Word of the Week – Caffeine

Word of the Week – Caffeine

by | Oct 26, 2020 | Word of the Week

Last week, my son and I were (for some reason I can’t recall) talking about caffeine, and how it occurs naturally in coffee. Which led him to ask, “Is that where the word caffeine comes from? From coffee?”

Insert me going, “Huh. You know, I bet it does…” and pulling up the etymology site on my computer (by which I mean clicking into the tab that is always open, LOL). And sure enough!

Caffeine comes directly from the German Kaffe and was in fact originally spelled kaffein. Named for it because it naturally occurs in coffee. Pretty straight forward! The stimulant itself was identified around 1830. So there you go. Score one for the boy who doesn’t even like that glorious brew like the rest of the family does… 😉

Word of the Week – Disgruntled + Gruntle

Word of the Week – Disgruntled + Gruntle

by | Oct 19, 2020 | Word of the Week

I saw a Facebook post a couple weeks ago in which someone realized disgruntled was the opposite of gruntled–a word they’d never heard before, but which they were “very gruntled to learn about.” I got a good laugh out of it…so naturally, had to look it up. Though in this case, the looking-up taught me that it wasn’t quite as straightforward as all that.

Back in the Middle Ages, gruntled meant “to grumble or complain.” Apparently occasionally the prefix dis- means “very, entirely,” which is what it does in this case (who knew?). So disgruntle began its life as a verb that meant “to disappoint, offend, or throw into a sulky state.” The verb was rarely used as a regular verb, though–mostly only as a past participle, disgruntled. Which has been a common word since 1680.

It wasn’t until 1938 that someone thought it would be fun to create a back-form for gruntle, that means the opposite of disgruntled–namely, “pleased, satisfied.” By this time, the original meaning of gruntle (“to grunt”) had been lost to the mists of the past, so the word was wide open to new meaning. 😉

I’m sure you’re very gruntled to learn about that too.

Word of the Week – Greg (That’s Right, Greg)

Word of the Week – Greg (That’s Right, Greg)

by | Oct 12, 2020 | Word of the Week

Did you know that greg is Latin for “flock or herd”? Yeah, neither did I. 😉 But that then makes sense when we look at some of the words that have greg as their root:

Congregate – to come together as a group
Segregate – to separate from a group

And then the one that got my attention – gregarious. I wouldn’t have thought that one so closely related, I admit. Until we consider that it means “someone who enjoys being with a group of people, the company of others.”

So there we have it. And now you can start calling that Greg you know “flock” or “herd” and see what he says. 😉

Word of the Week – The Dickens

Word of the Week – The Dickens

by | Oct 5, 2020 | Word of the Week

A phrase from the archives today…Original post published 2/20/2017
Another special request today, though there isn’t quite as much information on it as there was on last week’s . . .
The question was where the expression “the dickens” comes from.
Well, the answer’s a bit unclear. What we know is that it’s an English last name, taken from Richard. We’re not sure which Richard, or why the name became an exclamation; Shakespeare used the expression “I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.” (“Merry Wives of Windsor” Act 3, Scene 2), in which it’s clear that it’s a substitute for “the devil.” As for why? [Insert shrug here] Best guess by the Oxford English Dictionary is that it’s simply because it sounds similar.
There’s another bit of history surrounding it too, to account for some of its early uses. Apparently, in the 1500s there was a maker of wooden bowls who was rather infamous for losing money, to the degree that much literature of the 1500s would refer to bad investments as “bad as Dickens.”
Whatever the why, modern readers can be assured it has nothing to do with the Dickens with whom we are most familiar–Charles–as it predates him by several hundred years. 😉
Word of the Week – Decimate

Word of the Week – Decimate

by | Oct 4, 2020 | Word of the Week

So let’s look at the word decimate. We all know what it means–“to utterly destroy.” Right?

Well, as it turns out, yes–but. There’s always a “but,” right? LOL. Decimate actually has a much more precise meaning that I was completely unaware of.

If we look at the root of the word, we see dec in there, which is Latin for “ten.” And decimus is “one-tenth.” So decimate, which is a verb form of “one-tenth,” actually gives us a little history lesson. If a Roman legion mutinied or showed cowardice, they could be decimated as a punishment. Which is to say, one out of every ten soldiers would be executed. (!!!) Originally, then, decimate meant that an army would be reduced in strength by 10%. But over the years, the word began to be applied more loosely to any big loss.

Word of the Week – Myriad and Million

Word of the Week – Myriad and Million

by | Sep 28, 2020 | Word of the Week

When we think about  numbers, we don’t often consider that once upon a time, they didn’t go very high. But in fact, in ancient days, there weren’t words for anything greater than “ten thousand.” In the Ancient Greek and Roman eras, this was the largest number known, and myriad was the world used for it.

It was in fact because this was the largest named number that myriad also came to mean “countless, innumerable, vast amount.”

So what about million? It literally means “great thousand” and didn’t come along in any language until the 13th century. Even once it had taken on a more precise meaning, it was used only by mathematicians up into the 16th century!

 

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