 The news seems able to cover endless stories regarding dishonesty, shooting, manipulation, graft, harassment, & systemic inequality. These stories rightfully spark significant emotion, but we Americans aren’t famous for our facility with emotional vocabulary. This week’s Wordmonger post asks, What are we really feeling about all this?
Our default word tends to be angry. Dictionaries tells us anger is a broad term which implies emotional agitation of no specified intensity, aroused by great displeasure. That doesn’t quite nail my emotional response to all this, so here are some options: Fury is an overwhelming rage of a frenzied nature, bordering on madness. When we feel upset we’re experiencing an emotional toppling or disorganization. Ire suggests that our anger & wrath are transforming into keen resentment. When we are vexed, we are troubled, annoyed, irritated, & disturbed. Wrath is deep indignation expressing itself in a desire to punish or extract revenge. When we are enraged we experience uncontrolled anger that often results in violence. Indignation is righteous anger aroused by what is considered unjust, mean, or shameful. Smoldering means fully or partially suppressed rage and fury. When we are incensed we are spitefully or furiously angry. And rage is a violent outburst of anger unleashed through a loss of self control. Any thoughts on these near-synonyms for anger? Even better — suggest how our beleaguered society can constructively respond to these emotions. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Merriam Webster, & Wordnik, Collins Dictionary & the 1959 Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language.
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 November 26 will mark the 190th birthday of a little known, feisty and fascinating human being. I know I’m supposed to be writing about words, but as folksinger Arlo Guthrie once said, “You can’t always do what you’re s’pose to do.”
I fell for Dr. Walker some years ago. I hope you might find her intriguing. She was one of America’s first female medical doctors. In the late 1850s she opened her practice more than once, but failed miserably. People were under the impression that a woman couldn’t possibly practice medicine, so she had no luck attracting patients. Her lack of professional success may have been affected by her strident insistence that the primary reason women “got the vapors” and fainted was the corsets that restricted their breathing. Another fashion-related opinion may have had something to do with it, too. She was among the Bloomerites, and scandalous as it was, she wore wool trousers — under her wool dress or skirt. Though it’s beyond the modern sensibility to comprehend it, Dr. Walker was arrested multiple times for those trousers. When the Civil War broke out she wanted to do what she could for wounded soldiers, but it took two years of fighting with the US Army before she was allowed on the battlefield. Once there, she argued with the male doctors that they should embrace the newfangled practice of washing their hands between patients. This advice was not happily received. During free hours, she left the battlefield to treat injured civilians, whether northerners or southerners. After helping with an amputation in southern territory, Confederate forces captured her and she became a prisoner of war. Four months later she was freed through a prisoner exchange and became the first female recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. It will not surprise the historians among you that 52 years later at the age of 85 she was stripped of the honor for nebulous reasons. She wouldn’t give the medal up, though, and wore it the rest of her life. In her 70s and 80s her feistiness didn’t decline. She took to wearing men’s formal wear and fought with her fellow Suffragettes, arguing that there was no reason for a 15th amendment; the word men referred to all of humanity, and because of this, the Constitution already gave women the vote. All the Suffragettes needed to do was force Congress to accept the Constitution as it was written. Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Town of Oswego, Syracuse.com, biography.com, NIH, AAUW, Darlene Stille’s Extraordinary Women of Medicine, & Goldsmith’s Civil War Surgeon & Medal of Honor Recipient.  The word narcissist has been getting a lot of attention the last few years. Narcissist appears to have been coined by Coleridge in 1822, but didn’t catch on until 1905. Narcissism means to show extreme love & admiration for oneself. The word comes from the Greek story of Narcissus, a young man who fell in love with his own reflection.
Related terms or idioms & their meanings include: To be full of oneself is to be annoyingly self-focused. To have a swelled head is to have an exaggerated sense of self-importance. The word egotist arrived in 1714 meaning one who makes too-frequent use of the first person. Since then it has morphed into meaning one who is boastful & conceited. As of 1969, we began to say a person enthralled with him/herself was on an ego trip. Or there’s the academic term from 1890 — egocentric -- meaning limited in outlook or concern to one’s own activities or interests. A more colorful term arriving in the 1520s is cocksure, a person as assured of himself as a barnyard rooster. A century or so later cocksure began to mean arrogant & overconfident to the point of annoyance. It seems DH Lawrence offered a “feminine version” of this word, but for some reason hensure never caught on. And back in 1835 Davy Crockett gave us too big for your britches/breeches, an idiom he applied to General Andrew Jackson, a man Crockett believed overvalued himself. In 1991, we received a contemporary version of too big for your britches courtesy of the British musical group Right Said Fred. Their first hit song was inspired by the self-infatuation of mirror-gazers at the gym & gave us the idiom too sexy for your shirt. Comments? You know what to do. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, Merriam Webster, & Wordnik, Free Dictionary, Collins Dictionary, Phrases.org, CDUniverse  I’ve always assumed that — like most homonyms — the verb to bear & the noun bear came from different sources & managed to land in English with the same spellings but different meanings.
