After the last two posts this blog has a word starting with each of 25 letters in the alphabet. The only letter without one is y. There are a little more than six pages of y words in my dictionary, while x only has two. So to have several x words before a y word goes against mathematical probability. But since this is a word blog rather than a math blog, what does that matter?
To rectify this situation I did something I haven’t done before: looked through the dictionary to find a word to write about. There are a number of proper nouns beginning with Y, so those are eliminated. Then there are other very common words. To find a word that is useful in everyday conversation but not known well left me with no options.
What about a common word that sounds like it might have an interesting etymology? Aha (or Eureka! as the Greeks would – and Archimedes did - say). Yogurt! Well, maybe not the most intriguing etymology, but certainly one of the few words to come to English from the Turkish language. (A phrase that comes from Turkish is chock a block – meaning completely full – and comes from the Turkish words çok kalabalık.)
Yogurt, for those who don’t know, is a dairy product thickened by bacteria. Sound yummy? (Another y word that is also onomatopoetic – see blog of Nov. 17.) Yogurt, according to etymonline.com, came to English in the 1620s and “is a mispronunciation of the Turkish word yogurt, in which the -g- is a ‘soft’ sound, in many dialects closer to an English ‘w.’ The root yog means roughly ‘to condense’ and is related to yogun ‘intense,’ yogush ‘liquify’ (of water vapor), yogur ‘knead.’”
According to Wikipedia, it can be spelled yoğurt or with a tilde over the g (my Word version doesn’t have that option that I could find). Wikipedia also says that it wasn’t until the 20th century that the tilde appeared on the g, and that a few dictionaries don’t include the spelling yogurt. Instead, they have it spelled yoghurt, which is presumed by the Oxford English Dictionary (bow your heads in reverence) to be a better transcription of the sound. Perhaps the English retain the h, but I can’t remember the last time I saw the spelling yoghurt here in America.
So much for yogurt. I have space left, so let me share with you a word I find while searching the y section of the dictionary that should have more use: zaftig.
Zaftig is a Yiddish word that means tasty or yummy, although my dictionary uses the words juicy and succulent. But its use in English changed to refer only to the shapeliness of the female form. (My dictionary says “full, shapely form”.) Etymonline uses the words “alluringly, plump, curvaceous, buxom” and says that it came to English in 1937, although it doesn’t cite the source. According to http://podictionary.com/?p=1092 it first appeared in a book written by Meyer Levin called “The Old Bunch”. The podictionary episode also suggests that there are only about 200 commonly used words that came to English from Yiddish, which is about 198 more than came from Turkish.
So, enjoy a yogurt with a zaftig woman today.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
OZ Again
I realized, in trying to decide what words to blog about today, that I have waiting in line (queue for my British friends, “on” line for those in New York) that I have a very unusual coincidence. Wednesday’s words began with o and z, and I have another set of o and z words waiting for exposition. The very unusual thing about it is that zeugma was the first word beginning with the letter z (zed in Britain) that I’ve expounded upon. So, to have two in two successful blogs doubles the uniqueness of the situation.
So what are the words? Words that should be more familiar in Modesto (and Napa and France) than they probably are: oenophile and zymurgy.
An oenophile (pronounced ee – nuh – fahyl) is a person who loves wines, usually as a connoisseur (see blog of Nov. 14). The –phile suffix we covered in the blog of June 16, which only leaves us with the oeno- to discover. Etymonline.com says that the word itself was coined in the 1930s (after prohibition ended and at the time when Ernest and Julio Gallo started making wine in Modesto for worldwide enjoyment). It used the Greek word for wine, oinos, which had been used since 1894 in the word oenology, which my dictionary says is an alternate spelling of enology, the science or study of wine and winemaking. I am assuming (since my brief study of enology – the word, not the activity – didn’t reveal how the o was dropped) that since the o is silent it eventually was pruned from the word. Why it was spelled oeno- when the original language has the letter i instead of an e is still a mystery to me. And how it came to be pronounced with the hard e sound instead of the oy sound of the Greek is also lost to my sources. I suppose that the activity distracted students from the etymology. (I’m tempted to use oetymology, but then it would lead to a pronunciation like wet- omology, as opposed to dry- omology, which would be the study of prohibition.)
