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!

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.

Neither of these questions have a real answer.

An individual’s lexicon (the number of words he knows) will vary considerably depending on his career(s), hobbies, reading habits, and so much more. A chemist or other scientist will obviously have a larger vocabulary than most people, due to the fact that there are so many scientific terms that he’s required to learn. A person whose job doesn’t require much reading or terminology will probably have a smaller lexicon. Because of these cases, averages really don’t mean much.  The media claims that a good average for those leaving high school is probably 10,000 – 12,000 words, and for those leaving college, about 20,000 – 25,000. These would (should) continue to grow over time.

But then we have to think about our definition of lexicon. Do we mean active vocabulary (words used often) or passive vocabulary (words known, but not used)? The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language has the results of a little experiment the writers conducted while researching. They asked three people (a secretary, a keen businesswoman who reads a lot, and a lecturer) to go through a few pages of words (20 pages from a dictionary – 1% of the whole dictionary) and mark the words they knew. Then they used percentages to figure out how much they might know of the whole English language. Their active vocabularies were (respectively): 31,5000, 63,000, and 56,250 words; their passive vocabularies were 38,300, 73,350, and 76,250 words. These differ on average by about 25%.

Want to increase your word power? There are 106 2-letter words in the Scrabble dictionary; I bet you don’t know most of them! AA = a type of lava. GI = an article of clothing worn for martial arts. LI = Chinese unit of distance. I could go on.

So how many English lexemes are there? We don’t know that either. The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) has about 616,500 entries as of 2008. When we compare the words in Webster’s to the OED, there are many words that aren’t in one that are in the other. So the total number of words is probably much higher. The OED has more British terms; Webster’s has more American expressions.

Neither of those counts includes the myriad new slang terms that arise continually, or the terms used in the varieties of English spoken around the world (in India, Asia, Africa). They also fail to include most scientific names of plants and animals. And what about abbreviations? Isn’t FBI a word? If we decided to count these words, the English lexicon would have many millions of words. In a lifetime a person learns only a tiny percentage of the words in the English language.

How do you think your personal lexicon holds up?

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.

• “for ever and a day” – meaning indefinitely. This comes from Shakespeare. He used it in two of his plays…1. The Taming of the Shrew (1596):
  

  BIONDELLO: I cannot tell; expect they are busied about a
  counterfeit assurance: take you assurance of her,
  ‘cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum:’ to the
  church; take the priest, clerk, and some sufficient
  honest witnesses: If this be not that you look for,
  I have no more to say, But bid Bianca farewell for
  ever and a day.

  and 2. As You Like It (1599):

  ROSALIND: Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her.
  ORLANDO: For ever and a day.

• Waldorf salad – coined in 1911 at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. It was first created and served there.

I’m also going to post some useful and/or interesting vocab words.

• abnegation – renunciation, rejection
• hubristic – having excessive pride
• scurrilous – making bad claims about someone to damage their reputation; slanderous, offensive (sometimes humorous)

Have a great weekend.