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The Hidden Histories of English Words from A to ZSECOND EDITIONJOHN AYTO

www.acblack.comFirst edition published 1990Paperback edition published 2001This second edition published 2005A & C Black Publishers Ltd37 Soho Square, London W1D 3QZ© John Ayto 1990, 2005All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without theprior written permission of the publishers.A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.ISBN-10: 0 7136 7498 9ISBN-13: 978 0 7136 7498 9eISBN-13: 978-1-4081-0160-51 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2A & C Black uses paper produced with elemental chlorine-free pulp,harvested from managed sustainable forests.Text processed and typeset by A & C BlackPrinted in Great Britain by William Clowes Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk

INTRODUCTIONThe average English speaker knows around 50,000 words. That represents anastonishing diversity – nearly 25 times more words than there are individual starsvisible to the naked eye in the night sky. And even 50,000 seems insignificantbeside the half a million recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary. But looked atfrom an historical perspective, that diversity becomes more apparent than real.Tracing a word’s development back in time shows that in many cases what are nowseparate lexical terms were formerly one and the same word. The deep prehistory ofour language has nurtured little word-seeds that over the millennia haveproliferated into widely differentiated families of vocabulary.The purpose of this book is to uncover the often surprising connections betweenelements of the English lexicon that have become obscured by centuries oflanguage change – the links in our word-web that join such unlikely partners as, forinstance, beef and cow, bacteria and imbecile, and bishop and spy.The origins of the English languageThe life stories of individual words, often mazy and conjectural, need a fixedbackdrop if they are to make sense. So first, a little history. English is a member ofthe Indo-European family of languages. The precise origins of this are still a matterof some controversy, but the consensus view is that it came on the scene around8,000 years ago in the general area to the north of the Black Sea. Since then it hassplit up into a large number of subgroups, which today provide nearly all thelanguages of Europe and have also spread over large areas of the Middle East andnorthern India. Among them are the Indo-Iranian languages, including Hindi andancient Sanskrit; the Slavic languages – Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croat, andso on; the Baltic languages, Latvian and Lithuanian (which of all these modernlanguages most closely resembles its Indo-European ancestor); the Celticlanguages, such as Welsh, Gaelic, and Breton; and Greek.But in the history of English, there are two particular groups that are of centralimportance. The first is the Romance languages: classical Latin, the literarylanguage of ancient Rome; and French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, andRomanian, which evolved from Vulgar Latin, the language of the common peoplethat spread through the Western Roman Empire. The role of Latin and French, inparticular, in the growth of English vocabulary has been immense. We acquired asizeable portion of our words from one or other of these sources.The second important group, of course, is the Germanic languages: for that is thegroup to which English itself belongs. The existence of the Germanic peoples as aseparate speech community dates back at least 3,000 years. Their first northernEuropean home has been traced to an area around the river Elbe. At this time they allspoke the same language, which is generally known as Common Germanic.Around the 2nd century BC this began to split up into three distinct dialects. Onewas East Germanic. The only East Germanic language of which any writtenevidence survives is Gothic. Now extinct, it was spoken by Germanic peoples whomigrated back eastwards to the area of modern Bulgaria and the Crimea. It providesus with our closest glimpse of what prehistoric Common Germanic must have beenlike. The second was North Germanic, which has evolved into modern Swedish,

Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. And lastly there was West Germanic, theancestor of modern German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and English.The forerunners of English crossed the Channel in the 5th and 6th centuries AD.They were brought by peoples from the northeastern corner of the Europeanmainland, around Jutland and southern Denmark – the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.They spoke a mutually intelligible set of Germanic dialects (whose closestmodern continental relative is Frisian), which formed the basis of what is nowknown as Old English (the alternative term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is no longer muchused). This was a more or less homogeneous language, but with markedgeographical differences reflecting the areas into which the various Germanicpeoples had moved: the Angles into the Midlands (where Mercian was spoken)and the North (whose form of Old English is now called Northumbrian); the Jutesinto Kent; and the Saxons into the rest of southern and western England (theirspeech is known as West Saxon).Astonishing richness and diversityThe end of the Old English period is conventionally associated with the NormanConquest of 1066, but in practice of course the transition into the next historicalphase of the language, which we term Middle English, was a gradual process. Itscrucial feature from the point of view of vocabulary was the beginning ofimportation of non-native words which over the centuries have transformedEnglish from a parochial northeast European dialect into a lexical tapestry ofastonishing richness and diversity. A smattering of Latin words entered thelanguage following the conversion of the English to Christianity in the 7th century,but it was the Vikings who first introduced new ingredients to the lexical blend in abig way. Their forays began in the mid-8th century and lasted for several hundredyears. Their impact on English was greatest in northern areas, where they settled,but the language as a whole is indebted to Old Norse for such basic words as anger,egg, knife, law, and leg.Undoubtedly the single most significant event in the history of the Englishlanguage was the Norman invasion of 1066, for it provided the impetus for a hugeinflux of vocabulary from across the English Channel. These new words came bothvia Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Old French spoken in England by the new rulingclasses, which was based on the northern variety of French; and direct from OldFrench itself. It was this lexical infusion, which lasted from the 11th to the 16thcenturies, which truly laid the basis for the hybrid English language of today. Itwould be futile to try and give a representative sample of the words it introduced,for they are so all-pervasive. From supper to justice, from action to money, fromvillage to receive, they came in their thousands. Some were Gaulish in ultimateorigin. Gaulish was the Celtic language spoken in what is now France beforeFrench killed it off. But the greatest majority of these French imports weredescended from earlier Latin ancestors.It was Latin itself, together with Greek, that formed the next wave of lexicalinnovation in English. With the Renaissance came a revival in classicalscholarship, and in the 16th and 17th centuries hundreds of Latin and Greek wordswere naturalized into English – among them apparatus, area, crisis, maximum,poem, and pollen, to name no more than a minute fraction.

Expanding horizonsIt was around this time that English started to roam beyond its historical boundaries.As English merchant venturers sailed the world, not only did they take theirlanguage with them to distant continents, where it has since become in many casesthe dominant form of speech, but they also brought back with them new and exoticterms that have found their way into the English lexicon. There is not a majorlanguage in the world that has not over the past 500 years made some contribution toEnglish, from the beautiful donations of Italian (aria, arcade, bandit, bust, escort,frigate, granite, madrigal, pedal, solo, umbrella, etc) and Hindi (bungalow, chintz,cot, juggernaut, pundit, shampoo, etc) to the more modest gifts from the likes ofFinnish (sauna) and Tibetan (lama).English is still growing – faster probably now than at any previous time in itshistory (it has been calculated that around 800 neologisms are added to the workingvocabulary of the language every year). Over half of the new items come fromcombinations of old ones, but there continues to be a lot of borrowing from otherlanguages (glasnost and perestroika are notable examples from the 1980s). Theformation of blends (conflations of existing words, such as motel formed frommotor and hotel) and acronyms (words made up from initial letters, like yuppie –ayoung urban professional) is characteristic of late 20th-century English.Unlikely relativesAll down these centuries of evolution and acquisition runs a complex tracery ofdescent – often muddled, interrupted, cancelling itself out or losing itself in deadends, but often too presenting us with breathtaking lexical fragmentation patternsthat link the unlikeliest of partners. It seems scarcely plausible, for instance, thatacrobat and oxygen should be related, but they are. Both go back ultimately to anIndo-European base *ak-, which conveyed the notion of being ‘pointed’ or ‘sharp’.An acrobat is etymologically someone who walks on the ‘points’ of the feet, or ontiptoe (it is based on Greek ákros ‘terminal’, ‘topmost’), while oxygen meansliterally ‘acid-producer’. It comes from Greek oxús ‘sharp, acid’, which in turn wasdescended from *ak-. Nor is this by any means the end of the story. For the samebase is responsible for a wide range of other English words, including acacia, acid,acme, acne, acrid, acute, eager, ear (of corn), edge, and vinegar. Despite theircommon source, they have reached English along very different routes. Ear andedge, for example, come in a line of direct descent from Indo-European throughGermanic, while eager came via Old French from Latin, and acrobat and oxygen,as we have seen, go back to Greek.This family of English words traces its history right back to the prehistoric rootsof the language, but such extreme antiquity is not a precondition for great diversity.The Latin word gradus ‘step’, for instance, lies behind an enormous range ofEnglish vocabulary, much of it formed by prefixation: aggression, for example,congress, degrade, degree, digress, egress, ingredient, ingress, progress, regress,retrograde, and transgress, not to mention grade, gradation, gradient, gradual,and graduate. And even more prolific source has been Latin cēdere ‘go, go away,give up’, which has given English accede, ancestor, cease, cede, concede, exceed,intercede, precede, proceed, recede, and succeed, plus a range of related nounssuch as concession and procession.

How to use this bookThe aim of this dictionary is to bring out and make explicit these sorts of historicalconnection between English words. It is arranged alphabetically, so that eacharticle deals in the first instance with the origin and development of a particularword. But where appropriate the relationship of that word with other English wordsis described, and for quick reference a list is provided (preceded by ) of the wordswhich are etymologically linked with the entry word. All the words whose story istold in the dictionary are shown with a date after them in square brackets. Thisdenotes the century in which they are first recorded in English. Thus cock-a-hoop[16] indicates that cock-a-hoop probably entered the language in the 16th century(words that date back to the Old English period are marked simply [OE]). If, in thearticle about a given word, a related word is mentioned but no date is shown for it,this means that the related word has its own article, so you should look there forfurther information.In all about 8,000 words have their stories told here. They represent the centralcore of English vocabulary, plus an extensive selection of words included eitherbecause their etymology is intrinsically interesting, or because they form part of awider lexical family. It is far from being an exhaustive account of the entire Englishlexicon, of course, for it is not part of the book’s purpose to give it a complete list ofthe (all too many) English words whose origins are not known for certain.In terms of sheer numbers of years, at least half of the period which Word Originscovers predates the emergence of writing in the West, and so much of the material init – Indo-European forms, for instance, and prehistoric Germanic words – is notrecorded from contemporary sources. That we know so much about it is due to thework of historical linguists, who have reconstructed these ancient words andword-parts from the evidence of later written sources and of the moderndescendants of these prehistoric languages. It is conventional to mark suchreconstructions with an asterisk, and that is what is done here. So for example theprehistoric Germanic ancestor of English chicken is given as *kiukīnam. Thismeans that we have no direct evidence of a word kiukīnam, but that chicken itselfand its relatives in other Germanic languages, together with our knowledge of howGermanic words evolved, have enabled us to postulate its existence.It is now fifteen years since the publication of the first edition of this dictionary.That is a mere passing moment in the geological time-scale of the Englishlanguage’s evolution. Enough, though, to warrant some modifications to theoriginal. A few of the entries that in 1990 were most topical (for instance,perestroika) no longer seem so urgently relevant, and have been dispensed with,and new discoveries about the history of our vocabulary have necessitated changestoo (see, for example, the entry for marzipan). Not least, over a hundred completelynew entries have been added to this edition, which thus probes more deeply thanever into the hidden crevices of our language. Another innovation is a set of lexicalfamily trees, which enable the user to explore visually the complex historicalrelationships of a representative number of English words.John Ayto

Language namesThe language names used in this book are for the most part self-explanatory, butthere are some pre-modern ones that may be unfamiliar. The more commonly usedones are elucidated here:SanskritGreekLatinLate LatinMedieval LatinVulgar LatinGallo-RomanOld FrenchOld Northern FrenchThe ancient Indo-European language of northernSouth Asia. Its earliest known form, VedicSanskrit (the language of the Vedas, ancienthymns), is documented from c. 1000 BC. By the4th century BC Vedic Sanskrit had beensucceeded by classical Sanskrit.Without further qualification, ‘Greek’ refers toancient Greek, as spoken between c. 1500 BCand 500 AD. The present-day language isspecified as ‘modern Greek’ (this is traditionallydated from 1453, the year of the fall ofByzantium). The language of the interveningperiod is generally termed ‘Byzantine Greek’ or‘medieval Greek’.Without further qualification, ‘Latin’ refers toclassical Latin, the literary language of ancientRome between the 1st century BC and the 3rdcentury AD.The successor to classical Latin, extant from the3rd century AD to the 7th century.The Latin in use in Western Europe from the 7thcentury to the 15th.The spoken language in use in the WesternRoman Empire, which evolved into the modernRomance languages (French, Italian, Spanish,etc.). There are no records of it as a writtenlanguage, and the Vulgar Latin words quoted inthis dictionary are reconstructed forms.The intermediate stage between Vulgar Latinand Old French, spoken between the 7th centuryand the 10th.The ancestor of modern French, spoken betweenthe 10th century and c. 1600.The form of Old French spoken in NorthernFrance, which the Norman conquerors ofEngland brought with them. Most of English’searly acquisitions would have been from thisvariety of Old French, but in this dictionary it isgenerally not specified unless an explicitcontrast is being made with the more southerly,‘central’ Old French.

Anglo-NormanThe form of French spoken in England in theMiddle Ages.GaulishThe Celtic language spoken in Gaul, the ancientregion of Europe centred on what is now France.FrankishThe language spoken by the Franks, theGermanic people who conquered Gaul in the 6thcentury AD.Old NorseThe ancestor of the modern Scandinavianlanguages, spoken throughout Scandinavia fromc. 700 to c. 1350.Old English [OE] Spoken from the mid-5th century to c. 1150.Middle English Spoken from c. 1150 to c. 1500.Modern EnglishSpoken from c. 1500 to the present day.High GermanOriginally, the form of German spoken insouthern Germany, which has evolved intomodern standard German.Old High German Spoken up to c. 1200.Middle High German Spoken from c. 1200 to c. 1500.Low GermanGerman dialects spoken in northern Germany.Middle Low German Spoken from c. 1200 to c. 1500. Its forerunner isknown as ‘Old Saxon’.Middle DutchThe precursor of modern Dutch, spoken betweenc. 1100 and the early 16th century.Old Church Slavonicor Old SlavonicThe earliest written Slavonic language (actuallya dialect of Bulgarian), first recorded in the 9thcentury. It is still used in religious services inthe Eastern Orthodox churches.The scope of the terms ‘Indo-European’ and ‘Common Germanic’ (together withits descendants ‘East Germanic’, ‘North Germanic’ and ‘West Germanic’) isdescribed in the Introduction.

Aa, an [OE] The indefinite article in English isultimately identical with the word one (as is thecase, even more obviously, in other Europeanlanguages – French un, German ein, and so on).The ancestor of both a(n) and one was ān, with along vowel, but in the Old English period it waschiefly used for the numeral; where we woulduse a(n), the Anglo-Saxons tended not to use anarticle at all. Ān begins to emerge as theindefinite article in the middle of the 12thcentury, and it was not long before, in thatrelatively unemphatic linguistic environment, itsvowel became weakened and shortened, givingan. And at about the same time the distinctionbetween an and a began to develop, althoughthis was a slow process; until 1300 an was stilloften used before consonants, and right up to1600 and beyond it was common before allwords beginning with h, such as house. ONEaardvark see EARTH, FARROWabacus [17] Abacus comes originally from aHebrew word for ‘dust’, ’ābāq. This wasborrowed into Greek with the sense of ‘drawingboard covered with dust or sand’, on which onecould draw for, among other purposes, makingmathematical calculations. The Greek word,ábax, subsequently developed various othermeanings, including ‘table’, both in the literalsense and as a mathematical table. But it was asa ‘dust-covered board’ that its Latin descendant,abacus, was first used in English, in the 14thcentury. It was not until the 17th century that themore general sense of a counting board or framecame into use, and the more specific ‘countingframe with movable balls’ is later still.abandon [14] The Old French verb abandoneris the source of abandon. It was based on abandon, meaning literally ‘under control orjurisdiction’, which was used in the phrasemettre a bandon ‘put someone under someoneelse’s control’ – hence ‘abandon them’. Theword bandon came, in altered form, from Latinbannum ‘proclamation’, which is circuitouslyrelated to English banns ‘proclamation ofmarriage’ and is an ancestor of contraband. BANNS, CONTRABANDabash [14] Abash shares a common ancestrywith abeyance [16], although the latterunderwent an about-turn in meaning in the 17thcentury which disguises their relationship. Theygo back to a Latin verb batāre, meaning ‘yawn’or ‘gape’. This was borrowed into French asbaer, later bayer (it was the source of Englishbay ‘recessed space’). The addition of the prefixes- (from Latin ex-) produced esbaer, latere(s)bahir ‘gape with astonishment’, whence, viathe present stem e(s)bass-, came English abash,which originally meant ‘stand amazed’ as wellas ‘embarrass, discomfit’. (Bashful is a 16thcenturyderivative, with elision of the a-, whichwas first used by the dramatist Nicholas Udall.)Addition of the prefix a- to Old French baer,meanwhile, had given abaer ‘aspire after’, andits noun abeance ‘aspiration, desire’. In legalterminology, this word was used in French forthe condition of a person in expectation or hopeof receiving property, but in English the focusquickly became reversed to the property, and itscondition of being temporarily without anowner. ABEYANCE, BASHFULabbot [OE] Abbot comes ultimately from abbā,a Syriac word meaning ‘father’ (which itselfachieved some currency in English, particularlyin reminiscence of its biblical use: ‘And he said,Abba, father, all things are possible unto thee’,Mark 14:36). This came into Greek as abbás,and thence, via the Latin accusative abbatem,into Old English as abbud or abbod. The Frenchterm abbé (which is much less specific inmeaning than English abbot) comes from thesame source. In much the same way as father isused in modern English for priests, abba waswidely current in the East for referring to monks,and hence its eventual application to the head ofa monastery. A derivative of Latin abbatem wasabbatia, which has given English both abbacy[15] and (via Old French abbeie) abbey [13].Abbess is of similar antiquity (Latin hadabbatissa). ABBESS, ABBEYabbreviate see BRIEFabdicate see INDICATEabet see BAITabhor [15] Abhor comes from Latin abhorrēre,which literally meant ‘shrink back in terror’(from the prefix ab- ‘away’ and horrēre‘tremble’ – which also gave English horror andhorrid). The word used to have this intransitivemeaning ‘be repelled’ in English too, but thetransitive usage ‘loathe’ (which was probablyintroduced from Old French in the 15th century)has completely taken its place. HORRID, HORRORabide see BIDEable [14] Able and ability both come ultimatelyfrom the Latin verb habēre ‘have’ or ‘hold’.From this the Latin adjective habilis developed,meaning literally ‘convenient or suitable forholding on to’, and hence in more general terms

ablution 2‘suitable’ or ‘apt’, and later, more positively,‘competent’ or ‘expert’. It came into English viaOld French, bringing with it the noun ablete‘ability’. This was later reformed in English, onthe model of its Latin source habilitās, to ability. HABITablution see LAVATORYabode see BIDEabominable [14] The Latin original of thisword meant ‘shun as an evil omen’. The prefixab- ‘away’ was added to ōmen (source ofEnglish omen) to produce the verb abōminārī.From this was created the adjectiveabōminābilis, which reached English via OldFrench. From the 14th to the 17th century therewas a general misapprehension that abominablewas derived from Latin ab hominem ‘away fromman’, hence ‘beastly, unnatural’. This piece offanciful folk etymology not only perpetuated theerroneous spelling abhominable throughout thisperiod, but also seems to have contributedsignificantly to making the adjective much morestrongly condemnatory. OMENabort see ORIGINabound [14] Abound has no connection withbind or bound. Its Latin source means literally‘overflow’, and its nearest relative amongEnglish words is water. Latin undāre ‘flow’derived from unda ‘wave’ (as in undulate),which has the same ultimate root as water. Theaddition of the prefix ab- ‘away’ createdabundāre, literally ‘flow away’, hence‘overflow’, and eventually ‘be plentiful’. Thepresent participial stem of the Latin verb gaveEnglish abundant and abundance. In the 14thand 15th centuries it was erroneously thoughtthat abound had some connection with have, andthe spelling habound was consequentlycommon. INUNDATE, SURROUND, UNDULATE, WATERabout [OE] About in Old English times meant‘around the outside of’; it did not develop itscommonest present-day meaning, ‘concerning’,until the 13th century. In its earliest incarnationit was onbūtan, a compound made up of on andbūtan ‘outside’ (this is the same word as modernEnglish but, which was itself originally acompound, formed from the ancestors of by andout – so broken down into its ultimateconstituents, about is on by out). BUT, BY, OUTabove [OE] As in the case of about, the a- inabove represents on and the -b- elementrepresents by; above (Old English abufan) is acompound based on Old English ufan. Thismeant both ‘on top’ and ‘down from above’; it isrelated to over, and is probably descended froma hypothetical West Germanic ancestor *ufana,whose uf- element eventually became modernEnglish up. So in a sense, above means ‘on byup’ or ‘on by over’. BY, ON, UPabracadabra [16] This magical charm reachedEnglish, probably via French, from Greekabrasadabra (the c in the English word arosefrom a misinterpretation of the c in the originalGreek word, which in the Greek alphabet standsfor s). It seems to have originated (perhaps in the3rd century AD) as a cabalistic word of theBasilidians, a Gnostic sect of Alexandria, andwas probably based on Abraxas, the name oftheir supreme deity.abridge see BRIEFabroad [13] It was only in the 15th century thatabroad came to mean ‘in foreign parts’. Earlier,it had been used for ‘out of doors’, a sense stillcurrent today, if with a rather archaic air; butoriginally it meant ‘widely’ or ‘about’ (as in‘noise something abroad’). It was formed quitesimply from a ‘on’ and the adjective broad,although it was probably modelled on the muchearlier (Old English) phrase on brede, in whichbrede was a noun, meaning ‘breadth’. BROADabscess [16] Abscess comes, via French abcès,from Latin abscessus, a noun derived fromabscēdere ‘go away’. The constituent parts ofthis compound verb are abs ‘away’ and cēdere‘go’, which has given English cede and a wholerange of other words, such as accede and recede.The notion linking ‘abscesses’ and ‘goingaway’ was that impure or harmful bodilyhumours were eliminated, or ‘went away’, viathe pus that gathered in abscesses. It originatedamongst the Greeks, who indeed had a word forit: apostema. This meant literally ‘separation’(apo ‘away’ and histánai ‘stand’), and Latinabscessus was an approximate translation of it,possibly by Aulus Cornelius Celsus, the Romanwriter on medical and other matters. ACCEDE, CEDE, RECEDEabsent [14] Absent is based ultimately on theLatin verb ‘to be’, esse. To this was added theprefix ab- ‘away’, giving Latin abesse ‘beaway’; and the present participial stem of abessewas absent-. Hence, via Old French, theadjective absent and the noun absence. It hasbeen conjectured, incidentally, that the presentstem used for Latin esse was a descendant ofIndo-European *sontos ‘truth’, from whichEnglish sooth comes.absolute [14] Absolute, absolution, and absolveall come ultimately from the same source: Latinabsolvere ‘set free’, a compound verb made upfrom the prefix ab- ‘away’ and the verb solvere‘loose’ (from which English gets solve andseveral other derivatives, including dissolve andresolve). From the 13th to the 16th century analternative version of the verb, assoil, was inmore common use than absolve; this came fromthe same Latin original, but via Old Frenchrather than by a direct route. The t of absoluteand absolution comes from the past participialstem of the Latin verb – absolūt-. The noun, theadjective, and the verb have taken very differentroutes from their common semantic startingpoint, the notion of ‘setting free’: absolve nowusually refers to freeing from responsibility andabsolution to the remitting of sins, while

absolute now means ‘free from any qualificationor restriction’. DISSOLVE, RESOLVE, SOLVEabsorb [15] Absorb comes, via French absorber,from Latin absorbēre, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix ab- ‘away’ and sorbēre ‘suck up,swallow’. Words connected with drinking andswallowing quite often contain the sounds s orsh, r, and b or p – Arabic, for instance, has surāb,which gave us syrup – and this noisy gulpingseems to have been reflected in an Indo-European base, *srobh-, which lies behind bothLatin sorbēre and Greek ropheín ‘suck up’.abstain [14] The literal meaning of this word’sultimate source, Latin abstinēre, was ‘hold orkeep away’, and hence ‘withhold’ (the root verb,tenēre, produced many other derivatives inEnglish, such as contain, maintain, obtain, andretain, as well as tenacious, tenant, tenement,tenet, tenor, and tenure). That is how it was usedwhen it was first introduced into English (viaOld French abstenir), and it was not until the16th century that it began to be used morespecifically for refraining from pleasurableactivities, particularly the drinking of alcohol.The past participial stem of the Latin verb,abstent-, gave us abstention, while the presentparticipial stem, abstinent-, produced abstinentand abstinence. There is no connection,incidentally, with the semantically similarabstemious, which comes from a Latin word foralcoholic drink, tēmōtum.abstruse [16] It is not clear whether Englishborrowed abstruse from French abstrus(e) ordirectly from Latin abstrūsus, but the ultimatesource is the Latin form. It is the past participleof the verb abstrūdere, literally ‘thrust’ (trūdere)‘away’ (ab). (Trūdere contributed otherderivatives to English, including extrude andintrude, and it is related to threat.) The original,literal meaning of abstruse was ‘concealed’, butthe metaphorical ‘obscure’ is just as old inEnglish.abuse see USEabutabut see BUTTabyss [16] English borrowed abyss from lateLatin abyssus, which in turn derived from Greekábussos. This was an adjective meaning‘bottomless’, from a- ‘not’ and bussós ‘bottom’,a dialectal variant of buthós (which is related tobathys ‘deep’, the source of Englishbathyscape). In Greek the adjective was used inthe phrase ábussos limnē ‘bottomless lake’, butonly the adjective was borrowed into Latin,bringing with it the meaning of the noun as well.In medieval times, a variant form arose in Latin– abysmus. It incorporated the Greek suffix-ismós (English -ism). It is the source of Frenchabîme, and was borrowed into English in the13th century as abysm (whence the 19th-centuryderivative abysmal). It began to be ousted byabyss in the 16th century, however, and now hasa distinctly archaic air.acacia [16] Acacia comes via Latin from Greekakakía, a word for the shittah. This is a treementioned several times in the Bible (the Ark of3 accidentthe Covenant was made from its wood). It is notclear precisely what it was, but it was probably aspecies of what we now know as the acacia. Theultimate derivation of Greek akakía is obscuretoo; some hold that it is based on Greek aké‘point’ (a distant relation of English acid), fromthe thorniness of the tree, but others suggest thatit may be a loanword from Egyptian.academy [16] Borrowed either from Frenchacadémie or from Latin acadēmia, academygoes back ultimately to Greek Akadēmíā, thename of the place in Athens where thephilosopher Plato (c. 428–347 BC) taught.Traditionally thought of as a grove (‘the grovesof Academe’), this was in fact more of anenclosed piece of ground, a garden or park; itwas named after the Attic mythological heroAkadēmos or Hekadēmus. In its application tothe philosophical doctrines of Plato, Englishacademy goes back directly to its Latin source,but the more general meanings ‘college, place oftraining’ derive from French.accelerate [16] Accelerate comes from Latinaccelerāre, a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix ad- (ac- before /k/ sounds) andcelerāre ‘hurry’. Celerāre, in turn, derived fromthe adjective celer ‘fast’ (which gave Englishcelerity [15] and is ultimately related to hold).accent [14] Accent was originally a loantranslationfrom Greek into Latin (a loantranslationis when each constituent of acompound in one language is translated into itsequivalent in another, and then reassembled intoa new compound). Greek prosōidíā (whenceEnglish prosody) was formed from pros ‘to’ andōidé ‘song’ (whence English ode); theseelements were translated into Latin ad ‘to’ andcantus ‘song’ (whence English chant, cant,cantata, canticle), giving accentus. The notionunderlying this combination of ‘to’ and ‘song’was of a song added to speech – that is, theintonation of spoken language. The sense of aparticular mode of pronunciation did not arise inEnglish until the 16th century. CANT, CANTATA, CANTICLE, CHANTaccept [14] Accept comes ultimately from Latincapere, which meant ‘take’ (and was derivedfrom the same root as English heave). Theaddition of the prefix ad- ‘to’ produced accipere,literally ‘take to oneself’, hence ‘receive’. Thepast participle of this, acceptus, formed the basisof a new verb, acceptāre, denoting repeatedaction, which made its way via Old French intoEnglish. HEAVEaccident [14] Etymologically, an accident issimply ‘something which happens’ – ‘an event’.That was what the word originally meant inEnglish, and it was only subsequently that thesenses ‘something which happens by chance’and ‘mishap’ developed. It comes from the Latinverb cadere ‘fall’ (also the source of such diverseEnglish words as case, decadent, anddeciduous). The addition of the prefix ad- ‘to’produced accidere, literally ‘fall to’, hence‘happen to’. Its present participle was used as an

accolade 4adjective in the Latin phrase rēs accidēns ‘thinghappening’, and accidēns soon took on the roleof a noun on its own, passing (in its stem formaccident-) into Old French and thence intoEnglish. CASE, DECADENT, DECIDUOUSaccolade [17] Accolade goes back to anassumed Vulgar Latin verb *accollāre, meaning‘put one’s arms round someone’s neck’ (collumis Latin for ‘neck’, and is the source of Englishcollar). It put in its first recorded appearance inthe Provençal noun acolada, which wasborrowed into French as accolade and thencemade its way into English. A memory of theoriginal literal meaning is preserved in the use ofaccolade to refer to the ceremonial striking of asword on a new knight’s shoulders; the maincurrent sense ‘congratulatory expression ofapproval’ is a later development. COLLARaccomplice [15] This word was borrowed intoEnglish (from French) as complice (andcomplice stayed in common usage until late inthe 19th century). It comes from Latin complex,which is related to English complicated, andoriginally meant simply ‘an associate’, withoutany pejorative associations. The formaccomplice first appears on the scene in the late15th century (the first record of it is in WilliamCaxton’s Charles the Great), and it probablyarose through a misanalysis of complicepreceded by the indefinite article (a complice) asacomplice. It may also have been influenced byaccomplish or accompany. COMPLICATEDaccomplish see COMPLETEaccord [12] In its original source, Vulgar Latin*accordāre, accord meant literally ‘heart-toheart’(from Latin ad ‘to’ and cord-, the stem ofcor ‘heart’). It passed into Old French asacorder, and was borrowed comparatively earlyinto English, turning up in the Anglo-SaxonChronicle in 1123.Its general sense of ‘being in agreement’ hasbeen narrowed down in English and otherlanguages to the notion of ‘being in harmonymusically’, and either Italian accordare orFrench accorder provided the basis for Germanakkordion (from which English got accordion),the musical instrument invented by Buschmannin Berlin in 1822. CORDIALaccount [14] Account is of Old French origin. Itwas formed from compter, conter ‘count’ (whichderived from Latin computāre) and the prefix a-.Its original meaning in English, too, was ‘count’or ‘count up’; this had disappeared by the end ofthe 18th century, but its specialized reference tothe keeping of financial records is of equalantiquity. Account for, meaning ‘explain’, arosein the mid 18th century. COUNTaccoutre [16] Accoutre is related to bothcouture and sew. English borrowed it fromFrench accoutrer, which meant ‘equip withsomething, especially clothes’. A stage earlier,Old French had acoustrer, formed from cousture(whence couture) and the prefix a-. This camefrom Vulgar Latin *consūtūra, literally ‘sewntogether’, from con- ‘together’ and sūtūra‘sewn’ (whence English suture); sūtūra in turncame from the past participial stem of Latinsuere, which derived from the same Indo-European root as English sew. COUTURE, SEW, SUTUREaccretion see CRESCENTaccumulate [16] Accumulate was borrowedfrom Latin accumulāre, a compound verbformed from the prefix ad-, here meaning ‘inaddition’, and cumulāre ‘heap up’ (the source ofEnglish cumulative). Cumulāre itself derivedfrom cumulus ‘heap’; English adopted this withits original Latin meaning in the 17th century,but it was not until the early 19th century that itwas applied (by the meteorologist Luke Howard)to mountainous billowing cloud formations. CUMULATIVE, CUMULUSaccurate [16] ‘Accuracy’ is connected with‘curing’, in the sense not of ‘making better’ butof ‘looking after’ – as in ‘the cure of souls’. Theadjective comes from Latin accūrātus ‘donecarefully’, which in turn derived from a verb(cūrāre ‘care for’) formed from the noun cūra‘care’ (other English words from this source arecurate, curious, procure, and secure). The notionof doing something carefully led on naturally tothe notion of exactness. CURATE, CURIOUS, PROCURE, SECUREaccuse [13] Accuse comes via Old Frenchacuser from the Latin verb accūsāre, which wasbased on the noun causa ‘cause’ – but cause inthe sense not of ‘something that produces aresult’, but of ‘legal action’ (a meaningpreserved in English cause list, for instance).Hence accūsāre was to ‘call someone to accountfor their actions’.The grammatical term accusative [15](denoting the case of the object of a verb in Latinand other languages) is derived ultimately fromaccūsāre, but it arose originally owing to amistranslation. The Greek term for this case wasptósis aitiātiké ‘case denoting causation’ – areasonable description of the function of theaccusative. Unfortunately the Greek verbaitiásthai also meant ‘accuse’, and it was thissense that Latin grammarians chose to renderwhen adopting the term. CAUSE, EXCUSEaccustom see CUSTOMace [13] Ace comes from the name of a smallancient Roman coin, the as (which may havebeen of Etruscan origin). As well as denoting thecoin, Latin as stood for ‘one’ or ‘unity’, and itwas as the ‘score of one at dice’ that it firstentered English.ache [OE] Of the noun ache and the verb ache,the verb came first. In Old English it was acan.From it was formed the noun, æce or ece. Formany centuries, the distinction between the twowas preserved in their pronunciation: in the verb,the ch was pronounced as it is now, with a /k/sound, but the noun was pronounced similarly to

the letter H, with a /ch/ sound. It was not until theearly 19th century that the noun came regularlyto be pronounced the same way as the verb. It isnot clear what the ultimate origins of ache are,but related forms do exist in other Germaniclanguages (Low German āken, for instance, andMiddle Dutch akel), and it has been conjecturedthat there may be some connection with the OldHigh German exclamation (of pain) ah.achieve [14] Achieve is related to chief. It comesfrom Old French achever ‘bring to an end’, orliterally ‘bring to a head’, which was based onthe phrase a chief ‘to a head’ (chief derivesultimately from Latin caput ‘head’).The heraldic meaning of achievement, ‘coatof arms’, comes from the notion that theescutcheon was granted as a reward for aparticular achievement. Over the centuries it hasevolved an alternative form, hatchment [16]. CHIEF, HATCHMENTacid [17] The original notion contained in theword acid is ‘pointedness’. In common with awide range of other English words (for exampleacute, acne, edge, oxygen) it can be traced backultimately to the Indo-European base *ak-,which meant ‘be pointed or sharp’. Among theLatin derivatives of this base was the adjectiveācer ‘sharp’. From this was formed the verbacere ‘be sharp or sour’, and from this verb inturn the adjective acidus ‘sour’. The scientistFrancis Bacon seems to have been the first tointroduce it into English, in the early 17thcentury (though whether directly from Latin orfrom French acide is not clear). Its use as a noun,in the strict technical sense of a class ofsubstances that react with alkalis or bases,developed during the 18th century. ACACIA, ACNE, ACRID, ACUTE, ALACRITY, EAR,EDGE, OXYGENacknowledge see KNOWacne [19] It is ironic that acne, that represents alow point in many teenagers’ lives, comes fromacme, ‘the highest point’. The Greeks usedakme, which literally meant ‘point’, for referringto spots on the face, but when it came to berendered into Latin it was mistransliterated asacnē, and the error has stuck. (Acme comes,incidentally, from an Indo-European base *ak-‘be pointed’, and thus is related to acid, edge,and oxygen.) ACID, ACME, EDGE, OXYGENacolyte [14] Acolyte comes, via Old Frenchand/or medieval Latin, from Greek akólouthos‘following’. This was formed from the prefix a-(which is related to homos ‘same’) and the nounkeleuthos ‘path’, and it appears again in Englishin anacolouthon [18] (literally ‘not following’),a technical term for lack of grammaticalsequence. The original use of acolyte in Englishwas as a minor church functionary, and it did notacquire its more general meaning of ‘follower’until the 19th century. ANACOLOUTHONacorn [OE] Acorn has no etymologicalconnection with oak; its nearest linguisticrelative in English is probably acre. The Old5 acquitEnglish word was æcern, which may well havederived from æcer ‘open land’ (the relatedMiddle High German ackeran referred to beechmast as well as acorns, and Gothic akrandeveloped more widely still, to mean simply‘fruit’). There are cognate words in other, non-Germanic, Indo-European languages, such asRussian yagoda ‘berry’ and Welsh aeron ‘fruits’.Left to develop on its own, æcern would havebecome modern English achern, but theaccidental similarity of oak and corn havecombined to reroute its pronunciation. ACREacoustic [17] Appropriately enough, acousticmay be distantly related to hear. It first appearedin English in Francis Bacon’s Advancement ofLearning 1605, borrowed from Greekakoustikós. This in turn was derived from theGreek verb for ‘hear’, akoúein, which, it hasbeen speculated, may have some connectionwith *khauzjan, the original Germanic source ofEnglish hear, not to mention German hören andDutch horen (as well as with Latin cavēre ‘be onone’s guard’, and hence with English cautionand caveat). CAUTION, CAVEAT, HEARacquaint [13] Acquaint is connected withquaint, distant though they may seem inmeaning. It comes via Old French acointer frommedieval Latin accognitāre, which was basedultimately on cognitus, the past participle ofcognoscere ‘know’. Cognitus gave Englishcognition, of course, but also quaint (cognitusdeveloped into cointe, queinte in Old French,and came to mean ‘skilled, expert’; this led laterto the notion of being skilfully made or elegant,which eventually degenerated into ‘agreeablycurious’). COGNITION, QUAINTacquire [15] The original source of acquire,Latin acquīrere, meant literally ‘get somethingextra’. It was formed from the verb quaerere ‘tryto get or obtain’ (from which English gets query,the derivatives enquire and require, and, via thepast participial stem, quest and question) plusthe prefix ad-, conveying the idea of beingadditional. English borrowed the word via OldFrench acquerre, and it was originally spelledacquere, but around 1600 the spelling waschanged to acquire, supposedly to bring it moreinto conformity with its Latin source. QUERY, QUEST, QUESTIONacquit [13] Acquit is ultimately related to quiet.The Latin noun quies, from which we get quiet,was the basis of a probable verb *quietare, later*quitare, whose original meaning, ‘put to rest’,developed to ‘settle’, as in ‘settle a debt’. Withthe addition of the prefix ad- this passed into OldFrench as a(c)quiter, and thence into English(still with the ‘settling or discharging debts’meaning). The currently most common sense,‘declare not guilty’, did not appear until the 14thcentury, and the most recent meaning, ‘conductoneself in a particular way’, developed from thenotion of discharging one’s duties. QUIET

acre 6acre [OE] Acre is a word of ancient ancestry,going back probably to the Indo-European base*ag-, source of words such as agent and act. Thisbase had a range of meanings covering ‘do’ and‘drive’, and it is possible that the notion ofdriving contributed to the concept of drivinganimals on to land for pasture. However that maybe, it gave rise to a group of words in Indo-European languages, including Latin ager(whence English agriculture), Greek agros,Sanskrit ájras, and a hypothetical Germanic*akraz. By this time, people’s agriculturalactivities had moved on from herding animals inopen country to tilling the soil in enclosed areas,and all of this group of words meant specifically‘field’. From the Germanic form developed OldEnglish æcer, which as early as 1000 AD hadcome to be used for referring to a particularmeasured area of agricultural land (as much as apair of oxen could plough in one day). ACT, AGENT, AGRICULTURE, EYRIE, ONAGER,PEREGRINE, PILGRIMacrid [18] Acrid is related to acid, and probablyowes its second syllable entirely to that word. Itis based essentially on Latin acer ‘sharp,pungent’, which, like acid, acute, oxygen, andedge, derives ultimately from an Indo-Europeanbase *ak- meaning ‘be pointed or sharp’. Whenthis was imported into English in the 18thcentury, the ending -id was artificially grafted onto it, most likely from the semantically similaracid. ACID, ACRYLIC, ACUTE, EDGE, EGLANTINE,OXYGEN, PARAGONacrobat [19] The Greek adjective ákros meant‘topmost, at the tip or extremity’ (it derivesultimately from the Indo-European base *akmeaning‘be pointed or sharp’, which also gaverise to acid, acute, oxygen, and edge). It crops upin acrophobia ‘fear of heights’; in acropolis‘citadel’, literally ‘upper city’; in acromegaly‘unnaturally enlarged condition of the hands,feet, and face’, literally ‘large extremities’; andin acronym, literally ‘word formed from the tipsof words’. Acrobat itself means literally‘walking on tiptoe’. The -bat morpheme comesfrom Greek baínein ‘walk’, which is closelyrelated to basis and base, and is also connectedwith come. Akrobátēs existed as a term in Greek,and reached English via French acrobate. ACID, ACUTE, EDGE, OXYGENacross [13] English originally borrowed across,or the idea for it, from Old French. French hadthe phrase à croix or en croix, literally ‘at or incross’, that is, ‘in the form of a cross’ or‘transversely’. This was borrowed into MiddleEnglish as a creoix or o(n) croice, and it was notuntil the 15th century that versions based on thenative English form of the word cross began toappear: in cross, on cross, and the eventualwinner, across. CROSSacrostic [16] An acrostic is a piece of verse inwhich the first letters of each line when puttogether spell out a word. The term is of Greekorigin (akrostikhis), and was formed from ákros‘at the extremity’ (see ACROBAT) and stíkhos‘line of verse’. The second element crops up inseveral other prosodic terms, such as distich andhemistich, and comes from the Greek verbsteíkhein ‘go’, which is related ultimately toEnglish stair, stile, and stirrup. ACROBAT, DISTICH, HEMISTICH, STAIR, STILE,STIRRUPacrylic [19] Acrylic was based ultimately onacrolein [19], the name of a very pungentpoisonous organic compound. This in turn wasformed from Latin acer ‘sharp, pungent’ (sourceof English acrid) and olere ‘smell’.act [14] Act, action, active, actor all go back toLatin agere ‘do, perform’ (which is the source ofa host of other English derivatives, from agent toprodigal). The past participle of this verb wasāctus, from which we get act, partly throughFrench acte, but in the main directly from Latin.The Latin agent noun, āctor, came into thelanguage at about the same time, although at firstit remained a rather uncommon word in English,with technical legal uses; it was not until the endof the 16th century that it came into its own inthe theatre (player had hitherto been the usualterm).Other Latin derivatives of the past participialstem āct- were the noun āctiō, which enteredEnglish via Old French action, and the adjectiveāctīvus, which gave English active. See alsoACTUAL. ACTION, ACTIVE, AGENT, COGENT, EXAMINE,PRODIGALactual [14] In common with act, action, etc,actual comes ultimately from Latin āctus, thepast participle of the verb agere ‘do, perform’. Inlate Latin an adjective āctuālis was formed fromthe noun āctus, and this passed into Old Frenchas actuel. English borrowed it in this form, and itwas not until the 15th century that the spellingactual, based on the original Latin model,became general. At first its meaning was simply,and literally, ‘relating to acts, active’; the currentsense, ‘genuine’, developed in the mid 16thcentury. ACT, ACTIONacumen [16] Acumen is a direct borrowing fromLatin acūmen, which meant both literally ‘point’and figuratively ‘sharpness’. It derived from theverb acuere ‘sharpen’, which was also the sourceof English acute. The original pronunciation ofacumen in English was /əkjūmen/, with thestress on the second syllable, very much on thepattern of the Latin original; it is only relativelyrecently that a pronunciation with the stress onthe first syllable has become general. ACUTEacute [14] Acute derives from Latin acūtus‘sharp’ (which was also the source of Englishague). This was the past participle of the verbacuere ‘sharpen’, which in turn was probablyformed from the noun acus ‘needle’. Like therelated acid, acetic, and acrid, it can be tracedback to an Indo-European base *ak- ‘be

pointed’, which was also the ultimate source ofoxygen and edge. ACETIC, ACID, ACRID, AGUE, CUTE, EDGE,OXYGENadage [16] Adage was borrowed, via French,from Latin adagium ‘maxim, proverb’. Thisseems to have been formed from a variant of aio‘I say’ plus the prefīx ad- ‘to’. In the 16th and17th centuries an alternative version, adagy,existed.adamant [14] In Greek, adamas meant‘unbreakable, invincible’. It was formed fromthe verb daman ‘subdue, break down’ (whichcame from the same source as English tame)plus the negative prefix a-. It developed a nounusage as a ‘hard substance’, specifically‘diamond’ or ‘very hard metal’, and this passedinto Latin as adamāns, or, in its stem form,adamant-. Hence Old French adamaunt, andeventually English adamant. DIAMOND, TAMEappleAdam’s apple [18] The original apple inquestion was the forbidden fruit of the tree of theknowledge of good and evil, which the serpent inthe Garden of Eden tricked Eve into eating, andwhich she in turn persuaded Adam to eat. It wastraditionally believed that a piece of it stuck inAdam’s throat, and so it became an appropriateand convenient metaphor for the thyroidcartilage of the larynx, which protrudesnoticeably in men.add [14] Etymologically, add means simply ‘putto’. Its source is Latin addere, a compound verbformed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and the stem-dere ‘put’ (which is related to English do). Itsoriginal meaning in English was simply ‘joinone thing to another’; its specific mathematicaluse did not develop until the early 16th century. DOadder [OE] In Old English, the term for a snake(any snake, not just an adder) was nǣddre; thereare or were related forms in many otherEuropean languages, such as Latin natrix, Welshneidr, and German natter (but there does notseem to be any connection with the natterjacktoad). Around the 14th century, however, theword began to lose its initial consonant. Thenoun phrase including the indefinite article, anadder, became misanalysed as an adder, and bythe 17th century nadder had disappeared fromthe mainstream language (though it survivedmuch longer in northern dialects).addict [16] Originally, addict was an adjective inEnglish, meaning ‘addicted’. It was borrowedfrom Latin addictus, the past participle ofaddicere, which meant ‘give over or award tosomeone’. This in turn was formed from theprefix ad- ‘to’ and the verb dicere. The standardmeaning of dicere was ‘say’ (as in Englishdiction, dictionary, and dictate), but it also hadthe sense ‘adjudge’ or ‘allot’, and that was itsforce in addicere. DICTATE, DICTION, DICTIONARYaddled [13] Addled may be traceable backultimately to a confusion between ‘wind’ and‘urine’ in Latin. In Middle English the term was7 adjournadel eye ‘addled egg’. of which the first partderived from Old English adela ‘foul-smellingurine or liquid manure’. It seems possible thatthis may be a loan-translation of the Latin termfor ‘addled egg’, ōvum ūrīnae, literally ‘urineegg’. This in turn was an alteration, by folketymology, of ōvum ūrīnum, a partial loantranslationof Greek oúrion ōón, literally ‘windegg’ (a wind egg is an imperfect or addled egg).address [14] Address originally meant‘straighten’. William Caxton, for example, hereuses it for ‘stand up straight’: ‘The first day thathe was washed and bathed he addressedhim[self] right up in the basin’ Golden Legend1483. This gives a clue to its ultimate source,Latin dīrectum ‘straight, direct’. The first twosyllables of this seem gradually to have mergedtogether to produce *drictum, which with theaddition of the prefix ad- was used to producethe verb *addrictiāre. Of its descendants inmodern Romance languages, Italian addirizzaremost clearly reveals its source. Old Frenchchanged it fairly radically, to adresser, and it wasthis form which English borrowed. The centralcurrent sense of ‘where somebody lives’developed in the 17th and 18th centuries fromthe notion of directing something, such as aletter, to somebody. DIRECTadequate see EQUALadhere [16] Adhere was borrowed, eitherdirectly or via French adhérer, from Latinadhaerēre. This in turn was formed from theprefix ad- ‘to’ and the verb haerēre ‘stick’. Thepast participial stem of haerēre was haes- (theultimate source of English hesitate), and fromadhaes- were formed the Latin originals ofadhesion and adhesive. HESITATEadjacent [15] Adjacent and adjective come fromthe same source, the Latin verb jacere ‘throw’.The intransitive form of this, jacēre, literally ‘bethrown down’, was used for ‘lie’. With theaddition of the prefix ad-, here in the sense ‘nearto’, was created adjacēre, ‘lie near’. Its presentparticipial stem, adjacent-, passed, perhaps viaFrench, into English.The ordinary Latin transitive verb jacere,meanwhile, was transformed into adjicere by theaddition of the prefix ad-; it meant literally‘throw to’, and hence ‘add’ or ‘attribute’, andfrom its past participial stem, adject-, wasformed the adjective adjectīvus. This was used inthe phrase nomen adjectīvus ‘attributive noun’,which was a direct translation of Greek ónomaépithetos. And when it first appeared in English(in the 14th century, via Old French adjectif) itwas in noun adjective, which remained thetechnical term for ‘adjective’ into the 19thcentury. Adjective was not used as a noun in itsown right until the early 16th century. ADJECTIVE, EASY, REJECTadjourn [14] Adjourn originally meant ‘appointa day for’, but over the centuries, such is humannature, it has come to be used for postponing,deferring, or suspending. It originated in the Old

adjust 8French phrase à jour nomé ‘to an appointedday’, from which the Old French verb ajournerderived. Jour ‘day’ came from late Latindiurnum, a noun formed from the adjectivediurnus ‘daily’, which in turn was based on thenoun diēs ‘day’. DIARY, JOURNALadjust see JUSTadjutant [17] An adjutant was formerly simplyan ‘assistant’, but the more specific militarysense of an officer who acts as an aide to a moresenior officer has now virtually ousted thisoriginal meaning. The word comes from a Latinverb for ‘help’, and is in fact related to Englishaid. Latin adjuvāre ‘help’ developed a new form,adjūtāre, denoting repeated action, and thepresent participial stem of this, adjutant-‘helping’, was borrowed into English. AID, COADJUTORadmiral [13] Admirals originally had nothingspecifically to do with the sea. The word comesultimately from Arabic ’amīr ‘commander’(from which English later also acquired emir[17]). This entered into various titles followed bythe particle -al- ‘of’ (’amīr-al-bahr ‘commanderof the sea’, ’amīr-al-mūminīn ‘commander ofthe faithful’), and when it was borrowed intoEuropean languages, ’amīr-al- becamemisconstrued as an independent, free-standingword. Moreover, the Romans, when theyadopted it, smuggled in their own Latin prefixad-, producing admiral. When this reachedEnglish (via Old French) it still meant simply‘commander’, and it was not until the time ofEdward III that a strong naval link began toemerge. The Arabic title ’amīr-al-bahr had hadconsiderable linguistic influence in the wake ofArabic conquests around the Mediterraneanseaboard (Spanish almirante de la mar, forinstance), and specific application of the term toa naval commander spread via Spain, Italy, andFrance to England. Thus in the 15th centuryEngland had its Admiral of the Sea or Admiral ofthe Navy, who was in charge of the national fleet.By 1500 the maritime connection was firmlyestablished, and admiral came to be used on itsown for ‘supreme naval commander’. EMIRadmire [16] Admire has rather run out of steamsince it first entered the language. It comesoriginally from the same Latin source as marveland miracle, and from the 16th to the 18thcenturies it meant ‘marvel at’ or ‘be astonished’.Its weaker modern connotations of ‘esteem’ or‘approval’, however, have been present since thebeginning, and have gradually ousted the moreexuberant expressions of wonderment. It is notclear whether English borrowed the word fromFrench admirer or directly from its source, Latinadmīrārī, literally ‘wonder at’, a compound verbformed from ad- and mīrārī ‘wonder’. MARVEL, MIRACLEadmit [15] This is one of a host of words, frommission to transmit, to come down to Englishfrom Latin mittere ‘send’. Its source, admittere,meant literally ‘send to’, hence ‘allow to enter’.In the 15th and 16th centuries the form amit wasquite common, borrowed from French amettre,but learned influence saw to it that the more‘correct’ Latin form prevailed. COMMIT, MISSION, TRANSMITadmonish [14] In Middle English times thisverb was amoneste. It came, via Old Frenchamonester, from an assumed Vulgar Latin verb*admonestāre, an alteration of Latin admonēre(monēre meant ‘warn’, and came from the samesource as English mind). The prefix ad- wasreintroduced from Latin in the 15th century,while the -ish ending arose from a mistakenanalysis of -este as some sort of past tenseinflection; the t was removed when producinginfinitive or present tense forms, giving spellingssuch as amonace and admonyss, and by the 16thcentury this final -is had become identified withand transformed into the more common -ishending. MINDado [14] In origin, ado (like affair) meansliterally ‘to do’. This use of the preposition at(ado = at do) is a direct borrowing from OldNorse, where it was used before the infinitive ofverbs, where English would use to. Ado persistedin this literal sense in northern English dialects,where Old Norse influence was strong, well intothe 19th century, but by the late 16th century itwas already a noun with the connotations of‘activity’ or ‘fuss’ which have preserved it(alongside the indigenous to-do) in modernEnglish. DOadobe [18] Adobe is of Egyptian origin, from thetime of the pharaohs. It comes from Coptic tōbe‘brick’ (the form t.b appears in hieroglyphs).This was borrowed into Arabic, where theaddition of the definite article al produced attob‘the brick’. From Arabic it passed into Spanish(the corridor through which so many Arabicwords reached other European languages), andits use by the Spanish-speaking population ofNorth America (for a sun-dried brick) led to itsadoption into English in the mid 18th century.adolescent [15] The original notion lyingbehind both adolescent and adult is of‘nourishment’. The Latin verb alere meant‘nourish’ (alimentary and alimony come from it,and it is related to old). A derivative of this,denoting the beginning of an action, wasalēscere ‘be nourished’, hence ‘grow’. Theaddition of the prefix ad- produced adolēscere.Its present participial stem, adolēscent-‘growing’, passed into English as the nounadolescent ‘a youth’ (the adjective appears not tohave occurred before the end of the 18thcentury). Its past participle, adultus ‘grown’,was adopted into English as adult in the 16thcentury. ADULT, ALIMENTARY, ALIMONY, COALESCE,COALITION, PROLETARIAN, PROLIFICadopt see OPINIONadore see ORATORadornadorn see ORNAMENT

adrenaline [20] The hormone adrenaline issecreted by glands just above the kidneys. Fromtheir position these are called the ‘adrenalglands’ [19], a term based on Latin rēnes‘kidney’, which has also given English renal[17] and (via Old French) the now obsolete reins‘kidneys’ [14]. The discovery of adrenaline andthe coining of its name are both disputed: theymay have been the work of Dr Jokichi Takamineor of Dr Norton L. Wilson.adultery [14] Neither adultery nor the relatedadulterate have any connection with adult. Bothcome ultimately from the Latin verb adulterāre‘debauch, corrupt’ (which may have been basedon Latin alter ‘other’, with the notion ofpollution from some extraneous source). By theregular processes of phonetic change, adulterārepassed into Old French as avoutrer, and this wasthe form which first reached English, as avouter(used both verbally, ‘commit adultery’, andnominally, ‘adulterer’) and as the nounsavoutery ‘adultery’ and avouterer ‘adulterer’.Almost from the first they coexisted in Englishbeside adult- forms, deriving either from LawFrench or directly from Latin, and during the15th to 17th centuries these gradually ousted theavout- forms. Adulter, the equivalent of avouter,clung on until the end of the 18th century, but thenoun was superseded in the end by adulterer andthe verb by a new form, adulterate, directlybased on the past participle of Latin adulterāre,which continued to mean ‘commit adultery’until the mid 19th century. ALTERadumbrate see UMBRAGEadvance [13] Advance originated in the Latinadverb abante ‘before’ (source of, among others,French avant and Italian avanti), which in turnwas based on ab ‘from’ and ante ‘before’. Inpost-classical times a verb, *abantiāre, seems tohave been formed from the adverb. It developedinto Old French avancer, and passed intoEnglish as avaunce, initially with the meaning‘promote’. A new form, advancer, started life inOld French, on the mistaken association ofavancer with other av- words, such as aventure,which really did derive from Latin words withthe ad- prefix; over the 15th and 16th centuriesthis gradually established itself in English. Thenoun advance did not appear until the 17thcentury.advantage [14] Advantage comes from OldFrench avantage, which was based on avant‘before’; the notion behind its formation was ofbeing ahead of others, and hence in a superiorposition. As with advance, the intrusive -dbecameestablished in the 16th century, on theanalogy of words genuinely containing the Latinprefix ad-. The reduced form vantage actuallypredates advantage in English, having enteredthe language via Anglo-Norman in the 13thcentury.adventure [13] Adventure derives ultimatelyfrom a Latin verb meaning ‘arrive’. It originallymeant ‘what comes or happens by chance’,hence ‘luck’, but it took a rather pessimistic9 advicedownturn via ‘risk, danger’ to (in the 14thcentury) ‘hazardous undertaking’. Its Latinsource was advenīre, formed from the prefix adandvenīre ‘come’. Its past participle stem,advent-, produced English advent [12] andadventitious [17], but it was its future participle,adventura ‘about to arrive’, which producedadventure. In the Romance languages in which itsubsequently developed (Italian avventura,Spanish aventura, and French aventure, thesource of Middle English aventure) the ddisappeared, but it was revived in 15th – 16thcenturyFrench in imitation of Latin. Thereduced form venture first appears in the 15thcentury. ADVENTITIOUS, AVENT, VENTUREadverb [15] Adverb comes ultimately from aLatin word modelled on Greek epírrhēma,literally ‘added word’. The elements of thiscompound (the prefix epi- and rhēma ‘word’)were translated literally into Latin (ad- andverbum), giving adverbum. English took theword either directly from Latin, or via Frenchadverbe. VERBadvertise [15] When it was originally borrowedinto English, from French, advertise meant‘notice’. It comes ultimately from the Latin verbadvertere ‘turn towards’ (whose past participleadversus ‘hostile’ is the source of Englishadverse [14] and adversity [13]). A later variantform, advertīre, passed into Old French asavertir ‘warn’ (not to be confused with theavertir from which English gets avert [15] andaverse [16], which came from Latin abvertere‘turn away’). This was later reformed intoadvertir, on the model of its Latin original, andits stem form advertiss- was taken into English,with its note of ‘warning’ already softening into‘giving notice of’, or simply ‘noticing’. Themodern sense of ‘describing publicly in order toincrease sales’ had its beginnings in the mid 18thcentury. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the verbwas pronounced with the main stress on itssecond syllable, like the advertise- inadvertisement. ADVERSE, ADVERSITY, VERSEadvice [13] Like modern French avis, adviceoriginally meant ‘opinion’, literally ‘what seemsto one to be the case’. In Latin, ‘seem’ wasusually expressed by the passive of the verbvidēre ‘see’; thus, vīsum est, ‘it seems’ (literally‘it is seen’). With the addition of the dative firstperson pronoun, one could express the notion ofopinion: mihi vīsum est, ‘it seems to me’. Itappears either that this was partially translatedinto Old French as ce m’est a vis, or that the pastparticiple vīsum was nominalized in Latin,making possible such phrases as ad (meum)vīsum ‘in (my) view’; but either way it is certainthat a(d)- became prefixed to vīs(um), producinga new word, a(d)vis, for ‘opinion’. It wasoriginally borrowed into English without the d,but learned influence had restored the Latinspelling by the end of the 15th century. As to itsmeaning, ‘opinion’ was obsolete by the mid 17th

advocate 10century, but already by the late 14th century thepresent sense of ‘counsel’ was developing.The verb advise [14] probably comes fromOld French aviser, based on avis. VISION, VISITadvocate [14] Etymologically, advocatecontains the notion of ‘calling’, specifically ofcalling someone in for advice or as a witness.This was the meaning of the Latin verb advocāre(formed from vocāre ‘call’, from which Englishalso gets vocation). Its past participle,advocātus, came to be used as a noun, originallymeaning ‘legal witness or adviser’, and later‘attorney’. In Old French this became avocat, theform in which English borrowed it; it was laterrelatinized to advocate. The verb advocate doesnot appear until the 17th century.The word was also borrowed into Dutch, asadvocaat, and the compound advocaatenborrel,literally ‘lawyer’s drink’, has, by shortening,given English the name for a sweetish yellowconcoction of eggs and brandy. INVOKE, REVOKE, VOCATIONaegis [18] The notion of ‘protection’ containedin this word goes back to classical mythology, inwhich one of the functions or attributes of theGreek god Zeus (and later of Roman Jupiter orMinerva) was the giving of protection. This wasusually represented visually as a shield,traditionally held to be made of goatskin – henceGreek aigís, the name of the shield, came to beassociated in the popular imagination with aix(aig- in its stem form), the Greek word for‘goat’. English borrowed the word directly fromLatin.harpaeolian harp [18] Aeolus was the Greek god ofthe winds (the form of the name is Latin; theoriginal Greek was Aiolos, deriving from theadjective aiolos ‘quick-moving’). Hence theapplication of the epithet to a musical instrumentwhose strings are sounded by the breeze blowingover them. The term is first recorded in thewritings of Erasmus Darwin, at the end of the18th century.aeon see AGEaeroplane [19] The prefix aero- comesultimately from Greek āér ‘air’, but many of theterms containing it (such as aeronaut andaerostat) reached English via French. This wasthe case, too, with aeroplane, in the sense of‘heavier-than-air flying machine’. The word wasfirst used in English in 1873 (30 years before theWright brothers’ first flight), by D S Brown inthe Annual Report of the Aeronautical Society –he refers vaguely to an aeroplane invented by ‘aFrenchman’. The abbreviated form planefollowed around 1908. (An earlier, andexclusively English, use of the word aeroplanewas in the sense ‘aerofoil, wing’; this was coinedin the 1860s, but did not long survive theintroduction of the ‘aircraft’ sense.)Aeroplane is restricted in use mainly toBritish English (and even there now has adistinctly old-fashioned air). The preferred termin American English is airplane, a refashioningof aeroplane along more ‘English’ lines which isfirst recorded from 1907. AIRaesthetic [18] In strict etymological terms,aesthetic relates to perception via the senses. Itcomes ultimately from the Greek verbaísthesthai ‘perceive’ (which is related to Latinaudīre ‘hear’), and this meaning is preserved inanaesthetic, literally ‘without feeling’. Thederived adjective aisthētikós reached WesternEurope via modern Latin aesthēticus, and wasfirst used (in its Germanized form ästhetisch) inthe writings of the philosopher Immanuel Kant(1724–1804). Here, it retained its original sense,‘perceptual’, but its use by A T Baumgarten asthe title (Æsthetica) of a work on the theory ofbeauty in art (1750) soon led to its adoption in itsnow generally accepted meaning. AUDIBLE, AUDITIONaestivate see ETHERaffable [16] The Latin original of affable,affābilis, meant ‘easy to speak to’. It was formedfrom the verb āffārī ‘speak to’, which in turn wasderived from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and fārī ‘speak’(the source of fable, fame, and fate). It reachedEnglish via Old French affable. FABLE, FAME, FATEaffair [13] Like ado, and of course to-do, affairoriginally meant literally ‘to do’. It was coined inOld French from the phrase à faire ‘to do’, andentered English via Anglo-Norman afere. Thespelling affair was established by Caxton, whobased it on the French model. The specific senseof a ‘love affair’ dates from the early 18thcentury. FACTaffect There are two distinct verbs affect inEnglish: ‘simulate insincerely’ [15] and ‘have aneffect on’ [17]; but both come ultimately fromthe same source, Latin afficere. Of compoundorigin, from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and facere ‘do’,this had a wide range of meanings. One set, inreflexive use, was ‘apply oneself to something’,and a new verb, affectāre, was formed from itspast participle affectus, meaning ‘aspire orpretend to have’. Either directly or via Frenchaffecter, this was borrowed into English, and isnow most commonly encountered in the pastparticiple adjective affected and the derivednoun affectation. Another meaning of afficerewas ‘influence’, and this first entered English inthe 13th century by way of its derived nounaffectiō, meaning ‘a particular, usuallyunfavourable disposition’ – hence affection. Theverb itself was a much later borrowing, againeither through French or directly from the Latinpast participle affectus. FACTaffinity [14] The abstract notion of ‘relationship’in affinity was originally a more concreteconception of a border. The word comes, via OldFrench afinite, from the Latin adjective affinis,which meant literally ‘bordering on something’.It was formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and the

noun finis ‘border’ (from which English alsogets finish, confine, and define). CONFINE, DEFINE, FINISH, PARAFFIN, REFINEaffix see FIXafflict [14] When it originally entered English,afflict meant ‘overthrow’, reflecting its origins inLatin afflīgere ‘throw down’, a compound verbformed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and flīgere‘strike’. English afflict comes either from theLatin past participle afflictus, from a new Latinverb formed from this, afflictāre, or perhapsfrom the now obsolete English adjective afflict,which was borrowed from Old French aflit andrefashioned on the Latin model. The meaning‘torment, distress’ developed in the early 16thcentury.affluent [15] The meaning ‘rich’ is a fairlyrecent development for affluent; it is firstrecorded in the mid 18th century. Originally theadjective meant simply ‘flowing’. It came, viaOld French, from Latin affluent-, the presentparticiple of affluere, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix ad- ‘towards’ and fluere ‘flow’(the source of English fluid, fluent, flux,fluctuate, and many other derivatives). FLUCTUATE, FLUENT, FLUID, FLUXafford [OE] This verb originally meant‘accomplish, fulfil’. In Old English times it wasgeforthian, formed from the prefix ge-, denotingcompletion of an action, and forthian ‘advancetowards completion’ or literally ‘further’ (fromthe adverb forth). The notion of accomplishingsomething or managing something graduallyled, by the 15th century, to the idea of being ableto do something because one has enough money.Meanwhile, the original ge- prefix, which byMiddle English times had become i- (iforthien),had been transformed into af- under theinfluence of the many Latin-based wordsbeginning in aff-, and in the 16th centuryspellings with final d in place of th start toappear. FORTHaffray [14] Affray is a word of mixed Germanicand Romance origin. The noun comes from theverb, ‘alarm’ (now obsolete, but still very muchwith us in the form of its past participle, afraid),which was borrowed into English from Anglo-Norman afrayer and Old French effreer andesfreer. These go back to a hypothetical VulgarLatin verb *exfridāre, which was composed ofthe Latin prefix ex- ‘out’ and an assumed noun*fridus, which Latin took from the Frankish*frithuz ‘peace’ (cognate with German friede‘peace’, and with the name Frederick). Theunderlying meaning of the word is thus ‘takeaway someone’s peace’. AFRAID, BELFRYaffront [14] The present-day notion of ‘insultingsomeone’ has replaced the more direct action ofhitting them in the face. Affront comes, via OldFrench afronter, from Vulgar Latin *affrontāre‘strike in the face’, which was formed from theLatin phrase ad frontem, literally ‘to the face’. FRONT11 ageafter [OE] In the first millennium AD manyGermanic languages had forms cognate with OldEnglish æfter (Gothic aftra, for example, andOld Norse aptr), but, with the exception ofDutch achter, none survive. It is not clear whattheir ultimate origin is, but the suffix they sharemay well be a comparative one, and it is possiblethat they derive from a Germanic base *af-(represented in Old English æftan ‘frombehind’). It has been suggested that this goesback to Indo-European *ap- (source of Latin ab‘away, from’ and English of(f)), in which caseafter would mean literally ‘more off’ – that is,‘further away’.Nautical aft is probably a shortening of abaft,formed, with the prefixes a- ‘on’ and be- ‘by’,from Old English æftan. OF, OFFaftermath [16] Originally, and literally, anaftermath was a second crop of grass or similargrazing vegetation, grown after an earlier crop inthe same season had been harvested. Already bythe mid 17th century it had taken on thefigurative connotations of ‘resulting condition’which are today its only living sense. The -mathelement comes from Old English mǣth‘mowing’, a noun descended from the Germanicbase *mǣ, source of English mow. MOWagain [OE] The underlying etymological senseof again is ‘in a direct line with, facing’, hence‘opposite’ and ‘in the opposite direction, back’(its original meaning in Old English). It comesfrom a probable Germanic *gagin ‘straight’,which was the source of many compoundsformed with on or in in various Germaniclanguages, such as Old Saxon angegin and OldNorse íg gegn. The Old English form wasongēan, which would have produced ayen inmodern English; however, Norse-influencedforms with a hard g had spread over the wholecountry from northern areas by the 16th century.The meaning ‘once more, anew’ did not developuntil the late 14th century. From Old Englishtimes until the late 16th century a prefix-lessform gain was used in forming compounds. Itcarried a range of meanings, from ‘against’ to ‘inreturn’, but today survives only in gainsay.The notion of ‘opposition’ is carried throughin against, which was formed in the 12th centuryfrom again and what was originally the genitivesuffix -es, as in always and nowadays. Theparasitic -t first appeared in the 14th century.age [13] Age has undergone considerabletransmutations and abbreviations since itsbeginnings in Latin. Its immediate source inEnglish is Old French aage, which was theproduct of a hypothetical Vulgar Latin form*aetāticum (the t is preserved in Provençal atge).This was based on Latin aetāt- (stem of aetās),which was a shortening of aevitās, which in turncame from aevum ‘lifetime’. This enteredEnglish in more recognizable form in medieval,primeval, etc; it is related to Greek aión ‘age’,from which English gets aeon [17], and it can betraced back to the same root that produced (via

agenda 12Old Norse eí) the now archaic adverb ay(e)‘ever’ (as in ‘will aye endure’). AEON, AYEagenda [17] Agenda is the plural of Latinagendum, which is the gerundive form of theverb agere ‘do’ (see AGENT); it thus meansliterally ‘things to be done’. When the word firstentered the language it was given an anglicizedsingular form, agend, with the plural agends, butthis seems to have disappeared by the 18thcentury. The formal plurality of agenda is stilloften insisted on by purists, but it has been usedas a singular noun since the mid 18th century. ACT, AGENTagent [15] Latin agere, a verb of great semanticbreadth (‘drive, lead, act, do’), has been aprolific source of English words. Its pastparticiple, āctus, produced act, action, active,actor, actual, cachet, and exact, while other partsof its paradigm lie behind agile, agitate,ambiguous, coagulate, cogent, cogitate,examine, exigent, exiguous, and prodigal. Itsmost obvious offspring, however, are agent(literally ‘(person) doing something’) andagency, formed from the Latin present participialstem agent-. Agere itself is of considerableantiquity, being related to other Indo-Europeanverbs such as Greek ágein ‘drive, lead’, OldNorse aka ‘travel in a vehicle’, and Sanskrit ájati‘drives’. ACT, AGILE, AMBIGUOUS, CACHET, COGENT,DEMAGOGUE, EXACT, EXAMINE, PRODIGALagglutinate see GLUEaggravate [16] Aggravate originally meantliterally ‘to weigh down’ or ‘to make heavier’ (itwas modelled on Latin aggravare ‘to makeheavier’, which in turn was based on gravis‘heavy’, source of English gravity and grief; itsfirst cousin is aggrieve [13], which came via OldFrench agrever). From the first it was generallyused in a metaphorical sense, and by the end ofthe 16th century the meaning ‘to make worse’was well established. The sense ‘to annoy’,which some purists still object to, dates from atleast the early 17th century. GRAVE, GRAVITY, GRIEFaggregate [15] Etymologically, aggregatecontains the notion of a collection of animals. Itcomes from greg-, the stem of the Latin noungrex ‘flock, herd’ (also the source ofgregarious). This formed the basis of a verbaggregāre ‘collect together’, whose pastparticiple aggregātus passed into English asaggregate. Latin grex is related to Greek agorā‘open space, market place’, from which Englishgets agoraphobia. AGORAPHOBIA, EGREGIOUS, GREGARIOUS,SEGREGATEaggression [17] The violent associations ofaggression have developed from the muchmilder notion of ‘approaching’ somebody. TheLatin verb aggredī ‘attack’ was based on theprefix ad- ‘towards’ and gradī ‘walk’, a verbderived in its turn from the noun gradus ‘step’(from which English gets, among many others,grade, gradual, and degree). DEGREE, GRADE, GRADUALaggrieve see AGGRAVATEaghast [13] Aghast was originally the pastparticiple of a verb, agasten ‘frighten’, which inturn was based on the Old English verb gǣstan‘torment’. The spelling with gh did not finallybecome established until the 18th century, and infact aghast was the last in a series ofetymologically related words in the generalsemantic area of ‘fear’ and ‘horror’ to undergothis transformation. It seems to have acquired itsgh by association with ghastly, which in turn gotit from ghost (probably under the ultimateinfluence of Flemish gheest).agiotage [19] Agiotage is the speculative buyingand selling of stocks and shares. The term wasborrowed from French, where it was based onagioter ‘speculate’, a verb formed from the nounagio ‘premium paid on currency exchanges’.English acquired agio in the 17th century (aswith so many other banking and financial terms,directly from Italian – aggio). This Italian wordis thought to be an alteration of a dialectal formlajjē, borrowed from medieval Greek allagion‘exchange’. This in turn was based on Greekallagē ‘change’, which derived ultimately fromállos ‘other’ (a word distantly related to Englishelse). ELSEagitate [16] Agitate is one of a host of Englishwords descended ultimately from Latin agere(see AGENT). Among the many meanings ofagere was ‘drive, move’, and a verb derived fromit denoting repeated action, agitāre, hence meant‘move to and fro’. This physical sense of shakingwas present from the start in English agitate, butso was the more metaphorical ‘perturb’. Thenotion of political agitation does not emergeuntil the early 19th century, when the Marquis ofAnglesey is quoted as saying to an Irishdeputation: ‘If you really expect success, agitate,agitate, agitate!’ In this meaning, a derivative ofLatin agitāre has entered English via Russian inagitprop ‘political propaganda’ [20], in whichagit is short for agitatsiya ‘agitation’. ACT, AGENTagnostic [19] Agnostic is an invented word. Itwas coined by the English biologist and religioussceptic T H Huxley (1825–95) to express hisopposition to the views of religious gnostics ofthe time, who claimed that the world of the spirit(and hence God) was knowable (gnostic comesultimately from Greek gnōsis ‘knowledge’).With the addition of the Greek-derived prefix a-‘not’ Huxley proclaimed the ultimateunknowability of God. The circumstances of thecoinage, or at least of an early instance of theword’s use by its coiner, were recorded by R HHutton, who was present at a party held by theMetaphysical Society in a house on ClaphamCommon in 1869 when Huxley suggestedagnostic, basing it apparently on St Paul’sreference to the altar of ‘the Unknown God’.

ago [14] Historically, ago is the past participle ofa verb. Its earlier, Middle English, form – agone– reveals its origins more clearly. It comes fromthe Old English verb āgān ‘pass away’, whichwas formed from gān ‘go’ and the prefix ā-‘away, out’. At first it was used beforeexpressions of time (‘For it was ago five yearthat he was last there’, Guy of Warwick 1314),but this was soon superseded by the now currentpostnominal use. GOagog [15] Agog probably comes from OldFrench gogue ‘merriment’. It was used in thephrase en gogue, meaning ‘enjoying oneself’(Randle Cotgrave, in his Dictionarie of theFrench and English tongues 1611, defines estreen ses gogues as ‘to be frolicke, lustie, lively,wanton, gamesome, all-a-hoit, in a pleasanthumour; in a veine of mirth, or in a merriemood’), and this was rendered into English asagog, with the substitution of the prefix a- (as inasleep) for en and the meaning toned down a bitto ‘eager’. It is not clear where gogue came from(it may perhaps be imitative of noisy merrymaking),but later in its career it seems to havemetamorphosed into go-go, either throughreduplication of its first syllable (gogue had twosyllables) or through assimilation of the secondsyllable to the first: hence the French phrase àgo-go ‘joyfully’, and hence too English go-godancers.agony [14] Agony is one of the more remoterelatives of that prolific Latin verb agere (seeAGENT). Its ultimate source is the Greek verbágein ‘lead’, which comes from the same Indo-European root as agere. Related to ágein was theGreek noun agón, originally literally ‘a bringingof people together to compete for a prize’, hence‘contest, conflict’ (which has been borroweddirectly into English as agon, a technical termfor the conflict between the main characters in awork of literature). Derived from agón wasagōníā ‘(mental) struggle, anguish’, whichpassed into English via either late Latin agōniaor French agonie. The sense of physicalsuffering did not develop until the 17th century;hitherto, agony had been reserved for mentalstress. The first mention of an agony columncomes in the magazine Fun in 1863. ANTAGONISTagoraphobia [19] Agoraphobia – fear of openspaces or, more generally, of simply being out ofdoors – is first referred to in an 1873 issue of theJournal of Mental Science; this attributes theterm to Dr C Westphal, and gives his definitionof it as ‘the fear of squares or open places’. Thiswould be literally true, since the first element inthe word represents Greek agorá ‘open space,typically a market place, used for publicassemblies’ (the most celebrated in the ancientworld was the Agora in Athens, rivalled only bythe Forum in Rome). The word agorá came fromageirein ‘assemble’, which is related to Latingrex ‘flock’, the source of English gregarious.Agoraphobia was not the first of the-phobias. That honour goes to hydrophobia in13 aimthe mid 16th century. But that was an isolatedexample, and the surge of compounds based onGreek phóbos ‘fear’ really starts in the 19thcentury. At first it was used for symptoms ofphysical illness (photophobia ‘abnormalsensitivity to light’ 1799), for aversions to othernationalities (Gallophobia 1803; thesynonymous Francophobia does not appearuntil 1887), and for facetious formations(dustophobia, Robert Southey, 1824), and therange of specialized psychological termsfamiliar today does not begin to appear until thelast quarter of the century (CLAUSTROPHOBIA1879, acrophobia ‘fear of heights’ from Greekakros ‘topmost’ – see ACROBAT – 1892). AGGREGATE, ALLEGORY, GREGARIOUS,SEGREGATEagree [14] Originally, if a thing ‘agreed you’, itwas to your liking, it pleased you. This earlymeaning survives in the adjective agreeable[14], but the verb has meanwhile moved on via‘to reconcile (people who have quarrelled)’ and‘to come into accord’ to its commonest presentdaysense, ‘to concur’. It comes from Old Frenchagréer ‘to please’, which was based on thephrase a gré ‘to one’s liking’. Gré wasdescended from Latin grātum, a noun based ongrātus ‘pleasing’, from which English also getsgrace and grateful. CONGRATULATE, GRACE, GRATEFUL,GRATITUDEague [14] In its origins, ague is the same word asacute. It comes from the Latin phrase febrisacuta ‘sharp fever’ (which found its way intoMiddle English as fever agu). In the MiddleAges the Latin adjective acuta came to be usedon its own as a noun meaning ‘fever’; thisbecame aguē in medieval French, from which itwas borrowed into English. From the end of the14th century ague was used for ‘malaria’ (theword malaria itself did not enter the languageuntil the mid 18th century). ACUTEaid [15] Aid comes ultimately from the samesource as adjutant (which originally meantsimply ‘assistant’). Latin juvāre became, withthe addition of the prefix ad- ‘to’, adjuvāre ‘givehelp to’; from its past participle adjutus wasformed a new verb, adjūtāre, denoting repeatedaction, and this passed into Old French as aïdier,the source of English aid. ADJUTANT, JOCUNDail [OE] Now virtually obsolete except in themetaphorical use of its present participialadjective ailing, ail is of long but uncertainhistory. The Old English verb egl(i)an camefrom the adjective egle ‘troublesome’, which hadrelated forms in other Germanic languages, suchas Middle Low German egelen ‘annoy’ andGothic agls ‘disgraceful’, aglo ‘oppression’.The derivative ailment did not appear until aslate as the 18th century.aileron see AISLEaimaim [14] Etymologically, aim is a contraction ofestimate (see ESTEEM). The Latin verb aestimārebecame considerably shortened as it developed

air 14in the various Romance languages (Italian hasstimare, for instance, and Provençal esmar). InOld French its descendant was esmer, to whichwas added the prefix a- (from Latin ad- ‘to’),producing aesmer; and from one or both of theseEnglish acquired aim. The notion of estimatingor calculating was carried over into the Englishverb, but died out after about a hundred years.However, the derived sense of calculating, andhence directing, one’s course is of equalantiquity in the language. ESTEEM, ESTIMATEair [13] Modern English air is a blend of threestrands of meaning from, ultimately, twocompletely separate sources. In the sense of thegas we breathe it goes back via Old French airand Latin āēr to Greek áēr ‘air’ (whence theaero-compounds of English; see AEROPLANE).Related words in Greek were áērni ‘I blow’ andaúrā ‘breeze’ (from which English acquiredaura in the 18th century), and cognates in otherIndo-European languages include Latin ventus‘wind’, English wind, and nirvana ‘extinction ofexistence’, which in Sanskrit meant literally‘blown out’.In the 16th century a completely new set ofmeanings of air arrived in English: ‘appearance’or ‘demeanour’. The first known instance comesin Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, IV, i: ‘The qualityand air of our attempt brooks no division’(1596). This air was borrowed from French,where it probably represents an earlier, OldFrench, aire ‘nature, quality’, whose originalliteral meaning ‘place of origin’ (reflected inanother derivative, eyrie) takes it back to Latinager ‘place, field’, source of English agricultureand related to acre. (The final syllable of Englishdebonair [13] came from Old French aire,incidentally; the phrase de bon aire meant ‘ofgood disposition’.)The final strand in modern English air comesvia the Italian descendant of Latin āēr, aria. Thishad absorbed the ‘nature, quality’ meanings ofOld French aire, and developed them further to‘melody’ (perhaps on the model of Germanweise, which means both ‘way, manner’ and‘tune’ – its English cognate wise, as in ‘in nowise’, meant ‘song’ from the 11th to the 13thcenturies). It seems likely that English air in thesense ‘tune’ is a direct translation of the Italian.Here again, Shakespeare got in with it first – inA Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, i: ‘Yourtongue’s sweet air more tunable than lark toshepherd’s ear’ (1590). (Aria itself became anEnglish word in the 18th century.) ACRE, AEROPLANE, AGRICULTURE, ARIA, AURA,EYRIE, MALARIA, WINDaisle [15] The original English form of this wordwas ele. It was borrowed from Old French,which in turn took it from Latin āla ‘wing’ (themodern French form of the word, aile, has adiminutive form, aileron ‘movable controlsurface on an aircraft’s wing’ [20], which hasbeen acquired by English). Besides meaningliterally ‘bird’s wing’, āla was usedmetaphorically for ‘wing of a building’, whichwas the source of its original meaning inEnglish, the ‘sides of the nave of a church’. TheLatin word comes from an unrecorded *acsla,which is one of a complex web of ‘turning’words that include Latin axis, Greek axon ‘axis’,Latin axilla ‘armpit’ (whence English axillaryand axil), and English axle.The notion of an aisle as a detached, separatepart of a building led to an association with isleand island which eventually affected MiddleEnglish ele’s spelling. From the 16th to the 18thcentury the word was usually spelled ile or isle.A further complication entered the picture in the18th century in the form of French aile, whichtook the spelling on to today’s settled form,aisle. AILERON, AXISajar [16] Ajar comes from Scotland and NorthernEngland. In Middle English times it was a charor on char, literally ‘on turn’ (char comes froman Old English word cerr ‘turn’, which in itsmetaphorical sense ‘turn of work’ has givenmodern English charwoman and chore). A dooror window that was in the act of turning wastherefore neither completely shut nor completelyopen. The first spellings with j occur in the 18thcentury. CHAR, CHARWOMANakimbo [15] Akimbo was borrowed from OldNorse. Its original English spelling (whichoccurs only once, in the Tale of Beryn 1400) wasin kenebowe, which suggests a probable OldNorse precursor *i keng boginn (never actuallydiscovered), meaning literally ‘bent in a curve’(Old Norse bogi is related to English bow);hence the notion of the arms sticking out at theside, elbows bent. When the word next appearsin English, in the early 17th century, it hasbecome on kenbow or a kenbo, and by the 18thcentury akimbo has arrived. BOWalabaster [14] Chaucer was the first Englishauthor to use the word alabaster: in the Knight’sTale (1386) he writes of ‘alabaster white and redcoral’. It comes, via Old French and Latin, fromGreek alábast(r)os, which may be of Egyptianorigin. Scottish English used the variant fromalabast until the 16th century (indeed, this maypredate alabaster by a few years); and from the16th to the 17th century the word was usuallyspelled alablaster, apparently owing toconfusion with arblaster ‘crossbowman’.The use of alabaster for making marbles (ofthe sort used in children’s games) gave rise to theabbreviation alley, ally ‘marble’ in the early 18thcentury.alarm [14] Alarm was originally a call to arms. Itcomes from the Old Italian phrase all’ arme ‘tothe weapons!’ This was lexicalized as the nounallarme, which was borrowed into Old French asalarme, and thence into English. The archaicvariant alarum seems to have arisen from anemphatic rolling of the r accompanying aprolongation of the final syllable when the wordwas used as an exclamation. ARM

alas [13] In origin alas was an exclamation ofweariness rather than grief. Latin lassus ‘weary’(related to let ‘allow’ and source of lassitude)passed into Old French as las which, with theaddition of the exclamation a ‘ah’, became alas. LASSITUDE, LETalbatross [17] The word albatross has aconfused history. The least uncertain thing aboutit is that until the late 17th century it wasalcatras; the change of the first element to albaseemsto have arisen from association of thealbatross’s white colour with Latin albus‘white’. However, which particular bird thealcatras was, and where the word alcatrasultimately came from, are much more dubious.The term was applied variously, over the 16th tothe 19th centuries, to albatrosses, frigate birds,gannets, gulls, and pelicans. Its immediatesource was Spanish and Portuguese alcatraz‘pelican’ (hence Alcatraz, the prison-island inSan Francisco Bay, USA, once the haunt ofpelicans), which was clearly of Arabic origin,and it has been speculated that it comes fromArabic al qādūs ‘the bucket’, on the premise thatthe bucket of a water-wheel used for irrigationresembles a pelican’s beak. Arabic qādūs itselfcomes from Greek kádos ‘jar’.albino [18] Like album, albino comes ultimatelyfrom Latin albus ‘white’. It was borrowed intoEnglish from the Portuguese, who used it withreference to black Africans suffering fromalbinism (it is a derivative of albo, thePortuguese descendant of Latin albus). ALBUMalbum [17] Latin albus ‘white’ has been thesource of a variety of English words: alb‘ecclesiastical tunic’ [OE], albedo ‘reflectivepower’ [19], Albion [13], an old word forBritain, probably with reference to its whitecliffs, albumen ‘white of egg’ [16], and auburn,as well as albino. Album is a nominalization ofthe neuter form of the adjective, which was usedin classical times for a blank, or white, tablet onwhich public notices were inscribed. Its originaladoption in the modern era seems to have been inGermany, where scholars kept an albumamicorum ‘album of friends’ in which to collectcolleagues’ signatures. This notion of anautograph book continues in Dr Johnson’sdefinition of album in his Dictionary 1755: ‘abook in which foreigners have long beenaccustomed to insert the autographs ofcelebrated people’, but gradually it became arepository for all sorts of souvenirs, including indue course photographs. ALB, ALBEDO, ALBINO, ALBUMEN, AUBURN,DAUBalchemy [14] Alchemy comes, via Old Frenchalkemie and medieval Latin alchimia, fromArabic alkīmīā. Broken down into its componentparts, this represents Arabic al ‘the’ and kīmīā, aword borrowed by Arabic from Greek khēmíā‘alchemy’ – that is, the art of transmuting basemetals into gold. (It has been suggested thatkhēmīā is the same word as Khēmīā, the ancientname for Egypt, on the grounds that alchemy15 aldermanoriginated in Egypt, but it seems more likely thatit derives from Greek khūmós ‘fluid’ – source ofEnglish chyme [17] – itself based on the verbkhein ‘pour’). Modern English chemistry comesnot directly from Greek khēmíā, but fromalchemy, with the loss of the first syllable. CHEMISTRY, CHYMEalcohol [16] Originally, alcohol was a powder,not a liquid. The word comes from Arabic alkuhul,literally ‘the kohl’ – that is, powderedantimony used as a cosmetic for darkening theeyelids. This was borrowed into English viaFrench or medieval Latin, and retained this‘powder’ meaning for some centuries (forinstance, ‘They put between the eyelids and theeye a certain black powder made of a mineralbrought from the kingdom of Fez, and calledAlcohol’, George Sandys, Travels 1615). But achange was rapidly taking place: fromspecifically ‘antimony’, alcohol came to meanany substance obtained by sublimation, andhence ‘quintessence’. Alcohol of wine was thusthe ‘quintessence of wine’, produced bydistillation or rectification, and by the middle ofthe 18th century alcohol was being used on itsown for the intoxicating ingredient in strongliquor. The more precise chemical definition (acompound with a hydroxyl group bound to ahydrocarbon group) developed in the 19thcentury. KOHLalcove [17] Alcove is of Arabic origin. It reachedEnglish, via French alcôve and Spanish alcoba(where it means ‘recessed area for a bed’), fromArabic al-qobbah ‘the arch, the vault’, hence‘the vaulted room’, which was derived from theverb qubba ‘vault’.alder [OE] Alder is an ancient tree-name,represented in several other Indo-Europeanlanguages, including German erle, Dutch els,Polish olcha, Russian ol’khá, and Latin alnus(which is the genus name of the alder inscientific classification). Alder is clearly the oddman out amongst all these forms in having a d,but it was not always so; the Old English wordwas alor, and the intrusive d does not begin toappear until the 14th century (it acts as a sort ofconnecting or glide consonant between the l andthe following vowel, in much the same way asOld English thunor adopted a d to becomethunder). The place-name Aldershot is based onthe tree alder.alderman [OE] Alderman preserves the notionthat those who are old (the ‘elders’) areautomatically in charge. In Anglo-SaxonEngland the ealdor was the chief of a family orclan, by virtue of seniority (the word is based onthe adjective eald ‘old’). Alderman (Old Englishealdorman) was a political title or rank adoptedprobably in the early 8th century for someonewho exercised in society at large an authorityequivalent to that of the ealdor. In effect, thismeant that an alderman acted as a sort of viceroyto the king in a particular district. In the 12thcentury the title became applied to the governorof a guild, and as the guilds gradually took over

ale 16some functions of local government, analderman became a senior councillor. The titlewas officially abolished in Britain in 1974. OLDale [OE] Old English ealu ‘ale’ goes back to aGermanic root *aluth-, which also produced OldNorse öl (Scandinavian languages still use alerelatedwords, whereas other Germaniclanguages now only use beer-related words;English is the only one to retain both). Goingbeyond Germanic in time takes us back to theword’s ultimate Indo-European source, a basemeaning ‘bitter’ which is also represented inalum and aluminium. Ale and beer seem to havebeen virtually synonymous to the Anglo-Saxons; various distinctions in usage havedeveloped over the centuries, such as that ale ismade without hops, and is heavier (or somewould say lighter) than beer, but most of thedifferences have depended on local usage.The word bridal is intimately connected withale. Nowadays used as an adjective, andtherefore subconsciously associated with otheradjectives ending in -al, in Old English it was anoun, literally ‘bride ale’, that is, a beer-drinkingsession to celebrate a marriage.alert [17] Alert comes, via French, from anItalian phrase all’ erta ‘on the look-out’, orliterally ‘at the (alla) watch-tower (erta)’. Ertawas short for torre erta, literally ‘high tower’, inwhich the adjective erta ‘high’ came ultimatelyfrom Latin ērectus, the past participle of ērigere‘raise’. ERECTalexandrine [16] An alexandrine is a line ofverse of 12 syllables, characteristic of the classicFrench drama of the 17th century. The termderives from the use of this metre in Alexandre,a 12th-or 13th-century Old French romanceabout Alexander the Great.alfresco see FRESHalgebraalgebra [16] Algebra symbolizes the debt ofWestern culture to Arab mathematics, butironically when it first entered the Englishlanguage it was used as a term for the setting ofbroken bones, and even sometimes for thefractures themselves (‘The helpes of Algebraand of dislocations’, Robert Copland, Formularyof Guydo in surgery 1541). This reflects theoriginal literal meaning of the Arabic term aljebr, ‘the reuniting of broken parts’, from theverb jabara ‘reunite’. The anatomicalconnotations of this were adopted when theword was borrowed, as algebra, into Spanish,Italian, and medieval Latin, from one or other ofwhich English acquired it. In Arabic, however, ithad long been applied to the solving of algebraicequations (the full Arabic expression was ’ilmaljebr wa’lmuqābalah ‘the science of reunionand equation’, and the mathematician al-Khwarizmi used aljebr as the title of his treatiseon algebra – see ALGORITHM), and by the end ofthe 16th century this was firmly established asthe central meaning of algebra in English.algorithm [13] Algorithm comes from the nameof an Arab mathematician, in full Abu Ja farMohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–c.850), who lived and taught in Baghdad andwhose works in translation introduced Arabicnumerals to the West. The last part of his namemeans literally ‘man from Khwarizm’, a town onthe borders of Turkmenistan, now called Khiva.The Arabic system of numeration andcalculation, based on 10, of which he was thechief exponent, became known in Arabic by hisname – al-khwarizmi. This was borrowed intomedieval Latin as algorismus (with the Arabic-izmi transformed into the Latin suffix -ismus‘-ism’). In Old French algorismus becameaugorime, which was the basis of the earliestEnglish form of the word, augrim. From the 14thcentury onwards, Latin influence gradually ledto the adoption of the spelling algorism inEnglish. This remains the standard form of theword when referring to the Arabic numbersystem; but in the late 17th century an alternativeversion, algorithm, arose owing to associationwith Greek árithmos ‘number’ (source ofarithmetic [13]), and this became establishedfrom the 1930s onwards as the term for a stepby-stepmathematical procedure, as used incomputing.Algol, the name of a computer programminglanguage, was coined in the late 1950s from‘algorithmic language’. ALLEGORY, ALLERGY, ARITHMETICalibi [18] In Latin, alibi means literally‘somewhere else’. It is the locative form (that is,the form expressing place) of the pronoun alius‘other’ (which is related to Greek allos ‘other’and English else). When first introduced intoEnglish it was used in legal contexts as anadverb, meaning, as in Latin, ‘elsewhere’: ‘Theprisoner had little to say in his defence; heendeavoured to prove himself Alibi’, JohnArbuthnot, Law is a bottomless pit 1727. But bythe end of the 18th century it had become a noun,‘plea of being elsewhere at the time of a crime’.The more general sense of an ‘excuse’developed in the 20th century.Another legal offspring of Latin alius is alias.This was a direct 16th-century borrowing ofLatin aliās, a form of alius meaning ‘otherwise’. ALIAS, ELSEalien [14] The essential notion contained in alienis of ‘otherness’. Its ultimate source is Latinalius ‘other’ (which is related to English else).From this was formed a Latin adjective aliēnus‘belonging to another person or place’, whichpassed into English via Old French alien. InMiddle English an alternative version alientarose (in the same way as ancient, pageant, andtyrant came from earlier ancien, pagin, andtyran), but this died out during the 17th century.The verb alienate ‘estrange’ or ‘transfer toanother’s ownership’ entered the language in themid 16th century, eventually replacing an earlierverb alien (source of alienable and inalienable). ALIBI, ELSEalike [OE] Alike is an ancient word whoseultimate Germanic source, *galīkam, meantsomething like ‘associated form’ (*līkam ‘form,

ody’ produced German leiche ‘corpse’ and OldEnglish lic, from which we get lychgate, thechurchyard gate through which a funeralprocession passes; and the collective prefix *gameantliterally ‘with’ or ‘together’). In OldEnglish, *galīkam had become gelīc, whichdeveloped into Middle English ilik; and from the14th century onwards the prefix i-, which wasbecoming progressively rarer in English, wasassimilated to the more familiar a-.The verb like is indirectly related to alike, andthe adjective, adverb, preposition, andconjunction like was formed directly from it,with the elimination of the prefix. EACH, LIKEalimony [17] Alimony is an anglicization ofLatin alimōnia, which is based on the verb alere‘nourish’ (source of alma ‘bounteous’, as inalma mater, and of alumnus). This in turn goesback to a hypothetical root *al-, which is also thebasis of English adolescent, adult, altitude (fromLatin altus ‘high’), and old. The original sense‘nourishment, sustenance’ has now died out, butthe specialized ‘support for a former wife’ is ofequal antiquity in English.The -mony element in the word representsLatin -mōnia, a fairly meaning-free suffix usedfor forming nouns from verbs (it is related to-ment, which coincidentally was also combinedwith alere, to form alimentary), but in the later20th century it took on a newly productive rolein the sense ‘provision of maintenance for aformer partner’. Palimony ‘provision for aformer non-married partner’ was coined around1979, and in the 1980s appeared dallymony‘provision for somebody one has jilted’. ADULT, ALTITUDE, ALUMNUS, OLDalive [OE] Alive comes from the Old Englishphrase on life, literally ‘on life’. Līfe was thedative case of līf ‘life’; between two vowels f waspronounced /v/ in Old English, hence thedistinction in modern English pronunciationbetween life and alive. LIFEalkali [14] English acquired alkali via Latin fromArabic al-qalīy ‘the ashes’, a derivative of theverb qalay ‘fry’. The implicit reference is to theplant saltwort (Latin name Salsola kali), whichwas burnt to obtain its alkaline ashes (Chaucer’scanon’s yeoman, the alchemist’s assistant,mentions it: ‘Salt tartre, alcaly, and salt preparat,And combust matieres, and coagulat’, 1386).The modern chemical sense of a compoundwhich combines with an acid to form a salt wasfirst used in 1813, by the chemist Sir HumphryDavy.all [OE] Words related to all are found throughoutthe Germanic languages (German all, Dutch al,Old Norse allr, Gothic alls, for instance). Theycan probably all be traced back to a hypotheticalGermanic ancestor *alnaz. Connections outsideGermanic are not known, unless Lithuanian aliai‘completely’ is a relative.allay [OE] In Old English, alecgan meantliterally ‘lay aside’ (-a ‘away, aside, out’, lecgan‘lay’). The more recent senses ‘relieve, mitigate’17 alligatordeveloped from the 13th to the 15th centuriesowing to the influence of two formally similarOld French verbs: aleger ‘lighten’ (from Latinalleviāre, source of English alleviate [15]); andal(e)ier ‘qualify, moderate’ (source of Englishalloy). LAYallege [14] Allege is related to law, legal,legislation, legation, and litigation. Its originalsource was Vulgar Latin *exlitigāre, whichmeant ‘clear of charges in a lawsuit’ (from ex-‘out of’ and litigāre ‘litigate’). This developedsuccessively into Old French esligier and Anglo-Norman alegier, from where it was borrowedinto English; there, its original meaning was‘make a declaration before a legal tribunal’.Early traces of the notion of making an assertionwithout proof can be detected within 50 years ofthe word’s introduction into English, but it tooka couple of centuries to develop fully.The hard g of allegation suggests that thoughit is ultimately related to allege, it comes from aslightly different source: Latin allēgātiō, fromallēgāre ‘adduce’, a compound verb formedfrom ad- ‘to’ and lēgāre ‘charge’ (source ofEnglish legate and legation). LAW, LEGAL, LEGATION, LEGISLATION,LITIGATIONallegory [14] Etymologically, allegory means‘speaking otherwise’. It comes from a Greekcompound based on allos ‘other’ (which isrelated to Latin alius, as in English alibi andalias, and to English else) and agoreúein ‘speakpublicly’ (derived from agorá ‘(place of)assembly’, which is the source of Englishagoraphobia and is related to gregarious). Greekallēgorein ‘speak figuratively’ produced thenoun allēgorīā, which passed into English viaLatin and French. AGGREGATE, AGORAPHOBIA, ALIAS, ALIBI, ELSE,GREGARIOUSallergy [20] Allergy was borrowed from Germanallergie, which was coined in 1906 by thescientist C E von Pirquet. He formed it fromGreek allos ‘other, different’ and érgon ‘work’(source of English energy and related to Englishwork). Its original application was to a changedphysiological condition caused by an injectionof some foreign substance. ENERGY, WORKalley [14] Alley is related to French aller ‘go’.Old French aler (which came from Latinambulāre ‘walk’, source of English amble andambulance) produced the derived noun alee ‘actof walking’, hence ‘place where one walks,passage’. AMBLE, AMBULANCEalligator [16] The Spanish, on encountering thealligator in America, called it el lagarto ‘thelizard’. At first English adopted simply the noun(‘In this river we killed a monstrous Lagarto orCrocodile’, Job Hortop, The trauailes of anEnglishman 1568), but before the end of the 16thcentury the Spanish definite article el had beenmisanalysed as part of the noun – hence,alligator. Spanish lagarto derived from Latin

alliteration 18lacerta ‘lizard’, which, via Old French lesard,gave English lizard. LIZARDalliteration [17] Alliteration is an anglicizationof alliterātiō, a modern Latin coinage based onthe prefix ad- ‘to’ and litera ‘letter’ – from thenotion of an accumulation of words beginningwith the same letter. The verb alliterate is anearly 19th-century back-formation fromalliteration. LETTERallopathy see HOMEOPATHYallow [14] Allow comes ultimately from twocompletely different Latin verbs, allaudāre andallocāre, which became blended in Old Frenchalouer. The first, allaudāre, was based onlaudāre ‘praise’ (source of English laud,laudable, and laudatory); the second, allocāre(source of English allocate [17]) on locāre‘place’. The formal similarity of the Latin verbsgradually drew their meanings closer together.The notion of ‘placing’, and hence ‘allotting’ or‘assigning’, developed via the now obsolete‘place to somebody’s credit’ to ‘take intoaccount, admit’. Meanwhile, the idea of‘praising’ moved through ‘commending’ or‘approving’ to ‘accepting as true or valid’, andultimately to ‘permitting’. ALLOCATE, LAUDABLE, LOCATIONalloy [16] The notion of ‘mixing’ in alloyoriginated in the idea of ‘binding’ in Latin ligāre‘tie’ (source of English ligament, ligature, andlien – via Old French loien from Latin ligāmen‘bond’). Addition of the prefix ad- gave alligāre‘bind one thing to another’, hence ‘combine’.This passed into Old French as aleier, where iteventually became aloier – hence English alloy. ALLY, LIEN, LIGAMENT, LIGATUREallusion see ILLUSIONalluvial [19] Alluvial material is material thathas been washed down and deposited by runningwater. Hence the term; for its ultimate source,Latin lavere (a variant of lavāre, which producedEnglish latrine, laundry, lava, lavatory, lavish,and lotion), meant ‘wash’. Addition of the prefixad- ‘to’ changed lavere to luere, giving alluere‘wash against’. Derived from this were the nounalluviō (source of the English technical termalluvion ‘alluvium’) and the adjective alluvius,whose neuter form alluvium became a nounmeaning ‘material deposited by running water’.English adopted alluvium in the 17th century,and created the adjective alluvial from it in the19th century.If Latin alluere meant ‘wash against’, ablueremeant ‘wash away’. Its noun form was ablūtiō,which English acquired as ablution in the 14thcentury. ABLUTION, LATRINE, LAUNDRY, LAVATORY,LAVISH, LOTIONally [13] The verb ally was borrowed into Englishfrom Old French alier, an alteration of aleier (adifferent development of the Old French wordwas aloier, which English acquired as alloy).This came from Latin alligāre ‘bind one thing toanother’, a derivative of ligāre ‘tie’; hence theidea etymologically contained in being ‘allied’ isof having a bond with somebody else.The noun ally seems originally to have beenindependently borrowed from Old French alliéin the 14th century, with the meaning ‘relative’.The more common modern sense, ‘allied personor country’, appeared in the 15th century, and isprobably a direct derivative of the English verb. ALLOY, LIGAMENTmateralma mater [17] Alma mater literally means‘mother who fosters or nourishes’. The Latinadjective almus ‘giving nourishment’, derivesfrom the verb alere ‘nourish’ (source of Englishalimony and alimentary). The epithet almamater was originally applied by the Romans to anumber of goddesses whose particular provincewas abundance, notably Ceres and Cybele. In the17th century it began to be used in English withreference to a person’s former school or college,thought of as a place of intellectual and spiritualnourishment (Alexander Pope was amongst itsearliest users, although the reference is far fromkind: ‘Proceed, great days! ’till Learning fly theshore … ’Till Isis’ Elders reel, their pupils’sport, And Alma mater lie dissolv’d in Port!’Dunciad 1718).If that which nourishes is almus, those whoare nourished are alumni (similarly derived fromthe verb alere). Alumnus was first applied inEnglish to a pupil – and more specifically aformer pupil or graduate – in the 17th century;an early reference combines the notions ofalumnus and alma mater: ‘Lieutenant Governor… promised his Interposition for them, asbecome such an Alumnus to such an AlmaMater’, William Sewall’s Diary 12 October1696. The first example of the feminine form,alumna, comes in the 1880s. ALIMENTARY, ALIMONY, ALUMNUSalmanac [14] One of the first recorded uses ofalmanac in English is by Chaucer in his Treatiseon the astrolabe 1391: ‘A table of the verrayMoeuyng of the Mone from howre to howre,every day and in every signe, after thinAlmenak’. At that time an almanac wasspecifically a table of the movements andpositions of the sun, moon, and planets, fromwhich astronomical calculations could be made;other refinements and additions, such as acalendar, came to be included over succeedingcenturies. The earliest authenticated reference toan almanac comes in the (Latin) works of theEnglish scientist Roger Bacon, in the mid 13thcentury. But the ultimate source of the word isobscure. Its first syllable, al-, and its generalrelevance to medieval science and technology,strongly suggest an Arabic origin, but noconvincing candidate has been found.almond [13] The l in almond is a comparativelyrecent addition; its immediate source, Latinamandula, did not have one (and nor,correspondingly, do French amande, Portugueseamendoa, Italian mandola, or German mandel).But the relative frequency of the prefix al- inLatin-derived words seems to have prompted itsgrafting on to amandula in its passage from

Latin to Old French, giving a hypothetical*almandle and eventually al(e)mande. French indue course dropped the l, but English acquiredthe word when it was still there.Going further back in time, the source ofamandula was Latin amygdula, of which it wasan alteration, and amygdula in turn wasborrowed from the Greek word for ‘almond’,amygdálē. The Latin and Greek forms have beenreborrowed into English at a much later date invarious scientific terms: amygdala, for instance,an almond-shaped mass of nerve tissue in thebrain; amygdalin, a glucoside found in bitteralmonds; and amygdaloid, a rock with almondshapedcavities.almoner see ALMSalmost [OE] Almost is simply a combination ofall and most. In Anglo-Saxon times, and up untilthe 17th century, it meant ‘mostly all’ or ‘nearlyall’ (thus one could say ‘My best friends arealmost men’, meaning most of them are men);but already by the 13th century the modern sense‘nearly, not quite’ was well in place. ALL, MOSTalms [OE] The word alms has become muchreduced in its passage through time from itsultimate Greek source, eleēmosúnē ‘pity, alms’.This was borrowed into post-classical(Christian) Latin as eleēmosyna, whichsubsequently became simplified in Vulgar Latinto *alimosina (source of the word for ‘alms’ inmany Romance languages, such as Frenchaumône and Italian limosina). At this stageGermanic borrowed it, and in due coursedispersed it (German almosen, Dutch aalmoes).It entered Old English as ælmesse, whichbecame reduced in Middle English to almes andfinally by the 17th century to alms (whichbecause of its -s had come to be regarded as aplural noun). The original Greek eleēmosúnē isitself a derivative, of the adjective eleémōn‘compassionate’, which in turn came from thenoun éleos ‘pity’.From medieval Latin eleēmosyna wasderived the adjective eleēmosynarius (borrowedinto English in the 17th century as the almostunpronounceable eleemosynary ‘giving alms’).Used as a noun, this passed into Old French asa(u)lmonier, and eventually, in the 13th century,became English aumoner ‘giver of alms’. Themodern sense of almoner as a hospital socialworker did not develop until the end of the 19thcentury. ALMONER, ELEEMOSYNARYalone [13] Although partly disguised by itspronunciation, alone is in fact simply acompound of all and one (whose /wun/pronunciation began to develop around the 15thcentury). In Old English it was a completelyseparate phrase, all āna, literally ‘completely byoneself’, but by the 13th century this hadcoalesced into a single word. Loss of its initial a-in the 14th century gave rise to the adjectivelone. ALL, LONE, ONE19 alphabetalong [OE] The a- in along is related to theprefix anti-, and the original notion contained inthe word is of ‘extending a long way in theopposite direction’. This was the force of OldEnglish andlang, a compound formed from and-‘against, facing’ (whose original source wasGreek anti- ‘against’) and lang ‘long’. Themeaning gradually changed via simply‘extending a long way’, through ‘continuous’and ‘the whole length of something’ to‘lengthwise’. At the same time the and- prefixwas gradually losing its identity: by the 10thcentury the forms anlong and onlong werebecoming established, and the 14th century sawthe beginnings of modern English along.But there is another along entirely, nowadaysdialectal. Used in the phrase along of ‘with’ (asin ‘Come along o’me!’), it derives from OldEnglish gelong ‘pertaining, dependent’. Thiswas a compound formed from the prefix ge-,suggesting suitability, and long, of which thenotions of ‘pertaining’ and ‘appropriateness’ arepreserved in modern English belong. LONGaloof [16] Aloof was originally a nautical term, acommand to steer to windward. Its secondsyllable is a variant of luff ‘sail closer to thewind’ [13]. This was borrowed from Old Frenchlof, ‘windward side of a ship’, which may itselfhave been, like so many maritime expressions, ofDutch origin. The modern figurative meaning‘reserved, uninvolved’ developed via anintermediate physical sense ‘away, at adistance’. LUFFalopecia [14] This word appears to derive fromthe resemblance observed by the Greeksbetween baldness in human beings and mange infoxes. The Greek for ‘fox’ was alōpēx, hencealōpekía, borrowed into Latin as alopēcia.Alōpēx is related to Latin vulpēs ‘fox’, fromwhich English gets vulpine ‘foxlike’ [17]. VULPINEaloud [14] Aloud was formed in Middle Englishfrom the adjective loud and the prefix a-, as inabroad; it does not appear to have had a directOld English antecedent *on loud. Its opposite,alow ‘quietly’, did not survive the 15th century. LOUDalpaca [18] English gets the term alpaca (for aSouth American animal related to the llama)from Spanish, which in turn got it from alpako,the word for the animal in the Aymara languageof Bolivia and Peru. Alpako was a derivative ofthe adjective pako ‘reddish-brown’, a referenceto the colour of the animal’s hair.alphabet [15] This word is based on the namesof the first two letters of the Greek alphabet,alpha and beta, standing for the whole. It derivesfrom Greek alphabētos, via Latin alphabētum.When it first came into English, purists tried toinsist that it should be reserved for the Greekalphabet, and that the English alphabet should bereferred to by the term ABC (which had beenlexicalized in various forms, such as abece,apece, and absee, since the late 13th century),

Alsatian 20but, like most such prescriptive demands, thiswas a waste of breath and ink.Alsatian [17] Alsatian has been around since atleast the late 17th century (although in early useit generally denoted not the Franco-Germanborder province of Alsace but a no-go area inLondon, near the banks of the Thames, wherecriminals, vagabonds and prostitutes hung out,which was nicknamed ‘Alsatia’ because of thereal Alsace’s reputation as a harbour for thedisaffected). It really came into its own,however, during World War I. A breed of dogknown as the ‘German sheepdog’ or ‘Germanshepherd dog’ (German deutscher Schäferhund)had been introduced into Britain, butunderstandably, between 1914 and 1918 itsstock fell considerably. When it wasreintroduced after the war it was thought politicto give it a less inflammatory name, so it becameofficially the ‘Alsatian wolf-dog’ (even though ithas nothing to do with Alsace, and there is noelement of wolf in its genetic make-up). Itcontinued to be called the German shepherd inthe USA, and in the latter part of the 20th centurythat usage crept back into Britain.also [OE] Also was a late Old English compoundformed from all ‘exactly, even’ and swa ‘so’; itmeant ‘in just this way, thus’, and hence(recalling the meaning of German also‘therefore’) ‘similarly’. These two uses died outin, respectively, the 15th and 17th centuries, butalready by the 13th century ‘similarly’ wasdeveloping into the current sense ‘in addition’.As came from also in the 12th century.In Old English, the notion of ‘in addition’now expressed by also was verbalized as eke. ASaltar [OE] The etymological notion underlyingthe word altar is that of sacrificial burning. Latinaltar, which was borrowed directly into OldEnglish, was a derivative of the plural nounaltāria, ‘burnt offerings’, which probably camefrom the verb adolēre ‘burn up’. Adolēre in turnappears to be a derivative of olēre ‘smell’ (theconnection being the smell made bycombustion), which is related to English odour,olfactory, and redolent. (The traditional viewthat altar derives from Latin altus ‘high’ is nolonger generally accepted, although no doubt itplayed a part, by association, in itsdevelopment.)In Middle English, the Old French form auterreplaced altar, but in the 16th century the Latinform re-established itself. ODOUR, OLFACTORY, REDOLENTalter [14] Alter comes from the Latin word for‘other (of two)’, alter. In late Latin a verb wasderived from this, alterāre, which Englishacquired via French altérer. Latin alter (whichalso gave French autre and English alternate[16], alternative [17], altercation [14], andaltruism, not to mention alter ego) was formedfrom the root *al- (source of Latin alius – fromwhich English gets alien, alias, and alibi –Greek allos ‘other’, and English else) and thecomparative suffix *-tero-, which occurs also inEnglish other. Hence the underlying meaning ofLatin alter (and, incidentally, of English other)is ‘more other’, with the implication ofalternation between the two. ALIAS, ALIEN, ALTERNATIVE, ALTRUISM, ELSEaltitude see OLDaltruism [19] Etymologically as well assemantically, altruism contains the notion of‘other people’. It was borrowed from Frenchaltruisme, which was apparently coined in 1830by the philosopher Auguste Comte on the basisof Italian altrui ‘that which belongs to otherpeople’. This was the oblique case of altro‘other’, from Latin alter. Littré’s Dictionnaire dela langue française suggests that the coinagewas based on such French legal phrases as lebien d’autrui ‘the welfare of others’ and le droitd’autrui ‘the rights of others’ (autruicorresponds to Italian altrui). ALIAS, ALTER, ELSEaluminium [19] Aluminium comes from acoinage by the English chemist Sir HumphryDavy, who discovered the metal. His firstsuggestion was alumium, which he put forwardin Volume 98 of the Transactions of the RoyalSociety 1808: ‘Had I been so fortunate as … tohave procured the metallic substances I was insearch of, I should have proposed for them thenames of silicium, alumium, zirconium, andglucium’. He based it on Latin alūmen ‘alum’(alum is a sulphate of aluminium, and the wordalum, a 14th-century borrowing from French,derives ultimately from alūmen; alumina is anoxide of aluminium, and the word alumina is amodern Latin formation based on alūmen, whichentered English at the end of the 18th century);and alūmen may be linked with Latin alūta‘skins dried for making leather, using alum’.Davy soon changed his mind, however, and in1812 put forward the term aluminum – whichremains the word used in American English tothis day. British English, though, has preferredthe form aluminium, which was mootedcontemporaneously with aluminum on groundsof classical ‘correctness’: ‘Aluminium, for so weshall take the liberty of writing the word, inpreference to aluminum, which has a lessclassical sound’, Quarterly Review 1812. ALUMalumnus see ALMA MATERalways [13] In Old English, the expression wasalne weg, literally ‘all the way’. It seems likelythat this was used originally in the physical senseof ‘covering the complete distance’, but by thetime it starts to appear in texts (King Alfred’s isthe first recorded use, in his translation ofBoethius’s De consolatione philosophiae around888) it already meant ‘perpetually’. Alwaysurvived into modern English, albeit as anarchaism, but began to be replaced as the mainform by always in the 12th century. The final -sis genitive, not plural, and was originally addedto all as well as way: alles weis. It has ageneralizing force, much as in modern Englishone might say of a morning for ‘every morning’. WAY

diseaseAlzheimer’s disease [20] This serious braindisorder was first described in a scientificjournal in 1912, and was given its name inhonour of the German neurologist AloisAlzheimer (1864–1915). For many decades theterm was largely confined to specialist medicaljournals, but in the 1970s, as the disease becamebetter known, it seeped into the public domain.amalgamate [17] Amalgamate is a derivative ofamalgam, a term for an alloy of mercury andanother metal (now usually used for toothfillings) borrowed into English from French ormedieval Latin in the 15th century. Latin(amalagama) probably acquired the word fromthe Greek adjective málagma ‘softening’, aderivative of the verb malássein ‘soften’, whichis a distant relative of English malleable (seeMALLET).amanuensis see MANUALamateur [18] Etymologically, an amateur issimply a ‘lover’. That is what its ultimate Latinancestor amator meant, and indeed in English itstill denoted ‘someone who loves or is fond ofsomething’ until well into the 19th century (‘amno amateur of these melons’, Mrs Atkinson,Tartar Steppes 1863). However, its immediatesource, French amateur, had already evolved thesubsidiary sense ‘one who does somethingsolely for the enjoyment, not for payment’, andthat is now its only English meaning.amaze [OE] Old English āmasian meant‘stupefy’ or ‘stun’, with perhaps somereminiscences of an original sense ‘stun byhitting on the head’ still adhering to it. Someapparently related forms in Scandinavianlanguages, such as Swedish masa ‘be sluggish’and Norwegian dialect masast ‘becomeunconscious’, suggest that it may originally havebeen borrowed from Old Norse. The modernsense ‘astonish’ did not develop until the end ofthe 16th century; Shakespeare was one of itsearliest exponents: ‘Crystal eyes, whose fullperfection all the world amazes’, Venus andAdonis 1592.By the end of the 13th century both the verband its related noun had developed a formwithout the initial a-, and in the late 14th centurythe word – maze – had begun to be applied to adeliberately confusing structure. MAZEambassador [14] Appropriately enough,ambassador is a highly cosmopolitan word. Itwas borrowed back and forth among severalEuropean languages before arriving in English.Its ultimate source appears to be the Indo-European root *ag- ‘drive, lead’, whose othernumerous offspring include English act andagent. With the addition of the prefix *amb-‘around’ (as in ambidextrous), this produced inthe Celtic languages of Gaul the noun ambactos,which was borrowed by Latin as ambactus‘vassal’. The Latin word then found its way intothe Germanic languages – Old English hadambeht ‘servant, messenger’, Old High Germanambaht (from which modern German gets amt‘official position’) – from which it was later21 ambidextrousborrowed back into medieval Latin as ambactia.This seems to have formed the basis of a verb,*ambactiāre ‘go on a mission’ (from whichEnglish ultimately gets embassy), from which inturn was derived the noun *ambactiātor. Thisbecame ambasciator in Old Italian, from whichOld French borrowed it as ambassadeur. Theword had a be wildering array of spellings inMiddle English (such as ambaxadour andinbassetour) before finally settling down asambassador in the 16th century. EMBASSYamber [14] Amber was borrowed, via OldFrench, from Arabic ‘anbar, which originallymeant ‘ambergris’ (and in fact until the early18th century amber was used for ‘ambergris’too). A perceived resemblance between the twosubstances had already led in Arabic to ‘amber’ousting ‘ambergris’ as the main meaning of‘anbar, and this was reflected as soon as Englishacquired it.In Scotland until as recently as the early 19thcentury lamber was the usual form. This arosefrom borrowing the French word for ‘amber’complete with its definite article le: l’ambre.Before the introduction of the Arabic terminto European languages, the ancestor of modernEnglish glass appears to have been the wordused for ‘amber’. AMBERGRISambergris [15] The original term for ambergris(a waxy material from the stomach of the spermwhale) was amber. But as confusion began toarise between the two substances amber andambergris, amber came to be used for both in allthe languages that had borrowed it from Arabic,thus compounding the bewilderment. TheFrench solution was to differentiate ambergris asambre gris, literally ‘grey amber’, and thiseventually became the standard English term.(Later on, the contrastive term ambre jaune‘yellow amber’ was coined for ‘amber’ inFrench.)Uncertainty over the identity of the secondelement, -gris, has led to some fancifulreformulations of the word. In the 17th century,many people thought ambergris came fromGreece – hence spellings such as amber-degreceand amber-greece. And untilcomparatively recently its somewhat greasyconsistency encouraged the spellingambergrease. AMBERambidextrous [16] Ambidextrous meansliterally ‘right-handed on both sides’. It wasformed in Latin from the prefix ambi- ‘both’ andthe adjective dexter ‘right-handed’ (source ofEnglish dextrous). Ambi- corresponds to theLatin adjective ambo ‘both’, which derivedultimately from the Indo-European base *amb-‘around’ (an element in the source ofambassador and embassy). The second elementin Latin ambo seems to correspond to OldEnglish ba ‘both’, which is related to modernEnglish both.

ambiguous 22Other English words formed with the prefixamb(i)- include ambient [16] (which came, likeambition, from Latin ambīre ‘go round’), ambit[16] (from Latin ambitus ‘circuit’), ambiguous,ambition, amble, and ambulance. DEXTROUSambiguous [16] Ambiguous carries theetymological notion of ‘wandering arounduncertainly’. It comes ultimately from the Latincompound verb ambigere, which was formedfrom the prefix ambi- (as in AMBIDEXTROUS)and the verb agere ‘drive, lead’ (a prodigioussource of English words, including act andagent). From the verb was derived the adjectiveambiguus, which was borrowed directly intoEnglish. The first to use it seems to have been SirThomas More: ‘if it were now doubtful andambiguous whether the church of Christ were inthe right rule of doctrine or not’ A dialogueconcerning heresies 1528. ACT, AGENTambition [14] Like ambient, ambition comesultimately from the Latin compound verb ambīre‘go round’ (formed from the prefix ambi-, as inAMBIDEXTROUS, and the verb īre ‘go’, whichalso gave English exit, initial, and itinerant). Butwhile ambient, a 16th-century acquisition,remains fairly faithful to the literal meaning ofthe verb, ambition depends on a moremetaphorical use. It seems that the verb’snominal derivative, ambitiō, developedconnotations of ‘going around soliciting votes’ –‘canvassing’, in fact – and hence, figuratively, of‘seeking favour or honour’. When the word wasfirst borrowed into English, via Old Frenchambition, it had distinctly negative associationsof ‘greed for success’ (Reginald Pecock writesof ‘Vices [such] as pride, ambition, vainglory’,The repressor of overmuch blaming of the clergy1449), but by the 18th century it was a morerespectable emotion. EXIT, INITIAL, ITINERANTamble [14] The ultimate source of amble (and ofperambulator [17], and thus of its abbreviationpram [19]) is the Latin verb ambulāre ‘walk’.This was a compound verb, formed from theprefix ambi- (as in AMBIDEXTROUS) and the base*el- ‘go’, which also lies behind exile andalacrity [15] (from Latin alacer ‘lively, eager’, acompound of the base *el- and ācer ‘sharp’ –source of English acid). Latin ambulāredeveloped into Provençal amblar, whicheventually reached English via Old Frenchambler. At first the English word was used forreferring to a particular (leisurely) gait of ahorse, and it was not until the end of the 16thcentury that it began to be used of people. ACID, ALACRITY, EXILE, PERAMBULATORambulance [19] Originally, ambulance was aFrench term for a field hospital – that is, one setup at a site convenient for a battlefield, andcapable of being moved on to the next battlefieldwhen the army advanced (or retreated). In otherwords, it was an itinerant hospital, and theultimate source of the term is the Latin verbambulāre ‘walk’ (as in amble). The earliestrecorded term for such a military hospital inFrench was the 17th-century hôpitalambulatoire. This was later replaced by hôpitalambulant, literally ‘walking hospital’, andfinally, at the end of the 18th century, byambulance. This sense of the word had died outby the late 19th century, but already itsattributive use, in phrases such as ambulancecart and ambulance wagon, had led to its beingused for a vehicle for carrying the wounded orsick. ACID, ALACRITY, AMBLE, PERAMBULATORambush [14] Originally, ambush meant literally‘put in a bush’ – or more precisely ‘hide in awood, from where one can make a surpriseattack’. The hypothetical Vulgar Latin verb*imboscāre was formed from the prefix in- andthe noun *boscus ‘bush, thicket’ (a word ofGermanic origin, related to English bush). In OldFrench this became embuschier, and whenEnglish acquired it its prefix gradually becametransformed into am-.In the 16th century, various related formswere borrowed into English – Spanish producedambuscado, Italian was responsible forimboscata, and French embuscade wasanglicized was ambuscade – but none nowsurvives other than as an archaism. BUSHamen [OE] Amen was originally a Hebrew noun,āmēn ‘truth’ (based on the verb āman‘strengthen, confirm’), which was usedadverbially as an expression of confirmation oragreement. Biblical texts translated fromHebrew simply took it over unaltered (the GreekSeptuagint has it, for example), and although atfirst Old English versions of the gospelssubstituted an indigenous term, ‘truly’, by the11th century amen had entered English too.amend see MENDamethyst [13] The amethyst gets its name froma supposition in the ancient world that it wascapable of preventing drunkenness. The Greekword for ‘intoxicate’ was methúskein, which wasbased ultimately on the noun methú ‘wine’(source of English methyl, and related to Englishmead). The addition of the negative prefix a-‘not’ produced the adjective améthustos, used inthe phrase líthos améthustos ‘anti-intoxicantstone’. This was borrowed as a noun into Latin(amethystus), and ultimately into Old French asametiste. English took it over and in the 16thcentury re-introduced the -th- spelling of theLatin word. MEAD, METHYLamiable [14] Amiable and amicable are the twoEnglish descendants of that most familiar ofLatin verbs, amo, amas, amat … ‘love’. It hadtwo rather similar adjectives derived from it:amābilis ‘lovable’ and, via amīcus ‘friend’,amīcābilis ‘friendly’ (source of Englishamicable [15]). Amīcābilis became in Frenchamiable, and this was borrowed into English asamiable, but its meaning was subsequently

influenced by that of French aimable ‘likeable,lovable’, which came from Latin amābilis. AMICABLEammonia [18] Ammonia gets its nameultimately from Amon, or Amen, the Egyptiangod of life and reproduction. Near the temple ofAmon in Libya were found deposits ofammonium chloride, which was hence namedsal ammoniac – ‘salt of Amon’. The gas nitrogenhydride is derived from sal ammoniac, and in1782 the Swedish chemist Torbern Bergmancoined the term ammonia for it.ammonite [18] Like ammonia, the ammonitegets its name from a supposed connection withAmon, or Amen, the Egyptian god of life andreproduction. In art he is represented as havingram’s horns, and the resemblance of ammonitesto such horns led to their being named in theMiddle Ages cornu Ammōnis ‘horn of Amon’. Inthe 18th century the modern Latin termammonītēs (anglicized as ammonite) was coinedfor them. Earlier, ammonites had been calledsnake stones in English, a term which surviveddialectally well into the 19th century.ammunition [17] Ammunition is one of manywords which resulted from a mistaken analysisof ‘article’ plus ‘noun’ (compare ADDER). In thiscase, French la munition ‘the munitions, thesupplies’ was misapprehended as l’ammunition,and borrowed thus into English. At first it wasused for military supplies in general, and it doesnot seem to have been until the beginning of the18th century that its meaning became restrictedto ‘bullets, shells, etc’.The word munition itself was borrowed intoEnglish from French in the 16th century. Itoriginally meant ‘fortification’, and came fromthe Latin noun mūnītiō; this was a derivative ofthe verb munīre, ‘defend, fortify’, which in turnwas based on the noun moenia ‘walls, ramparts’(related to mūrus ‘wall’, the source of Englishmural). Also from munīre, via medieval Latinmūnīmentum, comes muniment [15], a legal termfor ‘title deed’; the semantic connection is that atitle deed is a means by which someone can‘defend’ his or her legal right to property. MUNIMENT, MUNITION, MURALamoeba [19] Amoebas got their name (around1840) from their inherent shapelessness. Withtheir infinitely mobile exterior and their fluidinterior, their shape is constantly changing, andso they were christened with the Greek wordamoibē, which means literally ‘change’.amok [17] Amok is Malayan in origin, where it isan adjective, amoq, meaning ‘fightingfrenziedly’. Its first brief brush with Englishactually came in the early 16th century, viaPortuguese, which had adopted it as a noun,amouco, signifying a ‘homicidally crazedMalay’. This sense persisted until the late 18thcentury, but by then the phrase run amok, withall its modern connotations, was wellestablished, and has since taken over the fieldentirely. The spelling amuck has always beenfairly common, reflecting the word’spronunciation.23 amuseamong [OE] Gemong was an Old English wordfor ‘crowd’ – ge- was a collective prefix,signifying ‘together’, and -mong is related tomingle – and so the phrase on gemonge meant ‘ina crowd’, hence ‘in the midst, surrounded’. Bythe 12th century, the ge- element had droppedout, giving onmong and eventually among. Aparallel bimong existed in the 13th century. MINGLEamount see MOUNTAINampere [19] This international term for a unit ofelectrical current derives from the name ofAndré-Marie Ampère (1775–1836), the Frenchphysicist and mathematician. It was officiallyadopted by the Congrès Électrique in Paris in1881. Ampère himself is best remembered forfirst making the distinction between electricalcurrent and voltage, and for explainingmagnetism in terms of electrical currents. Theterm ammeter ‘current-measuring device’ [19]was based on ampere.ampersand [19] This word for the printedcharacter & is a conflation of the phrase and perse and, literally ‘and by it self and’. This hasbeen variously explained as either ‘the singlecharacter “&” signifies and’, or ‘and on its own[that is, as the final character in a list of theletters of the alphabet given in old grammarbooks and primers], &’. The character & itself isa conventionalized printed version of anabbreviation used in manuscripts for Latin et‘and’. ANDamphibious [17] The Greek prefix amphimeant‘both, on both sides’ (hence anamphitheatre [14]: Greek and Roman theatreswere semicircular, so two joined together,completely surrounding the arena, formed anamphitheatre). Combination with bios ‘life’ (asin biology) produced the Greek adjectiveamphibios, literally ‘leading a double life’. Fromthe beginning of its career as an English word itwas used in a very wide, general sense of‘combining two completely distinct or oppositeconditions or qualities’ (Joseph Addison, forexample, used it as an 18th-century equivalent ofmodern unisex), but that meaning has nowalmost entirely given way to the word’szoological application. At first, amphibiousmeant broadly ‘living on both land and water’,and so was applied by some scientists to, forexample, seals; but around 1819 the zoologistWilliam Macleay proposed the more preciseapplication, since generally accepted, to frogs,newts, and other members of the class Amphibiawhose larvae have gills but whose adults breathewith lungs. BIOLOGYamuse [15] Amuse is probably a Frenchcreation, formed with the prefix a- from the verbmuser (from which English gets muse ‘ponder’[14]). The current meaning ‘divert, entertain’ didnot begin to emerge until the 17th century, andeven so the commonest application of the verb inthe 17th and 18th centuries was ‘deceive, cheat’.This seems to have developed from an earlier

anachronism 24‘bewilder, puzzle’, pointing back to an originalsense ‘make someone stare open-mouthed’. Thislinks with the probable source of muser, namelymuse ‘animal’s mouth’, from medieval Latinmūsum (which gave English muzzle [15]). Thereis no connection with the inspirational muse,responsible for music and museums. MUSE, MUZZLEanachronism [17] The Greek prefix anameant‘up’, and hence, in terms of time, ‘back’;Greek khrónos meant ‘time’ (as in Englishchronicle): hence Greek anakhronismós‘reference to a wrong time’. From the point ofview of its derivation it should strictly be appliedto the representation of something as happeningearlier than it really did (as if Christ were paintedwearing a wristwatch), but in practice, ever sincethe Greek term’s adoption into English, it hasalso been used for things surviving beyond theirdue time. CHRONICLEanacolouthon see ACOLYTEanaconda [18] The term anaconda has aconfused history. It appears to come fromSinhalese henakandayā, literally ‘lightningstem’,which referred to a type of slender greensnake. This was anglicized as anaconda by theBritish naturalist John Ray, who in a List ofIndian serpents 1693 described it as a snakewhich ‘crushed the limbs of buffaloes and yokebeasts’. And the 1797 edition of theEncyclopedia Britannica notes it as a ‘very largeand terrible snake [from Ceylon] which oftendevours the unfortunate traveller alive’.However, in the early 19th century the Frenchzoologist François Marie Daudin for no knownreason transferred the name to a large SouthAmerican snake of the boa family, and thatapplication has since stuck.analysis [16] The underlying etymologicalnotion contained in analysis is of ‘undoing’ or‘loosening’, so that the component parts areseparated and revealed. The word comesultimately from Greek análusis, a derivative ofthe compound verb analúein ‘undo’, which wasformed from the prefix ana- ‘up, back’ and theverb lúein ‘loosen, free’ (related to English less,loose, lose, and loss). It entered English viamedieval Latin, and in the 17th century wasanglicized to analyse: ‘The Analyse I gave of thecontents of this Verse’, Daniel Rogers, Naamanthe Syrian 1642. This did not last long, but itmay have provided the impetus for theintroduction of the verb analyse, which firstappeared around 1600; its later development wassupported by French analyser. DIALYSIS, LESS, LOOSE, LOSE, LOSSanathema [16] Originally in Greek anáthēmawas a ‘votive offering’ (it was a derivative of thecompound verb anatithénai ‘set up, dedicate’,formed from the prefix ana- ‘up’ and the verbtithénai ‘place’, source of English theme andrelated to English do). But from being broadly‘anything offered up for religious purposes’, theword gradually developed negative associationsof ‘something dedicated to evil’; and by the timeit reached Latin it meant ‘curse’ or ‘accursedperson’. DO, THEMEanatomy [14] Etymologically, anatomy means‘cutting up’ (the Greek noun anatomíā wascompounded from the prefix ana- ‘up’ and thebase *tom-, which figures in several Englishsurgical terms, such as tonsillectomy [19], aswell as in atom and tome), and when it first cameinto English it meant literally ‘dissection’ aswell as ‘science of bodily structure’. From the16th century to the early 19th century it was alsoused for ‘skeleton’, and in this sense it was oftenmisanalysed as an atomy, as if the initial anwerethe indefinite article: ‘My bones … will betaken up smooth, and white, and bare as anatomy’, Tobias Smollett, Don Quixote 1755. ATOM, TOMEancestor [13] Ultimately, ancestor is the sameword as antecedent [14]: both come from theLatin compound verb antecēdere ‘precede’,formed from the prefix ante- ‘before’ and theverb cēdere ‘go’ (source of English cede and ahost of related words, such as proceed andaccess). Derived from this was the agent nounantecessor ‘one who precedes’, which wasborrowed into Old French at two distinct times:first as ancessour, and later as ancestre, whichsubsequently developed to ancêtre. MiddleEnglish had examples of all three of these forms.The modern spelling, ancestor, developed in the16th century. ACCESS, ANTECEDENT, CEDE, PRECEDE,PROCEEDanchor [OE] English borrowed this word fromLatin in the 9th century, but its ultimate source isGreek ágkūra (which goes back to an Indo-European base *angg- ‘bent’, also the source ofangle and ankle). Originally it was spelledancor, reflecting Latin ancora; the inauthentic hbegan to creep in in the 16th century, in imitationof the learned-looking but misguided Latinspelling anchora. ANGLE, ANKLEanchovy [16] English acquired anchovy fromSpanish anchova (the word first turns up as anitem on Falstaff’s bill at the Boar’s Head:‘Anchovies and sack after supper … 2s 6d’, 1Henry IV 1596), but before that its history isdisputed. One school of thought holds that itcomes via Italian dialect ancioa from VulgarLatin *apjua, which in turn was derived fromGreek aphúē ‘small fry’; but another connects itwith Basque anchu, which may mean literally‘dried fish’.ancient [14] Like antique, ancient wasoriginally, in Latin, an adjectivized version ofthe adverb and preposition ‘before’: to ante‘before’ was added the adjective suffix -ānus, toproduce the adjective *anteānus ‘going before’.In Old French this became ancien, and it passedinto English via Anglo-Norman auncien. Thefinal -t began to appear in the 15th century, bythe same phonetic process as produced it inpageant and tyrant.

The now archaic use of ancient as ‘standard,flag’ and as ‘standard-bearer’ (as most famouslyin Shakespeare’s ‘ancient Pistol’) arose from analteration of ensign. ANTIQUEand [OE] A word as ancient as the Englishlanguage itself, which has persisted virtuallyunchanged since at least 700 AD, and hascognates in other Germanic languages (Germanund, Dutch en), but no convincing ultimateancestor for it has been identifiedanecdote [17] In Greek, anékdotos meant‘unpublished’. It was formed from the negativeprefix an- and ékdotos, which in turn came fromthe verb didónai ‘give’ (a distant cousin ofEnglish donation and date) plus the prefix ek-‘out’ – hence ‘give out, publish’. The use of theplural anékdota by the 6th-century Byzantinehistorian Procopius as the title of hisunpublished memoirs of the life of the EmperorJustinian, which revealed juicy details of courtlife, played a major part in the subsequent use ofLatin anecdota for ‘revelations of secrets’, thesense which anecdote had when it first came intoEnglish. The meaning ‘brief amusing story’ didnot develop until the mid 18th century. DATE, DONATIONanemone [16] The wild wood anemone issometimes called the wind flower, and this ideamay be reflected in its standard name too. For itcomes from Greek anemónē, which appears tobe a derivative of ánemos ‘wind’ (also the sourceof English animal and animate). However, it hasalso been speculated that the Greek word may bean alteration of Hebrew Na’ amān, which was anepithet applied to Adonis, the beautiful youthbeloved of Aphrodite from whose blood,according to Greek legend, the anemone sprangafter he was killed while boar hunting.According to this view, anemónē arose from afolk-etymological reformulation of the Hebrewword to make it approximate more closely to theGreek for ‘wind’.The application to sea anemone began in thelate 18th century. ANIMAL, ANIMATEangel [12] In a sense, English already had thisword in Anglo-Saxon times; texts of around 950mention englas ‘angels’. But in that form (whichhad a hard g) it came directly from Latinangelus. The word we use today, with its soft g,came from Old French angele (the ‘hard g’ formsurvived until the 13th century). The Frenchword was in its turn, of course, acquired fromLatin, which adopted it from Greek ángelos orággelos. This meant literally ‘messenger’, andits use in religious contexts arises from its beingused as a direct translation of Hebrew mal’ākh‘messenger’, the term used in the scriptures forGod’s intermediaries. The Greek word itselfmay be of Persian origin. EVANGELISTanger [12] The original notion contained in thisword was of ‘distress’ or ‘affliction’; ‘rage’ didnot begin to enter the picture until the 13thcentury. English acquired it from Old Norse25 animalangr ‘grief’, and it is connected with a group ofwords which contain connotations of‘constriction’: German and Dutch eng (and OldEnglish enge) mean ‘narrow’, Greek ánkheinmeant ‘squeeze, strangle’ (English gets anginafrom it), and Latin angustus (source of Englishanguish) also meant ‘narrow’. All these formspoint back to an Indo-European base *angg-‘narrow’. ANGINA, ANGUISHangina see ANGUISHangle There have been two distinct words anglein English. The older is now encounteredvirtually only in its derivatives, angler andangling, but until the early 19th century an anglewas a ‘fishing hook’ (or, by extension, ‘fishingtackle’). It entered the language in the OldEnglish period, and was based on Germanic*angg- (source also of German angel ‘fishingtackle’). An earlier form of the word appears tohave been applied by its former inhabitants to afishhook-shaped area of Schleswig, in theJutland peninsula; now Angeln, they called itAngul, and so they themselves came to bereferred to as Angles. They brought their wordswith them to England, of course, and so both thecountry and the language, English, now containa reminiscence of their fishhooks.Angle in the sense of a ‘figure formed by twointersecting lines’ entered the language in the14th century (Chaucer is its first recorded user).It came from Latin angulus ‘corner’, eitherdirectly or via French angle. The Latin word wasoriginally a diminutive of *angus, which isrelated to other words that contain the notion of‘bending’, such as Greek ágkūra (ultimatesource of English anchor) and English ankle.They all go back to Indo-European *angg-‘bent’, and it has been speculated that thefishhook angle, with its temptingly bent shape,may derive from the same source. ENGLISH; ANCHOR, ANKLEanguish [13] English acquired anguish fromOld French anguisse, changing its ending to -ishin the 14th century. Its central notion of ‘distress’or ‘suffering’ goes back ultimately (as in thecase of the related anger) to a set of wordsmeaning ‘constriction’ (for the sensedevelopment, compare the phrase in dire straits,where strait originally meant ‘narrow’). OldFrench anguisse came from Latin angustia‘distress’, which was derived from the adjectiveangustus ‘narrow’. Like Greek ánkhein‘squeeze, strangle’ (ultimate source of Englishangina [16]) and Latin angere ‘strangle’, thiscame originally from an Indo-European base*angg- ‘narrow’. ANGER, ANGINAanimal [14] Etymologically, an animal is a beingwhich breathes (compare DEER). Its immediatesource was the Latin adjective animālis ‘havinga soul’, a derivative of the noun anima ‘breath,soul’ (which also gave English the verb andadjective animate [15]). Anima is a member of aset of related words in which the notions of‘breath, wind’ and ‘spirit, life’ are intimately

ankle 26connected: for instance, Greek ánemos ‘wind’(possible source of English anemone), Latinanimus ‘spirit, mind, courage, anger’ (source ofEnglish animosity [15] and animus [19]),Sanskrit ániti ‘breathe’, Old English ōthian‘breathe’, Swedish anda ‘breath, spirit’, andGothic usanan ‘breathe out’. The ‘breath’ senseis presumably primary, the ‘spirit, life’ sense ametaphorical extension of it. ANEMONE, ANIMATE, ANIMOSITY, ANIMUSankle [14] Ankle comes from a probable OldNorse word *ankula. It has several relatives inother Germanic languages (German and Dutchenkel, for instance, and Swedish and Danishankel) and can be traced back to an Indo-European base *angg- ‘bent’ (ultimate sourcealso of anchor and angle). Before the Old Norseform spread through the language, English hadits own native version of the word: anclēow. Thissurvived until the 15th century in mainstreamEnglish, and for much longer in local dialects. ANCHOR, ANGLEannals see ANNUALannex [14] The verb annex entered Englishabout a century and a half before the noun. Itcame from French annexer, which was formedfrom the past participial stem of Latin annectere‘tie together’ (a verb annect, borrowed directlyfrom this, was in learned use in English from the16th to the 18th centuries). Annectere itself wasbased on the verb nectere ‘tie’, from whichEnglish also gets nexus and connect. The nounwas borrowed from French annexe, and in thesense ‘extra building’ retains its -e. CONNECT, NEXUSannihilate [16] Annihilate comes from the pastparticiple of the late Latin verb annihilāre,meaning literally ‘reduce to nothing’ (aformation based on the noun nihil ‘nothing’,source of English nihilism and nil). There wasactually an earlier English verb, annihil, basedon French annihiler, which appeared at the endof the 15th century, but it did not long survive theintroduction of annihilate. NIHILISM, NILanniversary [13] Like annual, anniversary isbased ultimately on Latin annus ‘year’. Theunderlying idea it contains is of ‘yearly turning’or ‘returning’; the Latin adjective anniversāriuswas based on annus and versus ‘turning’ (relatedto a wide range of English words, from verse andconvert to vertebra and vertigo). This was usedin phrases such as diēs anniversāria ‘dayreturning every year’, and eventually became anoun in its own right. ANNUAL, CONVERT, VERSEannounce see PRONOUNCEannoy [13] Annoy comes ultimately from theLatin phrase in odiō, literally ‘in hatred’, hence‘odious’ (odiō was the ablative sense of odium,from which English got odious [14] and odium[17]). The phrase was turned into a verb in laterLatin – inodiāre ‘make loathsome’ – whichtransferred to Old French as anuier or anoier (inmodern French this has become ennuyer, whosenoun ennui was borrowed into English in themid 18th century in the sense ‘boredom’). ENNUI, NOISOME, ODIOUSannual [14] Annual comes, via Old Frenchannuel, from annuālis, a late Latin adjectivebased on annus ‘year’ (perhaps as a blend of twoearlier, classical Latin adjectives, annuus andannālis – ultimate source of English annals[16]). Annus itself may go back to an earlier,unrecorded *atnos, probably borrowed from anancient Indo-European language of the Italianpeninsula, such as Oscan or Umbrian. It appearsto be related to Gothic athnam ‘years’ andSanskrit átati ‘go, wander’.The medieval Latin noun annuitās, formedfrom the adjective annuus, produced Frenchannuité, which was borrowed into English asannuity in the 15th century. ANNALS, ANNIVERSARY, ANNUITYanode [19] The term anode, meaning ‘positiveelectrode’, appears to have been introduced bythe English philosopher William Whewellaround 1834. It was based on Greek ánodos‘way up’, a compound noun formed from aná-‘up’ and hodós ‘way’ (also represented in exodus‘way out’ and odometer ‘instrument formeasuring distance travelled’, and possiblyrelated to Latin cēdere, source of English cedeand a host of derived words). It specificallycontrasts with cathode, which means literally‘way down’. EXODUS, ODOMETERanonymous see NAMEanorak [20] This was originally a word in theInuit language of Greenland: annoraaq. It cameinto English in the 1920s, by way of Danish. Atfirst it was used only to refer to the sort ofgarments worn by Eskimos, but by the 1930s itwas being applied to a waterproof hooded coatmade in imitation of these. In Britain, suchjackets came to be associated with the sort ofsocially inept obsessives who stereotypicallypursue such hobbies as train-spotting andcomputer-gaming, and by the early 1980s theterm ‘anorak’ was being contemptuouslyapplied to them.answer [OE] Etymologically, the word answercontains the notion of making a sworn statementrebutting a charge. It comes from a prehistoricWest and North Germanic compound*andswarō; the first element of this was theprefix *and- ‘against’, related to German ent-‘away, un-’ and to Greek anti-, source of Englishanti-; and the second element came from thesame source as English swear. In Old English,the Germanic compound became andswaru(noun) and andswarian (verb) ‘reply’, which bythe 14th century had been reduced to answer.The synonymous respond has a similarsemantic history: Latin respondēre meant ‘makea solemn promise in return’, hence ‘reply’. And,as another element in the jigsaw, Swedish ansvarmeans ‘responsibility’ – a sense echoed byEnglish answerable. SWEAR

ant [OE] The word ant appears to carry theetymological sense ‘creature that cuts off or bitesoff’. Its Old English form, æmette, was derivedfrom a hypothetical Germanic compound*aimaitjōn, formed from the prefix *ai- ‘off,away’ and the root *mait- ‘cut’ (modern Germanhas the verb meissen ‘chisel, carve’): thus, ‘thebiter’. The Old English word later developedalong two distinct strands: in one, it becameemmet, which survived into the 20th century as adialectal form; while in the other it progressedthrough amete and ampte to modern English ant.If the notion of ‘biting’ in the naming of theant is restricted to the Germanic languages(German has ameise), the observation that it andits nest smell of urine has been brought into playfar more widely. The Indo-European root*meigh-, from which ultimately we getmicturate ‘urinate’ [18], was also the source ofseveral words for ‘ant’, including Greek múrmēx(origin of English myrmecology ‘study of ants’,and also perhaps of myrmidon [14] ‘faithfulfollower’, from the Myrmidons, a legendaryGreek people who loyally followed their kingAchilles in the Trojan war, and who were saidoriginally to have been created from ants), Latinformīca (hence English formic acid [18],produced by ants, and formaldehyde [19]), andDanish myre. It also produced Middle Englishmire ‘ant’, the underlying meaning of which wassubsequently reinforced by the addition of pissto give pismire, which again survived dialectallyinto the 20th century.antagonist [16] Greek agón (source of Englishagony) meant ‘contest, conflict’. Hence theconcept of ‘struggling against (anti-) someone’was conveyed in Greek by the verbantagōnízesthai. The derived noun antagōnistésentered English via French or late Latin. AGONYantarctic see ARCTICantecedent see ANCESTORantelopeantelope [15] Antelope comes from medievalGreek antholops. In the Middle Ages it wasapplied to an outlandish but figmentary beast, inthe words of the Oxford English Dictionary,‘haunting the banks of the Euphrates, verysavage, hard to catch, having long saw-like hornswith which they cut in pieces and broke all“engines” and even cut down trees’. The termwas subsequently used for a heraldic animal, butit was not until the early 17th century that it wasapplied, by the naturalist Edward Topsell, to theswift-running deerlike animal for which it is nowused.anthem [OE] Anthem is ultimately an alterationof antiphon ‘scriptural verse said or sung as aresponse’ (which was independently reborrowedinto English from ecclesiastical Latin in the 15thcentury). It comes from Greek antíphōnos‘responsive’, a compound formed from anti-‘against’ and phōné ‘sound’ (source of Englishphonetic, telephone, etc). By the time it hadbecome established in Old English, antiphonhad already developed to antefn, and graduallythe /v/ sound of the f became assimilated to the27 antimonyfollowing n, producing antemne and eventuallyantem. The spelling with th begins to appear inthe 15th century, perhaps influenced by OldFrench anthaine; it gradually altered thepronunciation.The meaning ‘antiphon’ died out in the 18thcentury, having been succeeded by ‘piece ofchoral church music’ and more generally ‘songof praise’. The specific application to a ‘nationalsong’ began in the 19th century. ANTIPHON, PHONETIC, TELEPHONEanther [18] Greek ánthos originally meant ‘partof a plant which grows above ground’ (this wasthe basis of the Homeric ‘metaphor’ translatedas ‘flower of youth’, which originally referred tothe first growth of beard on young men’s faces).Later it narrowed somewhat to ‘flower’. Theadjective derived from it was anthērós, whichwas borrowed into Latin as anthēra, a nounmeaning ‘medicine made from flowers’. Inpractice, herbalists often made such medicinesfrom the reproductive part of the flower, and soanther came to be applied to the pollen-bearingpart of the stamen.More remote semantically, but also derivedfrom Greek ánthos, is anthology [17]. Thesecond element represents Greek logíā‘collecting’, a derivative of the verb legein‘gather’ (which is related to legend and logic).The notion of a collection of flowers,anthologíā, was applied metaphorically to aselection of choice epigrams or brief poems:borrowed into English, via French anthologie ormedieval Latin anthologia, it was originallyrestricted to collections of Greek verse, but bythe mid 19th century its application hadbroadened out considerably. The parallel Latinformation, florilegium, also literally ‘collectionof flowers’, has occasionally been used inEnglish for ‘anthology’. ANTHOLOGYanthrax [14] In Greek, anthrax means ‘coal’(hence English anthracite [19]). The notion of aburning coal led to its being appliedmetaphorically to a very severe boil orcarbuncle, and that is how it was first used inEnglish. It was not until the late 19th century thatthe word came into general use, when it wasapplied to the bacterial disease of animals thathad been described by Louis Pasteur (whichproduces large ulcers on the body). ANTHRACITEantic see ANTIQUEantidote see DATEantimacassarantimacassar [19] An antimacassar was acloth spread over chairbacks in the 19th andearly 20th centuries to protect them from greasyhair. It took its name from Macassar oil, aproprietary brand of hair oil made by Rowlandand Son, allegedly from ingredients obtainedfrom Makassar, a region of the island ofSulawesi (formerly Celebes) in Indonesia.antimony [15] Antimony, from medieval Latinantimōnium, was used by alchemists of theMiddle Ages for ‘stibnite’, the mineral fromwhich antimony is obtained, and for ‘stibium’,

antiphon 28or ‘black antimony’, a heated and powderedversion of the mineral used for eye make-up. Theelement antimony itself was first described in thelate 18th century, when it was called regulus ofantimony; the British chemist Humphry Davyappears to have been the first to apply the simpleterm antimony to it, in 1812.The ultimate origins of the word antimony areobscure, but attempts have been made to link itwith Latin stibium (source of Somebody, thechemical symbol for antimony). It has beenspeculated that Latin antimōnium may have beena modification of Arabic ithmid, which wasperhaps borrowed from Greek stimmi or stíbi(source of Latin stibium). This in turn has beenconjecturally traced back to an Egyptian wordstm, which was used for a sort of powder appliedto the eyelids as make-up.antiphon see ANTHEMantipodes [16] Greek antípodes meant literally‘people who have their feet opposite’ – that is,people who live on the other side of the world,and therefore have the soles of their feet ‘facing’those of people on this side of the world. It wasformed from the prefix anti- ‘against, opposite’and poús ‘foot’ (related to English foot andpedal). English antipodes, borrowed via eitherFrench antipodes or late Latin antipodes,originally meant ‘people on the other side of theworld’ too, but by the mid 16th century it hadcome to be used simply for the ‘opposite side ofthe globe’. FOOT, PEDALantique [16] Originally, in Latin, antique was anadjectivized version of the adverb andpreposition ‘before’: to ante ‘before’ was addedthe adjective suffix -īcus, to produce theadjective antīquus (somewhat later an exactlyparallel formation, using the suffix -ānus ratherthan -īcus, produced the adjective which becameEnglish ancient). English acquired the wordeither via French antique or directly from Latin.To begin with, and until relatively recently, itmeant simply ‘ancient’, or specifically ‘of theancient world’; it was only towards the end ofthe 18th century that the modern sense ‘madelong ago and therefore collectable’ began tobecome established.In Italian, antico (from Latin antīquus) wasoften applied to grotesque carvings found inancient remains. It was borrowed into English inthe 16th century as an adjective, antic, meaning‘bizarre’, but also as a noun, usually used in theplural, in the sense ‘absurd behaviour’. ANCIENT, ANTICantirrhinum [16] Antirrhinum means literally‘similar to a nose’. The Greek compoundantirrhīnon was formed from the prefix anti-‘against, simulating’ and rhīn-, the stem of rhīs‘nose’ (also found in English rhinoceros). TheEnglish word was borrowed from the latinizedform, antirrhinum. The name comes, of course,from the snapdragon flower’s supposedresemblance to an animal’s nose or muzzle(another early name for the plant was calf’ssnout). RHINOCEROSantler [14] English acquired antler via Anglo-Norman auntelere from Old French antoillier(modern French has andouiller). Its previoushistory is not altogether clear; it has beenspeculated that it comes originally from Latin*anteoculāris, which would have meant literally‘positioned before (ante) the eye (oculus)’, butthis derivation is rather dubious.anvil [OE] Etymologically, an anvil is‘something on which you hit something else’.The Old English word was anfīlte, which camefrom a prehistoric West Germanic compoundformed from *ana ‘on’ and a verbal componentmeaning ‘hit’ (which was also the source ofEnglish felt, Latin pellere ‘hit’, and Swedishdialect filta ‘hit’). It is possible that the wordmay originally have been a loan-translationbased on the Latin for ‘anvil’, incūs; for this toowas a compound, based on in ‘in’ and the stemof the verb cūdere ‘hit’ (related to English hew). APPEALany [OE] Any is descended from a prehistoricGermanic compound meaning literally ‘one-y’(a formation duplicated in unique, whose Latinsource ūnicus was compounded of ūnus ‘one’and the adjective suffix -icus). Germanic*ainigaz was formed from *ain- (source ofEnglish one) and the stem *-ig-, from which theEnglish adjective suffix -y is ultimately derived.In Old English this had become ǣnig, whichdiversified in Middle English to any and eny;modern English any preserves the spelling of theformer and the pronunciation of the latter. ONEaorta see ARTERYapart [14] English acquired apart from OldFrench apart, where it was based on the Latinphrase ā parte ‘at or to the side’ (Latin pars,part- is the source of English part). By the timeit came into English it already contained thenotion of separation. PARTapartheid [20] Apartheid is a direct borrowingfrom Afrikaans apartheid, literally‘separateness’, which is a compound based onDutch apart and the suffix -heid (related toEnglish -hood). The first record of its use inAfrikaans is in 1929, but it does not appear inEnglish-language contexts until 1947.ape [OE] Ape (in Old English apa) has cognatesin several Germanic languages (German affe,Dutch aap, Swedish apa), and comes from aprehistoric West and North Germanic *apan(perhaps originally borrowed from Celtic). Untilthe early 16th century, when English acquiredthe word monkey, it was the only term availablefor any of the non-human primates, but fromaround 1700 it began to be restricted in use to thelarge primates of the family Pongidae.aphorism see HORIZONaplombaplomb [18] Originally, aplomb meant literally‘quality of being perpendicular’. It wasborrowed from French, where it was a

lexicalization of the phrase à plomb ‘accordingto the plumb line’ (plomb came from Latinplumbum ‘lead’, also the ultimate source ofEnglish plumb, plumber, plumbago, andplummet). The notion of ‘uprightness’ gave risein the 19th century to the metaphorical sense‘composure’. PLUMB, PLUMBER, PLUMMETapocalypse [13] A ‘catastrophic event, such asthe end of the world’ is a relatively recent, 20thcenturydevelopment in the meaning ofapocalypse. Originally it was an alternativename for the book of the Bible known as the‘Revelation of St. John the divine’, whichdescribes a vision of the future granted to StJohn on the island of Patmos. And in fact, theunderlying etymological meaning of apocalypseis literally ‘revelation’. It comes, via Old Frenchand ecclesiastical Latin, from Greekapokálupsis, a derivative of the verbapokalúptein ‘uncover, reveal’, which wasformed from the prefix apo- ‘away, off’ and theverb kalúptein ‘cover’ (related to Englishconceal). CONCEALapocrypha see CRYPTapocryphal [16] Apocryphal is a ‘secondgeneration’adjective; the original adjective formin English was apocrypha (‘The writing isapocrypha when the author thereof is unknown’,John de Trevisa 1387). This came, viaecclesiastical Latin, from Greek apókruphos‘hidden’, a derivative of the compound verbapokrúptein ‘hide away’, which was formedfrom the prefix apo- ‘away, off’ and the verbkrúptein ‘hide’ (source of English crypt andcryptic). It was applied as a noun to writings ingeneral that were of unknown authorship, and inthe 16th century came to be used specifically asthe collective term for the uncanonical books ofthe Old Testament. It was perhaps confusionbetween the adjectival and nominal roles ofapocrypha that led to the formation of the newadjective apocryphal towards the end of the 16thcentury. CRYPT, CRYPTICapogee [17] In its original, literal sense, aplanet’s or satellite’s apogee is the point in itsorbit at which it is furthest away from the Earth;and this is reflected in the word’s ultimatesource, Greek apógaios or apógeios ‘far fromthe Earth’, formed from the prefix apo- ‘away’and gē ‘earth’ (source of English geography,geology, and geometry). From this was derived anoun, apógaion, which passed into English viaLatin apogeum or French apogée. Themetaphorical sense ‘culmination’ developed inthe later 17th century.The opposite of apogee, perigee [16],contains the Greek prefix peri- ‘around’, in thesense ‘close around’, and entered English atabout the same time as apogee. GEOGRAPHY, PERIGEEapology [16] The original meaning of apologywas ‘formal self-justification’, often used as thetitle of a piece of writing rebutting criticism (as29 apotheosisin the Apology of Sir Thomas More, knight1533). This is indicative of the word’s origins inGreek apologíā, a derivative of the verbapologeisthai ‘speak in one’s defence’, formedfrom the prefix apo- ‘away, off’ and logos‘speech’ (source of English logic). It enteredEnglish through either French apologie or Latinapologia (which was separately borrowed intoEnglish as a Latinism in the late 18th century).The meaning ‘expression of regret for offencegiven’ developed in the late 16th century. LOGICapoplexy [14] The Greek verb apoplésseinmeant ‘incapacitate by means of a stroke’. It wasformed from the prefix apo- ‘away, off’ (hereused as an intensive) and the verb pléssein ‘hit’(source of English plectrum [17] and related toEnglish complain, plangent, plankton, andplague). The derived noun, apoplēxíā, enteredEnglish via Latin and Old French. COMPLAIN, PLAGUE, PLANGENT, PLANKTON,PLECTRUMapostle [OE] Apostle was an early borrowinginto Old English from Latin, and like angel itoriginally meant ‘messenger’. Latin apostoluscame from Greek apóstolos ‘messenger’, orliterally ‘someone sent out’; this was acompound formed from the prefix apo- ‘away’and the verb stéllein ‘send’ (related to Englishstall and local). The Old English form, apostol,was gradually replaced from the 12th century byapostle, from Old French apostle. EPISTLE, LOCAL, STALLapostrophe [17] Apostrophe comes originallyfrom the Greek phrase prosōidiā apóstrophos,literally ‘accent of turning away’, hence, a markshowing where a letter or sound has beenomitted. Apóstrophos itself was derived from thecompound verb apostréphein, formed from theprefix apo- ‘away’ and the verb stréphein ‘turn’(related to the second element of catastrophe[16], whose Greek original meant literally‘overturning’). English acquired the word viaFrench and Latin. CATASTROPHEapothecary [14] Originally, an apothecary wassimply a shopkeeper – the word comes via OldFrench from late Latin apothēcārius, which wasbased on Greek apothékē ‘storehouse’ (source,via French, of boutique [18] and via Spanish ofbodega [19]), a derivative of the verb apotithénai‘put away’ (formed from the prefix apo- ‘away’and the verb tithénai ‘put’ – source of thesis). Bythe time the word entered English it was reservedto shopkeepers who sold non-perishablegroceries, such as spices – and herbal and otherremedies. Gradually, apothecaries began tospecialize more and more in drugs, so that in1617 a formal separation took place between theApothecaries’ Company of London and theGrocers’ Company. Apothecary remained thegeneral term for a ‘druggist’ until about 1800,when chemist began to take over. BODEGA, BOUTIQUE, THESISapotheosis see THEOLOGY

apparatus 30apparatus [17] Etymologically, apparatus is‘equipment that has been prepared for aparticular use’. The word is borrowed from Latinapparātus, the past participle of the compoundverb apparāre, formed from the prefix ad- andparāre ‘make ready’ (source of prepare ‘makeready in advance’, and related to parent). At thebeginning of the 17th century, the related butanglicized form apparate put in a briefappearance in the language (possibly borrowedfrom French apparat), but within 20 yearsapparatus had supplanted it. PARENT, PREPAREapparel [13] Apparel has the same source asapparatus, and originally it had the samemeaning, too: until as late as the start of the 18thcentury, it was used for ‘equipment needed forperforming a particular function’. But the sense‘clothing’ is of equal antiquity in English, and bythe 16th century it had become established as thecentral meaning of the word. Its immediatesource was Old French apareil (modern Frenchappareil means chiefly ‘apparatus’), whichcame from a hypothetical Vulgar Latin verb*appariculāre, an irregular formation based onLatin apparāre ‘make ready’ (see APPARATUS). PARENT, PREPAREapparent see APPEARapparition see APPEARappeal [14] The ultimate Latin source of appeal,the verb adpellere (formed from the prefix ad-‘to’ and pellere ‘drive’ – related to anvil, felt, andpulse), seems to have been used in nauticalcontexts in the sense ‘direct a ship towards aparticular landing’. It was extendedmetaphorically (with a modification in form toappellāre) to mean ‘address’ or ‘accost’, andfrom these came two specific, legal,applications: ‘accuse’ and ‘call for the reversalof a judgment’. Appeal had both these meaningswhen it was first adopted into English from OldFrench apeler. The former had more or less diedout by the beginning of the 19th century, but thesecond has flourished and led to the moregeneral sense ‘make an earnest request’.Peal [14], as in ‘peal of bells’, is anabbreviated form of appeal, and repeal [14]comes from the Old French derivative rapeler. ANVIL, FELT, PEAL, PULSE, REPEALappear [13] Appear comes via Old Frenchapareir from Latin appārēre, a compound verbformed from the prefix ad- and pārēre ‘show,become visible’ (related to Greek peparein‘display’). Appārēre was also the ultimatesource of apparent [14], via its presentparticipial stem appārent-, and of apparition[15], via its noun derivative appāritiō. APPARENT, APPARITIONappease see PEACEappendix see PENTHOUSEappetite [14] In its origins, appetite referred to avery generalized desire or inclination; the wishfor food is a secondary development. The Latinnoun was appetītus, a derivative of thecompound verb appetere ‘strive after, desireeagerly’, which was based on petere ‘go to, seekout’ (source also of English compete, impetus,petition, and repeat, and related to feather). COMPETE, IMPETUS, PETITION, REPEATapplaud [15] English probably acquired thisword directly from Latin applaudere, whichmeant literally ‘clap at’. It was a compoundformed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and the verbplaudere ‘clap’, source also of plaudit [17] andof explode, whose original sense seems to havebeen ‘drive from the stage by clapping’ (or,presumably, by any other signals of disapprovalfavoured by Roman audiences). EXPLODE, PLAUDITapple [OE] Words related to apple are found allover Europe; not just in Germanic languages(German apfel, Dutch appel, Swedish äpple),but also in Balto-Slavonic (Lithuanian óbuolas,Polish jabtko), and Celtic (Irish ubhall, Welshafal) languages. The Old English version wasæppel, which developed to modern Englishapple. Apparently from earliest times the wordwas applied not just to the fruit we now know asthe apple, but to any fruit in general. Forexample, John de Trevisa, in his translation ofDe proprietatibus rerum 1398 wrote ‘All mannerapples that is, “fruit” that are enclosed in a hardskin, rind, or shell, are called Nuces nuts’. Theterm earth-apple has been applied to severalvegetables, including the cucumber and thepotato (compare French pomme de terre), andpineapple (which originally meant ‘pine cone’,with particular reference to the edible pine nuts)was applied to the tropical fruit in the 17thcentury, because of its supposed resemblance toa pine cone.bedapple-pie bed see PLYapplyapply see PLYappoint [14] Appoint came from the Old Frenchverb apointier ‘arrange’, which was based on thephrase a point, literally ‘to a point’. Hints of theoriginal meaning can still be found in some ofthe verb’s early uses in English, in the sense‘settle a matter decisively’, but its main modernmeanings, ‘fix by prior arrangement’ and ‘selectfor a post’, had become established by the mid15th century. POINTappraise [15] Originally, appraise meantsimply ‘fix the price of’. It came from the OldFrench verb aprisier ‘value’, which is ultimatelya parallel formation with appreciate; it is notclear whether it came directly from late Latinappretiāre, or whether it was a newly formedcompound in Old French, based on pris ‘price’.Its earliest spellings in English were thus apprizeand apprise, and these continued in use down tothe 19th century, with the more metaphoricalmeaning ‘estimate the worth of’ graduallycoming to the fore. From the 16th centuryonwards, however, it seems that association withthe word praise (which is quite closely relatedetymologically) has been at work, and by the19th century the form appraise was firmlyestablished.Apprise ‘inform’, with which appraise isoften confused (and which appears superficially

to be far closer to the source pris or pretium‘price’), in fact has no etymological connectionwith it. It comes from appris, the past participleof French apprendre ‘teach’ (closely related toEnglish apprehend). APPRECIATE, PRICEappreciate [17] Like appraise, appreciateoriginally comes from the notion of setting aprice on something. It comes from late Latinappretiāre, a compound verb formed from ad-‘to’ and pretium ‘price’. The neutral sense of‘estimating worth’ was already accompanied bythe more positive ‘esteem highly’ when the wordbegan to be used in English, and by the late 18thcentury the meaning ‘rise in value’ (apparentlyan American development) was well in place. APPRAISE, PRICEapprehend [14] The underlying notion inapprehend is of ‘seizing’ or ‘grasping’; it comesultimately from the Latin verb prehendere‘seize’ (source also of comprehend, predatory,and prehensile). Latin apprehendere ‘lay holdof’, formed with the prefix ad-, developed themetaphorical meaning ‘seize with the mind’ –that is, ‘learn’; and that was the earliest meaningapprehend had in English when it was borrowedeither directly from Latin or via Frenchappréhender: John de Trevisa, for instance, inhis translation of De proprietatibus rerum 1398writes ‘he holds in mind … without forgetting,all that he apprehends’. More familiar modernsenses, such as ‘arrest’ and ‘understand’,followed in the 16th century.A contracted form of the Latin verb,apprendere, became Old French aprendre,modern French apprendre ‘learn’. This providedthe basis for the derivative aprentis ‘someonelearning’, from which English gets apprentice[14]; and its past participle appris, in thecausative sense ‘taught’, was the source ofEnglish apprise [17].The chief modern meaning of the derivednoun apprehension, ‘fear’, arose via the notionof ‘grasping something with the mind’, then‘forming an idea of what will happen in thefuture’, and finally ‘anticipation of somethingunpleasant’. APPRENTICE, COMPREHEND, IMPREGNABLE,PREDATORY, PREHENSILEapproach [14] Approach is etymologicallyconnected with propinquity ‘nearness’; theyboth go back ultimately to Latin prope ‘near’.Propinquity [14] comes from a derived Latinadjective propinquus ‘neighbouring’, whileapproach is based on the comparative formpropius ‘nearer’. From this was formed the lateLatin verb appropiāre ‘go nearer to’, whichcame to English via Old French aprochier. Latinprope, incidentally, may be connected in someway with the preposition prō (a relative ofEnglish for), and a hypothetical variant of it,*proqe, may be the source, via its superlativeproximus, of English proximity andapproximate. APPROXIMATE, PROPINQUITY, PROXIMITYappropriate see PROPER31 apseapprove [14] The Latin source of approve,approbāre, was a derivative of probāre, sourceof English prove. Probāre originally meant ‘testsomething to find if it is good’ (it was based onLatin probus ‘good’) and this became extendedto ‘show something to be good or valid’. It wasthis sense that was taken up by approbāre andcarried further to ‘assent to as good’. WhenEnglish acquired the word, via Old Frenchaprover, it still carried the notion of‘demonstrating’, but this was gradually takenover exclusively by prove, and the senses‘sanction’ and ‘commend’, present since thebeginning, established their primacy. PROBITY, PROVEapproximate see PROXIMITYapricot [16] The word apricot reached Englishby a peculiarly circuitous route from Latin. Theoriginal term used by the Romans for the apricot,a fruit which came ultimately from China, wasprūnum Arminiacum or mālum Arminiacum‘Armenian plum or apple’ (Armenia was anearly source of choice apricots). But a new termgradually replaced these: mālum praecocum‘early-ripening apple’ (praecocus was a variantof praecox, from which English getsprecocious). Praecocum was borrowed by asuccession of languages, making its way viaByzantine Greek beríkokkon and Arabic albirqūq ‘the apricot’ to Spanish albaricoque andPortuguese albricoque. This was the source ofthe English word, but its earliest form, abrecock,shows that it had already acquired the initial abrofFrench abricot, and the final -t followedalmost immediately. Spellings with p instead ofb are also found in the 16th century. PRECOCIOUSApril [14] Aprīlis was the name given by theRomans to the fourth month of the year. It isthought that the word may be based on Apru, anEtruscan borrowing of Greek Aphrō, a shortenedversion of Aphroditē, the name of the Greekgoddess of love. In that case Aprīlis would havesignified for the Romans ‘the month of Venus’.English acquired the word direct from Latin, butearlier, in the 13th century, it had borrowed theFrench version, avril; this survived, as averil,until the 15th century in England, and for longerin Scotland. The term April fool goes back atleast to the late 17th century. APHRODITEapron [14] As in the case of adder, umpire, andmany others, apron arose from a mistakenanalysis of the combination ‘indefinite article +noun’. The original Middle English word wasnapron, but as early as the 15th century a napronhad turned into an apron. Napron itself had beenborrowed from Old French naperon, a derivativeof nape ‘cloth’ (source of English napery andnapkin); and nape came from Latin mappa‘napkin, towel’ (source of English map). MAP, MAT, NAPKINapse [19] Apse ‘vaulted recess in a church’ is ananglicization of Latin apsis. This was aborrowing of Greek apsís or hapsís, whichmeant literally ‘a fastening together’ (it was

apt 32derived from the verb háptein ‘join’). The notionthat underlies its application to a vaulted spaceseems to be the joining together of arcs to forma circle; an early Greek use was as a ‘felloe’, partof the rim of a wheel, and this later came tomean, by extension, the wheel itself. Furthermetaphoricization led to the sense ‘orbit’, and,more semicircularly, ‘arch’ or ‘vault’.The Latin/Greek form apsis itself wasborrowed into English at the beginning of the17th century, and remains in use as a technicalterm in astronomy, ‘extreme point of an orbit’.apt [14] Apt comes from Latin aptus ‘fit, suited’,the past participle of the verb apere ‘fasten’.Other English words from this source are adapt,adapt, adept, inept, and (with the Latin prefixcom-) couple and copulation. Related words arefound in Indo-European languages of the Indiansubcontinent: for instance, Sanskrit āpta ‘fit’. ADAPT, ADEPT, ATTITUDE, COUPLE, INEPTaquamarine [19] Aquamarine means literally‘sea water’ – from Latin aqua marīna. Its firstapplication in English was to the precious stone,a variety of beryl, so named because of itsbluish-green colour. The art critic John Ruskinseems to have been the first to use it withreference to the colour itself, in Modern Painters1846. (The French version of the word,aiguemarine, was actually used in Englishsomewhat earlier, in the mid 18th century, but itdid not long survive the introduction of the Latinversion.)Latin aqua ‘water’ has of course contributeda number of other words to English, notablyaquatic [15] (from Latin aquāticus), aqualung(coined around 1950), aquarelle [19] (via Italianacquerella ‘water colour’), aquatint [18](literally ‘dyed water’), aqueduct [16] (fromLatin aquaeductus), and aqueous [17] (amedieval Latin formation); it is related to OldEnglish ēa ‘water’ and īg ‘island’, and is ofcourse the source of French eau, Italian acqua,and Spanish agua.aquarium [19] Aquarium is a modernadaptation of the neuter form of the Latinadjective aquārius ‘watery’ (a noun aquāriumexisted in Roman times, but it meant ‘placewhere cattle drink’). Its model was vivarium, a16th-century word for a ‘place for keeping liveanimals’. This was the term first pressed intoservice to describe such a place used fordisplaying fish and other aquatic life: in 1853 themagazine Athenaeum reported that ‘the new Fishhouse at the London Zoo has received thesomewhat curious title of the “MarineVivarium”’; and in the following year theguidebook to the Zoological Gardens called itthe ‘Aquatic Vivarium’. Within a year or two ofthis, however, the term aquarium had beencoined and apparently established.aquiline see EAGLEarbitraryarbitrary [15] Arbitrary comes ultimately fromLatin arbiter ‘judge’, via the derived adjectivearbitrārius. It originally meant ‘decided byone’s own discretion or judgment’, and has sincebroadened, and ‘worsened’, in meaning to‘capricious’. The Latin noun has of coursecontributed a large number of other words toEnglish, including arbiter [15] itself, arbitrate[16] (via the Latin verb arbitrārī), andarbitrament [14]. Arbitrage in the sense ‘buyingand selling shares to make a profit’ is a 19thcenturyborrowing from French, where it meansliterally ‘arbitration’. ARBITRATEarbour [14] Despite its formal resemblance to,and semantic connections with, Latin arbor‘tree’, arbour is not etymologically related to it.In fact, its nearest English relative is herb. Whenit first came into English it was erber, whichmeant ‘lawn’ or ‘herb/flower garden’. This wasborrowed, via Anglo-Norman, from Old Frencherbier, a derivative of erbe ‘herb’. This in turngoes back to Latin herba ‘grass, herb’ (in the16th century a spelling with initial h wascommon in England). Gradually, it seems thatthe sense ‘grassy plot’ evolved to ‘separate,secluded nook in a garden’; at first, thecharacteristic feature of such shady retreats wastheir patch of grass, but their seclusion wasachieved by surrounding trees or bushes, andeventually the criterion for an arbour shifted to‘being shaded by trees’. Training on a trellissoon followed, and the modern arbour as‘bower’ was born. The shift from grass andherbaceous plants to trees no doubt prompted thealteration in spelling from erber to arbour, afterLatin arbor; this happened in the 15th and 16thcenturies. HERBarc see ARCHarcane [16] Arcane comes from the Latinadjective arcānus ‘hidden, secret’. This wasformed from the verb arcēre ‘close up’, which inturn came from arca ‘chest, box’ (source ofEnglish ark). The neuter form of the adjective,arcānum, was used to form a noun, usually usedin the plural, arcāna ‘mysterious secrets’. ARKarch [14] English acquired arch via Old Frencharche and a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *arcafrom Latin arcus ‘curve, arch, bow’ (from whichEnglish also got arc [14]). When it first cameinto the language it was still used in the generalsense of ‘curve, arc’ as well as ‘curved structure’(Chaucer in his Treatise on the astrolabe 1391wrote of ‘the arch of the day … from the sunarising till it go to rest’), but this had died out bythe mid 19th century. Vulgar Latin *arca alsoproduced Italian arcata, which entered Englishvia French as arcade in the 18th century.Arch meaning ‘saucy’ is an adjectival use ofthe prefix arch- (as in archetype). ARCarchaic see ARCHIVESarcher [13] Like arch, archer comes from Latinarcus ‘curve, bow’. Its hypothetical Vulgar Latinderivative *arcārius ‘bowman’ passed via OldFrench archier and Anglo-Norman archer intoEnglish. The ultimate source of arcus was the

Indo-European base *arkw-, from whichEnglish arrow eventually developed. ARC, ARCH, ARROWarchetype [17] Archetype comes, via Latinarchetypum, from Greek arkhétupon, a nominaluse of the adjective arkhétupos, literally ‘firstmoulded’,from túpos ‘mould, model, type’.The Greek prefix arkhe- was based on thenoun arkhos ‘chief, ruler’, a derivative of theverb arkhein ‘begin, rule’ (see ARCHIVES). It firstentered our language (via Latin archi-) in theOld English period, as arce- (archbishop was anearly compound formed with it); and it wasreborrowed in the Middle English period fromOld French arche-. Its use has graduallyextended from ‘highest in status’ and ‘first of itskind’ to ‘the ultimate – and usually the worst –of its kind’, as in archcraitor. Its negativeconnotations lie behind its eventualdevelopment, in the 17th century, into anindependent adjective, first as ‘cunning, crafty’,later as ‘saucy, mischievous’.The same Greek root has provided Englishwith the suffixes -arch and -archy (as inmonarch, oligarchy); but here the originalmeaning of ‘ruling’ has been preserved muchmore stably. ARCHAIC, ARCHIVESarchipelago [16] Originally, archipelago was aquite specific term – it was the name of theAegean Sea, the sea between Greece and Turkey.Derivationally, it is a compound formed in Greekfrom arkhi- ‘chief’ and pélagos ‘sea’ (source ofEnglish pelagic [17] and probably related toplain, placate, and please). The term ‘chief sea’identified the Aegean, as contrasted with all thesmaller lagoons, lakes, and inlets to which theword pélagos was also applied. An ‘Englished’form of the word, Arch-sea, was in use in the17th century, and in sailors’ jargon it was oftenabbreviated to Arches: ‘An island called Augustonear Paros, in the Arches’, Sir T Roe,Negotiations 1626. A leading characteristic ofthe Aegean Sea is of course that it contains alarge number of islands, and from the 16thcentury onwards we see a strong and steadymove towards what is now the word’s mainmeaning, ‘large group of islands’.The immediate source of the English wordwas Italian arcipelago, and some etymologistshave speculated that rather than coming directlyfrom Greek arkhipélagos, this may have been asort of folk-etymological resuscitation of itbased on a misunderstanding of Greek Aigaionpelagos ‘Aegean Sea’. PELAGICarchitect [16] Etymologically, an architect is a‘master builder’. The word comes, via Frencharchitecte, Italian architetto, and Latinarchitectus, from Greek arkhitéktōn, acompound formed from the prefix arkhi-‘leading’ and téktōn ‘builder’ (source of Englishtectonic and related, via Greek tékhnē, toEnglish technical). TECHNICAL33 arenaarchives [17] The Greek verb arkhein meantoriginally ‘begin’ – and hence ‘be in first place,rule’. This sense development lies behind thediversity in meaning of the words ultimatelyderived from it in English. Greek arkheion wasthe official residence of a ruler, a ‘public office’,and its plural, arkheia, was used for ‘publicrecords’; it passed into English via Latin archīa,later archīva, and French archives. Greek arkhē,on the other hand, had the sense ‘beginning’, andthe adjective formed from it, arkhaios, laterarkhaikós, ‘ancient’, came through Frencharchaïque into English as archaic [19] (arkhaiosis also the source of archaeology [17]). The samesplit in meaning is evident in the prefix arch-,which comes from the same source: inarchetype, for instance, it signifies ‘first’,whereas in archduke it implies ‘highest in rank’. ARCHAIC, ARCHETYPEarctic [14] Etymologically, the Arctic is theregion of the ‘bear’. Nothing to do with polarbears, though. The characteristic constellationsof the northern hemisphere are the ‘Little Bear’(Latin Ursa Minor), which contains the northerncelestial pole, and the Plough, otherwise knownas the ‘Great Bear’ (Latin Ursa Major). Theperception that they resemble a bear (Greekarktos) goes back to ancient times, and theGreeks used the derived adjective arktikos,literally ‘relating to bears’, to denote ‘northern’.By the time this reached English, via Latinar(c)ticus and Old French artique, it was beingapplied specifically to the northern polarregions. (The original English spelling,reflecting the French form, was artic. The moreetymologically ‘correct’ arctic came in in the17th century, but uncertain spellers are still apt toregress to artic.) Antarctic [14] for thecorresponding southern polar region likewisecomes ultimately from Greek (antarktikos, withthe prefix anti- ‘opposite’).Arcturus [14], the name of a very bright starin the constellation Boötes, means literally ‘bearwatcher’ or ‘bear guardian’ (Greek Arktouros), areference to the fact that the tail of the GreatBear points towards it.arduous [16] Latin arduus, the source ofEnglish arduous, originally meant ‘high, steep’(it is related to Greek orthós ‘straight, upright,correct’, as in English orthodox); the sense‘difficult, laborious’ was a later metaphoricaldevelopment. (The word has no connection withardour, which comes ultimately from Latinardēre ‘burn’; see ARSON.) ORTHODOXarearea [16] Area is a direct borrowing from Latinārea, which simply meant ‘level piece of openground, particularly one not built on in a city’.An alternative sense of the Latin word, ‘placewhere grain is threshed’, has suggested to someetymologists a derivation from the Latin verbārēre ‘be dry’ (related to ardor and aridus,sources of English ardour and arid). ARDOUR, ARIDarena [17] The original sense of Latin (h)arēnawas ‘sand’ (hence the English technical term

argosy 34arenaceous ‘sandy’ [17]). The central, ‘stage’area of classical amphitheatres, where contestswere held, was covered with sand (to soak up thecontestants’ blood) and so by metaphoricalextension arēna became the term for this centralarea, and hence for any enclosed place used forcontests. The word may ultimately be ofEtruscan origin.argosy [16] On the face of it argosy, an archaicterm for ‘large merchant ship’, gives everyappearance of being connected with theArgonauts, members of the crew of the shipArgo who sailed with Jason in quest of theGolden Fleece; but in fact the words arecompletely unrelated. When English firstacquired argosy, from Italian, it was ragusea,which meant literally ‘vessel from Ragusa’ (animportant city and seaport on the Dalmatiancoast, now known as Dubrovnik). From thehotchpotch of spellings used in English in the16th and 17th centuries (including ragusye,rhaguse, argosea, and arguze), argosy finallyemerged as victor.argue [14] English acquired argue and itsvarious meanings via rather complex paths, butits ultimate origin is straightforward: the Latinverb arguere derived from a prehistoric Indo-European base *arg- ‘be white, bright, or clear’(source also of Latin argentum ‘silver’, and thusof French argent ‘money’); it therefore meantprimarily ‘make clear’, but this subsequentlydeveloped into ‘assert, prove’. A frequentativeform (that is, one denoting repeated action)evolved, argutāre; this signified ‘make repeatedassertions or accusations’. This passed intomedieval French as arguer ‘accuse, blame’, andalso ‘bring forward reasons for an assertion’, andthence into English. The meaning ‘accuse’ diedout in English in the late 17th century, leaving‘reasoning, discussing’ as the main sense ofargue. Meanwhile, original Latin arguere hadmade its presence felt in establishing the sense‘prove’ in English, now somewhat weakened to‘imply, indicate’ (as in ‘Their lack ofinvolvement argues indifference’). The sense‘quarrel’ seems to have developed from‘discuss’ in the 17th century.ariaria see AIRarid [17] English acquired arid from Latinaridus, either directly or via French aride. TheLatin adjective is part of a web of related wordsdenoting ‘dryness’ or ‘burning’: it came from theverb ārēre ‘be dry’, which may be the source ofarea; it seems to have connections with aprehistoric Germanic *azgon, source of Englishash ‘burnt matter’, and with Greek azaléos ‘dry’,source of English azalea [18] (so named from itsfavouring dry soil); and the Latin verb ardēre‘burn’ was derived from it, from which Englishgets ardour [14], ardent [14], and arson. ARDOUR, AREA, ARSON, ASH, AZALEAarise [OE] Arise is a compound verb withcognate forms in many other Germaniclanguages (Gothic, for instance, had urreisan).The prefix a- originally meant ‘away, out’, andhence was used as an intensive; rise comes froman unidentified Germanic source which someetymologists have connected with Latin rīvus‘stream’ (source of English rivulet), on the basisof the notion of a stream ‘rising’ from aparticular source. The compound arise was infact far commoner than the simple form rise inthe Old English period, and it was only in earlyMiddle English that rise began to take its place.This happened first in northern dialects, and mayhave been precipitated by Old Norse rísa. Today,it is only in the sense ‘come into existence’ thatarise is commoner. RAISE, REAR, RISE, RIVULETaristocracy [16] Greek áristos meant ‘best’;hence aristocracy signifies, etymologically,‘rule by the best’ (the suffix -cracy derivesultimately from Greek krátos ‘strength, power’,a relative of English hard). The term aristokratíāwas used by Aristotle and Plato in their politicalwritings, denoting ‘government of a state bythose best fitted for the task’, and English writersperpetuated the usage when the word wasborrowed from French aristocratie: ThomasHobbes, for instance, wrote ‘Aristocracy is that,wherein the highest magistrate is chosen out ofthose that have had the best education’, Art ofRhetoric 1679. But from the first the term wasalso used in English for ‘rule by a privilegedclass’, and by the mid 17th century this hadbegun to pass into ‘the privileged class’ itself,‘the nobility’. The derived aristocrat appeared atthe end of the 18th century; it was a directborrowing of French aristocrate, a coinageinspired by the French Revolution. HARDarithmetic see ALGORITHMark [OE] The notion underlying ark seems to bethat of ‘enclosing or defending a space’. Itsultimate Latin source, arca ‘large box or chest’,was related to arx ‘citadel’ and to arcēre ‘closeup’ (from which English gets arcane). Arca wasborrowed into prehistoric Germanic, and cameinto English as ærc. In addition to meaning‘chest’ (a sense which had largely died out by the18th century), it signified the ‘coffer in whichthe ancient Hebrews kept the tablets of the TenCommandments’ – the Ark of the Covenant –and by extension, the large commodious vesselin which Noah escaped the Flood. ARCANE, EXERCISEarm [OE] The two distinct senses of arm, ‘limb’and ‘weapon’, both go back ultimately to thesame source, the Indo-European base *ar- ‘fit,join’ (which also produced art and article). Onederivative of this was Latin arma ‘weapons,tools’, which entered English via Old Frencharmes in the 13th century (the singular form wasvirtually unknown before the 19th century, butthe verb arm, from Latin armāre via Old Frencharmer, came into the language in the 13thcentury). The other strand is represented inseveral European languages, meaning variously‘joint’, ‘shoulder’, and ‘arm’: Latin armus‘shoulder’, for example, and Greek harmos‘joint’. The prehistoric Germanic form was

*armaz, from which developed, among others,German, Dutch, Swedish, and English arm. ART, ARTICLEarmour [13] Armour comes ultimately fromLatin armātūra ‘armour, equipment’, aderivative of the verb armāre ‘arm’ (the directEnglish borrowing armature [15] originallymeant ‘armour’ or ‘weapons’, but the‘protective’ notion of armour led to itsapplication in the 18th century to ‘metalcovering the poles of a magnet’). In Old Frencharmātūra became armeure, and subsequentlyarmure, the form in which it was borrowed intoEnglish (the -our ending was artificially graftedon in the 14th century on the model of otherLatin-based words such as colour and odour).Armoury is French in origin: Old Frencharmoier ‘coat of arms’ was a derivative of arme‘weapon’; this became armoirie, which wasborrowed into English in the 15th century asarmory, meaning ‘heraldry’, but also, owing totheir formal similarity, came to be used with thesame sense as armour – ‘protective metal suit’ or‘weapons’. This was what armoury meant whenit came into English in the 14th century (and thesense survived long enough to be used byWordsworth in a sonnet to ‘Liberty’ 1802: ‘Inour halls is hung armoury of invincible knightsof old’). The meaning ‘place for keepingweapons’ developed in the 16th century. ARMATUREarmy [14] Latin armāta ‘armed’, the pastparticiple of the verb armāre, was used in postclassicaltimes as a noun, meaning ‘armedforce’. Descendants of armāta in the Romancelanguages include Spanish armada and Frencharmée, from which English borrowed army. Inearly usage it could (like Spanish armada) meana naval force as well as a land force (‘The Kingcommanded that £21,000 should be paid to hisarmy (for so that fleet is called everywhere inEnglish Saxon) which rode at Greenwich’,Marchamont Needham’s translation of Selden’sMare clausum 1652), but this had virtually diedout by the end of the 18th century. ARM, ARMADAaround [14] Around was formed in MiddleEnglish from the prefix a- ‘on’ and the nounround (perhaps influenced by the Old Frenchphrase a la reonde ‘in the round, roundabout’). Itwas slow to usurp existing forms such as about –it does not occur in Shakespeare or the 1611translation of the Bible – and it does not seem tohave become strongly established before the endof the 17th century. The adverb and prepositionround may be a shortening of around. ROUNDarouse [16] Shakespeare is the first writer onrecord to use arouse, in 2 Henry VI, 1593: ‘Loudhowling wolves arouse the jades that drag thetragic melancholy night’. It was formed, with theintensive prefix a-, from rouse, a word ofunknown origin which was first used in Englishin the 15th century as a technical term infalconry, meaning ‘plump up the feathers’. ROUSE35 arrogantarpeggio see HARPSICHORDarrack [17] Arrack is an Asian alcoholic drinkdistilled from rice or molasses. The word comesultimately from Arabic ‘araq ‘sweat, juice,liquor’, which was borrowed in a variety offorms into several Asiatic languages. Theimmediate source of English arrack seems tohave been an Indian language.arrange [14] Arrange is a French formation: OldFrench arangier was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix a- and the verb rangier ‘set in arow’ (related to English range and rank). InEnglish its first, and for a long time its onlymeaning was ‘array in a line of battle’.Shakespeare does not use it, and it does notoccur in the 1611 translation of the Bible. It isnot until the 18th century that it becomes at allcommon, in the current sense ‘put in order’, andit has been speculated that this is a reborrowingfrom modern French arranger. RANGE, RANKarrant [16] Arrant is an alteration of errant, as inknight errant. This originally meant ‘roaming,wandering’, but its persistent application tonouns with negative connotations, such as rogueand thief, gradually drove its meaningdownwards by association, to ‘notorious’. ERRANTarras [15] An arras is a tapestry hanging,immortalized by Shakespeare in Hamlet whenhe conceals Polonius behind one, there to bekilled by Hamlet. The word comes from theAnglo-Norman phrase draps d’arras, literally‘cloth of Arras’: Arras is a city in the Pas-de-Calais, northern France, famous in the MiddleAges as a centre for the manufacture of woollensand tapestry.arrear see REARarrestarrest [14] The Latin verb restāre meant ‘standback, remain behind’ or ‘stop’ (it is the source ofEnglish rest in the sense ‘remainder’). Thecompound verb arrestāre, formed in postclassicaltimes from the prefix ad- and restāre,had a causative function: ‘cause to remainbehind or stop’, hence ‘capture, seize’. Thesemeanings were carried over via Old Frencharester into English. RESTarrive [13] When speakers of early MiddleEnglish ‘arrived’, what they were literally doingwas coming to shore after a voyage. For arrivewas originally a Vulgar Latin compound verbbased on the Latin noun rīpa ‘shore, river bank’(as in the English technical term riparian ‘of ariver bank’; and river comes from the samesource). From the phrase ad rīpam ‘to the shore’came the verb *arripāre ‘come to land’, whichpassed into English via Old French ariver. Itdoes not seem to have been until the early 14thcentury that the more general sense of ‘reachinga destination’ started to establish itself inEnglish. RIPARIAN, RIVERarrogant [14] Etymologically, to be arrogant isto make great claims about oneself. It originatedin the Latin compound verb arrogāre ‘claim for

arrow 36oneself’, formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ androgāre ‘ask’ (as in English interrogate). Alreadyin Latin the present participle arrogāns wasbeing used adjectivally, for ‘overbearing’, andthis passed via Old French into English. INTERROGATE, PREROGATIVEarrow [OE] Appropriately enough, the wordarrow comes from the same ultimate Indo-European source that produced the Latin wordfor ‘bow’ – *arkw-. The Latin descendant of thiswas arcus (whence English arc and arch), but inGermanic it became *arkhw-. From this basic‘bow’ word were formed derivatives in variousGermanic languages meaning literally ‘thatwhich belongs to the bow’ – that is, ‘arrow’(Gothic, for instance, had arhwazna). The OldEnglish version of this was earh, but it isrecorded only once, and the commonest wordsfor ‘arrow’ in Old English were strǣl (stillapparently in use in Sussex in the 19th century,and related to German strahl ‘ray’) and fiān(which remained in Scottish English untilaround 1500). Modern English arrow seems tobe a 9th-century reborrowing from Old Norse*arw-. ARC, ARCHarrowroot [17] Arrowroot, a tropical Americanplant with starchy tubers, gets its name by folketymology, the process whereby an unfamiliarforeign word is reformulated along lines moreaccessible to the speakers of a language. In thiscase the word in question was aru-aru, the termused by the Arawak Indians of South Americafor the plant (meaning literally ‘meal of meals’).English-speakers adapted this to arrowrootbecause the root of the plant was used by theIndians to heal wounds caused by poisonedarrows.arse [OE] Arse is a word of considerableantiquity, and its relatives are found practicallyfrom end to end of the geographical range of theIndo-European language family, from Old Irisherr ‘tail’ in the west to Armenian or ‘rump’. ItsIndo-European source was *órsos, whichproduced the Germanic form *arsaz: henceGerman arsch, Dutch aars, and, via Old Englishærs, English arse. The euphemistic Americanspelling ass appears to be as recent as the 1930s,although there is one isolated (British) record ofit from 1860.The term wheatear, for a thrushlike Europeanbird, is an alteration over time of a MiddleEnglish epithet ‘white arse’, after its white rumpfeathers.arsenal [16] The word arsenal has acomplicated history, stretching back throughItalian to Arabic. The Arabic original was dāras-sinā‘ah,literally ‘house of the manufacture’.This seems to have been borrowed into VenetianItalian, somehow losing its initial d, as arzaná,and been applied specifically to the large navaldockyard in Venice (which in the 15th centurywas the leading naval power in theMediterranean). The dockyard is known to thisday as the Arzenale, showing the subsequentaddition of the -al ending. English acquired theword either from Italian or from French arsenal,and at first used it only for dockyards (‘makingthe Arsenal at Athens, able to receive 1000ships’, Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’sNatural history 1601); but by the end of the 16thcentury it was coming into more general use as a‘military storehouse’. The English soccer clubArsenal gets its name from its original home inWoolwich, south London, where there used to bea British government arsenal.arsenic [14] The term arsenic was originallyapplied to the lemon-yellow mineral arsenictrisulphide, and its history reveals the reason: forits appears to be based ultimately on Persian zar‘gold’ (related forms include Sanskrit hari‘yellowish’, Greek khlōros ‘greenish-yellow’,and English yellow itself). The derivative zarnīkwas borrowed into Arabic as zernīkh, which, asusual with Arabic words, was perceived byforeign listeners as constituting an indivisibleunit with its definite article al ‘the’ – henceazzernīkh, literally ‘the arsenic trisulphide’. Thiswas borrowed into Greek, where the substance’ssupposed beneficial effects on virility led,through association with Greek árrēn ‘male,virile’, to the new forms arrenikón andarsenikón, source of Latin arsenicum and,through Old French, of English arsenic. Theoriginal English application was still to arsenictrisulphide (orpiment was its other currentname), and it is not until the early 17th centurythat we find the term used for white arsenic orarsenic trioxide. The element arsenic itself wasisolated and so named at the start of the 19thcentury. CHLORINE, YELLOWarson [17] Like ardour and ardent, arson comesfrom the Latin verb ardēre ‘burn’. Its pastparticiple was arsus, from which was formed thenoun arsiō ‘act of burning’. This passed via OldFrench into Anglo-Norman as arson, and in factwas in use in the Anglo-Norman legal languageof England from the 13th century onwards (itoccurs in the Statute of Westminster 1275). Thejurist Sir Matthew Hale was the first to use theword in a vernacular text, in 1680. Other wordsin English ultimately related to it include aridand probably ash, area, and azalea. ARDOUR, AREA, ASH, AZALEAart [13] Like arm, arthritis, and article, art goesback to an Indo-European root *ar-, whichmeant ‘put things together, join’. Putting thingstogether implies some skill: hence Latin ars‘skill’. Its stem art- produced Old French art, thesource of the English word. It brought with it thenotion of ‘skill’, which it still retains; themodern association with painting, sculpture, etcdid not begin until the mid 17th century. Latinderivatives of ars include the verb artīre ‘instructin various skills’, from which ultimately Englishgets artisan [16]; and artificium, a compoundformed with a variant of facere ‘do, make’, fromwhich we get artificial [14]. ARM, ARTHRITIS, ARTICLE, ARTIFICIAL,ARTISAN, INERT

artery [14] Artery is a direct borrowing fromLatin artēria, which in turn came from Greekartēria. This appears to have been based on theroot *ar- ‘lift’. A parallel formation is thus aorta‘main coronary artery’ [16], which comes fromGreek aortē, a derivative of aeírein ‘lift’ – againultimately from the root *ar-. The notionunderlying aortē seems to be that the heart wasthought of by the ancients as in some sensesuspended from it, as if from a strap (Greekaortés ‘strap’), so that it was ‘held up’ or ‘raised’by the aortē (the aorta emerges from the top ofthe heart). The Greeks, of course, did not knowabout the circulation of the blood, and sincearteries contain no blood after death it wassupposed that their function was conveying air.Hence Hippocrates’ application of the termaorta to branches of the windpipe, and the use ofartery for ‘windpipe’ in English up until as lateas the mid 17th century: ‘[The lungs] expel theair: which through the artery, throat and mouth,makes the voice’, Francis Bacon, Sylva sylvarum1626. AORTAartesian [19] In the 18th century drillings madein Artois (a former northern French provinceroughly corresponding to the modern Pas-de-Calais) produced springs of water which rosespontaneously to the surface, without having tobe pumped. The name of the province, in itserstwhile form Arteis, was bestowed on thephenomenon, and has been so used ever since.arthritis [16] Greek árthron meant ‘joint’ (it isused in various technical terms in biology, suchas arthropod ‘creature, such as an insect, withjointed limbs’). It came from the Indo-Europeanroot *ar- ‘put things together, join, fit’, whichalso produced Latin artus ‘limb’ (source ofEnglish article) and English arm, as well as art.The compound arthritis is a Greek formation(-itis was originally simply an adjectival suffix,so arthritis meant ‘of the joints’ – with ‘disease’understood; its application to ‘inflammatorydiseases’ is a relatively modern development); itreached English via Latin. ARM, ART, ARTICLEartichoke [16] The word artichoke is of Arabicorigin; it comes from al kharshōf ‘the artichoke’,which was the Arabic term for a plant of thethistle family with edible flower-parts. This wasborrowed into Spanish as alcarchofa, and passedfrom there into Italian as arcicioffo. In northerndialects this became articiocco, the form inwhich the word was borrowed into otherEuropean languages, including English.The term was first applied to the Jerusalemartichoke, a plant with edible tuberous roots,early in the 17th century. The epithet Jerusalemhas no connection with the holy city; it arose byfolk etymology, that is, the adaptation of anunfamiliar foreign word to the lexical system ofone’s own language. In this case the word wasgirasole, Italian for ‘sunflower’ (the Jerusalemartichoke is of the sunflower family).article [13] Like art, arm, and arthritis, articlegoes back to an Indo-European root *ar-, which37 ashmeant ‘put things together, join, fit’. Amongst itsderivatives was Latin artus ‘joint’ (a formparallel to Greek árthron, source of arthritis), ofwhich the diminutive was articulus ‘small joint’.This was extended metaphorically to mean‘division, part’, and when the word first enteredEnglish, via Old French article, it was used for aparticular clause of a treaty, of a contract, orspecifically of the Creed. Its application to an‘item, thing’ is a comparatively latedevelopment, from the start of the 19th century.A Latin derivative of articulus, the verbarticulāre ‘divide into joints’, hence ‘speakdistinctly’, gave rise to English articulate [16]. ARM, ART, ARTHRITISartillery [14] Originally artillery meant ‘militarysupplies, munitions’ (Chaucer used it thus); itwas not until the late 15th century that it came tobe used for ‘weapons for firing missiles’ –originally catapults, bows, etc. The source of theEnglish word was Old French artillerie, aderivative of the verb artiller ‘equip, arm’. Thiswas an alteration of an earlier form atillier,probably influenced by art, but the ultimateprovenance of atillier is not clear. Someetymologists trace it back to a hypothetical Latinverb *apticulāre ‘make fit, adapt’, a derivative ofaptus ‘fitting’ (source of English apt and adapt);others regard it as a variant of Old French atirier‘arrange, equip’ (source of English attire [13]),which was based on tire ‘order, rank’, a noun ofGermanic origin, related to Latin deus ‘god’.as [12] Ultimately, as is the same word as also.Old English alswā ‘in just this way’ was used insome contexts in which modern English woulduse as, and as it was weakly stressed in suchcontexts it gradually dwindled to als or ase andfinally to as. ALSOasbestos [14] Originally, the word we nowknow as asbestos was applied in the MiddleAges to a mythical stone which, once set alight,could never be put out; it came from the Greekcompound ásbestos, literally ‘inextinguishable’,which was formed from the prefix a- ‘not’ andsbestós, a derivative of the verb sbennúnai‘extinguish’. However, by the time it first cameinto English, its form was not quite what it istoday. To begin with, it was the Greek accusativeform, ásbeston, that was borrowed, and in itspassage from Latin through Old French itdeveloped several variants, including asbestonand albeston, most of which turned up inEnglish. Then, in the early 17th century, theword was reborrowed from the original Greeksource, ásbestos, and applied to anoncombustible silicate mineral.ascend see DESCENDascribeascribe see SCRIBEash [OE] There are two distinct words ash inEnglish: ash the tree and ash ‘burnt material’.The tree (Old English æsc) comes from aprehistoric Germanic *askiz, which in turnderived from the Indo-European base *os-; thiswas the source of several tree-names in otherIndo-European languages, not all of them by any

ashamed 38means corresponding to the ash: Latin ornus, forinstance, meant ‘elm’, and Albanian ah is‘beech’. Ash as in ‘cigarette ash’ is a descendantof Old English æsce. It has cognate forms inother Germanic languages (German asche,Dutch asch, Swedish aska), pointing to aprehistoric Germanic *azgon, which may berelated to the Latin verbs ārēre ‘be dry’ (sourceof English arid) and ārdēre ‘burn’ (source ofEnglish ardent, ardour, and arson). ARDENT, ARID, ARSONashamed [OE] Ashamed is an Old Englishcompound, formed ultimately from the nounscamu ‘shame’. The verb derived from this,scamian, meant ‘feel shame’ as well as (as inmodern English) ‘put to shame’, and in thissense the intensive prefix ā- was added to it. Theresulting verb ashame died out in the 16thcentury, but its past participle ashamed hassurvived. SHAMEaside [14] Aside is a reduced form of the MiddleEnglish phrase on syde, literally ‘on side’,meaning ‘to one side’. SIDEask [OE] The Old English ancestor of ask existedin two main forms: āscian and ācsian. The firstproduced descendants such as asshe, which diedout in the 16th century; the second resulted inaxe (still extant in some dialects), which bymetathesis – the reversal of the consonantsounds k and s – became modern English ask.Ultimately the word comes from a prehistoricWest Germanic verb *aiskōjan (source ofGerman heischen, a poetical term for ‘ask’);cognates in other, non-Germanic, Indo-European languages include Latin aeruscāre‘beg’ and Sanskrit iccháti ‘seek’.askance [16] The origins of askance remainobscure. When it first entered the language itmeant literally ‘obliquely, sideways’ (‘He bid hisangels turn askance the poles of Earth’, JohnMilton, Paradise Lost 1667), so a possiblesource is Italian a scancio ‘obliquely,slantingly’, but this has never been firmlyestablished. Its metaphorical use in the phraselook askance dates from the 17th century.asp see ASPICasparagus [15] Asparagus comes ultimatelyfrom Greek aspáragos (a word related to theGreek verb spargan ‘swell’, to the Latin verbspargere ‘scatter’ – ultimate source of Englishsparse, disperse, and aspersions – and also toEnglish spark), and has over the past 150 yearsor so returned to the full Latin form, asparagus,in which it was originally borrowed by English.In the intervening centuries, however, it wentthrough several metamorphoses: in the 16thcentury, the truncated medieval Latin variantsparagus was current (it also occurs in oneisolated example from a book of Anglo-Saxonremedies of around 1000 AD); from then until the18th century an anglicized version, sperage, wasused; and in the 17th century folk etymology(the process by which an unfamiliar word isassimilated to one more familiar) turnedasparagus into sparrowgrass. This graduallydied out during the 19th century, but theabbreviation grass remains current in the jargonof the grocery trade. ASPERSION, SPARKaspersion see SPREADasphalt [14] The ultimate source of asphalt isGreek ásphalton, but when it first came intoEnglish it was with the p that had developed inlate Latin aspaltus: aspalte. The ph of theoriginal Greek form began to be reintroduced inthe 18th century.aspic [18] Aspic was borrowed from French,where, like the archaic English asp whichreputedly bit Cleopatra, it also means ‘snake’(ultimately from Greek aspís). This has led tospeculation that aspic the jelly was named fromaspic the snake on the basis that the colours andpatterns in which moulds of aspic were made inthe 18th and 19th centuries resembled a snake’scoloration. There does not appear to be anywatertight evidence for this rather far-fetchedtheory, and perhaps more plausible is someconnection with French aspic ‘lavender,spikenard’, formerly used for flavouring aspic,or with Greek aspís ‘shield’ (source ofaspidistra [19]), on the basis that the earliestaspic moulds were shield-shaped.aspire see SPIRITaspirin [19] The word aspirin was coined inGerman towards the end of the 19th century. It isa condensed version of the term acetyliertespirsäure ‘acetylated spiraeic acid’. Spiraeicacid is a former term for ‘salicylic acid’, fromwhich aspirin is derived; its name comes fromthe spiraea, a plant of the rose family. SPIRAEAass [OE] Ass comes ultimately from Latin asinus‘donkey’ (whence English asinine [16]), andEnglish probably acquired it via a Celtic route,from a prehistoric Old Celtic *as(s)in (source ofWelsh asyn). As borrowed directly into theGermanic languages, by contrast, the n of Latinasinus changed to l; from this branch of theword’s travels Old English had esol, longdefunct, and Dutch has ezel, which English hasappropriated as easel. Further back in time theword’s antecedents are unclear, but some wouldtrace it to Sumerian ansu, which could also bethe source of Greek ónos (whence Englishonager ‘wild ass’ [14]) and Armenian eš. EASEL, ONAGERassassin [17] Etymologically, an assassin is an‘eater or smoker of hashish’, the drug cannabis.In the Middle Ages, in the area of the MiddleEast and modern Iran, there was a sect offanatical Ismaili Muslims, founded in the late11th century by Hassan ibn Sabbah. Its memberskilled the sect’s opponents under the influence ofcannabis. Hence the hashshāshīn (plural ofhashshāsh, Arabic for ‘hashish-eater’) came tohave a reputation as murderers. In English theArabic plural form was perceived as singular.The word has retained its connotation of one

who kills for political or religious rather thanpersonal motives. HASHISHassault [13] To assault somebody was originallyto ‘jump on’ them. The word comes from aVulgar Latin compound verb *assaltāre, formedfrom the prefix ad- ‘to’ and saltāre ‘jump’, afrequentative form (denoting repeated action) ofthe verb salīre ‘jump’ (which is the source ofEnglish salient, and by a similar compoundingprocess produced assail [13]). In Old French thisbecame asauter, and English originallyborrowed it as asaute, but in the 16th century thel was reintroduced. ASSAIL, SOMERSAULTassay see ESSAYassemble see SIMILARassent see SENSEassert [17] Assert comes ultimately from Latinasserere, which meant literally ‘join oneself tosomething’. It was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix ad- ‘to’ and serere ‘join’ (sourceof English series and serial), and it came to takeon various metaphorical connotations: if one‘joined oneself to’ a particular thing, one‘declared one’s right to’ it, and if one ‘joinedoneself to’ a particular point of view, one‘maintained’ it, or ‘claimed’ it. The verb wasused in both these senses when English acquiredit, from the Latin past participial stem assert-,but the former had more or less died out by theend of the 18th century. SERIAL, SERIESassess [15] The literal meaning of Latinassidēre, ultimate source of assess, was ‘sitbeside someone’ (it was a compound verbformed from the prefix ad- ‘near’ and sedēre‘sit’, a relative of English sit). This developedthe secondary meaning ‘sit next to a judge andassist him in his deliberations’ (which liesbehind English assize), and in medieval Latin thesense passed from helping the judge toperforming his functions, particularly in fixingthe amount of a fine or tax to be paid. HenceEnglish assess, which came via Old Frenchassesser from Latin assess-, the past participialstem of assidēre. (The Latin adjective assiduus,formed from assidēre in the sense ‘apply oneselfto something’, gave English assiduous [16].) ASSIDUOUS, ASSIZE, SESSION, SIT, SIZEasset [16] Originally, to have assets was simplyto have ‘enough’ – as in French assez. TheAnglo-Norman legal phrase aver asetz signified‘have enough money to meet one’s debts’, andeventually asetz, later assets, passed from thegeneral meaning ‘enough’ to the particular‘financial resources’ (the final -s caused it to beregarded as a plural noun, but the analogicalsingular asset does not appear until the 19thcentury). Anglo-Norman asetz itself goes backvia Old French asez to Vulgar Latin *assatis,formed from the Latin phrase ad satis ‘toenough’ (satis is the source of English satisfyand satiate, and is related to sad). SAD, SATIATE, SATISFYasseveration see SEVERE39 astoundassiduous see ASSESSassign see SIGNassist [15] Etymologically, assist means ‘standby’. It comes, via French assister, from Latinassistere, a compound verb formed from theprefix ad- ‘near’ and sistere ‘stand’ (related toLatin stāre ‘stand’, from which English getsstate, station, status, statue, etc). A remnant ofthis original meaning survives in the sense ‘bepresent without actually participating’, but themain use of the word in English has always beenthat which came from the metaphorical sense ofthe Latin verb – ‘help’. STATE, STATION, STATUE, STATUSassize [13] Like assess, assize comes ultimatelyfrom Latin assidēre, which meant literally ‘sitbeside someone’ (it was a compound verbformed from the prefix ad- ‘near’ and sedēre‘sit’, related to English sit). In Old French thisbecame asseeir (modern French has asseoir), ofwhich the past participle was assis. The feminineform of this, assise, came to be used as a nounranging in meaning from the very general ‘act ofsitting’ or ‘seat’ to the more specific legal senses‘sitting in judgement’ and ‘session of a court’(English session comes ultimately from Latinsedēre too). It was the legal usages which passedinto English. SESSION, SIT, SIZEassociate [14] Latin socius meant ‘companion’(it is related to English sequel and sue), and hasspawned a host of English words, includingsocial, sociable, society, and socialism. In Latin,a verb was formed from it, using the prefix ad-‘to’: associāre ‘unite’. Its past participle,associātus, was borrowed into English as anadjective, associate; its use as a verb followed inthe 15th century, and as a noun in the 16thcentury. SEQUEL, SOCIAL, SOCIETY, SUEassort see SORTassuage see PERSUADEassumeassume see PROMPTassure see INSUREasthma [14] The original idea contained inasthma is that of ‘breathing hard’. The Greeknoun asthma was derived from the verb ázein‘breathe hard’ (related to áein ‘blow’, fromwhich English gets air). In its earliest form inEnglish it was asma, reflecting its immediatesource in medieval Latin, and though the Greekspelling was restored in the 16th century, theword’s pronunciation has for the most part stuckwith asma. AIRastound [17] Astound, astonish, and stun allcome ultimately from the same origin: a VulgarLatin verb *extonāre, which literally meantsomething like ‘leave someone thunderstruck’(it was formed from the Latin verb tonāre‘thunder’). This became Old French estoner,which had three offshoots in English: it wasborrowed into Middle English in the 13thcentury as astone or astun, and immediately lostits initial a, producing a form stun; then in the

astronomy 4015th century, in Scotland originally, it had thesuffix -ish grafted on to it, producing astonish;and finally in the 17th century its past participle,astoned or, as it was also spelled, astound,formed the basis of a new verb. ASTONISH, STUNastronomy [13] Astronomy comes via OldFrench and Latin from Greek astronomíā, aderivative of the verb astronomein, literally‘watch the stars’. Greek ástron and astér ‘star’(whence English astral [17] and asterisk [17])came ultimately from the Indo-European base*ster-, which also produced Latin stella ‘star’,German stern ‘star’, and English star. Thesecond element of the compound, which camefrom the verb némein, meant originally ‘arrange,distribute’.At first, no distinction was made betweenastronomy and astrology. Indeed, in Latinastrologia was the standard term for the study ofthe stars until Seneca introduced the Greek termastronomia. When the two terms first coexistedin English (astrology entered the language abouta century later than astronomy) they were usedinterchangeably, and in fact when a distinctionfirst began to be recognized between the two itwas the opposite of that now accepted: astrologymeant simply ‘observation’, whereas astronomysignified ‘divination’. The current assignment ofsense was not fully established until the 17thcentury. ASTERISK, ASTRAL, STARasylum [15] Greek sulon meant ‘right ofseizure’. With the addition of the negative prefixa- ‘not’ this was turned into the adjective ásūlos‘inviolable’, which in turn was nominalized asāsūlon ‘refuge’. When it first entered English,via Latin aslum, it was used specifically for‘place of sanctuary for hunted criminals andothers’ (a meaning reflected in modern English‘political asylum’), and it was not until the mid18th century that it came to be applied to mentalhospitals.at [OE] The preposition at was originally foundthroughout the Germanic languages: OldEnglish had æt, Old High German az, Gothic andOld Norse at. It survives in the Scandinavianlanguages (Swedish att, for instance) as well asEnglish, but has been lost from German andDutch. Cognates in other Indo-Europeanlanguages, including Latin ad ‘to, at’, suggest anultimate common source.athlete [18] The etymological idea underlyingathlete is ‘competing for a prize’. Greek āthlonmeant ‘award, prize’, whence the verb athlein‘compete for a prize’. Derived from this was thenoun athlētés ‘competitor’. The context in whichthe word was most commonly used in Greek wasthat of the public games, where competitors tookpart in races, boxing matches, etc. Hence thegradual narrowing down of the meaning ofathlete to ‘one who takes part in sports involvingphysical exercise’, and even further to‘participant in track and field events’.atlas [16] In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titanwho as a punishment for rebelling against thegods was forced to carry the heavens on hisshoulders. Hence when the term was first used inEnglish it was applied to a ‘supporter’: ‘I darecommend him to all that know him, as the Atlasof Poetry’, Thomas Nashe on Robert Greene’sMenaphon 1589. In the 16th century it wascommon to include a picture of Atlas with hisonerous burden as a frontispiece in books ofmaps, and from this arose the habit of referringto such books as atlases (the application issometimes said to have arisen specifically fromsuch a book produced in the late 16th century bythe Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator(1512–94), published in England in 1636 underthe title Atlas).Atlas also gave his name to the Atlanticocean. In ancient myth, the heavens were said tobe supported on a high mountain in northwesternAfrica, represented as, and now named after, theTitan Atlas. In its Greek adjectival formAtlantikós (later Latin Atlanticus) it was appliedto the seas immediately to the west of Africa,and gradually to the rest of the ocean as it camewithin the boundaries of the known world. ATLANTICatmosphere [17] Etymologically, atmospheremeans ‘ball of vapour’. It was coined as modernLatin atmosphaera from Greek atmós ‘vapour’(related to áein ‘blow’, ultimate source ofEnglish air) and sphaira ‘sphere’. Its originalapplication was not, as we would nowunderstand it, to the envelope of airencompassing the Earth, but to a mass of gasexhaled from and thus surrounding a planet;indeed, in the first record of the word’s use inEnglish, in 1638, it was applied to the Moon,which of course is now known to have noatmosphere. The denotation of the word movedforward with the development of meteorologicalknowledge. AIR, SPHEREatoll [17] Atoll was borrowed from Malayalamatolu ‘reef’, the name used by Maldive Islandersfor their islands, many of which are coral atollsatom [16] Etymologically, atom means ‘not cut,indivisible’. Greek átomos ‘that which cannot bedivided up any further’ was formed from thenegative prefix a- ‘not’ and the base *tom- ‘cut’(source also of English anatomy and tome), andwas applied in the Middle Ages not just to thesmallest imaginable particle of matter, but alsoto the smallest imaginable division of time; anhour contained 22,560 atoms. Its use by classicalwriters on physics and philosophy, such asDemocritus and Epicurus, was sustained bymedieval philosophers, and the word was readyand waiting for 19th-century chemists when theycame to describe and name the smallest unit ofan element, composed of a nucleus surroundedby electrons. ANATOMY, TOMEatone [16] As its spelling suggests, but itspronunciation disguises, atone comes from thephrase at one ‘united, in harmony’, lexicalizedas atone in early modern English. It may havebeen modelled on Latin adūnāre ‘unite’, which

was similarly compounded from ad ‘to, at’ andūnum ‘one’. AT, ONEatrocious [17] Traced back to its ultimatesource, atrocious meant something not toodissimilar to ‘having a black eye’. Latin āter was‘black, dark’ (it occurs also in Englishatrabilious ‘melancholic’ [17] – Greek mélāsmeant ‘black’), and the stem *-oc-, *-ox meant‘looking, appearing’ (Latin oculus ‘eye’ andferox ‘fierce’ – based on ferus ‘wild’, and sourceof English ferocious – were formed from it, andit goes back to an earlier Indo-European basewhich also produced Greek ōps ‘eye’ andEnglish eye). Combined, they formed atrox,literally ‘of a dark or threatening appearance’,hence ‘gloomy, cruel’. English borrowed it (inthe stem form atrōci-) originally in the sense‘wantonly cruel’. EYE, FEROCIOUS, INOCULATE, OCULARattach [14] When English first acquired it, attachmeant ‘seize’ or ‘arrest’. It is Germanic in origin,but reached us via Old French atachier. This wasan alteration of earlier Old French estachier‘fasten (with a stake)’, which was based on ahypothetical Germanic *stakōn. Themetaphorical meaning ‘arrest’ appears to havearisen in Anglo-Norman, the route by which theword reached English from Old French; theoriginal, literal sense ‘fasten, join’ did not arrivein English until as late as the 18th century, as areborrowing from modern French attacher.A similar borrowing of Germanic *stakōninto Italian produced the ancestor of Englishattack. ATTACK, STAKEattack [16] Attack reached English via Frenchattaquer from Italian attaccare ‘attach, join’,which, like Old French atachier (source ofEnglish attach) was based on a hypotheticalGermanic *stakōn (from which English getsstake). Phrases such as attaccare battaglia ‘joinbattle’ led to attaccare being used on its own tomean ‘attack’. Attach and attack are thus‘doublets’ – that is, words with the same ultimatederivation but different meanings. ATTACH, STAKEattain [14] Unlike contain, maintain, obtain, andthe rest of a very long list of English wordsending in -tain, attain does not come from Latintenēre ‘hold’. Its source is Latin tangere ‘touch’(as in English tangible and tangent). Theaddition of the prefix ad- ‘to’ produced attingere‘reach’, which passed via Vulgar Latin*attangere and Old French ataindre intoEnglish. TANGENT, TANGIBLEattempt [14] Attempting is etymologicallyrelated to tempting. The Latin verb attemptārewas formed with the prefix ad- from temptāre,which meant ‘try’ as well as ‘tempt’ (thesemantic connection is preserved in modernEnglish try, with the contrasting senses ‘attempt’and ‘put to the test’). The Latin form passed intoOld French as atenter (hence modern French41 attorneyattenter), but was later latinized back toattempter, the form in which English acquired it. TEMPTattend [13] Etymologically, attend means‘stretch to’. It comes originally from Latinattendere, a compound verb formed from theprefix ad- ‘to’ and tendere ‘stretch’ (adescendant of an Indo-European base *ten-,*ton- ‘stretch’ which also produced, amongothers, Latin tenēre ‘hold’ – source of Englishcontain, maintain, obtain, etc – and Englishtendon, thin, and tone). By metaphoricalextension ‘stretch to’ became ‘direct one’sattention to’, which was the original meaning ofthe verb in Old French atendre and subsequentlyin English. The sense ‘take care of’ developed inthe 15th century, ‘be present’ much later, in the17th century. The noun derivative attention [14]comes from Latin attentiō.Tend meaning ‘look after’ comes mainlyfrom attend, but also partly from intend, in bothcases with loss of the first syllable. CONTAIN, MAINTAIN, OBTAIN, TENDON, THIN,TONEattest see TESTAMENTattic [18] In classical architecture, an Attic orderwas a pilaster, or square column (the naḿecomes from Attica, a region of ancient Greece ofwhich Athens was the capital). This type ofcolumn was often used in a relatively low storeyplaced above the much higher main façade of abuilding, which hence became known in the 18thcentury as an attic storey. It was a short step toapplying the word attic itself to an ‘upperstorey’; the first record of it in this sense comesin Byron’s Beppo 1817: ‘His wife would mount,at times, her highest attic’.attire see TYREattitudeattitude [17] In origin, attitude is the same wordas aptitude. Both come ultimately from lateLatin aptitūdō. In Old French this becameaptitude, which English acquired in the 15thcentury, but in Italian it became attitudine, whichmeant ‘disposition’ or ‘posture’. This wastransmitted via French attitude to English, whereat first it was used as a technical term in artcriticism, meaning the ‘disposition of a figure ina painting’. The metaphorical sense ‘mentalposition with regard to something’ developed inthe early 19th century. APTITUDEattorney [14] Attorney was formed in OldFrench from the prefix a- ‘to’ and the verb torner‘turn’. This produced the verb atorner, literally‘turn to’, hence ‘assign to’ or ‘appoint to’. Itspast participle, atorne, was used as a noun withmuch the same signification as appointee –‘someone appointed’ – and hence ‘someoneappointed to act as someone else’s agent’, andultimately ‘legal agent’. Borrowed into English,over the centuries the term came to mean ‘lawyerpractising in the courts of Common Law’ (ascontrasted with a solicitor, who practised in theEquity Courts); but it was officially abolished inthat sense by the Judicature Act of 1873, andnow survives only in American English,

attract 42meaning ‘lawyer’, and in the title Attorney-General, the chief law officer of a government. TURNattract [15] Etymologically, attract meansliterally ‘pull something towards one’. It comesfrom attract-, the past participial stem of theLatin verb attrahere, a compound formed fromthe prefix ad- ‘to’ and the verb trahere ‘pull’. Itwas quite a late formation, of around the mid15th century, coined on the model of otherEnglish verbs, such as abstract and contract,deriving ultimately from Latin trahere. ABSTRACT, CONTRACT, RETRACT, SUBTRACTattrition see THROWattune see TUNEaubergine [18] Etymologically, the aubergine isthe ‘anti-fart vegetable’. That was the meaningof its ultimate source, Sanskrit vātinganah, sonamed because it did not produce intestinal gas.This was borrowed into Persian as bādingān,and reached Arabic as (with the definite articleal) al-bādindjān. It then made its way with theMoors into the Iberian peninsula: here itproduced Portuguese beringela (source ofbrinjal [18], an Indian and African English termfor ‘aubergine’) and, with the definite articleretained, Catalan alberginia. French turned thisinto aubergine and passed it on to English. InBritish English it has gradually replaced theearlier eggplant, named after the vegetable’sshape, which American English has retained.auburn [15] The colour of auburn has changedover the centuries. The word comes originallyfrom Latin albus ‘white’ (whence Englishalbum, albino, alb, albedo, and albion), fromwhich was derived in medieval Latin alburnus‘off-white’. This passed via Old French alborne,auborne into English, still meaning ‘yellowishwhite’.From the 15th to the 17th century it wasoften spelled abrun or abrown, and it seemslikely that its similarity to brown led to itsgradual shift in meaning to ‘golden-brown’ or‘reddish-brown’ over the centuries. ALBINO, ALBUMauction [16] The etymological idea underlyingauction is that of ‘increasing’ – as the saleproceeds, the price offered goes up. The wordcomes from Latin auctiō ‘increase’, a nounderived from auct-, the past participial stem ofthe verb augēre ‘increase’ (source of Englishaugment [15] and author, and related toauxiliary [17] and eke). The sense ‘auction sale’was already present in Latin. AUGMENT, AUGUST, AUTHOR, AUXILLIARY,EKE, WAXaudible [16] Audible is one of a wide range ofEnglish words based ultimately on the Latin verbaudīre ‘hear’ (which came from the Indo-European root *awiz-, source also of Greekaithánesthai ‘perceive’ and Sanskrit āvis‘evidently’). Others include audience [14],audio- [20], audit [15] (from Latin audītus‘hearing’; audits were originally done by readingthe accounts out loud), audition [16], andauditorium [17]. OBEY, OYEZaugur [14] In Roman times, an augur wassomeone who foretold the future by observingthe flight of birds (or by examining theirentrails). His method of divination was reflectedin his title, for the Latin word augur, earlierauger, seems to have meant literally ‘one whoperforms with birds’, from avis ‘bird’ (as inEnglish aviary [16] and aviation [19]) andgerere ‘do, perform’ (as in English gestation,gesture, gerund, digest, and suggest). (A parallelformation is auspice [16], whose Latinantecedent auspex meant ‘one who observed theflight of birds’; it was compounded from avisand the verb specere ‘look’, which is related toEnglish species and spy.) A Latin derivative wasthe verb inaugurāre ‘foretell the future from theflight of birds’, which was applied to theinstallation of someone of office after theappropriate omens had been determined; by thetime it reached English as inaugurate [17], theassociation with divination had been left farbehind. AVIARY, AVIATION, INAUGURATEAugust [OE] The month of August was namedby the Romans after their emperor Augustus (63BC–14 AD). His name was Caius Julius CaesarOctavian, but the Senate granted him thehonorary title Augustus in 27 BC. This connoted‘imperial majesty’, and was a specific use of theadjective augustus ‘magnificent, majestic’(source of English august [17]); it may deriveultimately from the verb augēre ‘increase’ (fromwhich English gets auction and augment). AUCTION, AUGMENTaunt [13] Aunt appears to come ultimately from*amma, a hypothetical non-Indo-European wordfor ‘mother’ (parallel to Indo-European*mammā, and like it reproducing syllablesperceived to be uttered by babies), which atsome point was borrowed into Latin. It firstappears in the derived form amita ‘paternalaunt’, which passed into English via Old Frenchante (of which modern French tante is analternation) and Anglo-Norman aunte.auraura see AIRaurochs see OXauspice see AUGURauthentic [14] Etymologically, something thatis authentic is something that has the authority ofits original creator. Greek authentikós was aderivative of the noun authéntēs ‘doer, master’,which was formed from autós ‘self’ and the base-hentēs ‘worker, doer’ (related to Sanskrit sanoti‘he gains’). The adjective’s original meaning inEnglish was ‘authoritative’; the modern sense‘genuine’ did not develop fully until the late 18thcentury. (Greek authéntēs, incidentally, waspronounced /afthendis/, and was borrowed intoTurkish as efendī, source of English effendi[17].) EFFENDIauthor [14] Latin auctor originally meant‘creator, originator’; it came from auct-, the pastparticipial stem of augēre, which as well as‘increase’ (as in English augment) meant‘originate’. But it also developed the specific

sense ‘creator of a text, writer’, and brought boththese meanings with it into English via OldFrench autor. Forms with -th- began to appear inthe mid 16th century (from French), andoriginally the-th- was just a spelling variant of-t-, but eventually it affected the pronunciation.While the ‘writing’ sense has largely takenover author, authority [13] (ultimately fromLatin auctōritās) and its derivativesauthoritative and authorize have developedalong the lines of the creator’s power tocommand or make decisions. AUCTION, AUGMENTautograph [17] Greek auto- was a prefixal useof the adjective autós, meaning ‘same, self’.Many of the commonest auto- words in English,including autograph itself and also autocrat[19], automatic [18] (a derivative of automaton[17], which was formed from a hypothetical base*men- ‘think’ related to mental and mind),autonomy [17], and autopsy [17] (originallymeaning ‘eye-witness’, and derived from Greekoptós ‘seen’, source of English optic), areoriginal Greek formations. But the 19th andparticularly the 20th century have seen a mass ofnew coinages, notably in scientific and technicalterminology, including such familiar words asautism, autobiography, autoerotic, autofocus,autogiro, autoimmune, automotive, autosuggestion,and of course automobile (originallya French formation of the 1870s). Automobilehas itself, of course, given rise to a completelynew use for the auto- prefix, with the generalconnotation of ‘motorized transport’, as inautobus, autocar, autocycle, and the Germanautobahn.autumn [14] English acquired autumn fromLatin autumnus, partly via Old Frenchautompne. Where Latin got the word from is amystery; it may have been a borrowing fromEtruscan, a long-extinct pre-Roman language ofthe Italian peninsula. In Old English, the term for‘autumn’ was harvest, and this remained incommon use throughout the Middle Ages; it wasnot until the 16th century that autumn reallybegan to replace it (at the same time as harvestbegan to be applied more commonly to thegathering of crops). Fall, now the main US termfor ‘autumn’, is 16th-century too.avail see VALUEavailableavailable see VALUEavalanche [18] Not surprisingly, avalancheoriginated in the Alps. The French dialect ofSavoy, an area near the Italian border in thewestern Alps, had a term lavantse, apparentlyderived from a Vulgar Latin *labanca (whenceProvençal lavanca). Through association withthe verb avaler ‘descend’ (see DOWN), thisunderwent metathesis (transposition of l and v)to produce in the Romansh language ofSwitzerland avalantze, which was borrowed intoFrench as avalanche.avant-garde see VANGUARDavarice [13] The Latin verb avēre meant ‘covet’.One of its derivatives was the adjective avārus‘greedy’, from which the noun avāritia was43 awakeformed. This entered English via Old Frenchavarice. Another of its derivatives was theadjective avidus ‘greedy’ which, as well as beingthe source of English avid [18], produced, via ahypothetical contracted form *audus, theadjective audax ‘bold’, source of Englishaudacity [15]. AUDACITY, AVIDavenge see VINDICATEaverage [15] The word average has a devioushistory. It began in Arabic, as ‘awārīya, theplural of ‘awār, a noun derived from the verb‘āra ‘mutilate’; this was used as a commercialterm, denoting ‘damaged merchandise’. Thefirst European language to adopt it was Italian,as avaria, and it passed via Old French avarieinto English (where in the 16th century itacquired its -age ending, probably by associationwith the then semantically similar damage).Already by this time it had come to signify the‘financial loss incurred through damage to goodsin transit’, and this passed in the 17th century tothe ‘equal sharing of such loss by those with afinancial interest in the goods’, and eventually,in the 18th century, to the current (mathematicaland general) sense of ‘mean’.aviary see AUGURaviationaviation see AUGURavocado [17] Anyone tucking into an avocadocould well be taken aback to learn that in theSouth American Indian language from which theword originally came, it meant literally‘testicle’. The Nahuatl Indians named the fruitahuacatl ‘testicle’ on account of its shape. TheSpanish conquistadors took the word over asaguacate, but before long this became altered byfolk etymology (the substitution of familiar forunfamiliar forms) to avocado (literally‘advocate’ in Spanish). When English borrowedthe word, folk etymology took a hand yet again,for in the late 17th century it became known asthe alligator pear, a name which survived intothe 20th century.avoid [14] Avoid at first meant literally ‘makevoid, empty’. It was formed in Old French fromthe adjective vuide ‘empty’ (source of Englishvoid [13], and derived from a hypotheticalVulgar Latin *vocitus, which is relatedultimately to vacant). With the addition of theprefix es- ‘out’, a verb evuider was formed,which passed into English via Anglo-Normanavoider. The original sense ‘empty’ barelysurvived into the 17th century, but meanwhile ithad progressed through ‘withdrawing, so as toleave someone alone or leave a place empty’ to‘deliberately staying away from someone orsomething’. VACANT, VOIDawake [OE] Awake was formed by adding theintensive prefix ā- to the verb wake (in OldEnglish wacan or wacian, related to watch, andalso ultimately to vegetable, vigil, and vigour).The adjective awake arose in the 13th century; itwas originally a variant form of the pastparticiple of the verb. VIGIL, WAKE, WATCH

aware 44aware see WAREaway [OE] Away was formed in the late OldEnglish period by conflating the phrase on weg,literally ‘on way’, that is, ‘on one’s way,departing’. This soon became reduced to aweg,hence away. WAYawe [13] Old English had the word ege, meaning‘awe’, but modern English awe is aScandinavian borrowing; the related Old Norseagi steadily infiltrated the language from thenortheast southwards during the Middle Ages.Agi came, like ege, from a hypotheticalGermanic form *agon, which in turn goes backto an Indo-European base *agh- (whence alsoGreek ákhos ‘pain’). The guttural g sound of the13th-century English word (technically a voicedvelar spirant) was changed to w during theMiddle English period. This was a generalchange, but it is not always reflected in spelling– as in owe and ought, for instance, which wereoriginally the same word.awkward [14] When awkward was coined, inScotland and northern England, it meant ‘turnedin the wrong direction’. Middle English had anadjective awk, which meant ‘the wrong wayround, backhanded’, and hence ‘perverse’, andwith the addition of the suffix -ward this becameawkward. Awk itself was adopted from OldNorse afugr, which is related to German ab‘away’ and English off. Awkward followed asimilar semantic path to awk, via ‘perverse, illadapted’to ‘clumsy’. OFFawl [OE] The Old English form, æl, came from ahypothetical Germanic base *āl-, which had aprobable relative in Sanskrit ārā. The compoundbradawl was formed in the 19th century usingthe term brad ‘thin flat nail’, which cameoriginally from Old Norse broddr ‘spike’. Awls,tools for making holes to take nails, are part ofthe shoemaker’s traditional set of implements:hence the apparently quite recent, early 20thcenturyrhyming slang cobbler’s awls (cobblersfor short) for ‘balls’.axe [OE] Relatives of the word axe are widespreadthroughout the Indo-European languages,from German axt and Dutch aaks to Latin asciaand Greek axínē. These point back to ahypothetical Indo-European *agwesī or *akusī,which denoted some sort of cutting or hewingtool. The Old English form was æx, and there isactually no historical justification for the modernBritish spelling axe, which first appeared in thelate 14th century; as late as 1885 the OxfordEnglish Dictionary made ax its main form, and itremains so in the USA.axis [14] Axis is at the centre of a complex webof ‘turning’ words. Besides its immediatesource, Latin axis, there were Greek áxōn,Sanskrit ákshas, and a hypothetical Germanic*akhsō which produced Old English eax ‘axle’as well as modern German achse ‘axle, shaft’and Dutch as; and there could well be aconnection with Latin agere (source of Englishact, agent, etc) in the sense ‘drive’. Also relatedis an unrecorded Latin form *acslā, whichproduced āla ‘wing’ (source of English aileronand aisle); its diminutive was axilla ‘armpit’,from which English gets the adjective axillary[17] and the botanical term axil [18]. AILERON, AISLE, AXILaxle [17] The word axle emerges surprisingly lateconsidering the antiquity of axles, but relatedterms had existed in the language for perhaps athousand years. Old English had eax, whichcame from a hypothetical Germanic *akhsō,related to Latin axis. This survived in thecompound ax-tree until the 17th century (later inScotland); tree in this context meant ‘beam’. Butfrom the early 14th century the native ax-treebegan to be ousted by Old Norse öxultré (or as itbecame in English axle-tree); the element öxullcame from a prehistoric Germanic *akhsulaz, aderivative of *akhsō. Axle first appeared on itsown in the last decade of the 16th century(meaning ‘axis’, a sense it has since lost), andbecame firmly established in the early 17thcentury.aye see EVER, Iazalea see ARIDazimuth see ZENITHazure [14] Azure is of Persian origin. It comesultimately from Persian lāzhuward, source alsoof the lazuli in lapis lazuli, a blue semipreciousstone (and azure originally meant ‘lapis lazuli’in English). The Arabs borrowed the Persianterm as (with the definite article al) allazward,which passed into Old Spanish as azur or azul.Old French borrowed azur and handed it on toEnglish. LAPIS LAZULI

Bbabel [14] According to Genesis 11: 1–9, thetower of Babel was built in Shinar by thedescendants of Noah in an attempt to reachheaven. Angered at their presumption, Godpunished the builders by making them unable tounderstand each other’s speech: hence,according to legend, the various languages of theworld. Hence, too, the metaphorical applicationof babel to a ‘confused medley of sounds’,which began in English in the 16th century. Theword has no etymological connection with‘language’ or ‘noise’, however. The originalAssyrian bāb-ilu meant ‘gate of god’, and thiswas borrowed into Hebrew as bābel (from whichEnglish acquired the word). The later Greekversion is Babylon. BABYLONbaboon [14] The origins of baboon are obscure,but it seems that the notion underlying it may bethat of ‘grimacing’. Baboons characteristicallydraw back their lips in snarling, revealing theirteeth, and it has been speculated that there maybe a connection with Old French baboue‘grimace’. However that may be, it was certainlyin Old French that the word first surfaced, asbabuin, and originally it meant ‘gaping figure’(as in a gargoyle) as well as ‘ape’. Thisalternative meaning was carried over when theOld French word was borrowed into English,where it remained a live sense of baboon untilthe 16th century.baby [14] Like mama and papa, baby and thecontemporaneous babe are probably imitative ofthe burbling noises made by an infant that hasnot yet learned to talk. In Old English, the termfor what we would now call a ‘baby’ was child,and it seems only to have been from about the11th century that child began to extend its rangeto the slightly more mature age which it nowcovers. Then when the word baby came into thelanguage, it was used synonymously with thisdeveloped sense of child, and only graduallycame to refer to infants not yet capable of speechor walking.bacchanalian [16] Bákkhos was the Greek godof wine. Son of Zeus and Semele, he was alsoknown as Diónūsos. The Romans adopted him,amending his name to Bacchus, and hisworshippers went in for a brand of licentiousrevelry, in his honour, known as Bacchanalia.Hence the metaphorical application of theEnglish adjective to anything drunkenlyorgiastic.bachelor [13] The ultimate origins of bachelorare obscure, but by the time it first turned up, inOld French bacheler (from a hypotheticalVulgar Latin *baccalāris), it meant ‘squire’ or‘young knight in the service of an older knight’.This was the sense it had when borrowed intoEnglish, and it is preserved, in fossilized form, inknight bachelor. Subsequent semanticdevelopment was via ‘university graduate’ to, inthe late 14th century, ‘unmarried man’. Aresemblance to Old Irish bachlach ‘shepherd,peasant’ (a derivative of Old Irish bachall ‘staff’,from Latin baculum, source of English bacillusand related to English bacteria) has led some tospeculate that the two may be connected.English baccalaureate [17] comes via Frenchbaccalauréat or medieval Latin baccalaureātusfrom medieval Latin baccalaureus ‘bachelor’,which was an alteration of an earlierbaccalārius, perhaps owing to an associationwith the ‘laurels’ awarded for academic success(Latin bacca lauri meant literally ‘laurel berry’).back [OE] Back goes back to a prehistoric Westand North Germanic *bakam, which wasrepresented in several pre-medieval andmedieval Germanic languages: Old HighGerman bah, for example, and Old Norse bak. Inmost of them, however, it has been ousted byrelatives of English ridge, originally ‘spine’(such as German rücken and Swedish rygg), andonly English retains back. BACONbackgammon [17] Backgammon appears tomean literally ‘back game’, although the reasonfor the name is far from clear (gammon had beenused since at least the early 18th century for aparticular type of victory in the game, but it ishard to say whether the term for the victory camefrom the term for the game, or vice versa). Eitherway, gammon represents Old English gamen, theancestor of modern English game. The gamebackgammon goes back far further than the 17thcentury, of course, but before that it was calledtables in English. GAMEbacon [12] Originally, bacon meant literally‘meat from a pig’s back’. It comes ultimatelyfrom a prehistoric Germanic *bakkon, whichwas related to *bakam, the source of Englishback. It reached English via Frankish báko andOld French bacon, and at first meant ‘a side ofpig meat (fresh or cured)’. Gradually it narroweddown to ‘a side of cured pig meat’ (bringing itinto competition with the Old English wordflitch, now virtually obsolete), and finally tosimply ‘cured pig meat’. BACKbacterium [19] Bacterium was coined in the1840s from Greek baktérion, a diminutive of

ad 46báktron ‘stick’, on the basis that the originallydiscovered bacteria were rod-shaped. At first itwas sometimes anglicized to bactery, but theLatin form has prevailed. Related, but a laterintroduction, is bacillus [19]: this is a diminutiveof Latin baculum ‘stick’, and the term was againinspired by the microorganism’s shape. Latinbaculum is also responsible, via Italian bacchioand its diminutive form bacchetta, for the longFrench loaf, the baguette. BACILLUS, BAGUETTE, DÉBACLE, IMBECILEbad [13] For such a common word, bad has aremarkably clouded history. It does not begin toappear in English until the end of the 13thcentury, and has no apparent relatives in otherlanguages (the uncanny resemblance to Persianbad is purely coincidental). The few clues wehave suggest a regrettably homophobic origin.Old English had a pair of words, bǣddel andbǣdling, which appear to have been derogatoryterms for homosexuals, with overtones ofsodomy. The fact that the first examples we haveof bad, from the late 13th and early 14thcenturies, are in the sense ‘contemptible,worthless’ as applied to people indicates that theconnotations of moral depravity may havebecome generalized from an earlier, specificallyanti-homosexual sense.badger [16] The Old English term for a ‘badger’was brock, a word of Celtic origin, and badgerdoes not begin to appear, somewhatmysteriously, until the early 16th century. Thename has never been satisfactorily explained, butperhaps the least implausible explanation is fromthe word badge, in reference to the white stripeson the animal’s forehead, as if it were wearing abadge (a term originally applied to a distinctivedevice worn by a knight for purposes ofrecognition); the early spelling bageard suggeststhat it may have been formed with the suffix-ard, as in dullard and sluggard. (Badge itself isof even more obscure origin; it first turns up inMiddle English, in the mid 14th century.) Otherearly terms for the badger were bauson (14th–18th centuries), from Old French bausen, andgrey (15th–17th centuries).badminton [19] The game of ‘battledore andshuttlecock’ has been around for some time (itappears to go back to the 16th century; the wordbattledore, which may come ultimately fromPortuguese batedor ‘beater’, first turns up in the15th century, meaning ‘implement for beatingclothes when washing them’, but by the 16thcentury is being used for a ‘small racket’; whileshuttlecock, so named because it is hit back andforth, first appears in the early 16th century, in apoem of John Skelton’s). This was usually afairly informal, improvised affair, however, andlatterly played mainly by children; the modern,codified game of badminton did not begin untilthe 1860s or 1870s, and takes its name from theplace where it was apparently first played,Badminton House, Avon, country seat of thedukes of Beaufort. (A slightly earlier applicationof the word badminton had been to a coolingsummer drink, a species of claret cup.)baffle [16] The etymology of baffle isappropriately baffling. Two main candidateshave been proposed as a source. The first is themedieval Scots verb bawchill or bauchle,meaning ‘discredit publicly’. This fits in with theway baffle was first used: ‘I will baffull yourgood name, sound with the trumpet yourdishonour, and paint your pictor with the heelesvpward, and beate it in despight of yourselfe’,Churchyardes chippes 1570. The other strand isrepresented by French bafouer ‘hoodwink,deceive’, which perhaps comes from Old Frenchbeffer. This corresponds more closely to thepresent-day meaning of baffle, and it may wellbe that there are two distinct words here.bag [13] English acquired bag from Old Norsebaggi ‘bag, bundle’, but it does not appear in anyother Germanic language, which suggests that itmay have been borrowed at some point from anon-Germanic language. Forms such as OldFrench bague, Italian baga, and Portuguesebagua show that it existed elsewhere. Aderivative of the Old French word was bagage,from which in the 15th century English gotbaggage; and Italian baga may have led, by adoubling of diminutive suffixes, to bagatella‘insignificant property, trifle’, which enteredEnglish in the 17th century via French bagatelle(although this has also been referred to Latinbacca ‘berry’ – see BACHELOR). BAGATELLE, BAGGAGEbail There are now three distinct words bail inEnglish, although they may all be related. Bail‘money deposited as a guarantee when released’[14] comes from Old French bail, a derivative ofthe verb baillier ‘take charge of, carry’, whosesource was Latin bājulāre ‘carry’, from bājulus‘carrier’. Bail ‘remove water’ [13], also spelledbale, probably comes ultimately from the samesource; its immediate antecedent was OldFrench baille ‘bucket’, which perhaps went backto a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *bājula, afeminine form of bājulus. The bail on top ofcricket stumps [18] has been connected withLatin bājulus too – this could have been thesource of Old French bail ‘cross-beam’ (‘loadcarryingbeam’), which could quite plausiblyhave been applied to cricket bails; on the otherhand it may go back to Old French bail, baille‘enclosed court’ (source of English bailey [13]),which originally in English meant the‘encircling walls of a castle’ but by the 19thcentury at the latest had developed the sense ‘barfor separating animals in a stable’. BAILEYbailiff [13] Latin bājulus meant literally ‘carrier’(it is probably the ultimate source of English bailin some if not all of its uses). It developed themetaphorical meaning ‘person in charge,administrator’, which passed, via thehypothetical medieval adjectival form*bājulīvus, into Old French as baillif, and henceinto English. BAILbain-marie [19] In its origins, the bain-mariewas far from today’s innocuous domestic utensil

for heating food over boiling water. It takes itsname from Mary, or Miriam, the sister of Moses,who according to medieval legend was an adeptalchemist – so much so that she had a piece ofalchemical equipment named after her, ‘Mary’sfurnace’ (medieval Greek kaminos Marias).This was mistranslated into medieval Latin asbalneum Mariae ‘Mary’s bath’, from which itpassed into French as bain-marie. Englishoriginally borrowed the word in the 15th century,in semi-anglicized form, as balneo of Mary. Atthis time it still retained its original alchemicalmeaning, but by the early 19th century, whenEnglish adopted the French term, it haddeveloped its present-day use.bairn see BEARbait [13] Etymologically, the verb bait means‘cause to bite’. It comes from Old Norse beita, acausative version of bita ‘bite’ (related toEnglish bite). This took two semantic paths inEnglish. In its aggressive mode, it meant literally‘set dogs on someone’, and hence by figurativeextension ‘harrass, persecute’. More peaceably,it signified ‘feed an animal’. And this sense of‘food provided’ is reflected in the noun bait,which comes partly from the verb, partly fromthe related Old Norse nouns beit ‘pasturage’ andbeita ‘fish bait’.Old Norse beita was probably borrowed intoOld French as beter, which with the prefix a-produced abeter, source of English abet [14],originally meaning ‘urge on, incite’. ABET, BITEbake [OE] The Old English verb bacan goesback to a prehistoric Germanic base *bak-,which also produced German backen, Dutchbakken, and Swedish baka; its ultimate sourcewas the Indo-European base *bhog-, anotherdescendant of which was Greek phógein ‘roast’.Derivatives of the English verb include batch[15], which comes from Old English *bæcce,literally ‘something baked’, and the nameBaxter, which originally meant ‘female baker’. BATCHbalance [13] The underlying etymologicalmeaning of balance is of a weighing apparatuswith ‘two pans’ for holding things. In Latin thiswas a lībra bilanx, literally ‘scales with twopans’ – bilanx being compounded from bi- ‘two’and lanx ‘plate, pan’. Bilanx passed, in its stemfrom bilanc-, via Vulgar Latin *bilancia into OldFrench balance, the source of the English word.balcony [17] Balcony entered English fromItalian balcone, but it seems to be ultimately ofGermanic origin. It was probably borrowed intoOld Italian, with the meaning ‘scaffold’. fromGermanic *balkon ‘beam’, source of Englishbalk – perhaps from the notion of a platform orscaffold being built from beams of timber,although the connection is not altogether clear. BALKbald [14] In Middle English times, bald wasballede, which suggests that it may have been acompound formed in Old English with the suffix-ede ‘characterized by, having’. It has beenconjectured that the first element in the47 ballastcompound was Old English *ball-, meaning‘white patch’ or ‘blaze’ on an animal’s head; thismay be supported by isolated examples of theuse of the adjective to mean (of a horse) ‘whitefaced’from the 16th to the 18th centuries, and bythe obsolete dialectal ball meaning both ‘whitepatch on the head’ and ‘white-faced horse’. Thiswould have produced the Old English adjective*bællede or *beallede, which, from ‘having awhite blaze’, progressed naturally in meaning to‘hairless’.The compounds piebald [16] and skewbald[17] are both based on bald: piebald means‘having black and white patches like a magpie’,while skewbald may be based on Middle Englishskew ‘(cloudy) skies’ or on Old French escu‘shield’. PIEBALD, SKEWBALDbalk [OE] There are two separate strands ofmeaning in balk, or baulk, as it is also spelled.When it first entered English in the 9th century,from Old Norse bálkr, it meant a ‘ridge of land,especially one between ploughed furrows’, fromwhich the modern sense ‘stumbling block,obstruction’ developed. It is not until about 1300that the meaning ‘beam of timber’ appears inEnglish, although it was an established sense ofthe Old Norse word’s Germanic ancestor*balkon (source also of English balcony). Thecommon element of meaning in these twostrands is something like ‘bar’, which may havebeen present in the word’s ultimate Indo-European base *bhalg- (possible source ofGreek phálagx ‘log, phalanx’). BALCONY, PHALANXball There are two distinct words ball in English.The ‘round object’ [13] comes via Old Norseböllr from a prehistoric Germanic *balluz(source also of bollock [OE], originally adiminutive form). A related form was Germanic*ballōn, which was borrowed into Italian to givepalla ‘ball’, from which French probablyacquired balle. Derivatives of this branch of thefamily to have reached English are balloon [16],from French ballon or Italian ballone, and ballot[16], from the Italian diminutive form ballotta(originally from the use of small balls ascounters in secret voting). The Germanic stemform *bal-, *bul- was also the ultimate source ofEnglish bowl ‘receptacle’.The ‘dancing’ ball [17] comes from Frenchbal, a derivative of the now obsolete verbbal(l)er ‘dance’, which was descended via lateLatin ballāre from Greek ballízein ‘dance’.Related words in English include ballad(e) [14],which came via Old French from Provençalbalada ‘song or poem to dance to’, and ballet. BALLON, BALLOT, BOLLOCK; BALLAD, BALLETballast [16] Originally, ballast appears to havemeant literally ‘bare load’ – that is, a load carriedby a ship simply for the sake of its weight, andwithout any commercial value. English probablyacquired it, via Low German, from aScandinavian language; Old Swedish and OldDanish had not only ballast but also barlast,which appears to betray the word’s component

allet 48parts: bar, related to English bare, and last‘burden’ (Old English had hlæst ‘burden’,related to lade, which survived into the 20thcentury as a measure of weight for variouscommodities). BARE, LADEballet [17] Etymologically, a ballet is a ‘littledance’. English acquired the word, via Frenchballet, from Italian balletto, a diminutive ofballo ‘dance’, related to English ball (thediminutive of Italian balla ‘spherical ball’ isballotta, whence English ballot). The noun ballocame from the verb ballare (a descendant vialate Latin ballāre of Greek ballízein ‘dance’), ofwhich another derivative was ballerino ‘dancingmaster’. The feminine form, ballerina, enteredEnglish in the late 18th century. Balletomane‘ballet enthusiast’ is a creation of the 1930s.Another word ballet, also a diminutive,exists, or at least existed, in English. It meant‘little [spherical] ball’, and was used in the 18thcentury as a technical term in heraldry. BALLballistic see PARABLEballoon see BALLballot see BALLballyhoo [20] Ballyhoo remains anetymological mystery, but there is no shortage ofsuggested candidates as its source: an Irishvillage called Ballyhooly; an old nautical slangword ballyhoo meaning ‘unseaworthy vessel’,which seems to have been an anglicization ofSpanish balahú ‘schooner’; and the bizarre late-19th-century ballyhoo bird, a fake bird made ofwood and cardboard and intended to fool a birdhunter.None of them, alas, seems remotelyrelevant to ballyhoo’s original American sense,‘barker’s patter outside a circus tent, toencourage people to enter’.balm [13] In origin, balm and balsam are thesame word. Both come via Latin balsamum fromGreek bálsamon, an ‘aromatic oily resin exudedfrom certain trees’. Its ultimate source may havebeen Hebrew bāśām ‘spice’. Latin balsamumpassed into Old French, and thence into English,as basme or baume (hence the modern Englishpronunciation), and in the 15th to 16th centuriesthe Latin l was restored to the written form of theword. The new borrowing balsam, direct fromLatin, was made in the 15th century. BALSAMbaluster [17] Etymologically, baluster andbanister are the same word. Both comeultimately from Greek balāustion ‘pomegranateflower’, which reached English via Latinbalaustium, Italian balaustro, and Frenchbalustre. The reason for the application of theterm to the uprights supporting a staircasehandrail is that the lower part of a pomegranateflower has a double curve, inwards at the top andthen bulging outwards at the bottom, similar tothe design of some early balusters. A balustrade[17], from Italian balaustrata via French, is arow of balusters. Already by the mid 17thcentury a transformation of the l to an n hadtaken place, producing the parallel banister. BALUSTRADE, BANISTERbamboo [16] Bamboo appears to come from aMalay word mambu. This was brought back toEurope by the Portuguese explorers, and enjoyeda brief currency in English from the 17th to the18th century. However, for reasons no one canexplain, the initial m of this word becamechanged to b, and it acquired an s at the end,producing a form found in Latin texts of the timeas bambusa. This appears to have passed intoEnglish via Dutch bamboes, so the earliestEnglish version of the word was bambos. As sooften happens in such cases, the final s wasmisinterpreted as a plural ending, so it droppedoff to give the new ‘singular’ bamboo.bamboozle [18] Bamboozle is a mystery word.It first appears in 1703, in the writings of thedramatist Colly Cibber, and seven years later itwas one of a list of the latest buzzwords cited byJonathan Swift in the Tatler (others includedbully, mob, and sham). It is probably a ‘cant’term (a sort of low-life argot), and may perhapsbe of Scottish origin; there was a 17th-centuryScottish verb bombaze ‘perplex’, which may bethe same word as bombace, literally ‘padding,stuffing’, but metaphorically ‘inflated language’(the variant form bombast has survived intomodern English). BOMBASTban [OE] Ban is one of a widespread group ofwords in the European languages. Its ultimatesource is the Indo-European base *bha-, whichalso gave English fame (from a derivative ofLatin fārī ‘speak’) and phase (from Greekphāsis). The Germanic offshoot of the Indo-European base, and source of the English word,was *bannan, which originally probably meantsimply ‘speak, proclaim’. This graduallydeveloped through ‘proclaim with threats’ to‘put a curse on’, but the sense ‘prohibit’ does notseem to have arisen until as late as the 19thcentury.The Germanic base *bann- was borrowedinto Old French as the noun ban ‘proclamation’.From there it crossed into English and probablymingled with the cognate English noun, MiddleEnglish iban (the descendant of Old Englishgebann). It survives today in the plural formbanns ‘proclamation of marriage’. The adjectivederived from Old French ban was banal,acquired by English in the 18th century. Itoriginally meant ‘of compulsory militaryservice’ (from the word’s basic sense of‘summoning by proclamation’); this wasgradually generalized through ‘open toeveryone’ to ‘commonplace’. BANAL, BANDIT, BANISH, CONTRABAND, FAME,PHASEbanana [16] Banana comes from a West Africanlanguage – possibly Wolof, a language of theNiger-Congo family, spoken in Senegal and theGambia. The original European discoverers ofthe word – and the fruit – were the Spanish andPortuguese, who passed them on to England.

The term bananas ‘mad’ is 20th-century, but itsorigins are obscure; some have comparedbanana oil, a 20th-century slang term for ‘madtalk, nonsense’.band There are two distinct words band inEnglish, but neither of them goes back as far asOld English. The one meaning ‘group of people’[15] comes from Old French bande, but isprobably Germanic in ultimate origin; thespecific sense ‘group of musicians’ developed inthe 17th century. Band ‘strip’ [13] comes fromGermanic *bindan, source of English bind, butreached English in two quite separate phases. Itfirst came via Old Norse band, in the sense‘something that ties or constrains’; this replacedOld English bend, also from Germanic *bindan(which now survives only as a heraldic term, asin bend sinister), but is now itself more or lessobsolete, having been superseded by bond, avariant form. But then in the 15th century itarrived again, by a different route: Old Frenchhad bande ‘strip, stripe’, which can be tracedback, perhaps via a Vulgar Latin *binda, to thesame ultimate source, Germanic *bindan. BEND, BIND, BOND, BUNDLE, RIBBONbandit [16] Etymologically, a bandit is someonewho has been ‘banished’ or outlawed. The wordwas borrowed from Italian bandito, which was anominal use of the past participle of the verbbandire ‘ban’. The source of this was VulgarLatin *bannīre, which was formed from theborrowed Germanic base *bann- ‘proclaim’(from which English gets ban). Meanwhile, inOld French, bannīre had produced banir, whoselengthened stem form baniss- gave Englishbanish [14]. BAN, BANISHbandy [16] To ‘bandy words with someone’ maygo back to an original idea of ‘banding togetherto oppose others’. The word comes from Frenchbander ‘oppose’, which is possibly a derivativeof bande ‘group, company’ (source of Englishband). The rather complex semanticdevelopment goes from ‘taking sides’, through‘opposing a third party’, ‘exchanging blows’,‘exchanging hits’ (in the 16th and 17th centuriesit was a term in tennis), to ‘exchanging hostilewords’.The adjective bandy [17], as in ‘bandy legs’,probably comes from the noun bandy ‘curvedstick used in an early form of hockey’ (the gamewas also known as bandy). It may ultimately berelated to the verb bandy, the connection beingthe notion of knocking a ball to and fro. BANDbanish see BANDITbanister see BALUSTERbanjobanjo [18] The origins of banjo are uncertain,but its likeliest source seems to be bandore, thename of a 16th-century stringed instrumentsimilar to the lute. It has been argued that in thespeech of Southern US blacks, amongst whomthe banjo originated, bandore became banjo,perhaps under the influence of mbanza, a termfor a similar instrument in the Kimbundulanguage of Northern Angola (although it might49 bantambe more plausible to suggest that mbanza is theimmediate source, altered by English-speakersmore familiar with bandore).Bandore itself appears to be a variant ofpandore or pandora, which comes from Greekpandoura ‘three-stringed lute’. A more farreachingmodification produced mandore,likewise a term for a lutelike instrument. TheItalian version of the word, mandola, is familiarin English from its diminutive form, which hasgiven us mandolin [18]. MANDOLINbank [12] The various disparate meanings ofmodern English bank all come ultimately fromthe same source, Germanic *bangk-, but theyhave taken different routes to reach us. Earliestto arrive was ‘ridge, mound, bordering slope’,which came via a hypothetical Old Norse*banki. Then came ‘bench’ [13] (now obsoleteexcept in the sense ‘series of rows or tiers’ – asin a typewriter’s bank of keys); this arrived fromOld French banc, which was originallyborrowed from Germanic *bangk- (also thesource of English bench). Finally came‘moneylender’s counter’ [15], whose source waseither French banque or Italian banca – both inany case deriving ultimately once again fromGermanic *bangk-. The current sense, ‘placewhere money is kept’, developed in the 17thcentury.The derived bankrupt [16] comes originallyfrom Italian banca rotta, literally ‘brokencounter’ (rotta is related to English bereave andrupture); in early times a broken counter orbench was symbolic of an insolventmoneylender.The diminutive of Old French banc wasbanquet ‘little bench’ (perhaps modelled onItalian banchetto), from which English getsbanquet [15]. It has undergone a completereversal in meaning over the centuries; originallyit signified a ‘small snack eaten while seated ona bench (rather than at table)’. BENCHbanner [13] Banner is of Germanic origin, but itreached English via Latin. Early forms whichshow its Germanic antecedents are Gothicbandwo ‘sign’ and the related Old Norse benda‘give a sign’, but at some stage it was acquiredby Latin, as bandum ‘standard’. This passed viaVulgar Latin *bandāria into various Romancelanguages, in some of which the influence ofderivatives of Germanic *bann- (source ofEnglish ban) led to the elimination of the d.Hence Old French baniere and Anglo-Normanbanere, source of English banner. BANbantam [18] When these diminutive chickenswere first imported into Europe in the middle ofthe 18th century, it was thought that they hadoriginated in a village called Bantam in Java,now in Indonesia, and they were namedaccordingly. This version of their history hasnever been firmly established, but the namestuck. Bantamweight as a category of boxingweights dates from the 1880s.

anyan 50banyan [17] Banyan originally meant ‘Hindutrader’. It is an arabization of Gujarati vāniyān‘traders’, which comes ultimately from Sanskritvanija ‘merchant’ (the Portuguese version,banian, produced an alternative Englishspelling). When European travellers first visitedBandar Abbas, a port on the Persian Gulf, theyfound there a pagoda which the banyans hadbuilt in the shade of a large Indian fig tree. Theyimmediately applied the name banyan to thisparticular tree, and the term later widened toinclude all such trees.baptize [13] The underlying notion of baptize isof ‘dipping’, as those baptized were originally(and sometimes still are) immersed in water. Itcomes from Greek báptein ‘dip’, whosederivative baptízein ‘baptize’ passed via Latinbaptizāre and Old French baptiser into English.Old Norse kafa ‘dive’ is a Germanic relative.bar [12] The history of bar cannot be traced backvery far. Forms in various Romance languages,such as French barre (source of the Englishverb) and Italian and Spanish barra, point to aVulgar Latin *barra, but beyond that nothing isknown. The original sense of a ‘rail’ or ‘barrier’has developed various figurative applicationsover the centuries: in the 14th century to the ‘railin a court before which a prisoner was arraigned’(as in ‘prisoner at the bar’); in the 16th centuryto a ‘partition separating qualified fromunqualified lawyers in hall’ (as in ‘call to thebar’); and also in the 16th century to a ‘counterat which drink is served’.Related nouns include barrage [19],originally an ‘artificial obstruction in awaterway’, and barrier [14], from Anglo-Norman barrere. BARRAGE, BARREL, BARRIER, BARRISTER,EMBARGObarbarb see BEARDbarbarous [15] Originally, a barbarous personwas a ‘foreigner’, anyone who did not speakyour own language. Greek bárbaros meant‘foreign, ignorant’, and it has been speculatedthat its ultimate signification was ‘unable tospeak intelligibly’ (the related Sanskrit barbarasmeant ‘stammering’). English acquired the wordfrom Latin barbarus, a modified Vulgar Latinversion of which, *brabus, produced Italianbravo and hence, via French, English brave. BRAVEbarbecue [17] Barbecue originated in thelanguage of the now extinct Taino people of theWest Indies. It first emerges in the Haitian creoleterm barbacoa, which meant simply ‘woodenframework’ (used for other purposes thanroasting meat – for example, as a bed). AmericanSpanish adopted the word, and passed it on toEnglish. Compare BUCCANEER.barbel see BEARDbarberbarber see BEARDbard [14] Bard is of Celtic origin. A prehistoricOld Celtic *bardos produced Scottish and IrishGaelic bárd and Welsh bardd, which meant‘poet-singer’. It appears to have been theScottish form which introduced the word intoEnglish, in the sense ‘strolling minstrel’. Themodern, more elevated meaning ‘poet’ is 17thcentury.bare [OE] Bare is an ancient word, traceableback to an Indo-European *bhosos. Descendantsof this in non-Germanic languages includeLithuanian basas ‘barefoot’, but for the mostpart it is the Germanic languages that haveadopted the word. Germanic *bazaz producedGerman and Swedish bar, Dutch baar, and, viaOld English bær, modern English bare.bargain [14] Bargain appears to be distantlyrelated to borrow. Its immediate source was OldFrench bargaignier ‘haggle’, but this wasprobably borrowed from Germanic *borganjan,a derivative of *borgun (from which ultimatelywe get borrow). The sense development mayhave been as follows: originally ‘look after,protect’ (the related Germanic *burg- producedEnglish borough, which to begin with meant‘fortress’, and bury); then ‘take on loan,borrow’; then ‘take or give’; and hence ‘trade,haggle, bargain’. BELFREY, BOROUGH, BORROW, BURYbarge [13] Barge comes in the first instance fromOld French barge, but speculation has pushed itfurther back to medieval Latin *barica, whichwould have derived from báris, a Greek word foran Egyptian boat. This hypothetical *baricawould have been a by-form of late Latin barca,which came into English via Old French asbarque, also spelled bark, ‘sailing vessel’ [15](source of embark). The metaphorical use of theverb barge, ‘move clumsily or rudely’, is barelya hundred years old; it comes from theponderous progress made by barges. BARK, BARQUE, EMBARKbaritone see GRAVITYbarium see GRAVITYbarleybarley [OE] The Old English word for ‘barley’was bære or bere. It came from an Indo-European base *bhar- which also gave Latinfarīna ‘flour’ (from which English getsfarinaceous [17]) and Old Norse farr ‘barley’.Barley (Old English bærlic) was in factoriginally an adjective formed from this (likeprincely based on prince), and it was not untilthe early twelfth century that it came to be usedas a noun.A barn [OE] was originally a building forstoring barley. The Old English word ber(e)nwas a compound formed from bere and ern orærn ‘house’ (which may be related to Englishrest). BARN, FARINACEOUS, FARRAGObarnacle [12] The term barnacle was originallyapplied to a type of goose, Branta leucopsis,which according to medieval legend grew ontrees or on logs of wood. Various fancifulversions of its reproductive cycle existed, amongthem that it emerged from a fruit or that it grewattached to a tree by its beak, but the mosttenacious was that it developed inside smallshellfish attached to wood, rocks, etc by theseashore. Hence by the end of the 16th centurythe term had come to be applied to these

shellfish, and today that is its main sense. Theword was originally bernak (it gained its -leending in the 15th century) and came frommedieval Latin bernaca, but its ultimate sourceis unknown.baron [12] The earliest historical sense of baron,‘tenant under the feudal system who held hisland and title directly from the king’, can betraced back to its probable source, medievalLatin barō, which originally meant simply‘man’, and hence ‘vassal’ or ‘retainer’. The wordwas of course brought into English by theNormans, as Anglo-Norman barun, and fromearliest times was used as a title for someonebelonging to the lowest order of peerage. Somehave suggested an ultimate Germanic origin, andcompared Old High German baro ‘freeman’.barque see EMBARKbarrage see BARbarricade [17] 12 May 1588 was known as lajournée des barricades ‘the day of thebarricades’, because in the course ofdisturbances in Paris during the Huguenot wars,large barrels (French barriques) filled withearth, cobblestones, etc were hauled into thestreet on that day to form barricades – and theterm has stuck ever since. Barrique itself wasborrowed from Spanish barrica ‘cask’, whichwas formed from the same stem as that fromwhich English gets barrel [14]. It has beenspeculated that this was Vulgar Latin *barra‘bar’, on the basis that barrels are made of ‘bars’or ‘staves’. BAR, BARRELbarrier see BARbarrister [16] A barrister is a lawyer who hasbeen ‘called to the bar’ – that is, admitted toplead as an advocate in the superior courts ofEngland and Wales. This notion derives from theancient practice of having in the inns of court apartition separating senior members fromstudents, which barrier the studentsmetaphorically passed when they qualified. Theending -ister was probably added on the analogyof such words as minister and chorister. BARbarrow [OE] Barrow for carrying things andbarrow the burial mound are two distinct wordsin English. The barrow of wheelbarrow isrelated to bear ‘carry’. The Old English word,bearwe, came from the same Germanic base,*ber- or *bar-, as produced bear, and also bier.Barrow the burial mound, as erected by ancientpeoples over a grave site, is related to Germanberg ‘mountain, hill’. The Old English word,beorg, came from prehistoric Germanic *bergaz. BEAR, BIERbase There are two distinct words base inEnglish. Base meaning ‘lower part, foundation’[14] came either via Old French base or was adirect anglicization of Latin basis (acquired byEnglish in its unaltered form at around the sametime). The Latin word in its turn came fromGreek básis, which meant originally ‘step’ andcame ultimately from the Indo-European base*gwm-, from which English gets come; the51 basketsemantic progression involved was ‘going,stepping’ to ‘that on which one walks or stands’to ‘pedestal’. The derivative basement [18] isItalian in origin (Italian basamento means ‘baseof a column’), but probably reached English viaearly modern Dutch basement ‘foundation’.Base meaning ‘low’ [14] comes via OldFrench bas from medieval Latin bassus ‘short,low’. The ultimate antecedents of this areuncertain, although some have suggested aconnection with básson, the comparative form ofGreek bathús ‘deep’. The adjective bass ishistorically the same word as base, but since the16th century has been distinguished from it byspelling. BASIS; BASSbashful see ABASHbasilisk [14] Greek basilískos meant literally‘little king’ – it was a diminutive of basiléus‘king’, source also of English basil [15](probably from the herb’s use by the Greeks incertain royal potions) and of English basilica[16] (a church built originally on the plan of aroyal palace). The Greeks used it for a ‘goldcrestedwren’, but also for a type of serpent, andit is this latter use which developed into thefabulous monster of classical and medievaltimes, whose breath and glance could kill. Thename was said by Pliny to be based on the factthat the basilisk had a crown-shaped mark on itshead. BASIL, BASILICAbasin [13] Basin comes via Old French bacinfrom medieval Latin *bacchinus, a derivative ofVulgar Latin *bacca ‘water vessel’, which mayoriginally have been borrowed from Gaulish.The Old French diminutive bacinet producedEnglish basinet ‘helmet’ [14] and, with amodification of the spelling, bassinette ‘cradle’[19], which was originally applied in French toany vaguely basin-shaped object. BASINET, BASSINETTEbask [14] When English first acquired this word,probably from Old Norse bathask, it was in thesense ‘wallow in blood’: ‘seeing his brotherbasking in his blood’, John Lydgate, Chroniclesof Troy 1430. It was not until the 17th centurythat the modern sense ‘lie in pleasant warmth’became established: ‘a fool, who laid him down,and basked him in the sun’, Shakespeare, As YouLike It 1600. The word retains connotations of itsearliest literal sense ‘bathe’ – Old Norse bathaskwas the reflexive form of batha ‘bathe’. BATHEbasket [13] Basket is something of a mysteryword. It turns up in the 13th century in OldFrench and Anglo-Norman as basket and inAnglo-Latin as baskettum, but how it got there isfar from clear. Some have suggested that Latinbascauda ‘washing tub’, said by the Romanwriter Martial to be of British origin (andthought by some etymologists to be possibly ofCeltic origin), may be connected with it in someway, but no conclusive proof of this has everbeen found.

ass 52bass Bass the fish [15] and bass the musical term[15] are of course completely unrelated words,with different pronunciations. Bass meaning ‘ofthe lowest register’ is simply a modified spellingof the adjective base, under the influence ofItalian basso. Related words are bassoon [18],from French basson, and basset-horn [19], apartial translation of Italian corno di bassetto,literally ‘bass horn’.The bass is a spiny-finned fish, and it may bethat its name is related to Old English byrst‘bristle’. The Old English term for the fish wasbærs, which survived dialectally until the 19thcentury in the form barse, and it is thought thatit goes back to a Germanic base *bars- (sourceof German barsch); this may be cognate with*bors-, from which Old English byrst came. Inthe 15th century, barse underwent some sort ofphonetic mutation to produce bass. BASE, BASSOONbassinette see BASINbastard [13] The idea underlying the wordbastard appears to be that of a child born of animpromptu sexual encounter on an improvisedbed, for it seems to echo Old French fils de bast,literally ‘packsaddle son’, that is, one conceivedon a packsaddle pillow. If this is the case, theword goes back to medieval Latin bastum‘packsaddle’, whose ultimate source was Greekbastázein ‘carry’; this passed via Old Frenchbast, later bat, into late Middle English as bat,which now survives only in batman [18]. Thederived form is first found in medieval Latin asbastardus, and this reached English via OldFrench bastard. Its modern usage as a generalterm of abuse dates from the early 19th century. BATMANbaste There are two separate verbs baste inEnglish, one meaning ‘sew loosely’ [14], theother ‘moisten roasting meat with fat’ [15]. Thefirst comes from Old French bastir, which wasacquired from a hypothetical Germanic *bastjan‘join together with bast’. This was a derivative of*bastaz, from which English gets bast ‘plantfibre’ [OE]. The origin of the second is far moreobscure. It may come from an earlier base, withthe past form based being interpreted as thepresent tense or infinitive.bat Bat as in ‘cricket bat’ [OE] and bat the animal[16] come from entirely different sources. Batthe wooden implement first appears in late OldEnglish as batt ‘cudgel’, but it is not clear whereit ultimately came from. Some have postulated aCeltic source, citing Gaulish andabata‘gladiator’, which may be related to Englishbattle and Russian bat ‘cudgel’, but whatever theword’s origins, it seems likely that at some pointit was influenced by Old French batte, frombattre ‘beat’.The flying bat is an alteration of MiddleEnglish backe, which was borrowed from aScandinavian language. The word is representedin Old Swedish natbakka ‘night bat’, andappears to be an alteration of an earlier -blaka, asin Old Norse lethrblaka, literally ‘leatherflapper’.If this is so, bat would meanetymologically ‘flapper’, which would be of apiece with other names for the animal,particularly German fledermaus ‘fluttermouse’and English flittermouse, which remained adialectal word for ‘bat’ into the 20th century. Itis unusual for the name of such a commonanimal not to go right back to Old English; inthis case the Old English word was hrēremūs,which survived dialectally into the 20th centuryas rearmouse. BATTLEbatch see BAKEbath [OE] Bath is a word widely dispersedamong the Germanic languages (German hasbad, as does Swedish). Like the others, OldEnglish bæth goes back to a hypotheticalGermanic *batham, which perhaps derives fromthe base *ba- (on the suffix -th see BIRTH). If thisis so, it would be an indication (backed up byother derivatives of the same base, such as bake,and cognate words such as Latin fovēre ‘heat’,source of English foment) that the originalnotion contained in the word was of ‘heat’ ratherthan ‘washing’. This is preserved in the steambath and the Turkish bath. The original verbalderivative was bathe, which goes back toGermanic *bathōn (another derivative of which,Old Norse batha, had a reflexive form bathask,which probably lies behind English bask); use ofbath as a verb dates from the 15th century. BASK, BATHEbathos [18] Bathos, the descent from the sublimeto the commonplace, means etymologically‘depth’. It represents Greek báthos, a derivativeof the adjective bathús ‘deep’ (which has alsogiven English such technical terms as bathyal ‘ofthe deep sea’, bathymetry, bathyscaphe, andbathysphere). The use of the word in Englishseems to have been initiated by the poetAlexander Pope (1688–1744), in his Bathos.batman see BASTARDbattalion see BATTLEbattery [16] The original meaning of battery inEnglish was literally ‘hitting’, as in assault andbattery. It came from Old French batterie, aderivative of batre, battre ‘beat’ (from whichEnglish also gets batter [14]). The ultimatesource of this, and of English battle, was Latinbattuere ‘beat’. The development of the word’smodern diversity of senses was via‘bombardment by artillery’, to ‘unit of artillery’,to ‘electric cell’: it seems that this last meaningwas inspired by the notion of ‘discharge ofelectricity’ rather than ‘connected series ofcells’. BATTER, BATTLEbattle [13] English acquired battle via OldFrench bataille and Vulgar Latin *battālia fromlate Latin battuālia ‘fencing exercises’. This wasa derivative of the verb battuere ‘beat’ (sourcealso of English batter and battery), which somehave viewed as of Celtic origin, citing Gaulishandabata ‘gladiator’, a possible relative ofEnglish bat. Related words include battalion[16], ultimately from Italian battaglione, aderivative of battaglia ‘battle’; battlements [14],

from Old French batailler ‘provide withbatailles – fortifications or battlements’; andderivatives such as abate, combat, and debate. ABATE, BAT, BATTALION, BATTERY, COMBAT,DEBATEbawdy [15] The adjective bawdy appears on thescene relatively late, but it is a derivative of bawd‘prostitute’ or ‘madam’, which entered Englishin the 14th century. Its origins are not altogetherclear, but it appears to have come from the OldFrench adjective baud ‘lively, merry, bold’,which in turn was probably acquired fromGermanic *bald-, source of English bold. BOLDbay There are no fewer than six distinct wordsbay in English. The ‘sea inlet’ [14] comes viaOld French baie from Old Spanish bahia. Bay asin bay leaf [14] comes from a different OldFrench word baie, whose source was Latin bāca‘berry’. The ‘reddish-brown colour of a horse’[14] comes via Old French bai from Latinbadius, which is related to Old Irish buide‘yellow’. The ‘recessed area or compartment’[14] comes from yet another Old French baie, aderivative of the verb bayer ‘gape, yawn’, frommedieval Latin batāre (English acquired abashand abeyance from the same source, and it mayalso be represented in the first syllable ofbeagle). Bay ‘bark’ [14] comes from Old Frenchabaiier, in which the element -bai- probablyoriginated as an imitation of a dog howling. Andit is the source of bay as in at bay [13] (from OldFrench abai), the underlying idea of which isthat of a hunted animal finally turning and facingits barking pursuers. ABASH, ABEYANCE, BEAGLEbayonet [17] Bayonet comes from Frenchbayonette, an early spelling of what is nowbaïonette. The French term is traditionallyderived from Bayonne, the name of a town andport on the southwest coast of France, nearBiarritz, where bayonets were supposedly firstused by Basques of the area, in the 17th century.But this etymology is not universally accepted,and some have noted the resemblance to OldFrench bayon ‘crossbow bolt’.bazaar [16] Bazaar is a word of Persian origin;it comes from Persian bāzār ‘market’ (whoseultimate source was a prehistoric Old Persian*abēcharish), and reached English via Turkishand Italian (whence the early English formbazarro). Many fanciful spellings competed in16th- and 17th-century English, includingbuzzard.be [OE] There are four distinct components thatgo to make up the modern English verb be. Theinfinitive form be comes ultimately from anIndo-European base *bheu-, *bhu-, which alsoproduced, by other routes, future and physical.Its Germanic descendant was *bu-, whichsignified on the one hand ‘dwell’ (from whichwe get booth, bower, byre, build, burly, byelaw,and the final element of neighbour), and on theother hand ‘grow, become’, which led to itsadoption as part of the verb expressing ‘being’53 beagle(in Old English particularly with the future senseof ‘coming to be’).Am and is go back to the ancient Indo-European verb ‘be’, *es- or *s-, which hascontributed massively to ‘be’ verbs throughoutall Indo-European languages (third personpresent singulars Greek esti, Latin est, Frenchest, German ist, Sanskrit ásti, Welsh ys, forexample) The Indo-European first and thirdperson singular forms were, respectively, ésmiand ésti.For the present plural Old English used therelated sind(on) (as found in Latin sunt, Frenchsont, and German sind), but this died out in the12th century, to be replaced by are, which comesfrom a Germanic base *ar- of unknown origin.From the same source is the now archaic secondperson singular art.The past tense forms was, were comeultimately from an Indo-European base *weswhichmeant ‘dwell, remain’. Related words inother Indo-European languages include Sanskritvásati ‘dwell, remain’ and Gothic wisan‘remain, continue’. BOOTH, BOWER, BUILD, BURLY, BYELAW, BYREbeach [16] Beach is a mystery word. When itfirst turns up, in the dialect of the southeastcorner of England, it means ‘shingle’; and sincelong stretches of the seashore in Sussex and Kentare pebbly, it is a natural extension that the wordfor ‘shingle’ should come to be used for ‘shore’.Its ultimate source is obscure, but someetymologists have suggested a connection withOld English bæce or bece ‘stream’ (a relative ofEnglish beck [14]), on the grounds that the newmeaning could have developed from the notionof the ‘pebbly bed of a stream’. BECKbeacon [OE] In Old English, bēacen meantsimply ‘sign’; it did not develop its modernsenses ‘signal fire’ and ‘lighthouse’ until the14th century. Its source is West Germanic*baukna, from which English also gets beckon[OE]. BECKONbead [13] The word bead originally meant‘prayer’. It comes ultimately from Germanic*beth-, source also of English bid. This passedinto Old English as gebed, which by the 13thcentury had lost its prefix to become bede.(German has the parallel gebet ‘prayer’.) Themodern sense ‘small pierced decorative ball’developed in the 14th century, from the use of astring of rosary beads for counting while sayingone’s prayers. BIDbeadle see BIDbeagle [15] The likeliest source of beagleappears to be Old French becgueule ‘noisyperson’ (the supposition is that the dog had theterm applied to it because of its loud bark).Becgueule itself was probably a compoundformed from beer ‘gape, yawn’ (source also ofEnglish abash and abeyance and, in its later

eak 54form bayer, of English bay ‘recessed area’) andgueule ‘throat’ (related to English gullet). ABASH, ABEYANCE, BAY, BULLETbeak [13] English acquired beak via Old Frenchbec from Latin beccus, which was probablyborrowed from some Gaulish word (the originalLatin word for ‘beak’ was rostrum). The Romanhistorian Suetonius (c. 69–140 AD) tells of oneAntonius Primus, a native of Toulouse, who wasnicknamed as a boy Beccus, ‘that is, hen’s beak’.The Old English term for ‘beak’ was bile ‘bill’. SOUBRIQUETbeaker [14] The immediate source of beaker wasOld Norse bikarr. It is widespread in the WestGermanic languages (German has becher, forinstance), and it seems likely that Old Norseacquired it from Old Saxon bikeri. But it wasborrowed into prehistoric West Germanic frommedieval Latin bicarius, which in turn goes backto Greek bikos ‘earthenware jug’ (ultimatesource of English pitcher [13]). PITCHERbeam [OE] In Old English times the word bēam(like modern German baum) meant ‘tree’ – asignification preserved in tree-names such ashornbeam and whitebeam. But already beforethe year 1000 the extended meanings we arefamiliar with today – ‘piece of timber’ and ‘rayof light’ – had started to develop. Related formsin other Germanic languages (which include, aswell as German baum, Dutch boom, from whichEnglish gets boom ‘spar’ [16]) suggest a WestGermanic ancestor *bauma, but beyond that allis obscure. BOOMbean [OE] The word bean (Old English bēan)has relatives in several Germanic languages(German bohne, Dutch boon, Swedish böna),pointing to a common West and North Germanicsource *baunō, but that is as far back in historyas we can pursue it.Beanfeast [19] apparently derived from thepractice of serving bacon and beans (or,according to some, bean geese, a species ofgoose) at the annual dinners given by firms totheir employees in the 19th century. Beano,originally a printers’ abbreviation, appearstowards the end of the 19th century.bear [OE] The two English words bear ‘carry’and bear the animal come from completelydifferent sources. The verb, Old English beran,goes back via Germanic *ber- to Indo-European*bher-, which already contained the two centralmeaning elements that have remained with itsoffspring ever since, ‘carry’ and ‘give birth’. It isthe source of a very large number of words in theIndo-European languages, including bothGermanic (German gebären ‘give birth’,Swedish börd ‘birth’) and non-Germanic (Latinferre and Greek phérein ‘bear’, source ofEnglish fertile and amphora [17], and Russianbrat ‘seize’). And a very large number of otherEnglish words are related to it: on the ‘carrying’side, barrow, berth, bier, burden, and possiblybrim; and on the ‘giving birth’ side, birth itselfand bairn ‘child’ [16]. Borne and born comefrom boren, the Old English past participle ofbear; the distinction in usage between the two(borne for ‘carried’, born for ‘given birth’) arosein the early 17th century.Etymologically, the bear is a ‘brown animal’.Old English bera came from West Germanic*bero (whence also German bär and Dutchbeer), which may in turn go back to Indo-European *bheros, related to English brown.The poetic name for the bear, bruin [17], followsthe same semantic pattern (it comes from Dutchbruin ‘brown’), and beaver meansetymologically ‘brown animal’ too. AMPHORA, BAIRN, BARROW, BERTH, BIER, BORN,BURDEN, FERTILE, FORTUNE, PARAPHERNALIA,SUFFER; BROWNbeard [OE] Old English beard came from WestGermanic *bartha, which was also the source ofGerman bart and Dutch baard. A close relativeof this was Latin barba ‘beard’, which gaveEnglish barb [14] (via Old French barbe),barber [13] (ultimately from medieval Latinbarbātor, originally a ‘beard-trimmer’), andbarbel [14], a fish with sensitive whisker-likeprojections round its mouth (from late Latinbarbellus, a diminutive form of barbus ‘barbel’,which was derived from barba). BARB, BARBERbeast [13] Beast replaced deer as the generalword for ‘animal’ in the 13th century (deer ofcourse remained in use for antlered animals ofthe family Cervidae), and was itself replaced byanimal in the 17th century. It entered English viaOld French beste from Latin bēstia (source ofEnglish bestial [14]). BESTIALbeat [OE] Old English bēatan and the related OldNorse bauta may be traced back to a prehistoricGermanic *bautan. It has been conjectured thatthis could be connected with *fu-, the base ofLatin confūtāre and refūtāre (source respectivelyof English confute [16] and refute [16]) and ofLatin fustis ‘club’ (from which English gets fusty[14]). BEETLE, CONFUTE, FUSTY, REFUTEbeauty [13] Beauty came via Anglo-Normanbeute and Old French bealte from Vulgar Latin*bellitas, a derivative of Latin bellus ‘beautiful’(this developed from an earlier, unrecorded*dwenolos, a diminutive form of Old Latin*duenos, *duonos, which is related to Latinbonus ‘good’ – source of English bonus [18],bounty [13], and bounteous [14]). Other Englishwords from the same ultimate source are beau[17] and its feminine form belle [17]; beatific[17], which comes from Latin beātus ‘blessed,happy’, the past participle of the verb beāre, arelative of bellus; embellish; and bibelot ‘smallornament’ [19], originally a French word basedultimately on *belbel, a reduplication of OldFrench bel ‘beautiful’. English beautiful is 15thcentury. BEAU, BELLE, BEATIFIC, BIBELOT, BONUS,BOUNTY, EMBELLISHbeaver [OE] Like bear, beaver appears to meanetymologically ‘brown animal’. Old English

eofor or befor came from a prehistoric Westand North Germanic *bebruz, which in turnwent back to an Indo-European *bhebhrús, aderivative of the base *bhru- ‘brown’. Otherwords for ‘beaver’ from the same source includeCzech bobr, Lithuanian bebrùs, and Latin fiber.because [14] Because originated in the phraseby cause, which was directly modelled onFrench par cause. At first it was always followedby of or by a subordinate clause introduced bythat or why: ‘The Holy Ghost was not yet given;because that Jesus was not yet glorified’, StJohn’s Gospel, 7:39, 1611. But already by theend of the 14th century that and why werebeginning to be omitted, leaving because tofunction as a conjunction, a move which wouldperhaps have exercised contemporary linguisticpurists as much as ‘The reason is because …’does today. The abbreviated form ’cause firstappears in print in the 16th century. CAUSEbeckon see BEACONbecome [OE] Become is a compound verbfound in other Germanic languages (Germanbekommen, for instance, and Dutch bekomen),which points to a prehistoric Germanic source*bikweman, based on *kweman, source ofEnglish come. Originally it meant simply ‘come,arrive’, but the modern senses ‘come to be’ and‘be suitable’ had developed by the 12th century.A parallel semantic development occurred inFrench: Latin dēvenīre meant ‘come’, but itsmodern French descendant devenir means‘become’. COMEbed [OE] Bed is common throughout theGermanic languages (German bett, Dutch bed),and comes from a prehistoric Germanic*bathjam. Already in Old English times theword meant both ‘place for sleeping’ and ‘areafor growing plants’, and if the latter is primary, itcould mean that the word comes ultimately fromthe Indo-European base *bhodh-, source ofLatin fodere ‘dig’ (from which English getsfosse and fossil), and that the underlying notionof a bed was therefore originally of a sleepingplace dug or scraped in the ground, like ananimal’s lair. FOSSE, FOSSILbedizen see DISTAFFbedlam [15] The word bedlam is a contraction ofBethlehem. It comes from the Hospital of StMary of Bethlehem founded in 1247 by SimonFitzMary, Sheriff of London, as the Priory of StMary Bethlehem. Situated outside Bishopsgate,in the City of London, the hospital began toadmit mental patients in the late 14th century. Inthe 16th century it officially became a lunaticasylum. The word bedlam came to be used forany ‘madhouse’, and by extension for a ‘scene ofnoisy confusion’, in the 17th century.bee [OE] Old English bēo ‘bee’ came from aprehistoric West and North Germanic *bīōn,source also of German biene, Dutch bij, andSwedish bi, which may all be traceable back toan Indo-European base *bhi- ‘quiver’. This, if it55 beetleis true, means that the bee was originally namedas the ‘quivering’, or perhaps ‘humming’ insect.Latin fucus ‘drone’ appears to be related.beech [OE] Like many other tree-names, beechgoes back a long way into the past, and is notalways what it seems. Among early relativesLatin fāgus meant ‘beech’ (whence the tree’smodern scientific name), but Greek phāgós, forexample, referred to an ‘edible oak’. Both comefrom a hypothetical Indo-European *bhagos,which may be related to Greek phagein ‘eat’(which enters into a number of Englishcompounds, such as phagocyte [19], literally‘eating-cell’, geophagy [19], ‘earth-eating’, andsarcophagus). If this is so, the name may signifyetymologically ‘edible tree’, with reference to itsnuts, ‘beech mast’. The Old English word bēce’simmediate source was Germanic *bōkjōn, butthis was a derivative; the main form bōkōproduced words for ‘beech’ in other Germaniclanguages, such as German buche and Dutchbeuk, and it survives in English as the firstelement of buckwheat [16], so named from itsthree-sided seeds which look like beech nuts. Itis thought that book may come ultimately frombōk- ‘beech’, on the grounds that early runicinscriptions were carved on beechwood tablets. BOOK, BUCKWHEAT, PHAGOCYTE,SARCOPHAGUSbeef [13] Like mutton, pork, and veal, beef wasintroduced by the Normans to provide a daintyalternative to the bare animal names ox, cow, etcwhen referring to their meat. Anglo-Norman andOld French boef or buef (which of coursebecame modern French boeuf) came from Latinbov-, the stem of bōs ‘ox’, from which Englishgets bovine [19] and Bovril [19]. Bōs itself isactually related etymologically to cow.The compound beefeater ‘yeoman warder ofthe Tower of London’ was coined in the 17thcentury; it was originally a contemptuous termfor a ‘well-fed servant’. BOVINE, COWbeer [OE] Originally, beer was probably simplya general term for a ‘drink’: it seems to havecome from late Latin biber ‘drink’, which was aderivative of the verb bibere ‘drink’ (from whichEnglish gets beverage, bibulous, imbibe, andpossibly also bibber). The main Old Englishword for ‘beer’ was ale, and beer (Old Englishbēor) is not very common until the 15th century.A distinction between hopped beer andunhopped ale arose in the 16th century. BEVERAGE, BIBULOUS, IMBIBEbeetle English has three separate words beetle.The commonest, beetle the insect, comes fromOld English bitula, which was a derivative of theverb bītan ‘bite’: beetle hence meansetymologically ‘the biter’. Beetle ‘hammer’,now largely restricted to various technicalcontexts, is also Old English: the earliest Englishform, bētel, goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*bautilaz, a derivative of the verb *bautan, fromwhich English gets beat (the cognate Old Norsebeytill meant ‘penis’). The adjective beetle [14],as in ‘beetle brows’, and its related verb are of

efore 56unknown origin, although it has been speculatedthat there is some connection with the tuftedantennae of certain species of beetle, which maysuggest eyebrows. BITE; BEATbefore [OE] Before is a Germanic compound,made up of *bi- ‘by’ and *forana ‘from thefront’ (the resulting *biforana entered OldEnglish as beforan). The second element,*forana, is a derivative of *fora, source ofEnglish for; this originally meant ‘before’, andonly gradually developed the senses we arefamiliar with today. FORbeg [OE] Beg first turns up in immediatelyrecognizable form in the 13th century, as beggen,but it seems likely that it goes back ultimately toan Old English verb bedecian ‘beg’. This camefrom the Germanic base *beth-, from whichEnglish also gets bid. BIDbegin [OE] Begin comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic compound verb *biginnan, which alsoproduced German and Dutch beginnen; theorigin of the second element, *ginnan, is notknown for certain. The form gin was common inthe Middle Ages and up until about 1600; thiswas a shortening, perhaps not so much of beginas of the now obsolete ongin ‘begin’, which wasfar more widespread than begin in Old English.behalf [14] Behalf was compounded from theprefix be- ‘by’ and the noun half, in the sense‘side’. The latter had been used in such phrasesas on my half, that is, ‘on my side, for my part’,since late Old English times, and the newcompound began to replace it in the 14thcentury. (That particular use of half had died outby the end of the 16th century.) The modernsense of ‘representing or in the interests ofsomeone’ was present from the beginning. HALFbehave [15] To ‘behave oneself’ originallymeant literally to ‘have oneself in a particularway’ – have being used here in the sense ‘hold’or ‘comport’. The be- is an intensive prefix. Ofparticular interest is the way in which the wordpreserves in aspic the 15th-centurypronunciation of have in stressed contexts. Formuch of its history behave has been used withreference to a person’s bearing and publicdignity (‘He was some years a Captain, andbehaved himself with great gallantry in severalengagements’, Richard Steele, SpectatorNumber 2, 1711), and the modern connotationsof propriety, of ‘goodness’ versus ‘naughtiness’,are a relatively recent, 19th-centurydevelopment.The noun behaviour [15] was formed onanalogy with the verb from an earlier haviour, avariant of aver ‘possession’ [14], from thenominal use of the Old French verb aveir ‘have’. HAVEbehind [OE] Behind was compounded in OldEnglish times from the prefix bi- ‘by’ andhindan ‘from behind’. This second element, andthe related Old English hinder ‘below’, haverelatives in other Germanic languages (Germanhinten and hinter ‘behind’, for example), and areconnected with the English verb hinder, but theirultimate history is unclear. Modern English hind‘rear’ may come mainly from behind. HIND, HINDERbehold see HOLDbelch [OE] Belch first appears in recognizableform in the 15th century, but it can scarcely notbe related to belk ‘eructate’, which goes back toOld English bealcan and survived dialectallyinto the modern English period. Belch itself mayderive either from an unrecorded variant ofbealcan, *belcan (with the c here representing a/ch/ sound), or from a related Old English verbbelcettan ‘eructate’. But whichever route it took,its ultimate source was probably a Germanicbase *balk-or *belk-, from which German gotbölken ‘bleat, low, belch’. Belch was originally aperfectly inoffensive word; it does not seem tohave been until the 17th century that itsassociations began to drag it down towardsvulgarity.beleaguer see LAIRbelfrybelfry [13] Etymologically, belfry has nothing todo with bells; it was a chance similarity betweenthe two words that led to belfry being used fromthe 15th century onwards for ‘bell-tower’. Theoriginal English form was berfrey, and it meant‘movable seige-tower’. It came from Old Frenchberfrei, which in turn was borrowed from ahypothetical Frankish *bergfrith, a compoundwhose two elements mean respectively ‘protect’(English gets bargain, borough, borrow, andbury from the same root) and ‘peace, shelter’(hence German friede ‘peace’); the underlyingsense of the word is thus the rather tautological‘protective shelter’. A tendency to break downthe symmetry between the two rs in the word ledin the 15th century to the formation of belfrey inboth English and French (l is phonetically closeto r), and at around the same time we find thefirst reference to it meaning ‘bell-tower’, inPromptorium parvulorum 1440, an earlyEnglish-Latin dictionary: ‘Bellfray,campanarium’. AFFRAY, BARGAIN, BORROW, BOROUGH, BURY,NEIGHBOURbelieve [OE] Believing and loving are closelyallied. Late Old English belēfan took the place ofan earlier gelēfan ‘believe’ (with the associativeprefix ge-), which can be traced back to aprehistoric West and North Germanic*galaubjan (source also of German glauben‘believe’). This meant ‘hold dear, love’, andhence ‘trust in, believe’, and it was formed on abase, *laub-, which also produced, by variousroutes, English love, lief ‘dear’, leave‘permission’, and the second element offurlough. FURLOUGH, LEAVE, LIEF, LOVEbell [OE] The Old English word was belle. Apartfrom Dutch bel it has no relatives in the othermain European languages (many of them usewords related to English clock for ‘bell’: Frenchcloche, for instance, and German glocke). It has

een speculated that it may be connected withthe verb bell, used of the baying call made by ahound or stag, which itself is perhaps related tobellow, a descendant of a hypothetical OldEnglish *belgan. The ultimate source maypossibly be the same as for bellows. BELLOWbelle see BEAUTYbellicose see REBELbelligerent see REBELbellows [OE] Bellows and belly were originallythe same word, Old English belig, which meant‘bag’. This was used in the compoundblǣstbelig, literally ‘blowing bag’, a device forblowing a fire, which was replaced in the lateOld English period by the plural form of thenoun, belga or belgum, from which we getbellows. Meanwhile the meaning of bellydeveloped from ‘bag’ to, in the 13th century,‘body’ and, in the 14th century, ‘abdomen’.Ultimately the word goes back to Germanic*balgiz ‘bag’, from the base *balg- or *belg-(itself a descendant of Indo-European *bhel-‘swell’), which also lies behind billow [16],bolster, and possibly bellow and bell. BELL, BELLOW, BELLY, BILLOW, BOLD, BOLSTERbelong [14] Old English had a verb langian,meaning ‘pertain to’. It had no immediateconnection with the other Old English verblangian, modern English long, ‘desire’, butcame from the Old English adjective gelang‘pertaining, belonging’ (although ultimately thisgelang and the modern English adjective andverb long come from the same Germanic source,*langgaz). The intensive prefix be- was added inthe 14th century. LONGbelow [14] Below is a lexicalization of the phraseby low, replacing an earlier on low, the oppositeof on high. It was perhaps modelled on beneath. LOWbelt [OE] Old English belt and related Germanicforms such as Swedish bälte point to a source inGermanic *baltjaz, which was borrowed fromLatin balteus, possibly a word of Etruscanorigin. The verbal idiom belt up ‘be quiet’appears to date from just before World War II.bench [OE] Old English benc goes back toGermanic *bangk-, also the source of Englishbank (the related German bank means ‘bench’).The Northern and Scottish English versions ofthe word were benk and bink. The specificapplication to the seat on which a judge sitsarose in the 13th century. BANKbend [OE] English band, bind, bond, and bundleare closely allied: all go back to a prehistoricGermanic base *band-. The relationship inmeaning was, in the case of bend, more obviousin Old English times, when bendan meant ‘tieup’ as well as ‘curve’ (a sense preserved in themodern English noun bend ‘knot’, as in carrickbend). The rather strange-seeming meaningdevelopment appears to have come about asfollows: bend in the sense ‘tie, constrain’ wasused for the pulling of bow-strings, with57 bequeathreference to the strain or tension thereby appliedto the bow; the natural consequence of this wasof course that the bow curved, and hence(although not until the late 13th century) bendcame to be used for ‘curve’. BAND, BIND, BOND, BUNDLEbeneath [OE] Beneath is a compound adverband preposition, formed in Old English from bi‘by’ and nithan or neothan ‘below’. This cameoriginally from Germanic *nith- (also the sourceof nether [OE]), a derivative of the base *ni-‘down’. NETHERbenefit [14] The element bene- occurs in a widevariety of English words. It comes from Latinbene ‘well’, a close relative of Latin bonus‘good’. Amongst its combinations arebenediction [15], literally ‘saying well’, hence‘blessing’, benefaction ‘doing well’ [17], andbenevolent ‘wishing well’ [15]. Benefit is relatedto benefaction, since it too comes ultimatelyfrom Latin bene facere, but it took a moreindirect route to English, from Latin benefactum‘good deed’ via Old French bienfait and Anglo-Norman benfet.benzene [19] The original name given to thishydrocarbon, by the German chemist EilhardtMitscherlich in 1833, was benzine. He based iton the term benzoic acid, a derivative of benzoin,the name of a resinous substance exuded by treesof the genus Styrax. This came ultimately fromArabic lubān-jāwī, literally ‘frankincense ofJava’ (the trees grow in Southeast Asia). Whenthe expression was borrowed into the Romancelanguages, the initial lu- was apprehended as thedefinite article, and dropped (ironically, since inso many Arabic words which do contain thearticle al, it has been retained as part and parcelof the word – see ALGEBRA). This produced avariety of forms, including French benjoin,Portuguese beijoim, and Italian benzoi. Englishprobably acquired the word mainly from French(a supposition supported by the folketymologicalalteration benjamin which was incommon use in English from the end of the 16thcentury), but took the z from the Italian form.Meanwhile, back with benzine, in thefollowing year, 1834, the German chemist Justusvon Liebig proposed the alternative namebenzol; and finally, in the 1870s, the chemist AW Hofmann regularized the form to currentlyaccepted chemical nomenclature as benzene. BENZOLbequeath [OE] Etymologically, what youbequeath is what you ‘say’ you will leavesomeone in your will. The word comes from OldEnglish becwethan, a derivative of cwethan‘say’, whose past tense cwæth gives us quoth (itis no relation to quote, by the way). The originalsense ‘say, utter’ died out in the 13th century,leaving the legal sense of ‘transferring by will’(first recorded in 1066).The noun derivative of Old English cwethanin compounds was -cwiss. Hence we can assumethere was an Old English noun *becwiss,although none is recorded. The first we hear of it

erate 58is at the beginning of the 14th century, when ithad unaccountably had a t added to it, producingwhat we now know as bequest. BEQUEST, QUOTHberate see RATEbereave see ROBberet [19] The beret originated in thesouthwestern corner of France, worn by thefarmers and peasants of Gascony, and the wordfor it comes from the south-western dialect termberret (it reached English via mainstreamFrench béret). It derives from Latin birrus‘hooded cloak’, which is probably of Celticorigin (Middle Irish berr ‘short’ has beencompared), and is thus a relative of biretta [16],the term for the square cap worn by RomanCatholic clergy, formed as a diminutive of birrusin Italian (berretta) and Spanish (birreta). BIRETTAberry [OE] Berry is a strictly Germanic word, notfound in other branches of Indo-European(German has beere, Dutch bes, and Danish bær).Its earliest application seems to have beenspecifically to grapes; the only record of it in OldSaxon and Gothic is in the compound‘wineberry’, and around 1000 Aelfric translatedDeuteronomy 23:24 into Old English as ‘If yougo into your friend’s vineyard, eat the berries’.But by the Middle Ages the term had broadenedout to encompass the sorts of fruit we wouldrecognize today as berries. The word goes backultimately to a prehistoric Germanic *basj-,which it has been speculated may be related toOld English basu ‘red’.berserk [19] Sir Walter Scott appears to beresponsible for introducing this word to theEnglish language. He mentions it in a footnote tohis novel The pirate 1822, adopting it (in theform berserkar) from the Icelandic berserkr‘frenzied Norse warrior’. Its etymology is notaltogether clear. Its second syllable representsserkr ‘coat, shirt’ (a word English used to have,as sark: cutty sark meant ‘short shirt’), but thefirst is disputed. Scott took it to mean ‘bare’(which would have been Icelandic berr), and infact the anglicized form baresark was quitecommonly used in the mid 19th century; theplausible-sounding notion underlying this is thatthe original berserkr was so called because in hisbattle-crazed frenzy he tore off his armour andfought in his shirt-sleeves – ‘bare-shirted’.However, 20th-century etymologists havetended to prefer the theory that ber- is ‘bear’,representing Icelandic bern-, a by-form of bjorn‘bear’. The concept of warriors dressingthemselves in animals’ skins is an ancient one,found in many mythologies.The modern use of the word as an adjective,meaning ‘in a violent frenzy’, appears to datefrom the third quarter of the 19th century.berth [17] Like birth, berth appears to be basedon the verb bear, although it is a separate andmuch later formation. At first it meant ‘safemanoeuvring distance at sea’ (from which weget the metaphorical ‘give a wide berth to’); thisseems to have come from the nautical sense ofbear ‘steer in a particular direction’ as in bearaway (from which we get bear down on, as wellas more general applications, such as ‘bear left’).This led, via ‘convenient space for a ship tomoor’, to, in the 18th century, the more familiarmodern senses ‘sleeping place on a ship’ and‘job, situation (originally on board ship)’. BEAR, BIRTHbeseech see SEEKbeside [13] Beside was a Middle Englishlexicalization of the Old English phrase besīdan, literally ‘by the side of’. The -s of besidesis a survival of the genitive ending added tocertain adverbs in the Old English and earlyMiddle English period (such as always). Themetaphorical beside oneself originated in the15th century. SIDEbest [OE] Best and better, the anomaloussuperlative and comparative of good, go back toa prehistoric Germanic base *bat-, which isrelated to the archaic English boot ‘remedy’ (asin to boot) and meant generally ‘advantage,improvement’. Its comparative and superlativewere *batizon and *batistaz, which came intoOld English as respectively betera and betest(gradually reduced via betst to best).The term best man originated in Scotland; ithas gradually replaced the earlier bride(s)manand groomsman. BETTER, BOOTbestial see BEASTbet [16] Since its comparatively late arrival, bethas ousted the earlier lay, wager, and game as themain term for ‘risking money on an uncertainoutcome’ (gamble is later still). It is by no meansclear where it came from; the usual explanationis that it is short for the noun abet, in the sense‘instigation, encouragement, support’ – that is,one is giving one’s ‘support’ to that which onethinks, or hopes, may happen in the future (abetitself comes from the Old French verb abeter,and is related to English bait). It first appears inRobert Greene’s Art of Cony Catching 1592,which suggests an origin in the argot of smalltimeElizabethan criminals. ABET, BAIT, BITEbetray [13] Betray is an English formation basedon the Old French verb traïr ‘betray’, whichcame from Latin tradere ‘hand over, deliver up’(originally a compound formed from trans-‘across’ and dāre ‘give’). The noun formed fromtradere was trāditiō, from which English gets,directly, tradition, and indirectly, via Old Frenchand Anglo-Norman, the appropriate treason. TRADITION, TREASONbetroth see TRUEbetween [OE] The second syllable of between isrelated to two and twin; the word as a wholeseems to represent an original phrase meaningsomething like ‘by two each’. Old Englishbetwēonum reflects a Germanic *twēon, reducedfrom an earlier *twikhnai; this represents thebase *twīkh- (from which we get two) plus an -nsuffix with apparently some sort of distributivefunction. The related betwixt comes ultimately

from Germanic *twa ‘two’ and the element*-isk- ‘-ish’. TWIN, TWObeverage [13] Beverage goes back to Latinbibere ‘drink’, from which English also getsimbibe [14], bibulous [17], beer, and probablybibber. From the verb was formed the VulgarLatin noun *biberāticum ‘something to drink’,and hence, via Old French bevrage, Englishbeverage. The colloquial abbreviation bevvy is atleast 100 years old (it has been speculated, butnever proved, that bevy ‘large group’ [15] comesfrom the same source). BEER, BEVY, BIB, BIBULOUS, IMBIBEbeware see WAREbewilder see WILDbeyond [OE] Beyond is a lexicalization of theOld English phrase be geondan ‘from the fartherside’. The second element comes from aprehistoric Germanic *jandana, formed on abase *jan- which also gave English the nowlargely dialectal yon [OE] and yonder [13]. ToGerman it contributed the demonstrativeadjective and pronoun jener ‘that’, and there arerelated demonstrative forms without the initial j-in other Indo-European languages, includingnon-Germanic ones (Old Slavonic onu ‘that’, forinstance, and Sanskrit āna- ‘this one’). YON, YONDERbias [16] English acquired bias from Old Frenchbiais, but its previous history is uncertain. Itprobably came via Old Provençal, but wherefrom? Speculations include Latin bifacem‘looking two ways’, from bi- ‘two’ and faciēs‘face’, and Greek epikársios ‘oblique’. When theword first entered English it meant simply‘oblique line’, but by the end of the 16th centuryit was being applied more specifically to thegame of bowls, in the sense of the ‘bowl’s curvedpath’, and also the ‘unequal weighting given tothe bowl in order to achieve such a path’. Themodern figurative senses ‘inclination’ and‘prejudice’ derive from this.bibib [16] The word bib is first mentioned in JohnBaret’s Quadruple dictionarie 1580, where it isdescribed as being ‘for a child’s breast’. Itappears to come from the now archaic verb bib(as in wine-bibber), perhaps from the notion thatthe bib protects the baby’s clothes as it drinks.The verb itself is possibly from Latin bibere‘drink’, source of beer, beverage, bibulous, andimbibe. BEER, BIBULOUS, IMBIBEbibelot see BEAUTYbible [13] Greek ta biblía meant literally ‘thebooks’. This was borrowed into ecclesiasticalLatin as biblia, where the plural form came to bemisanalysed as a feminine singular; hence OldFrench, and through it English, received bible asa singular noun. Greek biblía itself was theplural of biblíon ‘book’ (whence Englishbibliography [17]), which was originally adiminutive form of bíblos or búblos. This wasused for ‘book’, and for the book’s forerunners,such as scrolls and papyri. It may come from59 bierBublos, an ancient Phoenician port from whichpapyrus was exported to Greece. BIBLIOGRAPHYbicycle [19] The word bicycle, literally ‘twowheeled’(from Greek kúklos ‘circle, wheel’),was originally coined in French, and firstappeared in English in 1868, in the 7 Septemberedition of the Daily News: ‘bysicles and trysicleswhich we saw in the Champs Élysées and theBois de Boulogne this summer’. This reflects thefact that it was in the 1860s that the bicycle firstassumed the form we know it in today, withpedals and cranks driving the front wheel.(Slightly earlier was the now obsoletevelocipede, literally ‘swift foot’, first applied topedal bicycles and tricycles around 1850. Untilthe introduction of pneumatic tyres in the 1880s,the new cycles were known as bone-shakers – aterm first encountered in 1874.) CYCLE, WHEELbid [OE] Bid has a complicated history, for itcomes from what were originally twocompletely distinct Old English verbs. The mainone was biddan (past tense bæd) ‘ask, demand’,from which we get such modern English usagesas ‘I bade him come in’. It goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *bithjan (source ofGerman bitten ‘ask’), which was formed fromthe base *beth- (from which modern Englishgets bead). But a contribution to the presentnexus of meanings was also made by OldEnglish bēodan (past tense bēad) ‘offer,proclaim’ (whence ‘bid at an auction’ and soon). This can be traced ultimately to an Indo-European base *bh(e)udh-, which gaveGermanic *buth-, source also of German bieten‘offer’ and perhaps of English beadle [13],originally ‘one who proclaims’. BEAD, BEADLEbide [OE] Bide appears to be related ultimately toOld English bēodan, partial source of modernEnglish bid, but exactly how is not clear. Itcomes from a lengthened version of the samestem, producing a hypothetical Germanic*bīthan, and to all outward appearances isconnected with such non-Germanic forms asLatin fīdere and Greek peithésthai; but as thesemean ‘believe, trust’, it is not easy to reconstructa semantic connection with bide ‘remain’. Bideitself is now little used, except in ‘bide one’stime’, but the derived abide [OE] remainscurrent, especially in the sense ‘endure’, as doesthe noun formed from it, abode [13]. ABIDE, ABODE, BIDbier [OE] Etymologically, a bier is ‘somethingused for carrying’. It comes from WestGermanic *bērō, a derivative of the same base(*ber-) as produced the verb bear. Its OldEnglish form was bēr, and it was not spelled withan i until the 16th century. The original generalsense ‘framework for carrying something’(which it shares with the etymologically relatedbarrow) died out around 1600, but already byabout 1000 the modern specific meaning ‘standfor a coffin’ had developed. BARROW, BEAR

ifurcate 60bifurcate see FORKbig [13] Big is one of the notorious mysterywords of English etymology – extremelycommon in the modern language, but of highlydubious origin. In its earliest use in English itmeant ‘powerful, strong’, and it is not reallyuntil the 16th century that we get unequivocalexamples of it in the modern sense ‘large’. Itoccurs originally in northern texts, only slowlyspreading south, which suggests that it may be ofScandinavian origin; some have comparedNorwegian dialect bugge ‘important man’.bight see BOWbigot [16] According to the 12th-century Anglo-Norman chronicler Wace, bigot was acontemptuous term applied by the French to theNormans, but it is far from clear where this camefrom, whether it is the same word as present-daybigot, and, if it is, how it came to mean ‘narrowmindedperson’. All that can be said for certainis that the word first turned up in its modern formin the 15th century as French bigot, from whichEnglish borrowed it.bigwig see WIGbikinibikini [20] For Frenchmen, the sight of the firstminimal two-piece swimming costumes forwomen produced by fashion designers in 1947was as explosive as the test detonation of anatom bomb by the USA at Bikini Atoll in theMarshall Islands, in the western Pacific Ocean,in July 1946. Hence their naming it the ‘Bikini’,the first record of which is in the August 1947issue of Le Monde Illustré. English acquired theword in 1948. The monokini, essentially a bralessbikini, first appeared in 1964, the inspirationfor its name being the accidental resemblance ofthe element bi- in bikini to the prefix bi- ‘two’.bilge see BULGEbill There are three distinct words bill in English(not counting the proper name), and of them all,the most recent is the commonest. Bill ‘note ofcharges’ [14] comes from Anglo-Latin billa,which is probably a variant of Latin bulla‘document, seal’ (as in ‘papal bull’). Englishbillet [15], as in ‘billeting soldiers on a house’,was originally a diminutive form of billa (Frenchbillet ‘letter’ comes from the same source). Bill‘hook-bladed weapon’ [OE], now found mainlyin billhook, comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *bilja, which may be based ultimatelyon Indo-European *bhid-, source of English bite.Bill ‘beak’ [OE] may be related to bill ‘weapon’,but this is not clear. The verbal sense ‘caress’, asin ‘bill and coo’, is 16th-century; it arose fromthe courting behaviour of doves stroking eachother’s beaks. BILLETbilliards [16] Billiard comes from Frenchbillard, which is the name not only of the game,but also of the cue it is played with. And the cueis the clue to the word’s history, for it comesfrom French bille ‘tree trunk’, hence ‘longcylindrical bit of wood’. The import of the -ardsuffix is not altogether clear, but another suffixused with bille was the diminutive -ette, fromwhich English got billet ‘piece of wood’ [15](not to be confused with billet ‘assignment tolodgings’; see BILL). Bille itself came frommedieval Latin billa or billus, which may havebeen of Celtic origin. BILLETbiltong [19] Biltong, strips of sun-dried meat –anything from beef to ostrich – used as ironrations in southern Africa, has the unpromisingliteral meaning ‘buttock-tongue’ (Afrikaans bilis ‘buttock’, tong is ‘tongue’). The reason for thename is supposedly that the meat for biltong wascustomarily cut from the hind quarters of theanimal, and that the coiner found in it, perhapsrather optimistically, a resemblance to the tasteof smoked ox tongue.bimbo [20] Bimbo most recently made its markon the English language in the 1980s, when itwas in heavy use among journalists to denigratebuxom young women of limited IQ who sold thesecrets of their affairs with the rich and famousto the press. It was by no means a newcomer,though. It first crossed the Atlantic to America,from Italy, in the late 1910s. In Italian it means‘baby’, and US slang took it up in the colloquialsense of baby, for referring to a usually haplessfellow. By the 1920s it was being applied equallyto young women, especially promiscuous orempty-headed ones (the latter feature probablyreinforced by the appearance of dumbo ‘fool’ inthe early 1930s).bin [OE] Old English had the word bine or binne(it meant ‘manger’), but it is not clear where itgot it from. Perhaps the most likely source is aword, *benna, in the Celtic language of the pre-Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of Britain (Welsh hasben ‘cart’). But it may also have come frommedieval Latin benna, which gave French benne‘large basket’. In English, the modern sense‘storage container’ does not fully emerge untilthe 14th century.bind [OE] Band, bend, bind, bond, and bundlecan all be traced back ultimately to an Indo-European base *bhendh-, which was also thesource of Sanskrit bandh ‘bind’ and Greekpeisma ‘cable’. In the case of bind, theimmediate precursor of Old English bindan wasthe Germanic stem with an i vowel, *bind-. Inthe 14th century the verb came to be used as anoun, for the ‘stem of a climbing plant’, fromwhich we get bine (as in woodbine‘honeysuckle’). BAND, BEND, BOND, BUNDLEbinnacle [15] Binnacle ‘ship’s compasshousing’ has a curious history: etymologically itmeans ‘place where something lives’, and it isrelated to habitation and inhabit. Forms with-nn- do not begin to appear before the 18thcentury. Until then the word had been bittacle,which came from Spanish bitácula. A closerelative of the Spanish word, French habitacle,gives a clue to its ultimate provenance in Latinhabitāculum, a derivative of habitāre ‘inhabit’.biology [19] The modern European languageshave made prolific use of Greek bíos ‘life’ as aprefix, particularly in the 20th century. The firstcompound into which it entered in English

seems to have been biotic, in the now obsoletesense ‘of secular life’ (around 1600), but thetrend was really set by biography, first recordedas being used by John Dryden in his Life ofPlutarch 1683. Biology itself came along at thebeginning of the 19th century, via French,having been coined in German by GottfriedReinhold in 1802. Twentieth-centurycontributions have included bioengineering,biometric, bionic, biorhythm, and biotechnology.Greek bíos itself goes back to an Indo-Europeanbase *gwej-, from which English also ultimatelygets quick, vital, vivid, and zoo. QUICK, VITAL, VIVID, ZOObirch [OE] Old English bi(e)rce came from aprehistoric Germanic *berkjōn, source also ofGerman birke. The word goes back ultimately toan Indo-European *bhergo, but as is often thecase with ancient tree-names, it does not denotethe same type of tree in every language in whichit has descendants: Latin fraxinus, for example,means ‘ash tree’. It has been speculated that theword is related to bright (whose Indo-Europeansource was *bhereg-), with reference to thetree’s light-coloured bark. It could also be thatthe word bark [13] itself is related. The verbbirch ‘flog’ (originally with a birch rod or bunchof birch twigs) is early 19th-century. BARK, BRIGHTbird [OE] Bird is something of a mystery word. Itwas not the ordinary Old English word for‘feathered flying animal’; that was fowl. In OldEnglish, bird meant specifically ‘young bird,nestling’. It did not begin to replace fowl as thegeneral term until the 14th century, and theprocess took many hundreds of years tocomplete. Its source is quite unknown; it has noobvious relatives in the Germanic languages, orin any other Indo-European language.The connotations of its original meaning haveled to speculation that it is connected with breedand brood (the usual Old English form was brid,but the r and i subsequently became transposedin a process known as metathesis), but noconvincing evidence for this has ever beenadvanced.As early as 1300, bird was used for ‘girl’, butthis was probably owing to confusion withanother similar Middle English word, burde,which also meant ‘young woman’. The usagecrops up from time to time in later centuries,clearly as an independent metaphoricalapplication, but there does not really seem to bean unbroken chain of occurrences leading up tothe sudden explosion in the use of bird for‘young woman’ in the 20th century.Of other figurative applications of the word,‘audience disapproval’ (as in ‘get the bird’)comes from the hissing of geese, and in ‘prisonsentence’ bird is short for bird lime, rhymingslang for time.birth [12] Old English had a word gebyrd ‘birth’which survived until the end of the 13th centuryas birde, but it was quite distinct from (thoughrelated to) modern English birth, which wasborrowed from Old Norse byrth. This came from61 bitchthe same Germanic stem (*ber-, *bur-) asproduced bear, bairn, and indeed Old Englishgebyrd. The suffix -th denotes a process, or theresult of a process: hence birth is ‘(the result of)the process of bearing a child’. Along with bathand death it is one of the most ancient wordsformed with -th. BAIRN, BEAR, BERTHbiscuit [14] Biscuit means literally ‘twicecooked’– from the method of cooking, in whichthe biscuits are returned to the oven after theinitial period of baking in order to become dry orcrisp. The original source of the word wasprobably a medieval Latin *biscoctus, from bis‘twice’ and coctus ‘cooked’, the past participleof coquere (which is related to English cook). Itreached English via Old French biscut. COOKbisect see SECTIONbishop [OE] Bishop originally had noecclesiastical connections; its Greek source,episkopos, at first meant simply ‘overseer’, fromepi- ‘around’ and skopein ‘look’ (antecedent ofEnglish scope, and related to spy). From thegeneral sense, it came to be applied as the termfor various government officials, and waswaiting to be called into service for a ‘churchofficer’ as Christianity came into being andgrew. The Greek word was borrowed intoecclesiastical Latin as episcopus (source ofFrench évêque), and in more popular parlancelost its e-, giving *biscopus, which was acquiredby English in the 9th century. SCOPE, SPYbison [14] Bison appears to be of Germanicorigin, from a stem *wisand- or *wisund-. Thisbecame Old English wesand, which did notsurvive; and it was acquired again in the 19thcentury as wisent, borrowed from Germanwisent, applied to the ‘aurochs’, an extinctspecies of European wild ox. The b- form cameinto English via Latin bison, a borrowing fromthe Germanic. Originally of course referring tothe European bison, the term was first applied tothe North American species at the end of the17th century.bit There are three distinct nouns bit in English,but the two most ancient ones are probably bothrelated ultimately to the verb bite. Bit as in ‘drillbit’ [OE] originally meant simply ‘bite’ or‘biting’. The Old English word, bite, came fromGermanic *bitiz, a derivative of the verb *bītan‘bite’. The ‘drill bit’ sense did not develop untilthe 16th century. The bit placed in a horse’smouth is probably the same word. Bit meaning‘small piece’ [OE] also comes from a Germanicderivative of *bītan, in this case *biton; this gaveOld English bita ‘piece bitten off’. The moregeneral sense, ‘small piece’, developed in the16th century. The third bit, ‘unit of computerinformation’ [20], is a blend formed from‘binary digit’. BITEbitch [OE] The antecedents of Old English bicce‘female dog’ are obscure. It may come from aprehistoric Germanic *bekjōn-, but the only

ite 62related form among other Germanic languagesappears to be Old Norse bikkja. The superficiallysimilar French biche means ‘female deer’, and isprobably not related. The use of the word as aderogatory term for ‘woman’ seems to haveoriginated in the 14th century.bite [OE] The Old English verb bītan came fromprehistoric Germanic *bītan, which alsoproduced German beissen and Dutch bijten. Theshort-vowel version of the base, *bit-, was thesource of bit, beetle, and probably bitter, and isalso represented in various non-Germanic forms,such as Latin fidere ‘split’ (from which Englishgets fission). Bait came via Old Norse from acausal usage, ‘cause to bite’, and passed via OldFrench into abet (the possible source of bet). BEETLE, BIT, BITTER, FISSIONbitter [OE] Old English biter appears to havecome from *bit-, the short-vowel version of*bīt-, source of bite. Its original meaning wouldthus have been ‘biting’, and although there donot seem to be any traces of this left in thehistorical record, the sense development to‘acrid-tasting’ is fairly straightforward (comparethe similar case of sharp).It seems likely that the bitter of ‘bitter end’comes from a different source altogether,although in its current meaning it appears tohave been influenced by the adjective bitter. Abitter was originally a ‘turn of a cable round thebitts’, and a bitt was a ‘post on the deck of a shipfor fastening cables to’. It is not clear where bittcame from, although it was probably originally aseafarer’s term from the north German coast, andit may be related to English boat. Thus in thefirst instance ‘to the bitter end’ probably meant‘to the very end, as far as it is possible to go’. BITEbittern [14] The Latin word for ‘bittern’ (a marshbird) was būtiō, but by the time it reached OldFrench it had become butor. The discrepancy hasbeen accounted for by proposing a Vulgar Latinintermediate *būtitaurus, literally ‘bittern-bull’(Latin taurus is ‘bull’), coined on the basis of thebittern’s loud booming call, supposedlyreminiscent of a bull’s. The original Englishforms, as borrowed from Old French, were botorand bitoure; the final -n first appeared in the 16thcentury, perhaps on the analogy of heron.bitumen see CUDbivouac [18] Bivouac appears to be of Swiss-German origin. The early 19th-century writerStalder noted that the term beiwacht (bei‘additional’ + wacht ‘guard’ – a relative ofEnglish watch and wake) was used in Aargauand Zürich for a sort of band of vigilantes whoassisted the regular town guard. Beiwacht wasborrowed into French as bivac, and came toEnglish in a later form bivouac. Its originalapplication in English was to an army remainingon the alert during the night, to guard againstsurprise attack; in so doing, of course, thesoldiers did not go to sleep in their tents, andfrom this the term bivouac spread to‘improvised, temporary camp’, without theluxury of regular tents. WAKE, WATCHbizarre [17] Bizarre can probably be traced backto Italian bizzarro, of unknown origin, whichmeant ‘angry’. It passed into Spanish as bizarro,meaning ‘brave’, and then found its way intoFrench, where its meaning gradually mutatedfrom ‘brave’ to ‘odd’ – which is where Englishgot it from. It used to be thought that the Frenchword might have come from Basque bizarra‘beard’ (the reasoning being that a man with abeard must be a brave, dashing fellow), whichwould have made bizarre almost unique as aword of Basque origin in English (the onlygenuine one in everyday use now is theacronymic name ETA, standing for Euzkadi taAzkatasuna ‘Basque Homeland and Liberty’),but this is now not thought likely.black [OE] The usual Old English word for‘black’ was sweart (source of modern Englishswart and swarthy, and related to Germanschwarz ‘black’), but black already existed (OldEnglish blæc), and since the Middle Englishperiod it has replaced swart. Related but nowextinct forms existed in other Germaniclanguages (including Old Norse blakkr ‘dark’and Old Saxon blac ‘ink’), but the word’sultimate source is not clear. Some havecompared it with Latin flagrāre and Greekphlégein, both meaning ‘burn’, which go back toan Indo-European base *phleg-, a variant of*bhleg-.blackmail see MAILbladder [OE] Old English blǣdre came from ahypothetical West and North Germanic*blǣdrōn, a derivative of the stem *blǣ-, fromwhich we get blow. The name perhaps comesfrom the bladder’s capacity for inflation. It wasoriginally, and for a long time exclusively,applied to the urinary bladder. BLOWblade [OE] The primary sense of blade appearsto be ‘leaf’ (as in ‘blades of grass’, and Germanblatt ‘leaf’). This points back to the ultimatesource of the word, the Germanic stem *bhlō-,from which English also gets bloom, blossom,and the now archaic blow ‘come into flower’.However, the earliest sense recorded for OldEnglish blæd was the metaphorical ‘flattened,leaflike part’, as of an oar, spade, etc. Thespecific application to the sharp, cutting part of asword or knife developed in the 14th century. BLOOM, BLOSSOM, BLOWblame [12] Blame and blaspheme are ultimatelythe same word. Both come from Greekblasphēmein ‘say profane things about’, butwhereas blaspheme has stuck to the path of‘profanity’, blame has developed the moredown-to-earth sense ‘reproach, censure’. Theradical change of form seems to have come viablastēmāre, a demotic offshoot of late Latinblasphēmāre, which passed into Old French asblasmer, later blamer (whence English blame). BLASPHEMEblanch see BLANK

lancmange [14] Blancmange means literallysimply ‘white food’. It comes from a Frenchcompound made up of blanc ‘white’ andmanger, a noun derived from the verb manger‘eat’ (related to English manger). Originally itwas a savoury dish, of chicken or similar whitemeat in a sauce made with cream, eggs, rice, etcand often sugar and almonds. Gradually the meatcontent came to be omitted, and blancmangeturned into a sweet dish, typically containinggelatine. MANGERblank [15] Although English got blank fromFrench blanc ‘white’, its ultimate source isGermanic. Forms such as Old High Germanblanc ‘white’ suggest a prehistoric Germanic*blangkaz, which could have been borrowedinto Romanic, the undifferentiated precursor ofthe Romance languages, as *blancus – henceFrench blanc, Italian bianco, Spanish blanco,and Portuguese branco. The word originallymeant simply ‘white’ in English, but this sensehad all but died out by the early 18th century, bywhich time the present-day ‘unmarked’ was wellestablished.Other derivatives of French blanc include theverb blanch [14], from French blanchier, andblanket [13], from Old French blancquet. Blancois a trade name (based on blanc) coined in the1890s for a whitening preparation for militarywebbing (subsequently applied to the khakicolouredversion as well). BLANCH, BLANKETblaspheme [14] Blaspheme has maintained aremarkable semantic and formal stability sinceits origins in Greek blásphēmos, which meant‘speaking evil or profane things’ (blas- is relatedto blaptikós ‘hurtful’; the -phēmos elementdenotes ‘speaking’, and is related to phēmí ‘Isay’). The derived Greek verb blasphēmein wastransmitted via ecclesiastical Latin blasphēmāreto Old French and thence to English.Blastēmāre, an altered version of blasphēmāre,produced blame. BLAMEblatant [16] Blatant appears to have been coined,or at least introduced, by the poet EdmundSpenser. In the Faerie Queene 1596 he describeshow ‘unto themselves they [Envy andDetraction] gotten had a monster which theblatant beast men call, a dreadful fiend of godsand men ydrad [dreaded]’. This ‘blatant beast’was an allegorical representation of calumny. Inthe 17th century the word came to be applied tooffensively voluble people, but the main modernsense, ‘offensively conspicuous’, does not seemto have developed until the late 19th century. Ifthe word was Spenser’s own introduction, it isnot clear where he got it from. The likeliestcandidate seems to be Latin blatīre ‘babble,gossip’, of imitative origin.blaze There are three distinct words blaze inEnglish. The commonest, meaning ‘fire, flame’[OE], comes from a prehistoric Germanic*blasōn. Its original signification was ‘torch’ (inthe sense, of course, of a burning piece of wood63 bleakor bunch of sticks), but by the year 1000 the maincurrent meaning was established. The precisesource of blaze ‘light-coloured mark or spot’[17] is not known for certain, but there areseveral cognate forms in other Germaniclanguages, including Old Norse blesi andGerman blässe; perhaps the likeliest candidateas far as blaze is concerned is Middle LowGerman bles. The verbal usage, as in ‘blaze atrail’ (that is, by making conspicuous marks ontrees) originated in the mid 18th century. Therelated German adjective blass ‘pale’, whichoriginally meant ‘shining’, points up the fact thatultimately these two words blaze are related, theprimeval sense ‘shining’ having diverged on theone hand through ‘pale’, on the other through‘glowing, burning’.The third blaze, ‘proclaim’ [14], as in ‘blazeabroad’, is now seldom encountered. Itoriginally meant ‘blow a trumpet’, and comesultimately from the Indo-European base *bhlā-(source of blow). Its immediate source inEnglish was Middle Dutch blāsen. Despite itsformal and semantic similarity, it does notappear to have any connection with blazon [13],which comes from Old French blason ‘shield’, aword of unknown origin.A blazer [19] got its name from being abrightly coloured jacket (from blaze meaning‘fire, flame’). It originated among Englishuniversity students in the late 19th century.According to a correspondent in the Daily News22 August 1889, the word was originally appliedspecifically to the red jackets worn by membersof the ‘Lady Margaret, St John’s College,Cambridge, Boat Club’. But by the 1880s itsmore general application had become widelyestablished: in the Durham University Journalof 21 February 1885 we read that ‘the latestnovelty … for the river is flannels, a blazer, andspats’. BLOWbleak [16] Bleak originally meant ‘pale’, andcomes ultimately from an Indo-European base*bhleg-, possible source of black and a variant of*phleg-, which produced Greek phlégein ‘burn’and Latin flagrāre ‘burn’ (whence Englishconflagration and flagrant; flame, fulminate, andrefulgent are also closely related). From *bhlegcamethe prehistoric Germanic adjective*blaikos ‘white’, from which Old English gotblāc ‘pale’ (the sense relationship, as with thepossibly related blaze, is between ‘burning’,‘shining brightly’, ‘white’, and ‘pale’). Thissurvived until the 15th century in southernEnglish dialects as bloke, and until the 16thcentury in the North as blake. Its disappearancewas no doubt hastened by its resemblance toblack, both formally and semantically, sinceboth ‘pale’ and ‘dark’ carry implications ofcolourlessness. Blake did however persist inNorthern dialects until modern times in the sense‘yellow’. Meanwhile, around the middle of the16th century bleak had begun to put in anappearance, borrowed from a close relative ofbloke/blake, Old Norse bleikr ‘shining, white’.

