“Every word carries a secret inside itself; it’s called etymology. It is the DNA of a word.” — Mary Ruefle,”Madness, Rack & Honey”

“Etymology” derives from the Greek wordetumos, meaning “true.” The practice of etymology is uncovering the truth by tracing the root of a word. If you’re interested in language, it can be quite exhilarating. Like being a linguistic detective. There will be few pictures in this one so settle down….this will take you a few minutes!!!

1. Disaster

• “anything that befalls of ruinous or distressing nature; any unfortunate event,” especially a sudden or great misfortune, 1590s,
• from French désastre (1560s),
• from Italian disastro, literally “ill-starred,” from dis-,
• from Latin astrum,
• from Greek astron “star”.

The origin of the word points to unfavorable events being blamed on certain planet positions. Destiny is written in the stars – in some conceptions of fate in mythology, the universe is fixed and inevitable.

2. Muscle

A far cry from World’s Strongest Man, the origin of the word ‘muscle’ is perhaps the most surprising.

• “contractible animal tissue consisting of bundles of fibers,”
• late 14c., “a muscle of the body,”
• from Latin musculus “a muscle,” literally “a little mouse.

Rather than relating to strength and brawn as we understand it, ‘muscle’ is derived from the appearance of a muscle under the skin. Particularly biceps, which were thought both in Latin and in Greek to resemble a mouse running beneath the skin.

3. Nice

Perhaps you’ve been told by an English teacher in the past to avoid using the word ‘nice’. This is because the word is so commonly used in our language that it’s not highly descriptive or imaginative. Many English teachers consider it a cop-out. Yet its origins are far more interesting than the word appears.

• late 13c., “foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless,”
• from Old French nice (12c.) “careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish,”
• from Latin nescius “ignorant, unaware,” literally “not-knowing,”

4. Cloud

• Old English clud “mass of rock, hill,” related to clod.
• The modern sense “rain-cloud, mass of evaporated water visible and suspended in the sky” is a metaphoric extension that begins to appear c. 1300 in southern texts, based on the similarity of cumulus clouds and rock masses.
• The usual Old English word for “cloud” was weolcan (see welkin).
• In Middle English, skie also originally meant “cloud.”
• The last entry for cloud in the original rock mass sense in Middle English Compendium is from c. 1475.

The origins of the word ‘cloud’ are surprising. You wouldn’t automatically associate their wispy appearance with the solidity of rocks. The etymology explains that it refers to the mass it accumulates and thus appearing similar to earth formations.

5. Oxymoron

This is a great example of the word being an example of itself.

• in rhetoric, “a figure conjoining words or terms apparently contradictory so as to give point to the statement or expression,”
• 1650s, from Greek oxymōron, noun use of neuter of oxymōros (adj.) “pointedly foolish,”
• from oxys “sharp, pointed” (from PIE root *ak- “be sharp, rise (out) to a point, pierce”) + mōros “stupid” (see moron).

Now, it’s used more broadly to denote a contradiction in terms. Originally, though, it was a clash of terms around sharpness and dullness.

6. Quarantine

The origins of ‘quarantine’ may interest you.

• 1660s, “period a ship suspected of carrying disease is kept in isolation,”
• from Italian quaranta giorni, literally “space of forty days,”
• from quaranta “forty,” from Latin quadraginta “forty,” which is related to quattuor “four” (from PIE root *kwetwer- “four”). So called from the Venetian policy (first enforced in 1377) of keeping ships from plague-stricken countries waiting off its port for 40 days to assure that no latent cases were aboard. Also see lazaretto.
• The extended sense of “any period of forced isolation” is from the 1670s.
• Earlier in English the word meant “period of 40 days in which a widow has the right to remain in her dead husband’s house” (1520s), and, as quarentyne (15c.), “desert in which Christ fasted for 40 days,” from Latin quadraginta “forty.”

We understand ‘quarantine’ as a period of isolation to prevent the spread of an illness, but the background on this is very interesting. The root of the word is more specific to the period of time elapsed.

7. Tragedy

Without the word ‘tragedy’, we wouldn’t have one of the greatest songs by the Bee Gees. But there is also an interesting word history to be grateful for.

