Carnival of Etymologies
[This will be a regular Thursday feature of "Done With Mirrors." I'll pluck out some words or phrases that have been in the news in the previous week, and unscrew their back plates and spread out their parts.]
On Feb. 6, People around the world marked the 60th anniversary of the Allied armies overrunning the major Nazi concentration camps. The Nazi genocide of the European Jews has come to be called the Holocaust. Hitler's Jewish policies occasionally were referred to by that word in English newspaper reports from as far back as 1942, but it didn't start to be used as a proper name for the extermination until about 1957. An earlier name among Jews for the genocide was the Hebrew word Shoah, which means literally "catastrophe."
Holocaust itself has been in use in English since the Middle Ages, in the sense of "sacrifice by fire, burnt offering." Originally it was a Bible word for "burnt offerings." It comes from the ancient Greek word holokauston "burned whole," which breaks down into holos "whole" (as in Modern English holistic) and kaustos, a verbal adjective from kaiein, which means "to burn," and which gives English also caustic and cauterize.
Some modern writers have begun to turn away from the word as the specific term for the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis, in part because it has become a general synonym for "genocide" (in Rwanda and Armenia, for instance), and in part because its origin as the translation of a Jewish religious ritual term makes its use in reference to the Nazi killings feel offensive.
* * *
The run-up to the Academy Awards has begun, with the revelation of the list of actors, actresses and directors vying for the coveted Oscar statuette. The awards for excellence in film acting, directing, etc., have been given annually since 1928. The statuette first was officially called an "Oscar" in 1936. The name is said to have sprung from a 1931 remark by Margaret Herrick, secretary at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who saw one and said, "He reminds me of my Uncle Oscar." Thus the award is named for Oscar Pierce, U.S. wheat farmer and fruit-grower.
The masculine proper name Oscar is from Old English Osgar, and probably means literally "god's spear." The second element is Old English gar "spear," which also is preserved in gar, the name of a pike-like fish, and garlic, which literally means "spear-leek."
The first half of the name, os, is a word for "god" found in Old English only in personal names (including Oswald and Osmund), which means it probably had dropped out of regular use in English in prehistoric times. It is a very ancient word, however, preserved also in the Norse mythology names Aesir and Asgard, and the first element of the name of the Zoroastrian supreme deity Ahura Mazda (from the extinct Avestan language of Persia).
* * *
The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl.
Booooooooooooo. [I can't claim to be an Eagles fan; I grew up following the Philadelphia Flyers of the NHL -- remember the NHL? -- but their arch-rivals were Boston, so the 'boo' holds.]
Patriot is not a terribly old word in English; it's only attested from 1596, and the original sense was "compatriot, fellow countryman." Its history traces back through French and post-classical Latin to Greek patriotes, which ultimately is a derivative of pater "father" with the suffix -otes, expressing state or condition. The basic image is of the "fatherland," and the patriot is one who shares the same fatherland as the speaker.
Oriana Fallaci ["The Rage and the Pride," 2002] marvels that Americans, so fond of patriotic, patriot, and patriotism, lack the root noun and are content to express the idea of patria by cumbersome compounds such as homeland. Joyce, Shaw, and H.G. Wells all used patria as an English word in the early 20th century, but it failed to stick.
The main modern meaning of patriot, "loyal and disinterested supporter of one's country," is attested from 1605, but the history of the word has diverged in America and England. In the United States, patriot has kept a positive sense. Phony and rascally varieties of the patriotism tend to be identified by collateral formations, such as patrioteer (1928).
In England, however, patriot soon became an ironic term of ridicule or abuse. By about 1744, Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote, "The name of patriot had become a by-word of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely exaggerated when he said that ... the most popular declaration which a candidate could make on the hustings was that he had never been and never would be a patriot." ["Horace Walpole," 1833]
Samuel Johnson's dictionary (1755) at first defined patriot as "one whose ruling passion is the love of his country," but in his fourth edition he added, "It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government." The word underwent something of a revival based on its use with reference to resistance movements in overrun countries during World War II, but it never attained the positive sense it has had in the United States.
All this perhaps accounts for the Stefano Hatfield's properly British revulsion at the Salute to the troops Super Bowl ad, in which he uses "patriotism" as a term of scorn, and American commentator James Taranto thinking Stefano has done us the favor of stripping off the leftist mask:
It may be that they're simply using the same word differently.
* * *
Super Bowl itself is a hybrid phrase -- that is, the parts of it come from different languages. Super is from Latin, and bowl is a Germanic word. If the game had been played in Alfred the Great's time, the Anglo-Saxons in the cheap seats would have called it the Ofer Bolla (if it had been a Roman game, however, they might have called it Super Crater, and you can bet there would have been skyboxes).
The bowl is the same one you eat cereal from, of course; the word was applied to landscape features since the 19th century, based on similarity of shape, and began to be used for American football stadiums (generally in preference to stadium or coliseum) by 1913.
