There’s a bit of irony in the fact that we use artwork depicting leprechauns to celebrate the feast day of a saint who brought Christianity to Ireland, but…you know. Nothing says “Irish” like St. Pat, shamrocks, and leprechauns, so I thought it would be fun to look up the word as we draw near to St. Patrick’s Day, when so many Americans like to honor their Irish roots.

Leprechaun has various spellings in English, and we all have an image of a cute-if-mischievous little green-clad fairie when we think of them…much like Lucky of Lucky Charms, I daresay. But where does the word come from?

The word comes from the Old Irish luchorpán, which, in turn, is built of two root words: lú, meaning “small,” and corp, meaning “body.” So our idea of leprechauns being little tiny creatures is spot on. There’s some speculation as to whether the Irish luchorpan are also related to the Roman festival of Lupercalia, which was a pastoral festival celebrating the she-wolf who supposedly raised the founders of Rome…and it was a raucous festival. Linked to fertility and the warding off of evil, this festival could get, ahem, out of hand. It’s possible that when Romans encountered the Irish and their stories, they deemed leprechauns to be “little Lupercali.” Though Irish folklore usually denotes leprechauns as being solitary creatures, so that similarity in spelling could be purely coincidental.

While we’re talking about irony, though, it’s a bit ironic that leprechauns have, in modern times, come to be such an icon for things Irish…because they’re actually rarely noted in older folklore. They’re usually described as tiny old men wearing a hat and coat, often making shoes or guarding gold, and always making trouble. Like most Irish fairy lore, these little guys are mischievous and especially fond of practical jokes.

Word Nerds Merch!

Guy is a word that, these days, can mean any generic group of people of mixed genders but more specifically, things relating to males. Dudes. Bros. Men.

But it started life in the English language meaning “a small rope, wire, or chain.” Um…what?

Guy is actually related to guide (not surprising when you think about it), and when you think about a guy wire. It’s been used in that way since the 1620s, as well for other guiding equipment like cranes and derricks, and it traces its roots back to Germanic words that basically mean “guide” or “guard.”

So what’s the deal? How did it change so drastically?

For that, we can thank a terrorist. Guy was also a French given name, related to the Italian Guido. And Guy Fawkes was one of the members of a rebellion against the English crown in 1605–the one caught with the gunpowder. We’ve probably all heard of Guy Fawkes Day, even those of us across the pond. Well, a critical part of the celebration of this day in November on which the king and Parliament were not blown up, was to parade about one’s town with an effigy of Guy Fawkes. Usually poorly dressed, because what commoners were going to donate good clothes to such a cause?

And so a guy began, by the early 1800s, to mean “a poorly dressed man,” like those effigies. But once we attribute a word to a man of a particular state, it seems the meaning is likely to evolve. Within 60 years, guy could mean pretty much any man and had become a synonym for “fellow.”

So there you go, guys. 😉 Once it meant “fellow,” our modern meaning was but a whisper away.

Word Nerds Merch!

This one is short but fun. I often state (ahem…complain) that I have a backlog of work I’m trying to plow through. And you all know what I mean.

But back in the 1680s when the word was coined, backlog meant something far different. In fact, it was a very literal log. As in, wood. That you put in the fire. It was the biggest log in the load, placed at the back of the fire to concentrate the heat and keep the blaze going strong. Which, if you’re like me, cues an “Oh, of course!”

So…how did it change its meaning?

Well, in the 1880s, backlog had taken on a figurative sense of “something stored for later use.” That transition kinda makes sense, right? You might have set aside good logs to act as those backlogs.

Well, over the course of the next 50 years, that “stored up” meaning shifted in “unfulfilled orders,” which was likely influenced by the other meaning of the word log–a record.

So there we have it!

Word Nerds Merch!

If you look up silly in the dictionary today, you come across a couple definitions.

Those all match the uses I know I’ve seen for the word, right? And it’s a word I’ve used a lot when my kids were younger for when they were acting goofy. Silly is a word we often said with laughter, with joy. It’s a fun word.

And I had no idea that it began life meaning something rather different.

In Middle English, the word was spelled seely, and it was taken from the Old English equivalent that meant “happy, fortuitous, prosperous.” The Old English came in turn from the Old German selig, which means “blessed, happy, blissful.”

The fact that the pronunciation, and hence the spelling, changed is no great surprise–that long double E was shortened and changed to an I in either speech or spelling or both in all sorts of words. But the progression of the meaning is fascinating.

The journey went something like this. From “happy” it moved into “blessed.” But “blessed” was used primarily of religious giftings, so silly began to mean “pious” or “innocent” around 1200. As with many other words that had something to do with “innocent,” by the end of the century, it could mean “harmless”…and from there, it shifted to “pitiable” and “weak.” Throughout the 1400s and 1500s, it evolved into “feeble in mind, foolish, lacking reason.”

Of course, we know that innocence does not mean foolish…but all too often, we equate the two.

By the mid-to-late 1800s, the idea of being knocked silly, as in “dazed or stunned by a blow” entered the picture. But just a bit before that, in 1858, we also a see that connection to childhood things that I associate the word with–“a silly person” was one who wrote for or entertained children (how fun is that?).

Word Nerds Merch!

With Valentine’s Day upon us, I thought it would be fun to pick a “romantic” word to examine today…and flirt wins because it’s a rather hilarious evolution. Because it didn’t always mean what it does now!

In fact, flirt began life in English around 1550 as the very opposite of what we think of today. It means “to turn your nose up or sneer at someone.”

Say whaaaaaat?

Not long after that, flirt and flick were used interchangeably…and then flirt and flit would be used interchangeably. This is a word that just didn’t know what it wanted to mean!

So how did it come to land on its current meaning? Etymologists have several theories. It could be because flit was used frequently to describe the actions of “giddy girls.” Or it could have been influenced by the French fleureter, which was “to speak sweet nonsense,” a word that was used to describe bees flitting from pretty flower to pretty flower and was borrowed to describe people who did the same, especially in conversation.

At any rate, our current meaning had evolved by the 1770s…and this flitting, flicking, flirting word finally settled on a meaning. And it hasn’t looked back since.

Word Nerds Merch!