http://www.odeo.com/channels/31097-podictionary-for-word-lovers-dictionary-etymology-trivia-history CharlesHodgson no The surprising histories of words you thought you knew. The surprising histories of words you thought you knew. The podcast for word lovers. en 40 Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:01:28 -0800 Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:01:28 -0800 History http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25444088-trance-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1060 Being in a trance is better than it used to be. I looked up trance at wordnik and I see they list 19 definitions. Here’s the first one pulled from The American Heritage Dictionary: A hypnotic, cataleptic, or ecstatic state. I think that describes what I understand a trance to be—zoned out. As an aside, I always wondered what exactly cataleptic meant so I took this opportunity to look it up. The OED is a big help here telling me it means you’re affected by catalepsy, which means you’re in a trance. But at least now I know that the word came from Greek and meant to be “seized.” But back to trance. The mention of ecstatic in the list of what a trance might entail gives you the feeling that being in a trance may not be such a bad thing. Historically though, being in a trance was a very bad thing. The first time we hear about trance is when Geoffrey Chaucer scribbled in about 1374 “that lay, as doth these loueres, yn a traunce By-twixen hope and derk desesperaunce” Geoffrey Chaucer is a ... Being in a trance is better than it used to be. I looked up trance at wordnik and I see they list 19 definitions. Here’s the first one pulled from The American Heritage Dictionary: A hypnotic, cataleptic, or ecstatic state. I think that describes what I understand a trance to be—zoned out. As an aside, I always wondered what exactly cataleptic meant so I took this opportunity to look it up. The OED is a big help here telling me it means you’re affected by catalepsy, which means you’re in a trance. But at least now I know that the word came from Greek and meant to be “seized.” But back to trance. The mention of ecstatic in the list of what a trance might entail gives you the feeling that being in a trance may not be such a bad thing. Historically though, being in a trance was a very bad thing. The first time we hear about trance is when Geoffrey Chaucer scribbled in about 1374 “that lay, as doth these loueres, yn a traunce By-twixen hope and derk desesperaunce” Geoffrey Chaucer is a guy who sometimes wrote in three languages on a single page; English, French and Latin so it’s fitting that the word trance got into English from Old French and that it’s ancestors were Latin before that. What was it back in Chaucer’s day that made a trance such a bad thing? Etymology of course. The Latin parent word meant to “cross over” or to “pass” and you can certainly still sense that in words that contain trans. So a trance was the state of being between life and death. When someone was in a trance they were crossing over from life to that “derk desesperaunce.” Having noted that the wonderful new resource wordnik lists 19 definitions for trance I have to say that at Urbandictionary almost all the definitions relate to something that isn’t even mentioned in wordnik, or any of the paper-based dictionaries. To Urbandictionary enthusiasts trance is a kind of music. Being in a trance is better than it used to be. I looked up trance at wordnik and I see they list 19 definitions. Here’s the first one pulled from The American Heritage Dictionary: A hypnotic, cataleptic, or ecstatic state. I think that describes what I understand a trance to be—zoned out. As an aside, I always wondered what exactly cataleptic meant so I took this opportunity to look it up. The OED is a big help here telling me it means you’re affected by catalepsy, which means you’re in a trance. But at least now I know that the word came from Greek and meant to be “seized.” But back to trance. The mention of ecstatic in the list of what a trance might entail gives you the feeling that being in a trance may not be such a bad thing. Historically though, being in a trance was a very bad thing. The first time we hear about trance is when Geoffrey Chaucer scribbled in about 1374 “that lay, as doth these loueres, yn a traunce By-twixen hope and derk desesperaunce” Geoffrey Chaucer is a guy who sometimes wrote in three languages on a single page; English, French and Latin so it’s fitting that the word trance got into English from Old French and that it’s ancestors were Latin before that. What was it back in Chaucer’s day that made a trance such a bad thing? Etymology of course. The Latin parent word meant to “cross over” or to “pass” and you can certainly still sense that in words that contain trans. So a trance was the state of being between life and death. When someone was in a trance they were crossing over from life to that “derk desesperaunce.” Having noted that the wonderful new resource wordnik lists 19 definitions for trance I have to say that at Urbandictionary almost all the definitions relate to something that isn’t even mentioned in wordnik, or any of the paper-based dictionaries. To Urbandictionary enthusiasts trance is a kind of music. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-12,25444088 Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:01:28 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25439432-pant-%E2%80%93-podictionary-109 The panting my dog does is because she is hot and since she doesn’t have sweat glands she has to move air over her tongue to cool off. When I pant it’s because I am pumping my bike up a hill or something—it’s actually something I do like to do. When the word pant first appeared in English it meant just about what it does now, quick short breaths.  But what causes these quick breaths may have something to do with why it’s called panting. Etymologists think our English word came from an Old French word pantiser and ultimately goes back to an ancient Greek root that also spawned our word fantasy. There are Italian dialect words that also relate, and the point of all the historical linguistic cross-checking is that the experts think the reason our ancient forbearers were panting, is because they woke up in the night from a fantastic nightmare. The phantom caused the panting and so somehow grew into the word that means quick short breaths. The repetitious pattern of panting has suggested... The panting my dog does is because she is hot and since she doesn’t have sweat glands she has to move air over her tongue to cool off. When I pant it’s because I am pumping my bike up a hill or something—it’s actually something I do like to do. When the word pant first appeared in English it meant just about what it does now, quick short breaths.  But what causes these quick breaths may have something to do with why it’s called panting. Etymologists think our English word came from an Old French word pantiser and ultimately goes back to an ancient Greek root that also spawned our word fantasy. There are Italian dialect words that also relate, and the point of all the historical linguistic cross-checking is that the experts think the reason our ancient forbearers were panting, is because they woke up in the night from a fantastic nightmare. The phantom caused the panting and so somehow grew into the word that means quick short breaths. The repetitious pattern of panting has suggested the use of this word in other applications too.  Mary Shelly, author of Frankenstein used it to describe the wind and waves on the sea.  The OED says this usage is now rare and mainly found in Newfoundland. My brother-in-law is a Newfoundlander but he doesn’t recognize it. The date that the word pant first appears in English seems to blow around a bit too. Almost a hundred years ago the Philological Society discussed just this issue and published its findings in their transactions. My CD copy of the OED second edition is gives 1440 as the first appearance of pant. But the OED online has an updated entry that pushes the first appearance back 90 years. The interesting thing is that this update does so by taking into account the 100 year old discussions of the Philological Society. So why could information available 100 years ago make it into the online update but not into the CD? CD technology isn’t that outdated. As I’ve mentioned before, the OED is a huge piece of work and so it takes a long time to go through the whole thing again and make sure it is current. The original project proposal for the OED was looking at 10 years.  After 5 years, when they had made it all the way to the word ant they realized they had a project over-run on their hands. In the end the first edition took about 40 years. Because revising the OED is such a big deal, it doesn’t get done too often. The second edition wasn’t actually an update but an integration of lots of addendums. So until the online update the most authoritative widely recognized reference on the word pant was written in the 1890s. The fact that the entry didn’t change all that much in the update is a testament to the rigor of the original work. As the old saying goes, if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well; which is actually an old saying that Oxford tells me isn’t that old, at least compared to the word pant. Pant appeared in English around 1350 while the “old saying” dates from 1746 in the letters of Philip, fourth earl of Chesterfield. The panting my dog does is because she is hot and since she doesn’t have sweat glands she has to move air over her tongue to cool off. When I pant it’s because I am pumping my bike up a hill or something—it’s actually something I do like to do. When the word pant first appeared in English it meant just about what it does now, quick short breaths.  But what causes these quick breaths may have something to do with why it’s called panting. Etymologists think our English word came from an Old French word pantiser and ultimately goes back to an ancient Greek root that also spawned our word fantasy. There are Italian dialect words that also relate, and the point of all the historical linguistic cross-checking is that the experts think the reason our ancient forbearers were panting, is because they woke up in the night from a fantastic nightmare. The phantom caused the panting and so somehow grew into the word that means quick short breaths. The repetitious pattern of panting has suggested the use of this word in other applications too.  Mary Shelly, author of Frankenstein used it to describe the wind and waves on the sea.  The OED says this usage is now rare and mainly found in Newfoundland. My brother-in-law is a Newfoundlander but he doesn’t recognize it. The date that the word pant first appears in English seems to blow around a bit too. Almost a hundred years ago the Philological Society discussed just this issue and published its findings in their transactions. My CD copy of the OED second edition is gives 1440 as the first appearance of pant. But the OED online has an updated entry that pushes the first appearance back 90 years. The interesting thing is that this update does so by taking into account the 100 year old discussions of the Philological Society. So why could information available 100 years ago make it into the online update but not into the CD? CD technology isn’t that outdated. As I’ve mentioned before, the OED is a huge piece of work and so it takes a long time to go through the whole thing again and make sure it is current. The original project proposal for the OED was looking at 10 years.  After 5 years, when they had made it all the way to the word ant they realized they had a project over-run on their hands. In the end the first edition took about 40 years. Because revising the OED is such a big deal, it doesn’t get done too often. The second edition wasn’t actually an update but an integration of lots of addendums. So until the online update the most authoritative widely recognized reference on the word pant was written in the 1890s. The fact that the entry didn’t change all that much in the update is a testament to the rigor of the original work. As the old saying goes, if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well; which is actually an old saying that Oxford tells me isn’t that old, at least compared to the word pant. Pant appeared in English around 1350 while the “old saying” dates from 1746 in the letters of Philip, fourth earl of Chesterfield. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-11,25439432 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:01:00 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25434130-nova-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1058 I’m not exactly certain why the science show Nova chose its name. All it means is “new.” I mean there’s a Canadian province called Nova Scotia; “new Scotland.” Nova isn’t exactly a news show. What the name Nova has going for it is that it has a particularly sciency feel to it and that’s because it’s the name of a kind of exploding star. What’s so new about something a billion years old? Since stars are nothing new the question becomes why this kind of star is called “new.” The reason goes back to a Danish scientist named Tycho Brahe who wrote a report on an exploding star he noticed back in 1572. Before Brahe saw this exploding star it was a known scientific fact that the earth was at the centre of the universe and the sun and moon and planets orbited around us. Out there beyond those heavenly bodies (flapping about like balloons on strings) there was an enormous sphere into which were embedded all the stars. The universe was fixed and unchanging just as God had intended it to be. B... I’m not exactly certain why the science show Nova chose its name. All it means is “new.” I mean there’s a Canadian province called Nova Scotia; “new Scotland.” Nova isn’t exactly a news show. What the name Nova has going for it is that it has a particularly sciency feel to it and that’s because it’s the name of a kind of exploding star. What’s so new about something a billion years old? Since stars are nothing new the question becomes why this kind of star is called “new.” The reason goes back to a Danish scientist named Tycho Brahe who wrote a report on an exploding star he noticed back in 1572. Before Brahe saw this exploding star it was a known scientific fact that the earth was at the centre of the universe and the sun and moon and planets orbited around us. Out there beyond those heavenly bodies (flapping about like balloons on strings) there was an enormous sphere into which were embedded all the stars. The universe was fixed and unchanging just as God had intended it to be. But that night Brahe noticed something that wasn’t fixed and unchanging. There seemed to be a new star in the heavens. As was so common in those days scientific progress was in Latin and so his report was called de stella nova meaning “concerning the new star.” That’s why exploding stars are called nova and supernova, because at the time it was such a shocking idea to think that there might even be a new star in the sky that it got all the scientists talking and consequently stella nova got worn down to just nova. Tycho Brahe was a careful observer and what he saw convinced him also that this new star had to be much further away than most of the other stars. These observations were some of the nails in the coffin of the we’re-the-centre-of-the-universe theory of astronomy. Just how careful an observer was Tycho Brahe? Well, as part of his scientific equipment he had a clock to time when various lights in the sky crossed the meridian. He was worried his clock wasn’t accurate enough, which was true because pendulums hadn’t been invented yet. But in the end it didn’t matter because the universe is a pretty accurate clock itself and he found that he could keep better time by noting the known movements in the sky than he could with any old clock. Although this chain of events all began back in the late 1500s it took until 1833 before anyone used the word nova to refer to stars in English. One final note on the center of the universe: in 1964 in Cambridge University a certain Mr. Barnes was a little fed up with a certain Dr. Goodhart thinking pretty highly of himself and so bet him a bottle of wine that it could be proven that he, Dr. Goodhart was not the center of the universe. Luckily there was a Dr. Stephen Hawking nearby who settled the bet. But not in the way one might hope. While people might readily agree that Dr. Goodhart was not the center of the universe there is in fact no way to prove this. I’m not exactly certain why the science show Nova chose its name. All it means is “new.” I mean there’s a Canadian province called Nova Scotia; “new Scotland.” Nova isn’t exactly a news show. What the name Nova has going for it is that it has a particularly sciency feel to it and that’s because it’s the name of a kind of exploding star. What’s so new about something a billion years old? Since stars are nothing new the question becomes why this kind of star is called “new.” The reason goes back to a Danish scientist named Tycho Brahe who wrote a report on an exploding star he noticed back in 1572. Before Brahe saw this exploding star it was a known scientific fact that the earth was at the centre of the universe and the sun and moon and planets orbited around us. Out there beyond those heavenly bodies (flapping about like balloons on strings) there was an enormous sphere into which were embedded all the stars. The universe was fixed and unchanging just as God had intended it to be. But that night Brahe noticed something that wasn’t fixed and unchanging. There seemed to be a new star in the heavens. As was so common in those days scientific progress was in Latin and so his report was called de stella nova meaning “concerning the new star.” That’s why exploding stars are called nova and supernova, because at the time it was such a shocking idea to think that there might even be a new star in the sky that it got all the scientists talking and consequently stella nova got worn down to just nova. Tycho Brahe was a careful observer and what he saw convinced him also that this new star had to be much further away than most of the other stars. These observations were some of the nails in the coffin of the we’re-the-centre-of-the-universe theory of astronomy. Just how careful an observer was Tycho Brahe? Well, as part of his scientific equipment he had a clock to time when various lights in the sky crossed the meridian. He was worried his clock wasn’t accurate enough, which was true because pendulums hadn’t been invented yet. But in the end it didn’t matter because the universe is a pretty accurate clock itself and he found that he could keep better time by noting the known movements in the sky than he could with any old clock. Although this chain of events all began back in the late 1500s it took until 1833 before anyone used the word nova to refer to stars in English. One final note on the center of the universe: in 1964 in Cambridge University a certain Mr. Barnes was a little fed up with a certain Dr. Goodhart thinking pretty highly of himself and so bet him a bottle of wine that it could be proven that he, Dr. Goodhart was not the center of the universe. Luckily there was a Dr. Stephen Hawking nearby who settled the bet. But not in the way one might hope. While people might readily agree that Dr. Goodhart was not the center of the universe there is in fact no way to prove this. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-10,25434130 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:01:49 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25428645-baby-%E2%80%93-podictionary-108 The babies and babes I’ll be talking about here are the ones brought by storks, not those picked up in bars. The word baby appears first in Middle English, and although it is found in documents before the word babe, it is thought to have grown out of babe as a pet name. Each of these appear in the late 1300s Baby is one of those words that got exported from English rather than as is usual, other way round.  French adopted bebe in 1793. In English 150 years before babe or baby appeared there was baban which appeared first in an early document we have talked about before here on podictionary, the Ancrene Riwle. Although many of the citations for early uses of the word baby and its precursors mention babies crying it is thought that baban evolved as a word from the non-crying sounds that babies make before they learn to talk. The appearance of the next form, babe does involve crying. It appeared first in a fun little story called Confessio Amantis.  This is a poem that deals with how l... The babies and babes I’ll be talking about here are the ones brought by storks, not those picked up in bars. The word baby appears first in Middle English, and although it is found in documents before the word babe, it is thought to have grown out of babe as a pet name. Each of these appear in the late 1300s Baby is one of those words that got exported from English rather than as is usual, other way round.  French adopted bebe in 1793. In English 150 years before babe or baby appeared there was baban which appeared first in an early document we have talked about before here on podictionary, the Ancrene Riwle. Although many of the citations for early uses of the word baby and its precursors mention babies crying it is thought that baban evolved as a word from the non-crying sounds that babies make before they learn to talk. The appearance of the next form, babe does involve crying. It appeared first in a fun little story called Confessio Amantis.  This is a poem that deals with how love relates to the seven deadly sins and was written by John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer. Gower claimed to have been paddling across the Thames River one day when he met the King (this would have been Richard II), who said “you should write a book” so he did. In his book the babe is crying for good reason since its mother has just thrown herself on a sword and the  grandfather finds the babe all covered in blood—I told you it was a fun little story. After baban and babe, baby finally was delivered. The document of record here we have also talked about before; it’s called The vision of William concerning Piers Plowman and was also the first document to record the word spinster and the first to take note of that famous old bandit Robin Hood. This podictionary episode is a revision of one from 2005. That first time round I included a citation from something called the Blegburn Dickshonary and I’ll include that again in a moment. But first I want to tell you that the Blegburn Dickshonary rides again. This is a document from more than 100 years ago that 4 years ago I dug out and digitized. I had help in proofreading the thing from a number of podictionary listeners but then when I upgraded my podcast to include a better blog, the online version got lost. I figured though that since a number of people put considerable effort into the thing I should really get it online again. So now there is a link to it at the website and here in this blog post. I the audio portion of this episode I have Diana Rushton, the Local History Librarian for Blackburn in Lancashire, England reading the Blegburn Dickshonary entry for babby. BABBY (baby) – This is a wonderful thing, an’ heaw mich wonderful depends on id number. Iv it’s th’ fost it’s a hangel; yo’ mezzer id an’ weigh id every Setterda’ neet, an book th’ perticklers deawn in a family Bible. An’ when id says “Daddy” an’ ” Mammy “—wey, yo’ wodn’d tek th’ Nash’nal Det for id. But iv it’s th’ duzzenth, it’s a little imp an’ id gets plenty o’ strap; aw Know o abeawt id, becos aw’ve hed ‘em—at leeast th’ wife hes, an’ it’s o th’ same. Translation: Baby – This is a wonderful thing, and how wonderful depends on it’s number. If it’s the first it’s an angel; you measure it and weigh it every Saturday night, and write the particulars down in the family Bible. And when it says “Daddy” and “Mommy” – well, you wouldn’t take the National Debt for it. But if it’s your twelfth child, it’s a little imp and it gets plenty of strap; I know all about it, because I’ve had them – at least my wife has, and its all the same. The babies and babes I’ll be talking about here are the ones brought by storks, not those picked up in bars. The word baby appears first in Middle English, and although it is found in documents before the word babe, it is thought to have grown out of babe as a pet name. Each of these appear in the late 1300s Baby is one of those words that got exported from English rather than as is usual, other way round.  French adopted bebe in 1793. In English 150 years before babe or baby appeared there was baban which appeared first in an early document we have talked about before here on podictionary, the Ancrene Riwle. Although many of the citations for early uses of the word baby and its precursors mention babies crying it is thought that baban evolved as a word from the non-crying sounds that babies make before they learn to talk. The appearance of the next form, babe does involve crying. It appeared first in a fun little story called Confessio Amantis.  This is a poem that deals with how love relates to the seven deadly sins and was written by John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer. Gower claimed to have been paddling across the Thames River one day when he met the King (this would have been Richard II), who said “you should write a book” so he did. In his book the babe is crying for good reason since its mother has just thrown herself on a sword and the  grandfather finds the babe all covered in blood—I told you it was a fun little story. After baban and babe, baby finally was delivered. The document of record here we have also talked about before; it’s called The vision of William concerning Piers Plowman and was also the first document to record the word spinster and the first to take note of that famous old bandit Robin Hood. This podictionary episode is a revision of one from 2005. That first time round I included a citation from something called the Blegburn Dickshonary and I’ll include that again in a moment. But first I want to tell you that the Blegburn Dickshonary rides again. This is a document from more than 100 years ago that 4 years ago I dug out and digitized. I had help in proofreading the thing from a number of podictionary listeners but then when I upgraded my podcast to include a better blog, the online version got lost. I figured though that since a number of people put considerable effort into the thing I should really get it online again. So now there is a link to it at the website and here in this blog post. I the audio portion of this episode I have Diana Rushton, the Local History Librarian for Blackburn in Lancashire, England reading the Blegburn Dickshonary entry for babby. BABBY (baby) – This is a wonderful thing, an’ heaw mich wonderful depends on id number. Iv it’s th’ fost it’s a hangel; yo’ mezzer id an’ weigh id every Setterda’ neet, an book th’ perticklers deawn in a family Bible. An’ when id says “Daddy” an’ ” Mammy “—wey, yo’ wodn’d tek th’ Nash’nal Det for id. But iv it’s th’ duzzenth, it’s a little imp an’ id gets plenty o’ strap; aw Know o abeawt id, becos aw’ve hed ‘em—at leeast th’ wife hes, an’ it’s o th’ same. Translation: Baby – This is a wonderful thing, and how wonderful depends on it’s number. If it’s the first it’s an angel; you measure it and weigh it every Saturday night, and write the particulars down in the family Bible. And when it says “Daddy” and “Mommy” – well, you wouldn’t take the National Debt for it. But if it’s your twelfth child, it’s a little imp and it gets plenty of strap; I know all about it, because I’ve had them – at least my wife has, and its all the same. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-09,25428645 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:01:00 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25424275-abacus-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1057 There’s an etymological reason why calculations with an abacus can leave paper and pencil in the dust. Before the invention of pocket calculators most people did calculations with a paper and pencil. Some people found this too time consuming and invented the slide-rule. I actually was pretty good with a slide rule many decades ago; I won a competition. I don’t know if you can buy a slide-rule in too many places any more. Another tool to hasten and manually automate arithmetic calculations is the abacus. Wikipedia tells me that abacuses (or abaci) have been in use for between four and five thousand years. Slide-rules came into being only a few decades after Shakespeare and are a recent enough invention that we can even attribute names to the people who contributed to their invention. But while the slide-rule came and went the abacus has endured. It’s still evidently in common use in Africa and the Far East. It’s pretty clear why a slide-rule is called a slide-rule but it’s not ... There’s an etymological reason why calculations with an abacus can leave paper and pencil in the dust. Before the invention of pocket calculators most people did calculations with a paper and pencil. Some people found this too time consuming and invented the slide-rule. I actually was pretty good with a slide rule many decades ago; I won a competition. I don’t know if you can buy a slide-rule in too many places any more. Another tool to hasten and manually automate arithmetic calculations is the abacus. Wikipedia tells me that abacuses (or abaci) have been in use for between four and five thousand years. Slide-rules came into being only a few decades after Shakespeare and are a recent enough invention that we can even attribute names to the people who contributed to their invention. But while the slide-rule came and went the abacus has endured. It’s still evidently in common use in Africa and the Far East. It’s pretty clear why a slide-rule is called a slide-rule but it’s not so obvious that the same principals were at work behind the naming of the abacus. These days an abacus looks like a frame with wires or rods inside along which slide little beads. However, long ago the ancestor of the abacus was a board or table covered in sand into which were drawn little furrows that beans could be moved back and forth in. Less portable perhaps, and not so quick, but hey, calculators and slide-rules were still thousands of years in the future. This use of a board or table to work on explains why the Latin word grew from a Greek word abak or abax that meant “slab” or “board.” But the Greek word may have come from a Hebrew word that referred not to the board but to the sand on top of it. Abaq meant “dust” in Hebrew. I associated the invention of the slide-rule with the lifetime of William Shakespeare and although neither of author is cited as having used the words I might as well associate the first appearance of the word abacas to Geoffrey Chaucer; he was 44 years old when abacas first appeared on an English page. There’s an etymological reason why calculations with an abacus can leave paper and pencil in the dust. Before the invention of pocket calculators most people did calculations with a paper and pencil. Some people found this too time consuming and invented the slide-rule. I actually was pretty good with a slide rule many decades ago; I won a competition. I don’t know if you can buy a slide-rule in too many places any more. Another tool to hasten and manually automate arithmetic calculations is the abacus. Wikipedia tells me that abacuses (or abaci) have been in use for between four and five thousand years. Slide-rules came into being only a few decades after Shakespeare and are a recent enough invention that we can even attribute names to the people who contributed to their invention. But while the slide-rule came and went the abacus has endured. It’s still evidently in common use in Africa and the Far East. It’s pretty clear why a slide-rule is called a slide-rule but it’s not so obvious that the same principals were at work behind the naming of the abacus. These days an abacus looks like a frame with wires or rods inside along which slide little beads. However, long ago the ancestor of the abacus was a board or table covered in sand into which were drawn little furrows that beans could be moved back and forth in. Less portable perhaps, and not so quick, but hey, calculators and slide-rules were still thousands of years in the future. This use of a board or table to work on explains why the Latin word grew from a Greek word abak or abax that meant “slab” or “board.” But the Greek word may have come from a Hebrew word that referred not to the board but to the sand on top of it. Abaq meant “dust” in Hebrew. I associated the invention of the slide-rule with the lifetime of William Shakespeare and although neither of author is cited as having used the words I might as well associate the first appearance of the word abacas to Geoffrey Chaucer; he was 44 years old when abacas first appeared on an English page. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-09,25424275 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:22:52 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25409432-paint-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1056 Paint arose in Middle English from French, or as the latest update to The Oxford English Dictionary puts it from Anglo-Norman, a refinement in definition of the language that was being spoken by the descendants of the Norman Invaders from 1066. They would have been speaking a form of French and by the time paint popped out into the written record in 1275 that French had mixed with Old English to form Middle English. That timeline gives 200 years or so for people to have mixed the two languages but the case of the word paint shows not only that this mix could have happened faster, it also shows us a little bit about how ancient documents are interpreted. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates the year 1275 as the latest that this word paint might have first appeared, but they also list 1216 as a possible date. The reason for this is that the word is first cited in something called The Argument Between the Owl and the Nightingale which is a poem supposedly relating exactly what the t... Paint arose in Middle English from French, or as the latest update to The Oxford English Dictionary puts it from Anglo-Norman, a refinement in definition of the language that was being spoken by the descendants of the Norman Invaders from 1066. They would have been speaking a form of French and by the time paint popped out into the written record in 1275 that French had mixed with Old English to form Middle English. That timeline gives 200 years or so for people to have mixed the two languages but the case of the word paint shows not only that this mix could have happened faster, it also shows us a little bit about how ancient documents are interpreted. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates the year 1275 as the latest that this word paint might have first appeared, but they also list 1216 as a possible date. The reason for this is that the word is first cited in something called The Argument Between the Owl and the Nightingale which is a poem supposedly relating exactly what the title describes. It now exists in only two old manuscripts and scholars have to guess at how old the poem itself might be. The strongest evidence is a reference to King Henry. But which King Henry? And was the reference a literal one or metaphorical one because in the context of a story about two birds sitting in the trees arguing with one another one can’t be too sure anything is literal. Thus is woven the tenuous dating of first citations. The birds certainly were arguing. The citation for the word paint relates to the nightingale telling the owl how hateful and ugly she is: “your body is squat, your neck is scrawny, your head is bigger than the rest of you put together; your eyes are black as coal, and as big as if they were painted with woad.” Woad is a kind of dye. With this cutting remark it is appropriate that when we look back beyond the French etymology of paint we find Latin and ultimately an Indo-European root and that Indo-European root meant “to cut.” The development seems to have been that people used the word “to cut” to refer to making decorations with cut marks, that this later came simply to mean “to decorate” and later still “to decorate with colors.” Paint arose in Middle English from French, or as the latest update to The Oxford English Dictionary puts it from Anglo-Norman, a refinement in definition of the language that was being spoken by the descendants of the Norman Invaders from 1066. They would have been speaking a form of French and by the time paint popped out into the written record in 1275 that French had mixed with Old English to form Middle English. That timeline gives 200 years or so for people to have mixed the two languages but the case of the word paint shows not only that this mix could have happened faster, it also shows us a little bit about how ancient documents are interpreted. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates the year 1275 as the latest that this word paint might have first appeared, but they also list 1216 as a possible date. The reason for this is that the word is first cited in something called The Argument Between the Owl and the Nightingale which is a poem supposedly relating exactly what the title describes. It now exists in only two old manuscripts and scholars have to guess at how old the poem itself might be. The strongest evidence is a reference to King Henry. But which King Henry? And was the reference a literal one or metaphorical one because in the context of a story about two birds sitting in the trees arguing with one another one can’t be too sure anything is literal. Thus is woven the tenuous dating of first citations. The birds certainly were arguing. The citation for the word paint relates to the nightingale telling the owl how hateful and ugly she is: “your body is squat, your neck is scrawny, your head is bigger than the rest of you put together; your eyes are black as coal, and as big as if they were painted with woad.” Woad is a kind of dye. With this cutting remark it is appropriate that when we look back beyond the French etymology of paint we find Latin and ultimately an Indo-European root and that Indo-European root meant “to cut.” The development seems to have been that people used the word “to cut” to refer to making decorations with cut marks, that this later came simply to mean “to decorate” and later still “to decorate with colors.” tag:odeo.com,2009-11-05,25409432 Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:01:09 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25403048-horsdoeuvre-%E2%80%93-podictionary-107 Hors d’oeuvre is a tough one to spell because not only has this double barreled word retained its original French spelling, we in English have changed it’s pronunciation a bit to suit what feels most comfortable on our tongues. What I mean is that although we pronounce hors d’oeuvre with an “r” before the “v” it is actually spelled with the “v” before the “r”. This now English word hors d’oeuvre is really three French words baked into one. These days hors d’oeuvre likely mean to you finger foods scarfed down at a party. When the term was first used in French back in 1596, hors d’oeuvre was an architectural term and indicated a piece of masonry that jutted out from the rest building; a ledge or a piece of cornice or something. The literal meaning of these thee words is hors meaning “outside” de meaning “the”, and oeuvre meaning “work” Thus hors d’oeuvre literally means “out of the work.” So the main work of the building’s edifice has hors d’oeuvres sticking out of it. From that start... Hors d’oeuvre is a tough one to spell because not only has this double barreled word retained its original French spelling, we in English have changed it’s pronunciation a bit to suit what feels most comfortable on our tongues. What I mean is that although we pronounce hors d’oeuvre with an “r” before the “v” it is actually spelled with the “v” before the “r”. This now English word hors d’oeuvre is really three French words baked into one. These days hors d’oeuvre likely mean to you finger foods scarfed down at a party. When the term was first used in French back in 1596, hors d’oeuvre was an architectural term and indicated a piece of masonry that jutted out from the rest building; a ledge or a piece of cornice or something. The literal meaning of these thee words is hors meaning “outside” de meaning “the”, and oeuvre meaning “work” Thus hors d’oeuvre literally means “out of the work.” So the main work of the building’s edifice has hors d’oeuvres sticking out of it. From that start, when hors d’oeuvre first came into English in the early 1700s it meant “something out of the ordinary”  But both in French and in English it very quickly came to mean a little something extra to eat before the main meal; just to get the juices flowing. In this use it actually retains its original meaning since “the work” in this sense is the creative work of the cook. For a chef the main work is the main meal, so that the hors d’oeuvres are something outside of that main creation. Hors d’oeuvre is a tough one to spell because not only has this double barreled word retained its original French spelling, we in English have changed it’s pronunciation a bit to suit what feels most comfortable on our tongues. What I mean is that although we pronounce hors d’oeuvre with an “r” before the “v” it is actually spelled with the “v” before the “r”. This now English word hors d’oeuvre is really three French words baked into one. These days hors d’oeuvre likely mean to you finger foods scarfed down at a party. When the term was first used in French back in 1596, hors d’oeuvre was an architectural term and indicated a piece of masonry that jutted out from the rest building; a ledge or a piece of cornice or something. The literal meaning of these thee words is hors meaning “outside” de meaning “the”, and oeuvre meaning “work” Thus hors d’oeuvre literally means “out of the work.” So the main work of the building’s edifice has hors d’oeuvres sticking out of it. From that start, when hors d’oeuvre first came into English in the early 1700s it meant “something out of the ordinary”  But both in French and in English it very quickly came to mean a little something extra to eat before the main meal; just to get the juices flowing. In this use it actually retains its original meaning since “the work” in this sense is the creative work of the cook. For a chef the main work is the main meal, so that the hors d’oeuvres are something outside of that main creation. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-04,25403048 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:01:00 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25388689-pawn-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1054 A pawn is the lowliest payer on the chess board. But why are they called pawns? SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Today I’m going to talk about four words pawn. In some ways they all have to do with the lowly. When people are desperate for cash they sometimes pawn their valuables. Thankfully I’ve never been forced into this position but the basic arrangement is that you hand over your diamond tiara and the pawnbroker hands you a stack of bills. You agree to pay him back with interest in a certain time period or else he gets to keep and sell your tiara. The reason the gentleman now in possession of your jewelry is called a pawnbroker, and the act is called pawning is that this agreement between the two of you is a kind of pledge and about 600 years ago a French word for “pledge” pan made its way into English. The second word pawn I want to talk about today refers to people who are used as tools in other people’s schemes.... A pawn is the lowliest payer on the chess board. But why are they called pawns? SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Today I’m going to talk about four words pawn. In some ways they all have to do with the lowly. When people are desperate for cash they sometimes pawn their valuables. Thankfully I’ve never been forced into this position but the basic arrangement is that you hand over your diamond tiara and the pawnbroker hands you a stack of bills. You agree to pay him back with interest in a certain time period or else he gets to keep and sell your tiara. The reason the gentleman now in possession of your jewelry is called a pawnbroker, and the act is called pawning is that this agreement between the two of you is a kind of pledge and about 600 years ago a French word for “pledge” pan made its way into English. The second word pawn I want to talk about today refers to people who are used as tools in other people’s schemes. This usage is almost as old as the “pledge” pawn although it comes from a different source. Before I explain why someone who is being manipulated in this way is called a pawn I’ll jump to the third word pwn. Pwn is a fairly recent development. It means “to dominate.” This new pwn is a word that could only come about in the internet age because it is a typo-word among internet gamers who intended to type own but since the key for the letter “p” is right beside the “o” key, own all too often came out pwn.  One gamer might claim to “own” another when he or she dominates them in games. It seems to me that the coincidental similarity in meaning and form between pwn and pawn could be one reason why the new word caught on. Now to why that abused individual might be called a pawn. Someone who is merely a pawn is so called because they are being used like the lowliest piece in a game of chess. The name of the chess piece in turn came about because in real life the lowliest soldiers were those who fought on foot and when the Norman Conquerors arrived in England with their French a paun meant “a walker” based on the Latin root word for foot. A pawn is the lowliest payer on the chess board. But why are they called pawns? SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Today I’m going to talk about four words pawn. In some ways they all have to do with the lowly. When people are desperate for cash they sometimes pawn their valuables. Thankfully I’ve never been forced into this position but the basic arrangement is that you hand over your diamond tiara and the pawnbroker hands you a stack of bills. You agree to pay him back with interest in a certain time period or else he gets to keep and sell your tiara. The reason the gentleman now in possession of your jewelry is called a pawnbroker, and the act is called pawning is that this agreement between the two of you is a kind of pledge and about 600 years ago a French word for “pledge” pan made its way into English. The second word pawn I want to talk about today refers to people who are used as tools in other people’s schemes. This usage is almost as old as the “pledge” pawn although it comes from a different source. Before I explain why someone who is being manipulated in this way is called a pawn I’ll jump to the third word pwn. Pwn is a fairly recent development. It means “to dominate.” This new pwn is a word that could only come about in the internet age because it is a typo-word among internet gamers who intended to type own but since the key for the letter “p” is right beside the “o” key, own all too often came out pwn.  One gamer might claim to “own” another when he or she dominates them in games. It seems to me that the coincidental similarity in meaning and form between pwn and pawn could be one reason why the new word caught on. Now to why that abused individual might be called a pawn. Someone who is merely a pawn is so called because they are being used like the lowliest piece in a game of chess. The name of the chess piece in turn came about because in real life the lowliest soldiers were those who fought on foot and when the Norman Conquerors arrived in England with their French a paun meant “a walker” based on the Latin root word for foot. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-03,25388689 Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:01:24 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25388690-magazine-%E2%80%93-podictionary-106 I’m sure you’ve met people who save past copies of magazines likeNational Geographic in some kind of personal warehouse. People who collect like this are behaving in an etymologically appropriate way at least. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Urbandictionary.com, tells me that a magazine is “a controlling device used by corporate America to brainwash teenaged girls.” The word magazine appeared on this earth long before people were reading periodicals.  Its ultimate ancestor was an Arabic word kazana meaning to “store up” whose sister word makazan, meaning “storehouse” was adopted into a number of languages including Latin and then French, where English got it from. According to the OED, in Spanish the word also existed but they then stuck the Arabic al on the front meaning “the warehouse.” This is similar to our use of the words alcohol and algebra, both of which have prefixes that could have been left off since all th... I’m sure you’ve met people who save past copies of magazines likeNational Geographic in some kind of personal warehouse. People who collect like this are behaving in an etymologically appropriate way at least. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Urbandictionary.com, tells me that a magazine is “a controlling device used by corporate America to brainwash teenaged girls.” The word magazine appeared on this earth long before people were reading periodicals.  Its ultimate ancestor was an Arabic word kazana meaning to “store up” whose sister word makazan, meaning “storehouse” was adopted into a number of languages including Latin and then French, where English got it from. According to the OED, in Spanish the word also existed but they then stuck the Arabic al on the front meaning “the warehouse.” This is similar to our use of the words alcohol and algebra, both of which have prefixes that could have been left off since all the al means is “the.” Thus when magazine entered English in 1583 it arrived with the meaning of a “storehouse.” This meaning we can still recognize, particularly relating to military storage areas, but otherwise this usage has pretty well been eclipsed by the magazines we read. The storage of small items in a case, such as bullets in a clip or music CDs in a cartridge, take their name from the old meaning; but we developed these applications of the word right here in English around 1677, and the French had to adopt it back from us. Similarly it was in English that a bundle of pages sold at a news stand first became known as a magazine in 1731 when the Gentleman’s Magazine, explained its own title thus: “This Consideration has induced several Gentlemen to promote a Monthly Collection to treasure up, as in a Magazine.” This meaning too was later adopted back into French and other languages. Somehow magazines fall into a lower tier of sorts in that a periodical is thought of as aimed at an academic audience while a magazine is aimed at the general public. I’m sure you’ve met people who save past copies of magazines likeNational Geographic in some kind of personal warehouse. People who collect like this are behaving in an etymologically appropriate way at least. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Urbandictionary.com, tells me that a magazine is “a controlling device used by corporate America to brainwash teenaged girls.” The word magazine appeared on this earth long before people were reading periodicals.  Its ultimate ancestor was an Arabic word kazana meaning to “store up” whose sister word makazan, meaning “storehouse” was adopted into a number of languages including Latin and then French, where English got it from. According to the OED, in Spanish the word also existed but they then stuck the Arabic al on the front meaning “the warehouse.” This is similar to our use of the words alcohol and algebra, both of which have prefixes that could have been left off since all the al means is “the.” Thus when magazine entered English in 1583 it arrived with the meaning of a “storehouse.” This meaning we can still recognize, particularly relating to military storage areas, but otherwise this usage has pretty well been eclipsed by the magazines we read. The storage of small items in a case, such as bullets in a clip or music CDs in a cartridge, take their name from the old meaning; but we developed these applications of the word right here in English around 1677, and the French had to adopt it back from us. Similarly it was in English that a bundle of pages sold at a news stand first became known as a magazine in 1731 when the Gentleman’s Magazine, explained its own title thus: “This Consideration has induced several Gentlemen to promote a Monthly Collection to treasure up, as in a Magazine.” This meaning too was later adopted back into French and other languages. Somehow magazines fall into a lower tier of sorts in that a periodical is thought of as aimed at an academic audience while a magazine is aimed at the general public. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-02,25388690 Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:01:00 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25388692-pheasant-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1053 According to Sydney Smith, a churchman of two centuries ago “If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world it is a roast pheasant with bread sauce.” SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. A century after that Scottish politician Tom Johnston, when lamenting that poor people had been displaced from lands by rich landowners, said “the peasant has been ruthlessly swept aside to make room for the pheasant.” Both of these quotations are consistent with the current entry in Wikipedia for pheasant which says in part “Uses of pheasants: Pheasants are shot for sport and for the table…” The Wikipedia article also says they are valued for their attractive appearance and I guess that is exemplified in the peacock which is a type of pheasant. Pheasants are the birds being shot in those quaint rural images that remind you of Norman Rockwell and LL Bean. People must have been admiring their plumage as well as their taste for a lon... According to Sydney Smith, a churchman of two centuries ago “If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world it is a roast pheasant with bread sauce.” SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. A century after that Scottish politician Tom Johnston, when lamenting that poor people had been displaced from lands by rich landowners, said “the peasant has been ruthlessly swept aside to make room for the pheasant.” Both of these quotations are consistent with the current entry in Wikipedia for pheasant which says in part “Uses of pheasants: Pheasants are shot for sport and for the table…” The Wikipedia article also says they are valued for their attractive appearance and I guess that is exemplified in the peacock which is a type of pheasant. Pheasants are the birds being shot in those quaint rural images that remind you of Norman Rockwell and LL Bean. People must have been admiring their plumage as well as their taste for a long time because the word pheasant spans millennia as well as language; as is often characteristic of a word that is widely used and understood. The first use of pheasant in English so far as we know dates from 1299. Which is appropriate for a word that we think comes from French after the Norman Conquest. Since a pheasant is a type of fowl I found it fitting that the first Oxford English Dictionary citation for pheasant is credited to a man named Fowler who did the digging back through the Middle English Records of the Abbey of Durham to turn up this first documented use. French got pheasant from Latin who in turn got it from Greek and the reason the Greeks called this bird phasianos was that they had heard that these types of birds came from near the River Phasis which flows into the black sea. According to Sydney Smith, a churchman of two centuries ago “If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world it is a roast pheasant with bread sauce.” SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. A century after that Scottish politician Tom Johnston, when lamenting that poor people had been displaced from lands by rich landowners, said “the peasant has been ruthlessly swept aside to make room for the pheasant.” Both of these quotations are consistent with the current entry in Wikipedia for pheasant which says in part “Uses of pheasants: Pheasants are shot for sport and for the table…” The Wikipedia article also says they are valued for their attractive appearance and I guess that is exemplified in the peacock which is a type of pheasant. Pheasants are the birds being shot in those quaint rural images that remind you of Norman Rockwell and LL Bean. People must have been admiring their plumage as well as their taste for a long time because the word pheasant spans millennia as well as language; as is often characteristic of a word that is widely used and understood. The first use of pheasant in English so far as we know dates from 1299. Which is appropriate for a word that we think comes from French after the Norman Conquest. Since a pheasant is a type of fowl I found it fitting that the first Oxford English Dictionary citation for pheasant is credited to a man named Fowler who did the digging back through the Middle English Records of the Abbey of Durham to turn up this first documented use. French got pheasant from Latin who in turn got it from Greek and the reason the Greeks called this bird phasianos was that they had heard that these types of birds came from near the River Phasis which flows into the black sea. tag:odeo.com,2009-11-01,25388692 Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:01:29 -0800 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25388695-lampoon-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1052 Perhaps it’s etymologically appropriate that one of the first movies produced by National Lampoon, Animal House involved a lot of drinking. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. I can’t be completely sure but it may have been about the time of that movie Animal House in 1978 that I first became aware of the word lampoon. Perhaps I’d heard of the magazine National Lampoon before that, it started in 1970 and my impression was that while Mad Magazine was junior high humor, National Lampoon was university humor. Of course the word lampoon had been around for centuries before I noticed it or the magazine adopted the name. The Oxford English Dictionary dates lampoon to 1645 and defines it as “a virulent or scurrilous satire upon an individual.” All etymologies point to French as the source of lampoon but an equivalent word there seems to have blinked out of existence before lexicographers could nail it to the dictionnaire. But mo... Perhaps it’s etymologically appropriate that one of the first movies produced by National Lampoon, Animal House involved a lot of drinking. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. I can’t be completely sure but it may have been about the time of that movie Animal House in 1978 that I first became aware of the word lampoon. Perhaps I’d heard of the magazine National Lampoon before that, it started in 1970 and my impression was that while Mad Magazine was junior high humor, National Lampoon was university humor. Of course the word lampoon had been around for centuries before I noticed it or the magazine adopted the name. The Oxford English Dictionary dates lampoon to 1645 and defines it as “a virulent or scurrilous satire upon an individual.” All etymologies point to French as the source of lampoon but an equivalent word there seems to have blinked out of existence before lexicographers could nail it to the dictionnaire. But most English dictionaries have a theory about that French word. They say lampoon could possibly have been from a French word meaning “let us drink” which seems to have evolved from the same source as our word lap as a cat does when lapping up a saucer of milk. So it seems that this word lampoon had evolved into some kind of a tavern cry which found its way into various drinking songs. In turn the drinking songs sometimes made fun of the politicians of the day and so the word lampoon moved from meaning “let us drink” to referring to the cutting humor of the drinking songs. Perhaps it’s etymologically appropriate that one of the first movies produced by National Lampoon, Animal House involved a lot of drinking. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. I can’t be completely sure but it may have been about the time of that movie Animal House in 1978 that I first became aware of the word lampoon. Perhaps I’d heard of the magazine National Lampoon before that, it started in 1970 and my impression was that while Mad Magazine was junior high humor, National Lampoon was university humor. Of course the word lampoon had been around for centuries before I noticed it or the magazine adopted the name. The Oxford English Dictionary dates lampoon to 1645 and defines it as “a virulent or scurrilous satire upon an individual.” All etymologies point to French as the source of lampoon but an equivalent word there seems to have blinked out of existence before lexicographers could nail it to the dictionnaire. But most English dictionaries have a theory about that French word. They say lampoon could possibly have been from a French word meaning “let us drink” which seems to have evolved from the same source as our word lap as a cat does when lapping up a saucer of milk. So it seems that this word lampoon had evolved into some kind of a tavern cry which found its way into various drinking songs. In turn the drinking songs sometimes made fun of the politicians of the day and so the word lampoon moved from meaning “let us drink” to referring to the cutting humor of the drinking songs. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-29,25388695 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:01:26 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25388696-bargain-%E2%80%93-podictionary-105 Bargain is  a word that demonstrates how etymologies can get lost in the fog of history; and how I can happily bumble around in the same fog and find some fun things. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that ever since it appeared in English in 1330 bargain has meant just about what it means now, “discussion,” “agreement,” “negotiation.” The OED has as its etymology for bargain that English got it from Old French and ultimately Latin. But now comes the foggy part. The OED etymology calls up the opinions of  the German philologist Friedrich Diez who died in 1876. Diez seemed to feel that something called Capit. Charles the Bald implied that the Latin root of bargain is related to barca which meant “a small boat.” From this he thinks that the back and forth nature of bargaining is related to the fact that a boat carries goods to and fro. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t leave one ... Bargain is  a word that demonstrates how etymologies can get lost in the fog of history; and how I can happily bumble around in the same fog and find some fun things. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that ever since it appeared in English in 1330 bargain has meant just about what it means now, “discussion,” “agreement,” “negotiation.” The OED has as its etymology for bargain that English got it from Old French and ultimately Latin. But now comes the foggy part. The OED etymology calls up the opinions of  the German philologist Friedrich Diez who died in 1876. Diez seemed to feel that something called Capit. Charles the Bald implied that the Latin root of bargain is related to barca which meant “a small boat.” From this he thinks that the back and forth nature of bargaining is related to the fact that a boat carries goods to and fro. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t leave one with the impression that they are too convinced of this etymology and it seems that none of the more recently updated dictionaries are convinced either. The American Heritage Dictionary suggests an Indo-European via Germanic route for the development of bargain.  This would connect the word with roots with meanings of “hiding” and “protecting things.” This ties the word remotely to the word borrowing as well as berg which shows up in so many city names based on their histories as fortresses. The meaning development is hypothesized by John Ayto as moving from “keep” and “protect” to “take on loan” or “borrow” then becoming “give” or “take” and finally “trade” or “haggle.” Jumping back to the Diez theory concerning Charles the Bald.  It turns out that what was being referred to there were the Capitula of Charles the Bald. Charles the Bald was king of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor back just before Alfred the Great arose as King of Wessex. The Capitula of Charles the Bald were his laws. One of the things I found in the fog was that this is where we get our word chapter. The Latin capitula means “small head.” The title of the book would be its “big heading” but the title of each chapter would each be a “small heading.” For Charles the Bald this was a set of headings on a legal document and similarly that is why when someone “capitulates” they are cooperating with a former adversary; they have done so according to a written legal agreement containing a set of headings. Bargain is  a word that demonstrates how etymologies can get lost in the fog of history; and how I can happily bumble around in the same fog and find some fun things. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that ever since it appeared in English in 1330 bargain has meant just about what it means now, “discussion,” “agreement,” “negotiation.” The OED has as its etymology for bargain that English got it from Old French and ultimately Latin. But now comes the foggy part. The OED etymology calls up the opinions of  the German philologist Friedrich Diez who died in 1876. Diez seemed to feel that something called Capit. Charles the Bald implied that the Latin root of bargain is related to barca which meant “a small boat.” From this he thinks that the back and forth nature of bargaining is related to the fact that a boat carries goods to and fro. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t leave one with the impression that they are too convinced of this etymology and it seems that none of the more recently updated dictionaries are convinced either. The American Heritage Dictionary suggests an Indo-European via Germanic route for the development of bargain.  This would connect the word with roots with meanings of “hiding” and “protecting things.” This ties the word remotely to the word borrowing as well as berg which shows up in so many city names based on their histories as fortresses. The meaning development is hypothesized by John Ayto as moving from “keep” and “protect” to “take on loan” or “borrow” then becoming “give” or “take” and finally “trade” or “haggle.” Jumping back to the Diez theory concerning Charles the Bald.  It turns out that what was being referred to there were the Capitula of Charles the Bald. Charles the Bald was king of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor back just before Alfred the Great arose as King of Wessex. The Capitula of Charles the Bald were his laws. One of the things I found in the fog was that this is where we get our word chapter. The Latin capitula means “small head.” The title of the book would be its “big heading” but the title of each chapter would each be a “small heading.” For Charles the Bald this was a set of headings on a legal document and similarly that is why when someone “capitulates” they are cooperating with a former adversary; they have done so according to a written legal agreement containing a set of headings. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-28,25388696 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25388698-placenta-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1050 Why would people use a word meaning “cake” for this bloody thing? SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Every one of us has had a very intimate connection with a placenta at one point in our lives and yet, unless you work in a delivery room at a hospital, most of us would be hard pressed to identify a placenta if we saw one. I think most of the reason for this is that our closest association with a placenta happens when we are still inside our mother; a time that few of us can remember much about. Of course the placenta is also known as the afterbirth and is the thing that connects mothers’ and babies’ circulatory systems during that time when a baby can’t eat or breathe on account of the fact that they are trapped in a bag of fluid. Then later, as adults, the only time we might see a placenta is shortly after the birth of a child. For some reason during these times the child provides a significant distraction for both moth... Why would people use a word meaning “cake” for this bloody thing? SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Every one of us has had a very intimate connection with a placenta at one point in our lives and yet, unless you work in a delivery room at a hospital, most of us would be hard pressed to identify a placenta if we saw one. I think most of the reason for this is that our closest association with a placenta happens when we are still inside our mother; a time that few of us can remember much about. Of course the placenta is also known as the afterbirth and is the thing that connects mothers’ and babies’ circulatory systems during that time when a baby can’t eat or breathe on account of the fact that they are trapped in a bag of fluid. Then later, as adults, the only time we might see a placenta is shortly after the birth of a child. For some reason during these times the child provides a significant distraction for both mother and father and so memory of what a placenta looks like just doesn’t stick with us. Babies get their food and oxygen through their belly buttons to which is attached their umbilical chord. The other end of this trio of tubes connects to the placenta whose job it is to gently gently snuggle up against mom’s circulatory system and pass that food, oxygen and resulting waste products back and forth between the two. Just as the inside of our lungs requires a considerable surface area to facilitate gas exchange—the usual analogy is that if you flattened out your lungs they’d add up to about one side of a tennis court—in a similar way the mom/baby exchange needs an expanded area to do its job. We’re not talking sports venues this time but the placenta does spread out across the wall of the mother’s uterus and because of this has an appearance that is flat and round. So back in the 16th century when physicians chatted among themselves in classical languages they pulled out an Ancient Greek word for a flat, round cake, Latinized it and called the afterbirth placenta uterina meaning “uterine cake.” It’s the flatness of the thing that gives it the name and some etymologists think that there is a link between the flatness represented in the word plank and the flatness of placenta. Why would people use a word meaning “cake” for this bloody thing? SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Every one of us has had a very intimate connection with a placenta at one point in our lives and yet, unless you work in a delivery room at a hospital, most of us would be hard pressed to identify a placenta if we saw one. I think most of the reason for this is that our closest association with a placenta happens when we are still inside our mother; a time that few of us can remember much about. Of course the placenta is also known as the afterbirth and is the thing that connects mothers’ and babies’ circulatory systems during that time when a baby can’t eat or breathe on account of the fact that they are trapped in a bag of fluid. Then later, as adults, the only time we might see a placenta is shortly after the birth of a child. For some reason during these times the child provides a significant distraction for both mother and father and so memory of what a placenta looks like just doesn’t stick with us. Babies get their food and oxygen through their belly buttons to which is attached their umbilical chord. The other end of this trio of tubes connects to the placenta whose job it is to gently gently snuggle up against mom’s circulatory system and pass that food, oxygen and resulting waste products back and forth between the two. Just as the inside of our lungs requires a considerable surface area to facilitate gas exchange—the usual analogy is that if you flattened out your lungs they’d add up to about one side of a tennis court—in a similar way the mom/baby exchange needs an expanded area to do its job. We’re not talking sports venues this time but the placenta does spread out across the wall of the mother’s uterus and because of this has an appearance that is flat and round. So back in the 16th century when physicians chatted among themselves in classical languages they pulled out an Ancient Greek word for a flat, round cake, Latinized it and called the afterbirth placenta uterina meaning “uterine cake.” It’s the flatness of the thing that gives it the name and some etymologists think that there is a link between the flatness represented in the word plank and the flatness of placenta. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-27,25388698 Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:01:16 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25321512-aluminum-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1045 If you are American you’ll say aluminum. If you’re British you’ll say aluminium. But the guy who came up with the stuff called it alumium at first. That guy was Sir Humphrey Davy back in 1808. People had been using alum for thousands of years, especially to fix dye. It was economically important in England first to increase the value of wool being exported and later to increase the value of woven cloth by dying it. Sir Humphrey changed his mind though, after he first called his discovery alumium he revised the name to aluminum. Others thought this wonderful new stuff should have a more classical name and so suggested aluminium because they thought it went better with the names of other chemicals. Again, it’s all about style. I have a few problems with the OED definition of aluminium which hasn’t yet undergone the third edition revisions. It says “a metal, white, sonorous, ductile, and malleable, very light, not oxidized in the air…” Sonorous? When I look up sonorous it says “capable... If you are American you’ll say aluminum. If you’re British you’ll say aluminium. But the guy who came up with the stuff called it alumium at first. That guy was Sir Humphrey Davy back in 1808. People had been using alum for thousands of years, especially to fix dye. It was economically important in England first to increase the value of wool being exported and later to increase the value of woven cloth by dying it. Sir Humphrey changed his mind though, after he first called his discovery alumium he revised the name to aluminum. Others thought this wonderful new stuff should have a more classical name and so suggested aluminium because they thought it went better with the names of other chemicals. Again, it’s all about style. I have a few problems with the OED definition of aluminium which hasn’t yet undergone the third edition revisions. It says “a metal, white, sonorous, ductile, and malleable, very light, not oxidized in the air…” Sonorous? When I look up sonorous it says “capable of giving out a sound, especially of a deep or ringing character.” I do see one of their citations says that a bell was made of aluminum but this is not the usual choice for sonorous things because as a metal aluminum is pretty good at damping vibration. That’s why in the kitchen aluminum pots have a more thumpy sound than stainless steel pots. Also, what’s this about “not oxidized in air?” True, aluminum doesn’t raise blisters of rust the way iron and steel do, but the reason is that aluminum very quickly skins-over with a thin layer of oxide that blocks deeper oxidization. But Humphrey Davy was an interesting character. By sheer strength of inquisitiveness he rose up the scientific ladder to be President of the Royal Society. He also discovered laughing gas and did so because someone else theorized that it should be poison. To find out what the qualities of nitrous oxide might be Humphrey Davy applied his inquisitive nature and started breathing the stuff himself. Instead of dying of a poison gas he found the stuff made him delirious. He thought it might be good stuff to use as an anesthetic and so it is these days in dentist’s offices. But he didn’t stop there. Along with his many other scientific inquiries he tried gulping back a lungful of carbon monoxide; that one almost killed him. It didn’t though. Later after a stroke, he died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 50 in 1829. If you are American you’ll say aluminum. If you’re British you’ll say aluminium. But the guy who came up with the stuff called it alumium at first. That guy was Sir Humphrey Davy back in 1808. People had been using alum for thousands of years, especially to fix dye. It was economically important in England first to increase the value of wool being exported and later to increase the value of woven cloth by dying it. Sir Humphrey changed his mind though, after he first called his discovery alumium he revised the name to aluminum. Others thought this wonderful new stuff should have a more classical name and so suggested aluminium because they thought it went better with the names of other chemicals. Again, it’s all about style. I have a few problems with the OED definition of aluminium which hasn’t yet undergone the third edition revisions. It says “a metal, white, sonorous, ductile, and malleable, very light, not oxidized in the air…” Sonorous? When I look up sonorous it says “capable of giving out a sound, especially of a deep or ringing character.” I do see one of their citations says that a bell was made of aluminum but this is not the usual choice for sonorous things because as a metal aluminum is pretty good at damping vibration. That’s why in the kitchen aluminum pots have a more thumpy sound than stainless steel pots. Also, what’s this about “not oxidized in air?” True, aluminum doesn’t raise blisters of rust the way iron and steel do, but the reason is that aluminum very quickly skins-over with a thin layer of oxide that blocks deeper oxidization. But Humphrey Davy was an interesting character. By sheer strength of inquisitiveness he rose up the scientific ladder to be President of the Royal Society. He also discovered laughing gas and did so because someone else theorized that it should be poison. To find out what the qualities of nitrous oxide might be Humphrey Davy applied his inquisitive nature and started breathing the stuff himself. Instead of dying of a poison gas he found the stuff made him delirious. He thought it might be good stuff to use as an anesthetic and so it is these days in dentist’s offices. But he didn’t stop there. Along with his many other scientific inquiries he tried gulping back a lungful of carbon monoxide; that one almost killed him. It didn’t though. Later after a stroke, he died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 50 in 1829. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-20,25321512 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:01:24 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25315681-tragus-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1044 Perhaps it is the rise in the popularity of body piercing that has made the word tragus a more recognizable word. When I first came across the word I was surprised that this particular body part even had a name. I suppose that in specialist circles every part of the body has a name. Physicians concerned with the square inch of our physique in which they specialize have to build up a vocabulary to describe its every nuance. Body piercing is old hat when it comes to ears but traditionally ear rings are poked through the ear lobe. Perhaps poking a hole through the tragus was the next logical step because the tragus is the little bump that partially covers the ear hole through which sound enters your head on its way to the ear drum. Every little bump and notch in the human ear has a name but I have to say that tragus is the funniest. The word appeared in English in a medical dictionary in 1693. Then as now medical words often had Latin roots but in this case the Latin root reaches furth... Perhaps it is the rise in the popularity of body piercing that has made the word tragus a more recognizable word. When I first came across the word I was surprised that this particular body part even had a name. I suppose that in specialist circles every part of the body has a name. Physicians concerned with the square inch of our physique in which they specialize have to build up a vocabulary to describe its every nuance. Body piercing is old hat when it comes to ears but traditionally ear rings are poked through the ear lobe. Perhaps poking a hole through the tragus was the next logical step because the tragus is the little bump that partially covers the ear hole through which sound enters your head on its way to the ear drum. Every little bump and notch in the human ear has a name but I have to say that tragus is the funniest. The word appeared in English in a medical dictionary in 1693. Then as now medical words often had Latin roots but in this case the Latin root reaches further back to Greek. Rufus of Ephesus was a Greek physician of about 2000 years ago and is the first person known to have named this bump on the ear a tragus. I think that the reason it was called a tragus shows a sense of humor in the ancient Greeks. Before the bump on the ear was called a tragus a common domestic animal was known as tragus in Greek. If you know any men with little tufts of hair growing out of their ears you’ll appreciate the connection. Tragus in Greek meant “billy-goat” and the tuft of hair protruding from someone’s ear was being likened to the billy-goat’s beard. Perhaps it is the rise in the popularity of body piercing that has made the word tragus a more recognizable word. When I first came across the word I was surprised that this particular body part even had a name. I suppose that in specialist circles every part of the body has a name. Physicians concerned with the square inch of our physique in which they specialize have to build up a vocabulary to describe its every nuance. Body piercing is old hat when it comes to ears but traditionally ear rings are poked through the ear lobe. Perhaps poking a hole through the tragus was the next logical step because the tragus is the little bump that partially covers the ear hole through which sound enters your head on its way to the ear drum. Every little bump and notch in the human ear has a name but I have to say that tragus is the funniest. The word appeared in English in a medical dictionary in 1693. Then as now medical words often had Latin roots but in this case the Latin root reaches further back to Greek. Rufus of Ephesus was a Greek physician of about 2000 years ago and is the first person known to have named this bump on the ear a tragus. I think that the reason it was called a tragus shows a sense of humor in the ancient Greeks. Before the bump on the ear was called a tragus a common domestic animal was known as tragus in Greek. If you know any men with little tufts of hair growing out of their ears you’ll appreciate the connection. Tragus in Greek meant “billy-goat” and the tuft of hair protruding from someone’s ear was being likened to the billy-goat’s beard. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-19,25315681 Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25310118-carpenter-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1043 Here’s a message from a subscriber named Pierce. He asks “is it true that carpenter is the only common English word from a Celtic root?” I peeked into my Oxford English Dictionary and shot back that carpenter is from Latin via French but that lots of words rubbed off from Germanic or Gaulish roots as the Romans were doing business with European peoples who spoke dialects of these languages. Celtic and Gaulish are related. I hadn’t heard the last of Pierce though and he replied saying that his dictionary said that Latin may have gotten carpenter from the Gauls. Sure enough, when I actually took the time to read what the OED said it proved Pierce right “Latin carpentum was apparently after Old Celtic carpentom.” The other parts of Pierce’s question were whether carpenter is the only common English word from a Celtic root, and from there, how come if Celtic languages were all over the British Isles they don’t leave many traces in English. I guess that the OED information shows that Cel... Here’s a message from a subscriber named Pierce. He asks “is it true that carpenter is the only common English word from a Celtic root?” I peeked into my Oxford English Dictionary and shot back that carpenter is from Latin via French but that lots of words rubbed off from Germanic or Gaulish roots as the Romans were doing business with European peoples who spoke dialects of these languages. Celtic and Gaulish are related. I hadn’t heard the last of Pierce though and he replied saying that his dictionary said that Latin may have gotten carpenter from the Gauls. Sure enough, when I actually took the time to read what the OED said it proved Pierce right “Latin carpentum was apparently after Old Celtic carpentom.” The other parts of Pierce’s question were whether carpenter is the only common English word from a Celtic root, and from there, how come if Celtic languages were all over the British Isles they don’t leave many traces in English. I guess that the OED information shows that Celtic is in the mix for carpenter but it isn’t the only element. I see from The American Heritage Dictionary that the root can be traced further back into Indo-European. So does that make this a word with a Celtic root specifically? It’s true that Celtic hasn’t made much impact on English but I see that the word mine—as in: a hole in the ground from which one extracts minerals—is also felt to have Celtic traces to its etymology. Perhaps less common is another example, the word for the sediment left over after fermentation, the lees. So carpenter certainly isn’t the only example. As to why Celtic is so thin on the ground in English, I think it has to do with being conquered a few times over. About 2000 years ago the Romans marched into Britain and took over. They liked speaking Latin and so the various versions of tribal Celtic languages that were being spoken before their arrival suddenly became second class. The Romans then shipped out a few hundred years before the Anglo-Saxons shipped in 1500 years ago.  At that point Latin ceased to be an important language in Britain and the Germanic roots set in. Again the Anglo-Saxon culture made the indigenous culture take a back seat. That’s what Welsh evolved from. Maybe the earlier Roman domination had something to do with making this possible, maybe not. So by the time of William the Conqueror 1000 years ago Celtic roots already made up a diminishing fraction of the language stock. The Norman imposition of French watered that minimal influence down even more. But there are a few interesting points to bring out about the word carpenter. The OED defines a carpenter as one who does the heavier and stronger work in wood such as the framework of houses or ships and as distinct from a cabinet-maker. The Latin root of carpenter points to craftsmen who made wagons and chariots since that’s what a carpentum was, a two wheeled vehicle. You’d like your chariot to be strong and hold together as it bounced over those cobbled Roman roads. The Indo-European root I mentioned is thought to have been kers meaning “to run” and so fitting into “moving” meaning of chariot. Here’s a message from a subscriber named Pierce. He asks “is it true that carpenter is the only common English word from a Celtic root?” I peeked into my Oxford English Dictionary and shot back that carpenter is from Latin via French but that lots of words rubbed off from Germanic or Gaulish roots as the Romans were doing business with European peoples who spoke dialects of these languages. Celtic and Gaulish are related. I hadn’t heard the last of Pierce though and he replied saying that his dictionary said that Latin may have gotten carpenter from the Gauls. Sure enough, when I actually took the time to read what the OED said it proved Pierce right “Latin carpentum was apparently after Old Celtic carpentom.” The other parts of Pierce’s question were whether carpenter is the only common English word from a Celtic root, and from there, how come if Celtic languages were all over the British Isles they don’t leave many traces in English. I guess that the OED information shows that Celtic is in the mix for carpenter but it isn’t the only element. I see from The American Heritage Dictionary that the root can be traced further back into Indo-European. So does that make this a word with a Celtic root specifically? It’s true that Celtic hasn’t made much impact on English but I see that the word mine—as in: a hole in the ground from which one extracts minerals—is also felt to have Celtic traces to its etymology. Perhaps less common is another example, the word for the sediment left over after fermentation, the lees. So carpenter certainly isn’t the only example. As to why Celtic is so thin on the ground in English, I think it has to do with being conquered a few times over. About 2000 years ago the Romans marched into Britain and took over. They liked speaking Latin and so the various versions of tribal Celtic languages that were being spoken before their arrival suddenly became second class. The Romans then shipped out a few hundred years before the Anglo-Saxons shipped in 1500 years ago.  At that point Latin ceased to be an important language in Britain and the Germanic roots set in. Again the Anglo-Saxon culture made the indigenous culture take a back seat. That’s what Welsh evolved from. Maybe the earlier Roman domination had something to do with making this possible, maybe not. So by the time of William the Conqueror 1000 years ago Celtic roots already made up a diminishing fraction of the language stock. The Norman imposition of French watered that minimal influence down even more. But there are a few interesting points to bring out about the word carpenter. The OED defines a carpenter as one who does the heavier and stronger work in wood such as the framework of houses or ships and as distinct from a cabinet-maker. The Latin root of carpenter points to craftsmen who made wagons and chariots since that’s what a carpentum was, a two wheeled vehicle. You’d like your chariot to be strong and hold together as it bounced over those cobbled Roman roads. The Indo-European root I mentioned is thought to have been kers meaning “to run” and so fitting into “moving” meaning of chariot. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-18,25310118 Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:01:42 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25293636-surname-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1042 My parents gave me a first name and a second name and I inherited my surname from my father. My wife was born in a culture that didn’t give middle names and so she only has two names. It’s all about style. It’s the style in western culture to identify ourselves by two names and so you probably know my first name and my last name but not my middle name. In fact sometimes people who identify themselves with more than two names come across as pretentious. That’s part of the style too. The reason a last name is called a surname is because it wasn’t always the style to have two names. Surname literally means “on top of name” and figuratively means “another name on top of the one you already have.” This meaning makes sense when you understand why people began to think that having two names was more stylish—and practical. When the Normans invaded in 1066 almost no one in England went by more than one name. There were a large variety of names and people hung out in smaller groups in towns a... My parents gave me a first name and a second name and I inherited my surname from my father. My wife was born in a culture that didn’t give middle names and so she only has two names. It’s all about style. It’s the style in western culture to identify ourselves by two names and so you probably know my first name and my last name but not my middle name. In fact sometimes people who identify themselves with more than two names come across as pretentious. That’s part of the style too. The reason a last name is called a surname is because it wasn’t always the style to have two names. Surname literally means “on top of name” and figuratively means “another name on top of the one you already have.” This meaning makes sense when you understand why people began to think that having two names was more stylish—and practical. When the Normans invaded in 1066 almost no one in England went by more than one name. There were a large variety of names and people hung out in smaller groups in towns and villages. As French culture of the Normans influenced people French names began to be more popular, especially those with New Testament origins. In 1379 tax records show that in the town of Sheffield one third of the male taxpayers were named John and another 19 percent were named William. That’s more than half the guys with only two names. At the same time, as cottage industry began to give way to factories populations became more centralized. It’s one thing to keep 5 people named John straight, it’s quite another to keep 50 straight. Clearly another name on top of the name their parents gave them was necessary to tell which was who. What to call them? Margaret Atwood’s ancestors must have lived near the edge of town. Samuel Johnson must have had an ancestor who was the son of one of those Johns. I’ve always known that this happened somewhere back there in history but it’s nice to figure out why and when. In the early 1200s surnames hadn’t caught on widely, by the end of the 1400s almost everybody had ‘em. In case you’re wondering, my middle name is Brodie, from my mother’s maiden name. My parents gave me a first name and a second name and I inherited my surname from my father. My wife was born in a culture that didn’t give middle names and so she only has two names. It’s all about style. It’s the style in western culture to identify ourselves by two names and so you probably know my first name and my last name but not my middle name. In fact sometimes people who identify themselves with more than two names come across as pretentious. That’s part of the style too. The reason a last name is called a surname is because it wasn’t always the style to have two names. Surname literally means “on top of name” and figuratively means “another name on top of the one you already have.” This meaning makes sense when you understand why people began to think that having two names was more stylish—and practical. When the Normans invaded in 1066 almost no one in England went by more than one name. There were a large variety of names and people hung out in smaller groups in towns and villages. As French culture of the Normans influenced people French names began to be more popular, especially those with New Testament origins. In 1379 tax records show that in the town of Sheffield one third of the male taxpayers were named John and another 19 percent were named William. That’s more than half the guys with only two names. At the same time, as cottage industry began to give way to factories populations became more centralized. It’s one thing to keep 5 people named John straight, it’s quite another to keep 50 straight. Clearly another name on top of the name their parents gave them was necessary to tell which was who. What to call them? Margaret Atwood’s ancestors must have lived near the edge of town. Samuel Johnson must have had an ancestor who was the son of one of those Johns. I’ve always known that this happened somewhere back there in history but it’s nice to figure out why and when. In the early 1200s surnames hadn’t caught on widely, by the end of the 1400s almost everybody had ‘em. In case you’re wondering, my middle name is Brodie, from my mother’s maiden name. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-15,25293636 Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:01:55 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25287495-SPECIAL-podictionary-episode-1041-interview-with-Philip-Durkin This is a special podictionary episode in which I interview Philip Durkin, the Principal Etymologist for The Oxford English Dictionary. I contacted Dr. Durkin because his book The Oxford Guide to Etymology was recently released in North America and he was kind enough to spend a comfortable 20 minutes talking with me. Podictionary often concentrates on the changes in meaning that a word goes through over time so when we talked we discussed the other side of etymology—changes in word form. Dr. Durkin explained some of the tools of etymology as well as talked specifically about the etymologies of the words friar and penguin. At the moment there is no transcript available of this interview but I encourage you to listen. To subscribe in iTunes click here. You can also listen either by clicking the “download” link above or via the website audio player. This is a special podictionary episode in which I interview Philip Durkin, the Principal Etymologist for The Oxford English Dictionary. I contacted Dr. Durkin because his book The Oxford Guide to Etymology was recently released in North America and he was kind enough to spend a comfortable 20 minutes talking with me. Podictionary often concentrates on the changes in meaning that a word goes through over time so when we talked we discussed the other side of etymology—changes in word form. Dr. Durkin explained some of the tools of etymology as well as talked specifically about the etymologies of the words friar and penguin. At the moment there is no transcript available of this interview but I encourage you to listen. To subscribe in iTunes click here. You can also listen either by clicking the “download” link above or via the website audio player. This is a special podictionary episode in which I interview Philip Durkin, the Principal Etymologist for The Oxford English Dictionary. I contacted Dr. Durkin because his book The Oxford Guide to Etymology was recently released in North America and he was kind enough to spend a comfortable 20 minutes talking with me. Podictionary often concentrates on the changes in meaning that a word goes through over time so when we talked we discussed the other side of etymology—changes in word form. Dr. Durkin explained some of the tools of etymology as well as talked specifically about the etymologies of the words friar and penguin. At the moment there is no transcript available of this interview but I encourage you to listen. To subscribe in iTunes click here. You can also listen either by clicking the “download” link above or via the website audio player. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-14,25287495 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:01:44 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25281762-blanket-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1040 Slippery things are etymologies. I learned recently that in 1381 in London an unruly crowd cornered a bunch of Flemish people in a church then set up a block outside and proceeded to behead 35 of them one after the other. The reason for the animosity was that native English felt that their livelihoods were under threat from these immigrant workers. The author of the book I got this from said that the reason the Flemish workers were there in the first place was that earlier it had been official government policy to invite these workers because of their skill in textile manufacturing. A prime example was the Flemish factory owner Thomas Blanket who’s name gave us the name of the warm cloth. “Aha,” I thought, “here’s the stuff of a podictionary episode.” But what I found wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I could only find a single authoritative dictionary that mentions Thomas Blanket. That was The Oxford English Dictionary and it referred to poor Thomas with derision. I actually think... Slippery things are etymologies. I learned recently that in 1381 in London an unruly crowd cornered a bunch of Flemish people in a church then set up a block outside and proceeded to behead 35 of them one after the other. The reason for the animosity was that native English felt that their livelihoods were under threat from these immigrant workers. The author of the book I got this from said that the reason the Flemish workers were there in the first place was that earlier it had been official government policy to invite these workers because of their skill in textile manufacturing. A prime example was the Flemish factory owner Thomas Blanket who’s name gave us the name of the warm cloth. “Aha,” I thought, “here’s the stuff of a podictionary episode.” But what I found wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I could only find a single authoritative dictionary that mentions Thomas Blanket. That was The Oxford English Dictionary and it referred to poor Thomas with derision. I actually think that this OED entry is an example of some quaint Victorian wording that likely won’t survive the revisions now taking place for the 3rd edition. What it actually says is “the Thomas Blanket to whom gossip attributes the origin of the name, if he really existed, doubtless took his name from the article.” He certainly seems to have existed. His name survives because he was fined by the City of Bristol and appealed to King Edward III who sided with Thomas. But the OED is right that blankets didn’t get called blankets because Thomas flooded the market with a new kind of beadspread. The first citation in English for the word blanket was more than 30 years before Thomas set up his looms in Bristol and the first meaning the word took reveals its true etymology. Before blanket meant a warm piece of fabric it referred to the undyed woolen fluff that went into making the blanket. Undyed is the operative word here. Most sheep are white—or mostly white—and the French word for “white” is blanc and a blanket is called a blanket because it was made from this white fluff that was also called blanket. Slippery things are etymologies. I learned recently that in 1381 in London an unruly crowd cornered a bunch of Flemish people in a church then set up a block outside and proceeded to behead 35 of them one after the other. The reason for the animosity was that native English felt that their livelihoods were under threat from these immigrant workers. The author of the book I got this from said that the reason the Flemish workers were there in the first place was that earlier it had been official government policy to invite these workers because of their skill in textile manufacturing. A prime example was the Flemish factory owner Thomas Blanket who’s name gave us the name of the warm cloth. “Aha,” I thought, “here’s the stuff of a podictionary episode.” But what I found wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I could only find a single authoritative dictionary that mentions Thomas Blanket. That was The Oxford English Dictionary and it referred to poor Thomas with derision. I actually think that this OED entry is an example of some quaint Victorian wording that likely won’t survive the revisions now taking place for the 3rd edition. What it actually says is “the Thomas Blanket to whom gossip attributes the origin of the name, if he really existed, doubtless took his name from the article.” He certainly seems to have existed. His name survives because he was fined by the City of Bristol and appealed to King Edward III who sided with Thomas. But the OED is right that blankets didn’t get called blankets because Thomas flooded the market with a new kind of beadspread. The first citation in English for the word blanket was more than 30 years before Thomas set up his looms in Bristol and the first meaning the word took reveals its true etymology. Before blanket meant a warm piece of fabric it referred to the undyed woolen fluff that went into making the blanket. Undyed is the operative word here. Most sheep are white—or mostly white—and the French word for “white” is blanc and a blanket is called a blanket because it was made from this white fluff that was also called blanket. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-13,25281762 Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:01:40 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25277601-class-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1039 A month or so ago students were being called back to classes and that’s oh so etymologically appropriate. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. The word class in this sense means “classroom” or “lecture.” The reason I say that it is appropriate students are being called is that the word class has an etymology that appears to lead back to being called. The first time class was applied to the room in which education is delivered was in 1870 but as might be guessed from Greek and Latin being called classical languages the roots of class go quite a bit further back than 1870. Thomas Blount included the word in his 1656 dictionary Glossographia saying both that it was a social division of people and that it referred to the division of students within a school; the latter being the more frequent use according to him. It was the meaning of “social divisions of people into a hierarchy” that the Latin parent word classis referred to... A month or so ago students were being called back to classes and that’s oh so etymologically appropriate. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. The word class in this sense means “classroom” or “lecture.” The reason I say that it is appropriate students are being called is that the word class has an etymology that appears to lead back to being called. The first time class was applied to the room in which education is delivered was in 1870 but as might be guessed from Greek and Latin being called classical languages the roots of class go quite a bit further back than 1870. Thomas Blount included the word in his 1656 dictionary Glossographia saying both that it was a social division of people and that it referred to the division of students within a school; the latter being the more frequent use according to him. It was the meaning of “social divisions of people into a hierarchy” that the Latin parent word classis referred to. This meaning ran back to Servius Tullius who was king of Rome about 2,600 years ago. For tax purposes he divided his society into six groups based on land holdings. Part of what a person owed the state was military service and the word used to describe these six groups evolved out of the same word used to mean a soldier was being “called up.” That’s why students being called back to their classrooms is etymologically appropriate. The reason that ancient Greek and Roman are termed classical is the same reason that a rich or stylish person might be called classy. Although there were six classes in Rome during Tullius’ time, it is the top tier that gets all the attention and so class became associated with being first. When English adopted the word class from French around 400 years ago Greek and Roman were seen as “the original” languages and so were tagged with this “first” meaning. A month or so ago students were being called back to classes and that’s oh so etymologically appropriate. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. The word class in this sense means “classroom” or “lecture.” The reason I say that it is appropriate students are being called is that the word class has an etymology that appears to lead back to being called. The first time class was applied to the room in which education is delivered was in 1870 but as might be guessed from Greek and Latin being called classical languages the roots of class go quite a bit further back than 1870. Thomas Blount included the word in his 1656 dictionary Glossographia saying both that it was a social division of people and that it referred to the division of students within a school; the latter being the more frequent use according to him. It was the meaning of “social divisions of people into a hierarchy” that the Latin parent word classis referred to. This meaning ran back to Servius Tullius who was king of Rome about 2,600 years ago. For tax purposes he divided his society into six groups based on land holdings. Part of what a person owed the state was military service and the word used to describe these six groups evolved out of the same word used to mean a soldier was being “called up.” That’s why students being called back to their classrooms is etymologically appropriate. The reason that ancient Greek and Roman are termed classical is the same reason that a rich or stylish person might be called classy. Although there were six classes in Rome during Tullius’ time, it is the top tier that gets all the attention and so class became associated with being first. When English adopted the word class from French around 400 years ago Greek and Roman were seen as “the original” languages and so were tagged with this “first” meaning. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-12,25277601 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:01:13 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25276361-class-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1017b A month or so ago students were being called back to classes and that’s oh so etymologically appropriate. The word class in this sense means “classroom” or “lecture.” The reason I say that it is appropriate students are being called is that the word class has an etymology that appears to lead back to being called. The first time class was applied to the room in which education is delivered was in 1870 but as might be guessed from Greek and Latin being called classical languages the roots of class go quite a bit further back than 1870. Thomas Blount included the word in his 1656 dictionary Glossographia saying both that it was a social division of people and that it referred to the division of students within a school; the latter being the more frequent use according to him. It was the meaning of “social divisions of people into a hierarchy” that the Latin parent word classis referred to. This meaning ran back to Servius Tullius who was king of Rome about 2,600 years ago. For tax pur... A month or so ago students were being called back to classes and that’s oh so etymologically appropriate. The word class in this sense means “classroom” or “lecture.” The reason I say that it is appropriate students are being called is that the word class has an etymology that appears to lead back to being called. The first time class was applied to the room in which education is delivered was in 1870 but as might be guessed from Greek and Latin being called classical languages the roots of class go quite a bit further back than 1870. Thomas Blount included the word in his 1656 dictionary Glossographia saying both that it was a social division of people and that it referred to the division of students within a school; the latter being the more frequent use according to him. It was the meaning of “social divisions of people into a hierarchy” that the Latin parent word classis referred to. This meaning ran back to Servius Tullius who was king of Rome about 2,600 years ago. For tax purposes he divided his society into six groups based on land holdings. Part of what a person owed the state was military service and the word used to describe these six groups evolved out of the same word used to mean a soldier was being “called up.” That’s why students being called back to their classrooms is etymologically appropriate. The reason that ancient Greek and Roman are termed classical is the same reason that a rich or stylish person might be called classy. Although there were six classes in Rome during Tullius’ time, it is the top tier that gets all the attention and so class became associated with being first. When English adopted the word class from French around 400 years ago Greek and Roman were seen as “the original” languages and so were tagged with this “first” meaning. A month or so ago students were being called back to classes and that’s oh so etymologically appropriate. The word class in this sense means “classroom” or “lecture.” The reason I say that it is appropriate students are being called is that the word class has an etymology that appears to lead back to being called. The first time class was applied to the room in which education is delivered was in 1870 but as might be guessed from Greek and Latin being called classical languages the roots of class go quite a bit further back than 1870. Thomas Blount included the word in his 1656 dictionary Glossographia saying both that it was a social division of people and that it referred to the division of students within a school; the latter being the more frequent use according to him. It was the meaning of “social divisions of people into a hierarchy” that the Latin parent word classis referred to. This meaning ran back to Servius Tullius who was king of Rome about 2,600 years ago. For tax purposes he divided his society into six groups based on land holdings. Part of what a person owed the state was military service and the word used to describe these six groups evolved out of the same word used to mean a soldier was being “called up.” That’s why students being called back to their classrooms is etymologically appropriate. The reason that ancient Greek and Roman are termed classical is the same reason that a rich or stylish person might be called classy. Although there were six classes in Rome during Tullius’ time, it is the top tier that gets all the attention and so class became associated with being first. When English adopted the word class from French around 400 years ago Greek and Roman were seen as “the original” languages and so were tagged with this “first” meaning. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-12,25276361 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:01:13 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25270951-ordeal-%E2%80%93-podictionary-102 The word ordeal was part of Old English as ordal and ordel but according to the OED it disappeared during much of the period of Middle English only to reappear around the time of Shakespeare. To us an ordeal might involve fighting the Christmas shopping crowds, or having our hard disk go up in a puff of smoke. But originally an ordeal was a judgment. The word has relatives in other languages where the meaning also includes “the dealing out of judgment” —as in apportioning blame—and it is thought that this sense of “dealing” influenced the re-adoption of the word as or-deal. In English though, the older meaning was related to a specific kind of justice.  “Trial by ordeal” is mocked in Monty Python, but people who were thought to be witches really were tried by dunking them in water: if you float you’re a witch, if you sink, you’re innocent (the joke is that it’s too late ‘cause you’ve drowned). Other gruesome practices included making the accused grab onto a piece of red hot iron, th... The word ordeal was part of Old English as ordal and ordel but according to the OED it disappeared during much of the period of Middle English only to reappear around the time of Shakespeare. To us an ordeal might involve fighting the Christmas shopping crowds, or having our hard disk go up in a puff of smoke. But originally an ordeal was a judgment. The word has relatives in other languages where the meaning also includes “the dealing out of judgment” —as in apportioning blame—and it is thought that this sense of “dealing” influenced the re-adoption of the word as or-deal. In English though, the older meaning was related to a specific kind of justice.  “Trial by ordeal” is mocked in Monty Python, but people who were thought to be witches really were tried by dunking them in water: if you float you’re a witch, if you sink, you’re innocent (the joke is that it’s too late ‘cause you’ve drowned). Other gruesome practices included making the accused grab onto a piece of red hot iron, then binding up the burns and see if after a week or two they were infected or not. The logic behind this form of justice was that if one were guilty God would let you rot; if you were innocent he would perform a miracle and get you off. Around the year 1300 Englishmen figured out that this was a stupid idea, and made it illegal—mostly. They still dunked witches and allowed an accused person prove their innocence by challenging their accuser to a battle since whoever won was obviously telling God’s truth.  So with the ending of most forms of “trial by ordeal” so ended the use of the word—in fact it seems to have died out before that. It wasn’t scientific progress and a desire to reduce unnecessary cruelty that made the English abolish trial by ordeal.  It was theology. Think of God the almighty. Clearly, thought the lawmakers of the day, we puny humans cannot invoke the miracles of God according to our will.  Hence trial by ordeal contradicts the supremacy of God.  We can’t have that now can we.  T hus endeth the grabbing of red hot iron bars. Yet somehow witch dunking got around this clause in the law, as did what was called “wager by battle” which lasted until 1818. That was the year when a guy who had been accused of murder defended himself by calling for this “wager by battle.” The judge figured out that maybe it wouldn’t be a fair trial if the guy who was accused of murder got off by doing another murder. Another quirk is that “wager by battle” was different than a “duel of honor.”  Duels continued to be legal since they were not over criminal accusations, only over social faux pas—it was okay to kill or maim someone over that.  By 1900 dueling itself was a social faux pas. The word ordeal was part of Old English as ordal and ordel but according to the OED it disappeared during much of the period of Middle English only to reappear around the time of Shakespeare. To us an ordeal might involve fighting the Christmas shopping crowds, or having our hard disk go up in a puff of smoke. But originally an ordeal was a judgment. The word has relatives in other languages where the meaning also includes “the dealing out of judgment” —as in apportioning blame—and it is thought that this sense of “dealing” influenced the re-adoption of the word as or-deal. In English though, the older meaning was related to a specific kind of justice.  “Trial by ordeal” is mocked in Monty Python, but people who were thought to be witches really were tried by dunking them in water: if you float you’re a witch, if you sink, you’re innocent (the joke is that it’s too late ‘cause you’ve drowned). Other gruesome practices included making the accused grab onto a piece of red hot iron, then binding up the burns and see if after a week or two they were infected or not. The logic behind this form of justice was that if one were guilty God would let you rot; if you were innocent he would perform a miracle and get you off. Around the year 1300 Englishmen figured out that this was a stupid idea, and made it illegal—mostly. They still dunked witches and allowed an accused person prove their innocence by challenging their accuser to a battle since whoever won was obviously telling God’s truth.  So with the ending of most forms of “trial by ordeal” so ended the use of the word—in fact it seems to have died out before that. It wasn’t scientific progress and a desire to reduce unnecessary cruelty that made the English abolish trial by ordeal.  It was theology. Think of God the almighty. Clearly, thought the lawmakers of the day, we puny humans cannot invoke the miracles of God according to our will.  Hence trial by ordeal contradicts the supremacy of God.  We can’t have that now can we.  T hus endeth the grabbing of red hot iron bars. Yet somehow witch dunking got around this clause in the law, as did what was called “wager by battle” which lasted until 1818. That was the year when a guy who had been accused of murder defended himself by calling for this “wager by battle.” The judge figured out that maybe it wouldn’t be a fair trial if the guy who was accused of murder got off by doing another murder. Another quirk is that “wager by battle” was different than a “duel of honor.”  Duels continued to be legal since they were not over criminal accusations, only over social faux pas—it was okay to kill or maim someone over that.  By 1900 dueling itself was a social faux pas. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-11,25270951 Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25257108-neck-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1038 Here’s a test. Touch your own neck. Did you touch the front, the side or the back? I’ll lay odds that most people touched the side of their neck and almost no one touched the front. They’d have touched the front if I’d said “throat.” When the word neck first appeared in English it referred specifically to the back of the neck and wasn’t the usual word that people used when referring to that part of our bodies that keeps our heads from falling off. The usual words were halse and swire. Etymologists don’t really know where this word neck came from but some speculate that it may be related to and Indo-European root knok meaning “a rise” or “high point.” The real reason I chose the word neck today though was as an excuse to tell you about something once called the neck verse. Centuries ago as the legal system was working itself out in medieval England there were two parallel court systems. One was administered by the king’s officials and the other was administered by the church. The kin... Here’s a test. Touch your own neck. Did you touch the front, the side or the back? I’ll lay odds that most people touched the side of their neck and almost no one touched the front. They’d have touched the front if I’d said “throat.” When the word neck first appeared in English it referred specifically to the back of the neck and wasn’t the usual word that people used when referring to that part of our bodies that keeps our heads from falling off. The usual words were halse and swire. Etymologists don’t really know where this word neck came from but some speculate that it may be related to and Indo-European root knok meaning “a rise” or “high point.” The real reason I chose the word neck today though was as an excuse to tell you about something once called the neck verse. Centuries ago as the legal system was working itself out in medieval England there were two parallel court systems. One was administered by the king’s officials and the other was administered by the church. The king’s justice tended to involve more hangings, beheadings and burnings at the stake. Church justice was a little more forgiving. For your average criminal then it was much wiser if you could have your trial in the church court system but to qualify you had to be a member of the clergy. Back then it was a little less clear who was a member of the clergy and who was not. Actually it was a lot less clear. As a boy if you were lucky enough to have been educated and could read this often included the ability to read Latin. Since so much of the Latin reading material was church reading material it was a pretty safe bet that you were pursuing some kind of religious education. So let’s imagine you’ve been caught red handed stealing a silver spoon worth 13 pence. I have no idea what the cost of silver spoons was back then but I do know that any theft over 12 pence called for the death penalty according to the king’s justice. If you were caught with that spoon in your pocket the first thing you’d do was to claim what was called the benefit of clergy which allowed you to be tried by the church instead of the hanging judge. “Prove it” would be the response and the way you’d prove that you really were a member of the clergy just pretending to be a thief was that you’d read a passage of scripture in Latin. Since not all the king’s officials were necessarily all that literate one particular Latin verse emerged as a favorite passage to be read to prove you were a man of God. Problem was that word got around and so people learned to read that particular Latin verse even if they could read no other Latin. There is a fine line between being able to read only one particular verse in Latin and having just memorized one particular verse in Latin so many people who actually couldn’t read a word of anything saved their necks by reciting this verse. And that’s why it became called the neck verse. Here’s a test. Touch your own neck. Did you touch the front, the side or the back? I’ll lay odds that most people touched the side of their neck and almost no one touched the front. They’d have touched the front if I’d said “throat.” When the word neck first appeared in English it referred specifically to the back of the neck and wasn’t the usual word that people used when referring to that part of our bodies that keeps our heads from falling off. The usual words were halse and swire. Etymologists don’t really know where this word neck came from but some speculate that it may be related to and Indo-European root knok meaning “a rise” or “high point.” The real reason I chose the word neck today though was as an excuse to tell you about something once called the neck verse. Centuries ago as the legal system was working itself out in medieval England there were two parallel court systems. One was administered by the king’s officials and the other was administered by the church. The king’s justice tended to involve more hangings, beheadings and burnings at the stake. Church justice was a little more forgiving. For your average criminal then it was much wiser if you could have your trial in the church court system but to qualify you had to be a member of the clergy. Back then it was a little less clear who was a member of the clergy and who was not. Actually it was a lot less clear. As a boy if you were lucky enough to have been educated and could read this often included the ability to read Latin. Since so much of the Latin reading material was church reading material it was a pretty safe bet that you were pursuing some kind of religious education. So let’s imagine you’ve been caught red handed stealing a silver spoon worth 13 pence. I have no idea what the cost of silver spoons was back then but I do know that any theft over 12 pence called for the death penalty according to the king’s justice. If you were caught with that spoon in your pocket the first thing you’d do was to claim what was called the benefit of clergy which allowed you to be tried by the church instead of the hanging judge. “Prove it” would be the response and the way you’d prove that you really were a member of the clergy just pretending to be a thief was that you’d read a passage of scripture in Latin. Since not all the king’s officials were necessarily all that literate one particular Latin verse emerged as a favorite passage to be read to prove you were a man of God. Problem was that word got around and so people learned to read that particular Latin verse even if they could read no other Latin. There is a fine line between being able to read only one particular verse in Latin and having just memorized one particular verse in Latin so many people who actually couldn’t read a word of anything saved their necks by reciting this verse. And that’s why it became called the neck verse. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-08,25257108 Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:01:04 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25251264-lesbian-%E2%80%93-podictionary-101 Around 2600 years ago there lived a poet by the name of Sappho. This was a period when Greece was at its classical peak after a dark age and although her life can only be speculated at based on the fragments of news that come down to us through the ages, Sappho appears to have been a rock star of the age. When she rolled into town the city of Syracuse built her a statue. During the time when she wasn’t out on the road touring she seems to have been a school teacher or a headmistress at a girls’ school. Her poetry is highly praised by the classicists who swoon over its lyrical beauty. Of course her work is in ancient Greek but there have been English translations and one thing that’s for sure is that you can get some pretty different wording of the same little poem depending on who did the translation. In some of her poetry she sweetly goes on about the charms of girls and people in the centuries following have practically gotten into fistfights over whether she was simply a honey of... Around 2600 years ago there lived a poet by the name of Sappho. This was a period when Greece was at its classical peak after a dark age and although her life can only be speculated at based on the fragments of news that come down to us through the ages, Sappho appears to have been a rock star of the age. When she rolled into town the city of Syracuse built her a statue. During the time when she wasn’t out on the road touring she seems to have been a school teacher or a headmistress at a girls’ school. Her poetry is highly praised by the classicists who swoon over its lyrical beauty. Of course her work is in ancient Greek but there have been English translations and one thing that’s for sure is that you can get some pretty different wording of the same little poem depending on who did the translation. In some of her poetry she sweetly goes on about the charms of girls and people in the centuries following have practically gotten into fistfights over whether she was simply a honey of a schoolmarm with a talent for the written word who was singing the praises of her students; or rather, the type of gal who just liked gals. In the end it doesn’t really matter.  The fact is that her reputation as a gal who liked gals spawned a word for this female homosexual—and that word is… sapphian. No, really, it’s true, look it up. She also happened to have been from a certain island in Greece called Lesbos and that prompted a more popular word for this same love that dared not speak its name—and that’s today’s podictionary word lesbian, from the island of Lesbos. For about two and a half millennia this love certainly didn’t speak these names in English since sapphism first appears in 1890 and lesbian in 1870. Around 2600 years ago there lived a poet by the name of Sappho. This was a period when Greece was at its classical peak after a dark age and although her life can only be speculated at based on the fragments of news that come down to us through the ages, Sappho appears to have been a rock star of the age. When she rolled into town the city of Syracuse built her a statue. During the time when she wasn’t out on the road touring she seems to have been a school teacher or a headmistress at a girls’ school. Her poetry is highly praised by the classicists who swoon over its lyrical beauty. Of course her work is in ancient Greek but there have been English translations and one thing that’s for sure is that you can get some pretty different wording of the same little poem depending on who did the translation. In some of her poetry she sweetly goes on about the charms of girls and people in the centuries following have practically gotten into fistfights over whether she was simply a honey of a schoolmarm with a talent for the written word who was singing the praises of her students; or rather, the type of gal who just liked gals. In the end it doesn’t really matter.  The fact is that her reputation as a gal who liked gals spawned a word for this female homosexual—and that word is… sapphian. No, really, it’s true, look it up. She also happened to have been from a certain island in Greece called Lesbos and that prompted a more popular word for this same love that dared not speak its name—and that’s today’s podictionary word lesbian, from the island of Lesbos. For about two and a half millennia this love certainly didn’t speak these names in English since sapphism first appears in 1890 and lesbian in 1870. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-07,25251264 Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25245623-annihilate-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1036 I was lucky enough to catch Cory Doctorow at a book reading recently. In addition to being a science fiction author whose excuse for being there was his book Little Brother (an excellent and even important book by the way) Cory Doctorow is the co-editor of boingboing.net. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is involved in a stack of boards and describes himself as an activist. In my view he’s an activist for good. When I asked him to give me a word that I could make an episode out of he said “I like the word annihilate, it has nihilism in there.” Activist for good? That didn’t sound so good. Let’s first see what nihilism is all about. The Oxford English Dictionary says “Total rejection of prevailing religious beliefs, moral principles, laws, etc., often from a sense of despair and the belief that life is devoid of meaning.” The OED goes on to say this was later extended to apply to destructive attitudes and behavior generally, based on a group o... I was lucky enough to catch Cory Doctorow at a book reading recently. In addition to being a science fiction author whose excuse for being there was his book Little Brother (an excellent and even important book by the way) Cory Doctorow is the co-editor of boingboing.net. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is involved in a stack of boards and describes himself as an activist. In my view he’s an activist for good. When I asked him to give me a word that I could make an episode out of he said “I like the word annihilate, it has nihilism in there.” Activist for good? That didn’t sound so good. Let’s first see what nihilism is all about. The Oxford English Dictionary says “Total rejection of prevailing religious beliefs, moral principles, laws, etc., often from a sense of despair and the belief that life is devoid of meaning.” The OED goes on to say this was later extended to apply to destructive attitudes and behavior generally, based on a group of Russian revolutionaries who called themselves Nihilists starting about 140 years ago. The word annihilate seems to me to hold a destructive sense to it too so I was beginning to think that Cory had given me a word that I didn’t like very much. So I turned to the etymology of annihilate to see if there were any interesting twists and turns in meaning over the years. Annihilate was pulled from Latin more than 600 years ago, probably with some French influence since it was followed 100 years later by a French word annihil. This French word couldn’t have been of much use to English speakers since they quickly stopped using it (assigning it’s meaning to annihilate which had previously simply been the past tense of annihil). The word annihil wouldn’t be of much use to us either except that it leads me to some interesting facts. First I need to walk you back through history a little more. The word annihil had earlier in Latin been ad nihil meaning “to nothing” from which we can see why annihiliate means “bring something to nothing.” Also from this we can see that nihil meant “nothing” in Latin. When we contract nihil we get nil, which was actually what the Romans did too. But nihil didn’t come from nothing. Back in Indo-European ne meant “not” and before nihil meant “nothing” in Latin it was built on ne hilum where hilum was a word that meant “a minimal quantity” according to the OED. Thus our word nil literally means “not even a wee little bit.” Evidently hilum itself has a history. It was said to have meant “that which adheres to a bean.” Sure enough I see in several of the fatter dictionaries that hilum has a meaning in Modern English too: the scar on a seed or bean showing how it was connected to the mother plant; sort of like a bellybutton. I guess this shows that the destructive tone of Cory Doctorow’s word choice doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Finally, the person who tells us this bean-related history of hilum is new to me and also of interest. Sextus Pompeius Festus lived about 1800 years ago. His name sounds pretty Roman but he lived in what is now the south of France. Old Festus was an early lexicographer who produced something called de verborum significatu which might translate as “the meaning of words.” He didn’t write it all himself but collected it from centuries of earlier work and so compiled a rich source of information about what early Roman life was like. As with many very old books this one was nearly annihilated over the centuries. But half of one copy did survive, containing entries starting from the letter M. Scholars at University College London and at Duke University are working to put this wonderful humpty-dumpty back together again from the sole surviving manuscript plus numerous other references to the work sprinkled throughout history. I was lucky enough to catch Cory Doctorow at a book reading recently. In addition to being a science fiction author whose excuse for being there was his book Little Brother (an excellent and even important book by the way) Cory Doctorow is the co-editor of boingboing.net. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is involved in a stack of boards and describes himself as an activist. In my view he’s an activist for good. When I asked him to give me a word that I could make an episode out of he said “I like the word annihilate, it has nihilism in there.” Activist for good? That didn’t sound so good. Let’s first see what nihilism is all about. The Oxford English Dictionary says “Total rejection of prevailing religious beliefs, moral principles, laws, etc., often from a sense of despair and the belief that life is devoid of meaning.” The OED goes on to say this was later extended to apply to destructive attitudes and behavior generally, based on a group of Russian revolutionaries who called themselves Nihilists starting about 140 years ago. The word annihilate seems to me to hold a destructive sense to it too so I was beginning to think that Cory had given me a word that I didn’t like very much. So I turned to the etymology of annihilate to see if there were any interesting twists and turns in meaning over the years. Annihilate was pulled from Latin more than 600 years ago, probably with some French influence since it was followed 100 years later by a French word annihil. This French word couldn’t have been of much use to English speakers since they quickly stopped using it (assigning it’s meaning to annihilate which had previously simply been the past tense of annihil). The word annihil wouldn’t be of much use to us either except that it leads me to some interesting facts. First I need to walk you back through history a little more. The word annihil had earlier in Latin been ad nihil meaning “to nothing” from which we can see why annihiliate means “bring something to nothing.” Also from this we can see that nihil meant “nothing” in Latin. When we contract nihil we get nil, which was actually what the Romans did too. But nihil didn’t come from nothing. Back in Indo-European ne meant “not” and before nihil meant “nothing” in Latin it was built on ne hilum where hilum was a word that meant “a minimal quantity” according to the OED. Thus our word nil literally means “not even a wee little bit.” Evidently hilum itself has a history. It was said to have meant “that which adheres to a bean.” Sure enough I see in several of the fatter dictionaries that hilum has a meaning in Modern English too: the scar on a seed or bean showing how it was connected to the mother plant; sort of like a bellybutton. I guess this shows that the destructive tone of Cory Doctorow’s word choice doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Finally, the person who tells us this bean-related history of hilum is new to me and also of interest. Sextus Pompeius Festus lived about 1800 years ago. His name sounds pretty Roman but he lived in what is now the south of France. Old Festus was an early lexicographer who produced something called de verborum significatu which might translate as “the meaning of words.” He didn’t write it all himself but collected it from centuries of earlier work and so compiled a rich source of information about what early Roman life was like. As with many very old books this one was nearly annihilated over the centuries. But half of one copy did survive, containing entries starting from the letter M. Scholars at University College London and at Duke University are working to put this wonderful humpty-dumpty back together again from the sole surviving manuscript plus numerous other references to the work sprinkled throughout history. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-06,25245623 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:01:47 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25239407-frolic-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1035 The word frolic seems to me forever associated with Newfoundland. Long before my brother-in-law (a Newfie) even met my sister I heard a comedy skit where Newfoundlanders were rendered as loving to sing and frolic, moving to Ontario and turning into alcoholics. This depiction was based on the economics of the time when the cod fishery was collapsing and Ontario was the economic engine of Canada. Now Ontario is becoming the rusting industrial heartland of Canada while Newfoundland is gaining oil and energy aspirations just like Alberta. Etymologically the word frolic has nothing to do with Newfoundland except perhaps in a sort of metaphorical sense that the economy tends to bounce up and down. For the word frolic is suspected to go back to a root that relates to jumping up. Frolic first appeared in English in the 16th century and came from Germanic roots. The word at first wasn’t a verb but an adjective and meant “joyful.” But it’s suspected that the “joyful” meaning was applied based... The word frolic seems to me forever associated with Newfoundland. Long before my brother-in-law (a Newfie) even met my sister I heard a comedy skit where Newfoundlanders were rendered as loving to sing and frolic, moving to Ontario and turning into alcoholics. This depiction was based on the economics of the time when the cod fishery was collapsing and Ontario was the economic engine of Canada. Now Ontario is becoming the rusting industrial heartland of Canada while Newfoundland is gaining oil and energy aspirations just like Alberta. Etymologically the word frolic has nothing to do with Newfoundland except perhaps in a sort of metaphorical sense that the economy tends to bounce up and down. For the word frolic is suspected to go back to a root that relates to jumping up. Frolic first appeared in English in the 16th century and came from Germanic roots. The word at first wasn’t a verb but an adjective and meant “joyful.” But it’s suspected that the “joyful” meaning was applied based on an even older root that meant “to jump” as you would when you’re feeling particularly joyful. Thus the activity and motion that we might associate with frolicking points right back through the meaning of “high spirits” to a leaping source for the etymology. The word frolic seems to me forever associated with Newfoundland. Long before my brother-in-law (a Newfie) even met my sister I heard a comedy skit where Newfoundlanders were rendered as loving to sing and frolic, moving to Ontario and turning into alcoholics. This depiction was based on the economics of the time when the cod fishery was collapsing and Ontario was the economic engine of Canada. Now Ontario is becoming the rusting industrial heartland of Canada while Newfoundland is gaining oil and energy aspirations just like Alberta. Etymologically the word frolic has nothing to do with Newfoundland except perhaps in a sort of metaphorical sense that the economy tends to bounce up and down. For the word frolic is suspected to go back to a root that relates to jumping up. Frolic first appeared in English in the 16th century and came from Germanic roots. The word at first wasn’t a verb but an adjective and meant “joyful.” But it’s suspected that the “joyful” meaning was applied based on an even older root that meant “to jump” as you would when you’re feeling particularly joyful. Thus the activity and motion that we might associate with frolicking points right back through the meaning of “high spirits” to a leaping source for the etymology. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-05,25239407 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:01:12 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25233341-hue-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1034 There are several words hue but I’m going to pick on two. The most common is when referring to various shades of color when they are referred to as different hues. Almost as long as the word has been considered an English word people would have recognized this meaning, although around Shakespeare’s time it began appearing in dictionaries as a “hard word” so must have been less common then. The word appears in documents as old as 1100 years ago making it Old English but at that point it also had a second meaning that has since fallen out of use. Different forms, shapes, and even species were described as being different hues. As an Old English word hue has Germanic parentage and in Swedish The Oxford English Dictionary says its sister word hy means “skin” and “complexion.” The OED goes on to compare the word to the Indo-European chawi meaning “hide” as well as “skin” and “complexion.” This makes me think that our use of the word hue to discriminate fine differences in color grew out ... There are several words hue but I’m going to pick on two. The most common is when referring to various shades of color when they are referred to as different hues. Almost as long as the word has been considered an English word people would have recognized this meaning, although around Shakespeare’s time it began appearing in dictionaries as a “hard word” so must have been less common then. The word appears in documents as old as 1100 years ago making it Old English but at that point it also had a second meaning that has since fallen out of use. Different forms, shapes, and even species were described as being different hues. As an Old English word hue has Germanic parentage and in Swedish The Oxford English Dictionary says its sister word hy means “skin” and “complexion.” The OED goes on to compare the word to the Indo-European chawi meaning “hide” as well as “skin” and “complexion.” This makes me think that our use of the word hue to discriminate fine differences in color grew out of our ancient discrimination of people’s faces. The other use of the word hue is in the phrase hue and cry. This use is not as old an etymology but perhaps it’s more primal. I checked a few modern citations of the phrase hue and cry to find that public discussion of our dependence on oil is described as a hue and cry, as well as the controversy surrounding the arrest of Roman Polanski. Hue and cry was, 700 years ago and more, a legal term. It came to English with the French of the Norman conquest. Imagine yourself attending a medieval market day. A hungry bystander grabs a chunk of cheese or something and makes a run for it. By law at the time the whole crowd at the market day were required to grab the guy and bring him to justice. Same thing if a vagabond snuck in at night to steal a chicken, all the neighbors had to jump to and tackle the thief. But to alert the locals to the need to react one had to raise the alarm and the legal term for this was the hue and cry. Now imagine yourself realizing that someone was stealing your chicken. Your first reaction might be an inarticulate grunt, and then you’d start yelling. It’s suspected that the Old French word hu evolved based on that first inarticulate grunt. Note to email subscribers: If you own an iPod you can hear my dulcet voice by subscribing in iTunes. Just CLICK HERE for mispronunciations instead of misspellings. There are several words hue but I’m going to pick on two. The most common is when referring to various shades of color when they are referred to as different hues. Almost as long as the word has been considered an English word people would have recognized this meaning, although around Shakespeare’s time it began appearing in dictionaries as a “hard word” so must have been less common then. The word appears in documents as old as 1100 years ago making it Old English but at that point it also had a second meaning that has since fallen out of use. Different forms, shapes, and even species were described as being different hues. As an Old English word hue has Germanic parentage and in Swedish The Oxford English Dictionary says its sister word hy means “skin” and “complexion.” The OED goes on to compare the word to the Indo-European chawi meaning “hide” as well as “skin” and “complexion.” This makes me think that our use of the word hue to discriminate fine differences in color grew out of our ancient discrimination of people’s faces. The other use of the word hue is in the phrase hue and cry. This use is not as old an etymology but perhaps it’s more primal. I checked a few modern citations of the phrase hue and cry to find that public discussion of our dependence on oil is described as a hue and cry, as well as the controversy surrounding the arrest of Roman Polanski. Hue and cry was, 700 years ago and more, a legal term. It came to English with the French of the Norman conquest. Imagine yourself attending a medieval market day. A hungry bystander grabs a chunk of cheese or something and makes a run for it. By law at the time the whole crowd at the market day were required to grab the guy and bring him to justice. Same thing if a vagabond snuck in at night to steal a chicken, all the neighbors had to jump to and tackle the thief. But to alert the locals to the need to react one had to raise the alarm and the legal term for this was the hue and cry. Now imagine yourself realizing that someone was stealing your chicken. Your first reaction might be an inarticulate grunt, and then you’d start yelling. It’s suspected that the Old French word hu evolved based on that first inarticulate grunt. Note to email subscribers: If you own an iPod you can hear my dulcet voice by subscribing in iTunes. Just CLICK HERE for mispronunciations instead of misspellings. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-04,25233341 Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:01:07 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25219368-glue-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1033 Today glue is something that comes in tubes or bottles or something you lick to seal an envelope. Kids have lots of experience with glue but once we’ve grown to adulthood our exposure is more limited, except when we have to fix something around the house. Certainly glue is a useful substance and fittingly the word has been around a very long time and has always referred to something sticky. Interestingly though, the uses and shades of meaning change over time and from application to application. Back in Indo-European the word gloi or gli meant “stick.” This word evolved and by the time it shows up in Latin it appears as gluten. The word gluten is likely a word you recognize as a component in wheat flour; gluten is the gummy part that makes bread dough behave a little bit like glue. Gluten is what  makes a loaf of bread stick together. Back in Latin gluten didn’t have quite this narrow a meaning and was used not only for glue itself, but other methods of sticking things together; sol... Today glue is something that comes in tubes or bottles or something you lick to seal an envelope. Kids have lots of experience with glue but once we’ve grown to adulthood our exposure is more limited, except when we have to fix something around the house. Certainly glue is a useful substance and fittingly the word has been around a very long time and has always referred to something sticky. Interestingly though, the uses and shades of meaning change over time and from application to application. Back in Indo-European the word gloi or gli meant “stick.” This word evolved and by the time it shows up in Latin it appears as gluten. The word gluten is likely a word you recognize as a component in wheat flour; gluten is the gummy part that makes bread dough behave a little bit like glue. Gluten is what  makes a loaf of bread stick together. Back in Latin gluten didn’t have quite this narrow a meaning and was used not only for glue itself, but other methods of sticking things together; solder and connecting ties or bands are mentioned in one source. Although glue is important in our lives it isn’t necessarily easy to imagine how the Indo-Europeans used glue. There’s a hint in the first documented use of the word glue in English back in 1380as reported by The Oxford English Dictionary. A little cryptically the OED defines that first use as meaning “bird lime.” What is bird lime? you might ask yourself. One ancient technique of catching your groceries was to smear the branch of a tree with glue so that when a bird landed it couldn’t take off again. It was stuck there until you came along and grabbed it and took it home for supper. That’s one of the more ancient uses of glue. A more modern word arose in 1971 among nuclear physicists. Imagine yourself working in a world of electrons, protons and neutrons. Those protons and neutrons are particularly securely stuck together. What theoretical stuff might there be that could do such a good job at sticking them together. Let’s see, electrons, protons, neutrons … ah, how about gluons? Note to email subscribers: If you own an iPod you can hear my dulcet voice by subscribing in iTunes. Just CLICK HERE for mispronunciations instead of misspellings. Today glue is something that comes in tubes or bottles or something you lick to seal an envelope. Kids have lots of experience with glue but once we’ve grown to adulthood our exposure is more limited, except when we have to fix something around the house. Certainly glue is a useful substance and fittingly the word has been around a very long time and has always referred to something sticky. Interestingly though, the uses and shades of meaning change over time and from application to application. Back in Indo-European the word gloi or gli meant “stick.” This word evolved and by the time it shows up in Latin it appears as gluten. The word gluten is likely a word you recognize as a component in wheat flour; gluten is the gummy part that makes bread dough behave a little bit like glue. Gluten is what  makes a loaf of bread stick together. Back in Latin gluten didn’t have quite this narrow a meaning and was used not only for glue itself, but other methods of sticking things together; solder and connecting ties or bands are mentioned in one source. Although glue is important in our lives it isn’t necessarily easy to imagine how the Indo-Europeans used glue. There’s a hint in the first documented use of the word glue in English back in 1380as reported by The Oxford English Dictionary. A little cryptically the OED defines that first use as meaning “bird lime.” What is bird lime? you might ask yourself. One ancient technique of catching your groceries was to smear the branch of a tree with glue so that when a bird landed it couldn’t take off again. It was stuck there until you came along and grabbed it and took it home for supper. That’s one of the more ancient uses of glue. A more modern word arose in 1971 among nuclear physicists. Imagine yourself working in a world of electrons, protons and neutrons. Those protons and neutrons are particularly securely stuck together. What theoretical stuff might there be that could do such a good job at sticking them together. Let’s see, electrons, protons, neutrons … ah, how about gluons? Note to email subscribers: If you own an iPod you can hear my dulcet voice by subscribing in iTunes. Just CLICK HERE for mispronunciations instead of misspellings. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-01,25219368 Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:01:47 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25213468-macaroni-%E2%80%93-podictionary-100 One online source claims there are 350 types of pasta and twice as many names for them. Unlike some types of pasta—for example vermicelli, linguini or gnocchi—macaroni isn’t named for what it looks like. Vermicelli is unappetizingly named after worms. Gnocchi is named after a knot in wood. For linguini you need to think of a linguist who can speak many tongues, because linguini is supposed to look like a human tongue. Like the group word for all of these foods, pasta, macaroni is named for the “paste” it is made out of.  According to Mark Morton’s book Cupboard Love, an older Greek word gave us the word macaroni as well as macaroon. Macaroons are also made from paste, in this case almond paste. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the Greek root is a little hard to figure out. One possibility is that it means “barley soup”; another that it is a word meaning “blessed” because this was food only eaten on ceremonial occasions such as at a funeral; or even that the food was named... One online source claims there are 350 types of pasta and twice as many names for them. Unlike some types of pasta—for example vermicelli, linguini or gnocchi—macaroni isn’t named for what it looks like. Vermicelli is unappetizingly named after worms. Gnocchi is named after a knot in wood. For linguini you need to think of a linguist who can speak many tongues, because linguini is supposed to look like a human tongue. Like the group word for all of these foods, pasta, macaroni is named for the “paste” it is made out of.  According to Mark Morton’s book Cupboard Love, an older Greek word gave us the word macaroni as well as macaroon. Macaroons are also made from paste, in this case almond paste. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the Greek root is a little hard to figure out. One possibility is that it means “barley soup”; another that it is a word meaning “blessed” because this was food only eaten on ceremonial occasions such as at a funeral; or even that the food was named after the funeral chant. In any case macaroni came into English in 1616, first used in a play by William Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Johnson and is thought to have referred to something like gnocchi. Here Ben Johnson has his character learning to eat all manner of foreign food including anchovies and macaroni. However, none of this tells us why when Yankee Doodle came to town, riding on a pony, he stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni. The reason for that strange usage is that in spite of Ben Johnson’s play, English diners were still only discovering the delights of Italian cuisine 170 years later. This was at the time of the American Revolution. While the Boston Tea Party was being planned on this side of the Atlantic, dinner parties were being held in London by a group of young dudes who were just over-the-top about European foods and fashions. They formed a club and named it after their favorite food—macaroni—The Macaroni Club was oh so fashionable. So at the time, to be “macaroni” was to be very, very fashionable. Soldiers fighting on the British side of the American Revolution, were like all soldiers in that they bad-mouthed the enemy. Britain was sophisticated. America was rough cut. In the eyes of the British an American from the back woods was a hick.  They mocked him, he rode a pony, not a horse, his idea of high fashion was to stick a feather in his hat. Note to email subscribers: If you own an iPod you can hear my dulcet voice by subscribing in iTunes. Just CLICK HERE for mispronunciations instead of misspellings. One online source claims there are 350 types of pasta and twice as many names for them. Unlike some types of pasta—for example vermicelli, linguini or gnocchi—macaroni isn’t named for what it looks like. Vermicelli is unappetizingly named after worms. Gnocchi is named after a knot in wood. For linguini you need to think of a linguist who can speak many tongues, because linguini is supposed to look like a human tongue. Like the group word for all of these foods, pasta, macaroni is named for the “paste” it is made out of.  According to Mark Morton’s book Cupboard Love, an older Greek word gave us the word macaroni as well as macaroon. Macaroons are also made from paste, in this case almond paste. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the Greek root is a little hard to figure out. One possibility is that it means “barley soup”; another that it is a word meaning “blessed” because this was food only eaten on ceremonial occasions such as at a funeral; or even that the food was named after the funeral chant. In any case macaroni came into English in 1616, first used in a play by William Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Johnson and is thought to have referred to something like gnocchi. Here Ben Johnson has his character learning to eat all manner of foreign food including anchovies and macaroni. However, none of this tells us why when Yankee Doodle came to town, riding on a pony, he stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni. The reason for that strange usage is that in spite of Ben Johnson’s play, English diners were still only discovering the delights of Italian cuisine 170 years later. This was at the time of the American Revolution. While the Boston Tea Party was being planned on this side of the Atlantic, dinner parties were being held in London by a group of young dudes who were just over-the-top about European foods and fashions. They formed a club and named it after their favorite food—macaroni—The Macaroni Club was oh so fashionable. So at the time, to be “macaroni” was to be very, very fashionable. Soldiers fighting on the British side of the American Revolution, were like all soldiers in that they bad-mouthed the enemy. Britain was sophisticated. America was rough cut. In the eyes of the British an American from the back woods was a hick.  They mocked him, he rode a pony, not a horse, his idea of high fashion was to stick a feather in his hat. Note to email subscribers: If you own an iPod you can hear my dulcet voice by subscribing in iTunes. Just CLICK HERE for mispronunciations instead of misspellings. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-30,25213468 Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25207273-pompous-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1031 I know it’s creepy, but sometimes I sit alone laughing to myself. I did so just now when I came across the following Urbandictionary definition of the word pompous: “a big word used to criticize big words.” It works doesn’t it? Here’s what The Oxford Dictionary of English says: “affectedly grand, solemn, or self-important.” So a pompous ass is someone who acts in a puffed up way. The word itself has had enough self confidence to have held its meaning in English since Geoffrey Chaucer first pulled it from French and set it down in English in 1375. As with many French words pompous comes from Latin. It shows up in slightly different form when we talk about the pomp and ceremony surrounding a royal wedding or the swearing of an oath of office. In both cases the root pomp holds a sense of “formality”; in the case of pompous it’s just that the formality inappropriate. In Classical Latin pompa was a “ceremonial procession” and the word was taken from Greek where this formal parade was lik... I know it’s creepy, but sometimes I sit alone laughing to myself. I did so just now when I came across the following Urbandictionary definition of the word pompous: “a big word used to criticize big words.” It works doesn’t it? Here’s what The Oxford Dictionary of English says: “affectedly grand, solemn, or self-important.” So a pompous ass is someone who acts in a puffed up way. The word itself has had enough self confidence to have held its meaning in English since Geoffrey Chaucer first pulled it from French and set it down in English in 1375. As with many French words pompous comes from Latin. It shows up in slightly different form when we talk about the pomp and ceremony surrounding a royal wedding or the swearing of an oath of office. In both cases the root pomp holds a sense of “formality”; in the case of pompous it’s just that the formality inappropriate. In Classical Latin pompa was a “ceremonial procession” and the word was taken from Greek where this formal parade was likely first associated with saying formal goodbyes and sending someone away in style. The Greek root meant “to send.” That first English use of pompous by Geoffrey Chaucer certainly referred to someone’s puffed up ego, but curiously that someone was sent away in style as well. Chaucer writes “Was neuere capitayn vnder a kyng..Ne moore pompous in heigh presumpcioun Than Oloferne.” Oloferne, or Holophernes, he paid for his pompousness too. The sending-off-in-style that I mentioned was done by the biblical Judith. Holophernes was an avenging general sent by his Assyrian king to smack down those pompous people who hadn’t supported him in his drive world domination. Holophernes was holding a town under siege and one evening this lovely woman comes by his tent and they proceed to have a merry old time. What fun, drinking and cavorting, until Judith decided Holophernes had had enough to drink and it was time to decapitate him. Thus endeth the siege. I know it’s creepy, but sometimes I sit alone laughing to myself. I did so just now when I came across the following Urbandictionary definition of the word pompous: “a big word used to criticize big words.” It works doesn’t it? Here’s what The Oxford Dictionary of English says: “affectedly grand, solemn, or self-important.” So a pompous ass is someone who acts in a puffed up way. The word itself has had enough self confidence to have held its meaning in English since Geoffrey Chaucer first pulled it from French and set it down in English in 1375. As with many French words pompous comes from Latin. It shows up in slightly different form when we talk about the pomp and ceremony surrounding a royal wedding or the swearing of an oath of office. In both cases the root pomp holds a sense of “formality”; in the case of pompous it’s just that the formality inappropriate. In Classical Latin pompa was a “ceremonial procession” and the word was taken from Greek where this formal parade was likely first associated with saying formal goodbyes and sending someone away in style. The Greek root meant “to send.” That first English use of pompous by Geoffrey Chaucer certainly referred to someone’s puffed up ego, but curiously that someone was sent away in style as well. Chaucer writes “Was neuere capitayn vnder a kyng..Ne moore pompous in heigh presumpcioun Than Oloferne.” Oloferne, or Holophernes, he paid for his pompousness too. The sending-off-in-style that I mentioned was done by the biblical Judith. Holophernes was an avenging general sent by his Assyrian king to smack down those pompous people who hadn’t supported him in his drive world domination. Holophernes was holding a town under siege and one evening this lovely woman comes by his tent and they proceed to have a merry old time. What fun, drinking and cavorting, until Judith decided Holophernes had had enough to drink and it was time to decapitate him. Thus endeth the siege. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-29,25207273 Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:01:25 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25202053-cuckoo-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1030 We in North America are most familiar with cuckoo birds in the form of those little mechanical birds that jump out of German clocks coincidentally named cuckoo clocks. But the birds are flesh-and-blood-and-feathers in Europe; not the product of some crazed clockmaker-cum-puppeteer of centuries ago. The wooden, or these days maybe plastic, birds that poke their heads out of dark brown clocks sometimes give voice to their chirping call by means of tiny bellows in the clock. Perhaps electronic chips are more common these days. It’s the chirping of the real birds that gave the cuckoo its name. The Oxford English Dictionary has this to say: “A bird… well known by the call of the male during mating time, of which the name is an imitation… It is a migratory bird, arriving in the British Islands in April, and hence welcomed as the ‘harbinger of spring’.” The records show that this bird has gone by this name in English for more than 800 years. Of course to me it’s a robin that’s the “harbing... We in North America are most familiar with cuckoo birds in the form of those little mechanical birds that jump out of German clocks coincidentally named cuckoo clocks. But the birds are flesh-and-blood-and-feathers in Europe; not the product of some crazed clockmaker-cum-puppeteer of centuries ago. The wooden, or these days maybe plastic, birds that poke their heads out of dark brown clocks sometimes give voice to their chirping call by means of tiny bellows in the clock. Perhaps electronic chips are more common these days. It’s the chirping of the real birds that gave the cuckoo its name. The Oxford English Dictionary has this to say: “A bird… well known by the call of the male during mating time, of which the name is an imitation… It is a migratory bird, arriving in the British Islands in April, and hence welcomed as the ‘harbinger of spring’.” The records show that this bird has gone by this name in English for more than 800 years. Of course to me it’s a robin that’s the “harbinger of spring.” If a person is called cuckoo it means that they are “crazy” but this usage didn’t show up until about 100 years ago. Earlier than that the meaning was more gentle. For about 400 years someone who was cuckoo was merely foolish. This could have been because the foolish cuckoo bird had such a silly monotonous song. But it could also have been something to do with the mating habits of cuckoo birds. The OED goes on: the cuckoo “does not hatch its own offspring, but deposits its eggs in the nests of small birds.” Like, what kind of a foolish mother bird would lay its eggs in someone else’s nest? In actual fact this is a pretty good reproductive strategy. Having someone else raise your kids gives you more time to play. A number of other species have been successful with this strategy, including some humans. And so it is that when humans exhibit similar behavior they take the word used to describe it from this bird. Let’s imagine that Bob and Sue are married. But Sue sleeps with Jim and gets pregnant. Bob might end up raising Jim’s kid. So what’s the word that describes Bob? Poor Bob is a cuckold. We in North America are most familiar with cuckoo birds in the form of those little mechanical birds that jump out of German clocks coincidentally named cuckoo clocks. But the birds are flesh-and-blood-and-feathers in Europe; not the product of some crazed clockmaker-cum-puppeteer of centuries ago. The wooden, or these days maybe plastic, birds that poke their heads out of dark brown clocks sometimes give voice to their chirping call by means of tiny bellows in the clock. Perhaps electronic chips are more common these days. It’s the chirping of the real birds that gave the cuckoo its name. The Oxford English Dictionary has this to say: “A bird… well known by the call of the male during mating time, of which the name is an imitation… It is a migratory bird, arriving in the British Islands in April, and hence welcomed as the ‘harbinger of spring’.” The records show that this bird has gone by this name in English for more than 800 years. Of course to me it’s a robin that’s the “harbinger of spring.” If a person is called cuckoo it means that they are “crazy” but this usage didn’t show up until about 100 years ago. Earlier than that the meaning was more gentle. For about 400 years someone who was cuckoo was merely foolish. This could have been because the foolish cuckoo bird had such a silly monotonous song. But it could also have been something to do with the mating habits of cuckoo birds. The OED goes on: the cuckoo “does not hatch its own offspring, but deposits its eggs in the nests of small birds.” Like, what kind of a foolish mother bird would lay its eggs in someone else’s nest? In actual fact this is a pretty good reproductive strategy. Having someone else raise your kids gives you more time to play. A number of other species have been successful with this strategy, including some humans. And so it is that when humans exhibit similar behavior they take the word used to describe it from this bird. Let’s imagine that Bob and Sue are married. But Sue sleeps with Jim and gets pregnant. Bob might end up raising Jim’s kid. So what’s the word that describes Bob? Poor Bob is a cuckold. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-28,25202053 Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:01:33 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25196587-elbow-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1029 Few people ever wonder why their elbows are called elbows, but there is a reason. The word breaks into two parts el and bow. Inside your forearm are two bones called the radius and the ulna. The ulna is named from Latin and Latin in turn took the name ultimately from an Indo-European root el meaning “forearm.” There are obsolete units of measure that came about due to the convenience of measuring off things against parts of the body. A foot is the obvious example that is still in use but the forearm was just as handy for measurement purposes and that’s why you sometimes hear about ancient things having dimensions in ells or cubits. Cubitum was also used in Latin to describe the elbow or the distance from the elbow to the finger-tips. So el means “arm” or “forearm.” Bow is still a very recognizable word meaning “bend”; we bend a bow to shoot arrows and when we finish a performance we bend at the waist and take a bow. Thus the literal meaning of the word elbow is “arm bend.” In common... Few people ever wonder why their elbows are called elbows, but there is a reason. The word breaks into two parts el and bow. Inside your forearm are two bones called the radius and the ulna. The ulna is named from Latin and Latin in turn took the name ultimately from an Indo-European root el meaning “forearm.” There are obsolete units of measure that came about due to the convenience of measuring off things against parts of the body. A foot is the obvious example that is still in use but the forearm was just as handy for measurement purposes and that’s why you sometimes hear about ancient things having dimensions in ells or cubits. Cubitum was also used in Latin to describe the elbow or the distance from the elbow to the finger-tips. So el means “arm” or “forearm.” Bow is still a very recognizable word meaning “bend”; we bend a bow to shoot arrows and when we finish a performance we bend at the waist and take a bow. Thus the literal meaning of the word elbow is “arm bend.” In common parlance though, when someone mentions the elbow they usually mean the pointy bit; the outside of the arm bend. Is there a name for the inside of the arm bend; the crease inside your elbow? I haven’t come across a common name for this feature of the body but since physicians have a label for nearly every part of the body there is a technical name and that’s cubital fossa.  