Before I get too far off the track (it sometimes happens with the over-consumption of wine) let’s look at the word zymurgy. It is the word for the branch (too many vine allusions?) of chemistry that deals with wine-making and brewing. Zymurgy is the last word in many dictionaries, including mine. It was first used in English in 1868 and comes from the combining of the Greek words for leaven (zymo-) and working (-ourgia). The word ourgia comes from ergon, which is also the source of our English words urge and erg.
The word erg coined in 1873 by the British Association for the Advancement of Science to describe the amount of work done by a force one dyne exerted for a distance of one centimeter. It is equal to one gram centimeter-squared per second-squared, which obviously makes it also equal to 100 nanojoules (or ten to the negative seventh power joules).
After all that, I need a drink.
So what are the words? Words that should be more familiar in Modesto (and Napa and France) than they probably are: oenophile and zymurgy.
An oenophile (pronounced ee – nuh – fahyl) is a person who loves wines, usually as a connoisseur (see blog of Nov. 14). The –phile suffix we covered in the blog of June 16, which only leaves us with the oeno- to discover. Etymonline.com says that the word itself was coined in the 1930s (after prohibition ended and at the time when Ernest and Julio Gallo started making wine in Modesto for worldwide enjoyment). It used the Greek word for wine, oinos, which had been used since 1894 in the word oenology, which my dictionary says is an alternate spelling of enology, the science or study of wine and winemaking. I am assuming (since my brief study of enology – the word, not the activity – didn’t reveal how the o was dropped) that since the o is silent it eventually was pruned from the word. Why it was spelled oeno- when the original language has the letter i instead of an e is still a mystery to me. And how it came to be pronounced with the hard e sound instead of the oy sound of the Greek is also lost to my sources. I suppose that the activity distracted students from the etymology. (I’m tempted to use oetymology, but then it would lead to a pronunciation like wet- omology, as opposed to dry- omology, which would be the study of prohibition.)
Before I get too far off the track (it sometimes happens with the over-consumption of wine) let’s look at the word zymurgy. It is the word for the branch (too many vine allusions?) of chemistry that deals with wine-making and brewing. Zymurgy is the last word in many dictionaries, including mine. It was first used in English in 1868 and comes from the combining of the Greek words for leaven (zymo-) and working (-ourgia). The word ourgia comes from ergon, which is also the source of our English words urge and erg.
The word erg coined in 1873 by the British Association for the Advancement of Science to describe the amount of work done by a force one dyne exerted for a distance of one centimeter. It is equal to one gram centimeter-squared per second-squared, which obviously makes it also equal to 100 nanojoules (or ten to the negative seventh power joules).
After all that, I need a drink.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Long Time Coming
Way back on June 22 I used the word onomatopoetic, then at the end of July I referenced the word onomatopoeia, with the comment “one of these days I’ll get around to that good word.” Today is the day!
I could have included it in the September 29 blog post that was about rhetorical devices, but it was more about William F. Buckley’s words, so it didn’t fit nicely there and I didn’t need to fill the space. But having come across another word that is a figure of speech (and the first word that begins with the letter z to be discussed on this blog) the subject is overdue.
Onomatopoeia (one of the few words in English that ends with four different vowels) is the formation of a word by imitating the natural sound associated with the object or action involved; echoism. For instance, “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” is onomatopoetic. (For those of you under the age of 46, that may be an obscure reference. The reference is to a commercial that appeared before 1965. A good read and explanation is found here.)
The word onomatopoeia first appeared in English in the 1570s. It came through Late Latin from its original Greek where it was spelled only slightly differently, onomatopoiia. In Greek onomatopoiia means “the making of a name or word”. It is derived from the Greek words onoma, name or word, and poiein, compose or make. We also get the word poet from poiein.
