Etymologies:

• Fall. (Noun. Synonym for autumn – fall is actually only used in the U.S.). This is from 1664, and it’s short for “fall of the leaf” (1545).
• Halloween. (Noun. October 31st.) From about 1745. The word is a Scottish shortening of Allhallow-even (Eve of All Saints, last night of October, from 1556). In the Celtic calendar it was the last night of the year. It’s actually an old pagan holiday.
• October. (Noun. The 10th month of the year.) The word is from about 1050AD. Octo- is from Latin (= eight). October used to be the eighth month in the Roman calendar, but it’s the tenth month in the Gregorian calendar (what we use now).

Vocabulary:

• Recondite: adjective. Little known, obscure. “Her lectures were filled with recondite information.”
• Redoubtable: adjective. Formidable (like an opponent; can be humorous). “He is a redoubtable opponent in Battlefied 1943.”
• Refulgent: adjective. Shining brightly. “That fat cat has such beautiful, refulgent eyes.”

Enjoy this beautiful fall weekend.

Etymologies:

• Assassin. (Noun. A murderer of an important person, generally for political or religious reasons.) This word comes from the Arabic word hashishiyyin (hashish-users). A slightly nutty Ismaili Muslim sect back in the time of the Crusades (1095 – 1291) had a reputation for going out and murdering enemy leaders after they got high by eating hashish.
• Hazard. (Noun. A danger or risk.) The French game hasard was “a game of change played with dice”. It might have come from Spanish azar (“an unfortunate card or throw at dice”). So games of chance are hazardous.
• Whiskey/Whisky. This is from a Gaelic word that literally means “water of life”. Hehehe.

Vocabulary:

• Avarice: noun. Extreme greed for wealth or material gain. “The president’s avarice kept him motivated.”
• Fulminate: verb. Express vehement protest. “The students fulminated against the new curriculum.”
• Mendacity: noun. Untruthfulness. “The girl was embarrassed by her past mendacity.”

Have a great weekend.

World War II boosted the English vocabulary. The thing about world wars is that the participants are forced to be in contact with civilizations around the globe, whether they agree with those people and their ideologies or not. WWII first brought us blitz (1940, from German Blitzkrieg) snafu (1941, military abbreviation, ’situation normal, all f*cked up’), honcho (1947, from Japanese Hancho), and pin-up (1941, first was Dorothy Lamour). The atomic bombs created some menacing vocab: countdown, fallout, fission, fusion, mushroom cloud, and test site.

Next came the Korean War. Also known as The Forgotten War or the Unknown War, this war had an ambiguous ending and it’s culturally disremembered in the US. Brainwashing is a term from this war. It’s a direct translation of the Chinese term xi nao (1950). Chopper, slang for helicopter, is military slang from the same period (1951). I’m guessing the term comes from the chopping action of the helicopter blades.

The Vietnam war created and introduced even more words: defoliate, domino theory, napalm. Some words took on new meanings: a situation escalates, pacification meant to wipe out resisters, and hawks and doves were pro- or anti-war. Nixon’s use of the phrase the silent majority caused a wide spread of the phrase after a presidential address.

I got the idea for this post from a book I’m reading: The Story Of English by Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil, and William Cran.

Check out all my Words of the Day posts HERE.

Etymologies:

• Avocado: (noun. A pear-shaped fruit with a rough leathery skin, smooth oily flesh, and a large stone.) The Aztecs first called this fruit the ahucatl (testicle). It was called this either because of a physical resemblance, or because they thought it was an aphrodisiac. The Spanish misheard the word as avocado, and brought the fruit along with the incorrect name back to Europe.
• Big: (noun. Of considerable size.) This one is weird… it’s such a common word, but the origin is actually still unknown!
• Dog: (noun. The pet.) Like big, dog also has no clear origin. It appeared in Old English (OE) as docga, replacing OE hund. Most other Indo-European languages have words similar to hund (=> hound) or chien (French), but one can find how dog arrived. The Spanish word for dog (perro) also appeared without a clear origin.