Cubital is recognizable as meaning “elbow” from the Latin cubitum. A fossa is a shallow depression from the Latin word for “ditch” so that cubital fossa literally means “elbow crease.” Few people ever wonder why their elbows are called elbows, but there is a reason. The word breaks into two parts el and bow. Inside your forearm are two bones called the radius and the ulna. The ulna is named from Latin and Latin in turn took the name ultimately from an Indo-European root el meaning “forearm.” There are obsolete units of measure that came about due to the convenience of measuring off things against parts of the body. A foot is the obvious example that is still in use but the forearm was just as handy for measurement purposes and that’s why you sometimes hear about ancient things having dimensions in ells or cubits. Cubitum was also used in Latin to describe the elbow or the distance from the elbow to the finger-tips. So el means “arm” or “forearm.” Bow is still a very recognizable word meaning “bend”; we bend a bow to shoot arrows and when we finish a performance we bend at the waist and take a bow. Thus the literal meaning of the word elbow is “arm bend.” In common parlance though, when someone mentions the elbow they usually mean the pointy bit; the outside of the arm bend. Is there a name for the inside of the arm bend; the crease inside your elbow? I haven’t come across a common name for this feature of the body but since physicians have a label for nearly every part of the body there is a technical name and that’s cubital fossa.  Cubital is recognizable as meaning “elbow” from the Latin cubitum. A fossa is a shallow depression from the Latin word for “ditch” so that cubital fossa literally means “elbow crease.” tag:odeo.com,2009-09-27,25196587 Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:01:29 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25180743-columbine-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1028 Here’s a word that gives us a lot to think about and I see most of those topics laid out on the new media dictionary site wordnik. They’re pretty smart those wordnik people, they’ve arranged for postings of images from Flickr alongside snippets from Twitter alongside traditional dictionary definitions from such sources as the American Heritage Dictionary and the Century Dictionary. So what I see when I type the word columbine are three pretty different meanings depending on source. What did you think of when you heard this podictionary episode was going to be about the word columbine? I bet you thought about the high school tragedy. Or, if you’re a gardener you might have thought about flowers. I searched Twitter in a little more depth than shown at wordnik and found almost all of the Twitter users who used the word columbine were using it with some kind of context relating to the high school shootings. There were dozens of mentions on Twitter within the last 24 hours of when I chec... Here’s a word that gives us a lot to think about and I see most of those topics laid out on the new media dictionary site wordnik. They’re pretty smart those wordnik people, they’ve arranged for postings of images from Flickr alongside snippets from Twitter alongside traditional dictionary definitions from such sources as the American Heritage Dictionary and the Century Dictionary. So what I see when I type the word columbine are three pretty different meanings depending on source. What did you think of when you heard this podictionary episode was going to be about the word columbine? I bet you thought about the high school tragedy. Or, if you’re a gardener you might have thought about flowers. I searched Twitter in a little more depth than shown at wordnik and found almost all of the Twitter users who used the word columbine were using it with some kind of context relating to the high school shootings. There were dozens of mentions on Twitter within the last 24 hours of when I checked and this is more than ten years after the incident. The photos on Flickr, however, are almost all of flowers; a much nicer visual image. The flower columbine is the state flower of Colorado and that’s why the high school was named Columbine. So this word has essentially gained a new meaning out of the tragedy. I see it being used in phrases like columbine kids and columbine nightmare. These users are not talking about flowers. Curiously the phrase columbine massacre dates back to 1927 when a miners’ strike also in Colorado got out of hand and machine guns were used. But there is an older meaning to the word; etymologically columbine means “pigeon-like” or “dove-like.”   Columba was “dove” in Latin. We can ponder the peaceful symbolism of doves in the context of two events called massacres but instead let’s examine how a word to do with doves got to be attached to flowers. Something similar has happened with the word iris which had an association with rainbows and so was applied to a kind of flower that came in many different colors. If you look at the feathers on a pigeon’s neck as it’s bobbing around trying to grab things from your downtown picnic, you’ll see a pretty side to that ugly bird. The feathers shimmer in a rainbow of different colors. So perhaps it was that a kind of flower that appears in various colors deserved the name columbine based on the many colors of a pigeon’s neck. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t say this exactly, but instead gives examples of things other than these flowers being called columbine based on being “dove colored.” The OED gives another theory why these flowers might be named after doves. One of the characteristics of columbine flowers is that they have five spikes or horns and the argument is that this resembled five pigeons clustered together. This seems a pretty unconvincing association to me. Just to show that you can see whatever you want in the meaning of things, it turns out that back around Shakespeare’s time 400 years ago columbine flowers got a bad reputation as having something to do with the seamier side of sex. It was those five horns on the flower. Here’s a word that gives us a lot to think about and I see most of those topics laid out on the new media dictionary site wordnik. They’re pretty smart those wordnik people, they’ve arranged for postings of images from Flickr alongside snippets from Twitter alongside traditional dictionary definitions from such sources as the American Heritage Dictionary and the Century Dictionary. So what I see when I type the word columbine are three pretty different meanings depending on source. What did you think of when you heard this podictionary episode was going to be about the word columbine? I bet you thought about the high school tragedy. Or, if you’re a gardener you might have thought about flowers. I searched Twitter in a little more depth than shown at wordnik and found almost all of the Twitter users who used the word columbine were using it with some kind of context relating to the high school shootings. There were dozens of mentions on Twitter within the last 24 hours of when I checked and this is more than ten years after the incident. The photos on Flickr, however, are almost all of flowers; a much nicer visual image. The flower columbine is the state flower of Colorado and that’s why the high school was named Columbine. So this word has essentially gained a new meaning out of the tragedy. I see it being used in phrases like columbine kids and columbine nightmare. These users are not talking about flowers. Curiously the phrase columbine massacre dates back to 1927 when a miners’ strike also in Colorado got out of hand and machine guns were used. But there is an older meaning to the word; etymologically columbine means “pigeon-like” or “dove-like.”   Columba was “dove” in Latin. We can ponder the peaceful symbolism of doves in the context of two events called massacres but instead let’s examine how a word to do with doves got to be attached to flowers. Something similar has happened with the word iris which had an association with rainbows and so was applied to a kind of flower that came in many different colors. If you look at the feathers on a pigeon’s neck as it’s bobbing around trying to grab things from your downtown picnic, you’ll see a pretty side to that ugly bird. The feathers shimmer in a rainbow of different colors. So perhaps it was that a kind of flower that appears in various colors deserved the name columbine based on the many colors of a pigeon’s neck. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t say this exactly, but instead gives examples of things other than these flowers being called columbine based on being “dove colored.” The OED gives another theory why these flowers might be named after doves. One of the characteristics of columbine flowers is that they have five spikes or horns and the argument is that this resembled five pigeons clustered together. This seems a pretty unconvincing association to me. Just to show that you can see whatever you want in the meaning of things, it turns out that back around Shakespeare’s time 400 years ago columbine flowers got a bad reputation as having something to do with the seamier side of sex. It was those five horns on the flower. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-24,25180743 Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:01:47 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25175239-tweed-%E2%80%93-podictionary-99 According to the American Heritage Dictionary as well as the OED the name for the fabric we call tweed seems to have been one of those great words that came about by accident. I am not always a great speller so I can sympathize. What is supposed to have happened is that in 1826 William Watson of Hawick, Scotland sent James Locke, a London merchant, an invoice requiring payment for a shipment of twill fabric. The name twill comes from the two different yarns twisted together and used in this fabric. With is Scottish accent he pronounced—and evidently spelled—the word tweel. Whether it was a spelling mistake on Watson’s part or a difficulty in reading the handwriting on Locke’s part I don’t know, but Locke seemed to think he had gotten a shipment of tweed not tweel and the rest is history. But history didn’t stop then. Tweed is often associated with a classy but casual look, even sporty in a sort of “shooting birds on the estate” kind of way. This is because one Lady Dunmore in 1940 u... According to the American Heritage Dictionary as well as the OED the name for the fabric we call tweed seems to have been one of those great words that came about by accident. I am not always a great speller so I can sympathize. What is supposed to have happened is that in 1826 William Watson of Hawick, Scotland sent James Locke, a London merchant, an invoice requiring payment for a shipment of twill fabric. The name twill comes from the two different yarns twisted together and used in this fabric. With is Scottish accent he pronounced—and evidently spelled—the word tweel. Whether it was a spelling mistake on Watson’s part or a difficulty in reading the handwriting on Locke’s part I don’t know, but Locke seemed to think he had gotten a shipment of tweed not tweel and the rest is history. But history didn’t stop then. Tweed is often associated with a classy but casual look, even sporty in a sort of “shooting birds on the estate” kind of way. This is because one Lady Dunmore in 1940 upped the ante by introducing Harris Tweed among her aristocratic sporty friends. Harris Tweed is still a trade mark of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland but in the Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, Harris Tweed was evidently rhyming slang during the 1980s for speed— methedrine that is. And we evidently are still living in what later will be history because urbandictionary.com informs me that these days in some circles tweed means “marijuana.” According to the American Heritage Dictionary as well as the OED the name for the fabric we call tweed seems to have been one of those great words that came about by accident. I am not always a great speller so I can sympathize. What is supposed to have happened is that in 1826 William Watson of Hawick, Scotland sent James Locke, a London merchant, an invoice requiring payment for a shipment of twill fabric. The name twill comes from the two different yarns twisted together and used in this fabric. With is Scottish accent he pronounced—and evidently spelled—the word tweel. Whether it was a spelling mistake on Watson’s part or a difficulty in reading the handwriting on Locke’s part I don’t know, but Locke seemed to think he had gotten a shipment of tweed not tweel and the rest is history. But history didn’t stop then. Tweed is often associated with a classy but casual look, even sporty in a sort of “shooting birds on the estate” kind of way. This is because one Lady Dunmore in 1940 upped the ante by introducing Harris Tweed among her aristocratic sporty friends. Harris Tweed is still a trade mark of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland but in the Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, Harris Tweed was evidently rhyming slang during the 1980s for speed— methedrine that is. And we evidently are still living in what later will be history because urbandictionary.com informs me that these days in some circles tweed means “marijuana.” tag:odeo.com,2009-09-23,25175239 Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25167972-Excalibur-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1027 In the legend of King Arthur the sword that he pulls from the stone is named Excalibur. Or did he get the sword from The Lady of the Lake? Such is the way with legends, since there were few facts to begin with it’s hard to keep the facts straight. This word Excalibur must weigh attractively on our tongues because everyone remembers the word even if they’ve forgotten it had to do with a mythical English king. There are movies and cars named Excalibur and I wondered if the word had a Latin root, and if so, why would a word that might mean “out of calibration” be so memorable. As it turns out this was idle speculation and Latin or calibration have nothing to do with the mythical sword. There was Latin influence evidently. The sword had been called Caliburn 900 years ago and even been Latinized to Caliburnus in some of the old stories. And then the French got their hands on the story. They liked it because it reeked of chivalry and unlike most words that get worn down to a shorter form ... In the legend of King Arthur the sword that he pulls from the stone is named Excalibur. Or did he get the sword from The Lady of the Lake? Such is the way with legends, since there were few facts to begin with it’s hard to keep the facts straight. This word Excalibur must weigh attractively on our tongues because everyone remembers the word even if they’ve forgotten it had to do with a mythical English king. There are movies and cars named Excalibur and I wondered if the word had a Latin root, and if so, why would a word that might mean “out of calibration” be so memorable. As it turns out this was idle speculation and Latin or calibration have nothing to do with the mythical sword. There was Latin influence evidently. The sword had been called Caliburn 900 years ago and even been Latinized to Caliburnus in some of the old stories. And then the French got their hands on the story. They liked it because it reeked of chivalry and unlike most words that get worn down to a shorter form when used in French, this one got longer when the added the ex on the front. There is all kinds of scholarly speculation as to what the origin of this sword’s name might have been before that, but no one really knows. The only connection I did come up with between Excalibur and calibration was that the word calibrate also has origins in weaponry. The size of ammunition fired by a gun is obviously directly related to the inside diameter of the barrel and both of these are called the caliber. When the idea of measuring an instrument for accuracy was first expressed as calibration, only about 150 years ago, the instrument in question was a thermometer. If the little glass tube that held the mercury or alcohol was not consistent in its inside diameter then the temperature gradients wouldn’t be regularly spaced. So a thermometer was measured in the same way that a gun barrel was. When you measure something sometimes you do so with calipers and the etymological thinking is that calipers are called calipers because they were used in measuring calibers, either of gun barrels or of gun shot. Both caliber and caliper go back  more than 400 years in English and come from French before that. Their earlier history is the subject of several different directions of speculation including a Latin source qua libra which would mean “of what weight?” But since traces of both words disappear into the fog of history we don’t know for sure if they are really related or what their earlier histories actually are. In the legend of King Arthur the sword that he pulls from the stone is named Excalibur. Or did he get the sword from The Lady of the Lake? Such is the way with legends, since there were few facts to begin with it’s hard to keep the facts straight. This word Excalibur must weigh attractively on our tongues because everyone remembers the word even if they’ve forgotten it had to do with a mythical English king. There are movies and cars named Excalibur and I wondered if the word had a Latin root, and if so, why would a word that might mean “out of calibration” be so memorable. As it turns out this was idle speculation and Latin or calibration have nothing to do with the mythical sword. There was Latin influence evidently. The sword had been called Caliburn 900 years ago and even been Latinized to Caliburnus in some of the old stories. And then the French got their hands on the story. They liked it because it reeked of chivalry and unlike most words that get worn down to a shorter form when used in French, this one got longer when the added the ex on the front. There is all kinds of scholarly speculation as to what the origin of this sword’s name might have been before that, but no one really knows. The only connection I did come up with between Excalibur and calibration was that the word calibrate also has origins in weaponry. The size of ammunition fired by a gun is obviously directly related to the inside diameter of the barrel and both of these are called the caliber. When the idea of measuring an instrument for accuracy was first expressed as calibration, only about 150 years ago, the instrument in question was a thermometer. If the little glass tube that held the mercury or alcohol was not consistent in its inside diameter then the temperature gradients wouldn’t be regularly spaced. So a thermometer was measured in the same way that a gun barrel was. When you measure something sometimes you do so with calipers and the etymological thinking is that calipers are called calipers because they were used in measuring calibers, either of gun barrels or of gun shot. Both caliber and caliper go back  more than 400 years in English and come from French before that. Their earlier history is the subject of several different directions of speculation including a Latin source qua libra which would mean “of what weight?” But since traces of both words disappear into the fog of history we don’t know for sure if they are really related or what their earlier histories actually are. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-22,25167972 Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:01:34 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25162371-ostracize-%E2%80%93-podictionary-98 Ostracize is not, as urbandictionary.com says “An exercise program for ostriches.”  Ostracize is in fact a word that ultimately traces back to the animal kingdom. Urbandictionary also contains the definition “to shun one away from the rest of a group” which does line up with Merriam Webster which says “to banish from society, to cast out, to exile.” According to both The Oxford English Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary, in ancient Greek the bivalve shells you might find at the beach were called ostrakon. This is the root also for our name for those sexy slithery salty treats: oysters. Even though an ostrich lays eggs and those eggs have a shell, the ostriches name is unrelated. The ancient Greeks are rightly admired for their beautiful pottery. You gotta think though that over a couple of thousand years, if there are still a pile of vases each in one piece, there must have been many more that were dropped and got broken over the years.  Think of it, with all that fight... Ostracize is not, as urbandictionary.com says “An exercise program for ostriches.”  Ostracize is in fact a word that ultimately traces back to the animal kingdom. Urbandictionary also contains the definition “to shun one away from the rest of a group” which does line up with Merriam Webster which says “to banish from society, to cast out, to exile.” According to both The Oxford English Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary, in ancient Greek the bivalve shells you might find at the beach were called ostrakon. This is the root also for our name for those sexy slithery salty treats: oysters. Even though an ostrich lays eggs and those eggs have a shell, the ostriches name is unrelated. The ancient Greeks are rightly admired for their beautiful pottery. You gotta think though that over a couple of thousand years, if there are still a pile of vases each in one piece, there must have been many more that were dropped and got broken over the years.  Think of it, with all that fighting between Troy and Athens there must have been crockery shards all over the place. You think I’m joking. In actual fact there were enough chunks of pottery lying around the streets during the reign of Kleisthenes around 508 BC, that when he looked for a way to keep the powerful men in his city-state from killing each other, he used these broken pots to do it.  Rather than lynch someone, the law was that men of stature would vote, by marking their opinions on these shell-like shards as to whether to send they guy they thought was a jerk, away for ten years. The law prevented folks ganging up for gain, since after ten years the ousted person could return to their full property. You can see that our word ostracize comes from this “sending away for a decade” which in turn takes its name from the shell-like fragments. Ostracize is not, as urbandictionary.com says “An exercise program for ostriches.”  Ostracize is in fact a word that ultimately traces back to the animal kingdom. Urbandictionary also contains the definition “to shun one away from the rest of a group” which does line up with Merriam Webster which says “to banish from society, to cast out, to exile.” According to both The Oxford English Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary, in ancient Greek the bivalve shells you might find at the beach were called ostrakon. This is the root also for our name for those sexy slithery salty treats: oysters. Even though an ostrich lays eggs and those eggs have a shell, the ostriches name is unrelated. The ancient Greeks are rightly admired for their beautiful pottery. You gotta think though that over a couple of thousand years, if there are still a pile of vases each in one piece, there must have been many more that were dropped and got broken over the years.  Think of it, with all that fighting between Troy and Athens there must have been crockery shards all over the place. You think I’m joking. In actual fact there were enough chunks of pottery lying around the streets during the reign of Kleisthenes around 508 BC, that when he looked for a way to keep the powerful men in his city-state from killing each other, he used these broken pots to do it.  Rather than lynch someone, the law was that men of stature would vote, by marking their opinions on these shell-like shards as to whether to send they guy they thought was a jerk, away for ten years. The law prevented folks ganging up for gain, since after ten years the ousted person could return to their full property. You can see that our word ostracize comes from this “sending away for a decade” which in turn takes its name from the shell-like fragments. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-21,25162371 Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25157256-stigma-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1026 I was looking for modern uses of the word stigma and I came across this one in an NPR story from a few years ago about an AIDS conference: “One of the main barriers to treatment is the stigma that HIV carries. It keeps people from getting tested and allows the virus to continue to spread.” From this use it is easy to draw the meaning of the word stigma, as The New Oxford American Dictionary puts it “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance.” They give examples of “the stigma of mental disorder” or a “social stigma” associated with being a nonreader. Etymologically that definition “a mark of disgrace” is right on because originally in English stigma meant “a mark made upon the skin by burning with a hot iron … as a token of infamy or subjection.” That’s from the OED. So people who were convicted of crimes or who were slaves were branded, sometimes on their face, to show their social status. This meaning emerged about 400 years ago and very quickly, within a few de... I was looking for modern uses of the word stigma and I came across this one in an NPR story from a few years ago about an AIDS conference: “One of the main barriers to treatment is the stigma that HIV carries. It keeps people from getting tested and allows the virus to continue to spread.” From this use it is easy to draw the meaning of the word stigma, as The New Oxford American Dictionary puts it “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance.” They give examples of “the stigma of mental disorder” or a “social stigma” associated with being a nonreader. Etymologically that definition “a mark of disgrace” is right on because originally in English stigma meant “a mark made upon the skin by burning with a hot iron … as a token of infamy or subjection.” That’s from the OED. So people who were convicted of crimes or who were slaves were branded, sometimes on their face, to show their social status. This meaning emerged about 400 years ago and very quickly, within a few decades, was being used metaphorically as we use stigma today. The appearance of the literal “branding” word that appeared in the late 16th century was drawn from Latin and the Latin word was in turn drawn from Greek, so people have been setting social markings on each other—literally and figuratively—for a very long time. The Greek word didn’t so much mean “brand” with a hot iron. It could just as easily have been applied to a tattoo because the root of the word stigma is similar to that of the word stick and this is because the marks put on peoples skin in the style of a tattoo are done with a sharp needle that is stuck into the skin. This word root goes all the way back to Indo-European where steig is thought to have meant “to stick” or “sharp.” You likely already knew that there is a part of flowers called the sigma as well (although before I looked it up I wasn’t exactly sure which part it was). A flower’s stigma is the place where it receives the pollen it needs to go to seed. This part of the flower was named in the early 18th century and from what I can see it was so named because it represents a pinhole. So although the meaning of stigma in these two cases is quite different, the word roots are the same. You’ve heard the old pun my karma ran over your dogma? I was interested to see that in 1924 a British historian named Philip Guedalla had enough karma to give us another pun just as good. He said that any stigma is good enough to beat a dogma with. All I can say is too bad it’s always the dogma that gets the short end of the stigma. I was looking for modern uses of the word stigma and I came across this one in an NPR story from a few years ago about an AIDS conference: “One of the main barriers to treatment is the stigma that HIV carries. It keeps people from getting tested and allows the virus to continue to spread.” From this use it is easy to draw the meaning of the word stigma, as The New Oxford American Dictionary puts it “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance.” They give examples of “the stigma of mental disorder” or a “social stigma” associated with being a nonreader. Etymologically that definition “a mark of disgrace” is right on because originally in English stigma meant “a mark made upon the skin by burning with a hot iron … as a token of infamy or subjection.” That’s from the OED. So people who were convicted of crimes or who were slaves were branded, sometimes on their face, to show their social status. This meaning emerged about 400 years ago and very quickly, within a few decades, was being used metaphorically as we use stigma today. The appearance of the literal “branding” word that appeared in the late 16th century was drawn from Latin and the Latin word was in turn drawn from Greek, so people have been setting social markings on each other—literally and figuratively—for a very long time. The Greek word didn’t so much mean “brand” with a hot iron. It could just as easily have been applied to a tattoo because the root of the word stigma is similar to that of the word stick and this is because the marks put on peoples skin in the style of a tattoo are done with a sharp needle that is stuck into the skin. This word root goes all the way back to Indo-European where steig is thought to have meant “to stick” or “sharp.” You likely already knew that there is a part of flowers called the sigma as well (although before I looked it up I wasn’t exactly sure which part it was). A flower’s stigma is the place where it receives the pollen it needs to go to seed. This part of the flower was named in the early 18th century and from what I can see it was so named because it represents a pinhole. So although the meaning of stigma in these two cases is quite different, the word roots are the same. You’ve heard the old pun my karma ran over your dogma? I was interested to see that in 1924 a British historian named Philip Guedalla had enough karma to give us another pun just as good. He said that any stigma is good enough to beat a dogma with. All I can say is too bad it’s always the dogma that gets the short end of the stigma. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-20,25157256 Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:01:33 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25142621-intramural-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1025 Todd wrote me and suggested the word intramural. I instantly thought of school sports. I’m not alone. I bet you did too. Statistically I must be right because when I pop intramural into Google the top hits are about school sports. But what can this mean this intramural? Like, isn’t a mural a painting? Intra, that means “within” so by a little creative folk etymology I could pretend that school sports were so named because it was like they were from inside a painting; sort of the equivalent of saying they were picture perfect. But of course I made that up. The reason mural that is a painting is called a mural is because it is painted on a wall and the Latin word for “wall” was muralis. So intramural sports at school are sports that take place within the walls of the school. This is figurative since most football games or cross country running races don’t happen inside buildings. It’s just that all the competitors are from within the school. Now this word isn’t exactly a common word. ... Todd wrote me and suggested the word intramural. I instantly thought of school sports. I’m not alone. I bet you did too. Statistically I must be right because when I pop intramural into Google the top hits are about school sports. But what can this mean this intramural? Like, isn’t a mural a painting? Intra, that means “within” so by a little creative folk etymology I could pretend that school sports were so named because it was like they were from inside a painting; sort of the equivalent of saying they were picture perfect. But of course I made that up. The reason mural that is a painting is called a mural is because it is painted on a wall and the Latin word for “wall” was muralis. So intramural sports at school are sports that take place within the walls of the school. This is figurative since most football games or cross country running races don’t happen inside buildings. It’s just that all the competitors are from within the school. Now this word isn’t exactly a common word. I looked it up on the website wordcount.org which lays almost 90,000 words out in order of their frequency. At wordcount.org intramural came in as just a little less popular than the word studland and just a little more popular than the word thermoluminescence. Thermoluminescence is a special technique of dating archeological items by measuring the energy they give off as they are heated. It’s not a technique most of us get to use very often which explains its rarity as a word. The word studland; I was going to tell you that I couldn’t define studland is because it isn’t in The Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam Webster’s Unabridged, or even dictionary.com. But it turns out to be a small village in England; wordcount.org is after all more indicative of British usage. Based on its association with school sports I think that in North America intramural is a somewhat more commonly understood word than studland or thermoluminescence. But what is it called when one school plays another? Intramural means “within walls.” You might think that playing between schools would yield intermural since inter means “between.” Intermural certainly is being used out there but since it isn’t in most dictionaries it’s hard to say if that’s because people are misspelling intramural or because they are imposing a meaning of “school” on the word mural based on its use in intramural. Some dictionaries point to extramural as the correct word since it means playing outside one’s own walls. But despite the fact that extramural is in the fatter dictionaries people seem to use it even less than intermural. According to Google trends intercollegiate is 72% as popular as intramural as a search term at least. But the word varsity swamps them all, and in this I see a focus more on school pride as represented by the top athletes on the varsity team as opposed to considering the competition as being within or between schools. Varsity by the way is an abbreviation of the word university and appears to have first been used at Oxford University about 160 years ago. Todd wrote me and suggested the word intramural. I instantly thought of school sports. I’m not alone. I bet you did too. Statistically I must be right because when I pop intramural into Google the top hits are about school sports. But what can this mean this intramural? Like, isn’t a mural a painting? Intra, that means “within” so by a little creative folk etymology I could pretend that school sports were so named because it was like they were from inside a painting; sort of the equivalent of saying they were picture perfect. But of course I made that up. The reason mural that is a painting is called a mural is because it is painted on a wall and the Latin word for “wall” was muralis. So intramural sports at school are sports that take place within the walls of the school. This is figurative since most football games or cross country running races don’t happen inside buildings. It’s just that all the competitors are from within the school. Now this word isn’t exactly a common word. I looked it up on the website wordcount.org which lays almost 90,000 words out in order of their frequency. At wordcount.org intramural came in as just a little less popular than the word studland and just a little more popular than the word thermoluminescence. Thermoluminescence is a special technique of dating archeological items by measuring the energy they give off as they are heated. It’s not a technique most of us get to use very often which explains its rarity as a word. The word studland; I was going to tell you that I couldn’t define studland is because it isn’t in The Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam Webster’s Unabridged, or even dictionary.com. But it turns out to be a small village in England; wordcount.org is after all more indicative of British usage. Based on its association with school sports I think that in North America intramural is a somewhat more commonly understood word than studland or thermoluminescence. But what is it called when one school plays another? Intramural means “within walls.” You might think that playing between schools would yield intermural since inter means “between.” Intermural certainly is being used out there but since it isn’t in most dictionaries it’s hard to say if that’s because people are misspelling intramural or because they are imposing a meaning of “school” on the word mural based on its use in intramural. Some dictionaries point to extramural as the correct word since it means playing outside one’s own walls. But despite the fact that extramural is in the fatter dictionaries people seem to use it even less than intermural. According to Google trends intercollegiate is 72% as popular as intramural as a search term at least. But the word varsity swamps them all, and in this I see a focus more on school pride as represented by the top athletes on the varsity team as opposed to considering the competition as being within or between schools. Varsity by the way is an abbreviation of the word university and appears to have first been used at Oxford University about 160 years ago. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-17,25142621 Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:01:19 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25137190-puke-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1024 In The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Edition William Shakespeare is cited as the first of any man or woman to have set the word puke to paper; puke meaning “regurgitate.” That first citation is from 1600 and it’s from his play As You Like It. I think you’ll recognize the passage it comes from, you’ve heard it before: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. This example goes to show two things. First of all that just because we have a first citation date it doesn’t mean that’s when a word was invented. How could Shakespeare have expected anyone in his audience to understand the word puke if it hadn’t existed before.   There had to be some context for people to understand that the infant wasn’t smiling or feeding in the nurse’s arms. Looking at the etymology sources it appears ... In The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Edition William Shakespeare is cited as the first of any man or woman to have set the word puke to paper; puke meaning “regurgitate.” That first citation is from 1600 and it’s from his play As You Like It. I think you’ll recognize the passage it comes from, you’ve heard it before: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. This example goes to show two things. First of all that just because we have a first citation date it doesn’t mean that’s when a word was invented. How could Shakespeare have expected anyone in his audience to understand the word puke if it hadn’t existed before.   There had to be some context for people to understand that the infant wasn’t smiling or feeding in the nurse’s arms. Looking at the etymology sources it appears that although the word itself may have never been written down before, another word pukishness had appeared about 20 years before.  Pukishness meant the tendency to be sick frequently and that word appeared in a book about the value of a boy’s education—girls didn’t seem to benefit from education back then.  T he specific passage advocates the health benefits of speaking loudly. The author says it’s a form of exercise and believes that communicating at the top of your lungs is a cure for everything from bad circulation and elephantiasis to diarrhea and leprosy.  Evidently talking loudly cures pukishness as well. So the evidence is that there was already a word in circulation that William Shakespeare made use of. But I said this example shows us two things. The second thing is that the computer age is helping dictionary makers. The draft entry for puke in the third Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary ousts Shakespeare as the first coiner of puke and in his place names Philemon Holland. You see, with computers and such tools as Google Book Search it’s easier to comb through the huge backlog of historical writings looking for a specific word. The way that the first and second editions of the OED were researched involved an army of individual volunteer readers actually reading all the old books and taking notes on which words were in them. Obviously William Shakespeare attracted more readers than did Philemon Holland. But that’s all to do with the significance of first citations. With respect to the etymology of the word puke I see that it is possibly related to the word spew. Spew appeared as far back as King Alfred’s time and wonder of wonders, at first it also meant “barf.” In The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Edition William Shakespeare is cited as the first of any man or woman to have set the word puke to paper; puke meaning “regurgitate.” That first citation is from 1600 and it’s from his play As You Like It. I think you’ll recognize the passage it comes from, you’ve heard it before: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. This example goes to show two things. First of all that just because we have a first citation date it doesn’t mean that’s when a word was invented. How could Shakespeare have expected anyone in his audience to understand the word puke if it hadn’t existed before.   There had to be some context for people to understand that the infant wasn’t smiling or feeding in the nurse’s arms. Looking at the etymology sources it appears that although the word itself may have never been written down before, another word pukishness had appeared about 20 years before.  Pukishness meant the tendency to be sick frequently and that word appeared in a book about the value of a boy’s education—girls didn’t seem to benefit from education back then.  T he specific passage advocates the health benefits of speaking loudly. The author says it’s a form of exercise and believes that communicating at the top of your lungs is a cure for everything from bad circulation and elephantiasis to diarrhea and leprosy.  Evidently talking loudly cures pukishness as well. So the evidence is that there was already a word in circulation that William Shakespeare made use of. But I said this example shows us two things. The second thing is that the computer age is helping dictionary makers. The draft entry for puke in the third Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary ousts Shakespeare as the first coiner of puke and in his place names Philemon Holland. You see, with computers and such tools as Google Book Search it’s easier to comb through the huge backlog of historical writings looking for a specific word. The way that the first and second editions of the OED were researched involved an army of individual volunteer readers actually reading all the old books and taking notes on which words were in them. Obviously William Shakespeare attracted more readers than did Philemon Holland. But that’s all to do with the significance of first citations. With respect to the etymology of the word puke I see that it is possibly related to the word spew. Spew appeared as far back as King Alfred’s time and wonder of wonders, at first it also meant “barf.” tag:odeo.com,2009-09-16,25137190 Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:01:49 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25131829-coroner-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1023 In an earlier episode I reported on the office of sheriff and how it went from powerful to corrupt 1000 years ago. In the year 1194 King Richard the Lionheart saw it necessary to bring into law a new system of administrators. He needed to do so because he needed cash and the existing system of sheriffs had been bleeding him dry just when he needed the money to pay off some European kings who where holding him hostage. In the old Robin Hood stories the Sheriff of Nottingham is depicted as a dirty rotten thief but King Richard is held up as a super fellow away from the country doing his duty fighting the dirty rotten heathens who dare to live in the holy land. Alternate opinions now relate Richard the Lionheart to be a fairly rotten king himself when it came to England. He only spent about 4 months of his entire reign in the country and never spoke a word of English. But whether he was good or bad, his sheriffs were ripping him off and had to be replaced. The new officials brought in ... In an earlier episode I reported on the office of sheriff and how it went from powerful to corrupt 1000 years ago. In the year 1194 King Richard the Lionheart saw it necessary to bring into law a new system of administrators. He needed to do so because he needed cash and the existing system of sheriffs had been bleeding him dry just when he needed the money to pay off some European kings who where holding him hostage. In the old Robin Hood stories the Sheriff of Nottingham is depicted as a dirty rotten thief but King Richard is held up as a super fellow away from the country doing his duty fighting the dirty rotten heathens who dare to live in the holy land. Alternate opinions now relate Richard the Lionheart to be a fairly rotten king himself when it came to England. He only spent about 4 months of his entire reign in the country and never spoke a word of English. But whether he was good or bad, his sheriffs were ripping him off and had to be replaced. The new officials brought in to clean up were called coroners. Not because the sheriffs had been murdering delinquent taxpayers but because the etymology of coroner is “crown.” These new guys were representatives of the king and what more symbolic representation of a king than a crown? They represented the crown. In fact the title comes from the Latin used in the legal document that establishes their legitimacy but the English pronunciation of the office was crowner for centuries. Their duties were not those of present day coroners for three reasons. First of all scientific methods to investigate homicide were centuries away. Second, in those days there were often justifiable reasons to kill someone. From a king’s point of view the death of a few commoners was only important if it began to cause unrest or interfere with tax collection. And tax collection was the third reason. The king was in jail for heaven sake. The primary role of a coroner was to make sure that what was owed to the king was paid to the king. The way much of the tax base was raised was through a kind of travelling circus where courts of justice traveled around the country and imposed fines for breaking the laws. This was a big job and it took a full seven years for the court to roam all around England and start again. In seven years a lot of details could be forgotten and when details were forgotten that meant fines and taxes were not collected. So the role of the coroner was to keep meticulous records of everything that went on in their locality so that fines could be levied when the time came. The reason that modern coroners have a preoccupation with dead bodies is that in medieval England death was a major source of income for the government. I suppose if you could catch a murderer that was good but more important to the tax base was whether all the witnesses, relatives and neighbors had acted according to the complex rules in place surrounding a death. This was all death, not just death by evil deed. If your old grandma died at 100 years old and you didn’t follow the specific procedure required you could pay a hefty fine. If somehow the whole village wasn’t seen by the court to have acted in the “correct” manner, the whole village could be fined. So the old saying is true: nothing is certain but death and taxes. In an earlier episode I reported on the office of sheriff and how it went from powerful to corrupt 1000 years ago. In the year 1194 King Richard the Lionheart saw it necessary to bring into law a new system of administrators. He needed to do so because he needed cash and the existing system of sheriffs had been bleeding him dry just when he needed the money to pay off some European kings who where holding him hostage. In the old Robin Hood stories the Sheriff of Nottingham is depicted as a dirty rotten thief but King Richard is held up as a super fellow away from the country doing his duty fighting the dirty rotten heathens who dare to live in the holy land. Alternate opinions now relate Richard the Lionheart to be a fairly rotten king himself when it came to England. He only spent about 4 months of his entire reign in the country and never spoke a word of English. But whether he was good or bad, his sheriffs were ripping him off and had to be replaced. The new officials brought in to clean up were called coroners. Not because the sheriffs had been murdering delinquent taxpayers but because the etymology of coroner is “crown.” These new guys were representatives of the king and what more symbolic representation of a king than a crown? They represented the crown. In fact the title comes from the Latin used in the legal document that establishes their legitimacy but the English pronunciation of the office was crowner for centuries. Their duties were not those of present day coroners for three reasons. First of all scientific methods to investigate homicide were centuries away. Second, in those days there were often justifiable reasons to kill someone. From a king’s point of view the death of a few commoners was only important if it began to cause unrest or interfere with tax collection. And tax collection was the third reason. The king was in jail for heaven sake. The primary role of a coroner was to make sure that what was owed to the king was paid to the king. The way much of the tax base was raised was through a kind of travelling circus where courts of justice traveled around the country and imposed fines for breaking the laws. This was a big job and it took a full seven years for the court to roam all around England and start again. In seven years a lot of details could be forgotten and when details were forgotten that meant fines and taxes were not collected. So the role of the coroner was to keep meticulous records of everything that went on in their locality so that fines could be levied when the time came. The reason that modern coroners have a preoccupation with dead bodies is that in medieval England death was a major source of income for the government. I suppose if you could catch a murderer that was good but more important to the tax base was whether all the witnesses, relatives and neighbors had acted according to the complex rules in place surrounding a death. This was all death, not just death by evil deed. If your old grandma died at 100 years old and you didn’t follow the specific procedure required you could pay a hefty fine. If somehow the whole village wasn’t seen by the court to have acted in the “correct” manner, the whole village could be fined. So the old saying is true: nothing is certain but death and taxes. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-15,25131829 Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:01:47 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25126454-Greek-%E2%80%93-podictionary-95 You know, the country we know as Greece doesn’t call itself Greece, nor do its people call themselves Greeks. We call them that because the Romans called them something very much like that in Latin. It’s sort of funny how English has a whole pile of words that trace their roots back to Greek, but not the word Greek itself. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us, that Aristotle told them, that there was an early tribe from the biggest island in Greece who migrated or traded with people who were in what is now Italy. And that this tribe came from a place called Graia, said to mean “ancient” and also to have been the oldest city in Greece. This would have been before Greek civilization really got into high gear, and thus also before the Roman Empire took over the reins of power. The peoples who later became the Romans took this name of the starting point of the newcomers and they kept using it over the centuries. Back then, as now, the Greeks called themselves Ellinas or Hellinas. For ... You know, the country we know as Greece doesn’t call itself Greece, nor do its people call themselves Greeks. We call them that because the Romans called them something very much like that in Latin. It’s sort of funny how English has a whole pile of words that trace their roots back to Greek, but not the word Greek itself. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us, that Aristotle told them, that there was an early tribe from the biggest island in Greece who migrated or traded with people who were in what is now Italy. And that this tribe came from a place called Graia, said to mean “ancient” and also to have been the oldest city in Greece. This would have been before Greek civilization really got into high gear, and thus also before the Roman Empire took over the reins of power. The peoples who later became the Romans took this name of the starting point of the newcomers and they kept using it over the centuries. Back then, as now, the Greeks called themselves Ellinas or Hellinas. For many of us Greek is a bit of an impenetrable language. This is likely because along with sounding different than English, it doesn’t even use the same alphabet. Hence William Shakespeare’s phrase from Julius Caesar “it’s Greek to me” meaning “I can’t understand it.” As Steve Martin once said of French “they’ve got a different word for everything.” Steve Martin’s observation is also true of the French equivalent expression to “it’s Greek to me.”  Having not had the benefit of William Shakespeare to set the trend, the French instead, when they don’t understand something, say c’est du chinois meaning “it’s Chinese.” You know, the country we know as Greece doesn’t call itself Greece, nor do its people call themselves Greeks. We call them that because the Romans called them something very much like that in Latin. It’s sort of funny how English has a whole pile of words that trace their roots back to Greek, but not the word Greek itself. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us, that Aristotle told them, that there was an early tribe from the biggest island in Greece who migrated or traded with people who were in what is now Italy. And that this tribe came from a place called Graia, said to mean “ancient” and also to have been the oldest city in Greece. This would have been before Greek civilization really got into high gear, and thus also before the Roman Empire took over the reins of power. The peoples who later became the Romans took this name of the starting point of the newcomers and they kept using it over the centuries. Back then, as now, the Greeks called themselves Ellinas or Hellinas. For many of us Greek is a bit of an impenetrable language. This is likely because along with sounding different than English, it doesn’t even use the same alphabet. Hence William Shakespeare’s phrase from Julius Caesar “it’s Greek to me” meaning “I can’t understand it.” As Steve Martin once said of French “they’ve got a different word for everything.” Steve Martin’s observation is also true of the French equivalent expression to “it’s Greek to me.”  Having not had the benefit of William Shakespeare to set the trend, the French instead, when they don’t understand something, say c’est du chinois meaning “it’s Chinese.” tag:odeo.com,2009-09-14,25126454 Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25121052-sheriff-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1022 I will first shamelessly borrow from Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary: Sheriff: “In America the chief executive office of a country, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.” The Devil’s Dictionary then includes this little poem by one J. Milton Sloluck” John Elmer Pettibone Cajee (I write of him with little glee) Was just as bad as he could be. ‘Twas frequently remarked: “I swon! The sun has never looked upon So bad a man as Neighbor John.” A sinner through and through, he had This added fault: it made him mad To know another man was bad. In such a case he thought it right To rise at any hour of night And quench that wicked person’s light. Despite the town’s entreaties, he Would hale him to the nearest tree And leave him swinging wide and free. Or sometimes, if the humor came, A luckless wight’s reluctant frame Was given to the cheerful flame. While it was turning nic... I will first shamelessly borrow from Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary: Sheriff: “In America the chief executive office of a country, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.” The Devil’s Dictionary then includes this little poem by one J. Milton Sloluck” John Elmer Pettibone Cajee (I write of him with little glee) Was just as bad as he could be. ‘Twas frequently remarked: “I swon! The sun has never looked upon So bad a man as Neighbor John.” A sinner through and through, he had This added fault: it made him mad To know another man was bad. In such a case he thought it right To rise at any hour of night And quench that wicked person’s light. Despite the town’s entreaties, he Would hale him to the nearest tree And leave him swinging wide and free. Or sometimes, if the humor came, A luckless wight’s reluctant frame Was given to the cheerful flame. While it was turning nice and brown, All unconcerned John met the frown Of that austere and righteous town. “How sad,” his neighbors said, “that he So scornful of the law should be — An anar c, h, i, s, t.” (That is the way that they preferred To utter the abhorrent word, So strong the aversion that it stirred.) “Resolved,” they said, continuing, “That Badman John must cease this thing Of having his unlawful fling. “Now, by these sacred relics” — here Each man had out a souvenir Got at a lynching yesteryear — “By these we swear he shall forsake His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache By sins of rope and torch and stake. “We’ll tie his red right hand until He’ll have small freedom to fulfil The mandates of his lawless will.” So, in convention then and there, They named him Sheriff. The affair Was opened, it is said, with prayer. So, on to the etymology of the word sheriff. There were sheriffs in England before the Norman Conquest of 1066. Although the impression we have of sheriffs comes from the movies and involves a five pointed star and a pair of six-shooters the historical sheriffs were more administrators than police chiefs. The word sheriff evolved out of shire reeve. A shire was an administrative district and the reeve was a local high official representing the king. Contrary to the moral of the poem I just read (above) the convention that power corrupts was the undoing of England’s system of sheriffs. You remember the story of Robin Hood and his enemy the Sheriff of Nottingham. In those old tales the Sheriff of Nottingham is depicted as a bad guy and this is actually representative of the situation on the ground at the time of the rule of King Richard the Lionhearted. Richard got himself locked up in continental Europe and had to pay a huge ransom to get out of jail. England was doubly poor because they’d already been paying for Richard’s involvement in the Crusades plus all the sheriffs who collected the taxes were cooking the books and keeping most of the loot for themselves. Richard’s representative in England, the guy who actually ran the place, was Hubert Walter Archbishop of Canterbury. He needed cash and he needed it badly. So he fired each and every sheriff and brought in a new system that wouldn’t skim so much of the tax before it got to the king’s ransom fund. The new system used a different kind of local official called coroners. Thus the office of sheriff fell from grace. I’ll talk about coroners in an upcoming episode. I will first shamelessly borrow from Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary: Sheriff: “In America the chief executive office of a country, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.” The Devil’s Dictionary then includes this little poem by one J. Milton Sloluck” John Elmer Pettibone Cajee (I write of him with little glee) Was just as bad as he could be. ‘Twas frequently remarked: “I swon! The sun has never looked upon So bad a man as Neighbor John.” A sinner through and through, he had This added fault: it made him mad To know another man was bad. In such a case he thought it right To rise at any hour of night And quench that wicked person’s light. Despite the town’s entreaties, he Would hale him to the nearest tree And leave him swinging wide and free. Or sometimes, if the humor came, A luckless wight’s reluctant frame Was given to the cheerful flame. While it was turning nice and brown, All unconcerned John met the frown Of that austere and righteous town. “How sad,” his neighbors said, “that he So scornful of the law should be — An anar c, h, i, s, t.” (That is the way that they preferred To utter the abhorrent word, So strong the aversion that it stirred.) “Resolved,” they said, continuing, “That Badman John must cease this thing Of having his unlawful fling. “Now, by these sacred relics” — here Each man had out a souvenir Got at a lynching yesteryear — “By these we swear he shall forsake His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache By sins of rope and torch and stake. “We’ll tie his red right hand until He’ll have small freedom to fulfil The mandates of his lawless will.” So, in convention then and there, They named him Sheriff. The affair Was opened, it is said, with prayer. So, on to the etymology of the word sheriff. There were sheriffs in England before the Norman Conquest of 1066. Although the impression we have of sheriffs comes from the movies and involves a five pointed star and a pair of six-shooters the historical sheriffs were more administrators than police chiefs. The word sheriff evolved out of shire reeve. A shire was an administrative district and the reeve was a local high official representing the king. Contrary to the moral of the poem I just read (above) the convention that power corrupts was the undoing of England’s system of sheriffs. You remember the story of Robin Hood and his enemy the Sheriff of Nottingham. In those old tales the Sheriff of Nottingham is depicted as a bad guy and this is actually representative of the situation on the ground at the time of the rule of King Richard the Lionhearted. Richard got himself locked up in continental Europe and had to pay a huge ransom to get out of jail. England was doubly poor because they’d already been paying for Richard’s involvement in the Crusades plus all the sheriffs who collected the taxes were cooking the books and keeping most of the loot for themselves. Richard’s representative in England, the guy who actually ran the place, was Hubert Walter Archbishop of Canterbury. He needed cash and he needed it badly. So he fired each and every sheriff and brought in a new system that wouldn’t skim so much of the tax before it got to the king’s ransom fund. The new system used a different kind of local official called coroners. Thus the office of sheriff fell from grace. I’ll talk about coroners in an upcoming episode. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-13,25121052 Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:01:24 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25105252-cranberry-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1021 Do you suppose that manufacturers of juices would have anticipated a big market for something called marshwhort cocktail? How about fenberry cocktail? These were the names in England of the native berries now known as cranberries. Although the subspecies is different, North American cranberries were similar enough to European varieties that when Europeans first began to harvest cranberries in North America they named them according to a German word that meant “crane berry.” The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that there was already a trade importing cranberries from North America back to England by 1686 and that the word first shows up as an English word in 1672. So it was from North America that England adopted the originally German name for these berries. Even Anatoly Liberman blogging at the Oxford University Press blog asks the question what exactly cranberries have to do with cranes. The Century Dictionary says “the reason of the name is not obvious.” So no one knows for a f... Do you suppose that manufacturers of juices would have anticipated a big market for something called marshwhort cocktail? How about fenberry cocktail? These were the names in England of the native berries now known as cranberries. Although the subspecies is different, North American cranberries were similar enough to European varieties that when Europeans first began to harvest cranberries in North America they named them according to a German word that meant “crane berry.” The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that there was already a trade importing cranberries from North America back to England by 1686 and that the word first shows up as an English word in 1672. So it was from North America that England adopted the originally German name for these berries. Even Anatoly Liberman blogging at the Oxford University Press blog asks the question what exactly cranberries have to do with cranes. The Century Dictionary says “the reason of the name is not obvious.” So no one knows for a fact why cranberries are named on honor of these tall birds but here are a few theories. Some speculate that the flowers of the plant have stamens that resemble the bill of a crane. I myself wonder about the fact that—as indicated by their earlier English names marshwhort and fenberry—these plants grow in swampy areas. Like most long legged, long necked, long billed birds, cranes like to hunt in shallow water. Looking up crane diets I see that they like to eat all sorts of things including berries. I haven’t seen any references that indicate cranes don’t eat cranberries. Why not name cranberries after cranes? Do you suppose that manufacturers of juices would have anticipated a big market for something called marshwhort cocktail? How about fenberry cocktail? These were the names in England of the native berries now known as cranberries. Although the subspecies is different, North American cranberries were similar enough to European varieties that when Europeans first began to harvest cranberries in North America they named them according to a German word that meant “crane berry.” The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that there was already a trade importing cranberries from North America back to England by 1686 and that the word first shows up as an English word in 1672. So it was from North America that England adopted the originally German name for these berries. Even Anatoly Liberman blogging at the Oxford University Press blog asks the question what exactly cranberries have to do with cranes. The Century Dictionary says “the reason of the name is not obvious.” So no one knows for a fact why cranberries are named on honor of these tall birds but here are a few theories. Some speculate that the flowers of the plant have stamens that resemble the bill of a crane. I myself wonder about the fact that—as indicated by their earlier English names marshwhort and fenberry—these plants grow in swampy areas. Like most long legged, long necked, long billed birds, cranes like to hunt in shallow water. Looking up crane diets I see that they like to eat all sorts of things including berries. I haven’t seen any references that indicate cranes don’t eat cranberries. Why not name cranberries after cranes? tag:odeo.com,2009-09-10,25105252 Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:01:13 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25100066-petard-%E2%80%93-podictionary-94 Now this isn’t a word we come across by itself very often. Invariably it is used in the phrase hoist by his own petard. People have been using this expression for 400 years ever since William Shakespeare used it in Hamlet. It generally means to get caught in one’s own trap. Now, ignorant as I am, I had always gotten a feeling that the literal meaning of the expression stemmed from lifting something—hoist.” I imagined someone caught by the back of their waistband, suspended and struggling to get free and so by extension I assumed one’s petard was ones “rear end.” It turns out that The Oxford English Dictionary chose this as one of its interesting words or phrases in its December 2003 newsletter. There they explain that a petard was a sort of a small bomb that had been used to break down doors when storming castles. So much for my theory. They also point out that the word hoist didn’t exist much before the emergence of the expression and that it took over from an earlier word hoise wi... Now this isn’t a word we come across by itself very often. Invariably it is used in the phrase hoist by his own petard. People have been using this expression for 400 years ever since William Shakespeare used it in Hamlet. It generally means to get caught in one’s own trap. Now, ignorant as I am, I had always gotten a feeling that the literal meaning of the expression stemmed from lifting something—hoist.” I imagined someone caught by the back of their waistband, suspended and struggling to get free and so by extension I assumed one’s petard was ones “rear end.” It turns out that The Oxford English Dictionary chose this as one of its interesting words or phrases in its December 2003 newsletter. There they explain that a petard was a sort of a small bomb that had been used to break down doors when storming castles. So much for my theory. They also point out that the word hoist didn’t exist much before the emergence of the expression and that it took over from an earlier word hoise with the same meaning. So hoist by his own petard means “blown up,” and “lifted off the ground by his own little bomb.” But there’s more that the OED doesn’t say. I see this little gem from both The American Heritage Dictionary and John Ayto’s Word Origins:  Evidently the reason this little bomb was named a petard goes back to a Latin word pedere meaning “fart” (a different kind of small explosion). The root seems to have an ancestor word right back into Indo-European. This made me feel a little better about my misapprehension that petard meant “rear end.” Now this isn’t a word we come across by itself very often. Invariably it is used in the phrase hoist by his own petard. People have been using this expression for 400 years ever since William Shakespeare used it in Hamlet. It generally means to get caught in one’s own trap. Now, ignorant as I am, I had always gotten a feeling that the literal meaning of the expression stemmed from lifting something—hoist.” I imagined someone caught by the back of their waistband, suspended and struggling to get free and so by extension I assumed one’s petard was ones “rear end.” It turns out that The Oxford English Dictionary chose this as one of its interesting words or phrases in its December 2003 newsletter. There they explain that a petard was a sort of a small bomb that had been used to break down doors when storming castles. So much for my theory. They also point out that the word hoist didn’t exist much before the emergence of the expression and that it took over from an earlier word hoise with the same meaning. So hoist by his own petard means “blown up,” and “lifted off the ground by his own little bomb.” But there’s more that the OED doesn’t say. I see this little gem from both The American Heritage Dictionary and John Ayto’s Word Origins:  Evidently the reason this little bomb was named a petard goes back to a Latin word pedere meaning “fart” (a different kind of small explosion). The root seems to have an ancestor word right back into Indo-European. This made me feel a little better about my misapprehension that petard meant “rear end.” tag:odeo.com,2009-09-09,25100066 Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25094497-karate-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1020 I knew a guy in school who used to say that he knew karate. He then went on to say he also knew six other Japanese words. I hated this cheesy joke as well as several others he used to use. I now realize that I also make cheesy jokes and perhaps I hated his because I wish I’d said them first. He was making a bad joke but now that I’ve spent a little time with my dictionaries I can truthfully say that I know karate; the word at least. As I said this is a word English has borrowed from Japan and according to the Merriam Webster Unabridged dictionary karate is “a Japanese art of self-defense in which kicks and openhanded blows are delivered especially to vulnerable parts of the body.” All the dictionaries agree that karate breaks down into two other Japanese words kara meaning “empty” and te meaning “hand.” None of the dictionaries go further than that. Why might an art of self-defense be named “empty hand”? The Merriam Webster definition might give a clue. They specify “openhanded blow... I knew a guy in school who used to say that he knew karate. He then went on to say he also knew six other Japanese words. I hated this cheesy joke as well as several others he used to use. I now realize that I also make cheesy jokes and perhaps I hated his because I wish I’d said them first. He was making a bad joke but now that I’ve spent a little time with my dictionaries I can truthfully say that I know karate; the word at least. As I said this is a word English has borrowed from Japan and according to the Merriam Webster Unabridged dictionary karate is “a Japanese art of self-defense in which kicks and openhanded blows are delivered especially to vulnerable parts of the body.” All the dictionaries agree that karate breaks down into two other Japanese words kara meaning “empty” and te meaning “hand.” None of the dictionaries go further than that. Why might an art of self-defense be named “empty hand”? The Merriam Webster definition might give a clue. They specify “openhanded blows” and clearly a karate chop shows the user to have an empty hand. But other dictionaries define karate just a little differently.