http://www.odeo.com/channels/3241-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 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:01:21 -0700 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:01:21 -0700 History http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25381481-trapeze-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1049 Though swinging around in the top of circus tents might not be your idea of stability, stability is why a trapeze is called a trapeze. In an earlier episode I reviewed how the garment leotard was named after a trapeze artist Jules Leotard. Today I’ll look into why a trapeze is called a trapeze. When circus performers swing back and forth it is important that they don’t start to swing side to side. If they did then when they shot off into space expecting to grab their partner’s hands they’d find they were inches or feet off target and land in the net. To keep them swinging straight, the lines from which the trapeze hangs are mounted a little further apart from each other than the length of the trapeze bar. This allows the acrobat a little more control since leaning to one side or the other will steer the swinging motion. So when a trapeze is hanging unused its shape is a little wider at the top of the ropes than at the trapeze bar. A shape like this, where two sides are parallel and ... Though swinging around in the top of circus tents might not be your idea of stability, stability is why a trapeze is called a trapeze. In an earlier episode I reviewed how the garment leotard was named after a trapeze artist Jules Leotard. Today I’ll look into why a trapeze is called a trapeze. When circus performers swing back and forth it is important that they don’t start to swing side to side. If they did then when they shot off into space expecting to grab their partner’s hands they’d find they were inches or feet off target and land in the net. To keep them swinging straight, the lines from which the trapeze hangs are mounted a little further apart from each other than the length of the trapeze bar. This allows the acrobat a little more control since leaning to one side or the other will steer the swinging motion. So when a trapeze is hanging unused its shape is a little wider at the top of the ropes than at the trapeze bar. A shape like this, where two sides are parallel and two sides are not, is called a trapezoid. Or maybe it’s called a trapezium. Actually which word you use depends on which century you are living in and which language you speak, because for some reason in English the meanings of trapezoid and trapezium flipped like an acrobatic performer. In other places and in other times trapezium had parallel sides and trapezoid had no parallel sides. It hardly matters in the circus though. The parent of all of these words is Greek and means “table like.” I imagined that a table has its top parallel to the floor and maybe that’s why this geometrical shape was called a trapezoid, but I was wrong. Trapeza meaning “table” was once tetra peza meaning “four feet.” Though swinging around in the top of circus tents might not be your idea of stability, stability is why a trapeze is called a trapeze. In an earlier episode I reviewed how the garment leotard was named after a trapeze artist Jules Leotard. Today I’ll look into why a trapeze is called a trapeze. When circus performers swing back and forth it is important that they don’t start to swing side to side. If they did then when they shot off into space expecting to grab their partner’s hands they’d find they were inches or feet off target and land in the net. To keep them swinging straight, the lines from which the trapeze hangs are mounted a little further apart from each other than the length of the trapeze bar. This allows the acrobat a little more control since leaning to one side or the other will steer the swinging motion. So when a trapeze is hanging unused its shape is a little wider at the top of the ropes than at the trapeze bar. A shape like this, where two sides are parallel and two sides are not, is called a trapezoid. Or maybe it’s called a trapezium. Actually which word you use depends on which century you are living in and which language you speak, because for some reason in English the meanings of trapezoid and trapezium flipped like an acrobatic performer. In other places and in other times trapezium had parallel sides and trapezoid had no parallel sides. It hardly matters in the circus though. The parent of all of these words is Greek and means “table like.” I imagined that a table has its top parallel to the floor and maybe that’s why this geometrical shape was called a trapezoid, but I was wrong. Trapeza meaning “table” was once tetra peza meaning “four feet.” tag:odeo.com,2009-10-26,25381481 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:01:21 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25373538-yacht-and-special-behind-the-scenes-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1048 Special This is a special edition of podictionary in which I’m going to give you a little glimpse behind the scenes and explain a few changes that are coming up. After that I’ll include a bonus etymology. History Podictionary has been around for about 4½ years now but it hasn’t always been a blog and email subscription. The name “podictionary” was chosen because I was “podcasting the dictionary” and for more than half of its existence podictionary was available in audio format only. It is still the case that there are more listeners to podictionary than readers of podictionary. Most listeners picked up the show with the iPod software iTunes that automatically downloads each episode to their iPod or iPhone. I was lucky enough to have started podcasting before Apple included podcasts in their iTunes store and so as an early entrant I got quite good exposure. Because the majority of podictionary subscribers are listeners I’ve got an iPhone app in the works as well (I’ll let you know wh... Special This is a special edition of podictionary in which I’m going to give you a little glimpse behind the scenes and explain a few changes that are coming up. After that I’ll include a bonus etymology. History Podictionary has been around for about 4½ years now but it hasn’t always been a blog and email subscription. The name “podictionary” was chosen because I was “podcasting the dictionary” and for more than half of its existence podictionary was available in audio format only. It is still the case that there are more listeners to podictionary than readers of podictionary. Most listeners picked up the show with the iPod software iTunes that automatically downloads each episode to their iPod or iPhone. I was lucky enough to have started podcasting before Apple included podcasts in their iTunes store and so as an early entrant I got quite good exposure. Because the majority of podictionary subscribers are listeners I’ve got an iPhone app in the works as well (I’ll let you know when that’s released). When I began posting transcripts of the show it meant that podictionary started to get delivered to people in three different ways: as email; as audio via podcast; and by stumbling across podictionary in a Google search (actually there’s RSS too but most people don’t know about RSS) These new ways mean I’ve gained a whole new readership audience. That audience continues to grow. Thank you. Sponsorship Sustains Podictionary Originally the podcast was intended to promote my first book but podictionary has become much more than that. It is fun and I plan to keep doing it, but it is a good thing that it has grown to be more than a promotion vehicle because I can assure you that as a vehicle to drive book sales it couldn’t stand on its own. I’ve experimented with sponsors and Google advertising and what I’ve found is that the listening audience pays the freight. I have recently removed all advertising from the email because it doesn’t add up to anything anyway. If it were not for the sponsors who pay per download of the audio file I don’t think I could justify the time it takes to put podictionary together every day. So for all of you who’ve sent me messages saying you wanted to support podictionary with PayPal donations or something, the message is clear; if you like what you’re reading I would hope you’d like to listen to it even more. As the creator of podictionary I get paid for having listeners but I don’t get paid for having readers (funny old world isn’t it?). The fact that podictionary started out as a spoken product and not a written product explains why you’ll all too often find spelling mistakes, typos and grammatical errors here. I’ve given a lot of attention to producing clean sound but an editor has never been in the picture for podictionary. And yet I’d never dream of producing a book without several layers of editorial support. I suppose if podictionary generated ten times the revenue that it does I would hire an editor. I’m sure it could do nothing but good. Since you’ve been so patient as to stand all that rambling, here is  the etymology: This one is for the word yacht. Etymology of the Word Yacht I think to most people the word yacht evokes some sense of luxury. Unknown luxury for most of us because although we can pretty easily walk through the lobby of a swanky hotel, it is pretty rare that we get aboard someone’s yacht. The only yacht I’ve ever been on is The Royal Yacht Britannia. I wasn’t a guest of Queen Elizabeth or Prince Charles. The Royal Yacht Britannia is retired as a royal yacht and is now a tourist attraction tied up in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word yacht in English to 1557 and says it meant “a light fast-sailing ship, in early use especially for the conveyance of royal or other important persons.” So it may be this long-term association with royalty that gives the word yacht its patina of luxury. Then again it may be the price of the things. Yacht is alternately defined as a hole in the sea into which one pours money. Money is at the root of the etymology of yacht too because originally it wasn’t royalty that were cruising around in the ancestors of yachts but pirates. Yacht is spelled so strangely because it comes from a Germanic word that English speakers had a hard time rendering. Jaghtschip is traced by some dictionaries to Dutch and by other dictionaries to Norwegian. The literal meaning of jaghtschip is “hunting ship” or “chasing ship” and these were the kinds of ships most useful to pirates. Like so many words jaghtschip was abbreviated to jaght back in either Dutch or Norwegian before being picked up by English. Although some royal figures have indeed acted like pirates the reason a yacht became associated with royalty was likely not because it could be used to rob other ships. Instead, I think it was the speed of the things was what was attractive. Not only did royal or other important persons wish to be able to get away from chasing ships, there is prestige in a fast vessel. One last thing about the Royal Yacht Britannia: having seen the bed the Queen slept in I can tell you that what is sold as a queen sized bed isn’t. At least on board Britannia the real Queen slept in a single. Survey Finally, with respect to advertising within podcasts, a couple of groups are running a survey. You can get to that at either www.takethesurvey.com/rawvoice or www.takethesurvey.com/wizzard Rawvoice is kind of like my agent that finds advertisers for podcasters and Wizzard is where I host my files (in fact both companies do both things). The other group involved is the Association for Downloadable Media. The survey is supposed to take about 10 minutes and explores listener preferences in ad style, delivery and placement. Thanks for putting up with this unusual post. Special This is a special edition of podictionary in which I’m going to give you a little glimpse behind the scenes and explain a few changes that are coming up. After that I’ll include a bonus etymology. History Podictionary has been around for about 4½ years now but it hasn’t always been a blog and email subscription. The name “podictionary” was chosen because I was “podcasting the dictionary” and for more than half of its existence podictionary was available in audio format only. It is still the case that there are more listeners to podictionary than readers of podictionary. Most listeners picked up the show with the iPod software iTunes that automatically downloads each episode to their iPod or iPhone. I was lucky enough to have started podcasting before Apple included podcasts in their iTunes store and so as an early entrant I got quite good exposure. Because the majority of podictionary subscribers are listeners I’ve got an iPhone app in the works as well (I’ll let you know when that’s released). When I began posting transcripts of the show it meant that podictionary started to get delivered to people in three different ways: as email; as audio via podcast; and by stumbling across podictionary in a Google search (actually there’s RSS too but most people don’t know about RSS) These new ways mean I’ve gained a whole new readership audience. That audience continues to grow. Thank you. Sponsorship Sustains Podictionary Originally the podcast was intended to promote my first book but podictionary has become much more than that. It is fun and I plan to keep doing it, but it is a good thing that it has grown to be more than a promotion vehicle because I can assure you that as a vehicle to drive book sales it couldn’t stand on its own. I’ve experimented with sponsors and Google advertising and what I’ve found is that the listening audience pays the freight. I have recently removed all advertising from the email because it doesn’t add up to anything anyway. If it were not for the sponsors who pay per download of the audio file I don’t think I could justify the time it takes to put podictionary together every day. So for all of you who’ve sent me messages saying you wanted to support podictionary with PayPal donations or something, the message is clear; if you like what you’re reading I would hope you’d like to listen to it even more. As the creator of podictionary I get paid for having listeners but I don’t get paid for having readers (funny old world isn’t it?). The fact that podictionary started out as a spoken product and not a written product explains why you’ll all too often find spelling mistakes, typos and grammatical errors here. I’ve given a lot of attention to producing clean sound but an editor has never been in the picture for podictionary. And yet I’d never dream of producing a book without several layers of editorial support. I suppose if podictionary generated ten times the revenue that it does I would hire an editor. I’m sure it could do nothing but good. Since you’ve been so patient as to stand all that rambling, here is  the etymology: This one is for the word yacht. Etymology of the Word Yacht I think to most people the word yacht evokes some sense of luxury. Unknown luxury for most of us because although we can pretty easily walk through the lobby of a swanky hotel, it is pretty rare that we get aboard someone’s yacht. The only yacht I’ve ever been on is The Royal Yacht Britannia. I wasn’t a guest of Queen Elizabeth or Prince Charles. The Royal Yacht Britannia is retired as a royal yacht and is now a tourist attraction tied up in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word yacht in English to 1557 and says it meant “a light fast-sailing ship, in early use especially for the conveyance of royal or other important persons.” So it may be this long-term association with royalty that gives the word yacht its patina of luxury. Then again it may be the price of the things. Yacht is alternately defined as a hole in the sea into which one pours money. Money is at the root of the etymology of yacht too because originally it wasn’t royalty that were cruising around in the ancestors of yachts but pirates. Yacht is spelled so strangely because it comes from a Germanic word that English speakers had a hard time rendering. Jaghtschip is traced by some dictionaries to Dutch and by other dictionaries to Norwegian. The literal meaning of jaghtschip is “hunting ship” or “chasing ship” and these were the kinds of ships most useful to pirates. Like so many words jaghtschip was abbreviated to jaght back in either Dutch or Norwegian before being picked up by English. Although some royal figures have indeed acted like pirates the reason a yacht became associated with royalty was likely not because it could be used to rob other ships. Instead, I think it was the speed of the things was what was attractive. Not only did royal or other important persons wish to be able to get away from chasing ships, there is prestige in a fast vessel. One last thing about the Royal Yacht Britannia: having seen the bed the Queen slept in I can tell you that what is sold as a queen sized bed isn’t. At least on board Britannia the real Queen slept in a single. Survey Finally, with respect to advertising within podcasts, a couple of groups are running a survey. You can get to that at either www.takethesurvey.com/rawvoice or www.takethesurvey.com/wizzard Rawvoice is kind of like my agent that finds advertisers for podcasters and Wizzard is where I host my files (in fact both companies do both things). The other group involved is the Association for Downloadable Media. The survey is supposed to take about 10 minutes and explores listener preferences in ad style, delivery and placement. Thanks for putting up with this unusual post. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-25,25373538 Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:01:51 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25352741-leotard-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1047 People sometimes exercise or do yoga in leotards. The garment is variously described as having long or short sleeves or legs or none at all, but in all cases being skin tight and as such being an inappropriate piece of attire for me. Luckily the guy who invented the leotard had a good body and is remembered as having a good body because he died when he was still young and attractively shaped. Maybe not lucky for him. Jules Leotard was a French circus performer in the mid 1800s. He amazed crowds then the way that Cirque du Soleil amazes crowds today. His specialty was the trapeze and he was the first to dare to let go of one trapeze, do a mid-air summersault and grab onto a second trapeze. His innovative costume was skin tight from ankle to wrist with a more roomy pair of shorts in the middle. All this  supposedly to allow unrestricted freedom of movement, but with the added bonus—as anyone frequenting fitness clubs these days knows—of giving the audience a little more to look at. Wh... People sometimes exercise or do yoga in leotards. The garment is variously described as having long or short sleeves or legs or none at all, but in all cases being skin tight and as such being an inappropriate piece of attire for me. Luckily the guy who invented the leotard had a good body and is remembered as having a good body because he died when he was still young and attractively shaped. Maybe not lucky for him. Jules Leotard was a French circus performer in the mid 1800s. He amazed crowds then the way that Cirque du Soleil amazes crowds today. His specialty was the trapeze and he was the first to dare to let go of one trapeze, do a mid-air summersault and grab onto a second trapeze. His innovative costume was skin tight from ankle to wrist with a more roomy pair of shorts in the middle. All this  supposedly to allow unrestricted freedom of movement, but with the added bonus—as anyone frequenting fitness clubs these days knows—of giving the audience a little more to look at. What seems strange to me is that even though he was so famous in his day, and seems incontrovertibly to have been the reason that leotards are named leotards, it took quite a while after his death before this word shows up in the written record. He died in 1870—he was only 30—but the OED gives a first citation 50 years later in 1920. The Merriam Webster etymology must have been compiled more recently because they offer a first citation of 1886 but that’s still a bit of a gap. Jules Leotard himself didn’t refer to this garment as a leotard but instead as a maillot (pronounced “my oh”), a word that had only recently come into use in French. Now it’s usually the name of a style of woman’s bathing suit. Folk etymology had the source of this word also from someone’s name, supposedly a Monsieur Maillot who supplied the Paris Opera with such garments. But lexicographers find no evidence that Monsieur Maillot actually existed and instead point to a meaning of “swaddling clothing.” Since most of us would not go into a clothing store and expect to be understood if we asked for something that would “swaddle us” I looked that up too. It’s related to swathe. Babies are swaddled; which means they are wound up firmly in their blankets. People sometimes exercise or do yoga in leotards. The garment is variously described as having long or short sleeves or legs or none at all, but in all cases being skin tight and as such being an inappropriate piece of attire for me. Luckily the guy who invented the leotard had a good body and is remembered as having a good body because he died when he was still young and attractively shaped. Maybe not lucky for him. Jules Leotard was a French circus performer in the mid 1800s. He amazed crowds then the way that Cirque du Soleil amazes crowds today. His specialty was the trapeze and he was the first to dare to let go of one trapeze, do a mid-air summersault and grab onto a second trapeze. His innovative costume was skin tight from ankle to wrist with a more roomy pair of shorts in the middle. All this  supposedly to allow unrestricted freedom of movement, but with the added bonus—as anyone frequenting fitness clubs these days knows—of giving the audience a little more to look at. What seems strange to me is that even though he was so famous in his day, and seems incontrovertibly to have been the reason that leotards are named leotards, it took quite a while after his death before this word shows up in the written record. He died in 1870—he was only 30—but the OED gives a first citation 50 years later in 1920. The Merriam Webster etymology must have been compiled more recently because they offer a first citation of 1886 but that’s still a bit of a gap. Jules Leotard himself didn’t refer to this garment as a leotard but instead as a maillot (pronounced “my oh”), a word that had only recently come into use in French. Now it’s usually the name of a style of woman’s bathing suit. Folk etymology had the source of this word also from someone’s name, supposedly a Monsieur Maillot who supplied the Paris Opera with such garments. But lexicographers find no evidence that Monsieur Maillot actually existed and instead point to a meaning of “swaddling clothing.” Since most of us would not go into a clothing store and expect to be understood if we asked for something that would “swaddle us” I looked that up too. It’s related to swathe. Babies are swaddled; which means they are wound up firmly in their blankets. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-22,25352741 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:01:23 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/25335127-curfew-%E2%80%93-podictionary-103 When parents impose a curfew on their teenagers it means they want them home by a certain time. If the government imposes a curfew it means that authorities don’t want people out roaming the streets after a certain hour. According to Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable the word curfew came to England as a French word with William the Conqueror in 1066.  This arrival isn’t specifically claimed in The Oxford English Dictionary although the OED does give as its first citation a French usage just over 200 years afterwards. By this time the word curfew meant to the people of England “the ringing of the evening bell.” This bell would have in earlier times been the signal for lockdown by the French conquering aristocracy over their newly subordinate English subjects. The word does not go any further back into Latin or Greek since it is an alteration of two French words still in use today.  Couvre is easily recognizable as “cover” and feu is the French word for “fire.” But the earlier Fr... When parents impose a curfew on their teenagers it means they want them home by a certain time. If the government imposes a curfew it means that authorities don’t want people out roaming the streets after a certain hour. According to Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable the word curfew came to England as a French word with William the Conqueror in 1066.  This arrival isn’t specifically claimed in The Oxford English Dictionary although the OED does give as its first citation a French usage just over 200 years afterwards. By this time the word curfew meant to the people of England “the ringing of the evening bell.” This bell would have in earlier times been the signal for lockdown by the French conquering aristocracy over their newly subordinate English subjects. The word does not go any further back into Latin or Greek since it is an alteration of two French words still in use today.  Couvre is easily recognizable as “cover” and feu is the French word for “fire.” But the earlier French concept of curfew was not like England during the Second World War when blackout conditions were instituted to keep bombers from spotting their targets. Instead the idea seems to have been that fires were to be put out so that none would be left unattended and burn down the town. There were two equivalent words in Latin ignitegium and pyritegium, ignite and pyro being recognizably fire related and the ending meaning “to cover.” Thus curfew may have been a sensible approach to public safety. There have been other municipal control measures instituted after fires that had interesting results. In the city of Copenhagen a notable feature of the old downtown buildings is their diagonally faced corners. The reason for this is that during one fire in that town it was found that fire brigades with long ladders were unable to get around the corners of narrow streets because the buildings were in the way, so a bylaw was enacted to chop off all the building corners to allow ladders to get through. In the same city at one time it was decreed that wooden houses were forbidden so that today one can admire the beautiful stone frontages of some old structures and then wander into their back courtyards to see the old half-timbered rest of the building that their owners raised at reduced costs out of sight of the city fathers. Finally, Quebec City is known to be one of the most European-looking cities in North America.  Part of its charm comes from the old stone buildings that were built so that, by law, their adjoining walls extended above their roof lines.  That way if one caught fire, the flames could not spread directly. When parents impose a curfew on their teenagers it means they want them home by a certain time. If the government imposes a curfew it means that authorities don’t want people out roaming the streets after a certain hour. According to Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable the word curfew came to England as a French word with William the Conqueror in 1066.  This arrival isn’t specifically claimed in The Oxford English Dictionary although the OED does give as its first citation a French usage just over 200 years afterwards. By this time the word curfew meant to the people of England “the ringing of the evening bell.” This bell would have in earlier times been the signal for lockdown by the French conquering aristocracy over their newly subordinate English subjects. The word does not go any further back into Latin or Greek since it is an alteration of two French words still in use today.  Couvre is easily recognizable as “cover” and feu is the French word for “fire.” But the earlier French concept of curfew was not like England during the Second World War when blackout conditions were instituted to keep bombers from spotting their targets. Instead the idea seems to have been that fires were to be put out so that none would be left unattended and burn down the town. There were two equivalent words in Latin ignitegium and pyritegium, ignite and pyro being recognizably fire related and the ending meaning “to cover.” Thus curfew may have been a sensible approach to public safety. There have been other municipal control measures instituted after fires that had interesting results. In the city of Copenhagen a notable feature of the old downtown buildings is their diagonally faced corners. The reason for this is that during one fire in that town it was found that fire brigades with long ladders were unable to get around the corners of narrow streets because the buildings were in the way, so a bylaw was enacted to chop off all the building corners to allow ladders to get through. In the same city at one time it was decreed that wooden houses were forbidden so that today one can admire the beautiful stone frontages of some old structures and then wander into their back courtyards to see the old half-timbered rest of the building that their owners raised at reduced costs out of sight of the city fathers. Finally, Quebec City is known to be one of the most European-looking cities in North America.  Part of its charm comes from the old stone buildings that were built so that, by law, their adjoining walls extended above their roof lines.  That way if one caught fire, the flames could not spread directly. tag:odeo.com,2009-10-21,25335127 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24996531-vacuum-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1012 I am not fond of the job of vacuuming the house. Nor am I fond of being around when anyone else is vacuuming. It’s noisy and I’m not a fan of loud machines. Funny that a device with a name that means “nothing” should fill the air with so much racket. For the word vacuum comes to English directly from Latin in the 16th century. The Latin root is vacuus meaning “empty.” Hence the word vacuous which to means to me someone who is rather empty headed; though literally it means anything that’s empty. My memory of the word vacuous is anything but highfalutin since I recall it as being used in the Monty Python skit about buying a an argument. The word vacuum on the other hand came into English in a very high-flown manner from the pen of the Archbishop of Canterbury. As well as being Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer helped out King Henry VIII with his domestic troubles. It was Thomas Cranmer who said “naturall reason abhorreth vacuum” and in fact it was this quote that represents the ... I am not fond of the job of vacuuming the house. Nor am I fond of being around when anyone else is vacuuming. It’s noisy and I’m not a fan of loud machines. Funny that a device with a name that means “nothing” should fill the air with so much racket. For the word vacuum comes to English directly from Latin in the 16th century. The Latin root is vacuus meaning “empty.” Hence the word vacuous which to means to me someone who is rather empty headed; though literally it means anything that’s empty. My memory of the word vacuous is anything but highfalutin since I recall it as being used in the Monty Python skit about buying a an argument. The word vacuum on the other hand came into English in a very high-flown manner from the pen of the Archbishop of Canterbury. As well as being Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer helped out King Henry VIII with his domestic troubles. It was Thomas Cranmer who said “naturall reason abhorreth vacuum” and in fact it was this quote that represents the first use of vacuum in the English written record. I went and had a look at the document where this quotation comes from to see if I could get some context and from what I can see Cranmer was a bit of an expert at evaluating how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. That is to say he was experienced at making convoluted theological arguments and in this case his argument had to do with bread and wine that would not go moldy or turn to vinegar if they weren’t there and how this related to the symbolic representation of the body of Christ by the bread in a church ceremony. You can see that Thomas Cranmer was the perfect guy to have on your side if you were King Henry VIII and you wanted to have your marriage annulled based on the biblical ban on a man marrying his deceased brother’s wife. I guess this was a good thing for Catherine of Aragon since it meant she wasn’t executed. When we say “nature abhors a vacuum” we usually mean it in either a physical way, like the way air rushes in when you crack open a jar of pickles, or an analogous way, like when investors rush in to an untapped market opportunity.  This use of the phrase appeared before Thomas Cranmer and in a less elevated setting. François Rabelais was a French writer living in the half century before Cranmer—their lives overlapped. Rabelais was the kind of writer who gets a broad following because they don’t shy away from the grittier side of life. Rabelais introduced the phrase (in Latin) natura abhorret vacuum in a drinking scene in one of his books. The idea was “don’t leave me with an empty glass!” Before I go I should explain why a vacuum that makes so much noise as it’s cleaning the carpet is called a vacuum. The roaring motor inside has the job of sucking air out of the immediate vicinity of the rotating brushes. Because nature abhors a vacuum the air in the carpet and along its surface jumps in to fill the void, bringing dust and dog hair along with it. A device that uses this trick is called a vacuum cleaner because it is a cleaner that makes use of the properties of a vacuum. Although Cranmer and Rabelais were discussing vacuums in the early 1500s it was 1902 when the first vacuum cleaner was mentioned in print. I am not fond of the job of vacuuming the house. Nor am I fond of being around when anyone else is vacuuming. It’s noisy and I’m not a fan of loud machines. Funny that a device with a name that means “nothing” should fill the air with so much racket. For the word vacuum comes to English directly from Latin in the 16th century. The Latin root is vacuus meaning “empty.” Hence the word vacuous which to means to me someone who is rather empty headed; though literally it means anything that’s empty. My memory of the word vacuous is anything but highfalutin since I recall it as being used in the Monty Python skit about buying a an argument. The word vacuum on the other hand came into English in a very high-flown manner from the pen of the Archbishop of Canterbury. As well as being Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer helped out King Henry VIII with his domestic troubles. It was Thomas Cranmer who said “naturall reason abhorreth vacuum” and in fact it was this quote that represents the first use of vacuum in the English written record. I went and had a look at the document where this quotation comes from to see if I could get some context and from what I can see Cranmer was a bit of an expert at evaluating how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. That is to say he was experienced at making convoluted theological arguments and in this case his argument had to do with bread and wine that would not go moldy or turn to vinegar if they weren’t there and how this related to the symbolic representation of the body of Christ by the bread in a church ceremony. You can see that Thomas Cranmer was the perfect guy to have on your side if you were King Henry VIII and you wanted to have your marriage annulled based on the biblical ban on a man marrying his deceased brother’s wife. I guess this was a good thing for Catherine of Aragon since it meant she wasn’t executed. When we say “nature abhors a vacuum” we usually mean it in either a physical way, like the way air rushes in when you crack open a jar of pickles, or an analogous way, like when investors rush in to an untapped market opportunity.  This use of the phrase appeared before Thomas Cranmer and in a less elevated setting. François Rabelais was a French writer living in the half century before Cranmer—their lives overlapped. Rabelais was the kind of writer who gets a broad following because they don’t shy away from the grittier side of life. Rabelais introduced the phrase (in Latin) natura abhorret vacuum in a drinking scene in one of his books. The idea was “don’t leave me with an empty glass!” Before I go I should explain why a vacuum that makes so much noise as it’s cleaning the carpet is called a vacuum. The roaring motor inside has the job of sucking air out of the immediate vicinity of the rotating brushes. Because nature abhors a vacuum the air in the carpet and along its surface jumps in to fill the void, bringing dust and dog hair along with it. A device that uses this trick is called a vacuum cleaner because it is a cleaner that makes use of the properties of a vacuum. Although Cranmer and Rabelais were discussing vacuums in the early 1500s it was 1902 when the first vacuum cleaner was mentioned in print. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-20,24996531 Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:01:20 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24990725-moll-%E2%80%93-podictionary-84 In old gangster movies there was always a dame swinging off the arm of the tough guy. She is known as his moll or sometimes as a gun moll. Now I don’t use the word moll in conversation too often. Maybe it’s because I don’t know many.  But I did see it in the paper the other day and it caught my eye. Looking it up I see that most dictionaries give prominence to a meaning of “prostitute.” The etymology is that moll like Molly was once an alternative for the name Mary. Where one has gangsters one has conflict and such is the case between the dictionaries on this one.  In The Oxford English Dictionary the term gun moll is said to be American slang for a female thief or an armed woman.  But the American Heritage Dictionary says gun moll is based on obsolete British slang. It’s almost as if each country were trying to blame the other for its crooks. The explanation comes when we look closer at the word gun as Hugh Rawson did in his book Wicked Words. This particular gun didn’t have a barr... In old gangster movies there was always a dame swinging off the arm of the tough guy. She is known as his moll or sometimes as a gun moll. Now I don’t use the word moll in conversation too often. Maybe it’s because I don’t know many.  But I did see it in the paper the other day and it caught my eye. Looking it up I see that most dictionaries give prominence to a meaning of “prostitute.” The etymology is that moll like Molly was once an alternative for the name Mary. Where one has gangsters one has conflict and such is the case between the dictionaries on this one.  In The Oxford English Dictionary the term gun moll is said to be American slang for a female thief or an armed woman.  But the American Heritage Dictionary says gun moll is based on obsolete British slang. It’s almost as if each country were trying to blame the other for its crooks. The explanation comes when we look closer at the word gun as Hugh Rawson did in his book Wicked Words. This particular gun didn’t have a barrel or fire bullets, instead the word is an alteration of the word ganef or gonif, a Yiddish word meaning “thief.” So the babe at Bugsie’s elbow is a thieving hooker—no wonder I don’t know many. On a brighter note in this seamy investigation I came across clues to a most unusual dictionary. Dated 1891and written in dialect the Blegburn Dickshonary reflects not only the accent and vocabulary of the city of Blackburn in Lancashire, England, but also the sense of humor of the lexicographer who compiled it. He called himself Tum-O’-Dick-O’-Bobs but his parents called him Joseph Baron. I guess because the Blegburn Dickshonary is cited in several places by the OED it reflects a sense of humor there too. (in the audio version) I’ll read you the citation for moll: “Aw’m gooin’ to meet mi Moll to-neet” is a varra common sayin’ wi’ factory lads: some o’ th’ better soort say ‘woman’ i’ th’ place o’ Moll, but nooan so mony.” In old gangster movies there was always a dame swinging off the arm of the tough guy. She is known as his moll or sometimes as a gun moll. Now I don’t use the word moll in conversation too often. Maybe it’s because I don’t know many.  But I did see it in the paper the other day and it caught my eye. Looking it up I see that most dictionaries give prominence to a meaning of “prostitute.” The etymology is that moll like Molly was once an alternative for the name Mary. Where one has gangsters one has conflict and such is the case between the dictionaries on this one.  In The Oxford English Dictionary the term gun moll is said to be American slang for a female thief or an armed woman.  But the American Heritage Dictionary says gun moll is based on obsolete British slang. It’s almost as if each country were trying to blame the other for its crooks. The explanation comes when we look closer at the word gun as Hugh Rawson did in his book Wicked Words. This particular gun didn’t have a barrel or fire bullets, instead the word is an alteration of the word ganef or gonif, a Yiddish word meaning “thief.” So the babe at Bugsie’s elbow is a thieving hooker—no wonder I don’t know many. On a brighter note in this seamy investigation I came across clues to a most unusual dictionary. Dated 1891and written in dialect the Blegburn Dickshonary reflects not only the accent and vocabulary of the city of Blackburn in Lancashire, England, but also the sense of humor of the lexicographer who compiled it. He called himself Tum-O’-Dick-O’-Bobs but his parents called him Joseph Baron. I guess because the Blegburn Dickshonary is cited in several places by the OED it reflects a sense of humor there too. (in the audio version) I’ll read you the citation for moll: “Aw’m gooin’ to meet mi Moll to-neet” is a varra common sayin’ wi’ factory lads: some o’ th’ better soort say ‘woman’ i’ th’ place o’ Moll, but nooan so mony.” tag:odeo.com,2009-08-19,24990725 Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24984558-bildungsroman-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1011 Elise wrote to me the other day. Elise works in a library and part of her job is to catalog books. She says that she and her colleagues sometimes come across some strange subject headings from the Library of Congress. Her pick for the most curious is bildungsroman. I try to steer away from uncommon words and this is certainly an uncommon one. But I do like to think about why words become popular or why they might not. Bildungsroman is a German word and the English dictionaries that do contain it define it as a genre of novel that deals with coming of age themes or growing spiritually. The dictionaries that have etymologies for bildungsroman say it breaks simply in two bildung and roman; bidung meaning “education” and roman meaning “novel.” But from what I can see bildung in German means more than “education” it means education in life, in society, in self. So what we are talking about here are coming of age novels and self discovery novels. Because the word bildungsroman is unfamili... Elise wrote to me the other day. Elise works in a library and part of her job is to catalog books. She says that she and her colleagues sometimes come across some strange subject headings from the Library of Congress. Her pick for the most curious is bildungsroman. I try to steer away from uncommon words and this is certainly an uncommon one. But I do like to think about why words become popular or why they might not. Bildungsroman is a German word and the English dictionaries that do contain it define it as a genre of novel that deals with coming of age themes or growing spiritually. The dictionaries that have etymologies for bildungsroman say it breaks simply in two bildung and roman; bidung meaning “education” and roman meaning “novel.” But from what I can see bildung in German means more than “education” it means education in life, in society, in self. So what we are talking about here are coming of age novels and self discovery novels. Because the word bildungsroman is unfamiliar it might seem a little unwieldy, but familiarity aside it is certainly a more efficient word than the phrase coming of age novel. So being a word that made it into English, why didn’t it catch on and become a more popular word? Of course I don’t really know the answer, but here are a few clues. The German word bildung doesn’t seem to show up in the etymology of any other English word so the element of unfamiliarity that Elise and I experience with bildungsroman seems to extend to the word bildung and applies to most English speakers now and in centuries past. So one reason that this word never caught on even though it might be better for its application could be that didn’t have enough content that corresponded with meanings people already knew in English. The roman part of the word is a little unfamiliar too. Does it mean it’s from Rome or does it mean it’s romantic? I actually touched on this root way back in 2006 in an episode on romance . I explained there that love and romance were associated because novels written about love had earlier been written mostly in French. Further that French had evolved from Latin and that Latin was the language of the Romans. So for a time in some circles the language that we now call French was actually called Romance. Two other reasons why bildungsroman never caught on in English might have to do with timing. I told you that bildungsroman is a German word, but even if I hadn’t you might have guessed; it has a German sound to it I think. The Oxford English Dictionary first citation for the use of the word bildungsroman in English is 1910; World War I broke out in 1914. The OED second citation is from 1938; World War II started in 1939. Could it be that the unpopularity of Germany among English speakers during the two world wars also contributed to this useful word being stranded in the back shelves of the Library of Congress? Elise wrote to me the other day. Elise works in a library and part of her job is to catalog books. She says that she and her colleagues sometimes come across some strange subject headings from the Library of Congress. Her pick for the most curious is bildungsroman. I try to steer away from uncommon words and this is certainly an uncommon one. But I do like to think about why words become popular or why they might not. Bildungsroman is a German word and the English dictionaries that do contain it define it as a genre of novel that deals with coming of age themes or growing spiritually. The dictionaries that have etymologies for bildungsroman say it breaks simply in two bildung and roman; bidung meaning “education” and roman meaning “novel.” But from what I can see bildung in German means more than “education” it means education in life, in society, in self. So what we are talking about here are coming of age novels and self discovery novels. Because the word bildungsroman is unfamiliar it might seem a little unwieldy, but familiarity aside it is certainly a more efficient word than the phrase coming of age novel. So being a word that made it into English, why didn’t it catch on and become a more popular word? Of course I don’t really know the answer, but here are a few clues. The German word bildung doesn’t seem to show up in the etymology of any other English word so the element of unfamiliarity that Elise and I experience with bildungsroman seems to extend to the word bildung and applies to most English speakers now and in centuries past. So one reason that this word never caught on even though it might be better for its application could be that didn’t have enough content that corresponded with meanings people already knew in English. The roman part of the word is a little unfamiliar too. Does it mean it’s from Rome or does it mean it’s romantic? I actually touched on this root way back in 2006 in an episode on romance . I explained there that love and romance were associated because novels written about love had earlier been written mostly in French. Further that French had evolved from Latin and that Latin was the language of the Romans. So for a time in some circles the language that we now call French was actually called Romance. Two other reasons why bildungsroman never caught on in English might have to do with timing. I told you that bildungsroman is a German word, but even if I hadn’t you might have guessed; it has a German sound to it I think. The Oxford English Dictionary first citation for the use of the word bildungsroman in English is 1910; World War I broke out in 1914. The OED second citation is from 1938; World War II started in 1939. Could it be that the unpopularity of Germany among English speakers during the two world wars also contributed to this useful word being stranded in the back shelves of the Library of Congress? tag:odeo.com,2009-08-18,24984558 Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:01:54 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24978902-superstition-%E2%80%93-podictionary-83 This episode first aired in September of 2005 and was prompted by the unfortunate coincidence of podictionary having done an episode on hurricane just a few days before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans combined with the fact that this also coincided with podictionary’s 13th week of existence. No cause-and-effect there, but it did suggest today’s word superstition none-the-less. Superstition appeared in English in 1402 apparently from Old French although Italian, Spanish and Portuguese also have this word.  Like most words that appear in all those languages this word goes back into Latin. It’s easy to figure out that the prefix super means “above.” The –stition part of the word comes from a Latin word meaning “to stand.” Actually our word stand comes from the same root. Thus the word superstition has a literal meaning of “stand upon” or “stand over.” This is a bit of a mysterious translation in light of what we understand superstition to mean.  The Oxford Dictionary of English defin... This episode first aired in September of 2005 and was prompted by the unfortunate coincidence of podictionary having done an episode on hurricane just a few days before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans combined with the fact that this also coincided with podictionary’s 13th week of existence. No cause-and-effect there, but it did suggest today’s word superstition none-the-less. Superstition appeared in English in 1402 apparently from Old French although Italian, Spanish and Portuguese also have this word.  Like most words that appear in all those languages this word goes back into Latin. It’s easy to figure out that the prefix super means “above.” The –stition part of the word comes from a Latin word meaning “to stand.” Actually our word stand comes from the same root. Thus the word superstition has a literal meaning of “stand upon” or “stand over.” This is a bit of a mysterious translation in light of what we understand superstition to mean.  The Oxford Dictionary of English defines superstition as “excessively credulous belief in and reverence for the supernatural.” The first citation of the word back in 1402 appears to name superstition as a political sin; alongside sedition, gluttony and pride.  The Oxford English Dictionary gives a definition applicable to that first citation as “an irrational religious belief or practice founded on fear or ignorance.” This goes to show not only that their understanding of the word was the same as ours is today, but also that in a time when religion was a life & death matter people still had doubts about some aspects of religious practice. I scoured the various etymological sources and it’s clear that no one really knows why a word meaning “stand over” might have come to mean “an irrational belief.” Several theories are offered: One is that it refers to standing over something in amazement, perhaps some religious object. Another conjecture is that it refers to a state of religious exaltation. Finally a third guess proposes that this older meaning relates to old beliefs surviving new knowledge. The OED doesn’t buy this last one though; they don’t think it makes sense because the concept of the march of progress and improvements in scientific understanding wouldn’t have existed back in Roman society when the meaning of the word changed. This episode first aired in September of 2005 and was prompted by the unfortunate coincidence of podictionary having done an episode on hurricane just a few days before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans combined with the fact that this also coincided with podictionary’s 13th week of existence. No cause-and-effect there, but it did suggest today’s word superstition none-the-less. Superstition appeared in English in 1402 apparently from Old French although Italian, Spanish and Portuguese also have this word.  Like most words that appear in all those languages this word goes back into Latin. It’s easy to figure out that the prefix super means “above.” The –stition part of the word comes from a Latin word meaning “to stand.” Actually our word stand comes from the same root. Thus the word superstition has a literal meaning of “stand upon” or “stand over.” This is a bit of a mysterious translation in light of what we understand superstition to mean.  The Oxford Dictionary of English defines superstition as “excessively credulous belief in and reverence for the supernatural.” The first citation of the word back in 1402 appears to name superstition as a political sin; alongside sedition, gluttony and pride.  The Oxford English Dictionary gives a definition applicable to that first citation as “an irrational religious belief or practice founded on fear or ignorance.” This goes to show not only that their understanding of the word was the same as ours is today, but also that in a time when religion was a life & death matter people still had doubts about some aspects of religious practice. I scoured the various etymological sources and it’s clear that no one really knows why a word meaning “stand over” might have come to mean “an irrational belief.” Several theories are offered: One is that it refers to standing over something in amazement, perhaps some religious object. Another conjecture is that it refers to a state of religious exaltation. Finally a third guess proposes that this older meaning relates to old beliefs surviving new knowledge. The OED doesn’t buy this last one though; they don’t think it makes sense because the concept of the march of progress and improvements in scientific understanding wouldn’t have existed back in Roman society when the meaning of the word changed. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-17,24978902 Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24972379-foreign-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1010 Billy Wilder did such movies as The Seven Year Itch Some Like it Hot, and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. He once said “What [the critics] call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.” Here Billy Wilder was using the word foreign in a way we all recognize. It means that those lusty films came from some other country; some other culture. The critics look upon foreign films differently because they originate outside our culture. It’s the “outside” nature of something foreign that gives the word its form. As anyone with even a passing interest in etymology knows, words change their form and meaning over time. A meaning today may not match a meaning from the past. A British writer named L. P. Hartley once said “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The word foreign is one example of just that. 1297 is the date that The Oxford English Dictionary gives as the first time we know of when the word foreign was jotted down as an English word. T... Billy Wilder did such movies as The Seven Year Itch Some Like it Hot, and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. He once said “What [the critics] call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.” Here Billy Wilder was using the word foreign in a way we all recognize. It means that those lusty films came from some other country; some other culture. The critics look upon foreign films differently because they originate outside our culture. It’s the “outside” nature of something foreign that gives the word its form. As anyone with even a passing interest in etymology knows, words change their form and meaning over time. A meaning today may not match a meaning from the past. A British writer named L. P. Hartley once said “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The word foreign is one example of just that. 1297 is the date that The Oxford English Dictionary gives as the first time we know of when the word foreign was jotted down as an English word. That first usage did not mean something or someone from out of the country. Instead the word was used in combination with the word chamber. Back 700 years ago a chamber foreign was an outhouse, a smelly place where you went to answer the call of nature. People living those centuries ago didn’t call a privy a chamber foreign because they thought foreigners were smelly and disgusting, but because the word foreign had recently emerged from French where it had earlier arrived from Latin. Back in Latin the parent word foranus had meant “outside” so the “out” “house” meaning was quite literal. It wasn’t long—only about 100 years—before the analogy of the “outside” meaning of foreign began to be applied in ways we would recognize, including outside one’s experience, things that didn’t belong, and of course, meaning “from outside the country.” Billy Wilder did such movies as The Seven Year Itch Some Like it Hot, and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. He once said “What [the critics] call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.” Here Billy Wilder was using the word foreign in a way we all recognize. It means that those lusty films came from some other country; some other culture. The critics look upon foreign films differently because they originate outside our culture. It’s the “outside” nature of something foreign that gives the word its form. As anyone with even a passing interest in etymology knows, words change their form and meaning over time. A meaning today may not match a meaning from the past. A British writer named L. P. Hartley once said “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The word foreign is one example of just that. 1297 is the date that The Oxford English Dictionary gives as the first time we know of when the word foreign was jotted down as an English word. That first usage did not mean something or someone from out of the country. Instead the word was used in combination with the word chamber. Back 700 years ago a chamber foreign was an outhouse, a smelly place where you went to answer the call of nature. People living those centuries ago didn’t call a privy a chamber foreign because they thought foreigners were smelly and disgusting, but because the word foreign had recently emerged from French where it had earlier arrived from Latin. Back in Latin the parent word foranus had meant “outside” so the “out” “house” meaning was quite literal. It wasn’t long—only about 100 years—before the analogy of the “outside” meaning of foreign began to be applied in ways we would recognize, including outside one’s experience, things that didn’t belong, and of course, meaning “from outside the country.” tag:odeo.com,2009-08-16,24972379 Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:01:34 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24958341-giraffe-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1009 Imagine being the first European to see a giraffe. It must have been a confusing and exciting sight. How might you describe it when you told other people later? The evidence points to the fact that a giraffe was compared to a slightly similar domesticated animal but with a modifying noun added on. What domestic animal is similar you ask? Not many I have to admit, but whoever chose the name first given to giraffes by Europeans thought a giraffe bore some similarity to a camel. But a giraffe looks nothing like a camel I hear you clamoring. For one thing a giraffe has markings all over its body. Okay, okay, that’s where the modifying noun comes in. Those giraffe markings are kind of like spots and whoever named the giraffe for early Europeans chose another animal with spots to clarify the fact that a giraffe wasn’t the same as a camel. Hence in 1398 there appeared in English the first name we know of for the giraffe. It wasn’t called a giraffe, but instead a camelopard. That is, this b... Imagine being the first European to see a giraffe. It must have been a confusing and exciting sight. How might you describe it when you told other people later? The evidence points to the fact that a giraffe was compared to a slightly similar domesticated animal but with a modifying noun added on. What domestic animal is similar you ask? Not many I have to admit, but whoever chose the name first given to giraffes by Europeans thought a giraffe bore some similarity to a camel. But a giraffe looks nothing like a camel I hear you clamoring. For one thing a giraffe has markings all over its body. Okay, okay, that’s where the modifying noun comes in. Those giraffe markings are kind of like spots and whoever named the giraffe for early Europeans chose another animal with spots to clarify the fact that a giraffe wasn’t the same as a camel. Hence in 1398 there appeared in English the first name we know of for the giraffe. It wasn’t called a giraffe, but instead a camelopard. That is, this beast looks something like a camel but with spots like a leopard. I’ll quickly skate around the fact that etymologically camelopard doesn’t actually come from leopard but from pard, because pard means “leopard” anyway. I’ll also tell you that I lied when I said camelopard was the first English word for a giraffe, because 16 years earlier the beast had been called a camelion.  Camelion was actually just a transcription error. The writer, John Wyclif, was translating from Latin and misinterpreted the Latin word, inadvertently introducing a second cat to the various names for the giraffe. It was about 200 years later when giraffe began to come into use and supplant camelopard. The word giraffe, or its ancestors, were possibly what those first Europeans heard the animal called but just didn’t remember it because giraffe comes from Arabic and Arabic speakers would have been mixing with Africans who may have used a similar name. English got giraffe from other European languages like French and Italian, languages spoken in places at least a little closer to where giraffes might be roaming around. Although I said that camelopard arrived in English about 200 years before the word giraffe, in fact there is one single citation for a word similar to giraffe back around the time camelopard appeared. This giraffe-like word again mixes in yet other species since clearly medieval English writers didn’t have much firsthand knowledge of the towering creature. When you think of exotic animals at a zoo giraffes often have star billing. Another poster-child for exotic African wildlife has a particularly long nose instead of a particularly long neck. Back in the year 1400 that other name for a giraffe emerged as gerfaunt; part Arabic giraffe, part elephant. Imagine being the first European to see a giraffe. It must have been a confusing and exciting sight. How might you describe it when you told other people later? The evidence points to the fact that a giraffe was compared to a slightly similar domesticated animal but with a modifying noun added on. What domestic animal is similar you ask? Not many I have to admit, but whoever chose the name first given to giraffes by Europeans thought a giraffe bore some similarity to a camel. But a giraffe looks nothing like a camel I hear you clamoring. For one thing a giraffe has markings all over its body. Okay, okay, that’s where the modifying noun comes in. Those giraffe markings are kind of like spots and whoever named the giraffe for early Europeans chose another animal with spots to clarify the fact that a giraffe wasn’t the same as a camel. Hence in 1398 there appeared in English the first name we know of for the giraffe. It wasn’t called a giraffe, but instead a camelopard. That is, this beast looks something like a camel but with spots like a leopard. I’ll quickly skate around the fact that etymologically camelopard doesn’t actually come from leopard but from pard, because pard means “leopard” anyway. I’ll also tell you that I lied when I said camelopard was the first English word for a giraffe, because 16 years earlier the beast had been called a camelion.  Camelion was actually just a transcription error. The writer, John Wyclif, was translating from Latin and misinterpreted the Latin word, inadvertently introducing a second cat to the various names for the giraffe. It was about 200 years later when giraffe began to come into use and supplant camelopard. The word giraffe, or its ancestors, were possibly what those first Europeans heard the animal called but just didn’t remember it because giraffe comes from Arabic and Arabic speakers would have been mixing with Africans who may have used a similar name. English got giraffe from other European languages like French and Italian, languages spoken in places at least a little closer to where giraffes might be roaming around. Although I said that camelopard arrived in English about 200 years before the word giraffe, in fact there is one single citation for a word similar to giraffe back around the time camelopard appeared. This giraffe-like word again mixes in yet other species since clearly medieval English writers didn’t have much firsthand knowledge of the towering creature. When you think of exotic animals at a zoo giraffes often have star billing. Another poster-child for exotic African wildlife has a particularly long nose instead of a particularly long neck. Back in the year 1400 that other name for a giraffe emerged as gerfaunt; part Arabic giraffe, part elephant. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-13,24958341 Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:01:25 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24952227-forfeit-%E2%80%93-podictionary-77 In a game if you forfeit, it means that you skip your turn or give up your chance to win. This meaning comes about because originally 700 years ago in English, a forfeit was a crime, and the criminal had to give up something as punishment, or to repay his victims. The meaning of forfeit as a crime came to England in the usual way, through French from Latin. In Latin the original expression had been foris factum which you can see easily became forfeit.  Foris factum translates as “outside of what should be done,” hence, something criminal. The foris in the expression is also the root of our word forest. Foris means “outside” and that’s why a forest is called a forest, it’s outside. That other Latin word factum is related to our English word fact; factum meant “that which is done.” Around the middle of the 1500’s the word fact had two opposite meanings, neither of which we recognize today: a fact could be a noble deed; or a fact could be an evil deed. It wasn’t until after 1600 that f... In a game if you forfeit, it means that you skip your turn or give up your chance to win. This meaning comes about because originally 700 years ago in English, a forfeit was a crime, and the criminal had to give up something as punishment, or to repay his victims. The meaning of forfeit as a crime came to England in the usual way, through French from Latin. In Latin the original expression had been foris factum which you can see easily became forfeit.  Foris factum translates as “outside of what should be done,” hence, something criminal. The foris in the expression is also the root of our word forest. Foris means “outside” and that’s why a forest is called a forest, it’s outside. That other Latin word factum is related to our English word fact; factum meant “that which is done.” Around the middle of the 1500’s the word fact had two opposite meanings, neither of which we recognize today: a fact could be a noble deed; or a fact could be an evil deed. It wasn’t until after 1600 that fact started to mean what we think of as a fact today. In a game if you forfeit, it means that you skip your turn or give up your chance to win. This meaning comes about because originally 700 years ago in English, a forfeit was a crime, and the criminal had to give up something as punishment, or to repay his victims. The meaning of forfeit as a crime came to England in the usual way, through French from Latin. In Latin the original expression had been foris factum which you can see easily became forfeit.  Foris factum translates as “outside of what should be done,” hence, something criminal. The foris in the expression is also the root of our word forest. Foris means “outside” and that’s why a forest is called a forest, it’s outside. That other Latin word factum is related to our English word fact; factum meant “that which is done.” Around the middle of the 1500’s the word fact had two opposite meanings, neither of which we recognize today: a fact could be a noble deed; or a fact could be an evil deed. It wasn’t until after 1600 that fact started to mean what we think of as a fact today. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-12,24952227 Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24946226-orangutan-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1008 In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was formed and according to Wikipedia represents the first multinational and the first company to issue stock. In 1627 the Dutch East India Company sent a doctor named Jacques de Bondt off to the East Indies. When remembered at all Jacques de Bondt is remembered for being the first to document the herbal remedies and indigenous medical practices of the region. But he’s also remembered as being the first person to bring the word orangutan to European consciousness. If the word orangutan comes up in conversation these days there isn’t much confusion; people are referring to a powerful kind of ape with reddish hair. It may seem quaint that the word orangutan literally means “wild man” or “forest man” since these creatures are clearly man-like.  But it seems that our word for them isn’t chosen for this quaint applicability but because of a mistaken understanding. The word orangutan originates in Malay but in that language the “wild man” or “forest ma... In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was formed and according to Wikipedia represents the first multinational and the first company to issue stock. In 1627 the Dutch East India Company sent a doctor named Jacques de Bondt off to the East Indies. When remembered at all Jacques de Bondt is remembered for being the first to document the herbal remedies and indigenous medical practices of the region. But he’s also remembered as being the first person to bring the word orangutan to European consciousness. If the word orangutan comes up in conversation these days there isn’t much confusion; people are referring to a powerful kind of ape with reddish hair. It may seem quaint that the word orangutan literally means “wild man” or “forest man” since these creatures are clearly man-like.  But it seems that our word for them isn’t chosen for this quaint applicability but because of a mistaken understanding. The word orangutan originates in Malay but in that language the “wild man” or “forest man” meaning was quite literal. The animals we call orangutans were called mawas in Malay. People who lived in villages were the first to get to know the visiting Europeans and those urbanized villagers are thought to have looked down their noses at the people who hung out in the jungles, calling them “wild people.” The Europeans must have not appreciated the distinction and thought that when villagers referred to orangutans they meant apes. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was formed and according to Wikipedia represents the first multinational and the first company to issue stock. In 1627 the Dutch East India Company sent a doctor named Jacques de Bondt off to the East Indies. When remembered at all Jacques de Bondt is remembered for being the first to document the herbal remedies and indigenous medical practices of the region. But he’s also remembered as being the first person to bring the word orangutan to European consciousness. If the word orangutan comes up in conversation these days there isn’t much confusion; people are referring to a powerful kind of ape with reddish hair. It may seem quaint that the word orangutan literally means “wild man” or “forest man” since these creatures are clearly man-like.  But it seems that our word for them isn’t chosen for this quaint applicability but because of a mistaken understanding. The word orangutan originates in Malay but in that language the “wild man” or “forest man” meaning was quite literal. The animals we call orangutans were called mawas in Malay. People who lived in villages were the first to get to know the visiting Europeans and those urbanized villagers are thought to have looked down their noses at the people who hung out in the jungles, calling them “wild people.” The Europeans must have not appreciated the distinction and thought that when villagers referred to orangutans they meant apes. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-11,24946226 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:01:06 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24940206-citizen-%E2%80%93-podictionary-76 If I asked you “you are a citizen of…?”  