Short Words Found En Route

As I’ve written before, sometimes I see a word when I’m looking for another word, and keep track of the word for future blogging. Today’s short words are some of those.


I was probably looking up the word obfuscate or obloquy when I saw a word I’ve seen only in crossword puzzles, and another word above it I’d never seen: obi and obeah. These are actually two spellings for the same word, which in my dictionary is listed under obeah. Obeah is the form of witchcraft or magic by some in Africa and also in parts of the American South and in the West Indies. It is also the name of the talisman used in this witchcraft. Beyond being of West African origin, and coming to the U.S. with the slave trade in about 1760, there is no more certain etymology. It is comparable to the Efik word ubio (Efik is the language of southern Nigeria) which refers to a thing or mixture used as a charm to cause sickness or death.

A talisman, as used in the previous paragraph, is anything supposed to have magic power, although its primary definition is something like a ring or stone that has engraved figures on it, and is supposed to bring good luck or keep evil away. The word talisman is very much a product of the wars of the middle ages. Originally coming from the Greek word telesma used during the Byzantine Empire, the word became the Arabic word tilsam with the plural form tilsaman and was likely adopted by the Arabs during the Byzantine-Arab wars that occurred between the 7th and 12th centuries. It eventually entered French where it received the spelling we use and then was adopted into English in the 1630s.

Another word found on the way to another word is the word eft, which I noticed when looking up the word effete. Another common word in crossword puzzles, eft is like obi in that my dictionary says it is the same as newt. So why do we have two words so dissimilarly spelled with the same meaning? Usually it’s that they have sources from different languages but in this case it can be chalked up more to illiteracy or poor diction. Both words refer to any of the various small salamanders that can live on land or in water. (Some Democrats find this significant when referring to former Speaker of the House Newton Leroy “Newt” Gingrich.)

Eft comes from the Old English word variously spelled efte or efeta and is otherwise of unknown origin. But when you look at newt you find out that it is a mis-division of the phrase “an ewte” into "a newt" that occurred in the early 15th century. The word ewte came from the Middle English word evete, which to me is eerily similar to efeta. I can easily imagine the references to salamanders as an eft or an ewte, which would not have been a phrase used often, easily taking different paths with different accents and giving us two different words. Unfortunately, it’s not something of which we have evidence now.

So, short words are not easier to etymologize than long words. But they can still take us around the world searching for their origins.