Most of us can imagine the logic that would lead an ancient verb meaning to leanto give birth to these words: lean ladder lid low decline incline recline declivity Though it’s a bit of a logical stretch, most of us can also invent a path for this ancient word meaning to lean to have given us the word climax. Some less likely siblings of lean’s precursor, though, need a bit of explanation. When the word climate appeared in English in the 1300s, it came from this same ancient root because climate referred to horizontal zones on the earth’s surface, measured against the slope (or lean) of the globe’s surface. Within a century, scientists began to focus more on the weather in those zones than on the land itself, & climate began its ooze into its modern usage. Also in the 1300s, English borrowed a word from Anglo-French to mean one who lives under the patronage of another (one who leans on his/her patron) — client. This Anglo-French word also came from that ancient word meaning lean, & within a century assumed the meaning a lawyer’s customer. Two centuries later, client’s meaning broadened to mean any businessperson’s customer. Because a person tends to lean before completely taking to bed, in the early 1600s a related word began to mean a bedridden person. Soon, the word began to refer to a medical facility housing bedridden people, & so today we have the word clinic. For those who are wondering, the lean that means thin, spare, with little flesh or fat came from an entirely different source & has nothing to do with all this. I’d love to hear whether any of these leaning words surprised you. My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, Etymonline, & Wordnik.
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The Proto-Indo-European word *wer- meant to watch out for or perceive. It gave us the words aware, beware, wary, & guard. *Wer- also gave us some words that define some of the things people might be wary of losing: wares, warehouse, & reward And some words that involve storing or protecting those wares: wardrobe, steward, reverend, warden, & guard (the noun) It even gave us the word lord, which in the lower case refers to he who guards the loaves & in the upper case can refer to a British noble, or in Christianity, God. Then there are *wer-’s offspring that help label how we might look up to those who watch over things for us: regard, revere, & reverence And what would we do without outliers? These unlikely words also grew out of this same fruitful root: hardware, panorama, avant garde, & software To confuse matters even more, this is only one of the four Proto-Indo-European *wer-s linguists have identified. The other three meant to cover, to bend, & to lift. Ah, Language. Nothing like it, eh? My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, Etymonline, & Wordnik. Etymologists work hard studying languages. This study involves the proposal of languages that appear to have existed & can be built based on the products of these languages’ progeny. One such proposed source language is Proto-Indo-European, & one of the root words etymologists believe came from this proposed language is a word meaning speak. Though this root word was never written when this proposed language was spoken (assuming it was spoken), we write the root *wekw-. It appears to have given birth to a steaming heap of English words. After passing through Latin, this word meaning speak gave us: vociferous - 1600s vocabulary - 1500s avocation - (we also refer to an avocation as a calling — & isn’t a calling voiced?) 1400s After passing through Latin, Old French & Anglo-French: vouch - 1300s After passing through Latin & Old French: voice - late 1200s vowel - 1300s vocal - late 1300s invoke, revoke, provoke, & evoke — 1400-1600s convocation - 1300s advocate - 1300s equivocate - late 1300s And after passing through Greek & Latin: epic - 1500s All that from the idea of speaking up. For most of us in the US of A, voting day is upon us. Speak up. My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Etymonline.com, Merriam-Webster.com, Wordnik, Collins Dictionary, & the OED. I find the word grammar & its siblings to be somewhat beguiling. Grammar appeared in English in the late 1300s, meaning the rules of Latin. It came from an Old French word meaning Latin learning. And that Old French word came through Latin from a Greek word meaning the art of letters & learning. Because the art of letters & learning involved pulling meaning from little marks on paper, & this act was something done only by a small & somewhat secretive percentage of the population, such pursuits were sometimes seen by the masses as both more-than-human & less-than-wholesome, so the word grammar also meant, magic, spells, & mumbo-jumbo. By the 1500s, the Latin learning meaning generalized to mean rules of a language to which speakers must conform. The mumbo-jumbo meaning made its way to become the word gramary, meaning magic, necromancy, or occult learning. When the Scots got hold of this word, it became the word