 How can the words stallion, apostle, stalk, & stout have anything to do with one another? They are all the progeny of the Proto-Indo-European root *stel-, which meant to put, stand, or put in order.
The to put or stand meaning appears to have brought us install, installment, pedestal, & the noun stalk (the verb stalk comes from an entirely different source).. The to put in order meaning appears to have given us apostle, epistle, gestalt, peristalsis & stale (which originally referred to wine or other liquids that had stood long enough to be freed from the dregs & be clear (or put in order). Sometimes getting things in order means having them come to a stop or be still, so we have the noun stall (a place for an animal in a stable) & the verb stall (become stuck or come to a stop). From this branch of the tree we also have stolid, stallion, stultify, systolic, still, stele & stout (as an appreciator of dark, hefty beer, I’d say nothing can put things in order like a pint of good stout). Well, that’s a lot of putting in order, isn't it? Thanks to this week’s sources: Collins Dictionary, The OED, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, & Dreamstime.
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 We English speakers have a plethora of ways to say nothing. Here’s a smattering of them.
Nothing showed up in Old English as a combination of no & thing. It originally meant insignificant thing, or thing of no consequence. Nought was born of the same roots as nothing, also during Old English. Zero comes from Sanskrit through Arabic, Latin, Italian & French, meaning the absence of all quantity. Zero is etymologically realted to the word cipher. And speaking of cipher, it showed up in the late 1400s as a label for the arithemetical symbol for zero. Unlike zero, cypher didn’t pass through Italian, but came through Old French, Medieval Latin, & Arabic from Sanskrit. Goose-egg appeared in English in 1866 on the baseball field, apparently due to the visual similarty of a zero and an egg (why the goose was responsible for the egg is anyone’s guess). Zip showed up in 1900, from student slang meaning a score of zero on a test. Nix came to English in 1789 from Middle High German, where it meant nothing. English usage of nada is attributed to Ernest Hemingway in 1933. He learned it from Spanish speakers in California. The Spanish word has its roots in a Latin & Proto-Indo-European word meaning to be born or to beget. I don’t imagine any mother would suggest that giving birth was nada, but it seems that over the years the tininess of things that are born caused the word to adopt the meaning insignificant, & from there nada came to mean nothing. If you have anything to say about all this nothing, please do. Big thanks to his week’s sources: Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, Etymonline, The OED, Inspired Pencil  Last week’s post on malfeasance got me thinking, so I turned to Greed — A Dictionary for the Selfish, & found some fabulous words & related quotes. I hope you’ll like them. I’ll start with a word proposed in Greed — A Dictionary for the Selfish (I can’t find it anywhere else, but it’s too delicious a word not to include). Sinesthesia, a slang term meaning to commit all seven deadly sins at once (pride, envy, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, & sloth). I’m sorry to say, there are those in the headlines who appear to have such goals. And some more gree-inspired words: Guttle (1100s), to eat with greed & enjoyment. Swindle (1782), to cheat someone out of money or other possessions. Covetousness, (1200s), the act of being greedy or selfish Felonious,(1400s), criminal, villainous, reminiscent, or relating to a felony crime. Peculate, (1749), to embezzle funds that have been entrusted to one’s care, to steal public money. Plunder (1630s), to take with force, especially during wartime. In 1914, plunder gave birth to the colloquial term plunderbund, a corrupt alliance of corporate & finanical interests. Hmm. And here’s a related thought from Albert Einstein: Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear, & greed. And one from G.S. Bowles: Covetous persons are like sponges which greedily drink in water, but return very little until they are squeezed. We’ll end with a slightly more uplifting thought from Garrison Keillor. Even in a time of elephantine vanity & greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. ‘ May the campfires of gentle people persevere.. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Greed, a Dictionary for the Selfish, Merriam Webster, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, The OED, & dreamstime.com.  It seems news events these days might call for new words, however, the language has supplied us with any number of applicable words.
