 For a shift of gears, I’m hoping that you might appreciate this Mary Oliver poem as much as I do. I’m teaching a middle school class in writing fiction & recently used this poem as a discussion item before writing. I probably first read it twenty years ago. It still knocks my socks off. Talk about word choice, imagery, & wonder.
Some Questions You Might Ask -Mary Oliver Is the soul solid, like iron? Or is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl? Who has it, and who doesn't? I keep looking around me. The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus. The swan opens her white wings slowly. In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness. One question leads to another. Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg? Like the eye of a hummingbird? Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop? Why should I have it, and not the anteater who loves her children? Why should I have it, and not the camel? Come to think of it, what about maple trees? What about the blue iris? What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight? What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves? What about the grass? From Mary Oliver’s House of Light, 1990 — image from Freepik.com
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 Here in coastal California, the berries are ramping up, which caused me to discover that a surprising percentage of berry roots have baffled etymologists.
The roots for blueberry & blackberry aren’t all that exciting, but hold onto your berry hat. Strawberry’s origins are unclear. Etymologists suggest that straw- might refer to the long stems on which the berries grow, or the “chafflike” nature of the seeds on the surface of the berry. Hmmm. Gooseberry also has uncertain roots, but may have come from the Germanic word krauss meaning crispy or curly, bent or rounded. Hmmm again. Also in the who-knows? category is the raspberry. Apparently gooseberries, strawberries & blackberries were at one point all called raspberries. The best guess is that the rasp- came from a Latin word referring to a tart wine. Another hazy origin belongs to the cranberry. Cran- seems to have come from the word crane, however no part of the plant is crane-like, & cranes have not been particularly known to lurk in, fly over, or eat cranberries. The goji part of goji berry (which hails from China) is apparently a painfully mispronounced version of the Chinese word 枸杞, The açaí berry’s origin story belongs in the Highly Questionable Origin Story category. All we have is a folk etymology which claims that a drought caused a political leader to order all infants killed. When his daughter’s baby was killed, the daughter died of grief & from the site of her death, a tree sprung up. Its berries fed the village, so the berry was named açaí, which was the daughter’s name backward. Hmmm. The root for the elder part of elderberry is shaky at best. Etymologists think it may have come from the word alder, which is an entirely different tree, but there you go. All hail the loganberry, which has a clear etymology! Its name comes from American horticulturist James Logan. Like the loganberry, the boysenberry was named after a botanist, Rudolf Boysen. And mul- in mulberry comes from the Latin word morum, meaning (drumroll please) mulberry! The huckle- in huckleberry comes from Middle English hurtilberry, a word which American colonists employed to label any sort of blue, black, or red berry (one must wonder how many of those New World blue, black, or red berries were actually edible). Hurtilberry came from Old English whortleberry, which may or may not have come from an earlier root meaning to want. Any berry thoughts? You know what to do. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Latin is Simple, Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, the OED, & Dreamstime.  This week let’s change it up & appreciate a fabulous marriage of words & dance: Sarah Lamb of the Royal Ballet performing Wayne McGregor’s choreography inspired & accompanied by Virginia Woolf’s reading.
I’m hoping you’ve got about three minutes available to watch & listen. Here’s an excerpt to inspire: Words… “are the wildest, freest, most irresponsible, most unteachable of all things. Of course, you can catch them and sort them and place them in alphabetical order in dictionaries. But words do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind. If you want proof of this, consider how often in moments of emotion when we most need words we find none. Yet there is the dictionary; there at our disposal are some half-a-million words all in alphabetical order.” Enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7rNHx8Sib8 Thanks to this week’s sources: Writing pal Bruce West, for suggesting this as a blogpost, BBC, Nowness  Idioms are fabulous things. This week, I’m celebrating idioms that include the word eat. If you could use a laugh, try reading the list aloud. Lists of idioms are inherently laughworthy. I hope you eat them up. Eat humble pie Eat away at something Eat high on the hog Eat out of someone’s hands Eat something away Eat something up Eat like a bird Eat like a horse Eat one’s hat Eat the cost Eat crow Eat dirt Have one’s cake & eat it too Eat & run Eat one’s heart out Eat one’s words Eat someone alive What’s eating you? I hope this list gives you as much joy as it gives me. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Go English, Mr. Greg English, NTC’s American Idioms Dictionary, & Fly Club.  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.  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. |
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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