 November of 1922 brought the unsuspecting world Kurt Vonnegut. He didn’t have much to say initially, but as time progressed he proved to be a brilliant author, thinker, master of satire, dark humor, & pointed social commentary. This November 11 would be his 98th birthday. I’d like to celebrate with a tiny slice of what he had to say.
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country. Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center. Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why. I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. Make love when you can. It’s good for you. The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest. Oh, and then there’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Welcome to the Monkey House, Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Player Piano, A Man Without a Country, & a stunning & steaming heap of essays, articles, short stories and novels. Have a favorite Vonnegut work or quote? Please leave it in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Curated Quotes, Vonnegut.com, The Christian Science Monitor, Karen Cushman, & NPR. Image from pastdaily.com.
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 Often, the similarities in related words are obvious. Not so with the etymological descendants of the Proto-Indo-European word deik-.
Deik-‘s original meaning was to show or pronounce solemnly. A secondary meaning had to do with the directing of words or objects. One of the descendants of deik- made its way to Greek to become diskos, meaning disk, platter, or quoit (a quoit is a ring of rope or iron thrown toward a peg in a game much like horseshoes). Diskos moved from Greek into Latin in the form of discus, where it meant disc or quoit. By the 1660s it made its way to English (spelled disc or disk) to mean round, flat surface, & picked up the meaning phonograph record in 1888, computer information storage device in 1947 (who knew?) & the usage disk drive in 1952. Deik-‘s time in Greek also gave birth to the form dicare, to proclaim or dedicate. It then traveled through Latin to become dicere, to speak, tell or say, & showed up in English in the 1540s as diction, meaning a word. By the 1580s diction meant expression in words & by the 1700s it also meant choice of words & phrases.1748 brought the meaning speech or oratory. And in this same etymological strain in 1526 the word dictionary was born, meaning a repertory of phrases or words. When the Germans (or Proto-Germans to be exact) got hold of deik-, it became taiknam, show explain or teach, which made its way into Old English as tacen, meaning sign, symbol or evidence, & then became our modern word token. This same Proto-German>German strain of deik- turned into the word teach. Its Old English form was tæcan, to train, warn, persuade, or give instruction. Though etymologists don’t connect the word dactyl with deik-, it appears that deik may have also referred to fingers (probably due to its meaning show). Deik definitely referred to toes, even though few folks use their toes to show things. The toe strand of the family tree came through Proto-Germanic as taiwho, then into Old English as toe. Interestingly, the plural of toe was originally tan. I hope all that inspires you to leave a comment (or possibly to be thankful nobody needs to remember all this stuff).. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Wordnik, Merriam Webster, & the OED.  This post will cover some vamoose synonyms submitted by friends after the first vamoose post yet not covered in the second vamoose post.
Betsy suggested burn rubber, an idiom that showed up in the mid-1900s in reference to cars accelerating before their tires caught up with them. A related term is lay some rubber. Another idiom Betsy suggested is make like a ghost. Though I find multiple uses of this phrase in digital forums, I am finding no commentary regarding its origin. Maybe some hardworking etymologist did the research, then all his/her work made like a ghost. Pal Gwen suggested scat, which arrived in 1838 meaning go away. Scat is an abbreviation of an 1800s phrase, quicker than s’cat. Though nobody’s certain, the s preceding the cat may have represented the sound of the cat hissing as it skedaddled. Hit the Road, suggested by Sioux, showed up in the language in 1873. This idiom was celebrated with the addition of Jack in 1960 in a song written by Percy Mayfield & made famous by Ray Charles. Sioux also came up with take a hike, which is considered a pejorative directive. Though the idiom take a hike seems to have appeared in the last fifty years, the solo word hike was used in the early 1800s with the same contemptuous sense. Book it, suggested by Sami, has been around in that particular form since the 1970s & appears to be an abbreviation of bookity-book, an echoic representation of shoes running on a hard surface, first recorded in a 1935 Zora Neale Hurston story. Here’s hoping you’ll comment regarding all these vamoose synonyms before you digitally hit the road. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Wordnik, Etymonline, The Free Dictionary,Dictionary.com, & the OED.  I had assumed last week’s post on words meaning scram would be a one-shot deal, but a heap of friends contacted me with scram-related phrases and words I hadn’t covered. So I’ve got to keep going.
