Fun Etymology Tuesday – English

Hello hello hello, good friends!
It’s Tuesday, and long tradition dictates a new Fun Etymology is waiting for you, fresh and crispy!

Today’s word is the first in a mini-series we’ll be doing in the following weeks about country and language names, and where else to begin if not with our own lovely English?

The word “English” comes from Old English “Englisc”, the adjectival form of the noun “Engle”, which is the name the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who came to Great Britain and colonised it in the fifth century AD, called themselves.

Now you might think the word Angle sounds suspiciously the same as the word “angle”, i.e. what you get when two lines intersect, but they couldn’t possibly be related, could they?

Well, it turns out that they are! The Angles named themselves after their original homeland Angul, located on the Jutland peninsula in what is now the German state of Schleswig-Holstein (how cool are German state names, by the way?). The name Angul comes from Proto-Germanic *angul, “hook”, which itself comes from the PIE root *ank- “to bend”, which gave us the words “angle” and “ankle” (the part of the foot that bends), amongst others. They called their land that way because it sort of looks like a fish hook.

Another interesting aspect of this word is that by all accounts it should be pronounced “Anglish”, not at all how it is pronounced today. The explanation for this irregularity is that by the 14th century, the sound “e” before “ng” had become very rare, and the influence of the far more common “ing” combination resulted in the pronunciation shifting that way.
In some Middle English and Scots texts, the spelling “Inglis”, which reflects the modern pronunciation, can be found relatively frequently, but over time the archaic spelling prevailed, and here we are.

So, my dear Fish Hook People and other Fish Hook Language speakers, let me wish you a very nice week while you wait for our next foray into the history of words.

Fun Etymology Tuesday – Book

Friends and followers, welcome one and all to a brand new Fun Etymology!

Today’s word is one of my favourite things in the world: “book”.

Books are the closest thing we humans have to actual magic, as Carl Sagan once said. We have found a way to encode our thoughts into shapes we can draw and thereby preserve them for millennia.
Think about it: when you read Plato or Confucius or Caesar, you’re listening to the thoughts of someone who’s been dead for thousands of years, exactly as he expressed them. If that’s not sorcery I don’t know what is.

The word “book” comes from Old English “boc”, itself from Proto-Germanic *bokiz, meaning “beech” (from which the word “beech” also comes, predictably). This refers to the ancient custom amongst Germanic peoples of carving runes on the bark of beech trees, particularly suited to writing due to their white colour.
This is not unique of Germanic. The Latin word “librum”, from which come Italian “libro” and French “livre”, amongst others, itself originally meant “inner bark of a tree”.

So thank a tree on your way to the park today, for they give us not only the oxygen we breathe, but the means of preserving our thought and our wisdom through the centuries.

Fun Etymology Tuesday – Magazine

What do the magazines you find in the supermarket, full of gossip or specialist information, have to do with old buildings storing grain and dates in ancient Arabia?

Well, the word “magazine” ultimately comes from the Quranic Arabic word “makhzan”, meaning “storehouse, depot”, a form of the verb “khazana”, “to store”.
This was borrowed into Italian as “magazzino”, where it still has its original meaning of “storehouse”. Later, French brought the word to English, where its meaning of “storehouse” was metaphorically transferred to paper with the publication of the “Gentleman’s Magazine” in 1730, with the intended meaning of “storehouse of information”.

This metaphorical meaning supplanted the original and is now the primary one, the old meaning having survived only in military jargon, referring to the capsules storing ammunition for firearms.

Fun Etymology Tuesday – Lord & lady

Eala, folcgestællan!

It’s Tuesday, and, as per long tradition, we have a Fun Etymology ready for you!

This week’s words are of noble stock: “lord” and “lady”.

These two noble titles, ubiquitous in films set in Ye Olde Merrie Englande, have surprisingly lowly origins: they both have to do with bread.

