 Jet (as in a jet of water) showed up in English in the 1690s. It came through French from the Latin word iacere, which meant to throw. It doesn’t take much creativity to imagine how a word meaning to throw would end up referring to:
a stream of water (1690), a spout or nozzle for emitting fuel (1825), jet propulsion (1855 – no joke – at that point we were propelling things with jets of water), or fuel-driven jet propulsion (1945). What fascinates me are all the other words that came from iacere. jetty – early 1400s – rocks or land thrown into the sea jetsam – 1560s – initially the act of throwing something overboard, soon to morph into the items thrown overboard jettison – 1848 – to throw overboard trajectory – 1690s – the path of something thrown adjective – late 1300s – from ad-iacere, meaning to throw near adjacent – late 1400s – also from ad-iacere, meaning to throw near jut – mid 1400s – throw in the way eject – mid 1400s – to throw out joist – early 1300s – lumber thrown down on which a floor can be built interjection – early 1400s – a word thrown into a conversation conjecture – late 1300s – a possibility one throws into an argument As you consider the next list of words, imagine how they might have something to do with the Latin root iacere, to throw, then click on comments below & offer your explanation of the connection. subject object project reject abject inject deject, & jete Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Wordnik, Collins Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, & the OED.
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 For the last few years I've had the incredible good fortune to attend a writing retreat with children’s writing guru & editing luminary, Patricia Lee Gauch, retired editorial director of Philomel (Penguin). Patti wrote some remarkable children’s books & is a passionate editor & teacher. A handful of the many authors whose award-winning books she edited are TA Barron, Jane Yolen, Judith St. George, Eric Carle, Patricia Polacco, Kathryn Erskine, Andrew Clements, Virginia Hamilton, & Brian Jacques.
While discussing making a scene come alive, Patti notes that many editors tend to ask authors for detail, but the word detail has never resonated for her. Instead, she sometimes asks for more specifics. Her default term though -- the word that really latches onto what she’s looking for in a scene that needs to come alive -- is texture. Interesting. The modern word detail, meaning a small, subordinate piece, came to English about 1600 from a French noun that originally meant cut into pieces. Her second choice, the noun specifics, arrived in English about that same time from Latin through French. The original Latin word meant kind or sort, & is also the parent word for the word species. Patti's preferred word, texture, made its way into English two centuries earlier from Latin through Middle French. It’s related to the word textile & comes from a verb that meant to weave or fabricate. In her efforts to help an author craft a book, an editor is doing all she can to help the author weave the disparate strands of character, story, setting & tension into something whole, something complete. Nobody wants a story to be sorted or cut into pieces. Maybe it's no surprise that a gifted, longstanding editor doesn't find the words detail or specifics satisfying, but relishes the word texture. Does Patti’s word choice when it comes to editorial advice reflect a sixth sense regarding the history of these words? Can a word’s origins follow it from language to language & culture to culture, through centuries of change? Readers, writers, what are your thoughts on this? Please chime in by clicking on comments below. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Wordnik, Collins Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, & the OED. Photo by Megan Frances Abrahams.  Last week’s post featuring some thoughts from a favorite author luminary led me to this week’s post. I’ll get back to etymologies and such next week, but for now, I hope you’ll have a good time with the ever-prolific & fascinating Ray Bradbury.
Born in 1929 & leaving this universe we know in 2012, author of 500 works, Ray Bradbury won the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, the National Medal of Arts, & the National Book Foundation Medal, & tons more. Known best as a science fiction novelist & short story author whose stories always valued character above technology, Bradbury also wrote TV scripts, poems, plays, & screenplays. Here is a tiny sampling of his thoughts: “We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.” “You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.” “We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” & “Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.” I’m hoping some of you might choose a quote from above & have something to say about it in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: RayBradbury.com, SearchQuotes, BrainyQuote, & Quotes.net - photo from FamousAuthors.org  There are heaps upon heaps of amazing people out there, & a lot of them say things worth pondering. This week we’ll take a look at a few quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin.
Born in 1929 & leaving this earth in 2018, author Ursula K. Le Guin won the National Book Award, the PEN-Malamud, the Hugo, the Nebula, the National Book Foundation Medal, & tons more. Many readers know her as a brilliant fantasy writer, though not all her work falls in that genre. To cast a tiny light into her thinking, here are four of her quotes: “My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.” “To light a candle is to cast a shadow.” “The creative adult is the child who has survived.": & “The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” I’m hoping some of you might choose a quote from above & have something to say about it in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: UrsulaKLeguin.com, SearchQuotes, BrainyQuote, & Quotes.net - Author photo by Marian Wood Kolisch.  Ah, the ubiquitous dollar. We have many names for it. In this post we’ll cover a few of them.