I’m guessing that the answer that was forming in your mind was the name of your country, The USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia; somewhere like that. But when the word citizen first appeared in English it carried with it its Latin roots through French. According to The Oxford English Dictionary when the first citizen was mentioned in the tale of Guy of Warwick around 1314 the person was being referred to was being identified not according to nationality but according to the fact that they lived in a city instead of the countryside. When the ancestor of the word citizen first arose it was the ancient Romans who were speaking Latin and their entire state was centered on a city; Rome of course.  Civis was their word for “citizen” and civitas meant “citizenship” and “city state.” This is where we get our word city. The Romans started marching all over their known world and civilized it. Of course you can see that civilized has the same word ro... If I asked you “you are a citizen of…?”  I’m guessing that the answer that was forming in your mind was the name of your country, The USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia; somewhere like that. But when the word citizen first appeared in English it carried with it its Latin roots through French. According to The Oxford English Dictionary when the first citizen was mentioned in the tale of Guy of Warwick around 1314 the person was being referred to was being identified not according to nationality but according to the fact that they lived in a city instead of the countryside. When the ancestor of the word citizen first arose it was the ancient Romans who were speaking Latin and their entire state was centered on a city; Rome of course.  Civis was their word for “citizen” and civitas meant “citizenship” and “city state.” This is where we get our word city. The Romans started marching all over their known world and civilized it. Of course you can see that civilized has the same word root and what it means is that they brought these territories under the organization and control, and system of government of their city. So even back in Roman times you didn’t actually have to live in the city to be a citizen. In English, after that first appearance of citizen in 1314 meaning “city dweller” it only took about 55 years before the meaning we recognize today “citizen of a nation” also appeared in the written record. If I asked you “you are a citizen of…?”  I’m guessing that the answer that was forming in your mind was the name of your country, The USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia; somewhere like that. But when the word citizen first appeared in English it carried with it its Latin roots through French. According to The Oxford English Dictionary when the first citizen was mentioned in the tale of Guy of Warwick around 1314 the person was being referred to was being identified not according to nationality but according to the fact that they lived in a city instead of the countryside. When the ancestor of the word citizen first arose it was the ancient Romans who were speaking Latin and their entire state was centered on a city; Rome of course.  Civis was their word for “citizen” and civitas meant “citizenship” and “city state.” This is where we get our word city. The Romans started marching all over their known world and civilized it. Of course you can see that civilized has the same word root and what it means is that they brought these territories under the organization and control, and system of government of their city. So even back in Roman times you didn’t actually have to live in the city to be a citizen. In English, after that first appearance of citizen in 1314 meaning “city dweller” it only took about 55 years before the meaning we recognize today “citizen of a nation” also appeared in the written record. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-10,24940206 Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24934903-tawdry-%E2%80%93-podictionary-1007 The New Oxford American Dictionary defines tawdry to mean “showy but cheap” and “sordid or unpleasant.” Strange to say that this word derives from the habits of a saint—habits that the saint wasn’t proud of—but that the negative attributes of the word have nothing to do with anything negative that the saint might have done. To start off with the word tawdry derives from St. Audrey. St. Audrey during her lifetime certainly wouldn’t have answered to the name Audrey. Instead she was known to her contemporaries as Æthelthryth. First let’s look at what got her known as a saint. She lived in England in the mid 600s at a time when there wasn’t one king ruling the place but several. Her dad was one of those kings and perhaps for political reasons she was married off young to a neighboring prince. He didn’t last long though and so she was said to have still been a virgin when she became a widow. The local bishop was proud of her for this and encouraged her to maintain her virginity even thou... The New Oxford American Dictionary defines tawdry to mean “showy but cheap” and “sordid or unpleasant.” Strange to say that this word derives from the habits of a saint—habits that the saint wasn’t proud of—but that the negative attributes of the word have nothing to do with anything negative that the saint might have done. To start off with the word tawdry derives from St. Audrey. St. Audrey during her lifetime certainly wouldn’t have answered to the name Audrey. Instead she was known to her contemporaries as Æthelthryth. First let’s look at what got her known as a saint. She lived in England in the mid 600s at a time when there wasn’t one king ruling the place but several. Her dad was one of those kings and perhaps for political reasons she was married off young to a neighboring prince. He didn’t last long though and so she was said to have still been a virgin when she became a widow. The local bishop was proud of her for this and encouraged her to maintain her virginity even though she remarried to another prince. As you might imagine this second marriage was also not a love match and after a little while Æthelthryth decided she loved God more than any particular man so she ditched her second husband and opened an abbey. When she died she turned the place over to the management of her sister Seaxburh. All of this is background to the sainthood. Her sister began lobbying to get Æthelthryth declared a saint and 16 years after Æthelthryth died they dug her up as part of the process of confirming her as a saint when wonder of wonders they opened the coffin and instead of a pile of bones, there she was uncorrupted—or so the committee angling for sainthood said. This means that her flesh had not rotted. Her admirers claimed this was proof that she’d died a virgin and voila she was a saint. The rules about sexuality, sainthood and decomposition must have changed at some point in the last 1300 years because I don’t think that virgin-uncorruption condition applies any more. What this meant to the abbey was that lots of people would make pilgrimages to gain some kind of holy benefit from proximity to the remains of an authentic saint. The abbey built up quite a business along these lines and that’s where the self-consciousness of Æthelthryth comes in. The way that she died was that she developed a tumor in her neck and she herself blamed this tumor on the fact that when she was young she was vain and liked to wear pretty things around her neck. As an engine for pulling pilgrims to her abbey she did pretty well and one of the popular items sold to visiting pilgrims were ribbons or lace that had been placed in contact with her shrine. 900 years after her death such items were called St. Audrey’s lace because people had taken the name of the uncorruptable saint and corrupted Æthelthryth down to Audrey. St. Audrey’s lace then got corrupted down to tawdry lace. The vendors who sold the stuff might have been corrupt too because just like the trinkets sold at tourist traps these days the quality of the goods was none too fine and so lent their bad reputation to the word tawdry. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines tawdry to mean “showy but cheap” and “sordid or unpleasant.” Strange to say that this word derives from the habits of a saint—habits that the saint wasn’t proud of—but that the negative attributes of the word have nothing to do with anything negative that the saint might have done. To start off with the word tawdry derives from St. Audrey. St. Audrey during her lifetime certainly wouldn’t have answered to the name Audrey. Instead she was known to her contemporaries as Æthelthryth. First let’s look at what got her known as a saint. She lived in England in the mid 600s at a time when there wasn’t one king ruling the place but several. Her dad was one of those kings and perhaps for political reasons she was married off young to a neighboring prince. He didn’t last long though and so she was said to have still been a virgin when she became a widow. The local bishop was proud of her for this and encouraged her to maintain her virginity even though she remarried to another prince. As you might imagine this second marriage was also not a love match and after a little while Æthelthryth decided she loved God more than any particular man so she ditched her second husband and opened an abbey. When she died she turned the place over to the management of her sister Seaxburh. All of this is background to the sainthood. Her sister began lobbying to get Æthelthryth declared a saint and 16 years after Æthelthryth died they dug her up as part of the process of confirming her as a saint when wonder of wonders they opened the coffin and instead of a pile of bones, there she was uncorrupted—or so the committee angling for sainthood said. This means that her flesh had not rotted. Her admirers claimed this was proof that she’d died a virgin and voila she was a saint. The rules about sexuality, sainthood and decomposition must have changed at some point in the last 1300 years because I don’t think that virgin-uncorruption condition applies any more. What this meant to the abbey was that lots of people would make pilgrimages to gain some kind of holy benefit from proximity to the remains of an authentic saint. The abbey built up quite a business along these lines and that’s where the self-consciousness of Æthelthryth comes in. The way that she died was that she developed a tumor in her neck and she herself blamed this tumor on the fact that when she was young she was vain and liked to wear pretty things around her neck. As an engine for pulling pilgrims to her abbey she did pretty well and one of the popular items sold to visiting pilgrims were ribbons or lace that had been placed in contact with her shrine. 900 years after her death such items were called St. Audrey’s lace because people had taken the name of the uncorruptable saint and corrupted Æthelthryth down to Audrey. St. Audrey’s lace then got corrupted down to tawdry lace. The vendors who sold the stuff might have been corrupt too because just like the trinkets sold at tourist traps these days the quality of the goods was none too fine and so lent their bad reputation to the word tawdry. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-09,24934903 Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:01:27 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24912259-clique-%E2%80%93-podictionary-748 The word clique sounds French doesn’t it. Well, it was.Of course it means “a tight group of people” and is often used in a disparaging way. You don’t want your kids hanging out in cliques because there are sure to be tears as membership in a clique shifts like the tide. The word first appeared in English in 1711 in a book called, appropriately enough, The Club . In French the word goes back another 200 or 300 years but the sources aren’t exactly unanimous as to why an exclusive social group might be called a clique. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that it is a kind of imitative word and describes a clicking or clacking sound. My reading of the OED etymology seems to imply that there were a group of people that made such a sound, but it’s pretty unclear. The American Heritage Dictionary says it might be from Old French with a meaning of “a latch.” They don’t explain that, but I’m left wondering if there is an implica... The word clique sounds French doesn’t it. Well, it was.Of course it means “a tight group of people” and is often used in a disparaging way. You don’t want your kids hanging out in cliques because there are sure to be tears as membership in a clique shifts like the tide. The word first appeared in English in 1711 in a book called, appropriately enough, The Club . In French the word goes back another 200 or 300 years but the sources aren’t exactly unanimous as to why an exclusive social group might be called a clique. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that it is a kind of imitative word and describes a clicking or clacking sound. My reading of the OED etymology seems to imply that there were a group of people that made such a sound, but it’s pretty unclear. The American Heritage Dictionary says it might be from Old French with a meaning of “a latch.” They don’t explain that, but I’m left wondering if there is an implication of the members of a clique latching together. Merriam-Webster says “latch” also but explains itself by saying that this is due to the secrecy associated with cliques. The book I mentioned The Club, containing the first example of clique, was by a guy named James Puckle. It was very popular and went through many printings. He wrote the book in the form of a dialogue between a father and son, talking about the people in the son’s club. The father then moralizes so the book is supposed to be somehow full of little life lessons. These people are conveniently recalled by the son in alphabetical order, not by name but instead along the lines that the first guy’s called “the antiquary” and the second “the buffoon,” and so on. It is “the knave” in who’s little profile we reach the word clique. There are some weird vibes going on between this little book and what was then real life. The knave is described as a stock-jobber which I’m told is a “stock broker,” but looks more to me like a “stock promoter.” This knave is spoken of as a bit of a liar and a cheat and it turns out that the author James Puckle himself was a stock-jobber. As well as writing his book he was flogging shares in fishing fleets, some kind of special sword that he’d invented and a kind of machine gun that is reported to have been able to fire either round bullets or square bullets. The idea here was that when fighting fellow Christians you’d use round bullets but if you were shooting at Muslims you could do more damage with square bullets and that this was somehow unethical to do to Christians. He produced a lot of pamphlets trying to get people to give him money and other people wrote responses making fun of him. One of them claimed that the machine gun was more dangerous to investors than to the enemy. Unfortunately for a duke who bought the things for a battle, this proved to be true. Another bit of irony about James Puckle was that although his successful book was modeled on fatherly advice to a son, in real life he had a falling out with his kids and disinherited them. Maybe he was the right author to bring us the word clique. The word clique sounds French doesn’t it. Well, it was.Of course it means “a tight group of people” and is often used in a disparaging way. You don’t want your kids hanging out in cliques because there are sure to be tears as membership in a clique shifts like the tide. The word first appeared in English in 1711 in a book called, appropriately enough, The Club . In French the word goes back another 200 or 300 years but the sources aren’t exactly unanimous as to why an exclusive social group might be called a clique. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that it is a kind of imitative word and describes a clicking or clacking sound. My reading of the OED etymology seems to imply that there were a group of people that made such a sound, but it’s pretty unclear. The American Heritage Dictionary says it might be from Old French with a meaning of “a latch.” They don’t explain that, but I’m left wondering if there is an implication of the members of a clique latching together. Merriam-Webster says “latch” also but explains itself by saying that this is due to the secrecy associated with cliques. The book I mentioned The Club, containing the first example of clique, was by a guy named James Puckle. It was very popular and went through many printings. He wrote the book in the form of a dialogue between a father and son, talking about the people in the son’s club. The father then moralizes so the book is supposed to be somehow full of little life lessons. These people are conveniently recalled by the son in alphabetical order, not by name but instead along the lines that the first guy’s called “the antiquary” and the second “the buffoon,” and so on. It is “the knave” in who’s little profile we reach the word clique. There are some weird vibes going on between this little book and what was then real life. The knave is described as a stock-jobber which I’m told is a “stock broker,” but looks more to me like a “stock promoter.” This knave is spoken of as a bit of a liar and a cheat and it turns out that the author James Puckle himself was a stock-jobber. As well as writing his book he was flogging shares in fishing fleets, some kind of special sword that he’d invented and a kind of machine gun that is reported to have been able to fire either round bullets or square bullets. The idea here was that when fighting fellow Christians you’d use round bullets but if you were shooting at Muslims you could do more damage with square bullets and that this was somehow unethical to do to Christians. He produced a lot of pamphlets trying to get people to give him money and other people wrote responses making fun of him. One of them claimed that the machine gun was more dangerous to investors than to the enemy. Unfortunately for a duke who bought the things for a battle, this proved to be true. Another bit of irony about James Puckle was that although his successful book was modeled on fatherly advice to a son, in real life he had a falling out with his kids and disinherited them. Maybe he was the right author to bring us the word clique. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-04,24912259 Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:01:18 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24906651-replica-%E2%80%93-podictionary-743 In his Devil’s Dictionary Mark Twain’s old friend Ambrose Bierce explains that a replica is: A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made the original. It is so called to distinguish it from a “copy,” which is made by another artist. When the two are made with equal skill the replica is the more valuable, for it is supposed to be more beautiful than it looks. Ambrose Bierce would have written that about 100 years ago and it seems that the first citation for the word replica wasn’t much further back than that. The OED dates it at 1824, and sure enough the earlier meanings of replica did apply to works of art that the original artist was pumping out to resemble an original. But where did replica come from as a word before 1824? There are certainly older related English words dating back hundreds of years. What took replica so long? Because we are talking about the art world here it makes sense that this word replica was borrowed by art aficion... In his Devil’s Dictionary Mark Twain’s old friend Ambrose Bierce explains that a replica is: A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made the original. It is so called to distinguish it from a “copy,” which is made by another artist. When the two are made with equal skill the replica is the more valuable, for it is supposed to be more beautiful than it looks. Ambrose Bierce would have written that about 100 years ago and it seems that the first citation for the word replica wasn’t much further back than that. The OED dates it at 1824, and sure enough the earlier meanings of replica did apply to works of art that the original artist was pumping out to resemble an original. But where did replica come from as a word before 1824? There are certainly older related English words dating back hundreds of years. What took replica so long? Because we are talking about the art world here it makes sense that this word replica was borrowed by art aficionados from Italian. Why use an English word when a fancy Italian one will do. Back when Italian was Latin the parent of replica was replicare which meant to “unfold,” “reflect on” and “reply.” So an artistic replica isn’t a cynical attempt to make more money off a piece that went well the first time, it’s an artistic reexamination of the themes and techniques the artist explored in the earlier masterpiece. But I want to dig a little deeper into those meanings “unfold,” and “reply.” Funny how the word replica sort of sounds a bit like the word reply isn’t it. Reply is one of those older words in English I hinted at before. It comes from the same Latin root as replica, this time through French and showing up as early as Chaucer in 1385. But back then the Latin parent word didn’t mean “unfold” it meant “refold.” A plica is a “fold” or a “wrinkle,” so re-plicare means “to fold again.” It’s not clear to me if when someone is replying it is because the ancients actually refolded the paper to write on it again to send their answer back, or if the re-folding is more metaphorical and refers to the back and forth route of the message. I’ll have to reflect on that. In his Devil’s Dictionary Mark Twain’s old friend Ambrose Bierce explains that a replica is: A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made the original. It is so called to distinguish it from a “copy,” which is made by another artist. When the two are made with equal skill the replica is the more valuable, for it is supposed to be more beautiful than it looks. Ambrose Bierce would have written that about 100 years ago and it seems that the first citation for the word replica wasn’t much further back than that. The OED dates it at 1824, and sure enough the earlier meanings of replica did apply to works of art that the original artist was pumping out to resemble an original. But where did replica come from as a word before 1824? There are certainly older related English words dating back hundreds of years. What took replica so long? Because we are talking about the art world here it makes sense that this word replica was borrowed by art aficionados from Italian. Why use an English word when a fancy Italian one will do. Back when Italian was Latin the parent of replica was replicare which meant to “unfold,” “reflect on” and “reply.” So an artistic replica isn’t a cynical attempt to make more money off a piece that went well the first time, it’s an artistic reexamination of the themes and techniques the artist explored in the earlier masterpiece. But I want to dig a little deeper into those meanings “unfold,” and “reply.” Funny how the word replica sort of sounds a bit like the word reply isn’t it. Reply is one of those older words in English I hinted at before. It comes from the same Latin root as replica, this time through French and showing up as early as Chaucer in 1385. But back then the Latin parent word didn’t mean “unfold” it meant “refold.” A plica is a “fold” or a “wrinkle,” so re-plicare means “to fold again.” It’s not clear to me if when someone is replying it is because the ancients actually refolded the paper to write on it again to send their answer back, or if the re-folding is more metaphorical and refers to the back and forth route of the message. I’ll have to reflect on that. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-03,24906651 Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:01:45 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24901975-lotus-%E2%80%93-podictionary-738 A lotus is a flower but it seems to be some kind of idealized flower and to have held some special meaning in a number of cultures. People who practice yoga often use the lotus position and the lotus flower held a kind of sacred place in Hindu tradition. But for our western culture that came later with a first citation only 150 years ago. Around the Mediterranean there seem to have been a variety of plants called lotus that were held in sacred regard by the early Egyptians and others. The standout however is the Greek lotus described in Homer’s Odyssey. These flowers were found on an island occupied by a peaceful happy people where Odysseus and his crew were driven by a storm. The reason the islanders were happy and peaceful was that they ate these lotus flowers or perhaps their fruit which appeared to have narcotic properties. Three of Odysseus’ crewmembers were dispatched to check out the island culture and never came back. Odysseus had to go grab them by the scruff of the neck an... A lotus is a flower but it seems to be some kind of idealized flower and to have held some special meaning in a number of cultures. People who practice yoga often use the lotus position and the lotus flower held a kind of sacred place in Hindu tradition. But for our western culture that came later with a first citation only 150 years ago. Around the Mediterranean there seem to have been a variety of plants called lotus that were held in sacred regard by the early Egyptians and others. The standout however is the Greek lotus described in Homer’s Odyssey. These flowers were found on an island occupied by a peaceful happy people where Odysseus and his crew were driven by a storm. The reason the islanders were happy and peaceful was that they ate these lotus flowers or perhaps their fruit which appeared to have narcotic properties. Three of Odysseus’ crewmembers were dispatched to check out the island culture and never came back. Odysseus had to go grab them by the scruff of the neck and bodily haul them back to the ship. They had forgotten their assignment and only wanted to hang out with the islanders and keep eating lotus. Odysseus skedaddled out of there as quickly as his little oars could row him. There seems to be a lesson here, some kind of cautionary tale about drugs. But perhaps the lesson has been lost on us. I say this for two reasons. First of all I see that plenty of people have invested piles of time in trying to figure out what plant it was exactly that Odysseus was reporting on. You don’t suppose those researchers were interested in having a little taste do you? I suppose it’s natural that we don’t know if any of this research has ever been successful since if the correct lotus was discovered the discoverer wouldn’t be bothered to write his report after eating the stuff. The phrase lotus-eater mimics the Greek Lotophagi and refers to people who are in an unmotivated dreamlike happy state. Similarly lotus land is that place you go when you’re feeling deliciously irresponsible and happy. This could be just your internal “happy place” or an actual geographical location; California and British Columbia have been mentioned. I said there were two pieces of evidence pointing to our missing the moral lesson in lotus. The second is that despite the lazy and irresponsible tone that the etymology of lotus carries, people still have a warm fuzzy feeling about the word. Why else would so many artists name their work lotus or corporations adopt the name. There is software called Lotus, a supermarket chain and a car company. They all want you to feel warm and happy with their name. I have a story about a Lotus car. A friend bought a used Lotus and spent years tinkering with it in his garage. The last time I saw it it was in pieces. I don’t think he ever actually drove it much. Anyway, one day he was tinkering away in his driveway in the sunshine when a stranger strolls by and starts to chat. “A Lotus, I once had a Lotus years ago…” and they reminisce for quite some time about this and that car trivia. Eventually the guy picks up some tools and starts pitching in to help with the tinkering. After another while doing this he straightens up and says “You know what, this used to be my car!” It was one of those hobby projects that had changed hands several times always spending more time in parts than on the road. I guess it was just happiest in the garage. A lotus is a flower but it seems to be some kind of idealized flower and to have held some special meaning in a number of cultures. People who practice yoga often use the lotus position and the lotus flower held a kind of sacred place in Hindu tradition. But for our western culture that came later with a first citation only 150 years ago. Around the Mediterranean there seem to have been a variety of plants called lotus that were held in sacred regard by the early Egyptians and others. The standout however is the Greek lotus described in Homer’s Odyssey. These flowers were found on an island occupied by a peaceful happy people where Odysseus and his crew were driven by a storm. The reason the islanders were happy and peaceful was that they ate these lotus flowers or perhaps their fruit which appeared to have narcotic properties. Three of Odysseus’ crewmembers were dispatched to check out the island culture and never came back. Odysseus had to go grab them by the scruff of the neck and bodily haul them back to the ship. They had forgotten their assignment and only wanted to hang out with the islanders and keep eating lotus. Odysseus skedaddled out of there as quickly as his little oars could row him. There seems to be a lesson here, some kind of cautionary tale about drugs. But perhaps the lesson has been lost on us. I say this for two reasons. First of all I see that plenty of people have invested piles of time in trying to figure out what plant it was exactly that Odysseus was reporting on. You don’t suppose those researchers were interested in having a little taste do you? I suppose it’s natural that we don’t know if any of this research has ever been successful since if the correct lotus was discovered the discoverer wouldn’t be bothered to write his report after eating the stuff. The phrase lotus-eater mimics the Greek Lotophagi and refers to people who are in an unmotivated dreamlike happy state. Similarly lotus land is that place you go when you’re feeling deliciously irresponsible and happy. This could be just your internal “happy place” or an actual geographical location; California and British Columbia have been mentioned. I said there were two pieces of evidence pointing to our missing the moral lesson in lotus. The second is that despite the lazy and irresponsible tone that the etymology of lotus carries, people still have a warm fuzzy feeling about the word. Why else would so many artists name their work lotus or corporations adopt the name. There is software called Lotus, a supermarket chain and a car company. They all want you to feel warm and happy with their name. I have a story about a Lotus car. A friend bought a used Lotus and spent years tinkering with it in his garage. The last time I saw it it was in pieces. I don’t think he ever actually drove it much. Anyway, one day he was tinkering away in his driveway in the sunshine when a stranger strolls by and starts to chat. “A Lotus, I once had a Lotus years ago…” and they reminisce for quite some time about this and that car trivia. Eventually the guy picks up some tools and starts pitching in to help with the tinkering. After another while doing this he straightens up and says “You know what, this used to be my car!” It was one of those hobby projects that had changed hands several times always spending more time in parts than on the road. I guess it was just happiest in the garage. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-02,24901975 Sun, 02 Aug 2009 21:01:08 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24899939-Charles-Makes-Excuses Today I am only here to say that things have been busy here at podictionary world headquarters; busy and soggy. My normal routine has been temporarily disrupted by travel and childcare demands, plus it’s been raining non-stop for weeks and that’s only made things more unpredictable. So I am sorry to say that this week’s podictionary episodes haven’t been prepared. So what I’m going to do is re-post episodes from the past. The good thing about this is that there will be no ads, the bad thing about this is that some of these you might have heard or read before. I’ll get back on the air as soon as I can though. Since people don’t necessarily hear or read podictionary episodes right away when I post them let me clarify: when I say “this week” I mean the week of August 3rd 2009. Thanks for subscribing to podictionary. Today I am only here to say that things have been busy here at podictionary world headquarters; busy and soggy. My normal routine has been temporarily disrupted by travel and childcare demands, plus it’s been raining non-stop for weeks and that’s only made things more unpredictable. So I am sorry to say that this week’s podictionary episodes haven’t been prepared. So what I’m going to do is re-post episodes from the past. The good thing about this is that there will be no ads, the bad thing about this is that some of these you might have heard or read before. I’ll get back on the air as soon as I can though. Since people don’t necessarily hear or read podictionary episodes right away when I post them let me clarify: when I say “this week” I mean the week of August 3rd 2009. Thanks for subscribing to podictionary. Today I am only here to say that things have been busy here at podictionary world headquarters; busy and soggy. My normal routine has been temporarily disrupted by travel and childcare demands, plus it’s been raining non-stop for weeks and that’s only made things more unpredictable. So I am sorry to say that this week’s podictionary episodes haven’t been prepared. So what I’m going to do is re-post episodes from the past. The good thing about this is that there will be no ads, the bad thing about this is that some of these you might have heard or read before. I’ll get back on the air as soon as I can though. Since people don’t necessarily hear or read podictionary episodes right away when I post them let me clarify: when I say “this week” I mean the week of August 3rd 2009. Thanks for subscribing to podictionary. tag:odeo.com,2009-08-02,24899939 Sun, 02 Aug 2009 08:20:53 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24838634-Wednesday-%E2%80%93-podictionary-86 Sunday and Monday are obvious in being named in honor of ancient gods of the sun and the moon and we can recognize the god of thunder, Thor in Thursday. It was Thor’s dad, Woden who is remembered (though not so clearly) in Wednesday, and Thor’s brother Tui in Tuesday. Woden was the king of the gods and hung out in Valhalla.  Among other things he was the god of war. Woden was his Anglo-Saxon name while in Norse he was Oden. The English modeled our names for the days of the week along the lines of the Romans who had ditched their system of more or less having a name for every day of the month, in favor of the seven day system.  They adopted it from a system that was originally from Mesopotamia where each day was linked to a celestial body. English kept three—Sunday, Monday and Saturday (from Saturn) but changed the other four to gods they already knew and loved—the only one I’m missing is Friday. Friday replaced Venus’ day and since Venus is the god of love the Anglo-Saxons put in he... Sunday and Monday are obvious in being named in honor of ancient gods of the sun and the moon and we can recognize the god of thunder, Thor in Thursday. It was Thor’s dad, Woden who is remembered (though not so clearly) in Wednesday, and Thor’s brother Tui in Tuesday. Woden was the king of the gods and hung out in Valhalla.  Among other things he was the god of war. Woden was his Anglo-Saxon name while in Norse he was Oden. The English modeled our names for the days of the week along the lines of the Romans who had ditched their system of more or less having a name for every day of the month, in favor of the seven day system.  They adopted it from a system that was originally from Mesopotamia where each day was linked to a celestial body. English kept three—Sunday, Monday and Saturday (from Saturn) but changed the other four to gods they already knew and loved—the only one I’m missing is Friday. Friday replaced Venus’ day and since Venus is the god of love the Anglo-Saxons put in her place their god of love, who’s name, believe it or not, is Frigg. It gives a whole new meaning to “thank god it’s Friday”—two new meanings actually.  Frigg was the wife of Woden. This podictionary episode is a re-run from 2005. I see though that Anatoly Liberman did a piece more recently on Wednesday’s Father and revisited the theme at the beginning of July 2009. Sunday and Monday are obvious in being named in honor of ancient gods of the sun and the moon and we can recognize the god of thunder, Thor in Thursday. It was Thor’s dad, Woden who is remembered (though not so clearly) in Wednesday, and Thor’s brother Tui in Tuesday. Woden was the king of the gods and hung out in Valhalla.  Among other things he was the god of war. Woden was his Anglo-Saxon name while in Norse he was Oden. The English modeled our names for the days of the week along the lines of the Romans who had ditched their system of more or less having a name for every day of the month, in favor of the seven day system.  They adopted it from a system that was originally from Mesopotamia where each day was linked to a celestial body. English kept three—Sunday, Monday and Saturday (from Saturn) but changed the other four to gods they already knew and loved—the only one I’m missing is Friday. Friday replaced Venus’ day and since Venus is the god of love the Anglo-Saxons put in her place their god of love, who’s name, believe it or not, is Frigg. It gives a whole new meaning to “thank god it’s Friday”—two new meanings actually.  Frigg was the wife of Woden. This podictionary episode is a re-run from 2005. I see though that Anatoly Liberman did a piece more recently on Wednesday’s Father and revisited the theme at the beginning of July 2009. tag:odeo.com,2009-07-20,24838634 Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24737724-channel-%E2%80%93-podictionary-991 I was a young boy there weren’t many channels on TV. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts To change channels you got up off the couch, walked across the room and turned a dial. These days you can channel surf using your remote control.  Those remote controls usually use an infrared frequency signal to communicate with your TV but the first remote control I ever saw used high frequency sound instead of infrared.  This was fine except that when our dog scratched and jingled her dog tags the channels started flipping around. The fact that everybody channel surfs these days is etymologically appropriate since surfing was originally done on water and channels were, and still are, watercourses. Channel first turns up in English back around the year 1300 at which time it certainly meant a stream or river. The English word had come from French but by 1500 people had realized that there was an old Latin word canalis or canalum... I was a young boy there weren’t many channels on TV. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts To change channels you got up off the couch, walked across the room and turned a dial. These days you can channel surf using your remote control.  Those remote controls usually use an infrared frequency signal to communicate with your TV but the first remote control I ever saw used high frequency sound instead of infrared.  This was fine except that when our dog scratched and jingled her dog tags the channels started flipping around. The fact that everybody channel surfs these days is etymologically appropriate since surfing was originally done on water and channels were, and still are, watercourses. Channel first turns up in English back around the year 1300 at which time it certainly meant a stream or river. The English word had come from French but by 1500 people had realized that there was an old Latin word canalis or canalum from which French had formed channel and so into English sprang this new word canal right alongside channel. It makes sense that a word describing a watercourse or a passage through which boats might travel could metaphorically be applied to an electronic channel through which TV signals might be delivered. The first inkling for this was in 1848 in a description of telegraph circuits. If you were to guess, what date might you place on the a first citation for the following Oxford English Dictionary definition? “That through which information, news, trade, or the like passes; a medium of transmission, conveyance, or communication…” Does 1537 surprise you? I mentioned channel surfing.  This got me wondering why it was called channel surfing. It seems a no brainer that since the internet became big after the advent of TV remote controls that surfing the web grew out of channel surfing and sure enough the first citation for channel surfing was 1986 while web surfing seems to have been 1992. But what about surfing was it that leant its name to these activities? According to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms the reason is that surfers are in quest of a good wave, TV watchers and web browsers are in quest of a good show or a good website. I was a young boy there weren’t many channels on TV. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts To change channels you got up off the couch, walked across the room and turned a dial. These days you can channel surf using your remote control.  Those remote controls usually use an infrared frequency signal to communicate with your TV but the first remote control I ever saw used high frequency sound instead of infrared.  This was fine except that when our dog scratched and jingled her dog tags the channels started flipping around. The fact that everybody channel surfs these days is etymologically appropriate since surfing was originally done on water and channels were, and still are, watercourses. Channel first turns up in English back around the year 1300 at which time it certainly meant a stream or river. The English word had come from French but by 1500 people had realized that there was an old Latin word canalis or canalum from which French had formed channel and so into English sprang this new word canal right alongside channel. It makes sense that a word describing a watercourse or a passage through which boats might travel could metaphorically be applied to an electronic channel through which TV signals might be delivered. The first inkling for this was in 1848 in a description of telegraph circuits. If you were to guess, what date might you place on the a first citation for the following Oxford English Dictionary definition? “That through which information, news, trade, or the like passes; a medium of transmission, conveyance, or communication…” Does 1537 surprise you? I mentioned channel surfing.  This got me wondering why it was called channel surfing. It seems a no brainer that since the internet became big after the advent of TV remote controls that surfing the web grew out of channel surfing and sure enough the first citation for channel surfing was 1986 while web surfing seems to have been 1992. But what about surfing was it that leant its name to these activities? According to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms the reason is that surfers are in quest of a good wave, TV watchers and web browsers are in quest of a good show or a good website. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-30,24737724 Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:01:15 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24737726-gasoline-%E2%80%93-podictionary-78 The etymology of the word gasoline is dead boring. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Some chemists named the first thing that comes off in the distillation process of petroleum by plugging together the words gas—being the state of the stuff—ol—being the conventional suffix of something to do with oil—and ene—another suffix organic chemists like to use for this class of matter. We in North America call the stuff we put in our cars gas because it’s an abbreviation of gasoline, but if we look at why gasoline begins with gas and why air is a gas and the steam out of our teakettle is called a gas, that’s where things get interesting. Around 1600 this Flemish chemist named Jan Baptist van Helmont was one of the first to figure out what a gas was. As we know now, a gas is a state of matter in which the molecules are bouncing around in  space in no particular order, pranging into each other and into everything around them.... The etymology of the word gasoline is dead boring. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Some chemists named the first thing that comes off in the distillation process of petroleum by plugging together the words gas—being the state of the stuff—ol—being the conventional suffix of something to do with oil—and ene—another suffix organic chemists like to use for this class of matter. We in North America call the stuff we put in our cars gas because it’s an abbreviation of gasoline, but if we look at why gasoline begins with gas and why air is a gas and the steam out of our teakettle is called a gas, that’s where things get interesting. Around 1600 this Flemish chemist named Jan Baptist van Helmont was one of the first to figure out what a gas was. As we know now, a gas is a state of matter in which the molecules are bouncing around in  space in no particular order, pranging into each other and into everything around them. van Helmot called this stuff after the Greek concept of chaos, except with his Flemish accent he transcribed the Greek to the word gas instead of chaos. Chaos from Greek was supposed to be that mixed up state of things before the world formed—not a bad theory on the ancient Greek’s part given what we now know about the formation of the stars and planets out of space dust. So good on the Greeks and good on van Helmot. Except that von Helmot died in 1644 and no one looked at his notes for quite some time. People used his word gas but they didn’t know exactly why he had chosen it. They interpreted a spiritual element and for a while it was thought that he named gas after the Dutch word for ghosts geest. The etymology of the word gasoline is dead boring. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Some chemists named the first thing that comes off in the distillation process of petroleum by plugging together the words gas—being the state of the stuff—ol—being the conventional suffix of something to do with oil—and ene—another suffix organic chemists like to use for this class of matter. We in North America call the stuff we put in our cars gas because it’s an abbreviation of gasoline, but if we look at why gasoline begins with gas and why air is a gas and the steam out of our teakettle is called a gas, that’s where things get interesting. Around 1600 this Flemish chemist named Jan Baptist van Helmont was one of the first to figure out what a gas was. As we know now, a gas is a state of matter in which the molecules are bouncing around in  space in no particular order, pranging into each other and into everything around them. van Helmot called this stuff after the Greek concept of chaos, except with his Flemish accent he transcribed the Greek to the word gas instead of chaos. Chaos from Greek was supposed to be that mixed up state of things before the world formed—not a bad theory on the ancient Greek’s part given what we now know about the formation of the stars and planets out of space dust. So good on the Greeks and good on van Helmot. Except that von Helmot died in 1644 and no one looked at his notes for quite some time. People used his word gas but they didn’t know exactly why he had chosen it. They interpreted a spiritual element and for a while it was thought that he named gas after the Dutch word for ghosts geest. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-29,24737726 Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24737728-tennis-%E2%80%93-podictionary-990 I was listening to some commentary about the grunting sounds emanating from professional tennis players as they whack away at the ball. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Some players are said to be emitting sounds that peak around 100 decibels and are compared to the volume of a lion’s roar—though of shorter duration and with less teeth showing. Some say that these loud noises are a form of intimidation. In this I see an etymological connection.  But then I see an etymological connection in practically anything. The name of the game is tennis and it’s been around for a while.  The earliest reference we have for tennis is from Italian from 1325. Supposedly some French knights were hanging out in Florence and introduced the game there. It was 1400 before the word turned up in English and that happened in a poem by a fellow named John Gower who not only lived at the same time as Geoffrey Chaucer, but was actually budd... I was listening to some commentary about the grunting sounds emanating from professional tennis players as they whack away at the ball. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Some players are said to be emitting sounds that peak around 100 decibels and are compared to the volume of a lion’s roar—though of shorter duration and with less teeth showing. Some say that these loud noises are a form of intimidation. In this I see an etymological connection.  But then I see an etymological connection in practically anything. The name of the game is tennis and it’s been around for a while.  The earliest reference we have for tennis is from Italian from 1325. Supposedly some French knights were hanging out in Florence and introduced the game there. It was 1400 before the word turned up in English and that happened in a poem by a fellow named John Gower who not only lived at the same time as Geoffrey Chaucer, but was actually buddies with him. Just like soccer and rugby and American football are offshoots of an earlier form of one sport, tennis also diverged in several directions. It’s thought that tennis originally didn’t use racquets but was more like handball and in some cases was named for the French word for “hand.” Over time different forms of tennis were called real tennis, lawn tennis and field tennis. Real tennis was and still is played in an enclosed court with walls, some of which it is legitimate to ricochet your shot off of. Until 1800 field tennis was still played with the open hand instead of a racquet. The game we usually recognize as tennis, and from which all those loud grunts are emanating was until 1877 known as lawn tennis. If the grunting players are indeed trying to intimidate their opponents with these noises it’s a little like shouting “take that” as they wallop the ball.  Tennis is called tennis because its early players did shout something like “take that.” It is thought that the word tennis comes from the French word tenir meaning “to hold” or “to take.” Some tennis players may be harder to intimidate than others though; Serena Williams is quoted as saying “ If you can keep playing tennis when somebody is shooting a gun down the street, that’s concentration. I didn’t grow up playing at the country club.” I was listening to some commentary about the grunting sounds emanating from professional tennis players as they whack away at the ball. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Some players are said to be emitting sounds that peak around 100 decibels and are compared to the volume of a lion’s roar—though of shorter duration and with less teeth showing. Some say that these loud noises are a form of intimidation. In this I see an etymological connection.  But then I see an etymological connection in practically anything. The name of the game is tennis and it’s been around for a while.  The earliest reference we have for tennis is from Italian from 1325. Supposedly some French knights were hanging out in Florence and introduced the game there. It was 1400 before the word turned up in English and that happened in a poem by a fellow named John Gower who not only lived at the same time as Geoffrey Chaucer, but was actually buddies with him. Just like soccer and rugby and American football are offshoots of an earlier form of one sport, tennis also diverged in several directions. It’s thought that tennis originally didn’t use racquets but was more like handball and in some cases was named for the French word for “hand.” Over time different forms of tennis were called real tennis, lawn tennis and field tennis. Real tennis was and still is played in an enclosed court with walls, some of which it is legitimate to ricochet your shot off of. Until 1800 field tennis was still played with the open hand instead of a racquet. The game we usually recognize as tennis, and from which all those loud grunts are emanating was until 1877 known as lawn tennis. If the grunting players are indeed trying to intimidate their opponents with these noises it’s a little like shouting “take that” as they wallop the ball.  Tennis is called tennis because its early players did shout something like “take that.” It is thought that the word tennis comes from the French word tenir meaning “to hold” or “to take.” Some tennis players may be harder to intimidate than others though; Serena Williams is quoted as saying “ If you can keep playing tennis when somebody is shooting a gun down the street, that’s concentration. I didn’t grow up playing at the country club.” tag:odeo.com,2009-06-28,24737728 Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:23:29 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24737730-town-%E2%80%93-podictionary-989 Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that the axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts This quote appeared on my computer screen within 24 hours of my reading in an old book that Boston was the hub of the universe, and in conjunction with an etymological note telling me that many placenames ending in –ton arose from the same root as the word town. The city of Boston, Mass. is named after the town of Boston in Lincolnshire, England and popular legend has it that Boston is a development of Botolph’s Stone and that a saint named Botolph or Botwulf once preached his holy messages in that location. If true that would have been in the mid 600s. That famous document The Doomsday Book was written up after the Normans arrived in 1066 and was meticulous in its detail because it was intended to be an inventory of every piece of property—right down to the farm... Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that the axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts This quote appeared on my computer screen within 24 hours of my reading in an old book that Boston was the hub of the universe, and in conjunction with an etymological note telling me that many placenames ending in –ton arose from the same root as the word town. The city of Boston, Mass. is named after the town of Boston in Lincolnshire, England and popular legend has it that Boston is a development of Botolph’s Stone and that a saint named Botolph or Botwulf once preached his holy messages in that location. If true that would have been in the mid 600s. That famous document The Doomsday Book was written up after the Normans arrived in 1066 and was meticulous in its detail because it was intended to be an inventory of every piece of property—right down to the farm animals—in England so that the new French masters knew what to tax. Yet that very detailed inventory neglects to mention a town called anything like Boston. Evidently Botolph did have a number of churches dedicated to him though, and so it could be that instead of Botolph’s Stone, Boston grew up as Botolph’s Town, being the settlement that accumulated in the vicinity of one of these churches. In its most ancient sense town meant “an enclosed space” and as such was more likely to apply to a farm than an urban center. In some languages the related words mean “fence” or “hedge.” It was the collection of buildings that accumulated on a farm that likely gave town its modern meaning. So places like Northampton, Sutton, Taunton and Wolverhampton were named originally after farmsteads. As Oliver Wendell Holmes suggests, everyone thinks that their particular town is the very best place to live. I don’t live in Boston Lincolnshire or Boston Mass. but I do have some associations with the American Boston—my brother lives there for one thing.  A former mentor if mine was a Bostonian and it was from him that I first heard that Boston was the hub of the universe. He went on to explain that the hub is that dirty greasy thing in the middle of the wheel that stands still while everything else goes on around it. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that the axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts This quote appeared on my computer screen within 24 hours of my reading in an old book that Boston was the hub of the universe, and in conjunction with an etymological note telling me that many placenames ending in –ton arose from the same root as the word town. The city of Boston, Mass. is named after the town of Boston in Lincolnshire, England and popular legend has it that Boston is a development of Botolph’s Stone and that a saint named Botolph or Botwulf once preached his holy messages in that location. If true that would have been in the mid 600s. That famous document The Doomsday Book was written up after the Normans arrived in 1066 and was meticulous in its detail because it was intended to be an inventory of every piece of property—right down to the farm animals—in England so that the new French masters knew what to tax. Yet that very detailed inventory neglects to mention a town called anything like Boston. Evidently Botolph did have a number of churches dedicated to him though, and so it could be that instead of Botolph’s Stone, Boston grew up as Botolph’s Town, being the settlement that accumulated in the vicinity of one of these churches. In its most ancient sense town meant “an enclosed space” and as such was more likely to apply to a farm than an urban center. In some languages the related words mean “fence” or “hedge.” It was the collection of buildings that accumulated on a farm that likely gave town its modern meaning. So places like Northampton, Sutton, Taunton and Wolverhampton were named originally after farmsteads. As Oliver Wendell Holmes suggests, everyone thinks that their particular town is the very best place to live. I don’t live in Boston Lincolnshire or Boston Mass. but I do have some associations with the American Boston—my brother lives there for one thing.  A former mentor if mine was a Bostonian and it was from him that I first heard that Boston was the hub of the universe. He went on to explain that the hub is that dirty greasy thing in the middle of the wheel that stands still while everything else goes on around it. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-25,24737730 Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:01:55 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24737732-jungle-%E2%80%93-podictionary-75 SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary Now this is the Law of the Jungle as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. That’s Rudyard Kipling. Environmentalists have changed the use of the word jungle. Even the OED notes the similarity in sound between the words jungle and tangle and we often use jungle to mean an almost impenetrable tangle of some sort. The concrete jungle is a phrase used to convey a sense of a threatening place that is confusing and wild at times. That’s the same reason that Kipling’s jungle comes across as a dangerous place. Break the law of the jungle and you die. A tropical jungle, full of snakes and parrots and vines is now called, instead, a rainforest.  Its value is... SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary Now this is the Law of the Jungle as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. That’s Rudyard Kipling. Environmentalists have changed the use of the word jungle. Even the OED notes the similarity in sound between the words jungle and tangle and we often use jungle to mean an almost impenetrable tangle of some sort. The concrete jungle is a phrase used to convey a sense of a threatening place that is confusing and wild at times. That’s the same reason that Kipling’s jungle comes across as a dangerous place. Break the law of the jungle and you die. A tropical jungle, full of snakes and parrots and vines is now called, instead, a rainforest.  Its value is justly recognized by this name change since jungle denotes something that is more than we can deal with, and so is kind of useless to us. The word jungle comes to English from Hindi, but in some senses there, and even more so earlier in Sanskrit, it didn’t so much denote a lush rainforest, but a dry desert. So in jungle this sense of useless land is retained, although the amount of water, wildlife and leafy overhead cover is reversed. Jungle has only been part of English for a couple of hundred years, since the times when England was building her Empire and began taking on such words from the lands she claimed as hers. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary Now this is the Law of the Jungle as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. That’s Rudyard Kipling. Environmentalists have changed the use of the word jungle. Even the OED notes the similarity in sound between the words jungle and tangle and we often use jungle to mean an almost impenetrable tangle of some sort. The concrete jungle is a phrase used to convey a sense of a threatening place that is confusing and wild at times. That’s the same reason that Kipling’s jungle comes across as a dangerous place. Break the law of the jungle and you die. A tropical jungle, full of snakes and parrots and vines is now called, instead, a rainforest.  Its value is justly recognized by this name change since jungle denotes something that is more than we can deal with, and so is kind of useless to us. The word jungle comes to English from Hindi, but in some senses there, and even more so earlier in Sanskrit, it didn’t so much denote a lush rainforest, but a dry desert. So in jungle this sense of useless land is retained, although the amount of water, wildlife and leafy overhead cover is reversed. Jungle has only been part of English for a couple of hundred years, since the times when England was building her Empire and began taking on such words from the lands she claimed as hers. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-24,24737732 Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24737734-thrill-%E2%80%93-podictionary-988 In 1933 Franklin D Roosevelt made his famous “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” speech.  In another part of his speech he mentioned that happiness lies in the thrill of creative effort. He coupled this notion with the joy of achievement. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts One of Roosevelt’s contemporaries, Winston Churchill was asked if the fact that huge crowds gathered for all his speeches was thrilling. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York said it was thrilling to get fired from the big financial company he’d been working for—but he only said that because he got $10 million as a severance package. The point of all of these little stories is that we see something thrilling as something good. Joy is good; crowds gathering on your behalf is good; $10 million is good. But the word thrill has only been something “good” for a little over hundred years. The roots of thrill are particularly ancient, goin... In 1933 Franklin D Roosevelt made his famous “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” speech.  In another part of his speech he mentioned that happiness lies in the thrill of creative effort. He coupled this notion with the joy of achievement. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts One of Roosevelt’s contemporaries, Winston Churchill was asked if the fact that huge crowds gathered for all his speeches was thrilling. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York said it was thrilling to get fired from the big financial company he’d been working for—but he only said that because he got $10 million as a severance package. The point of all of these little stories is that we see something thrilling as something good. Joy is good; crowds gathering on your behalf is good; $10 million is good. But the word thrill has only been something “good” for a little over hundred years. The roots of thrill are particularly ancient, going back to Indo-European and arising in Old English. In Modern English there are piles of words that relate in the most unexpected ways. Believe it or not the name of the little pictures people put up on the internet to represent themselves—avatar—is related to thrill; the name of the holes in your nose—nostril—is related to thrill; the name of that handy household tool that makes holes—drill—is related to thrill .  (I was challenged on this one and dagnabbit, I was wrong.) All this is possible because back in Indo-European there had been a word tera that meant to “cross over” or to “pass through.” As I explained in my episode on the word avatar, that word came from Sanskrit and is supposed to be some kind of image of a god. The way that worked out was that most gods don’t pad around here on terra firma and so the god has crossed over to our world; that’s the tar part of avatar. If that old Indo-European word meant “pass through” then it is logical that it might lead to a word meaning “hole” since things can pass through holes. What makes holes? A drill makes holes, so there’s that connection.  But a drill is called a drill because it comes from the same Old English source as thrill and that brings us to nostril. The Old English word for “hole” was thirl and a nostril is a “nose hole” or a “nose thirl.” In Old English we don’t see evidence of people extending the metaphor of something going through you—like a hole or a thirl—to emotions going through you. But as soon as the word morphed to thrill around 1300 we see both meanings. Thus a thrill was for at least 500 years something that passed through you in an emotional sense, but only in the last 100 plus years was specifically a pleasurable sensation. I don’t know if Winston Churchill was thinking of the “crossing over” etymology of the word thrill when he answered his admirer.  She’d asked about the thrill of large crowds. He said that he always tried to remember that if he was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big. In 1933 Franklin D Roosevelt made his famous “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” speech.  In another part of his speech he mentioned that happiness lies in the thrill of creative effort. He coupled this notion with the joy of achievement. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts One of Roosevelt’s contemporaries, Winston Churchill was asked if the fact that huge crowds gathered for all his speeches was thrilling. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York said it was thrilling to get fired from the big financial company he’d been working for—but he only said that because he got $10 million as a severance package. The point of all of these little stories is that we see something thrilling as something good. Joy is good; crowds gathering on your behalf is good; $10 million is good. But the word thrill has only been something “good” for a little over hundred years. The roots of thrill are particularly ancient, going back to Indo-European and arising in Old English. In Modern English there are piles of words that relate in the most unexpected ways. Believe it or not the name of the little pictures people put up on the internet to represent themselves—avatar—is related to thrill; the name of the holes in your nose—nostril—is related to thrill; the name of that handy household tool that makes holes—drill—is related to thrill .  (I was challenged on this one and dagnabbit, I was wrong.) All this is possible because back in Indo-European there had been a word tera that meant to “cross over” or to “pass through.” As I explained in my episode on the word avatar, that word came from Sanskrit and is supposed to be some kind of image of a god. The way that worked out was that most gods don’t pad around here on terra firma and so the god has crossed over to our world; that’s the tar part of avatar. If that old Indo-European word meant “pass through” then it is logical that it might lead to a word meaning “hole” since things can pass through holes. What makes holes? A drill makes holes, so there’s that connection.  But a drill is called a drill because it comes from the same Old English source as thrill and that brings us to nostril. The Old English word for “hole” was thirl and a nostril is a “nose hole” or a “nose thirl.” In Old English we don’t see evidence of people extending the metaphor of something going through you—like a hole or a thirl—to emotions going through you. But as soon as the word morphed to thrill around 1300 we see both meanings. Thus a thrill was for at least 500 years something that passed through you in an emotional sense, but only in the last 100 plus years was specifically a pleasurable sensation. I don’t know if Winston Churchill was thinking of the “crossing over” etymology of the word thrill when he answered his admirer.  She’d asked about the thrill of large crowds. He said that he always tried to remember that if he was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-23,24737734 Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:01:56 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24737735-curry-%E2%80%93-podictionary-71 We all recognize curry as the name of a spicy, aromatic food, but the etymological storytellers tend to give this kind of curry short shrift in favor of another older word curry that isn’t used much except in the expression “to curry favor.” SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Curry the food came into English from Tamil in 1598 but the other curry came to English from French along with William the Conqueror. It isn’t strictly true that curry the food came into English from Tamil. The first Englishman to write about curry hadn’t actually tasted it.  He was translating a kind of travel guide that was actually written by a Dutchman. The Dutch were aggressive traders and had been looking for new ways to make money and had sent a pair of brothers, Cornelis and Frederik de Houtman, to check out what the Portuguese were doing. The brothers got arrested in Portugal for what amounts to industrial espionage; they tried to stea... We all recognize curry as the name of a spicy, aromatic food, but the etymological storytellers tend to give this kind of curry short shrift in favor of another older word curry that isn’t used much except in the expression “to curry favor.” SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Curry the food came into English from Tamil in 1598 but the other curry came to English from French along with William the Conqueror. It isn’t strictly true that curry the food came into English from Tamil. The first Englishman to write about curry hadn’t actually tasted it.  He was translating a kind of travel guide that was actually written by a Dutchman. The Dutch were aggressive traders and had been looking for new ways to make money and had sent a pair of brothers, Cornelis and Frederik de Houtman, to check out what the Portuguese were doing. The brothers got arrested in Portugal for what amounts to industrial espionage; they tried to steal the maps of East Indian trade routes that were valuable for the spices they might provide. Despite killing more than half the crew on their subsequent journey to get the spices, these brothers were successful and made a bundle when they arrived home with their precious cargo. A book was written about them in Dutch and translated into English and was such a success that the Translator did it again for another voyage. It was that second one that brought to us this word curry, that had in Tamil meant “sauce for rice.” About 300 years before, an earlier meaning for the word curry appeared. To curry favor means to ingratiate oneself, usually with a superior. There is a slight sense of sucking up about the expression curry favor. It didn’t used to be favor, but instead favel so people used to curry favel.  This is a word we don’t use any more but it in turn is related to fallow—a field that hasn’t been planted is left fallow. A fallow field looks like dead grass and has a tan brown shade.  Thus these words fallow and favel also took on a meaning of light brown color.  From there horses that were of similar color began to be called favel. That earlier existence of the word curry meant to “brush” or “rub down,” so that to curry favor originally meant to rub down a brown horse. No one really knows why this equine image should mean to “suck up,”—perhaps it was the stable hand sucking up to the horse’s owner, maybe it was just that rubbing down made the horse happy—but there are identical expressions in French and German. Before I go, some weeks ago I mentioned a top secret word website that was getting ready to launch.  It’s out there now so I’m officially allowed to tell you—though you may already know—the website is wordnik.com. We all recognize curry as the name of a spicy, aromatic food, but the etymological storytellers tend to give this kind of curry short shrift in favor of another older word curry that isn’t used much except in the expression “to curry favor.” SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Curry the food came into English from Tamil in 1598 but the other curry came to English from French along with William the Conqueror. It isn’t strictly true that curry the food came into English from Tamil. The first Englishman to write about curry hadn’t actually tasted it.  He was translating a kind of travel guide that was actually written by a Dutchman. The Dutch were aggressive traders and had been looking for new ways to make money and had sent a pair of brothers, Cornelis and Frederik de Houtman, to check out what the Portuguese were doing. The brothers got arrested in Portugal for what amounts to industrial espionage; they tried to steal the maps of East Indian trade routes that were valuable for the spices they might provide. Despite killing more than half the crew on their subsequent journey to get the spices, these brothers were successful and made a bundle when they arrived home with their precious cargo. A book was written about them in Dutch and translated into English and was such a success that the Translator did it again for another voyage. It was that second one that brought to us this word curry, that had in Tamil meant “sauce for rice.” About 300 years before, an earlier meaning for the word curry appeared. To curry favor means to ingratiate oneself, usually with a superior. There is a slight sense of sucking up about the expression curry favor. It didn’t used to be favor, but instead favel so people used to curry favel.  This is a word we don’t use any more but it in turn is related to fallow—a field that hasn’t been planted is left fallow. A fallow field looks like dead grass and has a tan brown shade.  Thus these words fallow and favel also took on a meaning of light brown color.  From there horses that were of similar color began to be called favel. That earlier existence of the word curry meant to “brush” or “rub down,” so that to curry favor originally meant to rub down a brown horse. No one really knows why this equine image should mean to “suck up,”—perhaps it was the stable hand sucking up to the horse’s owner, maybe it was just that rubbing down made the horse happy—but there are identical expressions in French and German. Before I go, some weeks ago I mentioned a top secret word website that was getting ready to launch.  It’s out there now so I’m officially allowed to tell you—though you may already know—the website is wordnik.com. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-22,24737735 Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24737737-snake-%E2%80%93-podictionary-987 That famous dictionary maker Samuel Johnson had a party trick he liked to play. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts He was obviously a pretty smart guy and to prove  how smart he was he’d claim to people that he could recite an entire chapter from memory out of the book The Natural History of Iceland. I don’t know if he took bets on this feat, but his delivery was thus: “Chapter LXXII, Concerning snakes: There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.” I guess it must be true because I see that the Oxford English Dictionary believes that in Old Norse the use of the word snakr was chiefly poetic. Which is to say that the fame of snakes is such that even in northern places where there are no snakes, people still think about them. So our word snake is from Old English and as such it comes from Germanic roots, as does the Icelandic language. A less common—and perhaps more poetic—word for a snake in Englis... That famous dictionary maker Samuel Johnson had a party trick he liked to play. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts He was obviously a pretty smart guy and to prove  how smart he was he’d claim to people that he could recite an entire chapter from memory out of the book The Natural History of Iceland. I don’t know if he took bets on this feat, but his delivery was thus: “Chapter LXXII, Concerning snakes: There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.” I guess it must be true because I see that the Oxford English Dictionary believes that in Old Norse the use of the word snakr was chiefly poetic. Which is to say that the fame of snakes is such that even in northern places where there are no snakes, people still think about them. So our word snake is from Old English and as such it comes from Germanic roots, as does the Icelandic language. A less common—and perhaps more poetic—word for a snake in English is serpent. While the word snake comes from Germanic, serpent comes to English from French and from Latin before that. Like many Latin words this one was founded on a Greek root. The reason a snake is called a snake is actually the same reason that a snake is called a serpent.  Both the words snake and serpent—despite their differing etymologies—slither back to a root meaning of something that creeps and crawls. The word srp in Sanskrit means “to crawl.” There are other things in the world that creep and crawl and according to the OED, back in Latin the word serpens could be applied to such things as lice. Since people in northern Europe were thinking about snakes even when they didn’t have the things, you can be sure that people in those places where Greek and Latin arose were thinking about them too. It’s likely they were thinking about them in less poetic terms and using more specific words than might be equally applicable to lice. A clue to what one of those words might be is found right in the OED definition for snake.  Right there along with the fact that the things are limbless and sometimes venomous the OED says a snake is “an ophidian, a serpent.” Ophidian isn’t a word that I use very often (whic is to say I’d never heard it before) but it does come from a Greek root that actually meant “small snakes” back in ancient Greek. This definition is one of those that makes me smile.  If someone didn’t know what a snake was, would the be too likely to know what an ophidian was? That famous dictionary maker Samuel Johnson had a party trick he liked to play. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts He was obviously a pretty smart guy and to prove  how smart he was he’d claim to people that he could recite an entire chapter from memory out of the book The Natural History of Iceland. I don’t know if he took bets on this feat, but his delivery was thus: “Chapter LXXII, Concerning snakes: There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.” I guess it must be true because I see that the Oxford English Dictionary believes that in Old Norse the use of the word snakr was chiefly poetic. Which is to say that the fame of snakes is such that even in northern places where there are no snakes, people still think about them. So our word snake is from Old English and as such it comes from Germanic roots, as does the Icelandic language. A less common—and perhaps more poetic—word for a snake in English is serpent. While the word snake comes from Germanic, serpent comes to English from French and from Latin before that. Like many Latin words this one was founded on a Greek root. The reason a snake is called a snake is actually the same reason that a snake is called a serpent.  Both the words snake and serpent—despite their differing etymologies—slither back to a root meaning of something that creeps and crawls. The word srp in Sanskrit means “to crawl.” There are other things in the world that creep and crawl and according to the OED, back in Latin the word serpens could be applied to such things as lice. Since people in northern Europe were thinking about snakes even when they didn’t have the things, you can be sure that people in those places where Greek and Latin arose were thinking about them too. It’s likely they were thinking about them in less poetic terms and using more specific words than might be equally applicable to lice. A clue to what one of those words might be is found right in the OED definition for snake.  Right there along with the fact that the things are limbless and sometimes venomous the OED says a snake is “an ophidian, a serpent.” Ophidian isn’t a word that I use very often (whic is to say I’d never heard it before) but it does come from a Greek root that actually meant “small snakes” back in ancient Greek. This definition is one of those that makes me smile.  If someone didn’t know what a snake was, would the be too likely to know what an ophidian was? tag:odeo.com,2009-06-21,24737737 Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:01:36 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24711470-grotesque-%E2%80%93-podictionary-69 At first blush you might think that the words grotesque and gross were a fancy and common version of the same thing. I talked about gross in an earlier episode as having a historical meaning of “thick” or “fat.” Grotesque has nothing to do with these etymologically and instead means “distorted” and “exaggerated.” Grotesque actually comes out of a hole in the ground.  But not the dripping spider-filled cavern you might be thinking of. More like a cherished sanctuary, a grotto decorated with artwork. Hence the style of art from the grottos became known as grotesque. That is “from a grotto” just as something picturesque is as if it is “from a picture.” To the relatively modern eye these images from grottos appeared distorted and exaggerated, and thus the meaning. The word grotto now wants exploring so, as your etymological spelunker I’ll tell you that English got grotto from Italian.  Both grotesque and grotto appeared in English very approximately about 400 years ago. The Italian grot... At first blush you might think that the words grotesque and gross were a fancy and common version of the same thing. I talked about gross in an earlier episode as having a historical meaning of “thick” or “fat.” Grotesque has nothing to do with these etymologically and instead means “distorted” and “exaggerated.” Grotesque actually comes out of a hole in the ground.  But not the dripping spider-filled cavern you might be thinking of. More like a cherished sanctuary, a grotto decorated with artwork. Hence the style of art from the grottos became known as grotesque. That is “from a grotto” just as something picturesque is as if it is “from a picture.” To the relatively modern eye these images from grottos appeared distorted and exaggerated, and thus the meaning. The word grotto now wants exploring so, as your etymological spelunker I’ll tell you that English got grotto from Italian.  Both grotesque and grotto appeared in English very approximately about 400 years ago. The Italian grotta had actually been a Latin word before that, which was closer to—and the ancestor of—our word crypt. But the ancestor word of that Latin crypta still wasn’t so much a creepy hole in the ground, but a special place for keeping special things. Before becoming Latin the word root had sprung from a Greek word meaning “vault” and before that “to hide.” At first blush you might think that the words grotesque and gross were a fancy and common version of the same thing. I talked about gross in an earlier episode as having a historical meaning of “thick” or “fat.” Grotesque has nothing to do with these etymologically and instead means “distorted” and “exaggerated.” Grotesque actually comes out of a hole in the ground.  But not the dripping spider-filled cavern you might be thinking of. More like a cherished sanctuary, a grotto decorated with artwork. Hence the style of art from the grottos became known as grotesque. That is “from a grotto” just as something picturesque is as if it is “from a picture.” To the relatively modern eye these images from grottos appeared distorted and exaggerated, and thus the meaning. The word grotto now wants exploring so, as your etymological spelunker I’ll tell you that English got grotto from Italian.  Both grotesque and grotto appeared in English very approximately about 400 years ago. The Italian grotta had actually been a Latin word before that, which was closer to—and the ancestor of—our word crypt. But the ancestor word of that Latin crypta still wasn’t so much a creepy hole in the ground, but a special place for keeping special things. Before becoming Latin the word root had sprung from a Greek word meaning “vault” and before that “to hide.” tag:odeo.com,2009-06-15,24711470 Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706570-park-%E2%80%93-podictionary-984 You know that old joke, why is it you can park on the driveway and drive on the parkway? I guess today’s episode will answer that. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Of course there are two meanings of park in that old joke. A park is a green space of some kind but the verb to park means to leave something stationary, usually a vehicle. Place your bets right now. Do you think these two words are related, or is it just coincidence that the two meanings use the same word? While you are thinking about that one I’ll tell you that—incredibly—this word actually has a connection to wine. This gives me an unexpected opportunity to remind you of my book History of Wine Words of which Dr. José Vouillamoz, specialist in DNA profiling of grape types said: “an impressive tour de force.” The word park appeared in English in a document dated to the year 1222. This referred to a tract of land and so from this you can correctly assu... You know that old joke, why is it you can park on the driveway and drive on the parkway? I guess today’s episode will answer that. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Of course there are two meanings of park in that old joke. A park is a green space of some kind but the verb to park means to leave something stationary, usually a vehicle. Place your bets right now. Do you think these two words are related, or is it just coincidence that the two meanings use the same word? While you are thinking about that one I’ll tell you that—incredibly—this word actually has a connection to wine. This gives me an unexpected opportunity to remind you of my book History of Wine Words of which Dr. José Vouillamoz, specialist in DNA profiling of grape types said: “an impressive tour de force.” The word park appeared in English in a document dated to the year 1222. This referred to a tract of land and so from this you can correctly assume that the green and leafy type of park predated the verb to park your SUV. When I think of parks I usually think of National Parks and parks that are big enough to contain some kind of real wilderness within them. In general these parks are set aside to protect the natural environment that they contain. The very first application of the word park, however, applied exclusively to a place protected from the average person, so that the aristocracy could go there and shoot at the wildlife. If you are a king or some other kind of landed gentry it isn’t much fun to head out into the park to blast away at birds and deer, only to find that the common rabble had eaten all the winged and four footed occupants before you got there. For this reason the powers that be (or should that be the powers that were) erected fences around such pieces of wilderness and passed laws to prevent the local people from eating what should properly be reserved for sporting purposes. It is the fencing of the property that gave it the name park. Etymologists aren’t completely certain whether the parent word was parricus—a Latin word meaning “fence”—but they think it’s pretty likely. The timing of the word’s appearance and the Latin connection might make you think that it was a French Norman word.  Yet looking further back in the word’s history there seems to be evidence that before the word got into Latin it could possibly have been a Germanic word root, and as such may have been in use in some form in Old English before the Norman Conquest, but just never written down. The Oxford English Dictionary concludes that it’s a toss-up as to whether Latin got it from Germanic or the other way around. Turning to parking your car on the driveway, it was almost 500 years ago that the noun meaning “a place to keep things” (such as deer for shooting) was applied as a verb to mean keeping those things in that place. Of course there were no cars at the time so at first you might park your cattle inside a fenced area. Then by about 200 years ago we get the first glimmerings of vehicular parking as the military began parking cannon and then wagons in fenced enclosures. What’s good for military wagons must be good for everyone else’s wagons and by 150 years ago anyone could park their vehicle and it didn’t even have to be inside a fence. So there’s your answer. Did you win the bet? The two parks are related. The only remaining detail is to explain how the word  park relates to wine and my book that I am subtlety reminding you of (it’s History of Wine Words at Amazon). That Latin use of parricus meaning “fence” seems to have gotten into Spanish as parra. You know that vines grow up poles and along wires and what in Latin had meant “fence,” in Spanish evolved to mean an “artificially supported vine.” It goes further; in Catalan parra means a type of vine and in Portuguese a grapevine leaf. You know that old joke, why is it you can park on the driveway and drive on the parkway? I guess today’s episode will answer that. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Of course there are two meanings of park in that old joke. A park is a green space of some kind but the verb to park means to leave something stationary, usually a vehicle. Place your bets right now. Do you think these two words are related, or is it just coincidence that the two meanings use the same word? While you are thinking about that one I’ll tell you that—incredibly—this word actually has a connection to wine. This gives me an unexpected opportunity to remind you of my book History of Wine Words of which Dr. José Vouillamoz, specialist in DNA profiling of grape types said: “an impressive tour de force.” The word park appeared in English in a document dated to the year 1222. This referred to a tract of land and so from this you can correctly assume that the green and leafy type of park predated the verb to park your SUV. When I think of parks I usually think of National Parks and parks that are big enough to contain some kind of real wilderness within them. In general these parks are set aside to protect the natural environment that they contain. The very first application of the word park, however, applied exclusively to a place protected from the average person, so that the aristocracy could go there and shoot at the wildlife. If you are a king or some other kind of landed gentry it isn’t much fun to head out into the park to blast away at birds and deer, only to find that the common rabble had eaten all the winged and four footed occupants before you got there. For this reason the powers that be (or should that be the powers that were) erected fences around such pieces of wilderness and passed laws to prevent the local people from eating what should properly be reserved for sporting purposes. It is the fencing of the property that gave it the name park. Etymologists aren’t completely certain whether the parent word was parricus—a Latin word meaning “fence”—but they think it’s pretty likely. The timing of the word’s appearance and the Latin connection might make you think that it was a French Norman word.  Yet looking further back in the word’s history there seems to be evidence that before the word got into Latin it could possibly have been a Germanic word root, and as such may have been in use in some form in Old English before the Norman Conquest, but just never written down. The Oxford English Dictionary concludes that it’s a toss-up as to whether Latin got it from Germanic or the other way around. Turning to parking your car on the driveway, it was almost 500 years ago that the noun meaning “a place to keep things” (such as deer for shooting) was applied as a verb to mean keeping those things in that place. Of course there were no cars at the time so at first you might park your cattle inside a fenced area. Then by about 200 years ago we get the first glimmerings of vehicular parking as the military began parking cannon and then wagons in fenced enclosures. What’s good for military wagons must be good for everyone else’s wagons and by 150 years ago anyone could park their vehicle and it didn’t even have to be inside a fence. So there’s your answer. Did you win the bet? The two parks are related. The only remaining detail is to explain how the word  park relates to wine and my book that I am subtlety reminding you of (it’s History of Wine Words at Amazon). That Latin use of parricus meaning “fence” seems to have gotten into Spanish as parra. You know that vines grow up poles and along wires and what in Latin had meant “fence,” in Spanish evolved to mean an “artificially supported vine.” It goes further; in Catalan parra means a type of vine and in Portuguese a grapevine leaf. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-14,24706570 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:01:24 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24705277-park-podictionary-984 You know that old joke, why is it you can park on the driveway and drive on the parkway? I guess today’s episode will answer that. Of course there are two meanings of park in that old joke. A park is a green space of some kind but the verb to park means to leave something stationary, usually a vehicle. Place your bets right now. Do you think these two words are related, or is it just coincidence that the two meanings use the same word? While you are thinking about that one I’ll tell you that—incredibly—this word actually has a connection to wine. This gives me an unexpected opportunity to remind you of my book History of Wine Words of which Dr. José Vouillamoz, specialist in DNA profiling of grape types said: “an impressive tour de force.” The word park appeared in English in a document dated to the year 1222. This referred to a tract of land and so from this you can correctly assume that the green and leafy type of park predated the verb to park your SUV. When I think of parks I us... You know that old joke, why is it you can park on the driveway and drive on the parkway? I guess today’s episode will answer that. Of course there are two meanings of park in that old joke. A park is a green space of some kind but the verb to park means to leave something stationary, usually a vehicle. Place your bets right now. Do you think these two words are related, or is it just coincidence that the two meanings use the same word? While you are thinking about that one I’ll tell you that—incredibly—this word actually has a connection to wine. This gives me an unexpected opportunity to remind you of my book History of Wine Words of which Dr. José Vouillamoz, specialist in DNA profiling of grape types said: “an impressive tour de force.” The word park appeared in English in a document dated to the year 1222. This referred to a tract of land and so from this you can correctly assume that the green and leafy type of park predated the verb to park your SUV. When I think of parks I usually think of National Parks and parks that are big enough to contain some kind of real wilderness within them. In general these parks are set aside to protect the natural environment that they contain. The very first application of the word park, however, applied exclusively to a place protected from the average person, so that the aristocracy could go there and shoot at the wildlife. If you are a king or some other kind of landed gentry it isn’t much fun to head out into the park to blast away at birds and deer, only to find that the common rabble had eaten all the winged and four footed occupants before you got there. For this reason the powers that be (or should that be the powers that were) erected fences around such pieces of wilderness and passed laws to prevent the local people from eating what should properly be reserved for sporting purposes. It is the fencing of the property that gave it the name park. Etymologists aren’t completely certain whether the parent word was parricus—a Latin word meaning “fence”—but they think it’s pretty likely. The timing of the word’s appearance and the Latin connection might make you think that it was a French Norman word.  Yet looking further back in the word’s history there seems to be evidence that before the word got into Latin it could possibly have been a Germanic word root, and as such may have been in use in some form in Old English before the Norman Conquest, but just never written down. The Oxford English Dictionary concludes that it’s a toss-up as to whether Latin got it from Germanic or the other way around. Turning to parking your car on the driveway, it was almost 500 years ago that the noun meaning “a place to keep things” (such as deer for shooting) was applied as a verb to mean keeping those things in that place. Of course there were no cars at the time so at first you might park your cattle inside a fenced area. Then by about 200 years ago we get the first glimmerings of vehicular parking as the military began parking cannon and then wagons in fenced enclosures. What’s good for military wagons must be good for everyone else’s wagons and by 150 years ago anyone could park their vehicle and it didn’t even have to be inside a fence. So there’s your answer. Did you win the bet? The two parks are related. The only remaining detail is to explain how the word  park relates to wine and my book that I am subtlety reminding you of (it’s History of Wine Words at Amazon). That Latin use of parricus meaning “fence” seems to have gotten into Spanish as parra. You know that vines grow up poles and along wires and what in Latin had meant “fence,” in Spanish evolved to mean an “artificially supported vine.” It goes further; in Catalan parra means a type of vine and in Portuguese a grapevine leaf. You know that old joke, why is it you can park on the driveway and drive on the parkway? I guess today’s episode will answer that. Of course there are two meanings of park in that old joke. A park is a green space of some kind but the verb to park means to leave something stationary, usually a vehicle. Place your bets right now. Do you think these two words are related, or is it just coincidence that the two meanings use the same word? While you are thinking about that one I’ll tell you that—incredibly—this word actually has a connection to wine. This gives me an unexpected opportunity to remind you of my book History of Wine Words of which Dr. José Vouillamoz, specialist in DNA profiling of grape types said: “an impressive tour de force.” The word park appeared in English in a document dated to the year 1222. This referred to a tract of land and so from this you can correctly assume that the green and leafy type of park predated the verb to park your SUV. When I think of parks I usually think of National Parks and parks that are big enough to contain some kind of real wilderness within them. In general these parks are set aside to protect the natural environment that they contain. The very first application of the word park, however, applied exclusively to a place protected from the average person, so that the aristocracy could go there and shoot at the wildlife. If you are a king or some other kind of landed gentry it isn’t much fun to head out into the park to blast away at birds and deer, only to find that the common rabble had eaten all the winged and four footed occupants before you got there. For this reason the powers that be (or should that be the powers that were) erected fences around such pieces of wilderness and passed laws to prevent the local people from eating what should properly be reserved for sporting purposes. It is the fencing of the property that gave it the name park. Etymologists aren’t completely certain whether the parent word was parricus—a Latin word meaning “fence”—but they think it’s pretty likely. The timing of the word’s appearance and the Latin connection might make you think that it was a French Norman word.  Yet looking further back in the word’s history there seems to be evidence that before the word got into Latin it could possibly have been a Germanic word root, and as such may have been in use in some form in Old English before the Norman Conquest, but just never written down. The Oxford English Dictionary concludes that it’s a toss-up as to whether Latin got it from Germanic or the other way around. Turning to parking your car on the driveway, it was almost 500 years ago that the noun meaning “a place to keep things” (such as deer for shooting) was applied as a verb to mean keeping those things in that place. Of course there were no cars at the time so at first you might park your cattle inside a fenced area. Then by about 200 years ago we get the first glimmerings of vehicular parking as the military began parking cannon and then wagons in fenced enclosures. What’s good for military wagons must be good for everyone else’s wagons and by 150 years ago anyone could park their vehicle and it didn’t even have to be inside a fence. So there’s your answer. Did you win the bet? The two parks are related. The only remaining detail is to explain how the word  park relates to wine and my book that I am subtlety reminding you of (it’s History of Wine Words at Amazon). That Latin use of parricus meaning “fence” seems to have gotten into Spanish as parra. You know that vines grow up poles and along wires and what in Latin had meant “fence,” in Spanish evolved to mean an “artificially supported vine.” It goes further; in Catalan parra means a type of vine and in Portuguese a grapevine leaf. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-14,24705277 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:01:24 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706571-adamant-%E2%80%93-podictionary-983 Winston Churchill is seen from this point as a giant of not too distant history. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom* during the Second World War but like any politician there were times when things were not all going his way, as was the case in 1936 when he was an outsider,  and critical of the British government, saying that they were “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift.” If someone is adamant about something they are decided, they are resolute, they are unyielding. With this kind of meaning to the word adamant it makes perfect sense that the etymology of adamant comes from a Greek root literally meaning “not tame” and figuratively meaning “invincible.” But the word’s history has taken a few unlikely twists and turns in getting to how we use it today. Although the word was in use in roughly the same form back in classical Greek and ... Winston Churchill is seen from this point as a giant of not too distant history. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom* during the Second World War but like any politician there were times when things were not all going his way, as was the case in 1936 when he was an outsider,  and critical of the British government, saying that they were “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift.” If someone is adamant about something they are decided, they are resolute, they are unyielding. With this kind of meaning to the word adamant it makes perfect sense that the etymology of adamant comes from a Greek root literally meaning “not tame” and figuratively meaning “invincible.” But the word’s history has taken a few unlikely twists and turns in getting to how we use it today. Although the word was in use in roughly the same form back in classical Greek and Latin, the meaning we give to the word doesn’t seem to have emerged until about 100 years ago. The word was old enough and popular enough that its first citation with any meaning at all as an English word, was back in the year 888, so that’s Old English. The context back then, and the shifts in meaning over time, mean that we really don’t know what the writers of more than 1100 years ago meant when they used the term adamant. By about 600 years ago there were clearly two meanings that can be identified; neither of which I was expecting.  In both cases the word adamant referred to a special kind of rock. Medieval scholars read this word adamant in those older documents and tried to figure out what exactly the authors were trying to get at. But they made an error in their etymology.  Instead of the Greek root meaning “not tame” they guessed at the Latin root adamare meaning “to take a liking to” or “to have an attraction for.” They asked themselves,why might a rock be named with a word that meant “to have an attraction for.” Maybe it’s because that rock attracted other rocks. Rocks with lots of iron in them can take on the properties of a magnet. And so those misinformed medieval scholars began to call these rocks adamant. Other medieval scholars guessed at the Greek “invincible” etymology that we think today is the correct one. According to this etymology adamant thus applied to extremely hard rocks and sometimes to the hardest metal. You might not recognize it, but this usage actually stuck. You don’t recognize it because it morphed a bit.  Like me, you probably never thought that the word adamant even applied to rocks. But I think you will recognize the particularly hard kind of rock that the word adamant’s descendant word applies to. If I chip off the leading “a” from adamant doesn’t damant pretty easily approximate the name of the rock that Carol Channing and Marilyn Monroe claimed were a girl’s best friend? Adamant became diamond. * at first I just said “England,” but Hugh wrote to correct me; see comments. Winston Churchill is seen from this point as a giant of not too distant history. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom* during the Second World War but like any politician there were times when things were not all going his way, as was the case in 1936 when he was an outsider,  and critical of the British government, saying that they were “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift.” If someone is adamant about something they are decided, they are resolute, they are unyielding. With this kind of meaning to the word adamant it makes perfect sense that the etymology of adamant comes from a Greek root literally meaning “not tame” and figuratively meaning “invincible.” But the word’s history has taken a few unlikely twists and turns in getting to how we use it today. Although the word was in use in roughly the same form back in classical Greek and Latin, the meaning we give to the word doesn’t seem to have emerged until about 100 years ago. The word was old enough and popular enough that its first citation with any meaning at all as an English word, was back in the year 888, so that’s Old English. The context back then, and the shifts in meaning over time, mean that we really don’t know what the writers of more than 1100 years ago meant when they used the term adamant. By about 600 years ago there were clearly two meanings that can be identified; neither of which I was expecting.  In both cases the word adamant referred to a special kind of rock. Medieval scholars read this word adamant in those older documents and tried to figure out what exactly the authors were trying to get at. But they made an error in their etymology.  Instead of the Greek root meaning “not tame” they guessed at the Latin root adamare meaning “to take a liking to” or “to have an attraction for.” They asked themselves,why might a rock be named with a word that meant “to have an attraction for.” Maybe it’s because that rock attracted other rocks. Rocks with lots of iron in them can take on the properties of a magnet. And so those misinformed medieval scholars began to call these rocks adamant. Other medieval scholars guessed at the Greek “invincible” etymology that we think today is the correct one. According to this etymology adamant thus applied to extremely hard rocks and sometimes to the hardest metal. You might not recognize it, but this usage actually stuck. You don’t recognize it because it morphed a bit.  Like me, you probably never thought that the word adamant even applied to rocks. But I think you will recognize the particularly hard kind of rock that the word adamant’s descendant word applies to. If I chip off the leading “a” from adamant doesn’t damant pretty easily approximate the name of the rock that Carol Channing and Marilyn Monroe claimed were a girl’s best friend? Adamant became diamond. * at first I just said “England,” but Hugh wrote to correct me; see comments. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-11,24706571 Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:01:53 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24693787-adamant-podictionary-983 Winston Churchill is seen from this point as a giant of not too distant history. He was Prime Minister of England during the Second World War but like any politician there were times when things were not all going his way, as was the case in 1936 when he was an outsider,  and critical of the British government, saying that they were “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift.” If someone is adamant about something they are decided, they are resolute, they are unyielding. With this kind of meaning to the word adamant it makes perfect sense that the etymology of adamant comes from a Greek root literally meaning “not tame” and figuratively meaning “invincible.” But the word’s history has taken a few unlikely twists and turns in getting to how we use it today. Although the word was in use in roughly the same form back in classical Greek and Latin, the meaning we give to the word doesn’t seem to have emerged until about 100 years ago. The word was old eno... Winston Churchill is seen from this point as a giant of not too distant history. He was Prime Minister of England during the Second World War but like any politician there were times when things were not all going his way, as was the case in 1936 when he was an outsider,  and critical of the British government, saying that they were “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift.” If someone is adamant about something they are decided, they are resolute, they are unyielding. With this kind of meaning to the word adamant it makes perfect sense that the etymology of adamant comes from a Greek root literally meaning “not tame” and figuratively meaning “invincible.” But the word’s history has taken a few unlikely twists and turns in getting to how we use it today. Although the word was in use in roughly the same form back in classical Greek and Latin, the meaning we give to the word doesn’t seem to have emerged until about 100 years ago. The word was old enough and popular enough that its first citation with any meaning at all as an English word, was back in the year 888, so that’s Old English. The context back then, and the shifts in meaning over time, mean that we really don’t know what the writers of more than 1100 years ago meant when they used the term adamant. By about 600 years ago there were clearly two meanings that can be identified; neither of which I was expecting.  In both cases the word adamant referred to a special kind of rock. Medieval scholars read this word adamant in those older documents and tried to figure out what exactly the authors were trying to get at. But they made an error in their etymology.  Instead of the Greek root meaning “not tame” they guessed at the Latin root adamare meaning “to take a liking to” or “to have an attraction for.” They asked themselves,why might a rock be named with a word that meant “to have an attraction for.” Maybe it’s because that rock attracted other rocks. Rocks with lots of iron in them can take on the properties of a magnet. And so those misinformed medieval scholars began to call these rocks adamant. Other medieval scholars guessed at the Greek “invincible” etymology that we think today is the correct one. According to this etymology adamant thus applied to extremely hard rocks and sometimes to the hardest metal. You might not recognize it, but this usage actually stuck. You don’t recognize it because it morphed a bit.  Like me, you probably never thought that the word adamant even applied to rocks. But I think you will recognize the particularly hard kind of rock that the word adamant’s descendant word applies to. If I chip off the leading “a” from adamant doesn’t damant pretty easily approximate the name of the rock that Carol Channing and Marilyn Monroe claimed were a girl’s best friend? Adamant became diamond. Winston Churchill is seen from this point as a giant of not too distant history. He was Prime Minister of England during the Second World War but like any politician there were times when things were not all going his way, as was the case in 1936 when he was an outsider,  and critical of the British government, saying that they were “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift.” If someone is adamant about something they are decided, they are resolute, they are unyielding. With this kind of meaning to the word adamant it makes perfect sense that the etymology of adamant comes from a Greek root literally meaning “not tame” and figuratively meaning “invincible.” But the word’s history has taken a few unlikely twists and turns in getting to how we use it today. Although the word was in use in roughly the same form back in classical Greek and Latin, the meaning we give to the word doesn’t seem to have emerged until about 100 years ago. The word was old enough and popular enough that its first citation with any meaning at all as an English word, was back in the year 888, so that’s Old English. The context back then, and the shifts in meaning over time, mean that we really don’t know what the writers of more than 1100 years ago meant when they used the term adamant. By about 600 years ago there were clearly two meanings that can be identified; neither of which I was expecting.  In both cases the word adamant referred to a special kind of rock. Medieval scholars read this word adamant in those older documents and tried to figure out what exactly the authors were trying to get at. But they made an error in their etymology.  Instead of the Greek root meaning “not tame” they guessed at the Latin root adamare meaning “to take a liking to” or “to have an attraction for.” They asked themselves,why might a rock be named with a word that meant “to have an attraction for.” Maybe it’s because that rock attracted other rocks. Rocks with lots of iron in them can take on the properties of a magnet. And so those misinformed medieval scholars began to call these rocks adamant. Other medieval scholars guessed at the Greek “invincible” etymology that we think today is the correct one. According to this etymology adamant thus applied to extremely hard rocks and sometimes to the hardest metal. You might not recognize it, but this usage actually stuck. You don’t recognize it because it morphed a bit.  Like me, you probably never thought that the word adamant even applied to rocks. But I think you will recognize the particularly hard kind of rock that the word adamant’s descendant word applies to. If I chip off the leading “a” from adamant doesn’t damant pretty easily approximate the name of the rock that Carol Channing and Marilyn Monroe claimed were a girl’s best friend? Adamant became diamond. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-11,24693787 Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:01:53 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706572-antique-%E2%80%93-podictionary-68 The Antiques Road Show still runs on PBS. It’s popular because people like to think they have valuable old items lying about the house. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary The show uses antics such as teasing people into guessing the value of their pieces before the expert gives an estimate. The words, antique and antic have a distinctly similar sound and are related etymologically although their meanings are so different you might not guess it. Antique is from the Latin antiquus, meaning “former” or “ancient”  so our meaning of the word is consistent with that etymology. Antic comes from the same source, but in a sentence like “the kids’ antics made us laugh” its meaning appears quite different from the Latin root.  It means something along the lines of frolicking or clowning around. Here’s how that came about. When you consider that truly antique and ancient items may have unfamiliar uses or bizarre inscriptions ... The Antiques Road Show still runs on PBS. It’s popular because people like to think they have valuable old items lying about the house. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary The show uses antics such as teasing people into guessing the value of their pieces before the expert gives an estimate. The words, antique and antic have a distinctly similar sound and are related etymologically although their meanings are so different you might not guess it. Antique is from the Latin antiquus, meaning “former” or “ancient”  so our meaning of the word is consistent with that etymology. Antic comes from the same source, but in a sentence like “the kids’ antics made us laugh” its meaning appears quite different from the Latin root.  It means something along the lines of frolicking or clowning around. Here’s how that came about. When you consider that truly antique and ancient items may have unfamiliar uses or bizarre inscriptions that are strange to us because they came from another time, it’s easier to see the connection with those bizarre and strange actions we saw the kids’ playing out to make us laugh. While antique came to English from Latin, and had much the same meaning as did the classical Latin parent word, the word antic arose in Italian as old Roman ruins were being excavated. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the Baths of Titus as an example. People dug up these old sites and saw stone carvings representing weird plants, animals and people so that the word they used for really old stuff  started also to be applied to really strange looking stuff. These two related words were already quite separate before they came into English around 500 years ago. The Antiques Road Show still runs on PBS. It’s popular because people like to think they have valuable old items lying about the house. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary The show uses antics such as teasing people into guessing the value of their pieces before the expert gives an estimate. The words, antique and antic have a distinctly similar sound and are related etymologically although their meanings are so different you might not guess it. Antique is from the Latin antiquus, meaning “former” or “ancient”  so our meaning of the word is consistent with that etymology. Antic comes from the same source, but in a sentence like “the kids’ antics made us laugh” its meaning appears quite different from the Latin root.  It means something along the lines of frolicking or clowning around. Here’s how that came about. When you consider that truly antique and ancient items may have unfamiliar uses or bizarre inscriptions that are strange to us because they came from another time, it’s easier to see the connection with those bizarre and strange actions we saw the kids’ playing out to make us laugh. While antique came to English from Latin, and had much the same meaning as did the classical Latin parent word, the word antic arose in Italian as old Roman ruins were being excavated. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the Baths of Titus as an example. People dug up these old sites and saw stone carvings representing weird plants, animals and people so that the word they used for really old stuff  started also to be applied to really strange looking stuff. These two related words were already quite separate before they came into English around 500 years ago. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-10,24706572 Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24688592-antique-podictionary-68 The Antiques Road Show still runs on PBS. It’s popular because people like to think they have valuable old items lying about the house. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary The show uses antics such as teasing people into guessing the value of their pieces before the expert gives an estimate. The words, antique and antic have a distinctly similar sound and are related etymologically although their meanings are so different you might not guess it. Antique is from the Latin antiquus, meaning “former” or “ancient”  so our meaning of the word is consistent with that etymology. Antic comes from the same source, but in a sentence like “the kids’ antics made us laugh” its meaning appears quite different from the Latin root.  It means something along the lines of frolicking or clowning around. Here’s how that came about. When you consider that truly antique and ancient items may have unfamiliar uses or bizarre inscriptions ... The Antiques Road Show still runs on PBS. It’s popular because people like to think they have valuable old items lying about the house. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary The show uses antics such as teasing people into guessing the value of their pieces before the expert gives an estimate. The words, antique and antic have a distinctly similar sound and are related etymologically although their meanings are so different you might not guess it. Antique is from the Latin antiquus, meaning “former” or “ancient”  so our meaning of the word is consistent with that etymology. Antic comes from the same source, but in a sentence like “the kids’ antics made us laugh” its meaning appears quite different from the Latin root.  It means something along the lines of frolicking or clowning around. Here’s how that came about. When you consider that truly antique and ancient items may have unfamiliar uses or bizarre inscriptions that are strange to us because they came from another time, it’s easier to see the connection with those bizarre and strange actions we saw the kids’ playing out to make us laugh. While antique came to English from Latin, and had much the same meaning as did the classical Latin parent word, the word antic arose in Italian as old Roman ruins were being excavated. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the Baths of Titus as an example. People dug up these old sites and saw stone carvings representing weird plants, animals and people so that the word they used for really old stuff  started also to be applied to really strange looking stuff. These two related words were already quite separate before they came into English around 500 years ago. The Antiques Road Show still runs on PBS. It’s popular because people like to think they have valuable old items lying about the house. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary The show uses antics such as teasing people into guessing the value of their pieces before the expert gives an estimate. The words, antique and antic have a distinctly similar sound and are related etymologically although their meanings are so different you might not guess it. Antique is from the Latin antiquus, meaning “former” or “ancient”  so our meaning of the word is consistent with that etymology. Antic comes from the same source, but in a sentence like “the kids’ antics made us laugh” its meaning appears quite different from the Latin root.  It means something along the lines of frolicking or clowning around. Here’s how that came about. When you consider that truly antique and ancient items may have unfamiliar uses or bizarre inscriptions that are strange to us because they came from another time, it’s easier to see the connection with those bizarre and strange actions we saw the kids’ playing out to make us laugh. While antique came to English from Latin, and had much the same meaning as did the classical Latin parent word, the word antic arose in Italian as old Roman ruins were being excavated. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the Baths of Titus as an example. People dug up these old sites and saw stone carvings representing weird plants, animals and people so that the word they used for really old stuff  started also to be applied to really strange looking stuff. These two related words were already quite separate before they came into English around 500 years ago. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-10,24688592 Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706573-pixel-%E2%80%93-podictionary-982 I once knew a graphic designer named Michael Pixel. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts I thought that was a particularly appropriate name, sort of like the ornithologist Dr. Bird, or the clergyman Reverend Kirker both of whom are people I knew or knew of. Why exactly was Michael Pixel’s name particularly appropriate to his calling as a graphic designer? Simply because in our computer age graphics are pixilated. A pixel is, as The American Heritage Dictionary puts it “the basic unit of the composition of an image on a television screen, computer monitor, or similar display.” Which is to say, one of the dots or squares. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the magazine Science in 1969 with the first occurrence of the word in print. The OED entry was updated in 2007 and so is fairly authoritative but I see in Wikipedia that earlier citations are claimed, including anecdotally (which the OED obviously can’t use as a cita... I once knew a graphic designer named Michael Pixel. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts I thought that was a particularly appropriate name, sort of like the ornithologist Dr. Bird, or the clergyman Reverend Kirker both of whom are people I knew or knew of. Why exactly was Michael Pixel’s name particularly appropriate to his calling as a graphic designer? Simply because in our computer age graphics are pixilated. A pixel is, as The American Heritage Dictionary puts it “the basic unit of the composition of an image on a television screen, computer monitor, or similar display.” Which is to say, one of the dots or squares. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the magazine Science in 1969 with the first occurrence of the word in print. The OED entry was updated in 2007 and so is fairly authoritative but I see in Wikipedia that earlier citations are claimed, including anecdotally (which the OED obviously can’t use as a citation) back to 1963 in more narrow technical publications and documents. The reason a pixel was called a pixel seems to have been because as early as 1884 people had gotten lazy and begun calling a picture a pic, then by 1924 the plural of pic, pics was rendered with an “x” instead of “cs” and so pix. That piece of genius—shortening an abbreviation of four letters down to three—seems to have been the work of newspaper editors who’d have been working to deadlines. Once the word pix had been established to mean “pictures,” when it came time in the digital age to break each picture into smaller elements, the word pixel was formed from a similar truncation of the word element. Thus a pixel (or pix-el) is literally and figuratively a picture element. The reason I focused on pixel today was because of Monday’s word doodle . I said there that the word doodle first appeared in a book by Russell Arundel called Everybody’s Pixillated: A Book of Doodles. I was made curious by the coincidence that this was a book of images—so something close to pictures, certainly something graphic—and it used the word pixilated in the title. To me, something that is pixilated is an image that has been rendered in pixels. 1937 was the year it was published and that seemed too early to me for the author or editors of the book to be referring to people as being made up of the little elements of pictures. So I did some hunting. It turns out that there is an older word pixilated.  It relates more closely to the history of the word doodle which seems to be that a doodle is something foolish. When my mother refers to someone who’s lost their grip on reality, someone with what we would refer to as dementia, she sometimes says they are “with the pixies.” So that is what the book title meant, that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the other famous people who’s doodles are there in the book, were off in the world of the pixies when they allowed their pens and pencils to wander at will. I once knew a graphic designer named Michael Pixel. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts I thought that was a particularly appropriate name, sort of like the ornithologist Dr. Bird, or the clergyman Reverend Kirker both of whom are people I knew or knew of. Why exactly was Michael Pixel’s name particularly appropriate to his calling as a graphic designer? Simply because in our computer age graphics are pixilated. A pixel is, as The American Heritage Dictionary puts it “the basic unit of the composition of an image on a television screen, computer monitor, or similar display.” Which is to say, one of the dots or squares. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the magazine Science in 1969 with the first occurrence of the word in print. The OED entry was updated in 2007 and so is fairly authoritative but I see in Wikipedia that earlier citations are claimed, including anecdotally (which the OED obviously can’t use as a citation) back to 1963 in more narrow technical publications and documents. The reason a pixel was called a pixel seems to have been because as early as 1884 people had gotten lazy and begun calling a picture a pic, then by 1924 the plural of pic, pics was rendered with an “x” instead of “cs” and so pix. That piece of genius—shortening an abbreviation of four letters down to three—seems to have been the work of newspaper editors who’d have been working to deadlines. Once the word pix had been established to mean “pictures,” when it came time in the digital age to break each picture into smaller elements, the word pixel was formed from a similar truncation of the word element. Thus a pixel (or pix-el) is literally and figuratively a picture element. The reason I focused on pixel today was because of Monday’s word doodle . I said there that the word doodle first appeared in a book by Russell Arundel called Everybody’s Pixillated: A Book of Doodles. I was made curious by the coincidence that this was a book of images—so something close to pictures, certainly something graphic—and it used the word pixilated in the title. To me, something that is pixilated is an image that has been rendered in pixels. 1937 was the year it was published and that seemed too early to me for the author or editors of the book to be referring to people as being made up of the little elements of pictures. So I did some hunting. It turns out that there is an older word pixilated.  It relates more closely to the history of the word doodle which seems to be that a doodle is something foolish. When my mother refers to someone who’s lost their grip on reality, someone with what we would refer to as dementia, she sometimes says they are “with the pixies.” So that is what the book title meant, that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the other famous people who’s doodles are there in the book, were off in the world of the pixies when they allowed their pens and pencils to wander at will. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-09,24706573 Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:01:43 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24681414-pixel-podictionary-982 I once knew a graphic designer named Michael Pixel. I thought that was a particularly appropriate name, sort of like the ornithologist Dr. Bird, or the clergyman Reverend Kirker both of whom are people I knew or knew of. Why exactly was Michael Pixel’s name particularly appropriate to his calling as a graphic designer? Simply because in our computer age graphics are pixilated. A pixel is, as The American Heritage Dictionary puts it “the basic unit of the composition of an image on a television screen, computer monitor, or similar display.” Which is to say, one of the dots or squares. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the magazine Science in 1969 with the first occurrence of the word in print. The OED entry was updated in 2007 and so is fairly authoritative but I see in Wikipedia that earlier citations are claimed, including anecdotally (which the OED obviously can’t use as a citation) back to 1963 in more narrow technical publications and documents. The reason a pixel was called a... I once knew a graphic designer named Michael Pixel. I thought that was a particularly appropriate name, sort of like the ornithologist Dr. Bird, or the clergyman Reverend Kirker both of whom are people I knew or knew of. Why exactly was Michael Pixel’s name particularly appropriate to his calling as a graphic designer? Simply because in our computer age graphics are pixilated. A pixel is, as The American Heritage Dictionary puts it “the basic unit of the composition of an image on a television screen, computer monitor, or similar display.” Which is to say, one of the dots or squares. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the magazine Science in 1969 with the first occurrence of the word in print. The OED entry was updated in 2007 and so is fairly authoritative but I see in Wikipedia that earlier citations are claimed, including anecdotally (which the OED obviously can’t use as a citation) back to 1963 in more narrow technical publications and documents. The reason a pixel was called a pixel seems to have been because as early as 1884 people had gotten lazy and begun calling a picture a pic, then by 1924 the plural of pic, pics was rendered with an “x” instead of “cs” and so pix. That piece of genius—shortening an abbreviation of four letters down to three—seems to have been the work of newspaper editors who’d have been working to deadlines. Once the word pix had been established to mean “pictures,” when it came time in the digital age to break each picture into smaller elements, the word pixel was formed from a similar truncation of the word element. Thus a pixel (or pix-el) is literally and figuratively a picture element. The reason I focused on pixel today was because of Monday’s word doodle . I said there that the word doodle first appeared in a book by Russell Arundel called Everybody’s Pixillated: A Book of Doodles. I was made curious by the coincidence that this was a book of images—so something close to pictures, certainly something graphic—and it used the word pixilated in the title. To me, something that is pixilated is an image that has been rendered in pixels. 1937 was the year it was published and that seemed too early to me for the author or editors of the book to be referring to people as being made up of the little elements of pictures. So I did some hunting. It turns out that there is an older word pixilated.  It relates more closely to the history of the word doodle which seems to be that a doodle is something foolish. When my mother refers to someone who’s lost their grip on reality, someone with what we would refer to as dementia, she sometimes says they are “with the pixies.” So that is what the book title meant, that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the other famous people who’s doodles are there in the book, were off in the world of the pixies when they allowed their pens and pencils to wander at will. I once knew a graphic designer named Michael Pixel. I thought that was a particularly appropriate name, sort of like the ornithologist Dr. Bird, or the clergyman Reverend Kirker both of whom are people I knew or knew of. Why exactly was Michael Pixel’s name particularly appropriate to his calling as a graphic designer? Simply because in our computer age graphics are pixilated. A pixel is, as The American Heritage Dictionary puts it “the basic unit of the composition of an image on a television screen, computer monitor, or similar display.” Which is to say, one of the dots or squares. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the magazine Science in 1969 with the first occurrence of the word in print. The OED entry was updated in 2007 and so is fairly authoritative but I see in Wikipedia that earlier citations are claimed, including anecdotally (which the OED obviously can’t use as a citation) back to 1963 in more narrow technical publications and documents. The reason a pixel was called a pixel seems to have been because as early as 1884 people had gotten lazy and begun calling a picture a pic, then by 1924 the plural of pic, pics was rendered with an “x” instead of “cs” and so pix. That piece of genius—shortening an abbreviation of four letters down to three—seems to have been the work of newspaper editors who’d have been working to deadlines. Once the word pix had been established to mean “pictures,” when it came time in the digital age to break each picture into smaller elements, the word pixel was formed from a similar truncation of the word element. Thus a pixel (or pix-el) is literally and figuratively a picture element. The reason I focused on pixel today was because of Monday’s word doodle . I said there that the word doodle first appeared in a book by Russell Arundel called Everybody’s Pixillated: A Book of Doodles. I was made curious by the coincidence that this was a book of images—so something close to pictures, certainly something graphic—and it used the word pixilated in the title. To me, something that is pixilated is an image that has been rendered in pixels. 1937 was the year it was published and that seemed too early to me for the author or editors of the book to be referring to people as being made up of the little elements of pictures. So I did some hunting. It turns out that there is an older word pixilated.  It relates more closely to the history of the word doodle which seems to be that a doodle is something foolish. When my mother refers to someone who’s lost their grip on reality, someone with what we would refer to as dementia, she sometimes says they are “with the pixies.” So that is what the book title meant, that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the other famous people who’s doodles are there in the book, were off in the world of the pixies when they allowed their pens and pencils to wander at will. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-09,24681414 Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:01:43 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706574-shoe-%E2%80%93-podictionary-64 Like so many old old words, the word shoe makes one of its first appearances in an Old English in a hand-written gospel. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts The very first time it appeared was as a shoe-nail in around 725, but that was only in a glossary to help Old English speakers understand a Latin gospel. Used in the context of a sentence shoe had to wait until about the year 950 when for the first time in English John the Baptist was reported to have claimed that he was not worthy to undo the shoes of the Christ. Skip forward to 1991, and a 5000 year old frozen corpse was found melting out of a glacier in the Austrian Alps.  He wore leather shoes and woven grass socks. Just like shoe the item, the shoe the word is much much older than reflected in English. Similar words appear in pretty well all the Germanic languages but etymologists aren’t sure if the roots go back to an early word related to the act of walkin... Like so many old old words, the word shoe makes one of its first appearances in an Old English in a hand-written gospel. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts The very first time it appeared was as a shoe-nail in around 725, but that was only in a glossary to help Old English speakers understand a Latin gospel. Used in the context of a sentence shoe had to wait until about the year 950 when for the first time in English John the Baptist was reported to have claimed that he was not worthy to undo the shoes of the Christ. Skip forward to 1991, and a 5000 year old frozen corpse was found melting out of a glacier in the Austrian Alps.  He wore leather shoes and woven grass socks. Just like shoe the item, the shoe the word is much much older than reflected in English. Similar words appear in pretty well all the Germanic languages but etymologists aren’t sure if the roots go back to an early word related to the act of walking, or to a different word meaning “to cover.” Until some 100 years before Shakespeare you wouldn’t have had a pair of shoes, but instead a pair of shoon. Since we started with shoe nail, I’ll end with a shoe-lace. In the generation after Shakespeare there lived a man named Robert Herrick.  He was a goldsmith and a clergyman but is remembered as a poet. One of his pieces is entitled Delight in Disorder and a few lines therein run: A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when Art Is too precise in every part. It’s a good poet who can use the image of an untied shoelace to evoke the attractiveness of the tumbled-out-of-bed look of a pretty girl. Although Herrick was a clergyman I see at Wikipedia that he is supposed to have used frequent references to women’s bodies and to lovemaking in his poetry. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and other poetry buffs have labeled this Wikipedia entry “biased or unverifiable” and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has nothing to say about such sultry images. Like so many old old words, the word shoe makes one of its first appearances in an Old English in a hand-written gospel. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts The very first time it appeared was as a shoe-nail in around 725, but that was only in a glossary to help Old English speakers understand a Latin gospel. Used in the context of a sentence shoe had to wait until about the year 950 when for the first time in English John the Baptist was reported to have claimed that he was not worthy to undo the shoes of the Christ. Skip forward to 1991, and a 5000 year old frozen corpse was found melting out of a glacier in the Austrian Alps.  He wore leather shoes and woven grass socks. Just like shoe the item, the shoe the word is much much older than reflected in English. Similar words appear in pretty well all the Germanic languages but etymologists aren’t sure if the roots go back to an early word related to the act of walking, or to a different word meaning “to cover.” Until some 100 years before Shakespeare you wouldn’t have had a pair of shoes, but instead a pair of shoon. Since we started with shoe nail, I’ll end with a shoe-lace. In the generation after Shakespeare there lived a man named Robert Herrick.  He was a goldsmith and a clergyman but is remembered as a poet. One of his pieces is entitled Delight in Disorder and a few lines therein run: A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when Art Is too precise in every part. It’s a good poet who can use the image of an untied shoelace to evoke the attractiveness of the tumbled-out-of-bed look of a pretty girl. Although Herrick was a clergyman I see at Wikipedia that he is supposed to have used frequent references to women’s bodies and to lovemaking in his poetry. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and other poetry buffs have labeled this Wikipedia entry “biased or unverifiable” and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has nothing to say about such sultry images. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-08,24706574 Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706575-doodle-%E2%80%93-podictionary-981 I saw a doodle that my daughter had made and I was reminded of my childhood. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Not of any doodles I ever made, but of when I was very small, of doodles that my mother as a young woman sometimes made as she talked on the phone—the phone was one of those black dial jobbies that were so indestructible you could use them for self defense. That got me wondering about where the word doodle came from. It’s an attractive word so I see that it’s been used in a variety of ways quite apart from the idle drawings that people do. Doodle-bugs referred to insects as well as divining rods and German drone aircraft during World War II. Doodles were also miniature race cars. (see comment) But a doodle that was a drawing done during a meeting, or as a distraction, was first cited in English back in 1937. But the word has a longer history and didn’t pop into the world without any earlier meaning.  Evide... I saw a doodle that my daughter had made and I was reminded of my childhood. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Not of any doodles I ever made, but of when I was very small, of doodles that my mother as a young woman sometimes made as she talked on the phone—the phone was one of those black dial jobbies that were so indestructible you could use them for self defense. That got me wondering about where the word doodle came from. It’s an attractive word so I see that it’s been used in a variety of ways quite apart from the idle drawings that people do. Doodle-bugs referred to insects as well as divining rods and German drone aircraft during World War II. Doodles were also miniature race cars. (see comment) But a doodle that was a drawing done during a meeting, or as a distraction, was first cited in English back in 1937. But the word has a longer history and didn’t pop into the world without any earlier meaning.  Evidently there was once a German word dudeltopf that meant “a simpleton.” Well, actually it really meant “night-cap” as one would wear when going to bed, but somehow that got to mean “simpleton” as well. The Oxford English Dictionary sees some kind of parallel with this German word and the emergence of our word doodle way back in 1628 because at that time a doodle wasn’t an idle drawing, but instead meant “a foolish fellow.” So the doodle you do with a pencil as you’re waiting for your turn to present at a meeting could quite possibly be named because those little scribbles could be seen as foolish. The word doodle meaning “foolish” shows up in another place you might not expect. Remember that little ditty Yankee Doodle Went to Town? As I explained in my episode on the word macaroni , originally that little ditty was a song sung as an insult by British troops before the American Revolution. It translates as “foolish Yankee went to town.” The guy who first published a book with the word doodle in it, meaning those foolish drawings, was a pretty interesting character.  