by Roseanna White | May 6, 2019 | Word of the Week
No, I’m not advocating one of anything. 😉 I just read the history of the word in my son’s vocab book and thought I’d share.
Do you already know the history of this one? I think I’ve probably heard it before, and I had a vague recollection that it was a name, but the facts certainly hadn’t stuck in my brain.
So, in the 1880s, Captain Charles Boycott was in charge the of the Irish estates of the Earl of Erne. I’m sure everyone remembers that this was not exactly an affluent time for the Irish. With potato famines and some absolutely awful laws that forbade the import of cheap foods to the island, people were quite literally starving to death. Well, Boycott refused to lower the rents for people on the estates, and he would evict anyone who couldn’t pay.
The people of County Mayo had had enough. They banded together and agreed that no one would have any dealings with this man until he relented. They wouldn’t work in his house. Shopkeepers refused to sell him anything. Basically, anything that required a local was refused to him and his household.
I daresay many of us have a longing–secret or not-so–to be a household name. Well, Boycott soon was…though probably not like he’d ever wanted. Very soon after this, boycott came to mean joining together to refuse to have dealings with someone or something. And it didn’t stop with entering the English language as such, either–the word has also been adopted by French, German, Dutch, and Russian.
by Roseanna White | Apr 29, 2019 | Word of the Week
This is one I’ve never thought to look up the meaning of before! But it appeared in my son’s vocabulary book, so I’ll happily soak up the knowledge. 😉
Opportunity comes to us via French, directly from Latin. It means, in all those languages “fitness, convenience, suitableness, favorable time.” But what I didn’t realize was that it’s actually a combination of three Latin words: ob portum veniens. Literally, “coming toward a port.”
According to the vocab book, sailors identified “coming toward a port” as when they’d have the chance/time/be able to do the things they couldn’t do at sea. It may also have to do with the fact that they had to await the tides and weather to be able to come into port, so that “favorable” circumstance was kind of built into it already.
Who knew it was so nautical?
by Roseanna White | Apr 22, 2019 | Word of the Week
I always find it interesting when a word with different meanings comes, in fact, from different root words. Such is the case with scale.
Though that single English word can mean many different things–fish’s scale, or a scale that builds up on something; to scale a mountain; something that measures weights–none of those meanings actually have anything to do with each other!
The first meaning comes from the Old French escale, meaning “shell,” hence being applied to thin, hard plates on animals.
The Latin word scala means ladder, which is where our “climb” meaning comes from.
And there’s an old Scandinavian word, skal, that means “bowl”–which were used for measuring in the old-timey scale versions that we all recognize but probably don’t have in our house these days. 😉
Now, why we gave them all the same spelling in English…I have no idea, LOL.
by Roseanna White | Apr 15, 2019 | Word of the Week
So mediocre has meant the same thing since it entered English round about 1580: “of moderate quality, neither good nor bad.”
But I’d never really looked it up to realize where it comes from. Medi- of course means “middle” or “halfway” in Latin, which we know from other words like medium, etc. But what about the second half of the word? That comes from the Latin ocri, which means…”mountain.” Who knew? Mediocre is literally “halfway up the mountain.” From that literal meaning, the word has pretty much always meant “of middling height or station.”
I think what I like about this though is that “halfway up the mountain” implies (in my mind, at least) a journey. We all start at the bottom and hike our way up. Maybe we’re mediocre at something now, but that’s just because it’s a step along the way… 😀😀
by Roseanna White | Apr 8, 2019 | Word of the Week
Yet another homeschool-inspired Word of the Week–this one from my daughter, who bounced out to the kitchen the other day to say, “Do you know where the word sinister comes from?”
To which I replied, stopping what I was doing, “No! Tell me!” And so she did. 😀 (I adore my word-loving children, LOL.)
So apparently sinister comes Latin by way of Greek and literally means “from the left.” As soon as she said that, I said, “Of course!” I’m sure we’ve all heard the medieval superstition about the left side being unlucky–which was why left-handed children for centuries were forced to use their right hand in school.
But I hadn’t realized the full scope–and the complication–of this. Apparently this particular movement of “from the left” to “unlucky” and finally “evil” started with omen-reading. Greeks would always face north when reading omens. And so, things like bird flights seen on the left were considered bearers of ill-tidings and misfortune. However, Romans actually often faced south…and when they did so, omens seen on the left side were actually considered favorable! So in Latin, this word can actually mean two opposite things–the Greek-inspired “unfortunate” as well as their own “fortunate.” How confusing must that be?
Sinister entered English in the 15th century with the meaning of “prompted by malice, intending to deceive.” This meaning was directly influenced by the idea of something unfavorable coming from the left-hand side. But by the end of the century, the meaning we still know today–evil–had taken hold.
by Roseanna White | Mar 25, 2019 | Word of the Week
My daughter has been taking ballet since she was five, and it’s safe to say she is a very enthusiastic fan of the art. 😉 A few weeks ago she asked me to look up where the word comes from, so of course, I obliged.
Ballet comes to English from (shocker) French. Though interestingly, the original French word is actually the feminine ballette. It’s been in English since the 1660s, meaning “a theatrical, costumed dance telling a story.” The French word is, in turn, from the Italian balletto, which is a diminutive of ballo, meaning “to dance.” The Italian, of course, come from Latin (ballare) and the Latin in turn from the Greek ballezein, all of the same meaning.
What I don’t think I ever paused to realize is that this is also where ball, as in, “a large dance party,” comes from (duh, right?). Perhaps simply because we pronounce ballet and ball differently, my brain just hadn’t made that connection. But OF COURSE!
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.