Word of the Week
Word history and etymology
Have you ever wondered when certain words started to be used in certain ways? Or how they even came about? If they’re related to other, similar-sounding words?
I wonder these things all the time. And so, for years I’ve been gathering interesting words together, looking at the etymology, and posting them in fun, bite-sized posts called Word of the Week. Here you’ll find everything from which definition of a word pre-dates another, to how certain holiday words came about, to what the original meaning was of something we use a lot today but in a very different way. And of course, the surprising words that we think are new but in fact are pretty ancient, like “wow”!
Word of the Week – The Dickens
A phrase from the archives today...Original post published 2/20/2017 Another special request today, though there isn't quite as much information on it as there was on last week's . . . The question was where the expression "the dickens" comes from. Well, the answer's...
Word of the Week – Decimate
So let's look at the word decimate. We all know what it means--"to utterly destroy." Right? Well, as it turns out, yes--but. There's always a "but," right? LOL. Decimate actually has a much more precise meaning that I was completely unaware of. If we look at the root...
Word of the Week – Myriad and Million
When we think about numbers, we don't often consider that once upon a time, they didn't go very high. But in fact, in ancient days, there weren't words for anything greater than "ten thousand." In the Ancient Greek and Roman eras, this was the largest number known,...
Mock Latin Words 5
I hope you've enjoyed the Mock Latin series! This is my final installment, and only one is mock Latin. The other two are just "mock" in general, but they were fun, so I thought I'd include them. 😉 Asquatulate - This is another word meant to poke fun at the person...
Mock Latin Words 4
Nearly through our Mock Latin series! I just have one more week of them after this one. 😉 Today we begin with a word I have used all the time, never realizing it was one of these "fake" constructions! Discombobulate - So obviously this is a fun word, which is why I...
Mock Latin Words 3
Time for the third installment of the Mock Latin series! Omnium gatherum ~ So technically, this one is only partly "mock." 😉 Omnium is indeed a Latin word for "of all things." Kind of like miscellaneous. In the 1520s (this one is OLD!), people came up with the...
Mock Latin Words 2
Today we're continuing our Mock Latin series with a few more totally fabricated, totally joke words that make me smile. =) Cruciverbalist - Our first word is actually quite new, dating from 1977. If you look at the parts of the word, we have the roots crux which means...
Mock Latin Words 1
After looking at circumbendibus last week, I decided it would be fun to do a series on Mock Latin words ~ words deliberately made up to sound like Latin even though they're not. Since they're completely fake, LOL, the etymology on these isn't very long, so I'm going...
Word of the Week – Circumbendibus
Circumbendibus. How fun is that word? You can almost guess the meaning just by listening to it, can't you? This is another selection from that Colonial-era word list I saw, and I absolutely LOVE this one. Circumbendibus simply means "a roundabout way or process." Like...
Word of the Week – Jollification
It's my birthday week, so I thought it would a fun time to look at this old-fashioned word, popular in the Colonial American era. =) Jollification is literally "making merry," from jolly + -ication ("to make") and dates from the 1760s. Though the adjective "jolly" had...
Word of the Week – Savvy
I recently saw a list of fun Colonial-era words that we should totally bring back into use. One of them was savvy, which anyone who watched Pirates of the Caribbean can hear in Jack Sparrow's voice. Well, just for the record, Jack was totally using it appropriately....
Word of the Week – Grand
A couple weeks ago, my husband said something about something costing "Ten Gs" and my mother-in-law said, "Where does that come from, anyway?" Cue the chime of "Word of the week!" from my kids, LOL. So obviously we knew that "G" was just short for grand. But why and...
Word of the Week – Cushy
A couple weeks ago a friend sent me a list of "18 English Words That Are Actually Hindi," and while quite a few of them I knew that about, others really surprised me. One of those was cushy. I knew that cushy meant "soft" and so I think I always imagined it came from...
Word of the Week – Hot Dog
(A revisit from 2012) Is summer hot dog season in your family? This year we've started grilling out on our campfire ring every Sunday with my mother-in-law, and hot dogs are pretty much always on the menu. But have you ever wondered where they got their name? Well, a...
Word of the Week – Quantum
I'm currently reading Siri Mitchell's State of Lies for my book club (SO GOOD!!!!), in which the heroine is a quantum physicist. (Which her 6-yr-old son calls a fizziest, which made me giggle.) I've been thoroughly enjoying all the science jokes on her T-shirts, and...