• late 14c., “play or other serious literary work with an unhappy ending,”
• from Old French tragedie (14c.), from Latin tragedia “a tragedy,”
• from Greek tragodia “a dramatic poem or play in formal language and having an unhappy resolution,”
• apparently literally “goat song,” from tragos “goat, buck” + ōidē “song” (see ode), probably on model of rhapsodos (see rhapsody).

Although the specificity of the goat connection is debated, the connection to goats, in general, is accepted. There are a few different possibilities as to why. The etymology includes the literal translation “goat song”. Tragedy as we know it has its roots in ancient Greece, where it’s thought people dressed as goats and satyrs in plays. There are other theories surrounding goat sacrifices. Either way, who knew goats were involved at all?

8. Surprise

What would a list of surprising etymology be without the word ‘surprise’ itself?

• also formerly surprize, late 14c.,
• “unexpected attack or capture,” from Old French surprise “a taking unawares” (13c.),
• from noun use of past participle of Old French sorprendre “to overtake, seize, invade” (12c.),
• Meaning “something unexpected” first recorded 1590s, that of “feeling of astonishment caused by something unexpected” is c. 1600.
• Meaning “fancy dish” is attested from 1708.

When you think of the word ‘surprise’ today, you might think of smiling faces. In history, though, it had a much more violent origin. The word is rooted in an invasion in having the element of surprise as an advantage. It is also interesting that it has root words meaning “grasp”. This can also be related to words like “comprehend”.

9. Comrade

It is interesting how the word ‘comrade’ is considered a non-neutral term. Whether it’s a veteran recalling time spent with his old army comrades, or used among the political left. Its origins point to it being more widely applicable.

• 1590s, “one who shares the same room,” hence “a close companion,”
• from French camarade (16c.),
• from Spanish camarada “chamber mate,” or Italian camerata “a partner,”
• from Latin camera “vaulted room, chamber” (see camera).
• In Spanish, a collective noun referring to one’s company.
• In 17c., sometimes jocularly misspelled comrogue.
• Used from 1884 by socialists and communists as a prefix to a surname to avoid “Mister” and other such titles.
• Also related: Comradely; comradeship.

With this considered, you could call any of your cohabitants “comrade”. And it’s perfectly acceptable to use it for your partner, no matter what your politics are.

10. Clue

To end where we started, with the spirit of investigation, let’s have a look at the word ‘clue’.

• “anything that guides or directs in an intricate case,” 1590s, a special use of a revised spelling of clew “a ball of thread or yarn” (q.v.).
• The word, which is native Germanic, in Middle English was clewe, also cleue; some words were borrowed from Old French and Middle but these later were reformed, and this process was extended to native words (hue, true, clue) which had ended in a vowel and -w.
• The spelling clue is first attested mid-15c.
• The sense shift is originally in reference to the clew of thread given by Ariadne to Theseus to use as a guide out of the Labyrinth in Greek mythology. The purely figurative sense of “that which points the way,” without regard to labyrinths, is from 1620s.
• As something which a bewildered person does not have, by 1948.

The word origins rooted in old stories like this are the most fascinating. A clue could be any object now. But, once upon a time, it was explicitly a ball of yarn a character used to find his way.

Murphy’s Law

If anything can go wrong, it will. This expression appears to have originated in the mid-1900’s in the U.S. Air Force. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle of March 16, 1978 (cited in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang), during some testing at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949, Captain Ed Murphy, an engineer, was frustrated with a malfunctioning part and said about the technician responsible, “If there is any to do things wrong, he will.” Within weeks his statement was referred to as “Murphy’s Law,” and by about 1960, it had entered the civilian vocabulary and was attached to just about any mistake or mishap. In succeeding decades, it became a cliche.

If the shoe fits, wear it!

