Word of the Week – Swagger

Word of the Week – Swagger

Time for another word brought to us by Shakespeare!

This time we’re looking at swagger. We all recognize a swagger when we see it–“to strut defiantly or insolently.” But did you know that the base word swag means “to sway”? So it’s the swaying motion of that strut that gives it its name.

Shakespeare was apparently quite fond of the word, using it in King Lear, Henry IV Part 2, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The verb came first in Shakespeare in the 1580s, but the noun for such a strut didn’t follow until 1727! I’m surprised at how long it took to cross that part-of-speech divide!

Word Nerds Unite!

Read More Word of the Week Posts

Word of the Week – Seconds

Word of the Week – Seconds

Time for another word brought to us by Shakespeare!

This time, we’re looking at seconds. Now, first, note the -s on the end of the word. We’re not talking here about second, but about seconds…and we don’t mean the measure of time. 😉

The meaning that Shakespeare coined for us in one of his sonnets circa 1600 is “articles below the first in quality.” So think of items pulled from production that aren’t quite up to full quality so are sold at a discount. Shakespeare first used this as an extension of the natural meaning of “following the first” and it stuck!

Now, maybe your favorite meaning of seconds is a second helping. (I mean…) If so, then you should know that that meaning dates from 1792. So we can’t thank Shakespeare for that one, but that’s no reason not to enjoy it. In fact, I’m going back for seconds on my coffee right now…

Word Nerds Unite!

Read More Word of the Week Posts

Word of the Week – Hint

Word of the Week – Hint

I love finding words that Shakespeare was the one to introduce to us…or at least, the first one we have record of. Goes to show the power of a writer, right? 😉

Did you know that hint also comes to us in its current meaning of “an indirect suggestion intended to be caught by the knowing” via Shakespeare as well? It’s true! He first used it right around 1600. It traces from Middle English hinten, which meant “to inform,” which is in turn from Old English hentan, which means “to seize.”

The noun form pre-dates the verb by about 40 years. By the late 1700s, the OED also records the meaning of “a small piece of practical information.” You know, like “I like coffee and chocolate. Hint, hint.” 😉

Word Nerds Unite!

Read More Word of the Week Posts

Word of the Week – Unfriend

Word of the Week – Unfriend

For those of us living in the age of social media, unfriend is a verb describing the act of removing someone from your social media friend list. However, you might be surprised to realize that the word has quite a long history!

To be fair, it wasn’t a verb until around 2007, when it began to be used as just described on Facebook. But unfriend has been a noun meaning “enemy” in Scotland as early as the 1200s, and was still used commonly into the 1800s! And Shakespeare got in on the unfriend action too–he frequented used unfriended to describe someone who didn’t have any trusted friends.

So see there, everything new is just a borrow from something old. 😉 (Okay, maybe not everything…but certainly in this case!)

Word Nerds Unite!

Read More Word of the Week Posts

Word of the Week – Rude and Rudimentary

Word of the Week – Rude and Rudimentary

Ever wonder what rude and rudimentary have in common? They sure sound alike…but these days, rude indicates bad manners, and rudimentary means basic. Are they related?

You bet they are! Both come from the same Latin root, rudis, which means “rough, crude, unlearned.” Think of this not as necessarily bad, but as “raw”–from there, rude came into English meaning the same thing by the late 1200s, with that sense of “coarse, unfinished.” But it only took about a hundred years for people to begin applying it to each other when they did mean something negative–because if one’s manners are raw and unfinished and coarse, that usually meant one “ill-mannered, boorish, ignorant, uneducated” or “marked by incivility.”

As for rudimentary, it starts from that same root, but didn’t become a word until 1819, but from the 1500s onward we had the same meaning carried in rudimental. Here, they both mean “undeveloped or elemental.” Rudiments is also from the 1540s, with that meaning of “elements”–the raw things that haven’t had anything done to them.

Word Nerds Unite!

Read More Word of the Week Posts

Word of the Week – Hurry

Word of the Week – Hurry

Did you know that Shakespeare was the first to use the word hurry (at least in writing)? It’s true! And he used it quite often. But though he gives us our first recorded uses, the word comes from a long line of similar words, going back to the Proto-Germanic (that just means first or root Germanic language) hurza, which meant “to move with haste.” From that came the Middle English hurren, which was used to describe the rapid vibration and buzz of insects. Hurry may have adopted its new ending because of the influence of harry.

Other Germanic languages like Middle High German and Old Swedish both have similar words (hurren and hurra), which both mean “to whirl or whir, to move fast.”

Hurry up as a command to make haste dates from the 1890s.

Word Nerds Unite!

Read More Word of the Week Posts