leed 64The modern sense ‘bare’ is recorded from veryearly on.A derivative of the Germanic base *blaikwasthe verb *blaikjōn, source of Old Englishblǣcan ‘whiten’, the ancestor of modern Englishbleach (which may be related to blight). And anasalized version of the stem may have producedblink [14]. BLEACH, BLIGHT, BLINK, CONFLAGRATION,FLAGRANT, FLAME, FULMINATEbleed [OE] As its form suggests, bleed is aderivative of blood, but a very ancient one. FromGermanic *blōtham ‘blood’ was formed the verb*blōthjan ‘emit blood’, which came into OldEnglish as blēdan, ancestor of bleed. BLOODblend [13] Old English had a verb blendan, but itmeant ‘make blind’ or ‘dazzle’. Modern Englishblend appears to come from blend-, the presentstem of Old Norse blanda ‘mix’ (a relative ofOld English blandan ‘mix’). The ultimate sourceof this is not clear, but it does not seem to berestricted to Germanic (Lithuanian has theadjective blandus ‘thick’ in relation to soup), soit may not be too far-fetched to suggest a linkwith blind, whose Indo-European ancestor*bhlendhos meant among other things‘confused’.bless [OE] Bless occurs in no other languagethan English, and originally meant ‘mark withblood’, from some sort of religious rite in whichsuch marking conferred sanctity. It probablygoes back to a prehistoric Germanic formation*blōthisōjan, a derivative of *blōtham ‘blood’,which was taken up by no Germanic languageother than Old English. Here it producedblētsian, which by the 13th century had becomeblesse. The word’s connotations of ‘happiness’and ‘well-being’, which go back at least to theyear 1000, were probably influenced by theetymologically unrelated bliss. BLOODblight [17] Blight appeared out of the blue in theearly 17th century in agricultural andhorticultural texts, and its origins are far fromclear. It has, however, been speculated that itmay be connected with the Old English wordsblǣce and blǣcthu, both terms for some sort ofitchy skin condition such as scabies. These inturn are probably related to Old English blǣcan‘bleach’, the link being the flaky whiteness ofthe infected skin. In Middle English, blǣcthuwould have become *bleht, which couldplausibly have been the source of blight. Arelated piece in the jigsaw is blichening ‘blightor rust in corn’, found once in Middle English,which may have come ultimately from OldNorse blikna ‘become pale’. BLEACHblighty [20] Blighty is a legacy of British rule inIndia. Originally a term used by British soldiersserving in India for ‘home, Britain’, it is ananglicization of Hindi bilāyatī, which meant‘foreign’, and particularly ‘European’. This wasactually a borrowing from Arabic wilāyat‘district, country’, which was independentlyacquired by English in the 19th century in itsTurkish form vilayet. It was a derivative of theArabic verb waliya ‘rule’, and is related to walī‘ruler’.blimp [20] The original blimp was a sort of smallnon-rigid military airship used in World War I.Its name is said to have come from its officialdesignation as ‘type B (limp)’ (as opposed to‘type A (rigid)’). Its rotund flaccidity suggestedit in 1934 to the cartoonist David Low (1891–1963) as a name for a character he had invented,a fat pompous ex-army officer (in full, ColonelBlimp) who was always cholerically airingreactionary views. The British public evidentlyrecognized the character as an all too commontype, and his name became a generic one, to theextent of inspiring spin-offs such as blimpish.blind [OE] The connotations of the ultimateancestor of blind, Indo-European *bhlendhos,seem to have been not so much ‘sightlessness’ as‘confusion’ and ‘obscurity’. The notion ofsomeone wandering around in actual or mentaldarkness, not knowing where to go, naturallyprogressed to the ‘inability to see’. Relatedwords that fit this pattern are blunder, possiblyfrom Old Norse blunda ‘shut one’s eyes’, blunt,and maybe also blend. By the time the wordentered Old English, as blind, it already meant‘sightless’, but ancestral associations ofdarkness and obscurity were retained (Pepys inhis diary, for instance, writes of a ‘little blind[that is, dark] bed-chamber’ 1666), and traces ofthem remain in such usages as ‘blind entrance’. BLEND, BLUNDER, BLUNTblindfold [16] The original term for coveringsomeone’s eyes with a bandage was blindfell[OE], which survived until the 16th century. Thismeant literally ‘strike someone blind’, thesecond element being the fell of ‘felling trees’. Itappears that its past form, blindfelled, came to bemistaken for a present form, and this, togetherwith some perceived connection with fold(presumably the ‘folding’ of the bandage roundsomebody’s head), conspired to produce the newverb blindfold.bliss [OE] Despite its formal and semanticsimilarity, bliss has no connection with bless. Itcomes ultimately from Germanic *blīthiz‘gentle, kind’, which is the source of Englishblithe ‘happy’ [OE]. The addition of the nounsuffix *-tjō produced the derivative *blīthsjō,which entered Old English as blīths ‘happiness’,later reduced to bliss. BLITHEblister [13] Blister and its now extinct variantblester first appear in English at the end of the13th century, possibly borrowed from OldFrench blestre, blostre. It seems that this in turnmay have come from Middle Dutch bluyster‘swelling’, but further back than that it has notproved possible to trace the word.bloat [13] Bloat has a confused and uncertainhistory. It seems first to have appeared on thescene in the 13th century as an adjective, blout,meaning ‘soft, flabby’, a probable borrowingfrom Old Norse blautr ‘soft from being cooked

with liquid’. This occurs only once, and does notresurface until the early 17th century, in Hamletas it happens, as blowt: ‘Let the blowt king temptyou again to bed’. This appears to be the sameword as turns up slightly later in the century asbloat, its meaning showing signs of changingfrom ‘flabby’ to ‘puffed up’. Then in the 1660swe encounter bloated ‘puffed up, swollen’,which paved the way for the verb bloat, firstrecorded in the 1670s.It is not clear whether bloater [19] comesfrom the same source. Its linguistic ancestor isthe bloat herring [16], which may perhaps havebeen given its name on the grounds that herringspreserved by light smoking are plumper thanthose fully dried.block [14] English borrowed block from OldFrench bloc, but its ultimate origin appears to beGermanic; French acquired it from MiddleDutch blok ‘tree trunk’. The derived verb block‘impede’ first crops up in the early 15th century,but was not established until the later 16thcentury; it originally meant ‘put blocks [ofwood] or obstacles in the way of’. Blockade wascoined in the 17th century, perhaps on the modelof ambuscade, a contemporary synonym ofambush. BLOCKADEblood [OE] Blood is a Germanic word, occurringas German blut, Dutch bloed, Swedish blod, etc.as well as in English (the Romance languagestake their words from Latin sanguis, whenceEnglish sanguine [14], while Greek had haima,as in English haemorrhage, haemoglobin, etc).The ultimate source of all these was Germanic*blōtham, a derivative of which, *blōthjan,produced English bleed. Old English had theadjective blōdig, from which we get bloody; itsuse as an expletive dates from the 17th century. BLEED, BLESSbloom [13] The Old English word for ‘flower’was the probably related blossom, and Englishdid not acquire bloom until the 13th century,when it borrowed it from Old Norse blómi. Thiscame from Germanic *blōmon, a derivative ofthe Indo-European *bhlō- which also producedLatin flōs (whence English flower), the nowarchaic English verb blow ‘come into flower’,and English blade. BLADE, BLOSSOM, BLOW, FLOWERbloomer [19] Bloomers, long loose trousersworn by women, were not actually invented bysomeone called Bloomer – the credit for thatseems to go to a Mrs Elizabeth Smith Miller ofNew York – but their first advocate was AmeliaJenks Bloomer (1818–94), a US feminist whostrongly promoted their use in the early 1850s asa liberated garment for women. The extent towhich this became a cause célèbre can be gaugedby the fact that it gave rise to so-calledBloomerism, a movement for ‘rationalizing’women’s dress; in 1882 Lady Harberton wrote inMacmillan’s Magazine ‘“Bloomerism” stilllurks in many a memory’.Bloomer ‘mistake’ is late 19th-century, andapparently originally Australian. Early65 bluestockingcommentators derived it, not altogetherconvincingly, from ‘blooming error’.blossom [OE] Blossom probably comesultimately from an Indo-European base *bhlōs-,which was also the source of Latin flōs, fromwhich English gets flower. It seems reasonableto suppose, in view of the semantic connections,that this *bhlōs- was an extended form of *bhlō-,from which English gets blade, bloom, and thenow archaic verb blow ‘come into flower’. BLADE, BLOOM, BLOW, FLOWERblow There are three distinct blows in English.The commonest, the verb ‘send out air’ [OE],can be traced back to an Indo-European base*bhlā-. It came into English (as Old Englishblāwan) via Germanic *blǣ-, source also ofbladder. The Indo-European base also producedLatin flāre ‘blow’, from which English getsflatulent and inflate. The other verb blow, ‘comeinto flower’ [OE], now archaic, comesultimately from Indo-European *bhlō-. Itentered English (as Old English blōwan) viaGermanic *blo-, from which English also getsbloom and probably blade. A variant form of theIndo-European base with -s- produced Latin flōs(source of English flower) and English blossom.The noun blow ‘hard hit’ [15] is altogether moremysterious. It first appears, in the form blaw, innorthern and Scottish texts, and it has beenconnected with a hypothetical Germanic*bleuwan ‘strike’. BLADDER, FLATULENT, INFLATE; BLADE,BLOOM, BLOSSOM, FLOWERblubber [14] The original notion underlyingblubber is of ‘bubbling’ or ‘foaming’,particularly in relation to the sea, and it may, likebubble itself, be an onomatopoeic creation,imitative of the sound of spluttering or poppingwater. This sense died out in the mainstreamlanguage in the 16th century (though it survivedlonger dialectally), but it lies behind the verbalsense ‘cry copiously’. The development of thenoun to its present meaning ‘whale fat’ is notaltogether clear, but it may have been via anintermediate 15th-century application to ‘fish’sentrails’, which perhaps bubbled or appearedpustular when ripped open by the fishermen.blue [13] Colour terms are notoriously slipperythings, and blue is a prime example. Its ultimateancestor, Indo-European *bhlēwos, seemsoriginally to have meant ‘yellow’ (it is the sourceof Latin flāvus ‘yellow’, from which Englishgets flavine ‘yellow dye’ [19]). But it laterevolved via ‘white’ (Greek phalós ‘white’ isrelated) and ‘pale’ to ‘livid, the colour of bruisedskin’ (Old Norse has blá ‘livid’). English had therelated blāw, but it did not survive, and themodern English word was borrowed from OldFrench bleu. This was descended from aCommon Romance *blāvus, which in turn wasacquired from prehistoric Germanic *blǣwaz(source also of German blau ‘blue’). FLAVINEbluestocking [18] The term bluestocking‘female intellectual’ derives from the gatheringsheld at the houses of fashionable mid-18th-

luff 66century hostesses to discuss literary and relatedtopics. It became the custom at these not to puton full formal dress, which for gentlemenincluded black silk stockings. One habitué inparticular, Mr Benjamin Stillingfleet, used towear greyish worsted stockings, conventionallycalled ‘blue’. This lack of decorum was lookedon with scorn in some quarters, and AdmiralBoscawan dubbed the participants the ‘BlueStocking Society’. Women who attended theirhighbrow meetings thus became known as ‘BlueStocking Ladies’ (even though it was a man whohad worn the stockings), and towards the end ofthe century this was abbreviated to simplybluestockings.bluff English has two words bluff, one or perhapsboth of them of Dutch origin. The older, ‘hearty’[17], originally referred to ships, and meant‘having a flat vertical bow’. This nauticalassociation suggests a Dutch provenance,though no thoroughly convincing source hasbeen found. The sense ‘flat, vertical, (andbroad)’ came to be applied to land features, suchas cliffs (hence the noun bluff ‘high steep bank’,which emerged in America in the 18th century).The word’s metaphorical extension to peoplewas at first derogatory – ‘rough, blunt’ – but themore favourable ‘hearty’ had developed by theearly 19th century.Bluff ‘deceive’ [19] was originally a USpoker term. It comes from Dutch bluffen ‘boast’,the descendant of Middle Dutch bluffen ‘swellup’.blunder [14] When blunder first entered thelanguage, it meant ‘stumble around blindly,bumping into things’, which gives a clue to itspossible ultimate connection with blind. Itsprobable source was Old Norse blundra ‘shutone’s eyes’, forerunner of Swedish blunda andNorwegian blunda (Jon Blund is the Swedishequivalent of ‘the sandman’), and very likely adescendant of Indo-European *bhlendhos, fromwhich blind comes. The first record of themodern sense ‘foolish mistake’ comes inEdward Phillips’s The new world of Englishwords 1706. BLINDblunderbus [17] Blunderbus was originallyDutch donderbus (literally ‘thundergun’), and itstransformation is due to folk etymology: theunfamiliar donder was replaced by the Englishword blunder, perhaps with some reference tothe fact that, with its wide muzzle, it is capableonly of fairly random firing. The second part ofthe word (which also occurs in arquebus) isultimately related to box, Dutch bus or buisbeing not just a ‘box’ but also a ‘tube’, and hencea ‘gun’. There is no connection with the 20thcenturythunderbox, a colloquial term for a‘portable loo’.blunt [12] Blunt originally meant ‘dull, obtuse,foolish’ in English, and it has been speculatedthat behind it there lay an earlier ‘dull of sight’,linking the word with blind. A possible sourcewould be a derivative of Old Norse blunda ‘shutone’s eyes’ (whence probably also blunder). Theapplication of blunt to dull, non-sharp edges orblades developed in the 14th century. BLIND, BLUNDERblush [OE] Modern English blush is adescendant of Old English blyscan ‘turn red,blush’, which was related to and perhaps derivedfrom Old English blsa ‘firebrand, torch’.Similarities of form and meaning make ittempting to compare blaze, which meant ‘torch’in Old English and came from a prehistoricGermanic *blasōn, but no connection has everbeen established. Middle Dutch blosen ‘glow’may be an intermediate form.board [OE] Old English bord had a wide rangeof meanings, whose two main strands (‘plank’and ‘border, side of a ship’) reveal that it camefrom two distinct sources: Germanic *borthamand *borthaz respectively (despite theirsimilarity, they have not been shown to be thesame word). Related forms in other Germaniclanguages that point up the dichotomy are Dutchbord ‘shelf’ and boord ‘border, side of a ship’.The second, ‘edge’ element of board (which isprobably related to border) now survives inEnglish only in seaboard (literally the ‘edge ofthe sea’) and in variations on the phrase on boardship (whose original reference to the ship’s sidesis nowadays perceived as relating to the deck).Board ‘food’ (as in ‘board and lodging’), andhence boarder, are metaphorical applications ofboard ‘table’. BORDERboast [13] The immediate source of boastappears to be Anglo-Norman bost, but where itcame from before that is far from clear; Germandialect bauste(r)n ‘swell’ has been compared,suggesting that it could be of Germanic origin.To begin with it meant ‘loud or threatening talk’as well as ‘bragging’.boat [OE] In origin, the word boat seems to berestricted to northern parts of Europe: OldEnglish bāt and Old Norse beit are the only earlyexamples (German boot was borrowed fromthem, and French bateau comes from theEnglish word). They point to a commonGermanic origin in *bait-. It has been speculatedthat this may be related to bitt ‘post for fasteningship’s cables’. If true, this could mean that boatoriginally referred to one or other of thestructural members of a wooden vessel.bobby [19] The British bobby ‘policeman’ getshis name from the English statesman Sir RobertPeel (1788–1850) – Bobby or Bob being the petform of Robert. Peel was Home Secretary whenthe Metropolitan Police Force was formed in1828, but the term bobby is not actually recordeduntil 1844. A much earlier application of hisname was the now obsolete Peeler, used from1817 for members of the Irish Constabulary,founded under Peel’s auspices, and later forEnglish policemen.Boche see CABBAGEbodicebodice [16] Originally, bodice was identicalwith bodies – that is, the plural of body. This useof body began early in the 16th century, when itreferred to the part of a woman’s dress that

covered the trunk, as opposed to the arms; and itsoon became restricted specifically to the partabove the waist. The reason for the adoption ofthe plural form (which was often used originallyin the phrase pair of bodies) was that the upperportion of women’s dresses was usually in twoparts, which fastened down the middle. In the17th and 18th centuries the term bodice wasfrequently applied to ‘corsets’. BODYbodkin [14] A bodkin was originally a smalldagger, and only in the 18th century did itdevelop the perhaps more familiar sense ‘longblunt needle’. Initially it was a three-syllableword, spelled boidekyn, and its origins aremysterious. Most speculation has centred onCeltic as a source. Welsh bidog ‘dagger’ beingcited (the -kin is no doubt a diminutive suffix).body [OE] For a word so central to people’sperception of themselves, body is remarkablyisolated linguistically. Old High German hadpotah ‘body’, traces of which surviveddialectally into modern times, but otherwise it iswithout known relatives in any other Indo-European language. Attempts have been made,not altogether convincingly, to link it with wordsfor ‘container’ or ‘barrel’, such as medievalLatin butica. The use of body to mean ‘person ingeneral’, as in somebody, nobody, got fully underway in the 14th century.bog [13] Bog is of Gaelic origin. It comes frombogach ‘bog’, which was a derivative of theadjective bog ‘soft’. A possible link betweenGaelic bog and Old English būgan ‘bend’(source of modern English bow) has beensuggested. The British slang use ‘lavatory’,which dates from the 18th century, appears to beshort for the slightly earlier bog-house, whichmay have been an alteration of the 16th-centuryboggard – quite possibly completely unrelated tobog ‘swamp’.bogey [19] Bogey is one of a set of wordsrelating to alarming or annoying manifestationsof the supernatural (others are bogle, bug,bugbear, and possibly boggle and bugaboo)whose interconnections are difficult to sort out.A strand common to most of them is a northernorigin, which has led some to suggest anultimate source in Scandinavia – perhaps anancestor of Norwegian dialect bugge ‘importantman’ (which has also been linked with Englishbig) might lie behind Middle English bugge,originally ‘scarecrow’ but later used for morespectral objects of terror. Others, however,noting Welsh bwg, bwgan ‘ghost’, have gonewith a Celtic origin.Of more recent uses of bogey, ‘policeman’and ‘nasal mucus’ seem to have appearedbetween the two World Wars, while ‘golf scoreof one stroke over par’ is said to have originatedat the Great Yarmouth Golf Club in the 1890s,when a certain Major Wellman exclaimed,during the course of a particularly trying round,that he must be playing against the ‘bogey-man’(a figure in a popular song of the time). Bogie67 bolt‘undercarriage’ [19] is a different word (of ifanything obscurer origin than bogey).boil Boil ‘large spot’ [OE] and boil ‘vaporizewith heat’ [13] are distinct words. The formercomes from Old English bl or ble, whichbecame bile in Middle English; the change toboil started in the 15th century, perhaps fromassociation with the verb. The Old English wordgoes back ultimately to a West Germanic *būlja,whose central meaning element was ‘swelling’;from it also comes German beule ‘lump, boil’.The verb’s source, via Anglo-Norman boiller, isLatin bullīre, a derivative of bulla ‘bubble’, aword which also gave us bull (as in ‘Papal bull’),bullion, bowl (as in the game of ‘bowls’), budge,bullet, bulletin and bully (as in ‘bully beef’), aswell, perhaps, as bill. BILL, BOWL, BUDGE, BULL, BULLET, BULLETIN,BULLION, BULLY, EBULLIENTbold [OE] In Old English, bold meant simply‘brave’; the modern connotations of immodestyor presumptuousness do not seem to havedeveloped until the 12th century. The word goesback to a prehistoric Germanic *balthaz, basedultimately, it has been speculated, on Indo-European *bhel- ‘swell’ (the psychological linkthrough ‘being puffed up’ via ‘adventurouscourage’ to ‘audacity’ is scarcely far-fetched). Ifthis is so it would mean bold is related tobellows, belly, billow, bolster, and possiblybellow and bell. The notion of impetuosity isperhaps retained in the related German bald‘soon’. BELL, BELLOWS, BELLY, BILLOW, BOLSTERbollock see BALLbolshevik [20] Russian bol’ shévik is aderivative of ból’ shiy, the comparative form ofthe adjective ból’ shoy ‘big’. It was originallyapplied, at the 1903 congress of the RussianSocial Democratic Party, to those party memberswho wished to go for a ‘big’, or extreme,socialist programme (in contrast with the moremoderate Mensheviks – from Russian mén’ shij‘less’); but since the Bolsheviks outnumberedthe Mensheviks, the word soon becameinterpreted as ‘those in the majority in the party’.The transferred use of the English abbreviationbolshy to mean ‘stubbornly uncooperative’ datesfrom around 1918. DEBILITYbolster [OE] The idea underlying bolster ‘longpillow’ is of something stuffed, so that it swellsup. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic*bolstraz, which was a derivative of *bolg-,*bulg- (source also of bellows, belly, billow andpossibly bell, bellow, and bold). German has therelated polster ‘cushion, pillow’. BELL, BELLOW, BELLY, BILLOW, BOLDbolt [OE] In Old English, a bolt was an arrow,particularly of the short stout variety used incrossbows (hence the phrase shoot one’s bolt).The more familiar modern sense ‘fastening pin’developed in the 13th century. The verbal sense‘make a quick escape’ comes from the notion offiring a projectile. The word appears in other

omb 68Germanic languages (for instance German bolz‘bolt’), but its ultimate origin is unknown.bombomb [17] Bomb is ultimately of onomatopoeicorigin, and can probably be traced back to Greekbómbos, a word for a booming or buzzing sound.This passed into Latin as bombus, the probablesource of Italian bomba, which acquired moreexplosive connotations. English got the word viaFrench bombe. The derivative bombardpreceded bomb into English, in the 15th century. BOUNDbombast [16] Bombast originally meant‘cotton-wool’, especially as used for stuffing orpadding clothes, upholstery, etc; hence, beforethe end of the 16th century, it had beentransferred metaphorically to ‘pompous orturgid language’. The ultimate source of theword was Greek bómbux ‘silk, silkworm’, whichcame into English via Latin bombyx, bombax(source also of English bombazine [16]) and OldFrench bombace. The earliest English form wasbombace, but it soon developed an additionalfinal -t. BOMBAZINEbonanza [19] Bonanza entered the language viaAmerican English from Spanish, where bonanzameans ‘prosperity’, or literally ‘good weather’.It came from an unrecorded general Romance*bonacia, a derivative of Latin bonus ‘good’.(Other English words acquired ultimately frombonus – a descendant of Old Latin duenos –include bonbon [19], bonus [18], boon [14] (asin ‘boon companion’), bounty [13] (from Latinbonitas ‘goodness’), and perhaps bonny [15].) Itappears to have been formed on the analogy ofLatin malacia, as if this meant ‘bad weather’,from malus ‘bad’, although it in fact originallymeant ‘calm at sea’, from Greek malakós. BONBON, BONNY, BONUS, BOON, BOUNTYbond English has two distinct words bond, whichstarted life very differently but have graduallygrown together. Bond ‘something that binds’[13] was originally the same word as band (fromOld Norse band), and only gradually divergedfrom it in pronunciation, spelling, and meaning.The key modern legal and financial senses beganto develop in the 16th century, the underlyingnotion being of something one is ‘bound’ or‘tied’ to by a promise. Bond ‘bound in slavery’[14], as in bondservant, is an adjectival use ofthe late Old English noun bonda ‘householder’,which came from Old Norse bóndi (the secondelement of húsbóndi, from which English getshusband). This represented an earlier bóandi,which was originally the present participle ofeast Norse bóa ‘dwell’, a derivative of theGermanic base *bū- ‘dwell’, (from whichEnglish also gets be, boor, booth, bower, build,burly, byelaw, and byre). The semanticassociation of ‘tying up’ and ‘servitude’ has ledto the merging of the two words, as shown in thederivative bondage. BAND; BE, BOOR, BOOTH, BUILD, BYELAW,NEIGHBOURbone [OE] Somewhat unusually for a basicbody-part term, bone is a strictly Germanicword: it has no relatives in other Indo-Europeanlanguages. It comes from a presumed Germanic*bainam, which also produced for exampleGerman bein and Swedish ben. These both mean‘leg’ as well as ‘bone’, suggesting that theoriginal connotation of *bainam may have been‘long bone’.bonfire [14] A bonfire was originally a fire inwhich bones were burned. References to such(presumably rather evil-smelling) fires, whichwere large open air affairs, continue down to the18th century, but latterly they have a distinctlyantiquarian air, as if such things were a thing ofthe past. By the later 15th century the word wasalready passing to the more general modernmeaning ‘large outdoor fire’, either celebratory(as in Bonfire Night, 5 November) or fordestroying refuse. BONEbonus see BEAUTYbook [OE] Book is widespread throughout theGermanic languages. German has buch, forexample, Dutch bock, and Swedish bok. Therepoint to a prehistoric Germanic *bōks, whichwas probably related to *bōkā ‘beech’, theconnection being that the early Germanicpeoples used beechwood tablets for writingrunic inscriptions on. The original meaning ofthe word in Old English (bōc) was simply‘written document or record’, but by the 9thcentury it had been applied to a collection ofwritten sheets fastened together. BEECHboom see BEAMboor [15] Boor was borrowed into English eitherfrom Low German hūr or from Dutch boer (Boer‘Dutch colonist in South Africa’ is a later, 19thcenturyborrowing). When first acquired itmeant ‘peasant farmer’, and did not develop itsmodern explicit connotations of coarseness andrudeness until the 16th century. Its ultimatesource was the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’, soits original meaning was something like ‘personwho lives in a particular place’ (the relatedneighbour was literally ‘someone who livesnearby’). Other English words from the samesource include be, booth, bound ‘intending togo’, bower, build, burly, byelaw, byre, and the-band of husband. BE, BOER, BOOTH, BOWER, BUILD, BURLY,BYELAW, BYRE, HUSBAND, NEIGHBOURboot [14] Boot is a comparatively late acquisitionby English. It came, either directly or via OldNorse bóti, from Old French bote, whose sourceis unknown. The modern British sense ‘car’sluggage compartment’ goes back to a 17thcenturyterm for an outside compartment forattendants on a coach, which may have comedirectly from modern French botte.The boot of ‘to boot’ is a completely differentword. It comes from Old English bōt ‘advantage,remedy’, which can be traced back to aprehistoric Germanic base *bat-, source also ofbetter and best. BEST, BETTER

ooth [12] In common with a wide range ofother English words, including bower and the-bour of neighbour, booth comes ultimatelyfrom the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’. From thissource came the East Norse verb bóa ‘dwell’(whose present participle produced Englishbond and the -band of husband); addition of thesuffix -th produced the unrecorded noun bóth.‘dwelling’, which came into Middle English asbōth. BE, BOOR, BOWER, HUSBAND, NEIGHBOURbooty [15] Booty has no connection with boots.It came into English as butin (it did not finallylose its n until the 18th century), a borrowingfrom Old French butin, but Old French had got itfrom Middle Low German būte ‘exchange’(whence German beute and Dutch buit ‘loot’),pointing to a prehistoric Germanic source*būtiōn. FILIBUSTER, FREEBOOTERbooze [13] This word seems to have beenborrowed on two distinct and widely separateoccasions from Middle Dutch būsen ‘drinkmuch alcohol’ (which some have connected withMiddle High German būs ‘swelling’). In the13th century this gave Middle English bouse,which if it had continued to the present daywould have rhymed with the verb house.However, in the 16th century the Middle Dutchword was reborrowed, giving modern Englishbooze.borage [13] The plant-name borage comes viaOld French bourrache from Latin borrāgo.Various words have been advanced as anultimate source, including late Latin burra‘shaggy cloth’, on account of its hairy leaves, butin view of the fact that the Arabs used the plantmedicinally to induce sweating, the likeliestcontender is Arabic abū ‘āraq, literally ‘father ofsweat’.border [14] English acquired border from OldFrench bordure. This came from the commonRomance verb *bordāre ‘border’, which wasbased on *bordus ‘edge’, a word of Germanicorigin whose source, *borthaz, was the same asthat of English board in the sense ‘side of aship’. BOARDbore Bore ‘make a hole’ [OE] and bore ‘betiresome’ [18] are almost certainly two distinctwords. The former comes ultimately from anIndo-European base *bhor-, *bhr-, whichproduced Latin forāre ‘bore’ (whence Englishforamen ‘small anatomical opening’), Greekphárynx, and prehistoric Germanic *borōn, fromwhich we get bore (and German gets bohren).Bore connoting ‘tiresomeness’ suddenly appearson the scene as a sort of buzzword of the 1760s,from no known source; the explanation mostcommonly offered for its origin is that it is afigurative application of bore in the sense ‘piercesomeone with ennui’, but that is not terriblyconvincing. In its early noun use it meant whatwe would now call a ‘fit of boredom’.There is one other, rather rare English wordbore – meaning ‘tidal wave in an estuary or river’69 boss[17]. It may have come from Old Norse bára‘wave’. PERFORATE, PHARYNXborn [OE] The Old English past participle of theverb meaning ‘bear’ was boren. By MiddleEnglish times this had become contracted toborn(e), but no distinction in meaning was madeon the basis of spelling. This did not come aboutuntil around 1600, since when born has becomeestablished as the obstetric orthography, whileborne remains the straightforward past participleof bear ‘carry’. BEARborough [OE] Borough (Old English burg orburh) comes from Germanic *burgs ‘fortress’(whence also German burg ‘castle, stronghold’).It was a derivative of the base *burg- ‘protect’(whence also bury), a variant of *berg- (sourceof English barrow ‘mound’ and German berg‘mountain’) and *borg- (source of Englishborrow). At some time during the prehistoricGermanic period a progression in meaningbegan to take place from ‘fortress’ (which hadlargely died out in English by 1000), through‘fortified town’, to simply ‘town’. Romancelanguages borrowed the word, giving forinstance French bourg, from which English getsburgess [13] and bourgeois [16]. Burrow [13] isprobably a variant form. BOURGEOIS, BURGESS, BURROW, BURYborrow [OE] Modern English borrow is adescendant of Old English borgian, which camefrom the Germanic base *borg-. This was avariant of *berg- (source of English barrow‘mound’) and *burg- (source of English boroughand bury). The underlying sense of the Germanicbase was ‘protection, shelter’, and thedevelopment of meaning in the case of borrowseems to have been like this: originally, toborrow something from somebody was toreceive it temporarily from them in return forsome sort of security, which would be forfeitedif the thing borrowed were not kept safe andeventually returned. Gradually, the notion ofgiving some sort of concrete security, such asmoney, weakened into a spoken pledge, whichby modern times had become simply theunspoken assumption that anything that has beenborrowed must by definition be returned. BARROW, BOROUGH, BURYbosom [OE] The immediate source of OldEnglish bōsm was West Germanic *bösm-,which also produced German busen and Dutchboezem. It has been conjectured that it may comeultimately from Indo-European *bhāghús,which perhaps meant ‘arm’ (source of Englishbought and possibly bow, as in ‘ship’s bow’); theearly occurrence of phrases like ‘in someone’sbosom’ meaning ‘clasped to someone’s chest, insomeone’s arms’ may support this. BOUGH, BOWboss English has two words boss, of which themore familiar is far more recent; both are fairlyobscure in origin. We know that boss ‘chief’ [19]comes from Dutch baas ‘master’ (it wasintroduced to American English by Dutch

otany 70settlers), but where Dutch got the word from wedo not know for certain. Boss ‘protuberance’[13] was borrowed from Old French boce, whichcomes from an assumed general Romance*botja, but there the trail goes cold.Boss-eyed [19] and boss shot ‘bungledattempt’ [19] are both usually assumed to comefrom, or at least be connected with a 19thcenturyEnglish dialect verb boss ‘bungle’, ofunknown origin.botany [17] Botany was derived from botanic, aborrowing, either directly or via Frenchbotanique, of Latin botanicus. The ultimatesource of the word was Greek botánē ‘plant,pasture’, a derivative of the verb boskein ‘feed’.both [12] The Old English word for ‘both’ wasbēgen (masculine; the feminine and neuter formwas bā), a relative of a wide range of Indo-European words denoting ‘each of two’,including the second syllables of Old Slavic obaand Latin ambō (represented in Englishambidextrous). Most Germanic languagesextended the base form by adding -d or -th (as inGerman beide ‘both’). In the case of Old Norse,this produced bāthir, the form from whichEnglish acquired both. AMBIDEXTROUSbother [18] When the word bother first turns upin English in the first half of the 18th century, itis largely in the writings of Irishmen, such asThomas Sheridan and Jonathan Swift. This hasnaturally led to speculation that the word may beof Irish origin, but no thoroughly convincingcandidate has been found. The superficiallysimilar Irish Gaelic bodhar ‘deaf, afflicted’ ismore alike in spelling than pronunciation.Another suggestion is that it may represent anIrish way of saying pother [16], an archaic wordfor ‘commotion’ which is itself of unknownorigin.bottle [14] Etymologically, a bottle is a smallbutt, or barrel. The word comes ultimately frommedieval Latin butticula, a diminutive form oflate Latin buttis ‘cask’ (whence English butt‘barrel’). It reached English via Old Frenchbotele. The 20th-century British colloquialmeaning ‘nerve, courage’ comes from rhymingslang bottle and glass ‘class’.In medieval Latin, a servant who handedwine round at meals and looked after the winecellar was a buticulārius: hence, via Old Frenchbouteillier and Anglo-Norman buteler, Englishbutler [13]. BUTLERbottom [OE] Bottom is a word with cognateswidely represented in other Indo-Europeanlanguages. It comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhudh- or *bhundh- ‘base,foundation’, source of Latin fundus, from whichEnglish gets fund, fundamental, foundation, andfounder ‘sink’. An extended form of the basepassed into Germanic as *buthm- or *buthn-,which produced German boden ‘ground, earth’and English bottom. The application of the wordto the ‘buttocks’ seems to have arisen towardsthe end of the 18th century. FOUNDATION, FUND, FUNDAMENTALbotulism [19] The fact that Latin botulus wasused metaphorically for ‘intestine’ is in this casejust a red herring; its principal meaning was‘sausage’, and it was the discovery of the foodpoisoninggerm in cooked meats, such assausages,which led to the term botulism. Earlywork on unmasking the bacterium responsible(now known as Clostridium botulinum) wasdone in Germany, and at first the German formof the word, botulismus, was used in English, butby the late 1880s we find the naturalizedbotulism fairly well established.bouclé see BUCKLEbough [OE] Bough is a word of some antiquity,dispersed far and wide throughout the Indo-European languages, but it is only in English thatit has come to mean ‘branch’. It comesultimately from an Indo-European *bhāghūs;the meaning this had is not altogether clear, butmany of its descendants, such as Greek pakhusand Sanskrit bāhús, centre semantically round‘arm’ or ‘forearm’ (a meaning element whichcan be discerned in the possibly related bosom).Germanic adopted the Indo-European form as*bōgus, with apparently a shift in significationup the arms towards the shoulders (Old Englishbōg, bōh, Old Norse bógr, and Middle Dutchboech all meant ‘shoulder’, and the Dutch wordlater came to be applied to the front of a ship –possibly the source of English bow). BOSOM, BOWboulder [13] Boulder is an abbreviated form ofthe original compound noun boulder-stone,which was a partial translation of a Scandinavianword which survives in Swedish dialectbullersten ‘large stone in a stream’. Sten is‘stone’, of course, and buller is usually identifiedwith Swedish buller ‘rumbling noise’, on thebasis presumably of the sound of a streamgurgling over rocks. Boulder first appears on itsown, outside the compound boulder-stone, in the17th century.boulevard [18] Boulevard is a frenchifiedversion of German bollwerk ‘fortification’ (thecorresponding anglicized version is bulwark).The meaning of the French word, apparentlyquite divergent from that of bulwark, comesoriginally from the practice of constructingwalkways along the top of demolished ramparts. BULWARKbounce [13] Bounce is something of a mysteryword. When it first appears in Middle English itmeans ‘hit’, and it does not acquire its modernsense ‘rebound’ until the late 16th century. Thereare similar words in other Germanic languages,such as Dutch bons ‘thump’, but there is noreason to suppose that any of them is actually thesource of the English word. Many etymologistsincline to the view that bounce is an independentonomatopoeic formation.bound English has no fewer than four separatewords bound. The only one which goes back toOld English is the adjective, meaning ‘obliged’

or ‘destined’, which comes from the pastparticiple of bind (in Old English this wasbunden, which survives partially in ‘boundenduty’). Next oldest is the adjective meaning‘going or intending to go’ [13]. Originallymeaning ‘ready’, this was borrowed from OldNorse búinn, the past participle of búa ‘prepare’,which derived from the same ultimate source(the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell, cultivate’) asbe, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, bye-law, andbyre. The final -d of bound, which appeared inthe 16th century, is probably due to associationwith bound ‘obliged’. Virtually contemporary isthe noun bound ‘border, limit’ [13]. It originallymeant ‘landmark’, and came via Anglo-Normanbounde from early Old French bodne (sourcealso of Old French borne, from which Englishgot bourn, as in Hamlet’s ‘undiscovered countryfrom whose bourn no traveller returns’). Itsultimate source was medieval Latin bodina,perhaps from a prehistoric Gaulish *bodina.Boundary [17] seems to have been formed fromthe dialectal bounder, an agent noun derivedfrom the verb bound ‘form the edge or limit of’.Finally, bound ‘leap’ [16] comes from OldFrench bondir. It originally meant ‘rebound’ inEnglish (rebound [14] began as an Old Frenchderivative of bondir), but this physical sense wasa metaphorical transference from an earliersense related to sound. Old French bondir‘resound’ came from Vulgar Latin *bombitīre‘hum’, which itself was a derivative of Latinbombus ‘booming sound’ (source of Englishbomb). BAND, BEND, BIND, BOND, BUNDLE; BE, BOOR,BOOTH, BOWER, BUILD, BURLY, BYRE,NEIGHBOUR; BOUNDARY, BOURN; BOMB,REBOUNDbounty see BEAUTYbouquet see BUSHbourgeois see BOROUGHbout see BOWboutique see APOTHECARYbovine see BEEFbow There are three distinct words bow inEnglish, although two of them, ‘arrow-shooter’[OE] and ‘bend the body’ [OE], are ultimatelyrelated. Bow for arrows comes from Old Englishboga, which also meant more generally ‘arch’;its source was Germanic *bugon, a derivative of*bug-, the short stem of *beugan. This *beuganwas also the source of Old English bōgan,antecedent of modern English bow ‘bend thebody’, while the short stem lies additionallybehind bright [OE] and bout [16]. Buxom, whichoriginally meant ‘flexible’ and ‘obedient’,derived from bow ‘bend the body’.The other bow ‘front of a boat’ [15] wasprobably borrowed from Dutch boeg, a wordrelated to English bough. BIGHT, BOUT, BUXOM; BOUGHbowdlerize [19] In 1818 Dr Thomas Bowdler(1754–1825), an English editor, published hisFamily Shakespeare, an expurgated edition ofthe plays ‘in which those words and expressionsare omitted which cannot with propriety be read71 boxaloud in a family’. This and other similarlycensored versions of the English classics led toBowdler’s name being cast as the epitome ofWhitehousian suppression. The first recordeduse of the verb was in a letter by General PThompson in 1836.bowel [13] Bowel comes via Old French buel orbouel from Latin botellus ‘small intestine,sausage’, a diminutive form of botulus‘sausage’. The term botulism ‘food poisoning’was coined on the basis that the toxinresponsible for it was originally found insausages and other preserved meats. BOTULISMbower [OE] A bower was originally simply aplace where one lived; the modern connotationof a ‘secluded arbour’ did not become fullyestablished until the 16th century. Old Englishbūr came from West and North Germanic *būrazor *būram, a derivative of the prolific base *bü-‘dwell’, which also produced be, boor, booth,bound ‘intending to go’, build, burly, byelaw,byre, and the -bour of neighbour. BE, BOOR, BOOTH, BUILD, BURLY, BYRE,NEIGHBOURbowl Bowl ‘round receptacle’ [OE] and bowl‘ball used in bowls’ [15] come from differentsources. The former (Old English bolle or bolla)comes ultimately from the Germanic base *bul-,*bal-, which was also the source of English ball,balloon, and ballot. The Middle Dutch formcorresponding to Old English bolle was bolle,which was borrowed into English in the 13thcentury as boll, initially meaning ‘bubble’ butlatterly ‘round seed-head’.The other bowl was originally simply asynonym for ball, but its modern specializeduses in the game of bowls, and the verbal usage‘deliver the ball’ in cricket and other games, hadalready begun their development in the 15thcentury. The word came via Old French boulefrom Latin bulla ‘bubble’, which also lies behindEnglish boil, bull (as in ‘papal bull’), bullion,bullet, bulletin, and bully (as in ‘bully beef’), aswell, perhaps, as bill. BALL, BALLOON, BALLOT; BOIL, BULL, BULLET,BULLETIN, BULLYbowler [19] The bowler hat was apparentlynamed after the Bowlers, a family of 19thcenturyLondon hatters who specialized in itsmanufacture. The first known reference to itcomes in the Saturday Review 21 September1861: ‘We are informed that he … wore … awhite bowler hat’.box English has two distinct words box. The‘receptacle’ [OE] probably comes from lateLatin buxis, a variant of Latin pyxis (whenceEnglish pyx ‘container for Communion bread’[14]). This was borrowed from Greek puxís,which originally meant not simply ‘box’, butspecifically ‘box made of wood’; for it was aderivative of Greek púxos, which via Latin buxushas given English box the tree [OE].Box ‘fight with the fists’ first appeared inEnglish as a noun, meaning ‘blow’ [14], nowpreserved mainly in ‘a box round the ears’. Its

oxer 72ancestry is uncertain: it may be related to MiddleDutch bōke and Danish bask ‘blow’, or it couldsimply be an obscure metaphorical extension ofbox ‘receptacle’. PYXboxer [15] Boxer is a much travelled word. In itsoriginal sense ‘fighter’ it comes of course fromthe verb box, the origins of which remainmysterious. German borrowed the name for anew breed of dog, a sort of elongated, moreelegant version of a bulldog – presumably eitherin tribute to its supposed pugnaciousness orbecause its flattened nose looked like that of anunsuccessful boxer. Then in the 1930s Englishacquired this new application back fromGerman.The use of ‘Boxer’ for the Chinese rebelsaround the turn of the 20th century whoattempted to drive out all foreigners is based ontheir Chinese name, yi hé quán, literally‘righteous harmonious fists’.boy [13] The etymology of boy has long beenproblematical, but the now most generallyaccepted view is that it is probably a reducedform of an unrecorded Anglo-Norman *abuie or*embuie ‘fettered’, from the Old French verbembuier ‘fetter’. This came from Vulgar Latin*imboiāre, a compound verb based on Latinboiae ‘leather collar, fetter’, which was adaptedfrom Greek boeiai doraí ‘ox-hides’ (hence ‘oxleatherthongs’), from bous ‘ox’ (related toEnglish bovine and cow). The apparentlyimplausible semantic connection is elucidatedby the early meaning of boy in English, whichwas ‘male servant’; according to this view, a boywas etymologically someone kept in leatherfetters, and hence a ‘slave’ or ‘servant’. Thecurrent main sense, ‘young male’, developed inthe 14th century. COWboycott [19] The word boycott sprang intogeneral use in the year 1880, to describe theactivities of the Irish Land League. This was anorganization set up in 1879 by the Irishnationalist Michael Davitt to press for agrarianreforms, rent reductions, etc. Those who did notagree with its aims, it subjected to an organizedcampaign of ostracism. One of the first to sufferfrom this was one Captain Charles CunninghamBoycott (1832–97), a British estate manager inCounty Mayo. Hence ‘to boycott’, whichbecame a buzzword of the early 1880s, wasquickly adopted by other European languages,and has remained in current use ever since.bra [20] The word bra made its first appearancein English in the mid 1930s. It is of course anabbreviation of brassiere (an early alternativeabbreviated form was bras), which wasborrowed from French around 1910. The Frenchterm originated in the 17th century, when itmeant simply ‘bodice’; it appears to have beenan alteration of an earlier, Old French braciere‘piece of armour for the arm or wrist’ (borrowedinto English as bracer in the 14th century), aderivative of bras ‘arm’.brace [14] English borrowed brace from OldFrench brace, which meant simply ‘(the lengthmeasured by) two arms’. It came from Latinbracchia, the plural of bracchium ‘arm’ (sourceof French bras ‘arm’, and also of various Englishtechnical terms, such as brachiopod [19], a typeof shellfish, literally ‘arm-foot’). The word’sultimate source was Greek brakhíōn ‘arm’,originally ‘upper arm’, which was formed fromthe comparative of brakhús ‘short’, a relative ofEnglish brief (the sense development is probablythat the upper arm was named from being‘shorter’ than the forearm). Of the rather diverserange of meanings the word has in modernEnglish, ‘pair’ derives from the original notionof ‘twoness’, while ‘strengthening or supportingstructure’ owes much to the idea of ‘clasping’,mainly contained originally in the verb brace[14], from Old French bracier ‘put one’s armsaround’ (a derivative of Old French brace). InEnglish it now only means ‘support, strengthen’,the sense ‘clasp with the arms’ being reserved toembrace [14], from Old French embracer. BRIEF, EMBRACEbracelet [15] The Latin word for ‘bracelet’ wasbracchiāle, a derivative of bracchium ‘arm’ –thus, ‘something worn on or round the arm’.This passed into Old French as bracel, whichmade a brief and unconvincing appearance inEnglish in the early 16th century. It was theFrench diminutive form, bracelet, which caughton in English. Its colloquial use as a term for‘handcuffs’ goes back to the early 19th century.bracket [16] The word bracket appears to havecome from medieval French braguette, whichmeant ‘codpiece’, a resemblance evidentlyhaving been perceived between the codpiece of apair of men’s breeches and the ‘projectingarchitectural support’ which was the originalmeaning of bracket in English. Before the wordeven arrived in English, it had quite an eventfulcareer. The French word was a diminutive formof brague, which in the plural meant ‘breeches’.It was borrowed from Old Provençal braga,which got it from Latin brāca; Latin in turnacquired it from Gaulish brāca, but the Gaulishword seems ultimately to have been of Germanicorigin, and to be related to English breeches. BREECHESbrag [13] Brag first turned up in English as anadjective, meaning ‘spirited’ or ‘boastful’; theverb and noun did not appear until the 14thcentury. Where English got the word from,however, remains a mystery. French has braguer‘brag’, but it is not clear whether Englishborrowed from French, or vice versa; Frenchdid, however, contribute the derivative bragard,which English adopted as braggart [16]. Thisprobably also formed the basis of braggadocio,an Italianate coinage first used by the poetEdmund Spenser as a personification of‘boastfulness’ in his Faerie Queene 1590.braid [OE] The ultimate source of braid wasWest and North Germanic *bregthan, whoseunderlying meaning was probably ‘make suddenjerky movements from side to side’. This was

carried through into Old English bregdan, buthad largely died out by the 16th century.However, ‘making swift side-to-sidemovements’ had early developed a specialapplication to the intertwining of strands orthreads, and it is this ‘plaiting’ sense which hassurvived. The Germanic base *bregth- was alsothe ultimate source of bridle, but thesuperficially similar embroider had a differentorigin. BRIDLE, UPBRAIDbraille [19] Braille, the system of printing inraised dots for the blind, was named after itsinventor, the French teacher Louis Braille(1809–52), himself blind from the age of three.He perfected his set of letter and number signs in1834, but the term did not appear in English untilthe early 1850s.brain [OE] Old English brægen came from aGermanic *bragnam. Its rather restricteddistribution in modern Germanic languages(apart from English brain there is only Dutchand Frisian brein) suggests that in prehistorictimes it may have been limited to the area ofNorth Germany where the Low German dialectswere spoken, but it may well have someconnection with Greek brekhmós ‘forehead’.braise [18] Braise has a wide range of rathersurprising living relatives. Its immediate sourceis French braiser, a derivative of braise ‘livecoals’ (from which English gets brazier [17] andthe breeze of breezeblock). In Old French thiswas brese, a borrowing from Germanic *brasa,which came from the same base as producedGerman braten ‘roast’ (as in bratwurst) and OldEnglish brǣdan ‘roast’. The ultimate source ofthis base was Indo-European *bhrē- ‘burn, heat’,which produced such other diverse offspring asEnglish breath, breed, brood, and probablybrawn. BRAWN, BRAZIER, BREATH, BREED, BROODbrake There are two distinct words brake inEnglish. By far the older is that meaning‘overgrown area, thicket’ [OE]. Its source isuncertain, but it has been speculated that it isultimately related to break, its original meaningperhaps having been something like ‘brokenwood’. Brake ‘decelerating mechanism’ [15]meant ‘bridle’ for stopping a horse’s progress,and may have been borrowed from MiddleDutch braeke, a word which was used for a widevariety of crushing implements but alsoapparently for a ring put through the nose of adraught ox. There may well be some ultimateconnection with break here too. BREAKbramble [OE] Bramble has several cognates inother Germanic languages, but as with manyplant-names it does not always refer to the sameplant. Old High German brāmma, for instance, isa ‘wild rose’; Old Saxon hiopbrāmio is a‘hawthorn bush’; and then there is Englishbroom. All come from a prehistoric Germanic*brāemoz ‘thorny bush’. In the case of bramble,Old English originally had brēmel, but themedial -b- had developed before the end of the73 brassOld English period. The bird-name brambling[16] is probably derived from it. BROOMbran [13] English borrowed bran from OldFrench bran, but its ultimate source is unclear.Modern French bran means ‘excrement’, and ifthis had always been a part of the word’s makeupit might have been possible to suggest a Celticorigin, perhaps a Gaulish *brenno- (Welsh braenand Irish brean both mean ‘manure’), butEnglish bran appears never to have meantanything but ‘cereal husks’. It may ultimately beconnected with burn. BURNbranch [13] Branch comes via Old Frenchbranche from late Latin branca ‘paw’, but itsultimate origins are not known. In otherRomance languages it retains more of itsoriginal Latin sense (Spanish branca ‘claw’, forexample, and Romanian brinca ‘hand, paw’).The semantic connection between ‘limb of atree’ and ‘appendage of a person or animal’ isfairly straightforward (compare BOUGH).brand [OE] A brand was originally a ‘piece ofburning wood’; the word comes from West andNorth Germanic *brandaz, a derivative of thesame base (*bran-, *bren-) as produced burn,brandy, and perhaps broil. In the 16th century itcame to be applied to an ‘(identifying) markmade with a hot iron’, which provided the basisfor the modern sense ‘particular make of goods’,a 19th-century development. A specialized (nowarchaic) sense of the word in English and otherGermanic languages was ‘sword’ (perhaps fromthe flashing sword blade’s resemblance to aburning stick). This was borrowed into VulgarLatin as *brando, and its derived verb *brandīrecame into English via Old French as brandish[14].Brand-new [16] may be from the notion ofemerging pristine from the furnace. BRANDISH, BRANDY, BROIL, BURNbrandy [17] English acquired the word for thisdistilled spirit from Dutch brandewijn, and atfirst altered and translated it minimally tobrandewine. Soon however this became brandywine, and by the mid-17th century theabbreviated brandy was in common use. TheDutch compound meant ‘distilled wine’, frombranden, which denoted ‘distil’ as well as ‘burn’(it was a derivative of brand ‘fire’, cognate withEnglish brand). BRANDbrass [OE] Related forms occur in one or twoother Germanic languages (such as Middle LowGerman bras, which meant simply ‘metal’), butessentially brass is a mystery word, of unknownancestry. Its association with ‘effrontery’ beginsin the late 16th century, prefigured byShakespeare’s ‘face of brass’ in Love’s LaboursLost 1580, and by the first instances of the use ofthe derived adjective brazen to mean‘shameless’ (the underlying notion is probablyof a face as hard as brass, and therefore unable toshow shame). Brass ‘high-ranking people’, as intop brass, comes from brass hat [19], a

at 74derogatory slang term for a senior militaryofficer with golden insignia on his cap.brat [16] The origins of brat are not altogetherclear, but it has plausibly been connected withthe English dialect brat ‘makeshift or raggedgarment’, as being the sort of apparel a rough orill-mannered child might wear. This brat firstappeared in late Old English as bratt, meaning‘cloak’, a borrowing from Old Irish bratt‘covering, mantle’.brave [15] The word which today means‘courageous’ comes from one which meant‘uncivilized, savage, wild’. English acquiredbrave via French brave, Italian bravo, andVulgar Latin *brabus from Latin barbarus,source, via a different route, of Englishbarbarous. Also from the Italian form come theexclamation bravo [18] and its derivativebravura [18], while Spanish bravada hascontributed bravado [16]. BRAVADO, BRAVO, BRAVURAbrawn [14] English acquired brawn from Anglo-Norman braun or Old French braon, whichmeant ‘flesh, muscle’, but the word’s ultimateorigins are not so much a matter of physiologicalsubstance as of suitability for cooking andeating. For the source of the French word wasGermanic *brādon ‘roast’, which can probablybe traced back to Indo-European *bhrē- ‘burn,heat’ (ancestor also of English braise, breath,breed, and brood). Brawn was thus originally a‘piece of meat suitable for roasting’. BRAISE, BREATH, BREED, BROODbreach see BREAKbread [OE] The general Germanic word for‘bread’ in prehistoric times was what we nowknow as loaf; bread probably originally meantsimply ‘(piece of) food’, but as bread was amongthe commonest foods, the word bread graduallybecame more specialized, passing via ‘piece ofbread’, ‘broken bread’, to simply ‘bread’. OldEnglish brēad and related Germanic forms suchas German brot and Swedish bröd point to ahypothetical Germanic precursor *brautham,but the word’s ultimate origins are unknown.Some etymologists have derived it from Indo-European *bhreu-, source of English brew.breadth [16] Breadth was formed in the 16thcentury by adding the suffix -th (as in length) tothe already existing noun brede ‘breadth’. Thiswas an ancient formation, directly derived inprehistoric Germanic times from *braid-, thestem of broad. It came into Old English asbrǣdu. BROADbreak [OE] Break comes via prehistoricGermanic *brekan from the Indo-European base*bhreg-, which also produced Latin frangere‘break’ (source of English fraction and fracture).Possibly related words include brake, bark‘sound made by a dog’, and brigade, while theGermanic derived noun *brecho passed intoEnglish via Old French as breach [14] (OldEnglish had the parallel form bryce, which diedout). The application of broke (originally avariant of the past participle broken) to‘insolvency’ dates from the 18th century. BARK, BRAKE, BREACH, BRIGADE, FRACTION,FRACTUREbreakfast [15] Breakfast is the first food oneeats in the morning, thereby literally ‘breaking’the night’s ‘fast’. The word is first recorded in atext of 1463: ‘Expenses in breakfast, xjd’. It is alexicalization of the phrase ‘break one’s fast’,which itself seems to have originated in the 14thcentury.breast [OE] Breast can be traced back viaprehistoric Germanic *breustam to an Indo-European base *bhrus- or *bhreus-, whose otherdescendants, including Old Saxon brustian‘bud’, Middle High German briustern ‘swell’,and Irish brú ‘abdomen, womb’, suggest that theunderlying reference contained in the word maybe to the growth and swelling of the femalebreasts. By the time it reached Old English, asbrēost, it had already developed a more general,non-sex-specific sense ‘chest’, but the meaningelement ‘mammary gland’ has remainedthroughout, and indeed over the past twohundred years ‘chest’ has grown steadily morearchaic.breath [OE] Breath comes ultimately from theIndo-European base *bhrē- ‘burn, heat’ (sourcealso of braise, breed, brood, and probablybrawn), and in its original Indo-European form*bhrētos appears to have meant something likethe ‘steam, vapour, etc given off by somethingburning or cooking’. When it reached OldEnglish, via Germanic *brǣthaz, it still meant‘smell’ or ‘exhalation’, and it was not in factuntil as late as the 14th century that this notion of‘exhalation’ came to be applied to human oranimal respiration (the main Old English wordfor ‘breath’ had been ǣthm, which German stillhas in the form atem). The verb breathe is 13thcentury. BRAISE, BRAWN, BREED, BROODbreeches [OE] The theoretical singular of thisword, breech, comes from a form which in OldEnglish was plural – brēc. Its unrecordedsingular, which would have been *brōc, camefrom a prehistoric West and North Germanic*brōks. The word’s ultimate origin is not known,although some connect it with break; and it ispossible that it was borrowed early on intoGaulish as brāca, the probable source of Englishbracket.The Old Norse descendant of the Germanicform, brók, was not only partly responsible forthe Scottish version of breeches, breeks, but isalso the source of brogue. BROGUEbreed [OE] The Old English verb brēdan camefrom West Germanic *brōdjan, a derivative of*brōd-, which produced brood. This in turn wasbased on *brō-, whose ultimate source was theIndo-European base *bhrē- ‘burn, heat’ (itsother English descendants include braise,breath, and probably brawn). The underlyingnotion of breed is thus not ‘reproduction’ so

much as ‘incubation, the warmth whichpromotes hatching’. BRAISE, BRAWN, BREATH, BROODbreeze [16] Breeze has not always connoted‘lightness’ or ‘gentleness’. Old Spanish briza, itsprobable source, meant ‘cold northeast wind’,and that is the meaning it originally had inEnglish. The word was picked up throughEnglish-Spanish contact in Central and SouthAmerica, and the fact that on the Atlantic coastof the area the onshore winds were from the eastand northeast led in the 17th century to breezebeing applied to any cool wind from the sea (asin ‘sea breezes’), and gradually to any lightwind. The adjective breezy perhaps retains moreof the word’s earlier ‘cold’ connotations.The breeze [18] of breezeblock is acompletely different word, meaning ‘cinders’,and comes from French braise ‘live coals’,source also of English braise and brazier.breviary see BRIEFbrevity see BRIEFbrew [OE] The ancestral meaning of brew hasbasically to do with ‘heat’. It comes from anIndo-European base *bhreu- or *bhru, which isalso the source of Latin fervēre ‘boil’, fromwhich we get fervent, ferment, and the secondsyllable of comfrey. Broth and possibly breadcan be traced back to the same Indo-Europeanbase, and some etymologists have linked it withburn. To ‘brew’ was thus originally somethinglike ‘make a drink by boiling’, ‘fermentation’being a secondary but connected connotation. BROTH, COMFREY, FERMENT, FERVENTbriar There are two distinct words briar inEnglish, both of which can also be spelled brier,and as their meanings are fairly similar, they areoften confused. The older [OE] is a name givento the wild rose, although in fact this usage is asrecent as the 16th century, and in Old Englishtimes the word was used generally for anyprickly bush, including particularly the bramble.The Old English form was brēr, but it is notknown where this came from. The other briar,‘wild heather’ [19], is the one whose root is usedfor making briar pipes. The word comes fromFrench bruyère, and was spelled bruyer whenfirst introduced into English in the third quarterof the 19th century; the current spelling is due toassimilation to the other briar. The French formcomes from Gallo-Roman *brūcaria, aderivative of *brūcus, which was borrowed fromGaulish brūko. It appears to be related to theGreek word for ‘heather’, ereikē, from whichEnglish gets the technical botanical termericaceous [19].bribe [14] The origin of bribe is obscure, and itssemantic history is particularly involved. Theword first turns up in Old French, as a nounmeaning ‘piece of bread, especially one given toa beggar’. From this, the progression of sensesseems to have been to a more general ‘alms’;then to the ‘practice of living on alms’; then,pejoratively, to simple ‘begging’. From there itwas a short step to ‘stealing’, and that was themeaning the verb had when first recorded in75 bridleEnglish. The shift to the current application tofinancial corruption occurred in the 16th century,originally, it seems, in the context of judges andothers in authority who exacted, or ‘stole’,money in exchange for favours such as lenientsentences.bric-a-brac [19] Bric-a-brac first appears inEnglish in William Thackeray’s The adventuresof Philip 1862: ‘all the valuables of the house,including, perhaps, JJ’s bricabrac, cabinets,china, and so forth’. It comes from the obsoleteFrench phrase à bric et à brac ‘at random’; thebrac element is a fanciful alteration of bric‘piece’.brick [15] For what is today such a commonphenomenon, the word brick made a surprisinglylate entry into the English language. But ofcourse until the later Middle Ages, bricks werevery little used in Britain. It was not until themid-15th century that they were introduced byFlemish builders, and they appear to havebrought the word, Middle Dutch bricke, withthem. The ultimate source of the word is notclear, although some have tried to link it withbreak.bride [OE] Bride goes back via Old English brdto Germanic *brūthiz, and has a wide range ofrelations in other Germanic languages(including German braut, Dutch bruid, andSwedish brud). All mean ‘woman beingmarried’, so the word has shown remarkablesemantic stability; but where it came fromoriginally is not known. In modern Englishbridal is purely adjectival, but it originated in theOld English noun brdealu ‘wedding feast’,literally ‘bride ale’.bridegroom see GROOMbridge [OE] A distant relative of bridge, OldSlavic bruvino ‘beam’, coupled with themeaning of the cognate Old Norse bryggja‘gangway’, suggest that the underlyingetymological meaning of the word is not‘spanning structure’ but ‘road or structure madeof logs’. The Norse word, incidentally, producedthe Scottish and northern English brig ‘bridge’.The card game bridge is first unambiguouslymentioned in English in the 1880s, and its namehas no connection with the ‘spanning’ bridge.The earliest recorded form of the word is biritch.Its source has never been satisfactorilyexplained, but since a game resembling bridge isknown to have been played for many centuries inthe Middle East, it could well be that the nameoriginated in that area. One suggestion putforward is that it came from an unrecordedTurkish *bir-ü, literally ‘one-three’ (one handbeing exposed during the game while the otherthree are concealed).bridle [OE] The Old English word was brīdel,which came from the same source (Germanic*bregd-) as braid. The basic meaning element ofthis was something like ‘pull or twitch jerkilyfrom side to side’, so the application to bridle,which one pulls on with reins to one side or theother to control the horse’s direction, is fairly

ief 76clear. The metaphorical verbal sense ‘takeoffence’ dates from the 18th century. BRAIDbrief [14] Brief comes via Old French bref fromLatin brevis ‘short’, which is probably related toGreek brakhús ‘short’, from which English getsthe combining form brachy-, as inbrachycephalic. Latin produced the nominalderivative breve ‘letter’, later ‘summary’, whichcame into English in the 14th century in thesense ‘letter of authority’ (German has briefsimply meaning ‘letter’). The notion of an‘abbreviation’ or ‘summary’ followed in the nextcentury, and the modern legal sense ‘summary ofthe facts of a case’ developed in the 17th century.This formed the basis of the verbal sense ‘informand instruct’, which is 19th-century. Briefs‘underpants’ are 20th-century.The musical use of the noun breve began inthe 15th century when, logically enough, itmeant ‘short note’. Modern usage, in which itdenotes the longest note, comes from Italianbreve. Other derivatives of brief include brevity[16], introduced into English via Anglo-Normanbrevete; abbreviate [15], from late Latinabbreviāre (which is also the source, via OldFrench abregier, of abridge [14]); and breviary‘book of church services’ [16], from Latinbreviārium. ABBREVIATE, ABRIDGE, BREVITYbrigade [17] Brigade is one of a small set ofwords (others are brigand and brigantine) whichgo back to Italian briga ‘strife’. It is not clearwhere this came from; theories have centredeither on a Celtic origin, comparing Old Irishbrig ‘strength’, or on a derivation from the Indo-European base *bhreg-, which produced Englishbreak. Either way, the noun briga produced theverb brigare ‘contend, brawl’, from which inturn came the noun brigata. This originallymeant simply ‘crowd or gang of people’, butsoon developed the special sense ‘militarycompany’. English acquired the word via Frenchbrigade. Meanwhile, the present participle of theItalian verb had given brigante, which Englishborrowed via Old French as brigand [14], andthe diminutive brigantino ‘fighting ship’, sourceof English brigantine [16] (abbreviated in the18th century to brig). Brigadier is a 17th-centuryadoption, from French. BRIG, BRIGAND, BRIGANTINEbright [OE] Bright is a word of ancient origins,going back to Indo-European *bhereg-, whichhas produced a range of words with the samegeneral meaning in a range of Indo-Europeanlanguages (for example Sanskrit bhrājate‘shine’). The Germanic derivative was*berkhtaz, which produced a number ofoffspring amongst the early Germaniclanguages, including Old English beorht, OldHigh German beraht, and Old Norse bjartr, allnow lost except English bright.brilliant [17] Brilliant comes from Frenchbrilliant, the present participle of briller ‘shine’.French borrowed the verb from Italian brillare,but it is not altogether clear where Italian got itfrom. One theory is that it came from VulgarLatin *bērillāre, a derivative of bērillus‘precious stone’ (whence English beryl [13]).The source of the Latin noun was Greekbérullos, which may have come from one of theIndo-European languages of India (Sanskritvaidūrya ‘cat’s-eye’ has been compared).brim [13] Brim appears out of the blue at thebeginning of the 13th century, meaning ‘edge,border’, with no apparent ancestor in OldEnglish. It is usually connected with MiddleHigh German brem and Old Norse barmr, both‘edge’, which would point to a prehistoricGermanic source *berm- or *barm-. It has beenconjectured that this could derive from the stem*ber- (source of English bear ‘carry’), and thatthe etymological meaning of brim is thus ‘raisedborder’. The modern sense ‘rim of a hat’ is firstrecorded in Shakespeare. BEARbrimstone see SULPHURbring [OE] Bring is an ancient verb, which hascome down to us, with great semantic stability,from its Indo-European source *bhrengk-. It iswidespread in the Germanic languages, apartfrom the Scandinavian ones (German hasbringen, Dutch brengen), but outside Germanicit seems to have flourished only in the Celticlanguages (Welsh has hebrwng ‘accompany’).brisk see BRUSQUEbrittle [14] Brittle probably comes from aGermanic stem *brut- ‘break’, which hadseveral descendants in Old English (includingthe verbs brēotan and gebryttan ‘break’) that didnot survive the Norman Conquest. It came in amore than usual profusion of spellings in MiddleEnglish (bretil, brutil, etc), not all of which maybe the same word; brottle, for instance, currentfrom the 14th to the 16th century, may well havecome from the aforementioned Old Englishbrēotan. There is also the synonymous brickle[15], which survived dialectally into the 20thcentury; this is related ultimately to break.broach [14] The original meaning of broach was‘pierce’, and it came from a noun meaning‘spike’. The word’s ultimate source was theLatin adjective brocchus ‘pointed, projecting’,which in Vulgar Latin came to be used as a noun,*broca ‘spike’. This passed into Old French asbroche, meaning ‘long needle’ and also ‘spit forroasting’. English first borrowed the word in the13th century, as brooch, and then took it overagain in the 14th century in the above quotedFrench meanings. The nominal senses have noweither died out or are restricted to technicalcontexts, but the verb, from the Vulgar Latinderivative *broccare, remains. From ‘pierce’, itsmeaning became specifically ‘tap a barrel’,which in the 16th century was appliedmetaphorically to ‘introduce a subject’.In French, the noun broche has produced adiminutive brochette ‘skewer’, borrowed intoEnglish in the 18th century; while a derivative ofthe verb brocher ‘stitch’ has been brochure,literally ‘a few pages stitched together’, alsoacquired by English in the 18th century. A

further relative is broccoli [17], plural of Italianbroccolo ‘cabbage sprout’, a diminutive ofbrocco ‘shoot’, from Vulgar Latin *brocca. BROCCOLI, BROCHURE, BROOCHbroad [OE] Broad’s close relatives arewidespread in the Germanic languages (Germanbreit, for example, Dutch breed, and Swedishbred), pointing to a prehistoric Germanicancestor *braithaz, but no trace of the word isfound in any non-Germanic Indo-Europeanlanguage. The original derived noun was brede,which was superseded in the 16th century bybreadth.The 20th-century American slang noun use‘woman’ may come from an obsolete Americancompound broadwife, short for abroadwife,meaning ‘woman away from her husband’; thiswas a term applied to female slaves in relation totheir new ‘masters’. BREADTHbroadcast [18] Broadcast was originally anadjective and adverb, and meant literally‘scattered widely’, particularly in the context ofsowing seeds. A metaphorical sense developedin the late 18th and 19th centuries (WilliamStubbs, in his Constitutional History of England1875 writes of ‘broadcast accusations’), and theword was ready in the early 1920s forapplication to the transmission of radio signals(the first actual record of such a use is as a verb,in the April 1921 issue of Discovery: ‘The[radio] station at Poldhu is used partly forbroadcasting Press and other messages toships’).broccoli see BROACHbrochurebrochure see BROACHbrogue [16] A brogue was originally arudimentary sort of shoe worn in the more wildand woolly Celtic corners of the British Isles; theterm does not seem to have been applied totoday’s ‘stout country walking shoe’ until theearly 20th century. The word, Irish and ScotsGaelic brōg, comes from Old Norse brók ‘legcovering’, which is related to English breeches;the relationship between ‘leg covering’ and ‘footcovering’ is fairly close, and indeed from the17th to the 19th century brogue was used for‘leggings’.It is not clear whether brogue ‘Irish accent’[18] is the same word; if it is, it presumablycomes from some such notion as ‘the speech ofthose who wear brogues’. BREECHESbroker [14] Broker has no connection with thepast tense of break. It comes from Anglo-Norman brocour ‘small trader’, but its ultimateorigin is not clear. A variant Anglo-Normanform abrocour has fuelled speculation as to alink with Spanish alboroque ‘sealing of abargain’ and Portuguese alborcar ‘barter’,which are presumably of Arabic origin (the alrepresentingthe Arabic definite article); butother etymologists have sought to link the wordwith broach, as if the underlying sense were‘someone who sells wine from [that is, bybroaching] the cask’, and hence any ‘retailer’.77 brookbromide [19] Potassium bromide is used as asedative, and it was that which inspired theAmerican humorist Gelett Burgess’s book AreYou A Bromide? (1906), in which hemetaphoricized bromide as a ‘dull conventionalperson’. In British English it is the more abstractfigurative sense ‘trite or conventional remark’that has caught on. Bromide was based onbromine [19], the name of a liquid element,which in turn was formed from French brome.The element was so christened, from Greekbrōmos ‘stench’, because of its highly irritantand unpleasant smell.bronze [18] Until the 18th century, copper alloyswere lumped together under the general termbrass. Bronze seems originally to have beenintroduced as a specialist term for ancientartefacts made from the metal, but the moderndistinction tends to be between brass (alloy ofcopper and zinc) and bronze (cooper and tin).The word comes via French from Italian bronzo,but its ultimate source is not clear. Perhaps thelikeliest candidate is Persian birinj, pirinj‘copper’, but it has also been speculated that itcomes via medieval Greek brontésion frommedieval Latin aes brundisium, literally ‘brassof Brindisi’, a port on the Adriatic coast of Italywhere in antiquity bronze mirrors were made.brooch [13] English acquired brooch from OldFrench broche, a source it returned to a centurylater to borrow broach. The French word meant‘long needle’, and at first a brooch was simply adecorative pin whose main function was tofasten a garment. Over the centuries thedecorative role has replaced the practical one. BROACHbrood [OE] Like breed, brood came from aprehistoric Germanic base *brōd-, whoseultimate source was Indo-European *bhrē-‘burn, heat’ (its other English descendantsinclude braise, breath, and probably brawn).The underlying notion of brood is thus not somuch ‘reproduction’ as ‘incubation, the warmththat promotes hatching’. The verbal sense‘worry’ developed in the 18th century. BRAISE, BRAWN, BREATH, BREEDbrook [OE] There are two distinct words brookin English. The one meaning ‘stream’ iscomparatively isolated; it apparently hasrelatives in other Germanic languages (such asGerman bruch), but they mean ‘swamp’, andthere the story ends. The now rather archaic verbbrook, however, meaning ‘stand for, tolerate’,can be traced right back to an Indo-Europeanbase *bhrug-, from which English also gets fruitand frugal. Its Germanic descendant was *brūk-‘use’, which has given rise to a range of currentverbs in the Germanic languages, includingGerman brauchen ‘use, need’. The Old Englishversion was brūcan, which also meant ‘use’. Aparticular application to food (‘use’ in the sense‘eat’, and later ‘be able to digest’) started todevelop in the late Old English period, and bythe 16th century this had come to be used moregenerally (rather like stomach) for ‘tolerate’. FRUGAL, FRUIT

oom 78broom [OE] Broom was originally the name ofthe yellow-flowered bush; its application to thelong-handled brush did not come about until the15th century (the underlying notion is of a brushmade from broom twigs tied to a handle). Theplant-name occurs throughout the Germaniclanguages, but it is applied to quite a wide rangeof plants: Old High German brāmma, forinstance, is a ‘wild rose’; Old Saxon hiopbrāmiois a ‘hawthorn bush’; and English brambleprobably comes from the same source. BRAMBLEbroth [OE] Broth comes ultimately from theIndo-European base *bhreu- or *bhru- ‘heat,boil’, which also produced brew and fervent.Etymologically, therefore, it means ‘liquid inwhich something has been boiled’. The notion of‘heating’ has now disappeared, but it seems tohave survived into the modern English period, asis shown by such compounds as snow-broth‘melted snow’, first recorded at the end of the16th century.The Germanic form *brotham was borrowedinto Vulgar Latin as *brodo, which came via OldFrench broez into 13th-century English as broysor browes. This survives in Scottish English asbrose ‘type of porridge’, as in Atholl brose. BREW, FERVENT, IMBRUEbrothel [14] Originally, brothel was a generalterm of abuse for any worthless or despisedperson (John Gower, in his Confessio Amantis1393, writes: ‘Quoth Achab then, there is one, abrothel, which Micheas hight [who is calledMicheas]’); it was a derivative of the Old Englishadjective brothen ‘ruined, degenerate’, whichwas originally the past participle of the verbbrēothan ‘deteriorate’ (possibly a relative ofbrēotan ‘break’, which may be connected withbrittle). In the late 15th century we have the firstevidence of its being applied specifically to a‘prostitute’. Thence came the compoundbrothel-house, and by the late 16th century thishad been abbreviated to brothel in its currentsense.brother [OE] The word brother is widespreadthroughout the Indo-European languages. TheIndo-European form was *bhrāter, from whichare descended, among many others, Latin frāter(as in English fraternal), Greek phrátēr, Sanskritbhrātr, and Breton breur. Its Germanicdescendant was *brōthar, which, as well asEnglish brother, has produced German bruder,Dutch broeder, and Swedish broder. BUDDY, FRATERNAL, PALbrougham [19] A brougham was a fourwheeledone-horse carriage. It was named afterHenry Peter Brougham, first Baron Broughamand Vaux (1778–1868), British Whig politician,jurist, and educational reformer, who designedthe original brougham in 1838.brow [OE] In Old English, brow meant ‘eyelash’,but there seems little doubt, from related wordsin other languages (such as Sanskrit bhrūs andGreek ophrus), that the original underlyingsense of the word is ‘eyebrow’, and thisresurfaced, or was recreated, in English in the11th century. Its ultimate source is Indo-European *bhrūs, which passed via Germanicbrūs into Old English as brū.brown [OE] In Old English, brown meant, rathervaguely, ‘dark’; it does not seem to have becomea definite colour word until the 13th century. Itcomes from West and North Germanic *brūnaz,which probably goes back ultimately to the sameIndo-European source (*bheros) as bear,etymologically the ‘brown [that is, dark]animal’. An additional meaning of brown in Oldand Middle English, shared also by relatedwords such as Old High German brūn, was‘shining, glistening’, particularly as applied toweapons (it survives in fossilized form in the oldballad Cospatrick, recorded in 1802: ‘my bonnybrown sword’); Old French took it over when itborrowed brun from Germanic, and it is the basisof the verb burnir ‘polish’, from which Englishgets burnish [14]. Another contribution made byFrench brun to English is the femininediminutive form brunette [17]. An earlier OldFrench variant burnete had previously beenborrowed by English in the 12th century asburnet, and since the 14th century has beenapplied to a genus of plants of the rose family.The term burnet moth is first recorded in 1842. BEAR, BRUNETTE, BURNISHbrowse [16] Although the noun has now largelydied out, browse was originally both a verb anda noun, and appears to come from Old Frenchbroust, brost ‘young shoots, twigs’ (hence theverb meant originally ‘feed on such shoots’).The source of the French word is not clear, but itis probably ultimately Germanic; a certainsimilarity in form and meaning has suggested aconnection with the Old Saxon verb brustian‘bud’ which, if it were so, would mean thatbrowse is related to breast. The modernfigurative sense, applied to shops, libraries, etcseems to be 19th-century.bruin see BEARbruisebruise [OE] Modern English bruise is a blend ofwords from two sources. The main contributor isOld English brsan, which as well as ‘bruise’meant ‘crush to pieces’, and is related to Latinfrustum ‘piece broken or cut off’. But then in theearly Middle English period we begin to see theinfluence of the unrelated Old French verbbruisier ‘break’ and its Anglo-Norman formbruser (which in modern French has becomebriser). Their main effect has been on thespelling of the word, although the use of bruisefor ‘break’ from the 14th to the 17th centuryseems to have been due to French influence too,rather than a survival of the Old Englishmeaning: ‘Had his foot once slipped … he wouldhave been bruised in pieces’, The mostdangerous and memorable adventure of RichardFerris 1590. Bruiser ‘large rough man’originated in an 18th-century term for a prizefighter. DÉBRISbrunette see BROWNbrush [14] It is not clear whether brush forsweeping and brush as in brushwood are the

same word, although both appeared in thelanguage at about the same time, from a Frenchsource. Brush ‘broken branches’ comes frombrousse, the Anglo-Norman version of OldFrench broce, which goes back to an unrecordedVulgar Latin *bruscia. Brush for sweeping, onthe other hand, comes from Old French broisseor brosse. It is tempting to conclude that this is avariant of Old French broce, particularly in viewof the plausible semantic link that brushwood(cut twigs, etc) bundled together and tied to ahandle makes a serviceable brush (that is howbroom came to mean ‘brush’). The verb brush‘move fast or heedlessly’ comes from OldFrench brosser ‘dash through undergrowth’, aderivative of broce; its frequent modernconnotation of ‘touching in passing’ comes fromthe other brush.brusque [17] Brusque comes ultimately fromthe name of an unpleasant spiky shrub, thebutcher’s broom, which instead of normalbranches and leaves has twigs flattened into aleaflike shape, with at their ends stiff spines. Theterm for this in Vulgar Latin was *bruscum,which, passing into Italian as brusco, came to beused as an adjective, meaning ‘sharp, tart’.French borrowed it as brusque ‘lively, fierce’,and passed it on to English. It seems likely thatEnglish brisk [16] is derived from it. BRISKbrute [15] The primordial meaning of bruteappears to be ‘heavy’. It comes from Latinbrūtus ‘heavy’, and it has been speculated that itis related to Latin grāvis ‘heavy’ (from whichEnglish gets grave, gravity, and grieve). In Latinthe sense ‘heavy’ had already progressed to‘stupid’, and it later developed to ‘of the loweranimals’. It was with this meaning that the wordreached English via French. Connotations of‘cruelty’ do not begin to appear until the 17thcentury. Brut meaning ‘very dry’ in relation tochampagne is a late 19th-century borrowing ofthe French adjectival form brut, literally ‘rough’.bubble [14] Several Germanic languages havewords that sound like, and mean the same as,bubble – Swedish bubla, for instance, and Dutchbobbel – but all are relatively modern, and thereis no evidence to link them to a common source.As likely as not, the whole family of bubblewords represents ultimately an attempt tolexicalize the sound of bubbling, by blowingthrough nearly closed lips.buccaneer [17] A buccaneer was originally‘someone who dried meat on a wooden frameover a fire’. The word comes ultimately frommukem, the term for such a frame in the Tupilanguage of the Caribbean islands, which in themouths of early French settlers became boucan(the Haitian term was barbacoa, from which weget barbecue). French boucanier thus came to beapplied in the 17th century to a woodsman in theWest Indies who prepared his food in such away; such men were fairly lawless, and took topiratical ways, bringing their name with them inthe late 17th century.79 buckwheatbuck [OE] Old English had two related wordswhich have coalesced into modern English buck:bucca ‘male goat’ and buc ‘male deer’. Both goback to a prehistoric Germanic stem *buk-, andbeyond that probably to an Indo-Europeansource. The 18th-century meaning ‘dashingfellow’ probably comes ultimately from therelated Old Norse bokki, a friendly term for amale colleague, which was originally adopted inEnglish in the 14th century meaning simply‘fellow’. The colloquial American sense ‘dollar’comes from an abbreviation of buckskin, whichwas used as a unit of trade with the NativeAmericans in Frontier days. BUTCHERbucket [13] We first encounter bucket in theAnglo-Norman forms buket and buquet. It is notentirely clear where this came from, but it maybe a derivative of Old English būc. The primaryunderlying sense of this was ‘something bulgingor swelling’, and hence it meant not only ‘jug’but also ‘belly’ (related are German bauch andSwedish buk ‘paunch’). It survived dialectallyinto modern English as bowk, meaning ‘milkpail’and ‘large tub used in coal mines’. Thebucket of ‘kick the bucket’ was originally a beamfrom from which slaughtered animals werehung; it is probably a separate word, from OldFrench buquet ‘balance’.buckle [14] English acquired buckle via OldFrench boucla from Latin buccula ‘cheek strapof a helmet’. This was a diminutive form of Latinbucca ‘cheek’ (source of French bouche‘mouth’), which gave English the anatomicalterm buccal ‘of the cheeks’ [19], and some havespeculated is related to English pock. The notionof ‘fastening’ implicit in the Latin word carriedthrough into English.As well as ‘cheek strap’, Latin buccula meant‘boss in the middle of a shield’. Old Frenchboucle adopted this sense too, and created thederivative boucler, originally an adjective,meaning (of a shield) ‘having a central boss’.English borrowed this as buckler ‘small roundshield’ [13].The verb buckle was created from the Englishnoun in the late 14th century, but the sense‘distort’, which developed in the 16th century,comes from French boucler, which had come tomean ‘curl, bulge’. Also from the French verb isbouclé ‘yarn with irregular loops’ [19]. BOUCLÉ, BUCKLERbuckram [14] Etymologically, buckram‘stiffened cloth’ is cloth from Bokhara, a city incentral Asia (now the Uzbek city of Bukhara),from where in the Middle Ages cloth wasexported to Europe. And not just any cloth:originally buckram denoted a high-qualitycotton or linen fabric, and it was only in the 15thcentury that the word came to be applied to acoarser textile. It came into English from OldFrench boquerant.buckwheat [16] Buckwheat has no connectionwith male deer. The buck- element is related tothe English word beech, and the name comesfrom the resemblance of buckwheat (the seeds of

ud 80a plant of the dock family) to the three-sidedseeds of the beech tree. The word was actuallyborrowed from Middle Dutch boecweite,meaning literally ‘beechwheat’. BEECHbud [14] Bud is something of a mystery word. Itappears in the late 14th century, with no apparentEnglish ancestors. Various suggestions havebeen put forward as to its origin, including OldFrench boter ‘push forward, thrust’ (a distantrelative of English button). Similarities have alsobeen noted to Old English budd ‘beetle’ andSanskrit bhūri ‘abundant’. But the questionremains open. The American colloquial form ofaddress bud is short for buddy [19], probablyitself an alteration of brother.budge see BULLbudgerigar [19] When the first English settlersarrived at Port Jackson (now Sydney Harbour) inthe late 18th century, they heard the localAborigines referring to a small green parrot-likebird as budgerigar. In the local language, thismeant literally ‘good’ (budgeri) ‘cockatoo’(gar). The English language had acquired a newword, but to begin with it was not too sure howto spell it; the first recorded attempt, inLeichhardt’s Overland Expedition 1847, wasbetshiregah. The abbreviated budgie is 1930s.budget [15] Originally, a budget was a ‘pouch’.English got the word from Old French bougette,which was a diminutive form of bouge ‘leatherbag’ (from which we get bulge). This came fromLatin bulga, which may have been of Gaulishorigin (medieval Irish bolg ‘bag’ has beencompared). The word’s financial connotationsarose in the 18th century, the original notionbeing that the government minister concernedwith treasury affairs opened his budget, orwallet, to reveal what fiscal measures he had inmind. The first reference to the expressionoccurs in a pamphlet called The budget opened1733 directed against Sir Robert Walpole: ‘Andhow is this to be done? Why by an Alterationonly of the present Method of collecting thepublick Revenues … So then, out it comes atlast. The Budget is opened; and our StateEmpirick hath dispensed his packets by his ZanyCouriers through all parts of the Kingdom … Ido not pretend to understand this Art of politicalLegerdemain’. The earliest recorded use of theword non-satirically in this sense seems to befrom 1764. BULGEbuff [16] Buff originally meant ‘buffalo’; it waspresumably an alteration of the French wordbuffe ‘buffalo’. That sense had died out by theearly 18th century, but since then the word hasundergone a bizarre series of semantic changes.First, it came to mean ‘leather’, originally frombuffalo hides, but later from ox hides. This wascommonly used in the 16th and 17th centuriesfor making military uniforms, so be in buff cameto mean ‘be in the army’. Then in the 17thcentury the associations of ‘hide’ and ‘skin’ ledto the expression in the buff ‘naked’. The colourof buff leather, a sort of dull yellowish-brown,led to the word’s adoption in the 18th century asa colour term. In the 19th century, soft buff orsuede leather was used for the small pads orwheels used by silversmiths, watchmakers, etcfor polishing: hence the verb buff ‘polish’. Andfinally, in the 1820s New York City volunteerfiremen were known as ‘buffs’, from the colourof their uniforms; thus anyone who was avolunteer or enthusiastic for something becameknown as a buff (as in ‘film buff’).The buff of blind-man’s buff is a differentword. It meant ‘blow, punch’, and was borrowedin the 15th century from Old French buffe,source also of English buffet ‘blow’ [13]. Theterm blind-man’s buff is first recorded around1600, some what later than its now obsoletesynonym hoodman blind. BUFFALO, BUFFETbuffalo [16] English probably acquired buffalofrom Portuguese bufalo, originally naming the‘water buffalo’, Bubalis bubalis, a large oxlikeanimal of Asia and Africa, and subsequentlyextended to the ‘Cape buffalo’ of South Africa,Syncerus caffer. The Portuguese word camefrom late Latin bufalus, an alteration of Latinbubalus, which was borrowed from Greekboúbalos. The Greek word, which seems to havenamed a type of African gazelle, may have beenformed from bous ‘ox’.The application of the word to the NorthAmerican bison, which is still regarded as‘incorrect’, dates from the late 18th century. BUFFbuffer Neither buffer ‘fellow’ [18] nor buffer‘shock absorber’ [19] can be traced back withany certainty to a source, but the likeliestconjecture is that they both come(independently) from an obsolete English verbbuff, which was probably originally (like puff)imitative of the sound of blowing or breathingout. The earliest recorded sense of this, in thelate 13th century, was ‘stammer’, and so thehuman buffer may originally have been a‘stammerer’. By the 16th century we find theverb being used in the sense ‘make the sound ofsomething soft being hit’, which is a likelysource of buffer ‘shock absorber’.bug [14] Originally, bug meant ‘somethingfrightening’ – and in fact one of the earliestknown uses of the word was for what we wouldnow call a ‘scare-crow’. It is one of a set ofwords (others are bogle and perhaps bugaboo)for alarming or annoying phenomena, usuallysupernatural, whose interrelationship andultimate source have never been adequatelyexplained (see BOGEY).Bug ‘insect’ [16] is probably the same word,although it has also been connected with OldEnglish budd ‘beetle’. The meanings ‘defect’(from the 19th century) and ‘germ’ and ‘hiddenmicrophone’ (both 20th-century) all developedfrom ‘insect’.bugbear [16] Early references to bugbearsuggest that it was a sort of bug – ‘frighteningcreature’ – conjured up to frighten naughtychildren. It is usually assumed that the second

element of the word simply represents theanimal ‘bear’, and that the frightening creaturewas represented as being in the shape of a bear.The modern sense ‘source of annoyance’developed in the late 19th century.bugger [16] The Bulgarians, belonging from theearly Christian era to the Eastern OrthodoxChurch, were regarded by Western Europeans asheretics. Thus it was that the Latin wordBulgarus came to be applied generically to anyheretic, and eventually specifically to theAlbigenses, a Catharistic sect in southern Francein the 11th to 13th centuries. It passed via OldFrench bougre and Middle Dutch bugger intoEnglish, acquiring along the way bigotedassociations of heresy with anal intercourse. Theweakened use of the word as a general term ofabuse dates from the early 18th century.bugle [14] Bugle originally meant ‘buffalo’ or‘bull’. It comes via Old French bugle from Latinbūculus, a diminutive form of bos ‘ox’ (a relativeof English cow). It was used from the early 14thcentury in the compound bugle-horn, denoting abull’s horn used either as a drinking vessel or asa hunting horn, and it was not long before bugletook on a separate life of its own in the ‘musicalhorn’ sense. COWbuild [OE] In common with a wide range of otherEnglish words, including bower, booth, and the– bour of neighbour, build comes ultimatelyfrom the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’. Aderivative of this, Germanic *buthlam, passedinto Old English as bold, which meant ‘house’;the verb formed from this, byldan, thusoriginally meant ‘construct a house’, and onlygradually broadened out in meaning toencompass any sort of structure. BOOR, BOOTH, BOWER, BUILD, BYRE,NEIGHBOURbulbulb [16] Bulb can be traced back to Greekbólbos, which was a name for various plantswith a rounded swelling underground stem. In itspassage via Latin bulbus to English it was oftenapplied specifically to the ‘onion’, and that wasits original meaning in English. Its application tothe light bulb, dating from the 1850s, is anextension of an earlier 19th-century sense ‘bulbshapedswelling in a glass tube’, used from the1830s for thermometer bulbs.bulge [13] Etymologically, bulge and budget arethe same word, and indeed when English firstacquired bulge it was as a noun, with, likebudget, the sense ‘pouch’. It came from OldFrench bouge ‘leather bag’, a descendant ofLatin bulga, which may have been of Gaulishorigin (medieval Irish bolg ‘bag’ has beencompared). The word’s present-dayconnotations of ‘swelling’ and ‘protruding’presumably go back to an early association of‘pouches’ with ‘swelling up when filled’(compare the case of bellows and belly, whichoriginally meant ‘bag’, and came from a sourcewhich meant ‘swell’), but curiously, apart froman isolated instance around 1400 when bulge isused for a ‘hump on someone’s back’, there is no81 bullevidence for this meaning in English before the17th century. Additionally, from the 17th to the19th centuries bulge was used for the ‘bottom ofa ship’s hull’; it has now been superseded in thissense by bilge [15], which may well be a variantform. BILGE, BUDGETbulimia [19] The condition now called ‘bulimia’– in which bouts of overeating are followed bybouts of purging – was recognized and so namedin the 1970s. The word used to name it, however,is much more ancient than that. It goes back toGreek boulimia, which meant ‘ravenous hunger’(it was formed from limos ‘hunger’, with theprefix bou-; this may well have been adaptedfrom bous ‘ox’, in which case the word wouldhave meant literally ‘the hunger of an ox’). Itoriginally came into English, via medieval Latin,in the late 14th century, and for many hundredyears its standard form was bulimy. It wasapplied to a sort of hunger so extreme that itcould be categorized as an illness.bulk [14] Formally, bulk comes from Old Norsebúlki, which meant ‘cargo’ or ‘heap’: theoriginal connotation of the English word in thissense was thus of goods loaded loose, in heaps,rather than neatly packed up. That is the sourceof the phrase in bulk. However, a certainsimilarity in form and meaning to the Englishword bouk ‘belly’ (from Old English būc, andultimately a descendant of West and NorthGermanic *būkaz) led to the two being confused,so that bulk was used for ‘belly’, or moregenerally ‘body’. Modern connotations of ‘greatsize’ seem to be a blend of these two.The bulk of bulkhead [15] is a different word;it may come from Old Norse bálkr ‘partition’.bull There are three distinct words bull inEnglish. The oldest is the animal name, whichfirst appears in late Old English as bula. Relatedforms occur in other Germanic languages,including German bulle and Dutch bul. Thediminutive bullock is also recorded in late OldEnglish. The second bull is ‘edict’ [13], as in‘papal bull’. This comes from medieval Latinbulla ‘sealed document’, a development of anearlier sense ‘seal’, which can be traced back toclassical Latin bulla ‘bubble’ (source also ofEnglish bowl, as in the game of bowls; of boil‘heat liquid’; of budge [16], via Old Frenchbouger and Vulgar Latin *bullicāre ‘bubble up,boil’; and probably of bill ‘statement ofcharges’). And finally there is ‘ludicrous or selfcontradictorystatement’ [17], usually now in thephrase Irish bull, whose origins are mysterious;there may be a connection with the MiddleEnglish noun bul ‘falsehood’ and the 15th-to17th-century verb bull ‘mock, cheat’, which hasbeen linked with Old French boler or bouller‘deceive’.The source of the modern colloquial senses‘nonsense’ and ‘excessive discipline’ is notclear. Both are early 20th-century, and closelyassociated with the synonymous andcontemporary bullshit, suggesting a consciouslink with bull the animal. In meaning, however,

ullet 82the first at least is closer to bull ‘ludicrousstatement’.Bull’s-eye ‘centre of a target’ and ‘largesweet’ are both early 19th-century. Bulldoze isfrom 1870s America, and was apparentlyoriginally applied to the punishment ofrecalcitrant black slaves; it has been conjecturedthat the underlying connotation was of ‘givingsomeone a dose fit for a bull’. The termbulldozer was applied to the vehicle in the1930s. PHALLIC; BILL, BOWL, BUDGEbullet [16] Etymologically, a bullet is a ‘littleball’. It comes from French boulette, adiminutive form of boule ‘ball’, from whichEnglish also gets bowl, as in the game of bowls.It originally meant ‘cannon-ball’ as well as ‘rifleor pistol projectile’, but this sense hadeffectively died out by the mid-18th century. BOWLbulletin [17] If a bullet is etymologically a ‘littleball’, a bulletin is a ‘little little edict’. It comesvia French bulletin from Italian bulletino, whichwas a diminutive form of bulletta ‘document,voting slip’ (briefly introduced into English inthe 17th century as bullet: ‘Elected by the GreatMaster and his Knights, who give their voices bybullets’, George Sandys, Travels 1615); Frenchbillet ‘letter’, and indeed English billet, as in‘billeting’ soldiers on a house, are parallelformations on a variant of the root of bulletta.And to return to bulletta, this was itself adiminutive form of bulla, from medieval Latinbulla ‘sealed document’, which is the source ofEnglish bull, as in ‘papal bull’. BILLET, BULLbullion [14] The immediate source of bullionwas Anglo-Norman bullion, which meant ‘placewhere coins are made, mint’, so presumably theunderlying connotation is of melting, or‘boiling’, metal down and then turning it intocoins. On this reasoning it would comeultimately from Vulgar Latin *bulliōnem, anominal derivative of Latin bullīre ‘boil’, frombulla ‘bubble’ (source of English boil). Thepresent-day meaning ‘gold and silver in bulk’had developed by the mid-15th century. BOILbully [16] Bullies have undergone a sad declinein status. In the 16th century the word meant‘sweetheart’: ‘Though she be somewhat old, it ismy own sweet bully’, John Bale, Three laws1538. But gradually the rot set in, its meaningpassing through ‘fine fellow’ to ‘blusterer’ to thepresent-day harasser of inferiors. In the 18th and19th centuries it also meant ‘pimp’. It isprobably a modification of Dutch boele ‘lover’which, as a term of endearment, may haveoriginated as baby-talk.This bully has no connection with the bully ofbully beef [18], which comes from Frenchbouilli, the past participle of bouillir ‘boil’. Thebully of bully off [19], a now discontinued way ofstarting play in hockey, appears to come from aterm for ‘scrummage’ in Eton football, butwhether that is related to the cruel bully is notclear.bulwark [15] Bulwark comes from Middle HighGerman bolwerc ‘fortification’, a compoundformed from bole ‘plank’ (the same word asEnglish bole ‘tree trunk’) and werc, equivalent toEnglish work. It thus originally meant ‘rampartconstructed out of planks or tree trunks’. Theword was shared by other Germanic languages,including Swedish bolverk, and Frenchborrowed it as boullewerc, which has sincebecome boulevard. BOLE, BOULEVARD, WORKbum There are two distinct words bum inEnglish. By far the older, ‘buttocks’, is firstrecorded in John de Trevisa’s translation ofRanulph Higden’s Polychronicon 1387: ‘Itseemeth that his bum is out that hath that evil[piles]’. It is not clear where it comes from. Theother, ‘tramp, loafer’, and its associated verb‘spend time aimlessly’ [19], chiefly American,probably come from an earlier bummer, derivedfrom the German verb bummeln ‘loaf around,saunter’ (familiar to English speakers from thetitle of Jerome K Jerome’s novel Three Men onthe Bummel 1900, about a jaunt aroundGermany).bumf [20] The earliest, literal, but now longdiscontinued sense of bumf is ‘toilet paper’ (firstrecorded in 1889), which does much to elucidateits origin: it is short for bum fodder. The elementof contempt is carried over into its modernmeaning, ‘unwanted or uninteresting printedmaterial’, which dates from around 1930.bump [16] The earliest recorded sense of bump is‘swelling, lump’, but the evidence suggests thatthe primary meaning is ‘knock’, and that this ledon to ‘swelling’ as the result of being hit. It is notclear where the word came from, although it maybe of Scandinavian origin; no doubt ultimately itimitates the sound of somebody being hit. Theverbal sense ‘swell’, now obsolete, is probablyresponsible for bumper, which originally meant‘full glass or cup’, and in the 19th century wasextended to anything large or abundant (as in‘bumper crop’).bumpkin [16] Originally, bumpkin seems tohave been a humorously disparaging epithet fora Dutch person: in the first known record of theword, in Peter Levins’s Dictionary of Englishand Latin words 1570, it is glossed batavus(Batavia was the name of an island at the mouthof the Rhine in ancient times, and washenceforth associated with the Netherlands). Itwas probably a Dutch word, boomken ‘little tree’(from boom ‘tree’, related to German baum‘tree’ and English beam), used with reference toNetherlanders’ supposedly dumpy stature. Thephrase ‘country bumpkin’ is first recorded fromthe later 18th century. BEAMbun [14] The word bun first crops up in 1371, inan Anglo-Latin document relating to differenttypes of bread. Its origins, however, arecompletely shrouded in mystery. Equallyobscure, but presumably unrelated, is another

word bun, which in the 16th century meant‘squirrel’. By the 19th century we find it beingused for ‘rabbit’, and it survives in its familiarform bunny.bunch [14] Bunch originally meant ‘swelling’(the first text recorded as containing the word,the Middle English poem Body and Soul 1325,speaks of ragged folk ‘with broad bunches ontheir back’), but we have no real clues as to itssource. Perhaps, like bump, it was ultimatelyimitative of the sound of hitting something, thesense ‘swelling’ being the result of the blows.The first hints of the modern sense ‘cluster,collection’ come in the mid-15th century in thephrase bunch of straw, although how this derivedfrom ‘swelling’ is not clear.bundle [14] Etymologically, bundle is ‘thatwhich binds or is bound’. Like band, bend, bind,and bond, it can be traced back ultimately to anIndo-European base *bhendh- ‘tie’. TheGermanic base *bund-, derived from this,produced Old English byndelle ‘binding’. Thereis no direct evidence to link this with the muchlater bundle, although the similarities arestriking. Alternatively, the source may be therelated Middle Dutch bundel ‘collection ofthings tied together’. BAND, BEND, BIND, BONDbungalow [17] Etymologically, bungalowmeans simply ‘Bengali’. Banglā is the Hindword for ‘of Bengal’ (as in Bangladesh), andEnglish borrowed it (probably in the Gujarativersion bangalo) in the sense ‘house in theBengal style’. Originally this signified anysimple, lightly-built, usually temporarystructure, which by definition had only onestorey, but it is the one-storeyedness that hascome to be the identifying characteristic.bunion [18] Bunion is probably a modificationof the East Anglian dialect word bunny ‘lump,swelling’, representing a 15th-century formbony, glossed in a contemporary English-Latindictionary as ‘great knob’. This was apparentlyborrowed from Old French hugne ‘bump on thehead’.bunkum [19] Buncombe is a county of NorthCarolina, USA. Around 1820, during a debate inthe US Congress, its representative Felix Walkerrose to make a speech. He spoke on – and on –and on. Fellow congressmen pleaded with him tosit down, but he refused to be deflected,declaring that he had to make a speech ‘forBuncombe’. Most of what he said was fatuousand irrelevant, and henceforth bunkum (orbuncombe, as it was at first spelled) became aterm for political windbagging intended toingratiate the speaker with the voters rather thanaddress the real issues. It early passed into themore general sense ‘nonsense, claptrap’.Its abbreviated form, bunk, is 20th-century; itwas popularized by Henry Ford’s remark‘History is more or less bunk’, made in 1916. Ofthe other English words bunk, ‘bed’ [19] isprobably short for bunker, which first appearedin 16th-century Scottish English, meaning83 bureau‘chest, box’; while bunk as in do a bunk and bunkoff [19] is of unknown origin.bunt see PUNTbunting Bunting ‘bird’ [13] and bunting ‘flags’[18] are presumably two distinct words,although in neither case do we really knowwhere they come from. There was a nowobsolete English adjective bunting, firstrecorded in the 16th century, which meant‘plump, rounded, short and thick’ (could asubliminal memory of it have been in FrankRichards’s mind when he named Billy Bunter?).Perhaps the small plump bird, the bunting, wascalled after this. The adjective probably camefrom an obsolete verb bunt, which meant (of asail) ‘swell, billow’, but since we do not knowwhere that came from, it does not get us verymuch further. As for bunting ‘flags’, the wordoriginally referred to a loosely woven fabricfrom which they were made, and it has beenconjectured that it came from the English dialectverb bunt ‘sift’, such cloth having perhaps oncebeen used for sifting flour.buoy [13] Buoy is of disputed origin, as to bothits immediate source and its ultimate derivation.One school of thought holds that Englishborrowed it directly from Old French boie‘chain’, while another views Middle Dutchboeye as an intermediate stage. Again someetymologists maintain that its beginnings wereamongst the Germanic languages, and haveconnected it with English beacon, while otherswould trace it via Latin boia ‘strap’ to Greekboeiai ‘ox-leather straps’, a derivative of bous‘ox’ (which is related to English cow). Themeaning of Old French boie favours the latterexplanation, the semantic link being that buoysare held in place by chains.Buoyant [16] comes from Spanish boyante,the present participle of boyar ‘float’, which wasderived from boya ‘buoy’, a borrowing from OldFrench boie.burden There are two distinct words burden inEnglish. By far the older, ‘load’, comes from OldEnglish byrthen. Like bear, birth, bairn, bier,barrow, and berth it goes back ultimately to anIndo-European base *bher-, which signifiedboth ‘carry’ and ‘give birth’. Its immediateGermanic ancestor was *burthi-, which alsogave German bürde ‘load’. The other burden,‘refrain’, and hence ‘main theme’, is analteration of an earlier bourdon [14], which wasborrowed from Old French bourdon ‘bass pipe’. BAIRN, BARROW, BEAR, BERTH, BIER, BIRTHbureau [17] Etymologically, bureau seems tomean ‘red’. Its ultimate source is probably Greekpurrhós ‘red’, a derivative of pur ‘fire’ (as inEnglish pyre and pyrotechnic), which is relatedto English fire. This was borrowed into Latin asburrus, which developed into Old French bure‘dark brown’. This seems to have formed thebasis of a derivative burel, later bureau, meaning‘dark brown cloth’. This cloth was used forcovering the writing surface of desks, and soeventually bureau came to mean ‘writing desk’itself. Offices being the natural habitat of writing

urgess 84desks, bureau was later applied to them too. Thederivative bureaucracy is 19th-century, ofFrench origin. PYRE, PYROTECHNICburgess see BOROUGHburglar [15] The first trace we have of burglar isas burgulator in 13th-century Anglo-Latin texts,and it appears in Anglo-Norman legaldocuments of the 15th century as burgler. Thesepoint to an unrecorded medieval Latin base*burg- ‘plunder’, which appears in Old Frenchburgur ‘robber’. The verb burgle is a 19thcenturyback-formation from burglar.burk [20] Although burk is now the commonerspelling, presumably under the influence of theproper name Burk, the original form of the wordwas berk. It is short for Berkeley (or perhapsBerkshire) hunt, rhyming slang for cunt. (TheBerkeley hunt chases foxes in Gloucestershire.)The pronunciation of the word represents, ofcourse, the dialectal or nonstandard version ofBerkeley/Berkshire, rather than the /ba:k/ whichbecame standard in southern British Englishfrom the 15th century.burke [19] In present-day English burke means‘avoid’, as in ‘burke an issue’, but it can betraced back semantically via ‘suppress, hush up’to ‘suffocate so as to provide a body for surgicaldissection’. In this sense it was a macabreadoption of the name of William Burke (1792–1829), an Irishman who with his colleagueWilliam Hare set up a profitable but nefariousbusiness in early 19th-century Edinburghproviding cadavers for surgeons to dissect. Tobegin with they obtained their supplies byrobbing graves, but eventually, in order to gethigher-quality material, they took to murderingpeople, generally by suffocation or strangling.Burke was executed.burlesque [17] French is the immediate sourceof English burlesque, but French got it fromItalian burlesco, a derivative of burla ‘joke, fun’.This may come from Vulgar Latin *burrula, aderivative of late Latin burra ‘trifle’, perhaps thesame word as late Latin burra ‘wool, shaggycloth’.burly [13] Burly has come down in the worldover the centuries. Originally it meant‘excellent, noble, stately’, and it appears to comefrom an unrecorded Old English adjective*būrlic, literally ‘bowerly’ – that is, ‘fit tofrequent a lady’s apartment’. Gradually,connotations of ‘stoutness’ and ‘sturdiness’began to take over, and by the 15th century themodern ‘heavily built’ had become wellestablished. BOOR, BOOTH, BOWERburn [OE] English has two separate words burn.The commoner, relating to ‘fire’, is actually aconflation of two Old English verbs: birnan,which was intransitive, and bærnan, which wastransitive. Both come ultimately from theGermanic base *bren-, *bran-, which alsoproduced brand and possibly broil, and was thesource of German brennen and Swedish brinna‘burn’ (another variant of the base, *brun-, liesbehind the brim- of brimstone). It has beenconjectured that Latin fervēre ‘boil’ (source ofEnglish fervent and ferment) may be connected.Burn ‘stream’ comes from Old Englishburn(e), burna, which was a descendant of aGermanic base *brun-, source also of Germanbrunne ‘stream’. This too has been linked withLatin fervēre (from the notion of fast-runningwater ‘boiling’ over rocks). BRAND, BRIMSTONE, BROIL, FERMENT, FERVENTburnish see BROWNburrow see BOROUGHbursar see PURSEburst [OE] In Old English, burst meant simply‘break suddenly and sharply’; the modernconnotation of ‘breaking open owing to internalpressure’ developed in the 16th century. Theword comes from a prehistoric West and NorthGermanic *brestan, which can be traced back toan Indo-European base *bhrest- (this has beenlinked with medieval Irish brosc ‘noise’).bury [OE] Modern English bury is a descendantof Old English byrgan, which came from theGermanic base *burg- (source also of Englishborough). The underlying meaning of the basewas ‘protection, shelter’, and in the case of burythis referred to ‘covering a dead body with earth’(in Old English, bury applied only to interment;the general sense ‘put underground’ did notdevelop until the 14th century). The derivedburial goes back to Old English byrgels, whichin Middle English times was mistaken for aplural. BOROUGHbus [19] Bus is, of course, short for omnibus. Thefirst person on record as using it was the Britishwriter Harriet Martineau, who spelled it buss: ‘ifthe station offers me a place in the buss’, Wealand woe in Garveloch 1832. Omnibus itself wasborrowed from French, where it was first appliedin 1828 to a voiture omnibus, literally ‘carriagefor everyone’ (omnibus is the dative plural ofLatin omnis ‘all’).busby [18] Busby originally meant ‘large bushywig’, and so may be related to buzz wig, a termwith similar meaning current during the 19thcentury (and perhaps the inspiration for SergeantBuzfuz, the lawyer in Dickens’s PickwickPapers). The application to the full-dress fur hatworn by hussars in the British army dates fromthe early 19th century, but its extension to theGuards’ bearskin (still regarded as a solecism insome quarters) seems to have been a 20thcenturydevelopment.bush [13] Bush comes ultimately from aprehistoric Germanic *busk-, which alsoproduced German busch ‘bush’. There is noactual record of the word in Old English, but itprobably existed as *bysc. The Germanic basewas also borrowed into the Romance languages,where in French it eventually produced bois‘wood’. A diminutive form of this gave Englishbouquet [18], while a variant bosc may havebeen at least partly responsible for the nowarchaic English bosky ‘wooded’ [16]. A derived

Vulgar Latin verb *imboscāre gave Englishambush. AMBUSH, BOUQUET, OBOEbust There are two different words bust inEnglish. The one meaning ‘break’ [18] is simplyan alteration of burst. Bust ‘sculpture of headand chest’ [17] comes via French buste fromItalian busto ‘upper body’, of uncertain origin(Latin had the temptingly similar bustum‘monument on a tomb’, but this does not seem tofit in with the word’s primary sense ‘upperbody’). In English, application of the word to thehuman chest probably developed in the 18thcentury (one of the earliest examples is fromByron’s Don Juan 1819: ‘There was an Irishlady, to whose bust I ne’er saw justice done’),although as late as the early 19th century it couldstill be used with reference to men’s chests, andhad not become particularized to female breasts:‘His naked bust would have furnished a modelfor a statuary’, Washington Irving, A tour on theprairies 1835.bustard [15] Bustard (the name of a large gamebird now extinct in Britain) is something of amystery word. Old French had two terms for thebird, bistarde and oustarde, both of which comefrom Latin avis tarda, literally ‘slow bird’ (Latintardus gave English tardy [15]). This, accordingto the Roman writer Pliny, was what the bird wascalled in Spain. It has been objected that thebustard can run quite fast, and that the name avistarda must be some sort of folk-etymologicalalteration of a non-Latin word; but in fact thebird’s normal gait is a fairly slow and statelywalk, so the term is not so far-fetched. TheEnglish word is presumably a blend of the twoOld French ones, perhaps via an Anglo-Norman*bustarde. TARDYbusy [OE] Busy goes back to an Old Englishbisig, which also meant ‘occupied’. Apart fromDutch bezig, it has no apparent relatives in anyIndo-European language, and it is not knownwhere it came from. The sense ‘inquisitive’,from which we get busybody [16], developed inthe late 14th century. Business was originallysimply a derivative formed from busy by addingthe suffix -ness. In Old English it meant ‘anxiety,uneasiness’, reflecting a sense not recorded forthe adjective itself until the 14th century. Themodern commercial sense seems to haveoriginated in the 15th century. (The modernformation busyness, reflecting the fact thatbusiness can no longer be used simply for the‘state of being busy’, is 19th-century.) PIDGINbut [OE] But originally meant ‘outside’. It was acompound word formed in prehistoric WestGermanic from *be (source of English by) and*ūtana (related to English out). This gave OldEnglish būtan, which quickly developed inmeaning from ‘outside’ to ‘without, except’, asin ‘all but me’ (the sense ‘outside’ survivedlonger in Scotland than elsewhere). The modern85 butterconjunctive use of but did not develop until thelate 13th century. BY, OUTbutcher [13] Butcher comes via Anglo-Normanboucher from Old French bouchier, a derivativeof boc ‘male goat’ (this was probably borrowedfrom a Celtic word which came ultimately fromthe same Indo-European base as producedEnglish buck). The original sense of the wordwas thus ‘dealer in goat’s flesh’. BUCKbutler see BOTTLEbutt There are no fewer than four distinct wordsbutt in English. The oldest, ‘hit with the head’[12], comes via Anglo-Norman buter from OldFrench boter. This can be traced back throughVulgar Latin *bottāre ‘thrust’ (source of Englishbutton) to a prehistoric Germanic *buttan. OldFrench boter produced a derivative boteret‘thrusting’, whose use in the phrase ars boterez‘thrusting arch’ was the basis of English buttress[13].Butt ‘barrel’ [14] comes via Anglo-Normanbut and Old French bot or bout from late Latinbuttis ‘cask’ (a diminutive form of which was thebasis of English bottle). A derivative of theAnglo-Norman form was buterie ‘storeroom forcasks of alcohol’, from which English getsbuttery ‘food shop in a college’ [14]. Butt‘target’ [14] probably comes from Old Frenchbut ‘goal, shooting target’, but the early Englishsense ‘mound on which a target is set up’suggests association also with French butte‘mound, knoll’ (which was independentlyborrowed into English in the 19th century as aterm for the isolated steep-sided hills found inthe Western states of the USA).Butt ‘thick end’ [15], as in ‘rifle butt’ and‘cigarette butt’, appears to be related to otherGermanic words in the same general semanticarea, such as Low German butt ‘blunt’ andMiddle Dutch bot ‘stumpy’, and may well comeultimately from the same base as producedbuttock [13]. (The colloquial American sense ofbutt, ‘buttocks’, originated in the 15th century.)The verb abut [15] comes partly from Anglo-Latin abuttāre, a derivative of hutta ‘ridge orstrip of land’, which may be related to Englishbutt ‘thick end’, and partly from Old Frenchaboter, a derivative of boter, from which Englishgets butt ‘hit with the head’. BUTTON, BUTTRESS; BOTTLE, BUTLER, BUTTE,DÉBUT; BUTTOCK, ABUTbutter [OE] The ultimate source of butter isGreek boútūron. This is usually said to be acompound noun, formed from boús ‘cow’ andtūros ‘cheese’, but not all etymologists acceptthe admittedly attractive hypothesis that butterwas once ‘cow-cheese’, preferring to see theGreek word as a foreign borrowing. In Latin itbecame būtrum (from which came Frenchbeurre), which was borrowed into the WestGermanic languages, producing English andGerman butter and Dutch boter. COW

utterfly 86butterfly [OE] A number of theories have beenput forward as to how the butterfly got its name.Perhaps the most generally accepted is that it isa reflection of a once-held notion that butterfliesland on and consume butter or milk leftuncovered in kitchen or dairy (an idea perhapssupported by the German name for the‘butterfly’, milchdieb, literally ‘milk-thief’).Other suggestions are that the word is areference to the yellow wings of certain speciesof the insect, or to the colour of butterflies’excrement.button [14] Button comes via Old French boutonfrom Vulgar Latin *botōne, a word connectedwith the verb *hottāre ‘thrust’ (from whichultimately English gets butt ‘hit with the head’).The underlying notion contained in button isthus of something which pushes up, thrusts itselfoutwards, rather like a bud growing on a plant;the fact that the resulting round knob is used forfastening is, from the point of view of the word’ssemantic history, secondary. (Inconclusiveattempts have in fact been made to link bud withOld French boter, a descendant of Vulgar Latin*bottāre, and from the 15th century the wordbutton has been applied in English to ‘buds’.) BUTTbuxom [12] Originally, buxom meant ‘obedient’.It goes back to an unrecorded *būhsum, whichmeant literally ‘capable of being bent’, and wasformed from the verb būgan ‘bend’, from whichmodern English gets bow. The sequence bywhich the word’s present-day sense developedseems to have been ‘compliant, obliging’,‘lively, jolly’, ‘healthily plump and vigorous’,and finally (of a woman) ‘large-breasted’. BOWbuy [OE] Buy has relatives in most otherGermanic languages, with the exception ofGerman, and can be traced back to a prehistoricGermanic *bugjan (the Old English form wasbycgan), but no non-Germanic connections haveever been identifiedby [OE] By comes from a prehistoric Germanic*bi, which appears ultimately to be the sameform as the second syllable of Latin ambi- (as inambidextrous), Greek amphí (as inamphitheatre), and Old English ymbe, all ofwhich meant ‘on both sides, round’. The originalmeaning of by thus seems to be ‘close to, near’.By is the basis of the prefix be-, as in befall andbelong.byelaw [13] Although nowadays oftensubconsciously thought of as being a ‘secondaryor additional law’, in fact byelaw has noconnection with by. The closest English relativesof its first syllable are be, boor, bower, both,bound ‘about to go’, build, burly, byre, and thesecond syllable of neighbour. It comesultimately from the Germanic base *bu- ‘dwell’,and is assumed to have reached English via anunrecorded Old Norse *býlagu ‘town law’, acompound of býr ‘place where people dwell,town, village’, and lagu, source of English law.It thus originally meant ‘law or regulation whichapplied only to a particular local community’,rather than the whole country. BE, BOOR, BOOTH, BOWER, BUILD, BURLY, BYRE,NEIGHBOUR

Ccab [19] Cab is short for cabriolet, a term,borrowed from French, for a light horse-drawncarriage. It comes, via the French verb cabrioler,from Italian capriolare ‘jump in the air’, aderivative of capriolo ‘roebuck’, from Latincapreolus, a diminutive form of caper ‘goat’(source of English caper ‘leap’ and Capricorn).The reason for its application to the carriage wasthat the vehicle’s suspension was so springy thatit appeared to jump up and down as it wentalong. From the same source comes the cabrioleleg ‘curved furniture leg’ [18], from itsresemblance to the front leg of a caperinganimal. CABRIOLE, CABRIOLET, CAPER, CAPRICORNcabbage [14] The shape of a cabbage,reminiscent of someone’s head, led to its beingnamed in Old French caboce, which meantliterally ‘head’. English acquired the word viathe Old Northern French variant caboche (whosemodern French descendant caboche, in the sense‘head’, is said to provide the basis for Boche, thecontemptuous term for ‘Germans’). It is notknown where it comes from ultimately;etymologists used to link it with Latin caput‘head’, but that theory is no longer generallyaccepted. The Old English word for ‘cabbage’was cāwel, which remains with us in the form ofvarious Germanic relatives such as kohl-rabi,cauliflower, and Scottish kale.cabin [14] English acquired cabin from OldFrench cabane, which had it via Provençalcabana from late Latin capanna or cavanna‘hut, cabin’. Surprisingly, despite their formaland semantic similarity, which has grown closertogether over the centuries, cabin has noultimate connection with cabinet [16], whoseimmediate source is French cabinet [16], whoseimmediate source is French cabinet ‘smallroom’. The etymology of the French word isdisputed; some consider it to be a diminutiveform of Old Northern French cabine ‘gamblinghouse’, while others take it as a borrowing fromItalian gabbinetto, which perhaps ultimatelycomes from Latin cavea ‘stall, coop, cage’ (fromwhich English gets cage). Its modern politicalsense derives from a 17th-century usage ‘privateroom in which the sovereign’s advisors orcouncil meet’; the body that met there was thuscalled the Cabinet Council, which quicklybecame simply Cabinet.cable [13] The ultimate source of cable is lateLatin capulum ‘lasso’, a derivative of the verbcapere ‘take, seize’, either directly or perhapsvia Arabic habl. In Provençal, capulum becamecable, which produced the Old French formchable: so English must either have borrowedthe word straight from Provençal, or from*cable, an unrecorded Anglo-Norman variant ofthe Old French word. CAPTURE, HEAVEcabriole see CABcachet [17] Cachet was a Scottish borrowing ofa French word which originally meant ‘sealaffixed to a letter or document’. In the 19thcentury this developed into the figurative‘personal stamp, distinguishing characteristic’,which, through its use in the context ofdistinguished or fashionable people or things,has come to mean ‘prestige’. The original notioncontained in the word is of ‘pressing’. It comesvia the medieval French verb cacher ‘press’from Latin coactāre ‘constrain’. This was aderivative of coact-, the past participial stem ofcōgere ‘drive together’ (source of Englishcogent), a compound verb formed from con-‘together’ and agere ‘drive’ (source of Englishact and a host of other derivatives from agent toprodigal).Modern French cacher means ‘hide’, whichis the source of cache ‘hoard’, borrowed byEnglish in the 19th century. CACHE, COGENTcack-handed [19] Cack comes from a 15thcenturydialect verb meaning ‘defecate’, whichprobably came from Middle Dutch cacken. Itgoes back via Latin cacāre to an ultimate Indo-European base *kak-, from which a lot of otherIndo-European languages get words connectedwith ‘excrement’. The connection with cackhandedis usually explained as being that clumsypeople make a mess; on this view ‘left-handed’,which cack-handed also means, is a secondarysense derived from ‘clumsy’. It may be nearerthe mark to place ‘left-handed’ first, however,bearing in mind the traditional role of the lefthand in many cultures for wiping the anus.cackle see CHEEKcactuscactus [17] Cactus comes via Latin from Greekkáktos, which was the name of the cardoon, aplant of the thistle family with edible leafstalks.Cactus originally had that meaning in Englishtoo, and it was not until the 18th century that theSwedish botanist Linnaeus applied the term to afamily of similarly prickly plants.cad see CADETcadavercadaver [16] Cadaver literally means‘something that has fallen over’. It is a derivativeof the Latin verb cadere ‘fall’ (from whichEnglish gets a wide range of other words, fromcase to accident). Its application to ‘dead body’

caddy 88arises from the metaphorical use of the Latinverb for ‘die’. ACCIDENT, CADENCE, CASEcaddy [18] Caddy comes ultimately from Malaykatī, which was a measure of weight equal toabout 0.6 kilos or 1½ pounds: it was thusoriginally ‘container which holds one caddy oftea’. English acquired the word in the 16thcentury as catty, and it is not altogether clearwhere the -dd- spelling came from. It has noconnection with the golfer’s caddie (see CADET).cadet [17] Etymologically, a cadet is a ‘littlehead’. Its original meaning in English was‘younger son or brother’, and it came fromFrench cadet, an alteration of a Gascon dialectterm capdet ‘chief’. This in turn derived fromVulgar Latin *capitellus ‘little head’, adiminutive form of Latin caput ‘head’ (fromwhich English also gets captain and chief). Thereason for its apparently rather strange change inmeaning from ‘chief’ to ‘younger son’ seems tobe that the younger sons of Gascon families werein former times sent to the French court to fulfilthe role of officers.When English borrowed French cadet, it didso not only in a form that retained the originalspelling, but also as caddie or cadee, whichoriginally meant ‘young officer’. The Scottishversion, caddie, gradually developed in meaningover the centuries through ‘person who runserrands’ to, in the 19th century, ‘golfer’sassistant’. Cad, originally ‘unskilled assistant’[18], is an abbreviation of caddie or cadee. CAPTAIN, CHIEFcadre see QUARTERcaesarian [17] The application of the adjectivecaesarian to the delivery of a baby by surgicalincision through the abdomen and womb arisesfrom the legend that Julius Caesar (c. 100–44BC) himself or an earlier ancestor of his was bornin this way. The name Caesar comes from theLatin phrase a caeso mātrisūtere, literally ‘fromthe mother’s cut womb’ (caesus was the pastparticiple of the Latin verb caedere ‘cut’, fromwhich English gets concise, incise, precise, etc).The abbreviation caesar for ‘caesarian section’is mid 20th-century. CONCISE, INCISE, PRECISEcafé see COFFEEcafeteria see COFFEEcaffeinecaffeine see COFFEEcage [13] English acquired cage via Old Frenchcage from Latin cavea, which meant ‘enclosurefor animals, such as a coop, hive, or stall’, andalso ‘dungeon’. This is usually referred to Latincavus ‘hollow’, from which English gets caveand cavern, although not all etymologists agreewith this derivation. A Vulgar Latin derivative ofcavea, *caveola, was the ancestor of Englishgaol, and cavea has also been postulated as theultimate source of cabinet. CABINET, CAVE, DECOY, GAOL, JAILcainozoic see RECENTcajun [19] Cajun, denoting a French-speakingculture of Louisiana, USA, is an alteration ofAcadian. Acadia was the name of a Frenchcolony in Canada (now Nova Scotia, NewBrunswick, and Prince Edward Island) whoseinhabitants were driven out by the British in the18th century and migrated to the southern statesof the USA (the source of the original FrenchAcadie is not known). The word became muchmore widely known in the 1980s following asudden fashion for Cajun food and dance music.cake [13] Originally, cake was a term for a flatround loaf of bread (it is this ‘shape’ element inits meaning that lies behind more modern usagessuch as ‘cake of soap’). It is not until the 15thcentury that we find it being applied tofoodstuffs we would now recognize as cakes,made with butter, eggs, and some sort ofsweetening agent. English borrowed the wordfrom Old Norse kaka; it is related to cookie(from Dutch koekje), but not, despite thesimilarity, to cook. The expression piece of cake‘something easy’ seems to have originated in the1930s. COOKIEcalcium [19] Calcium was coined by the Englishchemist Sir Humphry Davy in 1808 on the basisof Latin calx ‘limestone’ (which is also theancestor of English calcareous, calculate,calculus, causeway, and chalk). The Latin wordprobably came from Greek khálix, which meant‘pebble’ as well as ‘limestone’. CALCARIOUS, CALCULATE, CAUSEWAY, CHALKcalculate [16] Calculate comes from the pastparticipial stem of the Latin verb calculāre, aderivative of the noun calculus, which meant‘pebble’. This was almost certainly a diminutiveform of Latin calx, from which English getscalcium and chalk. The notion of ‘counting’ waspresent in the word from ancient times, for aspecialized sense of Latin calculus was ‘stoneused in counting, counter’ (its modernmathematical application to differential andintegral calculus dates from the 18th century).Another sense of Latin calculus was ‘stone in thebladder or kidney’, which was its meaning whenoriginally borrowed into English in the 17thcentury. CALCARIOUS, CALCIUM, CALCULUS, CAUSEWAY,CHALKcalendar [13] English acquired calendar viaAnglo-Norman calender and Old Frenchcalendier from Latin calendārium, which was a‘moneylender’s account book’. It got its namefrom the calends (Latin calendae), the first dayof the Roman month, when debts fell due. Latincalendae in turn came from a base *kal- ‘call,proclaim’, the underlying notion being that inancient Rome the order of days was publiclyannounced at the beginning of the month.The calendula [19], a plant of the daisyfamily, gets its name from Latin calendae,perhaps owing to its once having been used forcuring menstrual disorders. Calender ‘presscloth or paper between rollers’ [15], however,has no connection with calendar; it probablycomes from Greek kúlindros ‘roller’, source ofEnglish cylinder.

calf English has two distinct words calf, both ofGermanic origin. Calf ‘young cow’ goes back toOld English cealf, descendant of a prehistoricWest Germanic *kalbam, which also producedGerman kalb and Dutch kalf. Calf of the leg [14]was borrowed from Old Norse kálfi, of unknownorigin.calibre [16] Calibre, and the related calliper, areof Arabic origin. They come ultimately fromArabic qālib ‘shoemaker’s last, mould’ (there issome dispute over the source of this: someetymologists simply derive it from the Arabicverb qalaba ‘turn, convert’, while others trace itback to Greek kalapoús, literally ‘wooden foot’,a compound formed from kalon ‘wood’,originally ‘firewood’, a derivative of kaiein‘burn’, and poús ‘foot’). English acquired theArabic word via Italian calibro and Frenchcalibre. The original Western meaning,‘diameter of a bullet, cannon-ball, etc’, derivesfrom the Arabic sense ‘mould for casting metal’.Calliper [16], which originally meant‘instrument for measuring diameters’, isgenerally taken to be an alteration of calibre. CALLIPERcalico [16] Calico, a plain cotton cloth, wasoriginally Calicut-cloth. In the 16th and 17thcenturies it was the main export of Calicut, nowknown as Kozhikode, a city and port on thesouthwest coast of India whose first Europeanvisitor was the Portuguese explorer Vasco daGama (c. 1469–1524). In the 19th centuryCalicut was South India’s major port. (It has noconnection with Calcutta.)call [OE] Essentially, call is a Scandinavianword, although it does occur once in an OldEnglish text, the late 10th-century Battle ofMaldon. It was borrowed from Old Norse kalla,which can be traced back via West and NorthGermanic *kal- to an Indo-European base *gol-(among other derivatives of this is Serbo-Croatglagól ‘word’, source of Glagolitic, a term for anearly Slavic alphabet).calligraphy see KALEIDOSCOPEcallipercalliper see CALIBREcallisthenics see KALEIDOSCOPEcallow [OE] Old English calu meant ‘bald’.Eventually, the word came to be applied toyoung birds which as yet had no feathers, and bythe late 16th century it had been extendedmetaphorically to any young inexperiencedperson or creature. It probably came, via WestGermanic *kalwaz, from Latin calvus ‘bald’. CALVARYcalm [14] The underlying meaning of calmseems to be not far removed from ‘siesta’. Itcomes ultimately from Greek kauma ‘heat’,which was borrowed into late Latin as cauma.This appears to have been applied progressivelyto the ‘great heat of the midday sun’, to ‘resttaken during this period’, and finally to simply‘quietness, absence of activity’. Cauma passedinto Old Italian as calma, and English seems tohave got the word from Italian.calorie see CAULDRON89 camouflagecalumny see CHALLENGEcalvary [18] Latin calvāria meant literally‘skull’ (it was a derivative of calva ‘scalp’,which in turn came from calvus ‘bald’, source ofEnglish callow). It was therefore used totranslate Aramaic gulgūtha, also ‘skull’, whichwas the name of the hill outside Jerusalem onwhich Christ was crucified (applied to it becauseof its shape). CALLOWcambium see CHANGEcamel [OE] Naturally enough, camel is ofSemitic origin: Hebrew has gāmāl, for example,and Arabic jamal. It was a relative of these thatwas the source of Greek kámēlos, which passedvia Latin camēlus into English as early as themid 10th century. (It replaced a previous OldEnglish olfend, a word – shared by other earlyGermanic languages – apparently based on themisconception that a camel was an elephant.)camellia [18] The camellia, a shrub of orientalorigin, was named in the mid-18th century by theSwedish taxonomist Linnaeus after theMoravian Jesuit missionary and botanist JosephKamel (in modern Latin, Camellus) (1661–1706), who described the flora on the Philippineisland of Luzon. The spelling of its name, with adouble l, encourages a short ‘e’ pronunciation,but in practice most people say ‘cameelia’.cameo [15] The immediate source of modernEnglish cameo was Italian cameo or cammeo.No one is too sure where it ultimately camefrom, but it has always been assumed that it hadsome sort of Oriental source – perhaps Arabicqamaā’īl ‘flower buds’. The original form of theword in English was cameu, which came fromOld French camahieu; the Italianate cameo doesnot appear until the late 17th century.camera [18] Latin camera originally meant‘vaulted room’ (a sense preserved in theRadcliffe Camera, an 18th-century buildinghousing part of Oxford University library, whichhas a vaulted roof). It came from Greek kamárā‘vault, arch’, which is ultimately related toEnglish chimney. In due course the meaning‘vaulted room’ became weakened to simply‘room’, which reached English, via Old Frenchchambre, as chamber, and is preserved in thelegal Latin phrase in camera ‘privately, injudge’s chambers’.In the 17th century, an optical instrument wasinvented consisting of a small closed box with alens fixed in one side which produced an imageof external objects on the inside of the box. Thesame effect could be got in a small darkenedroom, and so the device was called a cameraobscura ‘dark chamber’. When the new scienceof photography developed in the 19th century,using the basic principle of the camera obscura,camera was applied to the picture-forming box. CHAMBER, CHIMNEYcamouflage [20] Camouflage reached theEnglish language during World War I, when theart of concealing objects from the enemy wasconsiderably developed. It is of French origin, aderivative of the verb camoufler ‘disguise’,

camp 90which came from Italian camuffare ‘disguise,trick’.camp [16] Latin campus meant ‘open field’. Itbranched out into various more specializedmeanings. One of them, for example, was ‘battlefield’: this was borrowed into the Germaniclanguages as ‘battle’ (German has kampf, forinstance, as in the title of Adolf Hitler’s bookMein Kampf ‘My struggle’). Another was ‘placefor military exercises’, and this seems to havedeveloped, in the word’s passage via Italiancampo and French camp, to ‘place where troopsare housed’. English got the word from French.Camp ‘mannered, effeminate’ [20] ispresumably a different word, but its origins areobscure.Latin campus itself was adopted in English inthe 18th century for the ‘grounds of a college’. Itwas originally applied to Princeton university inthe USA. CAMPAIGN, CHAMPION, DECAMP, SCAMPcampaign [17] Ultimately, campaign andchampagne are the same word. Both go back tolate Latin campānia, a derivative of Latincampus ‘open field’ (source of English camp).This passed into Old French as champagne andinto Italian as campagna ‘open country’, andboth words have subsequently come to be usedas the designation of regions in France and Italy(whence English champagne [17], wine made inthe Champagne area of eastern France). TheFrench word was also borrowed into Englishmuch earlier, as the now archaic champaign‘open country’ [14]. Meanwhile, in Italian aparticular military application of campagna hadarisen: armies disliked fighting in winterbecause of the bad weather, so they stayed incamp, not emerging to do battle in the opencountryside (the campagna) until summer.Hence campagna came to mean ‘militaryoperations’; it was borrowed in to French ascampagne, and thence into English. CAMP, CHAMPAGNEcamphor [15] Camphor is probably of Indianorigin. It has been traced back to Sanskritkarpūram, which appears to have reachedEnglish via Arabic kāfūr and then either OldFrench camphre or medieval Latin camphora.European forms replaced the long Arabic ā witha nasalized vowel.can [OE] English has two distinct words can. Theverb ‘be able to’ goes back via Old Englishcunnan and Germanic *kunnan to an Indo-European base *gn-, which also produced know.The underlying etymological meaning of can isthus ‘know’ or more specifically ‘come toknow’, which survived in English untilcomparatively recently (in Ben Jonson’s TheMagnetick Lady 1632, for example, we find ‘Shecould the Bible in the holy tongue’). Thisdeveloped into ‘know how to do something’,from which we get the current ‘be able to dosomething’. The past tense could comesultimately from prehistoric Germanic *kuntha,via Old English cūthe (related to Englishuncouth) and late Middle English coude; the l isa 16th-century intrusion, based on the model ofshould and would. (Canny [16] is probably aderivative of the verb can, mirroring a muchearlier but parallel formation cunning.)Can ‘container’ appears to come from aprehistoric Germanic *kannōn-. CANNY, CUNNING, KEN, KNOW, UNCOUTHcanary [16] Small green finches (Serinuscanarius) native to the Canary Islands wereintroduced as cage birds in England in the 16thcentury (the domestic breed is now for the mostpart yellow). They were called, naturallyenough, canary birds, and by the mid 17thcentury this had become simply canary. TheCanaries, a group of Spanish islands in theAtlantic off the northwest coast of Africa, gottheir name because one of them was famous inRoman times for a large breed of dog found there(Latin canārius ‘of dogs’ was a derivative ofcanís, source of English canine, chenille, andkennel and related to English hound). CANINE, CHENILLE, HOUND, KENNELcancan [19] The English word was borrowedfrom French, where it originally, in the 16thcentury, meant ‘noise, uproar’. Its ultimatesource is unknown, although it has traditionallybeen associated with Latin quanquam‘although’, taken to be the prelude to a noisyscholastic argument. Its application to theuproarious dance began in the 19th century, inFrench as well as English; however, its presentdayassociation with high-kicking chorus girls(with, according to the Oxford EnglishDictionary, ‘extravagant and indecent gestures’)seems to be a slightly later development, sincethe earliest examples of its use quoted by theOED apparently refer to men: ‘He usuallycompromises by dancing the Can-can’, A ESweet, Texas Siftings 1882.cancel see CHANCELLORcancer [14] Cancer comes from Latin cancer,which meant literally ‘crab’. It was a translationof Greek karkínos ‘crab’, which, together withits derivative karkínōma (source of Englishcarcinoma [18]) was, according to the ancientGreek physician Galen, applied to tumours onaccount of the crablike pattern formed by thedistended blood vessels around the affected part.Until the 17th century, the term generally usedfor the condition in English was canker, whicharose from an earlier borrowing of Latin cancerin Old English times; before then, cancer hadbeen used exclusively in the astrological sense.The French derivative of Latin cancer, chancre,was borrowed into English in the 16th centuryfor ‘syphilitic ulcer’. CANKER, CARCINOMAcandelabrum see CANDLEcandid [17] Originally, candid meant simply‘white’; its current sense ‘frank’ developedmetaphorically via ‘pure’ and ‘unbiased’.English acquired the word, probably throughFrench candide, from Latin candidum, aderivative of the verb candēre ‘be white, glow’(which is related to English candle,incandescent, and incense). The derived noun

candour is 18th-century in English. Candida, thefungus which causes the disease thrush, got itsname from being ‘white’. And in ancient Rome,people who were standing for election worewhite togas; they were thus called candidāti,whence English candidate [17]. CANDIDATE, CANDLE, INCANDESCENT, INCENSEcandle [OE] Candle is one of the earliest Englishborrowings from Latin. It probably arrived withChristianity at the end of the 6th century, and isfirst recorded in a gloss from around the year700. Latin candēla was a derivative of the verbcandēre ‘be white, glow’, also the source ofEnglish candid and related to incandescent andincense. Candelabrum [19] is a Latin derivative.The Christian feast of Candlemas [OE](February 2) gets its name from the blessing ofchurch candles on that day. CANDELABRUM, CANDID, INCANDESCENT,INCENSEcane [14] Cane is a word of ancient ancestry. Itcan be traced back to Sumerian gin ‘reed’, andhas come down to us via Assyrian kanū andGreek kánnā (a derivative of which, kánastron‘wicker basket’, was the ultimate source ofEnglish canister [17]). Latin borrowed the wordas canna, and broadened its meaning out from‘reed, cane’ to ‘pipe’, which is the basis ofEnglish cannal, channel, cannon, and canyon.From Latin came Old French cane, source of theEnglish word. CANAL, CANISTER, CANNON, CANYON, CHANNELcanine see KENNELcannibal [16] Cannibal was originally a propername, applied by the Spaniards to the Caribpeople of the West Indies (whom they regardedas eaters of human flesh). It is a variant,originally used by Christopher Columbus, ofCaribes, which comes from Carib, a word ofCarib origin in the Arawakan language ofnorthern South America and the Caribbean. It isrelated to the Caribs’ name for themselves,Galibi, literally ‘strong men’.cannon English has two different words cannon,neither of which can for certain be connectedwith canon. The earlier, ‘large gun’ [16], comesvia French canon from Italian cannone ‘largetube’, which was a derivative of canna ‘tube,pipe’, from Latin canna (source of Englishcane). Cannon as in ‘cannon off something’ [19]is originally a billiards term, and was analteration (by association with cannon the gun)of an earlier carom (the form still used inAmerican English). This came from Spanishcarombola, a kind of fruit fancifully held toresemble a billiard ball, whose ultimate sourcewas probably an unrecorded *karambal in theMarathi language of south central India. CANE; CAROMcanny see CANcanoe [16] Like cannibal, canoe is a word ofCaribbean origin. In the language of the localCarib people it was canaoua, and it passed viaArawakan into Spanish (recorded byChristopher Columbus) as canoa. That was theform in which it first came into English; modern91 cantaloupecanoe is due to the influence of French canoe.Originally, the word was used for referring toany simple boat used by ‘primitive’ tribes; it wasnot until the late 18th century that a more settledidea of what we would today recognize as acanoe began to emerge.canon There are today two distinct words canonin English, although ultimately they are related.The older, ‘(ecclesiastical) rule’ [OE], comes viaLatin canōn from Greek kanón ‘rule’, whichsome have speculated may be related to Greekkánnā ‘reed’, source of English cane (thesemantic link is said to be ‘reed’ – ‘rod’ –‘measuring rod’ – ‘rule’). The derived adjective,kanonikós, passed into ecclesiastical Latin ascanonicus, which was used as a noun,‘clergyman’; in Old French this became canonieor chanonie, and as it crossed into English its lastsyllable dropped off (owing to the influence ofcanon ‘rule’). The underlying sense of canon‘clergyman’ [13] is thus ‘one living according tothe rules of religious life’.canopy [14] Etymologically, a canopy is a‘mosquito net’. The word comes ultimately fromGreek kōnōpeion, a derivative of kónops‘mosquito’. This passed via Latin cōnōpūuminto medieval Latin as canopeum, which meantboth ‘mosquito net’ and ‘couch with such a net’.English adopted it directly from Latin as canopeor canape, meaning ‘covering suspended over athrone, bed, etc’. The French version of theword, however, concentrated on other aspects ofcanopeum’s meaning; French canapé means‘couch, sofa’. Its metaphorical extension, ‘pieceof bread or biscuit with a savoury topping’, wasborrowed into English towards the end of the19th century. CANAPÉcant English has two separate words cant. Theolder, ‘oblique angle’ [14], originally meant‘edge’, and appears to have come via MiddleLow German kant or Middle Dutch cant, bothmeaning ‘edge’ or ‘corner’, from Vulgar Latin*canto, a descendant of Latin cantus ‘iron tyre’.which was probably of Celtic origin (Welsh cantmeans ‘rim’). The accusative case of the VulgarLatin word, *cantōnem, was the source ofEnglish canton [16], originally ‘corner, section’,now ‘territorial division’; while its Italiandescendant, canto, may be the source of Italiancantina ‘cellar’, from which English got canteen[18]. Cant ‘thieves’ jargon’ or ‘hypocritical talk’[16] was probably originally a specificapplication of the Latin verb cantāre ‘sing’(source also of English chant, canto, cantor,cantata, and canticle). It is usually assumed thatthe usage derives from an ironic transference ofthe singing of church congregations or choirs tothe wheedling ‘song’ of beggars and (byassociation) thieves. CANTEEN, CANTON; CANTATA, CANTOR, CHANTcantaloupe [18] The cantaloupe melon wasintroduced into Europe from Armenia. The placewhere the newcomer was first cultivated is saidto have been a former summer estate of thepopes near Rome called Cantaluppi – whence

cantankerous 92the name. Both the name and the fruit had madetheir way to France by the 15th century, butneither seems to have arrived permanently inEngland until the early 18th century.cantankerous [18] Cantankerous is a rathermysterious word. It first appears in the 1770s,and the earliest known reference to it is in OliverGoldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer 1772:‘There’s not a more bitter cantanckerous road inall christendom’. Its origin is disputed: perhapsthe likeliest source is Middle English contekour‘brawler’, from contek ‘strife’, a borrowing froman unrecorded Anglo-Norman *contek, but anIrish origin has also been suggested, perhapsfrom Irish cannrán ‘strife, grumbling’ (anotherearly user of the word was the Irish playwrightThomas Sheridan).cantata see CHANTcanteencanteen see CANTcanter [18] Canter comes from phrases such asCanterbury trot, Canterbury pace, etc, whichwere terms applied to the pace at which medievalpilgrims rode on their way by horse to the shrineof Thomas à Beckett at Canterbury in Kent(earliest references to it are from the 17thcentury, much later than the time of Chaucer’spilgrims in the Middle Ages). The abbreviatedfrom canter appeared in the 18th century,initially as a verb, and Samuel Johnson in hisDictionary 1755 defined Canterbury gallop as‘the hand gallop of an ambling horse, commonlycalled a canter’.canticle see CHANTcantocanto see CHANTcanton see CANTcanvas [14] Canvas is related ultimately tohemp, for originally canvas was a cloth madefrom hemp. Latin cannabis (from the samesource as English hemp) produced the VulgarLatin derivative *cannapāceum, which passedinto English via Old Northern French canevas.The verb canvass [16] appears to come from thenoun: it originally meant ‘toss in a canvas sheet’,and this was perhaps the basis, via anintermediate ‘criticize roughly’, of themetaphorical sense ‘discuss thoroughly’. It isnot clear where the political meaning ‘solicitvotes’ came from. CANNABIS, HEMPcap [OE] Old English cæppa came from lateLatin cappa ‘hood’, source also of English cape‘cloak’. The late Latin word may well have comefrom Latin caput ‘head’, its underlying meaningthus being ‘head covering’. CAPPUCCINO, CHAPEL, CHAPERONE, KÉPIcapable [16] In common with a wide range ofother English words, from capture to recuperate,capable comes from Latin capere ‘take’, arelative of English heave. An adjective derivedfrom the verb was Latin capāx ‘able to holdmuch’, from which English gets capacious [17]and capacity [15]. From its stem capāci- wasformed the late Latin adjective capābilis, alsooriginally ‘able to contain things’. This meaningstill survived when the word passed, via Frenchcapable, into English (‘They are almost capableof a bushel of wheat’, Thomas Wright, ThePassions of the Mind 1601), but by the end of the18th century it had died out, having passed intothe current ‘able to, susceptible of’. CAPACIOUS, CAPACITY, CAPTURE, CHASE,HEAVE, RECUPERATEcape There are two distinct words cape inEnglish, but they may come from the sameultimate source. The earlier, ‘promontory,headland’ [14], comes via Old French cap andProvençal cap from Vulgar Latin *capo, aderivative of Latin caput ‘bead’. Cape ‘cloak’[16] comes via French cape and Provençal capafrom late Latin cappa ‘hood’, source of Englishcap; this too may be traceable back to Latincaput. (Other English descendants of caputinclude achieve, cadet, capital, captain, chapter,and chief; and cappa was also the precursor ofchapel, chaperone, and cope). ACHIEVE, CADET, CAPITAL, CAPPUCCINO,CAPTAIN, CHAPEL, CHAPERON, CHAPTER, CHIEF,ESCAPEcaper Caper ‘jump about’ [16] and the ediblecaper [15] are two different words. The former isa shortening of capriole ‘leap’, now obsoleteexcept as a technical term in horsemanship,which comes via early French capriole fromItalian capriola, a derivative of the verbcapriolare ‘leap’, which in turn was formedfrom capriolo ‘roebuck’; its ultimate source wasLatin capreolus, a diminutive form of caper‘goat’ (whence the English astrological termCapricorn, literally ‘goat’s horn’). (The Frenchby-form cabrioler was the source of Englishcab.) Caper ‘edible bud’ came via French câpresand Latin capparis from Greek kápparis; theearliest English form was capres, but this cameto be misinterpreted as a plural, and the -s wasdropped from the singular in the 16th century. CAB, CAPRICORN, CAPRIOLEcapercaillie [16] The name of the capercaillie,a very large species of grouse, means literally‘horse of the woods’ in Scots Gaelic. The Gaelicform of the word is capalcoille, a compoundformed from capall ‘horse’ (probably borrowedfrom Latin caballus ‘horse’, source of Englishcavalier) and coille ‘woods’. CAVALIERcapillary see DISHEVELLEDcapital [13] Etymologically, capital issomething that is at the top or ‘head’; it comesfrom Latin caput ‘head’. The various currentEnglish uses of the word reached us, however, bydiffering routes. The first to come was theadjective, which originally meant simply ‘of thehead’ (Milton in Paradise lost wrote of theSerpent’s ‘capital bruise’, meaning the bruise toits head); this came via Old French capital fromLatin capitālis, a derivative of caput. The othersenses of the adjective have derived from this:‘capital punishment’, for instance, comes fromthe notion of a crime which, figurativelyspeaking, affects the head, or life. Its use as anoun dates from the 17th century: the immediatesource of the financial sense is Italian capitale.

The architectural capital ‘top of a column’ (as in‘Corinthian capitals’) also comes from Latincaput, but in this case the intermediate form wasthe diminutive capitellum ‘little head’, whichreached English in the 14th century via OldFrench capitel. CATTLE, CHAPTER, HEADcapitulate see CHAPTERcapon [OE] Capon, a ‘castrated male chicken’,is probably literally a ‘cut cockerel’. The wordcomes via Anglo-Norman capun from Latincapō, which is probably ultimately derived froma word for ‘cut’ – Greek kóptein, for example –the underlying reference of course being to thecutting off of the unfortunate bird’s testicles.cappuccino [20] Frothy coffee was given thename cappuccino in Italian from its supposedresemblance to the habit of Capuchin monks,which is the colour of lightly milked coffee. TheOrder of Friars Minor Capuchins, anindependent branch of Franciscans, was foundedin 1528. In emulation of St Francis they wear apointed cowl, in Italian a cappuccio (from lateLatin cappa ‘hood’, source of English cap andcape), from which the name Cappuccino‘Capuchin’ (literally ‘little hood’) was derived.The term Capuchin itself arrived in English inthe late 16th century, and the order’svestimentary arrangements have gifted otheritems of vocabulary to English, notablycapuchin [18] for a woman’s cloak and hood andcapuchin monkey [18] for a type of SouthAmerican monkey with a tuft of hair on its headresembling a monk’s cowl. CAP, CAPEcaprice [17] Etymologically, caprice means‘hedgehog-head’. It comes, via French caprice,from an Italian noun capriccio, formed fromcapo ‘head’ (from Latin caput) and riccio‘hedgehog’ (from Latin ericeus, source ofEnglish urchin). Originally this meant ‘horror,shuddering’, the reference being to the hair of aterror-stricken person standing on end. Theword’s present-day meaning ‘whim, fickleness’seems to be partly due to association with Italiancapra ‘goat’, from the animal’s frisky behaviour. URCHINcapsicum see CASEcapstan [14] Capstan is a borrowing from OldProvençal. There the word was cabestan. Itsearlier form capestran was a derivative ofcapestre ‘rope, noose’, which came from Latincapistrum ‘halter’. This in turn came fromcapere ‘take’, a prolific source of English words,and related to English heave. CAPTURE, HEAVEcapsule see CASEcaptain [14] Etymologically, a captain issomeone who is at the ‘head’ of an organization,team, etc. It derives ultimately from late Latincapitāneus ‘chief’, a derivative of caput ‘head’,which came to English via Old French capitain.A parallel but earlier formation was chieftain,which also came from late Latin capitāneus, but93 caravanalong a different route, by way of Old Frenchchevetaine. CHIEFTAINcapture [16] Along with its relatives captive,captivity, captivate, and captor, capture is theEnglish language’s most direct lineal descendantof Latin capere ‘take, seize’ (others includecapable, case for carrying things, cater, andchase, and heave is distantly connected). First toarrive was captive [14], which was originally averb, meaning ‘capture’; it came via Old Frenchcaptiver from Latin captīvus, the past participleof capere. Contemporary in English was theadjectival use of captive, from which the noundeveloped. (The now archaic caitiff [13] comesfrom the same ultimate source, via an alteredVulgar Latin *cactivus and Old French caitiff‘captive’.) Next on the scene was capture, in the16th century; originally it was only a noun, andit was not converted to verbal use until the late18th century, when it replaced captive in thisrole. Also 16th-century is captivate, from thepast participle of late Latin captivāre, aderivative of captīvus; this too originally meant‘capture’, a sense which did not die out until the19th century: ‘The British … captivated foursuccessive patrols’, John Neal, Brother Jonathan1825. CAPTIVE, CATER, CHASE, COP, HEAVEcar [14] Car seems first to have been used as anindependent term for a road vehicle powered byan internal-combustion engine in 1896, in thepublication Farman’s Auto-Cars (thecompounds autocar and motorcar are a yearearlier). But the word is of course of far longerstanding as a general term for a wheeledconveyance. It comes ultimately from anunrecorded Celtic *karros, via Latin carrus‘two-wheeled wagon’, Vulgar Latin *carra, andAnglo-Norman carre or car; it is probablylinked with current and course, giving anunderlying meaning ‘move swiftly’. Englishwords derived at some point or other from thesame source include career, carriage, carry,charge, and chariot. CAREER, CARICATURE, CARRIAGE, CARRY,CHARGE, CHARIOT, COURSE, CURRENTcarat [16] The carat gets its name from the use ofcarob beans as standard weights for measuringthe heaviness of small quantities. The Greekname for the elongated seed pod of the carob treewas kerátion, a derivative of kéras ‘horn’(related to English horn). This passed intoArabic as qīrāt, where it became formalized in asystem of weights and measures as ‘four grains’.It passed into English via Italian carato andFrench carat. HORNcaravan [16] Caravans have no etymologicalconnection with cars, nor with char-a-bancs. Theword comes ultimately from Persian kārwān‘group of desert travellers’, and came intoEnglish via French caravane. Its use in Englishfor ‘vehicle’ dates from the 17th century, but tobegin with it referred to a covered cart forcarrying passengers and goods (basis of the

caraway 94shortened form van [19]), and in the 19thcentury it was used for the basic type of thirdclassrailway carriage; its modern sense of‘mobile home’ did not develop until the late 19thcentury. Caravanserai ‘inn for accommodatingdesert caravans’ [16] comes from Persiankārwānserāī: serāī means ‘palace, inn’, and wasthe source, via Italian, of seraglio ‘harem’ [16]. CARAVANSERAI, VANcaraway [14] The ultimate source of caraway isprobably Greek káron ‘cumin’ (caraway andcumin seeds are very similar). Arabic borrowedthe word as alkarāwiyā ‘the cumin’, and itsubsequently diverged along different branches.Borrowed into medieval Latin it became carvi,which was the source of carvy, the Scottish wordfor ‘caraway’ since the 17th century. The sourceof English caraway, however, was most likelyOld Spanish alcarahueya.carbon [18] The notion underlying carbon isprobably that of ‘burning’; it has been tentativelytraced back to a base *kar- ‘fire’. The word’simmediate source was French carbone, coinedin the 1780s on the basis of Latin carbō ‘coal,charcoal’ (supplementing an earlier borrowingcharbon ‘coal, charcoal’). It is not certainwhether char and charcoal are related to it.carbuncle [13] Etymologically, a carbuncle is a‘small piece of coal’. It comes ultimately fromLatin carbunculus, a diminutive form of carbō‘coal’ (source of English carbon). This reachedEnglish via Old French carbuncle. The Latinword had two main metaphorical meanings,based on the idea of a glowing coal: ‘red gem’and ‘red inflamed spot’, both of which passedinto English. The latter achieved some notorietyin British English in the 1980s following aremark by the Prince of Wales in 1984comparing a piece of modern architectureunfavourably to a ‘carbuncle’, althoughironically from the 15th to the 17th centuries theword was used for ‘something of greatsplendour’. CARBONcarburettor [19] Carburettor is a derivative ofcarburet, an obsolete term for what is nowknown as carbide ‘a carbon compound’. It wasoriginally used for a device for adding carbon toa gas for enhancing its power of illumination; thecurrent application to a device for producingair/fuel vapour in an engine dates from the1890s. Carburet itself was a later form ofcarbure, borrowed in the 1790s from French; itsultimate origin was in Latin carbō, source ofEnglish carbon. CARBONcarcass [14] English first acquired this wordfrom Anglo-Norman carcois, and early formswere carcays and carcoys. Spellings similar tomodern English carcass begin to emerge in the16th century, and may be due to reborrowingfrom French carcasse, to association with thenoun case ‘container’, which meant ‘body’ inthe 16th century, or to a combination of both.The usual current spelling throughout theEnglish-speaking world is carcass, but BritishEnglish also uses carcase. The word’s ultimateorigin is unknown.carcinoma see CANCERcard [16] English borrowed card from Frenchcarte, for some unknown reason changing t to din the process. The French word (source also ofEnglish carton) came from Latin charta, whichoriginally denoted ‘leaf of the papyrus plant’;and since papyrus leaves were used for makingpaper, the word in due course came to mean‘paper’ (Latin charta also gave English chartand charter). The Latin word in turn came fromGreek khártēs, which is probably of Egyptianorigin. CARTON, CHART, CHARTER, DISCARDcardiac see HEARTcardigan [19] The cardigan was named afterJames Thomas Brudenell, 7th earl of Cardigan(1797–1868), an early sporter of button-throughwoollen jackets. His other, but less successful,claim to fame was that he led the Charge of theLight Brigade (1854) at Balaclava during theCrimean War.cardinal [12] The ultimate source of cardinal isLatin cardō ‘hinge’, and its underlying idea isthat something of particular, or ‘cardinal’,importance is like the hinge on which all elsedepends. English first acquired it as a noun,direct from ecclesiastical Latin cardinālis(originally an adjective derived from cardō),which in the early church denoted simply aclergyman attached to a church, as a door isattached by hinges; it only gradually rose indignity to refer to princes of the Roman Catholicchurch. The adjective reached English in the13th century, via Old French cardinal or Latincardinālis.care [OE] Care goes back ultimately to aprehistoric Indo-European *gar-, source of awide range of words in other Indo-Europeanlanguages, two of which, garrulous and slogan,have also reached English. In the case of care,the route was via Germanic *karō, whichreached Old English as caru. The relatedadjective from the same source is chary [OE],which originally meant ‘sad’. CHARY, GARRULOUS, SLOGANcareen [16] Careen comes ultimately fromcarīna, the Latin word for a ‘nutshell’, which isrelated to Greek káruon ‘nut’ and Sanskritkárakas ‘coconut’. The idea of a ‘nut’ as ametaphor for a ‘boat’ is a fairly obvious one(shell is similarly used for a ‘rowing boat’), andthe Latin word came to be used for a ‘ship’skeel’, the raised seam of a walnut perhapssuggesting the line of the timber along the ship’sbottom. It passed via the Genoese dialect carenainto French, where a vessel en carène was turnedover on its side so that its keel was exposed;hence the verb. The equation of careen withcareer ‘go wildly’ is 20th-century and ofAmerican origin.career [16] Originally, a career was a ‘road orracetrack for vehicles’. Its ultimate source wasLatin carrus ‘wheeled vehicle’ (from which weget car), which produced the Vulgar Latin

derivative *carāria ‘track for wheeled vehicles’.This passed into English via Provençal carreira,Italian carriera, and French carrière. Its earliestmeaning was ‘racecourse’, and hence, byextension, ‘swift course’; the main present-daysense ‘course of someone’s working life’ did notdevelop until the 19th century, probably owingto renewed influence of French carrière. CARcarfax see QUARTERcargo see CHARGEcaribou [17] Caribou is the name of a closeNorth American relative of the reindeer, and itrefers literally to the way in which the animalscratches at the snow with its hooves to find thegrass, moss, etc that it eats. It comes fromMi’kmaq galipu (Mi’kmaq is an Algonquianlanguage of eastern Canada), meaning ‘snowshoveller’,which in Canadian French becamecaribou.carillon see QUARTERcarmine see CRIMSONcarnal [15] Carnal means literally ‘of the flesh’;it comes from late Latin carnālis, a derivative ofLatin carō ‘flesh, meat’. Other English wordsfrom the same source are carnivorous ‘meateating’[17]; carnage [16], which came viaFrench carnage and Italian carnaggio frommedieval Latin carnāticum ‘slaughter ofanimals’; carnation [16], which originallymeant ‘pink, colour of flesh’ and came viaFrench carnation and Italian carnagione fromlate Latin carnātiō ‘fleshiness, fatness’; charnel[14], as in charnel house, from Old Frenchcharnel; and also carnival and carrion. CARNAGE, CARNATION, CARNIVAL,CARNIVOROUS, CARRION, CHARNELcarnival [16] Etymologically, carnival means‘raising flesh’ – that is, the ‘removal of meat’from the diet during Lent (carnival wasoriginally a period of merrymaking precedingLent). It comes from medieval Latincarnelevāmen, a compound noun made up ofcarō ‘flesh’ (source of English carnal) andlevāmen, a derivative of the verb levāre ‘lighten,raise’ (source of English lever, levity, and levy). CARNAL, CARRION, LEVER, LEVYcarol [13] English acquired carol from OldFrench carole, and the similarity of form andmeaning naturally suggests that this in turn camefrom late Latin choraula ‘choral song’. Inclassical Latin times this had meant ‘person whoaccompanies a choir on a flute or reedinstrument’, and it came from Greek khoraúlēs,a compound formed from khorós ‘choir’ (sourceof English chorus and choir) and aulos ‘reedinstrument’. However, the fact that the earliestrecorded use of the word is for a dance in a ring,accompanied by singing, has led someetymologists to speculate that the underlyingnotion contained in it may be not ‘song’ but‘circle’ (perhaps from Latin corolla ‘littlecrown, garland’). CHOIR, CHORUScarouse [16] Etymologically, carouse means todrink something up ‘completely’. Originally it95 carrywas an adverb, used in phrases such as drinkcarouse (‘the tiplinge sottes at midnight which toquaffe carouse do use’, Thomas Drant, Horace’sEpigrams 1567). These were a partial translationof German trinken garaus, in which garaus is acompound adverb made up of gar ‘completely,all’ and aus ‘out’.carp [14] and carp ‘criticize’ [13] are distinctwords in English. The former comes frommedieval Latin carpa, probably via Old Frenchcarpe, but the word is probably ultimately ofGermanic origin. The verb, which originallysimply meant ‘talk’, was a borrowing from OldNorse karpa. The present-day sense ‘criticize’did not develop until the 16th century, probablyunder the influence of Latin carpere ‘pluck’(related to English harvest), which had themetaphorical meaning ‘slander’. HARVESTcarpenter [14] Etymologically, a carpenter is a‘maker of carriages’. The word comes, viaAnglo-Norman carpenter, from late Latincarpentārius, originally an adjective derivedfrom carpentum ‘two-wheeled vehicle’. This,like the similar and perhaps related Latin carrus,source of English car, was of Celtic origin. Thegeneralization in meaning to ‘worker in wood’took place before the word was borrowed intoEnglish.carpet [14] Originally, carpet was simply a sortof rough cloth, and medieval Latin carpīta, forexample, was sometimes used for a garmentmade from it. In earliest English use it was a‘table-cloth’ or ‘bed-spread’, and it was not untilthe 15th century that the specialized ‘floorcovering’began to establish itself. The worditself entered English via either Old Frenchcarpite or medieval Latin carpīta, which wasderived from carpīre, an alteration of Latincarpere ‘pluck’ (related to English harvest). Theunderlying notion seems to be that such clothwas originally made from ‘plucked’ fabric, thatis, fabric which had been unravelled or shredded.carriage [14] Carriage is literally ‘carrying’. Itis an Old Northern French derivative of the verbcarier, in the sense ‘transport in a vehicle’. Atfirst it meant simply ‘conveyance’ in the abstractsense, but in the 15th century more concretemeaning began to emerge: ‘load, luggage’ (nowobsolete) and ‘means of conveyance, vehicle’.By the 18th century the latter had become furtherspecialized to ‘horse-drawn wheeled vehicle forcarrying people’ (as opposed to goods). CARRYcarrion [13] Ultimately, carrion is a derivativeof Latin carō ‘flesh’ (source also of Englishcarnal). This appears to have had a Vulgar Latinoffshoot *carōnia, which entered English viaAnglo-Norman caroine. At first it was used inEnglish for ‘dead body’, but before the end ofthe 13th century the current sense ‘flesh unfit forhuman consumption’ had begun to establishitself. CARNAL, CRONEcarry [14] For such a basic and common word,carry has a surprisingly brief history. It does not

cart 96go back to some prehistoric Indo-European root,but was formed less than 1000 years ago inAnglo-Norman or Old Northern French, on thebasis of carre or car (immediate source ofEnglish car). The verb carier thus meantliterally ‘transport in a wheeled vehicle’. Thissense was carried over into English, and thoughit has since largely given way to the more general‘convey’, it is preserved in the derivativecarriage, in such expressions as ‘carriage paid’. CAR, CARRIAGEcart [13] Old English had a word cræt ‘carriage’,which may, by the process known as metathesis(reversal of speech sounds), have produced theword which first appeared at the beginning of the13th century as karte or carte. But a part mustcertainly also have been played by Old Norsekartr ‘cart’, and some have also detected theinfluence of Anglo-Norman carete, a diminutiveform of car (source of English car). CARcartel see CHARTcarton see CHARTcartoon [17] Cartoon comes via French cartonfrom Italian cartone, which meant literally‘strong heavy paper, pasteboard’ (it was aderivative of carta ‘paper’, which came fromLatin charta, source also of English card,carton, chart, and charter). Its meaning was indue course transferred to the preliminarysketches made by artists on such paper, theoriginal and for nearly two centuries the onlysense of the word in English; ‘But the sight bestpleased me was the cartoons by Raphael, whichare far beyond all the paintings I ever saw’,Hatton family correspondence, 1697. Itsapplication to comic drawings in newspapersand magazines began in the 1840s. CARD, CARTON, CHART, CHARTERcartouche see CHARTcartridge see CHARTcarvecarve [OE] Originally, carve meant simply ‘cut’.That sense died out in the 16th century, leavingthe more specialized ‘cut or incise decoratively’and later ‘cut up meat at table’. Related words inother Germanic languages, such as Dutchkerven, point to a prehistoric West Germanic*kerfan, which is probably ultimately linked toGreek gráphein ‘write’ (source of Englishgraphic), whose original notion was ‘scratch orincise on a surface’. GRAPHICcascara see CONCUSSIONcase [13] There are two distinct words case inEnglish, both acquired via Old French fromLatin and both members of very large families.Case ‘circumstance’ was borrowed from OldFrench cas, which in turn came from Latin cāsus‘fall, chance’. This was formed from the base ofthe verb cadere ‘fall’. The progression of sensesis from the concrete ‘that which falls’ to themetaphorical ‘that which befalls, that whichhappens (by chance)’ (and English chance isalso derived ultimately from Latin cadere).Other related words in English include accident,cadence, cadaver, cheat, chute, coincide,decadent, decay, deciduous, and occasion. Case‘container’ comes via Old French casse fromLatin capsa ‘box’, a derivative of the verb capere‘hold’ (which is related to English heave). Atvarious points during its history it has producedoffshoots which in English have become capsule[17], a diminutive form, cash, chassis, andperhaps capsicum [18] and chase ‘engrave’. ACCIDENT, CADAVER, CHEAT, CHUTE, DECAY,DECIDUOUS, OCCASION, OCCIDENT; CAPSICUM,CAPSULE, CASH, CHASSIScash [16] Cash originally meant ‘money-box’.English acquired it via French casse or Italiancassa from Latin capsa ‘box’ (source of Englishcase). It was not until the mid 18th century thatthis underlying sense died out, leaving thesecondary ‘money’ (which had alreadydeveloped before the word entered English).Cashier ‘person in charge of money’ [16] is aderivative, coming from French caissier orperhaps from Dutch cassier, but the verb cashier‘dismiss’ [16] is completely unrelated. It comesfrom Dutch casseren, a borrowing from OldFrench casser ‘discharge, annul’. This in turngoes back to Latin quassāre ‘break up’, sourceof English quash. CASEcassock [16] Etymologically, a cassock isprobably a cloak worn by a Cossack; the twowords appear to be ultimately identical.Cassock, which originally meant simply ‘cloak’or ‘long coat’ (its current application toclergymen’s tunics arose in the 17th century),comes via French casaque from Italian casacca.It has been conjectured that this was adescendant of Turkish quzzāk ‘nomad’ (aderivative of the verb qaz ‘wander’), which also,via Russian kozak, gave English Cossack [16].However, another theory is that cassock comesultimately from Persian kazhāghand ‘paddedjacket’, a compound formed from kazh ‘raw silk’and āghand ‘stuffed’. COSSACKcast [31] Cast comes from Old Norse kasta‘throw’. It has gradually been replaced sinceMiddle English times as the ordinary word for‘propelling with the arm’ by throw. Of thevarious metaphorical senses of the noun, ‘set ofperformers in a play’ developed in the 17thcentury, apparently from an earlier ‘plan,design’.castanet [17] Castanets were originally namedin Spanish from their resemblance to the shellsof chestnuts, Spanish castañeta being adiminutive form of castaña ‘chestnut’, fromLatin castanea (itself the ultimate source ofEnglish chestnut). Another name for them in17th-century English was knackers:‘Castinettas: knackers of the form of chestnuts,used to this day by the Spaniards in theirdances’, Robert Stapylton, Juvenal’s sixteensatires 1647. CHESTNUTcaste [16] Caste has no etymological connectionwith cast. It is borrowed from Spanish andPortuguese casta ‘race, breed’, a nominal use of

the adjective casta ‘pure’, from Latin castus(source of English chaste). The notionunderlying the word thus appears to be ‘racialpurity’. Use of casta by the Portuguese in Indiawith reference to the Hindu social groupings ledto its being adopted in this sense by English inthe 17th century. CHASTE, INCESTcastle [11] Castle was one of the first wordsborrowed by the English from their Normanconquerors: it is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxonchronicle only nine years after the battle ofHastings. It comes via Anglo-Norman castelfrom Latin castellum, a diminutive form ofcastrum ‘fort’ (which was acquired by OldEnglish as ceaster, and now appears in Englishplace-names as -caster or -chester). The OldFrench version of castel, chastel, producedmodern French château, and also its derivativechâtelaine, borrowed into English in the 19thcentury. CHÂTEAUcastor There are two distinct words castor inEnglish. The older originally meant ‘beaver’[14], and was early used with reference to abitter pungent substance secreted by glands nearthe beaver’s anus, employed in medicine andperfumery. The term castor oil [18] probablycomes from the use of this oil, derived from theseed of a tropical plant, as a substitute for castorin medicine. The more recent castor [17] issimply a derivative of the verb cast; it wasoriginally (and still often is) spelled caster. Itsuse for sprinkling or ‘throwing’ sugar is obvious(the term castor sugar dates back to the mid 19thcentury), but its application to a ‘smallswivelling wheel’ is less immediately clear: itcomes from a now obsolete sense of the verb,mainly nautical, ‘veer, turn’: ‘Prepare for castingto port’, George Nares, Seamanship 1882. CASTcat [OE] The word cat seems to have appeared onthe European scene, in the form of Latin catta orcattus, around 1000 AD (the previous Latin wordwas fēlēs, source of English feline). No one iscompletely sure where it came from (althoughgiven the domestic cat’s origins in Egypt, it islikely to have been an Egyptian word), but itsoon spread north and west through Europe. TheLatin word reached English via Germanic*kattuz, later backed up by Anglo-Norman cat, avariant of Old French chat.catacomb [17] Catacomb derives from thename of an underground cemetary in ancientRome, the Coemetērium Catacumbas, beneaththe Basilica of St Sebastian near the AppianWay. It is said that the bodies of St Peter and StPaul were deposited in or near its subterraneanpassages. The word’s more general applicationto any underground labyrinth dates from the 17thcentury. The original significance of LatinCatacumbas is not known.catafalque see SCAFFOLDcatamaran [17] Catamaran is a word borrowedfrom the Tamil language of the southeast coastof India. It is a compound meaning literally ‘tied97 catechismwood’, made up of kattu ‘tie’ and maram ‘wood,tree’. It was first recorded in English in WilliamDampier’s Voyages 1697: ‘The smaller sort ofBark-logs are more governable than the others… This sort of Floats are used in many placesboth in the East and West Indies. On the Coast ofCoromandel … they call them Catamarans’.catapult [16] The first catapults were largemilitary machines for hurling missiles at theenemy (originally darts, in contrast with theballista, which discharged large rocks, but thedistinction did not last); the schoolboy’s handheldcatapult, consisting of a piece of elasticfixed in a Y-shaped frame, did not appear untilthe latter part of the 19th century.Etymologically, their name is a fairlystraightforward description of what they do: itcomes ultimately from Greek katapáltēs, whichwas formed from katá- ‘down’, hence ‘against’,and pállein ‘hurl’.cataract [15] Greek kataráktēs meant literally‘swooping down, rushing down’; it was aderivative of the verb katarássein, a compoundformed from the prefix katá- ‘down’ (whichappears in a wide range of English words,including cataclysm, catalepsy, catalogue,catapult – literally ‘hurl down’ – andcatastrophe) and the verb rássein ‘strike’. Henceit was applied metaphorically to various thingsthat ‘rush down’, including waterfalls andportcullises. The word passed into English viaLatin cataracta, and the sense ‘opacity of theeye’s lens’ developed in the 16th century,probably as a metaphorical extension of the nowobsolete ‘portcullis’.catarrh [16] Etymologically, catarrh is‘something that flows down’. It comes viaFrench catarrhe and late Latin catarrhus fromGreek katárrhous, a derivative of the verbkatarrhein, a compound formed from the prefixkatá- ‘down’ (as in cataract) and the verb rhein‘flow’ (a relative of English rheumatism andstream). DIARRHOEA, RHEUMATISM, STREAMcatastrophe see APOSTROPHEcatch [13] Originally catch meant ‘chase, hunt’(and in fact it is etymologically related to theEnglish word chase). However, it remarkablyquickly moved on to be applied to the nextlogical step in the procedure, ‘capture’, and bythe early 16th century ‘chase’ was becomingobsolete (although it remains the only sense ofrelated words in other languages, such as Frenchchasser and Italian cacciare). Looked at fromanother point of view, however, catch might besaid to be harking back to its ultimate roots inLatin capere ‘take’, source of English capture.Its past participle, captus, provided the basis fora new verb captāre ‘try to seize, chase’. InVulgar Latin this became altered to *captiāre,source of Old French chacier (whence Englishchase) and the corresponding Anglo-Normancachier (whence English catch). CAPTURE, CHASEcatechism [16] Etymologically, catechism is‘teaching by the spoken word’. It is a derivative

category 98of catechize [15], which comes ultimately fromthe Greek verb katēkhein, a compound formedfrom the prefix katá- ‘thoroughly’ and the verbēkhein ‘sound, resound’ (related to Englishecho). Thus originally to ‘catechize’ someonewas literally to ‘din’ instruction into them, hence‘instruct orally’. The word came into English viaa later ecclesiastical Greek derivativekatēkhízein and Latin catēchīzāre. ECHOcategory [15] The word category has a rathercomplicated semantic history. It comesultimately from Greek katēgorein ‘accuse’, acompound formed from the prefix katá-‘against’ and agorá ‘public assembly’ (source ofEnglish agoraphobia and related to gregarious)– hence ‘speak against publicly’. ‘Accuse’gradually became weakened in meaning to‘assert, name’, and the derived noun katēgoríāwas applied by Aristotle to the enumeration ofall classes of things that can be named – hence‘category’. The word reached English via lateLatin catēgoria or French catégorie. AGORAPHOBIA, GREGARIOUS, PANEGYRICcater [16] Cater is related to French acheter‘buy’, and originally meant ‘buy provisions’. Itcomes ultimately from Vulgar Latin *accaptāre,a compound verb formed from the Latin prefixad- ‘to’ and the verb captāre ‘try to seize’(source of English catch and chase). Thisprovided the basis for the Anglo-Norman agentnoun acatour ‘buyer, purveyor’, which gaveEnglish the now obsolete acater. Losing its a-,this became cater, which until the early 17thcentury was the word for what we would nowcall a ‘caterer’. At around the same time caterbegan to be used as a verb; the first knownexample of this is in Shakespeare’s As You LikeIt II, iii: ‘He that doth the ravens feed, yeaprovidently caters for the sparrow’. CAPTURE, CATCH, CHASEcaterpillar [15] Etymologically, a caterpillar isa ‘hairy cat’. The word comes ultimately fromlate Latin *catta pilōsa: catta is the source ofEnglish cat, while pilōsus ‘hairy’ is a derivativeof Latin pilus ‘hair’, from which English getspile of a carpet. In Old French *catta pilōsabecame chatepelose, which passed into Englishas catyrpel. The present-day form arose in the16th century, probably from association with thenow obsolete piller ‘plunderer’ (related toEnglish pillage) – caterpillars being regarded, ofcourse, as plunderers of leaves. The notion thatcaterpillars resemble small furry mammals isalso reflected in such names as pussmoth andwoolly bear. CAT, PILEcaterwaul [14] The earliest known use of thisword comes in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’sPrologue 1386: ‘If the cat’s skin be slick andgrey, forth she will, ere any day be dawned, toshow her skin, and go a-caterwauling’. The firstelement of the word is generally accepted to becat, while the second (in Middle English it wasusually -wawe or -wrawe) is presumablyonomatopoeic, imitating the sound of a catwailing or yowling. It is not clear whether it wasa purely native creation, or whether Englishborrowed it from Low German katerwaulen(where kater means ‘tom cat’).cathedral [13] Cathedral is a shortening ofcathedral church, which was originally the‘church housing the bishop’s throne’. Forultimately cathedral comes from Greekkathédrā (source also of English chair), acompound noun meaning ‘seat’, formed fromkatá- ‘down’ and *hed- ‘sit’. The adjectival formwas created in late Latin as cathedrālis, andreached English via Old French. The notion ofthe bishop’s authority residing in his thronerecurs in see, which comes from Latin sēdem‘seat’, a relative of English sit. CHAIRcathode [19] The term cathode, meaning‘negative electrode’, appears to have beenintroduced by the English philosopher WilliamWhewell around 1834. It was based on Greekkáthodos ‘way down’, a compound formed fromkatá- ‘down’ and hodós ‘way’ (also representedin exodus ‘way out’ and odometer ‘instrumentfor measuring distance travelled’, and possiblyrelated to Latin cēdere, source of English cedeand a host of derived words). It specificallycontrasts with anode, which means literally‘way up’. EXODUS, ODOMETERcatholic [14] Etymologically, the CatholicChurch is the universal church, comprising allChristians. For catholic comes ultimately from aGreek word, katholikós, meaning ‘relating to all,general’. It was a derivative of kathólou, acompound formed from katá ‘relating to’ andhólos ‘whole’ (source of English holism andholistic). It passed into English via Old Frenchcatholique or ecclesiastical Latin catholicus. Itsoriginal meaning is preserved today in suchcontexts as ‘catholic tastes’ – that is, ‘widerangingtastes’. HOLISTICcattle [13] Ultimately, cattle is the same word aschattel [13], and when it first entered English ithad the same meaning, ‘property’. From earliesttimes, however, it was applied specifically tolivestock thought of as property. In the MiddleAges it was a wide-ranging term in animalhusbandry, being used for horses, sheep, pigs,and even poultry and bees, as well as cows, andsuch usages survived dialectally untilcomparatively recently, but from the mid 16thcentury onwards there is increasing evidence ofthe word’s being restricted solely to cows. Itsultimate source is medieval Latin capitāle‘property’, which came to English via OldFrench chatel as chattel and via Anglo-Normancatel as cattle. Capitāle itself goes back toclassical Latin capitālis (from caput ‘head’),from which English gets capital. CAPITAL, CHATTELcaucus [18] Caucus ‘closed party meeting’ isbelieved to be of native American origin.Certainly its early usage was restricted to theUSA (it did not reach British English until the

1870s, when it became something of a politicalbuzzword for a time). In form and meaning itstrongly resembles caucauasu, a word meaning‘counsellor’ in the Algonquian languages ofeastern Canada and the USA which wasrecorded in print by Captain John Smith (1580–1631), an early English colonist in America.caudal see QUEUEcauldron [13] Etymologically, cauldrons are forheating not food but people. The word comesultimately from Latin calidārium ‘hot bath’,which was a derivative of the adjective calidus‘warm’ (related to English calorie, and, by amuch more circuitous route, lee ‘sheltered area’and probably lukewarm). Among thedescendants of calidārium were late Latincaldāria ‘pot’, which produced Frenchchaudière (possible source of English chowder)and Vulgar Latin *caldario, which passed intoAnglo-Norman, with a suffix indicating greatsize, as caudron ‘large cooking pot’. In English,the l was reintroduced from Latin in the 15thcentury. CALORIE, CHOWDER, NONCHALANTcauliflower [16] Cauliflower is literally‘flowered cabbage’. English probably borrowedand adapted the word from Italian cavoli fiori,plural of cavolo fiore ‘cabbage flower’. Cavolocame from late Latin caulus, a variant of Latincaulis ‘cabbage’. This word originally meant‘stem’, but the notion ultimately underlying it is‘hollow stem’, for it can be traced back to anIndo-European base which also produced holeand hollow. It was borrowed early on into theGermanic languages, and via this route hasproduced in English the now rare cole ‘cabbage,rape’[14] (more familiar in the Dutch borrowingcoleslaw); the Scots version kale [13], from OldNorse kál, best known south of the border in theform curly kale; and via German kohlrabi [19],the last element of which is related to Englishrape the plant. COLE, COLESLAW, HOLE, HOLLOW, KALE,KOHLRABIcause [13] Cause comes via Old French causefrom Latin causa, which as well as ‘reason’meant ‘law-suit’; this was carried over intoEnglish legal language (it survives in terms suchas cause-list ‘list of cases to be tried’) and its usein expressions like ‘plead someone’s cause’ ledin the late 16th century to a more generalapplication ‘goal or principle pursued orsupported’. French chose ‘thing’ also comesfrom Latin causa, in the weakened sense ‘matter,subject’. EXCUSEcauseway [15] Etymologically, a causeway is aroad paved with limestone. In late MiddleEnglish, the word was causey way, causeycoming via Anglo-Norman *cauce from VulgarLatin *calciāta, an adjective derived from Latincalx ‘limestone’ (source also of English chalk,calcium, and calculate). The simple form causey‘causeway, path’ survived dialectally well into99 caviarethe 20th century, and its French relative chausée,‘road’ is still very much alive. CALCIUM, CALCULATE, CHALKcaustic see HOLOCAUSTcauterize see HOLOCAUSTcaution see SHOWcavalcade [16] Originally, a cavalcade wassimply a ride on horseback, often for the purposeof attack: in James I’s Counterblast to tobacco1604, for example, we find ‘to make somesudden cavalcade upon your enemies’. By the17th century this had developed to ‘processionon horseback’, and it was not long after that thatthe present-day, more general ‘procession’emerged. The word comes via French cavalcadefrom Italian cavalcata, a derivative of the verbcavalcare ‘ride on horseback’. This in turn camefrom Vulgar Latin *caballicāre, which wasbased on Latin caballus ‘horse’ (source also ofEnglish cavalier and French cheval ‘horse’). Inthe 20th century, -cade has come to be regardedas a suffix in its own right, meaning ‘procession,show’, and producing such forms as motorcade,aquacade, and even camelcade. CAVALIERcavalier [16] Etymologically, a cavalier is a‘horseman’. The word comes via Frenchcavalier from Italian cavaliere, which wasderived from Latin caballus ‘horse’, eitherdirectly or via late Latin caballārius ‘horseman,rider’. From the beginning in English itsconnotations were not those of any old horserider,but of a mounted soldier or even a knight,and before the end of the 16th century the moregeneral meaning ‘courtly gentleman’ wasestablishing itself. This led in the mid-17thcentury to its being applied on the one hand tothe supporters of Charles I, and on the other as anadjective meaning ‘disdainful’. Italian cavalierewas also the source of cavalleria ‘body of horsesoldiers’,which was borrowed into English inthe 16th century, via French cavallerie, ascavalry. (The parallel form routed directlythrough French rather than via Italian waschivalry.) CAVALRY, CHIVALRYcave There are two English words cave which,despite their apparent similarity, are probablyunrelated. The earlier, ‘underground chamber’[13], comes via Old French cave from Latincavea, a nominal use of the adjective cavus‘hollow’ (source also of cavern [14], via OldFrench caverne or Latin caverna, and of cavity[16], from the late Latin derivative cavitās). Theverb cave [18], however, as in ‘cave in’, seems tocome from an earlier dialectal calve ‘collapse,fall in’, once widespread in the eastern countiesof England; it has been speculated that this wasborrowed from a Low German source, such asFlemish inkalven. It has subsequently, of course,been much influenced by the noun cave. CAVERN, CAVITY, DECOYcaveat see SHOWcaviare [16] Caviare is of Turkish origin; itcomes from Turkish khāvyār. It spread fromthere to a number of European languages,

cavil 100including Italian caviale and French caviar,many of which contributed to the ratherconfusing diversity of forms in 16th-, 17th-, andearly 18th-century English: cavialy, cavery,caveer, gaveare, etc. By the mid-18th centurycaviare or caviar had become the establishedspellings. Ironically, although caviare isquintessentially a Russian delicacy, Russiandoes not have the word caviare; it uses ikrá.cavil see CHALLENGEcavity see CAVEcay see QUAYcease [14] Cease comes via Old French cesserfrom Latin cessāre ‘delay, stop’. This wasderived from cessus, the past participle of cēdere‘go away, withdraw, yield’, which was also thebasis of cessation [14], from Latin cessātiō. CESSATIONcede [17] Cede comes, either directly or viaFrench céder, from Latin cēdere ‘go away,withdraw, yield’. The Latin verb provided thebasis for a surprisingly wide range of Englishwords: the infinitive form produced, forinstance, accede, concede, precede, proceed,and succeed, while the past participle cessus hasgiven ancestor, cease, excess, recession, etc. ACCEDE, ANCESTOR, CEASE, CONCESSION,EXCESS, NECESSARY, PROCEED, RECESSION,SUCCEEDceiling [14] Ceiling is something of a mysteryword. It originally signified the internal lining ofany part of a building, including walls as well asroof (the modern sense ‘overhead inside surfaceof a room’ began to crystallize out in the 16thcentury), and the material of which it was madetook in wooden planks and even tapestryhangings, as well as plaster. But where it comesfrom is not at all clear. It has no apparentrelations in other modern European languages,and the likeliest candidate as a source may beLatin caelāre ‘carve, engrave’. This is perhapsendorsed by an item in the accounts of the LordHigh Treasurer of Scotland, 1497, revealing howa ‘carver’ was paid £2 14s for ‘the ceiling of thechapel’ – an indication that the underlyingnotion of ceiling may be ‘carved internal surfaceof a room’.celandine [12] Etymologically the celandine, abuttercup-like spring flower, is the ‘swallow’s’flower. Its name comes, via Old French, fromGreek khelidonion, which was based onkhelidon ‘swallow’. The original reference wasno doubt to the appearance of the flowers aroundthe time when the swallows began to arrive inEurope from Africa. Its juice was used in formertimes as a remedy for poor eyesight, and, nodoubt in an over-interpretation of the name, itwas said that swallows used the juice to boost thesight of their young.celerity see ACCELERATEcelerycelery [17] Celery comes ultimately from Greeksélīnon, which signified ‘parsley’ – like thecelery, a plant of the group Umbelliferae (theEnglish word parsley comes from Greekpetrōselínon, literally ‘rock parsley’). It cameinto English via Latin selīnon, Italian dialectselleri, and French céleri. The term celeriac wasformed from celery in the early 18th century; itfirst appears in an advertisement in the Londonand country brewer 1743. PARSLEYcell [12] Cell has branched out a lot over thecenturies, but its original meaning seems to be‘small secluded room’, for it comes ultimatelyfrom an Indo-European base *kel-, which is alsothe source of English conceal, clandestine, andoccult. It came into English either via OldFrench celle or directly from Latin cella ‘smallroom, storeroom, inner room of a temple’, and atfirst was used mainly in the sense ‘smallsubsidiary monastery’. It is not until the 14thcentury that we find it being used for smallindividual apartments within a monasticbuilding, and the development from this to‘room in a prison’ came as late as the 18thcentury. In medieval biology the term wasapplied metaphorically to bodily cavities, andfrom the 17th century onwards it began to beused in the more modern sense ‘smalleststructural unit of an organism’ (the botanistNehemiah Grew was apparently the first so touse it, in the 1670s). A late Latin derivative ofcella was cellārium ‘group of cells, storeroom’;this was the source of English cellar [13], viaAnglo-Norman celer. APOCALYPSE, CELLAR, CLANDESTINE, CONCEAL,HALL, HELL, HULL, OCCULTCelsius [19] The notion of a temperature scalebased on 100 was developed by the Swedishastronomer Anders Celsius (1701–44) (heoriginally had water boiling at zero and freezingat 100º, but this was later reversed). His namebegan to be used to designate the scale in Englisharound the middle of the 19th century. In popularparlance it has usually taken a back seat tocentigrade (a French invention, first recorded inEnglish in 1812), but it remains the preferredterm in scientific usage.cement [13] Latin caementa meant ‘stone chipsused for making mortar’; etymologically, thenotion behind it was of ‘hewing for a quarry’, forit was originally *caedmenta, a derivative ofcaedere ‘cut’ (from which English gets conciseand decide). In due course the signification ofthe Latin word passed from ‘small brokenstones’ to ‘powdered stone (used for mortar)’,and it was in this sense that it passed via OldFrench ciment into English. CONCISE, DECIDEcemetery [14] Not surprisingly for a wordhaving associations with death, cemetery’sorigins are euphemistic. It comes via late Latincoemētērium from Greek koimētérion, whichoriginally meant ‘dormitory’ (it was a derivativeof the verb koiman ‘put to sleep’); it wasapparently early Greek Christian writers whofirst applied the word to burial grounds.cenotaph [17] A cenotaph is literally an ‘emptytomb’: the word comes, via French and Latin,from Greek kenotaphion, from kenos ‘empty’and taphos ‘tomb’. The idea behind the name isthat someone who had been killed far away from

his or her home (for instance, in battle), andwhose body could not be brought back, shouldbe commemorated by a symbolic tomb.censer see INCENSEcensus see EXCISEcent [16] Centum is the Latin word for ‘hundred’– indeed both come ultimately from the sameIndo-European source, *kmtóm. It first appearedin English in the form cent in the phrase per cent(originally used apparently by the financier SirThomas Gresham in a letter of 1568: ‘the interestof xij per cent by the year’); this was probablyborrowed from Italian per cento (it is not agenuine Latin phrase). The use of cent for a unitof currency dates from the 1780s, when it wasadopted by the newly founded USA; its status asone hundredth of a dollar was officially ordainedby the Continental Congress on 8 August 1786. CENTURYcentre [14] The word centre came originallyfrom the spike of a pair of compasses which isstuck into a surface while the other armdescribes a circle round it. Greek kéntron meant‘sharp point’, or more specifically ‘goad foroxen’ (it was a derivative of the verb kentein‘prick’), and hence was applied to a compassspike; and it was not long before this spreadmetaphorically to ‘mid-point of a circle’. Theword reached English either via Old Frenchcentre or directly from Latin centrum. Thederived adjective central is 16th-century. ECCENTRICcentury [16] Latin centuria meant ‘group of onehundred’ (it was a derivative of centum‘hundred’). Among the specialized applicationsof this general sense, the most familiar to ustoday is that of a division of the Roman armyconsisting originally of a hundred soldiers (thetitle of its commander, centurion [14] – Latincenturiō – derives from centuria). When Englishtook the word over, however, it put it to otheruses: it was first applied to ‘period of 100 years’in the early 17th century, while ‘score of 100 ormore in cricket’ comes from the mid 19thcentury. CENT, CENTURIONcereal [19] Cereal is a comparatively modernintroduction of the Latin adjective cereālis ‘ofgrain’, which was derived from the name ofCerēs, the Roman goddess of agriculture(identified with Greek Demeter). It has, needlessto say, no connection with serial (see SERIES).cerebellum see SAVELOYcerebral see SAVELOYceremony [14] The antecedents of ceremonyare obscure. We can trace it back to Latincaerimōnia ‘religious rites’, but there the trailstops. It probably arrived in English via OldFrench ceremonie.certain [13] Certain comes ultimately fromLatin certus ‘sure, fixed’, which derived fromthe past participle of the verb cernere ‘decide’.The Latin adjective was extended in VulgarLatin to *certānus, which passed into Englishvia Old French certain. Other English words101 chairbased on certus include certify [14] (from lateLatin certificāre) and its derivative certificate,and certitude [15] (from late Latin certitūdō). CRIME, CRISIS, DECREE, DISCERN, DISCRETE,DISCRIMINATE, EXCREMENT, RIDDLE, SECRETcessation see CEASEcesspool [17] Cesspool has no directetymological connection with pool. It comesfrom Old French suspirail ‘ventilator, breathinghole’, a derivative of souspirer ‘breathe’ (thisgoes back to Latin suspīrāre, source of thearchaic English suspire ‘sigh’). This wasborrowed into English in the early 15th centuryas suspiral ‘drainpipe’, which in the subsequenttwo hundred years appeared in a variety ofspellings, including cesperalle. By the early 16thcentury we find evidence of its being used notjust for a pipe to drain matter away, but also fora well or tank to receive matter thus drained(originally any effluent, not just sewage). Theway was thus open for a ‘reinterpretation’ of theword’s final element as pool (by the processknown as folk etymology), and in the late 17thcentury the form cesspool emerged. By analogy,as if there were really a word cess ‘sewage’, theterm cesspit was coined in the mid-19th century. SUSPIREcha see TEAchaffinch [OE] Etymologically, a chaffinch is afinch which gets its food by pecking amongst thechaff and other grain debris in the barnyard. Theword chaff itself (Old English ceaf) probablygoes back to a prehistoric Germanic base *kaf-,*kef- ‘chew’, which was also the source ofchafer ‘beetle’ [OE] (literally the ‘chewingcreature’) and jowl. (The verb chaff ‘make funof’ [19], on the other hand, is probably analteration of chafe, which came via Old Frenchchaufer and Vulgar Latin *califāre from Latincalefacere ‘make warm’, a relative of Englishcauldron and calorie.) CHAFER, JOWLchagrin [17] The word chagrin first appeared inFrench in the 14th century as an adjective,meaning ‘sad, vexed’, a usage at first adoptedinto English: ‘My wife in a chagrin humour, shenot being pleased with my kindness to either ofthem’, Samuel Pepys’s Diary 6 August 1666. Itdied out in English in the early 18th century, butthe subsequently developed noun and verb havepersisted. Etymologists now discount anyconnection with French chagrin ‘untannedleather’ (source of English shagreen [17]),which came from Turkish sagri.chain [13] Chain is a direct descendant of Latincatēna ‘chain’, source also of Englishconcatenate [16], literally ‘link together in achain’. This passed into Old French as chaeine,a later from of which, chaine, was adopted byEnglish. The Latin word’s antecedents are notknown. CONCATENATEchair [13] Chair comes ultimately from Greekkathédrā ‘seat’ (source also of cathedral, ofcourse), which was a compound originallymeaning literally ‘something for sitting down

chalice 102on’ – it was formed from katá- ‘down’ and *hed-‘sit’. It produced Latin cathedra, which in OldFrench became chaiere, the source of theEnglish word. The use of chair specifically forthe seat occupied by someone presiding at ameeting dates from the mid 17th century, and itsmetaphorical extension to the person sitting in it,as symbolizing his or her office – as in ‘addressone’s remarks to the chair’ – is virtuallycontemporary (‘The Chair behaves himself likea Busby amongst so many schoolboys’, ThomasBurton’s Diary, 23 March 1658); but its use as asynonym for chairperson, to avoid a distinctionon grounds of sex, is a late 20th-centurydevelopment. CATHEDRALchalice [13] Latin calix ‘cup’ and its relative,Greek kálux ‘pod’, perhaps hold the record forthe words most often borrowed into English.Calix first made its appearance as part of theoriginal West Germanic stratum of English, intowhich it had been borrowed from Latin; this wasas Old English cælc. Then came cælic, whichOld English independently acquired from Latinafter the conversion of the English toChristianity. Next was calice, whose source wasan Old French dialectal form descended fromLatin calix. And finally, at the end of the 13thcentury, the main Old French form chalice wasadopted. The final twist in the story is that in the17th century Latin calyx (a descendant of therelated Greek kálux) was borrowed into Englishas a botanical term, ‘outer covering of a flower’.chalk [OE] Latin calx meant broadly ‘lime,limestone’ (it probably came from Greek khálix‘pebble’). This was borrowed in early times intothe Germanic languages, and in most of them itretains this meaning (German kalk, for instance,means ‘limestone’). In English, however, itfairly soon came to be applied to a particular softwhite form of limestone, namely chalk (the OldEnglish word was cealc). The Latin word is alsothe source of English calculate, calcium, andcauseway. CALCIUM, CALCULATE, CAUSEWAYchallenge [13] The original notion contained inchallenge in English was of ‘accusation’. Theword comes, via Old French chalenge orcalenge, from Latin calumnia ‘false charge,deception’ (source of English calumny [15]). Bythe early 14th century, the modern, more neutralsense of ‘inviting to a contest’ had emerged,however, and before the end of the 17th centurythe word’s accusatory connotations had virtuallydied out. Latin calumnia probably came from theverb calvī ‘deceive’. This may, via anunrecorded intermediary *calvilla, be related toLatin cavilla ‘raillery’, whose derived verbcavillārī was the source of English cavil [16]. CALUMNYchamber [13] The ultimate source of chamber isGreek kamárā ‘something with an arched cover,room with a vaulted roof’. This passed into Latinas camara or camera (source of Englishcamera), and in Old French became transformedinto chambre, the immediate source of theEnglish word. Related forms in English includecomrade (from Spanish camarada), originally‘someone sharing a room’; chamberlain [13],which was originally coined in the WestGermanic language of the Franks as *kamerlingusing the diminutive suffix -ling, and came intoEnglish via Old French chamberlenc; andchimney. CAMERA, CHAMBERLAIN, CHIMNEYchamelion [14] Etymologically, a chamelion isa ‘ground lion’. The word comes from Greekkhamailéōn, a compound formed from khamaí‘on the ground’ (English humus and humble arerelated to it) and léōn ‘lion’. Until the 19thcentury the word was usually spelled camelion,which led to popular association of the firstelement with camel; this is turn encouraged anidentification with camelopard, a now obsoleteword for ‘giraffe’, and in the 14th and 15thcenturies camelion was used for ‘giraffe’. HUMBLE, HUMUS, LIONchamois [16] The word chamois (the name of aspecies of Alpine antelope) probably goes backto a language spoken in the Alps before theRomans penetrated northwards. They adopted itas late Latin camox, and in the local Romanschlanguage it is kamuotsch, but the source of theEnglish word is the related French chamois. Itsuse in the sense ‘soft wash-leather’, as originallymade from the skin of the chamois, dates fromthe 16th century, although the spelling shammyis not recorded before the 17th century.champagne [17] Champagne comes (as doescampaign) from late Latin campānia, aderivative of Latin campus ‘open field’ (sourceof English camp). This passed into Old Frenchas champagne ‘open country’, a word borrowedinto English in the 14th century as champaign(now archaic). It came to be applied specificallyto a province of northeastern France (an arealargely of open rolling countryside) and hence tothe wine produced in that area. There arereferences to ‘brisk Champagne’ and ‘sparklingChampagne’ in English from the 1660s and1670s, but it was not until about two hundredyears ago that modern champagne, produced bysecondary fermentation in bottle, was invented(according to legend, by the monk DomPerignon). CAMP, CAMPAIGN, CHAMPIONchampion [13] Etymologically, a champion issomeone who fought in the campus or arena.Latin campus (source of English camp) meant,among other things, ‘field of battle’ – both a fullscalemilitary battlefield and an area for stagedbattles between gladiators. Those who fought insuch battles – the gladiators – were called inmedieval Latin campiones. The word passed intoEnglish via Old French champion. The word’soriginal meaning survives historically in suchphrases as ‘king’s champion’, someone who willfight on behalf of the king, and by extension in‘supporter’, as in ‘a champion of prisoners’rights’. The modern sense ‘winner’ did notdevelop until the early 19th century. The

abbreviated form champ is 19th-centuryAmerican.An alternative and now obsolete form of theword is campion, from Old Northern French,and it has been speculated that this is the originof the plant-name campion [16], on the basis thatit was used to make garlands for fighters. CAMP, CAMPION, CHAMPAGNE, CHAMPIONchance [13] Like the related case, chanceoriginally meant ‘that which befalls (byaccident, also a relative)’. It comes ultimatelyfrom Vulgar Latin *cadēre, a descendant ofLatin cadere ‘fall’ (source of English cadenceand cadenza). This passed into Old French ascheoir, whose noun derivatives included cheoite(source of English chute) and cheance, acquiredby English via Anglo-Norman chaunce. ACCIDENT, CADENCE, CASE, CHUTEchancellor [11] Etymologically, a chancellorwas an attendant or porter who stood at thecancellī, or ‘lattice-work bar’, of a court inRoman times – hence the Latin termcancellārius. Over the centuries thecancellārius’s status rose to court secretary, indue course with certain legal functions. Theword came into English, via Anglo-Normancanceler or chanceler, in the time of Edward theConfessor, denoting the king’s official secretary,a post which developed into that of LordChancellor, head of the English judiciary. Thecourt over which he presides, Chancery, gets itsname by alteration from Middle Englishchancellerie, which came from an Old Frenchderivative of chancelier ‘chancellor’.The word’s ultimate source, Latin cancellī‘cross-bars, lattice, grating’ (a diminutive formof cancer ‘lattice’), came to be applied to thepart of a church or other building separated offby such a screen: hence, via Old French, Englishchancel ‘part of a church containing the altar andchoir’ [14]. And a metaphorical application ofthe notion of a lattice or bars crossing each otherhas given English cancel [14], via Latincancellāre and Old French canceller, whichoriginally meant ‘cross something out’. CANCEL, CHANCELchange [13] Change goes back ultimately toLatin cambīre ‘barter’, which is probably ofCeltic ancestry. A later form of the verb wascambiāre, whose most readily recognizabledescendants are probably Italian cambio, whichappears outside currency-exchange shops, andEnglish cambium ‘layer of plant tissue’ [17],coined from the notion that it ‘changes’ into newlayers. Another branch of development,however, was to Old French changier, source ofEnglish change. CAMBIUMchannel [13] Channel and canal are ultimatelythe same word. Their common ancestor wasLatin canālis ‘groove, channel’, a derivative ofcanna ‘pipe’ (source of English cane). Thispassed into Old French as chanel, which Englishtook over as channel. But then in the 15thcentury English acquired canal, either directlyfrom Latin, or from French canal, which was103 chaplainitself remodelled on the Latin form – it is notclear which. CANAL, CANEchant [14] The Latin verb for ‘sing’ was canere(possibly related to English hen). A form derivedfrom it to denote repeated action was cantāre‘keep on singing’, a rich source of Englishwords. From its French descendant chanter wehave chant and the derived chantry [14]; fromItalian, cantata [18], originally a past participle;and from the Latin noun cantus ‘song’ thederivatives accent, descant, and canticle [13], aswell as (via Italian) canto [16]. Cant‘hypocritical talk’ is probably from the samesource, and shanty or chanty ‘sailor’s song’ isalso related. ACCENT, CANT, CANTATA, CANTO, CHANTY,DESCANT, HEN, INCANTATION, RECANTchaos see GASchap There are four distinct words chap inEnglish. The oldest, ‘sore on the skin’ [14],originally meant more generally ‘crack, split’,and may be related to Middle Low Germankappen ‘chop off’; it seems ultimately to be thesame word as chop ‘cut’. Chap ‘jaw’ [16] (as inBath chaps) is probably a variant of chop (as in‘lick one’s chops’). Chap ‘fellow’ [16] originallymeant ‘customer’; it is an abbreviation ofchapman ‘trader’ [OE] (source of the commonsurname, but now obsolete as an ordinary noun),whose first element is related to English cheap.Chaps ‘leggings’ [19] is short for MexicanSpanish chaparreras, a derivative of Spanishchaparro ‘evergreen oak’; they were namedfrom their use in protecting the legs of ridersfrom the low thick scrub that grows in Mexicoand Texas (named with another derivative ofchaparro, chaparral). Chaparro itself probablycomes from Basque txapar, a diminutive ofsaphar ‘thicket’. CHOP; CHEAP; CHAPARRALchapel [13] Chapel has a very specific source: itwas originally applied to the shrine built topreserve the cloak (late Latin cappa) of StMartin of Tours as a holy relic. The diminutiveform of cappa was cappella, and this came to beapplied to the building itself, gradually beingbroadened out subsequently to any moderatelysized place of worship. The word reachedEnglish via Old French chapele. The churchfunctionary who guarded St Martin’s cloak wasknown by the derivative term cappellānus,source of English chaplain [12]. CHAPLAINchaperon [14] A chaperon was originally a‘hood’. The word comes from Old Frenchchaperon, a derivative of chape, whose variantcape was the source of English cape, and goesback ultimately to late Latin cappa ‘hood,cloak’. The word’s modern sense, ‘companionsafeguarding propriety’, which first appears inEnglish in the 18th century, arose from thegeneral notion of a ‘hood’ as something thatgives protection. CAPEchaplain see CHAPEL

chapter 104chapter [13] Ultimately, chapter is the sameword as capital. Both came via Old French fromLatin capitulum ‘small head’, a diminutive formof caput ‘head’, but whereas capital represents alate, 12th-century borrowing into French inecclesiastical and legal contexts, chapter is farearlier and therefore shows more differences: inOld French, capitulum became chapitle, laterchapitre. Already in Latin the word was used for‘section of a book’; the semantic developmentseems to parallel English head ‘category,section’ (as in ‘heads of agreement’) and thederived heading. The ecclesiastical use ofchapter, as a collective term for the canons of acathedral, originated in the canons’ practice ofmeeting to read a chapter of Scripture.Latin capitulum in the sense ‘head of adiscourse, chapter’ produced the derivativecapitulāre ‘draw up under separate headings’.When its past participle passed into English inthe 16th century as the verb capitulate, it wasstill with this meaning, and it did not narrowdown to the more specific ‘make terms ofsurrender’ until the 17th century. CAPITAL, CAPITULATE, CATTLE, RECAPITULATEchar see CHARCOALcharacter [14] The ultimate source of characteris Greek kharaktér, a derivative of the verbkharássein ‘sharpen, engrave, cut’, which in turncame from kharax ‘pointed stake’. Kharaktérmeant ‘engraved mark’, and hence was appliedmetaphorically to the particular impress orstamp which marked one thing as different fromanother – its ‘character’. The word came intoEnglish via Latin charactēr and Old Frenchcaractere. Characteristic followed in the 17thcentury. GASHcharcoal [14] The words char and charcoal arerelated, but not in the way commonsense mightlead one to suppose: for the verb char [17],originally apparently a charcoal-burner’s term,appears to derive from charcoal. Soetymologically, the element char has nothing todo with ‘burning’. There are two mainsuggestions as to charcoal’s origins: firstly thatit comes from Old French charbon ‘charcoal’(related to English carbon); and secondly that itrepresents the now obsolete English verb chare(see CHARWOMAN), which in Old English times(cerran) meant ‘turn’. On the basis of thistheory, the etymological meaning of the wordwould be ‘turning into charcoal’ (for in OldEnglish, coal meant ‘charcoal’ as well as ‘coal’).charge [13] The notion underlying the wordcharge is of a ‘load’ or ‘burden’ – and this canstill be detected in many of its modern meanings,as of a duty laid on one like a load, or of theburden of an expense, which began asmetaphors. It comes ultimately from Latincarrus ‘two-wheeled wagon’ (source also ofEnglish car). From this was derived the lateLatin verb carricāre ‘load’, which produced theOld French verb charger and, via theintermediate Vulgar Latin *carrica, the OldFrench noun charge, antecedents of the Englishwords. The literal sense of ‘loading’ or ‘bearing’has now virtually died out, except in suchphrases as ‘charge your glasses’, but there arereminders of it in cargo [17], which comes fromthe Spanish equivalent of the French nouncharge, and indeed in carry, descended from thesame ultimate source.The origins of the verb sense ‘rush in attack’are not altogether clear, but it may have someconnection with the sense ‘put a weapon inreadiness’. This is now familiar in the context offirearms, but it seems to have been used as longago as the 13th century with reference to arrows.The Italian descendant of late Latin carricārewas caricare, which meant not only ‘load’ butalso, metaphorically, ‘exaggerate’. From thiswas derived the noun caricatura, which reachedEnglish via French in the 18th century ascaricature. CAR, CARGO, CARICATUREcharlatan [17] Charlatan is of Italian origin. Itcomes from the verb cialare ‘chatter, prattle’. Itsoriginal application was to the patter of salesmentrying to sell quack remedies, and hence Italianciarlatano at first referred to such vendors, andthen by extension to any dispenser ofimpostures. Some etymologists have sought toconnect the word with Italian Cerretano,literally ‘inhabitant of Cerreto’, an Italian villagesupposedly noted for exaggeration, alleging thatit may have contributed its suffix to ciarlatanoand reinforced its meaning. However that maybe, the word reached English in its current fromvia French charlatan.charm [13] Although now largely weakened tomere ‘attractiveness’, the origins of charm are inmagic spells and incantations. It comes via OldFrench charme from Latin carmen ‘song’, whichwas also used for the chanting or reciting ofverses with supposedly magic powers. Thus inthe Middle Ages, charms were synonymous withenchantment – either spoken or, in moreconcrete form, carried as talismans. The latterhave degenerated in modern times to smalltrinkets worn on bracelets, an application firstrecorded in the mid 19th century.charnel see CARNALchartchart [16] English card and chart are related.Both come from Latin charta ‘paper’, butwhereas card was routed via French carte, andfor some reason changed its t to a d, chart wasborrowed directly from the Latin word, in whichthe meaning ‘map’ had already developed.Latin charta originally denoted ‘leaf of thepapyrus plant’, and developed the sense ‘paper’because paper was originally made from papyrus(indeed the English word paper comes frompapyrus). It came from Greek khártēs, which isprobably of Egyptian origin. It has provided thebasis of a number of other English words besidescard and chart, including charter [13], whichcomes via Old French from Latin chartula, adiminutive form of charta; carton [19], whichcomes from a French derivative, and wasoriginally used in English for the ‘white disc atthe centre of a target’; and, via Italian carta,

cartel, cartoon, cartouche, and cartridge. Cartel[16] comes via French from the Italiandiminutive form cartello, which meant literally‘placard’. It was used metaphorically for ‘letterof defiance’, and entered English with the sense‘written challenge’. The modern commercialsense comes from German kartell. Cartouche[17] comes via French from Italian cartoccio. Itoriginally signified a ‘cartridge’, made from aroll or twist of paper; the modern architecturalsense of ‘ornamental tablet’ arose from itsoriginal scroll-like shape. Cartridge [16] is anEnglish modification of cartouche; anintermediate form was cartage. CARD, CARTEL, CARTON, CARTOON,CARTOUCHE, CARTRIDGE, CHARTERcharwoman [16] A charwoman is, quiteliterally, a woman who does ‘chores’. Chore is avariant of the now obsolete noun chare or char,which meant literally ‘turn’ (it derived from theOld English verb cerran, which may be thesource of charcoal). Hence ‘doing one’s turn’,‘one’s turn at work’ in due course advanced itsmeaning to ‘job’. Already by the 15th century ithad connotations of menial or household jobs:‘making the beds and such other chares’,Nicholas Love, Bonaventura’s Mirror 1410. AJAR, CHOREchary see CAREchase There are two distinct words chase inEnglish, although they may come from the sameultimate source. The commoner, and older,‘pursue’ [13], comes via Old French chacierfrom Vulgar Latin *captiāre (which alsoproduced Anglo-Norman cachier, source ofEnglish catch). This was an alteration of Latincaptāre ‘try to seize’, which was formed fromcaptus, the past participle of capere ‘take’(source of a wide range of English words,including capture, capable, and cater, anddistantly related to heave). The other, ‘engrave’[14], may come from Old French chas‘enclosure’, which in turn came from Latincapsa ‘box’ (source of English case and relatedultimately to Latin capere). The semanticconnection would seem to be between putting ajewel in its setting, or ‘enclosure’, anddecorating jewellery or precious metal by othermeans such as engraving or embossing. CAPABLE, CAPTURE, CASE, CATCH, CATER,HEAVE, PURCHASEchasm see YAWNchassischassis see SASHchaste [13] Chaste comes via Old French fromLatin castus ‘pure’. The notion of makingsomeone pure, by correcting or reproving them,was expressed in Latin by the derived verbcastīgāre, which passed into English in the 17thcentury as castigate. Old French, however, hadalready adopted it as chastier, which in the 12thcentury produced the now obsolete English verbchaste ‘discipline’. From it were formed thederivatives chastise [14] and chasten [16]. Alsoultimately from Latin castus is English caste. CASTE, CHASTEN, CHASTISE, INCESTchattel see CATTLE105 checkchauvinism [19] Chauvinism in its originalsense of ‘blind patriotism’ was coined in Frenchfrom the name of one Nicholas Chauvin ofRochefort, a (possibly legendary) French soldierand veteran of Napoleon’s campaigns noted forhis patriotic zeal. He was taken up and ridiculedas the type of the old soldier forever harkingback to the glories of Napoleon’s times, andbecame widely known particularly through theplay La cocarde tricolore 1831 by the brothersCogniard, in which there occurs the line ‘Je suisfrançais, je suis Chauvin’. Hence Frenchchauvinisme, which first appeared in English in1870.The word’s more general application to anunreasoning belief in the superiority of one’sown group (particularly in the context malechauvinism) arose around 1970.cheap [16] The adjectival use of cheap inEnglish is quite recent, but the word itself goesback a long way. Its ultimate source is the Latinnoun caupō ‘tradesman’, which was borrowedinto Germanic in prehistoric times. Among itsdescendants were German kaufen ‘buy’, OldEnglish cēapian ‘trade’ (the possible source ofchop, as in ‘chop and change’), and the OldEnglish noun cēap ‘trade’. In Middle Englishtimes this came to be used in such phrases asgood chepe, meaning ‘good bargain’, and by the16th century an adjectival sense ‘inexpensive’had developed. The original sense ‘trade’ ispreserved in the personal name Chapman, whichuntil the 19th century was an ordinary nounmeaning ‘trader’ (it is the source of chap‘fellow’). CHAP, CHOPcheat [14] Cheat is a reduced form of escheat, alegal term for the reversion of property to thestate on the death of the owner without heirs.This came from Old French escheoite, aderivative of the past participle of the verbescheoir ‘befall by chance, happen, devolve’,from Vulgar Latin *excadēre ‘fall away’, acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and Latin cadere ‘fall’ (source of a wide range ofEnglish words from case ‘circumstance’ tooccasion). The semantic steps leading to themodern English sense of cheat seem to be‘confiscate’; ‘deprive of something dishonestly’;‘deceive’. CADENCE, CASE, ESCHEAT, OCCASION,OCCIDENTcheck There are two distinct words check inEnglish, although by very involved pathwaysthey are related. Check ‘verify’ [14] is originallya chess term meaning ‘threaten the king’. Itcomes from Old French eschequier, a derivativeof the noun eschec (source also of Englishchess), which goes back via Vulgar Latin*scaccus and Arabic shāh to Persian shāh ‘king’(whence also, of course, English shah).(Checkmate [14] comes via Old French eschecmat from Persian shāh māt ‘the king is lefthelpless’; the second element turns up again inmat or matt ‘lustreless’.) From the very specificchess sense there developed more general

cheek 106applications such as ‘attack’, ‘arrest’, ‘stop’,‘restrict’, and ‘verify’. Among these in the 18thcentury was ‘token used as a counterfoil forverifying something, such as an amount’. Ascheck this survives mainly in American English(as in ‘hat-check’), but in the specific financialsense of ‘written money order’ it wastransformed in British English into cheque,perhaps under the influence of exchequer. Check‘pattern of squares’ [14] is probably short forchequer, which in turn is a reduced form ofexchequer, a word derived ultimately fromVulgar Latin *scaccus ‘check’. CHEQUE, CHESS, EXCHEQUERcheek [OE] Old English cēace and cēoce goback respectively to prehistoric West Germanic*kǣkōn and *keukōn, but beyond that the wordhas no known relatives in other Indo-Europeanlanguages. It has, however, produced one or twointeresting offshoots. It forms the basis of theverb choke, and may be the source of chock-full(literally, ‘full up to the cheeks’); and MiddleDutch kākelen, source of English cackle [13],may be partly based on the related Middle Dutchkāke ‘jaw’. The metaphorical sense ‘impudence’(whence cheeky) arose in the 19th century,originally as ‘insolent talk’. CACKLE, CHOCK-FULL, CHOKEcheer [13] Originally, cheer meant ‘face’. Itcame via Anglo-Norman chere ‘face’ and lateLatin cara ‘face’ from Greek kárā ‘head’. Asoften happens, ‘face’ was taken as a metaphor ofthe mental condition causing the expression onit, so ‘be of good cheer’ came to mean ‘be in agood mood’; and gradually cheer grew to beused on its own for ‘happy frame of mind,cheerfulness’. It first appears in the sense ‘shoutof applause or encouragement’ at the start of the18th century, when Daniel Defoe identifies it asa nautical usage.cheese [OE] Cheese is of Latin origin, but wasborrowed into the West Germanic languages inprehistoric times, producing German kāse andDutch kaas as well as cheese. The Latin wordwas cāseus (source also of Spanish queso‘cheese’), whose possible distant relativeSanskrit kvathati ‘he boils’ suggests anunderlying idea of froth or bubbles in the milkfrom which the cheese is made.chemical [16] Essentially chemical, and therelated chemistry and chemist, come fromalchemy with the initial al- dropped. Alchemyitself is of Arabic origin; al represents the Arabicdefinite article ‘the’, while the second elementwas borrowed from Greek khēmíā ‘alchemy’.Loss of al- seems to have taken place originallyin French, so the immediate source of theEnglish words was French chimiste andchimique (whence the now obsolete Englishchemic, on which chemical was based). At firstthis whole group of words continued to be usedin the same sense as its progenitor alchemy; it isnot really until the 17th century that we find itbeing consistently applied to what we wouldnow recognize as the scientific discipline ofchemistry. ALCHEMYchenille see KENNELchequer see EXCHEQUERcherry [14] Cherry comes ultimately from Greekkerasós ‘cherry tree’, which in Latin becamecerasus. This was borrowed into the Germaniclanguages in prehistoric times, producing, aswell as German kirsche, Old English ciris‘cherry’, which died out in the 11th century. InVulgar Latin, meanwhile, cerasus had becomeceresia, which passed into Old Northern Frenchas cherise (source of modern French cerise).When it was borrowed into English, its -s endingwas misinterpreted as indicating plurality, so a‘new’ singular cherry was created.cherub [OE] Cherub is of Akkadian origin(Akkad was the northern region of ancientBabylonia). Akkadian karūbu meant ‘gracious’.This was borrowed into Hebrew as kerūbh(plural kerūbhīm), which was used in the OldTestament to signify a certain class of wingeddivine being. It passed into English via Greekkheroúb and Latin cherūb.chess [13] The game of chess was named afterits key move, in which the king is put in check.The plural of Old French eschec (from which weget check) was esches, which in Middle Englishbecame chess. (A roughly contemporary Englishterm for the game was chequer, but this died outin the 15th century.)Old French eschec came ultimately fromPersian shāh ‘king’, reflecting the game’seastern origins. However, the terms for the gamein Persian (chatrang) and Sanskrit (chaturanga)signify ‘four members of an army’ – namely,elephants, horses, chariots, and foot-soldiers. CHECK, CHEQUE, EXCHEQUERchest [OE] Chest comes ultimately from Greekkístē ‘box, basket’. In Latin this became cista(source of English cistern [13]). In prehistorictimes the word was borrowed into Germanic as*kistā, which was the source of Old English cest.This still meant ‘box’, a sense which continuedin isolation until the 16th century, when it wasfirst applied to the ‘thorax’ – the basis of themetaphor presumably being that the ribs enclosethe heart and lungs like a box. It has sincereplaced breast as the main term for the concept. CISTERNchestnut [16] The Greek word for ‘chestnut’was kastanéā, which appears to have meantoriginally ‘nut from Castanea’ (in Pontus, AsiaMinor) or ‘nut from Castana’ (in Thessaly,Greece). It came into English via Latin castaneaand Old French chastaine, which in the 14thcentury produced the Middle English formchasteine or chesteine. Over the next twohundred years this developed to chestern, and indue course had nut added to it to produce themodern English form. Castaa, the Spanishdescendant of Latin castanea, is the source ofcastanet. CASTANET

chew [OE] Chew, and its Germanic relativesGerman kauen and Dutch kauwen, can be tracedback to a prehistoric West Germanic *kewwan. Ithas relatives in other Indo-European languages,including Latin gingīva ‘gum’ (source ofEnglish gingivitis). GINGIVITISchicken [OE] Chicken is a widespreadGermanic word (Dutch has kuiken, for instance,and Danish kylling), whose ancestor has beenreconstructed as *kiukīnam. This was formed,with a diminutive suffix, on a base *keuk-, whichsome have claimed is a variant of a base whichlies behind cock; if that is so, a chicken wouldamount etymologically to a ‘little cock’ (andhistorically the term has been applied to youngfowl, although nowadays it tends to be thegeneral word, regardless of age). Chick is a 14thcenturyabbreviation. The modern adjectivalsense ‘scared’ is a 20th-century revival of a 17thand18th-century noun sense ‘coward’, based nodoubt on chicken-hearted. COCKchickenpox see POXchickpea [18] Chickpeas have nothing to dowith chickens, and only remotely anything to dowith peas (they are both legumes). The wordcomes ultimately from Latin cicer (the name ofthe Roman orator Cicero is based on it – one ofhis ancestors must have had a chickpea-shapedwart). That came into English in the 14thcentury, by way of Old French, as chich, andchich remained for several centuries the name ofthe vegetable. The French, meanwhile, notingthe leguminous resemblance, had taken tocalling it pois chiche, which the English dulytranslated in the 16th century as chich-pea.Later, folk-etymology transformed chich tochick.chief [13] Etymologically, the chief is the ‘head’.The word comes via Old French chef or chief andVulgar Latin *capum from Latin caput ‘head’.The adjectival use is equally as old as the nounuse in English. Other English offshoots of*capum are cape and, via the diminutive form*capitellus, cadet, and it also forms the basis ofachieve. The form which has come through intomodern French is, of course, chef, which enteredEnglish in the sense ‘cook’ (short for chef decuisine ‘head of the kitchen’) in the 19th century.Chieftain [14] comes via Old Frenchchevetaine from late Latin capitāneus (aderivative of caput ‘head’), which was laterreborrowed as captain. ACHIEVE, CADET, CAPE, CAPTAIN, CHEFchiffon see CHIPchild [OE] For a word of so central importance,child is surprisingly isolated, having no knownliving relatives in other Germanic languages. Itsprehistoric Germanic ancestor has beenreconstructed as *kiltham, which some havelinked with Gothic kilthei ‘womb’ and even withSanskrit jathara ‘belly’. The plural children isnot an original feature; it developed in the 12thcentury. In earliest Old English times the pluralwas unchanged, like sheep.107 chinkchill [14] Old English had a noun cele or ciele‘cold’ (from the same Germanic base as cold)which developed into Middle English chile‘cold, frost’. Gaps in the record, however, castdoubt on whether this was the direct ancestor ofthe modern English noun, which may moreplausibly be derived from the verb chill. This hasbeen tentatively traced back to a hypotheticalOld English verb *cieldan (also from the sameGermanic base as cold), whose later form childmay have been misinterpreted as a pastparticiple, giving the new base form chill.Chilblain [16] is a compound formed from chilland blain ‘blister’, which comes from OldEnglish blegen. COLDchime [13] Etymologically, chime is the sameword as cymbal – indeed it originally meant‘cymbal’ in English – but the route by which itreached English is not altogether clear. Latincymbalum was borrowed into Old French aschimbe, which is perhaps the most likely sourceof the English word, whose earliest formsinclude chimbe. However, Old English alsoacquired the Latin word, as cimbal, and it hasbeen speculated that this may have survived intothe Middle English period as *chimbel, whoselast syllable was misinterpreted as bell. Thiswould have opened the way to a misanalysis ofthe word as chime bell, a term which doesactually occur from the 13th to the 15thcenturies. This theory has the advantage ofexplaining the transference of the word’smeaning from ‘cymbals’ to ‘bells’, whichoccurred between the 14th and 15th centuries. CYMBALchimney [14] Greek kámīnos meant ‘furnace’ (itwas related to kamárā ‘vaulted room’, source ofEnglish camera and chamber). It was borrowedinto Latin as camīnus, from which the adjectivecamīnātus ‘having a furnace, oven, etc’ wasderived. By late Latin times this had become anoun, camīnāta, which passed into Old Frenchas cheminee, and thence into English. Theoriginal meanings ‘fireplace’ and ‘stove’persisted until the 19th century, but already inOld French the sense ‘flue’ had developed,which was finally to win out. CAMERA, CHAMBERchin [OE] Chin has relatives throughout theGermanic languages (German has kinn, forinstance, and Dutch kin) and is also representedin words for ‘lower jaw’, ‘mouth’, ‘cheek’, etc inother Indo-European languages (Greek gnáthos‘jaw’, for example, which gave Englishprognathous ‘having projecting jaws’). All goback to a prehistoric Indo-European source*genw-. PROGNATHOUSchink English has three words chink. The onedenoting the sharp metallic sound [16] is purelyonomatopoeic. The one meaning ‘small hole’[16] is something of a mystery, but it may be analteration of chine ‘fissure’ [14] (best knowntoday as the term for a coastal ravine inHampshire and the Isle of Wight), which came

chintz 108from Old English cinu. Chink as a demeaningterm for a Chinese person [19] is a facetiousformation based on China or Chinese.chintz [17] Chintz is originally an Indian word.English borrowed it from Hindi chīnt, and at firstused it unaltered: Samuel Pepys, for instance,writing in his diary for 5 September 1663, notes‘Bought my wife a chint, that is, a painted Indiancalico, for to line her new study’. However, sincein commercial use the plural form, chints, was somuch commoner than the singular, it eventuallycame to be regarded as a singular itself, and thes-less form dropped out of the language. In the18th century, for some unexplained reason(perhaps on the analogy of such words as quartz)chints began to be spelled chintz. The Hindiword itself was originally an adjective, whichcame from Sanskrit chitra ‘many-coloured,bright’ (ultimate source of English chit ‘smallpiece of paper containing some sort of officialnotification’ [18]). CHITchip [OE] Old English cipp meant ‘share-beamof a plough’ (a sense paralleled in related formsin other Germanic languages, such as Dutch kip‘plough-beam’ and Old Norse keppr ‘stick’).This seems a far cry from the modern use ofchip, for which there is no evidence before the14th century, and in fact our noun chip may be anew formation based on the verb chip, whichgoes back to Old English -cippian ‘cut’ (foundonly in compounds). Here again, though, therecord is incomplete; for the post-Old Englishverb does not turn up until the late 15th century,and then in the very specialized sense ‘cut thecrust off bread’. The more general meaning ‘cut’appears in the 17th century, but the modern‘break off a small fragment’ is as late as the 18thcentury. All in all, a picture confused by lack ofevidence. But probably the basic etymologicalsense that underlies all later usage is ‘cut off’ or‘piece cut off’ (the early noun sensesrepresenting ‘branch or bough cut off a tree’).‘Small piece of fried potato’ dates from the1860s. (Old French borrowed the word as chipe,and a variant of this, chiffe ‘rag’, is the ultimatesource of English chiffon [18].) CHIFFONchipolata see CHIVESchiropodist see SURGEONchisel [14] Chisel and scissors are related, forboth come ultimately from Latin caedere ‘cut’(source of a range of other English words fromcement to concise and decide). From its pastparticiple caesus was formed an unrecordedVulgar Latin term for a cutting tool, probably*caesellus. This must have become changed atsome point to *cīsellus, probably under theinfluence of late Latin cīsōrium (source ofEnglish scissors), itself derived from caedere.This passed into Old Northern French as chisel,and thence into English. (The modern Frenchequivalent, in the plural, is ciseaux ‘scissors’.) CEMENT, CONCISE, DECIDE, PRECISE, SCISSORSchit see CHINTZchivalry [13] Etymologically, chivalry is thepractice of riding horses. It comes from OldFrench chivalerie, a derivative of medieval Latincaballārius (related to, and perhaps direct sourceof, English cavalier). This meant ‘horseman’,and was formed from Latin caballus ‘horse’(whence French cheval). The meaning ofchivalerie had two main strands, both of themadopted into English: on the one hand ‘mountedsoldiery’ (a sense superseded by the relatedcavalry), and on the other ‘knightly behaviour’. CAVALIER, CAVALRYchives [14] The Latin for ‘onion’ was cēpa. Theonly member of the onion family to carry areminiscence of that name in English is chives(although it crops up too in chipolata [19], whichcomes from Italian cipollata ‘with onions’, aderivative of Italian cipolla ‘onion’, ultimatelyfrom Latin cēpa). The Latin word entered OldFrench as cive (the term civet ‘game stew’derives from cive, such stews originally havingbeen flavoured with green onions). It must,however, have been a northern dialect version ofthis, *chive, which English borrowed. CHIPOLATAchlorine [19] Chlorine is a greenish-yellow gas,and was named for its colour. The term wascoined by the British chemist Sir Humphry Davyin 1810, from the Greek khlōrós ‘greenishyellow’.Of other words containing this element,chlorophyll [19] too was based on the notion ofcolour (in reference to the green colouringmatter of leaves: the Greek elements literallymean ‘green leaf’), but chloroform [19],originally French, is a secondary formationbased ultimately on chlorine (since it wasoriginally regarded as a trichloride of formyl). YELLOWchock-full [14] There is more than one theory toaccount for this word. It occurs in a couple ofisolated instances around 1400, as chokkefulleand chekeful, prompting speculation that the firstelement may be either chock ‘wooden block’,which came from an assumed Old NorthernFrench *choque (thus ‘stuffed full with lumps ofwood’) or cheek (thus ‘full up as far as thecheeks’). It resurfaces in the 17th century aschoke-ful, which has given rise to the idea that itmay originally have meant ‘so full as to choke’.The available evidence seems too scanty to cometo a firm conclusion.chocolate [17] Chocolate is one of thecontributions made to English by the Nahuatllanguage of the Aztec people. Their xocolatl wasa compound noun formed from xococ ‘bitter’and atl ‘water’, and therefore when first adoptedby European languages (via Spanish) it was usedfor the drink ‘chocolate’. This was its originalsense in English, and it was not for half a centuryor more that it came to be applied to solid, edible‘chocolate’.choice [13] Choice is a French formation,although like the verb with which it is linked,choose, its ancestry is Germanic. The source ofthe English word was Old French chois, aderivative of the verb choisir ‘choose’, which

came ultimately from the same Germanic base,*kaus- or *keus-, as produced choose. Englishhad its own native formation, Old English cyre‘choice’, which died out in Middle Englishtimes; had it survived to the present day, it mighthave been something like kire. CHOOSEchoir [13] Modern choirs merely sing, but farback in time they danced too. The word comesultimately from Greek khorós, which in ancientGreek drama signified a group of singers anddancers who commented on the action of theplay (the element of dance is preserved inchoreography). In Latin, khorós became chorus– whence English chorus [16], choral, andprobably also carol. The Latin form in turndeveloped to Old French quer, in which form itwas borrowed into English; the spelling choir,modelled on Latin and the modern French formchoeur, was introduced in the 17th century. CAROL, CHOREOGRAPHY, CHORUSchoke [14] Etymologically, to choke is to cut offair by constricting the ‘cheeks’, for it is aderivative of cēoce, the Old English word for‘cheek’. There is actually such a verb recorded,just once, from Old English: the compoundācēocian, with the intensive prefix ā-; soprobably the simple verb existed too, thoughevidence for it has not survived. The noun sense‘valve controlling the flow of air to an engine’dates from the 1920s, but it was a naturaldevelopment from an earlier (18th-century),more general sense ‘constriction in a tube’; itsparallelism with throttle, both being applied toconstriction of the air passage and hence tocontrol valves in an engine tube, is striking. (Thechoke of artichoke has no etymologicalconnection with choke ‘deprive of air’.)cholera [14] Greek kholéra originally meant‘illness caused by choler, bilious attack’; it was aderivative of kholé ‘bile’ (which is related toEnglish gall). Passing into Latin as cholera, itbegan to be used for ‘bile’ itself, both in thephysiological sense and as representing one ofthe four ancient humours, ‘anger’. It had thatsense when first adopted into English, and intoFrench, where it became colère (source ofEnglish choler [14]). It was revived as a term fora severe digestive disorder, involving vomiting,diarrhoea, etc, in the 17th century, and in the19th century was applied (from the similarity ofthe symptoms) to the often fatal infectiousdisease caused by the bacterium Vibrio comma. GALL, MELANCHOLYchoose [OE] Choose is a verb of ancientpedigree. It can be traced back to the prehistoricIndo-European base *geus-, whose descendantsin other Indo-European languages include Latingustus ‘taste’, source of English gusto andgustatory and French goût. Its Germanicoffshoot, *kiusan, produced a diversity of formsin the early Middle Ages, including Old Englishcēosan, but most of them, apart from Englishchoose and Dutch kiezen, have now died out.Germanic had an alternative version of the verb,however, *kausjan, and this was borrowed into109 ChristianGallo-Roman as causīre, which provided thebasis of Old French choisir ‘choose’, and henceof chois, source of English choice. CHOICE, GUSTOchop There are three distinct words chop inEnglish. The oldest [14] originally meant ‘trade,barter’, but it is now found only in the phrasechop and change. It appears to come from OldEnglish cēapian ‘trade’, which is related toEnglish cheap. Chop ‘jaw, jowl’ [15] (nowusually in the plural form chops) is of unknownorigin; the now archaic chap is a variant. Chop‘cut’ [16] seems ultimately to be the same wordas chap (as in ‘chapped lips’), and may berelated to Middle Low German kappen ‘chopoff’. The specific noun sense ‘meat cutlet’ datesfrom the 15th century. CHAP, CHEAPchopstick [17] A chopstick is literally a ‘quickstick’. The element chop occurs morerecognizably in chop-chop ‘quickly’; it is aPidgin English modification of CantoneseChinese gap ‘urgent’. ‘Quick stick’ is a ratherfree translation of the Chinese term for‘chopsticks’, Cantonese kuàizi, literally ‘fastones, nimble ones’. CHOP-CHOPchord see CORDchoreography [18] Choreography‘arrangement of dances’ comes from Frenchchoréographie, which was based on Greekkhoreíā ‘dance’, a derivative of khorós. (Sourceof English chorus, choir, and possibly also carol,this originally encompassed dancing as well assinging.) Khoreíā passed into Latin as chorea,applied in English to various muscular disorders(such as Huntington’s chorea); the usageprobably originated in the Latin phrase choreasancti Viti ‘St Vitus’s dance’. CAROL, CHOIR, CHOREA, CHORUSchorus see CHOIRchowder [18] Chowder, a North Americanseafood soup, probably takes its name from thepot in which it was originally cooked – Frenchchaudière ‘stew pot’. This came from late Latincaldāria ‘pot’, a descendant of Latin calidārium‘hot bath’ (which lies behind English cauldron);this in turn was a derivative of the adjectivecalidus ‘warm’. CALORIE, CAULDRONmeinchow mein [20] Most Chinese culinaryvocabulary in English arrived after World War II,but chow mein is part of an earlier influx, whichwas brought by Chinese-speakers who foundthemselves on the west coast of the USA in theearly years of the 20th century. In the Cantonese(Guangdong) dialect it means literally ‘friednoodles’ – a minimalist description of a dishwhich usually also contains chopped meat andvegetables.chrism see CREAMChristianChristian [16] Christian is derived, of course,from the name of Christ. It is a surprisinglyrecent word, having been introduced in the 16thcentury from Latin Chrīstiānus, replacing theexisting English adjective christen, which came

chrome 110from Old English crīsten. The latter was thebasis of the Old English verb crīstnian, fromwhich we get modern English christen. Thename Christ itself was borrowed into OldEnglish from Latin Chrīstus, which in turn camefrom Greek Khrīstós. This meant literally‘anointed’, and came from the verb khríein‘anoint’. It was a direct translation of Hebrewmāshīah (source of English messiah), which alsomeant literally ‘anointed’. Christmas comesfrom late Old English crīstes mæsse, literally‘Christ’s mass’. CRETINchrome [19] Compounds formed from theelement chromium are brilliantly colouredgreen, red, and yellow. Hence, when it was firstdescribed by the French chemist Vauquelin in1797, he named it chrome, after Greek khrōma‘colour’. This was soon latinized to chromium,and chrome was henceforth used for chromiumpigments or chromium plating.The Greek adjective derived from khrōmawas khrōmatikós, which as well as referring tocolour, denoted the gradations of notes in amusical scale; and it was in this musical sensethat it was first borrowed into English in the 17thcentury.chronicle [14] English has a number of wordsderived from Greek khrónos ‘time’, among themchronology [16], chronometer ‘timepiece’ [18],and crony. And from its adjective kronikós ‘oftime’ comes English chronic [15], by way ofLatin chronicus, which in medieval times pickedup the medical connotations which characterizethe word today. Greek bíblia khroniká meant‘books about time’; hence khroniká came to beused on its own for ‘historical records’, passingvia Latin chronica and Old French chronique toAnglo-Norman, where it acquired a new ending,cronicle. English took it over, and restored theLatin ch- spelling in the 16th century. ANACHRONISM, CHRONIC, CHRONOLOGYchrysalis [17] Etymologically, a chrysalis is a‘gold’-coloured pupa, for the word derivesultimately from Greek khrūsós ‘gold’. Manybutterflies do have pupae that, at least to startwith, have a metallic sheen of gold, so theGreeks applied to them the term khrūsallís, inwhich the final element seems to meansomething like ‘sheath’. This passed intoEnglish via Latin chrsalis.Also formed from Greek khrūsós (which is ofSemitic origin) is chrysanthemum [16], whichmeans literally ‘gold flower’.chukker see CYCLEchurchchurch [OE] Etymologically, a church is the‘Lord’s house’. Its ultimate source is Greekkūrios ‘lord, master’ (perhaps most familiarnowadays from the words of the choral masskyrie eleison ‘lord have mercy’). The adjectivederived from this was kūriakós, whose use in thephrase ‘house of the lord’ led to its use as a noun,kūrikón. The medieval Greek form, kūrkón‘house of worship’ was borrowed into WestGermanic as *kirika, producing eventuallyGerman kirche and English church. The Scotsform kirk comes from Old Norse kirkja, which inturn was borrowed from Old English. KIRK, KYRIEchurn [OE] It has been speculated that the termchurn is based on the granular appearance creamtakes on as it is stirred or agitated. The OldEnglish noun cyrin comes from a prehistoricGermanic *kernjōn, which may be related toEnglish corn and kernel and Latin grānum‘grain’. The derived verb churn is acomparatively late creation, not appearing untilthe 15th century. CORN, GRAIN, KERNELchyme see GUTcider [14] Despite its seeming roots in the appleproducingEnglish countryside, cider is a veryancient word, which has come a long way toreach us. Hebrew shēkhār meant ‘any strongdrink in general’. It crops up in several places inthe Bible, and was adopted by Greek and Latintranslators as, respectively, sīkéra and sīcera.The Latin form was borrowed into Old French,where it became sisdre and eventually sidre. Bynow it was being applied more specifically todrink made from apples, and it had that meaningwhen it was borrowed into English.However, its biblical associations were stillsufficiently strong for it to retain its originalmeaning in certain contexts: for example, in1382 John Wyclif translated Luke 1:15 (‘he shalldrink neither wine nor strong drink’) as ‘he shallnot drink wine and cider’. Its original formsurvived for a while, too, as sicar, which did notdisappear from English until the 17th century.cigar [18] Cigar comes from Spanish cigarro,whose origin is disputed. One story, perhapsmore picturesque than accurate, is that it is anadaptation of cigarra, the Spanish word for‘cicada’; supposedly this insect, with its stoutbody round which are wrapped large transparentleaflike wings, was held to resemble a cigar.Others have preferred to see as the source sicar,the verb for ‘smoke’ in the language of theancient Maya of Central America. Cigarette is aFrench derivative, with the diminutive suffix-ette, apparently coined in the early 1840s.cilium see SUPERCILIOUScincture see PRECINCTcinder [OE] Despite the similarity of form andmeaning, cinder has no etymological connectionwith French cendre (which comes from Latincinis ‘ashes’, and is thus related to Englishincinerate and cineraria, a plant so namedbecause of the grey down on its leaves). It is aGermanic word, related to German sinter‘deposit formed by evaporation’ (itself borrowedinto English in the 18th century), and from OldEnglish times until the 16th century was usuallyspelled with an initial s-; the c- is an adoptionfrom French cendre. The name of the fairy-talecharacter Cinderella is a translation andadaptation of French cendrillon, originally ageneric term for any downtrodden kitchen maidwho spent much of her time among the cendresof the hearth.

cinema [20] The cinema is so named because itshows moving pictures. The Greek verb for‘move’ was kīnein (source of English kineticand, via the related Latin cīre, a range of -citewords, including excite, incite, and recite). Itsnoun derivative was kínēma ‘movement’, fromwhich in 1896 Auguste and Louis Jean Lumièrecoined the French term cinématographe for theirnew invention for recording and showingmoving pictures. This and its abbreviated formcinéma soon entered English, the latter in 1909.In early years the graecized form kinema hadsome currency in English, but this had virtuallydied out by the 1940s. CITE, EXCITE, KINETIC, INCITE, RECITEcipher [14] The central meaning of cipher is‘zero’ (a word to which it is related); its use sincethe 16th century in connection with encryptedcommunications derives from the fact that intheir earliest forms such codes usually consistedof numbers representing letters, and cipher hadby then broadened in use from ‘nought’ to ‘anynumeral’. It entered English through Old Frenchcifre, which came via medieval Latin cifra fromArabic sifr (source of English zero); this was anominal use of an adjective meaning ‘empty’. ZEROcircle [14] Etymologically, a circle is a ‘smallring’. The word comes ultimately from Latincircus (source of course of English circus and ofa host of circle-related words), whose diminutiveform was circulus. This was actually borrowedinto English in Old English times, as circul, butthis died out. Modern English circle came viaOld French cercle, and to begin with was thusspelled in English, but in the 16th century theLatin i was reintroduced. Latin derivativesinclude the adjective circulāris, source ofEnglish circular [15], and the verb circulāre,whose past participle gave English circulate[15]. CIRCULATE, CIRCUS, SEARCHcircumstance see STATUEcircus [16] Latin circus meant literally ‘ring,circle’, but it was applied metaphorically by theRomans to the circular arena in whichperformances and contests were held. That wasthe original signification of the word in English,applied in a strictly antiquarian sense to theancient world, and it was not until the late 18thcentury that it began to be used for any circulararena and the entertainment staged therein.The Latin word is related to, and may havecome from, Greek kírkos; and it is alsoconnected with Latin curvus, source of Englishcurve. It has additionally been linked with Latincorōna ‘circlet’, from which English gets crown.And it is of course, via its accusative formcircum, the starting point of a wide range ofEnglish words with the prefix circum-, fromcircumference to circumvent (in this category iscircuit [14], which goes back to an original Latincompound verb circumīre, literally ‘go round’). CIRCLE, CIRCUIT, CIRCULATE, CROWN, CURVE,SEARCHcistern see CHEST111 civilcitadel see CITYcite [15] Latin ciēre or cīre meant ‘move’ (it wasrelated to Greek kīnein ‘move’, source ofEnglish kinetic and cinema). From its pastparticiple, citus, was formed the verb citāre,meaning ‘cause to move’, and hence ‘call,summon’. This passed into English (via OldFrench citer), as cite ‘summon officially’. In the16th century this came to be appliedmetaphorically to the ‘calling forth’ of aparticular passage of writing, author, etc as anexample or proof of what one is saying – hencethe modern sense ‘quote’. The same Latin verblies behind a range of other English verbs,including excite, incite, recite, and solicit. CINEMA, EXCITE, INCITE, KINETIC, RECITE,SOLICITcitizen [14] The Latin word for ‘citizen’ wascīvis. From it was formed the derivative cīvitās‘citizenship, city state’, from which English getscity. From this in turn a new derivative wasformed in Vulgar Latin, *cīvitātānus ‘citizen’,replacing the original cīvis. This found its way,much changed, into Old French as citeain(whence modern French citoyen). Anglo-Norman altered the Old French form to citezein,possibly on analogy with Anglo-Normandeinzein ‘denizen’.citrus [19] Latin citrus signified the ‘citron’, atree (Citrus medica) of Asian origin with alemon-like fruit which was the earliest of thecitrus fruits to become known in the West. Likethe fruit itself, the name is presumably ofEastern origin – perhaps from a non-Indo-European language from around the eastern endof the Himalayas. Citron is a French derivativeof citrus, coined on the model of French limon‘lemon’; it was borrowed into English in the16th century.cittern see GUITARcity [13] The Latin word for ‘city’ was urbs(whence English urban), but a ‘citizen’ wascīvis. From this was derived the noun cīvitās,which originally had the abstract sense‘citizenship’. Gradually it acquired moreconcrete connotations, eventually coming to beused as a synonym of urbs. It passed into Englishvia Old French cite, and at first was used for anysettlement, regardless of size (although it wasevidently felt to be a grander term than the nativeborough); the modern distinction between townsand cities developed during the 14th century.The Italian descendant of Latin cīvitās iscittà. A now obsolete variant of this was cittade,whose diminutive form is the source of Englishcitadel [16]. CITADEL, CITIZEN, CIVILcivil [14] Latin cīvis ‘citizen’ had two adjectivalderivatives which have passed into English:cīvicus, source of civic [16], and cīvīlis, fromwhich, via Old French, we get civil. Of itsderivatives, civility [14] comes from Latincīvīlitās, but civilize [17] and civilian [14] areFrench creations. CIVILIZE, CITY

claim 112claim [13] The etymological notion behind claimis of ‘calling out’. It comes from claim-, thepresent stem of Old French clamer, which goesback to Latin clāmāre ‘cry out, shout’ (whosederived noun clāmor is the source of Englishclamour [14]). Relatives of clāmāre includeclārus (source of English clear) and possiblycallāre ‘call out’ (whence English council); andit formed the basis of the English verbs acclaim,exclaim, and proclaim (their spelling was alteredthrough association with claim). These words’ultimate source was the onomatopoeic Indo-European base *klā-, which also produced low‘make the noise characteristic of cattle’. ACCLAIM, CLAMOUR, CLEAR, COUNCIL,EXCLAIM, LOW, PROCLAIMclam [OE] Old English clam meant ‘somethingfor tying up or fastening, fetter’; it can be tracedback to a prehistoric Germanic base *klam-,which also produced clamp [14] and is related toclimb. There is a gap in the word’s history inearly Middle English times, but it reappears atthe end of the 14th century in the sense ‘clamp’,and in the 16th century it was applied, originallyin Scotland, to the mollusc which now bears thename, apparently on the grounds that its twoshells close like the jaws of a clamp or vice. CLAMP, CLIMBclammy [14] Etymologically, clammy means‘sticky as if smeared with clay’. It comes fromthe now obsolete verb clam ‘smear, stick’. Thisgoes back to Old English clǣman, a word ofancient ancestry: its prehistoric Germanic sourcewas *klaimjan, a verb derived from *klaimaz‘clay’; this was formed from the base *klai-,which is also the ultimate source of English clayand can be traced back to the Indo-Europeanbase *gloi-, *glei-, *gli-, from which Englishgets glue and gluten. CLAY, GLUEclamour see CLAIMclamp see CLIMBclan [14] The immediate source of clan isnaturally enough Gaelic, but ultimately it comes,somewhat unexpectedly, from Latin, foretymologically it is the same word as plant.Scots Gaelic clann originally meant ‘offspring’(hence the modern meaning ‘family group’), andit came from Old Irish cland, a direct borrowingfrom Latin planta (the Celtic languages of theBritish Isles tended to change Latin /p/ to /k/).This was the source of English plant, but it didnot then have nearly such a broad application; itmeant specifically ‘shoot suitable for plantingout’, and the connotations of ‘new growth’ and‘offspring’ show up in the Gaelic borrowing. PLANTclandestine see CONCEALclangor see LAUGHclaretclaret [14] Claret was originally a ‘lightcolouredwine’ – pale red (virtually what wewould now call rosé), but also apparentlyyellowish. The word comes ultimately fromLatin clārus ‘clear’; from this was derived theverb clārāre, whose past participle was used inthe phrase vīnum clārātum ‘clarified wine’. Thispassed into Old French as vin claret. ModernFrench clairet preserves the word’s early sense‘pale wine, rosé’, but in English by the later 17thcentury seems to have been transferred to redwine, and since in those days the vast majority ofred wine imported into Britain came fromSouthwest France, and Bordeaux in particular, itwas not long before claret came to meanspecifically ‘red Bordeaux’. CLEARclarion see CLEARclass [16] Latin classis originally denoted ‘thepeople of Rome under arms, the ancient Romanarmy’; it appears to come from an earlierunrecorded *qladtis, a derivative of the base*qel- ‘call’, which points to an underlying sense‘call to arms’. Under the terms of theconstitution attributed to Servius Tullius, a 6thcenturyBC king of Rome, the army, and hencethe people, was divided into six such classes,membership of each based originally on theamount of land held, and latterly on wealth inmoney terms. English first adopted the word inthis antiquarian sense (which provided the basisfor the modern application to social class), but itswidespread use in the language probably beganin the sense ‘group of pupils’. The derivativesclassic [17] and classical [16] come from Latinclassicus, probably via French classique; inLatin, the adjective signified ‘of the highest classof Roman citizen’, whence the word’s presentdayapprobatory connotations.clause [13] The etymological notion underlyingclause is of ‘closing’ or ‘termination’. The wordderives ultimately from Latin claudere (sourceof English close) and was originally appliedeither as a rhetorical term to the conclusion of asentence, or as a legal term to the termination ofa legal argument. Gradually, in both cases, theelement of finality fell away, leaving the senses‘short sentence’ and ‘section of a legaldocument’, which passed into English. The pastparticiple of Latin claudere, clausus, probablyproduced an unrecorded noun *clausa (knownonly in its diminutive form clausula), whichpassed into English via Old French clause. CLAVIER, CLOSEclaustrophobia see CLOISTERclavier [18] The Latin word for ‘key’ was clāvis(it was related to claudere ‘close’). Itsapplication to the keys of a musical instrumenthas contributed two words to English: clavier,which came via French or German from anunrecorded Latin *clāviārius ‘key-bearer’; andclavichord [15], from medieval Latinclāvichordium, a compound of Latin clāvis andLatin chorda, source of English chord. Itsdiminutive form clāvicula was appliedmetaphorically to the collar-bone (hence Englishclavicle [17]) on account of the bone’sresemblance to a small key. And in Latin, a roomthat could be locked ‘with a key’ was a conclāve– whence (via Old French) English conclave[14]. Also related to clāvis is cloy. CLAVICLE, CLOSE, CLOY, CONCLAVE

clay [OE] Clay is named from its consistency –its stickiness, its squidginess, its capacity forbeing smeared. Its ultimate source is the Indo-European base *gloi-, *glei-, *gli-, from whichEnglish also gets glue and gluten. From it wasdescended the Germanic base *klai-, on whichwas formed West Germanic *klaijō-. Thispassed into Old English as clæg – hence modernEnglish clay. (Clammy comes from the sameGermanic source, and clag, from which we getclaggy ‘muddy’, is essentially the same word asclay, although it reached English via aScandinavian route.) CLAMMY, CLEANclaymore see GLADIATORclean [OE] Etymologically, clean and Germanklein ‘small’ are the same word. Both go back toWest Germanic *klainoz, which meant ‘clear,pure’, but whereas the English adjective hasstayed fairly close to the original meaning, theGerman one has passed via ‘clean’, ‘neat’,‘dainty’, and ‘delicate’ to ‘small’. It has beenspeculated that *klainiz was based on *klai-,which connoted ‘stickiness’ (it was the source ofEnglish clay and clammy). The reasoning is thatsomething sticky, perhaps from a coating of oil,would have been perceived as having a clear orshiny surface, and there may also have been asuggestion of the purity conferred by aceremonial anointing with oil. The derivativescleanse and cleanly (whence cleanliness) areboth Old English formations. CLAMMY, CLAY, CLEANSEclear [13] Clear comes via Old French cler fromLatin clārus (source also of English claret andclarion [14]). It has been suggested that clārus isrelated to calāre ‘call out’ (whence Englishcouncil). Latin derivatives that have come downto English are clārificāre, from which Englishgets clarify [14], and clāritās, whence Englishclarity [16]. The Middle English spelling of theadjective is preserved in clerestory ‘upper storeyof a church’ [15] (so named from its being‘bright’ or ‘lighted’ with numerous windows). CLAIM, CLARET, CLARION, CLARITY,CLERESTORY, DECLARE, LOWcleave [OE] There are two distinct verbs cleavein English, both of Germanic origin. Cleave‘cut’ comes from Germanic *kleuban, whichgoes back to an Indo-European base *gleubh-(this also produced Greek glúphein ‘carve’,source of English hieroglyphics). Cleave‘adhere’ can be traced back ultimately to anIndo-European base *gloi-, *glei-, *gli- ‘stick’,from which English also gets glue and gluten. ItsGermanic descendant *klai- produced Englishclay and clammy, and *kli- developed intocleave. CLAMMY, CLAY, CLIMB, GLUE, HIEROGLYPHICSclench see CLINGclerestory see CLEARclerk [11] Clerk and its relatives cleric and clergyowe their existence ultimately to a Biblicalreference, in Deuteronomy xviii 2, to theLevites, members of an Israelite tribe whosemen were assistants to the Temple priests:113 cliff‘Therefore shall they have no inheritance amongtheir brethren: the Lord is their inheritance’.Greek for ‘inheritance’ is klēros, and so it cameabout that matters relating to the Christianministry were denoted in late Greek by thederived adjective klērikós. This passed intoecclesiastical Latin as clēricus, which wasoriginally borrowed into late Old English ascleric or clerc, later reinforced by Old Frenchclerc to give modern English clerk. Its presentdaybureaucratic connotations, which emergedin the 16th century, go back to an earlier timewhen members of the clergy were virtually theonly people who could read or write. However,religious associations have of course beenpreserved in cleric [17], from ecclesiasticalLatin clēricus, and clergy [13], a blend of OldFrench clergie (a derivative of clerc) and clerge(from the ecclestiastical Latin derivativeclēricātus). The compound clergyman is 16thcentury. CLERIC, CLERGYclever [13] Clever is rather a mystery word.There is one isolated instance of what appears tobe the word in an early 13th-century bestiary,where it means ‘dextrous’, and the connotationsof ‘clutching something’ have led to speculationthat it may be connected with claw. It does notappear on the scene again until the late 16thcentury, when its associations with ‘agility’ and‘sprightliness’ may point to a link with MiddleDutch klever, of similar meaning. The modernsense ‘intelligent’ did not develop until the 18thcentury.cliché [19] Originally, French clicher meantliterally ‘stereotype’ – that is, ‘print from a platemade by making a type-metal cast from a mouldof a printing surface’. The word was supposedlyimitative of the sound made when the mould wasdropped into the molten type metal. Hence aword or phrase that was cliché – had literallybeen repeated time and time again in identicalform from a single printing plate – had becomehackneyed.client [14] The original status of a client wasrather lowly: he was someone who was atanother’s beck and call, and dependent on them.The word comes from Latin cliēns, an alterationof an earlier cluēns, the present participle of theverb cluēre ‘listen, follow, obey’; hencesomeone who was cliēns was always listeningout for another’s orders, unable to takeindependent action (in ancient Rome it meantspecifically a plebeian under the protection of anobleman). That sense is preserved in suchEnglish expressions as ‘client state’. The word’smore modern senses have developed through‘person on whose behalf a lawyer acts’ in the15th century to simply ‘customer’ in the 17thcentury.cliff [OE] Cliff comes from a prehistoricGermanic *kliban, of unknown origin (Germanklippe ‘crag’ is a collateral relative). Thecompound cliffhanger seems to have originatedin the USA in the 1930s; it comes from the serialmovies then popular, in which at the end of each

climate 114episode the hero or heroine was left in someperilous situation, such as hanging off the edgeof a cliff, not resolved until the next instalment.climate [14] The notion underlying climate is of‘sloping’ or ‘leaning’. It comes, via Old Frenchclimat or late Latin clīma (whence English clime[16]), from Greek klīma ‘sloping surface of theearth’, which came ultimately from the samesource (the Indo-European base *kli-) asproduced English lean. Greek geographersassigned the earth’s surface to various zonesaccording to the angle which their ‘slope’ madewith the rays of the sun (originally there wereseven of these, ranging from 17 degrees oflatitude North to 48 degrees, but later the systemwas elaborated so that each hemisphere wasdivided into 24 bands or ‘climates’ of latitude).This was the sense in which the word passed intoLatin, where it broadened out into simply‘region’, and hence ‘weather associated with aparticular area’. LADDER, LEANclimax [16] Etymologically, a climax is a seriesof steps by which a goal is achieved, but in thelate 18th century English, anticipating theculmination, started using it for the goal itself. Itcomes, via late Latin, from Greek klimax‘ladder’, which was ultimately from the samesource (the Indo-European base *kli-) asproduced English lean. This came to be usedmetaphorically as a rhetorical term for a figureof speech in which a series of statements isarranged in order of increasing forcefulness, andhence for any escalating progression: ‘the top ofthe climax of their wickedness’, Edmund Burke1793. Whence modern English ‘high point’. LADDER, LEANclimb [OE] The original notion contained inclimb seems not to have been so much ‘ascent’as ‘holding on’. Old English climban came froma prehistoric West Germanic *klimban, anasalized variant of the base which producedEnglish cleave ‘adhere’. To begin with this musthave meant strictly ‘go up by clinging on withthe hands and feet’ – to ‘swarm up’, in fact – butalready by the late Old English period we find itbeing used for ‘rising’ in general. The originalpast tense clamb, which died out in most areas inthe 16th century, is probably related to clamp‘fastening’ [14]. CLAMP, CLEAVEcling [OE] The basic underlying sense of clingseems to be ‘stick, adhere’, but surviving recordsof the word in Old English reveal it only in themore specialized senses ‘congeal’ or ‘shrivel’(the notion being that loss of moisture causessomething to contract upon itself or adhere moreclosely to a surface). It is not really until the late13th century that the more familiar ‘adhere’ (asin ‘a wet shirt clinging to someone’s back’)begins to show itself, and no hint that ‘clinging’is something a human being can do with his orher arms emerges before the early 17th century.The word goes back to a prehistoric Germanicbase *klingg-, whose variant *klengk- is thesource of English clench [13] and clinch [16]. CLENCH, CLINCHclinic [17] Etymologically, a clinic is a place with‘beds’. It comes ultimately from Greek klínē‘bed’, which goes back to the Indo-Europeanbase *kli- ‘lean, slope’ (source also of Englishlean) and hence was originally ‘something onwhich one reclines’. The adjective derived fromthis, klīnkós, reached English via Latin clīnicus,having become specialized in meaning from‘bed’ in general to ‘sick-bed’. Clinic wasreplaced as an adjective by clinical in the 18thcentury, but it continued on as a noun, originallyin the sense ‘sick or bedridden person’. Thissurvived into the 19th century (‘You are free toroam at large over the bodies of my clinics’, EBerdoe, St Bernard’s 1887), and the modernsense ‘hospital’ did not arrive until the late 19thcentury, borrowed from French clinique orGerman klinik. DECLINE, LEANclock [14] The clock appears to have been sonamed because it told the hours by the chimingof a ‘bell’, medieval Latin clocca. The Latinword, which emerged in the 7th century and mayhave been of Irish origin, probably reachedEnglish via Middle Dutch klocke. Besides beingapplied to time-pieces, it has also lent its name totwo garments on account of their supposedlybell-like shape: cloak [13], which comes fromthe Old French dialect cloke or cloque, andcloche hat [20], from French cloche ‘bell’. CLOAK, CLOCHEcloister [13] A cloister was originally simply anenclosed place, a ‘close’. The word comes fromOld French cloistre, a descendant of Latinclaustrum ‘bar, bolt, enclosure’, which wasformed from the past participial stem of Latinclaudere ‘close’ (source of English close). Thenotion of ‘enclosure’ led to the word’s beingapplied to a place of religious seclusion, such asa monastery or convent, and hence to a coveredwalkway within a monastic building. It also liesbehind claustrophobia [19], which was formedfrom Latin claustrum. CLAUSTROPHOBIA, CLOSEclose [13] Close originally entered English as averb. It came from clos-, the past participial stemof Old French clore ‘shut’, which was adescendant of Latin claudere (related to Latinclāvis ‘key’, from which English gets clavier,clavichord, clavicle, clef, and conclave, and toLatin clāvus ‘nail’, from which French gets clou‘nail’ – whence English clove – and English getscloy). The adjective was quick to follow, via OldFrench clos, but in this case the intermediatesource was the Latin past participial stem clausratherthan the Old French clos-. It originallymeant simply ‘shut, enclosed, confined’, and didnot evolve the sense ‘near’ until the late 15thcentury; it arose from the notion of the gapbetween two things being brought together bybeing closed off. Related forms in Englishinclude clause, cloister, closet [14] (from OldFrench, ‘small private room’, a diminutive form

of clos) and the various verbs ending in -clude,including conclude, include, and preclude. CLAUSE, CLAVIER, CLEF, CLOISTER, CLOSET,CLOVE, CLOY, CONCLAVE, CONCLUDE,ENCLAVE, INCLUDE, PRECLUDEcloth [OE] The history of the word cloth is notknown, beyond the fact that its immediate sourceis Germanic (German has the related kleid‘garment’). In Old English it meant both ‘pieceof fabric’ and ‘fabric in general’, and in theplural it was applied to ‘garments’ (hencemodern English clothes). The verb clothe, too,probably goes back to Old English times,although it is not recorded before the 12thcentury.cloud [OE] In Old English the word for ‘cloud’was weolcen (whence modern English welkin, apoetical term for ‘sky’), which is related toGerman wolke ‘cloud’. At that time Old Englishclūd, the ancestor of cloud, meant ‘mass of rock,hill’ (it is probably related to clod). As applied to‘clouds’, presumably from a supposedresemblance between cumulus clouds and lumpsof earth or rock, it dates from the 13th century. CLODclout [OE] In Old English, a clout was a patch ofcloth put over a hole to mend it. Hence in duecourse it came to be used simply for a ‘piece ofcloth’, and by further extension for a ‘garment’(as in ‘Ne’er cast a clout till May be out’).However, the reason for its colloquialapplication to ‘hit, blow’, which dates from the14th century, is not known, and indeed this maybe an entirely different word. As for the word’sultimate antecedents, it probably comes, alongwith cleat, clot, cluster, and clutter, from aprehistoric Germanic base *klut-, *kleut-,*klaut-. CLEAT, CLOT, CLUSTER, CLUTTERclove There are two distinct words clove inEnglish. In clove of garlic [OE] the underlyingnotion is of ‘cutting’; the head of garlic is as itwere ‘divided up’ into separate sections. Theword goes back ultimately to the Indo-Europeanbase *gleubh- ‘cut, carve’, which also producedEnglish cleave and its now archaic past tenseclove.Clove the spice [14] originated in the OldFrench phrase clou de girofle, which meantliterally ‘nail of the clove-tree’. The term ‘nail’was applied to the tree’s dried unopened flowerbud because of a perceived resemblance inshape. (French clou ‘nail’ comes from Latinclāvus, source of English cloy, and Frenchgirofle – whence English gillyflower [14], whichoriginally meant ‘clove’ – goes back viamedieval Latin caryophyllum to Greekkaruóphullon, which literally meant ‘nut leaf’.) CLEAVE; CLOY, GILLYFLOWERclown [16] Clown’s antecedents are obscure. Itsearliest recorded sense is ‘unsophisticated orboorish country fellow’, which has led tospeculation that it may come ultimately fromLatin colonus ‘colonist, farmer’ (residence in thecountry often being associated withbackwardness or lack of sophistication, as in the115 clutchcase heathen and pagan). Others, however, see amore direct source in a Germanic language fromthe Low Countries or Scandinavia: North Frisianklönne and Icelandic klunni, both meaning‘clumsy person’, have been compared.cloy [14] Cloy originally meant ‘fasten with anail’. It is a reduced form of the long obsoleteacloy, which came from Anglo-Norman acloyer.This was a variant of Old French encloyer, adescendant of the Vulgar Latin compound verbinclāvāre, based on Latin clāvus ‘nail’ (source ofLatin claudere ‘shut’, from which English getsclose). CLOSEclub [13] The original meaning of club is ‘thickheavy stick for hitting people’; it was borrowedfrom Old Norse klubba. The sense ‘association’developed in the 17th century, apparentlyoriginally as a verb. To club together seems tohave been based on the notion of ‘forming into amass like the thickened end of a club’: ‘Twosuch worlds must club together and becomeone’, Nathaniel Fairfax, The bulk and selvedgeof the world 1674. Hence the noun club, whichoriginally signified simply a ‘get-together’,typically in a tavern, but by the end of the 17thcentury seems to have become more of aformalized concept, with members and rules.clue [15] Clue is a variant spelling of the nowobsolete clew ‘ball of thread’, and its currentapplication to ‘that which helps to solve aproblem’, which originated in the early 17thcentury, is based on the notion of using (likeTheseus in the Minotaur’s labyrinth) a ball ofthread to show one the way out of an intricatemaze one has entered. Clew itself goes back toOld English cliwan or cleowan, which may berelated to claw. CLAWclumsy [16] When clumsy first appeared on thescene around 1600, both it and the presumablyrelated but now obsolete clumse were used notonly for ‘awkward’ but also for ‘numb withcold’. This, and the fact that the word’s nearestapparent relatives are Scandinavian (such asSwedish dialect klumsig ‘numb, clumsy’),suggests that the notion originally contained inthem was of being torpid from cold – so cold thatone is sluggish and cannot coordinate one’sactions.clutch Clutch ‘seize’ [14] and clutch of eggs [18]are separate words, although they mayultimately be related. The verb arose in MiddleEnglish as a variant of the now obsolete clitch,which came from Old English clyccan ‘bend,clench’. The modern sense of the noun, ‘devicefor engaging a motor vehicle’s gears’, which wasintroduced at the end of the 19th century,developed from a more general early 19thcenturymeaning ‘coupling for bringing workingparts together’, based no doubt on the notion of‘seizing’ and ‘grasping’. Clutch of eggs is avariant of the now obsolete dialectal form cletch[17]. This was a derivative of the Middle Englishverb clecken ‘give birth’, which was borrowed

coach 116from Old Norse klekja (probably a distantrelative of clutch ‘seize’).coach [16] Coach is one of the few Englishwords borrowed from Hungarian. It comes (viaFrench coche and German kutsche) fromHungarian kocsi, an adjective meaning ‘of Kocs’(Kocs is a village in north-east Hungary,between Budapest and Györ, where carriages,carts, etc were made). In Hungarian the originalfull form was kocsi szeker ‘cart from Kocs’. Themodern sense ‘instructor, trainer’ originated in19th-century university slang, the notion beingthat the student was conveyed through the examby the tutor as if he were riding in a carriage.coal [OE] In Old English, col meant ‘glowingember’. It came from a prehistoric Germanic*kolam (source also of German kohle and Dutchkool), which may be related to Irish Gaelic gual‘coal’. By the 12th century at the latest it wasalso being used for ‘charcoal’ (the wordcharcoal is based on it), but it was not until themid 13th century that the modern application tothe black solid fossil fuel appears. It seems quitelikely that the word’s underlying etymologicalmeaning is ‘glow’. Derived from coal are collier[14], which originally meant ‘charcoal-burner’,colliery [17], and possibly collie [17], on thebasis of its dark colour. CHARCOAL, COLLIERcoarse [14] For such an everyday word, theorigins of coarse are surprisingly clouded. It firstappears in the forms corse or course, andmeaning ‘ordinary, everyday’, which has led tospeculation that it is an application of the nouncourse, in the sense ‘the ordinary run of things,the usual practice’; however, not all etymologistsaccept this. The modern spelling coarse becameestablished in the 18th century.coast [13] Latin costa meant ‘rib’ (hence theEnglish medical term intercostal ‘between theribs’), but also more generally ‘flank, side’. Itwas in this sense that it passed into Old Frenchas coste, and subsequently into English. Themodern meaning ‘seashore’ (which had alreadydeveloped in Old French) arises from the shorebeing thought of as the ‘side’ or ‘edge’ of theland (compare seaside). Amongst the senses ofthe French word little represented in English is‘hillside, slope’; it was however adopted inNorth America for a ‘slope down which oneslides on a sledge’, and came to be used in themid 19th century as a verb meaning ‘sledgedown such a slope’. That was the source of themodern verbal sense ‘freewheel’.The coster of costermonger [16] wasoriginally costard, a variety of apple named fromits prominent ‘ribs’. And another hidden relativeis cutlet [18], borrowed from French côtelette,literally ‘little rib’. COSTERMONGER, CUTLET, INTERCOSTALcoat [13] Coat seems originally to have signifieda sort of short close-fitting cloth tunic withsleeves, worn by men. Over the centuries fashionhas lengthened the garment, and its maleexclusivity has disappeared (originally, as awoman’s garment a coat was a skirt, a sensepreserved in petticoat). The word is of Germanicorigin (it has been traced back to Frankish*kotta), but it reached English via Old Frenchcote.coax [16] In the 16th and 17th century a cokeswas a ‘simpleton, someone easily duped’ (it isnot known where the word came from, althoughit might perhaps be related to cockney). To cokessomeone was thus to ‘make a cokes of them, foolthem’. This spelling survived until the 18thcentury, when it was supplanted by coax. Theword’s meaning, meanwhile, had passed via‘treat as a simpleton or pet’ and ‘fondle’ to‘wheedle’.cob [15] Cob has a bizarre range of meanings –‘nut’, ‘horse’, ‘male swan’, ‘loaf’, ‘ear of maize’– but a distillation of them points back to anoriginal ‘head, or something similarly rounded’(cobnuts and cobloaves, for example, arespherical, and the male swan is the ‘chief’ or‘leader’). It is therefore tempting to see aconnection with the now obsolete cop ‘top,head’ (probably represented in cobweb), andeven with Latin caput ‘head’. COBBLEcobalt [17] German kobold means ‘goblin’: andin former times it was believed by German silverminers that impurities in the ore they wereextracting, which lessened the value of the silverand even made them ill, were put there by thesemischievous creatures. In fact these impuritieswere a silver-white metallic element, which wasnamed kobalt after a Middle High Germanvariant of kobold (the miners’ sickness wasprobably caused by the arsenic with which itoccurred).cobble Cobble as in cobblestone [15] and cobble‘mend’ [15] are two distinct words. The formerwas derived from cob ‘rounded lump’, with thediminutive suffix -le. The earliest evidence of itis in the compound cobblestone, and it is notrecorded on its own until about 1600. The verbcobble is a back-formation from cobbler‘shoemaker’ [14], of unknown origin. Thederivative cobblers ‘nonsense’ [20] is short forcobbler’s awls, rhyming slang for ‘balls’. COBcobra [19] Cobra is a shortening of Portuguesecobra de capella, which came into English inIndia in the 17th century. This meant literally‘snake with a hood’: cobra from Latin colubra‘snake’ and capella (referring of course to the‘hood’ it makes when agitated, by spreading outthe skin at the side of its head) from Vulgar Latin*cappellus ‘little cape’, from late Latin cappa‘hood’. CAP, CAPE, CHAPEL, CHAPERONcobweb [14] A cobweb was originally literally aweb woven by a cop, a Middle English word for‘spider’. It was short for attercop ‘spider’, acompound of Old English origin which hadlargely died out by the 17th century. This seemsto have meant literally ‘poison head’, from OldEnglish ātōr ‘poison’ and coppe ‘head, top’ (apossible relative of English cob). It was revivedby J R R Tolkien in The Hobbit 1937.

cocaine [19] Cocaine is made from the driedleaves of the coca bush, a plant native to theAndes, and its name was formed (perhapsoriginally in French, as cocaïne) from the plant’sname. That was a local name, Quechua koka,probably from the Aymara language of Boliviaand Peru, and it reached Europe in the 16thcentury by way of Spanish coca.coccyx [17] The Greek physician Galenconsidered that the small tapering bone at thebase of the human spine resembled a cuckoo’sbeak. He therefore named it kókkux, which wasGreek for ‘cuckoo’. It reached English via theLatin form coccyx.cochineal [16] Cochineal ‘red dye’ comes viaFrench cochenille from Old Spanish cochinilla,a term applied both to the dye and to the smallinsect related to the mealybugs, from whosedried body it is made. It is generally thought tobe a derivative of Latin coccinus ‘scarlet’, whichin turn came from Greek kokkinos, a derivativeof kókos, the Greek term for the cochineal insect(the word originally meant ‘berry, seed’ – it wasapplied to various bacteria, such asstreptococcus and staphylococcus, because oftheir spherical seedlike shape – and it wasthought in ancient times that the dried body ofthe insect was a berry). STAPHYLOCOCCUS, STREPTOCOCCUScock [OE] The word cock is probably ultimatelyof onomatopoeic origin, imitative of the malefowl’s call (like the lengthier English cock-adoodle-doo[16], French coquerico, and Germankikeriki). Beyond that it is difficult to go withany certainty; it reflects similar words in otherlanguages, such as medieval Latin coccus andOld Norse kokkr, but which if any the Englishword was borrowed from is not clear. It has beensuggested that it goes back to a Germanic base*kuk-, of which a variant was the source ofchicken, but typical Old English spellings, suchas kok and kokke, suggest that it may have beena foreign borrowing rather than a nativeGermanic word – perhaps pointing to Germaniccoccus. The origin of the interconnected set ofsenses ‘spout, tap’, ‘hammer of a firearm’, and‘penis’ is not known; it is possible that itrepresents an entirely different word, but the factthat German hahn ‘hen’ has the same meaningssuggests otherwise.Of derived words, cocker [19], as in ‘cockerspaniel’, comes from cocking, the sport ofshooting woodcock, and cocky [18] is probablybased on the notion of the cock as a spirited orswaggering bird, lording it over his hens (theremay well be some connection with cock ‘penis’,too, for there is an isolated record of cockymeaning ‘lecherous’ in the 16th century).Cockerel [15] was originally a diminutive form. CHICKEN, COCKYcock-a-hoop [16] Cock-a-hoop comes from a16th- and 17th-century expression set the cockon the hoop ‘make merry’ – but exactly how theexpression arose is not clear. One obviousinterpretation is that it meant ‘put the tap on thebarrel’ – that is, let the wine or beer flow freely117 cockle– but it has also been suggested that hoop heremeans ‘measure of grain’ (a sense whichoriginated in the 16th century), the notion beingthat to put a cockerel on a heap of grain impliedprodigality.cockatoo [17] Cockatoo was originally a Malayword, although it has changed somewhat underthe influence of English cock. It comes via Dutchkaketoe from Malay kakatua, a compoundformed from kakak ‘elder brother or sister’ andtua ‘old’. A related word is cockatiel ‘smallAustralian parrot’ [19]; it comes ultimately fromPortuguese cacatilha, formed from Malaykakatua with the Portuguese diminutive suffix-ilha, and it reached English via Dutchkaketielje.cockatrice [14] The name of the cockatrice, amythical serpent whose glance could kill, has abizarre history. It started life as medieval Latincalcātrix, which meant literally ‘tracker, hunter’(it was formed from the verb calcāre ‘tread,track’, a derivative of calx ‘heel’). This was adirect translation of Greek ikhneúmōn (aderivative of ikhneúein ‘track’), a name given toa mysterious Egyptian creature in ancient timeswhich was said to prey on crocodiles. At onepoint Latin calcātrix, later caucātrix, came to beused for the crocodile itself, but this applicationnever gained much currency in English (whichadopted the word via Old French cocatris).Instead, it was adopted as another name for thebasilisk, a mythical serpent. The accidentalsimilarity of the first syllable to cock led both tothe embroidering of the basilisk/cockatricelegend, so that it was said to have been born froma cock’s egg, and to the word’s 16th-centuryrerouting as a heraldic term for a beast with thehead, wings, and body of a cock and the tail of aserpent.cockchafer [18] Etymologically, cockchafer (amedium-sized beetle) is probably a ‘largegnawer’. The second part of the word, whichgoes back to Old English times (ceafor), can betraced to a prehistoric base *kab- ‘gnaw’, sourcealso of English jowl. The first element, cock,may be an allusion to the species’ greater size inrelation to other chafers. JOWLcockle [14] The cockle is related etymologicallyto another mollusc, the conch: they both beganlife in Greek kónkhē – which meant ‘mussel’ aswell as ‘conch’. From this was formed thediminutive konkhúlion ‘small variety of conch’ –hence ‘cockle’. The Greek word subsequentlybecame reduced to kokhúlion, whose pluralpassed into medieval Latin as *cochilia. Next inthe chain was Old French coquille, source of theEnglish word. The origin of the phrase cockles ofone’s heart (first recorded in the mid 17thcentury) are not clear: some have claimed thatthe heart resembles a cockle shell, or morespecifically that the fibres of the heart musclespiral like the lines on a cockle shell, whileothers note a supposed resemblance of cockle tocorculum, a Latin diminutive of cor ‘heart’, andothers again point out that the scientific name for

cockney 118the cockle is Cardium, from Greek kardíā‘heart’, but none of these explanations reallycarries conviction. CONCHcockney [14] Etymologically, a cockney is a‘cock’s egg’ (it comes from cokene, the oldgenitive plural of cock, and ey, the MiddleEnglish word for ‘egg’). This was a medievalterm for a small or misshapen egg, the ‘runt’ ofthe clutch, supposedly laid by a cock, and itcame to be applied (probably egged on byMiddle English cocker ‘pamper’) to a ‘pamperedchild’ or ‘mother’s boy’. In the 16th century wefind that it has passed on to ‘town dweller’ (thenotion being that people who lived in towns weresoft and effete compared with countrymen), andby around 1600 it had started to mean morespecifically ‘someone born in the city ofLondon’. The popular definition ‘someone bornwithin the sound of Bow bells’ is first reportedby the lexicographer John Minsheu in 1617. COCK, EGGcockroach [17] Cockroach is a product of folketymology, the process by which a ‘foreign’ –sounding is adapted by speakers of a language soas to seem more familiar. In this case the foreignword was Spanish cucaracha. This wasevidently too much for 17th-century Englishtongues, so the first element was transformedinto cock and the second to roach (presumablyafter the freshwater fish of that name). ModernEnglish roach ‘butt of a marijuana cigarette’ [20]is probably an abbreviation of cockroach, butthis is not certain.cocktail [19] The origins of the word cocktailare mysterious. It first appeared (in America) inthe first decade of the 19th century, roughlycontemporary with cocktail meaning ‘horse witha cocked tail’ – that is, one cut short and so madeto stick up like a cock’s tail – but whether the twowords are connected, and if so, how the drinkcame to be named after such a horse, are not atall clear.cocoa [18] Like chocolate, cocoa came toEnglish from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecpeople. Their cacahuatl meant ‘beans of thecocoa tree’. Its first element was borrowed intoSpanish as cacao. This was adopted by Englishin the 16th century, and remained the standardform until the 18th century, when it wasmodified to cocoa. Originally it was pronouncedwith three syllables (/ko-ko-a/), but confusionwith the coco of coconut (which was alsosometimes spelled cocoa) led to the current twosyllablepronunciation.coconut [17] Despite its tropical origins, thecoconut has a European name. The base of thecoconut’s shell, with its three small holes,apparently reminded early Spanish andPortuguese explorers of a human face, so theycalled it coco; this was the Portuguese word fora grinning or grimacing face, as of a scarecrow.English adopted it in the 16th century, and itformed the basis of the compound coconut, firstrecorded in 1613. (Before then the fruit of thecoconut palm had been known as the Indian nut.)cod [13] Like most fish-names, the origins of codare obscure. It has been suggested, not all thatconvincingly, that it comes from another wordcod [OE], now obsolete, which meant broadly‘pouch’ – the idea being that the fish supposedlyhas a ‘baglike’ appearance. Among the specificapplications of this other cod, which was ofGermanic origin, were ‘seedcase’ (whichsurvived into the twentieth century in the archaiccompound peascod ‘pea pod’) and ‘scrotum’.By transference the latter came to mean‘testicles’, whence codpiece, a 15th- to 17thcenturygarment somewhat analogous to thejockstrap. The cuttle of cuttlefish comes from thesame source. CUTTLEFISHcoda see QUEUEcode [14] ‘System of secret communicationsigns’ is a relatively recent semanticdevelopment of the word code, which emergedin the early 19th century. It derived from anearlier sense ‘system of laws’, which was basedon a specific application to various sets ofstatutes introduced by the Roman emperors. Theword itself came from Old French code, adescendant of Latin cōdex, whose meaning ‘setof statutes, book of laws’ derived from a broadersense ‘book’. This in turn came from an earlier‘piece of wood coated with wax for writing on’,which was based ultimately on ‘tree trunk’, theword’s original meaning. Codex itself wasborrowed into English in the 16th century. ItsLatin diminutive form, cōdicillus, producedEnglish codicil [15]. CODEX, CODICILcoerce [17] The underlying etymologicalmeaning of coerce is ‘restraining’ or ‘confining’.It comes from the Latin compound verb coercēre‘constrain’, which was formed from the prefixco- ‘together’ and the verb arcēre ‘shut up, wardoff’ (possibly a relative of Latin arca ‘chest,box’, from which English gets ark). An earlier,15th-century, form of the English word wascoherce, which came via Old French cohercier. ARKcoffee [16] The word coffee first reached us in aform which we would now recognize in the 17thcentury, probably via Italian caffè. It isultimately, however, of Middle Eastern origin,and the earliest spellings recorded in Englishreflect this: chaoua, cauwa, kahue, cahve, etc aremodelled closely on Turkish kahveh and itssource, Arabic qahwah. Where the Arabic wordcame from is not known for certain: probably itis based in some way on Kaffa, the name of anarea in the south Abyssinian highlands fromwhich the coffee tree is said to originate, but ithas also been claimed to have signifiedoriginally some sort of wine. Café [19] comes ofcourse from French café, whose source wasItalian caffè. From the French word was derivedcaféine, from which English gets caffeine [19],while Spanish café produced cafetero ‘coffeeseller’,source of English cafeteria [20]. CAFÉ, CAFFEINE, CAFETERIA

coffin [14] Greek kóphinus meant ‘basket’. Itpassed via Latin cophinus into Old French,where it split into two words. Cofin came tomean ‘box, chest’ as well as ‘basket’, and it waswith these senses that it was borrowed intoEnglish. The specific application to boxes forburial is not recorded before the early 16thcentury. The other Old French descendant ofLatin cophinus was coffre, which gave Englishcoffer [13]. COFFERcogent see SQUATcognate see NATIVEcognizance [14] Latin gnōscere meant ‘know’(it is related to know and notion). From it wasderived the compound verb cognōscere ‘get toknow, recognize, acknowledge’. Its presentparticipial stem cognōscent- formed the basis ofa Vulgar Latin noun *connōscentia, whichpassed into Old French as connoissance. Englishborrowed this as conisance, restoring the Latin gto the spelling in the 15th century, whicheventually affected the word’s pronunciation.Also from the Latin present participle cameItalian conoscente, which in its latinized formwas borrowed into English as cognoscente in the18th century. Meanwhile, the past participialstem of the Latin verb, cognit-, produced thenoun cognitiō, source of English cognition [15].The infinitive form of the Latin verb passedinto Old French as connoître, from which wasderived the agent noun connoisseur, borrowedinto English in the 18th century (modern Frenchhas connaisseur). COGNITION, CONNOISSEUR, KNOW, NOTION,RECOGNIZE, RECONNAISSANCE, RECONNOITREcohort [15] Etymologically, cohort is an‘enclosed yard’. It comes via Old French cohortefrom Latin cohors, a compound noun formedfrom the prefix com- ‘with’ and an element hortwhichalso appears in Latin hortus ‘garden’(source of English horticulture) and is related toEnglish garden, yard, and the second element oforchard. From the underlying sense of ‘enclosedplace’ it came to be applied to a crowd of peoplein such a place, and then more specifically to aninfantry company in the Roman army. Itsmeaning has spread figuratively in English to‘band of associates or accomplices’, whosefrequent use in the plural led to themisapprehension that a single cohort was an‘associate’ or ‘accomplice’ – a usage whichemerged in American English in the mid 20thcentury.The original form of the Latin word is wellpreserved in cohort, but it has also reached us,more thickly disguised, as court. COURT, GARDEN, HORTICULTURE, ORCHARD,YARDcoil [16] Ultimately, coil, cull, and collect are thesame word. All come from Latin colligere‘gather together’. Its past participial stemproduced collect, but the infinitive form passedinto Old French as coillir, culler, etc, and thenceinto English. In the case of coil, its originalgeneral sense ‘gather, collect’ (of which there is119 collarno trace in English) was specialized, no doubtoriginally in nautical use, to the gathering up ofropes into tidy shapes (concentric rings) forstowage. COLLECT, CULLcoin [14] Latin cuneus meant ‘wedge’ (from itwe get cuneiform ‘wedge-shaped script’). Itpassed into Old French as coing or coin, where itdeveloped a variety of new meanings. Primaryamongst these was ‘corner-stone’ or ‘corner’, asense preserved in English mainly in the nowarchaic spelling quoin. But also, since the die forstamping out money was often wedge-shaped, oroperated in the manner of a wedge, it came to bereferred to as a coin, and the term soon came tobe transferred to the pieces of moneythemselves. QUOINcoitus see EXITcolander [14] Colander probably comesultimately from Latin colum ‘sieve’. From thiswas derived the verb cōlāre ‘strain’, whichproduced a Vulgar Latin noun *cōlātor. This isassumed to have passed into Old Provençal ascolador, which appears to have been the sourceof early English forms such as culdor- andculatre. The n is a purely English innovation. PERCOLATE, PORTCULLIScold [OE] Cold is a word of ancient roots. It canbe traced back to the Indo-European base *gel-,*gol-, which also produced Latin gelu ‘frost’,ultimate source of English congeal, gel, andjelly. Its prehistoric Germanic descendant was*kal-, *kōl-, from which English gets cool,probably chill, and, via a past participialadjective *kaldaz, cold. The noun use of theadjective dates back to Old English times, butthe sense ‘viral infection of the nose, throat, etc’is a 16th- century development. CHILL, CONGEAL, COOL, GEL, JELLYcoleslaw [18] Cole is an ancient and now littleused English word for plants of the cabbagefamily, such as cabbage or rape (it comesultimately from Latin caulis ‘cabbage’, whoseunderlying meaning was ‘hollow stem’ – seeCAULIFLOWER). It was used in the partialtranslation of Dutch koolsla when that word wasborrowed into English in the late 18th century.Kool, Dutch for ‘cabbage’, became cole, but slapresented more of a problem (it represents aphonetically reduced form of salade ‘salad’),and it was rendered variously as -slaugh (nowdefunct) and -slaw. (Interestingly enough, theearliest record of the word we have, fromAmerica in the 1790s – it was presumablyborrowed from Dutch settlers – is in the formcold slaw, indicating that even then in somequarters English cole was not a sufficientlyfamiliar word to be used for Dutch kool.Coldslaw is still heard, nowadays as a folketymologicalalteration of coleslaw.) CAULIFLOWER, COLE, SALADcollar [13] Etymologically, a collar is simplysomething worn round one’s ‘neck’. The wordcomes via Anglo-Norman coler from Latincollāre, which meant ‘necklace’ as well as ‘part

colleague 120of a garment that encircles the neck’ (both senseshave come through into English, although thelatter has predominated). Collāre was aderivative of collum ‘neck’, which came from anearlier base *kols- that also produced Germanand Swedish hals ‘neck’. It has been speculatedthat it goes back ultimately to Indo-European*qwelo- ‘go round’, the root from which we getEnglish wheel – the underlying notion being thatthe neck is that on which the head turns. DÉCOLLETÉ, HAUBERK, WHEELcolleague [16] A colleague is literally ‘onechosen or delegated to be or work with another’.It comes via French collègue from Latin collēga,a compound noun formed from com- ‘with’ andlēg-, the stem of lēgāre ‘choose’ (whence alsoEnglish legation and delegate) and lēx ‘law’(source of English legal, legitimate, etc). Despitethe similarity in spelling, it is not related toEnglish league. COLLEGE, DELEGATE, LEGAL, LEGITIMATEcollect [16] Collect comes via French collecteror medieval Latin collēctāre from collēct-, thepast participial stem of Latin colligere ‘gathertogether’, a compound verb formed from com-‘together’ and legere ‘gather’ (source also ofEnglish elect, neglect, and select and, from itssecondary meaning ‘read’, lecture and legible).The specialized noun use of collect, ‘shortprayer’, pronounced with its main stress on thefirst syllable, antedates the verb in English,having arrived via Old French in the 13thcentury. It comes from late Latin collēcta‘assembly’, a nominalization of the pastparticiple of colligere, which was used inmedieval times in the phrase ōrātiō ad collēctam‘prayer to the congregation’.Collect comes from the past participle ofLatin colligere, but its infinitive form is thesource of English coil and cull. COIL, CULL, ELECT, LECTURE, LEGIBLE,LIGNEOUS, NEGLECT, SELECTcollege [14] College comes from the samesource as colleague. Latin collēga, literally ‘onechosen to work with another’, a compound basedon the stem of lēgāre ‘choose’. An ‘associationof collēgae, partnership’ was thus a collēgium,whence (possibly via Old French college)English college. For many hundreds of years thisconcept of a ‘corporate group’ was the mainsemantic feature of the word, and it was notreally until the 19th century that, via the collegesof Oxford and Cambridge universities, thenotion of ‘academic institution’ overtook it. COLLEAGUE, DELEGATE, LEGAL, LEGITIMATEcollide [17] Collide comes from Latin collīdere,a compound verb formed from com- ‘together’and laedere ‘injure by striking’. Other Englishdescendants of laedere are elide and lesion. ELIDE, LESIONcollie see COALcolliery see COALcolloquial see VENTRILOQUISTcolon There are two distinct words colon inEnglish. Colon ‘part of the large intestine’ [16]comes via Latin from Greek kólon, which meant‘food, meat’ as well as ‘large intestine’. Colonthe punctuation mark [16] comes via Latin fromGreek kōlon, which originally meant literally‘limb’. It was applied metaphorically (rather likefoot) to a ‘unit of verse’, and hence to a ‘clause’in general, meanings which survive in English astechnical terms. From there it was a short step tothe main present-day meaning, ‘punctuationmark’.colonel [17] Historically, a colonel was so calledbecause he commanded the company at the headof a regiment, known in Italian as the compagnacolonnella, literally the ‘little-columncompany’; hence the commander himself tookthe title colonnella. The word colonnella is adiminutive form of colonna, which is descendedfrom Latin columna ‘pillar’ (source of Englishcolumn). It appears first to have entered Englishvia French in the form coronel, in which the firstl had mutated to r. Spellings with this r occur inEnglish from the 17th and 18th centuries, and itis the source of the word’s modernpronunciation. Colonel represents a return to theoriginal Italian spelling. COLUMNcolony [16] Etymologically, a colony is a‘settled land’. The word goes back ultimately tothe Indo-European base *qwel-, *qwol-, whichsignified ‘move around’ (it is the source ofEnglish cycle and wheel) and hence ‘movehabitually in, settle in, inhabit’. One of thedescendants of this base was Latin colere‘inhabit, cultivate’. Thus someone who settledon a new piece of land and cultivated it was acolōnus, and the land he settled was his colōnia.(The German city of Cologne gets its name fromLatin colōnia; in Roman times it was calledColōnia Agrippīna, the ‘settlement or colony ofAgrippa’.) CYCLE, WHEELcolossal [18] Colossal comes ultimately fromGreek kolossós, a word of unknown origin whichwas first used by the historian Herodotus as aname for certain gigantic statues in Egypt. Itbecame much better known, of course, whenapplied to the Colossus of Rhodes, a 36-metrehighstatue of Apollo that stood at the entrance toRhodes harbour, built around 280 BC. Variousadjectives meaning ‘huge’ have since beenderived from it: Latin had colossēus andcolossicus, and in the 17th century English triedcolossean and colossic, but in the 18th centurythe choice fell on colossal, borrowed fromFrench. The amphitheatre built in Rome byVespasian and Titus around 80–75 BC wasnamed Colossēum after its great size.colour [13] The Old English words for ‘colour’were hīw ‘hue’ and blēo, but from the 13thcentury onwards they were gradually replacedby Old French colour. This came from Latincolor, which appears to have come ultimatelyfrom an Indo-European base *kel- ‘hide’ (sourcealso of apocalypse, cell, clandestine, conceal,and occult). This suggests that its originalunderlying meaning was ‘outward appearance,hiding what is inside’, a supposition supported

y the long history of such senses of Englishcolour as ‘outward (deceptive) appearance’ and‘(specious) plausibility’ (as in ‘lend colour to anotion’). APOCALYPSE, CELL, CONCEAL, HELL, OCCULTcolumn [15] The notion underlying column is of‘height, command, extremity’. It comes, via OldFrench colomne, from Latin columna ‘pillar’,which was probably a derivative of columen,culmen ‘top, summit’ (from which English alsogets culminate). It goes back ultimately to a base*kol-, *kel-, distant ancestor of English excel andhill.The word’s application to vertical sections ofprinted matter dates from the 15th century, butits transference to that which is written (as in‘write a weekly newspaper column’) is a 20thcenturydevelopment. CULMINATE, EXCEL, HILLcomb [OE] Comb is an ancient word, which hasbeen traced back to an Indo-European*gombhos. This appears to have signified‘tooth’, for among its other descendants wereSanskrit jámbhas ‘tooth’ and Greek góphos ‘pin,tooth’. In prehistoric West and North Germanicit became *kambaz, which produced Englishcomb, German kamm, and Dutch kam (probablyborrowed into English in the 18th century ascam, originally ‘projecting cog-like part on awheel for transferring motion’). The Old Englishverb formed from comb lasted dialectally askemb until the 19th century, but today it survivesonly in unkempt.The origin of the word’s application tohoneycomb, first recorded in the 13th century, isnot known. OAKUM, UNKEMPTcombat [16] Combat means literally ‘fightwith’. It comes via French combattre from lateLatin combattere, a compound verb formed fromLatin com- ‘with’ and *battere, an assumedvariant of Latin battuere ‘fight, beat’ (ultimatesource of English abate, battle, and debate). ABATE, BATTLE, DEBATEcombine [15] The notion underlying combine issimply ‘two together’. It comes, perhaps viaFrench combiner, from late Latin combīnāre, acompound verb formed from Latin com-‘together’ and bīnī ‘two at a time’; this Latinadverb was formed from the prefix bi- ‘twice’,and is the basis of English binary. BINARYcome [OE] Come is of course one of the basicwords of English, and its history goes back to thelanguage’s Indo-European roots. Here its distantancestor was the base *gwem-, which alsoproduced Greek baínein ‘go, walk’ (related toEnglish base and basis) and Latin venīre ‘come’(source of a whole range of English words fromadventure to venue). The prehistoric Germanicdescendant of *gwem- was *kweman or *kuman,which has produced German kommen, Dutchkomen, Swedish komma, and English come. Thecompound become (source of comely) wasformed in Germanic in prehistoric times. ADVENTURE, BASE, BASIS, BECOME, VENUE121 commacomedy [14] Comedy is of Greek origin. Itcomes ultimately from Greek kōmos ‘revelry’.This appears to have been combined with ōidós‘singer, poet’ (a derivative of aeídein ‘sing’,source of English ode and odeon) to producekōmōidós, literally ‘singer in the revels’, hence‘actor in a light amusing play’. From this wasderived kōmōidíā, which came to English viaLatin cōmoedia and Old French comedie. ENCOMIUM, ODEcomely [13] Old English had an adjective cmlic‘beautiful’ (no relation at all to come), but thisseems to have died out around the year 1000, andit is likely that comely, which first appears in theearly 13th century, represents a reduced versionof becomely, an adjective long since defunct ofwhich there are a few records towards the end ofthe 12th century. This meant ‘suitable,becoming’ (it was formed, of course, from theverb become), an early meaning of comely; itsother semantic strand, ‘beautiful’, is probably amemory of Old English cmlic. BECOMEcomestible see EATcomet [13] Comet means literally ‘the longhairedone’. Greek kómē meant ‘hair’, but it wasalso applied metaphorically to the tail of acomet, which was thought of as streaming outbehind like a luxuriant head of hair being blownby the wind. Hence an astēr kométēs ‘longhairedstar’ was the name given to a comet.Eventually the adjective kométēs came to standfor the whole phrase, and it passed via Latincomēta and Old French comete into English.comfit see CONFETTIcomfort [13] Comfort did not always have itspresent ‘soft’ connotations of physical ease,contentment, and well-being. Etymologically itmeans ‘make someone stronger’, and its originalEnglish sense was ‘encourage, support’ (thissurvives in such contexts as ‘give aid andcomfort to the enemy’). It comes via Old Frenchconforter from late Latin confortāre ‘strengthengreatly’, a compound verb formed from theprefix com- ‘with’ used as an intensive and theadjective fortis ‘strong’ (source of English force,fort, and effort).The antonym discomfort is notetymologically related to discomfit, a word withwhich it is often confused. EFFORT, FORCE, FORTcomfrey see FERVENTcomma [16] Greek kómma meant literally ‘piececut off, segment’. It derived from the verbkóptein ‘cut’, relatives of which include Russiankopje ‘lance’, source of the coin-name kopeck,and probably English capon. Kómma came to beapplied metaphorically, as a technical term inprosody, to a small piece of a sentence, a ‘shortclause’, a sense which it retained when itreached English via Latin comma. It was notlong before, like colon, it was applied to thepunctuation mark signifying the end of such aclause. CAPON, KOPECK

command 122command [13] Ultimately, command andcommend are the same word. Both come fromLatin compound verbs formed from the intensiveprefix com- and the verb mandāre ‘entrust,commit to someone’s charge’ (from which weget mandate). In the classical period thiscombination produced commendāre ‘commit tosomeone’s charge, commend, recommend’,which passed into English in the 14th century(recommend, a medieval formation, wasacquired by English from medieval Latin in the14th century). Later on, the compoundingprocess was repeated, giving late Latincommandāre. By this time, mandāre had cometo mean ‘order’ as well as ‘entrust’ (a changereflected in English mandatory). Commandāreinherited both these senses, and they coexistedthrough Old French comander and Anglo-Norman comaunder into Middle Englishcommande. But ‘entrust’ was gradually takenover from the 14th century by commend, and bythe end of the 15th century command meantsimply ‘order’.Commandeer and commando are both ofAfrikaans origin, and became established inEnglish at the end of the 19th century largely asa result of the Boer War. Commodore [17] isprobably a modification of Dutch komandeur,from French commandeur ‘commander’. COMMEND, COMMODORE, DEMAND,MANDATORY, RECOMMEND, REMANDcommensurate see MEASUREcomment [15] In Latin, a commentum wasoriginally ‘something invented or devised’. Itwas derived from the verb comminiscī ‘devise,contrive by thought’, a compound formed fromthe prefix com- ‘with’ and a base *men- (thisalso produced Latin mens and mentiō, sourcerespectively of English mental and mention). Itwas used in the 7th century by the Spanishtheologian Isidore in the sense ‘interpretation,annotation’, and it was with that meaning ratherthan the original ‘contrivance’ that the wordpassed eventually into English. MENTAL, MENTION, MINDcommerce [16] Commerce is etymologicallyrelated to market, merchandise, merchant, andmercury. It comes, perhaps via Frenchcommerce, from Latin commercium ‘trade’, acompound noun formed from the collectiveprefix com- ‘together’ and merx ‘merchandise’.The adjective commercial is 17th-century, itsnominal use for ‘broadcast advertisement’ 20thcentury. MARKET, MERCHANT, MERCURYcommit [14] Etymologically, commit simplymeans ‘put together’. It comes from Latincommittere, a compound verb formed from theprefix com- ‘together’ and the verb mittere ‘put,send’ (whence English missile and mission). Itoriginally meant literally ‘join, connect’, butthen branched out along the lines of ‘put forsafety, entrust’ (the force of com- here beingmore intensive than collective) and ‘perpetrate’(exactly how this sense evolved is not clear). Thewhole range of meanings followed the Latinverb into English, although ‘put together’ wasnever more than an archaism, and died out in the17th century. Of derivatives based on the Latinverb’s past participial stem commiss-,commission entered English in the 14th centuryand commissionaire (via French) in the 18thcentury. Medieval Latin commissārius producedEnglish commissary [14] and, via French,Russian commissar, borrowed into English inthe 20th century. COMMISSAR, COMMITTEE, MISSILE, MISSIONcommittee [15] Committee was formed fromthe verb commit by adding the suffix -ee.Following the pattern of all such formations, itoriginally meant ‘person to whom something iscommitted’; it was not until the 17th century thatthe sense ‘body of people delegated to perform aparticular function’ developed.commodious [15] Latin commodus meant‘convenient’. It was a compound adjectiveformed from com- ‘with’ and modus ‘measure’,and thus meaning literally ‘conforming with duemeasure’. From it was derived the medievalLatin adjective commodiōsus, which passed,probably via French commodieux, into English.This originally meant ‘advantageous, useful,convenient’, and it was not really until the 16thcentury that it developed the meaning ‘affordinga conveniently large amount of space’. The nounderivative commodity entered English in the 14thcentury, and from earliest times had the concretemeaning ‘article of commerce’, deriving fromthe more general sense ‘something useful’.Commodus was borrowed into French ascommode ‘convenient’, which came to be usedas a noun meaning both ‘tall headdress forwomen’ and ‘chest of drawers’. English adoptedthe word in the 17th century, and in the 19thcentury added the new sense ‘chair housing achamber pot’ (a semantic developmentparalleling the euphemistic use of conveniencefor lavatory). COMMODE, COMMODITYcommodore see COMMANDcommon [13] Common comes ultimately froman Indo-European base *moi-, *mei-, signifying‘change, exchange’, which also producedEnglish immune, mutate, mutual, andremunerate. A derivative of this base, *moin-,*mein- seems to have joined up with the Indo-European collective *kom- to produce *komoin-,*komein- ‘shared by all’. In Germanic thisbecame *gamainiz, source of English mean‘despicable’, while in Latin it gave commūnis,source, via Old French comun, of Englishcommon. Both the Latin and French forms havegiven English a number of derivatives: from theformer we have community [14] (Latincommūnitātis), communion [14] (Latincommūniō), and communicate [16] (Latincommūnicāre), while the latter has yieldedcommune [13] (Old French comuner) andcommunism [19] (French communisme, coinedaround 1840). COMMUNICATE, COMMUNISM, COMMUNITY,IMMUNE, MEAN, MUTUAL, MUTATE,

REMUNERATEcommonwealth see WEALTHcommotion see MOTORcompact There are two distinct words compactin English; both are of Latin origin, but theycome from completely different sources. Theadjective, ‘compressed’ [14], comes from Latincompactus, the past participle of compingere, acompound verb formed from com- ‘together’and pangere ‘fasten’. The noun use ‘small casefor face powder’ is 20th-century and based onthe notion of firmly compacted powder.Compact ‘agreement’ [16] comes from Latincompactum, a noun based on the past participleof the verb compacīscī ‘come to an agreement’.The unprefixed form pacīscī, a relative of Latinpax ‘peace’, gave English pact [15]. PACT, PEACEcompanion [13] Etymologically, yourcompanion is someone who shares your ‘bread’with you. It comes, via Old French compaignon,from Vulgar Latin *compāniō, a compound nounformed from Latin com- ‘with’ and pānis‘bread’. The Old French stem compaign- alsoformed the basis of compaignie, from whichEnglish gets company [13]. Compare MATE.The companion of companionway ‘stairwayon a ship’ [18] is of similar but distinct origin. Itcomes ultimately from Vulgar Latin *compānia,a compound noun meaning ‘what one eats withbread’, formed from Latin com- ‘with’ and pānis‘bread’. In Italian this became campagna‘provisions’, which was used in the phrasecamera della campagna ‘(ship’s) storeroom’.The meaning of the phrase eventually passed tocampagna on its own, and was carried via OldFrench compagne to Dutch kompanje, whichmeant ‘quarterdeck’. English borrowed this, andadapted it to the more familiar English patterncompanion. COMPANY, PANNIERcompare [15] Compare comes via Old Frenchcomparer from Latin comparāre ‘couple,match’, a verb based on the adjective compar‘equal’, a compound formed from the prefixcom- ‘mutually’ and pār ‘equal’ (source ofEnglish pair, peer, and parity). The Latinderivative noun comparātiō gave Old Frenchcomparesoun and hence English comparison[14]. PAIR, PAR, PARITY, PEERcompass [13] The notion underlying compassis of ‘measuring out with paces’. It originated asa verb, Vulgar Latin *compassāre ‘pace out’, acompound formed from the Latin intensiveprefix com- and passus (source of English pace).This passed into Old French as compasser‘measure’, and thence into English. The derivedOld French noun compas was early applied to apivoted two-armed measuring and drawinginstrument, presumably inspired equally by theideas ‘stepping’ and ‘measuring’, and Englishacquired this sense in the 14th century. The useof the word for a magnetic direction indicator,123 completewhich dates from the 16th century, may be due tothe device’s circular container. PACEcompel see PULSEcompendium see PONDERcompensate see PONDERcompete [17] Compete comes from Latincompetere. This was a compound verb formedfrom com- ‘together’ and petere ‘seek, strive’(source of English petition, appetite, impetus,and repeat). At first this meant ‘come together,agree, be fit or suitable’, and the last of thesemeanings was taken up in the present participialadjective competēns, source of Englishcompetent [14]. In later Latin, however,competere developed the sense ‘strive together’,and this formed the basis of English compete. APPETITE, COMPETENT, IMPETUS, PETITION,REPEATcompile see PILEcomplacent see COMPLAISANTcomplain [14] Complain goes back to the Latinin verb plangere, source also of Englishplangent. This was formed on a prehistoric base*plak- (from which we also get plankton), and itoriginally meant ‘hit’. Its meaning developedmetaphorically through ‘beat one’s breast’ to‘lament’, and in medieval Latin it was combinedwith the intensive prefix com- to producecomplangere. When it entered English via OldFrench complaindre it still meant ‘lament’, andalthough this sense had died out by about 1700,traces of it remain in ‘complain of’ a particularillness. Complaint [14] came from Old Frenchcomplainte. PLANGENT, PLANKTONcomplaisant [17] Complaisant and complacent[17] are virtual doublets. Both come from Latincomplacēre ‘please greatly’ (a compound verbformed from placēre, source of English please),but they reached English along different routes.Complaisant came via French, fromcomplaisant, the present participle of complaire‘gratify’, but complacent was a direct borrowingfrom the Latin present participle. It originallymeant simply ‘pleasant, delightful’, and did nottake on its present derogatory connotations (atfirst expressed by the now obsoletecomplacential) until the mid 18th century. COMPLACENT, PLEASEcomplete [14] Complete first reached English asan adjective, either via Old French complet ordirect from Latin complētus. This was the pastparticiple of complēre ‘fill up, finish’, acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixcom- and plēre ‘fill’, a word related to Latinplēnus ‘full’ (whence plenary, plenitude, plenty,etc) and indeed to English full.The verb complēre itself came into OldFrench as the now obsolete complir (complete asa verb is a later formation from the adjective),and was prefixed with a- to produce accomplir.From its stem accompliss- English gotaccomplish [14]. ACCOMPLISH, COMPLIMENT, COMPLY,EXPLETIVE, PLENARY, PLENTY

compliant 124compliant see COMPLYcomplicate see PLYcompliment [17] Compliment and complement,so often confused, are in effect doublets. Theycome from the same ultimate source, Latincomplēmentum, a noun derived from complēre‘fill up, finish’ (source of English complete andaccomplish). English borrowed complementdirect from Latin in the 14th century in the sense‘fulfilment, accomplishment’, and by the 16thcentury this had developed the more specificmetaphorical meaning ‘fulfilment of theobligation of politeness’ – hence ‘polite wordsof praise’. But then in the 17th century camecompetition in the form of compliment, alsomeaning ‘polite words of praise’. This also camefrom Latin complēmentum, but along acircuitous route via Vulgar Latin*complimentum, Spanish cumplimiento, andFrench compliment. It gradually took over fromcomplement in this ‘flattering’ sense, whilecomplement went on to develop its leadingcurrent meaning, ‘counterpart’, in the 19thcentury. ACCOMPLISH, COMPLEMENT, COMPLETE,COMPLY, EXPLETIVE, PLENARY, PLENTYcomply [17] Like accomplish, complete,complement, and compliment, comply comesfrom Latin complēre ‘fill up, finish’. It wasoriginally acquired in the 14th century, via OldFrench complire, but does not seem to havesurvived, and the sudden explosion in its use inthe early 17th century represents a newborrowing, from Italian complire. Italian had theword from Spanish cumplir, in which themeaning ‘be courteous’ had developed. Thispassed into English, and though long defunct,seems to have been the basis of the modernEnglish sense ‘be amenable or obedient’.Compliant [17] is an English development. COMPLETE, COMPLIANT, COMPLIMENTcompose [15] Etymologically, compose meanssimply ‘put together’; it comes, via Old Frenchcomposer, from compos-, the perfect stem ofLatin compōnere, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix com- ‘with’ and pōnere ‘place, put’,source of English position. Amongst its manydescendants and derivatives are compound,component [17] (from the Latin presentparticiple compōnent-), composite [16] (from theLatin past participle compositus), and compost[14] (which originally meant ‘stewed fruit’, likethe later-borrowed compote [17]). COMPONENT, COMPOSITE, COMPOST, COMPOTE,COMPOUND, POSITIONcompound There are two distinct wordscompound in English. The one meaning‘combine’ [14] comes ultimately from Latincompōnere ‘put together’. Old French took twoverbs from this: the perfect stem composproducedcomposer (whence English compose)while the infinitive became compondre, sourceof English compound. Its original MiddleEnglish form was compoune; the final d camefrom the adjectival use of the past participlecompouned. Compound ‘enclosure’ [17] is ofEastern origin: it comes from Malay kampong‘group of buildings, village’, and was borrowedvia Portuguese campon or Dutch campoeng. TheEnglish form was no doubt remodelled on thebasis of compound ‘combine’. COMPOSE, COMPOSITE, POSITIONcomprehend see PREYcompress see PRESScomprise see PREYcompunction [14] Etymologically, to dosomething ‘without compunction’ meansliterally to do it without one’s consciencepricking. The word comes via Old Frenchcomponction from late Latin compunctiō, aderivative of compungere ‘prick hard’, acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixcom- and pungere ‘prick’ (source of Englishpuncture and pungent). PUNCTURE, PUNGENTcompute [17] Latin computāre meant ‘reckontogether’. It was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix com- ‘together’ and putāre ‘reckon,think’ (source of English putative and variousderived forms such as amputate, deputy, dispute,impute, and reputation). It was borrowed intoOld French as compter, from which English gotcount, but English compute was a directborrowing from Latin. The derivative computerwas coined in the mid-17th century, andoriginally meant simply ‘person who computes’;the modern meaning developed via ‘device forcalculating’ at the end of the 19th century and‘electronic brain’ in the 1940s. AMPUTATE, COUNT, DEPUTY, DISPUTE, IMPUTE,PUTATIVE, REPUTATIONcomrade [16] Etymologically, one’s comrade issomeone with whom one shares a room. Theword came via French camerade from Spanishcamarada ‘room-sharer’, a derivative of camara‘room’, from Latin camera. Cameraderie is a19th-century borrowing from French. CAMARADERIE, CAMERA, CHAMBER,CHAMBERLAIN, CHIMNEYconcatenation [17] Aconcatenation isliterally a ‘chain’ of events or occurrences. It is aderivative of the seldom-encountered verbconcatenate [16], which comes from Latinconcatēnāre ‘chain together, link’, a compoundverb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ andcatēna ‘chain’ (source of English chain). CHAINconceal [14] Conceal can be traced back to theIndo-European base *kel- ‘hide’, which was alsothe source of English apocalypse, cell, occult,and probably colour. It formed the basis of theLatin verb cēlāre ‘hide’, which was strengthenedby the intensive prefix com- to produceconcēlāre. This reached English via Old Frenchconceler. Another offshoot of the Latin verb wasthe adverb clam ‘secretly’; from this was formedthe adjective clandestīnus, acquired by Englishas clandestine in the 16th century. APOCALYPSE, CELL, CLANDESTINE, HOLE,HOLSTER, OCCULT, SUPERCILIOUSconceive [13] Conceive is one of a number ofEnglish words (deceive, perceive, and receive

are others) whose immediate source is the OldFrench morpheme -ceiv-. This goes backultimately to Latin capere ‘take’ (source ofEnglish capture), which when prefixed became-cipere. In the case of conceive, the compoundverb was concipere, where the prefix com- hadan intensive force; it meant generally ‘take tooneself’, and hence either ‘take into the mind,absorb mentally’ or ‘become pregnant’ –meanings transmitted via Old French conceivreto English conceive. The noun conceit [14] is anEnglish formation, based on the models of deceitand receipt. Conception [13], however, goesback to the Latin derivative conceptiō. CAPTURE, CONCEIT, CONCEPTION, DECEIVE,PERCEIVE, RECEIVEconcern [15] In earliest use, English concernmeant ‘distinguish, discern’. This was areflection of its ultimate source, Latin cernere‘sift, separate’. In combination with the prefixcom- ‘together’ it produced concernere, whichin classical times meant specifically ‘mixtogether preparatory to sifting’. Later, however,the prefix seems to have taken on a moreintensive role, with concernere reverting to thesame range of senses as cernere. By the MiddleAges these not only included ‘discern, perceive’and ‘decide’ (whence English certain, from thepast participle of cernere), but had widenedconsiderably to ‘relate to’ – a meaning whichemerged in English concern in the 16th century.Connotations of distress or worry began todevelop in the late 17th century. CERTAIN, DISCERNconcert [16] Concert probably comes ultimatelyfrom Latin concertāre, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix com- ‘with’ and certāre ‘strive,contend’, a verb derived from certus ‘sure, fixed’(source of English certain), which in turn camefrom cernere (source of English concern). Someetymologists have rejected concertāre as theorigin of concert, on the grounds that itsmeaning – ‘dispute, debate’ – was completelyopposite, but it seems that in post-classical timesthe Latin verb came to mean ‘strive together (incooperation)’ – a much more plausible senserelationship. It passed into Italian as concertare‘bring into agreement’, and developed specificmusical connotations of ‘harmony’. Englishacquired it via French concerter. The nounconcerto [18] was an Italian derivative of theverb; French borrowed it as concert, and passedit on to English as the noun concert [17].Concertina was coined in the 1830s, from thenoun concert. CERTAIN, CONCERN, CONCERTINA, CONCERTO,DISCONCERTconciliate see COUNCILconclave see CLAVIERconcoct [16] To concoct an excuse is the same,etymologically, as to ‘cook’ one up. The wordconcoct comes from the past participle of Latinconcoquere, a compound verb formed from theprefix com- ‘together’ and coquere ‘cook’. Thiswas a derivative of the noun coquus ‘cook’,which was the source of English cook. The Latin125 concussionverb developed several figurative senses,including ‘digest food’ and ‘reflect onsomething in the mind’, but ‘fabricate’ seems tobe an English creation (first recorded in the late18th century), developed from an earlier ‘makeby mixing ingredients’. COOKconcomitant see COUNTconcord [13] Etymologically, concord signifiesthat two people’s hearts are together, as one. Theword comes, via Old French concorde, fromLatin concordia, a derivative of the adjectiveconcors. This meant literally ‘hearts together’,and thus ‘of one mind, in harmony’. It wasformed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and thenoun cors ‘heart’ (source of English cordial andFrench coeur). Concordat [17] comes from thepast participle of the Latin verb concordāre‘agree’.Discord [13], the antonym of concord, has aparallel origin, coming ultimately from Latindiscors ‘disagreeing’. CONCORDAT, CORDIAL, DISCORDconcourse see COURSEconcrete [14] In origin, something concrete issomething that has ‘grown together’. The wordcomes, via Old French concret, from Latinconcrētus, the past participle of concrēscere‘grow together’, hence ‘harden’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix com-‘together’ and crēscere ‘grow’ (source also ofEnglish crescent, increase, and accrue). Itsoriginal application in English was fairly general– referring to that which is solid or material; itsuse for the building material did not emerge untilthe early 19th century. ACCRUE, CRESCENT, DECREASE, INCREASEconcubine [13] A concubine is etymologicallya person with whom one goes to bed. It comesvia Old French concubine from Latin concubīna,a compound noun formed from the prefix com-‘with’ and cub-, the stem of the verb cubāre ‘liedown, go to bed’. Another derivative of this verbwas Latin cubiculum, whose meaning ‘bedroom’was carried through into English cubicle [15];the more general ‘partitioned-off area’ did notemerge fully until the 20th century. CUBICLEconcupiscence see CUPIDITYconcussion [15] The etymological notionunderlying concussion is of ‘violent shaking’;the modern connotation of a ‘jarring injury to thebrain’ did not emerge until the 16th century. Theword comes from late Latin concussiō, a nounderived from the past participial stem ofconcutere ‘shake violently’. This was acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixcom- and -cutere, an alteration of quatere ‘shake,strike’ (its variant quassāre was the source ofEnglish quash and cashier ‘dismiss’, andprobably lies behind cascara [19],etymologically ‘bark broken off the tree’). Theverb concuss is 17th-century.The related percussion [16] comes ultimatelyfrom Latin percutere ‘strike through’. CASCARA, CASHIER, PERCUSSION, QUASH,

condign 126RESCUEcondign [15] From its virtually exclusivemodern use in the phrase condign punishment,condign has come to be regarded frequently asmeaning ‘severe’, but etymologically it signifies‘fully deserved’. It comes via Old Frenchcondigne from Latin condignus, a compoundadjective formed from the intensive prefix comanddignus ‘worthy’ (source of English dainty,deign, dignity, disdain, and indignant, andrelated to decent). The collocation withpunishment arises from the frequent use of thephrase in Tudor acts of parliament. DAINTY, DECENT, DEIGN, DIGNITY, DISDAIN,INDIGNANTcondiment see RECONDITEconditioncondition [14] Latin condīcere originally meantliterally ‘talk together’ – it was a compound verbformed from the prefix com- ‘together’ anddicere ‘talk’ (whose base dic- forms the basis ofa wide range of English words from abdicate tovindicate, including diction and dictionary).Gradually the idea of ‘talking together,discussing’ passed to ‘agreeing’, and the derivedLatin noun conditiō originally meant‘agreement’. From this came ‘stipulation,provision’, and hence ‘situation, mode of being’,all of them senses which passed via Old Frenchcondicion into English condition. ABDICATE, DICTION, DICTIONARY, PREDICT,VINDICATEcondolence [17] Condolence and sympathy areparallel formations: both go back to classicaloriginals (late Latin condolēre and Greeksumpátheia respectively) which meant literally‘together-suffering’. Latin condolēre was acompound verb formed from the prefix com-‘together’ and dolēre ‘suffer pain’ (source ofEnglish dolour and doleful). This enteredEnglish in the 16th century as the now seldomencountered verb condole, but the comparativefrequency of the noun condolence is probablydue to the early 17th-century adoption of Frenchcondoléance (the spelling condoleance wascommon in English in the 17th and 18thcenturies). DOLEFUL, DOLOURcondone see DATEcone [16] Greek kōnos originally meant ‘pinecone’– it was the pine-cone’s typical shapewhich suggested the application of the word to aconical geometrical figure. The word passed intoEnglish via Latin cōnus and French cône.Coniferous [17] was formed from Latin cōnifer,literally ‘cone-bearing’ (-ifer goes back to Latinferre ‘carry’, a relative of English bear). HONEconfess [14] Confess comes from Latinconfitērī ‘acknowledge’. This was a compoundverb formed from the intensive prefix com- andfatērī ‘admit’ (a relative of English fable, fame,and fate). Its past participle was confessus, andthis was taken as the basis of a new Vulgar Latinverb *confessāre, which passed into English viaOld French confesser. FABLE, FAME, FATEconfetti [19] The Latin compound verbconficere meant ‘put together, make, prepare’ (itwas formed from the prefix com- and facere ‘do,make’, source of English fact, factory, fashion,etc and related to English do). From its pastparticipial stem was formed the noun confectiō,which passed into English, via Old French, asconfection in the 14th century (by which time italready had its present-day association withsweets). But the past participle confectum alsoproduced Old French confit, whence Englishcomfit [15], and Italian confetto, which was asmall sweet traditionally thrown duringcarnivals. The British adapted the missiles toweddings (displacing the traditional rice) at theend of the 19th century, using symbolic shreds ofcoloured paper rather than real sweets. COMFIT, CONFECTION, DISCOMFIT, DO, FACT,FACTORY, FASHIONconfide [15] To confide in somebody is literallyto ‘put one’s trust or faith’ in them. The wordcomes from the Latin compound verb confidere,which was formed from the intensive prefixcom- and fidere ‘trust’. This was a derivative offides ‘trust’ (whence English faith). Confidant[16] and confidence [15] come from the Latinverb’s present participle, confīdēns, in which thesecondary notion of ‘self-assurance’ was alreadypresent. The abbreviation con for confidenceman, confidence trick, etc originated in the USAin the late 19th century. CONFIDENT, FAITHconfine see FINEconfiscate [16] Confiscate’s etymologicalconnotations are financial: the Latin verbconfīscāre meant ‘appropriate to the publictreasury’. It was formed from the collectiveprefix com- and fiscus. This meant originally‘rush-basket’; it was applied to the baskets usedby tax collectors, and hence came to mean‘public treasury’ (English gets fiscal from it).The looser sense of confiscate, ‘seize byauthority’, dates from the early 19th century. FISCALconflagration see FLAGRANTconflict see PROFLIGATEconfoundconfound [13] Latin confundere literally meant‘pour together’; it was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix com- ‘together’ and fundere‘pour’ (source of English found ‘melt’ and fuse).This sense was later extended figuratively to‘mix up, fail to distinguish’, a meaning whichpassed via Old French confondre into English.Meanwhile, the Latin verb’s past participle,confusus, came to be used as an adjective; in OldFrench this became confus, which Englishacquired in the 14th century as confuse. This wassoon assimilated to the normal pattern of Englishpast participial adjectives as confused, fromwhich the new verb confuse, was coined. CONFUSE, FOUND, FUSEconfute see BEATcongratulate see GRATEFULcongregation [14] Etymologically, a church’scongregation is comparable to a pastor’s flock.The word comes from Latin congregātiō, a noun

derivative of congregāre ‘flock together’. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the collectiveprefix com- and grex ‘flock, herd’ (source ofEnglish egregious and gregarious).Congregation was thus originally simply a‘meeting, assembly’; its religious connotationsarose from its frequent use in the 1611translation of the Bible to render ‘solemn publicassembly’. The verb congregate wasindependently borrowed in the 15th century. AGGREGATE, EGREGIOUS, GREGARIOUS,SEGREGATEcongress [16] A congress is literally a ‘comingtogether’ – hence, a ‘meeting’. The word comesfrom Latin congressus, which was based on thepast participial stem of congredī ‘cometogether’. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix com- ‘together’ and gradī ‘go,walk’ (a derivative of gradus ‘step’, from whichEnglish gets grade, gradual, and graduate). Theapplication of the word to the US legislaturedates from the 1770s. GRADE, GRADUAL, GRADUATE, PROGRESS,TRANSGRESScongruent [15] Etymologically, triangles thatare congruent ‘come together’ or ‘agree’ – thatis, are similar. The word comes from congruēns,the present participle of Latin congruere ‘cometogether, meet, agree’. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ anda verb, *gruere, not found elsewhere (some havelinked it with Latin ruere ‘fall’ – ultimate sourceof English ruin – in which case congruere wouldhave meant literally ‘fall together’, but othershave seen a connection with Greek zakhrēēs‘attacking violently’). Incongruous is a 17thcenturyadoption from Latin incongruus.coniferous see CONEconjecture [14] A conjecture is, etymologicallyspeaking, simply something ‘thrown together’.The word comes, perhaps via Old French, fromLatin conjectūra ‘conclusion, interpretation’, anoun derived from the past participle of conicere‘throw together’. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix com- ‘together’ andjacere ‘throw’ (source of English jet, jettison,and jetty). The notion behind the word’ssemantic development is that facts are ‘throwntogether’ in the mind and (provisional)conclusions drawn. JET, JETTISON, JETTYconjugal [16] The notion underlying conjugal isof ‘joining together’. It comes from Latinconjugālis, an adjective derived from conjux‘spouse’. This is turn was derived fromconjugāre ‘join together (in marriage)’, acompound verb formed from the prefix com-‘together’ and jugāre ‘yoke’ (a derivative ofjugum ‘yoke’, which is related to English yokeand yoga). (The grammatical connotations ofEnglish conjugate [16] arise from the notion of a‘connected’ set of verb forms.) The base ofjugum, *jug-, also produced jungere ‘join’,whose derivative conjungere ‘join together’ isresponsible for the parallel set of English words127 consentconjoin [14], conjunct [15], and conjunction[14]. CONJUGATE, CONJUNCTION, JOIN, YOGA, YOKEconker [19] A conker was originally a ‘snailshell’. Small boys tied them on to pieces ofstring and played a game involving trying tobreak their opponent’s shell (another method ofplaying was simply to press two shells togetherand see which one broke). The first record of theuse of horse chestnuts instead of snail shells isfrom the 1880s, but in the succeeding centurythis has established itself as the word’s soleapplication. It is not entirely clear where itoriginally came from. The connection withmolluscs has inevitably suggested a derivationfrom conch (itself ultimately from Greekkónkhē), but early 19th-century spellings of thegame as conquering, and of conker asconqueror, point to a simpler explanation, thatthe stronger snail shell defeated, or ‘conquered’,the weaker.connect [17] Etymologically, connect means‘tie together’. It comes from Latin connectere, acompound verb formed from the prefix com-‘together’ and nectere ‘bind, tie’ (whose pastparticipial stem, nex-, is the ultimate source ofEnglish nexus [17]). The derived nounconnection first appeared, in the spellingconnexion, in the 14th century. NEXUSconnubial see NUBILEconquer [13] Latin conquīrere originally meant‘seek something out’. It was a compound verbformed from the intensive prefix com- andquaerere ‘seek’ (source of English query, quest,question, inquire, and require). Bit by bit,‘searching for something’ slid into ‘acquiring it’,including by force of arms: hence the sense‘vanquish’, already current in the 13th century.The term Conqueror appears first to have beenapplied to William I of England around 1300. ENQUIRE, INQUEST, QUERY, QUEST, QUESTION,REQUIREconscience [13] Latin conscīre meant ‘bemutually aware’. It was a compound verbformed from the prefix com- ‘with, together’ andscīre ‘know’ (source of English science). To‘know something with oneself’ implied, in aneutral sense, ‘consciousness’, but also a moralawareness, a mental differentiation betweenright and wrong, and hence the derived nounconscientia carried both these meanings, via OldFrench, into English (the more general, amoral,‘consciousness’ died out in the 18th century). Aparallel Latin formation, using *sci-, the base ofscīre, was conscius ‘aware’, acquired by Englishin the 17th century as conscious. Conscientiousis also a 17th-century borrowing, ultimatelyfrom Latin conscientiōsus. SCIENCEconsecutive see SEQUENCEconsent [13] The notion underlying ‘givingone’s consent’ is ‘feeling together’ – that is,‘agreeing’, and hence ‘giving approval orpermission’. The word comes from Old Frenchconsente, a derivative of the verb consentir. This

consequence 128was a descendant of Latin consentīre ‘agree’, acompound verb formed from the prefix com-‘together’ and sentīre ‘feel’ (source of Englishsense, sentence, sentiment, etc). Consensus,originally the past participle of Latin consentīre,was borrowed into English in the 19th century. CONSENSUS, SENSE, SENTENCE, SENTIMENTconsequence see SEQUENCEconserve [14] Latin servāre meant ‘keep,preserve’ (it was not related to servus ‘slave’,source of English serve and servant). Among thecompounds formed from it were praeservāre‘guard in advance’ and, using the intensiveprefix com-, conservāre. This passed intoEnglish via Old French conserver. Amongst itsderivatives are conservation [14], conservative[14] (first used in the modern political sense by JWilson Croker in 1830), and conservatory [16](whose French original, conservatoire, wasreborrowed in the 18th century in the sense‘musical academy’). OBSERVE, PRESERVE, RESERVEconsider [14] Etymologically, consider means‘observe the stars’. Amongst the most popular ofancient Roman methods of divination wasastrology, and so the Latin verb consīderāre wascoined (from the intensive prefix com- and sīdus‘star’, source of English sidereal) to describe theactivity of carefully noting the stars’ courses forthe purpose of drawing auguries. From‘observing stars’ it soon broadened out inmeaning to simply ‘observe’, and hencefiguratively ‘think over something’, but thesense ‘have an opinion’ seems to be an Englishdevelopment of the 16th century. Englishacquired the word via Old French considerer, butborrowed considerable directly from Latinconsīderābilis; the modern sense ‘large inamount’ arose in the mid-17th century, on thebasis of an earlier ‘worthy of considerationbecause of great quantity’. DESIRE, SIDEREALconsign see SIGNconsist [16] Latin consistere meant originally‘stand still, be firmly in place’. It was acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixcom- and sistere ‘place’ (a relative of Latin stāre,which entered into a parallel compound to formconstāre ‘stand firm’, source of English constant[14]). The concrete concept of ‘standing firm’passed into the more abstract ‘exist’, and hence‘have a particular kind of existence, haveparticular inherent qualities’. By the timeEnglish borrowed the verb it had come to mean‘be composed of’. CONSTANT, CONSTITUTEconsole [14] Console means literally ‘offersolace’. It comes from Latin consōlārī, acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixcom- and sōlārī ‘comfort’ (source of the Latinnoun sōlātium, from which English gets solace[13]). English acquired it either directly, or viaFrench consoler. The Latin agent noun derivedfrom consōlārī was consōlātor ‘comforter’,which passed into French as consolateur. Thiscame to be used as an architectural term for acarved human figure supporting a cornice, shelf,etc, and was eventually shortened to console;this was borrowed into English in the 18thcentury. SOLACEconsonant [14] Etymologically, consonantmeans ‘sounding together’. It comes via OldFrench consonant from Latin consonāns, thepresent participle of consonāre, a compoundverb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ andsonāre ‘sound’. Its application to particularspeech sounds, contrasted with ‘vowels’, comesfrom the notion that they were ‘pronouncedtogether with’ vowels, rather thanindependently. SONOROUS, SOUNDconsort see SORTconspire see SPIRITconstable [13] The late Latin comes stabulī wasan officer in charge of the stables (comes is thesource of the English title count, and stabulum isthe ancestor of English stable). From thecomparatively lowly status of head groom, thejob gradually grew in importance until OldFrench conestable was used for the principalofficer of the household of the early Frenchkings. In the 14th century the title was adoptedfor the Constable of England. On a less exaltedlevel, the word has also been used since the 14thcentury for someone appointed to uphold lawand order, and was applied to police officerswhen they were called into being in the 1830s. COUNT, STABLEconstant see CONSISTconsternation see STRATAconstipationconstipation [15] Latin constīpātiō originallymeant ‘condition of being closely packed orcompressed’. Its English descendantconstipation was briefly used in that literal sensein the 17th and 18th centuries, but for the mostpart it has been a medical term: at first forconstriction of some internal organ, bloodvessel, etc, and from the mid-16th century forimpaired bowel function. The Latin pastparticiple constīpātus passed into Old French ascostive, which English acquired, via anunrecorded Anglo-Norman *costif ‘constipated’[14]. COSTIVE, STEVEDORE, STIFFconstitute [15] Etymologically, that which isconstituted is that which is ‘caused to stand’ or‘set up’. The word comes from the past participleof Latin constituere ‘fix, establish’, a compoundverb formed from the intensive prefix com- andstatuere ‘set up’ (source of English statute). Thiswas a derivative of Latin status (whence Englishstate and status), which itself began life as thepast participle of stāre ‘stand’ (a relative ofEnglish stand). The derivative constituent [17]comes (partly via French) from the Latin presentparticiple constituēns. STAND, STATUE, STATUS, STATUTEconstrain see STRAINconstruct [17] Construct comes from thepresent participle of Latin construere ‘pile up

together, build’, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix com- and struere ‘pile up’ (source ofEnglish destroy and structure). English acquiredthe same verb somewhat earlier, in the 14thcentury, in the form construe. CONSTRUE, DESTROY, STRUCTUREconsult [17] The -sult element of consultrepresents a prehistoric Indo-European *sal-,which may be related to Sanskrit sar- ‘go’. It wasused with the prefix com- ‘together’ to form theLatin verb consulere ‘discuss, consult’. Analtered form developed, consultāre denotingrepeated action, and this was the source, viaFrench consulter of the English verb. Related toLatin consulere were the nouns consul,borrowed into English in the 14th century, andconsilium, ultimate source of English counsel[13]. CONSUL, COUNSELconsummate see SUMcontact [17] The underlying notion of contact isnot surprisingly one of ‘touching’. It comesultimately from Latin tangere ‘touch’, source ofEnglish tactile, tangent, and tangible. Using theprefix com- ‘together’ this was formed into acompound verb contangere ‘touch, border on’,whose past participle contāctus was borrowedinto English, originally as a noun (its use as averb is a surprisingly late development, whichdid not happen until the late 19th century). Alsoderived from Latin contangere is contagion [14],and contaminate is probably related. CONTAGION, CONTAMINATE, TACTILE,TANGENT, TANGIBLEcontain [13] Contain comes ultimately fromLatin tenēre ‘hold’, source of a wide range ofEnglish words from abstain to tenor. In the caseof contain the immediate ancestor, via OldFrench contenir, is Latin continēre ‘holdtogether, enclose, contain’, a compound formedwith the prefix com- ‘together’. Contain stilladheres fairly closely to the meaning of its Latinoriginal, but other descendants, such as content,continent, continue, and countenance, havebranched out a lot semantically. ABSTAIN, CONTENT, CONTINENT, CONTINUE,COUNTENANCE, RETAIN, SUSTAIN, TENORcontaminate [15] Contaminate appears tocome from the same ultimate source as contact,a base *tag- ‘touch’, which produced the Latinverb tangere ‘touch’ (whence English tactile,tangent, and tangible). It seems also to haveformed the basis of a compound Latin noun*contagmen ‘contact, pollution’, which becamealtered to contāmen. From this was derived theverb contamināre, whose past participle gaveEnglish contaminate. CONTACT, TACTILE, TANGIBLEcontemplate [16] Etymologically, tocontemplate something is to observe it in a‘temple’. The word comes from the pastparticiple of Latin contemplārī, a compoundverb formed from the intensive prefix com- andtemplum. This word, source of course of Englishtemple, originally signified a space marked outby augurs (priests in ancient Rome who129 continueinterpreted omens) for making observations.Hence contemplārī originally meant ‘observeomens carefully’, but its application soonbecame more general. TEMPLEcontend see TENDcontent The adjective and noun content comeultimately from the same source, but as theirdivergent pronunciations suggest, they reachedEnglish via different routes. Their commonoriginal is Latin contentus, past participle ofcontinēre ‘hold together, enclose, contain’(source of English contain, continent, continue,and countenance). The more recent borrowing,the noun content [15], comes directly frommedieval Latin contentum, and retains theoriginal meaning of the Latin verb. The adjectivecontent [14], however, comes via Old Frenchcontent, and reflects a metaphorical change inthe Latin past participle from ‘contained’ via‘restrained’ and ‘self-restrained’ to ‘satisfied’. CONTAIN, CONTINENT, CONTINUE,COUNTENANCE, RETENTIVEcontest [16] The idea underlying contest,unlikely as it may seem, is of ‘bearing witness’.It goes back to Latin contestārī, a compoundverb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ andtestārī ‘bear witness’, which in turn was derivedfrom testis ‘witness’ (whence English testament,testicle, and testimony). This verb signified thebringing of a lawsuit by ‘calling witnessestogether’ from both sides. Hence was introducedthe adversarial or competitive notion that passedinto English, probably via Old French contester(although in the 16th and 17th centuries traces ofthe original Latin sense ‘bear joint witness,attest’ survived in English, presumably as ascholarly reintroduction). TESTAMENT, TESTICLE, TESTIMONYcontext see TEXTcontinent [14] Continent comes via Old Frenchfrom Latin continēns, the present participle ofcontinēre ‘hold together, enclose, contain’(source of English contain). From the beginningit meant in general ‘exercising self-restraint’; ofthe more specific senses, ‘chaste’ developed inthe 14th century and ‘able to retain urine andfaeces’ apparently in the early 19th century. Theword’s noun use developed from the Latinphrase terra continēns ‘continuous land’ (forthis sense of Latin continēre see CONTINUE). Itwas at first applied in the 16th century to anylarge continuous expanse of territory, and fromthe early 17th century specifically to any of theEarth’s major landmasses (the English use of‘the Continent’ for mainland Europe is roughlycontemporary with this). CONTAIN, CONTENT, CONTINUE, COUNTENANCEcontinue [14] Latin continēre in its transitivesense (with an object) meant ‘hold together,contain’, and led to English contain. However, itwas also used intransitively in the sense ‘hangtogether’. From it was derived the adjectivecontinuus ‘uninterrupted’ (source of Englishcontinuous [17]), which formed the basis of anew verb continuāre ‘make or be continuous’.

contort 130English acquired this via Old French continuer.(The derivative continual entered English in the14th century.) CONTAIN, CONTENT, CONTINENT, COUNTENANCEcontort see TORMENTcontraband [16] Contraband means literally‘proclamation against’ – hence ‘prohibition’. Itcomes via French contrebande from Italiancontrabbando, a compound formed from contra‘against’ (see CONTRARY) and bando‘proclamation’ (whose source was late Latinbannus, bannum, a relative of English ban). Thesense ‘dealing in prohibited goods’ had alreadydeveloped before English acquired the word, andrapidly developed through ‘smuggling’ to‘smuggled goods’. BAN, CONTRARYcontract [14] English acquired the wordcontract in stages, although in all cases theultimate source was contractus, the pastparticiple of Latin contrahere, a compound verbformed from the prefix com- ‘together’ andtrahere ‘pull, draw’ (source of English tractionand tractor). This meant literally ‘pull together’,but it had a variety of metaphorical senses,including ‘bring about’ and ‘enter into anagreement’, and it was the latter which firstpassed into English via Old French as a nounmeaning ‘mutual agreement’. The arrival of theverb contract did not happen until the 16thcentury; it developed from an earlier adjectivecontract, which came again from Old Frenchcontract. This introduced a further sense of Latincontrahere; ‘become narrowed, get smaller’. DISTRACT, RETRACT, TRACTION, TRACTORcontrary [14] Contrary originated as a Latinadjectival formation based on the prepositioncontrā ‘against’, which historically was aderivative of com or cum ‘with’. Latin contrāriuspassed into English via Old French contraire andAnglo-Norman contrarie. Originally contrarywas pronounced with the main stress on itsmiddle syllable, but this survives only in thesense ‘obstinately self-willed’; from the 18thcentury onwards, the stress has usually beenplaced on the first syllable.contrast see STATUEcontributecontribute see TRIBEcontrition see THROWcontrive [14] In Middle English, contrive wascontrove; it was not transformed into contrive(perhaps under the influence of Scottishpronunciation) until the 15th century. It came viaOld French controver from Latin contropāre‘represent metaphorically, compare’, acompound verb based on the prefix com- ‘too’and tropus ‘figure of speech’ (source of Englishtrope). The word’s meaning has progressedthrough ‘compare via a figure of speech’ andOld French ‘imagine’ to ‘devise’. TROPEcontrol [15] Implausible as it may seem,control’s closest relative in English is contrarotating.It has its origins in a medieval methodof checking accounts which involved a duplicateregister, or ‘counter-roll’, as it was known(contrārotulus in medieval Latin, contrāmeaning ‘opposite’ and rotulus being thediminutive of rota ‘wheel’). From the medievalLatin noun a verb was formed, contrārotulāre,meaning ‘check accounts by such means’, andhence ‘exert authority’. This passed into Englishvia Anglo-Norman contreroller. The spelling ofthe agent noun controller as comptroller, stillencountered in certain official designations,arises from an erroneous 16th-centuryassociation of the first syllable with count, fromlate Latin computus. ROTA, ROTATEcontroversy see VERSEcontumely [14] The idea underlying contumely‘insolence’ is ‘swelling up’. It comes, via OldFrench contumelie, from Latin contumēlia‘insult, reproach’, a compound noun formedfrom the intensive prefix com- and (probably)tumēre ‘swell’ (source of English tumour). Thesense development – from being ‘puffed up’ and‘angry’, ‘proud’, or ‘stubborn’ through‘overbearing’ to ‘insulting’ – appears also to bereflected in contumacy ‘insubordination’ [14],whose Latin source contumācia likewiseprobably came from tumēre. CONTUMACY, TUMOURcontusion [14] Latin tundere meant ‘beat, hit’(it may be related to English stint and stunt).Addition of the intensive prefix com- producedcontundere ‘beat hard, pound’, and from its pastparticiple contūsus was formed the nouncontūsiō, which passed into English via OldFrench contusion. Apart from isolated instancesin the 17th and 18th centuries when it was usedfor ‘beating’ generally (probably scholarlyarchaisms), contusion has always had thephysiological connotation of ‘bruising’ inEnglish. STINT, STUNT, TOILconundrum [16] Conundrum originallyappeared in all manner of weird and wonderfulguises – conimbrum, conuncrum, quonundrum,connunder, etc – before settling down toconundrum in the late 18th century. It bears allthe marks of one of the rather heavy-handedquasi-Latin joke words beloved of scholars inthe 16th and 17th centuries, and a mid-17thcenturycommentator attributed it to Oxforduniversity. At first it meant ‘whim’ and then‘pun’; the current sense ‘puzzling problem’ didnot develop until the end of the 18th century.convalesce [15] Latin valēre meant ‘be strongor healthy’ (from it English gets valiant, valid,valour, and value). Derived from it wasvalēscere ‘grow strong’, which, with theaddition of the intensive prefix com- producedconvalēscere, source of English convalesce. Itwas quite a commonly used word in ScottishEnglish from earliest times, but does not seem tohave established itself south of the border untilthe 19th century. VALIANT, VALID, VALOUR, VALUEconvenient [14] Convenient comes from Latinconveniēns, the present participle of convenire‘come together, be suitable, agree’, a compound

verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ andvenire ‘come’ (a distant relative of Englishcome). Convenient reflects the more figurative ofconvenire’s meanings, as ultimately doescovenant, but its original literal sense ‘assemble’is preserved in convene [15], convention [15],convent, and coven. CONVENT, CONVENTION, COVEN, COVENANT,VENUEconvent [13] Latin conventus meant ‘assembly’(it was the past participle of convenire ‘cometogether’, source of English convenient), but as itpassed via Anglo-Norman covent into English itacquired the specialized sense ‘religiouscommunity’ (in early use it was applied tocommunities of either sex, but since the end ofthe 18th century it has come to be usedexclusively for a ‘house of nuns’). Until the mid-15th century the Anglo-Norman spelling coventwas retained in English (it survives in CoventGarden, which was formerly a vegetable gardenbelonging to the monks of Westminster Abbey,and may also the the source of coven [16]). CONVENIENT, COVEN, VENUEconverge see VERGEconversation [14] Latin convertere meant ‘turnround, transform’. It was a compound verbformed from the intensive prefix com- andvertere ‘turn’ (source of English verse, version,and vertigo). It has spawned a variety of Englishwords, its most direct descendant being convert[13]. Its past participle conversus produced thenoun converse ‘opposite’ [16], but this shouldnot be confused with the verb converse ‘talk’[14], which came via quite a different route.Latin vertere had a specialized form, vertāre,denoting repeated action. From it came versārī‘live, occupy oneself’, which, with the additionof the com- prefix, produced conversārī ‘live,dwell, associate or communicate with others’.This passed via Old French converser intoEnglish, but at first both it and its derivativeconversation were limited semantically to thenotion of ‘dwelling’ and ‘social life’; the specificmodern sense ‘talk’ was not brought into playuntil the late 16th century. CONVERT, VERSE, VERSIONconvex [16] Convex was borrowed from Latinconvexus, mainly an architectural term meaning‘arched, vaulted’. The element -vexus probablycame from vehere ‘carry’ (source of Englishvehicle), the notion being that vaults are ‘carriedtogether’ (Latin com- ‘together’) to meet at apoint at the centre of a roof, although some havespeculated that it is related to Latin vārus ‘bent,knock-kneed’ (source of English prevaricate). VEHICLE, VEXconvey [13] Etymologically, to conveysomething is to go with it on its way. It comes viaOld French conveier from medieval Latinconviāre ‘accompany, escort’, a compound verbformed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and via‘way’. The verb’s Latin meaning was carriedthrough into English, and though it died out inconvey in the 18th century it survives in convoy131 coolie[14], borrowed from a later French version of theword. CONVOY, VIAconvince [16] Latin convincere meantoriginally ‘overcome decisively’ (it was acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixcom- and vincere ‘defeat’, source of Englishvictory). It branched out semantically to‘overcome in argument’, ‘prove to be false orguilty’; and when borrowed into English itbrought these meanings with it. Before long theydied out, leaving ‘cause to believe’, whichdeveloped in the 17th century, as the only currentsense, but ‘find or prove guilty’ survives inconvict [14], acquired from the Latin pastparticiple convictus. CONVICT, VICTORYconvivial see VIVIDconvoke see VOCATIONconvolution see VOLUMEconvolvulus see VOLUMEconvoy see CONVEYcony [13] The rabbit was not originally native tonorthern Europe, so there is no Germanic wordfor it. Cony was introduced into English(originally in the sense ‘rabbit fur’, not until acentury later for the animal itself) from Anglo-Norman conis, which was the plural of conil.This in turn came from Latin cunīculus, which isthought to have been borrowed from an ancientlanguage of Spain or Portugal. The word rabbitwas introduced in the 14th century, originallydenoting the ‘young of a rabbit’, but graduallyreplacing cony as the general term for theanimal.cook [OE] The noun cook is a lot more ancientthan the verb, which in English was a 14thcenturydevelopment from the noun. The nounitself was borrowed in Old English times fromVulgar Latin cōcus, a descendant of classicalLatin coquus. This is of Indo-European origin,and has been linked with Greek péssein ‘cook,boil’. Also from Latin coquus English getsconcoct and biscuit, but cookie [18], a borrowingfrom Dutch koekje, is, despite its similarity,related not to cook but to cake. APRICOT, CONCOCT, CUISINE, CULINARY, KILN,KITCHEN, PEPSIN, PRECOCIOUScool [OE] Cool comes from the same source ascold, namely Indo-European *gel-, *gol- (fromwhich English also gets congeal, gel, and jelly).The Germanic descendants of this Indo-European base were *kal-, *kōl-. From thesewere derived the Germanic adjective *kōluz,which passed into Old English as cōl. Its use for‘fashionable, hip’ is mid-20th-century, but itsnonchalant application to large sums of money isof surprisingly long standing: ‘I just made acouple of bets with him, took up a cool hundred,and so went to the King’s Arms’, John Vanbrughand Colly Cibber, The Provok’d Husband 1728. COLD, CONGEAL, GEL, JELLYcoolie [17] Coolie is not etymologically relatedto cool. It comes from Hindi kulī, which may bethe same word as Kulī, the name of an aboriginal

coop 132tribe of Gujarat in western India. It has beenspeculated that the word was transported by thePortuguese from there to southern India andthence to China (it is now mainly applied to FarEastern labourers), its meaning perhapsinfluenced by Tamil kūli ‘hire’.coop see CUPcooperate see OPERATEco-opt see OPINIONcope There are two distinct words cope inEnglish. The now more familiar one, ‘deal with’[14], comes from Old French coper, andoriginally meant ‘hit, punch’. The Old Frenchverb was a derivative of the noun cop ‘blow’,which in turn was a variant of colp (from whichmodern French gets coup, borrowed into Englishin the 18th century). This came via medievalLatin colpus (ultimate source of Englishcoppice) and Latin colaphus from Greekkólaphos ‘blow, punch’. The modern Englishsense of the verb developed via ‘come to blowswith’ and ‘contend with’ to ‘handlesuccessfully’.Cope ‘cloak’ [13] was borrowed frommedieval Latin cāpa, a variant of cappa, whichproduced English cap and cape as well as chapeland chaperone. It may ultimately be descendedfrom Latin caput ‘head’. COPPICE, COUP; CAP, CAPE, CHAPEL, CHAPERONcopious [14] Copious comes, either directly orvia Old French copieux, from Latin copiōsus, aderivative of copia ‘abundance’ (from whichEnglish also gets copy). Copia itself wasoriginally a compound noun, formed from theintensive prefix com- and ops ‘wealth, power’. COPY, OPULENTcopper [OE] A major source of copper in theancient world was the Mediterranean island ofCyprus, so the Romans called it cyprium aes‘metal of Cyprus’. This became cuprum in lateLatin, from which it was borrowed intoprehistoric West and North Germanic as *kupar,source of Old English coper. (Copper the slangterm for ‘policeman’ [19] is simply the agentnoun formed from the verb cop ‘seize’, whichprobably comes via Old French caper fromLatin capere ‘seize, take’, source of Englishcapture.)coppice [14] The notion underlying coppice isof ‘cutting’. Its ultimate source is the Greeknoun kólaphos ‘blow’, which passed via Latincolaphus into medieval Latin as colpus (sourceof English cope and coup). From colpus wasderived a verb colpāre ‘cut’, which formed thebasis of Vulgar Latin colpātīcium ‘having thequality of being cut’. Its Old French descendantcopeïz came to be applied to an area of smalltrees regularly cut back. English borrowed thisas coppice (and in the 16th century spawned anew contracted form copse). COPE, COPSE, COUPcopulate see COUPLEcopy [14] Copy has a very devious semantichistory. It comes from Latin copia ‘abundance’(source also of English copious), and came intoEnglish via Old French copie. In addition to itscentral sense ‘abundance’, Latin copia couldalso mean ‘power, right’, and it appears that itsuse in such phrases as ‘give someone the right totranscribe’ led to its application to ‘right ofreproduction’ and ultimately to simply‘reproduction’. COPIOUScoral [14] Coral may ultimately be of Semiticorigin (Hebrew gōrāl ‘pebble’ has beencompared), but the first record we have of it is asGreek korállion, which came to English viaLatin corallum or corallium and Old Frenchcoral. Until the 17th century, the word wasapplied exclusively to the red coral (Coralliumnobile); hence its use, since the early 16thcentury, for a ‘rich red colour’.cord [13] Cord ‘string’ and chord ‘straight line’were originally the same word. They go back toGreek khordé ‘string’, which came into Englishvia Latin chorda and Old French corde. InEnglish it was originally written cord, a spellingwhich included the sense ‘string of a musicalinstrument’. But in the 16th century the spellingof this latter sense was remodelled to chord, onthe basis of Latin chorda, and it has beenretained for its semantic descendants ‘straightline joining two points on a curve’ and ‘straightline joining the front and rear edges of a wing’.(Chord ‘combination of musical notes’ [15] is norelation: it is a reduced version of accord, whichcomes via Old French acorder from VulgarLatin *accordāre, a compound verb based onLatin cors ‘heart’, and ironically was originallyspelled cord.) Related words include cordon[16], from the French diminutive form cordon,and cordite [19], so named from its often beingshaped into cords resembling brown twine. CHORD, CORDITE, CORDON, YARNcorduroy [18] Popular etymology usuallyassociates corduroy with a supposed Frenchcorde du roy ‘cord of the king’ or even couleurdu roy ‘king’s colour’ (the original corduroyhaving according to this theory been purple), butin fact there is no concrete evidence tosubstantiate this. A more likely explanation isthat the word’s first syllable represents cord inthe sense ‘ribbed fabric’, and that the secondelement is the now obsolete noun duroy ‘coarsewoollen fabric’ [17], of unknown origin.core [14] The origins of core are a mystery, overwhich etymologists disagree. Several candidateshave been put forward, including Old French cor‘horn’, on the grounds that two of core’s earliestapplications were to the horny central part ofapples and pears and to corns on the foot, andLatin cor ‘heart’, on the grounds that an apple’score is its ‘heart’.corgi see HOUNDcork [14] The earliest ascertainable ancestor ofcork is Spanish alcorque ‘cork sole’, whichpassed into English via Dutch kork. The initialal-, of course, suggests that this was of Arabicorigin (al being the Arabic definite article), andit seems likely that it represents Arabic al-qūrq,which some have suggested came from Latincortex ‘bark’, source of English cortex [17]. The

use of cork for a bottle-stopper made from corkdates from the early 16th century. CORTEXcormorant [13] In early medieval times thecormorant was named ‘sea raven’ – that is, inLatin, corvus marīnus. This passed into OldFrench first as cormareng, which later becamecormaran. English adopted it and added a final t.The word’s origins are still evident in Portuguesecorvo marinho ‘cormorant’. MARINEcorn [OE] The underlying sense of corn is ofgrinding down into small particles. The wordcomes ultimately from the Indo-European base*ger-, which meant ‘wear away’. From it wasderived *grnóm ‘worn-down particle’, which inLatin produced grānum (source of Englishgrain) and in prehistoric Germanic produced*kurnam, which developed into Old Englishcorn. Already in Germanic times the word haddeveloped in meaning from simply ‘particle’ to‘small seed’ and specifically ‘cereal grain’, butEnglish corn was not of course applied to‘maize’ before that plant came to Europe fromAmerica in the 16th century. The original sense‘particle’ survives in corned beef, where cornedrefers to the grains of salt with which the meat ispreserved. The meaning ‘hackneyed orsentimental matter’ is a 20th-centurydevelopment, based on the supposedlyunsophisticated life of country areas. Kernelcomes from an Old English diminutive form ofcorn.Corn ‘hardening of the skin’ [15] is acompletely different word, coming via Anglo-Norman corn from Latin cornū ‘horn’. GRAIN; HORNcorner [13] The idea underlying corner is of a‘projecting part’ or ‘point’. It came via Anglo-Norman corner from Vulgar Latin *cornārium, aderivative of Latin cornū ‘point’ (‘point’ was infact a secondary sense, developed from anoriginal ‘horn’ – and Latin cornū is related toEnglish horn). Other English descendants ofcornū are corn ‘hard skin’, cornea [14], cornet[14], originally a diminutive form, andcornucopia [16], literally ‘horn of plenty’. CORNEA, CORNET, HORNcorollary [14] Latin corolla was a ‘little crownor garland’, typically made from flowers (theword was a diminutive form of corōna ‘crown’,source of English crown). Hence a corollāriumwas ‘money paid for such a garland’, and byextension ‘gratuity’. Later it developed themeaning ‘deduction’, applied in geometry to asubsidiary proposition dependent on a previousproof, the sense in which it was first borrowedinto English. (English acquired corolla itself inthe 17th century.) CORONARY, CROWNcoronary [17] Coronary comes from Latincoronārius, an adjectival derivative of corōna‘garland, crown’. It was applied in the later 17thcentury to any anatomical structure, such as anartery, nerve, or ligament, that encircles anotherlike a crown. A leading example of such a133 correctconformation is the heart, with its encirclingblood vessels, and gradually coronary came tobe used for ‘of the heart’. Its application as anoun to ‘heart attack’ appears to be post-WorldWar II. Other English descendants of Latincorōna (which came from Greek korónē‘something curved’) include coronation [14], thediminutive coronet [15], coroner [14], originallyan ‘officer of the crown’, crown, and of coursecorona [16] itself. COROLLARY, CORONATION, CORONER, CROWNcorporal [14] Corporal comes via Old Frenchcorporal from Latin corporālis ‘bodily’, anadjective derived from corpus ‘body’. The nouncorporal ‘non-commissioned officer’ [16] wasprobably originally a completely different word.It was borrowed from French corporal, whichappears to have been an alteration of caporal;this in turn came from Italian caporale, aderivative of capo ‘head’ (the change to corporalseems to have been based on the notion of thecorporal as being in charge of a ‘body’ oftroops). CORPSEcorpse [14] Latin corpus ‘body’ has two directdescendants in English: corpse, which came viaOld French cors, and corps [18], which came viamodern French corps. The former first enteredEnglish in the 13th century as cors, and duringthe 14th century it had its original Latin preinserted. At first it meant simply ‘body’, but bythe end of the 14th century the current sense‘dead body’ was becoming firmly established.The idea originally underlying corps, on theother hand, was of a small ‘body’ of troops.Other English derivatives of corpus includecorporal, corporate [15], from the pastparticiple of Latin corporāre ‘make into a body’,corpulent [14], two diminutives corpuscle [17]and corset [14], and corsage [15]. Corpus itselfwas acquired in the 14th century. CORPORAL, CORPORATE, CORPULENT, CORSETcorral [16] English acquired corral from Spanishcorral, but its previous history is disputed. Someetymologists consider that it is of southernAfrican origin, from the language of theHottentot people, but others derive it fromVulgar Latin *currale ‘enclosure for vehicles’,which would have been based on Latin currus‘two-wheeled wagon’ (source of English car andcarry). Kraal [18] originated as an Afrikaansadaptation of Portuguese curral, correspondingto Spanish corral. KRAALcorrect [14] Correct is etymologically related torectitude and rightness. It comes from the pastparticiple of Latin corrigere ‘make straight, putright’, a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix com- and regere ‘lead straight,rule’. This regere (source of English regent,régime, regiment, and region) goes back to anIndo-European base *reg- ‘move in a straightline’, which also produced English right,rectitude, regal, royal, and rule. In English theverb correct by a long time predates the

corridor 134adjective, which first appeared (via French) inthe 17th century. ESCORT, REGAL, REGION, RIGHT, ROYAL, RULEcorridor see CURRENTcorroborate see ROBUSTcorrode see ROSTRUMcorrupt [14] The Latin verb rumpere meant‘break’ (it is etymologically related to Englishbereave and rob). It (or rather its past participialstem rup-) was the source of English rupture[15], and it entered into partnership with theintensive prefix com- to produce corrumpere‘destroy completely’. This was the ancestor(either directly or via Old French) of Englishcorrupt, both adjective and verb. BEREAVE, CURSE, ROB, RUPTUREcorsage see CORPSEcorsair [15] Etymologically, a corsair issomeone who goes on a ‘course’. Latin cursus(source of English course) was a derivative ofLatin currere ‘run’, and meant originally a ‘run’.From this it developed to ‘journey’ and‘expedition’ to ‘hostile or predatory expedition’,and eventually to the proceeds of such a raid, the‘plunder’ or ‘booty’. In medieval Latin the termcursārius was derived from it to denote someonewho took part in such raids, and this passed intoEnglish via Old Italian corsaro, Provençalcorsari, and Old French corsaire. COURSE, HUSSARcorset see CORPSEcortege see COURTcortex see CORKcosmos [17] Cosmos is a learned borrowingfrom Greek kósmos. The underlying meaning ofthis was ‘order’, and it appears originally to havebeen applied to the world and the universe byPythagoras and his school in reference to theorderliness of creation. In the mid 20th centurythe word provided a useful linguistic distinctionbetween Western and Soviet activities in space,cosmonaut (from Russian kosmonavt)contrasting with astronaut. Somebody who iscosmopolitan [19] is literally a ‘citizen of theworld’, from Greek kosmopolítēs, a compoundof kósmos and polítēs.From Greek kósmos ‘order’ was derived theverb kosmein ‘arrange, adorn’. This in turnprovided the basis of the adjective kosmētikós‘skilled in adornment’, which passed intoEnglish as cosmetic [17]. COSMETIC, COSMOPOLITANcossack see CASSOCKcosset [17] Cosset may originally have meant‘someone who lives in a cottage’. Old Englishhad a word cotsǣta ‘cottager’, which wasformed from cot ‘cottage’ and *sǣt-, an elementrelated to the verb sit. This disappeared from thelanguage after the Old English period, but notbefore it was adopted into Anglo-Norman ascozet or coscet (forms which appear inDomesday Book). It has been suggested that thisis the same word as turns up in local dialectsfrom the 16th century meaning ‘lamb reared byhand, pet lamb’ (that is, a lamb kept by a cottagerrather than at liberty with the flock), and furtherthat the notion of pampering a pet lamb gave riseto the verb cosset.cost [13] In Latin, something that cost aparticular price literally ‘stood at or with’ thatprice. The Latin verb constāre was formed fromthe prefix com- ‘with’ and stāre ‘stand’ (arelative of English stand). In Vulgar Latin thisbecame *costāre, which passed into English viaOld French coster (the derived noun arrived first,the verb a couple of decades later). The adjectivecostly is a 14th century formation. STAND, STATUEcoster [19] Coster is short for costermonger, aterm dating from the 16th century. Since the 19thcentury, and perhaps before, it has been a generalterm in Britain, and particularly in London, for astreet trader with a barrow or stall, but furtherback in time it meant ‘fruiterer’, and originally,more specifically still, a ‘seller of apples’. Thefirst element, coster, was an alteration ofcostard, a word of Anglo-Norman origin for atype of large apple. This was derived from coste‘rib’ (a descendant of Latin costa, source ofEnglish coast), and the costard was apparentlyso called because of its prominent ‘ribs’.(Monger ‘dealer’ [OE], now used in Englishonly in compounds, comes from a prehistoricGermanic *manggōjan, a borrowing from Latinmangō ‘dealer’.) COASTcostive see CONSTIPATIONcostume [18] Ultimately, costume and customare the same word. Both come from Latinconsuētūdō ‘custom’. But whereas custom wasan early borrowing, from Old French, costumetook a lengthier and more circuitous route viaItalian costume ‘custom, fashion, dress’ andFrench costume. In the early 18th century theword referred to the custom or fashion of aparticular period as it related to therepresentation of the clothes, furniture, etc ofthat period in art. In the 19th century this passedinto ‘mode of dress appropriate to a particulartime or place’, and thence (completing asemantic development rather similar to that ofhabit) into simply ‘garments, outfit’. CUSTOMcoterie [18] In Old French, coterie was a termfor an association of peasant tenants under thefeudal system. It was probably derived from anunrecorded *cote ‘hut’. This would have beenborrowed from Middle Low German kote, arelative of English cote and cot. In French theword gradually broadened out in meaning to‘group of people sharing a common interest’, thesense in which English borrowed it in the mid-18th century.cottage [14] The Old English words for a smallhouse or hut were cot and cote, both of whichsurvive – just: cot as an archaic term for‘cottage’ and cote in dovecote and sheepcote.(Cot ‘child’s bed’ [17], incidentally, is of Hindiorigin.) They both derive ultimately from aGermanic base *kut-. Then, probably in the 12thcentury, one or both of them seem to have been

taken up by the language of the gentry, Anglo-Norman, and had the suffix -age added, giving*cotage, which was eventually adopted byEnglish as cottage. Originally this simplydenoted any small humble country dwelling; itwas not until the mid-18th century that it beganto acquire modern connotations of tweeness. COT, COTEcotton [14] As with knowledge of the plant, itsname cotton came to Europe from the MiddleEast. It originated in Arabic qutn, which passedvia Spanish into the other languages of Europe.English acquired it via Old French coton. Theverbal idiom cotton (on) to ‘come to understand’developed in the 20th century from an earlier‘harmonize, agree’. This in turn has been tracedback to a still earlier ‘prosper’, which seems tohave originated in the 16th century with thenotion of the successful raising of the nap oncotton cloth.grasscouch grass see QUICKcough [14] Although it is largely disguised bythe modern English pronunciation, cough is ofonomatopoeic origin. It came from a prehistoricGermanic base *kokh- (the kh pronounced notunlike the ch of loch), which initiated the soundof coughing. This has no recorded Old Englishdescendant (although one probably existed,*cohhian), and first appears in the language asMiddle English coughen.could [16] Could began life as cūthe, the pasttense of Old English cunnan ‘can’. By MiddleEnglish times this had become couthe, and in the14th century it developed to coude under theinfluence of the standard past tense ending (e)de.The l was introduced in the 16th century, to bringcoude into line with would and should. KITH, UNCOUTHcoulter see CUTLASScouncil [12] Etymologically, a council is a bodythat has been ‘called together’ or ‘summoned’.Latin concilium meant ‘assembly, meeting’; itwas formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ andcalāre ‘call, summon’. It passed into English viaAnglo-Norman cuncile. It has no directetymological connection with counsel, but thetwo are so similar that their meanings havetended to merge at various points down thecenturies.Latin concilium also formed the basis of theverb conciliāre, which originally meant ‘bringtogether, unite’. Its metaphorical sense ‘makemore friendly, win over’ is preserved in Englishconciliate [16]. CONCILIATEcounsel see CONSULTcount There are two distinct words count inEnglish. Count ‘enumerate’ [14] comesultimately from Latin computāre ‘calculate’(source of English compute). It came intoEnglish from Old French conter, which had, viathe notion of ‘adding up and rendering anaccount’, developed the sense ‘tell a story’(preserved in English in the derivatives accountand recount). The derivative counter [14] beganlife as medieval Latin computātōrium ‘place of135 countryaccounts’, and entered English via Anglo-Norman counteour. Its modern sense ‘surfacefor transactions in a shop’ does not seem to havebecome firmly established until the early 19thcentury, although it was applied to similarobjects in banks from the late 17th century.The noble title count [16] comes via OldFrench conte from Latin comes, which originallymeant ‘companion, attendant’ (it was acompound noun, formed from the prefix com-‘with’ and īre ‘go’, and so its underlyingetymological meaning is ‘one who goes withanother’). In the Roman empire it was used forthe governor of a province, and in Anglo-Norman it was used to translate English earl. Ithas never been used as an English title, but thefeminine form countess was adopted for the wifeof an earl in the 12th century (and viscount wasborrowed from Anglo-Norman viscounte in the14th century). The Latin derivative comitātuswas originally a collective noun denoting a‘group of companions’, but with thedevelopment of meaning in comes it came tomean first ‘office of a governor’ and latterly‘area controlled by a governor’. In England, thisarea was the ‘shire’, and so county [14], acquiredvia Anglo-Norman counte, came to be asynonym for ‘shire’. Another descendant ofLatin comes is concomitant [17], from thepresent participle of late Latin concomitārī. ACCOUNT, COMPUTE, PUTATIVE, RECOUNT;CONCOMITANT, COUNTYcountenance [13] A person’s countenance hasnothing to do with computation. Etymologically,it is how they ‘contain’ themselves, or conductthemselves, and the word itself is a parallelconstruction with continence. It was borrowedfrom Old French contenance (a derivative of theverb contenir ‘contain’), which meant‘behaviour’, ‘demeanour’, or ‘calmness’ as wellas ‘contents’, and originally had this somewhatabstract sense in English. It was not until the14th century that the meaning began to developthrough ‘facial expression’ to the now familiar‘face’ (traces of the original sense survive insuch expressions as ‘put someone out ofcountenance’, meaning to make them lose theircool). CONTAIN, CONTINENCEcounter see COUNTcounterpane see QUILTcountry [13] Etymologically, the meaning ofcountry is virtually ‘surroundings’. It originatedin medieval Latin contrātus ‘lying on theopposite side’, an adjective formed from theproposition contrā ‘against, opposite’. This wasused in the phrase terra contrāta ‘land oppositeor before one, spread out around one’, and soonbroke free to act as a noun in its own right. In OldFrench it became cuntree, the form in which itwas borrowed into English. Its original notion of‘area of land’ had quickly become narroweddown to ‘district controlled or occupied by aparticular people’, hence ‘nation’, but its use for‘rural areas as opposed to cities’ does not seemto have developed until the 16th century. The

county 136compound countryside originated in Scotlandand northern England, probably in the 17thcentury.county see COUNTcoupé [19] Coupé is the past participle of theFrench verb couper ‘cut’, and it was originallyapplied in the early 19th century to a type offour-wheeled covered carriage (in full a carrossecoupé ‘cut-off carriage’). The notion behind theterm is a truncated version of an earlier type ofcoach, known as a berlin, achieved by removingthe rear seat. The first record of its application toclosed two-door cars comes in 1908. The Frenchverb couper is a derivative of the noun coup‘blow’ (itself borrowed into English in the 18thcentury), which in turn came from medievalLatin colpus (ultimate source of Englishcoppice, which etymologically denotes the‘cutting down’ of trees). Earlier in time the wordcan be traced back via Latin colaphus to Greekkólaphos ‘blow, punch’. A related word iscoupon, borrowed from French in the 19thcentury. COPPICE, COPSE, COUPcouple [13] The notion underlying couple is of‘joining’. The noun came into English via OldFrench from Latin cōpula ‘tie, connection’. Thiswas a compound noun formed from the prefixcom- ‘together’ and the verb apere ‘fasten’(source of English apt, adapt, adept, and inept).Derived from it was the verb cōpulāre, source ofEnglish copulate [17]. ADAPT, ADEPT, APT, COPULATE, INEPTcourage [13] Modern English uses heart as ametaphor for ‘innermost feelings or passions’,but this is nothing new. Vulgar Latin took theLatin word cor ‘heart’ and derived from it*corāticum, a noun with just this sense.Borrowed into English via Old French corage, itwas used from earliest times for a wide range ofsuch passions, including ‘anger’ or ‘lust’, and itwas not until the early 17th century that itbecame narrowed down in application to‘bravery’. CORDIALcourier see CURRENTcourse [13] Etymologically, course denotes‘running’. It comes via Old French cours fromLatin cursus, a derivative of the verb currere‘run’ (from which English gets current and awide range of other words, from courier tooccur). Its earliest meaning in English was‘onward movement in a particular direction’, butover the centuries it has developed a network ofadditional senses. From the same Latin basecurs- are concourse [14], cursory [17] (fromLatin cursōrius), discourse [14] (and the relateddiscursive [16]), excursion [16], incursion [15],precursor [16], and recourse [14]. The derivednoun courser [13] is a doublet of corsair. CORSAIR, COURIER, CURRENT, DISCOURSE,EXCURSION, OCCURcourt [12] Latin cohors designated an ‘enclosedyard’ (it was formed from the prefix com- ‘with’and an element hort- which also appears inEnglish horticulture). By extension it came tostand for those assembled in such a yard – acrowd of attendants or company of soldiers;hence the meaning of cohort familiar today. Butboth in its original sense and as ‘retinue’ theword took another and rather more disguisedpath into English. In late Latin the accusativeform cohortem had already become cortem, andthis passed into English via Old French cort andAnglo-Norman curt. It retains the underlyingnotion of ‘area enclosed by walls or buildings’(now reinforced in the tautological compoundcourtyard [16]), but it seems that an earlyassociation of Old French cort with Latin curia‘sovereign’s assembly’ and ‘legal tribunal’ hascontributed two of the word’s commonestmeanings in modern English.The Italian version of the word is corte. Fromthis was derived the verb corteggiare ‘attendcourt, pay honour’, which produced the nouncorteggio, borrowed into English via French ascortège [17]. Other derivatives include courtesy[13], from Old French cortesie (of which curtsey[16] is a specialized use) and courtesan [16], viaFrench courtisane from Italian cortigiana. COHORT, COURTESY, CURTSEY, HORTICULTUREcousin [13] The word cousin is etymologicallyrelated to sister. It comes via Old French cosinfrom Latin consobrīnus, which meant literally‘child of one’s mother’s sister’ – that is, ‘cousinon one’s mother’s side’ (consobrīnus was acompound noun formed from the prefix com-‘together’ and sobrīnus ‘maternal cousin’, aderivative of soror ‘sister’ and relative ofEnglish sister). By the time it entered English, ithad already broadened out in meaning to coverpaternal as well as maternal cousins, and indeedin the Middle Ages it was applied moregenerally still to any relative other than one’sparents or brother and sister (probably throughassociation with Latin consanguineus ‘bloodrelative’). SISTERcouvade see INCUBATEcove [OE] Old English cofa meant ‘small room’,as used for sleeping in or as a storeroom. It wasdescended from Germanic *kubon, which wasprobably also the ultimate ancestor of cubbyhole[19] (the superficially similar cubicle is notrelated). In the late Old English period thisseems to have developed in northern andScottish dialects to ‘small hollow place incoastal rocks, cave’, and hence (although not,apparently, until as late as the 16th century) to‘small bay’. (The other cove [16], a dated slangterm for ‘chap’, may come from Romany kova‘thing, person’.) CUBBYHOLEcoven see CONVENTcovenant [13] The notion of ‘agreement’ incovenant comes originally from a literal ‘comingtogether’. It was borrowed from Old Frenchcovenant, a noun use of the present participle ofthe verb covenir ‘agree’, which was descendedfrom Latin convenire ‘come together’ (sourcealso of English convene, convenient, convention,

convent, and coven). (Modern French hasrestored the n, giving convenir.) CONVENIENT, CONVENT, CONVENTION, COVEN,VENUEcover [13] Cover comes ultimately from Latincooperīre, a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix com- ‘completely’ and operīre‘cover’ (a relative of aperīre ‘open’, from whichEnglish gets aperient). It passed into English viaOld French cuvrir or covrir. Derivatives includecoverlet [13] (in which the final elementrepresents not the diminutive suffix but Frenchlit ‘bed’, the word being a borrowing fromAnglo-Norman covrelit, literally ‘bed-cover’)and kerchief (literally ‘head-cover’), as inhandkerchief. APERIENT, DISCOVERcovet [13] Covetousness and cupidity are veryclosely related, etymologically as well assemantically. Covet comes via Old Frenchcoveitier from Vulgar Latin *cupiditāre, a verbderived from the Latin noun cupiditās (fromwhich English gets cupidity). Its ultimate sourceis the Latin verb cupere ‘desire’. CUPIDITYcovey see INCUBATEcow English has two completely distinct wordscow. The commoner, ‘female of cattle’ [OE], is aword of very ancient ancestry. It goes back viaWest and North Germanic *kōuz to ahypothetical Indo-European *gwōus, which wasalso the source of Latin bōs (from which Englishgets bovine, beef, and bugle, not to mentionBovril). In modern English its plural is cows, butOld English cū had an anomalous plural, c,which in the remodelled form kine surviveddialectally into the 20th century. The other cow,‘intimidate, daunt’ [17], probably comes fromOld Norse kúga ‘oppress’. BEEF, BOVINE, BUGLEcoward [13] Etymologically, a coward seems tobe ‘someone who runs away with his tailbetween his legs’. It comes from Old Frenchcuard, which was based on *cōda, the VulgarLatin descendant of Latin cauda ‘tail’. (Theapparently similar cower [13] is no relation,coming from Middle Low German *kūren ‘lie inwait’.)cowslip [OE] Old English cūslyppe literallymeant ‘cow dung’ (a variant cūsloppe, whichsurvived dialectally into the 20th century ascowslop, suggests that its second element isrelated to slop and sloppy). The namepresumably came from the plant’s growing inpastures where cows commonly graze, andperhaps even from some perceived symbiosiswith cow-pats.coxswain [15] A coxswain was originally aservant, or swain, whose job was to steer a ship’sboat, or cock (cock comes from Old Frenchcoque, which was probably a descendant via lateLatin caudica ‘canoe’ of Latin caudex ‘treetrunk’, and swain is a borrowing from Old Norsesveinn ‘boy, servant’). The abbreviation coxseems to have developed in the 19th century.137 craftcoy [14] Essentially, coy is the same word asquiet, and ‘quiet’ is what it meant when it firstcame into English (it soon developed to ‘shylyreserved’, and the sense ‘quiet’ died out in the17th century). Its ultimate source was Latinquiētus, but whereas in the case of quiet thispassed directly through Old French, coy camevia the more circuitous route of Vulgar Latin*quētus, which produced early Old French quei,and later coi, the source of the English word. QUIETcrab Crab the crustacean [OE] and crab the apple[14] may be two distinct words. The word for thesea creature has several continental relatives(such as German krebs and Dutch krabbe) whichshow it to have been of Germanic origin, andsome of them, such as Old Norse krafla ‘scratch’and Old High German krapho ‘hook’, suggestthat the crab may have received its name onaccount of its claws. The origins of crab the fruitare not so clear. Some would claim that it issimply a metaphorical extension of the animalcrab, from a perceived connection between theproverbial perversity or cantankerousness of thecrustacean (compare crabbed) and the sournessof the apple, but others have proposed aconnection with Swedish dialect skrabba ‘wildapple’, noting that a form scrab was current inScottish English from at least the 16th century. CRAYFISHcrabbed [13] Because of their tendency todeploy their pincers at the slightest provocation,and also perhaps because of their sidelongmethod of locomotion, crabs seem always tohave had a reputation for being short-temperedand perverse. Hence the creation of the adjectivecrabbed, which literally means ‘like a crab’. Itsmeaning has subsequently been influenced bycrab the apple, famous for its sourness. (Thesemantically similar crabby is a 16th-centuryformation.)crack [OE] Old English had the verb cracian‘make a sudden sharp noise’, but English did notacquire the noun crack until the 14th century.Both are of Germanic origin (modern Germanhas the related krachen, for instance, and Dutchhas kraken), and the verb’s hypothetical ancestorcan be reconstructed as *krakojan. The notion of‘sudden sharp noise’ is semantically primary(presumably it was originally onomatopoeic),and the prevalent modern sense ‘fissure’ arisesfrom the connection between the noise ofsomething breaking and the resultant line offracture. CROCKcraft [OE] The original notion contained in theword craft is that of ‘strength’ (that is themeaning of its relatives in other Germaniclanguages, such as German and Swedish kraft).Old English crœft had that sense too (it hadlargely died out by the 16th century), but it hadalso developed some other meanings, which arenot shared by its Germanic cognates: ‘skill’, forexample (in a bad as well as a good sense,whence crafty) and ‘trade’ or ‘profession’. Muchlater in origin, however (17th-century in fact), is

cram 138the sense ‘ship’. It is not clear how thisdeveloped, but it may have been a shortening ofsome such expression as ‘vessel of the sailor’scraft’ (that is, ‘trade’). The word’s Germanicstem was *krab- or *kraf-, which some haveseen also as the source of crave [OE]. CRAVEcram [OE] Prehistoric Germanic had a base*kram-, *krem- which denoted ‘compression’ or‘bending’. Among its descendants were OldNorse kremja ‘squeeze, pinch’, German krumm‘crooked’ (source of English crumhorn [17], acurved Renaissance musical instrument), andOld English crammian (ancestor of cram),which meant ‘press something into somethingelse, stuff’. An extension of the base with p(*kramp-, *kremp-) produced Middle LowGerman and Middle Dutch krampe ‘bent’, one orother of which was borrowed by Old French ascrampe and passed on to English as cramp [14](crampon [15] comes from a related source).Other products of the Germanic base were OldEnglish crumb ‘crooked’, a possible ancestor ofcrumpet, and perhaps crimp [17]. A nonnasalizedversion of the base producedGermanic *krappon ‘hook’, source of grape andgrapnel. CRAMPON, CRIMP, CRUMHORN, CRUMPET,GRAPE, GRAPNELcrane [OE] Crane is a widespread Indo-European bird-name: related forms such as Latingrūs, Greek géranos (source of Englishgeranium, also known as crane’s-bill, from thelong pointed ‘beak’ of its fruit), and Welsh garanpoint to a prehistoric Indo-European base *ger-,possibly imitative of the bird’s raucous call. Theresemblance of a crane lowering its long neck tofeed or drink to the operation of a liftingapparatus with a long jib led to the application ofcrane to the latter in the 14th century (Frenchgrue and German kran show a similar semanticdevelopment). Cranberry [17] is a borrowing(originally American) of German cranbeere,literally ‘craneberry’, so named from thestamens, which supposedly resemble a beak. CRANBERRY, GERANIUM, PEDIGREEcrank [OE] There appears to be a link betweenthe words crank, cringe, and crinkle. They sharethe meaning element ‘bending’ or ‘curling up’(which later developed metaphorically into‘becoming weak or sick’, as in the relatedGerman krank ‘ill’), and probably all came froma prehistoric Germanic base *krank-. In OldEnglish the word crank appeared only in thecompound crancstœf, the name for a type ofimplement used by weavers; it is not recorded inisolation until the mid-15th century, when itappears in a Latin-English dictionary as atranslation of Latin haustrum ‘winch’. Theadjective cranky [18] is no doubt related, butquite how closely is not clear. It may derive froman obsolete thieves’ slang term crank meaning‘person feigning sickness to gain money’, whichmay have connections with German krank.Modern English crank ‘cranky person’ is a backformationfrom the adjective, coined inAmerican English in the 19th century. CRINGE, CRINKLEcranny see CRENELLATEcrash [14] Crash suddenly appeared fromnowhere in Middle English (meaning ‘break inpieces noisily’), with apparently no relatives inother Germanic languages. Its form suggests thatit originated in imitation of the sound of noisybreaking, but it has been further suggested that itmay be a blend of craze and dash. The financialor business sense of the noun, ‘sudden collapse’,is first recorded in the early 19th century in thewritings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.crass see GREASEcratecrate [17] Crate is usually connected with Latincrātis ‘hurdle’, making it a relative of grate,griddle, and grill(e), and indeed an isolatedexample of crate in the early 16th century, whichunequivocally means ‘hurdle’, certainly mustcome from that source. However, the main bodyof evidence for crate begins in the late 17thcentury, and its meaning, ‘large case or box’, issufficiently far from ‘hurdle’ to raise doubtsabout its origins. Another possible source thathas been suggested is Dutch krat ‘basket’. GRATE, GRIDDLE, GRILLcrater [17] Greek kratér meant ‘bowl’, or morespecifically ‘mixing bowl’: it was a derivative ofthe base *kerā, which also produced the verbkerannúnai ‘mix’. (Crater or krater is still usedin English as a technical term for the bowl or jarused by the ancient Greeks for mixing wine andwater in.) Borrowed into Latin as crātēr, it cameto be used metaphorically for the bowl-shapeddepression at the mouth of a volcano. Itsacquisition by English is first recorded inSamuel Purchas’s Pilgrimage 1619.cravat [17] The fashion for wearing scarvesround the neck started in France in the 1650s. Itwas inspired by Croatian mercenaries employedthere at that time, who regularly sported linenneckbands of that type. The Croats were calledin French Cravates (the name comes via GermanKrabate from the original Serbo-Croat termHrvat), and so their neckerchiefs came to beknown as cravates too. English was quick toadopt the term.crave see CRAFTcravencraven [13] Craven originally meant simply‘defeated’, and only gradually came to have thepejorative sense ‘cowardly’. It probably camefrom Old French cravante ‘defeated’, the pastparticiple of the verb cravanter, which in turncame via Vulgar Latin *crepantāre from Latincrepāre; this meant ‘creak, rattle, crack’ (hencethe English technical term crepitation [17]) butalso secondarily ‘burst’ or ‘break’. CREPITATION, CREVICE, DECREPITcrayfish [14] The crayfish is relatedetymologically as well as biologically to thecrab. The Old High German word for ‘crab’ waskrebiz (source of modern German krebs). Thiswas borrowed into Old French as crevice(modern French has preserved the variant formécrevisse), and transmitted to Middle English as

crevis. Association of the final syllable with fishled by the 16th century to its transformation tocrayfish (a variant Middle English form cravisbecame crawfish). CRAB, CRAWFISHcrazy [16] Crazy originally meant literally‘cracked’ (a sense preserved in the relatedcrazed). This soon came to be extendedmetaphorically to ‘frail, ill’ (as in Shakespeare’s‘some better place, fitter for sickness and crazyage’, 1 Henry VI), and thence to ‘mentallyunbalanced’. It was derived from the verb craze[14], which was probably borrowed from anunrecorded Old Norse verb *krasa ‘shatter’(likely source, too, of French écraser ‘crush,smash’).cream [14] Cream seems to have come from twodistinct late Latin sources: crānum ‘cream’,which may be of Gaulish origin, and chrisma‘ointment’ (from which English gets chrism[OE]). These two were probably blendedtogether to produce Old French cresme orcraime, immediate source of the English word.(Modern French crème was borrowed intoEnglish in the 19th century.) CHRISMcrease [15] Crease and crest are ultimately thesame word. The ridges produced by creasingcloth were regarded as similar to ridges or crests,and so the word crease (often creast in lateMiddle English) came to be applied to them. Theloss of the final -t may have been due to themistaken analysis of creast or crest as the pastform of a verb. CRESTcreature [13] Creature and creator, both 13thcenturyborrowings from Old French, predatethe introduction of the verb create into Englishby about a hundred years. This was a verbal useof an earlier adjective create, borrowed directlyfrom Latin creātus, the past participle of creāre‘produce’ (which in turn may have been acausative derivative of the verb crēscere ‘grow’,source of English crescent). Another descendantof Latin creāre was Portuguese criar ‘breed,nurse’, the probable ancestor of English creole[17]. CREATE, CREOLE, CRESCENT, CROISSANT,INCREASEcreed [OE] Creed was the first of a wide range ofEnglish words borrowed from Latin crēdere‘believe’. Others include credible [14] (fromLatin crēdibilis), credence [14] (from OldFrench credence), credential [16] (frommedieval Latin crēdentiālis), credit [16] (fromFrench crédit), and credulous [16] (from Latincrēdulus). Also ultimately from the same sourceare grant and miscreant [14] (from Old Frenchmescreant, the present participle of mescroire‘disbelieve’). CREDIBLE, CREDIT, GRANT, MISCREANTcreek [13] Now firmly associated with watercourse,the original connotations of creek seemto have been of ‘narrow and secludedbendiness’. It appears to have been borrowedfrom Old Norse kriki ‘nook’, which some have139 crestspeculated may be related to Old Norse krōkr‘hook’ (source of English crook). Creek remainsstrictly a word for narrow waterways, a reminderof its beginnings. CROOKcreep [OE] Creep is an ancient verb, which hasbeen traced back to Indo–European *greub-.This was the source also of Dutch kriupen andSwedish krypa ‘creep’, and of Lithuaniangrubineti ‘stumble’, and links have beensuggested with English cripple. The relatedIndo-European *greug- produced Germankriechen ‘creep’. CRIPPLEcremate see HEARTHcrenellate [19] The 19th century seems asurprisingly late date for English to haveacquired a term so closely associated withmedieval battlements, but it is a little misleading.For essentially the same word entered thelanguage in the 13th century as kernel. Bothcome ultimately from late Latin crēna ‘notch’(probable source also of English cranny [15]). InVulgar Latin this developed the diminutive form*crenellus, metathesized in medieval Latin askernellus. CRANNYcreole see CREATUREcreosote [19] The term creosote was coined asGerman kreosot in the early 1830s. Of creosote’svarious properties, the one perhaps most valuedin the early days after its discovery was that ofbeing antiseptic. Hence the name kreosot, whichwas intended to mean ‘flesh-preserver’. The firstelement, kreo-, is a derivative of Greek kréas‘flesh’; this also produced English pancreas, andis a descendant of an Indo-European base whichwas also the source of English crude, cruel, andraw. The second comes from Greek sōtér‘saviour, preserver’, a derivative of Greek sōs. CRUDE, CRUEL, PANCREAS, RAWcrepitation see CREVICEcrescent [14] Crescent is one of a wide range ofwords (including create, crescendo, concrete,crew, accretion, croissant, increase, and recruit)bequeathed to English by the Latin verb crēscere‘grow’. In the case of crescent, it came in theform of the present participial stem crēscent-,which passed into English via Old Frenchcreissant and Anglo-Norman cressaunt. Its usein the Latin phrase luna crescens ‘waxing moon’led later to its application to the shape of the newmoon, hence the modern meaning of crescent.The modern French form croissant has givenEnglish the term for a crescent-shaped puffpastryroll [19], so named allegedly from itsoriginal manufacture following the defeat of theTurkish besiegers of Budapest in 1686, whoseMuslim symbol was the crescent. ACCRETION, CREATE, CREATURE, CREW,CROISSANT, INCREASE, RECRUITcresset see GREASEcrestcrest [14] The original etymological meaning ofcrest appears to have been ‘tuft of hair’. It comesvia Old French creste from Latin crista ‘tuft,plume’, which may be related to Latin crīnis

cretin 140‘hair’ (source of the English biological termcrinite ‘hairy’ [16]). If so, crest belongs to thesame word family as crinoline. The notion ofcrest as a ‘surmounting ridge’ is a secondarysemantic development, which may have givenrise to the word crease. CREASEcretin [18] In the Swiss-French dialect of thehigh Alps the term creitin or crestin (theirversion of christian) was applied to peoplesuffering from mental handicap and stuntedgrowth – the notion being to emphasize thatdespite their abnormalities, such people werenevertheless as much human beings as any other‘Christian’. The word was adopted (via Frenchcrétin) as a clinical term for someone sufferingfrom dwarfism and mental retardation as a resultof a congenital thyroid deficiency, and wassubsequently broadened out, towards the end ofthe 19th century, as a general disparaging termfor a ‘fool’. CHRISTIANcrevice [14] Rather like crack, the word crevicebegan with the notion of the sharp noise ofbreaking and gradually developed to denote thefissure caused by such a break. It comesultimately from the Latin verb crepāre ‘creak,rattle, crack’ (source of English crepitation [17]and decrepit, and probably also of craven),which passed into Old French as crever ‘burst,split’. From this was derived the noun crevace,borrowed into Middle English as crevace orcrevisse. In modern French it developed intocrevasse, which English reborrowed in the 19thcentury. CRAVEN, CREPITATION, CREVASSE, DECREPITcrew [15] The idea originally underlying crew is‘augmentation’. It comes from Old Frenchcreue, which was derived from the verb creistre‘grow, increase, augment’, a descendant of Latincrēscere ‘grow’. At first in English it denoted asquad of military reinforcements. Soon itsmeaning had spread to any band of soldiers, andby the end of the 16th century the word wasbeing used for any group of people gatheredtogether with or without a particular purpose.The most familiar modern application, to thepeople manning a ship, emerged in the latter partof the 17th century. CRESCENT, CROISSANT, INCREASEcrib [OE] Crib is a Germanic word, with relativestoday in German (krippe) and Dutch (kribbe). InOld English it meant ‘manger’, and not until the17th century did it develop its familiar presentdaysense ‘child’s bed’. An intermediate stage,now lost, was ‘basket’, which appears to havegiven rise to its 18th-century use as a thieves’slang term for ‘pilfer’; this in turn is probably thesource of the modern colloquial sense‘plagiarize’. Vulgar Latin borrowed Old HighGerman kripja as *creppia, from which modernFrench gets crèche (acquired by English in the19th century). CRECHEcricket English has two completely unrelatedwords cricket. The name of the smallgrasshopper-like insect [14] comes from OldFrench criquet, a derivative of the verb criquer‘click, creak’, which no doubt originated as animitation of the sound itself. The origins of thename of the game cricket [16] have never beensatisfactorily explained. One explanation oftenadvanced is that it comes from Old Frenchcriquet ‘stick’, or its possible source, Flemishkrick, although it is not clear whether the originalreference may have been to the stick at which theball was aimed (the forerunner of the modernstumps) or to the stick, or bat, used to hit the ball.Another possible candidate is Flemish krickstoel,a long low stool with a shape reminiscentof the early types of wicket.crime [14] Crime is one of a wide range ofEnglish words (including certain, crisis, critic,decree, discern, discrete, discriminate,excrement, riddle ‘sieve’, secret, and secretary)which come ultimately from or are related to theGreek verb krínein ‘decide’. This was a relativeof Latin cernere ‘decide’, from whose rootevolved the noun crīmen ‘judgment, accusation,illegal act’. This passed via Old French crimne(later crime) into English, where traces of theoriginal meaning ‘accusation’ survived until the17th century. CERTAIN, CRITIC, DECREE, DISCRIMINATE,EXCREMENT, SECRETcrimp see CRAMcrimson [14] The colour term crimson comesultimately from the name of a small scale insect,the kermes, from whose dried bodies a reddyestuff is obtained. Kermes comes from Arabicqirmaz, which in turn was derived from Sanskritkrmi-ja ‘(dye) produced by a worm’, acompound formed from krmi- ‘worm’ and ja-‘produced, born’. From qirmaz was derivedArabic qirmazī ‘red colour’, which passed intoEnglish via metathesized Old Spanish cremesin.The medieval Latin version carmesīnum isthought to have been the source of Englishcarmine [18], through blending with minium‘red lead’ (whence English miniature). CARMINEcringe [13] Like crank, cringe appears to comeultimately from a prehistoric Germanic base*krank- whose original meaning was ‘bend’ or‘curl up’. This produced an Old English verbcrincan ‘fall in battle, yield’ (the association of‘curling up’ and ‘dying’ is obvious), probableancestor of modern English crinkle [14].Crincan does not itself seem to be the source ofcringe, which until the 16th century was usuallyspelled crenge or crench; to explain these e-forms it is necessary to postulate *crencean, anunrecorded Old English causative derivative ofcrincan, meaning ‘cause to curl up’. CRANK, CRINKLEcrinite see CRESTcrinoline [19] The reason crinolines are calledcrinolines is that they were originally made froma stiff fabric woven from horsehair and linenthread. Italian crino ‘horsehair’ (from Latincrīnus ‘hair’, a possible relative of English crest)and lino ‘flax’ (from Latin līnum, source of