If something applies to you, accept it. This expression is a version of an older term, if the cap fits, put it on, which originally meant a fool’s cap and dates from the early 18th century. This version is rarely heard today. It’s replacement by a shoe probably came about owing to the increased popularity of the Cinderella story and, indeed, an early appearance in print, in Clyde Fitch’s play “The Climbers” (1901), states, “If the slipper fits,”

Pennies from heaven

The first time that the expression “Pennies from heaven” came into the public consciousness was on the release of the 1936 film, starring Bing Crosby. It wasn’t coined by the film’s writers though, having been used in print a few years earlier, in Abraham Burstein’s book “Ghetto Messenger,” 1928.

A country mile

The complexity of what a mile actually is, or more to the point was when this phrase was coined, is more confusing than enlightening. Each country that has used a mile as a measurement of distance, has defined it differently from all the others, and most of them have changed the measurement at some point. What may help is a look at some documentary evidence. An early expression in print is in a poem by the Cornish seaman Frederick de Kruger – “The Villager’s Tale,”1829:

“The travelling stage had set me down
Within a mile of yon church-town;
‘T was long indeed, a country mile.
But well I knew each field or style;”

It’s reasonable to assume that the expression originated in the UK. The expression crossed the Atlantic in the 19th century and is still widely used there. Hardly any early 20th century report of a baseball game fail to use the expression when a ball is hit out of the ground. The expression is used in pretty well every English-speaking country and many have their own variants of it. People also speak of a ‘Welsh mile’, ‘a Scottish mile’, ‘Irish’, Dutch’, ‘German’ and so on.

Back to the drawing board

This term has been used since WWII as a jocular acceptance that a design has failed and that a new one is needed. It gained common currency quite quickly and began appearing in US newspapers by 1947, as here in theWalla Walla Union-Bulletin, Washington, December 1947: “Grid injuries for the season now closing suggest anew that nature get back to the drawing board, as the human knee is not only nothing to look at but also a piece of bum engineering.”

A drawing board is, of course, an architect’s or draughtsman’s table, used for the preparation of designs or blueprints. The phrase originated as the caption to a cartoon produced by Peter Arno (Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr.), for the New Yorker magazine, in 1941. The cartoon shows various military men and ground crew racing toward a crashed plane, and a designer, with a roll of plans under his arm, walking away saying, “Well, back to the old drawing board.”

Know the ropes

The first known use of the expression in print is a figurative one, that is, one where no actual rope is being referred to. It comes in James Skene’s travel mémoire “Italian Journey,” 1802: “I am a stranger and… I beg you to show me how I ought to proceed… You know the ropes and can give me good advice.”

Clearly, ‘know the ropes’ must have been in use in some context where real rope was being used before Skene wrote his diary, but it seems that no one wrote it down. The first printed example of ‘knowing the ropes’ which alludes to a context where actual rope would be present is in Richard H. Dana Jr’s “Two years before the mast,” 1840: “The captain, who had been on the coast before and ‘knew the ropes,’ took the steering oar.”

That clearly has a seafaring connection, although it appears to be using the figurative meaning of the phrase, that is, ‘the captain was knowledgeable’, but without any specific allusion to ropes.

Bag and baggage

The phrase is of military origin. ‘Bag and baggage’ referred to the entire property of an army and that of the soldiers in it. To ‘retire bag and baggage’ meant to beat an honourable retreat, surrendering nothing. These days, to ‘leave bag and baggage’ means just to clear out of a property, leaving nothing behind.

The phrase is ancient enough that the earliest citation isn’t in contemporary English. Rymer’s”Foedera,” 1422, has: “Cum armaturis bonis bogeis, baggagiis”. The earliest reference in English that most would understand is in John Berners’ ‘The firste volum of John Froissart’, 1525: “We haue with vs all our bagges and baggages that we haue wonne by armes.” Shakespeare later used the phrase in “As You Like It,” 1600:

“Let vs make an honorable retreit, though not with bagge and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.”

Yada-yada

This phrase is a modern-day equivalent of ‘blah, blah, blah’ (which is early 20th century). It is American and emerged during or just after the Second World War. It was preceded by various alternative forms – ‘yatata, yatata’, ‘yaddega, yaddega’ etc. One of the earliest of these is from an advertisement in an August 1948 edition of the Long Beach Independent:

“Yatata … yatata … the talk is all about Chatterbox, Knox’s own little Tomboy Cap with the young, young come-on look!” All of those versions, and including ‘yada yada’, probably took the lead from existing words meaning incessant talk – yatter, jabber, chatter.

