by Roseanna White | Jun 3, 2019 | Word of the Week
This week I’m mixing it up just a wee bit and referring you to another fun blog post that explores the origins of 9 common English sayings.
Language is such a fascinating area of study, and each has its own unique, complex set of intricacies that makes it difficult for those of another dialect to understand and learn. But this is what makes our written word so beautiful—the diversity in our language that results from different cultures, historical events, etc. Whether speaking or writing, we’re constantly using figurative phrases and idioms that, although make perfect sense to us, might perplex someone who doesn’t fully understand our jargon. Invaluable created a neat visual that highlights some of our most-used idioms and how each came from a literal event of the past. Explore the history and origins of our language below!
Just click on the links or the graphic below to visit the full post on the histories of these phrases!
Thanks for joining me today! Which of these is your favorite to use?
by Roseanna White | May 27, 2019 | Word of the Week
Okay, when I say truffle, I mean the chocolate. Period. At least in terms of things I’d like to put into my mouth. 😉 But I am, of course, also aware of the fungus sold for ridiculous amounts of money that answers to the same name. And I’ve wondered why these two very different foods share a name.
Truffle, the fungus, most certainly came first. It dates as an English word from the 1500s, taken from French, which is in turn from a Latin word meaning “edible root.” Truffles have long been considered a delicacy in Europe, and both dogs and pigs have been trained to hunt them (as seen in The Lost Heiress–the one time I used the word truffle and didn’t mean chocolate, LOL.)
So where did the confection version come from? Apparently, these delightful chocolates were invented in the 1920s and given the name truffle because they resembled the fungus and were a special treat.
Hmm. Not sure I approve of the connection, LOL. But I definitely do approve of the confection!
by Roseanna White | May 20, 2019 | Word of the Week
No one wants to be ostracized, right? It’s a banishment, or a more metaphorical exclusion. Either way, not good.
But it has a looooong history.
Ostracize actually comes from the Greek word ostrakon–a piece of broken pottery. See, back in the day in Athens, someone who was deemed dangerous to society but who hadn’t committed a crime could be officially banished. The votes were cast on these pieces of broken pottery, and if there were enough gathered, then the person was ostracized–cut off and cast out. Interestingly, this could only be done to men…because women weren’t citizens.
The word has been retained pretty much unchanged all this time, entering into English in the late 1500/early 1600s.
by Roseanna White | May 13, 2019 | Word of the Week
This ranks as another of those words that surprised me!
I’ve long known that people used to call small portraits
miniatures–but what I didn’t realize was that the “small” part wasn’t the root of the word.
In fact, the word miniature comes from the Latin miniare, which means “to paint red.” (Red being one of the primary colors used in illumination [illustration] of manuscripts.) Who knew?! So back in the day, when people were making books by hand, they would put small pictures onto the page and color them in, which they, therefore, called “miniatures.” So naturally, it was only a matter of time before it came to mean any “small picture.” And from there, it shifted to mean anything small!
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?
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.