English linen) were combined to producecrinolino, which passed into English via Frenchcrinoline. CREST, LINENcripple [OE] The etymological sense of crippleappears to be ‘someone who creeps along’, for itprobably goes back ultimately to the same Indo-European base, *greub-, as creep. The word iswidespread in the Germanic languages: Germanhas kruppel, Dutch kreupel, and Norwegiankrypel. CREEPcrisp [OE] Historically, crisp means ‘curly’. Itwas borrowed into Old English from Latincrispus ‘curled’ (which was also the source ofFrench crêpe, acquired by English as crape inthe 17th century and then reborrowed in theoriginal French form in the 19th century). Thereason for the emergence of the word’s modernsense ‘brittle’, which happened in the early 16thcentury, is not clear, it may simply be that thesound of the word suggested brittleness. CRAPE, CRÊPEcrisscross [16] Crisscross is an alteration ofChristscrosse, a term used from the 16th to 18thcenturies for the figure of a cross (notspecifically, as the name would seem to suggest,the crucifix). Gradually the original significationof the first syllable came to be lost, and the termfell into the pattern of reduplicated words (suchas flipflop, singsong) in which a syllable isrepeated with variation of the vowel. This mayhave contributed to the broadening of the word’smeaning to ‘pattern of repeated crossings’,which happened in the 19th century.critic [16] Critic and crisis both come ultimatelyfrom the Greek verb krínein ‘decide’ (a relativeof Latin cernere ‘decide’, which producedEnglish certain, crime, decree, discern, discrete,discriminate, excrement, riddle ‘sieve’, secret,and secretary). The Greek derived noun krísis‘judgment’ was used by the physiciansHippocrates and Galen for the ‘turning point ofa disease’. It passed as a medical term via Latincrisis into English in the 15th century, where itwas not used in the more general modern senseuntil the 17th century. The Greek derived nounkrités ‘judge’ produced in turn kritikós ‘able tomake judgments’; this came to be used as anoun, ‘one who makes judgments’, whichpassed via Latin criticus into English. Anotherdescendant of krités was Greek kritérion‘standard for making a judgment’, borroweddirectly into English in the 17th century ascriterion. CERTAIN, CRIME, CRISIS, CRITERION, DISCERN,DISCRIMINATE, EXCREMENT, SECRETcrock English has two words crock. The onemeaning ‘earthenware pot’ [OE] is now almostnever heard on its own, except perhaps in thephrase ‘crock of gold’, but it is familiar from itsderivative crockery [18]. Its immediateantecedents appear to be Germanic (Dutch, forinstance, has the related kruik), but cognateforms appear in other Indo-European languages,including Welsh crochan and Greek krōssós.141 crookCruet [13] comes from Anglo-Norman *cruet, adiminutive frorm of Old French crue ‘pot’,which was borrowed from Old Saxon krūka, arelative of English crock. Crock ‘decrepit person,car, etc’ [15] is earliest encountered (in ScottishEnglish) in the sense ‘old ewe’. The connotationof being ‘broken-down’, and the existence ofnear synonyms such as Dutch krak, Flemishkrake, and Swedish krake, all meaning ‘wornoutold horse’, suggest some kind of link withthe word crack. CROCKERY, CRUETcrocodile [13] The crocodile gets its name fromits habit of basking in the sun on sandbanks or onthe shores of rivers. The word means literally‘pebble-worm’, and it was coined in Greek fromthe nouns krókē ‘pebbles’ and drilos ‘worm’.The resulting Greek compound *krokódrīlos hasnever actually been found, for it lost its second r,giving krokódīlos, and this r reappeared anddisappeared capriciously during the word’sjourney through Latin and Old French toEnglish. Middle English had it – the 13thcentury form was cokodrille – but in the 16thcentury the modern r-less form took over, basedon Latin crocodīlus.croissant see CRESCENTcrone [14] Crone has a rather macabre history.Essentially it is the same word as carrion. Itbegan life in Latin carō ‘flesh’, which had aVulgar Latin derivative *carōnia ‘carcass’. InOld Northern French this became carogne,which was applied metaphorically to a witheredold woman (English carrion comes from theAnglo-Norman form caroine). Middle Dutchborrowed the word as croonje, applying itadditionally to old ewes, and passed it on toEnglish. CARRIONcrony [17] Crony originated as a piece ofCambridge university slang. Originally writtenchrony, it was based on Greek khrónios ‘longlasting’,a derivative of khrónos ‘time’ (source ofEnglish chronicle, chronology, chronic, etc), andseems to have been intended to mean ‘friend oflong-standing’, or perhaps ‘contemporary’. Thefirst recorded reference to it is in the diary ofSamuel Pepys, a Cambridge man: ‘Jack Cole,my old school-fellow … who was a great chronyof mine’, 30 May 1665. CHRONIC, CHRONICLE, CHRONOLOGYcrook [12] A crook ‘criminal’ is almost literallya ‘bent’ person. The underlying meaning of theword is ‘bend, curve, hook’, as can be seen inother applications such as ‘shepherd’s staff witha crooked end’, and particularly in the derivativecrooked [13]. Crook was borrowed into Englishfrom Old Norse krókr ‘hook, corner’. OldFrench also acquired the Old Norse word, ascroc, and passed it on to English in crochet,croquet, crotchet, and encroach; and the derivedverbs crocher and crochier producedrespectively a new noun croche ‘hook’, source ofEnglish crotch [16], and the English verb crouch[14]. Moreover, Old French also had croce,resulting from an earlier borrowing of the word’s

crop 142ultimate West and North Germanic base *krukintroducedinto Vulgar Latin as *croccus, andthis was eventually to form the basis of Englishcrosier [14] and perhaps lacrosse [18]. CROQUET, CROSIER, CROTCH, CROTCHET,CROUCH, ENCROACH, LACROSSEcrop [OE] Old English cropp meant ‘bird’s craw’and ‘rounded head of a plant’, and it waspresumably the latter that gave rise to the word’smost familiar modern sense, ‘cultivated plantproduce’, at some time in the 13th century. Itsrelatives in other Germanic languages, includingGerman kropf and Dutch krop, are used for‘bird’s craw’ but also for various bodilyswellings in the throat and elsewhere, indicatingthe word’s underlying meaning is ‘round mass,lump’. Its Germanic ancestor, *kruppō, wasborrowed into Vulgar Latin as *cruppa, whichmade its way via Old French into English ascroup ‘horse’s (round) rump’ [13], and as thederivative crupper [13]. Croupier [18] is basedon French croupe, having originally meant‘person who rides on the rump, behind thesaddle’. The Germanic base *krup- ‘round mass,lump’ is also the ancestor of English group. CROUP, CROUPIER, CRUPPER, GROUPcroquet [19] Old Norse krókr ‘hook’ (source ofEnglish crook) was borrowed into Old French ascroc. This formed the basis of a diminutive,crochet, literally ‘little hook’, which has passedinto English in various guises over the centuries.First to arrive was crotchet [14], applied tomusical notes from their hooked shape. Crocket‘curling ornamental device’ followed in the 17thcentury, via the Old Northern French variantcroquet. Crochet itself, in the ‘knitting’ sense,arrived in the 19th century. And in the mid 19thcentury croquet, apparently a dialectal variant ofFrench crochet, was applied to the lawn gamewith balls and mallets newly introduced fromIreland to Britain. Old French croc was also theancestor of encroach. CROOK, CROTCHET, ENCROACH, LACROSSEcrosier see CROOKcross [OE] When the Anglo-Saxons embracedChristianity they acquired cros, in the firstinstance from Old Irish cross. The word’sultimate source was Latin crux, which may havebeen of Phoenician origin (although some haveconnected it with Latin curvus ‘bent’). (Cruxitself was borrowed into English in the 18thcentury.) The cross’s shape formed the basis ofthe adjectival, adverbial, and verbal uses of theword, and also of across. (The notion of‘crossing’ also lies behind cruise [17] a probableborrowing from the Dutch kruisen ‘cross’.)Derivatives of the Latin word include crucial[18], crucible [15], crucifix [13] (from late Latincrucifixus, literally ‘fixed to a cross’), crusade[16], and excruciate [16]. CRUCIAL, CRUCIBLE, CRUCIFIX, CRUSADE,EXCRUCIATEcrotch see CROOKcrotchet see CROQUETcrouch see CROOKcroup see CROPcroupier see CROPcrow [OE] The verb crow began in prehistoricWest Germanic as an imitation of the harsh callof the cockerel. Its relatives still survive in otherGermanic languages, including German krähenand Dutch kraaien. Early examples of birdsother than cockerels being described as‘crowing’ are comparatively rare, butnevertheless there seems no doubt that the verbformed the basis of the name given to birds of thegenus Corvus [OE]. The crowbar [19] was sonamed from the resemblance of its splayed endto a crow’s foot.crowd [OE] The notion underlying crowd is of‘pushing’ or ‘pressing’ (a semantic elementshared by throng and of course by the nowobsolete use of press for ‘crowd’, and echoed insuch current expressions as ‘there’s quite a crushin here’). The Old English verb crūdan meantsimply ‘press’, and of its relatives Middle Dutchcrūden meant ‘press, push’ and Middle HighGerman kroten meant ‘oppress’. Old Englishalso had a noun croda ‘crowd’, but this does notseem to be the direct ancestor of the modernEnglish noun, which does not appear until as lateas the 16th century, as a derivative of the verb.crown [12] Crowns appear to have been namedessentially from their circular shape. The word’sultimate source, Greek korónē, simply meant‘something curved’ (it came from the adjectivekorōnos ‘curved’, which was a relative of Latincurvus ‘curved’). Latin borrowed it as corōna‘circular garland’, and passed it on via OldFrench corone and Anglo-Norman corune toEnglish. Latin also derived a verb from it,corōnāre, which ultimately became the Englishverb crown and also, of course, formed the basisof English coronation [14]. Other Englishdescendants of Latin corōna (which itselfbecame an English word in the 16th century) arethe two diminutives coronet [15] and corolla[17] (source of corollary), coroner [14](originally an ‘officer of the crown’), andcoronary. The use of crown for certain coins(based of course on their being stamped with thefigure of a crown) dates in English from the 14thcentury; it is also reflected in such coin names asSwedish krona and Danish and Norwegiankrone. COROLLARY, CORONATION, CORONER,CORONET, CURVEcrucial see CROSScrucible see CROSScrucifix see CROSScruel [13] Aptly, cruelty and crudeness areclosely linked etymologically. Cruel comes viaOld French cruel from Latin crūdēlis, a relativeof Latin crūdus (which actually meant ‘cruel’ aswell as ‘raw’ and ‘bloody’). Both comeultimately from an Indo-European base whichalso produced English raw, Greek kréas ‘flesh’(whence English creosote and pancreas), andOld Slavic kruvi ‘blood’. (Crude is a 14thcenturyborrowing direct from Latin.) CREOSOTE, CRUDE, PANCREAS, RAWcruet see CROCK

cruise see CROSScruller see CURLcrumb [OE] Relatives of crumb are fairlywidespread in the Germanic languages –German has krume, for example, and Dutchkruim – and it is represented in some non-Germanic Indo-European languages, such asGreek grūméā and even Albanian grime. Asthese forms indicate, the b is not original (theOld English word was cruma); it first appearedin the 16th century, but crum remained anaccepted spelling well into the 19th century. Thederivative crumble appeared in the 16th century. CRUMBLEcrumhorn see CRAMcrumpet [17] An isolated late 14th-centuryinstance of the phrase crompid cake suggeststhat etymologically a crumpet may be literally a‘curled-up’ cake, crompid perhaps being relatedto Old English crumb ‘crooked’. This was one ofa wide range of closely related words descendedfrom the Germanic base *kram- or *krem-,denoting ‘pressure’ (see CRAM). The colloquialapplication of the word to ‘women considered assexually desirable’ seems to date from the1930s. CRAMcrupper see CROPcrusade see CROSScrush [14] The emergence of crush is somethingof a mystery. English borrowed it from OldFrench croissir, but it is not clear where OldFrench got it from. Some consider it to be ofRomance origin, postulating a hypotheticalVulgar Latin *cruscīre to account for it, butothers suggest that Old French may haveborrowed it from Germanic, pointing to thesimilarity of Middle Low German krossen‘crush’.crust [14] Latin crusta meant ‘hard outercovering, shell’ (it is related to a number ofwords, including ultimately crystal, denoting ahard surface caused by freezing). Old Frenchacquired it as crouste (the modern French formcroûte formed the basis of croûton, borrowedinto English in the early 19th century), andpassed it on to Middle English as cruste. Crustaformed the basis of the modern Latin adjectivecrustāceus ‘having a shell’, applied in the early19th century to the crustacea or crustaceans.And a custard was originally a kind of pieenclosed in a crust. CROÛTON, CRYSTAL, CUSTARDcry [13] Cry comes via Old French crier fromLatin quirītāre, which, according to the Romanetymologist Marcus Terentius Varo, meantoriginally ‘call for the help of the Quirites’. Thiswas a term for those who held the rank of Romancitizen; it is of uncertain origin, variouslyexplained as coming from an Italic word for‘lance’ and as denoting those who lived in theSabine town of Cures. The more banal truth,however, is that the Latin verb was probably ofimitative origin.143 cuckoocrypt [18] The Greek adjective kruptós meant‘hidden’. From it was derived kruptikós, whichpassed into English via late Latin crypticus ascryptic [17]. The feminine form of the originalGreek adjective, krúptē, was used as a nounmeaning literally ‘hidden place’, thus‘underground chamber, vault’; English acquiredit via Latin crypta. From the same ultimatesource comes apocrypha [14], literally ‘books ofhidden – that is, unknown – authorship’. APOCRYPHAcrystal [OE] The prehistoric Indo-Europeanbase *kru- produced several words denoting‘hard outer surface’, including English crust,Old High German hrosa ‘crust’, and Old Norsehrúthr ‘crust’. In some cases they reflect ahardening caused by freezing: Old High Germanhrosa, for example, also meant ‘ice’, and Greekkrúos meant ‘frost’. From this was derivedkrustaímein ‘freeze’, which in turn formed thebasis of krústallos ‘ice’. When Old English firstacquired the word, via Latin crystallum and OldFrench cristal, it still meant ‘ice’, a sense whichsurvived until the 16th century, although losingground all the time to the metaphorical extension‘clear mineral’. CRUSTcubbyhole see COVEcube [16] Greek kúbos meant literally ‘six-sidedsolid figure’, a sense handed down to English viaLatin cubus. Apart from more obviousmetaphorical applications, such as ‘dice’, theGreek word was used for the internal cavity ofthe pelvis, a semantic feature which links it withits possible relative, English hip. The fine-artterm cubism was introduced to English in 1911from French, where it seems to have been coinedin 1908 by an anonymous member of theHanging Committee of the Salon desIndependents. The story goes that when apainting by Georges Braque was being shown tothe committee, he exclaimed ‘Encore des Cubes!Assez de cubisme!’.cubicle see CONCUBINEcuckoldcuckold [13] Cuckold is a derivative of cuckoo,the cuckoo’s invasion of other birds’ nestsperhaps being viewed as analogous to thestealing of a wife’s affections by another man. Itis not an original English coinage, but wasborrowed from an unrecorded Anglo-Norman*cucuald, a variant of Old French cucuault,which in turn was formed from cucu ‘cuckoo’and the pejorative suffix -ault. CUCKOOcuckoo [13] So distinctive is the cuckoo’s callthat it is not always clear whether the names forthe bird in various languages, based on the call,owe their similarity to borrowing or coincidence– Dutch, for instance, has koekoek, Russiankukúshka, Latin cuculus, and Greek kókkūx. Inthe case of English cuckoo, it seems to have beenborrowed from Old French cucu, which was ofimitative origin. Its first appearance is in thefamous Cuckoo song of the late 13th century(‘Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing, cuccu!’),where it replaced the native Middle English

cucumber 144word yeke (from Old English gēac, also ofimitative origin).cucumber [14] English acquired this word ascucumer, by direct borrowing from Latincucumer, which may originally have been aword of some pre-Italic Mediterraneanlanguage. The form spelled with a b did notappear until the 15th century. It seems to havebeen a blend of Middle English cucumer and OldFrench coucombre, which itself ultimatelyderived from Latin cucumer. Spellings based onthe Old French form led to a pronunciation of thefirst syllable as ‘cow’, which persisted until theearly 19th century.cud [OE] The etymological meaning of cudappears to be ‘glutinous substance’. It is relatedto a wide range of Indo-European words in thisgeneral sense area, including Sanskrit játu‘gum’, German kitt ‘putty’, and Swedish kâda‘resin’, and the first syllable of Latin bitūmen(source of English bitumen [15]) is generallyreferred to the same source. Quid ‘piece oftobacco for chewing’ is a variant of cud. BITUMEN, QUIDcue Cue has several meanings in English, and itis not clear whether they can all be considered tobe the same word. In the case of ‘pigtail’ and‘billiard stick’, both of which appeared in the18th century, cue is clearly just a variant spellingof queue, but although cue ‘actor’s prompt’ [16]has been referred by some to the same source (onthe grounds that it represents the ‘tail’ – fromFrench queue ‘tail’ – of the previous actor’sspeech) there is no direct evidence for this.Another suggestion is that it represents qu, anabbreviation of Latin quando ‘when’ which waswritten in actor’s scripts to remind them when tocome in. QUEUEcuirass [15] A cuirass ‘breastplate’ is literally,and was originally, a piece of body armour madeof leather. The word comes, via French cuirasse,from Vulgar Latin *coriācia, a nominal use ofthe Latin adjective coriāceus ‘made of leather’.This was a derivative of corium ‘leather’, whichcame ultimately from the Indo-European base*ker- or *sker- ‘cut’ (source also of Englishshear), the underlying notion being of removingthe animal’s hide with a knife. Otherdescendants of Latin corium include French cuirand Spanish cuero, both meaning ‘leather’. CURTAIL, SHEAR, SHIRT, SHORT, SKIRTculinary see KILNcull [15] Ultimately, cull is the same word ascollect. It comes via Old French cuillir fromLatin colligere ‘gather together’, whose pastparticipial stem collēct- formed the originalbasis of English collect. The Latin verb was acompound formed from the prefix com-‘together’ and legere ‘gather’ (source also ofEnglish elect, neglect, select, etc). COLLECT, ELECT, LECTURE, LEGEND, NEGLECT,SELECTculprit [17] Culprit appears to be a fossilizedsurvival of the mixture of English and Frenchonce used in English courts. The usuallyaccepted account of its origin is that it is alexicalization of an exchange in court betweenthe accused and the prosecutor. If the prisonerpleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge read outagainst him, the prosecutor would havecountered, in Law French, with ‘Culpable: pritd’averrer …’, literally ‘Guilty: ready to prove’.(English culpable [14] comes ultimately fromLatin culpa ‘guilt’, and prit is the Anglo-Norman form of what in modern French hasbecome prêt ‘ready’, from Latin praestus –source of English presto). The theory is that thiswould have been noted down by those recordingthe proceedings in abbreviated form as cul. prit,which eventually came to be apprehended as aterm used for addressing the accused. CULPABLE, PRESTOcult [17] The Indo-European base *quel-,* quoldenotedprimarily ‘move around, turn’ (it is thesource of English cycle and wheel). Bymetaphorical extension it came to signify ‘bebusy’, which later branched out in two semanticdirections: ‘inhabiting a place’ and ‘making awild place suitable for crops’. These are bothchannelled into Latin colere, which meant‘inhabit’, ‘cultivate’, and also ‘worship’. Thenotion of ‘inhabiting’ is reflected in itsdescendant colony, but its past participial stemcult- has bequeathed us other aspects of itsmeaning. ‘Worship’ is represented by cult,acquired via French culte or directly from Latincultus. ‘Developing the land’ appears incultivate [17], from the medieval Latinderivative cultivāre, and by metaphoricalextension in culture [15], from French culture,which originally meant ‘piece of tilled land’. COLONY, CULTIVATE, CULTURE, CYCLE, WHEELcunning [13] Cunning did not always have itspresent-day negative connotations. At first it wasa term of approval, meaning ‘learned’. It isconnected in some way to the verb can, whichoriginally meant ‘know’, although it is notaltogether clear whether it is a direct use of thepresent participle of the English verb, or whetherit was borrowed from the related Old Norsekunnandi, present participle of kunna ‘know’.Either way, it is a parallel formation to canny[16]. The sense ‘skilfully deceitful’ developedtowards the end of the 16th century. CANNYcunt [13] The first known reference to the wordcunt is in an early medieval Oxford street-name:Gropecuntlane (it was afterwards renamedMagpie lane). This was around 1230, and fromlater in the same century there are records of astreet of the same name (presumably the haunt ofprostitutes) in London, probably around the areaof modern Cheapside. York, too, had itsGrapcunt lane in the 15th century. Cunt has anumber of Germanic cognates, including OldNorse kunta, Middle Dutch kunte, and possiblyMiddle High German kotze ‘prostitute’, whichpoint to a prehistoric Germanic ancestor *kunton‘female genitals’, but beyond that its origins arenot known. A link has been suggested with Latincuneus ‘wedge’.

cup [OE] Cup is a member of a large Indo-European family of words denoting broadly‘round container’ that go back ultimately to thebases *kaup- (source of English head) and*keup-. This produced Greek kúpellon ‘drinkingvessel’, English hive, and Latin cūpa ‘barrel’,source of English coop [13] (via Middle Dutchkūpe) and cooper ‘barrel-maker’ [14] (from aderivative of Middle Dutch kūpe). A postclassicalby-form of cūpa was cuppa, fromwhich came German kopf ‘head’ and Englishcup. COOP, CUPOLAcupboard [14] A cupboard was originallyexactly that: a ‘board’, or table, on which cups(and other pieces of crockery or plate) wereplaced for display. Essentially, it was what wewould now call a sideboard. The modern sense,‘recess with doors and shelves’, did not developuntil the 16th century. (An earlier, and nowlargely superseded, term for ‘cupboard’ waspress [14]. Cabinet is roughly contemporarywith cupboard in its modern sense, and closetdeveloped this meaning in the 17th century.)cupidity [15] The Latin verb cupere meant‘desire’ (related forms such as Sanskrit kup-‘become agitated’, Church Slavonic kypeti‘boil’, and Latvian kūpēt ‘boil, steam’ suggestthat its underlying notion is ‘agitation’). One ofits derivatives was the noun cupīdō ‘desire’,which was used as the name of the Roman godof love – hence English cupid [14]. Another wasthe adjective cupidus ‘desirous’, whichproduced the further noun cupiditās, source,perhaps via French, of English cupidity, and alsoultimately of English covet. Concupiscence [14]also comes from Latin cupere. CONCUPISCENCE, COVETcurate see CUREcurb [15] Ultimately, curb and curve are thesame word. Latin curvāre ‘bend’ passed into OldFrench as courber, which Middle Englishborrowed as courbe ‘bend’. This seems to haveformed the basis of a noun courbe or curb, whichwas originally used for a strap to restrain a horse,the underlying meaning perhaps being thatpulling on the strap ‘bent’ the horse’s neck,thereby restraining it. The sense ‘enclosingframework’ began to emerge in the early 16thcentury, perhaps mainly through the influence ofthe French noun courbe, which meant ‘curvedpiece of timber, iron, etc used in building’. Itschief modern descendant is ‘pavement edge’, a19th-century development, which has generallybeen spelled kerb in British English. CIRCLE, CROWN, CURVEcurd [14] Curd began life as crud, a word whichhas survived in its own right. In the 15th centuryit underwent a process known as metathesis, bywhich the sounds r and u became transposed,producing curd. A derivative of this, dating fromthe 16th century, is curdle. The word’s ultimateancestry is not known, although some considerthat Gaelic gruth may be related.cure [13] The Latin noun cūra ‘care’ has fathereda wide range of English words. On their145 currantintroduction to English, via Old French, both thenoun and the verb cure denoted ‘looking after’,but it was not long before the specific sense‘medical care’ led to ‘successful medical care’ –that is, ‘healing’ (the Latin verb cūrāre couldmean ‘cure’ too, but this sense seems not to havesurvived into Old French). The notion of‘looking after’ now scarcely survives in cureitself, but it is preserved in the derived nounscurate [14] (and its French version curé [17]),who looks after souls, and curator [14]. TheLatin adjective cūriōsus originally meant‘careful’, a sense preserved through Old Frenchcurios into English curious [14] but defunctsince the 18th century. The secondary sense‘inquisitive’ developed in Latin, but it was notuntil the word reached Old French that themeaning ‘interesting’ emerged. Curio [19] is anabbreviation of curiosity [14], probablymodelled on Italian nouns of the same form.Curette [18] and its derivative curettage [19]were both formed from the French verb curer, inthe sense ‘clean’.Other English descendants of Latin cūrainclude scour, secure, and sinecure. CURATE, CURIOUS, SCOUR, SECURE, SINECUREcurfew [13] Curfew means literally ‘coverfire’. Itwas introduced into English via Anglo-Normancoeverfu from Old French covrefeu, which wasformed from covrir ‘cover’ and feu ‘fire’ (feuwas a descendant of Latin focus ‘hearth’, whichhas given English focus, foyer, fuel, andfusillade). The notion underlying the word is thatof a signal given at a particular time in theevening to extinguish all fires in a town, camp,etc; its original purpose seems to have been toprevent accidental fires breaking out at night. COVER, FOCUS, FOYER, FUELcurio see CUREcurious see CUREcurl [14] Curl seems to have been borrowed fromMiddle Dutch krul ‘curly’, and indeed theoriginal English forms of the word were crolleand crulle. The present-day form arose in the15th century by a process known as metathesis,whereby the sounds r and u were transposed.The Middle Dutch word came from a Germanic*krusl-, source also of German kraus ‘curly’.Modern Dutch krul, meanwhile, has givenEnglish cruller ‘small cake of twisted shape’[19]. CRULLERcurlew [14] The name of the curlew was nodoubt originally inspired by its haunting flutelikecall, but it has been speculated that otherforces have been at work too. The word wasborrowed from Old French courlieu, whichbears more than a passing resemblance to OldFrench courliu ‘messenger’ (a compoundformed from courre ‘run’ and lieu ‘place’, fromLatin locus), and it seems quite possible that thelatter may have influenced the formation of theformer.currant [14] Etymologically, currants are grapesfrom ‘Corinth’. In the Middle Ages Corinth, inGreece, exported small dried grapes of

current 146particularly high quality, which became knownin Old French as raisins de Corinthe ‘grapes ofCorinth’. This phrase passed via Anglo-Normanraisins de corauntz into Middle English asraisins of coraunce. By the 16th century,coraunce had come to be regarded as a pluralform, and a new singular was coined from it – atfirst coren, and then in the 17th century currant.In the late 16th century, too, the name wastransferred to fruit such as the blackcurrant andredcurrant, under the mistaken impression thatthe ‘dried-grape’ currant was made from them.current [13] Current literally means ‘running’. Itcomes from Old French corant, the presentparticiple of courre ‘run’, which in turn wasdescended from Latin currere ‘run’. This hasbeen traced back to a prehistoric root denoting‘swift movement’, which probably alsoproduced car, career, carry, and charge. TheLatin verb itself has a wide range of descendantsin English, from the obvious courier [16] to themore heavily disguised corridor [16] (originallyliterally ‘a run’), occur and succour. For theEnglish offspring of its past participle cursus seeCOURSE. The sense ‘of the present time’ (firstrecorded in the 17th century) comes from thenotion of ‘running in time’ or ‘being inprogress’. CAR, CARRY, CHARGE, CORRIDOR, COURIER,COURSE, OCCUR, SUCCOURcurry Of the two English words curry, the older,‘groom a horse’ [13], is now almost forgottenexcept in the compound currycomb and thephrase curry favour. It comes, via Old Frenchcorreier, from Vulgar Latin *conrēdāre‘arrange, prepare, get ready’, which seems tohave been an adaptation and partial translation ofa prehistoric Germanic verb *garǣthjan, aderivative of the base which produced Englishready. The expression curry favour is a partialtranslation of Old French estriller favel ortorcher favel, literally ‘groom a chestnut horse’,which, for reasons that are not known, was usedas a metaphor for hypocritical behaviour; theword favel, unfamiliar to English speakers, wasreplaced with the semantically appropriatefavour.Curry ‘spiced dish’ [16] was borrowed fromTamil kari ‘sauce’. READYcursary see COURSEcurse [OE] Curse first appeared in late OldEnglish (in the early 11th century) as curs. It hasno known linguistic relatives, and it is not clearwhere it comes from. Perhaps the most plausiblesuggestion is that it was borrowed from OldFrench curuz ‘anger’ (which probably camefrom the verb *corruptiāre, a Vulgar Latinderivative of Latin corrumpere ‘destroy’ –source of English corrupt), and that curse itselftherefore originally meant ‘anger, wrath’. Thecolloquial alteration cuss dates from the 18thcentury. CORRUPT, RUPTUREcurtail [16] The now defunct English noun curtalmeant ‘horse with a docked tail’. It wasborrowed in the 16th century from Frenchcourtault, a derivative of the adjective court‘short’. Like English curt [17] this came fromLatin curtus ‘cut off, shortened’, which incommon with English short and shear, can betraced back to an Indo-European base *ker- or*sker- ‘cut’. In the late 16th century the nounwas converted into a verb, originally meaningliterally ‘dock a horse’, and the close semanticlink with ‘tails’ led to its alteration to curtail. CUIRASS, CURT, SHEAR, SHIRT, SHORT, SKIRTcurtain [13] Latin cortīna meant ‘round vessel,cauldron’, but in the 4th-century Vulgate we findit being used to translate Greek aulaía ‘curtain’.The reason for this considerable semantic leapseems to have been a link perceived to existbetween Greek aulaía, a derivative of aulē‘court’, and Latin cohort- ‘court’ (source ofEnglish court), although in fact there is noetymological connection between cohort- andcortīna. The word passed into Old French ascortine, and from there was acquired by English.curtsey see COURTcurve [15] Curve has a wide circle of relations inEnglish. It comes from Latin curvus ‘curved’,which had connections with Greek kurtós‘curved’, Greek korōnos ‘curved’ (source ofEnglish crown), and Greek kírkos ‘ring, circle’(source of English circle). When Englishacquired it, it was still an adjective, and Englishdid not convert it into a noun until the 17thcentury. CIRCLE, CROWN, CURBcushion [14] Ultimately, cushion and quilt arethe same word. Both come from Latin culcita‘mattress, cushion’, which is related to Sanskritkūrcás ‘bundle’, and both reached English viarather circuitous routes. In Gallo-Roman (thedescendant of Latin spoken in France from the5th to the 9th centuries) culcita underwent atransformation which produced Old Frenchcoissin and cussin, which Middle Englishborrowed as quisshon and cushin. Thecomplexity of forms spawned by these was quitestaggering – the OED records nearly seventyspellings of the word – but by the 17th centurythings had settled down, with cushion emergingthe winner.Cushy [20], incidentally, is quite unrelated,being a borrowing from Hindi khūsh ‘pleasant’. QUILTcuspidor see SPITcustard [15] A custard was originally a pie,which took its name from its ‘crust’ (Anglo-Norman *crustade, the source of the word, wasa derivative of Old French crouste, from whichEnglish got crust). The earliest English form wascrustade, and intermediate spellings crustardeand custade occur. The reference in the name isto the pie’s pastry shell, not to its lid, for it hadnone: it was an open pie, of meat or fruit, filledup with stock or milk. This liquid was oftenthickened with eggs, and by around 1600 theterm had moved across to name a dish in its ownright made of eggs beaten into milk and cooked. CRUST

custom [12] Custom comes ultimately fromLatin consuēscere, a compound verb formedfrom the intensive prefix com- and suēscere‘become accustomed’. This in turn was derivedfrom suī, the genitive singular of the reflexivepronoun suus ‘oneself’; the notion underlying itsformation was therefore ‘that which is one’sown’, a semantic element echoed in Greek ethos‘custom, usage, trait’, which was basedultimately on Indo-European *swe- ‘oneself’.From consuēscere was formed the Latin nounconsuētūdō ‘being accustomed’ (source of theEnglish legal noun consuetude ‘custom’ [14]).This passed into early Old French as *costudne,which developed via *costumne to custome, theform borrowed into Middle English (Englishcostume came from the same ultimate source,but via Italian costume). The word’s originalsense, ‘habitual practice’, developed varioussecondary associations, including ‘customarytax’ (whence customs duties) and ‘customarybusiness patronage’ (whence customer). Thederivative accustom [15] was borrowed fromAnglo-Norman acustumer. ACCUSTOM, COSTUMEcut [13] There is no direct evidence that OldEnglish had the word cut – the Old English termswere sceran ‘shear’, ceorfan ‘carve’, andhēawan ‘hew’ – but many etymologists havespeculated that a pre-Conquest *cyttan did exist.Forms such as Norwegian kutte ‘cut’, Swedishkåta ‘whittle’, and Icelandic kuta ‘cut with aknife’ suggest an origin in a North Germanīcbase *kut-.cutaneous see HIDEcuticle see HIDEcutlass [16] Appropriate as the name sounds,cutlass has no etymological connection with cut.It comes from Old French cutelas, a derivative(denoting large size) of coutel ‘knife’. This inturn goes back to Latin cultellus, a diminutive ofculter ‘knife, ploughshare’ (source of Englishcoulter [OE] and cutler [14], whence cutlery[14]). COULTER, CUTLERYcutlet see COASTcuttlefish [11] The cuttlefish probably gets itsname from its resemblance to a bag when itsinternal shell is removed. Its earliest recordeddesignation is cudele (the compound cuttlefishdoes not appear until the 16th century), which isgenerally taken to be a derivative of the samebase as produced cod ‘pouch’ (as in codpieceand peascod). In the 16th century the variantscuttlefish arose, perhaps partly with reference tothe creature’s swift movements. CODcybernetics [20] Cybernetics was first coinedin French, as cybernétique, in the 1830s. Butthen it was used literally for the ‘art ofgoverning’ (it is a derivative of Greek kubernétēs‘steersman, governor’, from kubernan ‘steer’,source of English govern). The English term,‘theory of control and communication147 cynicprocesses’, is a new formation, introduced in thelate 1940s by the founder of cybernetics, the USmathematician Norbert Wiener (1894–1964). GOVERNcycle [14] Cycle is one of a wide range ofEnglish words (including pole, colony, and cult)which go back ultimately to the Indo-Europeanbase *qwel-, *qwol-, which signified ‘movearound’. Its reduplicated form, *qweqwlo-,produced English wheel, Sanskrit cakrá- ‘wheel,circle’ (ultimate source of the polo term chukker[19]), and Greek kúklos ‘circle’. Englishacquired this via French cycle or late Latincyclus. Its use as a cover term for bicycles,tricycles, etc (of which words in this context it isan abbreviation) dates from the late 19th century.Related forms in English include cyclone ‘massof rapidly circulating wind’ [19] (probably amodification of Greek kúklōma), cyclamen [16](so named from its bulbous roots), andencyclopedia. BICYCLE, CHUKKER, COLONY, CULT,ENCYCLOPEDIA, POLE, WHEEL.cygnet [15] A cygnet is literally a ‘small swan’.The late Old French term for ‘swan’ was cigne,and this was modified with the diminutive suffix-et, probably in Anglo-Norman, to produce*cignet, the source of the English word. Cigne,precursor of modern French cygne, strikes afamiliar chord, but in fact its Latin source,cygnus, is a comparatively late development.The standard classical Latin word for ‘swan’ wascycnus, from Greek kúknos, which produced inearly Old French cisne. A trace of it survives inSpanish cisne ‘swan’.cymbal [14] The notion underlying cymbal is ofa ‘hollow vessel’. Greek kúmbē meant ‘cup,bowl’. From it was derived kúmbalon, whichpassed via Latin cymbalum into Old French ascimbal ‘metal plate struck to make a noise’. Thisdid not survive much beyond the 10th century(although it may have given rise before itsdemise to chime), but the word was reborrowedvia Old French symbale in the 14th century. CHIMEcynic [16] Originally, the Cynics were a group ofascetic philosophers in ancient Greece. Theirfounder, around 400 BC, was Antisthenes, afollower of Socrates. They advocated the viewthat virtue and self-control are the highest goodand, particularly under their later leaderDiogenes, came to exhibit a contempt for thefrailties of their fellow human beings that istraditionally said to have earned them theirname: Greek kúōn meant ‘dog’ (it is related toEnglish hound), and the philosophers wereallegedly dubbed kunikós on account of their‘dog-like’ sneering. A more prosaic but morelikely explanation of the term is that it comesfrom the Kunósarge, the gymnasium whereAntisthenes taught (perhaps later influenced bykúōn). English acquired the word via Latincynicus.

Ddabchick see DEEPdachshund [19] Dachshund means literally‘badger-dog’ in German. It was originally bredin Germany for badger-hunting, its long thinbody enabling it to burrow into the animals’setts. The first known reference to it in English(in the anglicized form dachshound) is in a poemby Matthew Arnold of around 1881, PoorMatthias: ‘Max, a dachshound without blot’. HOUNDdado see DATEdaffodil [16] Originally, this word was affodil,and referred to a plant of the lily family, theasphodel; it came from medieval Latinaffodillus, and the reason for the change fromasph- (or asf-, as it often was in medieval texts)to aff- is probably that the s in medievalmanuscripts looked very like an f. The firstevidence of its use to refer to a ‘daffodil’, ratherthan an ‘asphodel’, comes in the middle of the16th century. It is not entirely clear where theinitial d came from, but the likeliest explanationis that daffodil represents Dutch de affodil ‘thedaffodil’ (the Dutch were then as now leadingexponents of bulb cultivation).daft [13] Daft was not always a term of reproach.It originally meant ‘mild, gentle’, and only inlate Middle English slid to ‘stupid’ (in asemantic decline perhaps paralleling that of silly,which started off as ‘happy, blessed’). MiddleEnglish dafte corresponds directly to an OldEnglish gedæfte, whose underlying sense seemsto have been ‘fit, suitable’ (the sense connectionwas apparently that mild unassuming peoplewere considered as behaving suitably). There isno direct evidence of its use with this meaning,but Old English had a verb gedæftan ‘make fit orready, prepare’ which, together with the Gothicverb gedaban ‘be suitable’, points to its origin ina Germanic base *dab- ‘fit, suitable’. This ties inwith the semantic development of deft, a variantof daft, which has moved from a prehistoric ‘fit,suitable’ to ‘skilful’. DEFTdagger [14] Dagger has an uncertain history.There was a verb dag in Middle English,meaning ‘stab’, which suggests that dagger maysimply be ‘something that stabs’, but similarityof form and sense indicates a connection toowith Old French dague ‘dagger’. This appears tohave come via Old Provençal or Old Italian dagafrom a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *daca, whichmeant literally ‘Dacian knife’ (from Latin Dācus‘Dacian’). Dacia was the ancient name for anarea roughly corresponding to modern Romania.dago [18] Dago originated in the USA as acontemptuous term for a Spanish-speakingperson. It is an alteration of Diego (the Spanishversion of James), a common Spanish forename,which itself was used in English in the 17thcentury for ‘Spaniard’: ‘Next follows one whoselines aloft do raise Don Coriat, chief Diego ofour days’. By the late 19th century theapplication of dago had broadened out to includeanyone of Spanish, Portuguese, or Italiandescent. JAMESdahlia [19] The dahlia was named in 1791 inhonour of Anders Dahl, an 18th-centurySwedish botanist who discovered the plant inMexico in 1788. The first record of the term inEnglish is from 1804. During the 19th century itwas used for a particular shade of red: ‘One ofthe many ugly shades that are to be worn thisseason is dahlia’, Pall Mall Gazette 29September 1892.dainty [13] In origin, dainty is the same word asdignity. The direct descendant of Latin dignitāsin Old French was daintie or deintie, but OldFrench later reborrowed the word as dignete. Itwas the latter that became English dignity, butdaintie took a route via Anglo-Norman dainte togive English dainty. At first it meant ‘honour,esteem’, but before a century was up it hadpassed through ‘pleasure, joy’ to ‘somethingchoice, luxury’. The first record of its adjectivaluse comes in the 14th century, when it meant‘choice, excellent, delightful’; this soondeveloped to ‘delicately pretty’. DIGNITYdairy [13] Etymologically, a dairy is a placewhere a female kneader of bread works. Theterm for such an operative in Old English wasdǣge, which came from the same Indo-European base (*dheigh-) as produced doughand the second syllable of lady. In MiddleEnglish this became deie or daye, and graduallyprogressed in meaning through ‘female servant’in general to ‘female farm-servant’ and ‘dairymaid’,concerned with the keeping of milk andmaking it into butter and cheese (the wordsurvived into modern times in Scottish English).From it was derived deierie or dayerie, to denotethe place where such a woman worked. DOUGH, LADYdais [13] Ultimately, dais and disc are the sameword. Both came from Latin discus ‘quoit’,which by medieval times had come to mean‘table’ (see DESK). Its Old French descendantwas deis, which was borrowed into MiddleEnglish as deis. It died out in English around

1600, but it survived in Scottish English, andwas revived in England by antiquarians, itsspelling based on the modern French form dais.Historically it is a monosyllabic word, and themodern two-syllable pronunciation representsan attempt to render the unfamiliar French word. DESK, DISC, DISHdaisy [OE] The Anglo-Saxons named thisfamiliar flower dæges ēage, literally ‘day’s eye’,from the fact that some species open in daylighthours to reveal their yellow disc, and close againat dusk. (The medieval Latin name for the daisywas solis oculus ‘sun’s eye’.) DAY, EYEdale [OE] Both dale and dell [OE] comeultimately from the Germanic base *dal- (whichalso produced German tal, ultimate source ofEnglish dollar). Dale goes back to the Germanicderivative *dalam, *dalaz, dell to the derivative*daljō. Cognate forms such as Old Norse dalr‘bow’ and, outside Germanic, Greek thólos showthat the underlying meaning of the word familyis ‘bend, curve’. Those members which mean‘valley’ (including Gothic dals, which alsosignified ‘ditch’) were no doubt named fromtheir rounded, hollowed-out shape. DELL, DOLLARDalek [20] The name of these pathologicallydestructive robots, which first appeared on BBCTV’s Dr Who in 1963, was coined by theircreator, Terry Nation. The story went about thathe had come up with it one day while staring ina library at the spine of an encyclopedia volumecovering entries from DA to LEK, but he hassubsequently denied this.dam [12] Dam, appropriately enough for a wordrelated to the human control of water-courses,seems to have been borrowed from MiddleDutch dam. It appears to have been a fairlywidespread West and East Germanic word,subsequently borrowed into North Germanic,but its ultimate source is not known.damage [14] Damage comes from Latindamnum ‘loss, damage’ (source of Englishdamn). It passed into Old French as dam, fromwhich was formed the derivative damage.English borrowed and has preserved the OldFrench form, but in modern French it hasbecome dommage. Besides damn, anotherEnglish relative is indemnity [15], ultimatelyfrom Latin indemnis ‘undamaged’. DAMN, INDEMNITYdamask [14] Originally, damask was ‘clothfrom Damascus’ (which was known as Damaskein Middle English). This Syrian city was anotable centre for export to the West in theMiddle Ages, and has provided English with thedamson [14] (originally the damascene plum, orplum from Damascus) and the damask rose [16].In addition, the term for the method of inlayingsteel known as damascening [19], or earlierdamaskining [16], comes via French and Italianfrom the name of Damascus (where such steelwas once produced). DAMSON149 dandeliondame [13] Latin domina was the feminine formof dominus ‘lord’ (see DOMINION). Englishacquired it via Old French dame, but it has alsospread through the other Romance languages,including Spanish dueña (source of Englishduenna [17]) and Italian donna (whence Englishprima donna, literally ‘first lady’ [18]). TheVulgar Latin diminutive form of domina was*dominicella, literally ‘little lady’. This passedinto Old French as donsele, was modified byassociation with dame to damisele, and acquiredin the 13th century by English, in which itsubsequently became damsel (the archaicvariant damosel came from the 16th-centuryFrench form damoiselle). DAMSEL, DANGER, DOMINATE, DOMINION,DUENNA, PRIMA DONNAdamn [13] Damn comes via Old French damnerfrom Latin damnāre, a derivative of the noundamnum. This originally meant ‘loss, harm’ (it isthe source of English damage), but the verbdamnāre soon spread its application to‘pronounce judgment upon’, in both the legaland the theological sense. These meanings(reflected also in the derived condemn) followedthe verb through Old French into English, whichdropped the strict legal sense around the 16thcentury but has persisted with the theologicalone and its more profane offshoots. CONDEMN, DAMAGE, INDEMNITYdamp [14] The familiar adjectival use of damp as‘slightly wet’ is a comparatively recentdevelopment, from the 18th century. When theword was first borrowed into English, fromMiddle Low German damp, it was a nounmeaning ‘vapour’ (an application whichsurvives in fire-damp). It comes ultimately froma Germanic base *thump-. The first line ofsemantic development taken by the word inEnglish was of a ‘noxious exhalation’ (includinggas or even smoke, not just vapour), and this isreflected in its earliest adjectival use, in the late16th century, meaning ‘dazed’, as if affected bysuch harmful fumes; ‘with looks downcast anddamp’, John Milton, Paradise Lost 1667.Another contemporary sense was ‘noxious’. Butthe 17th century saw the noun used more andmore for specifically wet turbidity: ‘mist’, orsimply ‘moisture’. And this formed the basis ofthe present-day adjectival sense.damson see DAMASKdancedance [13] The history of the word dance, nowwidespread amongst European languages(French dansir, Spanish danzar, Italian danzare,German tanzen, Swedish dansa, Russiantancovat’), is disappointingly obscure. All theseforms, including the English word, stem from anoriginal Old French danser. This developed froman assumed Vulgar Latin *dansāre, which mayhave been borrowed from a Frankish *dintjan(Frisian dintje ‘tremble’ has been compared).dandelion [13] Dandelion means literally‘lion’s tooth’. It was borrowed from Frenchdent-de-lion, which itself was a translation ofmedieval Latin dēns leōnis. It was presumably socalled from the toothlike points of its leaves

dandruff 150(although some have speculated that the namecomes from the long taproot). The plant has avariety of local dialectal names, many of them(clock, farmer’s clocks, schoolboy’s clock, telltime,time flower) reflecting the traditionalpractice of telling the time by blowing off all theplant’s tufted seeds (the number of puffs neededindicates the hour). Piss-a-bed, like its Frenchcounterpart pissenlit, betrays the plant’s diureticproperties. DENTIST, LIONdandruff [16] The word dandruff (or dandriff, asit commonly used to be) first appears, out of theblue, in the mid 16th century, with no knownrelatives. Its first element, dand-, remains utterlyobscure, but the second part may have beenborrowed from Old Norse hrufa or Middle LowGerman rōve, both meaning ‘scab’ (MiddleEnglish had a word roufe ‘scab, scurf’, andmodern Dutch has roof).dandy [18] The first record of the word dandycomes in Scottish border ballads of the late 18thcentury, but by the early 19th century it hadbecome a buzz term in fashionable Londonsociety. It is generally explained as being anabbreviation of jack-a-dandy ‘affected man’, aword first recorded in the 17th century whichapparently incorporates Dandy, a colloquialScottish abbreviation of the name Andrew. Theword’s adjectival use started in the 19th centuryin close semantic relationship to the noun –‘affectedly trim or neat’ – but American Englishhas rehabilitated it to ‘excellent’ in the 20thcentury. ANDREWdanger [13] Etymologically, danger is a parallelformation to dominion. It comes ultimately fromVulgar Latin *domniārium ‘power or sway of alord, dominion, jurisdiction’, a derivative ofLatin dominus ‘lord, master’. English acquiredthe word via Old French dangier and Anglo-Norman daunger, retaining the word’s originalsense until the 17th century (‘You stand withinhis [Shylock’s] danger, do you not?’ says Portiato Antonio in Shakespeare’s Merchant ofVenice). But things had been happening to itsmeaning in Old French, particularly in thephrase estre en dangier ‘be in danger’. Thenotions of being in someone’s danger (that is, ‘inhis power, at his mercy’) and of being in dangerof something (that is, ‘liable to somethingunpleasant, such as loss or punishment’ – a sensepreserved in the 1611 translation of the Sermonon the Mount: ‘Whosoever is angry with hisbrother without a cause shall be in danger of thejudgment’, Matthew 5:22) led directly to thesense ‘peril’, acquired by English in the 14thcentury. DAME, DOME, DOMINATE, DOMINION, DUNGEONdapper [15] Modern English dapper connotesneatness, alertness, and liveliness, but itsetymological significance as revealed by distantrelatives such as Old High German tapfar‘heavy’, Old Prussian debīkan ‘large’, and OldSlavic debelu ‘thick’, is ‘heavy’. The notion of‘weightiness’ spread to ‘firmness, endurance inbattle’, and hence ‘courage’ (German tapfer andDutch dapper both mean ‘brave’). Englishacquired the word, with an apparently ironicalchange of meaning, from Middle Dutch orMiddle Low German dapper ‘heavy, stout,bold’.dapple [14] Dapple is a puzzling word. It ispresumably derived from or linked in some wayto its contemporary dapple-grey (although thishas never been proved), which has formal andsemantic links with several colour terms in otherGermanic languages (such as Old Norseapalgrár, German apfelgrau, and Dutchappelgrauw) that are surely too strong to becoincidental. They all mean literally ‘applegrey’.Add to this such forms as French grispommelé,again literally ‘applegrey’, andRussian yablokakh ‘dappled’, a derivative ofyábloko ‘apple’, and the inference becomes evenmore compelling – that dappled is related insome way as yet unexplained to apple. Many ofthe above terms were applied specifically to greyhorses marked with round blotches, and soperhaps the word had its beginnings in aperceived resemblance in shape between suchmarkings and apples.dare [OE] Dare used to be a widespreadGermanic verb, with relatives in Old HighGerman (giturran) and Gothic (gadaursan), buttoday it survives only in English (the similarlookingDanish turde and Swedish töras areprobably not related). It comes via Germanic*ders- from an Indo-European *dhers-, whichalso produced Greek thrasús ‘bold’ and OldSlavic druzate ‘be bold’. In Old English it was aconjugationally complex verb, with anomalouspresent and past forms, but most of its odditieshave now been ironed out: the past form durst isnow on its last legs, and only the 3rd presentsingular form remains unusual, especially innegative contexts and questions: she daren’trather than she dares not.dark [OE] Dark comes ultimately from aGermanic base *derk-, *dark-, which alsoproduced Old High German tarchanjan ‘hide’and Middle Low German dork ‘place where dirtcollects’ (outside Germanic, Lithuanian dargushas been compared). In Old English the wordusually denoted absence of light, particularlywith reference to ‘night’; the application tocolours did not develop until the 16th century.darn English has two distinct words darn. Theverb ‘mend with stitches’ [16] may comeultimately from an Old English verb diernan‘hide’, a derivative of the adjective dierne‘secret’, which in turn was descended from WestGermanic *darnjaz. Darn the mild curse [18],which arose in American English, is usuallytaken to be a euphemistic alteration of damn,although it has been suggested, not veryplausibly, that it too came from dern, the modernEnglish descendant of Old English dierne, in thesense ‘dark, dreary’.dash [13] Dash is probably of Scandinavianorigin – Danish daske ‘beat’ has been compared– but whether it was a borrowing or a home-

grown word, it was no doubt formed in imitationof rapid impulsive violent movement. Itsoriginal sense in English was ‘hit, smash’ (nowrather eclipsed, put preserved in such phrases as‘dash someone’s hopes’). ‘Move quickly andviolently’ followed in the 14th century, and thenoun sense ‘stroke of a pen’ in the 16th century(this probably gave rise to the use of the word asa euphemism for damned, from the replacementof that word in print with a dash).date Date ‘time of an event’ and date ‘fruit’ aredistinct words in English, and perhapsunexpectedly the latter [13] entered the languagea century before the former. It came via OldFrench date and Latin dactylus from Greekdáktulos, which originally meant literally‘finger’ or ‘toe’. The term was originally appliedfrom the supposed resemblance of a date to alittle brown finger or toe. Date ‘time’ [14] wasacquired from Old French date, a descendant ofmedieval Latin data, which represented anominal use of the feminine form of Latin datus,the past participle of the verb dare ‘give’. Itoriginated in such phrases as data Romae ‘givenat Rome’, the ancient Roman way of datingletters. (Data ‘information’ [17], on the otherhand, is the plural of the neuter form of the pastparticiple, datum.) Among the wide range ofother English words descended from Latin dare(which can be traced back ultimately to an Indo-European base *dō-) are antidote [15](etymologically ‘what is given againstsomething’), condone [19], dado [17] (aborrowing from Italian, ‘cube’), dative [15],donation [15], dice, dowry and endow (bothultimately from Latin dōs ‘dowry’, a relative ofdare), edit, and pardon [13]. PTERODACTYL; ANTIDOTE, CONDONE, DATA,DATIVE, DICE, DONATION, EDIT, ENDOW,PARDONdaub [14] The ultimate source of daub, Latindēalbāre, meant literally ‘whiten’. It was derivedfrom the adjective albus ‘white’, ancestor ofEnglish albino and album. It developed thespecific meaning ‘cover with some whitesubstance, such as whitewash or plaster’, and bythe time it reached English, via Old Frenchdauber, it referred to the applying of a coating ofmortar, plaster, etc to a wall. This was generallya messy process (particularly in the smearing ofa mixture of mud and dung on to a framework oflaths to produce wattle-and-daub walls), and ledin due course to the broader sense ‘applycrudely’. ALBINO, ALBUM, AUBURNdaughter [OE] Daughter is an ancient wordwhich goes back to Indo-European *dhughətēr.Apart from Latin and the Romance languages(with filia and its descendants) and Celtic (Welshhas merch), all the Indo-European languageshave inherited this form: Greek had thugátēr,Armenian dustr, Old Slavic dusti (whenceRussian doch’), and Sanskrit duhitar-. Theprehistoric Germanic word was *dohtēr, whichproduced Gothic dauhtar, German tochter,Dutch dochter, Swedish dotter, Danish datter,151 deafand of course English daughter. It is not knownwhere the Indo-European word ultimately camefrom, although correspondences have beensuggested with Sanskrit duh- ‘milk’ and Greekteúkho ‘make’.daunt see TAMEdauphin [15] The eldest sons of the French kingwere from 1349–1830 designated by a titlewhich is essentially the same word as Englishdolphin. It was originally applied to the lords ofthe Viennois, an area in the southeast of France,whose coat of arms incorporated three dolphins.After the Viennois province of Dauphiné wassold by Charles of Valois to the French crown in1343, the king gave it to his eldest son, and fromthen on all eldest sons inherited it along with thetitle dauphin. DOLPHINdawn [15] Dawn was originally formed fromday. The Old English word dæg ‘day’ formed thebasis of dagung, literally ‘daying’, a wordcoined to designate the emergence of day fromnight. In Middle English this became daiing ordawyng, which in the 13th to 14th centuriesevolved to dai(e)ning or dawenyng, on the modelof some such Scandinavian form as Old Swedishdaghning. Then in the 15th century the -ingending was dropped to produce dawn. DAYday [OE] Day and its Germanic relatives(German tag, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish dag,and Gothic dags) come from a prehistoricGermanic *dagaz. It seems likely that theultimate source of this was the Indo-Europeanbase *dhegh-, which also produced Sanskritdah- ‘burn’ and nidāgha- ‘heat, summer’, andthat the underlying etymological meaning of dayis thus ‘time when the sun is hot’. DAWNdeadead [OE] Dead is part of a Germanic family ofadjectives (including also German tot, Dutchdood, Swedish död, and Gothic dauths) whichcome from a prehistoric Germanic adjective*dauthaz. This in turn came from an earlier*dhautós, which was the past participle of theverb base that eventually produced English die(thus etymologically dead is in effect a precursorof died). The word’s ultimate source was Indo-European *dheu-, which some have linked withGreek thánatos ‘dead’. DIEdeadline [19] Originally, in US militaryparlance, a ‘deadline’ was a literal line drawnround a military prison, which the inmates werenot allowed to cross. If they did, they riskedbeing shot. The modern figurative application ofthe word, to a time-limit (originally for thesubmission of material for a particular edition ofa newspaper), dates from around 1920.deaf [OE] Ultimately, deaf and dumb come fromthe same source, and moreover they are relatedto a Greek word for ‘blind’. The commondenominator ‘sensory or mental impairment’goes back to an Indo-European base *dheubh-,which denoted ‘confusion, stupefaction,dizziness’. It produced Greek tuphlós ‘blind’;

deal 152English dumb; and a prehistoric Germanicadjective *daubaz ‘dull, stupefied, slow’. Manyof the modern descendants of *daubaz retain thisgeneral sense – Danish doven means ‘lazy’ – butEnglish has specialized it to ‘dull in hearing’.Duffer may ultimately be derived from OldNorse daufr ‘deaf’ in which the sense ‘dull,stupid’ is preserved. DUFFER, DUMBdeal English has two words deal. The one whichnow means chiefly ‘distribute’ goes back to OldEnglish dǣl ‘part’ and its verbal derivativedǣlan ‘divide’. The noun (together with itsrelatives German teil, Dutch deel, and Gothicdails) goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*dailiz, a derivative of the base *dail-, whichalso produced English dole and ordeal. Theultimate source of this base is not known. Deal‘(plank of) pine’ [14] was borrowed fromMiddle Dutch or Middle Low German dele. DOLE, ORDEALdean [14] Etymologically, a dean is someone incharge of a group of ten people. That was themeaning of its ancestor, Greek dekānós, a wordformed from déka ‘ten’. This eventually came todesignate specifically someone in charge of tenmonks, and this sense passed via late Latindecānus, Old French deien, and Anglo-Normandeen into English as the ‘head of a cathedral’.The modern French descendant of deien, doyen,was reborrowed into English in the 17th century. DOYENdear [OE] Dear is one of the English language’smore semantically stable words. By the 11thcentury it had already developed its two majorpresent-day senses, ‘much-loved’ and‘expensive’, which are shared by its Germanicrelative, German teuer (Dutch has differentiateddier ‘much loved’ from duur ‘expensive’). Allthese words go back to a prehistoric West andNorth Germanic *deurjaz, whose ultimate originis not known. In the 13th century an abstractnoun, dearth, was derived from the adjective. Itseems likely that this originally meant‘expensiveness’ (although instances of thissense, which has since disappeared, are notrecorded before the late 15th century). Thisdeveloped to ‘period when food is expensive,because scarce’, and eventually to ‘scarcity’generally. DEARTHdeath [OE] Like dead, death comes from aGermanic verb base *dau-, which also producedEnglish die. To it was added the abstract nounsuffix *-tus, later *-thuz, meaning ‘act, process,condition’. This produced prehistoric Germanic*dauthuz, source of Gothic dauthus, Old Norsedauthr, and Old English dēath. Its modernEnglish descendant, death, thus means literally‘act or process of dying’, in the same way asbirth means ‘act or process of bearing’ andstrength means ‘condition of being strong’. DEAD, DIEdébâcle [19] A débâcle is etymologically an ‘actof unbarring’, the notion behind it being thatonce a restraining bar is removed, a rush ofdisasters follows. It was borrowed at the start ofthe 19th century (originally in the technicalgeological sense of a ‘sudden violent surge ofwater in a river’) from French, where it was aderivative of débâcler, a verb formed from dé-‘de-, un-’ and bâcler ‘bar’. This was acquiredfrom Provençal baclar ‘bar a door’, which camefrom medieval Latin *bacculāre, a derivative ofLatin bacculus ‘stick’ (responsible also forEnglish bacillus and bacterium). BACILLUS, BACTERIUMdebenture [15] Debenture is simply ananglicization of Latin dēbentur, literally ‘theyare due’, the third person plural present passiveof the verb dēbēre ‘owe’. It supposedly arosefrom the practice of writing debentur on IOUs inthe late Middle Ages. The English wordoriginally signified such IOUs issued by thegovernment or the Crown – certificates ofindebtedness, to give them their formaldesignation – and it was not until the mid-19thcentury that the modern meaning, ‘unsecuredbond backed by the general credit of acompany’, came into use. DEBT, DUE, DUTYdebility [15] Despite the passing similarity,debility has no connection with ability. It comesvia Old French debilite from Latin dēbilitās, aderivative of the adjective dēbilis ‘weak’. Thiswas a compound formed from the prefix de-‘not’ and a second element meaning ‘strong’,represented also in Sanskrit bálam ‘strength’,Greek beltíon ‘better’, and Old Slavic bolij‘larger’ (ultimate source of bolshevik).debt [13] Debt originated as dēbita, the plural ofLatin dēbitum ‘that which is owed’, a nounformed from the past participle of the verbdēbēre ‘owe’. In Vulgar Latin, dēbita wasevidently viewed as a feminine singular noun,and it passed thus into Old French as dette, theform in which English originally acquired theword. From the 13th to the 16th centuries theFrench spelling was latinized as debte, a reformwhich English adopted in the 16th century. In the15th century English independently borrowedLatin dēbitum as debit. (Latin dēbēre ‘owe’,source also of English debenture, due, and duty,was originally a compound verb formed from theprefix dē- ‘away’ and habēre ‘have’, literally‘have away’, that is, ‘keep in one’s possessionwhat belongs to someone else’.) DEBENTURE, DUE, DUTY, ENDEAVOURdecade see DECIMALdecant [17] The word decant depends on ametaphorical connection perceived in theancient world between the ‘corner of someone’seye’ (Greek kānthos) and the ‘lip of a jug’. Onthe basis of this, Latin acquired the word canthus‘lip of a jug’. From this was formed in medievalLatin the verb dēcanthāre ‘pour out’, a wordoriginally used by alchemists to denote thecareful pouring off of a liquid from its sediment.English probably acquired the verb direct fromLatin.decay [15] The notion underlying decay and itsclose relative decadence is of a ‘falling off’ from

a condition of health or perfection. Decay comesfrom Old Northern French decair, a descendantof Vulgar Latin *dēcadere, which in turn camefrom Latin dēcidere, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix dē- ‘down, off, away’ and cadere‘fall’ (source of English case and a wide range ofrelated words). Decadence [16] was acquired viathe medieval derivative dēcadentia.To the same word-family belongs deciduous[17], from Latin dēciduus, literally denoting the‘falling off’ of leaves from trees. ACCIDENT, CASE, CHANCE, DECADENCE,DECIDUOUSdecease see PREDECESSORdeceive [13] Etymologically, to deceivesomeone is to ‘catch’ or ‘ensnare’ them. Theword comes ultimately from Latin dēcipere‘ensnare, take in’, a compound verb formed fromthe pejorative prefix dē- and capere ‘take, seize’(source of English capture and a wide range ofrelated words). It passed into English via OldFrench deceivre and decevoir. English has twonoun derivatives of deceive: deceit [13] comesultimately from the past participle of Old Frenchdecevoir, while deception [14] comes fromdēcept-, the past participial stem of Latindēcipere. CAPABLE, CAPTURE, CONCEIVE, DECEIT,RECEIVEDecember [13] December was originally sonamed by the ancient Romans (Latin December)because it was the tenth month of their calendar(which began with March). The term wasderived from Latin decem ‘ten’. It reachedEnglish via Old French decembre. DECIMAL, TENdecent [16] Decent comes ultimately from Latindecere ‘be fitting or suitable’, close relatives ofwhich have produced decorate, dignity, and(from Greek) orthodox. Its present participialstem decent- was acquired by English, eitherdirectly or via French décent. DAINTY, DECORATE, DIGNITY, ORTHODOXdecide [14] Etymologically, decide denotes aresolving of alternatives or difficulties by cuttingthrough them as if with a knife or a sword –dealing with them ‘at a stroke’. The word comes,perhaps via French décider, from Latin dēcidere,a compound verb formed from the prefix dē-‘off’ and caedere ‘cut, strike’. It is not clearwhere this comes from, although Sanskrit khid-‘press, tear’ has been compared. Its otherdescendants in English include chisel, cement,concise, and scissors. (Other verbs for ‘decide’which contain the basic meaning element ‘cutthrough’ or ‘separate’ include Latin dēcernereand German entscheiden.) CEMENT, CHISEL, CONCISE, EXCISE, INCISION,PRECISE, SCISSORSdeciduous see DECAYdecimal [17] Decimal comes from decimālis, amedieval Latin coinage based on decimus‘tenth’, the ordinal derivative of Latin decem‘ten’ (a relative of English ten). Otherdescendants of decem include December,decimate, dime, and the prefix deci-, while its153 declineGreek cousin déka has given us decade [15] andthe prefix deca-. DECADE, DECEMBER, DECIMATE, DIME, TEN,TITHEdecimate [17] Decimate is a cause célèbreamongst those who apparently believe thatwords should never change their meanings. Theoriginal general signification of its Latin source,the verb decimāre, was the removal ordestruction of one tenth (it was derived fromLatin decem ‘ten’), and it may perhaps strike the20th century as odd to have a particular word forsuch an apparently abstruse operation. It does,however, arise out of two very specificprocedures in the ancient world: the exaction ofa tax of one tenth (for which indeed English hasthe ultimately related word tithe), and thepractice in the Roman army of punishing a bodyof soldiers guilty of some crime such as mutinyby choosing one in ten of them by lot to be put todeath. Modern English does not perhaps havemuch use for a verb with such specializedsenses, but the general notion of impassive andindiscriminate slaughter implied in the Romanmilitary use led, apparently as early as the mid-17th century, to the modern sense ‘kill or destroymost of’. DECIMAL, TENdeck [15] Ultimately, deck (both the noun and theverb) is the same word as thatch. The meaningelement they share is of a ‘covering over thetop’. The noun was borrowed from MiddleDutch dec, which meant ‘covering’ in general,and more specifically ‘roof’ and ‘cloak’ (itsultimate source was Germanic *thakjam, sourceof English thatch). Its modern nautical sense didnot develop in English until the early 16thcentury, and as its antecedents suggest, itsoriginal signification was of a covering, perhapsof canvas or tarpaulin, for a boat. Only graduallyhas the perception of it changed from a roofprotecting what is beneath to a floor for thosewalking above. The word’s application to a packof cards, which dates from the 16th century,perhaps comes from the notion of the cards in apile being on top of one another like thesuccessive decks of a ship.The verb deck [16] comes from Middle Dutchdekken ‘cover’. DETECT, THATCH, TOGAdeclare [14] To declare something is to make it‘clear’. English acquired the word from Latindēclārāre ‘make clear’, a compound verbformed from the intensive prefix dē- and clārāre‘make clear’, a derivative of clārus ‘clear’. CLARET, CLEARdecline [14] The notion underlying decline is of‘bending away’. It comes via Old Frenchdecliner from Latin dēclināre ‘turn aside, godown’, a compound verb formed from the prefixdē-, ‘away, aside’ and clināre ‘bend’, which alsoproduced English incline and recline and isrelated to lean. Its Latin nominal derivativedēclinātiō has bifurcated in English, to producedeclination [14] and, via Old Frenchdeclinaison, declension [15]. The latter is used

decorate 154only in the specialized grammatical sense ‘set ofinflectional endings of a noun’, already presentin Latin, which derives from the concept thatevery inflected form of a word represents a‘falling away’ from its uninflected base form(the same underlying notion appears in the termoblique case ‘any grammatical sense other thanthe nominative or vocative’, and indeed the wordcase itself, whose etymological meaning is‘fall’; and there are perhaps traces of it ininflection, literally ‘bending’). DECLENSION, INCLINE, LEAN, RECLINEdecorate [16] Decorate comes from Latindecorātus, the past participle of decorāre ‘makebeautiful’, a verb derived from decus‘ornament’. Its root, decor-, also produced theadjective decorus ‘beautiful, seemly’, fromwhich English gets decorous [17] and, via itsneuter singular form, decorum [16]. Décor is a19th-century borrowing from French, where itwas a derivative of the verb décorer. From thesame ultimate source come decent and dignity. DECENT, DIGNITY, DECOROUSdecoy [16] Dutch kooi means ‘cage’ (it comesfrom Latin cavea ‘cage’, source of Englishcage). The term came to be applied specificallyto a pond which had been surrounded with netsinto which wildfowl were lured for capture.English took it over, but brought with it theDutch definite article de, so that Dutch de kooi‘the decoy’ became English decoy. CAGEdecrease [14] Etymologically, decrease means‘ungrow’. It comes from de(s)creiss-, the presentstem of Old French de(s)creistre, which was adescendant of Vulgar Latin discrēscēre. Thiswas an alteration of Latin dēcrēscēre, acompound verb formed from the prefix dē-,denoting reversal of a previous condition, andcrēscēre ‘grow’ (source of English crescent anda wide range of other words). CRESCENT, CROISSANT, INCREASEdecree see DISCERNdecrepit [15] The underlying meaning ofdecrepit is ‘cracked’. It comes from Latindēcrepitus, an adjective formed (with theintensive prefix dē-) from the past participle ofcrepāre ‘creak, rattle, crack’ (ultimate sourcealso of English crepitation, crevice, andprobably craven).dedicate see INDICATEdeedeed [OE] Etymologically, a deed is ‘that whichis done’. An ancient word, it can be traced backas far as a hypothetical *dhētis, a noun derivedfrom *dhē-, *dhō- ‘place, put’, the Indo-European base from which do comes. Thispassed into Germanic as *dǣdiz, whichproduced German tat, Dutch daad, and Swedishdåad as well as English deed. The word’sapplication to a legal document is a 14th-centurydevelopment. DOpolldeed poll [16] Contrary to what the term’smodern pronunciation might seem to suggest,with the main stress on its first element ratherthan its second, a deed poll is a sort of deed, nota sort of poll. It originally referred to a legaldocument made and signed by one person only.Such documents were drawn up on parchmentcut evenly, or ‘polled’, rather than indented, aswas the case with documents relating to two ormore people.deep [OE] Deep is a member of a quite extensiveand heterogeneous family of English words. Itcomes from a prehistoric Germanic *deupaz(source also of German tief, Dutch diep, andSwedish djup), which was a derivative of thebase *d(e)u- ‘deep, hollow’. This may also havebeen the ancestor of the first syllable of dabchick‘little grebe’ [16] (which would thus meanliterally ‘diving duck’), while a nasalizedversion of it may underlie dimple. It produceddip, and a variant has given us dive. DABCHICK, DIMPLE, DIP, DIVEdeer [OE] In Old English, dēor meant ‘animal’ ingeneral, as opposed to ‘human being’ (as itsmodern Germanic relatives, German tier, Dutchdier, and Swedish djur, still do). Apparentlyconnected forms in some other Indo-Europeanlanguages, such as Lithuanian dusti ‘gasp’ andChurch Slavonic dychati ‘breathe’, suggest thatit comes via a prehistoric Germanic *deuzomfrom Indo-European *dheusóm, which meant‘creature that breathes’ (English animal andSanskrit prānin- ‘living creature’ have similarsemantic origins). Traces of specialization inmeaning to ‘deer’ occur as early as the 9thcentury (although the main Old English word for‘deer’ was heorot, source of modern Englishhart), and during the Middle English period itbecame firmly established, driving out ‘animal’by the 15th century.defalcate [15] Defalcate comes from medievalLatin dēfalcāre ‘cut off’, a compound verbformed from the prefix dē- ‘off’ and falx ‘sickle’(source of French faux ‘scythe’). At first it meantsimply ‘deduct’ in English; the modern legalsense ‘embezzle’ did not develop until the 19thcentury.defame [14] The main source of defame(originally, in Middle English, diffame) is OldFrench diffamer, which came from Latindiffāmāre ‘spread damaging rumours about’, acompound verb formed from the prefix dis-,denoting ‘ruination’, and fāma ‘report, fame’(source of English fame). FAMEdefeat [14] Etymologically, to defeat someone isliterally to ‘undo’ them. The verb comes fromAnglo–Norman defeter, a derivative of the noundefet. This in turn came from Old French desfait,the past participle of the verb desfaire. This wasa descendant of medieval Latin disfacere,literally ‘undo’, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix dis-, denoting reversal, and Latinfacere ‘do, make’. Its original metaphoricalextension was to ‘ruination’ or ‘destruction’, andthe now central sense ‘conquer’ is not recordedin English before the 16th century.

A classical Latin combination of facere withthe prefix dē- rather than dis- produced defect,deficient, and deficit. DEFECT, DEFICIENT, DEFICITdefect see DEFICIENTdefend [13] Defend comes via Old Frenchdefendre from Latin dēfendere ‘ward off’, acompound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘off,away’ and an element that survives elsewhereonly in other compound forms (represented inEnglish by offend). It has been suggested thatthis is related to Sanskrit han- ‘strike’ and OldEnglish gūth ‘battle’, and that it can be tracedultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European*gwendh-. Defend had not long becomeestablished in English when it produced theoffspring fend, dispensing with the first syllable.This in turn formed the basis of the derivativesfender [15] and forfend [14]. Fence likewisecomes from defence. FENCE, FENDdefer English has two distinct verbs defer. Theone meaning ‘delay’ [14] is ultimately the samewords as differ. It comes via Old French differerfrom Latin differre ‘carry apart, delay’, acompound verb formed from the prefix dis-‘apart’ and ferre ‘carry’ (related to Englishbear). The Latin verb’s past participle, dīlātus, isthe source of English dilatory [15]. Defer‘submit’ [15] comes via Old French deferer fromLatin dēferre ‘carry away’, a compound verbformed from the prefix dē- ‘away’ and ferre. Thenotion of submission seems to have arisen froman earlier application to referring, or ‘carrying’,a matter to someone else. BEAR, DILATORYdeficient [16] Deficient was acquired from Latindēficient-, the present participial stem of dēficere‘undo, fail, leave, be lacking’, a compound verbformed from the prefix dē- ‘away’ and facere‘do, make’ (a parallel formation lies behindEnglish defeat). The past participial stem of theLatin verb, dēfect-, produced English defect[15], while its third person present singulardēficit was borrowed by English as deficit. DEFEAT, DEFECT, DEFICITdefile Defile ‘make dirty’ [14] and defile ‘narrowpass’ [17] are distinct words in English. Theformer has a rather complex history. It wasoriginally acquired in the 13th century as defoul,borrowed from Old French defouler ‘trampledown, injure’; this was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix de- ‘down’ and fouler ‘tread’,which in turn goes back via Vulgar Latin *fullāreto Latin fullō ‘person who cleans and thickenscloth by stamping on it’, source of English fuller[OE]. In the 14th century defoul started to turninto defile under the influence of thesynonymous (and now obsolete) befile [OE], acompound verb derived ultimately from theadjective foul. Defile ‘narrow pass’ wasborrowed from French défilé, originally the pastparticiple of défiler, a compound verb based onfiler ‘march in a column’ (which is a closerelative of English file). FULLER; FILE155 delaydefine see FINEdefunct [16] The -funct in defunct is the sameultimately as that in function and perfunctory. Itcomes from the past participle of Latin fungī‘perform, discharge’. In combination with theintensive prefix dē- this produced dēfunctus‘discharged, finished’, hence ‘dead’, which wasborrowed directly into English. FUNCTION, PERFUNCTORYdefy [14] The underlying notion of defy is of therenunciation of allegiance. It comes via OldFrench defier from a Vulgar Latin *disfidāre‘renounce one’s faith’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix dis-, denoting reversal, and Latinfīdus ‘trusting’. This adjective came from alengthened variant of the stem which producedfidēs ‘faith’, source of English faith. The word’scurrent main sense represents a slight shift from‘being disloyal’ to actively ‘challengingsomeone’s power’. The verb’s noun derivativedefiance [14], borrowed from Old French, has afirst cousin in diffidence [15], originally‘distrustfulness’, which came from the classicalLatin compound verb diffidere ‘mistrust’. DIFFIDENCE, FAITHdegree [13] Etymologically, degree means ‘stepdown’, a sense revealed more clearly in itsrelative degrade [14]. It comes via Old Frenchdegre from Vulgar Latin *dēgradus, a compoundnoun formed from the prefix dē- ‘down’ andgradus ‘step’ (source of English gradual and awide range of other words). The word’s modernmeanings, such as ‘academic rank’ and ‘unit oftemperature’, come from an underlying abstractnotion of a hierarchy of steps or ranks. Degraderepresents a parallel but distinct formation,originally coined as ecclesiastical Latindēgradāre and passed into English via OldFrench degrader. DEGRADE, GRADUAL, PROGRESSdeign see DISDAINdeity [14] Deity comes via Old French deite fromlate Latin deitās ‘godhood, divinity’, a derivativeof Latin deus ‘god’. This traces its ancestry backto Indo-European *deiwos, which has links withother words meaning ‘sky’ and ‘day’ andprobably comes ultimately from a base with thesense ‘bright, shining’. Amongst its otherdescendants are English divine, thepersonifications Greek Zeus, Latin Iuppiter andIovis (source of English jovial), and Old EnglishTīw (source of English Tuesday), and Sanskritdēvás ‘god’ (source of English deodar ‘varietyof cedar’ [19], literally ‘divine wood’); thesuperficially similar Greek theós ‘god’,however, is not related. English is also indebtedto Latin deus for deify [14] and, via a somewhatcircuitous route, the joss [18] of joss-stick, aPidgin English word which comes from deos,the Portuguese descendant of deus. DIVINE, JOSS, JOVIAL, TUESDAYdelay [13] English acquired delay from OldFrench delaier, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix de- ‘off’ and laier ‘leave’. This verb,which also crops up in English relay, appears tohave been a variant of laissier (source of English

delegate 156lease), which came from Latin laxāre ‘slacken,undo’. This in turn was derived from theadjective laxus ‘loose’. LAX, LEASE, RELAYdelegate see LEGALdeliberate see DELIVERdelicate [14] Delicate comes either from OldFrench delicat or direct from its source, Latindēlicātus, but its ultimate history is obscure. Itsformal similarity to delicious and delight, andthe fact that ‘addicted to pleasure’ was one of themeanings of Latin dēlicātus, suggest that thethree words may have an ancestor in common.Delicatessen [19] was borrowed from Germandelikatessen, plural of delikatesse ‘delicacy’,which in turn was acquired by German fromFrench délicatesse. DELICATESSENdelicious [13] The underlying meaning ofdelicious is ‘tempting, luring one aside from thestraight and narrow’. It comes via Old Frenchdelicious from late Latin dēliciōsus, a derivativeof Latin dēlicia ‘delight’. This in turn wasformed from dēlicere ‘entice away’, a compoundverb made from the prefix dē- ‘away’ and lacere‘lure, deceive’ (source also of English elicit andrelated to lace, lasso, and possibly latch). Latindēlectāre, a derivative of dēlicere denotingrepeated action, produced Old French delit,source of English delight [13], and Italiandilettante, literally ‘lover’, borrowed by Englishin the 18th century in the positive sense‘someone who takes delight in fine art’. DELIGHT, DILETTANTE, ELICIT, LACE, LASSOdelinquent see RELICdelirious see LASTdeliverdeliver [13] To deliver something isetymologically to ‘set it free’. The word comesvia Old French delivrer from late Latindēlīberāre, a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix dē- and Latin līberāre ‘set free’,a derivative of the adjective līber ‘free’. Itsmeaning developed through ‘set free’ to ‘giveup, surrender’ and finally ‘hand over to someoneelse’. (Classical Latin dēlīberāre, source ofEnglish deliberate [15], is an entirely differentverb, derived from Latin lībra ‘scales’.) LIBERATEdell see DALEdelphinium see DOLPHINdelta [16] Delta was the fourth letter of the Greekalphabet, corresponding to English d. Its capitalform was written in the shape of a tall triangle,and already in the ancient world the word wasbeing applied metaphorically to the triangulardeposit of sand, mud, etc which forms at themouth of rivers (the Greek historian Herodotus,for instance, used it with reference to the mouthof the Nile). Greek acquired the word itself fromsome Semitic language; it is related to dāleth,the name of the fourth letter of the Hebrewalphabet.deluge see LAVATORYdelusiondelusion see ILLUSIONdemagogue [17] A demagogue is literally a‘leader of the people’. The word representsGreek demagōgós, a compound formed fromdemos ‘common people’ and agōgós ‘leader’.(This was derived from ágein ‘drive, lead’, averb related to Latin agere ‘do’, and hence to itshost of English descendants, from act toprodigal.) In ancient Greece the term wasapplied particularly to a set of unofficial leadersdrawn from the common people who controlledthe government of Athens in the 4th century BC,and whose irresponsible rule (as their critics sawit) has given demagogue a bad name ever since. ACT, AGENTdemand [13] Latin dēmandāre meant ‘entrustsomething to someone’. It was a compound verbformed from the intensive prefix dē- andmandāre ‘entrust, commit’ (source of Englishmandate). As it passed via Old French demanderinto English, its meaning developed to ‘givesomeone the responsibility of doing something’,and finally ‘order’. MANDATEdemarcation [18] As its form and meaningwould suggest, demarcation is indeed related tomark, but only in a distinctly roundabout way.The word comes, possibly via French, fromSpanish demarcación, a derivative of the verbdemarcar ‘mark out the boundaries of’, which inturn is descended ultimately from the sameprehistoric Germanic ancestor as English mark‘sign, trace’. It originally came into English invery specific application to the boundary linebetween the Spanish and Portuguese spheres ofinfluence in the New World, as laid down byPope Alexander VI in a bull of 4 May 1493. InSpanish this was the linea de demarcación (inPortuguese, linha de demarcação). By themiddle of the 18th century the word was beingused in English in much more general contexts.The familiar modern phrase demarcationdispute, relating to inter-union squabbles, datesfrom the 1930s.demeanour [15] A person’s demeanour is howthey ‘conduct’ themselves. The word goes backultimately to the literal notion of driving animalsalong. It is a derivative of the now virtuallyobsolete reflexive verb demean ‘behave’,borrowed in the 13th century from Old Frenchdemener. This was a compound formed from theintensive prefix de- and mener ‘lead’, adescendant of Latin mināre ‘drive a herd ofanimals’ (whose original connotation of ‘urgingon with threats’ is revealed by its closerelationship with minārī ‘threaten’, source ofEnglish menace).This obsolete demean should not,incidentally, be confused with demean ‘degrade’[17], which was formed from the adjectivemean. MENACEdemerit [14] A demerit may be virtually theopposite of a merit, but the word was not formed,as might be supposed, by adding the prefix de-,denoting oppositeness or reversal, to merit. Itsdistant ancestor was Latin demeritum, from the

verb demereri ‘deserve’, where the de- prefixmeant not ‘opposite of’ but ‘completely’ (as itdoes too in, for example, denude and despoil).Add this de- to mereri ‘deserve’ and you get‘deserve thoroughly’. However, at some point inthe Middle Ages the prefix began to bereinterpreted as ‘opposite’, and medieval Latindemeritum came to mean ‘fault’ – the sense thatreached English via French démérite.demesne [14] Ultimately, demesne is the sameword as domain. It comes via Old Frenchdemeine from Latin dominicus, an adjectivemeaning ‘of a lord’ (see DOMINION), and henceetymologically means ‘land belonging to a lord’.Under the feudal system it denoted land retainedby the lord for his own use, rather than let out totenants. The -s- was inserted into the word inAnglo-Norman, partly as a graphic device toindicate a long vowel and partly throughassociation with Old French mesnie‘household’, which came ultimately from Latinmansio ‘place to stay’ (source of Englishmansion). DAME, DANGER, DOMAIN, DOMINIONdemijohn [18] Demijohn ‘large globular bottle’has no connection with half of the common maleforename. It arose through a process known asfolk etymology, by which an unfamiliar orslightly outlandish foreign word isdeconstructed and then reassembled usingsimilar-sounding elements in the host language.In this case the source was French dame-jeanne,literally ‘Lady Jane’, a term used in French forsuch a container since the 17th century.demise see DISMISSdemocracydemocracy [16] Democracy means literally‘government by the populace at large’. It comesvia Old French democratie and medieval Latindēmocratia from Greek dēmokratíā, acompound formed from demos ‘people’ and-kratíā ‘rule’, a derivative of the noun krátos‘power, authority’, which has contributed anumber of terms for types of government toEnglish. The original meaning of Greek demoswas ‘district, land’, but eventually it came todenote the people living in such a district,particularly the ordinary people considered as asocial class participating in government – hencedemocracy. The derivative democrat [18] wascoined in French at the time of the Revolution. EPIDEMICdemolish [16] To demolish something isetymologically to ‘deconstruct’ it. The wordcomes from demoliss-, the stem of Old Frenchdemolir, which in turn came from Latin dēmōlīrī‘throw down, demolish’. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix dē-, denotingreversal of a previous condition, and mōlīrī,which among other things meant ‘build,construct’. This was a derivative of mōles ‘mass,huge mass, massive structure’ (source of Englishmole ‘harbour wall’ and molecule). MOLE, MOLECULEdemon [14] English acquired this word fromLatin in two forms, classical Latin daemōn andmedieval Latin dēmōn, which were once used157 denimfairly interchangeably for ‘evil spirit’ but havenow split apart. Demon retains the sense ‘evilspirit’, but this was in fact a relatively latesemantic development. Greek daímōn (source ofLatin daemōn) meant ‘divine power, fate, god’(it is probably related to Greek daíomai‘distribute, allot’, which comes from an Indo-European base whose descendants includeEnglish tide and time). It was used in Greekmyths as a term for a minor deity, and it was alsoapplied to a ‘guiding spirit’ (senses now usuallydenoted by daemon in English). It seems to befrom this latter usage that the sense ‘evil spirit’(found in the Greek Septuagint and NewTestament and in the Latin Vulgate) arose. PANDEMONIUM, TIME, TIDEdemonstrate see MONSTERdemur [13] Like its French cousin demeurer,demur originally meant ‘stay, linger’. It was notuntil the 17th century that the current sense,‘raise objections’, developed, via earlier ‘delay’and ‘hesitate in uncertainty’. The word comesvia Old French demorer and Vulgar Latin*dēmorāre from Latin dēmorārī, a compoundverb formed from the intensive prefix dē- andmorārī ‘delay’ (source also of Englishmoratorium [19]). DEMURE, MORATORIUMdemure [14] Etymologically, someone who isdemure is quiet and settled, not agitated. Theword comes from demore, the past participle ofOld French demorer ‘stay’ (source of Englishdemur), and so semantically is a parallelformation to staid. One of its earliest recordeduses in English was actually to describe the seaas ‘calm’, and it was not until the late 17thcentury that its modern slightly pejorativeconnotations of coyness began to emerge. DEMURden [OE] Related forms such as German tenne‘threshing floor’ and possibly Greek thenar‘palm of the hand’ suggest that the underlyingmeaning of den may be ‘flat area’. Old Englishdenn denoted ‘wild animal’s lair’, perhaps withreference to animals’ flattening an area ofvegetation to form a sleeping place. Dean [OE],a word for ‘valley’ now surviving only in placenames,comes from the same source.denigrate [16] To denigrate people is literally to‘blacken’ them. The word comes from Latindēnigrāre ‘blacken’, a compound verb formedfrom the intensive prefix dē- and niger ‘black’.This adjective, which is of unknown origin, alsoproduced French noir ‘black’ and Italian nero‘black’, and is the source (via Spanish negro) ofEnglish negro [16] and the now taboo nigger[18]. Denigrate originally meant ‘physicallyturn something black’ as well as themetaphorical ‘defame, belittle’: ‘This lotion willdenigrate the hairs of hoary heads’, RichardTomlinson, Renodaeus’ Medicinal dispensatory1657. NEGRO, NIGGERdenim [17] The name of the fabric from whichjeans are made had its origins in a sort of sergeproduced in the southern French town of Nîmes.

denizen 158The French naturally enough called it serge deNîmes, but the original meaning of this soonbecame lost when English borrowed it as sergede Nim, and the last two words came to be runtogether as denim.denizen [15] Etymologically, denizen means‘someone who is inside’, and it is related toFrench dans ‘in’. It comes from Anglo-Normandeinzein, a derivative of Old French deinz‘inside’. This had grown out of the Latin phrasedē intus, literally ‘from inside’. Hence denizen’soriginal meaning of someone who lives ‘in’ acountry, as opposed to a foreigner. In the 16thand 17th centuries the verb denize existed,coined by back-formation from denizen; it meantroughly the same as modern English naturalize.denouement [18] A denouement is literally an‘untying of a knot’. It was borrowed from French(its first recorded use in English is by LordChesterfield in one of his famous letters to hisson (1752)), where it was a derivative of dénouer‘undo’. This was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix dé- ‘un-’ and nouer ‘tie’, which cameultimately from Latin nōdus ‘knot’ (source ofEnglish newel, node, nodule, and noose). NEWEL, NODE, NODULE, NOOSEdenounce see PRONOUNCEdent see DINTdentist [18] Dentist was borrowed from Frenchdentiste, and at first was ridiculed as a highfalutinforeign term: ‘Dentist figures it now inour newspapers, and may do well enough for aFrench puffer; but we fancy Rutter is contentwith being called a tooth-drawer’, EdinburghChronicle 15 September 1759. It was aderivative of French dent ‘tooth’, which goesback via Latin dēns to an Indo-European base*dont-, *dent-, source also of English tooth.Other English descendants of Latin dēns includedental [16] and denture [19]. INDENT, TOOTHdeny see RENEGADEdeodar see DEITYdepart [13] Depart originally meant ‘divide’.This was the sense of its ultimate Latin ancestordispertīre, literally ‘separate up into constituentparts’, a compound verb formed from the prefixdis-, denoting separation, and partīre ‘divide,distribute’, a derivative of the noun pars ‘part’. Itpassed into English via Vulgar Latin *dēpartīreand Old French departir, by which time thenotions of ‘division’ and ‘separation’ hadalready produced the intransitive sense ‘goaway’. PARTdepartment [15] English has borroweddepartment from French département on twocompletely separate occasions. Originally, inlate Middle English, it was used for ‘departure’,but this died out in the mid-17th century. Then inthe 18th century it was re-acquired in thedifferent sense ‘distinct division’; Dr Johnson, inhis Dictionary 1755, dismisses it as a Frenchterm.depend [15] To depend on something is literallyto ‘hang down’ from it. The word comes, via OldFrench dependre, from Latin dēpendēre, acompound verb formed from the prefix dē-‘down’ and pendēre ‘hang’ (source of Englishpendant, pendulum, penthouse, and a host ofderivatives from appendix to suspend). Itsoriginal literal sense survives in English, just, asa conscious archaism, but essentially themetaphorical extensions ‘be contingent’ (echoedin the parallel use of hang on) and ‘rely’ havetaken the verb over. APPENDIX, PENDENT, PENDULUM, PENTHOUSE,SUSPENDdepict see PICTUREdepilatory see PILEdeplete see FULLdeplore see EXPLOREdeploy see DISPLAYdeport see PORTdepot [18] A depot is literally a ‘place wheresomething is deposited’, a ‘depository’. Theword comes, via French dépôt, from Latindēpositum (source of English deposit [17]), thepast participle of dēpōnere ‘put down’. This wasa compound verb formed from the prefix dē-‘down’ and pōnere ‘put, place’ (source ofEnglish position), and also produced Englishdepose [13] and deponent [15]. DEPONENT, DEPOSE, DEPOSIT, POSITIONdeprecate see PRAYdepreciate see PRICEdepredation see PREYdepress see PRESSdeprive see PRIVATEdepth [14] Depth is not as old as it looks. Similarnouns, such as length and strength, existed inOld English, but depth, like breadth, is a muchlater creation. In Old English the nouns denoting‘quality of being deep’ were dīepe and dēopnes‘deepness’. DEEPdeputy [16] A deputy is literally ‘someone whohas been deputed to act on someone else’sbehalf’. It represents a reformulation of theMiddle English noun depute. This was borrowedfrom the past participle of Old French deputer(source of the English verb depute [15] andhence of deputation [16]), which in turn camefrom late Latin dēputāre ‘assign, allot’. Inclassical times this meant literally ‘cut off’ (itwas a compound verb formed from the prefix dē-‘off’ and putāre, which meant ‘cut’ – as inamputate – as well as ‘esteem, consider, reckon,think’ – as in compute, dispute, impute, andrepute). AMPUTATE, COMPUTE, COUNT, DISPUTE, IMPUTE,PUTATIVE, REPUTEderive [14] Like rival, derive comes ultimatelyfrom Latin rīvus ‘stream’. This was used as thebasis of a verb dērīvāre, formed with the prefixdē- ‘away’, which originally designated literallythe ‘drawing off of water from a source’. Thissense was subsequently generalized to ‘divert’,and extended figuratively to ‘derive’ (a metaphor

eminiscent of spring from). English acquiredthe word via Old French deriver. RIVALderrick [16] Around the end of the 16th centurythere was a famous Tyburn hangman calledDerick. His name came to be used as apersonification of hangmen in general, andsubsequently as a metaphor for the ‘gallows’.Gradually, however, these macabre associationswere lost, and by the 18th century derrick hadprogressed in meaning to ‘hoisting apparatus’.derring-do [16] Derring-do arose from amisunderstanding of the Middle English phrasedorring do, which literally meant ‘daring to do’(dorren was the Middle English form of dare). Insome 16th-century editions of medieval authorsthis was misprinted as derring do. The poetEdmund Spenser came across it and used itseveral times in his often deliberately archaicverse – but as a noun, meaning ‘boldness’, ratherthan as the verbal phrase it actually was: ‘a manof mickle name, renowned much in arms andderring do’, Faerie Queene 1596. Spenser’susage was picked up and popularized by SirWalter Scott in the early 19th century. DAREdescant [14] Etymologically, descant is aparallel formation to English part song. Englishacquired it via Old French deschant frommedieval Latin discantus ‘refrain’, a compoundnoun formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ andcantus ‘song’. The notion originally underlyingit is of a separate vocal line ‘apart’ from the mainmusical theme. The Middle English form of theword was deschaunt; descant represents a partial16th-century reversion to Latin discantus. CANTO, CHANTdescend [13] Etymologically, descend means‘climb down’. Like its opposite, ascend [14], itcomes ultimately from Latin scandere ‘climb’,which also produced English scan and scansionand is related to echelon, escalate, scale ‘set ofgraduated marks’, scandal, and slander. TheLatin verb was a product of the Indo-Europeanbase *skand- ‘jump’. ASCEND, ECHELON, ESCALATE, SCALE, SCAN,SCANDAL, SLANDERdescribe [15] To describe something is literallyto ‘write it down’. The word comes from Latindēscrībere, a compound verb formed from theprefix dē- ‘down’ and scrībere ‘write’ (source ofEnglish scribe, script, etc). English originallyborrowed it via Old French descrivre in the 13thcentury as descrive, in which the metaphoricalsense ‘give an account of’ had alreadydeveloped, and this was grafted on to the Latinverb when it was reborrowed directly in the 15thcentury. The derivative nondescript was coined(originally as a term in biological classification)in the 17th century. ASCRIBE, SCRIBE, SCRIPTdesert English has three distinct words desert,which come from two separate sources. Desert‘what one deserves’ [13] (now usually used inthe plural) is related, as its meaning suggests, tothe verb deserve. It comes from Old French159 deskdesert or deserte, which were formed from thepast participle of deservir ‘deserve’. (Dessert‘sweet course’ [17] is its first cousin, comingfrom French desservir ‘clear the table’ – literally‘unserve’ – a compound verb formed, likedeserve, from the verb serve but with the prefixdis- rather than de-.)The noun desert ‘barren region’ [13] and theverb desert ‘abandon’ [15] both come ultimatelyfrom dēsertus, the past participle of Latindēserere ‘abandon’. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix dē- denoting reversal andserere ‘join’ (a derivative of which gave English‘serried ranks’). SERVE; SERRIEDdeserve [13] Latin dēservīre meant ‘serve wellor enthusiastically’ (it was a compound verbformed from the intensive prefix dē- and servīre‘serve’). Hence in late Latin it came to mean‘become entitled to because of meritoriousservice’, a sense which passed via Old Frenchdeservir into English. The more general modernEnglish ‘be worthy of’ developed in the 15thcentury. SERVEdesiccate see SACKdesign [16] The semantic history of design is alittle complicated. It comes ultimately from thepast participle of Latin dēsignāre ‘mark out’(source also of English designate [15]), acompound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘out’and signāre ‘mark’, a derivative of signum‘sign’. But English acquired it largely viaFrench, in which a three-way split of form andmeaning had taken place. In both respectsdésigner ‘point out, denote’ remains closest tothe original Latin, but this use of the word hasnow died out in English, having been taken overby designate. This has left the field open to themetaphorical use ‘plan’, represented in Frenchon the one hand by dessein ‘purpose, intention’and on the other by dessin ‘pattern, drawing’ andits related verb dessiner. They represent the twomain areas of meaning covered by the word inmodern English, although English has stuck tothe more latinate spelling. DESIGNATE, SIGNdesire [13] The underlying etymologicalmeaning of desire is something of a mystery.Like consider, it comes ultimately from a baserelated to Latin sīdus ‘star’, but the links in thesemantic chain that would lead us back from‘desire’ to ‘star’ have not all been successfullyreconstructed. It does at least seem, though, thatbefore the word denoted ‘wanting’, it signified‘lack’. English acquired it via Old Frenchdesirer, but has also gone back directly to thepast participle of Latin dēsīderāre fordesideratum ‘something desirable’ [17]. CONSIDER, SIDEREALdesist see STATUEdesk [14] Desk, disc, dish, and dais – strangebedfellows semantically – form a little gang ofwords going back ultimately, via Latin discus, toGreek dískos ‘quoit’. Desk seems perhaps theleast likely descendant of ‘quoit’, but it came

desolate 160about like this: Latin discus was usedmetaphorically, on the basis of its circular shape,for a ‘tray’ or ‘platter, dish’; and when such atray was set on legs, it became a table. (Germantisch ‘table’ comes directly from Vulgar Latin inthis sense.) By the time English acquired it frommedieval Latin it seems already to havedeveloped the specialized meaning ‘table forwriting or reading on’. DAIS, DISC, DISHdesolate see SOLEdespair [14] Etymologically, despair is literally‘lack of hope’. The word comes via Old Frenchdesperer from Latin dēspērāre, a compoundverb formed from the prefix dē-, denotingreversal, and spērāre, a derivative of the nounspēs ‘hope’. Its past participle, dēspērātus,produced English desperate [15], from whichdesperado is a 17th-century mock-Spanishcoinage. DESPERATEdespond [17] Latin had a phrase animamdēspondēre, literally ‘give up one’s soul’, hence‘lose heart’. The verb dēspondēre came to beused on its own in this sense, and was borrowedthus by English. It was a compound verb, formedfrom the prefix dē- ‘away’ and spondēre‘promise’ (source of English sponsor,spontaneous, spouse, respond, and riposte), andoriginally meant ‘promise to give away’, hence‘give up’. RESPOND, RIPOSTE, SPONSOR, SPONTANEOUS,SPOUSEdespot [16] The ultimate source of despot isGreek despótēs ‘lord’. It is related to Sanskritdampati ‘master of the house’, and bothprobably go back to an Indo-Europeancompound formed from *domo- ‘house’ (sourceof Latin domus ‘house’, and hence of Englishdomestic) and another element related to Latinpotis ‘able’ and English power. (Latin dominus‘lord’, a derivative of domus ‘house’ andoriginally meaning ‘master of the house’, is asemantically parallel formation.) Greek despótēswas used for ‘lord, master’ or ‘ruler’ in variouscontexts, with no particular pejorativeconnotation (in modern Greek it means‘bishop’). But most rulers in ancient timesenjoyed absolute power, and so eventually theword (which entered English via medieval Latindespota and early modern French despot) cameto mean ‘tyrannical ruler’; this sense becamefirmly established at the time of the FrenchRevolution. DOMESTIC, DOMINIONdessert see DESERTdestiny [14] Etymologically, one’s destiny isthat which has been firmly established ordetermined for one (as if by fate). The wordcomes from destinee, the Old French descendantof Latin dēstinātus. This was the past participleof dēstināre ‘make firm, establish’, a compoundverb formed from the intensive prefix dē- and*stanāre ‘fix’ (source also of English obstinate).This in turn was a derivative of stare ‘stand’, arelative of English stand. The Latin verb alsogave English destine [14] and hence destination[15], whose current use comes from an earlierplace of destination ‘place for which one isbound’. DESTINATION, OBSTINATE, STANDdestitute see STATUEdestroy [13] As in the case of demolish, todestroy something is almost literally to ‘unbuild’it. The word comes via Old Frenchdestruire from *dēstrūgere, a Vulgar Latinalteration of Latin dēstrūere. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix dē-,denoting reversal of a previous state, and strūere‘pile up, build’ (source of English construct andstructure). Its past participle, dēstructus, hasproduced English destruction [14], destructive[15], and the verb destruct (recorded once in the17th century but revived in the 1950s by backformationfrom destruction). CONSTRUCT, DESTRUCTION, STRUCTUREdesultory [16] Latin dēsultor designated acircus trick-rider who jumped from the back ofone horse to another while they were gallopingalong (it was a derivative of dēsilīre, a compoundverb formed from dē- ‘down’ and salīre ‘jump’,source of or related to English assail, assault,insult, salacious, salient, and sally). From it wasderived an adjective dēsultōrius ‘jumping fromone thing to another like a dēsultor’, hence‘superficial’, and eventually ‘unmethodical,irregular’, the sense which survives in English. ASSAIL, ASSAULT, INSULT, SALACIOUS, SALIENTdetail [17] Etymologically, a detail is a ‘littlepiece cut off’. It comes from French détail, aderivative of détailler ‘cut up’. This was acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixdé- and tailler ‘cut’ (a relative of English tailorand tally). English acquired the word via theFrench phrase en détail ‘piece by piece, item byitem’, source of the central modern meaning‘individual item, particular’. TAILOR, TALLYdetect see PROTECTdétente [20] English originally acquired thisword from French in the 17th century as detent,which denotes a catch that regulates themovement of a clock. French détente, whichoriginally signified a device for releasing acrossbow string, came from the past participle ofOld French destendre ‘release’, a compoundverb formed from the prefix des- ‘apart’ andtendre ‘stretch’ (related to English tension). ButEnglish-speakers, mistakenly associating it withdetain [15] (a verb of completely differentorigin, via Old French detenir from Latindētinēre ‘keep back’) completely reversed itsmeaning, applying to a restraining catch ratherthan a releasing one.French, the language of diplomacy, re-lentdétente to English in the first decade of the 20thcentury in the sense ‘relaxation of internationaltension’. TENSIONdeter see TERRORdetergent [17] A detergent is literallysomething that ‘wipes away’. The word comes

from dētergent-, the present participial stem ofLatin dētergēre, a compound verb formed fromdē- ‘away’ and tergēre ‘wipe’ (its past participleproduced English terse). English detergentoriginally meant simply ‘cleansing agent’ (usedparticularly in a medical or surgical context); thespecific application to a cleanser made fromsynthetic chemical compounds (as opposed tosoap, which is made from fats and lye) is a 20thcenturydevelopment. TERSEdeteriorate [16] The meaning of deteriorateresides etymologically in its first syllable, whichrepresents the Latin preposition dē ‘down’. Tothis was added the adjectival suffix -ter, toproduce *dēter ‘bad’, and this in turn wasmodified with the comparative suffix -ior todēterior ‘worse’. Dēterior formed the basis ofthe verb dēteriorāre ‘get worse’, source ofEnglish deteriorate.determine [14] The central meaning ofdetermine is ‘fix a limit to’, as in ‘determine thescope of an enquiry’. It comes via Old Frenchdeterminer from Latin dētermināre, a compoundverb formed from the prefix dē- ‘off’ andtermināre ‘limit’ (source of English terminate).Its connotations of ‘firm resolve’, a 17th-centurydevelopment, came via an intermediate sense‘come to a firm decision on’. TERMINATEdetest [16] Latin dētestārī, source of detest,meant ‘denounce’. It was a compound verbformed from the pejorative prefix dē- and testārī‘bear witness’. This in turn was a derivative oftestis ‘witness’, source of English testify,testimony, and testicle. It retained its originalsense of ‘cursing’ or ‘execration’ when firstborrowed into English, but by the 18th centurythis had weakened from open denunciation tointernal ‘loathing’. TESTICLE, TESTIFY, TESTIMONYdetonate [18] Detonate is related to thunder. Itcomes from the past participle of Latin dētonāre,a compound verb formed from the prefix dē-‘down’ and tonāre ‘thunder, roar’, which goesback to the same Indo-European base (*ten-,*ton-) as thunder. Latin dētonāre never actuallymeant ‘cause to explode’, though; that sensecomes from its French descendant détoner. THUNDERdetriment [15] Etymologically, detrimentdenotes damage caused by ‘wearing away’. Theword comes via Old French from Latindētrīmentum, a derivative of dēterere ‘wearaway’ (whose past participle is the source ofEnglish detritus [18]). This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix dē- ‘away’ andterere ‘rub’ (from which English gets attritionand trite). The generalized metaphorical sense‘harm’ had already developed in classical Latin. ATTRITION, DETRITUS, TRITEdeuce [15] The underlying meaning of deuceemerges most clearly in its application to playingcards and dice: the number two. It comes fromOld French deus ‘two’, which goes back to duōs,the accusative case of Latin duo ‘two’ (English161 deviltwo comes ultimately from the same source). Itsuse in tennis comes from the French phrase àdeux, literally ‘at two’, which signifies that aplayer must score two successive points to win agame. It is generally thought that the mild oathdeuce came from duus, the Low Germandescendant of Latin duōs, which gamblerssupposedly cried out in disgust when they threwthe lowest score, a two.devastate [17] Etymologically as well assemantically, devastate is related to ‘lay waste’.It comes from the past participle of Latindēvāstāre, a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix dē- and vāstāre ‘lay waste’. Thiswas a derivative of vāstus ‘waste’, source ofEnglish waste. VAST, WASTEdevelop [17] The history of develop and its closerelative envelop is hazy. English acquired it fromdévelopper, the modern French descendant ofOld French desveloper. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix des- ‘un-’ andvoloper ‘wrap’. But where did voloper comefrom? Some have proposed a hypothetical Celticbase *vol- ‘roll’, while others have pointed tosimilarities, formal and semantic, with Italianviluppo ‘bundle’ and viluppare ‘wrap’, whichcome from an assumed late Latin *faluppa‘husk’. Beyond that, however, the trail has gonecold. ENVELOPdeviate see DEVIOUSdevice [13] A device is something which hasbeen devised – which, etymologically speaking,amounts to ‘something which has been divided’.For ultimately devise and divide come from thesame source. The noun device comes in the firstinstance from Old French devis ‘division,contrivance’ and latterly (in the 15th century)from Old French devise ‘plan’, both of whichwere derivatives of the verb deviser ‘divide,devise’ (source of English devise [13]). This inturn came from Vulgar Latin *dīvisāre, a verbbased on the past participial stem of Latindīvidere, source of English divide. The semanticdevelopment by which ‘divide’ passed to‘contrive’, presumably based on the notion thatdividing something up and distributing it needssome planning, happened before the wordreached English, and English device has nevermeant ‘division’. The sense ‘simple machine’essentially evolved in the 16th century. DEVISE, DIVIDE, INDIVIDUAL, WIDOWdevil [OE] English acquired devil in the 8thcentury via late Latin diabolus from Greekdiábolos, which originally meant ‘slanderer’. Itwas a derivative of diabállein ‘slander’, acompound verb literally meaning ‘throw across’,formed from diá ‘across’ and bállein ‘throw’(whence English ballistics). The Greek word hasreached most European languages: for exampleFrench diable, Italian diavolo, German teufel,Dutch duivel, Swedish djāvul, and Russiandjavol. It has also given English diabolical [16],and indeed diabolo [20], a game played by

devious 162spinning a top (named from a variant of Italiandiavolo) on a string. BALLISTICS, DIABOLICALdevious [16] Devious and its close relativedeviate [17] are both based on the notion ofgoing ‘out of the way’. They come respectivelyfrom Latin dēvius and dēviāre, compoundadjective and verb formed from the prefix dē-‘from’ and via ‘way’. DEVIATE, VIAdevolution see VOLUMEdevout [13] Essentially, devout and devote [16]are the same word; they come from an identicalsource, but reached English along differentroutes. That source is dēvōtus, the past participleof Latin dēvovēre, which was a compoundformed from the intensive prefix dē- and vovēre‘promise’ (source of English vote and vow). Thisentered English originally via Old French devotas an adjective, and was then reborroweddirectly from Latin in the 16th century as thebasis for a verb. DEVOTE, VOTE, VOWdew [OE] Dew is an ancient word, which can betraced back to the Indo-European base *dheu-;this also produced Greek thein ‘run’ andSanskrit dhāv ‘flow, wash’ (whence, via Hindi,English dhobi ‘Indian washerman’ [19]) anddhaūtís ‘brook’. Its Germanic descendant was*dauwaz, which produced (besides English dew)German tau, Dutch dauw, and Swedish dagg. DHOBIdextrous [17] Just as the left hand has alwaysbeen associated with awkwardness ormaladroitness (cack-handed), so the right handhas traditionally been credited with skill: hencedextrous, a derivative of Latin dexter, whichmeant ‘on the right side’ and thus by extension‘skilful’. This came ultimately, like Greekdexiós, Gothic taihswa, Breton dehou, Russiandesnoj, and many other related forms in thegeneral semantic area ‘right-hand side’, from anIndo-European base *dek-. English acquired theLatin adjective itself as a heraldic term in the16th century.dhobi see DEWdiabetes [16] Diabetes means literally ‘passingthrough’; it was originally so named in Greekbecause one of the symptoms of the disease isexcessive discharge of urine. Greek diabétēs wasa derivative of diabaínein ‘pass through’, acompound verb formed from the prefix dia-‘through’ and baínein ‘go’ (a relative of Englishbasis and come). English acquired it viamedieval Latin diabētēs. Compare DIARRHOEA. BASIS, COMEdiabolical see DEVILdiadem [13] A diadem was originally somethingthat was bound round someone’s head. The wordcomes, via Old French diademe and Latindiadēma, from Greek diádēma; this was aderivative of diadein, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix dia- ‘across’ and dein ‘bind’. InGreek it was often applied specifically to theregal headband worn by Alexander the Great andhis successors.diaeresis see HERESYdiagnosis [17] The underlying meaning ofGreek diágnōsis was ‘knowing apart’. It wasderived from diagignóskein ‘distinguish,discern’, a compound verb formed from theprefix dia- ‘apart’ and gignóskein ‘know,perceive’ (a relative of English know): In postclassicaltimes the general notion of‘distinguishing’ or ‘discerning’ was appliedspecifically to medical examination in order todetermine the nature of a disease. KNOWdiagonal [16] Diagonal is commonly usedsimply as a synonym for oblique, but in strictmathematical terms it denotes a line joining twonon-adjacent angles of a polygon. This revealsfar more clearly its origins. It comes fromdiagōnālis, a Latin adjective derived from Greekdiagónios. This was a compound formed fromthe prefix dia- ‘across’ and gōníā ‘angle’ (as inEnglish polygon), meaning ‘from angle toangle’. Gōníā is related ultimately to Englishknee and genuine. GENUINE, KNEE, POLYGONdial [15] The original application of the word dialin English is ‘sundial’. The evidence for itsprehistory is patchy, but it is generally presumedto have come from medieval Latin diālis ‘daily’,a derivative of Latin diēs ‘day’, the underlyingnotion being that it records the passage of a 24-hour period.dialect [16] The notion underlying dialect andits relatives dialectic [14] and dialogue [13] is of‘conversation’. They come ultimately fromGreek dialégesthai ‘converse’, a compound verbformed from the prefix dia- ‘with each other’and légein ‘speak’ (source of English lecture anda wide range of related words). This formed thebasis of two derived nouns. First diálektos‘conversation, discourse’, hence ‘way ofspeaking’ and eventually ‘local speech’, whichpassed into English via Latin dialectus and OldFrench dialecte (from it was produced theadjective dialektikós ‘of conversation,discussion, or debate’, which was eventually tobecome English dialectic). Secondly diálogos‘conversation’, which again reached English viaLatin and Old French. LECTUREdialysis [16] As in the case of its close relativeanalysis, the underlying etymological notioncontained in dialysis is of undoing or loosening,so that the component parts are separated. Theword comes ultimately from Greek diálusis, aderivative of dialúein ‘tear apart’; this was acompound verb formed from the prefix dia-‘apart’ and lúein ‘loosen, free’ (related toEnglish less, loose, lose, and loss). In Greek itmeant simply ‘separation’, but it was borrowedinto English, via Latin dialysis, as a rhetoricalterm denoting a set of propositions without aconnecting conjunction. The chemical sense,‘separation of molecules or particles’ (fromwhich the modern application to ‘renal dialysis’

comes), was introduced in the 1860s by thechemist Thomas Graham (1805–69). ANALYSIS, LESS, LOOSE, LOSE, LOSSdiamond [13] Diamond is an alteration ofadamant, a rather archaic term which nowadaysrefers to hard substances in general, but formerlywas also used specifically for ‘diamond’. Thealteration appears to have come about in Latin ofpost-classical times: adamant- (stem of Latinadamas) evidently became Vulgar Latin*adimant- (source of French aimant ‘magnet’),which appears to have opened the way toconfusion, or at least association, with wordsbeginning dia-. The result was medieval Latindiamant-, which passed into English via OldFrench diamant. ADAMANTdiapason [14] Diapason, a musical term nowused mainly for the main stops on an organ, andalso metaphorically for ‘range, scope’ ingeneral, originally meant literally ‘through all’.It comes, via Latin diapāsōn, from the Greekphrase hē dia pasōn khordon sumphonía‘concord through all the notes’: dia means‘through’, and pasōn is the feminine genitiveplural of pas ‘all’ (as in the English prefix pan-‘all’).diaper [14] The notion underlying diaper is ofextreme whiteness. It comes ultimately fromByzantine Greek díaspros, which was acompound formed from the intensive prefix diaandáspros ‘white’. (Aspros itself has aninvolved history: it started life as Latin asper‘rough’ – source of English asperity – which wasapplied particularly to bas-relief on carvings andcoins; it was borrowed into Byzantine Greek andused as a noun to designate silver coins, and theirbrightness and shininess led to its reconversioninto an adjective, meaning ‘white’.) Díasprosappears originally to have been applied toecclesiastical vestments, and subsequently toany shiny fabric. When the word first enteredEnglish, via medieval Latin diasprum and OldFrench diapre, it referred to a rather rich silkfabric embellished with gold thread, but by the16th century it was being used for lessglamorous textiles, of white linen, with a smalldiamond-shaped pattern. The specificapplication to a piece of such cloth used as ababy’s nappy (still current in American English)seems to have developed in the 16th century. ASPERITYdiaphanous [17] Semantically, diaphanous isthe ancestor of modern English see-through. Itcomes, via medieval Latin diaphanus, fromGreek diaphanés, a compound adjective formedfrom dia- ‘through’ and the verb phaínein‘show’. Originally in English it meant simply‘transparent’, without its present-dayconnotations of delicacy: ‘Aristotle called light aquality inherent, or cleaving to a Diaphanousbody’, Walter Raleigh, History of the World1614.diaphragm [17] The etymological notionunderlying diaphragm is of a sort of ‘fence’ or163 dice‘partition’ within the body. It comes via lateLatin diaphragma from Greek diáphragma. Thisin turn was a derivative of diaphrássein ‘divideoff, barricade’, a compound verb formed fromthe intensive prefix dia- and phrássein ‘fence in,enclose’. Originally in Greek diáphragma wasapplied to other bodily partitions than thatbetween the thorax and the abdomen – to theseptum which divides the two nostrils, forinstance.diarrhoea [16] Diarrhoea means literally‘through-flow’ (and hence semantically is aparallel formation to diabetes). It comes via lateLatin diarrhoea from Greek diárrhoia, a termcoined by the physician Hippocrates for‘abnormally frequent defecation’. It was formedfrom the prefix dia- ‘through’ and rhein ‘flow’ (arelative of English rheumatism and stream). Ofother -rrhoea formations (or -rrhea, as it isgenerally spelled in American English),pyorrhoea ‘inflammation of the tooth sockets’was coined in the early 19th century, andlogorrhoea at around the turn of the 20th,originally as a clinical term in psychology(although subsequently hijacked as a facetioussynonym for ‘talkativeness’). RHEUMATISM, STREAMdiary [16] Like its semantic cousin journal, adiary is literally a ‘daily’ record. It comes fromLatin diarium, a derivative of diēs ‘day’.Originally in classical Latin the word meant‘daily allowance of food or pay’, and onlysubsequently came to be applied to a ‘record ofdaily events’. From the 17th to the 19th centuryEnglish also had an adjective diary, from Latindiarius, meaning ‘lasting for one day’.diaspora see SPORADICdiatribe [16] Diatribe’s connotations ofacrimoniousness and abusiveness are a relativelyrecent (19th-century) development. Originally inEnglish it meant simply ‘learned discourse ordisquisition’. It comes via Latin diatriba fromGreek diatribé ‘that which passes, or literallywears away, the time’, and hence, in scholarlycircles, ‘study’ or ‘discourse’. This was aderivative of diatribein ‘pass, waste, whileaway’, a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix dia- and tríbein ‘rub’. ATTRITION, DETRIMENT, TRITEdice [14] Dice originated, as every schoolboyknows, as the plural of die, which it has nowvirtually replaced in British English as the termfor a ‘cube marked with numbers’. Die itselfcomes via Old French de from Latin datum, thepast participle of the verb dare (and source alsoof English date). The main meaning of dare was‘give’, but it also had the secondary sense ‘play’,as in ‘play a chess piece’. The plural of the OldFrench word was dez (itself occasionally used asa singular), which gave rise to such MiddleEnglish forms as des, dees, and deys and, byaround 1500, dyse.The singular die survives for ‘dice’ inAmerican English, and also in the latersubsidiary sense ‘block or other device for

dictionary 164stamping or impressing’ (which originatedaround 1700). DATE, DONATEdictionary [16] The term dictionary was coinedin medieval Latin, probably in the 13th century,on the basis of the Latin adjective dictionārius‘of words’, a derivative of Latin dictiō ‘saying’,or, in medieval Latin, ‘word’. English picked itup comparatively late; the first known referenceto it is in The pilgrimage of perfection 1526: ‘andso Peter Bercharius [Pierre Bercheur, a 15thcenturyFrench lexicographer] in his dictionarydescribeth it’.Latin dictiō (source also of English diction[15]) was a derivatives of the verb dicere ‘say’.Its original meaning was ‘point out’ rather than‘utter’, as demonstrated by its derivative indicāre(source of English indicate) and words in otherlanguages, such as Greek deiknúnai ‘show’,Sanskrit diç- ‘show’ (later ‘say’), and Germanzeihen ‘accuse’, which come from the sameultimate source. Its past participle gave Englishdictum [16], and the derived verb dictāre ‘assert’produced English dictate [17] and dictator [14].It has been the basis of a wide range of otherEnglish words, from the more obviousderivatives like addict and predict to moreheavily disguised offspring such as condition,index, and judge. ADDICT, CONDITION, DICTATE, DICTION, DITTO,INDEX, INDICATE, JUDGE, PREDICTdidactic see DOCTORdiddle [19] The current meaning of diddle, ‘tocheat or swindle’, was probably inspired byJeremy Diddler, a character who was constantlyborrowing money and neglecting to repay it inJames Kenney’s play Raising the Wind (1803)(the expression raise the wind means ‘to procurethe necessary money’). Diddler immediatelycaught on as a colloquialism for a ‘swindler’,and by at the latest 1806 the verb diddle wasbeing used in the corresponding sense. It may bethat Kenney based the name Diddler on anothercolloquial verb diddle current at that time,meaning ‘to move shakily’ or ‘to quiver’.die English has two distinct words die. The noun,‘cube marked with numbers’, is now morefamiliar in its plural form (see DICE). The verb,‘stop living’ [12], was probably borrowed fromOld Norse deyja ‘die’. This, like English deadand death, goes back ultimately to an Indo-European base *dheu-, which some have linkedwith Greek thánatos ‘dead’. It may seem strangeat first sight that English should have borrowed averb for such a basic concept as ‘dying’(although some have speculated that a native OldEnglish verb *dīegan or *dēgan did exist), but infact it is a not uncommon phenomenon for ‘die’verbs to change their meaning euphemistically,and therefore to need replacing by new verbs. Inthe case of the Old English verbs for ‘die’,steorfan survives as starve and sweltan in itsderivative swelter, while cwelan is representedby the related cwellan ‘kill’, which has comedown to us as quell. DEAD, DEATHdiesel [19] The name of this type of internalcombustionengine (which runs on oil rather thanpetrol) commemorates its inventor, the ParisbornBavarian engineer Rudolf Diesel (1858–1913). He conceived his idea for the engine inthe early 1890s. In its development stage he wasalmost killed when one exploded, but by 1897 hehad succeeded in producing an operable engine.Within a year he was a millionaire. The termdiesel is first recorded in English in 1894.diet [13] Diet comes, via Old French diete andLatin diaeta, from Greek díaita ‘mode of life’.This was used by medical writers, such asHippocrates, in the specific sense ‘prescribedmode of life’, and hence ‘prescribed regimen offood’. It has been speculated that Latin diaeta,presumably in the yet further restricted sense‘day’s allowance of food’, came to be associatedwith Latin diēs ‘day’. This gave rise to medievalLatin diēta ‘day’s journey’, ‘day’s work’, etc,hence ‘day appointed for a meeting’, and thus‘meeting (of legislators)’. English acquired thisword (coming orthographically full circle asdiet) in the 15th century, but it is now mainlyused for referring to various foreign legislatures.different [14] English acquired different via OldFrench different from different-, the presentparticipial stem of Latin differre, a compoundverb formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and ferre‘carry’ (related to English bear). Latin differrehad two distinct strands of meaning that sprangfrom the original literal ‘carry apart, scatter,disperse, separate’: one was ‘put off, delay’,from which English gets defer; the other‘become or be unlike’, whence English differ[14] and different. The derived indifferent [14]originally meant ‘not differentiating ordiscriminating’. BEAR, DILATORYdifficult [14] Difficult means literally ‘not easy’.It is a back-formation from difficulty [14], whichwas borrowed from Latin difficultās. This was aderivative of the adjective difficilis (source ofFrench difficile), which was a compound formedfrom the prefix dis- ‘not’ and facilis ‘easy’(whence English facile [15]). FACILEdiffidence see DEFYdig [13] The origins of dig are not altogetherclear. It does not appear to have existed in OldEnglish, although it has been speculated thatthere was an Old English verb *dīcigian, neverrecorded, derived from dīc ‘ditch’ (the standardOld English verbs for ‘dig’ were delfan andgrafan, whence modern English delve andgrave). Another theory is that it was borrowedfrom Old French diguer ‘make a dyke, hollowout the earth’. This was a derivative of the noundigue ‘dyke’, which itself was borrowed from aGermanic source that also produced Old Englishdīc (and indeed modern English dyke). DITCH, DYKEdigest [15] English took the verb digest fromdīgest-, the past participle of Latin dīgerere. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the prefix dī-‘apart’ and gerere ‘carry’, and originally meant

‘divide, distribute’ – a sense which developedvia ‘dissolve’ into the specifically physiological‘dissolve and obtain nutrients from food in thebody’. A further semantic offshoot of‘distribute’ was ‘orderly arrangement’, and infact the earliest use of the word in English was asthe noun digest ‘summary of information’ [14],from Latin dīgesta, the neuter plural of the pastparticiple, literally ‘things arranged’. CONGEST, GESTURE, INGESTdigit [15] Digit was borrowed from Latin digitus.This meant ‘finger or toe’, but its underlyingetymological sense is probably ‘pointer’; itappears to come from an Indo-European base*deik-, which also produced Latin dicere ‘say’(originally ‘point out’), Greek deiknúnai ‘show’,Sanskrit diç- ‘show’, and possibly English toe.The word was used in classical times for ameasure of length, a ‘finger’s breadth’, but themathematical sense ‘any of the numbers from 0to 9’ (originally as counted on the fingers) is alater development.Digitalis [17], the scientific name of the‘foxglove’, is a modern Latin use of the Latinadjective digitālis ‘of the finger’, perhaps inallusion to the foxglove’s German namefingerhut ‘thimble’, literally ‘finger-hat’. TOEdignity [13] Dignity comes via Old Frenchdignete from Latin dignitās, a derivative ofdignus ‘worthy’. Also from the same source wasLatin dignāre (source of English deign and itsderivative disdain) and late Latin dignificāre(source of English dignify [15]). Dignus itselfprobably came from an earlier unrecorded*decnus ‘suitable, fitting’, a derivative of theverb decere, which produced English decent.Other related words in English include condign[15] and indignant [16], while dignitās alsoproduced, via a different line of descent, Englishdainty. CONDIGN, DAINTY, DEIGN, DISDAIN, INDIGNANTdigress see GRADUALdilapidate [16] It is a common misconceptionthat dilapidate means literally ‘fall apart stoneby stone’, since the word comes ultimately fromLatin lapis ‘stone’ (as in lapis lazuli [14],literally ‘azure stone’). But in fact Latindīlapidāre meant ‘squander’ (a sense oncecurrent in English, but now superseded). It was acompound verb formed from the prefix dis-‘apart’ and lapidāre ‘throw stones’, and thusoriginally must have meant literally ‘scatter likestones’, but its only recorded sense is themetaphorical extension ‘throw away or destroywantonly, squander’. The application of theword to the destruction of buildings is a piece oflater etymologizing. LAPIS LAZULIdilate [14] Latin lātus meant ‘wide’ (it probablycame from an earlier *stlātos, represented inChurch Slavonic stilati ‘spread out’, and hasgiven English latitude). It was used with theprefix dis- ‘apart’ to form the verb dīlātāre‘expand, extend’, which English acquired viaOld French dilater. The word has two English165 dimplenominal derivatives: dilatation [14], from lateLatin dīlātātiō, now mainly restricted to medicalcontexts, and dilation [15], an Englishformation. LATITUDEdilatory see DEFERdilemma [16] Dilemma was originally atechnical term in rhetoric, denoting a form ofargument in which one’s opponent is faced witha choice of two unfavourable alternatives. Itcomes via Latin dilemma from Greek dilēmma,a compound formed from di- ‘two’ and lēmma‘proposition, premise’. (Lēmma itself, whichEnglish acquired in the 16th century, cameultimately from *lab-, the base of Greeklambánein ‘talk’.) The ‘looser’ general sense‘choice between unpleasant alternatives’developed in the late 16th century.diligent [14] The underlying meaning of diligentis ‘loving’. It comes via Old French diligentfrom the present participial stem of Latindīligere ‘esteem highly, love’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix dis-‘apart’ and legere ‘choose’ (source of Englishelect, neglect, and select), and so originallymeant literally ‘single out’. It gradually passedsemantically via ‘love’ to ‘attentiveness’,‘carefulness’, and finally ‘steady effort’. ELECT, NEGLECT, SELECTdilute see LAVATORYdime [14] Dime originally meant ‘tenth part’, andoften specifically a ‘tax of one tenth, tithe’:‘From all times it was ordained to pay dimes ortithes unto the Lord’, James Howell, Lexicontetraglotton 1660. It came via Old French dismefrom Latin decima ‘tenth part’, a derivative ofdecem ‘ten’ (to which English ten is related).The application of the word to a coin worth onetenth of a US dollar dates from the 1780s. DECIMAL, TENdimension see MEASUREdiminish [15] Diminish is a hybrid verb, theresult of a marriage between the now obsoletediminue [14] and the virtually obsolete minish[14], both of which meant ‘make smaller’.Diminue came via Old French diminuer fromLatin dīminuere ‘break into small pieces’; it wasa compound verb formed from the prefix dē-‘from’ and minuere ‘lessen’ (source of Englishminute). Minish came via Old French menuiserfrom Vulgar Latin *minūtiāre, a derivative ofLatin minūtus ‘small’; this, bringing the historyof diminish full circle, was an adjectival use ofthe past participle of minuere. MINUTEdimity see DRILLdimple [13] Dimple originally meant ‘pothole’,and was not applied to an ‘indentation in theflesh’ until the 14th century. There is nosurviving record of the word in Old English, butit probably existed, as *dympel; Old HighGerman had the cognate tumphilo, ancestor ofmodern German tümpel ‘pool, puddle’. Both goback to a Germanic *dump-, which may be a

din 166nasalized version of *d(e)up-, source of Englishdeep and dip. DEEP, DIPdin [OE] Din is an ancient word, traceable backvia Old English dyne and Germanic *dunjaz toan Indo-European base *dhun-, signifying ‘loudnoise’. This is also represented in Sanskritdhúnis ‘roaring’ and Lithuanian dundéti‘sound’.dine see DINNERdingy [18] Nobody is quite sure where dingycomes from, but the very occasional occurrenceof ding or dinge as Middle English forms ofdung suggests that it may originally havesignified ‘dung-coloured’ (although if it camefrom such a source it might have been expectedto rhyme with springy rather than stingy). Dung[OE] itself appears to go back ultimately to anIndo-European base *dhengh- denoting‘covering’ (relatives include the Lithuanian verbdengti ‘cover’), so its etymological significanceis ‘material spread over the earth (forfertilization)’ rather than ‘excrement’. DUNGdinner [13] The etymological meaning of dinneris ‘breakfast’. The word comes ultimately froman unrecorded Vulgar Latin verb *disjūnāre, acompound formed from the prefix dis- ‘un-’ andjējūnus ‘fasting, hungry’ (source of Englishjejune [17]): hence, ‘break one’s fast’. OldFrench adopted it in two phases: as desiuner,which became modern French déjeuner(originally ‘breakfast’ but later ‘lunch’),borrowed by English in the 18th century; and asdisner. In later Old French this developed intodiner (source of English dine [13]), which cameto be used as a noun – from which Englishacquired dinner.In English it has always denoted the mainmeal of the day, although the timing of this hasvaried over the centuries, and continues to do so,according to region, social class, etc. JEJUNEdinosaur [19] Dinosaur means literally ‘terriblelizard’ (something of a misnomer, sincedinosaurs are not particularly closely related tomodern lizards). The word was coined around1840 from Greek deinós ‘terrible’ (which goesback to the same Indo-European base, *dwei-, asproduced English dire [16]) and sauros ‘lizard’(which occurs in its Latin form saurus in thenames of specific dinosaurs, such asbrontosaurus and tyrannosaurus). DIREdint [OE] Dint originally signified a ‘blow’ or‘hit’, particularly one inflicted by a sword orsimilar weapon. Its meaning broadened out inthe 14th century to ‘force of attack or impact’,and this is the source of the modern Englishphrase by dint of, which to begin with denoted‘by force of’. In the 13th century a variant formdent arose, which by the 16th century had movedon metaphorically to the sense ‘depression madeby a blow’.diocese [14] Etymologically, diocese means‘administration’, and only gradually did theword become more concrete and specific, via‘area administered, province’ to ‘ecclesiasticalprovince’. It comes ultimately from Greekdioíkēsis, a derivative of dioikein ‘keep house’,hence ‘administer’; this was a compound verbformed from the intensive prefix dia- and oikein‘inhabit’, which in turn was a derivative of oikos‘house’ (a distant relative of the -wich, -wickending in some British place-names). Itsecclesiastical meaning developed in Greek, andcame to the fore as the word passed via Latindioecēsis and late Latin diocēsis into Old Frenchdiocise (source of English diocese). In Englishthat has always been the only living sense of theword, although it has been used in historicalcontexts to refer to provinces of the Romanempire.dip [OE] Like deep, dip comes ultimately from aGermanic base *d(e)up- ‘deep, hollow’. Thederived verb, *dupjan, produced Old Englishdyppan, ancestor of modern English dip. Itoriginally meant quite specifically ‘immerse’ inOld English, sometimes with reference tobaptism; the sense ‘incline downwards’ is a17th-century development. DEEP, DIMPLEdiphtheria [19] The disease diphtheria ischaracterized by the formation of a falsemembrane in the throat which obstructsbreathing, and when the French physician PierreBretonneau described it in the 1820s, he coineda name for it based on Greek diphthéra, whichmeans ‘piece of leather’. Using the suffix -itis,denoting inflammation, he formed the modernLatin term diphtheritis (used in English until the1850s) and its French equivalent diphthérit. Hesubsequently substituted diphthérie, and thiswas borrowed into and established in English inthe late 1850s when an epidemic of the disease(then also termed Boulogne sore throat, from itsfirst having been observed in Boulogne) struckBritain.diploma [17] Etymologically, a diploma is a‘folded paper’. It comes via Latin diplōma fromGreek díplōma; this was a derivative of the verbdiploun ‘fold’, which in turn came from diplous‘double’ (a distant cousin of English double).Since official letters tended to be folded over,díplōma eventually came to mean ‘document,especially one issued by the government’ – thesense in which the word was acquired byEnglish.In the 17th and 18th centuries, the use of thederived Latin adjective diplōmaticus ‘relating toofficial documents’ with specific reference to thefield of international relations led eventually toits French descendant, diplomatique, coming tomean ‘relating to international relations’.English acquired the word as diplomatic in the18th century. DOUBLEdire see DINOSAURdirect [14] English acquired direct from dīrectus,the past participle of Latin dīrigere ‘arrange indistinct lines’, hence ‘straighten, guide’. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the prefix

dis- ‘apart’ and regere ‘guide, rule’ (source ofEnglish regent, region, etc). The first recordeduse of the verb in English was ‘write somethingand send it to a particular person’, a sense nowpreserved more specifically in the relatedaddress. (Also ultimately from Latin dīrigere isdirigible ‘steerable airship’ [19], a borrowingfrom French dirigeable; this was a derivative ofdiriger, the French descendant of dīrigere.) ADDRESS, DIRIGIBLE, DRESS, REGENT, REGIONdirge [16] Dirge is an anglicization of Latindīrige, the imperative singular of dīrigere‘guide’ (source of English direct). It is the firstword in the Latin version of Psalm 5, verse 8:Dirige, Domīne, Deus meus, in conspectu tuoviam meam ‘Direct, O Lord, my God, my way inthy sight’ (the Authorized Version expands thisto ‘Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousnessbecause of my enemies; make thy way straightbefore thy face’). This formed an antiphon in theOffice of the Dead (the funeral service) andhence came to be associated with songs ofmourning, and with gloomy singing in general. DIRECTdirham see DRAMdirt [13] Dirt was originally drit, and meant‘excrement’ (it was borrowed from Old Norsedrit, which goes back to a prehistoric Germanicbase *drit- that also produced Dutch dreet‘excrement’). The toned-down sense ‘soilingsubstance’ is of equal antiquity with ‘excrement’in English, and the modern English form dirtfirst appeared in the 15th century, by a processknown as metathesis in which two sounds arereversed.disappoint [15] Disappoint (a borrowing fromFrench désappointer) originally meant ‘removefrom a post or office, sack’ – that is, literally,‘deprive of an appointment’; ‘A monarch … hathpower … to appoint or to disappoint the greatestofficers’, Thomas Bowes, De La Primaudraye’sFrench academie 1586. This semantic line hasnow died out, but parallel with it was a sense ‘failto keep an appointment’, which appears to be theancestor of modern English ‘fail to satisfy,frustrate, thwart’.disaster [16] The word disaster has astrologicalconnotations. It comes, perhaps via Frenchdésastre, from Italian disastro; this was a backformationfrom disastrato, literally ‘ill-starred’,a compound adjective formed from thepejorative prefix dis- and astro ‘star’, adescendant of Latin astrum ‘star’. This in turncame from Greek astron ‘star’, source of Englishastronomy and related to English star. So theunderlying meaning of the word is ‘malevolentastral influence’. Provençal has the parallelmalastre ‘misfortune’.disc [17] Disc comes ultimately from Greekdískos ‘quoit’, a derivative of the verb dikein‘throw’. This passed into Latin as discus,adopted by English in the 17th century in itsoriginal athletic sense. The most salientsemantic feature of the discus was perhaps itsshape, and it was this that English took over inthe form disc (either adapted from Latin or167 discreetborrowed from French disque). The spelling diskis preferred in American English, and it is thestandard form used for ‘disc-shaped computerstorage device’. Other English words ultimatelyderived from Latin discus are dais, desk, anddish. DAIS, DESK, DISHdiscern [14] Discern, discreet, discrete, anddiscriminate all come ultimately from the samesource, Latin discernere, literally ‘separate bysifting’, hence ‘distinguish’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix dis-‘apart’ and cernere ‘sift, separate’ (source ofEnglish crime and secret and related to crisis).The derived noun discrīmen formed the basis ofa new Latin verb discrīmināre, from whichEnglish gets discriminate [17]. (Closely relatedis decree [14], whose ultimate source is Latindēcernere ‘decide’, also a derivative of cernerebut with the prefix dē-, denoting removal.) CERTAIN, CRIME, CRISIS, DECREE, DISCREET,DISCRETE, DISCRIMINATE, EXCREMENT, SECRETdiscipline [13] The Latin word for ‘learner’ wasdiscipulus, a derivative of the verb discere‘learn’ (which was related to docēre ‘teach’,source of English doctor, doctrine, anddocument). English acquired the word in Anglo-Saxon times, as discipul, and it wassubsequently reformulated as disciple on themodel of Old French deciple. Derived fromdiscipulus was the noun disciplīna ‘instruction,knowledge’. Its meaning developed graduallyinto ‘maintenance of order (necessary for givinginstruction)’, the sense in which the word firstentered English (via Old French discipline). DISCIPLE, DOCTOR, DOCTRINE, DOCUMENTdiscomfit [14] The underlying etymologicalsense of discomfit is ‘destroy’. It comes fromdesconfit, the past participle of Old Frenchdesconfire ‘defeat’; this in turn was a descendantof Vulgar Latin *disconficere ‘destroy, undo’, acompound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘un-’and conficere ‘put together, complete,accomplish’ (source of English comfit,confection, and confetti). Its original Englishmeaning ‘defeat’ has weakened over thecenturies to ‘disconcert’, probably due to theinfluence of discomfort, with which it is oftenconfused. COMFIT, CONFECTION, CONFETTIdiscord see CONCORDdiscourse see COURSEdiscreetdiscreet [14] Discreet and discrete [14] areultimately the same word. Both come from Latindiscrētus, the past participle of discernere‘distinguish’ (source of English discern).Discrete was borrowed direct from Latin, andretains its original meaning more closely:‘distinct, separate’. The Latin abstract nounformed from the past participle, discrētiō(source of English discretion [14]), developedthe sense ‘power to make distinctions’. This fedback into the adjective, giving it the meaning‘showing good judgment’, the semantic guise inwhich English acquired it from Old Frenchdiscret. This was usually spelled discrete too

discriminate 168until the 16th century, when discreet (based onthe -ee- spelling commonly used in words likesweet and feet which rhymed with discrete)became the established form for the more widelyused sense ‘judicious’. CERTAIN, DISCERN, DISCRETE, SECRETdiscriminate see DISCERNdiscursive see COURSEdiscuss [14] The ultimate source of discussmeant ‘smash to pieces’. It comes from discuss-,the past participle stem of Latin discutere, acompound verb formed from the prefix dis-‘apart’ and quatere ‘shake’ (from which Englishalso gets concussion and quash). Its literalmeaning was ‘smash apart, break up’, and thisgradually developed via ‘scatter, disperse’ to, inpost-classical times, ‘investigate, examine’ andeventually ‘debate’. The apparently widesemantic discrepancy between ‘scatter, disperse’and ‘examine’ was probably bridged by somesuch intermediate notion as ‘disperse or separatein the mind so as to distinguish and identify eachcomponent’. CONCUSSION, QUASHdisdain [14] Disdain comes via Old Frenchdesdeigner from *disdignāre, a Vulgar Latinalteration of Latin dēdignāri ‘scorn’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘un-,not’ and dignāre ‘consider worthy’ (source ofEnglish deign [13]). DAINTY, DEIGN, DIGNITYdisease [14] Disease and malaise are parallelformations: both denote etymologically an‘impairment of ease or comfort’. Disease comesfrom Old French desaise, a compound formedfrom the prefix dis- ‘not, lacking’ and aise‘ease’, and in fact at first meant literally‘discomfort’ or ‘uneasiness’. It was only towardsthe end of the 14th century that this sense beganto narrow down in English to ‘sickness’.(Malaise was borrowed from French malaise, anOld French formation from mal ‘bad’ and aise.) EASE, MALAISEdisguise see GEEZERdisgust [16] Something that disgusts one isliterally ‘not to one’s taste’. The word comesfrom Old French desguster, a compound verbformed from the prefix des- ‘not’ and goust‘taste’. This in turn came from Latin gustus(ultimate source of English gusto); its modernFrench descendant is goût. Originally, as itsderivation implies, disgust meant simply ‘causeto feel aversion, displease’ (and also, withsubject and object reversed, ‘dislike, loathe’:‘Had he not known that I disgusted it, it hadnever been spoke or done by him’, Robert South,Sermons 1716); but over the centuries it hashardened into ‘sicken, repel’. GUSTOdish [OE] Like dais, desk, and disc, dish comesultimately from Greek dískos ‘quoit’. As theirdiversity of form and meaning suggests, theywere acquired at various times and by variousroutes. English got dish around 700 AD fromLatin discus, in which the original meaning‘quoit’ had been extended metaphorically to‘tray, platter, dish’ on the basis of the semanticfeatures ‘roundness’ and ‘flatness’. DAIS, DESK, DISCdishevelled [15] Semantically, dishevelled‘with untidy hair’ and unkempt ‘with uncombedhair’ are closely parallel formations. Dishevelledoriginated as an adaptation of deschevele, thepast participle of Old French descheveler‘disarrange the hair’. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and chevel‘hair’, a descendant of Latin capillus ‘hair’(from which English got capillary [17]). InMiddle English its meaning was extended to‘without a head-dress’, and even to ‘undressed’,but its modern metaphorical application is themore general ‘untidy’. (The verb dishevel was alate 16th-century back-formation fromdishevelled.) CAPILLARYdismal [13] Etymologically, dismal means ‘badday’. It comes, via Anglo-Norman dis mal, fromLatin diēs malī, literally ‘evil days’, a term usedto denote the two days in each month whichaccording to ancient superstition were supposedto be unlucky (these days, of set date, were saidoriginally to have been computed by Egyptianastrologers, and were hence also called Egyptiandays). The term dismal thus acquiredconnotations of ‘gloom’ and ‘calamity’. Itsearliest adjectival use, somewhat tautologically,was in the phrase dismal day, but in the late 16thcentury it broadened out considerably inapplication.dismay [13] The underlying meaning of dismayis ‘deprive of power’ – its second syllable isultimately the same word as the verb may. Itcomes via Old French desmaier from VulgarLatin *dismagāre ‘deprive of power’, acompound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘un-’and the borrowed Germanic base *mag- ‘power,ability’ (source of English may). MAYdismiss [15] Ultimately, dismiss and demise[16] are the same word: both come from OldFrench desmis or demis ‘sent away’. These inturn came from dismissus, the medievaldescendant of Latin dīmissus, which was the pastparticiple of dīmittere, a compound verb formedfrom dis- ‘away’ and mittere ‘send’. In the caseof dismiss, English originally acquired the word,more logically, in the form dismit, based on theLatin infinitive, but in the late 15th centurydismiss, in the past participial form dismissedmodelled on the French past participle, began toreplace it. Demise comes from Anglo-Norman*demise, which represents a nominal use of thefeminine form of Old French demis. It wasoriginally a technical legal term signifying thetransference of property or title, and only in the18th century came to be used for the ‘death’which often brought this about. COMMIT, DEMISE, MISSION, TRANSMITdisparage see PAIRdispatch [16] Dispatch appears to have beenborrowed from Spanish despachar ‘expedite’,but its ultimate origins are not clear. The likeliest

source of the Spanish word is Old Frenchdespeechier ‘set free’ (source of modern Frenchdépêcher ‘hurry’), a compound verb formedfrom the prefix des- ‘un-’ and the verbal element-peechier ‘impede, hinder’, which is alsorepresented in English impeach and goes backultimately to Latin pedica ‘shackle’. Thesemantic history of dispatch thus appears to be‘unshackle’, ‘set free’, ‘send away, get rid of’,and hence (with the notion of ‘freeing fromrestraint’) ‘send away quickly’. (The currency ofthe alternative spelling despatch is due to itsoccurrence in Dr Johnson’s Dictionary 1755.) IMPEACHdispel see PULSEdispense [14] Dispense comes ultimately fromLatin dispendere ‘weigh out’ (partial source ofEnglish spend). This was a compound verbformed from the prefix dis- ‘away’ and pendere‘weigh’, a relative of pendēre ‘hang’, fromwhich English gets pendulum, pendant, andpenthouse. It had a derivative, dispensāre,denoting repeated action: hence ‘pay out,distribute’, senses which passed into English viaOld French dispenser. In medieval Latindispensāre also came to mean ‘administerjustice’, and hence ‘exempt, condone’; this wasthe source of the English usage dispense with ‘dowithout’. PENDULUM, PENDANT, PENTHOUSE, SPENDdisplay [14] Display originally meant ‘unfold’,and it is related not to modern English play butto ply. It comes via Old French despleier (whosemodern French descendant, déployer, is thesource of English deploy [18]) from Latindisplicāre. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix dis- ‘un-’ and plicāre ‘fold’(source of or related to English accomplish,complicated, ply, and simple), and in classicalLatin seems only to have had the metaphoricalmeaning ‘scatter’. In medieval Latin, however, itreturned to its underlying literal sense ‘unfold’,which was originally retained in English,particularly with reference to sails or flags. Thenotion of ‘spreading out’ is retained in splay,which was formed by lopping off the firstsyllable of display in the 14th century. ACCOMPLISH, COMPLICATE, DEPLOY, PLY,SIMPLEdisport see SPORTdispose see POSITIONdispute [13] Dispute comes via Old Frenchdisputer from Latin disputāre, a compound verbformed from the prefix dis- ‘separately’ andputāre ‘consider, reckon, think’ (source of awide range of English words, from computer toreputation). It was originally a commercial term,denoting the calculation of a sum by consideringeach of its items separately, but its meaningeventually broadened out to ‘estimate, examine,weigh up’ – either mentally or (the sense whichprevailed) by discussion with others. The neutralsense ‘discuss’ held centre stage in classicalLatin, but later (in the Vulgate, for instance) a169 distinctnote of acrimony appeared, signalling thebeginnings of dispute’s current sense ‘argue’. COMPUTER, COUNT, PUTATIVE, REPUTATIONdisrupt see ROUTdissect see SECTIONdissemble see SIMILARdisseminate see SEEDdissent see SENSEdissolve see SOLVEdissonant see SOUNDdissuade see PERSUADEdistaff [OE] The compound noun distaff ‘rod forholding flax, wool, etc in spinning’ was a lateOld English formation from *dis ‘bunch of flax’(a word which survives in bedizen [17], aderivative of the obsolete dizen, which originallymeant ‘put flax on to a rod’ and hence ‘dress upin finery’) and staff. The now fairly archaic useof phrases such as distaff side to refer to‘women’ comes from the traditional pigeonholingof spinning as a woman’s job. BEDIZENdistance [13] Etymologically, things that aredistant stand far apart from each other. The wordcomes via Old French from Latin distantia, anabstract noun formed from distāns, the presentparticiple of distāre ‘be remote’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix dis-‘apart’ and stāre ‘stand’ (source of English state,station, statue, etc and related to English stand). STAND, STATE, STATION, STATUEdistemper English has two distinct wordsdistemper, although ultimately they come fromthe same source, Latin temperāre ‘mingle’(source of English temper, temperate, andtemperature). This formed the basis of twoseparate medieval Latin verbs, bothcompounded from the prefix dis- but using it inquite different ways. Dis- in the sense ‘reversalof a current state’ joined with temperāre in thespecialized meaning ‘mingle in properproportion’ to produce distemperāre ‘upset theproper balance of bodily humours’, hence ‘vex,make ill’. This passed directly into English asdistemper [14], and survives today mainly as theterm for an infectious disease of dogs. Disjoinedwith temperāre in its intensive functionproduced medieval Latin distemperāre ‘mixthoroughly, soak’, which entered English viaOld French destemprer in the 14th century. Themeaning ‘soak, steep, infuse’ survived until the17th century: ‘Give the Horse thereof everymorning … the quantity of a Hasel-nutdistempered in a quart of Wine’, EdwardTopsell, History of Four-footed Beasts 1607. Theword’s modern application, to a water-baseddecorator’s paint, comes from the fact that thepigment is mixed with or infused in water (thesame notion lies behind tempera [19], borrowedfrom Italian). TEMPER, TEMPERATE, TEMPERATUREdistend see TENDdistil see STILLdistinctdistinct [14] Etymologically, distinct is the pastparticiple of distinguish. It comes from

distraught 170distinctus, past participle of Latin distinguere‘separate, discriminate’ (source, via the presentstem of Old French distinguer, of Englishdistinguish [16]). This was a compound verbformed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and the verbalelement -stinguere ‘prick, stick’, and hencemeant originally ‘separate by pricking’(-stinguere, related to English stick and instigate,is not found as an independent verb in Latin inthe sense ‘prick’, but stinguere does occur in theremote metaphorical meaning ‘quench’ – adevelopment mirrored in German ersticken‘stifle, suffocate’ – which lies behind Englishextinct and extinguish). Distingué is an early19th-century adoption of the past participle ofFrench distinguer. DISTINGUISH, EXTINCT, INSTIGATE, STICKdistraught see STRAIGHTdistribute see TRIBEdistrict [17] District started life as the pastparticiple of the verb which gave Englishdistrain [13] and strain. It came via Frenchdistrict from medieval Latin districtus; thismeant literally ‘seized, compelled’, and hencewas used as a noun in the sense ‘seizure ofoffenders’, and hence ‘exercise of justice’, andfinally ‘area in which justice is so exercised (inthe feudal system)’. This was the word’smeaning when it was first borrowed intoEnglish, and it was not really until the early 18thcentury that its much more general modernapplication developed. Districtus was the pastparticiple of Latin distringere, a compound verbformed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and stringere‘pull tight’ (source of English strain, strict,stringent, stress, etc). In classical times it meant‘draw apart, detain, hinder’, but by the MiddleAges this had moved on to ‘seize, compel’,which were the main senses in which it enteredEnglish as distrain (via Old French destreindre).Latin districtus was also the source of a VulgarLatin noun *districtia ‘narrowness’, whichpassed via Old French destresse into English asdistress [13]. DISTRAIN, DISTRESS, STRAIN, STRESS, STRICT,STRINGENTdisturb see TROUBLEditch [OE] Like its close relative dyke [13], ditchprobably comes ultimately from a long-lostlanguage once spoken on the shores of theBaltic. Its source-word seems to haverepresented an all-embracing notion of‘excavation’, including not just the hole dug butalso the mound formed from the excavated earth(which perhaps supports the suggestion that digbelongs to the same word-family). Thisdichotomy of sense is preserved in dyke, whoseoriginal meaning, from Old Norse dík, was‘ditch’, but which came in the 15th century todenote ‘embankment’ (probably under theinfluence of Middle Dutch dijc ‘dam’). DIG, DYKEditto [17] Ditto is a precisely parallel formationto English said ‘aforementioned’ (as in ‘the saidJohn Smith’). It is the Tuscan dialect version ofItalian detto, which comes from dictus, the pastparticiple of Latin dīcere ‘say’ (source ofEnglish dictionary and a vast range of relatedwords). It was originally used in Italian to avoidrepeating the name of the month when giving aseries of dates, much as inst and ult are used incommercial English. DICTION, DICTIONARYdiurnal see JOURNEYdiva see DIVINEdivan [16] The word divan has a long andspectacularly variegated semantic history. Itstarted out as Persian dēvān, which originallymeant ‘small book’. This came to be usedspecifically for ‘account book’, and eventuallyfor ‘accountant’s office’. From this itsapplication broadened out to cover variousofficial chambers and the bodies which occupiedthem, such as tax offices, customs collectors,courts, and councils of state. And finally itdeveloped to ‘long seat’, of the sort which linedthe walls of such Oriental chambers. The wordcarried these meanings with it via Arabic dīwānand Turkish divān into the European languages,and English acquired most of them as a packagedeal from French divan or Italian devano (it didnot, however, include the ‘customs’ sense which,via the Turkish variant duwan, survives inFrench douane, Italian dogana, Spanish aduana,etc). The 19th-century sense ‘smoking lounge’seems to be an exclusively Europeandevelopment.dive [OE] Old English dfan ‘dive’ came from aprehistoric Germanic *dūbjan. This was aderivative of the base *d(e)ub-, a variant ofwhich, *d(e)up-, was the source of English deepand dip. The colloquial use of the noun for adisreputable bar, nightclub, etc, which comesfrom 1880s America, is probably a reference tosomeone ‘diving’ out of sight into such anestablishment, which was often in a basement. DEEP, DIPdiverge see VERGEdiverse [13] Diverse is one of a small family ofEnglish words, including also divers, divert, anddivorce, which come ultimately from Latindīvertere. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix dis- ‘aside’ and vertere ‘turn’(source of English verse, version, vertebra, etcand related to worth), and hence meant literally‘turn aside, turn out of the way’. It developed invarious metaphorical directions, however. Onewas ‘turn one’s husband or wife out of the way’which, via the variant dīvortere, gave Englishdivorce [14]. The central sense of the verbpassed more or less unchanged into English, viaFrench divertir, as divert [15], but its pastparticiple diversus illustrates a furthermetaphorical strand, in which ‘turned aside’ hasbecome ‘separate, different’. English acquiredthis via Old French in the 13th century in twodistinct forms: masculine divers and femininediverse. The present-day semantic distinctionbetween the former (‘various, several’) and thelatter (‘different’) had established itself byaround 1700. DIVERT, DIVORCE, VERSE, VERSION, WORTH

divest see VESTdivide [14] Etymologically, divide shares itsunderlying notion of ‘separation’ with widow‘woman parted from or bereft of her husband’,which comes ultimately from the same source.English acquired it from Latin dīvidere ‘split up,divide’. This was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix dis- ‘apart’ and -videre, a verbalelement meaning ‘separate’ which is representedin Sanskrit vindháte ‘is empty’ as well as inwidow, and goes back to an Indo-European base*weidh- ‘separate’.English device and devise come ultimatelyfrom *dīvisāre, a Vulgar Latin derivative ofdīvidere, and individual belongs to the sameword family. DEVICE, INDIVIDUAL, WIDOWdivine [14] Like deity, divine comes ultimatelyfrom Indo-European *deiwos, an ancestor whosegodly connotations seem to have developed fromearlier associations with ‘sky’ and ‘day’, andwhich probably originally meant ‘shining’. ItsLatin descendants included deus ‘god’ (sourceof English deity) and the adjective dīvus‘godlike’ (the noun use of its feminine form,dīva, for ‘goddess’ entered English via Italian asdiva ‘prima donna’ [19]). From dīvus wasderived the further adjective dīvīnus, whichbecame Old French devin and eventually Englishdivine. Dīvīnus was used as a noun meaning, inclassical times, ‘soothsayer’ (whence, via theLatin derivative dīvīnāre, the English verbdivine) and in the Middle Ages ‘theologian’(whence the nominal use of English divine in thesame sense). DEITYdivorce see DIVERSEdivulge [15] Etymologically, to divulgesomething is to make it known to the vulgarmasses. The word comes from Latin dīvulgāre, acompound verb formed from the prefix dis-‘widely’ and vulgāre ‘make common, publish’.This in turn was derived from vulgus ‘commonpeople’, source of English vulgar. At first inEnglish it was semantically neutral, meaning‘make widely known’ (‘fame of his ouvrages[works, achievements] hath been divulged’,William Caxton, Book of Eneydos 1490), but bythe 17th century the word’s modern connotationsof ‘disclosing what should be secret’ haddeveloped. VULGARdizzy [OE] Dizzy originally signified ‘foolish,stupid’, a meaning which from the 13th centuryretreated into dialectal use and has onlycomparatively recently returned to themainstream language in the milder form‘scatterbrained’. The now central sense ‘giddy’is recorded from the 14th century. The wordcomes from a West Germanic base *dus-, whichalso produced Dutch duizelen ‘be giddy’. Itsformal and semantic similarity to doze and tizzyare obvious, but no actual etymological linkbetween the three seems ever to have beenestablished.171 dododo [OE] Not surprisingly, do is a verb of greatantiquity. It goes back to the Indo-European base*dhē- (source also of English deed and doom),which signified ‘place, put’. This sense remainsuppermost in descendants such as Sanskrit dhāandGreek títhēmi (related to English theme), buta progression to ‘make, do’ shows itself in Latinfacere (source of English fact and a host of otherwords) and West Germanic *dōn. ‘Make’ is nowthe central signification of English do, althoughtraces of the earlier ‘put, place’ survive in suchfossilized forms as don and doff, and ‘dosomeone to death’. Other Germanic relativesinclude German tun and Dutch doen, but theScandinavian languages have not adopted theverb, preferring instead for ‘do’ one whichoriginally meant ‘make ready’ (Danish gøre,Swedish gåra) and which is related to Englishgear. DEED, DOOM, FACT, FASHION, THEMEdock English has no fewer than four distinctwords dock. The oldest is the plant-name, whichcomes from Old English docce. Dock for ships[14] was borrowed from Middle Low German orMiddle Dutch docke, which may have comefrom Vulgar Latin *ductia ‘duct, conduit’, ahypothetical derivative of Latin dūcere ‘lead’(source of English, duke, educate, etc). Dock‘cut off’ [14] was originally a verbal applicationof the noun dock ‘horse’s short tail’, whichappears to go back to a Germanic *dukk-‘bundle’; it may be the source of docket [15].Dock for prisoners [16] was originally thieves’slang, borrowed from Flemish dok ‘cage’. DUKE, EDUCATE, INDUCE; DOCKETdoctor [14] Doctor, doctrine, and document allgo back ultimately to the Latin verb docēre‘teach’. This in turn was a descendant of anIndo-European base *dok-, *dek- which alsoproduced Greek dokein ‘seem, think’ (source ofEnglish dogma [17], orthodox, and paradox) anddidáskein ‘learn’ (source of English didactic[17]) and Latin decere ‘be fitting or suitable’(source of English decent, decorate, and dignity)and dexter (source of English dextrous). Latindoctor was derived from doctus, the pastparticiple of docēre, and came into English viaOld French doctour. It originally meant‘teacher’, and the main modern sense of‘medical practitioner’, although sporadicallyrecorded in Middle English, did not becomefirmly established until the late 16th century.Latin doctrīna ‘teaching, learning’, a derivativeof Latin doctor, produced English doctrine [14].Latin documentum, which came directly fromdocēre, originally meant ‘lesson’, but inmedieval Latin its signification had passedthrough ‘written instruction’ to ‘official paper’.English acquired it as document [15]. Thederivative documentary is 19th-century. DAINTY, DECENT, DECORATE, DEXTROUS,DIDACTIC, DIGNITY, DOCTRINE, DOCUMENT,DOGMA, ORTHODOX, PARADOXdodo [17] When Portuguese explorers firstencountered the unfortunate dodo on the islandof Mauritius, it struck them as a clumsy and

doff 172foolish bird, so they applied to it the Portugueseword doudo ‘simpleton’. The name has stuck inEnglish (although in the 17th century it hadsome competition from the French and Dutchterm dronte). The first record of the simile ‘deadas a dodo’ comes from 1904, over 200 years afterthe extinction of the species, although the wordhad been used since the late 19th century as ametaphor for someone or something hopelesslyout of date: ‘He belongs to the Dodo race of realunmitigated toryism’, Lisle Carr, Judith Gwynne1874.doff [14] Doff, don [14], and the now obsoletedout [16] and dup [16], contractions respectivelyof ‘do off, on, out, and up’, preserve the ancientmeaning of do, ‘put, place’. They were standardMiddle English forms, but gradually fell out ofthe mainstream language into dialect (fromwhich dout and dup never emerged). Sir WalterScott, however, included doff and don, in theirspecific sense ‘remove or put on clothing’, in hislong list of medieval lexical revivals (‘Myexperience has been in donning steel gauntletson mailed knights’, Fair Maid of Perth 1828),and they have survived as archaisms ever since.dog [11] Dog is one of the celebrated mysterywords of English etymology. It appears once inlate Old English, in the Prudentius glosses,where it translates Latin canis, but its use doesnot seem to have proliferated until the 13thcentury, and it did not replace the native houndas the main word for the animal until the 16thcentury. It has no known relatives of equalantiquity in other European languages, althoughseveral borrowed it in the 16th and 17thcenturies for particular sorts of ‘dog’: Germandogge ‘large dog, such as a mastiff’, for instance,French dogue ‘mastiff’, and Swedish dogg‘bulldog’.dogma see DOCTORdoily [17] In the latter part of the 17th century acertain Mr Doily kept a celebrated draper’s shopin the Strand, London, not too far from where theAldwych now is (‘The famous Doily is still freshin every one’s Memory, who raised a Fortune byfinding out Materials for such Stuffs as might beat once cheap and genteel’, Spectator 1712). Hegave his name first to a sort of light fabric usedfor summer wear (‘Some Doily Petticoats andManto’s we have’, John Dryden, Kind Keeper1678) and then, early in the 18th century, to avariety of ornamental table napkin (‘After dinnerwe had coarse Doily-napkins, fringed at eachend, upon the table to drink with’, JonathanSwift, Journal to Stella 1711).dole [OE] In Old English, the noun dāl meantsimply ‘part, portion’ (it came from a Germanicbase *dail-, which also produced English deal).By the 14th century this had developed into themore specific ‘portion (of food, money, etc)handed out as a charitable donation to those inneed’. This is the source of the phrase on the dole‘receiving government benefit’, first recorded inthe 1920s. The verb dole ‘distribute’ arose in the15th century; its modern use, dole out, is an18th-century development. DEALdoleful see INDOLENTdoll [16] Doll comes from the name Dorothy: thechanging of r to l in personal names is a commonEnglish phenomenon of long standing, fromShakespeare’s Prince Hal (for Harry) to thecurrently familiar Del and Tel (for Derek andTerry). The word was originally applied to aman’s mistress (much like moll, which camefrom Mary), but in the 18th century it came to beapplied to a ‘toy baby’. The pet form dolly datesfrom the 17th century.dollar [16] English originally acquired the worddollar in the form doler; this was the LowGerman form of German taler, a large silver coinin use in the German states from the 16thcentury. The word was short for Joachimstaler,literally ‘of Joachim’s valley’, and is a referenceto the fact that silver from which the coins weremade was mined near Joachimstal (modernJachymov) in the Erzgebirge mountains, CzechRepublic. By around 1700 the spelling dollarhad become fairly standard, and in 1785 the termwas formally adopted for the main unit ofcurrency in the USA. It has since been taken upby over thirty countries around the world. DALEdolmen [19] English acquired the word dolmenfor a ‘prehistoric structure of two upright stonessurmounted by a horizontal one’ from French,but its ultimate source is Celtic. The elementmen means ‘stone’ (it occurs also in menhir [19],literally ‘long stone’) but there is disagreementabout the first syllable. It is usually said torepresent tōl ‘table’, a Breton borrowing fromLatin tabula ‘board, plank’, but another view isthat it is Cornish tol ‘hole’, and that thecompound as a whole means literally ‘stonehole’, a reference to the aperture formed by thetop stone lying on the two side stones. MENHIRdolour see INDOLENTdolphin [13] The ultimate source of dolphin isGreek delphís ‘dolphin’, which some havelinked with Greek delphýs ‘womb’. From it wasderived delphīnion, a name given to the plantlarkspur on account of the dolphin-like shape ofpart of its flower, acquired by English via Latinas delphinium [17]. Latin took over Greekdelphís as delphīnus, which passed into Englishalong two channels. The classical form wasborrowed as delfyn or delphin, which did notsurvive the 17th century. But the Vulgar Latinform *dalphīnus progressed to Old Frenchdaulphin (ultimate source of English dauphin),which English acquired as dalphyn. Dolphin,first recorded in the 14th century, appears to bean English alteration of the form da(u)lphin. DAUPHIN, DELPHINIUMdolt see DULLdomain [17] Etymologically, domain means‘land belonging to a lord’, but its resemblance tosuch words as dominate and dominion issomewhat adventitious. Until the 17th century it

was essentially the same word as demesne:demaine or demeine ‘lord’s estate’ was the OldFrench equivalent of (and indeed source of)English demesne. It came ultimately from Latindominicus ‘of a lord’, but its etymologicalconnection with Latin dominus ‘lord’ hadbecome somewhat obscured over the centuries.But then, around 1600, by association with Latindominium (source of English dominion), Frenchdemaine became altered to domaine, whichEnglish borrowed as domain. DAME, DEMESNE, DOMINATE, DOMINIONdome [16] Dome originally meant ‘house’ inEnglish – it was borrowed from Latin domus‘house’ (source of English domestic). However,in other European languages the descendants ofdomus had come to signify more than a humbledwelling house, and its new meanings spread toEnglish. The word increasingly encompassedstately mansions and important places ofworship. Italian duomo and German dom mean‘cathedral’, for instance (a sense adopted byEnglish in the late 17th and early 18th centuries),and since a leading characteristic of Italiancathedrals is their cupola, the word was soonapplied to this. DOMESTICdomestic [16] Domestic comes, via Frenchdomestique, from Latin domesticus, a derivativeof domus ‘house’. This can be traced back to anIndo-European *domo-, *domu-, which was alsothe source of Greek dómos and Sanskrit dama-‘house’, and goes back in its turn to a base*dem-, *dom- ‘build’ which gave rise to Englishdaunt, tame, timber, and probably despot. Afurther derivative of domus is domicile [15],from Latin domicilium ‘dwelling-place’, and it isalso the ultimate source of the wide range ofEnglish words (dominate, dominion, etc) basedimmediately on Latin dominus ‘master’. DAME, DAUNT, DOME, DOMINION, TAME, TIMBERdominion [15] Dominion, in common withdemesne, domain, dominant, dominate,domineer, dominie, domino, and don, and indeeddanger and dungeon, comes ultimately fromLatin dominus ‘lord, master’. This was aderivative of Latin domus ‘house’ (source ofEnglish dome) and, like the parallel Greekformation despótēs (source of English despot),originally meant ‘master of the house’. Its mostdirect descendant in modern English is don [17].This is the Spanish reflex of Latin dominus, usedas a title of respect for Spanish lords orgentlemen, and has been applied since the mid17th century (originally as a piece of universityslang) to university teachers. Of derivatives,dominion comes from Latin dominium‘property’ (of which a post-classical descendantwas dominiō or domniō, source of Englishdungeon); dominate [17] and dominant [15]come from the verb dominārī ‘be lord andmaster’; domineer [16] is also from dominārī,via French dominer and early modern Dutchdomineren; and dominie [17], a Scottish term for173 dopea ‘schoolmaster’, probably comes from the Latinvocative case dominē. DAME, DANGER, DEMESNE, DESPOT, DOME,DOMESTIC, DOMINATEdomino [18] The word domino was borrowedfrom French, where it originally signified (in the16th century) a sort of hooded cloak worn bypriests. It presumably represents a form of Latindominus ‘lord, master’, but the reason for theapplication has never been satisfactorilyexplained (one suggestion is that it comes fromthe ritual formula benedicamus Domino ‘let usbless the Lord’). By the time English acquired it,it had come to mean ‘hooded cloak with a halfmask,worn at masquerades’, and by the 19thcentury it was being used for the mask itself. It isfar from clear whether the application to thegame played with small rectangular blocks,which dates in English from the 19th century,represents a new use of the same word or a returnto the original Latin, but either way the reasonbehind the usage is not known. A possibility thathas been advanced is that the winner of the gameoriginally shouted domino! ‘lord!’.don see DOFFdonation see DATEdonkey [18] The usual English word for‘donkey’ from Anglo-Saxon times was ass, anddonkey is not recorded until Francis Groseentered it in his Dictionary of the vulgar tonge1785; ‘Donkey or Donkey Dick, a he or Jackass’.No one really knows where it came from.The usual explanation offered is that it was basedon dun ‘brownish grey’ and the diminutive suffix-ey, with the intermediate k added in imitation ofmonkey (donkey originally rhymed withmonkey). DUNdoom [OE] Doom derives ultimately from *dō-,the Germanic base from which the verb docomes. This originally meant ‘put, place’, and soGermanic *dōmaz signified literally ‘that whichis put’. By the time it reached Old English asdōm a more concrete sense ‘law, decree,judgment’ had developed (this lies behind thecompound doomsday ‘day of judgment’ [OE],whose early Middle English spelling has beenpreserved in Domesday book). The modernsense ‘(evil) fate’ first appeared in the 14thcentury. DEEM, DOdoor [OE] Old English had two closely relatedwords for ‘door’: duru (mirrored by German tür‘door’) and dor (which corresponds to Germantor ‘gate’). They gradually came together duringthe Middle English period. Both go backultimately to the Indo-European base *dhwer-,which also produced Greek thúrū ‘door’ (sourceof English thyroid), Latin foris ‘door’ (source ofEnglish foreign and forest) and forum, Sanskritdvar- ‘door’, Russian dver’ ‘door’, Lithuaniandùrys ‘gate’, etc. FOREIGN, FOREST, THYROIDdope [19] Dope originated in the USA, where itwas borrowed from Dutch doop ‘sauce’. Thiswas a derivative of the verb doopen ‘dip’, which

doppelganger 174is related to English dip. It was at first used as ageneral colloquialism for any thick semi-liquidpreparation, whether used as a food or, forexample, as a lubricant, but during the 19thcentury some specific strands began to emerge:notably ‘drug’, and in particular ‘opium’, and‘varnish painted on the fabric of an aircraft’. Theeffects of the former led to its use in the sense‘fool’, and to the coinage of the adjective dopey,first recorded in the 1890s. The sense‘information’ dates from around 1900. DEEP, DIPdoppelganger [19] English borroweddoppelganger from German doppelgänger,which means literally ‘double-goer’. It wasoriginally used in the sense ‘ghostly apparitionof a living person, especially one that haunts itsreal counterpart’ (‘hell-hounds, doppel-gangers,boggleboes’, M A Denham, Denham tracts1851), but in the course of the 20th century it hasbecome increasingly restricted to a flesh-andblood‘person identical to another, double’. DOUBLEdormant [14] Like dormitory and dormer,dormant comes ultimately from Latin dormīre‘sleep’, which is related to Sanskrit drā- ‘sleep’and Russian dremat’ ‘doze’. Dormant wasborrowed from French dormant, the presentparticiple of dormir ‘sleep’, while dormitory[15] comes from Latin dormītōrium, a derivativeof the past participle of dormīre. Dormer [16],from Old French dormeor, a derivative ofdormir, originally signified a ‘dormitorywindow’. (It is not clear whether dormouse [15]is related, but if it is it would mean literally‘sleeping mouse’, or conceivably even ‘sleeper’,from French dormeuse, the feminine of dormeur‘sleeper’.) DORMER, DORMITORYdorsal see DOSSdose [15] A dose is literally ‘that which is givento one’ – etymologically and semantically, it is aparallel formation to donation. It comes viaFrench dose and late Latin dosis from Greekdósis, a derivative of the verb didónai ‘give’(which is related to English date, donate, etc). Itoriginally meant simply ‘giving, gift’, but wasused by Greek physicians such as Galen for‘portion of medicine administered’, and it is thatapplication that has proved most durable. Themodern slang sense ‘venereal infection’ datesfrom just before World War I. DATE, DONATEdoss [18] The use of doss in senses associatedwith ‘lying down on a bed’ comes from anearlier notion of ‘lying on one’s back’. In the18th century the word was dorse, a borrowingfrom Latin dorsum ‘back’, but by the 19thcentury it had become doss, perhaps owing to theinfluence of French dos. Other English wordsfrom the same source include endorse, theadjective dorsal [15], and dossier [19]. This wasacquired from French dossier, a derivative ofdos, which originally signified a ‘bunch ofpapers with a label on the back’. DORSAL, DOSSIER, ENDORSEdot [OE] The underlying meaning of dot seems tobe ‘small lump or raised mark’. In Old English(in which there is only a single record of its use)it meant ‘head of a boil’, and it could well berelated to English tit ‘nipple’. The worddisappears from written texts between the 11thand the 16th centuries, and resurfaces in thesense ‘small lump’. The modern meaning ‘smallroundish mark’ does not appear until the 17thcentury. Dottle ‘unburnt tobacco in the bottom ofa pipe’ [15] is a diminutive form of dot. DOTTLE, TITdote [13] English may have borrowed dote fromMiddle Dutch doten ‘be silly’, but its ultimateorigins are not known. To begin with it meant ‘besilly’ in English too (a sense now mainlypreserved in its various derivatives), and ‘showexcessive fondness’ did not develop until the15th century. Related forms include dotage [14],where the notion of ‘simple-mindedness due tosenility’ (implicit in the verb from earliest times)has passed to simply ‘senility’; dotterel [15], thename of a sort of plover, supposedly so calledbecause it was foolish enough to allow itself toget caught; and dotty [19], an alteration ofScottish English dottle ‘fool’, which was aderivative of dote. DOTAGE, DOTTEREL, DOTTYdottle see DOTdouble [13] Double comes via Old French dobleor duble from Latin duplus (direct source ofEnglish duple [16]). This was a compoundadjective formed from duo ‘two’ and an Indo-European element *pl- which denoted ‘folding’(it is present also in English fold and ply). Thesame semantic elements went to make upEnglish twofold, and indeed duplex (seeDUPLICATE), and also Greek diplous (source ofEnglish diploma and diplomat). The underlyingmeaning of doublet ‘close-fitting jacket’ [14](borrowed from French doublet, a derivative ofdouble) is ‘something folded’, while doubloon[17], borrowed via French doublon from Spanishdoblón (a derivative of doble ‘double’) wasoriginally a gold coin worth ‘double’ a pistole. DIPLOMA, DIPLOMAT, DUB, DUPLICATE, FOLD,PLYdoubt [13] English acquired the verb doubt fromOld French doter or duter, a descendant of Latindubitāre ‘waver, be uncertain’ (the b wasreintroduced from the Latin spelling in the 15thcentury). Dubitāre was closely related to Latindubius ‘uncertain’ (ultimate source of Englishdubious [16]), which appears to have been basedon duo ‘two’, and thus to have meant originally‘wavering between two possibilities’. In OldFrench, the sense ‘fear’ developed, and this wasan important meaning of the word in MiddleEnglish; it survives in the derivative redoubtable[14], literally ‘fearable’. DUBIOUS, REDOUBTABLEdouche see DUCTdough [OE] Dough is an ancient word, withrelated forms scattered throughout the Indo-European languages. It goes back to an Indo-European base *dheigh-, which meant ‘mould,

form, knead’, and produced Latin fingere‘mould’ and figūra ‘figure’ (source betweenthem of English effigy, faint, feign, fiction,figment, and figure), Sanskrit dih- ‘smear’,Gothic digan ‘mould, form’, Avestan (a dialectof Old Iranian) diz ‘mould, form’ (source of thelast syllable of English paradise), and the OldEnglish element *dig- ‘knead’, which forms thelast syllable of lady. It also produced theprehistoric Germanic *daigaz ‘somethingkneaded’, hence ‘dough’, whose modernGermanic descendants include German teig,Dutch deg, Swedish deg, Danish dej, andEnglish dough.In northern areas dough used to bepronounced /duf/, which has given modernEnglish the ‘plum duff’ [19]. DAIRY, DUFF, EFFIGY, FAINT, FICTION, FIGURE,LADY, PARADISEdoughty [11] Doughty originally had the rathergeneral sense ‘worthy, virtuous’ – ‘brave’ is asecondary specialization. It comes from late OldEnglish dohtig, an unexplained variant of anearlier Old English dyhtig, which appears tohave derived ultimately from a prehistoricGermanic *duhtiz ‘ability, capacity’. This in turncame from a verb *dugan ‘be able or strong’,which itself came into Old English and surviveddialectally until the 19th century as dow ‘be ableto do something’ or ‘thrive’.down Effectively, English now has three distinctwords down, but two of them are intimatelyrelated: for down ‘to or at a lower place’ [11]originally meant ‘from the hill’ – and the OldEnglish word for hill in this instance was dūn.This may have been borrowed from anunrecorded Celtic word which some haveviewed as the ultimate source also of dune [18](borrowed by English from Middle Dutch dūne)and even of town. Its usage is now largelyrestricted to the plural form, used as ageographical term for various ranges of hills (theapplication to the North and South Downs insouthern England dates from at least the 15thcentury).The Old English phrase of dūne ‘from thehill’ had by the 10th century become mergedinto a single word, adūne, and broadened outsemantically to ‘to a lower place, down’, and inthe 11th century it started to lose its first syllable– hence down. Its use as a preposition dates fromthe 16th century. (The history of down is closelyparalleled in that of French à val, literally ‘to thevalley’, which also came to be used for ‘down’;it is the source of French avaler ‘descend,swallow’, which played a part in thedevelopment of avalanche.)Down ‘feathers’ [14] was borrowed from OldNorse dúnn. DUNEdowry [14] English acquired dowry via Anglo-Norman dowarie from Old French douaire(source of the originally synonymous but nowlittle-used dower [14]). This in turn came frommedieval Latin dōtārium, a derivative of Latindōs ‘dowry’, which was related to dāre ‘give’175 dragon(source of English date, donate, etc). Itsassociated verb, dōtāre ‘endow’, is the ancestorof English endow. DATE, DONATE, ENDOWdozen [13] Dozen traces its ancestry back to theLatin word for ‘twelve’, duodecim. This was acompound formed from duo ‘two’ and decem‘ten’. This gradually developed in the postclassicalperiod via *dōdece to *doze, which,with the addition of the suffix -ēna, producedOld French dozeine, source of the English word. DUODENUMdrab [16] Drab is a variant of the now obsoleteform drap, which was borrowed from OldFrench drap ‘cloth’ (source also of Englishdrape, draper, and trappings). It was originally anoun meaning ‘cloth’ in English too, but thebeginnings of its transition to the modernEnglish adjective meaning ‘faded and dull’ canbe seen in the 17th century. The word came to beused particularly for natural undyed cloth, of adull yellowish-brown colour, and hence for thecolour itself (an application best preserved in theolive-drab colour of American serviceuniforms). The figurative development to ‘dulland faded’ is a comparatively recent one, firstrecorded a little over a hundred years ago. DRAPE, TRAPPINGSdrachma see DRAMdraconian [18] Draconian ‘excessively harsh’is a monument to the severe code of laws drawnup in 621 BC by the Athenian statesman Draco.Its purpose was to banish inequities in thesystem which were leading at the time torumblings and threats of rebellion among thecommon people, and to an extent it succeeded,but all it is now remembered for is its almostpathological harshness: the most trivialinfraction was punished with death. When taxedwith his laws’ severity, Draco is said to havereplied ‘Small crimes deserve death, and forgreat crimes I know of no penalty severer’.drag [14] Drag has two possible sources, eachwith equally plausible claims: Old Englishdragan, source of modern English draw, or therelated Old Norse draga. Both go back to acommon Germanic source. Of the moderncolloquial applications of the word, ‘women’sclothes worn by men’ seems to have originatedin 19th-century theatrical slang, in reference tothe ‘dragging’ of a woman’s long skirts along theground (an unusual sensation for someone usedto wearing trousers). DRAWdragée see DREDGEdragoman [16] Dragoman ‘Arabic guide orinterpreter’ comes via early modern Frenchdragoman, Italian dragomano, medieval Greekdragómanos, early Arabic targumān, andAramaic tūrgemānā from Akkadian targumānu‘interpreter’, a derivative of the verb ragāmu‘call’. It is one of the few English nouns endingin -man which forms its plural simply by adding-s (desman ‘small molelike animal’ is another).dragon [13] English acquired dragon via OldFrench dragon and Latin dracō from Greek

drain 176drákōn. Originally the word signified simply‘snake’, but over the centuries this ‘snake’increased in size, and many terrifying mythicalattributes (such as wings and the breathing offire) came to be added to it, several of themlatterly from Chinese sources. The Greek form isusually connected with words for ‘look at,glance, flash, gleam’, such as Greek drakein andSanskrit darç, as if its underlying meaning were‘creature that looks at you (with a deadlyglance)’.Dragon is second time around for English asfar as this word is concerned: it originally cameby it in the Old English period, via Germanic, asdrake.Dragoons [17] (an adaptation of Frenchdragon) were originally mounted infantry, socalled because they carried muskets nicknamedby the French dragon ‘fire-breather’. DRAGOON, DRAKE, RANKLEdrain [OE] The underlying meaning of drainseems to be ‘making dry’. It comes ultimatelyfrom *draug-, the same prehistoric Germanicbase as produced English drought and dry, and inOld English it meant ‘strain through a cloth orsimilar porous medium’. There then follows acurious gap in the history of the word: there is nowritten record of its use between about 1000 ADand the end of the 14th century, and when it reemergedit began to give the first evidence of itsmain modern meaning ‘draw off a liquid’. DROUGHT, DRYdrake English has two words drake, but theolder, ‘dragon’ [OE] (which comes viaprehistoric West Germanic *drako from Latindracō, source of English dragon), has now moreor less disappeared from general use (it is stillemployed for a sort of fishing fly). Drake ‘maleduck’ [13] probably goes back to (another)prehistoric West Germanic *drako, preservedalso in the second element of German enterich‘male duck’. DRAGONdram [15] Dram was borrowed from Old Frenchdrame or medieval Latin drama, which werevariants respectively of dragme or dragma. Bothcame from drachma, the Latin version of Greekdrakhmé. This was used in the Athens ofclassical times for both a measure of weight(hence the meaning of modern English dram)and a silver coin (hence modern Greekdrakhmē), in English drachma [16]. It is thoughtto have originated in the notion of the ‘amount ofcoins that can be held in one hand’, and to havebeen formed from *drakh-, the base which alsoproduced Greek drássesthai ‘grasp’. (Latindrachma is also the source of dirham [18], thename of the monetary unit used in Morocco andthe United Arab Emirates.) DIRHAM, DRACHMAdrama [17] Etymologically, drama is simply‘that which is done’ (in that respect it closelyresembles act, which has the neutral, generalmeaning ‘do something’, as well as the morespecific ‘perform on stage’). It comes via lateLatin drāma from Greek drama, originally‘deed, action’, and hence ‘play’. This was aderivative of the verb dran ‘do’, whose pastparticiple was the ultimate source of Englishdrastic [17]. DRASTICdrape [15] The verb drape originally meant‘weave wool into cloth’. It was borrowed fromOld French draper, which was a derivative ofdrap ‘cloth’ (source of English drab). This inturn came from late Latin drappus, which wasultimately of Celtic origin. Other offspring ofdrap which found their way into English aredraper [14], drapery [14], and trappings. Theuse of drapery for ‘loose voluminous clothcovering’ eventually fed back into the verbdrape, producing in the 19th century its currentsense ‘cover loosely with cloth’. DRAB, DRAPER, TRAPPINGSdrastic see DRAMAdraught [12] Draught and draft are essentiallythe same word, but draft (more accuratelyrepresenting its modern English pronunciation)has become established since the 18th century asthe spelling for ‘preliminary drawing or plan’,‘money order’, and (in American English)‘conscription’. The word itself probably comesfrom an unrecorded Old Norse *drahtr, anabstract noun meaning ‘pulling’ derived from aprehistoric Germanic verb *dragan (source ofEnglish drag and draw). Most of its modernEnglish meanings are fairly transparentlydescended from the idea of ‘pulling’: ‘draughtbeer’, for example, is ‘drawn’ from a barrel. Ofthe less obvious ones, ‘current of air’ is air thatis ‘drawn’ through an opening; the gamedraughts comes from an earlier, Middle Englishsense of draught, ‘act of drawing a piece acrossthe board in chess and similar games’; whiledraft ‘provisional plan’ was originally‘something drawn or sketched’. DRAFT, DRAG, DRAWdraw [OE] The Old English ancestor of modernEnglish draw was dragan, which came from aprehistoric Germanic verb *dragan (source alsoof English drag). This seems to have meantoriginally ‘carry’ (which is what its German andDutch descendants tragen and dragen stillmean). In English and the Scandinavianlanguages, however (Swedish draga, forinstance), it has evolved to ‘pull’. ‘Sketch’,perhaps the word’s most common modernEnglish sense, developed in Middle Englishfrom the notion of ‘drawing’ or ‘pulling’ apencil, brush, etc across a surface.Dray ‘wagon’ [14] is related to, and perhapsoriginally came from, Old English dragan. DRAG, DRAUGHT, DRAYdrawer [16] A drawer is literally something thatis ‘drawn’ or ‘pulled’ out. The coinage wasperhaps based on French tiroir ‘drawer’, whichwas similarly derived from the verb tirer ‘pull’.The same basic notion underlies the formation ofdrawers [16], a superannuated term for‘knickers’, which were originally ‘garmentpulled on’.dray see DRAW

dreadread [12] Old English had the verb ondrǣdan‘fear’. Its first syllable is generally taken to bethe prefix *and- ‘against’, which is related toGerman ent- ‘away, un-’ and Greek anti- (sourceof English anti-) and appears also in Englishanswer. The second part, however, remains amystery. There are one or two related forms inother West Germanic languages, such as OldHigh German intrātan, but where they comefrom has never been established satisfactorily.By the end of the Old English period thisobsolete prefix had shrunk to a- (adreadsurvived until around 1400), and in the 12thcentury it started to disappear altogether.dream [13] Old English had a word drēam,which meant ‘joy, merrymaking, music’, but it isnot at all clear that this is the same word asmodern English dream (the recorded OldEnglish words for ‘dream’ were swefn andmǣting). Semantically, the two are quite a longway apart, and on balance it seems more likelythat Old English had a homonym *drēam‘dream’, which has not survived in the writtenrecords, and which was perhaps subsequentlyreinforced by Old Norse draumr. Both these andthe related German traum and Dutch droom havebeen traced back to an Indo-European basedenoting ‘deception’, represented also inSanskrit druh- ‘seek to harm’ and Avestan (adialect of Old Iranian) druz- ‘lie, deceive’.dreary [OE] In Old English, dreary (or drēorig,as it then was) meant ‘dripping with blood,gory’, but its etymological connections are with‘dripping, falling’ rather than with ‘blood’. Itgoes back to a West Germanic base *dreuz-,*drauz- which also produced Old Englishdrēosna ‘drop, fall’, probably the ultimatesource of drizzle [16] and drowsy. The literalsense ‘bloody’ disappeared before the end of theOld English period in the face of successivemetaphorical extensions: ‘dire, horrid’; ‘sad’(echoed in the related German traurig ‘sad’);and, in the 17th century, the main modern sense‘gloomy, dull’. Drear is a conscious archaism,created from dreary in the 17th century. DRIZZLE, DROWSYdredge English has two distinct words dredge,neither with a particularly well-documentedpast. Dredge ‘clear mud, silt, etc from waterway’[16] may be related in some way to the 15thcenturyScottish term dreg-boat, and similaritieshave been pointed out with Middle Dutchdregghe ‘drag-net’, although if the two areconnected, it is not clear who borrowed fromwhom. It has also been suggested that it isrelated ultimately to drag. Dredge ‘sprinkle withsugar, flour, etc’ [16] is a verbal use based on anow obsolete noun dredge, earlier dradge, whichmeant ‘sweet’. This was borrowed from OldFrench dragie (its modern French descendantgave English dragée [19]), which may beconnected in some way to Latin tragēmata andGreek tragémata ‘spices, condiments’ (theseLatin and Greek terms, incidentally, may playsome part in the obscure history of Englishtracklements ‘condiments to accompany meat’177 drill[20], which the English food writer DorothyHartley claimed to have ‘invented’ on the basisof an earlier – but unrecorded – dialect wordmeaning more generally ‘appurtenances’). DRAGÉEdrench [OE] Originally, drench meant simply‘cause to drink’. It comes ultimately from theprehistoric Germanic verb *drangkjan, whichwas a causative variant of *drengkan (source ofEnglish drink) – that is to say, it denoted‘causing someone to do the action of the verbdrink’. That particular sense now survives onlyas a technical usage in veterinary medicine, butalready by the Middle English period it hadmoved on metaphorically to ‘drown’ (nowobsolete, and succeeded by the related drown)and ‘soak thoroughly’. DRINK, DROWNdress [14] Dress originally meant literally ‘putright, put straight’. It comes via Old Frenchdresser from Vulgar Latin *dīrectiāre, aderivative of Latin dīrectus ‘straight’ (fromwhich English gets direct). Traces of thisunderlying sense survive in the word’sapplication to the correct aligning of columns oftroops, but its main modern signification,‘clothe’, comes via a more generalized line ofsemantic development ‘prepare’ (as in ‘dress aturkey for the oven’), and hence ‘array, equip’.(English address developed in parallel withdress, and comes from the same ultimatesource.) Dresser ‘sideboard’ [15] was borrowedfrom Old French dresseur, a derivative ofdresser in the sense ‘prepare’. ADDRESS, DIRECTdrift [13] Drift comes ultimately from the sameGermanic base as produced drive, andetymologically means ‘driving or being driven’,but as far as we can tell it did not exist in OldEnglish, and the word as we now have it is aborrowing from other Germanic languages. Itsfirst recorded use is in the sense ‘snowdrift’,which points to Old Norse drift as the source, butlater more general applications were probablyreinforced by Dutch drift. DRIVEdrill English has no fewer than four separatewords drill, all of them comparatively recentacquisitions. Drill ‘make a hole’ [16] wasborrowed from Middle Dutch drillen, butbeyond that is history is obscure. The word’smilitary application, to ‘repetitive training’,dates from earliest times, and also existed in theDutch verb in the 16th century; it seems to haveoriginated as a metaphorical extension of thenotion of ‘turning round’ – that is, of troopsmarching around in circles. Drill ‘small furrowfor sowing seeds’ [18] may come from the nowobsolete noun drill ‘rivulet’, but the origins ofthis are purely conjectural: some have linked itwith the obsolete verb drill ‘trickle’. Drill‘strong fabric’ [18] gets its name from originallybeing woven from three threads. An earlier formof the word was drilling, an adaptation ofGerman drillich; this in turn was descended fromLatin trilix, a compound formed from tri- ‘three’

drink 178and līcium ‘thread’ (trellis is a doublet, comingultimately from the same Latin source). (Clothwoven from two threads, incidentally, is twill[14], or alternatively – from Greek dímitos –dimity [15].) Drill ‘African baboon’ [17] comesfrom a West African word. It occurs also in thecompound mondrill [18], the name of a relatedbaboon, which appears to have been formed withEnglish man. TRELLIS; MANDRILLdrink [OE] Drink comes ultimately from aprehistoric Germanic verb *drengkan, which iswidely represented in other modern Germaniclanguages: German trinken, for instance, Dutchdrinken, Swedish dricka, and Danish drikke.Variants of it also produced English drench anddrown. Its pre-Germanic history is not clear,however: some have suggested that the originalunderlying notion contained in it is of ‘suckingliquid in or up’, and that it is thus related toEnglish draw (a parallel semantic connectionhas been perceived between Latin dūcere ‘lead,draw’ and the related tsuk- ‘drink’ in TocharianA, an extinct Indo-European language of centralAsia). DRENCH, DROWNdrip see DROPdrive [OE] As far as is known, drive is anexclusively Germanic word. It and its relativesGerman treiben, Dutch drijven, Swedish driva,Danish drive, and Gothic dreiban point to aprehistoric Germanic ancestor *drīban. Its basealso produced English drift and drove [OE]. Thecentral modern sense of drive, ‘drive a car’,comes from the earlier notion of driving a horse,ox, etc by pushing it, whipping it, etc frombehind, forcing it onwards, but in most othermodern European languages the verb for‘driving a vehicle’ denotes basically ‘leading’ or‘guiding’ (French conduire, for example, orGerman lenken). DRIFT, DROVEdrizzle see DREARYdromedary [14] The dromedary, or onehumpedcamel, got its name from its swiftness offoot. The word comes via Old Frenchdromedaire from late Latin dromedārius, anadjective formed from dromas, the Latin termfor ‘camel’. This in turn was derived from theGreek dromás ‘runner’, a close relative ofdrómos ‘running, course’, which is the source ofthe -drome in such English words ashippodrome, aerodrome, and palindrome. AERODROME, HIPPODROME, PALINDROMEdrop [OE] Drop, droop, and drip are closelyrelated. Droop [13] was borrowed from OldNorse drūpa, which came from a Germanic base*drūp-. A variant of this, *drup-, producedMiddle Danish drippe, the probable source ofEnglish drip [15], and a further variant, *drop-,lies behind Old English dropa, ancestor ofmodern English drop. All three go backultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European*dhreub-, source of Irish drucht ‘dew’.The English noun originally meant ‘globuleof liquid’, and its related verb ‘fall in drops’. Themain modern transitive sense, ‘allow to fall’,developed in the 14th century, giving English asingle word for the concept of ‘letting fall’ notshared by, for example, French and German,which have to use phrases to express it:respectively, laisser tomber and fallen lassen. DRIP, DROOPdrought [OE] Etymologically, drought meanssimply ‘dryness’. The prehistoric Germanic basethat produced English dry (and indeed drain)was *draug-, *drūg-. To this was added thesuffix -th, used for creating abstract nouns fromadjectives, as in length, strength, and truth; thisgave Old English drūgath. The subsequentchange of -th to -t (which began in the 13thcentury) is mirrored in such words as height andtheft. DRAIN, DRYdrove see DRIVEdrown [13] Drown is not found in texts until theend of the 13th century (when it began to replacethe related drench in the sense ‘suffocate inwater’) but an Old English verb *drūnian couldwell have existed. The earliest occurrences of theword are from the North of England andScotland, which suggests a possible borrowingfrom, or influence of, Old Norse drukna ‘bedrowned’; this came ultimately from Germanic*drungk-, a variant of the base which producedEnglish drink. DRENCH, DRINKdrowsy [15] The etymological notionunderlying drowsy seems to be of heaviness,with eyelids falling and the head nodding overthe chest. The word probably comes from aGermanic base *drūs-, which also produceddrūsian, an Old English verb meaning ‘be slowand sleepy’ which did not survive into theMiddle English period (modern English drowse[16] is a back-formation from drowsy). A variantof this base is the possible source of Englishdreary and drizzle. DREAM, DRIZZLEdrub [17] Drub appears to have been introducedto the English language by Sir Thomas Herbert(1606–82), a traveller in the Orient, who used theword several times in his Relation of someyeares travaile into Afrique and the greater Asia1634: ‘[The pasha] made the Petitioner bealmost drub’d to death’. It came from Arabicdáraraba, which meant not just ‘beat’, but alsospecifically ‘bastinado’ – ‘beat on the soles ofthe feet as a punishment or torture’.drudge [15] No one is quite sure where drudgecomes from. It is first recorded, as a noun,towards the end of the 15th century, and the verbfollowed about fifty years later. One possiblesource may be the Middle English verb drugge‘pull laboriously’, a possible relative of Englishdrag; another suggestion is the Old English verbdrēogan ‘work’.drug [14] Drug is one of the mystery words ofthe language. It is clear that English acquired itfrom Old French drogue, but no one is certainwhere the French word came from. Onesuggestion is that it originated in Arabic dūrawā

‘chaff’; another, rather more likely, is that itssource was Dutch droog ‘dry’, via either thephrase droge waere ‘dry goods’ or droge vate‘dry barrels’, a common expression for ‘goodspacked in barrels’. It has spread to many otherEuropean languages, including Italian andSpanish droga, German droge, and Swedishdrog.druidruid [16] Druid is, not surprisingly, of Celticorigin, although English probably acquired it viaFrench druide or the Latin plural druides. Thesource of these forms was Gaulish druides,which came ultimately from Old Celtic*derwíjes. There are two opposing theories onthe derivation of this: one is that it comes froman Old Celtic adjective derwos ‘true’ (source ofWelsh derw ‘true’), in which case itsetymological meaning would be ‘someone whosays the truth’ (a parallel formation to Englishsoothsayer); the other is that it was formed fromthe Old Celtic base *dru- ‘tree’ (source of Welshderwen and Irish daur ‘oak-tree’ and related toGreek drus ‘oak’ and English tree) in referenceto the central role played by oak-trees in druidicceremonies.drum [16] Belying the total lack of similaritybetween the instruments, drum, trumpet, andtrombone seem to be closely related. Drumappears to be a shortening of a slightly earlierEnglish word drumslade ‘drum, drummer’,which was borrowed from Low Germantrommelslag ‘drumbeat’. This was a compoundnoun formed from trommel ‘drum’ and slag ‘hit’(related to English slay). An alternative view isthat English simply acquired the word fromMiddle Dutch tromme. Both these Germanicforms meant simply ‘drum’, but the picturebecomes more complex with Middle HighGerman tromme ‘drum’, for originally this hadthe sense ‘trumpet’, and what is more it had avariant form trumbe (its ancestor, Old HighGerman trumpa, ultimate source of Englishtrumpet and trombone, only meant ‘trumpet’).So the picture that emerges is of a word thatoriginally referred in a fairly undifferentiatedway to any musical instrument that made a loudnoise. TROMBONE, TRUMPETdry [OE] Dry comes ultimately from prehistoricGermanic *draugiz, a derivative of the base*draug-, *drūg-, which also produced Englishdrought and drain. Its other Germanic relativesare Dutch droog and German trocken, and somehave connected it with Old Norse drjūgr‘lasting, strong’, Old Prussian drūktai ‘firmly’,and Lithuanian dialect drūktas ‘thick, strong’ –the theory being that strength and endurance arelinked with ‘drying out’. DRAIN, DROUGHTdryadryad see TREEdual [17] Dual was borrowed from Latin duālis,a derivative of duo ‘two’ (which is a distantrelative of English two). In Latin it was usedparticularly by grammarians, to denote thecategory ‘two people or things’ (as opposed tothe plural, referring to three or more), and this179 ductwas the earliest sense of the word adopted byEnglish. (Incidentally, despite its formalsimilarity, and a common meaning element –two people participate – duel [15] is notetymologically related to dual; it comes frommedieval Latin duellum, which was originally anarchaic form of Latin bellum ‘war’. TWOdub English has two words dub. By far the older,‘create a knight, name’ [11], was one of the firstlinguistic fruits of the Norman conquest, whichwas during the Middle English period tocontribute such a vast number of French wordsto the English language. It came from Anglo-Norman duber, which was a reduced form ofaduber, the Anglo-Norman version of OldFrench adober. This meant ‘equip, repair,arrange’, but also specifically ‘equip witharmour’, which led metaphorically to ‘confer therank of knighthood on’. The sense ‘arrange’ hasremained in use in various technical areas up tothe present time, and its application to thedressing of leather with grease formed the basisof the noun dubbin ‘mixture of oil and tallow forsoftening and waterproofing leather’ [18].Dub ‘insert soundtrack’ [20] is a shortenedversion of double. DUBBIN; DOUBLEdubious see DOUBTducat see DUKEduchess see DUKEduchy see DUKEduck [OE] A duck is a bird that ‘ducks’ – assimple as that. It gets its name from its habit ofdiving down under the surface of the water.There is no actual record of an English verb duckuntil the 14th century, but it is generally assumedthat an Old English verb *dūcan did exist, whichwould have formed the basis of the noun duck. Itcame from a prehistoric West Germanic verb*dukjan, which also produced German tauchen‘dive’. English is the only language which usesthis word for the bird, although Swedish has theterm dykand, literally ‘dive-duck’, which refersto the ‘diver’, a sort of large waterbird. Nor is itthe original English word: the Anglo-Saxonsmainly called the duck ened, a term whichsurvived until the 15th century. This representsthe main Indo-European name for the duck,which comes from an original *anəti- and isfound in Greek nessa, Latin anas, German ente,Dutch eend, Swedish and, and Russian utka.duct [17] Duct comes from Latin ductus, a nounformed from the past participle of the verbdūcere ‘lead’. This is among the most prolificLatin sources of English words. It appears innumerous prefixed forms, all containing to someextent the underlying meaning element ‘lead’,such as deduce, introduce, produce, and reduce,as well as educate and, in less obvious form,subdue. Its past participle produced aqueductand ductile [14], not to mention (via VulgarLatin *ductiāre and Italian docciare) douche[18]. And furthermore it comes ultimately from

due 180the same Indo-European source as producedEnglish team, teem, tie, tight, tow, and tug. AQUEDUCT, CONDUCT, DEDUCE, DEDUCT,DOUCHE, DUKE, EDUCATE, INTRODUCE,PRODUCE, REDUCE, SEDUCE, TEAM, TIE, TIGHT,TOW, TUGdue see DUTYduel see DUALduenna see DAMEduet [18] The original term for ‘two musicians’was Italian duo, a descendant of Latin duo ‘two’.English acquired this in the 16th century. ButItalian (the major source of Western musicalvocabulary) also produced a diminutive formduetto, literally ‘little duo’, which Englishborrowed either directly (the unanglicized formduetto was used in English for about a hundredyears from the 1720s) or perhaps via Germanduett. TWOduff see DOUGHduffel [17] Duffel is actually a sort of heavywoollen material, and like so many names offabrics, it comes from the place where it wasoriginally made or exported from – in this caseDuffel, a town in Belgium, near Antwerp.However, the term duffel coat (which dates backto the late 17th century) has in modern timesbecome associated with a particular design ofcoat (with a hood and toggles) as much as withthe material it is made from. Duffel bag [20], aterm of American origin, was to begin with a bagfor ‘personal belongings and equipment’, orduffel, as it is called in American English (theapplication seems to have started with ‘spareclothes made of duffel’).duffer see DEAFdukeduke [12] Duke is one of a wide range of Englishwords which come ultimately from the Latinverb dūcere ‘lead’ (see DUCT). In this case itssource was the Latin derivative dux ‘leader’(ancestor also of Italian duce, the title adopted bythe 20th-century dictator Benito Mussolini),which passed into English via Old French duc.In Latin the word signified ‘military commanderof a province’, and in the so-called Dark Ages itwas taken up in various European languages asthe term for a ‘prince ruling a small state’. OldEnglish never adopted it though, preferring itsown word earl, and it was not until the 14thcentury that it was formally introduced, byEdward III, as a rank of the English peerage.Before that the word had been used in Englishonly in the titles of foreign dukes, or (echoingthe word’s etymological meaning) as a generalterm for ‘leader’ or ‘military commander’. Thefeminine form duchess [14] comes from OldFrench, while English has two terms for a duke’srank or territory: the native dukedom [15], andduchy [14], borrowed from Old French duche(this came partly from medieval Latin ducātus,ultimate source of English ducat [14], a formerItalian coin). CONDUCT, DUCAT, DUCHESS, DUCHY, DUCT,PRODUCEdull [13] Dull originally meant ‘slow-witted’. Itwas borrowed from Middle Low German dul, adescendant of the prehistoric Germanic adjective*dulaz, which also produced German toll andOld English dol ‘stupid’ (the Old Englishadjective does not seem to have survived beyondthe 10th century). The modern meaning ‘boring’developed in the 15th century. The now littleuseddullard [15] is a derivative (reflecting theadjective’s original sense), as also is probablydolt [16]. DOLTdumb [OE] The notion underlying dumb is of‘sensory or mental impairment’. It goes back toa nasalized version of prehistoric Indo-European*dheubh-, denoting ‘confusion, stupefaction, ordizziness’, which was also the ultimate source ofEnglish deaf. This developed two stands ofmeaning. The first, through association of‘sensory or mental impairment’ and ‘slowwittedness’,led to forms such as German dummand Dutch dom, which mean ‘stupid’ (the use ofdumb to mean ‘stupid’ did not develop until the19th century, in American English, presumablyunder the influence of the German and Dutchadjectives). The other was semanticspecialization to a particular sort of mentalimpairment, the inability to speak, whichproduced Gothic dumbs, Old Norse dumbr, andEnglish dumb. (The German word for ‘dumb’,stumm, is related to English stammer andstumble, as are Dutch stom and Swedish stum.)Dummy [16] is a derivative; it originallymeant ‘dumb person’. DEAF, DUMMYdump [14] Dump is probably of Scandinavianorigin – Danish and Norwegian have the similardumpe and dumpa, which mean ‘fall suddenly’ –although Dutch dompen ‘immerse, topple’ isanother candidate that has been put forward.Either way, there does not seem to be any directconnection with the dumps [16], which wasprobably originally a metaphorical use of Dutchdomp ‘haze’, in the sense ‘miasma ofdepression’. Nor has any relationship beenestablished with the obsolete noun dump ‘lump’[18], which appears to have close ties withdumpling [16] and dumpy [16], althoughwhether as source or descendant (by backformation)is a debatable point.dun English has two words dun. The colouradjective, ‘greyish brown’ [OE], comesultimately from Indo-European *donnos,*dusnos, which is also the source of Englishdusk. The now rather dated noun, ‘debtcollector’[17], is an abbreviation of dunkirk, a17th-century term for a ‘privateer’, a privatelyowned vessel officially allowed to attack enemyshipping during wartime. It was originallyapplied from such privateers that sailed from theport of Dunkirk, on the northern coast of France,to attack British ships, and its connotations ofunwarranted piracy soon spread metaphoricallyto one who was constantly importuning for therepayment of his loan. DONKEY, DUSK, OBFUSCATE

dunce [16] Dunce originated as a contemptuousterm for those who continued in the 16th centuryto adhere to the theological views of the Scottishscholar John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308).Renaissance philosophers ridiculed them asnarrow-minded hair-splitters, and so before longthe application of the word spreadmetaphorically to any ‘stuffy pedant’ in general,and hence, through the implication of a lack oftrue intellect, to ‘stupid person’. The conicaldunce’s cap seems to have originated in the 19thcentury.dune see DOWNdung see DINGYdungeon [14] In common with a wide range ofother English words, including danger, demesne,dominion, domino, and don, dungeon comesultimately from Latin dominus ‘lord, master’.Derived from this was dominium ‘property’(source of English dominion), which in postclassicaltimes became dominiō or domniō,meaning ‘lord’s tower’. In Old French thisbecame donjon, the term for a ‘castle keep’, andeventually, by extension, a ‘secure(underground) cell’. English acquired thepackage in the 14th century, but in commonusage has retained only the latter sense, in theadapted Middle English spelling (although theoriginal Old French form remains in use as atechnical term for a ‘castle keep’). DAME, DANGER, DEMESNE, DOMINION,DOMINATEduodenum [14] The term duodenum, for thefirst part of the small intestine, originated as ameasure of length. It comes from the medievalLatin phrase intestinum duodēnum digitōrum‘intestine of twelve digits’ – that is, twelvefinger-breadths long, or just over 20 centimetres.Latin duodēnī meant literally ‘twelve each’; itwas a derivative of duodecim ‘twelve’ (sourcealso of English dozen). DOZENdupe [17] English borrowed dupe from French,where it was probably originally a humorousapplication of a dialect word for a ‘hoopoe’, anextravagantly crested bird whose flamboyantappearance seems to have made it the butt ofjokes. It presumably represents ultimately analteration of Old French huppe ‘hoopoe’,sometimes explained as being a conflation of dehuppe ‘of the hoopoe’. (English hoopoe [17] isan alteration of an earlier hoop, which camefrom Old French huppe; its ultimate source wasLatin upupa, which originated as an imitation ofthe bird’s cry.) HOOPOEduple see DOUBLEduplicate [15] Like its close relative double,duplicate comes ultimately from Latin duplus‘two-fold’, a compound adjective based on Latinduo ‘two’ and an Indo-European element *plwhichdenoted ‘folding’ (it is present also inEnglish fold and ply). English acquired this inthe 16th century, and its synonym duplex (basedon the extended stem *plic-) in the 19th century.In Latin, duplus formed the basis of a verb181 dutyduplicāre ‘make twofold, double’, from whosepast participle English gets duplicate, whileduplex has given us duplicity [15]. DOUBLE, DUPLICITY, FOLD, PLY, TWOduress [14] Etymologically, duress meansliterally ‘hardness’, and that was what it wasused for when English first acquired it. It comesvia Old French duresse from Latin dūritia, aderivative of the adjective dūrus ‘hard’ (fromwhich English gets during). The current sense‘constraint’ developed during the 15th century. DURING, ENDUREduring [14] During, like durable [14], durance[15], duration [14], duress, and endure [14],comes ultimately from the Latin adjective dūrus‘hard’. This goes back to an earlier *drūros,which is related to Irish dron ‘solid’, Lithuaniandrūtas ‘strong, solid’, and Sanskrit dāruna-‘strong, hard’, and links with Irish daur ‘oak’ (apossible relative of druid) and Greek drus ‘oak’suggest that its original underlying meaning was‘oak wood’, from which ‘hard’ developed as ametaphorical extension. The Latin verb dūrāremeant originally literally ‘harden’, but thiswidened (perhaps with memories of anunderlying sense ‘strong, resilient’) to ‘continuein existence, last’. It is these notions of‘continuance’, ‘strength’, and ‘perseverance’that emerge in different proportions in durable,duration, and endure, and indeed in during,which is a translation of Old French durant, thepresent participle of durer ‘last’: phrases such as‘during the day’ mean etymologically ‘as long asthe day lasts’. Durance, an archaic term for‘imprisonment’, originally denoted ‘length ofsentence’, and so is virtually equivalent to themodern ‘for the duration’. DURABLE, DURATION, DURESS, ENDUREdusk [OE] In Anglo-Saxon times, dusk was anadjective meaning ‘dark in colour’ (a sensepreserved today in the derived adjective dusky[16]). Its modern noun use ‘twilight’ is notrecorded until as recently as the early 17thcentury. The Old English form of the word wasdox, which was descended from the sameultimate Indo-European ancestor as Latin fuscus‘dark’ (source of English obfuscate [16]). DUN, OBFUSCALEdust [OE] The notion ultimately underlying dustseems to be that of ‘smoke’ or ‘vapour’. It goesback to a prehistoric Indo-European base*dheu-, which also produced Latin fūmus andSanskrit dhūma- ‘smoke’. A Germanicdescendant of this, *dunstu-, picks up the idea ofa cloud of fine particles being blown about likesmoke, and is the basis of Norwegian dust ‘dust’and duft ‘finely ground grain’, German duft‘fragrance’ (from an earlier Middle HighGerman tuft ‘vapour, dew’), and English dust.duty [13] Duty comes from Anglo-Normandueté. This was a derivative of Old French deu‘owed’ (source of English due [13]), which inturn came from Latin dēbitus, past participle ofdēbēre ‘owe’ and source of English debit anddebt. (Latin dēbēre was originally a compoundverb formed from the prefix dē- ‘away’ and

dwarf 182habēre ‘have’, literally ‘have away’, that is ‘keepin one’s possession what belongs to someoneelse’.) So etymologically one’s duty is what one‘owes’ to others. DEBIT, DEBT, DUEdwarf [OE] Dwarf is descended via Germanic*dwergaz from Indo-European *dhwergwhos,which denoted ‘something tiny’. In English, itoriginally meant simply ‘person of abnormallysmall stature’; the modern connotation of ‘smallmanlike creature that lives underground andworks metal’, a product of Germanic mythology,is not recorded until the late 18th century. Theword’s German relative, zwerg, is the source ofEnglish quartz. QUARTZdwell [OE] Dwell has changed its meaningremarkably over the centuries. In Old English itmeant ‘confuse, lead astray’. It goes back to aGermanic base *dwel-, *dwal-, *dwul-, whichalso produced Old English dwola ‘error’, Gothicdwals ‘foolish’, and Old High German gitwelan‘be stunned’, and beyond that to Indo-European*dhwel-, source of Greek tholós ‘dirt’ and Irishdall ‘blind’. Already by the end of the OldEnglish period, ‘lead astray’ had progressed to‘hinder, delay’, probably under the influence ofthe related Old Norse dvelja ‘delay’, and thissubsequently developed through ‘linger’ to (inthe 13th century) ‘make one’s home in a place’.dye [OE] Dye is something of a mystery word. Itsoriginal meaning seems to have been simply‘colour’, its modern connotations of ‘artificiallychanging colour’ a secondary development, butits source remains unknown. A connection hasbeen suggested with Old English dēagol ‘secret,hidden’, but what the implications of that wouldbe for its semantic history are not clear. Theconvention of spelling the word dye did notbecome established until as recently as the 19thcentury; until then die was equally common, andorthographic confusion with die ‘cease to live’was rife.dyke see DITCHdynamic [19] Greek dūnamis (a word ofunknown origin) meant ‘strength’. It was usedby the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel in 1867 toform the name of the new explosive he hadinvented, dynamite. From it was derived theadjective dunamikós ‘powerful’, which Frenchadopted in the 17th century as dynamique, andEnglish acquired it in the early 19th century.Related to dúnamis was the verb dúnasthai ‘bestrong’ or ‘be able’; from this was derived thenoun dunasteíā ‘power, domination’, source, viaFrench or late Latin, of English dynasty [15].Part of the same word family is dynamo [19],short for dynamo-electric machine, a termcoined in 1867 by the electrical engineer WernerSiemens. DYNAMITE, DYNASTY

Eeach [OE] Each comes from Old English ǣlc.This, brief as it is, was in fact originally acompound adjective; it was descended fromWest Germanic *aiwō galīkaz, literally ‘everalike’ (*aiwō is the source of English aye ‘ever’[12], *galīkaz the source of English alike). ǣlcalso formed the second element of an OldEnglish expression, literally ‘ever each’, whichhas become modern English every. ALIKE, AYEeager [13] As its close etymological connectionwith vinegar and acid might suggest, theunderlying sense of eager is ‘sharp’. It comesultimately from the Indo-European base *ak-‘sharp, pointed’, amongst whose other Englishdescendants are acne, edge, and oxygen. It wasthe source of Latin ācer ‘keen, sharp’, whichwas used in relation both to sight, hearing, etc,and to temperamental qualities – hence ‘ardent,zealous’. The Latin adjective (from whichEnglish also gets acid and acrid) became*acrum in post-classical times, and from thiscame Old French aigre (source of the -egar ofvinegar), which passed into English via Anglo-Norman egre. English retained the literal senses‘pungent, sour’ and ‘sharp-edged’ until the early19th century. ACID, ACNE, ACRID, ACUTE, EDGE, OXYGENeagle [14] Eagle comes via Old French aiglefrom Latin aquila (source also of Englishaquiline [17]). This was presumably a derivativeof the adjective aquilus ‘dark-coloured’,suggesting that the eagle’s name originallysignified simply ‘dark-coloured bird’ (Greekhad the term melanáetos ‘black eagle’). Beforethe French word was introduced, the Englishterm for ‘eagle’ was erne, which still survivesdialectally. AQUILINEear Ear for hearing and ear of corn seem in someway to belong together, but in fact they are twoquite distinct words etymologically. Ear forhearing [OE] is an ancient term that goes rightback to the Indo-European roots of the language.Its ancestor is the base *aus-, whose underlyingsignification was perhaps ‘perception’ (a variant,*au-, produced Greek aisthánomai ‘perceive’).This lies behind the term for ‘ear’ in the majorityof European languages: French oreille, forexample, Italian orecchio, Spanish oreja,Romanian ureche, Irish ó, Russian and Polishucho, and modern Greek autí. Its Germanicdescendant, *auzon, produced German ohr,Dutch oor, Gothic ausō, Swedish öra, andEnglish ear.The etymological sense of ear of corn [OE] is‘spike’ of corn. The word comes from aprehistoric Germanic *akhuz, which goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *ak- ‘bepointed or sharp’ (ultimate source of Englishacid, acne, acute, eager, edge, and oxygen). ACID, ACNE, ACUTE, EAGER, EDGE, OXYGENearly [OE] Broken down into its equivalent partsin modern English, early means ‘before-ly’. Itwas a compound formed from Old English ǣr(ancestor of modern English ere ‘before’) andthe adverb ending -ly, modelled probably on theparallel Old Norse form árligr. Ere itself wasactually originally a comparative form, whichbefore it was used for ‘before’ meant ‘earlier’.Old English ǣr came from prehistoric Germanic*airiz, the comparative form of *air ‘early’.Related forms in other Indo-Europeanlanguages, such as Greek eri ‘in the morning’and Avestan (the sacred form of Old Iranian)ayarə ‘day’, suggest that its underlying meaningis ‘early in the morning’. EREearn [OE] The underlying sense of earn is ‘gainas a result of one’s labour’. It comes from aprehistoric West Germanic verb *aznōjan,which was based on the noun *aznu ‘work,labour’. This seems often to have been usedspecifically for ‘work in the fields’, for severalother related forms in the Germanic languages,such as German ernte and Gothic asans, denote‘harvest’, which in some cases has beenmetaphorically extended to apply to ‘autumn’.earnest [OE] Earnest was originally a muchmore red-blooded word than it is today. It comesultimately from a Germanic base *ern- whichdenoted ‘vigour’ or ‘briskness’. To this wasadded the noun suffix – ost (earnest wasoriginally a noun), giving Old English eornost,which appears at first to have meant ‘intensepassion’, and particularly ‘zeal in battle’.However, by the end of the Old English periodthere is already evidence of a semantic toningdown from ‘intensity of feeling’ to ‘seriousnessof feeling’ (as opposed to ‘frivolity’), a processwhich has culminated in modern Englishconnotations of ‘over-seriousness’.earth [OE] Earth comes ultimately from an Indo-European base *er-. This produced theprehistoric Germanic noun *erthō, ancestor ofGerman erde, Dutch aarde (whence, via earlyAfrikaans, English aardvark [19], literally‘earth-pig’), Swedish and Danish jord, andEnglish earth. Related forms outside Germanicinclude Greek eraze ‘on the ground’ and Welsherw ‘field’. The word’s basic range of modern

earwig 184senses, ‘ground’, ‘world’, and ‘soil’, all dateback to the Old English period. AARDVARKearwig [OE] A colloquial Old English term for‘insect’ was wicga (which would have beenpronounced something like ‘widger’). Itprobably came from the same prehistoricGermanic base (*wig-) as produced Englishwiggle [13], and so is roughly equivalent in spiritto modern English creepy-crawly. There used tobe a belief (perhaps still is) that earwigs creepinto people’s ears and penetrate inside theirheads, and so the Anglo-Saxons called themēarwicga, literally ‘ear-insect’. The same notionlies behind French perceoreille, literally ‘pierceear’,and German ohrwurm, literally ‘earworm’,both of which stand for ‘earwig’. WIGGLEeasel [17] Easel was borrowed from Dutch ezel,which means literally ‘donkey’ (it is related toEnglish ass). The notion of loading a painting onto a stand, much as a burden is loaded on to adonkey, is echoed in the use of clotheshorse fora stand for hanging clothes on to dry or air. ASSeast [OE] Etymologically, east is the point of thecompass at which the sun rises (and hence is aparallel formation to orient, which comes from aLatin word originally meaning ‘rising’). It goesback to an Indo-European base *aus-, source ofa range of terms meaning not only ‘east’ but also‘dawn’; Latin aurora, for instance, and Greekaúōs, had both senses. Its Germanic descendant,*austo-, produced German ost, Dutch oosten,Swedish öster, and English east (which wassubsequently borrowed by French as est). It wasalso the source of *Austron, the name of agoddess of the prehistoric Germanic peoples,originally the dawn-goddess, whose festivaloccurred in spring. In Old English her name wasĒastre, which is generally taken to be theultimate source of English Easter (GermanOstern ‘Easter’ has a parallel origin). EASTEReasy [12] Easy comes via Anglo-Norman aisefrom Old French aisie, the past participle ofaisier ‘put at ease’, which in turn was aderivative of aise. This noun (source of Englishease [13]) originally meant ‘convenience’ ratherthan ‘comfort’. It came from *adjaces, theVulgar Latin descendant of Latin adjacēns‘nearby’ (source of English adjacent and relatedto adjective), which was the present participle ofthe verb adjacēre ‘lie near’. The progression ofsenses is thus ‘nearby’, ‘handy’, ‘convenient’,and eventually ‘comfortable’. The subsequentdevelopment to ‘not difficult’, which took placein the 14th century, is purely English, althoughBreton took the parallel step of borrowingFrench aise, as aes, to mean ‘not difficult’. ADJACENT, ADJECTIVEeat [OE] Eat is a very ancient and basic verb. Itgoes back to Indo-European *ed- ‘eat’ (distantancestor of English tooth), which produced thebasic word for ‘eat’ in most European languages,apart from French, Italian, Romanian, and theCeltic languages: Greek édein, for example,Latin edere (source of English comestible [15],from Latin comedere ‘eat up’, and of obese[17]), and Russian jest’. Its Germanicdescendant was *etan (ultimate source ofEnglish etch), which produced German essen,Dutch eten, Swedish öta, and English eat (andalso lies behind English fret). COMESTIBLE, ETCH, FRET, OBESE, TOOTHeaves [OE] The etymological meaning of eavesappears to be ‘going over the edge, projecting’.It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *obaswa,which was probably formed on *ob-, the basefrom which English over ultimately derives. Theeavesdrip or eavesdrop is, or was, the area ofground on which rainwater thrown off by theeaves falls, so that somebody who stood withinthis area, with his or her ear to the door orwindow trying to listen in on privateconversations, became known as aneavesdropper [15]. OVERebb [OE] Water that is ebbing is literally going‘off’ or ‘away’. The word comes from WestGermanic *abjon, a noun formed from *ab,ancestor of modern English of, off, whichdenoted removal or departure. OF, OFFebony [15] Ebony is ultimately of Semiticorigin. The Greeks took it from some MiddleEastern source, perhaps Egyptian hbnj, andturned it into ébenos. This made its way viaLatin ebenus, later ebanus, and Old French ebaninto English. At first English simply used theFrench form (which as ebon survived intomodern times as an archaism), but from the 16thcentury forms ending in -y began to supersede it.ecclesiastical [15] In classical Greek, anekklēsíā was an ‘assembly’ (the word wasderived from ekkalein, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix ek- ‘out’ and kallein ‘call’). Withthe introduction of Christianity, it was adoptedas the term for ‘church’, and an ekklēsiastés,originally ‘someone who addressed anassembly’, became a ‘preacher’ or ‘priest’. Thederived adjective, ekklēsiastikos, passed intoEnglish via either French or Latin.echelon see SCALEechoecho [14] Echo comes via Old French or Latinfrom Greek ēkhó, a word related to ēkhé ‘sound’.It may have originated as a personification of theconcept ‘sound’, which developed eventuallyinto the mythological mountain nymph Echo,who faded away for love of Narcissus untilnothing but her voice was left. (The Greek verbderived from ēkhé, ēkhein, is the ultimate sourceof English catechism.) CATECHISMéclat see SLATeclipse [13] From the point of view of theobserver, an object which has been eclipsed has‘gone away’ – is no longer there. And that in factis the etymological foundation of the word. Itcomes, via Old French and Latin, from Greekékleipsis, a derivative of ekleípein ‘no longerappear or be present’. This was a compound verb

formed from the prefix ek- ‘out, away’ andleípein ‘leave’ (a distant relative of Englishleave). Its adjectival derivative, ekleiptikós,passed into English as ecliptic [14], which wasapplied to the apparent path of the Sun relative tothe stars because that is the line along whicheclipses caused by the moon occur. LEAVEecology [19] Interpreted literally, ecologymeans ‘study of houses’. The word was coined,as ökologie, by the German zoologist ErnstHaeckel in the 1870s, on the basis of Greek oikos(as in economy). This means literally ‘house’,but Haeckel was using it in the wider sense‘dwelling, habitat’. English adopted the wordsoon after its coinage, originally in the quasi-Latin form oecology. ECONOMYeconomy [16] The underlying notion containedin the word economy is of ‘householdmanagement’. It comes, via French or Latin,from Greek oikonomíā, a derivative ofoikonómos, a term for the ‘steward of ahousehold’. This was a compound noun formedfrom oikos ‘house’ (a word related to the -wichelement in many English place-names) andnémein ‘manage’ (ultimate source of Englishantinomian and nomad). The original sense‘household management’ was carried throughinto English. It broadened out in the 17th centuryto the management of a nation’s resources (aconcept at first termed more fully politicaleconomy), while the use of the derivativeeconomics for the theoretical study of thecreation and consumption of wealth dates fromthe early 19th century. ANTINOMIAN, ECOLOGY, NOMADecstasy [14] Etymologically, someone who isecstatic is out of his or her mind. The wordcomes, via Old French extasie and late Latinextasis, from Greek ékstasis, a derivative of theverb existánai ‘displace, drive out of one’smind’. This was a compound formed from theprefix ek- ‘out’ and histánai ‘place’ (a distantrelative of English stand). The underlying notionof being ‘beside oneself, in the grip of extremepassion’ survives in modern English in relationto mystic experiences or trances, and also, albeitarchaically, in such phrases as ‘an ecstasy ofrage’, and the specific sense ‘delight’ developedonly comparatively recently, apparently in the17th century. STANDeczema [18] A person suffering from eczemahas a skin that is, in a rather gruesome metaphor,‘boiling over’. The word comes from Greekékzema ‘eruption’, a compound formed from theprefix ek- ‘out’ and the verb zein ‘boil, ferment’.This in turn goes back to the Indo-European base*jes-, source also of Sanskrit yas- ‘boil, foam’,Welsh ias ‘boiling’, and English yeast. YEASTeddy [15] The ultimate source of eddy appears tobe a prehistoric Germanic particle meaning‘back, again’, represented in Old English by ed-,in Old High German by et-, and in Old Norse by185 editith- (it is related to Latin et ‘and’ and its variousRomance descendants, such as French et andItalian ed). According to this theory, an eddywould thus be ‘water that flows back’. What isnot altogether clear, however, is precisely howthat prehistoric particle became eddy. Perhapsthe most likely candidate as the missing link isOld Norse itha ‘whirlpool’, but it has also beensuggested that Old English may have had a word*edwǣg, whose second element, ‘wave’, wouldbe related to English way and vogue.edgedge [OE] Edge is probably the main nativeEnglish representative of the Indo-Europeanbase *ak- ‘be sharp or pointed’, which hascontributed so many words to the language viaLatin and Greek (such as acid, acrid, acute,acne, alacrity, and oxygen). Its Germanicdescendant was *ag-, on which was based thenoun *agjā, source of German ecke ‘corner’,Swedish egg ‘edge’ (a probable relative ofEnglish egg ‘urge’), and English edge. Theword’s application to a ‘border’ or ‘boundary’dates from the late 14th century. ACID, ACNE, ACRID, ACUTE, ALACRITY, EGG,OXYGENedict [15] An edict is literally that which is‘spoken out’ or ‘proclaimed’. It was acquireddirectly from Latin ēdictum, which comes fromthe past participle of ēdīcere ‘proclaim’. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the prefix ex-‘out’ and dīcere ‘say’ (source of English diction,dictionary, dictate amongst a host of others).The passing resemblance of edict to edit is quitefortuitous, for they are completely unrelated. DICTATE, DICTION, DICTIONARYedify [14] As its close relative edifice [14]suggests, edify has to do literally with ‘building’.And in fact its underlying etymological sense is‘building a hearth’. That was the original senseof Latin aedis. Gradually, though, it wasextended, in a familiar metaphorical transition,from ‘hearth’ to ‘home’ and ‘dwelling’.Addition of a verbal element related to facere‘make’ produced aedificāre ‘build a house’, orsimply ‘build’. Its figurative application to‘instruction’ or ‘enlightenment’ took place inLatin, and has no doubt been reinforced inEnglish (which acquired the word from OldFrench edifier) by its accidental similarity toeducate.edit [18] Etymologically, someone who edits anewspaper ‘gives it out’, or in effect ‘publishes’it. And that in fact is how the word was first usedin English: when William Enfield wrote in his1791 translation of Brucker’s Historia criticaphilosophiae that a certain author ‘wrote manyphilosophical treatises which have never beenedited’, he meant ‘published’. This usage comesdirectly from ēditus, the past participle of Latinēdere ‘put out, exhibit, publish’, which was acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and dare ‘put, give’ (source of English date,donate, etc). In its modern application, ‘preparefor publication’, it is mainly a back-formationfrom editor [17], which acquired this particularsense in the 18th century. (French éditeur still

educate 186means ‘publisher’, and the term editor is used inthat sense in some British publishing houses.) DATE, DONATEeducate [15] To educate people is literally to‘lead them out’. The word comes from the pastparticiple of Latin ēducāre, which meant ‘bringup, rear’ as well as more specifically ‘educate’.It was related to ēdūcere ‘lead out’ (source ofEnglish educe [15]), a compound verb formedfrom the prefix ex- ‘out’ and dūcere ‘lead’(source of English duct, duke, and a whole hostof derivatives such as deduce and seduce). CONDUCT, DEDUCE, DUCT, DUKE, EDUCE,PRODUCE, SEDUCEeerie [13] Eerie seems to come ultimately fromOld English earg ‘cowardly’, a descendant ofprehistoric Germanic *arg-, although theconnection has not been established for certain.It emerged in Scotland and northern England inthe 13th century in the sense ‘cowardly, fearful’,and it was not until the 18th century that it beganto veer round semantically from ‘afraid’ to‘causing fear’. Burns was one of the first to useit so in print: ‘Be thou a bogle by the eerie sideof an auld thorn’. In the course of the 19thcentury its use gradually spread further south tobecome general English.effect [14] Etymologically, an effect is that whichis ‘accomplished’ or ‘done’. The word comes(probably via Old French effect) from effectus,the past participle of Latin efficere ‘perform,accomplish, complete’, or literally ‘work out’.This was a compound verb formed from theprefix ex- ‘out’ and facēre ‘make, do’ (source ofEnglish fact, factory, etc). The English verbaluse, ‘bring about’, is a 16th-centurydevelopment based on the noun. (The similaraffect also comes ultimately from Latin facēre,but with the prefix ad- ‘to’ rather than ex-.) Latinefficere is also the source of English efficacious[16] and efficient [14].The feck- of feckless is an abbreviated versionof effect. EFFICACIOUS, EFFICIENT, FACT, FACTORY,FASHION, FECKLESSeffendi see AUTHENTICeffervescent see FERVENTeffete [17] Latin effētus meant literally ‘that hasgiven birth’. It was a compound adjective, basedon the prefix ex- ‘out’ and fētus ‘childbearing,offspring’ (source of English foetus). Its usespread metaphorically first to ‘worn out bygiving birth’ and finally to simply ‘exhausted’,the senses in which English originally acquiredit. The word’s modern connotations of ‘overrefinement’and ‘decadence’ did not developuntil the 19th century.efficacious see EFFECTefficientefficient see EFFECTeffigy [16] Effigy comes ultimately from theLatin verb effingere ‘form, portray’. This was acompound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ andfingere ‘make, shape’ (source of English faint,feign, fiction, figment, and related to Englishdairy and dough). It formed the basis of the nouneffigiēs ‘representation, likeness, portrait’,which was borrowed into English in the 16thcentury as effigies: ‘If that you were the good SirRowland’s son, as you have whisper’d faithfullyyou were, and as mine eye doth his effigieswitness most truly limn’d and living in your face,be truly welcome hither’, Shakespeare, As youlike it 1600. By the 18th century, however, thishad come to be regarded as a plural form, and soa new singular, effigy, was created. DAIRY, DOUGH, FAINT, FICTION, FIGMENTeffluent [19] Effluent is that which ‘flows out’.The word comes from the present participle ofLatin effluere, a compound verb formed from theprefix ex- ‘out’ and fluere ‘flow’ (source ofEnglish fluctuate, fluent, fluid, flux, and a host ofderivatives). English originally acquired it as anadjective in the 18th century, but did not begin touse it in its present-day noun senses until the mid19th century. From the same source comeeffluvium [17] and efflux [17]. FLUCTUATE, FLUENT, FLUID, FLUXeffort [15] Etymologically, effort is the ‘puttingout’ or ‘showing’ of ‘force’. It comes ultimatelyfrom Vulgar Latin *exfortiāre, a compound verbformed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and theadjective fortis ‘strong’. This passed into OldFrench as esforcier ‘force, exert’, from whichwas derived the noun esforz. English borrowed itin its later form effort. FORCEeffrontery [18] The notion of ‘audacity’ or‘impudence’ is often expressed in terms of‘exposing or pushing forward the face’: a‘barefaced lie’ or ‘putting on a bold front’, forinstance. And effrontery is no exception. Itcomes ultimately from late Latin effrōns‘barefaced, shameless’, a compound adjectiveformed from the prefix ex- ‘out of’ and frōns‘forehead’ (source of English front). This seemssubsequently to have been reformulated alongthe lines of its original components, givingVulgar Latin *exfrontātus, source of Old Frenchesfronte. This in turn developed to Frencheffronté, whose derived noun effronterie wasacquired by English as effrontery. FRONTegalitarian see EQUALegg English has two distinct words egg, butsurprisingly the noun, in the form in which wenow have it, has not been in the language as longas the verb. Egg ‘reproductive body’ [14] wasborrowed from Old Norse egg. Old English hada related word, ǣg, which survived until the 16thcentury as eye (plural eyren). Although it doesnot begin to show up in the written records untilthe 14th century, the form egg was presumablyintroduced into English by Norse immigrantsconsiderably earlier, but even so, as late as theend of the 15th century there was stillconsiderable competition between the native eyeand the imported egg: ‘What sholde a man inthyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren, certaynlyit is harde to playse every man’, William Caxton,Eneydos 1490. Both the Old English and the OldNorse forms came from a prehistoric Germanic*ajjaz (source also of German and Dutch ei).

This in turn was a descendant of an Indo-European *ōwo- (whence Greek ōión, Latinōvum, French oeuf, Italian uovo, Spanish huevo,and Russian jajco), which was probably derivedultimately from a base signifying ‘bird’ (sourceof Sanskrit vís and Latin avis ‘bird’, the ancestorof English aviary).Egg ‘incite’ [10], as in ‘egg on’, is aScandinavian borrowing too. It comes from OldNorse eggja, which was a relative or derivativeof egg ‘edge’ (a cousin of English edge). AVIARY; EDGEego [19] Ego is Latin for ‘I’ (and comes in factfrom the same Indo-European base as producedEnglish I). English originally acquired it in theearly 19th century as a philosophical term for the‘conscious self’, and the more familiar modernuses – ‘self-esteem’, or more derogatorily ‘selfimportance’,and the psychologist’s term (takenup by Freud) for the ‘conscious self’ – date fromthe end of the century.Derivatives include egoism [18], borrowedfrom French égoïsme, and egotism [18], perhapsdeliberately coined with the t to distinguish itfrom egoism. And the acquisitions do not endthere: alter ego, literally ‘other I, second self’,was borrowed in the 16th century, and theFreudian term superego, ‘beyond I’, entered thelanguage in the 1920s. Iegregious see SEGREGATEeighteight [OE] Virtually all the ancient basic Indo-European ‘number’-words are very stable,remaining recognizably the same as they spreadand developed over the millennia, and theancestor of English eight is no exception. It was*oktō, which produced Sanskrit astáu, Latinoctō (source of French huit, Italian otto, andSpanish ocho), Greek októ, and Irish ocht. Itsprehistoric Germanic descendant was *akhtō,source of German and Dutch acht, Swedish åtta,and English eight. OCTOBEReisteddfod [19] An eisteddfod is literally a‘session’ or ‘sitting’. It comes from the Welshverb eistedd ‘sit’, a derivative of sedd ‘seat’,which goes back to the same Indo-Europeanbase (*sed-) as produced English sit and session.The final element, -fod, comes from the Welshverb bod ‘be’. SESSION, SITeither [OE] Either is the modern descendant ofan ancient Germanic phrase which meantliterally ‘always each of two’. Its constituentswere *aiwō, source of English aye ‘ever,always’, (which was also one of the buildingblocks of which each was made) and*gikhwatharaz, ancestor of English whether. InOld English this became lexicalized as thecompound ǣgehwæther, subsequentlycontracted to ǣgther, from which developedmodern English either. Despite its similarity,neither is more than just either with a negativeprefix tacked on: its history is parallel butslightly different. AYE, WHETHER187 elateejaculate [16] Etymologically, ejaculate means‘dart out’. It comes from Latin ejaculārī, acompound verb formed ultimately from theprefix ex- ‘out’ and jaculum ‘dart, javelin’. Thisin turn was a derivative of jacere ‘throw’ (whichitself combined with ex- to form ejicere, sourceof English eject [15]). The word’s original sense‘throw out suddenly’ survived (or perhaps hasrevived) for a time in English, but essentially ithas been for its metaphorical uses (‘emit semen’and ‘exclaim’) that it has been preserved. EJECT, JESSES, JET, OBJECT, REJECT, SUBJECTekeke [12] No Old English evidence of this verb,which originally meant ‘increase’, has beenfound, but related forms in other Germaniclanguages, such as Old Norse auka and Gothicaukan, suggest that it did exist. Both these and arange of non-Germanic verbs, such as Latinaugēre (source of English auction, augment, andauthor) and Greek aúkhein, point to an ultimateIndo-European ancestor *aug- (from whichcomes English wax ‘grow’). The first syllable ofnickname was originally eke.Until comparatively recently English hadanother word eke [OE], which meant ‘also’(German auch and Dutch ook ‘also’ are relatedto it). It is not clear whether it is ultimately thesame word as the verb eke. AUCTION, AUGMENT, AUTHOR, NICKNAME, WAXelaborate [16] Etymologically, something thatis elaborate has been produced by hard work.The word comes from ēlabōrātus, the pastparticiple of Latin ēlabōrāre; this was acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and labor ‘work’ (source of English labour).The notion of ‘painstaking work’ had passed bythe early 17th century into ‘extreme detail’. LABOUReland [18] Although the eland is an Africananimal, it has an ancient European name, givento it by Dutch settlers in South Africa. Eland isthe Dutch word for an ‘elk’ (the Europeanversion of the North American moose); it comesvia German from Lithuanian élnis, which goesback ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-Europeansource (*oln-, *eln-) which also producedEnglish elk. ELKelastic [17] Greek elaúnein meant ‘drive’. Fromit was derived the late Greek adjective elastikós,which had the sense ‘driving, propelling’. ItsLatin version elasticus was used by the Frenchscientist Jean Pecquet (1622–74) in describingthe expansive properties of gases, and that is thesense in which it was originally adopted intoEnglish. Its transference to the wider meaning‘returning to a former state after contracting’took place towards the end of the 17th century.elate [16] Elate means literally ‘lift up’, and thatis how it was originally used in English: ‘Placusdoth elate his shady forehead’, GeorgeChapman, Iliad 1611. The word comes fromēlātus, the past participle of Latin efferre. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the prefix ex-‘out’ and ferre ‘carry’ (a relative of Englishbear). Its metaphorical extension to a ‘lifting of

elbow 188the spirits, exultation’ had already started in theLatin word, and had completely ousted the literalmeaning in English before the end of the 18thcentury. RELATEelbow [OE] Logically enough, elbow meansetymologically ‘arm bend’. It comes from aprehistoric West and North Germanīc*alinobogan (which also produced Germanellenbogen, Dutch elleboog, and Danish albue).This was a compound formed from *alinā‘forearm’ and *bogan (source of English bow).However, there is a further twist. For *alinā(source also of English ell [OE], a measure oflength equal to that of the forearm) itself goesback ultimately to an Indo-European base *el-,*ele- which itself meant ‘bend’, and producednot just words for ‘forearm’ (such as Latin ulna),but also words for ‘elbow’ (such as Welsh elin).So at this deepest level of all, elbow meanstautologically ‘bend bend’. BOW, ELL, ULNAelder Elder ‘older’ [OE] is not, of course, thesame word as elder the tree-name [OE]. Theformer began life in prehistoric Germanic as*althizon, the comparative form of *althaz ‘old’.Gradually, the vowel i had an effect on thepreceding vowel a, and by Old English times theword had become eldra – hence modern Englishelder. The regularized form older appeared inthe 16th century. The derivative elderly datesfrom the 17th century.The tree-name comes from Old Englishellærn, a word whose origin is not known forcertain (although it may perhaps be related toEnglish alder). The intrusive d began to appearin the 14th century. OLDeldorado [16] Eldorado was the name given bythe Spanish to a country or city which theybelieved to exist in the heart of the Amazonianjungle, rich in precious metals and gems. Itmeans ‘the gilded one’: el is the Spanish definitearticle, and dorado is the past participle of theSpanish verb dorar ‘gild’, a descendant of Latindēaurāre. This was a compound verb formedfrom the intensive prefix dē- and aurum ‘gold’.The first known use of the word in English is inthe title of Sir Walter Raleigh’s book Discoverieof Guiana, with a relation of the Great andGolden City of Manoa (which the Spaniards callEl Dorado) 1596.elect [15] To elect somebody is literally to‘choose them out’ of a range of possibilities. Theword comes from ēlectus, the past participle ofLatin ēligere ‘pick out, select’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and legere ‘gather, choose’ (source also ofEnglish collect, neglect, and select and, from itssecondary meaning ‘read’, legible and lecture).The notion of ‘choosing by ballot’ is the oldestof the verb’s senses in English.A person who may be ‘elected’ or ‘chosen’ iseligible [15] (an acquisition via French from thelate Latin derivative ēligibilis). And someonewho has been ‘picked out’ from the crowd is amember of the élite [18] (a borrowing of thefeminine form of the past participle of Frenchélire ‘elect’). Also closely related is elegant. COLLECT, ELEGANT, ELIGIBLE, ELITE, LECTURE,LEGIBLE, NEGLECT, SELECTelectricity [17] The earliest manifestation ofelectricity was that produced by rubbing amber,and hence the name, based on ēlectrum, Latin for‘amber’ (which in turn derives from Greekēlektron). The first evidence of this in a Latintext is in William Gilbert’s De magnete 1600, butby the middle of the century we find the wordbeing used in English treatises, notably SirThomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia epidemica1646. (At this early stage, of course, it referredonly to the ability of rubbed amber, etc to attractlight bodies, the only property of electricity thenknown about; it was not until later that the fullrange of other electrical phenomena came to beincluded under the term.)eleemosynary see ALMSelegant [15] Someone who made careful,fastidious choices was termed in Latin ēlegāns.This was the present participle of a hypotheticalverb *ēlegāre, a derivative of ēligere ‘pick out,select’ (source of English elect). Originally itseems to have been a derogatory term – ‘fussy,foppish’ – but by classical times it signified moreapprovingly ‘making refined choices’, and wasalso transferred to the things chosen – ‘choice,tasteful’. English probably acquired the word viaFrench. ELECTelegy [16] Greek élegos originally signifiedsimply ‘song’ (Aristophanes, for example, usedit for the song of a nightingale in his play Birds).It is not clear where it came from, although it hasbeen speculated that the Greeks may haveborrowed it from the Phrygians, an Indo-European people of western and central AsiaMinor, and that originally it denoted ‘flute song’(the long-held derivation from Greek e e légein‘cry woe! woe!’ is not tenable). Later on it cameto mean specifically ‘song of mourning’, and itsadjective derivative elegeíā passed as a noun viaLatin and French into English.elephant [13] Elephants were named from theirtusks. Greek eléphās (probably a borrowingfrom a non-Indo-European language) meantoriginally ‘ivory’ (hence chryselephantine ‘ofgold and ivory’ [19]). Only later did it come todenote the animal itself, and it passed in thissense into Latin as elephantus. By post-classicaltimes this had become *olifantus, and it is ameasure of the unfamiliarity of the beast innorthern Europe in the first millenium AD thatwhen Old English acquired the word, as olfend,it was used for the ‘camel’. Old French also hadolifant (referring to the ‘elephant’ this time) andpassed it on to English as olifaunt. It was notuntil the 14th century that, under the influence ofthe classical Latin form, this began to change toelephant. In the 16th and 17th centuries therewas a learned revival of the sense ‘ivory’:Alexander Pope, for instance, in his translation

of the Odyssey 1725, refers to ‘the handle …with steel and polish’d elephant adorn’d’.The notion of the white elephant as‘something unwanted’ arose apparently from thepractice of the kings of Siam presentingcourtiers who had incurred their displeasure withreal white elephants, the cost of whose properupkeep was ruinously high.eleven [OE] Originally, eleven and twelve seemto have meant literally ‘one over’ and ‘two over’.Eleven comes ultimately from a prehistoricGermanic *ainlif- (source also of German elfand Swedish elva) in which the first element*ainaz is ‘one’ and the second is probablyrelated to English leave. The compound wouldthus have signified ‘one left (over ten)’, hence‘ten plus one’. LEAVE, ONEelf [OE] In Germanic legend, elves were potentsupernatural beings, capable of exercisingconsiderable magic powers to the benefit orharm of human beings. Their decline to theirmodern status as small mischievous spritesseems to have begun in the 16th century. Theword comes from a prehistoric Germanic *albiz,a variant of which produced Old Norse álfr(source of English oaf [17]) and German alp‘nightmare’. OAFeligible see ELECTeliminate [16] To eliminate somebody isliterally to ‘kick them out of doors’. The wordcomes from the past participle of Latin ēlīnāre, acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and līmen ‘threshhold’ (source also of Englishsubliminal and probably sublime). At first it wasused in English with its original Latin sense (‘thesecounde sorte thearfore, that eliminate Poetsout of their citie gates’, Giles Fletcher, Christ’sVictorie 1610), and it was not until the early 18thcentury that the more general modern notion of‘exclusion’ began to develop. SUBLIME, SUBLIMINALélite see ELECTelixir [14] Although nowadays we think of anelixir as liquid, it probably originated in theGreek word for ‘dry’, xērós (whence Englishxerox). From this was derived a term for a ‘dry’powder for treating wounds, xérion, and it hasbeen speculated that this was borrowed byArabic as (with the definite article al) aliksīr.Medieval alchemists used this as a word for asubstance which could change base metals intogold, and also for a substance (according tosome the same substance) which could conferimmortality (known more fully as the elixir oflife). XEROXelk [OE] The Indo-European base *ol-, *elproduceda number of names for deerlikeanimals – Greek élaphos ‘stag’, for example, andWelsh elain ‘hind’, not to mention Englisheland. In its Germanic descendants, two mainlines of development are evident: its extensions*olk- and *elk- produced respectively Germanic*algiz (whence Old Norse elgr) and Germanic189 emaciate*elkho(n)- (whence Old English colh). It is notactually entirely clear which of these two isrepresented by modern English elk, which is firstunequivocally recorded in the late 15th century.It is formally possible that it could be a survivalof the Old English word, with its final /kh/ soundchanged to /k/, but the long gap in the writtenrecord between Old English eolh and MiddleEnglish elk suggests that it could be an OldNorse borrowing. ELANDell see ELBOWellipse [18] Greek élleipsis meant literally‘defect, failure’. It was a derivative of elleípein,literally ‘leave in’, hence ‘leave behind, leaveout, fall short, fail’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix en- ‘in’ and leípein ‘leave’(which is related to English loan and relinquish).It was borrowed into English in the 17th centuryas ellipsis in the grammatical sense ‘omission ofa word or words’, but its mathematical use for an‘oval’ (enshrined in the form ellipse, borrowedvia French ellipse and Latin ellīpsis) comes fromthe notion that a square drawn on lines passingvertically and laterally through the centre of anellipse ‘falls short’ of the entire length of thelateral line. LOAN, RELINQUISHelm [OE] The tree-name elm is widely distributedthroughout the Indo-European languages ofEurope. Latin had ulmus, for instance (source ofGerman ulme and Dutch olm) and Irish hasleamh. Of the Germanic languages (those whosenative forms have not been supplanted by Latinulmus) Swedish and Norwegian have alm besideEnglish elm.elope [17] Etymologically, elope signifies ‘leapaway’. It was originally an Anglo-Norman legalterm applied to a married woman running offwith a lover, and only in the past couple ofhundred years has it come to be applied to acouple leaving home to get married whenparental permission is denied. It is thought thatthe Anglo-Norman term was an adaptation ofMiddle English *alopen, past participle of anunrecorded verb *alepen ‘run away’, whichwould have been formed from the prefix a-‘away’ and lepen ‘run, leap’ (source of modernEnglish leap and related to lope and Germanlaufen ‘run’). LEAP, LOPEeloquent see VENTRILOQUISTelselse [OE] Else shares its sense of ‘otherness’with related words in other parts of the Indo-European language family. It comes ultimatelyfrom the base *al-, which also produced Latinalter ‘other’ (source of English alter) and alius‘other’ (source of English alibi and alien) andGreek állos ‘other’ (source of the prefix allo- insuch English words as allopathy, allophone, andallotropy). Its Germanic descendant was *aljo-‘other’, whose genitive neuter case *aljaz, usedadverbially, eventually became English else. ALIBI, ALIEN, ALTERelude see ILLUSIONemaciate see MEAGRE

emancipate 190emancipate [17] Despite modern associationswith women’s liberation, emancipate has noetymological connection with man. It comesfrom Latin ēmancipāre, which meant originally‘free from parental power’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘outof’ and mancipium ‘ownership’, and referred inRoman law to the freeing of a son from the legalauthority of the male head of the family, thusmaking him responsible for himself in law.Mancipium (source of the archaic English nounmanciple ‘steward, purveyor’ [13]) wasultimately a compound noun formed frommanus ‘hand’ (as in English manual) and capere‘take’ (as in English captive and capture). Theassociation of the verb with the ‘freeing ofslaves’, the basis of the present Englishmeanings, is a modern development. CAPTIVE, CAPTURE, MANCIPLE, MANUALembargo [16] Something that has beenembargoed has been literally ‘placed behindbars’ (compare EMBARRASS). The word comesfrom Vulgar Latin *imbarricāre, which wasformed from the Latin prefix in- ‘in’ and VulgarLatin *barra (source of English bar). Thispassed into Spanish as embargar ‘impede,restrain’, and its derived noun embargo wasborrowed into English. BAR, BARRIERembark [16] To embark is literally to ‘put or geton to a boat’ – or more specifically a barque [15](a word acquired ultimately from late Latinbarca, which is probably related to Englishbarge). Its immediate French ancestor, barque,formed the basis of a compound verbembarquer, borrowed by English as embark. Theantonym disembark also dates from the 16thcentury. BARGE, BARQUEembarrass [17] As in the case of embargo, theetymological meaning of embarrass is ‘putbehind bars’. It comes ultimately from Italianimbarrare ‘surround with bars’, hence ‘impede’,a compound verb formed from the prefix in- ‘in’and Vulgar Latin *barra ‘bar’ (source of Englishbar). From this was derived imbarazzare, whichpassed into English via Spanish embarazar andFrench embarrasser. Its original meaning‘impede, hamper’ remains in use, chiefly in thecontext ‘financially embarrassed’, but has beenovertaken in frequency by ‘disconcert’. BAR, BARRIERembassy [16] Ultimately, embassy comes fromthe same source as ambassador, the Vulgar Latinverb *ambactiāre ‘go on a mission’ (aderivative, via a rather circuitous route, of Latinambactus ‘vassal’, which was of Celtic origin).From the verb was derived the Old French nounambassade, which was borrowed into English inthe 15th century but was gradually supplantedfrom the 16th century onwards by embassy,acquired from another Old French derivativeambassee. AMBASSADORembellish [14] To embellish something isliterally to ‘make it beautiful’. It comes from OldFrench embellir, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix en-, which denotes ‘causing’ or‘making’, and bel ‘beautiful’. This Old Frenchadjective (source of modern French beau) camefrom Latin bellus ‘beautiful’, and its otherEnglish offspring include beau, belle, andbeauty. BEAU, BEAUTY, BELLEember [OE] Ember goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *aimuzjōn, although it is possible thatthe modern English word represents a borrowingfrom the related Old Norse eimyrja rather than adirect line of descent from Old English ǣmyrge.The ember of Ember days [10], incidentally,‘days following certain Christian festivals’, is acompletely different word. It comes from OldEnglish ymbryne ‘circuit’, literally ‘runninground’, a compound formed from ymb ‘round’and ryne ‘course, running’, a relative of modernEnglish run. It was applied to these particulardays of the Christian calendar because they‘come round’ four times a year.embezzle [15] Originally, embezzle meantsimply ‘steal’: ‘See that no victuals nor no otherstuff of the same household be embezzled out’,Household Ordinances 1469. The modern legalsense ‘convert fraudulently’ did not developuntil the late 16th century. The word itself comesfrom Anglo-Norman enbesiler, a compoundformed from the intensive prefix en- and the OldFrench verb besiller, of unknown origin.emblem [15] The Latin term emblēma referredto ‘inlaid work’ – designs formed by settingsome material such as wood or ivory, or enamel,into a contrasting surface. This usage survivedinto English as a conscious archaism (‘Theground more colour’d then with stone ofcostliest emblem’, John Milton, Paradise Lost1667), but for the most part English has used theword metaphorically, for a ‘design whichsymbolizes something’. The Latin word wasborrowed from Greek émblēma, a derivative ofembállein ‘throw in, put in, insert’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix en- ‘in’and bállein ‘throw’ (source of the secondsyllable of English problem, and closely relatedto that of symbol). PROBLEM, SYMBOLembrace [14] To embrace someone is literallyto ‘put your arms round’ them. It comes via OldFrench from Vulgar Latin *imbracchiāre, acompound verb formed from the prefix in- ‘in’and Latin bracchium ‘arm’ (ultimate source ofEnglish brace, bracelet, and bra, and of Frenchbras ‘arm’). The transferred sense ‘include’developed in the 17th century (a course alsotaken by modern French embrasser, whoseoriginal ‘clasp in the arms’ has moved on to‘kiss’ in response to the progression of baiserfrom ‘kiss’ to ‘have sex with’). BRA, BRACE, BRACELETembrocation [15] The semantic notionunderlying embrocation is of ‘wetness’, for itcomes ultimately from the Greek word for ‘rain’,brokhé. This was the basis of a verb embrékhein,used for ‘treat medically by the application of

liquid’, from which in turn was derived the nounembrokhé ‘lotion’. Latin took this over and in theMiddle Ages formed a verb from it, embrocāre‘treat with healing liquid’, which was actuallyborrowed into English as embrocate: ‘In woundsof gun-shot … embrocate often’, John Woodall,Surgion’s Mate 1612. This had died out by themid 19th century, but its noun, embrocation(used in the concrete sense ‘lotion’ since the17th century), survives.embroidery [14] Embroidery comes fromAnglo-Norman enbrouderie, a derivative of theverb enbrouder. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and broisder‘embroider’ (a borrowing from Frankish*brusdan). English originally borrowed the verbas embroud, but soon extended it to embrouder(the early substitution of -broid- for -broud- mayhave been due to the influence of broiden, theMiddle English past participle of braid).embryo [16] The idea underlying embryo is of‘growing within’. The word comes from Greekémbruon, a compound verb formed from theprefix en- ‘in’ and the verb brúein ‘swell, grow’,which meant literally ‘something that growsinside the body’. English acquired it via lateLatin embryo.emend see MENDemerald [13] Emerald traces its history back toan ancient Semitic verb ‘shine’ – bāraq. Fromthis there seems to have been formed a noun*bāraqt meaning ‘gem’. This was taken overinto the ancient vernacular languages of India(main source of gems in early times) asmaragada-. Greek acquired the word asmáragdos ‘green gem’, which was soonsuperseded as the main form by a variantsmáragdos. Latin adopted this as smaragdus(which passed into English, probably via OldFrench, as smaragd, a term used for the‘emerald’ from the 13th to the 18th century, andrevived as an archaism in the 19th century). Inpost-classical times Latin smaragdus became*smaralda, and as this became disseminatedthrough the Romance languages it acquired inmany cases an additional syllable: Spanishesmeralda, for instance (source of the Englishforename) and Old French esmeraude, borrowedinto Middle English as emeraud.emerge see MERGEemery see SMEARemetic see VOMITémeute see EMOTIONeminent [15] Someone who is eminent literally‘stands out’. The word comes from the presentparticiple of Latin ēminēre ‘stand out’, acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and a verbal element -minēre ‘stand, project’which occurs also in imminent and prominentand may be related ultimately to Latin mōns‘mountain’, source of English mount andmountain. IMMINENT, MOUNT, MOUNTAIN, PROMINENTemir see ADMIRAL191 empireemolument [15] Just as a salary was originallya ‘payment for salt’, so emolument appears tohave been a particular kind of payment – in thiscase for flour – which later became generalizedin meaning. Latin ēmolere meant ‘grind out’ (itwas a compound verb formed from the prefix ex-‘out’ and molere ‘grind’, a relative of Englishmill and meal ‘ground grain’), and hence thederivative ēmolumentum was used originally for‘fee paid to a miller for grinding grain’. Themetaphorical sense ‘gain’ was already present inclassical Latin. MEAL, MILLemotion [16] The semantic notion underlyingemotion – of applying ‘physical movement’metaphorically to ‘strong feeling’ – is an ancientone: Latin used the phrase mōtus animā, literally‘movement of the spirit’, in this sense. Emotionitself is a post-classical Latin formation; itcomes ultimately from Vulgar Latin *exmovēre,literally ‘move out’, hence ‘excite’, a compoundverb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and movēre‘move’ (source of English move). In French thisbecame émouvoir, and English borrowed itsderived noun émotion, but at first used it only inthe literal sense ‘moving, agitation’ (‘The waterscontinuing in the caverns … caused the emotionor earthquake’, Philosophical transactions of theRoyal Society 1758) and the metaphoricallyextended ‘political agitation or disturbance’ (asense now preserved only in émeute [19],another derivative of French émouvoir). It wasnot until the late 17th century that the sense‘strong feeling’ really came to the fore. Theback-formation emote is a 20th-centuryphenomenon, of US origin. ÉMEUTE, MOVEemperor see EMPIREemphasis [16] In Greek, émphasis originallymeant simply ‘appearance’. It was a derivative ofemphaínein ‘exhibit, indicate’, a compound verbformed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and phaínein‘show’ (source of English phase). It came to beused as a grammatical term denoting‘implication’ (as opposed to ‘directly expressedmeaning’) and passed in this sense via Latinemphasis into English. Its main modern use,‘special importance placed on something’,derives from the stressing of a particular word orphrase in speech to show that it is intended toimply something other than its literal meaningmight seem to suggest. PHASEempire [13] Empire and its close relativesemperor [13], imperial [14], imperious [16], andimperative [16] all come ultimately from theLatin verb imperāre ‘command’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix in- ‘inrelation to’ and parāre ‘make ready’ (source ofEnglish prepare), and hence originally meant‘make preparations for’ before shiftingmetaphorically to ‘issue commands for’. Of itsderivatives, imperātor (source of Englishemperor) was used originally for ‘commander ofan army’, and only secondarily for the ruler ofthe Roman empire, while the primary sense of

empirical 192imperium (source of English empire) was ‘acommand’, and hence ‘authority’. IMPERATIVE, IMPERIAL, PREPAREempirical [16] Despite their formalresemblance, empirical and empire arecompletely unrelated. Empirical comesultimately from the Greek adjective émpeiros‘skilled or experienced in’, a compound formedfrom the prefix en- ‘in’ and peira ‘attempt, trial’(a relative of English expert, peril, pirate, andrepertory). From this were derived successivelythe noun empeiría ‘experience’ and empeirikós,which English acquired via Latin empiricus. EXPERT, PERIL, PIRATE, REPERTORYemploy [15] Essentially, employ is the sameword as imply [14] and implicate [16]. All threecome ultimately from Latin implicāre ‘enfold,involve’, a compound verb formed from theprefix in- ‘in’ and plicāre ‘fold’ (source ofEnglish ply and related to English fold). Thispassed into Old French as emplier, which in turnwas transmitted into English as imply; thisoriginally retained the literal sense ‘enfold’, andit was only gradually that the metaphorical‘involve as a necessary condition’ developed.However, Old French emplier had a variantempleier, later emploier, which took a slightlydifferent semantic route – from simply ‘involve’to ‘involve in or apply to a particular purpose’.This was the sense in which English acquired itas employ. FOLD, IMPLICATE, IMPLY, PLYempty [OE] The original meaning of OldEnglish ǣmtig appears to have been‘unoccupied, at leisure’, and it was onlysecondarily that it developed the physicalconnotations of ‘not full’ which have comedown to us in empty. (It also meant ‘unmarried’.)It was a derivative of the noun ǣmetta ‘rest,leisure’. This is a word of uncertain history, butit has been plausibly analysed as the negativeprefix ǣ- plus a derivative of the root whichproduced modern English mete (as in ‘meteout’), meaning something like ‘not assigned’. METEemulate see IMITATEemulsion [17] An emulsion is an undissolvedsuspension of tiny drops of one liquid dispersedthroughout another. The classic example of thisis milk – whence its name. It comes frommodern Latin ēmulsiō, a derivative of ēmulgēre‘drain out, milk out’. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and mulgēre‘milk’, a distant relative of English milk. Theword’s familiar modern application to paintdates from the 1930s. MILKenamel [14] The underlying meaning element inenamel is ‘melting’. It comes ultimately from aprehistoric Germanic base *smalt- (source ofEnglish schmaltz ‘sentimentality’ [20],borrowed via Yiddish from German schmalz‘fat, dripping’), and related Germanic formsproduced English smelt, melt, and malt. OldFrench acquired the Germanic word and turnedit into esmauz; this in turn was re-formed toesmail, and Anglo-Norman adopted it as amail.This formed the basis, with the prefix en- ‘in’, ofa verb enamailler ‘decorate with enamel’.English borrowed it, and by the mid-15thcentury it was being used as a noun for thesubstance itself (the noun amel, a directborrowing from Anglo-Norman, had in fact beenused in this sense since the 14th century, and itdid not finally die out until the 18th century). Itsapplication to the substance covering teeth datesfrom the early 18th century. MALT, MELT, SCHMALTZ, SMELTencaustic see INKenclose see INCLUDEencroach [14] Something that encroaches onsomething else literally seizes it with its ‘hooks’.The word was borrowed from Old Frenchencrochier ‘catch in a hook’, hence ‘seize’. Thiswas a compound formed from the prefix en- andcroc ‘hook’ (source of English crochet, crocket,and croquet), a noun borrowed from Old Norsekrókr ‘hook’ (source of English crook). Theverb’s original use in English was transitive, inthe sense ‘seize wrongfully’; the modern sense‘intrude, trespass’ did not develop until the 16thcentury. CROCHET, CROOK, CROQUETencyclopedia [16] Etymologically,encyclopedia means ‘general education’. It is amedieval formation, based on the Greek phraseegkúklios paideíā (egkúklios, a compoundadjective formed from the prefix en- ‘in’ andkúklos ‘circle’ – source of English cycle – meantoriginally ‘circular’, and hence ‘general’, and isthe ultimate source of English encyclical [17];paideíā ‘education’ was a derivative of país‘boy, child’, which has given English paederast[18], paedophilia [20], pedagogue [14], pedant[16], and paediatrician [20]). This referred tothe general course of education which it wascustomary to give a child in classical Greece,and after it was merged into a single wordegkuklopaideíā and transmitted via medievalLatin encyclopedia into English, it retained thatmeaning at first. However, in the 17th centurythe term began to be applied to compendiousreference works (the first, or at least the onewhich did most to establish the name, wasperhaps that of J H Alsted in 1632). TheEncyclopedia Britannica was first published in1768. CYCLE, ENCYCLICAL, PAEDERAST, PEDAGOGUE,PEDANT, PEDIATRICIANend [OE] End is an ancient word, that has beentraced back to an Indo-European *antjó. Thisalso produced Sanskrit ántas ‘end’, as well asLatin ante ‘before’ and Greek anti ‘opposite’. ItsGermanic descendant was *andja, from whichcame Gothic andeis, German ende, Dutch einde,Swedish ända, and English end.endeavour [14] Despite its plausibleappearance, endeavour is not a borrowing fromFrench or Latin but a purely English creation. Itwas coined from the Middle English phrase putin dever, which was a partial translation of OldFrench mettre en deveir, literally ‘put in duty’,

hence ‘make it one’s duty to do something’(deveir, ancestor of modern French devoir‘duty’, came ultimately from Latin dēbēre‘owe’, source of English debit and debt). In the14th century the last two words were joinedtogether to form the verb endeavour ‘make aneffort’. DEBIT, DEBTendorse [16] To endorse something is literallyto write ‘on the back’ of it. The word comes frommedieval Latin indorsāre, a compound verbformed from the prefix in- ‘in’ and dorsum‘back’ (source of English dorsal, doss, anddossier). (An earlier English version of the wordwas endoss [14], acquired via Old Frenchendosser, which died out in the 17th century.) DORSAL, DOSS, DOSSIERendow see DOWRYendure see DURINGenemy [13] An enemy is literally someone whois ‘not a friend’. The word comes, via OldFrench enemi, from Latin inimīcus, a compoundformed from the prefix in- ‘not’ and amīcus‘friend’ (source of English amicable and relatedto English amiable). The late Latin derivativeinimīcālis produced English inimical [17]. AMICABLE, INIMICALenergy [16] Energy comes ultimately fromGreek érgon ‘deed, work’. This was adescendant of Indo-European *wergon, whichalso produced English work, liturgy, organ, andorgy. Addition of the prefix en- ‘at’ produced theadjective energés or energōs ‘at work’, hence‘active’, which Aristotle used in his Rhetoric asthe basis of a noun enérgeia, signifying ametaphor which conjured up an image ofsomething moving or being active. This latercame to mean ‘forceful expression’, or morebroadly still ‘activity, operation’. Englishacquired the word via late Latin energīa. LITURGY, ORGAN, ORGY, WORKengage [15] Vulgar Latin had a noun *wadium‘pledge’ (it came from Germanic *wathjam,source also of English wed and wage). From itwas derived a verb *wadiāre ‘pledge’, whichformed the basis of a compound *inwadiāre.Germanic w became g in French (hence FrenchGuillaume for William), so the Old Frenchdescendant of *inwadiāre was engager, acquiredby English as engage. (The superficially similargauge [15] is probably not related, although it isnot known for certain what its ultimate sourceis.) WAGE, WEDengine [13] The underlying etymologicalmeaning of engine is ‘natural talent’. It comesultimately from Latin ingenium (source also ofEnglish ingenious) which was formed from thebase *gen- (as in genetic) denoting‘reproduction’ and meant literally ‘skill oraptitude one was born with’. Abstract meaningsrelated to this (such as ‘ingenuity’ and ‘genius’)have now died out in English (which acquiredthe word via Old French engin), but whatremains is a more specific strand of meaning inthe Latin word – ‘clever device, contrivance’.193 enjoyOriginally this was an abstract concept (oftenused in a bad sense ‘trick, cunning ruse’), but asearly as about 1300 there is evidence of a moreconcrete application in English to a ‘mechanicaldevice’. The word’s modern use for ‘machineproducing motion’ originates in its early 19thcenturyapplication to the steam engine.Engineer [14] comes via Old Frenchengigneor from medieval Latin ingeniātōr, aderivative of the verb ingeniāre ‘contrive’, whichin turn came from ingenium. GIN, INGENIOUSEnglish [OE] The people and language ofEngland take their name from the Angles, a WestGermanic people who settled in Britain in the5th and 6th centuries AD. They came originallyfrom the Angul district of Schleswig, an area ofthe Jutland peninsula to the south of modernDenmark. This had a shape vaguely reminiscentof a fishhook, and so its inhabitants used theirword for ‘fishhook’ (a relative of modernEnglish angler and angling) to name it. Fromearliest times the adjective English seems tohave been used for all the Germanic peoples whocame to Britain, including the Saxons and Jutes,as well as the Angles (at the beginning of the 8thcentury Bede referred to them collectively asgens anglorum ‘race of Angles’). The earliestrecord of its use with reference to the Englishlanguage is by Alfred the Great. ANGLER, ANGLINGengrave see GRAVEengross see GROSSenhance [14] To enhance something is literallyto ‘make it higher’. The word comes via Anglo-Norman enhauncer from Old French enhaucer, adescendant of Vulgar Latin *inaltiāre ‘raise’.This was a verb formed from the Latin intensiveprefix in- and the adjective altus ‘high’ (sourceof English altitude). This original literal sensepersisted into English (‘It was a stone, the whichwas enhanced upright’, William Caxton,Charles the Great 1485), but had largely died outby the end of the 16th century, leaving the fieldclear for the metaphorical ‘augment’. ALTITUDEenigma [16] Enigma comes, via Latin, fromGreek aínigma ‘riddle, obscure statement’. Thiswas a derivative of the verb ainíssesthai ‘talk inriddles’, which in turn came from the noun ainos‘tale, story’. Its modern English use for‘something puzzling’ dates from the early 17thcentury.enjoy [14] Originally, enjoy was usedintransitively in English, rather as in the modernAmerican Yiddish-influenced injunction‘Enjoy!’: ‘Yet he never enjoyed after, but inconclusion pitifully wasted his painful life’,Robert Laneham 1549. However, by the end ofthe 16th century the transitive sense ‘takepleasure in’ had virtually taken over the field.The word probably comes from Old Frenchenjoïr, a compound formed from the prefix en-‘in’ and joir ‘rejoice’, which in turn came fromLatin gaudēre (ultimate source of English joy).Old French did have another, similar verb,

ennui 194however, enjoier (formed from the noun joie),which probably also played a part in the Englishacquisition. JOYennui see ANNOYenormous [16] Etymologically, enormous is aparallel formation to abnormal andextraordinary. It comes from Latin ēnormis, acompound adjective formed from the prefix ex-‘out of’ and norma ‘pattern, rule’ – henceliterally ‘out of the usual pattern’. It originallyhad a range of meanings in English, including‘abnormal, unusual’ (‘entered the choir in amilitary habit, and other enormous disguises’,Thomas Warton, History of English Poetry1774) and ‘outrageous’. By the beginning of the19th century these had mostly died out, leavingthe field clear for modern English ‘huge’,although the notion of ‘outrageousness’ remainsin the noun derivative enormity [15]. ABNORMAL, NORMALenough [OE] Enough is a widespread word inthe Germanic languages. German has genug,Dutch genoeg, and Swedish and Danish thereduced forms nog and nok. All go back to aprehistoric Germanic *ganōgaz, a compoundformed from the collective prefix *ga- and anIndo-European element *nak- whose underlyingmeaning is probably ‘reach, attain’ (it occurs inSanskrit na and Latin naniscī, both of whichhave that sense).enquire [13] The -quire element in enquire (orinquire, as it is alternatively spelled) isetymologically related to English query andquestion. The word comes via Old Frenchenquerre from *inquāerere, the Vulgar Latindescendant of Latin inquīrere. This was acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixin- and quaerere ‘seek, ask’. The modernEnglish spelling with i in the second syllablecomes from a 15th-century reintroduction of thevowel of Latin inquīrere. Inquest [13] comesfrom the Latin verb’s past participle. INQUEST, QUERY, QUESTIONensconce see SCONCEensemble see SIMILARensignensign see SIGNensue see SUEensure see INSUREentablature see TABLEentail [14] Entail means literally ‘put a tail on’ –but not the sort that grows. This is a tail in thesense of a ‘legal limitation’. It came from OldFrench taille, meaning literally ‘cut’, which isalso related to English detail, retail, tailor, andtally. The coining of entail itself probably tookplace in Anglo-Norman. Its current mainmeaning ‘have as a necessary or logicalconsequence’ did not develop until as late as the19th century. DETAIL, RETAIL, TAILOR, TALLYenter [13] Enter comes ultimately from a Latinpreposition and adverb, intrā, which meant‘inside’ (and was formed from in ‘in’ and thesuffix -trā, as in extra). This was taken as thebasis of a Latin verb, intrāre ‘enter’, whichpassed into English via Old French entrer. Of itsderivatives, entry [13] has the longer history,going back to a Vulgar Latin *intrāta; entrance[16] is an Old French formation.enterprise [15] Enterprise is the Romancelanguageequivalent of the native Englishformation undertaking. It comes from the pastparticiple of Old French entreprendre, acompound verb formed from entre ‘between’and prendre ‘take’ (a word with many relativesin English, from comprehend to surprise). Theoriginal Old French version of the word wasemprise (from Vulgar Latin *imprendere‘undertake’, in which the prefix was in- ratherthan inter-), and English actually borrowed thisin the 13th century; it survived as an archaisminto the 19th century. The underlying meaning ofboth versions is probably ‘taking something inor between one’s hands’ so as to do somethingabout it. APPREHEND, COMPREHEND, COMPRISE,SURPRISEenthusiasm [17] Enthusiasm has had achequered semantic history. Like giddiness, itmeant originally ‘state of being inspired by agod’. It comes ultimately from Greek énthous oréntheos ‘possessed, inspired’, a compoundformed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and theós ‘god’(as in English theology). From this in turn wasderived the verb enthousiázein ‘be inspired’ andthe noun enthousiasmós, which passed intoEnglish via Latin or French, still with the sense‘divine inspiration’ (‘Doth he think they knew itby enthusiasm or revelation from heaven?’Richard Baxter, Infants’ church membership andbaptism 1651). In the stern climate ofPuritanism, however, divine inspiration was notsomething to be encouraged, and as the 17thcentury progressed enthusiasm took onderogatory connotations of ‘excessive religiousemotion’. The modern approbatory meaning,‘eagerness’, had its beginnings at the start of the18th century, and by the early 19th century hadousted the deprecatory sense from leading place. THEOLOGYentice [13] Entice is an inflammatory sort ofword. It comes ultimately from Latin tītiō‘firebrand’, which was used, with the prefix in-‘in’, to form the Vulgar Latin verb *intītiāre ‘seton fire’. This passed into English via Old Frenchenticier, and originally retained much of the heatand vigour of its origins: ‘Your master is enticedand provoked by the Duke of Burgundy’,Richard Grafton, Chronicles of the Affairs ofEngland 1568; but by the 17th century theprocess of softening from ‘incitement’ to‘allurement’ was all but complete.entire [14] Entire and integrity [15] have thesame source – Latin integer. This meant ‘whole,complete’, and was formed from the prefix in-‘in’ and *tag-, the base which produced Latintangere ‘touch’, source of English tactile andtangible (and indeed of intact [15], a parallelformation to entire and integrity). Englishborrowed integer [16] itself as a mathematical

term denoting a ‘whole’ number, and several ofits Latin derivatives – not just integrity but alsointegral [16], from late Latin integrālis, andintegrate [17], from Latin integrāre ‘makewhole’. As its difference in form suggests,however, entire came via a different route. TheLatin accusative form integrum produced VulgarLatin *integro, which passed into Old French asentier – hence English entire. INTACT, INTEGRITY, TACTILE, TANGIBLEentitle see TITLEentomology see INSECTentrails [13] Entrails means literally just‘insides’ – and indeed there is an unbrokensemantic undercurrent to the word from earliesttimes to the present day signifying exactly that(as in ‘entrails of the earth’). It comes ultimatelyfrom the Latin adjective interāneus ‘internal’, aderivative of the adverb and preposition inter‘inside, among’. Its neuter plural form interāneacame to be used as a noun, and at some pointunderwent a metamorphosis to medieval Latinintrālia ‘inner parts, intestines’. Englishacquired the word via Old French entrailles.entrance see ENTERentrechat [18] An entrechat has no connectionwith cats, despite the passing resemblance toFrench chat. It comes from French, indeed, butthere the original form was not entrechat butentrechas, a derivative of the verb entrechasser‘chase in and out’, the notion being that thedancer’s feet cross, or ‘chase’, each other severaltimes while she or he is in the air. The verb is acompound formed from entre ‘between’ andchasser ‘pursue’, a relative of English chase. CHASEentropy [19] The term entropy was coined (asentropie) in 1865 by the German physicistRudolph Clausius (1822–88), formulator of thesecond law of thermodynamics. It was he whodeveloped the concept of entropy (a measure ofthe disorder of a system at atomic or molecularlevel), and he created the name for it (on themodel of energy) from Greek en- ‘in’ and tropé‘turning, transformation’ (source of Englishtrophy and tropical). The first record of theEnglish version of the word is from 1868. TROPHY, TROPICALentry see ENTERenumerate see NUMBERenvelopeenvelope [18] English borrowed envelope fromFrench enveloppe in the sense ‘wrapper’, andmore specifically ‘cover for a letter’, at the startof the 18th century. It was a derivative of the verbenvelopper ‘wrap’, whose ancestor, envoloper,gave English envelop in the 14th century. As inthe case of its first cousin develop, the origin ofthe verb remains a mystery. It is a compoundformed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and voloper‘wrap’, but the source of voloper has never beensatisfactorily explained. It may come from ahypothetical Celtic base *vol- ‘roll’, but anequally good candidate is late Latin *faluppa‘husk’, from which come Italian viluppo‘bundle’ and viluppare ‘wrap’. DEVELOP195 episodeenvoy [14] English has acquired envoy – literally‘sent on one’s way’ – twice. The first time, itmeant ‘final part of a poem’ (this is now usuallyspelled envoi); the second time (in the 17thcentury) it meant ‘diplomatic representative’.Both came from the past participle of the Frenchverb envoyer ‘send’, which in turn was adescendant of late Latin inviāre ‘put on the way’,a compound based on the noun via ‘way’. Itsplural formed the basis of invoice [16]. INVOICEenvy [13] The underlying meaning of envy issimply ‘look at someone’ – the implicationbeing, ‘with malice or resentment’. The wordcomes via Old French envie from Latin invidia‘malice’ (source of English invidious [17]),which was a derivative of invidēre ‘look at withmalice’. This in turn was a compound verbformed from the prefix in- ‘in, on’ and vidēre‘see’ (whence English vision). INVIDIOUS, VIEW, VISIONépée see SPADEephemeral [16] Ephemeral, now used fairlyloosely for ‘transitory’, originally meantspecifically ‘lasting only one day’. It comesfrom Greek ephémeros, a compound formedfrom the prefix epí- ‘on’ and hēmérā ‘day’. TheGreeks named the mayfly ephémeron, since itsadult form lives only one day, and Englishadopted ephemeron [16] as the scientific namefor the insect.epicure [16] The Greek philosopher Epicurus(Greek Epíkouros) (341–270 BC) evolved a codeof life and behaviour which stressed theavoidance of pain, but since his time it has beenstood on its head to signify the active seeking ofpleasure – and particularly the pleasures of thetable. Indeed, when the word epicure (whicharrived via Latin epicūrus) was introduced intoEnglish it was even used for a ‘glutton’ – sincetoned down somewhat to ‘connoisseur of finefood and wine’.epidemic [17] An epidemic is literallysomething that has an effect ‘among the people’.The word comes from French épidémique, aderivative of the noun épidémie, which goesback via late Latin epidēmia to Greek epidēmíā‘disease prevalent among the people’. This wasa noun use of epidémios, a compound adjectiveformed from the prefix epí- ‘among’ and demos‘people’ (source of English democracy). DEMOCRACYepiglottis see GLOSSepilepsy [16] Etymologically, epilepsy is theGreek equivalent of English seizure or attack.The word comes, via French or Latin, fromGreek epilēpsíā, a derivative of epilambánein‘seize upon’. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix epí- ‘on’ and lambánein ‘takehold of’.episode [17] In modern English, an episode is acomponent in a series of connected events, butoriginally it was something incidental, comingin adventitiously from the side. The word comesfrom Greek epeisódion ‘addition’, a noun use ofthe adjective epeisódios ‘coming in besides’.

epistle 196This was a compound formed from the prefixepí- ‘besides’ and the noun eísodos ‘coming in,entrance’ – which in turn was a compoundformed from the preposition eis ‘into’ and hodós‘way’ (a relative of Russian chodit’ ‘go’). EXODUSepistle [14] Epistle has never really caught on inEnglish as a general term for a ‘letter’ – too highfalutin– but in fact from a semantic point ofview its origins are quite simple. It comesultimately from Greek epistolé, which meant‘something sent to someone’. This was aderivative of epistéllein, a compound verbformed from the prefix epí- ‘to’ and stellein‘send’ (as in apostle, literally ‘someone sentout’). English actually acquired the word for thefirst time during the Anglo-Saxon period,directly from Latin epistola, and it survived intothe 16th century in the reduced form pistle. Inthe 14th century, however, it was reborrowed,via Old French, as epistle. APOSTLEepitaph [14] Greek táphos meant ‘tomb’, and soan oration that was epitáphios (an adjectiveformed with the prefix epí- ‘over’) was given‘over the tomb’. Eventually the adjective wasmade into a noun, epitáphion, and this reachedEnglish via Latin epitaphium and Old Frenchepitaphe.epithet [16] Etymologically, an epithet is a wordthat is ‘put on’ to or ‘added’ to another. The termcomes from Greek epítheton, which meantliterally ‘addition’, but was used by Greekgrammarians for ‘adjective’. It was a derivativeof epitithénai ‘put on, add’, a compound verbformed from the prefix epí- ‘on’ and tithénai‘place, put’ (a relative of English do and theme).By the time the word reached English (viaFrench or Latin) it had moved over from thevocabulary of the grammarian to that of thelayman, in the sense ‘descriptive appellation’. DO, THEMEepoch [17] Historically, epoch means ‘point intime’, but its particular application to ‘pointmarking the beginning of a new period of time’has led increasingly to its use in modern Englishfor simply ‘historical period’. The word comesvia modern Latin epocha from Greek epokhé,literally ‘pause, stoppage’, and hence ‘fixedpoint in time’. This was a derivative of epékhein‘pause, hold back’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix epí- ‘back’ and ékhein ‘hold’(source of English hectic and related to schemeand sketch). HECTIC, SCHEME, SKETCHequal [14] Latin aequus (a word of unknownancestry) meant ‘level’ or ‘even’. From it wasderived the adjective aequālis ‘equal’, which hasprovided the term for ‘equal’ in all the modernRomance languages, including French égal(source of English egalitarian [19]), Italianuguale, and Spanish igual. English, however, isthe only Germanic language in which itconstitutes a major borrowing.English also possesses, of course, a host ofrelated words, including adequate [17],equanimity [17], equate [15], equation [14]equator [14] (etymologically the line of latitudethat ‘equalizes’ day and night), and iniquity [14](etymologically the equivalent of inequality),not to mention all those beginning with theprefix equi-, such as equidistant [16],equilibrium [17] (literally ‘equal balance’, fromLatin lībra ‘balance’), equinox [14], equity [14],and equivalent [15]. ADEQUATE, EGALITARIAN, EQUATOR, EQUITY,INIQUITYequerry [16] Nowadays in Britain simply royalattendants, equerries’ long and traditionalassociation with the royal stables has led toassociation of the word equerry with Latin equus‘horse’, but in fact the two are quite unrelated.Equerry originally meant ‘stable’, and wasborrowed from the obsolete French escuirie(now écurie). It is not clear where this camefrom: some etymologists have linked it with OldHigh German scūr ‘barn, shed’, while othershave derived it from Old French escuier ‘groom’(source of English esquire and squire),according to which view it would mean ‘placewhere a groom stayed or worked’. (Escuier itselfcame ultimately from Latin scūtārius ‘shieldbearer’.)Forms such as escurie remained currentin English up until the 18th century, but alreadyby the 17th century equus-influenced spellingshad begun to appear.The person in charge of such a stable wasformerly termed in French escuier d’escuirie‘squire of the stable’, and in English groom ofthe equerry, and there are records from quiteearly in the 16th century indicating that equerrywas being used on its own as the term for such agroom. ESQUIRE, SQUIREequestrian [17] Equestrian was adapted fromLatin equester, an adjective derived from eques‘horseman’. Eques in turn was based on equus‘horse’ (source of English equine [18]). This wasthe Latin descendant of *ekwos, the prehistoricIndo-European term for ‘horse’, which was oncefound in all the daughter languages of Indo-European except for the Slavic branch: OldEnglish had eoh, for example, Old Irish ech,Sanskrit avás, and ancient Greek híppos (sourceof English hippodrome and hippopotamus). It isa remarkable circumstance, however, that overthe past thousand years equus and its relativeshave (other than in derivatives such as equine)died out, to be replaced by secondary terms suchas French cheval (from Latin caballus, probablya non-Indo-European borrowing), German pferd(from late Latin paraverēdus ‘extra post-horse’,source also of English palfrey), and Englishhorse. EQUINE, HIPPOPOTAMUSequip [16] Etymologically, equip means ‘fit outor provide crew for a ship’. Its immediate sourcewas French équiper, but this appears to havebeen a borrowing from Old Norse skipa ‘fit outa ship’, a verb derived from skip ‘ship’ (firstcousin of English ship). The carliest examples ofits use in English are in the much broader sense

‘supply with necessary materials’, and itsspecific links with the sea were soon severed. SHIPera [17] In ancient Rome, small discs or tokensmade of ‘brass’ (Latin aes, a descendant, likeEnglish ore [OE], of Indo-European *ajes) usedfor counting were known as area. In due coursethis developed the metaphorical meaning‘number as a basis for calculation’, and fromaround the 5th century AD it came to be used inSpain, North Africa, and southern Gaul as aprefix for dates, some what analogous to modernEnglish AD. By extension it was then applied toa ‘system of chronological notation, as datedfrom a particular event or point in time’, thesense in which English acquired the word. Themore general ‘historical period’ is an 18thcenturysemantic development. OREeradicate [16] Semantically, eradicate is ananalogous formation to uproot. It comes fromthe past participle of Latin ērādicāre ‘pull out bythe roots’, a compound verb formed from theprefix ex- ‘out’ and rādix ‘root’ (source ofEnglish radical and radish and related to Englishroot). In the 16th and 17th centuries it was oftenused literally (‘oaks eradicated by a prodigiouswhirlwind’, Thomas Nabbes, Hannibal andScipio 1637), but since then the metaphorical‘remove totally’ has taken over. RADISH, ROOTerase [17] Like abrade, rascal, rase and razor,erase comes ultimately from Latin rādere‘scrape’. This formed the basis of a compoundverb ērādere ‘scrape out, scrape off’ (its firstelement is the Latin prefix ex- ‘out’). Eraser‘rubber’ seems to be a 19th-century coinage. ABRADE, RASCAL, RASE, RAZORerect [14] Erect was borrowed from Latinērectus, the past participle of ērigere ‘raise up,set up’. This was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix ex- ‘out, up’ and regere ‘keep straight,set, direct’ (source of English regent, region,etc). The use of the derivative erection [15] forthe enlargement of the penis dates from the 16thcentury. CORRECT, DIRECT, REGENT, REGIONermine [12] The term ermine was introduced toEnglish from Old French as a name for the‘stoat’, but as in the case of other words ofFrench origin like mutton and pork which sooncame to be used for the dead animals’ productrather than the live animals themselves, it wasnot long (about a hundred years in fact) beforeermine was being applied to the stoat’s fur, andspecifically to its white winter fur. The source ofthe French word is not entirely clear. One schoolof thought derives it from medieval Latin mūsArmenius ‘Armenian mouse’, on the assumptionthat this denoted a ‘stoat’ or ‘weasel’, but analternative possibility is Germanic origin.erode see ROSTRUMeroticerotic [17] Érōs was the Greek word for ‘sexuallove’ (as opposed to agápē ‘brotherly love’ andphilía ‘friendship’). The concept waspersonified in Greek mythology as Érōs, the197 escalateboy-god of love. Its adjectival derivative erōtikósarrived in English via French érotique.err [14] Err, erratic [14], erroneous [14], anderror [13] all go back to a prehistoric base *er-,which meant ‘wandering about’ (the semanticprogression from ‘wandering’ to ‘makingmistakes’ is reproduced in several other quiteunrelated word groups in the Indo-Europeanlanguage family). This produced Gothic airzei‘error’, Old High German irri ‘astray’ (source ofmodern German irre ‘angry’), Old English ierre‘astray’, and Latin errāre ‘wander, makemistakes’ – from which, via Old French errer,English got err. ERRATIC, ERRORerrand [OE] Despite the passing similarity,errand has no etymological connection with errand error. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic*ǣrundjam, which meant ‘message’ – a sensewhich in fact survived in English until asrecently as the 18th century (Miles Coverdale,for example, in his 1535 translation of 1 Samuel11:5 wrote ‘So they told him the errand of themen of Jabesh’ – where the Authorized Versionhas ‘tidings’). The main modern meaning, ‘taskone goes to perform’, developed in the 13thcentury (in American English it has latterlygained specific connotations of ‘shopping’). Thesource of the Germanic word is not known, but itis no doubt related to Swedish ärende andDanish ærinde ‘errand, message, business’.error see ERReructate see REEKerudite [15] To be erudite is literally to be theopposite of ‘rude’. Latin rudis (source of Englishrude) meant ‘rough, unpolished’, and so ērudīre,a compound verb formed with the prefix ex- ‘outof, from’, signified ‘take the roughness out of’,hence ‘polish, teach’. Its past participle formedthe basis of an adjective, ērudītus ‘(well) taught’,which as borrowed into English has acquired thegreater gravitas of ‘learned’. RUDEerupt [17] Etymologically, erupt means simply‘break out’. It comes from the past participle ofLatin ērumpere, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix ex- ‘out, from’ and rumpere ‘break’(source of English rout, route, routine, andrupture, and related to bereave, rob, and robe).English actually acquired the derived nouneruption [15] before the verb. BEREAVE, CORRUPT, DISRUPT, ROB, ROUT,ROUTE, ROUTINE, RUPTUREerythrocyte see REDescalate [20] Escalate is a back-formation fromescalator [20], which was originally a tradenamefor a moving staircase first made in theUSA around 1900 by the Otis ElevatorCompany. This in turn seems to have beencoined (probably on the model of elevator) fromescalade [16], a term in medieval warfaresignifying the scaling of a fortified wall, whichcame via French and Spanish from medievalLatin scalāre, source of English scale ‘climb’.Escalate originally meant simply ‘ascend on an

escape 198escalator’; the metaphorical sense ‘increase’developed at the end of the 1950s.escape [14] Originally, escape meant literally‘take off one’s cloak’, and signifiedmetaphorically ‘throw off restraint’ – much aswe might say unbutton. The word appears tocome ultimately from Vulgar Latin *excappāre,a hypothetical compound verb formed from theprefix ex- ‘out, off’ and cappa ‘cloak’ (source ofEnglish cape). This passed into Old NorthernFrench as escaper (immediate source of theEnglish word), by which time the metaphor hadprogressed from ‘throwing off restraint’ to‘gaining one’s liberty’. CAPEeschew [14] Eschew is ultimately of Germanicorigin, although it reached English via French.Its remote ancestor is prehistoric Germanic*skeukhwaz, source also of English shy. A verbbased on this, *skeukhwan, was borrowed intoVulgar Latin as *skīvāre, which in Old Frenchbecame eschiver or eschuer – whence Englisheschew. An Old Northern French variant of theOld French form, eskiuer, gave English skew[14] (which originally meant ‘escape’), whilemodern French esquiver ‘dodge’ (actually areborrowing from Italian schivare rather than adirect descendant of Old French eschiver) couldbe the source of English skive [20], a probableborrowing by British servicemen in Franceduring World War I. SKEW, SKIVEescort [16] The notion underlying escort is of‘guidance’, of ‘showing the right path’. Theword comes via French from Italian scorta‘guide’, a noun use of the past participle ofscorgere ‘show, guide’. This in turn came fromVulgar Latin *excorrigere, a compound verbformed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and Latincorrigere ‘put right’ (source of English correct). CORRECTescrow see SCROLLescutcheon see SQUIREespecial see SPECIALespionage see SPYesplanade [17] Essentially, esplanade is thesame word as explain, but whereas explain haslost its underlying literal meaning, esplanadehas retained at least a memory of it. It comesultimately from Latin explānāre, which meant‘flatten out’, and so esplanade (acquired viaFrench from the Spanish past participleesplanada) was originally simply a ‘large levelarea’. Its application to the ‘promenade’ atseaside towns is a comparatively recentdevelopment. EXPLAINespouse [15] Etymologically, to espousesomething is the same as to sponsor it. Bothwords go back ultimately to Latin spondēre‘promise solemnly’. From it developed lateLatin spōnsāre, which produced Old Frenchespouser, source of the English verb. Itoriginally meant ‘promise to marry’, but thisparticular semantic strand has survived only inthe related noun spouse, and by the 17th centurythe now familiar metaphorical sense ‘adopt andsupport a cause’ had developed. SPONSOR, SPOUSEespresso [20] Etymologically, espresso iscoffee that has been ‘pressed out’. The wordcomes from Italian caffè espresso, literally‘pressed-out coffee’, which refers to the way inwhich the coffee is made by forcing pressurizedsteam or boiling water through the finely groundbeans. Espresso is the past participle ofesprimere ‘press out’, from Latin exprimere –which is also the source of English express.espy see SPYesquire see SQUIREessay [15] Essay and assay [14] arefundamentally the same word, and only began todiverge in the 15th century. Both come via OldFrench assaier from Vulgar Latin *exagiāre‘weigh out’, a verb derived from late Latinexagium ‘weighing’; this in turn was formedfrom the Latin verb exigere ‘weigh’ (source ofEnglish exact and examine). Accordingly, bothoriginally had underlying connotations of‘testing by weighing’. But while these havebecome more concrete in assay ‘analyseprecious metals’, essay has, under the influenceof French essayer, gone down the moremetaphorical route from ‘test’ to ‘try’. The verbnow survives only in fairly formal use, but thenoun is much more frequent, owing to itsapplication to a ‘short nonfictional literarycomposition’. It was first used thus in English byFrancis Bacon in 1597 as the title of a collectionof such pieces, and it is generally assumed thathe borrowed the idea from the Essais ofMontaigne, published in 1580. ASSAY, EXACT, EXAMINEessence [14] Essence and its derivativeessential [14] are the English descendants of theLatin verb ‘to be’, esse (which came ultimatelyfrom the Indo-European base *es- ‘be’, sourcealso of English is). From it was formed theabstract noun essentia ‘being, existence’,acquired by English through Old Frenchessence. In the adjective essential, the sense‘absolutely necessary’ developed via ‘inherent’and ‘indispensable’ in the 16th century. ISestablish [14] Etymologically, to establishsomething is to ‘make it firm’. The word comesvia Old French establir from Latin stabilīre, aderivative of stabilis ‘firm, secure’ (source ofEnglish stable and related to English stand).English originally acquired it at the end of the13th century as stablish, but by the end of the14th century the more ‘French’ spelling hadbeen introduced, and gradually took over. STABLE, STANDestate [13] Essentially, estate and state are thesame word, and originally their meanings werevery close (the now archaic ‘reach man’s estate’,for instance, signifies ‘reach the state ofmanhood’). From the 15th century, however,they began to diverge, estate taking a semanticpath via ‘interest in property’ to ‘such propertyitself’, and finally, in the 18th century, to the

‘land owned by someone’. Both come via OldFrench estat from Latin status ‘way of standing,condition’ (source of English status), aderivative of the verb stāre ‘stand’ (a relative ofEnglish stand). STAND, STATE, STATUE, STATUSesteem [15] Esteem and estimate [16] are fairlyopen about their relationship, but there isanother, more heavily disguised member of thefamily: aim. All three come ultimately fromLatin aestimāre. Estimate was a straightforwardborrowing from the Latin past participleaestimātus, but esteem came via Old Frenchestimer, and aim from the reduced Old Frenchform esmer. Originally, esteem meant much thesame as estimate does: ‘evaluate, assess’. But asearly as the 16th century it had passed into ‘thinkhighly of’ (a semantic development interestinglyparalleled in the 20th century by rate). AIM, ESTIMATEestrange see STRANGEetch [17] A line that has been etched has beenliterally ‘eaten’ away by acid or other corrosives.The word was borrowed from Dutch etsen,which in turn came from German ätzen ‘corrode,etch’. This can be traced back to a prehistoricGermanic *atjan ‘cause to eat, feed’, a relationof *etan ‘eat’ (from which English gets eat). EATeternal [14] Something that is eternal lastsliterally for ‘aeons’. The word comes via OldFrench eternal from aeternālis, a late Latindevelopment of the Latin adjective aeternus‘eternal’. This in turn was a derivative of aevum‘age’ (which crops up in English medieval,primeval, etc), a relative of Greek aión ‘age’(from which English gets aeon) and archaicEnglish aye ‘ever’. AEON, AYE, EVERether [17] Greek aithér denoted the ‘upperatmosphere’, and by extension the ‘substancethat permeated the cosmos’, from which the starsand planets were made. It was a derivative of theverb aíthein ‘ignite, blaze, shine’, a relative ofLatin aestās ‘summer’, from which English getsaestivate [17]. It passed into English via Latinaethēr, and to begin with was used in its originalGreek senses. Its application to the liquid withanaesthetic properties dates from the mid 18thcentury, the use of its first syllable in the namesof organic compounds in the bicarbon series(such as ethyl and ethane) from the mid 19thcentury. AESTIVATE, ETHYLethical [17] The underlying meaning of Greekēthos was ‘personal disposition’. It cameultimately from prehistoric Indo-European*swedh-, a compound formed from the reflexivepronoun *swe- ‘oneself’ and dhē- ‘put’ (fromwhich English gets do). Gradually the meaningbroadened out to ‘trait, character’ and then‘custom’, or in the plural ‘manners’ or ‘morals’.English acquired it, in the sense ‘distinctivecharacteristic’ (based on the usage of Aristotle),in the 19th century. The Greek derived adjectiveēthikós entered English, via Latin ēthicus, as199 eunuchethic in the 16th century. This had largely beenreplaced by ethical by the end of the 17thcentury, but it has survived as a noun (as in ‘thework ethic’), which actually predates theadjective in English by about two hundred years.The plural usage ethics ‘science of morals’ datesfrom the beginning of the 17th century. DOethnic [14] Greek éthnos meant ‘nation, people’.However, its use in the Septuagint (the earlyGreek translation of the Old Testament) torender the Hebrew word for ‘gentile’ led to itsderived adjective ethnikós, and hence Latinethnicus, meaning virtually ‘heathen’. It was inthis sense that English first acquired the word(‘an ethnic and a pagan king’, Nicholas Udall,Paraphrase of Erasmus 1545); indeed, earlyetymologists thought that English heathen camefrom éthnos. The word’s modernanthropological sense is a mid-19th-centuryreturn to its roots.etiquette [18] Etiquette is, almost literally, ‘justthe ticket’. The primary meanings of Frenchétiquette are ‘ticket’ and ‘label’ – and indeed it isthe source of English ticket. A particularapplication of it in former times was to a smallcard which had written or printed on it directionsas to how to behave properly at court – hence itcame to mean ‘prescribed code of socialbehaviour’. TICKETetymology [14] The underlying meaning ofetymology is ‘finding the underlying or ‘true’meaning of words’. Its ultimate source is Greekétumos ‘real, true’. From this was derivedétumon ‘true or literal sense of a word’ (acquiredby English in the 16th century as etymon). Postclassicalgrammarians came to use this in thesense ‘root from which a particular word wasderived’, as a result of which modern etymology,the study of etymons, deals with their historyrather than their meaning.eucalyptus [19] Europeans first encounteredeucalyptus trees in Australia at the end of the18th century. The French botanist Charles Louisl’Héritier based its Latin name, which he coinedin 1788, on the fact that its flower buds have acharacteristic conical cover (the Greek prefix eumeans‘well’ and Greek kaluptós means‘covered’).eucharist [14] The Greek-based eucharistcorresponds to native English thanksgiving. Itcomes via Old French eucariste and late Latineucharistia from Greek eukharistíā ‘gratitude’.This was a derivative of eukháristos ‘grateful’, acompound adjective formed from the prefix eu-‘well’ and kharízesthai ‘show favour’. The verbin turn was formed from the noun kháris ‘favour,grace’ (source of English charisma [19] andprobably a distant relative of yearn [OE]). YEARNeunuch [15] Eunuch has no etymologicalconnection with ‘castration’. It is simply the factthat in former times male harem attendants inOriental courts had their testicles removed, toensure that they were not distracted from their

euphemism 200work, that has led ultimately to the equation ofeunuch with ‘castrated man’. Literally, the wordmeans ‘bed-guard’; it comes via Latin fromGreek eunoukhos, a compound formed fromeuné ‘bed’ and ékhein ‘have charge of, keep’.euphemism [17] Etymologically, euphemismmeans ‘speaking with good words’. Greekeuphēmismós, a compound formed ultimatelyfrom the prefix eu- ‘good, well’ and phémē‘speech, saying’ (a relative of English fable,fame, and fate), originally denoted the avoidanceof words of ill omen at religious ceremonies, butit was subsequently taken up by grammarians tosignify the substitution of a less for a moreoffensive word. Its opposite, dysphemism ‘use ofa more offensive word’, is a modern coinage,formed in the late 19th century using the Greekprefix dus- ‘bad, difficult’. FABLE, FAME, FATEeureka [16] The Greek mathematicianArchimedes (c. 287–212 BC) was commissionedby King Hiero II of Syracuse to find out whetherthe goldsmith who had made a new crown forhim had fraudulently mixed some silver in withthe gold. In order to do so, Archimedes neededto ascertain the metal’s specific gravity. But howto do this? According to Plutarch, he decided totake a bath to ponder the problem. He filled thebath too full, and some of the water overflowed– and it suddenly occurred to Archimedes that apure-gold crown would displace more water ifimmersed than one made from an alloy. Elated atthis piece of lateral thinking, Archimedes is saidto have leapt out of the bath shouting heúrēka! ‘Ihave found!’, the perfect indicative of Greekheurískein ‘find’ (source of English heuristic[19]). The earliest occurrence of the word in anEnglish text as an exclamation of delight atdiscovery is in John Dee’s Preface, but there itappears in Greek characters; the first Englishauthor to fully naturalize it was probably HenryFielding in Joseph Andrews 1742; ‘Adamsreturned overjoyed cring out “Eureka!”’ (Thegoldsmith, incidentally, had adulterated thegold.) HEURISTICeuthanasia [17] Etymologically, euthanasiameans ‘good death’, and that was more or less itssignification when it was introduced intoEnglish: ‘Give me but gentle Death: Euthanasia,Euthanasia, that is all I implore’, Tatler 1709.The modern use of the word, ‘mercy killing’,seems to have originated in the 1860s; the firstrecorded use of it was by William Lecky in hisHistory of European morals 1869. The term isborrowed from Greek euthanasíā, a compoundbased on the prefix eu- ‘good’ and thánatos‘death’.evanescent see VANISHevangelistevangelist [12] The original sense of evangelistwas ‘writer of a gospel’. English used to have theword evangel ‘gospel’. This came via OldFrench evangile and ecclesiastical Latinevangelium from Greek euaggélion, which inclassical times meant ‘reward for bringing goodnews’ (it was a compound based ultimately onthe prefix eu- ‘good, well’ and the noun ággelos‘messenger’ – source of English angel). Later onit came to mean simply ‘good news’, and in earlyChristian texts written in Greek it denotedspecifically any of the four books of the NewTestament written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, andJohn. (English gospel was originally a literaltranslation of it.) Evangelist itself comes fromthe Greek derivative euaggelistés. ANGELeven [OE] Even can be traced back to aprehistoric Germanic *ebnaz, although it is notclear whether it meant originally ‘flat, level’ or‘equal, alike’ (both strands of meaning are stillpresent in the word, the latter in such expressionsas ‘get even with’ and ‘even number’, and also inits various adverbial uses, the former in ‘evenkeel’, ‘even light’, etc)evening [OE] Evening is a derivative of even[OE], a word for ‘evening’ now restricted to badpoetry. This came ultimately from an Indo-European base, whose general meaning of‘lateness’ is pointed up by other descendantssuch as Sanskrit apara- ‘later, western’, Greekopsé ‘late’, and Gothic iftuma ‘following, later’.The specific application to ‘latter part of the day’seems only to have occurred in the Germaniclanguages, where it is represented in Germanabend and Dutch avond, and also possibly inSwedish afton and Danish aften (although thesecould be from another source). The Old Englishword was ǣfen, which formed the basis of a verbǣfnian ‘become evening’; the verbal nounderived from this has become English evening.Eve [13], as in ‘Christmas eve’, is a MiddleEnglish reduction of even.ever [OE] For such a common and longestablishedword, the origins of ever aresurprisingly obscure. It has no relatives in otherGermanic languages, so it must be a purelyEnglish creation. Its first element probablycomes from Germanic *aiwō (which is alsorepresented in English aye ‘ever’ [12] and either,and is related to Latin aevum ‘age’, source ofEnglish eternal). The second element is apuzzle, though. Candidates that have been putforward include Old English feorh ‘life’ (thus,‘ever in life’) and Old English byre ‘occasion’(giving the underlying sense ‘on any occasion’).Never was formed in the Old English period withthe negative particle ne. AYE, EITHER, ETERNALevery [OE] Stripped down into its componentparts, every means literally ‘ever each’. It wasoriginally an Old English compound made up ofǣfre ‘ever’ and ǣlc ‘each’, in which basically the‘ever’ was performing an emphasizing function;in modern English terms it signified somethinglike ‘every single’, or, in colloquial American,‘every which’. By late Old English times the twoelements had fused to form a single word. EACH, EVER

evict [15] Ultimately, evict and evince [17] arethe same word, although they have divergedconsiderably over the centuries. Both come fromLatin ēvincere, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix ex- ‘out’ and vincere (source ofEnglish victory). This originally meant ‘defeat,conquer’, but a whole range of secondary legalsenses developed: ‘recover something bydefeating an opponent in a legal action’; ‘ejectby judicial process’; and ‘prove by legalargument’. Both evict (acquired from the Latinpast participle ēvictus) and evince have in thepast been used for ‘conquer’ and ‘prove’, and itwas not until the 18th century that they settledinto their present meanings. EVINCE, VICTORYevident [14] Something that is evident is literallysomething that can be ‘seen’. The word comesvia Old French from Latin ēvidēns ‘clear,obvious’, a compound formed from the intensiveprefix ex- and the present participle of videre‘see’ (source of English vision). The Latinderivative ēvidentia (from which English getsevidence [13]) meant originally ‘distinction’ andlater ‘proof’, basis of the main current sense ofevidence, ‘testimony which establishes thefacts’. VIEW, VISIONevil [OE] Evil has got distinctly worse over themillennia. Originally it seems to have signifiednothing more sinister than ‘uppity’, and in theOld and Middle English period it meant simply‘bad’; it is only in modern English that itsconnotations of ‘extreme moral wickedness’came to the fore. It probably comes ultimatelyfrom *upelo- a derivative of the Indo-Europeanbase *upo- ‘under’ (source of Greek hupó‘under’, Sanskrit upa ‘at, to’, and English up andover), and so its underlying connotation is of‘exceeding due limits, extremism’. Its Germanicdescendant was *ubilaz, source of German übel‘evil’ as well as English evil. OVER, UPevince see EVICTevoke see VOCATIONevolution [17] Evolution originally meantsimply ‘unfolding’, or metaphorically‘development’; it was not used in its maincurrent sense, ‘gradual change in form of aspecies over the centuries’, until the early 19thcentury. The Scottish geologist Charles Lyellappears to have been the first to do so, in hisPrinciples of Geology 1832, and it wassubsequently taken up by Charles Darwin. Theword comes from Latin ēvolūtiō, which denotedspecifically the unrolling of a papyrus orparchment roll. It was a derivative of ēvolvere, acompound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ andvolvere ‘roll’ (source also of Englishconvolution, involve, and revolve and related tovault, voluble, volume, vulva, and wallow). CONVOLUTION, INVOLVE, REVOLVE, VOLUME,WALLOW201 excellentexact [15] The adjective exact ‘precise’ and theverb exact ‘demand with severity’ haveundergone considerable semantic divergenceover the centuries, but they both go back to thesame source, the Latin verb exigere (from whichEnglish also got essay, examine, exigent [15],and exiguous [17]). This, a compound of theprefix ex- ‘out’ and agere ‘lead, drive’ (source ofEnglish act and agent), meant originally ‘driveout’, but in due course it developed themetaphorical senses ‘demand’ (preserved in theEnglish verb), ‘weigh accurately’, and ‘bring tocompletion or perfection’. These last two weretaken up adjectivally in the Latin past participleexactus, from which English gets exact. ACT, AGENT, ESSAY, EXAMINEexaggerate [16] Something that is exaggeratedis literally ‘piled up’ out of all due proportion;indeed that is what it originally meant inEnglish: ‘With their flipping and flapping up anddown in the dirt they exaggerate a mountain ofmire’, Philip Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses 1583.It was not really until the 17th century that thecurrent sense ‘overemphasize’ came to the fore,although it was already present in the word’sLatin original. This was exaggerāre, acompound formed from the intensive prefix exandaggerāre ‘pile up’ (a derivative of agger‘heap’).examine [14] Like essay and exact, examinecomes ultimately from Latin exigere, acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and agere ‘lead, drive’ (source of English actand agent). This originally meant literally ‘driveout’, but a metaphorical sense ‘weighaccurately’ developed which was carried overinto a derived noun exāmen ‘weighing’. This inturn formed the basis of another derivative, theverb exāmināre ‘weigh’, hence ‘weigh up,ponder, consider, test, examine’. Theabbreviation exam for examination dates fromthe late 19th century. ACT, AGENT, ESSAY, EXACTexample [14] Etymologically, an example issomething that has been ‘taken out’, so that itcan be considered separately. The word comesvia Old French example from Latin exemplum‘example’, a derivative of eximere ‘take out’.This was a compound verb formed from theprefix ex- ‘out’ and emere ‘take, buy’ (source ofEnglish peremptory, pre-empt, premium, andprompt), and also yielded English exempt [14].(An earlier Old French version of the word,essample, was borrowed into English in the 13thcentury as asample, which was the ancestor ofmodern English sample.) EXEMPT, PEREMPTORY, PREMIUM, PROMPT,SAMPLEexcellent [14] The underlying notion ofexcellent is of physically ‘rising above’ others. Itcomes via Old French from the present participleof Latin excellere. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and ahypothetical verbal element *cellere, which

except 202evidently meant something like ‘rise, be high’: itderived ultimately from an Indo-European base*kol-, *kel- which also produced Englishcolumn, culminate, and hill. There is littleevidence of its literal use in Latin; themetaphorical ‘be outstanding’ evidentlyelbowed it aside at an early stage. (Englishacquired excel itself in the 15th century,incidentally.) COLUMN, CULMINATE, HILLexcept [14] If you except something, youliterally ‘take it out’. The verb comes fromexceptus, the past participle of Latin excipere, acompound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ andcapere ‘take’ (source of English capture). Theuse of the word as a preposition, andsubsequently as a conjunction, arose from theadjectival use of the Latin past participleexceptus for ‘excepted, excluded’ (as in modernEnglish ‘present company excepted’). CAPTIVE, CAPTURE, CHASE, HEAVEexcerpt see SCARCEexchange [14] Like change, exchange comesultimately from Latin cambīre ‘barter’. In postclassicaltimes this had the prefix ex- added to it,here functioning as an indicator of ‘change’,producing late Latin *excambiāre. In Old Frenchthis became eschangier (whence modern Frenchéchanger), which English acquired via Anglo-Norman eschaunge. A 15th-century reversion tothe original Latin spelling of the prefix producedmodern English exchange. CHANGEexchequer [13] Etymologically, an exchequeris something that has ‘checks’ or squares on it,and indeed the earliest use of the word in Englishwas for ‘chessboard’. It came via Anglo-Norman escheker from medieval Latinscaccārium ‘chessboard’, a derivative of VulgarLatin scaccus ‘check’ (source of English check‘verify’). In the early Middle Ages the office ofstate, in both England and Normandy, whichdealt with the collection and management of theroyal revenue, used a table with a chequeredcloth on it as a sort of rudimentary addingmachine, counters being placed on varioussquares as an aid to calculation. And by the 14thcentury it had become the custom to refer to thisdepartment, from its chessboard-like table cloth,as the exchequer (Robert Mannyng, for instance,in his Chronicle 1331, records that ‘to Berwickcame the king’s exchequer, Sir Hugh ofCressyngham he was chancellor, Walter ofAdmundesham he was treasurer’). Exchequerwas the source of chequer [13], which by furtherreduction produced check ‘pattern of squares’. CHECK, CHESSexcise English has two words excise. The onemeaning ‘tax’ [15] is essentially a Dutch usage.English borrowed it in the late 15th century fromMiddle Dutch excijs, which came via Old Frenchacceis from Vulgar Latin *accēnsum, acompound noun formed from the Latin prefixad- ‘against, to’ and cēnsus ‘tax’ (source ofEnglish census [17]). At first it was used broadlyfor any ‘tax’, but in 1643 (following the exampleof Holland) it was officially adopted as the termfor a tax imposed on certain forms of goods(originally domestically produced or imported,but since the 19th century only domesticallyproduced – the tax on imports being termedcustoms duty). Dr Johnson in his Dictionary1755 defined excise as ‘a hateful tax levied uponcommodities, and ajudged not by the commonjudges of property, but by wretches hired bythose to whome excise is paid’.Excise ‘cut out’ [16] comes from the pastparticiple of Latin excīdere, a compound verbformed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and caedere‘cut’ (source also of English concise, decide, andincision). CENSUS, CONCISE, DECIDE, INCISIONexcite [14] The use of the word excite to convey‘agitated elation’ is a comparatively recentdevelopment, first recorded from the mid 19thcentury. Before that it was a fairly neutral verb,meaning ‘produce a response, provoke’ (as in therather formal ‘excite much comment’). It comes,perhaps via Old French exciter, from Latinexcitāre ‘call forth, arouse, produce’. This was avariant of exciēre, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix ex- ‘out’ and ciēre ‘move, call’ (sourcealso of English cite, incite, recite, and solicit). CITE, INCITE, RECITE, SOLICITexclude see SLUICEexcrement [16] Latin excrēmentum meantoriginally ‘that which is sifted out’ (it was aderivative of the verb excernere, a compoundformed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and cernere‘sift, decide’, from which English gets certain).Hence it was applied metaphorically to anysubstance that is excreted from or secreted by thebody, including sweat, nasal mucus, and milk, aswell as faeces. (English acquired excrete [17],incidentally, from the past participle ofexcernere, excrētus.) This very general sensesurvived in English into the mid 18th century,when it was finally ousted by the more specific‘faeces’. (Increment, by the way, is a completelyunrelated word, coming ultimately from Latincrēscere ‘grow’.) CERTAIN, CRIME, CRITIC, DISCERN,DISCRIMINATE, SECRETexcursion see COURSEexcuse [13] Etymologically, excuse means ‘freeof accusation’. It comes via Old French fromLatin excūsāre, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix ex-, denoting removal, and causa‘cause’ – but ‘cause’ in the sense not ofsomething that produces a result, but of ‘legalaction, accusation’ (a meaning preserved inEnglish ‘cause list’, for example) Originally, thes of both the noun and the verb was pronounced/z/; the /s/ of the modern English noun arose byanalogy with such nouns as use and abuse. ACCUSE, CAUSEexecute [14] The original meaning of execute inEnglish was ‘carry out’, but the sense ‘killjudicially’ had already developed by the end of

the 15th century (it comes from the notion of‘carrying out’ a sentence). The word comes viaOld French executer from medieval Latinexecutāre, a derivative of Latin exsequī. This, acompound formed from the intensive prefix exandsequī ‘follow’ (source of Englishconsecutive, consequent, obsequious, sequence,subsequent, etc), meant originally ‘follow to theend, pursue’, and hence ‘follow through, carryout, fulfil’. Its derivative exsequiās ‘funeralprocession’ produced English exequies [14]. CONSECUTIVE, CONSEQUENT, OBSEQUIOUS,SEQUENCE, SUBSEQUENTexempt see EXAMPLEexercise [14] The notion underlying exercise isof ‘removal of restraint’. It comes ultimatelyfrom Latin exercēre, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix ex- ‘out of, from’ and arcēre‘restrain, enclose’ (source of English arcane andrelated to English ark). It has been speculatedthat this originally denoted the driving ofdraught animals out into the fields to plough, buthowever that may be, it soon developed thegeneral senses ‘set to work, keep at work’ and‘drill, practise’ which form the semantic basis ofEnglish exercise. ARCANE, ARKexigent see EXACTexile [13] Latin exul meant ‘banished person’.This was formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and aprehistoric Indo-European base *ul- ‘go’(represented also in Latin ambulāre ‘walk’,source of English amble and ambulance). Fromit was created the noun exilium ‘banishment’,which in Old French became essil. This wassubsequently remodelled to exil, on the basis ofits Latin source, and passed on to English. AMBLE, AMBULANCEexist [17] The ‘existential’ use of exist is asecondary development; to begin with it had themore concrete meaning ‘stand out, so as to beperceptible’. It comes from Latin existere, acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and sistere ‘be placed, stand firm or still’ (adistant relative of English stand). Its originalsense ‘stand out, stand forth’ developed through‘emerge’ and ‘be visible’ to ‘exist’. Theavailable evidence suggests that it enteredEnglish at a surprisingly late date, somecenturies after the derivative existence [14] (ofwhich the English verb may be a backformation). STAND, STATUEexit [16] Ultimately, exit is the same word asEnglish issue. Both come from Latin exīre, acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and īre ‘go’. This Latin verb, which can betraced back to an Indo-European base *ei-, alsoproduced English coitus [18], obituary, andtransient (as well as the French future tense irai‘will go’). The earliest use of exit in English wasas a stage direction (it means literally ‘he or shegoes out’ in Latin). The sense ‘way out’ is a late17th-century development, the more concrete203 explain‘door by which one leaves’ as recent as the late19th century. COITUS, OBITUARY, TRANSIENTexodus see PERIODexpand see SPAWNexpect [16] Someone who expects somethingliterally ‘looks out’ for it. The word comes fromLatin expectāre, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix ex- ‘out’ and spectāre ‘look’ (sourceof English spectacle, spectre, spectrum, andspeculate). Already in Latin the literal ‘look out’had shifted metaphorically to ‘look forward to,anticipate’ and ‘await’, meanings adoptedwholesale by English (‘await’ has since beendropped). ESPIONAGE, SPECTACLE, SPECULATE, SPYexpedition [15] The Latin verb expedīreoriginally had the rather mundane meaning ‘freeone’s feet’ – from a snare, for example It wasformed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and pēs ‘foot’(source of English pedal, pedestrian, etc andrelated to English foot). Its literal meaning wassoon lost sight of, progressing via ‘extricate,liberate’ to ‘bring out, make ready’ and ‘put inorder, arrange, set right’. The notion of ‘freeing’something, enabling it to go forward withouthindrance, is reflected in the verb’s Englishdescendant expedite [17]. It also survives in thederived noun expedition, as ‘promptness,dispatch’; in the main, however, this has taken adifferent semantic route, via ‘sending out amilitary force’ to ‘long organized journey for aparticular purpose’. EXPEDITE, FOOT, PEDAL, PEDESTRIANexpel see PULSEexpend see SPENDexperienceexperience [14] Experience, experiment [14],and expert [14] all come from the same source,Latin experīrī. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and a prehistoricbase *per- denoting ‘attempt, trial’ (found alsoin English empirical, peril, pirate, andrepertory), and meant ‘try, test’. The originalmeaning is best preserved in experiment, but infact experience too meant at first ‘putting to thetest’ in English. From this developed the notionof ‘actually observing phenomena in order togain knowledge of them’, which in turn led to themore subjective ‘condition of having undergoneor been affected by a particular event’. The sense‘knowledge or skill gained from suchobservation or from undergoing such events’ didnot, however, emerge until the late 15th century.Expert was originally only an adjective, meaning‘having experience of something’, or ‘trained bysuch experience’; its use as a noun onlydeveloped in the 19th century. EMPIRICAL, EXPERIMENT, EXPERT, PERIL,PIRATE, REPERTORYexpiate see PIOUSexpire see SPIRITexplainexplain [15] To explain a matter is literally to‘make it plain’. The word comes from Latin

expletive 204explānāre, a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix ex- and the adjective plānus‘flat’ (source of English plain). This originallymeant ‘flatten out, make smooth’, but themetaphorical sense ‘make clear’ soon took over,and accompanied the verb into English(although in the 16th and 17th centuries a fewscholars attempted to revive the literal sense:‘He must calm and explain his forehead’, SirThomas Chalenor, translation of DesiderusErasmus’ Praise of Folly 1549). ESPLANADE, PLAINexpletive [17] Originally, an expletive word wassimply one used to ‘fill up’ a line of verse, tocomplete its metrical pattern (expletive comesfrom Latin explētus, the past participle of explēre‘fill out’, a compound formed from the prefix ex-‘out’ and plēre ‘fill’, source of English completeand related to English fill). Hence the term cameto be used for a redundant word, not contributinganything to the meaning of the sentence: “TheKey my loose, powerless fingers forsook”, alame and expletive way of saying “I dropt thekey”, Robert Southey 1804. The first recordedexample of its euphemistic application as a nounto ‘profanities’ is by Sir Walter Scott in GuyMannering 1815: ‘retaining only such of theirexpletives as are least offensive’. COMPLETE, FULLexplicit [17] Something that is explicit hasliterally been ‘unfolded’. Like the earlierborrowing explicate [16], the word comes fromthe past participle of Latin explicāre, acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘un-’and plicāre ‘fold’ (source of English ply andrelated to English fold). At first, in the 16th and17th centuries, English retained the literal senseof the original, but gradually it dropped out infavour of the metaphorical ‘make clear, distinct,and open’ (already present in Latin). EXPLOIT, FOLD, PLYexplode [16] The use of explode to mean ‘burstwith destructive force’ is a comparatively recent,late 19th-century development. The Latin verbexplōdere, from which it comes, signifiedsomething quite different – ‘drive off the stagewith hisses and boos’ (it was a compoundformed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and plaudere‘clap’, source of English applaud and plaudits).From this developed the figurative sense ‘reject,disapprove’, which was how the word was usedwhen it was first taken over into English: ‘Notthat I wholly explode Astrology; I believe thereis something in it’, Thomas Tryon, Miscellanea1696 (the modern notion of ‘exploding a theory’is descended from this usage). In the 17thcentury, however, the Latin verb’s original sensewas reintroduced, and it survived into the 19thcentury: ‘In the playhouse when he doth wrong,no critic is so apt to hiss and explode him’,Henry Fielding, Tom Jones 1749. Towards theend of the 17th century we find the first traces ofa metaphorical use that combines the notion of‘driving out, expelling’ with ‘loud noise’ (‘theeffects of Lightning, exploded from the Clouds’,Robert Plot, Natural History of Staffordshire1679), but it was not to be for more than acentury that the meaning element ‘drive out’ wasreplaced by the ‘burst, shatter’ of present-dayEnglish explode (Dr Johnson makes no mentionof it in his Dictionary 1755, for example) Todaythe notion of ‘bursting violently’ is primary, thatof ‘loud noise’ probably secondary, althoughstill present. APPLAUSE, PLAUDITSexploit [14] Latin explicāre (source of Englishexplicate and explicit) meant ‘unfold’. A VulgarLatin descendant of its past participle was*explictum ‘something unfolded’, which passedinto Old French as exploit or esplait. In theprocess, the original sense of ‘unfolding’ haddeveloped through ‘bringing out, development’and ‘advantage, success’ to ‘achievement’. Inthe case of the English noun, it is the lattermeaning which has survived, and in factoriginally the verb too denoted ‘achieve,accomplish’. This seems to have died out in the18th century, however, and when the verbreappears in the 19th century it is closer to theearlier ‘develop’ in meaning, particularly asapplied to ‘getting the most out of’ naturalresources. The modern derogatory sense ‘use forone’s own selfish ends’ emerged from this. EXPLICIT, FOLD, PLYexplore [16] Etymologically, to explore is tolook for something by shouting. The wordcomes ultimately from Latin explorare‘investigate’, which was based on the verbplorare ‘wail, cry out’ (source also of Englishdeplore [16] and implore [16]), and it is thoughtthat the word’s original scenario may have beenhunters shouting to flush out (Latin ex- ‘out’)their quarry. DEPLORE, IMPLOREexport see PORTexpose see POSITIONexpressexpress [14] Something that is expressed isliterally ‘pressed out’. The word comes via OldFrench from Vulgar Latin *expressāre, acompound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’and pressāre ‘press’. Its meaning developedmetaphorically from ‘press out’ to ‘form bypressure’ (presumably applied originally tomodelling in clay or some similar substance, andsubsequently to sculpture and then painting),and finally to ‘make known in words’.The Vulgar Latin verb was in fact moving inon territory already occupied by its classicalLatin forerunner exprimere (source of Frenchexprimer ‘express’ and perhaps of Englishsprain [17]). The past participle of this wasexpressus, used adjectivally for ‘prominent,distinct, explicit’. Old French took it over asexpres and passed it on to English in the 14thcentury. By now its meaning was movingtowards ‘intended for a particular purpose’, andin the 19th century it was applied to ‘special’trains (as in ‘football specials’). It did not take

long, however, for this to slip via ‘train forpeople wanting to go to a particular place, andtherefore not stopping anywhere else’ to ‘fasttrain’. Hence the modern sense of express, ‘fast’,was born. ESPRESSO, PRESS, SPRAINexpunge see PUNCTUATIONexpurgate see PUREexquisite [15] Etymologically, exquisite means‘sought out’. It comes from the past participle ofLatin exquīrere, a compound formed from theprefix ex- ‘out’ and quaerere ‘search’ (source ofEnglish query, quest, and question). Already inLatin it had acquired the metaphorical sense‘sought after, choice, excellent’, which itbrought with it into English. From the 15th to the18th centuries, however, the adjective underwentsomething of an explosion (being used in suchwidely varied senses as ‘ingenious, far-fetched’,‘abstruse’, ‘affected’, ‘careful’, ‘elaborate’, andeven – in relation to diseases – ‘true, typical’: ‘anexquisite diabetes caused by attraction of urine’,translation of Théophile Bonet’s MercuriusCompitalitius 1684) before settling back into thenow familiar ‘excellent in beauty’. QUERY, QUEST, QUESTIONextempore [16] An extempore speech is onethat is given literally ‘out of time’ – that is, ‘onthe spur of the moment’. That was the meaningof the Latin phrase extempore (ex ‘out of’ andtempore, the ablative case of tempus ‘time’),which was the source of the Latin adjectivesextemporālis and extemporāneus. Both of thesewere acquired by English, as extemporal [16]and extemporaneous [17], but only the latter hassurvived. Ex tempore itself was first lexicalizedin English as an adverb, and was not used as anadjective until the 17th century.extend [14] Etymologically, to extendsomething is to ‘stretch it out’. The word comesfrom Latin extendere, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix ex- ‘out’ and tendere ‘stretch’(source of English tend and tension and a widerange of derivatives, including contend, intend,and pretend). English standard derives from itsOld French descendant estendre. CONTEND, INTEND, PRETEND, STANDARD, TEND,TENSIONexterior see EXTRAextinct [15] Latin stinguere appears originally tohave meant ‘prick, stick’ (a sense revealed in thederivative from which English gets distinct), butin historical times the only record of it we haveis in the later, and rather remote metaphoricalmeaning ‘quench’. With the addition of theprefix ex- ‘out’ it became extinguere ‘put out’,whence English extinguish [16]. Extinct comesfrom its past participle, extinctus, and originallymeant ‘put out, no longer alight’: ‘That fire wasextinct’, Ranulph Higden, Polychronicon 1432–50. Its modern use, ‘having died out’, dates – in205 exuderelation to species, families, etc – from the late17th century. DISTINCT, EXTINGUISHextol see TOLERATEextort see TORMENTextra [18] In its modern English use, ‘beyondwhat is normal’ or ‘additional’, extra is probablyan abbreviation of extraordinary [15], in whichthe prefix represents Latin extrā ‘outside,beyond’. This in turn was short for exterā, theablative feminine case of the adjective exterus‘outer’ (from which English gets exterior [16]).And exterus itself began life as a compound formbased on Latin ex ‘out’. EXTERIOR, EXTREMEextradite [19] Extradite is a back-formationfrom extradition [19]. This was borrowed fromFrench extradition, which was a coinage(apparently of Voltaire’s) based on Latin ex ‘out’and tradītiō ‘handing over, deliverance’ (sourceof English tradition). TRADITION, TREASONextraneous see STRANGEextraordinary see EXTRAextravagant [14] An extravagant person isliterally one who ‘wanders out of’ the propercourse. The word comes from the presentparticiple of medieval Latin extrāvagārī, acompound formed from the prefix extrā-‘outside’ and vagārī ‘wander’ (source of Englishvagabond, vagary, and vagrant), which seemsoriginally to have been used adjectivally withreference to certain uncodified or ‘stray’ papaldecrees. This was the word’s original applicationin English, and the present-day meanings‘wildly excessive’ and ‘spending too lavishly’did not really establish themselves before theearly 18th century. VAGABOND, VAGARY, VAGRANTextreme [15] Etymologically, extreme is thelatinate equivalent of the native English utmost.It comes via Old French extreme from Latinextrēmus ‘farthest, last, excessive’, which beganlife as a superlative form based on Latin ex ‘out’– hence originally ‘most out, utmost’. Theunderlying notion of ‘furthest outlying’ stillsurvives in, for example, the use of extremitiesfor the ‘hands’ or ‘feet’.extricate see TRICKextrinsicextrinsic see INTRINSICextrude see ABSTRUSEexuberant [15] Exuberant comes via Frenchfrom the present participle of Latin exūberāre‘be abundant’. This was a compound verbformed from the intensive prefix ex- and ūberāre‘be productive’, a derivative of ūber ‘fertile’.This in turn was an adjectival use of the nounūber ‘udder’, which came from the sameultimate source (Indo-European *ūdhr-) asEnglish udder. UDDERexude see SWEAT

eye 206eyeye [OE] In Old English times eye was ēage,which is related to a whole range of words for‘eye’ in other European languages. Itsimmediate derivation is from prehistoricGermanic *augon, which was also the source ofGerman auge, Dutch oog, Swedish öga, andmany others. And *augon in its turn goes back toan Indo-European oqw-, which supplied theword for ‘eye’ to all the other Indo-Europeanlanguages except the Celtic ones, includingRussian óko (now obsolete), Greek ophthalmós,and Latin oculus (with all its subsequentderivatives such as French oeuil, Italian occhio,and Spanish ojo). Amongst its more surprisingEnglish relatives are atrocious, ferocious,inoculate, ullage, and window. ATROCIOUS, FEROCIOUS, INOCULATE, OCULAR,ULLAGE, WINDOWeyot see ISLANDeyrie [16] Latin ager (source of Englishagriculture and related to English acre) meant‘field’, or more broadly ‘piece of land’. In postclassicaltimes this extended via ‘native land’ to‘lair of a wild animal, particularly a bird of prey’,the meaning of its Old French descendant aire.The Old French form was taken back intomedieval Latin as aeria, the immediate source ofthe English word. ACRE, AGRICULTURE

