Did you know that Shakespeare was the first to use the word hurry (at least in writing)? It’s true! And he used it quite often. But though he gives us our first recorded uses, the word comes from a long line of similar words, going back to the Proto-Germanic (that just means first or root Germanic language) hurza, which meant “to move with haste.” From that came the Middle English hurren, which was used to describe the rapid vibration and buzz of insects. Hurry may have adopted its new ending because of the influence of harry.
Other Germanic languages like Middle High German and Old Swedish both have similar words (hurren and hurra), which both mean “to whirl or whir, to move fast.”
Hurry up as a command to make haste dates from the 1890s.
Word Nerds Unite!
Read More Word of the Week Posts
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.