 This week let’s take a look at nouns containing ump. Bump came to us in the 1500s meaning a protuberance caused by a blow. It came from an earlier verb which meant to strike violently. It is likely from a Scandinavian source, & is also likely onomatopoieic. Lump showed up in English in the 1300s meaning a small mass of irregularly shaped material. Its source is unknown, though it may come from Danish, Dutch, or some other Germanic tongue. Jump is another noun of uncertain origin. It showed up in the 1500s meaning spring from the ground. Though nobody’s sure, it may have come from Swedish, French, German, or Old English. Grump appeared in the 1700s meaning surly remarks. By 1900 it also meant a person in ill humor. Though etymologists haven’t nailed it down, it most likely came from a Danish word meaning cruel. Pump may have come to us in the 1400s from a Dutch word meaning water, conduit, or pipe. Or possibly from Middle Low German, or maybe even from an onomatopoeic word North Sea sailors used to imitate the sound of a plunger. Clump didn’t show up until the late 1500s, used first to identify a group of shrubs of trees, meaning a cluster. It came from a Germanic source. Frump started out meaning a mocking speech, sneer, or snort when it showed up in English in the 1500s. By the later 1500 it grew into a verb meaning to mock, flaunt, or taunt, & by the mid-1600s grew back into a noun meaning a cross-tempered, unstylish person. And then there’s umpire, meaning arbitrator, mediator, or one who decides when others are in disagreement. Umpire came from a French word meaning odd number, as the mediator was often the third in a dispute between two. May all your umps be good umps. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, the OED, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, & LooneyTunesCaps.
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 Consider this quote:
“The higher they went, the darker it became, though it wasn’t the darkness of night, but rather more like a mixture of lurking shadows & evil intentions which oozed from the slimy, moss-covered cliffs & blotted out the light. A cruel wind shrieked through the rocks & the air was thick & heavy, as if it had been used several times before.” This was written by Norton Juster in his classic middle grade novel, The Phantom Tollbooth. I think it’s rather brilliant. Let’s take a look at the origin of some selected words from the passage. Lurking comes from lurk, which showed up in English in the 1300s from a Scandinavian source. It originally meant to hide or lie hidden, but since the late 1300s has meant to move about secretly or to escape observation. Oozed (the past tense of ooze) came to English from early Germanic tongues. Over the years ooze & its kin have had the meanings to flow as ooze, to percolate through pores, to emit in the shape of moisture, plus the nouns juice, & sap. Slimy comes from the word slime, which originated in Proto-Indo-European and came through Germanic languages to English. Along the way it’s had the meanings viscous, sticky, phlegmy, slippery, snail-like, smooth, miry, & muddy. Moss started out as a Proto-Indo-European word meaning damp. That original word not only grew into our word moss, but also grew into the words mucus, must, & musty, & the Lithuanian word for mold. Blotted is the past tense of blot, which is a bit of a mystery. It may have come from an Old French word meaning boil (the boil on one's skin sort of boil), or perhaps it came from an Old Norse word meaning stain. But have no fear; hard-working etymologists continue to duke it out over the source of blot & they are bound to have an answer at some point in the future. Heavy comes from Proto-Indo-European through Old English. It originally comes from a word meaning to grasp, which morphed in time to mean something having weight, then oozed further to pick up its figurative meanings important, grave, oppresive, slow, & dull. Juster’s word choice really served him well in this passage. May your word choice this week serve you well. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Collins Dictionary, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, the OED, & Jules Feiffer.  This week, let’s take a look at words that appear to be disparaging, but are often used in a loving fashion — the words you might use to describe your best pal, sidekick, grandmother, or that “interesting’ neighbor.