Ffable [13] The Indo-European base *bha- ‘speak’has produced a wide range of English words,including (via Germanic) ban and (via Latin fārī‘speak’) affable, confess, fairy, fame, fate,ineffable, infant, nefarious, and profess. Fable isa member of this latter group; it comes via OldFrench fable from Latin fābula ‘narrative, story’(source also of English fabulous [15]), whichwas a derivative of fārī. Fib [17] is probablyshort for an earlier fible-fable ‘nonsense’, afanciful reduplication of fable. AFFABLE, BAN, CONFESS, FABULOUS, FAIRY,FAME, FATE, FIB, INEFFABLE, INFANT,NEFARIOUS, PROFESS, PROPHETfabric [15] Latin faber was a term for an artisanwho worked with hard materials – a carpenter,for example, or a smith (it probably came from aprehistoric Indo-European base meaning ‘fitthings together’). From it was derived fabrica,which denoted the trade such a man followed,the place where he worked, or in general termsthe product of his work – in the case of acarpenter, a ‘building’. And ‘building’ was theoriginal sense of the word in English when itacquired it via French fabrique: ‘He had neuerstudye in newe fabrykes ne buyldynges’,William Caxton, Golden Legend 1483.Remnants of the usage survive in the currentsense ‘walls, roof, and floor of a building’. It wasnot until the mid 18th century that the underlyingnotion of ‘manufactured material’ gave rise tothe word’s main present-day meaning ‘textile’.Derivatives include fabricate [18], from Latinfabricāre, and forge. FORGEface [13] The notion that a person’s face ‘is’ theirappearance, what they look like to the rest of theworld, lies behind the word face. It probablycomes from a prehistoric base *fac-, signifying‘appear’. This gave rise to Latin faciēs, whichoriginally meant ‘appearance, aspect, form’, andonly secondarily, by figurative extension, ‘face’.In due course it passed via Vulgar Latin *faciainto Old French as face, from which Englishacquired it (French, incidentally, dropped thesense ‘face’ in the 17th century, although theword face is retained for ‘front, aspect’, etc).Related forms in English include facade [17],facet [17] (originally a diminutive), superficialand surface. FACADE, FACET, SUPERFICIAL, SURFACEfacile see FACULTYfacsimile see FAXfact [16] A fact is literally ‘something that isdone’. It comes from Latin factum ‘deed’, a nounbased on the past participle of facere ‘do’. Thisverb, a distant relative of English do, hascontributed richly to English vocabulary, fromobvious derivatives like factitious [17] andfactitive [19] to more heavily disguised formssuch as difficult, effect, fashion, feasible, feature,and fetish, not to mention the -fic suffix of wordslike horrific and pacific, and the related verbalsuffix -fy. To begin with, English adopted theword in its original Latin sense ‘deed’, but thisnow survives only in legal contexts, such as‘accessory after the fact’. There is sporadicevidence in classical Latin, however, of its usefor ‘something that happens, event’, and thisdeveloped in post-classical times to produce‘what actually is’, the word’s main modern sensein French fait and Italian fatto as well as in theirEnglish relative fact.Feat is essentially the same word as fact,filtered through Old French. DIFFICULT, DO, EFFECT, FASHION, FEASIBLE,FEATURE, FETISHfaction see FASHIONfactory [16] Latin factor, a derivative of facere‘make’, meant ‘maker, doer’ (it was introducedinto English in the 15th century as ‘agent’, butwas not adopted as a mathematical term until themid 17th century). Among its post-classicalderivatives were late Latin factōrium ‘oil-press’and medieval Latin factōria ‘establishment forfactors or agents’. It appears that the latter musthave been the original source of the word factoryin English, which at first meant ‘factorship,agency’. However, this does not fit in at all withits main modern sense ‘place where things aremade’, first recorded in the early 17th century,which presumably must go back in some way toLatin factōrium. FACTfactotum [16] A factotum is literally someonewho ‘does everything’. It was coined from fac,the imperative form of the Latin verb facere ‘do’,and tōtum ‘all’ (source of English total).Originally it was used virtually as a name, inphrases such as ‘Master Factotum’, and it doesnot seem to have been until the late 18th centurythat it settled into its current role as an ordinarynoun. FACT, TOTALfaculty [14] If one has a faculty for doingsomething, one finds it ‘easy’ to do. The wordcomes, via Old French faculte, from Latinfacultās. This was a parallel form to facilitās(source of English facility [15]). Both werederived from Latin facilis ‘easy’ (whenceEnglish facile [15]), an adjective formed fromthe verb facere ‘do’. Since facilitās more closely

fade 208resembled facilis, it retained its connotations of‘easiness’, whereas by the classical periodfacultās had more or less lost them, coming tomean ‘capability, power’. FACILE, FACILITYfade [14] Fade comes from Old French fader, aderivative of the adjective fade ‘faded, vapid’.This in turn came from Vulgar Latin *fatidus,which probably represents an alteration of Latinfatuus ‘stupid, insipid’ (source of Englishfatuous [17]) under the influence of Latinvapidus ‘flat, lifeless’ (source of English vapid). FATUOUS, VAPIDfag English has three distinct words fag, none ofwhose origins is altogether clear. The oldest isthe one which denotes ‘drudgery’. It is firstrecorded as a verb in the 16th century, meaning‘droop, decline’; its more common noun uses,‘hard boring work’ and ‘boy who does tasks foran older boy in a British public school’, appearto have developed in the late 18th century. It isgenerally taken to have been originally analteration of flag ‘lose vigour, droop’, althoughthere is no conclusive proof of this. Fag‘cigarette’ [19] is an abbreviation of fag-end[17], which originally meant generally ‘extremeend’. It was a compound formed from an earlierfag [15], whose underlying meaning seems tohave been something like ‘piece hanging downloosely, flap’ (and which conceivably could berelated to fag ‘drudgery’). Fag ‘homosexual’[20] is short for faggot [13], a derogatory termapplied to male homosexuals in AmericanEnglish since the early 20th century; the usage isprobably based on the slightly earlieruncomplimentary use of the word for ‘woman’.Faggot means literally ‘bundle of sticks’, andcomes via Old French fagot from Italian faggotto(which is used also for ‘bassoon’). This in turn isa diminutive form of Vulgar Latin *facus, whichwas based ultimately on Greek phákelos‘bundle’. The notion of applying a term for‘bundle’ abusively to ‘women’ is perhapsechoed in baggage.Fahrenheit [18] The ‘pre-metrication’temperature scale takes its name from itsinventor, the German physicist Gabriel DanielFahrenheit (1686-1736). Not only did hedevelop the idea of a scale in which ice melts at32º and water boils at 212º, he also invented themercury thermometer.fail [13] Fail, fallacy [15], fallible, false, and faultall come ultimately from the same source – theLatin verb fallere. This originally meant‘deceive’, but it developed semantically to‘deceive someone’s hopes, disappoint someone’,and in its Vulgar Latin descendant *fallīre thismeaning had progressed to ‘be defective, fail’.English acquired the word via Old French faillir.Its Anglo-Norman form, failer, came to be usedas a noun, and is the source of English failure[17]. FALIACY, FALLIBLE, FALSE, FAULTfaint [13] Faint comes from Old French faint,which was originally the past participle of theverb faindre, feindre ‘pretend, shirk’ (whenceEnglish feign). This meant ‘pretended,simulated’, ‘lazy, shirking’, and ‘cowardly’, andall these senses were originally taken over byEnglish. None now survives except the last, inthe phrase faint heart, but in their place theunderlying notion of ‘feebleness’ has produced‘not bright, dim’ and ‘weak and dizzy’. Theverb, based on the second of these, developed inthe late 14th century. The variant spelling feint,used of printed lines, was introduced in the mid19th century. FEIGNfair English has two distinct words fair, oneGermanic and the other Romance. The older,meaning ‘beautiful’ [OE], comes from aprehistoric Germanic *fagraz, which survivesalso in Swedish fager ‘beautiful’. It derived froma base *fag-, which seems originally to havemeant ‘fitting, suitable’ (a variant of it was theultimate source of fake and possibly also of thenow archaic noun fig ‘clothes, array’, as in ‘infull fig’). Of its main present-day meanings,‘just, equitable’ developed in the 14th centuryand ‘not dark’ in the mid 16th century.Fair ‘festive event’ [13] comes from OldFrench feire. This was a descendant of late Latinfēria, a singular use of a noun which in classicaltimes had been used in the plural, fēriae, for‘holiday’. A close relative of fēriae was theadjective festus ‘joyous’, source of English feast,festival, festoon, and fête. FAKE, FEAST, FESTIVAL, FESTOON, FÊTE, FIGfairy [14] Fairy is an Old French coinage. Itcomes from Old French faerie, which meant‘enchantment, magic’ and was derived from fae‘fairy’ (source of English fay [14]). This in turncame from the Latin plural fāta, used inpersonifying the Fates, three goddesses who inancient mythology governed human destiny. Theoriginal notion of the French noun survives inthe mock-medieval term faerie (introduced byEdmund Spenser in his Faerie Queene 1590),but in fairy itself it has been gradually replacedby the meaning of the word from which it wasoriginally derived – fay. FABLE, FAME, FATEfaith [12] Faith comes ultimately from the prehistoricIndo-European *bhidh-, *bhoidh-(source also of English federal). It producedLatin fidēs ‘faith’, which lies behind a widerange of English words, including confide, defy,diffident (which originally meant ‘distrustful’),fealty [14], fidelity [15], fiduciary [17], andperfidy [16]. Its descendants in the Romancelanguages include Italian fede, Portuguese fé (asin auto-da-fé, literally ‘act of faith’, acquired byEnglish in the 18th century), and Old Frenchfeid. This was pronounced much as modernEnglish faith is pronounced, and Middle Englishtook it over as feth or feith. (A later Old Frenchform fei, foreshadowing modern French foi,produced the now defunct English fay [13]). CONFIDE, DEFY, DIFFIDENT, FEDERAL, FIDELITY,FIDUCIARY, PERFIDYfake [19] The use of fake for ‘produce afraudulent copy of’ is a comparatively recent

development. It used to mean ‘do up somethingspurious to make it seem genuine’, and in thissense seems to be a descendant of the longobsoleteverb feague [16]. Essentially it is apiece of underworld slang, and as such has arather slippery semantic history. In the 19thcentury it was used, like its ancestor feague, forany number of nefarious operations, includingbeating up and killing (‘to fake a man out andout, is to kill him’, J H Vaux, Vocabulary of theFlash Language 1812), but its current senseleads back in a straight line to its probableultimate source, German fegen ‘polish,refurbish’. This (like English fig ‘clothes, array’)was a derivative of the prehistoric Germanicbase *feg-, a variant of *fag-, from whichEnglish gets fair ‘beautiful’. FAIR, FEAST, FIGfalcon [13] English acquired falcon via OldFrench faucon, but it is probably ultimately ofGermanic origin. Related forms such as Germanfalke and Dutch valk suggest a prehistoricGermanic *falkon, adopted into late Latin asfalcō, and passing from there into Old French.fall [OE] The verb fall comes from prehistoricGermanic *fallan, which also produced Germanfallen, Dutch vallen, and Swedish falla. Thenoun is partly a survival of Old English feall,partly a borrowing from the related Old Norsefall, but probably mostly a new formation basedon the verb. The sense ‘autumn’, now restrictedto American English, originated in the 16thcentury from an earlier phrase fall of the leaf.(Fell ‘cut down’ is related: etymologically itmeans ‘cause to fall’.) FELLfallacy see FAILfallow English has two words fallow, both ofconsiderable antiquity. Fallow ‘uncultivated’[OE] originally meant ‘ploughed land’. Itspresent-day adjectival meaning ‘ploughed butnot sown’ or, more broadly, just ‘uncultivated’,developed in the 15th century. Fallow ‘paleyellowish-brown’ [OE] (now used only in fallowdeer) comes via Germanic *falwaz from Indo-European *polwos, a derivative of the base*pol-, *pel-, which also produced English appal[14] (originally ‘grow pale’), pale, and pallid. ItsGermanic relatives include German fahl ‘pale,fawn’ and falb ‘pale yellow’. (Germanic*falwaz, incidentally, was the ancestor of Frenchfauve ‘wild animal’, source of the term fauvism[20] applied to an early 20th-century Europeanart movement that favoured simplified forms andbold colours.) APPAL, PALE, PALLIDfalse [OE] False appears originally to have beenborrowed directly from Latin falsus at the end ofthe 10th century, but without making much of animpression. It was only in the 12th century thatit began being used with any frequency, probablyas the result of an extra impetus given byreborrowing it via Old French fals. The word’sultimate source was the Latin verb fallere209 fancy‘deceive’, from which English also gets fail,fallacy, fallible, and fault. FAIL, FALLACY, FALLIBLE, FAULTfame [13] Etymologically, fame is ‘being talkedabout’. The word comes via Old French famefrom Latin fāma ‘talk, reputation’. This in turngoes back ultimately to the Indo-European base*bha- ‘speak’, which also produced Englishconfess, fable, fate, ineffable, etc. Thederivatives famous and infamous are both 14thcenturyacquisitions. CONFESS, FABLE, FAIRY, FATE, INEFFABLE,PROFESSfamiliar [14] Familiar originally meant simply‘of the family’ (it came, partly via Old Frenchfamilier, from Latin familiāris). Its usual use inthis sense was in phrases such as familiar enemyand familiar foe, denoting a treacherous enemyfrom within one’s own family or household. Itgradually broadened out semantically via‘intimately associated’ (preserved in familiarspirit, and in the noun use ‘intimate friend’) to‘well-known from constant association’. FAMILYfamily [15] Latin famulus, a word of unknownorigin, meant ‘servant’. From it was derivedfamilia, a collective term for all the domesticservants of a household. Only rarely was it usedfor the entire household, including the servants’employers too, and when it first entered Englishit was with the original Latin sense (whichindeed survived until the late 18th century).Gradually, however, the English word broadenedout to ‘whole household’, and then in the mid-17th century narrowed down again to the currentmain sense ‘group of related people’. FAMILIARfamine [14] Both famine and famish [14] comeultimately from Latin famēs ‘hunger’. Its VulgarLatin derivative *faminis produced Old Frenchfamine, source of English famine. Famish hascome via a more circuitous route: another VulgarLatin derivative of famēs was *affamāre, acompound verb formed with the prefix ad-‘towards’; in Old French this became afamer,which was borrowed into Middle English, withloss of its first syllable, as fame ‘starve’; andbefore long this had the suffix -ish added to it, onthe model of other verbs such as abolish anddiminish. FAMISHfan English has two words fan. By far the older[OE] came from Latin vannus; it originallymeant ‘device for winnowing grain’, and its nowfamiliar sense ‘handheld device for creating acooling draught’ did not develop until the 16thcentury. Its characteristic semicircular shapegave rise to the term fanlight [19] (since appliedto a rectangular window above a door). Fan‘supporter’ is short for fanatic. There is a one-offexample of its use in the 17th century, in Newnews from Bedlam 1682, but the origins of themodern word were in late 19th-century America,where it was used for sports supporters.fancy [15] Ultimately, fancy is the same word asfantasy [15], from which it emerged by a process

fane 210of contraction and gradually becamedifferentiated in meaning. Both go backoriginally to the Greek verb phaínein ‘show’(source also of English diaphanous andphenomenon). From it was derived phantázein‘make visible’, which produced the nounphantasíā ‘appearance, perception, imagination’and its associated adjective phantastikós ‘able tomake visible’ (and also incidentally phántasma,from which English gets phantasm andphantom). The noun passed into English viaLatin phantasia and Old French fantasie,bringing with it the original Greek senses andalso some others which it had picked up on theway, including ‘caprice’. The semantic splitbetween fantasy, which has basically taken theroad of ‘imagination’, and fancy, which hastended more to ‘capricious preference’, wasmore or less complete by about 1600. The quasi-Greek spelling phantasy was introduced in the16th century, and has persisted for the noun,although the contemporary phantastic for theadjective has now died out. The Italian formfantasia was borrowed in the 18th century for afanciful musical composition. (Fancy andfantasy have no etymological connection withthe superficially similar fanatic, incidentally,which comes ultimately from Latin fānum‘temple’.) DIAPHANOUS, FANTASY, PANT, PHANTOMfane see PROFANEfang [11] Fang originally meant ‘prey, spoils’ – asense which survived well into the 18th century(‘Snap went the sheers, then in a wink, The fangwas stow’d behind a bink [bench]’, Morrison,Poems 1790). It was related to a verb fang ‘take,capture’ which was very common in the Old andMiddle English period, and which, like itssurviving cousins German fangen, Dutchvangen, and Swedish fånga, goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *fangg- (Englishnewfangled [15] is a memory of it). Theapplication of the word to an animal’s tooth doesnot emerge until as late as the 16th century, andalthough the broad semantic connection between‘seizing’ and ‘sharp canine tooth’ is clear, theprecise mechanism behind the development isnot known. NEWFANGLEDfantasy see FANCYfar [OE] Far is a word of ancient ancestry. It goesback to Indo-European *per-, which alsoproduced Greek pérā ‘beyond, further’ andSanskrit paras ‘beyond’. The Germanicdescendant of the Indo-European form was*fer-, whose comparative form *ferrō ‘further’passed into Old English as feorr, having lost itscomparative connotations and come to meansimply ‘far’. The Old English comparative wasfierr, but in early Middle English this too lost itscomparative force and a new form was createdwith the -er ending, ferrer, later farrer. This inturn was gradually replaced by further (acompletely different – although probablydistantly related – word, based on forth), ofwhich farther is a 13th-century variant modelledon far.farce [14] Farce originally meant ‘stuff’(widening gastronomic knowledge in the late20th century has made us more familiar with itsFrench cousin farcir ‘stuff’, and the force- offorcemeat [17] is the same word). It came viaOld French farsir from Latin farcīre ‘stuff’. TheLatin verb was used in the Middle Ages for thenotion of inserting additional passages into thetext of the Mass, and hence to padding out anytext. A particular application was the insertion ofimpromptu, usually comical interludes intoreligious plays, which had led by the 16thcentury to something approaching the modernmeaning of farce. FORCEMEATfare [OE] Both the verb fare (now only anarchaism) and the noun go back ultimately to theIndo-European base *por- ‘going, passage’,which has produced a wide range of otherEnglish words, including emporium, ferry, fiord,ford, importune, opportunity, pore, and port. ItsGermanic descendant was *fer- ‘go’, whichproduced in Old English the nouns fær and faru‘journey’ and the verb faran ‘go on a journey’(its German cousin fahren is still a standard verbfor ‘travel’). Of the noun’s current senses, ‘food’(which seems to have originated in the notion of‘how well one was faring’, ‘how one wasprovided for’) dates back to the 13th century, and‘money paid for travelling’ to the 15th century.The derivative welfare dates from the 14thcentury. EMPORIUM, FERRY, FIORD, FORD, IMPORTUNE,OPPORTUNITY, PORE, PORTfarinaceous see FARRAGOfarm [13] The specifically agriculturalconnotations of farm are surprisingly recent. Theword comes ultimately from Latin firmāre‘make firm, fix’, which produced a medievalLatin derived noun firma, denoting ‘fixedpayment’. English acquired the word via OldFrench ferme, and originally used it in just thissense (‘I will each of them all have 4d to drinkwhen they pay their farm’, Bury Wills 1463);something of this early sense is preserved in theverbal usage farm out, which to begin withsignified ‘rent out’. By the 16th century the nounwas shifting semantically from ‘fixed (rental)payment’ to ‘land leased for such payment, forthe purpose of cultivation’, but only verygradually did the notion of a farm beingspecifically a leased piece of land die out. FIRMfarrago [17] The notion of a farrago being a‘heterogeneous mixture’ comes originally fromthe mixture of various grains for animal feed.Latin farrāgo was a derivative of far ‘corn’(source of English farinaceous [17] and relatedto barley and barn), and was extendedmetaphorically to ‘medley, hotch-potch’ inclassical times. BARLEY, BARN, FARINACEOUSfarrier [16] Etymologically, a farrier is a ‘workerin iron’. The word comes via Old French ferrier

from Latin ferrārius, a derivative of ferum. Thismeant literally ‘iron’ (it is the source of Englishferrous [19], and may well have been borrowedfrom a Semitic source), and already in classicaltimes was being applied metaphorically toimplements made from iron, particularly‘swords’. Its use for ‘horseshoe’, on which themeaning of farrier is based, is a medieval Latindevelopment. FERROUSfarrow [OE] Farrow, nowadays used mainly as averb for ‘give birth to a litter of pigs’, originallymeant ‘young pig’. Its ultimate source was Indo-European *porkos (from which English also getspork). The Germanic descendant of this was*farkhaz, which produced German ferkel ‘youngpig’ and Dutch varken ‘pig’ (as in aardvark,literally ‘earth-pig’, originally from Afrikaans)as well as farrow. AARDVARK, PORKfart [OE] Fart is a widespread and ancient wordin the Indo-European languages, and goes backto a prehistoric Indo-European *perd-, whichmay originally have been an imitation of thesound of a fart. Its other offspring besides fartinclude German farzen and furzen, Swedishfjärta, Danish fjerte, Russian perdet’, Polishpierdzieć, Greek pordízō, and Welsh rhechain.farthing [OE] Farthing has a long history as anEnglish coin-name, going back to the 10thcentury, when it was used in translations of theBible to render Latin quadrans, a quarter of adenarius. It was introduced into Englishcurrency (as a silver coin equal to a quarter of apenny) in the reign of Edward I; in Charles Il’stime copper was used for it, and from 1860 untilits abolition in 1971 it was a bronze coin.Appropriately, the term means literally ‘quarter’;it was originally a derivative of Old Englishfēortha ‘fourth’, formed with the suffix -ingdenoting ‘fractional part’ (found also in riding[11], former name of the administrative areas ofYorkshire, which etymologically means ‘thirdpart’). FOURfascinate [16] To fascinate somebody isliterally to ‘bewitch’ them. The word comesfrom the past participle of the Latin verbfascināre, which was a derivative of fascinum‘witchcraft’. The Roman phallic deity,incidentally, was named Fascinus, because anamulet in the shape of a penis was hung aroundchildren’s necks in ancient times to ward off evilspells.fascist [20] The early 20th-century Italianfascisti, under Benito Mussolini, took their namefrom Italian fascio, literally ‘bundle’ butfiguratively ‘group, association’. Its source wasLatin fascis ‘bundle’, from whose diminutiveform fasciculus English gets fascicle [15].Closely related was Latin fascia ‘band, bandage,strip’, borrowed by English in the 16th century. FASCIA, FASCICLEfashion [13] The underlying notion of fashion isof ‘making’, ‘forming’, or ‘shaping’. The mainmodern sense of the word developed via211 fate‘particular shape or style’, ‘way, manner’, and‘prevailing or current manner’. English acquiredit via Anglo-Norman fasun from Latin factiō, aderivative of facere ‘make, do’ (which hascontributed an enormous range of vocabulary toEnglish, from fact to difficult, and is distantlyrelated to English do itself). Latin factiō wasonly rarely used in the literal sense ‘making’. Inclassical times it was generally applied to a‘group of people acting together’ (hence Englishfaction [16]), and the metaphorical extension to‘way, manner’ and ‘custom’ taken up by Englishfashion is a post-classical development. DIFFICULT, FACT, FACTION, FACTORYfast [OE] Widely dissimilar as they now seem,fast ‘quick’ and fast ‘abstain from food’ in factcome from the same ultimate source. This wasGermanic *fastuz, which denoted ‘firm’. Thatunderlying sense persists in various contexts,such as ‘hold fast’ and ‘fast friend’. The verbalapplication to ‘eating no food’ originated in thenotion of ‘holding fast to a particularobservance’ – specifically, abstinence fromfood. The use of fast for ‘quick’ is a much laterdevelopment, dating from the 13th century. Itprobably comes from a perception of fast ‘firm’containing an underlying connotation of‘extremity’ or ‘severity’.fasten [OE] Etymologically, fasten means ‘makefast’; it goes back ultimately to Germanic*fastuz, source of English fast. From this wasderived a verb *fastinōjan, which passed intoOld English as fæstnian. To begin with thisseems only to have been used in themetaphorical sense ‘settle, establish’. The moreconcrete ‘attach’ is not recorded until the 12thcentury, and the earliest reference to its use forlocking or bolting a door comes from as late asthe mid-18th century. FASTfat [OE] Fat is one of a large Indo-Europeanfamily of words denoting the substance ‘fat’ orits consequences in terms of obesity – theprobably related Greek pímelē and Latinpinguis, for instance, signified respectively‘lard’ and ‘fat’. The Germanic members of thefamily, which include German fett, Dutch vet,and Swedish fet as well as English fat, go back toa prehistoric Germanic *faitaz.fate [14] Etymologically, fate is ‘that which isspoken’ – that is, by the gods. Like so manyother English words, from fable to profess, itgoes back ultimately to the Indo-European base*bha- ‘speak’. Its immediate source was Italianfato, a descendant of Latin fātum, which wasformed from the past participle of the verb fārī‘speak’. That which the gods say determines thedestiny of human beings, and so Latin fātumcame to signify ‘what is preordained, destiny’. Itwas used in the plural fāta to personify the Fates,the three goddesses who preside over humandestiny – their direct etymological descendantsin English have been diminished to fairies. Thederivative fatal [14] comes from Latin fatālis,perhaps via Old French fatal. CONFESS, FABLE, FAIRY, PROFESS

father 212father [OE] Father is the English representativeof a general Indo-European family of words for‘male parent’. Its ancestor is Indo-Europeanpətér, which probably originated (like the wordsfor ‘mother’, and indeed like English daddy andpapa and Welsh tad ‘father’) in prearticulatesyllables interpreted by proud parents as words.Its multifarious descendants include Greekpatér, Latin pater (whence French père, Italianand Spanish padre – borrowed into English inthe 16th century – and English pater, paternal,patriarch, patrician, patriot, and patron), Irishathair, Armenian hayr, German vater, Dutchvader, Swedish and Danish fader, and Englishfather. A less obvious relation is perpetrate [16];this comes ultimately from Latin perpetrāre, aderivative of the verb patrāre, which originallymeant literally ‘perform or accomplish in thecapacity of a father’. PATERNAL, PATRIOT, PATRON, PERPETRATEfathom [OE] The underlying etymologicalmeaning of fathom appears to be ‘stretching out,spreading’. It probably comes ultimately fromthe Indo-European base *pot-, *pet-, which alsoproduced Latin patēre ‘be open’ (source ofEnglish patent) and Greek pétalos ‘outspread’(source of English petal). Its Germanicdescendant was *fath-, which produced the noun*fathmaz, direct ancestor of Old English fæthm.Here, the notion of ‘stretching out’ seems tohave spread via ‘stretching out the arms’ to, onthe one hand ‘embrace’ (and one meaning of OldEnglish fæthm was ‘embrace, bosom’), and onthe other ‘length spanned by outstretched arms’– about six feet. PATENT, PETALfatigue [17] In English a relatively formal term,fatigue goes back ultimately to a Latinexpression roughly equivalent to the Englishnotion of having ‘had it up to here’. It wasborrowed from French fatiguer, a descendant ofLatin fatigāre ‘tire’. This appears to have beenrelated to the adverb affatim ‘sufficiently’,suggesting that underlying fatigāre was the ideaof having ‘had enough’. The derivativeindefatigable ‘tireless’ [16] comes from Latinindēfatigābilis.fatuous see FADEfaucal see SUFFOCATEfault [13] Like fail, fallacy, fallible, and false,fault comes ultimately from Latin fallere‘deceive, fail’. Its past participle formed thebasis of a Vulgar Latin noun *fallita ‘failing,falling short’, which passed into English via OldFrench faute in the sense ‘lack, deficiency’. Thenotion of ‘moral culpability’ does not seem tohave become incorporated into the word until thelate 14th century. FAIL, FALLACY, FALLIBLE, FALSEfauna [18] Fauna was a Roman goddess of thecountryside, sister of Faunus (the Romanequivalent of Greek Pan) who was a nature andfertility god worshipped by shepherds, farmers,etc. The Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeusapplied her name in 1746 to his catalogue of theanimals of Sweden, Fauna suecica ‘SwedishFauna’, and it has been used since then as acollective term for the animal life of a region(one of the earliest records of its use in Englishis by the naturalist Gilbert White in 1771).(Faunus, source of English faun [14], may berelated ultimately to Latin favēre ‘regardfavourably’, source of English favour.) FAUNfauvism see FALLOWfavour [14] Latin favēre meant ‘regardfavourably, side with protect’. It came ultimatelyfrom Indo-European *dhegh-, *dhogh- ‘burn’,which also produced Latin fovēre ‘heat, cherish’(source of English foment [15]) and English day.From it was derived the Latin noun favor, whichpassed into English via Old French favour.Favourite [16] came via early modern Frenchfavorit from Italian favorito, the past participleof the verb favorire ‘favour’. DAY, FOMENTfawn Fawn ‘young deer’ [14] and fawn ‘grovel’[13] are two distinct words. The latter did notalways have the negative associations of‘servility’ which it usually carries today.Originally it simply referred to dogs showingthey were happy – by wagging their tails, forinstance. It was a derivative of Old Englishfægen ‘happy’, an adjective of Germanic originwhich survives in the archaic fain ‘willingly’ (asin ‘I would fain go’). Fawn ‘young deer’ comesvia Old French faon ‘young of an animal’ andVulgar Latin *fētō from Latin fētus ‘giving birth,offspring’ (whence English foetus). The generalsense ‘young of an animal’ survived into theearly 17th century in English (James I’stranslation of the Psalms, for instance, in 1603,has ‘the fawn of unicorns’ in Psalm 29, wherethe Authorized Version simply refers to ‘a youngunicorn’), but on the whole ‘young of the deer’seems to have been the main sense of the wordfrom the 15th century onwards. Its use as acolour term, after the pale yellowish brown of ayoung deer’s coat, dates from the 19th century. FAIN, FOETUSfax [20] Fax is a sleeper of a word. Thetechnology of facsimile telegraphy, by which adocument is scanned and its image transmittedvia a telegraphic link, had been around since the1870s, but the word fax was not invented for it(in the USA, by the simple expedient ofremoving the end of facsimile) until the 1940s.Even then, faxes were not widely known aboutoutside the world of commerce, and it was onlyin the 1970s that the technology, and with it theword (by now a verb as well as a noun), becamean everyday phenomenon. Facsimile [17],incidentally, is simply a lexicalization of Latinfac simile ‘make similar’.fay see FAIRYfaze [19] Faze ‘disconcert’ is now mainlyrestricted to American English, but in fact it hasan extensive prehistory stretching back toAnglo-Saxon times. It is a variant of feeze, a verbmeaning ‘drive away’ or ‘alarm’ as well as‘disconcert’ which survives in American English

and in some British dialects, and which comesfrom Old English fēsian ‘drive away’.fealty see FAITHfear [OE] ‘Being frightened’ seems to be acomparatively recent development in thesemantic history of the word fear. In Old Englishtimes the verb meant ‘be afraid’, but the nounmeant ‘sudden terrible event, danger’, and it didnot develop its modern sense – possibly underthe influence of the verb – until the 13th century(the Old English nouns for ‘fear’ were ege andfyrhto, source of modern English fright). Relatedwords, such as German gefahr and Dutchgevaar, both meaning ‘danger’, confirm that thisis the earlier sense (as would Latin perīculum‘danger’ – source of English peril – if, as hasbeen suggested, it too is connected). Taking thesearch wider, possible links with Latin perītus‘experienced’, Greek peráō ‘go through’, andEnglish fare ‘go’ point to an underlying meaning‘what one undergoes, experience’. PERILfeasible [15] Something that is feasible isliterally something ‘that can be done’. The wordwas borrowed from French faisable, a derivativeof the stem of the verb faire ‘do, make’. This isthe French descendant of Latin facere, which hascontributed so voluminously to Englishvocabulary, from fact to difficult. DIFFICULT, FACT, FACTORY, FASHION, FEAT,FEATUREfeast [13] The notion of ‘eating’ is a secondarysemantic development for feast, whoseunderlying meaning (as may be guessed fromthe related festival [14] and festivity [14]) hasmore to do with joyousness than with theappeasement of hunger. Its ultimate source is theLatin adjective festus, which meant ‘joyful,merry’. This was used as a plural noun, festa,meaning ‘celebratory ceremonies, particularlyof a religious nature’, which came down to OldFrench as feste. This was the source of Englishfeast, and its modern French descendant gaveEnglish fête [18]. Incidentally, the sense‘sumptuous meal’, present in feast but not infête, goes back to the Latin singular noun festum.Also related is festoon [17], acquired viaFrench from Italian festone, which originallymeant ‘ornament for a festive occasion’; and fair(as in fairground) comes ultimately from Latinfēria, first cousin to festus. FAIR, FESTIVAL, FESTOON, FÊTEfeat [14] Etymologically, a feat is ‘something thatis done’. The word comes via Old French fetfrom Latin factum ‘deed’, a noun based on thepast participle of facere ‘make, do’, and is hencea doublet of English fact – that is to say, bothwords go back to an identical source, but havebecome differentiated (in this case because factcame directly from Latin, whereas feat wasfiltered through Old French). FACT, FACTORY, FASHION, FEASIBLE, FEATUREfeather [OE] The concept of ‘feathers’ is closelybound up with those of ‘wings’ and ‘flying’, andnot surprisingly feather belongs to a word familyin which all three of these meanings are213 feerepresented. Its ultimate source is the prehistoricIndo-European base *pet-, which also producedGreek ptéron ‘wing’ (as in English pterodactyl),Latin penna ‘feather, wing’ (source of Englishpen), and Sanskrit pátati ‘fly’. Its Germanicdescendant was *fethrō, from which cameGerman feder, Dutch veer, Swedish fjäder andEnglish feather (itself used in the plural for‘wings’ in Anglo-Saxon times). PEN, PTERODACTYLfeature [14] Feature comes ultimately fromLatin factūra, a derivative of the verb facere ‘do,make’ which meant literally ‘making,formation’. Elements of this original senseremained when the word reached English viaOld French faiture – when John Dymmok wrotein 1600 of ‘horses of a fine feature’, for example,he was referring to their shape or generalconformation – but already a semanticnarrowing down to the ‘way in which the face isshaped’ had taken place. This meaning was thendistributed, as it were, to the individualcomponents of the face, and hence (in the 17thcentury) to any distinctive or characteristic part. DIFFICULT, FACT, FACTORY, FASHION, FEASIBLE,FEATFebruary [13] Etymologically, February is the‘month of purification’. The word comes via OldFrench feverier and late Latin febrārius fromLatin februārius (English reintroduced the Latin-ruar- spelling in the 14th century). This was aderivative of februa, a word borrowed into Latinfrom the language of the ancient Sabine peopleof Italy which was used to designate a festival ofpurification held on 15 February.feckless [16] From an etymological point ofview, feckless is simply another way of sayingineffective. It originated in Scotland, where fromthe 15th century the local populationeconomized on the pronunciation of effect,reducing it to feck (this survived into moderntimes in the sense ‘efficacy’). From it wasformed feckless, literally ‘having no effect’, andalso feckful ‘efficient, vigorous’, which nevermade it further south than northern England. EFFECTfecund see FOETUSfederal [17] The modern political use of federaland its various derivatives is a comparativelyrecent development, ushered in by the formationof the USA in the late 18th century. Its originalmeaning was ‘of a league or treaty’ (it wasformed from Latin foedus ‘league, treaty’, whichcame from the same ultimate Indo-Europeanbase – *bhidh-, *bhoidh- – as faith), and itsapplication to a ‘joining together of states into asingle unit’ seems to have arisen from suchphrases as federal union, which would originallyhave meant ‘union by treaty’. CONFIDE, DEFY, FAITH, PERFIDYfee [14] Fee is a word bequeathed to modernEnglish by the feudal system (and indeed it isclosely related etymologically to feudal). Itcame via Anglo-Norman fee from medievalLatin feodum or feudum (source also of feudal[17]). This denoted ‘land or other property

feeble 214whose use was granted as a reward for service’,a meaning which persists in its essentials inmodern English ‘payment for work done’. Thesecondary signification of fee, ‘feudal estate’, isno longer a live sense, but it is represented in therelated fief [17], a descendant of feodum, whichEnglish acquired through French rather thanAnglo-Norman. The ultimate derivation of themedieval Latin term itself is not altogether clear,although it is usually assigned to an unrecordedFrankish *fehuōd, literally ‘cattle-property’(*fehu has related forms in Old English féoh‘cattle, property’ and Old Norse fé ‘cattle,money’ – joint sources of the first syllable ofEnglish fellow – and in modern German viehe‘cattle’; they all go back ultimately to Indo-European *peku-, ancestor of a wide range ofwords meaning ‘cattle’ which, since in formertimes cattle were symbolic of wealth, in manycases came to signify ‘property’ too). FELLOW, FEUDAL, FIEFfeeble [12] Semantically, feeble was originally aclose relative of deplorable and lamentable, butover the centuries it has diverged markedly fromthem. Its ultimate source was Latin flēbilis, aderivative of the verb flēre ‘weep’. In classicaltimes this meant literally ‘worthy of being criedover, lamentable’, but later it came to signify‘weak’. It passed in this sense into Old French asfleible, which subsequently became feible orfeble (source of English feeble), and later stillfoible (whence English foible [17]) and faible(the modern French form). FOIBLEfeed [OE] Feed was formed from the noun foodin prehistoric Germanic times. It comes via OldEnglish fēdan from Germanic *fōthjan, aderivative of *fōthon, the noun from whichmodern English food is descended. Its use as anoun, for ‘food, fodder’, dates from the 16thcentury. FOODfeel [OE] Like its West Germanic cousins,German fühlen and Dutch voelen, feel is part ofa wider Indo-European word-family coveringnotions like ‘touching’ and ‘handling’, includingGreek palámē and Latin palma ‘palm of thehand’ and Latin palpāre, originally ‘stroke,touch lightly’, later ‘feel’ (source of Englishpalpable and palpitation). Its ultimate ancestorwas the Indo-European base *pōl-, *pal-. PALM, PALPABLE, PALPITATIONfeign [13] Feign is first cousin to faint. It comesfrom the present stem of Old French faindre orfeindre ‘pretend, shirk’, whose past participlegave English faint. This in turn came from Latinfingere ‘make, shape’, which also gave Englisheffigy, fiction, figure, and figment and is relatedto English dairy and dough. The semanticprogression from ‘make, shape’ to ‘reform orchange fraudulently’, and hence ‘pretend’, hadalready begun in classical Latin times. DAIRY, DOUGH, EFFIGY, FAINT, FICTION, FIGUREfeint The noun feint [17] and the adjective feint[19] are essentially different words, but theyhave a common ultimate origin. Feint‘misleading mock attack’ was borrowed fromFrench feinte, a noun use of the feminine form ofthe past participle of feindre ‘pretend’ (fromwhich English got feign). Feint ‘printed withpale lines’ is an artificial variant of faintintroduced in the printing trade in the mid 19thcentury (and faint itself originally came from thepast participle of feindre). FAINT, FEIGNfeisty [19] Feisty, nowadays a colloquialAmericanism for ‘quarrelsome’ or ‘spirited’,originated in Middle English as a term for a‘farting dog’. It goes back to the now obsoleteEnglish verb fist ‘fart’, which came ultimatelyfrom Indo-European *pezd- (source also of Latinpēdere ‘break wind’, whence English petard‘small bomb’ [16], as in ‘hoist with one’s ownpetard’); like *perd-, the Indo-Europeanancestor of English fart, this was probably ofimitative origin. In the 16th and 17th centuriesthe expression fisting dog, literally ‘farting dog’,was applied contemptuously to a ‘mongrel’ or‘cur’. This eventually became shortened to feist,and (mongrels being notoriously combative)feisty was born. FIZZLE, PETARDfelicity [14] Felicity and its relatives felicitous[18] and felicitate [17] all come ultimately fromLatin fēlīx. This originally meant ‘fruitful’ (it isprobably related to English fecund and foetus)but by classical times had progressedsemantically via ‘favourable, fortunate’ to‘happy’. FECUND, FOETUSfell English has no fewer than four separate wordsfell, not counting the past tense of fall. Fell ‘cutdown’ [OE] originated as the ‘causative’ versionof fall – that is to say, it means literally ‘cause tofall’. It comes ultimately from prehistoricGermanic *falljan, causative of *fallan ‘fall’.Fell ‘animal’s skin’ [OE] goes back viaGermanic *fellam (source also of English film)to Indo-European *pello- (whence Latin pellis‘skin’, from which English gets pellagra [19],pellicle [16], and pelt ‘skin’ [15]). Fell ‘hill’ [13]was borrowed from Old Norse fjall ‘hill’; thisseems to be related to German fels ‘rock’, whoseultimate ancestor was Indo-European *pels-.And the adjective fell ‘fierce, lethal’ [13] wasborrowed from Old French fel, ancestor ofEnglish felon. FALL; FILM, PELT; FELONfellow [11] Etymologically, a fellow is somebodywho ‘lays money’. The word originated as anOld Norse compound félagi, formed from fé‘money’ and *lag-, a verbal base denoting ‘lay’.Someone who puts down money with someoneelse in a joint venture is his or her associate:hence a fellow is a ‘companion’ or ‘partner’.When English adopted the Old Norse word inthe 11th century, it translated its first elementinto Old English fēoh ‘property’, giving late OldEnglish féolaga and eventually modern Englishfellow. (Both Old English fēoh and Old Norse fé

originally meant ‘cattle’, and are probablyrelated to modern English fee.) FEE, LAYfelon [13] Medieval Latin fellō (a word ofuncertain origin, sometimes referred to Latin fel‘gall, poison’) meant ‘evil-doer’. Its nominativeform gave English the adjective fell ‘fierce,lethal’, via Old French fel, while its stem form,fellōn-, passed into English through Old Frenchfelon. The derivative felony [13] comes from OldFrench felonie. FELLfelt [OE] Etymologically, felt is a fabric that isformed by ‘beating’ (as indeed is the case, for itis made from compressed fibres). The wordcomes via West Germanic *feltaz or *filtiz(source also of German filz and Dutch vilt ‘felt’,and of English filter) from prehistoric Indo-European *peldos, a derivative of the same baseas produced Latin pellere ‘strike, beat’ and thesecond syllable of English anvil. ANVIL, FILTERfemale [14] The symmetry between female andmale is a comparatively recent development.Female started as Latin fēmella, a diminutiveform of fēmina ‘woman’ (whence Englishfeminine [14]). This in turn was a derivative ofLatin fēlāre ‘suck’, and so etymologicallysignified ‘person from whom milk is sucked’ (itcame ultimately from the Indo-European base*dhēi-, which also produced Latin filia‘daughter’ and filia ‘son’, source of English filial[15]). Fēmella passed into English via OldFrench femelle as femele, but as early as the endof the 14th century began to change, byassociation with male, to female. FEMININE, FILIALfence [14] Fence is short for defence, and indeeduntil the 16th century meant ‘defence’ (‘Yet, for[that is, despite] the fence that he could make,she struck it from his hand’, Felon Sowe Rokeby1500). Of its present-day meanings, ‘enclosingstructure’ (originally a ‘defence’ againstintruders) and ‘sword-fighting’ (originally theuse of a sword for ‘self-defence’, now used onlyas a verb) developed in the 16th century. Thesense ‘dealer in stolen property’ came along inthe 17th century; it arose from the notion thatsuch transactions are carried out under the cover,or ‘defence’, of secrecy.Similarly, fend [13] and fender [15] came byloss of the initial syllable from defend. DEFENCE, FEND, FENDERferal see FIERCEferment see FERVENTfern [OE] Fern is a fairly widespread Indo-European word, represented among the otherWest Germanic languages by German farn andDutch varen. It comes ultimately from Indo-European *porno-. This also produced Sanskritparnám, which meant ‘feather’ as well as ‘leaf’,suggesting that the fern may have been namedoriginally from the feathery leaves of somespecies.ferocious [17] Etymologically, ferocious means‘wild-eyed’. It comes from Latin ferox, which215 fetchwas originally a compound formed from ferus‘fierce, wild’ (source of English feral [17]) andan element -oc-, -ox meaning ‘looking,appearing’. This also appears in atrocious andocular, and goes back to an Indo-Europeansource which also produced Greek ōps ‘eye’ andEnglish eye. ATROCIOUS, EYE, FERAL, OCULARferret [14] A ferret is, from an etymological pointof view, a ‘thieving animal’. The word comes viaOld French fuiret or furet from Vulgar Latin*fūrittus, literally ‘little thief’. This was aderivative of Latin fūr ‘thief’, which is related toEnglish furtive. The verbal senses ‘search about’and ‘search out’ developed in the 16th century. FURTIVEferrous see FARRIERferrule [17] Despite appearances, ferrule ‘metalcap on the end of a stick’ has no etymologicalconnection with Latin ferrum ‘iron’, although itspresent form has been heavily influenced by it. Itis an alteration of an earlier virolle, which wasborrowed in the 15th century from Old French.The Old French word in turn came from Latinviriola ‘little bracelet’, a diminutive form ofviriae ‘bracelet’.ferry [12] A ferry is etymologically a boat onwhich you ‘travel’ from one place to another.The word comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *por- ‘going, passage’, whichhas produced a wide range of other Englishwords, including emporium, ford, and port. ItsGermanic descendant was *fer- ‘go’, source ofEnglish fare as well as ferry. Ferry itself wasprobably borrowed from the Old Norse elementferju-, denoting ‘passage across water’, and thatwas what it at first meant in English. The word’smain modern use, which is essentially anabbreviation of ferry-boat, is not recorded beforethe 16th century, and does not seem to havereally become established until the 20th century. EMPORIUM, FARE, FORD, PORTfertile [15] Etymologically, something that isfertile can ‘bear’ offspring. The word comes viaFrench from Latin fertilis. This was a derivativeof *fertus, the original past participle of ferre‘bear’ (a distant relative of English bear). BEARfervent [14] Fervent comes from the presentparticiple of Latin fervēre ‘boil’. This verb alsoproduced English effervescent [17] and comfrey[15], a plant-name which means literally ‘boiltogether’, and moreover its derivative fermentumled to English ferment [14]. It goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *bhreu- or*bhru-, from which English also gets brew,broth, and fry, and possibly bread and burn. BREW, BROTH, COMFREY, EFFERVESCENT,FERMENT, FRYfestival see FEASTfestoon see FEASTfetch [OE] Fetch comes from the Old Englishverb fetian ‘go and get’, which surviveddialectally as fet well into the 19th century. In thelate Old English period a variant feccandeveloped, from which we get the modern

fête 216English verb’s /ch/ ending. Its ultimate originhas been disputed. Perhaps the likeliestexplanation is that it comes from a prehistoricGermanic *fat- ‘hold’ (source also of OldEnglish fetel ‘girdle, strap’, from which modernEnglish gets fettle).fête see FEASTfetish [17] Fetish is a doublet of factitious: that isto say, the two words have a common origin, buthave subsequently diverged widely. Both comeultimately from Latin factītius ‘made by art’, anadjective derived from the past participle offacere ‘do, make’ (whence English effect, fact,fashion, among a host of other related words). ItsPortuguese descendant, feitiço, was used as anoun meaning ‘charm, sorcery’. French took thisover as fétiche and passed it on to English, whereit was used in the concrete sense ‘charm,amulet’, particularly as worshipped by variousWest African peoples. ‘Object irrationally orobsessively venerated’ is a 19th-centurysemantic development. EFFECT, FACT, FACTORY, FASHIONfetter [OE] Etymologically, fetters are shacklesfor restraining the ‘feet’. The word comes fromprehistoric Germanic *feterō, which derivedultimately from the same Indo-European base,*ped-, as produced English foot. The parallelLatin formation, incidentally, was pedica‘fetter’, from which English gets impeach. FOOT, IMPEACH, PEDALfettle see FETCHfeud [13] Feud signifies etymologically the‘condition of being a foe’. It was borrowed fromOld French fede or feide, and originally meantsimply ‘hostility’; the modern sense ‘vendetta’did not develop until the 15th century. The OldFrench word in turn was a borrowing from OldHigh German fēhida. This was a descendant of aprehistoric Germanic *faikhithō, a compoundbased on *faikh- ‘hostility’ (whence Englishfoe). Old English had a parallel descendant,fāhthu ‘enmity’, which appears to have died outbefore the Middle English period. It is not clearhow the original Middle English form fedeturned into modern English feud (the first signsof which began to appear in the late 16thcentury). FOEfeudal see FEEfever [OE] The underlying meaning of fever,‘high temperature’, suggests that it goes backultimately to Indo-European *dhegh-, *dhogh-‘burn’ (which also produced English day, favour,and forment). Descended from it was Latinfebris ‘fever’, which English acquired duringAnglo-Saxon times as fēfor. The modern form ofthe word is partly due to the influence of therelated Old French fievre. DAY, FAVOUR, FOMENTfew [OE] Few traces its history back to the Indo-European base *pau-, denoting smallness ofquantity or number, amongst whose otherdescendants are Latin paucus ‘little’ (source ofEnglish paucity [15], French peu ‘few’, andItalian and Spanish poco ‘a little’), Latin (andhence English) pauper ‘poor’, and English poorand poverty. In Germanic it produced *faw-,whose modern representatives are Swedish få,Danish faa, and English few. PAUPER, POOR, POVERTYfiasco [19] In Italian, a fiasco is literally a‘bottle’ (the word comes from medieval Latinfiasco, source of English flagon and flask). Itsfigurative use apparently stems from the phrasefar fiasco, literally ‘make a bottle’, usedtraditionally in Italian theatrical slang for ‘suffera complete breakdown in performance’. Theusual range of fanciful theories has beenadvanced for the origin of the usage, but none isparticularly convincing. FLAGON, FLASKfib see FABLEfichu see FIXfiction [14] Fiction is literally ‘something madeor invented’ – and indeed that was the originalmeaning of the word in English. It seems alwaysto have been used in the sense ‘story or set of“facts” invented’ rather than of some concreteinvention, however, and by the end of the 16thcentury it was being applied specifically to aliterary genre of ‘invented narrative’. The wordcomes via Old French from Latin fictiō, aderivative of the verb fingere ‘make, shape’,from which English also gets effigy, faint, feign,figure, and figment. EFFIGY, FAINT, FEIGN, FIGURE, FIGMENTfiddle [OE] Like its distant cousin violin, fiddlecomes ultimately from the name of a Romangoddess of joy and victory. This was Vītula, whoprobably originated among the pre-RomanSabine people of the Italian peninsula. A Latinverb was coined from her name, vītulārī,meaning ‘hold joyful celebrations’, which inpost-classical times produced the noun vītula‘stringed instrument, originally as played at suchfestivals’. In the Romance languages this wenton to give viola, violin, etc, but prehistoric Westand North Germanic borrowed it as *fithulōn,whence German fiedel, Dutch vedel, and Englishfiddle. In English, the word has remained in usefor the instrument which has developed into themodern violin, but since the 16th century it hasgradually been replaced as the main term byviolin, and it is now only a colloquial or dialectalalternative. The sense ‘swindle’ originated in theUSA in the mid-to-late 19th century. VIOLINfidelity see FAITHfiduciary see FAITHfief see FEEfieldfield [OE] Like plain, field seems originally tohave meant ‘area of flat, open land’. It comesultimately from the Indo-European base *plth-,which also produced Greek platús ‘broad’,English place and plaice, and possibly alsoEnglish flan and flat. A noun derived from it,*peltus, entered prehistoric West Germanic as*felthuz, which subsequently disseminated asGerman feld, Dutch veld (English acquired veld

or veldt [19] via its Afrikaans offshoot), andEnglish field. FLAN, FLAT, PLACE, PLAICE, VELDfiend [OE] Fiend seems originally to have meant‘hated person’. It was formed in prehistorictimes from the past participle of a Germanic verbmeaning ‘hate’ (represented in historic times by,for example, Old English fēon, Old HighGerman fiēn, and Gothic fijan). In Old Englishits meaning had progressed to ‘enemy’ (which iswhat its German relative feind still means). Thentowards the end of the first millennium AD wesee evidence of its being applied to the ‘enemy’of mankind, the Devil. From there it was a shortstep to an ‘evil spirit’ in general, and hence toany ‘diabolically wicked person’.fierce [13] Fierce has not always had exclusivelynegative connotations of ‘aggression’, althoughadmittedly they do go back a long way. Itssource, Latin ferus (which also gave Englishferal) meant originally ‘wild, untamed’, but itsubsequently developed the metaphorical sense‘uncultivated, savage, cruel’. However, whenEnglish acquired the word, via Anglo-Normanfers and Old French fiers, it was used for ‘brave’and ‘proud’ as well as ‘wildly hostile ormenacing’. ‘Brave’ died out in the 16th century,although across the Channel ‘proud’ hassurvived to become the only sense of modernFrench fiers. FERALfig English has two words fig. Fig the fruit [13]comes via Old French figue, Provençal figua,and Vulgar Latin *fica from Latin ficus. This,together with its Greek relative súkon (source ofEnglish sycamore and sycophant), came from apre-Indo-European language of theMediterranean area, possibly Semitic. Greeksúkon was, and modern Italian fica (a relative offico ‘fig’) still is, used for ‘cunt’, apparently inreference to the appearance of a ripe fig whenopened. English adopted the term in the 16th and17th centuries as fig, fico, or figo, signifying an‘indecent gesture made by putting the thumbbetween two fingers or into the mouth’ (‘Thefigo for thee then!’ says Pistol to the disguisedking in Shakespeare’s Henry V 1599).The now little used fig ‘dress, array’ [19], asin ‘in full fig’, probably comes from an earlier,now obsolete feague, which in turn was verylikely borrowed from German fegen ‘polish’.This was a derivative of the same prehistoricGermanic base, *feg-, as produced English fake. SYCAMORE, SYCOPHANT; FAKEfight [OE] The deadly earnestness of fightingseems to have had its etymological origins in therather petty act of pulling someone’s hair. Fight,together with German fechten and Dutchvechten, goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*fekhtan, which appears to come from the sameultimate source as Latin pectere ‘comb’ andGreek péko ‘comb’. The missing links in theapparently far-fetched semantic chain between‘fighting’ and ‘combing’ are provided by suchwords as Spanish pelear ‘fight, quarrel’, aderivative of pelo ‘hair’, which originally meant217 filibuster‘pull hair’; German raufen ‘pull out, pluck’,which when used reflexively means ‘fight’; andEnglish tussle, which originally meant ‘pullroughly’, and may be related to tousle.figure [13] Figure comes via Old French fromLatin figūra ‘form, shape, figure’, a derivative ofthe same base (*fig-) as produced fingere ‘make,shape’ (whence English effigy, faint, feign, andfiction). Many of the technical Latin uses of theword, including ‘geometric figure’, are directtranslations of Greek skhéma, which also meantliterally ‘form, shape’, but the sense ‘numericalsymbol’ is a later development.Also from the base *fig- was derived Latinfigmentum ‘something created or invented’,from which English gets figment [15]. EFFIGY, FAINT, FEIGN, FICTION, FIGMENTfilbert [14] Hazelnuts begin to ripen around theend of August, and so in medieval times theywere named after Saint Philibert, a 7th-centuryFrankish abbot whose feast day falls on the 22ndof that month. Thus in Anglo-Norman they were*noix de Philibert or noix de filbert – whenceEnglish filbert.file The file for smoothing and rubbing [OE] andthe file for storing things in [16] are quitedifferent words. The former comes from aprehistoric Germanic *fikhalā (source also ofGerman feile and Dutch vijl), which goes backultimately to Indo-European *pik-, *peik-,denoting ‘cut’. The latter, on the other hand,comes from Old French fil, a descendant of Latinfilum ‘thread’, which was applied to a piece ofstring or wire suspended from two points andused for hanging documents and records on foreasy reference. As methods of document storageand retrieval became more sophisticated, theword file followed them. The later file ‘(military)column’, first recorded at the end of the 16thcentury, probably represents a reborrowing fromFrench, but it is ultimately the same word.Fillet [14] originated as a diminutive form ofLatin filum. FILIGREE, FILLETfilial see FEMALEfilibuster [16] Filibuster and freebooter [16] aredoublets: that is to say, they come from the sameultimate source, but have subsequently diverged.Freebooter ‘pirate’ was borrowed from Dutchvrijbuiter, a compound formed from vrij ‘free’and buiter ‘plunderer’ (this was a derivative ofbuit ‘loot’, to which English booty is related).But English was not the only language to adoptit; French wanted it too, but mangled itsomewhat in the borrowing, to flibustier. It wasthen handed on to Spanish, as filibustero. It is notclear where the 16th-century English use of theword with an l spelling rather than an r spelling(which is recorded in only one text) comes from.The French form flibustier was borrowedtowards the end of the 18th century, and presentdayfilibuster came from the Spanish form in themid-19th century. The use of the term for‘obstructing a legislature with an overlongspeech’ (which has now virtually obliterated its

filigree 218former semantic equivalence to freebooter)originated in the USA in the 1880s. BOOTY, FREE, FREEBOOTERfiligree [17] Etymologically, filigree describesvery accurately how filigree was originallymade: it was delicate ornamental workconstructed from threads (Latin filum) and beads(Latin grānum ‘grain, seed’). The Italiandescendants of these two Latin words werecombined to form filigrana, which passed intoEnglish via French as filigrane. This graduallymetamorphosed through filigreen to filigree. FILE, GRAINfill [OE] Fill originated in prehistoric Germanictimes as a derivative of the adjective *fullaz‘full’, source of modern English full. This was*fulljan, which produced German füllen, Dutchvullen, Swedish fylla, Danish fylde, and Englishfill. FULLfillet see FILEfilly see FOALfilm [OE] The notion underlying film is of a thin‘skin’. The word comes ultimately from aprehistoric Germanic *fellam, which was relatedto Latin pellis ‘skin’ (source of English pelt‘skin’). From this was derived *filminjam, whichproduced Old English filmen, a word used forvarious sorts of anatomical membrane or thinskin, including the peritoneum and the foreskinof the penis. It was generalized from the late16th century to any thin membrane, and wasapplied by early 19th-century photographers to athin layer of gel spread on photographic plates(‘The film of isinglass … peels off and will befound to bear a minute copy of the original’,William Thornthwaite, Guide to Photography1845). As photographic technique moved on tocellulose coated with photosensitive emulsion, ittook the term film with it. PELTfilter [14] Ultimately, filter is the same word asfelt – and indeed that is what it first meant inEnglish (‘They dwell all in tents made of blackfilter’, John Mandeville, Travels 1400). It comesvia Old French filtre from medieval Latinfiltrum, which was borrowed from prehistoricWest Germanic *filtiz, source of English felt.The modern sense of filter did not develop untilthe 17th century; it came from the use of felt forremoving impurities from liquid. The derivativeinfiltrate dates from the 18th century. (Thehomophonic philtre [16] is not related; it comesultimately from Greek phílos ‘beloved’.) FELT, INFILTRATEfilth see FOULfin [OE] Fin is a word common to the Germaniclanguages of northeast Europe (German hasfinne, Dutch vin), but its ultimate source is notclear. The likeliest candidate is Latin pinna‘feather, wing’ (source of English pin, pinion,and pinnacle), although another suggestion isLatin spīna ‘thorn, spike’. PIN, PINION, PINNACLEfinal [14] Of all the English descendants of Latinfinis ‘final moment, end’ or ‘limit’ (see FINANCE,FINE, and FINISH), final, which comes via OldFrench final from Latin finālis ‘last’, preservesmost closely the meaning of its source. Butalthough by classical times finis denoted atemporal conclusion, its original use was for aphysical boundary, and it appears to be related tofigere ‘fix’ (source of English fix) – as if itsunderlying meaning were ‘fixed mark’. FINANCE, FINE, FINISHfinance [14] Finance comes ultimately fromLatin fīnis ‘end’, and its present-day monetaryconnotations derive from the notion of ‘finallysettling a debt by payment’. Its immediatesource is Old French finance, a derivative of theverb finer ‘end, settle’, which when it wasoriginally acquired by English still meantliterally ‘end’: ‘God, that all things did make ofnought … puttest each creature to his finance’,Coventry Mystery Plays 1400. The debt-settlingsense had already developed by that time, butthis did not broaden out into the current‘management of monetary resources’ until the18th century. FINAL, FINE, FINISHfind [OE] Find is a widespread Germanic verb,with relations in German (finden), Dutch(vinden), Swedish (finna), and Danish (finde).Further back in time, however, its ancestry isdisputed. Some have connected it with variouswords for ‘path, way’ in Indo-Europeanlanguages, such as Sanskrit panthās and Russianput’, and with related forms denoting ‘go,journey’, like Old Saxon fāthi ‘going’ and OldHigh German fendeo ‘walker’; others havesuggested a link with Latin petere ‘seek’.fine [12] Both the adjective and the noun finehave come a very long way since theirbeginnings in Latin finis ‘end’. The etymologicalsense of the adjective is ‘finished’ – hence, ‘ofhigh quality’. It comes via Old French fin fromVulgar Latin *fīnus, an adjective formed fromthe Latin verb fīnīre ‘limit, complete’ (source ofEnglish finish). (A derivative of *finus was thenoun *finitia, from which ultimately Englishgets finesse [15].) The noun fine also comes froman Old French fin, this time a noun descendeddirectly from Latin fīnis. In medieval times thiswas used for ‘money to be paid at the completionof legal proceedings’ – hence the present-daysense ‘payment imposed as a punishment’. Fromthe same ultimate source, but reflecting differentaspects of it, come confine [16] and define [14](‘limitation’) and refine [16] (‘high quality’). CONFINE, DEFINE, FINAL, FINANCE, FINESSE,FINISH, REFINEfinger [OE] Widespread among the Germaniclanguages (German, Swedish, and Danish allhave finger, and Dutch vinger), finger is notfound in any other branch of Indo-European. It isusually referred to a prehistoric Indo-Europeanancestor *pengkrós ‘number of five’, aderivative (like fist) of *pengke ‘five’. FIST, FIVEfinish [14] The Latin verb *fīnīre, a derivative offīnis ‘end, limit’, signified ‘limit’ as well as‘complete’, but it is the latter which has come

down to English via feniss-, the stem of OldFrench fenir. The Latin past participle, fīnītus,gave English finite [15]. FINAL, FINANCE, FINE, FINITEfiord see FORDfir [14] As with many Indo-European tree-names,fir is a widespread term, but it does not mean thesame thing wherever it occurs. Its prehistoricIndo-European ancestor was *perkos, which inLatin became quercus, the name for the ‘oak’.Nor was the application confined to southernEurope, for Swiss German has a related ferch‘oak wood’. But by and large, the Germaniclanguages took the term over and applied it to the‘pine’: German föhre, Swedish fura, and Danishfyr all mean ‘pine’. So also did Old English furh(known only in the compound furhwudu ‘pinewood’),but this appears to have died out. It wasreplaced semantically by pine, but formally byMiddle English firre, a borrowing from the OldNorse form fyri- (also known only incompounds). This was used as a name not for the‘pine’, but for the ‘fir’ (which in Old Englishtimes had been called sæppe or gyr).fire [OE] Appropriately enough for one of themainsprings of human civilization, the word fireis widespread amongst Indo-Europeanlanguages (although it is only one of twocompeting ‘fire’ strands, the other beingrepresented in English by ignite). Among itsrelatives are Greek pur (whence English pyre,pyrotechnic, and, by a very circuitous route,bureau), Czech pýr ‘embers’, Armenian hūr, andHittite pahhur, pointing back to a prehistoricIndo-European *pūr. Its Germanic descendantwas *fūir, from which came German feuer,Dutch vuur, and English fire. BUREAU, PYRE, PYROTECHNICfirm [14] Firm comes ultimately from Latinfirmus ‘stable, strong, immovable’. In itsadjectival use, the English word’s semantic lineof descent from its Latin original is perfectlyclear, but the noun presents a very different story.From firmus was derived the verb firmāre ‘makefirm, fix’, which in post-classical times came tomean ‘confirm’. It passed into Italian as firmare,which was used in the sense ‘confirm by one’ssignature’, hence simply ‘sign’. It formed thebasis of a noun firma ‘signature’, and byextension the ‘name under which a business iscarried on’, and finally the ‘business’ itself.English took the noun over with the latter twomeanings in the 18th century.Other English words that trace their ancestryback to Latin firmus are firmament [13], fromLatin firmāmentum (this originally meant simply‘strengthening, support’, and acquired the sense‘sky’ in post-classical times as a literal Biblicaltranslation of Greek steréōma ‘heavenly vault’, aderivative of stereós ‘firm’, which in turn was aliteral translation of Hebrew rāqī a ‘heavenlyvault’, also derived from a word meaning‘firm’); furl [16], originally a blend formed inOld French from ferm ‘firm’ and lier ‘tie’ (arelative of English liable); and farm, whose219 fitsemantic history is quite similar to that of thenoun firm. FARM, FIRMAMENT, FURLfirst [OE] As its -st ending suggests, first wasoriginally a superlative form. Its distant ancestorwas Indo-European *pro, denoting ‘before, infront’ (amongst whose other descendants to havereached English are prime and the prefix proto-).Its Germanic offspring was *fur, *for (sourcealso of English for and fore), from which thesuperlative *furistaz, literally ‘most in front’,was formed. Besides English first and the relatedSwedish först and Danish først (whichetymologically are the equivalent of foremost),this has produced German fürst and Dutch vorst‘prince’. FOR, FORE, PRIMEfirth see FORDfiscal [16] Latin fiscus originally denoted a‘small rush basket’, used for example forkeeping olives in. Evidently, though, the mainpurpose to which it was put was as a purse, for itsoon acquired the figurative sense ‘public purse,public revenue’. Hence the adjective fiscālis ‘ofthe imperial treasury’, which passed into Englishvia French fiscal.fish [OE] Fish goes back to an ancient Indo-European word *piskos, which produced on theone hand Latin piscis (source of French poisson,Italian pesce, Spanish pez, Breton pesk, andWelsh pysgodyn) and on the other Germanic*fiskaz (source of Gothic fisks, German fisch,Dutch visch, Swedish and Danish fisk, andEnglish fish). (English, incidentally, getspiscatorial [19], piscina [16], and the zodiacalsign Pisces [14] from Latin piscis.) But not allIndo-European languages share the word, by anymeans: Greek had ikhthús for ‘fish’ (whenceEnglish ichthyology ‘study of fish’ [17]), andRussian, Polish, and Czech have ryba. PISCATORIAL, PISCESfissure see VENTfist [OE] Like finger, fist seems etymologically tobe a reference to the number of fingers on thehand. It comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *fūstiz (source also of German faustand Dutch vuist). This may represent an earlier*fungkhstiz, which has been referred to an Indo-European ancestor *pngkstis, a derivative of*pengke ‘five’. (Dutch vuist ‘fist’, incidentally,is probably the source of English foist [16],which originally denoted the dishonestconcealing of a dice in one’s hand.) FINGER, FIVE, FOISTfit English has three distinct words fit, but thehistory of them all is very problematical. Theverb fit ‘make suitable, be the right size, etc’[16], and the presumably related adjective‘proper, appropriate’ [14] may come from aMiddle English verb fitten ‘marshal troops’, butthat only pushes the difficulty one stage furtherback, for no one knows where fitten came from.(The derivative outfit dates from the 18thcentury.) Fit ‘seizure, sudden outburst’ [14] maybe the same word as Old English fitt ‘conflict’,whose antecedents again are obscure (fitful was

five 220formed from it in around 1600, but was notwidely used before the 19th century). Fit‘section of a poem’ [OE] also comes from an OldEnglish fitt, which might conceivably beidentical with Old English fitt ‘conflict’; but analternative possibility is some connection withOld High German fizza ‘skein’ and Old Norse fit‘hem’.five [OE] Five is one of a general Indo-Europeanfamily of words signifying ‘five’. It goes backultimately to Indo-European *pengke, whichalso produced Greek pénte (source of Englishpentagon [16], pentecost [OE] – literally ‘fiftiethday’ – pentagram [19], etc), Sanskrit paca(source of English punch ‘spiced drink’), andLatin quīnque. In due course this under-went aphonetic transformation to *pempe, which wasthe direct ancestor of prehistoric Germanic*fimfi. This led on in its turn to German fünf,Dutch vijf. Swedish and Danish fem, and Englishfive. FINGER, FIST, PENTAGON, PUNCHfix [15] Fix comes ultimately from Latin fīgere‘fasten’. Its past participle fīxus made its wayinto English along two distinct routes, partly viathe Old French adjective fix ‘fixed’, and partlyvia the medieval Latin verb fīxāre. Derivedforms in English include affix [15], prefix [17],suffix [18], and transfix [16], and also fichu‘scarf’ [19]: this came from the past participle ofFrench ficher ‘attach’, which is descended fromVulgar Latin *figicāre, another derivative offigere. AFFIX, PREFIX, SUFFIX, TRANSFIXfizzle [16] Originally, fizzle meant ‘fart silently orunobtrusively’: ‘And then in court they poisonedone another with their fizzles’, BenjaminWalsh’s translation of Aristophanes’ Knights1837. Then in the mid-19th century it started tobe used for a ‘weak spluttering hissing sound’,and hence figuratively ‘end feebly’. In the earliersense, fizzle was probably a derivative of the nowobsolete English verb fist ‘fart’ (source of feisty),which came ultimately from Indo-European*pezd- (no doubt imitative of the sound ofbreaking wind). The later sense is close enoughsemantically to suggest that it is probably ametaphorical extension of the earlier, but it couldalso be a new formation, based on fizz [17](which was also of onomatopoeic origin). FEISTYfjord see FORDflag English has at least three separate words flag,none of whose origins are known for certain.Both the noun ‘cloth used as an emblem’ [16]and the verb ‘droop, decline’ [16] may havedeveloped from an obsolete 16th-centuryadjective flag ‘drooping, hanging down’, but noone knows where that came from. Flag the plant[14] is probably related to Danish flæg ‘yellowiris’, but beyond that the trail goes cold. Flag asin flag-stone [15] originally meant ‘piece ofturf’. It probably came from Old Norse flaga‘stone slab’. This also gave English flaw (whichoriginally meant ‘flake’), which is related toEnglish floe, and goes back to a Germanic base,a variant of which produced English flake. FLAKE, FLAW, FLOEflagellation see FLAILflageolet see FLUTEflagon see FLASKflagrant [15] Etymologically, flagrant means‘burning, blazing’. It comes, via French, fromthe present participle of Latin flagrāre ‘burn’(source of English conflagration [16]). This inturn went back to Indo-European *bhleg-, whichalso produced English flame. The use of flagrantfor ‘shameless, shocking’, an 18th-centurydevelopment, comes from the Latin phrase inflagrante delicto ‘red-handed’, literally ‘with thecrime still blazing’. CONFLAGRATION, FLAMEflail [OE] Flail is a distant relative of flagellation[15]. Both go back ultimately to Latin flagrum‘whip’. This had a diminutive form flagellum,which in prehistoric times was borrowed intoWest Germanic as *flagil-. It is assumed that OldEnglish inherited it as *flegil (although this is notactually recorded), which, reinforced in MiddleEnglish times by the related Old French flaiel,produced modern English flail. Flagellationcomes from the derived Latin verb flagellāre‘whip’. FLAGELLATIONflake [14] Flake appears to go back to aprehistoric Germanic source which denoted thesplitting of rocks into strata. This was *flak-, avariant of which produced English flaw [14](which originally meant ‘flake’), the secondsyllable of whitlow [14] (which probably meansetymologically ‘white fissure’), floe [19], andprobably flag ‘stone slab’. FLAG, FLAW, FLOE, WHITLOWflame [14] Flame traces its history back to anIndo-European *bhleg-, *phleg-, which alsoproduced Greek phlóx ‘flame’ (source ofEnglish phlox, and related to phlegm andphlegmatic), Latin flāgrāre ‘burn, blaze’ (sourceof English flagrant), Latin fulmen (source ofEnglish fulminate), and Latin fulgēre ‘shine’(source of English refulgent [16]). The relevantdescendant in this case was Latin flamma‘flame’, acquired by English via Old Frenchflame. It had a diminutive form flammula, whichproduced Old French flambe ‘small flame’,ultimate source of English flambé [19] andflamboyant [19] (originally an architectural termapplied to a 15th- and 16th-century FrenchGothic style characterized by wavy flamelikeforms). FLAGRANT, FLAMBOYANT, FLAMINGO, PHLEGM,REFULGENTflamingo [16] Flamingos get their name fromtheir reddish-pink plumage, which earned themthe epithet ‘fire-bird’. This was expressed inProvençal (the language of southern Frenchcoastal areas, where flamingos abound) asflamenc, a compound formed from flama‘flame’ (a descendant of Latin flamma) and theGermanic suffix -ing ‘belonging to’. Englishacquired the word via Portuguese flamengo. (It

has, incidentally, no etymological connectionwith flamenco ‘Spanish dance’ [19], whichcomes from the Spanish word for ‘Flemish’: thepeople of Flanders seem to have had a reputationin the Middle Ages for bright, flamboyant dress,and hence ‘Flemish’ in Spanish becamesynonymous with ‘gipsy-like’.) FLAMEflan [19] The word flan itself is a relatively recentaddition to English, adopted on our behalf fromFrench by the chef Alexis Soyer (a Frenchmanworking in England), but in that form it is in factsimply a reborrowing of a word which originallycrossed the Channel in the 13th century as flawn,denoting some sort of custard tart or cheesecake.Its Old French source was flaon, which camefrom medieval Latin fladō, but this wasoriginally borrowed from Germanic *fladu-(source of German fladen ‘flat cake, cowpat’ andDutch vlade ‘pancake’), which is probablyrelated ultimately to Sanskrit prthūs ‘broad’,Greek platūs ‘broad’, and English flat. FLATflank see LINKflannel [14] Flannel is probably one of the fewWelsh contributions to the English language. Itappears to be an alteration of Middle Englishflanen ‘sackcloth’, which was borrowed fromWelsh gwlanen ‘woollen cloth’, a derivative ofgwlān ‘wool’. This in turn is related to Latinlāna ‘wool’ and English wool. It is not clearwhere the British colloquial sense ‘insinceretalk’ (which seems to date from the 1920s)comes from, although it may well have beeninspired by Shakespeare’s unflatteringapplication of the word to a Welshman in theMerry Wives of Windsor 1598: ‘I am not able toanswer the Welsh flannel’, says Falstaff of HughEvans, a Welsh parson. WOOLflash [14] The earliest recorded use of flash is asa verb, referring to the swift turbulent splashingmovement of water (a memory of which isprobably preserved in modern English flashflood). The glints of light on the splashingsurface of such water seems to have given rise inthe 16th century, or perhaps before, to the mainpresent-day sense of the word ‘burst out withsudden light’. It was presumably originallyimitative of the sound of splashing water.flask [14] English acquired flask via Frenchflasque from medieval Latin flasca, a word ofuncertain origin. It occurs widely in theGermanic languages (German has flasche, forinstance, and Dutch vlesch, and the related wordflasce existed in Old English, although it did notsurvive into Middle English), but it is not clearwhether the medieval Latin word was borrowedfrom Germanic, or whether the Germaniclanguages originally got it from a Latin word(Latin vāsculum ‘small vessel’, a diminutiveform of vās – whence English vascular, vase,and vessel – has been suggested as a source). Thesense ‘gunpowder container’, first recorded inthe 16th century, may have been inspired byItalian fiasco (source of English fiasco), which221 fledgecame from a variant medieval Latin form flascō.This also produced English flagon [15]. FIASCO, FLAGONflat [14] The Old English word for ‘flat’ was efen‘even’, and flat was not acquired until MiddleEnglish times, from Old Norse flatr. This camefrom a prehistoric Germanic *flataz, source alsoof German platt ‘flat’. And *flataz probablygoes back to an Indo-European *pelə-, *plā-,denoting ‘spread out flat’, from which cameSanskrit prthūs ‘broad’, Greek platūs ‘broad’(source of English place, plaice, plane [the tree],and platypus), Latin plānus ‘flat’ (whenceEnglish plane and plain ‘unadorned’), and alsoEnglish place, plaice, plant, and flan. Flat‘single-storey dwelling’ [19] is ultimately thesame word, but it has a more circuitous history.It is an alteration (inspired no doubt by theadjective flat) of a now obsolete Scottish wordflet ‘interior of a house’, which came from aprehistoric Germanic *flatjam ‘flat surface,floor’, a derivative of the same source (*flataz)as produced the adjective. FLAN, FLATTER, FLOOR, PLACE, PLAICE, PLANE,PLATYPUSflatter [13] Etymologically, flatter means‘smooth down or caress with the flat of thehand’. It comes from Old French flatter, inwhich the original literal notion of ‘caressing’had already passed into the figurative ‘butteringup’. The Old French verb in turn was based onFrankish *flat, the ‘flat or palm of someone’shand’, a word which shared a common sourcewith English flat. FLATflavour [14] The form of the word flavour, andprobably to some extent its meaning, owe a lot tosavour. It was borrowed from Old French flaor,and originally meant ‘smell’ (the currentassociation with ‘taste’ did not develop until the17th century). The savour-influenced changefrom flaor to flavour seems to have happenedsomewhere in the crack between Old French andMiddle English: there is no evidence of a -vspellingin Old French. The Old French worditself came from Vulgar Latin *flātor ‘smell’, aderivative of Latin flātus ‘blowing, breeze,breath’ (possibly influenced by Latin foetor‘foul smell’). Flātus in turn came from the pastparticiple of flāre ‘blow’.flaw see FLAKEflea see PUCEfledge [16] The notion underlying fledge is the‘ability to fly’. Historically, the idea of ‘havingfeathers’ is simply a secondary development ofthat underlying notion. The verb comes from anobsolete adjective fledge ‘feathered’, which goesback ultimately to a pre-historic West Germanic*fluggja (source also of German flügge‘fledged’). This was derived from a variant of thebase which produced English fly. There is noimmediate connection with fletcher ‘arrowmaker’[14], despite the formal resemblance andthe semantic connection with ‘putting featheredflights on arrows’, but further back in time theremay be a link. Fletcher came from Old French

flee 222flechier, a derivative of fleche ‘arrow’. Afleur-de-lys see LILYpossible source for this was an unrecordedFrankish *fliugika, which, like fledge, could beflight [OE] English has two distinct,traceable back to the same Germanic ancestor asthat of English fly. FLYflee [OE] Flee, like its close relatives Germanfliehe, Dutch vlieden, and Swedish and Danishfly, comes from a prehistoric Germanic*thleukhan, a word of unknown origin. In OldEnglish, flee and fly had the same past tense andpast participle (and indeed the same derivatives,represented in modern English by flight), andthis, together with a certain similarity inmeaning, has led to the two verbs beingassociated and often confused, but there is noreliable evidence that they are etymologicallyconnected.fleece [OE] Fleece comes from a prehistoricGermanic *flūsaz. This probably goes back to anIndo-European *plus-, which also producedLatin plūma ‘down’, later ‘feathers’, andLithuanian plunksna ‘feather’. The metaphoricalsense of the verb, ‘swindle’, developed in the16th century from the literal ‘remove the fleecefrom’. PLUMEfleet [OE] Fleet is one of a vast tangled web ofwords which traces its history back ultimately toIndo-European *pleu-, denoting ‘flow, float’(amongst its other English descendants are fly,flood, flow, fledge, fowl, plover, and pluvial).Fleet itself comes from the extended Indo-European base *pleud-, via the Germanic verb*fleutan and Old English flēotan ‘float, swim’(modern English float comes from the relatedOld English flotian). The verb has now virtuallydied out, but it survives in the form of the presentparticipial adjective fleeting, which developedthe sense ‘transient’ in the 16th century, and inthe derived noun fleet: Old English seems tohave had two distinct nouns flēot based on theverb flēotan, one of which meant ‘ships’, and theother of which signified ‘creek, inlet’ (it survivesin the name of London’s Fleet Street, which runsdown to the now covered-up Thames tributary,the river Fleet). The adjective fleet ‘quick’ (as in‘fleet of foot’) was probably borrowed from OldNorse fljótr, likewise a descendant of Germanic*fleut-. FLEDGE, FLOAT, FLOOD, FLOW, FOWL, PLOVER,PLUVIALflesh [OE] The etymological notion underlyingflesh, and its near relative flitch ‘side of bacon’[OE], is of ‘slitting open and cutting up ananimal’s carcase for food’. It, together with itscontinental cousins, German fleisch and Dutchvleesch ‘flesh’ and Swedish fläsk ‘bacon’,comes ultimately from Indo-European *pel-‘split’. Consequently, the earliest recorded senseof the Old English word flǣsc is ‘meat’; thebroader ‘soft animal tissue’, not necessarilyconsidered as food, seems to have developed inthe late Old English period. FLITCHfletcher see FLEDGEetymologically unrelated words flight. One,‘flying’, comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *flukhtiz, a derivative of the same baseas produced fly (the sense ‘series of stairs’,which developed in the 18th century, wasperhaps modelled on French volée d’escalier,literally ‘flight of stairs’). The other, ‘escape’,comes from a hypothetical Old English *flyht,never actually recorded, which goes backultimately to the same Germanic base asproduced flee. FLEE, FLYflinch see LINKflit see FLOATflitch see FLESHfloat [OE] Germanic *fleut-, which producedEnglish fleet, had the so-called ‘weak grades’(that is, variant forms which because they wereweakly stressed had different vowels) *flot- and*flut-. The former was the source of Germanic*flotōjan, which passed into late Old English asflotian and eventually ousted flēotan (modernEnglish fleet) from its original meaning ‘float’. Italso seems to have been borrowed into theRomance languages, producing French flotter,Italian fiottare, and Spanish flotar (a diminutiveof the Spanish noun derivative flota gave Englishflotilla [18]). The latter formed the basis of OldNorse flytja, acquired by English as flit [12], andof Old English floterian, which became modernEnglish flutter. FLEET, FLIT, FLOTILLA, FLUTTERfloe see FLAKEflood [OE] Flood goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *flōthuz, which also producedGerman flut, Dutch vloed, and Swedish flod‘flood’. It was derived ultimately from Indo-European *plō-, a variant of *pleu- ‘flow, float’which also produced English fleet, float, fly,fledge, and fowl. FLEET, FLOAT, FLY, FOWLfloor [OE] Floor and its first cousins, Germanflur ‘paved floor’ and Dutch vloer ‘floor’, goback to a prehistoric Germanic *flōruz. They arerelated to various Celtic words for ‘floor’,including Old Irish lār, Welsh llawr, and Bretonleur, and it has been speculated that both theGermanic and the Celtic words come ultimatelyfrom the same source as Latin plānus ‘flat’ andEnglish flat, and denote etymologically ‘flatsurface’. FLATflora [16] Latin flōs meant ‘flower’ (it was thesource of English flower). From it was derivedFlora, the name given to the Roman goddess offlowers. English took over the term in thismythological sense, and in the 17th century itbegan to be used in the titles of botanical works(for example John Ray’s Flora, seu de florumcultura ‘Flora, or concerning the cultivation offlowers’). In particular, it was used for booksdescribing all the plants in a particular area orcountry, and in the 18th century it came, like itsanimal counterpart fauna, to be applied as a

collective term to such plants. The adjectivefloral [17] comes from Latin flōs. FLOWERflorid see FLOWERflorin [14] Florin came via Old French florinfrom Italian fiorino, a diminutive of fiore‘flower’. This was used as the name of a goldcoin first issued in Florence, Italy in 1252, whichhad the figure of a lily on its obverse side. In the15th century it was adopted as the term for anEnglish gold coin worth variously 6 shillings and6 shillings and 8 pence, issued in the reign ofEdward III, and it was revived in 1849 when anew 2 shilling silver coin was issued. FLOWERflorist see FLOWERflotilla see FLOATflourflour [13] Etymologically, flour is the same wordas flower. It originally meant the ‘flower’, or‘finest part’, of ground grain, and henceeventually just ‘ground (and more or less sifted)grain’. The distinction in spelling between flourand flower did not emerge until the late 18thcentury, and the spelling flower for ‘flour’persisted into the early 19th century. FLOWERflourish [13] To flourish is etymologically to‘flower’ – and indeed ‘come into flower, bloom’is originally what the verb literally meant inEnglish: ‘to smell the sweet savour of the vinewhen it flourisheth’, Geoffrey Chaucer, Parson’sTale 1386. The metaphorical ‘thrive’ developedin the 14th century. The word comes from OldFrench floriss-, the stem of florir ‘bloom’, whichgoes back via Vulgar Latin *florīre to classicalLatin florēre, a derivative of flōs ‘flower’. FLOWERflow [OE] The prehistoric Indo-European *pleu-,ancestor of a heterogeneous range of Englishvocabulary, from fleet to plover, denoted ‘flow,float’. It had a variant form *plō-, which passedinto Germanic as *flō-. This formed the basis ofthe Old English verb flōwan (whence modernEnglish flow) and also of the noun flood. FLEET, FLOOD, FOWL, PLOVER, PLUVIALflower [13] The Old English word for ‘flower’was blōstm, which is ultimately related to flower.Both come from Indo-European *bhlō-, whichprobably originally meant ‘swell’, and also gaveEnglish bloom, blade, and the now archaic blow‘come into flower’. Its Latin descendant wasflōs, whose stem form flōr- passed via OldFrench flour and Anglo-Norman flur intoEnglish, where it gradually replaced blossom asthe main word for ‘flower’.Close English relatives include floral, florid[17] (from Latin flōridus), florin, florist [17] (anEnglish coinage), flour, and flourish. BLADE, BLOOM, BLOW, FLORAL, FLORID, FLOUR,FLOURISHflu [19] Flu is short for influenza [18]. The firstrecord of its use is in a letter of 1839 by the poetRobert Southey (who spelled it, as wascommonly the practice in the 19th century, flue):‘I have had a pretty fair share of the Flue’.Influenza means literally ‘influence’ in Italian,223 flyand was used metaphorically for the ‘outbreak ofa particular disease’ (hence an influenza difebbre scarlattina was an ‘outbreak of scarletfever’, a ‘scarlet fever epidemic’). The severeepidemic of the disease we now know as flu,which struck Italy in 1743 and spread from therethroughout Europe, was called an influenza dicatarro ‘catarrh epidemic’, or simply aninfluenza – and hence influenza became theEnglish word for the disease. INFLUENCE, INFLUENZAfluctuate see FLUXfluent see FLUXfluid see FLUXflush see FLUXflute [14] Provençal flaut was probably theoriginal source of flute, and it reached Englishvia Old French floute or floite. Where flaut camefrom, however, is another matter, and a muchdisputed one. Some etymologists claim that it isultimately simply an imitation of a high-pitchedsound, its initial consonant cluster perhapsprovided by Provençal flajol ‘small flute orwhistle’ (source of English flageolet [17], butitself of unknown origin) and Latin flāre ‘blow’;others suggest a specific blend of flajol withProvençal laut, source of English lute. The sense‘groove’ developed in English in the 17thcentury, from a comparison with the long thinshape of the instrument.Related forms in English include flautist[19], whose immediate source, Italian flautisto,preserves the au diphthong of the Provençalsource word flaut (American English prefers theolder, native English formation flutist [17]); andperhaps flout [16], which may come from Dutchfluiten ‘play the flute’, hence ‘whistle at, mock’. FLOUTflux [14] Flux denotes generally ‘flowing’, andcomes from Latin fluxus, a derivative of the pastparticiple of fluere ‘flow’. This verb, similar inform and meaning to English flow but in factunrelated to it, is responsible for a very widerange of English words: its past participle hasgiven us fluctuate [17], its present participlefluent [16] and a spectrum of derived forms, suchas affluent, effluent [18], and influence, and otherdescendants include fluid [15] (literally‘flowing’, from Latin fluidus), mellifluous(literally ‘flowing with honey’), superfluous[15], and fluvial [14] (from Latin fluvius ‘river’,a derivative of fluere). Latin fluxus also producedthe card-playing term flush [16]. AFFLUENT, EFFLUENT, FLUCTUATE, FLUENT,FLUID, INFLUENCE, MELLIFLUOUS,SUPERFLUOUSfly [OE] Historically, ‘move through the air’ issomething of a secondary semantic developmentfor fly. Its distant Indo-European ancestor,*pleu-, denoted rapid motion in general, and inparticular ‘flowing’ or ‘floating’, and itproduced such offspring as Greek pléo ‘sail,float’ and Sanskrit plu- ‘sail, swim’, as well asEnglish fleet, flood, flow, fowl, plover, andpluvial. An extension to that base, *pleuk-, gaverise to Lithuanian plaukti ‘float, sail, swim’, and

foal 224to prehistoric West and North Germanic*fleugan, source of German fliegen, Dutchvliegen, Swedish flyga, and English fly, allmeaning ‘move with wings’. The insect-name flyis also of considerable antiquity, going back to aprehistoric Germanic derivative *fleugōn or*fleugjōn, but the origins of the adjective fly‘crafty, sharp’ [19] are not known. FLEET, FLOOD, FLOW, FOWL, PLOVER, PLUVIALfoal [OE] Foal goes back to a prehistoric sourcemeaning ‘young, offspring’, which alsoproduced Latin puer ‘child’ and English pony,poultry, pullet, pullulate, and even pool‘common fund’. Its main Germanic descendantwas *folon, which gave German fohlen andfüllen, Dutch veulen, Swedish föl, and Englishfoal, but another derivative of the sameGermanic base produced English filly [15],probably borrowed from Old Norse fylja. FILLY, PONY, POOL, POULTRY, PULLET,PULLULATEfoam [OE] Foam is an ancient word, with severalrelatives widespread among the Indo-Europeanlanguages, all denoting generally ‘substancemade up of bubbles’: Latin pūmex, for instance,from which English gets pumice, and probablyLatin spūma, from which we get spume [14].These and other forms, such as Sanskrit phénasand Russian pena ‘foam’, point to a commonIndo-European source *poimo-, which producedprehistoric West Germanic *faimaz – whenceEnglish foam. PUMICE, SPUMEfocus [17] Latin focus meant ‘fireplace’, and inpost-classical times it came to be used for ‘fire’itself – hence French feu, Italian fuoco, Spanishfuego, all meaning ‘fire’, and hence too theEnglish derivatives fuel and fusillade. The firstwriter known to have used it in its modern sense‘point of convergence’ was the Germanastronomer Johannes Kepler, in 1604, but thereason for his choice of word is not clear. It mayhave been some metaphorical notion of the‘hearth’ symbolizing the ‘centre of the home’,but it has also been suggested that it may havebeen preceded and inspired by the use of focusfor the ‘burning point’ of a mirror (not actuallyrecorded until somewhat later). The philosopherThomas Hobbes appears to have introduced theterm into English, in 1656.A medieval Latin derivative of focus wasfocārius, from which French got foyer ‘hearth,home’, borrowed by English in the 19th centuryfor a public entrance hall or lobby. FOYER, FUEL, FUSILLADEfodder see FOODfoe [OE] Foe is the modern descendant of the OldEnglish noun gefā ‘enemy’, a derivative ofGermanic *faikh-. This also produced the OldEnglish adjective fāh ‘hostile’, and was theultimate source of modern English feud. FEUDfoetus [14] Foetus comes from Latin fētus‘giving birth, offspring’, which also gaveEnglish fawn ‘young deer’. It was a noun use ofthe adjective fētus ‘pregnant, productive’, fromwhose derivative effētus English got effete.Probably it was related to Latin fēcundas (sourceof English fecund [14]) and fēlīx ‘happy’(whence English felicity), and there could evenbe etymological links with fēmina ‘woman’,from which English gets feminine and female. EFFETE, FECUND, FELICITYfog [16] The word fog is something of a mystery.It first appears in the 14th century meaning ‘longgrass’, a use which persists in Yorkshire fog, thename of a species of grass. This may be ofScandinavian origin. The relationship, if any,between fog ‘grass’ and fog ‘mist’ is notimmediately clear, but it has been speculated thatthe adjective foggy, which to begin with referredto places overgrown with long grass, and thenpassed via ‘of grassy wetlands’ to ‘boggy,marshy’ may have given rise via this last sense toa noun fog denoting the misty exhalations fromsuch marshy ground. A rather far-fetchedsemantic chain, perhaps, lacking documentaryevidence at crucial points, and perhaps Danishfog ‘spray, shower’ may be closer to the realsource.foible see FEEBLEfoil English has three separate words foil. Theoldest, ‘thwart’ [13], originally meant ‘trample’.It probably comes via Anglo-Norman *fulerfrom Vulgar Latin *fullāre, a derivative of Latinfullō ‘person who cleans and bulks out cloth,originally by treading’ (whence English fuller[OE]). Foil ‘metallic paper’ [14] comes via OldFrench from Latin folium ‘leaf’ (source also ofEnglish foliage [15] and folio [16]). It originallymeant ‘leaf’ in English too, but that usage diedout in the 15th century. The modern notion of‘one that enhances another by contrast’ comesfrom the practice of backing a gem with metalfoil to increase its brilliancy, (Latin folium,incidentally, goes back to an Indo-European*bhel-, an extended form of which, *bhlō-,produced English blade, bloom, blossom, andflower.) The source of foil ‘sword’ [16] is notknown, although the semantic development ofblade from ‘leaf’ to ‘cutting part’ suggests thepossibility that a similar process took place inthe case of foil ‘leaf’. FULLER; BLADE, BLOOM, BLOSSOM, FLOWER,FOLIAGEfoist see FISTfold [OE] The verb fold comes ultimately fromthe Indo-European base *pel-, which alsoproduced Latin plicāre ‘fold’ (source of orrelated to English accomplice, complicated,explicit, perplex, plait, pleat, pliant, pliers,plight, ply, reply, and supple) and the finalelement -ple or -ble in such words as simple,double, or triple (which are hence related to theparallel Germanic formations twofold, threefold,etc). Its Germanic descendant was *falthan,from which are descended German falten, Dutchvouwen, Danish folde, and English fold. Thenoun fold ‘enclosure for animals’ is of Germanicorigin (Dutch has the related vaalt), but itsdistant antecedents are unknown. ACCOMPLICE, COMPLICATED, EXPLICIT,

PERPLEX, PLAIT, PLEAT, PLIERS, PLIGHT, PLY,REPLY, SUPPLEfoliage see FOILfolio see FOILfolk [OE] Folk comes from a prehistoricGermanic *folkam, which also producedGerman and Dutch volk and Swedish and Danishfolk. It is not clear where this came from,although it has been linked with the Indo-European base *pel-, *plē- ‘fill’, which mightalso have produced Latin populus ‘people’. Onthe other hand Russian polk’, thought to havebeen borrowed from the Germanic form, means‘division of an army’, and it is conceivable thatthis may preserve an earlier semantic stratum,represented also in Old Norse folk, whichsignified both ‘people’ and ‘army’.follow [OE] Follow is a widespread Germanicverb (German has folgen, for instance, Dutchvolgen, Swedish följa, and Danish følge,pointing to a prehistoric West and NorthGermanic *flug-), but its ultimate origins are notknownfolly see FOOLfomentfoment see FAVOURfond [14] Fond originally meant ‘foolish’, andthe likeliest explanation of its rather problematicorigin is that it was a derivative of the MiddleEnglish noun fon ‘fool’ (its Middle Englishspelling fonned suggests that it was formed withthe suffix -ed, just as wretched was formed fromwretch). However, where fon (probably a relativeof modern English fun) comes from is anothermatter. Links with Swedish fåne ‘fool’ havebeen suggested but never established for certain.The adjective’s modern meaning ‘having a greatliking’, incidentally, developed in the 16thcentury via an intermediate ‘foolishly doting’.Fondle [17] is a back-formation from the nowobsolete fondling ‘foolish person’, a derivativeof fond. FONDLE, FUNfont English has two words font. The older, ‘basinfor baptismal water’ [OE], comes from font-, thestem of Latin fons ‘spring, fountain’ (fromwhich English also gets fountain). It may wellhave been introduced into the language via OldIrish fant or font (it was often spelled fant in OldEnglish). Font ‘set of type’ [16] (or fount, as it isoften also spelled) was borrowed from Frenchfonte, a derivative of fondre ‘melt’ (whence alsoEnglish fondant, fondu, and foundry). FOUNTAIN; FONDANT, FOUNDRYfood [OE] Food and its Germanic relatives,German futter ‘fodder’, Dutch voedsel ‘food’,and Swedish föda ‘food’, all go back ultimatelyto a prehistoric Indo-European base *pā-, *pī-,which also produced Latin pābulum ‘fodder’,Russian pisca ‘food’, and Czech pice ‘fodder’.The immediate source of all the Germanic formswas *fōth-, which had two important derivatives:*fōthram, which gave English fodder [OE] and(via Old French) forage [14] and foray [14](etymologically probably a ‘search for food’);and *fōstrom, source of English foster. FEED, FODDER, FORAGE, FORAY, FOSTER225 forayfool [13] Fool comes via Old French fol fromLatin follis, which originally meant ‘bellows’(and may come ultimately from Indo-European*bhel-, which produced English bellows). Inpost-classical times it developed semanticallyvia ‘windbag’ and ‘fatuous person’ to ‘idiot’.Fool ‘dessert of puréed fruit and cream’ [16]appears to be the same word, applied (like trifle)to a light insubstantial dessert. Folly [13] comesfrom the Old French derivative folie. FOLLYfoot [OE] Foot traces its ancestry back to Indo-European *pōd-, *ped-, which provided theword for ‘foot’ in most modern Indo-Europeanlanguages (the exceptions are the Slaviclanguages, whose ‘foot’ – words, such asRussian noga and Czech noha, come from asource that meant ‘claw’, and the Celticlanguages – such as Welsh troed and Irishtroigh). Descendants include Greek poús ‘foot’(whence English antipodes, pew, podium [18],and tripod, literally ‘three-footed’, a formationmirrored exactly by Latin trivet [15] and Hinditeapoy [19]), Persian pāē or pay (whenceEnglish pyjama), Sanskrit pádas ‘foot’ (sourceof pie ‘unit of Indian currency’), and Lithuanianpedà ‘footstep’, but the most fruitful of all fromthe point of view of the English lexicon has beenLatin pēs, source of impede, pawn ‘chess piece’,pedal, pedestal, pedestrian, pedicure, pedigree,pedometer, peon, pioneer, quadruped, vamp,and velocipede (it also, of course, gave Frenchpied, Italian piede, and Spanish pie). ItsGermanic descendant was *fōr-, whichproduced German fuss, Dutch voet, Swedish fot,Danish fod, and English foot. Other relatedforms in English include pilot and trapeze. ANTIPODES, IMPEDE, PAWN, PEDAL, PEDESTAL,PEDESTRIAN, PEDIGREE, PILOT, PIONEER,PODIUM, PYJAMAS, QUADRUPED, TRAPEZE,TRIPOD, VAMPfootle [19] Footling appears to have originated asa euphemistic equivalent to fucking. It probablycomes from a dialectal footer ‘mess about, fuckaround’, which may well have been acquiredfrom French foutre ‘copulate with’, a descendantof Latin futuere ‘copulate with’ (whose origin isnot known).footpad see PADforfor [OE] For comes from a prehistoric Germanic*fora, which denoted ‘before’ – both ‘before’ intime and ‘in front’ in place. For itself meant‘before’ in the Old English period, and the samenotion is preserved in related forms such as first,fore, foremost, former, from, and of coursebefore. Germanic *fora itself goes back to Indo-European *pr, source also of Latin prae ‘before’,pro ‘for’, and primus ‘first’ (whence Englishpremier, primary, etc), Greek pará ‘by, past’, pró‘before’, and protos ‘first’ (whence Englishprotocol, prototype, etc). and English forth andfurther. BEFORE, FIRST, FORE, FORMER, FORTH, FROM,FURTHER, PREMIER, PRIMARYforage see FOODforay see FOOD

forbid 226forbid [OE] Forbid is a compound verb thatappears to have been coined in prehistoricGermanic times from the prefix *fer-, denotingnegation or exclusion (as in forget) and *bithjan,source of English bid – hence, ‘command not todo something’. It produced German verbietenand Dutch verbieden ‘forbid’ as well as Englishforbid. BIDforce [13] The ultimate source of force is Latinfortis ‘strong’, which also gave English comfort,effort, fort, etc. In post-classical times a nounwas formed from it, *fortia ‘strength’, whichpassed into English via Old French force. (Theforce of forcemeat [17], incidentally, is a variantof farce, in its original sense ‘stuff’, and is notetymologically related to force ‘strength’.) COMFORT, EFFORT, FORTford [OE] Ford is an ancient word, whose originscan be traced back as far as prehistoric Indo-European *prtús, a derivative of *por- ‘going,passage’, which also produced English fare andferry. Descendants of *prtús include Latinportus ‘harbour’ (source of English port), Welshrhyd ‘ford’, West Germanic *furduz (whenceGerman furt ‘ford’ and English ford) and NorthGermanic *ferthuz (source of English fiord orfjord [17] and firth [15]). FARE, FERRY, FIORD, FIRTH, FJORD, FORD, PORTforeign [13] Etymologically, foreign means ‘outof doors’. It comes via Old French forein fromVulgar Latin *forānus, a derivative of Latinforās ‘out of doors, abroad’. This originated asthe accusative plural of *fora, an unrecordedvariant form of forēs ‘door’ (to which Englishdoor is related). The literal sense ‘outdoor’survived into Middle English (the chambreforene mentioned by Robert of Gloucester in hisChronicle 1297, for instance, was an ‘outsideloo’), but by the early 15th century themetaphorical ‘of other countries, abroad’ hadmore or less elbowed it aside. DOOR, FOREST, FORFEITforemost see FORMERforensic see FORUMforestforest [13] The underlying sense of forestappears to be ‘outside wooded area’. It comesfrom the late Latin phrase forestis silva (Latinsilva means ‘wood’), which was applied to theroyal forests of Charlemagne. The adjectiveforestis (which became the Old French nounforest) was probably a derivative of Latin forīs‘outdoor, outside’, which, like forās (source ofEnglish foreign), was related to Latin forēs‘door’. In this context, ‘outside’ presumablymeant ‘beyond the main or central fenced area ofwoodland’. DOOR, FOREIGN, FORFEITforfeit [13] A forfeit was originally a‘transgression’ or ‘misdemeanour’. The wordcomes from Old French forfet, a derivative of theverb forfaire or forsfaire ‘commit a crime’. Thiswas a compound formed from fors- ‘beyond(what is permitted or legal)’, which is descendedfrom Latin forīs ‘outdoor, outside’ (source ofEnglish forest and related to foreign), and faire‘do, act’, which came from Latin facere (whenceEnglish fact, fashion, feature, etc). Theetymological meaning ‘misdeed’ was originallytaken over from Old French into Middle English(‘Peter was in hand nummen [taken] for forfaithe had done’, Cursor mundi 1300), but by the15th century it was being edged out by ‘penaltyimposed for committing such a misdeed’. DOOR, FACT, FACTORY, FASHION, FOREST,FOREIGNforfend see DEFENDforge Forge ‘make’ [13] and forge ahead [17] aretwo quite distinct and unrelated words inEnglish. The former’s now common connotationof ‘faking’ is in fact a purely Englishdevelopment (dating from the late 14th century)in a word whose relatives in other languages(such as French forger) mean simply ‘make –especially by working heated metal’. It comesvia Old French forger from Latin fabricāre‘make’ (source also of English fabricate, whichhas similarly dubious connotations). The relatednoun forge goes back to Latin fabrica (whencealso English fabric), amongst whose specializedsenses was ‘blacksmith’s workshop’.Forge ‘move powerfully’, as in forge ahead,may be an alteration of force. FABRICforget [OE] From a formal point of view, forgetis exactly what it seems – a combination of forand get. However, this is not the modern Englishpreposition for, but a prefix that in former timeswas a live building block of the language,denoting negation or exclusion. So here, forget’sGermanic ancestor *fergetan meant literally ‘notget’, hence ‘lose one’s hold on’ andmetaphorically ‘lose one’s memory of’. GETforgive [OE] Forgive is what is knowntechnically as a ‘calque’ or loan translation – thatis, it was created by taking the component partsof a foreign word, translating them literally, andthen putting them back together to form a newword. In this case the foreign word was Latinperdōnāre ‘forgive’ (source of English pardon),which was a compound verb formed from per-‘thoroughly’ and dōnāre ‘give’ (its underlyingsense was ‘give wholeheartedly’). These twoelements were translated in prehistoricGermanic times and assembled to give*fergeban, from which have come Germanvergeben, Dutch vergeven, and English forgive. GIVEfork [OE] Fork comes from Latin furca, a word ofunknown origin which denoted ‘two-prongedfork or stake’. It provided most of the Romanceand Celtic languages with their terms for ‘fork’,as well as English (French fourche, for instance,Italian forca, Spanish horca, Welsh fforch, andBreton forc’h). The term was not widely used for‘table forks’ until they came into general use,from Italy, in the 15th and 16th centuries; severallanguages have used diminutive forms in thiscontext, such as French fourchette andRomanian furculita. Bifurcate [17] is a

derivative, descended from Latin bifurcus ‘twopronged’. BIFURCATE, CARFAXforlorn [12] Forlorn began life as the pastparticiple of Old English forlēosan ‘losecompletely, forfeit, abandon’, a compound verbformed in prehistoric Germanic times from theintensive prefix *fer- and *leusan (a relative ofmodern English lose). It retains some of its earlyconnotations of being ‘abandoned’, but the mainmodern sense ‘miserable, downcast’ developedin the 14th century. The forlorn of forlorn hope[16], incidentally, is a translation of the relatedDutch verloren ‘lost’, but hope has noetymological connection with English hope. It issimply an anglicization of Dutch hoop ‘troop,band’ (to which English heap is related). Theword was originally used for a squad of soldierssent out on a very dangerous mission, with littlehope that they would return. The modern sense‘hopeless undertaking’ developed in the 17thcentury, ‘misguided hope’ probably even morerecently. LOSEform [13] Form comes via Old French formefrom Latin forma ‘shape, contour’, a wordwhose origins have never been satisfactorilyexplained. Its semantic similarity to Greekmorphé ‘form, shape’ (source of Englishmorphology [19]) is striking, and has led someetymologists to suggest that the Latin word maybe an alteration of the Greek one, presumably bymetathesis (the reversal of sounds, in this case/m/ and /f/). Another possibility, however, is thatit comes from ferīre ‘strike’, from the notion ofan impression, image, or shape being created bybeating. Of the word’s wide diversity of modernsenses, ‘school class’, a 16th-centuryintroduction, was inspired by the late Latinusage forma prima, forma secunda, etc fordifferent orders of clergy, while ‘bench’ may goback to the Old French expression s’asseoir enforme ‘sit in a row’. Amongst forma’sderivatives that have found their way intoEnglish are formal [14], format [19], formula[17] (from a Latin diminutive form), anduniform. FORMAL, FORMAT, FORMULA, INFORM, UNIFORMformaldehyde see ANTformer [12] Former is a comparative form basedon Middle English forme ‘first (in time ororder)’, on the analogy of the superlativeforemost [16] (which was originally formost[12]; the modern spelling came about throughassociation with fore and most). Forme itselfgoes back to Old English forma, which was adescendant of a prehistoric Germanic superlativefrom derived from *fora ‘before’ (whence alsoEnglish first, for, and fore). So untangling thesuffixal accretions of centuries, former meansetymologically ‘more most before’. FIRST, FOR, FORE, PRIMARYacidformic acid see ANTformidable [15] Latin formīdō meant ‘fear’ (itmay have links with Greek mormó ‘bugbear,goblin’, which came from an Indo-European227 fortress*mormo). From it was derived the verbformīdāre, which in turn produced the adjectiveformīdābilis, which English originally acquiredin the literal sense ‘inspiring fear’. The weaker‘impressive in size, difficulty, etc’ is a 17thcenturydevelopment.formula see FORMfornication [13] Latin fornix denoted an ‘arch’or ‘vault’, and hence came to be used in the laterepublican period for the sort of vaultedunderground dwellings where the dregs ofRoman society – tramps, prostitutes, pettycriminals, etc – lived. Early Christian writershomed in on the prostitutes, and employed theterm with the specific meaning ‘brothel’,whence the verb fornicārī ‘have illicit sexualintercourse’ and its derivative fornicatiō, sourceof English fornication.forsake see SAKEfort [15] Etymologically, a fort is a ‘strong place’.The word comes either from Old French fort orfrom Italian forte, both noun uses of an adjectivedescended from Latin fortis ‘strong’. A similarsemantic result, but achieved by derivationrather than conversion, can be seen in fortress[13], a borrowing from Old French forteresse,which goes back to Vulgar Latin *fortaritia, aderivative of Latin fortis. (The nearest nativeEnglish equivalent of both words is stronghold.)Other words inherited by English from fortisinclude fortify [15], fortitude [15], the noun forte‘strong point’ [17] (it was borrowed, despite itsmodern Italianate pronunciation, from Frenchfort, and was subsequently remodelled on theFrench feminine form forte), and the musicaldirection forte ‘loud’ [18] (from Italian), whichappears also in pianoforte. FORCE, FORTIFY, FORTRESSforth [OE] Forth can be traced back to the sameIndo-European source, *pr, as produced Englishfirst, for, fore, foremost, former, from, andbefore. It formed the basis of a word *prto‘forwards’, whose Germanic descendant *furthagave German fort, Dutch voort, and Englishforth. Modern English forward(s) [OE], whichhas largely replaced forth in general use, wasoriginally a compound formed from forth and-ward. Other related forms include afford, whichoriginally meant ‘accomplish, fulfil’, forthwith[14], at first literally ‘along with’, hence ‘at thesame time as’ and ‘immediately’, and further. AFFORD, BEFORE, FIRST, FOR, FORE, FORMER,FROM, FURTHERfortnight [13] The ancient Germanic peoplesrecorded the passing of time in units of ‘nights’rather than, as we do, in units of ‘days’: hence aperiod of two weeks was in Old Englishfēowertīene niht, or ‘fourteen nights’. By earlyMiddle English times this was starting to becontracted to the single word fortnight. (Theparallel sennight ‘week’ [15] – literally ‘sevennights’ – survived dialectally into the 20thcentury.) FOURTEENfortress see FORT

fortune 228fortune [13] Latin fors meant ‘chance’ (it cameultimately from Indo-European *bhrtis, aderivative of the same base as produced Englishbear ‘carry’, and hence signified etymologically‘that which fate brings along’). Formed fromfors was fortuna, which was used both for thepersonification of ‘chance’ as a goddess, and for‘luck’ in general – and in particular for ‘goodluck’. The notion of ‘good luck’ persists in mostof the word’s modern descendants, includingEnglish fortune (acquired via Old Frenchfortune) and fortunate [14], although Italianfortunale has opted for the downside of ‘luck’ –it means ‘storm at sea’.Another derivative of Latin fors was theadjective fortuitus ‘happening by chance’, fromwhich English gets fortuitous [17]. BEAR, FORTUITOUSforum [15] Originally Latin forum denoted an‘out-of-doors place’ – it was related to forīs ‘outof-doors,outside’ and to forēs ‘door’, a distantcousin of English door. It came to be used forany outdoor open space or public place, and inparticular for a market place (the most famous ofwhich was the one in Rome, where publicassemblies, tribunals, etc were held). OtherEnglish words from the same source are foreign,forest, and forensic ‘of legal proceedings’ [17](from Latin forēnsis ‘of a forum as a place ofpublic discussion’). DOOR, FOREIGN, FORENSIC, FORESTforward see FORTHfossil [17] Etymologically, a fossil is something‘dug’ out of the ground. It comes via Frenchfossile from Latin fossilis ‘dug up’, a derivativeof the verb fodere ‘dig’. The English adjectiveoriginally meant virtually the same as Latinfossilis (‘Seven unmixt fossil Metals areforecited’, Robert Vilvain, Epitome of Essais1654), and this sense survives in the present-dayexpression fossil fuel, but the word’s mainmodern connotation ‘excavated relic of a formerlife-form’ had begun to emerge by the mid 17thcentury.foster [OE] The etymological notion underlyingfoster is of ‘giving food’. Indeed, the OldEnglish verb fōstrian meant ‘feed, nourish’, andit was not until the 13th century that secondarymetaphorical senses, such as ‘rear a child’ and‘encourage, cultivate’, began to emerge. It was aderivative of the Old English noun fōstor ‘food’,which in turn was formed from the sameGermanic source, *fōth-, as produced Englishfood. FOODfoul [OE] The underlying meaning of foul isprobably ‘rotten, putrid’, with overtones of ‘evilsmelling’.It goes back to an Indo-European*pu-, which may originally have been inspiredby the same reaction as produced the Englishexclamation of disgust at a bad smell, pooh.Amongst its other off-spring were Latin pūs,source of English pus, purulent, and supurate,and Latin putridus, source of English putrid. ItsGermanic descendant was *fu-, on which theadjective *fūlaz was based. This producedGerman faul ‘rotten, lazy’, Dutch vuil ‘dirty’,and English foul, and also the derived noun filth[OE]. Defile ‘make dirty’ is not directly related,but its form was influenced by the now obsoleteverb befile, which was connected with foul. FILTH, PUS, PUTRID, SUPPURATEfound Aside from the past form of find, there aretwo distinct words found in English. Found‘establish’ [13] comes via Old French fonderfrom Latin fundāre, a derivative of fundus‘bottom’ (which, like English bottom, goes backultimately to Indo-European *bhud- or*bhund-). The Latin words also gave Englishfounder, fund and fundamental. Found ‘melt’[14], which is now mainly represented by thederived foundry [17], comes via Old Frenchfondre from Latin fundere ‘pour, melt’. Thisgoes back to Indo-European *ghud-, *gheud-,from which English also gets ingot. Amongstrelated forms in English are (from Frenchfondre) font, fondant, and fondu, (from Latinfundere) funnel, (from the Latin past participlefūsus) fuse and fusion, and (from *fud-, theimmediate root of Latin fundere) futile [16],which etymologically means ‘that pours away’,hence ‘useless’. BOTTOM, FOUNDER, FUND, FUNDAMENTAL;FONDANT, FUNNEL, FUSE, FUSION, FUTILE,INGOTfounder [13] Etymologically, founder means‘sink to the bottom’. Its history can be tracedback to Latin fundus ‘bottom’ (source also ofEnglish found ‘establish’, fund, andfundamental), which formed the basis of aVulgar Latin verb *fundorāre. This passed intoOld French fondrer, which meant ‘submerge’,but also, by extension, ‘fall in ruins, collapse’ –both of which groups of senses English tookover in founder. FOUND, FUND, FUNDAMENTALfountain [15] Latin fons meant ‘spring of water’(it was related to Sanskrit dhan- ‘run, flow’). Thefeminine form of its adjectival derivative,fontāna ‘of a spring’, came to be used in lateLatin as a noun, also meaning ‘spring’, and thispassed via Old French fontaine into English, stillcarrying its original sense ‘spring’ with it. Thissurvives in the reduced form fount [16], which isusually used metaphorically for a ‘source’, butfountain itself has from the 16th century beenmainly applied to an ‘artificial jet of water’.Other descendants of Latin fontāna, incidentally,include Italian fontana, Romanian fîntîna, andWelsh ffynon.Fontanelle ‘space between infant’s skullbones’ [16] comes ultimately from Old Frenchfontenelle, a diminutive form of fontaine. Theunderlying notion appears to be of an anatomical‘hollow’, as if from which a spring of waterwould come. FONTANELLE, FOUNTfour [OE] The distant Indo-European ancestor ofEnglish four was *qwetwōr-, which alsoproduced Latin quattuor (whence French quatre,Italian quattro, Spanish cuatro, etc), Greektéssares, Sanskrit catvāras, Russian chetvero,

and Welsh pedwar. Its Germanic descendant was*petwor-, from which come German and Dutchvier, Swedish fyra, and English four. Amongstthe word’s perhaps more surprising relatives inEnglish are carfax ‘crossroads’ (ultimately froma post-classical Latin compound which meantliterally ‘four forks’), quarantine (denotingetymologically a ‘period of 40 days’), quire ‘setof four sheets of paper’, and trapeze (literally‘four-footed’). CARFAX, QUARANTINE, QUIRE, TRAPEZEfowl [OE] Fowl was the main term for ‘bird’ inthe Old English period, but in Middle English itwas gradually replaced by bird. (It remains inuse in compounds, such as wildfowl andwaterfowl, and is sometimes still applied to‘chickens’.) It goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *foglaz or *fuglaz, which alsoproduced the still very much current German andDutch vogel, Swedish fåagel, and Danish fugl,all signifying ‘bird’, and which may have been aderivative of the same source (*fleug-) as gaveEnglish fly – in which case fowl would meanliterally ‘flying creature’. FLYfox [OE] Fox probably means literally ‘tailedanimal’ – the fox’s brush being perhaps its mostdistinctive feature. It has been traced back to aprehistoric Indo-European *puk-, which alsoproduced Sanskrit púcchas ‘tail’. In WestGermanic this gave *fukhs, from which comeGerman fuchs, Dutch vos, and English fox. Thefox is also named after its tail in Spanish (raposa‘fox’ is a derivative of rabo ‘tail’) and in Welsh(llwynog ‘fox’ comes from llwyn ‘bush’ – that is,‘bushy tail’).fraction [14] Like fracture [15], which preservesits etymological meaning more closely, fractioncomes ultimately from fractus, the pastparticiple of Latin frangere ‘break’. This verbgoes back to prehistoric Indo-European*bhr(e)g-, which also produced English break.The Latin derived noun fractiō simply meant‘breaking’, particularly with reference to thebreaking of Communion bread, but all trace ofthis literal sense has now virtually died out inEnglish, leaving only the mathematical sense‘number produced by division’ and itsmetaphorical offshoots. Amongst the Englishmeanings that have disappeared is ‘discord,quarrelling’, but before it went it producedfractious [18]. FRACTURE, FRAGILE, FRAILfragile [17] Fragile and frail [13] are doublets:that is to say, they have the same ultimate sourcebut have evolved in different ways. In this casethe source was Latin fragilis ‘breakable’, aderivative of the same base (*frag-) as producedfrangere ‘break’ (whence English fractious).Fragile was acquired either directly from theLatin adjective or via French fragile, but frailpassed through Old French frale or frele on itsway to English. Other English words to comefrom *frag- include fragment [15] (from Latin229 franticfragmentum) and saxifrage, literally ‘rockbreaker’. FRACTION, FRACTURE, FRAGMENT, FRAIL,SAXIFRAGEframe [OE] Frame comes from the prepositionfrom, whose underlying notion is of ‘forwardprogress’. This was incorporated into a verbframian in Old English times, which meant‘make progress’. Its modern meaning started todevelop in the early Middle English period, from‘prepare, make ready’, via the more specific‘prepare timber for building’, to ‘construct,shape’ (the Middle English transitive uses mayhave been introduced by the related Old Norsefremija). The noun frame was derived from theverb in the 14th century. Incidentally, if theconnection between from and frame should seemat first sight far-fetched, it is paralleled veryclosely by furnish, which came from the sameprehistoric Germanic source as from. FROMfranc see FRANKfranchise [13] Originally, franchise meant‘freedom’ (as it still does in French today): ‘Wewill for our franchise fight and for our land’,Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle 1297.Gradually, though, it became more specialized insense, narrowing down via ‘particular legalprivilege’ to (in the 18th century) ‘right to vote’.It comes from Old French franchise, a derivativeof franc ‘free’ (whence English frank). FRANKfrank [13] To call someone frank is to link themwith the Germanic people who conquered Gaularound 500 AD, the Franks, who gave their nameto modern France and the French. After theconquest, full political freedom was grantedonly to ethnic Franks or to those of thesubjugated Celts who were specifically broughtunder their protection. Hence, franc came to beused as an adjective meaning ‘free’ – a sense itretained when English acquired it from OldFrench: ‘He was frank and free born in a freecity’, John Tiptoft, Julius Caesar’scommentaries 1470. In both French and English,however, it gradually progressed semanticallyvia ‘liberal, generous’ and ‘open’ to ‘candid’. Ofrelated words in English, frankincense [14]comes from Old French franc encens, literally‘superior incense’ (‘superior’ being a nowobsolete sense of French franc), and franc [14],the French unit of currency, comes from theLatin phrase Francorum rex ‘king of the Franks’,which appeared on the coins minted during thereign of Jean le Bon (1350–64). The Franks,incidentally, supposedly got their name fromtheir preferred weapon, the throwing spear, inOld English franca. FRENCHfrantic [14] Frantic comes via Old Frenchfrenetique and Latin phreneticus from late Greekphrenētikús, a derivative of phrenítis ‘delirium’.This in turn was based on Greek phrén ‘mind’(source also of English phrenology ‘study ofcranial bumps to determine intelligence,character, etc’ [19]). The Old French form split

fraternal 230into two virtually distinct words once Englishgot hold of it: in one, the French three-syllableform was preserved, and even partiallyremodelled on its Latin ancestor, to give whathas become modern English phrenetic, while inthe other it was reduced to frentik which, forreasons that have never been satisfactorilyexplained, subsequently became frantic. Therelated noun frenzy [14] retains the originalvowel. FRENZY, PHRENOLOGYfraternal [15] Etymologically as well assemantically, fraternal is ‘brotherly’. It comesfrom frāternālis, a medieval Latin derivative ofLatin frāter ‘brother’. This goes back to thesame prehistoric Indo-European source,*bhrāter, as produced English brother. TheLatin accusative from, frātrem, produced Frenchfrère ‘brother’, from which English gets friar[13]. BROTHER, FRIAR, PALfraud see FRUSTRATEfraught [14] Fraught and freight [15] are related,and share the underlying meaning ‘load’. Butwhereas freight has stayed close to its semanticroots, fraught, which started out as ‘laden’, hasmoved on via ‘supplied or filled with something’to specifically ‘filled with anxiety or tension’. Itwas originally the past participle of a nowobsolete verb fraught ‘load a ship’, which wasborrowed from Middle Dutch vrachten. This inturn was a derivative of the noun vracht ‘load,cargo’, a variant of vrecht (from which Englishgets freight). Both vracht and vrecht probably goback to a prehistoric Germanic noun *fraaikhtiz,whose second element *-aikhtiz is related toEnglish owe and own. FREIGHTfree [OE] The prehistoric ancestor of free was aterm of affection uniting the members of afamily in a common bond, and implicitlyexcluding their servants or slaves – those whowere not ‘free’. It comes ultimately from Indo-European *prijos, whose signification ‘dear,beloved’ is revealed in such collateraldescendants as Sanskrit priyás ‘dear’, Russianprijatel’ ‘friend’, and indeed English friend. ItsGermanic offspring, *frijaz, displays the shiftfrom ‘affection’ to ‘liberty’, as shown in Germanfrei, Dutch vrij, Swedish and Danish fri, andEnglish free. Welsh rhydd ‘free’ comes from thesame Indo-European source. FRIDAY, FRIENDfreebooter see FILIBUSTERfreeze [OE] Freeze is an ancient word, whichtraces its history back to Indo-European *preus-(source also of Latin pruīna ‘hoarfrost’). ItsGermanic descendant was *freusan, from whichcome German frieren, Dutch vriezen, Swedishfrysa, and English freeze. The noun frost [OE]was formed in the prehistoric Germanic periodfrom a weakly stressed variant of the base of*freusan plus the suffix -t. FROSTfreight see FRAUGHTfrenzy see FRANTICfrequent [16] Frequent comes from Latinfrequēns, which meant ‘crowded’ as well as‘regularly repeated’ (it is not known what theorigins of frequēns were, although it may berelated to Latin farcīre ‘stuff’, source of Englishfarce). The sense ‘crowded’ was carried overinto English along with ‘regularly repeated’, butit had virtually died out by the end of the 18thcentury. The verb frequent [15] goes back toLatin frequentāre ‘visit frequently or regularly’.fresh [12] Fresh is of Germanic origin, but in itspresent form reached English via French. Itsultimate source was the prehistoric Germanicadjective *friskaz, which also produced Germanfrisch, Dutch vers, Swedish färsk, and possiblyEnglish frisk [16]. It was borrowed into thecommon source of the Romance languages as*friscus, from which came French frais andItalian and Spanish fresco (the Italian form gaveEnglish fresco [16], painting done on ‘fresh’ –that is, still wet – plaster, and alfresco [18],literally ‘in the fresh air’). English acquired freshfrom the Old French predecessor of frais, freis.The colloquial sense ‘making presumptuoussexual advances’, first recorded in the USA inthe mid 19th century, probably owes much toGerman frech ‘cheeky’. ALFRESCO, FRESCO, FRISKfret English has three separate words fret. Fret‘irritate, distress’ [OE] goes back to a prehistoricGermanic compound verb formed from theintensive prefix *fra- and the verb *etan(ancestor of English eat), which meant ‘eat up,devour’. Its modern Germanic descendantsinclude German fressen ‘eat’ (used of animals).In Old English, it gave fretan, which also meant‘devour’, but this literal meaning had died out bythe early 15th century, leaving the figurative‘gnaw at, worry, distress’. Fret ‘decorate withinterlaced or pierced design’ [14] (now usuallyencountered only in fretted, fretwork, andfretsaw) comes from Old French freter, aderivative of frete ‘trellis, embossed orinterlaced work’, whose origins are obscure.Also lost in the mists of time are the antecedentsof fret ‘ridge across the fingerboard of a guitar’[16]. EATfriar see FRATERNALFriday [OE] Friday was named for Frigg, inScandinavian mythology the wife of Odin andgoddess of married love and of the hearth (Frigg,or in Old English Frīg, is thought to have comefrom prehistoric Germanic *frijaz ‘noble’,source of English free). ‘Frigg’s day’ was adirect adaptation of Latin Veneris dies ‘Venus’sday’ (whence French vendredi ‘Friday’), whichin turn was based on Greek Aphrodítēs hēméra‘Aphrodite’s day’. FREEfriend [OE] Etymologically, friend means‘loving’. It and its Germanic relatives (Germanfreund, Dutch vriend, Swedish frände, etc) goback to the present participle of the prehistoricGermanic verb *frijōjan ‘love’ (historically, theGerman present participle ends in -nd, as in

modern German -end; English -ng is analteration of this). *Frijōjan itself was aderivative of the adjective *frijaz, from whichmodern English gets free, but which originallymeant ‘dear, beloved’. FREEfrieze [16] Phrygia, in western and central AsiaMinor, was noted in ancient times for itsembroidery. Hence classical Latin Phrygium ‘ofPhrygia’ was pressed into service in medievalLatin (as frigium, or later frisium) for‘embroidered cloth’. English acquired the wordvia Old French frise, by which time it hadprogressed semantically via ‘fringe’ to‘decorative band along the top of a wall’.fright [OE] Prehistoric Germanic *furkhtaz, anadjective of unknown origin (not related toEnglish fear), meant ‘afraid’. From it wasderived a noun *furkhtīn, which was the basis ofone of the main words for ‘fear’ among theancient Germanic languages (not superseded asthe chief English term by fear until the 13thcentury). Its modern descendants includeGerman furcht and English fright (in which theoriginal sequence ‘vowel plus r’ was reversed bythe process known as metathesis – somethingwhich also happened to Middle Low Germanvruchte, from which Swedish fruktan andDanish frygt ‘fear’ were borrowed).fringe [14] Late Latin fimbria meant ‘fibre,thread’ (it is used in modern English as ananatomical term for a threadlike structure, suchas the filaments at the opening of the Fallopiantube). In the plural it was applied to a ‘fringe’,and eventually this meaning fed back into thesingular. In Vulgar Latin fimbria, by the soundreversalprocess known as metathesis, became*frimbia, which passed into Old French as fringeor frenge – source of the English word.Frisbee [20] The name of this spinning plasticdisc had its origin in a catching game played inBridgeport, Connecticut in the 1950s. Theparticipants were no doubt not the first to noticethat an aerodynamically volatile flat discproduces more interesting and challengingresults than a spherical object, but it was theirparticular choice of missiles that had farreachingterminological results: they used pietins from the local Frisbie bakery. The idea forturning the dish into a marketable plastic productbelonged to Fred Morrison, and he registeredFrisbee (doubtless more commercially grabbythan Frisbie) as a trademark in 1959.fritter see FRYfrizz see FRYfro see FROMfrock [14] Frock is a Germanic word, althoughEnglish acquired it via Old French froc. Itoriginally meant ‘long coat or tunic’ – a sensereflected in the related Old High German hroc‘mantle, coat’, and preserved in English frockcoat and unfrock ‘dismiss from the office ofclergyman’ (frock once having denoted a‘priest’s cassock’, and hence symbolized thepriestly office). Its application to a ‘woman’sdress’ dates from the 16th century.231 frontispiecefrog [OE] Frog comes from Old English frogga,which probably started life as a playfulalternative to the more serious frosc or forsc.This derived from the pre-historic Germanic*fruskaz, which also produced German froschand Dutch vorsch. Its use as a derogatorysynonym for ‘French person’ goes back to thelate 18th century, and was presumably inspiredby the proverbial French appetite for theanimals’ legs (although in fact frog as a generalterm of abuse can be traced back to the 14thcentury, and in the 17th century it was used for‘Dutch person’). It is not clear whether frog‘horny wedge-shaped pad in a horse’s hoof’ [17]and frog ‘ornamental braiding’ [18] are the sameword; the former may have been influenced byFrench fourchette and Italian forchetta, bothliterally ‘little fork’.frolic [16] Like its source, Dutch vrolijk, and therelated German fröhlich, frolic was originally anadjective meaning ‘happy’. This usage had diedout by the end of the 18th century, but in themeantime the adjective had been converted intoa verb, and thence into a noun, both of which arestill with us. (Dutch vrolijk was formed from theadjective vro ‘happy’, which probably goes backultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European sourcewhich meant primarily ‘spring upwards, moveswiftly’.)from [OE] From goes back ultimately to Indo-European *pr, which also produced English first,for, fore, foremost, former, and before. Theaddition of a suffix -m gave a word denoting‘forward movement, advancement’ (as in Greekprómos ‘foremost’). By the time it reached OldEnglish as from or fram the notion of ‘movingforward or onward’ had passed into ‘movingaway’. The related fro [12], now little usedexcept in to and fro, comes from Old Norse frá. BEFORE, FIRST, FOR, FORE, FORMER, FORTH,FRO, PRIMARYfront [13] As its close French relative front stilldoes, front used to mean ‘forehead’. Both comefrom Latin frōns, a word of dubious originswhose primary meaning was ‘forehead’, butwhich already in the classical period wasextending figuratively to the ‘most forwardlyprominent part’ of anything. In present-dayEnglish, only distant memories remain of theoriginal sense, in such contexts as ‘put up a bravefront’ (a now virtually dead metaphor in whichthe forehead, and hence the countenance ingeneral, once stood for the ‘demeanour’). Therelated frontier [14], borrowed from Old Frenchfrontiere, originally meant ‘front part’; itsmodern sense is a secondary development. FRONTIERfrontispiece [16] The final syllable offrontispiece has no etymological connectionwith piece. It comes from *spic-, a root denoting‘see’ which is also represented in conspicuousand spectator. Here, as in the related auspices,its particular application is ‘divination byobservation’. Added to Latin frōns ‘forehead’ itproduced late Latin frontispicium, whichoriginally meant ‘judgment of character through

frost 232interpretation of facial features’. Gradually itweakened semantically through ‘face’ to simply‘front part’, and when English first acquired it, itwas used for the ‘principal façade of a building’(‘an indiscreet builder, who preferreth the care ofhis frontispiece before the maine foundation’,Richard Brathwait, English Gentleman 1630).By the 17th century, however, the word’smodern meaning ‘illustration facing the titlepage’ was becoming established. (Spellingsbased on an erroneous association with piece,incidentally, occur as early as the 16th century.) AUSPICES, CONSPICUOUS, FRONT, INSPECT,SPECTATOR, SPYfrost see FREEZEfrown [14] Probably the underlying notion offrowning is ‘snorting’ rather than ‘wrinkling thebrows’. It comes from Old French froignier,which meant ‘snort’ as well as ‘frown’. It isassumed to have been adopted into French froma Celtic language of Gaul, and would thereforehave been related to Welsh ffroen ‘nostril’.fructify see FRUITfructose see FRUITfrugal [16] Paradoxically, frugal comes from asource that meant ‘fruitful’. English borrowed itfrom Latin frūgālis, which was derived from theadjective frūgī ‘useful’. This in turn was thedative case of the noun frūx ‘fruit, value’, whichcame from the same base as frūctus, the sourceof English fruit. The links in the semantic chainseem to have been that something that was‘useful, valuable, or productive’ was also‘profitable’, and that in order to be ‘profitable’ itmust be ‘economical’ – hence frugal’sconnotations of ‘careful expenditure’. FRUITfruit [12] English acquired fruit via Old Frenchfruit from Latin frūctus, a source more clearly ondisplay in fructify [14], fructose [19], etc. Theunderlying meaning of the Latin noun seems tohave been ‘enjoyment of that which isproduced’, for it came, like frūx (source ofEnglish frugal), from a base which alsoproduced the verb fruī ‘enjoy’. By classicaltimes, however, it had passed from ‘enjoyment’to the ‘product’ itself – the ‘rewards’ of anenterprise, the ‘return’ on an investment, or the‘produce’ obtained from the soil or from farmanimals. When it reached English this lattermeaning had narrowed down somewhat, but itwas still capable of being used far more broadly,for any ‘edible vegetable’, than we would dotoday, except in certain archaic expressions suchas ‘fruits of the earth’. The modern restriction tothe edible reproductive body of a tree, bush, etcdates from the 13th century. English retains, ofcourse, the more general sense ‘product, result’,although this is now usually expressed by theplural fruits. FRUCTIFY, FRUGALfrustrate [15] Frustrate comes from Latinfrūstrātus ‘disappointed, frustrated’, the pastparticiple of a verb formed from the adverbfrūstrā ‘in error, in vain, uselessly’. This was arelative of Latin fraus, which originally meant‘injury, harm’, hence ‘deceit’ and then ‘error’(its English descendant, fraud [14], preserves‘deceit’). Both go back to an original Indo-European *dhreu- which denoted ‘injure’. FRAUDfry Fry ‘cook in fat’ [13] and fry ‘young fish’ [14]are quite distinct words. The former comes viaOld French frire from Latin frīgere, a cookingterm which covered what we would nowdistinguish as ‘roasting’ and ‘frying’. It goesback ultimately to Indo-European *bhreu-,which also produced Latin fervēre ‘boil’ (sourceof English fervent). Its past participle frictusformed the basis of Vulgar Latin *frīctūra, fromwhich, via Old French, English gets fritter [14];and the past participial stem of the French verb,fris-, may lie behind English frizz [17]. Fry‘small fish’ may come from Anglo-Norman frie,a derivative of Old French freier ‘rub, spawn’,which in turn goes back to Latin frīgere ‘rub’. FERVENT, FRITTER, FRIZZfuck [16] The most celebrated of the so-called‘Anglo-Saxon’ four-letter words goes back inwritten form no further than the early 16thcentury – a far cry from the Old English period.A personal name John le Fucker, however,recorded from 1278, shows that it was aroundbefore 1500 (perhaps not committed to paperbecause even then it was under a taboo). There islittle doubt that it is of Germanic origin, but itsprecise source has never been satisfactorilyidentified. All the earliest known examples ofthe word come from Scotland, which maysuggest a Scandinavian source, related toNorwegian dialect fukka ‘copulate’, andSwedish dialect focka ‘copulate, hit’ and fock‘penis’.fudge [17] Fudge the verb, ‘evade’, probablycomes from an earlier fadge, which meant ‘fake,deceive’, and hence ‘adjust, fit’, and this in turnprobably goes back to a Middle English nounfage ‘deceit’ – but where fage came from is notclear. Fudge as the name of a type of toffee,which is first recorded in the late 19th century,may be a different use of the same word –perhaps originally ‘toffee “cooked up” or“bodged up” in an impromptu manner’.fuel [14] The notions of ‘fuel’ and ‘fire’ areclosely connected etymologically. Fuel comesvia Anglo-Norman fuaille from medieval Latinfocālia, which was used in legal documents as aterm for the ‘right to demand material formaking a fire’. It was a derivative of Latin focus‘fireplace, fire’, which also gave English focus,foyer, and fusillade. FOCUS, FOYER, FUSILLADEfugitive see REFUGEfugue see REFUGEfull [OE] Full and its verbal derivative fill go backultimately to the Indo-European base *plē-,which also produced Latin plēnus ‘full’ (sourceof English plenary, plenty, and replenish, and ofFrench plein and Italian pieno ‘full’) and Englishcomplete, deplete [19] (literally ‘unfill, empty’),implement, plebeian, plethora, plural, plus,replete [14], supply, and surplus [14]. The Indo-

European derivative *plnós passed intoprehistoric Germanic as *fulnaz, whicheventually became *fullaz, source of Germanvoll, Dutch vol, and Swedish and English full.Fulfil dates from the late Old English period; itoriginally meant literally ‘fill full, fill up’. COMPLETE, DEPLETE, FILL, IMPLEMENT, PLENTY,PLETHORA, PLURAL, PLUS, REPLETE, SUPPLY,SURPLUSfuller see FOILfulminate [15] Etymologically, fulminate means‘strike with lightning’. It comes from Latinfulmināre, a derivative of fulmen ‘lightning’. Inmedieval Latin its literal meaning gave way tothe metaphorical ‘pronounce an ecclesiasticalcensure on’, and this provided the semantic basisfor its English derivative fulminate, although inthe 17th and 18th centuries there were sporadiclearned reintroductions of its originalmeteorological sense: ‘Shall our Mountains befulminated and thunder-struck’, WilliamSancroft, Lex ignea 1666.fume [14] Fume comes via Old French fum fromLatin fūmus ‘smoke, steam’. This in turn wentback to a prehistoric Indo-European *dhūmo-,which also produced Sanskrit dhūmás ‘smoke’and Russian and Polish dym ‘smoke’. Theword’s verbal use, ‘be very angry’, comes, likeseethe, from the notion of being ‘hot or steamingwith fury’. Derived words in English includefumigate [16] and perfume. FUMIGATE, PERFUMEfun [17] A fun was originally a ‘trick, hoax,practical joke’: ‘A Hackney Coachman he didhug her, and was not this a very good Fun?’Thomas D’Urfey, Pills to Purge Melancholy1719. It came from the contemporary verb fun‘cheat, hoax’, which was presumably a variant ofthe Middle English verb fon ‘make a fool of’.This in turn was a verbal use of the noun fon‘fool’, probable origin of modern English fond.The current sense of fun, ‘amusement,merriment’, did not develop until the 18thcentury. The derived adjective funny, in the sense‘amusing’, was roughly contemporary with it;‘strange, odd’ is an early 19th-century semanticdevelopment. FONDfunambulist see FUNICULARfunction [16] The ultimate source of function isthe Latin verb fungī ‘perform, discharge’, whichmay be related to Sanskrit bhunkte ‘he enjoys’.From its past participle, functus, was formed theabstract noun functiō ‘performance, activity’,which passed into English via Old Frenchfonction. Other English derivatives of fungīinclude defunct and perfunctory [16],etymologically ‘done only to discharge anobligation’. DEFUNCT, PERFUNCTORYfund [17] Latin fundus meant ‘bottom’. Englishoriginally acquired it via French as fond, and inthe course of the 17th century re-latinized it tofund. The literal meaning ‘bottom’ was retaineduntil the mid 18th century (‘a Glass-Bubble fix’dto the Fund of a Vessel’, British Apollo 1709),233 furlongbut gradually it gave way to the metaphorical‘basic supply, particularly of money’. Fromfundus was derived the Latin verb fundāre ‘laythe bottom for, establish’ (source of Englishfound), and the next step on from this was thenoun fundāmentum ‘bottom part, foundation’,which gave English fundament [13] andfundamental [15]. FOUND, FUNDAMENTfuneral [14] Latin fūnus, a word of uncertainorigin, meant ‘funeral’ and, probablysecondarily, ‘corpse’. From it was derived theadjective fūnerālis, which English acquired viaOld French in the 14th century. The noun funeralfollowed in the 16th century; it came from thesame ultimate source, of course, but by a slightlydifferent route – from medieval Latin fūnerāliavia Old French funeraille.fungus [16] Fungus was introduced into Englishin the early 16th century as a learned and moreall-embracing alternative to mushroom. It wasborrowed from Latin fungus, which probablycame from Greek sphóngos ‘sponge’, source ofEnglish sponge. SPONGEfunicular [19] A funicular railway is literallyone that runs on a ‘rope’. The word was coinedfrom Latin fūniculus, a diminutive form of fūnis‘rope’ (a word of uncertain origin from whichcomes Italian fune ‘cable, rope’). Fūnus alsogave English funambulist ‘tightrope walker’[18]. FUNAMBULISTfunnel [15] Etymologically, a funnel issomething used for ‘pouring in’. The wordcomes via Provençal fonilh from Latininfundibulum ‘funnel’. This was a derivative ofinfundere ‘pour in’, a compound verb formedfrom in- ‘in’ and fundere ‘pour’ (source ofEnglish found ‘melt’, foundry, and fuse). FOUND, FOUNDRY, FUSEfur [14] Old English did not have a distinct wordfor ‘animal’s hair’ – the nearest approach to itwas fell ‘animal’s hide’. Then in the 13th centuryEnglish acquired the verb fur ‘line with fur’ fromAnglo-Norman *furrer or Old French forrer‘encase, line’. These were derivatives of the OldFrench noun forre ‘sheath, case’, a loanwordfrom prehistoric Germanic *fōthram ‘sheath’,which in turn goes back to the Indo-Europeanbase *pō- ‘protect’. In the 14th century the newEnglish verb was taken as the basis for a noun,which originally meant ‘trimming for a garment,made from fur’, or more loosely ‘garment madefrom fur’; it was not until the 15th century that itwas used for ‘animal’s hair’.furl see FIRMfurlongfurlong [OE] Furlong ‘eighth of a mile’, whichhas now virtually died out except in horse-racingterminology, is part of a vocabulary of lengthmeasuringbequeathed to us by the agriculturalpractices of our ancestors. It originated as an OldEnglish compound formed from furh ‘furrow’and lang ‘long’ – that is, the length of a furrowploughed across a standard-sized square field often acres. Since the term acre varied somewhat

furnace 234in its application at different times and places,the length of a furlong could not be computedwith great precision from it, but in practice fromabout the 9th century the furlong was pegged tothe stadium, a measure equal to one eighth of aRoman mile. FURROW, LONGfurnace [13] Etymologically, furnace meansroughly ‘warm place’. It comes via Old Frenchfornais from Latin fornāx ‘furnace’. This was aderivative of fornus ‘oven’, a word related toformus ‘warm’, which goes back to the sameIndo-European source, *ghworm-, *ghwerm-, asprobably produced English warm. FORNICATIONfurnish [15] Far apart as they may now seem,furnish is closely parallel in its developmentwith frame. Both originated as verbs based onfrom, in its earliest signification ‘forwardmovement, advancement, progress’. Frame wasa purely English formation, but furnish goesback beyond that to prehistoric Germanic, whereit was formed as *frumjan. This was borrowedinto Vulgar Latin as *fromīre, which in duecourse diversified to *formīre and *fornīre, theform adopted into Old French as furnir. Itslengthened stem furniss- provided English withfurnish. To begin with this retained the ancestralsense ‘advance to completion, accomplish,fulfil’ (‘Behight [promise] no thing but that yemay furnish and hold it’, Melusine 1500).However, this died out in the mid 16th century,leaving the field clear for the semantic extension‘provide’. The derivative furniture [16] comesfrom French fourniture, but its main meaning,‘chairs, tables, etc’, recorded from as early as the1570s, is a purely English development (themajority of European languages get their wordfor ‘furniture’ from Latin mōbīle ‘movable’:French meubles, Italian mobili, Spanishmuebles, German möbel, Swedish möbler,Dutch meubelen, Russian mebel’ – indeed, evenMiddle English had mobles, though it retainedthe broader meaning ‘movable property’). Byanother route, Old French furnir has also givenEnglish veneer. FROM, FURNITURE, VENEERfurrow [OE] Furrow is an ancient agriculturalterm, going back to the prehistoric Indo-European base *prk-, which also producedWelsh rhych ‘furrow’, Armenian herk ‘newlyploughed land’, Latin porca ‘ridge betweenfurrows’, and possibly also Sanskrit parçãna-‘chasm’ and Latin porcus ‘grave’. Its Germanicdescendant was *furkh-, which producedGerman furche, Dutch voor, Swedish fåra, andEnglish furrow. FURLONGfurther [OE] Etymologically, further is simply acomparative form of forth, and originally meantnothing more than simply ‘more forward’. Itsmore metaphorical senses, ‘in addition’ and ‘to agreater extent’, are secondary developments. Itwas formed in the pre-historic Germanic period,and so has relatives in other Germaniclanguages, such as German vorder. Its verbal useis apparently equally ancient. FORTHfurtive [15] Etymologically, someone who isfurtive ‘carries things away like a thief’. Theword comes via Old French furtif from Latinfurtīvus ‘stealthy, hidden’, a derivative of furtum‘theft’, which in turn was based on fūr ‘thief’.This was either borrowed from or related toGreek phór ‘thief’, which came ultimately fromIndo-European *bher- ‘carry’ (source of Englishbear) and thus meant literally ‘someone whocarries things off’. A ferret is etymologically a‘furtive’ animal. BEAR, FERRETfurze see GORSEfuse English has two distinct words fuse. Thenoun, ‘igniting device’ [17], comes via Italianfuso from Latin fūsus ‘spindle’, a word ofunknown origin. Its modern application comesfrom the fact that the long thin shape of theoriginal gunpowder-filled tubes used for settingoff bombs reminded people of spindles. TheVulgar Latin diminutive form of fūsus, *fūsellus,gave French fuseau ‘spindle’, which is theultimate source of English fuselage [20](etymologically, ‘something shaped like aspindle’). The verb fuse ‘melt’ [17] probablycomes from fūsus, the past participle of Latinfundere ‘pour, melt’ (source of English found,foundry, and fusion [16]). FUSELAGE; FOUND, FOUNDRY, FUSIONfuss [18] The early use of fuss by Irish-bornwriters such as Jonathan Swift and GeorgeFarquhar has led to the supposition that it is ofAnglo-Irish origin, but no substantiation for thishas ever been found on the other side of the IrishSea. Among suggestions as to how it came intobeing have been that it was an alteration of force,as in the now obsolete phrase make no force of‘not bother about’, and that it was simplyonomatopoeic, imitating the sound of someonepuffing and blowing and making a fuss.fusty see BEATfutile see FOUNDfuturefuture [14] Future comes via Old French futurefrom Latin futūrus ‘going to be, about to be’,which was used as the future participle of esse‘be’. It was a descendant of the Indo-Europeanbase *bheu- or *bhu-, which originally denoted‘grow’, and also produced English be, theGerman present first and second person singularforms bin and bist, and the Latin perfect tense ofesse (fuī ‘I was’, etc). BE

Ggabardine [16] The use of gabardine for a sortof worsted material is an early 20th-centurydevelopment, but the word itself has been aroundmuch longer than that. Its central meaning (forwhich the usual spelling is gaberdine) is ‘longcoarse outer garment’. English acquired it fromOld French gauvardine, which was adevelopment of an earlier gallevardine. This wasprobably derived from Middle High Germanwallevart ‘pilgrimage’ (a compound formedfrom wallen ‘roam’ and vart ‘journey, way’),and hence etymologically meant ‘pilgrim’sgarment’.gable [14] The notion underlying gable isprobably of ‘topping’ or ‘surmounting’, for ithas been traced back by some to prehistoricIndo-European *ghebhalā, which also producedGreek kephalé ‘head’. Its immediate source wasOld Norse gafl, which gave English the formgavel, subsequently remodelled on the basis ofOld French gable (itself probably borrowedoriginally from the Old Norse word). CEPHALICgadfly see YARDgadget [19] Gadget is an elusive sort of word, asvague in its history as it is unspecific in itsmeaning. It seems to have originated as a pieceof sailors’ slang, and is said to have been currentas long ago as the 1850s, but the earliest recordof it in print is from 1886, in R Brown’s SpunYarn and Spindrift: ‘Then the names of all theother things on board a ship! I don’t know half ofthem yet; even the sailors forget at times, and ifthe exact name of anything they want happens toslip from their memory, they call it a chickenfixing,or a gadjet, or a gill-guy, or a timmeynoggy,or a wim-wom – just pro tem., youknow’. As for its source, suggestions haveincluded French gâchette ‘catch of amechanism’ and French dialect gagée ‘tool’.gagag [15] Middle English gaggen meant ‘strangle,suffocate’, so the word started out with strongconnotations that seem to have becomesubmerged in local dialects as it came to be usedmore commonly in the milder sense ‘obstructsomeone’s mouth’. In the 20th century, however,they have re-emerged in the intransitive sense‘choke’. It is not clear how the 19th-centurynoun sense ‘joke’ is connected, if at all. As forthe word’s source, it is generally said to haveoriginated as an imitation of someone retchingor choking.gain [15] Gain is Germanic in origin, althoughEnglish acquired it via Old French. Its distantancestor is the Germanic noun *waithā. Theetymological meaning of this was ‘huntingground’ (it came ultimately from a prehistoricIndo-European base *wei-, which also producedLithuanian vyti ‘pursue, hunt’ and Sanskrit veti,vayati ‘seeks, follows’), but gradually thisextended via ‘place where food or fodder issought’ to ‘grazing place’ (its modern Germanand Dutch descendant weide means ‘pasture’).From it was formed a verb *waithanjan ‘hunt’and ‘graze, pasture’, which Vulgar Latin tookover as *gwadanjāre. This preserved thesemantic dichotomy that had grown up inGermanic: the agricultural sense developed to‘cultivate land’, and it appears that the ‘hunting’sense gave rise metaphorically to ‘win, earn’.Both passed into Old French gaaigner, butevidently by the time English acquired the word,the former meaning had all but died out(although it is interesting to note that it wasintroduced into English as a pseudo-archaism inthe 17th and 18th centuries: ‘Of old to gain landwas as much as to till and manure it’, Termes dela ley 1708).gaiter [18] Etymologically as well assemantically, gaiter is an ‘ankle covering’. Itcomes from French guêtre ‘gaiter’, which maywell have been formed from Germanic *wirst-.This denoted ‘twist, turn’, and it has severalmodern derivatives which mean essentially‘twisting joint’: German rist, for example, whichhas now migrated anatomically to the ‘instep’and the ‘back of the hand’, originally signified‘ankle, wrist’, and although English wrist nowrefers only to the hand/arm joint, it was formerlyused dialectally for the ‘ankle’. WRISTgala [17] Gala comes ultimately from Arabickhil’a, which denoted an ‘especially finegarment given as a presentation’. This originalmeaning persisted through Spanish gala and intoItalian and French gala, from one or other ofwhich English got it (‘Whereupon this King andthe whole Court put on Galas [special festiveattire]’, Cabala sive scrinia sacra 1654) andsurvived into the 19th century (‘Apparelled onSunday morning in gala, as if for the drawingroom,he constantly marched out all hishousehold to the parish church’, GeorgeBancroft, History of the United States 1876).Nowadays, however, all that remains is theextended sense ‘festive occasion’, first recordedin the late 18th century.galaxy [14] The Greeks had a word for the‘Milky Way’ – and indeed it was very much thesame as ours. They called it galaxías, which wasoriginally an adjective, ‘milky’, derived from thenoun gála ‘milk’. English acquired it via late

gale 236Latin galaxiās and Old French galuxie. (Theterm Milky Way, incidentally, which originatedas a translation of Latin via lactea, is of roughlyequal antiquity in English with galaxy. Theircommon inspiration is the white appearance ofthe myriad stars packed densely together.)gale [16] Gale is a puzzling word. An isolatedearly example of what appears to be the word, inthe phrase gale wind (‘Our life like smoke orchaff is carried away as with a gale wind’,Zachary Boyd, The Last Battle 1619), suggeststhat it may originally have been an adjective. Ifthis is so, a possible candidate as a source may beNorwegian galen ‘bad’ – making galeetymologically a ‘bad wind’. The Norwegianadjective in turn may go back to Old Norsegalinn ‘bewitched, enchanted’, a derivative ofgalo ‘sing, bewitch, enchant’ (source of Englishyell and related to the final syllable ofnightingale). NIGHTINGALE, YELLgall Gall ‘bile’ [12], and by metaphoricalextension ‘bitterness’ and ‘effrontery’, wasborrowed from Old Norse gall. It gets its nameultimately from its colour, for its prehistoricGermanic ancestor *gallam or *gallon (whichalso produced German galle and Dutch gal) goesback to Indo-European *ghol-, *ghel-, whichalso gave English gold, jaundice, yellow, andyolk. The relationship of the two other Englishwords gall (‘skin sore’ [14], whence the verbaluse ‘exasperate’, and ‘plant swelling’ [14]) togall ‘bile’ and to each other is not clear. Theimmediate source of ‘skin sore’ was Middle LowGerman galle ‘sore’, but ‘bile’ could easily haveled via ‘astringent substance’ to ‘sore place’, andit may be that ultimately the Middle LowGerman word is connected with gall ‘bile’. Gall‘plant swelling’ has been traced back via OldFrench galle to Latin galla ‘plant gall’, but somelater descendants of this were used for ‘swellingon an animal’s leg’, further adding to theconfusion. GOLD, JAUNDICE, YELLOW, YOLKgallant [14] Gallant originated as the presentparticiple of Old French galer ‘make merry,rejoice’. This probably came from Gallo-Romance *walāre, a derivative of Frankish*wala ‘well’ (of which English well is arelative). Following its French model, theEnglish adjective originally meant ‘showy,splendid, gorgeous’ as well as ‘spirited, brave’and ‘courteous, polished’ (the last of which ledin the 17th century to ‘courteously attentive towomen’ and ‘amorous’). Regale [17] too goesback to Old French galer. REGALE, WELLgallery [15] The original meaning of gallery inEnglish was ‘long roofed walk way along thewall of a building’; the present sense ‘room orbuilding for the exhibition of paintings,sculpture, etc’ did not develop until the end ofthe 16th century. English borrowed the wordfrom Old French galerie ‘portico’, which camevia Italian galleria from medieval Latin galeria.This may have been an alteration of galilea(source of English galilee [16], as in galileechapel), thought to have been applied to a porchor chapel at the far or western end of a church inallusion to the position of Galilee as the provinceof Palestine most distant from Jerusalem.Gallic see GALOSHESgallilee see GALLERYgallon [13] English acquired gallon from OldNorthern French galon. This was a descendantof medieval Latin gallēta, a word for a ‘jug’which was also used as a unit of measurementfor wine. It may have been of Celtic origin. Anearly modern English dialect form of gallon wasgawn, which added to tree produced gantry [16],originally a ‘wooden stand for barrels’. GANTRYgallows [13] Gallows was probably borrowedfrom Old Norse gálgi (the related Old Englishgalga does not seem to have survived into theMiddle English period). Both go back to aprehistoric Germanic *galgon ‘pole’, whosedescendants, which also include Old HighGerman galgo and Gothic galga, were oftenused for the ‘cross on which Christ wascrucified’. The plurality of modern Englishgallows presumably comes from the fact thattechnically a gallows consists of two uprightpoles with a cross-piece in between (as opposedto a gibbet, which has a single upright).galoshes [14] In modern terms, galoshes mightbe etymologically rendered as ‘little Frenchshoes’. The word comes from Old Frenchgaloche, which was an alteration of late Latingallicula. This in turn was a diminutive form ofLatin gallica, short for gallica solea ‘Gallicsandal, sandal from Gaul’ (the name Gaul,incidentally, and the Latin-based Gallic [17],come ultimately from prehistoric Germanic*walkhoz ‘foreigners’, which is related also toWalloon, walnut, and Welsh). The term galoshwas originally used in English for a sort of clog;the modern sense ‘overshoe’ did not developuntil the early 19th century. GALLIC, WALLOON, WALNUT, WELSHgalvanize [19] The verb galvanizecommemorates the work of Italian physicistLuigi Galvani (1737–98), who in 1762discovered voltaic electricity by attaching thelegs of dead frogs to pairs of different metals. Itwas first used literally, for the production ofmuscular spasms by electrical means (SydneySmith in 1825: ‘Galvanize a frog, don’tgalvanize a tiger’), but by the mid-19th centuryit was being employed figuratively, for‘stimulate, spur’. The sense ‘coat electrolyticallywith metal’, dates from the 1830s.gambit [17] Like gambol [16], gambit originatedin an Italian noun meaning literally ‘tripping up’.The Italian for ‘leg’ is gamba (a relative ofEnglish gammon ‘bacon’). From it were derivedgambetto and gambata, both of which signified‘trip-up’. The former was borrowed into Spanishas gambito, where its underlying notion of‘underhanded procedure’ was first appliedspecifically to a chess manoeuvre in the mid-16th century. It passed into English mainly via

French gambit. More frivolous, light-heartedaspects of ‘tripping’ are preserved in gambata,which English originally took over via French asgambade and gradually transformed intogambol. GAMBOL, GAMMONgamble [18] Although its ancestry has neverbeen established beyond all doubt, it seemsoverwhelmingly likely that gamble is essentiallythe same word as game (in which the sense‘gamble’ is preserved in such contexts as gamingtables and betting and gaming). The MiddleEnglish form of game was gamen, and it isthought that this may have produced a variantform gamel (recorded in the 16th century) whichin due course became gamble. GAMEgame There are two games in English. The noungame ‘pastime, sport’ [OE] used to be a fairlywidespread word in the Germanic languages(Swedish and Danish still preserve it as gammanand gammen respectively) and may well go backto a prehistoric Germanic compound formedfrom the collective prefix *ga- and *mann-‘person’ (source of English man), and denotingliterally ‘people together, participating’. Its OldEnglish was gamen which, before it becamereduced to game (a process which began in the13th century but was not complete until the 16thcentury), bequeathed gammon (as inbackgammon) and probably also gamble tomodern English. Game ‘plucky’ [18] is probablyan adjectival use of the same word. Game ‘lame’[18], however, and its derivative gammy [19], arenot related; they may come from archaic Frenchgambi ‘crooked’. GAMBLE, MAN; GAMMYgammon Gammon ‘bacon’ [15] is not related tothe gammon [18] of backgammon. It comes fromOld Northern French gambon (source also ofmodern French jambon ‘ham’), which was aderivative of gambe ‘leg’ – hence etymologically‘leg meat’. This seems to go back ultimately toGreek kampé ‘bend’, which was usedparticularly as an anatomical term for joints ofthe body. Latin took it over as a veterinaryexpression, gamba, denoting a ‘horse’s hoof’,and it passed in due course into Italian as gamba(whence English gambit, gambol, jamb [14], andthe gamba of viola da gamba [18], playedbetween the legs) and into French as jambe, bothmeaning ‘leg’. The gammon of backgammoncomes from Middle English gamen, the ancestorof modern English game (see alsoBACKGAMMON). GAMBIT, GAMBOL, JAMBgamut [15] Gamut began life as a medievalmusical term. The 11th-century French-bornmusical theorist Guido d’Arezzo devised the‘hexachord’, a six-note scale used for sightreadingmusic (and forerunner of the moderntonic sol-fa). The notes were mnemonicallynamed ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la (after, according tolegend, syllables in a Latin hymn to St John: ‘Utqueant laxis resonāre fibris Mira gestorumfamuli tuorum, Solve polluti labii reatum’ –237 garage‘Absolve the crime of the polluted lip in orderthat the slaves may be able with relaxed chordsto praise with sound your marvellous deeds’).The note below the lowest note (ut) becameknown as gamma-ut (gamma, the name of theGreek equivalent of g, having been used inmedieval notation for the note bottom G). And indue course gamma-ut, or by contraction inEnglish gamut, came to be applied to the wholescale, and hence figuratively to any ‘completerange’ (an early 17th-century development).gander see GANNETgangang [12] Gang originally meant ‘going,journey’. It was borrowed from Old Norsegangr, which goes back ultimately to the sameGermanic source (the verb *ganggan ‘go’) asproduced the German past participle gegangen‘gone’ and Old English gangan ‘go’ – stillpreserved in Scottish gang ‘go’ and in gangway[17]. Originally literally a ‘way for going’. Theword’s modern meaning seems to havedeveloped via ‘quantity carried on a journey’ (acommon usage in Scottish English well into the19th century) and ‘set of articles carriedtogether’ to (in the 17th century) ‘group ofworkmen’ and ‘group of people acting togetherfor a (bad) purpose’.gannet [OE] The gannet used to be knowndialectally as the solan goose (solan was acompound formed in the 15th century from OldNorse súla ‘gannet’ and önd ‘duck’), and in factthe name gannet too reveals a perceivedsimilarity between the gannet and the goose. Forit comes ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic*ganitaz or *ganoton, a word formed from thesame base as produced English gander [10]. GANDERgantry see GALLONgaol see JAILgape [13] Gape and the related gap [14] are ofScandinavian origin. English borrowed the verbfrom Old Norse gapa ‘open the mouth’, whichsurvives in modern Scandinavian languages asSwedish gapa and Danish gabe. Old Norse gap‘chasm’ (source of Swedish gap ‘mouth’ andDanish gab ‘opening, open mouth’) wasoriginally taken over by English in the specificsense ‘hole in a wall or hedge’; the broadermodern range of meanings began to emerge inthe 16th century. GAP, YAWNgarage [20] As the motor-car age got under wayat the start of the 20th century, a gap opened upin the lexicon for a word for ‘car-storage place’.English filled it in 1902 by borrowing Frenchgarage. The first references to it show that theterm (station was an early alternative) wasoriginally applied to large commercially runshelters housing many vehicles – the equivalentmore of modern multi-storey car parks than ofgarages (the Daily Mail, for example, on 11January 1902, reports the ‘new “garage”founded by Mr Harrington Moore, hon.secretary of the Automobile Club … The“garage”, which is situated at the City end ofQueen Victoria-street, has accommodation for

garb 23880 cars’, and Alfred Harmsworth, in Motors1902, wrote of ‘stations or “garages” where anumber of cars can be kept’). It was not long,however, before individual houses got morepersonalized garages, and the application to anestablishment where vehicle repairs are carriedout and fuel sold soon followed. The Frenchword garage itself is a derivative of the verbgarer, which originally meant ‘dock ships’. Itcomes from Old French garer ‘protect, defend’,a loanword from Old High German warōn (towhich English ward, warn, and the -ware ofbeware are related). BEWARE, WARD, WARNgarb see GEARgarble [15] Garble used not to have its presentdaynegative connotations. It originally meantsimply ‘cleanse, sift, cull’: ‘[At Alexandria] allsorts of spices be garbled after the bargain ismade’, Richard Hakluyt, Voyages 1599.Gradually, though, ‘taking out the worst’ and‘selecting the best’ passed into ‘making anunfair selection’, ‘distorting by leaving thingsout’ and eventually simply ‘distorting meaning’.The word itself has a convoluted pre-Englishhistory: English got it from Italian garbellare,which in turn came from Arabic gharbala ‘sift,select’, a term probably widespread in thecommercial linguae francae of theMediterranean seaboard in medieval andRenaissance times. This verb was a derivative ofthe Arabic noun ghirbāl ‘sieve’, which seems tohave been based on the Latin verb crībellāre‘seive’ – itself derived from crībellum, adiminutive form of crībum ‘seive’, which wasrelated to Latin cernere ‘sift’ (source of Englishdiscern and discrete). CERTAIN, DISCERN, DISCRETEgarden [14] Ultimately, garden and yard are thesame word. Both come from prehistoricGermanic *gardon, but whereas yard reachedEnglish via a direct Germanic route, gardendiverted via the Romance languages. VulgarLatin borrowed *gardon as *gardo ‘enclosure’,and formed from it the adjective *gardīnus‘enclosed’. The phrase hortus gardīnus‘enclosed garden’ came to be abbreviated togardīnus, which gave Old Northern Frenchgardin, the source of the English word (moresoutherly dialects of Old French had jardin,borrowed by Italian as giardino). YARDgargoyle [15] The ancient root *garg-, *gurgoriginatedas an imitation of throat sounds. Fromit were derived such guttural words as Greekgargaraaizein ‘gargle’ (whence Latingargarizāre ‘gargle’) and Latin gurguliō ‘gullet’(Latin gurges, source of English gorge andregurgitate, had moved further figuratively to‘whirlpool’). Among the offspring of gurguliōare Vulgar Latin *gurguliāre, source of Englishgurgle [16], and Old French gargouille ‘throat’.Roof spouts carved in the shape of grotesquecreatures had the term gargouille applied tothem from the notion that the rain-water wascoming out of their throats – hence Englishgargoyle. Gargouille also formed the basis of theverb gargouiller ‘gargle, gurgle’, from whichEnglish gets gargle [16]. GARGLE, GURGLEgarlic see GOADgarner see GRAINgarnet [13] Garnet, as a term for a semipreciousstone, was borrowed from Middle Dutchgarnate. This in turn came from Old Frenchgrenat ‘dark red’, the colour of the garnet, whoseoriginal inspiration was probably thepomegranate (in Old French pome grenate), withits vivid scarlet pulp. GRAIN, POMEGRANATEgarnish [14] Garnish was originally a fairlyutilitarian verb, meaning simply ‘fit out, equip,supply’ or ‘adorn’. Its modern culinaryapplication did not develop until the late 17thcentury. It came from garniss-, the lengthenedstem of the Old French verb garnir ‘equip,adorn’. This was borrowed from prehistoricGermanic *warnjan, which presumably camefrom the same base as produced *warnōjan ‘becautious, guard, provide for’ (source of Englishwarn). The notion of ‘warning’ is preserved inthe legal term garnishee [17], applied tosomeone who is served with a judicial warningnot to pay their debt to anyone other than theperson who is seeking repayment. WARNgarotte [17] Garotte is widely used simply for‘strangle’, but its strict application is to a formerSpanish method of capital punishment bystrangulation or breaking the neck, in which ametal collar was screwed increasingly tight. Itgot its name from Spanish garrote, whichoriginally meant ‘cudgel’: in earlier, lesssophisticated or more impromptu versions of theexecution, a cudgel or stick was inserted into aband around the neck and twisted round andround so as to tighten the band. The immediatesource of garrote was no doubt Old Frenchgarrot, from an earlier guaroc ‘club, stick, rodfor turning’, whose form suggests a Celticorigin.garrison [13] The notion underlying garrison isof ‘protection’. Its ultimate source wasGermanic *war-, denoting ‘caution’, which alsoproduced English ward, warn, wary, and the-ware of beware. This produced the verb*warjan ‘protect, defend’, which Old Frenchborrowed as garir (the related garer gaveEnglish garage). From it was derived the OldFrench noun garison ‘defence, protection’, fromwhich English borrowed garrison. The concretesenses ‘fortress’, and hence ‘detachment oftroops in such a fortress’, developed in the 15thcentury. BEWARE, GARAGE, WARD, WARN, WARYgarter [14] The ultimate source of garter wasprobably an unrecorded Gaulish word meaning‘leg’ (related to Welsh gar ‘leg’). It wasborrowed into Old French at some point andused as the basis of the noun garet, which (inrelation to people) meant ‘place where the legbends, knee’. From this in turn was derived Old

French gartier ‘band just above or below theknee’, source of English garter. The BritishOrder of the Garter dates, according to themedieval French chronicler Jean Froissart, fromaround 1344. The story of its origin, notrecorded until over 250 years later and neverauthenticated, is that while the Countess ofSalisbury was dancing with King Edward III, hergarter fell off; the king picked it up and put it onhis own leg, remarking somewhat cryptically inAnglo-French ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ –‘Shamed be he who thinks evil of it’, and namedthe order of knighthood which he founded afterthis very garter.garth see YARDgas [17] We get gas from a Flemishpronunciation of Greek kháos ‘chasm, void’ (aderivative of Indo-European *ghəw- ‘hollow’,and source of English chaos [15]). The Flemishchemist J B van Helmont (1577–1644) used theGreek word to denote an occult principal,supposedly an ultra-refined form of water, whichhe postulated as existing in all matter. The soundof Greek kh is roughly equivalent of thatrepresented by Dutch and Flemish g, and so theword came to be spelled gas. Its modernapplication to any indefinitely expandingsubstance dates from the late 18th century.The derivative gasoline, source of AmericanEnglish gas ‘petrol’, dates from the late 19thcentury. CHAOSgash [16] Greek kharássein meant ‘sharpen,engrave, cut’ (it gave English character). It wasborrowed into Latin as charaxāre, which appearsto have found its way into Old Northern Frenchas garser ‘cut, slash’. English took this over asgarse, which survived, mainly as a surgical termmeaning ‘make incisions’, into the 17th century.An intermediate form garsh, recorded in the16th century, suggests that this was the source ofmodern English gash. CHARACTERgasket [17] Although it has never beenestablished for certain, it seems likely that gasketmay have originated as a word meaning ‘littlegirl’ – namely French garcette. This is adiminutive of grace ‘girl’, the feminine form ofgars ‘boy’ (whence garçon). It is usedfiguratively for a ‘small rope’, and wasoriginally borrowed into English in the 17thcentury as gassit, used as a nautical term for a‘small rope for attaching a furled sail to a mast’.Modern English gasket, first recorded in theearly 17th century, seems to be an alteration ofthis. The main present-day sense ‘joint seal’(originally made from tow or plaited hemp)developed in the early 19th century.gastric [17] Grek gastér meant ‘stomach’ (it wasrelated to Greek gráō ‘gnaw, eat’ and Sanskritgras- ‘devour’). It was used as the basis of themodern Latin adjective gastricus ‘of thestomach’, which English acquired via Frenchgastrique. Derivatives include gastronomy‘culinary connoisseurship’ [19], originally aFrench coinage, and gastropod ‘mollusc’ [19],239 gauntletliterally ‘stomach-foot’ (from the ventral discused by molluscs as a ‘foot’).gate Of the two English words gate, only onesurvives in general use. Gate ‘doorlike structure’[OE] comes from a prehistoric Germanic*gatam, whose other descendants, includingDutch gat ‘hole, opening’, suggest that itoriginally denoted an ‘opening in a wall’ ratherthan the ‘structure used to close such anopening’. Irish has borrowed it as geata. Theother gate ‘way, path’ [13] now survives only instreet-names, particularly in the North ofEngland (for instance, York’s Micklegate andCoppergate); its other main meaning, ‘way ofwalking’, has been partitioned off since the 18thcentury in the spelling gait. It was borrowedfrom Old Norse gata ‘path, passage’, whichcomes ultimately from prehistoric Germanic*gatwōn.gather [OE] Gather goes back ultimately toGermanic *gath- ‘bring together, unite’ (whichalso produced English good). From it wasderived *gadurī (source of English together),which in turn formed the basis of a verb*gadurōjan. Its offspring include Middle HighGerman gaten ‘come together’, Old Frisiangadia ‘unite’, and Old English gaderian, whencemodern English gather. It also produced Germangatte ‘husband, spouse’, originally ‘companion’. GOOD, TOGETHERgaudy [16] Middle English had a colour termgaudy-green ‘yellowish-green’, whichoriginally denoted ‘green produced by dyeobtained from the plant dyer’s rocket, Resedaluteola’, a plant formerly known as weld [14].The word weld came from a Germanic sourcewhich, borrowed into Old French, producedgaude – whence English gaudy-green. It hasbeen claimed that this gaudy soon lost its literalmeaning ‘produced from weld-dye’, and came tobe interpreted as ‘bright’. Other etymologists,however, favour the explanation that gaudycomes from gaud ‘joke, plaything’ [14], whichwas adapted from Old French gaudir ‘rejoice’, adescendant of Latin gaudēre ‘delight in’ (fromwhich English gets joy).gauge see ENGAGEgauntlet The gauntlet of ‘run the gauntlet’ hasno etymological connection with gauntlet‘glove’ [15]. The latter was borrowed from OldFrench gantelet, a diminutive form of gant‘glove’. This was originally a Germanicloanword, with surviving relatives in Swedishand Danish vante ‘glove’. As for ‘running thegauntlet’, it was to begin with ‘running thegantlope’, in which gantlope signified ‘two linesof people armed with sticks, who attackedsomeone forced to run between them’. This wasborrowed in the 17th century from Swedishgatlopp, a descendant of Old Swedish gatulop‘passageway’; this was a compound nounformed from gata ‘way’ (related to English gate,gait) and lop ‘course’ (related to English leapand lope). Under the influence of gauntlet‘glove’, English changed gatlopp to gantlope,and thence to gantlet (now restricted in use to an

gauze 240‘overlapping section of railway track’) andgauntlet (as in ‘run the gauntlet’). GAIT, GATE, LEAP, LOPEgauze [16] Many terms for various types offabric come from the name of a place they wereoriginally associated with, from obviousderivatives such as damask from Damascus tomore obscure associations like denim fromNîmes in France, and gauze appears to be noexception. It was borrowed from French gaze,which is generally assumed to have been namedafter Gaza, a city in medieval Palestine whichwas closely associated with the production ofgauze.gay [13] English borrowed gay from Old Frenchgai, an adjective of uncertain origin connectedby some with Old High German gāhi ‘sudden,impulsive’. ‘Happy’ is its ancestral meaning,stretching back to Old French gai. The 20thcenturysense ‘homosexual’, which first cameinto general use in the 1950s, can probably betraced back to the 17th-century meaning‘sexually dissolute’. By the early 19th century itwas being applied specifically to the world ofprostitution, and it seems not unlikely that maleprostitutes and their male clients could havebeen the vector for the present-day usage. Areported 1868 song by the US femaleimpersonator Will S. Hays was supposedlycalled ‘The Gay Young Clerk in the Dry GoodsStore’, but it is not entirely clear what ‘gay’ issupposed to have meant here, and the earliestreliable printed record of the ‘homosexual’ senseis from 1933. The adjective underwent a furthersemantic flipflop in the early 21st century, whenkids’ slang commandeered it, paradoxically, for‘sad’.gaze [14] Gaze is probably of Scandinavianorigin, although its precise antecedents havenever been pinned down. Swedish has a dialectverb gasa ‘gape, stare’, which may be related,and it could be connected in some way with OldNorse gá ‘heed’, source of a Middle Englishverb gaw ‘gape, stare’, which may lie behindmodern English gawk [18]. These suggestions fitsemantically, for the earliest use of gaze inEnglish was in the sense ‘gawp, stare’; onlygradually was this over-taken by the politer ‘lookintently’. Gazebo [18] probably originated as a‘humorous’ quasi-Latin coinage based on gaze,using the Latin first person singular future suffix-ēbō, as if gazebo meant ‘I shall gaze’. GAZEBOgazette [17] If the Sun or the Mirror were calledthe 22p, they would be echoing the origins of theword gazette. In Renaissance Venice, a‘newspaper’ was termed casually gazeta de lanovita (gazeta for short), literally a ‘pennyworthof news’ – for a gazeta was the name of a smallVenetian copper coin (probably a diminutiveform of gazza ‘magpie’). Italian took the wordover as gazzetta, and passed it on to English viaFrench. The verbal use of gazette, ‘announce amilitary promotion officially’, arises from thepractice of printing such announcements in theBritish government newspaper, the LondonGazette (first published in the 17th century).The derived gazeteer [17], ultimately fromItalian gazzettiere, originally meant ‘journalist’.Its current sense ‘index of places’ was inspiredby Laurence Echard’s The Gazetteer’s; or aNewsman’s Interpreter: Being a GeographicalIndex 1693.gear [13] The etymological meaning of gear isroughly ‘that which puts one in a state ofreadiness’ – hence ‘equipment, apparatus’. Itsultimate source is prehistoric Indo-European*garw-, which also produced the now obsoleteEnglish adjective yare ‘ready’ and (viaGermanic, Italian, and French) garh [16]. Aderivative *garwīn- passed into Old Norse asgervi, which English borrowed as gear. Themechanical sense of the word developed in the16th century. GARBgeezer [19] Originally, a geezer seems to havebeen ‘someone who went around in disguise’.The word probably represents a dialectalpronunciation of the now obsolete guiser‘someone wearing a masquerade as part of aperformance, mummer’. This was a derivative ofguise [13], which, together with disguise [14],goes back ultimately to prehistoric Germanic*wīsōn, ancestor of archaic English wise‘manner’. DISGUISE, GUISE, WISEgel see JELLYgelatine see JELLYgem [14] Gem comes via Old French gemmefrom Latin gemma. This originally meant ‘bud’,and the sense ‘precious stone’ was only asecondary metaphorical extension. Theunderlying semantic stratum still appears in suchbotanical terms as gemmation ‘formation ofbuds’ [18].general [13] General is one of a vast range ofEnglish words which go back ultimately to theprehistoric Indo-European base *gen-, *gon-,*gn-, denoting ‘produce’. Its Germanicoffshoots include kin, kind, and probably king,but for sheer numbers it is the Latin descendantsgenus ‘race, type’, gēns ‘race, people’, gignere‘beget’, and nāscī ‘be born’ (source of nation,nature, etc) that have been the providers. Fromgenus come gender [14] and its French-derivedcounterpart genre [19], generate [16],generation [13], generic [17], generous, andgenus [16] itself. Gēns produced genteel, gentile,gentle, and gentry, while gignere was the sourceof genital [14], genitive [14], gingerly [16](originally ‘daintily’, as if befitting someone of‘noble birth’), indigenous, and ingenuous. Aseparate Latin strand is represented by geniusand genie, and its derivative genial, while Greekdescendants of Indo-European *gen-, *gon- areresponsible for gene [20], genealogy [13],genesis [OE], genetic [19], genocide [20](apparently coined by the Polish-born Americanjurist Raphael Lemkin in 1944), and gonorrhoea[16] (literally ‘flow of semen’).

As for general itself, it comes via Old Frenchgeneral from Latin generālis ‘of the genus ortype (as a whole)’, particularly as contrastedwith speciālis ‘of the species’ (source of Englishspecial). The application of the noun general to‘senior military officer’ originated in the 16thcentury as an abbreviation of the phrase captaingeneral (where the general was an adjective), atranslation of French capitaine générale. GENDER, GENE, GENEALOGY, GENERATE,GENEROUS, GENESIS, GENETIC, GENIE, GENITAL,GENIUS, GENOCIDE, GINGERLY, GONORRHOEA,INDIGENOUS, INGENUOUS, JAUNTY, KIN, KINDgenerous [16] Generous comes via Old Frenchgenereux from Latin generōsus, which originallymeant ‘of noble birth’ (a sense which survived inEnglish into the late 17th century – RichardKnolles, for instance, in his General history ofthe Turks 1603, wrote of ‘many knights ofgenerous extraction’). It was a derivative ofgenus in the sense ‘birth, stock, race’, and harksback semantically to its ultimate source in theIndo-European base *gen- ‘produce’ (seeGENERAL). Its semantic progression from ‘noblyborn’ through ‘noble-minded, magnanimous’ to‘liberal in giving’ took place largely in Latin. GENERALgenetic see GENERALgenital see GENERALgenitivegenitive see GENERALgenius [16] Latin genius originally meant ‘deityof generation and birth’. It came ultimately fromthe Indo-European base *gen- ‘produce’ (sourceof English gene, generate, genitive, etc),probably via a derivative *gnjos. It broadenedout considerably in meaning, initially to‘attendant spirit’, the sense in which Englishoriginally acquired it (French took it over asgénie, a word which, because of its phonetic andsemantic similarity to Arabic jinn, 18th-centurytranslators of the Arabian nights eagerly adoptedinto English as genie). The main modern Englishsense, ‘person of outstanding intellectualability’, which dates from the 17th century, goesback to a comparatively rare Latin ‘intellectualcapacity’. Genial [16] comes from Latingeniālis, a derivative of genius, which againoriginally meant ‘of generation and birth’ (asense which survived into English: ‘And thou,glad Genius! in whose gentle hand the bridalbower and genial bed remain’, Edmund Spenser,Epithalamion 1595). It later developed in Latinto ‘pleasant, festive’. GENERALgenocide see GENERALgenre see GENERALgentlegentle [13] Expressions like ‘of gentle birth’,and related forms such as gentility [14] andgentleman [13] point up the original linkbetween gentle and ‘family, stock, birth’. Theword comes via Old French gentil from Latingentīlis, a derivative of gēns ‘family, stock’,which in turn goes back to the Indo-Europeanbase *gen- ‘produce’ (source of English gene,generate, genitive, etc). To begin with it meant‘of the same family’, but by post-classical times241 germit had shifted to ‘of good family’, the sense inwhich English originally acquired it. Like theclosely related generous, it then moved onsemantically from ‘well-born’ to ‘having a noblecharacter, generous, courteous’, but interestinglythis sense has virtually died out in English(except in such fixed phrases as gentle knightand gentle reader), having been replaced sincethe 16th century by ‘mild, tender’.French gentil was reborrowed into English inthe 16th century as genteel, in which againconnotations of good breeding figure highly.Attempts at a French accent resulted ultimatelyin jaunty [17], which originally meant ‘wellbred’or ‘elegant’.The other English descendant of Latingentīlis is the directly borrowed gentile [14],whose application to ‘non-Jewish people’ comesfrom its use in the Vulgate, the Latin version ofthe Bible. GENERALgenuine [16] Latin genu meant ‘knee’ (it comesfrom the same Indo-European ancestor asEnglish knee, and gave English genuflection[16]). In Rome and elsewhere in the ancientworld, it was the convention for a father toacknowledge a newly-born child as his own byplacing it on his knee – hence the child wasgenuinus. GENUFLECTION, KNEEgenus see GENERALgeography [16] All the English ‘geo-’ words(geography, geology [18], geometry [14], etc)come ultimately from Greek gē ‘earth’, a wordprobably of pre-Indo-European origin, whoseHomeric form gaia was used as the name of theGreek goddess of the earth. Geography denotesliterally the ‘describing of the earth’; geometrythe ‘measuring of the earth’ (from its earlyapplication to the measuring of land andsurveying). GEOLOGY, GEOMETRYgeranium [16] The native English name for the‘geranium’, cranesbill, shows that the samethought occurred independently to the speakersof two independent languages many miles andcenturies apart. For the plant’s seed case is longand pointed, very much like the beak of a crane;and geranium comes via Latin from Greekgeránion, literally ‘little crane’, a diminutiveform of géranos ‘crane’ (which is related toEnglish crane). CRANEgerm [17] As its close relatives germane andgerminate [17] suggest, germ has more to doetymologically with ‘sprouting’ and ‘coming tolife’ than with ‘disease’. It comes via Old Frenchgerme from Latin germen ‘sprout, offshoot’,which may go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *gen- ‘produce’ (source ofEnglish gene, generate, genitive, etc). Themeaning ‘sprout, from which new life develops’persisted into English (and still occurs in suchcontexts as wheatgerm – and indeed inmetaphorical expressions like ‘the germ of anidea’). Then at the beginning of the 19th century

germane 242it began to be used to put into words the idea ofa ‘seed’ from which a disease grew: ‘Thevaccine virus must act in one or other of thesetwo ways: either it must destroy the germe of thesmall-pox … or it must neutralize this germe’,Medical Journal 1803. By the end of the centuryit was an accepted colloquialism for ‘harmfulmicroorganism’. GERMANE, GERMINATEgermane [19] Germane is an alteration ofgerman ‘closely related’ [14], which nowsurvives only in the rather archaic expressioncousin-german. This came via Old Frenchgermain from Latin germānus, which meant ‘ofthe same race’ (it was a derivative of germen‘sprout, offspring’, from which English getsgerm). The use of germane for ‘relevant’ asopposed to simply ‘related’ seems to have beeninspired by Hamlet’s comment that a remark ofOsric’s would have been ‘more german to thematter, if we could carry cannon by our sides’.(The nationality term German [16], incidentally,is probably of Celtic origin, and has noetymological connection with germane.) GERMgerminate see GERMgerrymander [19] The story goes that in 1812the governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry,instituted some electoral boundary changesfavourable to his party, the Democrats. When apainter named Stuart saw these outlined on amap in the office of a newspaper editor, heremarked that the resulting area resembled asalamander in shape. ‘A gerrymander, youmean!’ replied the editor – and the term caughton for ‘unfair manipulation of constituencyboundaries’.gestation [16] Etymologically, gestation is theperiod during which unborn young is ‘carried’inside the womb. Indeed, to begin with the wordmeant simply ‘carrying’ in English (‘Gestacion,that is to be carried of another thing, without anytravail of the body itself’, William Bullein,Bulwark of Defence Against All Sickness 1562).It comes from Latin gestātiō, a derivative of theverb gerere ‘carry, conduct oneself, act’. Thishas given a wide variety of words to English,including congest, digest, gerund, gesture,jester, register, and suggest (gerund [16] comesfrom Latin gerundum, a variant of gerendum‘carrying on’, the gerund of gerere). CONGEST, DIGEST, GESTURE, JESTER, REGISTER,SUGGESTgesture [15] Originally, a person’s gesture wastheir ‘bearing’, the way they ‘carried’themselves: ‘He was a knight of yours full true,and comely of gesture’, Sir Cleges 1410. But bythe 16th century it was well on its way via‘bodily movement’ to ‘bodily movementconveying a particular message’. The word camefrom medieval Latin gestūra, a derivative ofLatin gerere ‘carry, conduct oneself, act’. Aparallel derivative was gestus ‘action’ (ultimatesource of English jest and jester), whosediminutive gesticulus produced Englishgesticulate [17]. GESTATION, GESTICULATE, JEST, JESTERget [13] Get, now one of the most pervasive ofEnglish words, has only been in the language forthe (comparatively) short period of 800 years. Itwas borrowed from Old Norse geta (although arelated, hundred-per-cent English -get, whichoccurs in beget and forget, dates back to OldEnglish times). Both come via a prehistoricGermanic *getan from Indo-European *ghed-,which signified ‘seize’ (guess is ultimately fromthe same source). Gotten is often quoted as anAmerican survival of a primeval past participlesince abandoned by British English, but in factthe original past participle of got was getten,which lasted into the 16th century; gotten was aMiddle English innovation, based on suchmodels as spoken and stolen. Got originated asan abbreviated form of gotten, which in duecourse came to be used, on both sides of theAtlantic, as the past tense of the verb (replacingthe original gat). BEGET, FORGET, GUESSgeyser see GUSTghastly [14] Despite its similarity in form andsense, ghastly is not related to ghost. It wasformed from the Middle English verb gasten‘terrify’, which may have been a descendant ofthe Old English verb gǣstan ‘torment’ (sourceof aghast). The spelling with gh-, based onghost, was first used by the 16th-century poetEdmund Spenser, and in due course caught ongenerally. AGHASTgherkin [17] Etymologically, a gherkin may be a‘little unripe one’. The word was borrowed froman assumed early Dutch *gurkkijn, a diminutiveform of gurk, which probably came fromLithuanian agurkas. This in turn goes back viaPolish ogurek to medieval Greek angoúrion,which has been linked with classical Greekágouros ‘youth’.ghetto [17] English acquired ghetto from Italian,but its precise history is uncertain. Among thesuggestions are that it represents Italian getto‘foundry’, from a Jewish enclave in Veniceestablished on the site of a medieval foundry in1516; that it is short for Italian borghetto, adiminutive form of borgo ‘settlement outsidecity walls’ (to which English borough is related);and that it was an alteration of Latin Aegyptus‘Egypt’, presumably an allusion to the captivityof the Jews in Egypt.ghost [OE] In Old English times, ghost wassimply a synonym for ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ (a sensepreserved in Holy Ghost); it did not acquire itsmodern connotations of the ‘disembodied spiritof a dead person appearing among the living’until the 14th century. However, since it has beentraced back to Indo-European *ghois- or*gheis-, which also produced Old Norse geisa‘rage’, Sanskrit hédas ‘anger’, and Gothicusgaisjan ‘terrify’, it could well be that itsdistant ancestor denoted as frightening conceptas the modern English word does. The Old

English form of the word was gāst, which inMiddle English became gost; the gh- spelling,probably inspired by Flemish gheest, firstappeared at the end of the 15th century, andgradually established itself over the nexthundred years. POLTERGEISTGI [20] GI originated, around the beginning of the20th century, as a US abbreviation of galvanizediron. It was soon in common use in the military,in contexts such as GI can, and the idea seems tohave got about that it stood for not galvanizediron but government issue. This misconceptionpropelled it into such combinations as GI shoe,GI soap and (facetiously) GI soldier. By the1930s this had been shortened to simply GI,designating an enlisted man in the US Army.giblets [14] French gibier means ‘game’ – in thesense ‘hunted animals’ (it comes from Frankish*gabaiti ‘hunting with falcons’). In the OldFrench period this seems to have produced adiminutive form *giberet, literally ‘small game’,which, though never recorded, is assumed tohave been the basis of Old French gibelet (l andr are very close phonetically, and each is easilysubstituted for the other). Gibelet is only knownin the sense ‘game stew’, but it seems quiteplausible that it could have originally meant‘entrails of hunted animals’ (Walloon, theFrench dialect of southern Belgium, has giblèd’awe ‘goose giblets’).giddy [OE] Like enthusiastic, the etymologicalmeaning of giddy is ‘possessed by a god’. Itsdistant ancestor was a prehistoric Germanicadjective *guthigaz, which was derived from*gutham ‘god’. This produced Old Englishgidig, which meant ‘insane’ or ‘stupid’. It wasnot until the 16th century that it acquired itsmain present-day meaning, ‘dizzy’. GODgift [13] Prehistoric Germanic *geb-, the sourcefrom which English gets the verb give, producedthe derivative *geftiz. This passed into OldEnglish as gift, which, as far as is known, meantonly ‘bride price’, and seems to have died out bythe Middle English period. Modern English giftrepresents a borrowing of the related Old Norsegipt or gift. (Modern German, Swedish, andDanish gift and Dutch gif are usedeuphemistically for ‘poison’.) GIVEgild see GOLDgill English has three separate words gill. Theoldest, gill ‘ravine’ [11], was borrowed from OldNorse gil, a word of unknown ancestry. Gill‘fishes’ breathing organ’ [14] probably alsocomes from an Old Norse *gil, never actuallyrecorded, but deduced from modern Swedish gäland Danish gjælle ‘gill’. It may well go back toa prehistoric Indo-European source which alsoproduced Greek kheilos ‘lip’. Gill ‘quarter of apint’ [14] comes via Old French gille frommedieval Latin gillo ‘water-pot’.gillyflower see CLOVEgilt see GOLD243 gipsygimmick [20]Gimmick originally meant‘dishonest contrivance’ – indeed, in the firstknown printed reference to it, in George Maine’sand Bruce Grant’s Wise-crack dictionary 1926(an American publication), it is definedspecifically as a ‘device for making a fair gamecrooked’. The modern sense ‘stratagem forgaining attention’ seems to have come to the forein the 1940s. The origins of the word are amystery, although it has been suggested that itbegan as gimac, an anagram of magic used byconjurers.gin Gin ‘alcoholic drink’ [18] and gin ‘trap’ [13]are different words, but both originated asabbreviations. The latter comes from Old Frenchengin (source of English engine), while theformer is short for geneva. This now obsoleteterm for the spirit was borrowed via Dutchgenever from Old French genevre, a derivative ofLatin jūniperus ‘juniper’ (juniper being the chiefflavouring agent of gin). English geneva wasremodelled on the basis of the name of the Swisscity. ENGINE; JUNIPERginger [OE] Few foodstuffs can have been asexhaustively etymologized as ginger – ProfessorAlan Ross, for instance, begetter of the U/non-Udistinction, wrote an entire 74-page monographon the history of the word in 1952. Anddeservedly so, for its ancestry is extraordinarilycomplex. Its ultimate source was Sanskritśrgavēram, a compound formed from śrgam‘horn’ and vẽra- ‘body’; the term was applied to‘ginger’ because of the shape of its edible root.This passed via Prakrit singabēra and Greekziggíberis into Latin as zinziberi. In postclassicaltimes the Latin form developed togingiber or gingiver, which Old Englishborrowed as gingifer. English reborrowed theword in the 13th century from Old Frenchgingivre, which combined with the descendantof the Old English form to produce MiddleEnglish gingivere – whence modern Englishginger.Its verbal use, as in ‘ginger up’, appears tocome from the practice of putting a piece ofginger into a lazy horse’s anus to make it buck itsideas up.gingerbread [13] The idea that gingerbreaddoes not much resemble bread is entirelyjustified by the word’s history. For originally itwas gingebras (a borrowing from Old French),and it meant ‘preserved ginger’. By the mid-14thcentury, by the process known as folk etymology(the substitution of a more for a less familiarform), -bread had begun to replace -bras, and itwas only a matter of time (the early 15th century,apparently) before sense followed form.The expression ‘take the gilt off thegingerbread’ (not recorded before the late 19thcentury) comes from the fact that formerlygingerbread was often decorated with gold leaf.gingerly see GENERALgipsygipsy [16] In the 16th century, it was widelythought that the Romany people originated inEgypt. They were therefore called gipcyans or

giraffe 244gipsens, which was simply an alteration ofEgyptian. The modern form of the worddeveloped in the 17th century (perhapsinfluenced by Latin Aegyptius). In AmericanEnglish the spelling gypsy is generally preferred.(Spanish gitano ‘gipsy’, incidentally, has asimilar origin.) EGYPTIANgiraffe [17] The 16th-century name for the‘giraffe’ was camelopard, a compound of cameland leopard appropriate enough in view of theanimal’s long neck and leopard-like spots, but inthe 17th century a rival term came on the scene –giraffe. This was borrowed from either Frenchgirafe or Italian giraffa, both of which go back toArabic zirāfah, a word probably of Africanorigin.girdle English has two words girdle. The morefamiliar, ‘belt’ [OE], goes back, together with itsrelatives garth, gird [OE], and girth [14], to aprehistoric Germanic *gurd-, *gard-, *gerdwhichdenoted ‘surrounding’. From *gurdcamethe verb *gurthjan, which produced bothgird and girdle (as well as relatives in otherGermanic languages, such as German gürtel,Dutch gordel, and Swedish gördel, all meaning‘belt’), while *gerd- formed the basis of *gerdō,acquired by English via Old Norse gjorth asgirth.Girdle ‘metal baking plate’ [15] (as in girdlecake) is a Scottish alteration of griddle (seeGRID). GARTH, GIRD, GIRTHgirl [13] Where girl comes from is one of theunsolved puzzles of English etymology. What isat least clear is that originally it meant ‘child’ ingeneral rather than specifically ‘female child’ (amid 15th-century text refers to knave-gerlys‘male children’), but where it came from is notknown. Among suggestions for words that maybe connected are Low German göre ‘child, kid’and Norwegian dialect gurre ‘lamb’.gist [18] Cest action gist, literally ‘this actionlies’, was an Old French expression denotingthat a case was sustainable in law and could beproceeded with. English took over gist, whichwas the third person singular of the verb gésir‘lie’, as a legal term meaning ‘grounds for actionin a suit’. The more general modern meaning,‘central point’, developed in the 19th century.give [OE] Give is part of a widespread Germanicfamily of verbs, including also German geben,Dutch geven, Swedish giva, and Danish give, notto mention Gothic giban. They all come from aprehistoric Germanic *geban, a verb ofuncertain ancestry (it has been suggested that itwas related to Latin habēre ‘have’, their oppositemeaning being accounted for by a shared notionof ‘reaching out the hands’ – either to ‘take andhave’ or to ‘give’).gizzard [14] Latin gigeria denoted the ‘cookedentrails of poultry’, something of a delicacy inancient Rome (the word may have beenborrowed from Persian jigar). This produced aVulgar Latin *gicerium, which passed into OldFrench as giser. English acquired it, but did notchange it from giser to gizzard until the 16thcentury (the addition of a so-called ‘parasitic’ dor t to the end of a word also accounts forpilchard, varmint, and the now obsolete scholardfor scholar, among others).glacier [18] Latin glaciēs meant ‘ice’ (itprobably came from Indo-European *gel- ‘cold’,which also produced English cold and Latingelidus ‘cold’). Its Vulgar Latin descendant was*glacia, which passed into French as glace(whence English glacé ‘iced, crystallized’ [19]).A derivative glacière was used in Frenchspeakingareas of the Alps for a ‘moving mass ofice’. It later became glacier, the form in whichEnglish borrowed it.Glacial [17] comes from the Latin derivativeglaciālis. COLD, GLANCE, JELLYglad [OE] The original meaning of Old Englishglæd was ‘bright, shining’. It went back to aprehistoric Germanic *glathaz, which wasrelated to Latin glaber ‘smooth, bald’ (source ofEnglish glabrous [17] and Old Slavic gladuku‘smooth’). ‘Happy’ is a secondary semanticdevelopment, which evidently took place beforethe various Germanic dialects went their ownway, for it is shared by Swedish and Danish glad(the sense ‘smooth’, also an extension of ‘bright,shining’, is preserved in German glatt). GLABROUSgladiator [16] The main Latin word for ‘sword’was gladius. It was probably borrowed from aCeltic word, in which case its relatives wouldinclude Irish claideb, Welsh cleddyf, and ScotsGaelic claidheamh (which with the addition ofmór ‘great’ produced English claymore [18]).Among its derivatives were gladiātor, literally‘swordsman’, and gladiolus, literally ‘littlesword’, acquired by English in the 16th century. CLAYMORE, GLADIOLUSglamour [18] Unlikely as it may seem, glamouris ultimately the same word as grammar. Thisseems to have been used in the Middle Ages for‘learning’ in general, and hence, by superstitiousassociation, for ‘magic’ (there is no actual recordof this, but the related gramarye was employedin that sense). Scottish English had the formglamour for grammar (l is phonetically close tor, and the two are liable to change places), usedfor ‘enchantment’, or a ‘spell’, for whoseintroduction to general English Sir Walter Scottwas largely responsible. The literal sense‘enchanted’ has now slipped into disuse,gradually replaced since the early 19th centuryby ‘delusive charm’, and latterly ‘fashionableattractiveness’. GRAMMARglance [15] ‘Touch or deflect lightly’, as in‘glance off something’ and a ‘glancing blow’, isthe primary meaning of glance; ‘look briefly’did not develop until the 16th century. The wordmay have originated as an alteration of theMiddle English verb glacen ‘glide, slide’(probably under the influence of Middle Englishglenten, the ancestor of modern English glint).Glacen was borrowed from Old French glacier

‘slide’, a derivative of glace ‘ice’ (from whichEnglish also gets glacier). GLACIERglare see GLASSglass [OE] The making of glass goes back toancient Egyptian times, and so most of the wordsfor it in the various Indo-European languages areof considerable antiquity. In those days, it wasfar easier to make coloured glass than thefamiliar clear glass of today. In particular,Roman glass was standardly bluish-green, andmany words for ‘glass’ originated in colourterms signifying ‘blue’ or ‘green’. In the case ofglass, its distant ancestor was Indo-European*gel- or *ghel-, which produced a host of colouradjectives ranging in application from ‘grey’through ‘blue’ and ‘green’ to ‘yellow’. Amongits descendants was West Germanic *glasam,which gave German, Dutch, Swedish, andDanish glas and English glass. A secondarysemantic development of the word’s base, glassbeing a shiny substance, was ‘shine, gleam’; thisprobably lies behind English glare [13], whoseprimary sense is ‘shine dazzlingly’ (the changeof s to r is a well-known phonetic phenomenon,termed ‘rhoticization’). Irish gloine ‘glass’ alsocomes from Indo-European *g(h)el-, and Frenchverre and Italian vetro ‘glass’ go back to Latinvitrum ‘glass’ (source of English vitreous),which also meant ‘woad’, a plant which gives ablue dye.The use of the plural glasses for ‘spectacles’dates from the mid-17th century. The verb glaze[14] is an English derivative of glass. GLAZEgleam [OE] Gleam is one of a very wide range ofEnglish words beginning with gl that denote‘shining’ (others include glare, glint, glister,glitter, and glow). Originally it was a noun,which came from Germanic *glaim-, *glim-(source also of glimmer [15]); the verb is a 13thcenturydevelopment. GLIMMER, GLIMPSEglebe see GLOBEglee [OE] Glee has had a strange history. It wascommon in Old English times, both for‘entertainment, having fun’ (source of themodern sense ‘joy, delight’), and in the morespecific sense ‘musical entertainment’ (fromwhich we get the ‘unaccompanied part-song’ ofglee clubs). It survived healthily into the 15thcentury but then went into long-term decline. Bythe 17th century it seems virtually to havebecome extinct. However, in 1755 Dr Johnson inhis Dictionary said that it was ‘not now usedexcept in ludicrous writing, or with somemixture of irony and contempt’, signalling thestart of a revival which got fully under waytowards the end of the 18th century. How andwhy it came back from the dead in this way is notknown. Its source was Germanic *gliujam.glimmer see GLEAMglimpse [14] Glimpse originally meant ‘shinefaintly’. It comes from the same Germanicsource (*glaim-, *glim-) as produced Englishgleam and glimmer. The modern sense ‘see245 glovebriefly’ developed in the 18th century from thenoun glimpse, originally a ‘momentary or dimflash’, hence ‘faint brief appearance’, and finally‘sight of something afforded by such anappearance’. GLEAM, GLIMMERglitter [14] Glitter goes back to a Germanic*glit-, denoting ‘shining, bright’, which alsoproduced German glitzern ‘sparkle’ (source ofEnglish glitz) and gleissen ‘glisten’ and Swedishglittra ‘glitter’. English probably acquired it viaOld Norse glitra. GLITZglitz [20] Glitz, a sort of ‘shallow but exciting andfashionable sparkle and showiness’, is a backformationfrom glitzy, an American slang termfashionable in the early 1980s. This in turn wasderived from Yiddish glitz ‘glitter’, which camefrom German glitzern ‘sparkle’ (a relative ofEnglish glitter). Its fortuitous resemblance to ablend of glamour and Ritz contributes to itsexpressiveness. GLITTERglobe [16] Globe comes from Latin globus,probably via Old French globe. Globus wasrelated to glēba ‘lump of earth’ (source ofEnglish glebe [14]), and may denoteetymologically ‘something rolled up into a ball’. GLEBEglory [13] Latin glōria had two separatedescendants in Old French: glore, whichproduced modern French gloire, and glorie,which English took over via Anglo-Norman.The source of the Latin word, which is also theancestor of Italian and Spanish gloria and IrishGaelic glōir, is not known. The now obsoleteEnglish sense ‘pride’, inherited from Latin, ispreserved in vainglorious [15].gloss English has two words gloss. The onemeaning ‘shining surface’ [16] is of unknownorigin, although no doubt it belongs ultimately tothe general nexus of words beginning gl- whichmean broadly ‘bright, shining’. Forms such asIcelandic glossi ‘spark’ and Swedish dialectglossa ‘glow’ suggest a Scandinavian origin.Gloss ‘explanation, definition’ [16] goes back toGreek glossa ‘tongue’, source also of Englishepiglottis [17]. This developed the secondarysense ‘language’ (as English tongue itself hasdone), and was borrowed by Latin as glōssameaning ‘foreign word needing an explanation’,and eventually the ‘explanation’ itself. It passedinto English via medieval Latin glōsa and OldFrench glose as gloze in the 14th century, andwas reformulated as gloss on the basis ofclassical Latin glōssa in the 16th century.Glossary [14] comes from the Latin derivativeglossārium. EPIGLOTTIS, GLOSSARYglove [OE] Not surprisingly, most words for‘glove’ in European languages are related insome way to words for ‘hand’; Germanhandschuh and Dutch handschoen, for example,mean literally ‘handshoe’; Greek kheirís wasderived from kheíris ‘hand’; and Romanianmanusa was based on Latin manus ‘hand’. And

glow 246glove appears to be no exception; it probablygoes back to a prehistoric Germanic *galōfō, inwhich *ga- was a collective prefix and lōfōmeant ‘hand’ (Swedish dialect loof ‘palm of thehand’ comes from it).glow [OE] Glow comes ultimately from Indo-European *ghlō-, in which the ghl- seemsoriginally to have had some sort of symbolicfunction, as if directly representing the notion of‘brightness, shining’ in speech. Its Germanicdescendant *glō- produced German glühen,Dutch gloeien, and Swedish glöda (all meaning‘glow’) as well as English glow and probablyalso glower [16]. GLOWERglucose see GLYCERINEglue [14] Glue is an ancient word, whoseancestry can be traced back all the way to Indo-European *gloi-, *glei-, *gli- ‘stick’. Its Latindescendant was glūten, from which English getsgluten [16], glutinous [16], and agglutinate [16].In post-classical times this spawned a new form,glūs, which English acquired via Old French gluas glue. AGGLUTINATE, GLUTEN, GLUTINOUSglutton [13] Indo-European *gel- produced awide range of descendants in the generalsemantic area ‘swallow’, among them Latin gula‘throat’ and its offspring French gueule ‘mouth’and English gullet; German kehle ‘throat’; andLatin gluttīre ‘swallow’, which was probably theultimate source of English glut [14]. Anotherwas Latin gluttō ‘overeater’, which Englishacquired via Old French gluton. GLUT, GULLETglycerine [19] Greek glukús meant ‘sweet’ (itsderivative gleukos ‘sweet thing’ is the ancestorof English glucose [19]). It had a variantglukerōs, which the French chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul took as the basis of a name ofa recently discovered syrupy liquid obtainedfrom fats or oils – glycerin (adopted by Englishas glycerine or glycerin). GLUCOSEgnarled [17] Gnarled is essentially a 19thcenturyword. It is recorded once before then, inShakespeare’s Measure for Measure 1603 (‘Thysharp and sulphurous bolt splits the unwedgableand gnarled oak’), but its modern currency is dueto its adoption by early 19th-century romanticwriters. It is probably a variant of knurled [17],itself a derivative of knur or knor ‘roughmisshapen lump, as on a tree trunk’ [14], whichis related to German knorren ‘knot, gnarledbranch or trunk’. KNURLEDgnome [18] Gnome comes via French fromLatin gnomus, a word coined by the 16thcenturySwiss physician Paracelsus for a type ofbeing that lives in the earth, in the same way thatfish live in water. It seems to have been a pureinvention on his part, and is not based on orrelated to Greek gnómē ‘opinion, judgment’(source of English gnomic [19] and connectedwith agnostic, diagnosis, and know).The term gnomes of Zürich for ‘Swissfinanciers’ is first recorded in the early 1960s.go [OE] Go is an ancient verb, traceable back toa prehistoric Indo-European base *ghēi- or*ghē-. This seems to have been relativelyunproductive outside the Germanic languages(Sanskrit hā-, hī- ‘leave’ and Greek kikhánō‘reach’ may be descendants of it), but it hasprovided the basic word for ‘move along,proceed’ in all the Germanic languages,including German gehen, Dutch gaan, Swedishgā, Danish gaa, and English go. In Old andMiddle English its past tense was ēode, lateryode, a word of uncertain origin, but from about1500 this was replaced by went, originally thepast tense of wend.goad [OE] Goad comes via prehistoric Germanic*gaidō from an Indo-European base *ghai-. Thisalso produced an Old English word for ‘spear’,gār, which survives today in garlic [OE],etymologically ‘spear leek’. GARLICgoal [16] The earliest examples of what canconfidently be identified as the word goal comefrom the first half of the 16th century, when itwas used for both the ‘finishing line of a race’and the ‘posts through which the ball is sent infootball’. Before that we are in the realm ofspeculation. A 14th-century text from Kent hasthe word gol ‘boundary’, which could quiteplausibly be the ancestor of the 16th-centurygoal, and gol suggest an Old English *gāl. Nosuch word has come down to us, but the OldEnglish verb gǣlan ‘hinder’, which looks asthough it could have been related to a noun *gāl,indicates that if it existed it might have meant‘obstacle, barrier’ (which would lead on quitelogically through ‘boundary’ and ‘finishing line’to ‘something to be aimed at’).goat [OE] Old English had no all-purpose wordfor ‘goat’; the male goat was a bucca (‘buck’)and the female goat was a gāt. In early MiddleEnglish, goat began to encroach on the semanticterritory of buck, and by the 14th century it hadcome to be the dominant form for both sexes, asis shown by the emergence around that time ofthe distinguishing terms she-goat and he-goat(nanny-goat and billy-goat are much later –18th-century and 19th-century respectively).Goat itself comes via prehistoric Germanic*gaitaz (source of German geiss, Dutch geit,Swedish get, and Danish ged) from Indo-European *ghaidos. This may be related toLithuanian zaidziu ‘play’, and if so, the goatcould be etymologically the ‘animal that jumpsabout’ (semantic development in the oppositedirection has given English caper from Latincaper ‘goat’).gobbledegook [20] This word for pretentiousor obfuscatory verbiage was the invention, in the1940s, of Maury Maverick, Texan lawyer,chairman of the US Smaller War PlantsCorporation and a descendant of the Samuel A.Maverick who gave English the word maverick.His explanation of its genesis, that it wasprobably suggested by ‘the old bearded turkey

gobbler back in Texas, who was alwaysgobbledy-gobbling and strutting with ludicrouspomposity’, stikes a disingenuous note in thelight of the previously existing US slang phrasegobble the goo, meaning ‘perform fellatio’.goblin [14] Goblin probably came via Anglo-Norman from medieval Latin gobelīnus, whichwas reported by the 12th-century Englishchronicler Ordericus Vitalis as haunting the areaaround Évreux in northwestern France. It isthought that this could have been based onGerman kobold ‘goblin’, source of Englishcobalt. COBALTgod [OE] Similar in form though it may be, andappropriate as the semantic connection wouldbe, god is not etymologically related to good. Itprobably comes from an Indo-European *ghut-.This may be related to Sanskrit havate and OldChurch Slavonic zovetu, both meaning ‘call’,and if so the underlying etymological meaningof god would be ‘that which is invoked’. TheEnglish word’s immediate ancestor wasprehistoric Germanic *guth-, which alsoproduced German gott, Dutch god, and Swedishand Danish gud.goffer see WAFERgold [OE] Gold gets its name from its colour. Theperception of what this is has varied. In theancient Germanic languages, red was often usedas a poetic epithet for ‘gold’, and in English thissurvives into the present day as an archaism.And Latin aurum ‘gold’, source of French or andItalian and Spanish oro, is probably related towords for ‘dawn’ (such as Latin aurora), theinspiration in both cases being ‘redness’. Theword gold, however, depends on the metal’syellowness. It goes back to Indo-European*ghel-, source of English yellow. From this wasformed *ghltom ‘gold’, which was the ancestorof Russian zoloto ‘gold’, Polish złoto (whencezłoty ‘golden’, used as the name of a Polishcoin), Sanskrit hiranya- ‘gold’, and the variousGermanic words for ‘gold’: English and Germangold, Dutch goud, and Swedish and Danish guld.Golden [13] is a Middle English derivative ofgold, replacing the earlier gilden, which camefrom Old English gylden. Of related forms inother Germanic languages, Dutch gulden is thesource of the former coin-name guilder [15].The verb gild, from Old English gyldan, retainsits original vowel; gilt [14] began life as its pastparticiple. GALL, GILD, GILT, GUILDER, YELLOWgolliwog [19] It was Florence Upton (1873–1922), an American-born illustrator and writerof children’s books, who dreamed up the blackfacedmale doll we now know as the golliwog. Itfirst appeared in the story The Adventures of TwoDutch Dolls – and a ‘Golliwog’ 1895, withverses by Florence’s mother Bertha. Theinspiration for the word may have been golly[19], a euphemism for God, and polliwog, anAmerican term for a ‘tadpole’ (which came fromMiddle English polwygle, a compound of pol‘head’ and the verb wiglen ‘wiggle’). The247 goonoffensive wog [20] for ‘black person’ is probablyshort for golliwog.gondola [16] The gondola, the narrow boat usedon Venetian canals, gets its name from the way itrocks gently in the water. Italian gondola is anadaptation of gondolà, a word meaning ‘roll,rock’ in the Rhaeto-Romanic dialect of Friuli, innortheastern Italy (Rhaeto-Romanic is a coverterm for a group of Romance-language dialectsspoken in southern Switzerland, northern Italy,and the Tyrol). Gondola was first applied to thecabin suspended from an airship or balloon inthe 1890s (probably as a translation of Germangondel).gonorrhoea see GENERALgood [OE] Good is such a general, all-embracingword for anything regarded in a positive lightthat it perhaps comes as something of a surprisethat it is not an ancient primary term distributedthroughout the Indo-European languages. It is astrictly Germanic word (German has gut, Dutchgoed, and Swedish and Danish god), and it goesback to prehistoric Germanic *gath- ‘bringtogether’ (source of English gather andtogether); the progression of senses appears tobe ‘brought together, united’, ‘fitting, suitable’,‘pleasing’, and ‘good’. See also BEST. GATHER, TOGETHERgood-bye [16] The good of good-bye wasoriginally God. The expression is a contractionof God be with you, a form of farewell firstrecorded in the late 16th century. Its gradualreduction can be traced through a series ofmetamorphoses (Shakespeare, for instance, hadGod be wy you and God buy’ ye), and it did notreach modern good-bye until the 18th century.The substitution of good for God seems to havebeen mainly due to the influence of such phrasesas good day and good night. GODgoogol [20] There are comparatively few ‘new’words in the English language – that is, wordswhich have not been made up fromcombinations of old words, or borrowed fromother languages, but have sprung up as entirelynew growths – but this is one of them. When inthe 1930s the American mathematician DrEdward Kasner was trying to think of a name foran unimaginably large number, ten to the powerof a hundred, he asked his nine-year-old nephewMilton Serotta for a suggestion, and googol waswhat he got. It has never really caught on intechnical use, although it has spawned acompound of its own – the googolplex, ten to thepower of a googol.goon [20] The antecedents of goon are murky. Itmay have been inspired by goony ‘simpleton’,which is first recorded in the 1890s and whichmay well be the same word as the much earliergony with the same meaning, which in turn goesright back to the 16th century and could berelated to Scottish gonyel ‘fool’. An ultimateconnection with the obsolete verb gane ‘yawn’has been suggested, but all we know for certainabout goon itself is that it was introduced to theEnglish language at large in America in 1921 by

goose 248Frederick Lewis Allen, writing in Harper’sMagazine. He claimed that it had been in use inhis family for some years, with the meaning‘stolid person’, but he had no suggestions tooffer as to its origins. It then disappears from therecord until the 1930s, when its resurrectionseems to have been set in train by ‘Alice theGoon’, a slow-witted, muscular character in thecomic strip ‘Thimble Theater, featuring Popeye’by E.C. Segar, which first came out in 1933 (it isnot clear whether Segar knew about the earlier,1920s usage). Taken up enthusiastically instudent slang, by the end of the decade goon wasfirmly established in the senses ‘fool’ and ‘thug,strong-arm man’. During World War II it wasapplied by Allied prisoners of war to theirGerman guards, and it has often been suggestedthat that was the inspiration for the goon of TheGoon Show (originally Crazy People), thepopular BBC radio comedy programme of the1950s. Its creator, Spike Milligan, denied this,and said that he got the idea from the ‘Goon’ ofthe Popeye cartoons. Either way, it is the show’sparticular brand of comical surreality thatcolours today’s meaning of the word.goose [OE] Goose has relatives throughout theIndo-European languages: Latin ānser, Greekkhén, Sanskrit hansás, Russian gus’, Czechhusa, German and Dutch gans, and Swedishgåas (not to mention Irish Gaelic gēis ‘swan’) allgo back to a prehistoric Indo-European *ghans-,which probably originated as an imitation of thehonking of geese. (The only major exceptions tothis cosy family are French ole and Italian andSpanish oca, which come from Latin avicula‘little bird’.) A Germanic extension of the basewas *ganit- or *ganot-, which produced not onlyEnglish gander ‘male goose’ but also gannet.Gosling [15] was borrowed from the Old Norsediminutive gáeslingr, literally ‘little goose’; andgoshawk [OE] is a compound of goose andhawk.The verb goose ‘jab between the buttocks’,first recorded in the 1870s, may come from asupposed resemblance between the upturnedthumb with which such jabbing may be done andthe neck of a goose. GOOSEBERRY, GOSHAWKgooseberry [16] Probably, when all is said anddone, gooseberry is simply a compound of gooseand berry. But no one has ever been able toexplain satisfactorily why the gooseberry shouldhave been named after the goose, and there hasbeen no lack of alternative etymologicalsuggestions for the word – notably that goose isan alteration of an old dialect word for the‘gooseberry’, such as groser or gozell, borrowedultimately from French groseille ‘gooseberry’.The quaint alteration goosegog dates from atleast the early 19th century.Play gooseberry ‘be an uncomfortablysuperfluous third person with two lovers’ alsogoes back to the early 19th century, and mayhave originated in the notion of a chaperone(ostensibly) occupying herself with pickinggooseberries while the couple being chaperoneddid what they were doing (gooseberry-pickerwas an early 19th-century term for a‘chaperone’).gore English has three separate words gore, twoof them perhaps ultimately related. Gore ‘blood’[OE] originally meant ‘dung, shit’, or moregenerally ‘filth, dirt, slime’, and related words inother languages, such as Dutch goor ‘mud, filth’,Old Norse gor ‘slime’, and Welsh gôr ‘pus’,round out a semantic picture of ‘unpleasantsemi-liquid material’, with frequent specificapplication to ‘bodily excretions’. It was fromthis background that the sense ‘blood’, andparticularly ‘coagulated blood’, emerged in themid-16th century. Gore ‘triangular piece ofcloth, as let into a skirt’ [OE] comes from OldEnglish gāra ‘triangular piece of land’ (a sensepreserved in the London street-name KensingtonGore). This was related to Old English gār‘spear’ (as in garlic; see GOAD), the semanticconnection being that a spearhead is roughlytriangular. Gore ‘wound with horns’ [14]originally meant simply ‘stab, pierce’; it too maycome ultimately from gār ‘spear’, although thereis some doubt about this. GARLICgorge [14] Gorge originally meant ‘throat’; themetaphorical extension to ‘rocky ravine’ did notreally take place until the mid 18th century (thesemantic connection was presumably ‘narrowopening between which things pass’). The wordwas borrowed from Old French gorge ‘throat’,which goes back via Vulgar Latin *gurga toLatin gurges ‘whirlpool’ from which Englishgets regurgitate [17].The superficially similar gorgeous [15],incidentally, is not related. It was adapted fromOld French gorgias ‘fine, elegant’, but no oneknows where that came from. REGURGITATEgorilla [19] The first we hear of gorilla is as aword used in a Greek translation of the 5thcenturyBC Carthaginian explorer Hanno’saccount of a voyage to West Africa. He reportedencountering there a tribe of wild hairy people,whose females were, according to a localinterpreter, called goríllas. In 1847 theAmerican missionary and scientist ThomasSavage adopted the word as the species name ofthe great ape Troglodytes gorilla, and by the1850s it had passed into general use.gorse [OE] Gorse appears to meanetymologically ‘prickly bush’. It has been tracedback to an Indo-European source *ghrzddenoting‘roughness’ or ‘prickliness’, whichalso produced German gerste ‘barley’. Of theplant’s other names, furze [OE] is of unknownorigin, while whin [11] was probably borrowedfrom a Scandinavian language.goshawk see GOOSEgosling see GOOSEgospel [OE] Etymologically, gospel is ‘goodnews’. It was coined in Old English as gōdspel,a compound of gōd ‘good’ and spel ‘discourse,tidings, news’ (the same word as the modernEnglish magic spell), which was a directtranslation of Latin bona annuntiatio. This in

turn was a literal interpretation or gloss ofecclesiastical Latin evangelium (whence Englishevangelist) and its source, Greek euaggélion,which originally meant ‘reward for bringinggood news’, but in its later sense ‘good news’tout court was applied to any of the fouraccounts of Christ’s life written by Matthew,Mark, Luke, and John. GOODgossamer [14] It would be pleasant to think thatgossamer, originally ‘fine cobwebs’, is adescendant of an earlier goose-summer, butunfortunately there is not enough evidence tomake this more than a conjecture. The theorygoes as follows: mid-autumn is a time whengeese for the table are plentiful (November wasonce known as gänsemonat ‘geese-month’ inGerman), and so a warm period around thenmight have been termed goose-summer (we nowcall it an Indian summer); the silken filaments ofgossamer are most commonly observed floatingin the air on such warm autumnal days; and sothe spiders’ webs were christened with the nameof the season.gossip [OE] The Anglo-Saxons’ term for a‘godparent’ was godsibb, a compound formedfrom god ‘god’ (just as in modern Englishgodmother, godfather, etc) and sib ‘relative’ (aword of unknown origin from which modernEnglish gets sibling). It denotes one’s ‘relative inGod’, one’s ‘spiritual relative’. By MiddleEnglish times, however, it had come down in theworld somewhat, to mean simply ‘close friend’,and by the 16th century it was being used for‘one who indulges in idle talk’. The modernsense ‘idle talk’ developed from the verb in the19th century. GOD, SIBLINGgouge [15] Gouge may be of Celtic origin – aresemblance to forms such as Welsh gylf ‘beak’and Cornish gilb ‘borer’ has been noted. But itsearliest positively identifiable ancestor is lateLatin gubia, whose Old French descendantgouge was borrowed by English.gout [13] Latin gutta meant literally ‘drop’ (thespelling of gutta in English gutta percha [19]shows its influence, although in fact the termoriginated in Malay getah percha ‘gum tree’). Itwas applied metaphorically to various diseasesascribed to the precipitation of fluids from onepart of the body to another, among them pain inthe joints which was supposed to be caused bypoisonous material deposited from the blood(not far wide of the mark, for the condition nowknown as gout is due to the accumulation of uricacidproducts in the joints). English acquired theword via Old French goute. GUTTERgovern [13] Politicians’ clichés about ‘steeringthe ship of state’ are no new thing; for the distantancestor of English govern is the Greek verbkubernan ‘steer a ship’ (source also of Englishcybernetics). It developed the metaphoricalsense ‘guide, rule’, and it was this that passedwith it via Latin gubernāre and Old French249 graftgoverner into English. The Latin form ispreserved in gubernatorial ‘of a governor’ [18]. CYBERNETICS, GUBERNATORIALgrab [16] Grab is a Germanic word. It wasprobably borrowed from Middle Dutch orMiddle Low German grabben. These weredescendants of a prehistoric Germanic *grab-,which could well have been related to the*graip-, *grip- which produced grip, gripe, andgrope. GRIP, GRIPE, GROPEgrace [12] Latin grātus meant ‘pleasing’. Itsmost obvious English descendants are grateful,gratify, gratuity, etc, but it is also responsible forgrace (not to mention the even better disguisedagree). Its derived noun grātia ‘pleasure, favour,thanks’ passed into English via Old Frenchgrace. Gracious [13] comes ultimately fromLatin grātiōsus; grateful [15] is an Englishformation. (The apparently similar gracile‘slender’ [17], incidentally, is notetymologically related; it comes from Latingracilis ‘slender’.) AGREE, GRATEFULgradual [16] Latin grādus ‘step’ has been aremarkably prolific source of English words.Beside grade [16] itself, it has contributed thederivatives gradation [16], gradient [19],gradual (from medieval Latin graduālis,literally ‘proceeding by steps’), graduate [15],and retrograde [14]. The derived verb gradī‘walk, go’ has produced ingredient, and its pastparticipial stem gress- has given, among others,aggression, congress, digress [16], progress[15], and transgress [16]. And degrade anddegree are of the same parentage, the latterfiltered through Old French. The origins of Latingrādus itself are not known. AGGRESSION, CONGRESS, DEGRADE, DEGREE,DIGRESS, GRADE, GRADIENT, INGREDIENT,PROGRESS, TRANSGRESSgraffiti [19] Although it denotes ‘writing’,graffiti has no etymological connection withGreek gráphein, source of English graphic. Itcomes from the plural of Italian graffito, adiminutive form of the noun graffio ‘scratching’.This was derived from the verb graffiare‘scratch’, itself originally formed from graffio‘hook’.graft [15] Graft, in its original sense ‘plant partinserted into a living plant’ (the application toskin and other animal tissue is a late 19thcenturydevelopment), came from itsresemblance in shape to a pencil. Greekgraphíon meant ‘writing implement, stylus’ (itwas a derivative of the verb gráphein ‘write’,source of English graphic). It passed via Latingraphium into Old French as grafe, graduallychanging in its precise application with theadvance of writing technology. By the time itreached Old French it denoted a ‘pencil’, and itwas then that the resemblance to two artificiallyunited plant stems was noted and the metaphorborn. English took the word over as graff in thelate 14th century (it actually survived in thatform into the 19th century), and within a

grain 250hundred years had added a -t to the end to givemodern English graft. Graft ‘corruption’, firstrecorded in mid 19th-century America, may bethe same word, perhaps derived from the notionof a graft as an ‘insertion’, hence ‘somethingextra, on the side’. Graft ‘hard work’ [19], on theother hand, is probably a different word, perhapsbased on the English dialect verb graft ‘dig’, analteration of grave ‘dig’. GRAPHICgrain [13] Grain comes via Old French fromLatin grānum ‘seed’. Its prehistoric Indo-European ancestor was *grnóm, literally ‘worndownparticle’, which also produced Englishcorn, and it has given English a remarkably widerange of related forms: not just obviousderivatives like granary [16], granule [17], andingrained [16], but also garner [12] (originally anoun derived from Latin grānārium ‘granary’),gram ‘chick-pea’ [18] (from the Portuguesedescendant of grānum, now mainly encounteredin ‘gram flour’), grange, granite, gravy,grenade, and the second halves of filigree andpomegranate. FILIGREE, GARNER, GRANARY, GRANITE, GRAVY,GRENADE, INGRAINED, POMEGRANATEgram [18] Gram, or gramme as it is sometimesspelled, was borrowed at the end of the 18thcentury from French gramme, the term adoptedin 1799 as the basic unit of weight in the metricsystem. The word itself goes back via late Latingramma ‘small unit’ to Greek grámma (sourceof English grammar), which originally meant‘letter of the alphabet’ but later came to be usedfor ‘small weight’. GRAMMARgrammar [14] Etymologically, grammar is the‘art of letters’. The word comes via Anglo-Norman gramere, Old French gramaire, andLatin grammatica from Greek grammatiké, anoun use of the adjective grammatikós ‘ofletters’ (whence English grammatical [16]).This was a derivative of the noun grámma‘something written’, hence ‘letter of thealphabet’, which was related to the verbgráphein ‘write’ (source of English graphic) andalso gave English gram and the suffix -gram thatappears in a wide range of English words, fromanagram and diagram to telegram andkissagram. GLAMOUR, GRAM, GRAPHICgramophone [19] The term gramophone wasregistered as a trademark in 1887 by theGerman-born American inventor Emil Berlinerfor a sound recording and reproducing device hehad developed using a disc (as opposed to thecylinder of Edison’s phonograph). He coined itsimply by reversing the elements of phonogram,a term adopted for a ‘sound recording’ in theearly 1880s and composed of descendants ofGreek phōné ‘voice, sound’ and grámma‘something written’. It seems to have begun togive way to record player in the mid 1950s.granary see GRAINgrand [16] The original Latin word for ‘big’ wasmagnus (as in magnify, magnitude, etc).However, it also had grandis. This not onlydenoted great physical size; it also hadconnotations of moral greatness or sublimity,and in addition often carried the specializedmeaning ‘full-grown’. This last, together with apossibly etymologically connected Greekbrénthos ‘pride’ and Old Church Slavonic gradi‘breast’ suggest that its underlying meaning maybe ‘swelling’. French (grand) and Italian andSpanish (grande) have taken it over as their mainadjective for ‘big’, but in English it remains amore specialized word, for things or people thatare ‘great’ or ‘imposing’. Its use for denotingfamily relationships separated by twogenerations, as in grandmother, was adoptedfrom Old French, and goes back, in the case ofgrandame and grandsire, to the 13th century,well before the independent adjective granditself was borrowed. But the underlying notion isas old as the Greeks and Romans, who usedmégas and magnus in the same way.prixgrand prix see PRIZEgrange [13] Originally, a grange was‘somewhere for storing grain’, a ‘barn’. Theword comes via Old French grange frommedieval Latin grānica, a noun use of anunrecorded adjective *grānicus ‘of grain’,which was derived from grānum ‘grain, seed’(source of English grain). Of its present-daymeanings, ‘farm-house’ developed in the 14thcentury, ‘country house’ in the 16th century. GRAINgranite [17] Etymologically, granite is ‘grainyor granular rock’. The word was borrowed fromItalian granito, a derivative of grano ‘grain’(which is related to English grain). (Englishacquired the Italian feminine form granita in the19th century as a term for a granular form ofwater ice.) GRAINgrant [13] To grant something etymologicallyimplies an element of ‘belief’ or ‘trust’, althoughthere is virtually no semantic trace of these leftin the word today. Its ultimate source wascrēdens, the present participle of Latin crēdere‘believe’ (source of English credence, credible,etc). This was used as the basis of a new VulgarLatin verb *crēdentāre, which passed into OldFrench as creanter ‘insure, guarantee’. Its latervariant greanter or granter gave English grant. CREDENCE, CREDIBLE, CREDITgrape [13] Not surprisingly, given thenortherliness of the British Isles, English doesnot have its own native word for ‘grape’. In OldEnglish it was was called wīnberige, literally‘wineberry’, and the Old French word grapewhich Middle English borrowed as grape meant‘bunch of grapes’, not ‘grape’. It was probably aderivative of the verb graper ‘gather grapes’,which itself was based on the noun grape ‘hook’(a relative of English cramp, crampon, andgrapnel [14]). The underlying notion is of abunch of grapes being gathered with a sort ofpruning hook. (The use of a word that originallymeant ‘bunch’ for ‘grape’ is in fact fairlycommon: Czech hrozen, Romanian stugure,

German traube, and Lithuanian keke all followthe same pattern, as does French raisin, sourceof English raisin.) CRAMP, CRAMPON, GRAPNELgraphic [17] The profoundest influence thatGreek gráphein ‘write’ has had on English hasno doubt been through its combining form-graphos, which has provided us with a wholehost of words, both original Greek formationsand new English ones, from autograph totelegraph. But descendants in their own rightinclude graphic (which came via Latingraphicus from the Greek derivative graphikós),graphite [18] (originally coined in German asgraphit, from its being used in writingimplements), and graph [19] (short for graphicformular, a term used in chemistry for a diagramrepresenting in lines the relationship betweenelements). Greek gráphein itself originallymeant ‘scratch’ (it is etymologically related toEnglish carve); it was applied to early methodsof writing, by scratching on clay tablets with astylus, and kept its job when writing technologymoved on. CARVE, GRAFT, GRAPH, GRAPHITEgrapnel see GRAPEgrass [OE] Reflecting its status as thecommonest and most obvious of plants (and, foragricultural communities, the most important),grass etymologically simply means ‘that whichgrows’. It comes from *grō-, *gra-, theprehistoric Germanic base which also producedgrow (and green). This gave the noun *grasam,from which German and Dutch get gras,Swedish gräs, and English grass. GRAZE, GREEN, GROWgrate Grate ‘framework for holding burningfuel’ [14] and grate ‘rub’ [15] are differentwords. The former comes via Old French grate‘grille’ and Vulgar Latin *grāta from Latincrātis ‘wickerwork, hurdle’. Grate ‘rub’ isultimately Germanic (its ultimate ancestor wasthe Germanic verb *krattōn, source of modernGerman kratzen ‘scratch’), but it reachedEnglish via Old French grater ‘scrape’. Gratin[19] comes from the derived French noun gratin. GRATINgrateful [16] Grateful is a curious sort ofadjective. The grate that a grateful person is fullof is a now obsolete adjective, meaning‘pleasing’ and ‘thankful’, which was derivedfrom Latin grātus. It is unusual for adjectivesending in -ful themselves to be formed fromadjectives, rather than from nouns, and it hasbeen suggested in this case that the relatedItalian gradevole ‘pleasing’ may have had someinfluence. Latin grātus itself meant ‘pleasing’ aswell as ‘thankful’, and has also given Englishcongratulate [16], gratify [16], gratitude [16],and gratuity [16], and, via the derived noungrātia, grace and gratis [15]. CONGRATULATE, GRACE, GRATIS, GRATITUDEgratin see GRATEgrave Modern English has essentially two wordsgrave. Grave ‘burial place’ goes back ultimatelyto prehistoric Indo-European *ghrebh- ‘dig’,251 grazewhich also produced Latvian grebt ‘hollow out’and Old Church Slavonic pogreti ‘bury’. ItsGermanic descendant had variants *grōb-(source of groove), *grub- (whence grub), and*grab-. This last formed the basis of *graban,from which have come the verbs for ‘dig’ inmost Germanic languages, including Germangraben, Dutch graven, Swedish gräva, andDanish grave. The English member of thefamily, grave, is now virtually obsolete as a verb(although its derivative engrave [16] survives);but its nominal relative grave, also formed from*grab-, is still very much with us. Grave‘serious’ [16] comes via Old French grave fromLatin gravis ‘heavy, important’, source also ofEnglish gravity and grief. Its application to abackward-leaning accent (as in è) comes fromthe original use of such an accent-mark toindicate low or deep intonation. ENGRAVE, GROOVE, GRUB; GRAVITY, GRIEFgravel [13] Gravel is of Celtic origin. It has beentraced to a prehistoric Celtic *gravo- ‘gravel’,never actually recorded but deduced from Bretongrouan and Cornish grow ‘soft granite’. Frenchborrowed it as grave ‘gravel, pebbles’ (perhapsthe source of the English verb grave ‘clean aship’s bottom’ [15], now encountered virtuallyonly in graving dock, from the notion of shipsbeing hauled up on to the pebbles of the seashorefor cleaning). The Old French diminutive ofgrave was gravelle – whence English gravel.gravity [16] Gravity comes from Latin gravitās,a derivative of the adjective gravis ‘heavy,important’. This in turn goes back to aprehistoric Indo-European *gru-, which alsoproduced Greek bárus ‘heavy’ (source ofEnglish baritone [19] and barium [19]), Sanskritgurús ‘heavy, dignified’ (whence English guru[17]), Latin brūtus ‘heavy’, hence ‘cumbersome,stupid’ (from which English gets brute), Gothickaurus ‘heavy’, and Latvian grūts ‘heavy,pregnant’. English descendants of gravis, apartfrom gravity, include grave ‘serious’, gravid‘pregnant’ [16], gravitate [17], grief, andgrudge. BARITONE, BARIUM, BRUTE, GRAVE, GRIEF,GRUDGE, GURUgravy [14] To begin with, the word gravysignified a sort of spiced stock-based sauceserved with white meat; it was not until the 16thcentury that its modern sense ‘meat juices’ or‘sauce made from them’ emerged. Its origins areproblematical. It is generally agreed that its vrepresents a misreading of an n in the Old Frenchword, grané, from which it was borrowed(modern v was written u in medievalmanuscripts, and was often very hard todistinguish from n); but what the source of granéwas is not clear. The favourite candidate isperhaps grain (source of English grain), as if‘sauce flavoured with grains of spice’, but graine‘meat’ has also been suggested. GRAINgraze [OE] There is no difficulty about theetymology of graze ‘feed on grass’: it wasformed in Old English times as a derivative of

grease 252the noun græs (modern English grass). But whatabout graze in the sense ‘scrape lightly’, firstrecorded in the 17th century? In the absence ofany convincing alternative candidates, it isusually taken to be simply a special use of graze‘feed on grass’, in the sense ‘remove grass closeto the ground’, as some animals do in grazing –like a ‘close shave’, in fact. GRASSgrease [13] Latin crassus meant ‘solid, thick,fat’, and hence ‘gross, stupid’ (English borrowedit in this latter metaphorical sense as crass [16],and it is also the source of French gras ‘fat’). Onit was based the Vulgar Latin derived noun*crassia ‘(melted) animal fat’, which passed intoEnglish via Old French craisse, later graisse,and Anglo-Norman gresse or grece. Old Frenchcraisse was the source of craisset ‘oil lamp’,from which English got cresset [14]. CRASS, CRESSETgreat [OE] The main adjective for ‘large’ in theAnglo-Saxon period was the now virtuallyobsolete mickle. Great at that time was for themost part restricted in meaning to ‘stout, thick’.In the Middle English period great broadenedout in meaning, gradually taking over frommickle, but in modern English has itself beensuperseded by big and large, and is now usedonly in reference to non-material things. Itsorigins are a problem. It comes from aprehistoric West Germanic *grautaz, which alsoproduced German gross and Dutch groot (sourceof English groat ‘small coin’ [14],etymologically a ‘big’ or ‘thick’ coin), but it isnot clear where *grautaz came from. Aresemblance to grit and groats has suggested acommon origin in Indo-European *ghrēu- ‘rub,pound’. GRIT, GROATgreen [OE] Green is pre-eminently the colour ofgrowing plants, and so appropriately it wasformed from the same prehistoric Germanicbase, *grō-, as produced the verb grow. Its Westand North Germanic derivative *gronjaz gaveGerman grün, Dutch groen, Swedish grön, andDanish grøn as well as English green. GRASS, GROWgregarious see SEGREGATEgremlin [20] Gremlin originated as Royal AirForce slang, as the name of a mischievous impthat caused malfunctions and crashes. It is firstrecorded in 1941, but it is said to go back to theearly 1920s. It is generally assumed that its latterpart comes from goblin, but speculation has beenrife and diverse as to the source of its firstsyllable: from the scholarly (Old Englishgremman ‘make angry’) to the inventivelypopular (a blend of goblin with Fremlin, thename of a well-known firm of brewers).grenade [16] The original grenades were smallspherical explosive-filled cases with a wick ontop. In shape, they bore more than a passingresemblance to pomegranates. The Old Frenchterm for ‘pomegranate’ was pome grenate, orjust grenate for short, and it was this abbreviatedform, altered to grenade under the influence ofthe related Spanish granada, that was applied tothe explosive device. Grenadier [17] came fromthe French derivative grenadier ‘grenadethrower’. GRAIN, GRENADIER, POMEGRANATEgrey [OE] Grey is an ancient colour term,traceable back all the way to a prehistoric Indo-European *ghrēghwos. From this was descendedWest and North Germanic *grǣwaz, whichproduced German grau, Dutch grauw, Swedishgrå, and Danish graa as well as English grey.The distinction in spelling between British greyand American gray is a comparatively recentone. Dr Johnson in his Dictionary 1755 gavegray as the main form, and even into the early20th century it was still quite common in Britain(The Times used it, for instance). Nor is grey byany means unknown in America.greyhound [OE] Most greyhounds are not grey– and there is no etymological reason why theyshould be. For the element grey- in their namehas no connection with the colour-term grey. Itcomes from an unrecorded Old English *grīeg‘bitch’, a relative of Old Norse grøy ‘bitch’.grid [19] Grid is simply an abbreviated version ofgridiron [13]. This in turn seems to have been analteration (through association with iron) ofgriddle [13], which is traceable back via OldFrench gridil to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin*crāticulum, a diminutive form of Latin crātis‘wickerwork, hurdle’ (from which English getsgrate). A parallel feminine Vulgar Latinderivative, crāticula, produced English grill [17]and grille [17]. GRATE, GRIDDLE, GRILLgrief [13] ‘Oppressiveness’ is the link betweenmodern English grief and Latin gravis (source ofEnglish gravity). The Latin adjective meant‘heavy, weighty’, and it formed the basis of averb gravāre ‘weigh upon, oppress’. This passedinto Old French as grever ‘cause to suffer,harrass’ (source of English grieve [13]), fromwhich was derived the noun grief or gref‘suffering, hardship’. Its modern sense, ‘feelingcaused by such trouble or hardship, sorrow’,developed in the 14th century. GRAVE, GRAVITY, GRIEVEgrill see GRIDgrim [OE] Indo-European *ghrem-, *ghromprobablyoriginated in imitation of the sound ofrumbling (amongst its descendants was grumins‘thunder’ in the extinct Baltic language OldPrussian). In Germanic it became *grem-,*gram-, *grum-, which not only produced theadjective *grimmaz (source of German grimm,Swedish grym, and English, Dutch, and Danishgrim) and the English verb grumble [16], butwas adopted into Spanish as grima ‘fright’,which eventually arrived in English as grimace[17]. GRIMACE, GRUMBLEgrin [OE] Modern English grin and groan arescarcely semantic neighbours, but a possiblecommon ancestor may provide the link:prehistoric Indo-European *ghrei-, which seemsto have meant something like ‘be open’. It has

een suggested as the source of a range of verbswhich started off denoting simply ‘open themouth’, but have since differentiated along thelines ‘make noise’ and ‘grimace’. Grin has takenthe latter course, but close relatives, such as OldHigh German grennan ‘mutter’ and Old Norsegrenja ‘howl’, show that the parting of thesemantic ways was not so distant in time. OldEnglish grennian actually meant ‘draw back thelips and bare the teeth in pain or anger’. Tracesof this survive in such distinctly unfunnyexpressions as ‘grinning skull’, but the modernsense ‘draw back the lips in amusement’ did notbegin to emerge until the 15th century. Groan[OE], on the other hand, is firmly in the ‘makenoise’ camp. GROANgrind [OE] Grind is part of the ancient Indo-European word-stock. Relatives such as Latinfrendere ‘crush’ and Lithuanian grendu ‘rub’point back to an Indo-European *ghrendh-. Thisperhaps denoted ‘crushing’ rather than what wewould today call ‘grinding’; for in earliest timesgrain was crushed rather than ground to producemeal. The connotations of the word seem to havechanged in step with advances in grainpulverizingtechnology. (The same is true,incidentally, in the case of Indo-European *mel-,which produced the majority of modernEuropean words for ‘grind’, from Germanmahlen and Spanish moler to Russian molot’,and also gave English meal, mill, molar, etc.)Grist [OE] was formed from the same base asproduced grind, and until the 15th century meantsimply ‘grinding’. GRISTgrip [OE] Grip comes from a prehistoricGermanic verb *gripjan, derived from a base*grip-. Variants of this base produced gripe [OE](which originally meant simply ‘grasp’), grope[OE], and possibly also grab. French borrowed itas gripper ‘seize’, from which English gets thenow obsolete grippe ‘flu’ [18]. GRAB, GRIPE, GROPEgrisly [OE] Middle English had a verb grise ‘beterrified’, which points back via an unrecordedOld English *grīsan to a West Germanic *grīdenoting‘fear, terror’, from which grisly wouldhave been formed. Dutch has the parallelformation grijzelijk. In 1900, the Oxford EnglishDictionary described grisly as ‘now only archand lit’, but since then its fortunes haverecovered strongly, and it is now firmly part ofthe general language.grist see GRINDgrit [OE] Etymologically, grit is ‘somethingproduced by pounding’. Prehistoric Indo-European *ghrēu- denoted ‘rub, pound, crush’,and from it came Germanic *greutam ‘tinyparticles of crushed or pounded rock’, hence‘sand, gravel’. Its modern descendants includeEnglish grit and German griess ‘gravel, grit,coarse sand’, and it was also used in theformation of the Old English word for ‘pearl’,meregrot, literally ‘sea-pebble’, an alteration of253 groinLatin margarīta ‘pearl’. Groats ‘husked grain’[OE] comes from the same source.The sense ‘determination, resolve’ originatedin the USA in the early 19th century, presumablyas a metaphorical extension of grit meaning‘hard sandstone’ (as in millstone grit). GROATSgrizzle [18] Grizzle ‘whine, complain’ is a bit ofa puzzle. It has no obvious ancestor, and it istempting to conclude that it originated as anironic allusion to ‘patient Griselda’ (popularlyGrizel from the 14th to the 19th centuries), theproverbial meek, uncomplaining wife. Againstthis it has to be said that in the earliest recordedexamples of the verb it means ‘grin’, and that thesense ‘whine, complain’ did not emerge until the19th century; however, grizzle ‘grin’ may be adifferent word. The adjective grizzle ‘grey’ [15]is now obsolete, but it lives on in its derivativesgrizzled ‘grey-haired’ [15] and grizzly [16] (as ingrizzly bear). It was borrowed from Old Frenchgrisel, a derivative of gris ‘grey’, which goesback ultimately to prehistoric Germanic*grīsiaz.groan see GRINgroats see GRITgrocer [15] Etymologically, a grocer is simplysomebody who sells ‘in gross’ – that is,wholesale. The word’s ancestor is medievalLatin grossārius ‘wholesale dealer’, a derivativeof late Latin grossus ‘large, bulky’ (from whichEnglish gets gross). It passed into English viaOld French grossier and Anglo-Norman grosser.In practice, the term seems largely restricted inBritain from earliest times to merchants whodealt in spices and similar imported ediblegoods, and as early as the mid 15th century itwas being used for retailers who sold such goodsin small quantities to the public. Greengrocer isan 18th-century formation. GROSSgrogrog [18] Grog comes from the nickname ofEdward Vernon (1684–1757), the Britishadmiral who in 1740 introduced the practice ofserving rum and water (grog) to sailors in theRoyal Navy rather than the hitherto customaryneat rum (it was discontinued in 1970). Hisnickname was ‘Old Grogram’, said to be anallusion to the grogram cloak he always wore(grogram ‘coarse fabric’ [16] comes fromFrench gros grain, literally ‘coarse grain’).Groggy [18], originally ‘drunk’, is a derivative.groin [15] Unravelling the history of groinrequired a good deal of detective work, and theanswer that the 19th-century etymologist WalterSkeat came up with was the rather surprising onethat it is related to ground. The root on whichthis was formed was prehistoric Germanic*grundu-, which also produced the derivative*grundja-. This passed into Old English asgrynde, which seems originally to have meant‘depression in the ground’ (although the moreextreme ‘abyss’ is its only recorded sense). Itappears to correspond to Middle English grynde‘groin’ (‘If the pricking be in the foot, anoint thegrynde with hot common oil’, Lanfranc’s

groom 254Science of Surgery 1400 – evidently an exampleof reflexology), and the theory is that the originalsense ‘depression in the ground’ becametransferred figuratively to the ‘depressionbetween the abdomen and the thighs’. By thelate 15th century grynde had become gryne, and(by the not uncommon phonetic change of /ee/ to/oi/) this metamorphosed to groin in the late 16thcentury. (Groyne ‘wall projecting into the sea’[16] is a different word. It is a transferred use ofthe now obsolete groin ‘pig’s snout’ [14], whichcame via Old French groin from Latin grunnīre‘grunt’.)groom [13] No one has ever been ablesatisfactorily to explain where the word groomcame from. It suddenly appears in early MiddleEnglish, meaning ‘boy, male servant’ (the sense‘one who takes care of horses’ is a 17th-centurydevelopment), and none of the words with asuperficial similarity to it, such as Old Frenchgrommet ‘servant’ and Old Norse grómr ‘man’,can be shown to be related. Bridegroom is a14th-century alteration of Old Englishbrdguma (the element guma ‘man’ is related toLatin homō ‘man’) under the influence of groom.groove see GRUBgrope see GRIPgross [14] Gross comes via Old French grosfrom late Latin grossus ‘large, bulky’, a word ofunknown origin (not related to German gross‘large’). Its association with literal physical sizehas now largely died out in English, in the faceof a growing figurative role in such senses as‘coarse, vulgar’ and (of amounts) ‘total, entire’.Its use as a noun meaning ‘144’, which datesfrom the 15th century, comes from the Frenchphrase grosse douzaine ‘large dozen’. Grocer isa derivative, as is engross [14]; this originallymeant ‘buy up wholesale’, hence ‘gain exclusivepossession of’ and, by metaphorical extension,‘occupy all the attention of’. ENGROSS, GROCERgrotesque [16] Etymologically, grotesquemeans ‘grotto-like’. Its Italian source, grottesco,was used in the phrase pittura grottesca, literally‘grotto-like pictures’, denoting wall paintings ofthe sort discovered in the excavated basementsof old buildings. Many of them were evidentlybizarre or highly imaginative, and so grottescacame to mean ‘fanciful, fantastic’. Englishacquired the word via Old French crotesque(crotescque was the earliest English spelling,later re-formed as grotesque on the basis ofFrench grotesque and Italian grottesca), and ingeneral use from the mid-18th century onward itslid towards the pejorativeness of ‘ludicrous,absurd’. The colloquial abbreviation grotty isfirst recorded in print in 1964. GROTTOgrotto [17] Grotto and crypt are ultimately thesame word. The source of both was Greekkrúptē, originally ‘hidden place’, hence ‘vault’.English acquired crypt directly from krúptē’sLatin descendant, crypta, but grotto came via amore circuitous route. Crypta became *crupta or*grupta in Vulgar Latin, and this producedItalian grotta, later grotto. French borrowed it asgrotte, and the earliest English form, the nowobsolete grot [16], came from French, but in the17th century the Italian version of the wordestablished itself. CRYPT, GROTESQUEground [OE] Ground is part of a widespreadfamily of Germanic words, which include alsoGerman, Swedish, and Danish grund and Dutchgrond. A common meaning element of all theseis ‘bottom’, particularly of the sea (preserved inEnglish ‘run aground’), and it seems that theirprehistoric Germanic ancestor *grunduz mayoriginally have denoted something like ‘deepplace’.groundsel [OE] The -sel of groundselrepresents Old English swelgan ‘swallow’(ancestor of modern English swallow), and ifground- genuinely represents ground, thengroundsel would mean etymologically ‘groundswallower’– presumably a reference to its rapidand invasive growth. However, in early texts theform gundæswelgiæ appears, the first element ofwhich suggests Old English gund ‘pus’. If this isthe word’s true origin, it would mean literally‘pus-swallower’, an allusion to its use inpoultices to absorb pus, and groundsel would bea variant introduced through association withground. SWALLOWgroup [17] Group was originally a term in artcriticism. It referred to the disposition of a set offigures or objects in a painting, drawing, etc. Notuntil the 18th century was it used in its currentgeneral sense. It comes via French groupe fromItalian gruppo, which was borrowed originallyfrom prehistoric Germanic *kruppaz ‘roundmass, lump’ (formed from the same base asproduced English crop). CROPgrouse English has two words grouse, neither ofwhose ancestries are adequately documented. Ithas been speculated that grouse the game-bird[16] originated as the plural of a now lost *grue,which may have come from the medieval Latinbird-name grūta, or from Welsh grugiar, acompound of grug ‘heath’ and iar ‘hen’. Grouse‘complain’ [19] is first recorded in the poetry ofRudyard Kipling. It seems originally to havebeen pronounced to rhyme with moose, but inthe 20th century has come into line phoneticallywith grouse the bird. It is not known where itcame from.grovel [16] Old and Middle English had a suffix-ling, used for making adverbs denotingdirection or condition. Few survive, and of thosethat do, most have had their -ling changed to themore logical-sounding -long (headlong andsidelong, for instance, used to be headling andsideling; darkling still hangs on – just –unchanged). Among them was grovelling, anadverb meaning ‘face downwards’ based on thephrase on grufe ‘on the face or stomach’, whichin turn was a partial translation of Old Norse ágrúfu, literally ‘on proneness’ (grúfu may berelated to English creep). It was not long before

grovelling came to be regarded as a presentparticiple, and the new verb grovel was coinedfrom it. CREEPgrow [OE] Grow comes from a prehistoricGermanic base *grō-, which also producedDutch groeien ‘grow’ and English grass andgreen. Latin grāmen ‘grass’ may indicateconnections outside Germanic, but this is notcertain. GRASS, GREENgrub [13] Grub ‘dig’ comes ultimately from prehistoricGermanic *grub-, perhaps via OldEnglish *grybban, although no record of such averb has actually come down to us (the relatedGermanic *grab- gave English grave, while afurther variant *grōb- produced groove [15]).The relationship of grub ‘dig’ to the variousnoun uses of the word is far from clear. Grub‘larva’, first recorded in the 15th century, mayhave been inspired by the notion of larvaedigging their way through wood or earth, butequally it could be connected (via the idea of‘smallness’) with the contemporary but nowobsolete grub ‘short, dwarfish fellow’ – anentirely mysterious word. Grub ‘food’, whichdates from the 17th century, is usually said tohave been suggested by birds’ partiality forgrubs or larvae as part of their diet. And in the19th century a grub was also a ‘dirty child’ –perhaps originally one who got dirty by diggingor grubbing around in the earth – which mayhave been the source of grubby ‘dirty’ [19]. GRAVE, GROOVEgruesome [16] The novels of Sir Walter Scotthad an enormous influence in introducingScotticisms into the general English language,and gruesome is a case in point. It wasapparently coined in the 16th century from anearlier verb grue ‘be terrified’, which wasprobably of Scandinavian origin. For over 200years it remained restricted in distribution toScotland and northern England, but Scott startedusing it (‘He’s as grave and grewsome an auldDutchman as e’er I saw’, Old Mortality 1816),immediately ensuring it an entrée into homes allover Britain thanks to Scott’s huge readership. Ithas never looked back.grumble see GRIMgrundyism [19] The term grundyism‘prudishness’ was based on Mrs Grundy, acharacter in Thomas Moreton’s play Speed thePlough 1798 who became proverbial for herextreme rigidity in matters of sexual morality.Dame Ashfield, another character in the play,when contemplating some ticklish moraldilemma would invariably ask herself ‘Whatwould Mrs Grundy say?’.guarantee [17] Guarantee is essentially thesame word as warrant, which is of Germanicorigin (Germanic initial w- became g(u)- in theRomance languages). It was probably borrowedinto English from the Spanish form garante (thisis suggested by early spellings garanté andgarante in English), and later changed to255 guideguarantee through confusion with guaranty [16](itself originally a variant of warranty). WARRANTguard [15] Prehistoric West Germanic *warthōnproduced English ward. It was borrowed intoVulgar Latin as *wardāre, and following thegeneral phonetic trend by which Germanicinitial w became g(u) in the Romance languages,it produced Italian guardare, Spanish guardar,and French garder. The noun derived from thelatter, garde, gave English guard. Guardian [15],borrowed from Old French gardien, has adoublet in warden. WARDgubernatorial see GOVERNguerilla [19] Etymologically, a guerilla is a‘little war’. English acquired the word during thePeninsular War (1808–14) from Spanishguerrilla, which is a diminutive form of guerra‘war’ (a word ultimately of Germanic origin,related to English war). In Spanish it still means‘skirmish’, and until well into the 19th century itwas used in English for a ‘war characterized byirregular skirmishing’ (the famous Times warcorrespondent William Russell, for instance,reported on 18 March 1862 that ‘Arkansas isnow the theatre of a large guerilla’). The firstrecorded use of the word in its present-day senseis by the Duke of Wellington, the British militarycommander in Spain, in a despatch of 1809: ‘Ihave recommended to the Junta to set theGuerillas to work towards Madrid’. WARguess [13] In the earliest records we have of theverb guess, it is used for ‘take aim’. The modernsense ‘estimate’ did not emerge until the mid-14th century. It seems to be of Scandinavianorigin, and probably comes ultimately from thesame base as produced get (Old Norse getameant ‘guess’ as well as ‘get’, and the semanticprogression hinted at by the intermediate ‘takeaim’ is probably via ‘lock on to something inone’s sights’ to ‘fix on a particular figure’ – byimplication, without exact calculation).Guesstimate, a blend of guess and estimate, isa US coinage of the 1930s. GETguest [13] Guest comes ultimately from thesame source as produced host. Their family treediverged in prehistoric times, but their closerelationship is pointed up by the fact that therelated French hôte means both ‘guest’ and‘host’. The common ancestor was Indo-European *ghostis ‘stranger’, whose Germanicdescendant *gastiz produced German and Dutchgast, Swedish gäst, Danish gæst, and Englishguest. The Old English version of the word wasgiest, which would have produced modernEnglish *yest, but it was elbowed out in MiddleEnglish times by Old Norse gestr. The spellinggu-, indicating a hard /g/ sound, developed in the16th century. HOST, XENOPHOBIAguide [14] The ancestor of guide was Germanic*wit- ‘know’, source of English wise, wit, andwitness. From it was derived a verb *wītan, and

guild 256the Franks, a West Germanic people whoconquered Gaul in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD,brought it with them. It eventually became OldFrench guider, and was borrowed by English.The semantic progression from ‘knowing’ to‘showing’ is also displayed in the relatedGerman weisen ‘show, direct, indicate’. WISE, WIT, WITNESSguild [14] Guilds probably got their name fromthe subscriptions paid by their members. It goesback to a Germanic *gelth- ‘pay’, which alsoproduced German and Dutch geld ‘money’. Anassociation to which people contributed in orderto further a common effort was a *gelthjōn,which probably passed into English via MiddleLow German or Middle Dutch gilde. Englishyield is a relative; it originally meant ‘pay’. YIELDguilder see GOLDguillotine [18] Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814), a French doctor, did not invent the devicenamed after him – such contraptions had beenaround for some time – but it was he who saw theadvantages, in terms of speed and efficiency, ofan easily resettable blade for beheading in a timeof peak demand, and he recommended it to theRevolutionary authorities. The term used for it,first recorded in English in 1793, is a fittingmemorial to him. Its application to the limitationof discussion in a legislature dates from the1890s.guilt [OE] Guilt is a strictly English word; noother Germanic, or indeed Indo-Europeanlanguage has it, and it is not clear where it camefrom. One theory is that, like guild and yield, itcomes ultimately from Germanic *gelth- ‘pay’,and originally meant ‘debt’. This is not generallyaccepted, but it is notable that the German wordschuld means ‘debt’ as well as ‘guilt’, with‘debt’ being the original sense.guinea [17] Guinea first emerged as the name ofa section of the West Africa continent in the late16th century (its origins are not known, butpresumably it was based on an African word). In1663 the Royal Mint began to produce a goldcoin valued at 20 shillings ‘for the use of theCompany of Royal Adventurers of Englandtrading with Africa’. It had the figure of anelephant on it. Straightaway it became known asa guinea, both because its use was connectedwith the Guinea coast and because it was madefrom gold obtained there. And what is more, thecoins soon came to be much in demand fordomestic use: on 29 October 1666 Samuel Pepysrecorded ‘And so to my goldsmith to bid himlook out for some gold for me; and he tells methat Ginnys, which I bought 2000 of not longago, and cost me but 18½d. change, will nowcost me 22d., and but very few to be had at anyprice. However, some more I will have, for theyare very convenient – and of easy disposal’. Itsvalue fluctuated, and was not fixed at 21shillings until 1717. The last one was minted in1813, but guinea as a term for the amount 21shillings stayed in use until the early 1970s,when the decimalization of British currencydealt it the deathblow.The guinea pig [17], incidentally, comesfrom South America, and its name probablyarose from a confusion between Guinea andGuiana, on the northern coast of South America.guise see GEEZERguitar [17] The Greek kithárā was a stringedmusical instrument of the lyre family, which hasbequeathed its name to a variety of successors.Via Latin cithara came English citole [14], amedieval stringed instrument, and Germanzither (borrowed by English in the 19th century),while Arabic took it over as qītār and passed iton to Spanish as guitarra. French adopted it inthe form guitare (which eventually supersededthe earlier guiterne), and it eventually reachedEnglish. (The history of guiterne, incidentally, isnot entirely clear, although it is obviously amember of the kithárā family. English acquiredit as gittern [14], applied to an early form ofguitar, and it seems to have been blended withLatin cithara to produce English cithern orcittern [16], the name of a plucked stringedinstrument of Renaissance times.) ZITHERgules see GULLETgulf [14] Gulf comes from Greek kólphos, whichmeant originally ‘bosom’. It was later extendedmetaphorically to denote ‘bag’, and also ‘troughbetween waves’, and these senses (the lattermodified to ‘abyss’) followed it through VulgarLatin *colphus, Italian golfo, and French golpheinto English. The derivative engulf, based on thesense ‘abyss’, dates from the mid-16th century.gull [15] Gull is a Celtic contribution to English.It was probably borrowed from Welsh gwylan,which together with Cornish guilan, Bretongwelan, and Old Irish foilenn, goes back to aprehistoric Old Celtic *voilenno-. (The OldEnglish word for ‘gull’ was mǣw, as in modernEnglish sea mew.)gullet [14] Latin gula meant ‘throat’. It was adescendant of Indo-European *gel- ‘swallow’,which also produced German kehle ‘throat’ andEnglish glut and glutton. Gula passed into OldFrench as gole or goule (whence modern Frenchgueule ‘mouth’), where it formed the basis of adiminutive form goulet, acquired by English asgullet (and later, in the 16th century, as gully,which originally meant ‘gullet’). The Englishheraldic term gules ‘red’ [14] also comes fromOld French gole, goule, in the specialized sense‘red fur neckpiece’. GLUT, GLUTTON, GULES, GULLYgullible [19] Gullible is a derivative of the nowarchaic gull ‘dupe’, itself a verbal use of thenoun gull ‘gullible person, simpleton’. Thisappears to have been a figurative extension of anearlier gull ‘newly hatched bird’ [14], whichsurvived dialectally into the late 19th century,and was itself perhaps a noun use of the obsoleteadjective gull ‘yellow’ (borrowed from OldNorse gulr and still extant in Swedish andDanish gul ‘yellow’). Some etymologists,

however, derive the noun gull ‘simpleton’ froman obsolete verb gull ‘swallow’ [16], which goesback ultimately to Old French gole, goule‘throat’ (source of English gullet).gum English has three words gum. The oldest,‘tissue surrounding the teeth’ [OE], originallymeant ‘mucous lining of the mouth and throat’;its present-day meaning did not emerge until the14th century. It is not clear where it came from,although it is related to German gaumen ‘roof ofthe mouth’, and perhaps to Lithuanian gomurys‘gum’ and even Latin fauces ‘throat’ (source ofEnglish suffocate). Gum ‘sticky material’ [14]comes ultimately from Egyptian kemai, whichpassed into English via Greek kómmi, Latincummi or gummi, Vulgar Latin *gumma, and OldFrench gomme. And gum in the exclamation bygum [19] is a euphemistic alteration of god.gun [14] Gun probably comes, unlikely as it mayseem, from the Scandinavian female forenameGunnhildr (originally a compound of gunnr‘war’ and hildr ‘war’). It is by no means unusualfor large fearsome weapons to be named afterwomen (for reasons perhaps best left topsychologists): the huge German artilleryweapon of World War I, Big Bertha, and the oldBritish army musket, Brown Bess, are cases inpoint. And it seems that in the Middle AgesGunnhildr or Gunhild was applied to variouslarge rock-hurling seige weapons, such as theballista, and later to cannon. The earliestrecorded sense of gun (on this theoryrepresenting Gunne, a pet form of Gunhild) is‘cannon’, but it was applied to hand-heldfirearms as they developed in the 15th century.gurgle see GARGOYLEguru see GRAVITYgust [16] The underlying meaning of gust is‘sudden rush or gush’, and related words refer towater or steam rather than wind. It was borrowedfrom Old Norse gustr ‘gust’, and the closelyconnected geysa ‘gush’ produced English geyser[18]. GEYSERgusto [17] Gusto originally meant ‘taste’. It wasborrowed from Italian gusto, which, like Frenchgoût, comes from Latin gustus ‘taste’. Itssemantic progress from ‘taste’ via ‘liking for aparticular food’ and ‘liking in general’ to ‘zest,enthusiasm’ is paralleled in relish. (Latin gustusitself came from an Indo-European *geus-,which also produced English choose.) CHOOSEgut [OE] Gut probably comes ultimately fromprehistoric Indo-European *gh(e)u- ‘pour’(source also of English foundry, funnel, fusion,etc), and presumably has the underlyingmeaning ‘tube through which digested foodflows’. From the same source came Greekkhūmós ‘animal or plant juice’, from whichEnglish got the technical term chyme ‘mass ofsemidigested food in the stomach’ [17].257 gypsumThe use of the plural guts for ‘vigour’ or‘courage’ dates from the late 19th century. FOUNDRY, FUNNEL, FUSIONperchagutta percha see GOUTgutter [13] Etymologically, a gutter is somethingalong which ‘drops’ of water run. Its distantancestor is Latin gutta ‘drop’ (source also ofEnglish gout). From it was formed the VulgarLatin derivative *guttāria, which passed intoEnglish via Anglo-Norman gotere. The use ofthe word as a verb, meaning (of a flame) ‘flickeron the point of going out’, comes from thechannel, or ‘gutter’, formed down one side of acandle by the melted wax flowing away. GOUTguy English has two separate words guy. The guyof guy rope [14] was probably borrowed from aLow German word (of which Dutch gei ‘ropeused for hauling a sail in’ may well be adescendant), but its ultimate ancestry is not clear.Guy ‘fellow, man’ [19] originated as anAmerican English generalization of guy ‘effigyof Guy Fawkes burned on 5 November’ – a sensefirst recorded in 1806.gymkhana [19] The British brought the wordgymkhana back with them from India, wherethey found it as Hindi gendkhāna, literally ‘ballhouse’,the name given to a racket court. Thefirst syllable gym- is generally assumed to be analteration of gend- on the analogy of gymnasium.The term was originally used for a ‘sportsground’; the current sense ‘horse-riding contest’seems to have developed after World War I.gymnasium [16] Greek gumnós meant ‘naked’.It was customary in ancient times for athletes totrain naked, and so the verb gumnázein came tomean ‘train, practise’ – particularly by doingexercises (whence English gymnast [16]). Fromthe verb was derived the noun gumnásion, whichLatin borrowed as gymnasium ‘school’. Thisacademic sense has never caught on to anyextent in English (although it is the word’s onlyapplication in German); we have preferred to goback to the original athletic connotations.gynaecology [19] The Greek word for‘woman’ was guné. It has relatives in severalmodern Indo-European languages, includingSwedish kvinna, Danish kvinde, Irish Gaelicbean, Welsh benyw, Czech zhena, Russianzhenshchina, Persian zan (whence ultimatelyEnglish zenana ‘harem’ [18]), and the nowobsolete English quean [OE], and goes back toIndo-European *gwen-. The resumption of thestudy of Greek in the 16th century led toincreasing adoption of compounds involvingguné into English. The earliest recorded ones aregyneconome ‘member of a board of Athenianmagistrates whose job was to ensure that womenbehaved properly’ [16] and gynocracy ‘rule bywomen’ [17]. Gynaecology is a comparativelatecomer, not appearing before the 1840s. QUEEN, ZENANAgypsum [17] The word gypsum originatedamong the Semitic languages, with a relative orancestor of Arabic jibs and Hebrew gephes

gypsy 258‘plaster’. Greek adopted this unknown form asgúpsos, which passed into Latin as gypsum. (AnItalian descendant of gypsum is gesso ‘plaster’,borrowed by English in the 16th century for‘plaster as a surface for painting on’.) GESSOgypsy [16] It appears that in late medievalEurope, it was widely believed that the Romapeople originated in Egypt. They first appearedin England around the beginning of the 16thcentury, and at first were generally referred to as‘Egyptians’ (a name which survived well intothe 18th century). Egyptian was soon eroded togyptian, and by the end of the 16th century a newending had been grafted on to the word toproduce gypsy.

Hcorpushabeas corpus [15] Habeas corpus meansliterally ‘you should have the body’. They arethe first words of a Latin writ, apparently in usein England since the 13th century, requiring aperson to be brought before a court of law. Itbegins Habeas corpus ad subjiciendum ‘Youshould have the body to undergo’, that is, ‘Youmust produce the person in court so that he orshe may undergo what the court decides’. Itapplies in particular to the bringing of a detainedperson before a court so that a judge may decidewhether he or she is being legally held – asafeguard against unlawful detention enshrinedin England in the Habeas Corpus Act 1679.haberdasher [14] No one is too sure whatAnglo-Norman hapertas meant – perhaps ‘pieceof cloth’, perhaps ‘small goods’ – but it is thenearest we can come to the origin of that curiousword haberdasher. The theory is that it had anAnglo-Norman derivative, *habertasser or*haberdasser, never actually recorded, whichpassed into Middle English as haberdassher.The term seems originally to have denoted a‘seller of small fancy goods’ – and indeed in the16th and 17th centuries it was often usedsynonymously with milliner, which had a similarbroad meaning in those days – but gradually itpassed into two more specific applications,‘seller of hats’ (now obsolete in British English,but surviving in the American sense ‘seller ofmen’s hats, gloves, etc’) and ‘seller ofdressmaking accessories’.habit [13] Etymologically, a habit is ‘what onehas’. The word comes via Old French abit fromLatin habitus, originally the past participle of theverb habēre ‘have’. This was used reflexively for‘be’, and so the past participle came to be usedas a noun for ‘how one is’ – one’s ‘state’ or‘condition’. Subsequently this developed alongthe lines of both ‘outward condition orappearance’, hence ‘clothing’, and ‘innercondition, quality, nature, character’, later ‘usualway of behaving’. This proliferation of meaningtook place in Latin, and was taken over lock,stock, and barrel by English, although the‘clothing’ sense now survives only in relation tomonks, nuns, and horseriders. (Incidentally, thenotion of adapting the verb have to express ‘howone is, how one comports oneself’ recurs inbehave.)Derived from Latin habitus was the verbhabitāre, originally literally ‘have somethingfrequently or habitually’, hence ‘live in a place’.This has given English habitation [14], inhabit[14], and also habitat [18], literally ‘it dwells’,the third person present singular of habitāre,which was used in medieval and Renaissancebooks on natural history to describe the sort ofplace in which a particular species lived.Malady [13] comes via Old French from anunrecorded Vulgar Latin *male habitus ‘in badcondition’. HABITAT, INHABIT, MALADYhack English has two distinct words hack. By farthe older, ‘cut savagely or randomly’ [OE], goesback via Old English haccian to a prehistoricWest Germanic *khak-, also reproduced inGerman hacken and Dutch hakken. It perhapsoriginated in imitation of the sound of chopping.Hack ‘worn-out horse’ [17] is short for hackney(as in hackney carriage), a word in use since the14th century in connection with hired horses. Itis thought that this may be an adaptation of thename of Hackney, now an inner-London boroughbut once a village on the northeastern outskirtsof the capital where horses were raised beforebeing taken into the city for sale or hire. Mostrented horses being past their best from long andprobably ill usage, hackney came to mean‘broken-down horse’ and hence in general‘drudge’. This quickly became respecified to‘someone who writes for hire, and henceunimaginatively’, which influenced thedevelopment of hackneyed ‘trite’ [18]. Themodern sense of hacker, ‘someone who gainsunauthorized access to computer records’,comes from a slightly earlier ‘one who workslike a hack – that is, very hard – at writing andexperimenting with software’.haemorrhage [17] Haemorrhage meansliterally a ‘bursting forth of blood’. It comesultimately from Greek haimorrhagíā, acompound formed from Greek haima ‘blood’and an element derived from the same source asthe verb rhēgnúnai ‘break, burst’. Haima, a wordof unknown origin, has been a generouscontributor to English vocabulary. Besideshaemorrhage, it has given haematite [17],literally ‘blood-like stone’, a type of iron ore,haemoglobin [19], a shortening of an earlierhaemoglobulin, haemorrhoid [14] (in the 16thand 17th centuries spelled emerod), literally‘flowing with blood’, and many more.haggard [16] Haggard was originally afalconer’s term for a hawk as yet untamed. It hasbeen suggested that its ultimate source wasGermanic *khag-, which also produced Englishhedge, the implication being that a haggard wasa hawk that sat in a hedge rather than on thefalconer’s arm. The modern meaning ‘gaunt’developed in the 17th century, probably byassociation with hag ‘ugly old woman’ [13]

haggis 260(perhaps a shortening of Old English hægtesse‘witch’, a word of unknown origin related toGerman hexe ‘witch’). HEDGEhaggis [15] Improbable as it may seem, theleading candidate for the source of the wordhaggis is Old French agace ‘magpie’.Corroborative evidence for this, circumstantialbut powerful, is the word pie, which alsooriginally meant ‘magpie’ (modern Englishmagpie comes from it) but was apparentlyapplied to a ‘baked pastry case with a filling’from the notion that the collection of edible oddsand ends a pie contained was similar to thecollection of trinkets assembled by theacquisitive magpie. On this view, themiscellaneous assortment of sheep’s entrails andother ingredients in a haggis represents themagpie’s hoard. An alternative possibility,however, is that the word comes from thenorthern Middle English verb haggen ‘chop’, aborrowing from Old Norse related ultimately toEnglish hew.hail Not surprisingly, hail ‘frozen rain’ [OE] andhail ‘call out’ [12] are quite unrelated. Theformer, together with its German and Dutchrelative hagel, comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *hagalaz, which is related ultimatelyto Greek kákhlēx ‘pebble’. The verb hail isclosely related to hale and whole. It comes fromthe noun hail, which in turn was a nominal useof the now obsolete adjective hail ‘healthy’(preserved in wassail, literally ‘be healthy’).This was borrowed from heill, the Old Norsecounterpart of English whole. HALE, WASSAIL, WHOLEhair [OE] No general Indo-European term for‘hair’ has come down to us. All the ‘hair’-wordsin modern European languages are descendedfrom terms for particular types of hair – hair onthe head, hair on other parts of the body, animalhair – or for single hairs or hair collectively, andindeed many retain these specialized meanings:French cheveu, for instance, means ‘hair of thehead’, whereas poil denotes ‘body hair’ or‘animal hair’. In the case of English hair,unfortunately, it is not clear which of thesecategories originally applied, although somehave suggested a connection with Lithuanianserys ‘brush’, which might indicate that theprehistoric ancestor of hair was a ‘bristly’ word.The furthest back in time we can trace it is toWest and North Germanic *khǣram, source alsoof German, Dutch, and Danish haar andSwedish hår.The slang use of hairy for ‘difficult’ is firstrecorded in the mid 19th century, in an eruditecontext that suggests that it may have beeninspired by Latin horridus (source of Englishhorrid), which originally meant (of hair)‘standing on end’. Its current use, in which‘difficult’ passes into ‘dangerous’, seems to haveemerged in the 1960s, and was presumablybased on hair-raising, which dates from around1900. It is fascinatingly foreshadowed by harsh,which is a derivative of hair and originallymeant ‘hairy’.hake see HOOKhalcyon [14] Halcyon days, originally ‘days ofcalm weather’, but now used figuratively for a‘past period of happiness and success’, areliterally ‘days of the kingfisher’. The expressioncomes from Greek alkuonídes hēmérai‘kingfisher’s days’, a term used in the ancientworld for a period of 14 days fine or calmweather around the winter solstice which wasattributed to the magical influence of thekingfisher. The origin of Greek alkúon is notknown, although it was from earliest timesassociated with Greek háls ‘sea’ and kúōn‘conceiving’ (whence the spelling halcyon).hale see WHOLEhalf [OE] Half comes from prehistoric Germanic*khalbaz, which also produced German halb,Dutch half, and Swedish and Danish halv. If, assome have suggested, it is connected with Latinscalpere ‘cut’ (source of English scalpel andsculpture) and Greek skóloph ‘spike’, itsunderlying meaning would be ‘cut, divided’.halibut see TURBOThall [OE] Etymologically, a hall is a ‘roofed orcovered place’. Its ultimate ancestor wasprehistoric West and North Germanic *khallō, aderivative of *khal-, *khel- ‘cover, hide’ (aslightly different derivative produced Englishhell, and cell, clandestine, conceal, hull ‘pod’,and possibly colour and holster are all relatives,close or distant). It retained much of its originalmeaning in Old English heall, which denotedsimply a ‘large place covered by a roof’. Thisgradually became specialized to, on the onehand, ‘large residence’, and on the other, ‘largepublic room’. The main current sense, ‘entrancecorridor’, dates from the 17th century (it derivesfrom the fact that in former times the principalroom of a house usually opened directly off thefront door). CELL, CLANDESTINE, CONCEAL, HELL, HULLhallmark [18] The hallmark on a piece of gold,silver or platinum, which allows it to be legallysold, is so called simply because it was originallyapplied in Goldsmiths’ Hall, the headquarters ofthe Goldsmiths’ Company (a City liverycompany), where the London assay office wassituated. The building is in Foster Lane, to thenortheast of St Paul’s Cathedral in the City ofLondon.hallow [OE] Hallow is essentially the same wordas holy. The noun, as in Halloween, the eve ofAll Hallows, or All Saints, comes from a nounuse of Old English Hālig, which as an adjectivedeveloped into modern English holy; and theverb was formed in prehistoric Germanic timesfrom the root *khailag-, source also of holy. HOLYhalt English has two words halt. By far the older,meaning ‘lame’ [OE], has virtually died out as aliving part of English vocabulary except in theverbal derivative halting ‘stopping and startinguncertainly’. It came from a prehistoricGermanic *khaltaz, which also produced

Swedish and Danish halt ‘Jame’. Halt ‘stop’[17], originally a noun, comes from Germanhalt, which began life as the imperative form ofthe verb halten ‘hold, stop’ (a relative of Englishhold). HOLDham [OE] The etymological meaning of ham is‘bend’ – it comes from Germanic *kham- ‘becrooked’ – and up until the 16th century itdenoted exclusively the ‘part of the leg at theback of the knee’ (a portion of the anatomy nowwithout a word of its own in English). Hamstring[16] reflects this original meaning. From themid-16th century, it gradually extendedsemantically to ‘back of the thigh’ and hence‘thigh’ generally, and by the 17th century it wasbeing used for the ‘thigh of a slaughtered animal,especially a pig, preserved and used for food’.Ham in the sense ‘performer who overacts’,first recorded in the late 19th century, apparentlycomes from an earlier hamfatter ‘bad actor’,which may have been inspired by the Negrominstrel song ‘The Ham-fat Man’.hamburger [19] As its inherent beefiness amplydemonstrates, the hamburger has nothing to dowith ham. It originated in the German city andport of Hamburg. The fashioning ofconveniently sized patties was a common way ofdealing with minced beef in northern Europe andthe Baltic in the 19th century, and it appears thatGerman sailors or emigrants took the delicacyacross the Atlantic with them to America. Thereit was called a Hamburg steak or, using theGerman adjectival form, a Hamburger steak.That term is first recorded in the late 1880s, andby the first decade of the 20th century the steakhad been dropped.By the 1930s the hamburger had become anAmerican fast-food staple, and products similarin concept but with different ingredients inspiredvariations on its name: beefburger,cheeseburger, steakburger, and so on; and by theend of the decade plain burger was wellestablished in the language.hamlet [14] Hamlet is a double diminutive:etymologically it means ‘little little village’. Itcomes from Old French hamelet, a diminutiveform of hamel, which was itself a diminutive ofham ‘village’. This was borrowed from aGermanic word related to English home, and tothe -ham in many English place-names. HOMEhammer [OE] Hammer is part of a widespreadGermanic word-family, including also Germanand Danish hammer, Dutch hamer, and Swedishhammar. The ancestor of the Scandinavianforms, Old Norse hamarr, meant ‘stone crag’ aswell as ‘hammer’. This and possible connectionswith the standard words for ‘stone, rock’ in theIndo-Iranian and Balto-Slavonic languagegroups (such as Sanskrit açman and Russiankamen’) suggest that hammer originally denotedsome sort of tool with a stone head.hammock [16] Hammock is a product of earlyEuropean explorations in the New World. WhenSpanish crews first sailed into the Caribbean,261 handkerchiefthey encountered a word in the Taino languageof the Arawakan people for a hanging bedsuspended between two trees. They adopted itinto Spanish as hamaca, which Englishborrowed as hamaca or ‘Englished’ ashammaker (hammock is a 17th-centuryalteration).hamster [17] The hamster is a native of westernAsia and southeastern Europe, and its Englishname is of Slavic origin. In Old Slavic it wascalled chomestoru, and it appears that at somepoint in the past an ancestor of this wasborrowed into Germanic. Old High German hadhamustro, which became modern Germanhamster, source of the English word. In the 18thcentury the animal was also called the Germanrat.hand [OE] Hand is a widespread Germanic word(German, Dutch, and Swedish also have it), butit has no relatives outside Germanic, and no oneis too sure where it comes from. Perhaps thelikeliest explanation is that it is related to Gothicfrahinthan ‘seize, pursue’, Swedish hinna‘reach’, and English hunt, and that is underlyingmeaning is ‘body part used for seizing’.The derived adjective handsome [15]originally meant simply ‘easy to handle’. Themodern sense ‘attractive’ did not develop untilthe late 16th century. HANDSOME, HUNThandicap [17] The word handicap originallydenoted a sort of game of chance in which oneperson put up one of his or her personalpossessions against an article belonging tosomeone else (for example one might match agold watch against the other’s horse) and anumpire was appointed to adjudicate on therespective values of the articles. All three partiesput their hands into a hat, together with a wager,and on hearing the umpire’s verdict the twoopponents had to withdraw them in such a wayas to indicate whether they wished to proceedwith the game. If they agreed, either in favour ofproceeding or against, the umpire took themoney; but if they disagreed, the one whowanted to proceed took it. It was the concealingof the hands in the hat that gave the game itsname hand in cap, hand i’ cap, source of modernEnglish handicap.In the 18th century the same term was appliedto a sort of horse race between two horses, inwhich an umpire decided on a weightdisadvantage to be imposed on a superior horseand again the owners of the horses signalledtheir assent to or dissent from his adjudication bythe way in which they withdrew their hands froma hat. Such a race became known as a handicaprace, and in the 19th century the term handicapfirst broadened out to any contest in whichinequalities are artificially evened out, and waseventually transferred to the ‘disadvantage’imposed on superior contestants – whence themain modern meaning, ‘disadvantage,disability’.handkerchief [16] Handkerchief is a compoundformed from hand and the now obsolete kerchief

handle 262‘cloth for covering the head’ [13] (what inmodern English would be called a head-scarf).This was acquired via Anglo-Norman courcheffrom Old French couvrechef, a compound ofcouvrir ‘cover’ and chief ‘head’. The colloquialabbreviation hanky is first recorded in the 1890s. CHEF, CHIEF, COVER, HAND, KERCHIEFhandle [OE] Etymologically, a handle is nothingmore or less than ‘something to be held in thehand’. Likewise the verb handle, together withGermanic relatives like German handeln andSwedish handla, began life as ‘hold, touch, feelwith the hands’ (the German and Swedish verbshave since lost this original literal meaning, andnow have only the metaphorical senses ‘dealwith’, ‘trade’, etc). HANDhandsome see HANDhang [OE] Hang is a general Germanic verb,represented also in German and Dutch hangenand Swedish hānga. These point back to aprehistoric Germanic *khang-, which some havelinked with the Latin verb cunctārī ‘deal’.Hanker [17] (which originally meant ‘loiter,hang about’) probably comes ultimately fromthe same source, as does hinge; but hangar‘structure housing aircraft’ [19] does not – itgoes back via French hangar to medieval Latinangarium ‘shed in which horses are shod’. HANKER, HINGEhank see HOOKhansom [19] The hansom cab, the taxi of thesecond half of the 19th century, was thebrainchild of James Aloysius Hansom (1803–82), an architect, whose other main claim tofame is that he designed Birmingham town hall.In 1834 he took out a patent for a Safety Cab,which included many features incorporated intothe hansom cab when it came into general use inthe late 1840s. In the 1890s the word was used asa verb: ‘To think that I … a raging Democrat,should be hansoming it to and fro between myLadies and Honourables’, Sabine Baring-GouldArmine 1890.happen [14] Surprisingly for such a commonverb, happen is a comparatively recent additionto the English language. Old English had anumber of verbs denoting ‘occurrence’, all longsince defunct, including gelimpan and gescēon,and in the 13th century befall began to be usedfor ‘happen’, but the first signs we see of thecoming of happen are when English acquired thenoun hap ‘chance, luck’ in the 13th century. Itwas borrowed from Old Norse happ, a word ofuncertain ancestry but probably related to OldSlavic kobu ‘fate’ and Old Irish cob ‘victory’,and represented in Old English by gehæp ‘fit’. Inthe 14th century it began to be used as a verbmeaning ‘happen by chance’, and hence simply‘happen’, and before the century was very old ithad been extended with the verbal suffix -en tohappen. HAPPY, PERHAPShappy [14] The Old and Middle English wordfor ‘happy’ was what in modern English hasbecome silly. This began to change its meaningaround the 15th century, and obviously anopportunity began to open up for an adjectiveexpressing ‘contentment’ (as opposed to positive‘joy’, denoted then by glad, fain, and joyful).The gap was partly filled by a weakening in themeaning of glad, but waiting in the wings washappy, a derivative of the noun hap ‘chance,luck’ (source of happen), which when it wascoined in the 14th century meant ‘lucky,fortunate, prosperous’. The main modern sense‘highly pleased or contented’ developed in theearly 16th century. HAPPENhara-kiri [19] Hara-kiri is a Japanese form ofritual suicide, now little practised, involvingdisembowelment. The term, which meansliterally ‘belly-cutting’, is a relatively colloquialone in Japanese; the more dignified expression isseppuku, literally ‘cut open the stomach’.harangue [15] The original notion underlyingharangue may have been of a large group ofpeople crowded round, with the idea of‘addressing’ them only developing later. Theword comes via Old French harangue frommedieval Latin harenga, and it has beenspeculated that this was perhaps acquired from aprehistoric Germanic *kharikhring- ‘assembly’,a compound of *kharjaz ‘crowd’ (source ofEnglish harbinger, harbour, harry, and heraldand related to harness) and *khringaz ‘ring’. HARBINGER, HARBOUR, HARNESS, HARRY,HERALDharbinger [12] Originally, a harbinger wassimply someone who provided ‘harbour’ – thatis, ‘shelter, lodging’. The word began life as aderivative of Old French herberge ‘lodging’, aborrowing from heriberga, the Old Saxonequivalent of Old English herebeorg (whencemodern English harbour). English acquired it asherbergere, and the n did not put in anappearance until the 15th century (it was quite acommon phenomenon, seen also in messengerand passenger). As for its meaning, it developedin the 14th century to ‘someone sent on ahead toarrange for lodging for an army, an official royalparty, etc’, and from this came the present-dayfigurative sense ‘forerunner’. HARBOURharbour [OE] Etymologically, a harbour is a‘shelter for a crowd of people’. English acquiredit in the late Anglo-Saxon period as herebeorg,perhaps borrowed from Old Norse herbergi, butit began life as a compound of prehistoricGermanic *kharjaz, originally ‘crowd’, laterspecifically ‘army’ (source also of English harryand related to harness) and *berg- ‘protect’(which occurs in a range of English words,including barrow ‘mound’, borough, borrow,and bury). The original sense ‘shelter for acrowd or army’ had broadened out by historictimes to the more general ‘shelter, lodging’. Thatis what Old English herebeorg meant, andgradually it underwent further semanticdevelopment, via ‘place in which shelter can be

obtained’, to (as recently as the 16th century)‘place of shelter for ships, port’. BARROW, BOROUGH, BORROW, BURY,HARBINGER, HARNESS, HARRY, HERALDhard [OE] Hard comes ultimately from aprehistoric Indo-European *krátus, whichdenoted ‘power, strength’. This originalmeaning was carried over into Greek krátos‘strength, power, authority’ (source of theending -cracy in such English words asdemocracy and plutocracy), but the Germaniclanguages took it over mainly in the sense‘resistant to physical pressure’. The prehistoricGermanic form *kharthuz produced, besidesEnglish hard, German hart, Dutch hard,Swedish hård, and Danish haard. The sense‘difficult’, incidentally, developed in the 14thand 15th century from the notion ‘resistant toone’s efforts’.A Germanic derived verb *kharthjan‘harden’ was borrowed into Old French as hardir‘embolden’, and its past participle hardi ‘bold’reached English as hardy [13]. Its main modernsense, ‘robust, tough’, presumably a harkingback to its distant English relative hard,developed in the 16th century. HARDYhare [OE] The hare seems originally to havebeen named from its colour. The word comesfrom prehistoric West and North Germanic*khason, which also produced German hase,Dutch haas, and Swedish and Danish hare, andif as has been suggested it is related to OldEnglish hasu ‘grey’ and Latin cascus ‘old’, itsunderlying meaning would appear to be ‘greyanimal’ (just as the bear and the beaver areetymologically the ‘brown animal’, and theherring may be the ‘grey fish’). Harrier ‘dog forhunting hares’ [16] was derived from hare on themodel of Old French levrier (French lièvremeans ‘hare’, and is related to English leveret‘young hare’ [15]); it was originally harer, andthe present-day form arose from confusion withharrier ‘falcon’ [16], a derivative of the verbharry. HARRIER, HERRING, HOARharem [17] Etymologically, Arabic harīm is a‘forbidden place’. It is a derivative of the verbharama ‘prohibit’ (whence also harmattan,literally ‘the forbidden one’, the name of a drydusty Saharan wind). Hence it came to beapplied to a part of a Muslim house reserved forwomen, and by extension to the women wholived there – the wives and concubines of themaster of the household. Synonymous terms inEnglish include seraglio, which comes viaItalian and Turkish from Persian serāi‘residence, palace’, and forms the secondelement of caravanserai, and zenana, which isderived ultimately from Persian zan ‘woman’, arelative of Greek guné ‘woman’ (as in Englishgynaecology).harlequin [16] Harlequin, a brightly-cladcharacter in the Italian commedia dell’arte, has amurky history. He seems to have originated in amythical figure known in Old French as263 harnessHerlequin or Hellequin, who was the leader of aghostly troop of horsemen who rode across thesky at night. And Herlequin could well be a laterincarnation of King Herla (in Old English Herlacyning), a legendary personage who has beenidentified with the chief Anglo-Saxon godWoden. It seems likely that another piece of thejigsaw could be the erlking, the supernaturalabductor of children described in a Goethe poemmemorably set to music by Schubert; its name isgenerally traced back to Danish ellerkonge, avariant of elverkonge, literally ‘king of theelves’, which bears a resemblance to Herlequinthat is surely too strong to be coincidental. Inearly modern French Herlequin becameHarlequin, the form borrowed by English(present-day French arlequin shows theinfluence of Italian arlecchino). KINGharlot [13] The use of harlot for ‘prostitute’ is acomparatively recent development in the word’shistory. It originally meant ‘tramp, beggar’, anddid not come to mean ‘prostitute’ until the 15thcentury. It was borrowed from Old French harlotor herlot ‘vagabond’, a word of unknownancestry with relatives in Italian (arlotto) andProvençal (arlot).harm [OE] The ideas of ‘physical damage’ and‘grief’ are intimately associated in the wordharm: indeed, until the early 17th century it hadboth meanings, and its relatives, German andSwedish harm, mean exclusively ‘grief’. Itappears to be related to Russian sram ‘shame,scandal’, but its ultimate ancestry is not known.harmony [14] The etymological idea behindharmony is ‘fitting things together’ – that is, ofcombining notes in an aesthetically pleasingmanner. It comes via Old French harmonie andLatin harmonia from Greek harmoníā ‘means ofjoining’, hence ‘agreement, concord’, aderivative of harmós ‘joint’. As a musical termin Greek it appears to have denoted ‘scale’, ormore simply just ‘music’, and its original use inEnglish was for what we would now call‘melody’. It was not applied to the combinationof notes to form chords (a practice whichoriginated in the 9th century) until the 16thcentury.The term harmonica was coined in 1762 bythe American physicist and statesman BenjaminFranklin for a musical instrument consisting of aset of water-filled glasses tuned to different notesand played with the fingers. It was first appliedto the mouth-organ in the 19th century.harness [13] Etymologically,harness is‘equipment for an army’. It comes via OldFrench herneis ‘military equipment’ from anunrecorded Old Norse *hernest, a compoundformed from herr ‘army’ (a descendant ofprehistoric Germanic *kharjaz ‘crowd’ andrelated to English harangue, harbinger,harbour, and harry) and nest ‘provisions’.English took it over in the general sense‘equipment’, and did not apply it specifically tothe straps, buckles, etc of a horse until the 14thcentury (it was originally used for any equestrian

harpsichord 264equipment, including reins, saddles, etc, but nowit denotes exclusively the gear of a draughthorse). HARANGUE, HARBINGER, HARBOUR, HARRY,HERALDharpsichord [17] Harpsichord means literally‘harp-string’. Harp [OE] is a Germanic word. Itcomes from a prehistoric West and NorthGermanic *kharpōn, which also producedGerman harfe, Dutch harp, and Swedish harpa,and was borrowed into the Romance languagesvia late Latin harpa (its Italian descendant, arpa,gave English arpeggio [18]). When theharpsichord was developed in the late 16thcentury, it was named in Italian arpicordo, acompound formed with corda ‘string’. Englishacquired the term via the now obsolete Frenchharpechorde, for some unknown reasoninserting an s in the process. ARPEGGIO, HARPharrier see HAREharry [OE] Etymologically, to harry is to ‘go ona raid as an army does’. The word comesultimately from prehistoric Germanic *kharjaz,which meant ‘crowd of people’ and also ‘army’(it also produced English harangue, harbinger,harbour, and harness). From it was formed theverb *kharōjan, which passed into Old Englishas hergian. This developed into modern Englishharry, and it also produced the verb harrow ‘rob,plunder’, now obsolete except in the expressionharrowing of hell (which denotes the rescuing byChrist, after his crucifixion, of the souls of therighteous held in captivity in hell). HARANGUE, HARBINGER, HARBOUR, HARNESS,HARROWharsharsh [16] Harsh originally meant ‘hairy’. Itsancestor, Middle Low German harsch, was aderivative of the noun haer ‘hair’, and its exactEnglish equivalent would have been hairish. Bythe time English acquired it, it had broadenedout in meaning to ‘rough’, both literally andfiguratively.harvest [OE] The idea underlying the wordharvest is of ‘plucking, gathering, cropping’ – itcomes ultimately from Indo-European *karp-,which also produced Greek karpós ‘fruit, crop,harvest’ (whence English carpel [19]) and Latincarpere ‘pluck’ (source of English carpet,excerpt, and scarce) – but its original meaning inEnglish was ‘time of gathering crops’ rather than‘act of gathering crops’. Indeed, until as recentlyas the 18th century it was used as the name forthe season now known as autumn (as its Germanrelative herbst still is), and it was not until the16th century that the present-day senses ‘act ofgathering crops’ and ‘crops gathered’ began todevelop. CARPET, EXCERPT, SCARCEhaste [13] Haste is a Germanic word, butEnglish acquired it through Old French. Thefurthest back it can be traced is to a prehistoricWest Germanic *khaistiz, which produced suchnow defunct offspring as Old English hǣst‘violence’ and Old High German heisti‘powerful’. Its survival is due to its acquisitionby Old French as haste, which not only gaveEnglish the noun haste, but also contributed arelated verb to German (hasten), Dutch(haasten), Swedish (hasta), and English (haste,largely superseded since the 16th century byhasten). The modern French noun is hâte.hat [OE] Hat and hood are ultimately the sameword, and denote literally ‘head-covering’. Bothgo back to Indo-European *kadh- ‘cover,protect’, which in the case of hat produced aGermanic derivative *khadnús, later *khattus.This was the source of English hat, and also ofSwedish hatt and Danish hat (German hutt andDutch hoed ‘hat’ are more closely related toEnglish hood). HOODhatchment see ACHIEVEhate [OE] There are indications that the ancestralmeaning of hate may have been a neutral ‘strongfeeling’ rather than the positive ‘dislike’. It hasbeen traced to a prehistoric Indo-European*kədes-, amongst whose other descendants wereGreek kedos, which meant ‘care, anxiety, grief’,and Old Irish caiss, which meant ‘love’ as wellas ‘hate’. It is clear, though, that the notion ofstrong dislike became established fairly early,and that it was certainly the sense transmitted viaGermanic *khatis-, source of German hass,Dutch haat, Swedish hat, Danish had, andEnglish hate. The derivative hatred was formedfrom the verb in the 13th century with the suffix-red ‘condition’, as in kindred.Old French borrowed the Germanic verb*khatjan ‘hate’ as haïr, and derived from it theadjective haïneus, acquired by English asheinous [14]. HEINOUShaughty [16] To be haughty is to be ‘aboveoneself’, or, to put it another way, to be ‘on one’shigh horse’. For etymologically, haughty meanssimply ‘high’. It is an alteration of an earlier,now dead English adjective haught, which wasborrowed from Old French haut ‘high’, adescendant of Latin altus (whence Englishaltitude). ALTITUDEhaunt [13] Etymologically, a ghost that haunts abuilding is only using the place as its ‘home’.The word’s distant ancestor is the prehistoricGermanic verb *khaimatjan, a derivative of thenoun *khaimaz (source of English home). Thiswas borrowed by Old French as hanter ‘frequenta place’, and passed on to English as haunt. Itsmain modern supernatural meaning did notdevelop until the 16th century (the first recordsof this sense come in Shakespeare’s plays). HOMEhave [OE] Have and its Germanic cousins,German haben, Dutch hebben, Swedish ha, andDanish have, come from a prehistoric Germanicancestor *khabēn. This was probably a productof Indo-European *kap-, which was also thesource of English heave and Latin capere ‘seize’(whence English capable, capture, etc). In allthe Germanic languages it shares the function ofdenoting ‘possession’ with that of forming the

perfect tense. (It appears, incidentally, to have noetymological connection with the superficiallysimilar Latin habēre ‘have’.) CAPABLE, CAPTIVE, CAPTUREhaven [11] Etymologically, a haven is probablya ‘container’ for ships. The word appears to goback ultimately to Indo-European *kap-, sourcealso of Latin capere ‘seize’ (whence Englishcapable, capture, etc). This produced Old Norsehöfn or hafn, which lies behind the modernScandinavian words for ‘harbour’ (such asSwedish hamn and Danish havn), and wasborrowed into late Old English as hæfen, whencemodern English haven. Closely related is Dutchhaven, from which German borrowed hafen‘harbour’. CAPABLE, CAPTIVE, CAPTUREhaversack [18] Etymologically, a haversack is a‘bag for oats’. The word comes via Frenchhavresac from German habersack, a compoundformed from the now dialectal haber ‘oats’ andsack ‘bag’. This denoted originally a bag used inthe army for feeding oats to horses, but by thetime it reached English it had broadened out to a‘bag for soldiers’ provisions’, carried over theshoulders (northern dialects of English,incidentally, had the term haver for ‘oats’,probably borrowed from Old Norse hafri, andrelated forms are still widespread among theGermanic languages, including German hafer,Dutch haver, and Swedish and Danish havre. Ithas been speculated that the word is related toLatin caper and Old Norse hafr ‘goat’, in whichcase it would mean etymologically ‘goat’sfood’).havoc [15] The ancestry of havoc is a mystery,but it seems originally to have been anexclamation, probably Germanic, used as asignal to begin plundering. This was adoptedinto Old French as havot, which was used in thephrase crier havot ‘shout ‘havot’,’ hence ‘letloose destruction and plunder’. Havot becamealtered in Anglo-Norman to havok, the form inwhich English adopted it; and in due course cryhavoc gave rise to the independent use of havocas ‘destruction, devastation’.hawk English has three current words hawk. Theoldest, denoting the bird of prey [OE], comesfrom a prehistoric West and North Germanic*khabukaz, which also produced Germanhabicht, Dutch havik, Swedish hök, and Danishhög. Hawk ‘peddle’ [16] is a back-formationfrom hawker. This was probably borrowed fromLow German höker, a derivative ultimately ofMiddle Low German hōken ‘peddle’, which maywell have been formed from the same base asproduced English huckster. Hawk ‘clear thethroat’ [16] probably originated as an imitationof the noise it denotes. HUCKSTERhawthorn [OE] The hawthorn appears to beetymologically the ‘hedgethorn’. Its firstelement, haw, which in Old English was haga,goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khag-,which also produced English hedge and possiblyhaggard (German hagedorn, Dutch haagdoorn,265 headand Swedish hagtorn share the same ancestry).The name of the tree’s fruit, haw [OE], ispresumably either a back-formation fromhawthorn, or an abbreviation of some lost termsuch as *hawberry ‘hedgeberry’. Hawfinchdates from the 17th century. HAGGARD, HEDGEhay [OE] Etymologically, hay is ‘that which iscut down’. It comes ultimately from theprehistoric Germanic verb *khauwan, sourcealso of English hew, which was formed from theIndo-European base *kou-, *kow-. From it wasderived the noun *khaujam, which has becomeGerman hau, Dutch hooi, Swedish and Danishhä, and English hay – ‘grass cut down anddried’. Other English descendants of Germanic*khauwan ‘cut down’ are haggle [16], whichoriginally meant ‘hack, mutilate’ and wasderived from an earlier hag ‘cut’, a borrowingfrom Old Norse höggva ‘cut’; and hoe [14],which comes via Old French houe from Frankish*hauwa ‘cut’. HAGGLE, HEW, HOEhazard [13] The word hazard was introduced toEnglish as the name for a game played with dice.It was borrowed from Old French hasard, whichcame via Spanish azar from Arabic azzahr,earlier al-zahr ‘luck, chance’. Its associationswere thus from the first with ‘uncertainty’, andits central modern sense ‘danger’ did notdevelop until the 16th century.hazel [OE] Hazel is a very ancient tree-name. Itcan be traced right back to Indo-European*kosolos or *koselos, which also producedFrench coudrier and Welsh collen. Its Germanicdescendant was *khasalaz, from which comeGerman hasel, Dutch hazel-, and Swedish andDanish hassel as well as English hazel. Theearliest known use of the word to describe thecolour of eyes comes in Shakespeare’s Romeoand Juliet 1592: ‘Thou wilt quarrel with a manfor cracking nuts, having no other reason, butthou hast hazel eyes’.he [OE] He comes ultimately from a prehistoricIndo-European base *ki-, *ko-, which denoted ingeneral terms ‘this, here’ (as opposed to ‘that,there’) and occurs in a number of modernEnglish demonstrative pronouns and adverbs,such as here and hence. The most direct use ofthe demonstrative is for the ‘person or thingreferred to’, and so *ki- has come down directlyvia Germanic *khi- as the third person singularpronoun he (of which him, his, she, her, and itare all derivatives). HIM, HIS, IT, SHEhead [OE] The word head can be traced backultimately to Indo-European *kauput-, *kaupet-,which probably had connotations of ‘bowl’ (asin ‘skull’) as well as ‘head’, although whichcame first is not clear. From it was descendedprehistoric Germanic *khaubutham,*khaubitham, which produced German haupt,Dutch hoofd, Swedish huvud, and English head.A variant of the Indo-European ancestor,*kaput-, seems to have been responsible for theLatin word for ‘head’, caput (source of a wide

health 266range of English words, including capillary,capital, captain, and chief), and also for Sanskritkapucchala- ‘hair at the back of the head’ andDanish hoved ‘head’. And a further related form,*keup-, produced English hive, Latin cūpa‘barrel’, and medieval Latin cuppa (source ofEnglish cup and German kopf ‘head’). CAPITAL, CAPTAIN, CHIEF, CUPhealth [OE] Etymologically, health is the ‘stateof being whole’. The word was formed inprehistoric Germanic times from the adjective*khailaz, ancestor of modern English whole. Tothis was added the abstract noun suffix *-itha,producing *khailitha, whence English health.The verb heal [OE] comes from the same source. HEAL, WHOLEheap [OE] Heap is an ancient word, with still theodd non-Germanic relative surviving. Itsimmediate West Germanic ancestor was*khaupaz, which also produced Dutch hoop (thehope of English forlorn hope), and forms such asGerman haufen ‘heap’ and Lithuanian kaupas‘heap’, while not in exactly the same line ofdescent, point to a common Indo-Europeansource.hear [OE] The prehistoric Germanic verb for‘hear’ was *khauzjan, which produced Germanhören, Dutch hooren, Swedish höra, Danishhøre, and English hear. Some etymologists havesuggested links with Greek akoúein ‘hear’(source of English acoustic), and also with Latincavēre ‘beware’ and Russian chuvstvovat’ ‘feel,perceive’, but these have not been conclusivelydemonstrated.hearse [14] The ancestor of hearse seems tohave been a word in an ancient Italic languagemeaning ‘wolf’ – Oscan hirpus. The salientfeature of wolves being their teeth, the Romanstook the word over as hirpex and used it for a‘large rake, of the sort used for breaking upfields’. It passed via Vulgar Latin *herpica intoOld French as herse, and by now had movedanother semantic step further away from itsoriginal sense ‘wolf’, for, since agriculturalharrows in those times were typically toothedtriangular frames, the word herse was applied toa triangular frame for holding candles, as used ina church, and particularly as placed over a coffinat funeral services. This was its meaning whenEnglish acquired it, and it only graduallydeveloped via ‘canopy placed over a coffin’ and‘coffin, bier’ to the modern sense ‘funeralcarriage’ (first recorded in the mid-17thcentury). REHEARSEheart [OE] Heart is part of a widespread Indo-European family of words for the ‘cardiacmuscle’, which all go back to the commonancestor *kerd-. From it come Greek kardíā(source of English cardiac [17]), Latin cor(whence French coeur, Italian cuor, Spanishcorazón, not to mention a wide range of Englishdescendants, including concord, cordial,courage, quarry ‘hunted animal’, and record),modern Irish croidhe, Russian serdce, andLatvian sirds. Its Germanic off-spring was*khertōn, which produced German herz, Dutchhart, Swedish hjärta, Danish hjerte, and Englishheart. The only major Indo-European languagesto have taken a different path are Romanian,whose inima ‘heart’ comes from Latin anima‘soul’, and Welsh, which keeps craidd for themetaphorical sense ‘centre’, but for the bodilyorgan has calon, a descendant of Latin caldus‘warm’. CARDIAC, CONCORD, CORDIAL, COURAGE,QUARRY, RECORDhearth [OE] Etymologically, hearth seems tomean ‘burning place’. It has been suggested thatits West Germanic ancestor *kherthaz, whichalso produced German herd and Dutch haard,may be connected with Latin cremāre ‘burn’(source of English cremate [19]) and Lithuaniankurti ‘heat’. CREMATEheat [OE] From an etymological point of view,heat is simply ‘hotness’ – that is, the adjectivehot with an abstract noun suffix added to it. Butthe addition took place a long time ago, in theprehistoric ancestor of Old English. The suffix*-īn ‘state, condition’ was tacked on to theadjective *khaitaz ‘hot’ to produce *khaitīn,which eventually became modern English heat.The verb heat is equally ancient, and wasindependently formed from *khiataz (het, as in‘het up’, comes from a dialectal form of its pastparticiple). HET, HOTheatheath [OE] Heath goes back to Indo-European*kait-, denoting ‘open, unploughed country’. ItsGermanic descendant *khaithiz producedGerman and Dutch heide and English heath. Oneof the commonest plants of such habitats is theheather, and this was accordingly named inprehistoric Germanic *khaithjō, a derivative ofthe same base as produced *khaithiz, which inmodern English has become heath ‘plant of theheather family’. (The word heather [14] itself,incidentally, does not appear to be related. Itcomes from a Scottish or Northern MiddleEnglish hadder or hathir, and its modern Englishform is due to association with heath.)heathen [OE] Etymologically, a heathen is‘someone who lives on the heath’ – that is,someone who lives in a wild upcountry area, andis uncivilized and savage (the word was derivedin prehistoric Germanic times from *khaithiz‘heath’, and is also represented in German heide,Dutch heiden, and Swedish and Danish heden).Its specific use for ‘person who is not aChristian’ seems to have been directly inspiredby Latin pāgānus (source of English pagan),which likewise originally meant ‘countrydweller’.(Etymologically, savages too were tobegin with dwellers in ‘wild woodland’ areas,while civilized or urbane people lived in cities ortowns.) The now archaic hoyden ‘high-spiritedgirl’ [16] was borrowed from Dutch heiden‘heathen’. HEATH, HOYDENheather see HEATH

heave [OE] Heave is part of a major family ofEnglish words that can trace their ancestry backto Indo-European *kap- ‘seize’. One of its Latindescendants was the verb capere ‘take’, whichhas given English capable, capacious, capstan,caption, captious, capture, case (for carryingthings), cater, chase, prince, and many others.To Germanic it gave *khabjan, from which comeGerman heben ‘lift’ and English heave (whichalso originally meant ‘lift’; ‘throw’ and ‘haul’are 16th-century developments). Haft [OE](literally ‘something by which one seizes orholds on to something’) and heavy are derivedfrom the same base as heave, and have may berelated.Hefty [19] comes from heft ‘weight,heaviness’ [16], which was formed from heaveon the analogy of such pairs as weave and weft. CAPABLE, CAPACIOUS, CAPSTAN, CAPTION,CAPTIVE, CAPTURE, CASE, CATER, CHASE, HAFT,HEAVY, HEFTY, PRINCEheaven [OE] The precise origins of the wordheaven have never been satisfactorily explained.Could it perhaps be related in some way to Greekkamára ‘vault, covering’, and thus originallyhave denoted ‘sky thought of as arching over orcovering the earth’ (‘sky’ is at least as ancient ameaning of heaven as ‘abode of god(s)’,although it now has an archaic air)? Are thetantalizingly similar German, Swedish, andDanish himmel and Dutch hemel related to it(going back perhaps to a common Germanicsource *hibn- in which the /b/ sound, whichbecame /v/ in English, was lost – as in e’en foreven – and a suffix *-ila- was adopted rather thanthe *-ina- that produced English heaven), or arethey completely different words? Theetymological jury is still out.heavy [OE] From the prehistoric Germanic verb*khabjan ‘lift’ was derived the noun *khabiz‘weight’. This in turn was the source of theadjective *khabiga- ‘weighty’, from which havecome Dutch hevig and English heavy (the otherGermanic languages once had related forms, buthave long since abandoned them in favour ofother ways of expressing ‘heaviness’). HEAVEhectic [14] The use of hectic for referring to‘great haste or confusion’ is a surprisingly recentdevelopment, not recorded before the firstdecade of the 20th century. It originally meant inEnglish ‘suffering from fever, particularly of thesort that characterizes tuberculosis orsepticaemia’ (the metaphorical progression to‘feverishly active’ is an obvious one). Englishacquired the word via Old French etique and lateLatin hecticus from Greek hektikós, whichmeant literally ‘habitual’, and hence ‘sufferingfrom a habitual or recurrent fever, consumptive’.It was a derivative of héxis ‘condition, habit’,which in turn was formed from the verb ékhein‘hold, be in a particular condition’, which hasalso given English epoch. (The original Englishform of the word was etik; hectic represents a16th-century return to the Latin form.)267 heliotropehedge [OE] Hedge traces its ancestry back to aprehistoric Germanic *khag-, which alsoproduced the haw of hawthorn and possiblyhaggard and quay too. From it was derived theWest Germanic noun *khagjō, which has sincebecome differentiated into German hecke, Dutchheg, and English hedge. The compoundhedgehog, an allusion to the animal’s piglikenose, dates from the 15th century (porcupine,literally ‘pig spine’, conveys much the sameidea). HAGGARD, HAWTHORN, QUAYheel English has two separate words heel. Theone that names the rear part of the foot [OE]comes ultimately from Germanic *khangkh-,which also produced English hock ‘quadruped’sjoint corresponding to the human ankle’. From itwas derived *khākhil-, source of Dutch hiel,Swedish häl, Danish hæl, and English heel. Heel‘tilt, list’ [16] is probably descended from theOld English verb hieldan ‘incline’ (whichsurvived dialectally into the 19th century), its -dmistaken as a past tense or past participle endingand removed to form a new infinitive. Hieldanitself came ultimately from the prehistoricGermanic adjective *khalthaz ‘inclined’. HOCKhefty see HEAVEhegemony [16] Hegemony ‘dominatinginfluence of one nation over another’etymologically denotes ‘leadership’. It wasborrowed from Greek hēgemoníā ‘authority,rule’, a derivative of the verb hegeisthai ‘lead’(to which English seek is distantly related). SEEKheight [OE] Etymologically as well assemantically, height is the ‘condition of beinghigh’. It was formed in prehistoric Germanicfrom *khaukh- (source of high) and *-ithā, anabstract noun suffix: combined, they came downto Old English as hēhthu. The change of final -thto -t seems to have begun in the 13th century.The spelling ei reflects the word’s pronunciationin Middle English times, when it rhymedapproximately with modern English hate. HIGHheinous see HATEheist see HOISThelicopter [19] The term helicopter was coinedin the mid-19th century from Greek hélix ‘spiral’(source of English helix [16] and helical [17])and Greek ptéron ‘wing’ (source of Englishpterodactyl and related to feather). The Frenchwere first in the field with hélicoptère, and theearliest record of the word in English, in 1861,was the barely anglicized helicoptere, but by thelate 1880s the modern form helicopter was beingused. (These 19th-century helicopters were ofcourse a far cry from the present-day rotorblade-drivencraft, which were introduced in thelate 1930s; as their name suggests, they werelifted – or more usually not lifted – by rotatingspiral-shaped aerofoils.) FEATHER, HELICAL, HELIX, PTERODACTYLheliotrope [17] The heliotrope, a plant of theforget-me-not family, gets its name because its

hell 268flowers always turn to face the sun (the wordcomes via Latin hēliotropium from Greekhēliotrópion, a compound formed from hélios‘sun’ and -tropos ‘turning’ – as in English trophyand tropical – which designated such plants, andwas also used for ‘sundial’). In early times theword was applied to the ‘sunflower’, which hassimilar heliotactic habits and in Italian is calledgirasole (literally ‘turn-sun’), source of theJerusalem in English Jerusalem artichoke.Another application of Greek hēliotrópioncarried over into English was to a sort of greenquartz which was believed to turn the sun’s raysblood-red if thrown into water. TROPHY, TROPICALhell [OE] Etymologically, hell is a ‘hidden place’.It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *kel-‘cover, hide’, which was contributed anextraordinary number of words to English,including apocalypse, cell, cellar, conceal,helmet, hull ‘pod’, occult, and possibly colourand holster. Its Germanic descendant was *khel-,*khal-, whose derivatives included *khallō and*khaljō. The first became modern English hall,the second modern English hell – so both halland hell were originally ‘concealed or coveredplaces’, although in very different ways: the hallwith a roof, hell with at least six feet of earth.Related Germanic forms include German hölle,Dutch hel, and Swedish helvete (in which vetemeans ‘punishment’). APOCALYPSE, CELL, CONCEAL, HALL, HELMET,HULL, OCCULThelmet [15] A helmet is literally a ‘littleprotective hat’. The word was borrowed fromOld French helmet, a diminutive form of helme‘helmet’. This in turn was acquired by OldFrench from Germanic *khelmaz (source ofEnglish helm [OE]), which goes back ultimatelyto Indo-European *kel- ‘hide, cover’ (source of awide range of English words, includingapocalypse, cell, cellar, conceal, hall, hell, andoccult). HELL, HELMhelp [OE] Today, help is essentially a Germanicword. Related forms such as German helfen,Dutch helpen, Swedish hjälpa, and Danishhjælpe point to a Germanic ancestor *khelp-. Butthere is one clue – Lithuanian shélpti ‘help,support’ – that suggests that formerly it mayhave been much more widespread throughoutthe Indo-European languages, and came from anIndo-European source *kelp-.hem [OE] If, as seems likely, hem is related toOld Frisian hemme ‘enclosed piece of land’, itsunderlying meaning would be ‘edge, border’.However, a link has also been suggested withArmenian kamel ‘press’.hemp [OE] Hemp is ultimately the same word ascannabis (as, bizarrely, is canvas, which wasoriginally made from hemp). Both go back to acommon ancestor which produced Persiankanab, Russian konóplya, Greek kánnabis(source of English cannabis), and a prehistoricGermanic *khanipiz or *khanapiz. From thelatter are descended German hanf, Dutchhennep, Swedish hampa, Danish hamp, andEnglish hemp. CANNABIShen [OE] Etymologically, a hen is a ‘singingbird’. The word goes back ultimately to aprehistoric Germanic *khanon ‘male fowl,cock’, which was related to the Latin verb canere‘sing’ (source of English chant). In the WestGermanic dialects a feminine form developed,*khannjō, which has become German henne,Dutch hen, Swedish höna, Danish høne, andEnglish hen. (The original masculine formsurvives in German hahn, Dutch haan, andSwedish and Danish hane, but English has givenit up – the Old English word was hana, and if ithad survived to the present day it wouldprobably be *hane.) The metaphorical extensionof the term to any female bird took place in the14th century. CHANThenchman [14] Early spellings such ashengestman and henxstman suggest that thisword is a compound of Old English hengest‘stallion’ and man ‘man’. There arechronological difficulties, for hengest seems tohave gone out of general use in the 13th century,and henchman is not recorded until the mid-14thcentury, but it seems highly likely neverthelessthat the compound must originally have meant‘horse servant, groom’. The word hengest wouldno doubt have remained alive in popularconsciousness as the name of the Jutish chieftainHengist who conquered Kent in the 5th centurywith his brother Horsa; it is related to modernGerman hengst ‘stallion’, and goes backultimately to a prehistoric Indo-Europeankənku-, which denoted ‘jump’. Henchmanremained in use for ‘squire’ or ‘page’ until the17th century, but then seems to have drifted outof use, and it was Sir Walter Scott who revived itin the early 19th century, in the sense ‘trustyright-hand man’.her [OE] Her is the modern English descendantof Old English hire, a derivative of the sameGermanic base, *khi-, as produced he. It was thegenitive and dative case of the feminine personalpronoun: the former, which we would nowexpress as of her, has become the possessiveadjective, as in ‘her job’, and the latter is now theobject form, as in ‘follow her’. The possessivepronoun hers dates from the 14th century. HEherald [14] Etymologically, a herald is a ‘leaderof an army’. The word comes via Old Frenchherault from a prehistoric Germanic*khariwald-, a compound formed from *kharjaz‘army’ (which occurs also in English harangue,harbinger, harbour, harness, and harry) and*wald- ‘rule’ (source of English wield). It isidentical in origin with the personal nameHarold. HARANGUE, HARBINGER, HARBOUR, HARNESS,HARRY, WIELDherd [OE] Herd is part of a widespread Indo-European family of words denoting ‘group’(others include Sanskrit çárdhas ‘troop,

multitude’ and Welsh cordd ‘tribe, family’). Itgoes back to an Indo-European *kherdhā-,whose Germanic descendant *kherthō producedGerman herde, Swedish and Danish hjord, andEnglish herd. Herd ‘herdsman’, now found onlyin compounds such as shepherd and goatherd, isa different word, albeit derived from the sameGermanic source. Its Germanic relatives areGerman hirte, Swedish herde, and Danish hyrde.here [OE] Like he, here can be traced backultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European base*ki-, *ko-, which denoted ‘thisness’ or‘hereness’ (as opposed to ‘thatness’ or‘thereness’). The adverbial suffix -r (as in thereand where) links it to the concept of ‘place’. THERE, WHEREhereditary [16] Latin hērēs ‘heir’ (a relative ofGreek khéra ‘widow’ and Sanskrit hā- ‘leave,lose’) has been quite a prolific source of Englishwords. For one thing there is heir [13] itself,acquired via Old French heir. And then there areall the derivatives of the Latin stem form hērēd-,including hereditament [15], hereditary, heredity[16], and, via the late Latin verb hērēditāre,heritage [13] and inherit [14]. HEREDITY, HERITAGE, INHERITheresy [13] Etymologically, a heresy is a‘choice’ one makes. The word comes ultimatelyfrom Greek haíresis ‘choice’, a derivative ofhairein ‘take, choose’. This was appliedmetaphorically to a ‘course of action or thoughtwhich one chooses to take’, hence to a particular‘school of thought’, and ultimately to a ‘faction’or ‘sect’. The word passed into Latin as haeresis,which early Christian writers used for‘unorthodox sect or doctrine’, and thence viaVulgar Latin *heresia and Old French heresieinto English. (Another derivative of hairein,incidentally, was diairein ‘divide’, from whichEnglish gets diaeresis [17].) DIAERESISheritage see HEREDITARYhermaphrodite [15] Biologically acombination of male and female, hermaphroditeis etymologically a blend of the names ofHermes, the messenger of the Greek gods, andAphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.According to Ovid Hermaphródītos, the son ofHermes and Aphrodite, was beloved of thenymph Salmacis with an ardour so strong thatshe prayed for complete union with him – withthe result that their two bodies became fused intoone, with dual sexual characteristics. Englishacquired the term via Latin hermaphrodītus.hermetic [17] Hermetic means literally ‘ofHermes’. Not Hermes the messenger of theGreek gods, though, but an Egyptian priest of thetime of Moses, who in the Middle Ages wasregarded as identical with the versatile Hermesin his capacity of patron of science andinvention, and who was thus named HermesTrismegistus ‘Hermes the thrice greatest’. Thisshadowy figure was the supposed author ofvarious works on alchemy and magic, and so theterm hermetic came to be roughly synonymouswith alchemical. One of the inventions credited269 heuristicto Hermes Trismegistus was a magic seal tomake containers airtight, and by the 1660s wefind hermetic being used for ‘airtight’.hermit [13] Etymologically, a hermit is someonewho lives alone in the desert. The word comesultimately from Greek érēmos ‘solitary’, fromwhich was derived erēmíā ‘desert, solitude’.Many of the early Christian hermits, notablySaint Anthony, lived not only alone but in thedesert, so it was appropriate that the termerēmítēs was applied to them. It came intoEnglish via medieval Latin herēmīta and OldFrench hermite.hero [14] Hero is a Greek word – hérōs – appliedin ancient times to men of superhuman ability orcourage, and in due course by extension todemigods. At first it was used in English simplyto render this Greek notion, and it was not untilthe late 16th century that the extended and moregeneral sense ‘brave or otherwise admirableman’ began to emerge. ‘Chief character in astory’ is a late 17th-century development.English acquired the word via Latin hērōs asheros, but it was not long before this becameinterpreted as a plural, and a new singular herowas formed. Heroin [19] comes from Germanheroin, said to have been coined from thedelusions of heroism which afflict those whotake the drug. HEROINheron [OE] Heron may well have originated inimitation of the bird’s cry, for its source wasprobably Indo-European *qriq- (whence alsoRussian krichat’ ‘call out, shout’). From this wasdescended prehistoric Germanic *khaigaron(source of Swedish häger ‘heron’), which wasborrowed into Old French as hairon. Englishtook it over as heron or hern (the latter now amemory surviving in personal names and placenames,such as Earnshaw).herpes see SERPENTherpetology see SERPENTherring [OE] Just as the hare is probably the‘grey animal’, so the herring could well be the‘grey fish’. Old English hǣring goes back to aprehistoric West Germanic *khēringgaz, inwhich the first syllable could represent theancestor of English hoar ‘silvery-grey’ – thecolour of the herring. French hareng comes froma variant of the West Germanic word. HARE, HOARhesitate [17] Etymologically, to hesitate is tobecome ‘stuck’. The word comes from Latinhaesitāre, a derivative of haerēre ‘hold fast,stick’ (which gave English adhere). Theunderlying idea is of being ‘held back’, or inspeech of ‘stammering’, and hence of beingunable to act or speak promptly or decisively. ADHEREhessian [19] In common with many other sortsof textile, such as denim, jersey, and worsted,hessian’s name reveals its place of origin. In thiscase it was Hesse, formerly a grand duchy,nowadays a state of West Germany, in thewestern central part of the country.heuristic see EUREKA

heyday 270heyday [16] Etymologically, the -day of heydayhas no connection with the English noun day,although it has come to resemble it over thecenturies. Nor is hey- related to hay. Originallythe word was heyda, an exclamation roughlyequivalent to modern English hurrah. Probablyit was just an extension of hey, modelled partlyon Low German heida ‘hurrah’. Its earliest nounuse (first recorded in the 1590s) was in the sense‘state of exultation’; the influence of the day-likesecond syllable did not make itself felt until themid-18th century, when the modern sense‘period of greatest success’ began to emerge.hiatus see YAWNhibernate [19] The Latin word for ‘winter’ washiems (it is the source of French hiver, Italianinverno, and Spanish invierno, and is related to anumber of other ‘winter’ or ‘snow’ words, suchas Greek kheima, modern Irish geimhreadh,Russian zima, and Sanskrit hima- – theHimalayas are etymologically the ‘snowy’mountains – which point back to a commonIndo-European ancestor *gheim-, *ghyem-).From it was derived the adjective hībernus,whose neuter plural form hīberna was used as anoun meaning ‘winter quarters’. This in turnformed the basis of a verb hībernāre ‘pass thewinter’, whose English descendant hibernatewas apparently first used by the British naturalistErasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles)around 1800. (Hibernia, incidentally, theRomans’ name for ‘Ireland’, comes ultimatelyfrom Old Celtic *Iveriu, source also of Erin andthe Ire- of Ireland, but its Latin form wasinfluenced by hībernus, as if it meant ‘wintryland’.) HIMALAYAShide English has two words hide in current usage,probably from an identical Indo-Europeansource. The verb, ‘conceal’ [OE], which has noliving relatives among the Germanic languages,comes from a prehistoric West Germanic*khūdjan. This was derived from a base whichprobably also produced English hoard, huddle,and hut, and goes back to Indo-European*keudh-, source also of Greek keúthein ‘cover,hide’, Welsh cuddio ‘hide’, and Breton kuzat‘hide’. Hide ‘skin’ [OE] and its Germanicrelatives, German haut, Dutch huid, andSwedish and Danish hud, come ultimately fromIndo-European *keut-, which also producedLatin cutis ‘skin’ (source of English cuticle [17]and cutaneous [16]) and Welsh cwd ‘scrotum’.The semantic link between the two hides is‘covering’. HOARD, HUDDLE, HUT; CUTANEOUS, CUTICLEhidebound [16] The term hidebound wasoriginally applied to cattle so emaciated thattheir skin (or hide) was dry and stiff and clungclosely to their bones. The idea of being trappedimmovably inside one’s skin had led by the early17th century to the meaning we are most familiarwith today: ‘set immovably in one’s opinions,narrow-minded’.hierarchy [14] Greek hierós meant ‘sacred,holy’. Combined with -arkhēs ‘ruling’ (as inEnglish archbishop) it produced hierárkhēs‘chief priest’. A derivative of this, hierarkhíā,passed via medieval Latin hierarchia and OldFrench ierarchie into Middle English asierarchie (the modern spelling was introducedon the basis of the Latin form in the 16thcentury). At first the word was used in Englishfor the medieval categorization of angels (intocherubs and seraphs, powers and dominions,etc), and it was not until the early 17th centurythat it was applied to the clergy and their gradesand ranks. The metaphorical use for any gradedsystem soon followed.hieroglyphic [16] Etymologically, hieroglyphicmeans ‘of sacred carving’. It came via Frenchhiéroglyphique from Greek hierogluphikós, acompound of hierós ‘sacred’ and gluphé‘carving’ (which derived from the same sourceas English cleave ‘split’). It was applied to thepicture writing of the ancient Egyptians becausethis was used in sacred texts. CLEAVEhighigh [OE] High is an ancient word. It goes rightback to Indo-European *koukos, which is relatedto a number of terms denoting roughly ‘roundedprotuberance’: Sanskrit kucas ‘breast’, forinstance, Russian húcha ‘heap’, and Lithuaniankaukas ‘swelling, boil’. Evidently the notion of‘tallness’, central to modern English high, ishistorically a secondary development from thenotion of being ‘heaped up’ or ‘arched up’. TheGermanic descendant of *koukos was*khaukhaz, which produced German hoch,Dutch hoog, Swedish hög, Danish hoj, andEnglish high. Height is a derivative of *khaukh-. HEIGHThill [OE] The ultimate source of hill was Indo-European *kel-, *kol-, which denoted ‘height’and also produced English column, culminate,and excellent. A derivative *kulnís producedGermanic *khulniz, which now has no survivingdescendants apart from English hill, but relatedwords for ‘hill’ or ‘mountain’ in other Indo-European language groups include Frenchcolline, Italian colle, and Spanish and Romaniancolina (all from Latin collis ‘hill’), Lithuaniankálnas, and Latvian kalns. COLUMN, CULMINATE, EXCELLENThim [OE] Him was originally the dative case ofOld English hē ‘he’, which in the late OldEnglish period gradually started to take overfrom the original accusative hine as the generalobject form (the ’un or ’n still occasionallyfound in southern English dialects for ‘him’ mayrepresent the last vestiges of this). The dativeending -m is also found in, for example, Germanihm (dative of er ‘he’) and Dutch hem. HEhind English has two words hind. The adjectivemeaning ‘rear’ [13] probably came mainly frombehind, a compound formed in Old Englishtimes from bi- ‘by’ and hindan ‘from behind’,whose ultimate origins are unknown. Related areGerman hinter ‘behind’, the first element ofhinterland, which English borrowed in the 19thcentury, and the verb hinder [OE],

etymologically ‘put behind or back’. Hind‘female deer’ [OE] comes ultimately from Indo-European *kemti-, a derivative of *kem-‘hornless’. BEHIND, HINDER, HINTERLANDhinge [13] Hinge is generally agreed to berelated to the verb hang, and to meanetymologically ‘something on which a doorhangs’, but the circumstances of its formationare obscure (as indeed are the reasons for itsrhyming with singe, a 16th-centurydevelopment; before that it rhymed with sing). HANGhip English has two hips. The anatomical hip[OE] comes from a prehistoric Germanic*khupiz, whose formal and semantic similarityto Greek kúbos ‘six-sided figure’, hence ‘pelviccavity’ (source of English cube) suggests that thetwo may be related. The rose-hip [OE] goes backto a West Germanic *kheup-, which survivesalso in Dutch joop ‘rose-hip’. CUBEhippopotamus [16] Etymologically, ahippopotamus is a ‘river horse’. The wordcomes, via Latin, from late Greekhippopótamos, a lexicalization of an earlierphrase híppos ho potámios, literally ‘horse of theriver’. Other English descendants of híppos (arelative of Latin equus ‘horse’) includehippodrome [16], from a Greek compound thatmeant originally ‘horse-race’ (-drome occursalso in aerodrome and dromedary), and the namePhilip, literally ‘lover of horses’. Theabbreviation hippo, incidentally, dates from themid-19th century. EQUINE, HIPPODROMEhire [OE] Hire probably originated in NorthGermany, in the area where the set of dialectsknown as Low German was spoken. It comesfrom a prehistoric *khūr-, which also producedDutch huren (Swedish hyra and Danish hyrewere borrowed from Low German).his [OE] His originated as the standard genitiveform of the masculine personal pronoun he, withthe genitive ending -s – what in modern Englishwould be expressed as of him. But comparativelyearly in the Old English period it began toreplace the ancestral third person possessiveadjective sīn (a relative of modern German sein‘his’), and by the year 1000 it was also beingused as a possessive pronoun, as in ‘It’s his’. HEhistory [15] Etymologically, history denotessimply ‘knowledge’; its much more specificmodern meaning is decidedly a secondarydevelopment. Its story begins with Greek hístōr‘learned man’, a descendant of Indo-European*wid- ‘know, see’, which also produced Englishwit and Latin vidēre ‘see’. From hístōr wasderived historíā ‘knowledge obtained byenquiry’, hence ‘written account of one’senquiries, narrative, history’. English acquired itvia Latin historia, and at first used it for‘fictional narrative’ as well as ‘account of actualevents in the past’ (a sense now restricted to271 hobbitstory, essentially the same word but acquired viaAnglo-Norman). STORY, VISION, WIThit [11] Hit is one of those words, now socommon that we assume it has always beenaround, that is in fact a comparative latecomer tothe English language, and one, what is more,whose ancestry is not at all clear. The standardOld English verb for ‘strike’ was slēan (modernEnglish slay), but at the end of the Old Englishperiod hit suddenly appeared. It was borrowedfrom Old Norse hitta, a verb of unknown originwhich meant not ‘strike’ but ‘come upon, find’(as Swedish hitta still does). This sense wascarried over into English (and still survives in hitupon), and it was not until the 13th century thatthe meaning ‘strike’ began to appear.hive [OE] Hive comes ultimately from Indo-European *keup-, which denoted ‘roundcontainer, bowl’ and also produced Greekkúpellon ‘drinking vessel’, Latin cūpa ‘barrel’(source of English coop, cooper, and cupola),and its post-classical offshoot cuppa (whenceEnglish cup). (A variant of the Indo-Europeanbase was the source of English head.) TheGermanic descendant of *keup- was *khūf-,from which came Old Norse húfr ‘ship’s hull’and English hive. COOP, COOPER, CUPOLA, CUP, HEADhoar [OE] Hoar now survives mainly in hoary, adisparaging term for ‘old’, and hoarfrost,literally ‘white frost’. Between them, theyencapsulate the meaning of hoar – ‘greyishwhitehaired with age’. But it is the colour that ishistorically primary, not the age. The word goesback to an Indo-European *koi-, whose otherdescendants include German heiter ‘bright’ andRussian ser’iy ‘grey’. Another Germanicoffshoot was *khairaz – but here the associationbetween ‘grey hair’ and ‘age, venerability’began to cloud the issue. For while English tookthe word purely as a colour term, German andDutch have turned it into a title of respect,originally for an elderly man, now for any man:herr and mijnheer respectively. HARE, HERRINGhoard [OE] Etymologically, a hoard is ‘thatwhich one hides’. The word comes from aprehistoric Germanic *khuzdam, which wasderived from the same base as the verb hide.(Hoarding [19], incidentally, is notetymologically connected; it comes from anearlier hoard ‘fence’, which probably goes backvia Old French hourd or hord to a prehistoricGerman form that also produced English hurdle[OE]. Nor is the identically pronounced horde[16] related: it goes back via Polish horda toTurkish ordū ‘camp’, source also of Urdu [18],etymologically the ‘language of the camp’.) HIDEhoax see HOCUS POCUShob see HUBhobbithobbit [20] The name of these small furry-footedhuman-like creatures was invented by theircreator, J.R.R. Tolkien, and first appeared inpublic in The Hobbit (1937). It probably simply

hobby 272occurred to him as a pleasing- and appropriatesoundingname, but with typical linguisticthoroughness he later worked up a detailedetymological rationale for it: in their ownlanguage, he claimed, hobbits were calledkuduk; this was a worn-down version of anoriginal kûd-dûkan, which meant literally ‘holedweller’;in Old English, ‘hole-dweller’ wouldhave been holbytla, which in modern Englishcould plausibly have become eroded to hobbit.hobby Hobby in the sense ‘pastime’ is short forhobbyhorse. This originated in the 16th centuryas a term for the figure of a horse used in morrisdances: the element hobby, used since the 14thcentury for a ‘small horse’, was derived fromHob, a pet form of the man’s name Robert orRobin which survives also in hobgoblin [16].From the morris-dance hobbyhorse wasdescended the toy hobbyhorse, a stick with ahorse’s head on top; and the notion of ‘riding ahobbyhorse’, which could not actually take youanywhere, passed metaphorically into ‘doingsomething only for amusement’ – hence themeaning ‘pastime’, first recorded forhobbyhorse in the 17th century and for theshortened hobby in the early 19th century.Hobby ‘bird of prey’ [15] comes from OldFrench hobet, a diminutive form of hobe ‘smallbird of prey’, whose origins are not known. HOBBYHORSE, HOBGOBLINhobnob [18] In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, SirToby Belch says ‘Hob, nob, is his word: give’t ortake’t’; from which it has been deduced that thehob of hobnob represents have and that the nobrepresents the now obsolete nave ‘not have’(formed in the Old English period by adding thenegative particle ne to have). In Middle Englishthese would have been habbe and nabbe. Whenhobnob first appears as a verb, in the mid 18thcentury, it means ‘drink together’ – perhaps fromthe notion of buying alternate rounds of drinks,or drinking toasts to each other in turn. Themodern sense ‘associate familiarly, socialize’ isnot recorded before the early 19th century. HAVEhock English has three words hock. The oldest,‘joint of a quadruped corresponding to thehuman ankle’ [16], is short for an earlierhockshin, which comes from Old Englishhōhsinu. This meant literally ‘heel-sinew’, andthe hōh came from the same prehistoricGermanic source as produced modern Englishheel. In its original sense it can also be spelledhough, but for ‘joint of bacon’, first recorded inthe 18th century, hock is the only spelling. Hock‘Rhinewine’ [17] is short for an earlierhockamore, an anglicization of Hochheimer(Hochheim, on the river Main, is a centre ofGerman wine production). Hock ‘pawn, debt’[19] comes from Dutch hok ‘prison’, hence‘debt’; it was introduced to English by Dutchimmigrants in the USA. The -hock of hollyhock,incidentally, comes from Old English hoc‘mallow’ (and the holly- is an alteration of holy,and has no connection with holly). HEELhockey [19] The first known unequivocalreference to the game of hockey comes inWilliam Holloway’s General Dictionary ofProvincialisms 1838, where he calls it hawkey,and describes it as ‘a game played by severalboys on each side with sticks, called hawkeybats,and a ball’ (the term came from WestSussex). It is not known for certain where theword originated, but it is generally assumed to berelated in some way to hook, with reference tothe hockey stick’s curved end. The GalwayStatutes of 1527 refer to the ‘hurling of the littleball with hockie sticks or staves’, which maymean ‘curved sticks’. HOOKpocushocus pocus [17] Hocus pocus came from aphoney Latin phrase – in full hax pax max Deusadimax – used by travelling conjurers to impresstheir audiences. It was originally used for such a‘conjurer’, or for a ‘trickster’ in general (‘aPersian hocus pocus performed rare tricks withhands and feet’, Sir Thomas Herbert, Travelsinto Africa and the Greater Asia 1634), but thishad largely died out by the end of the 17thcentury, leaving ‘trickery, deception’ in fullpossession. Hoax [18] probably originated as ashortened version of hocus. HOAXhoe see HAYhog [OE] Hog generally means ‘pig’, of course,and has done so since the late Old Englishperiod, but it is also a technical term used byfarmers and stockmen for a ‘young sheep beforeits first sheering’, a usage which seems to goback at least to the 14th century, so it could wellbe that originally the term hog denoted not a typeof animal, but its age. Its ultimate source mayhave been Celtic.hogmanay [17] Hogmanay is the Scottish termfor ‘New Year’s Eve’, and so might reasonablybe supposed to be of Gaelic origin, but in fact itis not. It appears to come from hoguinané, theNorman dialect version of Old Frenchaguillanneuf, a greeting given when exchangingNew Year’s gifts (and possibly a contraction ofaccueillis l’an neuf ‘welcome the new year’).polloihoi polloi see POLYPhoist [16] The history of hoist cannot be tracedback very far. It is an alteration of a now defuncthoise (probably due to the mistaking of the pastform hoised for a present form), which itself wasan alteration of an earlier heise. This probablycame from, or at least was related to, Dutchhijsen or Low German hissen ‘raise’. Heist‘robbery, hold-up’ [20], which originated in theUSA, is a variant of hoist, and perhapsrepresents a survival of heise. HEISThold Hold ‘grasp, clasp’ [OE] and hold ‘cargostore’ [16] are not the same word. The verb goesback to a prehistoric Germanic source whichmeant ‘watch, guard’. This ancestral sense ispreserved in the derivative behold [OE], but thesimple verb hold, together with its relativesGerman halten (source of English halt), Dutchhouden, Swedish hålla, and Danish holde, has

moved on via ‘keep’ to ‘have in the hands’. Thecargo hold, on the other hand, is simply analteration (influenced by the verb hold) of anearlier hole or holl – which was either theEnglish word hole or a borrowing of its Dutchrelative hol. BEHOLD, HALT; HOLEhole [OE] Etymologically, a hole is a ‘hollow’place. It originated as a noun use of the OldEnglish adjective hol ‘hollow’ which, togetherwith German hohl, Dutch hol, and Danish hul,all meaning ‘hollow’, goes back to a prehistoricGerman *khulaz. The source of this is disputed,but it may be related to Indo-European *kel-‘cover, hide’ (source of English apocalypse, cell,cellar, conceal, hall, hell, helmet, hull ‘pod’, andoccult). The semantic connection is presumablythat a place that is ‘deep’ or ‘hollowed out’ isalso ‘hidden’. APOCALYPSE, CELL, CONCEAL, HALL, HELL,HELMET, OCCULTholiday [OE] A holiday was originally a ‘holyday’, a day set aside as a religious festival. Thefirst signs of the word being used for a ‘day onwhich no work is done’ (originally because of itsreligious significance) appear in the 14thcentury. HOLYholism see HOLOCAUSThollow [12] Modern English hole comes from anOld English adjective meaning ‘hollow’, and bya coincidental swap hollow originated in an OldEnglish word for ‘hole’ (the two are probablyultimately related). Old English holh meant‘hollow place’, ‘hole’, or ‘cave’, and presumablycame from the same source as produced OldEnglish hol ‘hollow’. In the early MiddleEnglish period it began to be used as anadjective, its inflected form holge havingbecome holwe, later holew or hollow. CAULIFLOWERhollyhock see HOLYholocaust [13] Etymologically, a holocaust is a‘complete burning’, and the word was originallyused in English for a ‘burnt offering’, a ‘sacrificecompletely consumed by fire’ (Mark 12, 33,‘more than all whole burnt offerings andsacrifices’ in the Authorized Version, wastranslated by William Tindale in 1526 as ‘agreater thing than all holocausts and sacrifices’).It comes via Old French and Latin from Greekholókauston, a compound formed from hólos‘whole’ (as in English holograph [17] andholism [20], a coinage of the South Africanstatesman Jan Smuts) and kaustós, a relative ofGreek kaúein ‘burn’ (from which English getscaustic [14] and cauterize [14]). John Miltonwas the first English writer to use the word in thewider sense ‘complete destruction by fire’, in thelate 17th century, and in the succeeding centuriesseveral precedents were set for its modernapplication to ‘nuclear destruction’ and ‘massmurder’ – Bishop Ken, for instance, wrote in1711 ‘Should general Flame this World consume… An Holocaust for Fontal Sin’, and LeitchRitchie in Wanderings by the Loire 1833 refers273 hominyto Louis VII making ‘a holocaust of thirteenhundred persons in a church’. CAUSTIC, CAUTERIZE, HOLISMholster [17] Holster was probably borrowedfrom Dutch holster, and may well be related toOld English heolster ‘cover’, which did notsurvive into the Middle English period. It seemslikely that its ultimate source was Indo-European *kel- ‘cover, hide’, a prolificprogenitor of English words includingapocalypse, cell, cellar, conceal, hall, hell,helmet, hole, hollow, hull ‘pod’, and occult. APOCALYPSE, CELL, CONCEAL, HALL, HELL,HELMET, OCCULTholy [OE] Holy originated as a derivative of theprehistoric Germanic adjective which producedmodern English whole, and so its etymologicalmeaning is perhaps ‘unimpaired, inviolate’. Thisancestral form was *khailagaz, whichdiversified into German and Dutch heilig,Swedish helig, and Danish hellig as well asEnglish holy. Hallow is essentially the sameword, and compounds with holy as a now hiddencomponent include hollyhock [13] as well asholiday. HALLOW, HOLIDAYhome [OE] Old English hām meant ‘place whereone lives, house, village’. The last of thesesurvives only in place-names (such asBirmingham, Fulham), and it is the ‘house,abode’ sense that has come through into modernEnglish home. Its ancestor was prehistoricGermanic *khaim-, which also producedGerman heim, Dutch heem, Swedish hem, andDanish hjem. It is not clear where this camefrom, although some have connected it withLatin civis ‘citizen’.homeopathy [19] Greek hómoios meant ‘like,similar’. It was derived from homós ‘same’, aword ultimately related to English same whichhas contributed homogeneous [17], homonym[17], homophone [17], and homosexual [19] tothe English language. Combined with -pátheia, aderivative of Greek páthos ‘passion, suffering’,it produced German homöopathie, which wasborrowed by English around 1830.Etymologically, the word means ‘cure bysimilarity’ – that is, by administering minutequantities of the same substance as caused thedisease – and contrasts with allopathy [19],based on Greek állos ‘other’. SAMEhomily [14] Etymologically, a homily is adiscourse addressed to a ‘crowd of people’. Theword comes via Old French omelie and lateLatin homīlia from Greek homīlíā ‘discourse’.This was a derivative of hōmílos ‘crowd’,originally a compound noun formed from homou‘together’ and ílē ‘crowd’. Its moralconnotations emerged in the original Greek.hominy [17] Hominy, a gruel or porridge madefrom coarsely ground maize kernels, is a NorthAmerican dish, and appropriately enough itslinguistic origins are probably American too. Alikely source is Algonquian appuminnéonash‘parched corn’, a compound noun formed from

homonym 274appwóon ‘he bakes’ and minneash ‘grains,corn’. The first reference to it in an English textis by Captain John Smith, an early Englishcolonist in America, in 1629: ‘Their servantscommonly feed upon Milk Homini, which isbruised Indian corn pounded, and boiled thick,and milk for the sauce’.homonym see HOMEOPATHYhomosexual see HOMEOPATHYhonest [13] Honest comes via Old Frenchhoneste from Latin honestus, a derivative ofhonōs, from which English gets honour. Thenew Latin noun formed from honestus was*honestitās, literally ‘honestness’, recorded onlyin the later contracted form honestās. From itEnglish acquired honesty [14], whoseapplication to plants of the genus Lunaria wasinspired by their nearly transparent seed-pods. HONOURhoney [OE] Our Indo-European ancestors werevery fond of honey, and their word for it, basedon *melit-, has come down to many modernEuropean languages, such as French andSpanish miel, Italian miele, and Welsh mel (italso contributed to English mellifluous, mildew,and molasses). The Germanic languages,however, have not persisted with it. Their wordsfor ‘honey’ (which also include German honig,Dutch honing, Swedish honung, and Danishhonning) come from a prehistoric West andNorth Germanic *khunagom or *khunanggom.This may originally have described the colour ofhoney; it has been linked with Greek knēkós‘pale yellow’ and Sanskrit kācana- ‘golden’.honeymoon [16] The word honeymoon firstappeared in print in the middle of the 16thcentury. Richard Huloet in his AbecedariumAnglico Latinum 1552 defined it as ‘a termproverbially applied to such as be new married,which will not fall out at the first, but the oneloueth the other at the beginning exceedingly,the likelihood of their exceeding love appearingto assuage, the which time the vulgar people callthe honey moon’. His description suggests notonly that the term had already been around forsome time by the 1550s, but also that it wasprobably inspired by the notion that althoughmarried love was at first as sweet as honey, itsoon waned like the moon.honour [12] English acquired honour via OldFrench honour from honōr-, the stem form ofLatin honōs (later honor). It is not known wherethe Latin word came from. Derivatives to reachEnglish include honest, honesty, honorary [17],and honorarium [17] (which in Latin denotedvirtually a bribe paid in order to get appointed toan honorary post). HONEST, HONESTYhood [OE] Ultimately hood and hat are the sameword, and both mean etymologically ‘headcovering’.They go back to an Indo-European*kadh- ‘cover, protect’, which in the case ofhood produced a West Germanic derivative*khōdaz. From it are descended German hut‘hat’, Dutch hoed ‘hat’, and English hood.Hoodwink [16] originally meant literally ‘coversomeone’s eyes with a hood or blindfold so thatthey could not see’; the modern figurative sense‘deceive’ is first recorded in the 17th century. HAThook [OE] Hook and its Germanic relatives,German haken, Dutch haak, Swedish hake, andDanish hage, go back to a prehistoric *keg- or*keng- ‘bent object’, from which English alsogets hank [14] (via Old Norse *hanku). OldNorse haki ‘hook’ was the source of a nowobsolete English hake ‘hook’, which may havebeen the inspiration for the fish-name hake [15](the hake having a hook-shaped lower jaw).Hookah ‘water-pipe’ [18], incidentally, has noetymological connection with hook; it comes viaUrdu from Arabic huqqah ‘small box’. HAKE, HANKhoopoe see DUPEhope [OE] The origins of the word hope areobscure. It appears to have started life among theLow German dialects of northern Germany(whence English hope and Dutch hoop), andlater spread to Scandinavia (giving Swedishhopp and Danish haab) and High German(modern German has the verb hoffen and thederived noun hoffnung ‘hope’). Where did theoriginal Low German forms come from, though?A suggestion that has found some favour is thatthe word is related to hop, and that it started fromthe notion of ‘jumping to safety’. The theorygoes that the ‘place of refuge’ thus reached givesone ‘hope’, but it has an air of desperation.horde see HOARDhorizon [14] Etymologically, the horizon issimply a ‘line forming a boundary’. The wordcomes via Old French orizon and late Latinhorīzōn from Greek horízōn, a derivative of theverb horīzein ‘divide, separate’ (source also ofEnglish aphorism [16], originally a ‘definition’).This in turn came from the noun hóros‘boundary, limit’. Horizontal [16], which cameeither from French or directly from late Latin,originally meant simply ‘of the horizon’; it wasnot until the 17th century that it began to be usedin its modern sense ‘flat, level’. APHORISMhorn [OE] Horn belongs to a very large Indo-European word-family that has made anenormous number of contributions to English.Its ultimate source is Indo-European *ker-,whose offspring predominantly denote ‘animal’shorn’, but also include words for ‘top’ and‘head’. Its Germanic descendant, *khornaz, hasnot been that prolific (it has produced English,German, Swedish, and Danish horn and Dutchhoorn, and hornet is probably a derivative), butother branches of the family have been morefruitful sources. From Latin cornū ‘horn’, forexample, come English corn ‘hard skin’, cornea,corner, cornet, cornucopia, unicorn, andpossibly scherzo and scorn; Greek kéras ‘horn’has given English keratin, rhinoceros, andtriceratops; while Sanskrit śrgam ‘horn’ liesbehind English ginger. And besides these,

English hart ‘male deer’ [OE] goes back to aderivative of *ker-. CORN, CORNER, CORNET, GINGER, HART,HORNET, KERATIN, RHINOCEROS, TRICERATOPShoroscope see HOURhorrible [14] The Latin verb horrēre was usedfor hair standing on end or bristling. A commoncause of this phenomenon is of course fear, andso in due course horrēre came to mean ‘tremble,shake, be filled with fear and revulsion’. Thelatter sense has been carried through intoEnglish in the derivatives horrible, horrid [16],and horror [14]. (Horrid, incidentally, fromLatin horridus, was originally used in English inthe etymological sense ‘shaggy, hairy, bristling’– ‘a rugged attire, hirsute head, horrid beard’,Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy 1621 –but this did not survive beyond the early 19thcentury.) The Old French descendant of horriduswas ord ‘filthy’, from a derivative of whichEnglish gets ordure [14]. HORRID, HORROR, ORDUREd’oeuvrehors d’oeuvre [18] In French, hors d’oeuvremeans literally ‘outside the work’ – that is, ‘notpart of the ordinary set of courses in a meal’. Theearliest record of its use in English is in thegeneral sense ‘out of the ordinary’ (‘The Frenzyof one who is given up for a Lunatick, is a Frenzyhors d’ oeuvre … something which is singular inits kind’, Joseph Addison, Spectator 1714), butthis did not survive beyond the 18th century.Alexander Pope, in his Dunciad 1742, was thefirst to use the word in its modern culinary sense.(French oeuvre ‘work’, incidentally, comes fromLatin opera ‘work’, source of or related toEnglish copious, manoeuvre, opera, operate,and opulent.) D’OEUVRE, COPIOUS, MANOEUVRE, MANURE,OPERA, OPERATE, OPULENThorse [OE] The Germanic languages have gonetheir own way as far as the horse is concerned.The prehistoric Indo-European term for theanimal was *ekwos, which produced Latin equus(source of English equestrian and equine),Greek híppos (whence English hippodrome andhippopotamus), Sanskrit açvás, and Old Englisheoh. Remarkably, though, this has virtually diedout as the day-to-day word for ‘horse’ in themodern European branches of the Indo-European languages. In the case of English, ithas been replaced by a descendant of prehistoricGermanic *khorsam or *khorsaz: horse(German ross, now mainly a literary termequivalent to English steed, is related). Its sourceis not known, although some have linked it withLatin currere ‘run’.hose [OE] The original meaning of hose was‘leg-covering, stocking’. It comes from aprehistoric Germanic *khuson, which alsoproduced German hose and Dutch hoos. Itappears that the metaphorical transference froma ‘long tubular stocking’ to a ‘long tube forconveying liquid’ was first made in Dutch; it wasintroduced into English in the 15th century.hospital [13] Like hospices, hostels, and hotels,hospitals were originally simply places at which275 hotguests were received. The word comes via OldFrench hospital from medieval Latin hospitāle, anoun use of the adjective hospitālis ‘of a guest’.This in turn was derived from hospit-. the stemof Latin hospes ‘guest, host’. In English,hospital began its semantic shift in the 15thcentury, being used for a ‘home for the elderly orinfirm, or for down-and-outs’; and the modernsense ‘place where the sick are treated’ firstappeared in the 16th century. The original notionof ‘receiving guests’ survives, of course, inhospitality [14] and hospitable [16].Hospice [19] comes via French from Latinhospitium ‘hospitality’, another derivative ofhospes. HOSPICE, HOSPITABLE, HOST, HOSTEL, HOTELhost Indo-European *ghostis denoted ‘stranger’.From it were descended Germanic *gastiz(source of English guest), Greek xénos ‘guest,stranger’ (source of English xenon andxenophobia), and Latin hostis ‘stranger, enemy’.This original meaning is retained in the derivedadjective hostile [16], but the noun itself in postclassicaltimes came to mean ‘army’, and that iswhere (via Old French) English got host ‘army’[13] from. Its main modern sense, ‘largenumber’, is a 17th-century development. ButLatin had another noun, hospes ‘host’, whichwas probably derived from hostis. Its stem form,hospit-, passed into Old French as hoste (whosemodern French descendant hôte means both‘host’ and ‘guest’). English borrowed this in the13th century, giving it a second noun host, quitedistinct in meaning, but ultimately of the sameorigin. (Other English words that owe theirexistence to Latin hospes include hospice,hospital, hostel, hotel, and ostler.)But that is not the end of the host story.English has yet another noun host, meaning‘bread of the Eucharist’ [14]. This comes via OldFrench hoiste from Latin hostia ‘sacrifice,victim’. GUEST, HOSPITAL, HOSTILE, HOTEL, OSTLER,XENON, XENOPHOBIAhostage [13] Despite its similarity, hostage isnot related to any of the English words host. Itcomes via Old French hostage from*obsidāticum, a Vulgar Latin derivative of lateLatin obsidātus ‘condition of being held as asecurity for the fulfilment of an undertaking’.This is turn was based on Latin obses ‘hostage’,a compound noun formed from the prefix ob-‘before’ and the base of sedēre ‘sit’ (Englishobsess [16] is made up of virtually the sameelements). The use of hostage for the ‘personheld’ was established before English took itover. OBSESShostel see HOTELhot [OE] Hot is the English member of a familyof adjectives widespread in Germanic, but withvery few outside relatives. Its first cousins areGerman heiss, Dutch heet, Swedish het, andDanish hed, which point back to a prehistoricGermanic ancestor *khaitaz (the English nounand verb heat come from the same source).

