by Roseanna White | Apr 9, 2018 | Word of the Week
I looked this one up, wanting to use it in a book set in 1917…only to find a history I knew nothing about!
So mannequin has been around since 1902, but it wasn’t a form used to display clothes. Or rather, not a non-living one. When mannequin first appeared, it was the term used for a fashion model! So those well-formed young ladies who modelled clothes were the mannequins, not the dress-forms used in display windows. That meaning didn’t come along until 1939!
That said, the word did sometimes mean “artificial man” before 1902, apparently especially in the translation of Hugo. This because it’s directly from French.
Interesting to note that we also have the word manikin, from the Dutch for “little man,” which was specifically a jointed figure used by artists. So the little 4-inch tall artist’s model I got my daughter for Christmas is a manikin. The meanings have blended over the years, but they were once two distinct things from two different languages. Who knew?
by Roseanna White | Mar 26, 2018 | Holidays, Word of the Week
I’ve done this Word of the Week before, but it was six years ago, so I figured a revisit wouldn’t be begrudged by anyone. 😉
When Anglo-Saxon Christians first started celebrating the Mass of
Christ’s Resurrection, they gave it the name Easter, after Eastre, the
goddess of fertility and spring, whose holiday was likely the vernal
equinox. Have you ever looked up Eastre? She was a magician-goddess, and one of her tricks was to turn a chicken into a rabbit…but it still laid eggs. This, friends, is where we get the Easter Bunny bringing eggs for our baskets. Not exactly something that has to do with why we’re celebrating the day as Christians…
Now, all neighboring languages use a word derived from Latin pasche, or passover, for the holiday. (Which makes a whole lot more sense. I really wish English did this too!)
Easter eggs are attested from 1824 (though let it be noted that eggs are part of the Passover feast too, so there’s legitimate reason to include them in Resurrection celebrations). The Easter Bunny is from 1909. And as a
matter of fact, Easter Island is so named because the discoverer did so
on Easter Monday.
Although Christianity has a long history of “taking over” pagan
holidays and traditions and using them to get new converts to observe
Christianity instead, I have to say I don’t like the English word. I’d
never paused to consider it until my piano teacher back in the day
refused to use the word “Easter” and instead called it “Resurrection
Day.” (Of which I fully approve!) She would even re-title songs for our
recitals when necessary. One year I was playing “Easter Song” on the
organ, and it became “Resurrection Song.”
This is something I try to do in my speech, though I do frequently slip and old habits take over. But I’ve at least trained my kids to correct me. 😉 So around here, we’ll be celebrating Resurrection Day this Sunday–with a sunrise service, a breakfast at church, and then visiting a local nursing home before the family gathers for a scavenger hunt and dinner.
How do you celebrate the resurrection of our Lord?
by Roseanna White | Mar 19, 2018 | Word of the Week
Today’s Word of the Week is actually just inspired by
www.etymonline.com‘s trending word list, LOL. Which is funny, because those who know me well know that my church has actually opted to keep Saturday as the Sabbath rather than Sunday, so you might think I have an agenda with this word…but in fact, it just has an interesting history!
Our word for
sabbath does come directly from the Hebrew
shabbath (that ‘th’ is pronounced like a ‘t’), which is from the verb
shabath, literally meaning “he rested.” In English it was spelled
sabbat until the 16th century. Interesting to note that it didn’t just mean “a day of rest” but specifically “Saturday as a day of rest” until the 15th century. Up until then, though the Christian Church had adopted Sunday as their official day of worship long before, they never called it the Sabbath, only the Lord’s Day.
But the part that I actually found interesting here is that the very word for Saturday in many languages comes from sabbath–pretty much all Latin or Greek derived languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, German, Romanian, Hungarian, and many more.