Apparently not. They each come from a Proto-Indo-European word which had two different meanings. So, those who study steaming heaps of Indo-European languages in order to manufacture a proposed earlier language (Proto-Indo-European), came to the conclusion that way back in some imagined time & place, something shiny & brown was called *bher-, AND to carry or give birth was to *bher-. Why not? Every language includes words that look & sound the same but mean different things. Why not this imagined language of the distant past? The meaning shiny & brown gave us these modern words: brown brunette bruin burnish beaver And look what the meaning to carry or give birth bore: through Germanic languages birth burden bairn through Old English (look for barr) barrow wheelbarrow through Greek & earlier Latin (look for for, phor, fer, or phag) fortune semaphore euphoria metaphor odiferous pestiferous esophagus through later Latin for the most part (look for pher or fer) periphery peripheral paraphernalia circumference proliferate fertile conifer refer prefer infer confer transfer offer differ aquifer ferret I can hardly bear it. Comments? You know what to do. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Merriam Webster, & Wordnik.  Though the recent increase in frequency of apostrophe errors might suggest otherwise, reports of the death of the apostrophe are highly exaggerated.
Writers, editors and English teachers worry about such things, as one can tell by the very existence of organizations like The Apostrophe Protection Society. But I can’t find even one style guide that acknowledges the possible impending demise of the apostrophe. So this week I’m celebrating the life of this lovely & clarifying bit of punctuation. It helps us out with contractions, working its magic to transform they are into they’re or we have into we’ve. It helps us understand ownership, so instead of the smile that belongs to Ahmed we have Ahmed’s smile. It even helps us tell when something belongs to more than one person, so if a girl wields a club, it’s a girl’s club, but if more than one girl join together, we have a girls’ club. If you have a minute or two to celebrate the apostrophe, check out this brief video introducing the new Scholastic superhero, Apostrophe Girl, sing along with the Apostrophe Song by Shaun McNicholas, or peruse the painfully embarrassing photo archives of apostrophe abuse collected by John Richards of the Apostrophe Protection Society. If you have a tale of sad apostrophe use, or have stayed up nights worrying that these wonderful little beasts might be going the way of the passenger pigeon, feel free to share in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: Huffington Post, The Apostrophe Protection Society, Scholastic Magazine, Shaun McNicholas, APA, Chicago Manual of Style, Grammar Girl, & Associated Press Stylebook.  It seems there’s a lot of hurt, ache, & pain going around, so why not?
The word hurt appeared in English as early as 1200. Hurt not only meant to injure the body, feelings, or reputation, it also meant to charge against, rush, or crash into. It came from an Old French word with no definite source, though Celtic, Frankish, Middle High German, Norse, & Dutch roots have been suggested. The verb form of the word pain came to English from Old French in 1300, meaning to strive, endeavor, hurt or strain oneself. It came from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning to atone or compensate. The noun form of pain showed up later that century, meaning punishment (it’s related to the word penalty). Hmmm — so punishment = striving? Does this reflect some sort of medieval “no pain no gain” thinking? The Old English word for the concept of suffering continued pain gave us the modern word ache. Descendants of what appears to be ache’s root also exist in Sanskrit & Greek. Its meaning was fault or guilt. So might our aches be caused by guilt? Do we bring them on ourselves? Must striving and endeavoring involve pain? And how often is it we find ourselves uncertain of the source of our hurt? Ponderings aside, may you avoid all the following aches: tooth-ache (1200 or earlier) belly-ache (1590) back-ache (1600) heart-ache (1600) stomach-ache (1763) earache (1789) headache (1934) Comments? Here’s hoping you’ll avoid any hurtful ones. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Merriam Webster, & Wordnik.  Here’s a collection of completely unrelated etymologies — just a small pile of intriguing ones I hope you enjoy.
Why do gambling card players throw money into the kitty? Before we English speakers called it kitty we called it kit, & before that we called it kist, a Middle English word which gave us the word chest — another word for a box into which one might put money. Many Americans point to lobbying as one of our government’s problems. So what’s the source of lobby, lobbyist, & lobbying? Initially, those who wanted access to lawmakers simply entered the legislative chambers & made their case. When this became cumbersome (& I should imagine tiresome), they were bumped outside the chamber to the lobby (where they still successfully sway votes & occasionally write legislation). When something is false or fake we might label it as phony. It seems this word most likely came from a mispronunciation of Forney, the name of a chap who manufactured and sold brass rings that appeared to be gold. These became known as Forney rings, which in time shifted to phony rings, & soon phony broadened to mean anything fraudulent. The idiom killed by kindness is based on an event some claim is true & some claim is folklore. The Athenian legislator Draco is said to have been well-liked (though his name also gave us the term draconian). He was responsible for the first written set of laws in Athens. Though the setting down of laws is typically seen as a good thing for everybody, Draco’s laws clearly favored those with power, money, & prestige. As the story goes, Draco was so well-loved that in response to his popularity, the crowd in the chamber showered him with caps, shirts & cloaks to the point that he was smothered to death, or killed by kindness. I find myself reflecting on the possibility that those who can afford to dispense with their caps, shirts, & cloaks probably were quite fond of him. Comments? You know what to do. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Merriam Webster, Jordan Almond’s Dictionary of Word Origins, & Wordnik.  This week we investigate whether a pie by any other name taste as sweet.