Scrappy, meaning inclined to fight, showed up in English in the 1890s, & appears to have come from the word scrape (something one might be inclined to get if one is inclined to fight). Plucky showed up in the 1830s, meaning spiritied, determined, or courageous. It came from the adjective pluck, a colloquial synonym for courage. In the 1820s nutty meant crazy-in-love, but by the 1890s, crazy eclipsed the earlier meaning. Feisty showed up in American English in the 1890s, meaning exuberant, touchy, or aggressive. It may have come from one of two sources, or a marriage of the two. One possible source is a Middle English word that referred negatively to dogs (usually that fysting curre). Another possible source is a Norse word meaning fart. Wacky appeared in English in the 1930s, most likely from the idea that someone who acted wacky had been whacked in the head once too many times. It seems the noun whacky (fool) preceded the adjective wacky. Quirky appeared in the early 1800s meaning shifty or irregular. It wasn’t until the 1960s that quirky began to mean charmingly idiosyncratic. Attributed to the beatniks, kooky, meaning slighty strange or eccentric, showed up in American slang in the 1950s & is likely derived from the word cuckoo. May any apparently disparaging words thrown your way be delivered in a loving fashion. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, the OED, Etymonline, & Dreamstime.  Consider this John Gardner quote
“The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” Along with pondering Gardner’s worthy idea, here are a few etymologies from the quote: Exalted (or exalt) comes from Proto-Indo-European through Old French. In exalt’s long history it has meant to grow or nourish, to give off vapor or flow out, to glorify, praise, or extol, & to raise or elevate. The word shoddiness has been around since the 1800s. It was born during the American Civil War & referred to the poor quality of government supplies arriving on the front lines. It seems to have come from a noun that established itself in the carpet factories, labeling the scraps left over after carpet making. The word plumbing comes from the Latin word plumbum, lead. In the 1400s it referred to lead fishing weights, then plumbing was used to mean working in lead, & soon came to mean pipes used to convey water (which these days might be made of copper, plastic, PVC, ABS, or galvanized steel). The word humble showed up in the 1200s from Proto-Indo-European through Old French. It comes from the word humus, meaning earth, & came to mean on the ground, or lowly. These days it mostly means submissive, respectful, modest & unassertive. May we exalt both the plumber and the philospher. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Carnegie, Merriam Webster. Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, the OED & Shutterstock.  This week let’s consider synonyms & near-synonyms of the word uncouth.
Boorish arrived in the 1560s meaning uncultured, uncouth, or offensively low-bred. It came from the word boor, meaning rustic countryman or peasant farmer from the Latin word for cow, bovis. Crass came from Latin & showed up in English in the 1500s meaning thick, coarse, or gross. By the 1600s it meant obtuse or grossly stupid. And today crass means insensitive or blundering. Vulgar appeared in English in the 1500s meaning usual, ordinary, or pertaining to the common people. What a surprise! Vulgar morphed within a century to mean coarse, illbred, or depraved. Why is it always the fancy rich people who determine such things? Crude, in a raw or unprepared state, appeared in English in the 1300s through Latin from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning raw flesh. By the 1600s it begane to mean lacking in the social graces. In the 1700s the word tacky appeared in English to refer to something sticky or adhesive. By the 1800s it added the meaning shabby, seedy, or in poor taste. In the 1300s, rude came to English meaning coarse, rough, or without finish from a Latin word meaning crude or unlearned. A bit later it morphed into meaning boorish, ignorant, or uncultured, which is its primary meaning today. And uncouth comes from Old English. It originally meant unknown or unidentified, which morphed to mean unusual, strange, unfamiliar, or suspicious, which oozed from there into unkind, unfriendly or rough. By the 1400s uncouth meant awkward, crude, & clumsy. And what about couth? Though modern English speakers joke as though couth isn’t a word, it was a word back in Middle English, meaning, to have power, to be able to, then in the 1890s English speakers embraced it as a back-formation of uncouth, meaning cultured or refined. Somehow it slipped out of usage during the 1900s. May couthness return to our beleaguered world. Thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, the OED, Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, & Anamilla.  What with AI running rampant, filling the ether with slop (low quality AI generated content), that new meaning of slop is getting a lot of attention. In response, our friends at Etymonline have chosen their “Dead Word of the Year,” a much older meaning, & a slop of a different color — the slop that means ready-made clothes. Slop takes up almost a whole page of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary), which cites thirty-one meanings, plus slop-basin, a basin for holding slops, & slop-dash, a sloppy, liquid compound used as food, beverage, or medicine. The OED’s first noun meaning of slop started out as *sleubh- a Proto-Indo-European verb meaning to slip or slide, which in Old English became the noun sloppe, cow dung, & by the 1650s came to mean any sort of household liquid waste. By the 1800s slop also began to mean sentimental or affected material. The second noun meaning (ready-made clothes) may have come from the surname Sclopmongerie, or an Old English noun meaning a diagonally slanting neckline, or an earlier verb meaning to slip into or onto something. It’s the reason tailors’ shops in merry old England were known as slop shops. All this gives me the opportunity to bring up a fabulous woman named Geneva. Like my mother, she was a resident in what our squeamish culture refers to as a facility. She was wheelchair bound, gregarious, exuberant, happy, & the only two words she was able to utter were slop & sloppy. She could hold entire conversations with those two words, all through tone & context. She really was remarkable. What a shame our present internet slop isn’t nearly as clear, welcoming, & cordial as Geneva was. Thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, the OED, & Vecteezy.  