We probably all know that cornucopia literally means “horn of plenty,” from the Latin.  And it’s been a traditional symbol of Thanksgiving and a fruitful harvest since…well…forever. But do you know the actual history of it? I didn’t!

The story of the cornucopia actually dates all the way back to Greek mythology. According to legend, the baby Zeus had to be hidden from his father, Kronos, who otherwise devoured all his children (yikes!). So Zeus was hidden away in a cave with a goat named Amalthea, who fed him. Well, Zeus was obviously no ordinary baby–he was a god. And had a bit more strength than a normal baby too. One day he accidentally broke off one of Amalthea’s horns. But of course, this is a world of magic. The horn then became imbued with some of Zeus’s power and began overflowing with food…and it never ran empty. That horn would always spill out food and drink. And so, the horn of plenty.

All through ancient cultures, Greek and Roman and many that came in contact with them, the cornucopia became a symbol of a good harvest and plentiful food. This symbology traveled up through the ages and into modern society too, becoming an image used to represent the good harvest and Thanksgiving. Perhaps you even have plates or napkins or tablecloths or other decorations featuring the horn. And now you know that it’s an image that has been used for thousands of years!

A couple weeks ago as Halloween stuff was everywhere, my family was talking one night about the word monster and where it might have come from. We were musing that since it ends in -ster, and -ster usually indicates “someone who does a particular task” (like spinster is one who spins, mobster is one who belongs to a mob, hipster is one who is hip), then clearly monster is someone who…er…mons. Whatever that might be. 😉 We decided it was someone who moans and proceeded to be moaning monsters…

Turns out this time we were WAY off, ha ha. In this case, that -ster ending is coincidental. Monster in fact comes from the Latin monstrum, which means “a bad omen, portend, or sign; something misshapen.”

See, in the ancient days, any time an animal or person was born with some deformity, it was believed that it was a sign of bad things to come. And in fact, after a bad thing happened, historians would search for the bad omen that should have warned them about it. The first chunk of Histories by Herodotus if full of all the evil portends, monsters, and abnormalities that had been found in the country in the decades leading up to the war. So a creature–whether human or animal–who displayed these visible signs would be called monstrous or a monster.

If you look at the root of that word itself, it’s actually from monere, “to remind or bring to mind.” Which is what an omen does, I suppose.

I’m sure we’ve all noticed that history and story look mighty similar. Well, for good reason–they’re both taken directly from the same French word, estoire or estorie,which came in turn from Latin and Greek. The literal meaning is “a chronicle of events,” and has been the meaning pretty much forever.

It took on its “fictional” connotation–a tale meant to entertain–around 1500. Even then, story and history were still used fairly interchangeably for quite a while. And it wasn’t until around 1690 that the word first appeared as a euphemism for a lie. It was first applied to “a newspaper article” around 1892.

Another interesting tidbit is the other definition of story–a floor of a building. This is from the same root word, and historians’ best guess as to why is that in the Middle Ages, the few buildings that had multiple stories with windows would have had stained glass or painted windows, which of course depicted…you guessed it! Stories. How fun is that?