The “z” word is zeugma, and is a figure of speech in which a single word, usually a verb or adjective, in syntactically related to two or more words, with only one of which it seems logically connected. My dictionary gives as an example “The room was not light, but his fingers were.” Another example is “wage war and peace.”
Zeugma is only a decade more recent in usage than onomatopoeia, coming to English in the 1580s directly from the Greek. (Why involve those Late Latins? If they’re late, they can find their own words.) The word is derived (and you’ll be glad to find out it didn’t just get adopted in total) from the Greek word zeugnynai, which means “to yoke”. Try spelling that after only one reading.
A zeugma is similar to syllepsis (see the aforementioned Sept. 29 blog), but not identical. According to grammar.about.com “Rhetorician Edward Corbett offers this distinction between zeugma and syllepsis: in zeugma, unlike syllepsis, the single word does not fit grammatically or idiomatically with one member of the pair.” According to Wikipedia, “A syllepsis is a particular kind of zeugma, and there is a clear distinction between the two in classical treatises written on the subject.” You’re welcome to go looking for those classical treatises, but I don’t think you’ll get in trouble for making the wrong distinction. If so, blame me.
It is difficult to find clear examples of each, but my favorite of one or the other is the Alanis Morissette song “Head Over Feet” which has the line “you held your breath and the door for me.”
I could have included it in the September 29 blog post that was about rhetorical devices, but it was more about William F. Buckley’s words, so it didn’t fit nicely there and I didn’t need to fill the space. But having come across another word that is a figure of speech (and the first word that begins with the letter z to be discussed on this blog) the subject is overdue.
Onomatopoeia (one of the few words in English that ends with four different vowels) is the formation of a word by imitating the natural sound associated with the object or action involved; echoism. For instance, “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” is onomatopoetic. (For those of you under the age of 46, that may be an obscure reference. The reference is to a commercial that appeared before 1965. A good read and explanation is found here.)
The word onomatopoeia first appeared in English in the 1570s. It came through Late Latin from its original Greek where it was spelled only slightly differently, onomatopoiia. In Greek onomatopoiia means “the making of a name or word”. It is derived from the Greek words onoma, name or word, and poiein, compose or make. We also get the word poet from poiein.
The “z” word is zeugma, and is a figure of speech in which a single word, usually a verb or adjective, in syntactically related to two or more words, with only one of which it seems logically connected. My dictionary gives as an example “The room was not light, but his fingers were.” Another example is “wage war and peace.”
Zeugma is only a decade more recent in usage than onomatopoeia, coming to English in the 1580s directly from the Greek. (Why involve those Late Latins? If they’re late, they can find their own words.) The word is derived (and you’ll be glad to find out it didn’t just get adopted in total) from the Greek word zeugnynai, which means “to yoke”. Try spelling that after only one reading.
A zeugma is similar to syllepsis (see the aforementioned Sept. 29 blog), but not identical. According to grammar.about.com “Rhetorician Edward Corbett offers this distinction between zeugma and syllepsis: in zeugma, unlike syllepsis, the single word does not fit grammatically or idiomatically with one member of the pair.” According to Wikipedia, “A syllepsis is a particular kind of zeugma, and there is a clear distinction between the two in classical treatises written on the subject.” You’re welcome to go looking for those classical treatises, but I don’t think you’ll get in trouble for making the wrong distinction. If so, blame me.
It is difficult to find clear examples of each, but my favorite of one or the other is the Alanis Morissette song “Head Over Feet” which has the line “you held your breath and the door for me.”
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Now You Know
As I said on Wednesday, it isn’t often that television uses words that are hard to understand. Any hard to understand or deep subject is abstruse. Or, to make sure you understand, abstruse means hard to understand, deep. (Deep is the word my dictionary used. It hardly seems abstruse enough for the definition of abstruse.)
