 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.
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 What’s the deal with the word crock? It started out back in Old English as crocca or croc, a pot, earthen vessel, or jar. These are good things, right? Vessels for water, soup, ale, wine. Pots to press one’s cheese in, store one’s root vegetables, or to ferment one’s sauerkraut. Crocca or croc seems to have come from Germanic languages meaning pitcher or pot, & has cousins in Dutch, German, Old Norse, Irish, Greek, Old Saxon, & Old Church Slavonic.
But what about Well, that’s a crock of @%$@! or what a crock! & the possibly related He’s a crackpot! How did a word for such a useful item collect these negative meanings? Crock's downfall all started in the 1800s. It may have come from the idea that a female sheep past the point of being able to reproduce was just an empty vessel (elder ewes were known as crocks), or it may have had something to do with the unseemly contents of crockery chamber pots, or it may have come from the Scottich pejorative, crock, which referred to invalids or debilitated folks, or possibly even the Middle English word croke or crok, meaning a husk, hull, thing of no value, soot, smut, or refuse. The modern usage of crock can be used both positively & negatively, & has no etymological connection to the amphibian, crocodile, or the footwear known as Crocs. Big thanks to this week’s sources, Merriam Webster, Collins, the OED, Etymonline, & freepic.com.  The noun back appears to be have solely Germanic roots. Many languages use different words for the vertical back of a human vs. the horizontal back of most critters. Not so in English. And because our backs are “behind” us, the noun back has picked up that meaning also.
I hope you enjoy this selection of back idioms, terms, and words. 1200s backbiting 1520s literal meaning of backdoor 1520s the chair back 1600s back-ache 1640s figurative meaning of backdoor (shady, illegal, devious) 1670s setback 1680s backlog 1690s backhand 1767 back up to stand behind &/or support 1819 backstop 1832 backseat of a coach 1859 back down to withdraw a charge 1868 figurative meaning of backseat (least prominent position) 1883 blowback 1888 throwback 1923 backseat driver 1876 a position in US football, specialized later into quarterback, halfback, running back, fullback, etc. 1887 back-formation etymologiacl term referring to a word formed from an existing word by removal of part of the original word (for instance, the word babysitter came first, then the back-formation to babysit) 1891 backstage 1898 ladderback first referring to chairs, then to woodpeckers 1899 backspace 1903 flashback in engines or furnaces 1916 flashback as a plot device 1928 back-beat (an emphaiszed beat falling on a normally unaccented beat in a bar of music) 1938 back off By now you’re probably thinking it’s time to back off! Eh? Please comment with anything that surprised you. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Merriam Webster, & PaintingValley.com  The word so takes up over five pages in the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s small, but mighty.
So functions as an adjective, an intensive, a conjunction, an adverb, a pronoun, a noun, and multiple abbreviations. Adjective: She always arranges the flowers just so. Intentsive: Dude, I’m so tired. Conjunction: It’s ten degrees out there, so I’m staying home. Adverb: Do you really think so? Pronoun: If you must attend the protest, do so. Noun: 🎵 So, a needle pulling thread.🎵 Abbreviation: so = Southern or South, sellers’ option, & strike out So came to us through Old High German and Latin from Proto Indo-European. It shares a root with sole, sword, swoop, swollen, swoon, sworn, swoosh, & suicide. And I’m forced to acknowledge that so has boldly gone into the future with Captain Picard’s use of the phrase, “Make it so.” So-so means adequate, while so-and-so means jerk. And we can pair so with other words for new meanings: So long. Afraid so. And so on… Perhaps the lesson of so is that we should stop & appreciate the big things around us that appear to be small. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, the OED, Etymonline, & Collins Dictionary.  One might expect the word puppy to be a diminutive form of pup, but in this case, puppy was born some three hundred years before pup. Some time in the 1400s, English speakers borrowed the French word poupée, meaning doll or toy, and because dolls and toys were often affectionately petted, the word broadened to refer to other petted things (even “vain & silly young men”) but darned if those baby dogs didn’t steal the word for themselves. Before this, baby dogs were referred to as whelps.