Yellow belly

The term ‘yellow-belly’ is an archetypal American term, but began life in England in the late 18th century as a mildly derogatory nick-name. Grose’s “A Provincial Glossary,” with a collection of local proverbs, and popular superstitions, 1787, lists it: “Yellow bellies. This is an appellation given to persons born in the Fens, who, it is jocularly said, have yellow bellies, like their eels.”

The usage wasn’t limited to the Lincolnshire Fens. In the same year,”Knight’s Quarterly Magazine” (London) published an account of life in the the Staffordshire Collieries. It began by describing the region as “a miserable tract of country commencing a few miles beyond Birmingham” and went on to recount a lady’s attempts at guessing the nick-name of a local resident: ‘Lie-a-bed, Cock-eye, Pig-tail and finally Yellow-belly.’

Up shit creek without a paddle

This slang phrase, like most street slang, is difficult to date and determine the origin of precisely. What we can say is that it, or at least the ‘shit creek’ part of it was known in the USA in the 1860s as it appeared in the transcript of the 1868 Annual report of the [US] Secretary of War, in a section that included reports from districts of South Carolina: “Our men have put old [Abraham] Lincoln up shit creek.”

In Lincoln’s day, as now, ‘shit creek’ wasn’t a real place, just a figurative way of describing somewhere unpleasant; somewhere one wouldn’t want to be. The ‘without a paddle’ ending is just an intensifier, added by later wags for additional effect. This dates from the middle of the 20th century. The American novelist John Dos Passos used the phrase in”Adventures of a Young Man,” 1939:

“They left the store ready to cry from worry. It was dark; they had a hard time finding their way through the woods to the place where they’d left the canoe. The mosquitos ate the hides off them. ‘Well, we’re up shit creek without any paddle’.”

1. Avocado (Origin: Nahuatl)

The word avocado comes from Spanish aguacate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl ahuacatl, meaning testicle. Surprised? Perhaps, but the more one thinks about it, the less surprising it gets — they do rather resemble a man’s soft spot, and this resemblance becomes even more pronounced when you see avocado duos dangling clumsily from trees.

Nahuatl is the language of the Aztecs and is still spoken by approximately 1.5 million people native to Mexico and other parts of Central America. Avocado isn’t the only Nahuatl word that has been borrowed by the English language; chili, chocolate, tomato and guacamole were also coined by speakers of Nahuatl. Indeed, the mole of guacamole is derived from the Nahuatl molli, which means sauce. It’s a good thing the origin of this word has been obfuscated on its way into the English language. Otherwise, guacamole (Nahuatl: ahuacamolli) probably wouldn’t be as popular as it is.

2. Cappuccino (Origin: Italian/German)

Next time you’re trying to flirt with someone at your local coffee shop, impress them with this whimsical anecdote about the origin of the word cappuccino:

it’s the diminutive form of the word cappuccio, which means “hood” in Italian. Wondering what the link is between a (little) hood and a cappuccino? One must look no further than the Capuchin Monks, whose hooded habits were a dark, oak brown similar to the color of a good cappuccino.

The first recorded use of the word was in 1790 in Vienna, Austria. Wilhelm Tissot jotted down a recipe for an exquisite Kapuzinerkaffee (lit. “Capuchin coffee”), which was rather different in constitution to its modern-day successor, containing sugar, cream and egg yolks. The current, somewhat simplified recipe now consists of espresso and foamed milk, but there are still parts of Austria where you can order a good ol’ Kapuziner.

3. Disaster (Origin: Italian/Greek)

The word disaster has been passed around Europe like a hot potato. The English version is most closely tied to the French désastre, which is derived from the Old Italian disastro, itself derived from Greek. The pejorative prefix dis- and aster- (star) can be interpreted as bad star, or an ill-starred event. The ancient Greeks were fascinated by astronomy and the cosmos, and believed wholly in the influence of celestial bodies on terrestrial life. For them, a disaster was a particular kind of calamity, the causes of which could be attributed to an unfavorable and uncontrollable alignment of planets. It’s therefore interesting to note that the strict, modern English definition of disaster explicitly stipulates that a disaster is human-made, or the consequence of human failure.