On Feb. 6, People around the world marked the 60th anniversary of the Allied armies overrunning the major Nazi concentration camps. The Nazi genocide of the European Jews has come to be called the Holocaust. Hitler's Jewish policies occasionally were referred to by that word in English newspaper reports from as far back as 1942, but it didn't start to be used as a proper name for the extermination until about 1957. An earlier name among Jews for the genocide was the Hebrew word Shoah, which means literally "catastrophe."
Holocaust itself has been in use in English since the Middle Ages, in the sense of "sacrifice by fire, burnt offering." Originally it was a Bible word for "burnt offerings." It comes from the ancient Greek word holokauston "burned whole," which breaks down into holos "whole" (as in Modern English holistic) and kaustos, a verbal adjective from kaiein, which means "to burn," and which gives English also caustic and cauterize.
Some modern writers have begun to turn away from the word as the specific term for the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis, in part because it has become a general synonym for "genocide" (in Rwanda and Armenia, for instance), and in part because its origin as the translation of a Jewish religious ritual term makes its use in reference to the Nazi killings feel offensive.
* * *
The run-up to the Academy Awards has begun, with the revelation of the list of actors, actresses and directors vying for the coveted Oscar statuette. The awards for excellence in film acting, directing, etc., have been given annually since 1928. The statuette first was officially called an "Oscar" in 1936. The name is said to have sprung from a 1931 remark by Margaret Herrick, secretary at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who saw one and said, "He reminds me of my Uncle Oscar." Thus the award is named for Oscar Pierce, U.S. wheat farmer and fruit-grower.
The masculine proper name Oscar is from Old English Osgar, and probably means literally "god's spear." The second element is Old English gar "spear," which also is preserved in gar, the name of a pike-like fish, and garlic, which literally means "spear-leek."
The first half of the name, os, is a word for "god" found in Old English only in personal names (including Oswald and Osmund), which means it probably had dropped out of regular use in English in prehistoric times. It is a very ancient word, however, preserved also in the Norse mythology names Aesir and Asgard, and the first element of the name of the Zoroastrian supreme deity Ahura Mazda (from the extinct Avestan language of Persia).
* * *
The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl.
Booooooooooooo. [I can't claim to be an Eagles fan; I grew up following the Philadelphia Flyers of the NHL -- remember the NHL? -- but their arch-rivals were Boston, so the 'boo' holds.]
Patriot is not a terribly old word in English; it's only attested from 1596, and the original sense was "compatriot, fellow countryman." Its history traces back through French and post-classical Latin to Greek patriotes, which ultimately is a derivative of pater "father" with the suffix -otes, expressing state or condition. The basic image is of the "fatherland," and the patriot is one who shares the same fatherland as the speaker.
Oriana Fallaci ["The Rage and the Pride," 2002] marvels that Americans, so fond of patriotic, patriot, and patriotism, lack the root noun and are content to express the idea of patria by cumbersome compounds such as homeland. Joyce, Shaw, and H.G. Wells all used patria as an English word in the early 20th century, but it failed to stick.
The main modern meaning of patriot, "loyal and disinterested supporter of one's country," is attested from 1605, but the history of the word has diverged in America and England. In the United States, patriot has kept a positive sense. Phony and rascally varieties of the patriotism tend to be identified by collateral formations, such as patrioteer (1928).
In England, however, patriot soon became an ironic term of ridicule or abuse. By about 1744, Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote, "The name of patriot had become a by-word of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely exaggerated when he said that ... the most popular declaration which a candidate could make on the hustings was that he had never been and never would be a patriot." ["Horace Walpole," 1833]
Samuel Johnson's dictionary (1755) at first defined patriot as "one whose ruling passion is the love of his country," but in his fourth edition he added, "It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government." The word underwent something of a revival based on its use with reference to resistance movements in overrun countries during World War II, but it never attained the positive sense it has had in the United States.
All this perhaps accounts for the Stefano Hatfield's properly British revulsion at the Salute to the troops Super Bowl ad, in which he uses "patriotism" as a term of scorn, and American commentator James Taranto thinking Stefano has done us the favor of stripping off the leftist mask:
There's actually something mildly refreshing about a commentator openly scoffing at patriotism rather than feebly asserting that he isn't unpatriotic, as American left-wingers are wont to do.
It may be that they're simply using the same word differently.
* * *
Super Bowl itself is a hybrid phrase -- that is, the parts of it come from different languages. Super is from Latin, and bowl is a Germanic word. If the game had been played in Alfred the Great's time, the Anglo-Saxons in the cheap seats would have called it the Ofer Bolla (if it had been a Roman game, however, they might have called it Super Crater, and you can bet there would have been skyboxes).
The bowl is the same one you eat cereal from, of course; the word was applied to landscape features since the 19th century, based on similarity of shape, and began to be used for American football stadiums (generally in preference to stadium or coliseum) by 1913.
Labels: etymology