Abstruse appeared in English in the 1590s, either from the Middle French word abstrus, which had come to Middle French in the 16th century, or perhaps directly from the Latin abstrusus, which is the past participle of abstrudere, which means conceal. It literally means “to push away”, because “ab-“ means away and “trudere” means to push or thrust.
Esoteric, for those in the know (the cognoscenti), is an adjective meaning “intended for or understood by only a chosen few, as an inner group of disciples or initiates.” It is used ideas, doctrines, literature, and other similar items. Those ideas, doctrines, literature, etc. are known as esoterica.
Having come to English in the 1650s from the Greek word esoterikos, which means “belonging to an inner circle”, it was originally associated with the mystic Pythagorean philosophic doctrines that started to develop about 500 B.C. However, etymonline.com says “according to Lucian, the division of teachings into exoteric and esoteric originated with Aristotle.” Esoterikos is formed from esotero, which means “more within” (the comparative adverb of eso, which means “within”) and is related to eis, which means “into” and en, which means “in”.
The plural noun esoterica (a Greek or Latin scholar will need to provide the singular form) appeared by 1807 as a Modern Latin form of the Greek word.
The word exoteric is an adjective referring to things external, like “the outside world”. It also is the opposite of esoteric in its application to ideas, etc. “not limited to a select few or an inner group”. It is something suitable for even the uninitiated, or that can be understood by the public or hoi polloi. It is formed by the changing of the prefix from inner (eso-) to outer (exo-). Which makes one wonder why we don’t have words like esoumbilical and exoumbilical, words I have just made up (see blog of 10/24).
A cognoscente, as used above, is a person with special knowledge in some field, especially one of the fine arts. The plural is cognoscenti. It has a sense of inside knowledge that the word expert doesn’t have. Cognoscente (pronounced koe-nyoe-shen-tay by the cognoscenti, the g being silent) is an Italian word adopted into English without spelling change in 1778. In Italian it means connoisseur, and came originally from the Latinized word conoscente, which literally means “knowing man”. It has the same root word, cognoscentum, as our words cognition, cognizant, and, believe it or not, connoisseur.
A connoisseur, by the way, is a person who has expert knowledge and keen discrimination in some field, especially in the fine arts or matters of taste. It came to English in 1714 from the French, who in Modern French spelled it connaiseur. In Old French it was spelled conoisseor, which was a form of their word for “to know”, conoistre. Conoistre came from the verb form of the Latin present participle cognoscentum, the verb form being cognoscere.
In the case of the initiated, all roads lead to Rome. Now you know, but don't tell anyone else.
Abstruse appeared in English in the 1590s, either from the Middle French word abstrus, which had come to Middle French in the 16th century, or perhaps directly from the Latin abstrusus, which is the past participle of abstrudere, which means conceal. It literally means “to push away”, because “ab-“ means away and “trudere” means to push or thrust.
Esoteric, for those in the know (the cognoscenti), is an adjective meaning “intended for or understood by only a chosen few, as an inner group of disciples or initiates.” It is used ideas, doctrines, literature, and other similar items. Those ideas, doctrines, literature, etc. are known as esoterica.
Having come to English in the 1650s from the Greek word esoterikos, which means “belonging to an inner circle”, it was originally associated with the mystic Pythagorean philosophic doctrines that started to develop about 500 B.C. However, etymonline.com says “according to Lucian, the division of teachings into exoteric and esoteric originated with Aristotle.” Esoterikos is formed from esotero, which means “more within” (the comparative adverb of eso, which means “within”) and is related to eis, which means “into” and en, which means “in”.
The plural noun esoterica (a Greek or Latin scholar will need to provide the singular form) appeared by 1807 as a Modern Latin form of the Greek word.
The word exoteric is an adjective referring to things external, like “the outside world”. It also is the opposite of esoteric in its application to ideas, etc. “not limited to a select few or an inner group”. It is something suitable for even the uninitiated, or that can be understood by the public or hoi polloi. It is formed by the changing of the prefix from inner (eso-) to outer (exo-). Which makes one wonder why we don’t have words like esoumbilical and exoumbilical, words I have just made up (see blog of 10/24).
