etymology

Fun Facts About English #97 – Universal Language

02/21/2021 by admin

Words like taxi, tea, bikini, OK, and pizza are a type of “universal” language due to their highly frequent borrowings among populations around the planet. Such widespread adoption is the result of cultural contact, colonialism, war, trade, and popular media. The global spread began happening centuries ago. Below are four “universal” words and the histories of their intrepid march around the globe.

Pizza

This culture-specific word is written and pronounced in a variety of ways around the world: bǐsà-bǐng, biitza, pitstsa, pizā and pijā.

The precursor of modern pizza was likely focaccia, a flatbread known to the Romans as panis focacius. The word pizza was first documented in A.D. 997 in Gaeta and successively in different parts of Central and Southern Italy. The introduction of a savory tomato sauce came centuries later after the red fruit from the Americas was introduced.

In 16th-century Naples, the flatbread pizza was known as a dish for poor people and was sold as street food and in pizzerias. Over the next two centuries, the dish gained popularity and became a tourist attraction as visitors ventured into the poorer areas of Naples to visit the pizzerias and sample the local specialties.

Pizza made its appearance in the United States with the arrival of Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. Italian-American pizzerias flourished in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Trenton, and St. Louis. Following World War II, returning veterans who were introduced to Italy’s native cuisine abroad flocked to the American restaurants and entrepreneurs eyed the market for expansion.

By the 1960s, pizza consumption exploded in the U.S. Parallel to their fast-food brethren, pizza chains created a wildly popular dining market that included Shakey’s Pizza (1954), Pizza Hut (1958), and Little Ceasars (1959). Chilled and frozen pizzas sold in supermarkets made pizza readily available nationwide.

In the latter part of the 20th century, American pizza chains expanded into world markets. The recipes were adopted and adapted to local tastes with preferred toppings. Pizza Hut®, for example, has 18,703 restaurants around the globe. In Japan, eel and squid are popular toppings, Pakistanis love their curry pizza, and Norwegians eat the most pizza in the world! Once the provenance of the Italian poor, pizza has become one of the most recognized and popular dishes worldwide.

Coffee

This word is recognized in more than eight widely-spoken languages. Though its discovery is the fodder of various legends, coffee originated in the Arabic qahwah. There is evidence of coffee drinking from the early 15th century in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen (kingdom of Sheba) and spread to Mecca and Medina. By the 16th century, it reached the rest of the Middle East, South India, Persia, Turkey, India, and northern Africa. Coffee then spread to the Balkans, Italy, the rest of Europe, and Southeast Asia.

The word “coffee” entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie. The French pronounce the word café, Germans say kaffee, in Italian it’s caffè, and in Japanese, コーヒー (kōhī). From iced coffee in Portugal to the spiced coffee of Morocco, each culture has adapted the drink to their own distinctive cultural tastes. Major American chains such as Starbucks can be found in 76 countries around the globe.

Metro

The UK’s London Underground opened in 1863 with locomotive trains. In 1890, it became the world’s first urban railway “system” when electric trains began operating on its deep-level tube lines. In France, the Paris Métro opened in 1900. It was one of the first to use the term “metro,” an abbreviation from its original operating company’s name, “Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris.

This is a digitized and colorized film of Germany’s Wuppertal Schwebebahn shot in 1902. Where the train itself appears so recognizably “modern,” the background is shockingly old world!

Today, “metro” has the same meaning and almost the same pronunciation in Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Finnish, Basque, French, English, and Hungarian. There are more than 178 transportation systems globally with an average of 168 million daily passengers. From subway to above-ground railways, metro systems have become a ubiquitous part of the urban landscape worldwide.

Shampoo

The word shampoo entered the English language from the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era. It is dated to 1762 and was derived from Hindi chāmpo, from the Sanskrit root chapati, meaning “to press, knead, or soothe.”

The people of India would historically boil saponin-rich soapberries with a mixture of herbs and fruits, then strain it for an effective, lathery soap. This product would clean hair and was part of a massage and bathing routine known as chāmpo.

When early colonial traders in India returned to Europe, they introduced these newly-acquired bathing habits and the hair treatment they called “shampoo.” The first “champooi,” or Indian health spa and massage, was opened in England in 1814 by Sake Dean Mahomed, an Indian traveler, surgeon, and entrepreneur. Mr. Mahomed was also appointed as shampooing surgeon to both King George IV and William IV.

During the early stages of its adoption in Europe, hair stylists boiled shaved soap in water and added herbs to create a shampoo treatment that gave the hair shine and fragrance. Commercially-made shampoo wasn’t available until the turn of the 20th century when companies like Canthrox and Rexall offered shampoo products at local druggists. In 1927, liquid shampoo was created by German inventor Hans Schwarzkopf in Berlin. The first shampoo using synthetic surfactants instead of soap was Proctor & Gamble’s Drene brand in the 1930s.

Today, shampoo is an 85-billion dollar health and beauty market crossing every continent and nearly every nation on the planet. The word “shampoo” is also found in most major languages including French, Albanian, Corsican, Danish, Dutch, Finish, German, Italian, and Japanese. In Spanish, it’s champu, and in Korean, syampu.

I’ll finish this post with one more world map.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in what makes a word autological, the everyday language of anatomy, or why we use the word dumbbells!

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Fun Facts About English #95 – Eponyms

02/08/2021 by admin

Law-student-turned-acrobat, Jules Leotard, is credited with inventing the aerial trapeze act in 1859. He starred in the Paris Cirque Napoleon and was the inspiration for the song, “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” In order to show off his “splendid” physique and eliminate any safety hazards from loose clothing, Mr. Leotard designed a tight-fitting, one-piece knitted costume with long sleeves he called a “maillot.” He died from either smallpox or cholera in 1870 at the young age of thirty-two. Within a few decades after his death, his circus garment became eponymously known as a “leotard.”

Jules Leotard Kinney Brothers Publishing

Eponymy is when a thing, place, or event is named after or becomes synonymous with someone. For example, Queen Victoria of England is the eponym of the Victorian era. The label can be a fictional character as well. To be called a Grinch refers to the Christmas-hating central character in How The Grinch Stole Christmas. The term is also applied to creative work such as the album, The Doors, a work by the band, the Doors, which is then called a self-titled album. Unlike Marxism or Christian, eponymous words like quisling and sandwich have evolved a common-word status and no longer derive meaning from their proper-noun origin.

Below are six more eponyms with colorful histories that may surprise you!

Boycott

In 19th-century Ireland, absentee landlords in England grew wealthy at the expense of the Irish tenants working their land. With fears of another potato famine, the Irish National Land League demanded that British land agents, like Charles Boycott, reduce their rents. After Mr. Boycott rejected the order, the Land League responded with a nonviolent protest. Local workers refused to harvest Boycott’s crops, shops would not serve him, neighbors shunned him, and even the postman “forgot” to deliver his mail. Boycott was forced to hire armed guards to protect workers he imported from the north of Ireland. Boycott’s name has since become synonymous with the method of protest employed against him.

Gerrymander

The word “gerrymander” refers to the unfair practice of dividing voting districts to give an unfair advantage to one party. In 1812, Massachusetts governor, Elbridge Gerry, reshaped one of his voting districts in a shape that suggested the body of a salamander. This prompted a staffer at the Boston Gazette to coin the portmanteau “gerrymander.”

Cardigan

James Brudenell was the 7th Earl of Cardigan and a British military hero. Lord Cardigan led the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War against Russia in 1854. The earl used his own funds and designed a knitted wool waistcoat with an open front for his soldiers to stay warm during the Russian winter. Although his cavalry was decimated, the British major general was hailed a hero at home for the bravery of his soldiers. Lord Cardigan’s popularity led to the Cardigan sweater, a clothing item that has since become a fashion staple on both sides of the Atlantic.

Miranda Rights/mirandize

In 1963, Ernesto A. Miranda was a laborer convicted of kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery based on his confession under police interrogation. His conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court (Miranda v. Arizona) because arresting officers had failed to inform him of his legal rights. After his conviction was overturned, he was retried and again convicted based on other evidence. He served eleven years in prison and was paroled in 1972. After his release, he made money by selling Miranda warning cards with his signature for $1.50 each. In 1976, at the age of 34, he was stabbed to death in a bar fight. One suspect fled the scene and another was arrested. The detained suspect invoked his Miranda rights and refused to talk to the police. With no evidence against him, he was released.

Silhouette

Etienne de Silhouette was a French finance minister who imposed high taxes on the upper classes during the Seven Years War with Britain in the late 1700s. As France’s deficit spiraled out of control, he became an object of Parisian ridicule for his austerity measures. The phrase “a la Silhouette” was a mocking description for doing something “on the cheap.” At the time, profile portraits and framed images cut from black paper were looked at derisively as worthless replacements for more expensive paintings and sculptures. Today, the penny-pinching minister is eponymously remembered by these “silhouette portraits.”

Derrick

In the late 16th century, Thomas Derrick was a convict facing the death penalty in Elizabethan England. Derrick was offered a pardon by the Earl of Essex if he would work for the state as an executioner — an undesirable job often filled by coercion. During his time as a hangman, Derrick designed a new system with a topping lift and pulley to replace the rope-over-the-beam hanging method. Derrick executed over 3,000 people, one of whom, ironically, was the man who pardoned him, the Earl of Essex. Today, a derrick is known as a crane or lifting device designed for moving large objects. They are widely used in engineering and drilling for oil and gas reserves.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in the conundrum with cotronyms and capitonyms, or the explosive use of acronyms in the English language!

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Fun Facts About English #93 – Cock

01/31/2021 by admin

According to Merriam-Webster, the term “rooster” originated in the United States in the mid- or late-18th century as a euphemism to avoid the sexual connotation of the word “cock.” The noun is derived from “roosting,” the bird’s habit of perching aloft to sleep at night.

The appearance of “rooster” in the written record signals a cultural and linguistic shift as Americans became more persnickety when speaking about their bodies and carnal natures. “Cock” was no longer acceptable for genteel and pious New Worlders in the late 18th century because of its close association to the male sexual organ. In the early 19th century a religious revival of born-again Christianity swept the United States. During this time, the proverbial axe came down on any vulgar associations to a phallus:

cockhorse – riding horse
haycock – haystack
weathercock – weathervane
shuttlecock – birdie
drain cock/stop cock – drain valve

Even suggestive surnames were subject to this lingual henpecking party. For hundreds of years, family names suggested their history with the domesticated fowl, like Hitchcock, Handcock, Wilcox, and Alcox. The father of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, changed his last name from Alcock to Alcott in the early 19th century out of “professional concerns” during his teaching career.

The Bird and The Organ

The word “cock” is from Old English cocc meaning “male bird” and appears to be of German origin. Cocken and cocky were Old English slang for “one who swaggers or struts like a cock.” By the 17th century, “cock” was a general term for a “fellow, man, or chap,” as in “an old cock.” Age-old idioms and classifiers that include “cock” abound:

cock one’s hat – an aggressive or fighting attitude
cocked ear – to listen carefully
cock of the walk – a dominating attitude
cocksure – arrogantly confident
cock and bull story – an unbelievable tale
cockpit – cock-fighting ring
gamecock – hell-rooster, hell-kite; a fierce fighter
cocker-spaniel – a dog bred to flush woodcocks
cocktail – the high standing tail of a bird; docked tail of a pedigree horse; analogous for an alcoholic beverage in high society
billycock – a type of felt hat similar to a derby; from bullycock – to cock one’s hat in a swashbuckling fashion

The first two lines of the popular English nursery rhyme “Cock a doodle do!” first appeared in 1606 in a murder pamphlet (lurid accounts of gruesome murders, confessions, and executions, similar to our own genre of “True Crime” detective stories). The full rhyme was recorded in London in Mother Goose’s Melody in 1776:

Cock a doodle do!
My dame has lost her shoe,
My master’s lost his fiddlestick,
And knows not what to do.

Commercial business using cock — Click to make larger

The earliest allusions to the penis is pillicock, attested from the early 14th century in the Anglo-Irish The Kildare Lyrics, a poem complaining of the effects of old age:

“Y ne mai no more of loue done; Mi pilkoc pisseþ on mi schone” (I may no longer make love, my cock pisses on my shoe).

There’s also Middle English fide-cok, where fid means “a peg or plug.”

The reasons why “cock” became so closely associated with “penis” are numerous but speculative at best. The common traits of “rising in the morning” and the euphemistic “choking the chicken” for masturbation are humorous but not definitive. The rooster’s aggressiveness, its virility, the upright curvature of its neck with hackles that flare when excited, not to mention its pendulous wattles, are some of the ideas people have asserted for the cultural connection. Regardless, it’s a lot of conjecture considering a cock doesn’t even have a penis. (Through testes located high up in the body, sperm transfer occurs by cloacal contact between the cockerel and the hen known as the “cloacal kiss.”)

No matter how sheepish Americans might be, the word “cock” has been synonymous with “penis” for a very long time. Though “rooster” is a perfectly fine word, the original intent to disappear “cock” is prudish hogwash. The British, with a clearer grasp on context, still use the word without offense or fear of being vulgar. In the end, the animal has crossed with our culture to become not only an enduring symbol of our farming past but continues to be one of our most valued sources of sustenance. Like pigs, pussies, and asses, cocks also provide a wealth of reflections on our own undeniable human behavior.

If you enjoyed this bit of history, you may also enjoy learning about (NSFW) expletive infixations, the strange adjectival order of “Big Bad Wolf,” or why some words become fossilized!

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Dude! An Awesome History

11/15/2020 by admin

Although this blog post was part of my weekly Fun Facts About English in October, the history is so culturally rich, I thought it worth publishing as one of my monthly educational posts.

On a sunny summer day in 1965, I was in the front yard with my twin brother, Bobby, playing on our identical red tricycles. I said to him, “Lookit how fast I’m peddlin’, man!” Bobby suddenly dashed into the house like he had to poop. A few moments later, my mother sternly called out to me through the open living-room window, “Donnie! Stop saying “man!”

Yankee Doodle

The tune of Yankee Doodle is far older than the lyrics, is well known across western Europe, and has been used in Holland for centuries as a children’s song. The earliest lyrics we know come from a 15th-century Middle Dutch harvest song. Though some of the words may seem familiar, the English and Dutch mix is largely nonsensical. The cadence, however, is unmistakable:

“Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther.”

The word doodle is derived from either the Low German dudel, meaning “playing music badly,” or dödel, meaning “fool” or “simpleton.” Yankee is recorded in the late 17th century as a nickname; perhaps from the Dutch Janke, a diminutive of Jan (John). Finally, dandy is thought to be a shortened form of 17th-century Jack-a-dandy for “a conceited fellow” and a pet form of the given name Andrew, as in Dandy Andy.

In 18th-century Britain, the term “yankee doodle dandy” implied a fashionable man who goes beyond the pale of reasonable dress and speaks in an outlandishly affected and effeminate manner.

The song Yankee Doodle was written around 1755 by British Army surgeon Dr. Richard Shuckburgh. It was sung by British troops to mock the disheveled and disorganized colonial “Yankees” with whom they served in the seven-year French and Indian War (1756). In defiance, the American soldiers co-opted the song, added verses to mock the British troops, and by the time of the Revolutionary War (1775), turned the insult into a song of national pride.

FYI: The multi-award-winning musical film, Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney (1942), was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Bonus FYI: The state of Connecticut designated Yankee Doodle as the official state song in 1978.

Doodle to Dude

Recent research of the word dude is owed to Barry Popik and Gerald Cohen who have been combing through 19th-century periodicals amassing the world’s largest collection of dude citations. Cohen’s journal, Comments on Etymology, lays out a solidly supported account of the early days of dude.

In the vernacular of the American cowboy and popular press of the late 19th century, the diminutive dude from doodle emerged as a derisive word, like dandy, for an extremely well-dressed Eastern city slicker who knew little of the rugged lifestyle of the new American West. The verbed version of the word is still familiar in the cowboy phrase “all duded up” for getting dressed in fancy clothes.* Dudedom, dudeness, dudery, and dudism are all recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as terms used in the late 1800s to ridicule our foppish friends. In the early 20th century, dude ranches sprang up in many western states catering to wealthy urbanites wanting to vacation in the “cowboy lifestyle.”

In the 1960s, dude began appearing in surfer culture and the Black community with the meaning “fellow” or “guy,” much like bro in the 1970s. Dude continued its creep into the jargon of young Americans in general throughout the twentieth century.

One of the first known references to its contemporary use is the 1969 film, Easy Rider. In the clip below, Peter Fonda explains to Jack Nicholson the meaning of dude, giving us a marvelous linguistic marker in American pop culture:

From “dandy” to “regular guy” to “cool,” dude was further popularized in American films of the 80s and 90s, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Wayne’s World, and Clerks. The ultimate dude, based on the personality of Viet Nam war activist Jeff Dowd, was played by Jeff Bridges in the 1998 cult film, The Big Lebowski. Bridges’ character, The Dude, inspired Dudeism, a new religion that promotes a rebel-shrug philosophy and the mantra, “Just take it easy, man.”

Dudeism’s objective is to promote a modern form of Chinese Taoism, blended with concepts from the Ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, and presented in a style as personified by the character of Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski.

In 2008, the beer company, Bud Light, aired an advertising campaign in which the dialogue consists entirely of different inflections of “Dude!” without ever mentioning the product name.

As we move further into the 21st century, the female equivalents dudette and dudess failed to acquire any linguistic legs and have fallen out of use. Among many young Americans, dude is now considered a unisex term in much the way guys is used to address a group of men or women. Studies reveal that, though dude is used today in every possible gender combination, it is not used by men to address women in their intimate relationships.

I’ll finish with this Millienial-age gem I found in my research:

“I call my mother ‘dude.’ She doesn’t like it.”

*Not to be confused with the word duds, as in “I got my best duds on.” c. 1300, dudde “cloak, mantle,” later, in plural, “clothes,” especially “ragged clothing.”

Fun Facts About English #87 – Capitonyms

11/05/2020 by admin

A capitonym is a word that changes its nuance, meaning, and sometimes pronunciation when it’s capitalized; capitalization being applied due to one form being a proper noun, such as Bill/bill, or an eponym, such as Augustus/august. Some capitonyms are homonyms (Rose/rose), and others can be heteronyms (Polish/polish, Tangier/tangier) where pronunciation changes accordingly. The word capitonym is a portmanteau of the word capital with the suffix -onym.

Besides the list of first names above, last names that are capitonyms often fall in the realms of labor, colors, and animals, like baker, cook, farmer, brown, white, green, wolf, fox, and parrot. When first meeting people with such surnames, best to spare them your witticism.

Capitonyms may or may not be etymologically related in their capitalized and un-capitalized forms. The month of May and the verb may don’t share an etymology, whereas Catholic and catholic both derive from a Greek adjective meaning “universal.”

Capital letters can be used to differentiate a set of objects or people and an example of that set, like a moon and the Moon, a dad and Dad, or a bible and the Bible.

Religious contexts have very specific rules for capital spelling. The general word god is capitalized to God when referring to the deity of monotheistic religions. When referencing said deities, common pronouns like me, mine, you, and yours are usually capitalized as well. Within the liturgy, there is Mass as opposed to physical mass, and church denoting a building compared to Church when referring to members of a religious group. In the same lofty vein, words carrying a meaning of transcendence, religious or secular, are often capitalized, such as Truth, Beauty, and Justice.

Because political parties are often named after political philosophies, capital letters differentiate one who supports a philosophy, such as a conservative believing in a philosophy of conservatism, and one who claims herself a Conservative in support of the Conservative Party.

Finally, there’s one pesky little glitch in the English scheme to differentiate capitonyms: the beginning of a sentence. Consider the mental sort and the necessity of context and punctuation when reading these examples:

Bill the patient, please.
Turkey requires a visa.
Rusty waters plants.
Crystal is clearly delicate.
Nice winters are mild compared to Paris.
Cook wages war in court.
Iris blossoms on the piano.
Pat the dog.
Will Will?
March!
Randy?

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in reading about palindromes, the conundrum with contronyms, or why the word widow is unique among gender-specific nouns!

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Fun Facts About English #81 – Old English Words

10/29/2020 by admin

Kinney Brothers Publishing Flitterwochen

English Timeline Kinney Brothers Publishing

Old English is the language of the early Germanic inhabitants of England known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Their settlements began in the 5th century and lasted until the end of the 11th century. Only about a sixth of Anglo-Saxon words have survived and make up about 1% of the current English language. On the other hand, 80% of the thousand most common words in modern English come from Old English! They include the words water, earth, house, food, drink, sleep, sing, night, strong, the, a, be, of, he, she, you, no, and not. Interestingly, many common swear words are also of Anglo-Saxon origin, including tits, fart, shit, turd, arse, and probably, piss.

Here are ten Old English words you can start using to bring some medieval color to your daily vocabulary. You’ll also be doing your part to save endangered words!

anon – shortly; “The concert will begin anon! Make haste!”
bedward – to head to bed; “It’s late and I’m moving bedward!”
crapulous – feeling ill after too much eating or drinking; “I’m feeling totally crapulous today, dude.”
elflock – tangled hair; “After frolicking in the woods, her hair was full of elflocks.”
gardyloo – what you shout before emptying your bedpan out the window; “The drunk yelled, “Gardyloo!” and pissed out the window.”
groke – to stare intensely at someone who is eating hoping you will receive some, especially a cat or dog; “The dog sat groking at me while I ate my sandwich.”
grubble – to feel or grope around for something you can’t see; “She grubbled in the bottom of her purse for her house key.”
overmorrow – the day after tomorrow; “We’ll have to travel all day tomorrow and overmorrow to arrive by Sunday.”
trumpery – things that look good but are basically worthless; “The crowd was taken in by his Madison Avenue trumpery.”
twattling – gossip, nonsense; “The woman is nothing but a twattling old gossip!”

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in French words that you should know when dining at French restaurants, the influence of Native American languages in American English, or common words you didn’t know were Spanish!

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