About
David Romano
2007 Jun 04 (Mon)
Over the past two semesters, I've perused the books that are sold at the library of the university I'm going to, to see if anything is interesting. The hardbacks are sold for 50 cents and the paperback are sold for 25, so the price is good if the book is :-). So far I've picked up quite a few books, but haven't cracked many of them open. One I have cracked open is The Romance of Words by Ernest Weekley, which was first published 1911, and is a discusses some etymologies that the author has found, as well as those that have come out of the New English Dictionary project (now the Oxford English Dictionary).
So far I've gotten through 60 pages, and while I don't want to regurgitate all the etymologies Weekley goes into, here are a few that I personally found interesting in the first 36 pages (I'm going to mention the ones from 37 to 60 at some other time):
- trivial (p.11):
...and a trivial matter is so commonplace that it can be picked up at the meeting of "three ways" (trivium).
I first heard of this from one of my professors last semester. It's one of his favorites to mention (along with assassin). - gamut (p.13):
Gamut contains the Gk. gamma and the Latin conjunction ut. Guy d'Arezzo, who flourished in the 11th century, is said to have introduced the method of indicating the notes by letters a to g. For the note below he used the Gk. gamma. To him is attributed also the series of monosyllables by which the notes are also indicated. They are supposed to be taken from a Latin hymn to St John--
Ut queant laxis resonare fibris
Do is sometimes substituted for ut in French, and always in modern English.
Mira gestorum famuli tuorum
Solve polluti labii reatum
Sancte Iohonnes. - tennis (p.15):
Tennis, says Minsheu, is so called from Fr. tenez, hold, "which word the Frenchmen, the only tennis-players, use to speak when they strike the ball." This etymology, for a long time regarded as a wild guess, has been shewn by recent research to be most probably correct. The game is of French origin, and it was played by French knights in Italy a century before we find it alluded to by Gower (c. 1400).
- jingo (p.18):
Jingo first appears in conjurors' jargon of the 17th century. It has been conjectured to represent Basque jinko, God, picked up by sailors. If this is the case, it is probably the only pure Basque word in English.
- assassin (p.25):
Assassin is really a plural, from the hachaschin, eaters of the drug haschish, who executed the decrees of the Old Man of the Mountains. It was one of these who stabbed Edward Longshanks at Acre.
I first heard this one from a professor I had last semester, but he only went so far as to say assassin was derived from those who ate haschish, not that it was really plural nor that one of them stabbed Edward Longshanks. (And yes, the only thing I can think about when I hear the name Longshanks is Braveheart). - cinch (p.26):
Other "cow-boy" words of Spanish origin are the less familiar cinch girth of a horse, Span. cincha, from Lat. cingula...
- fetish (p.27-8):
Fetish, an African idol, first occurs in the records of the early navigators, collected and published by Hakluyt and Purchas. It is Port. feitiço, Lat. factitius, artificial, applied by the Portuguese explorers to the graven images of the heathen.
Both uses are different from how I use it (and have heard it used now): an intense interest in something, e.g., a Southwestern fetish is an intense interest in anything Southwestern. - gorilla (p.28):
The word gorilla is perhaps African, but more than two thousand years separate its first appearance from its present use. In the 5th or 6th century
Reminded me of when Horace talks about building something more lasting than bronze. Sure, Hanno wasn't as cocky as Horace in this regard, but coining a word which later cam into constant usage 4k years later is nothing to shake a stick at.B.C. , a Carthaginian navigator named Hanno sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules along the west coast of Africa....Among the wonders he encountered were some hairy savages called gorillas. His word was translated into Greek and later on into several European languages, so that the word became familiar to naturalists. IN 1847 it was applied to the giant ape, which had recently been described by explorers. - daisy (p.29):
To take a simple instance, how many realize that the daisy is "day's eye"?--
"Wele by reson men it calle may
I, for one, didn't realize. :-)
The dayeseye or ellis the 'eye of hte day.'"
(Chaucer , Legend of Good Women, Prol., 1. 184.) - mosquito (p.36):
Musket like saker (v.s.), was the name of a hawk...But the hawk was so nicknamed from it's small size. Fr. mousquet, now replaced in the hawk sense by émouchet, is from Ital. moschetto, a diminutive from Lat. musca, fly. Thus mosquito (Spanish) and musket are doublets.
I just thought it weird because then a mosquito hawk is awkwardly a hawk hawk. :-) - porcelain (p.36):
Porcelain comes, through French, from Ital. porcellana....It is a derivative of Lat. porcus, pig.
For some reason, I could vividly see a piggy bank made of porcelain, and it all came together. - easel (p.36):
Easel comes, with many other painters' terms, from Holland. It is Du. ezel, ass, which, like Ger. esel, comes from Lat. asinus.
The metaphor being that it is carrying the load for the painter, which I guess is what a donkey is literally used for.
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