Posts Tagged ‘etymology’
“Learning languages is like learning history from the inside out”*…
In a way that’s analogous to the evolution of morphology via mutation, the changes in the languages that we speak are driven by “mistakes” that get baked into practice. For instance…
projectiles to be fired from a gun
It is common to misanalyze an article that precedes a word as if it were part of that word. Here the French phrase la munition was misanalyzed so the “a” of the article became part of the word, becoming l’ammunition…
a group of many islands in a large body of water
The etymology of archipelago seems like it should be from Greek arkhi meaning “chief” andpelagos “sea,” suggesting the importance of a sea with so many islands. The problem is that this form never occurs in ancient Greek, and the modern form is actually borrowed from Italian, with the intended meaning being “the Aegean Sea.” If that’s the case, then the archi- inarchipelago is actually a corrupted version of Aigaion, which is how you say “Aegean” in Greek…
More words that originated in error.
* Eric van Lustbader
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As we misspeak creatively, we might spare a thought for Baruch (or Benedict) de Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher who lived a quiet public life as a lens grinder– but whose rationalism and determinism put him in opposition to Descartes and helped lay the foundation for The Enlightenment, and whose pantheistic views led to his excommunication from the Jewish community in Amsterdam. He died on this date in 1677.
As men’s habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude … that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely with his whole heart, while nothing would be publicly honored save justice and charity.
– Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1670
There’s (now) a word for that…
From Oxford Dictionaries, the OED Birthday Word Generator…
Do you know which words entered the English language around the same time you entered the world? Use our OED birthday word generator to find out! We’ve scoured the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to find words with a first known usage for each year from 1900 to 2004. Simply select the relevant decade and click on your birth year to discover a word which entered the English language that year.
Please note that the dates given for these words refer to the current first known usage of the word. The OED team is continuously researching the histories of words (something you may be able to help with), and it’s therefore possible that we will find an earlier sense of the words during our research…
A full exploration of the words of one’s nativity year requires a subscription; but the graphic on the intro page (pictured above; accessible here) is live, and will generate the word-of-the-year for any year selected. Your correspondent’s birthday word (or phrase, as it happens): “big bang.”
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As we marvel at how times flies, we might send dramatic birthday greetings to Jean-Baptiste Racine; he was born on this date in 1639. One of the three great dramatists in France in the 17th century (with Molière and Corneille), Racine was primarily a tragedian, producing plays like Phèdre, Andromaque, and Athalie, considered neoclassical masterpieces. Racine was a dramatic poet, writing in dodecasyllabic alexandrine; the linguisitic effects that he achieved have been considered essentially impossible to capture in translation– though many have tried: Robert Lowell and Ted Hughes into English, and Friedrich Schiller into German. (The quest continues: poet Geoffrey Argent won the American Book Award for his 2011 attempt to translate Racine’s plays into English.)
A strict observer of the dramatic unities, Racine frustrated Antonin Artaud, who wrote (in The Theater and Cruelty), “the misdeeds of the psychological theater descended from Racine have made us unaccustomed to that immediate and violent action which the theater should possess.” Conversely, Proust developed an earlier love of Racine “whom he considered a brother and someone very much like himself…” (Marcel Proust: A Life, by Jean-Yves Tadié, 1996).
“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization”*…
Cretin (n), “A stupid, vulgar, or insensitive person.”
It’s ironic that cretin is used to describe an insensitive person, because its origin is terribly insensitive. Cretin, like spaz, is an insult that evolved from a very real and very dreadful medical condition. It comes from a word used in an 18th century Alpine dialect. The word was crestin, used to describe “a dwarfed and deformed idiot.” Cretinism was caused by lack of iodine resulting in congenital hypothyroidism. Etymologists believe the word’s root, the Latin “Christian,” was to be a reminder that cretins were God’s children, too.
From Mental Floss, the origin of 10 familiar insults.
* Sigmund Freud
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As we mind our language, we might recall that it was on this date in 1919 that the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Schenck v. United States–– in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s opinion famously observed that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” As his observation passed into common parlance, “falsely” fell away and the condition of the theater was embellished– so that “shouting fire in a crowed theater” has come to stand for speech that is dangerous and unlawful. The ever-precise Holmes recognized that, if in fact there were a fire in a crowded theater, one may rightly shout “Fire!”; indeed one might, depending on the law in operation, be obliged to.
