I looked up the word dunce during my marathon writing session for the final book in the Secrets of the Isles trilogy, just to make sure I hadn’t been using it for years when I shouldn’t have been (because those sneak in!), and I was fascinated at what I learned! It had certainly been around long enough for my 1906-set story, but I had no idea its history was so interesting. So naturally, I have to share.

Dunce is actually taken from the name of John Duns Scotus, and before it was dunce, it was actually Duns’ man. So who, you ask, is John Duns Scotus? He was a Scottish scholar of philosophy and theology who lived from 1265-1308 and whose followers ran the universities just before the Reformation. By the 1520s, people were lashing out against the medieval theology and “knowledge,” and John Duns Scotus had become their archetype for the academic who was so obstinately focused on minutia that they failed to see larger truths. By the 1570s, dunce meant “ignoramus, dullard, dolt,” especially dull-witted students. The dunce cap that we all recognize from historical classroom scenes dates from around 1792.

Whenever I come across a word like this taken from someone’s name, I always shudder. Something to avoid in life: that sort of legacy!

The other week at one of our tea parties, a guest asked me how my writing was going, and I said, “Oh, you know. Plugging away at it.”

My daughter, who always joins us for these parties, looked over at me like I was crazy and said, “Plugging? Seriously? That’s a phrase?”

Yes, dear. That’s a phrase. And I can prove it. 😉

Plug has been a verb since the 1620s, in the sense of filling a hole. But it’s carried the meaning of “to work energetically” from 1865. As of the turn of the twentieth century, it had also taken on the meaning of “popularize by repetition” (like advertisements plugging a new product everywhere you turn).

See, Xoe. Totally a phrase, LOL. And an apt description of the day-to-day schedule of getting up and doing what you love, even when you’re exhausted! 😉

Did you know that algebra and algorithm are not only related, but both derived from a (mangled) translation of a mathematician? Yep!

In the 9th century, a Baghdad scholar named Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi wrote a famous treatise on mathematics that introduced Arabic numbers and computing to the West for the first time. In honor of him, these ways of working with numbers were named after him…in a way. Medieval Latin used algorismus for this “system of computation,” which was their bad translation of al-Khwarizmi. Over the centuries, algorismus eventually became algorithm.

Similarly, algebra (also joining the language in the medieval days) was influenced by this same name, altered slightly to reflect the Arabic al jabra, which means “reunion of broken parts.” By the 1550s, it meant “formal mathematics; the analysis of equations.” It wasn’t until the 17th century that the pronunciation became AL-gebra; until then, it was the more Arabic-influenced al-GEB-ra.

How do you stand with algebra? Love it? Hate it?

My daughter asked me a few weeks ago why a last name is called a surname. I had no idea…but of course declared, “Word of the week!” and promptly looked it up. 😉

And it’s both straightforward and not. Sur is Latin for “above,” so the original meaning of surname was “an epithet, name, or title”–as in, something tacked on to one’s name. Think Catherine the Great or Sir William, Esquire. It began being used in that sense in the 1300s. But it only took about a hundred years for surname to be applied to family names instead of just titles or epithets.

I found it quite interesting to learn that family names came to the English world first among the Norman nobility in the 12th century. Commoners had begun to adopt the tradition a century later, but it began in the south of England and was slower to catch on in the north.

Do you know what your surname means or where it came from?

It’s summertime in the northern hemisphere, our kids are out of school, so many of us are thinking about one of our favorite things…VACATION! But have you stopped to wonder about the history of the word? I actually first took a look at it back in 2012, but it was definitely time for a revisit!

I was pretty surprised to learn that this word is as old as it is! It strikes me as a modern idea, I suppose . . . or maybe I just tend to think of the British word “holiday” as being older.

I actually first looked at the etymology of motivation back in 2012, but…that’s been a long time ago, LOL. And since summers can be a weird time of either little motivation or super-charged motivation, I figured it was a great time to revisit.