Word of the Week – Cooler

Word of the Week – Cooler

When we think of a cooler, we think of a portable, insulated box that keeps things cold, right? That’s certainly the most common use these days, anyway.

But when cooler first joined the English language in the 1570s, it was instead referring to a vessel in which you’d put something hot that needed to cool off. (My family owns a farm, and in the shed there’s a cooler, which is an entire room, a walk-in refrigerator, which clearly comes from that same idea of making cool, not keeping cool.)

This “cool off” meaning was what led cooler to be adopted as a slang term for “jail” in 1884.

So what about those portable boxes? Those weren’t invented and named until 1944!

 

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Word of the Week – Lawn

Word of the Week – Lawn

Do you like mowing the lawn? Confession: I have never in my life done that job. My dad told me I should learn and I believe I said something like, “No thanks.” When living in an apartment during and after college, it was irrelevant. And after we moved to a house, we delegated tasks, and outdoor stuff like lawn care went to my husband. These days, my son has taken over much of the mowing. And I’m quite happy to let them at it. 😉

And as it turns out, my opinion is very classical. Lawn dates from about 1540 as “turf, a stretch of grass,” but not usually in a cultivated sense. It came directly from Middle English laune, which was “a meadow, open space in a forest or between woods.” Etymologists think this Middle English word was borrowed either from the Old French lande, meaning “heath, moor, barren land, clearing” or the Germanic ladam of similar meaning, from which we got land.

But it wasn’t until the 1730s that anyone thought to cultivate and mow these grassy expanses! The first written record we have of such a thing is from 1733.

Do you enjoy tending a lawn or does it rank as a dreaded chore in your family?

 

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Word of the Week – Beach

Word of the Week – Beach

It’s time to get technical with one of my favorite things: the beach.

When we say beach today, what do we think of? Generally speaking, the nice sandy shore abutting the ocean or a lake, right.

Turns out…we’re wrong. 😉 Okay, not wrong exactly, but that’s not where the word began. Beach dates from the 1530s as an English word, traced to the Old English bece, which meant not sand but “stream.” Beach itself was derived from that stream association but was used to describe the water-worn pebbles or rocks beside a body of water.

Rocks and stones and pebbles, not sand, per se–and originally that material itself, not the region. In parts of English, beach still refers to pebbles. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Of course, we know that plenty of shores don’t have pebbles but something even smaller–sand. And by the 1590s beach had already begun to be expanded to mean the shore, not just whatever it’s made up of.

And whatever the case, it’s one of my favorite things!

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Word of the Week – Picnic

Word of the Week – Picnic

Picnic. When we say the word, we have something definite in mind, right? To us, a picnic is an outdoor meal, often where we haul our food in with us from someplace else.

Turns out that meaning didn’t evolve until the mid-1800s. So what was it before?

Picnic was first used in 1748, but the event itself was rare before 1800, so far as historians can tell. And while always used to describe a certain type of meal, it was originally not meant in the way we think of now. You know what it was originally? A potluck! The earliest definitions of the word are for “a fashionable social affair, usually indoors, where every partaker brings something to contribute to the general table.”

Where did the word itself come from? That’s great question. Most etymologists agree we borrowed the word from French, but the root words are unclear. In fact, the Century Dictionary has this to say:

As in many other riming names, the elements are used without precision, but the lit. sense is appar. ‘a picking or nibbling of bits,’ a snatch, snack ….

Picnic basket dates from 1857, picnic table from 1858 for a folding table one would transport, and the metaphorical sense of something being easy is from 1886.

Do you enjoy picnics? Are you a blanket-on-the-group type, or a give-me-a-table-and-umbrella type?

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Word of the Week – Anniversary

Word of the Week – Anniversary

Today, David and I are celebrating our 23rd wedding anniversary!

So, of course, I thought we’d take a look at the word anniversary. That ann- prefix gives us a good idea where it comes from, sharing a root as it does with annual, from the Latin annus, for year. Latin also has anniversarium, from which English directly borrowed the word.

Originally, though, this wasn’t a word used for wedding dates or even birthdays, despite it’s very literal definition of “annual return of a certain date of the year.” Originally, the word was reserved for the day of death, especially martyrdom, of saints!

Who knew?

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Word of the Week – Camp

Word of the Week – Camp

Do you like to go camping? If so, do you prefer tents or campers?

These days, much of our camping is for recreation and leisure, but I daresay none of us will be surprised to learn that it wasn’t always so. We’re aware of travelers and military making camp when they come to a halt for the day…but do you know where the word really comes from?

Camp has been in English since about 1520, coming to us via French, who in turn got the word from the Latin campus, which means… “a field.”

Originally these wide fields where people stopped to rest was used solely in a military sense–“where armies lodge temporarily.” It only took about 30 years, though, for non-military people to borrow the term. And because so many travelers had cause to camp for the night, plenty of words sprang up around it, like camp-stool in the 1790s, camp-meeting as a religious service that took place in a field (primarily Methodist) by 1809, and camp-followers for the people not military but who traveled with them, like washer-women and other service people, by 1810.

The metaphorical sense of “people adhering to a certain doctrine” is from the 1870s.

As for camping just for fun? That’s unique to modern times.

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