4. Handicap (Origin: English)

This word originates from the 17th-century English trading game “hand-in-cap.” The game involved two players and an arbitrator, or umpire. The players would present two possessions they would like to trade. The umpire would then decide whether the possessions were of equal value or not, and if they weren’t, would calculate the discrepancy. The owner of the lesser object would make up the difference with money, and then all three participants would place forfeit money into a hat. If the two players agreed with the umpire’s valuation, they would remove their hands from the hat with their palm open. If they disagreed, they would pull out their hands clenched in a fist. If both agreed or disagreed, the umpire would get the forfeit money, while if one agreed and the other didn’t, the player who approved the transaction would receive the forfeit money.

Over time, hand-in-cap came to be known as “handicap” and started to be used to refer to any kind of equalization or balancing of a contest or game. The word handicap is still used in many sports today, such as golf and horse racing. Indeed, horse racing was probably the first sport to introduce the term in order to define an umpire’s decision to add more weight to a horse so that it runs equally to its competitors. This notion of being burdened or put at a disadvantage was carried over to describe people with a disability in the early 20th century. By the mid-20th century, it was widely used, but it has since fallen out of the popular lexicon.

5. Jeans (Origin: Italian)

Although jeans are quintessentially American, and their invention is commonly attributed to Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss, the etymology of the popular garment is actually of European origin. The fabric Strauss used for his patented, mass-produced trousers was first produced in Genoa, Italy and Nimes, France. Why’s that significant?

Well, the French word for Genoa is Gênes, and the name “jeans” is likely an anglicization of the material’s city of origin. Similarly, the word “denim” most likely comes from de Nimes, meaning “from Nimes” in French. Although we often talk about denim jeans nowadays, the two materials actually differed. Denim was coarser, more durable and of higher quality than the toughened cotton corduroy manufactured in Genoa. Workers in Northern Italy were sporting jeans as early as the 17th century, long before post-war American subcultures picked up on them as a fashion accessory.

6. Salary (Origin: Latin)

The word “salary” comes from the Latin salarium, meaning “salt money.” In ancient times, salt was used for many important things and was often referred to as “white gold.” It could be used as an antiseptic to treat wounds — (in Romance languages one can recognize a connection between sal/sale, meaning “salt,” and salud/saude/salute, meaning “health”) — and to preserve food; also as a method of payment in Greece and Rome.

As far back as the Egyptian Empire, laborers were paid with salt that they could use to preserve their food. The Roman Empire continued using this form of payment and it took on the name “salary” for “that which was given to workers at the end of the working month,” which adds a new dimension to the notion of a company’s solvency.

7. Trivial (Origin: Latin)

“Trivial” originates from the Latin word trivium, which was used to mean “a place where three roads meet” (tri- meaning “three,” and -vium from via, meaning “road”). A trivium gained the connotation of being an open, public place — a mini agora— where people from across society’s technicolor spectrum could relax, chat and simply coexist. The adjective trivialis was a derivative of trivium and came to mean “vulgar, ordinary, of little importance, common and contemporary,” and the English adjective trivial carries much of this definition to this day: tired, ordinary, commonplace; of little use, import, consequence or significance.

8. Whiskey (Origin: Gaelic)

Medieval monks called it aqua vitae, meaning “life water.” The expression was transformed into uisce beatha when it was transferred to Gaelic. As time passed and the word was anglicized, uisce evolved into uige, usque, and then uisky, which bears an obvious and close resemblance to “whiskey.”

You may have noticed that you can spell the drink two different ways — “whiskey” and “whisky.” Some people believe the extra “e” was added by Irish and American distilleries to differentiate their higher quality whiskeys during a period when Scottish whisky had a bad reputation.

Scotch was also introduced to denominate a Scottish whisky, and the word “whiskey” has been adopted in other countries for quite different reasons. In some South American countries, it’s used as an alternative to “cheese” to encourage people to smile when being photographed. How and why we chose “cheese,” and why the South Americans chose “whiskey” is a story for another time.