hotchpotch 276Lithuanian kaisti and Latvian kaist ‘become hot’are allied forms. HEAThotchpotch [15] Hotchpotch is an alteration(for the sake of the rhyme) of an earlier hotchpot.This was borrowed from an Old Frenchcompound made up of hocher ‘shake’ (perhapsfrom Frankish hottisōn) and pot ‘pot’. Sooriginally the word meant literally ‘shake thepot’ – presumably to blend an assortment ofingredients, although it is not certain that theallusion was in the first instance culinary. (OldFrench hocher, incidentally, may well have beenthe source of the Scottish verb hotch ‘shake,fidget’ [14].)doghot dog [19] This term for a cooked sausage orfrankfurter in a bun has its origins in the mid-19th-century use of dog as an American slangterm for a sausage (perhaps an allusion to thesausage’s often dubious contents). By the 1890shot dog was Yale University slang for a cookedsausage bought at a fast-food stall, and by 1900it was in widespread use for the whole deal, bunand all. Since then it has never looked back. (Thewidely repeated story that the term was inventedby the US cartoonist ‘Tad’ Dorgan in the early1900s is quite untrue.)hotel [17] Ultimately, hotel and hospital are thesame word, but they have diverged widely overthe centuries. Both go back to medieval Latinhospitāle ‘place where guests are received,hospice’, but this developed in two differentways in Old French. One branch led with littlechange to English hospital, but a reduced formhostel also emerged (borrowed by English ashostel [13]). Its modern French descendant ishôtel, from which English gets hotel (originallyused in the sense ‘large residence’, as in theFrench hôtel de ville ‘town hall’, but since the18th century increasingly restricted to itspresent-day sense). Other contributions made toEnglish by Old French hostel are the derivativeshostelry [14] and ostler [13], originally (ashosteler) ‘someone who receives guests’ butsince the 14th century used for someone wholooks after horses at an inn. HOSPITAL, HOST, HOSTEL, HOSTELRY, OSTLERhound [OE] Until superseded around the 16thcentury by dog, hound was the main Englishword for ‘dog’ (and indeed its relatives in theother Germanic languages remain so – German,Swedish, and Danish hund, for instance, andDutch hond). It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *kuntos, a derivative of the base whichalso produced Greek kúōn ‘dog’ (source ofEnglish cynic and, according to someetymologists, quinsy), Latin canis ‘dog’(whence French chien and Italian cane, not tomention English canine, canary, chenille, andkennel), Welsh ci ‘dog’ (as in corgi [20], literally‘dwarf dog’), and Russian sobaka ‘dog’. Sincethe 16th century, English hound has been usedlargely for ‘hunting dog’. CANARY, CANINE, CHENILLE, CYNIC, KENNEL,QUINSYhour [13] Greek hórā (a distant relative ofEnglish year) was originally a rather vague term,denoting ‘period of time, season’. In due courseit came to be applied more specifically to ‘onetwelfth of a day (from sunrise to sunset)’, but asthis varied in length according to the time of theyear, hórā was still far from being a precise unitof time. Not until the Middle Ages (when hórāhad passed via Latin hora and Old French horeinto English as hour) did the term become fixedto a period of sixty minutes. (The same sort ofvague relationship between ‘time’ in general or‘period of time’ and ‘fixed period’ is shown inSwedish timme, which is related to English timebut means ‘hour’; in German stunde, whichoriginally meant ‘period of time’, but now means‘hour’; and indeed in English tide, which in OldEnglish times meant ‘hour’ but now, insofar as itsurvives as a temporal term, denotes ‘season’ –as in Whitsuntide.) English horoscope [16]comes ultimately from Greek hōroskópos, acompound which meant literally ‘observer oftime’ – that is, of the ‘time of birth’. HOROSCOPE, YEARhouse [OE] The ultimate origins of house areuncertain. The furthest it can be positively tracedinto the past is to a prehistoric Germanic*khūsam, which also produced German haus,Dutch huus (probably a close relative of Englishhusk), and Swedish hus (descendant of OldNorse hús, which provided the hus- of Englishhusband). Beyond that, all is speculation: somehave argued, for instance, that *khūsam camefrom an Indo-European *keudh- ‘cover, hide’,source also of English hide, hoard, and hut. HUSBAND, HUSK, HUSTINGhow [OE] How belongs to the large family ofquestion-words which in Indo-European beganwith qw- (as in English quantity, query, etc). Thephonetic descendant of this in prehistoricGermanic was khw-, which in modern English isrepresented by wh-. How itself comes from aWest Germanic adverb *khwō formed from thebase that also produced English what and who;like who it has lost its /w/ sound, but since whodid not lose it until considerably later thespelling wh remains as a reminder of it.The how! with which North AmericanIndians supposedly greet each other is not thesame word, incidentally. It is an imitation of aSioux word, such as Dakota háo or Omaha hau. WHAT, WHOhowitzer [17] Czech houfnice denotes a ‘largecatapult’ for hurling stones at the enemy. It wasborrowed into German as houfenitz, and thismade its way into English as howitz at the end ofthe 17th century. This had died out within ahundred years, but at around the same timeEnglish acquired howitzer, probably via Dutchhouwitser, which has stood the test of time.hoyden see HEATHENhub [17] Hub is one of those words that emergeunheralded from the undergrowth of language,its forbears uncertain. It seems originally to havemeant ‘lump’, and is probably ultimately thesame word as hob [16]. This was at first spelled

hub and may have denoted a lump of clay usedas a bakestone, or a brick or clay projection at theback of a fire on which things were placed tokeep warm. And hobnail [16] is etymologicallya nail with a large ‘lumpy’ head. HOBhubbub [16] Hubbub is an Irish contribution toEnglish. It comes from Irish Gaelic hooboobbes,which appears to be related to the Old Irishbattle-cry abú. This was a derivative of buide‘victory’ (a relative of which across the Irish Seaformed the basis of the name Boudicca orBoadicea, the Ancient Britons’ version ofVictoria). English acquired the word (and thenow disused longer form hubbuboo) in the mid16th century, and originally used it for the ‘warcryof a savage tribe’; the modern sense ‘noisyturmoil’ developed in the 17th century.huckster [12] The Low German dialects ofnorthern Germany appear to have had inprehistoric times a root *huk- which denoted‘sell’. It has been suggested that this was thesource of English hawker ‘peddler’, and with thealternative agent suffix -ster (which originallysignified ‘female doer’, but in Low German wasused for males) it produced huckster – perhapsborrowed from Middle Dutch hokester. HAWKhuddle [16] Huddle originally meant ‘hide’ (‘tochop off the head of the sentence, and slylyhuddle the rest’, James Bell’s translation ofWalter Haddon against Orosius 1581),suggesting that it could well be a derivative ofthe same base as produced English hide (its formindicates that it would have come via a LowGerman dialect). But virtually from the firsthuddling was more than just ‘hiding’ – it was‘hiding in a heap or among a crowd’; and fromthis has developed the word’s modern meaning‘crowd or draw together’.hug [16] Etymologically, hug seems to conveythe notion of ‘consolation, solicitude’; theexpression of such feelings by clasping someonein one’s arms is apparently a secondary semanticdevelopment. The word is of Scandinavianorigin, and is probably related to, if notborrowed from Old Norse hugga ‘comfort,console’. This was descended from a prehistoricGermanic *hugjan, which also produced OldEnglish hogian ‘think, consider, be solicitous’.hull [OE] The notion underlying the word hull isof ‘covering’ or ‘concealing’. It originally meant‘peapod’ – etymologically, the ‘covering’ ofpeas – and comes ultimately from the same Indo-European source as produced English cell,clandestine, conceal, hall, hell, and possiblycolour and holster. It is generally assumed thathull ‘main body of a ship’, which first appearedin the 15th century, is the same word (a ship’shull resembling an open peapod), although someetymologists have suggested that it may beconnected with hollow. CELL, CLANDESTINE, CONCEAL, HALL, HELL,OCCULThuman [14] Human comes via Old Frenchhumain from Latin hūmānus. Like homō277 hump‘person’, this was related to Latin humus ‘earth’,and was used originally for ‘people’ in the sense‘earthly beings’ (in contrast with the immortalgods). Humane is essentially the same word, andbecame established in the 18th century as adistinct spelling (and pronunciation) for two orthree specific senses of human. Other Englishderivatives include humanism [19], humanity[14], and humanitarian [19]. HUMANE, HUMBLE, HUMUShumble [13] Etymologically, humble means‘close to the ground’. It comes via Old Frenchumble from Latin humilis ‘low, lowly’. This wasa derivative of humus ‘earth’, which is related toEnglish chameleon and human and was itselfacquired by English in the 18th century. In postclassicaltimes the verb humiliāre was formedfrom humilis, and English gets humiliate [16]from it. CHAMELEON, HUMAN, HUMILIATE, HUMUSpiehumble pie [17] Until the 19th century, humblepie was simply a pie made from the internalorgans of a deer or other animal (‘Mrs Turner didbring us an umble pie hot out of her oven’,Samuel Pepys, Diary 8 July 1663). Humble hasno etymological connection with the adjectivehumble ‘meek’; it is an alteration of the nowextinct numbles ‘offal’ [14] (which cameultimately from Latin lumulus, a diminutive oflumbus ‘loin’, from which English gets loin andlumbar). Numbles became umbles (perhaps frommisanalysis of a numble as an umble in contextssuch as numble pie), and from there it was a shortstep to humble; but the expression eat humblepie is not recorded in the sense ‘be humiliated’until the 1830s. It combines the notion of ‘foodfit only for those of lowly status’ with afortuitous resemblance to the adjective humble. LOIN, LUMBARhumiliate see HUMBLEhumour [14] Latin hūmēre meant ‘be moist’(from it was derived hūmidus, source of Englishhumid [16]). And related to it was the nounhūmor, which signified originally simply‘liquid’. In due course it came to be appliedspecifically to any of the four bodily fluids(blood, phlegm, choler, and black bile) whosecombinations according to medieval theories ofphysiology determined a person’s general healthand temperament. This was the sense in whichEnglish acquired the word, via Anglo-Normanhumour, and it gradually developed in meaningvia ‘mental disposition at a particular time,mood’ and ‘inclination, whim’ to, in the late17th century, the main modern sense‘funniness’. HUMIDhump [18] Hump seems to have originatedamong the Low German dialects of NorthGermany and the Low Countries – Dutch, forinstance, has the probably related homp ‘lump’.It first appeared in English towards the end of the17th century in the compound hump-backed, butby the first decade of the 18th century it wasbeing used on its own. (Another theory is that itarose from a blend of the now obsolete

humus 278crumpbacked with hunchbacked [16], whosehunch- is of unknown origin.)humus see HUMBLEhundred [OE] The main Old English word for‘hundred’ was hund, whose history can be tracedback via a prehistoric Germanic *khundam toIndo-European *kmtóm; this was also the sourceof Latin centum, Greek hekatón, and Sanskritçatám, all meaning ‘hundred’. The formhundred did not appear until the 10th century. Its-red ending (represented also in Germanhundert, Dutch honderd, and Swedishhundrade) comes from a prehistoric Germanic*rath ‘number’. CENT, RATE, THOUSANDhunger [OE] Hunger is a widespread word in theGermanic languages, shared by German,Swedish, and Danish as well as English (Dutchspells it honger), but it is not represented in anyof the other Indo-European languages. Indeed,no related forms have been identified for certain,although Greek kégkein ‘be hungry’ andSanskrit kákat ‘be thirsty’ are possibilities.hunt [OE] Hunt is an ancient word, probablytraceable back to an Indo-European *kend-,which also produced Swedish hinna ‘reach’. Itsoriginal Old English descendant was hentan‘seize’, of which huntian (source of modernEnglish hunt) was a derivative. Etymologically,therefore, hunt means ‘try to seize’. HANDhurdle see HOARDhurricane [16] European voyagers firstencountered the swirling winds of the hurricanein the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, andthey borrowed a local word to name it – Caribhuracan. This found its way into English viaSpanish. (An early alternative form wasfuracano, which came from a Carib variantfuracan.)hurry [16] The earliest known occurrences of theverb hurry are in the plays of Shakespeare, whouses it quite frequently. This suggests that it mayhave been a word well known to him in his nativeWest Midland dialect, but it is not clear whetherit is identical with the horye that occurs in a14th-century Middle English poem from thesame general area. A possible relative is MiddleHigh German hurren ‘move quickly’.hurt [12] English borrowed hurt from Old Frenchhurter, which meant ‘knock’ (as its modernFrench descendant heurter still does). This sensedied out in English in the 17th century, leavingonly the metaphorically extended ‘wound,harm’. It is not clear where the Old French wordcame from, although it may ultimately be ofGermanic origin. Hurtle [13], a derivative ofhurt, also originally meant ‘knock’, and did notdevelop its present connotations of precipitatespeed until the 16th century. HURTLEhusband [OE] The Anglo-Saxons used wer‘man’ (as in werewolf) for ‘husband’, and notuntil the late 13th century was the word husbanddrafted in for ‘male spouse’. This had originallymeant ‘master of a household’, and wasborrowed from Old Norse húsbóndi, acompound formed from hús ‘house’ and bóndi.Bóndi in turn was a contraction of an earlierbóandi, búandi ‘dweller’, a noun use of thepresent participle of bóa, búa ‘dwell’, This wasderived from the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’,which also produced English be, boor, booth,bound ‘intending to go’, bower, build, burly,byelaw, byre, and the -bour of neighbour. Theancient link between ‘dwelling in a place’ and‘farming the land’ comes out in husbandman[14] and husbandry [14], reflecting a nowobsolete sense of husband, ‘farmer’. Theabbreviated form hubby dates from the 17thcentury. BE, BOOR, BOOTH, BOWER, BUILD, BYRE, HOUSEhusk [14] Etymologically, a husk is probably a‘little house’. It seems to have been adapted fromMiddle Dutch hūskijn, a diminutive form of hūs‘house’ – the notion being, of course, that it‘houses’ seeds or fruits. The derivative huskywas coined in the 16th century; its use for‘hoarse’ comes from the idea of having dryhusks in the throat (the husky dog [19] is anentirely different word, probably an alteration ofEskimo). HOUSEhussar [15] Ultimately, hussar is the same wordas corsair. Its remote ancestor is Italian corsaro,which was borrowed via Old Serbian husar intoHungarian as huszár. This originally retained themeaning of corsair, ‘plunderer’, but graduallydeveloped into ‘horseman’, and it was as‘Hungarian horseman’ that English borrowed it. CORSAIRhusting [11] In the late Old English period, ahusting was a sort of deliberative assembly orcouncil summoned by the king. The word wasborrowed from Old Norse hústhing, literally‘house assembly’, which denoted a councilconsisting of members of the king’s immediatehousehold, rather than a general assembly(thing, which is the same word as modernEnglish thing, is represented in modernScandinavian languages by ting or thing‘parliament, court’). In the 12th century theword came to be used for a court of law held inLondon’s Guildhall, which for many centurieswas the City of London’s senior court, and in the17th century it is recorded as meaning the‘platform at the upper end of the Guildhall’, onwhich the Lord Mayor and Aldermen sat duringsessions of the court. In the early 18th centurythis was transferred metaphorically to the‘platform on which candidates stood to addresselectors’, and subsequently it was widened toinclude the whole ‘election proceedings’. HOUSE, THINGhut [17] Etymologically, a hut is probably a‘covering structure’. The word has plausiblybeen traced back to Germanic *khūd-, whichalso produced English hide and probably hoard,house, and huddle. This would have been thesource of Middle High German hütte, which

eventually found its way into French as hutte –whence English hut. HIDE, HOARD, HOUSE, HUDDLEhyacinth [16] Greek huákinthos denoted a plantwith deep red flowers which according to legendsprang from the blood of Hyacinthus, a beautifulyouth whom Apollo loved but accidentallykilled. It probably came from some pre-HellenicMediterranean language, and was remodelled inGreek on the basis of Hyacinthus’s name. It isnot clear what sort of plant the original hyacinthwas, but by the time the word reached English(via Latin hyacinthus and French hyacinthe) ithad been adopted for the bluebell and itsimmediate relatives. Greek huákinthos was alsoused for a variety of precious stone, probablyoriginally the sapphire. This meaning toofollowed the word into English, but is now littleused, having been taken over by jacinth [13] –itself a descendant of Latin hyacinthus. JACINTHhydrogen [18] Greek húdōr ‘water’ (a distantrelative of English water) has been a prolificsource of English vocabulary. Amongst itscontributions are hydrangea [18] (literally‘water-vessel’, so named from the cuplike shapeof its seedpods), hydrant [19], hydrate [18],hydraulic [17] (literally ‘of a water-pipe’),hydrofoil [20], and hydroponics [20] (literally‘water-culture’). Hydrogen itself means literally‘generating water’, and was coined in French ashydrogène in the late 1780s for hydrogen’sproperty of forming water when oxidized. It isfirst recorded in English in 1791. WATERhyena see SOWhygiene [19] Greek hugiés meant ‘healthy’.From it were formed the noun hugíeia ‘health’(personified as Hygieia, the Greek goddess ofhealth) and the adjective hugieinós ‘healthful’.This came to be used as a noun, hugieiné,‘science of healthy living’, which passed viamodern Latin hygieina and French hygiène intoEnglish.hymen see SEWhymnhymn [13] For the ancient Greeks, a húmnos wasa ‘song of praise’ – but not necessarily areligious one. It could be used to celebrate thedeeds of heroes as well as to compliment thegods. However, the Greek Septuagint uses it torender various Hebrew words meaning ‘songpraising God’, and it was this meaning that wascarried via Latin hymnus and Old French ymneinto English as imne (the spelling hymn is a 16thcenturylatinization).hypnosis [19] Húpnos was Greek for ‘sleep’.From it was derived the adjective hūpnotikós‘sleepy, narcotic’, which English acquired via279 hysteriaLatin and French as hypnotic [17]. At first thiswas used only with reference to sleep-inducingdrugs, but then in the late 18th and early 19thcenturies the techniques of inducing deep sleepor trance by suggestion were developed. Earlyterms for the procedure included animalmagnetism and mesmerism (see MESMERIZE),and then in 1842 Dr James Braid coined neurohypnotismfor what he called the ‘condition ofnervous sleep’. By the end of the 1840s this hadbecome simply hypnotism. Hypnosis was coinedin the 1870s as an alternative, on the model of ahypothetical Greek *hypnosis.hypochondria [16] Originally, hypochondriawas an anatomical term, denoting the ‘area of theabdomen beneath the ribs’. It comes via Latinfrom Greek hupokhóndrion, a compound nounformed from the prefix hupo- ‘under’ andkhóndros ‘cartilage’. This particular part of thebody was formerly supposed to be the seat ofmelancholy, and so in the 17th century the wordcame to be used for ‘low spirits, depression’.The modern sense ‘belief of being ill’ originallybe longed to the derived hypochondriasis [18],but was transferred in the 19th century tohypochondria.hypocrite [13] Etymologically, a hypocrite issomeone who is ‘playing a part’, merelypretending. The word comes via Old Frenchypocrite and late Latin hypocrita from Greekhupokritēs ‘actor, hypocrite’. This was aderivative of hupokrínein, a compound verbformed from the prefix hupo- ‘under’ andkrínein ‘separate’, which originally meantliterally ‘separate gradually’, and eventuallypassed via ‘answer’ and ‘answer one’s fellowactor on stage’ to ‘play a part’, and hence‘pretend’.hypotenuse [16] The hypotenuse isetymologically a line that is ‘stretched under’ theright angle of a triangle. The word comes viaLatin hypotēnūsa from Greek hupoteínousa, aderivative of hupoteínein. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix hupo- ‘under’ andteínein ‘stretch’ (a relative of English tend,tense, etc). TEND, TENSEhysteria [19] Greek hustérā meant ‘womb’ (it isrelated to Latin uterus ‘womb’). The adjectivederived from it was husterikós ‘suffering in thewomb’. This passed into Latin as hystericus,which formed the basis of the modern Latinnoun hysteria, a term coined in the 19th centuryfor a neurotic condition supposedly peculiar towomen (in popular parlance it was called ‘thevapours’). Hysterectomy ‘surgical removal of thewomb’ dates from the late 19th century. UTERUS

II [OE] Essentially all the Indo-Europeanlanguages share the same first person singularpronoun, although naturally it has diverged inform over the millennia. French has je, forexample, Italian io, Russian ja, and Greek egó.The prehistoric Germanic pronoun was *eka,and this has produced German ich, Dutch ik,Swedish jag, Danish jeg, and English I. Theaffirmative answer aye ‘yes’ [16] is probablyultimately the same word as I. AYE, EGOibex see IVYice [OE] Ice is a widespread word among theGermanic languages – German has eis, forinstance. Dutch ijs, and Swedish and Danish is –but beyond that its connections are somewhatdubious. Some of the more easterly Indo-European languages have or had similar-lookingforms, including Old Iranian isu- ‘frosty, icy’,modern Iranian yak ‘ice’, and Afghan asaī‘frost’, which suggest the possibility of acommon source.Iceberg [18] was perhaps an adaptation ofDanish and Norwegian isberg, literally ‘icemountain’.ichneumon [16] Ichneumon comes from aGreek word which meant literally ‘tracker’. Thiswas ikhneúmōn, a derivative of íkhnos ‘track,footstep’. Aristotle used it as the name for aspecies of wasp that hunted spiders, and it wasadopted into English in this sense for theichneumon fly, a wasplike insect with parasiticlarvae, in the 17th century. Its original Englishapplication, however, was to a variety of Africanmongoose which ‘tracks down’ or hunts outcrocodile eggs.ichthyology see FISHicicleicicle [14] Historically, icicle is a tautology,meaning literally ‘ice icicle’. It originated inMiddle English as a compound of ice and ickel‘icicle’. This word, which survived dialectallyinto the 20th century as ickle, goes back to OldEnglish gicel, which in turn was descended froma prehistoric Germanic *jakulaz (source also ofmodern Icelandic jökull ‘glacier’).icon [16] The etymological idea underlying iconis of ‘similarity’. It comes via Latin īcōn fromGreek eikón, which was derived from aprehistoric base meaning ‘be like’. From‘likeness, similarity’, eikón progressedsemantically via ‘image’ to ‘portrait, picture’.That was the general sense in which Englishacquired the word (‘The Icon, or forme of thesame birde, I have caused thus to bee figured’,John Bossewell, Workes of Armorie 1572), and itwas not until the early 19th century that theparticular application to a ‘sacred portrait in theEastern Orthodox church’ entered the language.iconoclast [17] The original iconoclasts weremembers of the Eastern Orthodox church in the8th and 9th centuries AD who were opposed tothe use or worship of religious images. In moreextreme cases their opposition took the form ofsmashing icons (the word iconoclast comes viamedieval Latin from medieval Greekeikonoklástēs, a compound formed from eikón‘icon’ and the verb klan ‘break’). The termsubsequently came to be applied to extremeProtestants in England in the 16th and 17thcenturies who expressed their disapproval ofgraven images (and popish practices in general)in similar ways. Its general use for an ‘attackerof orthodoxy’ dates from the early 19th century.idea [16] Etymologically, an idea is the ‘look’ ofsomething – it comes ultimately from the samesource as produced the Greek verb ídein ‘see’.Greek idéā itself was used by Plato in thespecialized sense ‘archetypal form ofsomething’, which survives in the derivedadjective ideal [17], but as far as the modernEnglish noun is concerned, its sense ‘notion,mental conception’ developed (in Greek) via‘look, appearance’, ‘image’, and ‘mentalimage’. Ideology [18] is a derivative, coinedoriginally in French at the end of the 18thcentury. IDEOLOGY, IDOLidentity [16] The historical meaning of identityis best preserved in its derivative identical [17] –‘the same’. For its ultimate source was Latinidem ‘same’, a pronoun (formed from id ‘it, thatone’ with the suffix -dem) used in English sincethe 17th century for referring to a previouslycited author or text. This formed the basis of lateLatin identitās, which meant literally‘sameness’; the main meaning of its Englishdescendant identity, ‘individuality, set ofdefinitive characteristics’, arose from the notionof something always being the same or alwaysbeing itself (rather than something else).ideology see IDEAidiosyncracyidiosyncracy [17] Greek idios meant ‘of aparticular person, personal, private, own’.Among the words it has contributed to Englishare idiom [16] (etymologically ‘one’s ownparticular way of speaking’), idiot, andidiosyncracy. This was a compound formed inGreek with súgkrāsis, itself a compound nounmade up of sún ‘together’ and krāsis ‘mixture’ (arelative of English crater). Súgkrāsis originallymeant literally ‘mixture’, but it was later used

metaphorically for ‘mixture of personalcharacteristics, temperament’, and soidiosúgkrāsis was ‘one’s own particular mix oftraits’. IDIOM, IDIOTidiot [13] The etymological idea underlying idiotis of a ‘private individual’. That is what Greekidiótēs (a derivative of ídios ‘personal, private’)originally meant. It was extended to the ordinary‘common man’, particularly a lay personwithout any specialized knowledge, and so cameto be used rather patronizingly for an ‘ignorantperson’. It is this derogatory sense that has comedown to English via Latin idiōta and Old Frenchidiot. IDIOSYNCRACYidle [OE] ‘Lazy’ is only a secondary meaning ofidle. It originally meant ‘useless, worthless’ (asin ‘idle threats’), and the sense ‘lazy’ did notdevelop until the 13th century (the Old Englishwords for ‘lazy’ were slow and slack). Idle isshared by other West Germanic languages, andits relatives (German eitel ‘vain, futile’ andDutch ijdel ‘vain, useless, conceited’) point upits original English meaning, but it is not knownwhat its ultimate origins are.idol [13] Greek eidos meant ‘form, shape’ (itcame from the same root as idéā, source ofEnglish idea). From it was derived eídōlon,which originally meant ‘appearance’, and inparticular ‘apparition, phantom’. It developedfrom there to ‘image’, either a ‘mental image’ ora ‘physical image’, such as a ‘statue’; and in theearly Christian era it and its Latin descendantīdōlum were used for an ‘image of a false god’.English acquired the word via Old French idoleor idele.Another English offspring of Greek eidos, inthe sense ‘picture’, is idyll [17], which wasborrowed from the diminutive form eidúllion‘little picture’, hence ‘small descriptive poem’. IDEA, IDYLLif [OE] The Old English version of if was gif, butits initial g was closer to modern English y inpronunciation than to g, and the conjunctiongradually evolved through Middle English yif toif. It is not known where it ultimately came from;it is evidently connected with Old High Germaniba ‘condition’ and Old Norse ef ‘doubt’, butwhether it started life as a noun like these or wasfrom the beginning a conjunction is not clear. Itssurviving Germanic relatives are German ob‘whether’ and Dutch of ‘if’.ignite [17] The Latin word for ‘fire’ was ignis (ithas been traced back to a prehistoric Indo-European *egni- or *ogni-, which also producedSanskrit agni- and Lithuanian ugnìs ‘fire’). Fromit were derived the verb ignīre ‘set light to’,source of English ignite, and the adjectiveigneus, from which English got igneous [17].Another contribution the Latin noun has made toEnglish is ignis fatuus ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ [16],literally ‘foolish fire’, so called perhaps from itserratic flickering, as if scatter-brained.ignoble see NOBLE281 illuminateignore [17] The Latin verb for ‘not know’, andhence ‘disregard’, was īgnōrāre, which wasformed with a negative prefix from the stem gnō-‘know’ (ultimate source also of Englishnarrate). From it English got ignore, and fromits derivative īgnōrantia the noun ignorance[13]. Its first person present plural wasīgnōrāmus ‘we do not know’. This wasoriginally used in English in the 16th century asa legal term, in the sense ‘we ignore’, used by aGrand Jury in rejecting an indictment for lack ofevidence. Not until the early 17th century was itapplied to an ‘ignorant person’. NARRATEiliac see JADEilk [OE] Historically ilk means simply ‘same’. ItsOld English form was ilca, which was ultimatelya compound made up of the demonstrativeparticle *i- ‘that (same)’ and *līk- ‘form’ (as inthe English verb like). It had virtually died out bythe mid-16th century as a straight synonym forsame, but one context in which it survived,particularly in Scottish English, was in theincreasingly fossilized phrase of that ilk ‘of thesame’, which was used originally to express thenotion that someone’s name was the same as thatof the place they came from: thus Nairn of thatilk would have signified ‘someone called Nairnfrom a place called Nairn’. In due course it cameto be applied specifically to landed Scottishfamilies, and so strong did the connection with‘family’ become that by the 19th century we seethe first signs of ilk being treated as if it were anoun, meaning ‘family’. That led on in time to aneven more general sense ‘type, sort’, capable ofuse in such expressions as ‘of a different ilk’.ill [12] ‘Sick’ is not the original meaning of ill. Tostart with it meant ‘bad’ (a sense which survives,of course, in contexts such as ‘ill-will’, ‘illmannered’,etc), and ‘sick’ did not come on thescene until the 15th century. The word wasborrowed from Old Norse illr, which issomething of a mystery: it has other moderndescendants in Swedish illa and Danish ilde‘badly’, but its other relations are highly dubious(Irish olc has been compared) and no one knowswhere it originally came from. The sense ‘sick’was probably inspired by an impersonal usage inOld Norse which meant literally ‘it is bad to me’. LIKEillicit see LEISUREilluminate [16] Etymologically, illuminate is aparallel construction to enlighten. It was formedin the late Latin period from the prefix in- andlūmen ‘light’ (source of English luminous). Thepast participle of the resulting illumināre gaveEnglish illuminate. The medieval-soundingsense ‘illustrate manuscripts’ is actually quiterecent, replacing in the 18th century the parallelformation enlumine, acquired by English in the14th century via Old French enluminer frommedieval Latin inlūmināre. Illumine [14] camevia Old French illuminer. Illustrate is closelyrelated. ILLUSTRATE, LUMINOUS

illusion 282illusion [14] The notion of ‘play’ is at theetymological heart of illusion (as indeed of itsclose relatives allusion [16], delusion [15], andelude [16]). It came via Old French from Latinillūsiō, a derivative of illūdere ‘make fun of’.This was a compound verb formed from theprefix in- and lūdere ‘play’ (source of Englishludicrous [17]). In classical Latin illūsiō meant‘mockery’, and no semantic shift seems to havetaken place until post-classical times, when itmoved to ‘deceit’ (a sense originally taken overby English). ALLUSION, DELUSION, ELUDE, LUDICROUSillustrate [16] Illustrate is closely relatedetymologically to illuminate. It goes back toLatin illustrāre, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix in- and lustrāre ‘make bright’, whichcame from the same base as produced Latinlūmen (source of illuminate) and lūx ‘light’, andindeed English light. Originally it meant literally‘throw light on’, but this eventually passed via‘elucidate’ to, in the 17th century, ‘exemplify’and ‘add pictures to’. More of the original senseof ‘brightness’ survives, albeit metaphorically,in illustrious [16], which comes from Latinillustris ‘shining, clear’, a back-formation fromillustrāre. ILLUMINATE, ILLUSTRIOUS, LIGHT, LUMINOUS,LUSTREimage [13] Latin imāgō meant a ‘likeness ofsomething’ (it probably came from the samesource as imitate). It subsequently developed arange of secondary senses, such as ‘echo’ and‘ghost’, which have not survived the journey viaOld French into English, but the central‘likeness’ remains in place. Derived from thenoun in Latin was the verb imāginārī ‘form animage of in one’s mind, picture to oneself’,which became English imagine [14]. (Latinimāgō, incidentally, was used in the 1760s by theSwedish naturalist Linnaeus for an ‘adult insect’– based on the Latin sense ‘natural shape’, theidea being that the insect had achieved its finalperfect form after various pupal forms – andEnglish took the term over at the end of the 18thcentury.) IMITATEimbecile [16] Etymologically imbecile means‘without support’, hence ‘weak’. It came viaFrench from Latin imbēcillus, a compoundadjective formed from the prefix in- ‘not’ and anunrecorded *bēcillum, a diminutive variant ofbaculum ‘stick’ (from which English getsbacillus and bacterium). Anyone or anythingwithout a stick or staff for support is byextension weak, and so the Latin adjective cameto mean ‘weak, feeble’. This broadened out to‘weak in mind’, and was even used as a noun for‘weak-minded person’, but English did notadopt these metaphorical uses until the late 18thcentury. BACILLUS, BACTERIUMimitate [16] Latin imitāri meant ‘make a copyof’. It was formed from the base *im-, whichalso lies behind the Latin ancestors of Englishemulate [16] and image; all three words sharethe basic meaning element ‘likeness’. Englishacquired the word via the Latin past participleimitātus. EMULATE, IMAGEimmaculate [15] A macula in Latin was a ‘spot’or ‘stain’ (as well as a ‘hole in a net’, which gaveEnglish the mail of chain mail). Hence anythingthat was immaculātus (an adjective formed withthe negative prefix in-) was ‘spotless’ –‘perfect’. CHAINMAILimmediate see MEDIUMimmense see MEASUREimmerse see MERGEimminent see PROMINENTimmolate see MILLimmune [15] The -mune of immune is the sameas that of remunerate and of commune (andhence of common). It represents Latin mūnis‘ready to give service’. The addition of thenegative prefix in- gave immūnis, which inclassical Latin denoted literally ‘exempt from aservice, charge, etc’, and hence by metaphoricalextension ‘free from something, devoid ofsomething’. This general sense still survives, ofcourse, in English (as in ‘grant immunity fromprosecution’); and the more specific ‘not liableto infection’ did not emerge until as recently asthe 1870s, probably under the influence ofFrench or German. COMMON, COMMUNE, REMUNERATEimmure see MURALimp [OE] Old English impe meant ‘new shoot,sapling’. Its ultimate source was medieval Latinimpotus ‘graft’, a borrowing from Greekémphutos, which itself was an adjective derivedfrom the verb emphúein ‘implant’. In the earlyMiddle English period it began to be transferredfrom plants to people, carrying its connotationsof ‘newness’ or ‘youth’ with it, so that by the14th century it had come to mean ‘child’. And inthe 16th century, in a development similar to thatwhich produced the now obsolete sense of limb‘naughty child’, it was applied to ‘mischievouschildren, children of the Devil’, and hence to‘mischievous or evil spirits’.impair [14] If to repair something is to ‘put itright’, it seems logical that to impair somethingshould be to ‘make it wrong’. In fact, though,logic has nothing to do with it, for the two wordsare quite unrelated. Repair comes ultimatelyfrom Latin parāre ‘make ready’, whereas impairgoes back via Old French empeirier to VulgarLatin *impējōrāre ‘make worse’.impeach [14] Impeach has nothing to do withpeaches. In fact it is closely related to impede,and indeed originally meant ‘impede’ inEnglish. Both verbs comes ultimately from Latinpēs ‘foot’. Impede [17] goes back to Latinimpedīre, a compound verb based on pēs whichoriginally meant literally ‘tie the feet together’.Impeach, on the other hand, comes via OldFrench empecher (ancestor of modern Frenchempêcher) from late Latin impedicāre ‘fetter,entangle, ensnare’, a compound verb based on

the noun pedica ‘fetter’, which itself came fromthe same base as pēs. Its original meaning‘impede, prevent’ survived in English until thelate 17th century (‘a Ditch of sufficient breadth,and depth, to impeach the Assaults of anEnemy’, William Leybourn. CursusMathematicus 1690). Its use for ‘charge, accuse’arose in the 14th century from an erroneousassociation with Latin impetere ‘attack, accuse’(source of English impetuous). FOOT, IMPEDE, PEDALimpede see PEDALimpend see PENDULUMimperative see EMPIREimperial see EMPIREimpersonate see PERSONimpetuous [14] Etymologically, impetuousmeans ‘having impetus’. It comes from Latinimpetuōsus, a derivative of the noun impetus‘attack’ (source of English impetus [17]), whichin turn was based on impetere ‘attack’. This wasa compound verb formed from the prefix in-‘against’ and petere ‘go towards, seek, attack’(source of English appetite, compete,perpetuate, petition, petulant, and repeat). Theetymological idea underlying both words is thusof ‘rushing towards something with greatviolence or aggression’. Another member of thesame family is impetigo [16], the name of a sortof skin disease. This was borrowed from Latinimpetīgō, whose medical meaning was aspecialization of an earlier and much moregeneral ‘attack’ (as in ‘an attack of eczema’). APPETITE, COMPETE, IMPETUS, PERPETUATE,PETULANT, REPEATimplacable see PLEASEimplementimplement [15] The idea underlying implementis of ‘filling up’. It comes ultimately from Latinimplēre, a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix in- and plēre ‘fill’ (as in Englishcomplete). This originally meant ‘fill up’, andhence ‘fulfil’, but in post-classical times, underthe influence of implicāre (source of Englishemploy) it came to mean ‘use, employ’, and sothe derived plural noun implēmenta denoted‘things used, equipment’. It was originally usedin the plural in English too, and it was not untilthe 16th century that the singular ‘tool’ emerged.The original Latin sense ‘fulfil’ is preservedmuch more closely in the verb implement, whichwas an independent and considerably laterintroduction, first recorded in Scottish English inthe 19th century. (From the same source comeEnglish complement and supplement.) COMPLEMENT, COMPLETE, SUPPLEMENTimplicate see EMPLOYimplore see EXPLOREimply see EMPLOYimportant [16] Important and import (theopposite of export) come from the same source –Latin importāre, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix in- and portāre ‘carry’ (as in Englishportable). Its original literal sense (asrepresented in the English verb import [16]) was‘bring in’, but in the Middle Ages this developed283 inmetaphorically to ‘imply, mean’ (which is whatFrench importer and Italian importare signify),and its present participle importāns gave Englishimportant. IMPORT, PORT, PORTABLEimpostor [16] An impostor is etymologicallysomeone who ‘imposes’ on others. The wordcomes via French imposteur from late Latinimpostor, a contraction of classical Latinimpositor. This was a derivative of imponere ‘puton’, hence ‘inflict, deceive’ (a compound verbbased on ponere ‘put, place’), which also gaveEnglish impose [15], impost ‘tax’ [16], andimposture [16]. It is the ‘deceive’ sense ofimponere, of course, that has come through intoimpostor. COMPOSE, DEPOSE, IMPOSE, POSITIONimprecation see PRAYimpregnable see PREYimpresario [18] Impresario has noetymological connection with ‘impressing’people (often though it is mistakenly spelledimpressario). It was borrowed from Italian,where it was a derivative of impresa‘undertaking’. This in turn came from the verbimprendere ‘undertake’, which goes back to ahypothetical Vulgar Latin *imprendere (sourceof the archaic English emprise ‘enterprise’ [13]),a compound based on Latin prendere ‘take’.Hence an impresario is literally someone who‘undertakes’ something.impress see PRESSimproveimprove [16] The -prove of improve has nodirect connection with the verb prove, althoughthe two have come to resemble each other overthe centuries. It comes ultimately from late Latinprōde ‘advantageous’ (source of English proud).This gave Old French prou ‘profit’, which wascombined in Anglo-Norman with the causativeprefix em- to produce the verb emprouer. Thisoriginally meant ‘turn to a profit, turn to one’sadvantage’, a sense which survives in English inone or two fossilized contexts such as ‘improvethe shining hour’. Modern English ‘make or getbetter’ developed in the 17th century. PROUDimprovise [19] Etymologically, if youimprovise something, it is because it has notbeen ‘provided’ for in advance. The word comesvia French improviser from the Italian adjectiveimprovviso ‘extempore’, a descendant of Latinimprōvīsus ‘unforeseen’. This in turn wasformed from the negative prefix in- and the pastparticiple of prōvīdere ‘foresee’ (source ofEnglish provide). The earliest recorded use ofthe verb in English is by Benjamin Disraeli inVivian Grey 1826: ‘He possessed also thesingular faculty of being able to improvisequotations’. (The closely related improvident‘not providing for the future’ [16] preserves evenmore closely the sense of its Latin original.) PROVIDEimpugn see PUGNACIOUSin [OE] In is a widespread preposition amongstthe Indo-European languages. Greek had en,Latin in (whence French and Italian en and

inaugurate 284Spanish in), and amongst modern languagesGerman and Dutch have in, Swedish i, Welsh yn,and Russian v, all of which point back to anoriginal Indo-European *en or *n. The adverb inwas not originally the same word; it comes froma conflation of two Old English adverbs, inn andinne, both ultimately related to the prepositionin. (An inn is etymologically a place ‘in’ whichpeople live or stay.) INNinaugurate see AUGURincense English has two distinct words incense,but both come ultimately from the same source.The noun, ‘aromatic burnt substance’ [13],comes via Old French encens from late Latinincensum, a noun use of the verb incendere ‘setfire to’ (source of English incendiary [17]). Thisin turn was formed from a derivative of candēre‘glow’ (source of English candle). (From encenswas derived Old French censier, which passedinto English via Anglo-Norman as censer [13].)Besides the literal ‘set fire to’, incendere wasused figuratively for ‘enrage’, which Englishacquired as the verb incense [15] via Old French. CENSER, INCENDIARYincest [13] Etymologically, incest is virtually thesame word as unchaste. It was borrowed fromLatin incestus, a noun use of an adjective formedfrom the negative prefix in- and castus ‘pure’(source of English chaste). The Latin worddenoted ‘unchastity’ in general, but in practicewas often applied specifically to ‘sexual contactbetween close relatives’. CHASTEinch [OE] Inch and ounce both meanetymologically ‘one twelfth’, but while thisancestral sense has largely been lost sight of inthe case of ounce, for inch it remains in force.The words’ common ancestor is Latin uncia, aterm for a ‘twelfth part’ derived from unus ‘one’.This was borrowed into prehistoric Germanic as*ungkja, but it has not survived in any otherGermanic language but English. ONE, OUNCEincident [15] An incident is literally that which‘befalls’. In common with accident andoccident, and a wide range of other Englishwords, from cadaver to occasion, it comesultimately from Latin cadere ‘fall’. This wascombined with the prefix in- ‘on’ to produceincidere ‘fall on’, hence ‘befall, happen to’. Itspresent participial stem incident- passed intoEnglish either directly or via French. The use ofa word that literally means ‘fall’ to denote theconcept of ‘happening’ is quite a commonphenomenon. It occurs also in befall and chance,and operates in other languages than English;Welsh digwydd ‘happen’, for instance, is derivedfrom cwyddo ‘fall’. ACCIDENT, CADENCE, CASE, OCCASIONincline [13] Latin -clīnāre (a relative of Englishlean, but itself only ever recorded in compounds)meant ‘bend, lean’. Add to this the prefix in- andyou had inclīnāre ‘lean towards’. This wasoriginally borrowed into English via Old Frenchencliner as encline – a form which survived untilthe 17th century, when the latinized inclinebegan to take over. The metaphorical use of theword to indicate a person’s disposition orpreference dates back to Roman times. LEANinclude [15] The idea of ‘shutting in’ or‘enclosure’ is etymologically central to include –indeed, it is virtually the same word as enclose.It was borrowed from Latin inclūdere, acompound verb formed from the prefix in- andclaudere ‘shut’ (source of English close). (Aprobable Vulgar Latin descendant of inclūderewas *inclaudere, which passed into Old Frenchas enclore. English took over its past participleenclose as the verb enclose [14].) Themetaphorical sense ‘comprise’ was alreadydeveloping in classical Latin. CLOSE, ENCLOSEincrease [14] The -crease element in increase(which occurs also, of course, in its antonymdecrease) means ‘grow’. It comes from Latincrēscere ‘grow’ (source of English crescent),which combined with the prefix in- to produceincrēscere ‘grow in, grow on’. This passed intoOld French as encreistre, which Englishoriginally took over as encres. The Latin-stylespelling, with in- instead of en-, wasreintroduced in the 15th century. Derived fromLatin incrēscere was incrēmentum ‘growth,increase’, which gave English increment [15]. CRESCENT, CREW, CROISSANT, DECREASE,INCREMENTincubate [18] Latin incubāre, the source ofEnglish incubate, meant literally ‘lie down on’.It was based on the verb cubāre ‘lie’, which alsoproduced English concubine and cubicle. Thenotion of ‘lying on eggs to hatch them’ seemslater to have fed back into the simple verbcubāre, which in this sense gave Englishcouvade ‘male mimicking of child-bearing’ [19](an anthropological term borrowed from French)and covey [14]. Another English descendant ofincubāre is incubus ‘male demon that has sexwith a sleeping woman’ [14], literally ‘one wholies down on another’ (its counterpart is thesuccubus ‘female demon that has sex with asleeping man’ [16], literally ‘one who lies downunder another’).The nasalized version of the stem of Latincubāre gave English incumbent [16] (whichetymologically means ‘resting upon as a duty’)and recumbent [17]. CUBICLE, CONCUBINE, COVEY, INCUBUS,INCUMBENT, RECUMBENT, SUCCUBUS, SUCCUMBincunabulum [19] An incunabulum is a bookprinted before 1501. But etymologically theword has nothing to do with books. It comesfrom the Latin plural noun incūnābula, whichhad a range of meanings, including ‘swaddlingclothes’, ‘cradle’, and ‘infancy’, which pointback to its original source, Latin cūnae ‘cradle’.Nineteenth-century antiquarians andbibliographers applied the term to early printedbooks since they represented the ‘infancy’ ofbook production.incursion see COURSE

indefatigable see FATIGUEindemnity see DAMAGEindent Etymologically, English has two separatewords indent, although they have converged to aconsiderable extent over the centuries(particularly in the virtually shared derivativeindentation). The one meaning ‘(make) a hole ordepression’ [14] is simply a derivative of dent,which itself probably originated as a variant ofdint. Indent ‘make notches in’ [14], however,owes its origin to Latin dēns ‘tooth’. This formedthe basis of an Anglo-Latin verb indentāre,which denoted the drawing up of a contractbetween two parties on two identical documents,which were cut along a matching line of notchesor ‘teeth’ which could subsequently be rejoinedto prove their authenticity. A particular use ofsuch contracts was between master craftsmenand their trainees, who hence became known asindentured apprentices. DENT, DINT; DENTISTindex [16] Latin index originally meant‘indicator’, and hence more specifically‘forefinger’ – the finger used for pointing thingsout. It was based on the same stem, *dik- ‘pointout’, as produced Latin dīcere ‘say’ (source ofEnglish diction, dictionary, etc). Themetaphorically extended sense ‘list of contents’had already developed in Latin before Englishtook it over. Indicate is a parallel but apparentlyindependent formation. DICTION, DICTIONARY, INDICATEindicate [17] Like index, indicate has its originsin the Latin stem *dik- ‘point out’. In this casethe base form was the verbal derivative dicāre‘proclaim’ (ultimate ancestor also of Englishabdicate [16], dedicate [15] and predicate [16]),which with the addition of the prefix inproducedindicāre ‘show’ – which Englishadopted as indicate. First cousin of Latin dicārewas dīcere ‘say’ (source of English diction,dictionary, etc). Addition of the prefix in- to thisproduced indīcere ‘proclaim’, which formed thebasis of Vulgar Latin *indictāre ‘declare,dictate’. This has given English two separateverbs: via Old French enditier the now archaicindite [14]; and via Anglo-Norman enditer, withsubsequent latinization of the spelling, indict[14]. ABDICATE, DEDICATE, PREDICATEindifferent see DIFFERENTindigenous [17] The -gen- of indigenous comesfrom the same ultimate source – Indo-European*gen- – as produced English gender, generate,genital, etc. It denoted ‘produce’. The additionof the Latin prefix indi- ‘in, within’, earlier indu-(a strengthened form of in- originally formedwith de ‘down’, which also appears in indigent‘poor’ [14] and industry) produced indigena‘born or produced in a particular place, native’,which English adopted and adapted asindigenous. GENDER, GENERAL, GENERATE, GENITAL, KINDindignant see DIGNITYindigo [16] Etymologically indigo, a blue dye, isthe ‘Indian dye’ – so named because supplies of285 industryit were obtained from India. The term is anancient one. It originated in Greek indikón,literally the ‘Indian substance’, a derivative ofthe adjective Indikós ‘Indian’, and passed viaLatin indicum and Spanish indico into English asindico. This was replaced in the 17th century bythe Portuguese form indigo, and it wasPortuguese influence, stemming from theircommercial activities in India, that reallyestablished the term among the Europeanlanguages (hitherto the commoner term for thedye had been anil, a word of Sanskrit origins).(The name India, incidentally, to which indigo isrelated, comes ultimately from Old Persianhiñd’u, which originally meant ‘river’, wassubsequently applied specifically to the riverIndus, and finally became the name for thecountry through which the Indus flowed.) INDIAindividual [15] To begin with, individualretained in English its ancestral meaning ‘notable to be divided’: ‘in the name of the holy andindividual Trinity’. Richard Whitbourne,Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland1623. It was borrowed from medieval Latinindīviduālis, a derivative of Latin indīviduus ‘notdivisible’, which in turn was based on dīviduus,a derivative of the verb dīvidere ‘divide’. Thesemantic move from ‘not divisible’ to ‘single,separate’ took place in the 17th century. (Englishacquired the formally parallel indivisible,incidentally, in the 14th century.) DIVIDEindolent [18] Historically, indolent means‘feeling no pain’ – indeed, that is how it wasused as a technical medical term in English inthe 17th and 18th centuries. It comes from lateLatin indolens, which was based on the Latinverb dolere ‘suffer pain’ (source also of Englishdolour [13] and doleful [13]). English took theterm directly from Latin, but meanwhile inFrench indolent had broadened out in meaningvia ‘insensitive’ to ‘inactive, lethargic, lazy’, andthat is the basis of the current English use of theadjective, acquired in the early 18th century. DOLEFUL, DOLOURindomitable see TAMEindulge [17] The -dulg- of indulge may berelated to such words as Greek dolikhós andRussian dólgij, meaning ‘long’. In that caseLatin indulgēre, the immediate source of theEnglish word, may to begin with have signified‘allow long enough for’. Its only recordedsenses, however, are the same as those of modernEnglish indulge.industry [15] Industry comes, partly via OldFrench industrie, from Latin industria, whichmeant ‘quality of being hard-working,diligence’. This was a derivative of the adjectiveindustrius ‘diligent’, which went back to an OldLatin indostruus, formed from the prefix indu-‘in’ (see INDIGENOUS) and the element -struus (arelative of the verb struere ‘build’, from whichEnglish gets construct, destroy, etc). CONSTRUCT, DESTROY, STRUCTURE

inebriate 286inebriate [15] Latin ēbrius (a relative of sōbrius,from which English gets sober) meant ‘drunk’.From it was formed the verb ēbriāre ‘intoxicate’,which with the addition of the intensive prefixin- produced inēbriāre ‘make very drunk’ –whence English inebriate. SOBERineffable [15] Ineffable literally means ‘thatcannot be spoken’. Its ultimate source was theLatin verb fārī ‘speak’, which has also givenEnglish fable, fame, fate, etc. Addition of theprefix ex- ‘out’ produced effārī ‘speak out’, fromwhich the adjective ineffābilis was derived. In19th-century English the word was used as aplural noun, like unmentionables, as a humorouseuphemism for ‘trousers’ or ‘nether garments’:‘shoes off, ineffables tucked up’, William Cory,Letters and Journals 1867. FABLE, FAME, FATEinert [17] The -ert of inert is the same word asart. The word comes from Latin iners, whichoriginally meant ‘unskilled’, but soon developedsemantically to ‘inactive’. It was formed with thenegative prefix in- from ars ‘skill’, source ofEnglish art. The derivative inertia [18] is a Latinformation. In classical times it meant simply‘lack of skill, idleness’; it was Johannes Keplerwho first used it as a technical term in physics inthe 17th century. ART, INERTIAinevitable [15] Latin ēvītāre meant ‘avoid’. Itwas a compound verb formed from the prefix ex-‘away, from’ and vītāre ‘shun’, and actuallyproduced an English verb evite ‘avoid’, ascholarly 16th-century introduction whichsurvived as an archaism into the 19th century. Itsderived adjective was ēvītābilis ‘avoidable’,which with the negative prefix becameinēvītābilis.inexorable [16] Etymologically, inexorablemeans ‘that cannot be removed by praying’. It isan adjective of many layers, of which theoriginal is Latin ōrāre ‘pray’ (source of Englishoracle, orator, etc). Addition of the prefix ex-‘out’ produced exōrāre ‘remove by pleading orentreating’, and further prefixation andsuffixation gave inexōrābilis, which enteredEnglish partly via French inexorable. ORACLE, ORATORinfamous [14] The negative connotations ofinfamous go back a long way – to the word’ssource, in fact, Latin infāmis. This did not meansimply ‘not well known’; the prefix in- denotedpositively ‘bad’, and so infāmis signified ‘of illrepute’. In post-classical times infāmis becameinfamōsus, which passed into English asinfamous. FAMOUSinfant [14] Etymologically, an infant is ‘someonewho cannot yet speak’. The word comes via OldFrench enfant from Latin infāns ‘young child’, anoun use of the adjective infāns, originally‘unable to speak’, which was formed from thenegative prefix in- and the present participle offārī ‘speak’ (source of English fable, fame, fate,etc). The somewhat improbable derivativeinfantry [16] comes via French from Italianinfanteria; this was based on infante, whoseoriginal meaning ‘young person’ had shifted to‘foot soldier’ (a development distantlyreminiscent of the use of British English lads for‘male members of a group, team, etc’). FABLE, FAME, FATEinfect [14] Latin inficere originally meant ‘putin’ – it was a compound verb formed from theprefix in- and facere ‘put, do’ (source of Englishfact, fashion, etc). Its earliest specializedextension was ‘dip in’, which was appliedspecifically to the dipping of cloth into dye.From this it moved on to ‘stain’, and then it wasa short step to ‘taint, spoil’. ‘Affect with disease’was a post-Latin development. English acquiredthe word via the Latin past participial steminfect-. FACT, FACTORY, FASHION, PERFECTinferior see UNDERinferno [19] Etymologically, an inferno is thatwhich is ‘below’. The word comes ultimatelyfrom Latin infernus, meaning ‘situated below,subterranean’. In ancient mythology, the netherregions were the abode of the dead, so infernacame to be used as the equivalent of Dis, and theGreek Hades. In Jewish and Christian belief, thisbasement area was the realm of evil spirits, andconsequently in late Latin infernus came tocover much the same semantic ground asEnglish hell. In Italian this became inferno, andEnglish adopted it (strongly under the influenceof the Inferno of Dante’s Divine Comedy) in thatform in the early 19th century. Its metaphoricaluse for ‘intense heat’, inspired by thestereotypical flames of hell, is a comparativelyrecent development. Meanwhile the relatedinfernal [14] (from late Latin infernalis) hadlong since taken up residence in English, and bythe 18th century was being used as an expletive(as in ‘their infernal cheek’).inflate [16] Inflate comes from inflātus, the pastparticiple of Latin inflāre ‘blow into’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix in- andflāre ‘blow’ (a distant relative of English blow).The use of inflate and inflation as technicalterms in economics to denote uncontrolledgrowth in money supply, credit, etc originated in1830s America. BLOWinflict see PROFLIGATEinfluence [14] Influence began life as anastrological term. It was coined in medievalLatin as influentia from the present participle ofLatin influere ‘flow in’, a compound verb basedon fluere ‘flow’, and to begin with denoted a sortof fluid that was supposed to be given off by thestars and to influence human life. Englishoriginally acquired the word with this meaning,and it was not until the end of the 16th centurythat the main current sense ‘power to produceeffects’ started to establish itself. The moreconcrete notion of an ‘emanation’ that affectedpeople also lay behind the use of Italianinfluenza for ‘epidemic’, from which Englishgot influenza (see FLU).

Another English acquisition from Latininfluere is influx [17], which comes from its pastparticiple. FLU, FLUENT, INFLUXinfluenza see FLUinform [14] When English first acquired inform(via Old French enfourmer) it was used simplyfor ‘give form or shape to’. However, its Latinoriginal, informāre (a compound verb based onforma ‘form’), had in classical times moved onfrom the primary notion of ‘shaping’ via‘forming an idea of something’ and ‘describingit’ to ‘telling or instructing people aboutsomething’. English took this sense over too, andhas persevered with it, but ‘give shape to’ wasdropped in the 17th century. FORMingenious [15] Ingenious used to be a moreelevated term than it is today. To begin with itmeant ‘highly intelligent’, but already by the16th century it was starting to come down in theworld somewhat to ‘cleverly inventive’. Itcomes, partly via French ingénieux, from Latiningeniōsus, a derivative of ingenium ‘naturaltalent, skill’ (a word which, like English gene,generate, genital, etc, goes back ultimately toIndo-European *gen- ‘produce’, and was alsothe source of English engine). Its formalsimilarity to the distantly related ingenuous hasled in the past to its being used for ‘honest, open,frank’, and indeed its semantic derivativeingenuity ‘quality of being ingenious’ [16]belongs etymologically to ingenuous. GENE, GENERAL, GENERATE, GENITALingenuous [16] Etymologically, ingenuousmeans ‘inborn’. English acquired it from Latiningenuus, which was composed of the prefix inandthe element *gen-, denoting ‘production,birth’. This was originally used for ‘born in aparticular place, native, not foreign’, but it soonbegan to take on connotations of ‘freeborn, not aslave’, and hence ‘of noble birth’. Metaphoricaltransference to qualities thought characteristic ofthe nobility – uprightness, candour, straightforwardness,etc – soon followed, and that wasthe word’s semantic slant when English acquiredit. By the 17th century, however, it had started toslide towards ‘artlessness, innocence’ (a sensereflected in ingénue, borrowed from French inthe 19th century). GENE, GENERAL, GENERATE, GENITAL, INGÉNUEingot [14] The etymological meaning of ingot is‘poured in’. It was formed in Middle Englishfrom in and an apparent survival of goten, thepast participle of Old English geotan ‘pour’. Itoriginally meant ‘mould for casting metal’ (theidea being that the molten metal was ‘pouredinto’ the mould), but towards the end of the 16thcentury it started being used for the lump ofmetal formed in this way. (When Frenchborrowed the word in the 15th century it graftedits definite article on to it, giving modern Frenchlingot ‘ingot’.)ingrain [17] Ingrain means literally ‘work into287 innthe grain’ (of fabric, originally) – whence themain metaphorical sense of ingrained, ‘deepseated’.But there is much more to the story ofingrain than that. Its ultimate source wasengrainer ‘dye’, an Old French verb based ongraine ‘cochineal dye’. English borrowed this inthe 14th century as engrain ‘dye crimson withcochineal’, which remained a live sense of theword into the 17th century. Gradually awarenessof the word’s original specific connections withthe colour crimson died out, and the verb wasvirtually formed anew in the mid 17th centuryusing the concept of the grain or ‘texture’ ofcloth, but the spelling engrain remained, andremains as a secondary variant to this day, toremind us of the word’s origins. GRAINingredient [15] The -gredi- of ingredientrepresents the Latin verb gradī ‘step, go’ (whosepast participial stem gress- has given Englishaggression, congress, digress, etc). From it wasformed ingredī ‘go in, enter’, whose presentparticiple ingrediēns became English ingredient.The word’s etymological meaning is thus ‘thatwhich “enters into” a mixture’. It was originallyused mainly with reference to medicines, and itscurrent application to food recipes seems to be acomparatively recent development. AGGRESSION, CONGRESS, GRADE, GRADUALinhabit see HABITinherit see HEREDITARYinimical see ENEMYiniquity see EQUALinjury [14] Etymologically, aninjury issomething ‘unjust’. It comes via Anglo-Normaninjurie from Latin injūria, a noun use of injūrius‘unjust’, which was a compound adjective basedon jūs ‘right’ (source of English just). Its originalmeaning in English was ‘wrongful action’, and itwas only gradually that the notion of ‘harm’(which had actually been present in the wordfrom classical Latin times) began to come to thefore. JUSTink [13] The Greeks had a method of paintingwhich involved applying coloured wax to asurface and then fixing it with heat. The verbdescribing this process was egkaíein ‘burn in’, acompound of en- ‘in’ and kaíein ‘burn’, whosederivative egkaustikós is the ancestor of the termused for the technique in English – encaustic[17]. Another derivative, égkauston, was appliedto the purple ink used by emperors in ancienttimes for signing documents. As it passed vialate Latin encaustum or encautum into OldFrench enque it gradually lost its imperialassociations, and by the time it reached Englishas enke it was being used for any dark writingfluid. CAUSTICinn [OE] An inn was originally literally a placeone lived or stayed ‘in’. It comes from aprehistoric Germanic *innam, which was aderivative of the ancestor of the modern Englishadverb in, and in Old English it meant simply‘house where one lives, abode, home’. Thissense survived into the 17th century (‘QueenMary gave this House to Nicholas Heth,

innate 288Archbishop of York, and his successors for ever,to be their Inne or Lodging for their Repair toLondon’, James Howell, Londinopolis 1657),and a memory of it remains in London’s Inns ofCourt, which originated as lodgings for lawyers.The later sense ‘public house, tavern’ developedtowards the end of the 14th century. INinnate see NATIVEinnocent [14] Someone who is innocent isliterally ‘harmless’. The word comes, partly viaOld French, from Latin innocēns, an adjectiveformed with the negative prefix in- from thepresent participle of nocēre ‘harm’ (source ofEnglish nuisance) – hence, ‘not harming’. Theslight semantic shift from ‘not harming’ to‘blameless, guiltless’ took place in Latin. NUISANCEinnuendo [17] An innuendo was originally ahint given with a ‘nod’ or a wink. The word is aderivative of Latin innuere ‘signal to by meansof a nod’, a compound verb formed from in-‘towards’ and nuere ‘nod’. The ablative case ofits gerund, innuendō ‘by nodding’, was used inmedieval legal documents as the equivalent of‘that is to say, i.e’. In particular, it introduced thederogatory meaning claimed by the plaintiff in alibel case to be contained in or implied by astatement, and this formed the basis for itsmetaphorical transference to any ‘obliquederogatory implication’.inoculate [15] Far-fetched as the connectionmay seem, inoculate actually comes ultimatelyfrom Latin oculus ‘eye’ (source of Englishocular [16] and oculist [17]). By metaphoricalextension oculus was applied to the ‘bud’ of aplant (much like the eye of a potato in English),and the verb inoculāre was coined to denote thegrafting on of a bud or other plan part. That washow it was used when originally adopted intoEnglish (‘Peaches have their Season at MayKalends them to inoculate’, Palladius onHusbandry 1440), and the modern sense‘introduce antigens into the body’ did notemerge before the early 18th century, based onthe notion of ‘engrafting’ or ‘implanting’ animmunising virus into a person. It was originallyused with reference to smallpox. EYE, FEROCIOUS, OCULARinquest see ENQUIREinsect [17] The Greek word for ‘insect’ waséntomon (source of English entomology [18]). Itwas derived from entémnein ‘cut up’, acompound verb formed from en- ‘in’ andtémnein ‘cut’ (a close relative of English tome),and denoted literally ‘creature divided up intosegments’. The term was translated literally intoLatin as insectum (originally the past participleof insecāre, a compound verb formed from inandsecāre ‘cut’), and seems to have beenintroduced into English in Philemon Holland’stranslation of Pliny’s Natural History 1601. SECTIONinsert see SERIESinside [16] Inside (a compound, of course, of inand side) was originally a noun, meaning ‘innersurface’ (‘Solomon builded the walls on theinside with Cedar timber’, Miles Coverdale’stranslation of I Kings 6:15 1535), and it was notused as an adjective until the early 17th century– by Shakespeare, in fact. Adverbial andprepositional use are more recent still, fromaround the end of the 18th century. SIDEinsidious see SESSIONinsignia see SIGNinsist see STATUEinsouciant see SOLICITinspire see SPIRITinstal [16] To instal someone was originallyliterally to put them ‘into a stall’. The wordcomes from medieval Latin installāre, acompound verb based on the noun stallum‘stall’, and referred originally to the formalinduction of someone into an office byceremonially placing them in a seat or ‘stall’,such as the choir stall of a cathedral. The instalofinstalment [18], incidentally, is a differentword, although the two are ultimately related. Itis an alteration of an earlier estallment‘arrangement for payment’, which came fromAnglo-Norman estaler ‘fix payments’. This wasa derivative of estal ‘fixed position’, which wasborrowed from Old High German stal ‘place’(source also of medieval Latin stallum). INSTALMENT, STALLinstant [15] Latin instāre meant ‘be present’ (itwas a compound verb formed from the prefix in-‘upon’ and stāre ‘stand’). Its present participleinstāns was used adjectivally for ‘present’, andhence by extension for ‘urgent’. The latter wasactually the meaning originally taken up byEnglish, but it has now virtually died out.‘Present’ was introduced in the mid-16th century(it now survives in the abbreviation inst, used ingiving dates to signify ‘the present month’), andby the end of the century this had evolved intothe main current sense ‘immediate’. The nouninstant ‘moment’ comes from medieval Latintempus instāns ‘present time’. Derived frominstāns was the Latin noun instantia ‘presence,urgency’. Again it was the latter that originallycame into English with instance [14]. The mainmodern sense ‘example’, first recorded in the16th century, appears to come ultimately from asemantic progression in medieval Latin from‘urgency’ to ‘eager solicitation’ and hence to‘legal pleading’. Further metaphoricization tookit on to ‘new argument or example adduced tocounter a previous one’, and hence in due courseto simply ‘example’. INSTANCE, STAND, STATION, STATUEinstead [13] Instead is the English end of a chainof loan translations that goes back to Latin inlocō (in loan translations, the individualcomponents of a foreign word or expression aretranslated into their equivalents in the borrowinglanguage, and then reassembled). The Latinphrase meant literally ‘in place (of)’, and thiswas translated into Old French as en lieu de.Middle English rendered the French expressionin turn as in stead of or in the stead of (stead

‘place’, now obsolete except in certain fixedcompounds and expressions, comes ultimatelyfrom the same Indo-European source as stand,station, etc). It began to be written as one wordtowards the end of the 16th century. STAND, STATION, STATUE, STEADinstigate see STICKinstil see STILLinstinct [15] The etymological notionunderlying instinct (and also the closely relatedinstigate) is of ‘goading onwards with a pointedstick’. Its ultimate source is Latin instinguere‘urge onwards, incite’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix in- ‘on’ and stinguere ‘prick,goad’. Source also of English distinct andextinct, this goes back to the same root, *stig-, asproduced English stick and Latin stīgāre ‘prick,goad’, the ancestor of English instigate [16]. Thenoun derived from it, instinctus, originallymeant ‘incitement, instigation’, but it eventuallymoved on to ‘impulse’, the sense it had whenEnglish acquired it. The more specialized‘innate impulse’ developed in the mid 16thcentury. DISTINCT, EXTINCT, INSTIGATE, STICKinstitute [15] An institute is etymologicallysomething ‘established’ or ‘set up’. Its ancestoris Latin instituere ‘establish’, a compound verbformed from the prefix in- and statuere ‘set up’(itself a derivative of stāre ‘stand’ and source ofEnglish prostitute, statute, etc). The nounderived from this was institūtum, which meant‘purpose, plan, practice’. Word and senses weretaken over as a package by English, but thesemeanings are now dead or dying, having beentaken over since the 19th century by‘organization that promotes a particular cause orpursuit’ (this originated in French at the end ofthe 18th century). The verb institute, however,remains far closer to the original Latin meaning. PROSTITUTE, STAND, STATION, STATUTEinstruct [15] The -struct of instruct occurs alsoin construction, destruction, structure, etc. Itcomes from the past participle of Latin struere‘build’. In the case of instruct, combination withthe prefix in- produced instruere ‘build, prepare,equip, teach’, whose past participle steminstruct- formed the basis of the English verb. CONSTRUCT, DESTROY, INSTRUMENT,STRUCTUREinstrument [13] Instrument comes from thesame source as instruct: the Latin verb instruere‘build, prepare, equip, teach’. From it wasderived the noun instrūmentum, which meant‘tool, equipment’. When introduced into Englishvia Old French at the end of the 13th century itwas used for a ‘musical instrument’, but themore general ‘implement’ and the metaphorical‘means’ soon followed in the 14th century. CONSTRUCT, DESTROY, INSTRUCT, STRUCTUREinsular see ISLANDinsulin [20] Insulin, a hormone which promotesthe utilization of blood sugar, was first isolatedin 1921 by F G Banting and C H Best. Its name,which was inspired by the fact that insulin issecreted by groups of cells known as the islets of289 intellectLangerhans (insula is Latin for ‘island’), wasactually coined in French around 1909, and wasindependently proposed in English on a coupleof further occasions before the substance itselfwas anything more than a hypothesis. ISLE, PENINSULAinsult [16] The -sult of insult comes from a wordthat meant ‘jump’. Its source was Latin insultāre‘jump on’, a compound verb based on saltāre‘jump’. This was a derivative of salīre ‘jump’,source in one way or another of English assail,assault, desultory, salacious, and salient. OldFrench took insultāre over as insulter and used itfor ‘triumph over in an arrogant way’. This washow the word was originally used in English, butat the beginning of the 17th century the nowfamiliar sense ‘abuse’ (which had actuallydeveloped first in the Latin verb) wasintroduced. ASSAIL, ASSAULT, DESULTORY, SALACIOUS,SALIENTinsuperable see SUPERinsure [15] Insure and ensure [14] are ultimatelythe same word. And their common ancestorstarted out, in fact, as a variant of assure [14].This came via Old French asseurer from VulgarLatin *assēcūrāre, a compound verb formedfrom the Latin prefix ad- ‘to’ and the adjectivesēcūrus ‘safe’ (source of English secure andsure). Anglo-Norman had a variant form,enseurer, which produced English ensure. Fromfairly early on this had been alternatively spelledinsure (using the Latinate prefix in-), but it wasnot until the 17th century that this versionbecame established in the sense ‘provide coveragainst loss, damage, etc’ (for which previouslythe more usual term had actually been assure). ASSURE, ENSURE, SECURE, SUREinsurgent [18] An insurgent is etymologicallysomeone who ‘rises up’. The word comes fromthe Latin verb insurgere, which was formed fromin- in the sense ‘against’ and surgere ‘rise’(source of English surge and source). Aninsurgent is hence fairly straightforwardly arebel, someone taking part in an uprising, abelligerent who is not part of an officiallyrecognized fighting force. Choice of vocabularyin this area tends to be controversial, however,and the use of insurgent to denote Iraqiirredentists after the Coalition invasion of 2003was widely criticized – partly, perhaps, from themisconception that they were beingcharacterized as ‘surging in’ from outside thecountry. The longer established insurrection[15], from the same ultimate source, is much lessliable to such misunderstanding. RESOURCE, RESURRECTION, SOURCE, SURGEintact see ENTIREintegral see ENTIREintegrityintegrity see ENTIREintegument see PROTECTintellect [14] Intellect and intelligent come fromthe same ultimate source: Latin intelligere‘perceive, choose between’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix inter-‘between’ and legere ‘gather, choose, read’

intend 290(source of English lecture, legible, etc). Its pastparticiple intellectus came to be used as a nounmeaning ‘perception, comprehension’, whichEnglish acquired as intellect via Old French;while its present participle intelligēns gaveEnglish intelligent [16]. The derivativeintelligentsia [20] was borrowed from Russianintelligyentsia, which in turn came via Polishinteligiencja from Latin intelligentia‘intelligence’. INTELLIGENT, LECTURE, LEGIBLEintend [14] The Latin verb intendere (acompound formed from the prefix in- ‘towards’and tendere ‘stretch’) had a variety ofmetaphorical meanings, some of which havecome through into English. Principal amongthem was ‘form a plan or purpose’, an extensionof an earlier ‘direct or ‘stretch’ one’s thoughtstowards something’, which has given Englishintend and the derived intention [14]. The nounintent [13] belongs with this group too, but theadjective intent [17] looks back to the earlier‘direct one’s mind towards a particular thing’,and intense [14] comes from the even moreliteral ‘stretched tight’. A medieval Latinaddition to the meanings of intendere was‘understand’, which English adopted in the 14thcentury. It had largely died out in English by theend of the 17th century, but it has persisted in theRomance languages, and has even developedfurther to ‘hear’ (which is what French entendremeans). INTENSE, INTENTION, TENSEinterest [15] The Latin verb interesse meantliterally ‘be between’ (it was a compound ofinter ‘between’ and esse ‘be’). It was usedmetaphorically for ‘be of concern, be important,matter’, and appears to have been borrowed intoAnglo-Norman as a noun, meaning ‘what onehas a legal concern in or share of’. English tookthis over in the 14th century as interesse, but itgradually changed over the next hundred yearsor so into interest, mainly due to the influence ofOld French interest ‘damage’, which came fromthe third person present singular form of theLatin verb. The main modern sense ‘curiosity’developed towards the end of the 18th century.interloper [16] An interloper is literallysomeone who ‘runs between’. The word wascoined in English, but based on Dutch loper, aderivative of lopen ‘run’ (to which English leapis related). It originally denoted someone whoengaged in trade without authorization, and onlyin the 17th century took on its present-daymeaning ‘interfering outsider’. LEAPintermediate see MEDIUMintermezzo see MEDIUMinternecineinternecine [17] Etymologically, internecinedenotes ‘attended by great slaughter’. Its modernconnotations of ‘conflict within a group’, whichcan be traced back to the 18th century (DrJohnson in his Dictionary 1755 defines it as‘endeavouring mutual destruction’), presumablyarise from the standard interpretation of inter- as‘among, between’. But in fact in the case ofinternecine it was originally used simply as anintensive prefix. The word was borrowed fromLatin internecīnus, a derivative of internecāre‘slaughter, exterminate’. This was a compoundverb formed with the intensive inter- fromnecāre ‘kill’ (a relative of English necromancyand pernicious). NECROMANCY, PERNICIOUSinterpolate [17] The Latin ancestor ofinterpolate meant literally ‘polish up’. It wasinterpolāre, based on a verbal element -polārethat was related to polīre ‘polish’ (source ofEnglish polish). Its meaning graduallyprogressed metaphorically via ‘refurbish’ and‘alter the appearance of’ to ‘falsify, particularlyby the insertion of new material’ (this lastpresumably arising from a reassertion of thecentral meaning of inter-, ‘between’). Englishoriginally took it over in the sense ‘alter, tamperwith’, but before the middle of the 17th centurythe notion of ‘insertion, interjection’ had begunto emerge in its own right, and has graduallytaken over from ‘alter’. POLISHinterpose see POSITIONinterregnum see REIGNinterrogate see PREROGATIVEinterrupt [15] Etymologically, interrupt means‘break between’. It comes from the pastparticiple of Latin interrumpere ‘break in’, acompound verb formed from the prefix inter-‘between’ and rumpere ‘break’ (source ofEnglish rout and rupture). CORRUPT, ROUT, RUPTUREintersect see SECTIONinterval [13] The val- of interval representsLatin vallum ‘rampart’ (source of English wall)– so etymologically the word means ‘spacebetween ramparts’. That was the original senseof its Latin ancestor, intervallum, but already inthe classical period the metaphorical ‘gap intime, pause’ was developing. WALLintestate see TESTAMENTintransigent [19] In the 18th century there wasan extreme leftist political party in Spain which,because of its unwillingness ever tocompromise, was known as los intransigentes.The name was formed with the negative prefixin- from transigentes, the present participle ofSpanish transigir ‘compromise’. This was adescendant of Latin transigere, literally ‘drivethrough’, hence ‘come to an understanding,accomplish’ (source of English transact), acompound verb formed from trans- ‘through’and agere ‘drive’ (from which English getsaction, agent, etc.) French took the Spanishword over as a general adjective meaning‘uncompromising’, and English acquired it inthe early 1880s. ACT, ACTION, AGENT, TRANSACTintrepid [17] The -trepid of intrepid representsLatin trepidus ‘alarmed’ (source also of Englishtrepidation [17]), which goes back to an Indo-European source in which the notion of ‘fear’

seems to be linked with or derived from that of‘scurrying away’. Addition of the negative prefixin- produced intrepidus ‘undaunted’, whichreached English partly via French intrépide. TREPIDATIONintricate see TRICKintrinsic [15] The Latin adverb intrinsecusmeant ‘on the inside’. It was formed from*intrim ‘inward’, an unrecorded derivative of theadverb intrā ‘within’, and secus ‘alongside’ (arelative of English second, sect, sequel, etc). Inthe post-classical period it came to be used as anadjective, meaning ‘inward’, and it passed intoOld French as intrinseque ‘inner, internal’. Thisgeneral concrete sense accompanied the wordinto English, but it now survives only as ananatomical term, meaning ‘situated within abody part’. The abstract sense ‘inherent’, nowthe adjective’s main meaning, developed in the17th century.The derivation of the antonym extrinsic [16]is precisely parallel, with Latin extrā ‘outside’taking the place of intrā. EXTRINSIC, SECOND, SECT, SEQUELintroduce [16] Introduce means etymologically‘lead inside’. It was borrowed from Latinintrōdūcere ‘lead in’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix intrō- ‘in, inside’ and dūcere‘lead’ (source of English duct, duke, educate,produce, etc). Of its main secondary meanings,‘use for the first time, originate’ emerged inLatin but ‘make known personally to others’seems to have been a later development. DUCT, DUKE, EDUCATE, PRODUCEintrude see ABSTRUSEinundate see UNDULATEinvalidinvalid see VALIDinveigh [15] Inveigh originally meant ‘carry in,introduce’ (‘In them are two colours quarterlyput: the one into the other, and so one colour isinveighed into another’, Book of Saint Albans1486). Its second syllable comes from Latinvehere ‘carry’ (source of English vector, vehicle,and vex). Invehere meant simply ‘carry in’, butits passive infinitive form invehī denoted ‘becarried into’, ‘go into’, and hence ‘attack(physically or verbally)’. This latter sense wasimported into English inveigh in the early 16thcentury, and into the derivative invective [15]. INVECTIVE, VEHICLE, VEXinveigle [15] The French verb aveugler means‘blind’ (it is a derivative of the adjective aveugle‘blind’, whose probable source was the medievalLatin phrase ab oculīs ‘without eyes’). It passedinto Anglo-Norman, with alteration of theprefix, as envegler, and English acquired thisoriginally in the metaphorical sense ‘deceive’ –which in the 16th century developed to ‘entice,seduce, persuade’.invent [15] Invent originally meant ‘find’ (‘Sincethat Eve was procreated out of Adam’s side,could not such newels [novelties] in this land beinvented’, wrote the anonymous author of a15th-century song). It was based on invent-, thepast participial stem of Latin invenīre ‘comeupon, find’, a compound verb formed from the291 irkprefix in- ‘on’ and venīre ‘come’. The sense‘devise’, which developed via ‘discover’,actually existed in the Latin verb, but English didnot take it on board until the 16th century.The derivative inventory [16] was borrowedfrom medieval Latin inventōrium ‘list’, analteration of late Latin inventārium, whichoriginally meant a ‘finding out’, hence an‘enumeration’. ADVENTURE, INVENTORYinvert see VERSEinvest [16] The etymological notion underlyinginvest is of ‘putting on clothes’. It comes via OldFrench investir from Latin investīre, a compoundverb formed from the prefix in- and vestis‘clothes’ (source of English vest, vestment,travesty, etc). It retained that original literalsense ‘clothe’ in English for several centuries,but now it survives only in its metaphoricaldescendant ‘instal in an office’ (as originallyperformed by clothing in special garments). Itsfinancial sense, first recorded in English in theearly 17th century, is thought to have originatedin Italian investire from the idea of dressingone’s capital up in different clothes by putting itinto a particular business, stock, etc. TRAVESTY, VEST, VESTMENTinvestigate [16] To investigate something isetymologically to look for traces, or ‘vestiges’,of it. The word comes from Latin investīgāre‘search into’, a compound verb based onvestīgāre ‘track, trace’. This in turn was aderivative of vestīgium ‘footprint’, hence ‘track,trace’ (source of English vestige). VESTIGEinvidious see ENVYinvigorate see VIGOURinvincible see VANQUISHinvite [16] Invite comes from Latin invitāre,probably by way of French inviter, but there ourcertain knowledge of its ancestry ends; for theLatin verb is something of a mystery word. Noone is too sure where the element -vitāre comesfrom. One suggestion is that it is related to Greekhiesthai ‘be desirous of’. VIEinvoice see ENVOYinvoke see VOCATIONinvolve see VOLUMEiodine [19] Íon was the Greek word for ‘violet’(indeed it is related to English violet). From itwas derived the adjective iódēs ‘violetcoloured’,which was taken by the chemistJoseph Louis Gay-Lussac as the basis of iode,the French term for ‘iodine’ (iodine gives off apurple vapour when heated). The British chemistSir Humphry Davy adopted it into English,adding the suffix -ine to produce iodine. VIOLETire see OESTRUSirk [13] Irk originally meant ‘grow tired’, andalthough it is not known for certain, itsunderlying sense could be ‘work until one isweary’: for a possible source may be Old Norse

iron 292yrkja ‘work’. The present-day sense ‘annoy’ isfirst recorded in the 15th century.iron [OE] Iron is probably a Celtic contribution toEnglish, but the borrowing took place in theprehistoric period, before the Germanic dialectsseparated, and so English shares the word withGerman (eisen), Dutch (ijzen), Swedish (järn),etc. The prehistoric Celtic form from whichthese all ultimately came was *īsarnon, whichsome have linked with Latin aes ‘bronze’ andSanskrit isira- ‘strong’. The ancient Indo-European peoples had already split up intogroups speaking mutually unintelligible tonguesby the time iron came into general use, so therewas never any common Indo-European term forit.irony [16] Irony has no etymological connectionwith iron. It comes via Latin īrōnia from Greekeirōneíā, which signified ‘deliberatelypretending ignorance, particularly as a rhetoricaldevice to get the better of one’s opponent inargument’. This was a derivative of eírōn‘dissembler’, which in turn came from the verbeírein ‘say’. This original sense of‘dissimulation’ survives in the expressionSocratic irony, a reference to Socrates’ use ofsuch feigned ignorance as a pedagogicalmethod, but it has been overtaken as the mainsense of the word by ‘saying the opposite ofwhat one means’.isinglass [16] Early modern Dutch huysenmeant ‘sturgeon’ and blas denoted ‘bladder’. Putthem together and you had huysenblas, whichEnglish took over as a term not for the sturgeon’sair bladder itself, but for the gelatinoussubstance obtained from it – isinglass. In theprocess of adoption the more familiar glass wassubstituted for -blas.island [OE] Despite their similarity, island hasno etymological connection with isle (theirresemblance is due to a 16th-century change inthe spelling of island under the influence of itssemantic neighbour isle). Island comesultimately from a prehistoric Germanic *aujō,which denoted ‘land associated with water’, andwas distantly related to Latin aqua ‘water’. Thispassed into Old English as īeg ‘island’, whichwas subsequently compounded with land toform īegland ‘island’. By the late MiddleEnglish period this had developed to iland, theform which was turned into island. (Adiminutive form of Old English īeg, incidentally,has given us eyot ‘small island in a river’ [OE].)Isle [13] itself comes via Old French ile fromLatin insula (the s is a 15th-centuryreintroduction from Latin). Other contributionsmade by insula to English include insular [17],insulate [16], insulin, isolate (via Italian) [18],and peninsula [16]. EYOTisotope [20] The term isotope for a version of anelement with a particular atomic weight wascoined in 1913 by the British chemist FrederickSoddy. It means literally ‘equal place’ and wasformed from two Greek components, the prefixiso- ‘equal’ and the noun tópos ‘place’ (source ofEnglish topic). The reason for the coinage wasthat although isotopes of the same element havedifferent atomic weights, they occupy the ‘sameplace’ in the periodic table of elements. TOPICissue [13] The words issue and exit are closelyrelated etymologically. Both go back ultimatelyto the Latin verb exīre ‘go out’. Its past participleexitus became in Vulgar Latin exūtus, whosefeminine form exūta was used as a nounmeaning ‘going out, exit’. This passed into OldFrench as eissue, later issue, and thence intoEnglish. The original literal sense of the wordstill survives in English, particularly in relationto the outflow of liquid, but has been overtakenin frequency by various metaphorical extensionsdenoting a ‘giving out’ – such as the ‘issue’ of abook or magazine. The sense ‘point ofdiscussion or consideration’ probably comesfrom a medieval legal expression join issue,which originally meant ‘jointly submit adisputed matter to the decision of the court’, andhence ‘argue about something’. EXITit [OE] It (or hit, as it was in Old English) comesultimately from the same prehistoric Germanicdemonstrative stem form. *khi-, as produced he.The possessive form its is a comparatively recentdevelopment, dating from the end of the 16thcentury; until then, his was used for ‘its’. HEitinerary see OBITUARYivory [13] As is hardly surprising, ivory goesback ultimately to an African word which meantboth ‘ivory’ and ‘elephant’. A likely candidate asthis source is Egyptian āb, which may well liebehind Latin ebur ‘ivory’. This passed intoEnglish via Old French ivurie.The expression ivory tower ‘place wherereality is evaded’ is a translation of French tourd’ivoire. This was originally used in 1837 by theFrench critic Sainte-Beuve with reference to thepoet Alfred de Vigny, whom he accused ofexcessive aloofness from the practicalities of theworld. The English version is first recorded in1911.ivy [OE] Ivy has been traced back to a prehistoricGermanic *ibakhs, which also lies behindmodern German efeu and Dutch eilof. This hasbeen linked by some etymologists with Latinibex ‘mountain goat’ (itself acquired by Englishin the 17th century), the semantic connectionbeing ‘climber’.The expression Ivy League, denoting theeight old-established and prestigious universitiesof the northeastern USA (Brown, Columbia,Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania,Princeton, and Yale), was inspired by the idea ofancient ivy-covered walls. It dates from the1930s.

Jjacinth see HYACINTHjade English has two words jade, of which by farthe commoner nowadays is the name of thegreen stone [18]. Despite the mineral’s closeassociation with China and Japan, the term hasno Oriental connections. It is of Latin origin, andstarted life in fact as a description of the stone’smedical applications. Latin īlia denoted the‘sides of the lower torso’, the ‘flanks’, the part ofthe body where the kidneys are situated (Englishgets iliac [16] from it). In Vulgar Latin thisbecame *iliata, which passed into Spanish asijada. Now it was thought in former times thatjade could cure pain in the renal area, so theSpanish called it piedra de ijada, literally ‘stoneof the flanks’. In due course this was reduced tosimply ijada, which passed into English viaFrench. (Jade’s alternative name, nephrite [18],is based on the same idea; it comes from Greeknephrós ‘kidney’.)English’s other word jade [14] now survivesreally only in its derivative adjective jaded ‘tired,sated’ [16]. It originally meant ‘worn-out horse’,and was later transferred metaphorically to‘disreputable woman’. Its origins are not known. ILIAC; JADEDjail [13] Etymologically, a jail is a ‘little cage’.The word comes ultimately from Vulgar Latin*gaviola, which was an alteration of an earlier*caveola, a diminutive form of Latin cavea‘cage’ (source of English cage). It passed intoEnglish in two distinct versions: jail came viaOld French jaiole; but the Old Northern Frenchform of the word was gaiole, and this producedEnglish gaol. Until the 17th century gaol waspronounced with a hard /g/ sound, but then itgradually fell into line phonetically with jail.There has been a tendency for British English touse the spelling gaol, while American prefersjail, but there are now signs that jail is on theincrease in Britain. CAGEjam [18] The verb jam, meaning ‘press tightlytogether’, first appears in the early 18th century(the earliest-known unequivocal example of itstransitive use is in Daniel Defoe’s RobinsonCrusoe 1719: ‘The ship stuck fast, jaum’d inbetween two rocks’). It is not known where itcame from, but it is generally assumed to beimitative or symbolic in some way of the effortof pushing. Equally mysterious are the origins ofjam the sweet substance spread on bread, whichappeared around the same time. Contemporaryetymologists were nonplussed (Nathan Baileyhad a stab in the 1730s: ‘prob. of J’aime, i.e. Ilove it; as Children used to say in Frenchformerly, when they liked any Thing’; but DrJohnson in 1755 confessed ‘I know not whencederived’); and even today the best guess that canbe made is that the word refers to the ‘jamming’or crushing of fruit into jars.jamb see GAMMONJanuary [14] The ancient Romans had a godnamed Janus whose head had two faces, lookingin opposite directions. He was the tutelary deityof doorways, and his festival month was at thebeginning of the year, when he could look bothbackwards at the old year and forwards to thenew one. This month was therefore calledJānuārius mensis ‘month of Janus’ – whenceEnglish January.japan [17] The hard laquer varnish called japanreceived its name, of course, because it camefrom Japan. But where did the name Japan comefrom? For the Japanese call their countryNippon. The answer is Chinese, where jih punmeans literally ‘sunrise’ (jih is ‘sun’, and theequivalent term in Japanese is ni, so JapaneseNippon too is the ‘land of the rising sun’). TheChinese word came into English via MalayJapang. Another English derivative is the nameof the shrub japonica [19], which originated inJapan.jaundice [14] Jaundice is literally ‘yellowness’.The word came from Old French jaunice, whichwas a derivative of the adjective jaune ‘yellow’(the d in the middle appeared towards the end ofthe 14th century). The derived adjectivejaundiced [17] originally meant simply‘suffering from jaundice’, but the association ofthe yellowish colour with bitterness and envysoon produced the figurative meaning familiartoday. YELLOWjaunty see GENTLEjaw [14] Given that it is a fairly important part ofthe body, our knowledge of the origins of theword for ‘jaw’ is surprisingly sketchy. The OldEnglish terms for ‘jaw’ were céace (modernEnglish cheek) and ceafl (ancestor of modernEnglish jowl), and when jaw first turns uptowards the end of the 14th century it is in theform iowe. This strongly suggests a derivationfrom Old French joe ‘cheek’, but the connectionhas never been established for certain, and manyetymologists consider it more likely that it isrelated to chew.jay [13] Like the robin, the jay may have beenchristened originally with a human name; LatinGaius. At all events, the term for it in postclassicalLatin was gaius, which passed into

jazz 294English via Old French jay. The term jaywalkerfor ‘one who crosses the road illegally’originated in the USA around the time of WorldWar I; it was based on an American use of jay fora ‘fool’ or ‘simpleton’.jazz [20] Words of unknown origin always attractspeculation, and it is hardly surprising that suchan unusual and high-profile one as jazz (firstrecorded in 1913) should have had more than itsfair share (one of the more ingenious andcolourful theories is that it comes from thenickname of one Jasbo Brown, an itinerant blackmusician along the Mississippi – Jasbo perhapsbeing an alteration of Jasper). Given that theword emerged in Black English (probablyoriginally in the sense ‘copulation’), it is notsurprising that attempts have been made to linkit with some West African language, and pictureit crossing the Atlantic with the slave ships, butthere is no convincing evidence for that (thescenario seems to have got started with a 1917article in the New York Sun, which was purelythe invention of a press agent).jealous [13] Etymologically, jealousy and zealare two sides of the same coin. Both comeultimately from Greek zelos. This passed intopost-classical Latin as zēlus, which laterproduced the adjective zēlōsus. Old French tookthis over as gelos or jelous and passed it on toEnglish. The Greek word denoted ‘jealousy’ aswell as ‘fervour, enthusiasm’, and it is this strandof meaning that has come down to us in jealous.Jalousie, incidentally, the French equivalent ofjealousy, was borrowed into English in the 19thcentury in the sense ‘blind, shutter’ – theunderlying notion apparently being that one canlook through the slats without oneself beingseen. ZEALjeans [19] Jeans of the sort we would recognizetoday – close-fitting working trousers made ofhard-wearing, typically blue cloth – emerged inAmerica in the mid-19th century. But theirantecedents have to be sought in a far distantplace. The first known reference to trouserscalled jeans actually comes from mid-19thcenturyEngland: ‘Septimus arrived flourishin’his cambric, with his white jeans strapped underhis chammy leather opera boots’, R S Surtees,Handley Cross 1843. Why the name jeans?Because they were made of jean, a sort of toughtwilled cotton cloth. This was short for jeanfustian, a term first introduced into English in themid-16th century, in which the jean representeda modification of Janne, the Old French name ofthe Italian city of Genoa. So jean fustian was‘cotton fabric from Genoa’, so named becausethat was where it was first made.jejune see DINNERjellyjelly [14] The central idea of ‘coagulation’ takesus back to the ultimate source of jelly, the Latinverb gelāre ‘freeze’ (which also gave Englishcongeal [14]). Its feminine past participle gelātawas used in Vulgar Latin for a substancesolidified out of a liquid, and this passed into OldFrench as gelee, meaning both ‘frost’ and ‘jelly’– whence the English word. (Culinarily, jelly atfirst denoted a savoury substance, made fromgelatinous parts of animals; it was not reallyuntil the early 19th century that the ancestors ofmodern fruit jellies began to catch on in a bigway.)The Italian descendant of gelāta was gelata.From it was formed a diminutive, gelatina,which English acquired via French as gelatine[19]. Gel [19] is an abbreviation of it. COLD, CONGEAL, GEL, GELATINEjeopardy [14] The semantic focus of jeopardyhas changed subtly over the centuries. Originallyit meant ‘even chance’, but gambling being therisky business it is, and human nature having astrong streak of pessimism, attention was soonfocussed on the ‘chanciness’ rather than the‘evenness’, and by the late 14th century jeopardywas being used in its modern sense ‘risk of lossor harm, danger’. The word originated in the OldFrench expression jeu parti, literally ‘dividedplay’, hence ‘even chance’. It was to begin witha term in chess and similar board games.jerry-built [19] In the absence of any watertightevidence, many theories have been put forwardto account for this adjective (first recorded in1869). One (touted in newspapercorrespondence as early as 1884) holds that itimmortalizes the incompetence of a firm ofLiverpool builders named Jerry, but no proof ofthat has ever been found. Another would link it,ingeniously, with the walls of Jericho, which felldown as soon as Joshua blew his trumpet.jet English has two distinct words jet. The older,which denotes a type of black stone used injewellery [14], comes via Old French jaiet andLatin gagātēs from Greek gagátēs, whichdenoted ‘stone from Gagai’, a town in Lycia, inAsia Minor, where it was found.The jet of ‘jet engines’ [16] goes backultimately to a word that meant ‘throw’ – Latinjacere (from which English also gets inject,project, reject, etc). A derivative of this wasjactāre, which also meant ‘throw’. It passed viaVulgar Latin *jectāre into Old French as jeter,and when English took it over it was originallyused for ‘protrude, stick out’: ‘the houses jettingover aloft like the poops of ships, to shadow thestreets’, George Sandys, Travels 1615. Thissense is perhaps best preserved in jetty‘projecting pier’, and in the variant form jut [16],while the underlying meaning ‘throw’ is stillpresent in jettison ‘throw things overboard’ andits contracted form jetsam. But back with theverb jet, in the 17th century it began to be usedfor ‘spurt out in a forceful stream’. The notion ofusing such a stream to create forward motionwas first encapsulated in the term jet propulsionin the mid 19th century, but it did not takeconcrete form for nearly a hundred years (theterm jet engine is not recorded until 1943). INJECT, JETSAM, JETTISON, JETTY, JUT, PROJECT,REJECT, SUBJECTjettison [15] Etymologically, to jettisonsomething is to ‘throw’ it overboard. Like jet, asin ‘jet engine’, the word comes from Latin

jactāre ‘throw’. The abstract noun derived fromthis was jactātiō, which entered English viaAnglo-Norman getteson. It was used for the‘action of throwing cargo overboard, especiallyin order to lighten a ship’, but it was notconverted to its familiar modern role, as a verb,until as recently as the 19th century. Thecontracted form jetson, later jetsam, emerged inthe 16th century, and later came to be used forsuch jettisoned material washed ashore. JET, JCTSAMjetty [15] A jetty is a structure that literallyprojects or is ‘thrown’ out beyond whatsurrounds it. The word was borrowed from OldFrench jetee, where it originated as the pastparticiple of the verb jeter ‘throw’ (source alsoof English jet, as in ‘jet engine’). It was usedoriginally both for a structure jutting out into abody of water, and for a projecting upper storeyof a house, of which the latter now survives onlyas a technical term in architectural history. JETjewel [13] Originally, jewel meant ‘costlyadornment made from precious stones or metals’– a sense now largely restricted to the collectiveform jewellery [14]. The main modern sense‘gem’ emerged towards the end of the 16thcentury. The word comes from Anglo-Normanjuel, but exactly where that came from is notknown for certain. It is generally assumed to bea derivative of jeu ‘game’, which came fromLatin jocus (source of English jocular, joke, etc). JEOPARDY, JOCULAR, JOKEjingo [17] The exclamation by jingo! has beenaround since at least the late 17th century, andthe element jingo probably originated as aeuphemistic alteration of Jesus. But it took on anew lease of life in 1878 when G W Huntincorporated it into a music-hall song he waswriting in support of Disraeli’s hawkish foreignpolicy towards the Russians. Its refrain went ‘Wedon’t want to fight, yet by Jingo! if we do, We’vegot the ships, we’ve got the men, and got themoney too’. By jingo! was taken up as anationalistic rallying call: those who supportedDisraeli’s plan to send in the fleet were calledjingoes, and their attitude was dubbed jingoism.But these were terms used by their opponents,not by the jingoes themselves, and they wereessentially derogatory, and when jingoism laterbroadened out in meaning, it denoted a mindlessgung-ho patriotism.job [16] The origins of job are uncertain. Itslikeliest source is an earlier and now obsoletenoun job which meant ‘piece’. It is quiteplausible that job of work, literally ‘piece ofwork’, could have become shortened to job. Butwhere this earlier job came from is not known,so the mystery remains open.jocular see JOKEjoinjoin [13] Join goes back ultimately to aprehistoric Indo-European *jug- (which alsoproduced English adjust, conjugal, jostle, joust,jugular, juxtapose, subjugate, yoga, and yoke).Its Latin descendant was jungere ‘join’, whichpassed into English via joign-, the present stem295 journeyof Old French joindre. The Latin past participialstem junct- gave English junction [18] andjuncture [14], and also, via Spanish, junta [17](etymologically a body of people ‘joined’together for a particular purpose, hence a‘governing committee’). ADJUST, CONJUGAL, JOUST, JUGULAR, JUNCTION,JUNTA, JUXTAPOSE, SUBJUGATE, YOGA, YOKEjoist [14] Etymologically, a joist is a woodenbeam on which boards ‘lie’ down. The word’sultimate ancestor is the Latin verb jacēre ‘liedown’ (from which English also gets adjacent).Its neuter past participle jacitum was taken intoOld French as a noun, giste, which denoted a‘beam supporting a bridge’ (its modern Frenchdescendant, gîte ‘home’ – that is, ‘place whereone lies down’ – is currently infiltratingEnglish). Middle English took over the OldFrench word, which from the 15th centurygradually began to change to joist. ADJACENTjoke [17] Latin jocus meant ‘jest, joke’ (apossible link with Old High German gehan ‘say’and Sanskrit yācati ‘he implores’ suggests thatits underlying meaning was ‘word-play’). Itpassed into Old French as jeu, which lies behindEnglish jeopardy and probably also jewel. ButEnglish also went direct to Latin for a set ofwords connected with ‘fun’ and ‘humour’,among them jocose [17] and jocular [17], bothfrom Latin derivatives of jocus (the superficiallysimilar jocund, incidentally, is etymologicallyunrelated), and joke itself, which was originallyintroduced in the form joque or joc (‘coming offwith so many dry joques and biting repartees’,Bishop Kennett’s translation of Erasmus’sEncomium Moriae 1683). Juggler belongs to thesame word family. JEOPARDY, JEWEL, JOCULAR, JUGGLERjolly [14] Old French jolif meant ‘pleasant, merry,festive’ (it has been speculated that it may havebeen derived from jól, the Old Norse term for themidwinter festival, to which English yule isclosely related). English took the adjective over,and whereas in French (the modern form is joli)it has come to mean ‘pretty’, in English it keptcloser to the original sense ‘merry’. YULEjoss see DEITYjostle see JOUSTjourneyjourney [13] Etymologically, a journey is a‘day’s’ travel. The word comes via Old Frenchjornee from Vulgar Latin *diurnāta. This in turnwas derived from Latin diurnum ‘dailyallowance or ration’, a noun use of the adjectivediurnus ‘daily’, which was based on diēs ‘day’.The specific notion of a ‘day’s’ travel had diedout by the mid-16th century, leaving only themore general ‘travel’. But before goingaltogether, ‘day’ left its mark on anothermanifestation of the word journey: the wordjourneyman ‘qualified worker’ [15]. This has noconnection with ‘travelling’; it originallydenoted one who was qualified to do a ‘day’s’work.

joust 296Another Latin derivative of diurnus was theadjective diurnātis, which has given Englishdiurnal [15], journal [14] (first cousin to diary),and journalism [19]. Sojourn belongs to thesame language family. DIARY, DIURNAL, JOURNAL, SOJOURNjoust [13] The underlying meaning of joust issimply an ‘encounter’. The word came from OldFrench juster, which originally meant ‘bringtogether’, and hence by extension ‘join battle’and ‘fight on horse-back’. The Old French verbgoes back to Vulgar Latin *juxtāre ‘cometogether’, a derivative of Latin juxtā ‘close’(source of English juxtaposition [17]). And juxtāitself comes from the same ultimate source asEnglish join and yoke.Jostle [14] originated as a derivative of joust. JOIN, JOSTLE, JUXTAPOSEjovial [16] Etymologically, jovial simply means‘born under the influence of the planet Jupiter’.It comes via French from Italian gioviale, aderivative of Giove ‘Jupiter’, which itself goesback to the Latin stem Jov- (from which Englishalso gets Jove [14], as in by Jove!). Jupiter wasthought of as endowing those born under its signwith happiness, and so by extension jovial cameto mean ‘jolly, good-humoured’.The word Jupiter [13] itself represents aLatin compound of Jov- and pater ‘father’.jowl English has two words jowl, which are quiteclose together in meaning but are etymologicallyunrelated. The older, which means ‘jaw’, goesback ultimately to Old English ceafl. It is nowencountered virtually only in the expression‘cheek by jowl’. Jowl ‘flesh around the throat’(now usually used in the plural) first appears inthe 16th century. It may well be a developmentof Middle English cholle, which in turn probablygoes back to Old English ceole ‘throat’ (arelative of German kehle ‘throat’).joy [13] Latin gaudēre meant ‘rejoice’ (it camefrom a prehistoric base *gāu-, which alsoproduced Greek gēthein ‘rejoice’). From it wasderived the noun gaudium ‘joy’, which passedinto English via Old French joye. From the samesource come English enjoy and rejoice.The use of joystick for the ‘control stick of anaircraft’ (perhaps inspired by an earlier slangsense ‘penis’) dates from around 1910. ENJOY, REJOICEjubilee [14] Despite their similarity, jubilee hasno etymological connection with jubilation [14]and jubilant [17]; but they have exerted aconsiderable influence on it over the centuries. Itwas originally a Hebrew word: Hebrew yōbhēlmeant ‘leading animal, ram’, and by extension‘ram’s horn’, and since a ram’s horn was blownto announce the start of a special year (set asideonce every fifty years according to ancientHebrew law) in which slaves were freed, landleft untilled, etc, the term yōbēl came to be usedfor the year itself. Greek took it over as ióbēlosand formed an adjective from it, iōbēlaios. Thiswas passed on to Latin, and it was here thatjubilation took a hand. Latin jūbilāre (source ofEnglish jubilation) originally meant simply ‘callout’, but early Christian writers used it for ‘shoutfor joy’. Under its influence Greek iōbēlaiosbecame Latin jūbilaeus, which was used in theexpression annus jūbilaeus to denote this specialJewish year. It soon came to be used as a noun inits own right, and in this role passed via OldFrench jubile into English. By this time the ideasof ‘fifty years’ and ‘joy, celebration’ hadmingled to such an extent that the word wasbeing used for a ‘fiftieth anniversary’ or itscelebration, a sense which remained currentuntil the early 20th century (in present-dayEnglish it means simply ‘anniversary’, usuallyof a monarch’s accession, and the periodinvolved has to be defined by golden, silver, etc).judge [13] Etymologically, a judge is someonewho ‘speaks the law’. The word comes via OldFrench juge from Latin jūdex, which wasoriginally a compound noun made up of jūs‘law’ and the element -dicus ‘speaking’ (relatedto English diction, dictionary, etc). Parallelformations to have reached English are juridical[16] and jurisdiction [13], while derivatives ofjūdex itself include judicature [16], judicial [14],judiciary [16], and judicious [16]. DICTION, DICTIONARY, JUDICIOUS, JURY, JUSTjuggernaut [17] Hindi Jagganath is a title ofKrishna, one of the avatars, or incarnations, ofthe god Vishnu, the Preserver. It comes fromSanskrit Jagganātha, a compound of jagat-‘world’ and nāthás ‘lord’. It is applied also to alarge wagon on which an image of the god iscarried in procession (notably in an annualfestival in Puri, a town in the northeastern Indianstate of Orissa). It used to be said, apocryphally,that worshippers of Krishna threw themselvesunder the wheels of the wagon in an access ofreligious ecstasy, and so juggernaut came to beused metaphorically in English for an‘irresistible crushing force’: ‘A neighbouringpeople were crushed beneath the worse thanJaggernaut car of wild and fierce democracy’, JW Warter, Last of the Old Squires 1854. Thecurrent application to large heavy lorries isprefigured as long ago as 1841 in WilliamThackeray’s Second Funeral of Napoleon(‘Fancy, then, the body landed at day-break andtransferred to the car; and fancy the car, a hugeJuggernaut of a machine’); but it did not becomefirmly established until the late 1960s.juggler [12] A juggler was originally a ‘jester’,and the word is related to English joke. Itsultimate source was Latin joculātor, a derivativeof jocus ‘jest’ (from which English gets joke).This passed into Old French as jogleor, and wasborrowed into English at the beginning of the12th century. It denoted a general entertainer orbuffoon, but it was also used for a magician orconjurer, and it was presumably an underlyingnotion of dexterity or sleight of hand that led bythe 17th century to its being used for someonewho keeps several objects in the air at the sametime. Old French jogleor became modern Frenchjougleur, and this spawned the variant form

jongleur, which was borrowed into English inthe 18th century. JOCULAR, JOKEjugular see YOKEjuice [13] Juice appears to come ultimately froma prehistoric root which meant ‘mix’. This hadearly descendants denoting ‘soup’ – Latin jūs,for instance, Sanskrit yūa, and Old Slavic jucha– and the Latin form passed into Old French asjus, whence English juice.jukebox [20] The jukebox – a coin-operatedrecord-player – got its name from being playedin jukes; and a juke (or juke-house, or jukejoint),in US Black English slang of the middleyears of the 20th century, was a roadhouseproviding food and drink, music for dancing,and usually the services of prostitutes. The wordprobably came from the adjective juke or joog,which meant ‘wicked’ or ‘disorderly’ in theGullah language, a creolized English of SouthCarolina, Georgia and northern Florida; and thatin turn may well have originated in some as yetunidentified West African language.July [13] July was the month in which JuliusCaesar was born. Originally in ancient Rome itwas called Quintilis, literally ‘fifth month’ (theRoman year began in March), but after the deathand deification of Caesar its name was changedin his honour. Latin Jūlius passed into Englishvia Anglo-Norman julie, and until the 18thcentury the word was usually pronounced torhyme with truly (as the related woman’s nameJulie still is).jump [16] Until the early modern English period,the words for ‘jump’ were leap and spring.Then, apparently out of nowhere, the verb jumpappeared. Its provenance has never beensatisfactorily explained, and etymologists fallback on the notion that it may originally havebeen intended to suggest the sound of jumpingfeet hitting the ground (the similar-soundingbump and thump are used to support this theory).And certainly one of the earliest knowninstances of the word’s use connotes as much‘making heavy contact’ as ‘rising’: ‘The saidanchor held us from jumping and beating uponthe said rock’, Sir Richard Guylforde,Pilgrimage to the Holy Land 1511.Jumper ‘sweater’ [19], incidentally, appearsto have no etymological connection with jump. It297 juxtapositionwas probably derived from an earlier dialectaljump or jup, which denoted a short coat for menor a sort of woman’s underbodice. This in turnwas borrowed from French juppe, a variant ofjupe ‘skirt’, whose ultimate source was Arabicjubbah, the name of a sort of loose outergarment.junction see JOINjuncture see JOINJune [13] June is the month of Juno, the Romangoddess of women and marriage, and wife andsister of Jupiter. Its Latin name was Jūniusmēnsis, ‘Juno’s month’, and Jūnius passed intoEnglish via Old French juin.jungle [18] Not surprisingly, jungle is a tropicalword, but its ancestor denoted quite the oppositeof the lush vegetation it now refers to. It comesfrom Sanskrit jangala, which originally meant‘dry’, and hence ‘desert’. Its Hindi descendantjangal was used for an ‘area of wasteland’, andhence ‘such an area overgrown with scrub’, andwhen it was taken over into Anglo-Indian it wasgradually extended to an ‘area of thick tangledtrees’.junta see JOINJupiterJupiter see JOVIALjurisdiction see JUDGEjust [14] Latin jūs originated in the terminologyof religious cults, perhaps to begin withsignifying something like ‘sacred formula’. Byclassical times, however, it denoted ‘right’, andparticularly ‘legal right, law’, and it has providedEnglish with a number of words connected with‘rightness’ in general and with the process oflaw. The derived adjective jūstus has producedjust and, by further derivation, justice [12] andjustify [14]. The stem form jūr- has given injury,jury [14], objurgate [17], and perjury [14]. Andcombination with the element -dic- ‘say’ hasproduced judge, judicial, juridical, andjurisdiction. Not part of the same word family,however, is adjust [17], which comes ultimatelyfrom Vulgar Latin *adjuxtāre ‘put close to’, acompound verb based on Latin juxtā ‘close’(whence English juxtaposition). INJURY, JUDGE, JURY, OBJURGATE, PERJURYjut see JETjuxtaposition see JOUST

Kkale see CAULIFLOWERkaleidoscope [19] Greek kalós meant‘beautiful’ (it was related to Sanskrit kalyāna‘beautiful’). It has given English a number ofcompound words: calligraphy [17], for instance,etymologically ‘beautiful writing’, callipygian[18], ‘having beautiful buttocks’, andcallisthenics [19], literally ‘beauty and strength’.The Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster usedit, along with Greek eidos ‘shape’ and theelement -scope denoting ‘observationinstrument’, to name a device he invented in1817 for looking at rotating patterns of colouredglass – a ‘beautiful-shape viewer’. CALLIGRAPHY, CALLISTHENICSkangaroo [18] The first English speakers torefer in writing to the kangaroo were CaptainCook and the botanist Joseph Banks, who bothmentioned it in 1770 in the journals they kept oftheir visit to Australia (Banks, for instance,referred to killing ‘kangaru’). This was theirinterpretation of ganjurru, the name for a largeblack or grey type of kangaroo in the GuuguYimidhirr language of New South Wales.English quickly generalized the term to any sortof kangaroo, although it caused some confusionamong speakers of other Australian Aboriginallanguages, who were not familiar with it:speakers of the Baagandji language, for instance,used it to refer to the horse (which had just beenintroduced into Australia). There is no truthwhatsoever in the story that the Aboriginal wordwas a reply to the English question ‘What’sthat?’, and meant ‘I don’t understand’.The element -roo was used in the 19thcentury to produce jackeroo, which denoted ‘anew immigrant in Australia’, and is firstrecorded as an independent abbreviation ofkangaroo in the first decade of the 20th century.The term kangaroo court ‘unofficial court’,which dates from the 1850s, is an allusion to thecourt’s irregular proceedings, which supposedlyresemble the jumps of a kangaroo.kaolin [18] The word kaolin comes ultimatelyfrom gaō ling, the name of a hill in Jiangxiprovince, northern China, from which fine whitechina clay was first obtained (it means literally‘high hill’). It reached English via French.karaoke [20] The conceptual basis of this term,enthusiastically adopted in the West from Japanin the latter part of the 20th century, is of abacking or accompaniment waiting to be ‘filled’by a singer or other soloist. In Japanese, it meansliterally ‘empty orchestra’: kara is ‘empty’ (italso appears in English karate [20], literally‘empty hand’) and oke is short for okesutora –originally a Japanization of English orchestra.keen [OE] The ancestral meaning of keen is‘brave’. That is what its German and Dutchrelatives, kühn and koen, mean, and that is whatkeen itself meant in the Old English period. Butthis sense had died out by the 17th century,having been replaced by the meanings familiartoday, such as ‘eager’ and ‘sharp’.keep [OE] For all that it is one of the commonestverbs in the language, remarkably little is knownabout the history of keep. It first appears in textsaround the year 1000. It is assumed to haveexisted before then, but not to have belonged toa sufficiently ‘literary’ level of the language tohave been written down. Nor has a link beenestablished for certain with any words in otherGermanic languages, although suggestions thathave been put forward include Old High Germankuofa ‘barrel’ (a relative of English coop), fromthe notion of its being something for ‘keeping’things in, and also (since in the late Old Englishperiod keep was used for ‘watch’) Old Norsekópa ‘stare’.keepsake see SAKEken [OE] Once a widespread verb throughoutEnglish, ken is now restricted largely toScotland, having taken over the semanticterritory elsewhere monopolized by know. In OldEnglish it actually meant not ‘know’ but ‘makeknown’; it was the causative version of cunnan‘know’ (ancestor of modern English can). Itsrelatives in other Germanic languages made thechange from ‘make known’ to ‘know’ early –hence German kennen ‘know’, for example Inthe case of English ken, the impetus is thought tohave come from Old Norse kenna ‘know’. Thederived noun ken, as in ‘beyond one’s ken’, datesfrom the 16th century. CANkennel [14] Appropriately enough for a word for‘dog-house’, kennel comes ultimately fromLatin canis ‘dog’ (a relative of English hound).Canis was the basis of a Vulgar Latin derivative*canīle, which passed into English via Anglo-Norman *kenil. Other English derivatives ofLatin canis include canary, canine [17], andchenille ‘fabric made from soft yarn’ [18], aborrowing from French chenille, literally ‘hairycaterpillar’, which came from a diminutive formof canis. CANARY, CANINE, CHENILLE, HOUNDkerchief see HANDKERCHIEFkernel [OE] Etymologically, a kernel is a ‘littleseed’. Old English corn, ancestor of modern

English corn, meant ‘seed, grain’, and itsdiminutive form cyrnel was applied to ‘pips’(now obsolete), to ‘seeds’ (a sense which nowsurvives only in the context of cereals), and tothe ‘inner part of nuts, fruit stones, etc’. CORNketchup [17] Ketchup is a Chinese word inorigin. In the Amoy dialect of southeasternChina, kôechiap means ‘brine of fish’. It wasacquired by English, probably via Malay kichap,towards the end of the 17th century, when it wasusually spelled catchup (the New Dictionary ofthe Canting Crew 1690 defines it as ‘a high East-India Sauce’). Shortly afterwards the spellingcatsup came into vogue (Jonathan Swift is thefirst on record as using it, in 1730), and itremains the main form in American English. Butin Britain ketchup has gradually establisheditself since the early 18th century.kettle [13] Latin catīnus denoted a ‘deep pan ordish in which food was cooked or served’. Itsdiminutive form catillus was borrowed intoprehistoric Germanic as *katilaz, which passedinto Old English in the form cetel. This producedMiddle English chetel, which died out in the15th century, having been ousted by the relatedOld Norse form ketill. Originally the termdenoted any metal vessel for boiling liquid, andit is only really in the past century that itsmeaning has narrowed down to an ‘enclosed potwith a spout’. The original sense lingers on in theterm fish kettle, and is still very much alive inrelated Germanic forms such as German kesseland Swedish kittel.key [OE] The Old English ancestor of key wascǣg. This produced a modern English wordwhich to begin with was pronounced to rhymewith bay, and its present-day pronunciation,rhyming with bee, did not come to the fore untilthe 18th century. No one knows where the wordoriginally came from; it has no living relatives inother Germanic languages.khaki [19] Khaki is part of the large linguisticlegacy of British rule in India. In Urdu khākīmeans ‘dusty’, and is a derivative of the nounkhāk ‘dust’ (a word of Persian origin). It seemsfirst to have been used with reference to thecolour of military uniforms in the Guide Corpsof the Indian army in the late 1840s. The termfollowed the colour when it was more widelyadopted by the British army for camouflagepurposes during the South African wars at theend of the 19th century.kickick [14] Kick is one of the mystery words ofEnglish. It first appears towards the end of the14th century, but no one knows where it camefrom, and it has no relatives in the other Indo-European languages. It may have been aScandinavian borrowing.kidney [14] The origins of kidney are a matter ofguesswork rather than certain knowledge.Probably the most widely accepted theory is thatthe -ey element represents ey, the Middle Englishword for ‘egg’, in allusion to the shape of thekidneys. The first syllable is more problematical,but one possible source is Old English cwith299 kind‘womb’ or the related Old Norse kvithr ‘belly,womb’, in which case kidney would meanetymologically ‘belly-egg’. EGGkill [13] The Old English verbs for ‘kill’ wereslēan, source of modern English slay, andcwellan, which has become modern Englishquell. The latter came from a prehistoricGermanic *kwaljan, which it has been suggestedmay have had a variant *kuljan that could havebecome Old English *cyllan. If such a verb didexist, it would be a plausible ancestor for modernEnglish kill. When this first appeared in earlyMiddle English it was used for ‘hit’, but themeanings ‘hit’ and ‘kill’ often coexist in thesame word (slay once meant ‘hit’ as well as‘kill’, as is shown by the related sledgehammer);the sense ‘deprive of life’ emerged in the 14thcentury.kiln [OE] Etymologically a kiln is for ‘cooking’,not for burning or drying. Its distant ancestorwas Latin coquīna ‘kitchen’, a derivative of theverb coquere ‘cook’. This produced anunexplained variant culīna (source of Englishculinary [17]), which was used not only for‘kitchen’, but also for ‘cooking-stove’. OldEnglish adopted it as cylene, which has becomemodern English kiln. COOK, CULINARY, KITCHENkilo [19] Khílioi was Greek for a ‘thousand’. Itwas adopted in French in the 1790s as the prefixfor ‘thousand’ in expressions of quantity underthe new metric system, and various compoundforms (kilogram, kilolitre, kilometre, etc) beganto find their way into English from the firstdecade of the 19th century onwards. The firstrecorded instance of kilo being used in Englishfor kilogram dates from 1870.kin [OE] Kin is the central English member of theGermanic branch of a vast family of words thattrace their ancestry back to the prehistoric Indo-European base *gen-, *gon-, *gn-, denoting‘produce’ (the Latin branch has given Englishgender, general, generate, genital, nature, etc,the Greek branch gene, genetic, gonorrhoea,etc). Amongst the Germanic descendants of thisbase was *kun-, from which was derived thenoun *kunjam, source of Swedish kön ‘sex’ andEnglish kin ‘family’. Kindred [12] was formedfrom kin in early Middle English by adding thesuffix -red ‘condition’ (as in hatred). Alsoclosely related are kind and king. GENDER, GENE, GENERAL, GENERATE, GENITAL,KIND, KINDRED, KING, NATUREkind [OE] Kind the noun and kind the adjectiveare ultimately the same word, but they split apartin pre-historic times. Their common source wasGermanic *kunjam, the ancestor of English kin.From it, using the collective prefix *ga- and theabstract suffix *-diz, was derived the noun*gakundiz, which passed into Old English asgecynde ‘birth, origin, nature, race’. The prefixge- disappeared in the early Middle Englishperiod.Germanic *gakundiz formed the basis of anadjective, *gakundjaz, which in Old English

kindred 300converged with its source to produce gecynde. Itmeant ‘natural, innate’, but gradually progressedvia ‘of noble birth’ and ‘well-disposed bynature’ to (in the 14th century) ‘benign,compassionate’ (a semantic developmentremarkably similar to that of the distantly relatedgentle). KINkindred see KINking [OE] The prehistoric Germanic ancestor ofking (as of German könig, Dutch koning,Swedish konung, and Danish konge) was*kuninggaz. This seems to have been aderivative of *kunjam ‘race, people’ (source ofEnglish kin). If it was, king meansetymologically ‘descendant of the race,offspring of the people’. KINkipper [OE] There is a single Old Englishinstance, in a text of around the year 1000, of afish called cypera. The context suggests that thiswas a ‘salmon’, which would tie in with the lateruse of the word kipper, from the 16th to the 20thcenturies, for ‘male salmon during the spawningseason’. What is not clear, however, despite theobvious semantic link ‘fish’, is whether this isthe same word as kipper ‘cured herring or otherfish’, first recorded in the 14th century. Nor is italtogether clear where the term originally camefrom, although it is usually held to be aderivative of Old English copor ‘copper’, inallusion to the colour of the fish.kiss [OE] Kiss is a widespread Germanic word,represented also in German kūssen, Dutchkussen, Swedish kyssa, and Danish kysse. Itprobably goes back to some prehistoric syllableimitative of the sound or action of kissing, suchas *ku or *kus, which would also lie behindGreek kunein ‘kiss’, Sanskrit cumb- ‘kiss’, andHittite kuwass- ‘kiss’. There is not sufficientlinguistic evidence, however, to show whetherthe Indo-Europeans expressed affection bykissing each other.kitchen [OE] The Latin word for ‘kitchen’ wascoquīna, a derivative of the verb coquere ‘cook’(ultimate source of English cook, culinary, kiln,precocious, etc). It had a colloquial variant,*cocīna, which spread far and wide throughoutthe Roman empire. In French it became cuisine(borrowed by English in the 18th century), whileprehistoric West Germanic took it over as*kocina. This has subsequently become Germanküche, Dutch keuken, and English kitchen –etymologically, a room where one ‘cooks’. APRICOT, COOK, CULINARY, KILN, PRECOCIOUSknapsack [17] The -sack of knapsack is nodoubt essentially the same word as English sack,but the knap- presents slightly more of aproblem. The term was borrowed from LowGerman knappsack, and so probably knapprepresentsLow German knappen ‘eat’ – the baghaving originally been named because it carrieda traveller’s supply of food.knee [OE] The majority of modern Europeanwords for ‘knee’ go back to a common Indo-European ancestor which probably originallysignified ‘bend’. This was *g(e)neu or *goneu,which lies behind Latin genu ‘knee’ (source ofFrench genou and Italian ginocchio, and also ofEnglish genuine) and may well be connectedwith Greek gōníā ‘angle’, from which Englishgets diagonal. It passed into Germanic as*knewam, which over the centuries hasdiversified into German and Dutch knie,Swedish knä, Danish knœ, and English knee. Thederivative kneel [OE] was formed before theAnglo-Saxons reached Britain, and is shared byDutch (knielen). GENUINE, KNEELknickers [19] The use of the word knickers for‘women’s underpants’ dates back to the 1880s: awriter in the magazine Queen in 1882recommended ‘flannel knickers in preference toflannel petticoat’, and Home Chat in 1895 wasadvertising ‘serge knickers for girls from twelveto sixteen’. Over the decades, of course, theprecise application of the term has changed withthe nature of the garment, and today’s leglessbriefs are a far cry from the knee-length‘knickers’ of the 1880s. They got their namebecause of their similarity to the originalknickers, which were knee-length trousers formen (The Times in 1900 reported the ‘ImperialYeomanry … in their well-made, loosely-fittingkhaki tunics and riding knickers’). And knickersitself was short for knickerbockers, a term usedfor such trousers since the 1850s. This camefrom Diedrich Knickerbocker, a fictitiousDutch-sounding name invented by the Americanwriter Washington Irving for the ‘author’ of hisHistory of New York 1809. The reason for theapplication seems to have been that the originalknickerbockers resembled the sort of kneebreechessupposedly worn by Dutchmen.knife [11] Knife is not a native English word, buta borrowing. It came from Old Norse knífr,which survives also in modern Swedish knif andDanish knif. It can be traced back to a prehistoricGermanic *knībaz, which also produced Germankneif ‘cobbler’s knife’, and was borrowed byFrench as canif ‘knife’, but its previous ancestryis not known.knight [OE] The word knight has come up in theworld over the centuries. In the Old Englishperiod it simply meant ‘boy’ or ‘young man’. Bythe 10th century it had broadened out to ‘maleservant’, and within a hundred years of that wefind it being used for ‘military servant, soldier’.This is the general level or ‘rank’ at which theword’s continental relatives, German and Dutchknecht, have remained. But in England, in thecourse of the early Middle Ages, knight came todenote, in the feudal system, ‘one who bore armsin return for land’, and later ‘one raised to noblerank in return for military service’. The modernnotion of knighthood as a rung in the nobility,without any necessary connotations of militaryprowess, dates from the 16th century.knit see KNOTknobknob see KNOTknock [OE] knock is a classic onomatopoeicword: that is to say, it originated in a direct

imitation of the sound it denotes. The similarSwedish knacka ‘knock’ may be related. Thefigurative use of the word for ‘criticize’originated in late 19th-century America.knot [OE] The word knot goes back ultimately toa prehistoric Germanic *knūdn-, whoseunderlying meaning was ‘round lump’. Thisonly emerged in the English word (in suchsenses as ‘point from which a branch hasgrown’) in the Middle English period, but it canbe seen in knoll [OE], which is a derivative of thesame base (the related German knolle means‘lump’). Knob [14] may be related too, althoughthis has never been conclusively demonstrated.The Germanic form diversified into English andDutch knot, German knoten, Swedish knut, andDanish knode (whose Old Norse ancestor knútrwas borrowed into Russian as knut ‘whip’,acquired by English as knout [18]). Knit [OE],which originally meant ‘tie in knots’, wasderived in prehistoric West Germanic from knot. KNITknow [11] The words for ‘know’ in the variousIndo-European languages mostly belong to onelarge many-branched family which goes backultimately to the base *gn-, which also producedEnglish can and ken. Its Latin offspring wasnōscere, from which English gets cognition,incognito, note, quaint, etc. From its Greekbranch come English agnostic and diagnosis.And in other Indo-European languages it isrepresented by, among others, Sanskrit jānáti‘know’, Old Irish gnáth ‘known’, and Russianznat’. In the other Germanic languages it is theimmediate relatives of English can (German andDutch kennen, Swedish känna, Danish kende)that are used for ‘know’; know itself, which wasoriginally a reduplicated form, survives only inEnglish.301 kraalThe -ledge of knowledge [13] was probablyoriginally the suffix -lock ‘action, process’,which otherwise survives only in wedlock.Acknowledge [15] is derived from knowledge. AGNOSTIC, CAN, COGNITION, DIAGNOSIS,INCOGNITO, KEN, KNOWLEDGE, NOTE, QUAINT,RECOGNIZEknuckle [14] Knuckle originally denoted therounded end of a bone at a joint, which sticks outwhen you bend the joint. This could be at anyjoint, including the elbow, the knee and even thejoints of the vertebrae; only gradually did itbecome specialized to the finger joints. Theword probably came from Middle Low Germanknökel (or a relative of it), which appears to havemeant etymologically ‘little bone’. Knuckledown, in the sense ‘begin to work hard andconscientiously’, comes from the game ofmarbles, where players have to put theirknuckles on the ground when shooting a marblewith the thumb.knurled see GNARLEDkohlrabi see CAULIFLOWER, RAPEkowtow [19] The approved Chinese method ofsignifying respect for the emperor or otheraugust personages was to prostrate oneself sothat one’s forehead touched the ground. This wasexpressed in Mandarin Chinese by the term ketóu (ke means ‘knock, bump’ and tóu ‘head’).English took the word over in the early 19thcentury and spelled it in various experimentalways (koo-too, ka-tou, kotow, etc) before settlingon kowtow in the early 20th century. The firstwriter on record as using the word in themetaphorical sense ‘defer servilely’ wasBenjamin Disraeli in his Vivian Grey 1826: ‘TheMarqess kotooed like a first-rate Mandarin, andvowed “that her will was his conduct”.’kraal see CORRAL

Llaager see LAIRlabel see LAPlabial see LIPlabour [13] Labour comes via Old Frenchlabour from Latin labor. This has been linkedwith the verb labāre ‘slip’, and if the two wererelated it would mean that the underlyingetymological meaning of labour was somethinglike ‘stumble under a burden’. Most of themodern European descendants of Latin laborhave progressed from the broad sense ‘work,exertion’ to more specialized meanings – Frenchlabourer denotes ‘plough’, for instance, andSpanish labrar ‘plough, carve, embroider’, etc.English has retained it as a formal alternative towork, although the additional obstetric sensedeveloped in the 16th century.lace [13] Lace originally meant ‘noose’ or‘snare’, and its underlying semantic connectionsare not with ‘string’ or ‘thread’ but with‘entrapment’ or ‘enticement’. Its ultimate sourcewas Latin laqueus ‘noose’, which was related tothe verb lacere ‘lure, deceive’ (source of Englishdelicious and elicit). This passed into VulgarLatin as *lacium, which in due course diversifiedinto Italian laccio, Spanish lazo (source ofEnglish lasso [19]), and French lacs. It was thelatter’s Old French predecessor, laz or las, thatgave English lace. The sense ‘noose’ had diedout by the early 17th century, but by then it hadalready developed via ‘string, cord’ to ‘cordused for fastening clothes’. ‘Open fabric made ofthreads’ emerged in the mid-16th century. Latch[14] is thought to be distantly related. DELICIOUS, ELICIT, LASSO, LATCHlachrymal see TEARlachrymose see TEARlacklack [12] The word lack is not known to haveexisted in Old English, although it is by nomeans impossible that it did. If it was aborrowing, a possible source would have beenMiddle Dutch lak ‘deficiency, fault’. This hasbeen traced back to a prehistoric Germanic*lak-, a variant of which produced English leak. LEAKlackey [16] By a circuitous series of steps, lackeyis of Arabic origin. English borrowed it fromFrench laquais, which originally denoted a sortof foot-soldier, and hence a ‘footman’ or‘servant’. French in turn got it from Catalanalacay, whose source was Arabic al-qādī ‘thejudge’ (the Spanish version alcalde ‘magistrate’was acquired by English in the 17th century).laconic [16] The Greek term for an inhabitant ofthe ancient region of Laconia, in the southernPeloponnese, and of its capital Sparta, wasLákōn. The Spartans were renowned for notusing two words where one would do (there is astory that when Philip of Macedon threatenedinvasion with ‘If I enter Laconia, I will razeSparta to the ground’, the Spartans’ only replywas ‘If’), and so English used the adjectivelaconic (from Greek Lakōnikós) for ‘sparing ofspeech’.lacquer see LAKElacrosse [18] French la crosse means ‘thehooked stick’ (crosse was originally borrowedfrom a prehistoric Germanic *kruk-, from whichEnglish got crook and crutch). French speakersin Canada used the term jeu de la crosse ‘gameof the hooked stick’ to name a game played bythe native Americans with netted sticks, and indue course this became reduced and lexicalizedto lacrosse. CROOK, CRUTCHlactation see LETTUCElacuna see LAKElad [13] Lad originally meant ‘male of low statusor social rank’, and hence ‘male servant’, but bythe 14th century its progression to the presentday‘young male’ was well under way. It is notknown where it came from, but there seems to bea strong likelihood of a Scandinavian origin(Norwegian has -ladd in compounds referring to‘(male) persons’).ladder [OE] Etymologically, a ladder issomething that is ‘leant’ up against a wall. LikeGreek klīmax ‘ladder’ (source of Englishclimax), it goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *khli-, source of English lean. ItsWest Germanic relatives are German leiter andDutch leer. CLIMAX, LEANlade see LOADladle see LOADlady [OE] Originally, the term lady denoted a‘kneader of bread’. It comes from Old Englishhlœfdige, a compound formed from hlǣf ‘bread’(ancestor of modern English loaf) and anelement *dig- ‘knead’ (related to Englishdough). It is a measure of the symbolic (andactual) importance of bread in medievalhouseholds that (like lord, also a derivative ofloaf) lady came, as a provider of bread, to beapplied to someone in a position of authoritywithin a house. DAIRY, DOUGH, LOAF, LORDlag English has three distinct words lag. The verb‘fall behind’ [16] is perhaps of Scandinavianorigin (Norwegian has lagga ‘go slowly’),

although a link has been suggested with the lagof fog, seg, lag, a dialect expression used inchildren’s games which represents an alterationof first, second, last. Lag ‘insulate’ [19] comesfrom an earlier noun lag ‘barrel stave’, whichwas also probably borrowed from aScandinavian language (Swedish has lagg‘stave’); the original material used for ‘lagging’was wooden laths. And finally the noun lag‘prisoner’ [19] seems to have come from anearlier verb lag, which originally meant ‘steal’,and then ‘catch, imprison’; but no one knowswhere this came from.lager [19] Lager is etymologically beer that hasbeen matured by being kept in a ‘store’. Englishborrowed the term from German lagerbier, acompound based on the noun lager ‘storeroom’(to which English laager and lair are closelyrelated). LAAGER, LAIRlagoon see LAKElair [OE] Etymologically a lair is a place whereyou ‘lie’ down. For it comes ultimately from thesame Germanic base, *leg-, as produced Englishlie. In Old English it had a range of meanings,from ‘bed’ to ‘grave’, which are now defunct,and the modern sense ‘place where an animallives’ did not emerge until the 15th century.Related Germanic forms show different patternsof semantic development: Dutch leger, forinstance, means ‘bed’ and ‘camp’ (it has givenEnglish beleaguer [16] and, via Afrikaans,laager [19]) and German lager (source ofEnglish lager) means ‘bed’, ‘camp’, and‘storeroom’.Layer in the sense ‘stratum’ [17] (which tobegin with was a culinary term) may haveoriginated as a variant of lair. BELEAGUER, LAAGER, LAGER, LAY, LAYER, LIElake English has two words lake. The onemeaning ‘body of water’ [13] comes via OldFrench lac from Latin lacus. This goes back tothe same prehistoric source as produced Gaelicloch (acquired by English in the 14th century)and Latin lacūna ‘hole, pit, pool’ (from whichEnglish got lacuna [17] and, via Italian orSpanish, lagoon [17]); this seems to havedenoted ‘hole, basin’, the notion of ‘water-filledhole’ being a secondary development.Lake the colour [17], now usuallyencountered only in crimson lake, is a variant oflac, a term for a reddish resin or dye that comesvia Dutch or French from Hindi lākh, and formsthe second syllable of English shellac. Itsultimate source is Sanskrit lākshā. Lacquer [16]comes via early modern French lacre ‘sealingwax’from laca, the Portuguese version of lac. LACUNA, LAGOON; LACQUER, SHELLAClamb [OE] Lamb is a widespread wordthroughout the Germanic languages (Germanand Swedish have lamm and Dutch and Danishhave lam), but no connections have ever beenestablished with any animal-names in non-Germanic languages. In Gothic, lamb was usedfor ‘adult sheep’ as well as ‘lamb’.lambent see LAP303 languagelame [OE] Prehistoric Germanic had an adjective*lamon which meant ‘weak-limbed’, and seemsto have originated in a base which meantsomething like ‘break by hitting’ (English lam‘hit’ [16], as in ‘lam into someone’, and itsderivative lambaste [17] probably come from thesame source). In the modern Germaniclanguages it has diversified into two strands ofmeaning: Dutch, Swedish, and Danish lamdenote mainly ‘paralysed’, a sense also presentin German lahm, while English lame has takenthe path of ‘limping, crippled’. LAM, LAMBASTElaminate see OMELETTELammas see LOAFlamp [12] A lamp is literally something that‘shines’. The word comes via Old French lampeand Latin lampas from Greek lampás, whichwas derived from the verb lámpein ‘give light,shine’ (source also of English lantern). TheGreek word originally denoted a ‘bunch ofburning sticks, torch’, but in post-classical timesit was applied to an ‘oil lamp’. The Old Englishword for ‘lamp’ was lēohtfœt, literally ‘lightvessel’. LANTERNlamprey [12] The words lamprey and limpet[OE] come from the same source: medievalLatin lamprēda. This was an alteration of anearlier, 5th-century lampetra, which has beenplausibly explained as literally ‘stone-licker’(from Latin lambēre ‘lick’, source of Englishlambent, and petra ‘stone’). The reason forapplying such a name to the limpet is fairlyobvious – it clings fast to rocks – but in fact thelamprey too holds on to rocks, with its jawlesssucking mouth. LAMBENT, LIMPET, PETROLlance [13] Lance is now a fairly widespreadword throughout the European languages:German has lanze, for instance, Swedish lans,Italian lancia, and Spanish lanza. Englishacquired the word from Old French lance, whichin turn came from Latin lancea, but its ultimateorigin may have been Celtic. Derived words inEnglish include élan and launch.Lance corporals [18] were not namedbecause they carried lances. The term was basedon the now obsolete lancepesade ‘officer oflowest rank’, which came via Old French fromOld Italian lancia spezzata, literally ‘brokenlance’, hence ‘old soldier’. ÉLAN, LAUNCHland [OE] Land goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *landam. This seems originally tohave meant ‘particular (enclosed) area’ (ancestorof the modern sense ‘nation’), but in due courseit branched out to ‘solid surface of the earth ingeneral’. The term is now common to all theGermanic languages, and it has distant relativesin Welsh llan ‘enclosure, church’ and Bretonlann ‘heath’ (source of French lande ‘heath,moor’, from which English gets lawn). LAWNlanguage [13] Like English tongue, Latinlingua ‘tongue’ was used figuratively for

languish 304‘language’; from it English gets linguist [16] andlinguistic [19]. In the Vulgar Latin spoken by theinhabitants of Gaul, the derivative *linguāticumemerged, and this became in due course OldFrench langage, source of English language.(The u in the English word, which goes back tothe end of the 13th century, is due to associationwith French langue ‘tongue’.) LINGUISTIClanguish see RELISHlank see LINKlanolin see WOOLlantern [13] Like lamp, lantern comesultimately from the Greek verb lámbein ‘givelight, shine’. Derived from this was the nounlamptér, which originally denoted ‘bunch ofburning sticks, torch’, but was later extended to‘lamp’. Latin borrowed it, and tacked on theending of lucerna ‘lamp’ to produce lanterna,which English acquired via Old French lanterne.The translucent cover of lanterns was in formertimes usually made of horn, and so popularetymology from the 16th to the 19th centuriesproduced the spelling lanthorn. LAMPlap English now has three distinct words lap, butprobably two of them are ultimately related. Lap‘upper legs of a seated person’ [OE] originallymeant ‘flap of a garment’, and it goes back to aprehistoric Germanic source which alsoproduced German lappen ‘rag, cloth, flap, lobe’,and which may lie behind label [14]. It seemslikely that lap in the sense ‘folds of a garment’was the basis of the Middle English verb lap,which meant ‘wrap’, and hence ‘extend beyond’.From this come both the verb overlap [18] andthe noun lap [18], whose modern meaning ‘onecircuit of a course’ emerged in the 19th century.Lap ‘lick up’ [OE] comes from a prehistoricGermanic base *lap-, which was related to Latinlambēre ‘lick’ (source of English lambent [17],and possibly responsible also for lamprey andlimpet). LABEL; LAMBENTlazulilapis lazuli see DILAPIDATElapwing [OE] The present-day form of the wordlapwing is due to the notion that it describes theway the bird’s wings overlap in flight, but in factalthough it did originally refer to the way thebird flies, it has no etymological connection withlap or wing. Its Old English form washlēupwince, whose first element came from theancestor of modern English leap, and whosesecond element went back to a base meaning‘move from side to side’ that also producedEnglish wink. So etymologically the lapwing isthe ‘leapwink’, the bird that tumbles and jinks inflight – as indeed it does.Its alternative name peewit [13] describes itscall.larceny [15] The Latin word for ‘robber’ waslatrō. Its original meaning was ‘mercenarysoldier’, and it came from Greek látron ‘pay’ (arelative of latreíā ‘service, worship’, whichprovided the suffix in such English words asidolatry and bardolatry). From latrō was derivedlatrōcinium ‘robbery’, which passed intoEnglish via Old French larcin and its Anglo-Norman derivative *larcenie. IDOLATRYlarge [12] Latin largus, a word of unknownorigin, meant ‘abundant’ and also ‘generous’. Itretained the latter meaning when it came intoEnglish via Old French large (‘the poor KingReignier, whose large style agrees not with theleanness of his purse’, Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI1593), but this now survives only in thederivative largesse [13]. ‘Abundant’, on theother hand, has provided the basis of the mainmodern English meaning ‘of great size’, whichemerged in the 15th century.lascivious see LUSTlass [13] Like its male counterpart lad, lass hasan obscure past. The form lasce, recorded in the13th and 14th centuries, suggests the possibilitythat it may originally have come from aScandinavian adjective related to Old Swedishløsk ‘unmarried’.lassitude see LATElasso see LACElast [OE] Modern English has three separatewords last, two of which are related. Theadjective, meaning ‘after all others’, originatedin prehistoric Germanic as the superlative formof late; its modern Germanic relatives includeGerman letzt and Dutch laatst. The verb last‘continue’ goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*laistjan ‘follow a track’, which also producedmodern German leisten ‘perform, afford’. Thiswas derived from *laisti-, as was ultimately thenoun last, which in Old English meant‘footprint’ (‘shoemaker’s model foot’ is asecondary development). The general semanticthread ‘following a track’ can be traced backfurther via Germanic *lais- (a variant of whichgave English learn) to Indo-European *leis-(source of Latin dēlīrāre, literally ‘deviate froma straight track’, from which English getsdelirious [18]). DELIRIOUS, LATE, LEARNlatch see LACElate [OE] English and Dutch (with laat) are theonly modern European languages to use thisword to express the idea of ‘behind time’. Itcomes from an Indo-European base *lad- ‘slow,weary’, which also produced Latin lassus ‘tired’(source of English alas [13] and lassitude [16]).In prehistoric Germanic this gave *lataz ‘slow,sluggish’. Its English descendant late originallymeant ‘slow’ (and the related German lass stillmeans ‘lazy’), but although this surviveddialectally into the 19th century, in themainstream language ‘delayed’ had virtuallyreplaced it by the 15th century. From the sameultimate Indo-European source come Englishlease, let, and liege. ALAS, LASSITUDE, LAST, LEASE, LET, LIEGElather [OE] Indo-European *lou- denoted ‘wash’(from it English gets laundry, lavatory, lotion,etc). Addition of the suffix *-tro- produced*loutrom, which passed via Germanic *lauthraminto English as lather. In Old English this is only

ecorded as meaning ‘washing soda’, and themodern sense ‘soap bubbles’ does not emergeuntil the late 16th century. ABLUTION, LAUNDRY, LAVATORY, LOTIONlatitude [14] Latin lātus meant ‘broad’. From itwere derived dīlātāre ‘spread out’ (source ofEnglish dilate) and lātitūdō, which English tookover as latitude. Its use as a cartographical termstems from the oblong maps of the ancientworld, in which distance from north to southrepresented ‘breadth’ (hence latitude), anddistance from east to west represented ‘length’(hence longitude [16], from Latin longitūdō, aderivative of longus ‘long’). DILATElatrine see LAVATORYlaudanum [16] Laudanum, the name of atincture of opium, a forerunner of modern heroinand crack, was coined by the 16th-century Swissphysician Paracelsus. He used it for a medicineof his own devising which according to theprescription he gave out contained all sorts ofexpensive ingredients such as gold leaf andpearls. It was generally believed, however, thatthe reason for the medicine’s effectiveness was agenerous measure of opium in the mixture, andso in due course laudanum came to have itscurrent use. It is not known where Paracelsus gotthe name from, but he could well have based iton Latin lādanum ‘resin’, which came fromGreek ládanon, a derivative of ledon ‘mastic’.laugh [OE] The word laugh is ultimatelyonomatopoeic, imitative of the sound oflaughter. It goes back to Indo-European *klak-,*klōk-, which also produced Greek klóssein, averb denoting the clucking of hens, and Latinclangere ‘sound’ (source of English clangor[16]). Its Germanic descendants were *khlakh-,*khlōkh-, from which come German and Dutchlachen, Swedish and Danish le, and Englishlaugh. CLANGORlaunch English has two separate words launch.The verb, ‘propel’ [14], is related to lance.Lances are propelled by throwing, and so thederived Old French verb lancier was used for‘throw’. English acquired it via the Anglo-Norman form launcher. The sense ‘put a boatinto the water’ emerged at the end of the 14thcentury. From the same source came modernFrench élancer ‘throw out’, whose derivativeélan was acquired by English in the 19th century.Launch ‘boat’ [17] comes via Portugueselancha from a Malay word related to lancharan‘boat’. ÉLAN, LANCElaundry [16] Although it is better disguised thanmost of its relatives, laundry is one of a largefamily of English words derived from Latinlavāre ‘wash’ (see LAVATORY). It is acontraction of an earlier lavendry, which camevia Old French lavanderie from Latinlavandārium ‘things to be washed’. By the timeit reached English it had also acquired themeaning ‘place where things are washed’. LAVATORY305 lazylavatory [14] The notion of ‘washing’ wasrepresented in prehistoric Indo-European by*lou-, which produced Greek loúein ‘wash’,English lather, and Latin lavāre ‘wash’. This lasthas been a fruitful source of English words, notall of them as obvious as lavatory, whichoriginally meant simply ‘place or vessel forwashing’ (its use for a ‘room containing a watercloset’ appears to date from the 19th century).Among its relatives are deluge [14], latrine [17](from a contraction of Latin lavātrīna), laundry,lava [18] (from Italian lava, which originallydenoted a ‘stream caused by sudden rain’),lavish [15] (from the metaphorical notion of an‘outpouring’), and lotion [14]. And from Latinluere, the form taken on by lavāre after prefixes,we get ablution [14] and dilute [16]. Lavender[15] looks as though it should belong to the samefamily, but no actual connection has ever beendemonstrated. ABLUTION, DELUGE, DILUTE, LATHER, LATRINE,LAUNDRY, LAVA, LAVISH, LOTIONlaw [10] Etymologically, a law is that which hasbeen ‘laid’ down. English borrowed the wordfrom Old Norse *lagu (replacing the native OldEnglish ǣ ‘law’), which was the plural of lag‘laying, good order’. This came ultimately fromthe prehistoric Germanic base *lag- ‘put’, fromwhich English gets lay. It has no etymologicalconnection with the semantically similar legal. LAYlawn English has two words lawn. ‘Grassy area’[16] is ultimately the same word as land. It is analteration of an earlier laund ‘glade’, whichcame from Old French launde ‘heath’, aborrowing from the same prehistoric Germanicsource as produced English land. Lawn wasoriginally used for ‘glade’ too, and it was notuntil the 18th century that its present-daymeaning emerged. Lawn ‘fine linen or cotton’[15] probably comes from Laon, the name of atown in northern France where linen wasformerly manufactured. LANDlax see LEASE, RELISHlay English has three words lay. The commonverb, ‘cause to lie’ [OE], goes back to theprehistoric Germanic base *lag- ‘put’, a variantof which produced lie. From it was derived*lagjan, whose modern descendants are Germanlegen, Dutch leggen, Swedish lägga, Danishlægge, and English lay. Law comes from thesame source, and it is possible that ledge [14]may be an offshoot of lay (which in MiddleEnglish was legge). Ledger could well be relatedtoo.Lay ‘secular’ [14] comes via Old French laiand Latin lāicus from Greek lāikós, a derivativeof lāós ‘the people’. And lay ‘ballad’ [13] comesfrom Old French lai, a word of unknown origin. LAW, LIE, LEDGER; LITURGYlayer see LAIRlazy [16] Lazy is one of the problem words ofEnglish. It suddenly appears in the middle of the16th century, and gradually replaces the nativeterms slack, slothful, and idle as the main word

lead 306for expressing the concept ‘averse to work’, butno one knows for sure where it came from. Earlyspellings such as laysy led 19th-centuryetymologists to speculate that it may have beenderived from lay, but the more generallyaccepted theory nowadays is that it wasborrowed from Low German. Middle LowGerman had the similar lasich ‘lazy, loose’,which may go back to an Indo-European formdenoting ‘slack’.lead [OE] English has two words lead, spelledthe same but of course pronounced differentlyand with a very different history. The verb goesback to a prehistoric West and North Germanic*laithjan. This was derived from *laithō ‘way,journey’ (from which English gets load); soetymologically lead means ‘cause to go alongone’s way’. Its Germanic relatives includeGerman leiten, Dutch leiden, Swedish leda, andDanish lede.Lead the metal is probably of Celtic origin.The prehistoric Celtic word for ‘lead’ was*loudiā, which may have come ultimately froman Indo-European source meaning ‘flow’ (areference to the metal’s low melting point). Itsmodern descendants include Irish luaidhe andGaelic luaidh. It could well have been borrowedinto prehistoric West Germanic as *lauda, whichwould have produced modern German lot‘solder’, Dutch lood ‘lead’, and English lead. LOADleaf [OE] Leaf goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *laubaz, which also produced wordsfor ‘foliage’ in other modern Germaniclanguages (German laub, Dutch loof, Swedishlöf, and Danish løv). It is not known for certainwhere the Germanic word came from, althougha connection has been suggested with Russianlupit’ ‘bark’. It may also lie behind the modernEnglish words lobby and lodge. LOBBY, LODGEleak [15] The ultimate source of leak is probablya prehistoric Germanic *lek-, which denoted‘deficiency’ (a variant *lak- gave English lack).It is not clear how this reached English; it couldhave been via Old Norse leka, or through MiddleDutch lēken. LACKlean [OE] Lean ‘thin’ and lean ‘incline’ are ofcourse of completely different origin. Theadjective goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*khlainjaz. The verb can be traced to an Indo-European base *kli- ‘lean, slope’, which hasgiven English a wealth of vocabulary. Via Greekintermediaries have come climate, climax, andclinic, while its Latin descendant clīnāre hasproduced decline, incline, and recline. Theprehistoric Germanic verb formed from it was*khlinōjan, which has diversified into modernGerman lehnen, Dutch leunen, and English lean.From the same Germanic base come ladder, andalso perhaps links ‘golf course’ [OE], whichoriginally meant ‘sloping or rising ground’. CLIMATE, CLIMAX, CLINIC, DECLINE, INCLINE,LADDER, LINKS, RECLINEleap [OE] Prehistoric Germanic *khlaupan wasthe source of English leap, and of its relativesGerman laufen and Dutch loopen (these bothdenote ‘run’, a meaning which leap used to have– and which is preserved in its first cousins lope[15], a borrowing from Old Norse, and elope). Itis not known where it ultimately came from,although a connection has been suggested withIndo-European *kloub-, source of Lithuanianšlubuoti ‘limp’. The verb loaf may be related. LOAF, LOPEyearleap year [14] The inspiration for the term leapyear is probably simply that in such a year theday on which any given date falls ‘jumps’ oneday ahead of where it would have been in anordinary year. The metaphorical application ofthe notion of ‘jumping’ to this phenomenonpredates the first record of the term leap year:medieval Latin, for instance, used the term saltuslunae ‘moon’s jump’ for the nineteen-yearlyomission of a day from the lunar calendar, andthis was translated into Old English as mōnanhlp ‘moon’s leap’.learn [OE] Learn comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *liznōjan, which also producedGerman lernen. This goes back ultimately to anIndo-European *leis- ‘track’, and so seems tocarry the underlying notion of ‘gainingexperience by following a track’. Very closelyrelated are terms in various Germanic languagesfor ‘teach’ (German lehren, for instance, andDutch leeren, Swedish löra, and Danish lære –the last three also mean ‘learn’). English used tohave such a verb for ‘teach’ too: lere. It hadlargely died out by the 19th century, but therelated lore ‘knowledge’ [OE] survives. LAST, LORElease [15] The etymological idea underlyinglease is of ‘letting go’ – a notion more readilyapparent in its close relative release. Its ultimateancestor is the Latin adjective laxus ‘loose’,source of English lax [14]. From this wasderived the verb laxāre ‘loosen, let go’, whichpassed into Old French as laissier (its moderndescendant is laisser ‘leave, let’). Anglo-Norman took it over as lesser, and used it for‘letting something go’ to someone else for acertain period under the terms of a legal contract.Hence English lease. The derivatives lessee [15]and lessor [15] also come from Anglo-Norman. LAX, RELEASEleast [OE] In origin, least is simply thesuperlative form of less. The prehistoricGermanic ancestor of less was *laisiz (itself acomparative form). Addition of the superlativesuffix produced *laisistaz, which passed intoOld English as lǣsest. Unchanged, this wouldhave become in modern English *lessest, but itwas contracted in the Old English period to lǣst,and so modern English has least. LESSleather [OE] The Indo-European ancestor ofleather was *letrom. It has descendants in twobranches of the Indo-European language family:in Celtic, Welsh lledr, Irish leathar, and Bretonler; and in Germanic, German leder, Dutch leer,

Swedish läder, Danish læder, and Englishleather.leave [OE] English has two distinct words leave.The noun, meaning ‘permission’, comes from aprehistoric West Germanic *laubā, which wasderived from a root meaning ‘pleasure, approval’(other English words from the same sourceinclude believe and love). It passed semanticallythrough ‘be well disposed to’ to ‘trust’ (a sensepreserved in the related believe, and also in thecognate German glauben ‘believe’), and fromthere to ‘permit’.The verb leave ‘go away’ comes from aprehistoric Germanic *laibjan ‘remain’. It hasbeen speculated that this is related ultimately tovarious Indo-European words for ‘stickysubstances’ or ‘stickiness’ (Sanskrit lipta-‘sticky’, for instance, and Greek lípos ‘grease’,source of English lipid [20]), and that itsunderlying meaning is ‘remaining stuck’, hence‘staying in a place’. The sense ‘remain’ survivedinto English, but it died out in the 16th century,leaving as its legacy the secondary causativesense ‘cause to remain’. The apparently oppositesense ‘go away’, which emerged in the 13thcentury, arose from viewing the action of theverb from the point of view of the person doingthe leaving rather than of the thing being left.The related German bleiben, which incorporatesthe prefix bi-, still retains the sense ‘remain’.Other related English words, distant and closerespectively, are eclipse and eleven. BELIEVE, LOVE; ECLIPSE, ELEVEN, LIPID,TWELVElecher [12] Etymologically, a lecher is a ‘licker’.English borrowed the word from Old Frenchlecheor, a derivative of the verb lechier ‘lick’,which was used figuratively for ‘live a life ofdebauchery’. This in turn came from Frankish*likkōn, a descendant of the same prehistoricGermanic source as English lick [OE]. Theinspiration of the metaphor, which originallyencompassed the pleasures of the table as well asof the bed, was presumably the tongue as anorgan of sensual gratification. LICKlecture [14] The Latin verb legere has been aprodigious contributor to English vocabulary. Itoriginally meant ‘gather, choose’, and in thatguise has given us collect, elect, elegant,intelligent, legion [13] (etymologically a‘chosen’ body), neglect, and select. Itsubsequently developed semantically to ‘read’,and from that mode English has taken lecture,lectern [14] (from the medieval Latin derivativelectrīnum), legend [14] (etymologically ‘thingsto be read’), and lesson. COLLECT, ELECT, ELEGANT, INTELLIGENT,LEGEND, LEGIBLE, LEGION, LESSON, NEGLECT,SELECTledger [15] Etymologically, a ledger is a bookthat ‘lies’ in one place. The term was used in15th- and 16th-century English with variousspecific applications, including a ‘large copy ofthe Breviary’ (the Roman Catholic servicebook), and a ‘large register or record-book’ –307 lendboth big volumes that would not have beenmoved around much – but it finally settled on the‘main book in the set of books used for keepingaccounts’. It probably comes from Dutch leggeror ligger, agent nouns derived respectively fromleggen ‘lay’ and liggen ‘lie’ (relatives of Englishlay and lie). LAY, LIEleft [13] The Old English word for ‘left’ waswinestra. Etymologically this meant ‘friendlier’(it is related to Swedish vän ‘friend’), and itseuphemistic application to ‘left’ is a reminderthat historically the left-hand side of the bodyhas been superstitiously regarded as of ill omen.To call it ‘friendly’ (a usage which survives inSwedish vänster and Danish venstre ‘left’) wasan attempt to placate the evil forces of the left.(Latin sinister ‘left’ is similarly fraught withnegative connotations. It too had euphemisticorigins – it came from a source meaning ‘moreuseful’ – and it developed the figurative senses‘unfavourable’, ‘injurious’, etc, taken over andextended by English in sinister [15].)An ancestor of left existed in Old English –left or *lyft. But it meant ‘weak’ or ‘foolish’, andit was not until the 13th century that it came tobe used as the partner of right. Its ultimateorigins are not known.leg [13] Shank was the word used in Old Englishfor ‘leg’. Not until the late 13th was leg acquired,from Old Norse leggr. It goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *lagjaz, which mayultimately come from a source that meant‘bend’. No other Germanic language any longeruses it for ‘leg’, but Swedish and Danish retainlägg and læg respectively for ‘calf’.legal [16] The Latin term for a ‘law’ was lex.From its stem form leg- come English legal,legislator [17] (which goes back to a Latincompound meaning literally ‘one who proposesa law’), and legitimate [15]. Loyal is a doublet oflegal, acquired via Old French rather thandirectly from Latin. Another derivative of legwasthe Latin verb lēgāre ‘depute, commission,bequeath’, which has given English colleague,college, delegate [14], legacy [14], and legation[15]. COLLEAGUE, COLLEGE, DELEGATE, LEGACY,LOYALlegend see LECTURElegion see LECTURElegumelegume see LOBEleisure [14] The etymological idea underlyingleisure is that of ‘having permission’, and henceof ‘having the freedom to do as one likes’. Theword came via Anglo-Norman leisour from OldFrench leisir. This was a noun use of a verb thatmeant ‘be permitted’, and came from Latinlicēre ‘be permitted’ (source of English illicit[17] and licence [14]). ILLICIT, LICENCElemon see LIMElend [15] Lend and loan are closely related –come in fact from the same ultimate source(which also produced English delinquent,ellipse, and relinquish). Why then does the verb

length 308have a d while the noun does not? Originallythere was no d. The Old English verb ‘lend’ waslǣnan, which in Middle English became lene.But gradually during the Middle English periodthe past form lende came to be reinterpreted as apresent form, and by the 15th century it wasestablished as the new infinitive. DELINQUENT, ELLIPSE, LOAN, RELINQUISHlength [OE] Length was coined in the prehistoricGermanic period from the adjective *langgaz(source of English long) and the abstract nounsuffix *-ithō. The resultant *langgithō hassubsequently diversified to Dutch lengte,Swedish längd, Danish længde, and Englishlength. (German has plumped for the differentnoun derivative länge ‘length’, whose Englishrelative lenge ‘length’ survived until the 17thcentury.) LONGlens [17] The Latin word for a ‘lentil’ was lēns;and when 17th-century scientists wanted a termfor a round biconvex (lentil-shaped) piece ofglass, they needed to look no further than lens.English lentil [13] itself comes via Old Frenchfrom Latin lenticula, a diminutive form of lēns. LENTILLent [OE] The etymological meaning of Lent is‘long days’. It comes from *langgitīnaz, aprehistoric West Germanic compound formedfrom *lanngaz ‘long’ and an element *tīnadenoting‘day’. This signified originally‘spring’, an allusion to the lengthening days atthat time of year. It passed into Old English aslencten, which became Middle English lenten,but in the 13th century the -en was dropped fromthe noun, leaving Lenten to function as anadjective. By this time too the secular sense‘spring’ was fast dying out, having been usurpedby the application of Lent to the period betweenAsh Wednesday and Easter. LONGlentil see LENSleotard [19] The leotard commemorates theFrench trapeze artist Jules Léotard (1830–70),who wore such a garment when he wasperforming. He was one of the foremost circusacrobats of his day, and a pioneer of aerial stunts:he performed the first mid-air somersault, andinvented the ‘flying trapeze’ (he became knownas the ‘Daring Young Man on the FlyingTrapeze’, from George Leybourne’s song (1860)of that name), but fate has decreed that his nameshould be passed down to posterity in the form ofa one-piece exercise garment.leper [13] Etymologically, a person sufferingfrom leprosy has ‘scaly’ skin. The Greek wordfor ‘scale’ was lépos or lepís. From them wasderived the adjective leprós ‘scaly’, whosefeminine form léprā was used as a noun meaning‘leprosy’. This passed via Latin lepra and OldFrench lepre into English as leper, where it stilldenoted ‘leprosy’. In the 14th century it came tobe used for a ‘person suffering from leprosy’.leprechaun [17] Leprechaun means literally‘little body’. It comes from an Irish compoundnoun made up of the adjective lu ‘little’ and corp‘body’ (a borrowing from Latin corpus). Itsoriginal Old Irish form was luchorpán, and inmodern Irish this became leipracán. The firstrecord of its use in English is in ThomasMiddleton’s Honest whore 1604: ‘as for yourIrish lubrican, that spirit whom by preposterouscharms thy lust hath rais’d in a wrong circle’. CORPSElesbian [16] Originally, and for many centuries,Lesbian simply meant ‘of Lesbos’, referring tothe Aegean island of that name, off the Turkishcoast. Then, in the second half of the 19thcentury, probably some time before 1870, itembarked on a more sensational career. The lyricpoet Sappho (c. 600 BC) lived on Lesbos, and shewas noted for the love poems she wrote to otherwomen. Her name was invoked directly (inSapphism) around this time as a genteel literaryallusion to female homosexuality, but it was theeven more deeply euphemistic lesbian that wenton to become the main English term in this area.less [OE] In origin, less is a comparative form. Itgoes back ultimately to Indo-European *loiso-‘small’, which in prehistoric Germanic had thecomparative suffix added to it to produce *laisiz– whence English less. It is not found in any ofthe other modern Germanic languages. LEASTlessee see LEASElesson [13] Etymologically, a lesson is‘something read’ – as indeed the lesson read inchurch still is. The word comes via Old Frenchlecon from Latin lectiō ‘reading’, a derivative ofthe verb legere ‘read’ (from which English getslectern, lecture, etc). The word’s educationalsense arose from the notion of a passage of textthat a child had to read and learn. LECTERN, LECTURE, LEGIBLElet [OE] English has two distinct verbs let, ofdiametrically opposite meaning, but they areprobably ultimately related. The one meaning‘allow’ goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*lǣt- (source also of German lassen and Dutchlaten) which, like the related late, is connectedwith a range of words denoting ‘slowness’ or‘weariness’. It therefore appears that theunderlying etymological meaning of let is ‘let goof something because one is too tired to hold onto it’. By the time the verb reached Old Englishthis had developed to ‘leave behind’ and ‘omit todo’, senses now defunct, as well as to ‘allow’.A close relative of the base *lǣt- was *lat-,direct ancestor of English late. From this wasformed the Germanic verb *latjan, which gaveEnglish its other verb let, meaning ‘prevent’,now largely obsolete except as a noun, in thephrase without let or hindrance or as a tennisterm. LATElethargy [14] Greek léthē meant ‘oblivion’ (theRomans used it for the name of a river in Hadeswhose water induced forgetfulness, and itsinfluence has also been traced in changing Latinlētum ‘death’ to lēthum, source of English lethal[17]). From it was formed the adjectiveléthargos, which in turn produced the noun

lēthargíā, source (via Latin and Old French) ofEnglish lethargy. LETHALletter [13] The distant ancestry of the word letterhas never been satisfactorily explained. Onepossible candidate as a source that has been putforward is Greek diphthérai ‘writing tablets’.But the earliest precursor that can be positivelyidentified is Latin littera. This meant ‘alphabeticsymbol’, or in the plural ‘document’ and‘epistle’. English acquired it via Old Frenchlettre. Also from Latin littera are Englishliterature and obliterate [16], which meansetymologically ‘remove letters’. LITERATURE, OBLITERATElettuce [13] The lettuce was named for the milkywhite sap that exudes from its stalk when cut.The Latin for milk is lac (source of Englishlactation [17] and lactose [19]), and so thelettuce was christened lactūca. This passed intoEnglish via laituës, the plural of Old Frenchlaituë. LACTATION, LACTOSEleukaemia see LIGHTlevel [14] The Latin word for a ‘balance’ or‘scales’ was libra (it has given English Libra thezodiacal sign [14] and also lies behind manyterms for units of measurement, including litreand the abbreviation lb for ‘pound’). Itsdiminutive form was lībella, which denoted an‘instrument for checking horizontality’, andhence a ‘horizontal line’. It passed into OldFrench as livel (which in modern French hasbecome niveau ‘level’), and English took it overas level. LITREliable [15] Today’s main meaning of liable,‘likely to’, is a comparatively recentdevelopment. Its primary sense is ‘legally boundor obliged’ (as in ‘liable for someone else’sdebts’), which goes right back to the word’sultimate source, Latin ligāre ‘tie’. Its Old Frenchdescendant lier is assumed to have give rise to anAnglo-Norman derivative *liable, literally‘bindable’, which English took over. OtherEnglish words that come ultimately from ligāreinclude ally, liaison [17], lien [16](etymologically a ‘bond’), ligament [14],ligature [14], oblige, religion, and rely. ALLY, LIAISON, LIEN, LIGAMENT, LIGATURE,OBLIGE, RELIGION, RELYlibel see LIBRARYliberal [14] The Latin word for ‘free’ was līber.It came from the same prehistoric source asGreek eleútheros ‘free’, which may havedenoted ‘people, nation’ (in which case theunderlying etymological meaning of the wordwould be ‘being a member of the (free) people’,as opposed to ‘being a slave’). From līber wasderived līberālis ‘of freedom’, which passed intoEnglish via Old French liberal. Its earliestEnglish meanings were ‘generous’ and‘appropriate to the cultural pursuits of a ‘free’man’ (as in ‘the liberal arts’). The connotationsof ‘tolerance’ and ‘lack of prejudice’ did notemerge until the 18th century, and the word’s use309 lifeas a designation of a particular political party inBritain dates from the early 19th century.Also from Latin līber come English libertine[14] and liberty [14]. LIBERTINE, LIBERTYlibidinous see LOVElibrary [14] The Latin word for ‘book’ was liber.It is related to Russian lub ‘bark’ and Lithuanianluba ‘board’, and originally denoted ‘bark’, asused for writing on before the introduction ofpapyrus. From it was derived librāria‘bookseller’s shop’, which Old French took overas librairie and passed on to English. TheEnglish word has only ever been used for a‘place where books are kept’, or for a ‘collectionof books’, but French librairie now exclusivelymeans ‘bookseller’s shop’. Other Englishderivatives of Latin liber include libel [13] (fromthe diminutive form libellus ‘little book’; itoriginally denoted in English simply a ‘formalwritten claim by a plaintiff’, and did not take onits current connotations of ‘defamation’ until the17th century) and libretto [18] (also literally a‘little book’, from an Italian diminutive form). LIBEL, LIBRETTOlicence see LEISURElick see LECHERlidlid [OE] The prehistoric Germanic ancestor of lidwas *khlitham, which also produced Dutch lidand the -lid of German augenlid ‘eyelid’. Itcomes ultimately from the Indo-European base*kli- ‘cover, shut’.lie [OE] English has two words lie. The verb‘recline’ goes back, together with its Germanicrelatives (German liegen, Dutch liggen, Swedishligga. Danish ligge), to a prehistoric base *leg-,a variant of the base *lag- which produced lay.Both come ultimately from Indo-European*legh-, *logh-, whose other English descendantsinclude litter and low.The verb ‘tell untruths’ and its related nouncome from a Germanic base *leug-, *loug-,represented also in German lügen, Dutch liegen,Swedish ljuga, and Danish lyve. The secondsyllable of English warlock comes from thesame source. LAY, LIG, LITTER, LOW; WARLOCKlien see LIABLElieutenant [14] Etymologically, a lieutenant issomeone who ‘holds the place’ of another (moresenior) officer – that is, deputizes for him. Theword comes from French lieutenant, acompound formed from lieu ‘place’ and tenant(source of English tenant). Lieu (borrowedindependently by English as lieu [13] in thephrase ‘in lieu of’) comes in turn from Latinlocus ‘place’, source of English local. Locumtenens [17] (or locum for short) ‘temporaryreplacement’, literally ‘holding the place’, isthus a parallel formation with lieutenant.Spellings of lieutenant with -f-, indicating thestill current British pronunciation /lef-/, firstappear as early as the 14th century. LIEU, LOCAL, TENANTlife [OE] Prehistoric Germanic *līb- denoted‘remain, be left’. From this was formed the noun

lift 310*lībam, which in due course produced Englishlife (the semantic connection between‘remaining’ and life – and the closely related live– is thought to lie in the notion of being ‘leftalive after a battle’). Of the noun’s Germanicrelatives, Swedish and Danish liv still mean‘life’, but German leib and Dutch liff havemoved on semantically to ‘body’.English alive is a derivative of life, not of theverb live. LIVElift see LOFTlig [20] The verb lig, meaning ‘freeload, sponge’,and its derivative ligger, achieved a particularprominence in late 20th-century British English.But in fact its roots go back far into the past. Inorigin it is simply a variant version of the verb lie‘recline’. In Old English times this was licgan,and although in the mainstream language licganbecame lie, liggen survived dialectally. Thesense ‘lie about’ passed naturally into ‘loungeabout lazily’, and apparently merged withanother dialectal sense ‘steal’ to produce theword’s current meaning. LIEligament see LIABLEligature see LIABLElightlight [OE] English has two distinct words light.The one meaning ‘illumination’ comesultimately from Indo-European *leuk-, *louk-,*luk-, which also produced Greek leukós ‘white’(source of English leukaemia [20]) and Latin lūx‘light’ (from which English gets lucifer [OE],literally ‘light-bearer’), lūmen ‘light’ (whenceEnglish luminous [15]), lūcēre ‘shine’ (source ofEnglish lucid [16]), lūstrāre ‘light up’ (whenceEnglish illustrate and lustre [16]), and lūna‘moon’ (source of English lunar). Its mainprehistoric West Germanic derivative was*leukhtam, from which come German and Dutchlicht and English light. The word lynx may berelated.Light ‘not heavy’ comes from a prehistoricGermanic *lingkhtaz, a close relative of whichproduced English lung (the word lung thusetymologically denotes ‘something full of airand not heavy’, and indeed lungs were, andanimal lungs still are called lights in English). ILLUSTRATE, LEUKAEMIA, LUCID, LUMINOUS,LUNAR, LUSTRE, LYNX; LUNGlightning [14] Etymologically, lightning issimply something that illuminates, or ‘lightens’,the sky. The word is a contraction of an earlierlightening, a derivative of lighten ‘make light’.The Old English word for ‘lightning’ was lēget,which is related to light. In Middle English itbecame leit, and later leiting, but in the 14thcentury lightning took over as the main form. LIGHTlike English has a diverse group of words spelledlike, but they all come ultimately from the samesource. This was prehistoric Germanic *līkam‘appearance, form, body’ (source also of thelych- of English lych-gate [15], which originallysignified the gate through which a coffin wascarried into a churchyard). From it was derivedthe verb *līkōjan, which passed into English aslike. It originally meant ‘please’, but by the 12thcentury had done a semantic somersault to ‘findpleasing’. The same Germanic *likam producedEnglish alike, literally ‘similar in appearance’,whose Old Norse relative líkr was borrowed intoEnglish as the adjective like [12]. Its adverbialand prepositional uses developed in the laterMiddle Ages. Also from Old Norse came thederived adjective likely [13].English each and such were formed from theancestor of like. EACH, SUCHlilac [17] Like the river Nile, the lilac gets itsname from its colour. The Sanskrit word for‘dark blue’ was nīla. This passed into Persian asnīl, from which was derived nīlak ‘bluish’. Thisdeveloped a variant līlak, which Englishacquired via Arabic līlak, Spanish lilac, andearly modern French lilac. Along the way it wasapplied to a shrub of the genus Syringa, onaccount of its mauve flowers.lily [OE] Lily probably originated in a pre-Indo-European language of the Mediterraneanseaboard. Latin acquired it (either independentlyor via Greek leírion) as līlium, and passed it onto English in the 10th century. It is now commonto virtually all western European languages,including German (lilie), Dutch (lelie), Swedish(lilja), Spanish (lirio), Italian (the more radicallyaltered giglio), and French (lis, acquired byEnglish in fleur-de-lis, literally ‘lily flower’[19]).limb [OE] The Old English word for ‘limb’ waslim. Like thumb, it later (in the 16th century)acquired an intrusive b, which has long sinceceased to be pronounced. It has cognates inSwedish and Danish lem, and Dutch lid ‘limb’ isprobably related too.limbo English has two distinct and probablyunrelated words limbo. By far the older is thetheological limbo [14], referring originally tothat condition in which the souls of the deadexist that are neither in heaven nor in hell. Itcomes from Latin limbus ‘border, edge’, whichin the Middle Ages was used to refer to a regionon the borders of, but not actually inside, hell. Itvery often turned up in the ablative case, in thephrase in limbo, which is how English adoptedit. The other limbo [20], denoting a West Indiandance that involves passing underneath aprogressively lowered bar, probably comes fromlimber ‘flexible, supple’ [16], which in turnmight be from limb or possibly from limber‘detachable forward part of a gun-carriage’ [15](although spellings of that with a b do not occurbefore the 17th century). No one knows wherethat limber came from, although it mightultimately be Celtic. Alternatively, if the bar isviewed as a sort of boundary that the dancermust cross, the terpsichorean limbo could berelated to the theological limbo.lime English has three distinct words lime, ofwhich by far the oldest is lime the ‘chalkysubstance’ [OE]. It goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *līm- (shared also by German leim,

Dutch lijm, and Swedish limma), a variant ofwhich also produced English loam [OE]. Limethe ‘citrus fruit’ [17] comes via French lime andProvençal limo from Arabic līmah ‘citrus fruit’,which was also the source of English lemon [14].And lime the ‘tree’ [17] is an alteration of anearlier line, a variant of lind ‘lime tree’ (theclosely related linden was acquired in the 16thcentury, from German lindenbaum or earlymodern Dutch lindenboom ‘lime tree’). LOAM; LEMON; LINDENlimerick [19] The best-known writer of limericksis of course Edward Lear, but ironically theterm limerick was not born until after Lear wasdead. It is first recorded in 1896, and is said tohave come from a Victorian custom of singingnonsense songs at parties, in the limerick rhymescheme(aabba), which always ended with theline ‘Will you come up to Limerick?’ (Limerickof course being a county and town in Ireland).limit [14] Latin līmes originally denoted a ‘pathbetween fields’, but it became extendedmetaphorically to any ‘boundary’ or ‘limit’, andthat was the sense in which English acquired it(in its stem form līmit-). LINTELlimousine [20] Limousin is a former provinceof central France. Its inhabitants commonlywore a distinctive style of cloak, and when at thebeginning of the 20th century a new andluxurious type of car was designed with a closedpassenger compartment and an open but roofedseat for the driver, it evidently struck someonethat the roof resembled a Limousin cloak, and sothe car was named a limousine. The Americanabbreviation limo is first recorded from the1960s.limp English has two words limp, which perhapsshare a common ancestry. Neither is particularlyold. The verb first crops up in the 16th century(until then the word for ‘walk lamely’ had beenhalt, which now survives, barely, as anadjective). It was probably adapted from the nowobsolete adjective limphalt ‘lame’, a descendantof Old English lemphealt (which goes backultimately to Indo-European *lomb-). Theadjective limp is first recorded in the 18thcentury, and in view of the common meaningelement ‘lack of firmness, infirmity’ it seemslikely that it is related to the verb.limpet see LAMPREYlimpidlimpid see LYMPHlinden see LIMEline [OE] The closest modern English line comesto its ancestor is probably in the fisherman’s ‘rodand line’ – a ‘string’ or ‘chord’. For it goes backto Latin līnea ‘string’. This was a derivative oflīnum ‘flax’ (source of English linen), and hencemeant etymologically ‘flaxen thread’. Englishacquired it in two separate phases. First of all itwas borrowed directly from Latin in the OldEnglish period, and then it made a returnappearance via Old French ligne in the 14thcentury; the two have coalesced to form modernEnglish line. Derived forms include lineage [14],lineal [15], lineament [15], and liner [19]. The311 lintellast is based on the sense ‘shipping line’, whichgoes back to the notion of a ‘line’ or successionof ships plying between ports. ALIGN, LINEAL, LINEN, LINERlinen [OE] The word for ‘flax’ is an ancient one,shared by numerous Indo-European languages:Greek līnon, Latin līnum (source of Englishline), and prehistoric West Germanic *līnamamong them. The latter passed into Old Englishas līn, but now survives only in the compoundlinseed (literally ‘flax-seed’). Its adjectivalderivative, however, *līnīn, lives on in the formlinen, nowadays used as a noun meaning ‘clothmade from flax’. The Latin word, or its Frenchdescendants lin or linge, have contributedseveral other derivatives to English, includingcrinoline, lingerie [19] (literally ‘linengarments’), linnet [16] (etymologically a ‘flaxeatingbird’), linoleum [19], and lint [14]. CRINOLINE, LINE, LINGERIE, LINNET, LINOLEUM,LINTliner see LINElinger [13] Etymologically, to linger is to remain‘longer’ than one should. Like its relatives,German längen and Dutch lengen, it goes backto a prehistoric Germanic *langgjan ‘lengthen’.In Old Norse this became lengja, which wasborrowed into English in the 10th century asleng. By now, ‘lengthen’ had progressedmetaphorically via ‘prolong’ to ‘delay’, which iswhat it meant when linger was derived from it inthe 13th century. LONGlingerie see LINENlinguist see LANGUAGElinklink [14] Link goes back ultimately to prehistoricGermanic *khlangkjaz, whose underlyingmeaning element was ‘bending’ (it also hasclose relatives in English flank [12], flinch [16],and lank [OE]). ‘Bending’ implies ‘joints’ and‘links’, and this is the meaning which is the wordis presumed to have had when it passed into OldNorse as *hlenkr – from which English acquiredlink.There is, incidentally, no etymologicalconnection with the now obsolete link ‘torch’[16], which may have come via medieval Latinlinchinus from Greek lúkhnos ‘lamp’, nor withthe links on which golf is played, which goesback to Old English hlincas, the plural of hlinc‘rising ground, ridge’. FLANK, FLINCH, LANKlinks see LEANlinnet see LINENlinoleumlinoleum see LINENlint see LINENlintel [14] Lintel is the result of the blending oftwo Latin words: līmes ‘boundary’ (source ofEnglish limit) and līmen ‘threshold’ (source ofEnglish subliminal and possibly also ofsublime). Līmen had a derived adjective,līmināris ‘of a threshold’. In the post-classicalperiod, under the influence of līmes, this becamealtered to *līmitāris, which was used in Vulgar

lion 312Latin as a noun meaning ‘threshold’. This passedinto English via Old French lintier, later lintel. LIMIT, SUBLIMINALlion [13] The word for ‘lion’ in virtually allmodern European languages goes back to Greekléōn, which was presumably borrowed fromsome non-Indo-European source. From it cameLatin lēo, which Old English took over as lēo.The modern English form lion was introduced inthe 13th century via Anglo-French liun. Relatedforms include French lion, Italian leone, Spanishleón, Romanian leu. German löwe, Dutch leeuw,Swedish lejon, Danish løve, Russian lev, andWelsh llew.The -leon of chameleon represents Greekléōn. CHAMELEONlip [OE] Lip has been traced back to Indo-European *leb-, which also produced Latinlabrum ‘lip’, source of French lèvre ‘lip’ andEnglish labial [16]. Its Germanic descendantwas *lepaz-, from which come German lippe,Dutch lip, Swedish läppe, Danish læbe, andEnglish lip. LABIALlipid see LEAVEliquid [14] Latin liquēre meant ‘be fluid’. Fromit was derived the adjective liquidus, whichreached English via Old French (it was not usedas a noun in the sense ‘liquid substance’ until theearly 18th century). Also derived from liquērewas the noun liquor, which passed into OldFrench as licur or licour. English has borrowedthis twice: first in the 13th century as licour,which was subsequently ‘re-latinized’ as liquor,and then in the 18th century in the form of itsmodern French descendant liqueur. From thesame ultimate source come liquefy [16],liquidate [16] (which goes back to ametaphorical sense of Latin liquēre, ‘be clear’ –thus ‘clear a debt’; the modern meaning‘destroy’ was directly inspired by Russianlikvidirovat’), and the final syllable ofprolix[15]. LIQUOR, PROLIXliquorice [13] Liquorice, or licorice as it isusually spelled in American English, has nodirect etymological connection with liquor(although liquor has played a significant role inits development). It goes back to Greekglukúrrhiza, which meant literally ‘sweet root’(it was a compound of glukús ‘sweet’, source ofEnglish glycerine, and rhíza ‘root’, source ofEnglish rhizome [19]). Under the influence ofliquor, this was borrowed into post-classicalLatin as liquiritia, which passed into English viaOld French licoresse and Anglo-Normanlycorys. GLYCERINE, RHIZOMElist Over the centuries, English has had no fewerthan five different words list, only two of whichare now in everyday common usage. List‘catalogue’ [17] was borrowed from French liste‘band, border, strip of paper, catalogue’. Thisgoes back to a prehistoric Germanic *līstōn,source also of English list ‘border, strip’ [OE],which now survives only in the plural lists‘tournament arena’. List ‘tilt’ [17] is of unknownorigin. List ‘listen’ [OE], which goes back toIndo-European *klu-, has been replaced by therelated listen. And the archaic list ‘desire’ [OE](source of listless [15]) goes back to the samesource as lust. LISTLESS, LUSTlisten [OE] The Indo-European base *kludenoted‘hearing’ (it is the ultimate source ofEnglish loud). From its extended form *kluswerederived in prehistoric Germanic the noun*khlustiz ‘hearing’, which eventually producedthe now archaic English verb list ‘listen’, and theverb *khlusnōjan ‘hear’, which became Englishlisten. LOUDlistless see LISTliterature [14] Latin littera meant ‘letter’, andwas the source of English letter. From it wasderived literātus ‘having knowledge of letters’,hence ‘educated, learned’ (source of Englishliterate [15]); and this formed the basis of thefurther derivative litterātūra, which denoted‘writing formed with letters’, and by extension‘learning, grammar’. English took it over partlydirect, partly via French littérature. From thesame source comes English literal [14]. LETTER, LITERAL, OBLITERATElithograph [19] Greek líthos meant ‘stone’. Ithas contributed a small cluster of words toEnglish, including lithium [19] (a metal sonamed from its mineral origin), lithops [20] (thename of a small pebble-like plant, coined in the1920s, which means literally ‘stoneface’ inGreek), lithosphere [19] (the solid outer layer ofthe Earth), lithotomy [18] (the surgical removalof stones from the bladder), megalith [19],monolith [19], and the various terms forsubdivisions of the Stone Age, such as Neolithic[19] and Paleolithic [19]. Lithography itself,which denotes a method of printing from a flatsurface, means etymologically ‘stone-writing’,reflecting the fact that the original printingsurfaces in this process were of stone (they arenow usually metal).litmus see MOSSlitrelitre [19] Litre goes back to Greek lītrā, a termwhich denoted a Sicilian monetary unit. Thisfound its way via medieval Latin litrā intoFrench as litron, where it was used for a unit ofcapacity. By the 18th century it had rather fallenout of use, but in 1793 it was revived, in the formlitre, as the name for the basic unit of capacity inthe new metric system. It is first recorded inEnglish in 1810.The Greek word was descended from anearlier, unrecorded *līthrā, which was borrowedinto Latin as lībra ‘pound’. This is the source ofvarious modern terms for units of weight, andhence of currency, including Italian lira and thenow disused French livre, and it also lies behindthe English symbol £ for ‘pound’. LEVEL, LIRAlitter [13] The word litter has come a long waysemantically since it was born, from ‘bed’ to

‘rubbish scattered untidily’. It goes backultimately to Latin lectus ‘bed’, a distant relativeof English lie and source of French lit ‘bed’(which forms the final syllable of Englishcoverlet [13], etymologically ‘bed-cover’).From lectus was derived medieval Latin lectāria,which passed into English via Old French litiereand Anglo-Norman litere ‘bed’. This originalsense was soon extended in English to a‘portable conveyance or stretcher’, which stillsurvives, just, as an archaism, but the word’smain modern sense, which first emerged fully inthe 18th century, derives from the notion ofscattering straw over the floor for bedding. COVERLETlittle [OE] Little goes back to the prehistoric WestGermanic base *lut-, which also produced Dutchluttel and may have been the source of the OldEnglish verb lūtan ‘bow down’. Some havedetected a link with Old English lot ‘deceit’, OldNorse lýta ‘dishonour, blame’, Russian ludit’‘deceive’, and Serbo-Croat lud ‘foolish’.liturgy [16] Etymologically, liturgy means‘public performance’. It comes via late Latinlīturgia from Greek leitourgíā ‘public service orworship’. This was a derivative of leitourgós‘public servant’, hence ‘priest’, a compoundformed from leit-, the stem of lēós ‘people,multitude’ (from which English gets layman),and érgon ‘work, action’ (source of Englishenergy). ENERGY, LAITY, LAYlive [OE] Modern English live represents aconflation of two Old English verbs, libban andlifian, both of which go back ultimately to thesame prehistoric Germanic source, *lib-‘remain, continue’. Variants of this producedleave ‘depart’ and life. The adjective live [16] isa reduced form of alive, which derived from life. LIFElivid see SLOElizard [14] Lizard goes back to Latin lacertus orlacerta, words of unknown origin. It reachedEnglish via Old French lesard. The Latin wordwas used for ‘muscle’ as well as ‘lizard’, perhapsbecause the ripple of a muscle beneath the skinreminded people of a lizard’s movement (anexactly parallel development links mouse andmuscle). And in heavily disguised form, owingto a detour via Arabic, alligator is the sameword. ALLIGATORload [OE] Load originally meant ‘way, course’and ‘conveyance, carriage’. It goes back toprehistoric Germanic *laithō, which also liesbehind English lead ‘conduct’. Not until the 13thcentury did it begin to move over to its currentsense ‘burden’, under the direct influence of lade[OE] (a verb of Germanic origin which nowsurvives mainly in its past participial adjectiveladen and the derived noun ladle [OE]).The word’s original sense ‘way’ is preservedin lodestar [14], etymologically a ‘guiding star’,and lodestone [16], likewise a ‘guiding stone’,named from its use as a compass. LADEN, LEAD313 lobsterloaf English has two words loaf. By far the olderis ‘portion of bread’ [OE], which goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *khlaibaz. This alsoproduced German laib and Danish lev ‘loaf’, andwas borrowed, originally into Gothic, from anOld Slavic chleb (source of modern Russian andPolish chleb ‘bread, loaf’). Heavily disguised,loaf forms part of both lady and lord (whichetymologically mean respectively ‘loafkneader’and ‘loaf-guardian’), and it alsocontributed the first syllable to Lammas [OE],literally ‘loaf-mass’.The verb loaf ‘dawdle, mooch’ [19] seems tohave been a back-formation from loafer, whichwas probably adapted in 19th-century AmericanEnglish from German landläufer ‘vagabond’, acompound of land ‘land’ and läufer ‘runner’ (towhich English leap is related). LADY, LORD; LEAPloam see LIMEloan [13] Old English had a noun lǣn, a closerelative of the verb lǣnan (precursor of modernEnglish lend). It meant ‘gift’, but it died outbefore the Middle English period, and wasreplaced by the related Old Norse lán, which hasbecome modern English loan. Both go backultimately to prehistoric Indo-European *loiq-,*leiq-, *liq-, which also produced Greek leípein‘leave’ (source of English ellipse) and Latinlinquere ‘leave’ (source of English delinquent,relic, and relinquish). DELINQUENT, LEND, RELIC, RELINQUISHloathe [OE] Loathe originated as a derivative ofthe adjective loath or loth [OE]. This originallymeant ‘hostile’ or ‘loathsome’, and goes back toa prehistoric Germanic *laithaz, which alsoproduced Swedish led ‘fed up’ and German leid‘sorrow’, and was borrowed into the Romancelanguages, giving French laid and Italian laido‘ugly’.lobby see LODGElobelobe [16] Greek lobós denoted ‘somethinground’, such as the circular part of the ear or theliver, or a round seed pod. It came from aprehistoric *logwós, a close relative of whichproduced Latin legūmen ‘seed pod’ (source ofEnglish legume [17]). Lobós was borrowed intolate Latin as lobus, and from there made its wayinto English. LEGUMElobster [OE] The Latin word locusta denotedboth the voracious grasshopper, the ‘locust’, andthe ‘lobster’ or similar crustaceans, such as thecrayfish (if, as has been suggested, the word isrelated to Greek lēkan ‘jump’, then presumablythe ‘grasshopper’ sense was primary, and the‘lobster’ application arose from some supposedresemblance between the two creatures). Englishhas borrowed the Latin word twice. Mostrecently it came in the easily recognizable guiselocust [13], but lobster too goes back to the samesource. The radical change of form may be dueto the influence of the Old English word loppe‘spider’ – the Old English precursor of lobsterwas loppestre or lopystre. LOCUST

local 314local [15] Latin locus meant ‘place’ (it became indue course French lieu, acquired by English inthe 13th century, and was itself adopted intoEnglish as a mathematical term in the 18thcentury). From it was derived the verb locāre‘place’, source of English locate [18] andlocation [16], and the post-classical adjectivelocālis, from which English gets local. The nounlocale is a mock frenchification of an earlierlocal [18], an adoption of the French use of theadjective local as a noun. LIEU, LOCOMOTIVE, LOCUSlock [OE] English has two words lock. The onemeaning ‘fastening mechanism’ goes backultimately to a prehistoric Germanic *luk-or*lūk-, denoting ‘close’, which also producedGerman loch ‘hole’ and Swedish lock ‘lid’.Closely related are locker [15], etymologically a‘box with a lock’, and locket [14], which wasacquired from Old French locquet, a diminutiveform of loc (which itself was a borrowing fromGermanic *luk-).Lock ‘piece of hair’ goes back to a prehistoricIndo-European *lug-, which denoted ‘bending’.Its Germanic relatives include German locke,Dutch and Danish lok, and Swedish lock.locomotive [17] Locomotive denotesetymologically ‘moving by change of place’. Itis an anglicization of modern Latin locōmōtīvus,a compound formed from locus ‘place’ andmōtīvus ‘causing to move’ (source of Englishmotive). Originally it was used strictly as anadjective, and it was not until the early 19thcentury that the present-day noun use (whichbegan life as an abbreviation of locomotiveengine) emerged.locust see LOBSTERlodestone see LOADlodge [13] The distant ancestor of lodge wasGermanic *laubja ‘shelter’, which may wellhave been a derivative of *laubam ‘leaf’ (sourceof English leaf) – the underlying idea being of asheltered place formed by or constructed fromleafy branches. German laube ‘summer-house,covered way’ comes from the same source.Medieval Latin took over the Germanic form aslaubia or lobia (from which English gets lobby[16]), and passed it on via Old French loge toEnglish in the form lodge. LEAF, LOBBYloft [OE] The notion underlying loft is of being‘high up in the air’ – and indeed originally loft,like its close German relative luft, meant ‘air’.Not until the 13th century do we find it beingused in English for ‘upper room’ (although infact its source, Old Norse lopt, had bothmeanings). All these words go back to acommon ancestor, prehistoric Germanic *luftuz‘air, sky’. From this was derived a verb *luftjan,which, again via Old Norse, has given Englishlift [13] (the use of the derived noun for an‘elevator’, incidentally, dates from the mid 19thcentury). LIFTlog [14] Log is a mystery word. It first turns up (inthe sense ‘felled timber’) towards the end of the14th century, but it has no ascertainable relativesin any other language. Nor is it altogether clearhow the sense ‘ship’s record’ came about. It wasinspired by the use of log for a thin piece ofwood floated in the water from a line todetermine the speed of a ship, but someetymologists have speculated that this is not thesame word as log ‘piece of timber’, but wasadapted from Arabic lauh ‘tablet’.logarithm [17] Greek lógos had a remarkablywide spread of meanings, ranging from ‘speech,saying’ to ‘reason, reckoning, calculation’, and‘ratio’. The more ‘verbal’ end of its spectrum hasgiven English the suffixes -logue and -logy (as indialogue, tautology, etc), while the ‘reasoning’component has contributed logic [14] (from theGreek derivative logiké), logistic [17] (from theGreek derivative logistikós ‘of calculation’), andlogarithm, coined in the early 17th century bythe English mathematician John Napier fromGreek logós ‘ratio’ and arithmós ‘number’(source of English arithmetic [13]). ARITHMETIC, LOGIC, LOGISTICloggerhead [16] Loggerhead originally meantmuch the same as blockhead – a stupid personwith a block of wood for a head (inShakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1588),Berowne calls Costard a ‘whoresonloggerhead’). The first part of it probablyrepresents logger ‘block for hobbling a horse’,which in turn was based on log, but how it cameto be used in the phrase at loggerheads, meaning‘in conflict’ and first recorded in 1831, isunclear. Perhaps the underlying image is of twostupid people having an in-your-face argument,but loggerhead was also used over the centuriesfor various bulbous-ended objects, including along-handled tool for melting pitch, and it couldbe that a fight is being invoked in which thesefearsome articles are being used as weapons.loin [14] Loin has had a circuitous history. Itsdistant ancestor was probably Germanic, but itwas borrowed early on into Latin as lumbus‘loin’ (source of English lumbar [17], lumbago[17], and the numbles or umbles which becamethe humble of humble pie). Lumbus passed viaVulgar Latin *lumbia into Old French as longe.This had an eastern dialectal form loigne, whichEnglish acquired as loin. HUMBLE PIE, LUMBAGO, LUMBARlonely [16] Lonely is a derivative of lone [14],itself a truncated form of alone. Another coinagebased on lone is lonesome [17].long [OE] Long goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *langgaz, which also producedGerman, Dutch, and Danish lang and Swedishlång. It is presumably related to Latin longus‘long’ (source of French long, Italian lungo, andRomanian lung) but quite how has not beenestablished. The derived verb long is of equalantiquity, and originally meant simply ‘growlong’; the current sense ‘yearn’ developed via‘seem long’. Derived forms, more or less heavilydisguised, include belong, Lent, linger, lunge,

and purloin [15], etymologically ‘take a longway away’, hence ‘remove’. BELONG, LENGTH, LENT, LINGER, LUNGE,PURLOINlongitude see LATITUDEloo [20] Loo presents one of the more celebratedpuzzles of English etymology. Not the least of itsproblematical points is that there is no reliableevidence of its existence before the 1920s,whereas most of its suggested sources have amore dated air than that. Amongst them, themost widely touted is of course gardy loo!, ashout of warning (based on French gardez l’eau‘beware of the water’) supposedly used whenemptying chamber pots from upper-storeywindows in the days before modern plumbing;but that is chronologically most unlikely. Otherpossibilities are that it is short for Waterloo,which was a trade name for cast-iron lavatorycisterns in the early part of the 20th century (‘Oyes, mon loup. How much cost? Waterloo.Watercloset’, James Joyce, Ulysses 1922), andthat it comes from louvre, from the use of slattedscreens for a makeshift lavatory. But perhaps thelikeliest explanation is that it derives fromFrench lieux d’aisances, literally ‘places ofease’, hence ‘lavatory’ (perhaps picked up byBritish servicemen in France during World WarI).look [OE] For such a common word, look issurprisingly isolated. It goes back to prehistoricWest Germanic *lōkōjan, which has no otherdescendants in the modern Germanic languages,and its only distant relative is the German verblugen ‘show, be visible’.loose [13] Loose is one of a large family ofwords that go back ultimately to Indo-European*lau-, *leu-, *lu-, which denoted ‘undoing’. Itincludes (via Greek) analyse and paralyse, (viaLatin) dissolve and solution, and (via Germanic)lose and the suffix -less. Loose itself wasborrowed from Old Norse laus, which wasdescended from a prehistoric Germanic *lausaz. ANALYSE, DISSOLVE, LOSE, PARALYSE,SOLUTIONlope see LEAPloquacious see VENTRILOQUISTlord [OE] It is a measure of the centrality of breadto human society that the word lord denotesetymologically ‘guardian of the loaf’. It goesback to a primitive Old English *khlaibward, acompound formed from *khlaib ‘loaf’ and*ward ‘guardian, keeper’ (ancestor of modernEnglish ward). This gradually developed in OldEnglish via hlāfweard to hlāford, and in the 14thcentury it lost its middle /v/ to become thesingle-syllable word we know today.Lady was likewise originally based on theword loaf. GUARD, LOAF, WARDlore see LEARNlorry [19] The first record we have of the wordlorry is from the northwest of England in theearly 1830s, when it denoted a ‘low wagon’ (itwas often used for railway wagons). The modernapplication to a motor vehicle emerged at the315 lovebeginning of the 20th century. It is not clearwhere it came from, although it has beenspeculated that it was based on the personalname Laurie (perhaps someone called Laurieinvented the vehicle). Another possibility issome connection with the Northern dialect verblurry ‘pull’.lose [OE] The verb lose originated as a derivativeof the Old English noun los ‘loss’, which wentback ultimately to the same Indo-Europeansource (*lau-, *leu-, lu-) as produced Englishloose and the suffix -less. In Old English it waslosian, which eventually ousted the originallēosan to become the only verb for ‘lose’. Thenoun los died out before the Middle Englishperiod, and was replaced by loss [14], probablya derivative of the past participle lost. The pastparticiple of lēosan ‘lose’ was loren, whichsurvives in forlorn and love-lorn. LOOSElot [OE] Lot goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*khlut-, which appears to have denoted the useof objects to make decisions by chance (OldEnglish hlot was used for such an object). Thefirst inklings of the modern range of senses didnot emerge until the 18th century, when lotbegan to be used for a ‘set of things’. ‘Largenumber, many’ followed in the 19th century. TheGermanic word was borrowed into the Romancelanguages, and of its descendants English hasacquired allot [16] (from Old French) and lotto[18] (from Italian). Lottery [16] comes from theDutch derivative loterij. ALLOT, LOTTERY, LOTTOloth see LOATHEloud [OE] The underlying meaning of loud is‘heard, audible’ – for it goes back ultimately toan Indo-European *klu- ‘hear’ (source also ofEnglish listen). The past participial form basedon this, *klūtós, passed into prehistoric WestGermanic as *khluthaz, which has sincedifferentiated into German laut, Dutch luid, andEnglish loud. LISTENlounge [16] It is the verb lounge (originally‘move indolently’) which came first; itsapplication as a noun to a ‘room where one cansit and take one’s ease’ came later, in the 18thcentury. It is not at all clear where the word camefrom, but some have linked it with the longobsolete noun lungis, which denoted both a‘gangling foolish fellow’ and ‘someone who isslow or dilatory at doing things’. This wasborrowed in the 16th century from Frenchlongis, which was apparently a genericapplication of Longīnus, the name of the Romancenturion who pierced Christ’s side with a spearas he was hanging on the cross.love [OE] The word love goes back to an Indo-European *leubh-, which has spawned a hugelexical progeny: not just words for ‘love’ (love’sGermanic relatives, such as German liebe andDutch liefde, as well as the archaic English lief‘dear’ [OE] and Latin libīdō ‘strong desire’,source of English libidinous [15]) but also wordsfor ‘praise’ (German lob and Dutch lof) and

low 316‘belief’ (German glauben, Dutch gelooven,English believe). The sense ‘find pleasing’ isprimary; it subsequently developed to ‘praise’and, probably via ‘be satisfied with’, to ‘trust,believe’.The derivative lovely [OE] originally meant‘affectionate’ and ‘lovable’; the modern sense‘beautiful’ did not develop until the late 13thcentury. BELIEVE, LEAVE, LIEFlow English has two words low, of whichsurprisingly the ‘noise made by cattle’ [OE] isthe older. It goes back ultimately to theonomatopoeic Indo-European base *klā-. Thisalso produced Latin clārus (which originallymeant ‘loud’, and gave English clear anddeclare), clāmāre ‘cry out’ (source of Englishacclaim, claim, exclaim, etc), and calāre‘proclaim, summon’ (source of English council).It produced a prehistoric Germanic *khlō-,whose only survivor other than English low isDutch loeien.Low ‘not high’ [12] was borrowed from OldNorse lágr (source also of Swedish låg ‘low’).This goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*lǣgjaz, which was derived from the same baseas produced the English verb lie ‘recline’. ACCLAIM, CLAIM, CLEAR, COUNCIL, EXCLAIM;LIEloyal [16] Loyal, ultimately the same word aslegal, has a double history in English. It wasoriginally acquired in the 13th century as leal.This came from Anglo-Norman leal, adescendant of Latin lēgālis ‘legal’. Then in the16th century it was reborrowed from the modernFrench form loyal. The semantic link is‘faithfully carrying out (legal) obligations’. LEGALlubricate see SLIPlucid see LIGHTluciferlucifer see LIGHTluck [15] The antecedents of luck are not at allclear. Its likeliest source is Low German luk.This is clearly a close relative of modern Dutchgeluk, whose prefix ge- is found also in MiddleHigh German gelücke (source of modernGerman glück ‘good fortune, happiness’). Butwhere the element lu(c)k came from is notknown.Luddite [19] The original Luddites, in the 1810s,were members of organized bands of workingmen who were opposed to the new factorymethods of production (foreseeing – quitecorrectly – that the traditional ways which gavethem employment would be destroyed by thenew ones) and went around the country, mainlyin the Midlands and Northern England, breakingup manufacturing machinery. They were namedafter Ned Ludd, a possibly apocryphalLeicestershire farm worker who around 1779supposedly rushed into a stocking-maker’shouse in an insane rage and smashed up twostocking frames. Thereafter, the story continues,whenever a stocking frame suffered damage thesaying would be ‘Ludd must have been here!’.The ringleaders of the disturbances in the 1810swere commonly nicknamed ‘Captain Ludd’ or‘King Ludd’. The modern application of theword to an opponent of technological orindustrial change appears to date from the 1960s.ludicrous see ILLUSIONluff see ALOOFlug English has three words lug, two of thempossibly connected. The verb, ‘pull’ [14], maybe related to Swedish lugga ‘pull someone’shair’, suggesting a Scandinavian origin. And ithas been pointed out that the various meaningsof the noun lug [15], such as ‘ear’ and‘projecting handle’, share a common semanticelement ‘capable of being held (and pulled)’, sothe noun may have been derived from the verb.The lug- of lugworm [17] may be of Celticorigin.lukewarm [14] Lukewarm is a compoundadjective based on the now obsolete MiddleEnglish luke ‘tepid’. It is not altogether clearwhere this came from, but it is generallyassumed to be a derivative of the also nowobsolete lew ‘(fairly) warm’, with perhaps adiminutive suffix. Lew goes back to an OldEnglish hlēow ‘warm’, a variant of whichbecame modern English lee ‘shelter’. It is relatedto Latin calor ‘heat’ (source of English calorie),calidus ‘hot’ (source of English caudle,cauldron, and chowder), and calēre ‘be hot’(source of English nonchalant). CALORIE, CAULDRON, CHOWDER, LEE,NONCHALANTlull [14] There are several words similar to lull invarious Germanic languages, including Swedishlulla ‘lull’ and Dutch lullen ‘prattle’, but it is notclear to what extent they are interconnected. Buteither individually or collectively they all nodoubt go back ultimately to a repitition of thesyllable lu or la, used in singing a baby to sleep.Lullaby was coined from lull in the 16th century,perhaps using the final syllable of goodbye.lumbago see LOINlumbar see LOINlumber [14] Swedish has a dialectal verb loma‘move heavily’, which is the only clue we haveto the antecedents of the otherwise mysteriousEnglish verb lumber. The noun, too, which firstappears in the 16th century, is difficult toaccount for. In the absence of any otherconvincing candidates, it is presumed to havebeen derived from the verb (its earliest recordedsense is ‘useless or inconvenient articles’,plausibly close to the verb; ‘cut timber’ did notemerge until the 17th century, in NorthAmerica).luminous see LIGHTlumplump [13] The origins of lump are obscure. Itpresumably emerged from an imperfectlyrecorded medieval Germanic substratum ofwords for ‘coarse or shapeless things’ (alsorepresented perhaps by Low German lump‘coarse, heavy’ and Dutch lomp ‘rag’), butwhere this began is not known. The lump of likeit or lump it [19] is a different word, of evenmore mysterious ancestry.

lunar [17] Latin lūna ‘moon’ came from an Indo-European base which also produced Englishlight (not to mention a range of Latin ‘light’-words, such as lūx and lūmen, which have givenEnglish illustrate, lucid, luminous, lustre, etc). Ithad two adjectival derivatives: lūnāris, whichsimply meant ‘of the moon’, and was borrowedby English as lunar; and lūnāticus. This wasoriginally used for ‘living on the moon’, butsubsequently came to employed in the sense‘crazy’, from the notion that certain sorts ofperiodic madness were caused by the phases ofthe moon. English acquired it via Old Frenchlunatique as lunatic [13]. ILLUSTRATE, LIGHT, LUMINOUS, LUNATIC,LUSTRElunch [16] When lunch first appeared on thescene, at the end of the 16th century, it was usedfor a ‘slice or hunk of food’ (‘He shall take breadand cut it into little lunches into a pan withcheese’, Richard Surfleet, Country Farm 1600).It appears to have been borrowed from Spanishlonja ‘slice’. The roughly contemporaneousluncheon, probably just an arbitrary lengtheningof lunch, came to be used in the early 17thcentury for a ‘snack’ (the link with ‘hunk orpiece of food’ is obvious), and eventually for a‘light meal’. Lunch returned to the language inthis sense at the beginning of the 19th century, asan abbreviation of luncheon.lung [OE] Lungs, insubstantial air-filled sacs, gottheir name because they weigh so little. It comesultimately from Indo-European *lnggh-, avariant of which produced English light ‘notheavy’. In prehistoric Germanic this became*lungg-, which over the centuries hasdifferentiated to German lunge, Dutch long,Swedish lunga, and English lung. The similarlymotivated use of the word lights for ‘lungs’ datesfrom the 12th century; it is now restricted to‘animals’ lungs used as food’, but it wasformerly a general term. LIGHTlunge [18] ‘Length’ is the etymological notionunderlying the word lunge. It comes ultimatelyfrom French allonger ‘lengthen’, a verb basedon the adjective long ‘long’. Its fencingapplication derived, in French, from the idea of‘extending one’s sword to strike a blow’. It wasoriginally borrowed into English in the 17thcentury as allonge, but this was soon shortenedto lunge.lupin see WOLFlurch English has two words lurch, both withrather obscure histories. The verb, ‘stagger’[19], appears to come from an earlier lee-lurch,which in turn may have been an alteration of an18th-century nautical term lee-latch, denoting‘drifting to leeward’. The latch element mayhave come from French lâcher ‘let go’.317 lynxThe lurch of leave someone in the lurch [16]originated as a term in backgammon, denoting a‘defeat’, ‘low score’, or ‘position ofdisadvantage’. It was borrowed from Frenchlourche, which probably goes back to MiddleHigh German lurz ‘left’, hence ‘wrong’,‘defeat’.lust [OE] Lust is a Germanic word; it goes backto a prehistoric Germanic *lust-, which as wellas English lust had produced German lust (nowused for ‘pleasure’ rather than ‘desire’). Swedishlust ‘inclination, pleasure, desire’ was borrowedfrom Low German. From the same Germanicancestor came the now archaic verb list ‘desire’,source of listless. And it is possible thatlascivious [15], acquired from late Latinlascīviōsus, may ultimately be related. LASCIVIOUS, LISTLESSlustre see LIGHTluxury [14] Luxury was originally a pejorativeword, denoting ‘sinful self-indulgence’. Notuntil the 17th century did it begin to acquire itspositive modern connotations of costliness,comfort, and desirability. It came via Old Frenchfrom Latin luxuria ‘excess’, a derivative of luxus‘excess, abundance, extravagance’. The Latinderived verb luxuriāre ‘grow profusely’ hasgiven English luxuriant [16] and luxuriate [17].lycanthropy see WOLFlychgate see LIKElymph [17] Despite its Greek appearance, lymphcomes, perhaps via French, from Latin. Itsdistant ancestor was Latin limpa or lumpa,which meant ‘water’. And that was the originalsense of English lymph; not until the 18thcentury was it used for ‘clear bodily fluid’. Thealteration of the Latin word to lympha appears tohave been due to association with Greek númphē‘nymph’.English limpid [17] comes from Latinlimpidus ‘clear’, which may have been related tolimpa.lynch [19] This verb for ‘punishing someonewithout an official trial’ owes its existence to oneWilliam Lynch, a planter and justice of the peaceof Pittsylvania, Virginia, USA, who at thebeginning of the 19th century took it uponhimself to set up unofficial tribunals to trysuspects. His rough and ready method ofadministering justice was termed Lynch’s law,later lynch law, and the verb followed in the1830s.lynx [14] The lynx, a member of the cat family,probably gets its name from its clear sight. Itcomes via Latin lynx from Greek lúgx, whichprobably derived from the same Indo-Europeanroot (*leuk-) as produced English light and (viaLatin) illuminate, illustrate, lucid, luminous,lunar, and lustre. A precedent for its applicationto ‘seeing’ is provided by Greek leússein ‘see’. ILLUSTRATE, LIGHT, OUNCE

Mmacabre [15] Macabre is now used generallyfor ‘ghastly’, but that is a late 19th-centurydevelopment. It originated in the very specificphrase dance macabre, which denoted a dance inwhich a figure representing death enticed peopleto dance with him until they dropped down dead.This was borrowed from French danse macabre,which was probably an alteration of an earlierdanse Macabé. This in turn was a translation ofmedieval Latin chorea Machabaeorum ‘dance ofthe Maccabees’, which is thought originally tohave referred to a stylized representation of theslaughter of the Maccabees (a Jewish dynasty ofbiblical times) in a medieval miracle play.macaroni [16] Macaroni was the earliest of theItalian pasta terms to be borrowed into English,and so it now differs more than any other from itsoriginal. When English acquired it, the Italianword was maccaroni (it came ultimately fromlate Greek makaría ‘food made from barley’),but now it has become maccheroni.The colloquial 18th-century application ofmacaroni to a ‘dandy’ is thought to have been anallusion to such people’s supposed liking forforeign food. And the derivative macaronic [17],used for a sort of verse in which Latin words aremixed in with vernacular ones for comic effect,was originally coined in Italian, comparing theverse’s crude mixture of languages with thehomely hotchpotch of a macaroni dish.Macaroon [17] comes from macaron, theFrench descendant of Italian maccaroni. MACAROONmachine [16] The ultimate source of bothmachine and mechanic [14] was makhos, aGreek word meaning ‘contrivance, means’, andrelated distantly to English may ‘be able’ andmight. From it was derived mēkhané, whoseDoric dialect form mākhaná passed into Latin asmāchina ‘engine, contrivance’. English acquiredthe word via Old French machine. Meanwhilemēkhané had spawned an adjectival derivativemēkhanikós, which was in due course to find itsway into English through Latin mēchanicus. MECHANICmacho see MALEmackintosh [19] The rubberized material fromwhich this waterproof coat was originally madewas invented in the early 1820s by the Britishchemist Charles Macintosh (1766–1843). Hisname (misspelled with a k) is first recorded asbeing applied to the coat in 1836. Theabbreviated form mac (or occasionally mack)dates from around the turn of the 20th century.mad [13] The underlying etymological meaningof mad is ‘changed’. It goes back ultimately toIndo-European *moitó-, a past participial formbased on *moi-, *mei-, ‘change’ (source also ofLatin mūtāre ‘change’, from which English getsmutate). Prehistoric Germanic inherited it,adding the collective prefix *ga- to form*gamaithaz, which passed into Old English asgemād ‘insane’. From this was derived the verbgemǣdan ‘madden’, whose past participlegemǣded eventually became a new adjectivegemǣdd. By the Middle English period this hadbecome amadd, and the reduced prefix a-eventually disappeared, leaving mad. MUTATEmadrigal [16] Etymologically, madrigaldenotes a ‘simple song, such as might just havesprung from the mother’s womb’. It comesultimately from medieval Latin mātricālis‘simple, primitive’, a derivative of Latin mātrix‘womb’. (And mātrix itself, source of Englishmatrix [16] and matriculate [16] –etymologically ‘put on a list’, from a latermetaphorical use of the Latin noun for ‘list’ –was a derivative of māter ‘mother’.) Mātricālispassed into Italian as madrigale, where it wasused as a noun for a ‘simple unaccompaniedsong’. MATRICULATE, MATRIXmaenad see MANIAmagazine [16] The original meaning ofmagazine, now disused, was ‘storehouse’. Theword comes, via French magasin and Italianmagazzino, from Arabic makhāzin, the plural ofmakhzan ‘store-house’ (a derivative of the verbkhazana ‘store’). It was soon applied specificallyto a ‘store for arms’, and the modern sense‘journal’, first recorded in the early 18th century,goes back to a 17th-century metaphoricalapplication to a ‘storehouse of information’.maggot see MAWKISHmagicmagic [14] Greek mágos, a word of Persianorigin, meant ‘sorcerer’ (Latin borrowed it asmagus, whose plural magi is used in English forthe three ‘Wise Men’ who visited the infantChrist). From mágos was derived the adjectivemagikós. Its use in the phrase magiké tékhnē‘sorcerer’s art’ led eventually to magiké itselfbeing regarded as a noun, and it passed intoEnglish via late Latin magica and Old Frenchmagique. MAGImagistrate [14] By far the most widely usedcontributions of Latin magister ‘master’ toEnglish are the heavily disguised master andmister, but more obvious derivatives have madethe trip too. The late Latin adjective magisterius

‘of a master’, modified through medieval Latinmagisteriālis, has given us magisterial [17]; andmagistrātus, source of English magistrate,denoted a ‘state official’ in ancient Rome. MASTER, MISTERmagma see MAKEmagnanimous see MAGNITUDEmagnate see MAGNITUDEmagnet [15] Greek Mágnēs líthos meant ‘stonefrom Magnesia’ – Magnesia being a region ofThessaly, Greece where much metal wasobtained. It had two specific applications: to orewith magnetic properties, and to stone with ametallic sheen. And it was the first of these thathas come down to English via Latin magnēta asmagnet. English magnesia [14] comes from thesame source, but it is not clear how it came to beapplied (in the 18th century) to ‘magnesiumoxide’, for it originally denoted, in the rathervague terminology of the alchemists, a‘constituent of the philosopher’s stone’. In the17th century it was used for ‘manganese’ (andmanganese [17] itself comes via French fromItalian manganese, an alteration of medievalLatin magnēsia). And when the term magnesium[19] was introduced (at the suggestion of thechemist Sir Humphry Davy), it too at firstdenoted ‘manganese’. MAGNESIUM, MANGANESEmagnitude [14] Magnitude is one of a largefamily of words for which English is indebted toLatin magnus ‘large’. This goes back to an Indo-European *meg- or *megh-, source also of Greekmégas ‘large’ (from which English gets theprefix mega-) and prehistoric Germanic *mikil-,ancestor of English much. Apart frommagnitude, English descendants of magnusinclude magnanimous [16] (etymologically‘large-minded’), magnate [15] (a ‘large’ or‘important’ person), magnificat [12] (from thefirst words of Luke 1:46, Magnificat anima meadominum ‘My soul doth magnify the lord’,where magnificat is the 3rd person presentsingular of Latin magnificāre, a derivative ofmagnus and source of English magnify [14]),magnificent [16] (etymologically ‘doing greatdeeds’), and magnum [18] (the application to adouble-sized wine bottle is a modern one). Inaddition maxim and maximum come from thesuperlative of magnus and major and mayorfrom its comparative, and master and the monthnameMay could also be related. MAGNUM, MAJOR, MAXIM, MAYOR, MUCHmagpie [17] The original name of the magpiewas simply pie, which came via Old French fromLatin pīca. This is thought to go back ultimatelyto Indo-European *spi- or *pi-, denoting‘pointedness’, in reference to its beak (the Latinmasculine form, pīcus, was applied to a‘woodpecker’). Pie arrived in English as longago as the 13th century, but not until the 16thcentury do we begin to find pet-forms of thename Margaret applied to it (one of the earliestwas maggot-pie). By the 17th century magpiehad become the institutionalized form.319 mainSome etymologists consider that the term forthe edible pie comes from the bird’s name, basedon a comparison of the miscellaneous contentsof pies with the board of assorted stolentreasures supposedly accumulated by themagpie. PIEmaharajah see RAJmaiden [OE] Maiden goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *magadiz ‘young (sexuallyinexperienced) woman’, which is also the sourceof German mädchen ‘girl’. Its diminutive form,*magadīnam, passed into Old English asmægden, the antecedent of modern Englishmaiden. Maid is a 12th-century abbreviation.mail English has two extant words mail. The onemeaning ‘post’ [13] goes back via Old French toOld High German malha, which meant ‘bag,pouch’. That indeed was what the wordoriginally denoted in English (and modernFrench malle is still used for a ‘bag’). It was notuntil the 17th century that a specific applicationto a ‘bag for carrying letters’ emerged, and thiswas followed in the next century by the ‘letters,etc so carried’.Mail ‘chain-armour’ [14] comes via OldFrench maille ‘mesh’ from Latin macula, whichoriginally meant ‘spot, stain’ (hence Englishimmaculate [15], etymologically ‘spotless’), butwas transferred to the ‘holes in a net’, from theirappearance of being spots or marks. The wordmaquis, made familiar in English during WorldWar II as a term for the French resistance forces,means literally ‘scrub, undergrowth’ in French.It was borrowed from Italian macchia, adescendant of Latin macula, whose literal sense‘spot’ was applied metaphorically to ‘bushesdotted over a hillside’.English once had a third word mail, meaning‘payment, tax’ [12]. It was borrowed from OldNorse mál ‘speech, agreement’. It now survivesonly in blackmail [16]. IMMACULATE, MAQUISmaimaim [13] Maim and mayhem [15] are ultimatelythe same word. Both go back to a Vulgar Latinverb *mahagnāre ‘wound’, whose origins areunknown. This passed into Old French asmahaignier (whose probable Anglo-Normanderivative *mahangler was the source of Englishmangle ‘mutilate’ [14]). Mahaignier becamemayner, and passed into Middle English asmayn. But it also had a noun derivative, mahaingor main, which in due course became mayhem.This seems to have been borrowed into Englishtwice. First, in the 14th century, as maheym ormaim ‘severe injury’; this has now died out, buthas left its mark on the verb, which it haschanged from mayn to maim. And second, in the15th century, via Anglo-Norman, as mayhem. MAYHEMmain [OE] Main goes back to prehistoricGermanic *mag- ‘be able, have power’ (sourcealso of English may and might, and distantlyrelated to machine). From it was descended OldEnglish mægen ‘strength’. This now survives asa noun only in the expression with might and

maintain 320main, but it was also used attributively in OldEnglish to mean ‘of large size, great’, and by the13th century (helped along partly by the relatedOld Norse megenn or megn ‘strong’) it was beingused as an adjective in its own right. At first itstill meant just ‘large’, but by the 15th century itsmodern sense ‘chief’ had evolved. MAY, MIGHTmaintain [13] Etymologically, maintain means‘hold in the hand’. It comes via Old Frenchmaintenir from Vulgar Latin *manūtenēre‘support’, a compound verb formed from manū,the ablative case of manus ‘hand’, and tenēre‘hold’. The derivative maintenance [14] comesfrom Old French. MAINTENANCE, MANUAL, TENANTmaisonette see MANORmajor [16] Latin mājor ‘larger’ was thecomparative form of magnus ‘large’, from whichEnglish gets magnitude, magnum etc (in earlyLatin it was *māgjōs). English originallyacquired it as an adjective. Its noun use, for anarmy officer, followed in the 17th century. Thisrepresented a borrowing from French major,which was short for sergeant-major (in thosedays, ‘sergeant major’ was a more elevated rankthan it is today). The derivative majority [16]comes via French majorité from medieval Latinmājōritās.Mayor comes from Latin mājor, routed viaOld French. MAGNITUDE, MAGNUM, MAYORmake [OE] Make probably goes back ultimatelyto an Indo-European base *mag- denoting‘kneading’ (also the source of Greek mágma‘salve made by kneading’, from which Englishgets magma [15]). A prehistoric Germanicdescendant was *mako- (source of Englishmatch ‘go together’). From this was derived theWest Germanic verb *makōjan, which over thecenturies differentiated into German machen,Dutch maken, and English make. Make was nota particularly common verb in Old English(gewyrcan, ancestor of modern English work,was the most usual way of expressing the notion‘make’), but in the Middle English period its useproliferated. MAGMA, MATCHmakeshift see SHIFTmalachite see MAUVEmaladymalady see MALIGNmalaise see MALIGNmalapropism [19] English owes the wordmalapropism to Mrs Malaprop, a character inRichard Sheridan’s play The Rivals 1775 whosegrandiloquent impulses led her to use slightly(but ludicrously) the wrong word: amongst themost familiar of her errors are ‘contagiouscountries’ (for contiguous), ‘a superciliousknowledge in accounts’ (for superficial), and ‘ashead-strong as an allegory on the banks of theNile’. Sheridan based the name on malapropos‘inappropriate’ [17], an anglicization of Frenchmal à propos, literally ‘badly to the purpose’ (onmal, see MALIGN). MALIGN, PROPOSEmalaria [18] The original English term for an‘attack of malarial fever’ was ague. The wordmalaria did not come on the scene until the mid-18th century. It was borrowed from Italianmal’aria, a conflation of mala aria, literally ‘badair’. This was an allusion to the former beliefthat malaria was caused by foul air, andparticularly by vapours given off by swamps. AIR, MALIGNmale [14] The Latin word for ‘male’ wasmasculus (from which of course English getsmasculine [14]). It passed into Old French asmasle, which later became male – hence Englishmale. The Spanish descendant of masculus ismacho, which means ‘virile’ as well as simply‘male’, and has given English macho [20] andthe derivative machismo [20]. Another closerelative is probably mallard, which seems tomean etymologically ‘male bird’.Female, incidentally, despite its similarity, isnot etymologically related to male, although thetwo have converged formally owing to theirsemantic closeness. MACHO, MALLARD, MASCULINEmalic see POMEGRANATEmalign [14] Malign comes, probably via OldFrench, from Latin malignus ‘wicked’. This wasderived from malus ‘bad’, a word of unknownorigin (some have tried to link it with Englishsmall). Malus is of course the starting point for awide range of other English words, includingmalady [13] (ultimately from Vulgar Latin*male habitus ‘in bad condition’); malaise [18](which originated in Old French as a conflationof mal aise ‘bad ease’); malapropism; malaria;malediction [15] (etymologically ‘evil saying’);malevolent [16] (literally ‘wishing evil’); malice[13] (from Latin malitia, a derivative of malus);and malingerer [18] (from French malingre,which may have been a compound of mal- andhaingre ‘weak’). Malignant [16] comes from thepresent participle of Latin malignāre ‘act withmalice’, a verb derived from malignus. MALADY, MALAISE, MALARIA, MALIGNANT,MALINGERERmall see MALLETmallard [14] Etymologically, a mallard seems tobe a ‘male bird’. It comes from Old Frenchmallart, which was probably a development ofan earlier *maslart, a derivative of masle ‘male’(source of English male). It was originally usedfor the ‘male of the wild duck’, but now itdenotes either sex of the species (Anasplatyrhynchos). MALEmallet [15] Latin malleus meant ‘hammer’ (itmay be related to Latin molere ‘grind’, and toRussian mólot and Polish młot ‘hammer’). Itpassed into Old French as mail, of which thederivative maillet eventually reached English asmallet. Mail itself was borrowed into English asmaul ‘hammer’ [13], but it now survives only asa verb (which originally meant ‘hit with ahammer’).The Latin verb derived from malleus wasmalleāre ‘hit with a hammer’, from which

ultimately English gets malleable [14]. And theItalian descendant of malleus, maglio, wascombined with a word for ‘ball’, palla, to formthe name of a croquet-like game, pallamaglio;via French this passed into English as pall-mall[17], remembered in the London street-namesPall Mall and The Mall (whence the use of mall[18] for a ‘walkway’ or ‘promenade’, andlatterly for a ‘shopping precinct’). MALL, MALLEABLE, MAUL, PALL-MALLmalt [OE] Malt goes back to prehistoricGermanic *malt-, a variant of which producedEnglish melt. Hence it seems to denoteetymologically the ‘softening’ of the barley orother grain by steeping it in water preparatory togerminating it for use in brewing (German malzmeans ‘soft’ as well as ‘malt’). MELTmammal [19] Etymologically, mammal denotesan ‘animal that suckles its young’. The word is aderivative of mammalia [18], the term for thatwhole class of animals, coined by the Swedishnaturalist Linnaeus from Latin mammālis ‘of thebreast’. This in turn was based on mamma‘mother, breast’, which has been traced back to aprehistoric Indo-European *mammā. There areobvious links with ‘mother’-terms in otherlanguages, such as Greek mámmē, Frenchmaman, Italian mamma, Russian mama, Welshmam, and English mamma and mummy, butwhether a sustained chain of descent andborrowing is involved, or simply parallelformation based on the syllable ma, imitative ofthe sound of a suckling baby, is not clear.Mammary [17] is an English derivative ofLatin mamma, in the sense ‘breast’. MAMMA, MAMMARY, MUMMYmammoth [18] Mammoth is a Russiancontribution to English. The word was borrowedfrom early modern Russian mammot, anadaptation of Tatar mamont ‘earth’ (the reasonfor the animal being so named is that the firstremains of mammoths to be found were dug outof the frozen soil of Siberia). The adjectival useof the word for ‘huge’ dates from the early 19thcentury (‘The dancing very bad; the performersall had mammoth legs’, private diary of SirRobert Wilson, 1814).man [OE] Man is a widespread Germanic word(with relatives in German mann ‘man’ andmensch ‘person’, Dutch and Swedish man‘man’, Danish mand ‘man’, and Swedishmenniska ‘person’), and connections have evenbeen found outside Germanic (Sanskrit, forinstance, had mánu- ‘man’). But no decisiveevidence has been found for an ultimate Indo-European source. Among the suggestions putforward have been links with a base *men-‘think’ or ‘breathe’, or with Latin manus ‘hand’.The etymologically primary sense of theword is ‘human being, person’, and that is whatit generally meant in Old English: the sexes weregenerally distinguished by wer ‘man’ (whichsurvives probably in werewolf and is related toworld) and wīf (source of modern English wife)or cwene ‘woman’. But during the Middle321 maneEnglish and early modern English periods ‘maleperson’ gradually came to the fore, and today‘person’ is decidedly on the decline (helped onits way by those who feel that the usagediscriminates against women). Womanoriginated in Old English as a compound of wīf‘woman, female’ and man ‘person’.Manikin [17] was borrowed from Dutchmanneken, a diminutive form of man ‘man’; andmannequin [18] is the same word acquired viaFrench. MANIKIN, MANNEQUINmanacle see MANUALmanage [16] Etymologically, manage means‘handle’. It comes via Italian maneggiare‘control a horse’ from Vulgar Latin *manidiare,a derivative of Latin manus ‘hand’. To beginwith it was used in the context of ‘horsetraining’in English, but eventually the Frenchform manège took over in this sense. The moregeneral sense ‘handle, control’ is of virtuallyequal antiquity in English, though. MANUALmanciple see EMANCIPATEmandarin [16] Although it refers to a Chineseofficial, mandarin is not a Chinese word.Sanskrit mantrin meant ‘counsellor’ (it was aderivative of mantra ‘counsel’, which itself wasbased on man ‘think’, a distant relative ofEnglish mind). Its Hindi descendant mantrīpassed into English via Malay mẽteri andPortuguese mandarin. The word’s application toa variety of small loose-skinned orange, whichdates in English from the 19th century, wasinspired by the yellow robes worn by mandarins. MINDmandate [16] Etymologically, mandate means‘give one’s hand’. It comes from mandātum(source also of English maundy), a noun use ofthe past participle of Latin mandāre ‘commit,command’. This verb was formed by blendingmanus ‘hand’ and dāre ‘give’. English verbsderived from mandāre are command, commend,demand, and remand. COMMAND, COMMEND, DATE, DEMAND,DONATION, MANUAL, MAUNDY, REMANDmandolin see BANJOmandrake [14] The mandrake is aMediterranean plant of the potato family withmedicinal uses. Its name is an alteration ofmandragora, which goes back via Latin toGreek mandragóras, a word probably of non-Indo-European origin. The change arose owingto an association with man (the mandrake has alarge forked root which supposedly resembles ahuman being) and drake ‘dragon’ (an allusion tothe root’s supposedly magical properties).mandrill see DRILLmanemane [OE] Mane goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *manō, which also produced Germanmähne and Dutch mane. Related forms such asSwedish manke ‘neck’, Irish muin ‘nape of theneck’, archaic Welsh mwn ‘neck’, Latin monīle‘necklace’, and Sanskrit manyā- ‘nape of theneck’ suggest that historically ‘neck’ is theprimary, ‘neck-hair’ a secondary meaning of this

manganese 322word-family. It has been speculated that it goesback ultimately to Indo-European *men-‘project’ (source of English eminent, prominent,etc).manganese see MAGNETmanger [14] Etymologically, a manger is an‘eater’, or ‘feeding place’. It comes from OldFrench mangeoire, a descendant of Vulgar Latin*mandūcātōria. This was derived from Latinmandūcāre ‘chew’, which in modern French hasbecome manger ‘eat’; the use of this as a noun,meaning ‘edible substance’, forms the ultimatebasis of English blancmange, literally ‘whitefood’. From a parallel source comes the name ofthe skin disease mange [14], an allusion to its‘eating’ or irritating the skin; mangy is a 16thcenturyderivative. BLANCMANGE, MANGEmangle see MAIMmania [14] Greek maníā meant ‘madness’. Itgoes back ultimately to Indo-European *mn-,*men- ‘think’, the same source as producedEnglish mind. It reached English via late Latinmania. Of its derivatives, maniac [17] comesfrom late Greek maniakós, but manic [20] is anEnglish formation. Closely related to maníā wasthe Greek verb maínesthai ‘be mad’; from it wasderived mainás, the name for a fanatical femalefollower of Dionysus, which English hasadopted via Latin as maenad [16]. MAENAD, MANIC, MINDmanicure see MANUALmanifest [14] That which is manifest isetymologically ‘grasped by the hand’ – that is,‘palpable, obvious’. The word comes via OldFrench from Latin manifestus. This was a laterform of manufestus, a compound formed frommanus ‘hand’ and *festus ‘gripped’. Manifesto[17] is a borrowing from Italian; it originallymeant ‘evidence, proof’, and only graduallydeveloped to the present-day ‘politicalstatement’. MANIFESTO, MANUALmanifold see MANYmanikin see MANmanipulate see MANUALmanna [OE] Manna was introduced into OldEnglish by Latin, which got it from Aramaicmannā. This was a derivative of Hebrew mān,one of a family of Semitic words denoting anedible substance exuded by a sort of tamarisktree that grows in the Sinai desert.mannequin see MANmanner [12] Etymologically, a manner is amethod of ‘handling’ something. It comes viaAnglo-Norman manere from Vulgar Latin*manuāria ‘way of handling’. This was a nounuse of the Latin adjective manuārius ‘of thehand’, a derivative of manus ‘hand’. Theadoption of manner as a conventional translationof Latin modus ‘method’ helped to establish thefar broader range of meanings it has today. MANUALmanoeuvre [18] Essentially manoeuvre andmanure [14] are the same word. Both go backultimately to a Latin expression denoting‘manual labour’. This was manū operārī,literally ‘work with the hand’. It was lexicalizedin medieval Latin as the verb manuoperāre, andthis passed into Old French as manovrer. MiddleEnglish took it over via Anglo-Normanmainoverer as maynoyre or manour, which atfirst was used for ‘administer land’, and morespecifically ‘cultivate land’. Not until the mid16th century did the noun manure, denoting‘dung spread in cultivating the land’, emerge.Meanwhile Old French manovrer developed intomodern French manoeuvrer, which Englishborrowed in the 18th century. MANUAL, MANURE, OPERATEmanor [13] Etymologically, a manor is a placewhere one ‘stays’ or ‘dwells’. It goes backultimately to the Latin verb manēre ‘remain,stay’, which in post-classical times was used for‘dwell, live’. Its Old French descendant maneircame to be used as a noun, meaning ‘dwellingplace’. This passed into English via Anglo-Norman maner, and was originally used for‘country house’. In the 14th century it came to beincorporated into the terminology of the feudalsystem, from which its present-day meaningscome.The past participle stem of manēre wasmāns-, from which was derived the Latin nounmānsiō ‘place to stay’. Old French took this overin two forms: maison (whence the modernFrench word for ‘house’, source of Englishmaisonette [19]) and mansion. English borrowedthis as mansion [14], and originally used it for‘place of abode, house’. The present-dayconnotations of a ‘large stately house’ did notemerge until as recently as the 19th century.Manse [15] comes from the same ultimatesource, as do menagerie [18] (whose immediateFrench source originally denoted the‘management of domestic animals’), permanent,and remain. MAISONETTE, MANSE, MANSION, MENAGERIE,PERMANENT, REMAINmantis see NECROMANCYmantle [13] Mantle comes via Old Frenchmantel from Latin mantellum ‘cloak’, a word ofuncertain (possibly Celtic) origin. Related formsto find their way into English from otherlanguages include mantilla [18] (a Spanishdiminutive of manta ‘cape’, which came fromLatin mantus, a shortened form of mantellum)and mantua, a term used in the 17th and 18thcenturies for a woman’s loose gown, whicharose from the association of modern Frenchmanteau with the name of the Italian city ofMantua, once famous for its silks. And themantel [15] of mantelpiece is a variant spellingof mantle. MANTELmanual [15] The Latin word for ‘hand’ wasmanus (it came from an Indo-European base*mən-, and its modern descendants includeFrench main, Italian and Spanish mano, andRomanian mîna). It has contributed generouslyto English vocabulary, and manual (from the

Latin adjective manuālis) is among its leastheavily disguised derivatives. Others includeamanuensis [17] (from the Latin phrase servus āmanū ‘servant at hand(writing)’, hence‘secretary’); emancipate; manacle [14] (fromLatin manicula ‘little hand’); manage; mandate(and its relatives command, demand, etc);manicure [19]; manifest; manipulate [19] (fromLatin manipulus ‘handful’); manner;manoeuvre; manufacture [16] (ultimately fromLatin manū factum ‘made by hand’); manure;manuscript [16] (in Latin literally ‘written byhand’); mastiff; and possibly masturbate [17],which comes from Latin masturbārī, perhaps alexicalization of the phrase manū stuprāre‘defile with the hand’. AMANUENSIS, COMMAND, DEMAND,EMANCIPATE, MANACLE, MANAGE, MANDATE,MANIFEST, MANIPULATE, MANNER,MANOEUVRE, MANURE, MASTIFF, MASTURBATE,MAUNDY, REMANDmanure see MANOEUVREmany [OE] Many goes back ultimately to Indo-European *monogho-, *menogho-, which alsoproduced Russian mnogij ‘many’ and Welshmynych ‘often’. From it was descendedprehistoric Germanic *managaz, *manigaz,which have differentiated into German manch,Dutch menig, Swedish många, Danish mange,and English many. The pronunciation /meni/dates from the 13th century; it perhaps arosefrom association with the unrelated any. Thederived manifold [OE] preserves the originalpronunciation. MANIFOLDmap [16] Map is closely related to apron andnapkin. It comes from Latin mappa, whichdenoted a ‘cloth’, ‘towel’, ‘sheet’, ‘table-cloth’,etc. This was used in the expression mappamundī, literally ‘sheet of the world’, whichreferred to a graphical representation of theearth’s surface – a ‘map’, in other words. APRON, NAPKINmaquis [20] The French word maquis literallymeans ‘undergrowth, scrub’, and its use for theresistance fighters who opposed Germanoccupation during World War II is an allusion totheir hide-outs in scrubby country. It is aborrowing, via Corsica, of Italian macchia. Thisoriginally meant ‘spot’ (it came from Latinmacula ‘spot, stain’, source of Englishimmaculate and mail ‘armour’), but wastransferred metaphorically to a ‘bush or thicketseen from the distance as a spot on a hillside’. IMMACULATE, MAILmarathon [19] According to tradition, when theGreek army defeated the Persians at Marathon,on the northeast coast of Attica, in 490 BC, therunner Pheidippides was dispatched to bring thegood news to Athens (in fact there is nocontemporary evidence for the story, which isnot recorded until 700 years after the event).When the modern Olympic Games were firstheld, in Athens in 1896, a long-distance race wasintroduced to commemorate the ancient feat, runover a course supposedly equal in distance to323 marigoldthat from Marathon to Athens (about 35 km/22miles). The present distance (42.195 km/26miles 385 yards) was established at the 1908London Olympics (the odd yards were added tobring the finishing line in front of the royal box).marble [12] Greek mármaros, a word ofunknown origin, denoted to begin with ‘any hardstone’, but association with the verb marmaírein‘shine’ led to a particular application to‘marble’. Latin took it over as marmor, and itpassed into Old French as marbre. Here, by aprocess known as dissimilation, in which one oftwo similar sounds is replaced by a different one,marbre became marble – whence Englishmarble. The use of the word for the little ballwith which the game of ‘marbles’ is played datesfrom the late 17th century.march English has three words march. Thecommonest is also the most recent: march ‘walkas a soldier’ [16]. Etymologically, this meansvirtually ‘trample down’. It comes via Frenchmarcher from Gallo-Roman *marcāre, a verbderived from late Latin marcus ‘hammer’. Themonth-name March [12] goes back via OldFrench to Latin Martius, literally the ‘month ofMars, the god of war’ (Mars also gave Englishmartial). March ‘boundary’ [13] has now almostdied out, apart from its use in the plural (‘theMarches’) as a geographical name. It comes viaOld French marche from medieval Latin marca(source also of marquis and marchioness); andmarca in turn goes back through Frankish*marka to prehistoric Germanic *markō, sourceof English mark. MARTIAL; MARK, MARQUISmare see MARSHALmargarine [19] Margarine was invented in 1869by the French food technologist HippolyteMège-Mouries. Its name was based on margaricacid, a term coined by the French biochemistMichel-Eugène Chevreul for a fatty acid whichhe believed to be one of the constituents ofanimal fats (the earliest margarine was madefrom clarified beef fat). He derived it from Greekmargarítēs ‘pearl’ (source also of Englishmarguerite [19], and of the names Margaret andMargot), an allusion to the pearly lustre of theacid crystals. The abbreviation marge dates fromthe 1920s. MARGUERITEmargin [14] Margin comes from margin-, thestem form of Latin margō ‘margin’. This appearsto go back to the same ultimate source as Englishmark (which originally meant ‘boundary’). Thenow archaic synonym marge [15] was borrowedfrom the Latin word’s French descendant. MARCH, MARKmarigold [14] The Old English term for thisyellow-to-orange-flowered plant was golde,which was presumably derived from gold, inallusion to the colour. In the Middle Ages thename Mary (no doubt a reference to the VirginMary) was added to it. Another English wordbased ultimately on Mary is marionette [17],which was borrowed from a French wordderived from the diminutive form Marion.

marinade 324marinade [17] Etymologically, to put food in amarinade is virtually to dunk it in the ‘sea’; forthe word comes via French from Spanishmarinada, a derivative of marina ‘of the sea’. Itoriginally signified strictly a ‘brine pickle’(hence the reference to the sea), and onlygradually broadened out to include vinegar andother preservatives. The related verb marinate[17] comes from French mariner or Italianmarinare. MARINEmarine [15] The Latin word for ‘sea’ was mare(borrowed into English in the 19th century as aterm for any of the sea-like dark areas on themoon). It goes back to Indo-European *mori-,*mari-, which also produced Russian more‘sea’, Welsh mor ‘sea’, and English mere ‘lake’(the mer- of mermaid). The Romance-languageterms for ‘sea’ (French mer, Italian andRomanian mare, and Spanish mar) aredescended from it. And its derived adjective,marīnus, has given English marine (and mariner[13]). Maritime [16] is another derivative.Marina [19] was borrowed from Italian. MARINADE, MARITIME, MEREmark English has two words mark, although theymay be ultimately related. Mark ‘sign, trace’[OE] goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*markō. This seems originally to have denoted‘boundary’ (that is what Old English mearcmeant, and related forms such as march ‘border’and margin still bear witness to it), but the notionof a ‘sign denoting a boundary’ seems to haveled early on to the development of the word’smain present-day sense. Remark is closelyrelated, as are marquis and marchioness, andmarquetry [16], borrowed from Frenchmarqueterie, a derivative of marque ‘mark’,denotes etymologically work that is ‘marked’with patterns.Mark ‘coin’ [OE] comes from medieval Latinmarcus or marca, which may well deriveultimately from the ancestor of mark ‘sign,trace’ (its etymological meaning being ‘mark ona piece of metal, constituting a coin’). DEMARCATION, MARCH, MARGIN, MARQUETRY,MARQUIS, REMARKmarket [12] The Latin word for ‘goods to besold’ was merx (source of English commerce,merchant, and mercury). From it was derived theverb mercārī ‘buy’, and its past participleproduced the noun mercātus ‘trade, market’. InVulgar Latin this became *marcātus, which wasadopted into early Middle English as market.The now seldom used synonym mart [15] comesfrom early modern Dutch mart, a variant ofmarkt ‘market’. COMMERCE, MART, MERCHANT, MERCURYmarmalade [16] The word marmaladeoriginally denoted ‘quince jam’. It comes viaFrench from Portuguese marmelada, aderivative of marmelo ‘quince’. And marmelogoes back via Latin melimēlum to Greekmelímēlon, a term meaning literally ‘honeyapple’which was applied to the fruit of an appletree grafted on to a quince (the second element,melon ‘apple’, is the source of English melon).Not until the 17th century was marmalade usedfor a preserve made from citrus fruits. MELONmarmot see MOUSEmaroon English has two distinct and completelyunrelated words maroon. The one denoting‘brownish red’ and ‘firework’ [16] has had achequered semantic history, as its present-daydiversity of meanings suggests. It comesultimately from medieval Greek máraon ‘sweetchestnut’, and reached English via Italianmarrone and French marron (as in marronsglacés). It was originally used for ‘chestnut’ inEnglish too, but that sense died out in the early18th century, leaving behind the colour term (anallusion to the reddish brown of the chestnut’sinner shell) and ‘firework, exploding projectile’(perhaps a reference to the shape of suchdevices).Maroon ‘abandon’ [17] comes from the nounmaroon. This originally meant ‘runaway slave’,and comes via French from American Spanishcimarron. The most widely accepted derivationof this is that it was based on Spanish cima‘summit’, a descendant of Latin cma ‘sprout’,and that it thus denotes etymologically ‘one wholives on the mountain tops’.marquetry see MARKmarquismarquis [14] Etymologically, a marquis is a lordof the ‘marches’ or borderlands. The wordcomes from Old French marquis, an alteration ofan earlier marchis. This was a derivative ofmedieval Latin marca ‘border, frontier’, sourceof archaic English march ‘border’. The feminineform marchioness [16] comes from medievalLatin marchionissa, a derivative of marchiō ‘lordof the marches’, which likewise was based onmarca.The French feminine form of marquis ismarquise. This was borrowed into English in the17th century and used for a ‘large tent’. It sooncame to be misanalysed as a plural form, and soa new ‘singular’, marquee, was born. MARCH, MARK, MARQUEEmarry [13] Latin marīus meant ‘husband’ (it maygo back to an Indo-European *mer-, *mor-,which meant something like ‘young person’ –Lithuanian has the related marti ‘bride’ – and inthat case would denote etymologically ‘manwho has been provided with a young woman asa bride’). From it was derived the verb marītāre‘marry’, which passed into English via OldFrench marier. Marriage [13] likewise comesfrom Old French.marsh [OE] The immediate origin of marsh isGermanic: it comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic. *marisk-, which also producedGerman marsch and Dutch marsk. This wasprobably a derivative of Germanic *mari ‘sea’(source of English mere ‘lake’), whose relativesincluded Latin mare ‘sea’ (source of Englishmarine). MARINE, MEREmarshal [13] Etymologically, a marshal is a‘horse-servant’. The word goes back to a

prehistoric Germanic *markhaskalkaz ‘groom’,a compound based on *markhaz ‘horse’ (sourceof English mare [OE]) and *skalkaz ‘servant’.This was borrowed into late Latin asmariscalcus, and passed from there via OldFrench mareschal into English. In the course ofits journey its status gradually rose, and by thetime it reached English it denoted a ‘high officerof state’. MAREmart see MARKETmartial [14] Latin mārtiālis denoted ‘of Mars,the god of war’ (his name goes back to an earlyLatin Māvors). In its journey via Old French toEnglish it acquired the meaning ‘of war’. Theapplication of the name Mars to the red planetdates back to Roman times, as does the adjectiveMartian [14] (from Latin Mārtiānus), which inmodern English refers exclusively to theastronomical Mars. The god also gave his nameto the first month of the Roman calendar –whence English March. MARSmartinet [17] The word martinet comes fromthe name of Jean Martinet, a 17th-centuryFrench army officer who invented a system ofdrill. Indeed, it was as the term for this new drillthat martinet was first used in English (‘What,d’ye find fault with Martinet? … ’tis the bestexercise in the World’, William Wycherley, ThePlain-Dealer 1676); not until the 18th centurydid the figurative sense ‘rigid disciplinarian’emerge.martyr [OE] Etymologically, a martyr is a‘witness’ – that was the original meaning ofGreek mártur, which came ultimately fromIndo-European *mer ‘remember’ (source ofEnglish memory, mourn, remember, etc). InChristian usage, the notion of someone dying asa ‘witness’ to their faith led to the application ofmártur to ‘martyr’, and it was in this sense that itpassed via Latin martyr into Old English. MEMORY, MOURN, REMEMBERmarvel see MIRRORmarzipan [19] The word marzipan has longpuzzled etymologists. An elaborate theory wasformulated in the early 20th century that tracedit back to Arabic mawthabān ‘king who sitsstill’. That was applied by the Saracens to amedieval Venetian coin with a figure of theseated Christ on it. A series of fairly implausiblesemantic changes led from ‘coin’ via ‘box’ to‘confectionery’, while the form of the wordsupposedly evolved in Italian to marzapane.This turns out to be completely wide of the mark(not surprisingly), but the truth seems scarcelyless remarkable. In Burma (now Myanmar) thereis a port called Martaban, which was renownedin the Middle Ages for the jars of preserves andfruits exported from there to Europe. The nameof the place came to be associated with itsproducts, and in Italian, as marzapane, itdenoted a type of sweetmeat (-pane for -bansuggests that some people subconsciouslyconnected the word with Italian pane ‘bread’).Marzapane and its relatives in other languages325 master(such as early modern French marcepain)entered English in the 16th century, and from theconfusion of forms the consensus spellingmarchpane emerged. This remained the standardEnglish word for ‘marzipan’ until the 19thcentury, when marzipan was borrowed fromGerman; this was an alteration of Italianmarzapane, based on the misconception that itcame from Latin marci pānis ‘Mark’s bread’.masculine see MALEmask [16] Mask may be of Arabic origin. Theword maskharah ‘buffoon’ has been postulatedas the source of Italian maschera, from which,via French masque, English got mask. In modernEnglish, the word is largely restricted to ‘facecovering’, but a range of other senses developedduring the 16th and 17th centuries, including‘masked ball’ and ‘allegorical dramaticentertainment’, which are now lumped togetherunder the French spelling masque. Thederivative masquerade [16] was borrowed fromFrench mascarade, with the spelling of masquelater grafted on to it. MASQUE, MASQUERADEmasochism [19] The term masochism wasbased on the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836–95), an Austrian novelist whoused the theme of gaining sexual gratificationfrom the infliction of pain on oneself in hiswritingsmason [13] English originally acquired masonin the form machun, from Anglo-Norman. In the14th century it was remodelled as masoun ormason on the basis of Old French masson. Thederivation of this is disputed. Some etymologistsclaim that it comes via a Vulgar Latin *matiōfrom prehistoric Germanic *mattjon (source ofGerman steinmetz ‘stonemason’), but analternative theory traces it back to a Frankish*makjo, a derivative of *makōn ‘make’.masquerade see MASKmass English has two distinct words mass. Theone meaning ‘Eucharist’ [OE] comes from lateLatin missa, a noun use of the feminine pastparticiple of mittere ‘send’ (source of Englishadmit, commit, dismiss, mission, etc) possiblyarising from Ite, missa est ‘Go, it is thedismissal’, the last words of the Latin Eucharistservice.Mass ‘amount of matter’ [14] comes via OldFrench masse and Latin massa from Greek maza‘barley cake’, hence ‘lump, mass’. Thederivative massive [15] goes back ultimately toVulgar Latin *massīceus. A possible relative ismassage [19], a borrowing from French. It was aderivative of masser ‘massage’, which may havebeen acquired from Portuguese amassar‘knead’, a verb based on massa ‘mass, dough’. ADMIT, COMMIT, DISMISS, MISSION, TRANSMIT;MASSAGE, MASSIVEmaster [OE] The Latin word for ‘master, chief’was magister (which is generally assumed tohave been based on the root of Latin magis‘more’ and magnus ‘big’, source of Englishmagnify, magnitude, etc). Its more obviousEnglish descendants include magistrate and

mastiff 326magisterial, and indeed English originallyacquired magister itself in the 10th century in theform mægister, but over the years (partly underthe influence of Old French maistre) thisdeveloped to master.The feminine counterpart mistress [14] wasborrowed from Old French maistresse, a formmaintained in English for some time. Thealteration of mais- to mis- began in the 15thcentury, due probably to the weakly-stressed useof the word as a title (a phenomenon alsoresponsible for the emergence of mister [16]from master). The abbreviated miss followed inthe 17th century. MAGISTRATE, MAGNITUDE, MAGNUM, MISS,MISTER, MISTRESSmastiff [14] Despite its rather fierce reputation, amastiff may etymologically be a ‘tamed’ dog, adog ‘accustomed to the hand’. The word seemsto have come into the language as an alterationof Old French mastin, which was a descendant ofthe Vulgar Latin *mānsuētīnus ‘tame’. This inturn went back to Latin mānsuūtus, a compoundadjective based on manus ‘hand’ and suēscere‘accustom’. MANUALmasturbate see MANUALmat English has two distinct words mat. The onemeaning ‘small carpet’ [OE] is ultimately ofLatin origin (matta), but it found its way into theWest Germanic group of languages inprehistoric times, and has produced Germanmatte and Dutch mat as well as English mat. Mat(or matt) meaning ‘dull’ [17] comes from Frenchmat ‘dead’, which is also the source of the chessterm mate. MATEmatador see MATEmatch There are two unrelated words match inEnglish, of which the older is ‘counterpart’[OE]. This goes back to an Old English gemæcca‘mate’, whose ancestry can be traced to aprehistoric *gamakjon, a word based on thecollective prefix *ga- and *mak- ‘fit’ (source ofEnglish make). Its etymological meaning is thus‘fitting well together’. The use of the word as averb emerged in the 14th century. Match‘ignitable stick’ [14] originally meant ‘wick’. Itcomes via Old French meiche from Latin myxa‘lamp nozzle’. The first record of its modern usefor ‘ignitable stick’ comes from 1831 (thesynonymous lucifer is exactly contemporary, buthad virtually died out by the end of the 19thcentury). MAKEmate [14] Mate ‘friend’ and mate the chess termare two distinct words. The former wasborrowed from Middle Low German mate orgemate ‘companion’ (source also of Dutchmaat), which goes back to a prehistoric WestGermanic *gamaton. This was formed from thecollective prefix *ga- and *mat- ‘measure’,which was also the source of English meat; soetymologically mate (like companion) is‘someone you eat with or share your food with’.The chess term mate comes from Old Frenchmat ‘dead’. This was short for eschec mat(source of English checkmate), which comesfrom Persian shāh māt ‘the king is dead’. Persianmāt ‘dead’ also contributed the verb matar ‘kill’to Spanish, from which was derived matador[17], literally ‘killer’. MEAT; MAT, MATADOR, MATTEmaterial [14] Etymologically, material is simplya derivative of matter. It comes via Old Frenchmateriel from late Latin māteriālis, a derivativeof Latin māteria ‘matter’ (source of Englishmatter). The modern French form of the wordwas reborrowed as materiel ‘militaryequipment’ [19]. MATERIAL, MATTERmaternal [15] Maternal and maternity [17] arethe central English representatives of theRomance-language branch of the great Indo-European ‘mother’ word-family. Both go back toLatin māter ‘mother’ (source of French mère andItalian and Spanish madre), whose derivedadjective māternus reached English via OldFrench maternel. Other English words that comeultimately from māter include material andmatter, matrix [16] (from which also comemadrigal and matriculate [16], etymologically‘enter on a matrix or list’), and matrimony [14]. MOTHERmathematics [16] Etymologically,mathematics means ‘something learned’. Itsultimate source was the Greek verb manthánein‘learn’, which came from the same Indo-European base (*men-, *mon-, *mn- ‘think’) asproduced English memory and mind. Its stemform math- served as a basis of a noun máthēma‘science’, whose derived adjectivemathēmatikós passed via Latin mathēmaticusand Old French mathematique into English asmathematic, now superseded by thecontemporary mathematical [16]. Mathematicsprobably comes from French les mathématiques,a rendering of the Latin plural nounmathēmatica. From earliest times the notion of‘science’ was bound up with that of ‘numericalreasoning’, and when mathematics reachedEnglish it was still being used for variousscientific disciplines that involved geometricalcalculation, such as astronomy and physics, butgradually over the centuries it has been narroweddown to a cover term for the abstract numericalsciences such as arithmetic, algebra, andgeometry.The abbreviated form maths dates from theearly 20th century, the preferred American formmath from the late 19th century.The original meaning of the word’s Greekancestor is preserved in English polymath‘person of wide learning’ [17]. MEMORY, MIND, POLYMATHmatins see MATUREmatriculate see MADRIGALmatrixmatrix see MADRIGALmatter [14] Matter comes via Anglo-Normanmatere from Latin māteria ‘matter’. This wasoriginally applied to the ‘hard inner wood of a

tree’, and etymologically denoted the ‘matrix’ or‘mother’ from which the tree’s new growth came(it was a derivative of Latin māter ‘mother’). Theverbal use of matter dates from the late 16thcentury.Material originated as a derivative of Latinmāteria. MATERIAL, MOTHERmattress [13] Etymologically, a mattress issomething ‘thrown’ down on the floor to lie on.The word comes via Old French materas andItalian materasso from Arabic matrah ‘mat,cushion’, a derivative of the verb taraha ‘throw’.mature [15] ‘Earliness’ is the etymologicalnotion underlying the word mature. It goes backultimately to a pre-Latin base *mātu-, whichproduced the Latin adjective mātūrus ‘timely,early’, direct source of the English word (in OldFrench mātūrus became mur ‘ripe’, whichplayed a part in the emergence of Englishdemure). Another Latin derivative of *mātu- wasMātūta, the name of the Roman goddess of thedawn. From this in turn was derived the adjectivemātūtīnus ‘of the morning’, source of Englishmatins [13] and matutinal ‘of the morning’ [17]. DEMURE, MATINSmaudlin [16] Maudlin represents a gradualerosion of the pronunciation of Magdalen(exhibited also in the case of the Oxford andCambridge colleges that have taken that name).The word originated as the name given to awoman called Mary who came from Magdala onthe Sea of Galilee, and who according to theBible was present at Christ’s crucifixion and wasthe first to meet him after he had risen from thedead. In the Middle Ages she was generallyrepresented in paintings as crying, and somaudlin came to be used for ‘oversentimental’.maul see MALLETmaulstick see MOLEmaundy [13] Maundy Thursday commemoratesChrist’s washing of the apostles’ feet at the LastSupper. The first antiphon sung at the CatholicMaundy service begins Mandātum novum dōvōbis ‘I give you a new commandment’, and soin medieval Latin mandātum (source of Englishmandate) came to be used as the name for thecommemorative ceremony. The word passedinto Old French as mandé, whence Englishmaundy. MANDATE, MANUALmausoleum [16] The original mausoleum wasa vast marble tomb (one of the seven wonders ofthe ancient world) erected in 353 BC forMausolus, king of Caria in Asia Minor by hiswidow Artemisia. Its architect was Pythius, andits site was at Halicarnassus (now Bodrum inTurkey). Its Greek name was mausōleion, and itpassed into English as a generic term for a ‘largetomb’ via Latin mausōlēum.mauve [19] Etymologically, mauve is the colourof the ‘mallow’ flower. The word was borrowedfrom French mauve, whose original meaningwas ‘mallow’, and which was descended fromLatin malva ‘mallow’. English took over malvain the Old English period as mealuwe, which has327 mayhembecome modern English mallow. And Greekmolókhē ‘mallow’, a probable relative of malva,is the ultimate source of English malachite [16]. MALACHITE, MALLOWmaverick [19] Originally, in the American West,a maverick was an unbranded calf that hadbecome separated from its mother and its herd(by convention, any farmer or stockman whocame upon such a calf could add it to his herdand brand it as his own). The name probablycomes from Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803–70), a Texas cattle-owner (and ancestor of theMaury Maverick who coined the wordgobbledegook) who did not brand the calves ofone of his herds. The familiar modernmetaphorical application to an awkwardlyindependent-minded person was in place beforethe end of the 19th century.mawkish [17] The underlying meaning ofmawkish is ‘maggotish’. It was derived from anow obsolete word mawk, which meant literally‘maggot’ but was used figuratively (like maggotitself) for a ‘whim’ or ‘fastidious fancy’. Hencemawkish originally meant ‘nauseated, as ifrepelled by something one is too fastidious toeat’. In the 18th century the notion of ‘sickness’or ‘sickliness’ produced the present-day sense‘over-sentimental’. Mawk itself went back to aMiddle English mathek ‘maggot’ (possiblesource of maggot [14]), which was borrowedfrom Old Norse mathkr. MAGGOTmaximumaximum [18] Maximum was adopted, viaFrench, from maximum, the neuter form of Latinmaximus ‘largest’. This was the superlative ofmagnus ‘large’ (source of English magnitude,magnum, etc). From the same ultimate sourcecomes maxim [15], which goes back via Frenchmaxime to Latin maxima. This was short formaxima prōpositio ‘largest proposition’, a termused in medieval philosophy for a ‘fundamentalaxiom’. MAGNITUDE, MAGNUM, MAXIMmay English has basically two words may,although one of them has now virtually split intotwo. The auxiliary verb may [OE] goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *mogh-,*megh-, denoting ‘power, ability’, which alsoproduced English machine, main, and might. ItsGermanic descendant *magan lies behindGerman and Dutch mag, Swedish må, andDanish maa as well as English may. Thecompound maybe dates from the 15th century,and dismay is also related.May the month-name [13] comes via OldFrench mai from Latin Maius. This wasoriginally an adjective meaning ‘of Maia’, Maiabeing a Roman goddess and wife of Vulcan (hername may go back to the same source as Latinmagnus ‘large’, and hence denote ‘growth’ or‘increase’). In the month of May the hawthorncomes into flower, and so in the 16th century thetree received the name may. DISMAY, MACHINE, MAIN, MIGHTmayhemayhem see MAIM

mayonnaise 328mayonnaise [19] There are several conflictingtheories about the origin of the term mayonnaise,among them that it is an alteration ofbayonnaise, as if the sauce originated inBayonne, in southwestern France; that it wasderived from the French verb manier ‘stir’; andthat it goes back to Old French moyeu ‘eggyolk’. But the early variant spelling mahonnaisestrongly suggests that it originally meantliterally ‘of Mahon’, and that the sauce was sonamed to commemorate the taking of PortMahon, the capital of the island of Minorca, bythe duc de Richelieu in 1756.mayor [13] Mayor and major are ultimately thesame word. The ancestor of mayor is Latinmājor ‘larger’, which reached English viamedieval Latin mājor (used nominally as thetitle of various officials) and Old French maire.In Middle English the word was mair or mer, andmayor represents a partial return to the Latinform. MAJORmaze [13] Maze was originally a verb (nowobsolete) meaning ‘daze’, which arose byshortening of amaze. When it was first used as anoun it meant ‘delusion, delirium’, and it wasnot until the late 14th century that it began to beused for a ‘structure of bewildering complexity’. AMAZEme [OE] Me is an ancient and widespread word.It goes back to Indo-European *me, which is thesource of the pronoun corresponding to me in allmodern Indo-European languages (for instanceGerman mich, Dutch mij, Swedish mig, French,Italian, and Spanish me, Greek me, emé, andWelsh and Irish mi). The derivative mine isequally ancient, but my is a later shortening ofmine. MINEmead [OE] Mead goes back ultimately to Indo-European *medhu- which meant ‘sweet drink’(it was also the source of Greek méthu ‘wine’,from which English gets methyl [19] and hencemethylated spirits [19]). Its prehistoricGermanic descendant was *meduz, from whichcome German met, Dutch mede, Swedish mjöd,and Danish mjød as well as English mead. METHYLmeadow [OE] Etymologically, meadow means‘mowed land’. It goes back ultimately to anIndo-European *mētwá, a derivative of the base*mē- ‘mow’ (source of English mow [OE]). Inprehistoric Germanic this became *mǣdwō(whence German matte ‘meadow’), whichpassed into Old English as mǣd. The modernEnglish descendant of this, mead, now survivesonly as an archaism, but its inflected form,mǣdwe, has become modern English meadow. MOWmeagre [14] Meagre originally meant literally‘thin’ (it goes back via Anglo-Norman megreand Old French maigre to Latin macer ‘thin’,source also of English emaciate [17]). Not untilthe 16th century did the modern figurative sense‘scanty’ begin to emerge. (Its distant Indo-European ancestor, incidentally, *makró-, alsoproduced a parallel Germanic form mager ‘thin’,shared by German, Dutch, Swedish, andDanish.) EMACIATEmeal [OE] Meal ‘repast’ and meal ‘flour’ are twodistinct words. The former originally meant‘measure’: it goes back via prehistoric Germanic*mǣlaz (source of German mal ‘time, occasion’and mahl ‘meal’, Dutch maal ‘time, meal’, andSwedish mål ‘meal’) to the Indo-European base*me- ‘measure’, which is also the ancestor ofEnglish measure. The semantic progressionfrom ‘measure’ (which died out for meal in theMiddle English period, but survives in thecompound piecemeal [13], etymologically‘measured piece by piece’) to ‘repast’ was via‘measured or fixed time’ (hence the meaning‘time, occasion’ in many of the related Germanicforms) and ‘time fixed for eating’.Meal ‘flour’ (as in oatmeal) goes backultimately to Indo-European *mel-, *mol-, *ml-‘grind’, source of a wide range of other Englishwords from mild and mill to molar and mould.From it was descended West and NorthGermanic *melwam, which has differentiated toGerman mehl, Dutch meel, Swedish mjōl,Danish mel, and English meal. It has beenspeculated that mellow [15] may have originatedin the use of Old English melu ‘meal’ as anadjective, in the sense ‘soft and rich like flour’. MEASURE, PIECEMEAL; MELLOW, MILD, MILL,MOLAR, MOULDmean English has three distinct words mean. Theoldest, ‘intend’ [OE], goes back via a prehistoricWest Germanic *mainjan to the Indo-Europeanbase *men- ‘think’ (source also of Englishmemory, mention, mind, etc).The adjective ‘petty, stingy’ [12] originallymeant ‘common, shared by all’. It comes from aprehistoric Germanic *gamainiz (source also ofGerman gemein ‘common, shared’), which wasformed from the collective prefix *ga- and*mainiz. This went back to an Indo-Europeanbase *moi-, *mei- ‘change, exchange’, whichalso lies behind English mad, moult, mutate,mutual, and the second syllable of common.Mean’s semantic history can be traced from‘common to all’ via ‘inferior’ and ‘low, ignoble’to ‘petty’.The adjective ‘intermediate, average’ [14]came via Anglo-Norman meen and Old Frenchmeien from Latin mediānus (source of Englishmedian), a derivative of medius ‘middle’ (sourceof English medium). It forms the basis of theplural noun means ‘method’ [14], and of thecompound adverb meanwhile [15]. MEMORY, MENTION, MIND; COMMON, MAD,MOULT, MUTATE, MUTUAL; MEDIAN, MEDIUMmeander [16] The word meander comes fromthe name of an actual river, the Maeander (nowknown as the Büyük Menderes), which flowsthrough Turkey into the Aegean sea. It wasfamous in ancient times for its winding course,and so Greek maíandros came to be used as ageneric term for ‘winding course’. The word

329 melodypassed into English via Latin maeander, and was medieval see MEDIUMturned into a verb in the 17th century.mediocre [16] Etymologically, mediocre meansmeasles [14] Measles means literally ‘spots,blemishes’. The word was originally borrowedfrom Middle Dutch māsel ‘blemish’, which wentback to a prehistoric Germanic base *mas- ‘spot,blemish, excrescence’. The earliest English formof the word was thus maseles, and the change tomeasles (which began in the 14th century) mayhave been due to association with the nowobsolete mesel ‘leper’, a descendant of Latinmiser ‘wretched, unfortunate’ (source of Englishmisery).measure [13] The distant ancestor of Englishmeasure was the Indo-European base *ma-,*me- ‘measure’. This has generated a wide rangeof often unexpected English progeny, includingmeal ‘repast’, month, and moon. Measure itselfcomes from an extension of the base, *mat-,*met-, from which was derived the Latin verbmētīrī ‘measure’. Its past participial stem mēnsformedthe basis of the noun mēnsūra ‘measure’,which passed into English via Old Frenchmesure as measure. From the same Latin stemcome commensurate [17], dimension [14], andimmense [15] (literally ‘unmeasurable’); andother related forms that go back to the base*mat-, *met- (or *med-) include mate ‘friend’,meat, meditate, meet ‘suitable’, mete, mode,moderate, modest, and modify. COMMENSURATE, DIMENSION, IMMENSE, MATE,MEAL, MEAT, MEDITATE, MEET, METE, METRE,MODE, MODERATE, MODEST, MONTH, MOONmeat [OE] Etymologically, meat is a ‘portion offood measured out’. The word’s ultimate sourceis Indo-European *mat-, *met- ‘measure’, whichalso lies behind English measure. This produceda prehistoric Germanic *matiz, which by thetime it passed into Old English as mete hadbroadened out in meaning from ‘portion of food’to simply ‘food’. That is still the meaning of itsGermanic relatives, Swedish mat and Danishmad, and it survives for English meat in certainfixed contexts, such as meat and drink andWhat’s one man’s meat is another man’s poison,but for the most part the more specific ‘fleshused as food’, which began to emerge in the 14thcentury, now dominates. MEASUREmedal see METALmeddle see MIXmedialmedial see MEDIUMmedian see MEDIUMmediate see MEDIUMmedicine [13] Latin medērī ‘heal’ underlies allthe English ‘medical’-words (it was formedfrom the base *med-, which also producedEnglish remedy). From it was derived medicus‘doctor’, which has given English medical [17];and on medicus in turn were based Latinmedicīna ‘practice of medicine’ (source ofEnglish medicine) and medicārī ‘give medicineto’ (source of English medicament [14] andmedicate [17]). The informal medico [17] comesvia Italian. REMEDY‘halfway up a mountain’. It comes from Latinmediocris ‘of middle height, in a middle state’,which was formed from medius ‘middle’ (sourceof English medium) and ocris ‘rough stonymountain’. MEDIUMmediumedium [16] Latin medius meant ‘middle’ (itcame from an Indo-European source that alsoproduced English mid and middle). Its neuterform, used as a noun, has given English medium,but it has made several other contributions to thelanguage, including mean ‘average’, medial[16], median [16], mediate [16] (and itsderivatives immediate [16] – etymologically‘acting directly, without any mediation’ – andintermediate [17]), medieval [19] (literally ‘ofthe Middle Ages’), mediocre, meridian, mitten,and moiety. Its Italian descendant is mezzo‘half’, which has given English intermezzo [19],mezzanine [18], mezzosoprano [18], andmezzotint [18]. IMMEDIATE, INTERMEZZO, MEAN, MEDIAN,MEDIATE, MIDDLE, MITTENmedley see MIXmeek see MUCKmeerschaum see SCUMmeet [OE] English has two words meet, althoughone of them has almost died out. The verb comesfrom a prehistoric Germanic *gamōtjan, aderivative of the noun *mōtam ‘meeting’ (fromwhich English gets moot). Its Germanic relativesinclude Dutch moeten, Swedish mōta, andDanish møde. The adjective, ‘suitable’,originally meant literally ‘fitting’, and goes backvia Old English gemǣte to the prehistoricGermanic base *mǣt-, *met- ‘measure’ (sourcealso of the verb mete ‘measure’ [OE], as in meteout, and related ultimately to English measure). MOOT; MEASURE, METEmegalith see LITHOGRAPHmelancholy [14] Etymologically, melancholymeans ‘black gall’. The word comes via OldFrench melancolie and late Latin melancholiafrom Greek melagkholíā, a compound formedfrom mélās ‘black’ (source also of Englishmelanin [19] and melanoma [19]) and kholé‘bile’ (a relative of English gall). This ‘blackbile’ was one of the four bodily substances or‘humours’ whose relative preponderance,according to medieval medical theory,determined a person’s physical and mental state.Excess of black bile was thought to causedepression – hence the modern meaning ofmelancholy. GALL, MELANOMAmêlée see MIXmellifluous see FLUX, MOLASSESmellow see MEALmelody [13] Greek mélos originally meant‘limb’ (it is related to Cornish mal ‘joint’), but itwas transferred metaphorically to a ‘limb or‘part’ of a piece of music’, a ‘musical phrase’,and from there to ‘song’. It was combined with

melon 330the element ōid- ‘singing’ (source of Englishode) to form melōidíā ‘choral song’, whichpassed into English via late Latin melōdia andOld French melodie. The compound melodrama[19] is of French origin. MELODRAMA, ODEmelon [14] Greek mēlon actually meant ‘apple’.But combination with pépōn ‘ripe’ (a relative ofEnglish peptic [17]) produced mēlopépōn,which was used for ‘melon’. This passed intoLatin as mēlopepō, but the -pepō part wassubsequently dropped, giving mēlō – source, viaOld French, of English melon. MARMALADEmelt [OE] Melt goes back ultimately to an Indo-European *meld-, *mold-, *mld-, denoting‘softness’, which also produced English mildand Latin mollis ‘soft’ (source of English mollifyand mollusc). Its prehistoric Germanicdescendant *melt-, *malt- produced the verb*maltjan ‘dissolve’, which has become Englishmelt. Malt comes from the same Germanicsource, and smelt [15], a borrowing from MiddleLow German, goes back to *smelt-, a variant ofthe base *melt-. MALT, MILD, MOLLIFY, MOLLUSC, SMELTmember [13] Latin membrum originally meant‘part of the body, limb, organ’ (it has beenconnected tentatively with various words inother Indo-European languages meaning ‘flesh,meat’, including Sanskrit māmsám and Gothicmimz). But it was early broadened outmetaphorically to ‘part of anything, one thatbelongs’, and brought that meaning with it viaOld French membre into English. The originalsense still survives, though, particularly withreference to the ‘penis’ (an application thatoriginated in Latin – membrōsus denoted‘having a large penis’).Derived from Latin membrum was theadjective membrānus. Its feminine formmembrāna was used as a noun meaning ‘skincovering an organ or limb’ – whence Englishmembrane [16]. MEMBRANEmemory [14] The Indo-European base *men-,*mon- ‘think’ has contributed an enormouslywide range of words to the English lexicon, fromcomment to mind. One particular semanticfamily denotes ‘memory’, and goes back tomemor ‘mindful’, a Latin descendant of *men-.From it was derived the noun memoria‘memory’, which has given English memory,memorize [16], memorial [14], and, via modernFrench, memoir [16]; and the verb memorāre‘remember’, from which English getscommemorate [16], memorable [15], andmemorandum [16] (not forgetting itsabbreviation memo [19]). Also from memorcomes remember; and three other Latindescendants of *men-, meminisse ‘remember’,reminiscī ‘remember’, and mentiō‘remembrance’, gave English memento [15],reminiscence [16], and mention respectively.The distantly related remind carries the sameidea. COMMEMORATE, COMMENT, MENTION, MIND,REMIND, REMINISCEmenace [13] Latin mināx meant ‘threatening’ (itwas formed from a base *min- ‘jut’ which alsoproduced English eminent and prominent, andhence etymologically denoted ‘overhanging’).From it was derived the noun minācia‘threatening things’, which passed into Englishvia Old French manace.The closely related demeanour comesultimately from a word denoting ‘drive animalswith threats’. EMINENT, PROMINENTmenagerie see MANORmend [12] Mend originated as a shortened formof amend [13] – or rather, of the Old Frenchsource of amend, which did not arrive in Englishuntil after mend. The Old French verb wasamender, a descendant of Vulgar Latin*admendāre ‘remove faults, correct’. This inturn was an alteration of classical Latinēmendāre (source of English emend [15]), acompound verb formed from the prefix exdenoting‘removal’ and menda, mendum ‘fault,defect’. (Other Latin derivatives of mendumwere mendīcus ‘injured’, which was used as anoun meaning ‘beggar’ – hence Englishmendicant [15]; and perhaps mendāx ‘speakingfaultily’, hence ‘lying’, from which English getsmendacious [17].) AMEND, EMEND, MENDICANTmenhir see DOLMENmenstrual [14] Etymologically, menstrualmeans ‘monthly’. It comes from Latinmēnstruālis, an adjective derived from mēnsis‘month’ (a close relative of English month).From the same source comes menses [16],originally the plural of Latin mēnsis, and menopause[19] is based on the related Greek word for‘month’, mén. Their gynaecological applicationcomes, of course, from the ‘monthly’ flow ofblood from the uterus. MENOPAUSE, MONTHmental see MINDmenthol see MINTmentionmention [14] The etymological notionunderlying mention is of ‘reminding’. For itcomes via Old French from Latin mentiō, whichoriginally meant ‘remembrance’ (it was aderivative of the Indo-European base *men-,which also produced English memory,remember, etc). It developed via ‘cause toremember something by speaking or writing ofit’ (a sense still present in Middle English) tosimply ‘refer to something’. MEMORY, MIND, REMEMBERmenu see MINUTEmerchant [13] Latin merx denoted ‘goods forsale’. From it was derived the verb mercārī‘trade’ (whose past participle was the source ofEnglish market). Mercārī was adapted in VulgarLatin to mercātāre, whose present participlemercātāns produced the Old French noun

marcheant ‘trader’, source of English merchant.Merchandise [13] comes from a derivative ofmarcheant; and other English descendants ofLatin merx are commerce and mercury. COMMERCE, MARKET, MERCURYmercury [14] The Roman god Mercury got hisname from his original role as patron of tradeand tradesmen: Latin Mercurius was a derivativeof merx ‘goods for sale’ (source of Englishcommerce and merchant). The inspiration for themedieval application of the term to the fluidmetal was its use as a planet-name, which datesfrom the classical Latin period. COMMERCE, MERCHANTmercy [12] Latin mercēs meant ‘payment,reward’. In the Christian era the notion of a‘reward’ was taken up and reappliedmetaphorically to the ‘compassion given freelyby God to humankind’, and the word passed intoOld French (in the form merci) with the broadersense ‘compassion’, and hence ‘forbearancefrom punishment’. English took it over and hascontinued to use it in much the same way, but itsmain role in modern French is as the word for‘thank you’.mere see MERMAIDmergemerge [17] Merge comes from Latin mergere,which meant ‘dive, plunge’ (it was also thesource of English emerge [16], whichetymologically means ‘rise out of a liquid’,immerse [17], and submerge [17]). Merge wasoriginally used for ‘immerse’ in English too, andthe modern meaning ‘combine into one’ did notemerge fully until as recently as the 20th century.It arose from the notion of one thing ‘sinking’into another and losing its identity; in the 1920sthis was applied to two business companiesamalgamating, and the general sense ‘combine’followed from it. EMERGE, IMMERSE, SUBMERGEmeridian [14] Etymologically, meridian denotesthe ‘middle of the day’. It comes via Old Frenchfrom Latin merīdiānus, a derivative of merīdiēs‘mid-day’. This was an alteration of an earliermedidiēs, a compound noun formed frommedius ‘middle’ (source of English medium) anddiēs ‘day’. The application of the word to a circlepassing round the Earth or the celestial sphere,which is an ancient one, comes from the notionof the sun crossing it at noon. MEDIUMmermaid [14] A mermaid is literally a‘seamaiden’. The word was coined on the basisof English mere [OE], which is now a little-usedterm for ‘lake’, but originally denoted ‘sea’ (itcame ultimately from Indo-European *mori-,*mari- ‘sea’, which also produced German meer‘sea’ and Latin mare ‘sea’, source of French merand English marine). Mermaid served in duecourse as a model for merman [17]. MARINE, MEREmerry [OE] Merry goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *murgjaz, which appears to have beenderived from a base meaning ‘short’. By the timeit reached Old English, as myrige, it meant331 metal‘pleasant’ – a semantic leap perhaps inspired bythe notion of ‘shortening’ time by passing itpleasantly. The modern meaning ‘jolly’ did notemerge until the 14th century. A derivative of*murgjaz was the noun *murgithō, source ofEnglish mirth [OE]; Dutch has the relatedmerchte ‘mirth’. MIRTHmesmerize [19] Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) was an Austrian doctor whoseexperiments with what he called ‘animalmagnetism’, by which he induced a trance-likestate in his subjects, are considered to be theforerunner of modern hypnotism (formerlycalled mesmerism [19]). The broader sense ofmesmerize, ‘enthral’, dates from the early 20thcentury.mess [13] Mess comes via Old French mes fromlate Latin missus, a derivative of the verb mittere‘send’ (source of English admit, mission,transmit, etc). This meant ‘sending, placement’,and its original metaphorical application was toa ‘round or heat of a contest’, but it was also usedfor a ‘course of a meal’, and this was the sense inwhich it originally entered English. Traces of thefood connection survive in the mess of pottage(literally a ‘dish of porridge or gruel’ made fromlentils) for which Esau sold his birthright toJacob, and in the sense ‘communal eating place’(as in ‘sergeants’ mess’), which developed in the16th century. But the main present-day meaning,‘disorderly thing or condition’, did not emergeuntil as recently as the 19th century, apparentlybased on the notion of a mess as a ‘dish ofassorted foodstuffs dumped unceremoniouslyand without thought on to a plate’. ADMIT, COMMIT, MISSION, PERMIT, TRANSMITmessage [13] Etymologically, a message issomething that is ‘sent’. The word comes via OldFrench message from Vulgar Latin *missāticum,a derivative of the Latin verb mittere (fromwhich English also gets admit, mission,transmit, etc). Messenger [13] comes from theOld French derivative messager, and wasoriginally messager in English; the n is a 14thcenturyintruder, found also in such words asharbinger and passenger. ADMIT, COMMIT, MESS, MISSION, PERMITmessieurs see SIRmessrs see SIRmetal [13] Greek métallon, a word of unknownorigin, had a range of meanings, including‘mine’ (the original sense) and ‘mineral’ as wellas ‘metal’. These were carried over into Latinmetallum, but by the time the word reachedEnglish, via Old French metal, ‘metal’ was allthat was left. Mettle [16] is a variant spelling ofmetal, used to distinguish its metaphoricalsenses.Closely related is medal [16], whichetymologically means ‘something made ofmetal’. It comes via French médaille and Italianmedaglia from a general Romance form*medallia. This was an alteration of VulgarLatin *metallea, a derivative of Latin metallum.

mete 332Medallion [17] goes back via French to Italianmedaglione ‘large medal’. MEDAL, MEDALLIONmete see MEETmeteor [15] Greek metéōron meant literally‘something high up’, and was used to denote‘phenomena in the sky or heavens’. It was acompound noun formed from the intensiveprefix metá- and *eōr-, a variant form of the baseof the verb aeírein ‘raise’. When English firsttook it over, via medieval Latin meteōrum, it wasstill in the sense ‘phenomenon of the atmosphereor weather’ (‘hoar frosts … and such like coldmeteors’, Abraham Fleming, Panoplie ofEpistles 1576), an application which survives, ofcourse, in the derivative meteorology [17]. Theearliest evidence of the specific use of meteor fora ‘shooting star’ comes from the end of the 16thcentury. The derivative meteorite, for a meteorthat hits the ground, was coined in the early 19thcentury. METEOROLOGYmeter see METREmethod [16] Method comes via French méthodeand Latin methodus from Greek méthodos,which meant ‘pursuit’. It was a compound nounformed from the prefix metá- ‘after’ and hodós‘way, journey’ (found also in English episode,exodus, and period). ‘Pursuit’ of a particularobjective gradually developed into a ‘procedurefor attaining it’, the meaning which the word hadwhen it reached English.The derivative methodist [16], originallysimply ‘someone who followed a particularmethod’, was first applied to the followers ofJohn Wesley in the 18th century. EPISODE, EXODUS, PERIODmethyl see MEADmétier see MINISTERmetremetre [14] Greek métron meant ‘measure’: itcame ultimately from the Indo-European base*me- ‘measure’, which also produced Englishmeasure, immense, etc. English originallyacquired it, via Latin metrum and Old Frenchmetre, in the sense ‘measured rhythmic patternof verse’. Then at the end of the 18th centuryFrench mètre was designated as the standardmeasure of length in the new metric system, andEnglish reborrowed it as metre.Meter ‘measuring device’ [19] is probably anominalization of the element -meter, occurringin such compounds as galvanometer [19],gasometer [18], and pedometer [18], which itselfwent back via French -mètre or modern Latin-metrum to Greek métron. COMMENSURATE, IMMENSE, MEASURE, METEmetropolis [16] A metropolis is etymologicallya ‘mother city’. The word comes via late Latinmētropolis from Greek mētrópolis, a compoundformed from métēr ‘mother’ (a distant relative ofEnglish mother) and pólis ‘city’ (source ofEnglish police, policy, politics, etc). MOTHER, POLICE, POLICY, POLITICSmews [14] In former times, a mew was a placewhere trained falcons were kept (etymologicallythe word means ‘moulting-place’; it came fromOld French mue, a derivative of muer ‘moult’,which was descended from Latin mūtāre‘change’). In the latter part of the 14th centurythe Royal Mews were built in London on the siteof what is now Trafalgar Square, to house theroyal hawks. By Henry VII’s time they werebeing used as stables, and from at least the early17th century the term mews was used for‘stabling around an open yard’. The modernapplication to a ‘street of former stablesconverted to human dwellings’ dates from theearly 19th century. MOULT, MUTATEmezzanine see MEDIUMmica [18] Latin mīca meant ‘grain’, and itsoriginal use in English (perhaps influenced bythe similar but unrelated Latin verb micāre‘shine’) was to ‘small shiny particles orplatelets’ in certain sorts of rock. The modernapplication to a group of related silicates, whichcontain such shiny plates, dates from the 1790s.micro [19] The conversion of the prefix microintoa noun (standing, for instance, for amicroskirt or microcomputer) is not as recent asone might have supposed: as long ago as the1860s it was being used for a sort of tiny moth(short for microlepidoptera). The prefix itselfcomes from Greek mīkrós ‘small’, a variant ofsmīkrós, which may be distantly related toEnglish small. The earliest English wordcontaining it appears to have been microcosm[15], etymologically ‘little world’. From the17th century come micrometer, microphone, andmicroscope. Microbe [19] means etymologically‘little life’ (from Greek bíos ‘life’), hence ‘littlecreature’.micturate see ANTmiddenmidden see MUCKmiddle [OE] Middle traces its ancestry back toIndo-European *medhjo-, which also producedLatin medius ‘middle’ (source of Englishmediate, medium, etc) and Greek mésos ‘middle’(source of the English prefix meso-). Itsprehistoric Germanic descendant was *mithja-,which has given English the adjective mid [OE]and the derived noun midst [14]. From *mithjawasformed in West Germanic the adjective*middila, which has given modern Germanmittel, Dutch middel, and English middle. MEDIATE, MEDIUMmidge see MOSQUITOmidget see MOSQUITOmidwife [14] A midwife is etymologically a‘with-woman’. The mid- element represents thelong extinct preposition mid ‘with’ (itsGermanic relatives are still alive and well:German mit, Dutch met, and Swedish andDanish med). Wife preserves the originalmeaning of Old English wīf, ‘woman’. The ideaunderlying the word is that a midwife is ‘with’ awoman giving birth.might [OE] Might goes back ultimately to Indo-European *mag- ‘be able, have power’, the samebase as produced the auxiliary verb may. Thenoun might was formed with the Germanic

suffix *-tiz, which also gave German and Dutchmacht ‘power’; and the verb might, the past formof may, contains the past inflectional suffix (inmodern English -(e)d). MAYmigraine [14] The earliest English forms of thisword were mygrame and mygrane, buteventually it became institutionalized as megrim.Not until the 18th century did what is now thestandard form, migraine, begin to appear on thescene, probably as a reborrowing of the word’soriginal source, French migraine. This came vialate Latin hēmicrānia from Greek hēmikrāníā,literally ‘half-skull’ (krāníon is the source ofEnglish cranium [16], and is distantly related toEnglish horn). The etymological ideaunderlying the word is of ‘pain in one side of thehead’. CRANIUM, HORNmigrate see MUTATEmilch see MILKmild [OE] Mild goes back ultimately to Indo-European *meld-, *mold-, *mld-, which denoted‘softness’ and also produced English melt andLatin mollis ‘soft’, source of English mollify andmollusc. From it was derived the Germanicadjective *milthjaz, whose modern descendanthas shown remarkable formal stability: German,Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and English all sharethe word mild. MELT, MOLLIFY, MOLLUSC, SMELTmildew [OE] Mildew originally meant ‘honeydew’(which is a sort of sticky substance exudedby aphids and similar insects on to leaves). It isa compound noun formed in the prehistoricGermanic period from *melith ‘honey’ (arelative of Latin mel ‘honey’, source of Englishmellifluous and molasses) and *daw-waz,ancestor of English dew. The metaphoricaltransference from ‘honey-dew’ to a lesspleasant, fungal growth on plants, etc took placein the 14th century. DEW, MELLIFLUOUS, MOLASSESmile [OE] Latin mille denoted ‘thousand’ (it isthe source of English millennium [17],etymologically a ‘thousand years’, and, viaItalian and French, of million [14]). Its pluralmīllia was used in ancient Rome for a measure oflength equal to a thousand paces. This wasborrowed into prehistoric West Germanic as*mīlja, which has subsequently differentiatedinto German meile, Dutch mijl, and English mile.(The English mile is over 100 yards longer thanthe Roman one was.) MILLENNIUM, MILLIONmilitary [16] Military traces its history back toLatin mīles ‘soldier’, a word possibly ofEtruscan origin. Its derived adjective mīlitārisentered English via French militaire. Also basedon mīles was the verb mīlitāre ‘serve as asoldier’, which has given English militant [15]and militate [17], a verb whose meaning haschanged sharply over the centuries: at first it wasused in the same way as its Latin ancestor, butthen it developed via ‘conflict with’ to ‘beevidence against’, and finally, in the 20th333 mincecentury, to ‘make unlikely’. Militia [16] comesfrom Latin militia ‘warfare’, another derivativeof mīles.milk [OE] Far back into prehistory, milk traces itsancestry to an Indo-European base *melg-,which denoted ‘wiping’ or ‘stroking’. The wayof obtaining milk from animals is to pull one’shand down their teats, and so *melg- came in duecourse to be used for ‘milk’. It passed intoGermanic as *melk-, which formed the basis ofthe noun *meluks, and this over the centuries hasbecome German milch, Dutch and Danish melk,Swedish mjölk, and English milk. The nowvirtually obsolete adjective milch ‘giving milk’[OE] (as in milch cow) goes back to a Germanicderivative of *meluks.Another derivative of Indo-European *melgwasthe Latin verb mulgēre ‘milk’, which hasgiven English emulsion and promulgate. EMULSION, PROMULGATEmill [OE] Mill is one of a large family of Englishwords that go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *mel-, *mol-, *ml-, denoting‘grind’. It includes meal ‘flour’, mollify, mollusc,mould ‘earth’, and (via the extended form*meld-, *mold-) melt and mild. One particularsubset of the family comes from closely relatedLatin sources: the verb molere ‘grind’ hasproduced emolument and ormolu [18](etymologically ‘ground gold’); the noun mola‘grindstone’ has given molar [16] and (via a latersense ‘flour mixed with salt, sprinkled onsacrificial victims’) immolate [16]; and lateLatin molīnus ‘grindstone’, which replacedclassical Latin mola, was borrowed into OldEnglish as mylen, from which we get modernEnglish mill. EMOLUMENT, MEAL, MELT, MILD, MOLAR,MOLLIFY, MOLLUSC, MOULD, ORMOLUmillennium see MILEmilliner [16] The Italian city of Milan wasfamous in medieval and Renaissance times forthe fabrics, laces, etc that it manufactured; and amerchant who imported such ‘Milan ware’became known as a Milaner. In due course theterm became associated with ‘makers of femalegarments’, which would have incorporated suchItalian haberdashery, and by the 19th century ithad narrowed down specifically to ‘maker ofwomen’s hats’.million see MILEmimemime [17] Greek mimos meant ‘imitator’, andhence ‘actor’. English took it over via Latinmīmus, and lost no time in turning it into a verb.The derived Greek adjective mīmikós has givenEnglish mimic [16], and other related formsinclude mimeograph [19], so called because itcopies things, and mimosa [18], named from itstendency to curl up when touched, as if in‘imitation’ of animal behaviour. The compoundpantomime means etymologically ‘completemime’. MIMEOGRAPH, MIMOSA, PANTOMIMEmince [14] Etymologically, to mince somethingis to make it extremely ‘small’. The word comesvia Old French mincier from Vulgar Latin

mind 334*minūtiāre, a derivative of Latin minūtia ‘smallthing’. This in turn was based on minūtus‘small’, source of English minute. MINUTEmind [12] Mind is a member of a large anddiverse family of English words (includingmandarin, mathematics, memory, and reminisce)that go back ultimately to the Indo-Europeanbase *men- ‘think’. Amongst its otherdescendants were Latin mēns ‘mind’, source ofEnglish mental [15], and prehistoric Germanic*gamunthiz (formed with the collective prefix*ga-). This passed into Old English as gemynd,but its prefix was dropped in the early MiddleEnglish period, giving modern English mind.Historically, ‘memory’ has been as important anelement in the word’s meaning as ‘mentalfaculty’, but it now survives mainly in thederived verb remind. MANDARIN, MATHEMATICS, MEMORY, MENTAL,REMINISCEmine English has two quite distinct words mine.The first person possessive pronoun [OE] goesback to a prehistoric Germanic *mīnaz (sourcealso of German mein, Dutch mijn, and Swedishand Danish min), which was derived from thesame Indo-European source as produced Englishme. Originally it was an adjective, but in the 13thcentury the -n was dropped before consonants,and eventually the resulting my took over theadjective slot altogether, leaving mine as apronoun only.Mine ‘excavation’ [14] is of uncertain origin.It comes via Old French from an assumed VulgarLatin *mina, which may go back ultimately to aCeltic *meini- ‘ore’ (Gaelic has mein ‘ore, mine’and Welsh mwyn ‘ore’). The use of the word foran ‘explosive device’, which dates from the 17thcentury, arose from the practice of diggingtunnels or ‘mines’ beneath enemy positions andthen blowing them up. ME, MYmineral [15] A mineral is etymologicallysomething obtained by ‘mining’. The wordcomes from medieval Latin minerāle, aderivative of the adjective minerālis. This in turnwas derived from minera ‘ore’, a latinization ofOld French miniere. And miniere itself camefrom Vulgar Latin *mināria, a derivative of*mina – source of English mine. MINEmingle see AMONGminiature [16] ‘Smallness’ is a purelysecondary semantic development as far asminiature is concerned, inspired by its accidentalsimilarity to the min- element of words likeminimum and minute. It in fact comes ultimatelyfrom Latin minium ‘red lead’. Red lead was usedin ancient and medieval times for making a sortof red ink with which manuscripts weredecorated, and so the derived medieval Latinverb miniāre was coined for ‘illuminate amanuscript’.Italian took this over as miniare, and derivedminiatura ‘painting, illustrating’ from it. Itreferred particularly to the small paintings inmanuscripts, and when English borrowed it asminiature it was soon broadened out to any‘small image’. Association with minute, etc ledby the early 18th century to its adjectival use for‘small’.minimuminimum see MINUTEminister [13] Etymologically, a minister is aperson of ‘lower’ status, a ‘servant’. The wordgoes back via Old French ministre to Latinminister ‘servant, attendant’, which was derivedfrom minus ‘less’. It retained this meaning whenit arrived in English, and indeed it still survivesin the verb minister. But already by the MiddleAges a specialized application to a ‘churchfunctionary’ had developed, and in the 16thcentury this hardened into the present-day‘clergyman’. The political sense of the worddeveloped in the 17th century, from the notion ofa ‘servant’ of the crown.Derivatives from other languages to haveestablished themselves in English include métier[18], which came via French from Vulgar Latin*misterium, an alteration of Latin ministerium‘service’ (source of English ministry [14]), andminstrel. And etymologically, minister is theantonym of master, whose Latin ancestor wasbased on magis ‘more’. MÉTIER, MINSTREL, MINUSminor [13] Latin minor ‘less’ was a comparativeform based on the element min- ‘small’ (sourceof English minute and a whole range of other‘small’-words). The noun derived from it, minus‘less’, was taken over by English in the 15thcentury. MINUTEminster see MONKminstrel [13] Originally minstrel, like its closerelative minister, denoted a ‘servant’. Its musicalassociations are a comparatively recentdevelopment. It goes back ultimately to lateLatin ministeriālis ‘official’, a derivative ofLatin ministerium (source of English ministry).Old French took it over as menestral, and it washere that a gradual specialization in meaningtook place, from ‘servant’ via ‘entertainer’ to‘singer’. MINISTERmint [OE] English has two completelyunconnected words mint. The ‘money factory’comes ultimately from Latin monēta ‘mint,money’ (source also of English money). It wasborrowed into prehistoric West Germanic as*munita, which in due course produced OldEnglish mynet. This denoted ‘coin’ (as itsmodern German relative münze still does), and itwas not until the 15th century that the modernsense ‘place where money is made’ emerged.Mint the plant originated in Greek mínthē,and reached English via Latin mentha (source ofmenthol [19], a German coinage) and prehistoricWest Germanic *minta. MONEY; MENTHOLminute [14] Latin minūtus ‘small’ was aderivative of the verb minuere ‘lessen’ (source ofEnglish diminish), which itself was based on theelement min- ‘small’. In medieval Latin the term

pars minuta prima ‘first small part’ was appliedto a ‘sixtieth part of a whole’ – originally of acircle, later of an hour (likewise a second wasoriginally a secunda minuta, a sixtieth of asixtieth). Hence minūta itself came to be used forthe unit of time, and that was the originalmeaning of minute when English acquired it viaOld French. Its use for ‘note, record’ may derivefrom the Latin expression minuta scriptura,which denoted the writing of a rough draft in‘small’ writing. The adjective minute ‘small’was an independent 15th-century borrowingdirect from Latin. A French descendant ofminūtus is the adjective menu ‘small’; itsextended sense ‘detailed’ has led to its noun usefor ‘list’, and the expression menu de repas‘meal list’ has given English menu [19].Other members of the extended family ofEnglish words that come ultimately from Latinmin- include métier, mince, minim [15],minimum [17], minister, minor, minstrel, minuet[17], minus, minuscule [18], and minutia [15]. MENU, MÉTIER, MINCE, MINISTER, MINOR,MINSTREL, MINUS, MINUSCULEmirror [13] Mirror belongs to a small family ofEnglish words which illustrate how a Latin termoriginally signifying ‘wonder at’ weakened(presumably via ‘stare in wonder at’) to ‘lookat’. Etymologically, a mirror is something you‘look at’ yourself in. The word comes via OldFrench mirour from Vulgar Latin *mīrātōrium, aderivative of *mirāre ‘look at’. This was closelyrelated to classical Latin mīrārī ‘wonder at’ (aderivative of mīrus ‘wonderful’), which passedinto Old French as mirer ‘look at’, source ofEnglish mirage [19]. Based on mīrārī were Latinmīrābilis ‘wonderful’ (source of English marvel[13]) and mīrāculum ‘something to be wonderedat’ (source of English miracle [12]). MARVEL, MIRACLE, MIRAGEmirth see MERRYmiscegenation see MIXmiscellaneous see MIXmischief [13] Etymologically, mischief issomething that ‘happens amiss’. The wordcomes from Old French meschef, a derivative ofthe verb meschever ‘meet with misfortune’. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the prefixmis- ‘wrongly, amiss’ and chever ‘happen’(which came ultimately from Latin caput ‘head’,and etymologically meant ‘come to a head’). Itstill meant ‘misfortune’ when English acquiredit; in the 14th century the sense ‘harm, damage’emerged, but the more trivial modern sense‘naughtiness’ did not develop until the 18thcentury.miscreant see CREEDmiserymisery [14] Latin miser meant ‘miserable,wretched’. From it were derived miseria‘wretchedness’, source of English misery, andmiserābilis ‘pitiable’, source of Englishmiserable [16]. Fitting in with the generalsemantic pattern, English miser [16] (a directnominalization of the Latin adjective) originallymeant ‘wretched person’. But people whohoarded money were evidently viewed as being335 mistletoebasically unhappy, and so right from thebeginning miser was used for an ‘avariciousperson’. MISERmiss English has two words miss. The one usedas a title for an unmarried woman [17], whichoriginated as a shortened form of mistress (seeMASTER), is a comparatively recent introduction,but the verb miss [OE] has a much longer history.It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *missjan(source of German and Dutch missen, Swedishmista, and Danish miste), which was derivedfrom the base *missa- ‘wrongly, amiss’(ancestor of the English prefix mis-). MASTERmission [16] Mission, etymologically a‘sending’, is the hub of a large family of Englishwords that come from the Latin verb mittere ‘letgo, send’ or its stem miss-. Most are prefixedforms – admit, commit, permit, promise,transmit, etc – but the unadorned verb isrepresented in mass ‘eucharist’, mess, missile[17] (literally ‘something capable of beingsent’), mission itself and its derivativemissionary [17], and missive [15] (‘somethingsent’). The source of mittere is not known, butwhat does seem clear is that it originally meant‘let go, throw’. This subsequently developed to‘send’ and, in the post-classical period, to ‘put’(hence French metre ‘put’). ADMIT, COMMIT, MESS, MESSAGE, MISSILE,MISSIVE, PERMIT, PROMISE, SUBMIT, TRANSMITmist [OE] Mist is a member of quite a widespreadIndo-European family of ‘mist’-words. Dutchand Swedish share mist, and among the non-Germanic languages Greek has omíkhlē,Lithuanian and Latvia migla, Serbo-Croatmàgla, Polish mgła, and Russian mgla, allmeaning ‘mist’, besides Sanskrit mēghas‘cloud’, which all point back to an Indo-European ancestor *migh-, *meigh-.mistake [13] Mistake originally meant literally‘take in error, take the wrong thing’. It wasborrowed from Old Norse mistaka, a compoundverb formed from the prefix mis- ‘wrongly’ andtaka ‘take’. This sense survived in English forsome time (‘to be ever busy, and mistake awaythe bottles and cans … before they be but halfdrunk of’, Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair 1614),but gradually through the late Middle Englishperiod the notion of ‘error’ came to the fore (itwas already present in the Old Norse verb, whichwas used reflexively for ‘go wrong’, and wasprobably reinforced by Old French mesprendre,literally ‘take wrongly’, which was also used for‘err’). The noun use, ‘error’, emerged in the 17thcentury. TAKEmister see MASTERmistletoe [OE] Mistletoe is a mystery word. Itmeans literally ‘mistletoe twig’, and comes froman Old English compound misteltān formedfrom mistel ‘mistletoe’ and tān ‘twig’. Theorigins of mistel, however (which has relatives inGerman mistil and Dutch and Swedish mistel),are unknown. The mistle thrush [18], or missel

mistress 336thrush, got its name from its predilection formistletoe berries.mistress see MASTERmite English has two words mite, although theyprobably share a common origin. The older,‘tiny insect-like creature’ [OE], goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *mītōn, which wasprobably derived from a base meaning ‘cut’(hence ‘something cut up small’). Dutch has therelated mijt. The original meaning of mite ‘smallthing’ [14] was ‘small coin’ (as in the ‘widow’smite’). It was used in Flanders for such a coin,worth a third of a penny, and Middle Dutch mītewas borrowed into English. It too goes back to aGermanic mītōn, which is probably the sameword as produced the animated mite.mitten [14] Etymologically, a mitten is ‘half aglove’. The word comes via Old French mitainefrom Vulgar Latin *medietāna ‘cut off in themiddle’ (originally an adjective, and applied togloves, but subsequently used independently as anoun meaning ‘cut-off glove’). This in turn camefrom Latin medietās ‘half’ (source of Englishmoiety [15]), a derivative of medius ‘middle’(source of English medium).The abbreviated mitt dates from the 18thcentury. MEDIUM, MOIETYmix [15] English originally acquired this word inthe form mixt or mixed, a past participialadjective, and did not coin the new verb mixfrom it until the 16th century. Mixt came via OldFrench from Latin mixtus, the past participle ofthe verb miscēre ‘mix’. Derivatives of miscēre tohave reached English include miscellaneous [17]and promiscuous [17], and its Vulgar Latindescendant *misculāre ‘mix up’ has givenEnglish meddle [14], medley [14], and mêlée[17]. Miscegenation [19] was coined in the USAaround 1863 from miscēre and Latin genus‘race’. MEDDLE, MEDLEY, MISCELLANEOUS, MUSTANG,PROMISCUOUSmoat [14] The word moat originally meant a‘mound’ or ‘embankment’ (this has since beenhived off into the specialized form motte). Theword was borrowed from Old French mote ormotte ‘hill, mound’, whose ultimate source wasprobably a Gaulish mutt or mutta. The use of theword for the mound on which a castle keep wasbuilt led in Old French or Anglo-Norman to itsreapplication to the ditch surrounding such amound.mob [17] Mob is famous as one of the then new‘slang’ abbreviations against which JosephAddison and Jonathan Swift inveighed at thebeginning of the 18th century (others includedpozz for positively and rep for reputation). Mobwas short for mobile, which itself was atruncated form of mobile vulgus, a Latin phrasemeaning ‘fickle crowd’. Latin mōbilis‘movable’, hence metaphorically ‘fickle’(source of English mobile [15]), came from thebase of the verb movēre ‘move’ (source ofEnglish move). MOBILE, MOVEmodel [16] Latin modus meant originally‘measure’ (it came from the same Indo-European base, *met-, *med-, as producedEnglish measure and metre). It subsequentlyspread out semantically to ‘size’, ‘limit’, ‘way,method’, and ‘rhythm, harmony’. From it wasderived the diminutive form modulus, source ofEnglish modulate [16], module [16], and mould‘form’. It was altered in Vulgar Latin to*modellus, and passed into English via Italianmodello and early modern French modelle. Itsoriginal application in English was to an‘architect’s plans’, but the familiar modern sense‘three-dimensional representation’ is recordedas early as the start of the 17th century. Thenotion of an ‘artist’s model’ emerged in the late17th century, but a ‘model who shows offclothes’ is an early 20th-century development.Other English descendants of modus includemodern, modicum [15], modify [14], and ofcourse mode [16] itself (of which mood ‘set ofverb forms’ is an alteration). MEASURE, METE, METRE, MODE, MODERN,MODULATE, MOOD, MOULDmoderate [14] Latin moderārī or moderāremeant ‘reduce, control’. They were derived froman unrecorded *modes- (source also of modest),which was related to modus ‘measure’ (source ofEnglish mode and model), and hence denotedetymologically ‘keep within due measure’. Theirpast participle moderātus was taken over byEnglish as an adjective, and converted into averb in the 15th century. MODE, MODEL, MODERN, MODESTmodern [16] Latin modus (source of Englishmode and model) meant ‘measure’. Its ablativeform modō hence originally denoted ‘to themeasure’, but it subsequently came to be used asan adverb meaning ‘just now’. And in postclassicaltimes an adjective modernus wasderived from it, signifying ‘of the present time’– source, via French, of English modern. At firstit was used strictly for ‘of the present moment’,but before the end of the 16th century the nowfamiliar sense ‘of the present age’ had begun toemerge. MODE, MODELmodest [16] Etymologically, modest means‘kept within due measure’. It comes via Frenchfrom Latin modestus, a derivative of the samesource as produced English moderate. This was*modes-, a close relative of Latin modus‘measure’ (from which English gets mode andmodel). MODE, MODELmodicumodicum see MODELmodify see MODELmodule see MODELmoiety see MITTENmoist [14] Latin mūcidus meant ‘mouldy’ and‘snivelling’ (it was a derivative of mūcus, sourceof English mucus). In Vulgar Latin it becamealtered to *muscidus, which is thought to havebranched out in meaning to ‘wet’, and passed inthis sense into Old French as moiste – whenceEnglish moist.

