This is one that has meant its current meaning long enough that I never have to wonder if I can use it in a manuscript. Still, it got its start elsewhere–just a looooong time ago. Let’s break down the word. “Hand” and
“some.” Now how in the world did that come to mean “good looking”??

Well, first it meant “ready at
hand or easy to handle” in the 1400s. Literally hand + some. By the
mid/late 1500s the meaning had been extended to mean “considerable, of
fair size.” And then within ten years, that became “of fine form,” which
easily becomes “good-looking.” Then it extended further to mean
“generous” (i.e. a handsome reward) a hundred years after that, in 1680.

A fairly significant change in 280 years, especially when you consider that it hasn’t changed any more since!

At church last week I was joking with my son about something and declared it “Beyond the pale.” At which point he, of course, asked what in the world that meant.

Hmm. Good question. This being me, I immediately pulled up etymonline.com (so not cool, Mom) and looked up what archaic meaning of pale had led to that saying–because obviously, it doesn’t mean “beyond fair-skinned.” Though my husband jokingly insisted it did.

Turns out that back in ye olden days, in the 13th century, a pale was a stake or pole used to create boundaries between things. By the 14th century, it had taken on the figurative meaning of “any boundary or restriction.” I love that the website says this meaning is “barely surviving” in phrases like “beyond the pale.” So true! Something we still say, but without really knowing why we say it! So “beyond the pale” would literally mean that something pushed beyond the limits.

Are there any other phrases you use whose actual meaning you’re uncertain of? I’d love to look into them!

Since last week we looked into peach, I thought it would be fun to move to an autumn fruit this week and explore the history of the word apple.

Apple is from Old English, which means it’s been around pretty much forever. But it didn’t always mean that specific fruit we identify as an apple today. Nope, is used to mean “any kind of fruit.” (Excluding berries, but including nuts, interestingly.) And English isn’t the only language that can claim that. The same was true of the similar words in French, German, Dutch, Norse, Irish, and even Slavonic. That would be why we then get words like pomme de terre in French–“apple of the earth” for potato.

It also explains why the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden has come to be thought of as an apple. Because it was called an apple for hundreds of years–not because people meant that specific rosy-skinned, white-fleshed fruit, but because it simply meant FRUIT!

So, funny story. When we moved from our old house to one on my mother-in-law’s property, my daughter was distraught over leaving the beautiful old weeping cherry tree we had at the other house. So her grandmother promised to plant her one here. And so she did…or so she thought, anyway. We waited years for it to grow, and it soon became clear it wasn’t a weeping anything. But that was okay.

Then this year, Cherry (why, yes, we name our trees) began to bear fruit. And I gotta tell you, those, ahem, cherries, were the biggest, fuzziest, yellowest cherries we ever did see. 😉 Yeah…so either Nonna got the trees she’d ordered mixed up, or they sent her the wrong one, LOL. Because Cherry is most assuredly a peach tree. And at the moment, I have a giant bowl full of small but lovely peaches on my counter, waiting to be cut up and frozen. So of course–word of the week!

While the English word peach comes straight from the French word pesche of the same meaning, if you trace it back to the Latin, it actually gets interesting. The Latin word actually means “Persian apple.” Peach trees originated in China, apparently, but they came to Europe by way of Persia. In fact, in Ancient Greek, the word persikos could mean EITHER Persian or peach! They were that interchangeable! I had no idea. But the Persians must have really loved their peaches if it was the fruit other nations associated so fully with them.

Peach began to be applied to people in the 1700s. First to mean “attractive woman” in the 1750s and then “a good person” around 1900.

And they’ve been my son’s favorite fruit since around 2010, when he first bit into one. 😉 I swear that boy could eat a whole basket of them in a day if we let him… How about you? Are you a peach fan?

We’re all familiar with the word stamina, meaning “strength to resist, endurance.” But did you know that it comes from the Latin word for “threads”?

The Latin, in turn, is from the Greek stemon…a thread. Specifically, the thread that the three Fates spun, measured out, and snipped for each human life. If someone had a long life–exhibiting fortitude and endurance and resistance to the bad things that could end said life early–they were thought to have long “threads of life.” Much stamina.

And just as a bonus–if you haven’t brushed up on your Greek mythology lately, LOL, the three fates are Clotho (the one who spun the threads), Lachesis (the one who measured it out), and Atropos (the one who cuts it).

Did you know that our word enigma actually comes from the Greek word for “fable”? I hadn’t! But apparently so.

Said Greek word is ainos. And since a fable is a tale whose meaning/message has to be puzzled out, ainos let to a verb ainissesthai, which means (go figure) “to puzzle out.” Well, the Greek was of course adopted into Latin and changed a bit, to aenigma. Sound familiar? This was a noun, meaning (you guess it!) “a puzzling speech or riddle.”

It officially joined English as enimga in the 1530s.