Bruce suggested the term di di, in use by the American military during the Viet Nam War (aka Police Action). Di di is a direct borrowing from Vietnamese, though in Viet Nam both di di (get out of here) & di di mau (get out of here pronto) are considered impolite ways to ask someone to beat feet (an idiom suggested by both Bruce & my friend Sioux). Beat feet is an idiom that appears to have originated in American prisons or among American police, though nobody seems to be working very hard at finding its first use. Bruce also suggested let’s split a phrase first used in American slang in 1954. Split comes from Middle English & originally meant to divide two things or remove something, which suggests the idiom let’s split may be more literal that figurative. A clearly related idiom suggested by another pal, Betsy, is the term splitsville, a word I find in use in many places, but its origin is a mystery. First used when? First used where? Nada. Betsy also suggested feets don’t’ fail me now, which appears to have been a line used regularly in vaudeville. Though it was employed to poke fun at Black dialect, it appears the term may have been authentic. Feets don’t’ fail me now was embraced by actor Manton Moreland in the 1940s & has been used in songs by Blind Lemon Jefferson, Herbie Hancock, & Little Feat. And my pal Sioux came up with let’s blow this popsicle stand, which is similarly un-researched, though the phrase did appear in a Mork and Mindy episode & in a Richard Dreyfus movie. Apparently the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were also fond of the phrase. Also of interest, there may be a regional element at work, as the idioms let’s blow this pop stand & let’s blow this taco stand are used to mean the same thing. Please leave a comment or two about all this in the comments section. Me? I’m splitsville. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Wordnik, Etymonline, Straight Dope, Glossary of Military Terms, the OED.  How many ways are there to say to leave? Here are a few that I find intriguing. Interestingly, only the first two come from sources other than American English.
Vamoose comes from the Spanish word vamos & showed up in English in 1834. The Spanish word translates to let us go & comes from the Proto-Indo-European word wadh- through Latin. Wadh-‘s progeny include the word wade. Since 1844 English speakers have been able to shove off, a term born in the British boating world. The classic American cop shows of our youth often included the theifly imperative Cheese it man, it’s the cops! Cheese it means stop, hide, quit, be quiet, or get out of here. Nobody’s sure where cheese it came from, but at least one etymologist has suggested it may have come from the word cease. 1950s westerns gave us the phrase, Get out of Dodge, meaning leave town, as so many westerns were based in Dodge City, Kansas, & there was seldom enough room in Dodge City into which a protagonist & antagonist might successfully coexist In 1928 the word scram materialized in American English. Its source is unclear. It may have been derived from scramble or it may have descended from the German word schramm, which means to depart. Another American English term, to make tracks, showed up in 1835, meaning to move quickly. Skedaddle also comes from American English & has an unknown source. It appeared in 1861 meaning to run away & was a form of military slang during the Civil War. Possible but unproven sources include scaddle, a dialectical English word meaning scare or frighten, & a Northern English dialectical word which meant to spill. Continuing in the uncertain parentage vein skedaddle may or may not have spawned the 1905 word skidoo, meaning to leave in a hurry, a word nearly always associated with the number twenty-three for no reason anyone has yet discerned. Here’s hoping you’ll add a comment or two about all this in the comments section. Me? I’ve got to scram. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Wordnik, Etymonline, Dictionary.com, the OED.  Jacquie and Rich are a fabulous singer-songwriter duo called Small Potatoes. They’ve been a big part of the household soundtrack these days, so darned if they didn’t inspire this post.
Potato entered English in the 1560s form the Spanish patata. The Spanish borrowed the word from the people of Haiti, who called their native sweet potato batata. The paler tuber brought to Europe in 1565 from Peru is the tuber most first-world folks think of today as the potato: the potato of Idaho, of Ireland, of infamous emigration-inspiring famines, though it wasn’t called a potato until 1590. Oddly, this interloper was referred to both as the Virginia potato (geographic confusion, you say?), or the bastard potato (at the time it had to play second fiddle to the sweet potato). The word tuber came to English in the 1660s from a Latin word meaning thick underground stem. It’s Proto-Indo-European root tubh-, which meant to swell, also gave us the word thigh. My preferred term for potatoes is spuds, a word first applied to our friend the potato in New Zealand about 1845. Though nobody’s sure, spud appears to have come to English from Danish or Old Norse, where it meant spear, lance, & spade. That third meaning might certainly lead to spud’s modern meaning, though at some point in the 1680s English speakers also began using the word spud to refer to a short stumpy person or thing. Hmmm. Have a minute? Check out Rich & Jacquie singing a ridiculous Who’s-On-First type song all about a traveling salesman meeting the Knott family: Shirley, Mae Bea & Wy. Have another minute? Please leave a comment about all these potato-related etymologies, or about the musical group, Small Potatoes. . Big thanks to this week’s sources: Wordnik, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, the OED.  Welcome to the final installment on words that refer to our belongings. You can find the first three posts here, here, & here.
The word accoutrements (which can sadly also be spelled accouterments) and means clothing, equipment or apparatus, arrived in English in the 1540s from Middle French. It came through Old French from the Vulgar Latin word, accosturare, to sew up. Though accosturare looks as though it may also be the root for costume, it is not, but it did give us the word suture. The word possession arrived in English in the 1300s through Old French from Latin. Through all three languages possession has meant item one owns, however, in English the meaning demonic possession was added in the 1580s, just in time for the zealotry that led up to the Salem witch trials a century later. An earlier Wordmonger “stuff” post compelled Julie Harris, to ask, “Can I use the word ‘things’ instead?” Absolutely. The word things came to Modern English from Old English. The singular form, thing, looked like þing & originally meant a meeting, assembly or discussion. Because meetings involved discussions of items, thing picked up the meaning entity, item, being or matter. Though that original meaning of meeting, assembly or discussion has been lost in English, we can still see evidence of it in Iceland, where the nation’s general assembly is called the Althing. And that very 1960s phrase do your thing actually made its way into the language in the 1840s. The word paraphernalia came to English in the 1650s from Medieval Latin, originally meaning a woman’s property other than her dowry. The Medieval Latin word’s source is Greek, where it held that same meaning and was constructed of the word parts pherein, to carry, and para, beside. The modern meaning, personal belongings or articles used in a particular activity showed up in 1791. Good readers, please leave any thoughts regarding all these things in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Wordnik, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, the OED.  In this pre-election season, why not take a look at words that may (or may not) apply to political speech?