From the 15th to the 17th centuries thederived adjective moisty ‘damp’ existed (it wasrevived in the 19th century). Musty [16] isthought to have originated as an alteration of it,perhaps under the influence of must ‘grapejuice’. MUCUS, MUSTYmolar see MILLmolasses [16] The etymological connections ofmolasses are with ‘honey’ rather than ‘sugar’. Itcomes via Portuguese melaço from late Latinmellāceum ‘fermenting grape juice, new wine’.This was a derivative of mel ‘honey’, source ofEnglish mellifluous [15] and related to mildew. MELLIFLUOUS, MILDEWmole English has four distinct words mole. Theoldest is ‘brown spot’ [OE]. It is the descendantof Old English māl, which meant broadly‘discoloured mark’. This developed in MiddleEnglish to ‘spot on the skin’, but the specificsense ‘brown mark’ did not emerge until fairlyrecently. The word goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *mailam, a derivative of a basemeaning ‘spot, mark’ which also producedGerman malen ‘paint’ and Dutch maalen ‘paint’(source of English maulstick ‘stick used as a restby painters’ [17]).Mole the animal [14] was borrowed fromMiddle Dutch mol. No one knows for sure wherethis came from, but its similarity to the nowobsolete mouldwarp ‘mole’ [14] (a compoundnoun whose etymological meaning is ‘earththrower’)suggests that it could represent atruncated version of mouldwarp’s prehistoricGermanic ancestor. The metaphoricalapplication of the word to a ‘traitor workingsecretly’ has been traced back as far as the 17thcentury, but its modern currency is due to its useby the British espionage writer John le Carré.Mole ‘harbour wall’ [16] comes via Frenchmôle and medieval Greek mólos from Latinmōlēs ‘mass, massive structure’. The diminutiveform of this, coined in modern times, ismōlēcula, from which, via French molécule,English gets molecule [18]. Other relatives aredemolish and, possibly, molest [14], whichcomes ultimately from Latin molestus‘troublesome’, connected by some scholars withmōlēs. And German mol, a convenientshortening of molekulargewicht ‘molecularweight’, has given English its fourth mole [20],used as the basic unit of measurement for theamount of a substance. MAULSTICK; MOLECULE, MOLESTmollusc [18] Etymologically, a mollusc is a‘soft’ creature. The word comes ultimately fromLatin molluscus ‘soft’, a derivative of mollis‘soft’. In classical times it was used as a noun forvarious ‘soft’ things, such as a sort of thinshellednut and a species of fungus that grewfrom maple trees, but its application to a range ofinvertebrate animals seems to have beenintroduced by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus inthe mid-18th century. Latin mollis (source alsoof English mollify [15]) goes back ultimately toIndo-European *mel-, *mol-, *ml- ‘grind’,337 monkwhich also produced English meal ‘flour’, mill,and molar. MEAL, MELT, MILD, MILL, MOLAR, MOLLIFYmoment [14] As the closely related momentum[17] suggests, ‘movement’ is the etymologicalnotion underlying moment. It comes via OldFrench moment from Latin mōmentum. This wasa contraction of an assumed earlier*movimentum, a derivative of movēre ‘move’(source of English move), and it had a widerange of meanings: from the literal ‘movement’(preserved in English in the directly borrowedmomentum) developed the metaphorical ‘instantof time’ (which arose from the notion of aparticle so small as only just to ‘move’ thepointer of a scale) and ‘importance’ – bothpreserved in English moment. The former hasbeen allotted the derived adjective momentary[16], the latter momentous [17]. MOMENTOUS, MOMENTUM, MOVEmonastery see MONKMonday [OE] Etymologically, Monday is the‘moon’s day’. It comes from a prehistoricGerman translation of Latin lūnae diēs ‘day ofthe moon’, which also produced Germanmontag, Dutch maandag, Swedish måandag,and Danish mandag. In the Romance languages,the Latin term has become French lundi, Italianlunedì, Spanish lunes, and Romanian luni. (Thevarious words for ‘Monday’ in the Slaviclanguages, incidentally, such as Russianponedel’nik, mean basically ‘after Sunday’.) MOONmoney [13] An epithet used in ancient Rome forthe goddess Juno was Monēta (derived by someetymologists in the past from the Latin verbmonēre ‘advise, warn’, although this is nowregarded as rather dubious). The name was alsoapplied to her temple in Rome, which containeda mint. And so in due course monēta came tomean ‘mint’ (a sense retained in English mint,which goes back via a circuitous route tomonēta), then ‘stamp for coining’, and finally‘coin’ – the meaning transmitted via Old Frenchmoneie to English money. MINTmongrel [15] The etymological notionunderlying mongrel is of a ‘mixture’. For theword goes back ultimately to the prehistoricGermanic base *mong- ‘mix’, which alsoproduced English among and mingle [14]. AMONG, MINGLEmonitor see MONSTERmonk [OE] Etymologically, a monk is someonewho lives ‘alone’. The word comes ultimatelyfrom late Greek mónachos ‘solitary person,hermit’, which was derived from Greek mónos‘alone’ (source of the English prefix mono-). Itpassed into late Latin as monachus (by whichtime it had come to denote ‘monk’), andeventually found its way to Old English asmunuc – whence modern English monk.Another derivative of Greek mónos wasmonázein ‘live alone’. On this was based lateGreek monastérion, whose late Latin formmonastērium has been acquired by English in

monkey 338two distinct phases: first in the Anglo-Saxonperiod as mynster, which has given modernEnglish minster [OE], and then in the 15thcentury as monastery. MINSTER, MONASTERYmonkey [16] No one is too sure where monkeycame from. Spanish has mono ‘monkey’, andOld Italian had monno ‘monkey’, both probablyborrowed from Arabic maimūn ‘monkey’, and itcould be that an ancestor of these was borrowedinto Low German and given the diminutivesuffix -ke. This would account for monkey. Norelated Germanic form has been found tosubstantiate this, although the name Monekedoes occur in Middle Low German.monolith see LITHOGRAPHmonsieur see SIRmonster [13] Monster originated as a word for a‘divine omen or warning’. It goes back via OldFrench monstre to Latin mōnstrum, a derivativeof the verb monēre ‘warn’. From its originalsense ‘warning of misfortune, evil omen’,mōnstrum was transferred to the sort of thingthat could function as such an omen – a‘prodigy’, or a ‘misshapen or horrifyingcreature’ – whence the meaning of Englishmonster. The word’s connotations of ‘largeness’seem to be rather more recent, first emerging inEnglish in the 16th century.Other English derivatives of mōnstrum, someof them reflecting a later sense of monēre, ‘show,inform’, rather than the original ‘warn’, includedemonstrate [16], monstrance [16], muster [13](which originally meant ‘display’), andremonstrate [16]. And from monēre itself comeadmonish, monitor [16], monument [13],premonition [16], and summon [13]. ADMONISH, DEMONSTRATE, MONITOR,MONUMENT, MUSTER, PREMONITION,REMONSTRATE, SUMMONmonth [OE] In ancient times the passing of timewas recorded by noting the revolutions of themoon. Consequently prehistoric Indo-Europeanhad a single word, *mēnes-, which denoted both‘moon’ and ‘month’. The Romance languagesretain it only for ‘month’: Latin mēnsis (sourceof English menstrual) has given French mois,Italian mese, and Spanish mes. The Germaniclanguages, however, have kept both,distinguishing them by different forms. In thecase of ‘month’, the Germanic word was*mǣnōth, which has differentiated into Germanmonat, Dutch maand, Swedish månad, Danishmaaned, and English month. MENSTRUAL, MOONmonument see MONSTERmood English has two words mood. The originalone, ‘emotional state’ [OE], goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *mōthaz or *mōtham,whose descendants have denoted a wide range ofsuch states: ‘anger’, for instance (Old Norsemóthr), and ‘courage’ (German mut). OldEnglish mōd meant ‘mind, thought’, ‘pride’,‘courage’, and ‘anger’ as well as ‘frame ofmind’, but it is only the last that has survived.Mood ‘set of verb forms indicating attitude(such as the subjunctive)’ [16] is an alteration ofmode, influenced by mood ‘frame of mind’. MODEmoon [OE] Indo-European *mēnes- meant both‘moon’ and ‘month’. It was probably a derivativeof the base *me- (source of English measure),reflecting the fact that in ancient times thepassage of time was measured by the revolutionsof the moon. Both strands of meaning have beenpreserved in the Germanic languages,represented by different forms: the ‘moon’strand has differentiated into German mond,Dutch maan, Swedish måane, Danish maane,and English moon. Etymologically, Monday is‘moon day’. MEASURE, METRE, MONDAY, MONTHmoor Counting the capitalized form, English hasthree separate words moor. The oldest, ‘openland’ [OE], comes from a prehistoric Germanic*mōraz or *mōram, whose other moderndescendants, such as German moor, mean‘swamp’, suggest the possibility of someconnection with English mere ‘lake’ (seeMARINE).Moor ‘tie up a boat’ [15] was probablyborrowed from a Middle Low German mōren, arelative of Dutch meren ‘moor’. And Moor‘inhabitant of North Africa’ [14] comesultimately from Greek Mauros, a word no doubtof North African origin from which the name ofthe modern state Mauritania is derived. Englishrelatives include morello [17], the name of adark-skinned cherry which comes via Italianfrom Latin morellus or maurellus, a derivative ofMaurus ‘Moor’; and morris dance. MARINE, MERE; MORELLO, MORRIS DANCEmoose [17] The moose’s name is a nativeAmerican word. It comes from Natick moos,which has been linked by some withNarragansett moosu ‘he strips’, an allusion to themoose’s habit of stripping the bark from trees.moot [OE] Etymologically, a ‘moot point’ is onetalked about at a ‘meeting’. For ‘meeting’ is theoriginal sense of the noun moot – particularly asapplied in early medieval England to a meetingfunctioning as a court of law. The word goesback to a prehistoric Germanic *mōtam‘meeting’, source also of English meet. Itsmodern adjectival usage seems to have emergedin the 16th century. The derived verb moot goesback to Old English times (mōtian ‘converse,plead in court’), but again its present-day use, for‘suggest, propose’, is a more recentdevelopment, dating from the 17th century. MEETmop [15] Mop first appeared in the guise mappe,a late 15th-century sailors’ term for animprovised brush used for caulking ships’ seamswith tar. The modern form mop, presumably thesame word, did not emerge until the mid-17thcentury.It may be a truncation of an earliermapple ‘mop’ [15], which came from late Latinmappula ‘towel, cloth’, a diminutive form ofLatin mappa ‘cloth’ (source of English map). MAP

moral [14] Latin mōs ‘custom’ is the startingpoint of the English family of ‘morality’-words(and its plural mōres was acquired by English asmores in the 20th century). Its derived adjectivemōrālis was coined, according to some byCicero, as a direct translation of Greek ēthikós‘ethical’, to denote the ‘typical or properbehaviour of human beings in society’, and wasborrowed directly into English in the 14thcentury. Morale [18] was borrowed from French,where it is the feminine form of the adjectivemoral. At first it was used in English for‘morality, moral principles’; its modern sense‘condition with regard to optimism,cheerfulness, etc’ is not recorded until the early19th century. MORALE, MORESmoratorium see DEMURmordant see MORSELmore [OE] The Indo-European term for ‘more’was *meis (it was formed from the same base asproduced Latin magis ‘more’, source of Spanishmas ‘more’ and English master, and Latinmagnus ‘large’, source of English magnitude).Its Germanic descendant was *maiz, whichevolved into modern German mehr ‘more’, andalso into Old English mā ‘more’, which surviveddialectally until fairly recently as mo. From theadverb *maiz was derived the adjective *maizon,and it was this that has given English more. Mostis, of course, closely related. MAGNITUDE, MASTER, MOSTmorello see MOORmorganatic [18] A morganatic marriage is onebetween people of different social status, inwhich the rank and entitlements of the higherstatuspartner are not shared by the lower or theiroffspring. The word morganatic is a survival ofan ancient Germanic marriage custom. On themorning after the wedding night, after themarriage had been consummated, the husbandgave the wife a symbolic gift, which removedany further legal claim the wife or their childrenmight have on his possessions. The term for thisuseful gift was *morgangeba, a compoundformed from *morgan (ancestor of Englishmorning) and *geba (a noun formed from thesame base as produced English give). The wordwas adopted into medieval Latin asmorganaticus, from which (via either French orGerman) English got morganatic. MORNING, GIVEmorgue [19] The original Morgue was a Parisianmortuary where unidentified corpses weredisplayed for visitors to try and put names tofaces (a process described in gruesome detail byÉmile Zola in Thérèse Raquin 1867). Its name ispresumed to be a reapplication of an earlierFrench morgue ‘room in a prison where newprisoners were examined’, which may ultimatelybe the same word as morgue ‘haughtysuperiority’ (used in English from the 16th to the19th centuries). Morgue was first adopted as ageneric English term for ‘mortuary’ in the USAin the 1880s.339 mortarmorning [13] The Old English word for‘morning’ was morgen. It came from aprehistoric Germanic *murganaz (source also ofGerman, Dutch, and Danish morgen ‘morning’),and links have been suggested with forms suchas Old Church Slavonic mruknati ‘darken’ andLithuanian mirgeti ‘twinkle’, which may point toan underlying etymological notion of the‘glimmer of morning twilight’. By the MiddleEnglish period the word morgen had evolved towhat we now know as morn, and morning wasderived from it on the analogy of evening. Aparallel development of morgen was to MiddleEnglish morwe, from which we get modernEnglish morrow (and hence tomorrow). MORN, TOMORROWmorphology see FORMmorris [15] Etymologically, the morris dance isa ‘Moorish dance’. The name, probablyborrowed into English from Flemish mooriskedans, implies a perceived connection with adance performed by the Moors, presumably inSpain, but the dance to which it is applied has farmore ancient cultural roots than this wouldsuggest. (The morris of nine men’s morris,incidentally, a sort of old board game, is adifferent word, perhaps going back ultimately toOld French merel ‘token, counter’.) MOOR, MORELLOmorse [19] People had for some years beenexperimenting with the magnetic telegraph, butit was the American inventor Samuel Morse(1791–1872) who in 1836 produced the firstworkable system. And with his assistantAlexander Bain he devised a set of dots anddashes representing letters and numbers whichcould be used for transmitting messages, andwhich came to be known as the Morse code. Inthe first half of the 20th century morse was alsoused as a verb: ‘It can be used for Morsinginstructions about breakfast to the cook’, Punch31 March 1920.morsel [13] Etymologically, a morsel is a piece‘bitten’ off. The word comes from Old Frenchmorsel, a diminutive of mors ‘bite’. This in turngoes back to Latin morsus, a derivative of thesame base as the verb mordēre ‘bite’. OtherEnglish words from the same source includemordant [15] and remorse. MORDANT, REMORSEmortal [14] Mortal goes back ultimately to theIndo-European base *mor-, *mr- ‘die’ (sourcealso of English murder). From it were descendedthe Latin words mortuus ‘dead’ (source ofEnglish mortuary [14] and the 19th-centuryAmerican coinage mortician) and mors ‘death’.The adjectival derivative of mors was mortālis,which reached English via Old French mortal,mortel. Also based on mors was the late Latinverb mortificāre ‘kill’, hence metaphorically‘subdue desires’, from which English getsmortify [14]. MORTGAGE, MORTIFY, MORTUARY, MURDERmortar [13] Latin mortārium, a word ofunknown origin, denoted both a ‘bowl forgrinding’ and, by extension, the ‘substance made

mortgage 340in such a bowl’. These twin meanings survivedthrough Anglo-Norman morter into modernEnglish mortar as the ‘bowl used with a pestle’and a ‘building mixture of cement, sand, andwater’. The shape of the former led in the 17thcentury to the word’s application to a ‘shortcannon’. The use of mortarboard for a ‘squareflat academic cap’ dates from the mid-19thcentury.mortgage [14] Mortgage means literally ‘deadpledge’. It comes from Old French mortgage, acompound formed from mort ‘dead’ and gage‘pledge’ (source of English gage and closelyrelated to English wage). The notion behind theword is supposedly that if the mortgagor fails torepay the loan, the property pledged as securityis lost, or becomes ‘dead’, to him or her. MORTAL, WAGEmortuary see MORTALmosaic [16] Mosaic work is etymologicallywork ‘of the muses’. The word comes ultimatelyfrom Greek mouseion, which originally meantliterally ‘place of the muses’, and has also givenEnglish museum. Somehow in medieval Latin itbecame altered to mūsaicus or mōsaicus, andpassed via early modern Italian mosaico andFrench mosaïque into English as mosaic. It hasno etymological connection, incidentally, withMosaic ‘of Moses’ [17]. MUSE, MUSEUMmosque [17] Mosque means etymologically aplace where you ‘bow down’ in prayer and is,not surprisingly, of Arabic origin. It comes fromArabic masjid ‘place of worship’, a derivative ofthe verb sajada ‘bow down’. English acquiredthe word via Italian moschea and Frenchmosquée as mosquee, but soon dropped the final-e. (The Arabic form masjid or musjid has beenintermittently used in English in the 19th and20th centuries.)mosquito [16] Mosquito comes ultimately fromthe Latin word for ‘fly’, musca (this went back toan Indo-European base *mu-, probably imitativeof the sound of humming, which also producedEnglish midge [OE], and hence its derivativemidget [19] – originally a ‘tiny sand-fly’).Musca became Spanish mosca, whosediminutive form reached English as mosquito –etymologically a ‘small fly’. (The Italiandescendant of musca, incidentally, is also mosca,and its diminutive, moschetto, was applied withblack humour to the ‘bolt of a crossbow’. Fromit English gets musket [16].) MIDGE, MIDGET, MUSKETmoss [OE] The prehistoric Germanic ancestor ofmoss was *musam. This had two distinctmeanings: ‘swamp’ and ‘moss’. It is notaltogether clear which was primary, but it seemsmore probable than not that ‘moss’ (a plantwhich frequents damp places) was derived from‘swamp’. The only meaning recorded for its OldEnglish descendant mos was ‘swamp’ (whichsurvives in place-names), but no doubt ‘moss’(not evidenced before the 14th century) wascurrent too. Words from the same ultimatesource to have found their way into Englishinclude mire [14] (borrowed from Old Norsemýrr ‘swamp’), mousse [19] (borrowed fromFrench, which got it from Middle Low Germanmos ‘moss’), and litmus [16] (whose Old Norsesource litmosi meant literally ‘dye-moss’ –litmus is a dye extracted from lichens). LITMUS, MIRE, MOUSSEmost [OE] Like more, most comes ultimatelyfrom prehistoric Germanic *maiz. Addition ofthe superlative suffix produced *maistaz, whichpassed into Old English as mǣst. Thissubsequently evolved to most in Middle Englishunder the influence of more. MAGNITUDE, MASTER, MOREmother [OE] The ancestral Indo-European wordfor ‘mother’ was *māter-, which hasdescendants in virtually all the modern Europeanlanguages. It was probably based on the syllablema, suggested by the burbling of a sucklingbaby, which also lies behind English mama,mamma (and indeed mammal). Amongst itsimmediate descendants were Latin māter(source of English madrigal, material, maternal,matrimony, matrix, matron, and matter) andGreek métēr (from which English getsmetropolis). In prehistoric Germanic it evolvedto *mōthar-, which has differentiated to Germanmutter, Dutch moeder, Swedish and Danishmoder, and English mother. MADRIGAL, MAMMA, MAMMAL, MATERIAL,MATERNAL, MATRIMONY, MATRIX, MATRON,MATTER, METROPOLISmotor [16] The most direct English descendantof Latin movēre ‘move’ is of course move, butseveral more have found their way into thelanguage via derivatives. From mōtiō‘movement’ comes motion [15] (and itscollateral forms commotion [15], emotion, andpromotion [15]); from mōtīvus ‘causing tomove’ come motivate [19], motive [14], and (viamodern French) motif [19]; and mōtor ‘mover’has given motor. Originally this was used for therather generalized notion of a ‘moving force’;the modern application to an ‘engine’ did notemerge until the mid-19th century. Also frommovēre come English moment and mutiny. COMMOTION, EMOTION, MOMENT, MOTIF,MOTION, MOTIVE, MOVE, MUTINY, PROMOTIONmould English has three words mould. By someway the oldest is ‘earth, soil’ [OE], which comesultimately from the Indo-European base *mel-,*mol-, *ml- ‘grind’ (source also of English meal‘flour’, mill, etc). Moulder [16] may be derivedfrom it. Mould ‘form’ [13] is assumed to comefrom Old French modle ‘form, shape, pattern’.This was descended from Latin modulus ‘smallmeasure’ (source of English module), adiminutive form of modus ‘measure’ (source ofEnglish mode, model, etc). Mould ‘fungus’ [15]appears to have originated as an adjective,meaning ‘mouldy’. This in turn was an adjectivaluse of the past participle of a now obsolete verbmoul ‘go mouldy’, which was borrowed from anassumed Old Norse *mugla. MEAL, MILL, MOLAR, MOULDER; MODE, MODEL,MOOD

moult [14] The etymological meaning of moult issimply ‘change’. It comes (via an assumed butnever recorded Old English *mūtian) from aprehistoric Germanic verb borrowed from Latinmūtāre ‘change’ (source of English mutate). Theextreme semantic narrowing down from‘change’ to ‘change a coat of feathers’ is showntoo in the related mews, which originallydenoted ‘cages for moulting hawks’. Thespelling with l, which started to appear in the16th century, is due to association with wordssuch as fault, whose l at that time was generallynot pronounced. When it began to be, moultfollowed suit. MEWS, MUTATEmountain [13] Latin mōns ‘mountain’ couldwell go back ultimately to a variant of the base*min- ‘jut’ which produced English eminent,imminent, menace, and prominent. Englishacquired it originally direct from Latin as anoun, mount [OE], which is now used only in thenames of mountains. The verb mount followedin the 14th century, via Old French munter. Latinmōns had a derived adjective montānus‘mountainous’, which was adapted in VulgarLatin to the noun *montānea ‘mountainousarea’. This made its way into Old French asmontaigne, by which time it meant simply‘mountain’ – whence English mountain.Amount [13] comes ultimately from the Latinphrase ad montem ‘to the mountain’, hence‘upwards’; and paramount [16] in turn derivesfrom an Old French phrase par amont ‘byabove’, hence ‘superior’. AMOUNT, EMINENT, IMMINENT, MENACE,MOUNT, PARAMOUNT, PROMINENT,TANTAMOUNTmouse [OE] Mouse is an ancient word, withrelatives today in all the Germanic and Slaviclanguages. Its Indo-European ancestor was*mūs-, which produced Greek mūs, Latin mūs(something of a dead end: the modern Romancelanguages have abandoned it), Sanskrit mūs(source, via a very circuitous route, of Englishmusk), and prehistoric Germanic *mūs-. This hasevolved into German maus, Dutch muis,Swedish and Danish mus, and English mouse.And the Slavic branch of the ‘mouse’-familyincludes Russian mysh’, Polish mysz, and Serbo-Croat mish. English relatives of mouse includemuscle and mussel (ultimately the same word)and marmot [17], which goes back to a VulgarLatin accusative form *mūrem montis ‘mouse ofthe mountain’. MARMOT, MUSCLE, MUSK, MUSSELmousse see MOSSmoustache [16] Moustache comes via Frenchfrom Italian mostaccio, which goes backultimately to Greek mústax ‘upper lip,moustache’. The synonymous mustachio [16]appears to have originated as a blend ofmostaccio with the related Spanish mostacho.mouth [OE] Mouth is part of a general Germanicfamily of ‘mouth’-words that go back to aprehistoric *munthaz: its modern relativesinclude German and Danish mund, Dutch mond,341 muesliand Swedish mun. The loss of the nasalconsonant is part of a general phenomenon thathappened in primitive Old English (and also inOld Frisian and Old Saxon) whose effects can beseen also in goose (beside German gans) andtooth (beside German zahn). It is thought that*munthaz itself comes from the same Indo-European source as produced Latin mentum‘chin’.move [13] Move comes via Anglo-Normanmover from Latin movēre ‘move’, which wasrelated to Sanskrit mīv- ‘push, press’.Derivatives of the Latin verb have been a richsource of English vocabulary, includingemotion, moment, motion, motor, and mutiny. EMOTION, MOMENT, MOTION, MOTOR, MUTINYmuch [13] The Old English word for ‘much’ wasmycel (a relative of Old Norse mikill, from whichEnglish got the now archaic mickle [13]). It goesback ultimately to the same Indo-European baseas produced Latin magis ‘more’ (source ofEnglish master) and magnus ‘large’ (source ofEnglish magnitude) and Greek mégas ‘large’(source of the English prefix mega-). Mycelbecame early Middle English muchel, whichbegan to lose its second syllable in the 13thcentury. MAGNITUDE, MASTER, MOREmucilage see MUCUSmuck [13] The original meaning of muck is‘excrement’; the more general ‘dirt’ is a 14thcenturydevelopment. It goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *muk-, *meuk- ‘soft’. Thiswas also the source of Danish møg ‘dung’(which provides the first syllable of midden [14],a borrowing from the ancestor of Danishmødding, literally ‘dung-heap’). The sameGermanic base lies behind English meek [12],whose immediate Old Norse antecedent mjúkrmeant ‘soft, pliant’ – leading on in due course toEnglish ‘submissive’. MEEK, MIDDENmucus [17] Mucus was borrowed from Latinmūcus ‘nasal mucus’, which was related to twoancient verbs for ‘blow the nose’: Greekmússesthai and Latin ēmungere. Thehomophonic adjectival derivative mucous [17](as in mucous membrane) comes from Latinmūcōsus. Related forms to have reached Englishare mucilage [14], from the late Latin derivativemūcilāgō, and moist. MOIST, MUCILAGEmud [14] The Old English word for ‘mud’ wasfen, which now survives only in the sense‘swamp’. It was replaced in the Middle Englishperiod by mud, probably a borrowing fromMiddle Low German mudde. This goes backultimately to a prehistoric base *meu-, *mu- thathas produced a range of words in the Indo-European languages denoting ‘dirt’ or ‘wet’:Greek múdos ‘damp’, for instance, and Polishmuł ‘slime’. Muddle [17] may come fromMiddle Dutch moddelen ‘make muddy’, aderivative of modde ‘mud’.muesli [20] Etymologically, muesli means ‘littlepap’. It is a Swiss-German diminutive form of

mule 342German mus ‘pulp, purée’. Old English had thecognate mōs, which survived into the 16thcentury in the compound apple-mose ‘dish madefrom a purée of stewed apples’.mule English has two words mule. The ‘donkeylikeanimal’ [13] comes via Old French mul fromLatin mūlus, which was borrowed from a pre-Latin language of the Mediterranean area;Albanian mušk ‘mule’ is related. Mule the‘slipper’ [16] is probably an adaptation of Latinmulleus, which denoted a sort of red or purpleshoe worn by high-ranking magistrates in Rome.This was short for mulleus calceus ‘red shoe’,and mulleus itself appears to have been derivedfrom mullus ‘red mullet’ (ultimate source ofEnglish mullet [15]), which in turn came fromGreek múllos, a relative of mélās ‘black’. MULLETmultiply [13] Multiply is one of a large family ofEnglish words based on Latin multus ‘much’, aword of uncertain origin which may be related toGreek mála ‘very’ and Latin melior ‘better’.Multiply itself comes from the Latin derivativemultiplicāre, formed with the element plic-‘fold’ found also in complicated, explicit, etc,and therefore very closely parallel to the nativeEnglish compound manifold. Other members ofthe family include multiple [17], from late Latinmultiplus (the -plus is a relative of the -plic- inmultiplicāre); multitude [14], from Latinmultitūdō ‘crowd’, formed with the abstractnoun suffix -tūdō; and of course the host ofwords formed since the 16th century with theprefix multi-, including multifarious [17] (basedon Latin -fārius ‘doing’), multilateral [17],multinational [20], multiracial [20], andmultistorey [20]. FOLDmumum see MUMMY, MUMPSmumble see MUMPSmummer see MUMPSmummy English has two words mummy. Theone meaning ‘mother’ [19], although notrecorded in print until comparatively recently, isone of a range of colloquial ‘mother’-words,such as mama and mammy, that go backultimately to the syllable ma, imitative of asuckling baby (see MAMMAL and MOTHER), andwas probably common in dialect speech muchearlier. The 19th century saw its adoption intothe general language. The abbreviation mum[19] has a parallel history.The Egyptian mummy [14] comes ultimatelyfrom Arabic mūmiyā ‘embalmed body’, aderivative of mūm ‘embalming wax’, but when itfirst arrived in English (via medieval Latinmumia and Old French mumie) it was used for a‘medicinal ointment prepared from mummifiedbodies’ (‘Take myrrh, sarcocol [a gum-resin],and mummy … and lay it on the nucha [spinalcord]’, Lanfranc’s Science of Cirurgie, c. 1400).The word’s original sense ‘embalmed body’ didnot emerge in English until the early 17thcentury. MAMA, MAMMYmumps [16] The dialect noun mump meant‘grimace’; and the use of its plural mumps for thedisease is thought to have been originally anallusion to the distorted expression caused by theswollen neck glands. Mump itself is presumablyrelated to the verb mump ‘sulk’ [16], and belongsto a family of words (including also mumble[14]) based on the syllable mum, representing an‘indistinct sound made through closed lips’(mum ‘silent’ [14] itself, as in ‘keep mum’,comes from this source, as does mummer [15],originally ‘mime actor’). MUM, MUMBLE, MUMMERmunicipal [16] Latin mūnus meant ‘office, duty,gift’. Combined with -ceps ‘taker’ (a derivativeof the verb capere ‘take’, source of Englishcapture) it formed mūniceps, which denoted a‘citizen of a Roman city (known as amūnicipium) whose inhabitants had Romancitizenship but could not be magistrates’. Frommūnicipium was derived the adjectivemūnicipālis, source of English municipal; thiswas originally used for ‘of the internal affairs ofa state, domestic’, and the modern application tothe sphere of local government did not emergestrongly until the 19th century. The stem of Latinmūnus also crops up in commūnis (source ofEnglish common), and so community andmunicipality are etymologically related.Mūnus in the later sense ‘gift’ formed thebasis of the Latin adjective mūnificus ‘givinggifts’, hence ‘generous’, from which ultimatelyEnglish gets munificent [16]. CAPTURE, COMMONmural [16] The Latin for ‘wall’ was mūrus,derivatives of which have given English immure[16] and mural. It came from an earlier formmoerus, to which was related moenia ‘walls’,source of the verb mūnīre ‘fortify, defend’. Thishas given English muniment ‘documentary proofof ownership, which ‘defends’ one’s right tosomething’ [15] and munition [16] (whenceammunition). AMMUNITION, IMMURE, MUNIMENT, MUNITIONmurder [OE] The ultimate source of murder isthe Indo-European base *mor-, *mr- ‘die’(source also of English mortal). Its extension*mrt- produced a prehistoric Germanic *mortam(source of German, Swedish, and Danish mordand Dutch moord ‘murder’) and *murthram,from which comes English murder. MORTALmuscat see MUSKmuscle [16] Ultimately, muscle and mussel [OE]are the same word, and both owe their origin toa supposed resemblance to a mouse. They goback to Latin mūsculus, literally ‘little mouse’, adiminutive form of mūs ‘mouse’, which wasapplied to the shellfish because of a similarity inshape and colour, and to ‘muscle’ because theshape and movement of certain muscles beneaththe skin, such as the biceps, reminded people ofa mouse. Latin mūsculus ‘mussel’ was borrowedinto Old English as muscle or muxle; the -ssspellingbegan to emerge in the 15th century,inspired by Middle Low German mussel (which

came from *muscula, a Vulgar Latinfeminization of Latin mūsculus and source ofFrench moule ‘mussel’) and reinforced in the16th century by the introduction via Old Frenchof muscle for ‘muscle’.The notion of resemblance to a mouse alsolies behind English musk. MOUSE, MUSSELmuseumuseum [17] Etymologically, a museum is aplace devoted to the ‘muses’. It comes via Latinmūsēum ‘library, study’ from Greek mouseion‘place of the muses’, a noun based on theadjective mouseios ‘of the muses’. This in turnwas derived from mousa ‘muse’, source ofEnglish muse [14]. Other English words fromthe same source are mosaic and music. But muse‘ponder’ is not related; it comes, like its firstcousin amuse, from Old French muse ‘animal’smouth’. MOSAIC, MUSE, MUSICmusic [13] Etymologically, music comes fromthe ‘muses’, Greek goddesses who inspiredpoets, painters, musicians, etc. The word tracesits history back via Old French musique andLatin mūsica to Greek mousiké, a noun use ofmousikós ‘of the muses’, an adjective derivedfrom mousa ‘muse’. The specialization of theword’s meaning began in Greek – first to ‘poetrysung to music’, and subsequently to ‘music’alone. MUSE, MUSEUMmusk [14] Like the substance musk itself, thename musk came to Europe from the East. Itsultimate ancestor appears to have been Sanskritmuska ‘scrotum, testicle’. This meant literally‘little mouse’ (it was a diminutive form ofSanskrit mūs ‘mouse’), and its metaphoricalreapplication was due to a supposed similarity inshape between mice and testicles (a parallelinspiration gave rise to English muscle andmussel). The gland from which the male muskdeer secretes musk was held to resemble ascrotum, and so Persian took the Sanskrit wordfor ‘scrotum’ over, as mushk, and used it for‘musk’. It reached English via late Latin muscus.The -meg of English nutmeg comesultimately from Latin muscus, and other Englishrelatives include muscat [16], the name of agrape that supposedly smells of musk, and itsderivative muscatel [14]. MOUSE, MUSCATEL, MUSCLE, MUSSEL, NUTMEGmusket see MOSQUITOmuslin [17] Etymologically, muslin is ‘clothfrom Mosul’, a city in Iraq where fine cottonfabric was once made. The Arabic form mūslinwas adopted into Italian as mussolino, and madeits way into English via French mousseline.mussel see MUSCLEmust English has three words must. By far thecommonest is of course the verb, ‘have to’ [OE],which originated in Old English as the past tenseof the now obsolete mūt ‘may, must’. It hasrelatives in German muss and Dutch moet, but itsultimate origins are not known for certain (theremay be some distant link with Germanic343 muzzle‘measure’-words, such as English mete,suggesting a semantic progression from anoriginal ‘time measured out for doingsomething’, through ‘have time to dosomething’, ‘be able to do something’, and ‘beallowed to do something’ to ‘have to dosomething’).Must ‘unfermented grape juice for makinginto wine’ [OE] comes from Latin mustum ‘newwine’, a noun use of the adjective mustus ‘new’.Mustard is a derivative. And the esoteric must‘sexual frenzy in elephants, camels, etc’ [19]comes via Urdu from Persian mast ‘drunk’. MUSTARDmustachio see MOUSTACHEmustang [19] Etymologically, a mustang is a‘mixed’ animal. The word comes from MexicanSpanish mestengo, which originally in Spanishmeant ‘stray’. This was derived from mesta‘annual roundup of cattle, participated in by allthe herdsmen, in which stray cattle weredisposed of’, which in turn goes back tomedieval Latin mixta. And mixta (literally‘mixed’) was used for the wild or stray animalsthat got ‘mixed’ in with the graziers’ herds (itwas a noun use of the feminine past participle ofmiscēre ‘mix’, source of English miscellaneousand mix). The word passed early on from ‘straycattle’ to ‘stray horses’. MISCELLANEOUS, MIXmustard [13] Mustard was originally made bymixing the crushed seeds of various plants of thecabbage family with the freshly pressed juice ofgrapes – the ‘must’. Hence its name, whichcomes from Old French moustarde, a wordderived from a descendant of Latin mustum ‘newwine’ (source of English must ‘grape juice’). MUSTmuster see MONSTERmusty see MOISTmutate [19] Semantically, mutate is probably themost direct English descendant of the Indo-European base *moi-, *mei- ‘change, exchange’,which has also given English mad, mean‘unworthy, ignoble’, municipal, mutual [15](from Latin mūtuus ‘exchanged, reciprocal’), thefinal syllable of common, and probably migrate[17]. Mutate itself comes from Latin mūtāre‘change’ (source also of English mews andmoult), and was preceded into English by somecenturies by the derivatives mutable [14] andmutation [14]. MEWS, MOULT, MUTUALmutiny [16] Etymologically, a mutiny is simply a‘movement’. The word was adapted from thenow obsolete mutine, a borrowing from Frenchmutin ‘rebellion’. This in turn was a derivative ofan earlier muete, literally ‘movement’, hence‘rebellion’ (remembered in English in the relatedémeute ‘uprising’), which came from VulgarLatin *movita, a descendant of Latin movēre‘move’ (source of English move). ÉMEUTE, MOTION, MOVEmuzzle see AMUSE

my 344my [12] My is simply a reduced form of mine,which used to be an adjective, but is nowrestricted almost entirely to pronoun use. At firstit was used only before consonants (except h),but gradually from the 14th century it came to beused before all nouns, whatever their initialsound. The first record of its use as anexclamation (short, of course, for my goodness!,my word!, etc) comes from the early 18thcentury. ME, MINEmyrmedon see ANTmystery [14] Greek múein meant ‘close one’seyes or mouth’, and hence was used figurativelyfor ‘keep secret’. Its association with secretinitiation ceremonies inspired the formationfrom it of muein ‘initiate’, whose derivativemústēs meant ‘initiated person’. This in turnformed the basis of mustérion ‘secret ceremony,secret thing’, which passed into English viaLatin mystērium. Also derived from mústēs wasmustikós, from which ultimately English getsmystic [14] and mystical [15]. MYSTIC

Nnaff [20] There seem to be two separate wordsnaff in British slang, but the origins of both aremysterious. The first, naff off, appeared in the1950s. Functionally it is a euphemistic substitutefor fuck off, and there could be some connectionwith eff, another euphemism for fuck (perhapsthe n in an eff wandered out of place).Alternatively it could come from naf, an oldbackslang reversal of fan in the sense ‘femalegenitals’. The second, an adjective meaning‘unstylish, unfashionable, tasteless’, is firstrecorded in 1969. Its antecedents are even moreobscure. Among possible relatives are northernEnglish dialect niffy-naffy ‘stupid’ and naffy,naffin and naffhead ‘idiot’ and Scots nyaff‘unpleasant person’.nail [OE] The Indo-European ancestor of nailwas *nogh- or *onogh-. The latter was thesource of Latin unguis (which evolved intoFrench ongle and Italian unghia and has givenEnglish ungulate [19]) and Greek ónux (sourceof English onyx). Both these strands refer only tothe sort of nails that grow on fingers and toes, butthe Germanic branch of the family (which hascome from *nogh- through a prehistoricGermanic *naglaz) has differentiated into a‘fastening pin’ – originally of wood, latterly ofmetal. Hence English nail and German nagelcover both meanings (although Dutch andSwedish nagel and Danish negl are used only forthe anatomical ‘nail’). ONYX, UNGULATEnaive see NATIVEnaked [OE] Naked goes back ultimately to Indo-European *nogw- ‘unclothed’, which alsoproduced Latin nūdus (source of English nude[16]) and Russian nagój ‘naked’. The pastparticipial form derived from this, *nogwedhos,passed into prehistoric Germanic as *naquethaz,which has subsequently differentiated toGerman nackt, Dutch naakt, Swedish naken,Danish nøgen, and English naked. NUDEnamby-pamby [18] Namby-pamby originatedin the early 18th century as a derisive nicknamefor the English poet Ambrose Philips (1674–1749), who wrote feebly sentimental pastorals(‘Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling’ givessomething of their flavour). They appear to havegot on the nerves particularly of hiscontemporary, the author Henry Carey (?1687–1741), who is credited with coining thenickname (based, of course, on the first syllableof Philip’s forename). The first record of its useas a general term comes from 1745.name [OE] Name is an ancient word, whichtraces its history back to Indo-European*-nomen-. This has produced Latin nōmen(source of English nominate, noun, etc), Greekónoma (source of English anonymous [17] –etymologically ‘nameless’ – and synonym [16]),Welsh enw, and Russian imja, among manyothers. Its prehistoric Germanic descendant was*namōn, which has evolved to German andEnglish name, Dutch naam, Swedish namn, andDanish navn. ANONYMOUS, NOMINATE, NOUN, SYNONYMnamesake see SAKEnapalm [20] Napalm, a jelly-like substance, ismade by thickening petrol with the aluminiumsalts of naphthenic acid and palmitic acid, andthe term napalm was coined in the early 1940sfrom the first syllables of naphthenic andpalmitic (the former is from naphtha [16],ultimately of Greek origin, the latter from Latinpalma (see PALM), because the acid is obtainedfrom palm oil). It was used in World War II, butit was the Korean War that really brought it topublic attention, and it is from then that the useof napalm as a verb dates.napkin [15] Latin mappa meant ‘cloth’ (it is thesource of English map). As it passed into OldFrench its m became transformed into an n,producing nappe. This was borrowed intoEnglish as the long-defunct nape ‘cloth’, which,with the addition of the diminutive suffix -kin,has bequeathed napkin to modern English. Theabbreviation nappy dates from the early 20thcentury. From derivatives of Old French nappeEnglish also gets apron and napery [14]. APRON, MAPnarcissus [16] The plant-name narcissus goesback via Latin to Greek narkissos. Writers ofancient times such as Pliny and Plutarchconnected it with Greek nárkē ‘numbness’(source of English narcotic), a temptinginference given the plant’s sedative effect, but infact it probably came from an unknown pre-Greek Aegean language. In Greek mythologythe name passed to a vain youth who waspunished by the gods for spurning the love ofEcho. They made him fall in love with thereflection of his beautiful features in a pool. Hedied gazing at his own image and was changedinto a narcissus plant. In the 19th century hisstory inspired the word narcissism. At first it wasjust a general term for excessive self-admirationand self-centredness, but in the 1890s (probablyat the hands of the sexologist Havelock Ellis) itbecame a technical term for a specificpersonality disorder marked by those traits.

narcotic 346narcotic [14] Greek nárkē meant ‘numbness’.From it was derived the verb narkoun ‘makenumb’, which in turn formed the basis of theadjective narkōtikós ‘numbing’, which passedinto English via medieval Latin narcōticus andOld French narcotique.narrate [17] To narrate something isetymologically to ‘make it known’. The wordcomes from Latin narrāre ‘give an account of’,which was derived from gnārus ‘knowing’ and ishence related to English ignore, recognize, and,distantly, know. English acquired the derivednoun narration [15] considerably earlier than theverb (which was widely condemned in the 18thcentury for its inelegance), and it could be thatnarrate represents a back-formation fromnarration rather than a new introduction directlyfrom the Latin verb. IGNORE, KNOW, RECOGNIZEnarrow [OE] Narrow comes from a prehistoricGermanic *narwaz, whose only other modernrepresentative is Dutch naar ‘unpleasant, sad’(although it also occurs in Norva-sund, the OldNorse term for the ‘Straits of Gibraltar’). It is notknown for certain where it comes from, but aconnection has been suggested with Latin nervus‘sinew, bowstring’ (source of English nerve) andOld High German snuor ‘string’, which mightpoint back to an ancestral sense ‘tying togethertightly’.narwhal [17] The narwhal, a small arctic whalewith a long unicorn-like tusk, is whitish incolour, which evidently reminded Vikingseafarers somewhat morbidly of a corpse, forthey named it in Old Icelandic nāhvalr, literally‘corpse whale’. In Danish and Norwegian thisbecame narhval, and English took it over andpartially anglicized it as narh whale. Over thecenturies this has contracted to narwhal.nascent see NATIVEnasturtium [17] The nasturtium plant has apeppery taste (its immature flower buds are oftenused as an alternative to capers), and traditionhas it that the Romans named it nasturtiumbecause its pungency made them pucker up theirnoses. According to this theory, the word is analteration of an earlier *nāsitortium, whichwould have been a compound formed fromnāsus ‘nose’ and tort-, the past participle stem oftorquēre ‘twist’ (source of English torture).nasty [14] Nasty, now such a widespread term ofdisapproval, is not that ancient a word inEnglish, and it is not too certain where it camefrom. In the 14th and 15th centuries it was oftenspelled naxty, and this, together with one early17th-century example of nasky, has suggestedsome connection with Swedish dialect naskug‘dirty, nasty’. And a link has also been proposedwith Dutch nestig ‘dirty’, which may denoteetymologically ‘made dirty like a bird’s nest’.‘Dirty’ was the original sense of the Englishadjective; the more general ‘unpleasant’ did notbegin to emerge until the end of the 17th century.natal see NATIVEnationnation [13] Etymologically a nation is a ‘breed’or ‘stock’. It is one of a wide range of Englishwords that go back ultimately to Latin nāscī ‘beborn’, and its immediate source is the derivednoun nātiō. This literally meant ‘that which hasbeen born’, a ‘breed’, but was soon used byextension for a ‘species’ or ‘race’, and then byfurther narrowing down for a ‘race of people,nation’. The notion of ‘common ancestry’underlying the term survived into English, butover the centuries has gradually been overtakenby the political concept of an organizedterritorial unit. The derivative nationality datesfrom the 17th century. NATIVEnative [14] Native is one of a large family ofEnglish words that go back ultimately to theLatin verb nāscī. This meant ‘be born’, and wasa descendant of the Indo-European base *gen-,*gn- ‘produce’, which also gave English gene,general, generate, etc. From its past participialstem nāt- was formed the adjective nātīvus ‘frombirth, born’, which has produced English native(and also, via Old French, naive [17], which isetymologically the equivalent of ‘bornyesterday’), and also its derivative nativity [12](applied from earliest times specifically to thebirth of Christ). Other English words from thesame source include cognate [17], innate [15],nascent [17], natal [14], nation, nature, noel(earlier nowel [14], from an Old Frenchdescendant of Latin nātālis ‘of birth’), pregnant,puny, and renaissance [19] (literally ‘rebirth’). COGNATE, GENE, GENERAL, GENERATE, INNATE,NAIVE, NASCENT, NATION, NATURE, NOEL,PREGNANT, PUNY, RENAISSANCEnatty see NEATnature [13] Etymologically, someone’s nature isthe qualities they were ‘born’ with. The wordcomes via Old French nature from Latin nātūra,a derivative of the verb nāscī ‘be born’ (source ofEnglish nation, native, etc). This originallymeant simply ‘birth’, but by classical times ithad developed to the ‘innate properties orqualities of something or someone’, and hence tothe ‘inherent course of things’, the ‘way thingsare in the world’. The common English sense‘physical world’ (as in nature study) first beganto emerge in the 16th century. NATIVEnavy [14] Latin nāvis ‘ship’ is the ultimatesource of navy. In post-classical times itspawned an offspring nāvia ‘fleet’, which passedinto English via Old French navie. Other Latinderivatives of nāvis were nāvālis, source ofEnglish naval [16], and the verb nāvigāre‘manage a ship’, from which English getsnavigate [16] (navvy [19] originated as acolloquial abbreviation for navigator, a termapplied to someone who dug ‘navigationcanals’). In medieval Latin nāvis was applied tothe central part of a church, from the passingresemblance in shape to a ship, and the word wasanglicized as nave [17].Nāvis was related to Greek naus ‘ship’,whose contributions to English include nautical[16], nautilus [17], nausea [16] (etymologically

‘seasickness’), and, somewhat surprisingly,noise. NAUSEA, NAUTICAL, NAVIGATE, NOISEnay see NOnear [12] Historically, near is a comparativeform, and its ancestor originally meant ‘nearer’.It was borrowed from Old Norse náer, thecomparative of ná- ‘near’, which came from thesame prehistoric Germanic source as producedEnglish nigh [OE] and next (not to mentionGerman nah ‘near’). By the time it reachedEnglish it had lost its comparative force, andsimply meant ‘close’ (which is also the sense ofits modern Scandinavian descendants, Swedishnära and Danish nær). NEIGHBOUR, NEXT, NIGHneat English has two words neat. The older isnow virtually obsolete, while the commoner is acomparatively recent introduction. Neat ‘tidy’[16] was borrowed from French net ‘neat, clean’.This goes back to Latin nitidus ‘elegant, shiny’,a derivative of the verb nītēre ‘shine’. Englishoriginally acquired the word in the 14th centuryas net ‘clean, tidy’ (from which the modern net‘with deductions’ developed). This had a 16thcenturyderivative netty, which may be thesource of modern English natty [18].Neat ‘cow, ox’ [OE] is now encountered onlyin gastronomic contexts, such as ‘neat’s footjelly’, and even then is an archaism. It goes backto prehistoric Germanic *nautam, a derivative ofa base meaning ‘use’, and hence reflects (likecattle itself) the original notion of cattle as‘useful property’. NATTY, NETnebula [17] As its form suggests, nebula wasoriginally a Latin word, but it goes back to aprehistoric Indo-European base (*nebh- ‘cloud’)which produced a wide range of otherdescendants, including German nebel ‘cloud’,Greek néphos ‘cloud’, and Latvian debess ‘sky’.It also got into Old English, as nifol ‘dark’. TheLatin word was originally used in English for asort of ‘cataract’ over the eye, and the presentdayastronomical application to a ‘cloud’ of starsdid not emerge until the early 18th century. Thederivative nebulous [16] is an earlier borrowing.necessary [14] The original Latin adjectivemeaning ‘necessary’ was necesse (it was formedwith the negative particle ne- from the stem ofcēdere ‘yield’, source of English cede, and hencemeant etymologically ‘unyielding’). This wassubsequently extended to necessārius, andEnglish acquired it via Anglo-Norman*necessarie. CEDE, CONCEDE, PROCEEDneck [OE] Neck originally meant only the ‘backor nape of the neck’ (that is what its modernGerman relative nacken denotes, and in OldEnglish times the usual word for ‘neck’ ingeneral was heals). It seems to go back to aprehistoric Indo-European base *knoksignifying‘high point, ridge’, which alsoproduced Irish cnoc ‘hill’. The use of the verbneck for ‘kiss and cuddle’ dates back at least tothe early 19th century.347 negotiatenecromancy [13] Greek nekrós meant ‘corpse’(it has given English necrophilia [19],necropolis ‘cemetery’ [19], and necrosis ‘deathof tissue’ [17] as well as necromancy, and goesback to a base *nek- ‘kill’ which also producedLatin nex ‘killing’, source of English internecineand pernicious, and possibly Greek néktar,source of English nectar). Addition of manteíā‘divination’, a derivative of mántis ‘prophet,diviner’ (from which English gets the insectnamemantis [17], an allusion to its raised frontlegs, which give it an appearance of praying),produced nekromanteíā ‘foretelling the future bytalking to the dead’, which passed into late Latinas necromantīa. By the Middle Ages theapplication of the term had broadened out to‘black magic’ in general, and this led to anassociation of the first element of the word withLatin niger ‘black’. Hence when it first arrived inEnglish it was in the form nigromancy, and therestoration of the original necro- did not happenuntil the 16th century. INTERNECINE, MANTIS, PERNICIOUSnectar [16] Nectar was originally the drink of theGreek gods, but soon after the word’s arrival inEnglish it was being used metaphorically for any‘delicious drink’. It comes via Latin nectar fromGreek néktar, and it has been speculated that thismay have been derived from the base *nek- ‘kill’(source also of English necromancy), as somesort of allusion to the ‘immortality’ of the gods.Nectarine [17], the name of a sort of peach basedon the now disused adjective nectarine ‘likenectar’, was probably inspired by Germannektarpfirsich ‘nectar-peach’.need [OE] Need is a widespread Germanic noun,with relatives also in German not, Dutch nood,Swedish nöd, and Danish nød. It comes from aprehistoric Germanic *nauthiz, whose non-Germanic relatives, such as Old Prussian nautin‘necessity, distress’ and Czech nyti ‘languish’,reveal its darker past, in which the accent was on‘distress’ and ‘straitened circumstances’ ratherthan just the desirability of having something(these connotations survive in German not,which means ‘misery, danger, emergency’ aswell as ‘need’).needle [OE] Etymologically, a needle is a‘sewing’ implement. The word comes from aprehistoric Germanic *nēthlō (source also ofGerman nadel, Dutch naald, Swedish nål, andDanish naal), which was derived from an Indo-European base *nē- ‘sew’ (represented also inEnglish nerve and neural). NERVE, NEURALnefarious [16] Latin nefās ‘sin’ denotedetymologically something that was contrary tothe divine law. It was a compound noun formedfrom the negative particle ne- and fās ‘divinelaw, dictates of religion’. From it was derived theadjective nefārius, source of English nefarious.negative see RENEGADEnegotiate [16] The etymological notionunderlying negotiate is of ‘not being at leisure’,and hence of ‘being busy’. The word comesultimately from Latin negōtium ‘business’,

negro 348which was a compound formed from thenegative particle neg and ōtium ‘leisure’ (sourceof English otiose [18]). From it was derived theverb negōtiārī ‘do business’, which passed intoEnglish as negotiate. There is some earlyevidence in the derivatives negotiation andnegotiator that the original Latin sense of theword survived into English, but in the verb itselfit had already developed via ‘transact business’and ‘hold business discussions’ to ‘holddiscussions’ generally. OTIOSEnegro see DENIGRATEneighbour [OE] Etymologically, yourneighbour is simply someone who ‘lives near’you. It is a compound formed in the Old Englishperiod from nēah (ancestor of modern Englishnigh) and gebūr ‘dweller’ (a descendant of theprolific Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’, which alsoproduced English be, booth, bower, build, etc).Parallel formations in other Germanic languagesinclude German nachbar and Swedish andDanish nabo. The derivative neighbourhooddates from the 15th century, but was not used inits main modern sense ‘district’ until the late17th century. BE, BOOTH, BOWER, BUILD, BURLY, BYRE,HUSBAND, NEARneither [13] Despite the two words’ similarity,neither is not just either with a negative prefixtacked on. It comes ultimately from Old Englishnāhwæther ‘neither’, a compound formed fromnā ‘not’ (which survives as no in modern English‘whether or no’) and hwæther ‘which of two’(ancestor of modern English whether). In the lateOld English period it was contracted to nawther,and in Middle English, under the influence ofeither, this became transformed into neither. WHETHERnemesis see NOMADNeolithic see LITHOGRAPHneophyte [16] Neophyte is one of anevergrowing family of English words containingthe prefix neo-, which comes from Greek néos‘new’ (a relative of English new). Most of themare English formations (neoclassical [19],Neolithic [19], neologism [18], neonatal [20],neoplatonism [19], etc), but neophyte goes backto a Greek compound, neóphutos, which meantliterally ‘newly planted’. Also derived fromGreek néos is the name of the gas neon [19], socalled in 1898 because it was ‘newly’discovered. NEON, NEWnephew [13] Nephew goes back ultimately toIndo-European *nepōt-, which denoted a rangeof indirect male descendants, including‘grandson’ and ‘nephew’. Among its offspringwere Greek anepsiós ‘nephew’, Sanskrit nápāt‘grandson’, Germanic *nebon (source ofGerman neffe and Dutch neef ‘nephew’), andLatin nepōs ‘nephew, grandson’ (source ofEnglish nepotism [17], etymologically‘favouring one’s nephews’). This passed intoOld French as neveu, from which English gotnephew (replacing the related native Englishterm neve). The corresponding Indo-Europeanfeminine form was *neptī-, which is the ultimatesource of English niece. NEPOTISM, NIECEnephrite see JADEnerd [20] It seems likely that nerd, a term for adull, socially inept or otherwise obnoxiousperson that appeared in US slang in the early1950s, was inspired by a whimsical creaturecalled a ‘nerd’ that was invented by theAmerican children’s author ‘Dr Seuss’(Theodore Seuss Geisel (1904–91)) andintroduced by him in his book If I Ran the Zoo(1950): ‘And then, just to show them, I’ll sail toKa-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preepand a Proo, a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker,too!’ In thinking up the word he may have beeninfluenced by Mortimer Snerd, the name of adummy used by the American ventriloquistEdgar Bergen.nerve [16] Latin nervus meant ‘sinew,bowstring’. It and its Greek relative neuron(source of English neural) may belong to a widerfamily of words that includes Latin nēre ‘spin’ (arelative of English needle) and possibly alsoEnglish narrow, perhaps with a commonmeaning element. The application to ‘bundle offibres carrying sensory or other impulses’ seemsto have begun in Greek, but was soon adoptedinto the Latin word, and was brought with it intoEnglish. Metaphorically, the Romans usednervus for ‘strength, force’, an applicationperhaps lying behind the English sense‘courage’, first recorded in the early 19thcentury. The use of the plural nerves for‘agitation, apprehension’ (and of the adjectivenervous [14] for ‘apprehensive’) is an Englishdevelopment, which probably started in the mid-18th century. NEEDLE, NEURALness see NOSEnest [OE] Etymologically, a nest is a place for‘sitting down’. It is a very ancient word, andtraces its history all the way back to Indo-European *nizdo-, a compound formed from *ni‘down’ (source of English beneath and nether)and *sed- (ancestor of English sit). From it cameEnglish nest (a word shared by German andDutch), and also Latin nīdus ‘nest’, source ofOld French niche ‘nest’ – whence English niche[17]. Nestle [OE] was derived from nest. BENEATH, NESTLE, NETHER, SITnet English has two distinct words net. Thecommoner and more ancient, ‘mesh’ [OE], is awidespread Germanic word: German has therelated netz, Dutch and Danish net, and Swedishnät. Its ultimate origins are not known, althougha link with Latin nassa ‘wicker basket forcatching fish’ has been suggested. Net ‘withoutdeductions’ [14] comes from French net, whichwas borrowed into English again two centurieslater as neat. It was originally used, like itsFrench source, for ‘trim, clean’, but thisdeveloped via ‘unadulterated, unmixed’ to, bythe early 16th century, ‘free from any (further)

deduction’. The alternative spelling nett datesfrom the 16th century. NEATnether see BENEATHneural [19] Neural is one of a wide range ofwords for which English is indebted to Greekneuron ‘nerve’ (a relative of Latin nervus, fromwhich English gets nerve). Others includeneuralgia [19] (etymologically ‘nerve-pain’),neurology [17], neurosis [18], and neurotic [17]. NERVEneuter [14] From a formal point of view, Latinneuter is virtually identical to English neither.Both originated as compounds formed from anegative particle and an element meaning ‘whichof two’. In the case of neuter these were ne anduter, which in combination denotedetymologically ‘neither one thing nor the other’.The specialized application to grammaticalgender soon emerged, and it was in this sensethat neuter was first adopted into English. Thederivative neutral [16] goes back to Latinneutrālis.new [OE] New goes back a long way – to Indo-European *newos, in fact. This also producedGreek néos ‘new’ (source of English neophyteand a range of other neo- compounds), Latinnovus ‘new’ (ancestor of French nouveau, Italiannuovo, and Spanish nuevo, and source of Englishnovel, novice, etc), Welsh newydd ‘new’,Lithuanian naujas ‘new’, and Russian novyj. Itsprehistoric Germanic descendant was *neujaz,which has fanned out into German neu, Dutchnieuw, Swedish and Danish ny, and English new.The use of the plural noun news for‘information’ dates from the 15th century. NEON, NOVEL, NOVICEnewel see NOOSEnewfangled see FANGnewtnewt see NICKNAMEnext [OE] Etymologically, something that is nextis ‘nearest’. The word comes, like its Germanicrelatives, German nächste, Dutch naaste,Swedish näst, and Danish næst, from aprehistoric ancestor formed from *nēkh- ‘near’(from which English nigh is descended) and thesuperlative suffix *-istaz. A parallel comparativeformation has given English near. NEAR, NIGHnexus see CONNECTnice [13] Nice is one of the more celebratedexamples in English of a word changing itsmeaning out of all recognition over the centuries– in this case, from ‘stupid’ to ‘pleasant’. Itsultimate source was Latin nescius ‘ignorant’, acompound adjective formed from the negativeparticle ne- and the base of the verb scīre ‘know’(source of English science). This passed intoEnglish via Old French nice with minimalchange of meaning, but from then on a slow butsure semantic transformation took place, from‘foolish’ via ‘shy’, ‘fastidious’, and ‘refined’ toon the one hand ‘minutely accurate ordiscriminating’ (as in a ‘nice distinction’) and on349 nightthe other ‘pleasant, agreeable’ (first recorded inthe second half of the 18th century). SCIENCEniche see NESTnickel [18] The element nickel was named in1754 by the Swedish mineralogist Axel vonCronstedt. The word he chose was a truncatedform of kupfernickel, a term formerly used byGerman miners for niccolite, a nickle-bearingore. This meant literally ‘copperdemon’, anallusion probably to the fact that niccolite looksas though it contains copper, but does not. The-nickel part of the term represents a pet form ofthe name Nikolaus, perhaps chosen for itsresemblance to German nix ‘water-sprite’.Nickel was first used for a US five-cent coin(made of a copper and nickel alloy) in the 1880s.nickname [14] A nickname is etymologically an‘additional name’. The word was originallyekename, whose eke ‘addition’ was a derivativeof the verb eke (as in ‘eke out’). But by the 15thcentury an ekename was becomingmisinterpreted as a nekename – hence nickname(the same process produced newt [15] from ewt,ancestor of modern English eft ‘newt’, and thereverse happened to adder, apron, and umpire). EKEnicotine [19] Nicotine gets its name ultimatelyfrom Jean Nicot, 16th-century Frenchambassador in Lisbon, who in 1560 got hold ofsome samples of the new ‘tobacco’ and sentthem to the French queen Catherine de Medici.The tobacco-plant was named herba nicotiana‘herb of Nicot’ in his honour (whence themodern English term nicotiana for all plants ofthis genus), and nicotine was derived fromnicotiana, originally in French, for the addictivealkaloid obtained from it.niece [13] Niece comes ultimately from *neptī-,the feminine form of Indo-European *nepōt-(source of English nephew). This passed intoLatin as neptis ‘granddaughter, niece’, which inpost-classical times became *neptia. Old Frenchtook it over as niece – whence English niece.*Neptī- also had a Germanic descendant, *niptiz,which now survives only in German nichte andDutch nicht ‘niece’. NEPHEWnigger see DENIGRATEnigh see NEARnight [OE] Night is the English member of anancient Indo-European family of ‘night’-words,represented in virtually all the modern Europeanlanguages. The ancestral form was *nokt-, andfrom this have come Greek núx, Latin nox(source of English nocturnal [15] and nocturne[19], and forerunner of French nuit, Italian notte,and Spanish noche), Welsh nos, Latvian nakts,and Russian noch’. The Germanic descendant of*nokt- was *nakht-, source of modern Germanand Dutch nacht, Swedish natt, Danish nat, andEnglish night. The only exception to the generalEuropean picture is modern Irish oidhche‘night’, a word of unknown origin. NOCTURNAL

nightingale 350nightingale [OE] The nightingale’s name,appropriately enough, means literally ‘nightsinger’.It represents a 13th-century alteration ofan earlier nihtgale, which goes back to aprehistoric Germanic compound formed from*nakht ‘night’ and *galan ‘sing’ (a relative ofEnglish yell [OE] and possibly of gale). RelatedGermanic forms include German nachtigall,Dutch nachtegaal, Swedish näktergal, andDanish nattergal.nightmare [13] The mare of nightmare is notthe same word as mare ‘female horse’. It comesfrom Old English mære, which denoted a sort ofevil spirit or goblin which sat on sleepers’ chestsand gave them bad dreams. That is what thecompound nightmare meant too when itemerged in the early Middle English period, andthe metaphorical application to the bad dreamsupposedly caused by this incubus is notrecorded until the mid-16th century. YELLnil [19] Latin nil was a contracted form of nihil‘nothing’ (source of English nihilism [19]). Thisin turn was a shortening of an earlier nihilum, acompound formed from the negative particle nīand hīlum ‘small or trivial thing’, and thusdenoted etymologically ‘not a jot’. NIHILISMnine [OE] Nine is part of a general Indo-European family of ‘9’-words, which trace theirancestry back to a prehistoric *newn or *enewn.Among the descendants of these are Greekennéa, Latin novem (source of EnglishNovember), Irish nóin, Lithuanian devynì, andRussian devyat’. Its Germanic forms *niwun or*nigun have differentiated into German neun,Dutch negen, Swedish nio, Danish ni, andEnglish nine. Noon is so called from beingoriginally the ‘ninth’ hour. NOONno English has three words no, which come fromquite distinct sources (although they all, ofcourse, contain the ancient negative particle ne).No the negative reply [OE] meansetymologically ‘not ever, never’. It originated asa compound of ne and ā ‘ever’ (a relative ofarchaic modern English aye ‘ever’, whose ownnegative form is nay [12]) and the resulting nābecame in the 13th century no. The history of no‘not’ [OE] (which is now used virtually only inthe expression ‘whether or no’) is almost exactlyparallel: it was formed from Old English ō‘ever’, a variant of ā. The adjective no ‘not any’[13] is a reduced form of none, its final noriginally dispensed with before consonants. AYE, NAY; NONEnoble [13] Etymologically, to be noble is simplyto be ‘well known’. The word reached Englishvia Old French noble from Latin nōbilis. But thiswas only a later form of an original gnōbilis(preserved in the negative form ignoble [16]),which was derived from the base *gnō- ‘know’,source also of English notorious. It thusoriginally meant ‘knowable’, hence ‘known’,and only subsequently broadened out via ‘wellknown’ to ‘noble’ (which in ancient Romedenoted ‘belonging to a family of which manymembers had held high office in the state’). COGNITION, IGNOBLE, KNOW, NOTORIOUS,RECOGNIZEnocturnal see NIGHTnodule see NOOSEnoel see NATIVEnoise [13] Unlikely as it may seem, the ancestorof English noise meant ‘sickness’. It comes fromLatin nausea, source also, of course, of Englishnausea. This was used colloquially for the sort of‘hubbub’ or ‘confusion’ which is oftencoincident with someone being sick (andparticularly seasick, which was what nauseaoriginally implied), and Old French took it over,as noise, with roughly these senses. They laterdeveloped to ‘noisy dispute’, and modern Frenchnoise has retained the ‘dispute’ element of this,while English noise has gone for the ‘intrusivesound’. NAUSEA, NAUTICAL, NAVYnoisome [14] Noisome has no etymologicalconnection with noise. Its closest Englishrelative is annoy. This had a shortened from noy‘trouble, annoy, harm’, current from the 13th tothe 17th centuries, which was combined with thesuffix -some to form noysome, later noisome,‘harmful’. ANNOYnomad [16] The Greek verb némein had a verywide range of senses. It originally meant ‘dealout, dispense’, a signification mirrored in thederived nemesis [16] (etymologically the‘dealing out’ of what is due) and the possiblyrelated number. It developed subsequently to‘inhabit’ and to ‘control, manage’ (which isrepresented in English economy). But a furtherstrand was ‘put out to pasture’; and from thesame stem as produced némein was formed theadjective nomás ‘wandering about to findpasture for herds or flocks’. Its plural nomádeswas used to denote pastoral people who lived inthis way, and the word was passed on via Latinnomades and French (singular) nomade intoEnglish. ECONOMY, NEMESISnominate [16] Nominate is one of a small bandof English words descended from nōmen, theLatin representative of the Indo-European‘name’ word family that also includes Englishname. It was based on the derived verb nōmināre‘name’, which has also given English, viaFrench, nominee [17]. Other English words fromthe same source include nominal [15],nomenclature [17] (from Latin nōmenclātūra,whose second element was based on the verbcalāre ‘call’), noun, and renown. NAME, NOUN, RENOWNnonchalant [18] To be nonchalant isetymologically ‘not to get hot under the collar’.The word comes from French nonchalant, anadjective formed with the prefix non- ‘not’ fromthe present participle of the verb chaloir ‘beconcerned’. This goes back ultimately to Latin

calēre ‘be hot’ (a relative of English calorie andcauldron). CALORIE, CAULDRON, LUKEWARMnone [OE] Etymologically, none is simply ‘notone’. It was formed in the Old English periodfrom the negative particle ne and ān, ancestor ofmodern English one. It was originally both apronoun and an adjective, but in the latter role ithas been replaced by its reduced form no. ONEnonpareil see PAIRnonplus see PLURALnoonoon [OE] Noon denotes etymologically the‘ninth’ hour. It was adopted in the Old Englishperiod from Latin nōna, short for nōna hōra, the‘ninth hour’. Reckoning the day from sunrise, onaverage six o’clock, this meant that ‘noon’ wasthree o’clock in the afternoon (which wasoriginally when the office of nones [18] – arelated word – was said in the Roman catholicchurch). By the 12th century, however, we findnoon being used for a ‘midday meal’, and in theearly 13th century it had moved on to simply‘midday’, so it appears that some forwardshifting of a meal that had originally taken placein mid afternoon was responsible for altering themeaning of noon (modern English terms formealtimes, such as tea and dinner, are equallyslippery). NINEnoose [15] The notion underlying the wordnoose is of a ‘knot’, rather than of a ‘loop of ropemade with a knot’. The word comes from nos ornous, the Old French descendant of Latin nodus‘knot’. This was the source of English node [16],of course, and of the diminutive form nodule[16], but it has also made a couple of lessobvious contributions to English: dénouement[18], which comes via a French word denotingliterally the ‘untying of a knot’, and newel [14]‘staircase post’, which was borrowed from OldFrench nouel ‘knob’, a descendant of themedieval Latin diminutive nōdellus. DÉNOUEMENT, NEWEL, NODE, NODULEnor [14] Nor began life in the Old English periodas nother. This was a compound formed from thenegative particle and an unrecorded *ōther, aword related to either which expressed thenotion of ‘alternative’. In the Middle Englishperiod this was contracted to nor. EITHERnormal [17] Latin norma originally denoted asort of set square used by carpenters, masons, etcfor measuring right angles. It was extendedmetaphorically to a ‘rule, pattern, precept’, butEnglish originally took over its derivativenormālis as a mathematical term, in the fairlyliteral sense ‘perpendicular’. The more familiarmodern sense ‘standard, usual’ did not emergeuntil the 19th century, at about the same time asnormality, normalcy, and norm itself began toappear on the scene.Norman [13] Etymologically, the Normans wereand are ‘men of the north’, a reference to theScandinavians who settled in northern France inthe 9th century and whose possession of the351 notregion, under their leader Rollo, was officiallyrecognized by the French king in 911. The wordoriginated in Old Norse northmathr, literally‘northman’. In Old French that became normantor normand. That had a brief currency in Englishin the Middle Ages, but it was its plural formnormans, shorn of its -s, that provided thestandard modern English term.north [OE] North is a general West and NorthGermanic word for ‘north’, represented also inGerman, Swedish, and Danish nord and Dutchnoorden. It was also borrowed into French (fromOld English) as nord, from where it spread intoItalian and Romanian as nord and into Spanishas norte. It is not known for certain where itcame from, but a link has been suggested withnertro-, a word for ‘left’ in the extinct Oscan-Umbrian languages of Italy, which might meanthat the underlying meaning of north is ‘to theleft as one faces the rising sun’ (modern Irishtuaisceart ‘north’ was based on a word meaning‘left’).nose [OE] Nose is the English member of awidespread family of ‘nose’-words that tracetheir ancestry back to Indo-European *nas-. Thishas produced Latin nāsus (source of Englishnasal [17]), Sanskrit nás, Lithuanian nósis, andRussian, Polish, Czech, and Serbo-Croat nos. ItsGermanic descendant has differentiated intoGerman nase, Dutch neus, Swedish näsa,Danish næse, and English nose. Nozzle [17] andnuzzle [15] are probably derived from nose, andness ‘promontory, headland’ [OE] (nowencountered only in place-names) is related to it. NASAL, NESS, NOSTRIL, NOZZLE, NUZZLEnostalgia [18] Etymologically, nostalgia is painconnected with returning home – in other words,homesickness. It is a modern coinage, basedultimately on Greek nostos ‘homecoming’ andalgos ‘pain, grief’ (as in analgesic [19] andneuralgia (see NEURAL)). At first it was used asthe name of what was regarded virtually as aform of mental illness (the earliest known recordof it is in the journal kept by the botanist andexplorer Joseph Banks on Captain Cook’sround-the-world voyage, in which he noted(1770) that most of the ship’s company were‘now pretty far gone with the longing for homewhich the Physicians have gone so far as toesteem a disease under the name of Nostalgia’).The milder present-day connotations of wistfullonging for a past time emerged in the early 20thcentury.nostril [OE] Etymologically, a nostril is a ‘nosehole’.Its Old English ancestor was nosthyrl, acompound formed from nosu ‘nose’ and thrl‘hole’. This was a derivative of thurh ‘through’,and still survives as thirl, a dialectal word for‘hole’. NOSE, THRILL, THROUGHnot [14] In Old English and early Middle Englishthe simple particle ne was used for makingnegative sentences. But it was evidently oftenfelt to be in need of some reinforcement, forpurposes of emphasis, and to do this job nohtwas brought in. Ancestor of modern English

notable 352nought [OE], it was a compound formed from neand ōwiht ‘anything’ (precursor of archaicmodern English ought). By the end of the 13thcentury this was being widely used as the solenegator in sentences, the ne having beendispensed with, and we soon find spellingsreflecting the sort of reduction in pronunciationfrom nought to not that one would expect fromits often weakly-stressed position. NOUGHT, OUGHTnotable see NOTEnotary see NOTEnotch [16] Not much is known for certain aboutthe word notch, apart from the fact that itsimmediate source, Anglo-Norman noche,existed at least a couple of centuries beforeEnglish acquired it. There may well be someconnection with Old French oche ‘groove,notch’ (probable source of the English darts termoche ‘line where the dart-thrower stands’); theinitial n could well have arisen by misdivision ofa preceding indefinite article (as happened withnickname). OCHEnote [13] Latin nota had a remarkably widerange of meanings. Its original sense was ‘sign,mark’, but already in classical times it hadbroadened out semantically to include‘alphabetical character’, ‘shorthand sign’, ‘briefletter’, ‘musical note’, and ‘characteristicquality’. Many of these followed it via OldFrench note into English, where they weresupplemented by ‘distinction, reputation’,perhaps inspired by the derived adjective notable[14]. From the same source came notary [14],etymologically a ‘shorthand-writer’.notice [15] One of the main Latin verbs for‘know’ was nōscere (earlier gnōscere), a distantrelative of English know and, via the derivedcognōscere, source of a wide range of Englishwords, from cognizance to reconnaissance.From its past participle nōtus was formed thenoun nōtitia, which denoted ‘knowledge,acquaintance’. English took this over via OldFrench notice, and at first used it only for‘advance knowledge, warning’ (as in ‘givesomeone notice of something’). The mainmodern sense, ‘heed, attention’ (as in ‘takenotice of’), did not emerge until the end of the16th century (and the use of the verb notice for‘observe, perceive’ is later still, dating from themid-18th century). Also from the Latin pastparticipial stem nōt- come notify [14], notion[16], and notorious. COGNITION, KNOW, NOBLE, NOTION,NOTORIOUS, RECONNAISSANCEnotorious [16] Notorious originally meantsimply ‘well known’. It was borrowed frommedieval Latin nōtōrius, which was a derivativeof nōtus ‘known’, the past participle of Latinnōscere ‘know’ (source also of English notice,notion, etc). The English word very soon cameto be used in association with derogatory nouns(as in ‘a notorious liar’), and by the early 17thcentury the adjective itself had taken on negativeconnotations. (Noble, which comes from thesame ultimate source and likewiseetymologically means ‘known’, has gone up inthe world as far as notorious has gone down.) NOTICEnougat see NUTnought see NOTnounoun [14] Etymologically, a noun is simply a‘name’. Latin nomen ‘name’ (a relative ofEnglish name) was used by classicalgrammarians for a ‘noun’ – that is, a word that‘names’ something – and English acquired it viaOld French non and Anglo-Norman noun.nourish see NURSEnovel English has acquired the word novel inseveral distinct instalments. First to arrive wasthe adjective, ‘new’ [15], which came via OldFrench from Latin novellus, a derivative of novus‘new’ (to which English new is distantlyrelated). (The Old French derived noun noveltehad already reached English as novelty [14].)Next on the scene was a now obsolete noun novel‘new thing, novelty’ [15], which went back toLatin novella, a noun use of the neuter plural ofnovellus. In Italian, novellus became novello,and this was used in storia novella, literally ‘newstory’, a term which denoted ‘short story’.English adopted this as a third novel [16], at firstreferring specifically to Italian short stories ofthe type written by Boccaccio, but by the mid-17th century being extended to a longer ‘prosenarrative’ (the original Italian novella wasreborrowed in the early 20th century for a ‘shortnovel’). English is also indebted to Latin novusfor nova [19] (etymologically a ‘new star’) andnovice [14].November [13] The ancient Romans calculatedthe beginning of their year from March. Hencethey named their ninth month novembris ornovember mēnsis. November and novembriswere derivatives of Latin novem ‘nine’.novice see NOVELnow [OE] Now is the English member of a widespreadfamily of words denoting ‘present time’that are traceable back to Indo-European *nu- or*nū- (a relative of the ancestor of new). Othersinclude Greek nun, Latin nunc, Sanskrit nū,Czech nyní, and, among the Germaniclanguages, German nun and Dutch, Swedish,and Danish nu. (French maintenant ‘now’,incidentally, originally meant literally ‘holdingin the hand’, and developed its present sense via‘at hand’ and ‘soon’.)noxious [17] Noxious was adapted from Latinnoxius ‘harmful’, a derivative of noxa ‘damage,injury’. (An earlier borrowing was obnoxious[16], from Latin obnoxius, which contains theprefix ob- ‘to’.) Related to noxa were Latin nex‘destruction, death, slaughter’ (source of Englishinternecine and pernicious) and nocēre ‘injure’(source of English innocent, innocuous, andnuisance). INNOCENT, INNOCUOUS, INTERNECINE,NUISANCE, OBNOXIOUS, PERNICIOUSnozzle see NOSE

nubile [17] In modern English, nubile isgenerally used as a facetious synonym for ‘sexy,attractive’, but etymologically it means ‘suitablefor marriage’. It comes from Latin nūbilis, aderivative of nūbere ‘take a husband’. This hasalso given English nuptial [15] and connubial[17], and is related to nymph. CONNUBIAL, NUPTIAL, NYMPHnuclear see NUTnucleus see NUTnude see NAKEDnuisance [15] Nuisance has become much lessserious over the centuries. When Englishoriginally acquired it, it meant ‘harm, injury’(‘Helpe me to weye ageyn the feend … keepe vsfrom his nusance’, Thomas Hoccleve, Mother ofGod 1410), reflecting its origins in Latin nocēre‘injure’ (source also of English innocent andinnocuous). But gradually it softened to‘troublesomeness’, and by the early 19th centuryit had acquired its present-day connotations of‘petty annoyance’.number [13] The etymological notionunderlying the word number is probably‘distribution’. Its ultimate source, Latinnumerus, may have been related to Greeknémein ‘deal out, distribute’ (source of Englishnemesis and related to nomad). Numerus passedinto Old French as nombre (subsequentlyborrowed by German as nummer), and Englishacquired it via Anglo-Norman numbre.Derivatives of Latin numerus to have reachedEnglish include enumerate [17], numeral [16],numerate [20], numerical [17], and numerous[16]. ENUMERATE, NUMEROUSnunun [OE] In medieval Latin, nunnus and nunnawere titles of respect accorded respectively toold men and old women in general. In due coursethey came to be applied specifically to ‘monks’and ‘nuns’. The masculine form has sincedisappeared, but the feminine nonna wasborrowed into Old English as nunne. This wassubsequently reinforced in the 13th century byOld French nonne.nuptial see NUBILEnurse [13] The ultimate source of nurse wasLatin nūtrīre (which also gave English nourish[13], nutriment [16], and nutrition [16]). Thisoriginally meant ‘suckle’ (it is related to Sanskritsnauti ‘drips, trickles’), but was later generalizedto ‘feed, nourish’ and ‘look after’. Both ‘suckle’and ‘look after’ are preserved in nurse, whichcomes via Old French nourice from the lateLatin derivative nūtrīcia, although originally the‘looking after’ was restricted to children: thenotion of a nurse as a ‘carer for sick people’ didnot emerge in English until the end of the 16thcentury. The derivative nursery [16] retains itsassociations with children, and by extensionwith young plants. Late Latin nūtrītūra353 nymph‘feeding’, based on nūtrīre, gave English nurture[14]. NOURISH, NURTURE, NUTRIMENT, NUTRITIONnut [OE] Nut is a member of a restricted family ofIndo-European ‘nut’-words, present only in theGermanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, thatwere derived ultimately from the Indo-Europeanbase *knu-, denoting ‘lump’. Latin nux (sourceof French noix, Italian noce, and Spanish nuez)came from an extended base *knuk-. Itsderivative nucleus ‘nut, kernel’ has givenEnglish nucleus [18] and nuclear [19], andVulgar Latin *nucātum is the source of Englishnougat [19]. The Germanic branch of the family,on the other hand, comes from an extended base*knut-, which has produced German nuss, Dutchnoot, Swedish nöt, Danish nød, and English nut.The adjectival use of the plural, nuts, for‘crazy’ dates back to the mid-19th century. Itcame from the metaphorical application of nut to‘head’ – hence off one’s nut ‘deranged’, and indue course nuts. NOUGAT, NUCLEAR, NUCLEUSnutmeg [13] Etymologically, the nutmeg is the‘musk-flavoured nut’. The word originated as apartial anglicization of Anglo-Norman *noismugue, which came via Old French noismuguede from Vulgar Latin *nuce muscāta,literally ‘musky nut’. This ‘musky’ connection,now effectively concealed in English, is stillapparent in, for example, German muskatnuss,Swedish muskotnöt, and French noix muscade. MUSK, NUTnutriment see NURSEnutrition see NURSEnuzzle see NOSEnylonylon [20] English has a long history of namingfabrics after their places of origin: denim fromNîmes, for instance, muslin from Mosul, andcalico from Calicut in India. It is not surprising,therefore, that the popular myth has grown upthat nylon took its name from New York (ny-)and London (-lon). The truth, however, is moreprosaic. Du Pont, nylon’s inventors, took theelement -on (as in cotton and rayon) and simplyadded the arbitrary syllable nyl-. The word wascoined in 1938, and its plural was in use for‘nylon stockings’ as early as 1940.nymph [14] Greek númphē originally meant‘bride’ (it was related to Latin nūbere ‘take ahusband’, source of English connubial andnubile). It subsequently became extended,however, to ‘beautiful young woman’ and‘female nature spirit, particularly onefrequenting water’, and it was in the latter sensethat the word first entered English, via Latinnympha and Old French nimphe. The originalsense ‘bride’ lies behind nymphomania, coinedin the second half of the 18th century. CONNUBIAL, NUBILE

Ooaf see ELFoak [OE] Oak is an ancient Germanic tree-name,shared by German (eiche), Dutch (eik), Swedish(ek), and Danish (eg). These point back to acommon Germanic ancestor *aiks. There is noconclusive evidence of any related forms outsideGermanic, however, although similarities havebeen noted with Greek aigílops, a term for a sortof oak tree, and Latin aesculus ‘oak sacred toJupiter’. Despite its passing similarity, acorn isnot etymologically related.The oak was one of the commonest trees inthe ancient European forests, and many termsthat started out as names for it becamegeneralized to simply ‘tree’: English tree, forinstance, comes from an Indo-European ancestorthat probably originally meant ‘oak’.oar [OE] Oar is a general northern Germanicterm, traceable back to an ancestral *airō, sourcealso of Swedish år, Danish aare, and, byborrowing, Finnish airo. It is not clear where itcomes from, although it may ultimately berelated to Latin rēmus ‘oar’ (as in trirēmis,source of English trireme [17]). TRIREMEoasis [17] The ultimate origins of the word oasisno doubt lie in North Africa, and although nopositive link has been established, it is likely tobe related in some way to Coptic ouahe. Thismeans literally ‘dwelling area’ (it is derivedfrom the verb ouih ‘dwell’), but since isolatedfertile spots in the desert are natural centres ofhabitation, it is used also for ‘oasis’. The farthestback we can actually trace English oasis is, viaLatin, to Greek óasis.oasthouse [18] Although the compoundoasthouse is not recorded until the mid 18thcentury, oast itself, which means ‘kiln’, goesright back to Old English, and beyond, to Indo-European *aidh- ‘burn’. This was also thesource of Latin aestās ‘summer’, etymologicallythe ‘hot season’, from which are descendedFrench été ‘summer’ and English aestivate [17].Originally oast was simply a general term for‘kiln’, and the specific application to a ‘hopdryingkiln’ did not begin to emerge until the16th century. AESTIVATEobese see EATobey [13] ‘To hear is to obey’ carries more thana germ of etymological truth. For obey comes viaOld French obeir from Latin ōbēdīre, whichmeant literally ‘listen to’. It was a compoundverb formed from the prefix ob- ‘to’ and audīre‘hear’ (source of English audible). By classicaltimes the metaphorical sense ‘obey’ hadvirtually taken over from the original ‘listen to’,and it is this sense that informs the relatedobedient [13] and obeisance [14]. AUDIBLE, OBEDIENTobfuscate see DUSKobituary [18] Obituary goes back ultimately to aLatin euphemism for ‘die’, meaning literally ‘godown, make an exit’. This was obīre, acompound verb formed from the prefix ob-‘down’ and īre ‘go’. From it was derived obitus‘death’, which formed the basis of the medievalLatin adjective obituārius ‘of death’, source ofEnglish obituary. A parallel Latin formation wasthe adverb obiter ‘on the way, in passing along’,based on the noun iter ‘journey’ (a relative of īreand source of English itinerant [16] anditinerary [15]). English preserves it in obiterdictum [19], literally a ‘statement in passing’. ITINERANTobject Object the noun [14] and object the verb[15] have diverged considerably over thecenturies, but they come from the same ultimatesource: Latin obicere. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix ob- ‘towards’ andjacere ‘throw’ (source of English ejaculate,inject, subject, etc), and hence originally meantliterally ‘throw towards’, but by classical times ithad been extended metaphorically to ‘place ahindrance in the way of, oppose’. This was thestrand of the word’s meaning taken up byEnglish in the verb object, and also originally inthe noun (‘how Christ answered to objects [thatis, objections] of false Jews’, John Wycliffe1380). The standard present-day meaning of thenoun, however, comes from a post-classicalmeaning of Latin objectum (the noun formedfrom the past participle of obicere): ‘somethingput in someone’s way so that it can be seen’,hence a ‘visible object’. EJACULATE, INJECT, JET, SUBJECTobjurgate see JUSToblation see OFFERobligeoblige [13] To oblige someone is etymologicallyto ‘bind them to’ something with a promise. Theword comes via Old French obliger from Latinobligāre, a compound verb formed from theprefix ob- ‘to’ and ligāre ‘tie’ (source of Englishliable, ligament, etc). By classical times itsoriginal literal sense had been extendedfiguratively to ‘make liable, put under anobligation’. The synonymous obligate [16]comes from its past participial stem, as doesobligatory [15]. LIABLE, LIGAMENT, OBLIGATORY

obliterate see LETTERobnoxious see NOXIOUSoboe [18] The oboe gets its name from its highpitch. Its ultimate ancestor was French hautbois,a compound of haut ‘high’ and bois ‘wood’ (theoboe is a woodwind instrument). Englishacquired this in the 16th century as hautboy, butfrom the 18th century it was gradually ousted bythe Italian version of the word, oboe (itselforiginally an acquisition from French). BUSHobscure see SKYobsequious see SEQUENCEobserveobserve [14] Latin observāre meant ‘watch, payattention to, look to, comply with’. It was acompound verb, formed with the prefix ob- ‘to’from servāre ‘keep safe’, hence ‘guard, watch,heed’ (no relation to servīre, source of Englishserve and servant). The two semantic strands‘seeing, noting’ and ‘complying’ have remainedtogether in the English verb, but have diverged inits derived nouns, the former going toobservation [14], the latter to observance [13]. CONSERVE, RESERVEobstetric [18] An obstetric nurse isetymologically one who ‘stands before’ awoman giving birth to render assistance. Theword is an adaptation of Latin obstetrīcius, aderivative of obstetrīx ‘midwife’. This in turnwas formed from obstāre ‘stand in the way’(source also of English obstacle [14] and oust[16]), a compound verb formed from the prefixob- ‘before’ and stāre ‘stand’. OBSTACLE, OUST, STAND, STATION, STATUEobstruct see STRUCTUREobtain [15] Obtain is one of the large family ofEnglish words (attain, contain, continue, tenor,etc) that come ultimately from Latin tenēre‘hold’. In this case its source, by way of OldFrench obtenir, was Latin obtinēre, a compoundformed with the intensive prefix ob-, whichdenoted both ‘get possession of’ and ‘prevail, beestablished’. ATTAIN, CONTAIN, CONTINUE, TENORobtuse [16] The etymological meaning ofobtuse is ‘beaten down, blunted’. It comes fromLatin obtūsus, the past participle of obtundere, acompound verb formed from the prefix ob-‘against’ and tundere ‘beat’ (source of Englishcontusion and related to toil). The notion ofbeing ‘dulled’ or ‘blunted’ led to its being usedfor ‘having dulled wits, stupid’, and the idea ofbluntness also lies behind its geometrical use foran angle of more than 90 degrees (as contrastedwith the ‘sharp’ acute angle). CONTUSION, TOILocarina [19] The ocarina, a primitive sort ofmusical instrument played by blowing, gets itsname from a supposed resemblance to a goose (itis shaped like an elongated egg, with a neck-likemouthpiece). Italian ocarina means literally‘little goose’. It is a diminutive form of oca‘goose’, which in turn goes back to Latin auca, aderivative of avis ‘bird’. AVIARY355 oceanoccasion [14] Like English befall, occasiondepends on a metaphorical connection between‘falling’ and ‘happening’. Its ultimate source isthe Latin verb occidere ‘go down’, a compoundformed from the prefix ob- ‘down’ and cadere‘fall’ (source of English cadence, case‘circumstance’, decadent, etc). The figurativenotion of a ‘falling together of favourablecircumstances’ led to the coining of a derivednoun occasiō, meaning ‘appropriate time,opportunity’, and hence ‘reason’ and ‘cause’.English acquired it via Old French occasion.Also from Latin occidere comes Englishoccident [14], a reference to the ‘west’ as thequarter in which the sun ‘goes down’ or sets. CADAVER, CADENCE, CASE, DECADENT,OCCIDENToccult [16] Something that is occult isetymologically ‘hidden’. The word comes fromthe past participle of Latin occulere ‘hide’, acompound verb formed from the prefix ob- andan unrecorded *celere, a relative of cēlāre ‘hide’(which forms the second syllable of Englishconceal). When English acquired it, it still meantbroadly ‘secret, hidden’ (‘Metals are nothingelse but the earth’s hid and occult plants’, JohnMaplet, Green Forest 1567), a sense preserved inthe derived astronomical term occultation‘obscuring of one celestial body by another’[16]. The modern associations with supernaturalmysteries did not begin to emerge until the 17thcentury. CELL, CONCEAL, HALL, HELLoccupy [14] Occupy comes via Anglo-Norman*occupier from Latin occupāre ‘seize’, acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixob- and capere ‘take’ (source of English capture,chase, etc). In the 16th and 17th centuries it wasused in English for ‘have sex (with)’ (‘as kingEdwin occupied Alfgifa his concubine’, JohnBale, English Votaries 1546), and felltemporarily out of ‘polite’ usage: as DollTearsheet complained in Shakespeare’s 2 HenryIV 1597, ‘A captain! God’s light, these villainswill make the word ‘captain’ as odious as theword ‘occupy’, which was an excellent goodword before it was ill sorted’. CAPTIVE, CAPTURE, CHASEoccur [16] Etymologically, occur means ‘runtowards’. It was borrowed from Latin occurrere,a compound verb formed from the prefix ob-‘towards’ and currere ‘run’ (source of Englishcourse, current, etc). This had the sense ‘run tomeet’, hence simply ‘meet’, which survived intoEnglish: ‘The whole multitude might freelymove … with very little occurring orinterfering’, Richard Bentley, Boyle Lectures1692. But ‘meeting’ also passed into ‘presentingitself’, ‘appearing’, and hence ‘happening’ –from which the main present-day meaning ofEnglish occur comes. COURSE, CURRENTocean [13] In Greek mythology, ōkeanós was agreat river or sea that completely encircled theworld. This was personified as Ōkeanós, a Titanwho was god of this outer sea. The name passed

oche 356into English via Latin ōceanus and Old Frenchoccean, and to begin with was used only for thismythical sea, or for the whole body of watersurrounding the Eurasian landmass, with whichit was identified. Not until the end of the 14thcentury did it begin to be applied to largeindividual sections of the Earth’s seas.oche see NOTCHOctober [OE] The Romans calculated thebeginning of their year from March, and so theeighth month was called octōber or octōbrismēnsis, literally ‘eighth month’ (terms derivedfrom Latin octō ‘eight’). Other English wordsderived from Latin octō or its close Greekrelative októ include octagon [17], octane [19],octave [14], octet [19], and octopus [18] (fromGreek októpous, literally ‘eightfoot’). OCTANE, OCTAVE, OCTOPUSocular see INOCULATEodd [14] The etymological idea underlying odd isof ‘pointing upwards’. Its ultimate ancestor is aprehistoric Indo-European *uzdho-, a compoundformed from *uz- ‘up’ and *dho- ‘put, place’(source of English do). From the notion of a‘pointed vertical object’ developed ‘triangle’,which in turn introduced the idea of ‘three’ and‘one left over from two’, hence ‘indivisible bytwo’. This is the meaning odd had when Englishborrowed it from Old Norse oddi, and themodern sense ‘peculiar’ (as if the ‘odd one out’)did not emerge until the late 16th century. DOode see PROSODYodontology see TOOTHodourodour [13] The Latin noun for ‘smell’ was odor.It was descended from the Indo-European base*od-, source also of the Greek verb ózein ‘smell’(from which English gets ozone [19]), the Latinverb olēre ‘smell’ (ancestor of English redolent),and the Latin verb olfacere ‘smell’ (source ofEnglish olfactory). It passed into English viaAnglo-Norman odour. (It has, incidentally, noetymological connection with odious [14],which comes from Latin odium ‘hatred’.) OLFACTORY, REDOLENToenology see WINEoestrus [17] Greek oistros had anextraordinarily wide range of meanings, from‘madness, frenzy’ through ‘sting’ to ‘gadfly’,and including also ‘breeze’. If, as has beensuggested, it is related to Latin īra ‘anger’(source of English ire [13]), Lithuanian aistra‘passion’, etc, ‘frenzy’ is presumably theprimary sense, but in fact English originallyadopted it (via Latin oestrus) as the genus namefor a variety of horsefly or botfly. ‘Sting’ wastaken up, in the sense ‘impetus, goad’, as alearned borrowing in the mid-19th century(‘They too were pricked by the oestrus ofintellectual responsibility’, John Morley, OnCompromise 1874), but oestrus was not used for‘period of sexual receptiveness in femaleanimals’ (based of course on the notion of sexual‘frenzy’) until the end of the 19th century. Thederived oestrogen dates from the 1920s. IREof [OE] Of has an ancient ancestry, going back tothe prehistoric Indo-European preposition of‘removal’ or ‘origin’, *ap. Its Germanicdescendant was *ab, source of modern Germanab (now only an adverb, meaning ‘away’),Dutch af, Swedish av, and English of. Latin ab‘from’ (as in English abduct, abject, etc) alsocame from Indo-European *ap. OFFoff [OE] Off originated simply as the adverbialuse of of. The spelling off, denoting the extraemphasis given to the adverb, began to appear inthe 15th century, but the orthographic distinctionbetween off for the adverb, and for prepositionaluses associated with it (‘removal,disengagement’), and of for the ordinarypreposition did not become firmly establisheduntil after 1600. OFoffal [14] Etymologically, offal is simply materialthat has ‘fallen off’. English borrowed the wordfrom Middle Dutch afval, a compound formedfrom af ‘off’ and vallen ‘fall’ which denotedboth the ‘extremities of animals cut off by thebutcher, such as feet, tail, etc’ and ‘shavings,peelings, or general refuse’. English originallytook it over in the latter sense, but by the 15thcentury offal was being used for ‘animals’entrails’. FALL, OFFoffend [14] Latin offendere meant ‘strikeagainst’. It was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix ob- ‘against’ and -fendere ‘hit’ (sourcealso of English defend). Its literal sense survivedinto English (‘The navy is a great defence andsurety of this realm in time of war, as well tooffend as defend’ proclaimed an act ofparliament of Henry VIII’s time), and continuesto do so in the derivatives offence [14] andoffensive [16], but as far as the verb is concernedonly the metaphorical ‘hurt the feelings’ and‘violate’ remain. DEFEND, FENDoffer [OE] Latin offerre was a compound verbformed from the prefix ob- ‘to’ and ferre ‘bring,carry’ (a distant relative of English bear), and itmeant ‘present, offer’. It was borrowed into OldEnglish from Christian Latin texts as offrian, inthe specific sense ‘offer up a sacrifice’; the moregeneral spread of modern meanings wasintroduced via Old French offrir in the 14thcentury. The past participle of offerre wasoblātus, from which English gets oblation [15]. BEAR, OBLATIONoffice [13] Office comes from a Latin source thatoriginally meant ‘do work’. This was officium, areduced form of an earlier *opificium, whichwas compounded from opus ‘work’ (source ofEnglish opera, operate, etc) and -ficium, aderivative of facere ‘do’ (source of English fact,faction, etc). That original literal sense has nowdisappeared from English (which got the wordvia Old French office), but it has left its mark in‘position, post, job’ and ‘place where work isdone’, both of which existed in Latin. Englishhas a small cluster of derivatives, including

officer [14], official [14], officiate [17], andofficious [16]. FACT, FACTORY, FASHION, OPERA, OPERATEoften [14] Oft was the Old English word for‘often’. It came from a prehistoric Germanicadverb of unknown origin, which also producedGerman oft, Swedish ofta, and Danish ofte. Inearly Middle English it was extended to ofte.This developed a form often before vowels andh, which by the 16th century had begun to oustoft(e).oil [12] Around the Mediterranean in ancienttimes the only sort of oil encountered was thatproduced by pressing olives, and so ‘oil’ wasnamed after the olive. The Greek word for‘olive’ was elaíā, and from it was derived elaíon‘olive oil’. This passed into Latin as oleum, andreached English via Old French oile. By now ithad begun to be applied to similar substancespressed from nuts, seeds, etc, but its specificmodern use for the mineral oil ‘petroleum’ is amuch more recent, essentially 19th-centurydevelopment. OLIVEOK [19] Few English expressions have had somany weird and wonderful explanations offeredfor their origin as OK. There is still some doubtabout it, but the theory now most widelyaccepted is that the letters stand for oll korrect, afacetious early 19th-century American phoneticspelling of all correct; and that this wasreinforced by the fact that they were alsocoincidentally the initial letters of OldKinderhook, the nickname of US presidentMartin Van Buren (who was born inKinderhook, in New York State), which wereused as a slogan in the presidential election of1840 (a year after the first record of OK in print).old [OE] Etymologically, old means ‘grown-up’.It comes from a prehistoric West Germanic*altha (source also of German alt and Dutchoud) which was a past-participial adjectiveformed from the base of a verb meaning ‘grow,nourish’. (A precisely similar formation fromthe related Latin verb adolēscere ‘grow’ hasgiven English adult, and Latin altus ‘high’ –source of English altitude [14] – was originallya past-participial adjective too, derived fromalēre ‘nourish’, although it has metaphoricized‘growing’ to ‘height’ rather than ‘age’.) Elderlyand the comparative and superlative elder, eldestcome ultimately from the same source.World began life as a compound noun ofwhich the noun *ald- ‘age’, a relative of old,formed the second element. ADULT, ALTITUDE, ELDER, WORLDolfactory [17] Olfactory means etymologically‘making smell’. It was borrowed from Latin*olfactōrius, a derivative of the verb olfacere‘smell’. This in turn was a blend of olēre ‘smell’(source of English redolent and related to odour)and facere ‘make’ (source of English fact,faction, etc). ODOUR, REDOLENTolive [13] The word olive probably originated ina pre-Indo-European language of the357 oneMediterranean area. Greek took it over as elaíā,and passed it on to English via Latin olīva andOld French olive. The olive’s chief economicrole is as a source of oil (indeed the very word oilcomes from a Greek derivative of elaíā), andbefore the word olive arrived in English, it wascalled eleberge, literally ‘oil-berry’. OILombudsman [20] The word ombudsman,denoting an ‘investigator of public complaints’,was introduced into English from Swedish, andwas first used as a quasi-official term in the1960s: New Zealand was the first Englishspeakingcountry to introduce such a post, in1962, and Britain followed four years later. TheSwedish word is a descendant of Old Norseumbothsmathr, literally ‘administration-man’;and umboth was originally a compound of um‘about’ and both ‘command’ (a relative ofEnglish bid). BIDomelette [17] The omelette seems to have beennamed for its thinness, like a sheet of metal. Theword was borrowed from French omelette, themodern descendant of Old French amelette. Thismeant literally ‘thin sheet of metal’, and was analteration, by metathesis (the reversal of sounds)of alumette. This in turn was a variant ofalumelle, which arose through the mistaking ofla lemelle ‘the blade’ as l’alemelle. And lemellegoes back to Latin lāmella ‘thin sheet of metal’,a diminutive form of lāmina ‘plate, layer’ (fromwhich English gets laminate [17]). LAMINATEomen [16] Omen was a direct borrowing fromLatin ōmen, whose derivative ōminōsus alsogave English ominous [16]. From the samesource comes abominable. ABOMINABLE, OMINOUSon [OE] On is an ancient Germanic preposition,with relatives in German (an), Dutch (aan), andSwedish (å), and also connections outsideGermanic (such as Greek aná ‘on’ and Russianna ‘on’)onager see ASSonce [12] Once originated as the genitive form ofone (the genitive case was widely used in Oldand Middle English for making adverbs out ofnouns – other examples include always, needs,nowadays, and towards). To begin with, this wasclearly indicated by its spelling – ones – but fromabout the start of the 16th century -es wasgradually replaced by -ce (reflecting the fact thatonce retained a voiceless /s/ at its end, whereasin ones it had been voiced to /z/). ONEone [OE] One is the English member of anancient and widespread family of ‘one’-wordsthat goes back ultimately to Indo-European*oinos. This also produced Latin ūnus (ancestorof French un and Italian and Spanish uno andsource of English ounce, union, unit, etc), Welshun, Lithuanian víenas, Czech and Polish jeden,and Russian odin, all meaning ‘one’. ItsGermanic descendant was *ainaz, which hasfanned out into German ein, Dutch een, Swedish

onion 358and Danish en, and English one. In manylanguages the word is used as the indefinitearticle, but in English the numeral one hasbecome differentiated from the article a, an. Onelies behind alone, atone, and only (all of whichpreserve its earlier diphthongal pronunciation)as well as once, and its negative form is none.The use of the word as an indefinite pronoun,denoting ‘people in general’, dates from the late15th century. ALONE, ATONE, ELEVEN, INCH, LONELY, NONE,ONCE, ONLY, OUNCE, UNION, UNITonion [14] The usual Old English word for‘onion’ was cīpe (a borrowing from Latin cēpa,source also of English chives and chipolata), butit also had ynne. This came from Latin ūniō, aword of uncertain origin but possibly identicalwith ūniō (a derivative of ūnus ‘one’) whichdenoted a ‘single large pearl’ (according toJulius Moderatus Columella, ūniō was afarmer’s term, and one can well imagine a proudonion-grower comparing his products withpearls). An alternative explanation, also basedon a derivation from ūnus, is that the word is anallusion to the ‘unity’ formed by the layers of theonion. Ynne had died out by the Middle Englishperiod, and onion represents a reacquisition ofthe word via Anglo-Norman union. ONEonly [OE] Only is a compound formed in the OldEnglish period from ān, ancestor of modernEnglish one, and -lic ‘-ly’. It originally meant‘solitary’ as well as ‘unique’, but this sense hasbeen taken over by the related lonely. Onlypreserves the early diphthongal pronunciationwhich its source one has lost. LONELY, ONEonyx [13] Greek ónux meant ‘claw, fingernail’ (itis distantly related to English nail). Certain sortsof onyx are pink with white streaks, and aresemblance to pink fingernails with their palercrescent-shaped mark at the base led the Greeksto name the stone ónux. The word travelled toEnglish via Latin onyx and Old French onix. NAILopen [OE] Etymologically, open means ‘turnedup’ or ‘put up’. It comes ultimately from aprehistoric Germanic *upanaz, an adjectivebased on the ancestor of up, and thereforepresumably denoted originally the raising of alid or cover. The German verb aufmachen‘open’, literally ‘make up’, contains the adverbauf, the German equivalent to English up. TheEnglish verb open [OE] is a derivative of theadjective. UPoperate [17] Operate belongs to a small familyof English words that trace their history back toLatin opus ‘work’, which may be related toSanskrit ápas ‘work’, Old English afol ‘power’,and Latin ops ‘wealth’ (source of Englishcopious, copy, and opulent [17]). Its most directEnglish descendant is of course opus [18] itself,which was originally adopted in the phrasemagnum opus ‘great work’. Opera [17] goesback to the Latin plural, which came to beregarded as a feminine singular noun meaning‘that which is produced by work’. Italian gave itits musical sense, and passed it on to English.Operate itself came from the past-participialstem of the derived Latin verb operārī ‘work’. Itwas originally used in English for ‘produce aneffect’, and the transitive sense, as in ‘operate amachine’, did not emerge until as recently as themid-19th century, in American English. Thesurgical sense is first recorded in the derivativeoperation [16] at the end of the 16th century.Other English descendants of opus includecooperate [17] and manoeuvre. COPIOUS, COPY, MANOEUVRE, OPERA, OPULENTopinion [13] Opinion comes via Old Frenchfrom Latin opīniō, a derivative of opīnārī‘think’. It is not certain where this came from,although some have linked it with Latin optāre‘choose’, source of English adopt [16], co-opt[17], opt [19], and option [17]. ADOPT, OPT, OPTIONopium [14] Etymologically, opium means ‘littlejuice’. It comes via Latin from Greek ópion‘poppy juice’, which originated as a diminutiveform of opós ‘juice’. This in turn may be relatedto Persian āb ‘water’. The derivative opiate [16]comes via medieval Latin opiātus.opossum [17] Opossum comes from aposoum,a word in Virginia Algonquian meaning literally‘white animal’. The shortened form possum isvirtually contemporary with it. When referringto the animal, opossum is now the more usualterm, but possum holds its own in the expressionplay possum ‘feign death or sleep’. Dating fromthe early 19th century, it alludes to theopossum’s habit of pretending to be dead whenthreatened.opportunity [14] Opportunity has its origins ina Latin nautical term denoting ‘favourablewinds’. This was opportūnus, a compoundadjective formed from the prefix ob- ‘to’ andportus ‘harbour’ (source of English port). It wasused originally for winds, ‘blowing towards theharbour’, and since it is good when suchadvantageous winds arrive, it developedmetaphorically to ‘coming at a convenient time’.From it English got opportune [15] and thederived opportunity. Opportunism [19] is a muchmore recent introduction, which originated inthe world of Italian politics. PORToppose [14] Oppose is in origin an Old Frenchre-formation of Latin oppōnere, based on poser(source of English pose). Oppōnere was acompound verb formed from the prefix ob-‘against’ and pōnere ‘put’ (source also ofEnglish position, posture, etc). It originallymeant literally ‘set against’, but developedvarious figurative senses, including ‘oppose inargument’, which is how it was originally usedwhen it arrived in English. The notions of‘contention’ and ‘prevention’ have remaineduppermost in the English verb, as they have inopponent [16], which comes from the presentparticiple of the Latin verb. But opposite [14](from the Latin past participle) retains another

metaphorical strand that began in Latin, of‘comparison’ or ‘contrast’. POSE, POSITION, POSTUREoppress see PRESSopt see OPINIONoptical [16] Greek optós meant ‘visible’ (it waspresumably related to ophthalmós ‘eye’, sourceof English ophthalmic [17], and belonged to thegeneral Indo-European family of ‘eye’/‘see’-words – including English eye itself – that goesback to the base *oqw-). From it was derivedoptikós, which has given English optic [16] andoptical. Optician [17] originated as a Frenchcoinage. OPHTHALMICoptimism [18] Etymologically as well assemantically, optimism means hoping for ‘thebest’. It was coined in French (as optimisme) in1737 as a term for the doctrine of the Germanphilosopher Leibnitz (1646–1716) that the worldis as good as it could possibly be. It was based onLatin optimum (source also of English optimum[19]), the neuter case of optimus ‘best’. This mayhave been formed from the preposition ob ‘infront of’ and a superlative suffix.option see OPINIONopulentopulent see OPERATEopus see OPERATEor [12] The Old English word for ‘or’ was oththe.This appears to have been altered in the earlyMiddle English period to other, probably due tothe influence of similar words denoting ‘choicebetween alternatives’ and ending in -er (notablyeither and whether). Other was soon contractedto or, but it did not finally die out until the 15thcentury.oracle see ORATORoraloral [17] Oral comes from Latin ōs ‘mouth’. Thiswent back to a prehistoric Indo-European *ōs- or*ōus-, which also produced Sanskrit ās-,‘mouth’ and Old Norse óss ‘mouth of a river’. Itsother contributions to English include orifice[16] (etymologically ‘forming a mouth’),oscillate, osculate ‘kiss’ [17], and usher. ORIFICE, OSCILLATE, OSCULATE, USHERorange [14] The name of the orange originatedin northern India, as Sanskrit nāranga. Thispassed westwards via Persian nārang and Arabicnāranj to Spain. The Spanish form naranjfiltered up to France, and became altered(perhaps under the influence of Orange, thename of a town in southeastern France whichused to be a centre of the orange trade) to orenge,later orange – whence the English word.orang-utan [17] Malay ōrang ūtan meansliterally ‘wild man’. It probably originated as aterm used by those who lived in open, moredensely populated areas for the ‘uncivilized’tribes who lived in the forest, but was taken byearly European travellers to refer to the largered-haired ape that inhabits the same forests. Theword may well have reached English via Dutch.orator [14] Orator is one of a small family ofEnglish words that go back to the Latin verbōrāre ‘speak’. Others include oracle [14],359 ordealoration [14] (whence, by back-formation, orate[16]), and oratory ‘public speaking’ [16]. Andbesides these, there is a special subset of wordsthat depend on a later, extended sense of ōrāre,‘pray’: adore [15] (etymologically ‘pray to’),inexorable, oratory ‘small chapel’ [14] (whoseItalian form has given English oratorio [18]),and the now archaic orison ‘prayer’ [12](etymologically the same word as oration). ADORE, INEXORABLE, ORACLE, ORISONorbit [16] Orbit comes from Latin orbita. Thiswas a derivative of the noun orbis, whichoriginally meant ‘circle, disc’. It was appliedmetaphorically to a number of circular things,including the ‘circular path of a satellite’ (fromwhich the main meaning of orbit comes) andalso the ‘eye socket’, and eventually came to beapplied to ‘spheres’ as well as ‘circles’ – whenceEnglish orb [16]. ORBorchard [OE] Etymologically, an orchard isprobably simply a ‘plant-yard’. It appears tohave been coined in the prehistoric Germanicperiod from *worti-, the ancestor of the nowarchaic English noun wort ‘plant, vegetable,herb’ (which is distantly related to root), and*gardaz, *gardon, forerunner of English yardand garden. Originally, as its derivationsuggests, it was quite a broad term, coveringvegetable gardens as well as enclosures for fruittrees, but by the 15th century it had more or lessbecome restricted to the latter. GARDEN, YARDorchestra [17] In ancient Greece, the termorkhéstrā denoted a ‘semicircular space at thefront of a theatre stage, in which the chorusdanced’ (it was a derivative of the verborkheisthai ‘dance’). English originally took itover (via Latin orchēstra) in this historical sense,but in the early 18th century orchestra began tobe used for the ‘part of a theatre where themusicians played’, and hence by extension forthe ‘group of musicians’ itself. The derivativeorchestrate [19] was adapted from Frenchorchestrer.orchid [19] Greek órkhis meant ‘testicle’ (asense preserved in English orchitis‘inflammation of the testicles’ [18]). Thetuberous roots of the orchid supposedlyresemble testicles (hence the old dialect nameballock’s-grass for various sorts of wild orchid),and so the plant was named órkhis. The Latinform orchis was taken by botanists of the 16thand 17th centuries as the basis for the plant’sscientific name (they smuggled an inauthentic dinto it, under the mistaken impression that itsstem form was orchid-), and it passed from thereinto English.ordain see ORDERordealordeal [OE] The ‘meting out of judgement’ is theetymological notion immediately underlyingordeal, but at a more primitive level still thanthat it denotes simply ‘distribution, giving outshares’. It comes ultimately from prehistoricGermanic *uzdailjan ‘share out’, a compoundverb formed from *uz- ‘out’ and *dailjan,

order 360ancestor of English deal. The noun derived fromthis was *uzdailjam, and it came to be used overthe centuries for the ‘handing out of judgements’(modern German urteil, for instance, meansamong other things ‘judicial verdict orsentence’). Its Old English descendant, ordāl,denoted specifically a ‘trial in which a person’sguilt or innocence were determined by ahazardous physical test, such as holding on tored-hot iron’, but the metaphorical extension toany ‘trying experience’ did not take place untilas recently as the mid-17th century. DEALorder [13] Order comes via Old French ordrefrom Latin ōrdō. This originally denoted a ‘row,line, series, or other regular arrangement’, but itspawned a lot of other metaphorical meaningsthat have also come through into English,including ‘regularity’ and (from the generalnotion of a ‘rank’ or ‘class’) ‘ecclesiastical rankor office’ (preserved in English in ‘holy orders’and in the derivatives ordain [13] and ordination[15]). The sense ‘command, directive’, firstrecorded in English in the mid-16th century,presumably comes from the notion of ‘keepingin order’. Other derivatives of ōrdō arerepresented by ordinance [14] and ordinary. ORDAIN, ORDINARY, ORDINATIONordinary [14] Latin ōrdinārius meant ‘followingthe usual course’; it was a derivative of ōrdō,source of English order. It was originally used inEnglish as a noun, meaning ‘someone withjurisdiction in ecclesiastical cases’, and right upuntil the 19th century the noun ordinary wascommon, with an amazingly wide range ofmeanings (including ‘post, mail’, ‘fixedallowance’, ‘priest who visited people in thecondemned cell’, and ‘tavern’). Nowadays,however, the only (quasi-)nominal use at allfrequently encountered is in the phrase out of theordinary. English first took the word up as anadjective in the 15th century. ORDERordination see ORDERore see ERAorganorgan [13] Greek órganon meant ‘tool,implement, instrument’. It was a descendant ofthe Indo-European base *worg- (source also ofEnglish work). Latin took the word over asorganum, and in the post-classical periodapplied it to ‘musical instruments’. At first it wasa very general term, but gradually it narroweddown to ‘wind instrument’, and in ecclesiasticalLatin it came to be used for a musical instrumentmade from a number of pipes. When Englishacquired it, via Old French organe, it was in theintermediate sense ‘wind instrument’ (in the1611 translation of Psalm 150, ‘Praise him withstringed instruments and organs’, organ stillmeans ‘pipe’), but by the end of the 17th centurythis had died out. The sense ‘functional part ofthe body’ goes right back to the word’s Greeksource.The derivative organize [15] comes via OldFrench from medieval Latin organizāre. Thisoriginally denoted literally ‘furnish with organsso as to form into a living being’, and hence‘provide with a co-ordinated structure’. ORGANIZE, ORGY, WORKorgy [16] Orgy comes ultimately from Greekórgia (like English organ, a descendant of theIndo-European base *worg- ‘work’), whichdenoted ‘religious revels involving dancing,singing, getting drunk, and having sex’. It was aplural noun, and passed into English via Latinorgia and French orgies as orgies. This was verymuch a historical term, denoting the goings-onin ancient Greece, but in the 18th century it wassingularized to orgy, and used for any‘copulatory revelry’. ORGAN, WORKorient English has two separate words orient, butthey come ultimately from the same source:Latin orīrī ‘rise’ (from which English also getsabort and origin). Its present participle, oriēns‘rising’, was used for the direction of the ‘risingsun’, and hence for the ‘east’, and passed intoEnglish via Old French as the adjective and nounorient [14]. The verb orient [18] was borrowedfrom French orienter, a derivative of theadjective orient. It originally meant ‘turn to facethe east’, and was not used for ‘ascertain or fixthe direction of’ until the 19th century. Orientateemerged in the mid-19th century, probably as aback-formation from orientation [19], itself aderivative of orient. ABORT, ORIGINorifice see ORALorigin [14] Etymologically, origin denotesliterally an ‘arising’. The word was borrowedfrom Latin orīgō ‘source’, a derivative of theverb orīrī ‘rise’. This also produced Englishabort [16] (etymologically ‘be born badly’) andorient. ABORT, ORIENTorison see ORATORormolu see MILLornament [14] Ornament comes from Latinōrnāmentum, a derivative of the verb ōrnāre‘equip, get ready’, hence ‘decorate’. This alsoforms the basis of English adorn [14] and suborn[16] (etymologically ‘equip secretly’). ADORN, SUBORNorthodox [16] Greek orthós meant ‘straight,correct’ (it enters into numerous Englishcompounds, including orthography ‘correctspelling’ [15] and orthopaedic [19]). Greek dóxameant ‘opinion’; it was derived from the verbdokein ‘think’. Put them together and you gotorthódoxos ‘having the right opinion’, whichpassed into English via ecclesiastical Latinorthodoxus.Oscar [20] The Academy of Motion Picture Artsand Sciences in Hollywood has been awardingthese golden statuettes annually since 1928, butat first they were not called Oscars. That name issaid to have come about in 1931, when MargaretHerrick, a former secretary of the Academy,reputedly remarked that the Art Deco figurinereminded her of her ‘Uncle Oscar’ (OscarPierce, an American wheat and fruit grower).

The name evidently struck a chord, and has beenused ever since.oscillate [18] Latin ōs originally meant ‘mouth’(it was the source of English oral), but it was alsoused for ‘face’. Its diminutive form ōscillum‘little face’ was applied to a mask depicting thegod Bacchus that was hung up as a charm invineyards, to be swung to and fro by the breeze.In due course its meaning broadened out to‘swing’ generally, and a verb ōscillāre ‘swing’was derived from it – whence English oscillate. ORALosculate see ORALosprey [15] Etymologically, the osprey is simplya ‘bird of prey’. Its name comes from ospreit, theOld French descendant of Vulgar Latin*avispreda, which in turn was a conflation ofLatin avis praedae ‘bird of prey’ (avis is thesource of English augur, auspice, aviary, andaviation, and praeda is the ancestor of Englishprey). The specific association with the ‘osprey’came about in Old French through confusionwith the coincidentally similar osfraie ‘osprey’.This meant etymologically ‘bone-breaker’. Itcame from Latin ossifraga, a compound formedfrom os ‘bone’ (source of English ossify [18])and frangere ‘break’ (source of English fracture,fragment, etc). It was originally applied to thelammergeier, a large vulture, in allusion to itshabit of dropping its prey from a great height onto rocks beneath in order to break its bones, butwas subsequently also used for the osprey. AVIARY, PREYostensible [18] Ostensible means literally ‘thatcan be shown’. It comes via French frommedieval Latin ostensibilis, a derivative of theLatin verb ostendere ‘show’ (itself a compoundformed from the prefix ob- ‘in front of’ andtendere ‘stretch’, source of English extend, tend,tense etc). Its original meaning ‘showable’survived into English (‘You should send me twoletters – one confidential, another ostensible’,Jeremy Bentham, 1828), but seems to have diedout by the mid-19th century. Two metaphoricalstrands came with it, though. One, ‘vainlyconspicuous’, goes right back to ostendere, andis still preserved in English ostentation [15],although it has disappeared as far as ostensible isconcerned. The other, ‘presented as real but notso’, is today the central meaning of the adjective. EXTEND, OSTENTATION, TEND, TENSEostler see HOTELostracism [16] In ancient Greece, when it wasproposed that a particular person should be sentinto exile for a period, because he was becominga danger to the state, a democratic vote was takenon the matter. The method of registering one’svote was to inscribe the name of the prospectivebanishee on a piece of broken pottery. The pieceswere counted, and if enough votes were castagainst him away he would go for ten years. Thefragment of pottery was called an óstrakon, aword related to Greek ostéon ‘bone’ (source ofthe English prefix osteo-) and óstreon ‘oyster’(source of English oyster). To cast such a votewas therefore ostrakízein (whence English361 ounceostracize [17]), and the abstract now derivedfrom this was ostrakismós, source of Englishostracism.ostrich [13] Greek strouthós seems originally tohave meant ‘sparrow’. Mégas strouthós ‘greatsparrow’ – the understatement of the ancientworld – was used for ‘ostrich’, and the ‘ostrich’was also called strouthokámelos, because of itslong camel-like neck. Eventually strouthós cameto be used on its own for ‘ostrich’. From it wasderived strouthíōn ‘ostrich’, which passed intolate Latin as strūthiō (source of Englishstruthious ‘ostrich-like’ [18]). Combined withLatin avis ‘bird’ (source of English augur,aviary, etc) this produced Vulgar Latin*avistrūthius, which passed into English via OldFrench ostrusce as ostrich. STRUTHIOUSother [OE] Other is one of a widespread familyof Germanic words expressing ‘alternative’,represented today also by German and Dutchander. The prehistoric ancestor of all three was*antheraz, which came ultimately from an Indo-European *ánteros. This, a comparativeformation based on *an-, may have been relatedto Latin alter ‘other’ (source of English alter,alternative, etc).otiose see NEGOTIATEotter [OE] The otter is etymologically the ‘wateranimal’.Its name goes back ultimately to anIndo-European *udros, source also of Greekhúdrā ‘water-snake’ (the best-known example ofwhich in English is the many-headed Hydrakilled by Hercules). This was a derivative of thesame base as produced English water. ItsGermanic descendant was *otraz, which hasbecome otter in German, Dutch, and English. WATERought [OE] Ought began life as the past tense ofowe, but the two have diverged widely over thecenturies. The Old English ancestor of owe wasāgan, and its past form was āhte. This originallyshared all the meanings of its parent verb, ofcourse, and continued to do so well into the 17thcentury (‘He said this other day, you ought hima thousand pound’, Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV1596). Indeed, it survived dialectally untilcomparatively recently. But steadily since the1600s its role as a quasi-modal auxiliary verb,denoting ‘obligation’, has come to the fore. OWEounce English has two separate words ounce.The ‘measure of weight’ [14] is etymologicallythe same word as inch. It comes from the sameultimate source, Latin uncia ‘twelfth part’, butwhereas inch reached English via prehistoricGermanic, ounce’s route was through OldFrench unce. Its original use was in the Troysystem of weights, where it still denotes ‘onetwelfth of a pound’, but in the avoirdupoissystem it came to be applied to ‘one sixteenth ofa pound’. Its abbreviation, oz [16], comes fromItalian onza.Ounce [13] ‘big cat’ comes from the samesource as lynx (and indeed it originally meant‘lynx’; ‘snow leopard’ is an 18th-century

our 362reapplication of the name). It represents analteration of Old French lonce, based on themisapprehension that the initial l represented thedefinite article. This in turn came via VulgarLatin *luncia from Latin lynx, source of Englishlynx. INCH, ONE; LIGHT, LYNXour [OE] Our is the English member of thecommon Germanic family of first person pluralpossessive forms, which also includes Germanunser and Dutch onze. They all come from thesame prehistoric base, *ons, as produced Englishus. USoust see OBSTETRICout [OE] Out is a widespread Germanic adverb(German aus, Dutch uit, Swedish ut, and Danishud are its first cousins) which also has a relativeon the far side of the Indo-European languagearea, Sanskrit ud- ‘out’. Its former comparativeform still survives in utter ‘complete’, andutmost and the verb utter are also closely related. UTMOST, UTTERoutfit see FIToutrage [13] Outrage has no etymologicalconnection with either out or rage. It comes viaOld French outrage from Vulgar Latin*ultrāticum ‘excess’, a noun derived from theLatin preposition ultrā ‘beyond’. This of coursehas given English the prefix ultra-, and it is alsothe source of French outré ‘eccentric’, borrowedby English in the 18th century. OUTRÉ, ULTRA-outstrip see STRIPovaryovary [17] Latin ōvum ‘egg’ came from the sameIndo-European base (*ōwo-) as producedEnglish egg. From it were derived the medievalLatin adjective ōvāl is ‘egg-shaped’ (source ofEnglish oval [16]) and the modern Latin nounōvārium (whence English ovary). Also fromōvum come English ovate [18] and ovulate [19],and the Latin noun itself was adopted as atechnical term in biology in the early 18thcentury. EGGover [OE] Etymologically, over denotes ‘moreup, upper’. It originated as an Indo-Europeancomparative form derived from the base *upó‘under’, which gave rise to English up. Thisbecame prehistoric Germanic *uberi, which hasdiversified into German über, Swedish öfver,and Dutch, Danish, and English over. Aderivative of the same base forms the secondsyllable of English above, while amongst over’smore surprising relatives are eaves and evil. ABOVE, EAVES, EVIL, UPoverlap see LAPoverweening see WISHovulate see OVARYowe [OE] Owe goes back to a prehistoric Indo-European base *oik-, *ik- denoting ‘possession’.Its Germanic descendant *aig- produced a rangeof ‘possession’-verbs, none of which nowsurvives except Swedish äga, Danish eie, andEnglish owe. In the Old English period thismeant ‘possess’, but that sense was graduallytaken over by the related own, and owedeveloped in the 12th century to ‘have to repay’.A more general notion of ‘obligation’ alsoemerged, which is now restricted to ought,originally the past tense of owe. OUGHT, OWNowl [OE] Owl has several relatives in the othermodern Germanic languages (German eule,Dutch uil, Swedish uggla), which point back toa prehistoric source *uwwalōn, *uwwilōn. Likemost owl-names, such as Latin ulula and thepossibly related German uhu, this no doubtoriginated as an imitation of the owl’s call.own [OE] The adjective own originated as thepast participle of *aigan, the prehistoricGermanic ancestor of English owe. Its originalform was *aiganaz, which has producedGerman and Dutch eigen and Swedish andDanish egen as well as English own. The verbown is a derivative of the adjective. OWEox [OE] Ox is an ancient word, traceable back toa prehistoric Indo-European *uksín-. This alsoproduced Welsh ych ‘bull’, Irish oss ‘stag’, andSanskrit ukshán ‘bull’, and it has beenspeculated that there may be some connectionwith Sanskrit uks- ‘emit semen’ and Greekhugrós ‘moist’, as if *uksín- denotedetymologically ‘male animal’. If this was so, the‘seed-bearing’ function had clearly been lostsight of by the time it had evolved to Germanic*okhson, which was reserved for a ‘castratedbull’. Ox’s modern Germanic relatives areGerman ochse (taken over by English in thecompound aurochs ‘extinct wild ox’ [18], whichetymologically means ‘original or primeval ox’),Dutch os, Swedish oxe, and Danish okse. AUROCHSoxygen [18] Etymologically, oxygen means‘acid-former’. The word was coined in French inthe late 1780s as oxygène, based on Greek oxús‘sharp, acid’ (a descendant of the same Indo-European base, *ak- ‘be pointed’, as producedEnglish acid, acute, etc) and the Greek suffixgenes,denoting ‘formation, creation’ (adescendant of the Indo-European base *gen-‘produce’, which has given English a vast rangeof words, from gene to genocide). ACID, ACUTE, EAGER, GENE, GENERAL,GENERATEoyster [14] The Greek word for ‘oyster’ wasóstreon – etymologically an allusion to its shell.It came from a prehistoric Indo-European base*ost- denoting ‘bone’, which also producedGreek ostéon ‘bone’ (source of the Englishprefix osteo-), ostakós ‘crustacean’, andóstrakon ‘shell, piece of broken pottery’ (sourceof English ostracism). Óstreon passed into Latinas ostrea, and from there came by way of OldFrench oistre into English as oyster. OSTEO-oz see OUNCEozone see ODOUR

Ppace [13] Latin passus ‘step’, the source ofEnglish pace (and also ultimately of Englishpass), denoted etymologically a ‘stretch of theleg’. It was based on passus, the past participleof the verb pandere ‘stretch’ (source also ofEnglish expand and spawn). English acquired itvia Old French pas, and at first used it not just for‘step’ and ‘rate of movement’, but also for a‘mountain defile’. In this last sense, though, ithas since the early modern English period beenconverted to pass, partly through reassociationwith French pas, partly through the influence ofthe verb pass. EXPAND, PASS, SPAWNpacific see PEACEpacify see PEACEpack [13] The ultimate origins of pack areunknown. English borrowed it from one of theGermanic languages of northeastern Europe(both Middle Dutch and Middle Low Germanhad pak), but where they got it from is not clear.Its derivatives package [16] and packet [16] areboth English formations.pact see COMPACTpad [16] English has two words pad, both ofthem borrowed from Low German or Dutch. Theancestral meaning of pad ‘cushion’ seems to be‘sole of the foot’, although that sense did notemerge in English until the 18th century.Flemish pad and Low German pad both denote‘sole’, as does the presumably relatedLithuanian pādas. Pad ‘tread, walk’ comes fromLow German padden, a descendant of the sameGermanic source as produced English path. Itwas originally a slang term used by 16th- and17th-century highwayman, muggers, and thelike, and its corresponding noun pad survives infootpad [17]. Paddle ‘walk in shallow water’[16] comes from a Low German or Dutchderivative (the other paddle, ‘oar, bat’ [15], is ofunknown origin). PADDLE, PATHpaddock [17] Paddock is ultimately the sameword as park. Their common ancestor was aprehistoric Germanic word which took a routethrough Latin and French to reach English aspark. Its direct Old English descendant,however, was pearruc. This in due coursebecame parrock, which survived dialectally intothe 20th century. But in the early modern Englishperiod a variant form paddock appeared. It is notclear how this arose, but it may be a hypercorrectform reflecting the change in theopposite direction, from /d/ to /r/, in words suchas porridge for pottage and geraway for getaway. PARKpagan [14] The history of pagan is a bizarreseries of semantic twists and turns that takes itback ultimately to Latin pāgus (source also ofEnglish peasant). This originally meant‘something stuck in the ground as a landmark’ (itcame from a base *pāg- ‘fix’ which alsoproduced English page, pale ‘stake’, and pole‘stick’ and is closely related to pact and peace).It was extended metaphorically to ‘country area,village’, and the noun pāgānus was derived fromit, denoting ‘country-dweller’. But then this inits turn began to shift semantically, first to‘civilian’ and then (based on the early Christiannotion that all members of the church were‘soldiers’ of Christ) to ‘heathen’ – whenceEnglish pagan. PACT, PAGE, PALE, PEACE, PEASANT, POLEpage English has two nouns page. The one thatnow denotes ‘boy servant’ originally meantsimply ‘boy’ [13]. It was borrowed from OldFrench page, itself an adaptation of Italianpaggio. This is generally assumed to have comefrom Greek paidíon, a diminutive form of pais‘boy, child’ (source of English encyclopedia,paediatric [19], paedophilia [20], pedagogue[14], pederast [18], etc). Page of a book [15]depends ultimately on the notion of ‘fastening’.It comes via Old French page from Latin pāgina,a derivative of the base *pāg- ‘fix’ (source alsoof English pagan, pale ‘stake’, etc). This wasused for ‘vine-stakes fastened together into atrellis’, which perhaps inspired its metaphoricalapplication to a ‘column of writing’ in a scroll.When books replaced scrolls, pāgina wastransferred to ‘page’. ENCYCLOPEDIA, PAEDIATRIC, PEDAGOGUE;PAGAN, PALE, POLEpagoda [17] The immediate source of pagodawas Portuguese pagoda, but this is generallyassumed to have been an adaptation of Persianbutkada, a compound put together from but‘idol’ and kada ‘dwelling, temple’. Its form wasno doubt influenced by bhagodī, a word for‘holy’ in the vernacular languages of India.pain [13] ‘Punishment’ (now encountered only insuch phrases as on pain of death) is the ancestralmeaning of pain; ‘suffering’ is a secondarydevelopment. The word comes via Old Frenchpeine and Latin poena from Greek poiné‘punishment, penalty’. Its original connotationsare preserved in the related penal [15], penalty

paint 364[16], penance [13], penitence [12], and punish,its later associations in the related verb pine. PENAL, PENALTY, PENANCE, PINE, PUNISHpaint [13] Paint comes ultimately from an Indo-European base *pik-, *pig-. This originallymeant ‘cut’ (English file comes from it), but itbroadened out via ‘decorate with cut marks’ andsimply ‘decorate’ to ‘decorate with colour’(whence English pigment). A nasalized versionof the base produced Latin pingere ‘paint’,which reached English via Old French peindreand its past participle peint (the Latin pastparticiple pictus is the source of English Pict andpicture, and also lies behind depict). DEPICT, PICTURE, PIGMENTpair [13] Like English par [17], parity [16], andpeer ‘noble’ [13], pair comes ultimately fromLatin pār ‘equal’, a word of unknown origin. Itsderivative paria ‘equal things, similar things’passed into English via Old French paire. OtherEnglish descendants of Latin pār includecompare, disparage [14], nonpareil [15], andumpire. COMPARE, DISPARAGE, NONPAREIL, PAR,PARITY, PEER, UMPIREpal [17] Pal is a Travellers’ contribution toEnglish. It was borrowed from British Romanypal ‘brother, friend’, an alteration of continentalRomany pral. This was descended ultimatelyfrom Sanskrit bhrátar- ‘brother’, a member ofthe same Indo-European word-family as Englishbrother. BROTHERpalace [13] The Palātium, or Mons Palātīnus (inEnglish the ‘Palatine hill’), was one of the sevenhills of ancient Rome. On it the emperorAugustus built a house, which in due coursegrew into a grand imperial palace, also called thePalātium. This came to be used as a generic termfor such residences, and passed into English viaOld French paleis. The derived Latin adjectivepalātīnus has given English paladin [16] andpalatine [15]. PALADIN, PALATINEPalaeolithic see LITHOGRAPHpalaver [18] Palaver originated as a piece ofnaval slang picked up by English sailors inAfrica. There they came across Portuguesetraders negotiating with the local inhabitants, aprocess known in Portuguese as palavra‘speech’ (a descendant of Latin parabola, sourceof English parable). They took the Portugeseword over as palaver, applying it first to‘negotiations’, and then by extension to ‘idlechatter’. PARABLEpale English has two words pale. The adjective[13] comes via Old French from Latin pallidus(source also of English appal – originally ‘turnpale’ – pall ‘become wearisome’ [14] –originally a shortening of appal – and pallid[17]). This was a derivative of the verb pallēre‘be pale’, which was descended from *pol-,*pel-, the same Indo-European base as producedEnglish fallow.The noun pale [14] comes via Old French palfrom Latin pālus ‘stake’. This was a descendantof the base *pāg- ‘fix’, which also producedEnglish pagan, page, and pole ‘stick’. Englishpalisade [17] comes ultimately from *pālicea, aVulgar Latin derivative of pālus, and the closelyrelated Latin pāla ‘spade’ produced Englishpalette [17] and pallet [16]. APPAL, FALLOW, PALL, PALLID; PAGAN, PAGE,PALETTE, PALISADE, PALLET, POLE, TRAVELpalfrey [12] Etymologically, a palfrey is an‘extra horse’. The word comes via Old Frenchpalefrei from medieval Latin palefrēdus, analteration of an earlier paraverēdus (source ofGerman pferd ‘horse’). This was a compoundformed from Greek pará ‘extra’ (source of theEnglish prefix para-) and late Latin verēdus‘light fast horse used by couriers’, a word ofGaulish origin.palisade see PALEpalletpallet see PALEpallid see PALEpalm Palm the tree [OE] and the palm of the hand[14] are effectively distinct words in English, butthey have the same ultimate source: Latin palma.This originally meant ‘palm of the hand’ (it isrelated to Irish lám ‘hand’ and Welsh llaw‘hand’), and the application to the tree is asecondary one, alluding to the shape of thecluster of palm leaves, like the fingers of a hand.The Latin word was borrowed into the Germanicdialects in prehistoric times in the tree sense, andis now widespread (German palme and Dutchand Swedish palm as well as English palm).English acquired it in the ‘hand’ sense via OldFrench paume, with subsequent reversion to theLatin spelling.The French diminutive palmette denotes astylized palm leaf used as a decorative device,particularly on cornices. It was borrowed intoEnglish in the mid-19th century, and is thoughtto have formed the basis of English pelmet [20]. PELMETpalpable [14] Latin palpāre meant ‘touch,stroke’ (it may be related to English feel). Fromit in post-classical times was derived theadjective palpābilis ‘touchable’ – whenceEnglish palpable. Other derivatives were theverb palpitāre ‘tremble, throb’ (from whichEnglish gets palpitate [17]) and the noun palpus‘touching’ (source of English palp [19]). PALPITATEpamphlet [14] The original ‘pamphlet’ wasPamphilus, a short anonymous Latin love poemof the 12th century. It was very popular andwidely reproduced, and its name was adapted inthe vernacular to Pamflet; and by the end of the14th century this was being used generically forany text shorter than a book. The word’s morerestricted modern connotations (‘unbound’ and‘dealing with controversial subjects’) developedgradually over the centuries.pan [OE] Pan is a general West Germanic word,with relatives in German (pfanne) and Dutch(pan), and also, by borrowing, in Swedish(panna) and Danish (pande). It may have been

orrowed into Germanic from Latin patina‘dish’ (source of English paten [13] and patina[18]), which itself went back to Greek patánē‘plate, dish’.The verbal use pan out ‘turn out, succeed’ isan allusion to the getting of a result when‘panning’ for gold – washing gold-bearinggravel, silt, etc in a shallow pan to separate outthe metal. (Pan ‘move a camera’ [20],incidentally, is a different word altogether. It isan abbreviation of panorama.) PATEN, PATINA; PANORAMApanache see PINpancreas [16] Etymologically, pancreas means‘all-flesh’. It is a modern Latin adaptation ofGreek págkreas, a compound formed from theprefix pan- ‘all’ and kréas ‘flesh’. This waspresumably an allusion to the homogeneoussubstance of the organ. The term sweetbread,denoting the ‘pancreas used as food’, also datesfrom the 16th century. The -bread element mayrepresent Old English brǣd ‘flesh’ rather thanmodern English bread. RAWpandemonium [17] Pandemonium was coinedby John Milton as the name for the capital ofHell in his poem Paradise lost 1667:‘Meanwhile the winged heralds … throughoutthe host proclaim a solemn council forthwith tobe held at Pandaemonium, the high capital ofSatan and his peers’. He formed it from theprefix pan- ‘all’ and Greek daímōn ‘demon’ –hence ‘place of all the demons’. The moderncolloquial use of the word for ‘uproar’developed in the mid-19th century. DEMONpander [16] Pandaro was a character inBoccaccio’s Filostrato. He was the cousin ofCressida, and acted as go-between in her affairwith Troilus. Chaucer took him over in hisTroilus and Criseyde as Pandarus, changing himfrom cousin to uncle but retaining his role. Hisname came to be used as a generic term for an‘arranger of sexual liaisons’ (‘If ever you provefalse to one another, since I have taken suchpains to bring you together, let all pitiful goersbetweenbe call’d to the world’s end after myname: call them all Panders’, says Pandarus inShakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida 1606), andby the mid-16th century was already well on thedownward slope to ‘pimp, procurer’. Its modernuse as a verb, meaning ‘indulge’, dates from the19th century.panel [13] Etymologically, a panel is nothingmore than a ‘small pane’. It comes via OldFrench from Vulgar Latin *pannellus, adiminutive form of Latin pannus ‘rag’ (source ofEnglish pane [13]). Both panel and pane enteredEnglish with their original ‘cloth’ connotationsintact, but they have now virtually died out,surviving only in the compound counterpane(which is actually an alteration of an earliercounterpoint), and ‘shape’ has taken over from‘substance’ as the word’s key semantic feature. PANE365 pansypanic [17] Panic is etymologically ‘terror causedby the god Pan’. The ancient Greeks believedthat he lurked in lonely spots, and would frightenpeople by suddenly appearing, or making noises.He was evidently invoked to account foralarming but harmless natural phenomena, andso the element of ‘irrationality’ in the Englishword was present from the beginning. Englishacquired it (originally as an adjective) via Frenchpanique and modern Latin pānicus from Greekpānikós ‘of Pan’. PANpanjandrum [18] Panjandrum is an inventedword, coined in 1755 by the English actor andplaywright Samuel Foote (1720–77) to test thememory of the actor Charles Macklin, whoclaimed to be able to memorize and repeatanything said to him (it was one of severalinventions in the same vein that Foote put to him:‘And there were present the Picninnies, and theJoblillies, and the Garyulies, and the GrandPanjandrum himself, with the little round buttonat top’). It does not seem to have been taken upas a general comical term for a ‘pompous highrankingperson’ until the 19th century.pannier [13] Etymologically, a pannier issomething for carrying ‘bread’ in. It comes viaOld French pannier from Latin pānārium‘breadbasket’, a derivative of pānis ‘bread’. Thisoriginally meant simply ‘food’ (it came from thesame ultimate source as Latin pābulum ‘food’,borrowed into English in the 17th century, andEnglish food); ‘bread’ was a secondarydevelopment. It is the ancestor of the modernRomance words for ‘bread’ (French pain, Italianpane, Spanish pan, etc), and also gave Englishpantry. PANTRYpanoply [17] Panoply originally meant a ‘fullsuit of armour’; the modern sense ‘impressivearray’ is a metaphorical extension that did notemerge until the 19th century. The word comesvia French from Greek panoplíā, a compoundformed from the prefix pan- ‘all’ and hópla‘arms, weapons’.panorama [18] The word panorama was coinedin the late 1780s by an Irish artist called RobertBarker for a method he had invented for paintinga scene on the inside of a cylinder in such a waythat its perspective would seem correct tosomeone viewing it from inside the cylinder. Heput his invention into practice in 1793 when heopened his ‘Panorama’, a large building inLeicester Square, London where the publiccould come and gaze at such all-encompassingscenes. By the early years of the 19th century theword (formed from the prefix pan- ‘all’ andGreek hórāma ‘view’, a derivative of horān‘see’) had acquired all its modern extendedmeanings.pansy [15] French pensée means literally‘thought’, and it was presumably the pensivelook of these flowers of the viola family thatearned them the name. English originally took itover as pensee, but later anglicized it to pansy.

pant 366The use of the word for an effeminate malehomosexual dates from the 1920s.French pensée itself is the feminine pastparticiple of penser ‘think’ (source also ofEnglish pensive [14]). This was descended fromLatin pēnsāre ‘weigh’, which in post-classicaltimes was used for ‘think’. PENSIVEpant [15] It is the shock that makes you ‘gasp’that lies behind the word pant. It is closelyrelated to English fancy, fantasy, and phantom. Itcomes from Anglo-Norman *panter, acondensed version of Old French pantaisier‘gasp’. This in turn went back to Vulgar Latinphantasiāre ‘gasp in horror, as if at a nightmareor ghost’, a derivative of Latin phantasia‘apparition’ (source of English fancy and fantasyand first cousin to phantom). FANCY, FANTASY, PHANTOMpantechnicon [19] The original Pantechniconwas a huge complex of warehouses, wine vaults,and other storage facilities in Motcomb Street, inLondon’s Belgravia. Built in 1830 and supposedto be fireproof, it was almost totally destroyed byfire in 1874. It seems originally to have beenintended to be a bazaar, and its name was coinedfrom the prefix pan- ‘all’ and Greek tekhnikón,the neuter form of tekhnikós ‘artistic’, denotingthat all sorts of manufactured wares were to bebought there. But it was its role as a furniturerepository that brought it into the generallanguage. Removal vans taking furniture therecame to be known as pantechnicon vans, and bythe 1890s pantechnicon was a generic term for‘removal vans’. ARCHITECT, TECHNICALpantomime [17] In ancient Rome, apantomīmus was a ‘mime artist’, a sort of MarcelMarceau performer who acted scenes, incidents,etc without words. The term was adopted fromGreek pantómōmos ‘complete imitator’, acompound formed from panto- ‘all’ and mōmos‘imitator, actor’ (source of English mime).English originally took the word over in thishistorical sense, and it was not until the early18th century that it began to be used first for asort of mime ballet and then for a play withoutwords, relating a popular tale, which graduallydeveloped into the Christmas fairy-talepantomimes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Theabbreviation panto dates from the mid-19thcentury. MIMEpantry [13] A pantry is etymologically a ‘bread’room. The word comes from Old Frenchpaneterie ‘cupboard for keeping bread’, aderivative of panetier ‘servant in charge ofbread’. This was adopted from medieval Latinpānetārius, an alteration of late Latin pānārius‘bread-seller’, which in turn was a derivative ofLatin pānis ‘bread’ (source also of Englishpannier). The notion of ‘bread storage’ survivedinto English, but was gradually lost in the face ofthe extended ‘food store’. PANNIERpants [19] Pants is short for pantaloons, a termused since the 17th century for men’s nethergarments. The word originated in the name of acharacter in the old Italian commedia dell’arte,Pantalone, a silly old man with thin legs whoencased them in tight trousers. English took theword over via French pantalon, and began to useit for ‘tight breeches or trousers’. In AmericanEnglish it broadened out to ‘trousers’ generally,whence the current American use of pants for‘trousers’. British English, however, tends to usethe abbreviation for undergarments, perhapsinfluenced by pantalets, a 19th-centurydiminutive denoting ‘women’s long frillydrawers’.papa see POPEpapacy see POPEpapal see POPEpaparazzi [20] In Federico Fellini’s film LaDolce Vita (1959), a press photographer whopesters celebrities is called Paparazzo (the namewas supplied by the writer of the film’s scenario,Ennio Flaiano, who in turn got it from Sulle Rivedello Ionio (1957), Margherita Guidacci’stranslation of George Gissing’s travel book Bythe Ionian Sea (1901), in which a restaurantowneris called Coriolano Paparazzo). By thelate 1960s the name, usually in the Italian pluralform paparazzi, had entered English as a genericterm for such intrusive snappers.paper [14] Paper gets its name from the papyrus,a sort of rush from which in ancient times paperwas made. The Greek word for this (presumablyborrowed from some Oriental language) waspápūros, and its Latin in descendant papruspassed into English via Old French papier andAnglo-Norman papir. (English papyrus [14]itself was an independent borrowing direct fromLatin.) PAPYRUS, TAPERpar see PAIRparable [14] The etymological idea underlyingparable is of ‘drawing analogies’. It comes viaOld French parabole and Latin parabola fromGreek parabolé, a derivative of parabállein.This was a compound verb formed from pará‘beside’ and bállein ‘throw’ (source of Englishballistic [18]). It meant ‘put beside’, hence‘compare’. Its derived noun parabolé was usedfor a ‘comparison’ or ‘analogy’, and hence in theChristian tradition for an ‘allegorical or moralnarrative’. The geometrical sense of the term,acquired by English directly from Latin asparabola [16], comes from the notion of‘comparability’ or ‘parallelism’ between thesection of a cone that forms the parabola and anelement in the cone’s surface. Etymologicallythe same word is parole [17], which reachedEnglish via Vulgar Latin *paraula and OldFrench parole ‘word’. Its use for ‘conditionalrelease’ is based on the notion of the prisonergiving his ‘word of honour’ to be of goodbehaviour. BALLISTIC, PALAVER, PARABOLA, PARLIAMENT,PAROLEparadigm see TEACH

paradise [12] Paradise comes from an ancientPersian word meaning ‘enclosed place’. InAvestan, the Indo-European language in whichthe Zoroastrian religious texts were written,pairidaēza was a compound formed from pairi‘around’ (a relative of Greek péri, from whichEnglish gets the prefix peri-) and diz ‘make,form’ (which comes from the same Indo-European source as produced English dairy,dough, and the second syllable of lady). Greektook the word over as parádeisos, andspecialized ‘enclosed place’ to an ‘enclosedpark’; and in the Greek version of the Bible itwas applied to the ‘garden of Eden’. Englishacquired the word via Latin paradīsus and OldFrench paradis. DAIRY, DOUGH, LADYparaffin [19] The term paraffin was coined inGerman around 1830 by the chemistReichenbach. It was formed from Latin parum‘little’ and affinis ‘related’ (source of Englishaffinity), an allusion to the fact that paraffin is notclosely related chemically to any othersubstance. The word is first recorded in Englishin 1838. AFFINITY, FINEparagon [16] When we say someone is a‘paragon of virtue’ – a perfect example of virtue,able to stand comparison with any other – we areunconsciously using the long-dead metaphor of‘sharpening’ them against others. The wordcomes via archaic French paragon and Italianparagone from medieval Greek parakónē‘sharpening stone, whetstone’. Thīs was aderivative of parakonan, a compound verbformed from pará ‘alongside’ and akonan‘sharpen’ (a descendant of the same base, *ak-‘be pointed’, as produced English acid, acute,etc), which as well as meaning literally ‘sharpenagainst’ was also used figuratively for‘compare’. ACID, ACUTE, EAGER, OXYGENparakeet [16] Parakeet is an anglicization ofOld French paraquet. Like the roughlycontemporary parrot, this seems to have begunlife as a diminutive form of the name Pierre‘Peter’ (several species of bird, such as themagpie and robin, have been given humannames).parallel [16] Etymologically, parallel simplymeans ‘beside each other’. It comes via Frenchparallèle and Latin parallēlus from Greekparállēlos. This was a compound formed frompará ‘beside’ and allélōn ‘each other’, aderivative of állos ‘other’ (to which English elseis distantly related). ELSEparamount see MOUNTAINparaphernalia [17] In former times, when awoman married her property was divided intotwo categories: her dowry, which became theproperty of her husband, and the rest. The legalterm for the latter was paraphernalia, whichcame via medieval Latin from late Latinparapherna, a borrowing from Greekparápherna. And the Greek word in turn was a367 parishcompound formed from pará ‘beside’ andpherné ‘dowry’. It is a measure of the light inwhich these remaining odds and ends wereviewed that by the early 18th century the termparaphernalia had come to be used dismissivelyfor ‘equipment’ or ‘impedimenta’.parcel [14] Etymologically, parcel is the sameword as particle. Both go back to Latinparticula, a diminutive form of pars (source ofEnglish part). Particle [14] was acquired directfrom Latin, whereas parcel was routed via anunrecorded Vulgar Latin variant *particella andOld French parcelle. It originally meant ‘part’ inEnglish (a sense which survives in fossilizedform in the phrase part and parcel); the modernmeaning ‘package’ emerged in the 17th centuryvia the notions of a ‘number of parts forming awhole’ and a ‘collection of items’. PART, PARTICLEparchment [13] Under several layers ofdisguise lurks the geographical origin ofparchment: the ancient town of Pergamum inwestern Turkey, whose inhabitants used the skinof sheep for writing on rather than papyrus. InLatin, such skin was known as charta Pergamīna‘paper from Pergamum’, or simply pergamīna.This was later blended with Parthica pellis‘Parthian leather’ to produce a Vulgar Latin*particamīnum, which passed into English viaOld French parchemin (the ending was changedto -ment on the model of other English words, inthe 15th century). The formal distinctionbetween parchment (made from sheepskin) andvellum (made from calfskin) has never beenparticularly watertight in English.pardon see DATE, FORGIVEparentparent [15] Latin parere meant ‘bring forth, givebirth’. Its present participle was used to form anoun, parēns, which denoted literally ‘one whogives life to another’, hence a ‘mother’ or‘father’. Its stem form parent- passed intoEnglish via Old French parent. Other Englishdescendants of Latin parere (which is related toprepare) include parturition ‘giving birth,labour’ [17], puerperal (a compound containingLatin puer ‘child’), and viviparous ‘giving birthto live young’ [17]. PARTURITION, PREPARE, PUERPERAL, VIPER,VIVIPAROUSpariah [17] Now a general term for an ‘outcast’,pariah came into English from the caste systemof southern India. It originally denoted amember of the largest of the lower castes, whichwas named in Tamil paraiyan. This meantliterally ‘drummer’ (it was a derivative of parai‘large festival drum’), a reference to thehereditary role of the paraiyar (plural) asdrummers in festival parades.parish [13] The etymological notion underlyingparish is of ‘living nearby’. It comes via OldFrench paroisse and late Latin parochia (sourceof English parochial [14]) from late Greekparoikíā. This was a derivative of pároikos‘living near’, a compound formed from pará‘beside’ and oikos ‘house’ (source of Englisheconomy). Scholars have not been able to agree

parity 368on precisely how the idea of ‘living nearby’became transmuted into that of the ‘parish’:some consider the central concept to be of a‘community of neighbours’, while others viewthe ‘near-dweller’ here not as a permanentneighbour but as a temporary ‘sojourner’ or‘stranger’, an epithet applied to early Christians. ECONOMY, PAROCHIALparity see PAIRpark [13] The origins of park are Germanic. Itgoes back to a prehistoric Germanic base,meaning ‘enclosed place’, which has also givenEnglish paddock. This reached English by directdescent, but park took a route via medievalLatin. Here it was parricus, which passed intoEnglish via Old French parc. The verbal use ofpark, for ‘place a vehicle’, began to emerge inthe early 19th century, and was based on thenotion of putting military vehicles, artillery, etcin an ‘enclosure’. Parquet [19] comes from adiminutive of French parc, in the sense ‘smallenclosed place’. PADDOCK, PARQUETparliament [13] The French verb parler ‘talk’has made a small but significant contribution toEnglish. Amongst its legacies are parlance [16],parley [16], parlour [13] (etymologically a‘room set aside for conversation’), andparliament itself. This came from the OldFrench derivative parlement, which originallymeant ‘talk, consultation, conference’, but soonpassed to ‘formal consultative body’, and henceto ‘legislative body’. French parler was adescendant of medieval Latin parabolāre ‘talk’,which was derived from the Latin noun parabola(source of English parable, parabola, andparole). BALLISTIC, PARABLE, PARLOURparlous see PERILparochial see PARISHparody see PROSODYparquet see PARKparrot [16] The original English name for the‘parrot’ was popinjay [13] (whose ultimatesource, Arabic babaghā, probably arose as animitation of the parrot’s call). But in the early16th century this began to be replaced by parrot,which seems to have originated (like its closerelative parakeet) in French as a diminutive formof the name Pierre ‘Peter’.parse see PARTparsley [14] The ultimate source of parsley isGreek petrōselínon, a compound formed frompétrā ‘rock’ (source of English petrify, petrol,etc) and sélīnon ‘parsley’ (source of Englishcelery). From it was descended Latinpetroselīnum, which in post-classical timesbecame petrosilium. This passed into English intwo distinct phases: first, direct from Latin in theOld English period as petersilie, and secondly, inthe 13th century via Old French peresil as percil.By the 14th century these had started to mergetogether into percely, later parsley. CELERY, PETROLparsnip [14] The Romans called the ‘parsnip’(and the ‘carrot’) pastināca. This was aderivative of pastinum, a term for a sort of smalltwo-pronged fork, inspired no doubt by theforked appearance of some examples of thevegetable. In Old French the word had becomepasnaie, but when English took it over, it alteredthe final syllable to -nep, under the influence ofMiddle English nep ‘turnip’ (source of thesecond syllable of turnip).parson [13] Parson and person started off as thesame word (both come from Latin persōna) butsplit into two. It is not altogether clear whyparson came to be used for a ‘priest’. It maysimply have been a specialized application of anextended post-classical sense of Latin persōna,‘person of rank, important person, personage’ –hence ‘person of high position within thechurch’. But it has also been speculated that itoriginated in the notion of the priest as the‘person’ who legally embodied the parish (whocould for example sue or be sued on behalf of theparish). PERSONpart [13] Latin pars, a possible relative of parāre‘make ready’ (source of English prepare), had awide range of meanings – ‘piece’, ‘side’, ‘share’,etc – many of them shared by its Englishdescendant part. The word was originallyacquired in the late Old English period, but doesnot seem to have survived, and as we now haveit was reborrowed via Old French part in the13th century. Other English descendants of parsinclude parcel, parse [16] (based on the notionof ‘parts’ of speech), partake [16] (a backformationfrom partaker [14], itself created frompart and taker), partial [15], participate,participle, particle, particular, partisan,partition, partner, and party. PARCEL, PARSE, PARTIAL, PARTICLE, PARTISAN,PARTNER, PARTYparticiple [14] The etymological notionunderlying participle is of a word that shares or‘partakes’ of the dual nature of an adjective anda noun. It comes via Old French participle fromLatin participium, a derivative of particeps‘partaker’ (the usage was a direct translation ofGreek metokhé ‘sharer, partaker’, which waslikewise used as a grammatical term for‘participle’). Particeps (based on a variant ofLatin capere ‘take’, source of English capture)also spawned the verb participāre ‘take part’,from which English gets participate [16]. PART, PARTICIPATEparticle see PARCELparticular [14] Latin particula (source ofEnglish parcel and particle) was a diminutiveform of pars ‘part’, and denoted ‘small part’.From it was derived the adjective particulāris,which denoted ‘concerned with small parts, ordetails’ (as opposed to ‘concerned with wideraspects of a matter’). English acquired it via OldFrench particuler. PART, PARTICLEpartisan [16] Etymologically, a partisan issomeone who takes a ‘part’ – in the sense ‘side’

or ‘cause’. The word comes via French partisanfrom partisano, a dialect form of mainstreamItalian partigiano, which was based on parte‘part’. PARTpartner [14] Partner is related to part – but notquite so directly as might appear. When it firstentered the language it was in the form parcener[13], which remains in existence as a legal termmeaning ‘joint heir’. This came via Anglo-Norman parcener ‘partner’ from Vulgar Latin*partiōnārius, a derivative of Latin partītiō‘partition’ (source of English partition [15]).This in turn was based on the verb partīrī ‘divideup’, a derivative of pars ‘part’. The change fromparcener to partner began in the 14th century,prompted by the similarity to part. PART, PARTITIONparturition see PARENTparty [13] The Latin verb partīrī ‘divide up’ wasderived from pars ‘part’ (source of Englishpart). The feminine form of its past participle,partīta, was used in Vulgar Latin as a nounmeaning ‘part, side’, and passed into English viaOld French partie. This was later reinforced byOld French parti, which came from the VulgarLatin neuter form *partītum and contributed theEnglish word’s more salient current senses‘political group’ and (in the 18th century) ‘socialgathering’. Other contributions made to Englishby the Latin past participle are the element-partite of words like bipartite, tripartite, etc and(via Italian) the musical term partita [19]. PARTpass [13] Strictly speaking, English has twodistinct words pass, although they come fromthe same ultimate source, and have now virtuallymerged together again. That source was Latinpassus ‘step’, which gave English pace. From itwas derived the Vulgar Latin verb *passāre,which came to English via Old French passer.The past participle of the English verb hasbecome past; and other related English wordsinclude passage and passenger. The noun pass‘mountain defile’ originated as a sense of pace,but since the early modern English period hasbeen spelled (and pronounced) pass, partlythrough reassociation with French pas, partlyunder the influence of the verb pass. PACE, PASSAGE, PASSENGERpassage [13] Passage goes back to the Latinancestor of modern French. Here, the noun*passāticum was derived from passāre (sourceof English pass). This found its way into Englishvia Old French passage. At first it simply meant‘passing’ or ‘way along which one passes’; thesense ‘segment of music, text, etc’ did notemerge in English until the 16th century. PASSpassenger [14] Originally a passenger was apassager – someone who goes on a ‘passage’,makes a journey. The word was borrowed fromOld French passager, at first an adjectivemeaning ‘passing’, which was derived frompassage. The n began to appear in the mid-15th369 pastrycentury, a product of the same phonetic processas produced the n of harbinger and messenger. PASSpassion [12] Latin patī meant ‘suffer’ (it is thesource of English patient). From its pastparticipial stem pass- was coined in postclassicaltimes the noun passiō, denotingspecifically the ‘suffering of Christ on the cross’.English acquired the word via Old Frenchpassion, but its familiar modern senses, in which‘strength of feeling’ has been transferred from‘pain’ to ‘sexual attraction’ and ‘anger’, did notemerge until the 16th century. Also from theLatin stem pass- comes passive [14],etymologically ‘capable of suffering’. PASSIVE, PATIENTpast [13] Past originated simply as a variantspelling of passed, the past participle of pass.The earliest unequivocal examples of it are as apreposition, but its adjectival use followed in the14th century, and by the 16th century it wasbeing employed as a noun too (the past). PASSpaste [14] Greek pástē denoted a sort of‘porridge made from barley’ (it was a derivativeof the verb pássein ‘sprinkle’). Late Latinborrowed it as pasta, by which time it had cometo mean ‘dough’. From this were descendedItalian pasta (acquired by English in the late19th century) and Old French paste, source ofEnglish paste. This at first meant ‘pastry,dough’, a sense now largely taken over by therelated pastry. The meaning ‘glue’ did notemerge until the 16th century, ‘soft mixture’until as recently as the 17th century. Otherrelated forms in English include pastel [17],which comes via French from the Italiandiminutive pastello; pastiche [19], which comes,again via French, from Italian pasticcio ‘pie’,hence ‘hotchpotch’; and pasty [13], paté [18],and patty [18], all of which go back to medievalLatin *pastāta. PASTA, PASTEL, PASTICHE, PASTY, PATÉ, PATTYpastor [14] Latin pāstor meant ‘shepherd’. Itcame from the same base as produced pāscere‘feed’, source of English pasture and repast, andhence denoted etymologically ‘one who grazessheep’. The ‘animal husbandry’ sense is stillfairly alive and well in the derivative pastoral[15], but in pastor itself it has largely beenousted by ‘Christian minister’, inspired by thefrequent metaphorical use of shepherd for‘minister, priest’ in the Bible. PASTURE, REPASTpastry [16] The original word in English for‘pastry’ in English was paste. This is still in useas a technical term, but in everyday usage it hasgradually been replaced by pastry. This wasderived from paste, modelled apparently on OldFrench pastaierie ‘pastry’, a derivative ofpastaier ‘pastry cook’. It originally meant‘article made from pastry’ (as in Danishpastries), and not until as recently as the mid-19th century did it start being used for simply‘pastry’. PASTE

pasty 370pasty see PASTEpatch see PIECEpaté see PASTEpaten see PANpatent [14] Etymologically, patent meanssimply ‘open’. Its ultimate source is patēns, thepresent participle of the Latin verb patēre ‘beopen’ (a relative of English fathom and petal). Itwas used particularly in the term letters patent,which denoted an ‘open letter’, particularly anofficial one which gave some particularauthorization, injunction, etc. It soon came to beused as a noun in its own right, signifying such aletter, and by the end of the 16th century it hadacquired the meaning ‘exclusive licence grantedby such a letter’. This gradually passed into themodern sense ‘official protection granted to aninvention’. FATHOM, PETALpaternal see PATRONpaternity see PATRONpaternosterpaternoster see PATRONpath [OE] Path is a West Germanic word ofuncertain ultimate origin. Its cousins Germanpfad and Dutch pad point back to a prehistoricWest Germanic ancestor *patha, but no one istoo sure where this came from (one possibility isthat it was borrowed somehow from Greek pátos‘path’). The verb pad ‘tread, walk’ and the -padof footpad come from the same source. PADpathos see SYMPATHYpatient [14] Etymologically, a patient issomeone who is ‘suffering’. The word comes viaOld French from the present participle of theLatin verb patī ‘suffer’ (source also of Englishpassion and passive). As an adjective it hadalready in Latin taken on its present-day sense of‘bearing affliction with calmness’, but themedical connotations of the noun are a post-Latin development. PASSION, PASSIVEpatina see PANpatriarch see PATRONpatricianpatrician see PATRONpatrimony see PATRONpatriot see PATRONpatrol [17] What is now a reasonably dignifiedterm began life as a colloquialism meaning‘paddle about in mud’. English acquired theword via German from French patrouiller,which originally denoted ‘tramp around throughthe mud of a military camp – when doing guardduty, for instance’. This was an alteration of OldFrench patouiller ‘walk or trample in mud’, averb based on the noun patte ‘paw’. OtherEnglish words which trace their history back topatte are patois [17] (which developed via theOld French verb patoier ‘trample on’, hence‘treat roughly’, and originally meant ‘roughspeech’) and patten ‘wooden shoe’ [14]. PATOIS, PATTENpatron [14] Patron is one of a large group ofEnglish words descended from pater, the Latinmember of the Indo-European family of ‘father’-words (which also includes English father).Among the others are paternal [17], paternity[15], paternoster [OE] (literally ‘our father’),patrician [15], and patrimony [14]. Patron itselfcomes from Latin patrōnus, a derivative of paterwhich was used for ‘one who protects theinterests of another, as a father does’. By postclassicaltimes it had acquired its currentmeanings, including that of a ‘guardian saint’.Pattern is ultimately the same word as patron.The Greek branch of the ‘father’-family isrepresented by patér, from which English getspatriarch [12], patriot [16] (based ultimately onthe notion of a ‘fatherland’), and patronymic[17]. FATHER, PATERNAL, PATTERN, PATRICIAN,PATRIOTpatten see PATROLpattern [14] Etymologically, pattern and patronare the same word. When it arrived in OldFrench as patron (from Latin patrōnus), it hadroughly the range of senses of modern Englishpatron, including that of ‘one who commissionswork’. But it had also acquired one other.Someone who pays for work to be done oftengives an example of what he wants for theworkman to copy: and so patrōnus haddeveloped the meaning ‘example, exemplar’.This passed into English from Old French alongwith the other meanings of patron, and not untilthe 17th century did it begin to be differentiatedby the spelling pattern. The sense ‘decorativedesign’ emerged in the 16th century. PATRONpatty see PASTEpaucity see FEWpauperpauper see POORpause [15] Greek paúein meant ‘stop’. Its nounderivative pausis passed into English via Latinpausa and Old French pause. The Greek wordalso lies behind English pose and repose. Itsultimate origins are not clear, although someetymologists have suggested links with OldPrussian pausto ‘wild’ and Old Church Slavonicpustiti ‘let go’. POSE, REPOSEpavilion [13] Pavilion got its name becausesome anonymous ancient Roman was remindedby a tent, with its two ‘wings’ spread out from acentral crosspiece, of a ‘butterfly’. Latin for‘butterfly’ was pāpiliō (a word of unknownorigin), which hence came to be used for ‘tent’.English acquired it via Old French pavillon.pawn English has two words pawn. The older,‘chess piece’ [14], means etymologically ‘footsoldier’.It comes via Anglo-Norman poun frommedieval Latin pedō ‘infantryman’, a derivativeof Latin pēs ‘foot’ (to which English foot isrelated). The foot-soldier being the lowest of thelow in the army, the term came to be applied tothe ‘chess piece of lowest rank’. (English getspioneer from a derivative of paon, the OldFrench version of poun.)Pawn ‘pledge as security for a loan’ [15]comes via Old French pan ‘security, pledge’

from a prehistoric West Germanic *panda(source of modern German pfand ‘pledge,security, pawn’). Penny may go back to the samesource. FOOT, PEDAL, PIONEER; PENNYpay [12] Etymologically, to pay someone is to‘quieten them down by giving them the moneythey are owed’. For the word is closely related toEnglish peace. It comes via Old French payerfrom Latin pācāre ‘pacify’, a derivative of pāx‘peace’. The notion of the irate creditor needingto be appeased by payment led to the verb beingused in medieval Latin for ‘pay’. The originalsense ‘pacify, please’ actually survived intoEnglish (‘Well he weened with this tiding for topay David the king’, Cursor Mundi 1300), but bythe beginning of the 16th century it had virtuallydied out, leaving ‘give money’ in solepossession. PACT, PEACEpea [17] Pea is the mirror-image of dice. Dicestarted off as the plural of die, but has become asingular form; the singular form of pea wasoriginally pease, but it came to be regarded asplural, and so a new singular pea was created.The word was originally acquired in the OldEnglish period from Latin pisa, which in turn gotit from Greek píson. The old singular formsurvives in pease pudding. Relatives of the wordinclude French pois, Italian pisello, and Welshpysen.peace [12] The etymological notion underlyingpeace is of ‘fastening’, so as to achieve a ‘stable’condition. The word comes via Anglo-Normanpes from Latin pāx ‘peace’, which was derivedfrom the same base, *pāk- ‘fasten’, as liesbehind English pact, and is closely related topagan, page, pale ‘stake’, and pole ‘stick’.Derivatives of Latin pāx or its Old Frenchdescendant to reach English include appease[16], pacific [16], pacify [15], and pay. APPEASE, PACIFIC, PACT, PAGAN, PALE, PAY,POLEpeach [14] Etymologically, the peach is the‘Persian’ fruit. The word comes via Old Frenchpeche from medieval Latin persica, an alterationof an earlier persicum ‘peach’. This was short formālum Persicum, literally ‘Persian apple’,reflecting the fact that the peach, a native ofChina, first became widely known in Europewhen it had reached Persia on its westwardjourney.peacock [14] The original English name of the‘peacock’ in the Anglo-Saxon period was pēa.This was borrowed from Latin pāvō, a wordwhich appears to have been related to Greek taós‘peacock’, and which also gave French paon,Italian pavone, and Spanish pavo ‘peacock’. TheOld English word is presumed to have survivedinto Middle English, as *pe, although no recordof it survives, and in the 14th century it wasformed into the compounds peacock and peahento distinguish the sexes. The non-sex-specificpeafowl is a 19th-century coinage.peak [16] Peak seems to come ultimately fromthe noun pick ‘pointed implement’ (as in371 peertoothpick). From this in the 15th century wasformed an adjective picked ‘pointed’, whichsurvived dialectally into the 19th century (S H AHervey noted in the Wedmore Chronicle 1887‘Children still use ‘picked’ of a pencil with agood point to it’). It had a variant form peaked,from which peak appears to have been derived asa back-formation. The adjective peaky ‘sickly’[19], incidentally, is not etymologically related.It comes from a now little used verb peak‘become sickly or pale’ [16], whose origins areunknown. PICKpeal see APPEALpearl [14] Latin perna originally signified ‘leg’,and hence ‘ham’. It came to be appliedmetaphorically to a variety of sea-mussel whosestalk-like foot resembled a ham in shape. Suchmussels could contain pearls, and so adiminutive form *pernula seems to have beencoined in Vulgar Latin to designate ‘pearl’. Thiswas later contracted to *perla, which passed intoEnglish via Old French perle.peat see PIECEpeculiar [15] The etymological notionunderlying peculiar is of ‘not being shared withothers’, of being ‘one’s own alone’. It wasborrowed from Latin pecūliāris ‘of privateproperty’, a derivative of pecūlium ‘privateproperty’, which in turn was based on pecus‘cattle’, hence ‘wealth’ (source also of Englishpecuniary [16]). (A parallel semanticprogression from ‘cattle’ to ‘property’ is shownin English fee.) The development of theadjective’s meaning from ‘belonging to oneselfalone’ through ‘individual’ to ‘extraordinary,strange’ took place in Latin. Peculate ‘pilfer,embezzle’ [18] also comes ultimately from Latinpecūlium. PECUNIARYpedagogue see PAGEpedal [17] Pedal is one of a group of Englishwords which go back to Latin pēs ‘foot’ or itsRomance descendants (to which English foot isrelated). Others include impede [17], pedestal[16] (which comes via French from Old Italianpiedestallo, a conflation of pie di stallo ‘foot ofa stall’), pedestrian [18], pedicure [19],pedigree, and pedometer [18]. FOOT, IMPEDE, PAWN, PEDESTAL, PEDESTRIAN,PEDIGREEpederast see PAGEpedigree [15] Etymologically, pedigree means‘crane’s-foot’. It comes from Anglo-Norman*pe de gru, pe meaning ‘foot’ (from Latin pēs)and gru ‘crane’ (from Latin grūs). The notionbehind the metaphor is that a bird’s foot, with itsthree splayed-out toes, resembles the branchinglines drawn to illustrate a family tree. CRANE, GERANIUMpediment see PYRAMIDpedometer see PEDALpeepee see PISSpeel see PILLAGEpeer see PAIR, PORE

peewit 372peewit see LAPWINGpelican [OE] Pelican comes via Latin pelicānusfrom Greek pelekán. This is generally thought tohave been derived from pélekus ‘axe’, in allusionto the shape of the pelican’s beak.pellagra see FELLpelletpellet [14] Etymologically, a pellet is a ‘littleball’. It comes via Old French pelote (a relativeof Spanish pelota ‘ball’, from which the name ofthe Basque ball-game pelota [19] comes) fromVulgar Latin *pilotta, a diminutive form of Latinpila ‘ball’ (source of English pill [15] and piles‘haemorrhoids’ [15]). Pelt ‘throw things at’ [15]may have originated as a contraction of pellet(although a possible alternative source is Latinpultāre ‘hit’); and platoon comes from adiminutive form of French pelote. PELOTA, PELT, PILES, PLATOONpellicle see FELLpelmet see PALMpelt see FELL, PELLETpen English has three words pen. The oldest,‘enclosure’ [OE], is something of a mysteryterm. It has no known relatives in the otherEuropean languages, and even in English it is notunequivocally found in its current sense until the14th century. Pent [16], as in ‘pent up’,originated in the past participle of the verb pen.The earliest writing implements known as‘pens’ were of course made from feathers, andso it is not surprising that the word pen [13]comes from a word that meant ‘feather’. Thiswas Latin penna, source also of English pennon[14] and a distant relative of English feather. Itentered English via Old French penne.Pen ‘female swan’ [16] is of unknown origin. PENT; FEATHER, PENNONpenal see PAINpenalty see PAINpenance see PAINpenchant see PENDULUMpencil [14] Etymologically, a pencil is a ‘littlepenis’. It originally denoted a ‘paintbrush’ – thecurrent sense ‘writing implement filled with agraphite rod’ did not emerge until the 17thcentury – and came via Old French pincel fromVulgar Latin *pēnicellum, an alteration of Latinpēnicillum ‘paintbrush’. This was a diminutiveform of pēniculus ‘brush’, which was in turn adiminutive of pēnis. Pēnis originally meant ‘tail’(whence the metaphor of the ‘brush’), and onlyby extension was it used for ‘male sex organ’ (inwhich sense English adopted it as penis [17]).The term penicillin [20] was based on Latinpēnicillum, in allusion to the tuft-like shape of itsspore-bearing structures. PENICILLIN, PENISpendulum [17] A pendulum is etymologicallysimply something that ‘hangs’. It is a noun use ofthe neuter form of the Latin adjective pendulus‘hanging’ (source of English pendulous [18]).This was a derivative of the verb pendēre ‘hang’,which has contributed a wide range of words toEnglish, among them penchant [17], pendant[14], pendent [15], pending [17], and penthouse,and derived forms such as append [15],appendix [16], depend, impend [16],perpendicular [14], and suspend. APPEND, APPENDIX, DEPEND, IMPEND,PENCHANT, PENDANT, PENDENT, PENTHOUSE,PERPENDICULAR, SUSPENDpenguin [16] Penguin is one of the celebratedmystery words of English etymology. It firstappears towards the end of the 16th century(referring to the ‘great auk’ as well as to the‘penguin’) in accounts of voyages to thesouthern oceans, but no one has ever ascertainedwhere it came from. A narrative of 1582 noted‘The countrymen call them Penguins (whichseemeth to be a Welsh name)’, and in 1613 JohnSelden speculated that the name came fromWelsh pen gwyn ‘white head’. Etymologistssince have not been able to come up with a betterguess than this, but it is at odds with the fact thatthe great auk had a mainly black head, and so dopenguins. The earliest known reference to theword (from 1578) mentions the birds beingfound on an ‘island named Penguin’, offNewfoundland, so it could be that it wasoriginally the name of the island (perhaps ‘white(i.e. snow-covered) headland’) rather than of thebird. However, a further objection to this theoryis that a combination based on Welsh pen gwynwould have produced penwyn, not penguin.penicillin see PENCILpeninsula see ISLANDpenis see PENCILpenitence see PAINpennon see PENpenny [OE] Penny comes from a prehistoricGermanic *panninggaz, which also producedGerman pfennig and Dutch and Swedishpenning. It has been speculated that this wasderived from *pand- ‘pledge, security’, whichalso produced English pawn – in which case itwould denote etymologically a ‘coin used intransactions involving the pledging of a sum assecurity’. PAWNpension see PONDERpensive see PANSYpentpent see PENpentagon see FIVEpentagram see FIVEpentecost see FIVEpenthouse [14] Penthouse has no etymologicalconnection with house. It comes from Anglo-Norman *pentis, an abbreviated version of OldFrench apentis. This in turn went back to Latinappendicium ‘additional attached part’, aderivative of appendēre ‘attach’ (source ofEnglish append [15] and appendix [16]), whichwas a compound verb formed from the prefix ad-‘to’ and pendēre ‘hang’ (source of Englishpending, pendulum, etc). It arrived in English aspentis, and was used for a sort of ‘lean-to with asloping roof’. A perceived semantic connectionwith houses led by the late 14th century to itsreformulation as penthouse, but its application to

a ‘(luxurious) flat on top of a tall block’ did notemerge until the 20th century. APPEND, PENDULUMpenumbra see UMBRAGEpeople [13] People is one of a large family ofEnglish words (including also popular andpublic) descended from Latin populus ‘people’.Its spelling and pronunciation are due to its routeof entry into English, via Anglo-Norman poeple,people and Old French pueple, pople rather thandirect from Latin. POPULAR, POPULATION, PUBLICpepper [OE] The pepper vine is a native of theEast Indies, and its name is oriental in origin too.It comes ultimately from Sanskrit pippalí, whichmeant ‘berry’, and hence ‘peppercorn’. It camewest via Greek péperi and Latin piper, and wasborrowed in prehistoric times into the WestGermanic languages, giving German pfeffer,Dutch peper, and English pepper. Its applicationto fruits of the capsicum family, or their pungentdried products (no relation to the originalpepper), dates from the 16th century. Pimpernelis a derivative of Latin piper. PIMPERNELpeptic see MELONperchance see PERHAPSpercussion see CONCUSSIONperegrine see PILGRIMperemptory [16] Peremptory comes via Anglo-Norman peremptorie from Latin peremptōrius.This meant ‘destructive’, and was derived fromperimere ‘take away completely’, a compoundverb formed from the prefix per- ‘completely’and emere ‘obtain’ (source of English example,exempt, prompt, etc). By extension it was usedfor ‘taking away all possibility of debate’, andhence ‘decisive’. EXAMPLE, EXEMPT, PROMPTperestroika [20] Along with glasnost,perestroika was catapulted into English fromRussian in the mid-1980s by MikhailGorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union. Itmeans literally ‘rebuilding, reconstruction,reform’, and is a compound formed from pere-‘re-’ and stroika ‘building, construction’. In thecontext of Gorbachev’s sweeping changes, itdenotes a ‘sweeping restructuring of Sovietsociety, industry, etc’.perfect [13] Something that is perfect isetymologically ‘completely made’. The wordcomes via Old French parfit from Latinperfectus, the past participle of perficere ‘finish’.This was a compound verb formed from theprefix per- ‘completely’ and facere ‘do, make’(source of English fact, fashion, etc). Themodern English form perfect, a reversion to theLatin spelling, emerged in the 15th century. FACT, FACTORY, FASHIONperfidy see FAITHperform [14] If the word perform had carried onas it started out, it would now be perfurnish (asindeed it was in northern and Scottish Englishfrom the 14th to the 16th centuries). For it comesultimately from Old French parfournir, a373 peripateticcompound verb formed from the intensive prefixpar- and fournir ‘accomplish’ (source of Englishfurnish). By association with forme ‘form’, thiswas altered in Anglo-Norman to parformer –whence English perform. FURNISHperfume [16] The -fume of perfume is the sameword as English fumes, but whereas fumes hasgone downhill semantically, perfume hasremained in the realms of pleasant odours. Itcomes from French parfum, a derivative of theverb parfumer. This was borrowed from earlyItalian parfumare, a compound formed from theprefix par- ‘through’ and fumare ‘smoke’, whichdenoted a ‘pervading by smoke’. When it firstarrived in English, the semantic element‘burning’ was still present, and perfume denotedthe ‘fumes produced by burning a substance,such as incense’, but this gradually dropped outin favour of the more general ‘pleasant smell’. FUMEperfunctory see FUNCTIONperhaps [16] The phrase by hap or by haps ‘bychance’ originated in the 14th century (hap‘chance’, a borrowing from Old Norse, nowsurvives in the derived happen). In the 16thcentury it was transformed into perhaps on themodel of perchance [14] and the now obsoletepercase [14], both borrowings from Anglo-Norman containing per ‘by’. HAPPEN, HAPPYperigee see APOGEEperil [13] Etymologically, peril means a ‘tryingout of something’, an ‘experiment’. The wordcomes via Old French peril from Latinperīculum ‘experiment, danger’, a noun formedfrom the base *per- ‘attempt’ (which also liesbehind English empiric, experience, expert,pirate, and repertory). Its derivative perīculōsusoriginally reached English via Old French asperilous [13], but subsequently becamecontracted to parlous [14]. EMPIRIC, EXPERIENCE, EXPERT, PARLOUS,PIRATE, REPERTORYperiod [14] Period means etymologically ‘goinground’. It comes via Old French periode andLatin periodus from Greek períodos, acompound noun formed from the prefix perí-‘round’ and hódos ‘way’ (source also of Englishepisode, exodus [17], and method). The mainsense of the word in modern English, ‘interval oftime’ (which first emerged in post-classicalLatin), comes from the notion of a ‘repeatedcycle of events’ (now more obvious in thederivative periodical [17]). EPISODE, EXODUS, METHODperipatetic [16] Peripatetic means literally‘walking round’. It comes via Old Frenchperipatetique and Latin peripatēticus fromGreek peripatētikós. This was a derivative ofperipatein, a compound verb formed from theprefix perí- ‘round’ and patein ‘walk’. But theGreeks used it not simply for ‘walk around’, butspecifically for ‘teach while walking around’ –an allusion to the teaching methods of Aristotle,who discussed and argued with his pupils and

periphrasis 374followers while walking about in the Lyceum, agarden near the temple of Apollo in Athens.Hence adherents of Aristotle’s school ofphilosophy are known as Peripatetics. The moregeneral use of the adjective for ‘itinerant’represents a relatively modern (17th-century)return to its etymological meaning.periphrasis see PHRASEperiwig see WIGperjury see JUSTpermanent see REMAINpermit [15] Permit is one of a large family ofEnglish words (including also admit, commit,etc) which go back to Latin mittere ‘let go, send’.Combination with the prefix per- ‘through’produced permittere ‘let go, give up’, hence‘allow’. Amongst derivatives to have reachedEnglish are permissible [15], permission [15],and permissive [17]. ADMIT, COMMIT, MISSION, PERMISSION, SUBMIT,TRANSMITperpendicular see PENDULUMperpetrate see FATHERperpetual see REPEATperplex see PLYpersecute see SEQUENCEpersist see STATUEperson [13] Latin persōna originally denoted a‘mask, particularly one worn by an actor’ (it mayhave been borrowed from Etruscan phersu‘mask’). It gradually evolved through ‘characterplayed by an actor’ (a meaning preserved inEnglish persona [20], a term introduced byJungian psychology) to ‘individual humanbeing’. It entered English via Old Frenchpersone, and by the normal processes ofphonetic development has become parson. Butthis in the Middle English period was hived off(for reasons that have never been satisfactorilyexplained) to ‘priest’, and the original Latinatespelling person was restored for ‘human being’.Other derivatives to have reached Englishinclude impersonate [17], personage [15],personal [14], personality [14], and, via French,personnel [19]. IMPERSONATE, PARSON, PERSONNELperspire see SPIRITpersuade [16] The -suade element of persuadegoes back to Latin suādēre ‘advise, urge’, adescendant of the same Indo-European base(*swād-) as produced English assuage [14],suave [16], and sweet. Addition of the intensiveprefix per- produced persuādēre, source ofEnglish persuade; while negation of suādērewith dis- has given English dissuade [15]. ASSUAGE, SUAVE, SWEETperuke see WIGperuse see USEpervert see VERSEpeseta see PONDERpessimism [18] The first English writer onrecord as using pessimism was the poetColeridge, in the 1790s. But he employed it forthe ‘worst possible state’. The modern sense‘expecting the worst’ did not emerge until theearly 19th century. The word was probablycoined first in French, and was based on Latinpessimus ‘worst’.pestle see PISTONpetard see FEISTYpetition see REPEATpetrel [17] The petrel, a gull-like seabird, isalleged to have been named after the apostlePeter, supposedly inspired by the resemblancebetween the petrel’s habit of flying close to thesurface of the sea and touching it with its feet,and Peter’s reported feat of walking on the water,as reported in Matthew 14:29 – ‘And when Peterwas come down out of the ship, he walked on thewater, to go to Jesus’petrol [16] Petrol originally meant ‘mineral oil,extracted from the ground’ (what we would nowcall petroleum or, more loosely, simply oil); notuntil the end of the 19th century was it applied tothe ‘fuel refined from this’. The word wasborrowed from French pétrole, which in turncame from Latin petroleum (itself taken overdirectly into English in the 16th century). Thismeans etymologically ‘rock-oil’. It was formedfrom petra ‘rock’ and oleum ‘oil’. Other Englishwords that go back to Latin petra or its Greeksource pétrā include parsley, petrify [16],saltpetre [16] (so called because it forms a crustlike salt on rocks), and the name Peter (areference to Jesus calling the apostle Simon the‘rock on which he would build his church’ –hence ‘Simon Peter’). PARSLEY, PETRIFY, SALTPETREpetulant see REPEATpetunia see TOBACCOpewpew [14] Historically, pew and podium are thesame word. Both go back ultimately to Greekpódion ‘small foot, base’, a diminutive form ofpoús ‘foot’ (a distant relative of English foot).This passed into Latin as podium ‘raised place,balcony’, acquired directly by English as podium[18]. Its plural podia passed into English via OldFrench puie ‘raised seat, balcony’ as pew. Thiswas originally used for a sort of raised enclosurein a church, court, etc. rather like a pulpit ordock; then for an enclosure in a church set asidefor particular people to sit in (now known as abox pew); and finally (in the 17th century) for achurch bench. FOOT, PEDAL, PODIUMphantom [13] Like fancy and fantasy, phantomgoes back ultimately to the Greek verbphantázein ‘make visible’, a derivative ofphaínein ‘show’ (source also of Englishdiaphanous and phenomenon [17]). Fromphantázein was derived the noun phántasma‘apparition, spectre’, which passed into Latin asphantasma. This reached English in twoseparate forms: as phantom, via Old Frenchfantosme; and as phantasm [13], via Old Frenchfantasme. The latter formed the basis of thefanciful coinage (originally French)phantasmagoria [19]. Other related Englishwords are emphasis and pant. DIAPHANOUS, EMPHASIS, PANT, PHASE,

PHENOMENONphase [19] Greek phásis (a derivative of the verbphaínein ‘show’, source of English phantom)meant ‘appearance’, and also ‘cyclical apparentform of a planet, moon, etc’. This was adoptedinto modern Latin as phasis, and it originallypassed into English (in the 17th century) in theLatin plural form phases. Phase represents anew singular formed from this. The morefamiliar modern sense ‘stage in a sequence’ is ametaphorical extension of the astronomicalmeaning. PHANTOMpheasant [13] Etymologically, the pheasant is abird from the ‘Phasis’. This was a river in theCaucusus, where the pheasant is supposedaccording to legend to have originated. TheGreeks therefore called it phāsiānós, the‘Phasian bird’, and the word passed into Englishvia Latin phāsiānus and Anglo-Norman fesaunt.phenomenon see PHANTOMphilander see PHILOSOPHYphilanthropy see PHILOSOPHYphilately [19] When a Monsieur Herpin, aFrench stamp-collector, was looking for animpressive and learned-sounding term for hishobby, he was hampered by the fact that theGreeks and Romans did not have postagestamps, and therefore there was no classical termfor them. So he decided to go back a stagebeyond stamps, to the days of franking with apost-mark. In France, such letters were stampedfranc de port ‘carriage-free’, and the nearest hecould get to this in Greek was atelés ‘free ofcharge’, a compound formed from a- ‘not’ andtélos ‘payment’. Using the Greek prefix phil-‘loving, love of’ (as in philosophy and a widerange of other English words) he createdphilatélie, which made its first appearance inEnglish in 1865.philippic [16] The original philippics (in Greekphilippikós) were a series of speeches in whichthe Athenian orator Demosthenes denounced thepolitical ambitions of Philip of Macedon in the4th century BC (the word was a derivative of theGreek name Phílippos ‘Philip’, whichetymologically means ‘horse-lover’). The termwas subsequently applied (as Latin philippicus)to the speeches of Cicero attacking MarkAnthony, and in due course became a generalword for a ‘fierce denunciation’.philistine [16] The original Philistines wereinhabitants of Philistia, an area in thesouthwestern corner of ancient Palestine. Theywere famed for their aggression and harryingtactics, and so the word Philistine was often usedmetaphorically for an ‘enemy into whose handsone might fall’, but the notion of a Philistine as a‘boorish person’ is a comparatively recentdevelopment, not recorded in English until the19th century. It appears to have originated inGerman universities (the German term isPhilister), and the story goes that it comes fromthe use of the biblical quotation ‘the Philistinesbe upon thee, Samson’ as the text of a sermon375 phosphorusdelivered at the funeral service for a studentkilled in a town-and-gown riot in Jena.philosophy [14] Greek phílos (a word ofuncertain origin) meant ‘loving’. It has enteredinto an enormous range of English compounds,including philander [17] (adopted from a Greekword meaning ‘loving men’), philanthropy [17],philately, and philology [17], not to mention allthe terms suffixed with -phil or -phile, such asAnglophile [19] and paedophile [20].Philosophy itself means etymologically ‘lovingwisdom’. It comes via Old French filosofie andLatin philosophia from Greek philosophíā,whose second element was a derivative ofsophós ‘wise’ (source of English sophisticate). SOPHISTICATEphiltre see FILTERphlegm [14] Greek phlégma denoted ‘bodilyfluid produced by inflammation’ (it was aderivative of phlégein ‘burn’, which went backto the same Indo-European base as producedEnglish flagrant, flame, fulminate, and phlox[18] – in Greek literally ‘flame’). As Latinphlegma it came to be used for ‘body fluid’ ingeneral, and was incorporated into the medievalsystem of bodily humours as a term for the ‘coldmoist humour’, which induced sluggishness(whence the meaning of the derivativephlegmatic [16]). This came to be associated inthe late Middle Ages with ‘mucus, particularlyas produced in the respiratory passage’. Englishacquired the word via Old French fleume asfleume, and did not revert to the latinate formuntil the 16th century. FLAGRANT, FLAME, FULMINATE, PHLOXphoenix [OE] The phoenix, a fabulous birdwhich every 500 years consumed itself by fireand then rose again from its own ashes, may getits name from the red flames in which itperished. The word comes via Latin phoenixfrom Greek phoinix, which as well as ‘phoenix’denoted ‘Phoenician’ and ‘purple’, and it hasbeen speculated that it may be related to phoinós‘blood-red’.phone [20] Phone is of course short fortelephone [19], a compound word formed fromGreek tēle- ‘far off’ and phōné ‘voice, sound’ (adescendant of the Indo-European base *bha-‘speak’, and related to English fable, fame, fate,etc). Other English words derived from or basedon phōné include gramophone, megaphone [19],microphone, phonetic [19], phonology [18],saxophone, and xylophone. FABLE, FAME, FATEphosphorus [17] Etymologically, phosphorusmeans ‘bringing light’. The word comes viaLatin phōsphorus from Greek phōsphóros, acompound adjective formed from phōs ‘light’and the suffix -phóros ‘carrying’ (a relative ofEnglish bear), which was used as an epithet forthe planet Venus as it appears at dawn. It wasalso applied to any substance that that glowed,and in the mid 17th century it was taken up as theterm for the newly isolated element phosphorus,which catches fire when exposed to the air.Phosphate [18] was borrowed from French

photo 376phosphat, a derivative of phosphore‘phosphorus’. BEAR, PHOTOphoto [19] Greek phōs meant ‘light’ (it wasrelated to Sanskrit bhā- ‘shine’). Its stem formphōto- was used by the astronomer Sir JohnHerschel in 1839 to coin the term photograph,based on the Greek element -graphos ‘writing’,and perhaps inspired by a parallel Germanformation photographie which had appeared alittle earlier the same year. The word’s livingconnection with the concept ‘light’ has now beenvirtually severed, but it still flourishes in, forexample, photoelectric [19], photometer [18],photon [20], and photosynthesis [19]. PHOSPHORUS, PHOTONphrase [16] Greek phrásis ‘speech, way ofspeaking’ was a derivative of the verb phrázein‘show, explain’. English adopted it via Latinphrasis as phrasis, whose plural phraseseventually gave rise to a new singular phrase.From the same source comes periphrasis [16]. PERIPHRASISphrenology see FRANTICphysics [16] Physics comes ultimately fromGreek phúsis ‘nature’, a derivative of phúein‘bring forth, cause to grow’. The science ofstudying the natural world was hence phusikéepistémē ‘knowledge of nature’, and phusiké,turned into a noun, passed into English via Latinphysica and Old French fisique as fisike. By nowits meaning had shifted from ‘natural science’ to‘medicine’, a sense preserved in the now archaicphysic [13] and in the derivative physician [13],and the modern plural form, which restores theoriginal meaning, was a direct translation ofGreek tà phusiká ‘the physics’, the title ofAristotle’s writings on natural science. Physique[19] was borrowed from French. PHYSIQUEpiano [19] Piano is short for pianoforte [18], aterm borrowed from Italian which meansliterally ‘softloud’. It was a lexicalization of anepithet (piano e forte ‘soft and loud’) applied inthe early 18th century to a new sort ofharpsichord whose volume could be varied bythe use of dampers. Italian piano itself isdescended from Latin plānus ‘flat, even’, later‘smooth’, source of English plain. It wasintroduced into English as a musical direction inthe late 17th century. PLAIN, PLANEpiazza see PLACEpick English has two distinct words pick. Theverb [15], which originally meant ‘pierce’ (asense which survives in ‘pick holes in’), appearsto come via Old French piquer from a VulgarLatin *piccāre ‘prick, pierce’. Picket [17], whichoriginally meant ‘pointed stake’, is probablyderived from the same source (its modern sense‘guard’, which emerged in the 18th century,comes from the practice of soldiers tying theirhorses to stakes). Pique [16] is a slightly laterborrowing from French.Pick ‘sharp implement’ [14] (as in toothpick)is probably related to Old English pīc ‘pointedobject’, source of English pike ‘spear’. It alsolies behind English peak. In view of their closesemantic similarity, it seems likely that the twopicks share a common ancestor, which was nodoubt responsible also for Old French picois‘pickaxe’, altered in English, under the influenceof axe, to pickaxe [15]. PICKET, PIQUE; PEAK, PIKEpicnic [18] Picnic was borrowed from Frenchpiquenique, a word which seems to haveoriginated around the end of the 17th century. Itis not clear where it came from, but one theory isthat it was based on the verb piquer ‘pick, peck’(source of English pick), with the rhyming niqueperhaps added in half reminiscence of theobsolete nique ‘trifle’. Originally the worddenoted a sort of party to which everyonebrought along some food; the notion of an‘outdoor meal’ did not emerge until the 19thcentury.picture [15] Picture and paint are very closelyrelated. The Latin verb pingere ‘paint’ was thesource of English paint, and its past participialstem pict- produced a noun, pictūra ‘painting’,which was eventually to become English picture.The same source produced English depict [17]and Pict [OE] (etymologically the ‘painted’ or‘tattooed’ people), while its ultimate ancestor,the Indo-European base *pik-, *pig- ‘cut’, alsoevolved Latin pigmentum ‘colouring substance’,from which English got pigment [14] and, viaSpanish, pimento [17]. DEPICT, PAINT, PIGMENT, PIMENTOpidgin [19] A pidgin is a reduced form oflanguage used for communication betweenspeech communities which do not share thesame native language. A characteristic of suchlanguages is that words in the base languagefrom which the pidgin evolved become altered.And this is how the word pidgin itself arose. Itcomes from pidgin English, an alteration ofbusiness English in the commercial pidgin usedin Far Eastern ports in the mid-19th century. BUSINESSpie [14] The characteristic feature of pies in theMiddle Ages was that their filling consisted of aheterogeneous mixture of ingredients (asopposed to pasties, which had just one mainingredient). This has led etymologists to suggestthat pies were named after magpies (or pies, asthey were originally called), from a supposedresemblance between the miscellaneouscontents of pies and the assortment of objectscollected by thieving magpies.Although pie has now been superseded bymagpie as the bird-name, it survives in pied [14](etymologically ‘coloured black and white like amagpie’) and piebald [16] (etymologically‘streaked with black and white’). MAGPIE, PIED, PIEBALDpiece [13] Piece is probably ultimately of Celticorigin. It comes via Anglo-Norman pece frommedieval Latin pecia or petia, which appears tohave been borrowed from *pettia, an unrecordedword in the Celtic language of ancient Gaul. Thiswould have been descended from an Old Celtic

ase *pett- that may also be the source ofEnglish peat [14]. Anglo-Norman *peche, avariant form of pece, of dialectal origin, gaveEnglish patch [14]. PATCH, PEATpiecemeal see MEALpied see PIEpiety see PITYpig [13] The word pig is not recorded until theMiddle English period, although it is assumed tohave existed in Old English as *picga or *pigga.It originally meant ‘young pig’, and did notbecome the general term for ‘pig’ until the 16thcentury (the usual word in Old and MiddleEnglish was swine). Piglet is a late 19th-centurycoinage. It is not known where the word pigcame from, although some have suggested aconnection with Old English pīc ‘pointed object’(source of modern English pike), perhaps inallusion to the pig’s pointed muzzle (if that is thetruth of the matter, pig may be parallel as ananimal-name with pike).pigeon [14] Pigeon comes ultimately from lateLatin pīpiō. This meant originally simply ‘youngbird’, and was formed from the onomatopoeicbase *pīp- (source also of English pipe), whichimitated the chirps of young birds. It graduallyspecialized in use to ‘young pigeon, squab’, andboth the general and the specific senses passedvia Vulgar Latin *pībiō into Old French as pijon.By the time it arrived in English, however, onlythe ‘young pigeon’ sense survived, and this wassoon overtaken by ‘pigeon’ in general. PIPEpigment see PICTUREpike English has two pikes now in commonusage, which are probably ultimately the sameword. Pike ‘spear’ [OE] goes back to an OldEnglish pīc ‘pointed object’, which is closelyrelated to English peak and pick ‘sharpimplement’. It had various specific applicationsin Old and Middle English, now long defunct,including ‘pickaxe’, ‘spike’, ‘thorn’, ‘point of ashoe’, and ‘pitchfork’ (and pitchfork [13] itselfwas originally pickfork, a fork with ‘sharppoints’; its current form, which emerged in the16th century, is due to the association with‘pitching’ or tossing hay on to a cart). But thesense ‘weapon consisting of a long pole with aspike on top’ did not appear until the 16thcentury, partly inspired by the related OldFrench pique ‘pike’.Pike the fish [14] was probably also namedwith the descendant of Old English pīc, inallusion to its long pointed jaws (a similarinspiration can be seen in French brochet ‘pike’,a derivative of broche ‘spit’). PEAK, PICK, PITCHFORKpikelet see PIZZApilaster see PILLARpile English has three words pile. Thecommonest, ‘heap’ [15], originally meant‘pillar’. It comes ultimately from Latin pīla‘pillar’, source also of English pilaster, pillar,etc. This evolved in meaning to ‘pier or harbour377 pillarwall made of stones’, and inspired a derived verbpīlāre ‘heap up’ (source of English compile[14]). The sense ‘heap’ came to the fore in OldFrench pile, and passed into English.Pile ‘post driven into the ground’ [OE] wasborrowed into Old English from Latin pīlum‘javelin’. It was originally used for a ‘throwingspear’, ‘arrow’, or ‘spike’, and its present-dayuse did not emerge (via ‘pointed stake or post’)until the Middle English period.Pile ‘nap on cloth, carpets, etc’ [15] probablycomes via Anglo-Norman pyle from Latin pilus‘hair’ (which may be distantly related to Englishpillage and pluck, and lies behind Englishdepilatory [17]). COMPILE, PILASTER, PILLAR; DEPILATORYpiles see PELLETpilfer [14] Originally pilfering was quite aserious matter, roughly what would now betermed plundering, but gradually over thecenturies is has become trivialized to ‘stealingsmall things’. It was to begin with only a noun inEnglish (the verb did not arrive until the 16thcentury), but its ultimate source was the Anglo-Norman verb pelfrer ‘rob, plunder’. No one istoo sure where that came from, although it maybe related in some way to the now archaic pelf‘money’ [14], which originally meant ‘spoils,booty’.pilgrim [12] Etymologically, a pilgrim issomeone who goes on a journey. The wordcomes via Provençal pelegrin from Latinperegrīnus ‘foreign’. This was a derivative ofpereger ‘on a journey, abroad’, a compoundformed from per ‘through’ and ager ‘country’(source of English agriculture). When it arrivedin English it was still being used for ‘traveller’ (asense which survives in the relatedperegrinations [16]), but the specific ‘one whojourneys for religious purposes’ was wellestablished by the 13th century.The peregrine falcon [14] got its namebecause falconers took its young for huntingwhile they were ‘journeying’ from theirbreeding places, rather than from their nests. PEREGRINEpill see PELLETpillage [14] The origins of pillage are disputed.It comes from Old French pillage, a derivative ofpiller ‘plunder’, but there the consensus breaksdown. Some say that piller (which also meant‘tear up’) was based on pille ‘rag, cloth’, whichmay have been descended from Latin pilleus‘felt cap’; others that it came from a Vulgar Latinverb *pīliāre, a derivative of Latin pīlum‘javelin’ (source of English pile ‘supportingstake’); and others again that it came from Latinpilāre ‘remove hair’ (source of English peel[13], which originally meant ‘plunder’), aderivative of pilus ‘hair’ (source of English pile‘nap’), in which case it would be roughly parallelin inspiration to colloquial English fleece ‘rob’.pillar [13] Pillar comes ultimately from Latinpīla ‘pillar’ (source also of English compile,pilaster [16], and pile ‘heap’). In Vulgar Latinthis was extended to *pīlāre, which passed into

pillion 378Anglo-Norman piler. This was the form in whichEnglish originally acquired it, and the -ar endingwas not grafted on to it until the 14th century. COMPILE, PILASTER, PILEpillion [16] The word pillion long predates theinvention of the motorcycle. It originallydenoted a ‘small light saddle on a horse’,particularly one placed behind a main saddle. Itis ultimately of Latin origin, but it reachedEnglish via a Celtic route. English borrowed itfrom Scottish Gaelic pillean, a diminutive formof peall ‘covering, cushion’. This in turn camefrom Latin pellis ‘skin’ (source of English pelt‘skin’ and related to English film). FILM, PELTpillow [OE] Pillow in a recognizable formemerged in the 14th century. It was based on aninflected form of Old English pyle ‘pillow’. Thiscame via a prehistoric West Germanic *pulwīn(source also of German pfühl and Dutch peluw‘pillow’) from Latin pulvīnus ‘pillow’, a word ofunknown origin.pilot [16] Pilot comes ultimately from a Greekword for ‘oar’, pēdón, which went back to thesame Indo-European base as produced Englishfoot. Its plural, pēdá, was used for ‘rudder’, andfrom this was derived medieval Greek *pēdótēs‘rudder, helmsman’. This in turn was borrowedinto medieval Latin as pedota, which was lateraltered to pilotus – whence, via French, Englishpilot. For most of its career in English, of course,the word has been used in connection with thesteering of ships, but in the middle of the 19thcentury it began to be applied to the steering ofballoons, and the first record of its modern usefor ‘flier of an aeroplane’ comes from 1907. FOOTpimento see PICTUREpimpernel [15] The burnet, a plant of the rosefamily, has fruit that look like peppercorns. Itwas therefore termed in Vulgar Latin*piperīnella, a derivative of *piperīnus ‘pepperlike’,which in turn was based on Latin piper‘pepper’ (source of English pepper). This passedinto Old French as piprenelle, which was lateraltered to pimpernelle – hence Englishpimpernel. This too denoted the ‘burnet’, and itis not clear how it came to be applied (as early asthe 15th century) to the small red-flowered plantof the primrose family, its current usage. PEPPERpin [OE] Latin pinna (a probable relative ofEnglish fin) meant ‘wing, feather, pointed peak’.Amongst its derivatives were the diminutivepinnāculum, which has given English pinnacle[14] and, via French, panache [16] (whichoriginally meant ‘plume of feathers’), pinnātus‘feathered, winged’, source of English pinnate[18], and Vulgar Latin *pinniō, from whichEnglish gets pinion ‘wing’ [15]. Pinna itself wasborrowed into Old English as pinn, and it wasused for ‘peg’ (a sense which survives in varioustechnical contexts); the application to a ‘smallthin metal fastener’ did not emerge until the 14thcentury.A pinafore [18] is etymologically a garmentthat is ‘pinned afore’, that is, ‘pinned to the frontof a dress to protect it’. FIN, PANACHE, PINAFORE, PINION, PINNACLEpine [OE] English has two words pine. The treenamewas borrowed from Latin pīnus, whichsome have traced to the Indo-European base*pīt- ‘resin’ (source of English pituitary [17]).Pine-cones were originally called pineapples[14], but in the mid 17th century the name wastransferred to the tropical plant whose juicyyellow-fleshed fruit was held to resemble a pinecone.The Latin term for ‘pine-cone’ was pīnea,whose Vulgar Latin derivative *pīneolus hasgiven English pinion ‘cog-wheel’ [17], and itseems likely that English pinnace [16] comes viaFrench and Spanish from Vulgar Latin *pīnāceanāvis ‘ship made of pine-wood’. And the pinotnoir [20] grape is etymologically the grape with‘pine-cone’-shaped bunches.Pine ‘languish’ is a derivative of anunrecorded Old English noun *pīne ‘torture’,originally borrowed into Germanic from pēna,the post-classical descendant of Latin poena‘penalty’ (source of English pain). PINION, PINNACE, PITUITARY; PAINpinion see PIN, PINEpink English has three distinct words pink. Thecolour term [18] appears to have come, by abizarre series of twists, from an early Dutchword meaning ‘small’. This was pinck (sourcealso of the colloquial English pinkie ‘littlefinger’ [19]). It was used in the phrase pinckoogen, literally ‘small eyes’, hence ‘half-closedeyes’, which was borrowed into English andpartially translated as pink eyes. It has beenspeculated that this was a name given to a plantof the species Dianthus, which first emerged inthe abbreviated form pink in the 16th century.Many of these plants have pale red flowers, andso by the 18th century pink was being used for‘pale red’.Pink ‘pierce’ [14], now preserved mainly inpinking shears, is probably of Low Germanorigin (Low German has pinken ‘peck’). Andpink (of an engine) ‘make knocking sounds’ [20]is presumably imitative in origin.pinnace see PINEpinnaclepinnacle see PINpinnate see PINpinyin [20] Pinyin is a system of writing Chinesein Roman characters which began to beintroduced in China in the late 1950s. The termin Chinese means literally ‘spell-sound’.pioneer [16] Pioneer was borrowed from Frenchpionnier, a descendant of Old French paonier.This originally denoted a ‘foot soldier sent onahead to clear the way’, and was a derivative ofpaon ‘foot soldier’ (whose Anglo-Normanversion poun gave English pawn). FOOT, PAWN, PEDALpious [17] Pious is one of a nexus of Englishwords descended from Latin pius, an adjective ofunknown origin. Its derivative pietās has givenEnglish piety and pity, and the derived verb piāre‘appease, atone’ lies behind English expiate

[16]. Pious itself was probably borrowed directfrom Latin. EXPIATE, PIETY, PITYpipe [OE] The etymological notion underlyingpipe is of a ‘piping’ sound. The word goes backto a Common Romance *pīpa, a derivative of theLatin verb pīpāre ‘chirp’. This was formed fromthe base *pīp-, imitative of the sounds made byyoung birds, which also lies behind Englishpigeon. Prehistoric Germanic took over *pīpa,and it has since evolved to German pfeife, Dutchpijp, Swedish pipa, and English pipe. By thetime it reached English it had broadened outsemantically from its original ‘tubular windinstrument which makes a piping sound’ to‘tube’ in general. PIGEONpique see PICKpirate [15] A pirate is etymologically someonewho makes an ‘attempt’ or ‘attack’ on someone.The word comes via Latin pīrāta (where thenotion of a ‘sea-robber’ first emerged) fromGreek peirātés ‘attacker, marauder’, a derivativeof the verb peiran ‘attempt, attack’. This camefrom the same base, *per- ‘try’, as producedEnglish experience, expert, peril, repertory, etc. EXPERIENCE, EXPERT, PERIL, REPERTORYpiscatorial see FISHPisces see FISHpiscina see FISHpiss [13] Piss probably originated in imitation ofthe sound of urinating. It has been traced back toa hypothetical Vulgar Latin *pisāre, whichpassed into English via Old French pisser. It hasbecome widely distributed throughout the otherEuropean languages (Italian pisciare, forinstance, German and Dutch pissen, and Welshpiso). Pee [18] started life as a euphemism forpiss. PEEpistil see PISTONpistol [16] Pistol is one of a very small and selectgroup of words contributed to English by Czech(others are howitzer and robot). It comes viaGerman pistole from Czech pišt’ala, whichliterally means ‘pipe’ (it is related to Russianpischal ‘shepherd’s pipe’).piston [18] The Latin verb pinsere meant ‘beat,pound’. Its past participial stem pist- formed thebasis for the noun pistillum ‘grinding stick,pestle’ (from which English gets pistil ‘femaleflower part’ [18], an allusion to its shape). Thispassed into Italian as pestello, from whichEnglish gets pestle [14]. From the Italian stempest- was formed pestone ‘rammer’, whosevariant pistone gave French piston – whenceEnglish piston. PESTLE, PISTILpit English has two words pit. The older, ‘hole’[OE], comes ultimately from Latin puteus ‘pit,well’ (source also of French puits ‘well, shaft’),but reached English via a Germanic route. It wasborrowed in prehistoric times into WestGermanic as *putti, which has evolved into379 placeGerman pfütze ‘pool’, Dutch put ‘pit’, andEnglish pit.Pit ‘fruit-stone’ [19] may have beenborrowed from Dutch pit, which goes back to aprehistoric West Germanic *pithan, source ofEnglish pith [OE]. PITHpitcher see BEAKERpitchfork see PIKEpitta see PIZZApittance see PITYpituitary see PINEpity [13] Latin pius ‘pious’, an adjective ofunknown origin which gave English expiate andpious, had a noun derivative pietās. This hascome into English in three distinct forms. First toarrive, more or less contemporaneously, werepity and piety [13], which were borrowed fromrespectively Old French pite and piete. Theseboth developed from Latin pietās, and wereoriginally synonymous, but they becamedifferentiated in meaning before they arrived inEnglish. The Italian descendant of the Latinnoun was pietà, which English took over in the17th century as a term for a ‘statue of Maryholding the body of the crucified Christ’.Vulgar Latin *pietantia, a derivative ofpietās, meant ‘charitable donation’. It has givenEnglish pittance [13]. EXPIATE, PIETY, PIOUS, PITTANCEpizza [20] Italian pizza is quite a broad term,signifying ‘cake’, ‘tart’ or ‘pie’ andencompassing dishes as diverse as a closed fruitpie and a flat bread-dough base with a topping. Itis the latter, of course, that brought the word intoEnglish. At first, both the word and the foodstuffwere unfamiliar enough for the tautologousname ‘pizza pie’ to be deemed necessary, but thefast-food revolution from the 1960s onwards hasthoroughly naturalized pizza (US fast-foodoutlets have their own abbreviation, za). Theorigin of the Italian word is uncertain. It has beenlinked with Vulgar Latin *picea, a derivative ofLatin pyx ‘pitch’ (in which case it would beparalleled by Welsh bara pyglyd, literally‘pitchy bread’, possibly a reference to its colour,from which English gets pikelet [18], the nameof a type of tea-cake), but it could also be relatedto modern Greek pitta (source of English pitta[20]), which may be a descendant of classicalGreek peptos ‘cooked’.placate see PLEASEplace [13] A place is etymologically a ‘broad’area. The word comes ultimately from the Greekexpression plateia hodós ‘broad way’ (theadjective platús ‘broad’ is probably related toEnglish flat). Plateia came to be used on its ownas a noun, and passed into Latin as platea ‘broadstreet, open area’. This became changed in postclassicaltimes to *plattja, which passed intoEnglish via Old French place. Probably theclosest the English word comes to its ancestralmeaning is as a street name (as in PortlandPlace), introduced under French influence in thelate 16th century, which originally denoted morean ‘open square’ than a ‘street’. But closer still

placebo 380are piazza [16] and plaza [17], borrowedrespectively from the Italian and Spanishversions of the word.The homophonous plaice the fish-name is adistant relative. FLAT, PIAZZA, PLAICE, PLATE, PLATYPUS, PLAZAplacebo [13] Placebo started life as the firstperson future singular of the Latin verb placēre‘please’ (source of English please), and hencemeant originally ‘I will please’. It was the firstword of the antiphon to the first psalm in theRoman Catholic service for the dead, PlacēboDominō in rēgiōne vivōrum ‘I will please theLord in the land of the living’. The word’smedical use emerged at the end of the 18th, andarose from the notion of a medicine ‘pleasing’the patient rather than having any directphysiological effect. PLEASEplacenta [17] Latin placenta originally meant‘flat cake’. It was borrowed from Greekplakóenta, the accusative form of plakóeis ‘flatcake’, which was derived from pláx ‘flat surface’(possible relative of English plank). Itsapplication to the afterbirth (originally in thephrase placenta uterīna ‘uterine cake’) is a postclassicaldevelopment, inspired by the flat roundshape of the afterbirth.placid see PLEASEplagiarizeplagiarize [17] Latin plagium meant‘kidnapping’ – it was a derivative of plaga ‘net’.From it was formed plagārius ‘kidnapper’,which was used metaphorically by theepigrammatist Martial for ‘literary thief’ – thesense in which the word reached English.plague [14] Etymologically, plague means a‘blow’ or ‘stroke’. It goes back to the sameprehistoric base, *plag- ‘hit’, as produced Latinplangere ‘beat’ (source of English complain,plaintiff [14], plaintive [14], and plangent [19] –which originally denoted the sound of waves‘beating’ against the shore) and Englishplankton. From this was derived Greek plāgá‘blow’, which was borrowed into Latin as plāga‘blow’, hence ‘wound’. In the Vulgate it wasused for an ‘infectious disease’, and wasborrowed in this sense (as well as the nowdefunct ‘blow’) via Old French into English.(*Plak-, a parallel form to *plag-, lies behindEnglish apoplexy and plectrum [17].) APOPLEXY, COMPLAIN, PLAINTIVE, PLANGENT,PLANKTON, PLECTRUMplaice [13] The plaice is etymologically the‘broad’ fish. Its name goes back ultimately toGreek platūs ‘broad’ (which makes it distantlyrelated to place). From this was descended, viasome missing links, late Latin platessa ‘flatfish’,which became Old French plaïs – whenceEnglish plaice. PLACE, PLATE, PLATYPUSplain [13] Plain is etymologically the same wordas plane in all its uses except the tree-name, andeven that comes from the same ultimate source.This was Indo-European *plā- ‘flat’, whichproduced Greek platús ‘broad’ (source ofEnglish place, plaice, and platypus), Latinplānus ‘flat, clear’, and possibly English flat.The Latin word passed into English via OldFrench plain, but its original ‘flat’ senses havebeen hived off into the separately acquiredplane, leaving only the metaphorically derived‘clear’ senses. The Italian descendant of plānushas given English piano. PLANEplaintiff see PLAGUEplaintive see PLAGUEplait see PLEATplan [18] A plan is etymologically a design thathas been ‘planted’ on the ground. Indeed inFrench, from which English acquired the word,it was originally plant, and was not altered toplan until the 16th century, under the influenceof plan ‘flat’ (source of English plane ‘flat’). Itwas a derivative of the verb planter ‘plant’, andoriginally referred to the laying-out of theground plan of a building. The metaphor seemsfirst to have arisen in Italian pianta ‘groundplan’, a relative of plant, which prompted itsdevelopment in French. PLANTplanchette see PLANKplane English has five distinct planes, four ofwhich are essentially the same word as plain.These come ultimately from Latin plānus, butpreserve its ‘flat’ meanings rather than (likeplain) its ‘clear’ meanings. Plane ‘flat surface’[17] comes from Latin plānum, a noun use of theneuter form of the adjective; it is the plane fromwhich aeroplane, and hence its abbreviationplane, were formed. Plane ‘carpenter’ssmoothing tool’ [14] comes via Old Frenchplane from late Latin plāna, a derivative of theverb plānāre ‘make level’, itself a derivative ofplānus. Plane ‘flat’ [17] is an alteration of plain,on the model of French plan ‘flat’. And plane‘glide, soar’ [17] comes from French planer, aderivative of plan ‘level surface’ (the underlyingnotion being of a bird soaring with level wings).The odd man out is plane the tree-name [14],which comes via Old French plane and Latinplatanus from Greek plátanos, a derivative ofplatús ‘broad’ (source of English place, plaice,and platypus) – the reference being to its broadleaves. Platanus probably also underlies Englishplantain, as applied to the banana-like vegetable. PIANO, PLAIN; PLACE, PLAICE, PLANTAIN, PLATE,PLATYPUSplanet [12] A planet is etymologically a‘wanderer’. The word comes via Old Frenchplanete and late Latin planēta from Greekplanétos, a derivative of the verb planasthai‘wander’. This was applied to any heavenly bodythat appeared to move or ‘wander’ across theskies among the fixed stars, which in ancientastronomy included the sun and moon as well asMars, Venus, etc. The modern application to a‘body that orbits the sun (or similar star)’ datesfrom the mid 17th century.plangent see PLAGUEplankplank [13] The etymological idea underlyingplank may be ‘flatness’. It comes via planke, anorthern dialect version of Old French planche

(source of English planchette [19]), from lateLatin planca ‘slab’, a derivative of the adjectiveplancus ‘flat’. This may have come from thesame source as Greek pláx ‘flat surface’,ancestor of English placenta. PLANCHETTEplankton [19] The ultimate source of plankton isGreek plázein ‘hit’, a descendant of the samebase as produced English apoplexy, plague, andplectrum. The link between these two unlikelysoundingrelatives is that something that is hitmoves or wanders, and plankton are minuteorganisms that wander or drift in the ocean. TheGreek derivative plagtón meant ‘wanderer’, andthe application to ‘plankton’ was first made inGerman in the 1880s. PLAGUEplant [OE] Etymologically, a plant is probablysomething you press into the ground with the‘sole’ of your foot. The word was borrowed fromLatin planta ‘shoot, sprout, cutting’, a derivativeof the verb plantāre ‘plant, transplant’, and it hasbeen speculated that this was based on Latinplanta ‘sole of the foot’ (source of Englishplantain and plantigrade ‘walking on the solesof the feet’ [19]). PLAN, PLANTAINplantain Two entirely unrelated plants have thename plantain. Both get it from their broadleaves. One, an insignificant-looking weed [14],comes via Old French plantain from Latinplantāgō, a derivative of planta ‘sole of the foot’(source of English plantigrade and possiblyplant). The other, a tropical plant of the bananafamily [16], was originally named by theSpaniards plántano ‘plane tree’, a descendant ofthe same Latin source as produced English plane(which etymologically means ‘broad-leaved’).This was adopted by English and quickly alteredto the more familiar plantain. PLAN, PLANT; PLANEplasma see PLASTICplaster [OE] Like plastic, plaster comesultimately from the Greek verb plássein‘mould’. Combination with the prefix en- ‘in’produced emplássein ‘daub on, plaster’. From itspast participle emplastós was derivedémplastron ‘medicinal application to the skin’,which reached Latin as emplastrum. MedievalLatin shortened it to plastrum, which OldEnglish adopted as plaster. Its use for a ‘softsubstance spread on walls, etc’ was introducedvia Old French plastre in the 14th century. PLASTICplastic [16] Plastic is etymologically a‘mouldable’ substance. The word comes viaFrench plastique and Latin plasticus from Greekplastikós ‘fit for moulding’, a derivative of theverb plássein ‘mould’ (source also of Englishplasma [18] and plaster). Up until the 20thcentury its main use in English was as anadjective, meaning ‘pliable’. The first record ofits use for a ‘synthetic material made fromorganic compounds’ comes from 1909. The381 pleasetrade-name Plasticine was coined from it in the1890s. PLASMA, PLASTERplate [13] Etymologically, a plate is something‘flat’. It comes from Vulgar Latin *plattus ‘flat’,which may go back to Greek platús ‘broad’(source of English place, plane the tree, andplatypus). It reached English via two separateOld French words, which have since coalesced:first plate, which gives the sense ‘flat sheet’, asin silver plate and plate glass; and then, in the15th century, plat, ‘dish for food’. Related formsin English include plateau [18], platform [16](etymologically a ‘flat form’), platinum [19],platitude [19] (a ‘flat’ or dull remark), andplatter [14]. FLAT, PLACE, PLANE, PLATEAU, PLATFORM,PLATINUM, PLATITUDE, PLATTER, PLATYPUSplatoon [17] Platoon means etymologically‘little ball’. It comes from French peloton, adiminutive form of pelote ‘ball’ (source ofEnglish pellet). The notion of a ‘small ball’ wasextended in French to a ‘little cluster of people orgroup of soldiers’ – hence the meaning ofEnglish platoon. PELLET, PELOTAplatter see PLATEplatypus [18] The platypus’s name meansliterally ‘flat-footed’. It was given to it at the endof the 18th century, and is first recorded inGeorge Shaw’s Naturalists’ Miscellany 1799. Itwas adapted from Greek platúpous, a compoundformed from platús ‘flat’ (source of Englishplace, plaice, and plane the tree) and poús ‘foot’(a relative of English foot). FOOT, PLACE, PLANE, PLATEplay [OE] The origins of play are obscure. It hada relative in Middle Dutch pleien ‘dance about,jump for joy’, but this has now died out, leavingit in splendid but puzzling isolation, its ancestryunaccounted for. Its underlying meaning appearsto be ‘make rapid movements for purposes ofrecreation’, but already in Old English times itwas being used for ‘perform on a musicalinstrument’. The earliest record of the use of thenoun for a ‘dramatic work’ is from the 14thcentury.plead [13] Essentially plead and plea are thesame word. Both go back ultimately to Latinplacitum ‘something pleasant’, hence‘something that pleases both sides’, ‘somethingagreed upon’, and finally ‘opinion, decision’.This was a noun formed from the past participleof placēre ‘please’ (source of English please). Itpassed into Old French as plaid ‘agreement,discussion, lawsuit’, and formed the basis of averb plaidier, from which (via Anglo-Normanpleder) English got plead. In later Old Frenchplaid became plait, and Anglo-Norman took itover as plai or ple – whence English plea [13]. PLEA, PLEASEplease [14] Please is at the centre of a smallfamily of English words that go back to Latinplacēre ‘please’ (a derivative of the same base asproduced plācāre ‘calm, appease’, source ofEnglish implacable [16] and placate [17]).

pleat 382Related English words that started life in Latininclude complacent, placebo, and placid [17]. Itreached English via Old French plaisir, andother derivatives picked up via Old French orAnglo-Norman are plea, plead, pleasant [14],and pleasure [14] (originally a noun use of theverb plaisir). COMPLACENT, IMPLACABLE, PLACATE,PLACEBO, PLACID, PLEA, PLEAD, PLEASANT,PLEASUREpleat [14] Pleat, plait, and plight ‘predicament’are essentially the same word, but have becomedifferentiated over the centuries. All three goback to Vulgar Latin *plicitum or *plictum‘fold’, a noun use of the past participle of Latinplicāre ‘fold’ (source of English ply). Thisbecame Old French pleit, which was originallyborrowed into English as plete ‘fold’. Plete wasto become modern English pleat, but at first itwas used only as a verb. For the noun, Englishborrowed pleit as plait [15] ‘fold’, which did notbegin to acquire its modern English meaning‘braid’ until the 16th century. The Anglo-Norman version of pleit was plit, which gaveEnglish plight [14]. This too originally meant‘fold’, and the sense ‘predicament’ waspresumably due to the influence of the other(completely unrelated) English word plight (seePLEDGE), which as a noun in Old and MiddleEnglish meant ‘danger’, but is now mainlyencountered in the expression ‘plight one’stroth’. FOLD, PLAIT, PLIGHT, PLYplebeian [16] The plēbs were the ‘commonpeople’ of ancient Rome (the word mayconnected with Greek pléthos ‘multitude’, arelative of English plethora). English getsplebeian from its derived adjective plēbēius. Theconnotations of ‘lower-classness’ have beentransferred from ancient Rome to the presentday, and inspired the derogatory pleb [19]. Aplebiscite [16] is etymologically a ‘decreeapproved by the common people’.plectrum see PLAGUEpledgepledge [14] Pledge comes via Old French plegefrom late Latin plebium, a derivative of the verbplebīre ‘pledge’. This was probably borrowedfrom Frankish *plegan ‘guarantee’, a derivativeof the same Germanic base as produced Englishplight ‘pledge’ [OE] (as in ‘plight one’s troth’)and German pflicht ‘duty’. PLIGHTplenty [13] Plenty is one of a family of Englishwords that trace their history back to Latinplēnus ‘full’ (a descendant of the same Indo-European base, *plē-, as produced English fulland plethora). Others include plenary [16],plenipotentiary [17], plenitude [15], plenteous[13], and replenish. Plenty itself comes via OldFrench plentet from the Latin derivative plenitās.Other close relatives contributed by Latininclude plural, plus, and surplus and the range ofwords based on the verbal element -plēre ‘fill’ –complete, deplete, implement, replete, supply,etc. COMPLETE, DEPLETE, FULL, IMPLEMENT,PLETHORA, REPLETE, SUPPLYplethora [16] Greek plēthórē meant ‘fullness’ (itwas derived from the verb pléthein ‘fill’, adescendant of the Indo-European base *plē-,from which English gets full, plenty, etc). It wastaken over into late Latin as plēthōra, and at firstwas widely used as a medical term, denoting an‘excess of blood or other fluids in the body’.That was what it originally denoted in English,but by the end of the 16th century the moregeneral ‘surplus’ was coming into use. FULLpleurisy [14] Greek pleurá, a word of unknownorigin, denoted ‘side’ or ‘rib’. It came to be usedas an anatomical term for the ‘inner lining of thechest, containing the lungs’, and the derivativepleurítis ‘inflammation of the chest lining’ wascoined (apparently by the physicianHippocrates). This passed into Latin as pleurītis,which in post-classical times evolved topleurisis. Old French took this over as pleurisie,whence English pleurisy.pliable see PLYpliant see PLYpliers see PLYplight see PLEATplimsoll [20] The British politician and socialreformer Samuel Plimsoll (1824–98) was one ofthe leading instigators of the Merchant ShippingAct 1876. Amongst its provisions was that a lineshould be painted round the hulls of ships toindicate a safe limit for loading. This wasPlimsoll’s idea, and it became known as thePlimsoll line. It is thought that the word plimsollwas applied to ‘gym shoes’ in allusion to the linerunning round the shoes formed by the rubberwelt or trimming.plonk English has two distinct words plonk. Theone that means ‘put down firmly and heavily’[19] was no doubt originally simply an imitationof the sound made by the action (alternativerealizations of which are plank and plunk). Theother, ‘cheap bog-standard wine’ [20], appearsto have originated among Australian troopsserving in France during World War I, whichlends credence to the supposition that it wasbased on a French original – generally supposedto be vin blanc ‘white wine’. It is true that notuntil the 1930s do we have any written evidenceof plonk in this sense, nor of its possibleprecursor plinkety-plonk (which could have beena comical rhyming variation on vin blanc, andwhich also produced the shorter-lived spin-offplink in the same sense), and that nowadays theterm seems to be applied mainly to red winerather than white. Nevertheless, there arerelevant records of Great-War-period puns (forexample von blink as a ‘humorous corruption’ ofvin blanc), and the explanation has an air ofplausibility.plot [11] Two separate and unrelated words havecome together to form modern English plot. Theearlier was late Old English plot, a term ofunknown origin which denoted ‘area of ground’(as in a ‘plot of land’). This subsequentlydeveloped to ‘ground plan’ and ‘diagram’,

which formed the basis of ‘set of events in astory’ (first recorded in the 17th century). Theother ancestor was Old French complot ‘secretscheme’ (also of unknown origin), which wasoriginally borrowed into English in the 16thcentury as complot, but soon lost its prefix com-,no doubt under the influence of the alreadyexisting noun plot.plough [OE] Plough was not the originalEnglish word for an ‘implement for turning overthe soil’. That was Old English sulh, a relative ofLatin sulcus ‘furrow’. Plough was borrowed inthe 10th century from Old Norse plógr, adescendant of prehistoric Germanic *plōgaz.And this in turn was derived from a base *plōgacquiredfrom one of the ancient Indo-Europeanlanguages of northern Italy (source also of Latinplaustrum ‘wagon’). The earliest record we haveof the word being used for the characteristicallyshaped group of seven stars in Ursa major isfrom early 16th-century Scotland.plover [14] Etymologically, the plover is the‘rain-bird’. Its name comes via Anglo-Normanplover from Vulgar Latin *ploviārius, aderivative of Latin pluvia ‘rain’ (source ofFrench pluie, Italian pioggia, and Spanish Iluvia‘rain’ and related to English flow). Varioustheories have been put forward as to how it cameto be so called, among them that migratingplovers arrive in autumn, at the start of the rainyseason; that plovers get restless at the approachof rain; and that some species have plumagespotted with pale marks, like raindrops. FLOW, PLUVIALpluck [OE] Pluck is a widespread Germanicword (Flemish has plokken, Swedish plocka, andDanish plukke, and German and Dutch theclosely related pflücken and plukken), but it isultimately of Latin origin. Prehistoric Germanic*plukkōn was acquired from a Vulgar Latin*piluccāre (source also of Old French peluchier‘pluck’ – from which English gets plush [16] –and Italian piluccare ‘pluck’), a derivative ofLatin pīlus ‘hair’ (source of English depilatory,pile ‘nap’, etc). The use of the noun pluck for‘courage’ originated in the 18th century from anearlier literal application to the ‘heart (and otherinternal organs) of a slaughtered animal’, whichin turn was based on the notion of their being‘plucked’ or removed from the carcase. DEPILATORY, PILE, PLUSHplum [OE] Plum and prune ‘dried plum’ areultimately the same word. Their commonancestor was Greek proumnon, a word whichoriginated somewhere in Asia Minor. This waslater contracted to prounon, and borrowed intoLatin as prōnum. Its plural prōna came to beregarded in post-classical times as a singular,and this is where English gets prune from, butprōna was also borrowed into prehistoricGermanic, and many of its descendants herehave had their r changed to l (the two are closetogether phonetically) – hence German pflaume,Swedish plommon, and English plum. PRUNE383 plyplumb [13] Plumb comes via Old French*plombe from Latin plumbum ‘lead’, a word ofuncertain origin. Of its modern English uses, theverbal ‘sound the depths’ comes from the use ofa line weighted with lead (a plumb line) tomeasure the depth of water and the adverbial‘exactly’ from the use of a similar line todetermine verticality. Related words in Englishinclude aplomb; plumber [14] (originally simplya ‘worker in lead’, but eventually, since waterpipes were once made of lead, a ‘pipe-layer’);plummet [14] (a diminutive form coined in OldFrench); and plunge [14] (from the Vulgar Latinderivative *plumbicāre ‘sound with a plumb’). APLOMB, PLUMBER, PLUMMET, PLUNGEplume [14] Latin plūma originally denoted‘down, feathers’ (it is probably related toEnglish fleece). Eventually, though, it came tosignify a ‘single feather’, and evolved in thissense to Italian piuma, Spanish pluma, andFrench plume – source of English plume. Thederivative plumage [15] originated in OldFrench. FLEECE, PLUMAGEplummet see PLUMBplunder [17] Plunder is of Dutch origin, andetymologically denotes something like ‘rob ofhousehold odds and ends’. It was borrowed fromMiddle Dutch plunderen, which was presumablyderived from the noun plunde or plunne‘household goods, clothes, etc’, whose originsare unknown.plunge see PLUMBpluralplural [14] Plural is one of a range of Englishwords that go back ultimately to Latin plūs‘more’, a descendant (like English full andGreek pólus ‘much’, source of the English prefixpoly-) of the Indo-European base *plē- ‘full’.This was borrowed into English directly as plus[17], in the sense ‘with the addition of’. Pluralcomes via Old French plurel from the Latinderivative plūrālis ‘more than one’. Otherrelated words in English include nonplus [16](etymologically ‘put in a position where “nomore” – Latin nōn plūs – can be done’);pluperfect [16] (a lexicalization of the Latinphrase plūs quam perfectum ‘more thanperfect’); and surplus. NONPLUS, PLUPERFECT, PLUS, SURPLUSfoursplus fours [20] The term plus fours wasintroduced around 1920. It is an allusion to thefact that such trousers were made four incheslonger in the leg than the standardknickerbockers or shorts of the time, whichcame to just above the knee.plush see PLUCKplyply English has two distinct words ply, althoughultimately they are related. The one meaning‘fold, twist, layer’ [14], now mainly found inplywood [20] and in combinations such as twoplyand three-ply, comes from Old French pli, aderivative of the verb plier ‘bend, fold’ (sourceof English apply [14], pliable [15], pliant [14],pliers [16], and reply). This went back to Latinplicāre ‘fold’, a relative of English fold andsource of accomplice, complicate [17], employ,

pneumatic 384explicit, imply, pleat, plight ‘predicament’, andsupplicate. It was formed from a base that alsoproduced English perplex [16] and the finalsyllables of simple and supple. The apple pie ofapple-pie bed [18] is thought to be an alterationof French nappe pliée ‘folded sheet’.Ply ‘travel a route regularly’ or ‘solicit’ (as in‘ply for hire’) [14] is short for apply, a relative ofply ‘fold’, and originally meant ‘apply, employ’(as in ‘ply one’s needle’). ACCOMPLICE, APPLY, COMPLICATE, COMPLY,DOUBLE, EMPLOY, EXPLICIT, FOLD, IMPLY,PERPLEX, PLEAT, PLIABLE, PLIERS, PLIGHT,REPLY, SIMPLE, SUPPLE, SUPPLICATEpneumatic [17] Pneumatic denotesetymologically ‘of the wind or breath’. It comesvia Latin pneumaticus from Greek pneumatikós,a derivative of pneuma ‘wind, breath’ (which isdistantly related to English sneeze). Despite itssimilarity, pneumonia [17] does not comeultimately from the same source. It goes back toGreek pleúmōn ‘lung’, a relative of Latin pulmō(source of English pulmonary), which wasaltered to pneumōn under the influence ofpneuma. From this was derived pneumoníā,acquired by English via Latin pneumonia. PNEUMONIA, PULMONARYpoach English has two words poach, both ofwhich go back ultimately to Old French pocher‘put in a bag’, a derivative of poche ‘bag’ (sourceof English pocket and pouch). The cookery term[15] is an allusion to the forming of little ‘bags’or ‘pockets’ around the yolk of eggs by thecoagulating white. Poach ‘steal’ [17] seems tomean etymologically ‘put in one’s pocket’. POCKET, POUCHpock see POXpocket [15] A pocket is etymologically a ‘smallbag’. It comes from Anglo-Norman poket, adiminutive form of poke ‘bag’ (source of Englishpoke ‘bag’ [13], now used only in the expression‘buy a pig in a poke’). Its Old French equivalentwas poche, source of English pouch [14] (and ofpoach). This was acquired from Frankish *pokka‘bag’, a derivative of the same Germanic base(*puk-) as produced English pock (whose pluralhas become pox) and pucker. POACH, POCK, POKE, POUCH, PUCKERpodium see PEWpoem [16] A poem is etymologically ‘somethingcreated’. The word comes via Old French poemeand Latin poēma from Greek póēma, a derivativeof poeín ‘make, create’. The original sense‘something created’ developed metaphoricallyvia ‘literary work’ to ‘poem’. From the sameGreek verb was derived poētés ‘maker’, hence‘poet’, which produced Latin poēta and in duecourse English poet [13] (the Old English wordfor ‘poet’ had been scop, a relative of modernEnglish scoff). Poetry [14] originated as amedieval Latin derivative of poēta. Poesy‘poetry, poems’ [14], like poem originally aderivative Greek poeín, now has an archaic air,but it has a living descendant in posy [16], whichstarted life as a contraction of poesy. POESY, POET, POETRY, POSYpoignant see PUNCTUATIONpoint [13] ‘Sharp end’ is the etymological notionunderlying point. For it comes ultimately fromLatin pungere ‘prick, pierce’ (source also ofEnglish expunge, poignant and pungent). Theneuter form of its past participle, punctum, wasused as a noun, meaning ‘small hole made bypricking, dot, particle, etc’ (it is the source ofEnglish punctual, punctuation, etc), whichpassed into Old French as point. Then in thepost-classical period a further noun was created,from the feminine past participle puncta,meaning ‘sharp tip’, and this gave Old Frenchpointe. The two have remained separate inFrench, but in English they have coalesced inpoint. The Spanish descendant of Latin punctum,punta, has given English punt ‘bet’. COMPUNCTION, EXPUNGE, POIGNANT,PUNCTUAL, PUNCTUATION, PUNTpoise see PONDERpoison [13] Etymologically, poison is simplysomething you ‘drink’. The word comes via OldFrench poison from Latin pōtiō ‘drink’ (sourcealso of English potion), a derivative of the verbpōtāre ‘drink’ (from which English getspotable). The specialization in meaning from‘drink’ to ‘poisonous drink’ took place inclassical Latin, but the further progression to‘any poisonous substance’ is a laterdevelopment. Another probable relative is pot. POTABLE, POTION, SYMPOSIUMpoke see POCKETpoker English has two words poker. The earlier,poker for a fire [16], is simply the agent nounformed from poke [14], a verb borrowed fromMiddle Dutch or Middle Low German poken‘thrust, hit’. The card-game name [19]originated in the USA, but it is not clear where itcame from: one suggestion is that it is connectedwith German pochen ‘brag’.pole There are two separate words pole inEnglish. Pole ‘long thin piece of wood’ [OE]comes from a pre- historic Germanic *pāl-(source also of German pfahl, Dutch paal, andSwedish påla). This was borrowed from Latinpālus ‘stake’, from which English gets pale‘stake’. Pole ‘extremity’ [14] was acquired fromLatin polus, which in turn went back to Greekpólos ‘axis of a sphere’. This was a descendantof Indo-European *qwolo- ‘turn round’ (sourceof English wheel), and has also given Englishpulley. The derivative polar [16] is ananglicization of the modern Latin coinagepolāris. PALE; POLAR, PULLEY, WHEELpolice [16] Etymologically, the police are incharge of the administration of a ‘city’. In fact,police is essentially the same word as policy‘plan of action’. Both go back to Latin polītīa‘civil administration’, a descendant of Greekpólis ‘city’. In medieval Latin a variant polītiaemerged, which became French police. Englishtook it over, and at first continued to use it for‘civil administration’ (Edmund Burke as late as1791 described the Turks as ‘a barbarous nation,with a barbarous neglect of police, fatal to the

human race’). Its specific application to theadministration of public order emerged inFrance in the early 18th century, and the firstbody of public-order officers to be named policein England was the Marine Police, a force set uparound 1798 to protect merchandise in the Portof London. POLITICSpolicy English has two distinct and completelyunrelated words policy. The one meaning ‘planof action’ [14] comes via Old French policiefrom Latin polītīa ‘civil administration’, sourcealso of English police and the now archaic polity[16]. This in turn came from Greek polīteíā, aderivative of pólis ‘city’ (source of Englishpolitics). But the insurance policy [16] comes viaFrench police ‘document’ and Provençal polissafrom medieval Latin apodissa, an alteration ofLatin apodīxis ‘proof, demonstration’, which inturn was acquired from Greek apódeixis, acompound noun derived ultimately from theverb deiknúnai ‘show’. POLITICS; DICTIONpolio [20] Polio is an abbreviation ofpoliomyelitis [19], a term coined in modernLatin from Greek poliós ‘grey’ and muelós‘marrow’ (a derivative of mūs ‘muscle’) – hence‘inflammation of the ‘grey matter’ of the spinalchord’polish [13] Latin polīre ‘make smooth andshiny’ is the ultimate source of English polish. Itpassed into Old French as polir, whose stemform was poliss- – whence polish. The element-pol- of English interpolate is related to polīre. INTERPOLATE, POLITEpolite [15] Someone who is polite isetymologically ‘polished’ – indeed that is whatthe word originally meant in English (‘The archwithin and without was hiled [covered] withgold polite’, Mirror of man’s salvation 1450).This had passed metaphorically into ‘refined’ bythe 16th century, but not until the 17th centurydid the modern sense ‘having refined manners’emerge. It was borrowed from polītus, the pastparticiple of Latin polīre ‘polish’ (source ofEnglish polish). POLISHpolitics [16] Politics is etymologically the art of‘civil administration’. It is an English renderingof Greek tà polītiká ‘affairs of state’. Greekpolītikós ‘of the city or state, civil, political’ wasa derivative of polítēs ‘citizen’, which in turncame from pólis ‘city, state’ (source also ofEnglish police and policy and related to Sanskritpūr ‘stronghold, fortified place’). It passed intoEnglish via Latin polīticus and Old Frenchpolitique as politic [15], which originally meant‘political’ as well as ‘judicious’ (political wascoined in the 16th century). COSMOPOLITAN, METROPOLIS, POLICE, POLICYpolity see POLICYpoll [13] ‘Head’ is the original and centralmeaning of poll, from which all its modern useshave derived. The ‘voting’ sort of poll, forinstance, which emerged in the 17th century, isetymologically a counting of ‘heads’, and the385 pomegranatepoll tax is a ‘per capita’ tax. The verb polloriginally meant ‘cut someone’s hair’, a clearextension of the notion of ‘top’ or ‘head’ (thederived pollard [16] denotes an ‘animal with itshorns removed’ or a ‘tree with its top branchescut off’); this later developed to ‘cut evenlyacross’, which is what the poll of deed pollmeans (originally it was a legal agreement cutevenly across, signifying that only one personwas party to it – agreements made between twoor more people were cut with a wavy line). POLLARDpollen [16] Pollen originally meant ‘flour’ inEnglish. Not until the 18th century was it takenup as a botanical term. It was borrowed fromLatin pollen ‘powder, dust, flour’, a relative ofpulvis ‘dust’ (source of English powder andpulverize) and polenta ‘pearl barley’ (source ofEnglish polenta [16]). POLENTA, POWDER, PULVERIZEpolo [19] In Balti, a Tibetan language of northernKashmir, polo means ‘ball’. English travellers inKashmir in the 1840s observed a game beingplayed on horseback which involved trying toknock a wooden polo into a goal using a longhandledmallet. The English sahibs lost no timein taking the game up themselves, and by 1871 itwas being played back home in England, underthe name ‘polo’.poltergeist [19] A poltergeist is literally a‘noisy ghost’. The word was borrowed fromGerman in the 19th century, where it is acompound made up of poltern ‘make a noise,rattle or rumble’ and geist ‘spirit, ghost’ (arelative of English ghost).polymath see MATHEMATICSpolypolyp [16] A polyp is etymologically a‘manyfooted’ creature. The word originallysignified ‘octopus’, but in the 18th century wasbroadened out into a general term for marineinvertebrates with tentacles, such as hydras andsea anemones. It comes via French polype andLatin polypus from Greek polúpous ‘cuttlefish’,a compound formed from pólus ‘much, many’and poús ‘foot’ (source of English pew andpodium and related to English foot). Themetaphorical application of the word to a tumourgrowing from mucous membrane (an allusion toits tentacle-like outgrowths) originated in Greek.Greek pólus (a distant relative of English fulland plural) is of course the starting point ofmany English poly- words, all with theunderlying notion of ‘several’ – among thempolyglot [17] (etymologically ‘many tongues’),polygon [16], polysyllable [16], and polytechnic[19]. And its plural, polloí ‘many’, is the originof English hoi polloi [19], literally ‘the many’. FOOT, FULL, HOI POLLOI, PEDAL, PLURAL, PLUS,POLYGONpomegranate [14] The pomegranate isetymologically the ‘many-seeded apple’. Theword’s ultimate ancestor was Latin mālumgrānātum (mālum gave English malic ‘ofapples’ [18], and grānātus was derived fromgrānum ‘seed’, source of English grain). InVulgar Latin this became reduced to simply

pomp 386*grānāta, which passed into Old French asgrenate (source of English grenade, so namedbecause early grenades looked likepomegranates). Before long pome ‘apple’ wasadded to the term, giving pome grenate –whence English pomegranate. Pome came fromLatin pōmum ‘apple, fruit’, which also gaveEnglish pomade [16] (an ointment so calledbecause the original version was apple-scented),pomander [15] (etymologically an ‘apple ofamber’), pommel [14] (etymologically a ‘littlefruit’), and pomology [19]. GARNET, GRAIN, GRENADE, POMADE,POMANDER, POMMELpompomp [14] Greek pompé meant literally‘sending’ (it was derived from the verb pémpein‘send’). But it came to be used metaphoricallyfor a ‘solemn procession or parade’ (as beingsomething that was ‘sent out’ on its way), andhence for the concomitant ‘display’ or‘ostentation’, and passed with these senses intoLatin as pompa. They survived into English, but‘procession’ has gradually died out.pond [13] Pond is historically the same word aspound ‘enclosure’. The differentiation betweenthe two was established early on, althoughpound continued to be used for ‘pond’ inScotland and in some English dialects until quiterecently. The common denominator is that pondswere originally specifically used for keeping fishin. The reason for the phonetic change frompound to pond is not known. POUNDponder [14] To ponder something isetymologically to ‘weigh’ it up. The word comesvia Old French ponderer from Latin ponderāre‘weigh’, hence ‘consider’ (source also ofEnglish preponderate [17]). This was derivedfrom pondus ‘weight’ (source of Englishponderous [14]), a relative of pendere ‘weigh’(source of English compendium [16],compensate [17], dispense, expense, pansy,pension [14], pensive [14], peseta [19], poise[15], and spend) and pendēre ‘hang’ (fromwhich English gets pendant, pendulum, etc).Also closely related is English pound, the unit ofweight. COMPENDIUM, COMPENSATE, DISPENSE,EXPENSE, PANSY, PENDANT, PENDULUM,PENSION, PENSIVE, PESETA, POISE, POUND,PREPONDERATE, SPENDpontiff [17] In ancient Rome, members of thehighest college of priests were known by theepithet pontifex. This looks as though it shouldmean ‘bridgemaker’ (as if it were formed fromLatin pōns ‘bridge’ – source of English pontoon– with the suffix -fex, from facere ‘make’), butno one has ever been able to make any sense ofthis, and it is generally assumed that it originatedas a loan-word, perhaps from Etruscan, and wassubsequently adapted by folk etymology topontifex. It was adopted into Christian usage inthe sense ‘bishop’. The pope was the ‘sovereignpontifex’, and in due course pontifex came todesignate the ‘pope’ himself. The word passedinto French as pontife, from which English getspontiff. PUNTpontoon English has two words pontoon. Theearlier, ‘floating structure’ [17], comes viaFrench ponton from Latin pontō ‘bridge made ofboats’, a derivative of pōns ‘bridge’. (Pontō,presumably the same word, was also used for asort of Gaulish boat, and in that sense is thesource of English punt.) Pontoon the card game[20] is an alteration of French vingt-et-un‘twenty-one’ (the perfect score in pontoon beingtwenty-one) based on the other pontoon.pony [18] Latin pullus denoted a ‘young animal’,particularly a ‘young horse’ or ‘young chicken’(it is related to English foal, and has givenEnglish pool ‘collective amount’, poultry, andpullet). From it was derived in post-classicaltimes pullāmen, which passed into Old French aspoulain ‘foal’. This had a diminutive formpoulenet, and it is thought that this was thesource of the early 18th-century Scottish termpowny, which in due course spread southwardsas pony. FOAL, POOL, POULTRY, PULLETpoodle [19] The ancestor of the modern poodlewas a water-dog, used probably in the hunting ofwater-fowl – very different from the effete toyvariety of today. Its name reflects its aquaticorigins: in German it is pudelhund, the firstelement (a relative of English puddle) beingfrom Low German pudeln ‘splash about inwater’. This was shortened to simply pudel, theform in which it was acquired by English (andindeed other languages: in Swedish it is pudel, inDutch poedel). PUDDLEpool Pool of water [OE] and pool ‘collectiveamount’ [17] are distinct words in English. Theformer comes from a prehistoric West Germanic*pōl-, source also of German pfuhl and Dutchpoel. The latter was borrowed from French poule‘hen’, a descendant of Latin pullus ‘youngchicken’ (source also of English pony, poultry,and pullet). There was a French game called jeude la poule, the ‘hen game’, involving throwingthings at a hen – which you won as a prize if youhit it. Hence poule came to be used figurativelyfor ‘target’, and also for ‘that which is at stake ina game’ – source of the original meaning ofEnglish pool, ‘stake’. This evolved via ‘stakemade up of players’ contributions’ to ‘collectiveamount’ and ‘collective resource’. Pool thesnooker-like game is the same word; the gamewas originally played for a collective stake. FOAL, PONY, POULTRY, PULLETpoor [13] Poor came via Old French povre fromLatin pauper ‘poor’. This is thought originally tohave been a compound meaning literally ‘gettinglittle’, formed from paucus ‘little’ (a distantrelative of English few) and parāre ‘get, prepare’(source of English prepare). Its derivativepaupertās has given English poverty [12], andpauper itself was acquired by English in the 16thcentury as a noun meaning ‘poor person’. FEW, PAUPER, POVERTY

pope [OE] Etymologically, the pope is the‘daddy’ of the Roman Catholic church. Greekpáppas was a nursery word for ‘father’, based nodoubt on the first syllable of patér ‘father’ (arelative of English father). In the form pápas itcame to be used by early Christians for ‘bishop’,and its Latin descendant pāpa was applied fromthe 5th century onwards to the bishop of Rome,the pope. English acquired the word in theAnglo-Saxon period, and so it has undergone thenormal medieval phonetic changes to becomepope, but the derivatives papacy [14] and papal[14] arrived later, and retain their a. Latin pāpaalso gave English papa [17], via French papa. PAPA, PAPACY, POPLINpopinjay see PARROTpoplar [14] The ancestor of poplar was Latinpōpulus ‘poplar’ (not to be confused withpopulus ‘people’). This passed into Old Frenchas pople, which with the addition of the treenamesuffix -ier became poplier. Its Anglo-Norman version was popler, from which Englishgot poplar.poplin [18] Poplin is etymologically the ‘pope’scloth’. The word comes via obsolete Frenchpapeline from Italian papalina, a noun use of thefeminine form of the adjective papalino ‘papal’,and was applied to the cloth on the grounds thatit was originally made in Avignon, in southernFrance, seat of the popes from 1309 to 1377. POPEpoppet see PUPPETpoppy [OE] The Latin word for ‘poppy’ waspapāver. A post-classical descendant,*papāvum, was borrowed into prehistoric WestGermanic as *papau. This was later altered to*papāg, which became Old English popæg,ancestor of modern English poppy. Italianpapavero ‘poppy’ is a reminder of the Latinword.popular [15] Popular is one of a range ofEnglish words that go back to Latin populus‘people’. Besides people (which came via OldFrench) and popular itself, these includepopulace [16], population [16], and public. It isnot clear where populus itself came from,although some have linked it with the Indo-European base *plē- ‘fill’, source of English fulland Greek pléthos ‘multitude, common people’(a relative of English plethora). PEOPLE, POPULATION, PUBLICporcelain [16] The bizarre history of the wordporcelain leads us back to a pig’s vagina. It wasoriginally applied to fine china in Italian, asporcellana. This meant literally ‘cowrie shell’,and was used for the china in allusion to its shelllikesheen. Porcellana was a derivative ofporcella ‘little sow’, a diminutive form of porca‘sow’ (to which English pork is related), and wasapplied to cowrie shells because they supposedlyresembled the external genitalia of female pigs.English acquired the word via Frenchporcelaine. PORKporch [13] Porch and portico [17] are ultimatelythe same word. Both go back to Italian portico, a387 porpoisedescendant of Latin porticus ‘covered gallery orentry’, but whereas portico was borroweddirectly, porch came via Old French porche.Porticus was derived from Latin porta ‘gate’,source of the port of English porthole. PORT, PORTICOporcupine [14] The porcupine isetymologically a ‘spiny pig’. Its name wascoined in Vulgar Latin as *porcospīnus fromLatin porcus ‘pig’ (source of English pork) andspīnus ‘spine’. It came to English via Old Frenchporc espin. It underwent all sorts of traumas(portpen, porpoynt, porpentine – the form usedby Shakespeare: the ghost of Hamlet’s fatherspeaks of the ‘quills upon the fretful porpentine’– porkenpick, porpin, etc) before finally settlingdown in the 17th century to porcupine, andaround 1700 the fanciful variant porcupig wascoined. PORK, SPINEpore English has two words pore. The older,‘look attentively’ [13], may go back to ahypothetical Old English *pūrian, which mightmake it a relative of the nearly synonymous peer[16]. The pore in the skin [14] comes via OldFrench pore and Latin porus from Greek póros‘passage’, a descendant of the Indo-Europeanbase *por- ‘going, passage’, which alsoproduced English fare, ferry, opportunity, andport. The development of the word’s anatomicalsense began in Greek. Porous [14] is derivedfrom it. PEER; FARE, FERRY, OPPORTUNITY, POROUS,PORTpork [13] Latin porcus ‘pig’ went back to aprehistoric Indo-European *porko-, which alsoproduced Russian porosenok ‘pig’, Irish orc‘pig’, and English farrow. It passed into OldFrench as porc, which English adopted as a termfor the ‘flesh of pigs used as food’. Derivativesthat have made it to English include porcelain,porcupine, and porpoise. FARROW, PORCELAIN, PORCUPINE, PORPOISEpornography [19] Pornography denotesetymologically the ‘depiction of prostitutes’;and indeed Webster’s dictionary 1864 definedthe word as ‘licentious painting employed todecorate the walls of rooms sacred tobacchanalian orgies, examples of which occur inPompeii’. Originally in English it was mainlyreserved to classical Greek and Roman examplesof the genre, and the application tocontemporary books, magazines, etc did notemerge strongly until the 1880s. The termoriginated in Greek, based on pórnē ‘prostitute’,and reached English via French.porpoise [14] The porpoise is etymologicallythe ‘pig-fish’. The word comes via Old Frenchporpois from Vulgar Latin *porcopiscis, acompound formed from porcus ‘pig’ (source ofEnglish pork) and piscis ‘fish’ (a relative ofEnglish fish) and based on the model of Latinporcus marīnus ‘sea-pig’. The name may havebeen suggested by the porpoise’s snout. FISH, PORK

porridge 388porridge [16] Porridge is a 16th-centuryalteration of pottage [13]. This originallydenoted a stew of vegetables and sometimesmeat, boiled to submission, but it gradually cameto be applied to a gruel, of varying consistency,made of cereals, pulses, etc, and it was the sortmade from oatmeal that eventually took over theword porridge. Its transformation from pottagetook place via an intermediate poddage (the tpronounced /d/ as in American English), and thechange to r is mirrored in such forms as gerawayand geroff for getaway and get off. The samething happened in the case of porringer ‘dish’[16], which came from an earlier pottinger.Pottage itself was acquired from Old Frenchpotage, which etymologically meant simply‘something from a pot’ (it was a derivative of pot‘pot’). English reborrowed it in the 16th centuryas potage ‘soup’. POT, POTAGE, POTTAGEport English has no fewer than five distinct wordsport, all of them going back to the Latin stemport-, a descendant of the Indo-European base*por- ‘going, passage’ (from which English alsogets fare, ford, etc). Based on this stem wasportus ‘harbour’ (etymologically a ‘place bywhich one enters’), which was borrowed intoEnglish as port ‘harbour’ [OE]. It is thought thatthe nautical port ‘left’ [17] originally denotedthe side of the vessel facing harbour. And portthe drink [17] gets its name from Oporto(literally ‘the port’), the town at the mouth of theriver Douro in Portugal through which port isshipped. From Latin portus was derived the verbportāre, which presumably originally meant‘bring into port’, but by classical times hadbroadened out to simply ‘carry’. This gaveEnglish the military verb port ‘carry’ [16], andalso underlies deport [15], export [15], import,important, portable [14], portfolio [18](etymologically a ‘carrier of leaves’ or papers),portly [16], portmanteau, report, and transport.Also from portus comes English opportunity.From the same stem came Latin porta ‘gate,door’, which reached English via Old Frenchporte as port ‘gate’ [13]. It came to be applied inthe 14th century to an ‘opening in the side of aship’, and it is now most commonly encounteredin the compound porthole [16]. Portal [14] andportcullis are among its descendants. FARE, FERRY, FIORD, FORD; DEPORT, EXPORT,IMPORT, IMPORTANT, OPPORTUNITY, PORTABLE,PORTLY, REPORT, TRANSPORT; PORCH, PORTAL,PORTCULLIS, PORTHOLE, PORTICOportcullis [14] A portcullis is etymologically a‘sliding door’. The word comes from Old Frenchporte coleïce, a term made up of porte ‘door’(source of English port, as in porthole) andcoleïce ‘sliding’. This was a derivative of theverb couler ‘slide’, which came ultimately fromLatin cōlum ‘sieve’ (source of English colander[14]). COLANDER, PORCH, PORT, PORTICOportend see TENDporter English has two distinct words porter, onefor a ‘person who carries things’ [14] and theother for a ‘door attendant’ [13]. The formercomes via Old French portour from medievalLatin portātor, a derivative of Latin portāre‘carry’ (source of English import, portable, etc).It is generally assumed that porter the beer, firstheard of in the 18th century, was so called fromits being a favourite drink of porters. Porter‘door attendant’ comes via Anglo-Normanporter from late Latin portārius, a derivative ofLatin porta ‘gate’ (source of English port, as inporthole).portfolio see PORTporthole see PORTportico see PORCHportly see PORTportmanteau [16] A portmanteau isetymologically something for ‘carrying one’smantle’ in. The word was borrowed from Frenchportemanteau, a compound formed from porter‘carry’ and manteau ‘cloak’ (source of Englishmantle). This originally denoted a ‘court officialwhose duty was to carry the king’s cloak’, but itwas also applied to the bag in which he carriedit, and hence eventually to any bag for carryingclothes and other items needed on a journey. MANTLE, PORTportrait [16] Portrait was borrowed from Frenchportrait, which originated as the past participleof the verb portraire ‘depict’ (source of Englishportray [14]). This was descended from Latinprōtrahere, a compound verb formed from theprefix prō- ‘forth’ and trahere ‘draw’ (source ofEnglish tractor). This originally meant ‘drawout, reveal’, and also ‘lengthen’ (it has givenEnglish protract [16]), but in medieval Latin itcame to be used for ‘depict’. PORTRAY, PROTRACT, TRACTORpose [16] Pose and pause come ultimately fromthe same source. This was late Latin pausāre‘stop, pause’. In Vulgar Latin it came to beassociated with pōnere ‘put’, and particularly,owing to the similarity of form, with its pastparticiple positum (source of English position),and gradually started to take over its meaning.Hence Old French poser, source of the Englishword, meant ‘put, place’. The noun pose is amodern acquisition from French, dating from theearly 19th century. PAUSEposh [20] Although it only appeared as recentlyas the early 20th century, posh is one of theoldest chestnuts of English etymology. The storygot around that it was an acronym for port out,starboard home, an allusion to the fact thatwealthy passengers could afford the moreexpensive cabins on the port side of the shipsgoing out to India, and on the starboard sidereturning to Britain, which kept them out of theheat of the sun. Pleasant as this story is, though,it has never been substantiated. Anotherpossibility is that posh may be the same word asthe now obsolete posh ‘dandy, swell’, a slangterm current around the end of the 19th century.This too is of unknown origin, but it has beententatively linked with the still earlier 19thcenturyslang term posh ‘halfpenny’, hence

oadly ‘money’, which may have comeultimately from Romany posh ‘half’.position [15] Position comes via Old Frenchfrom Latin positiō, a noun formed from posit-,the past participial stem of Latin pōnere ‘put,place’. This was also the source of English posit[17], positive [13] (which etymologically means‘placed down, laid down’, hence ‘emphaticallyasserted’), post (in the senses ‘mail’ and ‘job’),and posture [17]. And in addition it lies behind awealth of English verbs (compose, depose,dispose [14], expose [15], impose, interpose[16], oppose, repose, suppose, transpose [14],etc) whose form underwent alteration byassociation with late Latin pausāre ‘stop’ (seePOSE); postpone exceptionally has retained itslink with pōnere. COMPOSE, DEPOSE, DISPOSE, EXPOSE, IMPOSE,OPPOSE, POSITIVE, POST, POSTPONE, REPOSE,SUPPOSE, TRANSPOSEposse [17] Posse was the Latin verb for ‘beable’. It was a conflation of an earlier expressionpotis esse ‘be able’; and potis ‘able’ wasdescended from an Indo-European base *potthatalso produced Sanskrit pati- ‘master,husband’ and Lithuanian patis ‘husband’. Inmedieval Latin posse came to be used as a nounmeaning ‘power, force’. It formed the basis ofthe expression posse comitātus, literally ‘forceof the county’, denoting a body of men whomthe sheriff of a county was empowered to raisefor such purposes as suppressing a riot. Theabbreviated form posse emerged at the end of the17th century, but really came into its own in18th- and 19th-century America. POSSIBLE, POTENTpossess [15] Latin potis ‘able, having power’(source of English posse and potent) wascombined with the verb sīdere ‘sit down’ (arelative of English sit) to form a new verbpossīdere. This meant literally ‘sit down as theperson in control’, hence by extension ‘takepossession of’ and ultimately ‘have, own’. Itpassed into English via Old French possesser. POSSIBLE, POTENT, SITpossible [14] Latin posse ‘be able’ (source ofEnglish posse) produced the derived adjectivepossibilis ‘that can be done’, which came intoEnglish via Old French possible. (Its antonymimpossible reached English at roughly the sametime.) POSSE, POTENTpost Including the prefix post-, English has fourdifferent words post. The oldest, ‘long uprightpiece of wood, metal, etc’ [OE], was borrowedfrom Latin postis. From it was derived the verbpost ‘fix to a post’, which in turn producedposter [19], denoting a placard that can be‘posted’ up. Post ‘mail’ [16] comes via Frenchposte and Italian posta from Vulgar Latin*posta, a contracted version of posita, thefeminine form of the past participle of Latinpōnere ‘put, place’ (source of English position).The notion underlying the sense ‘mail’ is ofriders ‘placed’ or stationed at intervals along aroad so as to carry letters at speed by a relay389 potashsystem. Post ‘job’ [16] reached English via avery similar route, this time from the neuter formof the Latin past participle, positum. Thisbecame *postum in Vulgar Latin, whichproduced Italian posto, French poste, andEnglish post. Here again the word’s originalmeaning, ‘position where a soldier is placed’,reflects that of its Latin source pōnere. Theprefix post- comes from the Latin prepositionpost ‘after’. It occurs in a number of Englishwords that go back to Latin ancestors (includingposterior [16], posthumous, postpone [16],postscript [16], and the more heavily disguisedpreposterous), as well as being widely used tocreate new coinages (such as postgraduate [19]and postwar [20]). POSITIONposthumous [17] Latin postumus functionedas a superlative form of post ‘after’, and meant‘last of all’. It was often applied to a child ‘bornafter the death of its father’, as being the finaloffspring that man could possibly have, and sobegan to pick up associations with the ‘periodafter death’. This led in turn to the perception ofa link with humus ‘ground’ (source of Englishhumble and humus) and humāre ‘bury’, and sopostumus became posthumus. English adapted itdirect from Latin.postpone see POSTpostscript see POSTpostulate [16] The noun postulate originallymeant ‘demand, request’. It was an anglicizationof postulātum, a noun use of the past participleof postulāre ‘demand, request’. It was used inthe mid-17th century by mathematicians andlogicians for a proposition that (because it was asimple or uncontentious one) ‘demanded’ to betaken for granted for the sake of furtherreasoning, and from this it spread to moregeneral usage. The notion of ‘requesting’ isbetter preserved in postulant [18], from thepresent participle of the Latin verb.posture see POSITIONposyposy see POEMpot [OE] Pot was borrowed in the late OldEnglish period from medieval Latin *pottus,which also produced French pot ‘pot’. This mayhave been an alteration of pōtus ‘drinking-cup’,which in classical Latin meant simply ‘drink’ (itwas derived from the same stem as producedpōtiō ‘drink’, source of English poison andpotion). Related or derived forms in Englishinclude porridge, potash, poteen [19](etymologically spirits distilled in a ‘little pot’ –Irish poitín is a diminutive of pota ‘pot’), potpourri[18] (literally in French ‘rotten pot’),pottery [15], and putty. PORRIDGE, POTAGE, POTASH, POTEEN, POTTAGE,PUTTYpotable see POTIONpotage see PORRIDGEpotash [17] Potassium carbonate was originallyobtained by burning wood or other vegetablematter, soaking the ashes in water, andevaporating the resulting liquid in iron pots. The

potato 390resulting substance was hence called in earlymodern Dutch potasschen, literally ‘pot ashes’,and the word was adopted into English aspotash. From it, or its French relative potasse,the chemist Sir Humphry Davy coined in 1807the term potassium for the metallic elementwhich occurs in potash. ASH, POT, POTASSIUMpotato [16] Potato was originally the Englishname for the ‘sweet potato’ (when Falstaff inShakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor 1598cried ‘Let the sky rain potatoes!’ it was to thesweet potato, and its supposed aphrodisiacproperties, that he was referring). It did not beginto be used for the vegetable we now know as thepotato until the very end of the 16th century. Theword comes via Spanish patata from batata, thename for the ‘sweet potato’ in the Tainolanguage of Haiti and other Caribbean islands.poteen see POTpotent [15] Latin posse (source of English posseand possible) meant ‘be able or powerful’. It wasa conflation of an earlier verbal phrase potis esse‘be able’. The precursor of posse was Old Latin*potēre, whose present participle potēnssurvived to become the present participle ofposse. And its stem form potent- has givenEnglish potent, potentate [14], and potential[14]. Power also comes from *potēre. POSSE, POSSIBLE, POTENTATE, POTENTIAL,POWERpotion [13] The Indo-European base *pō-, *pī-‘drink’ has provided the verb for ‘drink’ in mostmodern European languages, apart from theGermanic ones: French boire, for instance,Russian pit’, and Welsh yfed all come from it.Amongst it Latin descendants were the nounspōtiō ‘drink’, source of English potion (and alsopoison) and pōtus ‘drink’, the probable ancestorof English pot, and the verb pōtāre ‘drink’, fromwhich English gets potable [16]. POISON, POTABLEpot-pourri see POTpotshot [19] A potshot was originally a shottaken at an animal or bird simply in order to killit for food – in order to get it into the ‘pot’, inother words – rather than in accordance with thestrict code and precise techniques of shooting asa ‘sport’. Indeed to begin with it was distinctly acontemptuous term among the hunting andshooting fraternity. But gradually it broadenedout in meaning to any ‘casually aimed shot’.pottage see PORRIDGEpotterpotter see PUTpottery see POTpouch see POCKETpoultry [14] Poultry comes ultimately from aLatin word for a ‘young animal’, which alsogave English pony. It was borrowed from OldFrench pouleterie, a derivative of pouletier‘poultry dealer’. This in turn was based on poulet(source of English pullet [14]), a diminutiveform of poule ‘hen’, which went back via VulgarLatin *pulla to Latin pullus ‘young animal,young horse, young chicken’ (source of Englishpony and related to foal). Punch, as in ‘Punchand Judy’, may come from pullus too. FOAL, PONY, PULLETpounce [15] Pounce was originally a noun,denoting the ‘claw of a bird of prey’. It is thoughtit may have come from puncheon ‘stamping orperforating tool’, which was also abbreviated topunch ‘stamping or perforating tool’ and isprobably related to punch ‘hit’. The verb pounceemerged in the 17th century. It at first meant‘seize with talons’, and was not generalized to‘attack swoopingly’ until the 18th century. PUNCHpound English has three distinct words pound.The measure of weight and unit of currency[OE] goes back ultimately to Latin pondō ‘12-ounce weight’, a relative of pondus ‘weight’(source of English ponder) and pendere ‘weigh’(source of English pension and poise). It wasborrowed into prehistoric Germanic as *pundo,which has evolved into German pfund. Dutchpond, Swedish pund, and English pound. Itsmonetary use comes from the notion of a‘pound’ weight of silver.Pound ‘enclosure’ [14] is of unknown origin.It existed in Old English times in the compoundpundfald, which has become modern Englishpinfold, and pond is a variant form of it.Pound ‘crush’ [OE] is almost equallymysterious. In Old English it was pūnian (it didnot acquire its final d until the 16th century, infact), and it has been traced back to a Germanic*pūn-, which also produced Dutch puin‘rubbish’. PENDANT, PENSION, POISE, PONDER; PINFOLD,PONDpoverty see POORpowder [13] The ultimate ancestor of powder isLatin pulvis ‘dust’ (source also of Englishpulverize [16]). This was related to Latin pollen‘fine flour’ (source of English pollen), Latin puls‘gruel’ (source of English poultice and pulse‘legume’), and Greek póltos ‘gruel’. POLLEN, POULTICE, PULSE, PULVERIZEpower [13] Old Latin *potēre was the precursorof Latin posse ‘be able or powerful’ (source ofEnglish posse and possible). Its presentparticipial stem potent- has given English potent.It seems to have remained current in colloquialspeech, and by the 8th century AD wasreasserting itself as the main form of the verb. Itpassed into Old French as poeir, later povoir(whence modern French pouvoir), and this cameto be used as a noun, meaning ‘ability to dothings’. Its Anglo-Norman version poer passedinto English, where it became power. POSSE, POSSIBLE, POTENTpox [16] Pox originated as an alternation ofpocks, the plural of pock [OE]. This originallydenoted a ‘pustule’, and later the ‘scar left bysuch a pustule, pock-mark’. Pox used to be acommon term for ‘syphilis’, but today it ismainly found in compounds such as chickenpox[18] (possibly a reference to the comparativemildness of the disease) and smallpox [16] (so

called to distinguish it from the great pox,syphilis). POCK, POCKETpractice [15] The ultimate source of practice isGreek prássein ‘do, practise’. From its base*prak- were derived the noun praxis ‘doing,action’ (source of English praxis [16]) and theadjective praktós ‘to be done’. On this was basedpraktikós ‘concerned with action, practical’.This passed into English via late Latin practicusas practice [14], which was later superseded bypractical [17]. From practicus was derived themedieval Latin verb practicāre, later practizāre.This passed into English via Old Frenchpractiser as practise [15]. The derived nounpractise was altered to practice in the 16thcentury, on the analogy of pairs likeadvice/advise. PRACTICAL, PRACTISE, PRAGMATIC, PRAXISpragmatic [16] The base *prak-, whichproduced Greek praktós (source of Englishpractice), also lies behind Greek prágma ‘deed,affair’. From this was derived pragmatikós‘skilled in affairs’, which passed into English vialate Latin pragmaticus. PRACTICEprairie [18] Prairie comes ultimately from Latinprātum ‘meadow’ (source also of French pré‘meadow’). From it was derived Vulgar Latin*prātāria, which passed into English via Frenchprairie. The word was from the start almostexclusively used with reference to the plains ofNorth America.praise [13] Despite a certain similarity in formand meaning, praise has no connection withpray. It comes ultimately from Latin pretium‘price’, which has also given English precious,price, prize, etc. From it was derived the lateLatin verb pretiāre ‘value highly, praise’, whichEnglish acquired via Old French preisier. PRECIOUS, PRICE, PRIZEpraxis see PRACTICEpray [13] Latin precārī meant ‘ask for, entreat,pray’ (it has given English deprecate [17] andimprecation [16]). In Vulgar Latin it became*precāre, which passed into English via OldFrench preier. The noun prayer [13] goes backultimately to the Latin adjective precārius‘obtained by asking or praying’ (source also ofEnglish precarious), which was derived fromprecārī. DEPRECATE, IMPRECATION, PRECARIOUSpreach [13] Preach goes back ultimately toLatin praedicāre ‘proclaim’ (source also ofEnglish predicament and predicate). Its OldFrench descendant was prechier, whenceEnglish preach (English had actually acquiredthe word before, directly from Latin in theAnglo-Saxon period, as predician ‘preach’, butthis had died out before the Old French wordarrived). The semantic shift in the Latin verbfrom ‘proclaiming’ to ‘preaching’ took place inthe early Christian period. PREDICAMENT, PREDICATEprebend [15] A prebend is a salary paid to aclergyman from the revenue of his cathedral.391 precipiceThe word comes via Old French prebende fromlate Latin praebenda ‘salary, pension’. This wasa noun use of the gerundive of praebēre ‘give,grant, supply’, and hence meant literally ‘thingsto be given’. Praebēre was a compound verbformed from the prefix prae- ‘forth’ and habēre‘have’. In Vulgar Latin, praebenda was alteredto *prōbenda, from which English getsprovender [14]. PROVENDERprecarious [17] Precarious comes from Latinprecārius (source also of English prayer), whichmeant ‘obtained by asking or praying’. It wasoriginally used in English as a legal term, inwhich ‘obtained by asking’ had undergone aslight change in focus to ‘held through the favourof another’. This introduced the notion that thefavour might be withdrawn, and that thepossession was therefore uncertain, and so theadjective soon came to be used for ‘dependingon chance or caprice’ and, in the 18th century,‘risky’. Latin precārius was derived from prex‘prayer’, a close relative of precārī ‘ask, entreat,pray’, from which English gets pray. PRAYprecede [14] Precede is one of a large family ofEnglish words (including concede, proceed,succeed, and of course cede) which go backultimately to Latin cēdere ‘go away, withdraw,yield’. In this case the ancestor was Latinpraecēdere ‘go before’, a compound verbformed with the prefix prae- ‘before’, whichEnglish acquired via Old French preceder.Precedent [15] goes back to the Latin verb’spresent participle, precession [16] to the lateLatin derivative praecessiō. CEDE, CONCEDE, PREDECESSOR, PROCEED,SUCCEEDprecinct [15] The notion underlying precinct isof ‘encirclement’ or ‘enclosure’. It comes fromthe past participle of Latin praecingere ‘girdabout, surround’. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix prae- ‘before, around’and cingere ‘encircle with a belt’ (source ofEnglish cincture [16]). From the underlyingnotion come the twin modern meanings of an‘area enclosed by walls’ and a ‘delimited districtwithin a city’ (mainly used in AmericanEnglish). CINCTUREprecious [13] Latin pretiōsus ‘expensive,valuable, precious’ was derived from pretium‘price’ (source of English praise, price, andprize). English acquired it via Old Frenchprecios. The sense ‘affected’ was introducedfrom French in the early 18th century. PRAISE, PRICE, PRIZEprecipice [16] The etymological notionunderlying precipice is of falling ‘headlong’. Itcomes via French précipice from Latinpraecipitium ‘headlong fall, steep place’. Thiswas derived from praecipitāre ‘throw headlong’(source of English precipitate [16] andprecipitous [17]), a verb based on the adjectivepraeceps ‘headlong, steep’. This in turn was acompound formed from the prefix prae- ‘in

precise 392front’ and caput ‘head’ (source of Englishcapital, captain, etc). CAPITAL, CAPTAIN, CHIEFprecise [16] Something that is precise isetymologically ‘cut off in front’. The word wasacquired via French précis (subsequentlyborrowed as the noun précis ‘summary’ in the18th century) from Latin praecīsus, an adjectivaluse of the past participle of praecīdere ‘shorten’.This was a compound verb formed from theprefix prae- ‘in front’ and caedere ‘cut’ (sourcealso of English concise, decide, excise, etc). Thenotion of being ‘shortened’ gradually slipped via‘expressed shortly, leaving out extraneousmatter’ to ‘exact’. CONCISE, DECIDE, EXCISE, PRÉCISprecocious [17] Precocious meansetymologically ‘pre-cooked’. It was borrowedfrom Latin praecox, a derivative of the verbpraecoquere ‘cook in advance’, which was acompound formed from the prefix prae- ‘before’and coquere ‘cook’ (a relative of English cookand kitchen). But coquere was also usedmetaphorically for ‘ripen’, and so praecox alsomeant ‘early-ripening’ – whence Englishprecocious ‘developing before its time’. Theapricot is etymologically the ‘precocious’ fruit. APRICOT, COOK, KILN, KITCHENprecursor see COURSEpredatory see PREYpredecessor [14] Etymologically, predecessoris first cousin to decease, but it has never takenon decease’s connotations of ‘dying’. Both goback to Latin dēcēdere ‘go away’ (a compoundverb based on cēdere ‘go away’, source ofEnglish cede, concede, precede, etc), whosederived noun dēcessus ‘departure’ came to beused euphemistically for ‘death’ – whenceEnglish decease [14]. Combination with theprefix prae- ‘before’ with the derived dēcessor‘leaver’ produced praedēcessor ‘one who leavesbefore’. Traces of this original meaning linger inEnglish predecessor (acquired via Old Frenchpredecesseur) in the notion of ‘one who leftoffice before the present incumbent took over’. CEDE, CONCEDE, DECEASE, PRECEDE, PROCEED,SUCCEEDpredicament [14] Predicament was originally atechnical term in logic, denoting a ‘category ofattributes which may be asserted of a thing’. Itbroadened out in the 16th century to ‘situation’,but it does not seem to have been until the 18thcentury that the specific modern sense ‘awkwardsituation’ became established. The word comesfrom late Latin praedicāmentum, a derivative ofpraedicāre ‘proclaim’ (source of English preachand predicate [16]). This was a compound verbformed from the prefix prae- ‘in front of’, hence‘in public’ and dicāre ‘make known’. PREACH, PREDICATEpredicate see INDICATEpreen [14] Preen is generally taken to be analteration of prune ‘cut branches’, under theinfluence of another now obsolete verb preen‘pierce’, a descendant of the Old English nounprēon ‘pin’ (the notion presumably being of abird ‘piercing’ its feathers with its beak whencleaning them). PRUNEpreface [14] Preface is a misleading sort ofword. It has no connection with face. It comesultimately from Latin praefātiō, a derivative ofpraefārī ‘say beforehand’. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix prae- ‘before’ andfārī ‘speak’ (source of English fable, fate, etc).So etymologically, preface is virtually theequivalent of the native formation foreword. FABLE, FAME, FATEprefer [14] To prefer one thing is etymologicallyto ‘carry it before’ others. The word comes viaOld French preferer from Latin praeferre ‘setbefore’, a compound verb formed from theprefix prae- ‘before’ and ferre ‘carry’ (source ofEnglish fertile and related to bear). BEARprefix see FIXpregnant [16] Latin praegnās ‘pregnant’probably originated as a compound formed fromprae ‘before’ and gnascī or nascī ‘be born’(source of English nation, native, etc). It wasaltered to praegnāns, bringing it in line withpresent participial adjectives ending in -āns, andwas borrowed into English in its stem form aspregnant. From it was derived the verbimpregnāre, from which English getsimpregnate [16], but English impregnable isquite unrelated, despite its similarity – it comesfrom Latin prehendere ‘seize’ (source also ofEnglish apprehend, comprehend, etc). IMPREGNATE, NATION, NATIVE, NATUREprehensile see PREYpremier see PRIMEpremise [14] Premise comes via Old Frenchpremisse from medieval Latin praemissa, a nounuse of the past participle of Latin praemittere‘send ahead’. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix prae- ‘before’ and mittere ‘send’(source of English admit, commit, mission,transmit, etc). It first entered English as atechnical term in logic, in which its underlyingmeaning is of a proposition ‘set before’someone. But it was also used in the plural as alegal term, meaning ‘matters stated previously’.In a conveyance or will, such ‘matters’ wereoften houses or other buildings referred tospecifically at the beginning of the document,and so the term premises came to denote suchbuildings. ADMIT, COMMIT, MISSION, PERMIT, SUBMIT,TRANSMITpremonition see MONSTERprepare [15] Latin parāre ‘make ready’ liesbehind a wide range of English words, fromapparatus and apparel to emperor and separate.It combined with the prefix prae- ‘before’ toproduce praeparāre ‘make ready in advance’,adopted into English via Old French preparer. APPARATUS, APPAREL, EMPEROR, SEPARATEpreponderate see PONDERpreposterous [16] Preposterous originated asa Latin oxymoron, praeposterus. This was

coined from prae ‘before’ and posterus ‘comingafter, next’, a derivative of post ‘after’. It denoted‘the wrong way round, out of order’ (and indeedthat was how English preposterous was onceused: ‘The preposterous is a pardonable fault …We call it by a common saying to set the cartbefore the horse’, George Puttenham, Art ofEnglish Poesie 1589). But already in Latin thenotion had developed via ‘irrational’ to ‘absurd’,a sense quickly taken up by English.prerogative [14] Latin praerogāre meant ‘askbefore others’ (it was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix prae- ‘before’ and rogāre ‘ask’,source also of English interrogate [15]). Theterm praerogātīva (based on its past participle)was applied to those electoral groups who were‘invited before others’ to vote, or in other wordshad the privilege of voting first, in elections forstate officials. Hence the word (acquired byEnglish via Old French prerogative) came tomean in general ‘right to precedence, privilege’. ARROGANT, INTERROGATEpresage see SEEKpresbyterian see PRIESTpresentpresent [13] The Latin adjective praesēns ‘athand, now here’ originated as the presentparticiple of praeesse ‘be before one’, acompound verb formed from the prefix prae- ‘infront’ and esse ‘be’. English acquired it via OldFrench present, the same route as was taken byits derivative praesentia on its way to Englishpresence [14]. The use of the related nounpresent for ‘gift’ originated in Old French in theconcept of ‘bringing something into someone’spresence’, and hence of giving it to them. Theverb present [13] comes from the Latinderivative praesentāre.preserve [14] The -serve of preserve comesfrom Latin servāre ‘keep safe’ (no relation toservīre ‘serve’, but source also of Englishconserve, observe, and reserve). Combinationwith prae- ‘before’ produced medieval Latinpraeservāre ‘guard beforehand, take steps toward off possible harm’, which reached Englishvia Old French preserver. CONSERVE, OBSERVE, RESERVEpresident [14] A president is etymologicallysimply someone who ‘presides’. The wordcomes via Old French president from Latinpraesidēns, the present participle of praesidēre‘superintend’ (it literally meant ‘sit in front of’ –it was formed from the prefix prae- ‘before’ andsedēre ‘sit’ – and it has given English preside[17]). Another Latin derivative was the nounpraesidium ‘garrison, fortification’, whichEnglish has acquired via Russian prezídium aspresidium [20]. PRESIDE, PRESIDIUM, SITpress English has two words press. Thecommoner, and older, ‘exert force, push’ [14],comes via Old French presser from Latinpressāre, a verb derived from the past participleof premere ‘press’ (source of English print). Thecorresponding noun press (which actuallyarrived in English a century earlier in the nowarchaic sense ‘crowd’) originated as a derivative393 prevaricateof the Old French verb. Derived verbs in Englishinclude compress [14], depress [14], express,impress [14], oppress [14], repress [14], andsuppress [14].The other press, ‘force’ [16], is now foundvirtually only in the expression ‘press intoservice’ and in the compound press-gang [17]. Itoriginally denoted ‘compel to join the navy,army, etc’, and was an alteration, under theinfluence of press ‘exert force’, of prest ‘payrecruits’. This was a verbal use of MiddleEnglish prest ‘money given to recruits’, whichwas borrowed from Old French prest ‘loan’.This in turn was a derivative of the verb prester‘lend’, which went back to Latin praestāre‘provide’, a compound formed from the prefixprae- ‘before’ and stāre ‘stand’. Related topraestāre was Latin praestō ‘at hand’, fromwhich have evolved French prêt ‘ready’ andItalian and Spanish presto ‘quick’ (Englishborrowed the Italian version as presto [16]). COMPRESS, DEPRESS, EXPRESS, IMPRESS,OPPRESS, PRINT, REPRESS, SUPPRESS; PRESTO,STATIONprestige [17] As opponents of semantic changeare fond of pointing out, prestige once meant‘trick, illusion’, and its use until the 19th centurywas usually derogatory. It comes via Frenchprestige from Latin praestigiae ‘illusionsproduced by a conjurer or juggler’, an alterationof an unrecorded *praestrigiae. This would havebeen a derivative of praestringere ‘blindfold’,hence ‘confuse the sight, dazzle’, a compoundverb formed from the prefix prae- ‘before’ andstringere ‘bind’ (source of English strict). Themodern approbatory meaning appears to havebeen reintroduced from French. STRICTpresto see PRESSpretend [14] To pretend something isetymologically to ‘hold it out’ – as an excuse, oras something it is not. The word comes fromLatin praetendere, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix prae- ‘before’ and tendere‘stretch’ (source of English tend, tense, etc). EXTEND, TEND, TENSEpretext see TEXTpretty [OE] In Old English pretty (or prættig, asit was then) meant ‘clever’ in a bad sense –‘crafty, cunning’. Not until the 15th century hadit passed via ‘clever’, ‘skilfully made’, and ‘fine’to ‘beautiful’. It was a derivative of prætt ‘trick,wile’, which came from a prehistoric WestGermanic *pratt- (source also of Dutch part‘trick’).prevaricate [16] Etymologically, prevaricatemeans ‘walk crookedly’, and it goes backultimately to a Latin adjective meaning ‘knockkneed’,varus. From this was derived the verbvāricāre ‘straddle’, which was combined withthe prefix prae- ‘before, beyond’ to producepraevāricārī ‘walk crookedly’, hence ‘deviate’.This developed in English to ‘deviate fromstraightforward behaviour’, hence ‘be evasive,equivocate’.

prevent 394prevent [15] If you prevent someone, you ‘comebefore’ them (and indeed that literal meaning ofthe verb survived for some time: ThomasCromwell wrote in 1538 ‘I have sent it unto himafter the departure of the said Muriell, to theintent he might prevent the ambassadors postand you have leisure to consult and advise uponthe same’; and as late as 1766 we find in FrancesSheridan’s Sidney Biddulph ‘I am an early riser,yet my lord V – prevented me the next morning,for I found him in the parlour when I camedownstairs’). The word comes from Latinpraevenīre, a compound verb formed from theprefix prae- ‘before’ and venīre ‘come’. Alreadyin Latin, though, it had progressed semanticallyfrom ‘come before’ via ‘act in advance of,anticipate’ to ‘hinder’, and this meaningemerged in English in the 16th century. ADVENTURE, VENUEprey [13] Prey comes via Old French preie fromLatin praeda ‘booty’ (from which was derivedthe verb praedārī ‘plunder’, source of Englishdepredation [15] and predatory [16]). This was acontraction of an earlier praeheda, a nounformed with the prefix prae- ‘before’ from thesame base (*hed- ‘seize’, source also of Englishget) as produced the verb praehendere ‘seize’.This has been a rich source of Englishvocabulary, contributing through differentchannels such a varied assortment as prehensile[18], prison, and prize ‘something seized inwar’, not to mention prefixed forms likeapprehend. comprehend [14], comprise [15],impregnable [15], reprehensible, reprieve, andsurprise. It is also the ancestor of French prendre‘take’. APPREHEND, COMPREHEND, COMPRISE,DEPREDATION, IMPREGNABLE, PREDATORY,PREHENSILE, PRISON, REPREHENSIBLE,REPRIEVE, SURPRISEprice [13] The Latin word for ‘price’ was pretium(it was probably derived ultimately from theIndo-European preposition *preti ‘back’, and soetymologically denoted ‘recompense’). Itsdescendants have spread through most modernwestern European languages, including Frenchprix, Italian prezzo, Spanish precio, Germanpreis, and Dutch prijs. The last two wereborrowed from Old French pris, the ancestor ofmodern prix, as was English price. The worddifferentiated in the 16th century into price andprize; and derivatives of the Latin original havegiven English appreciate, depreciate [15],praise, and precious. APPRAISE, APPRECIATE, DEPRECIATE, GRANDPRIX, PRAISE, PRECIOUSprick [OE] Prick is a word of the Low Germanarea, which English shares with Dutch (prik). Itsultimate origins, though, are not known. Theearliest record of its use for ‘penis’ is from thelate 16th century, and in the 16th and 17thcenturies women employed it as a term ofendearment – a usage which did not go downwell in all quarters: ‘One word alone hathtroubled some, because the immodest maidsoothing the young man, calls him her Prick. Hewho cannot away with this, instead of “myPrick”, let him write “my Sweetheart”,’ H M,Colloquies of Erasmus 1671. Prickle [OE] is adiminutive derivative. PRICKLEpride [OE] The original Old English noun for‘pride’ was prte, a derivative of the adjectiveprūd ‘proud’ (ancestor of modern Englishproud). This changed in the 11th century toprde, probably under the influence of theadjective, and subsequently developed to pride.There is an isolated example of the use of theword for a ‘group of lions’ from the late 15thcentury, but the modern usage seems to be a20th-century revival. PROUDpriest [OE] Priest goes back ultimately to theGreek noun presbúteros, which meant literally‘elder’ (it was formed from the comparative ofthe adjective présbus ‘old’). It was used in theGreek translation of the New Testament for‘elder of the church, priest’. It was borrowed intoLatin as presbyter (source of Englishpresbyterian [17]). This subsequently becamereduced to *prēster (as in Prester John), whichwas taken over by Old English as prēost,ancestor of modern English priest. PRESBYTERIANprim [18] Prim etymologically means ‘first’. Itcomes from Old French prime, the feminineform of prin ‘fine, excellent’, which went backto Latin prīmus ‘first’ (source of English prime).The English meaning developed through aderogatory ‘overrefined’. FIRST, PRIMEdonnaprima donna see DAMEprime [OE] Latin prīmus ‘first’ came from anearlier *prīsmo-, which went back ultimately toIndo-European *pro ‘before, in front’ (ancestoralso of English first). English first acquired itdirect from Latin in the Anglo-Saxon period asan ecclesiastical term for the earliest of thecanonical hours, and this is the source of themodern English noun uses of the word (as in ‘inone’s prime’). The adjective prime wasborrowed in the 14th century from Old Frenchprime. English has a wide range of words that goback to derivatives of Latin prīmus, includingpremier [15], prim, primal [17], primary [15],primate [13], primitive [14], prince, principal,and principle. The trade-name Primus was firstused for a sort of paraffin lamp in the early yearsof the 20th century. FIRST, PREMIER, PRIM, PRIMITIVE, PRINCE,PRINCIPLEprince [13] A prince is etymologically someonewho ‘takes first place’, hence a ‘leader’. Theword comes via Old French prince from Latinprinceps, a compound formed from prīmus‘first’ (source of English prime) and capere‘take’ (source of English captive, capture, etc).(German fürst ‘prince’ was derived from OldHigh German furist ‘first’, apparently inimitation of the Latin word.) The derivative

princess [14] was also acquired from OldFrench. FIRST, PRIMEprinciple [14] Frequently confused, principal[13] and principle come from distinct sources –but both sources were derived ultimately fromLatin princeps ‘chief’ (from which English getsprince). Principal goes back via Old Frenchprincipal to Latin principālis ‘first, original’,while principle comes from *principle, anassumed Anglo-Norman variant of Old Frenchprinciple, which went back to Latin principium‘beginning, foundation’. FIRST, PRIME, PRINCEprint [13] Latin premere meant ‘press’ (its pastparticipial stem press- underlies English press).It passed into Old French as preindre, whose pastparticiple formed the basis of a noun preinte‘impression, impressed mark’ – source ofEnglish print. The verb first used for the activityof ‘printing books’ was the derived imprint [14](‘Because this said book is full of wholesomewisdom … I have purposed to imprint it’,William Caxton, Game and Play of the Chess1474), but print soon followed at the beginningof the 16th century. PRESSprior Prior the ecclesiastical rank [11] and prior‘previous’ [18] are ultimately the same word.Both go back to Latin prior ‘former, superior’, acomparative formation based on the Old Latinpreposition pri ‘before’. This came in postclassicaltimes to be used as a noun meaning‘superior officer, administrator’, and it was takenover as such into the terminology of themonastic foundations.prism [16] The etymological idea underlying theword prism is of its shape, that of a ‘sawn-off’piece. It comes via medieval Latin prisma fromGreek prísma, a derivative of the verb prízein‘saw’. Its optical application emerged in Englishat the beginning of the 17th century.prison [12] Like comprehend, prehensile, etc,prison goes back ultimately to Latinpraehendere ‘seize’. From this was derived thenoun praehensiō ‘seizure’, later contracted toprēnsiō, which passed into Old French as prisun.By now it had come to be used specifically for‘imprisonment’, and from this it moved on indue course to the concrete ‘place ofimprisonment’ – both senses which enteredEnglish from Old French in the 12th century. APPREHEND, COMPREHENSIVE, PREHENSILE,PRIZE, REPREHENSIBLEprivate [14] Latin prīvus meant ‘single,individual’. From it was derived the verbprīvāre, source of English deprive [14] andprivation [14]. This originally meant ‘makesolitary, isolate’, and although it later moved onmetaphorically to ‘bereave, deprive’, its earliestsense was preserved in the adjective formedfrom its past participle prīvātus. This denoted‘belonging to the individual alone’, hence ‘notbelonging or related to the state’. English hasacquired the word twice: first, via Old French, asthe now almost archaic privy [13], and later,395 processdirectly from Latin, as private. Privilege [12]comes via Old French privilege from Latinprīvilēgium, a compound formed from prīvusand lēx ‘law’ (source of English legal) whichetymologically meant ‘law affecting anindividual’. DEPRIVE, PRIVILEGE, PRIVYprize English has four words prize. The onemeaning ‘reward’ [16] is essentially the sameword as price. This was originally pris,mirroring its immediate Old French ancestorpris. It became prise, to indicate the length of itsvowel i, and in the 16th century thisdifferentiated into price for ‘amount to pay’ andprize for ‘reward’. (Modern French prix hasgiven English grand prix [19], literally ‘greatprize’, first used for a ‘car race’ in 1908.) Prize‘esteem’ [14] was based on pris-, the stem of OldFrench preisier ‘praise’ (source of Englishpraise). Prize ‘something captured in war’ [14]comes via Old French prise ‘capture, seizure,booty’ from Vulgar Latin *prēsa or *prēnsa‘something seized’. This was a noun use of thepast participle of *prēndere ‘seize’, acontraction of classical Latin praehendere (fromwhich English gets prehensile, prison, etc).Another sense of Old French prise was ‘grasp’.English borrowed this in the 14th century asprize ‘lever’, which in due course was turnedinto modern English’s fourth prize, the verbprize, or prise, ‘lever’ [17]. Pry ‘lever’ [19] is analteration of prize, based on themisapprehension that it is a third-person singularpresent form (*pries). GRAND PRIX, PRICE; PRAISE; COMPREHENSIVE,PRISON, REPREHENSIBLE; PRYprobable [14] Latin probāre meant ‘test,approve, prove’ (it is the source of Englishprobate [15], probation [15], probe [16], andprove). From it was derived the adjectiveprobābilis ‘provable’, hence ‘likely’. It passedinto English via Old French probable. PROBATE, PROBATION, PROBE, PROVE,REPROBATEprobity see PROVEproblem [14] A problem is etymologicallysomething ‘thrown forward’. The word comesvia Old French probleme and Latin problēmafrom Greek próblēma, a derivative of probállein‘throw forward’. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix pro- ‘forward’ andbállein ‘throw’ (source of English ballistic,emblem, parable, etc). Things that are ‘thrownout’ project and can get in the way and hinderone, and so próblēma came to be used for an‘obstacle’ or ‘problem’ – senses carried throughinto English problem. BALLISTIC, EMBLEM, PARABLE, SYMBOLproboscis [17] The elephant’s trunk wasoriginally called proboscis because it is used forgetting food – by pulling down leafy branches,for instance. The word comes via Latin fromGreek proboskís, a compound formed from pró‘in front’ and bóskein ‘feed’.process [14] Latin prōcēdere meant ‘goforward’: it was a compound verb formed from

procrastinate 396the prefix prō- ‘forward’ and cēdere ‘go’ (sourceof English cede, concede, etc), and has givenEnglish proceed [14] and procedure [17]. Its pastparticiple prōcessus was used as a noun meaning‘advance, progress, lapse of time’. This passedvia Old French proces into English, where thenotion of something ‘advancing during a periodof time’ led in the 17th century to the word’smain modern sense ‘set of operations for doingsomething’. Procession [12] comes from theLatin derivative prōcessiō. ACCEDE, CEDE, CONCEDE, EXCEED, PRECEDE,PROCEED, PROCESSIONprocrastinate [16] Crās was Latin for‘tomorrow’ (its antecedents are uncertain). Theadjective derived from it was crāstinus ‘oftomorrow’, which in turn formed the basis of averb prōcrāstināre ‘put forward to tomorrow’(prō- denotes ‘forward’). By the time it reachedEnglish it had broadened out to simply ‘delay’.procure [13] The -cure of procure goes back toLatin cūrāre ‘look after’, source of English cure.Combination with prō- ‘for’ produced prōcūrāre‘look after on behalf of someone else, manage’,which English acquired via Old French procureras procure. The main modern sense ‘obtain’developed via ‘take care, take pains’ and ‘bringabout by taking pains’. The agent noun derivedfrom the Latin verb was prōcūrātor ‘manager,agent’; English adopted this as procurator [13],and subsequently contracted it to proctor [14]. Asimilar process of contraction lies behind proxy,which goes back to Latin prōcūrātiō. CURE, PROCTOR, PROXYproduce [15] To produce something isetymologically to ‘lead it forward’, a meaningstill discernible beneath the veil of metaphor thatclothes the modern English word’s range ofmeanings. It comes from Latin prōdūcere, acompound verb formed from the prefix prō-‘forward’ and dūcere ‘lead’ (source of Englishduct, duke, educate, introduce, etc). DUCT, DUKE, EDUCATE, INDUCE, INTRODUCEprofane [15] Anything that is profane isetymologically ‘outside the temple’ – hence,‘secular’ or ‘irreligious’. The word comes viaOld French prophane from Latin profānus, acompound adjective formed from the prefix prō-‘before’ (used here in the sense ‘outside’) andfānum ‘temple’ (source of archaic English fane[14]). FANEprofess [14] Profess comes from prōfessus, thepast participle of Latin prōfitērī ‘declarepublicly’. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix prō- ‘forth, in public’ and fatērī‘acknowledge, confess’ (a relative of Englishfable, fame, and fate and source also of confess).A professor [14] is etymologically someone who‘makes a public claim’ to knowledge in aparticular field; and someone’s profession [13] isthe area of activity in which they ‘profess’ a skillor competence. CONFESS, FABLE, FAME, FATEproficient see PROFITprofile [17] The -file of profile is etymologicallya ‘thread’. The word comes from early modernItalian profilo, a derivative of profilare ‘draw inoutline’. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix pro- ‘forward’ and filare, whichused to mean ‘draw a line’; and this in turn wentback to Latin filāre ‘spin’, a derivative of filum‘thread’ (from which English gets file for storingthings in). FILEprofit [14] Like proficient, profit goes back toLatin prōficere ‘advance, be advantageous’. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the prefixprō- ‘forward’ and facere ‘do, make’ (source ofEnglish fact, fashion, feat, etc). Its past participleprōfectus was used as a noun meaning ‘progress,success, profit’, and this passed into English viaOld French profit. The Latin present participleprōficiēns ‘making progress’ is the source ofEnglish proficient [16], which took its meaningon via ‘making progress in learning’ to ‘adept’. FACT, FASHION, FEAT, PROFICIENTprofligate [16] Something that is profligate hasetymologically been ‘beaten down’ to a state ofruination or degradation. The word was adaptedfrom Latin prōflīgātus ‘destroyed, dissolute’, anadjective based on the past participle ofprōflīgāre ‘beat down, destroy’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix prō-‘forward’ (used here in the sense ‘down’) andflīgere ‘hit’ (source also of English afflict,conflict [15], and inflict [16]). AFFLICT, CONFLICT, INFLICTprogress [15] Progress is one of a large familyof English words (including also grade, gradual,transgress, etc) that go back to Latin gradus‘step’. From it was derived the verb gradī ‘go,step’, which in combination with the prefix prō-‘forward’ produced prōgredī ‘go forward’.English gets progress from its past participleprōgressus. GRADE, GRADUAL, INGREDIENT, REGRESS,TRANSGRESSproletarian [17] A Roman citizen of the lowestclass was termed a prōlētārius. The only servicehe was capable of performing for the state wasthat of producing children, to maintain itspopulation level, and it was this function thatgave the prōlētārius his name. For it was derivedfrom prōlēs ‘offspring’, a word based on thesame source (*ol- ‘nourish’) as producedEnglish adolescent, alimony, etc. Theabbreviation prole dates back to the late 19thcentury (George Bernard Shaw is the first writeron record as using it), but it was George Orwellin the 1930s who firmly established the term.The immediate source of proletariat [19] isFrench prolétariat (in the 19th century it wasoften anglicized to proletariate).English is also indebted to Latin prōlēs forprolific [17], which comes from the medievalLatin derivative prōlificus ‘producing offspring’. ADOLESCENT, ALIMENTARY, ALIMONY, PROLIFICprolix see LIQUIDpromenade [16] Promenade was borrowedfrom French. It was a derivative of se promener

‘go for a walk’, which came from late Latinprōmināre ‘drive forward’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix prō-‘forward’ and mināre ‘drive’. It was originallyused in English for a ‘leisurely walk’; ‘place forwalking’ followed in the mid-17th century, but itdoes not seem to have been applied specificallyto a ‘walk-way by the sea’ until the end of the18th century. The abbreviation prom dates fromthe early 20th century. The term promenadeconcert originated in the 1830s.prominent [16] Prominent comes from thepresent participle of Latin prōminēre ‘jut out’.This was formed with the prefix prō- ‘forwards,out’ and -minēre ‘project’, a verbal elementwhich also lies behind English eminent andimminent [16]. It was derived from *min-‘project’, a base which also gave Englishmenace and may be related ultimately to Latinmōns ‘mountain’ (source of English mount andmountain). Combination of prō- and mōns itselfproduced Latin prōmunturium ‘headland’,ancestor of English promontory [16]. EMINENT, IMMINENT, MENACEpromiscuous see MIXpromise [14] Latin prōmittere originally meantsimply ‘send forth’ (it was a compound verbformed from the prefix prō- ‘forward’ andmittere ‘send’, source of English mission,missile, transmit, etc). But it soon evolvedmetaphorically via ‘say in advance, foretell’ to‘cause to expect’ and hence ‘promise’ – thesense adopted into English via its past participleprōmissum. ADMIT, COMMIT, MISSILE, MISSION, SUBMIT,TRANSMITpromontory see PROMINENTpromotion see MOTORprompt [14] Latin prōmere meant ‘bring out,show’ (it was a compound verb formed from theprefix prō- ‘forward, forth’ and emere ‘take’,source also of English assume [15], example,exempt, peremptory [16], redeem, and sample).Its past participle was promptus, and this wasused as an adjective in which the notion of‘shown, manifest’ evolved via ‘ready at hand,available’ to ‘quick, punctual’ – whence Englishprompt. In Spanish, Latin promptus becamepronto, which was borrowed into English in themid-19th century. ASSUME, EXAMPLE, EXEMPT, PEREMPTORY,REDEEM, SAMPLEpromulgate [16] Promulgate owes its existenceto an analogy drawn by the Romans between‘milking’ and ‘bringing out into the light of day’.The Latin verb for ‘milk’ was mulgēre (source ofEnglish emulsion). It was used metaphoricallyfor ‘cause to emerge’, and combination with theprefix prō- ‘forth, out’ produced prōmulgāre‘make known publicly, publish’ – whenceEnglish promulgate. EMULSIONpronounce [14] Latin nuntius meant‘messenger’. From it was derived the verbnuntiāre ‘announce’, which has formed the basisof English announce [15], annunciation [14],397 propertydenounce [13], pronounce, and renounce [14].Pronounce itself goes back to Latin prōnuntiāre‘proclaim’, formed with the prefix prō- ‘forth,out, in public’. Its specific application to the‘way in which a person speaks’ emerged inEnglish in the early 17th century. ANNOUNCE, DENOUNCE, NUNCIO, RENOUNCEpronto see PROMPTproof [13] Proof and prove are of course closelyrelated. Both go back ultimately to Latin probāre‘test, prove’. From this in post-classical timeswas derived the noun proba ‘proof’, whichpassed into English via Old French preve as pref.In the 14th and 15th centuries this graduallychanged in the mainstream language to proof,due to the influence of the verb prove. PROBE, PROVEpropaganda [18] English gets the wordpropaganda from the term Propaganda Fide, thename of a Roman Catholic organization chargedwith the spreading of the gospel. This meantliterally ‘propagating the faith’, prōpāgāndabeing the feminine gerundive of Latinprōpāgāre, source of English propagate [16].Originally prōpāgāre was a botanical verb, as itsEnglish descendant remains, only secondarilybroadening out metaphorically to ‘extend,spread’. It was derived from the noun prōpāgo‘cutting, scion’, which in turn was formed fromthe prefix prō- ‘forth’ and the base *pāg- ‘fix’(source of English pagan, page, pale ‘stake’,etc). PAGAN, PAGE, PALE, PROPAGATEpropel see PULSEproper [13] Proper originally meant ‘belongingto itself, particular to itself’ (a sense now defunctin English except in certain fossilized contexts,such as the astronomical term proper motion). Itcomes via Old French propre from Latinprōprius ‘one’s own’, which may have been alexicalization of the phrase prō prīvō, literally‘for the individual’ (prīvus is the source ofEnglish private). The word developed widely inmeaning in Latin, but its main modern Englishsenses, ‘correct’ and ‘morally right’, are of laterevolution. Appropriate [15] goes back to a lateLatin derivative. APPROPRIATE, PROPERTYproperty [13] Property and propriety [15] aredoublets – that is to say, they have the sameancestor, but have diverged over the centuries. Inthis case the ancestor was Latin prōprietās‘ownership’, a derivative of prōprius (fromwhich English gets proper). It passed into OldFrench as propriete, which originally reachedEnglish via Anglo-Norman proprete as property,and was subsequently reborrowed direct fromOld French as propriety (this to begin withdenoted ‘property’, and did not begin to developits present-day meaning until the 17th century).Proprietary [15] came from the late Latinderivative prōprietārius; and proprietor [17] wasformed from proprietary by substituting thesuffix -or for -ary. PROPER, PROPRIETARY, PROPRIETY

prophet 398prophet [12] A prophet is etymologicallysomeone who ‘speaks for’ another. The wordcomes via Old French prophete and Latinprophēta from Greek prophétēs, a compoundnoun formed from the prefix pro- ‘for’ and-phētēs ‘speaker’ (a derivative of phánai ‘speak’,which goes back to the same Indo-Europeanbase, *bha- ‘speak’, as produced English fable,fate, etc). It meant literally ‘spokesman’, andwas frequently used specifically for ‘one whointerprets the will of the gods to humans’. TheGreek translators of the Bible adopted it intoChristian usage. Prophecy [13] comes ultimatelyfrom the Greek derivative prophētíā. FABLE, FAME, FATEprophylactic [16] Prophylactic comes fromGreek prophulaktikós, a derivative of the verbprophulássein. This meant literally ‘keep guardin front of a place’, and hence ‘take precautionsagainst’. It was formed from the prefix pro-‘before’ and phulássein ‘guard’.propinquity see PROXIMITYproponent see PURPOSEpropose see PURPOSEpropound see PURPOSEpropriety see PROPERprose [14] Prose is etymologically‘straightforward discourse’ (as opposed to themore sophisticated discourse of poetry). Theterm comes via Old French prose from Latinprōsa, which was short for prōsa ōrātiō‘straightforward discourse’. Prōsus‘straightforward, direct’ was a contraction of anearlier prōversus, the past participle ofprōvertere ‘turn forward’. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix prō- ‘forward’ andvertere ‘turn’ (source of English verse, version,etc). VERSE, VERSIONprosecute [15] If you prosecute someone,etymologically you ‘pursue’ them. The wordcomes from prōsecūt-, the past participial stemof prōsequī ‘pursue’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix prō- ‘forward’ and sequī ‘follow’(source of English sequal, sequence, etc). Theword’s legal application emerged in the late 16thcentury. PURSUE, SEQUAL, SEQUENCE, SUITproselyte [14] A proselyte is etymologicallysomeone who ‘comes to’ a new religion. Theword comes via Latin prosēlytus from Greekproséluthos ‘person who comes to a place’, aderivative of the verb prosérkhesthai ‘come to,approach’.prosody [15] Despite the passing similarity,prosody has no etymological connection withprose. In fact, its closest English relative is ode.It comes via Latin prosōdia from Greekprosōidíā, which originally meant ‘song with aninstrumental accompaniment’. This was acompound formed from prós ‘in addition to’ andōidé ‘song’ (source of English ode [16] and alsoof parody [16], rhapsody, and probably tragedy). MELODY, ODE, PARODY, RHAPSODYprostitute [16] To prostitute something isetymologically to ‘set it up in front of everyone’.The word comes from the past participle of Latinprōstituere, a compound formed from the prefixprō- ‘before, in public’ and statuere ‘set, place’(source of English statute). The Latin verbevolved semantically via ‘expose publicly’ and‘offer for sale’ to ‘make available for sex inreturn for money’, and the feminine form of itspast participle, prōstitūta, foreshadows itsEnglish noun descendant prostitute. STATUE, STATUS, STATUTEprostrate see STRATAprotect [16] The -tect element of protect goesback to the past participle of Latin tegere ‘cover’(source of English integument [17] and toga [16]and related to thatch). Combination with theprefix prō- ‘in front’ produced prōtegere ‘coverin front, protect’. Another English product of thepast participle tectus is detect [15]. DETECT, INTEGUMENT, THATCH, TOGAprotein [19] The word protein was coined (asFrench protéine) by the Dutch chemist Mulder inthe late 1830s. He based it on late Greek prōteios‘primary’, a derivative of Greek prótos ‘first’(see PROTOZOA), the notion being that proteinswere substances of ‘primary’ importance to theproper functioning of the body.protest [14] The noun protest comes from earlymodern French protest, a derivative of the verbprotester, which goes back to Latin prōtestārī‘make a public declaration’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix prō-‘out, in public’ and testārī ‘declare, bearwitness’ (source of or related to English attest,contest, detest, testament, testify, etc). Thenotion of ‘making an objection’ is acomparatively late development in the word’ssemantic history. Protestant [16], which comesfrom the Latin present participle, originated in1529 as a term for those Germans who dissentedfrom the decree of the Diet of Spires, anassembly of the estates of the Holy RomanEmpire, which called for obedience to Rome. Itwas first used in English in 1539, and within afew years had broadened out in application todenote anyone dissenting from RomanCatholicism. ATTEST, CONTEST, DETEST, TESTAMENT,TESTICLE, TESTIFYprotocol [16] Protocol originally denoted an‘official record of a transaction’. Not until theend of the 19th century, as a reborrowing fromFrench, did it come to be used for ‘rules ofetiquette’ (the semantic link is an intermediatesense ‘draft of a treaty or other diplomaticdocument’, which led to its use in French for the‘department in charge of diplomatic etiquette’).It goes back via Old French prothocole andmedieval Latin prōtocollum to Greekprōtókollon, a compound formed from prótos‘first’ and kólla ‘glue’ which meant ‘flyleafglued to the front of a book giving a list of itscontents’. COLLOID

protozoa [19] Greek prótos meant ‘first’ (likeEnglish first and Latin prīmus ‘first’ it goes backultimately to Indo-European *pro ‘before, infront’). It forms the basis of a wide range ofEnglish words, both original Greek compoundsand post-classical formations, among themprotagonist [17] (etymologically the ‘first orleading actor’), protein, protocol, proton [20],protoplasm [19], and prototype [17]. Protozoaitself was coined in modern Latin by thezoologist Goldfuss in 1818 from proto- andGreek zóia ‘animals’ (source of English zoo), thenotion being that the protozoa are the simplest ormost primitive forms of life. ZOOproud [OE] Proud was borrowed in the 10thcentury from Old French prud. This came froma Vulgar Latin *prōdis, a derivative of Latinprōdesse ‘be beneficial’, which was a compoundformed from prōd-, a variant of prō- ‘for’, andesse ‘be’. The Old French adjective meant‘good, brave’, and it is thought that the sense‘having a high opinion of oneself’, which doesnot occur in Old French but is the earliestrecorded in English, may reflect what the Anglo-Saxons thought of Norman nobles who referredto themselves as prud barun or prud chevalier. Alater form of Old French prud or prod was prou,whose derivative proesce ‘bravery’ passed intoEnglish as prowess [13]; and English is alsoindebted to prud for prude. PRIDE, PROWESS, PRUDEprove [12] The ultimate source of prove wasLatin probus ‘good’. This went back (like therelated Sanskrit prabhu- ‘eminent, mighty’) to aprehistoric Indo-European compound *probhwo-‘being in front’, hence ‘excelling’ (*promeant‘in front’, and *bhwo- was the ancestor ofEnglish be). From it was derived the verbprobāre ‘test, approve, prove’, which has givenEnglish approve, probable, probe, proof,reprobate, reprove, and of course prove,acquired via Old French prover. Another Latinderivative of probus was probitās ‘honesty’,from which English gets probity [16]. APPROVE, PROBABLE, PROBE, PROOF,REPROBATEprovender see PREBENDproverb [14] Latin prōverbium meant literally‘set of words put forth’ – that is, ‘commonlyuttered’. It was a compound formed from theprefix prō- ‘forth’ and verbum ‘word’ (source ofEnglish verb, verbal, etc). English acquired it viaOld French proverbe. ADVERB, VERB, VERBAL, WORDprovide [15] The -vide of provide goes back toLatin vidēre ‘see’ (source of English vision),which is a long way from the English verb’smain present-day meaning, ‘supply’. Its Latinancestor prōvidēre, formed with the prefix prō-‘before’, meant ‘foresee’ – a sense whichsurvived into English: ‘evident and sufficientsigns, whereby may be provided and foreseenthe aborcement [abortion] before it comes’,Thomas Raynalde, Birth of Mankind 1545. Butalready in Latin it had moved on to ‘exercise399 prudentforesight by making preparations’, and thisformed the basis of the later ‘supply’. OtherEnglish descendants of prōvidēre includeimprovise, provident [15] (a close relative ofprudent), provision [14], proviso [15], andpurvey [13]. IMPROVISE, PROVISION, PROVISO, PRUDENT,PURVEY, VISIONprovoke see VOCATIONprovost [OE] A provost is etymologically anofficial ‘placed before’ others – that is, put incharge of them. The word’s ancestor is Latinpraepositus ‘superintendent’, a noun use of thepast participle of praepōnere, a compound verbformed from the prefix prae- ‘in front’ andpōnere ‘put’ (source of English position, post,etc). In medieval Latin a variant form prōpositusemerged, which was borrowed into Old Englishas profost. This was supplemented in MiddleEnglish by the Anglo-Norman form provost. POSITIONprow [16] ‘Being in front’ is the etymologicalnotion that underlies prow. It comes ultimatelyfrom Greek próira ‘front of a ship’, which wasprobably a derivative of Indo-European *pro‘before, in front’. It reached English via Latinprōra and Old French proue.prowess see PROUDproximity [15] Latin proximus meant ‘nearest,next’ (it was the superlative form of anunrecorded *proqe ‘near’, a variant of prope,from which English gets approach andpropinquity [14]). From it were formed the verbproximāre ‘come near’, ultimate source ofEnglish approximate [15], and the nounproximitās ‘nearness’, from which English getsproximity. APPROXIMATEproxy [15] Proxy has no etymologicalconnection with ‘closeness’. It is a muchcontracted form of prōcūrātia, the medievalversion of Latin prōcūrātiō ‘caring for, takingcare of’. This was a noun derived fromprōcūrāre, source of English procure. Itoriginally entered English in the 13th century asprocuracy, and gradually shrank via procracyand prokecye to proxy. The semantic notionunderlying it is of ‘taking care of another’sinterests’. PROCUREprude [18] Old French prudefemme ‘virtuouswoman’ meant literally ‘fine thing of a woman’.It was a lexicalization of the phrase *preu defemme, in which preu meant ‘fine, brave,virtuous’ (its variant prud gave English proud).In the 17th century it was shortened to prude(Molière is the first writer on record as using it),with distinctly negative connotations of ‘overvirtuousness’.It was borrowed into English atthe beginning of the 18th century, and for acouple of hundred years continued to be usedalmost exclusively with reference to women. PROUDprudent [14] Prudent and provident are as itwere two separate goes at the same word. Bothwere formed from the Latin prefix prō- ‘before,

prune 400in advance’ and vidēns, the present participle ofvidēre ‘see’ (and hence etymologically mean‘foreseeing’). The pre-classical coinage wascontracted to prūdēns ‘farsighted, wise’, whichreached English via Old French prudent.Provident comes from the uncontractedprōvidēns, part of the paradigm of prōvidēre(source of English provide). PROVIDEprune English has two distinct words prune. Theolder, ‘dried plum’ [14], is ultimately the sameword as plum, and indeed in the 16th and 17thcentury was often used for ‘plum’. It comes viaOld French prune from Vulgar Latin *prūna,which also gave English (through Germanic)plum. Prune ‘cut off unneeded parts’ [15]denotes etymologically ‘cut in a rounded shapein front’. It comes via Old French proignier fromVulgar Latin *prōrotundiāre, a compound verbformed from the Latin prefix prō- ‘in front’ androtundus ‘round’ (source of English rotund andround). PLUM; ROTUND, ROUNDpry see PRIZEpsalm [OE] The Greek verb psállein originallymeant ‘pluck’, but it was extended figuratively to‘pluck harpstrings’, and hence ‘sing to theaccompaniment of the harp’. From it wasderived the noun psalmós ‘harp-song’, whichwas used in the Greek Septuagint to renderHebrew mizmōr ‘song (of the sort sung to theharp by David)’. It passed into Old English vialate Latin psalmus. Another derivative of Greekpsállein was psaltérion ‘stringed instrumentplayed by plucking’, which has given Englishpsalter [OE] and psaltery [13].psephology [20] The term psephology ‘studyof voting patterns’ was coined in the early 1950sby R B McCallum from Greek pséphos ‘pebble’.Pebbles were used in ancient Greece for castingvotes, and so pséphos came to meanmetaphorically ‘vote’ – hence psephology.pseudonym [19] Pseudonym comes via Frenchpseudonyme from Greek pseudónumon, acompound formed from pseudés ‘false’ andónoma ‘name’. Pseudés, a derivative of the verbpseúdein ‘lie’, has given English the prolificprefix pseudo-, which in the mid 20th centuryyielded the noun and adjective pseud. NAMEpsyche [17] Like Latin animus (source ofEnglish animal), Greek psūkhé started outmeaning ‘breath’ and developed semantically to‘soul, spirit’. English adopted it via Latin pschēin the mid-17th century, but it did not reallybegin to come into its own until the middle of the19th century, when the development of thesciences of the mind saw it pressed into servicein such compound forms as psychology (firstrecorded in 1693, but not widely used until the1830s) and psychiatry (first recorded in 1846),which etymologically means ‘healing of themind’. PSYCHIATRY, PSYCHOLOGYptarmigan [16] Ptarmigan was borrowed fromScottish Gaelic tarmachan, a diminutive form oftarmach ‘ptarmigan’. There is no etymologicaljustification for the spelling pt-. It was foisted onthe word in the late 17th century in the erroneousbelief that it had some connection with Greekpterón ‘wing’ (source of English pterodactyl).pterodactyl [19] Pterodactyl means literally‘wing-finger’. It was coined in the early 19thcentury, as Latin pterodactylus, from Greekpterón ‘wing’ (source of English helicopter, anddescendant of the Indo-European base *pet-‘fly’, which also produced English feather) anddáktulos ‘finger’ (source of English date thefruit). DATE, FEATHERptomaine [19] Ptomaine denotesetymologically ‘matter from a corpse’. It comesvia French ptomaïne from Italian ptomaina,which was based on Greek ptōma ‘corpse’. Thisin turn was derived from the verb píptein ‘fall’,and originally meant literally ‘fallen body’. Theterm was coined to name substances producedby decomposing flesh.puberty [14] Latin pūber denoted ‘adult’, andhence, by implication, ‘covered in hair’. Bothstrands of meaning have followed the word intoEnglish: ‘adulthood’ by way of the derivativepūbertās, source of English puberty, and‘hairiness’ in pubescent [17], which means‘downy’ as well as ‘having reached puberty’.And the two are combined in pubic ‘relating tothe region of the groin where hair begins to growat puberty’ [19].public [15] Public means etymologically ‘of thepeople’. It comes via Old French public fromLatin pūblicus, an alteration (apparently inspiredby pūber ‘adult’, source of English puberty) ofpoplicus ‘of the people’, which was derived frompopulus ‘people’ (source of English people,popular, etc). Publicity [19] was borrowed fromthe French derivative publicité. PEOPLE, POPULAR, PUB, PUBLISHpublican [12] The modern use of publican for‘innkeeper’ dates from the early 18th century,and presumably arose from an association withpublic house. Its original meaning was ‘taxcollector’. It comes via Old French publicainfrom Latin pūblicānus ‘person who paid for theprivilege of collecting the public revenues, inreturn for a percentage’. This in turn was derivedfrom pūblicum ‘public revenue’, a noun use ofpūblicus ‘public’ (source of English public).publish [14] To publish something isetymologically to make it ‘public’. The wordcomes from publiss-, the stem of Old Frenchpublier, which was descended from Latinpūblicāre ‘make public’, a derivative of pūblicus‘public’. The earliest record of its use in Englishfor ‘bring out a book’ comes from the early 16thcentury. PUBLICpuce [18] Puce is etymologically ‘fleacoloured’.It was borrowed from French puce‘flea’, a descendant of Latin pūlex ‘flea’, whichgoes back to the same Indo-European source asEnglish flea [OE]. FLEA

pucker [16] The etymological notion underlyingpucker seems to be of forming into ‘pockets’ orsmall baglike wrinkles (the same idea led to theuse of the verb purse for ‘wrinkle, pucker’ – nowdated in general usage, but fossilized in theexpression purse the lips). The word was basedon the stem pock- of pocket.puckish [19] In English folklore from the lateMiddle Ages onward, Puck was a mischievousbut essentially harmless sprite, up to all sorts oftricks (hence the coining of puckish for‘mischievous’). But his Anglo-Saxon ancestorPūca was a far less pleasant proposition – forthis was the Devil himself. He graduallydwindled over the centuries, but a hint of hisformer power remained in his placatoryalternative name Robin Goodfellow. It is notknown whether pūca is of Germanic or Celticorigin.pudding [13] The original puddings weresausages – whose present-day survivor is theblack pudding. They were encased in theintestines or stomachs of animals, and it was thiscasing that provided the spring-board for theword’s subsequent development in meaning. Itcame to be applied to any food cooked in a bag(hence the cannon-ball shape of the traditionalChristmas pudding). Such dishes could besavoury (like today’s steak-and-kidney pudding)or sweet, but it was not until the 20th century thatpudding came to be used specifically for the‘sweet course of a meal’. The word comes viaOld French boudin from Vulgar Latin*botellīnus, a diminutive form of Latin botellus‘sausage’ (source of English botulism). BOTULISMpuddle [14] Old English pudd, a word ofunknown origin but related to German dialectpfudel ‘puddle’, denoted ‘ditch, furrow’, andpuddle was a diminutive formed from it. InMiddle English, it was often used for quite largebodies of water, what we would now call a pondor pool, but by the 17th century it had largelynarrowed down to its present-day meaning. POODLEpuerile [17] Latin puer denoted ‘child’, or morespecifically ‘boy’ (like Greek pais ‘child’,source of English paediatric, pedagogue, etc, itcame ultimately from a base which signified‘smallness’, and also gave Englishpusillanimous). The derived adjective puerīlis‘childlike’ began to acquire its negativeconnotations in Latin, and brought them with itinto English. The related puerperal ‘ofchildbirth’ [18] comes from a Latin compoundformed from puer and parere ‘give birth’ (sourceof English parent). PUSILLANIMOUSpuffin [14] Puffin probably goes back to one ofthe ancestral Celtic languages of the British Isles– perhaps Cornish. Its English guise is no doubtdue to its plump appearance, which suggestedassociations with puff [13] (a word whichoriginated as an imitation of the sound ofpuffing).401 pulpitpugnacious [17] Latin pugnus meant ‘fist’ (itmay have been related to Greek pugmé ‘fist’,source of English pygmy). From it was derivedthe verb pugnāre ‘hit with the fist’, hence ‘fight’,which has given English impugn [14], repugnant[14], and, via the further derivative pugnāx ‘fondof fighting’, pugnacious. IMPUGN, REPUGNANTpuke [16] The first record of puke in English is inJaques’s famous ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech inShakespeare’s As You Like It 1600: ‘At first theinfant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms’.Its origins are not known for certain, but itpresumably goes back ultimately to someGermanic base imitative of the sound ofregurgitation (perhaps the same as producedGerman spucken ‘spew, spit’).pull [OE] The main Old and Middle English wordfor ‘pull’ was draw, and pull did not really beginto come into its own until the late 16th century.It is not known for certain where it came from.Its original meaning was ‘pluck’ (‘draw, drag’ isa secondary development), and so it may well berelated to Low German pūlen ‘remove the shellor husk from, pluck’ and Dutch peul ‘shell,husk’.pullet see POULTRYpulleypulley [14] Although pulleys are used for‘pulling’, there is no etymological connectionbetween the two words. Pulley comes via OldFrench polie from Vulgar Latin *polidia, whichwas probably borrowed from the plural of amedieval Greek *polidion, a diminutive form ofGreek pólos ‘pole, pivot’ (source of English pole‘extremity’). POLEpullulate [17] The etymological notionunderlying pullulate is of rapid ‘new growth’. Itgoes back ultimately to Latin pullus ‘younganimal’, which also produced English pony andpoultry and is distantly related to foal. From thiswas derived the verb pullulāre ‘grow, sprout’,whose past participle provided English withpullulate. This too originally meant ‘sprout’, asense largely displaced since the 19th century byits metaphorical descendant ‘swarm, teem’. FOAL, PONY, POULTRY, PULLETpulmonary [18] Latin pulmō meant ‘lung’ (itwas related to Greek pleúmōn ‘lung’, ultimatesource of English pneumonia). From it wasformed the adjective pulmōnārius, whichEnglish adopted at the beginning of the 18thcentury as pulmonary.pulpit [14] Classical Latin pulpitum, a word ofunknown origin, denoted ‘platform, stage’. Thissense was originally carried over into English(Miles Coverdale, in his 1535 translation of IIChronicles 6:13, wrote ‘Salomon had made abrasen pulpit … upon the same stood he’, wherethe 1611 Authorized Version was later to have‘Solomon had made a brasen scaffold … andupon it he stood’). But it was eventuallyswamped by a subsidiary sense which emergedin medieval Latin: pulpitum had been appliedparticularly to platforms on which people stoodto speak in public, and in ecclesiastical usage it

pulse 402came to denote a ‘raised structure on whichpreachers stand’.pulse English has two separate words pulse. Theolder, ‘seeds of beans, lentils, etc’ [13], comesvia Old French pols from Latin puls ‘thick gruel(often made from beans and the like)’. This wasa relative of Latin pollen ‘flour’ (source ofEnglish pollen) and Latin pulvis ‘powder’(source of English powder and pulverize). Itsplural pultes has given English poultice [16].Pulse ‘beat of the blood’ [14], comes via OldFrench pouls from Latin pulsus ‘beating’, a nounuse of the past participle of pellere ‘drive, beat’(source of English appeal, compel [14], dispel[17], expel [14], propel [15], and repel [15]). Thederivative pulsāre gave English pulsate [18], andalso push. POLLEN, POULTICE, POWDER, PULVERIZE;APPEAL, COMPEL, DISPEL, EXPEL, PROPEL,PULSATE, PUSH, REPELpulverize see POWDERpumice [15] Pumice comes via Old Frenchpomis from Latin pūmex ‘pumice’. This wentback to a prehistoric Indo-European *poimo-,source also of English foam and of Latin spūma‘foam, froth’ (from which English gets spume). FOAM, SPUMEpumpump [15] The precise origins of pump havenever been established. It is now widespreadthroughout the European languages, by dint ofassiduous borrowing (French pompe, forinstance), but its epicentre appears to have beennorthwestern Europe, with Middle Low Germanpumpe or Middle Dutch pompe. It started out, nodoubt, as a vocal imitation of the sound ofpumping.pumpkin [17] Much as they look as though theyhad been blown up with a pump, pumpkins haveno etymological connection with pumps. Greekpépōn denoted a variety of melon that was noteaten until it was fully ripe (the word was a nounuse of the adjective pépōn ‘ripe’). Latin took itover as pepō, and passed it on to Old French as*pepon. Through a series of vicissitudes thisevolved via popon to early modern Frenchpompon. This was borrowed into English in the16th century, and soon altered to pompion; andin the 17th century the native diminutive suffix-kin was grafted on to it to produce pumpkin.pun [17] Snappy monosyllables produced bybreaking off a piece of a longer word were all therage in late 17th- and early 18th-centuryEngland (mob is a well-known example), and itis thought that pun may be one of them. It seemsto be short for pundigrion, a short-lived fanciful17th- and 18th-century term for a ‘pun’ or‘quibble’ which may have been adapted fromItalian puntiglio ‘nice point, quibble’ (source ofEnglish punctilious).punch English has three distinct words punch,not counting the capitalized character in thePunch and Judy show, but two of them areprobably ultimately related. Punch ‘hit’ [14]originated as a variant of Middle English pounce‘pierce, prod’. This came from Old Frenchpoinsonner ‘prick, stamp’, a derivative of thenoun poinson ‘pointed tool’ (source of the nowobsolete English puncheon ‘pointed tool’ [14]).And poinson in turn came from Vulgar Latin*punctiō, a derivative of *punctiāre ‘pierce,prick’, which went back to the past participle ofLatin pungere ‘prick’ (source of English point,punctuation, etc). Punch ‘tool for making holes’[15] (as in ‘ticket punch’) probably originated asan abbreviated version of puncheon.Punch ‘drink’ [17] is said to come from Hindipānch, a descendant of Sanskrit pachan ‘five’,an allusion to the fact that the drink istraditionally made from five ingredients: spirits,water, lemon juice, sugar, and spice. This hasnever been definitely established, however, andan alternative possibility is that it is anabbreviation of puncheon ‘barrel’ [15], a word ofuncertain origin.The name of Mr Punch [17] is short forPunchinello, which comes from a Neapolitandialect word polecenella. This may have been adiminutive of Italian polecena ‘young turkey’,which goes back ultimately to Latin pullus‘young animal, young chicken’ (source ofEnglish poultry). It is presumably an allusion toPunch’s beaklike nose. POINT, PUNCTUATIONpunctuation [16] Punctuation is one of a smallfamily of English words that go back to punctus,the past participle of Latin pungere ‘prick’(source of English expunge [17], poignant [14],and pungent [16]). They include point, whicharrived via Old French; punctilious [17] (whichcomes via Italian and may be related to pun) andpunctual [14], both of them containing theetymological notion of ‘adherence to a precisepoint’; puncture [14]; punt ‘bet’; andpunctuation itself, whose present-day meaningcomes from the insertion of ‘points’ or dots intowritten texts to indicate pauses (also termedpointing from the 15th to the 19th centuries). EXPUNGE, POIGNANT, POINT, PUNGENT, PUNTpunish [14] Latin pūnīre ‘punish’ was derivedfrom the noun poena ‘penalty, punishment’(source of English pain). It passed into OldFrench as punir, whose stem puniss- gaveEnglish punish. A derivative of pūnīre waspūnitīvus ‘inflicting punishment’, which hasgiven English punitive [17]. PAINpunt English has three separate words punt. Theoldest is punt ‘flat-bottomed boat’ [15], whichcomes via Middle Low German punte or puntofrom Latin pontō, a term for a sort of Gaulishboat which also produced English pontoon. Punt‘bet’ [18] (better known in the form of the agentnoun punter ‘better’, hence ‘customer’) comesfrom French ponter, a derivative of ponte ‘betagainst the banker in certain card games’. Thiswas adapted from Spanish punto ‘point’, adescendant of Latin punctum (source of Englishpoint). Punt ‘kick’ [19] may be a variant of bunt‘push’ [19] (now used as a baseball term,meaning ‘hit the ball softly’); this could in turnbe an alteration of butt, but it might also come

from a Celtic source, related to Breton bounta‘butt’. PONTOON; POINT, PUNCTUATIONpuny [16] Etymologically, puny means ‘bornlater’. It was borrowed from Old French puisne,a compound adjective formed from puis‘afterwards’ and ne ‘born’ (a relative of Englishnative, nature, etc). This signified ‘junior’, inwhich sense it was originally acquired byEnglish as puisne. This spelling survives (albeitpronounced the same as puny) as a term denotinga judge of junior rank, and the anglicizedorthography has since the 18th century beenreserved to ‘feeble, small’. NATION, NATIVE, NATUREpupil [14] Latin pūpus and pūpa meantrespectively ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ (pūpa was appliedby the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus to‘chrysalises’, the underlying link being‘undeveloped creature’, and English adopted itas pupa [19]). The diminutive derivativespūpillus and pūpilla denoted ‘orphan’, a sensewhich remained with pūpill- as it passed via OldFrench pupille into English as pupil. ‘Personbeing taught’ did not emerge until the 16thcentury. The application of the word to the‘black aperture in the eye’, which reachedEnglish in the mid-16th century, goes back toLatin pūpilla, which was also used for ‘doll’ –the notion being that if you stand close tosomeone and look into their eyes, you can seeyourself reflected in the pupils like a little ‘doll’. PUPA, PUPPET, PUPPYpuppet [16] Puppet, like its variant poppet [14],originally meant ‘doll’. It comes from OldFrench poupette, a diminutive form of *poupe‘doll’. This in turn came from Vulgar Latin*puppa, a descendant of Latin pūpa ‘girl, doll’(source of English pupa and pupil). Theapplication to a ‘moving doll controlled bystrings’ developed in the 16th century; in thecase of poppet it has since died out, but it hastaken over puppet completely. PUPILpuppy [15] A puppy is etymologically a ‘toy’dog. The word was borrowed from Old Frenchpopee ‘doll’, hence ‘toy’, which went back viaVulgar Latin *puppa (source of English puppet)to Latin pūpa ‘girl, doll’ (source of English pupaand pupil). The shift from ‘toy dog, lapdog’ to‘young dog’ happened towards the end of the16th century. (The Old and Middle English wordfor ‘puppy’, incidentally, was whelp.) PUPILpurchase [13] To purchase something isetymologically to ‘hunt it down’. It comes fromOld French pourchacier ‘pursue’, hence ‘try toobtain’, a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix pour- and chacier ‘pursue’(source of English chase). It arrived in Englishmeaning ‘obtain’. This sense had virtually diedout by the end of the 17th century, but not beforeit had evolved in the 14th century to ‘buy’. CHASEpure [13] Pure goes back ultimately to Latinpūrus ‘clean’, a word of ancient ancestry which403 pursuewas related to Sanskrit pūtás ‘purified’. Itreached English via Old French pur. Amongst itsLatin derivatives were the verbs pūrificāre‘make pure’, source of English purify [14];pūrāre ‘make pure’, which became French purer‘purify, strain’, source of English purée [19];and pūrigāre, later pūrgāre ‘purify’, source ofEnglish expurgate [17] and purge [14]. EXPURGATE, PURGEpurlieu [15] Purlieu has no etymologicalconnection with French lieu ‘place’, whichseems to have been grafted on to it in the 16thcentury in ignorance of its origins. It comes fromAnglo-Norman puralee ‘act of walking round’,hence ‘area of land beyond a perimeter fixed bywalking round’. This was a noun use of the pastparticiple of Old French pouraler ‘go through,traverse’, a compound verb formed from theprefix pour- ‘round’ and aler ‘go’.purloin see LONGpurple [OE] Greek porphúrā, a word of Semiticorigin, denoted a sort of shellfish from which areddish dye was obtained (known as Tyrianpurple, because it was produced around Tyre, inwhat is now Lebanon, it was highly prized inancient times, and used for dyeing royalgarments). It hence came to be used for the dyeitself, and for cloth coloured with it, and itpassed in this latter sense (with the particularconnotation of ‘royal cloth’) via Latin purpurainto Old English as purpura. Its derivedadjective purpuran became purple by a processknown as dissimilation, by which one of twosimilar speech sounds (here /r/) is altered.purpose [13] Purpose, propose [14], andpropound [16] are ultimately the same word. Allgo back to Latin prōpōnere ‘put forward,declare’, a compound verb formed from theprefix prō- ‘forward’ and pōnere ‘place’ (sourceof English pose, position, etc). Its past participleprōpositus was the source of two distinct OldFrench verbs: the minimally altered proposer,source of English propose; and purposer, whichcontains the Old French descendant of the Latinprefix prō-, source of English purpose.Propound is an alteration of an earlier propone(source of proponent [16]), which was baseddirectly on prōpōnere. POSE, POSITION, PROPOSE, PROPONENT,PROPOUNDpurse [OE] Purse was borrowed into OldEnglish from late Latin bursa (source of Englishbursar [13] and reimburse [17]), which wentback to Greek búrsa. This originally meant‘skin, leather’, and hence came to be used for‘wineskin, bag’. The Latin word was alsoborrowed into the Celtic languages, where itproduced Gaelic sporan, source of Englishsporran. BURSAR, REIMBURSE, SPORRANpursue [13] Pursue is first cousin to prosecute.Both go back ultimately to Latin prōsequī‘follow up, pursue’. This led fairly directly toEnglish prosecute, but it also seems to have hada Vulgar Latin descendant *prōsequere, which

purvey 404passed into English via Old French porsivre andAnglo-Norman pursuer as pursue. PROSECUTE, SUE, SUITpurvey see PROVIDEpus [16] English borrowed pus from Latin pūs,which was descended from the prehistoric Indo-European base *pū- (source also of English fouland Latin puter ‘rotten’, from which Englishgets putrid [16]). Its stem form pūr- has givenEnglish purulent [16] and suppurate [16]. TheGreek relative of Latin pūs was púon ‘pus’, fromwhich English gets pyorrhoea [18]. FOUL, PURULENT, PUTRID, PYORRHOEA,SUPPURATEpush [13] Push comes ultimately from the samesource as English pulsate and pulse – pulsus, thepast participle of Latin pellere ‘drive, push,beat’. From it was formed the verb pulsāre‘push, beat’, which in Old French becamepoulser, later pousser. Anglo-Norman took thisover as *pusser, and passed it on to English aspush. PULSATE, PULSEpusillanimous [16] Pusillanimous meansetymologically ‘tiny-spirited’. It comes fromlate Latin pūsillanimis, a compound adjectiveformed from pūsillus ‘very small or weak’ (adescendant of the same base as produced Latinpuer ‘child, boy’, source of English puerile) andanimus ‘mind, spirit’ (source of Englishanimate). ANIMAL, ANIMATE, PUERILEpuss English has two distinct words puss. Theorigins of the one meaning ‘cat’ [16] are rathermysterious. It appears to have been borrowedfrom Middle Low German pūs, but there the trailgoes cold. Since it is basically used for callingcats, it may have originated simply in anexclamation (like pss) used for gaining theirattention. Puss the slang term for ‘mouth’ or‘face’ [19] comes from Irish bus ‘lip, mouth’.Pussy ‘cat’ [18] is derived from puss, of course,but pussy the slang term for ‘cunt’ [19] may beLow German or Scandinavian origin (LowGerman had pūse ‘vulva’ and Old Norse púss‘pocket, pouch’).pustule [14] Despite the fact that pustulescontain pus, there is no etymological connectionbetween the two words. Pustule comes via OldFrench pustule from Latin pustula ‘blister’. Thiswas a derivative of a prehistoric Indo-Europeanbase *pu- signifying ‘blow’, so etymologically itmeans ‘inflated area’.put [12] Put is one of the commonest of Englishverbs, but its origins are uncertain. It goes backto an Old English *putian, never actuallyrecorded but inferred from the verbal nounputung ‘instigation’, but where that came from isnot known. It was presumably related to OldEnglish potian ‘push, thrust’, whose MiddleEnglish descendant pote formed the basis ofmodern English potter [16]. The golfing termputt [18] is essentially the same word as put,differentiated in spelling and pronunciation. POTTER, PUTTputrid see PUSputty [17] Etymologically, putty is somethingthat comes from a pot. It was borrowed fromFrench potée ‘contents of a pot’, a derivative ofpot ‘pot’. By the time English acquired it, it hadcome to be applied to a powder made fromheated tin, used by jewellers for polishing, andfor a cement made from lime and water, used asa top coating on plaster – both substances madein pots. The latter led on in English in the 18thcentury to the now familiar application to thewindow-pane sealant. POTpuzzle [16] The origin of puzzle is,appropriately, a puzzle. One suggestion is that itmay be derived from the now obsolete verb pose‘interrogate, perplex’ (which survives in poser‘difficult question or problem’), a shortenedform of appose ‘interrogate or questionseverely’. This came from Old French aposer, avariant of oposer, from which English getsoppose. Another possibility is some connectionwith the Old English verb puslian ‘pick out thebest bits’, which is reminiscent of puzzle out‘find or solve by laborious reasoning’ (althoughthat sense of puzzle is not recorded until the endof the 18th century).pygmy [14] Greek pugmé meant ‘fist’ (it mayhave been related to Latin pugnus ‘fist’, sourceof English pugnacious). By extension, it wasused for a ‘measure of length equal to thedistance from the elbows to the knuckles’. Fromit was derived pugmaíos ‘dwarfish’, whichpassed into English via Latin pygmaeus. Inancient and medieval times it was used as a nounto designate various apocryphal or mythicalraces of short stature, but it was not until the late19th century that it was applied to the people ofequatorial Africa who now bear the name. PUGNACIOUSpyjama [18] Pyjamas are etymologically‘leggarments’ – that is, ‘trousers’. The wordcomes from Hindi pāejāma, a compound formedfrom Persian pāī ‘foot’, hence ‘leg’ (which goesback to the same Indo-European ancestor asEnglish foot) and jāmah ‘clothing’. It denotedthe loose trousers worn in India and the MiddleEast. Europeans living in that part of the worldtook to wearing them, especially for sleeping in.They brought them back to Europe, where, forreasons of temperature or propriety, a jacket wasadded to the trousers, in due course beingsubsumed under the term pyjama. FOOT, PEDALpyorrhoea see PUSpyramid [16] Egypt seems a likely ultimatesource for pyramid, but its earliest knownancestor is Greek puramís, which passed intoEnglish via Latin pyramis. Pediment ‘triangulargable’ [17] probably originated as a garbling ofpyramid, later influenced by ped-, the stem ofLatin pēs ‘foot’. PEDIMENTpyrotechnic [18] The Greek word for ‘fire’ waspūr (it came from the same prehistoric Indo-European source as English fire). It underlies arange of English words, including pyracantha

[17] (etymologically ‘fire-thorn’), pyre [17],pyrethrum [16], and pyrites [16]. Pyrotechnicitself was derived from an earlier pyrotechny,which was originally used for the ‘manufactureof gunpowder, firearms, bombs, etc’. Theapplication to ‘fireworks’ did not emerge untilthe 17th century. FIRE, PYRE, PYRITESpython [19] The original Python was a fabulousserpent said to have been hatched from the mudof Deucalion’s flood (Deucalion was the Greekcounterpart of Noah) and slain by Apollo nearDelphi in ancient Greece. Its name, in GreekPūthōn, may be related to Pūthó, an old name forDelphi; and that in turn, it has been speculated,may derive from púthein ‘rot’, as the serpentsupposedly rotted there after its demise. Femalesoothsayers served at the Delphi oracle, and405 pyxEnglish adopted pythoness [14] as a general termfor such ancient priestesses; and the four-yearlyathletic contests held at Delphi in honour ofApollo were known as the Pythian Games (theywere second in importance only to the OlympicGames). The scientific application of the namepython to a genus of large Old Worldconstricting snakes (now its most familiar role)dates from the 1830s. Then, in the late 1960s, achance decision brought python a more left-fieldcareer move: after considering and rejectingseveral alternatives, a group of young comicwriter-performers called their new surreallyhumorous BBC television series Monty Python’sFlying Circus (1969–74), and by the mid-1970sPythonesque was being used generically tosuggest surreality or absurdity.pyx see BOX

Qquack English has two words quack. The onedenoting the call of a duck [17] originated ofcourse as an imitation of the sound itself. Quack‘person claiming to be a doctor’ [17] is short foran earlier quacksalver, which etymologicallydenoted ‘someone who prattles on or boastsabout the efficacy of his remedies’. It wasborrowed from early modern Dutch quacksalver,a compound formed from the now obsoletequacken ‘chatter, prattle’ and salf, the Dutchrelative of English salve.quad see QUARTERquagmire [16] The now virtually defunct wordquag denoted a ‘marsh’, particularly one with atop layer of turf that moved when you trod on it.Combination with mire (which also originallymeant ‘marsh’, and is related to English moss)produced quagmire. It is not known where quagcame from, but its underlying meaning isgenerally taken to be ‘shake, tremble’, and itmay ultimately be of imitative origin.quail Quail the bird [14] and quail ‘cower’ [15]are not related. The former comes via OldFrench quaille from medieval Latin coacula,which probably originated in imitation of thebird’s grating cry. It is not known for certainwhere the verb (which originally meant ‘decline,wither, give way’) came from, although somehave linked it with another verb quail, nowobsolete, which meant ‘curdle’. This came viaOld French quailler from Latin coāgulāre,source of English coagulate. COAGULATEquaint [13] Quaint was once a more wholeheartedterm of approval than it is now. InMiddle English it meant ‘clever’ or ‘finely orskilfully made’. Its current sense ‘pleasantlycurious’ did not emerge until the 18th century. Itcomes via Old French coint from Latin cognitus‘known’, the past participle of cognōscere‘know’ (source of English recognize). Theword’s meaning evolved in Old French via thenotion of someone who ‘knows’ aboutsomething, and hence is an expert at it or isskilful in doing it. COGNITION, RECOGNIZEquality [13] The ultimate source of quality isLatin quālis ‘of what sort?’, a compoundpronoun formed from quī ‘who’ and theadjectival suffix -ālis. From it were derived thenoun quālitās, source of English quality, andquālificāre, from which English gets qualify[16]. QUALIFYquandary [16] Quandary may have originatedas a quasi-latinism. One of its early forms wasquandare, which suggests that it may have beena pseudo-Latin infinitive verb, coined on thefanciful notion that Latin quandō ‘when’ was afirst person present singular form.quango [20] Quango is an acronym createdprobably in the late 1960s to refer, in a none toocomplimentary way, to an administrative bodyhovering in the grey area between publicaccountability and private control. It iscommonly explained as being based on theinitial letters of quasi-autonomous nationalgovernment organization, but there is no actualevidence for that unwieldy phrase before themid-1970s, by which time the acronym wasalready going strong. A more plausible source isthe simpler quasi-nongovernmentalorganization, which was around in the late1960s.quantity [14] Latin quantus meant ‘how much’(it was a compound adjective formed from quī‘who’). From it was derived the noun quantitās‘extent, amount’, which passed into English viaOld French quantite. Quantum [17], a noun useof the neuter form of the Latin adjective,originally denoted simply ‘amount’; its specificapplication to a ‘minimum amount of matter’was introduced by Max Planck in 1900, andreinforced by Einstein in 1905. QUANTUMquarantine [17] Quarantine denotesetymologically a period of ‘forty’ days. It goesback ultimately to Latin quadrāgintā ‘forty’,whose Italian descendant quaranta formed thebasis of the noun quarantina ‘period of fortydays’. English used it originally for a ‘period offorty days’ isolation’, but gradually thestipulation of the number of days faded out. QUARTERquark [20] The term quark was applied to a typeof fundamental particle by its discoverer, theAmerican physicist Murray Gell-Mann. Heseems first to have used quork, but then heremembered quark, a nonsense word used byJames Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake 1939, and hedecided to plump for that. It first appeared inprint in 1964.quarrel English has two words quarrel, one ofthem now little more than a historical memory.Quarrel ‘argument’ [14] goes back via OldFrench querele to Latin querēla, a derivative ofquerī ‘complain’. Also based on querī wasquerulus ‘complaining’, from which Englishgets querulous [15]. Quarrel ‘crossbow arrow’[13] comes via Old French quarel from Vulgar

Latin *quadrellus, a diminutive form of lateLatin quadrus ‘square’ (the quarrel had a‘square’ head). And quadrus was based on thestem quadr- ‘four’, source of Englishquadrangle, quadrant, quadruped, etc. QUERULOUS; QUARTERquarry Quarry from which stone is extracted[15] and quarry which one hunts [14] are quitedifferent words. The former was borrowed fromOld French quarriere, a derivative of *quarre‘square stone’. This went back to Latin quadrum‘square’, which was based on the stem quadr-‘four’, source of English quadrangle, quadrant,quadruped, etc. The sort of quarry that ispursued came from Anglo-Norman *quire or*quere, which denoted ‘entrails of a killed deergiven to the hounds to eat’. This went back toOld French cuiree, which was an alteration of anearlier couree or coree. And this in turn wasdescended from Vulgar Latin *corāta ‘entrails’,a derivative of Latin cor ‘heart’. The present-daysense of the English word emerged in the 15thcentury. QUARTER; CORDIAL, COURAGE, RECORDquarter [13] Quarter is one of a large family ofEnglish words that go back ultimately to Latinquattuor ‘four’ and its relatives. Directdescendants of quattuor itself are actually fairlyfew – among them quatrain [16] and quatrefoil[15] (both via Old French). But its ordinal formquārtus ‘fourth’ has been most prolific: Englishis indebted to it for quart [14], quarter (via theLatin derivative quartārius ‘fourth part’),quartet [18], and quarto [16]. In compoundsquattuor assumed the form quadr-, which hasgiven English quadrangle [15] (and itsabbreviation quad [19]), quadrant [14],quadratic [17], quadrille [18], quadruped [17],quadruplet [18] (also abbreviated to quad [19]),quarantine, quarrel ‘arrow’, not to mention themore heavily disguised cadre [19], carfax [14](which means etymologically ‘four-forked’),squad, and square. And the derivative quater‘four times’ has contributed carillon [18](etymologically a peal of ‘four’ bells),quaternary [15], and quire of paper [15](etymologically a set of ‘four’ sheets of paper). CADRE, CARFAX, CARILLON, QUAD, QUARREL,QUARRY, QUIRE, SQUAD, SQUAREquash [14] Quash goes back ultimately to Latinquatere ‘shake’ (source also of English rescue[14], which etymologically means ‘shake off,drive away’, and of concussion and percussion).From it evolved quassāre ‘shake to pieces,break’, which passed into Old French as quasser(its modern descendant is casser, from whichEnglish gets cashier ‘dismiss from the army’).English took quasser over as quash. Squash [16]comes ultimately from the Vulgar Latinderivative *exquassāre. CONCUSSION, PERCUSSION, RESCUE, SQUASHquaver [15] Quaver was derived from an earlierand now obsolete Middle English quave‘tremble’. This was of Germanic origin (LowGerman has the related quabbeln ‘tremble’), andprobably started life as a vocal realization of the407 queueaction of trembling. The use of the noun quaverfor a short musical note (first recorded in the16th century) comes from the original singing ofsuch notes with a trill.quay [14] Quay is of Celtic origin. Its immediatesource was Old French kai, but this wasborrowed from Gaulish caio, which went back toan Old Celtic *kagio-. The spelling quay wasintroduced from modern French in the 17thcentury. The homophonic cay ‘small coralisland’ [18] comes from cayo, a Spanishborrowing from French quai. CAYquean see GYNAECOLOGYqueen [OE] Queen goes back ultimately toprehistoric Indo-European *gwen- ‘woman’,source also of Greek guné ‘woman’ (from whichEnglish gets gynaecology), Persian zan ‘woman’(from which English gets zenana ‘harem’),Swedish kvinna ‘woman’, and the now obsoleteEnglish quean ‘woman’. In its very earliest usein Old English queen (or cwēn, as it then was)was used for a ‘wife’, but not just any wife: itdenoted the wife of a man of particulardistinction, and usually a king. It was not longbefore it became institutionalized as ‘king’swife’, and hence ‘woman ruling in her ownright’. GYNAECOLOGY, QUEAN, ZENANAqueer [16] Queer was probably borrowed fromGerman quer ‘across, oblique’, hence‘perverse’. This went back to a prehistoric Indo-European *twerk-, which also produced Englishthwart and Latin torquēre ‘twist’ (source ofEnglish torch, torture, etc). THWART, TORCH, TORMENT, TORT, TORTUREquell [OE] Quell and kill are probably closelyrelated – indeed, in Old and Middle Englishquell was used for ‘kill’ (‘birds and small beastswith his bow he quells’, William of Palerne1350). Quell goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *kwaljan (source also of Germanquälen ‘torture’), which may have had a variant*kuljan, that could have produced English kill.The milder modern sense of quell developed inthe 14th century.querulous see QUARRELquestionquestion [13] Question is one of a large familyof English words that go back to the Latin verbquaerere ‘seek, ask’. Its past participle quaestusformed the basis of a noun, quaestiō, which hasbecome English question. An earlier form of thepast participle was quaesītus, and its feminineversion quaesīta eventually passed into Englishvia Old French as quest [14]. Other Englishwords from the same source include acquire,conquer, enquire, exquisite, inquest, request, andrequire; and query [17] is an anglicization ofquaere, the imperative form of quaerere. ACQUIRE, CONQUER, ENQUIRE, EXQUISITE,INQUEST, QUERY, QUEST, REQUEST, REQUIREqueue [16] Etymologically a queue is simply a‘tail’. That was the meaning of its Latin ancestorcauda, a word of unknown origin which has alsogiven English caudal ‘of a tail’ [17] and, viaItalian, coda [18] (literally a ‘tail’-piece). To

quibble 408begin with in English queue (acquired viaFrench) was used only as a technical term inheraldry for a ‘tail’. It was not until the 18thcentury that metaphorical applications started toappear: to a ‘billiard stick’ (now spelled cue) anda ‘pigtail’. ‘Line of people waiting’ (which hasnever caught on in American English) emergedin the early 19th century. CODAquibble [17] Quibble probably originated as arather ponderous learned joke-word. It is derivedfrom an earlier and now obsolete quib ‘pun’,which appears to have been based on quibus, thedative and ablative plural of Latin quī ‘who,what’. The notion is that since quibus madefrequent appearances in legal documents writtenin Latin, it became associated with pettifoggingpoints of law.quiche [20] German kuchen ‘cake’ (a relative ofEnglish cake) is the original of quiche. In thedialect of Alsace it became küchen, whichFrench transformed into quiche. The word foundits way into English in the first half of the 20thcentury, but initially only as a specialist term fora somewhat recherché dish – before World WarII, quiche Lorraine was exotic fare. It was the1970s and the advent of winebar cuisine thatmade it much more widely familiar.quick [OE] Originally quick meant ‘alive’ (as inthe now fossilized phrase the quick and thedead); it was not until the 13th century that thesense ‘rapid’ began to emerge. It goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *kwikwaz (which alsoproduced Swedish kvick ‘rapid’); and this wasdescended from an Indo-European base *gwej-,which branched out into Latin vīvus ‘alive’(source of English vivid), Greek bíos ‘life’(source of English biology), Welsh byw ‘alive’,Russian zhivoj ‘alive’, etc.The couch of couch grass [16] is a variant ofthe now seldom encountered quitch, whose OldEnglish ancestor cwice may be related to quick(the allusion presumably being to its vigorousgrowth). BIOLOGY, VIVIDquid English has two words quid. The colloquialterm for a ‘pound’ appears to be the same wordas Latin quid ‘something’, and may have beeninspired by the expression quid pro quo [16],literally ‘something for something’. Quid ‘pieceof chewing tobacco’ [18] is a variant of cud. CUDquiet [14] The Latin noun quiēs meant ‘quiet’ (itcame from a prehistoric Indo-European base*qwi- ‘rest’, which also produced English whileand the final syllable of tranquil). From it wasderived the verb quiēscere ‘be still’ (source ofEnglish quiescent [17]). Its past participlequiētus has given English quiet (and its Siamesetwin coy), quit, and quite, not to mention thederived forms acquit and requite. ACQUIT, COY, QUIT, QUITE, REQUITE, TRANQUIL,WHILEquilt [13] The ultimate source of quilt is Latinculcita ‘mattress’, which passed into English viaOld French cuilte. Its function gradually evolvedfrom that of a mattress for lying on to that of acoverlet for lying under. A long-standingcharacteristic of such quilts is that their stuffingis held in place by cross-stitching. This does notemerge as a distinct meaning of the verb quilt(‘sew padded cloth in a crisscross pattern’) untilthe mid-16th century, but it is reflected in themedieval Latin term culcita puncta ‘prickedmattress’ – that is, a mattress that has beenstitched. This passed into English via Old Frenchas counterpoint, which was subsequentlyaltered, by association with pane ‘panel’, tocounterpane [17]. COUNTERPANEquince [14] Etymologically, the quince is the‘fruit from Khaniá’, a port on the northwestcoast of Crete from which quinces wereexported. In ancient times Khaniá was known asCydonia (in Greek Kudónia), so the Greekscalled the fruit mélon Kudónion ‘Cydonianapple’. Latin took the term over as cydōneum,later cotōneum, which passed into English viaOld French cooin. The original English form ofthe word was quoyn, later quyn, but already bythe early 14th century its plural quyns wascoming to be regarded as a singular – whencemodern English quince.quinsy [14] Quinsy, a now virtually obsoleteterm for ‘sore throat’, has one of thoseetymologies that strain credulity to the limit. Forit comes ultimately from a Greek term thatmeant literally ‘dog-strangling’. This waskunágkhē, a compound formed from kúōn ‘dog’(a distant relative of English hound) and ágkhein‘strangle’, which originally denoted a sort ofthroat infection of dogs, which impaired theirbreathing, and was subsequently extended to asimilar complaint in humans. English acquiredthe word via medieval Latin quinancia and OldFrench quinencie. HOUNDquintessence [15] Just as modern particlephysicists search for the ultimate constituent ofmatter, the common denominator of all knownforces, so medieval alchemists tried to find afifth primary essence, which together with earth,air, fire, and water formed the substance of allheaven and earth. This fifth essence, higher andmore ethereal than the other four, was postulatedby Aristotle, who called it aithēr ‘either’.Another Greek term for it was pemptē ousíā‘fifth essence’, which was translated intomedieval Latin as quinta essentia – whence, viaFrench, English quintessence. The metaphoricalsense ‘most perfect or characteristicembodiment’ began to emerge in the second halfof the 16th century.Other English words based on quintus ‘fifth’,the ordinal form of Latin quinque ‘five’, includequintet [19] and quintuple [16].quire see QUARTERquisling [20] Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegianpolitician who from 1933 led the National UnionParty, the Norwegian fascist party (Quisling wasnot his real name – he was born Abraham LauritzJonsson). When the Germans invaded Norway in

1940 he gave them active support, urging hisfellow Norwegians not to resist them, and in1942 he was installed by Hitler as a puppetpremier. In 1945 he was shot for treason. Theearliest recorded use of his name in English as ageneric term for a ‘traitor’ comes from April1940.quit [13] Quit comes from the same ultimatesource as quiet – Latin quiētus. This originallymeant simply ‘quiet, calm’, but in medievalLatin it developed a wider range of senses,including ‘unharmed’ and ‘free’. From it wasderived the verb quiētāre ‘set free, discharge’,which reached English via Old French quiter.The derived forms acquit and requite [16] comefrom the same source, and quite is essentially thesame word as quit. QUIETquite [14] Quite is essentially the same word asthe adjective quit ‘free, absolved, discharged,cleared’ (which in Middle English commonlytook the alternative form quite). It came to beused as an adverb meaning ‘thoroughly, clearly’.The weaker modern sense ‘fairly’ did notdevelop until as recently as the mid-19th century. QUITquixotic [18] Quixotic commemorates DonQuixote, the hero of Cervantes’s novel of thesame name (published in two parts in 1605 and1615). He was a slightly dotty Spanishgentleman whose head became turned by tales ofchivalric derring-do, which he sought to emulatein real life. His most famous exploit was tocharge with his lance at windmills, under themistaken impression that they were giants.quiz [19] No one has ever been able satisfactorilyto explain the origins of quiz. A word of thatform first appeared at the end of the 18th century,meaning ‘odd person’ or, as a verb, ‘make funof’ (in the early 19th century it was claimed tohave been coined by a Dublin theatre proprietorby the name of Daly, but no proof has ever beenfound for this). The verb later came to be used409 quothfor ‘look at mockingly or questioningly througha monocle’, and it may be that this led on(perhaps helped by associations with inquisitiveor Latin quis? ‘who?, what?’) to the sense‘interrogate’.quorum [15] Quorum began life as the genitiveplural of the Latin pronoun quī ‘who’. Thisappeared in former times in the Latin text ofcommissions issued to persons who because ofsome special expertise were required to act asjustices of the peace in a particular case (if twoJPs were required, for instance, the wordingwould be quorum vos … duos esse volumnus ‘ofwhom we wish that you … be two’). In duecourse the word came to be used as a noun,denoting the ‘number of justices who must bepresent in order to try the case’, and in the 17thcentury this was generalized to ‘minimumnumber of members necessary for a validmeeting’.quote [14] Latin quot meant ‘how many’. Fromit was derived the adjective quotus ‘of whatnumber’, whose feminine form quota was usedin post-classical times as a noun, denotingliterally ‘how great a part’ – whence Englishquota [17]. Quotus also formed the basis of themedieval Latin verb quotāre ‘number’, whichwas used specifically for the practice of markingsections of text in manuscripts with numbers, asreference points. English took the verb over asquote, and by the 16th century was using it for‘cite’ or ‘refer to’. The derived unquote is firstrecorded in a letter by e e cummings, dated 1935.Also based on quot was Latin quotiēns ‘howmany times’, which has given English quotient[15]; and quotidian ‘daily’ [14] goes backultimately to a Latin compound formed fromquotus and diēs ‘day’. But the archaic quoth[OE], despite a certain similarity in form andsense, is not related; it comes from cwæth, thepast tense of Old English cwethan ‘say’. QUOTA, QUOTIENTquoth see BEQUEATH

Rrabbi [14] Hebrew rabbī meant ‘my master’. Itwas a compound formed from rabh ‘great one’and the pronoun suffix -ī ‘my’. Englishoriginally acquired the word, via Latin, at theend of the Old English period, but only inbiblical contexts, as a term of address equivalentto English master (as in ‘Jesus … saith untothem, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi(which is to say, being interpreted, Master),where dwellest thou?’ John 1:38). Not until the14th century did it begin to be used as anordinary noun, meaning ‘Jewish spiritualleader’.rabbit [14] Rabbit was probably introduced intoEnglish from Old French. No immediate sourceis known to have existed, but we do havecorroborative evidence in French dialect rabotte‘young rabbit’ and Walloon robète. The latterwas a diminutive derivative of Flemish robbe(Walloon is the form of French spoken inFlanders and Belgium), and it seems likely thatthe word’s ultimate origins are Low German. Atfirst it was used only for ‘young rabbit’ inEnglish, and it did not really begin to take overfrom cony as the general term for the animaluntil the 18th century.rabies [17] Latin rabiēs meant ‘fury, madness’(it is the source of English rage). Hence it cameto be used for ‘madness in dogs’, and wassubsequently adopted as the name of the diseasecausing this, when it came to be identified. Theword was derived from the verb rabere ‘be mad’,as also was rabidus, source of English rabid[17]. RABID, RAGErace For such a common word – or rather twowords, for ‘people, population’ [16] and ‘speedcompetition’ [13] are unrelated – surprisinglylittle is known about the origins of race. Theformer comes via French from Italian razza, butthe antecedents of razza are obscure. The‘running’ race originally meant ‘rush’, and wasborrowed from Old Norse rás ‘rush, running,race’ – again, of unknown origin.raceme see RAISINrackrack English has no fewer than four distinctwords rack. The oldest, ‘framework’ [14], wasborrowed from Dutch rak, which was probably aderivative of the Middle Dutch verb recken‘stretch’. Rack ‘destruction’ [16], now used onlyin the phrase rack and ruin, is a variant of wrack,which is closely related to wreak and wreck.Rack, or wrack, ‘mass of wind-driven cloud’[14] was probably acquired from Old Norse(Swedish has the probably related rak). And rack‘drain wine off its lees’ [15] was borrowed fromProvençal arracar, a derivative of raca ‘dregs’. WRACK, WREAK, WRECKracket Racket for playing tennis [16] and racket‘noise’ [16] are unrelated words. The former wasborrowed from French raquette, whichoriginally meant ‘palm of the hand’. This goesback via Italian racchetta to Arabic rāhat, avariant of rāha ‘palm of the hand’. The originsof racket ‘noise’ are not known, although theprobability is that it started life as a verbalimitation of an uproar.radar see RADIOradical [14] Etymologically, radical means ‘ofroots’. Its modern political meaning, based onthe metaphor of fundamental change, going tothe ‘roots’ of things, did not begin to emergeuntil the 18th century. The word was borrowedfrom late Latin rādīcālis, a derivative of Latinrādīx ‘root’ (source of English radish [OE] andprobably related to root). RADISH, RAMIFY, ROOTradio [20] Radio began life, in the first decade ofthe 20th century, as an abbreviation ofradiotelegraphy, a compound based on Latinradius. This originally meant ‘staff, stake’, but itis its secondary meanings that have contributedsignificantly to English: ‘spoke of a wheel’, forinstance, lies behind English radius [16], and thenotion of a ‘ray’ has produced radiant [15],radiate [17], radium [19] (etymologically ametal emitting ‘rays’), and indeed ray.Radiotelegraphy itself denoted the sending ofmessages by electromagnetic ‘rays’. Radar [20],coined in the USA in 1941, is an acronymformed from radio detection and ranging. RADAR, RADIATE, RADIUS, RADIUM, RAYradish see RADICALraffish see RAFTraffle [14] Raffle was originally the name of agame played with three dice; the modernapplication to a ‘prize draw’ did not emerge untilthe 18th century. The word was borrowed fromOld French raffle ‘act of snatching’, but wherethis came from is not known.raft [15] The ancestor of raft meant ‘beam,rafter’. This was Old Norse raptr. Not until it gotinto English, apparently, was it used for a ‘craftmade by tying logs together’. (It should not,incidentally, be confused with the mainlyAmerican raft ‘large collection, lot’ [19], whichis an alteration of Scottish English raff ‘rubbish’– probable source of English raffish [19]. Thistoo may well be of Scandinavian origin –Swedish has rafs ‘rubbish’.) Rafter [OE] comes

from a Germanic source that was probably alsoresponsible for raft. RAFFISH, RAFTERrag English has four separate words rag, none ofthem with very well-documented histories. Theorigins of the oldest, ‘rough building stone’ [13],are completely unknown. Rag ‘piece of cloth’[14] is probably a back-formation from ragged[13], which was adapted from Old Norseroggvathr ‘tufted’. This in turn was derived fromrogg ‘tuft of fur’, but no one knows where thatcame from. Rag ‘taunt, piece of fun’ [18] iscompletely mysterious, although someconnection with Danish dialect rag ‘grudge’ hasbeen suggested. And finally rag ‘syncopatedjazz’ [19] is short for ragtime, which is probablyan alteration of ragged time.rage [13] Rage is a close relative of rabies. Itcomes via Old French rage from Vulgar Latin*rabia, an alteration of Latin rabiēs ‘madness,frenzy, fury’ (from which English gets rabies).(French rage still means ‘rabies’ as well as‘anger’.) RABIESraid [15] Raid and road are doublets – that is tosay, they have a common ancestor, but havediverged over the centuries. In this case theancestor was Old English rād ‘riding’, hence‘hostile incursion on horse-back’, a relative ofride. South of the border this developed to road,and lost its predatory connotations (althoughthey are preserved in inroads), but in ScottishEnglish it became raid. This had more or lessdied out by the end of the 16th century, but SirWalter Scott revived it at the beginning of the19th century, and it has gone from strength tostrength ever since. RIDE, ROADrail English has three words rail. The oldest, ‘rod,bar’ [13], comes via Old French reille ‘iron bar’from Latin rēgula ‘straight stick, rod’, source ofEnglish regular and rule. The bird-name rail[15] goes back via Old Northern French raille toVulgar Latin *rascula, which probablyoriginated in imitation of the bird’s hoarse cry.And rail ‘complain, be abusive’ [15] comes viaOld French railler ‘mock’ and Provençal ralhar‘scoff’ from Vulgar Latin *ragulāre ‘bray’, analteration of ragere ‘neigh, roar’. This in turnwas a blend of Latin rugīre ‘bellow’ and VulgarLatin *bragere ‘bray’ (source of English bray[13]). Raillery [17] and rally ‘tease’ [17] comefrom the same source. REGULAR, RULE; BRAY, RALLYrain [OE] Rain is an exclusively Germanic word,not shared by any other language group in theIndo-European family. Its prehistoric ancestor*reg- has evolved into German and Dutch regen,Swedish and Danish regn, and English rain.There may be some connection with Old Norserakr ‘wet’.raise [12] Raise is first cousin to rear. It wasborrowed from Old Norse reisa, which wasdescended from the same prehistoric Germanicverb as produced English rear ‘lift, rise’. This411 ramifywas *raizjan, a derivative of the same source asgave English rise. REAR, RISEraisin [13] Raisin comes ultimately from a Latinword that meant ‘bunch of grapes’. This wasracēmus (source also of English raceme [18]). Itpassed via Vulgar Latin *racīmus into OldFrench as raisin, by which time it had come tomean just ‘grape’ rather ‘bunch of grapes’. Andit was already developing further to ‘dried grape’by the time English acquired it. RACEMEraj [18] English acquired the word raj, of course,from the period of British rule in India. It wasborrowed from Hindi rāj ‘reign’, which goesback to Sanskrit rājā, a derivative of rājati ‘herules’. Closely related is rajah [16], which came(probably via Portuguese) from Hindi rājā, adescendant of Sanskrit rājan ‘king’ (the Sanskritfeminine from rājnī produced ranee [17]). Thewhole family of words goes back to an Indo-European base *rēg-, which also produced Latinrēx ‘king’, source of English regal and royal.Maharajah [17] means literally ‘great ruler’(Hindi mahā ‘great’ comes from the same sourceas Latin magnus ‘great’, ancestor of Englishmagnify, magnitude, etc). REGAL, ROYALrake English has three distinct words rake. Theoldest, ‘toothed implement’ [OE], goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *rak- or *rek- ‘gather,heap up’, which also produced German rechen‘rake’. It may be descended ultimately fromIndo-European *rog-, *reg- ‘stretch’ (source ofLatin regere ‘rule’ and English right), the notionof ‘stretching’ developing via ‘stretch out thehand’ to ‘collect, gather’. Rake ‘slant,inclination’ [17] is of uncertain origin, althoughit seems likely that it is related to German ragen‘project’. It formed the basis of the adjectiverakish [19] (inspired originally by the backwardinclinedmasts on certain fast sailing ships), butthis has since become associated with the thirdrake, ‘dissolute man’ [17]. This was short for thenow defunct rakehell [16], which comes fromthe notion that one would have to search throughhell with a rake to find such a bad man. RIGHT; RAKISHram [OE] Ram is a general West Germanic wordfor ‘male sheep’, now shared only by Dutch(although German has the derivative ramme‘rammer’). It may be related to Old Norse ramr‘strong’, the allusion being to the ram’s strengthin butting. This is reflected in the word’smetaphorical applications: it was being used inOld English for a ‘battering-ram’, and by the14th century the verb ram had emerged. Anotherrelative is the verb ramble [17], whichetymologically denotes ‘wander around like arandy ram, looking for ewes to copulate with’. Itwas borrowed from Middle Dutch rammelen, aderivative of rammen ‘copulate with’, which isconnected with ram. RAMBLEramify [16] Ramify has no connection with rams.It comes ultimately from Latin rāmus ‘branch’,

amp 412which probably goes back to the same source asproduced Latin rādīx ‘root’ (ancestor of Englishradical and radish) and English root. From itwas derived the medieval Latin verb rāmificāre,which passed into English via Old Frenchramifier. RADICAL, RADISHramp [18] A ramp is etymologically somethingyou ‘climb’ up. The word was borrowed fromFrench rampe, a derivative of the verb ramper‘climb’, hence ‘slope’. This goes back to aFrankish *rampōn, and was borrowed intoEnglish in the 13th century as ramp. It nowsurvives mainly in the form of its presentparticiple, rampant [14], which preserves thesense ‘rearing up’. Rampage [18] may be aderivative.rampart [16] Rampart, which meansetymologically ‘fortified place’, has a veryconvoluted history. Its ultimate ancestor is Latinparāre ‘prepare’ (source of English prepare). Tothis was added the prefix ante- ‘before’ toproduce the Vulgar Latin verb *anteparāre‘prepare for defence’. This passed via Provençalamparar into Old French as emparer ‘defend,fortify’, which had the intensive re- prefixed toit, giving remparer ‘fortify’. From this wasderived the noun remper or ramper, which wasaltered (apparently under the influence ofboulevart, source of English boulevard) torempart or rampart – whence English rampart. PREPAREramshackle see RANSACKrancour [14] To account for rancour and itsclose relative rancid we have to postulate a Latinverb *rancēre ‘stink’, never actually recordedbut inferable from its present participle rancēns‘stinking, putrid’. From it were derived theadjective rancidus, source of English rancid[17], and in post-classical times the noun rancor,source of English rancour. RANCIDrandom [14] The antecedents of random aresomewhat murky. It originally meant‘impetuosity, sudden speed, violence’, and onlyin the mid 17th century emerged as an adjectivemeaning ‘haphazard’. It was borrowed from OldFrench randon, which was probably a derivativeof the verb randir ‘run impetuously’. This in turnwas based on Frankish *rant ‘running’, whichwas apparently descended from prehistoricGermanic *randa. This originally meant ‘edge’(it is the source of English rand [OE], nowobsolete as a term for ‘edge’, but reintroduced inthe 20th century via Afrikaans as the name of thebasic South African currency unit), but it wasalso widely used for ‘shield’, and it is thoughtthat the link with ‘running impetuously’ may bethe notion of soldiers running along with theirshields. RANDranee see RAJrange [13] Range and rank come ultimately fromthe same source: Old French ranc. This wasborrowed directly into English as rank, but itsubsequently developed to rang, from whichwas derived the verb rangier ‘set in a row’(ancestor of English arrange). This in turnproduced the noun range ‘rank, row’. RANKrank English has two words rank. The onemeaning ‘row, line’ [16], and hence ‘position ofseniority’, was borrowed from Old French ranc(source also of English range), which goes backvia Frankish *hring to a prehistoric Germanic*khrengaz ‘circle, ring’ (ancestor of Englishring). Rank ‘absolute, downright’ [OE], as in‘rank bad manners’, has had an eventfulsemantic history. It originally meant ‘haughty’and ‘full-grown’, and came from a prehistoricGermanic *rangkaz, which also produced OldNorse rakkr ‘erect’. ‘Full-grown’ evolved via‘growing vigorously, luxuriant’ (which stillsurvives) into ‘gross, disgusting’, on which thepresent-day intensive usage is based. RANGE, RINGrankle [14] Etymologically, if somethingrankles, it festers from the effects of a ‘dragon’s’bite. Nowadays the word is only usedmetaphorically, but it originally meant literally‘be sore, fester’. It was borrowed from OldFrench rancler, a variant of draoncler. This wasderived from draoncle ‘ulcer’, which in turncame from dranculus, the medieval Latindescendant of dracunculus, a diminutive form ofLatin dracō ‘snake’ (source of English dragon).The notion underlying the word is of an ulcercaused by the bite of a snake. DRAGONransack [13] Ransack means etymologically‘search a house’. It was borrowed from OldNorse rannsaka, a compound verb formed fromrann ‘house’ (a relative of Old English ærn‘house’, which underlies English barn) and-saka ‘search’ (a relative of English seek). A nowdefunct derivative was ransackle or ranshackle,from which we get modern English ramshackle[19]. BARN, RAMSHACKLE, SEEKransom [13] Heavily disguised, ransom is thesame word ultimately as redemption. It wasborrowed from Old French ransoun, which,much weathered over the centuries, wasdescended from Latin redemptiō, source ofEnglish redemption. The etymological notionunderlying the word is thus of money paid to‘redeem’ or rescue a hostage. REDEMPTIONrapacious see RAPTURErape English has three distinct words rape, onlytwo of them now in general usage. Thecommonest, ‘violate sexually’ [14], comes viaAnglo-Norman raper from Latin rapere ‘seizeby force’, a generous contributor to Englishvocabulary which has also given us rapid, rapt,rapture, etc. Rape the plant-name [14] wasborrowed from Latin rāpa or rāpum. Like itsLatin ancestor, it originally denoted ‘turnip’, butsince the 16th century it has come to be usedexclusively for another plant of the brassicafamily, grown for its oil-rich seeds. (The -rabi ofkohlrabi also comes ultimately from Latin rāpa;

and Italian dialect raviolo, a diminutive of rava‘turnip’, has given English ravioli [19].) Theoldest rape [11] is now only of historicalinterest. It denoted any of the six administrativeareas into which Sussex was once divided. It isthe same word ultimately as rope, andetymologically denotes the partitioning off ofland with rope. RAPID, RAPT, RAPTURE; KOHLRABI, RAVIOLI;ROPErapid [17] Like rape and rapture, rapid comesultimately from Latin rapere ‘seize by force’.From this was derived the adjective rapidus,which originally denoted ‘carrying off by force’.The notion of ‘swiftness’ soon becameincorporated into the meaning, however, andalthough the Latin adjective retained its originalconnotations of violence (it suggested‘impetuous speed’ or ‘haste’), by the time itreached English it had simply becomesynonymous with ‘quick’. RAPTURErapscallion see RASCALrapture [17] Rapture is one of a large family ofEnglish words that go back ultimately to Latinrapere ‘seize by force’. Its past participle wasraptus (source of English rapt [14]), whichformed the basis of the medieval Latin nounraptūra ‘seizure’, hence ‘ecstasy’ – whenceEnglish rapture. From the same source comerapacious [17], rape ‘violate sexually’, rapid,rapine [15], ravage, ravenous, ravine, ravish,surreptitious, and usurp. RAPACIOUS, RAPE, RAPID, RAVAGE, RAVENOUS,RAVINE, RAVISH, SURREPTITIOUS, USURPrare Rare ‘uncommon’ [15] and rare ‘underdone’[17] are not the same word. The former wasborrowed from Latin rārus, which originallysignified ‘having a loose texture, widelyseparated’ – hence ‘scarce’. It is not known whatits ultimate source is. The latter is an alterationof the now obsolete rear ‘underdone’ (originallyused mainly of eggs: ‘They had at their dinnerrear eggs’, Book of the knight of the tower 1450),which goes back to Old English hrēr – again ofunknown origin.rascal [14] Rascal has been traced backultimately to Latin rādere ‘scratch’. Its pastparticipial stem rās- (source of English eraseand razor) formed the basis of a Vulgar Latinverb *rāsicāre. From this was derived the noun*rāsica ‘scurf, scab, dregs, filth’, which passedinto Old Northern French as *rasque (its centralOld French counterpart, rasche, may be thesource of English rash). And it could well be thatthis *rasque lies behind Old French rascaille‘mob, rabble’, which gave English rascal (theEnglish word originally meant ‘rabble’ too, butthe application to an individual person emergedin the 15th and 16th centuries). Rapscallion [17]is an alteration of a now defunct rascallion,which may have derived from rascal. ERASE, RAPSCALLION, RASH, RAZORrash English has two words rash. The older,‘impetuous’ [14], probably comes from anunrecorded Old English *ræsc, which together413 rationwith its relatives German rasch ‘quick’ andSwedish rask ‘active, vigorous’ goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *raskuz. This wasprobably derived from the same base asproduced English rather, which originally meant‘more quickly’. Rash ‘skin condition’ [18] mayhave been borrowed from the now obsoleteFrench rache, a descendant of Old Frenchrasche, whose Old Northern French counterpart*rasque is the possible source of English rascal. RATHER; RASCALraspberry [17] The origins of the wordraspberry are a mystery. At first, the fruit wasknown simply as raspes or raspis (recorded in anAnglo-Latin text as early as the 13th century),and the -berry was not tacked on until the early17th century – but no one knows where raspescame from. Its use for a ‘rude noise made byblowing’, first recorded in the 1890s, comesfrom rhyming slang raspberry tart ‘fart’.rat [OE] Rat is a general western European term,with relatives in French rat, Italian ratto,Spanish rata, German ratte, Dutch rat, Swedishråatta, and Danish rotte. These all come fromVulgar Latin *rattus, whose origin is unknown.ratafia see TOFFEEratchet [17] Ratchet was originally acquired, inthe form rochet, from French rochet. This was adiminutive form descended ultimately fromFrankish *rokko ‘spool’, which is related toEnglish rocket. The notion of having teeth,which is central to the idea of a ratchet, thereforeappears to be historically secondary; itpresumably arose from the addition of ‘teeth’ toa rotating ‘spool’ or ‘spindle’ in a machine. Thechange from rochet to ratchet, which began inthe 18th century, may have been influenced byGerman ratsch ‘ratchet’. ROCKETrate English has two words rate. The commoner,‘relative quantity’ [15], comes via Old Frenchrate from medieval Latin rata ‘calculated,fixed’, as used in the expression pro rata parte‘according to a fixed part, proportionally’. Thiswas the feminine form of ratus, the pastparticiple of rērī ‘think, calculate’, from whichEnglish also gets ratio, ration, reason, etc. Theother rate, ‘scold’ [14], is now seldomencountered except in its derivative berate [16].It is not certain where it comes from, although apossible source is Old French reter ‘accuse,blame’, which comes from Latin reputāre(ancestor of English reputation). RATIO, RATION, REASON; BERATErather [OE] Rather originated as the comparativeform of the now obsolete adjective rathe ‘quick’,and so to begin with meant ‘more quickly’,hence ‘earlier, sooner’. Its most frequent modernmeaning, ‘more willingly’, emerged as recentlyas the 16th century. Rathe itself went back to aprehistoric Germanic *khrathaz, which mayhave been derived from the same base asproduced English rash ‘impetuous’. RASHration [18] Ration, like reason, comes from Latinratiō, a derivative of the verb rērī ‘think,

attle 414calculate’. This meant, among other things, ravish see RAVENOUS‘calculation, computation’, in which sense it has raw [OE] Raw has relatives in German (roh),yielded English ratio [17]. In the Middle Ages it Dutch (rauw), Swedish (rå), and Danish (ra).was used for an ‘amount of provisions calculated These all go back to a prehistoric Germanicfor a soldier’, and that meaning has channelled ancestor *khrawaz, whose ultimate source wasvia Spanish ración and French ration into Indo-European *krowos (other descendants ofEnglish as ration. The ‘thinking’ sense of ratiō the same base include Greek kréas ‘flesh’, fromhas reached English as reason, but its derivative which English gets creosote and pancreas, andrational [14] is less heavily disguised. Other Latin crūdus ‘raw’, source of English crude andEnglish descendants of Latin rērī include rate cruel).and ratify [14], and the -red of hundred comes CREOSOTE, CRUDE, CRUEL, PANCREASfrom a prehistoric Germanic *rath ‘number’, ray Ray the ‘beam of light or energy’ [14] and raywhich came ultimately from Latin ratiō. HUNDRED, RATE, RATIO, REASONrattle [14] Rattle probably existed in OldEnglish, but in the absence of any directevidence, it is usually suggested that the wordwas borrowed from Middle Low Germanrattelen, a relative of German rasseln ‘rattle’.Whatever its ultimate source, it no doubtoriginally imitated the sound of rattling.raven English has two separate words raven. Thebird-name [OE] is a general Germanic term,related to German rabe, Dutch raaf, and Danishravn. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*khrabnaz or *khraben, which originated in animitation of the raven’s harsh croaking. The verbraven ‘prey, plunder’ [15], nowadaysencountered virtually only in its presentparticiple ravening and the derived ravenous,goes back ultimately to Latin rapere ‘seize byforce’. RAPE, RAPTURE, RAVENOUSravenous [15] Ravenous was borrowed fromOld French ravineux, a derivative of the verbraviner ‘seize by force’ (source of Englishraven, which nowadays appears mainly in itspresent participial form ravening). This camefrom Latin rapere ‘seize by force’, ancestor alsoof English rape. The central modern meaning ofravenous, ‘very hungry’, developed from thenotion of predatory animals that ‘seize’ and eattheir prey. Other English descendants of Latinrapere include rapacious, rapid, rapture,ravage, ravine, ravish [13], surreptitious, andusurp. RAPE, RAPTURE, RAVENravine [15] Ravine and the now seldomencountered rapine ‘plunder’ [15] areessentially the same word. Both come ultimatelyfrom Latin rapīna ‘plunder’, a derivative ofrapere ‘seize by force’ (from which English getsrape, rapid, rapture, ravenous, etc). This passeddirectly into English via Old French as rapine,but a variant Old French form also developed,ravine, whose meaning appears to have beeninfluenced by Latin rapidus ‘rapid’. It denoted‘violent rush, impetus’ – which is how it wasused in its brief and very spasmodic career inMiddle English. It did not become firmlyestablished as an English word until the 19thcentury, when it was reborrowed from French inthe sense ‘gorge’ – originally as carved out by a‘violent rush’ or torrent of water. RAPE, RAPINE, RAPTUREravioli see RAPEthe fish-name [14] are two different words. Theformer comes from rai, the Old Frenchdescendant of Latin radius ‘spoke of a wheel,ray’ (source also of English radiant, radio,radius, etc). The textile term rayon was coinedfrom it in the early 1920s. Ray the fish-namecomes via Old French raie from Latin raia, aword of unknown origin. RADIO, RADIUSrazor [13] A razor is etymologically a ‘scraper’.The word was borrowed from Old French rasor,a derivative of raser ‘scrape, shave’ (from whichEnglish gets raze [16]). This in turn went backvia Vulgar Latin *rasāre to Latin rādere‘scrape’, source also of English abrade [17],erase, and possibly rascal. ABRADE, ERASE, RASCALreach [OE] Reach goes back ultimately to aprehistoric West Germanic *raikjan, a word ofuncertain origin which also produced Germanreichen and Dutch reiken. It originally meant‘stretch out the hand’, and ‘attain’ and ‘arrive at’are secondary semantic developments.read [OE] In most western European languages,the word for ‘read’ goes back ultimately to asource which meant literally ‘gather, pick up’:French lire, for instance, which comes fromLatin legere (source of English legible andcollect), and German lesen. English read,however, is an exception. Its underlying meaningis ‘advise, consider’ (it is related to Germanraten ‘advise’, and a memory of this originalsense lives on in the archaic rede ‘advise’, whichis essentially the same word as read, and also inunready ‘ill-advised’, the epithet applied to theAnglo-Saxon king Ethelred II), and the sense‘read’ developed via ‘interpret’ (preserved in therelated riddle). RIDDLEready [12] Ready is a derivative of Old Englishrǣde ‘ready’, which went back to a prehistoricGermanic *raithjō ‘arranged’, hence ‘prepared’.This also produced German bereit ‘ready’,Dutch gereed ‘ready’, and Swedish reda ‘ready’,and it lies behind the second syllable of curry‘groom a horse’.real [15] Real and its various derivatives (such asrealism [19], reality [16], and realize [17]) goback ultimately to Latin rēs ‘thing’, a word ofuncertain origin related to Sanskrit rās ‘riches’.It had a post-classical derivative reālis, whichEnglish originally acquired via Anglo-Normanreal and used strictly in the legal sense ‘of fixedproperty’ (as in real estate). The broader modern

ange of meanings was probably instigated bythe reintroduction of the word direct from Latinin the mid-16th century. REALIZErealm [13] Realm., régime, and regimen areultimately the same word. All three come fromLatin regimen ‘system of government’, aderivative of the verb regere ‘rule’ (from whichEnglish gets rector, regent, register, etc). Thispassed into Old French, where reiel ‘royal’ wasgrafted into it, producing realme – whenceEnglish realm. RECTOR, REGAL, RÉGIME, REGIMEN, REGISTER,ROYALream English has two distinct words ream. Theone denoting an amount of paper [14] comes viaOld French remme from Arabic risma ‘bundle’,a derivative of the verb rasama ‘collect into abundle’. Ream ‘make or enlarge a hole’ [19] maybe the same word as Middle English reme ‘openup, make room’, which goes back to Old Englishrman ‘widen’, a derivative of the same base asEnglish room. ROOMreap see RIPErear There are two separate words rear inEnglish. The older, ‘raise’ [OE], is a descendantof prehistoric Germanic *raizjan, which alsoproduced Old Norse reisa, source of Englishraise. The Germanic verb denoted literally‘cause to rise’, and was derived from *reisan,which evolved into English rise. Rear ‘hind’[16] is descended ultimately from Latin retrō-‘behind’, but it is not clear whether it came intothe language as an abbreviation of arrear [18],which goes back via Old French arere tomedieval Latin adretrō ‘to the rear’ (the Anglo-Norman noun areres existed in the 14th century,so the chronological disparity may not becrucial), or was extracted from rearguard [15], aborrowing from Old French rereguarde. RAISE, RISE; ARREAR, RETRO-reason [13] Reason, together with rational,represent in English the ‘thinking’ aspects of theLatin verb rērī (it also meant ‘calculate’, and inthat guise has given English rate, ration, etc).From it was derived the noun ratiō ‘thinking,calculation’ (source of English ratio and therest). This spawned a Vulgar Latin variant*ratiōne, which passed into Old French as reisun– whence English reason. RATE, RATIO, RATIONrebate [15] A rebate is etymologically anamount that has been ‘re-abated’. The word,originally a verb, comes from Old Frenchrabattre ‘beat down again’, hence ‘reduce’, acompound formed from the prefix re- ‘again’and abattre ‘beat down’ (source of English abate[13], and also of abattoir [19], euphemistically aplace where animals are ‘beaten down’ orkilled). This in turn went back to Vulgar Latin*abbattuere, a compound verb formed from theprefix ad- ‘completely’ and battuere ‘beat’(source of English battle, combat, etc). ABATE, ABATTOIR, BATTLE, COMBAT415 reciperebel [13] Etymologically, a rebel is someonewho, having been defeated, ‘makes war again’against his conquerors. The word comes via OldFrench rebelle from Latin rebellis, an adjectiveformed from the prefix re- ‘again’ and bellum‘war’ (source of English bellicose [15] andbelligerent [16]). The same Latin word underliesEnglish revel [14]; the semantic link betweenthese two rather unlikely relatives is the noisydisturbance or uproar that goes with a rebellion,not too dissimilar to that made by a crowd ofrevellers. BELLIGERENT, REVELrecalcitrant [19] People who are recalcitrantare etymologically ‘kicking back’ againstwhatever restrains or upsets them. The word wasborrowed from French récalcitrant, adescendant of the present participle of Latinrecalcitrāre ‘kick back’. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix re- ‘back, again’ andcalcitrāre ‘kick’, which in turn was derived fromLatin calx ‘heel’.recap [20] The -cap of recap has of course noimmediate connection with cap. The word isshort for recapitulate [16], whichetymologically denotes ‘repeat the headings’. Itcomes from late Latin recapitulāre, a compoundverb formed from the prefix re- ‘again’ andcapitulum ‘section of text, heading’ (source ofEnglish chapter). Capitulum was a diminutiveform of Latin caput ‘head’, which mayultimately underlie English cap – so the twowords could after all be linked. CAPITULATE, CHAPTERreceive [13] To receive something isetymologically to ‘take it back’. The wordcomes via Old French receivre from Latinrecipere ‘regain’, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix re- ‘back, again’ and capere ‘take’(source of English capture). Other Englishdescendants of recipere are receipt [14] (whichgoes back to medieval Latin recepta, a noun useof the verb’s feminine past participle),receptacle [15], reception [14], recipe, andrecipient [16]. CAPTIVE, CAPTURE, RECEPTACLE, RECIPErecent [16] English acquired recent from Latinrecēns ‘new, fresh’, possibly via French récent.It is not clear where the Latin word came from,although some have linked it with Greek kainós‘new’ (source of the English geological termcainozoic [19]) and Sanskrit kanīna- ‘young’.recidivist [19] A recidivist – a ‘persistentoffender’ – is etymologically someone who‘falls back’. The word was borrowed fromFrench récidiviste, a descendant of medievalLatin recidīvāre. This in turn was based on thenoun recidīvus ‘falling back’, a derivative ofLatin recidere ‘fall back’, which was acompound verb formed from the prefix re-‘back, again’ and cadere ‘fall’ (source of Englishcadence, case, decadent, etc). CADAVER, CADENCE, CASE, DECADENTrecipe [14] Recipe originated as the imperativeform of Latin recipere ‘receive, take’ (source ofEnglish receive). It was commonly used in Latin,

eciprocal 416and occasionally English, lists of ingredients formedicines and dishes (as in ‘Take three eggs…’), and by the end of the 16th century it wasbeing applied to the medical formulaethemselves. Its modern gastronomic sense didnot emerge until the mid-18th century. RECEIVEreciprocal [16] English adapted reciprocal fromLatin reciprocus ‘alternating’. This was acompound adjective based ultimately on theelements re- ‘back, backwards’ and prō- ‘for,forwards’.recite [15] Recite came, probably via Old Frenchreciter, from Latin recitāre ‘read out’. This wasa compound verb formed from the prefix re-‘back, again’ and citāre ‘call, summon’ (sourcealso of English cite, excite, incite, etc).Recitative ‘speech-like singing’ [17] wasborrowed from Italian recitativo. CITE, EXCITE, INCITEreckless [OE] The reck- of reckless is the sameword as the now virtually obsolete verb reck‘care’. It is not clear where this ultimately camefrom, but the compound reckless itself evidentlygoes back to the prehistoric West Germanicperiod, for it also occurs in German (ruchlos)and Dutch (roekeloos).reckon [OE] Reckon originally meant ‘give a listof, enumerate, tell’. The sense ‘count’ haddeveloped by the 13th century, and ‘estimate,consider’ emerged in the 14th century. It comesultimately from a prehistoric West Germanic*rekenōjan, which also produced Germanrechnen ‘count’ and Dutch rekenen.recluse [13] A recluse is etymologically aperson who is ‘shut up’. The word was borrowedfrom reclus, the past participle of Old Frenchreclure ‘shut up’. This was descended fromLatin reclūdere, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix re- ‘again’ and claudere ‘shut’ (sourceof English close) which originally,paradoxically, meant ‘open’ – the notion being‘reversing the process of closing’. ‘Shut up’emerged in the post-classical period. CLOSErecognize [15] Latin gnōscere ‘becomeacquainted’ came from the same prehistoricIndo-European base, *gnō-, as produced Englishknow. Combination with the prefix co- ‘with’gave cognōscere ‘know’ (source of Englishcognition, quaint, etc). And this in turn had theprefix re- ‘again’ added to it to producerecognōscere ‘know again’, which found its wayinto English via reconniss-, the stem of OldFrench reconnaistre (the -ize ending is anEnglish introduction). English has three nounderivatives of the verb: recognition [15], fromLatin recognitiō; recognizance [14], now purelya legal term, borrowed from Old Frenchreconnissance and remodelled on the basis ofrecognize; and reconnaissance [19], borrowedfrom modern French during the Napoleonicwars. Reconnoitre [18] comes from the nowobsolete French reconnoître, which like itssurviving variant reconnaître goes back to Latinrecognōscere. COGNITION, KNOW, QUAINT, RECONNAISSANCE,RECONNOITRErecoil [13] Recoil has no connection with coil. Infact, etymologically it means virtually‘withdraw backside first’, for it was coined inFrench on the basis of cul ‘arse, backside’. Thiswent back to Latin cūlus ‘arse’, which wasprobably related to Sanskrit kūla- ‘rearguard’.recollect [16] Recollect originated in Latin asrecolligere, a compound verb formed from theprefix re- ‘again’ and colligere ‘gather’ (sourceof English collect). At first it simply meantliterally ‘gather again’, but in the post-classicalperiod it was extended metaphorically to ‘recall,remember’. English acquired it through its pastparticiple stem recollect-.recondite [17] Recondite ‘obscure, abstruse’means etymologically ‘hidden’. It comes fromreconditus, the past participle of Latin recondere‘hide’. This was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix re- ‘again’ and condere ‘put away,store’ (ultimate source of English condiment[15], literally ‘stored’ or ‘preserved’ food). CONDIMENTreconnaissance see RECOGNIZEreconnoitre see RECOGNIZErecordrecord [13] To record something isetymologically to commit it to one’s ‘heart’. Theword comes via Old French recorder from Latinrecordārī ‘go over in one’s mind, ponder,remember’. This was a compound verb based onLatin cor ‘heart’ (source of English concord,cordial [14], courage, etc), used metaphoricallyin the sense ‘mind’. The notion of ‘puttingsomething down in writing or other permanentform’ did not emerge until the Old French stagein the word’s history. The derivative recorder‘woodwind instrument’ [15] depends on a nowobsolete sense of record, ‘practise a tune’. CONCORD, CORDIAL, COURAGE, QUARRYrecourse see COURSErecover [14] Recover and recuperate [16] areultimately the same word. Both come from Latinrecuperāre ‘recover, regain’, a compound verbbased on the stem cup- ‘take’ (a variant of whichproduced capere ‘take’, source of Englishcaptive, capture, etc). Recuperate itself wasacquired directly from the Latin verb’s pastparticiple, whereas recover was routed via OldFrench recoverer. (Re-cover ‘cover again’,spelled similarly but pronounced differently,also dates from the 14th century.) CAPTIVE, CAPTURE, RECUPERATErecruit [17] Etymologically, a recruit issomething that ‘grows again’. The word’sultimate ancestor is Latin recrēscere ‘regrow’, acompound verb formed from the prefix re-‘again’ and crēscere ‘grow’ (source of Englishcrescent, increase, etc). This passed into Frenchas recroître, whose feminine past participle inthe standard language was recrue. In the dialectof northeastern France, however, it was recrute,and it was this, used as a noun meaning ‘new

growth’, hence ‘reinforcement of troops’, thatgave English recruit. CRESCENT, CROISSANT, INCREASErector [14] A rector is etymologically a ‘ruler’.The word comes via Old French rectour fromLatin rēctor ‘governor’, a derivative of the verbregere ‘govern, rule’ (from which English getsregent, region, etc). It carried its originalmeaning with it into English, with reference bothto Roman governors in the ancient world and toGod as ‘ruler’ of the universe (Sir Matthew Halein 1676 referred to God as the ‘great dispenser orpermitter and rector of all the events in theworld’), but by the 18th century it had largelybecome restricted to the more specialized senses‘clergyman in charge of a parish’ and ‘head of acollege’. REGENT, REGIMENT, REGIONrectum [16] Rectum is one of a range of wordsbequeathed to English by Latin rēctus ‘straight,correct’ (a distant relative of English right).Others include rectangle [16], rectify [14], andrectitude [15]. Rectum itself is short for rēctumintestīnum ‘straight intestine’ – a termcontrasting the rectum with the convolutions ofthe remainder of the intestines. DIRECT, RECTIFY, RECTITUDE, RIGHTrecumbent see INCUBATErecuperate see RECOVERrecusantrecusant see REFUSEred [OE] Red is an ancient colour-term, whosehistory can be traced back to prehistoric Indo-European *reudh-. This also produced Greekeruthrós ‘red’ (source of English erythrocyte‘red blood cell’ [19]) and a whole range of Latin‘red’-words, including ruber (source of Englishrubicund and ruby), rubeus (source of Englishrouge [15]), russus (source of English rissoleand russet), and rūfus (source of English rufous[18]). Amongst other English words from thesame Indo-European source are robust, ruby,ruddy [OE], and rust. The immediate Germanicprecursor of red was *rauthaz, which alsoproduced German rot, Dutch rood, Swedish röd,and Danish rød. CORROBORATE, ERYTHROCYTE, RISSOLE,ROBUST, ROUGE, RUBY, RUDDY, RUSSET, RUSTredeem [15] The -deem is not the same word asdeem (which is related to doom). In fact, therenever was a true -deem in it. It comes from Latinemere ‘take, buy’ (source also of Englishexample, prompt, etc), which when combinedwith the prefix re- ‘again, back’ had a d graftedinto it to produce redimere ‘buy back’. Englishprobably acquired it via French rédimer. EXAMPLE, PROMPT, SAMPLEredolent [14] Etymologically, something that isredolent of something ‘smells’ of it. The wordcomes ultimately from Latin olēre ‘smell’,which was derived from the same base asproduced English odour. Combination with theprefix re- ‘back’ resulted in redolēre ‘emit asmell’, from whose present participle Englishgets redolent. The Latin word was mainly usedto convey the notion ‘smelling of something’,and this lies behind the English word’s417 reekmetaphorical use for ‘suggestive, reminiscent,evocative’, first recorded in the early 19thcentury. ODOURredoubt [17] Redoubt ‘stronghold’ has noetymological connection with doubt (althoughredoubtable [14] does – it derives from theFrench ancestor of doubt, which originallymeant ‘fear’, and so historically denotes ‘to befeared’). It was borrowed from French redoute,which goes back via obsolete Italian ridotta tomedieval Latin reductus ‘hidden place, refuge’,a noun use of the past participle of Latinredūcere ‘bring back, withdraw’ (source ofEnglish reduce). The b was inserted under theinfluence of redoubtable. REDUCEredound see REDUNDANTreduce [14] ‘Lessen, diminish’ is acomparatively recent semantic development forreduce. Its Latin ancestor was certainly not usedin that sense. This was redūcere, a compoundverb formed from the prefix re- ‘back, again’ anddūcere ‘lead, bring’ (source of English duct,duke, educate, etc). It meant literally ‘bringback’, hence ‘restore’ and also ‘withdraw’. Theoriginal ‘bring back’ made the journey toEnglish, and even survived into the early 17thcentury (‘reducing often to my memory theconceit of that Roman stoic’, Sir Henry Wotton,Elements of Architecture 1624). The sense‘lessen, diminish’ seems to be the result of asemantic progression from ‘bring back to aparticular condition’ via ‘bring back to order’and ‘bring to subjection’. DUCT, DUKE, EDUCATE, INTRODUCE, PRODUCE,REDOUBTredundant [17] Etymologically, something thatis redundant ‘overflows’ because there is toomuch of it. The word comes from the presentparticiple of Latin redundāre ‘flow back,overflow’ (source also of English redound [14]).This was a compound verb formed from theprefix re- ‘back, again’ and undāre ‘rise inwaves, surge’, a derivative of unda ‘wave’(source of English undulate). REDOUND, SURROUND, UNDULATEreef English has two words reef, which bothcome from the same source, but have reached thelanguage via different routes. That source wasOld Norse rif ‘rib’, a close relative of Englishrib. Amongst its metaphorical senses were‘horizontal section of sail’, which Englishacquired in the 14th century via Middle Dutch rifas riff, later reef, and ‘underwater ridge of rock’,which came into English in the 16th century viaMiddle Low German ref. The former was put toverbal use in the 17th century in the sense ‘furlsails’, which may underlie reefer ‘marijuanacigarette’ [20] – perhaps a ‘furled’ cigarette. RIBreek [OE] Reek originally meant ‘smoke’(Edinburgh was called Auld [old] Reekie becauseof its smoky chimneys, not because it smelled).The word came from a prehistoric Germanic*raukiz, which also produced German rauch,

efer 418Dutch rook, Swedish rök, and Danish røk, allmeaning ‘smoke’. It is likely that it was relatedto Latin ructāre ‘spew out’ (source of Englisheructate [17]), in which case the etymologicalnotion underlying reek ‘smoke’ is of something‘belching’ out. The English sense ‘bad smell’emerged in the 17th century. ERUCTATErefer [14] To refer something is etymologically to‘carry it back’. The word comes via Old Frenchreferer from Latin referre, a compound verbformed from the prefix re- ‘back’ and ferre‘carry’ (source of English fertile and related toEnglish bear). Of its derivatives, referee [16] isan English coinage, and referendum [19] is anadoption of the neuter gerundive of referre –literally, ‘that which is to be referred’. Relātus,which was used as the past participle of Latinreferre, has given English relate. BEAR, REFEREE, REFERENDUMrefine see FINEreflect [15] To reflect something isetymologically to ‘bend it back’. The wordcomes via Old French reflecter from Latinreflectere ‘bend back’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix re- ‘back’ and flectere ‘bend’(source also of English deflect [17], flex [16],flexible [15], inflect [15], etc). The word’soptical application is a post-Latin development. DEFLECT, FLEX, FLEXIBLE, INFLECTrefrain Refrain ‘chorus of a song’ [14] andrefrain ‘desist’ [14] are different words. Theformer comes via Old French refrain fromProvençal refranh. This was a derivative of theverb refranhar, which went back via VulgarLatin *refrangere to Latin refringere ‘break off’(source of English refract [17]). Theetymological notion underlying the word is thatthe chorus of a song ‘breaks off’ and thenresumes. Refrain ‘desist’ is descended fromLatin refrēnāre ‘hold back’, a compound verbformed from the prefix re- ‘back’ and frēnum‘bridle’. It reached English via Old Frenchrefrener. FRACTION, REFRACTrefuge [14] A refuge is etymologically a placeone ‘flees’ to in order to get away from danger.The word comes via Old French refuge fromLatin refugium, a derivative of refugere. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the prefix re-‘away’ and fugere ‘flee’ (source of Englishfugitive [14] and fugue [16]). The derivativerefugee [17] is an adaptation of refugié, the pastparticiple of modern French refugier ‘takerefuge’. FUGITIVE, REFUGEErefulgent see FLAMErefuse [14] Refuse comes via Old French refuserfrom an unrecorded Vulgar Latin *refūsāre. It isnot altogether clear where this came from, for ithas no direct Latin antecedent. One theory is thatit represents a blend of Latin recūsāre ‘refuse’(source of English recusant [16]), a compoundverb based on causa ‘cause’, and refūtāre ‘rebut’(source of English refute [16]), a compound verbbased on the element *fūt-, found also in Englishconfute [16]. But another long-establishedschool of thought derives it from refūsus, thepast participle of Latin refundere ‘pour back’(source of English refund [14]) – the underlyingnotion being of something ‘poured back’ or‘rejected’. The noun refuse ‘rubbish’ [15]probably comes from Old French refus ‘refusal’,a derivative of refuser ‘refuse’.refute see BEATregal [14] Regal and royal are doublets: that is tosay, they come from the same ultimate source,but have diverged over the centuries. This sourcewas rēgālis, a derivative of Latin rēx ‘king’. Thiscame from Indo-European *rēg-, which alsoproduced the Sanskrit ancestor of English rajah,and was a lengthened version of *reg-, source ofEnglish rector, regiment, region, regular, reign,right, rule, etc. Regal was probably borroweddirect from Latin, whereas royal was routed viaOld French. Also from rēx come regalia [16] andregicide [16]. RAJAH, RECTOR, REGIMENT, REGION, REGULAR,REIGN, RIGHT, ROYAL, RULEregale see GALLANTregard [14] The notions of ‘looking atsomething, keeping it in sight’ and ‘guarding it’are closely linked, and often coexist in singlewords. Watch is an example, and so was OldFrench garder, ancestor of English guard.Addition of the prefix re- ‘back’ producedregarder ‘look back at, keep one’s eyes on’,hence simply ‘look at’. The Anglo-Normanversion of the word gave English reward. GUARD, REWARD, WARDregatta [17] The word regatta originated in Italy,and at first denoted a gondola race on the GrandCanal in Venice. It appears to have been derivedfrom a Venetian dialect verb rigattare ‘contend,fight’, of uncertain origin. The first record of itsapplication to a boat race in England is in June1775, when a ‘regatta’ was held on the Thames:the Public advertiser noted that ‘The Regattawill keep at home many of our Nobility andwealthy Commoners’, and Dr Johnson wrote tohis friend Mrs Thrale on June 21 ‘I am glad youare to be at the regatta’.regent [14] Regent is one of a large family ofEnglish words that go back to Latin regere ‘rule’,a descendant of the Indo-European base reg-‘move in a straight line’, hence ‘direct, guide,rule’. Others include correct, direct, dirge, erect,rector, régime [18], regimen [14] (and its moreheavily disguised twin realm), regiment [14](which originally meant ‘government’), region[14] (etymologically a ‘governed area’),resurrect, source, and surge. Regent itself comesfrom the present participle of the Latin verb.Related words in Latin include rēx ‘king’(source of English regal, regalia, royal, etc),rēgula ‘rule’ (source of English rail ‘bar’,regular, rule, etc), and rēgnum ‘kingship’(source of English reign); and among otherEnglish words from the same Indo-Europeansource are raj, rich, and right. ADDRESS, CORRECT, DIRECT, DIRGE, DRESS,ERECT, RAJAH, REALM, RECTOR, REGIMENT,

