Legend.

We all know what the word means…and my character Bram spends a lot of time in Worthy of Legend pondering what really makes someone worthy to be called a hero, worthy to have stories written and sung and remembered about him or her.

But have you ever paused to wonder about the word itself?

Legend has been around in English since the 1300s, and it originally meant “a narrative dealing with a happening or event.” It’s taken directly from French, which in turn traces back to Latin legenda, which is literally “a story,” especially of the saints. Stories of the lives of saints used to be read at matins and at religious houses, so these stories were called legends…”things to be read.” The Latin root is, not surprisingly, legere, “to read.”

Because it was used in English exclusively at first for lives of saints–full of wonderful and miraculous things–the word soon began to be used to describe mythological, unbelievable, non-historical events as well. I love, though, how closely related the unbelievable and the miraculous have been even in our vocabulary for so long.

What do you think makes someone worthy of legend?

Today is Labor Day in the US, which is the unofficial start of autumn. Specifically, it marks the beginning of a new school year for American kids (many of whom have already been back to school for a couple weeks). What better time to examine the history of the word? (I first looked at this word back in 2015, so if you’ve been around for a while, you may remember this one!)

The first time I posted about the word school, my daughter was entering 5th grade and my son 2nd. This year, my daughter will be a SENIOR and my son a FRESHMAN! Two highschoolers?! How did this happen??? Those last seven years sure have flown by, and man, has it been a journey in the school realm! The perceived irony of this word, however, continues to delight me, and I’ve been known to remind my groaning kids of it. 😉

So, school.

The word comes from the Latin schola, which interestingly enough originally meant “leisure.” (Cue the dubious looks from my kids, who insist that “school” and “leisure” cannot exist in the same sentence.) But in Roman days, only those who didn’t have to work had the leisure for learning. And in those ancient days, what was the favored pastime when one had leisure? Discussion. Conversation. Philosophy. This is where the idea of leisurely discussions came from, and where it got extended to the place for such conversations. You can see this root reflected in many different languages, and English is no exception.

By the 1300s, the English word was applied not only to this learning and the place where it happens, but also to the students engaged in it. By the 1610s it had been extended to the idea of “people united by similar principles or methods.” Hence, school of thought by the 1860s.

For my own part, I always loved school and hated to miss a day. How about you? School lover or school groaner?

Sometimes it’s fun to look up words so very common that one never really pauses to think about them. You never know what you’re going to find! So as one of my cats stared at me as I was contemplating this week’s Word of the Week, I chuckled and said, “Okay, sure, why not? Let’s look up cat.” And I did. 😉

There are times when a word’s history really surprises me. And times, like this, when what surprises me is how universal a word is! Cat (and its various forms) is nearly universal word in European languages today. Our English spelling and pronunciation comes from the Proto-Germanic (that just means “first Germanic”) kattuz. Kattuz has in turn influenced many, many other words for domestic felines throughout Europe, and did itself come from Late Latin cattus. In English, it dates alllll the way back to 700 (!!!!), when the English was Old but the cats were still cats. 😉

That Late Latin word has informed pretty much all the European languages that the German didn’t directly influence, which means that nearly every language in the Western world has a very similar world for our small feline friends–and in fact, replaced an earlier Latin word, feles, which is also familiar to us as the scientific name. The Late Latin version was borrowed from Greek, and the Greek was borrowed from the Arabic qitt. Cats have been domestic animals in Egypt since 2,000 BC, though the Greeks and Romans didn’t actually have them as pets.

Cats have had their proverbial nine lives since about 1560. The word has been applied to big cats–lions, tigers, etc–by about 1600.

And just a fun little tidbit I learned from a documentary called The Lion in Your Living Room…did you know that Vikings were not only cat lovers, but they favored orange cats? So much, in fact, that one can trace Viking trade routes by the orange cat population in different areas! How fun is that?

Are you a cat person? A dog person? Both?

As of the moment when I’m writing this, we’re awaiting a few fun deliveries at our house–a new bed frame and desk for Rowyn, who has been asking for about a year to update his room. We decided that starting high school was a pretty good time to get rid of the loft-bed-with-sliding-board he got when he was 5 (it was SO COOL then…but, yeah, not so useful or cool for a 14.5-year-old!) and trade out the desk he and David cobbled together from a broken bookcase into a desk (upon Rowyn’s request, mind you) for something a little sturdier.

Of course, this being me, I can’t look at desks without wondering about the word desk. So now you get to wonder too. 😉

Upon looking it up, the first thing I learned is that desk and disk are actually very closely related, from the same root: the Greek diskos, which turned into the Latin discus. Both of these mean exactly what you would expect when you consider that root: a round, flat surface, a platter.

A…platter? We write on a platter?

Yup. I personally never think of a desk as round, but the earliest desks were in fact … wait for it … a table. (DUH.) And tables being round is no surprise at all. So the evolution of the word begins to make sense. From “platter” we moved into “flat, round surface,” and from “flat, ROUND surface” we moved into “flat surface suitable for writing” by the mid-1300s, courtesy of Medieval Latin. (Which is to say, those doing the writing were likely church clerics who still used Latin.)

By 1797, it was used figuratively to mean “office or clerical work.” Desk-work (exactly what it sounds like) joined the language in the 1820s. The term desk job began being used by 1900. By 1918 it was being applied to departments within a large organization responsible for a particular thing–think help desk. A reception desk has been noted from about 1960.

Do you have a desk in your house? Do you use it often? (I spend most of my life at my desk, it seems, LOL.)

Anyone who has read The Odyssey has “met” the original Sirens … the mythological creatures in Greek history who lure sailors to their destruction on rocks with their sweet singing. But I daresay most of us haven’t looked too closely at the word.

The Greek seirenes is from seira, which means “cord, rope.” The idea, then, is that these women bind or entangle their pray–with song, in the case of the Sirens. It’s interesting to note that in Greek, the same word was used metaphorically for any deceitful woman.

As English developed, they preserved the word as it appeared in Greek from the 14th century, keeping that metaphorical sense too.

So…what about the modern day sirens? As in, devices that make a loud noise? Those date from around 1879 and were first used on steamboats. Why that word? I couldn’t find written evidence of the reason, but my own reason suggests that it was a bit of linguistical irony. Sirens, which once were said to lure sailors to their death with a sweet song, will now warn people of danger with a loud, unpleasant noise.

I learned way back in my school days that two of our summer months are named for Roman emperors–July (for Julius Caesar) and August (for Augustus Caesar). I imagine you knew that too. Similarly, you probably know that august as an adjective means “solemnly grand, inspiring reverence,” as it has since the 1660s.

It’s no surprise that our word comes directly from the Latin augustus, which means “venerable, majestic, magnificent, noble.” But did you know that Augustus Caesar wasn’t the man’s name … it was his title? I knew that this particular Caesar hadn’t been born with the name Augustus (his name was actually Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus), but back when I first learned about him in high school, I think I assumed he just changed his name when he became emperor…you know, like they do sometimes.

Nope. In actuality, “Augustus” is a title like “Your Highness” or “Your Majesty.” When Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus was styled Augustus Caesar, he was literally being called “Venerable Emperor.”

Funny side note … when we were learning about these emperors in my tenth grade history class, cue Roseanna going, “OH!! I get it!” My history teacher looked over at me, clearly interested in my great epiphany. I, of course, enlightened him with: “In Disney’s Cinderella! She names the mouse Octavius, but for short, called him Gus. For Augustus. Because Octavius is Augustus!”

Yyyyyeeeppp. These are the sort of epiphanies I will treasure always. 😉