Carnival of the Etymologies
[A regular Thursday feature of "Done With Mirrors"]
The movie "Batman Begins" dominated the box office last week.
This word bat meaning "flying rodent" is a strange 16th century dialect alteration of Middle English bakke, which probably is related to Scandinavian words like Old Swedish natbakka and Old Danish nathbakkæ, both meaning "night bat," and Old Norse leðrblaka, literally "leather flapper." So the original sense of bat likely is "flapper," and the word may have been somehow imitative of the sound of flapping wings. The shift from -k- to -t- may have come through confusion with the extinct Middle English bakke "nocturnal insect," which derives from Latin blatta "moth."
Given the Scandinavian connections, bat likely is one of the words the Vikings brought to England which displaced the local word. The Anglo-Saxon word for the animal was hreremus, literally "shaky mouse," from hreran "to shake." That's closer to the German fledermaus. Batty meaning "nuts" is attested from 1903.
Begin is from an Old English compound strong verb, beginnan (sometimes also onginnan) from bi- "be" and West Germanic *ginnan, a verb of obscure meaning found only in compounds, perhaps literally meaning "to open, open up."
Sir Bob Geldof must be angling for a Nobel prize. Not for plotting Live 8, the sequel to Live Aid, but for opening a peace conference in the ego war of the ex-Spice Girls, whom he wants to reunite for his upcoming event. Geldof says Posh, Baby, Sporty and Ginger are willing to let bygones be bygones, but Scary is holding out.
The Spice Girls got their identities in the British press, aided by their record label. Each name derived from their debut 1996 single and video, "Wannabe." Geri Halliwell was the "sexy Spice," later known as "Ginger Spice." Melanie Brown was the "scary Spice"; Victoria Adams was "the posh Spice;" Melanie Chisholm was "the sporty Spice;" and Emma Lee Bunton was "the baby Spice."
Sexy meaning "sexually attractive" only dates from about 1932; earlier the word had meant "engrossed in sex" (1925). The general use of sex as shorthand for sexual intercourse is an early 20th century development; the original meaning of sex was "males or females collectively," and it comes from Latin sexus "state of being either male or female, gender," which is "commonly taken with seco as division or 'half' of the race," according to the Latin etymologist T.G. Tucker. That would connect it to secare "to divide or cut."
Ginger is Old English gingifer, which comes via Latin and Greek from Prakrit (Middle Indic) singabera, from a Sanskrit compound of srngam "horn" and vera- "body." The root was so called from its shape. But this may be a Sanskrit folk-etymology, and the name could be ultimately from an ancient Dravidian word that also produced the Malayalam name for the spice, inchi-ver, from inchi "root."
Scary is first recorded 1582, from the verb scare, which came to English with the Vikings, from Old Norse skirra "to frighten," a word of unknown origin.
Baby is a Middle English word, a diminutive form of babe, a word attested from the 13th century and probably imitative of baby talk noises. As a term of endearment for one's lover, baby is attested perhaps as early as 1839, and certainly was in use by 1901; its popularity perhaps got a boost in the early 20th century from baby vamp "a popular girl," student slang from c.1922.
Sporty meaning "sportsmanlike" dates from 1889, but the more modern sense of luxurious and high-performance developed in the early 1960s from sports car.
Posh is attested from 1918; the word is of uncertain origin, but it is the subject of one of the most unkillable false etymologies in existence. There is flat out no evidence whatsoever for the common derivation of it from an acronym of port outward, starboard home, which allegedly was the shipboard accommodations given to wealthy British traveling to India on the P & O Lines (to keep their cabins out of the sun). The objections to this old error are outlined in G. Chowdharay-Best's article in "Mariner's Mirror" of January 1971, for those who care to look it up.
More likely the word comes from British slang posh "a dandy" (1890), which in turn derives from a thieves' slang word meaning "money" (attested from 1830), originally "coin of small value, halfpenny." This is possibly from Romany posh, meaning "half."
Speaking of rock bands with messianic issues and egos, U2 also is on the Live 8 bill. And this week, a U-2 spy pilot died in a crash in the Mideast. Opinion among pop music fans seems to be divided as to whether the Irish rock band took its name from the American spy plane. But this site offers a strong argument that it did not:
As for the spy plane name (usually written with a hyphen), according to this site, the U stands for nothing more mysterious than utility, and the pun is a lucky accident.
Spy, meanwhile, entered English in the 13th century from Old French espier "to spy" and espie "a spy," which ultimately are Germanic words related to German spähen "to spy," and derive from the fertile Proto-Indo-European root *spek- "to look."