REGION, REGULAR, REIGN, RIGHT, ROYAL, RULEregister [14] Register comes via Old Frenchregistre from late Latin regestum ‘list’. This wasa noun use of the past participle of regerere‘bring back’, hence ‘set down, record’, acompound verb formed from the prefix re-‘back, again’ and gerere ‘bring, carry’ (sourcealso of English congest, digest, gesture, jester,suggest, etc). CONGEST, DIGEST, GESTURE, JESTER, SUGGESTregret [14] The origins of regret are notaltogether clear, but it may mean etymologically‘weep over again’. It was borrowed from OldFrench regreter, which could have been based ona prehistoric Germanic verb *grētan ‘weep’(source of archaic English greet ‘weep’).regular [14] Regular ‘according to a rule’ is themost instantly recognizable English descendantof Latin rēgula ‘rule’ (others include rail ‘bar’and rule). It goes back ultimately to the sameIndo-European base as produced Latin regere‘rule’ (source of English rector, regent, etc) andrēx ‘king’ (source of English regal, royal, etc).From it was derived the late Latin verb rēgulāre,which has given English regulate [17], and mayalso lie behind rile ‘annoy’ [19], a variant of anearlier roil which was possibly imported via OldFrench ruiler ‘mix mortar’. RECTOR, REGENT, REGULATE, RILE, RULEregurgitate see GORGErehearse [13] To rehearse something isetymologically to ‘rake it over’. The word comesfrom Old French rehercer ‘repeat’, a compoundverb based on hercer ‘harrow’. This was aderivative of the noun herce ‘large agriculturalrake’, from which English gets hearse. At first inEnglish too rehearse meant simply ‘say overagain, repeat, recite’; not until the late 16thcentury did the modern theatrical meaning beginto emerge. HEARSEreign [13] Reign goes back via Old Frenchreignier to Latin rēgnāre ‘be king, rule’, aderivative of rēgnum ‘kingship’ (source ofEnglish interregnum [16]). This was closelyrelated to rēx ‘king’ (source of English regal,royal, etc), and also to regere ‘rule’ (source ofEnglish rector, regent, etc). INTERREGNUM, REGENTreimburse see PURSErein [13] A rein is etymologically something that‘retains’. It goes back via Old French rene toVulgar Latin *retina, a descendant of the Latinverb retinēre ‘hold back’, from which Englishgets retain and retinue. The rein for horses hasno connection with the rein- of reindeer [14],incidentally; that comes from Old Norse hreinn‘reindeer’, which may be of Lappish origin. RETAIN, RETINUErejoice [14] Rejoice was adapted from rejoiss-,the stem form of Old French rejoir ‘be joyful’.This was a compound verb formed from theintensive prefix re- and joir ‘be joyful’, whichwent back to Latin gaudēre ‘rejoice’, ultimatesource of English joy. English originally used419 religionrejoice for ‘enjoy the possession of’. Thissurvived until as late as the 16th century (‘Manycovetous men do we see … to whom God givespower to get riches … but not liberty to rejoiceand use them’, Sir Geoffrey Fenton, GoldenEpistles 1577), and may lie behind the modernuse of rejoice in for ‘possess’. JOYrelate [16] Something that is related tosomething else is etymologically ‘carried back’to it. The word is based on relātus, the pastparticiple of Latin referre ‘carry back, refer to’(source of English refer). (Lātus was not theoriginal past participle of Latin ferre ‘carry’; itwas drafted in from tollere ‘raise’, source ofEnglish extol and tolerate.) Derivatives inEnglish include relation [14] and relative [14]. EXTOL, TOLERATErelax see RELISHrelease see RELISHrelevant [16] Relevant comes ultimately fromthe present participle of Latin relevāre ‘raise’,source of English relief and relieve. The modernEnglish sense ‘appropriate’ probably developedfrom a medieval application of relevāre to ‘takeup’, hence ‘take possession of property’, whichled to relevant being used as a legal term for‘connected with’. RELIEF, RELIEVErelic [13] A relic is etymologically something‘left’ behind. The word comes via Old Frenchrelique from Latin reliquiae ‘remains,particularly of a dead saint’. This was a noun useof the feminine plural of reliquus ‘remaining’,an adjective formed with the prefix re- from thebase *liq- ‘leave’ (source also of Englishdelinquent [17] – etymologically ‘leaving thingsundone’ – and relinquish [15], and also ofellipse, lend, and loan). DELINQUENT, ELLIPSE, LEND, LOAN, RELINQUISHrelieve [14] Relieve goes back via Old Frenchrelever to Latin relevāre ‘raise again’, acompound verb formed from the prefix re-‘again’ and levāre ‘raise’ (source of Englishelevate, levy, etc). Its metaphorical extension to‘lighten, alleviate’ began in Latin. The derivednoun relief reached English in two phases. First,in the standard sense ‘easing, alleviation’, viaAnglo-Norman relef in the 14th century; andthen, in the 17th century, via French from Italianrelievo in the sense ‘raised area in a design’ – areturn to the etymological meaning ‘raise’. ELEVATE, LEVY, RELEVANTreligion [12] Latin religiō originally meant‘obligation, bond’. It was probably derived fromthe verb religāre ‘tie back, tie tight’ (source ofEnglish rely), a compound formed from theprefix re- ‘back’ and ligāre ‘tie’ (source ofEnglish liable, ligament, etc). It developed thespecialized sense ‘bond between human beingsand the gods’, and from the 5th century it cameto be used for ‘monastic life’ – the sense inwhich English originally acquired it via OldFrench religion. ‘Religious practices’ emergedfrom this, but the word’s standard modern

elinquish 420meaning did not develop until as recently as the16th century. ALLY, LIABLE, LIGAMENT, LIGATURE, RELYrelinquish see RELICrelish [16] Ultimately, relax [15], release [13],and relish are all the same word. They go back toLatin relaxāre ‘loosen’, a compound verbformed from the prefix re- ‘back’ and laxāre, aderivative of laxus ‘loose’ (from which Englishgets languish [13] and lax [14]). Relax wasacquired from the Latin verb itself, while releasecame via Old French relaisser (the notion of‘loosening’ having led on to ‘letting go’). Relishcame from Old French relais, a noun derivedfrom relaisser; the sense ‘taste’ came from theidea of what is ‘released’ or ‘left behind’ afterthe food or drink has been swallowed. LANGUISH, LAX, RELAX, RELEASEreluctant [17] To be reluctant about doingsomething is etymologically to ‘struggleagainst’ it. The word comes from the presentparticiple of Latin reluctārī, a compound verbformed from the prefix re- ‘against’ and luctārī‘struggle’. Among the first English writers toemploy it was John Milton, who used it in theliteral Latin sense, describing the writhingSatan: ‘a monstrous serpent on his belly prone,reluctant, but in vain’, Paradise Lost 1667.‘Unwilling, averse’, a metaphorical extensionwhich saw the light of day in Latin, made itsdebut in English at the start of the 18th century.rely [14] Rely comes via Old French relier fromLatin religāre ‘tie back, tie tightly’ (source alsoof English religion). It was a compound verbformed from the prefix re- ‘back’ and ligāre ‘tie’(source of English ally, liable, ligament, etc). Itwas originally used for ‘assemble’, which by the16th century had developed via ‘come togetherwith one’s friends’ to ‘depend’. The derivativereliable is first recorded in 16th-century ScottishEnglish, but did not enter general usage until themid 19th century. ALLY, LIABLE, LIGAMENT, LIGATURE, RELIGIONremain [14] Latin manēre meant ‘stay’ (it hasgiven English manor, mansion, permanent [15],etc). Combination with the prefix re- ‘back, inplace’ produced remanēre ‘stay behind, remain’,which passed into English via Old Frenchremanoir. Its present participle gave Englishremnant [14]. A variant of remanoir wasremaindre, which is the source of Englishremainder [15]. MANOR, MANSION, PERMANENT, REMNANTremark [17] Remark originated in French as anintensified version of marquer, in the sense‘observe, notice’ (French had acquired marquerfrom the same Germanic source as producedEnglish mark). The sense ‘say something’emerged from the notion of ‘making a verbalobservation’. The derived remarkable [17] soondeveloped the sense ‘extraordinary’ from itsoriginal ‘worthy of being noticed’. MARKremedy [13] Remedy is closely related tomedicine. It comes via Anglo-Norman remediefrom Latin remedium ‘medicine’ a noun formedfrom the same stem, med-, as produced medērī‘heal’ (source of English medical, medicine,etc). The extension in meaning from ‘medicine’to ‘something that corrects a wrong’ took placein Latin. MEDICINEremember [14] Latin memor meant ‘mindful’(it gave English memorial, memory, etc, andwent back ultimately to the Indo-European base*men-, *mon- ‘think’, source of a wide range ofEnglish vocabulary from comment to mind).From it in the post-classical period was formedthe verb rememorārī ‘recall to mind’, whichpassed into English via Old French remembrer. COMMENT, MENTAL, MINDremind [17] Remind is an English coinage. Itwas formed, apparently in the 1640s, from theprefix re- and the verb mind, in the sense‘remember’ (now restricted to Scottish English).It may have been modelled on the now obsoleterememorate, which came from the same Latinsource as English remember. It was originallyused for ‘remember’, but the modern sense‘cause to remember’ emerged as early as the1660s.reminiscence see MEMORYremnantremnant see REMAINremonstrate see MONSTERremorse [14] Remorse etymologically denotesthe ‘biting’ of conscience. The word comesultimately from medieval Latin remorsus‘torment’, a derivative of Latin remordēre ‘biteback’, hence ‘torrnent’. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix re- ‘back, again’ andmordēre ‘bite’ (source of English morsel). Thenoun was used in the expression remorsusconscientiae ‘torment of conscience’, whichpassed into Old French as remors de conscience.English adopted this at the end of the 14thcentury, and by the beginning of the 15th centuryremorse was being used on its own in the samesense. MORSELremove [14] The -move of remove comes fromthe same source as English move itself – Latinmovēre ‘move’. Combination with the prefix re-‘again, back’ produced removēre ‘move back,move away’, which reached English via OldFrench removeir. The Latin past participleremōtus gave English remote [15],etymologically ‘moved away to a distant place’. MOVE, REMOTErenaissance see NATIVErend see RENTrenderrender [14] Latin reddere meant ‘give back’. Itwas a compound verb formed from the prefix re-‘back’ and dāre ‘give’ (source of English date,donate, etc). In Vulgar Latin this was changed to*rendere, perhaps under the influence ofprendere ‘take’, which passed into English viaOld French rendre. Rent ‘payment’ goes back tothe past participle of *rendere. DATE, DONATE, RENTrendezvous [16] Rendezvous was borrowedfrom French rendez-vous, a lexicalization of

endezvous, the imperative plural of se rendre.This meant literally ‘present yourself’ – that is,at a particular place. English first used the wordas a verb in the mid 17th century.renegade [16] A renegade is etymologically a‘denier’. The word is an anglicization of Spanishrenegado, a term picked up via Anglo-Hispaniccontact at the end of the 16th century and itselfquite commonly used in English until the 18thcentury. Renegado itself comes from medievalLatin renegātus, a noun use of the past participleof Latin renegāre ‘deny’ (source of Englishrenegue [16]). This was a compound verbformed from the intensive prefix re- and negāre‘deny’ (source of English deny [13] and negative[14]). DENY, NEGATIVE, RENEGUErennet [15] Rennet probably goes back to anunrecorded Old English *rynet. This appears tohave been derived from the verb run, which wasused dialectally into the 20th century for‘curdle’. The underlying notion is of the solidparts of milk ‘running’ together and coagulating. RUNrenounce see PRONOUNCErenown [14] To be renowned is etymologicallyto be ‘named again’, and hence to be ‘famous’.The word comes from Old French renon, aderivative of the verb renomer ‘make famous’.This was formed from the prefix re- ‘again’ andnomer ‘name’, a descendant of Latin nōmināre,from which English gets nominate. NOMINATE, NOUNrent English has two words rent. The onemeaning ‘payment’ [12] comes via Old Frenchrente from Vulgar Latin *rendita, a noun use ofthe feminine past participle of *rendere ‘giveback’ (source of English render). Rent ‘tear, rift’[16] comes from the verb rend [OE], which goesback to Old English rendan. Its ultimateantecedents are not known, although it may berelated to Sanskrit rándhra- ‘split’. RENDERrepair Repair ‘mend’ [14] and repair ‘go’ [14]are two distinct words. The former comes viaOld French reparer from Latin reparāre ‘putback in order’, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix re- ‘back’ and parāre ‘put in order’(source of English prepare). Repair ‘go’ isultimately the same word as repatriate [17].Both go back to late Latin repatriāre ‘go home’,a compound verb based on Latin patria‘homeland’ (a relative of English father, patron,etc). Repatriate was acquired direct from Latin,whereas repair was routed via Old Frenchrepairer. PREPARE; FATHER, PATERNAL, PATRIOT,PATRON, REPATRIATErepast [14] The closest English relative of repastis not past but pasture. It was borrowed from OldFrench repast, a derivative of repaistre ‘feed’.This in turn went back to late Latin repascere‘feed again’, a compound verb formed from theprefix re- ‘again’ and pascere ‘feed’ (whose past421 representparticipial stem formed the basis of Englishpasture). PASTURErepeal see APPEALrepeat [14] The -peat of repeat comes ultimatelyfrom Latin petere ‘go to, seek’, which has alsogiven English appetite, compete, impetuous,perpetual [14], petition [14], and petulant [16].Addition of the prefix re- ‘back, again’ producedrepetere ‘go back to’, which reached English viaOld French repeter. APPETITE, COMPETE, IMPETUOUS, PERPETUAL,PETITION, PETULANTrepel see PULSErepertory [16] A repertory is etymologically alist of things ‘found’. The word was adoptedfrom late Latin repertōrium, a derivative ofreperīre ‘find out’. This was formed from thebase *per- ‘attempt’, which has also givenEnglish experience, expert, peril, pirate, etc. Thesense ‘list of plays, pieces of music, etcperformed’ was introduced from French in the19th century, along with the French formrepertoire. EXPERIENCE, EXPERT, PERIL, PIRATEreplete see FULLreply [14] Etymologically, reply means ‘foldback’. It comes ultimately from Latin replicāre‘fold back, unfold’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix re- ‘back’ and plicāre ‘fold’(source of English ply and related to Englishfold). This came to be used metaphorically for‘go over again, repeat’ (whence Englishreplicate [16]), and also as a legal term for‘respond’. In this latter sense it passed intoEnglish via Old French replier. FOLD, PLY, REPLICATEreport [14] To report something isetymologically to ‘carry it back’. The word wasborrowed from Old French reporter, which wentback to Latin reportāre, a compound verbformed from the prefix re- ‘back’ and portāre‘carry’ (source of English import, portable,porter, etc). The metaphorical application to‘bringing back news’ developed in Latin. EXPORT, IMPORT, PORT, PORTABLE, PORTERrepose Repose ‘rest’ [15] and repose ‘place’[15] (as in ‘repose confidence in someone’) aredistinct words in English. The former comes viaOld French reposer from late Latin repausāre, acompound verb based on pausāre ‘rest’ (sourceof English pause). The latter was an Englishcoinage, formed from the prefix re- and the verbpose ‘place’. It was modelled on Latin repōnere‘replace’, whose derivative repositorium hasgiven English repository [15]. PAUSE; POSITION, REPOSITORYreprehensible see REPRIEVErepresent [14] English borrowed representfrom Latin repraesentāre, which meant ‘presentagain, bring back’, hence ‘show’. It was acompound verb formed from the prefix re-‘back, again’ and praesentāre, source of English

epress 422present. The notion of ‘standing in the place ofanother’ is a post-classical development. PRESENTrepress see PRESSreprieve [16] Reprieve originally meant ‘sendback to prison’ (‘Of this treason he was foundguilty, and reprieved in the Tower a long time’,Edmund Campion, History of Ireland 1571), butsince this was often the alternative to execution,the word soon came to mean ‘suspend a deathsentence’. The form in which it originallyoccurs, at the end of the 15th century, is repry,and it is not clear where the v came from. Reprywas borrowed from repris, the past participle ofOld French reprendre ‘take back’. This in turnwent back to Latin reprehendere (source ofEnglish reprehensible [14]), a compound verbformed from the prefix re- ‘back, again’ andprehendere ‘seize, take’ (source of Englishprison, prize, surprise, etc). The medieval Latinderivative reprehensālia produced Englishreprisal [15], and the feminine past participle ofOld French reprendre was the source of Englishreprise [14]. APPREHEND, PRISON, PRIZE, REPRISAL, REPRISE,SURPRISEreproach [15] The -proach of reproach is thesame as that of approach. Both go backultimately to Latin prope ‘near’. From this wasformed the Vulgar Latin verb *repropiāre ‘bringback near’, which, by the time it reached OldFrench as reprochier, had evolvedmetaphorically towards the notion of ‘bringingsomebody face to face with something for whichthey should be blamed’. APPROACHreprobate [16] The Latin prefix re- usuallydenoted ‘return’ or ‘repetition’, but it was alsoused for ‘reversal of a previous condition’. Thisusage lies behind Latin reprobāre (source ofEnglish reprove [14]), a compound verb basedon probāre ‘test, approve’ (source of Englishprove). It meant ‘disapprove’, and its pastparticiple reprobātus was used in post-classicalLatin to denote a person ‘disapproved orabandoned by God’ because of their wickedness. PROBATION, PROBE, PROVE, REPROVErepublic [17] Latin rēspublica meant literally a‘public matter’. It was a compound noun formedfrom rēs ‘thing, matter’ (source of English real)and publicus ‘public’ (source of English public).It was used as a term for the ‘state’ as governedby its people, and it was first taken over inEnglish in the sense ‘state governed by electedrepresentatives of the people, rather than by aking’ in the first decade of the 17th century. PUBLIC, REALrepudiate [16] Repudiate originally meant‘divorce one’s wife’. It comes from Latinrepudiāre ‘divorce, reject’, a derivative of thenoun repudium ‘divorce’. It has been suggestedthat the ultimate source of this may be pēs ‘foot’(source of English pedal), in which case itsunderlying meaning would be virtually ‘kickout’.repugnant see PUGNACIOUSrequest [14] Request and require [14] comefrom the same ultimate source: Latin requīrere.This was a compound verb formed from theprefix re- ‘again’ and quaerere ‘ask, search’(source of English enquire, question, etc). Itoriginally meant ‘seek again, ask for again’, andit passed into Vulgar Latin as *requaerere,whose feminine past participle *requaesita hasgiven English request. ‘Ask for’ graduallypassed via ‘demand’ into ‘need’, and it was inthis sense that English acquired the verb*requaerere, through Old French requere, asrequire. Derivatives include requisite [15] andrequisition [16]. ENQUIRE, INQUEST, QUERY, QUESTION,REQUISITIONrequite see QUITrescind see SCISSORSrescue see QUASHresemble [14] Resemble goes back ultimately toLatin similis ‘like’, source of English similar.From it was formed the verb similāre ‘imitate’,which passed into Old French as sembler ‘belike, seem’ (source of English semblance).Addition of the intensive prefix re- producedresembler ‘be very like’ – whence Englishresemble. SIMILARresent [17] Etymologically, to resent somethingis to ‘feel it strongly’. The word was borrowedfrom early modern French resentir, a compoundverb formed from the intensive prefix re- andsentir ‘feel’ (a relative of English sense,sentiment, etc). It had a range of meanings inEnglish in the 17th and 18th centuries, includingits original ‘feel strongly’ and also simply‘experience a particular emotion’ (‘God resentsan infinite satisfaction in the accomplishment ofhis own will’, Robert Boyle, Treatise of SeraphicLove 1648), but gradually they all gave way to‘feel aggrieved at’. SENSATION, SENSE, SENTIMENTreside [15] The -side of reside has no connectionwith English side. It comes from Latin sedēre‘settle’ (source of English sedentary, session, etcand related to sit). Combination with the prefixre- ‘back’ produced residēre ‘settle back, remainin place, rest’, which passed into English via itspresent participle as resident ‘settlingpermanently in a place’ [14]. Reside is either aback-formation from this or a borrowing fromFrench résider. The past participle of residērewas residuus, whose neuter form residuum wasused as a noun meaning ‘that which settlesback’, hence ‘that which is left behind’. It passedinto English via Old French as residue [14]. RESIDUE, SEDENTARY, SESSION, SITresign see SIGNresin [14] Resin comes via Old French resine andLatin resīna from Greek rhētínē ‘resin’, a wordof unknown origin. A collateral form that arosein medieval Latin was rosīna, which has givenEnglish rosin [14]. ROSINresist see STATUE

423 retinueresolve see SOLVErestive see RESTresonant see SOUNDrestrain see STRAINresource see SURGEresult [15] Etymologically, to result is to ‘jumprespect [14] Respect and respite [13] arebackwards’. The word comes ultimately fromultimately the same word. Both go back toLatin resultāre ‘jump backwards’, hencerespectus, the past participle of Latin respicere‘rebound’, a compound verb formed from the‘look back at’, hence ‘look at, regard, consider’.prefix re- ‘back’ and saltāre ‘jump’ (source ofThis was a compound verb formed from theEnglish insult, sauté, etc). In medieval Latin itprefix re- ‘back’ and specere ‘look’ (source ofcame to be used figuratively for ‘happen as aEnglish spectacle, speculate, etc). Respectusconsequence’, the sense in which Englishpassed into English, perhaps via Old Frenchborrowed it. It was not used as a noun until therespect, as respect, in the sense ‘regard, relation’17th century.(as in with respect to); the key modern meaningASSAULT, INSULT, SAUTÉ‘deference, esteem’ developed towards the end resurrection see SURGEof the 16th century. An earlier borrowing of retail [14] Retail etymologically denotes the salerespectus into Old French produced respit,which preserved another meaning of the Latinword, ‘refuge’. This was the source of Englishrespite. INSPECT, RESPITE, SPECTACLE, SPECTATORrespire see SPIRITresplendent see SPLENDIDrespond [16] Respond comes from Latinrespondēre ‘promise in return’, a compoundverb formed from the prefix re- ‘back’ andspondēre ‘promise’ (source of English sponsor,spouse, etc). The notion of ‘obligation’ survivesin the derivative responsible [16]. The Italiandescendant of respondēre is rispondere, whosefeminine past participle risposta has givenEnglish riposte [18] (originally a fencing term). SPONSOR, SPOUSErest English has two words rest in current generaluse: ‘repose’ [OE] and ‘remainder’ [15]. Theformer is a general Germanic term, withrelatives in German (rast) and Swedish (rast),but its ultimate antecedents are uncertain. Thelatter comes via Old French rester ‘remain’ fromLatin restāre ‘stand back’, a compound verbformed from the prefix re- ‘back’ and stāre‘stand’ (source of English statue, status, etc andrelated to English stand). Amongst itsderivatives is restive [16], which has completelyreversed its meaning over the centuries. It comesfrom Vulgar Latin *restīvus ‘inclined to remain,unwilling to move’, and reached English via OldFrench restif in the sense ‘inactive’. The modernmeaning ‘restless, uneasy’ comes partly from anintermediate ‘refractory, hard to control’, butalso through association with the unrelated rest‘repose’. ARREST, STAND, STATION, STATUErestaurant [19] A restaurant is etymologicallya place where one is ‘restored’ or refreshed. Theword was borrowed from French restaurant, anoun use of the present participle of restaurer‘restore’, whose Old French ancestor restorergave English restore [13]. This went back toLatin restaurāre ‘restore, repair’, a compoundverb based on an earlier instaurāre ‘restore,renew, repeat’ – a word of uncertain originwhich may have been related to Greek stavrós‘stake, pale’. RESTORE, STORErestitution see STATUEof ‘cut-off’ bits, hence sale in small quantities. Itcomes from Old French retaille ‘piece cut off’, aderivative of retaillier ‘cut up’. This was acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixre- and taillier ‘cut’ (source of English tailor). Ituse in English for ‘sell in small quantities’ wasprobably inspired by the Italian retagliare,which has the same meaning. The figurativesense ‘relate, tell’ appeared at the end of the 16thcentury. TAILORretaliate [17] To retaliate is etymologically togive someone ‘so much’ or an equal amount inreturn for what they have given you. Its ultimatesource is Latin tālis ‘suchlike’ (source of Frenchtel ‘such’). This formed the basis of a noun tāliō‘punishment equal in severity to the wrong thatoccasioned it’, which was combined with theprefix re- ‘back’ to create the verb retaliāre‘repay in kind’ – whence English retaliate.reticent [19] The ultimate source of reticent isLatin tacēre ‘be silent’ (source of English tacitand taciturn). Combination with the intensiveprefix re- produced reticēre ‘keep silent’, whosepresent participle gave English reticent. It waspreceded into the language by over two hundredyears by the derived noun reticence. TACIT, TACITURNreticule [18] Reticule is a now superannuatedterm for a small handbag. It alludes to the factthat such bags were originally made from nettedfabric. The Latin word for ‘net’ was rēte, whosediminutive form rēticulum was used for ‘nettedbag’ – whence, via French réticule, Englishreticule. From rēticulum was derived rēticulātus‘having a network pattern’, which has givenEnglish reticulated [18] (used by Dr Johnson inhis famous definition of network: ‘any thingreticulated or decussated, at equal distances,with interstices between the intersections’,1755). Rēte was also the source of medievalLatin retina ‘inner lining of the eyeball’,borrowed by English as retina [14]. RETINAretinue [14] A retinue is etymologically ‘thatwhich is retained’. The word was borrowed fromOld French retenue, the feminine past participleof retenir ‘keep, restrain’ (source of Englishretain [14]). This in turn went back via VulgarLatin *retenēre to Latin retinēre ‘hold back’, acompound verb formed from the prefix re-

etort 424‘back’ and tenēre ‘hold’ (source of Englishcontain, obtain, etc). The notion behind retinueis of a body of men ‘retained’ in one’s service.Another English descendant of retinēre is rein. CONTAIN, DETAIN, OBTAIN, REIN, RETAINretort see TORMENTretreat [14] Retreat and retract [15] areultimately the same word. Both go back to Latinretrahere ‘draw back’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix re- ‘back’ and trahere ‘draw,pull’ (source of English tractor). This passedinto Old French as retraire, and its past participleretrait came to be used as a noun meaning‘withdrawal’ – whence English retreat.Meanwhile the past participle of retrahere,retractus, had been used as the basis of a newLatin verb, retractāre, which passed into Englishvia Old French retracter as retract. CONTRACT, DISTRACT, RETRACT, TRACTORretrench [16] Retrench originally meant literally‘dig a new trench as a second line of defence’. Itwas borrowed from early modern Frenchretrencher, a descendant of Old Frenchretrenchier. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix re- ‘again’ and trenchier ‘cut off’(source of English trench, trenchant, etc).The standard present-day sense of retrench,‘cut back, economize’, first recorded in the 17thcentury, is a return to the underlying meaning ofFrench retrencher. TRENCH, TRENCHANTretribution see TRIBEretrieve [15] To retrieve something isetymologically to ‘re-find’ it. The word comesfrom retreuv-, the stem of Old French retrover.This was a compound verb formed from theprefix re- ‘again’ and trover ‘find’ (ancestor ofmodern French trouver and source of Englishtroubadour and trove, as in treasure trove). Itsoriginal application in English was to dogs refindinggame that had been temporarily lost(hence the term retriever [15]). TROUBADOUR, TROVEretrograde see GRADUALreturn [14] The origins of return are in VulgarLatin. There, Latin tornāre (source of Englishturn), which originally meant ‘turn on a lathe’,was combined with the prefix re- ‘back’ toproduce *retornāre ‘turn back’, which passedvia Old French retorner into English as return. TURNreveal [14] To reveal something isetymologically to ‘unveil’ it. The word comesvia Old French reveler from Latin revēlāre‘unveil, disclose’, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix re- ‘back’ (in the sense ‘reverting to aformer condition’) and vēlum ‘veil’ (source ofEnglish veil). VEILreveille see VIGILrevenge see VINDICATEreverberate [16] Latin verbera meant ‘whips,rods’ (it was related to Greek rhábdos ‘stick’).From it was derived the verb verberāre ‘whip,beat’, which with the addition of the prefix re-‘back’ produced reverberāre ‘beat back’. Whenthis first arrived in English it was used literally(Thomas Coryat, for instance, in his Crudities1611, wrote of ‘a strong wall to repulse andreverberate the furious waves of the sea’), but itwas not long before the metaphorical applicationto the re-echoing of sounds took over.revere [17] Revere goes back ultimately to Latinverērī ‘hold in awe or fear’, a possible distantrelative of English aware and beware. Additionof the intensive prefix re- produced reverērī,which English probably acquired via Frenchrévérer. The derivative reverend [15], whichcomes from the Latin gerundive reverendus ‘tobe revered’, has been used from earliest times asa title of respect for clergymen. That was forlong a common application of reverent [14] too,which came from the Latin present participialstem reverent-.reverse see VERSErevile see VILErevise see VISITrevive see VIVIDrevoke see VOCATIONrevolt [16] Latin volvere meant ‘roll’ (it is thesource of English vault ‘jump’). Addition of theprefix re- ‘back’ produced revolvere ‘roll back,unroll’, hence ‘come to the original point, return,revolve’. English acquired this as revolve [14],and also took over its late Latin derivativerevolūtiō via Old French as revolution [14],whose leading modern meaning ‘violentoverthrow of a government’ emerged in the 16thcentury via an intermediate ‘complete reversal’.The term revolver [19] for a pistol with arevolving chamber was apparently coined by itsinventor Samuel Colt. Revolt itself came viaFrench révolter and Italian rivoltare from VulgarLatin *revolvitāre, a derivative of revolvere. VAULT, VOLUMEreward [14] Reward is ultimately the same wordas regard, and indeed was originally usedinterchangeably with it. It came from rewarder,the Anglo-Norman version of Old Frenchregarder, source of English regard. The modernmeaning of reward, ‘recompense’, which goesback to the 14th century, presumably arose fromthe notion of ‘regarding’ someone with favour. GUARD, REGARDrhapsody [16] A rhapsody is etymologically theproduct of a ‘weaver of songs’. It goes backultimately to Greek rhapsōidíā ‘epic poemrecited on a single occasion’, which was derivedfrom rhapsōidós ‘writer of such poems’. Thiswas a compound formed from rháptein ‘sewtogether’ and ōidé ‘song’ (source of English ode,parody, prosody, etc). The somewhat trivializedmodern meaning ‘self-indulgently effusive pieceof verse, music, etc’ emerged in the 17th century. MELODY, ODE, PARODY, PROSODYrhetoric [14] In ancient Greece, a rhétōr was a‘public speaker’, an ‘orator’. The word wentback to a prehistoric Indo-European base *wer-‘speak, say’, which also produced English verband word. From it was derived the adjective

hētorikós, which passed into English as a nounvia Latin rhētorica and Old French rethorique. VERB, WORDrheumatic [14] Greek rheuma meant literally‘flow, stream’ (it came ultimately from the sameIndo-European base as produced Englishstream, and was a close relative of the Greekverb rhein ‘flow’, which provides the secondhalves of English catarrh and diarrhoea). It wasused for a ‘watery discharge from the body’, andwas borrowed into English (via late Latinrheuma and Old French reume) as rheum [14] inthe sense ‘mucous discharge from the eyes ornose’. Pains in the joints were in former timesthought to be caused by watery secretions withinthe body, and so towards the end of the 17thcentury the term rheumatism was applied tothem. CATARRH, DIARRHOEA, RHYME, RHYTHMrhinoceros [13] Rhinoceros means literally‘nose-horn’. The term was coined in Greek fromrhīno-, the stem form of rhīs ‘nose’, and kéras‘horn’ (a distant relative of English horn). Greekrhīnókerōs reached English via Latinrhīnocerōs. The abbreviated form rhino is firstrecorded in the 1880s. ANTIRRHINUM, HORN, KERATINrhizome see LIQUORICErhododendron [17] A rhododendron isetymologically a ‘rose-tree’. The term comesfrom Greek rhodódendron, a compound formedfrom rhódon ‘rose’ (apparently a relative ofEnglish rose) and déndron ‘tree’ (source ofEnglish dendrite [18] and dendrochronology[20]). This denoted the ‘oleander’, anapplication it retained through Latinrhododendron into English. The first record ofits use for the plant we now know as therhododendron dates from the mid 17th century. ROSErhubarb [14] The Greeks had two words for‘rhubarb’: rhéon, which was borrowed fromPersian rēwend, and which evolved into Latinrheum, now the plant’s scientific name; and rha,which is said to have come from Rha, an ancientname of the river Volga, in allusion to the factthat rhubarb was once grown on its banks(rhubarb is native to China, and was onceimported to Europe via Russia). In medievalLatin rhubarb became known as rha barbarum‘barbarian rhubarb, foreign rhubarb’, again withreference to the plant’s exotic origins; and in duecourse association with Latin rheum altered thisto rheubarbarum. It passed into English viaVulgar Latin *rheubarbum and Old Frenchreubarbe. BARBARIANrhyme [12] Etymologically, rhyme and rhythmare the same word. Both go back to medievalLatin rythmus ‘rhythm’, but whereas rhythm hasreached us almost unchanged, rhyme has comevia a branch line. The sort of accented verse towhich the medieval Latin word was appliedcommonly rhymed, and so when rythmus passedinto early Old French as *ritme, it carriedconnotations of ‘rhyming’ with it. This later425 rickshawdeveloped to rime, and when English borrowedit as rime, it still contained the notion of‘rhythm’; but by the 13th century ‘rhyme’ wasbecoming its main meaning. The spelling rhyme,which emerged around 1600, represents aconscious partial return to the word’s ultimateancestors, Latin rhythmus and Greek rhuthmós. RHYTHMrhythm [16] Rhythm goes back ultimately toGreek rhuthmós. This originally meant‘recurring motion’, and was related to the verbrhein ‘flow’ (source of English catarrh anddiarrhoea). It was subsequently applied to‘recurrent accents in verse’, in which sense itpassed into English via Latin rhythmus. (LaterOld French alteration of the word led to Englishrhyme.) CATARRH, DIARRHOEA, RHEUMATIC, RHYMErib [OE] Rib is a widespread Germanic word,which goes back to a prehistoric *rebjō, sourcealso of German rippe, Dutch rib, Swedish ribba‘lath’, etc. Its Old Norse form rif is the ancestorof English reef. Outside Germanic it is related toRussian rebro ‘rib’. REEFribald [13] Ribald was originally a noun, aderogatory term meaning ‘retainer or dependentof low status’. It was borrowed from Old Frenchribaut, a derivative of the verb riber ‘sleeparound’. This is turn went back to Old HighGerman rīban ‘rub’, hence ‘copulate’. It was notused as an adjective until the early 16th century.rice [13] The word rice is presumably, like theplant it names, of oriental origin; its ancestormay well be represented in Sanskrit vrīhi-. It firstappeared in Europe as Greek órūza. This passedinto Latin as oryza, and eventually spreadthroughout the languages of Europe: French riz,Italian riso, Spanish arroz, German reis, Dutchrijst, Swedish and Russian ris, Welsh reis,Lithuanian rysai, English rice, etc.rich [OE] The original meaning of rich was‘mighty, noble’. It goes back ultimately to theIndo-European base *reg- ‘move in a straightline’, hence ‘direct’, hence ‘rule’, source ofEnglish right, Latin rēx ‘king’ (ancestor ofEnglish regal, royal, etc), and Latin regere ‘rule’(ancestor of English regent, regiment, etc). TheOld Celtic equivalent of Latin rēx was rīx ‘king’.This was borrowed into prehistoric Germanic,where it subsequently evolved into Germanreich, Dutch rijk, Swedish rik, Danish rig, andEnglish rich. (It was also taken over by theRomance languages, giving French riche, Italianricco, etc.) The sense ‘mighty, noble’ survived inEnglish into the late Middle Ages, but ‘wealthy’had started to develop in Germanic, andeventually saw off ‘mighty’. REGAL, RIGHT, ROYALrickshaw [19] Rickshaw is English’s attempt todomesticate Japanese jin-riki-sha. These smalltwo-wheeled man-hauled vehicles wereintroduced in Japan around 1870, and theirname, which means literally ‘man strengthvehicle’, had made its way into English by 1874.By the 1880s it had been shortened to rickshaw.

id 426rid [13] The verb rid was borrowed from OldNorse rythja, ancestor of modern Swedish rödja,Danish rydde, and Norwegian rydja. This in turnwent back to a prehistoric Germanic *rudjan. Itspast participle rid has been used in the context berid of, get rid of since the 15th century. Riddanceis a 16th-century English coinage.riddle [OE] English has two separate wordsriddle. The ‘puzzling’ sort of riddle isetymologically something you ‘read’. For itoriginated as a derivative of Old English rǣdan,the ancestor of modern English read. One of itsearlier meanings was ‘interpret’ – hence riddle.Riddle ‘sieve’ goes back to a prehistoric Germankhrid- ‘shake’, which also produced Germandialect reiter ‘sieve’. It is also related to Latincrībrum ‘sieve’ and cernere ‘separate’ (source ofEnglish decree, discern, secret, etc). READ; CERTAIN, DECREE, DISCERN, SECRETride [OE] Ride is a widespread Germanic verb,with close relatives in German reiten, Dutchrijden, Swedish rida, and Danish ride. Itapparently has connections in the Celticlanguages – Irish rīadaim ‘ride’ and Gaulishrēda ‘chariot’, for instance – but its ultimateprovenance is unclear. RAID, ROADridge [OE] Old English hrycg denoted ‘theback’, as its modern Germanic relatives –German rücken, Dutch rug, Swedish rygg, andDanish ryg – still do. But a gradual semanticfocussing on the ‘backbone’ led by the 14thcentury to the emergence of ‘long narrow raisedarea’, today’s main meaning. It goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *khrugjaz, which mayhave been related to Sanskrit kruc- ‘becrooked’ – in which case the notion underlyingthe word would be of a ‘bent back’.riding [11] Until 1974 Yorkshire was divided foradministrative purposes into three ridings. Theword has no connection with ride. It meansetymologically ‘third part’. It was borrowedfrom Old Norse thrithjungr ‘third part’, aderivative of thrithi ‘third’. Its original Englishform was *thrithing, later thriding or triding,and it eventually lost its initial t throughassimilation into the t of the preceding east andwest. THREEright [OE] Right goes back ultimately to theIndo-European base *reg- ‘move in a straightline’, hence ‘direct’, hence ‘rule’, which alsoproduced English rich and Latin rēx ‘king’(source of English regal, royal, etc).Combination with the past participial suffix*-to- resulted in Latin rēctus ‘straight, right’,which lies behind English rectify, rectum, etc,and prehistoric Germanic *rekhtaz, which hasevolved into German and Dutch recht, Swedishrätt, Danish ret, and English right. The use of theword as the opposite of left, paralleled inGerman and Dutch but not in the Scandinavianlanguages, derives from the notion that the righthand is the ‘correct’ hand to use. (French droit‘right’ goes back to Latin dīrēctus, a derivativeof rēctus.) The derived righteous [OE]etymologically means ‘in the right way’; it wascompounded in the Old English period from riht‘right’ and wīs ‘way’ (ancestor of the modernEnglish suffix -wise). ADDRESS, DIRECT, RAJ, RECTOR, REGAL,REGIMENT, ROYALrigmarole [18] Rigmarole is a corruption of anearlier ragman roll, a term first encountered inthe late 13th century. It denoted a roll ofparchment used in a gambling game. The rollhad things written on it, such as names, withpieces of string attached to them, andparticipants had to select a string at random. Theword ragman may have been a contraction ofragged man, perhaps in allusion to theappearance of the roll, with all its bits of stringhanging from it. Ragman roll eventually came tobe used for any ‘list’ or ‘catalogue’, and ragmanitself denoted a ‘long rambling discourse’ in16th-century Scottish English – the meaningwhich had somehow transferred itself torigmarole when it emerged in the early 18thcentury.rile see REGULARring [OE] English has two distinct words ring.The one meaning ‘circle’ goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *khrenggaz, which alsoproduced German, Dutch, Swedish, and Danishring (not to mention the Finnish borrowingrengas). It may be related to Old ChurchSlavonic kragu ‘circle’. The Germanic form wastaken over by Old French as ranc, from whichEnglish gets rank, and also as renc, which maybe the source of English rink [18]. Ring ‘chime’presumably goes back to a prehistoric Germanicancestor that imitated the sound of clanging, andalso produced German and Dutch ringen,Swedish ringa, and Danish ringe (the suggestionthat it contains some reference to the circularmotion of tolling bells is attractive, but has nobasis in fact). RANGE, RANK, RINKriparian see RIVERripe [OE] Ripe is restricted to the West Germaniclanguages – it has relatives in German reif andDutch rijp. Its antecedents are uncertain, butsome have linked it with reap [OE], as if itsunderlying meaning is ‘ready for harvesting’.And reap itself may go back to an Indo-European base *rei- ‘tear, scratch’, and hencedenote etymologically ‘strip’ the fruits, seeds,etc from plants.riposte see RESPONDriserise [OE] Not surprisingly, rise and raise areclosely related. Both go back to a commonprehistoric Germanic ancestor meaning ‘go up’.This reached English directly as rise, while itscausative derivative, meaning ‘cause to go up’,has given English raise, and also rear. Thederived arise is of long standing. It is not clearwhat the word’s ultimate ancestry may be; somehave linked it with Latin rīvus ‘stream’ (sourceof English rivulet), from the notion of a stream‘rising’ in a particular place. RAISE, REAR

isk [17] The ultimate origins of risk have neverbeen satisfactorily explained. English acquired itvia French risque from Italian risco, a derivativeof the verb riscare ‘run into danger’, but therespeculation takes over. One persistent theory isthat its ancestral meaning is ‘sail dangerouslyclose to rocks’, and attempts have been made tolink it with Greek rhīza ‘cliff’ and Latin resegāre‘cut off short’ (from the notion of coastal rocksbeing ‘cut off sharply’ or ‘sheer’). Englishacquired the French past participial form risquéin the 19th century.rissole [18] Rissoles originally got their namefrom their colour. The word comes via Frenchrissole and Old French ruissole from VulgarLatin *russeola, a shortening of *russeola pasta‘reddish pastry’. Late Latin russeolus ‘reddish’was a derivative of Latin russus ‘red’ (source ofEnglish russet), and is distantly related toEnglish red. RED, RUSSET, RUSTritual [16] Ritual was borrowed from Latinrītuālis, a derivative of rītus ‘religious or otherceremony or practice’ (from which, via OldFrench rite, English gets rite [14]). It may havebeen related to Sanskrit rīti- ‘going, way,custom’. RITErival [16] A rival is etymologically ‘someonewho uses the same stream as another’. The wordcomes from Latin rīvālis, a noun use of anadjective meaning ‘of a stream’, derived fromrīvus ‘stream’ (source of English derive). Peoplewho use or live by the same stream areneighbours and hence, human nature being as itis, are usually in competition with each other –hence rival. DERIVEriver [13] Etymologically, the term river denotesthe ‘banks’ of a river, rather than the water thatflows between them. Its distant ancestor is Latinrīpa ‘bank’. From this was derived the adjectiverīpārius (source of English riparian ‘of a riverbank’[19]), whose feminine form came to beused in Vulgar Latin as a noun, *rīpāria,denoting ‘land by the water’s edge’. From itevolved Italian riviera ‘bank’ (whence EnglishRiviera [18]) and Old French riviere. Thisoriginally meant ‘river bank’, but thissubsequently developed to ‘river’, the sense inwhich English adopted the word. A heavilydisguised English relative is arrive, whichetymologically denotes ‘come to the shore’. ARRIVE, RIPARIAN, RIVIERAroach see COCKROACHroad [OE] Road comes from the same ultimatesource as ride – and indeed in the Old Englishperiod it meant either simply ‘riding’ or ‘hostileincursion on horseback’ (a sense preserved ininroads [16] and also in raid, which ishistorically the same word as road). By the 14thcentury the sense ‘sheltered anchorage’ (nowrepresented by the plural roads) had emerged,but the central modern meaning ‘track fortraffic’ did not put in an appearance until the late16th century (hitherto the main words for427 robustexpressing this concept had been way andstreet). INROADS, RAID, RIDEroast [13] Roast can be traced back ultimately toa prehistoric West Germanic term for a ‘metalgrid for cooking things on’. From this wasderived the verb *raustjan, which evolved intoGerman rösten and Dutch roosten. There is notrace of it in Old English, however: English gotit via Old French rostir, which had beenborrowed from Germanic. A derivative of Dutchroosten was rooster ‘gridiron’. The resemblancebetween a gridiron pattern and lines ruled onpaper led to the metaphorical use of rooster for‘list, table’ – whence English roster [18]. ROSTERrob [13] Rob goes back ultimately to a prehistoricGermanic *raub- ‘break’ (a close relative of theLatin base rup- ‘break’, which has given Englishrout, route, and rupture). This produced OldEnglish rēafian ‘rob’, which although it has nowdied out has left us its derivative bereave [OE],and also Middle Dutch rōven ‘rob’, which gaveEnglish rover ‘pirate’ [14]. It was also borrowedinto Old French as robber, which is the source ofmodern English rob. Other English descendantsof the Germanic base are robe, rubbish, andrubble. BEREAVE, CORRUPT, DISRUPT, ROBE, ROUT,ROUTE, ROVER, RUBBISH, RUBBLE, RUPTURErobe [13] A robe is etymologically ‘somethingstolen’, hence a ‘looted garment’, and finallysimply a ‘(long) garment’. The word comesultimately from Vulgar Latin *rauba, which wasborrowed from the same Germanic base asproduced English bereave and rob. It passed intoEnglish via Old French robe. This still retainedthe ancestral meaning ‘stolen things, spoils’ aswell as the new ‘garment’, and in that sense ithas given English rubbish and rubble. ROBrobin [15] Robin was borrowed from the Frenchmale first name Robin, a familiar form of Robert,which is first recorded as a bird-name in the 15thcentury. It originally appeared in English, in themid-15th century, in the expression robinredbreast, and robin was not used on its ownuntil about a hundred years later. Since then itshas gradually ousted the native ruddock (arelative of red) as the standard term for the bird.(The name Robert, incidentally, is of Germanicorigin, and means etymologically ‘famebright’.)robot [20] Robot is a Czech contribution toEnglish. It comes from robota ‘forced labour,drudgery’, a word related to German arbeit‘work’. It was used by the Czech dramatist KarelČapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s UniversalRobots) 1920 for ‘mechanical peopleconstructed to do menial tasks’. Englishacquired it via German robot, and the first recordof it in an English text comes from 1923.robust [16] By a series of semantic twists, robustis related to red. It comes ultimately from Indo-European *reudh- ‘red’ (source of English red).This produced Latin rōbus, which was applied to

ock 428a particular sort of oak tree with reddish wood.The oak being synonymous with strength, rōbusin due course came to mean ‘strength’. This wascarried over into the derived rōbustus ‘firm,strong, solid’, from which English gets robust,and also into the verb rōborāre ‘strengthen’,source of English corroborate [16]. CORROBORATE, REDrock English has two words rock, both ofuncertain origin. The older, ‘sway’ [11], goesback to a prehistoric Germanic base *rukk-‘move’, which also produced German rücken‘move’ and Dutch rukken ‘pull, jerk’, but beyondthat its trail goes cold. Rock ‘stone’ [14] wasborrowed from Old French rocque. This hasrelatives in Italian rocca and Spanish roca, butwhere it ultimately came from is not known. TheFrench word is also the ultimate source ofEnglish rococo. ROCOCOrocket English has two words rocket. The older,and now less familiar, is the name of a plant ofthe cabbage family whose leaves are used insalads. It was inspired by the plant’s downystems, for it goes back ultimately to Latin ērūca,which originally meant ‘hairy caterpillar’. Thismay have been related to ērīcius ‘hedgehog’,from which English gets caprice and urchin. Itpassed into Italian as ruca, whose diminutiveform ruchetta developed a variant rochetta –whence French roquette and finally Englishrocket [16]. Rocket ‘projectile’ [17] is ultimatelyan allusion to the shape of such objects. It comesvia Old French roquette from Italian rocchetto, adiminutive form of rocca ‘spool’ – hence theapplication to the ‘cylindrical’ rocket. Roccaitself represents a borrowing from a prehistoricGermanic *rukkon, which also lies behindEnglish ratchet. CAPRICE, URCHIN; RATCHETrococo [19] Old French roque was the source ofEnglish rock ‘stone’. From its modern Frenchdescendant roc was derived rocaille ‘decorationin the form of pebbles, shells, etc’, which wasaltered to rococo as a term for a stylecharacterized by convoluted ornamentation. ROCKrod [12] It seems likely that rod is related toEnglish rood [OE]. In post-Anglo-Saxon timesthis has mainly been used for ‘cross of Christ’,and it now survives mainly in rood screen ‘altarscreen’, but in the Old English period it was alsoused for ‘rod’. Where their Germanic ancestor,which also produced German rute ‘rod’ andNorwegian dialect rodda ‘stake’, came from isnot clear. The use of rod for a unit ofmeasurement dates from the mid 15th century. ROODrodent see ROSTRUMrodeo see ROTAroeroe Roe the deer [OE] and roe ‘fish eggs’ [15] aredistinct words. The former goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *raikh-, which alsoproduced German reh, Dutch ree, Swedish råa,and Danish raa. Its underlying meaning may be‘spotted’, an allusion to the roe deer’s dappledcoat. Roe ‘fish eggs’ was borrowed from MiddleDutch or Middle Low German roge, a word ofuncertain origin.rogue [16] Rogue originated as a thieves’ slangterm for a ‘vagrant’ in the mid-16th century. It isnot clear where it came from, but one suggestionis that it was derived from the contemporaryslang term roger ‘beggar who pretended to be apoor university student in order play on people’sfeelings’. This was based on Latin rogāre ‘ask’,source of English interrogate, prerogative, etc.roister see RURALroll English has two words roll, both of which goback ultimately to Latin rotulus ‘small wheel’, adiminutive form of rota ‘wheel’ (source ofEnglish rotate, rotund, round, etc). This passedvia Old French rolle into English as roll ‘rolledupparchment’ [13]. The modern French versionof the word has given English role [17], whoseunderlying notion is of a ‘rolled-up’ piece ofpaper with the actor’s lines written on it. Fromrotulus was derived the Vulgar Latin verb*rotulāre, which has given English its verb roll[14]. Control comes from the same source. CONTROL, ROTA, ROTATE, ROUNDromance [13] A romance is etymologically astory written in the language ‘of Rome’. Theword comes from Old French romanz, whichdenoted ‘something written in French (asopposed to classical Latin)’. This went back tothe Vulgar Latin adverb *rōmānicē ‘in the localvernacular descended from Latin’ (contrastedwith latinē ‘in Latin’). This in turn came fromLatin rōmānicus ‘Roman’, a derivativeultimately of Rōma ‘Rome’. In practice, thesemedieval vernacular tales were usually aboutchivalric adventure, and that was the startingpoint from which the modern meaning ofromance, and its derivative romantic [17],developed. The original sense survives in thelinguistic term Romance, denoting languagessuch as French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,Romanian, etc that have evolved from Latin.rondo see ROUNDroodrood see RODroof [OE] The antecedents of roof are far fromclear. Its only surviving relative seems to beDutch roef ‘cabin, coffin lid’, and although italso had links with Old Norse hróf ‘boat-shed’,its ultimate origins remain a mystery.room [OE] The Old English word for ‘room’ wascofa (ancestor of modern English cove ‘shelteredbay’). At that time, room meant simply ‘space’(as its German relative raum still does). Itsmodern sense ‘chamber’ did not emerge until the15th century. It comes ultimately from theprehistoric Germanic adjective *rūmaz‘spacious’, which may be related to Latin rūs‘country’, source of English rural and rustic.Rummage is a distant relative. RUMMAGE, RURALroot Root of a plant [OE] and root ‘dig with thenose’ [14] are distinct words. The former wasborrowed from Old Norse rót, which goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *wrd-.This also produced Latin rādīx ‘root’, source of

English radical, radish, etc. Root ‘dig’ is analteration of an earlier wroot, which went back toOld English wrōtan. It is usually assumed thatroot ‘cheer, support’, which first emerged inAmerica in the late 19th century, is the sameword. RADICAL, RADISHrope [OE] Rope is a general Germanic term,represented also by German reif, Dutch reep,Swedish rep, and Danish reb (the German wordnow means ‘hoop, loop’). These point to aprehistoric Germanic ancestor *raipaz, whoseultimate origins are not known. A stirrup isetymologically a ‘climbing rope’. STIRRUProsary [14] Rosary comes from Latin rosārium‘rose garden’, a derivative of rosa ‘rose’. It wasa common conceit in the Middle Ages to namecollections of verse or similar short pieces afterbunches of flowers (anthology comes from theGreek word for ‘flower’, and a similarinspiration underlies florilegium, while a 13thcenturyvolume of the collected works of thePersian poet Sa’di was called the Rose garden).That was the background against which acollection of Roman Catholic prayers,consisting of Aves, Paternosters, and Glorias,came to be known as a rosary. A string of beadsof varying sizes came to be used for counting offhow far one has got in saying these prayers(English bead itself comes from a word meaning‘prayer’), and this too was termed rosary. ROSErose [OE] Rose is a general European term,represented also in French, German, and Danishrose, Italian and Spanish rosa, Dutch roos,Swedish ros, Russian roza, etc. These all go backultimately to Latin rosa, which was eitherborrowed from, or came from the same source asGreek rhódon ‘rose’, a word of easternMediterranean origin. RHODODENDRONrosemary [15] Originally, rosemary had noconnection with either ‘roses’ or ‘Mary’.Etymologically it means ‘sea-dew’. It comes,probably via Old French rosmarin, from lateLatin rōsmarīnum. This in turn was a conflationof Latin rōs marīnus, rōs meaning ‘dew’ andmarīnus ‘of the sea’ (an allusion to the fact thatthe plant grew near sea coasts). The wordoriginally entered English in the 14th century asrosmarine, but association with rose and Mary(the Virgin Mary, no doubt) led to its alterationto rosemary. MARINE, MERE, MERMAIDrosin see RESINroster see ROASTrostrum [16] Latin rōstrum originally meant‘beak’ or ‘muzzle of an animal’ – it was derivedfrom the verb rōdere ‘gnaw’ (source of Englishcorrode [14], erode [17], and rodent [19]). Theword was also applied metaphorically to the‘beaklike’ prows of ships. In 338 BC the platformfor public speakers in the Forum in Rome wasadorned with the prows of ships captured fromAntium (modern Anzio), and so in due course all429 rouxsuch platforms came to be known as rostra –whence the English word. CORRODE, ERODE, RODENTrot [OE] Rot goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*rutjan, which also produced Dutch rotten. Itmay be related ultimately to Latin rudis ‘rough’,source of English rude. The adjective rotten [13]was borrowed from Old Norse rotinn, whichcame from the same Germanic stem as produced*rutjan. The mild imprecation drat [19] is aconflation of God and rot. RUDErota [17] Latin rota denoted ‘wheel’: it cameultimately from a prehistoric Indo-Europeanbase *reth- meaning ‘run, roll’, which alsoproduced German rad ‘wheel’. It was introducedinto English in 1659 by the republican JamesHarrington as the name for a political club hefounded to advocate his idea that governmentoffice should be held in rotation.Derivatives of rota have contributed richly toEnglish. Medieval Latin rotārius has givenrotary [18]. From the verb rotāre ‘revolve’ havecome rotate [19] and, via its Spanish descendantrodear, rodeo [19] (etymologically a ‘roundingup’or ‘surrounding’ of cattle). Rotundus, aderivative of rotāre, has produced rotund [18]and round. The diminutive form rotulus hasgiven control and roll. And roue ‘wheel’, theFrench descendant of rota, is the source of roué[18], etymologically someone broken on the‘wheel’. CONTROL, PRUNE, RODEO, ROLL, RONDO,ROTATE, ROTUND, ROUNDrouge see REDroughrough [OE] Rough goes back to a prehistoricWest Germanic *rūkhwaz, which also producedGerman rauh and Dutch ruw. Despite thesimilarity of form and sense, ruffian is notrelated, and there is no evidence that ruffle iseither.round [13] Round goes back ultimately to Latinrotundus ‘round’, source of English rotund. InVulgar Latin this became *retundus, whichpassed into Old French as reont, later ront. Itsstem form rond- gave English round. Derivativesto have reached English include prune ‘cutbranches’, rondo [18], roundel [13], androundelay [16]; but surround, despite thesimilarity, is not related. ROTA, ROTUNDrout English has two words rout. ‘Disorderlyretreat’ [16] comes via archaic French route‘dispersed group’ and Italian rotta ‘breakage’from Vulgar Latin *rupta, a noun use of the pastparticiple of Latin rumpere ‘break’ (source ofEnglish corrupt, disrupt [17], erupt, and ruptureand related to English rob). Other Englishdescendants of *rupta are route, routine, and rut.Rout ‘dig with the nose’, hence ‘search,rummage’ [16] is a variant form of root. CORRUPT, DISRUPT, ERUPT, ROB, ROBE, ROUTE,ROUTINE, RUPTURE, RUT; ROOTroute see RUTroutine see RUTroux see RUSSET

over 430rover see ROBrow There are three distinct words row in English.The one meaning ‘use oars’ [OE] goes back to aprehistoric Germanic base *rō- ‘steer’, whichalso produced Dutch roeijen and Swedish ro, notto mention English rudder. Row ‘orderly line’[OE] comes from a prehistoric Germanic*raigwa, and is probably related to Germanreihe ‘row’. Row ‘noisy quarrel’ [18] seems tohave originated in the late 18th century as a pieceof Cambridge University slang, but where itcame from is not known. RUDDERroyal [14] Royal and regal are ultimately thesame word. Both go back to the Latin adjectiverēgālis, a derivative of rēx ‘king’. But whereasregal was probably borrowed direct from Latin,royal was acquired via Old French, whererēgālis became roial. REGALrub [14] The antecedents of rub are unclear. Itmay have been borrowed from Low Germanrubben, but since it is not known where thatcame from, it does not get us much further. Thederivative rubber [16] was originally usedsimply for ‘something for rubbing with’. Butsince the substance obtained from rubber treeswas early on used for pencil erasers, it becameknown from the end of the 18th century asrubber (or in full India-rubber, from its place oforigin). It is not clear whether rubber ‘set ofgames’ [16], which originated as a bowls term, isthe same word. RUBBERrubble [14] Old French robe (a relative ofEnglish rob) originally meant ‘loot, odds andends stolen’ (its later sense ‘stolen clothes’ ledon to English robe). From it was derived Anglo-Norman *robel ‘bits of broken stone’, whichpassed into English as rubble. The plural of*robel would have been *robeus, and this mayhave been the starting point for Anglo-Normanrubbous, which became English rubbish [14]. ROB, RUBBISHruby [14] Ruby goes back ultimately to Latinruber ‘red’, a descendant of the same Indo-European base as produced English red. From itwas derived the medieval Latin adjectiverubīnus, which was used in the term lapisrubīnus ‘red stone’. In due course rubīnus itselfcame to be employed as a noun in this sense, andit passed into English via Old French rubi. OtherEnglish words from the same source includerubella [19], rubicund [16], rubidium [19], andrubric [14] (headings in ancient and medievalmanuscripts were often written in red ink). RED, RUBELLA, RUBICUND, RUBRICrudder [OE] Rudder comes from the samesource as English row ‘use oars’ – prehistoricGermanic *rō- ‘steer’. Indeed it originallydenoted an ‘oar used for steering’; the modernapplication to a fixed steering surface did notemerge until the 14th century. Its west Germanicancestor *rōthra- also produced German ruderand Dutch roer. ROWruddy see REDrude [14] Rude comes via Old French rude fromLatin rudis ‘rough, raw’. This seems originallyto have denoted ‘rough unpolished stone’ – itwas related to Latin rūdus ‘broken stone’ – butits ultimate origins are unknown. From it werederived rudīmentum ‘beginning’(etymologically ‘raw state’), which has givenEnglish rudiment [16], and ērudīre ‘take theroughness out of’, hence ‘polish, teach’, sourceof English erudite. ERUDITE, ROT, RUDIMENTrue Rue ‘regret’ [OE] and rue the plant [14] aredistinct words. The former goes back to aprehistoric Germanic source, of uncertainultimate origins, which meant ‘distress’, andwhich also produced German reuen and Dutchrouwen. In the early Middle English period,when it still meant ‘cause to feel pity’ (a sensewhich has now died out), a noun ruth ‘pity’ wasformed from it, which survives in ruthless [14].And a cognate noun rue once existed too,meaning ‘sorrow, regret’, which also lives ononly in the form of a derivative: rueful [13]. Theplant-name rue comes via Old French rue andLatin rūta from Greek rhūté. RUEFUL, RUTHLESSrufous see REDrug [16] The ancestry of rug is not altogetherclear. It originally meant ‘rough woollen cloth’,which appears to link it with words such asSwedish rugg ‘ruffled hair’ and Old Norse rogg‘tuft’ (source of English rag), so it could well bea Scandinavian borrowing. It was not used for a‘mat’ until the early 19th century. The originalnotion of ‘roughness’ or ‘shagginess’ is betterpreserved in rugged [14], which presumablycomes from a related source.rugby [19] Legend has it that the game of rugbyfootball was born at Rugby School inWarwickshire in 1823 when, during an ordinarygame of football, a boy called William WebbEllis picked up the ball and ran with it. The useof the term rugby for the game is not recordedbefore 1864, and the public-school slang versionrugger dates from the 1890s.ruin [14] If something is ruined, etymologicallyit has simply ‘fallen down’. The word’s ultimateancestor is Latin ruere ‘fall, crumble’ (sourcealso of English congruent). From it was derivedthe noun ruīna ‘fall’, which passed into Englishvia Old French ruine. CONGRUENTrule [13] Rule is one of a largish family ofEnglish words that go back ultimately to Latinrēgula ‘straight stick, ruler, rule, pattern’ (whoseclose relatives rēx ‘king’ and regere ‘rule’ havealso contributed royally to English vocabulary inthe form of rector, regent, regiment, royal, etc).Derivatives have produced regular and regulate,while rēgula itself has given rail ‘bar’ and, viaVulgar Latin *regula and Old French reule, rule. RAIL, RAJ, RECTOR, REGAL, REGENT, REGULAR,REGULATE, ROYALrummage [16] Rummage is etymologically‘roomage’. It originally denoted the ‘stowage of

cargo in a ship’s hold’. It came from Anglo-Norman *rumage, a reduced form of Old Frencharrumage. This was derived from the verbarrumer ‘stow in a hold’, which itself was basedon run ‘ship’s hold’. And this in turn wasborrowed from Middle Dutch ruim ‘space’, arelative of English room. The verb rummage,derived from the noun, was also used for ‘searcha ship’s hold’, which is where the modern notionof ‘rummaging around’ comes from. ROOMrun [14] Run is quite a widespread Germanicverb, represented also by German rennen andSwedish ränna. Its ultimate ancestry is notknown, although links have been suggested withSanskrit rnoti ‘he moves’ and Greek órnūmi‘rouse’. The Old English verb was rinnan; run,which was originally a past form, did not beginto emerge as the infinitive until the early 14thcentury, and it was not common until the 16thcentury. Runnel ‘brook’ [OE] comes from thesame Germanic source, and rennet may berelated. RENNET, RUNNELrune [17] Old English had a word rūn, whichappears originally to have denoted ‘mystery’,and hence ‘carved or written character withmysterious or magical properties’. This had diedout by the end of the Middle Ages, but its OldNorse relative *rún lived on to become modernSwedish runa and Danish rune, and whenantiquarian interest in the ancient runic writingsystem developed in Britain in the 16th century,they were borrowed into English as rune.runnel see RUNrupture see CORRUPTrural [15] Latin rūs denoted ‘the country’ (itcame ultimately from an Indo-Europeanancestor meaning ‘open space’, which alsoproduced English room). Its stem form was rūr-,on which was based the adjective rūrālis, sourceof English rural. A related adjective, this timederived from the nominative form, was rūsticus,which has given English rustic [15], and is alsothe ultimate source (via Old French rustre‘ruffian’) of English roister [16]. ROISTER, ROOM, RUSTICruse [15] Ruse and rush ‘hurry’ are ultimatelythe same word. Both come from Old Frenchruser ‘drive back, detour’. From this was derivedthe noun ruse, which brought the sense ‘detour,deviation’ with it into English. It was used in thecontext of a hunted animal dodging about anddoubling back on its tracks to throw off itspursuers, and this led in the early 17th century tothe emergence of the metaphorical sense ‘trick,stratagem’. The precise origins of Old French431 rutruser are uncertain. It is generally referred toLatin recūsāre ‘refuse’, source of Englishrecusant and possibly of refuse, but it has alsobeen speculated that it came via a Vulgar Latin*rursāre or *rusāre from Latin rursus‘backwards’. RUSHrush English has two words rush. The plantname[OE] goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*rusk-, which also produced German and Dutchrusch, and may be related to Latin restis ‘rush’.Rush ‘hurry’ [14] goes back ultimately to OldFrench ruser ‘drive back, detour’, source ofEnglish ruse. It reached English via Anglo-Norman russher, where until the 17th century itwas used in its original sense ‘drive back,repulse’. The sense ‘hurry’ developed in Anglo-Norman, presumably from some association ofthe sound of the word with ‘hurrying’. RUSErusset [13] Latin russus ‘red’ went backultimately to the prehistoric Indo-European*reudh- ‘red’, which also produced English red.From it was descended Old French rous, whosemodern form roux has given English roux ‘flourand butter mixture’ [19] (it is short for beurreroux ‘browned butter’). This formed the basis ofa diminutive form rousset, which passed intoEnglish via Anglo-Norman russet. Theapplication of the word to a red-skinned varietyof apple dates from the 18th century. RED, ROUXrust [OE] Etymologically, rust means‘reddened’. The word goes back ultimately tothe Indo-European base *reudh- ‘red’ (sourcealso of English red). This produced a prehistoricGermanic noun which has evolved into Germanand Swedish rost, Dutch roest, and English andDanish rust. REDrut The rut of deer [15] and the rut of a wheel [16]are not related. The latter in fact is historicallythe same word as route. Both go back ultimatelyto Vulgar Latin *rupta, which was a noun use ofthe past participle of Latin rumpere ‘break’(source also of English rout and rupture). Theetymological notion underlying it is therefore ofa path that has been ‘broken’ by constant use, a‘beaten track’. It passed into Old French as ruteor rote, and it was this that gave English rut,which originally denoted the ‘track’ made by awheel. The later French form route is the sourceof English route [16]. Routine [17] comes froma French derivative of route.Rut ‘oestrus’ comes via Old French rut fromLatin rugītus, a derivative of rugīre ‘roar’. ROUT, RUPTURE

Ssabbath [OE] The sabbath is etymologically theday of ‘rest’. The word comes ultimately fromHebrew shabbāth, a derivative of shābath ‘rest’.English acquired it via Greek sábbaton andLatin sabbatum. The modern use of the derivedsabbatical [16] for a ‘period away from normalduties’, first recorded in the 19th century,evolved from its original application to the oneyear in seven when, according to ancient Jewishlaw, land had to be left fallow. French samedi‘Saturday’ comes from the same source. SABBATICALsable [14] The sable, an animal like a largeweasel with valuable fur, lives in northernEurope and Asia, and its name reflects where itcomes from – for it is of Slavic origin, related toRussian sóbol’. It came west with the fur trade,and was borrowed into medieval Latin assabellum. From there it made its way intoEnglish via Old French sable.sabotage [20] The etymological ideaunderlying sabotage is of ‘clattering along innoisy shoes’. For its ultimate ancestor is Frenchsabot, a word of unknown origin which means‘clog’. From it was derived saboter ‘walk alongnoisily in clogs’, hence (via the notion of‘clumsiness’) ‘do work badly’, and finally‘destroy tools, machines, etc deliberately’. Thisin turn formed the basis of the noun sabotage,which originally denoted the ‘destruction ofmachinery, etc by factory workers’, butgradually broadened out to include anydeliberate disruptive destruction. Englishacquired it around 1910.sabre [17] Both the sabre and its name are ofeastern European origin. The word comes fromeither Polish szabla or Hungarian száblya. It waswesternized as sabel in German, and in the early17th century it passed in this guise into French,where for reasons that are not altogether clear issoon evolved into sabre – source of the Englishword.sac see SACHETsaccharinsaccharin [19] Medieval Latin saccharum‘sugar’ belonged to the same word-family as theancestor of English sugar. Its originalcontribution to English was the adjectivesaccharine ‘sugary’ [17]; and in the late 1870sthe German chemist Fahlberg used it in coiningthe term saccharin for the new sweeteningsubstance he had invented. English borrowed itin the mid 1880s. SUGARsachet [19] A sachet is etymologically a ‘littlesack’. The word was borrowed from Frenchsachet, a diminutive form of sac ‘bag’, whichcame from the same Latin source that producedEnglish sack. Sac itself was acquired by Englishas a biological term in the 18th century. SACKsack English has three separate words sack, oneof them now a historical relic and the other twoultimately related. Sack ‘large bag’ [OE] wasborrowed from Latin saccus (source also ofEnglish sac, sachet, and satchel). This in turncame from Greek sákkos ‘rough cloth used forpacking’, which was of Semitic origin (Hebrewhas saq meaning both ‘sack’ and ‘sackcloth’).The colloquial sense ‘dismissal from work’ (asin get the sack) arose in the early 19th century,perhaps from the notion of a dismissed workergoing away with his tools or clothing in his bag.Sack ‘plunder’ [16] came via French sac fromsacco ‘bag’, the Italian descendant of Latinsaccus. This was used in expressions likemettere a sacco, literally ‘put in a bag’, whichdenoted figuratively ‘plunder, pillage’ (no doubtinspired by the notion of ‘putting one’s loot in abag’).Sack ‘sherry-like wine’ [16] (Sir JohnFalstaff’s favourite tipple) was an alteration ofseck. This was short for wine sec, a partialtranslation of French vin sec ‘dry wine’ (Frenchsec came from Latin siccus ‘dry’, source ofEnglish desiccate [16]). SAC, SACHET, SATCHEL; DESICCATE, SECsacred [14] Sacred is one of a wide range ofEnglish words that go back to Latin sacer‘sacred, holy’ (which itself came from the samebase that produced Latin sancīre ‘consecrate’,source of English saint, sanctuary, etc). Many ofthem come via the derived verb sacrāre‘consecrate’. These include consecrate [15],execrate [16], sacrament [12], and sacred itself,which was originally the past participle of thenow obsolete verb sacre ‘consecrate’, adescendant via Old French sacrer of Latinsacrāre. Amongst other relatives are sacerdotal[14] (from Latin sacerdōs ‘priest’, a derivative ofthe same base as sacer), sacrifice [13] (from aLatin compound meaning ‘make holy’),sacrilege [13] (from a Latin compound meaning‘steal holy things’), sacristan and its moreheavily disguised relative sexton, sacrosanct[17] (etymologically ‘consecrated with religiousceremonies’), and sacrum ‘bottom section of thespine’ [18] (short for medieval Latin os sacrum‘holy bone’, which was a direct translation ofGreek hieron ostéon, an allusion to the use of thebone in sacrificial ceremonies). CONSECRATE, EXECRATE, SACRAMENT,

SACRIFICE, SACRISTAN, SAINT, SANCTUARY,SEXTONsad [OE] Originally, to feel sad was to feel thatone had had ‘enough’. For the word comesultimately from the same Indo-European basethat produced English satisfy and saturate. Bythe time it reached English (via a prehistoricGermanic *sathaz) ‘enough’ had alreadybecome extended to ‘weary’, and the modernsense ‘unhappy’ emerged in the 14th century.The original notion of ‘sufficiency’ has now diedout in the case of sad, but it survives in the caseof sated [17], an alteration (probably under theinfluence of satiate) of the past participle of anearlier verb sade ‘satiate’, which was derivedfrom sad. SATED, SATIATE, SATISFY, SATURATEsaddle [OE] Saddle comes from a prehistoricGermanic *sathulaz, which also producedGerman sattel, Dutch zadel, and Swedish sadel.Etymologically it no doubt signifies somethingto ‘sit’ on, hailing ultimately from the Indo-European base *sed- ‘sit’, from which Englishgets sit. SITsadist [19] The terms sadist and sadismcommemorate the so-called Marquis de Sade (infact he was a count), the French writer who livedbetween 1740 and 1815. Towards the end of the18th century he produced several pornographicnovels, whose theme of sexual gratificationthrough (among other things) the inflicting ofpain led in the late 19th century to the use of hisname by psychiatrists to describe suchbehaviour. By the 1930s sadism had become ageneral term for ‘gratuitous cruelty’.safe [13] Like save, and indeed salvage andsalvation, safe comes from Latin salvus‘uninjured’. It reached English via Old Frenchsauf. Salvus itself went back to a prehistoricIndo-European *solwos ‘whole’, which camefrom the same base that produced Englishsoldier, solemn, and solid. The noun safe‘strongbox’ [15] was originally save, aderivative of the verb, but by the late 17thcentury it had, under the influence of theadjective, become safe. The plant-name sage[14] comes via Old French sauge from Latinsalvia, etymologically the ‘healing’ plant, aderivative of salvus (English acquired salviaitself in the 19th century). SAGE, SALUTE, SALVAGE, SALVATION, SALVIA,SAVE, SOLDIER, SOLEMN, SOLIDsaffron [13] Saffron brought its name with italong the spice route from the Middle East. Itcomes from Arabic za‘farān, a word of unknownorigin, and reached English via medieval Latinsafranum and Old French safran. The town ofSaffron Walden in Essex is so named from itsonce thriving saffron-growing industry.sag [15] There are several Scandinavian verbsthat bear a strong resemblance to sag, includingSwedish sacka and Danish sakke, and it seemslikely that one of these was borrowed intoMiddle Low German as sacken ‘settle, subside’,433 saladand subsequently found its way into English assag (whose original meaning was ‘subside’)saga see SAWsagacious see SEEKsage see SAFEsago [16] Sago is of Malay origin. ThePortuguese were responsible for introducing theMalay term sāgū to English, as sagu; the modernform sago, which became established during the17th and 18th centuries, came via Dutch.sail [OE] Sail has numerous relatives in the otherGermanic languages, among them German andSwedish segel, Dutch zeil, and Danish sejl.These all come from a prehistoric Germanic*seglam, which some have traced back to anIndo-European *seklom. This was presumablyformed from the same Indo-European base(*sek- ‘cut’) that produced English dissect, saw,segment, etc, and so sail may signifyetymologically a piece of ‘cut’ cloth. DISSECT, SAW, SEGMENTsaint [OE] Latin sancīre meant ‘consecrate’ (itwas formed from the same base as producedsacer ‘holy’, source of English sacred, sacrifice,etc). Its past participle was sanctus. This came tobe used as an adjective meaning ‘holy, sacred’,and in due course as a noun too, ‘holy person’.English originally borrowed it direct from Latin,as sanct, but this was superseded in the 12thcentury by saint, acquired via Old French. OtherEnglish words based on the Latin stem sanctincludesanction, sanctity, etc, and saunter maybe related to saint. SACREDsake English has two nouns sake. The older, nowused only in the expression for the sake of, wasoriginally an independent fully-fledged noun,with a range of meanings including ‘strife’,‘guilt’, and ‘lawsuit’ [OE]. Its use in for the sakeof, which emerged in the 13th century, probablyarose out of its legal usage, and thus denotedoriginally ‘on behalf of a litigant’s case in alawsuit’. The word itself came from a prehistoricGermanic *sakō ‘affair, thing, charge,accusation’, which also produced German sache‘affair, subject, lawsuit’. It is also represented inEnglish forsake [OE], which etymologicallymeans ‘accuse, quarrel with’, hence ‘decline’,and finally ‘give up’; keepsake [18],etymologically something that is kept for the‘sake’ of the giver; and namesake [17], whichprobably arose from the notion of two peoplebeing linked or associated for the ‘sake’ of theirnames. Seek is a distant relation.Sake, or saki, ‘rice wine’ [17] was borrowedfrom Japanese, where it literally means‘alcohol’. FORSAKE, KEEPSAKE, NAMESAKE, SEEK, SEIZEsalacious see SALIENTsalad [15] Etymologically, a salad is a ‘salted’dish. The word comes via Old French saladefrom Vulgar Latin *salāta, a noun use of thefeminine past participle of Latin *salāre ‘put salton to, treat with salt’. This is turn was aderivative of sāl ‘salt’, a relative of English salt.The Romans were fond of dishes of assorted raw

salary 434vegetables with a dressing, and this oftenconsisted of brine – hence the name, which isshort for herba salāta ‘salted vegetables’. SALTsalary [14] Salary goes back to a Latin word thatoriginally denoted an ‘allowance given toRoman soldiers for buying salt’ (salt being informer times a valued commodity, over whichwars were fought, rather than taken for grantedas it is today). This was salārium, a derivative ofsāl ‘salt’. It soon broadened out to mean ‘fixedperiodic payment for work done’, and passed inthis sense via Anglo-Norman salarie intoEnglish. SALTsale [11] Sale was borrowed from Old Norsesala. This came from the same prehistoricGermanic base, *sal-, that produced Englishsell. The word’s specific application to the‘selling of goods at lower-than-normal prices’did not emerge until the 1860s. SELLsalient [16] Salient is one of a large number ofEnglish words that go back ultimately to Latinsalīre ‘jump’. Others include assail, assault,desultory, insult, sally, sauté, and also salacious[17], which goes back to Latin salāx ‘given toleaping on to females in order to copulate’, aderivative of salīre. Salient itself comes from thepresent participle saliēns, and was originallyused as a heraldic term, meaning ‘jumping’; themetaphorical ‘prominent’ did not emerge untilthe 18th century. ASSAIL, ASSAULT, DESULTORY, INSULT, RESULT,SALACIOUS, SALLY, SAUTÉsallow [OE] English has two distinct wordssallow. The adjective goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *salwa-, which was also borrowedinto French as sale ‘dirty’. The underlyingmeaning appears to be ‘dark-coloured’. Its onlysurviving relative among the mainstreamGermanic languages is Icelandic sölr ‘yellow’.Sallow ‘willow’ comes from a prehistoricGermanic *salkhaz, which also produced Frenchsaule ‘willow’ and was distantly related to Latinsalix ‘willow’.sally [16] To sally is etymologically to ‘jump’.For the word comes ultimately from Latin salīre‘jump’, source also of English assail, insult,salient, etc. It passed into Old French as salir,which later became saillir. From this wasderived a noun saillie ‘jump’, hence ‘suddenbreaking out from a defended position to attack’,which English took over and soon turned into averb. (The name Sally, incidentally, is analteration of Sarah, by the same phoneticprocess that produced Del, Hal, Moll, and Telfrom Derek, Harry, Mary, and Terence.) SALIENTsalmon [13] The ancestral Indo-European wordfor ‘salmon’ is lax. It survives in numerousmodern European languages, including Germanlachs, Swedish lax (whence English gravlax),Yiddish laks (source of English lox ‘smokedsalmon’), and Russian losos’. The Old Englishmember of the family was læx, but in the 13thcentury this was replaced by salmon, aborrowing from Anglo-Norman saumoun. Thisin turn went back to Latin salmō, which somehave linked with salīre ‘jump’ (source of Englishassail, insult, salient, etc) – hence the ‘leaping’fish.saloon [18] Saloon is part of a widespreadwestern European family of words for ‘largeroom’. They go back to a prehistoric Germanic*salaz, ancestor of German saal. This wasborrowed into Vulgar Latin as *sala, whosedescendants include French salle and Italiansala. A derivative of this, denoting ‘large size’,was salone, which was borrowed into French assalon. English acquired this at the beginning ofthe 18th century in two forms: the original salonand the anglicized saloon.salt [OE] Salt was a key element in the diet of ourIndo-European ancestors, and their word for it,*sal-, is the source of virtually all the modernEuropean terms, including Russian sol’, Polishsól, Serbo-Croat so, Irish salann, and Welshhalen. Greek háls has given English halogen[19]. And Latin sāl, besides evolving into Frenchsel, Italian sale, Spanish sal, and Romanian sare,has contributed an enormous range ofvocabulary to English, including salad, salary,saline [15], salsa, sauce, saucer, and sausage. ItsGermanic descendant was *salt-, which hasproduced Swedish, Danish, and English salt andDutch zout, and also lies behind English silt andsouse. HALOGEN, SALAD, SALARY, SALINE, SALSA,SAUCE, SAUCER, SAUSAGE, SILT, SOUSEsaltcellar [15] Saltcellar is a tautology – foretymologically it means ‘saltcellar for salt’. Itssecond element has no connection withunderground rooms. Its spelling merelydisguises its origins, which are in Anglo-Norman *saler ‘saltcellar’, a derivativeultimately of Latin sāl ‘salt’. This was adoptedinto English in the 14th century as saler, laterseler, but when its etymological links with saltbegan to fade from people’s awareness, salt wastacked on to the front to reinforce the meaning,and when they disappeared altogether in the 16thcentury the spelling became assimilated to thatof the similar-sounding cellar.saltpetre see PETROLsalute [14] Salute goes back ultimately to theLatin noun salūs, a relative of salvus ‘safe,healthy’ (source of English safe and save). Thishad two main strands of meaning. The primaryone was ‘health, well-being’, and in that sense itlies behind English salubrious [16] and salutary[15]. But by extension it also denoted a ‘wish forsomeone’s well-being’, hence a ‘greeting’, and itis this that has given English, via its derived verbsalūtāre ‘greet’, salute. SAFE, SALUBRIOUS, SAVEsalvage [17] The salvage of a ship isetymologically simply a payment made for‘saving’ it. The word comes via Old Frenchsalvage from medieval Latin salvāgium, aderivative of late Latin salvāre ‘save’ (source ofEnglish save). The use of English salvage as a

verb is a comparatively recent development,dating from the 1880s. SAVEsalvation see SAVEsalve [OE] The central semantic element ofmodern English salve is ‘healing’, but itsunderlying etymological meaning is ‘oilysubstance’. It goes back to a prehistoric WestGermanic *salbō, which had relatives in Greekélpos ‘oil’ and Sanskrit srpras ‘greasy’. TheGermanic from has evolved into German salbeand Dutch zalf as well as English salve.salver [17] The word salver recalls the ancientpractice of paranoid monarchs employing aspecial servant to taste their food before it wascommitted to the royal mouth, in case it waspoisoned. The Spanish term for this was salva, aderivative of the verb salvar ‘save’, hence ‘makesafe, try something out to make sure it is safe’,which in turn was descended from Latin salvāre‘save’ (source of English save). By extension theSpanish noun came to be used for a tray onwhich the tested food was presented to the king,and it passed into French as salve. When Englishadopted it, the ending -er was added, perhaps onthe model of platter. SAVEsalvia see SAFEsalvo [16] When English originally acquired theword salvo, it was in the forms salve or salva,which came respectively from French salve andits source, Italian salva. This originally meant‘salute, greeting’ (it came from salvē ‘hail’, theimperative form of Latin salvēre ‘be in goodhealth’, which is related to English safe,salubrious, salute, save, etc). Importantpersonages being greeted with a volley ofgunfire, salva soon came to be used for such adischarge of guns (the related English salute hasdeveloped along the same lines – as in a ‘21-gunsalute’). The form salvo, which emerged in the17th century, is an alteration of salva. SAFE, SALUTE, SAVEsame [12] Same comes ultimately from Indo-European *somós ‘same’. This also producedGreek homós ‘same’ (source of the Englishprefix homo-, as in homosexual), and was avariant of the base that gave Latin similis‘similar’ (source of English similar andsimulate), Latin simul ‘at the same time’ (sourceof English assemble and simultaneous), Latinsimplus ‘simple’ (source of English simple).Latin singulus ‘single’ (source of English singleand singular), and English seem and some. TheIndo-European adjective passed into prehistoricGermanic as *samaz, which in due courseevolved into Old Norse same. The Vikingsbrought the word with them to England, where itgradually replaced the native terms for ‘same’,ilk and self.sample see EXAMPLEsanatorium see SANEsanctity [14] Latin sanctus ‘holy’ (source ofEnglish saint) originated as the past participle ofsancīre ‘consecrate’, a verb derived from thesame base that produced sacer ‘sacred’ (source435 sapof English sacred, sacrifice, etc). Amongst itsderivatives to have reached English are sanctify[14], sanctimonious [17], sanctity, sanctuary[14], and sanctum [16]. And its stem sanctformedthe basis of the Latin noun sanctiō‘ordaining of something as sacred or inviolable’,hence more broadly a ‘decree, sanction’, fromwhich English gets sanction [16]. SACRED, SAINTsand [OE] Sand is a widespread Germanic word,shared by German, Swedish, and Danish (Dutchhas zand). Its prehistoric source was *sandam,which went back to an Indo-European *samdam.This also produced Latin sabulum ‘sand’, whichevolved into French sable and Italian sabbia‘sand’. It probably came ultimately from a basewhich signified ‘grind, crush’.sandal [14] English acquired sandal from Latinsandalium. This is turn was borrowed fromGreek sandálion, a diminutive form of sándalon‘wooden shoe’, which probably came from awestern Asian language. It has no connectionwith the sandal- of sandalwood [16], whichcame via medieval Latin sandalum and Greeksántalon or sándanon from Sanskrit candanah.sandwich [18] John Montagu, the fourth Earl ofSandwich (1718–92), is said to have been soaddicted to the gambling table that in order tosustain him through an entire 24-hour sessionuninterrupted, he had a portable meal of coldbeef between slices of toast brought to him. Thebasic idea was nothing new, of course, but theEarl’s patronage ensured it a vogue, and by theearly 1760s we have the first evidence of hisname being attached to it: the historian EdwardGibbon in 1762 recorded in his diary how hedined at the Cocoa Tree and saw ‘twenty orthirty of the best men in the kingdom … suppingat little tables … upon a bit of cold meat, or aSandwich’.sane [17] Latin sānus, a word of uncertainorigin, meant ‘healthy’ – a connotationperpetuated in its derivative sanatorium ‘sickroom’[19]. Its use with reference to mentalrather than physical health (as in the Latin tagmēns sāna in corpore sāno ‘a healthy mind in ahealthy body’) led to its adoption in English for‘of sound mind, not mad’. SANATORIUM, SANITARYsap English has three distinct words sap. Theoldest, ‘plant-juice’ [OE], goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *sappam, which alsoproduced German saft ‘juice’. This in turn was adescendant of Indo-European *sapon-, fromwhich came Latin sapa ‘new wine’. Sap‘undermine’ [16] was borrowed via Frenchsaper from Italian zappare, which may havebeen ultimately of Arabic origin. Its originalliteral sense ‘dig a trench or tunnel underneath inorder to attack’ has now been largely supersededby the metaphorical ‘weaken’, which has beenheavily influenced by sap ‘plant-juice’ (from thenotion of ‘draining sap from a plant’). Thecolloquial sap ‘fool’ [19] may be short for anearlier sapskull, a compound formed from sap in

sapient 436the now seldom heard sense ‘sapwood’ – hence‘wooden head’.sapient [15] Like English taste, Latin saperecombined the notions of ‘appreciating flavour’and ‘fine discrimination’, and hence meant both‘taste’ and ‘be wise’. In the former sense it hasgiven English savour and savoury, while thelatter has fed through into English in its presentparticipial form as sapient. It is also the source ofSpanish saber ‘know’, which via a West Africanpidgin has given English the slang term savvy‘understand’ [18], and French savoir ‘know’, asin English savoir-faire [19]. SAVOUR, SAVOURYsapphire [13] Sapphire can be traced backthrough Old French safir and Latin sapphīrus toGreek sáppheiros (which seems to have denoted‘lapis lazuli’, another blue stone), but beyondthat its origins are uncertain. It may have beenacquired via a Semitic language (Hebrew hassappir), but it has been suggested that itsultimate source could be Sanskrit sanipriya,which stood for a type of dark-coloured preciousstone. It meant literally ‘precious to the planetSaturn’, and was a compound of Sani ‘Saturn’and priya ‘precious’.Saracen [13] The Saracens were etymologically‘people of the sunrise’ – hence ‘easterners’. Theword comes via Old French Saracin and lateLatin saracēnus from Greek Sarakēnós, whichwas probably adapted from Arabic sharqī‘eastern’. This was a derivative of sharq‘sunrise’. Sarsen [17] stones, large isolatedboulders found in southern England, wereprobably named from some fanciful associationwith Saracens.sarcasm [16] A sarcastic remark isetymologically one which involves the ‘rendingof flesh’. Greek sárx meant ‘flesh’ (it has givenEnglish sarcoma [17] and sarcophagus), and itformed the basis of a verb sarkázein ‘tear theflesh’, hence ‘bite one’s lip, gnash one’s teeth’,and by further extension ‘make a cuttingremark’. This gave rise to the late Greekderivative sarkasmós, which passed into Englishvia late Latin sarcasmos and French sarcasme. SARCOMA, SARCOPHAGUSsarcophagus [17] A sarcophagus isetymologically a ‘flesh-eater’: the word comesvia Latin sarcophagus from Greek sarkophágos,a compound formed from sárx ‘flesh’ (source ofEnglish sarcasm) and -phágos ‘eating’. Thisoriginated as the term for a particular type oflimestone that in the ancient world was used formaking coffins, since bodies buried in themquickly decomposed. By extension it came to beused for the coffins themselves. SARCASMsardonic [17] The Greek word for ‘scornful,mocking’ was sardánios, but this came to bechanged to sardónios, which literally meant‘Sardinian’, through association with the Latinterm herba Sardonia ‘Sardinian plant’, the nameof a sort of plant which when eaten caused facialcontortions that resembled a scornful grin.English acquired the word via Latin sardoniusand French sardonique. The sardine [15]probably gets its name from Sardinia too. SARDINEsarsen see SARACENsash The sash you wear [16] and the sash thatgoes in a window [17] are distinct words. Theformer comes from Arabic shāsh ‘turban’, andthat is exactly how English first acquired it: ‘Allof them wear on their heads white shashes andturbans, the badge of their religion’, GeorgeSandys, Travels 1615. But the Arabic word alsodenoted a strip of muslin or other material fromwhich such turbans were constructed, and it isthat application that led towards the end of the17th century to the current sense of the Englishword. The altered form sash appeared around thesame time. Sash ‘window-frame’ was originallychassis, an early borrowing of French chassis‘frame’ (it was acquired again in the sense‘frame of a carriage’ in the 19th century). Thisevolved to shashes, and in due course came to beregarded as a plural form, so a new singular sashemerged. French chassis itself goes backultimately to Latin capsa ‘box’, source ofEnglish capsule, case, etc. CAPSULE, CASE, CHASSISsassenach [18] Sassenach, the Gaelic name forthe English, etymologically means ‘Saxon’. Itsultimate source is probably Saxonēs, the Latinversion of Seaxe, which was the Old Englishterm for the Saxon people. The Celts of Scotlandtook this over as Sasunnoch, the Irish asSasanach, and the Welsh as Seisnig. The Englishform of the word appears to have beenestablished by Sir Walter Scott in the early 19thcentury. SAXONsatchel [14] A satchel is etymologically a ‘smallsack’ or bag. The word comes via Old Frenchsachel from Latin saccellus, a diminutive formof saccus ‘bag’ (source of English sack). Itsspecific application to a ‘bag for carrying schoolbooks’ emerged in the mid 16th century, and isreflected by Shakespeare in Jaques’s ‘Seven agesof man’ speech in As You Like It 1600: ‘And thenthe whining schoolboy, with his satchel andshining morning face, creeping like snailunwillingly to school’. SACHET, SACKsated see SADsateen see SATINsatellitesatellite [16] Satellite comes via French satellitefrom Latin satelles ‘attendant, escort’, whichitself probably went back to Etruscan satnal. Itsuse for a ‘body orbiting a planet’ is first recordedin English in 1665, and comes from theastronomer Johannes Kepler’s application ofLatin satelles to the moons of Jupiter.satiate [16] Like satisfy, satiate comes fromLatin satis ‘enough’, a descendant of the sameIndo-European base that produced English sadand sated. Satis formed the basis of a verbsatiāre ‘give enough or too much’, which wasoriginally taken over by English in the former ofthese senses, virtually the equivalent of satisfy,but since the 17th century this has been

gradually pushed aside by the more opprobrious‘give too much, surfeit’. From the same sourcecome satiable [16] and satiety [16]. SAD, SATED, SATISFYsatin [14] Like many other fabric names, satinbetrays the fabric’s place of origin, althoughonly after a little digging. It comes via OldFrench satin from Arabic zaitūnī, which denoted‘of Zaitun’ – and Zaitun was the Arabicrendering of Tseutung, the former name of a port(now Tsinkiang) in southern China from whichsatin was exported. Sateen [19] is an alteration ofsatin, on the model of velveteen.satire [16] A satire is etymologically a ‘versemedley’, an ‘assortment of pieces on varioussubjects’. The word comes via Old French satirefrom Latin satira ‘mixture’, an alteration of anearlier satura. This is said to have been derivedfrom satus ‘full’ (a relative of satis ‘enough’,source of English satisfy), and the link in thesemantic chain from ‘full’ to ‘mixture’ is‘plateful of assorted fruit’, the earliest recordedmeaning of satura. By classical times, Latinsatira had moved on from being a generalliterary miscellany to its now familiar role as a‘literary work ridiculing or denouncing people’sfollies or vices’. The word has no etymologicalconnection, incidentally, with satyr ‘Greekwoodland god’ [14], which comes ultimatelyfrom Greek sáturos, a word of unknown origin.satisfy [15] Etymologically, satisfy means‘make enough’. It comes, via Old Frenchsatisfier, from Latin satisfacere ‘satisfy,content’, a compound verb formed from satis‘enough’ (a relative of English sad, sated, andsaturate, and source of English satiate). Thederived noun satisfaction reached English wellover a century before the verb, in the specializedecclesiastical sense ‘performance of penance’. SAD, SATED, SATIATE, SATURATEsaturate [16] Latin satur meant ‘full’, and inparticular ‘full of food, full up’ (it was a relativeof satis ‘enough’, source of English satiate andsatisfy). From it was formed a verb saturāre ‘fill,glut, surfeit’, whose past participle has givenEnglish saturate. At first this was used as asynonym of satisfy or satiate (‘so to saturatetheir insatiable hunger’, Thomas Bell, Survey ofPopery 1596), and the modern sense ‘soak’ didnot emerge fully until the mid 18th century. SAD, SATED, SATISFYSaturday [OE] Saturday is etymologically‘Saturn’s day’. Old English Sæterdæg was shortfor Sæternes dæg, a translation of Latin Sāturnīdiēs ‘Saturn’s day’. Saturn [OE] itself, as thename of both the god and the planet, comes fromLatin Sāturnus, which may have been ofEtruscan origin. In ancient Rome, the festivalheld in honour of Saturn, which took place inDecember, was the occasion for fairlyuninhibited revelry. It was called the Sāturnālia,which English acquired as saturnalia [16].Those born under Saturn, by contrast, wereconsidered by ancient and medieval astrologers437 savageto be of gloomy temperament – hence theadjective saturnine [15]. SATURN, SATURNALIA, SATURNINEsauce [14] Sauce is one of a range of Englishwords (others include salad, salary, andsausage) that go back ultimately to Latin sāl‘salt’ (a relative of English salt). From it wasformed the adjective salsus ‘salted’, whosefeminine form salsa was used in Vulgar Latin fora ‘brine dressing or pickle’. This later evolvedinto Italian and Spanish salsa ‘sauce’ (the latteradopted into English as salsa [20]) and Frenchsauce, from which English gets sauce. Thederivative saucy ‘cheeky’ no doubt arose fromthe ‘piquancy’ or ‘tartness’ of sauces.Saucer [14] originally meant ‘sauceboat’,and was borrowed from Old French saussier, aderivative of sauce. The modern application to a‘dish for a cup’ did not evolve until the 18thcentury. SALT, SAUCERsaunter [15] Saunter’s modern connotations of‘walking’ did not emerge until the 17th century,but it is presumably the same word as MiddleEnglish santer ‘muse’. The origins of this,however, are largely a matter of speculation. Onetheory is that it is connected with the 15thcenturyterm sawnterell ‘pretended saint,sanctimonious person’, the notion being thatthose who affect piety go around with a farawaymystical musing air. Sawnterell in turn wasprobably a derivative of saint. SAINTsausage [15] A sausage is etymologically adish made by ‘salting’. The word comes via OldNorthern French saussiche from late Latinsalsīcia, a noun use of the neuter plural ofsalsīcius ‘made by salting’. This in turn wasbased on Latin salsus ‘salted’, a derivative of sāl‘salt’. The earliest record of the use of sausagedog for ‘dachshund’ (an allusion to itscylindrical shape, and also perhaps to theGermans’ supposed liking for sausages) datesfrom the late 1930s. SALTsauté [19] If you sauté something, you areetymologically making it ‘jump’. The wordcomes from the past participle of French sauter‘jump’, a descendant of Latin saltāre ‘jump’.This in turn was derived from salīre ‘jump’,which has given English assail, insult, salacious,salient, etc. In the cookery sense sauter is usedcausatively, to ‘make something jump’, hence to‘toss’ it in a frying pan. ASSAULT, INSULT, RESULT, SALACIOUS, SALIENTsavage [13] A savage is etymologicallysomeone who comes from the ‘woods’ –woodlands being anciently viewed as places ofuntamed nature, beyond the pale of civilizedhuman society. The word comes via Old Frenchsauvage from Vulgar Latin *salvāticus, analteration of Latin silvāticus ‘of the woods,wild’. This was a derivative of silva ‘woods,forest’ (source of English sylvan [16]), a word ofuncertain origin. SYLVAN

save 438save English has two distinct words save, whichcome from the same ultimate source, but haveentered the language along very different routes.That source was Latin salvus ‘unharmed’,ancestor of English safe. Its ablative form salvōwas used as a virtual preposition, in the sense‘without injury to, without prejudice to’, hence‘except’, and this passed into English via OldFrench sauf as the preposition and conjunctionsave [13]. The verb save [13] goes back viaAnglo-Norman sauver to late Latin salvāre(source also of English salvage, salver, andsalvation [13]), which in turn was derived fromsalvus. The derivative saviour [13] comes viaOld French sauveour from late Latin salvātor. SAFE, SAGE, SALVATION, SAVIOURsaveloy [19] Saveloy ‘spicy sausage’ isetymologically a sausage made from ‘brains’.The word is an anglicization of early modernFrench cervelat, which in turn was borrowedfrom Italian cervellata, a diminutive form ofcervello ‘brains’. This was a descendant of Latincerebellum (acquired by English in the 16thcentury), itself a diminutive of cerebrum ‘brain’(source of English cerebral [19]). And cerebrumis distantly related to Swedish hjarna andDanish hjerne ‘brain’, all three going backultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European basemeaning ‘head’. CEREBRALsaviour see SAVEsavoir-faire see SAPIENTsavour [13] Latin sapere meant both ‘taste’ and‘be wise’. In the latter sense it has given Englishsapient, but the former only was preserved in itsderived noun sapor ‘taste’. This found its wayinto English via Old French savour. Thederivative savoury [13] originally meant‘pleasant-tasting’. Its modern use, contrastedwith sweet, dates from the 17th century. SAPIENTsavvy see SAPIENTsaw Not counting the past tense of see, Englishhas two words saw. The one meaning ‘toothedcutting tool’ [OE] comes from a prehistoricGermanic *sagō, a close relative of whichproduced German säge ‘saw’. This in turn wasdescended from an Indo-European base *sak-,*sek- ‘cut’, which also lies behind Englishsection, segment, sickle, etc. The now seldomheard saw ‘saying, adage’ [OE] comes from adifferent prehistoric Germanic *sagō, which wasderived from the verb *sagjan ‘say’ (ancestor ofEnglish say) and also produced Old Norse saga‘narrative’ (source of English saga [18]). SECTION, SEGMENT, SICKLE; SAGA, SAYsaxifrage [15] The saxifrage is etymologicallythe ‘stone-breaker’. The word comes via OldFrench saxifrage from late Latin saxifraga, acompound formed from Latin saxum ‘rock’ andfrag-, the stem of frangere ‘break’ (source ofEnglish fraction, fracture, etc). The name is anallusion to the fact that the plant grows increvices in rock, and so gives the impression ofsplitting the rock. FRACTION, FRACTURE, FRAGMENTsaxophone [19] The saxophonecommemorates the name of its inventor, theBelgian musical instrument maker Adolphe Sax(1814–94) (his real Christian names wereAntoine Joseph). He seems to have devised itaround 1840, and the term saxophone firstappeared in English in 1851, in the catalogue ofthe Great Exhibition. His father Charles JosephSax (1791–1865) was also an instrument maker,and similarly had an instrument of his inventionnamed after him – the saxhorn [19].say [OE] Say is part of a widespread Germanicfamily of ‘say’-verbs, which also containsGerman sagen, Dutch zeggen, Swedish säga,and Danish sige. These point back to a commonGermanic ancestor *sagjan, which wasdescended from the Indo-European base *seq-.This originally signified ‘point out’, but evolvedto ‘say’, and it also lies behind Lithuanian sakýti,Latvian sacīt, Welsh eb, and Latin inquit, all ofwhich mean ‘say’. SAGA, SAWscab [13] Old English had a word sceabb ‘scab’.This survived into modern English as shab, adialectal synonym of scab, but it is onlyrepresented in the mainstream language by itsderivative shabby. It is its Old Norse relativeskabbr, borrowed in the 13th century as scab,which has become the general English term for a‘crust over a wound’. The derogatory sense‘strike-breaker’ emerged in the 19th centuryfrom an earlier, 16th-century ‘despicableperson’. The word comes ultimately from theGermanic base *skab- ‘scratch, shave’ (sourcealso of English shave [OE]), which wasdescended from the same Indo-European basethat produced Latin scabiēs ‘itch’ (source ofEnglish scabies [14], scabious [14] – a plant socalled because it was supposed to cure skindiseases – and scabrous [17]). SCABIES, SHABBY, SHAVEscabbard [13] English acquired scabbard fromAnglo-Norman escaubers. This appears to havebeen a compound formed from Old HighGerman scār, which usually meant ‘scissors’ butwas also used for ‘sword’ (it came from the samebase that produced English shear), and theelement -berc ‘protection’ (as in hauberk [13],which etymologically means ‘neck-protection’),which was derived from bergan ‘protect’ (arelative of English borough, borrow, bury, etc).So essentially, a scabbard is ‘sword-protection’. BOROUGH, BORROW, BURY, SHARE, SHEAR,SHIRT, SHORT, SKIRTscabies see SCABscabrous see SCABscaffold [14] Historically, scaffold andcatafalque [17] ‘coffin-stand’ are virtually thesame word. Catafalque comes via Frenchcatafalque and Italian catafalco from VulgarLatin *catafalcum, a word of uncertain origin.Combination with the prefix ex- produced*excatafalcum, which passed into English viaOld French eschaffaut and Anglo-Norman*scaffaut. The word originally denoted any sortof platform, and did not narrow down to

‘platform for executions’ until the 16th century.The derivative scaffolding, a term whichoriginally alluded to the platforms set up arounda building rather than to poles supporting them,also dates from the 14th century. CATAFALQUEscald [13] Scald comes ultimately from Latincalidus ‘hot’ (source also of English cauldronand chowder and related to calorie andnonchalant). From it was derived the verbexcaldāre ‘wash in hot water’, which passed intoEnglish via Anglo-Norman escalder as scald. CALORIE, CAULDRON, CHOWDER, NONCHALANTscale English has three separate words scale.The oldest, ‘pan of a balance’ [13], wasborrowed from Old Norse skál ‘bowl, drinkingcup’ (ancestor of Swedish skåal, from whichEnglish gets the toast skol [16]). This wasdescended from a Germanic base *skal-, *skel-,*skul-, denoting ‘split, divide, peel’, which alsoproduced English scalp, shell, shelter, shield,skill, probably skull, and also scale ‘externalplate on fish, etc’ [14]. This second scale wasborrowed from Old French escale, which itselfwas acquired from prehistoric Germanic *skalō– another derivative of *skal-. Its modernGerman descendant, schale, is the probablesource of English shale [18]. The third scale,which originally meant ‘ladder’ [15], came fromLatin scāla ‘ladder’, a descendant of the samebase as Latin scandere ‘climb’, from whichEnglish gets ascend, descend, scan, and scandal.(In modern French scāla has evolved to échelle,whose derivative échelon has given Englishechelon [18].) The modern meanings of theword, variations on the theme ‘system ofgraduations used for measuring’, aremetaphorical extensions of the original ‘ladder,steps’. Its use as a verb, meaning ‘climb’, goesback to the medieval Latin derivative scālāre. SCALP, SHELL, SHELTER, SHIELD, SKILL, SKOL,SKULL; SHALE; ASCEND, DESCEND, ECHELON,SCAN, SCANDALscallion see SHALLOTscalp [13] Scalp originally meant ‘top of thehead, cranium’; it was not used for the ‘skin ontop of the head’ until the 17th century. It is notaltogether clear where the word came from, butits resemblance to Old Norse skálpr ‘sheath,shell’ and the fact that it first appeared inScotland and the north of England suggest that itwas borrowed from a Scandinavian language. Itsultimate ancestor was no doubt the Germanicbase *skal-, *skel-, *skul-, source also of Englishshell and probably skull. SCALE, SHELL, SKULLscalpel see SCULPTUREscan [14] Latin scandere meant ‘climb’ (it hasgiven English ascend and descend). In the postclassicalperiod it was used metaphorically for‘analyse the rising and falling rhythm of poetry’,and it was in this sense that it passed into Englishas scan. It was broadened out semantically to‘examine’ in the 16th century, and to ‘look atwidely’ in the 18th century. The Latin past439 scarletparticiple scansus formed the basis of the nounscansiō, from which English gets scansion [17]. ASCEND, DESCEND, SCANDALscandal [16] Greek skándalon originally meantliterally ‘trap’ (it came from prehistoric Indo-European *skand- ‘jump’, which also producedLatin scandere ‘climb’, source of Englishascend, descend, and scan). It was extendedmetaphorically to ‘snare for the unwary,stumbling block’, and passed into late Latin asscandalum, which was used for ‘cause ofoffence’. It came down to Old French asescandle, which was not only the source of ashort-lived Middle English scandle, but also liesbehind English slander. It was the later Frenchform scandale that gave English scandal. ASCEND, DESCEND, SCAN, SLANDERscapegoat [16] In biblical times the ritual ofYom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement,included a ceremony involving two goats: onewas sacrificed to God, and the other was sent offinto the wilderness as the symbolic bearer of thepeople’s sins. This second goat was termed‘azāzēl. That appears to have been a propername, said in Jewish tradition to be that of ademon to whom the goat was sent, and may belinked with Aziz, the name of a Canaanite god.Later commentators, however, interpreted it asequivalent to Hebrew ‘ēz ōzēl, which means‘goat that departs’. In the Latin of the Vulgate,that was rendered as caper emissarius (whencethe French expression bouc émissaire, literally‘goat sent forth’), and William Tindale, in his1530 translation of the Bible, expressed it asscapegoat (the first part, scape, is a shortenedform of escape). The modern metaphoricalapplication to someone who takes the blame forothers’ faults dates from the early 19th century.scarce [13] Scarce comes via Anglo-Normanscars, earlier escars, from Vulgar Latin*excarpsus ‘picked out’, hence ‘rare’. This wasthe past participle of *excarpere, an alteration ofclassical Latin excerpere ‘picked out. select’(source of English excerpt [17]). And excerperewas a compound verb formed from the prefix ex-‘out’ and carpere ‘pluck’ (source of Englishcarpet and related to harvest). CARPET, EXCERPT, HARVESTscarf English has two words scarf. The older, butnow less frequent, is ‘joint between two piecesof wood’ [14]. This may have been borrowedfrom an Old French *escarf, which itself waspossibly based ultimately on a Scandinaviansource (Swedish has skarf ‘joint between piecesof wood’). The scarf that is worn [16] comesfrom Old Northern French escarpe. This wasequivalent to central Old French escarpe,escherpe, which originally denoted a ‘pilgrim’sbag hung round the neck’. It came via a Frankish*skirpja from Latin scirpea ‘basket made fromrushes’, a derivative of scirpus ‘rush’.scarlet [13] Scarlet originally denoted asumptuous sort of cloth, which came in variouscolours, not just red. Red was evidently thecommonest colour, however, for by the 15thcentury we find the word scarlet being used for

scarper 440‘red’. It was borrowed from Old Frenchescarlate, but where that came from is notknown (some have derived it from Persiansaqalāt ‘rich cloth’, but this has not beenconclusively established).scarper [19] Scarper entered English in the mid-19th century by way of the underworld slang ofcriminals, who probably got it from Italianscappare ‘get away’ (a relative of Englishescape). It remained a subcultural vocabularyitem until the early years of the 20th century, andits rise in prominence then may have been partlydue to the coincidental Cockney rhyming slanguse of Scapa Flow (the name of a navalanchorage in the Orkney Islands) for ‘go’.Indeed, from the 1930s onwards scarper hasoften been spelled scarpa or even scapa.scathe [12] Scathe is now encountered virtuallyonly in the negative form unscathed (firstrecorded in the 14th century), but originally itwas a verb in its own right, meaning ‘harm’. Itwas borrowed from Old Norse skatha, whichwas descended from a prehistoric Germanic*skathōjan (source also of German and Dutchschaden ‘harm’). This was formed from a base*skath-, which has links with Irish scathaim‘mutilate, lame’ and Greek askēthés ‘unhurt’.scatter [13] Scatter originally meant ‘squander’,and appears to have started life as an alteration ofshatter. It first appears in northern and Scottishtexts, and so the change from /sh/ to /sk/ isprobably due to Norse influence. The origins ofshatter [12] itself are not known. SHATTERscavenger [15] A scavenger was originally ascavager – the extra n is the same as thatintruded into messenger, passenger, etc. Thiswas acquired from Anglo-Norman scawager,and it started life as a term for an official whosejob was to collect taxes levied on foreignmerchants. Etymologically it denoted‘inspector’, for it was derived from the verbescauwer ‘inspect’, which was borrowed fromFlemish scauwen ‘look at’, a relative of Englishshow. By the 16th century the scavenger hadbegun to come down in the world, first to a‘street-cleaner’ and finally to ‘one who gathersor lives on what others have thrown away’. Theverb scavenge was derived from it in the 17thcentury. SHOWscene [16] Greek skēné originally meant ‘tent’(it was related to skiá ‘shadow’, a descendant ofthe same Indo-European base that producedEnglish shimmer and shine, and soetymologically denoted ‘something that givesshade’). Such tents or booths were used forpresenting plays, and eventually the word skēnécame to denote the backdrop against whichdrama is performed. It passed into English viaLatin scaena. The Italian version of the word,scena (itself borrowed into English in the 19thcentury), has the derivative scenario, which hasbeen acquired by English on two separateoccasions: first as scenery [18] and later asscenario [19]. SCENARIO, SHIMMER, SHINEscent [14] Scent comes ultimately from the samesource that gave English sensation, sense,sentient, and sentiment – namely, Latin sentīre‘feel, perceive’. It arrived via Old French sentir,and at first was sent in English (‘Fishes lurkingamong the stones [the dogs] seek out with theirsent’, James Dalrymple, Leslie’s history ofScotland 1596). The modern sc- spelling did notbegin to emerge until the 17th century. It is notknown what the reason for it was, although itmay have been a resolution of a possibleconfusion with the past form of send. SENSATION, SENSE, SENTIENT, SENTIMENTsceptic [16] The Greek verb sképtesthai meant‘examine, consider’ (it was descended from abase *skep- which was related to *skop-, sourceof English scope, and may have been a reversedversion of *spek-, from which English getsspectator, speculate, etc). From it was derivedthe adjective skeptikós, which was applied tovarious schools of philosophy (particularly thatof Pyrrho of Elis) which stressed the need forcareful examination of a proposition, startingfrom an attitude of doubt, before accepting it.The word passed via Latin scepticus and Frenchsceptique into English as sceptic, by which timeit had acquired broader connotations of ‘initialdoubt’. SCOPEsceptre see SHAFTschedule [14] Late Latin scedula meant ‘smallpiece of paper’. It was a diminutive form of Latinsceda ‘papyrus leaf, piece of paper, page’, itselfa borrowing from Greek skhedē. By the time itreached English via Old French cedule it hadmoved on semantically to ‘small piece of paperwith writing on it, used as a ticket or label’; andthis subsequently developed through‘supplementary sheet giving a summary, list ofadditional points, etc’ to any ‘list giving detailsof what has been arranged’. Until around 1800the word was pronounced /sed-/; but then inBritain, apparently under French influence, itchanged to /shed-/, while Americans reverted tothe original Greek with /sked-/.scheme [16] Greek skhéma meant ‘form,figure’. Latin took it over as schēma and used itas the equivalent of figure in a range ofapplications, such as ‘figure of speech’ and‘diagram’, many of which were originally takenover by English (‘In the text, by a very elegantscheme of speech he does … once more set themat liberty’, John Tillotson, Sermons 1684). Themodern sense ‘plan’, which presumablydeveloped out of ‘diagram’, began to emerge inthe mid 17th century.scherzo see SCORNschismschism [14] The Greek verb skhízein meant‘split’ (it has given English schizophrenia, and acommon source lies behind English schist [18],etymologically a ‘split rock’, and shit). From itwas derived the noun skhísma, literally ‘split,division’, which in the Greek translation of the

New Testament was applied to dissensions ordiscords between factions in the Church. Englishacquired it via late Latin schisma and Old Frenchscisme or sisme. CONCISE, DECIDE, SCHIST, SCHIZOPHRENIA,SCISSORS, SHITschizophrenia [20] Schizophrenia meansliterally ‘split mind’. It is a Latinized version ofGerman schizophrenie, coined in 1910 by EBleuler from Greek skhízein ‘split’ (source ofEnglish schism and schist) and phrén ‘mind’(source of English frantic and phrenology). FRANTIC, PHRENOLOGY, SCHISMschlemiel see SHEMOZZLEschlep see SHEMOZZLEschlock see SHEMOZZLEschmaltz see ENAMELschmooze [19] To ‘schmooze’ is to chat orgossip. The word came into colloquial AmericanEnglish towards the end of the 19th century fromYiddish shmuesn ‘to talk, chat’, which in turnwas based on Hebrew shemū’ah ‘rumour’.schmuck see SHEMOZZLEschool School for teaching [OE] and school offish [14] are different words. The former wasborrowed into prehistoric Germanic frommedieval Latin scōla, and has since evolved intoGerman schule, Dutch school, Swedish skola,and Danish skole, as well as English school. Themedieval Latin word itself goes back viaclassical Latin schola to Greek skholé. Thisoriginally denoted ‘leisure’, and only graduallydeveloped through ‘leisure used for intellectualargument or education’ and ‘lecture’ to ‘school’(in the sense ‘educational assembly’) and finally‘school’ the building. The Latin word has spreadthroughout Europe, not just in the Romancelanguages (French école, Italian scuola, Spanishescuela), but also into Welsh ysgol, Irish scoil,Latvian skuola, Russian shkola, Polish szkola,etc. Derivatives of the Latin word in Englishinclude scholar [14] and scholastic [16].School of fish was borrowed from MiddleDutch schōle ‘troop, group’. This went back to aprehistoric West Germanic *skulo, which mayhave been derived from the base *skal-, *skel-,*skul- ‘split, divide’ (source also of Englishscale, scalp, shell, etc); if so, it would meanetymologically a ‘division’. SCHOLAR, SCHOLASTIC; SHOALscience [14] Etymologically, science simplymeans ‘knowledge’, for it comes via Old Frenchscience from Latin scientia, a noun formed fromthe present participle of the verb scīre ‘know’. Itearly on passed via ‘knowledge gained by study’to a ‘particular branch of study’, but its modernconnotations of technical, mathematical, orbroadly ‘non-arts’ studies did not begin toemerge until the 18th century. The derivativescientist was coined in 1840 by WilliamWhewell: ‘We need very much a name todescribe a cultivator of science in general. Ishould incline to call him a Scientist’,Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences 1840. CONSCIOUS441 sconcescintillate see TINSELscissors [14] Scissors are etymologically a‘cutting’ implement. The word comes via OldFrench cisoires from cīsōria, the plural of lateLatin cīsōrium ‘cutting implement’, which wasderived from Latin caedere ‘cut’ (source ofEnglish concise, decide, incision, etc). Theoriginal form of the word in English wassisoures; the sc- spelling did not come on thescene until the 16th century, presumably throughassociation with Latin scindere ‘cut’ (source ofEnglish rescind [17] and scission ‘cutting’ [15],and related to Greek skhízein ‘split’, from whichEnglish gets schism and schizophrenia). CONCISE, DECIDE, INCISION, RESCIND, SCHISM,SCHIZOPHRENIAsclerosis see SKELETONscofflaw [20] Aside from proprietary names andsome scientific terms, it is rare for words that arepure human inventions (rather than naturallyevolved forms) to make a permanent place forthemselves in the English language, but scofflawis a case in point. In the US in the early 1920s, inthe middle of the Prohibition years, oneDelcevare King of Quincy, Massachusettsoffered a prize of $200 for a word to denotesomeone who defied the law and consumedalcohol. Over 25,000 suggestions were receivedfrom America and around the world. In January1924 King announced his chosen winner:scofflaw, a simple combination of scoff [14](probably of Scandinavian origin) and law. Twopeople had submitted it (Henry Irving Dale andKate L. Butler), and they shared the prize.Whether because or in spite of its homespuntransparency, the word caught on, and survivesin America to this day, albeit somewhatbroadened out in meaning: specific reference toillicit drinkers is no longer in much demand, butit is now used for someone who flouts any law.scold [13] Scold was originally a noun, denotingan argumentative or nagging woman – the sortwho had a ‘scold’s bridle’ fitted to keep hertongue quiet. It appears to have been borrowedfrom Old Norse skáld ‘poet’, the semantic linkperhaps being the poet’s role of satirizing orpoking fun at people (in Icelandic law in formertimes the term skáldskapr, literally ‘poetry’,denoted ‘libel in verse’). The origins of skálditself are not known. Scold began to be used as averb in the 14th century, at first in the sense‘argue, nag’. The modern transitive use‘reprove’ is not recorded until the early 18thcentury.sconce Effectively, English now only has oneword sconce in general use, although others havecome and gone in the past. That is the nounmeaning ‘candlestick’ or ‘wall bracket for alight’ [14]. It originally denoted a ‘lantern’ or‘covered candlestick’, and came via Old Frenchesconse from medieval Latin absconsa. This wasshort for laterna absconsa, literally ‘hiddenlantern’; absconsa was the feminine pastparticiple of Latin abscondere ‘hide’ (source ofEnglish abscond [16]), a compound verb formedfrom the prefix ab- ‘away’ and condere ‘put,

scone 442stow’. It may be that sconce ‘lantern, lamp’ laybehind the now obsolete slang sconce ‘head’[16], and there are grounds for believing that thisin turn inspired the old university slang termsconce ‘penalty of drinking a large amount ofbeer for a breach of the rules’ [17] (theunderlying notion being of a poll tax or ‘head’tax). A fourth sconce, now altogether defunct,was a military term for a ‘small fort’ [16]. Thiswas borrowed from Dutch schans, which camevia Middle High German schanze from Italianscanso ‘defence’. This in turn was a derivative ofthe verb scansare ‘turn aside, ward off’, whichwas descended from Vulgar Latin *excampsāre,a compound verb formed from the prefix ex-‘out’ and campsāre ‘turn round, sail by’. Amemory of the word survives in English,however, in the derived verb ensconce [16](etymologically ‘hide behind a fortification’). ABSCOND; ENSCONCEscone [16] The word scone first appeared inScottish English, and does not seem to havemade any significant headway south of theborder until the 19th century (helped on its way,no doubt, by that great proselytizer of Scottishvocabulary, Sir Walter Scott). It was borrowedfrom Dutch schoonbrood ‘fine white bread’, acompound formed from schoon ‘beautiful,bright, white’ (first cousin to German schön‘beautiful’ and related to English sheen andshow) and brood ‘bread’. SHEEN, SHOWscoop [14] Scoop appears to go back ultimatelyto a prehistoric Germanic base *skap- whichoriginally denoted ‘chop or dig out’ (it was laterextended metaphorically to ‘form’, and in thatsense has given English shape). It had a variantform *skōp-, amongst whose derivatives wasWest Germanic *skōpō. This evolved intoMiddle Dutch and Middle Low German schōpe,which was used for the bucket of a dredge,water-wheel, etc, and English borrowed it earlyin the 14th century. The journalistic sense ‘story’reported in advance of competitors’ emerged inthe USA in the 1870s. SHAPEscope [16] Greek skopós meant ‘target’. As itpassed via Italian scopo into English it evolvedmetaphorically to ‘aim kept in view, goal,purpose’ (‘the seventh Council of Carthage andthe Milevitane Council, which both tend to oneend and scope, that there should be noappellations made out of Africa’, NicholasHarpsfield, The Pretended Divorce betweenHenry VIII and Catherine of Aragon 1555), butthe further step to ‘range’ seems to be an Englishdevelopment. The Greek word came from thebase *skop- ‘look, observe’, which alsoproduced -skopos ‘looking’ (ultimate source ofEnglish bishop, which etymologically denotes‘overseer’) and -skópion ‘instrument forobserving’ (which lies behind Englishmicroscope, telescope, etc). Sceptic comes froma variant of the same base. BISHOP, SCEPTICscore [11] The etymological notion underlyingscore is of ‘cutting’ – for it is related to Englishshear. It was borrowed from Old Norse skor,which went back to the same prehistoricGermanic base – *skur-, *sker- ‘cut’ – thatproduced shear (not to mention share, shore, andshort). It had a range of meanings, from ‘notch’to ‘record kept by cutting notches’, but it wasspecifically the ‘number twenty’ (presumablyoriginally ‘twenty recorded by cutting notches’)that English at first took over. The other sensesfollowed, perhaps as a result of reborrowing, inthe 14th century, but the main modern meaning,‘number of points made in a game’ (originally asrecorded by cutting notches), is a purely Englishdevelopment of the 18th century. Roughlycontemporary is ‘written music’, which is said tocome from the linking together of related staveswith a single common bar line or ‘score’ (in thesense ‘mark’). The verb score ‘mark with lines’was borrowed in the 14th century from OldNorse skora. SHARE, SHEAR, SHIRT, SHORT, SKIRTscorn [12] Scorn reached English via OldFrench, but it is ultimately of Germanic origin.Its immediate source was Old French escharnir,a descendant of Vulgar Latin *escarnīre. Thishad been borrowed from a prehistoric Germanic*skarnjan ‘mock, deride, make fun of’. Aproduct of the same base was Middle HighGerman scherz ‘joke, jest’, which was borrowedinto Italian as scherzo and subsequently made itsway into English as the musical term scherzo‘lively passage’ [19]. SCHERZOscot-free see SHOTscour [13] The notion of ‘cleaning’ implicit inscour evolved from an earlier ‘take care of’. Forthe word goes back ultimately to Latin cūrāre(source of English cure), which originally meant‘take care of’, and only in medieval times cameto mean ‘clean’. Combination with the prefix ex-‘out’ produced excūrāre ‘clean out’, whichreached English via Old French escurer andMiddle Dutch scūren. Scour ‘search thoroughly’[14] (as in ‘scour the countryside’) is a differentword, and may come from Old Norse skýra ‘rushin’. CUREscourge [13] Scourge comes ultimately from aLatin word for a ‘long strip of leather’, corrigio,which itself was borrowed from Celtic. It had anumber of specific applications, including‘shoelace’, ‘rein’, and ‘whip’, and it was the lastthat formed the basis of the Vulgar Latin verb*excorrigiāre ‘whip’, which passed into Englishvia Old French escorgier and its derived nounescorge.scout [14] Etymologically, a scout is someonewho ‘listens’. For the word goes back ultimatelyto Latin auscultāre ‘listen’, a derivative of thesame base that produced Latin auris ‘ear’(source of English aural [19] and distantlyrelated to English ear). This passed into OldFrench as escouter ‘listen’ (its moderndescendant is écouter), which English adopted

as the verb scout, meaning ‘look about, spy’. Thenoun, from the French derivative escoute,followed in the 15th century. AURAL, EARscrape [14] Scrape is certainly of Germanicorigin, but it is not clear whether it was borrowedfrom Old Norse skrapa (ancestor of Swedishskrapa and Danish skrabe) or Middle Dutchschrapen. Either way it goes back to aprehistoric Germanic base *skrap-, source alsoof Old English scrapian ‘scratch’, whichsurvived into the 16th century as shrape. Scrap‘small piece’ [14] was borrowed from Old Norseskrap ‘remnants, trifles’, a derivative of the samebase as skrapa; and scrap ‘fight’ [17] may haveoriginated as a variant of scrap. SCRAPscratch [15] Early Middle English had twowords for ‘scratch’ – scrat and cratch; and itseems likely that scratch represents a blend ofthem. Where exactly they came from is not clear,although cratch is no doubt related to Germankratzen ‘scratch’, and both probably had theirorigins in imitation of the sound of scratching.screen [15] Screen goes back ultimately to aFrankish *skrank ‘barrier’, a distant ancestor ofGerman schrank ‘cupboard’. This was takenover into Old Northern French as escran, and itwas a variant form of this, escren, that becameEnglish screen.screw [15] Screw comes ultimately from a Latinword meaning ‘female pig’ – scrōfa (source alsoof English scrofula [14], a disease to which pigswere once thought to be particularly prone). Bythe medieval period scrōfa was being used for a‘screw’, mainly no doubt in allusion to the pig’scurly, corkscrew-like tail, but also perhaps partlyprompted by the resemblance to Latin scrobis‘ditch, trench’, hence ‘cunt’, which was used inVulgar Latin for the ‘groove in a screw-head’(the use of the verb screw for ‘copulate’, firstrecorded in the early 18th century, is purelycoincidental). English got the word from OldFrench escroue, which came either directly fromLatin scrōfa or via prehistoric West Germanic*scrūva (source of German schraube ‘screw’). SCROFULAscribe [14] Scribe is at the centre of a largenetwork of English words that go back to Latinscrībere ‘write’. Others include ascribe [15],describe, scribble [15], and shrive, while its pastparticiple scriptus has contributed script [14],scripture [13], and transcript [13]. Scribe itselfcomes from the Latin derivative scrība ‘officialwriter’. Scrībere went back to an Indo-Europeanbase which meant ‘cut, incise’, reflecting theorigins of writing in carving marks on stone,wood, or clay; this was *skreibh-, an extensionof *sker-, from which English gets shear, short,etc. ASCRIBE, CONSCRIPTION, DESCRIBE, SCRIBBLE,SCRIPT, SHARE, SHEAR, SHORT, SHRIVE,TRANSCRIBEscrimmage see SKIRMISHscrofula see SCREW443 scumscroll [15] Scroll has no family connection withroll, although roll is largely responsible for itspresent-day form. Etymologically it is actuallythe same word as shred. Both go back to aprehistoric Germanic *skrautha ‘somethingcut’. This evolved in a straight line to giveEnglish shred, but it was also borrowed throughmedieval Latin scrōda into Old French asescroe, where its meaning ‘cut piece, strip’narrowed to ‘strip of parchment’. Its Anglo-Norman version escrowe was acquired byEnglish, where it split in two. It survives in fullas escrow [16], a legal term for a sort of deed, buta shortened form, scrow, also emerged, andassociation with roll (in the sense ‘roll ofparchment’) led to its being altered to scrowle orscroll. ESCROW, SHREDscrummage see SKIRMISHscruple [16] Latin scrūpus meant ‘sharp stone’,and the notion of something troubling the mindlike a painful stone in the shoe led to itsmetaphorical use for ‘anxiety, doubt,particularly over a moral issue’. Both meaningswere carried over into the diminutive formscrūpulus, which also came to be used for a verysmall unit of weight. This passed into Englishvia French scrupule as scruple, on the waylosing the literal sense ‘small stone’.scrutinize [17] The etymological notionunderlying scrutinize is of ragpickers searchingthrough piles of garbage looking for anything ofuse or value. For its ultimate source is Latinscrūta ‘rubbish’. From this was formed the verbscrūtārī ‘rummage through rubbish’, hencebroadly ‘search, examine’. This in turn formedthe basis of the noun scrūtinium, source ofEnglish scrutiny [15], from which scrutinize wasderived.scud see SCUTTLEsculleryscullery [15] A scullery is etymologically aplace where ‘dishes’ are handled. For it goesback ultimately to Latin scutra ‘wooden dish’.Its diminutive form scutella was used for a sortof square tray or stand for plates, glasses, vases,etc. Association with scūtum ‘shield’ led to thisbeing changed in Vulgar Latin to *scūtella,which passed into Old French as escuele ‘dish’.Its derivative escuelerie ‘place where dishes,plates, and other kitchen utensils are kept,cleaned, etc’ passed into English via Anglo-Norman squillerie as scullery. Also descendedfrom scutella are English scuttle and skillet.sculpture [14] Latin sculpere meant ‘carve,scratch’ (it was a variant of scalpere, from whichEnglish gets scalpel [18]). From is pastparticiple sculptus was formed the nounsculptūra, acquired by English as sculpture. Theagent noun sculptor [17] also comes from Latin,while the verb sculpt [19] was borrowed fromFrench sculpter. SCALPELscum [13] Scum is etymologically a ‘layer ontop’ of something. The word’s modernconnotations of ‘dirt’ are a secondarydevelopment. It comes ultimately from

scuttle 444prehistoric Germanic *skūman, a derivative ofthe base *skū- ‘cover’, and its relatives includeGerman schaum ‘foam’ (source of Englishmeerschaum [18], literally ‘sea-foam’). Englishscum originally meant ‘foam’ too (‘Those smallwhite Fish to Venus consecrated, though withoutVenus’ aid they be created of th’ Ocean scum’,Joshua Sylvester, Divine Weeks and Works of DuBartas 1598), the notion being of a layer of froth‘covering’ liquid, but by the 15th century it wasbroadening out to any ‘film on top of liquid’, andfrom there it went downhill to a ‘film of dirt’ andthen simply ‘dirt’. Germanic *skūman wasborrowed into Old French as escume, and thisformed the basis of a verb escumer ‘remove thetop layer’, from which English gets skim [15]. MEERSCHAUM, SKIMscuttle English has three distinct words scuttle.The oldest, ‘large container’ [15] (now mainlyencountered in coal-scuttle), was borrowed fromOld Norse skutill, which goes back ultimately toLatin scutella ‘tray, salver’ (from which Englishalso gets scullery and skillet). Scuttle ‘sink aship’ [17] is a verbal use of an earlier nounscuttle ‘opening or hatch in a ship’s side’. Thiswas borrowed from early modern Frenchescoutille ‘hatch’, which in turn came fromSpanish escotilla, a diminutive form of escota‘opening in a garment’. And escota was derivedfrom escotar ‘cut out’, a compound verb formedwith the prefix e- ‘out’ from the Germanic stem*skaut- (source of English sheet). Scuttle ‘run’[17] is a variant of the now obsolete scuddle,which was derived from scud ‘move quickly’[16]; and scud itself may have been an alterationof scut ‘rabbit’s tail’ [15] (a word of unknownorigin), the underlying meaning therefore being‘run like a rabbit’. SCULLERY, SKILLET; SHEET; SCUD, SCUTscythe [OE] Scythe goes back ultimately to theIndo-European base *sek- ‘cut’, source also ofEnglish section, segment, sickle, etc. ItsGermanic descendant was *seg-, whichproduced the noun *segithō, source of Englishscythe (the variant *sag- lies behind Englishsaw). Until the 17th century the word wasgenerally spelled sythe; modern scythe is due tothe influence of scissors. SECTION, SEGMENT, SICKLEsea [OE] Sea is a widespread Germanic word,related to German see, Dutch zee, Swedish sjö,and Danish sø (the Scandinavian words are nowmore usually used for ‘lake’ than ‘sea’). Theseall point back to a prehistoric Germanic *saiwiz,but it is not known where that came from.seal Seal the animal [OE] and seal ‘impressedmark, closure’ [13] are of course differentwords. The former goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *selkhaz, a word of unknown originwhich also produced Swedish säl and Danishsæl. The latter was borrowed from Anglo-Norman seal, a descendant of Latin sigillum.This, a diminutive form of signum (from whichEnglish gets sign), meant ‘little mark or picture’,and came to be used for such a mark distinctiveof a particular person. SIGN, SIGNALseam [OE] A seam is etymologically a jointmade by ‘sewing’. The word goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *saumaz (source also ofGerman saum, Dutch zoom, Swedish söm, andDanish søm), which was derived from the base*sau-, the ancestor of English sew. SEWséance see SESSIONsearch [14] Etymologically, search denotes‘going round in a circle’ – for its ultimate sourceis Latin circus ‘circle’ (source of English circleand circus). From this was derived the verbcircāre ‘go round’, which by the time it hadreached Old French as cerchier had acquiredconnotations of ‘examining’ or ‘exploring’.English took it over via Anglo-Norman sercher.(It is no relation, incidentally, to English seek.) CIRCLE, CIRCUSseason [13] A season is etymologically a timeof ‘sowing seeds’. The word comes via OldFrench seson from Latin satiō ‘act of sowing’, aderivative of satus, the past participle of serere‘sow, plant’ (which went back to the same Indo-European base that produced English seed,semen, and sow). In post-classical times ‘act ofsowing’ evolved into ‘time for sowing’, and bythe time it reached Old French it had developedfurther to any ‘suitable time’. The application to‘any of the four main divisions of the year’emerged in English in the 14th century. The useof season as a verb, meaning ‘add flavouringsto’, had its beginnings in post-classical Latin,and arose as the result of a progression from‘sow’ through ‘ripen’ to ‘cook thoroughly orwell’. SEED, SEMEN, SOWseat [12] Seat is of course a close relative of sit –they come from the same prehistoric Germanicbase, *set-. But unlike sit, it is not a longestablishednative word. It is a borrowing, fromOld Norse sáeti. It originally meant ‘act ofsitting’, and was not used for ‘something to siton’ until the 13th century. SITsebaceous see SUETsecateurs see SECTIONsecondsecond [13] Latin secundus originally meant‘following’ – it was derived from sequī ‘follow’,source of English sequence – and onlysecondarily came to be used as the ordinalversion of ‘two’. English acquired it via OldFrench second, employing it to take over part ofthe role of other, which until then had denoted‘second’ as well as ‘other’. Its noun use for‘sixtieth of a minute’, first recorded in English inthe 14th century, comes from medieval Latinsecunda minuta, literally ‘second minute’ – aminute was a ‘sixtieth part’, and so a ‘secondminute’ was a ‘sixtieth of a sixtieth’. Latinsecundus was also used for ‘favourable’, and inthis sense the verb secundāre was formed fromit, meaning ‘favour’. English acquired it viaFrench seconder as second ‘support’ [16]. (The

differently pronounced second ‘transfer to adifferent job’ [19] comes from the French phraseen second ‘in second rank’.) SECT, SEQUAL, SEQUENCE, SUE, SUITsecret [14] Etymologically, something that issecret is ‘separated’ from others, hence put outof the way, hidden. The word comes via OldFrench secret from Latin sēcrētus, an adjectivaluse of the past participle of sēcernere ‘separate’.This was a compound verb formed from theprefix sē- ‘apart’ and cernere ‘separate’ (sourcealso of English certain, discern, excrement, etc).From the 16th to the 18th centuries, secret wasused as a verb, meaning ‘hide’, but it was thenaltered to secrete, on the model of Latin sēcrētus.(The other verb secrete, ‘produce fluids or othersubstances’ [18], is a back-formation fromsecretion [17], which goes back to Latin sēcrētiō‘separation’, a derivative of sēcernere.) Asecretary is etymologically a ‘secret’ orconfidential helper. CERTAIN, DECREE, DISCERN, EXCREMENT,SECRETARYsecretary [14] A secretary was originally a‘person in someone else’s confidence, sharingsecret or private matters with them’ (‘[Christ]taking with him his three special secretaries, thatis to say Peter and James and John’, NicholasLove, Mirror of the life of Jesus Christ 1400).The word was adapted from late Latinsēcrētārius ‘confidential aide’, a derivative ofLatin sēcrētus ‘secret’. The notion of writingletters and performing other clerical dutiesdeveloped in the Latin word, and first emerged inEnglish in the 15th century. SECRETsect [14] Despite its similarity to section andsector, sect has nothing to do with ‘cutting’. Itcomes via Old French secte from Latin secta,which denoted literally a ‘following’, hence a‘faction of supporters’ (it was a noun use ofsectus, an archaic past participle of sequī‘follow’, from which English gets sequence, sue,etc). Set ‘group’ is ultimately the same word assect. SECOND, SEQUEL, SEQUENCE, SET, SUE, SUITsection [16] Section is one of a wide range ofEnglish words that go back to Latin secāre ‘cut’.Others include bisect [17], dissect [17], insect,intersect [17], secateurs [19], sector [16], andsegment [16]. It goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *sek- ‘cut’, which also producedEnglish saw, scythe, sedge, and sickle. Theimmediate source of section itself was the Latinderivative sectiō ‘cutting’. BISECT, DISSECT, INSECT, SAW, SCYTHE,SECATEURS, SEDGE, SEGMENT, SICKLEsecular [13] Latin saeculum, a word of uncertainorigin, meant ‘generation, age’. It was used inearly Christian texts for the ‘temporal world’ (asopposed to the ‘spiritual world’), and that wasthe sense in which its derived adjectivesaeculāris passed via Old French seculer intoEnglish. The more familiar modern Englishmeaning ‘non-religious’ emerged in the 16thcentury.445 seemsecure [16] Something that is secure isetymologically ‘carefree’. The word wasborrowed from Latin sēcūrus, a compoundadjective formed from the prefix sē- ‘without’and cūra ‘care’ (source of English curate, cure,etc). The metaphorical extension from ‘freefrom care’ to ‘free from danger, safe’ took placein post-Augustan Latin. Sure is in effect atelescoped version of secure. CURATE, CURE, SUREsedentary see SESSIONsedge [OE] The sedge is etymologically theplant with ‘cutting’ leaves. The word goes backto a prehistoric Germanic *sagjaz, which wasdescended from the Indo-European base *sek-‘cut’ (source also of English saw, section,segment, sickle, etc). SECTION, SEGMENTsediment see SESSIONsee English has two words see. The older is theverb, ‘perceive visually’ [OE]. Like itsGermanic cousins, German sehen, Dutch zien,and Swedish and Danish se, it goes back to aprehistoric *sekhwan, which was descendedfrom an Indo-European base *seq-. This mayhave been the same *seq- that produced Latinsequī ‘follow’ (source of English sequence, sue,etc), in which case see would denoteetymologically ‘follow with the eyes’. See‘diocese’ [13] originally signified ‘bishop’sthrone’. It came via Anglo-Norman se fromVulgar Latin *sedem ‘seat’, descendant ofclassical Latin sēdem, the accusative case ofsēdes ‘seat’. This in turn went back to the Indo-European base *sed- ‘sit’, which also producedEnglish sit. SIGHT; SEAT, SITseed [OE] Seed is a general Germanic word,related to German saat, Dutch zaad, Swedishsöd, and Danish sæd. Their common ancestorwas Germanic *sǣthiz. This was formed fromthe base *sǣ-, which produced English sow andwent back ultimately to Indo-European *sē-,source of English disseminate [17], season,semen [18], and seminar [19]. DISSEMINATE, SEASON, SEMEN, SEMINARseek [OE] Seek has several Germanic relatives –German suchen, Swedish söka, Danish søge, etc– which point back to a prehistoric Germanicancestor *sōkjan. The base from which this wasderived, *sōk-, went back to an Indo-European*sāg-, which also produced (via Latin) Englishpresage [14] and sagacious [17]. If Old Englishsēcan had developed in the ordinary way, itwould have become modern English seech, notseek. For various reasons it did not, but we cansee how it would have been in its derivativebeseech [12]. BESEECH, PRESAGE, SAGACIOUS, SAKEseem [12] Originally, seem meant ‘be suitable’(a meaning preserved in the derived seemly[13]). It was borrowed from the Old Norse verbsoema ‘conform to, honour’. This was derivedfrom the adjective soemr ‘fitting’, a descendantof the prehistoric base *sōm- (to which English

seethe 446same is distantly related). The sense ‘appear tobe’ emerged in the early 13th century. SAME, SEEMLY, SOFTseethe [OE] Seethe was once the standard wordfor ‘boil’, until it began to be overtaken by theFrench import boil in the Middle English period.In the 16th century a new meaning, ‘soak’,emerged, now preserved only in the pastparticiple sodden. And the modern metaphorical‘be violently agitated’ came on the scene in the17th century. The word goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *seuth-, which alsoproduced German sieden and Dutch zieden‘boil’. English suds probably comes from avariant of the same base. SODDENsegment see SECTIONsegregate [16] The etymological ideaunderlying segregate is of ‘removal from aflock’. The word comes from Latin sēgregāre, acompound verb formed from the prefix sē-‘apart’ and grex ‘flock’ (source also of Englishaggregate, congregation, egregious [16], andgregarious [17]). AGGREGATE, CONGREGATION, EGREGIOUS,GREGARIOUSseigneur see SIRseize [13] Seize entered English as a term in thefeudal legal system, meaning ‘take possession ofproperty’. It was borrowed from Old Frenchseisir, which went back via a Gallo-Latin *sacīre‘claim’ to a prehistoric Germanic *sakjan. Thisin turn was derived from the base *sak-‘process’, which also produced English sake(one of whose ancestral meanings was ‘legalaction’). SAKEseldom [OE] Seldom goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *selda-, of which the underlyingnotion appears to have been ‘strange and rare’.Its modern Germanic relatives include Germanselten, Dutch zelten, Swedish sällan, and Danishsjelden.select [16] Select is one of a wide range ofEnglish words that go back ultimately to Latinlegere ‘choose’ or its past participle lectus(others include collect and elect and, from itslater extended meaning ‘read’, lectern andlecture). Addition of the prefix sē- ‘apart’produced sēligere ‘choose out’, whose pastparticiple sēlectus gave English select, both asadjective and verb. COLLECT, ELECT, LECTURE, LEGIBLEself [OE] Self is a general Germanic word,closely related to German selbe, Dutch zelf,Swedish sjelv, and Danish selv. These all pointback to a prehistoric Germanic *selba-. Wherethis came from is not known for certain,although it seems likely to be related in someway to various pronouns denoting ‘oneself’,such as German sich and French se. Accordingto John Hacket in his Scrinia reserata 1693, theword selfish was coined in the early 1640s by thePresbyterians.sell [OE] The underlying etymological meaningof sell is ‘give up, hand over’, but gradually thenotion of handing something over in exchangefor something else, particularly money, led to itspresent-day sense. Both meanings co-existed inOld English, but the original one had largelydied out by the 14th century. The word comesfrom a prehistoric Germanic *saljan, which alsoproduced Swedish sälga and Danish sælge‘sell’. The noun sale is a product of the samebase. SALEsemantic [17] Sēma was the Greek word for‘sign’. It has been widely pressed into service inthe modern European languages for coining newterms, including semaphore [19] (a borrowingfrom French, which etymologically means‘signal-carrier’), semasiology [19] (a Germancoinage), and semiology [17]. The adjectivederived from sēma was semantikós whichreached English via French sémantique. It wasfleetingly adopted in the mid-17th century as aword for ‘interpreting the ‘signs’ of weather’,but it did not come into its own as a linguisticterm until the end of the 19th century. SEMAPHORE, SEMIOLOGYsemblance see SIMILARsemen see SEEDseminar see SEEDsemolina [18] Latin simila meant ‘fine flour’ (ithas given English the simnel [13] of simnel cake,which originally denoted ‘bread made from fineflour’). From it was descended Italian semola‘bran’, whose diminutive form semolino wasadapted into English as semolina. SIMNELsenate [13] The Roman senate wasetymologically an assembly of ‘elders’. Latinsenātus was a derivative of senex ‘old’, whichhas also given English senile, senior, sir, etc.English acquired the word via Old French senat.Senator [13] comes from the Latin derivativesenātor. SENILE, SENIOR, SIRsend [OE] English shares send with the otherGermanic languages – German senden, Dutchzenden, Swedish sönda, and Danish sende.These all go back to a prehistoric ancestor*santhjan, which originated as a causativederivative of a base denoting ‘go, journey’ – soetymologically send means ‘cause to go’.senior [14] Senior was borrowed direct fromLatin senior, which was the comparative form ofsenex ‘old’. This in turn was descended from theIndo-European base *sen-, which also producedWelsh hen, Gothic sineigs, Lithuanian senas,and Armenian hin, all meaning ‘old’.English is also indebted to senex for senateand senile [17], while senior has contributed sirand the whole range of Romance terms ofaddress, including monsieur, senor, and signor. SENATE, SENIOR, SIRsennight see FORTNIGHTseñor see SIRsense [14] Sense comes ultimately from Latinsentīre ‘feel’, a prodigious contributor to Englishvocabulary (it is also the source of assent [13],

consent, dissent [16], resent, sentence, sentient[17], and sentiment). From it was derived thenoun sēnsus ‘faculty of perceiving’, which wasborrowed by English as sense. And sēnsus inturn spawned its own derivatives, which havegiven English sensation [17], sensible [14],sensitive [14], sensual [15], and sensuous [17]. ASSENT, CONSENT, DISSENT, RESENT, SENSIBLE,SENTENCE, SENTIMENTsentence [13] ‘Complete grammatical unit’ is acomparatively recent meaning of sentence,which only emerged in English in the 15thcentury. Its Latin ancestor sententia originallymeant ‘feeling’, for it was a derivative of sentīre‘feel’ (source also of English sense, sentiment,etc). It subsequently broadened out to ‘opinion,judgment’, which was the starting point for theuse of English sentence for ‘judicial declarationof punishment’. Sententia also came to denote‘meaning’, and hence ‘meaning expressed inwords’ and ‘maxim’. The former lies behind thegrammatical sense of English sentence, whilethe latter survives in the derived adjectivesententious [15]. SENSE, SENTENTIOUSsentiment [17] Sentiment comes via Old Frenchsentiment from medieval Latin sentīmentum‘feeling’, a derivative of Latin sentīre ‘feel’(from which English gets sensation, sense,sentence, etc). It originally meant ‘feeling’ and‘opinion’ (the former now defunct, the lattersurviving with a somewhat old-fashioned air insuch expressions as ‘My sentiments exactly!’).The sense ‘(excessively) refined feeling’ did notemerge until the mid-18th century. SENSEsentry [17] Sentry is probably short for the nowobsolete centrinell ‘sentry’. This first appearedin the 16th century as a variant of sentinel [16],which came via French sentinelle from Italiansentinella. It is not altogether clear where theItalian noun came from, but it may well havebeen derived from the verb sentire ‘perceive,watch’, a descendant of Latin sentīre ‘feel’ (fromwhich English gets sense, sentence, sentiment,etc). SENTINELseparate [15] Etymologically, separate means‘arrange apart’. It comes from the past participleof Latin sēparāre, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix sē- ‘apart’ and parāre ‘arrange(in advance), furnish, make ready’ (source alsoof English prepare). Sever is essentially thesame word as separate, in reduced form. PREPARE, SEVERsepia [14] Sepia originated as a word for acuttlefish. It comes via Latin from Greek sēpíā.In English it is now rare in that sense, except asa zoological genus name and in various technicalderivatives such as sepiacean and sepioid, but aparticular attribute of some types of cuttlefishhas given it a much wider role: as a term for areddish-brown pigment made from the liquidsecreted by cuttlefish ink sacs. That applicationoriginated in Italy, and it was from Italian447 serenadeseppia, probably by way of French sépia, thatEnglish acquired it in the 19th century.September [11] September is etymologicallythe ‘seventh’ month. The word comes from LatinSeptember, a derivative of septem ‘seven’ (theRoman year started with March). Other Englishdescendants of Latin septem, which is a distantrelative of English seven, include septet [19] andseptuagenarian [18]. SEVENsepulchre [12] Sepulchre comes ultimatelyfrom Latin sepelīre ‘bury, inter’. From its pastparticiple sepultus was derived the nounsepulcrum ‘burying place, tomb’, which passedinto English via Old French sepulcre. There is noetymological justification for the ch spelling.sequence [14] Sequence is at the centre of alarge family of English words that go backultimately to Latin sequī ‘follow’ (others includeconsecutive [17], consequence [14], ensue,obsequious [15], persecute [15], prosecute,pursue, second, sect, subsequent [15], sue, andsuit). Sequence itself comes from late Latinsequentia, a derivative of the present participlesequēns. Another Latin derivative was sequēla‘that which follows’, which has given Englishsequal [15]. Sequī came from the Indo-Europeanbase *seq-, which also produced Greek hépomai,Irish sechur, Lithuanian sekti, and Sanskrit sac-,all meaning ‘follow’. CONSECUTIVE, CONSEQUENCE, ENSUE,OBSEQUIOUS, PERSECUTE, PROSECUTE, PURSUE,SECOND, SECT, SEQUAL, SET, SUE, SUITsequin [17] When English first adopted sequin,it was the name of a coin. Its ultimate ancestorwas Arabic sikkah, which denoted a die fromwhich coins were minted (in Anglo-IndianEnglish from the 17th to the 19th century, a siccawas a newly minted rupee). Italian took the wordover as zecca, and created a diminutive formzecchino, referring to a gold coin. The originalapplication was specifically to a Venetian coin,but this subsequently broadened out, and theterm was also used for a Turkish coin(alternatively known as a sultanin). In French,zecchino became sequin, which is the form inwhich English acquired it. The word might wellhave followed the coin into oblivion, but in thelate 19th century it managed to get itself appliedto the small round shiny pieces of metal appliedto clothing, and its continued existence wasguaranteed.seraglio see CARAVANserenade [17] A serenade is strictly a ‘songsung in the evening’, but in fact historically it hasnothing to do with ‘night’ – etymologically it isa ‘serene’ piece of music. The word comes viaFrench sérénade from Italian serenata, aderivative of sereno ‘serene’. The notion of aserenata as a piece of ‘night’ music arosethrough association with sera ‘evening’ (arelative of French soir ‘evening’, from whichEnglish gets soirée [19]). Italian sereno camefrom Latin serēnus ‘bright, clear’, which alsoproduced English serene [16]. SERENE

serendipity 448serendipity [18] Serendipity – the ‘faculty ofmaking lucky discoveries’ – was coined in 1754by the British writer Horace Walpole (1717–97).He took it from The Three Princes of Serendip,the title of a fairy tale whose leading characters,in Walpole’s words, ‘were always makingdiscoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of thingsthey were not in quest of’. (Serendip is an oldname for Sri Lanka.)serene see SERENADEserge [14] The textile term serge is first cousin tosilk. It comes via Old French sarge from *sārica,a Vulgar Latin alteration of Latin sērica. Thiswas short for lāna sērica, which meant literally‘wool of the Seres’. Seres was a name given to apeople living in what we would now call China,and it is also the ultimate source of the word silk. SILKsergeant [12] A sergeant is etymologicallysimply a ‘servant’ – and indeed that is what theword originally meant in English. It comes viaOld French sergent from Latin servient-, thepresent participial stem of servīre ‘serve’. It wassubsequently incorporated into the terminologyof the feudal system, roughly equivalent inapplication to esquire, and it was also used forvarious legal officers, but it does not seem tohave become a specific military rank until themid 16th century. ‘Sergeant’ then was acomparatively exalted position, but by the end ofthe century we see it settling into its modernniche as a senior noncommissioned officer. SERVANT, SERVEseries [17] Latin seriēs (from which English gotseries) denoted a ‘succession of thingsconnected together’. It was derived from serere‘connect’, which has also given English assertand insert [16]. Serial [19] was coinedspecifically with reference to stories publishedin instalments. ASSERT, INSERT, SERIALserious [15] Serious comes ultimately fromLatin sērius ‘serious, grave’. From this wasderived late Latin sēriōsus, which passed intoEnglish via Old French serieux. It is not clearwhere sērius came from, although some havelinked it with German schwer ‘heavy’(‘seriousness’ and ‘weightiness’ beingsemantically close).sermon [12] Latin sermō meant simply ‘talk,conversation, discourse’, but by the time itreached English via Anglo-Norman sermun ithad narrowed down to an ‘address given from apulpit on a religious topic’. It is not clear what itsultimate ancestry is, but probably the favouritecandidate as its source is the Indo-European base*swer-, *swar-, which gave English answer andswear.serpent [14] The serpent is etymologically a‘crawling’ animal. The word comes via OldFrench serpent from Latin serpēns, a noun use ofthe present participle of serpere ‘crawl, creep’.This was a close relative of Greek hérpein‘creep’, from which English gets herpes [17](etymologically the ‘creeping’ disease) andherpetology ‘study of reptiles’ [19]. HERPESserried [17] The phrase serried ranks is firstrecorded in William Wilkie’s Epigoniad 1757,but it was clearly inspired by Milton’s ‘Norserv’d it to relax their serried files’ in ParadiseLost 1667. It means ‘rows crowded closetogether’, and serried is the past participle of anow obsolete verb serry ‘press together’. Thiswas borrowed from serré, the past participle ofOld French serrer ‘close’, which went back viaVulgar Latin *serrāre to Latin sērāre, aderivative of the noun sera ‘lock, bolt’.serve [13] Latin servus ‘slave’ has been a richsource of English vocabulary. It is the directancestor of serf [15] (and of the second syllableof concierge [17]). but it is its derivatives thathave made the most numerous contributions.From the verb servīre ‘serve’ come deserve,dessert, sergeant, servant [13], serve, andserviette [15] (but not, despite the similarity,conserve, observe, preserve, reserve, etc, whichgo back to the unrelated Latin servāre ‘keep,protect’). Servītium ‘slavery’ has providedservice [12] and its derivative serviceable [14],while from servīlis ‘slavish’ comes servile [14]. CONCIERGE, DESERVE, DESSERT, SERF,SERVIETTE, SERVILEsesquipedalian [17] Sesquipedalian meansetymologically ‘a foot and a half long’. Its use inEnglish was inspired by the Roman poetHorace’s phrase sesquipedalia verba, literally‘words a foot and a half long’, hence‘preposterously long words that soundpompous’ – of which sesquipedalian itself is anappropriately good example. It is a compoundword formed from the Latin prefix sesqui- ‘halfas much again’ (a derivative of sēmi- ‘half’) andpēs ‘foot’. FOOT, PEDALsession [14] Etymologically, a session is simplya ‘sitting’. The word comes via Old Frenchsession from Latin sessiō, a derivative of sedēre‘sit’. Its sense development reflects the symbolicassociation of ‘sitting down’ with the conductingof business, which can be seen anew in themodern English expression get round a table.Other English descendants of Latin sedēre,which is closely related to English sit, includeassess, assiduous [16], insidious [16], séance[19], sedentary [16], sediment [16], size, subsidy[14], and supersede. ASSESS, ASSIDUOUS, INSIDIOUS, SÉANCE,SEDENTARY, SEDIMENT, SIZE, SUBSIDY,SUPERSEDEset English has two words set. The verb [OE] issimply the causative version of sit. That is to say,etymologically it means ‘cause to sit’. It comesfrom a prehistoric Germanic *satjan (source alsoof German setzen, Dutch zetten, Swedish sätta,and Danish sætte), which was a causative variantof *setjan, ancestor of English sit. Set ‘group’[14] is essentially the same word as sect. Itcomes via Old French sette from Latin secta,source of English sect. It originally meant

strictly a ‘group of people’, and its far broadermodern application, which emerged in the 16thcentury, is no doubt due to association with theverb set and the notion of ‘setting’ thingstogether. SIT; SECTsettle [OE] Although now far less common, thenoun settle ‘bench’ is older than the verb, andindeed was the source of it. It evolved (alongwith German sessel) from a prehistoricGermanic *setlaz, which was derived from thesame base that produced English sit. (Saddlecomes from a variant of the same base.) In OldEnglish times it was setl, and still meant simply‘seat’. This formed the basis of a verb setlan ‘putin a position of repose’, ancestor of modernEnglish settle. SADDLE, SITseven [OE] The Indo-European term for ‘seven’was *septm. This evolved into Latin septem(source of English September), Greek heptá(source of English heptathlon [20]), andGermanic *sebun. And *sebun in turn hasdiversified into German sieben, Dutch zeven,Swedish sju, Danish syv, and English seven. HEPTATHLON, SEPTEMBERseveral [15] Etymologically, several means‘separate’. It comes via Anglo-Norman severalfrom medieval Latin sēparālis, a derivative ofLatin sēpar ‘separate’. This in turn was formedfrom sēparāre ‘separate’ (source of Englishseparate), whose Vulgar Latin descendant*sēperāre passed into English via Anglo-Norman severer as sever [14]. Several’s originalsense ‘separate, individual’ survives in legalterminology, but it has been superseded in thegeneral language by ‘many’, which emerged inthe 16th and 17th centuries via ‘different,various’. PREPARE, SEPARATE, SEVERsevere [16] Severe is a descendant, via OldFrench severe, of Latin sevērus, a word ofuncertain origin. English asseveration ‘firmdeclaration’ [16] comes from its Latin derivativeasseverāre ‘assert earnestly’. ASSEVERATIONsew [OE] Sew comes, with its relatives Swedishsy and Danish sye, from a prehistoric Germanic*siwjan. This was descended from an Indo-European base *siw-, *sju- that also producedLatin suere ‘sew’ (source of English suture[16]), Greek humén ‘membrane’ (source ofEnglish hymen [17]), and English seam. It is norelation to sow. HYMEN, SEAM, SUTUREsewer [15] Etymologically, sewer denotes the‘removal of water’. The word comes via Anglo-Norman sever from Vulgar Latin *exaquāria, aderivative of *exaquāre ‘remove water, drain’.This was a compound verb formed from Latinex- ‘out’ and aqua ‘water’. The derivativessewage [19] and sewerage [19] are both nativeEnglish formations. AQUATICsex [14] Sex comes via Old French sexe fromLatin sexus. This has traditionally been449 shaftexplained as a relative of Latin secāre ‘cut’(source of English section, sector, etc), as if itdenoted etymologically that ‘section’ of thepopulation which is male or female, but thatview is no longer generally held. The use of sexfor ‘sexual intercourse’ (first recorded in theworks of D H Lawrence) and the derivative sexyare both 20th-century developments.sextant [17] A sextant is etymologically aninstrument based on a ‘sixth’ of a circle. Sextantsmeasure off the angle between the horizon and acelestial body on a graduated scale that ismarked on an arc equal to one sixth of a circle.They were first named at the beginning of the17th century by the Danish astronomer TychoBrahe, who used the term sextāns ‘sixth part’, aderivative of Latin sextus ‘sixth’ (to whichEnglish six is closely related). The anglicizedversion sextant is first recorded in 1628. SIXsexton [14] Sexton and sacristan [14] aredoublets: that is to say, they started out as thesame word, but have diverged over the centuries.Both come from medieval Latin sacristānus, aderivative of sacrista ‘person in charge of holyvessels’ (which in turn was based on Latin sacer‘holy’, source of English sacred), but whereassacristan was borrowed directly from Latin,sexton came via the roundabout route of Anglo-Norman segerstaine. SACRED, SACRISTAN, SAINTshabby [17] Etymologically, shabby means‘scabby’. It comes from a now obsolete shab,which denoted ‘scab’, and also metaphorically‘disreputable fellow’. It was the nativeequivalent to Old Norse *skabbr ‘scab’, fromwhich English gets scab. SCABshaddock [17] The shaddock is a large citrusfruit, similar to a grapefruit. Its namecommemorates one Captain Shaddock, thecommander of an East India Company ship whoat some point in the late 17th century stopped offat Jamaica en route from the East Indies toEngland and left some seeds of the shaddock treethere.shade [OE] Shade and shadow [12] areultimately the same word. Both originated in OldEnglish sceadu. Shade is the direct descendantof this, whereas shadow comes from its inflectedform sceaduwe. Sceadu itself went back viaprehistoric Germanic *skathwō (source also ofGerman schatten and Dutch schaduw) to Indo-European *skotwá (whence also Greek skótos‘darkness’ and Welsh cysgod ‘shade’). Shed‘hut’ probably originated as a variant of shade. SHADOW, SHEDshaft [OE] Shaft is a general Germanic word,shared by German and Dutch schaft and Swedishand Danish skaft. These point back to a commonprehistoric ancestor *skaftaz, which may havebeen descended from the Indo-European base*scap- ‘support’ (source of English sceptre[13]). SCEPTRE

shag 450shag [OE] Shag originally meant ‘rough untidyhair’, a sense now more familiar in its derivativeshaggy [16]. Related Old Norse forms such asskegg ‘beard’, skagi ‘promontory’, and skaga‘project’ suggest that its underlying meaning is‘something that sticks out’. The bird-name shag,which denotes a relative of the cormorant andwas first recorded in the 16th century, may be anallusion to the bird’s shaggy crest. The origins ofthe verb shag ‘copulate with’, which dates fromthe late 18th century, are not known, although itmay be distantly related to shake.shagreen see CHAGRINshake [OE] Shake is a general Germanic verb,although today its only surviving relatives areSwedish skaka and Norwegian skage. It comesfrom a prehistoric Germanic *skakan, whichgoes back to the Indo-European base *skeg-,*skek- (source also of Sanskrit khajati ‘agitate,churn’ and Welsh ysgogi ‘move’).shale see SCALEshall [OE] The etymological meaning of shall is‘owe’. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanicbase *skal-, *skul- which also produced Germansollen ‘ought to’ and schuld ‘debt’. Its use inEnglish as an auxiliary verb denoting future timeevolved via the intermediate senses ‘ought to,must’ and ‘be to’. The notion of obligationsurvives in should, which originated as its pasttense. SHOULDshallot [17] The shallot is etymologically theonion from ‘Ascalon’, an ancient port insouthern Palestine. The Romans called itAscalōnia caepa ‘Ascalonian onion’, orascalōnia for short. In Vulgar Latin this became*escalonia, which passed into Old French asescaloigne (source of English scallion [14], stillused for ‘spring onion’ in America andelsewhere). The variant form eschalottedeveloped. English took this over as eschalot(‘Eschalots are now from France become anEnglish plant’, John Mortimer, Whole Art ofHusbandry 1707), and soon lopped off the firstsyllable to produce shallot. SCALLIONsham see SHAMEshamble [17] Shamble ‘slouch’ and the nounshambles [15] are probably related. The latteroriginally meant ‘meat market’. It arose out ofthe plural of the now obsolete shamble ‘meatstall, meat table’, which represented a semanticspecialization of Old English sceamul ‘stool,table’. This was descended from prehistoricGermanic *skamul (source also of Germanschemel ‘stool’), which in turn was borrowedfrom Latin scamellum, a diminutive form ofscamnum ‘bench’. In the 16th century, thesignification of shambles moved on to‘slaughterhouse’, and hence metaphorically toany ‘scene of bloodshed and slaughter’, but themilder modern sense ‘scene of disorder or ruin’did not emerge until as recently as the early 20thcentury. The verb shamble is thought to comefrom the now obsolete expression shamble legs‘ungainly legs’, an allusion to the rickety legs ofthe stalls or tables in meat markets.shame [OE] Shame is a general Germanic term,with relatives in German scham, Dutch schaam,and Swedish and Danish skam. Their commonancestor is a prehistoric *skamō, a word ofunknown origin. Sham [17] probably originatedin a northern English pronunciation of shame.The compound shamefaced [16] has noetymological connection with face. It is analteration of an earlier shamefast, whose secondelement is the same word as fast ‘firm’, and itsunderlying meaning is ‘held firm by shame’. SHAMshampoo [18] Hindi chāmpō means ‘press!’ Itis an imperative form of chāmpnā ‘press’, ormore specifically ‘knead the muscles’. TheEnglish in India took the word up in the 18thcentury as a verb meaning ‘massage’, but by themiddle of the 19th century we find it being usedin the accepted modern sense, ‘wash the hair’.The linking factor was presumably the vigorousmassaging action typically applied to the scalpwhen shampooing the hair.shank [OE] Shank originally meant ‘leg’, ormore specifically ‘shin’ (Edward I of Englandwas nicknamed ‘Longshanks’ on account of hislong legs). The word goes back to a prehistoricWest Germanic *skangkan, which also producedDutch schenk ‘leg-bone’ and is closely related toGerman schinken ‘ham’. Its ultimate origins arenot known, although it has been suggested that itarose from the notion of ‘crookedness’ or‘lameness’ (in which case German hinken ‘limp’may be related). The main modern meaning ofshank, ‘stem, shaft’, emerged in the 16thcentury.shanty English has two distinct words shanty.The older, ‘shack’ [19], originated in America,and the fact that to begin with it was mainly usedfor the houses of Irish immigrants suggests thatit may have come from Irish sean tig ‘old house’.Shanty ‘sailor’s song’ [19] probably comes fromchantez, the imperative plural of French chanter‘sing’. CANTO, CHANTshape [OE] Shape goes back ultimately to theprehistoric Germanic base *skap- ‘form, create’,which also produced German schaffen andSwedish skapa ‘create, make’. ‘Create’ seems tohave been a secondary meaning of the base,evolving out of an earlier ‘chop or dig out’,which probably gave rise to English scoop. SCOOPshare Share ‘plough-blade’ [OE] and share‘portion’ [14] are distinct words, but they areultimately related. The former came from theGermanic base *skar-, *sker- ‘cut’, which alsoproduced English score, shear, short, etc. ItsGerman relative is schar ‘ploughshare’. Share‘portion’ appears to be a survival of Old Englishscearu. This is only recorded in the senses‘groin’ and ‘tonsure’, but they share a meaningelement (‘dividing’ in the case of the groin, the‘forking’ of the body, and ‘cutting’ in the case oftonsure) that leads back to Germanic *skar-,

*sker-, and suggests that share ‘portion’ denotesetymologically something ‘cut’ up or dividedbetween people. SCORE, SHARP, SHEAR, SHIRT, SHORT, SKIRTshark [16] The origins of the word shark areobscure. It appears to have been introduced toEnglish in the late 1560s by members of Sir JohnHawkins’ expedition (a ballad of 1569 recorded‘There is no proper name for [the fish] that Iknow, but that certain men of Captain Hawkins’sdoth call it a shark’), but it is not known wherethey got it from. A resemblance to Austriandialect schirk ‘sturgeon’ has been noted. Alsonot clear is whether shark ‘swindler’ (firstrecorded in the 18th century) is the same word;an alternative possibility is that it came fromGerman schurke ‘scoundrel’.sharp [OE] Sharp, together with its closerelatives German scharf, Dutch scherp, andSwedish and Danish skarp, goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *skarpaz. This wasprobably descended from an extension of theIndo-European base *sker- ‘cut’ (source ofEnglish score, share, shear, etc). Welsh hasborrowed sharp as siarp. SHEARshatter see SCATTERshave see SCABshawl [17] The shawl was originally an Orientalgarment – an oblong strip of cloth wornvariously over the shoulders, round the waist, oras a turban, and supposedly woven from the hairof a species of Tibetan goat. Versions of it didnot begin to be worn in the West until the mid-18th century. Its name comes via Urdu fromPersian shāl, which may be derived fromShāliāt, an Indian town.she [12] The Old English word for ‘she’ was hēo.As this evolved during the late Old Englishperiod, its main pronunciation stress shiftedfrom the e to the o. The o gradually changed toan e sound, while the original e becametransmuted into a y sound, which eventuallymerged with the h to form sh. The original hsurvives in her. HE, HER, ITshear [OE] Shear is the principal Englishdescendant of the Indo-European base *sker-‘cut’, which has also produced English score,share, shirt, short, and skirt, and probably sharpand shore as well. A variant of the base withoutthe s is responsible for curt and curtail. Theimmediate source of shear itself is prehistoricGermanic *skeran, which also evolved intoGerman and Dutch scheren, Swedish skära, andDanish skjære. The verb sheer ‘swerve’ [17]probably originated as a variant of shear, but theadjective sheer [16] is an entirely different word.It probably represents a survival of Old Englishscīr ‘bright, shining’, which came ultimatelyfrom the Germanic base *ski-, source also ofEnglish shimmer and shine. CURT, CURTAIL, SCORE, SHARE, SHEER, SHIRT,SHORT, SKIRTsheath [OE] A sheath is probablyetymologically a ‘split stick’. The word comes451 shelffrom a prehistoric Germanic *skaithiz, whichalso produced German scheide, Dutch schede,and Danish skede. This seems to have beenderived from the base *skaith ‘divide, split’(source also of English shed ‘give off, drop’ andski), in which case the notion underlying itwould have been of a stick split open so that asword blade could be inserted into it. SHED, SKIshed English has two distinct words shed. Theverb [OE] originally meant ‘divide, separate,split’ (a 14th-century religious poemparaphrased Genesis with ‘the sun to shed theday from the night’), and the modern range ofsenses, ‘give off, drop’, did not begin to emergeuntil the Middle English period. It goes back toa prehistoric Germanic *skaithan, which alsoproduced German and Dutch scheiden‘separate’. This was derived from a base *skaith-‘divide, split’, source also of English ski andprobably sheath. Shed ‘hut’ [15] may be analteration of shade (but the shed of watershed isof course a noun use of the verb shed). SHEATH, SKI; SHADEsheen [OE] Despite its similarity in form andmeaning, sheen has no etymological connectionwith shine. It was originally an adjective,meaning ‘beautiful, bright’. Like its relatives,German schön and Dutch schoon, it goes back toa prehistoric Germanic *skauniz, which wasderived from the base *skau- ‘see, look’ (sourcealso of English scavenger and show). It was notused as a noun until the early 17th century (it isfirst recorded in Shakespeare). SCAVENGER, SCONE, SHOWsheep [OE] Sheep is a West Germanic word,with relatives in German schaf and Dutchschaap. It is not known where it came from,although it has been speculated that it may berelated to German schaffen ‘make, create’ (andhence to English shape), and that its underlyingmeaning is hence ‘creature’. The derivativesheepish [12] originally meant simply‘sheeplike’. It had a variety of metaphoricalapplications in Middle English, including ‘silly’and ‘fearful’, but the modern ‘shy’ did notemerge until the late 17th century. Shepherd is ofcourse based on sheep.sheer see SHEARsheet Sheet ‘cloth’ [OE] and sheet ‘rope attachedto a sail’ [OE] are distinct words, although theyhave a common ancestor. This was the Germanicbase *skaut-, *skut- ‘project’, which alsoproduced English scot-free, scuttle ‘sink a ship’,shoot, shot, shout, shut, and skit. This producedtwo Old English nouns, scēte ‘cloth’ and scēata‘sail-rope’, which have formally coalesced inmodern English as sheet, but retained theirdistinctive meanings. (Sheet ‘cloth’ was not usedspecifically for ‘bed sheet’ until the 13thcentury.) SCOT-FREE, SCUTTLE, SHOOT, SHOT, SHOUT,SHUT, SKITshelf [14] Shelf appears to have been borrowedfrom Middle Low German schelf ‘shelf’. Thismay have come from the Germanic base *skelf-

shell 452‘split’, which also produced Old English scylfe‘partition’, the word’s underlying meaningtherefore being a ‘piece of split wood used forstanding things on’. The derivative shelve datesfrom the 16th century.shell [OE] Shell goes back ultimately to theGermanic base *skal- ‘divide, separate’, whichalso produced English scale, scalp, school (offish), shale, shelter, shield, shoal (of fish), skill,and skol. Its underlying meaning is hence a‘covering that splits off or is peeled off’. Itsimmediate Germanic ancestor was *skaljō,which also produced Dutch schel andNorwegian skjæl. Shellac [18] is a compound ofshell and lac ‘lacquer, varnish’ (a word ofSanskrit origin, of which lacquer is a derivative),and is a direct translation of French laque enécailles ‘lac (melted) in thin plates’. SCALE, SCALP, SCHOOL, SHALE, SHELTER,SHIELD, SHOAL, SKILL, SKOLshelter [16] The origins of shelter are unclear,but the most usually accepted explanation is thatit is an alteration of the now obsolete sheltron.This denoted a body of troops which protecteditself in battle with a covering of joined shields.It was descended from Old English scieldtruma,a compound formed from scield, the ancestor ofmodern English shield, and truma ‘troop’. SHIELDshemozzle [19] Shemozzle is one of a numberof Yiddish words beginning with sh to havefound their way into English. Most are relativelyrecent introductions, via American English –schlemiel ‘fool, blunderer’ [19] (possibly from aBiblical character Shelumiel who came to asticky end), schlep ‘carry, lug’ [20] (ultimatelyfrom German schleppen ‘drag’), schlock ‘trash’[20] (originally ‘broken merchandise’, and soperhaps related to German schlagen ‘hit’),schmaltz ‘oversentimentality’ [20] (originally‘melted fat’, and so distantly related to Englishsmelt), schmuck ‘fool, oaf’ [19] (literally‘penis’) – but shemozzle is of an earlier vintage,brought by Jewish immigrants to the East End ofLondon. It is a compound formed from Yiddishshlim ‘bad’ and mazel ‘luck’ (as in the Yiddishgreeting mazel tov ‘good luck’), and wasindependently borrowed into American Englishas schlimazel ‘loser, failure’ [20].shepherd [OE] Shepherd is of course acompound of sheep and herd – but not herd‘group of animals’. This is a different herd,meaning ‘herdsman’, which now survives onlyin compounds (cowherd and goatherd are otherexamples). It comes from the same Germanicsource as herd ‘group of animals’. HERD, SHEEPsherbet [17] Like syrup, sherbet goes backultimately to the Arabic verb shariba ‘drink’,whose initial /shr/ sound was originally imitativeof the sound of noisy drinking or slurping. Fromit was derived the noun sharbah, whose pluralsharbāt passed into Turkish as sherbet orshorbet. English took over the former as sherbet,and originally used it for a ‘cooling MiddleEastern drink, made with melted snow’. Itsmodern application, to a powder for makingsweet fizzy drinks (or just for eating), did notemerge until the mid-19th century. Italianadopted shorbet as sorbetto, which reachedEnglish via French as sorbet [16]. SORBET, SYRUPsheriff [OE] A sheriff is etymologically a ‘shirereeve’– that is, a ‘county official’. The term wascompounded in the Old English period fromscīr, ancestor of modern English shire, andgerēfa ‘local official’, a word based on *rōf‘assembly’ which survives as the historical termreeve. It was used for the ‘monarch’srepresentative in a county’. REEVE, SHIREsherpa [19] The Sherpas are a Tibetan peoplewho live in northern Nepal. Their name forthemselves (sharpa in Tibetan) means literally‘dweller in an eastern country’. They act asmountain guides in the Himalayas, and since theexploits on Mount Everest of Tenzing Norgay, aSherpa, became well known in the 1950s, sherpahas become a generic term for a ‘Himalayanmountain guide’.sherry [16] Various sorts of dryish or sweetenedwhite wine known as sack (etymologically ‘drywine’) were imported into England in the 16thand 17th centuries. Many came from Spain, andthe sort made around Xerez (now Jerez) insouthern Spain was called in English (in anapproximation to the Spanish pronunciation ofXerez) sherris sack. Before the end of the 16thcentury this had been reduced to sherry, which indue course came to be applied to the fortifiedSpanish wine that now goes by that name.shibboleth [14] Hebrew shibbōleth meant‘stream’. According to the Bible, the Gileaditesused it as a password, for they knew theirenemies the Ephraimites could not pronouncethe sh properly (‘And it was so, that when thoseEphraimites which were escaped said, Let me goover; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Artthou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay, then theysaid unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he saidSibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce itright’, Judges 12:5–6). In 17th-century English itcame to be applied generically to any word usedas a test of pronunciation, particularly as a signof belonging to a group, and hence by extensionto any catchword or slogan adopted by a group,and this eventually evolved into the modernsense ‘outmoded slogan, practice, etc stilladhered to’.shield [OE] Shield goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *skelduz, which also producedGerman and Dutch schild, Swedish sköld, andDanish skjoldr. This was probably derived fromthe Germanic base *skel- ‘divide, split, separate’(source also of English scale, shell, etc), andhence denoted etymologically a ‘flat piece ofwood produced by splitting a log, board’. Shelteris probably descended from a compound formedfrom shield. SCALE, SHELL, SHELTERshift [OE] Old English sciftan meant ‘arrange’ (itcame from a prehistoric Germanic base *skip-,

which also produced German schichten ‘arrangein layers, pile up’, and traces of its originalmeaning survive in make-shift [16], denotingsomething arranged or contrived for lack ofanything better). Its modern meaning ‘move’emerged in the 14th century, via an intermediate‘change’. The notion of ‘change’ underlies theuse of the noun shift for ‘woman’s slip’, whichevolved from an earlier ‘change of clothing’, andalso its use for a ‘particular working period’,marked by a ‘change’ of workers at beginningand end.shilling [OE] Shilling has relatives in the otherGermanic languages – German schilling, Dutchschelling, and Swedish and Danish skilling –which point back to a prehistoric Germanic*skillinggaz. Where this came from, however, isa mystery. Among suggestions are that it wasformed from the base *skel- ‘divide, separate’(source of English scale, shell, etc), and hencedenotes etymologically a ‘division’ of a standardunit of weight or currency; or from the base*skell- ‘resound, ring’ (source of Dutch schel‘shrill’ and German schelle ‘bell’).shimmer [OE] Shimmer goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *skim- (source also ofGerman schimmern ‘glitter, gleam’). This wasan extension of the base *ski-, from whichEnglish gets sheer and shine. SHEER, SHINEshin [OE] Shin has Germanic relatives inGerman schiene ‘thin plate’, Dutch schen ‘shin’,Swedish skena ‘shin’, and Danish skinne‘splint’. Its underlying meaning seems to be‘thin piece’. The first record of its use as a verb,meaning ‘climb with the hands and legs’, comesfrom the early 19th century.shindy [19] Shindy is an alteration of shinty [18],the name of a rumbustious Scottish gameresembling hockey which was also used in the19th century for a ‘commotion’. Shinty itselfappears to be a lexicalization of shin t’ ye ‘shinto you’, a cry supposedly uttered by players ofthe game. Shindig [19] is probably an alterationof shindy. SHINDIG, SHINTYshine [OE] Shine and its Germanic relatives,German scheinen, Dutch schijnen, Swedishskina, and Danish skinne, go back to aprehistoric *skīnan. This was derived from *ski-,a base which also produced English sheer andshimmer (sheen, despite its similarity, is notconnected). Other descendants of this base wereGreek skiá ‘shadow’ and skēné ‘tent’ (source ofEnglish scene); the semantic link between therather unlikely bedfellows ‘shining’ and‘shadow’ is held to be ‘faint light’. SCENE, SHEER, SHIMMERshingle English has two distinct words shingle.The older, ‘roof tile’ [12], was borrowed fromLatin scindula, a variant of scandula ‘roof tile’.This was probably derived from scandere‘ascend’ (source of English ascend, descend,scan, etc), the underlying notion being of rowsof tiles rising one above the other like steps.Shingle ‘beach pebbles’ [16] is of unknown453 shiverorigin; it may be related to Norwegian singl‘coarse sand’ and North Frisian singel ‘gravel’.Shingles [14], incidentally, the name of a viralinfection, comes from Latin cingulum ‘girdle’, aclose relative of English cincture ‘girdle’: thedisease is often characterized by skin eruptionsthat almost encircle the body. ASCEND, DESCEND, SCAN; CINCTUREship [OE] Ship comes from a prehistoricGermanic *skipam, which also producedGerman schiff, Dutch schip, Swedish skepp, andDanish skib. It is not known for certain wherethis came from, although a link has beensuggested with Latvian shkibīt ‘cut, hew’, inwhich case the underlying meaning of ship couldbe ‘hollowed-out log’ – a ‘dugout’, in otherwords. The Old High German form schif wasborrowed into Italian as schifo, and this made itsway via French esquif into English as skiff [16].The Middle Dutch form schip had a derivativeschipper ‘captain of a small ship’, which hasgiven English skipper [14]. And equip too comesfrom a relative of English ship. EQUIP, SKIFF, SKIPPERshire [OE] The original meaning of shire, whichdid not survive beyond the Old English period,was ‘official charge, administrative office’, andit has been suggested that the word is relatedultimately to Latin cūra ‘care, charge’ (source ofEnglish curate, cure, etc). Already by the 9thcentury it was being used for an ‘administrativearea ruled by a governor’, and over the nexthundred years the application to what is nowknown as a county emerged. (County itself wasintroduced in the 14th century, and graduallyousted shire.) Sheriff is a compound based onshire. SHERIFFshirt [OE] A shirt, like a skirt, is etymologicallya ‘short’ garment, one that stops at or just belowthe waist rather than reaching down to the kneesor beyond. In common with Swedish skjorta andDanish skjorte, it comes from the prehistoricbase *skurt-, source of English short. Shirty‘angry’ [19] was inspired by the now defunctexpression get one’s shirt out ‘lose one’s temper’(the opposite keep one’s shirt on ‘remain calm’survives). SHARE, SHEAR, SHORT, SKIRTshit [14] The verb shit is an alteration (due to theinfluence of the past participle shitten) of anearlier shite [OE]. This, like German scheissen,Dutch schijten, Swedish skita, and Danish skide,goes back to a prehistoric Germanic base *skīt-,which in turn was descended from Indo-European *skheid- ‘split, divide, separate’(source of English schism and schist – theunderlying notion being of ‘separation’ from thebody, and hence ‘discharge’ from the body. Thenoun shit, a derivative of the verb, is firstrecorded in the 16th century. SCHISM, SCHIST, SCHIZOPHRENIAshiver Shiver ‘tremble’ [13] and shiver ‘sliver,fragment’ [12] are different words. The formerwas originally chiver, which may have been analteration of an earlier chevel ‘shiver’. This in

shoal 454turn was derived from the Old English nounceaft ‘jaw’ (source of English jowl), and soetymologically denoted the ‘chattering of theteeth’. Shiver ‘fragment’ may have beenborrowed from Low German (Middle LowGerman had schever). It goes back ultimately tothe prehistoric Germanic base *skif- ‘split’. JOWLshoal English has two distinct words shoal.‘Shallow area’ [16] is descended from the OldEnglish adjective sceald ‘shallow’, which in turncame from prehistoric Germanic *skaldaz.(English shallow [15] is related, although it isnot clear precisely how.) Shoal of fish [16] issimply a reborrowing of Middle Dutch schōle,which had earlier been taken over as school. SCHOOLshock English has two words shock in currentgeneral usage. Shock ‘heavy blow, unpleasantsurprise’ [16] was borrowed from French choc, aderivative of the verb choquer ‘strike’, whoseorigins are unknown. Shock ‘thick shaggy massof hair’ [19] is a nominalization of an earlieradjective shock ‘thick and shaggy’ [17], but it isnot clear where this came from. It has beenlinked with the obsolete shough, which referredto a sort of dog, and another possibility is that itis connected with the now little used shock ‘stackof sheaves of corn’ [14]. This was probablyborrowed from Middle Dutch or Middle LowGerman schok.shoe [OE] Shoe is a strictly Germanic word, withno living relatives in other branches of the Indo-European language family. It comes from aprehistoric Germanic *skōkhaz, which isprobably descended ultimately from the Indo-European base *skeu- ‘cover’. Its cousins areGerman schuh, Dutch schoen, and Swedish andDanish sko. Until the early modern Englishperiod shoon vied with shoes as its plural; andthe archaic past form of the verb, shod, stillsurvives. SHODshoot [OE] Like sheet, shout, shut, and perhapsskit [15], shoot goes back ultimately to theprehistoric Germanic base *skeut-, *skaut-,*skut- ‘project’. This formed the basis of a verb*skeutan, which evolved into German schiessen,Dutch schieten, Swedish skjuta, and Danishskyde as well as English shoot. The noun shotcomes from the same source. SHEET, SHOT, SHOUT, SHUTshop [13] The word shop had humblebeginnings. It goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *skoppan, which denoted a smalladditional structure, such as a lean-to shed or aporch. There is one isolated example of an OldEnglish descendant of this – sceoppa, whichdenoted a ‘treasury’ – but this does not appear tohave survived. The modern English word wasborrowed from Old French eschoppe ‘booth,stall’, which in turn had got it from Middle LowGerman schoppe. German dialect schopf ‘shed,shelter’ comes from the same source. The verbshop originated in the 16th century, in the sense‘imprison’ (reflecting a now obsolete slang useof the noun shop for ‘prison’). This is theancestor of modern British slang shop ‘informagainst’. The sense ‘visit shops to buy things’emerged in the mid 18th century.shore English has two words shore. The onemeaning ‘land at the water’s edge’ [14] wasborrowed from Middle Dutch or Middle LowGerman schōre, which probably came from theGermanic base *skur- ‘cut’ (source also ofEnglish score, shear, etc). Shore ‘support’ [14],as in ‘shore up’, comes from Middle Dutchschōren ‘prop’, a word of unknown origin. SHARE, SHEAR, SHORTshort [OE] Etymologically, something that isshort has been ‘cut off’. The word’s immediateGermanic ancestor was *skurtaz, which wasdescended from an extension of the Indo-European base *sker- ‘cut’ (source also ofEnglish score, share, shear, etc). Anotherversion of the base, without the s, was the sourceof Latin curtus ‘short’, which has producedEnglish curt and curtail, and also supplied theword for ‘short’ in the other Germanic languages(German kurz and Dutch, Swedish, and Danishkort), as well of course as the Romancelanguages (French court, Italian and Spanishcorto, and Romanian scurt). The shirt and theskirt are etymologically ‘short’ garments. CURT, CURTAIL, SCORE, SHARE, SHEAR, SHORE,SHORT, SKIRTshot [OE] Shot goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *skutaz, which was derived from thesame base that produced English shoot. It usedto mean ‘payment’ as well as ‘act of shooting’, asense shared by its Old Norse relative skot,which provided English with the scot of scotfree[16] (etymologically ‘without having topay’). SCOT-FREE, SHOOTshould [OE] Should started life as the past tenseof shall. It preserves the word’s originalconnotations of ‘obligation’ which have all butdisappeared from shall. SHALLshoulder [OE] Shoulder is a general WestGermanic word, with relatives in Germanschulter and Dutch schouder (it was alsoborrowed into Swedish and Danish as skuldraand skulder respectively). It goes back to aprehistoric *skuldr-, but where this came from isnot clear. One suggestion is that it is distantlyrelated to English shield, and originally denoted‘shoulder-blade’ (the underlying meaning being‘flat piece’).shout [14] The origins of shout are disputed.One school of thought traces it back to theprehistoric Germanic base *skeut-, *skaut-,*skut- ‘project’ (source of English sheet andshoot), as if its etymological meaning were‘throw one’s voice out forcibly’, while anotherviews it as a borrowing from Old Norse skúta‘taunt’, which may be a distant relative of Greekkudázein ‘abuse’.shove [OE] Shove was originally a perfectlyrespectable, neutral verb for ‘push forcefully,thrust’, but over the centuries it has come down

in the world, acquiring connotations of rudeness.In common with German schieben and Dutchschuiven it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*skeuban. This was formed from a base whichalso produced English scuffle [16], sheaf [OE],shuffle [16], and indeed shovel [OE](etymologically an ‘implement for shoving’),and may be distantly related to Lithuanianskubus ‘quick’ and Old Church Slavonic skubati‘pull’. SCUFFLE, SHEAF, SHOVEL, SHUFFLEshow [OE] Show originally meant ‘look at’. Itsmodern senses – basically ‘cause to look at’ –did not begin to develop until the early MiddleEnglish period. It comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *skauwōjan, whose Germandescendant schauen still means ‘look at’ (andwhose Flemish descendant scauwen gaveEnglish scavenger). This in turn was derivedfrom the base *skau- ‘see, look’, source also ofEnglish sheen and German schön ‘beautiful’.And the ultimate ancestor of *skau- was an Indo-European base which also produced Greek keein‘observe’ and Latin cavēre ‘beware’ (source ofEnglish caution [13] and caveat [16]). CAUTION, CAVEAT, SCAVENGER, SCONE, SHEENshower [OE] Shower comes from a prehistoricWest Germanic *skūra, which also producedGerman schauer and Dutch schoer. Its ultimateancestry is uncertain.shrapnel The term shrapnel commemorates thename of General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842), aBritish artillery officer who in the course of thePeninsular War, at the beginning of the 19thcentury, invented an exploding shell that sentbullets flying in all directionsshred [OE] A shred is etymologically a ‘cut’piece. The word comes ultimately from theprehistoric West Germanic base *skraud-,*skreud-, *skrud- ‘cut’, source also of Englishshroud. From it was formed the noun *skrautha,which has evolved into German schrot, Dutchschroot, and English shred, and has also, via acircuitous route, given English scroll. SCROLL, SHROUDshrewd [14] Shrewd originally meant ‘wicked,dangerous’. Its modern sense ‘astute’ did notdevelop (via a less approbatory ‘cunning’) untilthe 16th century. It was derived from shrew‘wicked man’ (a sense now obsolete). This isgenerally assumed to be the same noun as shrewthe animal-name [OE], a word of uncertainorigin. Shrews were formerly thought to have apoisonous bite, and were held in superstitiousfear – hence the term’s metaphorical application.The move from ‘wicked man’ via ‘bad-temperedabusive complainer’ to ‘nagging woman’ beganin the 14th century. SHREWshrift see SHRIVEshrimp [14] The shrimp’s name appears to echoits small size. It was probably borrowed fromsome Low German source, and its possiblerelatives include Middle Low Germanschrempen ‘shrink, wrinkle’ and modernGerman schrumpfen ‘shrivel, shrink’. Its use for455 shya ‘tiny person’ is virtually as old in English as itsapplication to the crustacean, and probably goesright back to its original source.shrive [OE] Shrive ‘hear someone’s confession’goes back ultimately to Latin scrībere ‘write’(source of English scribe, script, etc). This wasborrowed into prehistoric West Germanic as*skrīban, whose direct descendants are Germanschreiben and Dutch schrijven ‘write’. But italso developed a specialized sense ‘prescribepenances’, and it is this that has given Englishshrive. Today the word is best known in the formof shrove, its past tense, which is used in ShroveTuesday [15] (an allusion to the practice of goingto confession at the beginning of Lent), and thederived noun shrift ‘penance, confession’ [OE](the expression short shrift originally referred tothe short period of time allowed to someoneabout to be executed to say their confession). SCRIBE, SCRIPT, SHRIFT, SHROVEshroud [OE] Shroud originally meant simply‘garment’ – a sense which survived into the earlymodern English period (‘My princely robes arelaid aside, whose glittering pomp Diana’sshrouds supplies’, Christopher Marlowe andThomas Nashe, Dido Queen of Carthage 1594).Not until the late 16th century did the modernmeaning ‘winding-sheet’ begin to emerge. Theword derives ultimately from the prehistoricWest Germanic base *skraud-, *skreud-, *skrud-‘cut’ (source also of English shred). SHREDTuesdayShrove Tuesday see SHRIVEshut [OE] Shut comes ultimately from the sameprehistoric Germanic base (*skaut-, *skeut-,*skut- ‘project’) that produced English shoot,and its underlying etymological reference is tothe ‘shooting’ of a bolt across a door to fasten it.Its immediate West Germanic ancestor was*skuttjan, which also produced Dutch schutten‘obstruct’. In Old English this became scyttan,which if it had evolved unchecked would havegiven modern English shit. For reasons ofdelicacy, perhaps, the West Midlands form shutwas drafted into the general language in the 16thcentury. SHEET, SHOOT, SHOT, SHOUT, SHUTTLEshuttle [OE] A shuttle is etymologicallysomething that is ‘shot’. Indeed, the word’s OldEnglish precursor scytel meant ‘arrow’ or ‘dart’.It comes ultimately from the prehistoricGermanic base *skaut-, *skeut-, *skut- ‘project’,which also produced English shoot and shut.There is a gap between the disappearance of OldEnglish scytel and the emergence of shuttle inthe 14th century, but they are presumably thesame word (a shuttle being something that isthrown or ‘shot’ across a loom). SHUTshy Shy ‘timid, reserved’ [OE] goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *skeukhwaz ‘afraid’(source also of English eschew and skew). It isgenerally assumed that shy ‘throw’ [18] musthave come from it, but the exact nature of therelationship between the two words is not clear.The original application of the verb seems to

shyster 456have been specifically to the throwing of sticksat chickens, and it has been suggested, notaltogether convincingly, that its use alludes tothe notion of a ‘shy’ cockerel that refuses to fight(there was an 18th- and early 19th-century slangterm shy-cock which meant ‘cowardly person’). ESCHEW, SKEWshyster [19] Shyster ‘unscrupulous lawyer’originated in the USA in the 1840s. It isgenerally supposed to come from the name ofone Scheuster, a New York lawyer of that erawho was constantly being rebuked by judges forhis sharp practices. An alternative explanation,however, is that it represents an alteration ofGerman scheisser, literally ‘shitter’.twinsSiamese twins [19] The original ‘Siamesetwins’ were two males, Chang and Eng (1811–74), born in Siam (now Thailand), who werejoined together at the hip. No attempt was madeto separate them, and they lived to a respectableage; each married and fathered children. In anage unembarrassed to be interested in ‘freaks’,they gained considerable public attention, and bythe 1850s Siamese twins seems to haveestablished itself as a generic term. The late 20thcentury’s aversion from associating physicaldefects with racial or national groups has oustedit in favour of ‘conjoined twins’.sick [OE] The ultimate origins of sick are amystery. It has been traced back to a hypotheticalprehistoric Germanic *seukaz, but beyond thatnothing certain is known. Its modern relativesare German siech, Dutch ziek, Swedish sjuk, andDanish syg.sickle [OE] A sickle is etymologically a ‘cutting’tool. Like its close relatives German sichel andDutch zikkel, it originated in a prehistoricGermanic borrowing of Latin secula ‘sickle’.This was a derivative of the verb secāre ‘cut’(source of English section, sector, etc), which inturn went back to the Indo-European base *sek-‘cut’ (source also of English scythe). SCYTHE, SECTION, SEGMENTside [OE] The etymological meaning of sideappears to be the ‘long’ surface of something (asopposed to the ends or the top or bottom, whichare the ‘shorter’ or ‘narrower’ surfaces). Theword goes back, together with German seite,Dutch zijde, Swedish sida, and Danish side, to aprehistoric Germanic *sīthō, which wasprobably derived from the adjective *sīthaz‘long, deep, low’ (source of Swedish sid ‘long’).sight [OE] Sight is a derivative of the prehistoricGermanic base *sekh-, which also producedEnglish see. In the case of its Germanic relatives,German gesicht, Dutch gezicht, Swedish ansikte,and Danish ansigt, the notion of ‘sight’ has ledon via ‘appearance’ to ‘face’. SEEsign [13] Sign comes via Old French signe fromLatin signum ‘mark’. It already had the meaning‘mark denoting something’ in Latin, and it wasin this sense that it entered English, graduallyousting the native word token. The verb signgoes back ultimately to the Latin derivativesignāre ‘mark’. English acquired it in the 14thcentury, and first used it for ‘write one’s name’in the 15th century. Other related forms inEnglish include assign [14], consign [15],design, ensign [14], insignia [17], resign [14] (inwhich the prefix re- has the force of ‘un-’), seal‘wax impression, fastening’, signal, signatory[17], signature [16], signet [14], significant [16],and signify [13]. The ultimate source of Latinsignum is uncertain. It was once assumed to goback to the Indo-European base *sek- ‘cut’(source of English saw, section, etc), as if itdenoted etymologically a ‘cut mark’, but nowIndo-European *seq- ‘point out’, hence ‘say,tell’ (source of English say) is viewed as a morelikely ancestor. ASSIGN, CONSIGN, DESIGN, ENSIGN, INSIGNIA,RESIGN, SEAL, SIGNAL, SIGNATURE, SIGNIFICANTsignal [16] Latin signālis meant ‘of a sign’ (itwas derived from signum ‘mark, token’, sourceof English sign). It came to be used as a noun,and passed via medieval Latin signāle into OldFrench as seignal. This was later relatinized intosignal, in which form it was taken over byEnglish. The adjective signal ‘conspicuous’came from the same ultimate source, but via amore circuitous route. The Italian version of thenoun signal is segnale. From it was derived theverb segnalare ‘make famous’, whose pastparticiple segnalato gave French signalé –whence English signal. SIGNsignor see SIRsilent [16] Silent comes from the presentparticiple of Latin silēre ‘be silent’. It is not clearwhat the origins of this were, although it seemslikely to be related in some way to Gothicanasilan, a verb which denoted the wind dyingdown, and also perhaps to Latin dēsinere ‘stop’(in which case its underlying meaning would be‘stop speaking’). The Latin-derived nounsilentium actually reached English much earlierthan the adjective, as silence [13].silhouette [18] The term silhouettecommemorates the name of the French authorand politician Étienne de Silhouette (1709–67).As finance minister in the late 1750s he gained areputation for cheeseparing, and silhouette cameto be used for anything skimped. One account ofthe application of the word to a ‘simple cut-outpicture’ is that it carries on this notion of‘simplicity’ or ‘lack of finish’, but an alternativetheory is that Silhouette himself was in the habitof making such pictures. The metaphorical useof the term for a ‘dark image against a brightbackground’ emerged in the mid-19th century.silicon [19] Silicon was coined in 1817 by theBritish chemist Thomas Thomson. Like theslightly earlier silica, it was based on Latin silex‘flint’. From the same source comes silicone,which dates from the 1860s.silk [OE] Like the substance itself, the word silkoriginated in the Far East, possibly in Chinese sī‘silk’. Its immediate ancestor is most closelyrepresented by Manchurian sirghe andMongolian sirkek. Silk-traders brought theirterm west, and the Greeks used it to coin a name

for them: Seres, the ‘silk people’. That is thesource of Latin sēricum and Irish sīric ‘silk’, andalso of English serge. But there must have beenanother oriental form, with an l rather than an r,which made its more northerly way via theBalto-Slavic languages (leaving Russian shelkand Lithuanian shilkai ‘silk’) to Germanic,where it has given Swedish and Danish silke andEnglish silk. SERGEsill [OE] Sill originally denoted the ‘foundationof a wall’. Not until the 15th century was it usedfor the ‘base of a window-frame’. It is related toGerman schwelle ‘threshold’ and possibly alsoto English sole ‘underside of the foot’.silly [OE] In one of the more celebrated semanticvolte-faces in the history of the English lexicon,silly has been transformed over the pastmillennium from ‘blessed, happy’ to ‘stupid’.The word goes back ultimately to a prehistoricWest Germanic *sǣliga, a derivative of *sǣli‘luck, happiness’. It reached Old English asgesǣlig, still meaning ‘happy’, but as it evolvedformally in Middle English through seely to silly,its meaning developed via ‘blessed’, ‘pious’,‘innocent, harmless’, ‘pitiable’, and ‘feeble’ to‘feeble in mind, foolish’. The related Germanselig retains its original meaning ‘happy,blessed’.silt [15] The likelihood is that silt originallyreferred to the mud in salt flats by river estuaries,and that it is etymologically related to salt. It wasprobably borrowed from a Scandinavian word –Danish and Norwegian have the apparentlyrelated sylt ‘salt marsh’. SALTsilver [OE] The word silver probably originatedin Asia Minor. Its unidentified source word wasborrowed into prehistoric Germanic as *silubr-,which has evolved into German silber, Dutchzilver, Danish sølf, and English and Swedishsilver. Borrowing of the same ancestral form intothe Balto-Slavic languages produced Russianserebro, Polish and Serbo-Croat srebro,Lithuanian sidabras, and Latvian sidrabs.similar [17] Similar comes via French similairefrom medieval Latin *similāris, a derivative ofLatin similis ‘like, similar’. This or the closelyrelated simul ‘at the same time’ have also givenEnglish assemble [13], dissemble [15], ensemble[15], resemble, semblance [13], similitude [14],simulate [17], and simultaneous [17]. Itsultimate source was the Indo-European base*sem-, *som-, which also lies behind Englishsame, simple, single, and the homo- ofhomosexual. ASSEMBLE, DISSEMBLE, ENSEMBLE, RESEMBLE,SAME, SEMBLANCE, SIMPLE, SIMULATE,SIMULTANEOUS, SINGLEsimnel [13] Simnel, a term now used for a cakemade at Easter, originally denoted ‘bread madefrom fine flour’. It was borrowed from OldFrench simenel, which itself came from eitherLatin simila (source of English semolina) orGreek semídālis, both meaning ‘fine flour’.457 singsimony [13] Simony, a term which denotes the‘selling of ecclesiastical offices’, perpetuates thename of Simon Magus. He was a Samaritan whoaccording to Acts 8:18–20 tried to buy the powerof conferring the Holy Ghost on people: ‘Andwhen Simon saw that through laying on of theapostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, heoffered them money, saying, Give me also thispower, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he mayreceive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him,Thy money perish with thee, because thou hastthought that the gift of God may be purchasedwith money’.simple [13] Etymologically, simple denotes‘same-fold’ – that is, not multifarious. It goesback ultimately to a compound formed fromprehistoric Indo-European *sm-, *sem-, *som-‘same’ (source also of English same, similar,single, etc) and *pl- ‘fold’ (source of Englishfold, ply, etc). This passed into Latin as simplus‘single’, which found its way into English viaOld French simple. FOLD, PLY, SAME, SIMILARsimulate see SIMILARsimultaneous see SIMILARsin [OE] Sin comes from a prehistoric Germanic*sunjō, a close relative of which producedGerman sünde, Dutch zonde, and Swedish andDanish synd ‘sin’. It is not altogether clear whatits ultimate origins were, but it has been linkedwith Latin sōns ‘guilty’, and also with Englishsooth ‘truth’ and Sanskrit satya- ‘real, true’, as ifits ancestral meaning were ‘(truly) guilty’.since [15] Since is a contracted form of MiddleEnglish sithenes ‘since’. This in turn went back(with the addition of a final -s) to Old Englishsiththan, a compound adverb and conjunctionformed from sīth ‘after’ (a relative of Germanseit ‘since’) and thām ‘that’.sine [16] As in the case of many othermathematical terms, English is indebted toArabic for sine. But here the debt is onlysemantic, not formal. The word sine itself wasborrowed from Latin sinus ‘curve, fold, hollow’(source also of English sinuous [16] and indeedof sinus [16], whose anatomical use comes fromthe notion of a ‘hollow’ place or cavity). In postclassicaltimes it came to denote the ‘fold of agarment’, and so it was mistakenly used totranslate Arabic jayb ‘chord of an arc’, adoppelganger of Arabic jayb ‘fold of a garment’. SINUOUS, SINUSsinecure [17] Sinecure means literally ‘withoutcure’. It comes from the Latin phrase beneficiumsine cūrā ‘benefice without cure’, that is to sayan ecclesiastical office that does not involve thecure of souls (looking after people’s spiritualwelfare), the usual duty of a priest. Hence itcame to be applied to any appointment thatinvolves payment for no work.sing [OE] Sing is a general Germanic word,related to German singen, Dutch zingen,Swedish sjunga, and Danish synge, and ofcourse to the noun song. It is thought that it may

single 458have distant links with Greek omphé ‘voice’ andWelsh dehongli ‘explain, interpret’. SONGsingle [14] Single comes via Old French sengleor single from Latin singulus. This was formedfrom sim-, the stem of simplus ‘single’ (whichcame from the same Indo-European base thatproduced English same and similar), togetherwith the diminutive suffix *-go and a furtherelement *-lo. Singlet ‘vest’ [18] was coined onthe model of doublet, in allusion to its being anunlined garment, made from a ‘single’ layer ofmaterial. SAME, SIMILAR, SIMPLEsingular [14] Singular comes ultimately fromLatin singulāris ‘alone of its kind’, a derivativeof singulus ‘single’. It reached English via OldFrench singuler as singuler (the modern spellingsingular is a 17th-century relatinization). Theword’s grammatical application, and its use for‘remarkable, extraordinary’, both developed inLatin. SINGLEsinister see LEFTsink [OE] Sink is a general Germanic verb, withrelatives in German sinken, Dutch zinken,Swedish sjunka, and Danish synke. But wheretheir common Germanic ancestor came from isnot known. These days, sink means both ‘gobelow water’ and ‘cause to go below water’, butoriginally it was used only for the former. Therewas a separate but closely related verb, sench,for ‘cause to sink’, which died out in the 14thcentury. The noun sink [15] originally denoted apit ‘sunk’ in the ground for receiving water.sinuous see SINEsinussinus see SINEsir [13] In common with many other Europeanterms of address for men (such as monsieur andseñor), sir goes back ultimately to Latin senior‘older’ (source also of English senior). This wasreduced in Vulgar Latin to *seior, which foundits way into Old French as *sieire, later sire.English borrowed this as sire [13], which inweakly-stressed positions (prefixed to names,for instance) became sir. Other titles based onsenior that have found their way into Englishinclude French monsieur [15] (literally ‘mysire’), together with its plural messieurs [17],abbreviated to messrs [18]; French seigneur[16]; Spanish señor [17]; and Italian signor [16].Surly [16] is an alteration of an earlier sirly‘lordly’, a derivative of sir. The meaning‘grumpy’ evolved via an intermediate ‘haughty’. SENATOR, SENIOR, SIRE, SURLYsiren [14] The Seirēnes were sea nymphs who,according to Greek mythology, sat on rocksluring impressionable sailors to their doom withthe sweetness of their singing. Latin took theword over as sīrēna, and it passed into Englishvia Old French sereine. The term was applied toan acoustical instrument invented in 1819 byCagniard de la Tour, that produced musicalsounds and was used for measuring thefrequency of sound waves, and it was this thatformed the basis of its later use (in the 1870s) fora device for giving loud warning signals.sirloin [16] One of the oldest of etymologicalchestnuts is that sirloin got its name because aparticular English king found the joint of beef soexcellent that he knighted it. The monarch inquestion has been variously identified as HenryVIII, James I, and Charles II, but while the firstof these is chronologically possible, in fact thestory has no truth in it at all. The more soberfacts are that the word was borrowed from OldFrench *surloigne, a compound formed from sur‘above’ and loigne ‘loin’ (source of Englishloin). The spelling sir- (first recorded in the 18thcentury) no doubt owes something to the‘knighting’ story. LOIN, LUMBARsirocco [17] The sirocco is a hot wind that blowsinto southern Europe from North Africa.Etymologically its name means ‘east’ wind. Theterm comes via French sirocco and Italianscirocco from Arabic sharūq ‘east’, hence ‘eastwind’, a derivative of the verbal past formsharaqa ‘rose’ (the allusion being to thedirection of the rising sun).sister [OE] Sister is one of a widespread familyof ‘sister’-words that go back ultimately to Indo-European *swesor. Amongst its otherdescendants are Latin soror (source of Frenchsoeur, Italian sorella, and Romanian sora, not tomention English sorority [16]), Russian, Czech,and Serbo-Croat sestra, Polish siostra, Welshchwaer, Breton c’hoar, Lithuanian sesuo, andSanskrit svasar-. To prehistoric Germanic itcontributed *swestr, which has evolved intoGerman schwester, Dutch zuster, Swedishsyster, Danish søster, and English sister. Englishcousin goes back ultimately to a compoundbased on *swesor, the Old Latin antecedent ofsoror. SORORITYsit [OE] Sit comes from a prehistoric Germanic*sitjan or *setjan, which also produced Germansitzen, Dutch zitten, Swedish sitta, and Danishsidde. This was derived from a base *set-, sourcealso of English seat, set (etymologically ‘causeto sit’), and settle. And this in turn went back tothe Indo-European base *sed- ‘sit’, which hascontributed hugely to English vocabulary –mainly through its Latin descendant sedēre ‘sit’(source of English assess, insidious, séance,session, size, subsidy, etc), but also via Welsh, inthe form of eisteddfod. It lies in addition behindEnglish saddle and soot, and its other progenyinclude Russian sidet’, Serbo-Croat sjediti, andLatvian sēdēt ‘sit’. ASSESS, EISTEDDFOD, INSIDIOUS, SADDLE,SÉANCE, SEAT, SESSION, SET, SETTLE, SIZE,SUBSIDYsituate [16] Situate, originally an adjective, goesback to late Latin situātus ‘placed’, a derivativeof Latin situs ‘position’ (from which Englishgets site [14]). This probably originated as anoun use of situs, the past participle of sinere‘allow’, hence ‘allow to stay’, hence ‘put’. SITE

six [OE] The Indo-European ancestor of six was*seks, which also produced Latin sex (source ofEnglish sextant, sextuplet, etc), Greek héx,Welsh chwech, Russian shest’, etc. The word’sGermanic relatives include German sechs, Dutchzes, and Swedish and Danish sex. SEXTANTsize [13] The etymological notion underlyingsize is of ‘settling’ something, of fixing anamount. The word is a curtailed version ofassize, which went back ultimately to Latinassidēre, literally ‘sit beside someone’. By thetime it reached English, via Old French, it hadacquired connotations of ‘sitting down to make ajudgment on something’, such as a law case(hence the meaning of English assize). Othermatters decided on in this way included thestandardization of amounts (of taxes, forexample, or food), and this led to the word sizebeing used for ‘dimension’. Size ‘gum’ [15] maybe the same word, but the nature of therelationship between the two is unclear. ASSIZE, SITskate English has two words skate. The older isthe fish-name [14], which was borrowed fromOld Norse skata. Skate used for gliding over ice[17] comes from an Old French word for ‘stilt’ –eschasse. Its northern dialect form was escase.This was borrowed into English in the 16thcentury as the now obsolete scatch ‘stilt’, andinto Middle Dutch as schaetse, its meaningunaccountably changed to ‘skate’. Its modernDutch descendant schaats was borrowed intoEnglish as scates, which soon came to beregarded as a plural, and was ‘singularized’ toskate. Eschasse itself came from a Frankish*skakkja, a derivative of the verb *skakan ‘runfast’, which in turn was descended fromprehistoric Germanic *skakan (source ofEnglish shake). SHAKEskeleton [16] A skeleton is etymologically a‘dried-up’ or ‘withered’ body. The word comesvia modern Latin from Greek skeletón, short forsóma skeletón ‘dried-up body’. The adjectiveskeletós was derived from skéllein ‘dry up,wither’, and was related to sklērós ‘dry, hard’,from which English gets sclerosis [14]. SCLEROSISsketch [17] Sketch comes ultimately from Greekskhédios ‘impromptu’. This reached English bya rather roundabout route: via Latin schedius,which led to a Vulgar Latin verb schediāre ‘dohastily’, source of Italian schizzare ‘make asketch’, which in turn produced the noun schizzo‘sketch’, borrowed into English via Germanskizze or Dutch schets.skew see ESCHEWskewbald [17] Skewbald, which denotes a horsewith brown and white patches, is a compoundformed (on the model of piebald) from an earlierskued ‘skewbald’ and bald (in the ancestralsense ‘having white patches on the coat’). It isnot clear where skued came from. One candidateas its ancestor is Old French escu ‘shield’, as if itmeant etymologically ‘marked with shield459 skirmishshapes’ or ‘chequered’, but another possibility isMiddle English skew ‘(cloudy) skies’.ski [19] A ski is etymologically a piece of wood‘split’ from a tree trunk. The word was borrowedfrom Norwegian ski, a descendant of Old Norseskíth ‘piece of split wood, ski’. This in turn camefrom the prehistoric Germanic base *skīth-,*skaith- ‘divide, split’, source also of Englishsheath, shed, etc. The Norwegian word ispronounced /she/, and that is the way in which itwas once often said (and indeed sometimesspelled) in English. (Old Norse skíth may also liebehind English skid [17], which originally meant‘block of wood used as a support’, hence‘wooden chock for stopping a wheel’. Themodern sense only emerged in the 19th century,from the notion of a wheel slipping when it isprevented from revolving.) SHEATH, SHED, SKIDskiff see SHIPskill [12] Skill etymologically denotes not aphysical accomplishment, but the mentalcapacity to make ‘distinctions’. It was borrowedfrom Old Norse skil ‘distinction, discernment,knowledge’, whose relatives include Dutchgeschil ‘difference’, and which goes backultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base*skel- ‘divide, separate’ (source also of Englishscale, shell, shield, etc). The modern Englishsense emerged in the 13th century. SCALE, SHELL, SHIELDskillet [15] Skillet may come ultimately from thesame source as English scuttle ‘large container’– Latin scutella, a diminutive form of scutra‘dish, platter’. This was altered in the postclassicalperiod to *scūtella, which passed intoOld French as escuele (source of Middle Englishskele ‘dish’, recorded only once). A furtherdiminutive form escuelete ‘small platter’emerged, which is a plausible source of Englishskillet. (An alternative possibility is that it wasderived from the now virtually obsolete Englishskeel ‘bucket’ [14], which was borrowed from aScandinavian source related to Old Norse skjóla‘bucket’.) SCUTTLEskim see SCUMskin [11] The ancestral English word for ‘skin’ ishide. Skin was borrowed at the end of the OldEnglish period from Old Norse skinn (source ofSwedish skin and Danish skind). Theetymological notion underlying the word is of‘peeling’ or ‘slicing’ off an outer layer (it goesback ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-Europeanbase *sken- ‘cut off’, which was an extension of*sek- ‘cut’, source of English section, sector,sickle, etc), and so it presumably referredoriginally to the pelts removed from huntedanimals. SECTION, SEGMENT, SICKLEskipper see SHIPskirmish [14] English adapted skirmish fromeskermiss-, the present stem of Old Frencheskermir ‘fight with a sword’. This in turn wentback to a Frankish *skirmjan, a relative ofmodern German schirmen. A variant of skirmish

skirt 460arose with the i and r sounds reversed, givingscrimish, which is the source of modern Englishscrimmage [15] and also of scrummage [19] andits abbreviation scrum [19]. SCRIMMAGE, SCRUMMAGEskirt [13] Essentially skirt is the same word asshirt. It was borrowed from Old Norse skyrta‘shirt’, which came from the same prehistoricGermanic source as English shirt, and likewisemeant etymologically ‘short garment’. It is notclear why English came to use the word for‘woman’s garment hanging from the waist’, buta link may be provided by modern Icelandicskyrta, which denotes a sort of long shirt withfull tails that come down well below the waist.Swedish skört and Danish skørt ‘skirt’ wereborrowed from the related Middle Low Germanschorte ‘apron’. SHEAR, SHIRT, SHORTskive see ESCHEWskol see SCALEskull [13] The Old English word for ‘skull’ washēafodpanne, literally ‘head-pan’. It has neverbeen firmly established where its MiddleEnglish replacement skull came from, but isseems more than likely that it was borrowedfrom a Scandinavian language (Swedish andNorwegian have skalle ‘skull’).sky [13] Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called thesky heofon ‘heaven’. Not until the early MiddleEnglish period did heaven begin to be pushedaside by sky, a borrowing from Old Norse ský‘cloud’. This came ultimately from an Indo-European base meaning ‘cover’, which alsoproduced Latin obscūrus, source of Englishobscure [14]. (For a while English continued touse sky for ‘cloud’ as well as for ‘sky’: themedieval Scots poet William Dunbar wrote,‘When sable all the heaven arrays with mistyvapours, clouds, and skies’.) OBSCUREslack [OE] In common with Dutch and Swedishslak, slack comes from a prehistoric Germanic*slakaz. This was derived from the sameultimate source that produced Latin laxus ‘loose’(source of English lax, relax, release, and relish)and languēre ‘languish’ (source of Englishlanguish). The plural noun slacks was first usedfor ‘trousers’ in the early 19th century. (Thenoun slack ‘small pieces of coal’ [15] is adifferent word, probably borrowed from MiddleDutch slacke ‘waste produced by smeltingmetal’.) LANGUISH, LAX, RELAX, RELEASE, RELINQUISHslander [13] Slander and scandal are ultimatelythe same word. Both go back to Latin scandalum‘cause of offence’. This passed into Old Frenchas escandle, which in due course had itsconsonants switched round to produceesclandre, source of English slander. Scandalwas borrowed from the later French formscandale. SCANDALslang [18] Slang is a mystery word. It firstappeared in underworld argot of the mid-18thcentury. It had a range of meanings – ‘cant’,‘nonsense’, ‘line of business’, and, as a verb,‘defraud’. Most of these have died out, but ‘cant’is the lineal ancestor of the word’s modernmeaning. It is not clear where it came from,although the use of the verb slang for ‘abuse’,and the expression slanging match ‘abusiveargument’, suggest some connection withNorwegian dialect sleng- ‘offensive language’(found only in compounds).slat [14] Slat was adapted from Old French esclat‘piece broken off, splinter’. This was derivedfrom the verb esclater ‘shatter’, a descendant ofVulgar Latin *esclatāre or *exclatāre. And thisin turn may have been formed from a base *clatsuggestiveof the sound of breaking. Analternative theory, however, is that it goes back toa prehistoric Germanic *slaitan ‘cause to split orbreak’, a variant of *slītan ‘split, break’ (fromwhich English gets slice and slit). The feminineform of Old French esclat was esclate, which hasgiven English slate [14]. And its moderndescendant éclat was borrowed by English in the17th century in the metaphorical sense‘brilliance’.It has been conjectured that esclater mayhave been related to Old French esclachier‘break’, which could have had a variant form*esclaschier. This would be a plausiblecandidate as a source for English slash [14]. SLATEslaughter [13] Slaughter was borrowed fromOld Norse *slahtr, which went back to the sameprehistoric Germanic base (*slakh- ‘strike’) thatproduced English slay. Old English appears tohave had its own version of the word, *slæht,which survived into the 17th century as slaught.This forms the second syllable of onslaught [17],where it replaced the -slag in the borrowing fromMiddle Dutch aenslag (literally ‘onstriking’). ONSLAUGHT, SLAYslave [13] The word slave commemorates thefate of the Slavic people in the past, reduced byconquest to a state of slavery. For ultimatelyslave and Slav are one and the same. The earliestrecord we have of the ethnic name is as SlavicSloveninu, a word of unknown origin borrowedby Byzantine Greek as Sklábos and passed on tomedieval Latin as Sclavus. It was this that wasturned into a generic term sclavus ‘slave’, whichpassed into English via Old French esclave.slay [OE] Etymologically, slay means ‘hit’ (itsGerman relative schlagen still does), but fromthe earliest Old English times it was also used for‘kill’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic base*slakh-, *slag-, *slög- ‘hit’, which alsoproduced English onslaught, slaughter, thesledge of sledgehammer, sleight, sly, andpossibly slag [16] (from the notion of ‘hitting’rock to produce fragments), slog, and slug ‘hit’. ONSLAUGHT, SLAUGHTER, SLEDGE, SLEIGHT,SLYsleaze [20] It is common practice to namefabrics after their place of manufacture, andfrom the 17th century that applied to cloth madein Silesia (a region in east-central Europe, nowmainly within Poland), and in particular to a type

of fine linen or cotton. It did not take long forSilesia to be worn down to Slesia or Sleasia andfinally to Sleasie. Also in the 17th century wefind sleasie being applied as an adjective tofabrics that are thin or flimsy, and although aconnection between the two usages has neverbeen proved, the closeness of meaning seemsunlikely to be coincidental. Soon sleasie (orsleazy) was being used metaphorically for‘slight, flimsy, insubstantial’. It took a suddensideways semantic leap in the 1930s and 40swhen it began to be used as a term of moraldisapproval, denoting squalor, depravity orslatternliness, and it was in this sense that theback-formed noun sleaze first emerged in the1960s. Then in the 1980s the word shifted itstarget from sex to financially motivatedmisdemeanours, notably the taking of bribes (thenew usage is first recorded in ‘The sleaze factor’,a chapter heading in the book Gambling withHistory (1983) by the US journalist LaurenceBarrett).sledge English has two words sledge. Thesledge [OE] of sledgehammer [15] was once aword in its own right, meaning ‘heavy hammer’.It goes back to the prehistoric Germanic base*slakh- ‘hit’, source also of English slaughter,slay, etc. Sledge ‘snow vehicle’ [17] wasborrowed from Middle Dutch sleedse. LikeDutch slee (source of English sleigh [18]) andMiddle Low German sledde (source of Englishsled [14]), its ultimate ancestor was theprehistoric Germanic base *slid- ‘slide’ (sourceof English slide).Sledging ‘unsettling a batsman with taunts’[20], which originated in Australia in the 1970s,may have been derived from sledgehammer. SLAUGHTER, SLAY, SLY; SLED, SLEIGH, SLIDEsleek [16] Sleek originated as a variant form ofslick [14], which probably went back to anunrecorded Old English *slice. It apparently hasrelatives in Icelandic slíkja and Norwegian slikja‘smoothen’. SLICKsleep [OE] Sleep comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *slǣpan, which also producedGerman schlafen and Dutch slapen. Its ancestryhas not been pieced together in detail, but it isrelated to Dutch slap ‘sluggish’ and Germanschlaff ‘slack, loose’, and a link has beensuggested with Lithuanian slabnas ‘weak’.sleigh see SLEDGEsleuth [12] Sleuth originally meant ‘track, trail’(‘John of Lorn perceived the hound had lost thesleuth’, John Barbour, The Bruce 1375). It wasborrowed from Old Norse slóth ‘track, trail’,which was probably also the ultimate source ofEnglish slot ‘trail of an animal’ [16]. In the 14thcentury the compound sleuth-hound‘bloodhound for tracking fugitives’ was coined.This was later shortened back to sleuth, andapplied in 19th-century America to a ‘detective’. SLOTslice [14] Slice comes from Old French esclice‘splinter’, a derivative of the verb esclicier‘reduce to splinters, shatter’. This in turn was461 slimeacquired from Frankish *slītjan, a descendant ofprehistoric Germanic *slītan ‘slit’ (source ofEnglish slit and possibly of slat and slate).English originally took over the word’s Frenchmeaning, but this had died out by the end of the16th century. The modern sense ‘piece cut fromsomething’ is first recorded in the early 15thcentury. SLITslick see SLEEKslide [OE] Slide comes from a prehistoricGermanic *slīd- ‘slide, slip’, which alsoproduced English sled, sledge, sleigh, and slither[OE]. Its ultimate source was the Indo-Europeanbase *slei- or *lei-, a prolific source of words for‘slide’. A version with -dh- on the end liesbehind slide, and is also responsible for Greekolisthánein, Lithuanian slysti, Latvian slīdēt, andprobably Welsh llithro ‘slide’. A versionsuffixed -b- produced English slip, and oneending in -g- has spread throughout the Slaviclanguages, giving Russian skol’zit’, Czechklouznouti, etc, all meaning ‘slide’. SLED, SLEDGE, SLEIGH, SLITHERslight [13] The ancestral sense of slight is ‘level,even’. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*slekhtaz, a word of unknown origin which hadthat meaning, but whose descendants havediversified semantically beyond all recognition(German schlecht and Dutch slecht, for instance,now mean ‘bad’, having arrived there by way of‘level, smooth’ and ‘simple, ordinary’).‘Smooth’ was the original meaning of Englishslight (Miles Coverdale, in his 1535 translationof the Bible, recorded how David ‘chose fiveslight stones out of the river’ to confront Goliathwith (1 Samuel 17:40), where the AuthorizedVersion of 1611 has ‘smooth stones’), and itsurvived dialectally into the 20th century. By the14th century, however, it was evolving into‘slim’, and this eventually became, in the early16th century, ‘small in amount’. Englishacquired the adjective from Old Norse sléttr‘smooth’, and Old Norse was also the originalsource of a verb slight [13], meaning ‘make levelor smooth’. This died out in the 17th century,however, and the modern verb slight ‘disdain,snub’, first recorded at the end of the 16thcentury, is derived from the adjective, in thesense ‘of little importance’. The noun comesfrom the verb.slim [17] Slim is now quite an upbeat word, butthat is a comparatively new departure, forhistorically it has been neutral if not downrightderogatory. It was borrowed from Dutch slim‘small, inferior’, which went back via MiddleDutch slim ‘slanting, bad’ to a prehistoricGermanic *slimbaz ‘oblique, crooked’ (sourcealso of German schlimm ‘bad’). It may bedistantly related to Latvian slīps ‘crooked,steep’.slime [OE] Along with its relatives Germanschleim, Dutch slijm, and Danish slim, slimecomes from a prehistoric Germanic slīm-. Thisprobably has connections with English lime‘calcium’ and Latin līmus ‘mud’.

sling 462sling English has at least two distinct wordssling, maybe more – the picture is far from clear.The first to appear was the verb, ‘throw’ [13].This was probably borrowed from Old Norseslyngva, but as it originally meant specifically‘throw with a sling’ there is clearly someconnection with the noun sling ‘strap forthrowing stones’ [13], whose immediate sourcewas perhaps Middle Low German slinge. Sling‘loop or strap for holding things’ [14] may be thesame word, although there is no conclusive prooffor this. Sling ‘spirit-based drink’ [18] first cameon the scene in America, but its origins areunknown.slip There are three separate words slip inEnglish. The verb [13] was probably borrowedfrom Middle Low German slippen, a product ofthe prehistoric Germanic base *slip-. This in turnwent back to Indo-European *sleib- (source alsoof English lubricate [17]), a variant of the basewhich gave English slide. Slippery [16] wasbased on an earlier and now defunct slipper‘slippery’, which also goes back to Germanic*slip-. It may have been coined by the Bibletranslator Miles Coverdale, who used it in Psalm34:6: ‘Let their way be dark and slippery’. It isthought that he modelled it on Germanschlipfferig ‘slippery’, used in the same passageby Martin Luther in his translation of the Bible.Slipper ‘soft shoe’ [15] was originally a shoe‘slipped’ on to the foot; and someone who isslipshod [16] is etymologically wearing ‘looseshoes’.Slip ‘thinned clay’ [OE] is descended fromOld English slypa ‘slime’, and may be related toslop [14]. One of its earlier meanings was‘dung’, which is fossilized in the second elementof cowslip.Slip ‘strip, piece’ [15], as in a ‘slip of paper’,was probably borrowed from Middle LowGerman or Middle Dutch slippe ‘cut, slit, strip’. LUBRICATE, SLIDE; COWSLIP, SLOPslit [13] Slit is not recorded in Old English, but itis assumed to have existed, as *slittan (its firstcousin slītan ‘slit’ survived into the 20th centuryin Scottish English as slite). It goes backultimately to the same Germanic base thatproduced English slice and possibly also slash,slat and slate. SLICEsloe [OE] Etymologically, the sloe is probablythe ‘blue-black’ fruit. The word comes, alongwith its relatives German schlehe, Dutch slee,Swedish slå, and Danish slaa, from a prehistoricGermanic *slaikhwōn, which has been linkedwith Latin līvēre ‘be blue-black’ (source ofEnglish livid [17]). Another close relative isSerbo-Croat shljiva ‘plum’, whose derivativeshljivovica ‘plum brandy’ has given Englishslivovitz [19]. LIVID, SLIVOVITZslogan [16] Slogan is a Gaelic contribution toEnglish. It comes from sluaghghairm ‘war-cry’,a compound formed from sluagh ‘army’ andghairm ‘shout’. English at first used it in itsoriginal Gaelic sense, and the metaphorical‘catchphrase’ did not emerge until the 18thcentury.slop see SLIPslope [15] The noun slope did not emerge untilthe 17th century. Originally it was an adverb,short for the now defunct aslope. This isgenerally supposed to go back to an unrecordedOld English *āslopean, an adverbial use of thepast participle of āslūpan ‘slip away’. Such ascenario would appear to fit in well with thecolloquial slope off ‘leave’, but in fact this usagedid not emerge until the early 19th century, inAmerica.slow [OE] The etymological notion underlyingslow is ‘dullness, sluggishness’; ‘lack of speed’is a secondary development. The word goes backto a prehistoric Germanic *slæwaz, which alsoproduced Swedish slö and Danish sløv ‘dull,blunt’. The original idea of ‘sluggishness’ isbetter preserved in the derivative sloth [12](etymologically ‘slow-ness’). SLOTHslug English has at least two, possibly fourdistinct words slug. The oldest, ‘shell-lessmollusc’ [15], originally meant ‘slow or lazyperson’. It was not applied to the slow-movinganimal until the 18th century. It was probably aborrowing from a Scandinavian source(Norwegian has a dialectal slugg ‘large heavybody’). A similar ancestor, such as Swedishdialect slogga ‘be lazy’, may lie behind the nowobsolete English verb slug ‘be lazy’, from whichwere derived sluggard [14] and sluggish [14].Slug ‘bullet’ [17] is of uncertain origin. Itmay have come from slug ‘mollusc’, in allusionto the shape of the animal, but that suggestiondepends on the supposition that slug was beingused for the mollusc at least a hundred yearsbefore our earliest written record of it. Slug‘swig of drink’ [18] may be the same word, butit has also been speculated that it comes fromIrish Gaelic slog ‘swallow’.Slug ‘hit’ [19] and the related slog [19]probably go back ultimately to the prehistoricGermanic base *slakh-, *slag-, *slōg- ‘hit’(source of English slaughter, slay, etc). SLOGsluice [14] A sluice is etymologically a devicefor ‘excluding’ water. The word comes via OldFrench escluse from Gallo-Roman *exclūsa, anoun use of the feminine past participle of Latinexclūdere ‘shut out’ (source of English exclude[14]). This was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix ex- ‘out’ and claudere ‘shut’ (sourceof English close). CLOSE, EXCLUDEslush [17] Like the very similar (and perhapsultimately identical) slosh [19] and sludge [17],slush probably originated in imitation of thesound of squelching or splashing. The similarityof early modern Danish slus ‘sleet, mud’ andNorwegian slusk ‘slushy’ suggests thepossibility of a Scandinavian borrowing ratherthan a native formation. Slush fund [19] comesfrom the use of slush for ‘grease that is a byproductof cooking in a ship’s galley’, the

allusion being to the ‘greasing’ of people’spalms with money.sly [12] Etymologically, sly means ‘able to hit’. Itwas borrowed from Old Norse slǣgr ‘clever,cunning’, which went back ultimately to theprehistoric Germanic base *slakh-, *slag-,*slōg- ‘hit’ (source also of English slaughter,slay, etc). The word’s original approbatoryconnotations of ‘cleverness’ or ‘skill’ survivedinto the 20th century in northern dialects, butelsewhere they were soon ousted by the notion of‘underhandedness’. More neutral associationslinger on in sleight ‘dexterity’ [13] (as in ‘sleightof hand’), which was acquired from an OldNorse derivative of slǣgr. SLAUGHTER, SLAY, SLEIGHTsmack English has four separate words smack.The oldest, ‘taste’ [OE], is now mainly usedmetaphorically (as in smack of ‘suggest’). It hasrelatives in German geschmack, Dutch smaak,Swedish smak, and Danish smag ‘taste’, andmay be distantly linked to Lithuanian smagus‘pleasing’.Smack ‘hit’ [16] at first meant ‘open the lipsnoisily’, and was borrowed from Middle LowGerman or Middle Dutch smacken, which nodoubt originated in imitation of the noise made.It was not used for ‘hit with the palm of the hand’until the mid 19th century. The slang use of thederivative smacker for ‘money’ originated in theUSA around the end of World War I.Smack ‘small sailing boat’ [17] was borrowedfrom Dutch smak, a word of unknown origin.And smack ‘heroin’ [20] is probably analteration of schmeck ‘heroin or other drug’ [20],which in turn comes from Yiddish schmeck‘sniff’.small [OE] Small comes from a prehistoricGermanic *smalaz, which in turn probably goesback ultimately to *smel-, a variant of the Indo-European base *mel- ‘grind’ (source of Englishmeal, mill, etc). Etymologically, therefore, itcould well denote ‘ground up into little bits’. ItsGermanic relatives, such as German schmal andDutch smal, have become specialized inmeaning to ‘narrow’, but while English did startoff down this semantic path, it has long sinceabandoned it. MEAL, MILL, MOLARsmallpox see POXsmart [OE] Smart originated as a verb, meaning‘be painful’. It came from a West Germanic base*smert-, *smart- (source also of Germanschmerz and Dutch smart ‘pain’), which may goback ultimately to the same Indo-Europeanancestor that produced Greek smerdnós‘terrible’ and Latin mordēre ‘bite’ (source ofEnglish morsel, remorse, etc). The adjectivesmart was derived from the verb in the 11thcentury, and at first meant ‘stinging, painful’. Itsmodern senses ‘clever’ and ‘neat’ emerged in the17th and 18th centuries respectively. MORSEL, REMORSEsmear [OE] Smear comes from a prehistoricGermanic *smerwjan, which also producedGerman schmieren, Dutch smeren, Swedish463 smokesmörja, and Danish smøre. The Swedish andDanish words for ‘butter’, smör and smør, comefrom the same source (the former is the firstelement in the compound smörgåsbord ‘opensandwichtable’, literally ‘butter goose table’,from which English gets smorgasbord [19]).Also closely related are Irish smir ‘marrow’ andGreek smúris ‘polishing powder’ (source ofEnglish emery [15]). EMERY, SMORGASBORDsmell [12] Smell is something of a mystery word.It is assumed to go back to an Old English*smiellan or *smyllan, but no such verb has beenrecorded, nor have any related forms in otherlanguages been pin-pointed for certain. Onetheory links it with English smoulder [14] andthe related Dutch smeulen ‘smoulder’, as if thenotion of ‘smelling’ arose from the idea ofbreathing vapour or smoke through the nose.smelt see MELTsmile [13] The Old English word for ‘smile’ wassmearcian, ancestor of modern English smirk.This was descended ultimately from the Indo-European base *smei-, which also producedGreek meidos ‘laugh’, Sanskrit smeras‘smiling’, Latvian smaidīt ‘smile’, and Russiansmejat’ sja ‘laugh’. Smile, which from the 13thcentury began to push smirk towards the morespecialized sense ‘smile in a self-satisfied way’,comes from the same base, and was probablyborrowed from a Scandinavian source (Swedishhas smila and Danish smile). SMIRKsmite [OE] Old English smītan meant ‘smear’ (itcame from a prehistoric Germanic *smītan,which also produced German schmeissen‘throw’, and probably went back ultimately tothe Indo-European base *smēi-, source of Greeksmékhein ‘rub, cleanse’, from which Englishgets smegma [19]). Exactly the same oddsemantic development from ‘smear’ to ‘hit’,presumably via an intervening ‘stroke’,happened in the case of strike. SMEGMA, SMUTsmith [OE] Smith is a general Germanic word,with relatives in German schmied, Dutch smid,and Swedish and Danish smed. These point backto a prehistoric Germanic ancestor *smithaz.This appears to have meant simply ‘worker,craftsman’, a sense which survived into OldNorse smithr. The specialization to ‘metalworker’is a secondary development.smock [OE] Smock originally denoted awoman’s undergarment, and etymologically itmay be a garment one ‘creeps’ or ‘burrows’ into.For it may be related to Old English smūgan‘creep’ and smygel ‘burrow’ and to Old Norsesmjúga ‘creep into, put on a garment’. Theunderlying comparison seems to be betweenpulling on a tight undershirt over one’s head andburrowing into a narrow space. Low Germansmukkelen or smuggelen, the source of Englishsmuggle [17], may come from the same source. SMUGGLEsmoke [OE] Smoke has close relatives inGerman schmauch and Dutch smook, now

smooth 464specialized in meaning to ‘thick smoke’. Andmore distantly it is linked to Welsh mwg andBreton moged ‘smoke’, Lithuanian smaugti‘choke with smoke’, Greek smugenai ‘beconsumed with heat’, and Armenian mux‘smoke’. The use of the verb smoke inconnection with tobacco is first recorded in1604, in James I’s Counterblast to Tobacco.smooth [OE] Smooth is a mystery word, with noknown relatives in any other Indo-Europeanlanguage. The usual term in Old English wassmēthe, which survived into modern Englishdialect speech as smeeth. Smooth comes fromthe late Old English variant smōth.smorgasbord see SMEARsmuggle see SMOCKsmut [16] Smut is a member of a large butloosely-knit family of West Germanic wordsbeginning with sm and ending in t or d thatconvey the general notion of ‘putting dirt onsomething’. Others include German schmutzen‘get dirty’ and English smudge [15], and alsoEnglish smite, which originally meant ‘smear’.Smut itself may have been borrowed from LowGerman smutt. SMITE, SMUDGEsnack [15] Snack originally meant ‘bite’ (‘The… Tuscan hound … with his wide chafts [jaws]at him makes a snack’, Gavin Douglas, Æneid1513). It was not used for a ‘quick meal’ (as in‘have a bite to eat’) until the 18th century. It wasborrowed from Middle Dutch snac or snack‘bite’, which was closely related to snappen‘seize’, source of English snap [15]. Fromsnappen was derived the noun snaps ‘gulp,mouthful’, which was borrowed by German asschnapps ‘gin-like drink’, source of Englishschnapps [19]. And English snatch [13] isprobably closely related to snack. SCHNAPPS, SNAP, SNATCHsnail [OE] Snail, like German dialect schnägel,Swedish snigel, and Danish snegl, comes from aprehistoric Germanic base *snag-, *sneg-‘crawl’, which also produced German schnecke‘snail’ and English snake. Lithuanian snāke‘snail’ is a distant relative. SNAKEsnake [OE] The snake, like the serpent (andindeed the snail) is etymologically the‘crawling’ animal. Along with Swedish snok andDanish snog, it comes from a prehistoricGermanic base denoting ‘crawl’, which alsoproduced English snail and German dialectschnaacken ‘crawl’. SNAILsnap see SNACKsnapdragon [16] The herbalist John Gerard (nofeminist, evidently) gave the reason whyantirrhinums were called snapdragons: ‘Theflowers [are] fashioned like a dragon’s mouth;from whence the women have taken the nameSnapdragon’, Herbal 1597. The term was alsoused from the early 18th century for a partygame which involved picking raisins out of abowl of burning brandy and eating them whilethey were still alight – the allusion being ofcourse to the dragon’s firebreathing habits.snatch see SNACKsneeze [15] The Old English word for ‘sneeze’was fnēsan, a distant relative of Greek pneuma‘breath’ (source of English pneumatic). Thissurvived into Middle English as fnese. Theletters f and s were very similar in medievalscript, so it could have played a part in the late15th-century emergence of sneeze. Fnese hadlargely died out by the early 15th century, and itcould well be that when printing got into fullswing in the 1490s, with many old manuscripttexts being reissued in printed form, printersunfamiliar with the old word fnese assumed ithad the much more common initial consonantcluster sn-. Another factor in the equation is thenow obsolete verb neeze ‘sneeze’. This wasborrowed in the 14th century from Old Norsehnósja, a descendant of the Indo-European base*ksneu-, which also produced German niesen,Dutch niezen, Swedish nysa, Danish nyse, andRussian chikhat’ ‘sneeze’. It bridged the gapbetween fnese and sneeze, and the new sneeze nodoubt struck people as a more expressivealternative to the old neeze. (Both fnese andneeze go back ultimately to an imitation of thesound of breathing, blowing, or sneezing.) PNEUMATICsniff see SNUFFsnivel see SNUFFsnob [18] Snob originally meant a ‘shoemaker’.Cambridge University students of the late 18thcentury took it over as a slang term for a‘townsman, someone not a member of theuniversity’, and it seems to have been this usagewhich formed the basis in the 1830s for theemergence of the new general sense ‘member ofthe lower orders’ (‘The nobs have lost their dirtyseats – the honest snobs have got ’em’,proclaimed the Lincoln Herald on 22 July 1831,anticipating the new Reform Act). This in turndeveloped into ‘ostentatiously vulgar person’,but it was the novelist William Thackeray whoreally sowed the seeds of the word’s modernmeaning in his Book of Snobs 1848, where heused it for ‘someone vulgarly aping his socialsuperiors’. It has since broadened out to includethose who insist on their gentility as well asthose who aspire to it. As for the origins of theword snob itself, they remain a mystery. Aningenious suggestion once put forward is that itcame from s. nob., supposedly an abbreviationfor Latin sine nobilitate ‘without nobility’, butthis ignores the word’s early history.snooker [19] The most widely canvassed theoryof the origins of the term snooker is that it is anadaptation of late 19th-century army slangsnooker ‘new cadet’ (‘These embryo generalswere called by the somewhat sneering terms of“snookers” or “last-joined”,’ Routledge’s EveryBoy’s Annual 1872). The game was invented, asa diversion perhaps from the monotony ofbilliards, by British army officers serving inIndia in the 1870s, and the story goes that theterm snooker was applied to it by Colonel Sir

Neville Chamberlain (1856–1944), at that time asubaltern in the Devonshire Regiment stationedin Jubbulpore, in allusion to the inept play of oneof his brother officers. The ancestry of snooker‘new cadet’, however, remains a mystery.snore [14] Like snort [14] (which originallymeant ‘snore’), snore goes back ultimately to aprehistoric Germanic base *snor-, imitative ofthe sound it represents. From the same sourcecame German schnarchen ‘snore’, whichproduced the German dialect noun schnorchel‘snout’. The mainstream language adopted it asa term for a ‘breathing tube’, and Englishborrowed it as snorkel [20]. SNORKEL, SNORTsnout [13] Snout and snot [14] are very closeetymologically. Both go back ultimately to aprehistoric Germanic base *snut-or *snūt-,source also of obsolete English snite ‘wipe orpick one’s nose’, German schneuzen ‘blow one’snose’, and German schnauze ‘snout’ (whenceEnglish schnauzer ‘German breed of dog’ [20]).The colloquial snoot ‘nose’ [19] is an alterationof snout, and formed the basis of the adjectivesnooty [20] (the underlying idea being ofholding one’s ‘nose’ in the air in a superior way). SCHNAUZER, SNOOTY, SNOTsnow [OE] Snow is an ancient word, withrelatives throughout the Indo-Europeanlanguages. Its ultimate ancestor was Indo-European *snigwh- or *snoigwho-. This alsoproduced Latin nix (source of French neige,Italian neve, and Spanish nieve), obsolete Welshnyf, Russian sneg, Czech snóh, Latvian sniegs,etc. Its prehistoric Germanic descendant was*snaiwaz, which has evolved into Germanschnee, Dutch sneeuw, Swedish snö, Danish sne,and English snow.snuff English has three words snuff, all probablygoing back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanicbase *snuf-, imitative of the sound of drawing airnoisily in through the nose. Snuff ‘powderedtobacco for inhaling’ [17] was borrowed fromDutch snuf. This was probably short forsnuftabak, etymologically ‘sniff-tobacco’,which in turn was derived from Middle Dutchsnuffen ‘sniff, snuffle’, source of English snuff‘sniff’ [16]. That base *snuf- also producedEnglish snuffle [16], probably borrowed fromLow German or Dutch snuffelen, and snivel [14],which may go back to an unrecorded OldEnglish *snyflan; and sniff [14], if not directlyrelated, was certainly similarly inspired by thesound of sniffing.Snuff ‘put out a candle’ was derived in the15th century from the noun snuff ‘burntcandlewick’ [14]. The origins of this are notknown, but the fact that the now obsolete verbsnot was once used for ‘put out a candle’ as wellas ‘blow one’s nose’ suggests that this snuff toomay ultimately have connections with the innerworkings of the nose (possibly a perceivedresemblance between an extinguishedcandlewick and a piece of nasal mucus), and465 soccerwith the base *snuf-. Snuff it ‘die’ is firstrecorded in the late 19th century. SNIVELso [OE] So is a general Germanic word, withrelatives in German so, Dutch zo, Swedish så,and Danish saa. It is also distantly connectedwith Greek hōs ‘as’ and hóppōs ‘how’. Far backin its history it participated in the formation ofEnglish as and such.soak [OE] Soak and suck come from the sameultimate source, the prehistoric Germanic base*suk-. It appears to have been a fairly lateGermanic formation, for its only knownimmediate relative is West Frisian soken orzoken ‘soak’. SUCKsoap [OE] The word soap is of West Germanicorigin. It comes from a prehistoric *saipō(source also of German seife and Dutch zeep).This may have been related to Old Englishsīpian ‘drip’, suggesting that it perhapsoriginally referred to a stage in the manufactureof soap. The Romans, like the Greeks, used oilfor cleansing the skin, not soap, and so they didnot have their own native word for it. Insteadthey borrowed the Germanic term, as sāpō,which has evolved into French savon, Italiansapone, and Spanish jabon. Germanic *saipōwas also acquired by Latvian (ziepes), Finnish(saippio), and Lappish (saipo).operasoap opera [20] The original soap operas werea radio phenomenon, in 1930s America. Serialdramas dealing with humdrum-butoccasionally-melodramaticdomestic life wereas common then as they are on television now,and several of those on the commercial USnetworks were sponsored by soapmanufacturers. A writer on the ChristianCentury in 1938 said ‘These fifteen-minutetragedies…I call the “soap tragedies”…becauseit is by the grace of soap I am allowed to shedtears for these characters who suffer so muchfrom life’. The soap connection soon linked upwith horse opera, a mildly derisive term for aWestern movie that had been around since the1920s, to produce soap opera (a later coinage onthe same model was space opera). Theabbreviated version soap is recorded as early as1943.sober [13] Sober comes via Old French sobrefrom Latin sōbrius ‘not drunk’. This was theopposite of ēbrius ‘drunk’ (source of French ivre‘drunk’ and English inebriate [15]), but whereēbrius came from, and precisely whatconnection the presumably related sōbrius haswith it, are not known. INEBRIATEsoccer [19] Soccer was coined from Associationfootball, a term introduced around 1870 forfootball played according to the rules of theFootball Association (as opposed to Rugbyfootball). The suffix -er was commonly used asa more-or-less meaningless addition to nouns inBritish public-school and university slang of thelate 19th and early 20th centuries (footer‘football’ was formed in the same way).

social 466Originally, in the 1890s, socker vied with socceras the word’s spelling.social [16] Latin socius meant ‘companion,partner’. It came ultimately from the Indo-European base *seq- ‘follow’ (source of Englishsequel, sequence, etc). From it was derived theadjective sociālis, which has given Englishsocial (socialism was coined in the early 19thcentury). Other Latin derivatives have givenEnglish associate, sociable [16] and society[16]. Sociology [19] was borrowed from Frenchsociologie, a term coined in 1830 by thephilosopher Auguste Comte. ASSOCIATE, SEQUEL, SEQUENCE, SOCIETY, SUE,SUITsock English has two distinct words sock. Thenoun ‘foot covering’ [OE] originally meant‘light shoe’, and went back ultimately to Greeksúkkhos, a word perhaps borrowed from someAsiatic language. Latin took this over as soccus,which was then borrowed into prehistoricGermanic as *sok-. And this in turn evolved intoGerman socke, Dutch zok, Swedish socka,Danish sok, and English sock. The origins ofsock ‘hit’ [17] are not known.sod see SODOMYsoda [16] Soda comes from medieval Latin soda,which may have been derived from Latinsodānum ‘samphire, glasswort’ (the plantsamphire was burned to obtain soda for makingglass). Another of the uses of samphire was as aheadache cure, and it has been speculated thatsodānum may have come ultimately from Arabicsudā ‘headache’, a derivative of sada’a ‘split’.Sodium was coined from soda in 1807 by theEnglish chemist Humphry Davy. SODIUMsodomy [13] The term sodomy commemoratesthe ancient Palestinian city of Sodom, whichaccording to the Bible was a hotbed of unnaturalvice (‘But before they lay down, the men of thecity, even the men of Sodom, compassed thehouse round, both old and young, all the peoplefrom every quarter. And they called unto Lot,and said unto him, Where are the men whichcame in to thee this night? Bring them out untous, that we may know them. And Lot went out atthe door unto them, and shut the door after him.And said, I pray you, brethren, do not sowickedly. Behold now, I have two daughterswhich have not known man; let me, I pray you,bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as isgood in your eyes: only unto these men donothing; for therefore came they under theshadow of my roof’, Genesis 19:4–8). Analintercourse and allied practices were known inlate Latin as peccātum Sodomīticum ‘sin ofSodom’, and from this was coined the medievalLatin term sodomia – whence English sodomy.The abusive sod [19] is short for the relatedsodomite [14].soft [OE] Soft goes back to a prehistoric WestGermanic *samft-, which also produced Germansanft ‘gentle, easy, smooth’ and Dutch zacht‘soft’. It may go back ultimately to theprehistoric base *sōrn- ‘fitting, agreeable’,source of English seem and seemly. SEEM, SEEMLYsoil Soil ‘ground’ [14] and soil ‘make dirty’ [13]are distinct words. The former comes fromAnglo-Norman soil ‘land’. This was the formaldescendant of Latin solium ‘seat’, but its use for‘land’ appears to have arisen from confusionwith Latin solum ‘ground’.Etymologically, to soil something virtuallyamounts to making a pigsty of it. The verbcomes via Old French souiller from Vulgar Latin*suculāre ‘make dirty’, a derivative of Latinsuculus ‘little pig’. This was a diminutive formof sūs ‘pig’, a relative of English sow. Frenchsouiller may also be the source of English sully[16]. SOW, SULLYsoirée see SERENADEsojourn [13] To sojourn in a place isetymologically to ‘spend the day’ there. Theword comes via Old French sojorner fromVulgar Latin *subdiurnāre ‘spend the day’, acompound verb formed from the Latin prefix sub‘under’, hence ‘during’, and late Latin diurnum‘day’ (source of English diurnal, journey, etc). DIURNAL, JOURNEYsolace see CONSOLEsolar [15] Solar comes from Latin sōlāris, aderivative of sōl ‘sun’. This went back to thesame ultimate Indo-European base, *su-, thatproduced English sun. Solarium [19] wasborrowed from another Latin derivative,sōlārium, which denoted a ‘sundial’ as well as a‘balcony, flat rooftop, or other part of a houseexposed to the sun’. Solstice [13] meansetymologically the ‘sun standing still’. It comesfrom Latin sōlstitium, a compound formed fromsōl and stit-, the past participial stem of sistere‘make stand’. SOLARIUM, SOLSTICEsolder [14] To solder something isetymologically to make it ‘solid’. The word wasoriginally acquired, as a noun, from Old Frenchsoldure, a derivative of the verb solder ‘solder’.This in turn came from Latin solidāre ‘makesolid, strengthen, fasten’, a derivative of solidus‘solid’ (source of English solid). SOLDIER, SOLIDsoldier [13] The etymological idea underlyingthe word soldier is the ‘pay’ received bymercenary soldiers. It was borrowed from OldFrench soudier or soldier, a derivative of soulde‘pay’. This in turn went back to Latin solidus, aterm used for an ancient Roman gold coin; it wasshort for nummus solidus, literally ‘solid coin’. SOLIDsole English has three separate words sole, twoof them closely related. Sole ‘underneath of thefoot’ [14] comes via Old French sole fromVulgar Latin *sola, a descendant of Latin solea‘sandal, sill’ (a possible relative of English sill).And this in turn was derived from Latin solum‘ground, sole of the foot’ (a possible contributorto English soil). Sole ‘flatfish’ [14] wasindependently borrowed from Old French sole in

the sense ‘flatfish’, a metaphorical extensionbased on the similarity in shape between the fishand the sole of the foot.Sole ‘only’ [14] comes via Old French soul(ancestor of modern French seul ‘only, sole’)from Latin sōlus ‘alone, single’. The origins ofthis are uncertain, but it may be related to thepronoun sē ‘oneself’, in which case it couldmean etymologically ‘by oneself’. Its othercontributions to English include desolate [14],soliloquy [17], solitary [14], solo [17] (viaItalian), and sullen. SILL; DESOLATE, SOLITARY, SOLO, SULLENsolecism [16] Solecism ‘act of (grammatical)impropriety’ comes via Latin soloecismus fromGreek soloikismós, a derivative of sóloikos‘ungrammatical utterance’. This is said to havereferred originally to the speech of Atheniancolonists in Soloi, in ancient Cilicia, southernTurkey, held by snooty sophisticates back homein Athens to be a debased form of their ownspeech.solemn [14] Solemn comes via Old Frenchsolemne from Latin sollemnis ‘customary’,hence ‘performed with due ceremony on aparticular fixed day’. This was derived fromsollus ‘whole’ (source also of English solicit). SOLICITsol-fa [16] Sol-fa is a lexicalization of two of thesyllables (sol and fa) used in the tonic sol-fasystem for representing the notes of the musicalscale. In Italian the combination was turned intoa verb, solfeggiare, a derivative of which hasgiven English solfeggio ‘use of the sol-fasystem’ [18]. (Another English word based onthe name of notes of the scale is gamut.)solicit [15] The ultimate source of solicit is Latinsollicitus ‘agitated’, which also gave Englishsolicitous [16]. It was a compound adjective,formed from sollus ‘whole’ (source also ofEnglish solemn) and citus, the past participle ofciēre ‘move’ (source of English cite, excite, etc)– hence literally ‘completely moved’. From itwas formed the verb sollicitāre ‘disturb, agitate’,which passed into English via Old Frenchsolliciter. By the time it arrived it had acquiredthe additional meaning ‘manage affairs’, whichlies behind the derived solicitor [15]; and theoriginal ‘disturb’ (which has since died out) gaverise in the 16th century to ‘trouble withrequests’.French insouciant, borrowed by English inthe 19th century, goes back ultimately to Latinsollicitāre. CITE, EXCITE, INCITE, INSOUCIANT, SOLEMN,SOLIDsolid [14] Solid comes via Old French solidefrom Latin solidus ‘solid, whole’ (source also ofEnglish solder and soldier and of the Frenchcoin term sou). It went back to the same base(Indo-European *sol-) that produced Latinsollus ‘whole’ (source of English solemn andsolicit) and salvus ‘unharmed’ (source ofEnglish safe, save, etc). SOLDER, SOLDIER, SOLEMN, SOLICITsolitary see SOLE467 sonsolo see SOLEsolstice see SOLARsolve [15] Etymologically, solve means‘release’, particularly by the payment of debt. Itwas borrowed from Latin solvere ‘release,unbind, pay’, which was descended from anearlier *seluere. This was a compound verbbased on luere ‘loosen, release, pay’, adescendant of the same Indo-European base thatproduced English analyse, loose, lose, etc. Thenotion of ‘payment of debts’ survives in Englishsolvent [17], and a metaphorical extension of‘loosening’ to ‘turning a solid into a liquid’ canbe seen in soluble [14] and the derivativedissolve [14]. The use of solve for ‘explain’, nowthe major English sense, emerged in Latin, but itwas not a major feature of the Latin verb. Otherrelated forms include absolute, absolve, andresolve [14]. ABSOLUTE, ABSOLVE, ANALYSE, DISSOLVE,LOOSE, LOSE, RESOLVE, SOLUTIONsombre [18] Something that is sombre isetymologically ‘under a shadow, in the shade’.The word comes from French sombre, anadjective derived ultimately from Vulgar Latin*subombrāre ‘put in shadow, shade’. This was acompound verb formed from Latin sub- ‘under’and umbra ‘shade, shadow’ (source of Englishumbrage, umbrella, etc). Another descendant ofVulgar Latin *subombrāre is Spanish sombra‘shade’, from which was derived sombrero ‘hatfor giving shade’, borrowed by English in the18th century. SOMBRERO, UMBRAGE, UMBRELLAsome [OE] Some goes back ultimately to Indo-European *smmos, which passed into prehistoricGermanic as *sumaz. This has now died out inmost Germanic languages other than English,although a few derivatives survive, such asDutch sommige ‘some’. The Indo-Europeanform also produced Greek hamos ‘somehow’and Sanskrit samás ‘some, every’, and variantsof the base from which it came have also givenEnglish same, seem, similar, and simple. SAME, SEEM, SIMILAR, SIMPLEsomersault [16] Somersaults have noconnection with ‘summer’. The first element ofthe word means etymologically ‘over’. It comesfrom Old French sombresault, an alteration of anearlier sobresault. And this in turn was acquiredfrom Provençal *sobresaut, a compound formedfrom sobre ‘over, above’ (a descendant of Latinsūpra) and saut ‘jump’ (a descendant of Latinsaltus, which has close relatives in Englishassault, insult, sauté, etc). ASSAULT, INSULT, RESULT, SAUTÉson [OE] Son is an ancient word, with relatives inseveral Indo-European languages: Russian,Polish, and Czech syn, for instance, Sanskritsūnús, and Greek huiús. These point back to anancestral *sunu- or *sunyu-. This may have beenrelated to Sanskrit sú- ‘bear, carry’, in whichcase its original meaning would have been‘birth’, which evolved via ‘offspring’ to ‘son’.The prehistoric Germanic descendant of *sunuwas*sunuz, which has diversified into German

sonata 468sohn, Dutch zoon, Danish søn, and English andSwedish son.sonata see SOUNDsong [OE] Song comes from a prehistoricGermanic *sanggwaz, a derivative of the samebase that produced sing. Its Germanic relativesinclude German and Danish sang, Dutch zang,and Swedish sång. SINGsonnet [16] A sonnet is etymologically a ‘littlesound’. The word comes, via French sonnet andItalian sonetto, from Provençal sonet, adiminutive form of son ‘song’. This in turn wasdescended from Latin sonus ‘sound’ (source ofEnglish sound). SOUNDsonorous see SOUNDsoon [OE] In Old English times, soon meant‘straightaway’, but human nature being what itis, the tendency to procrastinate led over thecenturies to a change in meaning to ‘after a shortwhile’. (The same thing happened to anon, andis in the process of happening to directly.) Theword itself comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *sǣnō, whose other descendants apartfrom soon have all but died out.soot [OE] Soot is etymologically that which‘sits’ on something – that is, a film which settleson a surface. The word comes from a prehistoricGermanic *sōtam, which was descended fromthe Indo-European base *sōd-, *sed- ‘sit’(source also of English settle, sit, etc). By thetime it reached English it had becomespecialized in meaning to the ‘fine blackparticles produced by burning’. SETTLE, SITsooth [OE] Sooth ‘truth’ (which now survives incurrent usage only in the compound soothsayer[14]) goes back ultimately to Indo-European*sntyós (possible ancestor also of English sin).This was a derivative of the base *es- ‘be’, andhence etymologically means ‘that which is’. Itpassed into prehistoric Germanic as the adjective*santhaz. As in English, in most other Germaniclanguages the word has now died out, but itsurvives in Swedish (sann) and Danish (sand) asan adjective meaning ‘true’. From the OldEnglish form sōth a verb was formed, sōthian‘prove to be true’, which has evolved intomodern English soothe. Its present-day meaningdid not emerge, via intermediate ‘confirm’ and‘please or flatter by confirming or agreeing’,until the 17th century. SOOTHEsop [OE] The word sop originally denoted a‘piece of bread, cake, etc dipped into water,milk, wine, or similar liquid’. The modernmetaphorical meaning ‘something given to gainfavour, bribe’ did not emerge until the mid-17thcentury, in allusion to the piece of bread soakedin enticing honey but spiked with a soporificdrug that was given to the guard dog Cerberus toput him to sleep so that Aeneas could visit theUnderworld. The word goes back ultimately tothe same prehistoric Germanic base (*sup-) thatproduced English sip and sup ‘drink’, and also,via the Romance languages, soup and supper.The corresponding verb sop ‘dip in liquid’ nowsurvives only in the present participial formsopping ‘soaking wet’ [19]. SIP, SOUP, SUP, SUPPERsophisticate [14] As those who hanker for theancestral meanings of words never tire ofpointing out, sophisticated originally meant‘adulterated, corrupted’. The modernapprobatory sense ‘worldly-wise, cultured’ didnot emerge (via an intermediate ‘lackingprimitive or original naturalness or naivety’)until the end of the 19th century; and ‘refinedand elaborate’ (as in ‘a sophisticated missilesystem’) is more recent still, not being recordeduntil after World War II. The verb was adaptedfrom the past participle of medieval Latinsophisticāre. This was derived from Latinsophisticus, a borrowing from Greeksophistikós, which in turn was derived fromsophistés, a noun which meant literally ‘expert,deviser’, but was also used for a school of 5thcenturyBC Greek philosophers (the Sophists)who came to be despised for their specious andintellectually dishonest reasoning (henceEnglish sophistry [14]). Sophistés itself came viasophízesthai ‘play subtle tricks’ from sophós‘skilled, clever, wise’, a word of unknownorigin.Sophomore ‘second-year student’ [17] is analteration of an earlier sophumer ‘arguer’, aderivative of sophum, which is a now defunctvariant of sophism. SOPHISTRY, SOPHOMOREsoprano see SUPERsorbet see SHERBETsorcerer [16] A sorcerer is etymologically adrawer of ‘lots’ – for the word comes ultimatelyfrom Latin sors ‘lot’ (source also of Englishsort). The plural sortēs was used for the‘responses made by oracles’, and this formed thebasis of the Vulgar Latin noun *sortārius ‘priestof the oracle’, hence ‘caster of spells’. It passedinto English via Old French sorcier as sorser,which was later extended to sorcerer. SORTsore [OE] Sore comes from a prehistoricGermanic *sairaz ‘painful, pained’, which wasrelated to Irish Gaelic sāeth ‘affliction, sickness’and possibly Latin saevus ‘fierce’. It wasborrowed into Finnish as sairas ‘ill’. Theadverbial use of sore as an intensive (as in ‘soreafraid’) has now died out, but it survives in therelated German sehr ‘very’. The word’sancestral connotations were of mental as well asphysical pain, and while sore has preserved thelatter, the derivative sorry has kept to the former. SORRYsorrel see SOURsorry [OE] Sorry goes back to a prehistoric WestGermanic *sairig-, a derivative of *sairaz(source of English sore). The original basedenoted physical as well as mental pain, but it isthe latter semantic path that has been taken bysorry. Despite the similarity, incidentally, sorryhas no etymological connection with sorrow

[OE], which comes from a prehistoric Germanicbase meaning ‘care’, and is related to modernGerman sorge ‘worry, sorrow’. SOREsort [14] Latin sors originally denoted a ‘piece ofwood used for drawing lots’ (it is the source ofEnglish sorcerer). It later developedmetaphorically into ‘that which is allotted to oneby fate’, and hence one’s ‘fortune’ or‘condition’, and by the time it had turned into*sorta, in the post-Latin precursor of theRomance languages, its meaning had evolvedfurther to ‘rank, class, order’. It was this sensethat reached English, via Old French sorte. Thenotion of ‘arranging into classes’ underlies theverb sort, and also the derived assort [15]. Fromthe same source comes consort [15]. ASSORT, CONSORT, SORCERERsoubrette see SUPERsoul [OE] Behind the word soul lies the ancientnotion of the soul as something fleeting ormercurial. For its prehistoric Germanic ancestor,*saiwalō, was related to Greek aiólos ‘quickmoving’.Its modern Germanic cousins includeGerman seele, Dutch ziel, Swedish själ, andDanish sjæl.sound English has no fewer than four distinctwords sound. The oldest, ‘channel, strait’ [OE],originally meant ‘swimming’. It came from aprehistoric Germanic *sundam, a derivative ofthe base *sum-, *swem- ‘swim’ (source ofEnglish swim). The sense ‘channel’ was adoptedfrom a related Scandinavian word (such asDanish sund) in the 15th century. Sound‘undamaged’ [12] is a shortened version of OldEnglish gesund, which went back to prehistoricWest Germanic *gasundaz, a word of uncertainorigin. Its modern relatives, German gesund andDutch gezond ‘well, healthy’, retain theancestral prefix. Sound ‘noise’ [13] comes viaAnglo-Norman soun from Latin sonus ‘sound’, arelative of Sanskrit svan- ‘make a noise’.Amongst the Latin word’s many othercontributions to English are consonant,dissonant [15], resonant [16], sonata [17] (viaItalian), sonorous [17], and sonnet. Sound‘plumb the depths’ [14] (as in sounding line)comes via Old French sonder from Vulgar Latin*subundāre, a compound verb formed fromLatin sub- ‘under’ and unda ‘wave’ (source ofEnglish undulate). SWIM; CONSONANT, DISSONANT, RESONANT,SONATA, SONNET, SONOROUS; SURROUND,UNDULATEsoup [17] Soup was borrowed from Frenchsoupe. This, like its English relative sop,originally denoted a ‘piece of bread soaked inliquid’. One way of making such sops was to putthem in the bottom of a bowl and pour broth overthem, and eventually soupe came to denote the‘broth’ itself – the sense in which Englishacquired it. The word was descended from lateLatin suppa, a derivative of the verb *suppāre‘soak’, which was formed from the borrowed469 sowGermanic base *sup- (source of English sop andsup ‘drink’). SOP, SUP, SUPPERsour [OE] Sour is a general Germanic word, withrelatives in German sauer, Dutch zuur, andSwedish and Danish sur. Their commonancestor was prehistoric Germanic *sūraz,which was related to Lithuanian sūrus ‘salty’and Old Church Slavonic syru ‘damp, raw’.Sorrel [14] is etymologically the ‘sour’ plant: itsOld French source sorele came ultimately fromGermanic *sūraz. SORRELsource [14] A source is etymologicallysomething that has ‘surged’ up. The word comesfrom Old French sourse ‘spring’, a noun use ofthe feminine past participle of sourdre ‘rise,spring’. This in turn was descended from Latinsurgere ‘rise’, source of English surge. Thenotion of the ‘place where a watercourse springsfrom the ground’ led on naturally to themetaphorical ‘place of origin’. SURGEsouse [14] To souse something isetymologically to steep it in ‘salt’. The wordcomes via Old French sous from Old Saxonsultia or Old High German sulza ‘brine’,descendants of the prehistoric Germanic base*salt-, *sult- (from which English gets salt). Thenotion of pickling something in brine soonbroadened out to pickling in other liquids, suchas vinegar, and by the 16th century souse wasbeing used metaphorically for ‘drench’. SALTsouth [OE] South, together with its relativesGerman süd, Dutch zuid, Swedish söder, andDanish syd, goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*suntha-. This may have been derived from thebase of *sunnōn ‘sun’ – in which case southwould mean etymologically ‘region of the sun,side on which the sun appears’. French sud‘south’ was borrowed from English.sovereign [13] A sovereign is etymologicallysomeone who is ‘above’ others. The word comesvia Old French souverein ‘ruler’, a descendant ofVulgar Latin *superānus. This was derived fromthe Latin preposition super ‘above’. In the 1490sthe term was applied to a gold coin worth 22s 6d(£1.12½), a usage which served as a model in1817 for its application to a gold coin worth onepound. SUPERsow English has two words sow, both of which goback to the Old English period. The verb, ‘putseeds in the ground’, comes from a prehistoricGermanic *sǣjan, which also produced Germansäen, Dutch zaaien, Swedish så, and Danish saa.It was formed from the base *sǣ- (source ofEnglish seed), which goes back ultimately toIndo-European *sē- (source of English season,semen, etc). Sow ‘female pig’ is descended froman Indo-European base *su- (possibly imitativeof the noise made by a pig), which also producedGreek hus ‘pig’ (whose feminine form húaina is

soy 470the source of English hyena [16]), Latin sūs‘pig’, German sau ‘sow’, and English swine. SEASON, SEED, SEMEN; HYENA, SWINEsoy [17] Chinese shi-yu is the ultimate source ofsoy (shi means ‘salted beans’ and yu means‘oil’). Japanese adopted the term as shō-yu,whose colloquial form soy was borrowed byEnglish at the end of the 17th century. Dutchacquired shō-yu as soja, from which English getssoya [17].spa [17] The town of Spa, in eastern Belgium,has medicinal mineral springs. They werediscovered in the 14th century, and by the early17th century were well enough known in Britainfor the town’s name to be used as a generic termfor ‘medicinal springs’. The present-dayapplication to a ‘town containing such springs’emerged towards the end of the 18th century.space [13] Space comes via Old French espacefrom Latin spatium ‘distance, space, period’, aword of unknown origin. Its modern Englishapplication to the ‘expanse in which theUniverse is contained’ did not emerge until the19th century. The Latin derived adjectivespatiōsus has given English spacious [14], butspatial [19] was coined in English directly fromLatin spatium.spade English has two words spade, but they areultimately related. Spade for digging [OE]comes from a Low German source, which alsoproduced Dutch spade. This went back to, orshared a common source with, Greek spáthē‘broad blade’, which was borrowed into Latin asspatha ‘broad flat instrument’ (source of theEnglish botanical term spathe [18]). This in turnpassed into Italian as spada ‘broad sword’,whose plural spade gave English the playingcardsymbol spade [16]. The correspondingFrench term is épée ‘sword’, adopted by Englishas a fencing term in the 19th century; and its OldFrench precursor espee is the ultimate source ofEnglish spay [15]. The diminutive form of Latinspatha was spathula, from which English getsspatula [16]. SPATHE, SPATULA, SPAY, SPOONspaghetti [19] Spaghetti comes from the pluralof Italian spaghetto, a diminutive form of spago‘string’ (a word of uncertain origin). The earliestrecord of its use in English is by Eliza Acton inher Modern Cookery 1849, but it was stillsufficiently unfamiliar then for her to mis-spell itsparghetti.span [OE] Span is of Germanic origin, withrelatives in German and Dutch spanne, Swedishspann, and Danish spand. It originated in thenotion of the distance between the tip of thethumb and the tip of the little finger. The verbspan was derived in the 14th century from thenoun. Its German relative spannen ‘stretch,tighten’ produced the derived noun spanner,which was borrowed by English in the 17thcentury. SPANNERspaniel [14] The spaniel is etymologically the‘Spanish’ dog. The word comes via Old Frenchespaigneul ‘Spanish’ and Vulgar Latin*spāniōlus from Latin Hispāniōlus, a derivativeof Hispānia ‘Spain’. The breed of dog was ofSpanish origin. SPAINsparse see SPREADspasm [14] A spasm is etymologically a sudden‘stretching’ of a muscle (although in factphysiologically spasms are contractions ofmuscle tissue). The word comes via Old Frenchspasme and Latin spasmus from Greek spasmós,a derivative of the verb span ‘pull’. This in turnwas descended from the Indo-European base*spə- ‘stretch’. The metaphorical notion of‘intermittence’ (based on the intervals betweenspasms) emerged in the derived adjectivespasmodic [17] in the 19th century. STADIUMspat English has three words spat (not countingthe past form of spit). The oldest, ‘young of anoyster or similar shellfish’ [17], comes fromAnglo-Norman spat, but the origins of that areunknown. Spat ‘shoe covering’ [19] is short forthe earlier spatterdash [17]. This was acompound formed from spatter [16] (a wordbased ultimately on the sound of spattering) anddash (used here in the now archaic sense ‘splashviolently’). Spat ‘tiff’ [19] originated in theUSA, but its ancestry is not known.spathe see SPADEspatialspatial see SPACEspatula see SPADEspawn [14] Spawn is ultimately the same wordas expand, and etymologically it denotes the‘spreading out’ of a fish’s eggs by its sheddingthem into the water. The word comes fromespaundre, an Anglo-Norman variant of OldFrench espandre ‘spread, shed’. This wasdescended from Latin expandere ‘spread out’(source of English expand [15]), a compoundverb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ andpandere ‘spread’. EXPANDspay see SPADEspeak [OE] The usual Old English word for‘speak’ was sprecan, which has close livingrelatives in German sprechen and Dutch spreken.Specan, the ancestor of modern English speak,did not appear until around the year 1000, butalready by the 12th century it had virtuallyreplaced sprecan. It is not known how the r-lessform (which has no surviving relatives in otherGermanic languages) arose, but it is clearly asecondary development of the r-form. Thisseems to be connected with Danish spage‘crackle’, Lithuanian sprageti ‘crackle’, andSanskrit sphūrj- ‘crackle, rustle’, suggesting thatthe English word’s use for ‘utter, say’ arose viaan earlier ‘crackle, prattle, babble, chatter’(English ‘crack on about something’, ‘not whatit’s cracked up to be’, and ‘crack a joke’ areremnants of an earlier widespread use of Englishcrack for ‘speak’). SPEECHspear [OE] Spear is a general Germanic word,with relatives in German and Dutch speer (the

Scandinavian forms have died out). Its ultimateancestry is uncertain, although it may havedistant links with English spar and Latin sparus‘hunting spear’.special [13] Latin speciēs originally denoted the‘outward aspect’, the ‘look’ of something (it wasderived from specere ‘look’, source of Englishspectacle, spectator, spy, etc). It later evolvedmetaphorically to ‘type, kind’, and in that sensewas adopted by English as species [16] (spice isultimately the same word). From it was derivedthe adjective speciālis ‘of a particular type’,which has given English special (especial [14]came via Old French especial). Other derivativeshave given English specific [17], specify [13],specimen [17], and specious [17] (from Latinspeciōsus ‘good-looking’). SPECTACLE, SPECTATOR, SPICE, SPYspectacle [14] Spectacle is one of a large familyof English words that go back ultimately to Latinspecere ‘look’ (a descendant of the Indo-European base *spek- ‘look’, of which areversed Greek version *skep- gave Englishsceptic and scope). Others include special,species, spectator [16], spectre [17](etymologically an ‘appearance’ or ‘image’),spectrum [17] (from Latin spectrum‘appearance’, ultimate source also of spectre,and first used for the ‘band of colours’ by IsaacNewton around 1671), speculate [16], spite, andspy, not to mention prefixed forms such as aspect[14], auspice, conspicuous [16], espionage,expect, frontispiece, inspect [17], respect, andsuspect. Spectacle itself comes via Old Frenchspectacle from the Latin derivative spectāculum‘show, sight’. The application to a ‘device forseeing with’, which lies behind Englishspectacles [15] and its abbreviation specs [19], isa post-Latin development. AUSPICE, CONSPICUOUS, ESPIONAGE, EXPECT,FRONTISPIECE, INSPECT, RESPECT, SPECIAL,SPECIES, SUSPECTspeech [OE] Speech originated as a derivative ofthe late Old English verb specan, ancestor ofmodern English speak. It was originally used forthe ‘action of speaking’ in general, or for‘conversation’; the modern application to an‘address delivered to an audience’ did notemerge until the 16th century. SPEAKspeed [OE] Speed originally meant ‘success,prosperity’ – and when you wish someoneGodspeed, you are wishing them ‘good fortune’.Largely, though, it is the secondary sense‘quickness’, which first emerged in the late OldEnglish period, that has survived to the presentday. It has a surviving Germanic relative inDutch spoed ‘quickness’, and it also has possiblelinks with Old Church Slavonic speti ‘succeed’.It was first used as a slang term for‘amphetamine’ in the mid 1960s.spell English has three distinct words spell,although two of them come from the sameultimate source. Spell ‘name the letters of aword’ [13] was adapted from Old French espeler‘read out’. This was descended from an earlier471 spice*espeldre, which was borrowed from prehistoricGermanic *spellōn. And it was a noun relative ofthis, *spellam, which gave English spell ‘magicformula’ [OE]. Spell ‘period of time’ [16] maygo back ultimately to Old English spelian‘substitute’; its original meaning was ‘replacesomeone else at a job’, and the main modernsense ‘period of time’ did not emerge, via‘period of work’, until the 18th century.spend [OE] Spend is a blend of verbs from twodistinct sources, but both going back ultimatelyto Latin pendere ‘weigh, pay’. The earlier wasLatin expendere ‘pay out’ (later to give Englishexpend [15]), which Old English took over asspendan. (It was also the source of Germanspenden.) This was later reinforced by dispend,a borrowing from Old French despendre whichnow survives only in dispense. DISPENSE, EXPEND, PENDANT, PENDULUMsperm [14] Sperm is etymologically somethingthat is ‘sown’, like ‘seed’. The word comes, vialate Latin sperma, from Greek spérma ‘seed’.This was a derivative of the same base asproduced English diaspora, sporadic, and spore,and it may ultimately be related to English spray. DIASPORA, SPORADIC, SPOREspew see SPITsphere [17] Sphere goes back ultimately toGreek sphaira, a word of uncertain origin, whichreached English via Latin sphaera or sphēra andOld French espere. Amongst the theories putforward to account for its ancestry are that it wasderived from Greek sphurás ‘fall of dung, roundpellet of dung, pill’, which has relatives inLithuanian spira ‘sheep-dung’ and modernIcelandic sperthill ‘goat-dung’; and that it isrelated to Greek spaírein ‘quiver’ and Sanskritsphur- ‘spring, quiver, trouble’. It metaphoricaluse in English for ‘area of activity’ dates fromthe early 17th century.sphinx [16] The original Sphinx was a monster,half woman and half lion, which terrorized thecountry around Thebes in ancient Greece.According to legend, it would waylay travellersand ask them a riddle; and if they could not solveit, it killed them. One of its favoured methodswas strangulation, and its name supposedlymeans ‘the strangler’ – as if it were derived fromGreek sphíggein ‘bind tight’ (source of Englishsphincter [16]). However, this account of itsname sounds as mythological as the account ofits existence, and a more likely explanation isperhaps that the word was derived from the nameof Mount Phikion, not far from ancient Thebes.One of the first yachts to carry a spinnakersail, in the mid-1860s, was the Sphinx, and it hasbeen conjectured that its name (or rather amispronunciation /spingks/) formed the basis ofthe term spinnaker [19], perhaps as a partialblend with spanker, the name of another type ofsail. SPINNAKERspice [13] Spice is ultimately the same word asspecies. It comes via Old French espice fromLatin speciēs ‘appearance, kind’. In late Latin itsplural came to be used for ‘goods, wares’,

spick and span 472probably from the notion of a particular ‘sort’ ofmerchandise, and by the time the word reachedEnglish its usage had narrowed still further to‘aromatic plant substances of oriental or tropicalorigin, used in cooking’. SPECIALand spanspick and span see SPIKEspider [OE] The spider is etymologically the‘spinner’. Its name goes back to a primitive OldEnglish *spinthron, a derivative of the verbspinnan ‘spin’. The inspiration is the same, andmuch more obvious, behind other Germanicwords for ‘spider’, such as German spinne,Dutch spinner, Swedish spindel, and Danishspinder. SPINspike English has two etymologically distinctwords spike, although they are so similar inmeaning that they are commonly regarded as oneand the same. Spike ‘long sharp piece’ [13] wasprobably borrowed from Middle Dutch spīker. Ithas another relative in Swedish spik ‘nail’, andgoes back ultimately to prehistoric Germanic*speik-, *spaik- (source also of English spoke).The spick of spick and span [17] is a variant ofspike. The expression is an elaboration of anearlier span-new ‘brand-new’, which wasborrowed from Old Norse spánnýr ‘as new as anew chip of wood’ (spánn ‘chip’ is related toEnglish spoon, which originally meant ‘chip’).The spick was added in imitation of Dutchspiksplinter nieuw ‘spike-splinter new’.Spike ‘ear of corn, arrangement of flowers ona stalk similar to this’ [14] was borrowed fromLatin spīca, a close relative of spīna ‘thorn’(source of English spine). Spīca is alsoultimately responsible for English spigot [14],perhaps via the diminutive spiculum; and itforms the first syllable of spikenard [14], thename of a sort of ancient aromatic ointment or ofthe plant that probably produced it. SPICK; SPIGOT, SPINE, SPOKEspill Spill ‘let fall’ [OE] and spill ‘thin piece ofwood’ are distinct words. The former originallymeant ‘destroy, kill’; the modern sense ‘allowliquid to pour out or fall’, which did not emergeuntil the 14th century, arose as a rather grislymetaphor based on the notion of ‘sheddingblood’. The ultimate origins of the word, whichhas relatives in Dutch spillen and Swedish spilla,are not known. Spill ‘thin piece of wood’ wasprobably borrowed from Middle Low German orMiddle Dutch spile ‘splinter, wooden pin, bar,etc’, which also gave English spile ‘bung’ [16].This in turn went back to a prehistoric WestGermanic *spinla (source also of Englishspindle). The familiar modern use of spill for a‘small slip of wood, paper, etc used for carryinga flame’ did not emerge until the early 19thcentury. SPIN, SPINDLEspin [OE] Spin is a general Germanic word, withrelatives in German and Dutch spinnen, Swedishspinna, and Danish spinde. It goes backultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European base*spen- or *pen- ‘stretch’ which also producedEnglish span, Lithuanian pinti ‘plait’, and OldChurch Slavonic peti ‘stretch’. English wordsderived from it or its immediate Germanicancestor include spider, spill ‘slip of wood’,spindle [OE], and spinster [14] (originally a‘female spinner’, and not used as a designationof an unmarried woman until the 17th century). SPIDER, SPILL, SPINDLE, SPINSTERspinach [16] The ultimate origin of the wordspinach is Persian aspanākh, which passed viaArabic isfināj, medieval Latin spinachia, andSpanish espinaca into Old French as espinache.Middle Dutch borrowed this as spinaetse, theprobable source of English spinach. It has beenspeculated that the change of form from Arabicto Latin may have been partly motivated by the‘spiny’ seeds of certain types of spinach.spindle see SPINspine [14] Spine comes via Old French espinefrom Latin spīna ‘thorn’, which was probablyderived from the same base as spīca ‘ear of corn’(source of English spike ‘pointed flower head’).The metaphorical extension ‘backbone’developed in Latin, perhaps via ‘prickle’ and‘fish bone’. A spinney [16] is etymologically a‘thorny thicket’. The word comes via Old Frenchespinei from Vulgar Latin *spīnēta, an alterationof Latin spīnētum ‘thorny hedge’, which wasderived from spīna. SPIKE, SPINNEYspinet [17] A spinet is a sort of smallharpsichord. English acquired the term via earlymodern French espinette from Italian spinetta,and one version of its origin is that it came fromthe name of one Giovanni Spinetti, a Venetianwho supposedly invented the instrument at thebeginning of the 16th century. A more prosaicstory is that it was a diminutive form of spina‘thorn’ (a relative of English spine), the allusionbeing to the plucking of the strings withthornlike quills.spinnaker see SPHINXspinsterspinster see SPINspiral [16] Spiral comes via French spiral frommedieval Latin spīrālis ‘coiled’, a derivative ofLatin spīra. This in turn went back to Greekspeira ‘coil’. English also acquired the noun, asspire [16], which is used for the ‘tip of a spiralshell’. It is not the same word as the spire of achurch [OE], which originally meant ‘stalk,stem’, and may go back ultimately to the base*spī- (source of English spike ‘pointed flowerhead’ and spine). The spiraea [17] isetymologically the ‘coiled’ plant; and spiraea inturn was used to form the term aspirin. ASPIRIN, SPIRAEAspirit [13] Latin spīritus originally meant‘breath’: it was derived from the verb spīrāre‘breathe’ (source of English aspire [15],conspire [14], expire [15], inspire [14], perspire[17], respire [14], transpire [16], etc), whichprobably came ultimately from the prehistoricIndo-European base *speis- or *peis-, imitativeof the sound of blowing or breathing out (sourcealso of Old Church Slavonic piskati ‘whistle’,Serbo-Croat pistati ‘hiss’, and Old Norse físa

‘fart’). But in the Augustan period it graduallybegan to take over as the word for ‘soul’ fromanima (source of English animal, animate, etc),which itself originally denoted ‘breath’, and inChristian Latin writings it was the standard termused. ASPIRE, CONSPIRE, EXPIRE, INSPIRE, PERSPIRE,RESPIRE, TRANSPIREspit English has two words spit in current usage.Spit ‘eject saliva’ [OE] is one of a sizable groupof English words beginning sp- which denote‘ejecting or discharging liquid’. Others includespew [OE], spout [14], spurt [16], and sputter[16]. They all go back ultimately to an Indo-European base *spyēu-, *spyū-, etc, imitative ofthe sound of spitting, which also produced Latinspuere ‘spit’ (source of English cuspidor [18]and sputum [17]). The immediate source of spititself was the prehistoric Germanic base *spit-, avariant of which, *spāt-, produced Englishspittle [15] (originally spattle, but changedthrough association with spit).Spit for roasting things on [OE] comes froma prehistoric Germanic *spituz, which alsoproduced German spiess and Dutch spit. CUSPIDOR, SPEW, SPOUT, SPURT, SPUTTER,SPUTUMspite [13] Spite was adapted from Old Frenchdespit ‘scorn, ill will’, which was also borrowedintact as despite [13]. This came from Latindēspectus, the past participle of dēspicere ‘lookdown on’ (source of English despise [13]),which was a compound verb formed from theprefix dē- ‘down’ and specere ‘look’ (source ofEnglish spectacle, spy, etc). The use of in spite ofand despite for ‘notwithstanding’ goes back viaan intermediate ‘in defiance of’ to an original ‘incontempt of’. DESPISE, SPECIES, SPECTATOR, SPYspleen [13] Spleen comes via Old French esplenand Latin splēn from Greek splén, which mayhave been related to Latin liēn ‘spleen’ andGreek splágkhnon ‘entrails’ (source of Englishsplanchnic ‘of the viscera’ [17]). In medievalphysiology many internal organs were held to bethe seat of a particular emotion, and the spleenwas no exception. It had several conflictingstates of mind attributed to it, but the one whichsurvives is ‘moroseness’ or ‘bad temper’, in thederived adjective splenetic [16].splendid [17] Splendid comes via Frenchsplendide from Latin splendidus, a derivative ofthe verb splendēre ‘shine’. This went backultimately to the Indo-European base *splēnd- or*plēnd- ‘bright’, which also produced OldLithuanian splendeti ‘shine’ and Welsh llathru‘polish’. Amongst the derivatives adopted byEnglish are resplendent [15], splendiferous [15](from splendiferus, a medieval alteration of lateLatin splendōrifer, literally ‘bearing brightness’,hence ‘full of splendour’ – its modern use, as ajocular alternative to splendid, is a 19th-centuryAmerican innovation), and splendour [15]. RESPLENDENTsplit [16] Split was borrowed from Middle Dutchsplitten. This, like German spleissen ‘splice’ and473 spoonerismEnglish splice [16], goes back to a prehistoricbase *spleid-, which may have been related to*spel-, the source of English spill. SPLICEspoil [13] Latin spolium originally denoted ‘skinstripped from a killed animal’ (it went backultimately to the Indo-European base *spel-‘split, burst’, which also produced Germanspalten ‘split’, and probably English spill andsplit). It broadened out metaphorically via‘weapons stripped from a fallen enemy’ to‘booty’ in general, which lies behind Englishspoils. The word itself was borrowed from OldFrench espoille, a derivative of the verbespoillier, which in turn went back to Latinspoliāre ‘despoil’ (source of English spoliation[14]), a derivative of spolium. The verb spoilcame either from Old French espoillier, or isshort for despoil [13], which went back via OldFrench despoillier to Latin dēspoliāre. It used tomean ‘strip of possessions’, as despoil still does,but in the 16th century it moved across to takeover the semantic territory of the similarsoundingspill (which once meant ‘destroy,ruin’). DESPOIL, SPOLIATIONspoke [OE] Like its relatives German speicheand Dutch speek, spoke goes back to prehistoricGermanic *spaikōn. This was derived from thebase *spaik-, *speik-, which also producedEnglish spike. SPIKEspoliation see SPOILsponsor [17] Etymologically, a sponsor issomeone who makes a ‘solemn promise’. Theword was borrowed from Latin sponsor, aderivative of spondēre ‘promise solemnly’,which denoted ‘someone who stands surely foranother’. In the Christian era it came to be usedfor a ‘godparent’, which was its original sense inEnglish. From the same source come Englishdespond, respond, spouse, and probablyspontaneous [17]. DESPOND, RESPOND, SPONTANEOUS, SPOUSEspoon [OE] The word spoon originally denoted‘chip of wood’. Such chips typically beingslightly concave, they could be used forconveying liquid, and by the 14th century spoon,through Scandinavian influence, was being usedin its present-day sense. It goes back ultimatelyto the same prehistoric base as produced Englishspade, and its Old Norse relative spánn ‘chip’lies behind the span of spick and span. The late19th-century slang use ‘court, make love, billand coo’ comes from a late 18th-centuryapplication of the noun to a ‘shallow’ or foolishperson. SPADEspoonerism [19] The term spoonerismcommemorates the name of the ReverendWilliam Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of NewCollege, Oxford, who reputedly was in the habitof producing utterances with the initial letters ofwords reversed, often to comic effect (as in ‘hushmy brat’ for ‘brush my hat’ or ‘scoop of boytrouts’ for ‘troop of boy scouts’)

spoor 474spoor see SPURsporadic [17] Sporadic means etymologically‘scattered like seed’. It comes via medieval Latinsporadicus from Greek sporadikós, a derivativeof the adjective sporás ‘scattered’. This wasformed from the same base as produced sporá‘act of sowing, seed’, ancestor of Englishdiaspora [19] (etymologically ‘dispersal’) andspore [19]. And both were related to speírein‘sow’, source of English sperm. DIASPORA, SPERM, SPOREsporran [19] English acquired sporran fromGaelic, of course, but it is not ultimately ofCeltic origin. It goes back to Latin bursa ‘purse’(source of English bursar, purse, etc), which wasearly on borrowed into the Celtic languages,giving Irish sparán and Welsg ysbur as well asGaelic sporan. As with so many otherScotticisms, it was Walter Scott who introducedthe word to English. BURSAR, PURSE, REIMBURSEsport [14] Sport is short for disport [14]. Thiscame from Anglo-Norman desporter ‘carryaway’, hence ‘divert’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix des- ‘apart’ and porter ‘carry’.The noun originally meant ‘amusement,recreation’, and it was not used in its mainmodern sense ‘athletic contests’ until the mid19th century. DISPORT, PORT, PORTABLEspot [12] Spot may have been borrowed fromLow German spot or Middle Dutch spotte. Thesepoint back to a prehistoric Germanic *sput-,which also produced Norwegian spott ‘speck,spot’. There may also be some connection withOld English splott ‘spot’.spouse [12] A spouse is etymologicallysomeone who has made a ‘promise’ to another –in this case, of marriage. The word comes viaOld French spous, spouse from Latin spōnsus‘bridegroom’ and spōnsa ‘bride’, noun uses ofthe past participle of spondēre ‘promisesolemnly, betroth’ (source of Englishdespondent and sponsor). SPONSORspout see SPITsprain see EXPRESSspread [OE] Spread is a general West Germanicword, with relatives in German spreiten andDutch speiden. These point back to a commonprehistoric ancestor *spraidjan. Where thatcame from is not clear, although it may havelinks with Latin spargere ‘scatter, sprinkle’(source of English aspersion [16] and sparse[18]) and Greek speírein ‘sow’ (a relative ofEnglish sperm, spore, etc).spring [OE] The noun spring and the verb springcome from the same source: the Indo-Europeanbase *sprengh-, which denoted ‘rapidmovement’. Of its Germanic verbal descendants,German and Dutch springen, like Englishspring, have moved on semantically to ‘jump’,but Swedish springa ‘run’ has stayed closer to itsroots. The noun spring in Old English timesdenoted the place where a stream ‘rises’ from theground, which soon evolved metaphorically into‘source, origin’ in general. The notion of ‘rising’was also applied figuratively to the ‘beginning ofthe day’ and to the ‘emergence of new growth’,and the latter led in the 16th century, via theexpression spring of the year, to the use of springfor the ‘season following winter’ (replacing theprevious term Lent).spruce Spruce ‘neat’ [16] and spruce the tree[17] are completely different words, of course,but they could have a common origin – inSpruce, the old English name for Prussia. Sprucethe tree was originally the spruce fir, literally the‘Prussian fir’. And it is thought that the adjectivespruce may have come from the expressionspruce leather ‘Prussian leather’, which denoteda particularly fine sort of leather, used formaking jackets. The word itself is anunexplained alteration of Pruce ‘Prussia’, whichwas acquired via Old French from medievalLatin Prussia. PRUSSIAspume see FOAMspur [OE] Spur goes back ultimately to Indo-European *sper- ‘hit with the foot, kick’ (sourcealso of English spurn [OE], which originallymeant literally ‘hit with the foot, trip over’).From it was descended the prehistoric Germanicnoun *spuron, which produced German sporn‘spur’, Dutch spoor ‘track’ (source of Englishspoor [19]), and Swedish sporre ‘spur’ as well asEnglish spur. SPOOR, SPURNspurt see SPITsputnik [20] Russian sputnik means literally‘travelling companion’ (it is formed from s‘with’ and put ‘way, journey’, with the agentsuffix -nik). The Soviets gave the name to theseries of Earth-orbiting satellites that theylaunched between 1957 and 1961. The firstbleeps from space in October 1957 came as asevere shock to the West, which had not thoughtSoviet science capable of such a thing, andimmediately propelled sputnik into the Englishlanguage (the politically charged Englishversion ‘fellow traveller’, which is more strictlya translation of Russian popútchik, was tried fora time, but never caught on). It became one of the‘in’ words of the late 1950s, and did much topopularize the suffix -nik in English (as inbeatnik and peacenik).sputter see SPITsputum see SPITspy [13] A spy is etymologically someone who‘looks’. The word was adapted from Old Frenchespie ‘watcher, spy’, a derivative of espier‘watch, spy’ (from which English gets the verbspy, and also espy [14] and espionage [18]). Thisin turn was formed from the borrowed Germanicbase *spekh- (source of German spähen‘reconnoitre, watch’ and Swedish speja ‘spy,scout’), which went back ultimately to Indo-European *spek- ‘look’ (source of Englishinspect, spectator, etc). ESPIONAGE, EXPECT, INSPECT, SPECIAL,SPECTATOR

squadron [16] A squadron is etymologically a‘square’. The current sense ‘military group’comes from an earlier ‘square formation oftroops’. The word was borrowed from Italiansquadrone, a derivative of squadra ‘square’,which comes from the same source as Englishsquare. The related squad [17] comes fromFrench escouade, an alteration of escadre, whichwas acquired from Italian squadra. QUARTER, SQUAREsquare [13] Etymologically a square is a ‘four’-sided figure. The word comes via Old Frenchesquare or esqire (squire was the Middle Englishform of square) from Vulgar Latin *exquadra, aderivative of *exquadrāre ‘square’. This was acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixex- and Latin quadrāre ‘square’, a derivative ofthe Latin stem quat-, quad- ‘four’, from whichEnglish gets quadrant, quarantine, quarter, etc,as well as cadre, and, via Italian, squad andsquadron. The use of the adjective square for‘stuffy, old-fashioned’ originated in jazz circlesin the USA in the 1940s. CADRE, QUADRANT, QUARTER, SQUADRONsquash see QUASHsquat [13] Someone who squats isetymologically ‘forced together’ – and indeedthe verb originally meant ‘squash, flatten’ inEnglish (‘This stone shall fall on such men, andsquat them all to powder’, John Wyclif, Sermons1380). Not until the early 15th century did themodern sense (based on the notion of hunchingoneself up small and low) emerge. The word wasadapted from Old French esquatir, a compoundverb formed from the intensive prefix es- andquatir ‘press flat’. This in turn came from VulgarLatin *coactīre ‘press together’, a verb based onLatin coāctus, the past participle of cōgere ‘forcetogether’ (from which English gets cogent [17]).The adjectival use of squat for ‘thickset’, whichpreserves some of the word’s originalconnotations of being ‘flattened’, is firstrecorded in 1630. Swat ‘slap’ [17] originated asa variant of squat. COGENT, SWATsquint [14] Squint is short for the now nearlydefunct asquint [13], which may have beenbased on the ancestor of Dutch schuinte ‘slope,slant’, a derivative of schuin ‘sideways, sloping’.The origins of this are not known.squire [13] A squire is etymologically a ‘shieldcarrier’.The word was adapted from Old Frenchesquier (which was later reborrowed intoEnglish as esquire [15]). This was descendedfrom Latin scūtārius ‘shield-carrier’, aderivative of scūtum ‘shield’ (source also ofEnglish escutcheon [15]). ESCUTCHEONsquirrel [14] The squirrel’s name meansetymologically ‘little shadow-tail’. It comes viaAnglo-Norman esquirel from Vulgar Latin*scūriōlus, a diminutive form of *scūrius. Thiswas an alteration of Latin sciūrus ‘squirrel’ (nowthe scientific name for the squirrel genus), which475 stairin turn came from Greek skíouros, a compoundformed from skiá ‘shadow’ and ourá ‘tail’. CONSTABLE, ESTABLISH, STANDstable English has two distinct words stable, butboth come ultimately from the same source: theIndo-European base *stā- ‘stand’, ancestor alsoof English stand. The adjective stable [13]comes via Old French estable from Latin stabilis‘standing firm’, which has also given Englishestablish, stability [15], and stabilize [19]. It wasformed from the base *stā-, as was Latinstabulum ‘standing-place’, hence ‘enclosure foranimals’, which English acquired via OldFrench estable as stable [13]. The correspondingGermanic formation, also based on *stā-, is stall.A constable is etymologically an ‘officer incharge of stables’.stadium [16] Greek stádion denoted a‘racetrack’, particularly the one at Olympia,which was about 185 metres long. In due coursethe word came to be used as a term for a measureof length equal to this, and that was the sense inwhich English originally acquired it, via Latinstadium. The original ‘racetrack’ was introducedin the 17th century, and ‘sports arena’ is amodern development of this. The Greek worditself was an alteration of an earlier spádion‘racetrack’, a derivative of span ‘pull’ (source ofEnglish spasm). The change from sp- to st- wasperhaps set in motion by Greek stádios ‘fixed,firm’. SPASMstaff [OE] Staff is a widespread Germanic word,with relatives in German stab, Dutch andSwedish staf, and Danish stav. These point backto a common Germanic ancestor *stabaz. Itsancestral meaning is ‘stick’, and its use as acollective term for ‘employees’, which dates inEnglish from the 18th century, probablyoriginated as an allusion to the carrying of a staffor ‘stick’ of office by a person in charge ofsubordinates – who thus became subsumedmetaphorically under the notion of his ‘staff’.stage [13] Astage (like a stable) isetymologically a ‘standing-place’. The wordcomes via Old French estage from Vulgar Latin*staticum ‘standing-place, position’, a derivativeof Latin stāre ‘stand’ (to which English stand isdistantly related). By the time it arrived inEnglish it had acquired the additionalconnotation of a ‘set of positions one above theother’, and this led to its use in the more concretesenses ‘storey, floor’ and ‘raised platform’. Thespecific application to a ‘platform in a theatre’emerged in the mid-16th century. The sense‘section of a journey’ (on which stagecoach [17]is based) developed at the end of the 16thcentury, presumably on the analogy of physicallevels succeeding one another in ‘steps’ or‘tiers’; and the further metaphoricization to ‘stepin development’ took place in the 19th century. STANDstaid see STAYstair [OE] A stair is etymologically somethingyou ‘climb’. The word goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *staigrī (source also of Dutch steiger

stake 476‘scaffolding’). This was derived from the base*staig-, *stig- ‘rise’, which also producedEnglish stile, stirrup, and sty in the eye. And thisin turn went back to an Indo-European *steigh-‘go, rise’, source also of Greek steíkhein ‘stride,go’ and Irish tiagu ‘go’. STILE, STIRRUP, STYstake [OE] Stake ‘post’ comes ultimately fromthe prehistoric Germanic base *stak-, *stek-,*stik- ‘pierce, prick’, which also producedEnglish attach, stick, stockade, etc. It may bethat stake ‘wager’ [16] is the same word,alluding to a supposed former practice of puttingthe object wagered (such as one’s shirt) on a postbefore the start of the contest. ATTACH, STICK, STOCKADEstalactite [17] A stalactite is etymologicallysomething that ‘drips’. The word was coined inmodern Latin as stalactītēs, based on Greekstalaktós ‘dripping’, a derivative of the verbstalássein ‘drip’. Also derived from stalásseinwas stalagmós ‘dropping’, which formed thebasis of stalagmite [17].stale [13] Something that is stale hasetymologically been allowed to ‘stand’ – so thatit is no longer fresh. The word comes from OldFrench estale ‘stationary’, a derivative of estaler‘halt’ (from which English gets the verb stall).And this in turn goes back ultimately to theprehistoric Germanic base *sta- ‘stand’. Staleoriginally denoted wine, beer, etc that had‘stood’ long enough for the sediment to clear (‘Ifmead is well sod [boiled] and stale it is liking tothe taste’, John de Trevisa, De proprietatibusrerum 1398), and it was not until the early 16thcentury that derogatory connotations of lack offreshness began to creep in. STALL, STANDstalemate [18] Stalemate is a compound noun,based on the now obsolete stale ‘stalemate’. Andthis in turn was probably borrowed from Anglo-Norman estale ‘fixed position’, a derivative ofOld French estaler ‘halt’, which also underliesEnglish stale and stall. So etymologically, whenyou reach stalemate in chess, you have to ‘stand’or ‘halt’ where you are, going neither forwardnor back.stalk English has two distinct words stalk. Thenoun, ‘plant stem’ [14], probably originated as adiminutive form of the now extinct stale ‘longhandle’, a word distantly related to Greek steleá‘handle’. The verb, ‘track stealthily’ [OE], goesback to a prehistoric Germanic *stalkōjan,which was formed from the same base asproduced English steal. The sense ‘walkhaughtily’, diametrically opposed to ‘trackstealthily’, emerged in the 16th century.stall Stall ‘compartment, booth, etc’ [OE] andstall ‘stop’ [15] are distinct words, but they havea common ancestor, in prehistoric Germanic*stal-, *stel- ‘position’ (source of English still).This in turn was formed from the base *sta-‘stand’, which also produced English stand.From *stal- was derived the noun *stallaz‘standing-place (for an animal)’, which hasgiven German, Swedish, and English stall,Dutch stal, and Danish stald. A stallion [14] isetymologically a horse kept in a ‘stall’ forbreeding purposes. And stable represents aparallel Latin formation to the Germanic stall (ithas become specialized to a ‘building forhorses’, whereas stall developed to ‘standingplacefor a single animal’). The same Germanicbase produced Frankish *stal ‘position’, whichformed the basis of Old French estaler ‘halt’,source of the English verb stall, and also ofEnglish stale and stalemate. STALE, STALLION, STAND, STILLstalwart [14] The ancestor of stalwart was OldEnglish stǣlwierthe. The second half of thiscompound adjective denoted ‘worth, worthy’,but the precise significance of the first element isnot clear. It represents Old English stǣl ‘place’,perhaps used here in the metaphorical sense‘stead’, so that etymologically the word wouldmean ‘able to stand someone in good stead’. Butstǣl itself may have been a contraction of stathol‘foundation’, so the underlying meaning of thecompound could be ‘foundation-worthy’, hence‘firmly fixed’ (an adjective statholfæst existed inOld English, meaning ‘firm, stable’). South ofthe border it became stalworth, which hadvirtually died out by the end of the 17th century.But the Scottish variant stalwart, first recordedin the late 14th century, survived, and wasbrought into the general language by Sir WalterScott.stamina [17] Etymologically, stamina is theplural of stamen ‘male reproductive part of aflower’ [17]. The ultimate source of both is Latinstāmen ‘thread of woven cloth’, which wentback to Indo-European *stāmen-, a derivative ofthe base *stā- ‘stand’ (source also of Englishstand). The application to the plant-part appearsto go back to the Roman naturalist Pliny, whoused stāmen for the stamens of a sort of lily,which resembled threads of cloth. The Latinplural stāmina was borrowed into English in themetaphorical sense ‘threads of human life, vitalcapacities’, and by the 18th century it hadbroadened out to ‘vigour’. STAMEN, STANDstammer [OE] To stammer is etymologically tobe ‘impeded’ in speech. The word comes (alongwith Dutch stameren) from a prehistoric WestGermanic *stamrōjan, which was derived fromthe base *stam-, *stum- ‘check, impede’ (sourcealso of English stem ‘halt, check’ and stumble). STEM, STUMBLEstamp [12] Stamp originally meant ‘crush intosmall pieces, pound’. The sense ‘slam the footdown’ did not emerge until the 14th century, and‘imprint with a design by pressure’ (which formsthe semantic basis of postage stamp [19]) is asrecent as the 16th century. The word comes,probably via an unrecorded Old English*stampian, from prehistoric Germanic*stampōjan (source also of German stampfen,Dutch stampen, Swedish stampa, and Danishstampe). This was derived from the noun*stampaz ‘pestle’, which was formed from thebase *stamp- (a non-nasalized version of which,

*stap-, lies behind English step). The Germanicverb was borrowed into Vulgar Latin as*stampīre, whose past participle has givenEnglish, via Mexican Spanish, stampede [19]. STAMPEDE, STEPstance see STANZAstand [OE] Stand goes back ultimately to theprehistoric Indo-European base *stā- ‘stand’.This passed into Germanic as *sta-, *stō-.Addition of the suffix *-nd- produced *standan,source of English stand, while past forms werecreated with the suffix *-t-, which has givenEnglish stood. Another descendant of the Indo-European base was Latin stāre ‘stand’, a prolificsource of English words (among them stage,stanza, state, station, statue, etc). STABLE, STAGE, STALL, STAMINA, STANZA,STATE, STATIC, STATION, STATUE, STEED,STOOL, STUD, SYSTEMstandard Standard ‘flag, banner’ [12] denotesetymologically something that is ‘extended’ orunfurled. The word comes from Anglo-Normanestaundart ‘flag displayed on a battlefield so thattroops can rally to it’. This was a derivative ofOld French estendre ‘extend’ (first cousin ofEnglish extend). The sense ‘criterion, norm’,which emerged in the 15th century, is probably ametaphorical application of the notion of the‘royal standard’ or banner as being the pointfrom which authoritative commands (as ofstandards of weight and measurement) areissued. Standard ‘upright object, such as a tree’[13] is probably an alteration of stander. EXTEND; STANDstanza [16] Etymologically, a stanza is a placewhere one ‘stands’ or stops. The word wasborrowed from Italian stanza, a descendant ofVulgar Latin *stantia ‘standing, stopping-place’,which in turn was derived from the presentparticiple of Latin stāre ‘stand’ (source ofEnglish stage, state, station, etc). Its applicationto a ‘verse of poetry’ arose in Italian from thenotion of ‘stopping’ at the end of a section.Stanza was borrowed into French as stance,from which English gets stance [16]. STANCE, STAND, STATE, STATIONstaple English has two distinct words staple, butthey come from a common ancestor – prehistoricGermanic *stapulaz ‘pillar’. This evolved intoEnglish staple [OE], which at first retained itsancestral meaning ‘post, pillar’. The modernsense ‘U-shaped metal bar’ did not emerge untilthe end of the 13th century, and the details of itsdevelopment from ‘pillar’ are obscure. TheMiddle Low German and Middle Dutchdescendant of *stapulaz was stapel, which hadthe additional meaning ‘market, shop’(presumably from the notion of a stall situatedbehind the ‘pillars’ of an arcade). This wasborrowed into Old French as estaple, which inturn gave English staple ‘market’ [15], hence‘principal commercial commodity’.star [OE] Star is a general Germanic word, withrelatives in German stern, Dutch ster, Swedishstjärna, and Danish stjerne. These were alldescended from a prehistoric Germanic base477 starve*ster-, which had come down unaltered fromIndo-European *ster- ‘star’, source also of Latinstēlla ‘star’ (from which English gets stellar[16]) and Greek astér ‘star’ (from which Englishgets asterisk, astronomy, disaster, etc). Theultimate source of the Indo-European base is notknown for certain, but the traditional view is thatit comes from the base *ster- ‘spread out’, theunderlying notion being of the stars ‘spread out’in the sky. Sterling ‘British money’ wasoriginally named from the design of a small‘star’ on a coin, but starling is notetymologically related. The modern sense ofstar, ‘leading performer’, is first recorded in theearly 19th century. ASTERISK, ASTRONOMY, DISASTER, STELLAR,STERLINGstarboard [OE] Starboard is etymologically‘steer-board’. The word originated as an OldEnglish compound formed from stēor ‘paddle,rudder’ (a relative of the verb steer) and bord‘board’. The early Germanic peoples propelledand steered their boats by means of a paddle onthe right-hand side of the vessel – hence the useof starboard as the nautical equivalent of right. STEERstare [OE] The etymological notion underlyingstare is of ‘fixity’ or ‘rigidity’. It goes backultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base*star-, *ster- ‘be rigid’, which also producedEnglish starch [15], stark [OE], starve(originally ‘be stiff’, hence ‘die’), stern ‘severe’,and stork (etymologically the ‘stiff’-leggedbird). Thus to stare is to ‘look fixedly’. (Greekstereós ‘solid’, source of English stereo, camefrom the same Indo-European base as produced*ster-.) STARCH, STARK, STARVE, STEREO, STERN,STORKstarling [OE] Starling is a diminutive form. Theoriginal Old English name of the bird was stær,which together with German star, Swedish stare,and Danish stær goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *staraz. This was related to Latinsturnus ‘starling’.start [OE] Start originally meant ‘jump, leap,caper’ (‘Him lust not [he did not like] to play norstart, nor to dance, nor to sing’, Chaucer,Romance of the Rose 1366). This graduallyevolved via ‘make a sudden movement’ to‘begin a journey’, but it did not emerge as afully-fledged synonym for ‘begin’ until the endof the 18th century. Startle [OE], which camefrom the same Germanic base *start-, has keptmore closely to the notion of ‘suddenmovement’. STARTLEstarve [OE] Starve means etymologically ‘bestiff’ – it goes back to a prehistoric Germanicbase *star-, *ster- ‘be stiff’, which alsoproduced English starch, stare, etc. The‘stiffness’ of a corpse led to its use for ‘die’ – ameaning which it retains in the related Germansterben and Dutch sterven. In English, however,from the 12th century onwards, starve graduallynarrowed down in meaning to ‘dying from cold’

state 478(which survived into the modern era in northerndialects) and ‘dying from hunger’. STARCH, STARE, STORKstate [13] State comes, partly via Old Frenchestat (source of English estate), from Latinstatus ‘way of standing, condition, position’,which was formed from the same base as stāre‘stand’ (a distant relative of English stand). Theword’s political sense, ‘body politic’, firstrecorded in the 16th century, comes from Latinexpressions such as status rei publicae‘condition of the republic’ and status civitatis‘condition of the body politic’. The verb stateoriginally meant ‘put, place’; its modernmeaning ‘declare’ arose from the notion of‘placing’ something on record, setting it out indetail. English borrowed status itself in the 17thcentury. ESTATE, STAND, STATION, STATISTIC, STATUE;STATUTEstatic [17] Static means etymologically ‘causingto stand’. Its ultimate ancestor is Greek statós‘placed, standing’, a derivative of the base *sta-‘stand’ (to which English stand is related). Fromthis was derived statikós ‘causing to stand’,which passed into English via Latin staticus. STANDstation [14] A station is etymologically a‘standing’, hence a ‘place for standing’ – a guardwho takes up his ‘station’ outside a buildinggoes and ‘stands’ there. The word comes via OldFrench station from Latin statiō ‘standing’, adescendant of the base *stā- ‘stand’ (to whichEnglish stand is related). Various metaphoricalsenses emerged in Latin, such as ‘post, job’ and‘abode, residence’, but ‘stopping place forvehicles’ is a post-Latin development. It cameout of an earlier ‘stopping place on a journey’,and is first recorded in English at the end of the18th century, in the USA, with reference tocoach routes. The application to ‘railwaystations’ dates from the 1830s. The notion of‘standing still’ is preserved in the derivedadjective stationary [15]. CONSTANT, INSTANT, STAND, STATE,STATIONARY, STATIONERY, STATUEstationer [15] In medieval Latin a statiōnāriuswas originally a ‘trader who kept a permanentstall’ (as opposed to an itinerant seller). Theword was derived from Latin statiō ‘standing,keeping still’ (source of English station), whichin the post-classical meaning evolved inmeaning to ‘shop’. Such permanent shops werecomparatively rare in the Middle Ages. Of thosethat did exist, the commonest were bookshops,licensed by the universities, and so when Englishadopted the Latin term, it was used in the sense‘bookseller’. It has since come down in theworld somewhat to ‘seller of paper, pens, etc’ (asense first recorded in the mid 17th century), butthe earlier application is preserved in the nameof the Stationers’ Company, a London liverycompany to which booksellers and publishersbelong. The derivative stationery dates from the18th century. STATIONstatistic [18] The term statistics [18]etymologically denotes the ‘science of the state’.It comes from statisticus ‘of state affairs’, amodern Latin coinage based on classical Latinstatus (source of English state). It was the 18thcenturyGerman political scientist Aschenwallwho brought it (in German statistisch) intogeneral usage, in the specific sense ‘of thecollection and evaluation of data (particularlynumerical data) relating to the study of the stateand its functions and institutions’. By the 1830sit had broadened out into its modern generalsense. English acquired the word from German. STATEstatue [14] A statue is etymologically somethingthat has been ‘set up’ or ‘erected’. The wordcomes via Old French statue from Latin statua,a derivative of statuere ‘cause to stand, erect,establish’ (source of English constitute, destitute[14], institute, prostitute, restitution [13], statute[13], and substitute [16]). This in turn wasformed from status (source of English state andstatus), the past participle of Latin stāre ‘stand’(source of English contrast [16], cost, stage,station, stay, etc). And stāre came ultimatelyfrom the Indo-European base *stā- ‘stand’,which is also the ancestor of English stable,stand, stead, stem, etc. Amongst the host of otherEnglish words that come from the prolific Latinstāre are (via its present participle stāns)circumstance [13], constant, distant, instant,stance, stanza, substance, etc, and (via thederivative sistere ‘stand’) assist, consist, desist[15], exist, insist [16], persist [16], and resist[14]. ASSIST, CIRCUMSTANCE, CONSIST, CONSTANT,CONTRAST, COST, DESIST, DESTITUTE, DISTANT,ESTATE, EXIST, INSIST, INSTANT, INSTITUTE,PERSIST, PROSTITUTE, RESIST, RESTITUTION,STABLE, STANCE, STAND, STANZA, STATE,STATION, STATISTIC, STATUS, STATUTE, STAY,STEAD, STEM, STOIC, SUBSTANCE, SUBSTITUTEstatus see STATEstatute see STATUEstay English has three distinct words stay, two ofthem ultimately from the same source. Stay‘stop’ [15] comes from estai-, the present stemof Old French ester ‘stand, stop’. This in turnwent back to Latin stāre ‘stand’ (source ofEnglish state, statue, etc). Staid [16] originatedas the past participle of stay. Stay ‘strong rope’[OE] comes from a prehistoric Germanic*staga-. This was derived from a base *stagh-,*stakh- ‘be firm’, which also produced Englishsteel and (by borrowing) Old French estayer‘support’ (source of English stay ‘support’ [16]). STAID, STAND, STATUE; STEELstead [OE] Stead ‘place’ comes from aprehistoric Germanic *stadiz, which alsoproduced German statt ‘place’ and stadt ‘town’.This in turn went back to Indo-European *stətís,a derivative of the base *stə-, *stā- ‘stand’,which also produced English stand and Latinstāre ‘stand’ (source of English state, statue,etc). The expression in the stead of ‘in place of’,

and its lexicalized form instead, originated in the13th century, modelled on Old French en lieu de. STAND, STATE, STATUE, STEADYsteady [16] Steady was derived from stead‘place’, probably on the model of Middle LowGerman stēdig ‘stable’. This in turn went back toa prehistoric Germanic *stadigaz, a product ofthe same base as produced English stead. Itsetymological meaning is ‘fixed in one place’. STEADsteal [OE] Steal comes from a prehistoricGermanic base *stel-. This also producedGerman stehlen, Dutch stelen, Swedish stjäla,and Danish stjæle, but its ultimate ancestry isunknown. The derived stealth [13] originallymeant ‘theft’ (‘I know my lord hath spent ofTimon’s wealth, and now ingratitude makes itworse than stealth’, Shakespeare, Timon ofAthens 1607), but this has gradually been oustedby the metaphorical ‘furtiveness’. Stalk ‘followfurtively’ comes from the same Germanic base. STALK, STEALTHsteam [OE] Steam comes from a prehistoricGermanic *staumaz, a word of uncertain originwhich also produced Dutch stoom. It originallydenoted any ‘vapour given off by somethinghot’; the specific modern sense ‘vapour fromboiling water’ emerged in the 15th century.steed see STUDsteelsteel [OE] Steel is etymologically a ‘firm’substance. The word goes back to a prehistoricWest Germanic *stakhlam, which was derivedfrom the Germanic base *stakh-, *stagh- ‘befirm’ (source also of English stay ‘rope,support’). It has Germanic relatives in Germanstahl and Dutch staal. STAYsteep English has two words steep. Theadjective, ‘precipitous’ [OE], originally meant‘very high’. It came from the prehistoricGermanic base *staup-, *stūp-, which alsoproduced English steeple [OE] (etymologicallya ‘high’ tower) and stoop [OE]. The verb steep‘soak’ [14] probably came via an unrecordedOld English *stīepan from prehistoric Germanic*staupjan. This was formed from the base*staup-, *stup-, which also produced Englishstoup ‘water vessel’ [14] (a borrowing from OldNorse). STEEPLE, STOOP, STOUPsteer Steer ‘control direction’ [OE] and steer‘young ox’ [OE] are quite unrelated. The lattercomes from a prehistoric Germanic *(s)teuraz,which also produced German and Dutch stier,Swedish tjur, and Danish tyr ‘bull’. It wasdescended from a base denoting ‘strength’ or‘sturdiness’ (source also of Sanskritsomethingūra- ‘strong, thick’), and may berelated to Latin taurus ‘bull’. Steer ‘controldirection’ comes from a prehistoric Germanic*steurjan, source also of German steuern, Dutchstieren, Swedish styra, and Danish styre. This inturn was derived from the noun *steurō‘steering’, which also lies behind English sternand the first syllable of starboard. STARBOARD, STERN479 sterilestem The stem [OE] of a tree is etymologicallythe upright part, the part that ‘stands’ up. Theword comes from prehistoric Germanic*stamniz, a derivative of the base *sta- ‘stand’(which also produced English stand). Theapplication to the ‘front of a vessel’ (as in fromstem to stern) comes from the notion of an‘upright beam’ at the prow (and originally thestern also) of a boat, which dates back to theAnglo-Saxon period. Stem ‘stop’ [13] wasborrowed from Old Norse stemma, a descendantof prehistoric Germanic *stamjan. This wasformed from the base *stam- ‘stop, check’,which also produced English stammer andstumble. STAND, STATUE; STAMMER, STUMBLEstench see STINKstencil [14] Stencil was originally a verb,meaning ‘decorate with bright colours’. It camefrom Old French estenceler ‘cause to sparkle’, aderivative of estencele ‘spark’. This wasdescended from Vulgar Latin *stincilla, analteration of Latin scintilla ‘spark’ (source ofEnglish scintilla ‘jot’ [17] and scintillate [17]).There are no records of this original verb beyondthe 15th century, and the noun stencil ‘sheet withcut-out designs’ did not appear until the early18th century, but despite the long gap, they aregenerally assumed to be the same word. SCINTILLATE, TINSELstentorian [17] Stentor was a Greek warrior inthe Trojan war, whose abnormally loud voiceearned him the job of herald (his name wasderived from the Greek verb sténein ‘groan,moan’). Stentorian, based on late Latinstentoreus or Greek stentóreios, commemorateshis carrying tones.step [OE] Step, together with its relativesGerman stapfen and Dutch steppen, comes froma prehistoric West Germanic base *stap- ‘tread’(a nasalized version of which produced Englishstamp). (Russian step, source of English steppe[17], is not related.) The prefix step- [OE], as instepdaughter, stepfather, etc, originated in aword meaning ‘orphan’. It is related to Old HighGerman stiufen ‘bereave’. STAMPstereo [19] Greek stereós meant ‘solid’. Theearliest English compound noun formed from itwas stereometry [16], a mathematical termdenoting the measurement of solid or threedimensionalobjects. This was followed bystereographic [17], stereotype [18] (coined inFrench and originally used for a ‘solid’ printingblock; the metaphorical ‘unvaried orconventional image’ emerged in the middle ofthe 19th century), stereoscope [19] (a viewer forproducing ‘solid’ or three-dimensional images),and stereophonic ‘producing three-dimensionalsound’ [20]. Stereo was used in the 19th centuryas an abbreviation for stereotype andstereoscopic; its use for stereophonic dates fromthe early 1950s. STARE, STORKsterile [16] Sterile is a word of ancient ancestry,which goes right back to the prehistoric Indo-

sterling 480European base *ster- (source also of Greekstériphos and Gothic stairō ‘infertile’). TheLatin descendant of the base was sterilis,acquired by English via French stérile.sterling [13] Sterling ‘British money’ originatedas a term for an English silver penny from the13th to the 15th centuries. The first ones struckhad the design of a small star on them – hencethe name sterling (and its now defunct variantstarling), literally ‘little star’. Two hundred andforty of such coins formed a unit of weight,known as a pound of sterlings. The earliest useof sterling as a general term for ‘Englishcurrency’ dates from the mid 16th century. STARstern English has two distinct words stern. Theolder, the adjective ‘severe’ [OE], comes from aprehistoric Germanic *sternjaz, which wasprobably derived from the base *ster-, *star- ‘berigid’ (source also of English starch, stare,starve, etc). Stern ‘rear of a vessel’ [13] isetymologically the ‘steering’ end of a ship. Theword was probably borrowed from Old Norsestjórn ‘steering’, a derivative of the same base asproduced stýra ‘steer’ (source of English steer). STARCH, STARE, STARVE, STEREO, STORK; STEERstevedore [18] A stevedore ‘docker’ isetymologically a ‘packer’ of cargo. The wordwas originally borrowed into American Englishfrom Spanish estivador, a derivative of estivar‘stow cargo’. This was descended from Latinstīpāre ‘press, pack’ (source also of Englishconstipation). CONSTIPATION, STIFFstew [14] The cooking sense of stew is asecondary development, first recorded inEnglish in the 15th century. It originally denoted‘take a steam bath’. It came via Old Frenchestuver from Vulgar Latin *extūfāre. This was acompound verb formed from a probable noun*tūfus ‘hot vapour, steam’, a descendant ofGreek túphos ‘smoke, steam, stupor’ (sourcealso of English typhus [18] and typhoid [18]).*Extūfāre probably lies behind English stifle too. STIFLE, STOVE, TYPHOID, TYPHUSsteward [OE] A steward is etymologicallysomeone ‘in charge of a sty’. Its Old Englishancestor stigweard was a compound formedfrom stig ‘hall, house’ (a relative, if not the directancestor, of English sty ‘dwelling for pigs’) andweard ‘guardian, keeper’ – hence ‘keeper of thehall’. GUARD, STY, WARDstick Stick ‘piece of wood’ [OE] and stick ‘fix,adhere’ [OE] come from the same Germanicsource: the base *stik-, *stek-, *stak- ‘pierce,prick, be sharp’ (which also produced Englishattach, stake, stitch, stockade, and stoke). This inturn went back to the Indo-European base *stig-,*steig-, whose other descendants include Greekstígma (source of English stigma) and Latinstīgāre ‘prick, incite’ (source of Englishinstigate [16]) and stinguere ‘prick’ (source ofEnglish distinct, extinct, and instinct). From theGermanic base was derived a verb, source ofEnglish stick, which originally meant ‘pierce’.The notion of ‘piercing’ led on via ‘thrustingsomething sharp into something’ and ‘becomingfixed in something’ to ‘adhering’. The same baseproduced the noun *stikkon, etymologically a‘pointed’ piece of wood, for piercing, which hasbecome English stick. Yet another derivative ofthe base was Old English sticels ‘spine, prickle’,which forms the first element of the fish-namestickleback [15] – etymologically ‘prickly back’. ATTACH, DISTINCT, EXTINCT, INSTIGATE,INSTINCT, STAKE, STIGMA, STIMULATE, STITCH,STOCKADE, STOKE, STYLEstiff [OE] Stiff goes back to prehistoric Germanic*stīfaz ‘inflexible’, source also of German steif,Dutch stiff, Swedish styf, and Danish stiv. This inturn was descended from an Indo-European*stīpos, a derivative of the same base asproduced Latin stīpāre ‘press, pack’ (source ofEnglish constipate and stevedore), Latvian stipt‘stiffen’, and Lithuanian stiprùs ‘strong’. CONSTIPATION, STEVEDOREstifle [14] Stiffle was probably adapted from OldFrench estouffer ‘choke, smother’. This in turnwent back to a Vulgar Latin *extuffāre, whichmay have been a blend of *extūfāre ‘take a steambath’ (source of English stew) and late Latinstuppāre ‘stop up, plug’ (source of English stopand stuff). STEW, STOP, STUFFstigma [16] Greek stígma denoted a ‘mark madeon the skin with a sharp implement’, hence a‘tattoo’ or ‘brand’. It was derived from the Indo-European base *stig- ‘be sharp, pierce’, whichalso produced English stick, stitch, etc. By thetime it arrived in English, via Latin stigma, it hasacquired the connotation of a ‘brand of shame’,and it was also used specifically for the marksmade on Christ’s hands and feet by the nails ofthe cross. STICK, STITCHstile [OE] A stile is etymologically somethingyou ‘climb’. The word goes back ultimately tothe prehistoric Germanic base *stig- ‘climb’(source also of English stair, stirrup, etc, and ofGerman steigen ‘climb, rise’). STAIR, STIRRUPstill The adjective still ‘not moving’ [OE] comesfrom a prehistoric West Germanic *stillja or*stellja, which also produced German still andDutch stil. It was derived from the base *stel-‘fixed, not moving, standing’ (a variant of whichlies behind English stalemate and stall). It wasused as an adverb in the Old English period,denoting ‘not changing physical position’, andthis gradually evolved metaphorically via ‘neverchanging or stopping, always’ to (in the 16thcentury) ‘until now’. The noun still ‘distillingapparatus’ [16] is of course a different word. Itcomes from the now defunct verb still ‘distil’.This was short for distil [14], which came fromLatin distillāre, a derivative ultimately of thenoun stilla ‘drop’ (source also of English instil[16]). STALEMATE, STALL; DISTIL, INSTILstilt [14] Stilt was probably acquired from someLow German source – Low German and Flemish

have stilte. Its ultimate ancestor was a prehistoricGermanic *steltjōn, which was formed from abase meaning ‘walk stiffly, strut’ (source also ofGerman stolz ‘proud’ and English stout). Thederived stilted ‘over-dignified’ dates from theearly 19th century. STOUTstimulate [16] Latin stimulus denoted a ‘pointedstick for goading animals on’ (it probably cameultimately from an Indo-European base *sti-‘point, prick, pierce’, extensions of which liebehind English stick, stitch, style, etc). It wasused metaphorically for ‘something that incitesor causes a response’, and in that sense wasborrowed into English as stimulus [17].Stimulate itself comes from the past participle ofthe derived verb stimulāre ‘goad on’. STICK, STITCH, STYLEsting [OE] Sting comes from a prehistoricGermanic base *stengg-, which also producedSwedish stinga and Danish stinge. This denoted‘pierce with something sharp’ (‘He with a spearstung the proud Viking’, Battle of Maldon 993),a meaning which was not ousted in English bythe more specialized application to insects untilthe late 15th century. Stingy [17] may be basedon stinge ‘act of stinging’, a dialectal nounderived from Old English stingan ‘sting’; anunderlying sense ‘having a sting, sharp’ isrevealed in the dialectal sense ‘bad-tempered’.stink [OE] Stink comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *stingkwan, which also producedGerman and Dutch stinken. Another form of thebase, *stengkw-, gave English stench [OE]. Itsancestral meaning is probably simply ‘smell’,but it early on became specialized to ‘smell bad’. STENCHstipend [15] Latin stīpendium denoted a ‘tax’ or‘levy’. It was a compound noun formed fromstips ‘payment, donation’ and pendere ‘weigh,pay’. It subsequently shifted in meaning to‘wages, salary’, and particularly ‘soldier’s pay’,both of which passed into English via OldFrench stipende. PENDANT, PENDULUM, SPENDstipulate [17] Tradition has it that theetymological notion underlying stipulate is anancient custom of breaking a straw to seal abargain. The word comes from the Latin verbstipulārī ‘bargain, demand’, and it has beenspeculated that this was derived from Latinstipula ‘straw’ (source also of English stubble[13]). The theory has not been conclusivelydemonstrated, but it makes a good story. Anotherpossibility is some connection with Old Latinstipulus ‘firm’.stir [OE] The etymological connotations of stirare of ‘agitation’ and ‘disturbance’; the notion of‘mixing a liquid with circular movements of aspoon or other implement’ is a secondarydevelopment. The verb goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *sturjan, whose only other livingdescendant is Norwegian styrja ‘make adisturbance’. It was formed from a base *stur-,481 stoicwhich was probably also responsible for Englishstorm. STORMstirrup [OE] A stirrup is etymologically a‘climbing rope’. The word goes back to aprehistoric Germanic compound formed fromthe base *stig- ‘climb’ (source also of Englishstair and stile) and *raipaz (ancestor of Englishrope). The earliest stirrups were looped pieces ofrope. ROPE, STAIR, STILEstitch [OE] Stitch was originally a noun,meaning ‘sting, prick’ (a sense which survives inthe very specialized application to a ‘pain in theside, caused by exertion’). It came from aprehistoric Germanic *stikiz, which was formedfrom the base *stik- ‘pierce, prick’ (source alsoof English stick). Its use as a verb, denoting ‘joinwith thread by piercing with a needle’, emergedat the beginning of the 13th century, and thesewing sense fed back into the noun. STICKstock [OE] The word stock originally denoted a‘tree-trunk’. It came from a prehistoricGermanic *stukkaz, which also producedGerman stock ‘stick’ and Swedish stock ‘log’.The lineal semantic descent to the stocks [14], apunishment device made from large pieces ofwood, is clear enough, but how stock came to beused for a ‘supply, store’ (a sense first recordedin the 15th century) is more of a mystery. It maybe that a tradesman’s supply of goods wasthought of metaphorically as the trunk of a tree,from which profits grew like branches; andanother possibility is that the usage was inspiredby an unrecorded application of stock to awooden storage chest or money box. Stock‘broth’ was so named (in the 18th century,apparently) because one keeps a ‘stock’ of it onhand in the stockpot, for use at need. Theoriginal notion of a stout piece of wood ispreserved in the derivative stocky [14], and alsoin stock-still [15] – literally ‘as still as a log’.stocking [16] Stocking is a derivative of stock, inthe now defunct sense ‘stocking’. This appearsto have arisen in the 15th century from theblackly humorous comparison of the stocks inwhich one’s legs are restrained as a punishmentwith ‘leggings, hose’. Until comparativelyrecently stocking was a unisex term (as it still isin the expression in one’s stockinged feet); therestriction to ‘women’s hose’ is a 20th-centurydevelopment. STOCKstoic [16] The Greek philosopher Zeno (c. 334–c. 262 BC), who taught that only virtue isnecessarily good, and that pleasure and pain arematters of indifference, is reputed to havelectured to his followers and students in a porchor portico in Athens. The Greek word for ‘porch’was stoá (a descendant of the Indo-Europeanbase *stā-, *sto- ‘stand’, which also producedEnglish stand), and so Zeno’s teachings came tobe characterized by the term stōikós. This passedinto English via Latin stōicus as stoic, carryingwith it metaphorical associations of

stoke 482‘impassivity’ as well as the literal application ofZeno and his followers. STAND, STATUEstoke [17] Stoke is a back-formation from stoker[17], which was borrowed from Dutch stoker.This in turn was derived from the verb stoken‘put fuel into a furnace’, a descendant of MiddleDutch stoken ‘push, poke’. And stoken camefrom a prehistoric Germanic base *stok-, avariant of *stik-, *stek- ‘pierce, prick’, fromwhich English gets stick, stitch, etc. So theetymological meaning underlying stoke is of‘thrusting’ fuel into a fire like a sharp instrumentbeing pushed into something. STICK, STITCHstomach [14] Greek stómakhos was derivedfrom stóma ‘mouth’, and originally denoted the‘throat’ or ‘oesophagus’. It was also applied tothe opening or ‘mouth’ of various internalorgans, particularly the stomach, and eventuallycame to be used for the stomach itself. Englishacquired the word via Latin stomachus and OldFrench stomaque.stone [OE] Stone is a general Germanic word,with relatives in German stein, Dutch steen, andSwedish and Danish sten. These all go back to aprehistoric *stainaz, which was derived from abase denoting ‘stiffness’ or ‘solidity’ (sourcealso of Greek stía ‘pebble’ and stéar ‘stiff, fat’,Sanskrit styā- ‘stiffen’, and Serbo-Croat stijena‘rock’). The use of the English term for ameasure of weight, equal to fourteen pounds,dates from the 14th century.stool [OE] Although stools are for sitting on, theword’s etymological meaning is ‘stand’. Itcomes from a prehistoric Germanic *stōlaz,which was formed from the base *stō-, *sta-‘stand’ (source of English stand) using the nounsuffix *-l- (in much the same way as saddle wasformed from a base meaning ‘sit’). The notion of‘standing’ no doubt passed into ‘sitting’ via anintermediate generalized ‘be positioned orsituated’. In the 15th century stool came to beapplied specifically to a ‘commode’, and this ledto its use in the following century for an ‘act ofdefecating’, and hence for a ‘piece of faeces’.Stoolpigeon [19] originated in American Englishas a term for a decoy pigeon tied to a stool. STALL, STANDstoop see STEEPstop [14] ‘Close an opening, plug’ is the originalmeaning of stop. It comes via Old English*stoppian (recorded only in compounds) from aprehistoric Germanic *stoppōn ‘plug up’ (sourcealso of English stuff). The sense ‘halt’ emergedin Middle English from the notion of ‘preventinga flow by blocking a hole’. STUFFstore [13] Store is a shortened version of the nowdefunct astor ‘supplies, stock of provisions’.This was borrowed from Old French estor, aderivative of estorer ‘build, restore, furnish,stock’, which in turn came from Latin instaurāre‘renew, repair, restore’ (source also of Englishrestaurant and restore, and possible relative ofGreek stavrós ‘stake, pale’). The use of store for‘shop’ arose in American English in the early18th century. RESTAURANT, RESTOREstorey [14] Storey is etymologically the sameword as story. Both come ultimately from Latinhistoria ‘story’ (source also of English history).Storey itself was borrowed directly from Anglo-Latin historia, which is known to have been usedfor ‘picture’, and may also have denoted a ‘rowof pictures in the form of stained glass windowsor statues, telling a story’, which filled the entirewall between floor and ceiling at a given level ofa building. HISTORY, STORYstork [OE] The stork may get its name from itsrather stiff-legged gait. The word comes from aprehistoric Germanic *sturkaz, which alsoproduced German storch and Dutch, Swedish,and Danish stork. This may have been formedfrom the base *sturk-, *stark-, *sterk- ‘rigid’,which also produced English starch and stark. STARCH, STARE, STARK, STARVE, STEREOstorm [OE] Etymologically, a storm is probablya ‘violent disturbance or agitation’; itsmeteorological connotations appear to be asecondary development. The word comes from aprehistoric Germanic *sturmaz (source also ofGerman sturm and Dutch, Swedish, and Danishstorm). This was probably formed from the base*stur- ‘disturbance, agitation’, which also liesbehind English stir. STIRstory [13] Story comes via Anglo-Normanestorie from Latin historia ‘account of events,narrative, history’ (source also of English historyand storey). It originally retained the senses‘factual account of past events’ and ‘past eventsin general’, but since the 17th century these havegradually been taken over by history, and the useof story has been concentrated more on ‘fictionalnarratives’. HISTORY, STOREYstoup see STEEPstout [14] Stout originally meant ‘proud, brave’.It came via Anglo-Norman stout from aprehistoric West Germanic *stult- (source alsoof German stolz ‘proud’), which may have beenrelated to the ancestor of English stilt. Thenotion of ‘braveness’ led on to that of ‘physicalstrength’ and ‘powerful physique’, but the worddid not go downhill to ‘fat’ until the end of the18th century. The application to a sort of strongbeer dates from the 17th century. STILTstove [15] Stove probably goes back ultimatelyto Vulgar Latin *extūfāre ‘take a steam bath’(source also of English stew). From this wasderived a noun denoting a ‘heated room used forsuch baths’, which was disseminated widelythroughout the Romance and Germaniclanguages. In its modern German and Danishdescendants, stube and stue, the meaningelement ‘heat’ has disappeared, leaving simply‘room’ (Latvian istaba, Serbo-Croat soba, andPolish izba ‘room’ represent borrowings fromGermanic), but in the Romance languages