English’s Saturday is of course from Saturn–and was preserved in English and other Norse languages largely because they had no god that would compete with the Roman Saturn, so they felt no objection to it when the Romans brought that name for the day of the week to their regions, LOL. But as Christianity spread in other regions, it was changed in the languages mentioned above away from the name of a Roman god and to something in keeping with biblical principles.
by Roseanna White | Mar 12, 2018 | Word of the Week
This week, something fun is happening, and I’m celebrating by making all the week’s blog posts go to the theme. This week, the book previously known as Love Finds You in Annapolis, Maryland will re-release from WhiteFire as A Heart’s Revolution. On Wednesday, I’ll be going behind the cover design process, and on Thursday–official re-release day–a cool contest will be launching!
Today, we’re taking a look at the word I chose for my new title…a word that’s very much a theme in the book.
Revolution
We’re all familiar with the word, of course. But when it first entered the English language in the 1300s, it had nothing to do with political unrest or change. Rather, it was a word used to describe the revolving of celestial bodies. It’s from Old French revolucion, literally “a course, a revolving.” Which in turn came from the Latin revolvere, “to turn, to roll back.”
This sense of turning and rolling let the word by the mid-1400s to take on a generalized meaning of “an instance of great change in affairs.” But around 1600, it had been applied specifically to great changes in political circles and the new meaning of “an overthrow of an established political system” came about–specifically, it was used for the expulsion of the Stuart dynasty under James II in 1688, when the power in England was transferred to William and Mary.
And of course, eventually we had the American Revolution. Which is the backdrop into which I put Lark Benton and Emerson Fielding, in A Heart’s Revolution. If you haven’t read this early novel of mine yet, I hope you seize the chance!
by Roseanna White | Mar 5, 2018 | Word of the Week
A couple weeks ago on the radio, I heard someone musing about the shift of the university experience from its origins. He was saying how university came from uni (one) + verity (truth), and how in recent years people have forgotten the one-truth bit and are instead treating it as place where they should question truth rather than learn it.
I found this intriguing, so of course went to look it up. And went, “Um…no, not really.” 😉
Uni does indeed mean “one.” Of course. But versity is not from veritas, the Latin word for “truth,” but rather from versus, the Latin word for “turn.” Universe is more the root–meaning “the whole, the aggregate, the collective.”
That is what university is from…the collective of the academic world. Which does still harken unto unity. There’s a reason it’s not called “the diversity.” The purpose of a university isn’t to highlight differences, but to form a community. A oneness.
If you went to college, did you experience this community at your institution? I went to a very small school, and St. John’s (though not a university by the modern definition because there aren’t different “colleges” of study within it) is really all about the community. All about the common experience we have while there, despite our different backgrounds or interests or beliefs. We were about the uni-, not the di-. And I love that about it.
by Roseanna White | Feb 26, 2018 | Word of the Week
Yet another word I just never bothered to look up…but once I did, I was a bit surprised!
Did you know that family didn’t mean “parents with their children” until 1660, though it was an English word since the early 1400s??? I sure didn’t!
So what did it mean before? “Servants of a household.” Well, huh! Interesting. From there, it shifted every so slightly into, “all the members of a household; the estate, the property; the household, including relatives and servants.” Keeping in mind this would have been during a time when relatives far and wide would often come to live under a single roof.
Family comes from the Latin famulus, which meant “a slave or servant.” We’re not sure where that word comes from in Latin, but we do know it was never used for our modern definition of “family.” That was reserved for domus. (Think: domestic.) This obviously shares a root with familiar, which comes about because those servants were party to one’s private affairs.
So then, from that broad sense of “one’s entire household, including servants,” the definition eventually narrowed again to be just “parents with their children.”
As an adjective,
family has been in use since about 1600. “In a family way” (pregnant) is from 1796. But one I found interesting is that
family man as we know it now is from 1856, but earlier it was used to mean a thief! (Because of the fraternity of thieves. Think mafia family type of thing).
This is really just a snapshot of the word’s evolution and current meanings, but an interesting one, for sure!
I looked this one up, wanting to use it in a book set in 1917…only to find a history I knew nothing about!
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. 