Word of the Week – Fence
Originally posted in May 2015 So, duh moment. Did you know that the noun fence--like, you know, the thing around your yard--is from defense? Yeah. Duh. I'd never paused to consider that, perhaps because the spelling has ended up different, but there you go! It has...
Word of the Week – Field Trip
This is another revisit...and since we were all sheltering at home for the last months of the school year, one that we're probably all thinking about with longing. 😉 Coming at you originally from May of 2015, when Rowyn was only 7 and Xoe was 9, which of course gave...
Word of the Week – Grapevine
Originally published June 2015 We've all heard it through the grapevine (and some of us might break into song at the mere mention...), but do you know where the saying comes from? I didn't--but I learned recently so thought I'd share. =) Grapevine, meaning "a rumor"...
Word of the Week – Salary and Salt
Leave it to my daughter to lean over in the middle of church and whisper, "Word of the week!" during the sermon--which is exactly what happened when my dad shared this fun little tidbit. ;-)Did you know that salary is from the same root as salt? Salary has meant...
Word of the Week – Sit, Twiddle, and Twirl
Originally published on 9/3/2012 Today I'm going to examine the origin of a particular phrase rather than a particular word. 😉 Back in the day when I originally examined this, as I was working on Whispers from the Shadows, my hero was exclaiming something about how it...
Word of the Week – Nauseous
Originally published 10/15/2012 Okay, y'all, I originally posted this seven and a half years ago, and my call for actual evidence to support the claim below netted me nothing but others who were curious, LOL. So I'm trying again--because this claim has since even...
Word of the Week – Mean
Originally posted 8/20/12 Mean is one of those words that I knew well would have been around forever, but I looked it up to see about some of the particular uses. And as usual, found a few surprises. =) As a verb, mean has meant "intend, have in mind" even back...
Word of the Week – Zone
Originally posted on 8/13/12 Once upon a time, I was looking up "war zone," and in so doing came across some interesting tidbits on zone. =) The noun dates to the late fourteenth century, coming directly from the Latin zona, which means "a geographical belt, celestial...
Word of the Week – Mayday
This is a very appropriate revisit from 2012, I thought since we're only a few days away from May 1. As in, May Day. Ha...ha...ha...😉 Anyway! Mayday, according to "The Wireless Age" from June 1923, is an aviator distress call. It was agreed that just saying the...
Word of the Week – Wow
Originally posted August 27, 2012 Though a revisit, this remains one of my favorite word discoveries! I always thought of wow as a modern word. So when I looked it up, I was shocked to see that it's from 1510! Wow is a Scottish interjection, one of those that...
Word of the Week – Smorgasbord
Holidays mean food. (So do regular days, LOL.) And this year, with trying to limit our trips to the store, I'm making more of an effort than usual to make sure all leftovers get eaten. Which led me to pull everything out of the fridge and declare dinner a smorgasbord...
Word of the Week – Fast II
I've looked at the word fast before, but I was specifically focusing on the adjective/adverb form (and why we don't add -ly to it anymore). Today I wanted to take a look at the verb/noun form. Seems appropriate as we enter Holy Week, the end of the period of Lenton...
Word of the Week – Curfew
I found this one on another trending list at Etymonline.com -- and found it quite interesting! Did you know that curfew is literally "cover fire"? It's from the Old French cuevrefeu -- cuevre being "cover" and feu, of course, being "fire." Why? Well, it began in the...
Word of the Week – Mystic and . . . Secretary?
Talking about some secretive words today. 😉 In one of our family devotionals last week, there was a quote from a "mystic" of millennia past, and we found ourselves wondering where the word came from. Mystic comes from the Greek mystikos, meaning "secret, connected to...
Word of the Week – Quarantine
No, I'm not being morbid. 😏 But this was one of the trending words on Etymonline, and I found its etymology fascinating! So quarantine entered English around 1660 with its somewhat-familiar meaning: "the length of time a ship suspected of carrying disease was kept in...
Word of the Week – Mesmerize
When one looks up the etymology of mesmerize, one will find that it dates from 1819, when it was coined with the meaning of "to put into a hypnotic state." What Etymonline doesn't mention is that this comes directly from the name of the physician who developed the...
Word of the Week – Just Kidding!
Originally published November 2011 I like the word "kid." I use it with my children (do you know how hard it was for me to write that sentence without using the word "kid"? LOL), I use it for jests. It's a standard part of my vocabulary. But I'll never forget the...
Word of the Week – Cameo
I'm having so much fun going through my old Word of the Week entries and redoing some of the oldest ones. I don't know about you, but I don't remember all these tidbits I've looked up in the past! LOL. This one comes to you from 2011. Appropriate, again, since I'm...