A whole lot of scoffing went on this last year, especially in the political realm, so here’s a look into scoff & some of its synonyms. The verb scoff came to English from an un-agreed-upon Scandinavian or German source. Perhaps an Old Norse word meaning mockery or ridicule, perhaps an Old High German word meaning sport, jest, or derision, or a Middle Danish word meaning jest & mockery. In Modern English, scoff means to show contempt by derisive acts or language. To deride is to laugh at or insult contemptuously. Deride comes through French from the Latin word deridere, to ridicule, laugh at, or scorn. Like scoff, the verb jeer, to deride or mock, is a mystery. It may have come from Dutch or German, but we’re not sure. And some etymologists suggest jeer may be an ironic mispronunication of the verb cheer. A near-synonym is the verb revile, to subject to verbal abuse. Revile came from Old French & is related to villain, & vilify, & of course, vile. Another near-synonym is mock, to behave with scorn or contempt, or to mimic derisively. It most likely came through Old French from Latin, though it may have come from a Vulgar Latin word meaning to blow the nose. To ridicule is to make fun of, mock, or deride. This verb showed up in the 1680s from a French word meaning to treat with contemptuous merriment. Contemptuous merriment? Hmmm. And sneer first appeared in English in the 1550s meaning to snort or scorn, though by the 1670s it had morphed to a word meaning to grin or smile contemptuously, & by 1707 it had come to mean to speak derisively or insinuate contemptuously. The meaning to curl the upper lip in scorn joined us in 1775. As the new year dawns, may all sneering, deriding, mocking, reviling, ridiculing, & scoffing be behind you. Big thanks to his week’s sources, Merriam Webster, Thesaurus.com, Collins Dictionary, Etymonline, & Steve Lowtwait Art.  Many parts of the northern hemisphere are experiencing precipitation this time of year, so here we go. The word snow comes through Middle (snou) & Old English (snaw) from a Proto-Germanic word (snaiwaz) meaning, well, snow. It has some very cool sounding relatives: Dutch --sneeuw Old Irish — snechta Old Church Slavonic -- snegu Old Norse -- snjor Gothic -- snaiws The word rain has also been with us a very long time & comes from a Proto-Germanic word meaning, well, rain. The noun hail, meaning pellets of ice falling from the sky, is also of Proto-Germanic origin. And the word sleet comes from Proto-Germanic, too. Originally slautjan, sleet is precipitation of mingled snow & rain. Deluge comes through Middle English & Anglo-French from the Latin word deluvium, meaning flood or inundation. Drizzle comes from an Old English verb meaning to fall. And the lovely & under-appreciated word mizzle comes from Middle English. It’s related to a Dutch word meaning fog or mist. My sister in Montana, uses the word grapple to describe a snowy/rainy mix, though Merriam Webster spells it graupel, & cites it’s the diminutive form of a word meaning pearl barley. Hmmm. My pals in Ohio refer to the same sort of precipitiation as sniz, a combination of snow & drizzle. May your winter holidays be sweet & may any precipitation stay outside, so you can best appreciate it. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, the OED, Etymonline, How Stuff Works, Collins Dictionary, & Alamy.  After unexpectedly spending a couple rainy evenings rearranging the tarps on our roof & getting the bucket in the bedroom in just the right spot to catch the drips, why not look into the word roof? To begin with, I feel fortunate to have a roof (even if it’s not perfect). So many people don’t, & this is a tough season for rooflessness. The noun roof appeared in Old English. Forms of it exist in many Germanic languages, though hardworking etymologists haven’t successfully traced it back further than that. In English is has meant upper covering of a house, ceiling, highest point, top, summit, the sky, & heaven. In other Germanic languages its meanings include cover, deckhouse, cabin, penthouse, & coffin lid. Roof has applied to the top of the mouth since it first showed up in Old English. And the language is rife with roof idioms: Hit the roof. Raise the roof Through the roof Cat on a hot tin roof Under one roof Roof over one’s head Roof rats Roof came crashing down Take the roof off On the roof Roof fell in Snow on the roof I invite you all to appreciate roofs. They really do a lot of unsung good work. And if you have anything to say about the post, please do. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, phrases.com, the OED, EngDic, Etymonline, & Megavtogal.  The verb touch appeared in English as early as 1300. It came through Old French from Vulgar Latin. Touch is crucial to human existence, so over the years touch has had many meanings: To move or reach so as to make direct physical contact with To touch, hit, knock, mention or deal with To pertain to To pass over To border on To lay hands upon with intent to heal To come close, to verge To make a brief stop on shore while traveling on water To extend to reach, or attain To affect physically To affect emotionally To stain, lay hands on for harm or cause injury or pain To handle or have to do with To be felt as the concern of To strike the keys or strings of an instrument To get or go as far as To meet without overlapping or penetrating To perceive to the tactile sense To attain equality with To partake of food To commit violence upon To draw or delineate with light strokes To leave a mark or impression on To take in hand To handle gentlly with the intent to understand or appreciate To hurt or wound the mind or feelings Idioms involving touch include: touch a sore spot touch & go touch base touch off touch down touchdown touch on something touch someone off touch something up touched in the head to be touched by something Anything I forgot to touch on? Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, NTC’s American Idioms Dictionary, Etymonline, & Inspired Pencil. |
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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