His name was Russell Arundel and he was a journalist and lobbyist in Washington in the middle of the last century.  He served on the Mount Rushmore Memorial Commission but also got into trouble during his time as a lobbyist  for “loaning” Senator Joe McCarthy $20,000. Arundel later went on to buy an island off of Nova Scotia, that’s the east coast of Canada, and renamed the place The Principality of Outer Baldonia. The book he produced was actually a book full of doodles of famous people and he called it Everybody’s Pixillated: A Book of Doodles and it contained the idle scriblings of such august personages as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. I saw a doodle that my daughter had made and I was reminded of my childhood. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Not of any doodles I ever made, but of when I was very small, of doodles that my mother as a young woman sometimes made as she talked on the phone—the phone was one of those black dial jobbies that were so indestructible you could use them for self defense. That got me wondering about where the word doodle came from. It’s an attractive word so I see that it’s been used in a variety of ways quite apart from the idle drawings that people do. Doodle-bugs referred to insects as well as divining rods and German drone aircraft during World War II. Doodles were also miniature race cars. (see comment) But a doodle that was a drawing done during a meeting, or as a distraction, was first cited in English back in 1937. But the word has a longer history and didn’t pop into the world without any earlier meaning.  Evidently there was once a German word dudeltopf that meant “a simpleton.” Well, actually it really meant “night-cap” as one would wear when going to bed, but somehow that got to mean “simpleton” as well. The Oxford English Dictionary sees some kind of parallel with this German word and the emergence of our word doodle way back in 1628 because at that time a doodle wasn’t an idle drawing, but instead meant “a foolish fellow.” So the doodle you do with a pencil as you’re waiting for your turn to present at a meeting could quite possibly be named because those little scribbles could be seen as foolish. The word doodle meaning “foolish” shows up in another place you might not expect. Remember that little ditty Yankee Doodle Went to Town? As I explained in my episode on the word macaroni , originally that little ditty was a song sung as an insult by British troops before the American Revolution. It translates as “foolish Yankee went to town.” The guy who first published a book with the word doodle in it, meaning those foolish drawings, was a pretty interesting character.  His name was Russell Arundel and he was a journalist and lobbyist in Washington in the middle of the last century.  He served on the Mount Rushmore Memorial Commission but also got into trouble during his time as a lobbyist  for “loaning” Senator Joe McCarthy $20,000. Arundel later went on to buy an island off of Nova Scotia, that’s the east coast of Canada, and renamed the place The Principality of Outer Baldonia. The book he produced was actually a book full of doodles of famous people and he called it Everybody’s Pixillated: A Book of Doodles and it contained the idle scriblings of such august personages as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-07,24706575 Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:01:11 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706576-snoop-%E2%80%93-podictionary-980 The word snoop shows how words can diverge. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts When I visit someone else’s house I try to get comfortable, but I am acutely aware that it’s their house, not mine.  I don’t feel comfortable opening kitchen cabinet doors looking for a glass or cup.  I feel like I’m invading their space. Some people however do not have these reservations.  They love to pull open drawers or thumb through a stack of mail while they wait for their host to come back from the barbeque. They are snoops. I noticed an actual word in The Oxford English Dictionary, snooperscope; it refers to an infrared night vision device and has done since 1946 evidently. So, to snoop is to “spy on” someone, or to stick your nose in where it isn’t your business. Snoop sort of has a nosey sound to it doesn’t it? Snoop, snoot, snout. And what about that dog from the Charlie Brown comic strip.  His name was snoopy and he had a big ... The word snoop shows how words can diverge. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts When I visit someone else’s house I try to get comfortable, but I am acutely aware that it’s their house, not mine.  I don’t feel comfortable opening kitchen cabinet doors looking for a glass or cup.  I feel like I’m invading their space. Some people however do not have these reservations.  They love to pull open drawers or thumb through a stack of mail while they wait for their host to come back from the barbeque. They are snoops. I noticed an actual word in The Oxford English Dictionary, snooperscope; it refers to an infrared night vision device and has done since 1946 evidently. So, to snoop is to “spy on” someone, or to stick your nose in where it isn’t your business. Snoop sort of has a nosey sound to it doesn’t it? Snoop, snoot, snout. And what about that dog from the Charlie Brown comic strip.  His name was snoopy and he had a big nose. That’s why it came as a bit of a surprise to me that the actual etymology of snoop isn’t from sticking your nose in other people’s business, or even from nose at all. Instead it relates to eating sweets. The OED tells me that the original meaning was “to appropriate and consume dainties in a clandestine manner.” They give a citation from 1848 from John Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms “A servant who goes slyly into a dairy-room and drinks milk from a pan, would be said to be snooping.” I guess it is a guilty pleasure thing. The etymology is from Dutch and German and I see that in a number of Germanic descended languages snoepen or snopen means to “buy candy,” or “enjoy candy,” or “waste money on candy.” In one case it even is said to mean to “have sex”; presumably with a guilty conscience. The word snoop shows how words can diverge. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts When I visit someone else’s house I try to get comfortable, but I am acutely aware that it’s their house, not mine.  I don’t feel comfortable opening kitchen cabinet doors looking for a glass or cup.  I feel like I’m invading their space. Some people however do not have these reservations.  They love to pull open drawers or thumb through a stack of mail while they wait for their host to come back from the barbeque. They are snoops. I noticed an actual word in The Oxford English Dictionary, snooperscope; it refers to an infrared night vision device and has done since 1946 evidently. So, to snoop is to “spy on” someone, or to stick your nose in where it isn’t your business. Snoop sort of has a nosey sound to it doesn’t it? Snoop, snoot, snout. And what about that dog from the Charlie Brown comic strip.  His name was snoopy and he had a big nose. That’s why it came as a bit of a surprise to me that the actual etymology of snoop isn’t from sticking your nose in other people’s business, or even from nose at all. Instead it relates to eating sweets. The OED tells me that the original meaning was “to appropriate and consume dainties in a clandestine manner.” They give a citation from 1848 from John Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms “A servant who goes slyly into a dairy-room and drinks milk from a pan, would be said to be snooping.” I guess it is a guilty pleasure thing. The etymology is from Dutch and German and I see that in a number of Germanic descended languages snoepen or snopen means to “buy candy,” or “enjoy candy,” or “waste money on candy.” In one case it even is said to mean to “have sex”; presumably with a guilty conscience. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-05,24706576 Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:04:21 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24654760-snoop-podictionary-980 The word snoop shows how words can diverge. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts When I visit someone else’s house I try to get comfortable, but I am acutely aware that it’s their house, not mine.  I don’t feel comfortable opening kitchen cabinet doors looking for a glass or cup.  I feel like I’m invading their space. Some people however do not have these reservations.  They love to pull open drawers or thumb through a stack of mail while they wait for their host to come back from the barbeque. They are snoops. I noticed an actual word in The Oxford English Dictionary, snooperscope; it refers to an infrared night vision device and has done since 1946 evidently. So, to snoop is to “spy on” someone, or to stick your nose in where it isn’t your business. Snoop sort of has a nosey sound to it doesn’t it? Snoop, snoot, snout. And what about that dog from the Charlie Brown comic strip.  His name was snoopy and he had a big ... The word snoop shows how words can diverge. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts When I visit someone else’s house I try to get comfortable, but I am acutely aware that it’s their house, not mine.  I don’t feel comfortable opening kitchen cabinet doors looking for a glass or cup.  I feel like I’m invading their space. Some people however do not have these reservations.  They love to pull open drawers or thumb through a stack of mail while they wait for their host to come back from the barbeque. They are snoops. I noticed an actual word in The Oxford English Dictionary, snooperscope; it refers to an infrared night vision device and has done since 1946 evidently. So, to snoop is to “spy on” someone, or to stick your nose in where it isn’t your business. Snoop sort of has a nosey sound to it doesn’t it? Snoop, snoot, snout. And what about that dog from the Charlie Brown comic strip.  His name was snoopy and he had a big nose. That’s why it came as a bit of a surprise to me that the actual etymology of snoop isn’t from sticking your nose in other people’s business, or even from nose at all. Instead it relates to eating sweets. The OED tells me that the original meaning was “to appropriate and consume dainties in a clandestine manner.” They give a citation from 1848 from John Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms “A servant who goes slyly into a dairy-room and drinks milk from a pan, would be said to be snooping.” I guess it is a guilty pleasure thing. The etymology is from Dutch and German and I see that in a number of Germanic descended languages snoepen or snopen means to “buy candy,” or “enjoy candy,” or “waste money on candy.” In one case it even is said to mean to “have sex”; presumably with a guilty conscience. The word snoop shows how words can diverge. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts When I visit someone else’s house I try to get comfortable, but I am acutely aware that it’s their house, not mine.  I don’t feel comfortable opening kitchen cabinet doors looking for a glass or cup.  I feel like I’m invading their space. Some people however do not have these reservations.  They love to pull open drawers or thumb through a stack of mail while they wait for their host to come back from the barbeque. They are snoops. I noticed an actual word in The Oxford English Dictionary, snooperscope; it refers to an infrared night vision device and has done since 1946 evidently. So, to snoop is to “spy on” someone, or to stick your nose in where it isn’t your business. Snoop sort of has a nosey sound to it doesn’t it? Snoop, snoot, snout. And what about that dog from the Charlie Brown comic strip.  His name was snoopy and he had a big nose. That’s why it came as a bit of a surprise to me that the actual etymology of snoop isn’t from sticking your nose in other people’s business, or even from nose at all. Instead it relates to eating sweets. The OED tells me that the original meaning was “to appropriate and consume dainties in a clandestine manner.” They give a citation from 1848 from John Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms “A servant who goes slyly into a dairy-room and drinks milk from a pan, would be said to be snooping.” I guess it is a guilty pleasure thing. The etymology is from Dutch and German and I see that in a number of Germanic descended languages snoepen or snopen means to “buy candy,” or “enjoy candy,” or “waste money on candy.” In one case it even is said to mean to “have sex”; presumably with a guilty conscience. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-05,24654760 Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:04:21 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706578-pal-%E2%80%93-podictionary-979 I guess people like to rhyme things. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts A friend of mine once played in a band.  In the band was another guy named Al.  Al was universally known as Al the pal. The word pal is an unusual one in a few ways.  One is that it comes from the slang of criminals and the other is that when The Oxford English Dictionary did a revision on the word, instead of finding that it was older than they previously thought—which is often the case—they found it was actually younger as an English word. The word pal was thought of at first as a term used between people involved in nefarious activities. The reason for this is mostly that what were once called gypsies in England and are now referred to as Romani, were themselves viewed as people perpetually involved in nefarious activities. I guess if no one allows you to put down roots then you are stuck being a drifter. So the word pal had in Romani been ph... I guess people like to rhyme things. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts A friend of mine once played in a band.  In the band was another guy named Al.  Al was universally known as Al the pal. The word pal is an unusual one in a few ways.  One is that it comes from the slang of criminals and the other is that when The Oxford English Dictionary did a revision on the word, instead of finding that it was older than they previously thought—which is often the case—they found it was actually younger as an English word. The word pal was thought of at first as a term used between people involved in nefarious activities. The reason for this is mostly that what were once called gypsies in England and are now referred to as Romani, were themselves viewed as people perpetually involved in nefarious activities. I guess if no one allows you to put down roots then you are stuck being a drifter. So the word pal had in Romani been phal or phral, a word thought to be related to a Sanskrit word meaning “brother.” The word first appeared in English in 1682. Or at least the now dead editors of The Oxford English Dictionary in its first edition thought it had first appeared in 1682. That wasn’t seen as an impossible date, but it was seen as being about 100 years earlier that most other words that came from Romani. So the present editors of the third edition of the OED took a closer look. The tale they found is almost as sad as the tale of the gypsies. To begin with, the first citation referred to a very rare book of court cases that took place more than 300 years ago. The fact that the word pal is thought to have been used by underworld operatives at first appeared to hold up. But in fact that first citation was a love story; a love story gone wrong. Pal wasn’t in that case a derivative of some ancient word for “brother,” in that case pal was a sister; in fact a mother. Pal was an affectionate nickname similar to Polly and it was used in the legal record by someone named Ed to address the object of his affection. The problem was that the object of his affection happened to be married to someone else and this landed them in that rare book legal records. So scratch that citation. I guess people like to rhyme things. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts A friend of mine once played in a band.  In the band was another guy named Al.  Al was universally known as Al the pal. The word pal is an unusual one in a few ways.  One is that it comes from the slang of criminals and the other is that when The Oxford English Dictionary did a revision on the word, instead of finding that it was older than they previously thought—which is often the case—they found it was actually younger as an English word. The word pal was thought of at first as a term used between people involved in nefarious activities. The reason for this is mostly that what were once called gypsies in England and are now referred to as Romani, were themselves viewed as people perpetually involved in nefarious activities. I guess if no one allows you to put down roots then you are stuck being a drifter. So the word pal had in Romani been phal or phral, a word thought to be related to a Sanskrit word meaning “brother.” The word first appeared in English in 1682. Or at least the now dead editors of The Oxford English Dictionary in its first edition thought it had first appeared in 1682. That wasn’t seen as an impossible date, but it was seen as being about 100 years earlier that most other words that came from Romani. So the present editors of the third edition of the OED took a closer look. The tale they found is almost as sad as the tale of the gypsies. To begin with, the first citation referred to a very rare book of court cases that took place more than 300 years ago. The fact that the word pal is thought to have been used by underworld operatives at first appeared to hold up. But in fact that first citation was a love story; a love story gone wrong. Pal wasn’t in that case a derivative of some ancient word for “brother,” in that case pal was a sister; in fact a mother. Pal was an affectionate nickname similar to Polly and it was used in the legal record by someone named Ed to address the object of his affection. The problem was that the object of his affection happened to be married to someone else and this landed them in that rare book legal records. So scratch that citation. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-02,24706578 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:01:26 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24643606-pal-podictionary-979 I guess people like to rhyme things. A friend of mine once played in a band.  In the band was another guy named Al.  Al was universally known as Al the pal. The word pal is an unusual one in a few ways.  One is that it comes from the slang of criminals and the other is that when The Oxford English Dictionary did a revision on the word, instead of finding that it was older than they previously thought—which is often the case—they found it was actually younger as an English word. The word pal was thought of at first as a term used between people involved in nefarious activities. The reason for this is mostly that what were once called gypsies in England and are now referred to as Romani, were themselves viewed as people perpetually involved in nefarious activities. I guess if no one allows you to put down roots then you are stuck being a drifter. So the word pal had in Romani been phal or phral, a word thought to be related to a Sanskrit word meaning “brother.” The word first appeared... I guess people like to rhyme things. A friend of mine once played in a band.  In the band was another guy named Al.  Al was universally known as Al the pal. The word pal is an unusual one in a few ways.  One is that it comes from the slang of criminals and the other is that when The Oxford English Dictionary did a revision on the word, instead of finding that it was older than they previously thought—which is often the case—they found it was actually younger as an English word. The word pal was thought of at first as a term used between people involved in nefarious activities. The reason for this is mostly that what were once called gypsies in England and are now referred to as Romani, were themselves viewed as people perpetually involved in nefarious activities. I guess if no one allows you to put down roots then you are stuck being a drifter. So the word pal had in Romani been phal or phral, a word thought to be related to a Sanskrit word meaning “brother.” The word first appeared in English in 1682. Or at least the now dead editors of The Oxford English Dictionary in its first edition thought it had first appeared in 1682. That wasn’t seen as an impossible date, but it was seen as being about 100 years earlier that most other words that came from Romani. So the present editors of the third edition of the OED took a closer look. The tale they found is almost as sad as the tale of the gypsies. To begin with, the first citation referred to a very rare book of court cases that took place more than 300 years ago. The fact that the word pal is thought to have been used by underworld operatives at first appeared to hold up. But in fact that first citation was a love story; a love story gone wrong. Pal wasn’t in that case a derivative of some ancient word for “brother,” in that case pal was a sister; in fact a mother. Pal was an affectionate nickname similar to Polly and it was used in the legal record by someone named Ed to address the object of his affection. The problem was that the object of his affection happened to be married to someone else and this landed them in that rare book legal records. So scratch that citation. I guess people like to rhyme things. A friend of mine once played in a band.  In the band was another guy named Al.  Al was universally known as Al the pal. The word pal is an unusual one in a few ways.  One is that it comes from the slang of criminals and the other is that when The Oxford English Dictionary did a revision on the word, instead of finding that it was older than they previously thought—which is often the case—they found it was actually younger as an English word. The word pal was thought of at first as a term used between people involved in nefarious activities. The reason for this is mostly that what were once called gypsies in England and are now referred to as Romani, were themselves viewed as people perpetually involved in nefarious activities. I guess if no one allows you to put down roots then you are stuck being a drifter. So the word pal had in Romani been phal or phral, a word thought to be related to a Sanskrit word meaning “brother.” The word first appeared in English in 1682. Or at least the now dead editors of The Oxford English Dictionary in its first edition thought it had first appeared in 1682. That wasn’t seen as an impossible date, but it was seen as being about 100 years earlier that most other words that came from Romani. So the present editors of the third edition of the OED took a closer look. The tale they found is almost as sad as the tale of the gypsies. To begin with, the first citation referred to a very rare book of court cases that took place more than 300 years ago. The fact that the word pal is thought to have been used by underworld operatives at first appeared to hold up. But in fact that first citation was a love story; a love story gone wrong. Pal wasn’t in that case a derivative of some ancient word for “brother,” in that case pal was a sister; in fact a mother. Pal was an affectionate nickname similar to Polly and it was used in the legal record by someone named Ed to address the object of his affection. The problem was that the object of his affection happened to be married to someone else and this landed them in that rare book legal records. So scratch that citation. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-02,24643606 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:01:26 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706579-giggle-%E2%80%93-podictionary-73 In 1494 a German poet named Sebastian Brandt published a poem in Latin whose English name is The Ship of Fools. It was so widely popular that within 15 years it had been translated and published in England by one Alexander Barclay. It was popular because it took a satirical look at the problems of the age. And also because it had lots of pictures. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts In the ideology of the time pretty well all of the anti-social types were considered fools and in the poem they were loaded onto a boat for shipment off to Narragonia, the land of fools. This translation was the first document to use the word giggle, as the fools were said to be doing in an undignified manner. Etymological sources agree that this word is what is known as an onomatopoeia, that is, a word that sounds like what it is. So the word giggle imitates the sound of a giggle. This word is so recent in terms of how long people have b... In 1494 a German poet named Sebastian Brandt published a poem in Latin whose English name is The Ship of Fools. It was so widely popular that within 15 years it had been translated and published in England by one Alexander Barclay. It was popular because it took a satirical look at the problems of the age. And also because it had lots of pictures. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts In the ideology of the time pretty well all of the anti-social types were considered fools and in the poem they were loaded onto a boat for shipment off to Narragonia, the land of fools. This translation was the first document to use the word giggle, as the fools were said to be doing in an undignified manner. Etymological sources agree that this word is what is known as an onomatopoeia, that is, a word that sounds like what it is. So the word giggle imitates the sound of a giggle. This word is so recent in terms of how long people have been giggling—only 500 years—that it must have had an earlier name as well, but I couldn’t find one.  Two other words for types of laugh that I did find were smere (which used to be “to laugh lightly”) and fleer (also obsolete, meaning “to laugh in an unattractive way”). I went looking for a good quotation using the word giggle. I don’t know if what I came up with is good or not but it was the only one in The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations with the word giggle in it. During the Second World War their Royal Highnesses must have been feeling a little bored when they had T.  S.  Eliot in at Windsor Castle. The queen mother recalled “We had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem…I think it was called The Desert. And first the girls got the giggles and then I did and then even the King.” Lugubrious means “sad.” The poem was called The Waste Land not The Desert, and Eliot had written it after his marriage broke up. It makes you wonder if The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations is put together because the quotations are good, or the people quoted are famous. In 1494 a German poet named Sebastian Brandt published a poem in Latin whose English name is The Ship of Fools. It was so widely popular that within 15 years it had been translated and published in England by one Alexander Barclay. It was popular because it took a satirical look at the problems of the age. And also because it had lots of pictures. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts In the ideology of the time pretty well all of the anti-social types were considered fools and in the poem they were loaded onto a boat for shipment off to Narragonia, the land of fools. This translation was the first document to use the word giggle, as the fools were said to be doing in an undignified manner. Etymological sources agree that this word is what is known as an onomatopoeia, that is, a word that sounds like what it is. So the word giggle imitates the sound of a giggle. This word is so recent in terms of how long people have been giggling—only 500 years—that it must have had an earlier name as well, but I couldn’t find one.  Two other words for types of laugh that I did find were smere (which used to be “to laugh lightly”) and fleer (also obsolete, meaning “to laugh in an unattractive way”). I went looking for a good quotation using the word giggle. I don’t know if what I came up with is good or not but it was the only one in The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations with the word giggle in it. During the Second World War their Royal Highnesses must have been feeling a little bored when they had T.  S.  Eliot in at Windsor Castle. The queen mother recalled “We had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem…I think it was called The Desert. And first the girls got the giggles and then I did and then even the King.” Lugubrious means “sad.” The poem was called The Waste Land not The Desert, and Eliot had written it after his marriage broke up. It makes you wonder if The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations is put together because the quotations are good, or the people quoted are famous. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-01,24706579 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24638670-giggle-podictionary-73 In 1494 a German poet named Sebastian Brandt published a poem in Latin whose English name is The Ship of Fools. It was so widely popular that within 15 years it had been translated and published in England by one Alexander Barclay. It was popular because it took a satirical look at the problems of the age. And also because it had lots of pictures. In the ideology of the time pretty well all of the anti-social types were considered fools and in the poem they were loaded onto a boat for shipment off to Narragonia, the land of fools. This translation was the first document to use the word giggle, as the fools were said to be doing in an undignified manner. Etymological sources agree that this word is what is known as an onomatopoeia, that is, a word that sounds like what it is. So the word giggle imitates the sound of a giggle. This word is so recent in terms of how long people have been giggling—only 500 years—that it must have had an earlier name as well, but I couldn’t find one.  Tw... In 1494 a German poet named Sebastian Brandt published a poem in Latin whose English name is The Ship of Fools. It was so widely popular that within 15 years it had been translated and published in England by one Alexander Barclay. It was popular because it took a satirical look at the problems of the age. And also because it had lots of pictures. In the ideology of the time pretty well all of the anti-social types were considered fools and in the poem they were loaded onto a boat for shipment off to Narragonia, the land of fools. This translation was the first document to use the word giggle, as the fools were said to be doing in an undignified manner. Etymological sources agree that this word is what is known as an onomatopoeia, that is, a word that sounds like what it is. So the word giggle imitates the sound of a giggle. This word is so recent in terms of how long people have been giggling—only 500 years—that it must have had an earlier name as well, but I couldn’t find one.  Two other words for types of laugh that I did find were smere (which used to be “to laugh lightly”) and fleer (also obsolete, meaning “to laugh in an unattractive way”). I went looking for a good quotation using the word giggle. I don’t know if what I came up with is good or not but it was the only one in The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations with the word giggle in it. During the Second World War their Royal Highnesses must have been feeling a little bored when they had T.  S.  Eliot in at Windsor Castle. The queen mother recalled “We had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem…I think it was called The Desert. And first the girls got the giggles and then I did and then even the King.” Lugubrious means “sad.” The poem was called The Waste Land not The Desert, and Eliot had written it after his marriage broke up. It makes you wonder if The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations is put together because the quotations are good, or the people quoted are famous. In 1494 a German poet named Sebastian Brandt published a poem in Latin whose English name is The Ship of Fools. It was so widely popular that within 15 years it had been translated and published in England by one Alexander Barclay. It was popular because it took a satirical look at the problems of the age. And also because it had lots of pictures. In the ideology of the time pretty well all of the anti-social types were considered fools and in the poem they were loaded onto a boat for shipment off to Narragonia, the land of fools. This translation was the first document to use the word giggle, as the fools were said to be doing in an undignified manner. Etymological sources agree that this word is what is known as an onomatopoeia, that is, a word that sounds like what it is. So the word giggle imitates the sound of a giggle. This word is so recent in terms of how long people have been giggling—only 500 years—that it must have had an earlier name as well, but I couldn’t find one.  Two other words for types of laugh that I did find were smere (which used to be “to laugh lightly”) and fleer (also obsolete, meaning “to laugh in an unattractive way”). I went looking for a good quotation using the word giggle. I don’t know if what I came up with is good or not but it was the only one in The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations with the word giggle in it. During the Second World War their Royal Highnesses must have been feeling a little bored when they had T.  S.  Eliot in at Windsor Castle. The queen mother recalled “We had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem…I think it was called The Desert. And first the girls got the giggles and then I did and then even the King.” Lugubrious means “sad.” The poem was called The Waste Land not The Desert, and Eliot had written it after his marriage broke up. It makes you wonder if The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations is put together because the quotations are good, or the people quoted are famous. tag:odeo.com,2009-06-01,24638670 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706580-mea-culpa-%E2%80%93-podictionary-978 I messed up, I admit it; mea culpa. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Today’s word is still pretty Latin sounding isn’t it.  It’s Latin for “through my own fault” and the reason it is common to use this Latin phrase when admitting guilt is that this phrase has been repeated by millions of church-goers for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was 1225 or so when the phrase first escaped Latin and can be classified as an English word; so it’s pretty impressive that it still is so unmistakably Latin. There is a whole lot of admitting of guilt and asking for forgiveness in the Latin church and so that’s why people were so familiar with the phrase. Although I am not a religious man I have to say that I have found that admitting guilt is usually a good thing.  The very first time I recall hearing the phrase mea culpa was as a young engineer after I goofed up on a project. I had made some calculations about the optical prop... I messed up, I admit it; mea culpa. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Today’s word is still pretty Latin sounding isn’t it.  It’s Latin for “through my own fault” and the reason it is common to use this Latin phrase when admitting guilt is that this phrase has been repeated by millions of church-goers for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was 1225 or so when the phrase first escaped Latin and can be classified as an English word; so it’s pretty impressive that it still is so unmistakably Latin. There is a whole lot of admitting of guilt and asking for forgiveness in the Latin church and so that’s why people were so familiar with the phrase. Although I am not a religious man I have to say that I have found that admitting guilt is usually a good thing.  The very first time I recall hearing the phrase mea culpa was as a young engineer after I goofed up on a project. I had made some calculations about the optical properties of a piece of an antenna that implied it would meet the temperature specifications when it flew on a satellite.  One day, half way through the project I noticed an error; a big error.  That antenna was going to be way outside the spec. when it launched into space. Anyway I figured out a solution and it just so happened that it was review time at work.  My boss who had asked me, when I admitted the error, if I was taking on un-necessary guilt and chanting mea culpa, turned around and gave me a fat raise because I didn’t try to cover it up. And that brings me to today’s mea culpa. Last week I mentioned the word dine and in that episode said that dejeuner was French for “breakfast.” What was I thinking? Dejeuner is French for “lunch,” it’s petit dejeuner that means “breakfast.” Well I certainly got feedback about that mistake, but I didn’t get a big fat raise. Instead I got something that’s almost as good; new etymological clues. I had said that the word dinner had come from the first part of a Latin word disjejunare and that this held the same meaning as breaking one’s fast. One subscriber pointed out that there is in fact a rarely used English word jejune that means “without nourishment.” Another subscriber said that there are equivalent words yeyun in Spanish and jejum in Portuguese that refer to parts of the intestine, so that the Latin word disjejunare has a meaning of filling the intestine. Although everyone was piling on telling me I had the meaning of dejeuner wrong, and I’ve said my mea culpa, it turns out that I wasn’t so wrong after all. Dejeuner was originally “breakfast” in France but somehow changed to “lunch.” One subscriber tells me that this is because the king liked to sleep in so that his courtiers had to eat before he awoke, calling their meal petit dejeuner. Now I couldn’t find corroboration for that little story but I do see in The Oxford English Dictionary that 100 years ago and more dejeuner was a word used in English to mean “breakfast,” but “in France, it often corresponds in time more to the English luncheon, for which déjeuner is consequently used as a synonym. Déjeuner à la fourchette [meaning “breakfast with the fork” denoted] a late déjeuner of a substantial character, with meat, wine, etc.; [that is] a luncheon.” I messed up, I admit it; mea culpa. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Today’s word is still pretty Latin sounding isn’t it.  It’s Latin for “through my own fault” and the reason it is common to use this Latin phrase when admitting guilt is that this phrase has been repeated by millions of church-goers for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was 1225 or so when the phrase first escaped Latin and can be classified as an English word; so it’s pretty impressive that it still is so unmistakably Latin. There is a whole lot of admitting of guilt and asking for forgiveness in the Latin church and so that’s why people were so familiar with the phrase. Although I am not a religious man I have to say that I have found that admitting guilt is usually a good thing.  The very first time I recall hearing the phrase mea culpa was as a young engineer after I goofed up on a project. I had made some calculations about the optical properties of a piece of an antenna that implied it would meet the temperature specifications when it flew on a satellite.  One day, half way through the project I noticed an error; a big error.  That antenna was going to be way outside the spec. when it launched into space. Anyway I figured out a solution and it just so happened that it was review time at work.  My boss who had asked me, when I admitted the error, if I was taking on un-necessary guilt and chanting mea culpa, turned around and gave me a fat raise because I didn’t try to cover it up. And that brings me to today’s mea culpa. Last week I mentioned the word dine and in that episode said that dejeuner was French for “breakfast.” What was I thinking? Dejeuner is French for “lunch,” it’s petit dejeuner that means “breakfast.” Well I certainly got feedback about that mistake, but I didn’t get a big fat raise. Instead I got something that’s almost as good; new etymological clues. I had said that the word dinner had come from the first part of a Latin word disjejunare and that this held the same meaning as breaking one’s fast. One subscriber pointed out that there is in fact a rarely used English word jejune that means “without nourishment.” Another subscriber said that there are equivalent words yeyun in Spanish and jejum in Portuguese that refer to parts of the intestine, so that the Latin word disjejunare has a meaning of filling the intestine. Although everyone was piling on telling me I had the meaning of dejeuner wrong, and I’ve said my mea culpa, it turns out that I wasn’t so wrong after all. Dejeuner was originally “breakfast” in France but somehow changed to “lunch.” One subscriber tells me that this is because the king liked to sleep in so that his courtiers had to eat before he awoke, calling their meal petit dejeuner. Now I couldn’t find corroboration for that little story but I do see in The Oxford English Dictionary that 100 years ago and more dejeuner was a word used in English to mean “breakfast,” but “in France, it often corresponds in time more to the English luncheon, for which déjeuner is consequently used as a synonym. Déjeuner à la fourchette [meaning “breakfast with the fork” denoted] a late déjeuner of a substantial character, with meat, wine, etc.; [that is] a luncheon.” tag:odeo.com,2009-05-31,24706580 Sun, 31 May 2009 21:01:39 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24634500-mea-culpa-podictionary-978 I messed up, I admit it; mea culpa. Today’s word is still pretty Latin sounding isn’t it.  It’s Latin for “through my own fault” and the reason it is common to use this Latin phrase when admitting guilt is that this phrase has been repeated by millions of church-goers for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was 1225 or so when the phrase first escaped Latin and can be classified as an English word; so it’s pretty impressive that it still is so unmistakably Latin. There is a whole lot of admitting of guilt and asking for forgiveness in the Latin church and so that’s why people were so familiar with the phrase. Although I am not a religious man I have to say that I have found that admitting guilt is usually a good thing.  The very first time I recall hearing the phrase mea culpa was as a young engineer after I goofed up on a project. I had made some calculations about the optical properties of a piece of an antenna that implied it would meet the temperature specifications when it flew ... I messed up, I admit it; mea culpa. Today’s word is still pretty Latin sounding isn’t it.  It’s Latin for “through my own fault” and the reason it is common to use this Latin phrase when admitting guilt is that this phrase has been repeated by millions of church-goers for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was 1225 or so when the phrase first escaped Latin and can be classified as an English word; so it’s pretty impressive that it still is so unmistakably Latin. There is a whole lot of admitting of guilt and asking for forgiveness in the Latin church and so that’s why people were so familiar with the phrase. Although I am not a religious man I have to say that I have found that admitting guilt is usually a good thing.  The very first time I recall hearing the phrase mea culpa was as a young engineer after I goofed up on a project. I had made some calculations about the optical properties of a piece of an antenna that implied it would meet the temperature specifications when it flew on a satellite.  One day, half way through the project I noticed an error; a big error.  That antenna was going to be way outside the spec. when it launched into space. Anyway I figured out a solution and it just so happened that it was review time at work.  My boss who had asked me, when I admitted the error, if I was taking on un-necessary guilt and chanting mea culpa, turned around and gave me a fat raise because I didn’t try to cover it up. And that brings me to today’s mea culpa. Last week I mentioned the word dine and in that episode said that dejeuner was French for “breakfast.” What was I thinking? Dejeuner is French for “lunch,” it’s petit dejeuner that means “breakfast.” Well I certainly got feedback about that mistake, but I didn’t get a big fat raise. Instead I got something that’s almost as good; new etymological clues. I had said that the word dinner had come from the first part of a Latin word disjejunare and that this held the same meaning as breaking one’s fast. One subscriber pointed out that there is in fact a rarely used English word jejune that means “without nourishment.” Another subscriber said that there are equivalent words yeyun in Spanish and jejum in Portuguese that refer to parts of the intestine, so that the Latin word disjejunare has a meaning of filling the intestine. Although everyone was piling on telling me I had the meaning of dejeuner wrong, and I’ve said my mea culpa, it turns out that I wasn’t so wrong after all. Dejeuner was originally “breakfast” in France but somehow changed to “lunch.” One subscriber tells me that this is because the king liked to sleep in so that his courtiers had to eat before he awoke, calling their meal petit dejeuner. Now I couldn’t find corroboration for that little story but I do see in The Oxford English Dictionary that 100 years ago and more dejeuner was a word used in English to mean “breakfast,” but “in France, it often corresponds in time more to the English luncheon, for which déjeuner is consequently used as a synonym. Déjeuner à la fourchette [meaning “breakfast with the fork” denoted] a late déjeuner of a substantial character, with meat, wine, etc.; [that is] a luncheon.” I messed up, I admit it; mea culpa. Today’s word is still pretty Latin sounding isn’t it.  It’s Latin for “through my own fault” and the reason it is common to use this Latin phrase when admitting guilt is that this phrase has been repeated by millions of church-goers for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was 1225 or so when the phrase first escaped Latin and can be classified as an English word; so it’s pretty impressive that it still is so unmistakably Latin. There is a whole lot of admitting of guilt and asking for forgiveness in the Latin church and so that’s why people were so familiar with the phrase. Although I am not a religious man I have to say that I have found that admitting guilt is usually a good thing.  The very first time I recall hearing the phrase mea culpa was as a young engineer after I goofed up on a project. I had made some calculations about the optical properties of a piece of an antenna that implied it would meet the temperature specifications when it flew on a satellite.  One day, half way through the project I noticed an error; a big error.  That antenna was going to be way outside the spec. when it launched into space. Anyway I figured out a solution and it just so happened that it was review time at work.  My boss who had asked me, when I admitted the error, if I was taking on un-necessary guilt and chanting mea culpa, turned around and gave me a fat raise because I didn’t try to cover it up. And that brings me to today’s mea culpa. Last week I mentioned the word dine and in that episode said that dejeuner was French for “breakfast.” What was I thinking? Dejeuner is French for “lunch,” it’s petit dejeuner that means “breakfast.” Well I certainly got feedback about that mistake, but I didn’t get a big fat raise. Instead I got something that’s almost as good; new etymological clues. I had said that the word dinner had come from the first part of a Latin word disjejunare and that this held the same meaning as breaking one’s fast. One subscriber pointed out that there is in fact a rarely used English word jejune that means “without nourishment.” Another subscriber said that there are equivalent words yeyun in Spanish and jejum in Portuguese that refer to parts of the intestine, so that the Latin word disjejunare has a meaning of filling the intestine. Although everyone was piling on telling me I had the meaning of dejeuner wrong, and I’ve said my mea culpa, it turns out that I wasn’t so wrong after all. Dejeuner was originally “breakfast” in France but somehow changed to “lunch.” One subscriber tells me that this is because the king liked to sleep in so that his courtiers had to eat before he awoke, calling their meal petit dejeuner. Now I couldn’t find corroboration for that little story but I do see in The Oxford English Dictionary that 100 years ago and more dejeuner was a word used in English to mean “breakfast,” but “in France, it often corresponds in time more to the English luncheon, for which déjeuner is consequently used as a synonym. Déjeuner à la fourchette [meaning “breakfast with the fork” denoted] a late déjeuner of a substantial character, with meat, wine, etc.; [that is] a luncheon.” tag:odeo.com,2009-05-31,24634500 Sun, 31 May 2009 21:01:39 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706581-holocaust-%E2%80%93-podictionary-977 I have always associated the word holocaust with Nazi atrocities during World War II. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Now, when you think of it, those atrocities didn’t take place all that long ago and presumably the word holocaust wasn’t invented specifically to apply to that shameful period of history. This fact didn’t occur to me until recently. I bought a Kindle electronic book almost a year ago. So already it’s obsolete, there are two other models out now. But aside from buying ebooks at Amazon I’ve been downloading free out-of-copyright books as well.  One of these was a murder mystery written before the Second World War and therein I came across the word holocaust in quite a different context. The detective admonished someone who was thinking of burning a piece of evidence.  So, I thought, the word holocaust must have something to do with burning. Looking the word up I see that I was right.  The latter par... I have always associated the word holocaust with Nazi atrocities during World War II. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Now, when you think of it, those atrocities didn’t take place all that long ago and presumably the word holocaust wasn’t invented specifically to apply to that shameful period of history. This fact didn’t occur to me until recently. I bought a Kindle electronic book almost a year ago. So already it’s obsolete, there are two other models out now. But aside from buying ebooks at Amazon I’ve been downloading free out-of-copyright books as well.  One of these was a murder mystery written before the Second World War and therein I came across the word holocaust in quite a different context. The detective admonished someone who was thinking of burning a piece of evidence.  So, I thought, the word holocaust must have something to do with burning. Looking the word up I see that I was right.  The latter part of holocaust is related to our word caustic. Caustic chemicals burn and caustic comments do too. The word holocaust appears first in English way back in 1250 and comes from French who got it from Latin who got it from Greek. In Greek it had been two words; the holo is the same as whole so that holocaust literally means “wholly burned.” Back then the word didn’t apply to man’s inhumanity to man, but instead referred to religious rites in which offerings were burned in sacrifice. By the 1500s holocaust had come to mean sacrifice on a large scale and by the 1700s meant wholesale slaughter. According to The Oxford English Dictionary the word was specifically applied as The Holocaust to the Nazi mass murders by historians during the 1950s, so after the war was over. The OED says this was probably as an equivalent to the Hebrew words hurban and shoah meaning “catastrophe.” But there are citations applying the word back to 1942, while the events were actually happening. What got me going on the word today was listening to recent reports of the conviction for war crimes of one of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.  Some reports referred to that as a holocaust too. Those atrocities happened 15 years ago and I dare say there are others even more recent. It makes me wish we could make the rallying cry “never again” stick. I have always associated the word holocaust with Nazi atrocities during World War II. SPONSOR: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit  www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts Now, when you think of it, those atrocities didn’t take place all that long ago and presumably the word holocaust wasn’t invented specifically to apply to that shameful period of history. This fact didn’t occur to me until recently. I bought a Kindle electronic book almost a year ago. So already it’s obsolete, there are two other models out now. But aside from buying ebooks at Amazon I’ve been downloading free out-of-copyright books as well.  One of these was a murder mystery written before the Second World War and therein I came across the word holocaust in quite a different context. The detective admonished someone who was thinking of burning a piece of evidence.  So, I thought, the word holocaust must have something to do with burning. Looking the word up I see that I was right.  The latter part of holocaust is related to our word caustic. Caustic chemicals burn and caustic comments do too. The word holocaust appears first in English way back in 1250 and comes from French who got it from Latin who got it from Greek. In Greek it had been two words; the holo is the same as whole so that holocaust literally means “wholly burned.” Back then the word didn’t apply to man’s inhumanity to man, but instead referred to religious rites in which offerings were burned in sacrifice. By the 1500s holocaust had come to mean sacrifice on a large scale and by the 1700s meant wholesale slaughter. According to The Oxford English Dictionary the word was specifically applied as The Holocaust to the Nazi mass murders by historians during the 1950s, so after the war was over. The OED says this was probably as an equivalent to the Hebrew words hurban and shoah meaning “catastrophe.” But there are citations applying the word back to 1942, while the events were actually happening. What got me going on the word today was listening to recent reports of the conviction for war crimes of one of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.  Some reports referred to that as a holocaust too. Those atrocities happened 15 years ago and I dare say there are others even more recent. It makes me wish we could make the rallying cry “never again” stick. tag:odeo.com,2009-05-28,24706581 Thu, 28 May 2009 21:01:53 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24623866-holocaust-podictionary-977 I have always associated the word holocaust with Nazi atrocities during World War II. Now, when you think of it, those atrocities didn’t take place all that long ago and presumably the word holocaust wasn’t invented specifically to apply to that shameful period of history. This fact didn’t occur to me until recently. I bought a Kindle electronic book almost a year ago. So already it’s obsolete, there are two other models out now. But aside from buying ebooks at Amazon I’ve been downloading free out-of-copyright books as well.  One of these was a murder mystery written before the Second World War and therein I came across the word holocaust in quite a different context. The detective admonished someone who was thinking of burning a piece of evidence.  So, I thought, the word holocaust must have something to do with burning. Looking the word up I see that I was right.  The latter part of holocaust is related to our word caustic. Caustic chemicals burn and caustic comments do too. The ... I have always associated the word holocaust with Nazi atrocities during World War II. Now, when you think of it, those atrocities didn’t take place all that long ago and presumably the word holocaust wasn’t invented specifically to apply to that shameful period of history. This fact didn’t occur to me until recently. I bought a Kindle electronic book almost a year ago. So already it’s obsolete, there are two other models out now. But aside from buying ebooks at Amazon I’ve been downloading free out-of-copyright books as well.  One of these was a murder mystery written before the Second World War and therein I came across the word holocaust in quite a different context. The detective admonished someone who was thinking of burning a piece of evidence.  So, I thought, the word holocaust must have something to do with burning. Looking the word up I see that I was right.  The latter part of holocaust is related to our word caustic. Caustic chemicals burn and caustic comments do too. The word holocaust appears first in English way back in 1250 and comes from French who got it from Latin who got it from Greek. In Greek it had been two words; the holo is the same as whole so that holocaust literally means “wholly burned.” Back then the word didn’t apply to man’s inhumanity to man, but instead referred to religious rites in which offerings were burned in sacrifice. By the 1500s holocaust had come to mean sacrifice on a large scale and by the 1700s meant wholesale slaughter. According to The Oxford English Dictionary the word was specifically applied as The Holocaust to the Nazi mass murders by historians during the 1950s, so after the war was over. The OED says this was probably as an equivalent to the Hebrew words hurban and shoah meaning “catastrophe.” But there are citations applying the word back to 1942, while the events were actually happening. What got me going on the word today was listening to recent reports of the conviction for war crimes of one of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.  Some reports referred to that as a holocaust too. Those atrocities happened 15 years ago and I dare say there are others even more recent. It makes me wish we could make the rallying cry “never again” stick. I have always associated the word holocaust with Nazi atrocities during World War II. Now, when you think of it, those atrocities didn’t take place all that long ago and presumably the word holocaust wasn’t invented specifically to apply to that shameful period of history. This fact didn’t occur to me until recently. I bought a Kindle electronic book almost a year ago. So already it’s obsolete, there are two other models out now. But aside from buying ebooks at Amazon I’ve been downloading free out-of-copyright books as well.  One of these was a murder mystery written before the Second World War and therein I came across the word holocaust in quite a different context. The detective admonished someone who was thinking of burning a piece of evidence.  So, I thought, the word holocaust must have something to do with burning. Looking the word up I see that I was right.  The latter part of holocaust is related to our word caustic. Caustic chemicals burn and caustic comments do too. The word holocaust appears first in English way back in 1250 and comes from French who got it from Latin who got it from Greek. In Greek it had been two words; the holo is the same as whole so that holocaust literally means “wholly burned.” Back then the word didn’t apply to man’s inhumanity to man, but instead referred to religious rites in which offerings were burned in sacrifice. By the 1500s holocaust had come to mean sacrifice on a large scale and by the 1700s meant wholesale slaughter. According to The Oxford English Dictionary the word was specifically applied as The Holocaust to the Nazi mass murders by historians during the 1950s, so after the war was over. The OED says this was probably as an equivalent to the Hebrew words hurban and shoah meaning “catastrophe.” But there are citations applying the word back to 1942, while the events were actually happening. What got me going on the word today was listening to recent reports of the conviction for war crimes of one of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.  Some reports referred to that as a holocaust too. Those atrocities happened 15 years ago and I dare say there are others even more recent. It makes me wish we could make the rallying cry “never again” stick. tag:odeo.com,2009-05-28,24623866 Thu, 28 May 2009 21:01:53 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24706582-Dutchdouble-%E2%80%93-podictionary-976 Listener Meredith asks about several phrases related to Dutch. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary She mentions going Dutch where people on a date pay their own share, and double Dutch a kind of skipping rope game. I called this episode Dutch double because I’ve actually looked into the word Dutch before on podictionary, back in March 2008. There I focused on the phrase Dutch courage. I won’t repeat that story, but I will touch again on the etymology of Dutch before jumping into the origin of going Dutch and double Dutch. Today Dutch refers to the people of the Netherlands also known as Holland. But in 1380 when the word Dutch first appeared in English it referred to a broader area of Europe. Germans call Germany Deutschland and there is no coincidence that this sounds like Dutch land. The group we now call Germans were in Middle English called High Dutch. The Low Dutch were the people of the Netherlands. Originall... Listener Meredith asks about several phrases related to Dutch. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary She mentions going Dutch where people on a date pay their own share, and double Dutch a kind of skipping rope game. I called this episode Dutch double because I’ve actually looked into the word Dutch before on podictionary, back in March 2008. There I focused on the phrase Dutch courage. I won’t repeat that story, but I will touch again on the etymology of Dutch before jumping into the origin of going Dutch and double Dutch. Today Dutch refers to the people of the Netherlands also known as Holland. But in 1380 when the word Dutch first appeared in English it referred to a broader area of Europe. Germans call Germany Deutschland and there is no coincidence that this sounds like Dutch land. The group we now call Germans were in Middle English called High Dutch. The Low Dutch were the people of the Netherlands. Originally Dutch meant “people” or “nation” and it’s a common trait through history that when a tribe or group has the option to choose their own name they usually choose one that means they are people while other groups get stuck with names meaning that they are something less. For example, the group name Eskimo is now seen as insulting because it was first applied by a rival group and means “eaters of raw meat.” With respect to going Dutch and double Dutch, The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that these are only some of a pile of phrases that arose as a result of “rivalry and enmity between the English and Dutch in the 17th century.” Going Dutch, where one pays their own way fits in well with Dutch treat, and other phrases that have fallen out of use such as Dutch party, Dutch supper and Dutch lunch. In all of these cases the idea was that it was a bring-your-own party because the host was too cheap to pay your way and since the English hated the Dutch, labeling the event as Dutch was as good as calling it “a cheap party.” Many of the things called Dutch were associated with drinking and a Dutch feast was one where the host got plastered before the guests did. 100 years before double Dutch was applied to a kind of skipping rope session where two ropes turn in opposition to one another—and that first shows up in 1895—double Dutch was applied to a language you didn’t understand. It was like saying “that’s Greek to me.” So people who couldn’t understand a language referred to it as if it was not only as impenetrable as the Dutch language, but doubly so. I see no theory as to why this clueless reaction to a foreign language might have transferred its name to a skipping game, but I see that both uses were in play at the same time and since the skipping uses two ropes the double was a natural, and double Dutch slips off the tongue so easily, I guess it stuck. Listener Meredith asks about several phrases related to Dutch. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary She mentions going Dutch where people on a date pay their own share, and double Dutch a kind of skipping rope game. I called this episode Dutch double because I’ve actually looked into the word Dutch before on podictionary, back in March 2008. There I focused on the phrase Dutch courage. I won’t repeat that story, but I will touch again on the etymology of Dutch before jumping into the origin of going Dutch and double Dutch. Today Dutch refers to the people of the Netherlands also known as Holland. But in 1380 when the word Dutch first appeared in English it referred to a broader area of Europe. Germans call Germany Deutschland and there is no coincidence that this sounds like Dutch land. The group we now call Germans were in Middle English called High Dutch. The Low Dutch were the people of the Netherlands. Originally Dutch meant “people” or “nation” and it’s a common trait through history that when a tribe or group has the option to choose their own name they usually choose one that means they are people while other groups get stuck with names meaning that they are something less. For example, the group name Eskimo is now seen as insulting because it was first applied by a rival group and means “eaters of raw meat.” With respect to going Dutch and double Dutch, The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that these are only some of a pile of phrases that arose as a result of “rivalry and enmity between the English and Dutch in the 17th century.” Going Dutch, where one pays their own way fits in well with Dutch treat, and other phrases that have fallen out of use such as Dutch party, Dutch supper and Dutch lunch. In all of these cases the idea was that it was a bring-your-own party because the host was too cheap to pay your way and since the English hated the Dutch, labeling the event as Dutch was as good as calling it “a cheap party.” Many of the things called Dutch were associated with drinking and a Dutch feast was one where the host got plastered before the guests did. 100 years before double Dutch was applied to a kind of skipping rope session where two ropes turn in opposition to one another—and that first shows up in 1895—double Dutch was applied to a language you didn’t understand. It was like saying “that’s Greek to me.” So people who couldn’t understand a language referred to it as if it was not only as impenetrable as the Dutch language, but doubly so. I see no theory as to why this clueless reaction to a foreign language might have transferred its name to a skipping game, but I see that both uses were in play at the same time and since the skipping uses two ropes the double was a natural, and double Dutch slips off the tongue so easily, I guess it stuck. tag:odeo.com,2009-05-27,24706582 Wed, 27 May 2009 21:01:45 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24617975-Dutchdouble-podictionary-976 Listener Meredith asks about several phrases related to Dutch. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary She mentions going Dutch where people on a date pay their own share, and double Dutch a kind of skipping rope game. I called this episode Dutch double because I’ve actually looked into the word Dutch before on podictionary, back in March 2008. There I focused on the phrase Dutch courage. I won’t repeat that story, but I will touch again on the etymology of Dutch before jumping into the origin of going Dutch and double Dutch. Today Dutch refers to the people of the Netherlands also known as Holland. But in 1380 when the word Dutch first appeared in English it referred to a broader area of Europe. Germans call Germany Deutschland and there is no coincidence that this sounds like Dutch land. The group we now call Germans were in Middle English called High Dutch. The Low Dutch were the people of the Netherlands. Originall... Listener Meredith asks about several phrases related to Dutch. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary She mentions going Dutch where people on a date pay their own share, and double Dutch a kind of skipping rope game. I called this episode Dutch double because I’ve actually looked into the word Dutch before on podictionary, back in March 2008. There I focused on the phrase Dutch courage. I won’t repeat that story, but I will touch again on the etymology of Dutch before jumping into the origin of going Dutch and double Dutch. Today Dutch refers to the people of the Netherlands also known as Holland. But in 1380 when the word Dutch first appeared in English it referred to a broader area of Europe. Germans call Germany Deutschland and there is no coincidence that this sounds like Dutch land. The group we now call Germans were in Middle English called High Dutch. The Low Dutch were the people of the Netherlands. Originally Dutch meant “people” or “nation” and it’s a common trait through history that when a tribe or group has the option to choose their own name they usually choose one that means they are people while other groups get stuck with names meaning that they are something less. For example, the group name Eskimo is now seen as insulting because it was first applied by a rival group and means “eaters of raw meat.” With respect to going Dutch and double Dutch, The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that these are only some of a pile of phrases that arose as a result of “rivalry and enmity between the English and Dutch in the 17th century.” Going Dutch, where one pays their own way fits in well with Dutch treat, and other phrases that have fallen out of use such as Dutch party, Dutch supper and Dutch lunch. In all of these cases the idea was that it was a bring-your-own party because the host was too cheap to pay your way and since the English hated the Dutch, labeling the event as Dutch was as good as calling it “a cheap party.” Many of the things called Dutch were associated with drinking and a Dutch feast was one where the host got plastered before the guests did. 100 years before double Dutch was applied to a kind of skipping rope session where two ropes turn in opposition to one another—and that first shows up in 1895—double Dutch was applied to a language you didn’t understand. It was like saying “that’s Greek to me.” So people who couldn’t understand a language referred to it as if it was not only as impenetrable as the Dutch language, but doubly so. I see no theory as to why this clueless reaction to a foreign language might have transferred its name to a skipping game, but I see that both uses were in play at the same time and since the skipping uses two ropes the double was a natural, and double Dutch slips off the tongue so easily, I guess it stuck. Listener Meredith asks about several phrases related to Dutch. SPONSOR Get a FREE audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at www.audiblepodcast.com/podictionary She mentions going Dutch where people on a date pay their own share, and double Dutch a kind of skipping rope game. I called this episode Dutch double because I’ve actually looked into the word Dutch before on podictionary, back in March 2008. There I focused on the phrase Dutch courage. I won’t repeat that story, but I will touch again on the etymology of Dutch before jumping into the origin of going Dutch and double Dutch. Today Dutch refers to the people of the Netherlands also known as Holland. But in 1380 when the word Dutch first appeared in English it referred to a broader area of Europe. Germans call Germany Deutschland and there is no coincidence that this sounds like Dutch land. The group we now call Germans were in Middle English called High Dutch. The Low Dutch were the people of the Netherlands. Originally Dutch meant “people” or “nation” and it’s a common trait through history that when a tribe or group has the option to choose their own name they usually choose one that means they are people while other groups get stuck with names meaning that they are something less. For example, the group name Eskimo is now seen as insulting because it was first applied by a rival group and means “eaters of raw meat.” With respect to going Dutch and double Dutch, The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that these are only some of a pile of phrases that arose as a result of “rivalry and enmity between the English and Dutch in the 17th century.” Going Dutch, where one pays their own way fits in well with Dutch treat, and other phrases that have fallen out of use such as Dutch party, Dutch supper and Dutch lunch. In all of these cases the idea was that it was a bring-your-own party because the host was too cheap to pay your way and since the English hated the Dutch, labeling the event as Dutch was as good as calling it “a cheap party.” Many of the things called Dutch were associated with drinking and a Dutch feast was one where the host got plastered before the guests did. 100 years before double Dutch was applied to a kind of skipping rope session where two ropes turn in opposition to one another—and that first shows up in 1895—double Dutch was applied to a language you didn’t understand. It was like saying “that’s Greek to me.” So people who couldn’t understand a language referred to it as if it was not only as impenetrable as the Dutch language, but doubly so. I see no theory as to why this clueless reaction to a foreign language might have transferred its name to a skipping game, but I see that both uses were in play at the same time and since the skipping uses two ropes the double was a natural, and double Dutch slips off the tongue so easily, I guess it stuck. tag:odeo.com,2009-05-27,24617975 Wed, 27 May 2009 21:01:45 -0700 no podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history podcasts