the name they gave to the activity which they engaged in from time to time: namely, raiding and pillaging.

The word itself is of uncertain etymology, but it’s probably related to the word “vik”, meaning “bay” or “fjord”, from which Vikings used to launch their raiding expeditions. It’s also the second part of the name “Reykjavik”, the capital of Iceland, whose name literally means “smoking bay”.

Curiously, the Old English name “wicing” (wee-king), meaning “raider” or “viking”, appeared 300 years before the Old Norse “vikingr”, and might therefore have a wholly different etymology: it could come from Latin “vicus”, meaning “village, abitation”.
That would make the similarity between the two words completely coincidental!

Hello, protocol-compliant friends! My system clock indicates it’s Tuesday, and that means a new Fun Etymology must be outputted!

Today’s word is “robot”!

We are very familiar with this word today, both from science fiction and, increasingly, in our everyday lives. Our cars are mostly built by robots, and some of us have tiny robots cleaning their floors.
But did you know that this word did not originate in a computer lab, but in the theatre?

The word “robot” was coined by the Czech playwright Karel Capek for his 1920 play “R.U.R.” (Rossum’s Universal Robots). It is a deeivation of the Czech word “robota”, meaning “hard labour”, from Proto-Slavic “*orbu”, itself from PIE *orbh-, the same root that gave us the german word “Arbeit”, “work”.

I’m afraid the fact that the word “robot” basically means “slave” will not work in our favour during the Great Robot Uprising of 2037.

Hello, fantastic followers!

After an empty week (sorry…), we bring you your scheduled Etymological Fun this Tuesday!

Today we finally conclude our short nation series with the last of the HLC countries: my own Italy!

The origin of the word “Italy” is disputed: nobody really knows where it comes from and what it means.
The most believable etymology would have the name of the peninsula derive from the Oscan language, one of the languages spoken in Italy before the rise of Rome.
The word “Viteliu”, originally referred to the southern part of Italy and is thought to be cognate with the Latin word “vitulus” and its Italian descendant “vitello”, meaning “calf”.
So according to this hypothesis, the etymological meaning of “Italy” would be “land of calves”. Why this would be, we’re not sure.
Some connect it to the name of an indigenous tribe in modern day Calabria, called the Vitali, who perhaps were cattle herders.

Another hypothesis would have it be a loanword from Illyrian, a language spoken in the Balkans in the Roman age. However, we know little to nothing about Illyrian and we literally have no writings to figure anything out, so we can’t know for sure whether this hypothesis is true, and what the word might mean if it is.

From this Calflander it’s everything. See you around peepz!