Most of us probably aren’t all that familiar with the words susurrous and susurration, to be intrigued by the history of said words…but they are words perfectly suited to autumn, so I thought it would be fun to highlight them and give you an extra word in your vocabulary.

What do these words mean? They’re both used (as the noun and adjective forms) to describe whispering sounds, from the Latin susurrus, which means “hum or whisper.” The noun has been in use in English since the 1400s, but the adjective didn’t make its way into use until the mid-1800s, interestingly enough.

So if you find yourself needing a word to describe the whispering rustle of leaves on the ground or blowing in the breeze, now you know what to use!

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Is there “sweater weather” where you live? So far in West Virginia, we’ve had a couple cool days but quite a few surprisingly warm ones. Between that and surgery, there have been a few random moments where I honestly forget what season we’re moving into and have to stop and think about it, LOL.

But I am a fan of sweaters. Thin ones, thick ones, patterned ones, pull-over ones, cardigan style ones. Have you ever paused, though, to wonder at the origin of the sweater?

The English word dates from around 1520, but it did NOT describe an article of clothing. Instead, it was very literally “a person who sweats,” implying that they did manual labor. By the 1680s it was used for things that caused one to sweat, but still not with clothing in mind. In the early 1700s is took on a new meaning, “a street ruffian who uses intimidation and violence to bully,” presumably because such a person would make one sweat. Around 1840, we see “one who overworks and underpays his employees,” (think sweatshop).

So when, you ask, did our modern version of a sweater come into being? While knitted garments have existed for millenia, the term sweater for them didn’t come around until the 1880s! And it was at first meant as a knitted, woolen garment by athletes with the goal of promoting sweat and thereby decreasing weight.

It was in the 1920s that sweaters became fashionable for both men and women and began to be called such, especially in America. Other parts of the English-speaking world still refer to the American sweater as pull-overs, jumpers, and cardigans (none of which have earlier origins).

Are sweaters a mainstay in your wardrobe, or do you prefer other kinds of cozy clothing? I will choose a sweater over a sweatshirt nearly every time!

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As November is upon us and with it come cooler temperatures for many of us, it seems like a great time to explore another reader request and look into the history of the tea bag.

People have been brewing tea for thousands of years, of course, but it wasn’t until the early 1900s that the invention of the tea bag made single-serving brewing so easy. So who gets credit for that invention? There’s actually a bit of debate.

In 1901, Roberta C. Lawson and Mary Molaren of Milwaukee filed a patent for what we know as a tea bag, though they called it a “tea leaf holder.” Their design used fabric with a loose mesh and called for the bag to be big enough for water to flow around the leaves but small enough to hold the leaves together. They focused on how much less waste of tea leaves their holder would necessitate.

But the first practical application came in 1908, when tea manufacturer Thomas Sullivan sent out some samples in silk pouches. He merely intended the pouch to be an easy way to send these small samples…but his customers plopped them right into their tea cups and poured water over them! They proved popular enough that Sullivan began receiving requests for the tea-filled bags, and he soon learned that silk didn’t allow water through well enough and changed to a gauze with a bigger mesh. Customers loved the ease of the tea bag in brewing a single cup and also the cleanup.

By the 1920s, the world’s biggest tea companies had jumped onto the tea bag bandwagon and were selling their teas in individual servings. The bags haven’t changed significantly since then, though they did move gradually from a pouch style to the bag we see most often today.

Are you a tea enthusiast? Do you prefer tea bags or loose leaf? I drink a lot of tea that I buy loose-leaf…but I also buy tea bags that you can fill up with this tea yourself, called T-sacs*. Very handy, and you can get two brews from each of these bags of loose leaf tea!

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Today’s Word of the Week comes from a reader request! Ready? Let’s take a look at the word elegant.

Elegant had been in the English language since the late 1400s, starting life with the meaning of “tastefully ornate.” Our English word came from the French élégant, which in turn comes from the Latin elegantem, an adjective meaning “choice, fine, tasteful.” The root of elegantem is actually eligere, a verb that means “to select with care, to choose.” This is the same root from which we get the word election! Did you realize those two were related? I didn’t!

Interestingly, the Latin adjective first carried the sense of “dantiy, fastidious” and was used as an insult or term of reproach. But eventually the Latin evolved to mean “tastefully refined,” which is what then carried over into French and English.

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Can you believe I’ve never featured pumpkin as a Word of the Week before? Gasp! And here it’s one of my favorite things about autumn in America!

The fruit native to North America has obviously been here well before English colonists named it, but our word for it dates from around 1640. It’s an alteration of the French word for melon, pompone or pumpion. The French, in turn, comes from the Latin peponem, which was used for melons and comes itself from the Greek pepon. What are the roots of the Greek word? “Ripe.” The notion was that the sun ripened or cooked the melons to give them their color. The -kin ending is a diminutive that comes from Dutch and often added to the ends of words to make them cutesy. (That’s the Roseanna interpretation of a diminutive, LOL.)

So what about one of my favorite treats, pumpkin pie? That combination of words dates from 1650! By 1781, pumpkin head was used of those with a person with hair cut short all around their head, and pumpkin was applied to “a stupid, self-important person” from the 1800s onward.

Are you a pumpkin fan? As a decoration? A food? A flavor? Do you like to carve them? (My answer to all of these is a resounding YES!)

Word Nerds Merch!