Blither-Blather, Maggie Lauder, and Garbanzo Beans

This week a friend of mine posted a link on her Facebook page to a list of “20 ‘Forgotten’ Words That Should Be Brought Back.”  On the list was a word that and spurred and starts today’s post – blithering.

The verb blither was first used in 1868, a variant of blether, which comes “from Middle English blather.”

Blather is a good word that is either a verb or a noun, and means either foolish talk or talking foolishly, although it is often used with voluble talking. It’s an old Scottish word from the 1520s that probably came from the Old Norse word blađra that meant to mutter or “wag the tongue.” In its gerund form (blathering) it looks very much like the word blithering, which I’ve heard a lot, too (never in reference to my expressing myself, you understand – always about others).

Blither means the same thing as blather and blathering. Maybe on Thanksgiving Day this week I can caution the kids to “stop all that blither-blather.” According to etymonline.com it wasn’t for another 12 years (in 1880) that the “present participle adjective (from the first typically [used] with idiot)” was formed, even though it had been in use as a “verbal noun” since 1872.

These words reminded me this morning of a word Bill O’Reilly used to use (he still may – I haven’t seen his show recently) in encouraging people to write in: blatherskite. Blatherskite doesn’t primarily have the implication of foolish talk, only of voluble talk, although its second definition does.  The word blatherskite is formed by combining the aforementioned blather with the “dialectical” (etymonline.com) –skite, the suffix applied to a “contemptible person.”

It also comes from Scottish, from bletherskate. It came to English about 1650, but came to America during the American Revolution as Scottish soldiers in the Continental Army would sing the song Maggie Lauder.

The list that I referred to as I began this post also had a word previously mentioned in this blog, gallimaufry. I didn’t have space in the post on gallimaufry to include a similar word so let’s get to it now.

Farrago is a word that came into English in the 1630s from Latin, and it is defined as “a confused mixture,” something that can be used to describe this blog today. The Latin word farrago described a medley, or mix of grains for animal feed, the far in farrago being the word for grain. (Which reminds me – another blogspot user posted a blog on 10 freezer to crockpot meals. I’ve got to replicate this preparation soon.)

Also from that casserole post is chickpeas vs. garbanzo beans. Chickpeas and garbanzo beans are disparate words for the seeds of the plant biologically known as Cicer arietinum.  Etymonline.com has the word as a hyphenated word, but my dictionary doesn’t; it also says the word is a “false singular back-formation” because the word used since the 1540s was chich-pease, having come from the French name for the seeds, pois chiche. In pois chiche the chiche comes from the Latin name of the plant.

Garbanzo is the other name for the seeds, and comes from Spanish. One source said it is an alteration of the Spanish word arvanҫo, but I couldn’t find the word in Spanish. Wikipedia says arvanҫo is possibly a Portuguese word. Wikipedia also says garbanzo came to English as calavance from Old Spanish, perhaps influenced by garroba or algarroba. Said by etymonline to ultimately to come from Greek or Basque, its usage is primarily American. According to the OED, the Basque construction it might have come from is garbantzu, a word formed by combining the Basque words for seed (garau) and dry (antzu). I like that explanation best, even if it doesn’t have sufficient provenance (not to be confused with Provence, an area of France which really isn’t that far from the Basque region).

How “beans” got attached to garbanzo, I don’t know, but garbanzos sound much more fun, and masculine, than chickpeas.