House approves amendment to protect US flag the headlines read on Wednesday, proving again that some people value the symbols more than the substance and prompting one wag to suggest that the best way to protect the American flag from desecration would be to print the Quran on it.
Flag, the noun, meaning "cloth ensign" is attested from the late 15th century, which is not terribly old as English words go. It now exists in all the modern Germanic languages, but apparently it first turned up in English. The origin is unknown, but it is likely connected with the verb flag "to flap about loosely."
THis word itself has a murky past, though. Perhaps it is a variant of Middle English flakken, flacken "to flap, flutter," which probably comes from Old Norse flakka "to flicker, flutter," which is perhaps onomatopoeic of something flapping in the wind. The flag- in flagstone seems to be unrelated to this group, though it, too, comes from a Viking word, flaga, meaning "stone slab." This may be a variant of the Scandinavian form of flake.
Burn is a combination of Old Norse brenna "to burn, light," and two originally distinct Old English verbs: bærnan "to kindle" (transitive) and beornan "to be on fire" (intransitive). The whole group is related, and seems to come from the Proto-Indo-European base *bhereu- "to boil forth, well up." This root also is the source of Old English born, burne "a spring, fountain," which still is common in place names.
The first recorded burning of an American flag as a symbol of protest against the United States took place shortly after the Southern secession that preceded the American Civil War. The citizens of Liberty, Mississippi, organized a ritual burning of the Stars and Stripes on May 10, 1861.*
*[Robert Justin Goldstein, Saving 'Old Glory': The History of the Flag Desecration Controversy, Boulder, Colo., 1995]
The movie "Batman Begins" dominated the box office last week.
This word bat meaning "flying rodent" is a strange 16th century dialect alteration of Middle English bakke, which probably is related to Scandinavian words like Old Swedish natbakka and Old Danish nathbakkæ, both meaning "night bat," and Old Norse leðrblaka, literally "leather flapper." So the original sense of bat likely is "flapper," and the word may have been somehow imitative of the sound of flapping wings. The shift from -k- to -t- may have come through confusion with the extinct Middle English bakke "nocturnal insect," which derives from Latin blatta "moth."
Given the Scandinavian connections, bat likely is one of the words the Vikings brought to England which displaced the local word. The Anglo-Saxon word for the animal was hreremus, literally "shaky mouse," from hreran "to shake." That's closer to the German fledermaus. Batty meaning "nuts" is attested from 1903.
Begin is from an Old English compound strong verb, beginnan (sometimes also onginnan) from bi- "be" and West Germanic *ginnan, a verb of obscure meaning found only in compounds, perhaps literally meaning "to open, open up."
Sir Bob Geldof must be angling for a Nobel prize. Not for plotting Live 8, the sequel to Live Aid, but for opening a peace conference in the ego war of the ex-Spice Girls, whom he wants to reunite for his upcoming event. Geldof says Posh, Baby, Sporty and Ginger are willing to let bygones be bygones, but Scary is holding out.
The Spice Girls got their identities in the British press, aided by their record label. Each name derived from their debut 1996 single and video, "Wannabe." Geri Halliwell was the "sexy Spice," later known as "Ginger Spice." Melanie Brown was the "scary Spice"; Victoria Adams was "the posh Spice;" Melanie Chisholm was "the sporty Spice;" and Emma Lee Bunton was "the baby Spice."
Sexy meaning "sexually attractive" only dates from about 1932; earlier the word had meant "engrossed in sex" (1925). The general use of sex as shorthand for sexual intercourse is an early 20th century development; the original meaning of sex was "males or females collectively," and it comes from Latin sexus "state of being either male or female, gender," which is "commonly taken with seco as division or 'half' of the race," according to the Latin etymologist T.G. Tucker. That would connect it to secare "to divide or cut."
Ginger is Old English gingifer, which comes via Latin and Greek from Prakrit (Middle Indic) singabera, from a Sanskrit compound of srngam "horn" and vera- "body." The root was so called from its shape. But this may be a Sanskrit folk-etymology, and the name could be ultimately from an ancient Dravidian word that also produced the Malayalam name for the spice, inchi-ver, from inchi "root."
Scary is first recorded 1582, from the verb scare, which came to English with the Vikings, from Old Norse skirra "to frighten," a word of unknown origin.
Baby is a Middle English word, a diminutive form of babe, a word attested from the 13th century and probably imitative of baby talk noises. As a term of endearment for one's lover, baby is attested perhaps as early as 1839, and certainly was in use by 1901; its popularity perhaps got a boost in the early 20th century from baby vamp "a popular girl," student slang from c.1922.