Some time around 1300 the word pie appeared in English. It was used to refer to meat or fish encased in pastry. Some etymologists argue that it came from an Old English word for bakery, piehus, while others argue pie must have pre-dated piehus because the Old English word for house was — you guessed it — hus, thus the word for bakery might have simply meant pie house. Sadly, at the moment we don’t have enough linguistic forensic information to answer this pressing question. Pie seems to have a relationship with a Medieval Latin word meaning the same thing. It also seems to be connected with the word magpie. The connection may be that a medieval pie included various foodstuffs, while a pastry included only one, and a magpie has a fascination for collecting miscellaneous objects. Just think, if it tables were turned on those two words, we’d all be calling a black and white bird a magpastry. In the 1500s, a cunning person could be referred to as a wily pie. By the 1600s, the word pie could be used to label a fruit-filled pastry. In the 1830s, folks forced to face humiliation could be said to be eating humble pie. This idiom is based on umble pie, a pie made of inglorious animal parts — a dish eaten by folks who couldn’t afford anything else — thus the confusion with the word humble. The inaccurate, yet ubiquitous idiom easy as pie showed up in 1889. As of 1904 we could label an inebriated individual as pie-eyed. By 1911, unrealistic hopes could be referred to as pie in the sky. And in 1922 the term pie chart was born. The word pi has no relationship to pie — pi came through Greek from a Phoenician word meaning little mouth & appeared in English in 1748 to refer to the mathematical constant 3.14… If you’re inspired to comment non-etymologically, consider sharing your favorite sort of pie. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Merriam Webster, & Wordnik.  Yoga is a fascination for many and a way of life for some, while others find the whole idea unthinkable. Whatever your opinion about yoga, I’m hoping you’ll find its etymology as appealing as I do.
Yoga first came to English in 1820 through Hindi from a Sanskrit word meaning union or yoking. That Sanskrit word came from the Proto-Indo-European word *yeugh-, which meant, to join. It takes no imagination to see how the ideas of union, wholeness & joining could come to mean yoga, but what I find truly fascinating is all the other words that proposed root word *yeugh- has grown into. It gave us join, adjoin, conjoin, enjoin & joint. It gave us junction, juncture, adjunct, conjunct & subjunctive. It gave us subjugate, conjugate & conjugal. And how about yoke, zygote, jostle, joust, jugular & junta? *yeugh- to join, gave us all those words while also contributing words to Lithuanian, Old Church Slavonic, Hittite, Greek, Latin, & Old Welsh. Nothing like a little joining, eh? Please leave any comments about yoga and its many family-members in the comments section. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Merriam Webster, Allfreedownloads & Wordnik.  Though local writer and mensch, Paul Fahey passed away a few years ago, I'm continuing to remember him fondly.
Here's a look at some of the many words those who knew Paul have used to describe him. Supportive appeared in the 1590s from the verb support through Old French from a Latin word meaning to convey, carry or bring up. Talented showed up in English in the 1630s. It came from the word talent, which has been around since the 1200s, meaning inclination, will, or desire. It came from Greek through Latin & Old French, & originally meant a balance, a pair of scales, or anything of weight. Encouraging came to English in the 1400s from the word courage, which was born of an Old French word meaning innermost feelings, heart. Gracious made its way to English in the 1300s from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to favor. One of gracious’s English meanings is merciful & benevolent. Kind made its way to us through Proto-Germanic & Old English. When the word kind appeared in Modern English in the 1400s, it meant benign, compassionate, loving, full of tenderness. One of the conversations Paul & I regularly shared over the years had to do with the word mensch, a person of strength & honor. We share(d) the goal of working toward what we called menschhood. Mensch came to English in 1907 through Yiddish from a German word meaning human. Mensch’s Proto-Indo-European root was *manna-, which isn’t related to manna from heaven, but I would submit that having a mensch in one’s life, like having Paul Fahey in one’s life, is indeed, manna. I miss him. Paul was a prolific writer, editor, & LGBTQ advocate. But I'd submit that mostly, he was a mensch. Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Merriam Webster, & 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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