glamour, initially meaning a magical spell or charm, & then morphing to mean charming or beautiful, sometimes dependent on artifice. And in 1849 English adopted the French word grimoire (from that magic, spells, & mumbo-jumbo meaning). A grimoire is a manual for invoking demons & spirits of the dead. And because all things grammar have to do with writing, the suffix -gram also comes from grammar, giving us telegram, anagram, hologram, mammogram, & a host of others. Who would’ve thought? My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, Etymonline, & Wordnik. A lot of people think modern English is a bit of a hot mess. Truth is, English has been a full-on hot mess since well before it became modern, and so were any number of languages from which English has pilfered over the centuries. One of the many poster children for the English-is-a-Hot-Mess argument is the tiny, simple, prefix in-. English speakers borrowed in- (meaning not) from Latin, giving us words like ineffective, inedible, & inaccurate. Because any number of sounds are hard to pronounce directly after the letter n, in- also gave us words like impossible, immobile, illiterate, illegitimate, irreversible, & irreverent, all from that borrowed Latin prefix in-. Around the same time, English speakers also borrowed a Latin prefix that meant into, in, upon, or on. And of course, it was spelled in-. This prefix gave us words like investigate & intrude. Because of the same pronunciation challenges, this prefix also gave us. immemorial, illuminate, & irradiate, and more. And English speakers also borrowed a third Latin prefix meaning thoroughly. This prefix is spelled — what a surprise ! — in-, & gives us words like inflammable. So that one tiny English prefix can either negate what follows it, clarify what follows it, or amplify what follows it. Helpful, eh? Author Brené Brown tells us “Kindness is clarity.” Perhaps we can find English’s kindness in the pronunciation end of this sad tale of woe. At least we’re not all stumbling over trying to say inmobile, inlegitimate, inradiate, inreverent, & inluminate. Kind readers, I hope you’ll add an in- word or three to this list in the comments section. Big thanks to a Wordmonger follower for suggesting this subject, & big thanks to this week’s sources, Etymonline, the OED, Merriam Webster, & Collins. This collection of words that share a centuries-old root. What do you suppose the root meant? aware, beware, wary, & guard (the verb) As you probably guessed, the root word has something to do with wariness — these words all came from the Proto-Indo-European word *wer-, which meant to watch out for or perceive. *Wer- also gave us some words that define some of the things people might be wary of losing: wares, warehouse, & reward And some words that involve storing or protecting those wares: wardrobe, steward, reverend, warden, & guard (the noun) It even gave us the word lord, which in the lower case refers to he who guards the loaves & in the upper case can refer to a British noble, or in Christianity, God. Then there are *wer-’s offspring that help label how we might look up to those who watch over things for us: regard, revere, & reverence And what would we do without outliers? These unlikely words also grew out of this same fruitful root: hardware, panorama, avant garde, & software To confuse matters even more, this is only one of the four Proto-Indo-European *wer-s linguists have identified. The other three meant to cover, to bend, & to lift. Ah, Language. Nothing like it, eh? My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, yokostogut.blogspot.com, Etymonline, & Wordnik. Some people can’t sleep because of partying neighbors, indigestion, climate change, or national news. Others lie awake at night wondering how the word parabolic could possibly be related to the word parable. In case you fall in the latter category, here’s the answer… Parable, parabolic, parabola & parley all come from a Greek word constructed of para- (alongside) & -bole (a throwing, casting, beam, or ray). The original term literally meant a throwing beside, but parable’s primary application was its figurative meaning, a comparison. The word maintained that figurative meaning in Medieval times, when used in Late Latin to refer to stories told to make a point, parables that compared a fictional tale to real life with the purpose of teaching a lesson. After Medieval times, much study turned to science, & the word picked up its mathematical meaning. Above, you'll see a parabolic curve or parabola — still a comparison, not really a curve, but a collection of intersecting straight lines that appears to be a curve. As to the word parley, it grew from the earlier meaning, as most parables weren’t written, but spoken, so parley means to speak, talk, or confer. If anything about this Parable of the Parabolic Parley seems worthy of comment, please offer your remark in the comments section. My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Merriam Webster, Collins Dictionary, Etymonline, & Wordnik. A