In the 1550s the word dollar entered the English language. It referred to any number of coins of various values. Dollar comes from the German word thaler, an abbreviation of the word Joachimstaler, a word which referred to the coins minted in a town called Joachimstal, a village positioned in a valley, taler) & named for a chap called Joachim. In 1836 Washington Irving coined the term almighty dollar, defining it as “that great object of universal devotion throughout our land.” In 1855 some folks started calling dollars scads. Nobody’s certain about the source of the word scads, though some etymologists point toward a fish called the scad. Apparently the scaled, cold-blooded scads tend to travel in abundant schools. There is no singular form of the monetary scad, & by 1869 scads added the generalized meaning, large amounts. Connection? Nobody knows for sure. In 1856 the word buck kicked in among American English speakers. Buck (meaning dollar) also has no verified source, though some have wondered whether bucks may have sprung from buckskins, which were used in some places as a unit of trade on the American frontier. In 1862, Americans started calling dollars greenbacks. Before this, paper money was printed & issued by individual banks. The country’s paper money (initially known as demand notes) was printed in green ink, thus the name, greenbacks. In 1895 the word simoleon entered the fray, though nobody’s sure why simoleon came to mean dollar, & nobody has found a connection to somewhat similar Roman coin names, the simbella & simodius. About 1936 the word single came to mean dollar. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this happened. Single has been a word in English since 1400 & came from the Old French word sengle, which meant alone, unaccompanied, unadorned. In the 1940s, for no reason I can find, some Americans started calling dollars rutabagas. Any thoughts about all these monetary monikers? Please say so in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Wordnik, Collins Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, & the OED.  Welcome to the third of three posts on synonyms for child. The first & second posts can be found here & here.
In 1725 the Scottish word tot, little child, became an English word. It appears to have come from either the word totter, OR an Old Norse term for dwarf, OR a Danish term of endearment that translates to thumb-child. In early Renaissance Western England and the northern Midlands there was a word for ragged garment. It was related to the word for cloak. This word morphed by about 1500 to mean beggar’s child. The word? Brat. Back in the 1300s, urchin meant hedgehog (it still does in Shropshire, Yorkshire & Cumbria). Apparently the word urchin was used pejoratively to refer to those who looked different. Etymonline tells us these unfortunates ranged “from hunchbacks to goblins to bad girls.” By the 1500s, we English speakers landed on a new meaning for urchin: raggedly clothed youngster. Along similar lines, the word nipper appeared in 1530s to refer to a pickpocket. One can imagine how the chaos, poverty, & 16-hour work days of parents during the industrial revolution might have inspired nipper to shift its meaning to small boy (by 1859). Friend Bruce West asked about the terms of affection sometimes applied to children, punkin & punkinhead. These spellings, considered to be “vulgar American English,” appeared in 1806 & seem to have come from the 1780s term pumpkinhead, which referred to a person whose hair was “cut short all around.” Pumpkin, as in squash, showed up in English in 1640 from Middle French. Bambino came to English in 1761 from the Italian word for baby, the diminutive form of bambo, the Italian word for simple. Interestingly, in 1919 the word bambino gave birth to another English word that originally meant simple fellow, the word bimbo. Only one year later, bimbo picked up the additional meaning, floozy. Any thoughts about all these childish words? Please say so in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Wordnik, Collins Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, & the OED.  Last week’s post on synonyms for child was just a start. Here are some ways we might refer to young folk older than babies, but still quite young.
In 1793 the word toddler came to English. Its source was the English verb toddle, which showed up in 1600. Toddle may have come from totter, or from another English verb from the 1500s meaning to toy or play. Lass came to English in 1300 from a Scandinavian source, though etymologists can’t decide which one. Some suggest the source was an Old Swedish word meaning unmarried woman, some posit lass came from a West Frisian source meaning light & thin, and some suggest a Norse source for lass – a word meaning idle & weak. Though I hold nothing against the Norse, it would be nice to hear some future word historians disprove that possibility. Though many of us might assume the English word lad had its source in the Scottish words lad & laddie, the Scots borrowed those words from English in the 1540s, more than two centuries after ladde appeared in English. In 1300 it meant both foot solider & young male servant. Like lass, lad’s source has etymologists’ collective knickers in a twist. Some suggest lad comes from a Middle English word meaning one who is led. Other word sleuths argue for a Norwegian word meaning young man, while those aforesaid Norse provide the most unlikely & intriguing possibility. There was a time when associating someone with shoes, socks or stockings was an egregious putdown (I’m not making this up). The Old Norse word for woolen stockings or hose was ladd, and may have been the source for our modern word lad, though if so, it came through a somewhat negative view of boys. And how does that explain lass? Of course, there are the deliciously negative terms born in 1960s, rugrat & anklebiter. Any thoughts about all these childish words? Please say so in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Wordnik, Collins Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, & the OED.  After last week’s look at terms referring to parents, we’ll take a couple of weeks considering some of the words we use to refer to children.