Word of the Week – Fiddle (dedee, faddle, and sticks)
This is another re-post, from way back in 2011...and I couldn't resist sharing it again now, given that the most famous use of fiddle de dee is undoubtedly from Gone with the Wind, and I'm currently editing my upcoming novel, Dreams of Savannah that has a very...
Word of the Week – Stable
This one was a question my son asked the other day. Why do we use the same word for the two different meanings of stable--the adjective and then the noun? Are they from the same root? (Why yes, my children do ask questions like this regularly, LOL.) The short answer...
Word of the Week – Plant
Originally published 5/12/12 I thought it would be fun to revisit this old Word of the Week when I saw the pretty photo I put in here of a strip of our flowers at our old house. Ah, spring, how I long for thee. 😉 So here you go--a(nother) glimpse at the word plant:...
Word of the Week Revisit – Kidnap
Okay, I just did this one not-quite-three-years ago...but it was when I was brainstorming On Wings of Devotion, so it seemed like a fun revisit! ~*~ This might seem like an odd word of the week until you consider I'm a writer, LOL. One who, as it happens, is indeed...
Word of the Week – Nimrod
Nimrod. In Genesis, he's recorded as being a hunter of legendary renown and expertise. But I remember the first time I read that for myself thinking, "Really? I thought it meant 'idiot.'" The etymologists can't document exactly how this change in meaning happened, but...
Word of the Week – Figgy Pudding
Special request from Bev today, and an appropriate one for the 6th Day of Christmas. 😀 Figgy Pudding. If you're like me, you've really only heard of it in that oft-forgotten verse of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." But what in the world is it? First, let's get this...
Word of the Week – Elves
(Originally published in 2015) I am sometimes baffled by how things come into our cultural consciousness...and change over the centuries. Cue the elves. Elf comes from Germanic folklore, with equivalents in Norse and Saxon mythology. The word itself hasn't...
Word of the Week – Jolly
This one's another revisit from 2014. 😁 And this discovery made me smile. I have to say that most times when I hear the word jolly, I think of Christmas. Jolly old St. Nick, jolly elves, etc. And apparently, that's a good thing to think of! Though the word comes most...
Word of the Week – Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Today's Word of the Week--a revisit of a post from 2014--is less a word and more the etymology of a story. Because my kids asked me after I went through the original St. Nicholas story with them, when Rudolph came about, and I had no clue. As it turns out, our beloved...
Word of the Week – X-mas
1922 ad in Ladies' Home Journal Advent is upon us, so I figured I'd go back to my practice of sharing holiday-themed words each Monday. I think I've used pretty much all of them at some point or another, but I'll try to highlight ones I haven't looked at in a while,...
Word of the Week – Whim(sy)
I've always loved the word whimsy. For some reason, those "fanciful, fantastic" ideas strike me as pure joy. (Shocking for a novelist, right?) Interesting, though, that (in my head at least) whimsy and whimsical have good connotations, while whim can carry a more...
Word of the Week – Candid
We know the word candid as "truthful, honest, sincere." It's carried this meaning since the 1670s. But before that, it carried the meaning of "bright, white" which came from the Latin candere, which means, "to shine." I really kind of love this one. Because what...
Word of the Week – Trek
The word trek has been in the English language only since around 1849--and it was a direct borrow from the Dutch treck. But I found it interesting that treck didn't actually mean "a long journey" when the Dutch started using it. Nope. It meant "to drag or pull." Why?...
Word of the Week – Understand
(Originally published on April 25, 2011) I can't say as I've ever understood why, when we comprehend something, we stand under it. So this week we're working to understand the word understand. 😀 According to the wonderful world of www.etymonline.com, this word, which...
Word of the Week – Amen
Post originally published 4/18/2011 Another Word of the Week revisit coming your way, again from my first days of doing these features in 2011. 😀 And today we're (re)looking at amen. "Amen" is a direct translation from a Hebrew word that literally means "so be it."...
Word of the Week – Macaroni
This is actually a revisit of one of my very first word features, from way back in 2011. Figured we could use a refresher on some of those fun ones! So today...macaroni! Yes, you read that right. 😉 Now, in my house "macaroni" is synonymous with "the most common food...
Word of the Week – Handsome
Those of you who have been reading these posts for the entire eight years I've been writing them weekly may (or may not) remember the third word I featured: handsome. I thought it would be fun to revisit some of those early entries and remind myself of their...