wellerism is a well-known (or sometimes not-so-well known) interjection or statement, followed by a facetious or witty phrase. Here are a few. "Remarkable," said the teacher, trying out the new dry-erase board. "I hope I made myself clear," said the water as it passed through the filter. "It's all coming back to me now," Salvador said after spitting into the wind. "Let's dig up that body," said Arianna, gravely. "My business is looking good," said the model. "We'd better rehearse this," said the undertaker after the coffin had fallen out of the vehicle. Though he’s not responsible for wellerisms themselves, Charles Dickens is responsible for creating a character after whom we name wellerisms. Sam Weller, in Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers, regularly spoke in this fashion, thus the word, wellerism. We’ll end with an example straight from the mouth of Sam: “Sorry to do anythin' as may cause an interruption to such wery pleasant proceedin’s," as the king said wen he dissolved the parliament. I’d love to know which wellerisms you haven’t previously heard, or which ones took a little thinking to make sense of. Please share your thoughts in the comments section. My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Sleuthsayers, Charles Dickens Page, The Island English Tutor,& Wordnik. The word snout doesn’t strike me as a likely parent of many words. Wrong again. Snout showed up from early Germanic sources in English in the early 1200s, meaning trunk or projecting nose of an animal. The Scottish version of snout is snoot. It made its way back to English in 1861, meaning nose. Snore & snort appeared in the 1300s & 1400s respectively. Etymologists cite these words as coming from snout, but also as imitative words of the sounds they represent. In the 1300s snout gave us the verb snack, meaning to bite or snap. By the 1400s snack also became a noun meaning a snatch or snap. By the 1680s, the meaning a share or portion grew from the original noun meaning, & by 1757 snack began to mean a bit of food to be eaten hastily. In Old English, the word snafl was born of snout. It meant nasal mucus. In time, snafl became snyflan, which gave us both sniffle and snivel. Another snout-born Old English word referring to nasal mucus was gesnot, which by the late 1300s, morphed into our modern word snot. In German, the mother-word for snout gave birth to a word for snarl, which got applied to a breed of dog, & made its way into English in 1923 as the word schnauzer. All from snout — who knew? Please leave any snout-oriented thoughts in the comments section. My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Etymonline.com, Wordnik, Merriam-Webster, Collins Dictionary, & the OED. Once upon a time (or so linguists believe) there was the word *wi-ro-. It meant man. Over the years it’s given birth to a disparate batch of word-children. One of those words is the noun virtue, which appeared in English about 1200, meaning moral excellence. It came from a Latin word meaning courage, manliness, high character. The following century saw the beginnings of the related word virtuous, meaning characterized by vigor, strength, or valiance. It took two hundred years for virtuous to mean having peerless moral qualities. And by 1610 another word was born into this family of words through Italian: virtuoso, originally meaning scholar or connoisseur, & shifting by 1743 to mean one with peerless artistic skill or talent. Two *wi-ro-born words many of us hope are being re-conceptualized in this MeToo era are virile & virility, meaning manly & manly strength respectively. Virile & virility showed up in the 1400s & 1500s through Latin & Middle French. When *wi-ro- made its way into Germanic languages, one branch of its meaning became generalized to the human race, human existence, or the affairs of life & became the Old English word world. After a few hundred years of wallowing about in the minds & usage of Old English speakers, it oozed through meanings like the world of humans, the physical world (as opposed to the spiritual world), & morphed its way into its many modern meanings, one of which is the earth. Another branch of this word continued to mean man in Old English. When Old English speakers added their version of *wi-ro- (man) to their word wulf (wolf) they came up with werewolf. Here’s hoping in the next few centuries as these words grow & adopt new meanings, they’ll encourage a bit more virtue, & virtuosity among all humanity & add some gentler, more flexible understandings to what it is to be a man — or for that matter, a human. Thoughts? Please sling them into the comments section. My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Etymonline.com, fineartamerica.com, Wordnik, Merriam-Webster, Collins Dictionary, & the OED. |
I write for teens & tweens, bake bread, play music, and ponder the wonder of words in a foggy little town on California's central coast.
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November 2023
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