A cognoscente, as used above, is a person with special knowledge in some field, especially one of the fine arts. The plural is cognoscenti. It has a sense of inside knowledge that the word expert doesn’t have. Cognoscente (pronounced koe-nyoe-shen-tay by the cognoscenti, the g being silent) is an Italian word adopted into English without spelling change in 1778. In Italian it means connoisseur, and came originally from the Latinized word conoscente, which literally means “knowing man”. It has the same root word, cognoscentum, as our words cognition, cognizant, and, believe it or not, connoisseur.
A connoisseur, by the way, is a person who has expert knowledge and keen discrimination in some field, especially in the fine arts or matters of taste. It came to English in 1714 from the French, who in Modern French spelled it connaiseur. In Old French it was spelled conoisseor, which was a form of their word for “to know”, conoistre. Conoistre came from the verb form of the Latin present participle cognoscentum, the verb form being cognoscere.
In the case of the initiated, all roads lead to Rome. Now you know, but don't tell anyone else.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Television Words
Most of the times, words come from my reading, but on rare occasions there is a word on television that attracts my attention, and even rarer on network television.
Incredibly, the show Two and a Half Men, a popular situation comedy that has degenerated into a puerile (and less humorous) show about sex and drugs, provided one of the words this week. A pedantic girlfriend of Alan’s teenage son Jake uses the word puerile, a surprisingly appropriate insertion into the script.
Puerile comes originally from the Latin word for boy, puer, and came to English from the French in the 1660s. The Latin word puerilis, meaning childlike, was (according to my dictionary) formed into the French word puéril. It was a short 20 years before the English word childlike developed the meaning of immature, juvenile or childish.
Another word, from the cancelled CBS show Numbers (now in reruns on cable), is constantly used by the central character in the series, Charlie Eppes. Charlie is a mathematician who often uses algorithms to solve cases for his FBI agent brother.
Algorithm is a mathematical term that my dictionary defines as “any special method of solving a certain kind of problem; specifically, the repetitive calculations used in finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers”, which is called Euclid’s algorithm. According to my dictionary, it is an altered form “(after ARITHMETIC) of algorism. An algorism isn’t something Al Gore said, it’s “the Arabic system of numerals; decimal system of counting, or the act or skill of computing with any kind of numerals.”
It came to English in the 1690s from the Middle English algorithme (those Middle English dolts are the ones who confused it with arithmetic) and the Old French word algorisme, which came from the Middle Latin word algorismus, which was formed (etymonline.com calls it a “mangled transliteration”) from the Arabic al-Khowarazmi, which literally means a native of Khwarazm, which of course you know is related to the surname of the 9th century “Baghdad mathematician Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi…[who wrote the] famous treatise on equations ("Kitab al-Jabr w'al-Muqabala" "Rules of Reintegration and Reduction"), which also introduced Arabic numerals to the West.” Boy, what a knee-slapper of a treatise that was!
One other word I’ve heard on television, albeit from political commentators who are allowed to use bigger words, is iconoclast. An iconoclast was originally anyone who opposed the religious use of images or advocated the destruction of such images, specifically a member of the group in the Orthodox Eastern Church in the 8th and 9th centuries who denounced the use of icons. Later it was used of the 16th and 17th century Protestants in the Netherlands who vandalized Catholic churches and destroyed their icons. It has since broadened its meaning to refer to a person who attacks or ridicules traditional or venerated institutions or ideas regarded by him as erroneous or based on superstition.
The word came to English in the 1590s from the French word iconoclaste, which they took from the Middle Latin word iconoclastes, which they got from the Late Greek word (or was it Middle Greek? The jury’s out.) eikonoklastes, formed from the Greek words for image (eikonos) and breaker (klastes). So while it passed through multiple languages, the idea of an iconoclast being an image breaker remains intact, something that can’t be said for many images.
Who knew that television could provide such esoteric, recondite, and abstruse information?
