 The Latin word meaning to fall is cadere. It’s sister word (a combining form with the same meaning), is cidere. Before reading on, sort through your brain’s language center for English words that have to do with falling & might have grown out of cadere or cidere.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cascade, meaning waterfall, came to English in 1640 through Italian & French. Cadence, meaning a flow of rhythm in music or verse, appeared in the 1300s through Middle French. Decay showed up in the late 1400s through several varieties of French from the Latin decadere, to fall off. Decadence arrived in the 1540s, meaning behavior that shows low morals. Deciduous, meaning that which falls off, came to English in the 1680s straight from Latin. Originally, the falling items included petals, leaves and teeth. It wasn’t until the 1778 that deciduous referred to trees that drop their leaves (as opposed to evergeeens). In 1705, the word coincide came to English straight from Latin, meaning to fall together, or to agree. In the late 1300s accident was born, meaning an occurrence, incident, or event. Over the centuries, that simple event definition morphed to mean a chance event, & then a mishap. And we’ll finish off with a real killer, the English noun marker –cide, also from cadere/cidere, an important element in pesticide, homicide, genocide, suicide, & many other English words, all suggesting some sort of fall. Followers, can you come up with other cidere/cadere words? If so, please add them to this post in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Wordnik, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, & the OED.
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 The word lie, meaning to speak falsely or tell an untruth, has been part of the English language since the 1100s. Its roots are buried deep in Germanic languages. Lie’s linguistic cousins show up in Norse (ljuga), Danish, (lyve), Gothic, (liugan), Frisian, (liaga), & German (lugen).
It shouldn’t surprise us that we have an impressive number of synonyms, near-synonyms & idioms available to substitute for that terribly direct & offensive three-letter word, lie. Instead of lying, businesslike folk might reframe, mislead, evade, misspeak, or misstate, while artsy types might buff, burnish, embroider, or fictionalize. We can also whitewash, inflate, dissemble, or spin, and those of us who lie regularly can lay claim to any number of afflictions: necessary disingenuity, factual flexibility, serial exaggeration, or the ever-popular; fictitious disorder syndrome. Ah, but all lies are not equal. For instance, to lie is to make a deliberately false statement, to prevaricate is to quibble or confuse in order to avoid the truth, to fabricate is to invent a false story, to equivocate is to deliberately use ambiguity to mislead, & to fib is to tell a falsehood about something unimportant. Good readers if you have any thoughts on all this dishonesty, I’d love to read them in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Ralph Keyes’ Euphemania, the 1959 Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Disney Images, Wordnik, Etymonline, & the OED.  This post celebrates a word all two-year-olds appreciate. Additionally, the good folks who wrote the OED appreciated it enough to give it a nearly two-page entry. No came to English as early as the 1200s through Old English from the Proto-Indo European word ne, meaning no, not, never. And ne is the grandmother of oh-so-many modern words:
Never, which started out as næfre, meaning not ever, came to the language even before no, appearing in the first Anglo Saxon tale to be written down in that barbaric tongue they called Anglish in the epic poem Beowulf, some time before 1000. Nothing, which came to English as an adverb in 1200, added noun to its quiver in 1600, & added adjective in 1961. The word not came from its earlier form, naught, arriving in English in the 1200s. Interestingly, naught came from an even earlier term no whit, meaning no thing. The combining form non- showed up in the 1300s, giving us non sequitur, nonviolence, non-fiction, non-conformist, nonfat milk, & any number of other non-s. Null, which came through Latin & Middle French, arriving in English in the 1560s and mostly meaning nothing, zero, void, is assigned eight different meanings in the OED – a delicious bit of irony. Nil came through Latin & arrived in English in 1833, Naughty showed up in the 1300s, meaning having nothing. By the 1520s naughty had picked up its second meaning, wicked, evil, or morally wrong. By the 1630s its third meaning applied to misbehaving children, & by 1869 its fourth meaning, sexually promiscuous, jumped on board. It occurs to me the etymology of naughty provides a fascinating sociological study. Any nay-saying, followers? Any thoughts on NO? Big thanks to this week’s sources: Word Detective, Wordnik, Etymonline, & the OED.  Thanks to a phone call from Dennis Rogers of Pflugerville, Texas, I’ve been reminded of my interest in regional language use. This week’s brief post includes some examples I hope this taste will get you sorting through your memories for regional usage you can send my way for a future post.