The word “lord” comes from old English “hlaford”, itself a contraction of “hlafweard”, literally “loaf-ward”, or “bread protector”, while the word “lady” comes from “hlæfdige”, which could be rendered as “loaf-dey”, or “bread kneader” (though it must be noted that this last etymology is disputed by the OED. However, nobody seems to have a better one, so there).

So the lady made the bread, while the lord stood there with his sword on the ready should any bread thieves dare tamper with their nutritious wheat derivate.

As an Italian, though, I must say that ladies were apparently not too good at making bread, considering the flaccid, sweetish mess English bread ended up being. No “hlafþeóf” would be interested in that.

Perhaps that’s why lords and ladies ended up moving on from baking to the far more profitable business of oppressing peasants.

Fun Etymology Tuesday – Hypocrite

Hello peepz!
It’s Tuesday and, as usual, it’s time for our regular appointment with words and their wacky histories!

Today’s word is a word nobody likes to be called: “hypocrite”.

We’ve probably seen many of this kind of people in our lives (*cough*politicians*cough*), and we all know what they are: people who say one thing and do the opposite, who preach well but do wrong.

It’s no wonder then that the word comes from the Ancient Greek “hypocrites”, meaning “stage actor”.
This word is itself a nominal form of the verb “hypokrinesthai”, a compound of the words “hypo-“, ‘under’, and the middle voice (sort of like a reflexive) of the verb “krinein”, ‘to discriminate, separate’. So “self-under-separation”, if you like, or, in plain English, to separate yourself from your true self; i.e. playing a part.

Don’t be actors, people. Do what you say you do.

Fun Etymology Tuesday – Coffee

People of the netz!
It is Fun Etymology day, and I know you’ve been waiting for this, so let’s get started!

Today’s word is “coffee”.

Ah, coffee. Some people swear they couldn’t live without it, others, like me, only drink it occasionally.

The coffea arabica plant, from which the coffee seeds are taken, is native of Ethiopia and Yemen, from which it was brought to Europe in the 1500. In fact, Yemen became so rich from the export of coffee that its laws decreed that no living plant or seed could be taken out of the country, in order to protect the monopoly they had.
When it arrived in France and England in the late 1590s, it sparked what can only be called a coffee mania, with more than 3000 coffee houses opened in England alone by 1670. These places were a popular meeting place for intellectuals and philosophers, because they offered a more egalitarian atmosphere from the clubs and universities of the time.

The word “coffee” is a borrowing from Arabic “qahwah”, itself of uncertain origin, filtered through Turkish “kahveh” and Italian “caffè”.
Some say the word originally meant “wine”, others that it comes from the Ethiopian region of Kaffa, one of the homelands of this incredible plant.

Whatever the origins of its name, we can all agree that love it or hate it, the world would not be the same without this black, powerful beverage.

Fun Etymology Tuesday – Penguin

Hello, our internet friends!
It’s Fun Etymology day!

Today’s word is a weird one: “penguin”!

The word “penguin” is yet another of a long string of borrowings in the English language, and that is rather unremarkable. What is remarkable though, is the language it probably comes from: Welsh.

Now what could the Welsh be doing naming a bird that lives on the opposite side of the Earth from Wales?

And the original meaning is even weirder: it comes from the words “pen”, ‘head’, and “gwyn”, ‘white’, but most penguins’ heads are black!

Well, it turns out that the name didn’t originally belong to the penguin, but to another bird: the Great Auk, a bird which is unfortunately now extinct and which lived in the northern Atlantic, and which happened to look very similar to a penguin.
Its head was also black, but it sported a very prominent white mark on its beak, which was probably the origin of its name.

It appears that sailors exploring Antarctica noticed the similarity between the two birds and were too lazy to give the newly discovered one a new name.

And that’s how a Celtic word meaning “white head” came to mean a black-headed bird from Antarctica.

Words. We never get tired of them.