Incredibly, the show Two and a Half Men, a popular situation comedy that has degenerated into a puerile (and less humorous) show about sex and drugs, provided one of the words this week. A pedantic girlfriend of Alan’s teenage son Jake uses the word puerile, a surprisingly appropriate insertion into the script.
Puerile comes originally from the Latin word for boy, puer, and came to English from the French in the 1660s. The Latin word puerilis, meaning childlike, was (according to my dictionary) formed into the French word puéril. It was a short 20 years before the English word childlike developed the meaning of immature, juvenile or childish.
Another word, from the cancelled CBS show Numbers (now in reruns on cable), is constantly used by the central character in the series, Charlie Eppes. Charlie is a mathematician who often uses algorithms to solve cases for his FBI agent brother.
Algorithm is a mathematical term that my dictionary defines as “any special method of solving a certain kind of problem; specifically, the repetitive calculations used in finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers”, which is called Euclid’s algorithm. According to my dictionary, it is an altered form “(after ARITHMETIC) of algorism. An algorism isn’t something Al Gore said, it’s “the Arabic system of numerals; decimal system of counting, or the act or skill of computing with any kind of numerals.”
It came to English in the 1690s from the Middle English algorithme (those Middle English dolts are the ones who confused it with arithmetic) and the Old French word algorisme, which came from the Middle Latin word algorismus, which was formed (etymonline.com calls it a “mangled transliteration”) from the Arabic al-Khowarazmi, which literally means a native of Khwarazm, which of course you know is related to the surname of the 9th century “Baghdad mathematician Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi…[who wrote the] famous treatise on equations ("Kitab al-Jabr w'al-Muqabala" "Rules of Reintegration and Reduction"), which also introduced Arabic numerals to the West.” Boy, what a knee-slapper of a treatise that was!
One other word I’ve heard on television, albeit from political commentators who are allowed to use bigger words, is iconoclast. An iconoclast was originally anyone who opposed the religious use of images or advocated the destruction of such images, specifically a member of the group in the Orthodox Eastern Church in the 8th and 9th centuries who denounced the use of icons. Later it was used of the 16th and 17th century Protestants in the Netherlands who vandalized Catholic churches and destroyed their icons. It has since broadened its meaning to refer to a person who attacks or ridicules traditional or venerated institutions or ideas regarded by him as erroneous or based on superstition.
The word came to English in the 1590s from the French word iconoclaste, which they took from the Middle Latin word iconoclastes, which they got from the Late Greek word (or was it Middle Greek? The jury’s out.) eikonoklastes, formed from the Greek words for image (eikonos) and breaker (klastes). So while it passed through multiple languages, the idea of an iconoclast being an image breaker remains intact, something that can’t be said for many images.
Who knew that television could provide such esoteric, recondite, and abstruse information?
Sunday, November 7, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Republicans and the San Francisco Giants
In light of last night’s election, in which many House seats changed parties (the exact number is still to be determined as I write), a couple of words come to mind. But since I brought up the degree of change, which is more than in any election since 1948, it doesn’t hurt to look at history. In 1948 the Democrats won 75 seats to take the house from the Republicans in the same surprising election that elected Harry S. Truman as President. In 1932 the Democrats had had an even bigger win, when they took 97 seats in the wave that elected Franklin D. Roosevelt and sent a message to the Republicans and Herbert Hoover. But even that pales in comparison to the election of 1894, when Republicans picked up 130 seats to go from a 124-218 minority to a 254-93 majority.
But this isn’t a blog about politics or elections, it’s a blog about words. What words did this election bring to mind? Hegemony and suzerainty.
With the word suzerainty we are treated to one of what I think is a lexicographer’s joke of a definition: “the position or power of a suzerain.” Ha, ha! Made you look! What’s a suzerain? A feudal lord, or a state in it relation to a semiautonomous state over which it exercises political control. So, while the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives last night, that is only one-half of control of the legislative branch of the government, which is only one of three branches of our government. The Republicans have new political power now in 1/6 of the government. (Or in an additional 1/6 of the government if you feel they have control of the Supreme Court.)