Harangue, now meaning a pompous speech or tirade, came to English in the 1400s through Scottish from Middle French. The Middle French word, harangue, meant a public address, which came from the Old Italian word aringo, a public square or pulpit. Aringo came from the Old High German word hring, which simply meant circle. This probably referred to people gathering in a circle to hear someone talk or its source may be the Old High German word harihring, or army-ring. In either case, it seems harangue’s origin has more to do with the audience’s configuration than the speaker’s vitriol. Interestingly, this same root gave us ring, rank, range & arrange. In the 1640s the word diatribe came to English from Latin through French. The Latin word meant learned discussion, & the Greek source of the Latin word meant employment or study. This Greek word was constructed of dia- meaning away, & tribien, meaning to wear or rub. So, even back at its very source, a diatribe was simply a wearing away, or loss of the listener’s time. In the 1300s the word oration appeared in English meaning speech or prayer. It comes from the Latin word orare, meaning to pray, plead, or speak before an assembly. It wasn’t until the 1500s that oration collected its modern meaning, a formal speech The word lecture showed up in the 1300s meaning that which is read. It comes from the Medeival Latin word lectura, a reading. Going back further, lectura comes from a verb meaning to collect or gather, a word whose literal translation was firewood. Could this root account for the fact that many lectures are perceived as nothing more than blowing smoke? Good readers, please leave any thoughts about lectures, diatribes, harangues or orations in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Wordnik, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, & the OED.  I’m having too much fun with words meaning stuff. First one post, then a second, & now a third post all looking into words we use for our belongings. In 1942 the US Navy & Marines gave us the word gizmo, meaning any old thing you can’t put a name to. Nobody can verify why that particular collection of letters adopted that meaning, but such is life. In 1824 the word thingamajig came to English, meaning an item one can’t recall the name of. It’s brethren thingy, thingumabob, thingum & thingummy all provide the same function though their dates of origin are tougher to corroborate. Another synonym for something one can’t recall the name of is whatchamacallit, which appeared in that form in 1928, derived from what you may call it. Interestingly, the earliest word of that nature appears to be what-call-ye-hym, the precursor to our modern whatshisname. A beautifully honest word that entered English in the 1600s meaning equipment that hinders or encumbers, is the word impedimenta. It’s the plural form of the Latin word for luggage that gets in the way, impedimentum. Ah, says the minimalist, how I would love to have the talent to identify the impedimenta in my life. The word trappings, meaning personal effects, arrived in English in the 1400s from its 1300s form, trappe, meaning saddle blanket or ornamental cloth for a horse, which in turn came from the French word drap, a word related to the English word drape. Ah, repeats the aforesaid minimalist, for the times when all our trappings could be draped over the back of a horse (though then one would have to care for the horse, a task that sounds most unpleasant to this minimalist). So readers, what is worthy of comment in all this stuff-talk? Big thanks to this week’s sources: Wordnik, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, the OED.  I’m on a roll with words referring to unessential belongings. So here’s the second post in the series.
My great grandmother referred to knick-knacks as gewgaws. Though in my youth I imagined she had created this word, gewgaw came to English in the early 1200s, centuries before my great grandmother existed. Though etymologists aren’t sure of its source, some have suggested gewgaw is an intentionally mispronounced version of the Old French word gogue, which meant rejoicing, prank, or mockery. Others have suggested it came from the French word for play, jouer. These days it means a gaudy but valueless trinket. Another word meaning the same thing is bauble, which came to English in the 1300s from the French word baubel, a child’s trinket or toy. Again, no source has been verified, but etymologists have suggested it may be a reduplication of the French or Latin word for pretty, belle or bel. The word trinket also comes from no known source. It showed up in English in the 1530s & may have come from the word trick. An American English word meaning unnamed thing, gadget or device is dingus, but this one has a clear source. It came to English in 1876 from the Dutch word for thing, dinges. Also appearing in American English in 1905 & 1914 respectively, we have doodad & doohickey. Etymologists label one a “made up word” & the other an “arbitrary formation”, which suggests that nobody knows a darn thing about the source of either word. Both doodad & doohickey mean an unnamed thing, gadget or device. Good readers, please leave anything you have to say about all these trinket-esque words in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Wordnik, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, the OED. |
I write for teens, narrate audio books, bake bread, play music, and ponder the wonder of words in a foggy little town on California's central coast.
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