Fun Etymology Tuesday – Iron

Hello, followers! It’s Tuesday, and that means a shining new Fun Etymology is here for you!

Today’s word is “iron”.

It can be safely said that history changed forever when humanity discovered a way to smelt iron, an achievement comparable to the rise of agriculture or the industrial revolution. But iron was much more than that: for the peoples of Northern Europe, this metal possessed sacred and magical powers. It was thought to be able to chase away or even kill spirits and to be able to store spells.

This belief can be seen in the etymology of the word: the word “iron” comes from Old English “isern”, through a process called ‘rhotacism’ in which an ‘s’ sound becomes an ‘r’ sound between vowels. This word comes from Proto-Germanic “isarnan”, itself a loanword from proto-Celtic “isarnon” (whose descendants include Welsh “haiarn”, for example).
The Celtic word itself is thought to come from a PIE root *is(e)ro-, meaning “holy” or “powerful”, the same root from which the Greek word “hieros” (‘priest’) descends.
The original meaning would therefore had been “holy metal” or “powerful metal”.

Fun Etymology Tuesday – Chocolate

Well met, people! Didn’t think we’d forget about our beautiful followers on Fun Etymology day, did you? Let’s get right to it!
Today, we’re going back to the origins of Fun Etymologies by bringing you another word from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.
Today’s word is “chocolate”!

This beloved food is made from the seeds of the evergreen tropical plant Theobroma Cacao (“Theobroma” means “food of the gods” in Greek, and who could disagree?), a relative of cotton native of Central America, and enjoys undying popularity in every corner of the planet due to its amazing taste and incredible versatility.

The etymology of its name is pretty straightforward: it comes to English through Spanish from a Nahuatl compound “xocolatl” (where “x” is pronounced “sh”), literally meaning “bitter water”, in reference to the drink the Aztecs used to make from cocoa seeds. The funny thing about this etymology, however, is that no Aztec ever used the word “xocolatl”! It can’t be found in any Aztec document dating to before the Spanish conquest, where the drink was simply referred to as “cacahuatl” (which is where our word “cocoa” comes from, incidentally. The Aztec word was itself a loanword from Olmec “kakawa”. Triple language chain!). Where did this word come from then? Nobody knows for sure!
A leading hypothesis is that it was coined by the Spanish themselves to avoid the similarity between “cacahuatl” and the Spanish word “caca”, meaning, well… “animal and/or human waste”, an association which would also be brought to mind by the… ahem… suggestive colour of the drink.

Hope I haven’t ruined your snack.

Fun Etymology Tuesday – Hearse

Hello, splendid followers!
Let me ask you a question: how do you go from a wolf to a car model specifically designed to transport coffins?
No clue? Well, you’re in luck, because today’s Fun Etymology is about one of the English words with the most byzantine history of semantic shifts: “hearse”.

The original roots of the word are thought to be found in the Oscan word “hirpus”, meaning “wolf”. Oscan was a sister language to Latin, spoken during the time of the Roman Empire. This word would have gone extinct if some Oscan farmer hadn’t noticed how the tool he used to break up soil on his farm kinda looked like the fangs of a wolf, and decided to call it so. This word was quickly borrowed into Latin as “hirpex” and went on to describe this agricultural implement (what in modern English is called a harrow) for centuries. Then, at some point during the Middle Ages, someone noticed how certain kinds of chandelier used in churches kinda looked similar to these harrows, so they figured why not extend the meaning of this word to indicate those as well?
By this time, the word looked like “hercia”, and that’s how it was borrowed into Old English. Only guess what that particular kind of chandelier was used for in England? That’s right, it was hung above coffins during funerals! So someone thought: “What’s the harm in having this word mean “coffin” as well? It’s not like you talk about chandeliers every day, is it?”
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, and soon the word was further extend to indicate the carriage on which the coffin was transported to the church prior to the funeral, then those carriages got replaced by cars, and here we are!