Suzerain is a word that came to English in the 15th century from Old French. The Old French word came from Latin, from sursum, which means upward or above, and vertere, which means a turning, and from which we get words such as verse or versus. Sursum, by the way, is a contraction of subversum (up from below). The French added the suffix from souverain, from which we get the word sovereign.
Sovereign (you’ll love this upcoming Latin word) came to English in the 13th century from that Old French word mentioned above (etymonline.com leaves out the v in souverain, with the explanation that Milton spelled it souran, as though it came from the Italian sourano). The Vulgar Latin word from which it came to Old French is superanus, and does not refer to a body part, even though some rulers would seem to warrant that description. Superanus is the Vulgar Latin word for chief or principal, and the super refers to having authority over others, a meaning that remains as the definition of sovereign. (Vulgar doesn’t mean the same in reference to Latin as it does in common usage now. In fact, it refers to common, spoken usage as opposed to literary language.)
The other word which came to mind, hegemony, is one of only four words in my dictionary that begin with heg- that are not proper nouns or an adjective of the proper noun. Hegemony means leadership or dominance, especially of one state or nation over others. (I dubbed my team in fantasy baseball the Hegemons. We made the playoffs but weren’t as hegemonic as the SF Giants, who are World Champions!)
Hegemony comes from the Greek word hegemonia, which means leadership. The word hegemony dates from the 1560s, and by the 1650s had spawned the adjectival form hegemonic. It wasn’t until 1904, however, that the form hegemon appeared in Enlgish. In my dictionary, only hegemony and hegemonic are given.
So now you know what the Republicans and SF Giants have in common.
But this isn’t a blog about politics or elections, it’s a blog about words. What words did this election bring to mind? Hegemony and suzerainty.
With the word suzerainty we are treated to one of what I think is a lexicographer’s joke of a definition: “the position or power of a suzerain.” Ha, ha! Made you look! What’s a suzerain? A feudal lord, or a state in it relation to a semiautonomous state over which it exercises political control. So, while the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives last night, that is only one-half of control of the legislative branch of the government, which is only one of three branches of our government. The Republicans have new political power now in 1/6 of the government. (Or in an additional 1/6 of the government if you feel they have control of the Supreme Court.)
Suzerain is a word that came to English in the 15th century from Old French. The Old French word came from Latin, from sursum, which means upward or above, and vertere, which means a turning, and from which we get words such as verse or versus. Sursum, by the way, is a contraction of subversum (up from below). The French added the suffix from souverain, from which we get the word sovereign.
Sovereign (you’ll love this upcoming Latin word) came to English in the 13th century from that Old French word mentioned above (etymonline.com leaves out the v in souverain, with the explanation that Milton spelled it souran, as though it came from the Italian sourano). The Vulgar Latin word from which it came to Old French is superanus, and does not refer to a body part, even though some rulers would seem to warrant that description. Superanus is the Vulgar Latin word for chief or principal, and the super refers to having authority over others, a meaning that remains as the definition of sovereign. (Vulgar doesn’t mean the same in reference to Latin as it does in common usage now. In fact, it refers to common, spoken usage as opposed to literary language.)
The other word which came to mind, hegemony, is one of only four words in my dictionary that begin with heg- that are not proper nouns or an adjective of the proper noun. Hegemony means leadership or dominance, especially of one state or nation over others. (I dubbed my team in fantasy baseball the Hegemons. We made the playoffs but weren’t as hegemonic as the SF Giants, who are World Champions!)
Hegemony comes from the Greek word hegemonia, which means leadership. The word hegemony dates from the 1560s, and by the 1650s had spawned the adjectival form hegemonic. It wasn’t until 1904, however, that the form hegemon appeared in Enlgish. In my dictionary, only hegemony and hegemonic are given.
So now you know what the Republicans and SF Giants have in common.
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