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines karate as “a Japanese system of unarmed combat…” I suppose that being unarmed means that one’s hands are empty of weapons and this too could be a reason for naming the technique “empty hand.” After all, kicks and closed handed punches are also part of the karate arsenal. At the time I checked Wikipedia contained a discussion that began with the idea that “empty hand” is consistent with weaponless combat. But the article then claims that the originally the word didn’t mean “empty hand” but instead meant “Chinese hand.” The idea being that there was a period of history when things Chinese were seen as being of high quality in Japan. It wasn’t until 1955 that the word karate is recorded as being used as an English word. Both this late date and the shallowness of most of the authoritative etymologies underline how unfamiliar western culture has historically been with cultures of the Far East. My admission earlier that perhaps I envied my friend’s bad joke reminds me of a story. I don’t think it’s really a true story. My research can’t turn up what the original quote actually was that I’m about to tell you about. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story. Supposedly the artist James McNeill Whistler—the painter of Whistler’s Mother—was a good friend of Oscar Wilde. Both men were reputed to be pretty quick with their jokes. The story goes that once Whistler said something witty and Wilde said “I wish I’d said that” to which Whistler replied “You will, Oscar, you will.” I knew a guy in school who used to say that he knew karate. He then went on to say he also knew six other Japanese words. I hated this cheesy joke as well as several others he used to use. I now realize that I also make cheesy jokes and perhaps I hated his because I wish I’d said them first. He was making a bad joke but now that I’ve spent a little time with my dictionaries I can truthfully say that I know karate; the word at least. As I said this is a word English has borrowed from Japan and according to the Merriam Webster Unabridged dictionary karate is “a Japanese art of self-defense in which kicks and openhanded blows are delivered especially to vulnerable parts of the body.” All the dictionaries agree that karate breaks down into two other Japanese words kara meaning “empty” and te meaning “hand.” None of the dictionaries go further than that. Why might an art of self-defense be named “empty hand”? The Merriam Webster definition might give a clue. They specify “openhanded blows” and clearly a karate chop shows the user to have an empty hand. But other dictionaries define karate just a little differently.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines karate as “a Japanese system of unarmed combat…” I suppose that being unarmed means that one’s hands are empty of weapons and this too could be a reason for naming the technique “empty hand.” After all, kicks and closed handed punches are also part of the karate arsenal. At the time I checked Wikipedia contained a discussion that began with the idea that “empty hand” is consistent with weaponless combat. But the article then claims that the originally the word didn’t mean “empty hand” but instead meant “Chinese hand.” The idea being that there was a period of history when things Chinese were seen as being of high quality in Japan. It wasn’t until 1955 that the word karate is recorded as being used as an English word. Both this late date and the shallowness of most of the authoritative etymologies underline how unfamiliar western culture has historically been with cultures of the Far East. My admission earlier that perhaps I envied my friend’s bad joke reminds me of a story. I don’t think it’s really a true story. My research can’t turn up what the original quote actually was that I’m about to tell you about. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story. Supposedly the artist James McNeill Whistler—the painter of Whistler’s Mother—was a good friend of Oscar Wilde. Both men were reputed to be pretty quick with their jokes. The story goes that once Whistler said something witty and Wilde said “I wish I’d said that” to which Whistler replied “You will, Oscar, you will.” tag:odeo.com,2009-09-08,25094497 Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:01:40 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25088264-gap-%E2%80%93-podictionary-93 It’s nice to come across a word once in a while that doesn’t seem to trace its ancestry back to Latin and Greek.  Gap is one such word.  Appearing in English in 1380, the word gap seems to have come to England with the Vikings where in Old Norse it meant “a wide mouthed outcry” as well as “a chasm.” It’s first use as an English word was to refer to a hole in a wall or hedge. In an earlier episode I expanded on the word gas and how it seemed to have come from the Greek word chaos. The Norse history of gap has a grazing intersection with chaos, in that as The Oxford English Dictionary points out, the only time gap meant a “gaping space” in Old Norse, was when referring to something called the Ginnunga Gap. I had never heard of the Ginnunga Gap but it is described in such references as the Catholic Encyclopedia and Wikipedia as a huge dark pit that made up most of the universe before the creation of the world; at least in Norse mythology. Evidently several rivers flowed into the Ginnun... It’s nice to come across a word once in a while that doesn’t seem to trace its ancestry back to Latin and Greek.  Gap is one such word.  Appearing in English in 1380, the word gap seems to have come to England with the Vikings where in Old Norse it meant “a wide mouthed outcry” as well as “a chasm.” It’s first use as an English word was to refer to a hole in a wall or hedge. In an earlier episode I expanded on the word gas and how it seemed to have come from the Greek word chaos. The Norse history of gap has a grazing intersection with chaos, in that as The Oxford English Dictionary points out, the only time gap meant a “gaping space” in Old Norse, was when referring to something called the Ginnunga Gap. I had never heard of the Ginnunga Gap but it is described in such references as the Catholic Encyclopedia and Wikipedia as a huge dark pit that made up most of the universe before the creation of the world; at least in Norse mythology. Evidently several rivers flowed into the Ginnunga Gap but their waters froze as they approached so that there was a constant roaring as they formed huge blocks of ice which tumbled and crashed into the dark emptiness. Greek mythology lacks the ice and cold of Norse mythology but the connection between the Ginnunga Gap and Greece is through chaos. In classical Greek chaos had a sense not just of “disorder” as we interpret it now, but also of emptiness; as before the formation of the world—like Ginnunga Gap. I’ve seen some references to an etymological connection between gap and chaos back to a common Indo-European root, but none of the authoritative etymological references make that connection. Before I let go of the word gap I thought I would include what Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has to say. They identify the term gap year to mean a time between high school and college that some people take to travel. Personally, I took the time out after finishing university and since I was traveling with my girlfriend before we got married, my mother has always referred to this as our “funnymoon.” It’s nice to come across a word once in a while that doesn’t seem to trace its ancestry back to Latin and Greek.  Gap is one such word.  Appearing in English in 1380, the word gap seems to have come to England with the Vikings where in Old Norse it meant “a wide mouthed outcry” as well as “a chasm.” It’s first use as an English word was to refer to a hole in a wall or hedge. In an earlier episode I expanded on the word gas and how it seemed to have come from the Greek word chaos. The Norse history of gap has a grazing intersection with chaos, in that as The Oxford English Dictionary points out, the only time gap meant a “gaping space” in Old Norse, was when referring to something called the Ginnunga Gap. I had never heard of the Ginnunga Gap but it is described in such references as the Catholic Encyclopedia and Wikipedia as a huge dark pit that made up most of the universe before the creation of the world; at least in Norse mythology. Evidently several rivers flowed into the Ginnunga Gap but their waters froze as they approached so that there was a constant roaring as they formed huge blocks of ice which tumbled and crashed into the dark emptiness. Greek mythology lacks the ice and cold of Norse mythology but the connection between the Ginnunga Gap and Greece is through chaos. In classical Greek chaos had a sense not just of “disorder” as we interpret it now, but also of emptiness; as before the formation of the world—like Ginnunga Gap. I’ve seen some references to an etymological connection between gap and chaos back to a common Indo-European root, but none of the authoritative etymological references make that connection. Before I let go of the word gap I thought I would include what Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has to say. They identify the term gap year to mean a time between high school and college that some people take to travel. Personally, I took the time out after finishing university and since I was traveling with my girlfriend before we got married, my mother has always referred to this as our “funnymoon.” tag:odeo.com,2009-09-07,25088264 Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25083354-Chardonnay-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1019 The heavyweights of the English dictionary world (The Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam Webster for instance) can only trace the use of the word Chardonnay back only to 1911 in English when it appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica. These English dictionaries haven’t made too much progress for this word in the etymology department saying only that the origin is French. Chardonnay has been grown for centuries in France and is now one of the most popular white wines in the world. The 1911 date is a reflection on an earlier lack of sophistication among English speaking wine drinkers rather than on the antiquity of the grape type. The Dictionnaire des Noms de Cépages de France finds French citations dating back to 1685 for the grape name. Both this and the great French Robert dictionary identify Chardonnay as being applied to the grape based on a place name. Between the cities of Dijon and Lyon in France, there is a very small village called Chardonnay that is reported to take its ... The heavyweights of the English dictionary world (The Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam Webster for instance) can only trace the use of the word Chardonnay back only to 1911 in English when it appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica. These English dictionaries haven’t made too much progress for this word in the etymology department saying only that the origin is French. Chardonnay has been grown for centuries in France and is now one of the most popular white wines in the world. The 1911 date is a reflection on an earlier lack of sophistication among English speaking wine drinkers rather than on the antiquity of the grape type. The Dictionnaire des Noms de Cépages de France finds French citations dating back to 1685 for the grape name. Both this and the great French Robert dictionary identify Chardonnay as being applied to the grape based on a place name. Between the cities of Dijon and Lyon in France, there is a very small village called Chardonnay that is reported to take its name from an earlier Latin name for the place cardonnacum. The Latin name likely arose based on a personal name Cardus, thought to be Gaulish. However, carduus is also the Latin word for “thistle,” so some people believe the ultimate meaning of Chardonnay to be “a place of thistles.” The heavyweights of the English dictionary world (The Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam Webster for instance) can only trace the use of the word Chardonnay back only to 1911 in English when it appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica. These English dictionaries haven’t made too much progress for this word in the etymology department saying only that the origin is French. Chardonnay has been grown for centuries in France and is now one of the most popular white wines in the world. The 1911 date is a reflection on an earlier lack of sophistication among English speaking wine drinkers rather than on the antiquity of the grape type. The Dictionnaire des Noms de Cépages de France finds French citations dating back to 1685 for the grape name. Both this and the great French Robert dictionary identify Chardonnay as being applied to the grape based on a place name. Between the cities of Dijon and Lyon in France, there is a very small village called Chardonnay that is reported to take its name from an earlier Latin name for the place cardonnacum. The Latin name likely arose based on a personal name Cardus, thought to be Gaulish. However, carduus is also the Latin word for “thistle,” so some people believe the ultimate meaning of Chardonnay to be “a place of thistles.” tag:odeo.com,2009-09-06,25083354 Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:01:32 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25069163-door-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1018 A door is so basic to our experience that the entry I came across at Urbandictionary basically insulted the user for having to look it up. Because it’s a basic part of human life we shouldn’t be surprised that the word has been around for a very long time. In English it is certainly from Old English, appearing first in the written record in Beowulf according to The Oxford English Dictionary. But a door is like an egg in that it begs the question, which came first, the door panel or the doorway, at least insofar as having the word door attached to the thing. We use the word door to apply interchangeably to both of these things and according to The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture so did the ancient Greeks and Romans with their words for “door.” Those words were thyra and fores respectively and if you listen to the basic sound of the words—door, thyra, door, fores—you can hear their common heritage. In the podictionary episode on the word forfeit I said... A door is so basic to our experience that the entry I came across at Urbandictionary basically insulted the user for having to look it up. Because it’s a basic part of human life we shouldn’t be surprised that the word has been around for a very long time. In English it is certainly from Old English, appearing first in the written record in Beowulf according to The Oxford English Dictionary. But a door is like an egg in that it begs the question, which came first, the door panel or the doorway, at least insofar as having the word door attached to the thing. We use the word door to apply interchangeably to both of these things and according to The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture so did the ancient Greeks and Romans with their words for “door.” Those words were thyra and fores respectively and if you listen to the basic sound of the words—door, thyra, door, fores—you can hear their common heritage. In the podictionary episode on the word forfeit I said that word’s etymology meant “outside the law” and that the for portion was at the root of our word forest because a forest was outside. While that’s true, another twist on this relationship can be seen in the Latin word for “door” fores; what is “outside” is in this case more literally “outdoors.” So the concept and word for a door goes back as far as we can trace anything and shows up in Indo-European as dhwer. This is also a word that can tell us a little bit about the world of those long ago people who actually laid the groundwork for all of these Indo-European words. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots the word dhwer is thought to have originally designated the entrance not to an Indo-European house, but to the enclosure inside which that house stood; so that would be like a garden gate, or more likely the gate to a kind of barnyard or corral. Moreover The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots says that the word seems to have been plural and at Etymonline I see that fact has lead to speculation that early doors were not single panels, but instead came in pairs. In terms of my chicken and egg analogy both of these facts suggest door first was applied to the door panel, not the doorway. For one thing you would be unlikely to refer to a pair of doorways. For another, although logic might suggest that primitive builders would have had huts with openings before they invented doors to close them, a barnyard isn’t of much use if it doesn’t have a gate, the domestic animals can get out and the wild animals can get in. A door is so basic to our experience that the entry I came across at Urbandictionary basically insulted the user for having to look it up. Because it’s a basic part of human life we shouldn’t be surprised that the word has been around for a very long time. In English it is certainly from Old English, appearing first in the written record in Beowulf according to The Oxford English Dictionary. But a door is like an egg in that it begs the question, which came first, the door panel or the doorway, at least insofar as having the word door attached to the thing. We use the word door to apply interchangeably to both of these things and according to The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture so did the ancient Greeks and Romans with their words for “door.” Those words were thyra and fores respectively and if you listen to the basic sound of the words—door, thyra, door, fores—you can hear their common heritage. In the podictionary episode on the word forfeit I said that word’s etymology meant “outside the law” and that the for portion was at the root of our word forest because a forest was outside. While that’s true, another twist on this relationship can be seen in the Latin word for “door” fores; what is “outside” is in this case more literally “outdoors.” So the concept and word for a door goes back as far as we can trace anything and shows up in Indo-European as dhwer. This is also a word that can tell us a little bit about the world of those long ago people who actually laid the groundwork for all of these Indo-European words. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots the word dhwer is thought to have originally designated the entrance not to an Indo-European house, but to the enclosure inside which that house stood; so that would be like a garden gate, or more likely the gate to a kind of barnyard or corral. Moreover The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots says that the word seems to have been plural and at Etymonline I see that fact has lead to speculation that early doors were not single panels, but instead came in pairs. In terms of my chicken and egg analogy both of these facts suggest door first was applied to the door panel, not the doorway. For one thing you would be unlikely to refer to a pair of doorways. For another, although logic might suggest that primitive builders would have had huts with openings before they invented doors to close them, a barnyard isn’t of much use if it doesn’t have a gate, the domestic animals can get out and the wild animals can get in. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-03,25069163 Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:01:40 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25064305-road-%E2%80%93-podictionary-92 The Devil’s Dictionary defines road as “A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.” Although the word road with the meaning we know didn’t appear until William Shakespeare wrote it down in 1596, he didn’t invent it.  In fact, although the exact routes by which the word came to our usage today are clouded by history, it’s tracks lead back to Indo-European origins. The very first appearance of road in English was back when King Alfred the Great used it when he was trying to bring literacy back to England around the year 888. In the centuries before this the Vikings had made a mess of English book learning with all their looting and pillaging, so Alfred decided that what was needed were a few books that were written in a language that people actually spoke; instead of only in Latin as were used in the churches. When Alfred used the word road he used it as we might use the noun ride. That is, he didn’t use it as a past tense... The Devil’s Dictionary defines road as “A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.” Although the word road with the meaning we know didn’t appear until William Shakespeare wrote it down in 1596, he didn’t invent it.  In fact, although the exact routes by which the word came to our usage today are clouded by history, it’s tracks lead back to Indo-European origins. The very first appearance of road in English was back when King Alfred the Great used it when he was trying to bring literacy back to England around the year 888. In the centuries before this the Vikings had made a mess of English book learning with all their looting and pillaging, so Alfred decided that what was needed were a few books that were written in a language that people actually spoke; instead of only in Latin as were used in the churches. When Alfred used the word road he used it as we might use the noun ride. That is, he didn’t use it as a past tense for ride as we would use rode, that would be a verb.  He stuck it in where we would say “did you have a nice ride.” So our road meaning “street” comes—one way or another—from the path upon which one rides. The OED expresses frustration that, although this word and meaning are clearly linked to roots beyond recorded history, they can’t find the twists and turns of its use before Shakespeare scribbled it into Henry IV. Other sources don’t seem to do any better, although the American Heritage Dictionary gives the clues that lead to the Indo-European sources. Similar words appear in many other languages, as would befit an Indo-European root. Road also appears in a similar meaning in several Old English words including streamrad, being the course a stream follows; and hweolrad, being the track left in the mud by a wheel. When Shakespeare first used road it was in the context of one of his minor characters complaining about his hotel accommodations. Quothe he: “I think this be the most villanous house in all London road for fleas: I am stung like a tench.” I won’t leave you hanging on what a “tench” is. It seems to have been a name for a kind of fish. The Devil’s Dictionary defines road as “A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.” Although the word road with the meaning we know didn’t appear until William Shakespeare wrote it down in 1596, he didn’t invent it.  In fact, although the exact routes by which the word came to our usage today are clouded by history, it’s tracks lead back to Indo-European origins. The very first appearance of road in English was back when King Alfred the Great used it when he was trying to bring literacy back to England around the year 888. In the centuries before this the Vikings had made a mess of English book learning with all their looting and pillaging, so Alfred decided that what was needed were a few books that were written in a language that people actually spoke; instead of only in Latin as were used in the churches. When Alfred used the word road he used it as we might use the noun ride. That is, he didn’t use it as a past tense for ride as we would use rode, that would be a verb.  He stuck it in where we would say “did you have a nice ride.” So our road meaning “street” comes—one way or another—from the path upon which one rides. The OED expresses frustration that, although this word and meaning are clearly linked to roots beyond recorded history, they can’t find the twists and turns of its use before Shakespeare scribbled it into Henry IV. Other sources don’t seem to do any better, although the American Heritage Dictionary gives the clues that lead to the Indo-European sources. Similar words appear in many other languages, as would befit an Indo-European root. Road also appears in a similar meaning in several Old English words including streamrad, being the course a stream follows; and hweolrad, being the track left in the mud by a wheel. When Shakespeare first used road it was in the context of one of his minor characters complaining about his hotel accommodations. Quothe he: “I think this be the most villanous house in all London road for fleas: I am stung like a tench.” I won’t leave you hanging on what a “tench” is. It seems to have been a name for a kind of fish. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-02,25064305 Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25058898-hi-jinks-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1017 Jeff wrote to ask me about the word hi-jinks, saying “its spelling and pronunciation don’t give me many clues. Is it Yiddish, perhaps?” Jeff spelled it hijinx and I do see that spelling here and there, but in most places I see it spelled hi-jinks, although I don’t know if that gives too many more clues as to the origin of the word. I’ll start by giving you some of what Urbandictionary has for this word. According to that crowd powered resource hi-jinks are “uninhibited mischief, capers and pranks,” The following etymologically appropriate example sentence is included: “We’ll get together, have a few drinks, and hijinks will ensue.” According to The Oxford English Dictionary hi-jinks was originally two words high and jinks. Evidently to jink was to do something nimbly and came from Scottish usage. This might include a fancy move on the dance floor or a quick dodge to elude a pursuer. When the word jink had the prefix high attached to it the jink seems to have referred specifica... Jeff wrote to ask me about the word hi-jinks, saying “its spelling and pronunciation don’t give me many clues. Is it Yiddish, perhaps?” Jeff spelled it hijinx and I do see that spelling here and there, but in most places I see it spelled hi-jinks, although I don’t know if that gives too many more clues as to the origin of the word. I’ll start by giving you some of what Urbandictionary has for this word. According to that crowd powered resource hi-jinks are “uninhibited mischief, capers and pranks,” The following etymologically appropriate example sentence is included: “We’ll get together, have a few drinks, and hijinks will ensue.” According to The Oxford English Dictionary hi-jinks was originally two words high and jinks. Evidently to jink was to do something nimbly and came from Scottish usage. This might include a fancy move on the dance floor or a quick dodge to elude a pursuer. When the word jink had the prefix high attached to it the jink seems to have referred specifically to a prank; so that a high jink was a “high prank.” The OED has this entry marked with a more specific kind of high prank that is said there to be an obsolete usage. They define that supposedly obsolete usage as “A name given to various frolics formerly indulged in at drinking parties.” It seems to me that the Urbandictionary entry shows that such usage isn’t all that obsolete. But the “various frolics” the OED mention weren’t the freeform drunken revels imagined by Urbandictionary users. There used to be rules. As the OED explains the usual approach was to roll dice to decide which of the drinkers had to perform some ridiculous task. Failure was an option but it would cost you either in cash or in sobriety since the penalty was that you had to empty your glass. Somehow this penalty doesn’t seem such and obsolete practice either. Since the word hi-jinks seems to represent “high pranks” I wondered what was so “high” about them. I don’t really have an answer although I do know the answer isn’t that these are pranks done when one is high. The use of the word high to denote some drug induced state of elation didn’t appear until 1936. The usage was unusual enough even in 1961 that one citation shows a popular periodical printed the word high in quotation marks. The OED also includes this dubious claim from a 1969 edition of the New Scientist “It is far safer to drive a car when high on marihuana than when drunk.” This unlucky piece of advice makes me think of a homonym jinx meaning to give someone bad luck. Whereas a Scottish jink only goes back a little more than 200 years, to jinx someone goes back to ancient Greek. Back then a jynx was actually a kind of woodpecker picked out as being especially useful in witchcraft because of its habit of twisting its neck to an unusual degree. They were used to cast spells and so to be jinxed came to mean to have had a curse cast on you. Jeff wrote to ask me about the word hi-jinks, saying “its spelling and pronunciation don’t give me many clues. Is it Yiddish, perhaps?” Jeff spelled it hijinx and I do see that spelling here and there, but in most places I see it spelled hi-jinks, although I don’t know if that gives too many more clues as to the origin of the word. I’ll start by giving you some of what Urbandictionary has for this word. According to that crowd powered resource hi-jinks are “uninhibited mischief, capers and pranks,” The following etymologically appropriate example sentence is included: “We’ll get together, have a few drinks, and hijinks will ensue.” According to The Oxford English Dictionary hi-jinks was originally two words high and jinks. Evidently to jink was to do something nimbly and came from Scottish usage. This might include a fancy move on the dance floor or a quick dodge to elude a pursuer. When the word jink had the prefix high attached to it the jink seems to have referred specifically to a prank; so that a high jink was a “high prank.” The OED has this entry marked with a more specific kind of high prank that is said there to be an obsolete usage. They define that supposedly obsolete usage as “A name given to various frolics formerly indulged in at drinking parties.” It seems to me that the Urbandictionary entry shows that such usage isn’t all that obsolete. But the “various frolics” the OED mention weren’t the freeform drunken revels imagined by Urbandictionary users. There used to be rules. As the OED explains the usual approach was to roll dice to decide which of the drinkers had to perform some ridiculous task. Failure was an option but it would cost you either in cash or in sobriety since the penalty was that you had to empty your glass. Somehow this penalty doesn’t seem such and obsolete practice either. Since the word hi-jinks seems to represent “high pranks” I wondered what was so “high” about them. I don’t really have an answer although I do know the answer isn’t that these are pranks done when one is high. The use of the word high to denote some drug induced state of elation didn’t appear until 1936. The usage was unusual enough even in 1961 that one citation shows a popular periodical printed the word high in quotation marks. The OED also includes this dubious claim from a 1969 edition of the New Scientist “It is far safer to drive a car when high on marihuana than when drunk.” This unlucky piece of advice makes me think of a homonym jinx meaning to give someone bad luck. Whereas a Scottish jink only goes back a little more than 200 years, to jinx someone goes back to ancient Greek. Back then a jynx was actually a kind of woodpecker picked out as being especially useful in witchcraft because of its habit of twisting its neck to an unusual degree. They were used to cast spells and so to be jinxed came to mean to have had a curse cast on you. tag:odeo.com,2009-09-01,25058898 Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:01:15 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts