word origins

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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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 #66 – Folk Etymology & Gender Nouns

08/14/2020 by admin

According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, the word lord can be traced back to the Old English word hlāfweard meaning “loaf-ward” or “bread-keeper,” reflecting the Germanic tribal custom of a chieftain providing food for his followers. Likewise, lady is from the Old English word hlœfdīge and referred to the woman in charge of the household production of food, e.g., kneading of said bread.

As our culture moved into wholly agrarian-based urban societies, land holdings and titles came to denote wealth, authority, and nobility. As individuals rose in status, so did their titles, like Lord and Lady. Where wifman, meaning woman, is the word from which our lawful term wife is derived, so husband, meaning “tiller of the soil,” has come to refer to the legal male head of a household. Such language, revealing in its history, is constantly evolving.

Popular but Mistaken

There is a thing called “folk” or “popular” etymology where one overlays prejudices or preferences on language to justify contemporary ideas or concerns. For example, the “son” in person has no relationship to a male child. Likewise, the “his” in history, from the Greek word historia meaning “to seek knowledge,” has no etymological connection to a male-oriented view of past events, i.e., his story.* Old English hire or her, is the third person singular form of heo or she, with the absolute form being hers.

Another example of folk etymology is the misconception that the words womb and woman are related. Womb is from the Old English word wombe or wambe meaning “stomach” and, besides having no gender specificity, referred to either human or animal organs that sometimes included the intestines and the heart.

Gender Nouns

Next, let’s take a closer look at the nouns male, female, man, woman, and human.

Man or mann derives from Proto-Germanic and meant “person,” referring to both men and women. To be gender specific, wifman and werman were used for a female person and male person respectively. The “wer” in werman survives to this day in the word werewolf, meaning “man-wolf.”

Over time, wifman lost the ‘f’ and became first wimman, then wumman, and finally woman. After the Norman Conquest, the ‘wer’ disappeared from werman to become man, a gender-specific noun referring to males but still maintained the “mankind” inflection meaning “all humans.”

Surprisingly, the word world has its origins in a male-specific etymology. The Anglo-Saxon word werold means “age of man” derived from the compound wer (man) + ald (age). Its definition, on the other hand, is more closely related to a gender-neutral “human existence” or “affairs of life.”

Now, what about male and female? Both of these words came into the English language via Old French. Male is from the Latin masculus, meaning “male,” and was shortened to masle in Old French. Over time, the ‘s’ was dropped and the word became male. Female is derived from the Latin diminutive femina, became femelle in Old French, and finally female in English. In short, the “male” in female has no relationship to the word male meaning “dude.”

Finally, human comes from the Latin word humanus and the Latin root homo, meaning “human being.” It transformed into humaine in Old French and Middle English, and finally human and humane in Modern English. Once again, the word human has no etymological connection with the words male or man in a gender-specific sense.

You might also be interested in the peculiarity of the word widow, the explosion of acronyms in the past two centuries, or the fact that un-friend is actually quite old!

*The Herstory Archives is an archive of Lesbian history and literature founded in the 1970s. The use of “her” in the organization’s name, while clever, is not going to castrate the canons of history nor does it defile any linguistic integrities. Give the women their historical due and move on.

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If you’re not using task cards in class, you’re missing out on an excellent center or whole class activity that turns repetition into fun! Check out all the task cards available in Donald’s English Classroom!

Fun Facts About English #60 – Rebracketing

07/03/2020 by admin

Fun Facts About English 60 Kinney Brothers Publishing

“A napron” becoming “an apron” wasn’t an anomaly. This kind of rebracketing has happened again and again in our language history. Here are five similar examples:

an ewt (salamander) / a newt
an ekename (additional name) / a nickname
an otch / a notch
a naranj / an orange
a naddre (type of snake) / an adder

These may seem like quaint misinterpretations from long ago. In reality, this kind of rebracketing is happening before our very eyes and ears, in spite of the fact that we rely less on an oral transfer of language. Our higher literacy rates seem to accelerate how we (sometimes intentionally) manipulate our language and, in turn, create strings of new words in the process.

Take for example the Middle English words all one or alone, meaning “one only” or “on one’s own.” When the word rebracketed to a-lone, a profusion of new vocabulary entered the English language, such as lone, lonely, and lonesome.

Consider the word helicopter. To most English speakers’ thinking, the two parts of the word are heli and copter. This is not correct. Coined in 1861, the etymology of the word originates from the Greek helico (spiral) and pter (with wings, as in pterodactyl). Nonetheless, we now have derivatives of this rebracketing, like helipad, heliport, and helidome. Copter, which wasn’t a word, suffix, or even slang before helicopter, gives us new combinations like gyrocopter, jetcopter, and quadcopter.

A more recent arrival is blog. The internet-era word came from the clever rebracketing of “weblog.” Its cousin, vlog, came from the words “video log.” From these newly-coined terms we get blogger, blogging, vlogger, and vlogging.

A popular rebracketing has occurred with the word alcoholic. The two parts of the word are alcohol (booze) and -ic (related to). Though –holic has no etymological history, per se, it is now a suffix with the definition of “being addicted to something,” such as shopaholic, chocoholic, and workaholic.

Finally, our beloved American hamburgers are a linguistic carnival of misinterpretations and rebracketing. If asked, many Americans would probably think the breakdown of the word hamburger (ignoring any cognitive dissonance) would be ham (meaning “not really ham”) and burger (a patty of meat or meat sandwich). From these misinterpretations, we get new words and food like a cheeseburger, double burger, and veggieburger.

The real meaning of hamburger is “a resident of the German town of Hamburg;” Hamburg + -er (resident of). Denizens of this burg gave us our meat sandwich progenitor, the Hamburg steak. When Germans arrived in America, their spicy Hamburg steaks were sold in restaurants, state fairs, and on food carts to industrial workers. Difficult to eat while standing or walking, the beef patty was sandwiched between two pieces of bread, and the hamburger was born. While there are numerous competing stories, it’s said that Louis’ Lunch, a small lunch wagon in New Haven, Connecticut, sold the first Hamburg steak sandwich around 1900.

And the rest is global history.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in how we unconsciously stack our adjectives, the anomaly of “The Big Bad Wolf,” or how Lewis Carroll gave us the first literary portmanteaux!

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Fun Facts About English #52 – Fossilized Words

05/08/2020 by admin

Fun Facts About English 52 Kinney Brothers Publishing

Most would recognize the Middle English verb beckon, as in “I beckoned the waiter to my table.” The noun beck means “a gesture used to signal, summon, or direct someone.” Though the noun has fallen out of use, it is preserved in the phrase “be at someone’s beck and call.”

Fossilized words are linguistic artifacts of another era preserved only in certain idioms or phrases. We may recognize such words from their set phrases, but we often don’t understand their true meaning or history. Below are ten fossilized words with definitions and the idiomatic phrases in which they appear.

Bated

The word abate means “reduced or lessened in force.” The word bate is simply a-bate after losing its unstressed first vowel in a linguistic process called aphesis, like around and round. Though abate and bate were both in use from the 14th century, the latter lost its steam by the 19th century. The adjective bated was fossilized in Shakespeare’s familiar “with bated breath,” where one’s breathing is reduced from awe, terror, or excitement.

Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, / With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness, / Say this …
The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare

Deserts

When we say, “He got his just deserts,” it’s usually with a bit of schadenfreude for justice served. The deserts in this case is the Old French word for deserve and was used from the 13th century to mean “that which is deserved.”

Dint

This Old English word has been preserved in our language in the phrase “by dint of…” Dint originally referred to “a blow struck with a sword or other weapon” or “subduing something by force.” Today, “by dint of” charisma, hard work, luck, or intelligence, one’s efforts are applied to accomplish something.

Eke

The word eke is from the Middle English word ēac and means to “add, supplement, or grow.” It’s meaning has idiomatically evolved to include “to make a living or support one’s existence,” as well as “to scrimp, stretch, or squeeze,” e.g., “They managed to eke out a living” or “I eked three meals out of a five-dollar bill.”

Keeping in mind its original meaning, the word eke–name means an additional name or alias. The word changed over time by way of linguistic re-bracketing. The misdivision of the syllables of the phrase “an ekename” led to its rephrasing as “a nekename” or “nickname” as we know it today.

Hue

Like “hoot and holler,” the phrase “hue and cry” conveys the image of a rowdy or incensed mass of people. Hue is from the Old French heu, and like hoot, is an onomatopoeia for a crowd’s noisy clamor. The phrase “hue and cry” is also an Anglo-Norman French legal phrase hu e cri, and former English common law where bystanders are summoned to assist in the apprehension of a criminal witnessed in the act of committing a crime. The word has been fossilized in such phrases as, “A hue and cry was raised against the new tax proposals.”

Kith

Kith is an Old English word referring to knowledge or acquaintance and also stood for one’s native land or country. Kith includes persons who are known or familiar and taken collectively, such as one’s friends, neighbors, or fellow countrymen. The phrase is used in such examples as “She became a widow without kith or kin” or “Is this the way we treat our kith and kin?”

Lurch

Lurch, as in “leave someone in the lurch,” means to leave them in a jam or difficult position. Lurch comes from an old French backgammon-style game called Lourche. The name of the game became a general expression for beating your opponent by a large score and, by extension, getting the better of someone, if even by cheating. Though the rules of the game have been lost, it’s memory is preserved in this common phrase.

Pale

Pale is derived by way of Anglo-French from the Latin word palus, meaning “stake.” The verb impale is still in common use and means “to torture or kill by fixing on a sharp stake.” In it’s literal uses, pale referred to stakes, fences, and boundaries made of stakes. This extended to geographical areas with defined limits. Historically, the areas of Ireland, Scotland, and areas of France that were dominated by the English were referred to as “the English Pale” and anything outside to be “beyond the pale.”

Over time, pale took on a metaphorical sense, meaning “the limits within which one is privileged or protected.” To be “beyond the pale” is to be outside such protective limits. Today, the phrase is most often used to describe behavior that is regarded as shocking, outlandish, or uncivilized — going beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable.

Roughshod & Slipshod

The word shod simply means “wearing shoes” and is from the past tense Middle English verb shoen, “to shoe.” Shod feet referred to anything wearing a shoe though today it usually alludes to shoeing horses. In the 16th century slipshod meant loosely fitting “slip-shoes” or “slippers.” By the 19th century the word came to mean something loose and shabby.

Roughshod specifically referred to a method of shoeing a horse with protruding nails to help the animal on icy roads. By the 1700s, “riding roughshod over something” came to mean a lack of concern for or treating someone abusively, as in “He ran roughshod over anyone standing in his way.”

Wend

In Middle English, go and wenden were two words which meant “to proceed on one’s way.” The past tense of go was gaed and the past tense of wend was went. By the 15th century, went had replaced the past tense forms of go giving us an inexplicably irregular verb. Robbed of its past form, wend developed a new past tense — wended. Though wend is rarely used today without the object way, we see the fossilized form of the word in the phrase, “to wend one’s way.”

Supperless to bed, the plunderers wend, And feast upon the pleasant dreams which on deceit attend.
— Thomas Park, Sonnets, 1797

Learn more about the rich history of English! The History of English 1 & 2 begins with the Celts on the prehistoric British Isles up through Late Modern English. The Future of English looks at English as the global lingua franca and the role of foreign speakers of the language in shaping its future.

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Fun Facts About English #49 – Portmanteau

03/20/2020 by admin

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice that slithy combines the words ‘lithe and slimy’ and mimsy means ‘flimsy and miserable.’ Though Carroll’s fanciful expressions may have lacked linguistic legs, his analogous use of portmanteau, a Middle French term for ‘a large suitcase,’ coined the word as a literary device. In fact, portmanteau is itself a portmanteau that joins porter (to carry) and manteau (cloak)! A synonym and itself a portmanteau, frankenword is an autological word exemplifying the very word it describes.

Portmanteau words are very popular in modern-day English and new combinations can manifest from any social corner. Many older words have become so common that their timely origins are forgotten and their novelty has long since worn off. Here is a short list of common portmanteaux in order of their known appearance.

gerrymander – Governor Elbridge Gerry + salamander; early 19th century
brunch – breakfast + lunch; late 19th century
Eurasia – Europe + Asia; 1881
electrocution – electricity + execution; 1889
motorcade – motor + cavalcade; early 20th century
smog – smoke + fog; early 20th century
spork – spoon + fork; 1909
hangry – hungry + angry; 1918
Chunnel – channel + tunnel; 1920s
motel – motor + hotel; 1920s
meld – melt + weld; 1930s
ginormous – gigantic + enormous; 1948
frenemy – friend + enemy; 1950s
rockabilly – rock’n’roll + hill-billy; 1950s
televangelist – television + evangelist; 1958
bionic – biology + electronic; 1960s
workaholic – work + alcoholic; 1968
internet – inter [reciprocal] + network; 1970s
Microsoft – microcomputer + software; 1975
gaydar – gay + radar; 1980s
carjack – car + hijack; 1990s
cosplay – costume + play; 1990s
emoticon – emotion + icon; 1990s
metrosexual – metropolitan + heterosexual; 1990s
adorkable – adorable + dorky; 21st century
anticipointment – anticipation + disappointment; 21st century
Brangelina – Brad + Angelina; 21st century
bromance – brother + romance; 21st century
mansplain – man + explain; 21st century
advertainment – advertisement + entertainment; 21st century
permalance – permanent + freelance; 21st century

If you enjoyed reading this post, check out these posts on fossilized words, the problem with peas, or eponyms named after notorious personalities!

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