The term puppy-dog comes from the 1590s Puppy-dog eyes appeared soon after The term puppy love was born in 1823 & the term puppy fat was born in 1913 Bought a pup (meaning someone has been tricked) showed up in the Middle Ages, when it was common practice to sell a baby pig in a bag, but nefarious merchants would swap out the pig for a pup — interestingly, this idiom is synonymous with buying a pig in a poke). Puppy is also a variant of the word poppy, a flowering herbaceious plant (papaveracea). Puppy can be used figuratively to question someone’s sanity, as in you are one sick puppy. Why all this puppy talk? My loving wife is an inveterate champion of critters, especially abandoned and foundling critters, so at the moment, she’s fostering seven puppies from the County Pound. It’s a bit much. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Idiom origins, Merriam Webster, Etymonline, the OED, & Creative Fabrica.  I’ve always had a fondness for the verb ogle -- not the act of ogling as much as the sound of it. Little did I know that ogle can also be a noun (as in "That was not an affectionate glance, Mr., that was an ogle.") And oddly, back when we spoke Middle English, we used the noun ogle to refer to a cannonball. To my complete delight, ogle is related to heaps upon heaps of other words, all progeny of the Proto-Indo-European root *okw- (to see). So this week’s post is a listworthy appreciation of ogle’s unlikely family members. I hope you’ll enjoy seeing them all together, & making the “to see” connection to their meanings. monocle myopia ocular oculus optics optician optometry panopticon synopsis autopsy binocular cyclops triceratops wall-eyed presbyopia inoculate inveigle biopsy daisy eyelet antique antler atrocity necropsy window eye hyperopia ferocity Thanks for coming by. Thanks to this week’s sources: The OED, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, & Let’s Draw Today.  We English speakers have been using various forms of the word together since we spoke Old English fifteen centuries ago. The word together came through Germanic languages from the Proto-Indo-European word *ghedh-, meaning to unite, join, or fit. This same root also gave us gather and good. I’m quite enamored with the idea that gather, good, & together share a source. Though folk etymology has suggested that good and God share a root, this isn’t true. God appears to have come from another Proto-Indo-European root *ghu-to-, which meant to pour, offer, or sacrifice. May all your gatherings involve togetherness & goodness. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam Webster, Safestock, & Etymonline.  Who would imagine that the words reindeer & cheer would be related? Certainly not me. However, they most likely are.
Reindeer showed up in English about 1400 meaning exactly what you’d think from a Scandinavian language. The deer part meant animal, and the rein part referred to that particular animal (so at some level reindeer translates to reindeer-animal). The Scandinavian languages appear to have adopted the rein- part of the word from *krei-, a Proto-Indo-European root meaning horn or head. Some fun historic English spellings of reindeer include: rayne-dere, reynder, & raindere. The word cheer appeared in English in 1200, meaning the face or countenance. It came through Anglo-French, French, & Late latin, & most likely originated in that same Proto-Indo-European root, *krei-, meaning horn or head. It took a couple centuries for the meaning to shift from face, to state of mind as indicated by expression, and another century or two for cheer to mean a state of gladness or joy. May all your horns, heads, countenances, & reindeer be cheery. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Collins Dictionary, the OED, Etymonline, & ClipArt Library.  This time of year the word joy gets a lot of play. And why not? We could all use a little joy. So here’s a brief post about joy.
The noun Joy arrived in English about a thousand years ago, meaning a feeling of pleasure & delight. It came from the Proto-Indo-European word *gau- through Latin & French, with meanings along the way that included bliss, joyfulness, sensual delight, pleasure, & gladness. Joy is also a verb, though we don’t use the verb much these days. It has several meanings, including to feel gladness or pleasure; to be happy, to express joy openly, to exult, to boast or brag. Relatives of joy include rejoice, enjoy, joyless, overjoyed, joy-ride, joy-stick, & possibly jolly, gaudy, gaudily, gaudiness, & gaudery. May the season find you joying with the best of them. Thanks to this week’s sources: Collins Dictionary, the OED, Etymonline, & Adobe Stock.  In modern parlance, the word oaf gives us a very different image than the word elf. Interestingly, they come from the same source. The word oaf (initially spelled auf or oph) showed up in English in the 1620s from a Scandinavian source & meant a changeling — a foolish or otherwise defective child left by the fairies. The word elf came from that same Scandinavian root, but in its Germanic phase it got stuck in a detour & showed up in English meaning one of a race of powerful, supernatural beings. In modern English we pluralize elf as elves, & back when modern English first became a thing, we pluralized oaf as oaves. Sadly, we lost that spelling & pronunciation along the way. It doesn’t appear that oaf gave us any proper names, but we did get some names from the word elf: Aelfric, Aelfwine, Eldridge, & Alfred. Synonyms for the modern word oaf include: lout, clod, lubber, & doofus, while synonyms for elf include: fairy, sprite, pixie, & brownie. May all those who feel like louts, clods & lubbers find themselves transforming into powerful, supernatural beings. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam Webster, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Megan Gwynn, & Drawing Tutorials. |
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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