Category: Fun Etymology

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!

Hello all! It’s your favourite time of the week again: Fun Ety Time! This week, the word is ‘villain’.

For any francophones out there, the French-looking spelling certainly gives away the origin of this word, no? It’s actually no red herring – ‘villain’ does indeed enter English through Old French and Anglo-Norman (the latter is the variety of Norman French spoken in England after the Norman conquest).

Today, ‘villain’ mostly refers to an antagonist in literature or media, someone criminal or with evil intent, but when we first see ‘villain’ appearing in the early 14th century, its meaning referred more to someone low-born and dishonourable, rather than the more specific meaning it has today.

So how did we get to the low-born dishonorable use in the first place? The Old French word comes from the Latin ‘villanus’, which is a derivation of the word ‘villa’, meaning… well, roughly what you’d expect: a big country house or farm.

In fact, ‘villain’ originally simply referred to someone who lived on a farm. Then, people’s prejudice took the reins and we now only find the pejorative meaning of ‘villain’ in both English and French. This is just one of many examples of a word receiving a more negative or positive meaning due to the social connotations it brings.

That’s it for now, tune in next week for more etymology fun!

A late Tuesday FunEty for you, friends! Today’s word is “disaster”!

This word can refer to any unfortunate or ruinous event, and it’s origins is a bit all over the map (not really, but it does have multiple origins).

Partly, it’s a borrowing from French “desastre”, from Italian “disastro”, which in turn is modelled on an Occitan lexical item. For those of you who are, like i was before this post, somewhat unfamiliar with the Occitan language, it is a Romance language, spoken in southern France, Italy’s Occitan Valleys, Monaco and Spain’s Val d’Aran. Some also consider Catalan to be included. However, the unity of the Occitan language is a bit disputed, and some consider it a macrolanguage, that is, a language with widely varying dialects.

Anyway, back to “disaster”. So, Italian “disastro” can here be split into two: the prefix “dis-“, equivalent to English “mis-“ meaning ill, and “astro” from Latin “astrum”, meaning star. So, disaster could be translated, literally, to “ill-star(red)”.

So what about Occitan? Well, in Old Occitan, we find “desastre”, which is probably from Old Occitan “dezastruc”, which also meant “ill-starred” from late 12th century.

I hope you enjoyed that little trip, I know I did! Now, excuse me while I go read up some more on the Occitan language!

Tuesday! Let’s go, shall we?

Today’s word is “mortgage”. Few of us wish to have one, a non-wish reflected in its etymology!

Coming to English during the 14th century, this word comes from Old French “morgage”, a compound from “mort gage”, ultimately from post-classical Latin mortuum vadium, literally meaning “dead pledge”!

The term stems from the fact that a deal dies when the debt is paid (or, in worst case scenario, when payment fails). In English, it was actually borrowed straight off as “morgage”, the <t> being restored in modern English on the basis of Latin mortuum.

So let those debts die (in the good way, that is), ladies and gents, and see you next week for more Fun Etymology!

I’m obsessed with looking up etymologies, you know, that’s why I’m here every Tuesday! So, I figured it was appropriate that today’s word should be “obsess”!

From Latin “obsessus”, the past participle of “obsidere”, meaning to watch closely, besiege, occupy; stay, remain or abide.

The Latin word can actually be split in two: “ob”, meaning against, and “sedere”, meaning to sit, so the Latin word literally means “sit opposite to”.

When it came to English, around the year 1500, it had come to mean something like “to besiege”, and from around 1530, we get the “ghost” sense of being obsessed by an evil spirit.

The most common meaning today, though, may be the psychological one, that is “I am obsessed with FunEty!”, but that is a late sense of the word that didn’t develop until the 20th century.