Dinkum entered English n 1888, meaning hard work. Hailing from Australia, dinkum added the meaning honest & genuine by 1894. Though it may have its roots in Lincolnshire, nobody’s really sure where dinkum came from. The Old English word for ant was æmete, which explains why in some parts of England ants are called emmets, Interestingly,holiday tourists in & around Cornwall are also known as emmets. Swivet appears to have come from the Kentucky environs in at late 1800s and nobody’s sure about its roots. A swivet is a fluster, a confusion. A related idiom is “Don’t get your knickers in a swivet.” May your week find you avoiding emmets & swivets of all kinds, enjoying good company (most likely virtual) and good food (hopefully not virtual), & getting a restful respite from dinkum (first meaning). In the meantime, please send any regional words, idioms or turns of phrase my way. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Suko’s Notebook, Wordnik, Etymonline & the OED.  In the previous post, we took a look at the etymologies of frog, weasel, plover, caterpillar, narwhal, muskrat, & platypus. Now, onto more!
Aardvark came to English in 1833 from Afrikaans (a branch of Dutch). It’s a compound Dutch word meaning earth-pig (aard = earth & vark = pig). And thanks to Christine Ahern for asking about raccoon, which came to our language from Algonquian in the 1600s, written raugroughcum in Captain John Smith’s journals. It translates to he scratches with the hands. Another English word that came from Algonquian is moose, written by various “first inscribers” as muns, moos, mooz and moz. The story is that an earlier form was moosu, meaning he strips off. This referred to the animal’s habit of stripping bark from trees for its meals. The word penguin first referred to the now-extinct great auk of Newfoundland. Apparently the birds we now call penguins share some characteristics with the great auk. Sir Francis Drake wrote this word into English in the 1570s. The one proposed source is pooh-poohed by most etymologists, but for the sake of interest, I’ll state it here. In Welsh, pen means head and gwyn means white, and the long-gone great auks of Newfoundland had a big white spot between their eyes. The word slug came to English in 1704 to refer to a shell-less land snail. It was taken from the word sluggard, which referred to a slow-moving & useless person. Though the existence of slugs pre-dates the existence of sluggards (or humans for that matter), we anthrocentric humans labeled those lazy people a good 500 years before labeling the shell-less snail. Toad came from who-knows-where about the time we started calling English English. It had several forms including tadie, tadige & toadie. Rest assured, hard-working etymologists are – as you read - digging through old manuscripts to solve this centuries-old mystery. Like toad, barracuda remains a mystery. It arrived in English in 1607 probably through American Spanish from some Caribbean language, but nobody knows but the barracudas, & they’re not talking (it can’t be easy to enunciate through all those teeth). If an Old English speaker were to have seen what we would today call a hamster, s/he would have correctly referred to it as a German rat. By the 1600s, though, the German word hamster showed up in English, eventually eclipsing the less attractive moniker. It is thought that the German word hamster may have come from a combining of the Russian word chomiak and the Lithuanian word staras. Though my sick and twisted sensibilities wish chomiak meant German and staras meant rat, my sensibilities are dead wrong. Both words mean hamster. So, which of these do you find most interesting or unlikely? Big thanks to this week’s sources: Dictionary.com, Wordnik, Etymonline & the OED.  Many etymologies of animals' names are pretty straightforward. Fish, for instance, comes from a source that meant fish. The original word for fly meant to fly. Ho hum. Some names for critters, though, are a tad more interesting.
Plover made its way to English around 1300 from Vulgar Latin through French. Its original meaning was belonging to rain. Apparently the plover made its migratory way through the British Isles just as the rainy season began. Frog comes from fruska, a Proto-Germanic word meaning hop, and has been with us since we started calling the language English. Another word that came to English as Old English was born is weasel. It came from the Proto-Germanic word, wisulon, & means stinking animal. Interestingly, wisulon is also the grandmother word to another slightly larger animal with a distinctive smell, the bison. In the mid-1400s, caterpillar came to English from the French word chatepelose, meaning shaggy cat. Apparently, many languages named the caterpillar after other animals: American English - wooly bear, Portuguese – lizard, Italian – both little cat & little dog. Narwhal came to English in the 1650s through Danish & Norwegian from the Old Norse word nahvalr. The pale hide of this animal inspired the Old Norse to call it the corpse-whale (na-meaning corpse & hvalr meaning whale). Muskrat made it into English in the 1610s from the Algonquian word muscascus, which meant it is red. The very unlikely animal the platypus got its name, not from any number of unexplainable physical characteristics, but from its flat feet. Platy is Greek for flat & pus is Greek for foot. Platypus came to English in 1799. Shark arrived in English in the 1560s. Its origin is a complete mystery. Good readers, which etymology was most surprising, or most unlikely? Big thanks to this week’s sources: Dictionary.com, Wordnik, Etymonline & the OED.  Some time ago I played in an old time string band. Whenever a particular musical acquaintance (who shall remain nameless) showed up at our rehearsals or shows, our banjo/guitar/harmonica/mandolin player’s capo would disappear. Thus, this post’s title.
For those of you who don’t know the word, a capo is a device used primarily by guitarists. It temporarily shortens the length of the strings, which changes the key without changing the fingerings. Capo came to English in 1946 from Italian & Latin and means head stop. A capo stops the vibration of the strings early, functionally moving the head of the instrument closer to the instrument’s body. The word capo can also refer to the head of a mafia family. This meaning entered English a few years later in 1952. Capo has a couple of cousins with stories to tell. Caprice means a sudden change of mind or whim, though it originally meant a shivering. It came to English in the 1660s from French. Though some believe its origins lie in the word capro, or goat, most evidence suggests that caprice comes from the Italian term capo riccio, meaning frizzled head, which suggests that one’s caprices can surprise one to the point that they curl the hair on one’s head. The Italian term capo muffare meant to muffle the head. In time, this term made its way to Paris, where it became the French slang word camuffare, to disguise. According to a 1917 Popular Science Monthly article, the word camouflage was brought into English that same year by journalists to more efficiently describe military efforts to hide troops & artillery. In previous years, “Sometimes a whole paragraph was required to explain this military practice,” but the introduction to English of the word camouflage ended all that. Just think of the trees we could save if all bureaucracies could engage in this one simple practice. So, good readers, do your caprices curl the hair on your head? Do you have any suggestions of new words to take the place of complex concepts? Big thanks to this week’s sources: Dictionary.com, Wordnik, Etymonline & the OED.  I know. This week’s post title sounds like a law firm consisting of difficult partners.
I started out thinking it would be fun to look into the etymologies of words meaning to get in the way, & I was surprised to learn that about half the words meaning to bamboozle were, by definition, bamboozling. It’s wonderfully ironic that so many of these words’ histories have stymied etymologists. Stymie first appeared in English in 1857. Today it means to thwart, hinder, or get in the way, though its original meaning (as a noun) was specific to the game of golf – the condition in which the opponent’s ball blocks the hole. Most sources list its origins as unknown, though some etymologists posit Scottish roots from the Scottish word stymie, meaning a person who sees poorly. Though logic would suggest it might be related to the sort of sty one might get in one’s eye, no such connection seems to exist. Who would have thought that stump was originally a verb? In the 1200s, stump meant to stumble over an obstacle. Not until the 1400s did stump refer to the part of a tree left in the ground after felling. In the 1800s stump added two verb meanings, to go about making political speeches, & to baffle or bring to a halt. To hinder is to obstruct, harm, interfere with or get in the way of. Hinder first showed up in English in the 1300s as a noun meaning situated in the rear of. It appears to have come through Old English from Germanic sources. Its verb form followed within the century, meaning to delay or put back. One of its notable yet now-gone siblings was the word hinderling, a person fallen from social respectability, a wretch. Though the English word veto clearly comes from the Latin, meaning I forbid, the Latin word’s origin is unknown. Our modern word veto means to forbid, prohibit, oppose, or hinder. The word thwart started out in English as an adverb in the 1200s, meaning across. It came through Old Norse from terkw-, Proto-Indo-European for to twist. After a century or so, thwart picked up the meaning to oppose or hinder, & it has held onto that meaning ever since. Bamboozle’s roots are – what a surprise – bamboozling. It first showed up in English in 1703, meaning to con, hoodwink or make a fool of. Bamboozle may have come from the Scottish word bombaze, to perplex. It may have its roots in French through the word embabouiner, which means to make a baboon of. Nobody knows for sure. Rest assured, though, hard-working etymologists are working night and day to verify the origin of bamboozle. So good followers, what sort of thwarting, bamboozling, & hindering are you planning on accomplishing in the next few weeks? My thanks go out to this week’s sources: OED, Merriam Webster, Wordnik, & Etymonline  These days phrases like "grim times" get bandied about quite a bit. This week we’ll take a look at a few grim words.