The Old English word cild had a broader meaning than our modern word child. It meant infant, newly born person, unborn person, & fetus. It came from a Proto-Germanic word whose descendants from various languages include words meaning womb, pregnant, children of the same marriage, & litter. It wasn’t until later Old English that cild/child came to mean young person before the onset of puberty. Our modern plural children (born in the 1100s) was predated by the 975 AD plural of child, cildru. Both baby & babe, meaning infant, showed up in the 1300s from the Old English word baban, most likely a term imitating an infant’s babble. Baby also came to mean childish adult person about 1600, & in or around 1915 babe came to mean attractive young woman. Interestingly, the French word bébé came from the English word baby. The Old English word geoguð meant junior warriors, the young of cattle, & young people, & morphed in time into our modern word youth. Related words include geong, which became the word young, & geongling which morphed first into youngling, & by 1580 into youngster. The Old Norse word kið, meaning the young of a goat, gave English speakers the word kid as early as 1200. It took until the 1590s for kid to refer to the offspring of humans. Kid was not always a term of endearment, as our friends at Etymonline.com tell us it was “applied to skillfull young thieves and pugilists since at least 1812.” The more endearing word kiddo showed up in 1893. The word tyke probably came from Old Norse & made its English debut in the 1300s, meaning mongrel or cur. Tyke didn’t start meaning child until 1902. I’m planning on investigating more childish words next week. Any you’d like to know about? Leave a request in the comments. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Wordnik, Merriam-Webster, & the OED (baby image by Nicole Zeug).  Some time ago, fellow writer and friend Angela Russell asked where we get the words we use to label our parents. Since this is a family-friendly blog, I’ve stuck with traditional words, leaving out those terms of non-endearment that might be used by children under duress.
Mother comes from the Old English word, modor, which comes from Proto-Germanic. Chances are good mother was born of ma, that first sound many babies make (many etymologists associate ma with suckling), paired with –ther, known as a kinship suffix (sometimes showing up as –ter). That ma sound gave us most our words for mother. It seems almost all Indo-European languages have some form of ma or mamma: Welsh: mam French: maman German: muhme Greek: mamme Persian, Russian, Lithuanian & others: mama In 1844 in American English the word mommy grew out of mamma. And in 1867 mom was born of mommy. In Britain it seems mamma morphed first in to mummy in 1815, and then into mum by 1823. And on to the dads. In the 1200s the word sire appeared in English, meaning lord or liege. Within fifty years it came to also mean father. The OId English word fæder came from Proto-Germanic and gave us our modern word father. Fæder ‘s original meanings included he who begets a child, nearest male relative, & supreme being. Other words that share father’s etymological lineage include: Dutch: vader (the surname of the chap who said, "Luke, I am your father.") German: vater Gothic: atta Old Irish: athir Old Persian: pita Sanskrit: pitar Greek & Latin: pater In multiple sources I find commentary that the word dad is thought to be “prehistoric” – far older than written records could possibly show. I am astounded to find no similar claims for mama, which forces me to question whether this mostly reflects solid research, or mostly reflects sexism. Hmmm. My musings notwithstanding, about 1500 the word daddy appeared. The Old French word papa made its way into English in the 1680s. By 1838, Americans had shortened papa to pop. Back in 1200 the term old man came to mean boss, father or husband, though it took until 1775 for old lady to come to mean mother or wife. It was no surprise that I was unable to find the terms of endearment my sister & I used for our parents, Muz & Puz. This causes me to wonder whether other offspring labeled their parents in a similarly odd or unique fashion. Good readers, I’m hoping you’ll address these wonderings in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Dictionary.com, Wordnik, Merriam-Webster, & the OED.  After three previous craziness posts (March 25, April 1, & April 8), we've finally reached the last one.
Good friend and fellow writer Bruce West wrote in & submitted these: Dinky dau, a term Bruce & his fellow Viet Nam vets brought home with them. The direct translation is crazy head, though dinky dau is used as a synonym for crazy. The universal sign language of the index finger spinning at the temple, which Bruce points out was first reported in 1885 by Captain “White Hat” Clark of the US Cavalry when documenting the sign language of Native Americans. Plus a pile more. Due to the abundant number, I’m skipping the word histories (& dozens more crazy synonyms).. Late 1600s – to be half-baked 1810 – to have a screw loose 1850s – to be off one’s chump Late 1800s – to be off one’s base Late 1800s - to be off one’s kadoova Late 1800s -To not have all one’s buttons Late 1800s – To slip a cog Late 1800s – to be out of touch 1870 – to be off one’s conk 1890 – to be off one’s onion Early 1900s - to be off one’s kazip Early 1900s - to be off one’s bean 1929 – To be round the bend (or around the bend) 1940s - to be off one’s nana 1950s - to be off one’s nob Having so many ways to say crazy is, well, crazy! In the comments section, I’m hoping some of you might note the term above that most took you by surprise. Big thanks to this week’s sources: The Sixties Project, WP Clark’s The Indian Sign Language, Dictionary.com, English Language & Usage, Word Wizard, 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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