Jon's Page O'
Linguistis - Word Stories
- alligator A
new-world Spanish loan, from el lagarto 'the lizard'. The definite article el
was not understood as a morpheme, but taken as an unanalyzed part of a monomorphemic root.
Oddly, a similar process happened in loans from Arabic to Spanish during the Islamic
period in Spain. Words like alcoba 'alcove, bedroom' and azucar 'sugar'
which had the Arabic definite article al or a- were taken as monomorphemic
and borrowed whole. English has a number of such Arabic words too, most via Spanish and
the other Romance languages (algebra, admiral, alcohol, azimuth...)
- anaconda Probably a modification of
Sinhalese henakandaya 'a slender green snake' (WNC)
- brainwash Although now associated
mainly with spy movies, to brainwash originated as a military term during the
Korean War. The word is a literal translation of the Chinese phrase HSI NAO, 'to wash the
brain.' We call such cases of native word forms put together with a borrowed meaning
"loan translations" or "calques". Another pair of loan translations is
to save face/ lose face, both of which literally translate Chinese expressions.
- cappuccino 'milky coffee drink,
originating in Italy'
Named after the color of the robes of the Capuchin monks, which, like the drink, are light
chocolaty brown. The word is from Italian Cappuccino, which is the Italian name for
the monks' order. The Capuchins themselves got their name from the hooded robe they wear; cappuccio
means 'hood' (a diminutive form of Late Latin cappa 'head covering, cloak')
- catalyze 'to induce a chemical
reaction; to engender a change'
Comes from cata 'down' + lyze 'loosen'. A catalyst (the noun form of the word) causes
things to break down chemically; this breaking down causes further chemical reactions, and
this aspect of the process is represented by the modern meaning.
- catholic 'universal'; when
capitalized, the name of the church of Rome.
From cata 'down, entirely'' + hol 'whole' + ic 'ADJ'. The church,
emphasizing the all-embracing nature of the religion, called itself catholic in the
sense of entirely universal. Something of this sense survives in the phrase catholic
tastes, meaning eclectic or non-parochial tastes. But the word stuck to the church
most strongly, and became essentially its proper name, distinguishing the Catholic
religion from other religions.
- cloak From Middle English cloke,
from Old French cloque 'bell'. This is a case of a metaphorical extension: the
garment was named after the word for 'bell', because of the bell-like shape of the garment
around the body.
- clock From Middle Dutch clocke,
meaning 'bell, clock', from Old French cloche or cloque 'bell', from Late
Latin clocca (imitative of the sound of a bell).
It was apparently in Dutch that the crucial semantic shift occurred in the history of this
borrowed word: the word that was used to describe the time-keeping noisemaker in the
churchtower (bong, bong) began to be applied to the newfangled timekeeper with hands and
numbers, located in the same tower (tick, tick). When the English imported these new
timekeepers, often made in Holland and Germany, they imported the word for them: clock.
But they had their own word for the more traditional bell (namely bell), so the
word clock was never polysemous like in Dutch.
The semantic extension from 'bell' to 'clock' is a classic example of metonymy.
- gamut This word
comes from the history of music. Guido d'Arezzo, an 11th century musician and former monk,
devised a system of musical notation that was a precursor to our modern system of notes
and staffs.
D'Arezzo's system had a six-note scale, represented on a higher and lower staff. The first
line on the lower staff he called by the Greek letter 'gamma'. The lowest note in the
scale was called 'ut' and was placed on gamma. This first note was soon called 'gamma ut',
which contracted to 'gamut'. At some point, French musicians began referring to the whole
scale (by then an octave) as the 'gamut', a typical example of metonymy. The term was next
extended to refer to the musical range of an instrument or voice. By the seventeenth
century 'gamut' was further generalized to mean an entire range of any kind.
The story of GAMUT also relates to the syllables commonly sung to the tones of the musical
scale (do, re, mi...). D'Arezzo named the six notes in his scale after the first syllables
of six lines of a hymn sung to John the Baptist. In the seventeenth century ut
was replaced by the more singable do. With the introduction of octaves a new note
name was needed and si, was added, probably formed from the initial letters in sancte
Iohannes . The seventh note is now more usually sung as ti. (MWE, AHD)
Ut queant
laxis
re sonare fibris
Mi ra gestorum
fa muli tuorum
Sol ve polluti
la bii reatum
Sancte Iohannes
"That with full
voices your servants may be able to sing the wonders of your deeds, purge the sin from
their unclean lips, O holy John."
- hoosegow 'jail'. From Spanish juzgado
'justice', used to refer metonymically to the institutions for administering justice,
specifically to the place of confinement for lawbreakers. Comes from the old west, from
areas that had been under the jurisdiction of Mexico. American settlers simply pronounced
the word as it sounded to them. It spread, and became a slangy or jocular American term
for jail even outside the southwest.
- ketchup The name of this most
American of condiments originates from the Malay word KOETSIAP, which literally means
'seafood sauce.'
- lord A native word, going back to an
ancient compound hlaf weard, literally 'loaf ward'--the guardian of the stock of
bread in a household. Since this was usually the master of the household, the word came to
mean specifically that in Anglo-Saxon (in the somewhat reduced form hlaford). Hlaford
was used by Christian missionaries to translate the Latin word for 'master', Dominus,
when referring to God. Lord in its ordinary social sense became a respectful term
of address for a householder of means, then a title for a major landowner, and finally a
hereditary title independent of land ownership. Unlike its counterpart German Herr
'lord, master', it never became an ordinary form of address prefixed to mens' last names;
that role was taken on by Mister, from Latin magister 'great one'.
- paparazzo n., pl. paparazzi. A
reporter or photographer, esp. a free-lance one, who doggedly searches for sensational
stories about or takes candid pictures of celebrities for magazines and newspapers.
This word is an example of eponymy, or naming a concept after a person associated with
that concept. In this case the person is a fictional character, one Signor Paparazzo, a
character in the movie La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini (b. 1920), in the 1960s. In the
movie, Paparazzo was a street photographer. The name was apparently taken from the
dialectal Italian word paparazzo, a kind of buzzing insect.
In its current sense, the word is usually found in the plural, since such photographers
are often found in insect-like clusters around celebrities. Paparazzi became a household
word after the tragic death of Princess Diana while she was being pursued by paparazzi in
Paris. (WAD)
Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary (AHD)
Dictionary of Word Origins by John Ayto (DWO)
Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
Merriam Webster's book of Etymologies (MWE)
Word-a-Day listserver (WAD)
Page constructed and maintained by Jonathan D.
Pettus
Email: [email protected]