Sporty meaning "sportsmanlike" dates from 1889, but the more modern sense of luxurious and high-performance developed in the early 1960s from sports car.
Posh is attested from 1918; the word is of uncertain origin, but it is the subject of one of the most unkillable false etymologies in existence. There is flat out no evidence whatsoever for the common derivation of it from an acronym of port outward, starboard home, which allegedly was the shipboard accommodations given to wealthy British traveling to India on the P & O Lines (to keep their cabins out of the sun). The objections to this old error are outlined in G. Chowdharay-Best's article in "Mariner's Mirror" of January 1971, for those who care to look it up.
More likely the word comes from British slang posh "a dandy" (1890), which in turn derives from a thieves' slang word meaning "money" (attested from 1830), originally "coin of small value, halfpenny." This is possibly from Romany posh, meaning "half."
Speaking of rock bands with messianic issues and egos, U2 also is on the Live 8 bill. And this week, a U-2 spy pilot died in a crash in the Mideast. Opinion among pop music fans seems to be divided as to whether the Irish rock band took its name from the American spy plane. But this site offers a strong argument that it did not:
In the band's very early beginnings, circa 1978, Adam Clayton asked Steve Averill (formerly known as Steve Rapid of the band Radiators From Space) to help the band come up with a good name. Averill was interviewed by Hot Press magazine in 2001 and gave this answer when asked about how he helped U2 choose the band's name:
"When I first met them they didn't really know what they wanted to do, what type of band they really wanted to be. But they had qualified for the final of that band competition in Limerick and they needed to decide on a name. Adam liked names like XTC, which were short and crisp and could mean a lot or mean very little. So I made a list of ten and I put U2 on the bottom. I thought it was strong graphically and it had a variety of connotations without meaning something specific. It was short and stood out from the band names common at the time. After we discussed the list we decided to go for U2 for all those reasons."
There have also been many stories told about how the band's name is taken from the U-2 spy plane, and those stories gained favor with the connection of the famous Francis Gary Powers U-2 incident which occurred on May 1, 1960, and the fact that Bono was born just nine days later. These stories seem to be a stretch at best, and Averill's answer above makes no mention of the spy plane connection.
As for the spy plane name (usually written with a hyphen), according to this site, the U stands for nothing more mysterious than utility, and the pun is a lucky accident.
The U-2, whose development name at Lockheed was the CL-282 Aquatone, needed an official name. It could not be named with letters such as B for bomber and F for fighter because its purpose was not for any of those specific designations. Also, since the project was under high secrecy, it could not be called a reconnaissance plane. Finally, the Air Force decided to call it a utility plane. Since the names U-1 and U-3 had already been chosen, the name given to the plane was U-2.
Spy, meanwhile, entered English in the 13th century from Old French espier "to spy" and espie "a spy," which ultimately are Germanic words related to German spähen "to spy," and derive from the fertile Proto-Indo-European root *spek- "to look."
House approves amendment to protect US flag the headlines read on Wednesday, proving again that some people value the symbols more than the substance and prompting one wag to suggest that the best way to protect the American flag from desecration would be to print the Quran on it.
Flag, the noun, meaning "cloth ensign" is attested from the late 15th century, which is not terribly old as English words go. It now exists in all the modern Germanic languages, but apparently it first turned up in English. The origin is unknown, but it is likely connected with the verb flag "to flap about loosely."
THis word itself has a murky past, though. Perhaps it is a variant of Middle English flakken, flacken "to flap, flutter," which probably comes from Old Norse flakka "to flicker, flutter," which is perhaps onomatopoeic of something flapping in the wind. The flag- in flagstone seems to be unrelated to this group, though it, too, comes from a Viking word, flaga, meaning "stone slab." This may be a variant of the Scandinavian form of flake.
Burn is a combination of Old Norse brenna "to burn, light," and two originally distinct Old English verbs: bærnan "to kindle" (transitive) and beornan "to be on fire" (intransitive). The whole group is related, and seems to come from the Proto-Indo-European base *bhereu- "to boil forth, well up." This root also is the source of Old English born, burne "a spring, fountain," which still is common in place names.
The first recorded burning of an American flag as a symbol of protest against the United States took place shortly after the Southern secession that preceded the American Civil War. The citizens of Liberty, Mississippi, organized a ritual burning of the Stars and Stripes on May 10, 1861.*
*[Robert Justin Goldstein, Saving 'Old Glory': The History of the Flag Desecration Controversy, Boulder, Colo., 1995]
Labels: etymology
