by Bookworm Mama | Aug 12, 2019 | Word of the Week
A couple years ago, I remember reading to the kids about Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s visit to Japan in 1854, and how it opened Japan to trade with the US for the first time. But I didn’t realize that the word tycoon came directly from this visit!
During Perry’s meetings, the shogun’s supporters wanted to make it very clear to the guests that the shogun was actually more important than the emperor when it came to making decisions. So they called him taikun, which is literally “great prince”–(ta, great + kiun, prince). Perry brought the word home with him, and it apparently quickly caught on.
During Lincoln’s term as president, his cabinet members began to affectionately refer to him as the tycoon (the Americanized spelling of the word). This nudged the meaning from “great prince” to “important person.” Only after World War One did the meaning travel a bit more to mean “wealthy and powerful businessman.”
by Roseanna White | Aug 5, 2019 | Word of the Week
If you saw my post a few weeks ago on excruciating/crucifixion, you might just look at the word crucial and say, “Well, huh. That has that cruc root in it too!”
And you’d be right. Crucial also has the same root, which literally means “cross” in Latin. But in the case of this word, we actually owe Francis Bacon thanks for our meaning of “critical, of the highest importance.”
You see, in addition to being a torture device, a cross was also a very simple form used for practical things like signposts. In his work, Instantius Crucis in 1620, Bacon takes the literal signpost and its Latin word and uses it metaphorically–when you see a signpost, you know to pay attention, right? Following the right direction will be of the utmost importance to where you end up on a journey.
Well, by the 1730s English had adopted the literal meaning of crucial–shaped like a cross. And by 1830, the metaphorical meaning had come along too. I always find it interesting when the later, symbolic meaning has completely overtaken the literal one in modern speech!
by Roseanna White | Jul 29, 2019 | Word of the Week
Did you know that the word adept is linked to alchemy?
Yeah…neither did I.
Adept is from the Latin adeptus, literally meaning “having attained” and was introduced into English in the Middle Ages among alchemists. If you showed particular knowledge of this art, you were known as “an adept.”
Over the years, adept broadened to include anyone who exhibits a high level of skill at something, though for quite a while it was only a noun used for the person, not an adjective (interesting, since the Latin word is an adjective). Also interesting to note is that adept implies a natural and acquired ability, as opposed to expert, which implies experience and practice.
by Roseanna White | Jul 22, 2019 | Word of the Week
When I think about Roman tax collectors, I admit that most of what I know has been gleaned from the Gospel passages dealing with them, LOL.
But did you know that tax collectors in Roman days would collect all the taxes in baskets woven from rushes? The Latin word for this basket was fiscus.
See where I’m going with this? Yep. Quite a lot of English words dealing with money have the -fisc root in there, the most obvious one being fiscal. I had no idea that it was because of the basket used to collect tax money!
Even more interesting is that it’s the same root in confiscate. Because, of course, if you didn’t pay those taxes, the government agents had every legal right to confiscate your money. Our English word does come directly from the Latin. It was used in English strictly for seizures of property of criminals, which would go into the treasury, until the 1800s, when it took on a broader sense of any seizing, whether by authority or as if by one.
by Roseanna White | Jul 15, 2019 | Word of the Week
This seems like a nice word for the middle of summer, doesn’t it? We know it as meaning “lazy, languid.” Not always a good thing, but on a summer day, you might be inclined to give it less negative connotation, right?
This word has a fun history, though! It dates to the 1700s but is inspired by an expression of centuries gone by. Namely, when someone wanted to express regret for a failure, they would say “Alack the day!” Which is more or less saying they’re sorry that day happened. (I’ve had a few of those…)
Well, this eventually became the word lackaday. And if you used this word too often, you came to be known as lackadaisical.
It’s worth noting that lax is a completely different word with a different history, though it’s thought that the similar sound may have influenced our modern meaning of the lackadaisical a bit.
by Roseanna White | Jul 8, 2019 | Word of the Week
We all know what an anthology is, right? A collection of pieces by various writers or artists (or by a single author) all gathered into one volume.
I’d never paused to think about how old these are, but in fact, the English word anthology as a collection of poems dates back to the 1600s…and is borrowed from Latin and Greek words for the same idea, proving anthologies have been around pretty much forever.
But did you know where the word comes from? Anthos actually means “flower,” and legein is “to gather.” So an anthology is literally a gathering of flowers, though it’s been used for centuries to mean literature, not a bouquet.
Still, I love that image, don’t you? That when we collect beautiful words, it’s like arranging blooms together…
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.