The Dutch verb gluren meant to leer. In the 1300s it (or one of its Scandinavian siblings) made its way into Old English as gloom, initially a verb meaning to look sullen or displeased. The adjective gloomy showed up in the 1580s & the noun version of gloom, meaning darkness or obscurity, first appeared in writing in 1629. Though we don’t know its roots, the Latin word luridis meant pale yellow & ghastly. By the 1650s it showed up in English as lurid, meaning ghastly or horrible, adding the meaning glowing in the dark by 1727 & the meaning sensational by the 1850s. Though I would love it if lurid were somehow related to the term yellow journalism, no such link seems to exist. The Scandinavian tongues all had some version of the word grim (grimm, grimmaz, grimmr, grym), meaning furious, dire, painful, savage or cruel. Because of some similar-sounding words meaning thunder in Old Church Slavonic & Russian, etymologists have posited that grim’s grandmother words started out as an imitation of the sound of thunder. Grim made its way to Old English in the 1100s along with its sister-word grima, a noun referring to a ghoul, goblin or specter. Sadly, grima didn’t live very long, possibly taken out by some sort of linguistic grim reaper. Sources suggest that the term grim reaper didn’t show up until 1847, though one could argue that the grim reaper had been doing his job for centuries with no recognition. The Greek word for black was melanin & the Greek word for bilewas khole. Because depression was seen as a problem with the body’s humors, specifically pinned on black bile, the word for overpowering sadness was melancholia, or black bile. This word made its way through Old French to English by the year 1300, to become melancholy. Back in the 2nd century BCE, some folks we now call the Maccabees got fed up with intolerance & against all expectations, rose up to fight their mighty Greek oppressors. Though their story has its triumphant elements, the outcome wasn’t good for the Maccabees, known thereafter as martyrs. At some point in Medieval Latin the story was told as the dance of the Maccabees, or Machabaeorum. This term made its way through Old French to land in English in the early 1400s as macabre, meaning involving death or violence in a strange, frightening or unpleasant manner. So, are these mostly grim times? Melancholy, lurid, gloomy, or macabre times? Or something else altogether? My thanks go out to this week’s sources: OED, Merriam Webster, Wordnik, & Etymonline  Talk about a frustrating spelling problem. How many English learners have wanted to thump that annoying & useless W right out of the word two? Or at least thump the imagined bozo who “invented” the spelling?
Though the imagined bozo must remain nameless, there is a story behind that bothersome W. The word two came to English almost before English was English. It’s Proto-Indo-European grandmother is duwo &/or dwo, and left its linguistic progeny all over Europe: Old Norse: tvau or tveir Old Frisian & Old Saxon: twene or twa Dutch: twee Old High German: zwein or zwo German: zvei Gothic: twai Latin & Greek: duo If we take into account that the letters U, V & W often swap places in the languages of Europe, we start to see that the one common spelling element of all these twos is the U/V/W. Intriguing. In Modern English, the W seems to have prevailed. We see it in other grandchildren of the Proto-Indo-European duwo or dwo: twain – a descendant of two’s under-appreciated Old English cousin twegen, twain may have survived in part due to inclusion in the King James Bible. Some have suggested that this variation of two is still around because it was helpful in rhyming poetry or because when used in verbal orders (for instance, aboard a ship) it could not be confused with too or to. twine – those of you who are curious & fidgety already have tactile knowledge of why twine is related to two – because twine is made up of two fibers twisted together, then possibly two of those twisted again, & so on. As a curious & fidgety child I spent a lot of satisfying time untwisting things & figuring this out sans dictionary. twist – a comparative latecomer to the language, twist didn’t show up in English until the mid-1300s. Twist first referred to the flat parts of a hinge, but in time came to mean combining two into one, which morphed into our multiple modern understandings of the word. twin -- like twain & two, this form come to English almost before English was English. It hasn’t changed meaning at all over the centuries; it has only lost its second n (it was originally twinn). twizzle – this word, meaning to twist, appears to have come from the word twist sometime in the 1780s, giving birth to the amusing term, twizzle stick. In those two-ish words we’ve borrowed from Latin & Greek, the letter U prevailed: duo – came to our language from Italian in the 1580s meaning a tune for two voices. After about two centuries duo generalized to refer to any two people (whether singing or not). dual – entered English in the 1600s straight from Latin, meaning of two or having two parts. Interestingly, duel can’t claim the same linguistic heritage. Though it seems it ought to have come from the idea of two people fighting, duel actually comes from duellum, an old-fashioned form of the Latin word bellum, or war. It was only through its similarity with all the words above that this particular type of war became associated with two people facing off against one another. I’m hoping you’ll have something to say in the comments section – either a thought about all this two-ness, or a request to look into some other annoyingly spelled word. My thanks go out to this week’s sources: The OED, Etymonline, The Free Dictionary, &Wordnik |
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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