Vocabulary:

• Anachronism: noun. Something located in a time when it couldn’t have existed or occurred. “Everything looked just as it would have in 1776… except for one anachronism, the bright red fire truck.”
• Diaphanous: adjective. Light, delicate, or translucent. “The girl drew the diaphanous veil over her face.”
• Polemical: adjective. Of or involving dispute or controversy. “The polemical essay caused quite a stir in the academic community.”

Have a great weekend!

But it hasn’t always been like that. In the Middle Ages, people only had first names. In the 1300s, last names were added to distinguish between people who had the same first name. Middle names came along sometime in the 1600s.

Let’s talk about last names. There are several ways that last names are created: 1) come from a place or a landmark (Van der Water = from the water, Bridge, Wood, Hamilton – a place, Washington – a place); 2) come from an occupation (Smith, Walker, Baker, Knight); 3) describe a family relationship (Johnson, Robertson, Molson – from Molly, Madison – from Maud, MacDonald – Mac = son); 4) nicknames based on personality or appearance (Short, Brown, Black, Long).

There are many many ways to classify first names. Some are descriptive (Margaret = pearl), some relate to place names (Francis = Frenchman), some are just invented (Wendy from Peter Pan), some are religious (Gabriel), some come from plants (Lily), some used to be last names (Douglas), and some are just random (Apple? Kal-el? Kyd? Ocean? Blanket?Jermajesty? Click here for more strange celebrities’ children’s names).

The last time my name (Margaret) was in the top ten names (by decade) was in the 1930s (#8). It was actually #3 in the 1890s and 1900s. You can find out the top names by decade at the Social Security website, found HERE.

How did your name do? Do you like your name? What’s your favorite name?

Eponyms are actually all over our language. Did you know the Pavlova (a meringue dessert) was named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1885-1931)?

The volt (the unit of electromotive force) was named after the Italian physicist Allessandro Volta (1745-1827). He invented the electric battery.

Nicotine (the drug in tobacco) was named after Jean Nicot (1530-1600), a French intellectual who first brought tobacco to France.

The magnolia genus (a type of shrub or tree) is from Pierre Magnol (1638-1715), a botanist from France who came up with a system of taxonomy.

The cardigan (a sweater with buttons) was first coined during the Crimean War when soldiers wore them to keep warm. It was named after an English officer who happened to be the seventh Earl of Cardigan (James Thomas Brudenell, 1797-1868).

A more common one is the teddy bear: it was named after president Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), who was nicknamed Teddy. One time while he was bear-hunting he left a bear cub unhurt, which led to a comic, which led to this eponym.

Some eponyms are obvious (Disneyland or Lou Gehrig’s Disease), while others are more subtle (adidas). Here are some more eponyms that come from people’s names: guillotine, Graham crackers, Dewey Decimal System, diesel, Mount Everest, guppy, lutz, lynching, narcissism, pasteurization, shrapnel, and zamboni (the thing that makes ice smooth).

We have eponyms from famous fictional characters: “keeping up with the Joneses” (comic strip characters, 1913), herculean (Hercules), and quixotic (Don Quixote de la Mancha).

We can have eponymous places, too: bourbon (Bourbon County, Kentucky), copper (Cyprus), jeans (Genoa, Italy), labrador (Labrador, China), pheasant (Phasis, Georgia), pistol (Pistoia, Italy), suede (Sweden), and tuxedo (Tuxedo Park Country Club, New York) are all eponyms based on locations.

[Some of these examples come from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language by David Crystal. It's the best linguistic reference book that I own.]

Etymologies (thanks to Clare’s questions):

• lexicon – Lexicon comes from the Greek word lexis, which means… word.
• Lexus – Lexus (like the car) is the short form of Alexus, which is a variant of the name Alexis. Alexis comes from Greek; it means helper, or defender. There are many variants of this name, including Alex, Alexander, Alexius, Xander, Sasha, Alexa… It looks like it doesn’t have a connection to “lexicon”.
• amaranthine (dark reddish purple; like the flower amaranth) – this comes from the Greek word amarantos, which means everlasting. A- = “not”; marantos = “dying away, extinguishing”. Writers use the word amaranth to describe a flower that never fades.

Vocabulary:

• chary – wary; cautious. “She was chary of investing in an expensive juicer.”
• didactic – intended to teach or instruct (sometimes it has a negative connotation). “The lecture was slow-paced and didactic; I almost fell asleep!”
• exigent – urgent; pressing. “The exigent demands of her boss took a toll on her health.”