Pugnacious — inclined to aggression or fighting, 1640s, (from a root meaning to prick) Malfeasance — behavior marked by by illegality or wrongdoing, 1690s (from roots translating to do bad doings) Polarize — to pull apart, 1811 in optics, & 1949 in politics Iniquity — an unjust or immmoral act, 1300, from a word meaning unjust, unequal, slanting, or steep Effrontry — immense nerve or audacity, 1715 from a word meaning shameless Provocateur — a person who intentionally stirs up trouble, 1915, shortened by Emma Goldman from the 1845 term, agent provacateur. Traduce — to knowingly make false accusations against a person, 1580s from a 1530s word meaning to alter or change Unconscionable — immoral, unscrupulous, without conscience, 1560s, created by adding un- to a word meaning to be guided by conscience. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, Etymonline, the OED, Wrath, A Dictionary for the Enraged, & thumbs.com.  April 30 is International Jazz Day, so here’s a paltry collection of the countless jazz vocabulary terms:
Jazz — 1915, American music genre developed especially from ragtime, blues, & African sources, as it referred to music, but the word showed up first in 1912 in the field of baseball, from an 1860 word meaning energy, vitality, spirit Axe — 1955, the saxophone (partially due to rhyme, & also due to being the right tool for the job), 1976 meaning the guitar, later broadening to mean musical instrument Backbeat — 1928, a strong beat regularly falling on a normally unaccented beat of a bar Bebop — 1928, nonsense words in jazz lyrics Boogie woogie — 1928, a reduplication of boogie, a rent party (a usually musical gathering in which attendees all pay an entrance fee in order to help the host pay rent) Chops — 1900s, a musician’s skills, from the 1600s term meaning to cut into smaller portions Dig — 1934, to appreciate, probably from the 1827 verb dig, to study hard Jam — 1935, to collectively improvise, this verb probably comes from the same verb that led to the fruit preserves sort of jam, to be pressed tightly together. Moldy fig — 1942, a jazz purist who eschews such things as printed scores Riff — 1935, a repeated melodic phrase, probably a shortened form of riffle or refrain Scat — 1927, the use of emotive, onomatopoeic, and nonsense syllables instead of words in solo vocal improvisations Thanks to this week’s sources: Bebop, Etymonline, Brittanica, Mini Jazz World, Merriam Webster, & Alamy.  Every so often our friends at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) add some words to the English language. This year they appear to have focused on words making their way into English from other languages. Here is a tiny sampling of the three dozen or so words that officially made the cut.
Yoh! is an exclamation of shock, distress, admiration or surprise. It most likely comes from the Xhosa language. Morto is an Irish word meannig extremely embarrassed or mortified. Another Irish term meaning to act foolishly is to act the maggot. Gatvol is an adjective from Afriakaans. It is used to refer to a person who is fed up with it all, frustrated, annoyed or bored, especially with a situation that has existed for a long period of time. Moggy comes from the nation of South Africa, though nobody’s certain what language it comes from. Moggy is an adjective meaning out of touch with reality. When one loses touch with one’s emotions or behavior one has gone moggy. And last we have alamak, an interjection from the Malay language. Alamak! conveys shock, dismay, surprise or outrage. May people feeling gatvol do so somewhere far from you, may you have little need to exclaim alamak! or yoh! & may you avoid acting the maggot, feeling morto and going moggy. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, OED Commentaries, & pngtree.com.  While working on revisions for a manuscript I hope will someday become a novel, I’ve been thinking about the word revise & its synonyms. Though statistics vary greatly, it’s fair to say that Modern English comes from about 40% Latinate & Greek, and about 40% Germanic or Anglo-Saxon. So, shouldn’t revision synonyms reflect that?