Cabinet of Curiosities…
Satyra altera species
Monstrorum Historia, (Bologna, 1642)
Author: ALDROVANDI, Ulisse (1522-1605)
Aldrovandi was a prodigious writer of natural history. His book on monsters, profusely illustrated with marvellous woodcuts of monsters in the human, animal and vegetable realms, forms part of his great encyclopoedic work on natural history complete in thrirteen thick volumes, of which only four were published during his lifetime. His valuable teratological work is by far the most exahaustive treatise on monsters with descriptions and depictions of all kinds of monstrosities. Even if the woodcuts often are fanciful or largely inaccurate they exceeded a considerable influence and became the prototypes for succeeding illustrators of monsters.
The Hagströmerbiblioteket– the Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library— is a treasure trove of unique medical art treasures. In order to make their holdings more accessible, they’ve created the Wunderkammer (“Cabinet of Wonders”)– at once a glorious collection of historically-important (and often strikingly strange) medical and scientific illustrations , and an homage to the European Renaissance tradition of “The Cabinet of Curiosities.”
Prothesis, artificial leg
Les Oeuvres. Quatrième édition, (Paris, 1585)
Author: PARÉ, Ambroise (1510-1590)Paré was a French barber surgeon and the official Royal Surgeon for four successive French kings. He is considered one of the fathers of modern surgery, and a leader of surgical techniques. His collective works were published in several editions, a book of over 1000 pages richly illustrated with woodcuts and among them his inventions of both artificial hands and legs.
Scurvy
Physiognomice Pathologica – Krankenphysiognomik, (Stuttgart, 1859)
Author: BAUMGÄRTNER, Karl Heinrich (1798-1886) Artist: Karl SandhaasA remarkable atlas with portraits of patients suffering from various diseases. Baumgärtner, professor of medicine in Freiburg, taught it was possible to make a correct diagnosis with accompanying medical treatment by studying the patient’s physiognomy, the expression of the face, the colour of the skin, the eyes, the lips, etc.
Tour the full collection at The Wunderkammer. (And for a look at what’s become of the “Cabinet of Curiosities” in our times, check out Joesph Cornell’s boxes (here or here)– better yet, visit the extraordinary Museum of Jurassic Technology… or if L.A. isn’t handy, read Lawrence Wechsler’s extraordinary Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder.)
[Thanks to AH, via EWW]
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As we self-diagnose, we might recall that it was on this date in 1878 that Charles Sédillot received approval from the editor of the 1886 edition of the Dictionary of Medicine, Emile Littré, to name certain micro-organisms “microbe”– rather than, say, “microbia”– even though “microbe” is coined from two Greek words that together mean “short-lived” rather than “small life.”
Sédillot
The measure of things…
In issue 33, Mad published a partial table of the “Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures”, developed by 19-year-old Donald E. Knuth (later a famed computer scientist). According to Knuth, the basis of this new revolutionary system is the potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or 2.263348517438173216473 mm.
Volume was measured in ngogn (equal to 1000 cubic potrzebies), mass in blintz (equal to the mass of 1 ngogn of halva, which is “a form of pie [with] a specific gravity of 3.1416 and a specific heat of .31416”), and time in seven named units (decimal powers of the average earth rotation, equal to 1 “clarke”). The system also features such units as whatmeworry, cowznofski, vreeble, hoo, and hah…
More on the Potrzebie system, and other merry metrics, at “List of humorous units of measurement.” (Though, as GMSV observes the list doesn’t [yet] include “The Kardashian.”)
As we trade in our tape measures, we might recall that it was on this date in 1889, that the word “hamburger” appeared for the first time in print (in the Walla Walla Union, a Walla Walla, Washington, newspaper– per the Oxford English Dictionary). In the 19th century, German immigrants migrated to North America bringing along the recipe for the hamburg steak (i.e., “from Hamburg”), a form of pounded beef. Americans adopted the dish, but used the adjectival form “hamburger” to describe it. It’s a measure of the pounded patty’s prompt popularity that “hamburger” appeared as an entry in 1902 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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