Have a great weekend.

The Indo-European languages are a family of languages spoken in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The languages can be broken down into branches, such as: Anatolian, Indo-Iranian (like Iranian), Greek, Italic (Italian, French, etc…), Germanic (German, English, etc…), Armenian, Celtic, Albanian, the extinct Tocharian languages, Baltic, and Slavic.

All of these language groups share a common ancestor: Proto-Indo-European (PIE). PIE was spoken before 2000BC; by 2000BC PIE had broken up into its different branches (though of course, change would still occur – this was just the beginning of diversification and these branches would divide even further).

English is a Germanic language. But we can trace it back all the way to PIE and find links from English to other Indo-European languages around the globe. We don’t technically have records of written “Germanic” or “PIE”, but linguists have made educated guesses at what it might have sounded like. These education guesses are denoted by *.

I researched basic color terms over time – from PIE, to Germanic, to Old English, to English (today’s).

PIE originally had only four color terms: white, black, red, yellow-and-green. The word for yellow (*ghel-) used to be used for both yellow and green.

Germanic expanded its color lexicon to six colors: white, black, red, yellow, green, grey. Some people say this was because of cultural progress and material advances… but a quick comparison to Greek and Latin (both more advanced societies) shows that they stuck with the 4-color scheme – so it probably wasn’t due to this kind of development. Some people say that the distinction between yellow and green was made because of the growing importance of agriculture. This, I could be persuaded of.

Old English stuck with the same 6-color scheme: black, white, red, green, yellow, grey.

This chart comes from Anderson’s book, Folk Taxonomies in Early English. It shows the color terms in each of the 3 languages I mentioned (plus today’s terms).

I do have some more cool facts about color terms, but that’s for part 2! What’s your favorite color word? Here’s a good list if you want some ideas.

My favorite color is purple. As for my favorite color word – I don’t know… Emerald? Azure? Chartreuse? Crimson? Vermillion?

Labor. This word is traced back as far as ~1300AD. It comes from Old French labour (now French labeur), which was from Latin laborem. In today’s French, Spanish, and Portuguese, the verb actually means “to plow”, not “hard, physical work”. The first time labor was used to describe the process of childbirth was in 1595. (From Etymonline.com.)

Day. This word has been around for quite a long time. It comes from Old English dæg. It’s also related to the Sanskrit word dah (to burn), the Lithuanian word dagas (hot season), and the Old Prussian word dagis (summer). Its original meaning (in English) was “the daylight hours”, but the meaning expanded over time. The first record of day meaning “a period of 24 hours” was from late Old English (~1066AD).(From Etymonline.com.)

Labor Day was first celebrated in the United States on September 5, 1882.

Most other countries celebrate Labo(u)r Day on the first of May, but Bermuda, Canada, and the US all celebrate it on the First Monday in September.

Now go enjoy your day!

Note: OE = Old English; ME = Middle English; MnE = Modern English.

Here are two etymologies that I find interesting. They come from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.

• silly – This comes from the OE word sælig – ‘happy’; ‘blessed’ (from about 700AD – 1300AD). In ME the word was seely – ‘innocent’ (about 1300AD – 1450AD). In MnE, the word began to take on many meanings. From about 1450AD – 1550AD: silly – ‘deserving of compassion’. After 1550AD it gained some more meanings: silly – ‘weak’, ‘feeble’, ’simple’, ‘ignorant’, ‘feeble-minded’, ‘foolish’, ‘empty-headed’. This is an example of a previously positive word that gained a negative connotation over time.
• punch (the drink) – This was not based on the fact that drinking punch may make you feel like you’ve been punched (or make you punch someone). It actually comes from the Hindi word for ‘five’ (panch), because the original recipe had 5 ingredients (spirits, water, lemon juice, sugar, spice).

Today’s vocab words are simply some words that I enjoy.

• acumen – the ability to make good judgements and quick decisions; keenness; sharpness
• chicanery – trickery; artful deception
• halcyon – happy and peaceful; calm; (usually an idyllic period in the past)

Enjoy your weekend.