Apparently not. Here’s Merriam Webster’s list of revise synonyms, with any Germanic or Anglo Saxon word parts in red: Modify, change, alter, remodel, rework, transform, recast, redo, remake, refashion, revamp, & vary. WordHippo offers most the same options, plus: Amend, correct, adjust, edit, adapt, reorganize, overhaul, emend, redraft. restyle, update, rephrase, upgrade, debug, recalibrate, rescript, rebrand, rehash, redraw, scrub, cut, make over, copy-edit, & blue-pencil. And neither of these sources offers the word fix. Does this imbalance suggest that Latin & Greek speakers were more focused on getting things right? Or might this reflect a prejudice that developed after 1066 when English upper classes (who had time for such things as revision) conversed & wrote in French (a Latinate language), while hardworking peasants spoke that terribly low-class language known as English? No idea. But I’m nonetheless pondering it. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Stack Exchange, WordHippo, Etymonline, Word Origins, & Vecteezy.  What’s the deal with the word crock? It started out back in Old English as crocca or croc, a pot, earthen vessel, or jar. These are good things, right? Vessels for water, soup, ale, wine. Pots to press one’s cheese in, store one’s root vegetables, or to ferment one’s sauerkraut. Crocca or croc seems to have come from Germanic languages meaning pitcher or pot, & has cousins in Dutch, German, Old Norse, Irish, Greek, Old Saxon, & Old Church Slavonic.
But what about Well, that’s a crock of @%$@! or what a crock! & the possibly related He’s a crackpot! How did a word for such a useful item collect these negative meanings? Crock's downfall all started in the 1800s. It may have come from the idea that a female sheep past the point of being able to reproduce was just an empty vessel (elder ewes were known as crocks), or it may have had something to do with the unseemly contents of crockery chamber pots, or it may have come from the Scottich pejorative, crock, which referred to invalids or debilitated folks, or possibly even the Middle English word croke or crok, meaning a husk, hull, thing of no value, soot, smut, or refuse. The modern usage of crock can be used both positively & negatively, & has no etymological connection to the amphibian, crocodile, or the footwear known as Crocs. Big thanks to this week’s sources, Merriam Webster, Collins, the OED, Etymonline, & freepic.com.  I’m among a pile of very fortunate authors and aspiring authors spending this week at the Highlights Foundation retreat center with our writing guru, Patricia Lee Gauch. So here are some observations about the word guru. Guru entered English in 1806 through Hindi from a Sanskrit word meaning one to be honored, teacher. Its Proto-Indo-European root was a word meaning weighty. Though my particular guru weighs very little physically, those of us fortunate enough to work with her definitely feel the weight, the gravity, the profundity of her teachings. Over forty modern English words share the root with guru, & like the word gravity, some apply quite nicely. She’s mentoring a small group of us, and like any brigade, we are devoted to one another. We gravitate toward one another for support. Like a barometer, she measures our progress. When she suggests we kill our darlings, we become aggravated, but we know she’s right, so with that brutal weapon, the delete key, we follow orders while grieving, knowing those darlings needed to die. And after a week with her, we all head home with new grist for the mill (or the mill’s synonym, the quern). I hope this week’s brief post will inspire you to take a moment to honor your own gurus. Big thanks to this week’s soiurces: Merriam Webster, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, the OED, & Highlights Foundation.  The “language” etymologists label Proto-Indo-European may have never been spoken. It’s been assembled based on evidence from the languages that appear to have evolved from it. One of the proposed Proto-Indo-European words is *men-, which meant to think. In English alone this word appears to have given birth to over forty words we use today. Here’s a sampling of some of them: Mental, mention, mentor, comment, & memento — pretty easy to see how a word meaning to think might have morphed into these words. A few more that fall in that category are premonition, reminisce, reminsicent, mnemonic, & mantra. And, of course, we have some that require just a bit more of a mental stretch to connect: amnesia, amnesty, demented & dementia. And some that take more of a stretch: muster, summon, muse, monitor, & money. And these: museum, music, monument, money, mania, maniac & manic. And those that are downright puzzling: muster, monster, mantis, & Mandarin. All from a little word meaning to think -- all, I suppose, fodder for thought. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, the OED, Dreamstime, & Etymonline. |
I write for teens & tweens, bake bread, play music, and ponder the wonder of words in a foggy little town on California's central coast.
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