(Italian stufa, Spanish estufa, Romanian soba)‘heated room’ has shrunk to ‘heated cupboardfor cooking, oven’. The English word, borrowedfrom Middle Low German stove, has taken thesame semantic course. STEWstraddle see STRIDEstraggle see STRETCHstraight [14] Straight began life as the pastparticiple of stretch. Nowadays this verb has aperfectly normal past form (stretched), but inMiddle English it was straught (source ofdistraught [14], an alteration of distract) orstraight – whence the adjective straight. Thesense ‘not bent or curved’ derives from thenotion of stretching something between twopoints. Straightaway [15] originally meant ‘by astraight path’; the temporal sense ‘immediately’emerged in the 16th century. DISTRACT, DISTRAUGHT, STRETCHstrain English has two distinct words strain. Theolder, ‘line of ancestry’ [OE], denotesetymologically ‘something gained byaccumulation’. It comes from the prehistoricbase *streu- ‘pile up’, which was related to Latinstruere ‘build’ (source of English destroy,structure, etc). In the Old English period thenotion of ‘gaining something’ was extendedmetaphorically to ‘producing offspring’, whichformed the jumping-off point for the word’smodern range of meanings. Strain ‘pull tight,wrench’ [13] was borrowed from estreign-, thestem form of Old French estreindre ‘pull tight,tie’. This in turn was descended from Latinstringere ‘pull tight, tie tight’ (source also ofEnglish strait, strict, and stringent [17] and of ahost of derived forms such as constrain [14],prestige, restrain [14] and constrict, district,restrict, etc). Strain ‘tune’ [16] is assumed to bethe same word, perhaps deriving ultimately fromthe notion of ‘stretching’ the strings of a musicalinstrument. CONSTRUCT, DESTROY, STRUCTURE;CONSTRAIN, CONSTRICT, DISTRICT, PRESTIGE,RESTRAIN, RESTRICT, STRAIT, STRICT,STRINGENTstrait [12] Strait was originally an adjective andadverb, meaning ‘narrow’ or ‘tight’. It reachedEnglish via Old French estreit ‘narrow, tight’from Latin strictus (source of English strict). Itsuse as a noun, ‘narrow waterway’, emerged inthe 14th century, and the metaphorical straits‘difficulties’ is a 16th-century development. STRICTstrange [13] The etymological notionunderlying strange is of being ‘beyond the usualbounds or boundaries’. This evolved into‘foreign’ (which survives in the closely relatedFrench étrange) and ‘odd’. The word came viaOld French estrange from Latin extrāneus‘foreign, strange’ (source of English extraneous[17]), an adjective based on extrā ‘outward,outside’. Stranger [14] goes back to*extrāneārius, a Vulgar Latin derivative of483 streakextrāneus; and another derivative, extrāneāre‘alienate’, produced English estrange [15]. ESTRANGE, EXTRANEOUSstrangle [13] Strangle comes via Old Frenchestrangler and Latin strangulāre from Greekstraggalān ‘strangle’. This was related tostraggós ‘twisted’, and has more distant linkswith English string and strong – the commonsemantic denominator being ‘stiffness,tautness’. STRING, STRONGstrata [16] Latin strātum meant ‘something laiddown’. It was a noun use of the neuter pastparticiple of sternere ‘spread out, lay down,stretch out’, which also produced Englishconsternation [17] and prostrate [14]. Its use forthe abstract concept of a ‘layer’ (in English moreusually in the plural strata) is a modern Latindevelopment. Other English words from thesame source include stratify [17], stratosphere[20] (the ‘layer’ of the atmosphere above thetroposphere), stratus [19] (cloud in thin ‘layer’-like form), and street. CONSTERNATION, PROSTRATE, STRAW, STREETstrategy [17] Etymologically, strategy denotes‘leading an army’. It comes ultimately fromGreek stratēgós ‘commander-in-chief, general’,a compound noun formed from stratós ‘army’and ágein ‘lead’ (a relative of English act, agent,etc). From it was formed stratēgíā ‘generalship’,which reached English via French stratégie.Another derivative was stratēgeīn ‘be a general’,which in turn spawned stratégēma ‘act of ageneral’. This passed via Latin stratēgēma andFrench stratagème into English as stratagem[15].straw [OE] Straw is etymologically something‘strewn’ on the floor. The word goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *strāwam (source also ofGerman stroh, Dutch stroo, Swedish strå, andDanish straa). This was formed from the samebase as produced strew [OE], and goes backultimately to Indo-European *ster- ‘spread’,source also of Latin sternere ‘spread out’ (fromwhich English gets prostrate, strata, etc). Driedgrain stalks were commonly scattered overfloors as an ancient form of temporary carpeting,and so they came to be termed straw. STRATA, STREWstrawberry [OE] The origins of strawberryhave long puzzled etymologists. The two mostplausible suggestions put forward are that therunners put out by strawberry plants, longtrailing shoots that spread across the ground,reminded people of straws laid on the floor; andthat word preserves a now defunct sense ofstraw, ‘small piece of straw or chaff’,supposedly in allusion to the fruit’s ‘chafflike’external seeds.streak [OE] Streak and strike are closely related.Both come from a prehistoric Germanic base*strik-, denoting ‘touch lightly’. But whereas theconnotations of strike have become moreviolent, streak has moved semantically from theaction to the effect it produced on a surface.Originally, in the Old English period, it denoted

stream 484simply a ‘mark’, but by the 16th century it hadnarrowed down to a long thin mark. The use ofthe verb streak for ‘run naked through a publicplace’ dates from the early 1970s. STRIKEstream [OE] A stream is etymologicallysomething that ‘flows’. The word comes from aprehistoric Germanic *straumaz (source also ofGerman strom, Dutch stroom, Swedish ström,and Danish strøm). This in turn was derivedfrom the Indo-European base *sreu- ‘flow’,which has also given English catarrh,diarrhoea, and rheumatism. Non-Germanicrelatives of stream include Polish strumyk‘brook’ and Sanskrit srotas- ‘stream’. CATARRH, DIARRHOEA, RHEUMATISMstreet [OE] Etymologically, a street is a road thathas been ‘spread’ – with paving stones, that is. A‘paved’ road, in other words. The term wasborrowed into prehistoric West Germanic fromLatin strāta, short for via strāta ‘paved road’.Strāta was the feminine form of strātus, the pastparticiple of sternere ‘spread out’ (source ofEnglish strata, stratify, etc). The relatedGermanic forms are German strasse and Dutchstraat, while the term is also preserved in theRomance languages, in Italian strada, whichwas borrowed by Romanian as strada. STRATAstrength [OE] Strength is of course closelyrelated to strong. It was formed in prehistoricGermanic (as *stranggithō) from the ancestor ofmodern English strong. The verb strengthen wascoined from it in the 13th century. STRING, STRONGstretch [OE] Stretch comes from a prehistoricWest Germanic *strakkjan (source also ofGerman strecken and Dutch strekken). This wasformed from a base *strak-, which probably alsoproduced English straggle [14]. It is not certainwhere *strak- came from, but probably it was analteration of *strak- ‘rigid’ (source of Englishstarch and stark). Reversal of speech sounds(here a and r) is quite common; the process isknown as metathesis. The notions of ‘rigidity’and ‘stretching’ do not appear very compatible atfirst sight, but it is thought that the originalapplication of stretch was to ‘stretching thelimbs’, in the sense of making them straight or‘stiff’. Straight comes from a former pastparticiple of stretch. STRAGGLE, STRAIGHTstrew see STRAWstrict [16] Strict was acquired direct fromstrictus, the past participle of Latin stringere‘pull tight, tighten’ (source also of Englishprestige, strain, and stringent). The originalliteral sense ‘tight’ survived into English (‘Shewildly breaketh from their strict embrace’,Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis 1592), but it hassince given way to various metaphoricalextensions. Routed via Old French, strictus hasgiven English strait, and English is also indebtedto it for stress [14] (via the Vulgar Latinderivative *strictia) and stricture [14], not tomention prefixed forms such as constrain,constrict [18], distrain, distress, district,restrain, and restrict [16]. CONSTRAIN, CONSTRICT, DISTRAIN, DISTRESS,DISTRICT, PRESTIGE, RESTRAIN, RESTRICT,STRAIN, STRESS, STRICTURE, STRINGENTstride [OE] Stride comes from a prehistoricGermanic base *strīd-, whose other descendants(German streiten and Dutch strijden ‘quarrel’,Swedish and Danish strid ‘strife, affliction’)suggest a basic underlying meaning ‘severity,great effort’. There may also be a link withEnglish strife and strive. Straddle [16] comesfrom a variant of the same base. The use of theplural noun strides for ‘trousers’ dates from thelate 19th century. STRADDLEstrident [17] Strident was adopted from thepresent participle of Latin strīdēre ‘make a harshnoise, creak’. This also produced Englishstridulate [19], which denotes the sound madeby grasshoppers. STRIDULATEstrife see STRIVEstrike [OE] Strike comes from a prehistoricGermanic base which denoted ‘touch lightly’ – asense which survived into English (‘That goodhorse blessed he then, and lovingly struck itsmane’, Sir Ferumbras 1380). The more violentmodern sense ‘hit hard’ did not begin toencroach until the 13th century. The relatedstroke retains the original meaning, but anotherrelative, streak, has also lost it. All three go backto West Germanic *strīk-, *straik-, which in turnwere descended from the Indo-European base*strig-, *streig-, *stroig-, source of Latinstrigilis ‘tool for scraping the skin after a bath’(acquired by English as strigil [16]). The use ofstrike for ‘withdraw labour’ developed in themid-18th century (it is first recorded in theAnnual Register 1768: ‘This day the hattersstruck, and refused to work till their wages areraised’). It probably comes from the notion of‘downing’ one’s tools, as in strike a sail ‘lower asail’. STREAK, STRIGIL, STROKEstring [OE] String is etymologically somethingthat has been pulled ‘taut’ or ‘stiff’. It comesfrom a prehistoric Germanic base *strang-,denoting ‘taut, stiff’, which also producedEnglish strong. STRONGstringent see STRAINstrip Strip ‘narrow piece’ [15] and strip ‘removecovering’ [13] are distinct words. The formerwas perhaps borrowed from Middle LowGerman strippe ‘strap’, and may be related toEnglish stripe [17], an acquisition from MiddleDutch strīfe. A stripling [13] is etymologicallysomeone who is as thin as a ‘strip’. Strip‘unclothe’ goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*straupjan, which also produced Germanstreifen and Dutch stroopen. There was once athird English word strip, meaning ‘movequickly’, but it now survives only in the derivedoutstrip [16]; its origins are uncertain. STRIPE, STRIPLING

strive [13] Strive was borrowed from Old Frenchestriver ‘quarrel, strive’. It is not certain wherethis came from, although it has been suggestedthat it was acquired from Old High German strīt‘contention’, a relative of English stride. Strife[13] comes from the associated Old French nounestrif. STRIFEstroke The verb stroke [OE] and the noun stroke[13] are different words, but they comeultimately from the same source – the prehistoricGermanic base *strīk-, *straik- ‘touch lightly’(from which English also gets streak and strike).The verb has stayed very close semantically toits source, whereas the noun has followed thesame path as its corresponding verb strike. STREAK, STRIKEstrong [OE] Strong comes from a prehistoricGermanic *stranggaz (its immediate Germanicsiblings have now died out, but German streng‘severe’ is quite closely related). It went backultimately to a base denoting ‘stiffness’ or‘tautness’, which also produced English string. STRINGstrontium [19] The element strontium gets itsname from the Strontian area of the Highlandregion of Scotland, which contains lead mines inwhich strontium was first discovered. Indeed, itwas originally called strontian; the latinizedversion strontium was introduced by the chemistSir Humphry Davy in 1808.strop [OE] Strop has now narrowed down inmeaning to the specialized ‘strip of leather forsharpening a razor’, but it used to be a muchmore general term for a leather band or loop. Itgoes back to a prehistoric West Germanic wordthat was probably an adoption of Latin stroppus‘strap, band’. That in turn may well have comefrom Greek strophos ‘twisted band’, fromstrephein ‘turn’. Old French had estrope fromthe same West Germanic source, and thatprobably reinforced the English word in the 14thcentury. Scottish pronunciation turned strop intostrap [17], and that has now inherited most of thegeneral functions of strop in English at large. Asfor stroppy ‘bad-tempered and uncooperative’,first recorded in 1951, no convincing link withstrop ‘leather strip’ has ever been established(strop ‘fit of stroppiness’ is a back-formationfrom stroppy). One suggestion is that it may be aradically stripped-down version of obstreperous.structure [15] Structure comes via Old Frenchstructure from Latin structūra, a noun derivedfrom the past participle of struere ‘build’. OtherEnglish words from the same source areconstruct, construe, destroy, destruction,instruct, and obstruct [17]. CONSTRUCT, CONSTRUE, DESTROY,DESTRUCTION, INSTRUCT, OBSTRUCT, STRAINstruthious see OSTRICHstud Stud ‘place where horses are bred’ and stud‘nail’ [OE] are different words. The former (likestable and stall) denotes etymologically a placewhere animals ‘stand’, in this case for breedingpurposes. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic*stōtham, a derivative of the base *sta-, *stō-485 stupid‘stand’ (source also of English stand, and ofsteed [OE], which originally denoted a ‘malehorse used for breeding’). The use of the wordfor a ‘man who is highly active and proficientsexually’ dates from the end of the 19th century.The ancestry of stud ‘nail’ is not altogether clear,although it appears to be related to Germanstützen ‘support’. It originally meant ‘post,support’, a sense preserved in the building termstud ‘upright post to which boards are fixed’, and‘nail’ (presumed to represent the same word) didnot emerge until the 15th century. STAND, STEEDstudy [13] Study comes via Old French estudiefrom Latin studium ‘eagerness, intenseapplication’, hence ‘application to learning’(English studio [19] comes from the sameultimate source, only via Italian). Studium inturn was derived from the verb studēre ‘be eager,study’ (source of English student [15]). Thisprobably went back ultimately to the Indo-European base *steud-, *teud- ‘hit’, which alsoproduced Latin tundere ‘hit’ (source of Englishcontusion and obtuse) and German stossen‘shove, hit’ – the underlying notion of study thusbeing the ‘application of extreme effort’. CONTUSION, OBTUSE, STUDENT, STUDIOstuff [14] Stuff is ultimately the same word asstop. It comes via Old French estoffer andprehistoric Germanic *stopfōn, earlier *stoppōn(source of English stop), from late Latinstuppāre ‘plug, stop up’. This originally denotedliterally ‘stop up a hole with a plug of coarsefibres’, for it was derived from Latin stuppa‘coarse fibres, tow’, a borrowing from Greekstúppē. The noun stuff comes from Old Frenchestoffe ‘provisions’, a derivative of estoffer. STOPstumble [14] Stumble was probably borrowedfrom an unrecorded Old Norse *stumla. Thiswould have come, along with its first cousinstumra ‘trip’, from a prehistoric Germanic base*stum-, *stam- ‘check, impede’, which alsoproduced English stammer and stem ‘halt,check’. STAMMER, STEMstun [13] Stun is virtually the same word asastonish and astound, and like them it denotesetymologically ‘leave thunderstruck’. It comesvia Anglo-Norman estuner from Vulgar Latin*extonāre ‘stupefy’. This was a compound verb,formed from the Latin intensive prefix ex- andtonāre ‘thunder’ (a relative of English thunder)and based on the model of Latin attonāre‘stupefy’, similarly formed from tonāre but withthe prefix ad-. The variant *astoner producedEnglish astonish and astound. ASTONISH, ASTOUND, THUNDERstupid [16] As the related stupefy [16] andstupor [17] still do, stupid originally denoted‘mental numbness’; ‘lack of intelligence’ is asecondary development. It comes via Old Frenchstupide from Latin stupidus, a derivative ofstupēre ‘be stunned or numbed with shock’. Thiswas descended from an Indo-European base

sturdy 486*stup- or *tup- ‘hit’, which also produced Greektüptein ‘hit’ and Sanskrit tup- ‘harm, hurt’. STUPEFY, STUPORsturdy [13] Someone who is sturdy isetymologically ‘as drunk as a thrush’ – theancient Roman equivalent to ‘pissed as a newt’.The word comes from Old French estourdi‘stunned, dazed, violent’, the past participle ofestourdir. This went back to a Vulgar Latin*exturdīre ‘be dazed like a drunken thrush’, acompound verb formed from the intensive prefixex- and Latin turdus ‘thrush’ (the use of thethrush as a symbol of drunkenness perhaps arosefrom observations of the birds staggering aroundafter feasting on stolen fermenting wine grapes).The metaphorical Old French sense ‘violent,reckless’ passed over into English, and by the14th century had evolved into ‘strong, vigorous,robust’.sty English has two distinct words sty. The ‘pigenclosure’ [OE] is not recorded for certain as anindependent word before the 13th century, but itoccurs in compounds in Old English, and it isprobably the same word as Old English stig‘hall’ (source of English steward). It goes backultimately to a prehistoric Germanic *stijam.The sty on one’s eye [17] denotes etymologicallya ‘swelling’. It comes from the now defunctstyany ‘sty’. This was misinterpreted as ‘sty-oneye’,but in fact it was a compound formed fromMiddle English styan ‘swelling’ (a descendantof the present participle of Old English stīgan‘rise’, which is related to modern English stairand stirrup) and eye. STEWARD; EYE, STAIR, STIRRUPstyle [13] Style comes via Old French stile fromLatin stilus, which denoted a ‘pointed writinginstrument’. It came to be used metaphoricallyfor ‘something written’, and hence for ‘mannerof writing’. The spelling with y instead of i arosefrom the misapprehension that the word was ofGreek origin. It also invaded stylus [18], whichwas acquired directly from Latin. STIMULATE, STYLUSsuave see PERSUADEsubdue [14] Subdue denotes etymologically‘lead away’. It came via Anglo-Norman*subduer from Latin subdūcere ‘lead away,withdraw’, a compound verb formed from theprefix sub- ‘from under, away’ and dūcere ‘lead’(source of English duct, duke, etc). The sense‘conquer, subjugate, suppress’ arose throughassociation with the long defunct and quiteunrelated English subdit ‘subject’, which camefrom subditus, the past participle of Latinsubdere ‘bring under, subjugate’. DUCT, DUKEsubject [14] To subject something isetymologically to ‘throw it under’. The verbcomes via Old French subjecter from Latinsujectāre, which was formed from subjectus, thepast participle of Latin subicere ‘bring down’.This in turn was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix sub- ‘under’ and jacere ‘throw’(source also of English abject [15], adjacent,adjective, conjecture, dejected [15], inject [17],jet, jettison, jetty, reject [15], etc). The nounsubject, which also came from Latin subjectus,originally denoted a person ‘subjected’ to thecontrol of another (as in ‘the Queen’s subjects’).The most salient modern sense, ‘topic’, comesultimately from the notion of ‘that which isoperated on by something else’. ABJECT, ADJACENT, ADJECTIVE, CONJECTURE,DEJECTED, INJECT, JET, JETTISON, JETTY,OBJECT, REJECTsubjugate see YOKEsublime [16] Sublime was borrowed from Latinsublīmis ‘lofty, exalted’. This was a compoundadjective formed from the prefix sub- ‘under’and probably līmen ‘lintel, threshold’ (a relativeof līmes ‘boundary’, from which English getslimit). Sub- here probably has the force of ‘upto’, so that the word denotes etymologically ‘ashigh as the top of a door’. The same elementswere used in the 1880s to coin subliminal, as adirect rendering of the German psychologicalterm unter der schwelle des bewusstseins ‘belowthe threshold of consciousness’. LIMITsubmerge see MERGEsuborn see ORNAMENTsubsequentsubsequent see SEQUENCEsubsidy see SESSIONsubstance [13] Latin substantia denoted the‘essence’ of something. Derived from thepresent participle of substāre ‘be present’, acompound verb formed from the prefix sub-‘under’ and stāre ‘stand’ (a relative of Englishstand), it was virtually a loan-translation ofGreek hupóstasis ‘substance, existence,essence’, which likewise was formed fromelements meaning literally ‘under’ and ‘stand’.The word’s ultimate etymological meaning isthus ‘that which underlies or is the essence ofsomething’. STAND, STATION, STATUEsubstitute see STATUEsubtle [14] Latin subtīlis, the ultimate source ofEnglish subtle, seems to have originated as aweaving term. It probably goes back ultimatelyto the phrase sub tēla ‘beneath the lengthwisethreads in a loom’ (tēla, source of English toiletand toils, was a contraction of *texla, a relativeof English textile). As this was lexicalized via*subtēlis to subtīlis, it developed the meaning‘finely woven’, which subsequently broadenedout to ‘fine, thin’. By the time it reached English,via Old French sutil, it had evolved further, to‘making fine discriminations’. TEXTILE, TOILETsubtract [16] To subtract something isetymologically to ‘pull it away’. The wordcomes from subtractus, the past participle ofLatin subtrahere ‘pull away’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix sub-,usually ‘under’ but here used in the sense‘away’, and trahere ‘pull’ (source of Englishtraction, tractor, trait, etc). The strictly

mathematical use of the word is a post-Latindevelopment. CONTRACT, RETRACT, TRACTION, TRACTOR,TRAITsuburb see URBANsucceed [15] To succeed someone isetymologically to ‘go next to them’, hence tofollow them. The word comes via Old Frenchsucceder from Latin succēdere, a compoundverb formed from the prefix sub- ‘under’ (usedhere in the sense ‘next below’, hence ‘next to,after’) and cēdere ‘go’ (source also of Englishcede, exceed, proceed, etc). The notion of‘getting near to something’ evolved in Latin into‘doing well, prospering’ – whence the othermain meaning of English succeed. CEDE, EXCEDE, PROCEED, SUCCESSsuccour [13] If you succour someone, you areliterally ‘running under’ them. The word comesvia Old French socorre from Latin succurrere, acompound verb formed from the prefix sub-‘under’ and currere ‘run’ (source of Englishcourier, course, current, etc). The original sense‘run under’ evolved metaphorically to ‘run tosomeone’s assistance’, and then to simply ‘help’. COURIER, COURSE, CURRENTsuccubus see INCUBATEsuccumb [15] Someone who succumbs tosomething is etymologically ‘lying down under’it. The word comes via Old French succomberfrom Latin succumbere, a compound verbformed from the prefix sub- ‘under’ and-cumbere ‘lie’. This verbal element alsoproduced English incumbent and recumbent, andthe non-nasalized version of its stem lies behindcovey, incubate, incubus, and succubus. COVEY, INCUBATE, INCUMBENT, RECUMBENTsuch [OE] Etymologically, such means ‘soformed’. It comes from a prehistoric Germaniccompound formed from *swa ‘so’ (ancestor ofEnglish so) and *līk- ‘form, body’ (source ofEnglish like). This reached Old English as swylc,which gradually lost its l and w and evolved intomodern English such. Amongst its Germanicrelatives are German solch, Dutch zulk, Swedishsilk, and Danish slig. LIKE, SOsuck [OE] Suck is part of a widespread Indo-European family of ‘suck’-words which go backto the base *seug-, *seuk-. This no doubtoriginated in imitation of the sound of suckingfrom the mother’s breast. Amongst its relativesare Latin sūgere (whose past participle sūctusgave English suction [17]), Welsh sugno,German saugen, Dutch zuigen, Swedish suga,and Danish suge. Suckle [15] was probably aback-formation from suckling [13], itself aderivative of suck. Also from suck comes sucker[14], which originally denoted a ‘baby still at thebreast’; its use for a ‘gullible person’ (that is,someone as naive as an unweaned child)originated in American English in the early 19thcentury. SUCTION, SUCKLEsudden [13] The etymological notionunderlying sudden is of something approaching487 suffocatestealthily or without warning, so that it takes oneby surprise. It comes via Anglo-Norman sudeinfrom late Latin subitānus, an alteration of Latinsubitāneus ‘sudden’. This was derived fromsubitus ‘sudden’, an adjectival use of the pastparticiple of subīre ‘approach stealthily’. Andsubīre was a compound verb formed from theprefix sub-, used here in the sense ‘secretly’, andīre ‘go’ (source of English ambition, exit, issue,etc). AMBITION, EXIT, ISSUEsudsuds [16] Suds was probably borrowed fromMiddle Dutch sudse ‘marsh, swamp’ (it wasused in the East Anglian dialect for ‘muddyswamp water’ or ‘flood water’, and probably thenotion of scum or flotsam on such water led onto ‘floating bubbles, lather’ – first recorded at theend of the 15th century). The word’s ultimatesource is no doubt the prehistoric Germanic base*suth- ‘boil’, which also produced Englishseethe and sodden. SEETHE, SODDENsue [13] Sue, like its close relative pursue,originally meant ‘follow’ (‘My wickednessesever follow me, as men may see the shadow abody sue’, Thomas Hoccleve, Complaint 1421).It comes via Anglo-Norman suer from VulgarLatin *sequere ‘follow’, an alteration of Latinsequī ‘follow’ (source also of Englishconsecutive, ensue [14], persecute, pursue,sequence, sect, set, suit, etc). Its legal use, whichemerged in the 14th century, is based on thenotion of ‘following’ up a matter in court (asimilar inspiration underlies the relatedprosecute). CONSECUTIVE, ENSUE, PERSECUTE, PROSECUTE,PURSUE, SECT, SEQUENCE, SET, SUITsuet [14] Suet goes back ultimately to Latinsēbum ‘tallow’, which also produced Englishsebaceous [18]. This passed into Anglo-Normanas seu or sue, of which a presumed diminutiveform *sewet gave English suet. SEBACEOUSsuffer [13] To suffer something is etymologicallyto ‘hold it up from underneath’, to ‘sustain’ it’.The word comes via Anglo-Norman suffrir fromVulgar Latin *sufferīre, an alteration of Latinsufferre ‘sustain’. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix sub- ‘up fromunderneath’ and ferre ‘carry’ (a relative ofEnglish bear). The word’s modern meaningevolved from ‘sustain’ via ‘undergo’ and‘undergo something unpleasant’ to ‘endure’. BEARsufficient [14] Sufficient originated as thepresent participle of Latin sufficere ‘be enough’(source also of English suffice [14]). This was acompound verb formed from the prefix sub-‘under’ and facere ‘do, make’ (source of Englishfact, factory, etc). It originally meant literally‘put under’, and the notion of ‘enough’ evolvedvia ‘cause to take the place of’. FACT, FACTORY, FASHIONsuffix see FIXsuffocate [16] To suffocate someone isetymologically to press down their ‘throat’. The

sugar 488word comes from the past participle of Latinsuffocāre, a compound verb formed from theprefix sub- ‘under, down’ and faucēs ‘throat’(source of the English technical term faucal ‘ofthe throat’ [19]). The origins of faucēs are notknown. FAUCALsugar [13] The ultimate source of sugar isSanskrit, where the substance was named with aterm that originally meant ‘gravel, grit’ –sharkarā. This was borrowed into Arabic assukkar, which made its way into English viamedieval Latin succarum, Italian zucchero, andOld French sukere. The Sanskrit word was alsoacquired by Greek as sákkharon, which passedinto English through medieval Latin saccharumas saccharin. SACCHARINsuggest [16] To suggest something isetymologically to ‘carry it under’. It comes fromthe past participle of Latin suggerere, acompound verb formed from the suffix sub- andgerere ‘carry’ (source also of English digest,gesture, etc). Its meaning evolved via ‘heap up,build’ and ‘furnish a supply’ to ‘bring forwardan idea’. CONGEST, DIGEST, GESTUREsuit [13] As in the case of its first cousins sect andset, the etymological notion underlying suit is‘following’. It comes via Anglo-Norman siutefrom Vulgar Latin *sequita, a noun use of thefeminine past participle of *sequere ‘follow’,which in turn was an alteration of Latin sequī‘follow’ (source of English consequence,persecute, sequence, etc). It was originally usedfor a ‘body of followers, retinue’, and it passedfrom this via a ‘set of things in general’ to (in the15th century) a ‘set of clothes or armour’. Suite[17] is essentially the same word, but borrowedfrom modern French. A suitor [13] isetymologically a ‘follower’. SECT, SET, SUE, SUITEsulk [18] Sulk was a back-formation from sulky[18], which in turn was derived from the nowobsolete sulke ‘sluggish’ [17]. It has beenplausibly suggested that this may have beendescended from Old English āsolcen ‘sluggish,inactive’, an adjectival use of the past participleof āseolcan ‘be lazy or slow’. In the mid-18thcentury the term sulky was applied to a ‘singleseatcarriage’, from the notion of the‘standoffishness’ of a lone driver.sullen [16] The etymological notion underlyingsullen is of being miserable because one is ‘onone’s own’. The word comes from Anglo-Norman *solein ‘alone’, hence ‘miserable’, aderivative of Old French soul ‘alone’ (source ofEnglish sole). SOLE, SOLOsully see SOILsulphur [14] The origins of Latin sulphur arenot known, although it may have links withGerman schwefel ‘sulphur’. It has spreadthroughout the Romance languages (Frenchsoufre, Italian solfo, and, with the addition ofArabic al ‘the’, Spanish azufre), and has beenborrowed into Dutch as sulfer and into English(where it eventually replaced the nativebrimstone [12], etymologically ‘burning stone’)as sulphur.sultan [16] Arabic sultān meant ‘ruler’. It wasderived from Aramaic shultānā ‘power’, whichin turn was based on the verb shəlēt ‘havepower’. English acquired the word via medievalLatin sultānus. The Italian version of the word issultano, whose feminine form has given Englishsultana ‘sultan’s wife’ [16]. The word wasapplied to a variety of small raisin (originally infull sultana raisin) in the early 19th century.sum [13] Latin summus meant ‘highest’ (ameaning preserved in English summit [15],which is ultimately derived from it); it evolvedfrom an earlier *supmus, a superlative formbased on the stem of Latin super ‘above’ (sourceof English super). When the Romans counted upcolumns of figures they worked from the bottomupwards, and put the total on top – whence theuse of the expression rēs summa, literally‘highest thing’, for ‘total’. This was eventuallyshortened to summa, which reached English viaOld French summe. Other derivatives in Englishinclude consummate [15] and summary [15]. CONSUMMATE, SUMMARY, SUMMITsummer [OE] Summer is a general Germanicword, with relatives in German and Danishsommer, Dutch zomer, and Swedish sommar. Itgoes back ultimately to an Indo-European base*sem-, which also produced Welsh haf ‘summer’and Sanskrit sámā ‘year, season’.summit see SUMsummon see MONSTERsumptuous [15] Etymologically, sumptuousdenotes ‘expensive, costly’; its modernconnotations of ‘luxury’ or ‘lavishness’ are asecondary development. It comes via Old Frenchsomptueux from Latin sumptuōsus, a derivativeof sumptus ‘expense’. This in turn was based onthe past participle of the verb sūmere ‘spend,consume, take’ (source also of English assume[15], consume [14], presume [14], resume [15],and subsume [16]). And sūmere in turn was acompound verb, formed from the prefix sub-‘under’ and emere ‘take’ (source of Englishexample, redeem, etc). ASSUME, CONSUME, EXAMPLE, PRESUME,REDEEM, RESUME, SAMPLE, SUBSUMEsun [OE] Not surprisingly, considering thecentral importance of the sun to human life, theword for it in the vast majority of modernEuropean languages goes back to a commonIndo-European source – *sāu- or *su-. Thesevariants have however differentiated into severaldistinct camps. The *sāu- form adopted an -lsuffix,and evolved into Greek hélios (source ofEnglish heliotrope), Latin sōl (whence Frenchsoleil, Italian sole, and Spanish sol, not tomention English solar, solarium, etc), Welshhaul, and Swedish and Danish sol. The *suformwith an -l- ending has given Russiansolnce, Czech slunce, Serbo-Croat sunce, etc.But the modern West Germanic languages have

inherited the *su- form with an -n- suffix, givingGerman sonne, Dutch zon, and English sun. HELIOTROPE, SOLAR, SOLARIUMsundae [19] The ice-cream concoction knownas a ‘sundae’ first appeared on the scene inAmerica, at the end of the 19th century. It isgenerally agreed that its name is an alteration ofSunday, but the why and the how remain unclear.As far as the change in spelling is concerned(sundi was another early variant), it seemsplausible that it was intended to placate thosewho might have been offended by naming adessert after the Lord’s day. But why Sunday?Perhaps, it has been speculated, because icecream was a dessert that could be eaten onSunday without offending propriety; or becauseit was a special sort of ice cream that could besold on Sundays without breaking the Sabbathtrading laws; or because it was made of assortedodds and ends of ice cream left over fromSunday. The jury is still out.Sunday [OE] Sunday is part of the generalsystem of naming days of the week afterheavenly bodies inherited by the Germanicpeoples from the ancient Mediterranean world.The Romans called the day diēs sōlis ‘day of thesun’, which in translation has become Germansonntag, Dutch zondag, Swedish söndag,Danish söndag, and English sunday. Welshretains the term (dydd sul), but the Romancelanguages have gone over to variations on‘Lord’s day’ (French dimanche, Spanishdomingo, etc).sundry [OE] Sundry goes back to an Old Englishsyndrig ‘apart, separate’. This, like sunder [OE],is descended ultimately from an Indo-Europeanbase *su-, denoting ‘separation’, which alsoproduced Latin sine ‘without’, Welsh hanner‘half’, and German sondern ‘but’.super [17] Super has been used over thecenturies as an abbreviated form of a variety ofEnglish words containing the Latin elementsuper ‘above’. Its earliest manifestation, shortfor the now defunct insuper ‘balance left over’,did not last long and it was the 19th centurywhich really saw an explosion in the use of theword. In 1807 it appeared as an abbreviation forthe chemical term supersalt, and in the 1850s itslong career as an ‘extra person’ (short forsupernumerary [17]) began. Its application tosuperintendant [16], today its commonest nounusage, dates from around 1870. But it is as anadjective that it has made its greatest impact. Inthis context it is short for superfine [15], andoriginally, in the mid 19th century, its use wasrestricted to denoting the ‘highest grade ofgoods’ (‘showing me a roll of cloth which hesaid was extra super’, Charles Dickens, DavidCopperfield 1850); not until the early 20thcentury did it really begin to come into its ownas a general term of approval.Amongst the more heavily disguised Englishdescendants of Latin super (a relative of Latinsub ‘below’ and also of English sum and supine)are insuperable [14], soprano [18], soubrette[18], and sovereign. And superior [14] comes489 superstitionfrom the Latin comparative form superior‘higher’. INSUPERABLE, SOPRANO, SOUBRETTE,SOVEREIGN, SUPERB, SUPERIOR, SUPREMEsuperb [16] Etymologically, superb denotesbeing ‘above’. It comes ultimately from Latinsuper ‘above, over’, which with the addition ofthe suffix *bh- produced superbus. This had thesense ‘superior’, and it also, from the notion ofbeing ‘above oneself’, of thinking oneself‘superior’, came to mean ‘proud’. Englishacquired it via Old French superbe. SUPERsupercilious [16] The etymological notionunderlying supercilious is of raising the‘eyebrows’ as a sign of haughty disdain. Itcomes from Latin superciliōsus, a derivative ofsupercilium ‘eyebrow’, hence ‘haughtiness’.This was a compound noun formed from theprefix super- ‘above’ and cilium ‘eyelid’ (sourceof the English biological term cilium ‘hair-likeprocess’ [18], whose meaning evolved via anintermediate ‘eyelash’).superficial [14] Superficial means literally ‘ofthe surface’. It comes from Latin superficiālis, aderivative of superficiēs ‘surface’. This was acompound noun formed from the prefix super-‘above’ and faciēs ‘face’ (ancestor of Englishface). The main modern sense, ‘concerned onlywith outward appearances’, emerged in the 16thcentury. FACE, SURFACEsuperfluous see FLUXsuperman [20] The term superman wasintroduced into English in 1903 by GeorgeBernard Shaw in his play Man and Superman. Itwas a direct translation of German übermensch,coined by the philosopher Friedrich Nietsche todesignate a superior, highly evolved humanbeing that transcended good and evil.supersede [15] Etymologically, to supersedesomething is to ‘sit above’ it, hence to ‘be above’it or ‘desist’ from doing it. The word comes viaOld French superseder from Latin supersedēre‘desist from’, a compound verb formed from theprefix super- ‘above’ and sedēre ‘sit’ (source ofEnglish sedentary, session, etc). It carried thesense ‘desist from’ with it into English (‘I couldnot see, but your both majesties must supersedeand give place to your ardent appetites, inconcluding of the said marriage’, State Papers ofHenry VIII 1527), but this gradually evolved via‘set aside’ to ‘take the place of something setaside’. The word is frequently spelledsupercede, as if it came from Latin cēdere ‘go’,and there are long-standing historical precedentsfor this, going back via Old French superceder tomedieval Latin supercēdere. SEDENTARY, SESSIONsuperstition [15] Etymologically, superstitiondenotes ‘standing over’ something. It comes viaOld French superstition from Latin superstitiō, aderivative of superstāre ‘stand over’. This was acompound verb formed from the prefix super-‘above’ and stāre ‘stand’ (a relative of Englishstand). The sense ‘irrational fear’, which

supine 490evolved in Latin, may have been based on thenotion of someone ‘standing over’ something inawe or fear. STAND, STATION, STATUEsupine [15] Supine means literally ‘lying onone’s back’. It comes from Latin supīnus. Thiswas derived from a prehistoric base *sup- ‘up’which also produced Latin super ‘above, over’(and summus, source of English sum), so theword’s etymological meaning is presumably‘with the front of one’s body upwards’. Themetaphorical sense ‘inactive’ evolved in Latin.The origins of the use of supine as a noun, todesignate a type of ‘verbal noun’, are not known.supper [13] Supper started life as a verb. It wasborrowed from Old French super, which was anoun use of the verb super ‘eat one’s eveningmeal’ (source of English sup ‘have supper’[13]). This in turn was formed from theGermanic base *sup-, which also producedEnglish sip, sop, and sup [OE] and Latin*suppāre ‘soak’ (source of English soup). SIP, SOP, SOUP, SUPsupplant [13] Supplant has no connection withthings that grow, even though it may be related toEnglish plant. Etymologically it means ‘trip up’.It comes via Old French supplanter from Latinsupplantāre ‘trip up’, hence ‘overthrow’, acompound verb formed from the prefix sub- ‘upfrom under’ and planta ‘sole of the foot’(possible ancestor of English plant).supplement see SUPPLYsupplicate [15] Someone who supplicates isetymologically ‘bending or folding upunderneath’ – hence ‘kneeling down to pray’.The word comes from the past participle of Latinsupplicāre, a compound verb formed from theprefix sub- ‘down, underneath’ and plicāre‘fold’ (a relative of English fold). Also formedfrom sub- and the base *plic- was Latin supplex‘bending under’, hence ‘submissive’, fromwhich English gets supple [13]. COMPLICATE, FOLD, PLY, SUPPLEsupply [14] Latin supplēre meant ‘fill up,complete’. It was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix sub- ‘under, from below’, hence ‘up’,and plēre ‘fill’ (source of English accomplish,complete, etc). The sense ‘provide’ evolved viathe notion of ‘making good a deficiency,fulfilling a need’.The original meaning is better preserved insupplement [14], whose Latin ancestorsupplēmentum was derived from supplēre. ACCOMPLISH, COMPLETE, FULL, PLUS,SUPPLEMENT, SURPLUSsupport [14] Latin supportāre meant ‘carry,convey, bring’ (it was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix sub- ‘up, towards’ and portāre‘carry’, source of English portable, porter, etc).The sense ‘endure’ (represented in Englishmainly by the derivative insupportable [16])evolved in post-classical Latin. ‘Bear the weightof’ is not recorded in English until the 16thcentury. PORT, PORTABLE, PORTERsuppose [14] Latin suppōnere meant literally‘put under’ (it was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix sub- ‘under’ and pōnere ‘put,place’, source of English position, and itsoriginal meaning is best preserved in Englishsuppository [14], literally ‘something placedunderneath’). From it was derived the nounsuppositiō, which, on the analogy of Greekhupóthesis (source of English hypothesis [16],and itself made up of elements meaning literally‘under’ and ‘put’), came to be used for an‘assumption’ – English gets supposition [15]from it. This meaning then fed back into theverb, which English acquired via Old Frenchsupposer. POSITION, SUPPOSITORYsuppress see PRESSsuppurate see PUSsupreme [16] Supreme comes ultimately fromLatin suprā ‘above’ (a close relative of super).From this was formed the adjective suprēmus‘highest’, which English adopted as supreme.Supremo is a 20th-century borrowing of theSpanish version of the word. SUPERsure [14] Sure and secure are doublets – that is tosay, they come from the same ultimate source,but have diverged over the centuries. Latinsēcūrus (etymologically ‘without care’) wasborrowed directly into English as secure, but inOld French it evolved into sur, from whichEnglish gets sure. SECUREsurface [17] Surface was coined in French onthe model of Latin superficiēs ‘surface’ (sourceof English superficial). It contains the sameelements: sur- ‘above’ (a descendant of Latinsuper) and face ‘face’. FACE, SUPERFICIALsurge [15] Latin surgere meant literally ‘lead upfrom below’, hence ‘rise’ – it originated as acompound verb formed from the prefix sub- ‘upfrom below’ and regere ‘rule’, hence ‘lead’(source of English regiment, region, etc).English acquired it via Old Spanish surgir andOld French sourgir, by which time it had takenon watery associations, of waves heaving.Surgere also produced English resource [17],resurrection [13], and source. INSURGENT, RECTOR, REGIMENT, REGION,RESOURCE, RESURRECTION, SOURCEsurgeon [14] A surgeon is etymologicallysomeone who does ‘hand work’ – that is, amedical practitioner who performs manualoperations on the body, as opposed toadministering drugs. The word comes viaAnglo-Norman surgien from Vulgar Latin*chirurgiānus, a derivative of Latin chirurgia‘work of a surgeon’. This was borrowed fromGreek kheirurgíā, which in turn was derivedfrom kheirourgós ‘working by hand’, acompound noun formed from kheír ‘hand’(source of English chiropodist [18]) and érgon‘work’ (source of English energy). CHIROPODIST, ENERGY, WORKsurplus see FULL

surprise [15] To surprise someone isetymologically to ‘overtake’ them. The wordcomes from the past participle of Old Frenchsurprendre ‘overtake’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix sur- ‘over’ and prendre ‘take’.By the time it reached English it was being usedfor ‘affect suddenly, as with a particularemotion’ (‘He shall be so surprised with angerand furious woodness [madness]’, WilliamCaxton, Eneydos 1490), and this graduallyevolved via ‘take unawares’ to, in the mid 17thcentury, ‘astonish’. APPREHEND, COMPREHEND, PRISON,REPREHENSIBLEsurrender [15] To surrender is etymologicallyto ‘give up’. The word was borrowed from OldFrench surrendre ‘deliver over, give up’, acompound verb formed from the prefix sur-‘over’ and rendre ‘give, deliver’ (source ofEnglish render). RENDERsurreptitious [15] Latin surreptītius meant‘taken away secretly’. It was formed from thepast participle of surripere ‘take away secretly’,a compound verb formed from the prefix sub-‘under’, hence ‘secretly’, and rapere ‘seize’(source of English rape, rapture, etc). Englishacquired surreptitious direct from the Latinadjective. RAPE, RAPTURE, RAVENOUSsurrogate [17] A surrogate is etymologicallysomeone who has been ‘asked for’ to take theplace of another. The word was borrowed fromLatin surrogātus, a later form of subrogātus, thepast participle of subrogāre ‘nominate analternative candidate’. This was a compoundverb formed from the prefix sub-, used here inthe sense ‘instead of’, and rogāre ‘ask for,propose’ (source of English interrogate,prerogative, etc). INTERROGATE, PREROGATIVEsurround [15] Although surround means ‘existround’ something, it has no etymologicalconnection with round. It comes via Old Frenchsuronder from late Latin superundāre‘overflow’. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix super- ‘over’ and undāre ‘rise inwaves’, a derivative of unda ‘wave’ (source ofEnglish undulate). English took the word over inits original sense, and this survived into the 17thcentury (an Act of Parliament of 1609 noted that‘the sea hath broken in … and hath decayed,surrounded, and drowned up much hardground’). The modern sense ‘exist round,encircle’ arose in the early 17th century,presumably by association with round. ABUNDANT, REDUNDANT, SOUND, UNDULATEsurveillance see VIGILsurvey [15] To survey something isetymologically to ‘oversee’ it. The word comesvia Anglo-Norman surveier from medieval Latinsupervidēre, a compound verb formed from theprefix super- ‘over’ and vidēre ‘see’ (source ofEnglish view, vision, etc). VIEW, VISIONsurvive see VIVID491 swarthysuspect [14] Latin suspicere originally meantliterally ‘look up at’ (it was a compound verbformed from the prefix sub- ‘up from under’ andspecere ‘look at’, source of English spectator,spy, etc). It evolved metaphorically along twolines: ‘look up to, admire’, which has since diedout, and ‘look at secretly’, hence ‘look atdistrustfully’, which has passed into English inthe form of its past participial stem suspect-.Suspicion [14] comes from the medieval Latinderivative suspectiō. EXPECT, INSPECT, SPECTATOR, SPY, SUSPICIONsuspend [13] To suspend something isetymologically to ‘hang it up’. The word comesvia Old French suspendre from Latin suspendere‘hang up’, a compound verb formed from theprefix sub- ‘up from under’, hence ‘up’, andpendere ‘hang’ (source of English depend,pendent, etc). The metaphorical sense ‘delay’developed in Latin. DEPEND, PENDANT, PENDULUMsuture see SEWswallow English has two distinct words swallow.The verb, ‘ingest’ [OE], comes from aprehistoric Germanic *swelgan, which alsoproduced German schwelgen, Dutch swelgen,Swedish svälja, and Danish svælge. It wasformed from a base which also gave Old Norsesvelgr ‘whirlpool, devourer’. Swallow the bird[OE] comes from a prehistoric Germanic*swalwōn, which also produced Germanschwalbe, Dutch zwaluw, Swedish svala, andDanish svale and is probably related to Russiansolovej ‘nightingale’.swan [OE] Swan is a general Germanic word,with relatives in German schwan, Dutch zwaan,Swedish svan, and Danish svane. These all comefrom a prehistoric base *swan-, which may goback ultimately to Indo-European *swon-,*swen- ‘make sound’ (source of Latin sonus‘sound’, from which English gets sound). If itdoes, the swan was originally named for the(admittedly rather unmusical) sound it makes. SOUNDswap [14] Swap originally meant ‘hit’ (‘With aswing of his sword [he] swapped him in theface’, Destruction of Troy 1400). It came from aprehistoric Germanic base denoting ‘hit’(presumably imitative of the sound of hitting),which also produced German schwappen‘splash, whack’. The modern English sense‘exchange’ emerged in the 16th century from thenotion of ‘striking the hands together to seal abargain’.swarm Swarm ‘group of insects’ [OE] andswarm ‘climb’ [16] are distinct words. Theformer comes from a prehistoric Germanic*swarmaz, which also produced Germanschwarm, and is closely related to Dutch swerm,Swedish svärm, and Danish sværm. It may goback ultimately to an Indo-European base whichalso lay behind Latin susurrus ‘hum’ andSanskrit svárati ‘it sounds’. The origins ofswarm ‘climb’ are not known.swarthy [16] Old English sweart meant ‘black’.It came from a prehistoric Germanic *swartaz,

swashbuckle 492which also produced German schwarz, Dutchzwart, Swedish svart, and Danish sort, and maygo back ultimately to the same Indo-Europeanbase as gave Latin sordidus ‘dirty’ (source ofEnglish sordid [16]). It survives, just, in modernEnglish as swart ‘dark, black’. From this in the16th century was derived the now defunctswarty, of which swarthy is an unexplainedvariant. SORDIDswashbuckle [19] Swashbuckle is a backformationfrom swashbuckler [16], whichoriginally denoted a warrior who struck hisshield with his sword as a sign of aggression andmachismo, rather like a gorilla beating its chest.It was a compound formed from swash ‘hit’ [16],a word of imitative origin which is nowrestricted to the sound of water splashing againsta surface, and buckler ‘shield’. It was usedbroadly for a ‘swaggering fellow’, but the word’smodern associations of romantic swordplay andhigh adventure did not begin to emerge until theearly 19th century.swat see SQUATswear [OE] Swear is a general Germanic word,with relatives in German schwören, Dutchzweren, Swedish svärja, and Danish sverge.They all go back to a prehistoric Germanic*swarjan, a derivative of the base *swar-, whichalso lies behind the second syllable of Englishanswer. And this in turn may come ultimatelyfrom the same Indo-European base as producedEnglish sermon. The verb’s original meaningwas ‘take an oath’; its use for ‘curse, blaspheme’dates from the 15th century. ANSWERsweat [OE] Sweat is part of a widespread familyof ‘sweat’-words that goes back ultimately to theprehistoric Indo-European base *sweid-,*swoid-. Other members include Greek hidrós,Latin sūdor (source of English exude [16]),Welsh chwys, Latvian sviēdri, and Sanskritsvédas. Amongst its Germanic descendants was*swaitjan, which evolved into Germanschweissen ‘weld’, Dutch zweeten ‘sweat’, andEnglish sweat. Swot [19] originated as a dialectalvariant of sweat. EXUDE, SWOTsweep [13] The Old English word for ‘sweep’was swāpan, which evolved into Middle Englishswope. Modern English sweep, which began toemerge in the 13th century, probably came fromthe old past tense swepe, a descendant of OldEnglish swēop. Swāpan itself came from aprehistoric Germanic base *swei- ‘swing, bend’,which also produced German schweifen‘wander’ and English swift. Swipe [19] probablyoriginated as a dialectal variant of sweep. SWIFT, SWIPEsweet [OE] Sweet is part of an ancient family of‘sweet’-words that goes back to the Indo-European base *swād-. From this evolved Greekhēdús ‘sweet’ (and also hēdoné ‘pleasure’,source of English hedonism [19]), Latin suāvis‘sweet, pleasant’ (source of English suave) andsuādēre ‘advise’ (source of English dissuadeand persuade), and Sanskrit svādús ‘pleasanttasting’.Its Germanic descendant was *swōtja-,which evolved into German süss, Dutch zoot,Swedish söt, Danish sød, and English sweet. Theuse of the noun sweet for a ‘piece ofconfectionery’ (presumably short for sweetmeat[15]) dates from the mid-19th century. DISSUADE, HEDONISM, PERSUADE, SUAVEsweetbread see PANCREASswell [OE] Swell comes from prehistoricGermanic *swellan, a verb of unknown originwhich also produced German schwellen, Dutchzwellen, and Swedish svälla. Its use as anadjective, meaning ‘fine’, emerged at thebeginning of the 19th century. The notionunderlying it is ‘suitable to a swell, a fashionableor stylish person’; and this application of thenoun swell probably arose out of an earlier usefor ‘swollen’ or pompous behaviour.swift [OE] The etymological meaning of swiftappears to be ‘moving along a course’; ‘speed’ isa secondary development. It goes backultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base*swei- ‘swing, bend’, which also producedEnglish sweep, swivel [14], and the long defunctswive ‘copulate with’ (a descendant of OldEnglish swīfan ‘move in a course’). Its use as aname for the fast-flying swallow-like bird datesfrom the 17th century. SWEEP, SWIVELswim [OE] Together with German schwimmen,Dutch zwemmen, Swedish simma, and Danishsvømme, swim goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *swemjan, a derivative of the samebase as produced Old Norse sund ‘swimming’(source of English sound ‘channel, strait’). Alink with Welsh chwyfio ‘stir, wave, brandish’has been suggested. SOUNDswine [OE] Swine is the ancestral English termfor the ‘pig’, and it remained the main word untilpig began to take over from it in the earlymodern English period. It came from aprehistoric Germanic *swīnam, which alsoproduced German schwein, Dutch swijn, andSwedish and Danish svin. And this in turn wentback to Indo-European *su-, source also ofEnglish hyena and sow. HYENA, SOWswing [OE] Swing goes back ultimately to aprehistoric Germanic base *swinggw-, whichdenoted ‘violent circulatory movement’. One ofits specific applications was to the wielding of awhip, and indeed the English verb swingoriginally meant ‘flog’ (‘They bind him andswing him and spit on his face’, BlicklingHomilies 971). Another Old English sense was‘rush’, but the main modern meaning ‘oscillate’did not emerge until as recently as the 16thcentury. The ancestral notion of ‘flogging’ or‘beating’ is better preserved in the related swinge[16]. SWINGEswipe see SWEEPswitch [16] Switch originally denoted a ‘thinflexible twig’; it may have been borrowed from

Middle Dutch swijch ‘bough, twig’. From thenoun was derived the verb switch. Thisoriginally meant ‘beat with a switch’, but in theearly 19th century the sense ‘bend or waggle toand fro like a flexible stick’ emerged, and thisled on in the middle of the century via ‘divert’ to‘turn off a train on to another track’ (the usagedeveloped in American English, where theapparatus used for this is still known as a switch,as opposed to British English points). By the endof the century this had broadened out to ‘connector disconnect by pushing a contact to or fro’. Thenotion of ‘exchanging’ or ‘swopping’ did notemerge until as recently as the 1890s.swivel see SWIFTsword [OE] Sword comes from a prehistoricGermanic *swertham, which also producedGerman schwert, Dutch zwaard, Swedish svärd,and Danish sværd. It is not known what itsultimate source was, although it has beenspeculated that it may have links with Old HighGerman swerdo ‘pain’ – in which case itsetymological meaning would be the ‘stinger,causer of pain’.swot see SWEATsybaritesybarite [16] Sybaris was an ancient Greekcolony in southern Italy. It was a flourishingtrading centre, and its inhabitants put theirconsiderable wealth to the service ofunrestrained self-indulgence. Their luxuriousand debauched ways became a byword in theancient world, and Greek Subarítēs ‘inhabitantof Sybaris’ came to be synonymous with‘pleasure-seeker’, and also with ‘lecher’ – bothheterosexual and homosexual. English acquiredthe word via Latin Sybarīta, and has rather toneddown its connotations.sycamore [14] The sycamore is etymologicallyeither the ‘fig-mulberry’ or the ‘mulberrymulberry’.The word came via Old Frenchsicamor and Latin scomorus from Greeksūkómoros. This was a compound based onmóron ‘mulberry’, its first element being eitherGreek súkon ‘fig’ or an adaptation of Hebrewshiqmāh ‘mulberry’. It was originally used inEnglish for a type of fig tree (the sycomoresmentioned in the Bible – as in ‘The sycomoresare cut down, but we will change them intocedars’, Isaiah 9:10 – are fig trees), and themodern application to a variety of maple did notemerge until the 16th century. SYCOPHANTsycophant [16] Sycophants are etymologically‘fig-showers’. The word comes via Latinschophanta from Greek súkophántēs, acompound formed from súkon ‘fig’ and -phántēs‘shower’, a derivative of phaínein ‘show’(source of English fancy, phantom, etc). Súkon(which probably came from a Semitic sourcethat also produced Latin ficus ‘fig’, source ofEnglish fig) was used metaphorically for ‘cunt’,and hence for an ‘indecent gesture made byputting the thumb into the mouth or between twofingers’. People who grassed on criminals weresaid to ‘show them the fig’ – ‘show them twofingers’, as it might be expressed in modern493 sympathyEnglish. And so the term súkophántēs came to beused for an ‘informer’, and eventually, via ‘onewho ingratiates himself by informing’, for a‘flatterer’ or ‘toady’. FANCY, PHANTOM, SYCAMOREsyllable [14] A syllable is etymologically a‘gathering together’ of letters. The word comesfrom Anglo-Norman sillable, an alteration ofOld French sillabe, which went back via Latinsyllaba to Greek sullabé ‘gathering, gatheringtogether of letters, syllable’. This was aderivative of sullambánein ‘gather together’,hence ‘spell together’, a compound verb formedfrom the prefix sun- ‘together’ and lambánein‘take, grasp’.syllabus [17] The word syllabus is the result ofa misprint. It originated as Greek sittúbā ‘label,table of contents’, which was borrowed intoLatin as sittyba. However, in an early printededition of Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, in the1470s, its accusative plural form sittybas wasmisprinted as syllabos. This was taken asrepresenting a Greek súllabos, a supposed (butquite spurious) derivative of Greek sullambánein‘gather together’ (source of English syllable),which was then relatinized to syllabus. Itsearliest application to the ‘contents of a course ofinstruction’ appears to date from the late 18thcentury.syllogism [14] A syllogism is etymologicallysomething ‘reasoned together’, hence ‘inferred’.The word comes via Old French sillogisme andLatin syllogismus from Greek sullogismós, aderivative of sullogīzesthai ‘reason together,infer’. This was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix sun- ‘together’ and logízesthai‘reason, reckon, compute’, a derivative of lógos‘word, discourse, computation’ (source ofEnglish logarithm, logic, etc). LOGARITHM, LOGICsylvan see SAVAGEsymbol [15] Etymologically, a symbol issomething ‘thrown together’. The word’sultimate source is Greek sumbállein, acompound verb formed from the prefix sun-‘together’ and bállein ‘throw’ (source of Englishballistic, problem, etc). The notion of ‘throwingor putting things together’ led on to the notion of‘contrast’, and so sumbállein came to be used for‘compare’. From it was derived súmbolon,which denoted an ‘identifying token’ – becausesuch tokens were ‘compared’ with a counterpartto make sure they were genuine – and hence an‘outward sign’ of something. BALLISTIC, PARABLE, PAROLE, PROBLEMsympathy [16] Sympathy is etymologically‘feeling with’ someone else. The word comesvia Latin sympathīa from Greek sumpátheia, aderivative of sumpathés ‘feeling with orsimilarly to someone else’. This was acompound adjective formed from the prefix sun-‘together, with, like’ and páthos ‘feeling’(source of English pathetic [16], pathology [17],pathos [17], etc). PATHETIC, PATHOLOGY, PATHOS

symphony 494symphony [13] Symphony originally meant‘harmony’; it was not used for a ‘large-scalepiece of orchestral music in several movements’until the late 18th century. The word came viaOld French symphonie and Latin symphōniafrom Greek sumphōníā, a derivative ofsúmphōnos ‘harmonious’. This was a compoundadjective formed from the prefix sun- ‘together’and phōné ‘sound’ (source of English phone,phonetic, etc). PHONE, PHONETICsymposium [18] A symposium isetymologically a ‘get-together for a drink’. Theword comes via Latin symposium from Greeksumpósion, a derivative of sumpótēs ‘drinkingcompanion’. This was a compound noun formedfrom the prefix sun- ‘together’ and the base*pot- ‘drink’ (source of English poison, potion,etc). The Greeks favoured lubricatingintellectual discussion with drink, and so theterm sumpósion came to be used for a meetingwhich combined elements of party andintellectual interchange. POISON, POTABLE, POTIONsymptom [16] A symptom is etymologicallysomething that ‘happens’ – an occurrence orphenomenon. The word’s application tophysiological phenomena as signs of disease is asecondary development. It comes via late Latinsymptōma from Greek súmptōma ‘occurrence’, aderivative of sumpíptein ‘fall together’, hence‘fall on, happen to’. This was a compound verbformed from the prefix sun- ‘together’ andpíptein ‘fall’.synagogue [12] A synagogue is etymologicallyan ‘assembly’. The word comes via Old Frenchsinagoge and late Latin synagōga from Greeksunagōgé ‘meeting, assembly’. This was aderivative of sunágein ‘bring together’, hence‘assemble’, a compound verb formed from theprefix sun- ‘together’ and ágein ‘lead, drive’. Itsspecific application to an assembly for Jewishworship was introduced by early Greektranslators of the Old Testament. ACT, AGENTsyndicate [17] A syndicate was originally a‘body of syndics’ or delegates. Syndic [17] camevia Old French syndic ‘delegate’ and late Latinsyndicus ‘delegate’ from Greek súndikos‘assistant in a court of law, public advocate’.This was a compound noun formed from theprefix sun- ‘with’ and díkē ‘judgment’.synonym see NAMEsyphilis [18] Syphilus was the name of ashepherd who according to Syphilis sive morbusGallicus (Syphilis or the French disease) 1530, apoem by the Veronese doctor GirolamoFracastoro, was the first sufferer from syphilis.The word Syphilis in Fracastoro’s title meantsimply ‘narrative about Syphilus’; he did not useit as a generic term for the disease until 1546, ina treatise called De contagione (Concerningcontagious disease). It is not known where he gotthe name Syphilus from.syringe [15] Syringes get their name from theircylindrical shape. The word comes from lateLatin syringa, an alteration of Latin syrinx,which in turn went back to Greek súrigx ‘pipe,shepherd’s pipe’. The stems of both the mockorange shrub and the lilac were used for makingsuch pipes – hence their alternative namesyringa [17]. SYRINGAsyrup [14] Syrup is etymologically ‘somethingdrunk’. Like sherbet, it goes back ultimately tothe Arabic verb shariba ‘drink’, whose initial/shr/ sound originated in imitation of the soundof slurping. From this was derived the nounsharāb ‘drink’, which passed into English viamedieval Latin siropus and Old French sirop.Arab drinks tend to be liberally sweetened, andso when the word came west it was with thespecific sense ‘thick sweet liquid’. SHERBET, SORBETsystem [17] A system is etymologicallysomething that is ‘brought together’. The wordcomes via French système and late Latin systēmafrom Greek sústēma ‘combined or organizedwhole, formed from many parts’. This was aderivative of sunistánai ‘bring together,combine’, a compound verb formed from theprefix sun- ‘together’ and histánai ‘cause tostand’ (a relative of English stand). STAND

Ttabby [17] By a bizarre series of etymologicaltwists and turns, the tabby cat commemorates atextile manufacturing suburb of Baghdad. Thiswas al-‘Attābīya, named after Prince Attāb, wholived there. The cloth made there was known as‘attābī, and the term passed via Old Frenchatabis and modern French tabis into English astabby. This originally denoted a sort of rich silktaffeta (‘This day … put on … my false tabbywaistcoat with gold lace’ noted Samuel Pepys inhis diary for 13 October 1661), but since suchcloth was originally usually striped, by the 1660sthe word was being applied to brindled cats.tabernacle see TAVERNtable [12] Latin tabula originally denoted a‘board’ or ‘plank’, and hence a ‘slab for writingon’ and a ‘list or similar arrangement of words orfigures written on such a slab’ (as in a ‘table ofcontents’). It was in the farther outposts of theRoman empire that the sense ‘piece of furniturefor serving meals on’ emerged – possibly inFrankish, where it would have been a directtranslation of the term used for ‘table’, whichmeant literally ‘serving board’ (until tables withlegs found their way northward from Greece andRome, food had been served on individual traysor boards). In much of the empire it becameestablished as the word for ‘table’ (and it passedinto English via Old French table), although inSpanish the original Latin term mensa survivedas mesa. Derivatives in English includeentablature [17], tableau [17] (originally aFrench diminutive form), tablet, tabloid, andtabular [17]. ENTABLATURE, TABLEAU, TABLET, TABLOID,TABULARtabloid [19] Tabloid originated as a trade-namefor a brand of tablets of condensed medicine,registered in 1884 by Burroughs, Wellcome andCompany. It was an alteration of tablet [14],which came from Old French tablete, adiminutive form of table (source of Englishtable). This originally denoted a ‘slab for writingon or inscribing’. Such slabs would have beenflat and often quite small, and in the late 16thcentury the term came to be applied to a ‘flatcompressed piece of something’ – such as soapor medicine. The notion of ‘compression’ or‘condensation’ underlies the use of tabloid fornewspapers of small page size and ‘condensed’versions of news stories, which emerged at thebeginning of the 20th century (‘He advocatedtabloid journalism’, Westminster gazette 1January 1901). TABLEtabor see TAMBOURINEtacit [17] Tacit was adapted from Latin tacitus,the past participle of tacēre ‘be silent’. Anotherderivative of this was Latin taciturnus, fromwhich English gets taciturn [18]; and tacēre alsolies behind English reticent. RETICENT, TACITURNtack English has three distinct words tack. Theoldest, meaning ‘nail or other fastening’ [14],comes from Old Northern French taque, avariant of Old French tache ‘nail, fastening’.This was borrowed from prehistoric Germanic,but the nature of its connection with attach, ifany, is not known. In the 15th century it wasapplied to the ‘ropes, cables, etc fastening aship’s sails’, and the adjustment of thesefastenings when changing direction led to theuse of tack as a verb meaning ‘change directionin a boat’. Tacky ‘sticky’, derived from tack inthe 18th century, also depends on the generalnotion of ‘fastening’ (the origins of the othertacky, ‘shoddy, tasteless’ [19], are not known).Tack ‘horse’s harness and other equipment’[20] is short for tackle [13]. This was probablyborrowed from Middle Low German takel, aderivative of taken ‘seize’ (to which English takeis related). The origins of tack ‘food’ [19] (as inhard tack) are not known. TACKLEtact [17] Tact originally denoted the ‘sense oftouch’ (that is what Alexander Ross wasreferring to when he wrote ‘Of all the creatures,the sense of tact is most exquisite in man’,Arcana microcosmi 1651). But by the end of the18th century it had evolved semantically via‘refined faculty of perception’ to ‘skill inbehaving or speaking with propriety orsensitivity’. It was acquired via French tact fromLatin tactus ‘sense of touch’, a noun use of thepast participle of tangere ‘touch’ (source ofEnglish contact, tangent, tangible, etc). Tactile[17], from the Latin derivative tactilis, preservesthe original notion of ‘touching’. CONTACT, CONTAGION, TACTILE, TANGENT,TANGIBLEtactic [17] Tactics denotes etymologically‘arrangement, setting in order’. It goes backultimately to Greek tássein ‘put in order’, hence‘arrange in battle formation’. From this wasderived taktós ‘arranged’, which formed thebasis of the further adjective taktikós ‘concernedwith arrangement or (military) planning’ (sourceof English tactic and tactical [16]). It was usedin the plural, taktiká, for ‘matters relating toarrangement’, and this served as a model forEnglish tactics.

tadpole 496tadpole [15] A tadpole is etymologically a‘toad-head’. The word was coined from MiddleEnglish tadde ‘toad’ and pol ‘head’ (ancestor ofmodern English poll ‘voting’, historically acounting of ‘heads’). Tadpoles, with theirmoonlike faces appearing to take up about halfof their small globular bodies, seem rather likeanimated heads. POLL, TOADtail [OE] Tail comes from a prehistoric Germanic*taglaz, whose other modern descendantsinclude German zagel ‘penis’ and Swedish tagel‘horsehair’. This in turn went back to an Indo-European *doklos, which had the generalmeaning ‘something long and thin’.tailor [13] A tailor is etymologically a ‘cutter’.The word was acquired from Anglo-Normantaillour, a variant of Old French tailleur. Thiswent back to Vulgar Latin *tāliātor ‘cutter’, aderivative of *tāliāre ‘cut’, which in turn wasformed from Latin tālea ‘cutting’ (in the sense ofa ‘piece of a plant removed for grafting orregrowing’). The specific application of theword to a ‘cutter or maker of clothes’ wasforeshadowed in medieval Latin tāliātor vestiumand Old French tailleur d’habits, and by the timeit reached English, the memory of itsetymological connection with ‘cutting’ hadvirtually disappeared; indeed in strict technicalusage tailor ‘person who makes up clothes’contrasts with cutter ‘person who cuts out thecloth’. Other English descendants of tāleainclude detail, entail, retail, and tally [15](which depends on another meaning of tālea,‘twig’, hence ‘notches cut on a stick forcounting’). DETAIL, ENTAIL, RETAIL, TALLYtaint see TINGEtake [12] Take was borrowed from Old Norsetaka, whose modern descendants includeSwedish taga and Danish tage. Now defunctrelatives include Middle Dutch tāken ‘seize’ andGothic tekan ‘touch’, and its ancestral meaningis probably ‘lay hands on’, but its ultimateorigins are not known.tale [OE] A tale is etymologically something thatis ‘told’. The word is descended from aprehistoric Germanic *talō, a derivative of thebase *tal-, which also produced English talk andtell. Of its Germanic relatives, German zahl,Dutch getal, Swedish antal, and Danish tal allmean ‘number’, reflecting a secondary meaning‘reckoning, enumeration’ which once existed inEnglish, perhaps as an introduction from OldNorse (it survives in the related teller ‘counter ofvotes’ and all told). TALK, TELLtalent [13] Greek tálanton meant ‘balance,weight’, and hence ‘unit of weight or money’.Latin borrowed it as talentum, using itmetaphorically for ‘mental inclination’, and itwas in this sense that English originally acquiredit, via Old French talent. ‘Unit of money’ did notarrive (apart from one isolated Old Englishinstance) until the late 14th century, and it wasthe use of the word in the parable of the talents(Matthew 25:14–30), in which a master gave hisservants talents (money), which two of them putout to interest, earning their master’s approval,while the other less enterprising servant simplyburied his, that led in the early 15th century tothe use of the term for ‘aptitude, ability’.talisman [17] Talisman, one of the very fewEnglish nouns ending in -man which does notturn into -men in the plural (dragoman isanother), denotes etymologically an ‘objectconsecrated by the completion of a religiousritual’. It comes via French talisman frommedieval Greek télesmon, an alteration of lateGreek télesma ‘consecrated object’. This in turnwas derived from the verb teleín ‘complete’,hence ‘perform a ritual’, hence ‘consecrate’,which was based on télos ‘aim, result’ (source ofEnglish teleology [18]). TELEOLOGY, TELEVISIONtalk [13] Talk has only one close relative – EastFrisian talken ‘talk, chatter’. This suggests that itmay first have seen the light of day just beforethe Anglo-Saxon peoples first crossed the NorthSea to Britain – they were then in close contactwith the Frisians. However, there is no record ofthe verb in Old English, and it first crops up inWest Midland texts of the early 13th century. Itsultimate source is the prehistoric Germanic base*tal-, which also produced English tale and tell. TALE, TELLtall [14] The ancestral meaning of tall is ‘quick’.It is a descendant of Old English getæl ‘quick,ready’, whose relatives included Old Frisian teland Old High German gizal ‘quick’, and whichmay go back ultimately to the prehistoricGermanic base *tal- (source of English tale,talk, and tell). By the time of its re-emergence inMiddle English it was being used for ‘brave,bold’, but the modern sense ‘of great height’ didnot develop until the 16th century.talon [14] Latin tālus meant ‘ankle’ (it wasprobably a borrowing from Celtic – Irish has sal‘talon’). From it was derived Vulgar Latin *tālō‘heel, spur’, which passed into English via OldFrench talon. In English its meaning evolved via‘heel of an animal’ and ‘bird of prey’s claw’ to‘claw’ in general.tambourine [16] Tambourine is one of a smallfamily of English words that go back ultimatelyto Persian tabīr ‘drum’. This found its way viaProvençal tabor and Old French tabour intoEnglish as tabor ‘small drum’ [13]. The Persianword was adopted into Arabic, where it wasswallowed up by the similar-sounding tambūr‘lute’ – so that tambūr now meant ‘drum’. Thiswas borrowed into Old French as tambour, andpassed on to English as tambour [15].Tambourine comes from a French diminutiveform. TABORtame [OE] Tame evolved from a prehistoricGermanic *tamaz, which also produced Germanzahm and Dutch tam. This in turn was descendedfrom the Indo-European base *dom-, which alsolay behind Latin domāre ‘tame, subdue’ (sourceof English daunt [13] and indomitable [17]) and

Greek damán ‘tame, subdue’ (source of Englishadamant and diamond). ADAMANT, DAUNT, DIAMOND, INDOMITABLEtamper [16] Tamper began life as a variant oftemper. It originally meant ‘mix clay togetherwith water to make it suitable for use’. However,the notion of ‘mixing’ seems to lead on naturallyto ‘interference’ (meddle originally meant‘mix’), and by the end of the 16th century wefind that ‘tampering with clay’ had moved on to‘tampering with anything’ – ‘interfering’ with it. TEMPERtan [OE] Tan was borrowed into late Old Englishfrom the medieval Latin verb tannāre. This wasderived from tannum ‘oak bark’ (oak bark isused in tanning leather), which itself wasprobably a loan-word from Gaulish tanno-‘oak’. The French noun tan ‘tan’ cameultimately from the same Latin source. From itwas derived tanin, acquired by English as tannin[19]; and its immediate Old French predecessorformed the basis of an adjective tané ‘tancoloured,dark’, whose Anglo-Norman versiontauné gave English tawny [14]. TANNIN, TAWNYtandem [18] Latin tandem meant ‘eventually, atlength’. Its use for ‘acting conjointly’ arose froman 18th-century play on words, in which ‘atlength’ was jocularly interpreted as ‘lengthwise,in a straight line’, and the word was applied to a‘carriage drawn by two horses one behind theother in a straight line’. In the 1880s it wastransferred to a ‘bicycle with two seats, onebehind the other’. Its more general modern use,for ‘acting together’, dates from the early 20thcentury.tangerine [18] The tangerine was originallyexported to Britain, in the 1840s, from theMoroccan port of Tangier, and so it was calledthe Tangerine orange (Tangerine started life asan adjective meaning ‘of Tangier’: ‘an oldTangerine captain with a wooden leg’, JosephAddison, Tatler 1710). This was soon shortenedto tangerine. It was first used as a colour term atthe end of the 19th century.tangible [16] Tangible means literally‘touchable’. It comes via French tangible fromlate Latin tangibilis, a derivative of Latin tangere‘touch’. Other English words from this sourceinclude tangent [16], etymologically a line‘touching’ a circle. Its past participle tactus hascontributed contact, intact, and tact, while thebase from which it was formed, *tag-, has alsoproduced contagion, contaminate, entire, andintegrity. CONTACT, CONTAGION, CONTAMINATE, INTACT,INTEGRITY, TACT, TASK, TASTE, TAXtank [17] Tank ‘water-storage container’originated in India, where it denoted a ‘pond’. Itwas borrowed from a local word, such asGujarati tānkh or Marathi tānken ‘pond, cistern’.These in turn probably went back to Sanskrittadāga ‘pond, lake’, which was of Dravidianorigin. The word was applied as a secret codename to the new armoured vehicle at the end of497 tarantella1915, supposedly because it was thought toresemble a benzene tank.tannin see TANtantalize [16] The verb tantalize was inspired bythe sad story of Tantalus, a mythical king ofPhrygia in the ancient world. He had displeasedthe gods in some way (versions differ as to how,the commonest being that he had stolen theirfood), and as a punishment he was condemned tostand for ever in water up to his chin, whileoverhead hung boughs laden with fruit:whenever he stooped to drink, the waterdisappeared, and when he tried to reach the fruit,the wind blew it away. The term tantalus, coinedin the 19th century for a lockable decanter standwhose contents can be seen but not got at,preserves the same idea.tantamount [17] Tantamount meansetymologically ‘amounting to as much’. Itcomes from an earlier verb tantamount ‘amountto as much as, be equal to’, which was alexicalization of the Anglo-Norman expressiontant amunter ‘amount to as much’. This wasmade up of tant ‘as much’, which came via OldFrench from Latin tantus, and amunter, ancestorof English amount. AMOUNT, PARAMOUNTtaper [OE] Taper is ultimately the same word aspaper. Both go bach to Latin papyrus ‘papyrus’.This was used among other things for a‘candlewick made from papyrus’, and hence fora ‘candle’. It seems to have been borrowed inthis sense into Old English as *papur, and by aprocess known as dissimilation (in which one ofa pair of similar speech sounds is changed, so asto break up the pair) it became tapur. The verbtaper ‘become narrower’, which emerged in the16th century, is an allusion to the shape of thecandle. PAPER, PAPYRUStapestry [15] The ultimate source of tapestry isGreek tápēs ‘tapestry, woven carpet’. Itsdiminutive from tapētion was borrowed via lateLatin tapētium into Old French as tapis ‘carpet’.From this was derived the verb tapisser ‘coverwith a carpet’, and this in turn formed the basisof a noun tapisserie ‘carpets, woven material’.English took it over and altered it to tapestry.tar [OE] Tar is etymologically a substanceproduced from ‘trees’. The word goes back via aprehistoric Germanic *terw- (source also ofGerman and Dutch teer, Swedish tjära, andDanish tjære) to Indo-European *drew- ‘tree’(source of English tree) – the originalapplication of the word evidently having been tothe tarry resins produced by conifers. (The tar[17] of Jack tar ‘sailor’ is short for tarpaulin[17], a compound noun probably formed fromtar and pall ‘covering’.) TREE, TROUGHtarantella [18] In the 15th century in southernItaly an epidemic of a curious nervous disorderbroke out, one of whose symptoms was anuncontrollable compulsion to whirl and cavortaround, as if dancing. The people attributed it tothe bite of a spider, the tarantula [16], named

tardy 498after the local town and seaport of Taranto. Indue course the dancing came to be rationalizedas a method of counteracting the effects of thespider’s bite, and it was named tarantella, adiminutive form of Taranto. The word finallycame to stand for a particular type of dance.tardy see BUSTARDtarmac [20] The term tarmac commemorates thename of John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836), aScottish civil engineer who developed a methodof levelling roads and covering them with gravel.Setting the gravel in tar produced in the 1880sthe term tarmacadam, and in 1903 theabbreviated form tarmac was registered as atrademark. By 1919 the word was being used inBritish English as a synonym for ‘runway’.task see TAXtastetaste [13] The origins of taste are not entirelyclear, but what does seem certain is that it isconnected in some way with Latin tangere‘touch’; indeed it was originally used for ‘touch’in English (‘With that finger he will it taste if itis rightly wrought’, St Michael 1290), and itsFrench relative tâter denotes ‘feel’. It was oncegenerally supposed that it came from Latintaxāre ‘feel, assess’ (source of English tax),which was derived from tangere. The theory isthat taxāre produced a Vulgar Latin derivative*taxitāre, which turned into tastāre – whenceOld French taster, and eventually English taste.Another theory has it, however, that *tastāre wasa blend of tangere with Latin gustāre ‘taste’(source of English gusto). TANGENT, TANGIBLEtattoo English has two words tattoo. The older,‘military display’ [17], was borrowed from aDutch word, taptoe, that means literally ‘tap to’,that is, ‘shut the tap’ – a signal to shut off the tapsof the beer barrels at closing time in the taverns.By the time it reached English it was being usedfor a ‘drum beat signalling the time for soldiersto return to their quarters at night’, and in the18th century it was applied to a ‘military displaybased on this’. The tattoo on the skin [18] wasborrowed from a Polynesian language, such asTahitian (tatau) or Marquesan (ta-tu). TAPtaunt [16] The etymological notion underlyingtaunt is of giving someone tit for tat, of returningas much in reply as has been given. It comesfrom the French phrase tant pour tant ‘so muchfor so much’. This was borrowed into English inthe early 16th century as taunt pour taunt or(partially anglicized) taunt for taunt, which wasused for a ‘sarcastic rejoinder’. The first recordof the use of taunt on its own (as a verb) datesfrom 1513.tavern [13] Tavern comes via Old Frenchtaverne from Latin taberna ‘hut, inn’, a wordpossibly of Etruscan origin. Derived fromtaberna, in the sense ‘hut’, was the diminutiveform tabernāculum ‘tent’, which was borrowedinto English as tabernacle [13]. Its originalapplication was to the tent which according tothe Bible covered the Ark of the Covenant. TABERNACLEtawdry [17] Anna, Anglo-Saxon king of EastAnglia, had a daughter called Etheldrida, whobecame queen of Northumbria (she died in 679).She had an inordinate fondness in her youth forfine lace neckerchiefs, and when she was laterafflicted by a fatal tumour of the neck, sheregarded it as divine retribution for her formerextravagance. After her death she was canonizedand made patron saint of Ely. In the Middle Agesfairs were held in her memory, known as ‘StAudrey’s fairs’ (Audry is a conflated version ofEtheldrida), at which lace neckties were sold.These were termed Seynt Audries lace, a nameeventually eroded to tawdrie lace. They wereoften made from cheap gaudy material, and soby the end of the 17th century tawdry was beingused generally for ‘cheap and gaudy’.tawny see TANtax [13] Tax originally denoted ‘assess an amountto be levied’; the notion of ‘imposing such alevy’ is a secondary development. The wordcomes via Old French taxer from Latin taxāre‘touch, assess, appraise’, a derivative of tangere‘touch’ (source of English contact, tangible,etc). From taxāre was derived the medieval Latinnoun taxa ‘tax, piece of work imposed’, whichpassed into English via Anglo-Norman tasque astask [13]. TACT, TANGENT, TANGIBLE, TASKtaxi [20] Taxi is short for taximeter cab, a termcoined around 1890 for a cab fitted with ataximeter, a device for showing the fare to bepaid. Taximeter [19] was borrowed from Frenchtaximètre, a compound noun formed from taxe‘charge, tariff’ (a relative of English tax) andmètre ‘meter’. TAXtea [17] English acquired tea via Dutch thee andMalay teh from te, the word for ‘tea’ in theAmoy dialect of Chinese, from southeast China(the Mandarin Chinese version of the word ischá, from which English got cha [17]). It wasoriginally pronounced /tay/ as well as /tee/, but itwas the latter which eventually won out. CHAteach [OE] To teach someone is etymologicallyto ‘show’ them something. The word goes backultimately to the prehistoric Indo-European base*deik- ‘show’, which also produced Greekdeiknúnai ‘show’ (source of English paradigm[15]) and Latin dīcere ‘say’ (source of Englishdiction, dictionary, etc). Its Germanicdescendant was *taik-, which produced Englishtoken and German zeigen ‘show’. From it wasderived the verb *taikjan, ancestor of Englishteach. DICTION, DICTIONARY, PARADIGM, TOKENteam [OE] The etymological notion underlyingthe word team is ‘pulling’. It goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *deuk-‘pull’, which also produced Latin dūcere ‘pull,lead’ (source of English abduct, duke, etc). ItsGermanic descendant was *taukh-. From thiswas derived a noun *taugmaz, whose later form*taumaz gave English team. This originallydenoted a group of animals harnessed together to

‘pull’ a load, but the modern sense ‘group ofpeople acting together’ did not emerge from thisuntil the 16th century. Another strand in themeaning of the base is ‘giving birth, off-spring’(presumably based on the notion of childrenbeing ‘drawn’ forth from the womb). This hasnow disappeared from team, but traces of it canstill be detected in the related teem [OE], whosemodern connotations of ‘abundance’ go back toan earlier ‘bring forth offspring prolifically’.From the same source come English tie and tow. ABDUCT, DUCT, DUKE, EDUCATE, TEEM, TIE,TOWteapoy see FOOTtear English has two separate words tear, both ofancient ancestry. The sort of tear that one weeps[OE] goes back (together with its Germanicrelatives German träne, Dutch traan, Swedishtår, and Danish taare) to prehistoric Indo-European *dakru-, a word of uncertain originwhich also produced Welsh deigryn and Latinlacrima (source of English lachrymal [16] andlachrymose [17]).Tear ‘rip’ [OE] comes from an Indo-European base *der- ‘tear’, which also producedRussian drat’ and Polish drzeć ‘tear’. The base*der- denoted the concept of ‘flaying’ as well as‘tearing’, in which sense it produced Englishturd and Greek dérma ‘skin’ (source of Englishdermatitis, epidermis, etc). LACHRYMOSE; DERMATITIS, EPIDERMIS, TURDtease [OE] Tease originally meant ‘separate thefibres of wool’ (a sense still perceptible in themetaphorical tease out ‘disentangle somethingcomplicated’). It came from a prehistoric WestGermanic *taisjan, whose base was also thesource of English teasel [OE], a plant whoseprickly flower heads were used for carding wool.The notion of ‘irritating someone with prickles’led in the 17th century to tease being used for‘pester’, which gradually weakened into ‘makefun of’.technical [17] Greek tékhnē denoted ‘skill, art,craft, trade’ (it may have come from the Indo-European base *tek- ‘shape, make’, which alsoproduced Greek téktōn ‘carpenter, builder’,source of English architect and tectonic [17]).From it was derived the adjective tekhnikós,which passed into English via Latin technicus astechnic (now obsolete) and technical. Technique[19] comes from a noun use of the Frenchadjective technique ‘technical’. From the samesource come technicolour [20], based on thetrademark Technicolor (registered in 1929), andtechnology [17]. ARCHITECT, TECHNIQUE, TECTONIC, TEXTteddy English has two words teddy, both of thembased on affectionate alterations of male firstnames. The teddy bear [20] was named afterTheodore (‘Teddy’) Roosevelt, president of theUSA from 1901 to 1909. One of his favouriteleisure pursuits was hunting bears, and early in1906 the New York Times published a humorouspoem about the adventures of two bears, whichwere named Teddy B and Teddy G in his honour.The names were then appropriated to two bears499 temeritythat had just been presented to the Bronx Zoo;and before the year was out, toy manufacturerswith an eye for profit had put toy bears calledteddy bears on the market.The teddy of teddy boy [20] is short forEdward, an allusion to the teddy boys’preference for clothes in a style reminiscent ofthe Edwardian period (1901–10). The firstrecord of the word comes from 1954.teem see TEAMteen [OE] The element -teen (as in thirteen,fourteen, etc) originated as an inflected form often. The noun teen, usually used in theexpression in one’s teens ‘from the ages ofthirteen to nineteen’, was derived from it in the17th century (‘Your poor young things, whenthey are once in the teens, think they shall neverbe married’, William Wycherley, GentlemanDancing-Master 1673). The compound teenageis first recorded in 1921, teenager in 1941. TENteetotal [19] The adverb teetotally is firstrecorded in America in 1832 (James Hall, in hisLegends of West Philadelphia, recorded aKentucky backwoodsman as saying ‘TheseMingoes … ought to be essentially, andparticularly, and tee-totally obflisticated off ofthe face of the whole yearth’); the tee representsthe initial t of total, as if repeating it to give extraemphasis to the word. The application of theadjective teetotal to ‘total abstinence fromalcohol’ (that is, including beer, and not justspirits) is virtually contemporary. It is credited toa certain Richard Turner, of Preston, Lancashire,who is reputed to have used it in a speech to atemperance society in September 1833.teleology see TALISMANtelevisiontelevision [20] Television means etymologically‘far vision’. Its first element, tele-, comes fromGreek téle ‘far off’, a descendant of the samebase as télos ‘end’ (source of English talismanand teleology). Other English compoundsformed from it include telegraph [18], telegram[19], telepathy [19] (etymologically ‘farfeeling’, coined by the psychologist FredericMyers in 1882), telephone [19], telescope [17] (aword of Italian origin), and telex [20] (a blend ofteleprinter and exchange). Television itself wascoined in French, and was borrowed into Englishin 1907. Of its abbreviations, telly dates fromabout 1940, TV from 1948. TALISMAN, TELEOLOGYtell [OE] Tell goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*taljan, a derivative of *talō ‘something told’(from which English gets tale). This in turn wasformed from the base *tal-, source also ofEnglish talk. Beside ‘narrative, discourse’ liesanother strand of meaning, ‘counting,enumeration’ (pointing back to an originalcommon denominator ‘put in order’), whichsurvives in all told and the derivative teller‘counter of votes’, and also in the relatedGerman zählen ‘count’. TALE, TALKtemerity [15] Someone who behaves withtemerity is etymologically acting in the ‘dark’.

temper 500The word was adapted from Latin temeritās‘rashness’, a derivative of temere ‘blindly’,hence ‘rashly’. This in turn was formed from anunrecorded *temus ‘darkness’, a relative oftenebrae ‘darkness’, and hence originallydenoted ‘acting in the dark, so that one cannotsee’.temper [OE] The verb temper was borrowed intoOld English from Latin temperāre ‘mix, blend’.This seems originally to have meant ‘mix in dueproportion’, and so may have been derived fromLatin tempus ‘time, due time’ (source of Englishtemporary). The noun temper was derived fromthe verb in the 14th century in the sense ‘mixtureof elements’, and this led on in the 17th centuryto ‘set of mental traits’ (a meaning that has nowlargely passed to the derivative temperament[15]). The modern sense ‘ill humour’ emergedfrom this in the 19th century. Another meaningof Latin temperāre was ‘restrain oneself’, whichhas come through into the derivativestemperance [14] and temperate [14]. Otherrelatives include distemper and temperature.Tamper probably originated as an alterationof temper. DISTEMPER, TAMPER, TEMPERA, TEMPERATUREtempera see DISTEMPERtemperature [16] Like its relatives temper andtemperament, temperature originally meant‘mixture’ (Philemon Holland in 1601 wrote of ‘atemperature of brass and iron together’). Themodern sense ‘degree of heat’ emerged in thelate 17th century, and seems to have evolvedfrom another early and now obsolete sense,‘mild weather’. This reflected the ‘restraint’strand of meaning in the word’s ultimate source,Latin temperāre, which also survives in Englishtemperance and temperate. TEMPERtempest [13] Latin tempestās started offmeaning nothing more alarming than ‘period oftime’ (it was a derivative of tempus ‘time’,source of English temporary). Gradually,however, it progressed via ‘weather’ to ‘badweather, storm’. Tempus moved in to take itsplace in the neutral sense ‘weather’, andprovides the word for ‘weather’ in modernFrench (temps), Italian (tempo), Spanish(tiempo), and Romanian (timp). Other languageswhose word for ‘weather’ comes from a termoriginally denoting ‘time’ include Russian(pogoda), Polish (czas), Czech (počasí), Latvian(laiks), and Breton (amzer). TEMPORARYtemple Temple for worship [OE] and temple atthe side of the head [14] are distinct words. Theformer was borrowed from Latin templum,which originated as a term relating to divination,used by priests in ancient times. It denoted aspace marked out or ‘cut’ out as suitable formaking observations on which auguries werebased – some say a space marked out on theground, others a section of the night sky. Itprobably came ultimately from the base *tem-‘cut’, which also produced Greek témein ‘cut’and the English suffix -tomy ‘surgical cutting’. Ithas found its way into most western Europeanlanguages, including German, Dutch, Swedish,and Danish tempel and Welsh teml as well as theRomance languages.Temple ‘area at the side of the head’ comesvia Old French temple from Vulgar Latin*tempula, an alteration of tempora, the plural ofLatin tempus. This of course originally meant‘time’ (English gets temporary from it), and itseems that the sense ‘area at the side of the head’arose via an intermediate ‘appropriate time,proper period’, hence ‘right place (for dealingsomeone a fatal blow)’. TOME; TEMPORARYtemporary [16] Temporary was adapted fromLatin temporārius, a derivative of tempus ‘time’.The origins of this are not certain, but it could goback ultimately to the prehistoric base *ten-‘stretch’ (source of English tend, tense, thin,etc), in which case it would denoteetymologically a ‘stretch of time’. Other Englishderivatives include extempore, tempest, temple‘side of the head’, tempo [18] (via Italian),temporal [14], and tense ‘verb category’. EXTEMPORE, TEMPEST, TEMPLE, TEMPO, TENSEten [OE] Ten is part of a general European familyof ‘ten’-words which goes back ultimately toprehistoric Indo-European *dekm. This alsoproduced Greek déka (source of English deanand decade and the prefix deca-), Latin decem(source of English December, decimal,decimate, dime, etc), and Russian désyat’. ItsGermanic descendant was *tekhan, which hasevolved into German zehn, Dutch tien, Swedishtio, Danish ti, and English ten. Also related areteen and tithe. DEAN, DECADE, DECEMBER, DECIMAL,DECIMATE, DIME, TEEN, TITHEtenant [14] A tenant is etymologically a‘holder’. The word comes from Old Frenchtenant, a noun use of the present participle oftenir ‘hold’. This in turn went back to Latintenēre ‘hold’, a descendant of the Indo-Europeanbase *ten- ‘stretch, extend’ (source also ofEnglish tend, tense, thin, etc). Also from Latintenēre come English tenacious [16], tenement[14], tenet [17], and tenor, not to mentioncontain, continue, detain, maintain, obtain,retain, etc, while French tenir has additionallyproduced tenable [16], tenon [15], tenure [15],and probably tennis. CONTAIN, CONTINUE, DETAIN, MAINTAIN,OBTAIN, RETAIN, TENABLE, TENACIOUS, TEND,TENEMENT, TENET, TENNIS, TENON, TENOR,TENSE, TENURE, THINtend English has two distinct words tend, butthey come from the same ultimate source. Tend‘look after’ [14] is short for attend, which goesback to Latin compound verb based on tendere‘stretch’ – source of English tend ‘have aninclination’ [14]. Tendere itself was descendedfrom the Indo-European base *ten- ‘stretch’(source also of English tenant, tenuous, thin,tone, tune, etc), and its other contributions toEnglish include contend [15], distend [14],extend, intend, portend [15], pretend, and also

ostensible, tendency [17], tense, tension, andtent. CONTEND, DISTEND, EXTEND, INTEND,OSTENSIBLE, PORTEND, PRETEND, TENANT,TENSE, TENT, TENTERHOOKS, TENUOUS, THIN,TONE, TUNEtender English has two distinct words tender,both of which go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *ten- ‘stretch’. The adjective,‘delicate, fragile’ [13], comes via Old Frenchtendre from Latin tener ‘delicate’, a descendantof *ten- and source also of English tendril [16](etymologically a ‘tender’ shoot). The verb,‘offer’ [16], comes from another Old Frenchtendre, which went back to Latin tendere‘stretch, hold out’ (source of English tend,tendency, etc). TENANT, TEND, TENDRILtenement see TENANTtenet see TENANTtennis [14] The earliest recorded English formsof the word tennis include tenetz, teneys, andtenes. These suggest that it probably came fromtenez, the imperative plural of Old French tenir‘hold’, hence ‘receive’, supposedly shouted bythe server to his opponent as a warning to getready to receive the ball. The word originallyreferred, of course, to what is now known as realtennis (in which the real does simply mean‘real’; it has no connection, as is often claimed,with obsolete English real ‘royal’); it was firstapplied to the newly invented outdoor game in1874, in the compound lawn tennis, and this wassoon shortened to simply tennis. TENANTtenon see TENANTtenor [13] Latin tenor was derived from the verbtenēre ‘hold’ (source also of English tenacious,tenant, etc), and so etymologically denoted ‘thatwhich is held to’, hence a ‘continuous course’.This evolved in due course into the ‘generalsense or import’ of a piece of speech or writing,in which sense English acquired it via Anglo-Norman tenur. The musical term tenor, which isbasically the same word, arrived in the 14thcentury via Italian tenore and Old French tenor.It denotes etymologically the voice that ‘holds’the melodic line. TENANTtense English has two separate words tense. Theolder, ‘verb form indicating time’ [14], came viaOld French tens from Latin tempus ‘time’(source also of English temporal, temporary,etc). The original meaning ‘time’ survived intoEnglish, but died out in the early 16th century.The adjective tense [17] was adapted fromtensus, the past participle of Latin tendere‘stretch’ (source also of English tend, tendency,etc). It originally meant simply ‘stretched tight’,and the metaphorical ‘strained’ did not emergeuntil the 19th century. Tension [16] comes fromthe Latin derivative tensiō. TEMPORARY; TENDtent [13] A tent is etymologically something thatis ‘stretched’ – over a frame to provide shelter.The word comes via Old French tente from501 termagentVulgar Latin *tenta, a noun derived from the pastparticipial stem of Latin tendere ‘stretch’(source of English tend, tendency, etc). It wassupposedly inspired by the expression pellestendere, literally ‘stretch skins’, that is, ‘stretchanimal hides over a framework to make a tent’,which was used metaphorically for ‘set up acamp’. TENDtenterhooks [15] A tenterhook is one of a set ofhooks used to hold cloth taut on a frame duringmanufacture, especially while its dries (tentercomes from medieval Latin tentorium, aderivative of Latin tendere ‘stretch’). Themetaphorical use of on tenterhooks to mean ‘in astate of agonizing suspense’ dates from the mid-18th century.tenth see TITHEtenuous [16] Tenuous comes from the sameultimate ancestor as thin. It is an alteration of anearlier and now defunct tenuious, which wasadapted from Latin tenuis ‘thin’. And this wentback to the Indo-European base *ten- ‘stretch’, avariant of which produced English thin. TEND, THINtenure see TENANTtepid [14] English gets tepid from Latin tepidus,a derivative of tepēre ‘be warm’. This wasdescended from the Indo-European base *tep-‘warm’, which also produced Russian teplyj‘warm’, Czech teplý ‘warm’, and Welsh twym‘hot’.term [13] The etymological notion underlyingthe word term is of a ‘limit’ or ‘boundary’, andhence of an ‘end’. It comes via Old French termefrom Latin terminus ‘boundary, limit’, whichwas also borrowed into Welsh as terfyn‘boundary’ and directly into English in the 17thcentury as terminus ‘finishing point’ (it was firstapplied to railway stations in the 1830s). Thenotion of a ‘time limit’ led to its use for a ‘periodof time’, the sense in which it was first used inEnglish; the particular application to a ‘period inwhich a school, law court, etc is in session’emerged in the mid 15th century. The sense‘word or phrase expressing a particular idea’arose (through Greek influence) in medievalLatin from the concept of ‘limiting’ theapplication of an expression. Also from Latinterminus come English determine, exterminate[16], terminal [15], terminate [16], andterminology [19]. DETERMINE, EXTERMINATE, TERMINOLOGY,TERMINUStermagent [13] Termagent was originally thename of a blustering arrogant Muslim deity inmedieval mystery plays; it was not used for a‘quarrelsome woman’ until the 16th century. Itwas an alteration of an earlier Tervagant, whichcame via Old French Tervagant from ItalianTrivigante. It is not known for certain where thiscame from. It has been interpreted as literally‘three-wandering’, in allusion to the moontravelling in different guises to heaven, earth,and hell, as if it were formed from Latin tri-‘three’ and vagārī ‘wander’ (source of English

terrace 502vagabond, vagrant, etc); but it may simply havebeen borrowed from some unknown orientallanguage.terrace [16] Terrace is one of a small family ofEnglish words that go back ultimately to Latinterra ‘earth, land’. This was probably descendedfrom Indo-European *tersā- ‘dry’ (source alsoof English thirst, torrid, etc), in which case itdenoted etymologically ‘dry land’, as opposed to‘sea’. The family also includes inter [14](etymologically ‘put into the earth’), terra cotta[18] (from Italian, literally ‘cooked earth’), terrafirma [17] (literally ‘firm land’), terrain [18],terrestrial [15], terrier [15] (etymologically adog which is sent down burrows in the ‘earth’after its quarry), terrine, territory [15], andtureen. Terrace itself came via Old Frenchterrace from the Vulgar Latin derivative*terrāceus, which denoted a ‘platform madefrom a pile of earth or rubble’. TERRAIN, TERRESTRIAL, TERRIER, TERRINE,TERRITORY, THIRST, TORRID, TUREENterror [14] To be terrified is etymologically to‘shake with fear’. The ultimate ancestor of Latinterror ‘fear’ (source of English terror) andterrēre ‘frighten’ (source of English deter [16],terrible [15], terrific [17], and terrify [16]) wasthe Indo-European base *tre- ‘shake’, whichalso produced English tremble, tremor, etc.Terrorism [18] and terrorist [18] were coined inFrench in the 1790s to denote the activities of theRevolutionary government during the ‘Terror’,when thousands of its opponents were put todeath. It broadened out towards its present-daymeaning in the 19th century. DETER, TERRIBLE, TERRIFY, TREMBLE, TREMORterse [17] Terse originally meant ‘polished,smooth’ (‘This man … so laboured upon it thathe left it smooth and terse’, Helkiah Crooke,Description of the Body of Man 1615). By the18th century, however, the associated notion of‘neatness’ had led on to ‘neatly concise’. Theword’s present-day negative connotations of‘brusqueness’ seem to be a comparatively recentdevelopment. It was borrowed from tersus, thepast participle of Latin tergēre ‘wipe’ (sourcealso of English detergent). DETERGENTtertiary see THIRDtest [14] Latin testum denoted an ‘earthenwarepot’. English acquired it via Old French test, andused it originally for a ‘pot in which metals aresubjected to heat’. Among the purposes thesetests were put to was assaying, to ascertain thequality of metal, and by the 16th century theword was being used metaphorically for an‘examination of properties or qualities’. Englishtesty and French tête ‘head’ are close relatives. TESTYtestament [13] Testament is one of a range ofEnglish words that go back to Latin testis‘witness’. This was derived from a prehistoricIndo-European base *tris- ‘three’, and sodenoted etymologically a ‘third person’, whowas not party to an agreement and thus could bea disinterested witness to it. Other Englishmembers of the testis family include testicle [15](which etymologically ‘bears witness’ to aman’s virility), testify [14], testimony [14], andthe prefixed forms attest [16], contest, detest,intestate [14], and protest. The use of testamentfor ‘will’ was inspired by the notion of a‘witnessed’ document. Its application to the twoparts of the Bible arose from a mistranslation ofGreek diathékē, which meant both ‘covenant’and ‘will, testament’. It was used for the‘covenant’ between God and human beings, butLatin translators rendered it as if it were beingused for ‘will’ rather than ‘covenant’. ATTEST, CONTEST, DETEST, INTESTATE,PROTEST, TESTICLE, TESTIFY, TESTIMONY,THREEtesty [14] Testy means etymologically ‘heady’. Itwas borrowed from Anglo-Norman testif, aderivative of Old French teste ‘head’ (ancestor ofmodern French tête). This in turn went back toLatin testa ‘tile, earthenware pot’ (a relative oftestum, from which English gets test), which inthe post-classical period was used humorouslyfor ‘head’. English acquired testy in the sense‘headstrong, impetuous’, but by the 16th centuryit had shifted via ‘impatient’ to ‘irritable’. TESTtext [14] Latin texere meant ‘weave’ (this wasactually a secondary sense, its original meaningbeing ‘build’, and it went back ultimately to theIndo-European base *tek- ‘make’, source also ofEnglish technical). Its past participle textus wasused as a noun meaning ‘woven material’, andhence metaphorically ‘literary composition’.English acquired it via Old French texte. OtherEnglish words from the same source includecontext [15], pretext [16], subtle, textile [17],texture [15], tissue, and toilet. ARCHITECT, CONTEXT, PRETEXT, SUBTLE,TECHNICAL, TEXTURE, TISSUE, TOILETthan [OE] Than is ultimately the same word asthen, and the two were used interchangeablyuntil the end of the 17th century. It is not clearhow the adverb came to be used as a conjunctiondenoting comparison, although it is possible thatthe comparison implicit in expressions like ‘Thisone is better; then there is that one’ may have ledon to ‘This one is better than that one’. THENthank [OE] The notion of ‘gratitude’ in modernEnglish thank arose out of an earlier‘thoughtfulness’. For the word goes backultimately to prehistoric Germanic *thank-,*thengk-, which also produced English think,and the noun thank originally meant ‘thought’ (a12th-century translation of the gospels has‘From the heart come evil thanks’ Matthew15:19, where the Authorized Version gives ‘Outof the heart proceed evil thoughts’). The sense‘thought’ graduated via ‘favourable thought,good will’ to ‘gratitude’. It was originallysingular, and the modern plural usage did notemerge until the 14th century. Thank you firstappeared in the 15th century, short for I thankyou. THINK

that [OE] That is a very ancient word, going rightback to prehistoric Indo-European *tad (sourcealso of Greek tó ‘the’ and Russian tot’, ta, to‘that’). Its original function in English was as theneuter form of a demonstrative pronoun. Thiscame to be used as the definite article (modernEnglish the), but as the grammatical gendersystem began to break down in the early MiddleEnglish period, that broke away from thedefinite article and began to be used as ademonstrative adjective. Its use as a relativepronoun goes back to the Old English period. THEthatch [OE] To thatch a building isetymologically to ‘cover’ it; the notion of ‘straw’is a secondary development. The word goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *tog-,*teg- ‘cover’ (source also of English detect,integument, protect, tile, and toga). Its Germanicdescendant was *thak- (source of German dach‘roof’ and English deck). From this was derived*thakjan, which gave English thatch. DECK, DETECT, INTEGUMENT, PROTECT, THUG,TILE, TOGAthe [OE] The nominative forms of the OldEnglish definite article were se (masculine), sēo(feminine), and thæt (neuter – ancestor ofmodern English that). In the late Old Englishperiod se was replaced by the, probably aneroded version of that and perhaps the sameword as the Old English relative particle the. Itsdrafting in to take the place of se was no doubtpromoted by the fact that all the inflected formsof the Old English definite article (thone, thæm,thæs, etc) began with th-. When the distinctionbetween genders began to die out in the earlyMiddle English period, the took over as thegeneral form. THAT, THEN, THERE, THIS, THOUGHtheatre [14] A theatre is etymologically a placefor ‘looking at’ something. The word comes viaOld French theatre and Latin theātrum fromGreek théātron. This was derived from the verbtheásthai ‘watch, look at’, whose base thea- alsoproduced English theory. It was first used inEnglish for the open-air amphitheatres of theancient world; its application to contemporaryplayhouses dates from the end of the 16thcentury. THEORYtheft see THIEFtheir [12] Like they and them, their was borrowedfrom Old Norse. Its source was theirra, thegenitive plural form of the demonstrativeadjective sá. The pronoun form theirs [13] is anEnglish creation. THEM, THEYthem [12] The Old English set of forms of thethird person plural pronoun was hīe, hiera, andhim. These were replaced at the end of the OldEnglish period by they, their, and them, whichcame from Old Norse, but the colloquial ’em forthem is a lineal descendant of him. THEIR, THEYtheme [13] Greek théma denoted etymologically‘something placed’, hence a ‘proposition’ (it503 thermometerwas formed from the base *the-, source also oftithénai ‘place, put’ and distant relative ofEnglish do). English acquired the word via Latinthēma and Old French *teme as teme, but soonreverted to the Latin spelling. DOthen [OE] Then was formed from the ancientdemonstrative base *ta-, which also underliesEnglish that and there. Its West Germanicrelatives include German dann and Dutch dan. Itis ultimately the same word as than. THAN, THE, THEREtheology [14] Greek theós meant ‘god’.(Despite the more than passing similarity, it isnot related to Latin deus ‘god’, source of Englishdeity. Its precise ancestry has never beendetermined. It may go back ultimately to theIndo-European base *dhē- ‘put, place’, whichalso produced English do, but it could equallywell have been borrowed from a non-Indo-European source.) From it was derived theologíā‘study of divine things’, which passed intoEnglish via Latin theologia and Old Frenchtheologie, and also apothéōsis ‘deification’,from which English gets apotheosis [17]. APOTHEOSIStheory [16] The etymological notion underlyingtheory is of ‘looking’; only secondarily did itdevelop via ‘contemplation’ to ‘mentalconception’. It comes via late Latin theōria fromGreek theōríā ‘contemplation, speculation,theory’. This was a derivative of theōrós‘spectator’, which was formed from the basethea- (source also of theásthai ‘watch, look at’,from which English gets theatre). Also derivedfrom theōrós was theōreín ‘look at’, whichformed the basis of theórēma ‘speculation,intuition, theory’, acquired by English via lateLatin theōrēma as theorem [16]. From the samesource comes theoretical [17]. THEATREtherapy [19] Greek théraps denoted an‘attendant’. From it was derived the verbtherapeúein ‘attend, administer treatment to’,which itself produced two further derivatives:therapeíā ‘treatment’, which gave Englishtherapy, and therapeutés ‘person whoadministers treatment’, source of the adjectivetherapeutikós, from which English getstherapeutic [16].there [OE] There was formed in prehistoricGermanic from the demonstrative base *tha-(which also underlies English that and then) andthe suffix -r used in making adverbs of place (itoccurs also in English here and where). ItsGermanic relatives include German da, Dutchdaar, and Swedish and Danish der. HERE, THE, THEN, WHEREthermometer [17] Greek thérmē meant ‘heat’(it came from prehistoric Indo-European*ghwerm-, *ghworm-, which probably alsoproduced English warm). From it was formedFrench thermomètre (first recorded in 1624),which was borrowed into English in the early1630s. The same source produced English therm[19] and thermal [18]; and thermos (from the

thesaurus 504related Greek thermós ‘hot’) was registered as atrademark for a vacuum flask in 1907. WARMthesaurus see TREASUREthese [13] The Old English plural of this wasthās or thōs. This evolved into those, whichcame to be used as the plural of that, and it wasreplaced as the plural of this by thise, formedfrom this with the plural ending -e, which in duecourse turned into these. THISthesis [14] Greek thésis meant literally a‘placing’ or ‘laying down’ (it was derived fromthe verb tithénai ‘put, place’, which also gaveEnglish apothecary). It evolved metaphoricallyto ‘proposition’, and passed in this sense via lateLatin thesis into English. APOTHECARY, BODEGA, BOUTIQUEthey [12] Like their and them, they was borrowedfrom Old Norse. Its source was their, the pluralform of the demonstrative adjective sá, and itreplaced the native Old English pronoun hīe. THEIR, THEMthick [OE] Thick comes from a prehistoricGermanic *thekwia-, which also producedGerman dick, Dutch dik, Swedish tjock, andDanish tyk. It is related to Welsh tew and Bretonteo ‘thick’, but its ultimate antecedents are notknown. Thicket [OE] is a derivative.thief [OE] Thief goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *theubaz, which also producedGerman dieb, Dutch dief, Swedish tjuf, andDanish tyv. It is not clear where this came from,although it might be related to Lithuanian tupeti‘cower, squat’ and Latvian tupt ‘squat’, in whichcase it would denote etymologically ‘crouching,furtive person’. From *theubaz was derived*thiūbithō, ancestor of modern English theft. THEFTthigh [OE] The thigh is etymologically the‘plump’ part of the leg. Together with Dutch dij,it evolved from a prehistoric Germanic*theukham. This went back to Indo-European*teuk-, *tauk-, *tuk-, which also producedLithuanian táukas ‘fat’. And these in turn wereextensions of the base *tu- ‘swell’, source ofEnglish thousand, thumb, tumour, etc. THOUSAND, THUMB, TUMOURthimble [OE] A thimble is etymologically a‘thumb implement’. The word goes back to OldEnglish thmel, a derivative of thūma ‘thumb’.In Old English (where it is recorded only once)it was used for a ‘finger-stall’. By the time itreappears in the 15th century we find it beingapplied to a ‘leather finger-protector used forpushing in a needle’, and it was extended tometal thimbles, introduced in the 17th century. THUMBthin [OE] Thin denotes etymologically‘stretched’. It goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *ten- ‘stretch’, which alsoproduced Latin tenuis ‘thin’ (source of Englishtenuous) and Latin tendere ‘stretch’ (source ofEnglish tend, tense, etc). From this wasdescended prehistoric Germanic *thunnuz,which has evolved into German dünn, Dutchdun, Swedish tunn, Danish tynd, and Englishthin. TEND, TENSE, TENUOUSthing [OE] The ancestral meaning of thing is‘time’: it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*thingam, which was related to Gothic theihs‘time’, and may come ultimately from the Indo-European base *ten- ‘stretch’ (source of Englishtend, tense, etc). In Germanic it evolvedsemantically via ‘appointed time’ to ‘judicial orlegislative assembly’. This was the meaning itoriginally had in English, and it survives in otherGermanic languages (the Icelandic parliament isknown as the Althing, literally ‘generalassembly’). In English, however, it moved onthrough ‘subject for discussion at such anassembly’ to ‘subject in general, affair, matter’and finally ‘entity, object’. (The ancient meaning‘assembly’ is preserved in fossilized form inEnglish husting, etymologically a ‘houseassembly’). HUSTINGthink [OE] Think goes back to an Old Englishthencan. This was a variant of thyncan ‘seem,appear’, which survives in the archaic methinks(literally ‘it seems to me’), and soetymologically think probably carries the notionof ‘causing images, reflections, etc to appear tooneself, in one’s brain’. The noun thought comesfrom the same prehistoric Germanic base asproduced the verb (as does English thank).Related Germanic forms include German andDutch denken, Swedish tänka, and Danishtænke. THANK, THOUGHTthird [OE] Third goes back ultimately to an Indo-European *tritjos, an ordinal derivative of thebase that produced English three. Amongst itsother descendants were Greek trítos, Latintertius (source of English tertiary [16]), Russiantretij, Polish trzeci, Latvian trešais, and Welshtryddydd. In prehistoric Germanic it became*thrithjaz, which has evolved into Germandritte, Dutch derde, Swedish and Danish tredje,and English third. THREEthirst [OE] The etymological notion underlyingthe word thirst is of being ‘dry’. For it goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *trs, *tors-‘dry’, which also produced Latin torrēre ‘parch’(source of English toast, torrid, etc). From thiswas formed the prehistoric West Germanic noun*thurstu, which has evolved into German durst,Dutch dorst, and English thirst. TERRACE, TOAST, TORRIDthis [OE] This is descended from the neuter formof the Old English demonstrative adjective andpronoun whose masculine form was thes. It wasformed in the prehistoric Germanic period fromthe demonstrative base *tha- (source also ofEnglish that, there, etc) and a suffix *-se whichhad the function of indicating a specific thing. THE, THOSEthong [OE] Etymologically, a thong issomething that ‘binds’ up. The word comes froma prehistoric Germanic *thwangg-, which also

produced German zwang ‘constraint’. In the OldEnglish period it was thwong; it began to lose itsw in the 13th century.thorn [OE] Thorn is an ancient word, which goesall the way back to an Indo-European *trnus.The Germanic descendant of this was *thurnuz,which evolved into German dorn, Dutch doorn,Swedish and Danish torn, and English thorn.thorough [OE] Thorough is ultimately the sameword as through. Both go back to Old Englishthurh ‘through’. In its single-syllable form it hasstuck to its original role as a preposition andadverb, but in the case of thorough this has nowvirtually died out, leaving only the adjective,which evolved in the 13th century from thenotion of going ‘through’ something so as toaffect every part. THRILL, THROUGHthose [OE] Originally, those was the plural ofthis. It did not move across to that until theMiddle English period, gradually replacing itsprevious plural thō. The game of musical chairswas completed by these, which was a newformation based on this. THISthough [12] English borrowed though from OldNorse thōh, and by the end of the 15th century ithad virtually wiped out the related native form,which went back to Old English thēah.Both came from a prehistoric Germanicadverb formed from the demonstrative base*tha- (source also of English that, there, etc) anda suffix meaning ‘and’. Modern Germanicrelatives include German and Dutch doch. THEthought [OE] Thought comes from a prehistoricGermanic noun *gathangkht-, which wasformed from the same base as produced Englishthink. Its modern Germanic relatives includeGerman gedächtnis ‘memory’ and Dutchgedachte ‘thought’. THANK, THINKthousand [OE] Thousand is a compound nounof some antiquity, which seems to meanetymologically ‘several hundreds’. Its firstelement probably comes from a base denoting‘increase’ or ‘multiplicity’, which also producedLatin tumēre ‘swell’ (source of English tumour)and Sanskrit tuvi ‘much’; its second element isthe same as the first element of English hundred.The combination resulted in a prehistoricGermanic *thusundi, which evolved intoGerman tausend, Dutch duizend, Swedish tusen,Danish tusind, and English thousand. It is sharedby the Slavic languages – Russian, for instance,has tysjacha. HUNDRED, THIGH, THUMB, TUMOURthrash see THRESHOLDthread [OE] A thread is etymologicallysomething ‘twisted’. The word comes from aprehistoric Germanic *thrǣthuz, which wasderived from the base *thrǣ- ‘twist’ (source alsoof English throw). Other descendants of*thrǣthuz include Dutch draad, Swedish tråd,505 thriveand Danish traad ‘thread’ and German draht‘wire’. THROWthreat [OE] Threat originally meant ‘trouble,oppression’; ‘expression of an intention to doharm’ is a secondary sense, which arose out ofthe notion of ‘putting pressure’ on someone. Itcame from a prehistoric base *thraut-, *threut-,*thrut-, which probably went back to Indo-European *trud- ‘push, press’ (source also ofLatin trūdere ‘thrust’, from which English getsabstruse, intrude, etc, and probably also ofEnglish thrust). ABSTRUSE, INTRUDEthree [OE] Three goes back to a prehistoric Indo-European *trejes, which also produced Greektreis, Latin trēs, Russian tri, Sanskrit tráyas, etc.Its Germanic descendant was *thrijiz, which hasevolved into German drei, Dutch drie, Swedishand Danish tre, and English three. Amongstthree’s many relations in English are treble,trellis [14] (etymologically something madefrom ‘three threads’), trinity, trio [18], triple,tripod [17] (etymologically something with‘three feet’), trivial and possibly also travail andtribe. DRILL, TESTAMENT, THIRD, TRAVAIL, TREBLE,TRELLIS, TRIBE, TRINITY, TRIO, TRIPLE, TRIPOD,TRIVET, TRIVIALthreshold [OE] The first element of threshold isidentical with English thresh [OE]. This seemsto go back ultimately to a prehistoric source thatdenoted ‘making noise’ (the apparently relatedOld Church Slavonic tresku meant ‘crash’, andLithuanian has trešketi ‘crack, rattle’). By thetime it reached Germanic, as *thresk-, it wasprobably being used for ‘stamp the feet noisily’,and it is this secondary notion of ‘stamping’ or‘treading’ that lies behind threshold – as beingsomething you ‘tread’ on as you go through adoor. Thresh by the time it reached English hadspecialized further still, to mean ‘separate grainsfrom husks by stamping’, and this later evolvedto simply ‘separate grains from husks’. Thrash[OE], which originated as a variant of thresh, hastaken the further semantic step to ‘beat, hit’. It isnot known where the second element ofthreshold came from. THRASH, THRESHthrift see THRIVEthrill [13] Etymologically, thrill denotes ‘make ahole in’. It is a Middle English alteration of OldEnglish thrlian ‘pierce’, a derivative of thrl‘hole’ (source of the second syllable of nostril).And this in turn was formed from thurh‘through’. The notion of ‘making a hole’ led inthe 16th century to the metaphorical ‘pierce withemotion’, but the narrowing down of this to ‘fillwith pleasure’ seems to be a comparativelyrecent development, from the late 19th century.Its earlier wider connotations are preserved inthe derivative thriller ‘exciting story’ [19]. NOSTRIL, THROUGHthrive [13] Thrive was borrowed from Old Norsethrífask ‘grasp for oneself’, hence ‘prosper’, thereflexive form of thrífa ‘grasp, seize’ (whose

throat 506origins are not known). The word’s semanticdevelopment from ‘grasp for oneself’ to‘prosper’ was presumably inspired by the notionof ‘accumulating resources’. Thrift [13],borrowed from the Old Norse derivative thrift,originally meant ‘thriving’; the modern sense‘frugality’ evolved in the 16th century –frugality being thought of as a prerequisite forprosperity. THRIFTthroat [OE] Throat comes from a prehistoricGermanic base *thrut- or *thrūt-. This alsoproduced Old English thrūtian ‘swell’, and arelated base *strut- was the source of the nowdefunct Middle English strouten ‘bulge, swell’(not to mention Dutch strot ‘throat’), so it hasbeen speculated that the underlyingetymological meaning of throat is ‘swollen part’– an allusion no doubt to the bulge of the Adam’sapple. Throttle [14] is probably a derivative ofthroat. THROTTLEthrong [13] The etymological notion underlyingthrong is of ‘pressing together’. It was borrowedfrom Old Norse throng ‘crowd’, which wentback ultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base*thringg- ‘press’ (source also of German drang‘crowd, pressure’ and dringen ‘press’). Amongstits non-Germanic relatives is Old Persianthraxta- ‘closely-packed’.throttle see THROATthrough [OE] Through comes from a prehistoricWest Germanic *thurkh, which also producedGerman durch and Dutch door. Its ultimatesource was the Indo-European base *tr-, whichalso produced Latin trans ‘across’. Thorough ishistorically the same word as through. NOSTRIL, THOROUGH, THRILLthrow [OE] Old English thrāwan meant ‘twist,turn’. It came from a prehistoric Germanic*thrējan, which also produced German drehen‘turn’. This in turn went back to the Indo-European base *ter-, whose other descendantsinclude Greek teírein ‘wear out’, Latin terere‘rub’ (source of English attrition [14], contrition[13], and trite [16]), Lithuanian trinù ‘rub, file,saw’, Welsh taradr ‘auger’, and English threadand turn. It is not clear how the original sense‘twist, turn’ (which survives in ‘throwing a pot’on a potter’s wheel) evolved in English into‘project, hurl’ (first recorded in the 13thcentury), but presumably there must have beensome intermediate phase such as ‘throw with atwisting action – as in throwing the discus’. ATTRITION, CONTRITION, THREAD, TRITE, TURNthrush Thrush the bird [OE] and thrush thedisease [17] are presumably different words,although the origins of the latter are obscure.The bird-name goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *thruskjōn, and has relatives in Latinturdus ‘thrush’ (source of English sturdy),German drossel ‘thrush’, and the now archaicEnglish throstle ‘thrush’. The first record wehave of thrush the disease is in Samuel Pepys’sdiary, for 17 June 1665: ‘He hath a fever, athrush, and a hickup’. It may have been ofScandinavian origin (Danish has troske for asimilar disease).thrust [12] Thrust was borrowed from Old Norsethrýsta ‘thrust, compress’. It probably goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *trud-‘push, press’, whose other descendants includeLatin trūdere ‘thrust’ (source of Englishabstruse, intrude, etc) and probably also Englishthreat.thug [19] Hindi thag means literally ‘robber,cheat’ (it is descended from Sanskrit sthaga‘robber’, a derivative of sthagati ‘cover, hide’,which goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *steg-, *teg- ‘cover’, source alsoof English deck, detect, integument, protect,thatch, etc). It came to be applied to members ofa band of professional thieves and murderers inIndia, whose preferred method of dispatchingtheir victims was strangulation (their other namewas phansigar, literally ‘strangler’); and Englishtook it over in the 1830s as a general term for a‘brutally violent person’. DECK, DETECT, PROTECT, THATCHthumb [OE] The thumb is etymologically the‘swollen’ part – an allusion to its greaterthickness than the other fingers. Along with itsrelatives German daumen and Dutch duim, itgoes back to a prehistoric West Germanic*thūmon. This in turn can be traced to Indo-European *tum- ‘swell’, which also producedEnglish tumour and tumult. The b in thumbappeared in the early Middle English period,when it was still a two-syllable word (thumbe),and at first was pronounced, but it has fallensilent over the centuries. THIGH, THIMBLE, TUMOUR, TUMULTthunder [OE] Etymologically, thunder isnothing more than ‘noise’. In common withGerman donner, Dutch donder, and Danishtorden, it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic*thonara-. This was descended from the Indo-European base *ton-, *tn- ‘resound’, which alsoproduced the Latin verb tonāre ‘thunder’ (sourceof English astound, detonate, and stun) and theLatin noun tonitrus ‘thunder’ (source of Frenchtonnerre ‘thunder’). Thursday is etymologicallythe ‘day of thunder’. ASTOUND, DETONATE, STUN, THURSDAY,TORNADOThursday [OE] The Romans called the fourthday of the week diēs Iovis ‘Jupiter’s day’. Whenthe Germanic peoples took over their system ofnaming days after the gods, or the planets theyrepresented, they replaced Jupiter, the Romansky-god, with the Germanic god of thunder,Thor, whose name comes from the same sourceas English thunder. This produced a prehistoricGermanic *thonaras daga-, which evolved intoOld English thunresdæg. The modern formThursday is partly due to association with OldNorse thórsdagr. THUNDERthus [OE] Thus is something of a mystery word.It presumably belongs to the family of words(that, there, etc) that go back to the prehistoricGermanic demonstrative base *tha-, but how its

fits into the family tree is not clear. Its only closerelative is Dutch dus ‘thus’.thwart [13] Thwart was originally an adverb andadjective, meaning ‘across, crosswise’. It washowever used as a verb, meaning ‘obstruct’(from the metaphorical notion of ‘crossing’someone) as early as the 13th century. It wasborrowed from Old Norse thvert, the neuter formof thverr ‘transverse’. This went back to aprehistoric Germanic *thwerkhwaz (possiblesource also of English queer), which in turn wasdescended from Indo-European *twork-,*twerk- ‘twist’ (source also of English torch,torment, torture, etc). How the noun thwart ‘seatacross a boat’ [18] fits into the picture is notaltogether clear. Its modern meaning clearlyconnects it with thwart ‘across’, but the notion of‘crosswise’ may have been a secondarydevelopment. For an earlier noun thought ‘seatin a boat’ existed, which came ultimately fromOld English thofta ‘rower’s bench’, and it couldbe that thwart the modern English nounrepresents a blending, both formal and semantic,of thwart ‘across’ with the now obsoletethought. QUEER, TORCH, TORMENT, TORTUREthyroid [18] The thyroid glands are situated inthe neck, and they get their name ultimately froma comparison of the shape of the large oblongcartilage in front of the throat (which includesthe Adam’s apple) with that of a door. The wordcomes via early modern French thyroide fromGreek thuroidés ‘door-shaped’, an alteration ofthureoeidés, which was derived from thúrā‘door’ (a relative of English door). The termkhóndros thureoiedés, literally ‘door-shapedcartilage’, was used by the Greek physicianGalen for the ‘cartilage in front of the throat’(now known in English as the thyroid cartilage). DOOR, FOREIGNtick English now has no fewer than four distinctwords tick in general use. The oldest, tick ‘mite’[OE], comes from a prehistoric West Germanic*tik-, which may be related to Armenian tiz‘bug’. Tick ‘sound of a clock, mark ofcorrectness, etc’ [13] originally meant broadly‘light touch, tap’; its modern uses are secondaryand comparatively recent developments (‘soundof a clock’ appears to have evolved in the 16thcentury, and ‘mark of correctness’ did notemerge until the 19th century). Tickle [14] isprobably a derivative. Tick ‘mattress case’ [15]was borrowed from Middle Dutch tēke, whichwent back via Latin thēca to Greek thékē ‘cover,case’. And tick ‘credit’ [17] (as in on tick) isshort for ticket. TICKLE; TICKETticket [16] Ticket was adapted from early modernFrench étiquet ‘ticket, label’, whose present-daydescendant étiquette has given English etiquette.The etymological notion underlying étiquet wasof ‘sticking’ a label on, for it was derivedultimately from the Old French verb estiquier‘stick’, a borrowing from Middle Dutch steken‘stick’ – to which English stick is related. ETIQUETTE, STICK507 tighttickle see TICKtide [OE] Tide originally meant ‘time’ – as in thetautologous ‘time and tide wait for no man’. Likethe related German zeit, Dutch tijd, and Swedishand Danish tid, all of which mean ‘time’, itcomes from a prehistoric Germanic *tīdiz. Thiswas derived from the base *tī- (source also ofEnglish time), which in turn went back to theIndo-European base *dī- ‘divide, cut up’ – soetymologically the word denotes ‘time cut up,portion of time’. This notion of a ‘period’ or‘season’ is preserved in now rather archaicexpression such as Christmastide, Whitsuntide,and noontide. The application to the rise and fallof the sea, which emerged in the 14th century, isdue to the influence of the related Middle LowGerman tīde and Middle Dutch ghetīde, where itpresumably arose from the notion of the ‘fixedtime’ of the high and low points of the tide.Betide [13] was formed from the now archaicverb tide ‘happen’, a derivative of the noun. BETIDE, TIDY, TIMEtidings [OE] Tidings is etymologically ‘thatwhich happens’. It is closely related to Englishtide, in the sense ‘happen’ (as in betide). It wasadapted from Old Norse títhendi ‘happenings,events, news’, a derivative of the adjective títhr‘happening’. A similar semantic developmentfrom ‘events’ to ‘news of events’ lies behind therelated German zeitung ‘newspaper’.tidy [13] Tidy originally meant ‘timely,seasonable’ (it was a derivative of tide, in thenow superannuated sense ‘time, season’). Itearly on evolved metaphorically to ‘goodlooking’,and hence ‘good’, but the modernsense ‘neat’ did not emerge until the 18thcentury. Titivate [19] may have been based ontidy. TIDE, TITIVATEtie [OE] Tie comes from a prehistoric Germanic*taugian. This was derived from the base*taukh-, *teuk- ‘pull’ (source also of Englishteam and tug and closely related to tow). Andthis in turn went back to Indo-European *deuk-,which also produced Latin dūcere ‘lead’ (sourceof English duct, duke, etc). The use of the nountie for a ‘necktie’ dates from the mid 18thcentury. DUCT, DUKE, EDUCATE, TEAM, TEEM, TOW, TUGtiger [13] English got tiger via Old French tigreand Latin tigris from Greek tígris, a wordpresumably of oriental origin. It was originallytaken over directly from Latin in the Old Englishperiod as tigras, but this did not survive.tight [14] Tight originally meant ‘dense’ (‘Hissquire rode all night in a wood that was fulltight’, Torrent of Portugal 1435). It appears tohave been an alteration of an earlier thight‘dense, thickset’, which was borrowed from OldNorse théttr ‘watertight, dense’. And this, likeGerman and Dutch dicht ‘dense, close’, camefrom a prehistoric Germanic *thingkhtaz, whoseother relatives include Lithuanian tankus ‘thick,standing close together’, Irish contēcim‘coagulate’, and Sanskrit tañc- ‘contract’. The

tilde 508sense ‘firmly fixed’ developed in the 16thcentury, ‘drunk’ in the 19th century.tilde see TITLEtile [OE] A tile is etymologically a ‘cover’. Theword comes ultimately from Latin tēgula ‘tile’, aderivative of the same Indo-European base asproduced English deck and thatch and Latintegere ‘cover’ (source of English detect, protect,etc). Tēgula was borrowed into prehistoric WestGermanic as *tegala, which evolved intoGerman ziegel, Dutch tegel, and English tile. DECK, DETECT, PROTECT, THATCH, TOGAtill English has three distinct words till, but two ofthem are probably related. The etymologicalnotion underlying till ‘cultivate the soil’ [OE] isof ‘striving to obtain a goal’. Indeed, that is whatits Old English ancestor tilian originally meant;‘cultivate’ is a late Old English development, viaan intermediate ‘labour’. The verb comes from aprehistoric Germanic *tilōjan, a derivative of thenoun *tilam ‘aim, purpose’ (source of Germanziel ‘goal’). This passed into Old English as till‘fixed point’, which seems to have beenconverted into a preposition meaning ‘up to aparticular point (originally in space, but soonalso in time)’. The compound until dates fromthe 13th century; its first element was borrowedfrom Old Norse *und ‘till’. The origins of till‘money box’ [15] are uncertain.tiller see TOILtilt [14] Tilt originally meant ‘fall over’; the sense‘slant’ is not recorded before the 16th century.The word is probably descended from anunrecorded Old English *tyltan, whose ultimatesource would have been the prehistoricGermanic adjective *taltaz ‘unsteady’ (ancestoralso of Swedish tulta ‘totter’). Tilt ‘joust’ (firstrecorded in the 16th century) has traditionallybeen regarded as the same word, basedpresumably on the notion of making one’sopponent ‘fall over’, but this is not certain.timber [OE] Timber originally denoted a‘building’ – the Lindisfarne Gospels of around950 translated Mark 13:1 (‘See what manner ofstones and what buildings are here’) as ‘Seewhat stones and what timber’. It comes from aprehistoric Germanic *timram, whose Germandescendant zimmer ‘room’ has remained closerto its semantic roots (but German zimmermannmeans ‘carpenter’). And this in turn went back toIndo-European *demrom, a derivative of thebase *dem-, *dom- ‘build’, from which Englishalso gets dome, domestic, etc. The sense‘building’ gradually developed into ‘buildingmaterial’, then ‘wood used for building’, andfinally ‘wood’ in general. DOME, DOMESTICtimbre see TIMPANItime [OE] Time originally denoted ‘delimitedsection of existence, period’. Its ultimate sourceis the Indo-European base *dī- ‘cut up, divide’.This passed into prehistoric Germanic as *tī-(source also of English tide), and addition of thesuffix *-mon- produced *tīmon – whenceEnglish time and Swedish timme ‘hour’. Theapplication of the word to the more generalized,abstract notion of ‘continuous duration’ datesfrom the 14th century. TIDEtimid [16] The Latin verb timēre meant ‘fear’ (itsorigins are not known). From it were derived theadjective timidus (source of English timid) andthe noun timor ‘fear’ (whose medieval Latindescendant timorōsus ‘fearful’ gave Englishtimorous [15]). TIMOROUStimpani [16] Timpani was borrowed fromItalian, where it is the plural of timpano‘kettledrum’. This in turn went back via Latintympanum ‘drum’ (source of English tympanum‘ear-drum’ [17]) to Greek túmpanon ‘drum’, aclose relative of the verb túptein ‘hit’. Part of thesame word-family is timbre ‘sound-quality’[19], whose French antecedent meant ‘bell hitwith a hammer’. TIMBRE, TYMPANUMtin [OE] Tin is a general Germanic word, withrelatives in German zinn, Dutch and Danish tin,and Swedish tenn. These point to a commonancestor *tinam, but where this came from is notknown. The word was first used for a ‘tin can’ inthe early 19th century. Tinker may be related.tincture see TINGEtinder [OE] Tinder, and its relatives Germanzunder, Dutch tonder, and Swedish tunder, goback to a prehistoric Germanic base *tund-‘ignite, kindle’, which also produced Germananzünden, Swedish upptända, and Danishantænde ‘kindle’. Its ultimate origins are notknown. The now clichéd tinder-dry is firstrecorded in Rudyard Kipling’s Light That Failed1891: ‘the tinder-dry clumps of scrub’.tinge [15] Etymologically, tinge denotes ‘soak,moisten’. That is what its Latin source, tingere,originally meant. The notion of ‘colour’ comesfrom a secondary Latin sense, ‘dye’, which arosefrom the concept of ‘dipping in liquid dye’. TheLatin past participle, tinctus, lies behind Englishtaint [14], tincture [14], and tint [18]. TAINT, TINCTURE, TINTtinker [13] Etymologically, a tinker is probably a‘worker in tin’. It could well be descended froman unrecorded Old English *tinecere, a plausiblederivative of tin. There is an alternativepossibility, however: it may have been derivedfrom the now obsolete verb tink ‘tinkle’ (which,like tinkle [14] itself, was of imitative origin), inallusion to the metallic sounds made by tinkersrepairing pots (northern and Scottish dialectshad the word tinkler for ‘tinker’).tinsel [16] Tinsel is etymologically somethingthat ‘sparkles’. Its ultimate source is Latinscintilla ‘spark’, which has also given Englishscintillate [17]. This was altered in the postclassicalperiod to *stincilla, which passed intoOld French as estincele ‘spark’. From this wasderived the adjective estincelé ‘sparkling’,which was applied particularly to fabric withmetallic thread woven into it. English took thisover as tinselle, originally an adjective but soonused as a noun. Its derogatory connotations of

‘gaudiness’ or ‘cheap glamour’ began to emergein the 17th century. SCINTILLATE, STENCILtint see TINGEtip English has three distinct words tip, two ofthem possibly related. Tip ‘extremity’ [15] wasprobably borrowed from Old Norse typpi. Thiswas descended from prehistoric Germanic*tupp- ‘upper extremity’ (source also of Englishtop and toupee). Tip ‘touch lightly’ [13] (as in‘tip-and-run cricket’) may have been borrowedfrom Low German tippen, although it could bethe same word as tip ‘extremity’ (from thenotion of ‘just touching something with the tip ofsomething else’). It was used in 17th-centuryunderworld argot for ‘give’ (as in ‘tip someonethe wink’), and this evolved in the 18th centuryto ‘give a gratuity’. The antecedents of tip‘overturn’ [14] (originally tipe) are not known,although the fact that it first appeared in northerndialects suggests that it may have been borrowedfrom a Scandinavian language. The derived tipsy[16] denotes etymologically ‘liable to fall over’. TOP, TOUPEE; TIPSYtire [OE] Tire is something of a mystery word. Itwas relatively common in the Old English period(where it originally meant ‘fail, cease, come toan end’ – ‘become weary’ is a secondarydevelopment), but then it disappeared, to returnin the 14th century. Nor is anything certainknown about its pre-English ancestry, although itmay go back to the Indo-European base *deus-(source also of Sanskrit dosa- ‘fault, lack’). Theuse of the past participle tired as an adjectivedates from the late 14th century.tissue [14] Tissue is etymologically ‘woven’cloth. The word was borrowed from Old Frenchtissu ‘fine woven cloth’, which was a noun use ofthe past participle of tistre ‘weave’. This in turnwas descended from Latin texere ‘weave’(source of English text, texture, etc). Theapplication of the word to ‘physiologicalsubstance’ dates from the early 19th century.The original notion of weaving is preservedmetaphorically in expressions such as ‘tissue oflies’. TECHNICAL, TEXT, TEXTURE, TOILETtit English has three separate words tit. Theoldest, ‘breast’ [OE], belongs to a WestGermanic family of terms for ‘breast’ or ‘nipple’that also includes German zitze and Dutch tit: itpresumably originated in imitation of a baby’ssucking sounds. From Germanic it wasborrowed into the Romance languages, givingItalian tetta, Spanish teta, Romanian tata, andFrench tette. The Old French ancestor of this,tete, gave English teat [13], which graduallyreplaced tit as the ‘polite’ term. (Titillate [17]may be ultimately related). Tit the bird [18] isshort for titmouse [14]. This in turn was formedfrom an earlier and now defunct tit, used incompounds denoting ‘small things’ andprobably borrowed from a Scandinavianlanguage, and Middle English mose ‘titmouse’,which came from a prehistoric Germanic*maisōn (source also of German meise and509 toadDutch mees ‘tit’). And the tit [16] of tit for tat(which produced British rhyming slang titfer‘hat’ [20]) originally denoted a ‘light blow, tap’,and was presumably of onomatopoeic origin.(The tit- of titbit [17], incidentally, is probably adifferent word. It was originally tid- – as it stillis in American English – and it may go backultimately to Old English tiddre ‘frail’.) TEAT, TITILLATE; TITMOUSEtitchy [20] Titchy commemorates the ‘Tichborneclaimant’, the title given to Arthur Orton, who,in an English cause célèbre of the 1860s,returned from Australia claiming to be RogerTichborne, the heir to an English baronetcy whohad supposedly been lost at sea. The diminutivemusic-hall comedian Harry Relph (1868–28)bore some resemblance to Orton, and so heacquired the nickname ‘Little Tich’. This in duecourse spread to other small people (the tinyKent and England leg-spinner A P Freeman(1888–1965) was called ‘Tich’), but it does notappear to have been until the 1950s that tich, ortitch, established itself as a colloquial genericterm for a ‘small person’. With it came thederived adjective titchy.tithe [OE] Originally, tithe meant simply a‘tenth’ – a sense that has revived somewhat inrecent years. The specific application to a ‘tenper-cent levy on annual production, paid to theChurch’ dates from the 12th century. It comesfrom Old English tēotha ‘tenth’ (the modernEnglish form tenth arose in the 12th century,through the influence of ten). TENtitillate see TITtitivate see TIDYtitle [13] Title comes via Old French title fromLatin titulus ‘inscription on a tomb or altar, label,title’. Other contributions made by the Latinword to English include entitle [14], tilde [19],tittle [14], and titular [18]. ENTITLE, TILDE, TITTLE, TITULARtitmouse see TITto [OE] To comes from a prehistoric WestGermanic *tō, which also produced German zuand Dutch toe. This went back ultimately to anIndo-European *do, which also producedRussian do ‘to’. Too is historically the sameword as to. TOOtoad [OE] Toad is a mystery word, with noknown relatives in any other Indo-Europeanlanguage. Of its derivatives, toady [19] is shortfor the earlier toad eater ‘sycophant’ [17]. Thisoriginated in the dubious selling methods ofitinerant quack doctors. They employed anassistant who pretended to eat a toad (toads werethought to be poisonous), so that the quack couldappear to effect a miraculous cure with hismedicine. The toad-eating assistant came to be abyword for ‘servility’ or ‘dependency’, andhence for ‘servile flattery’. Toadstools [14] werenamed for their stool-like shape, and alsobecause of an association between poisonousfungi and the supposedly poisonous toad.

toast 510toast [14] Toast comes via Old French toster‘roast, grill’ from Vulgar Latin *tostāre, aderivative of the past participle of Latin torrēre‘parch’ (source of English torrid). Its use as anoun, meaning ‘toasted bread’, dates from the15th century. It was common to put sippets orcroutons of spiced toast into drinks to improvetheir flavour, and it was the custom of gallants inthe 17th century, when (as they frequently did)they drank the health of ladies, to say that thename of the lady in question enhanced theflavour of their drink better than any toast. Thatis supposedly the origin of the use of the termtoast for ‘drinking someone’s health’. THIRST, TORRENT, TORRIDtobacco [16] Tobacco was introduced to Europefrom the Americas, and that is where its namecame from too. It originated in a Carib word, andreached English via Spanish and Portuguesetabaco. What precisely the Carib word meant,however, is a matter of dispute. Some say that itreferred to tobacco leaves rolled up into acylindrical shape for smoking, while othersmaintain that it denoted a pipe for smoking thetobacco in. The word has spread to virtually allEuropean languages (French tabac, German,Dutch, Russian, and Czech tabak, Welsh tybaco,etc), and only a few remnants of alternativeterms remain: Romanian tutun and Polish tytun,for instance, borrowings from Turkish tütün,which originally meant ‘smoke’, and Bretonbutun, which came from pet, the word for‘tobacco’ in the Guarani language of SouthAmerica (source also of English petunia [19], aclose relative of the tobacco plant).toccata see TOUCHtocsin see TOUCHtoday [OE] Today is simply a compoundassembled from the preposition to (in the nowobsolete sense ‘at, on’) and day. Parallelformations are Dutch vandaag (literally ‘from orof day’) and Swedish and Danish i dag (‘inday’). In fact virtually all the terms for ‘today’ inthe European languages contain an elementmeaning ‘day’, but not all of them are as obviousas today, vandaag, and i dag. German heute, forinstance, comes from a prehistoric Germanic*hiu tagu, which meant literally ‘on this day’.Russian segodnja likewise denotesetymologically ‘this day’. And the secondsyllable of Latin hodiē ‘today’ (ancestor ofFrench aujourd’hui, Italian oggi, and Spanishhoy) represents an inflected form of diēs ‘day’.Tomorrow and tonight [OE] were formed on thesame basis.toddy [17] Toddy originally meant ‘palm sap’. Itwas an alteration of an earlier tarry, which wasborrowed from Hindi tārī. This was a derivativeof tār ‘palm tree’, a descendant of Sanskrit tālaor tāra, which in turn was probably borrowedfrom a Dravidian language of southern India(Kannada has tar, Telugu tādu). This palm sapwas used as a drink, often in a potentlyfermented form, and in the 18th century toddycame to denote a hot spirit-based drink.toe [OE] Many European languages use the sameword for ‘finger’ and ‘toe’ (Spanish dedo, forexample, and Russian and Polish palec), andEnglish toe may have originated in such a dualpurposeterm. Its prehistoric Germanic ancestorwas *taikhwōn, and it has been speculated thatthis may be related to Latin digitus ‘finger, toe’(source of English digit). Other descendants ofthe Germanic form include German zehe, Dutchtee, Swedish tåa, and Danish taa. DIGITtoff [19] Toff probably originated as an alterationof tuft [14], which was used from the 18thcentury as an Oxford University slang term for a‘titled undergraduate’ (students who came fromnoble families wore a gold tassel or ‘tuft’ ontheir caps). Tuft itself was adapted from OldFrench tofe or toffe ‘tuft’, a word of Germanicorigin. TUFTtoffee [19] Toffee is one of the mystery words ofEnglish. It is an alteration of an earlier taffy [19](still current in American English), but wherethat came from is not known. The early 19thcenturyspelling toughy suggests that it may havebeen derived from tough, in allusion to thesweet’s texture, but it is probably only a laterfolk-etymologizing rationalization. Anotherpossibility is that it came from tafia ‘rumlikedrink made from molasses’ [18], an alteration ofratafia [17], which was of West Indian Creoleorigin.toga see PROTECTtogethertogether [OE] The etymological notionunderlying together is of ‘gathering’ things intoone group. It was formed from the preposition toand the element *gad- denoting ‘association,company’, which also lies behind gather. GATHERtoil English has two words toil, one of them nowused only in the plural. Toil ‘work’ comes viaAnglo-Norman toiler ‘stir, agitate, wrangle’from Latin tudiculāre ‘stir around’. This wasderived from tudicula ‘mill for crushing olives’,a diminutive form of tudes ‘hammer’, whichwent back to the prehistoric base *tud- ‘hit’,source also of Latin tundere ‘beat, crush’, whichgave English abstruse, protrude, etc. Toils‘entanglements’ represents a plural use of thenow archaic toil ‘net’ [16]. This denotedetymologically ‘something woven’: it came viaOld French toile from Latin tēla, a contraction ofan earlier *texlā, which was derived from thebase *tex- ‘weave’ (source of English text,textile, etc). Toilet [16] was borrowed fromFrench toilette, a diminutive form of toile. Itoriginally meant ‘cloth cover’, but it graduallyevolved via ‘cloth cover for a dressing table’ to‘the act of dressing and grooming oneself’. Thesense ‘lavatory’ emerged in mid 19th-centuryAmerica, from the now obsolete ‘dressing room(with lavatory attached)’, inspired no doubt bythe same delicacy that produced AmericanEnglish bathroom ‘lavatory’. Another memberof the same word-family is tiller [15], whichcame via Anglo-Norman telier ‘weaver’s beam’

from medieval Latin tēlārium, a derivative oftēla. ABSTRUSE, PROTRUDE; TECHNICAL, TEXT,TEXTILE, TEXTURE, TILLER, TISSUE, TOILETtoken [OE] A token is etymologically somethingthat ‘shows’ you something. It comes from aprehistoric Germanic *taiknam, which alsoproduced German zeichen ‘sign’. This in turnwas formed from a base *taik- ‘show’, whichalso produced English teach. TEACHtolerate [16] To tolerate something isetymologically to ‘bear’ it. The word comesfrom the past participle of Latin tolerāre ‘bear,tolerate’. This in turn was formed from a base*tol- ‘lift, carry’, which also underlies Englishextol [15]. EXTOLtoll Toll ‘charge, payment’ [OE] and toll ‘ring abell’ [15] are distinct words. The former wasborrowed into Old English from medieval Latintolōneum ‘place where tolls are collected’, analteration of late Latin telōneum. This in turnwas borrowed from Greek telónion, a derivativeof télos ‘tax’. The ancestry of toll ‘ring a bell’ ismore conjectural. It may be the same word as thelong-obsolete toll ‘pull’, which went back to anOld English *tollian.tombola see TUMBLEtomboy [16] Tomboy originally denoted a ‘rudeor boisterous boy’, but before the end of the 16thcentury it was being applied to a ‘girl whobehaves like a boisterous boy’. Tom (the familiarform of Thomas) is presumably being used todenote ‘maleness’ (here ‘typical maleaggressiveness’).tome [16] Tome comes via French tome andLatin tomus from Greek tómos. This originallymeant ‘slice, piece’ (it went back to theprehistoric Indo-European base *tom-, *tem-‘cut’, which is also responsible for Englishtemple, tonsorial [19], tonsure [14], and thesurgical suffix -tomy ‘cutting’), but it wasextended metaphorically to a ‘cut roll of paper’and eventually to a ‘volume, book’. TEMPLE, TONSORIAL, TONSUREguntommy gun [20] The name of the tommy gun, alightweight hand-held machine gun favoured byChicago gangsters, commemorates itsoriginator: as its full designation, the Thompsonsubmachine gun, reveals, a man calledThompson. He was John T. Thompson (1860–1940), a general in the US Army who had linkswith the Auto-Ordnance Corporation of NewYork City. The idea for the gun was originallyhis, and although it was actually designed byO.V. Payne, it was Thompson’s name that itcarried when it came on the market in 1919. Thesubstitution with the colloquial Tommy is firstrecorded in 1929.tomorrow [OE] Tomorrow was formed(following the model of today) from thepreposition to (here in the sense ‘at, on’) andmorgenne, the dative form of Old English511 toolmorgen ‘morning’, which has evolved intomodern English morn and morrow. MORNINGton [14] Ton originated as a variant of tun ‘barrel’[OE]. At first it was used for a unit of capacity,equal to the space occupied by a tun of wine, butby the end of the 15th century we find it beingapplied to a unit of weight. Tun itself wasacquired from medieval Latin tunna, which wasprobably of Gaulish origin. Another of itsdescendants was Old French tonne, whosediminutive tonel was borrowed into English astunnel [15]. This was originally used for a‘tubular net for catching birds’, and then for a‘chimney flue’ or ‘funnel’. It was not applied toan ‘underground passage’ until as recently as thelate 18th century. TUN, TUNNELtone [14] English acquired tone via Old Frenchton and Latin tonus from Greek tónos‘stretching, tension’, hence ‘sound’. This in turnwent back to the Indo-European base *ton-,*ten- ‘stretch’, which also produced Englishtend, tense, thin, etc. The semantic transferencefrom ‘tension’ to ‘sound’ may have arisen fromthe notion of tightening the strings of a musicalinstrument, but it could also be due toassociation with another Indo-European base*ton-, meaning ‘resound’ (source of Englishthunder). The derivative tonic [17] comesultimately from Greek tonikós. Tune is anunexplained variant of tone. TEND, TENSE, TENUOUS, THIN, TUNEtongs [OE] The etymological notion underlyingthe word tongs is of ‘biting’. It comes from aprehistoric Germanic *tanguz (source also ofGerman zange, Dutch and Danish tang, andSwedish tång), which went back ultimately tothe Indo-European base *dank- ‘bite’ (ancestorof Greek dáknein ‘bite’). (Tong ‘Chinese secretsociety’ [19], incidentally, comes fromCantonese tong ‘assembly hall’.)tongue [OE] Tongue is a general Germanicword, with relatives in German zunge, Dutchtong, Swedish tonga, and Danish tonge. Theseall evolved from a prehistoric Germanic*tunggōn, whose ultimate ancestor was Indo-European *dnghwā-. This also produced Latinlingua ‘tongue, language’ (source of Englishlanguage, linguistic, etc), Welsh tafod ‘tongue’,Russian jazyk ‘tongue’, etc. LANGUAGE, LINGUISTICtonsorial see TOMEtonsure see TOMEtoo [16] Too is historically the same word as to,but the two were not differentiatedorthographically until the 16th century. Thesense ‘also’ comes from the notion of additionimplicit in putting something ‘to’ somethingelse; and ‘addition’ led on to ‘excess’. TOtool [OE] A tool is etymologically an implementused to ‘make’ something. It came from aprehistoric Germanic *tōwlam. This was derivedfrom a base *tōw-, *taw-, which produced avariety of other words with the general sense

tooth 512‘make, prepare, do’ (most of them have now diedout, but survivors include Dutch touwen andEnglish taw ‘make leather’). TAW, TOWtooth [OE] Etymologically, a tooth is an ‘eater’.Its ultimate source is the prehistoric Indo-European base *ed- ‘eat’, which also lies behindEnglish eat and edible. From this was formed thenoun *dont-, *dent- ‘tooth’, whose descendantsinclude Latin dēns ‘tooth’ (source of Englishdentist, indent, trident [16], etc), Greek odón‘tooth’, (source of English odontology [19]),Welsh dant ‘tooth’, and prehistoric Germanic*tanthuz. This evolved into German zahn,Dutch, Swedish, and Danish tand, and Englishtooth. A variant of *tanthuz may lie behindEnglish tusk. DENTIST, EAT, EDIBLE, INDENT, ODONTOLOGY,TRIDENT, TUSKtop English apparently has two distinct wordstop. The one meaning ‘uppermost part’ [OE]came from a prehistoric Germanic *toppaz,whose original meaning seems to have been ‘tuftof hair on top of the head, topknot’: this sensesurvived into English, although it has now diedout, and amongst the other descendants of*toppaz are German zopf ‘plait’. The Germanicword was borrowed into Old French as top ortoup ‘tuft of hair’, which is the ultimate source ofEnglish toupee [18]. And a variant of the basefrom which it was formed may lie behindEnglish tip. Topple [16] is a derivative of top.It is generally assumed that top ‘spinning toy’[11] is a different word, but it is not knownwhere it came from. TIP, TOPPLE, TOUPÉEtopic [16] Greek tópos meant ‘place’. From itwas derived the adjective topikós ‘of a place’,which came to mean ‘commonplace’. Aristotleused it in the title of his treatise Tà topiká, whichcontains commonplace arguments, and it waswith direct reference to this that the word firstarrived in English (via Latin topica). The sense‘subject, theme’ arose in the 18th century fromthe notion of the various heads of argumentcontained in Tà topiká and works like it. Thederived topical [16] originally meant ‘of topics’;the specialization to ‘of topics of the day, ofcurrent interest’ is as recent as the second half ofthe 19th century. The word’s original notion of‘place’ is preserved in topography [15] andtopology [17].The diminutive form of Greek tópos wastópion ‘small place’, hence ‘field’. Latin tookover its plural as topia, and used it for‘ornamental gardening’. From it was derived theadjective topiārius, which forms the basis ofEnglish topiary [16]. TOPIARY, TOPOGRAPHYtopple see TOPtorch [13] A torch is etymologically something‘twisted’. The word comes via Old Frenchtorche from Vulgar Latin *torca, which wasderived from the Latin verb torquēre ‘twist’(source also of English torment, torture, etc).The notion underlying the word is of pieces ofstraw or similar material ‘twisted’ together andthen dipped in some inflammable material. Thatis what it still denotes in American English, butin British English it has been reapplied to abattery-driven alternative to this. TORMENT, TORQUE, TORTUREtorment [13] The notion underlying torment isof an instrument of torture worked by ‘twisting’.The word was borrowed from Latin tormentum‘instrument of torture’, hence ‘torture, greatsuffering’. This was a contraction of an earlier*torquementum, a derivative of torquēre ‘twist’,which has also given English contort [15], extort[16], retort [16], torch, torque [19], torsion [15],tort [14], tortuous [15], and torture [16] (literally‘twisting’). CONTORT, EXTORT, RETORT, THWART, TORCH,TORQUE, TORSION, TORT, TORTUREtornado [16] Tornado appears to denoteetymologically something that ‘turns’, but this isdue to a piece of English folk-etymologizing. Itsactual source is Spanish tronada ‘thunderstorm’,a derivative of the verb tronar ‘thunder’ (whichin turn went back to Latin tonāre ‘thunder’,source of English astonish, detonate, etc). It wasat first used in English for a ‘violentthunderstorm’, but confusion with Spanishtornado ‘turned’ had converted tronada intotornado, and as early as the 1620s we find itbeing applied to a ‘whirlwind’. THUNDERtorpid [17] Torpid was acquired from Latintorpidus, a derivative of torpēre ‘be stiff, numb,inactive, etc’. Also from torpēre came torpēdō,which was applied to a type of fish capable ofproducing an electric shock with which it numbsits prey. English adopted the term as torpedo[16]. The fish is long and thin, and in the 1860sits name was applied to an underwater selfpropelledmissile which shares its shape, and itsdisconcerting effect on enemies (it had earlier,from the late 18th century, been used for a sort ofunderwater mine). TORPEDOtorrent [17] Despite its firm connections with‘water’, torrent comes from a source that meant‘scorch, parch’. This was Latin torrēre, whichalso produced English toast and torrid [16] andis related to thirst. Its present participle torrēnswas used metaphorically as an adjective ofstreams that ‘boil’ or ‘bubble’ because of theirstrong current, and it was in this sense that itpassed as a noun via Italian torrente and Frenchtorrent into English. THIRST, TOAST, TORRIDtorsion see TORMENTtort see TORMENTtortoise see TURTLEtortuous see TORMENTtorture see TORMENTTory [17] The term tory originally denoted anIrish guerrilla, one of a group of Irishmen who inthe 1640s were thrown off their property by theBritish and took to a life of harrying andplundering the British occupiers (it is an

anglicization of Irish *tóraighe ‘pursuer’, whichwas derived from tóir ‘pursue’). In the 1670s itwas applied as a term of abuse to Irish Catholicroyalists, and then more generally to supportersof the Catholic James II, and after 1689 it cameto be used for the members of the Britishpolitical party that had at first opposed theremoval of James and his replacement with theProtestant William and Mary.total [14] Total goes back ultimately to Latintōtus ‘whole’ (source also of French tout, Italiantutto, and Spanish todo ‘all’). From it wasderived medieval Latin totālis ‘of the whole’,which passed into English via Old French total.Tot [18], as in ‘tot up’, is short for total.Totalizator was coined in Australia in the late1870s, and the abbreviation tote started life inAustralian English too. TOTtotem [18] Totem is of native American origin,and denotes etymologically ‘belonging to afamily or group’. Its ultimate source is the stem*ōtē- ‘belong to a local group’, and it wasadapted from an Ojibwa derivative formed witha possessive prefix ending in t, such as otōtēman‘his group or family’, hence ‘his family mark’.touch [13] The etymological notion underlyingtouch seems to be the ‘striking of a bell’. Itcomes via Old French tochier from Vulgar Latin*toccāre ‘hit, knock’, which appears originallyto have denoted ‘make the sound toc by strikingsomething, such as a bell’ (as in English ticktock).The connection with bells is preserved intocsin ‘signal given with a bell’ [16], whichcomes via French tocsin from Provençal tocasenh,a compound formed from tocar ‘strike’and senh ‘bell’ (a relative of English sign).Another member of the family is toccata [18], aborrowing from Italian, which etymologicallydenotes the ‘touching’ of the keys of aninstrument with the fingers. TOCCATA, TOCSINtoupée see TOPtour [14] Etymologically, a tour is a ‘circularmovement’. The word comes via Old Frenchtour from Latin tornus ‘lathe’, which alsoproduced English turn. It was not used for a‘journey of visits’ – literally a ‘circuitousjourney’ – until the 17th century (the term grandtour, denoting a lengthy journey around westernEurope formerly undertaken by fashionableyoung men, ostensibly for educational purposes,is first recorded in the mid-18th century, but thederivative tourist does not crop up until about1800). Tournament [13] and tourney [13] bothgo back ultimately to a Vulgar Latin derivative oftornus, the underlying etymological notionbeing of the combatants ‘turning’ or wheelinground to face each other. And tourniquet [17]probably comes from the same source. TOURNAMENT, TOURNIQUET, TURNtousle [15] Tousle was derived from an earliertouse ‘pull about, shake’ (probable source alsoof tussle [15]), which went back to an Old513 townEnglish *tūsian. Amongst its relatives is Germanzausen ‘tug, tousle’. TUSSLEtout [14] The etymological notion underlyingtout is of ‘sticking out, projecting’. It goes backultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base *tūt-‘project’, whose other descendants includeDutch tuit ‘spout’. It is assumed to haveproduced an Old English *tūtian, but it does notturn up in the written record until the MiddleEnglish period, by which time the notion of‘poking out’ had moved on to ‘peeking’ or‘peeping’. It progressed further to ‘spy on’, butthe modern ‘look for business’ did not emergeuntil the 18th century.tow English has two words tow. The older, ‘pull’[OE], came from a prehistoric Germanic*togōjan (source also of Norwegian toga ‘pull’).This was derived from the base *tog-, variants ofwhich gave English team, tug, etc, and it goesback ultimately to the same Indo-European baseas produced Latin dūcere ‘pull, lead’ (source ofEnglish conduct, duke, etc). Tow ‘flax or hempfibre’ [14] was borrowed from Middle LowGerman touw. This probably went back to theprehistoric Germanic base *tōw-, *taw- ‘make,prepare’ (source also of English tool), in thespecialized sense ‘make yarn from wool, spin’. CONDUCT, DUCT, DUKE, EDUCATE, TEAM, TEEM,TIE, TUG; TOOLtowards [OE] The suffix -ward or -wards, whichunderlies towards, forward, and a host of otherEnglish adverbs and adjectives, comes from aprehistoric Germanic *-warth. This in turn goesback to the Indo-European base *wert- ‘turn’(source also of English convert, version, etc) – soetymologically, towards denotes ‘turning to’something. CONVERT, VERSIONtowel [13] A towel is etymologically somethingfor ‘washing’ with. The word comes from OldFrench toaille, which was a borrowing fromprehistoric Germanic *thwakhliō. This wasderived from the verb *thwakhan ‘wash’, whosemodern descendants include Swedish tvätta andDanish tvætte ‘wash’. Another relative isSwedish tvål ‘soap’.tower [12] The ultimate source of tower is Greektúrris, a word probably from a pre-Indo-European language of the Mediterranean region.It passed into English via Latin turris and OldFrench tur, tor. Turret [14] comes from the OldFrench diminutive turet. TURRETtown [OE] The ancestral meaning of town is‘enclosed place’ – amongst its relatives areGerman zaun ‘hedge, fence’ and Old Irish dūn‘fort, camp, fortified place’. Its Old Englishforerunner tūn was used for an ‘enclosure’ or‘yard’, and also for a ‘building or set of buildingswithin an enclosure’, hence a ‘farm’. This in duecourse evolved to a ‘cluster of dwellings’, and bythe 12th century the modern English sense of theword was in place (the standard Old Englishterm for ‘town’ was burg, ancestor of modernEnglish borough). The -ton ending of English

toxic 514place-names goes back in many cases to a timewhen the word meant ‘farmstead’.toxic [17] The etymological meaning underlyingtoxic is of ‘poisoned arrows’. Its ultimate sourceis Greek tóxon ‘bow’, which also gave Englishtoxophily ‘archery’ [19]. From it was derivedtoxikós ‘of bows and arrows’, which formed thebasis of a noun toxikón ‘poison for putting onarrows’. Latin took this over as toxicum‘poison’, and the medieval Latin derivativetoxicus gave English toxic. TOXOPHILYtoy [14] Nothing is known for certain about theorigins of toy. It originally meant ‘amorousdalliance’ (‘So said he, and forbore not glance ortoy, of amorous intent, well understood of Eve’,Milton, Paradise Lost 1667), traces of whichsurvive in the verbal sense ‘amuse oneself idly’.‘Plaything’ first appeared towards the end of the16th century.trace English has two distinct words trace, butthey come from the same ultimate ancestor. Thiswas tractus (source also of English tract, tractor,treat, etc), the past participle of Latin trahere‘pull’. This passed into Old French as trait‘pulling, draught’, hence ‘harness-strap’, fromwhich English gets trait [16]. Its plural trais wasborrowed by English as trace ‘harness-strap’[14]. Tractus also formed the basis of a VulgarLatin verb *tractiāre ‘drag’, which evolved intoOld French tracier ‘make one’s way’, source ofthe English verb trace [14]. A noun trace wasalso derived from tracier, and this too wasacquired by English as trace [13]. At first itdenoted a ‘path’ or ‘track’; the modern sense‘visible sign’ did not develop until the 17thcentury. ATTRACT, CONTRACT, TRACT, TRACTOR, TRAIT,TREATtrack [15] Track was borrowed from Old Frenchtrac ‘trail, set of footprints, etc’. This too appearsto have been a loanword, from Middle Dutchtrek ‘pulling’ (ultimate source of English trek[19], via Afrikaans), which was derived from theverb trekken ‘pull’. The sense ‘path’ did notemerge until as recently as the 19th century. TREKtracklements see DREDGEtractor [17] Tractor is one of a large family ofEnglish words that come from tractus, the pastparticiple of Latin trahere ‘pull’ (others includeabstract [14], attract, contract, detract [15],distract [14], extract [15], retract, subtract,trace, tract [14], tractable [16], traction [17],trait, treat, treatise, and treaty). Tractor itselfwas originally used in English for a device,invented by the 18th-century American doctorElisha Perkins, for ‘pulling’ across the surface ofthe skin, which was supposed to relieverheumatic pains. It was not applied to a ‘vehiclefor pulling loads’ until the end of the 19thcentury.From Latin trahere itself come Englishretreat and train; and drag may go back to thesame ultimate source. ABSTRACT, ATTRACT, CONTRACT, DETRACT,DISTRACT, EXTRACT, RETRACT, RETREAT,SUBTRACT, TRACE, TRACT, TRAIN, TRAIT,TREAT, TREATYtrade [14] Trade originally meant ‘way, track’.Not until the 16th century did the modern sense‘buying and selling’ emerge, via ‘regular pathfollowed by someone’ and ‘business pursued bysomeone’. Etymologically, it amounts to a‘trodden’ path; for it was borrowed from MiddleLow German trade ‘track’, which goes backultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base*trad-, *tred-, source also of English tread andtrot. TREAD, TROTtraffic [16] The ultimate origins of traffic are notknown. It was acquired from French traffique,which in turn was borrowed from Old Italiantraffico, a derivative of the verb trafficare ‘trade’,but there the trail goes cold. It is generallyassumed that the word’s first element goes backto the Latin prefix trāns- ‘across’.tragedy [14] Etymologically, a tragedy isprobably a ‘goat-song’. The word comes via OldFrench tragedie and Latin tragoedia from Greektragōidíā, a compound formed from trágos‘goat’ and ōidé ‘song’ (source of English ode,parody, rhapsody, etc). It is thought that theunderlying reference may be to a sort of ancientGreek drama in which the chorus were dressedas satyrs, goatlike woodland deities. MELODY, ODE, PARODY, PROSODY, RHAPSODYtrail see TRAWLtrain [14] A train is etymologically somethingthat is ‘pulled’ along. The word was borrowedfrom Old French train, a derivative of the verbtrahiner ‘drag’. And this in turn went back toVulgar Latin *tragināre, a derivative of Latin*tragere, a variant of trahere ‘pull’. It was firstused in English for ‘delay’, from the notion ofbeing ‘pulled’ back, and ‘part of a garment thattrails behind’ dates from the 15th century. Whensteam locomotives pulling carriages wereintroduced in the 1820s, the combined vehiclewas called a train of carriages; the simple termtrain is first recorded in 1835. The use of theverb train for ‘instruct, school’, which datesfrom the 16th century, evolved from an earlier‘direct the course of growth of a plant’, which inturn went back to the original notion of ‘pulling’. TRACTORtrait see TRACEtraitor [13] Traitor and tradition [14] come fromthe same ultimate source: Latin trādere. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the prefixtrāns- ‘across’ and dare ‘give’ (source ofEnglish data, date, etc). It originally meant‘hand over, deliver’, and it is this sense that (viathe derivative trāditiō) has given Englishtradition – etymologically something ‘handedover’ to succeeding generations. But it was alsoused metaphorically for ‘betray’, and thismeaning has passed through into English inbetray, traitor, and treason. BETRAY, TRADITION, TRAITOR, TREASONtram [16] Tram was borrowed from Middle LowGerman or Middle Dutch trame ‘balk of timber,

eam’, a word of unknown origin. It wasoriginally used in English for the ‘shafts’ of acart, and then for the cart itself. The track onwhich such carts ran in mines and similar placescame to be known as tramlines, and this termwas adopted in the 19th century for a track usedfor passenger road vehicles. These in turn werecalled tramcars, or trams for short.trance see TRANSIENTtranscript see SCRIBEtransfer [14] Transfer comes via Old Frenchtransferer from Latin trānsferre ‘carry across’.This was a compound verb formed from theprefix trāns- ‘across’ (a distant relative ofEnglish through) and ferre ‘carry’ (a relative ofEnglish bear, birth, fertile, etc). Its pastparticiple trānslātus gave English translate. BEARtransfix see FIXtransgress see GRADUALtransient [17] English adapted transient fromtrānsiēns, the present participle of Latin trānsīre‘go over’. This was a compound verb formedfrom the prefix trāns- ‘across, over’ and īre ‘go’(source also of English coitus, exit, obituary,etc). Also from trānsīre come English trance[14], transit [15], transition [16], transitive [16],and transitory [14]. COITUS, EXIT, OBITUARY, TRANSIT, TRANSITORYtranslate [13] To translate something isetymologically to ‘carry it across’ from onelanguage into another. The word was acquiredfrom trānslātus, the past participle of Latintrānsferre ‘carry across, transfer, translate’(source of English transfer). EXTOL, RELATEtransparent [15] Etymologically, somethingthat is transparent allows the light to ‘appearthrough’ it. The word comes via Old Frenchfrom medieval Latin trānspārēns, the presentparticiple of trānspārēre ‘be seen through’. Thiswas a compound verb formed from the Latinprefix trāns- ‘across, through’ and pārēre ‘show,appear’ (source of English appear). APPEARtranspire see SPIRITtranspose see POSITIONtransvestite see TRAVESTYtrap [OE] The precise origins of trap are obscure.It goes back to an Old English træppe, and it hasvarious relatives in the modern Germanic andRomance languages – Flemish trape, Frenchtrappe, Portuguese trapa, for instance – but itsultimate ancestry has never been unravelled. Itsapplication to a small carriage emerged in the19th century; it may be short for rattle-trap‘rickety vehicle’.trapeze [19] Trapeze and quadruped areultimately the same word: both meanetymologically ‘four feet’. Trapeze comes viaFrench trapèze and late Latin trapezium (sourceof English trapezium [16]) from Greek trapézion‘small table’. This was a diminutive form oftrápeza ‘table’, literally ‘four-footed’ thing, acompound noun formed from tetra- ‘four’ and515 treacherypeza ‘foot’ (a relative of English foot). TheGreek mathematician Euclid used trapézion fora ‘table’-shaped geometrical figure, aquadrilateral. The application to the piece ofgymnastic equipment, which evolved in French,alludes to the quadrilateral shape formed by thetrapeze’s ropes and crossbar and the roof or othersupport it hangs from. FOOT, QUADRUPEDtrappings [14] Trappings are etymologically‘drapery’. The word was adapted from Anglo-Norman *trapour, a variant of Old Frenchdrapure; and this in turn was a derivative of drap‘cloth’, source of English drape, drapery, etc. Itwas originally used in English for an‘ornamental covering for a horse’, and its moregeneral modern meaning did not emerge untilthe 16th century. DRAPE, DRAPERYtravel [14] Travel and travail [13] are doublets –that is to say, they have a common ancestor, buthave split into separate words. Their ultimatesource is medieval Latin trepālium, a term for aninstrument of torture made of three sharp stakes.This was a compound noun formed from Latintrēs ‘three’ and pālus ‘stake’ (source of Englishpale). From it was formed a verb *trepāliāre‘torture on the trepālium’, hence generally‘torture’. This passed into Old French astravailler, where its reflexive use ‘put oneself topain or trouble’ evolved to ‘work hard’. Its nounderivative travail ‘painful effort, hard work’ wasborrowed by English as travail, and this quicklydeveloped a new sense, ‘journey’ (presumablyfrom the notion of a ‘wearisome journey’),which came to be distinguished by the spellingtravel. PALE, THREE, TRAVAILtravesty [17] Travesty and transvestite [20] arefirst cousins. Both are compounded of the Latinelements trāns- ‘across’ and vestīre ‘clothe’(source of English vest, vestment, etc), but theyare separate formations. Travesty comesultimately from Italian travestire ‘changeclothes so as to disguise’, formed from theItalian descendants of the Latin elements. Thiswas borrowed into French as travestir ‘ridicule’,and its past participle travesti gave Englishtravesty. Transvestite is a new formation, coinedin German in the first decade of the 20th century(although there are a couple of isolated instancesof a verb transvest ‘cross-dress’ from the 1650s). INVEST, TRANSVESTITE, VEST, VESTMENTtrawl [17] Trawl was probably borrowed fromMiddle Dutch traghelen ‘drag’. This was aderivative of traghel ‘net pulled along behind aboat for catching fish’, which in turn came fromLatin trāgula, a possible relative of trahere ‘pull’(source of English tractor, treat, etc). Trāgulaprobably also lies behind English trail [14]. TRAILtray see TREEtreachery [13] Despite the passingresemblance, treachery has no etymologicalconnection with traitor or treason. In fact, itsclosest English relative is trick. The word was

treacle 516borrowed from Old French trecherie, aderivative of trichier ‘cheat’ (source of Englishtrick). TRICKtreacle [14] Treacle is etymologically an‘antidote to the bite of wild animals’. The wordcomes via Old French triacle and Latin thēriacafrom Greek thēriaké. This was short forantídotos thēriaké ‘antidote to poisonousanimals’, thēriaké being a derivative of thēríon‘wild animal, poisonous animal’, which in turncame from thér ‘wild savage’. It retained itsoriginal meaning into English, but it thengradually broadened out into ‘medicine’, and thepractice of disguising the unpleasant taste ofmedicine with sugar syrup led in the 17thcentury to its application to ‘syrup’.tread [OE] Tread comes from a prehistoricGermanic *trethan, which also producedGerman treten, Dutch treden, Swedish träda,and Danish træde. It does not appear to have anyrelations outside Germanic, however. Tradecomes from the same base, and it is thought thattrot [13] may do so too, although its immediatesource was Old French troter. TRADE, TROTtreason [13] Treason and tradition are doublets– they have a common source. This was Latintrāditiō, a derivative of trādere ‘hand over,deliver’ (source also of English traitor). Thenotion of ‘handing something on to someoneelse’ lies behind tradition, but treason (acquiredvia Anglo-Norman treisoun) gets its meaningfrom the metaphorically extended Latin sense‘hand over treacherously, betray’. BETRAY, TRADITION, TRAITORtreasure [12] Treasure comes ultimately fromGreek thēsaurós ‘treasure’, a word of unknownorigin. This was borrowed into Latin asthēsaurus (acquired directly by English asthesaurus [19] with the metaphorical sense‘treasury of knowledge, words, etc’), and itmade its way into English via Vulgar Latin*tresaurus and Old French tresor. THESAURUStreat [13] Treat comes ultimately from Latintractāre, a derivative of tractus (source ofEnglish contract, tractor, etc), the past participleof trahere ‘pull’. Originally tractāre meant‘drag’, but it branched out metaphorically to‘handle, deal with, discuss’, and it was in thesesenses that it reached English via Anglo-Normantreter. The notion of ‘dealing with something bydiscussion’ also underlies treatise [14] andtreaty [14], which come from the same ultimatesource. CONTRACT, TRACTOR, TREATISE, TREATYtreble [14] Treble and triple [15] come from thesame ultimate source: Latin triplus ‘threefold’.This in turn was borrowed from Greek triplous,a compound adjective formed from tri- ‘three’and the base *pl- ‘fold’ (which lies behindEnglish ply and is related to English fold).Triplus passed into Old French, where it splitinto two: treble and triple. Both were taken overinto English (the former has now died out inFrench). The application of treble to the highestpart in music, equivalent to soprano, which datesfrom the 14th century, probably comes from thenotion of its being the ‘third’ part, above bassand alto. FOLD, PLY, THREE, TRIPLEtree [OE] Tree is part of an ancient andwidespread family of ‘tree’-words that goesback ultimately to Indo-European *deru, *doru-.This appears originally to have designatedspecifically the ‘oak’, rather than ‘tree’ ingeneral, an application retained by some of itsdescendants: Greek drūs, for instance (source ofEnglish dryad [14]), and Welsh derwen (apossible relative of English druid). From it cameGermanic *trewam, which has evolved intoSwedish träd, Danish træ, and English tree.Other English words from the same sourceinclude tray [OE] (etymologically a ‘wooden’vessel), trough, and possibly tar. DRUID, DRYAD, TAR, TRAY, TROUGHtrek see TRACKtrellis see THREEtremble [14] Tremble goes back ultimately to aprehistoric base *trem- ‘shake’, which probablyhas connections with English terrify, terror, etc.Amongst the Latin descendants of this base weretremor ‘shaking’ (source of English tremor[14]), tremere ‘tremble’ (source of Englishtremendous [17]), and tremulus ‘shaking’(source of English tremolo [19] and tremulous[17]). The last of these formed the basis of aVulgar Latin verb *tremulāre, which passed intoEnglish via Old French trembler as tremble. TERRIFY, TERROR, TREMENDOUS, TREMOR,TREMULOUStrench [14] A trench is etymologicallysomething ‘cut’ or ‘sliced’. The word wasborrowed from Old French trenche ‘slice,cutting, ditch’, a derivative of trenchier ‘cut’(from which English gets trenchant [14]). Andthis in turn went back to Latin truncāre ‘cut,mutilate’ (source of English truncate [15]), aderivative of truncus ‘tree-trunk, torso’ (sourceof English trunk) – the semantic link being the‘cutting’ of branches from a tree or of limbs froma body. The sense ‘ditch’ for trench comes ofcourse from the notion of ‘cutting’ a long narrowhole in the ground (a similar inspirationunderlies cutting ‘excavation for a railway, road,etc’). Trencher ‘platter’ [14] came from theAnglo-Norman derivative trenchour, andoriginally denoted both a board for ‘cutting’food up on and a ‘slice’ of bread used as a plate. TRENCHANT, TRENCHER, TRUNCATE, TRUNKtrend [OE] The etymological notion underlyingtrend is of ‘circularity’ or ‘roundness’. It comesfrom a prehistoric Germanic base *trend-,*trund-, which also produced Dutch trent‘circumference’, Swedish trind ‘round’, andEnglish trundle [16], and it was originally usedin the sense ‘revolve, roll’. This graduallyevolved via ‘turn’ to, in the 16th century, ‘turn ina particular direction, take a particular course’.

The first record of the derivative trendy datesfrom 1962. TRUNDLEtrepidation see INTREPIDtrespass [13] To trespass is etymologically to‘pass across’ something. The word was acquiredfrom Old French trespasser, a descendant ofmedieval Latin trānspassāre. This was acompound verb formed from the Latin prefixtrāns- ‘across’ and Vulgar Latin *passāre ‘pass’. PASStrews see TROUSERStribe [13] Tribe comes via Old French tribu fromLatin tribus ‘division of the Roman people’.This was probably derived from the base *tri-‘three’, and denoted etymologically the ‘threeoriginal tribes of Rome’ – the Tities, theRamnes, and the Luceres. The ‘head of a tribe’was known as a tribūnus, whence Englishtribune [14]; and the verb for ‘give out amongstthe tribes’ was tribuere, source of Englishcontribute [16], distribute [15], retribution [14],and tribute [14]. CONTRIBUTE, DISTRIBUTE, RETRIBUTION, THREE,TRIBUNE, TRIBUTEtribulation [13] Latin trībulum denoted anagricultural implement consisting of a woodenboard with sharp stones or metal teethunderneath, used for threshing grain (it wasderived from the base *trī-, a variant of *ter-‘rub’, which also produced English attrition,contrition, detriment, detritus, diatribe,tribadism ‘lesbianism’ [19], and trite). From thiswas derived the verb trībulāre ‘press’, whichwas used by Christian writers for ‘oppress,afflict’. And this sense provoked the derivativetrībulātiō ‘affliction’, which passed into Englishvia Old French tribulation. ATTRITION, CONTRITION, DETRIMENT, DETRITUS,DIATRIBE, THROW, TRIBADISM, TRITEtrick [15] Trick comes from Old French trique, avariant of triche, which was derived from theverb trichier ‘cheat’ (source of Englishtreachery). And this in turn probably came fromLatin trīcarī ‘make difficulties, play tricks’(source also of English extricate [17] andintricate [15]), a derivative of trīcae ‘difficulties,tricks’, whose origins are unknown. Tricky datesfrom the 18th century, its use for ‘difficult’ fromthe end of the 19th century. EXTRICATE, INTRICATE, TREACHERYtrident see TOOTHtrifle [13] Trifle was acquired from Old Frenchtruffle, a derivative of truffe ‘trickery, deceit’ (itis not known where this came from; it has noconnection with English truffle, which maycome ultimately from the same source as tuber).The first record of its application to a ‘sweetdessert confection’ dates from the end of the16th century.trilby [19] The word trilby commemorates thename of Trilby O’Ferrall, the eponymousheroine of George du Maurier’s novel Trilby1894. She was an artist’s model in Paris who fellunder the spell of Svengali. In the stage versionof the book the character Trilby wore a soft felt517 tropehat with an indented top, and the style soonbecame fashionable. The novel also dwells onthe erotic qualities of Trilby’s feet, and for awhile in the early 20th century trilbies was usedas a slang term for ‘feet’.trim [16] The origins of trim are uncertain, but itmay come from an unrecorded Middle Englishverb *trimmen ‘arrange’, a descendant of OldEnglish trymman or trymian ‘make stronger orfirmer’trinity [13] Trinity comes via Old French trinitefrom Latin trīnitās ‘group of three’. This was aderivative of trīnus ‘threefold’, which in turncame from tria ‘three’, a close relative ofEnglish three. THREEtrio see THREEtrip [14] The original meaning of trip was ‘movelightly or nimbly’. ‘Stumble’ is a secondarydevelopment, and the use of the derived noun for‘short journey’ did not emerge until the late 17thcentury (it was apparently originally a nauticalusage). The word was borrowed from OldFrench tripper, which in turn was acquired fromMiddle Dutch trippen ‘hop, skip’.tripod see FOOT, THREEtrireme see OARtrite see THROWtriumph [14] Triumph comes via Old Frenchtriumphe from Latin triumphus, which denoted a‘public celebration to welcome home avictorious general’. It was an alteration of OldLatin triumpus, which was probably borrowedfrom Greek thríambos ‘hymn to Bacchus’. Thecards term trump is an alteration of triumph. TRUMPtrivet see FOOTtrivial [15] Medieval educationists recognizedseven liberal arts: the lower three, grammar,logic, and rhetoric, were known as the trivium,and the upper four, arithmetic, astronomy,geometry, and music, were known as thequadrivium. The notion of ‘less importantsubjects’ led in the 16th century to the use of thederived adjective trivial for ‘commonplace, oflittle importance’. Latin trivium itself was acompound noun formed from the prefix tri-‘three’ and via ‘way, road’, and originally meant‘place where three roads meet’. THREE, VIAtrochlea see TRUCKLEtrombone see TRUMPtrooptroop [16] Troop was borrowed from Frenchtroupe (acquired again as troupe in the 19thcentury). This appears to have been a backformationfrom troupeau ‘flock, herd’, adiminutive formation based on Latin troppus.And troppus itself may have been of Germanicorigin. By the time the word reached English itwas already being applied to a ‘group ofsoldiers’, and its plural was being used as acollective term for ‘soldiers’. TROUPEtrope see TROUBADOUR

trophy 518trophy [16] Atrophy is etymologicallysomething awarded to commemorate theenemy’s ‘turning round’ and running away. Theword comes via French trophée and Latintrophaeum from Greek trópaion ‘monument tothe enemy’s defeat’. This was a noun use of theadjective tropaíos ‘of turning’, a derivative oftropé ‘turning’, hence ‘turning back the enemy’(source also of English tropic). TROPICtropic [14] The etymological notion underlyingthe word tropic is of ‘turning’, and the reason forits application to the hot regions of the world isthat the two lines of latitude which bound them(the tropic of Cancer and the tropic ofCapricorn) mark the points at which the sunreaches its zenith at the solstices and then ‘turns’back. The word comes via Latin tropicus fromGreek tropikós, a derivative of tropé ‘turning’(source also of English trophy and related to thesecond syllable of contrive). CONTRIVE, TROPHY, TROUBADOURtrot [13] Trot’s closest English relative isprobably tread. It was borrowed from OldFrench troter, which went back via Vulgar Latin*trottāre to a Frankish *trottōn. This seems tohave been derived from the same Germanic baseas produced English tread. The colloquial use ofthe noun for ‘diarrhoea’ dates from the early19th century – originally in the singular, butsince at least the early 20th century in the plural,the trots. TREADtroth see TRUEtroubadour [18] A troubadour isetymologically someone who ‘finds’ – that is,‘composes’ – songs. The word comes via Frenchtroubadour from Provençal trobador, aderivative of the verb trobar (whose modernFrench equivalent is trouver). This seemsoriginally to have meant ‘compose’, and later tohave shifted its semantic ground via ‘invent’ to‘find’. It is not known for certain where it camefrom, but one theory traces it back via a VulgarLatin *tropāre to Latin tropus ‘figure of speech’(source of English trope [16]). This in turn wasborrowed from Greek trópos ‘turn’, a relative ofEnglish trophy and tropic. If this is so, itsancestral meaning would be ‘use figures ofspeech’. TROPICtrouble [13] Trouble is etymologicallysomething that ‘disturbs’ one – indeed, the twowords are related. Trouble was borrowed fromOld French trouble or tourble, a derivative of theverb tourbler. This was descended from VulgarLatin *turbulāre, a derivative of *turbulus,which in turn was an alteration of Latin turbidus‘wild, confused, muddy’ (source of Englishturbid [17]). And turbidus itself was derivedfrom turba ‘disturbance, crowd’ (a borrowingfrom Greek túrbē ‘disorder’), which alsoproduced the verb turbāre ‘disturb’ (source ofEnglish disturb [13] and turbulent [16]). Turbinetoo is closely related. DISTURB, TURBID, TURBINE, TURBULENTtrough [OE] Etymologically, a trough issomething made out of ‘wood’. Its ultimatesource is Indo-European *drukós, a derivative ofthe base *dru- ‘wood, tree’ (source also ofEnglish tree). This passed into prehistoricGermanic as *trugaz, which has sincediversified into German and Dutch trog,Swedish tråg, Danish trug, and English trough.English trug ‘shallow basket’ [16] is a variant oftrough. TRAY, TREE, TRUGtroupe see TROOPtrousers [17] Trousers is a Gaelic contributionto English vocabulary. Irish trius and ScotsGaelic triubhas (singular nouns) denote ‘closefittingshorts’. They were borrowed into Englishin the 16th century as trouse or trews. The latterform has survived intact, but trouse, through theinfluence of drawers, was expanded intotrousers. TREWStrow see TRUEtruant [13] A truant was originally a ‘beggar’ or‘vagrant’. The word was borrowed from OldFrench truant ‘vagabond’, which in turn camefrom Gaulish trugant- (amongst its Celticrelatives are Gaelic trudanach ‘vagabond’ andWelsh truan ‘wretched’). The word was notapplied to absconding schoolchildren until the15th century.truce [13] Historically, truce is simply the pluralof the noun version of the adjective true. In OldEnglish this was trēow, which meant ‘faith,pledge’. It was often used in the plural with thesame meaning as the singular, and this tendencyincreased in early Middle English to the pointwhere the singular disappeared altogether. It hadmeanwhile narrowed down in meaning to a‘pledge to stop fighting’. TRUEtruck English has two distinct words truck. Theearlier, ‘dealings’, as in ‘have no truck with’,was originally a verb, meaning ‘exchange,barter’ [13]. It was borrowed from Anglo-Norman *truquer, but its ultimate ancestry isunknown. Americans call a ‘market garden’ atruck farm, from the former practice of barteringits produce. Truck ‘goods vehicle’ [17] isgenerally assumed to be short for truckle; it wasoriginally used for a ‘small wooden wheel’,particularly one on the carriage of a navalcannon. TRUCKLEtruckle [15] A truckle is a ‘small wooden wheelor caster’. The word was originally used for a‘pulley’ (an application which has now largelydied out), and it was borrowed from Anglo-Norman trocle. This in turn came via Latintrochlea ‘system of pulleys’ (source of Englishtrochlea [17], an anatomical term for a ‘structureresembling a pulley’) from Greek trokhilíā‘pulley, system of pulleys, roller, etc’. Trucklebedwas a term applied to a sort of low bed oncasters that could be pushed under a larger bedwhen not in use, and the notion of sleeping in thetruckle-bed, ‘beneath’ someone in the higher

main bed, led in the 17th century to the use oftruckle as a verb meaning ‘be subservient’. TROCHLEA, TRUCKtrue [OE] The underlying etymological meaningof true is ‘faithful, steadfast, firm’; ‘inaccordance with the facts’ is a secondarydevelopment. It goes back to the prehistoricGermanic base *treww-, which also producedGerman treue and Dutch trouw ‘faithful’ and theEnglish noun truce, and it has been speculatedthat it may ultimately have links with the Indo-European base *dru- ‘wood, tree’ (source ofEnglish tree), the semantic link being thefirmness or steadfastness of oaks and suchliketrees. Truth [OE] comes from the same source,as do its derivative betroth [14], its now archaicvariant troth [16], the equally dated trow [OE],and probably also trust and tryst. BETROTH, TROTH, TROW, TRUCE, TRUST, TRUTH,TRYSTtruffle [16] English acquired truffle, probably viaDutch truffel, from early modern French truffle,a derivative of Old French truffe (which survivesas the modern French term for the fungus). Thisin turn came via Provençal trufa from a VulgarLatin *tūfera, an alteration of the plural of Latintūber ‘swelling, lump, tuber, truffle’ (fromwhich English gets tuber [17] and tuberculosis[19]). The term was first used for a chocolatesweet with the external appearance of a truffle inthe 1920s. TUBER, TUBERCULOSIStrump There are two distinct words trump inEnglish. The now archaic term for a ‘trumpet’[13] is of Germanic origin, although it and itsderivatives reached English via the Romancelanguages. Its ultimate source was Old HighGerman trumpa, which no doubt started life asan imitation of the sound made by the instrumentit denoted. This passed into English via OldFrench trompe. Its diminutive trompette hasgiven English trumpet [13], while its Italianrelative trombone (literally ‘big trump’) is thesource of English trombone. The cards termtrump [16] is an alteration of triumph. DRUM, TROMBONE, TRUMPET; TRIUMPHtruncate see TRENCHtrundle see TRENDtrunk [15] Trunk came via Old French tronc fromLatin truncus (source also of English trench andtruncate). This denoted ‘something with itsprotruding parts torn off’, hence ‘somethingregarded separately from its protruding parts’ –the stem of a tree without its branches, or a bodywithout its limbs. The application of the Englishword to an ‘elephant’s proboscis’, which datesfrom the 16th century, apparently arose fromsome confusion with trump ‘trumpet’. TRENCH, TRUNCATEtrust [13] Trust was probably borrowed from OldNorse traust ‘help, confidence, firmness’. This,together with its modern German and Dutchrelatives trost and troost ‘consolation’, goesback to the same prehistoric Germanic base asproduced English true and truth. Tryst [14] isprobably closely related. It was borrowed from519 TuesdayOld French triste ‘appointed place forpositioning oneself during a hunt’, which itselfwas very likely acquired from a Scandinaviansource connected with traust. TRUEtruth see TRUEtry [13] Try originally meant ‘separate, sift out’.It was borrowed from Old French trier ‘separate,sift’, and it has been speculated that this wentback to a Vulgar Latin *trītāre, formed from thepast participle of Latin terere ‘rub’ (source ofEnglish attrition, detritus, trite, etc). The notionof ‘separation’ led via ‘separating out the good’to ‘examine, test’ and, in the 14th century,‘attempt’. The derivative trial [16] wasborrowed from Anglo-Norman after the sense‘attempt’ developed for try in English, and sohas never wholeheartedly taken over thismeaning. TRIALtsar [16] Caesar was a Roman cognomen(English gets caesarian from it) and from thedays of Augustus was used as part of the title of‘emperor’. The Germanic peoples took it over inthis sense (it is the source of German kaiser) andpassed it on to prehistoric Slavic as *tsēsari.This has evolved into Serbo-Croat and Bulgariantsar and Russian tsar’ – source of English tsar. CAESARtsunami [19] Japanese tsunami means literally‘harbour waves’, a reference to the devastatingeffect Pacific tsunamis have had on Japanesecoastal communities. For most of the 20thcentury the term was largely restricted to thespecialized vocabulary of oceanographers andearth scientists, lay people preferring the morefamiliar tidal wave (a misnomer: strictlyspeaking, a tidal wave is one caused by themovement of the tide, whereas a tsunami isspecifically generated by an underseaearthquake), but the disastrous inundation ofsouthern Asian coasts at the end of 2004 lodgedit firmly in the language’s everyday lexicon.tube [17] The ultimate origins of tube areunclear. It comes, probably via French tube,from Latin tubus ‘tube’. This was closely relatedto tuba ‘war trumpet’, source of English tuba[19], but what their joint ancestor might be is notknown. TUBAtuber see TRUFFLEtuberculosis see TRUFFLEtucktuck see TUGTuesday [OE] Tiu was the Germanic god of warand the sky (his name came from the samesource as produced Latin deus ‘god’, from whichEnglish gets deity). When the Germanic peoplestook over the Roman system of naming the daysof the week after the gods, they replaced the termfor the second day of the week, diēs Martis ‘dayof Mars, the war-god’ (source of French Mardi‘Tuesday’) with ‘Tiu’s day’ – hence Tuesday.The Norse version of the god’s name appears inSwedish tisdag and Danish tirsdag. DEITY

tuft 520tuft see TOFFtug [13] Tug goes back to a prehistoric Germanicbase *teukh- ‘pull’ (source also of Germanziehen ‘pull’ and English truck [14], whoseoriginal meaning was ‘pull up, gather up’). Thisin turn was descended from Indo-European*deuk- ‘pull’, from which English gets conduct,duke, reduce, etc. CONDUCT, DUCT, DUKE, EDUCATE, REDUCE, TIE,TOWtulip [16] Tulip and turban [16] are ultimately thesame word. Both come from Persian dulband,and the name was applied to the plant because ofits flower’s supposed resemblance to a turban.Dulband was borrowed into Turkish as tuliband,and this made its way into English via earlymodern French tulipan and modern Latin tulipa,acquiring its botanical meaning along the way(relatives that preserve the link with turbanslightly more closely include Swedish tulpan,Danish tulipan, Italian tulipano, and Russiantjul’pan). Meanwhile Turkish tuliband evolvedto tülbend, and this passed into English viaItalian turbante and French turbant as turban. TURBANtumble [13] Tumble was borrowed from MiddleLow German tummelen, which has otherrelatives in modern German tummeln ‘bustle,hurry’ and taumeln ‘reel, stagger’. All wereformed from a base that also found its way intothe Romance languages, producing Frenchtomber ‘fall’ (source of English tumbrel [14],which in Old French denoted a ‘chute’ or ‘cartthat could be tipped up’) and Italian tombolare‘tumble, turn somersaults’ (source of Englishtombola [19]). The derivative tumbler [14]originally denoted an ‘acrobat’; the applicationto a ‘drinking glass’, which emerged in the mid17th century, comes from the fact that suchglasses were originally made with roundedbottoms, so that they could not be put down untilthey were empty. TOMBOLAtumour [16] Tumour is one of a small family ofEnglish words that go back ultimately to Latintumēre ‘swell’. Others include contumacy,contumely, tumid ‘swollen’ [16], and tumult[15]. CONTUMACY, CONTUMELY, THIGH, THUMB,TUMID, TUMULTtun see TONtune [14] Tune originated as a variant of tone, andto begin with it was used for ‘sound, tone’ (‘Hetold him of the death of Brunes; then were madehideous tunes of many a gentle damsel’, Troybook 1400). Very quickly, however, the sense‘melody’ emerged (it is not present in tone), andeventually took over from ‘sound’. Thederivative attune dates from the late 16thcentury. ATTUNE, TONEtunnel see TONturban see TULIPturbidturbid see TROUBLEturbine [19] Latin turbō denoted ‘whirl’,‘whirling thing’, or ‘whirlwind’, and also‘spinning-top’ (it was related to turba‘disturbance, crowd’, source of English disturb,trouble, etc). From it around 1824 was coinedFrench turbine, applied originally to a revolvingwheel on an axis, driven by water-pressure. Itwas borrowed into English in the early 1840s. DISTURB, TROUBLEturbot [13] The turbot is etymologically the‘thorn-flatfish’. Its name comes via Old Frenchturbot from Old Swedish törnbut ‘turbot’. Thiswas a compound noun formed from törn ‘thorn’(a relative of English thorn) and but ‘flatfish’, aborrowing from Middle Low German but whichprobably denoted etymologically ‘stumpy’, andalso supplied the final syllable of English halibut[15]. The name presumably alludes to the bonynodules on the fish’s back. HALIBUT, THORNturbulent see TROUBLEturd [OE] Turd is an ancient word, traceable rightback to Indo-European *drtom. This was formedfrom the base *dr-, *der- ‘flay, tear’ (source alsoof English tear), and so etymologically denotedthat which is ‘separated’ from the body, likeflayed skin, and hence ejected or excreted fromthe body. It passed into English via prehistoricGermanic *turdam. A distant relative is Latviandirsti ‘defecate’. TEARtureen [18] Tureen and terrine are ultimately thesame word. Both were borrowed simultaneouslyfrom French terrine ‘deep earthenware dish’ inthe early 18th century, since when in its originalsense ‘dish’ it has been contorted to tureen(perhaps partly through some association withTurin) and applied specifically to a ‘soup dish’,while in the extended sense ‘paté-like dish madein a terrine’ it has remained as terrine. TheFrench word originated as a noun use of thefeminine form of Old French terrin ‘earthen’,which went back ultimately to Latin terra ‘earth’(source of English terrace, terrain, etc). TERRINEturf [OE] Turf is a general Germanic word. It goesback to a prehistoric Germanic *turb-, whichalso produced German torf ‘peat’, Dutch turf,Swedish torf, and Danish tørv, and wasborrowed into the Romance languages, givingFrench tourbe, Italian torba, and Spanish turba.Its ultimate source was the Indo-European base*drbh-.turkey [16] The term turkey was originallyapplied to the ‘guinea-fowl’, apparently becausethe bird was imported into Europe from Africaby the Portuguese through Turkish territory.When the American bird we now know as theturkey was introduced to the British in the mid16th century, it seems to have reminded them ofthe guinea fowl, for they transferred the guineafowl’s name turkey to it.turn [OE] The ultimate source of turn is Greektórnos ‘lathe’, which was probably related toLatin terere ‘rub’ (source of English attrition,detritus, trite, etc). Latin took this over as tornus

and formed a verb from it, tornāre ‘turn on alathe’, hence ‘round off, make smooth’. OldEnglish borrowed tornāre as turnian, which waslater reinforced by Old French turner. To thesame word family belong tour and tournament. ATTRITION, DETRIMENT, DETRITUS, TOUR,TOURNAMENT, TRITEturncoat [16] A turncoat is someone whoabandons or betrays a group or cause and joinsits opponents. The story goes – probablyapocryphally – that there was once a Duke ofSaxony whose territories abutted those ofFrance. Clearly anxious always to make the rightimpression, he had a coat made which was blueon one side and white on the other. When hewished to be seen to be supporting the Frenchinterest he wore it with the white side outwards,and when he did not, he wore it with the blueside outwards. Documentation of this tale islacking, and probably the expression had a muchless specific origin (the phrase turn one’s coatfor ‘betray one’s loyalties’ is contemporaneous).turnip [16] Etymologically, a turnip may be a‘turned neep’ – that is, a neep, or turnip, that hasbeen ‘turned’ on a lathe, so as to be round (theturnip is a roughly spherical vegetable). Itssecond syllable, -nip, goes back ultimately toLatin nāpus ‘turnip’, which was adopted by OldEnglish as nǣp. It survives in Scottish English asneep, which is used for ‘swedes’ as well as‘turnips’. The linking of the first syllable withturn is purely conjectural, and has never beendefinitely established. NEEPturpentine [14] Turpentine is nowadays usedfor an oil obtained from pine trees, but itoriginally denoted the ‘resin of the terebinth’, asmall European tree of the sumach family. Thename of the terebinth is probably of non-Indo-European origin. It was borrowed into Greek astérbinthos, which made its way into Latin asterbinthus. Its resin was called terbenthinarēsīna. The adjective terbenthina came to beused as a noun, and this passed into English viaOld French terbentine.turquoise [14] Turquoise is etymologically the‘Turkish’ stone. The word was borrowed fromOld French turqueise, short for pierre turqueise‘Turkish stone’. The stone was so called becauseit was first found in Turkestan. The present-dayform of the word, which dates from the 16thcentury, is due to the influence of modern Frenchturquoise. It was first used as a colour adjectivein the late 16th century.turret see TOWERturtleturtle Turtle the dove [OE] and turtle the marinereptile [17] are different words. The former wasborrowed from Latin turtur, which no doubtoriginated in imitation of the bird’s cooing. It isnow encountered only in the compoundturtledove, first recorded in the 13th century.Turtle the reptile is more of a mystery. It isgenerally assumed to be an alteration of Frenchtortue ‘tortoise’ (source of English tortoise[15]), but since it is not known where that camefrom, it does not get us much further. The521 twelveexpression turn turtle (which dates from the 19thcentury) alludes to the practice of sailors turningturtles over on to their backs, like beetles, so thatthey were helpless and could be easily captured. TORTOISEtussle see TOUSLEtutor [14] A tutor is etymologically someonewho ‘looks after’ another – indeed, it wasoriginally used for a ‘guardian’ or ‘protector’:‘The king … behested himself to be a tutor anddefender of him and of his’, Foundation of StBartholomew’s church 1425. The word’seducational connotations are a secondarydevelopment. It comes via Anglo-Normantutour from Latin tūtor, a derivative of tuērī‘look after, protect’. From the same sourcecomes English tuition [15], and also tutelage[17], which retains its original sense of‘guardianship’. TUITION, TUTELAGEtwain see TWOtwat see TWITtweaktweak see TWIGtweed [19] The story attached to the origin oftweed is that it resulted from a misreading oftweel, or perhaps more plausibly the past formtweeled, Scottish variants of twill or twilled,under the influence of the name of the Scottishriver Tweed. Early accounts date its coinage to1831, and ascribe it to the London clothmerchant James Locke (although Locke himselfin his book Tweed and Don 1860 does not makeany such claim). The term was in general use by1850, and it was registered as a trademark. (Twillitself is etymologically ‘two-threaded’ cloth; it isa compound formed from twi- ‘two’ and Latinlīcium ‘thread’.)tweezers [17] French étui denotes a small casefor carrying personal articles, small tools and thelike (it was descended from Old French estuier‘keep, shut up, imprison’). English adopted it inthe early 17th century as etui or, anglicized, asetwee. The plural of this came to be used (likescissors) for a single article, and it did not takelong for etweese to be apprehended as a singularnoun. The next step in the word’s transformationwas the loss of its first syllable: hence, tweeze.This still meant ‘case for small instruments’, andthe plural tweezes began to be used for theinstruments themselves – typically implementsof personal adornment, such as combs, scissorsand small pincers for pulling out hairs. By the1650s tweezes had been extended to tweezers(perhaps on the model of scissors), and this wasbeing applied specifically to the pincers – as itstill is today.twelve [OE] Etymologically, twelve probablymeans ‘two over’ (just as eleven means ‘oneover’). It appears to go back to a prehistoricGermanic compound formed from *twa- ‘two’and *lif- (a relative of English leave), which alsoproduced German zwölf, Dutch twaalf, Swedishtolf, and Danish tolv. If so, its underlyingmeaning is ‘two left (over ten)’, hence ‘ten plustwo’. LEAVE, TWO

twenty 522twenty [OE] Twenty is etymologically ‘twotens’. The second syllable, -ty, is related to ten,and twen- goes back to the same source as two,although its precise ancestry is not clear. TEN, TWOtwice [12] Twice was formed from Old Englishtwige ‘twice’ (itself based on twi-, the combiningform of two) and the genitive ending -s, whichwas used for creating adverbs, such as always,nowadays, once, thrice, etc. TWOtwig English has two separate words twig. Theolder, ‘small branch’ [OE], which has relativesin German zweig and Dutch tijg, appears to havebeen formed from the Germanic base *twi-‘two’, and so etymologically it presumablydenotes a ‘forked branch’. The origins of twig‘catch on, understand’ [18] are uncertain. It maybe the same word as the contemporary but nowdefunct twig ‘pull’. This was presumably relatedto tweak [17] and twitch [12], which go back toa prehistoric Germanic base *twik-. TWEAK, TWITCH, TWOtwilight [15] Twilight is etymologically ‘lightbetween day and night’. The word wascompounded from the prefix twi- ‘two’,apparently used here in the sense ‘between’(between itself comes from the same ultimatesource as two) and light. German has the parallelzwielicht. TWOtwill see DRILLtwin [OE] Twin originally meant simply ‘double’,but the specific application to ‘two people bornat the same birth’ had already evolved by the endof the Old English period. The word goes backvia prehistoric Germanic *twisnaz to Indo-European *dwisno-, a derivative of the base*dwi- ‘double’ (other derivatives formed withthe same -n suffix include English between andtwine [OE] – etymologically thread of ‘two’strands). BETWEEN, TWINE, TWOtwist [OE] Twist appears to come ultimately fromprehistoric Germanic base *twi- ‘double’, whichalso underlies English twice, twig, twin, etc. InOld English it is found only in compound words,denoting such things as ‘rope’ (presumablyoriginally made from ‘two’ strands) and ‘forkedobjects’. It does not appear as an independentword until the 14th century, by which time itsassociation with ‘rope’ had given it the sense‘wrench, wind’. TWOtwit Twit was originally, and still is, a verb,meaning ‘taunt’ [16]. It is a shortened version ofthe now defunct atwite. This went back to OldEnglish ætwītan, a compound verb formed fromthe prefix æt-, denoting ‘opposition’, and wītan‘reproach’. It is not altogether clear whether thenoun twit ‘fool’ is the same word. There is anisolated example of what could be twit ‘fool’recorded from the early 18th century, but it didnot really begin to proliferate as a mild term ofabuse until the 1950s. Semantically, theconnection is plausible – a ‘fool’ could be a‘person who is taunted’ (presumably for beingfoolish) – but an alternative theory is that it is analteration of twat [17]. This originally meant‘cunt’, and is not recorded as a term of abuseuntil the 1920s. It is not known where it camefrom. (It was, incidentally, the object of one ofthe more ludicrous misapprehensions in Englishliterature. There is a passage in Vanity of Vanities1660 that reads ‘They talked of his having acardinal’s hat, they’d send him as soon an oldnun’s twat’. Robert Browning took ‘twat’ asmeaning some item of nun’s clothing, and sowrote in his Pippa Passes 1841 ‘Sing to the bats’sleek sisterhoods full complines with gallantry:Then, owls and bats, cowls and twats, monks andnuns, in a cloister’s moods, adjourn to the oakstumppantry!’).twitch see TWIGtwo [OE] Two is an ancient word, traceable rightback to Indo-European *duwo. Amongst itsother descendants were Greek dúo, Latin duo(source of English deuce, double, dual, duet,duo, etc), Russian dva, and Welsh dau. In theGermanic languages, aside from English, it hasevolved into German zwei, Dutch twee, Swedishtvå, and Danish to. Two represents the OldEnglish feminine and neuter forms twā; themasculine twegen has become twain. BETWEEN, DEUCE, DOUBLE, DUAL, DUET, DUO,TWAIN, TWELVE, TWENTY, TWICE, TWIG,TWILIGHT, TWIN, TWISTtycoon [19] Japanese taikun was a title used forthe military commander or shogun of Japan,particularly by his supporters when addressingforeigners, in the attempt to convey theimpression that he was more powerful andimportant than the emperor. For it meant literally‘great prince, emperor’. It was borrowed fromancient Chinese t’ai kiuən ‘emperor’, acompound formed from t’ai ‘great’ and kiuən‘prince’. English acquired it in the 1850s, and itbegan to be used more generally for a ‘highrankingpersonage’ in the USA soon afterwards.The specific application to businessmen seemsto have evolved after World War I.type [15] The etymological notion underlying theword type is of making an impression by‘striking’. It comes via Latin typus from Greektúpos ‘blow, impression’, a derivative of túptein‘hit’. In post-classical Latin the meaning ‘form,sort’ evolved (in much the same way as it did inthe case of stamp). The more concretemetaphorical attachment to ‘making a mark bystamping’ had already been made in the classicalperiod, and this eventually led in the 18thcentury to the use of English type for a ‘printingblock with a letter on it’.typhoid see STEWtyphoon [16] A typhoon is etymologically a‘great wind’. The word was adapted fromCantonese Chinese daai feng ‘great wind’, itsform no doubt influenced by Greek Tūphón,father of the winds in Greek mythology (hisname was derived from the verb túphein‘smoke’, which also produced túphos ‘smoke’,

hence ‘fever causing delusion’, source ofEnglish stew, typhoid, and typhus).typhus see STEWtyre [15] The word tyre was originally used for aprotective covering of metal plates put round therim of a wooden wheel. It is thought that it wasshort for attire [13] (a borrowing from OldFrench, but ultimately of unknown origin), the523 tyrenotion being of ‘attiring’ the wheels in theircovering. At first the word was spelled tire ortyre indiscriminately. By the 18th century tirehad become the standard form, and it remains soin American English, but when rubber wheelcushions were introduced in the 19th century,British English took to spelling them tyre. ATTIRE

Uubiquitous [19] Latin ubīque meant‘everywhere’ (it was formed from ubī ‘where’and a generalizing particle -que). From it wasderived the modern Latin noun ubīquitās‘quality of being everywhere’. This was adoptedinto English as ubiquity [16], which later formedthe basis of ubiquitous.udder [OE] Udder goes back ultimately toprehistoric Indo-European *ūdhr-. This, orvariants of it, produced the word for ‘udder’ inthe majority of Indo-European languages: Greekoúthar, Latin ūber (source of Englishexuberant), Sanskrit údhar, Russian vymja,German euter, Dutch uier, Swedish juver, andDanish yver for instance, as well as Englishudder. EXUBERANTugly [13] Ugly originally meant ‘horrible,frightening’; ‘offensive to the sight’ is asecondary development, first recorded in the14th century. The word was borrowed from OldNorse uggligr, a derivative of the verb ugga‘fear’. In the early 1930s it was applied, in thealtered spelling ugli, to a new sort of citrus fruit,a hybrid of the grapefruit and the tangerine; thereference is to the fruit’s unprepossessingknobbly skin.ullage [15] Ullage denotes the amount ofunfilled space in a wine bottle or barrel. It goesback ultimately to Latin oculus ‘eye’ (a distantrelative of English eye), in the metaphoricalsense ‘bung-hole of a barrel’. As the wordpassed into Old French as oeil, this meaningfollowed it, and it formed the basis of a varbouiller ‘fill up a barrel to the bung-hole’. Fromthis was derived ouillage, which Englishacquired via Anglo-Norman ulliage as ullage. EYE, OCULARulterior [17] Ulterior goes back to an unrecordedLatin *ulter ‘distant’ (a relative of ultrā‘beyond’, source of the English prefix ultra-). Itscomparative form was ulterior, which meantliterally ‘more distant’. Its superlative form wasultimus, which lies behind English ultimate [17]and ultimatum [18] (etymologically the‘farthest’ or last point). ULTIMATE, ULTIMATUMultramarine [16] Ultramarine originallydenoted a blue pigment made from the stonelapis lazuli. This was imported in the MiddleAges from Asia by sea, and so it was termed inmedieval Latin ultrāmarīnus, literally ‘beyondthe seas’. This was a compound adjective formedfrom the prefix ultrā- ‘beyond’ and marīnus ‘ofthe sea’ (source of English marine). MARINE, MERE, MERMAIDumbilical [16] Umbilical was borrowed frommedieval Latin umbilīcālis, a derivative of Latinumbilīcus ‘navel’. This went back ultimately tothe Indo-European base *onobh-, a variant ofwhich, *nobh-, produced English navel [OE]. NAVELumbrage [15] Umbrage is one of a group ofEnglish words that go back ultimately to Latinumbra ‘shadow’. Indeed, it was originally usedfor ‘shade, shadow’ in English: ‘the light, andalso … the false umbrage which the moon dothshow forth’, Betham, Precepts of War 1544. Theexpression take umbrage ‘take offence’ arisesfrom a metaphorical extension of ‘shadow’ to‘suspicion’, which took place in French. Theword itself reached English via Old Frenchumbrage from Vulgar Latin *umbrāticum, anoun use of the neuter form of Latin umbrāticus‘shadowy’, which was derived from umbra.Other English words from the same sourceinclude adumbrate [16], penumbra [17], sombre,sombrero, umbel [16], and umbrella. ADUMBRATE, PENUMBRA, SOMBRE, SOMBRERO,UMBEL, UMBRELLAumbrella [17] Etymologically, an umbrella is a‘little shadow’. The word was borrowed fromItalian ombrella, a diminutive form of ombra‘shade, shadow’. This in turn went back to Latinumbra, source of English sombre, umbrage, etc.It originally denoted a ‘sunshade’, and thatmeaning followed it into English, but it was notlong before the vagaries of the British climatesaw it being applied to a ‘protector against rain’. UMBRAGEumpire [15] An umpire is etymologicallysomeone who is ‘not the equal’ of others, and istherefore neutral between them. The word’sultimate source is Old French nomper, acompound noun formed from the prefix non-‘not’ and per ‘equal’ (source of English peer).This was borrowed into English in the 14thcentury as noumpere, but soon misdivision of anoumpere as an oumpere led to umpire (the sameprocess produced adder from an originalnadder). PEERumpteen [20] Umpteen was derived from anearlier umpty. This began life as a signallers’slang term for a ‘dash’ in morse code (like itscompanion iddy for ‘dot’, it was purely fancifulin origin). Its similarity to twenty, thirty, etc ledto its being used for an ‘indefinitely largenumber’, and umpteen simply replaced the -tysuffix with -teen.unanimous [17] Unanimous meansetymologically ‘of a single mind’, hence

‘sharing the same opinion’. It comes from Latinūnanimus ‘of one mind’, a compound adjectiveformed from ūnus ‘one’ and animus ‘mind,spirit’ (a relative of English animal, animate,etc). ANIMAL, ANIMATEuncle [13] Uncle comes via Anglo-Normanuncle and late Latin aunculus from Latinavunculus ‘mother’s brother, maternal uncle’(source also of English avuncular [19]). Thiswas a diminutive noun derived from theprehistoric base *aw- ‘grandparent’, and it hasrelatives in Latin avus ‘grandfather’, Welshewythr ‘uncle’, Polish wuj ‘uncle’, Armenianhav ‘uncle’, etc. AVUNCULARuncouth [OE] Uncouth originally meant‘unknown’ or ‘unfamiliar’ – a sense whichsurvived into the 17th century (‘Now the wholesuperficies of the earth as well uncouth asdiscovered, is but a little point’, John Boys,Works 1616). ‘Crude, awkward’ is a secondarydevelopment, first recorded in the 16th century.The word was formed in the prehistoricGermanic period from the prefix un- ‘not’ andthe past participle of *kunnan ‘know’ (whoseclosest living English relative is could). COULDunction [14] Unction was borrowed from Latinunctiō, a derivative of unguere ‘anoint’ (sourcealso of English unguent [15]). This wasdescended from the same prehistoric ancestor asproduced Welsh ymenyn ‘butter’. Unctuous [14],from the medieval Latin derivative unctuōsus,originally meant literally ‘oily, greasy’, but hassince moved into more metaphorical areas. UNCTUOUS, UNGUENTunder [OE] Under originated as a comparativeform. It has been traced back to a prehistoricIndo-European *ndhero-, which meant ‘lower’,and is also the ultimate source of Englishinferior [15]. This passed into Germanic as*unther-, which has evolved into German unter,Dutch onder, and Swedish, Danish, and Englishunder. INFERIORunderstand [OE] The compound verbunderstand was formed in the centuriesimmediately preceding the Anglo-Saxoninvasions of Britain. It is composed, of course, ofunder and stand, and the semantic link between‘standing under’ something and ‘knowingabout’ it may be ‘being close to’ it.undulate [17] Undulate goes back ultimately toLatin unda ‘wave’, source also of Englishinundate [17], redundant, and surround. This inturn was descended from the Indo-Europeanbase *ud-, which also produced Greek húdōr‘water’ (source of the English prefix hydro-),and variants of which lie behind English vodka,water, and wet. ABOUND, INUNDATE, REDUNDANT, SOUND,SURROUNDungulate see NAILunicorn [13] Legends of a one-horned beastabounded in ancient times, perhaps inspired by525 unitethe rhinoceros, or a sideways view of anantelope. When the early Greek translators of theHebrew Bible came across the word re’em,which seems to have denoted a sort of wild ox,they rendered it monókerōs (literally ‘onehorn’),perhaps identifying it with therhinoceros. The Vulgate turned this into Latin asunicornis, a noun use of an already existent Latinadjective meaning ‘one-horned’, formed fromūnus ‘one’ and cornū ‘horn’ (a relative ofEnglish horn). HORNuniform [16] Something that is uniform hasliterally only ‘one form’, the same throughout.The word comes, probably via French uniforme,from Latin ūniformis, a compound adjectiveformed from ūnus ‘one’ and forma ‘form’. Itsuse as a noun, for a ‘set of identical clothes wornby everyone’, dates from the 18th century, andwas inspired by French. FORMunion [15] Union is one of a range of Englishwords that go back to Latin ūnus ‘one’. This inturn was descended from a prehistoric Indo-European *oinos, which also produced Englishone. Other members of the family include inch,ounce, unique, unite [15], etc. As for unionitself, its immediate ancestor was ūniō, aderivative of ūnus which denoted ‘unity’ or ‘thenumber one’. The application of the Englishword to an ‘association of workers’ dates fromthe early 19th century (a somewhat earlier termwas combination). INCH, ONE, OUNCE, UNIQUE, UNITEunique [17] Unique comes via French uniquefrom Latin ūnicus ‘only, sole’. This was derivedfrom ūnus ‘one’, a distant relative of Englishone. It originally meant simply ‘single, sole’ inEnglish, and the extended sense ‘unequalled,unparalleled’, which has often drawn the hostilecriticism of purists (particularly whenaccompanied by qualifiers such as very orcompletely), did not emerge until the late 18thcentury, under French influence. ONE, UNIONunison [16] Unison originated as a musical term,denoting ‘of the same sound’. It comes via OldFrench unison from late Latin ūnisonus, acompound adjective formed from ūnus ‘one’ andsonus ‘sound’ (source of English sound). Themetaphorical sense ‘agreement, concord’emerged in the 17th century. SOUNDunit [16] The term unit was given generalcurrency by the 16th-century Englishmathematician, astrologer, and magician JohnDee. It was formed from Latin ūnus, probably onthe analogy of digit, and used as a mathematicalterm to replace unity as a translation of Euclid’smonás ‘indivisible number’. In a commentadded to his introduction to Sir HenryBillingsley’s translation of Euclid, Dee wrote‘Note the word unit to express the Greek monas,and not unity: as we have all commonly untilnow used’.unite see UNION

universe 526universe [14] Universe denotes etymologically‘turned into one’, hence ‘whole, indivisible’. Itgoes back ultimately to Latin ūniversus ‘whole,entire’, a compound adjective formed from ūnus‘one’ and versus, the past participle of vertere‘turn’. Its neuter form, ūniversum, was used as anoun meaning the ‘whole world’ (based on themodel of Greek to hólon ‘the whole’), and thispassed into English via Old French univers. TheLatin derivative ūniversālis gave Englishuniversal [14]. CONVERT, VERSIONuniversity [14] The etymological notionunderlying a university is that it denotes the‘whole’ number of those belonging to it. Theword comes via Old French universite fromLatin ūniversitās, which was derived fromūniversus (source of English universe). Thisoriginally meant the ‘whole’, but in the postclassicalperiod it was applied to guilds and othersuch associations, referring to the ‘totality’ oftheir membership. These included societies ofteachers and students, from which the modernmeaning of university emerged. UNIVERSEunkempt [15] Unkempt means literally‘uncombed’. It was coined from the prefix un-‘not’ and the past participle of the now defunctverb kemb ‘comb’. This came from a prehistoricGermanic *kambjan, a derivative of *kambaz‘comb’ (ancestor of the English noun comb). Itbegan to be replaced by the new verb comb in the14th century. COMBuntil see TILLunwieldy [14] Unwieldy originally meant‘weak, feeble’ (‘a toothless, old, impotent, andunwieldy woman’, Reginald Scot, Discovery ofWitch-craft 1584). The meaning ‘awkward tohandle’ developed in the 16th century. The wordwas based on the now seldom encounteredwieldy, which evolved from Old English wielde‘active, vigorous’. This in turn went back to theGermanic base *walth- ‘have power’, sourcealso of English herald and wield. HERALD, WIELDup [OE] Up is part of a widespread family ofGermanic adverbs which also includes Germanauf, Dutch and Danish op, and Swedish upp. Itgoes back ultimately to Indo-European *up-,which also produced English over and theprefixes hyper- and super- and may lie behindEnglish evil. To open something isetymologically to put it ‘up’. OPEN, OVERupbraid [OE] Upbraid originally meant ‘throwsomething up against someone as a fault’. It wasformed from up and the ancestor of modernEnglish braid, which used to mean ‘throw’,amongst other things. The object of the verb wasoriginally the ‘fault’; the shift of focus to the‘person blamed’ began in the 13th century. BRAIDupholster [19] Upholster has no etymologicalconnection with holsters. It is a back-formationfrom upholsterer [17], which itself was derivedfrom an earlier but now obsolete upholster‘person who deals in or repairs small articles’.This was an agent noun formed from the verbuphold [13] (a compound of up and hold), in thenow defunct sense ‘repair’. HOLDuproar [16] Uproar has no direct etymologicalconnection with roar. It originally meant‘uprising, insurrection’, and was borrowed fromDutch oproer. This is a compound formed fromop ‘up’ and roer ‘movement’. It was first used inEnglish by William Tindale, in his 1526translation of the Bible (for Acts 21:38 he has‘that Egyptian which made an uproar, and ledout into the wilderness about four thousandmen’). The sense ‘loud outcry’, which wasinspired of course by the similarity of roar,emerged as early as the 1540s.upstart [16] An upstart is etymologically simplysomeone who has ‘started up’ – but start in itsearly sense ‘jump, spring, rise’. Start-up was anearly alternative version of the word (‘Thatyoung start-up hath all the glory of myoverthrow’, says Don John in Shakespeare’sMuch Ado About Nothing 1599), but it did notsurvive the 17th century.uranium [18] Ouranós was an ancient sky god inGreek mythology, consort of Gaea and father ofCronos and the Titans (his name was apersonification of Greek ouranós ‘heaven’). TheRomans called him ūranus, and the name sooncame to be applied to the seventh planet from thesun after it was discovered in 1781. (Itsdiscoverer, the German-born British astronomerSir William Herschel, originally named itGeorgium sidus ‘Georgian planet’, as anobsequious compliment to King George III, andothers suggested that it should be calledHerschel after the man who found it, but in theend the customary practice of naming after aclassical deity prevailed.) The term uranium wasderived from the planet’s name in 1789 by theGerman chemist Martin Klaproth, and is firstrecorded in English in 1797.urban [17] Urban comes from Latin urbānus, aderivative of urbs ‘city’ (a word of unknownorigin). It was preceded into English by urbane[16], which is essentially the same word, butcame via Old French urbaine. It was originallyused as urban is now, but after urban arrived itgradually took the metaphorical path to ‘smooth,sophisticated’. The derivatives suburb andsuburban date from the 14th and 17th centuriesrespectively; and suburbia was coined in the1890s. SUBURBAN, URBANEurchin [13] Urchin originally meant ‘hedgehog’.It was borrowed from Old Northern Frenchherichon, which came via Vulgar Latin *hēriciōfrom Latin hērīcius or ērīcius ‘hedgehog’, aderivative of ēr ‘hedgehog’. This ancestral sensenow survives only dialectally, but its spinyconnotations are preserved in sea urchin, whichdates from the late 16th century. Themetaphorical ‘dirty scruffy child, brat’ emerged

in the 16th century too. The second syllable ofcaprice goes back to Latin ērīcius. CAPRICEUrdu see HOARDurge [16] Urge was borrowed from Latin urgēre‘push, press, compel’. Its present participle gaveEnglish urgent [15], which thus meansetymologically ‘pressing’. URGENTurine [14] Urine comes via Old French urinefrom Latin ūrīna, which may be related to Greekoúron ‘urine’ (source of English urea [19],ureter [16], urethra [17], and uric [18]) andSanskrit varsa- ‘rain’. Urinal [13] comes fromthe late Latin derivative ūrīnālis.us [OE] Us can be traced back ultimately to Indo-European *ns. This passed into prehistoricGermanic as uns, which has evolved intoGerman uns, Dutch ons, Swedish and Danish os,and English us. Latin nōs ‘we’ (source of Frenchnous) is distantly related. OUR, WEuse [13] The verb use comes via Old French userfrom Vulgar Latin *ūsāre. This was derived fromūsus, the past participle of Latin ūtī ‘use’ (sourcealso of English utensil, utility [14], utilize [19],etc). Latin ūsus was also used as a noun,meaning ‘use, usage’, and this has given Englishthe noun use [13] and the derivatives usage [13](an Old French formation), usual, usurp, andusury. Abuse [14] and peruse [15](etymologically ‘use up’) go back to the sameLatin roots. ABUSE, PERUSE, USUAL, USURP, USURY,UTENSIL, UTILIZEusher [14] An usher is etymologically a ‘doorkeeper’.The word comes via Anglo-Normanusser from medieval Latin ūstārius, an alterationof classical Latin ōstārius ‘door-keeper’. Thiswas derived from ōstium ‘door’, which in turnwas based on ōs ‘mouth’ (source of Englishoral). The usher’s job-description graduallybroadened out from standing at the door toaccompanying visitors inside and showing themto their places, which led in the 16th century tothe emergence of the verb usher. ORALusual [14] That which is usual is etymologicallythat which is commonly ‘used’ or employed, orwhich commonly obtains. The word wasacquired, probably via Old French usual, fromlate Latin ūsuālis, a derivative of Latin ūsus(source of the English noun use). USEusurp [14] Etymologically, to usurp somethingis probably to ‘seize it for one’s own use’. Theword comes via Old French usurper from Latinūsūrpāre, which may have been formed from thenoun ūsus ‘use’ (source of English use) andrapere ‘seize’ (source of English rape, rapture,ravish, etc). RAPE, RAPTURE, RAVISH, USE527 uvulausury [14] Usury is etymologically ‘use’ ofmoney lent. The term comes via Anglo-Norman*usurie from medieval Latin ūsūria, analteration of classical Latin ūsūra ‘use of moneylent’, hence ‘interest’. This in turn was derivedfrom ūsus ‘use’, source also of English use andusage. USEutensil [14] Latin ūtēnsilis meant ‘usable,useful’. It was derived from the verb ūtī ‘use’(source also of English use, utility, utilize, etc).In the Middle Ages it was adapted into a noun,ūtēnsilia, meaning ‘things for use, implements’.This passed into English via Old French utensileas utensil, still a collective noun, but by the 15thcentury it was being used for an individual‘implement’. USEuterus [17] Latin uterus ‘belly, womb’ goesback ultimately to an Indo-European *udero- or*wedero-, which also produced Sanskrit udáram‘belly’, Latvian vēders ‘belly’, and possiblyGreek hustérā ‘womb’ (source of Englishhysteria). It was first used in English by HelkiahCrooke in his Description of the Body of Man1615. HYSTERIAutility see USEutopia [16] Utopia means etymologically ‘noplace’.It was coined by the English statesmanand scholar Sir Thomas More from Greek ou‘not’ and tópos ‘place’ (source of English topic).He used it as the name of an imaginary islandwhose inhabitants had organized their societyalong the lines of what he regarded as atheoretically ideal commonwealth, which hedescribed in his book Utopia 1516. The wordwas first used as a more general term for an‘ideal place’ in the early 17th century. TOPICutter English has two distinct words utter, butthey come from the same ultimate source – out.The older, ‘complete, thorough-going’ [OE]originated as a comparative form of out (or ūt, asit was in the Old English period), and somorphologically is the same word as outer. It didnot begin to be used as an intensive adjectiveuntil the 15th century. Utter ‘express openly,say’ [14] was borrowed from Middle Dutchūteren ‘drive out, announce, speak’, a derivativeof Old Low German ūt ‘out’. OUTuvula [14] The uvula, a small globular mass oftissue suspended from the rear of the roof of themouth, reminded the Romans of a small grape.They therefore called it uva, which meantliterally ‘grape’ (it is not known where thisultimately came from, but it may be distantlyrelated to Russian jagoda ‘berry’). In postclassicaltimes the diminutive form uvula tookover in this sense.

Vvacant [13] Latin vacāre meant ‘be empty’. Itspresent participle vacāns has provided Englishwith vacant, while its past participle lies behindEnglish vacate [17] and vacation [14]. It alsoformed the basis of an adjective vacuus ‘empty’,from which English gets vacuous [17] andvacuum [16] (the term vacuum cleaner is firstrecorded in 1903, and the consequent verbvacuum in 1922). English avoid and void comefrom a variant of Latin vacāre. VACATE, VACUUMvaccine [18] Vaccine was adapted from Latinvaccīnus, which means literally ‘of a cow’ (itwas a derivative of vacca ‘cow’, source ofFrench vache). It was used by the Britishphysician Edward Jenner at the end of the 18thcentury in the terms vaccine disease for‘cowpox’, and hence vaccine inoculation for thetechnique he developed of preventing smallpoxby injecting people with cowpox virus. The verbvaccinate was coined from it at the beginning ofthe 19th century, but vaccine itself was not usedas a noun, meaning ‘inoculated material’, untilthe 1840s.vagabond [15] A vagabond is etymologically a‘wanderer’. The word comes via Old Frenchvagabond from Latin vagābundus, which wasderived from vagārī ‘wander’ (source also ofEnglish termagant, vagary [16], and vagrant[15]). And vagārī in turn was based on vagus‘wandering, undecided’ (source also of Englishvague [16]). TERMAGANT, VAGARY, VAGRANT, VAGUEvagina see VANILLAvain [13] Latin vānus meant ‘empty’ (it wasrelated to vacuus ‘empty’, source of Englishvacuum). It passed into English via Old Frenchvain in the sense ‘worthless’, and the mainmodern meaning ‘conceited’ did not developuntil the 17th century. Also from vānus comeEnglish evanescent, vanish, vanity [13], andvaunt [14], and wane, want, etc go back to thesame ultimate Indo-European base. EVANESCENT, VANISH, VANITY, VAUNT, WANE,WANTvainglorious see GLORYvale see VALLEYvalencyvalency see VALUEvalet see VARLETvaliant see VALUEvalid [16] Something that is valid isetymologically ‘strong’, and hence ‘effective’.The word comes via French valide from Latinvalidus ‘strong, effective’, which was derivedfrom the verb valēre ‘be strong’ (source also ofEnglish valiant, valour, value, etc). The negativeform invalid [16] also goes back to Latin, but itsspecific application to infirm people,differentiated with a distinct pronunciation, wasintroduced from French in the 17th century. VALIANT, VALOUR, VALUEvalley [13] Valley comes via Anglo-Normanvaley from *vallāta, a Vulgar Latin derivative ofLatin vallis ‘valley’, whose origins areuncertain. A more direct English descendant ofvallis is vale [13]. VALEvalue [14] To have value is etymologically to be‘strong’ or ‘effective’, and hence to have‘worth’. The word was borrowed from OldFrench value, a noun use of the feminine pastparticiple of valoir ‘be worth’. This wasdescended from Latin valēre ‘be strong, be ofvalue’, which also produced English avail [13],available [15] (which originally meant‘advantageous’, and was not used for ‘accessiblefor use’ until as recently as the 19th century),convalesce [15], valency [19], valiant [14],valid, and valour [14]. AVAILABLE, CONVALESCE, VALENCY, VALIANT,VALID, VALOURvalve [14] The etymological notion underlyingvalve is of a door opening and closing. The wordwas adapted from Latin valva, which denotedone of the sections of a folding or revolving door,and may have had links with volvere ‘roll’(source of English revolve). It carried its originalmeaning with it into English, but it was not usedat all widely until various metaphorical senses,such as ‘flap controlling the flow of a fluid’ and‘half of a shell’, evolved. The electronic valve isso called because current can flow in only onedirection through it; the usage dates from theearly 20th century.vamp English has two distinct words vamp. Thenow dated slang term for a ‘seductive woman’[20] is short for vampire. The other vamp,‘extemporize on the piano’, was originally anoun meaning the ‘part of a stocking that coversthe foot and ankle’ [13]. It was borrowed fromAnglo-Norman *vaumpé, a reduced form of OldFrench avantpié. This was a compound nounformed from avant ‘in front’ and pié ‘foot’.From it in the 16th century was derived a verbvamp, meaning ‘provide a stocking with a newvamp’, and this evolved semantically via ‘patchup, repair’ to, in the 18th century, ‘extemporize’. VAMPIRE; FOOT, PEDALvampire [18] Vampire probably goes backultimately to ubyr, a word for ‘witch’ in theKazan Tatar language of an area to the east of

Moscow. This was borrowed into Russian asupyr’, and from there probably found its wayinto Hungarian as vampir. English acquired it viaFrench vampire or German vampir. Theapplication of the word to a type of bloodsuckingbat was introduced by the 18th-centuryFrench biologist Buffon.van see CARAVANvandal [17] The term vandal commemorates aGermanic tribe, the Vandals, who sacked Romein 455 AD, and thereby earned themselves areputation as destroyers of civilization. Theirname for themselves was *Wandal-, whichetymologically means ‘wanderer’.vane [15] Vane is an alteration of an earlier fane‘flag, weather-cock’, which was descended fromOld English fana. This in turn came from aprehistoric Germanic *fanon. The change fromfane to vane took place in southwest England,where initial f and s have a tendency to becomev and z (as in zyder for cyder).vanguard [15] Vanguards have nothing to dowith guarding vans. The word denotesetymologically an ‘advance guard’. It is short forthe long defunct avantgard, which wasborrowed from Old French avant-garde, acompound formed from avant ‘in front’ andgarde ‘guard’. (Its modern French descendantwas reborrowed into English as avant-garde[20].) AVANT-GARDE, GUARDvanilla [17] A vanilla pod is etymologically a‘little vagina’. The word was borrowed fromSpanish vainilla, a diminutive form of vaina‘sheath’ (the pod was so named because of itssheath-like shape). Vaina was descended fromLatin vāgīna ‘sheath’, which came to be jokinglyapplied to the ‘female reproductive passage’ –hence English vagina [17]. VAGINAvanish [14] To vanish is etymologically to‘become empty’. The word comes via OldFrench esvanir ‘disappear’ from Vulgar Latin*exvānīre, a variant of Latin ēvānēscere‘disappear’ (source also of English evanescent[18]). This was a compound verb formed fromthe prefix ex- ‘out’ and vānus ‘empty’ (source ofEnglish vain, vanity, vaunt, etc). EVANESCENT, VAIN, VANITY, VAUNTvanity see VAINvanquish [14] Vanquish was adapted fromvainquiss-, the stem form of Old French vainquir‘defeat’. This was derived from vaintre ‘defeat’,a descendant of Latin vincere ‘defeat’ (sourcealso of English convince, invincible [15], victory,etc). CONVINCE, INVINCIBLE, VICTORYvapour [14] Latin vapor meant ‘steam, heat’.English acquired it via Old French vapour. Thenow archaic use of the plural, vapours, for a ‘fitof fainting, hysteria, etc’, which dates from the17th century, was inspired by the notion thatexhalations from the stomach and other internalorgans affected the brain. Vapid [17] comes from529 vastLatin vapidus ‘insipid’, which may have beenrelated to vapor. VAPIDvarlet [15] Varlet and valet [16] are doublets –they come from the same ultimate source. Thiswas Vulgar Latin *vassus, a borrowing from OldCeltic *wasso- ‘young man, squire’. From*vassus were derived two medieval Latindiminutive forms: vassallus, which has givenEnglish vassal [14], and *vassellitus. Thispassed into Old French as vaslet, whichdiversified into valet (source of English valet)and varlet (source of English varlet). Both tobegin with retained their original connotations ofa ‘young man in service to a knight’, and henceby extension any ‘feudal retainer or servant’, butwhile valet still denotes a ‘servant’, varlet wentdown in the world in the 16th century to ‘knave’. VALET, VASSALvarnish [14] Varnish may come ultimately fromBerenice (Greek Bereníkē), the name of a city inCyrenaica, Libya, which was credited with thefirst use of varnishes. Bereníkē became a genericterm in medieval Greek, and is thought to liebehind medieval Latin veronix ‘resin used invarnishes’, which passed into English via OldFrench vernis.vary [14] Latin varius meant ‘speckled,variegated, changeable’ (it gave English various[16], and may have been related to Latin vārus‘bent, crooked, knock-kneed’, source of Englishprevaricate). It had a range of derivatives, whichhave given English variable [14], variance [14],variant [14], variegate [17], variety [16], variola‘smallpox’ [18] (which retains the originalnotion of ‘speckling’), and vary. PREVARICATE, VARIEGATE, VARIETY, VARIOLA,VARIOUSvase [17] Latin vās meant a ‘dish’ or ‘vessel’ (itsdiminutive forms vāsculum and vāscellum havegiven English vascular [17] and vesselrespectively). It passed into English via Frenchvase, and at first was pronounced to rhyme withbase. This pronunciation survives in AmericanEnglish, but in Britain since the 19th centuryvase has been rhymed with bores (now defunct)and bars (the present-day way of saying theword). VASCULAR, VESSELvaseline [19] The term vaseline was coinedaround 1872 as a trade name for a sort ofpetroleum jelly newly brought out by theChesebrough Manufacturing Company. The firstsyllable, vas-, comes from an anglicized spellingof German wasser ‘water’; the second representsthe el- of Greek élation ‘oil’; and the third is thescientific-sounding suffix -ine. WATERvassal see VARLETvast [16] Latin vastus originally meant ‘empty,unoccupied, deserted’. The sense ‘huge’, inwhich English borrowed it, is a secondarysemantic development. Another metaphoricalroute took it to ‘ravaged, destroyed’, in whichsense it lies behind English devastate and waste. DEVASTATE, WASTE

vat 530vat [13] Vat comes from a prehistoric Germanic*fatam ‘vessel, barrel’, which also producedGerman fass, Dutch vat, Swedish fat, and Danishfad. It passed into Old English as fæt, whosedirect descendant, fat, had largely died out by theend of the 19th century; vat represents asouthwestern dialect form.vaudeville [18] In 15th-century France therewas a fashion for songs from the valley of theVire, in the Calvados region of Normandy(particularly popular, apparently, were thesatirical songs composed by a local fuller,Olivier Basselin). They were known as chansonsdu Vau de Vire ‘songs of the valley of the Vire’,which became shortened to vaudevire, and thiswas later altered to vaudeville. It was originallyused in English for a ‘popular song’; theapplication to ‘light variety entertainment’ didnot emerge until the early 19th century.vault Vault ‘arched roof’ [14] and vault ‘jump’[16] are distinct words, although they share acommon ancestor: Latin volvere ‘roll, turn’(source also of English involve, revolve, etc). Itsfeminine past participle volūta evolved in VulgarLatin into *volta, which was used as a nounmeaning ‘turn’, hence ‘curved roof’. Englishacquired it via Old French voute or vaute. Theuse of vaulted ceilings in underground rooms ledin the 16th century to the application of vault to‘burial chamber’.Also from volvere came Vulgar Latin*volvitāre ‘turn a horse’, hence ‘leap, gambol’.This passed via Italian voltare and French volterinto English as vault. INVOLVE, REVOLVE, VOLUMEvaunt see VAINveal [14] The Latin word for ‘calf’ was vitulus (itappears originally to have denoted ‘yearling’, forit is probably related to Greek étos ‘year’). Itsdiminutive form vitellus passed into English viaAnglo-Norman veel, in the sense ‘calf-meat’. ItsOld French cousin, veel, formed the basis of aderivative velin ‘calfskin for writing on’, whichEnglish adopted and adapted into vellum [15]. VELLUMvector see VEHICLEvegetable [14] Latin vegēre meant ‘be active’ (itwas formed from the same Indo-European baseas lies behind English vigil, vigour, and wake).From it was derived vegetus ‘active’, which inturn formed the basis of vegetāre ‘enliven,animate’. From this again came late Latinvegetābilis ‘enlivening’, which came to beapplied specifically to plant growth. It was inthis sense that the word entered English (via OldFrench vegetable), and it was not furthernarrowed down to ‘plant grown for food’ untilthe 18th century. Its semantic descent from itsoriginal links with ‘life, liveliness’ wascompleted in the early 20th century, whenvegetable came to be used for an ‘inactiveperson’. The derivative vegetarian was formedin the early 1840s, and vegan was coined fromthis around 1944. VIGIL, VIGOUR, WAKEvehicle [17] A vehicle is etymologicallysomething that ‘carries’. The word comes viaFrench véhicule from Latin vehiculum, aderivative of vehere ‘carry’. This also gaveEnglish convex, inveigh, vector [18](etymologically a ‘carrier’), and vex [15], and itcame ultimately from a prehistoric Indo-European base *wegh-, ancestor also of Englishwaggon, way, weigh, etc. CONVEX, INVEIGH, VECTOR, VEX, WAGGON,WAY, WEIGHveil [13] The ultimate source of veil is Latinvēlum ‘sail, curtain, veil’, and English acquiredit via Anglo-Norman veile. To reveal somethingis etymologically to ‘remove a veil’ from it. REVEALvein [13] Vein comes via Old French veine fromLatin vēna ‘blood vessel’, a word of uncertainorigin. Acquired directly from Latin were thederivatives venose [17] and venous [17].veld see FIELDvellum see VEALvelvet [14] Velvet is etymologically a ‘hairy’ or‘downy’ fabric. Its ultimate ancestor is Latinvillus ‘hair, down’, which also produced Englishvelours [18]. From it was derived medieval Latinvillūtus ‘shaggy’, which passed into Old Frenchas velu ‘velvety’. And this in turn formed thebasis of a noun veluotte, from which English gotvelvet. The derivative velveteen dates from the18th century. VELOURSvend [17] Latin vēndere meant ‘sell’: it was acompound verb formed from vēnum ‘sale’(source of English venal ‘corrupt, bribable’ [17])and dare ‘give’ (source of English data). Englishacquired the word via French vendre, but it waspreceded into the language by the derivativevendor [16]. DATA, DATE, DONATE, VENALvendetta see VINDICATEveneer [17] Veneer is ultimately the same wordas furnish. Both come from Old French fournir,but veneer was routed via German, whichborrowed fournir as furniren. The verbal nounderived from this, furnirung, was borrowed intoEnglish as faneering in the highly specializedsense ‘provision of a thin surface layer of finewood’. The noun veneer was a back-formationfrom this. FURNISHvenereal [15] Latin venus meant ‘love, charm’(it came ultimately from the same Indo-European base as produced English wish andwinsome and Sanskrit vāchā ‘wish’). It was notthat common as a generic term, its most familiarrole being as the name of the Roman goddess oflove. From it was derived venereus ‘of sexuallove or sexual intercourse’, which Englishborrowed and adapted as venereal. The termvenereal disease dates from the mid 17thcentury. Other contributions made by Latinvenus to English include venerable [15] andvenerate [17] (from Latin venerārī ‘revere’, a

derivative of venus), venial [13], and possiblyvenom. VENERATE, VENIAL, VENUS, WINSOME, WISHvengeance see VINDICATEvenison [13] Latin vēnātiō meant ‘hunting’,hence ‘hunted animals, game’ (it was derivedfrom vēnārī ‘hunt’, which may be distantlyrelated to English win). English acquired it viaOld French venison in the sense ‘flesh of huntedanimals used for food’, and the modernspecialization to ‘deer-meat’ did not begin toemerge until the 18th century.venom [13] Venom comes via Old French venimfrom Vulgar Latin *venīmen, an alteration ofLatin venēnum ‘drug, poison’. It has beenspeculated that this was derived ultimately fromvenus ‘love’ (source of English venerate,venereal, etc), in which case its ancestral sensewould presumably have been ‘love-potion’.vent English has two words vent. The verb,‘provide with an outlet’ [14], came via OldFrench esventer from Vulgar Latin *exventāre‘let out air’. This was a compound verb formedfrom the Latin prefix ex- ‘out’ and ventum‘wind’ (source also of English ventilate [15] anddistantly related to English wind). Vent ‘slit inthe back of a garment’ [15] goes back via OldFrench fente to Vulgar Latin *findita ‘slit’, anoun use of the feminine past participle of Latinfindere ‘split’ (source also of English fission [19]and fissure [14]). VENTILATE, WIND; FISSION, FISSUREventriloquist [17] A ventriloquist isetymologically a ‘stomach-speaker’. The wordis an anglicization of late Latin ventriloquus, acompound formed from Latin venter ‘stomach’(source also of English ventral [18] and ventricle[14]) and loquī ‘speak’ (source of Englishcolloquial [18], elocution [15], eloquent [14],loquacious [17], etc). The ultimate model forthis was Greek eggastrímuthos ‘speaking in thestomach’. The term was originally a literal one;it referred to the supposed phenomenon ofspeaking from the stomach or abdomen,particularly as a sign of possession by an evilspirit. It was not used for the trick of throwingone’s voice until the end of the 18th century. COLLOQUIAL, ELOCUTION, ELOQUENT,LOCUTION, LOQUATIOUS, VENTRAL, VENTRICLEverb [14] Latin verbum originally meant simply‘word’ (a sense preserved in English verbal [15],verbiage [18], and verbose [17]); the specificapplication to a ‘word expressing action oroccurrence’, which passed into English via OldFrench verbe, is a secondary development.Verbum goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *wer-, which also producedEnglish word. English verve [17] comesultimately from the Latin plural verba. VERBOSE, VERVE, WORDverdict [13] A verdict is etymologically a ‘truesaying’. The word was borrowed from verdit, theAnglo-Norman variant of Old French veirdit.This was a compound term formed from veir‘true’ (a descendant of Latin vērum and relativeof English very) and dit ‘saying, speech’, which531 vermouthcame from Latin dictum. The partial latinizationof verdit to verdict took place in the 16th century. DICTION, DICTIONARY, VERYverdigris [14] Etymologically, verdigris means‘green of Greece’. It comes from Old Frenchvertegrez, a conflation of vert de Grece ‘green ofGreece’ (vert came from Latin viridis ‘green’,which also gave English verdant [16] andverdure [14] and may be related to Old Englishwīse ‘sprout, stalk’, Old Norse vísir ‘bud,sprout’, and Lithuanian veisti ‘propagate’). Thereason for the application of the term to thepatina on copper is not known. VERDANT, VERDUREverge English has two words verge. The noun[14], which now means ‘edge’, was originallyused in English for ‘penis’ (it is to this day atechnical term for the male reproductive organ ofinvertebrate animals). It comes via Old Frenchverge from Latin virga ‘rod’ (source also ofEnglish virgule [19]), and the sense ‘edge’emerged in the 15th century from the notion ofthe limits of territorial jurisdiction of the LordHigh Steward, as symbolized by his ‘rod’ ofoffice. A verger is likewise etymologicallysomeone who carries an official ‘rod’. The verbverge [17] comes from Latin vergere ‘bend,incline’, which also gave English converge [17]and diverge [17]. VERGER, VIRGULE; CONVERGE, DIVERGEverify see VERYveritable see VERYvermilion [13] Etymologically, vermilion is‘worm’-coloured. The word comes from OldFrench vermeillon, a derivative of vermeil‘vermilion’. This in turn came from Latinvermiculus ‘little worm’, a diminutive form ofvermis ‘worm’ (source of English vermicelli,vermin, etc and related to English worm). Thelink between ‘worms’ and ‘red’ is that in thepost-classical period, Latin vermiculus was usedfor the ‘kermes’, a sort of scale insect fromwhich red dye was obtained. VERMINvermin [13] Vermin comes via Old Frenchvermin from Vulgar Latin *vermīnum ‘noxiousanimals’, a derivative of Latin vermis ‘worm’.This came ultimately from Indo-European*wrmi-, which also produced English worm, andamong the other contributions it has made toEnglish are vermicelli [17] (from an Italiandiminutive meaning ‘little worms’), vermicular[17], vermiculite [19] (so called because whenheated it produces wormlike projections),vermifuge [17], and vermilion. VERMICELLI, VERMILION, WORMvermouth [19] Vermouth gets its name from itsbeing originally flavoured with wormwood, abitter-tasting plant. The German term for theplant, and the drink, is wermut, a word ofunknown origin, and this passed into English viaFrench vermout. (The corresponding OldEnglish name for the plant, incidentally, waswermōd, and this was later altered to wormwoodfrom the use of the plant as a cure for intestinalworms.)

verse 532verse [OE] Verse is one of a large family ofEnglish words that come ultimately from theLatin verb vertere or its past participial stemvers-. Others include versatile [17], version [16],versus [15], vertebra, vertical, and vertigo, aswell as prefixed forms such as controversy [14],conversation, convert, diverse, invert [16],pervert [14], and reverse [14]. Latin vertereitself came from the Indo-European base *wert-,which also produced English weird and thesuffix -ward. Verse was borrowed from the Latinderivative versus ‘turning, turning of theplough’, hence ‘furrow’, and by furthermetaphorical extension ‘line, line of poetry’. CONTROVERSY, CONVERSATION, CONVERT,DIVERSE, INVERT, PERVERT, REVERSE, SUBVERT,VERSATILE, VERSION, VERSUS, VERTEBRA,VERTICAL, VERTIGO, WEIRDvertebra [17] A vertebra is etymologically abony pivot, a bone on which other bones ‘turn’.The word’s Latin source, vertebra, was derivedfrom the verb vertere ‘turn’ (source also ofEnglish verse, version, etc). VERSEvertical [16] Latin vertex originally meant‘whirl’ (it was derived from vertere ‘turn’,source also of English verse, version, etc, andwas itself borrowed into English in the 16thcentury). It came to be applied metaphorically tothe ‘spiral of hair on top of the head’, and wasthen extended further to ‘highest point’. From itwas derived late Latin verticālis, which passedinto English via French vertical. It originallydenoted ‘of the highest point in the sky, thezenith’, and since this is directly overhead, bythe 18th century vertical had come to be used for‘perpendicular’. Also from vertere came Latinvertīgō ‘whirling’, borrowed into English asvertigo ‘dizziness’ [16]. VERSEverve see VERBvery [13] Latin vērus meant ‘true’ (it cameultimately from Indo-European *wēros, sourcealso of German wahr ‘true’, and it has also givenEnglish verdict, verify [14], verisimilitude [17],and veritable [15]). From it was derived VulgarLatin *vērāius, which passed into English viaOld French verai. Very was originallyexclusively an adjective, meaning ‘true’. It wasnot used as an adverb, meaning ‘truly’, until the14th century, and its modern role as anintensifier did not begin to emerge until the 15thcentury. VERDICT, VERIFYvespers [17] Latin vesper meant ‘evening’, andlike Greek hésperos it went back ultimately toIndo-European *wespero-. This was formedfrom a base *we- which denoted ‘down’ and alsoproduced English west, so etymologicallyvesper signified ‘time when the sun goes down’.(Russian vecher ‘evening’ comes from anotherversion of the same base.) English vespers itselfgoes back via Old French vespres to the plural ofthe variant Latin form vespera. WESTvessel [13] Latin vascellum meant ‘small dish orutensil’. It was a diminutive form of vas ‘dish,vessel’ (source of English vase). It passed intoEnglish via Old French vaissel and Anglo-Norman vessel, on the way acquiring theadditional meaning ‘ship’. VASEvest [17] Vest was originally used fairly generallyfor a ‘robe’ or ‘gown’. Its earliest specificapplication was to a ‘sleeveless jacket wornunder an outer coat’. It was Charles II ofEngland who introduced the fashion, and thefirst reference to vest in this sense is in SamuelPepy’s diary for 8 October 1666: ‘The King hathyesterday, in Council, declared his resolution forsetting a fashion in clothes … It will be a vest, Iknow not well how; but it is to teach the nobilitythrift’. The direct descendant of this is AmericanEnglish vest for ‘waist-coat’. The Britishapplication of the word to an undergarment forthe upper part of the body did not emerge untilthe 19th century. The word came via Frenchveste and Italian veste from Latin vestis‘clothing, garment’. This went back to the Indo-European base *wes-, which also producedEnglish wear. The derived Latin verb vestīreoriginally meant ‘clothe’, and hence ‘induct intoan office by dressing in the appropriategarments’. It has given English its verb vest [15],as well as divest [17] and invest. Other Englishwords from the same source include travesty,vestment [13], vestry [14], and vesture [14]. DIVEST, INVEST, TRAVESTY, VESTRY, WEARvestige [17] Vestige comes via French vestigefrom Latin vestīgium ‘footprint, trace’, a word ofuncertain origin. From it was derived vestīgāre‘track, trace’, which has given Englishinvestigate. INVESTIGATEvestment see VESTvestry see VESTvet [19] Vet is short for veterinary surgeon. As averb, it was originally used (in the 1890s) for‘examine an animal medically’, but before theend of the 19th century this had broadened out to‘investigate, screen’. Veterinary [18] itself camefrom Latin veterīnārius, a derivative of veterīnus‘of cattle and similar domestic animals’.veteran [16] Veteran comes via French vétéranfrom Latin veterānus ‘old’. This was a derivativeof vetus ‘old’, which is the ancestor of Frenchvieux, Italian vecchio, and Spanish viejo. It wentback ultimately to Indo-European *wetus-(source also of Latvian vecs ‘old’). This may berelated to Greek étos ‘year’, in which case ‘old’could derive from an ancestral meaning ‘full ofyears’.veto [17] Latin vetō meant ‘I forbid’ (it was thefirst person present singular of vetāre ‘forbid’, averb of uncertain origin which may be related toWelsh gwadu ‘deny’). It was used in the Romansenate by tribunes of the people as a formula forobjecting to proposals, and it was originallyintroduced into English as part of theterminology of parliamentary procedure.vex see VEHICLE

via see VOYAGEviable see VITALvibrate [17] Vibrate comes from Latin vibrāre‘move quickly to and fro, shake’. This went backultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European base*wib-, *weib- ‘move quickly to and fro’, whichalso produced English weave ‘move to and fro’(as in ‘weave through the traffic’), whip, andwipe. WEAVE, WHIP, WIPEvicar [13] A vicar is etymologically a ‘substitute’for or ‘representative’ of someone else: thus thepope is the vicar of God on Earth, and the vicarof a parish was originally someone who stood infor the parson or rector. The word comes via OldFrench vicaire from Latin vicārius ‘substitute,deputy’. This was a noun use of the adjectivevicārius ‘substituting’ (source of Englishvicarious [17], which more closely preserves themeaning of its Latin original). And vicārius inturn was derived from vicis ‘change, turn,office’, source also of English vicissitude [16]and the prefix vice-. VICARIOUS, VICISSITUDEvice Including the prefix vice-, English has threedistinct words vice. The oldest, ‘wickedness’[13], comes via Old French vice from Latinvitium ‘defect, offence’, which also gave Englishvicious [14], vitiate [16], and vituperate [16].Vice ‘tool for holding’ [14] was acquired via OldFrench viz from Latin vītis. This came to denote‘vine’ (in which sense it gave English viticulture‘vine-growing’ [19]), but originally it signified‘tendril’, and it was this that lay behind theoriginal meanings of English vice: ‘windingstaircase’ and ‘screw’. Its modern applicationbegan to emerge in the 15th century, and derivedfrom the notion of jaws being opened and closedby means of a ‘screw’. The prefix vice- [15]comes from Latin vice ‘in place of’, the ablativecase of vicis ‘change’ (source of English vicar,vicissitude, etc). VICIOUS, VITIATE, VITUPERATE; VITICULTUREvicinity [16] Latin vīcus meant ‘group of houses,village’ (it is related to the -wich or -wick ofEnglish place-names, which originally meant‘hamlet, town’). From it was derived vīcīnus‘neighbouring’, which in turn produced vīcīnitās‘neighbourhood’, source of English vicinity.vicissitude see VICARvictim [15] Victim originally denoted a ‘personor animal killed as a sacrifice’; the more generalnotion of ‘someone who suffers from or is killedby something’ is a secondary development. Theword was borrowed from Latin victima, whichmay be related to German weihen ‘consecrate’.victory [14] Latin vincere meant ‘defeat’ (it hasgiven English convince, evince, invincible, andvanquish). Its past participle was victus, fromwhich English gets convict, evict, victor [14](etymologically a ‘defeater, conqueror’), andvictory. CONVICT, CONVINCE, EVICT, EVINCE,INVINCIBLE, VANQUISHvictuals [14] Victuals are etymologicallysomething you eat to stay ‘alive’. The word533 vigourcame from late Latin vīctūālia ‘provisions’, anoun use of the plural of vīctūālis ‘ofnourishment’. This in turn was derived fromvīctus ‘livelihood’, which was formed from thesame base as vivere ‘live’ (source of Englishconvivial, revive, survive, viper, vivacious, vivid,etc, as well as of a range of words descendedfrom its derivative vīta ‘life’, such as vital andvitamin). The pronunciation of the word,/vitəlz/, reflects the form in which it wasoriginally acquired, via Old French vitaille, butits spelling represents a return to its Latinoriginal. CONVIVIAL, REVIVE, SURVIVE, VIPER,VIVACIOUS, VIVIDvideo see VISITvie [15] Vie is ultimately the same word as invite.It is a shortened version of the now defunct envie‘make a challenge’, which came via Old Frenchenvier from Latin invītāre (source of Englishinvite), a word of uncertain origin which meant‘challenge’ as well as ‘invite’. INVITEview [15] Etymologically, a view is simplysomething ‘seen’. The word was borrowed fromOld French veue, a noun use of the feminine pastparticiple of veoir ‘see’. This was descendedfrom Latin vidēre ‘see’ (source of Englishvision, visit, etc). VISIONvigil [13] Etymologically, to take part in a vigil,you have to be ‘alert’ and ‘awake’. The wordcomes via Old French vigile from Latin vigilia,which was derived from the adjective vigil‘awake, alert’, so the notion underlying it is ofstaying awake to keep watch. Another derivativeof the Latin adjective was vigilāre ‘keep watch’,which lies behind English reveille [17],surveillance [19], vigilant [15], and vigilante[19] (via Spanish). It came ultimately from theIndo-European base *wog-, *weg- ‘be lively oractive’, which also produced English vigour,wake and watch. REVEILLE, SURVEILLANCE, VIGILANTE, VIGOUR,WAKE, WATCHvignette [18] A vignette is etymologically apicture with a border of ‘vine’ tendrils, leaves,etc round it. The word comes from Old Frenchvignette, a diminutive form of vigne ‘vine’(source of English vine and related to Englishwine). It was originally applied to decorations inmedieval manuscripts, but it was then transferredto the border around pictures, and finally to thepictures themselves. The conscious link with‘vines’ now became broken, and in the 19thcentury the term moved on to a ‘head-andshouldersphotograph’ and (metaphorically) a‘short verbal description’. VINE, WINEvigour [14] Latin vigēre meant ‘be lively,flourish’ (it came from the Indo-European base*wog-, *weg- ‘be lively or active’, which alsoproduced English vigil, wake and watch). Fromit was derived the noun vigor ‘liveliness’, whichpassed into English via Old French vigour. From

viking 534the same source come vigorous [14] andinvigorate [17]. INVIGORATE, VIGILviking [19] There are two competing theories asto the origin of the word viking. If its ancestry isgenuinely Scandinavian (and Old Norse víkingris first recorded in the 10th century), then it waspresumably based on Old Norse vík ‘inlet’, andit would denote etymologically ‘person wholives by the fjords’ – a logical enough notion.However, earlier traces of the word have beenfound in Old English and Old Frisian, fromaround the 8th century, which suggests thealternative theory that it may have been coinedfrom Old English wīc ‘camp’ (ancestor of the-wick, -wich of English place-names). On thisview, the term originated as a word used by theAnglo-Saxons for the Norse raiders, who madetemporary camps while they attacked andplundered the local populace. It was introducedinto modern English at the start of the 19thcentury as an antiquarian’s or historian’s term.vile [13] The ancestral meaning of vile is ‘of lowstatus, quality, or price, cheap, common’; its useas a general epithet of ‘horribleness’ is asecondary development. It comes via Old Frenchvil from Latin vīlis, a word of uncertain origin.The same source has given English revile [14]and vilify [15]. REVILE, VILIFYvilla [17] Latin vīlla denoted a ‘country house’. Itwas a condensation of an earlier *wīcslā, whichin turn was derived from *wīcus ‘group ofhouses, camp, village, etc’ (source of the -wick,-wich of English place-names). And *wīcus wasdescended from Indo-European *weik-, *wik-,*woik-, which also produced Greek oíkos‘house’ (source of English economy). To thesame family belong village [14], a derivative ofOld French ville in its extended sense ‘town’,and villain [14], which came via Old Frenchvilain from Vulgar Latin *vīllānus, literally‘dweller in a villa’, and originally denoted‘feudal serf’ (now usually spelled villein, todistinguish it from the metaphorical ‘scoundrel,criminal’). ECONOMY, VILLAGE, VILLAINvindicate [16] Latin vindex meant ‘claimant,defender, avenger’. From it was derivedvindicāre ‘claim, defend, revenge’, which gaveEnglish vindicate, as well as (via French) avenge[14], revenge [14], and vengeance [13].Vindicāre in turn formed the basis of vindicta‘vengeance’, from which English gets vindictive[17] and (via Italian) vendetta [19]. AVENGE, REVENGE, VENDETTA, VENGEANCE,VINDICTIVEvine see WINEvinegar [13] Etymologically, vinegar is ‘sourwine’. The term was borrowed from Old Frenchvyn egre, whose elements went back respectivelyto Latin vīnum ‘wine’ (source of English wine)and acer ‘sharp, pungent’ (source of Englisheager). In modern French, vyn egre becamevinaigre, and its diminutive form has givenEnglish vinaigrette [17]. This originally denoteda sort of small French carriage, whichsupposedly resembled a vinegar-seller’s cart; themodern application to an ‘oil-and-vinegardressing’ is not recorded in English until the endof the 19th century. ACID, ACRID, EAGER, WINEvintage [15] The vintage is etymologically the‘taking away of wine’. The word’s ultimatesource is Latin vindēmia ‘grape gathering’, acompound noun formed from vīnum ‘wine’(source of English wine) and dēmere ‘take away,take off’ (which in turn was a compound verbbased on emere ‘buy, take’). This passed intoEnglish via Old French vendange as vendage,which by association with vintner [15] (anotherderivative ultimately of Latin vīnum) soonchanged to vintage. It continued at first to berestricted to the general sense ‘grape crop’. Thespecific application to the crop of a particularyear did not begin to emerge until the 18thcentury, and this led at the end of the 19thcentury to the broad use of the word for ‘yearwhen something was produced’. Connotationsof ‘oldness’ were encouraged by its applicationto ‘vintage cars’, first recorded in 1928. VINE, VINTNER, WINEviolate [15] Latin violāre ‘treat with violence’was derived from the noun vīs ‘force, energy’(whose accusative form, vim, is probably thesource of English vim [19]). Its past participlegave English violate, while its present participleis ultimately responsible for English violent[14]. VIM, VIOLENTviolet [14] Violet was borrowed from Old Frenchviolete, a diminutive form of viole ‘violet’. Thisin turn went back to Latin viola ‘violet’, itselfacquired by English in the 15th century. Theword probably originated in a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean language, which alsoproduced Greek íon ‘violet’ (source of Englishiodine). Its primary application is as a plantname;its use as a colour term is a secondaryapplication. IODINEviolin [16] Violin has been traced back to VulgarLatin *vītula ‘stringed instrument’, which wasbased ultimately on the name of Vītula, a Romangoddess of joy and victory (and has also, via aprehistoric Germanic borrowing, given Englishfiddle). The Vulgar Latin term passed viaProvençal viola and Old French viole intoEnglish as viol [15], which survives as the nameof an early form of stringed instrument. ItsItalian counter-part is viola, which has givenEnglish viola [18], and its diminutive formviolino is the source of violin. FIDDLE, VIOLAviper [16] A viper is etymologically a creaturethat ‘gives birth to live young’. The word comesvia Old French vipere from Latin vīpera ‘snake’.This was a contraction of an earlier *vīvipera, acompound noun formed from vīvus ‘alive’(source of English vivacious, vivid, etc) andparere ‘give birth’ (source of English parent,parturition, etc) – in former times it was thought

that snakes gave birth to live young. Latin vīperais also the ancestor of English wyvern ‘dragonlikecreature’ [17] and possibly of weever [17],the name of a type of fish with poisonous spines;and the elements from which it was formed alsoof course underlie the English adjectiveviviparous. PARENT, VIVID, VIVIPAROUSvirago see VIRTUEvirgin [13] Virgin comes via Old French virginefrom Latin virgō, a word of uncertain origin. Thevirginals [16], a form of small harpsichord, wereso called because they were intended for playingby girls or young women.virgule see VERGEvirtuevirtue [13] Latin virtūs ‘bravery, strength,capacity, skill, merit’ was derived from vir ‘man’(source also of English virago ‘manlike woman’[14] and virile [15]), and so etymologically itdenoted ‘manliness’. It passed into English viaOld French vertu. Derivatives include virtual[14] which, preserving another semantic aspectof its source, originally meant ‘having power, ineffect’, but by the 17th century had evolved intoits modern sense ‘so in effect or in essence’; andvirtuoso [17], which was borrowed from Italianand goes back to the ancestral sense ‘skill’. VIRAGO, VIRILE, VIRTUAL, VIRTUOSOvisa [19] A visa is etymologically something‘seen’. The word comes via French visa fromLatin vīsa, literally ‘things seen’, a noun use ofthe neuter plural form of the past participle ofvidēre ‘see’ (source of English vision, visit, etc).The notion underlying the word is that a visa is anote or other mark made on a passport to signifythat it has been officially ‘seen’ or examined. VISIT, VISIONvisit [13] Visit is one of a large family of Englishwords that go back to Latin vidēre ‘see’. This inturn was descended from the Indo-Europeanbase *woid-, *weid-, *wid-, which also producedEnglish wise and wit. Other members of thefamily include envy, revise [16], survey, video[20], view, visa, visage, visible [14], vision [13],visor, vista [17], and visual [15]. Visit itselfcomes from the Latin derivative visitāre, whichmeant literally ‘go to see’. ENVY, REVISE, SURVEY, VIDEO, VIEW, VISA,VISIBLE, VISION, VISOR, VISTA, VISUAL, WISE,WITvisor [14] A visor is etymologically somethingthat covers the ‘face’. The word was borrowedfrom Anglo-Norman viser, a derivative of OldFrench vis ‘face’. This in turn was descendedfrom Latin vīsus ‘sight, appearance’ (a noun useof the past participle of vidēre ‘see’, source ofEnglish vision, visit, etc), which in post-classicaltimes was used for ‘face’. Another derivative ofOld French vis was visage ‘face’, from whichEnglish got visage [13]. VISIT, VISIONvista see VISITvisual see VISITvital [14] Vital comes via Old French vital fromLatin vītālis. This was a derivative of vīta ‘life’.535 vodkaAnd vīta went back ultimately to Latin vīvus‘living’, source of English vivacious, vivid, etc.Viable [19] is also descended from vīta, andetymologically means ‘capable of life’. VIABLE, VITAMIN, VIVIDvitamin [20] Vitamins were originally vitamines:the Polish-born biochemist Casimir Funk whointroduced them to the world in 1920 believedthat they were amino acids and so formed thename from Latin vita ‘life’ and amine. It wassoon discovered that Funk’s belief was mistaken,and alternative names were suggested, but in1920 it was successfully proposed (by J.C.Drummond) that the -e be dropped to avoidconfusion, and the form vitamin was born. AMINE, VITALvitreous [17] Latin vitrum meant ‘glass’ (it maybe the same word as vitrum ‘woad, plantproducing blue dye’, the link being the bluishgreencolour of glass, and it might even bedistantly related to English woad itself). From itwas derived vitreus ‘clear, transparent’, whichgave English vitreous. The sulphates of variousmetals have a glassy appearance, and so inmedieval Latin the term vitriolum (a derivativeof vitrum) was applied to them – whence Englishvitriol [14]. VITRIOLvivacious see VICTUALSvivid [17] Vivid was acquired from Latin vīvidus‘full of life, lively’. This was derived from vīvere‘live’, which in turn went back to the Indo-European base *gwei-, source also of Englishbiology, quick, and zoo. To the same immediateword-family belong convivial [17], revive [15],survive [15], victuals, viper, vital, vitamin,vivacious [17], and vivisection [18]. BIOLOGY, CONVIVIAL, QUICK, REVIVE, SURVIVE,VICTUALS, VIPER, VITAL, VITAMIN, VIVACIOUS,VIVISECTION, ZOOviviparous see PARENTvixen [15] The only Old English word on recordfor a ‘female fox’ is fyxe. Fixene first appears inthe late Middle English period. It was formedusing the suffix -en, denoting ‘female’. This wasonce quite common – Old English had biren‘female bear’, for instance, and gyden ‘goddess’– but it now survives only in vixen. (Its Germancounterpart, -in, is still a live suffix.) The initialv of vixen comes from southwestern England. FOXvocation [15] A vocation is etymologically a‘calling’. The word comes via Old Frenchvocation from Latin vocātiō. This was derivedfrom the verb vocāre ‘call’, which came from thesame base as vōx ‘voice’ (source of Englishvocal, voice, etc). Also from vocāre comeconvoke [16], evoke [17], invoke [15], provoke[15], revoke [16], vocabulary [16], vocative [15],and vouch. CONVOKE, EVOKE, INVOKE, PROVOKE, REVOKE,VOCABULARY, VOICE, VOUCHvodka [19] Vodka denotes etymologically ‘littlewater’. The word was borrowed at the beginningof the 19th century from Russian vodka, which isa diminutive form of voda ‘water’. And voda

vogue 536came from the same Indo-European source(*wedōr, *wodōr) as produced English water.The euphemistic application of the term water todistilled spirits is also responsible for eau de vieand whisky, both of which mean literally ‘waterof life’. WATERvogue [16] The etymological notion underlyingthe word vogue is of being borne along on the‘waves’ of fashion. Its immediate source wasFrench vogue. This was originally used for‘rowing’, but was subsequently extendedmetaphorically via ‘smooth easy course’ and‘successful course’ to ‘fashionable course’.French vogue itself, though, was of Germanicorigin. It was a derivative of the verb voguer‘row, go along smoothly’, which was probablyborrowed from Old Low German *wogon ‘floaton the waves’ (a relative of English waggon,way, etc). WAGGON, WAYvoice [13] Voice comes via Old French vois fromLatin vōx ‘voice’, whose other contributions toEnglish include vocal [14], vociferous [17], andvowel. Its ultimate source is the Indo-Europeanbase *wek- ‘speak, say’, which also producedLatin vocāre ‘call’, ancestor of Englishvocabulary, vocation, etc. VOCAL, VOCATION, VOCIFEROUS, VOWELvoid see AVOIDvolatile see VOLLEYvolcano [17] Volcanoes get their name fromVulcan, the Roman god of fire. His name inLatin was Volcānus, and it was the Italiandescendant of this, volcano, that was originallyadapted as a term for ‘fire-emitting mountain’.English borrowed the word from Italian. Alsocommemorating Vulcan is the vulcanization[19] of rubber. The term appears to have beencoined around 1845 by a certain Mr Brockedon,a friend of the English chemist Thomas Hancock(1786–1865), an early pioneer of the process.Latin Volcānus itself may be related to CretanWelkhanoc, which came from HittiteValhannasses. VULCANIZATIONvole [19] A vole is etymologically a‘fieldmouse’. The word is short for an earliervolemouse, which is assumed to have beenborrowed from an unrecorded Norwegiancompound *vollmus. The first element of this,voll ‘field’, was descended from Old Norse völlr‘field’, which in turn went back to prehistoricGermanic *walthus (source also of Englishweald [OE] and wold [OE] and German wald‘forest’). It may be related ultimately to wild.The second element, mus, is the same word asEnglish mouse. WEALD, WOLDvolition [17] Volition comes via French volitionfrom medieval Latin volitiō, a noun derived fromLatin volō ‘I will’. Together with English will,this went back ultimately to Indo-European*wel-, *wol- ‘be pleasing’, which also producedEnglish volunteer and voluptuous. VOLUNTARY, VOLUNTEER, VOLUPTUOUS, WILLvolley [16] A volley is etymologically a ‘flight’of something, such as missiles. The word comesvia Old French volee from Vulgar Latin *volāta‘flight’, which was a noun use of the femininepast participle of Latin volāre ‘fly’ (source alsoof English volatile [17]). The origins of this arenot certain, although it may be distantly relatedto Sanskrit garutmant- ‘bird’. The use of volleyas a sporting term for a ‘shot hit before the ballbounces’ dates from the 19th century. VOLATILEvolume [14] Volume is one of a sizeable familyof English words that go back to Latin volvere‘roll, turn’. Others include convolution [16],convolvulus [16], devolution [16], evolution,involve [14], revolt, revolution, revolve, vault,volte-face [19], and voluble [16]. Volume itselfcomes via Old French volum from Latinvolūmen, a derivative of volvere. The sense‘book’ evolved from the notion of a ‘roll’ ofparchment. The word came to have connotationsof a ‘big’ book, and this gave rise in the 16thcentury to the sense ‘size of a book’. By the 17thcentury this had broadened out to ‘size’ ingeneral, but the modern sense ‘size of sound’ didnot emerge until the early 19th century. Latinvolvere itself came ultimately from the Indo-European base *wol-, *wel- ‘turn’, which alsoproduced English wallow. CONVOLUTION, CONVOLVULUS, DEVOLUTION,EVOLUTION, INVOLVE, REVOLT, REVOLUTION,REVOLVE, VAULT, VOLTE-FACE, VOLUBLE,WALLOWvolunteer [17] Volunteer comes via Frenchvolontaire from Latin voluntārius, a noun use ofthe adjective which gave English voluntary [14].This was derived from the noun voluntās ‘will,free will’, which itself was based on volō ‘I will’(source also of English volition). VOLITIONvoluptuous [14] Voluptuous goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *wol-,*wel- ‘be pleasing’, which also producedEnglish volunteer and will. From it wasdescended the Latin adverb volup ‘agreeably’,from which were derived in turn the nounvoluptās ‘pleasure’ and the adjectivevoluptuōsus ‘giving pleasure’. In itstransmission via Old French voluptueux toEnglish, it acquired additional connotations of‘sensual pleasure’. VOLITIONvomit [14] Vomit comes from vomitus, the pastparticiple of Latin vomere ‘vomit’. This wasdescended from the prehistoric Indo-Europeanbase *wem-, which also produced Greek emeín‘vomit’ (source of English emetic [17]). EMETICvote [15] Vote goes back ultimately to Latinvovēre ‘promise solemnly, wish for’. Its pastparticiple was vōtus, which fed directly intoEnglish as the verb vote; the noun vote comesfrom the Latin derivative vōtum. The modernEnglish meaning of the word comes from thenotion of expressing one’s ‘wishes’ by means ofcasting a ballot. ‘Wishing, desiring’ was a

secondary semantic development of the Latinverb; its original meaning, ‘promise solemnly’,is preserved in English vow [13], which comesvia Anglo-Norman vou from Latin vōtum. VOWvouch [14] Vouch originally meant ‘call as awitness’; ‘guarantee’ is a 16th-centurydevelopment. The word was borrowed from OldFrench voucher ‘summon’, which in turnappears to have evolved from Latin vocāre ‘call’(source of English vocation, vocative, etc).Anglo-Norman used the Old French infinitiveverb as a noun, meaning ‘summons’, from whichEnglish gets voucher [16]. Vouchsafe [14]originated as a compound of vouch ‘guarantee’and safe. VOCATIONvow see VOTEvowel [14] A vowel is etymologically a ‘vocal’sound – that is, one made by vibrating the vocalchords. The word comes via Old French vouelfrom Latin vōcālis. This was short for litteravōcālis ‘vocal letter, letter that sounds’, sonusvōcālis ‘vocal sound’, etc. Vōcālis (source ofEnglish vocal) was derived from vōx ‘voice’(source of English voice). VOICE537 vulturevoyage [13] Voyage goes back ultimately toLatin via ‘way’ (source also of the Englishpreposition via [18]). From it was derivedviāticum, which originally meant ‘provisions fora journey’, but in post-classical times was usedfor simply ‘journey’. English acquired it via OldFrench veiyage and Anglo-Norman voiage. VIAvulcanization see VOLCANOvulgar [14] Latin vulgus, a word of uncertainorigin, denoted the ‘common people’. From itwas derived the adjective vulgāris, from whichEnglish gets vulgar. The Vulgate [17], a versionof the Bible translated into Latin in the 4thcentury, was so called because it made the textavailable to the ‘common people’. Divulgecomes from the same source, and meansetymologically ‘make known to the commonpeople’. DIVULGEvulture [14] The origins of Latin vultur ‘vulture’are uncertain, although it may be related to Latinvellere ‘pluck, tear’. English acquired it notdirectly, but by way of its derived adjectivevulturius, which produced the Old French nounvoltour. This passed into English via Anglo-Norman vultur.

Wwafer [14] Wafer and waffle [18] are essentiallythe same word. Both come ultimately from aLow German term whose underlyingetymological meaning was of a ‘honeycomb’-patterned cake or biscuit – a sense wafer hassince lost. The ancestral form was wāfel, whichseems to have come from the prehistoricGermanic base *wab-, *web- (source of Englishweave) and is probably related to German wabe‘honeycomb’. Old French borrowed MiddleLow German wāfel as gaufre (which is whereEnglish got goffer ‘crimp’ [18] from). TheAnglo-Norman version of this was wafre –whence English wafer. Waffle was borroweddirect into American English from Dutch wafel.(The verb waffle ‘speak verbosely’ [19],incidentally, is not the same word. It is aderivative of an earlier waff [17], used for thesounds a dog makes, which like woof was ofimitative origin.) GOFFER, WAFFLE, WEAVE, WEBwaft [16] A wafter was an ‘armed ship used forconvoying others’ (the word was borrowed fromMiddle Dutch wachter ‘guard’, which camefrom the same prehistoric Germanic base asEnglish wait, wake, and watch). The verb waftwas derived from it by back-formation, and atfirst was used for ‘convey by water, convoy’(‘Because certain pirates … were lurking at theThames mouth … Thomas Lord Camoys withcertain ships of war was appointed to waft overthe king’, Edward Hall, Chronicle 1548). Thechange from ‘conveyance by water’ to‘conveyance through the air’ began in the 17thcentury. WAIT, WAKE, WATCHwag [13] Wag was derived from the MiddleEnglish descendant of Old English wagian‘totter’, a word related to English wave of thesea. Waggle [15] was based on it. The noun wag‘comical fellow’, first recorded in the 16thcentury, is generally taken to be short forwaghalter, literally ‘someone who swings to andfro in a noose’, hence ‘someone destined for thegallows’. WAGGLEwage [14] Wage and gage (as in engage) aredoublets – that is to say, they come from thesame ultimate source, but have drifted apart overthe centuries. The source in this case wasprehistoric Germanic *wathjam ‘pledge’, whichis also the ancestor of English wedding. It wasborrowed into Old French as gage, which iswhere English gets gage from; but its Anglo-Norman form was wage, which accounts forEnglish wage. Gage, engage, and the derivativewager [14] all preserve to some degree theoriginal notion of ‘giving a pledge or security’,but wage has moved on via ‘payment’ to‘payment for work done’. ENGAGE, GAGE, WAGER, WEDDINGwaggon [16] Waggon was borrowed from Dutchwagen. It has gradually replaced the nativeEnglish form wain ‘waggon’ [OE]. Both wordsgo back via prehistoric Germanic *wagnaz,*wegnaz to Indo-European *woghnos,*weghnos, a derivative of the base *wogh-,*wegh- ‘carry’ (which also produced Englishvehicle, way, weigh, etc). VEHICLE, VEX, WAIN, WAINSCOT, WAY, WEIGHwainscot [14] Wainscot was borrowed fromMiddle Low German wagenschot. It is notaltogether clear what the origins of this were, butthe generally accepted theory is that it is acompound of wagen ‘waggon’ and schot‘planks, boards’, and that it therefore originallymeant ‘planks used for making waggons’. Tobegin with it was applied in English to ‘highgradeoak imported from Russia, Germany, andHolland’. Such wood was used mainly forpanelling rooms, and by the 16th centurywainscot had come to signify ‘wood panelling’. WAGGON, WAINwaist [14] Waist is something of a mystery word,but it is generally taken to denote etymologically‘girth to which one has grown’. It is probablydescended from an unrecorded Old English*wæst, which would have gone back toprehistoric Germanic *wakhs- ‘grow’, source ofEnglish wax ‘grow’ (as in wax and wane).Related forms which support this hypothesisinclude Icelandic vöxstr and Gothic wahstus,which mean ‘growth, size’.wait [12] Wait originally meant ‘look, spy’. Butthe notion of remaining in hiding, keeping awatch on one’s enemies’ movements led via thesense ‘remain, stay (in expectation)’ to, in the17th century, ‘defer action’. The word wasborrowed from Old Northern French waitier,which was itself a loanword from prehistoricGermanic *wakhtan (ultimate source also ofEnglish waft). This in turn was formed from thebase *wak-, which also produced English wake,watch, etc. The sense ‘serve food at table’emerged in the 16th century from an earlier‘attend on’. WAFT, WAKE, WATCHwaive [13] To waive something is etymologicallyto make a ‘waif’ of it. The word comes fromAnglo-Norman weyver, a derivative of the nounweif (source of English waif [14]). Thisoriginally meant ‘ownerless property’, and so

the verb came to be used for ‘abandon’. Itsspecific application in English to ‘relinquishinga right’ emerged in English in the 15th century.Anglo-Norman weif itself was ultimately ofScandinavian origin. WAIFwake English has two distinct words wake. Theolder, ‘not sleep’ [OE], goes back ultimately tothe prolific Indo-European base *wog-, *weg-‘be active or lively’. This proliferatedsemantically in many directions, including‘growth’ (in which it gave English vegetable)and ‘staying awake’, which developed into‘watching’ and from there into ‘guarding’ (allthree preserved in vigil). The original sense‘liveliness’ is represented in vigour. Theprehistoric Germanic base *wak- took over the‘not sleep, watch’ group of senses. From it wasderived the verb *wakōjan, which subsequentlysplit into two in English, producing wake andwatch. The noun wake, which (unlike the verb)preserves the ‘watch’ strand of meaning (nowspecialized to ‘watching over a dead body’),comes from the same base. Waken [12] wasborrowed from the related Old Norse vakna.Wake ‘track of a boat’ [16] probably came viaMiddle Low German wake from Old Norse vök‘hole in the ice’. VEGETABLE, VIGIL, VIGOUR, WAFT, WAIT,WATCHwalk [OE] Walk originally meant ‘roll about,toss’ (an 11th-century Anglo-Saxon glossarytranslated Latin ferventis oceani as ‘walkingsea’). This gradually broadened out via ‘moveabout’ to ‘go on a journey’, but the specificapplication to ‘travelling on foot’ did not emergeuntil the 13th century. The verb came from aprehistoric Germanic *walkan, which alsoproduced Dutch walken ‘make felt by beating’and French gauchir ‘turn aside, detour’ (sourceof English gauche [18]). It is ultimately relatedto Sanskrit valgati ‘hops’. GAUCHEwall [OE] Wall was borrowed into Old Englishfrom Latin vallum ‘rampart’. This originallydenoted a ‘stockade made of stakes’, and it wasderived from vallus ‘stake’. German wall, Dutchwal, and Swedish vall, also borrowings fromLatin, preserve its meaning ‘rampart,embankment’, but English wall has becomeconsiderably wider in its application. Aninterval is etymologically a space ‘betweenramparts’. INTERVALwallet [19] Etymologically, a wallet may besomething ‘rolled’ up. The word originallydenoted a ‘traveller’s pack’; its application to a‘small flat case for money and papers’ arose in19th-century American English. It was probablyborrowed from an Anglo-Norman *walet, whichcould have been formed from the prehistoricGermanic base *wal- ‘roll’ (source also ofEnglish wallow).wallop [14] Wallop and gallop are doublets – thatis to say, they began life as the same word, buthave gradually drifted apart. Their ultimate539 waltzcommon source was Frankish *walahlaupan‘jump well’. This was a compound verb formedfrom *wala ‘well’ and *hlaupan ‘jump’, arelative of English leap. This was borrowed intoOld French as galoper, which gave Englishgallop. But the northern dialect of Old Frenchtook it over as waloper, which is where Englishwallop comes from. This was originally used for‘gallop’ (‘Came there king Charlemagne, as fastas his horse might wallop’. William Caxton,Four Sons of Aymon 1489), but after theacquisition of gallop it began to go steadilydownhill semantically, helped on its wayperhaps by its sound, suggestive of hitting. GALLOPwallowallow [OE] To wallow is etymologically to‘roll’ about. The word goes back ultimately tothe Indo-European base *wol-, *wel- ‘roll’,which also produced English helix, involve,vault, volume, etc. From this was descendedprehistoric Germanic *wal-, *wel- (source ofEnglish waltz, welter, etc, and possibly ofwallet). The extended form *walw- producedWest Germanic *walwōjan, which evolved intoEnglish wallow. INVOLVE, REVOLVE, VOLUME, WALTZ, WELTERwalnut [OE] A walnut is etymologically a‘foreign nut’. Its name alludes to the fact that thenut was regarded by the Germanic peoples as anexotic import from southern Europe, land ofRomans and Celts (their own native nut was thehazel). Prehistoric Germanic *walkhazoriginally meant ‘Celtic’ (it was borrowed fromLatin Volcae, the name of a Celtic people), but itsoon broadened out to include anyone oranything foreign (including the Romans) withinits scope. Its original Celtic connotationssurvive, however, in Welsh and Walloon (thename of a people of Gaulish origin), both ofwhich go back to *walkhaz. English shares theformation walnut with its Germanic neighbours– German walnuss, Dutch walnoot, Swedishvalnöt, and Danish valnød. WALLOON, WELSHwalrus [17] Etymologically, a walrus isprobably a ‘whale-horse’. The word seems tohave been borrowed from Dutch walrus, whichwas an inversion of a presumed prehistoricGermanic compound represented by OldEnglish horschwæl and Old Norse hrosshvalr.(The inversion may have been due to theinfluence of Dutch walvisch ‘whale’ – literally‘whale-fish’ – but it could also owe something toFrench influence, since French noun compoundsof this sort are often in the reverse order tocorresponding Germanic ones.) The elementwal- is clearly the same word as whale, and -rusis generally assumed to be horse. It has,however, been suggested that the horsc- of theOld English term was an alteration of morsa, aname for the walrus of Lappish origin which isalso the source of French morse ‘walrus’. HORSE, WHALEwaltz [18] To waltz is etymologically to ‘roll’.The word was adapted from German walzen.This meant literally ‘roll, revolve’. Its

wand 540application to a dance that involves spinninground is a secondary development. It came fromthe prehistoric Germanic base *wal-, *wel-‘roll’, which also produced English wallow,welter, etc, and it is ultimately related to Englishinvolve, volume, etc. WALLOWwand [12] A wand is etymologically a‘bendable’ stick. The word was borrowed fromOld Norse vöndr ‘thin straight stick’. This inturn went back to a prehistoric Germanic*wanduz, which was derived from *wand-,*wend- ‘turn’ (source also of English wander,went, etc). A stick that can be ‘turned’ is one thatcan be ‘bent’, hence a ‘flexible stick’. Theearliest record of the word’s use for a ‘stick withmagic powers’ comes from the 15th century. WANDER, WENTwander [OE] To wander is etymologically to‘turn’ off the correct path. The word comes,together with German wandern, from aprehistoric West Germanic *wandrōjan, whichwas derived from the base *wand-, *wend- ‘turn’(source also of English wand, went, etc). TheGerman compound wanderlust, literally ‘traveldesire’,was borrowed into English at thebeginning of the 20th century. WAND, WENTwane [OE] Wane and Norwegian vana ‘spoil,waste’ are the only survivors of a family ofGermanic verbs that goes back to a prehistoric*wanōjan. This was derived from the base *wan-‘lacking’, which also produced English want.The related but now defunct English adjectivewane ‘lacking’ is represented in the first syllableof wanton. WANT, WANTONwant [12] Etymologically, to want something isto ‘lack’ it (a sense still intact in the noun want);‘wishing to have’ is a secondary extension ofthis. The word was borrowed from Old Norsevanta ‘be lacking’. This in turn was descendedfrom a prehistoric Germanic *wanatōn, whichwas formed from the base *wan- ‘lacking’(source also of English wane). WANEwanton [13] Someone who is wanton isetymologically ‘lacking in proper upbringing ordiscipline’. The word was formed from theMiddle English prefix wan- ‘un-’ (a reducedform of the adjective wane ‘lacking’, which isrelated to the modern English verb wane) andtowen, a descendant of Old English togen, thepast participle of tēon ‘pull’, hence ‘bring up,train, discipline’. WANEwar [12] The word war was acquired from werre,the northern dialect form of Old French guerre.This in turn came from prehistoric Germanic*werra ‘strife’, which was formed from the base*wers- (source also of English worse andGerman wirren ‘confuse’). Warrior [13] is fromthe Old Northern French derivative werreieor.The diminutive of guerra, the Spanishequivalent of French guerre, gave Englishguerilla. GUERILLAwarble [14] The etymological notion underlyingthe word warble is of ‘whirling around’; itsapplication to sounds, originally in the sense‘whirl of notes, trill’, is a secondarydevelopment. It was borrowed from OldNorthern French werbler, a derivative of thenoun werble ‘trill, melody’. And this in turncame from Frankish *hwirbilōn ‘whirl, trill’,which is distantly related to English whirl.(Warble ‘swelling on an animal’s back caused byinsect larva’ [16] is a completely different word.It may have been borrowed from the nowobsolete Swedish compound varbulde, literally‘pustumour’, or a related Scandinavian word.)ward [OE] Ward and guard are ultimately thesame word. Both go back to a prehistoric WestGermanic *wartho ‘watching over’. Butwhereas guard reached English via Old French,ward is a lineal descendant of the Germanicword. The noun originally meant ‘watching,guarding’; its application to an individual roomof an institution where people are guarded orlooked after (at first including prisons as well ashospitals) dates from the 16th century. The verbward (now mainly encountered in ward off)comes from the Germanic derivative*warthōjan. The early sense ‘guardianship,custody’ is preserved in such expressions asward of court, and also in warden [13] (from theOld Northern French derivative wardein,corresponding to the central French formguardien ‘guardian’) and warder [14], fromAnglo-Norman wardere. The word’s ultimatesource is the base *war- ‘watch, be on one’sguard, take care’ (source also of English aware,beware, warn, wary, etc). AWARE, BEWARE, GUARD, WARN, WARYwardrobe [14] A wardrobe was originally aroom in which clothes were kept. It did notshrink to a cupboard until the 18th century. Theword was borrowed from Old Northern Frenchwarderobe, a compound formed from warder‘look after, keep’ (a relative of English ward)and robe ‘garment’. ROBE, WARDware English has two distinct words ware, but thelikelihood is that both come from the sameultimate source – the prehistoric Germanic base*war-, *wer-. This denoted ‘watch, be on one’sguard, take care’, and also produced Englishward and warn. It may have had links with Latinverērī ‘fear’ (source of English revere). From itwas formed the adjective *waraz, which evolvedinto English ware [OE] – now virtually obsoleteexcept in the derived forms aware [13], beware[13], and wary [16]. It is thought that ware‘article for sale’ [OE] could also come from thebase *war- – its etymological meaning thusbeing ‘something one takes care of’. Borrowedinto French, *war- produced garage,subsequently acquired by English. AWARE, BEWARE, GARAGE, GUARD, WARD,WARN, WARRANT, WARY

warlock [OE] Etymologically, a warlock is a‘liar on oath’, and hence a ‘traitor’ or ‘deceiver’.Indeed, the word originally meant ‘traitor’ inEnglish. It soon broadened out into a generalterm of abuse, and it was also used as an epithetfor the ‘Devil’, but the modern sense ‘evilsorcerer’ did not emerge until the 14th century. Itstarted life as a compound noun formed fromwǣr ‘faith, pledge’ (a relative of English veryand German wahr ‘true’) and -loga ‘liar’ (aderivative of lēogan, the ancestor of modernEnglish lie). LIE, VERYwarm [OE] English, German, and Dutch warmand Swedish and Danish varm go back to acommon prehistoric source, *warmaz. This inturn was descended from Indo-European*ghworm-, *ghwerm-, which also producedGreek thermós ‘hot’ (source of English thermal,thermometer, etc), Latin formus ‘warm’ andfornus ‘oven’ (source of English fornication andfurnace), and Armenian jerm ‘warm’. FORNICATION, FURNACE, THERMALwarn [OE] Warn, and its German relativewarnen, go back to a prehistoric West Germanic*warnōjan. This was formed from the base*war- ‘watch, be on one’s guard, take care’,which also produced English ward, ware, wary,etc. Germanic *warnjan, which evidently hadclose links with *warnōjan, was borrowed intoFrench, and surfaced in English as garnish. GARNISH, WARD, WARE, WARYwarp [OE] Warp originally meant ‘throw’ (‘SaintPaul’s head after his decease in a deep vewar[fishpond] warped was’, Scottish Legends of theSaints 1375). The notion of ‘bending’ or‘twisting’ is a secondary development (firstrecorded in the 14th century). Its immediateinspiration may have been the related Old Norsepast participle orpinn ‘warped’, but theunderlying motivation was no doubt aconceptual link between ‘throwing’ and‘twisting’, presumably via ‘throw with a twistingaction’ (it is probably no coincidence thatEnglish throw originally meant ‘twist’). Theword came from a prehistoric Germanic base*werb-, which also produced German werfenand Dutch werpan ‘throw’. This was probablydescended from Indo-European *wer-, sourcealso of Latin vertere ‘turn’, from which Englishgets revert, version, etc. CONVERT, REVERT, VERSION, WHARFwarrant [13] Warrant probably goes backultimately to werenti ‘protector’, a noun use ofthe present participle of Old High Germanwerren ‘protect’, which in turn was formed fromthe base *wer- ‘watch, be on one’s guard, takecare’ (source of English ward, wary, etc). Thiswas borrowed into medieval Latin as warantus,and passed into English via Old Northern Frenchwarant. The central Old French form of the wordwas garant, which passed into English viaSpanish as guarantee. GUARANTEE, WAREwarren [14] A warren is etymologically a‘fenced-off’ area. The word was acquired from541 watchwarenne, the Anglo-Norman version of OldFrench garenne ‘game-park’. This in turn camefrom Gaulish *varrenna ‘area bounded by afence’, which was derived from *varros ‘post’.The specific link with rabbits (originally as areserve set aside for breeding rabbits, now anarea where wild rabbits live) is a secondarydevelopment.warrior see WARwary see WAREwash [OE] Etymologically, to wash something isprobably to clean it with ‘water’. Like Germanwaschen, Dutch wasschen, and Swedish vaska, itgoes back to a prehistoric Germanic *waskan,which seems to have been derived from *wat-,the base which produced English water. (Washer‘small disc with a hole’ [14] is usually assumedto come from the same source, but its semanticlink with wash has never been satisfactorilyexplained.) WATERwasp [OE] Etymologically, the wasp may be the‘weaver’. The word comes ultimately from Indo-European *wobhes- or *wops-, which wasprobably derived from the base *webh-, *wobh-‘weave’ (source of English weave, web, etc); theallusion is presumably to the papery nest whichmany species construct. West Germanic tookthis over as *wabis- or *waps-, and the processof metathesis (reversal of sounds) producedEnglish wasp and German wespe. From the sameIndo-European ancestor come Latin vespa(source of French guêpe, Italian vespa, andSpanish avispa) and Russian osa. WEAVE, WEBwassail [13] Wassail was borrowed from OldNorse ves heill, literally ‘be healthy’. This was atoast or salutation given when about to drink(much like English good health!). Ves was theimperative singular of vesa or vera ‘be’ (arelative of English was and were) and heill isessentially the same word as English hale andwhole, and related to healthy. HALE, HEALTHY, WHOLEwaste [12] The etymological notions underlyingwaste are ‘emptiness’ and ‘desolation’. Its mainmodern sense, ‘squander’, is a comparativelyrecent development, first recorded in English inthe 14th century. Its ultimate source is Latinvāstus ‘empty’, which has also given Englishdevastate and vast. From this was formed theverb vāstāre ‘devastate, lay waste’, which passedinto English via Old Northern French waster.The derivative wastrel dates from the 16thcentury. DEVASTATE, VASTwatch [OE] Ultimately, watch and wake are thesame word. The two verbs share a commonancestor (prehistoric Germanic *wakōjan), andto begin with watch was used for ‘be awake’(‘He sleepeth on the day and watcheth all thenight’, John Lydgate, 1430). The notion of being‘alert and vigilant’, of being ‘on the look-out’, isimplicit in that of being ‘awake’ (indeed, vigiland vigilant are members of the same wordfamily), but watch did not develop fully into

water 542‘observe, look at closely’ until the 14th century.The sort of watch that tells the time is probablyso called not because you look at it to see whatthe time is, but because originally it woke youup. The earliest records of the noun’s applicationto a timepiece (in the 15th century) refer to an‘alarm clock’; it was not used for what we wouldtoday recognize as a ‘watch’ until the end of the16th century. VEGETABLE, VIGIL, VIGOUR, WAFT, WAIT, WAKEwater [OE] Water is an ancient and widespreadword, which goes back ultimately to prehistoricIndo-European *wodōr. Its relatives includeGreek húdōr ‘water’ (source of the Englishprefix hydro-), Latin unda ‘wave’ (source ofEnglish redundant, surround, undulate, etc),Russian voda ‘water’ (source of English vodka),Gaelic uisge ‘water’ (source of English whisky),Lithuanian vanduō ‘water’, Latvian ūdens‘water’, Sanskrit udán ‘water’, and Hittite watar‘water’. In the Germanic languages it hasbecome German wasser (source of Englishvaseline), Dutch and English water, Swedishvatten, and Danish vand. Otter comes from avariant of the same Indo-European base, as maywinter, and wet is closely related. ABOUND, HYDRO-, OTTER, REDUNDANT,SURROUND, UNDULATE, VASELINE, VODKA,WET, WHISKYWaterloo [19] The decisive battle at which thearmy of Napoleon was finally defeated byBritish, Dutch, and Prussian forces was foughtjust outside the village of Waterloo, nearBrussels in Belgium, on 18 June 1815. The wordWaterloo soon came to be used metaphoricallyfor a ‘final and crushing defeat, something thatputs one hors de combat for ever’. The firstrecord of this new application comes in a letterwritten in 1816 by Lord Byron to his friendThomas Moore: ‘It [Armenian] is … a Waterlooof an Alphabet’.wave English has two words wave, distinct inorigin, which have grown to resemble each otherover the centuries. The verb, ‘move to and fro’[OE], goes back to a prehistoric Germanic base*wab-, which also produced English waver [14](borrowed from Old Norse vafra ‘moveunsteadily’) and wobble [17]. The noun wave‘movement of the sea’ [16] seems to be analteration (under the influence of the verb wave)of an earlier wawe ‘wave’. This in turn probablywent back to Old English wǣg ‘motion, wave’, aderivative of the verb which produced modernEnglish wag. WAVER, WOBBLE; WAGwax Wax ‘soft oily substance’ [OE] and the nowarchaic wax ‘grow, become’ [OE] are distinctwords. The former comes (together withGerman wachs, Dutch was, Swedish vax, andDanish vox) from a prehistoric Germanic*wakhsam. This in turn was descended from theIndo-European *weg- ‘weave’ (source also ofEnglish veil). Wax originally referredspecifically to ‘bees-wax’, and the word’sunderlying etymological reference is to thecombs ‘woven’ from wax by bees. Russian andCzech vosk ‘wax’ come from the same ultimatesource. The verb wax goes back to the Indo-European base *woks-, a variant of which hasgiven English auction and augment. Although ithas largely died out in English, its relatives in theother Germanic languages (meaning ‘grow’) arestill very much alive: German wachsen, Dutchwassen, Swedish vāxa, and Danish vokse. VEIL; AUCTION, AUGMENTway [OE] In common with German and Dutchweg, Swedish väg, and Danish vej, way goesback to a prehistoric Germanic *wegaz. This wasformed from the base *weg- ‘move, carry’(source also of English waggon, wee, andweigh), which in turn was descended from Indo-European *wegh-. This also produced Englishvector, vehicle, etc, and a variant of it isresponsible for English wag and wave of the sea. VEHICLE, VOGUE, WAG, WAGGON, WAVE, WEE,WEIGHwe [OE] We goes back ultimately to Indo-European *wei, which also produced Sanskritvayám ‘we’. The precise process by which thisevolved into German wir, Dutch wij, Swedishand Danish vi, and English we has never beenunravelled.weak [13] Etymologically, something that isweak is ‘bendable’. The word was borrowedfrom Old Norse veikr. This was descended fromprehistoric Germanic *waikwaz, which alsoproduced German weich and Dutch week ‘soft’.And this in turn was formed from *waikw-,*wikw- ‘give way, yield’, a derivative of the base*wik- ‘bend’, which also produced the witch ofEnglish witch hazel [16] (etymologically thehazel with ‘bendy’ branches) and possiblyEnglish week.wealth [13] The now virtually defunct weal [OE]meant ‘welfare’, and also ‘riches’; it wasdescended from prehistoric West Germanic*welon, a derivative of the same base asproduced English well. The abstract-noun suffix-th was added to it in early Middle English toproduce wealth. This also originally meant‘welfare, well-being’ as well as ‘riches’, a sensewhich now survives only in the compoundcommonwealth [15]. WELLwean [OE] The etymological notion underlyingwean is of ‘becoming accustomed’. Thespecialization to ‘making accustomed to foodother than mother’s milk’ is a secondarydevelopment. The word comes from aprehistoric Germanic *wanjan (source also ofGerman gewöhnen ‘accustom’). This wasderived from the adjective *wanaz‘accustomed’, which in turn was formed fromthe base *wan-, *wen-, *wun-(source also ofEnglish winsome, wish, and wont ‘accustomed’[OE]). WINSOME, WISH, WONTweapon [OE] Weapon comes from a prehistoricGermanic *wǣpnam, a source it shares withGerman waffe, Dutch wapen, Swedish vapen,and Danish vaaben. But of the ancestry of theGermanic form nothing certain is known.

wear [OE] Wear goes back to a prehistoricGermanic *wazjan, of whose other descendantsonly the Icelandic past participle varinn ‘clad’survives. This was formed from the base *was-,which in turn was descended from Indo-European *wes-, source of Latin vestis‘clothing’, from which English gets vest,vestment, etc. VESTweary [OE] Weary is descended from a WestGermanic *wōriga, whose other offspring haveall died out. It was formed from the base *wōr-,which also produced Old English wōrian‘wander, totter’ and Old Norse örr ‘mad’, but itsultimate ancestry is uncertain.weather [OE] Weather goes back ultimately tothe Indo-European base *we- ‘blow’, which alsoproduced English ventilate and wind. From itwere formed two nouns, *wedhrom (source ofRussian vedro ‘good weather’) and *wetróm(source of Lithuanian vétra ‘storm’). One orother of these became prehistoric Germanic*wethram, which evolved into German wetter,Dutch weer, Swedish väder, Danish vejr, andEnglish weather. Wither [14] may haveoriginated as a variant of weather, in the sense‘show the effects of being exposed to theelements’. VENTILATE, WINDweave English has two distinct verbs weave, butthey have grown to resemble each other closelyover the centuries. Weave ‘make cloth’ [OE]goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *weben,which also produced German weben, Dutchweven, Swedish väva, and Danish vœve. It wasformed from the base *web-, *wab- (source alsoof English wafer, web, and weft [OE]), which inturn went back to Indo-European *webh-,*wobh-, probable source of English wasp.Weave ‘take a zigzag course’ [13] was probablyborrowed from Old Norse veifa. This wasdescended from prehistoric Germanic *weibjan,which came from the Indo-European base*weib-, *wib- ‘move quickly’ (source also ofEnglish vibrate, whip, and wipe). At first itmeant ‘move about, travel’ (‘Then the evil ghostfares out of the man and weaves wide … seekingrest’, 11th-century English poem). The notion of‘moving from side to side, threading one’s way’did not emerge until the 16th century,presumably through the influence of the otherverb weave. WAFER, WASP, WEB, WEFT; VIBRATE, WHIP, WIPEweb [OE] A web is etymologically something‘woven’. In common with Dutch web, Swedishväf, and Danish vœv, the word goes back to aprehistoric Germanic *wabjam. This wasderived from the base *wab-, *web-, which alsoproduced English weave ‘make cloth’. Thederivative webster [OE] originally denoted a‘female weaver’, but it now survives only as asurname. WEAVEwedding [OE] A wedding is etymologically aceremony at which people ‘promise’ to marryeach other. The word’s source, the verb wed543 weigh[OE], goes back to prehistoric Germanic*wathjōjan (source also of German wetten‘wager’). This in turn was derived from the noun*wathjam ‘pledge’, which also producedEnglish engage, wage, and wager. ENGAGE, WAGE, WAGERWednesday [OE] The Romans called themiddle day of the week Mercurii diēs‘Mercury’s day’ (source of French mercredi,Italian mercoledì, and Spanish miercoles). TheGermanic peoples equated Mercury with theirown god Woden or Odin (whose name mayetymologically mean the ‘inspired or mad one’),and they translated the Latin term accordingly,giving Dutch woensdag, Swedish and Danishonsdag, and English Wednesday.wee English has two words wee. The older,‘small’ [OE], was originally a noun, Old Englishwēg or wēge. This meant ‘weight’, and is closelyrelated to English weigh. Its use in contexts suchas a little wee, literally ‘a small weight’, meantthat by the 13th century it had shiftedsemantically to ‘small amount’, but it did notbecome an adjective until the 15th century.Weeny was derived from it in the 18th century.Wee ‘urine, urinate’ [20] and its reduplicationwee-wee [20] are nursery words, and no doubtoriginated in some sort of fanciful imitation ofthe sound of urinating. WEIGHweek [OE] Week evolved from a prehistoricGermanic *wikōn, which also produced Germanwoche, Dutch week, Swedish vecka, and Danishuge. This was probably derived from the base*wik- ‘bend, turn, change’ (source also ofEnglish weak), and it is thought that it mayoriginally have denoted ‘time-change’, perhapswith specific reference to the change of phase ofthe moon.ween see WISHweepweep [OE] Weep goes back to prehistoricGermanic *wōpjan, which probably originatedin imitation of the sound of wailing orlamentation. Most of its Germanic relatives havelong since died out, but Icelandic still has ǽpa‘cry out, scream’.weever see VIPERweevilweevil [15] Old English had a word wifel‘beetle’, but this appears to have died out, andweevil was probably borrowed from Middle LowGerman wevel. Both words had the sameultimate origin, however: prehistoric Germanic*webilaz. It is not clear whether this was derivedfrom the base *web-, *wab- ‘weave’ (source ofEnglish weave ‘make cloth’ and web), in whichcase the weevil would be the ‘weaving’ creature;or from the base *web- ‘move quickly’ (sourceof English weave ‘move in a zigzag way’, whip,etc), in which case it would be the ‘quickmover’.weft see WEAVEweighweigh [OE] The etymological notion underlyingweigh is ‘carrying’: for it comes ultimately fromthe Indo-European base *wegh-, which alsoproduced Latin vehere ‘carry’ (source of Englishvector, vehicle, etc). The idea of ‘heaviness’ is a

weir 544secondary development. The word’s immediatesource was prehistoric Germanic *wegan, whichalso produced Dutch wegen, Swedish väga, andDanish veie ‘weigh’ and German bewegen‘move’. The derivative weight [OE] also goesback to prehistoric Germanic. VEHICLE, WAGGON, WEEweir [OE] A weir is etymologically a structurefor ‘hindering’ the flow of water. The word’s OldEnglish ancestor was derived from the verbwerīan ‘defend, protect’, also ‘hinder’, andhence by extension ‘dam up’, which wasdistantly related to Sanskrit vr ‘cover’ andvāraya ‘stop, hinder’, and came ultimately fromthe Indo-European base *wer- ‘cover, shut’.weird [OE] Originally, weird was a noun,meaning ‘fate, destiny’. Etymologically itdenoted ‘that which comes about’: for it wasderived from the same base which produced thenow obsolete English verb worth ‘come to be,become’ (a relative of German werden‘become’). It was used adjectivally in MiddleEnglish in the sense ‘having power to controlfate’ (which is where the weird sisters whoconfronted Macbeth come in), but the modernsense ‘uncanny’ did not emerge until the early19th century, inspired by, but taking semanticliberties with, Shakespeare’s use of the word. VERSEwelcome [12] Old English had the greetingwilcume, which was a compound word formedfrom wil- ‘pleasure’ (ancestor of modern Englishwill) and cume, a derivative of cuman ‘come’.From it was formed the verb wilcumian‘welcome’. (German has the parallelwilkommen.) Then in the early Middle Englishperiod, due to the similarity of well and theinfluence of the parallel Old French greetingbienvenu (literally ‘well come’), it changed towelcome. COME, WILLweld [16] Weld is ultimately the same verb aswell (as in ‘The tears welled up in his eyes’).This originally meant ‘boil, melt’, but in the 15thcentury (perhaps under the influence of Swedishvälla ‘gush, weld’) it began to be used for ‘fusemetal by heating’. Weld itself presumably arosefrom the use of the past form welled as a presentform. WELLwell English has two distinct words well, both ofancient ancestry. The adverb, ‘satisfactorily’[OE], has relatives throughout the Germaniclanguages (German wohl, Dutch wel, Swedishväl, and Danish vel), and probably goes backultimately to the Indo-European base *wel-,*wol-, which also gave English voluntary,wealth, and will. It was not used as an adjectiveuntil the 13th century. Well ‘water-hole’ [OE] isdescended from the Germanic base *wal-, *wel-‘roll’ (source also of English wallet, wallow,waltz, welter, etc), and so etymologicallydenotes a place where water ‘bubbles’ up. Thisoriginal notion of turbulent overflowing liquid isbetter preserved in the related verb well ‘gush’[OE], which to begin with meant ‘boil’, andhence ‘melt metal’ (‘He made him drink welledlead’, Holy Rood 1300), and produced Englishweld. VOLUNTARY, WEALTH, WILL; VOLUME,WALLOW, WALTZ, WELD, WELTERwellington [19] The first duke of Wellington(1769–1852) was perhaps the best-known figurein British public life during the first half of the19th century, having won considerable prestigefor his military campaigns during theNapoleonic wars, and (in what amountedvirtually to the first instance of personallyendorsed clothing) several types of garmentworn by or associated with him were namedafter him – among them the Wellington coat, theWellington hat, and the Wellington trousers. Itwas, however, the Wellington boot (first recordedin 1817) that carried his name down to posterity.The abbreviation welly is first recorded in 1961,and its use as a verb meaning ‘kick’ dates fromthe mid 1960s. The duke is also commemoratedby the wellingtonia [19], a large Californianconifer.rabbitWelsh rabbit [18] Despite the proverbial likingof the Welsh for cheese, there is no knownconnection between Wales and the Welsh rabbit;it is thought the epithet may reflect an earlierhumorous use of Welsh for inferior things orsubstitutes for the real thing (the use of one’shand to comb one’s hair used to be known as theWelsh comb, for instance). But if the Welsh partof the compound is dubious, the rabbit part isdownright impenetrable. All that can be saidwith reasonable certainly is that it is the originalform (first recorded in 1725), and that rarebit(first recorded in 1785) is a later perversion bythose who found rabbit a little vulgar.welter [13] Welter was originally a verb,meaning ‘roll about’ (borrowed probably fromMiddle Dutch welteren, it came ultimately fromthe Germanic base *wal-, *wel- ‘roll’, sourcealso of English wallet, wallow, waltz, etc, and isdistantly related to English involve, revolve, etc).It was first used as a noun in the 16th century, inthe sense ‘confusion, turmoil’, but the modernsense ‘confused mass, jumble’ did not emergefully until the mid 19th century. The welter ofwelter-weight [19], which originally meant‘heavyweight horseman or boxer’, may be thesame word, but it is perhaps more likely to havebeen derived from the verb welt in the sense ‘hit,thrash’. This originally meant ‘provide a shoewith a welt or strip of leather’, and was derivedfrom the noun welt [15], a word of uncertainorigin. INVOLVE, REVOLVE, VOLUME, WALLOW, WALTZ,WELD, WELLwend [OE] Wend comes from the prehistoricGermanic base *wand-, *wend- ‘turn’, whichalso produced German and Dutch wenden,Swedish vända, and Danish vende ‘turn’ (andEnglish wand and wander). It started offmeaning ‘turn’ in English too, but it soonbroadened out to ‘go’, and from the end of the

15th century its past form went has been used asthe past tense of go. WAND, WANDER, WINDwerewolf [OE] Etymologically, a werewolf isprobably a ‘man-wolf’. Its first element, were-,is generally assumed to be the same word as thelong obsolete Old English noun wer ‘man’ (arelative of Latin vir ‘man’, from which Englishgets virile). VIRILE, WORLDwest [OE] Etymologically, the west may be thedirection in which the sun goes ‘down’. Togetherwith German and Dutch west, Swedish väster,and Danish vest, it comes from a prehistoricGermanic *westaz. This in turn was descendedfrom the Indo-European base *wes-, which alsoproduced Latin vesper (source of Englishvespers) and Greek hesperos ‘evening’ and wasrelated to Sanskrit avas ‘down’. French ouestand Spanish oeste were borrowed from Englishwest, Romanian vest from German west. VESPERSwet [OE] Wet is closely related to water. Togetherwith Swedish våat, Danish vaad, Norwegianvaat, Ice-landic votur, and Frisian wiet, wiat, itwas formed from the same prehistoric base asproduced English water. WATERwhale [OE] Whale comes from a prehistoricGermanic *khwal-, which also producedSwedish and Danish hval and the wal- ofGerman walfisch ‘whale’. The expression awhale of, meaning ‘no end of’, originated in theUSA towards the end of the 19th century.wharf [OE] Wharf has relatives in German werft‘wharf, shipyard’ and Dutch werf ‘shipyard’. Allthree appear to go back to a prehistoricGermanic base *(kh)werb-, *(kh)warb- ‘turn’,which also produced German werfen ‘throw’and English warp. VERSION, WARPwhat [OE] What traces its history right back toIndo-European *qwod, which also producedLatin quod ‘what’. The Germanic descendant ofthis was *khwat, which has evolved into Germanwas, Dutch wat, Swedish vad, Danish hvad, andEnglish what.wheat [OE] Wheat is etymologically the ‘white’grain. The word comes from prehistoricGermanic *khvaitjaz (source also of Germanweizen, Dutch weit, Swedish hvete, and Danishhvede), which was derived from a variant of thebase *khwīt-, source of English white. It alludesto the ‘white’ flour produced by grinding thegrain. WHITEwheatear [16] The wheatear is etymologicallythe ‘white-arsed’ bird. The word is a backformationfrom an earlier wheatears, a singularform which came to be regarded as plural. Andwheatears in turn was an alteration (due nodoubt to confusion with wheat) of *whiteeres, acompound formed from white and arse. Like theparallel French term culblanc, it alludes to thewhite feathers on the bird’s rump. ARSE, WHITE545 Whigwheel [OE] A wheel is etymologically simplysomething that ‘goes round’. It is a member of alarge family of words that goes back to Indo-European *qweqwlo-, which was derived from*qwelo- ‘go round’. Other members includeGreek kúklos ‘circle’ (source of English cycle),Sanskrit cakrá- ‘circle, wheel’ (source ofEnglish chukker), Serbo-Croat and Czech kolo‘wheel’, and Russian koleso ‘wheel’. Itsprehistoric Germanic descendant was*khwekhula, which evolved into Dutch wiel,Swedish and Danish hjul, and English wheel. CHUKKER, CYCLE, ENCYCLOPEDIAwhen [OE] When was formed from the ancientinterrogative base *qwo- (source also of Englishwhat, who, etc) and a nasal suffix which alsoappears in then. From the same ancestor, butwith an additional dental suffix, came Latinquando ‘when’, source of English quandary. QUANDARYwhere [OE] Where is an ancient Indo-Europeanformation derived from the interrogative base*qwo- (source also of English what, who, etc). InGermanic (where its relatives include Dutchwaar, Swedish var, Danish hvor, and the war- ofGerman warum ‘why’) it has largely becomelimited in its application to ‘place’, but in otherbranches of the Indo-European language familyit performs other interrogative functions: Latincūr ‘why’, for instance, Welsh pyr ‘why’, andSanskrit kárhi- ‘when’, beside Lithuanian kur‘where’.whether [OE] Whether was formed in theprehistoric Germanic period from theinterrogative base *khwa-, *khwe- (source ofEnglish what, who, etc) and the comparativesuffix *-theraz, which also occurs in Englishother. Its Germanic relatives include Germanweder ‘neither’ and Swedish hvar ‘each’.English either goes back to a Germaniccompound formed from the ancestors of ay andwhether. EITHER, OTHERwhich [OE] Etymologically, which means ‘whatlike, of what form or sort?’ The word wasformed in the prehistoric Germanic period fromthe interrogative base *khwa-, *khwe- (source ofEnglish what, who, etc) and *līka- ‘body, form’(source of English like and also incorporatedinto English each and such). Its Germanicrelatives include German welch and Dutch welk‘which’. LIKEWhig [17] Whig appears to be short for the nowobsolete Scottish term whiggamaire. Thispresumably originally meant ‘horse-driver’ (it isassumed to have been formed from the Scottishverb whig ‘drive’, whose origins are not known,and maire, a Scottish form of mare ‘femalehorse’), but its earliest recorded application wasto Presbyterian supporters in Scotland. It waslater adopted as a name for those who opposedthe succession of the Catholic James II, and by1689 it had established itself as the title of one ofthe two main British political parties, opposed tothe Tories.

while 546while [OE] While comes via prehistoricGermanic *khwīlō from the Indo-European base*qwi-. This denoted ‘rest’, and its meaning wascarried through into Latin quiēs (source ofEnglish quiet) and tranquillus (source of Englishtranquil) and Swedish hvila and Danish hvile‘repose, refreshment’. In English, however, andthe other Germanic languages (German weileand Dutch wijl), the notion of ‘rest’ has passed,presumably via ‘period of rest’, to ‘period oftime’. English while was first used as aconjunction in the 12th century. QUIET, TRANQUILwhin see GORSEwhip [13] Whip was originally a verb, meaning‘move quickly’. It was probably borrowed fromMiddle Low German or Middle Dutch wippen‘vacillate, swing’, which in turn went back to theprehistoric Germanic base *wip- ‘move quickly’(source also of English wipe). And *wip- itselfwas descended from Indo-European *wib-, fromwhich English gets vibrate. Wafer, weave, web,etc come from variants of the same base. Theapplication of whip to a ‘flexible implement forlashing’ is first recorded in the 14th century. VIBRATE, WEAVE, WIPEwhisk see WHISTwhisky [18] Whisky denotes etymologically‘water of life’. The word is short for an earlierwhiskybae, which was an alteration ofusquebaugh; and this in turn was ananglicization of Gaelic uisge beatha ‘water oflife’ (Gaelic uisge ‘water’ comes from the sameIndo-European source as English water, andbeatha ‘life’ is related to Latin vīta ‘life’ andEnglish vital). The distinction in spellingbetween Scotch whisky and American and Irishwhiskey goes back no further than the 19thcentury. French eau de vie ‘brandy’, literally‘water of life’, is semantically identical. VITAL, WATERwhisper [OE] Whisper comes ultimately fromthe prehistoric Germanic base *khwis-, whichimitated a sort of hissing sound. This alsoproduced German wispeln and wispern‘whisper’, and with a different suffix it gaveEnglish whistle. WHISTLEwhist [17] The game of whist was originallycalled whisk, and it is generally assumed that thename came from the ‘whisking’ away of thecards after the tricks had been taken (whisk [14]itself was borrowed from a Scandinavian sourcethat went back ultimately to the prehistoricGermanic base *wisk- ‘move quickly’). CharlesCotton, however, in his Complete Gamester1680, said that it was ‘called Whist from thesilence that is to be observed in the play’ (whistis also a now archaic exclamation meaning ‘bequiet!’).whistle [OE] Like whisper, whistle goes backultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base*khwis-, which denoted a ‘hissing’ sound.Related forms include Swedish vissla ‘whistle’and Danish hvisle ‘hiss’. WHISPERwhite [OE] White goes back ultimately to Indo-European *kwitnos or *kwidnos, which wasformed from the same base as produced Sanskritsveta- ‘white’ and Russian svet ‘light’. It passedinto prehistoric Germanic as *khwītaz, whichhas since evolved into German weiss, Swedishvit, Danish hvid, and English white (Dutch witcomes from a variant of the same Germanicsource). Wheat is etymologically the ‘white’grain. WHEAT, WHITSUNelephantwhite elephant see ELEPHANTwhitlow see FLAKEWhitsun [OE] Whitsun is etymologically ‘whiteSunday’. The name comes from the ancienttradition of clothing newly baptized people inwhite on the feast of Pentecost. The abbreviatedform Whit began to be used with other days ofthe week (such as Whit Monday) in the 16thcentury, but its broader modern usage (as in Whitweek, Whit bank holiday, etc) did not emergeuntil the end of the 19th century. SUNDAY, WHITEwho [OE] Who goes right back to Indo-European*qwos, *qwes (source also of Russian kto‘who’), whose neuter form *qwod gave Englishwhat. Its prehistoric Germanic descendant was*khwaz, *khwez, which has evolved into Germanwer, Dutch wie, Danish hvo, and English who.Whom comes from the Old English dative formhwǣm.whole [OE] Whole is at the centre of a tightlyknitfamily of English words descended fromprehistoric Germanic *khailaz ‘undamaged’ (theother members – hail ‘salute’, hale, hallow, heal,health, and holy – have have branched off indifferent semantic directions, but whole hasstayed fairly close to its source). The Germanicform, which also produced German heil, Dutchheel, and Swedish and Danish hel, went back toan Indo-European *qoilos, source also ofRussian celyj ‘whole’ and Welsh coel ‘goodomen’. Hale [13] originated as a northern variantof whole (whose wh- spelling emerged in the16th century). The compound wholesome wasprobably formed in Old English, but it is notrecorded until the 12th century. HAIL, HALE, HALLOW, HEAL, HEALTH, HOLYwhore [OE] A whore is etymologically a ‘lover’.The word goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *qār-, which also produced Latincārus ‘dear’ (source of English caress andcharity), Old Irish caraim ‘I love’, and Latviankārs ‘randy, greedy’. It gave prehistoricGermanic *khōrōn, which evolved into Germanhure, Dutch hoer, Swedish hora, Danish hore,and English whore (whose wh- spelling firstappeared in the 16th century). CARESS, CHARITYwhy [OE] Why goes back to Indo-European*qwei, the locative case of the interrogative base*qwo- (source of English what and who). Thispassed into prehistoric Germanic as *khwī,which has since died out in all the Germaniclanguages apart from Danish (hvi) and English(why).

wick [OE] Wick ‘burning fibre in a candle orlamp’ has West Germanic relatives in Germanwieche and Dutch wiek, but its ultimate ancestryis uncertain (a connection has been suggestedwith Old Irish figim ‘I weave’). The wick of geton someone’s wick ‘annoy someone’,incidentally (first recorded in 1945), is probablya different word. It appears to be short forHampton Wick, rhyming slang for ‘prick, penis’(Hampton Wick is a district in southwestLondon; its wick means historically ‘village,town’, and is the same word ultimately as the-wich, -wick of English place-names).wicked [13] Wicked and witch are closelyrelated. Wicked is an extension, using the suffix-ed, of the now obsolete adjective wick ‘wicked’.And this in turn originated as an adjectival use ofOld English wicca ‘wizard’, whose feminineform is the ancestor of modern English witch. WITCHwicket [13] A wicket was originally a ‘smallgate’, and etymologically the word appears todenote something that ‘turns’ – presumably on ahinge in opening and closing. It was borrowedfrom Old Northern French wiket, which in turncame from a Germanic source represented alsoby modern Swedish vika ‘fold, turn’. The set ofstumps originally used for cricket resembled agate – indeed the game’s first batsmen may havedefended an actual gate in a sheep pen – and soit came to be known as a wicket. This was in the18th century; the extension of the term to the‘pitch’ dates from the mid 19th century.wide [OE] Wide is a general Germanic word,with relatives in German weit, Dutch wijd, andSwedish and Danish vid. All are descended fromprehistoric Germanic *wīdaz, which may goback ultimately to the Indo-European base *wi-‘apart, away’ (source also of Sanskrit vitarám‘further’). Width was coined in the early 17thcentury, probably on the analogy of breadth.widowidow [OE] A widow is etymologically awoman who has been ‘separated’, left ‘solitary’.The word goes back ultimately to Indo-European *widhewo, an adjective formed fromthe base *weidh- ‘separate’ (source also ofEnglish divide and Sanskrit vidhu- ‘solitary’).This produced a large number of words for‘widow’ in the Indo-European languages,including Latin vidua (source of French veuve,Italian vedova, and Spanish viuda), Russian andCzech vdova, and Welsh gweddr. To theGermanic languages it has given German witweand Dutch weduwe as well as English widow.Widower was coined in the 14th century. DIVIDE, INDIVIDUALwidth see WIDEwield [OE] To wield something is etymologicallyto ‘command’ or ‘rule’ it. Indeed, that is whatthe word originally meant in English. ‘Handle,use’ is a secondary development. It goes back toa prehistoric base *wald-, which also producedGerman walten, Lithuanian valdyti, Czechvládnouti, and Polish władać ‘rule, govern’ andRussian vladet’ ‘possess, own’. And this in turnwas probably an extension of Indo-European547 wimp*wal-, source also of Latin valēre ‘be strong’,from which English gets valid, value, etc. VALID, VALUEwife [OE] Wife originally meant simply ‘woman’,but the semantic restriction to ‘married woman’began in the Old English period and has becomemore and more firmly established as thecenturies have passed. Of the word’s Germanicrelatives, German weib has largely been replacedby frau, and Dutch wijf, Swedish vif, and Danishviv are no longer front-line words. It is notknown what its ultimate source was. A woman isetymologically a ‘wife-man’, that is, a ‘womanperson’,a ‘female-person’.wig [17] Wig is short for periwig [16], which inturn is an alteration of perwike, a now defunctvariant of peruke [16]; and peruke came viaFrench perruque from Italian perrucca, a wordof unknown origin. Wigging ‘scolding’, firstrecorded at the beginning of the 19th century,may have been inspired by the notion of beingtold off by a bigwig [18], etymologically a ‘highrankingbewigged dignitary’. PERIWIG, PERUKEwiggle see EARWIGwild [OE] Wild is a general Germanic word,shared by German and Dutch (wild) and Swedishand Danish (vild). All go back to a prehistoricancestor *wilthijaz, which in turn was probablydescended from Indo-European *ghwelt-(source of Welsh gwyllt ‘wild’). The derivativewilderness [OE] etymologically denotes the‘condition of being a wild animal’. It originatedas an abstract noun formed from Old Englishwild dēor ‘wild animal’. But by the time itappears in texts, the modern sense ‘wild land’ iscomplete. The noun is thought to have been thesource of the now defunct verb wilder, whichprobably served as the basis of bewilder [17].Wildebeest [19] was acquired from Afrikaans. BEWILDER, WILDERNESSwill Will the noun [OE] and the two verbs will[OE] all go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *wel-, *wol- ‘be pleasing’, whichalso produced English voluntary, voluptuous,wealth, well ‘satisfactorily’, etc. From it wasderived a noun, *weljon, which evolved intoEnglish will, and also German wille, Dutch wil,Swedish vilja, and Danish vilje. The verb will‘decide on or resolve by force of the will’ wasformed in the prehistoric Germanic period fromthe noun. The auxiliary verb will, expressingintention or future time, comes from aprehistoric Germanic *weljan. Would evolvedfrom its original Old English past form wolde. VOLUNTARY, VOLUPTUOUS, WEALTH, WILL,WOULDwilly-nilly [17] Willy-nilly originated in theexpression will I, nill I, literally ‘whether I wishit or do not wish it’ (nill ‘be unwilling’, longdefunct as an independent verb, was formedfrom will and the negative prefix ne-)wimp [20] The first record of the word wimp‘feeble ineffectual person’ is from as long ago as1920, but it was not used at all widely until theearly 1960s. Its origins have never been

win 548satisfactorily explained. It is tempting to link itwith J. Wellington Wimpy, a curious little manwith a moustache who featured in the Popeyecartoons, but he was not around in the 1920s.Nor is it altogether plausible that it came fromAmerican slang gimp ‘lame or handicappedperson’. Perhaps the least unlikely suggestion isthat it is short for whimper. No connection withthe now obsolete slang wimp ‘woman’ [20](perhaps an alteration of women) has ever beendemonstrated. In the 1980s WIMP was used asan acronym for ‘weakly interacting massiveparticle’ and for ‘widows/icon/mouse/pointer’, acomputer term.win [OE] Win probably goes back ultimately tothe Indo-European base *van- ‘overcome,conquer’, which also produced Sanskrit van-‘gain, acquire’. Its Germanic relatives includeGerman gewinnen ‘gain’ and Swedish vinna‘win’.wind English has three distinct words wind. Thenoun, ‘moving air’ [OE], came from aprehistoric Germanic *windaz, which alsoproduced German and Dutch wind and Swedishand Danish vind. This in turn went back to Indo-European *went-, whose other descendantsinclude Latin ventus (source of English vent,ventilate, etc) and Welsh gwynt. And *wentitselfwas derived from the base *we- ‘blow’,source also of Greek aétēs ‘wind’ and áēr ‘air’(from which English gets air), Sanskrit vátas‘wind’, and Russian vejat’ ‘blow’. The nowarchaic verb wind ‘blow a horn’ [16], for all thatit rhymes with wind ‘wrap round’, was derivedfrom the noun wind. Wind ‘wrap round’ [OE]originally meant ‘go in a particular direction’;‘wrap’ did not emerge until the 14th century, viaan intermediate ‘go in a circle’. It came from aprehistoric Germanic *windon (source also ofGerman and Dutch winden, Swedish vinda, andDanish vinde), which was formed from a variantof the base which produced English wand,wander, and wend. AIR, VENT, VENTILATE, WEATHER, WINNOW;WAND, WANDER, WENTwindowindow [13] A window is etymologically a‘wind-eye’ – that is, an ‘eye’-like opening foradmitting the air. The word was borrowed fromOld Norse vindauga, a compound noun formedfrom vindr ‘wind’ and auga ‘eye’. Danishvindue is descended from the Old Norse form,which was also taken over by Irish as fuinneog. EYE, WINDwine [OE] Wine comes from Latin vīnum. Thiswas borrowed into prehistoric Germanic as*wīnam, which subsequently evolved intoGerman wein, Dutch wijn, Swedish and Danishvin, and English wine. It also gave French vinand Italian and Spanish vino, and wasextensively acquired by other Indo-Europeanlanguages, including Russian and Serbo-Croatvino, Polish wino, Lithuanian vnas, and Welshgwin. The Latin word itself came from anancient Mediterranean source, possibly non-Indo-European, which also produced Greekoínos ‘wine’ (source of English oenology [19]),Albanian vēne ‘wine’, and Armenian gini‘wine’. The same ancestral term also fed into theSemitic languages, giving Arabic wain, Hebrewyayin, and Assyrian īnn ‘wine’. Latin vīnumadditionally gave English vintage and vintner,and its derivative vīnea ‘vineyard, vine’produced English vine [13]. OENOLOGY, VINE, VINTAGE, VINTNERwing [12] Wing was borrowed from Old Norsevængir, source also of Swedish and Danish vingeand Norwegian veng. This came ultimately fromthe Indo-European base *we- ‘blow’, and themissing semantic link with ‘wing’ may be‘flutter’.winnowinnow [OE] Etymologically, to winnow grainis to separate it from the chaff by means of the‘wind’. The verb was coined in the Old Englishperiod from wind. The same notion underlayLatin ventilāre ‘winnow’ (source of Englishventilate), which was derived from ventus‘wind’ (a relative of English wind). WINDwinsome see WISHwinter [OE] Winter is a general Germanic word(German and Dutch spell it the same, Swedishand Danish have vinter). Its prehistoric ancestorwas *wentrus, but the ultimate source of this isuncertain. It could well go back to a nasalizedversion of the Indo-European base *wed-,*wod-, *ud- ‘wet’ (source also of English otter,water and wet), in which case winter would beetymologically the ‘wet’ season. But analternative theory traces it back to Indo-European *wind- ‘white’ (source of Bretongwenn, Welsh gwyn – which may underlieEnglish penguin – and Irish fionn ‘white’), inwhich case it would denote the ‘white’ season.wire [OE] Wire probably goes back ultimately tothe Indo-European base *wi- ‘plait’. Relatedforms in other Germanic languages have nowlargely died out. The adjective wireless is firstrecorded in 1894 (in the term wirelesstelephone); its use as a noun dates from around1903.wise English has two distinct words wise, butthey come from the same ultimate source: theIndo-European base *woid-, *weid-, *wid-. Thisdenoted ‘see’, and hence ‘know’, and it alsoproduced English idea, vision, and wit. From itwas formed the past participial adjective *wīttos,which passed into prehistoric Germanic as*wīsaz ‘knowing things, learned’. And this hassince evolved into German weise, Dutch wijs,Swedish and Danish vis, and English wise.Wisdom [OE] and wizard are derivatives.Meanwhile, another derivative of the sameprehistoric base was the Germanic noun *wīsōn,*wīsō, whose original meaning ‘appearance’(going back to the ancestral ‘see’ of the base)had developed via ‘for, shape’ and ‘kind, sort’ to‘way, manner’. This produced German weise,Dutch wijze, Swedish and Danish vis (usedlargely in compounds and phrases), and Englishwise (similarly nowadays restricted mainly tocompounds, such as likewise and otherwise).

Guise is ultimately the same word, filteredthrough Old French. GUISE, IDEA, VISION, WIT, WIZARDwiseacre [16] Wiseacre has no etymologicalconnection with acres. The word’s ancestralmeaning is ‘person who sees or knows things,prophet’. It was borrowed from Middle Dutchwijsseggher, which denoted ‘soothsayer’ (withno derogatory connotations). And this in turncame from Old High German wīssago, analteration (due to the similarity of wīs ‘wise’ andsagen ‘say’) of wīzago ‘prophet’, which wasderived from the prehistoric Germanic base*wīt- ‘know’ (source of English wise and wit).wish [OE] Wish comes from a prehistoricGermanic *wunskjan, which also producedGerman wünschen, Swedish önska, and Danishønske. Its ultimate ancestor is the Indo-Europeanbase *wun-, *wen-, *won-, source also ofEnglish wean, ween ‘think, suppose’ [OE] (nowarchaic except in the derivative overweening[14]), the win- of winsome [OE], and wont‘accustomed’, and of German wonne ‘joy’. OVERWEENING, WEAN, WINSOME, WONTwit Both the noun wit [OE] and the verb [OE] goback ultimately to the Indo-European base*woid-, *weid-, *wid-. This originally meant‘see’, in which sense it has given English visible,vision, etc, but it developed metaphorically to‘know’, and it is this sense that lies behindEnglish wit. The noun to begin with denoted‘mind, understanding, judgement, sense’ (ameaning preserved in expressions such as ‘keepone’s wits about one’ and ‘slow-witted’), and themodern sense ‘clever humorousness’ did notbegin to emerge until the 16th century. The verbhas now virtually died out, except in theexpression to wit. Witness is etymologically thestate of ‘knowing’. Other English words thatcome from the same Indo-European base or itsGermanic descendant include guide, history,idea, story, and twit. GUIDE, GUISE, HISTORY, IDEA, STORY, TWIT,VISION, WISE, WITNESSwitch [OE] The close Germanic relatives ofwitch have died out, but it seems that it may berelated to German weihen ‘consecrate’ and even,distantly, to English victim (etymologically‘someone killed in a religious ritual’), so theword’s underlying signification is of a‘priestess’. Wicked was derived from OldEnglish wicca ‘wizard’, the masculine form ofwicce, ancestor of modern English witch. WICKEDwith [OE] The ancestral meaning of with is‘against’ (retained by its German relative wider).It goes back ultimately to the Indo-Europeanbase *wi-, which denoted ‘separation’. Thenotion of ‘accompaniment’ is a secondarydevelopment, albeit an ancient one, and the ideaof ‘instrumentality’ did not emerge until the 12thcentury.wither see WEATHERwitnesswitness [OE] Witness originally meant‘knowledge’ or ‘wisdom’; it was simply anabstract noun formed from wit. This was549 woodextended via ‘knowledge gained by observation’to ‘testimony’ in the Old English period, and bythe beginning of the Middle English period‘person who gives testimony’ was wellestablished. WITwizard [15] A wizard is etymologically a ‘wise’man – indeed originally the word was used for‘philosopher’ or ‘sage’, without any suggestionof magical practices. It was derived from wise.The distinction between philosophy and magicwas sufficiently blurred in the Middle Ages forthe sense ‘magician’ to emerge in the 16thcentury, and that is the one which has prevailed. WISEwobble see WAVEwog see GOLLIWOGwolf [OE] Wolf is an ancient word, which hasbeen traced back to Indo-European *wlqwos.This, or its variant *lukwos, also produced Greeklúkos (source of English lycanthropy ‘(delusionof) turning into a wolf’ [16]), Latin lupus (sourceof French loup, Italian lupo, and Spanish lobo,and probably also of English lupin [14]),Sanskrit vrkas, Russian volk, Polish wilk, Czechvlk, Serbo-Croat vuk, Lithuanian vilkas, Latvianvilks, Albanian u’lk, and Armenian gail. Inprehistoric Germanic it gave *wulfaz, which hasevolved into German, Dutch, and English wolfand Swedish and Danish ulv. LUPIN, LYCANTHROPYwoman [OE] A woman is etymologically a‘wife-man’ – that is to say, a ‘female person’.The word was compounded in the Old Englishperiod from wīf ‘woman’ (source of modernEnglish wife) and man ‘person’ (source ofmodern English man). Already by the end of theOld English period the f of wifman wasdisappearing, giving wiman, and the influence ofthe w sound started to turn this into woman in the13th century. Woman did not finally oust the twomore ancient words for ‘female person’, wifeand the now obsolete quean, until the end of theMiddle English period. MAN, WIFEwonder [OE] Wonder is something of a mysteryword. It is widespread in the Germaniclanguages (German has wunder, Dutch wonder,Swedish undran, and Danish undren, but itsultimate ancestry is unknown.wont see WEANwoodwood [OE] The ancestral meaning of wood isprobably ‘collection of trees, forest’; ‘tree’ (nowobsolete) and ‘substance from which trees aremade’ are secondary developments. The wordgoes back to prehistoric Germanic *widuz,which also produced Swedish and Danish ved‘firewood’, and it has Celtic relatives in Gaelicfiodh ‘wood, woods’, Welsh gwydd ‘trees’, andBreton gwez ‘trees’. Its ultimate source is notknown for certain, although it has beensuggested that it may go back to the Indo-European base *weidh- ‘separate’ (source alsoof English divide and widow). According to thistheory, it would originally have denoted a‘separated’ or ‘remote’ piece of territory, near

wool 550the outer edge or borders of known land; and wormwood see VERMOUTHsince such remote, uninhabited areas were worry [OE] Worry originally meant ‘strangle’. Itusually wooded, it came to denote ‘forest’ (forestitself may mean etymologically ‘outside area’,and the Old Norse word for ‘forest’, mork,originally signified ‘border area’).wool [OE] Wool goes back to Indo-European*wlná, which also produced Latin lāna (sourceof English lanolin [19]), Czech vlna, Polishwełna, and Welsh gwlān (probable source ofEnglish flannel). In prehistoric Germanic it hadbecome *wullō, which evolved into Germanwolle, Dutch wol, Swedish ull, Danish uld, andEnglish wool. FLANNEL, LANOLINword [OE] Word and verb are closely related.Both go back ultimately to the Indo-Europeanbase *wer- ‘speak, say’, which also producedGreek rhétōr ‘public speaker’ (source of Englishrhetoric), Latvian vārds ‘word’, and Lithuanianvardas ‘name’. Its prehistoric Germanicdescendant was *wordam, which has givenGerman wort, Dutch woord, Swedish andDanish ord, and English word. VERBwork [OE] Work is at the centre of a small familyof English words that go back ultimately to Indo-European *werg-, *worg- ‘do, work’ (othermembers include energy, organ, and orgy). Fromthis base was formed the noun *wergon, whichpassed into prehistoric Germanic as *werkam,and evolved from there into German and Dutchwerk, Swedish verk, and English work. Wright‘craftsman’ [OE] (which now survives only incompounds) comes from the same source (withthe transposition of r and the vowel), as doeswrought, originally the past participle of the verbwork. ENERGY, ORGAN, ORGY, WRIGHT, WROUGHTworld [OE] Etymologically, world means ‘age ofman’. That is the basis of its earliest recordedsense, ‘earthly existence, human life’. Butalready by the 9th century it was being used forthe ‘earth’ itself. It is a compound noun formedin the prehistoric Germanic period from *weraz‘man’ (probable source of the were- of Englishwerewolf and related to virile) and *ald- ‘age’(ancestor of English old), and its relativesinclude German welt, Dutch wereld, Swedishverld, and Danish verden. OLD, VIRILE, WEREWOLFworm [OE] The ancestral meaning of wormappears to be ‘snake’; its application to smallerlimbless creatures is a secondary development. Itcomes from a prehistoric Germanic *wurmiz,*wurmaz, which also produced German wurm,Dutch worm, and Danish orm ‘worm’ andSwedish orm ‘snake’. And this in turn went backto Indo-European *wrmi-, *wrmo- (source alsoof Latin vermis, from which English getsvermilion and vermin), a possible derivative ofthe base *wer- ‘turn, twist’ (source of Englishconvert, reverse, etc) – in which case the wormwould be etymologically the ‘twisting’ or‘winding’ creature. VERMILION, VERMINcomes from a prehistoric West Germanic*wurgjan, which also produced German wügen‘choke, strangle’. The sense ‘harass physically’(as in ‘dogs worrying sheep’) emerged in the16th century, via an intermediate ‘seize by thethroat’, and the modern sense ‘vex, disturb’came on the scene in the 17th century, but theverb was not used intransitively until the mid-19th century.worse [OE] Worse goes back to prehistoricGermanic *wersizon. This was a comparativeformation based on *wers-, which also producedEnglish war and German wirren ‘confuse’. Thesuperlative worst [OE] came from the same base.worship [OE] Worship began life as a compoundnoun meaning virtually ‘worthiness’. It wasformed from the adjective worth and the nounsuffix -ship ‘state, condition’, and at first wasused for ‘distinction, credit, dignity’. This soonpassed into ‘respect, reverence’, but it was notused in specifically religious contexts until the13th century. The verb dates from the 12thcentury. WORTHworth [OE] Worth is a general Germanicadjective, with relatives in German wert, Dutchwaard, Swedish värd, and Danish værd (worth‘value’ [OE] is a noun use of the adjective). Itsultimate ancestry is uncertain, although it hasbeen speculated that it may go back to the Indo-European base *wer- ‘turn’, which alsoproduced Latin vertere (source of Englishconvert, version, etc), German werden ‘become’,and the now obsolete English verb worth‘become’, not to mention English weird andpossibly worm. Derived from worth are worshipand worthy [13]. WORSHIP, WORTHYwould [OE] Would goes back to wold-, the OldEnglish past tense of will. Its vowel is inheritedfrom the Indo-European variant *wol- (as inGerman wollen ‘will, want’), rather than the*wel- that produced the English present formwill. Its use as an auxiliary to form theconditional dates back to the Old English period. WILLwound [OE] Wound is a widespread Germanicword, with relatives in German wunde, Dutchwond, and Icelandic und (Danish vunde is areborrowing from Low German). Its ultimateorigins are uncertain, but it has been speculatedthat it may go back to an Indo-European base*wen-, which also produced Welsh gwanu‘stab’.wrangle see WRONGwrapwrap [14] The antecedents of wrap are a mystery.It has no known Germanic relatives, although itis similar to North Frisian wrappe ‘stop up’ andDanish dialect vrappe ‘stuff’. A possibleconnection has been suggested with Greekráptein ‘sew, patch’ and Lithuanian verpti‘spin’.wreath see WRIST

wreck [13] Wreck goes back ultimately to theIndo-European base *wreg-, a variant of whichmay be responsible for English urge. ItsGermanic descendant *wrek- formed the basis ofa verb *wrekan ‘drive’. The native Englishdescendant of this is wreak [OE], whichoriginally meant ‘drive out’, and developed itsmodern meaning via ‘give vent to anger or otherviolent emotions’. Wreck itself was acquired viaOld Norse *wrek and Anglo-Norman wrec, andetymologically it denotes a ship that has been‘driven’ on to the shore. A variant of the samebase, *wrak-, lies behind English wretch [OE](etymologically someone ‘driven’ out, an‘exile’) and also possibly French garçon ‘boy’. URGE, WREAK, WRETCHwriggle see WRYwright see WORKwring see WRONGwrist [OE] The wrist is etymologically the‘twisting’ joint. The word goes back toprehistoric Germanic *wristiz, which alsoproduced German rist ‘instep, wrist’ andSwedish vrist ‘instep, ankle’. This was derivedfrom the base *writh-, whose wr- sound seemsoriginally to have been symbolic of the action oftwisting. Variants of the base lie behind Englishwreath [OE], wrest [OE], and writhe [OE]; andgaiter may be related. WREATH, WREST, WRITHE551 wyvernwrite [OE] The etymological notion underlyingwrite is of ‘cutting’ or ‘scratching’ (it is relatedto German reissen ‘tear’). The earliest form ofwriting involved cutting marks on stone, wood,etc, and the same word was carried over whenthe technology of writing moved on to pen andink. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic*wrītan, but its ultimate origins are not known.The noun writ [OE] goes back to the sameGermanic base. WRITwrithe see WRISTwrong [OE] Etymologically, wrong probablymeans ‘twisted’. It was borrowed into late OldEnglish from Old Norse *vrangr ‘awry’ (rangris the recorded form), which was descendedfrom prehistoric Germanic *wrangg- (sourcealso of English wrangle [14]). A variant of thesame base, *wrengg-, produced English wring[OE]. WRANGLE, WRINGwrought see WORKwry [16] Wry means literally ‘twisted’ (manyother English words beginning with wr-, such aswrist and writhe, share the same basic meaning).It comes from the now obsolete verb wry‘deviate, twist’, which was descended from OldEnglish wrīgian ‘turn, tend in a particulardirection’. Wriggle [15] is probably related. WRIGGLEwyvern see VIPER

XYZxenon [19] Xenon is etymologically the‘strange’ gas. It was named in 1898 by itsdiscoverer, the British chemist Sir WilliamRamsay. He adapted the term from the neuterform of Greek xénos ‘strange’, which may be adistant relative of English guest, hospital, host,etc, and is also the source of English xenophobia‘fear of foreigners’ [19]. GUEST, HOSPITAL, HOST, XENOPHOBIAxerox [20] Greek xērós meant ‘dry’ (it may bethe ultimate source of English elixir, and isperhaps distantly related to English serene andserenade). From it was derived in the 1940s theterm xerography, which denotes a process ofphotographic reproduction that does not involvethe use of liquid developers. And xerography inturn formed the basis of xerox, which wasregistered as a trademark for the process in 1952by the Haloid Company of Rochester, New York(later renamed the Xerox Corporation). ELIXIR, SERENADE, SERENExylophone [19] Etymologically, a xylophonemakes ‘sounds’ from ‘wood’. The term wascoined in the 1860s from Greek xúlon ‘wood’(an allusion to the instrument’s tuned woodenbars) and the combining form -phone ‘sound’.yacht [16] A yacht is etymologically a boat for‘chasing’ others. The word was borrowed fromearly modern Dutch jaghte. This was short forjaghtschip, literally ‘chase ship’, a compoundnoun formed from jaght, a derivative of the verbjagen ‘hunt, chase’, and schip ‘ship’. The Dutchword (whose present-day form is jacht) has beenborrowed into many other European languages,including French and German jacht and Russianjakhta.Yankee [17] Yankee appears to have started lifeas a nickname for Dutchmen, and it is thoughtthat it may represent Dutch Janke, a diminutiveform of the common Dutch forename Jan. It wasfirst used as a term for inhabitants of NewEngland (where of course there were many earlyDutch settlers) in the mid-18th century, and itsapplication gradually spread to cover all thenorthern states and (more loosely, by non-American speakers) the whole of the USA.yard Yard ‘enclosed area’ [OE] and yard ‘threefeet’ [OE] are distinct words, both of ancientancestry. The former probably goes backultimately to Indo-European *ghorto-, whichalso produced Latin cohors ‘court’ (source ofEnglish cohort and court) and hortus ‘garden’(source of English horticulture) and Russiangorod ‘town’ (as in Leningrad). Its prehistoricGermanic descendant was *gard-, which, aswell as providing English with yard, hasproduced garden, garth [14] (via Old Norse),and the second syllable of orchard.Yard ‘three feet’ originally meant ‘stick, rod’(a sense preserved nautically, as in yardarm[16]). It goes back ultimately to prehistoricGermanic *gazdaz ‘pointed stick’ (source of thegad of gadfly [16], etymologically the fly withthe ‘sting’). From this was derived WestGermanic *gazdjō, which evolved into Germangerte ‘sapling, riding cane’, Dutch gard ‘twig,rod’, and English yard. The Anglo-Saxons usedthe term as a unit of measurement of land, equalto about five metres (what later became knownas a rod, pole, or perch), but its modern use for‘three feet’ did not emerge until the 14th century. COHORT, COURT, GARDEN, GARTH,HORTICULTURE, ORCHARD; GADFLYyarn [OE] Yarn comes from prehistoricGermanic *garn-, which also produced German,Swedish, and Danish garn and Dutch garen.This in turn went back to an Indo-European basewhose other descendants include Greek khordé‘string’ (source of English chord, cord). Thesailors’ expression spin a yarn ‘tell a story’ ledin the 19th century to the use of yarn for ‘story,tale’. CHORD, CORDyawn [OE] Yawn goes back ultimately to theIndo-European base *ghei-, *ghi-, which alsoproduced Greek kháskein ‘gape’ (a close relativeof English chasm [17]) and Latin hiāre ‘gape,yawn’ (source of English hiatus [16]). The basepassed into prehistoric Germanic as *gai-, *gi-,whose surviving descendants are Germangähnen, Dutch geeuwen, and English yawn.English gap and gape probably come from anextension of the same Indo-European base. CHASM, GAP, GAPE, HIATUSyear [OE] Year is part of a widespread Europeanfamily of ‘time’-words that goes back ultimatelyto Indo-European *jēr-, *jōr-. This alsoproduced Greek hórā ‘season’ (ultimate sourceof English hour), Czech jaro ‘spring’, andAvestan (the ancient Persian sacred language)yāre ‘year’. From it was descended prehistoricGermanic *jǣram, which has evolved intoGerman jahr, Dutch jaar, Swedish år, Dutchaar, and English year. It has been speculated thatthe Indo-European forms themselves may havebeen derived from a base meaning ‘go’, in whichcase the etymological notion underlying theword would be of time proceeding. HOURyearn see EUCHARISTyeast [OE] Yeast is etymologically a substancethat causes ‘fermentation’. For its ultimate

source is the Indo-European base *jes- ‘boil,foam, froth’, which also produced Greek zeín‘boil’ (source of English eczema) and Welsh iās‘seething’. Its Germanic descendant producedGerman gischt ‘yeast, froth’, Dutch gist, gest‘yeast’, and English yeast. ECZEMAyell see NIGHTINGALEyellow [OE] Yellow is a member of an ancientand widespread family of European colourtermsdescended from Indo-European *ghel-,*ghol-, which denoted both ‘yellow’ and‘green’. From it were descended Latin helvus‘yellowish’ and possibly galbus ‘greenishyellow’(source of French jaune ‘yellow’ andEnglish jaundice), Greek kholé ‘bile’ (source ofEnglish choleric, melancholy, etc), Russianzheltyj ‘yellow’, Lithuanian geltonas ‘yellow’,and English gall and gold. In the Germaniclanguages it has produced German gelb, Dutchgel, Swedish and Danish gul, and Englishyellow. A yolk [OE] is etymologically a ‘yellow’substance. CHOLERIC, GALL, GOLD, JAUNDICE,MELANCHOLY, YOLKyeoman [14] Etymologically, a yeoman isprobably simply a ‘young man’; indeedoriginally the word denoted a ‘junior householdservant’, between a squire and a page in rank. Itstarted life as yongman, a compound of MiddleEnglish yong ‘young’ and man, and wasgradually eroded to yeoman. The modern sense‘freeholding farmer’, and its metaphoricalextensions, emerged in the 15th century. MAN, YOUNGyes [OE] Yes is descended from Old Englishgese. It is thought that this was a compoundformed from gēa ‘yes’ (ancestor of archaicEnglish yea and related to German and Dutch ja‘yes’) and sīe, the third-person present singularsubjunctive of be, and that it therefore originallymeant literally ‘yes, may it be so’. It was at firstused as a response to negative questions, whileyea was used for positive questions, but aroundthe end of the 16th century this distinction beganto disappear, and yea has since died out. YEAyesterday [OE] The yester- of yesterday (and ofyesteryear [19], coined by Dante GabrielRossetti) was originally a free-standing word,meaning ‘yesterday’, but by the time records ofit in Old English begin it was already locked intoa collocation with day. Its ultimate source isIndo-European *ghes, which also producedLatin herī (source of French hier, Italian andRomanian ieri, and Spanish ayer), Welsh doe,German gestern, and Dutch gisteren.yet [OE] Yet is one of the mystery words ofEnglish. It seems to have emerged from theAnglo-Frisian group of dialects in northeasternEurope before the Angles and Saxons crossedthe Channel (Old Frisian had iēta), but itsultimate source is unknown.yield [OE] Yield is descended from prehistoricGermanic *gelthan ‘pay’, which also producedGerman gelten ‘pay’ (German geld ‘money’553 Yulecomes from the same base). It originally meant‘pay’ in English too, and it seems the sense‘surrender’, which emerged in the 13th century,may be due to the influence of French rendre‘give’, which is used reflexively for ‘surrender’.yoghurt [17] It has taken a long time for yoghurtto settle down orthographically, and the processis not yet complete. It was originally acquired(from Turkish yoghurt) in the 1620s as yoghurd,and since then spellings such as yaghourt,yooghort, yughard, yohourth, and yaourt(reflecting the fact that Turkish gh is silent) havebeen tried. Yoghurt still vies with yogurt.yoke [OE] The etymological ideal underlyingyoke is of ‘joining’ – here, of joining twoanimals together. The word came ultimatelyfrom Indo-European *jugom, which alsoproduced Latin jugum ‘yoke’ (source of Englishconjugal, jugular [16], and subjugate [15]),Welsh iau ‘yoke’, Czech jho ‘yoke’, Sanskrityugám ‘yoke’, etc. The prehistoric Germanicdescendant of this was *jukam (borrowed intoFinnish as juko), which evolved into Germanjoch, Dutch juk, Swedish ok, Danish aag, andEnglish yoke. The Indo-European form itselfwas derived from the base *jug-, *jeug-, *joug-‘join’, which also produced Latin jungere ‘join’(source of English join, junction, etc) andSanskrit yoga ‘union’ (acquired by English viaHindi as yoga [19], which literally denotes‘union with the universal spirit’). CONJUGATE, JOIN, JUGULAR, JUNCTION,SUBJUGATE, YOGAyolk see YELLOWyouyou [OE] You was originally the accusative anddative form of ye ‘you’, but it began to take overas the nominative form in the 15th century, andat the same time was in the process of ousting thesingular thou to become the general secondpersonpronoun. Its West Germanic ancestor*iwwiz, which also produced German euch andDutch u, went back ultimately to Indo-European*ju (source also of Greek úmme, Sanskrit yūyám,and Lithuanian jūs). Your [OE] comes from thesame source, with the genitive ending -er.young [OE] Young is part of a widespread familyof words that go back to Indo-European*juwngkós ‘young’ (others include Welshieuanc, Irish ōg, and Sanskrit juvaçás). And thisin turn was derived from *juwen-, whichproduced Latin juvenis (source of Englishjunior, juvenile, etc), Lithuanian jaunas, Russianjunyj, Bulgarian jun, etc. The Indo-Europeanadjective passed into prehistoric Germanic as*juwunggaz. This was later contracted to*junggaz, which evolved into German jung,Dutch jong, Swedish and Danish ung, andEnglish young. Youth [OE], and its relativesGerman Jugend and Dutch jeugd, go back toprehistoric West Germanic *jugunth-, analteration of *juwunth-, which was derived from*juwunggaz ‘young’. JUNIOR, JUVENILE, YEOMAN, YOUTHyour see YOUYule [OE] Old English gēol, the ancestor ofmodern English Yule, was originally the name of

yuppie 554a pre-Christian mid-winter festival, but it latercame to be applied to ‘Christmas’. It was relatedto Old Norse jól ‘mid-winter festival’ (possiblesource of English jolly), but where it ultimatelycame from is not known. It has been speculatedthat it may be descended from the Indo-European base *qwelo- ‘go round’ (source ofEnglish cycle and wheel), in which case it woulddenote etymologically the ‘turn’ of the year.yuppie [20] Yuppie is an acronym, formed in theUSA from the initial letters of ‘young urbanprofessional’. It came on the scene in 1984, andat first competed with yumpie (formed from‘young upwardly mobile people’). It was yuppiewhich won out, and indeed has thrived to such anextent as to produce a whole range of (more orless ephemeral) clones such as buppie ‘blackyuppie’, guppie ‘green [ecologically concerned]yuppie’, and Juppie ‘Japanese yuppie’.zany [16] Zany originated as the name of acharacter in the old Italian commedia dell’arte,who tried, rather feebly, to mimic the antics ofthe clown. It came from Italian Zanni, a Venetianand Lombardic variant of Gianni, the pet form ofGiovanni (the Italian equivalent of EnglishJohn). Its meaning was broadened out to‘buffoon’ in the 17th century, but it does notseem to have really established itself as anadjective until the mid 19th century. JOHNzeal [14] Zeal is closely related to jealousy. Itcomes via late Latin zēlus from Greek zélos‘fervour, jealousy’. The medieval Latinderivative zēlōsus has left English a doublelegacy: zealous [16] and (via Old French)jealous. JEALOUSzenana see GYNAECOLOGYzenith [14] Arabic samt arrās means literally‘path over the head’. Samt ‘path, road’ made itsway via Old Spanish zenit and Old French cenitinto English as zenith, bringing with it themetaphorical application to the ‘point in the skydirectly overhead’. The plural of samt, sumūt, isthe ultimate source of English azimuth [14]. AZIMUTHzero [17] In common with many other Englishmathematical terms, zero comes ultimately fromArabic. Its distant ancestor is Arabic sifr, a nounuse of an adjective meaning ‘empty’, which alsoproduced English cipher. It passed into Englishvia Old Spanish zero and French zéro. CIPHERzither see GUITARzodiac [14] The zodiac is etymologically a circleof ‘little animals’. Greek zóidion originallydenoted a ‘carved figure of an animal’ (it was adiminutive of zóion ‘animal’, a relative ofEnglish zoo). From it was derived the adjectivezōidiakós, which was used in the expressionzōidiakós kúklos ‘circle of carved figures’,denoting the twelve figures or signs representingthe divisions of a band around the celestialsphere. Zōidiakós became a noun in its ownright, and passed into English via Latin zōdiacusand French zodiaque. ZOOzombie [19] Zombie was originally the name ofa snake-god in the voodoo cult of West Africa,and later of the Caribbean, and it comes from aWest African language (it is related to Kongonzambi ‘god’ and zumbi ‘fetish’). It was laterapplied to a reanimated corpse in the voodoocult, and a ghoulish sense of humour transferredthe English word in the 1930s to a ‘catatonicallyslow-witted person’.zoo [19] Greek zóion meant ‘animal’ (it camefrom the Indo-European base *gwei-, which alsolies behind English biology, quick, and vital).From it was formed modern Latin zōologia‘study of animals’, which English adapted aszoology [17]. Zoological was derived from thisin the 19th century, and when the ZoologicalSociety of London opened their exhibition oflive wild animals in Regent’s Park in 1829, theycalled it the Zoological Gardens. This was soonabbreviated to ‘the Zoological’, and by the mid1840s it had shrunk further to zoo. BIOLOGY, QUICK, VITAL

Word Family TreesThe following pages show a representative sample of family trees of English words – a smallcopse selected from a vast forest. They give an alternative, visual perspective on the history ofEnglish vocabulary as presented in the main body of the text.At the foot of each diagram is an Indo-European root – a word which, scholars have deduced,existed in the ancient Indo-European language from which English ultimately developed (formore details on this, see the Introduction). The root is given with an asterisk in front of it,indicating that it is a theoretical reconstruction – no actual written Indo-European texts survive(if indeed such things ever existed). It ends in a hyphen. That is because in real ‘life’ theseroots were not independent, free-standing words; they only existed in combination withsuffixes or other endings.Leading off from this basic Indo-European form are branches representing some of the ancientlanguages and language groups that evolved from Indo-European – for instance, Latin, ancientGreek and prehistoric Germanic. Tracing onwards from these, we can see how the Indo-European form developed in these languages. And at the very tip of the branches are theEnglish words that grew out of the various ancestral forms. All these words, in English andother languages, that are descended from a common Indo-European ancestor are known as‘cognates’.For example, Indo-European had a root *wed- which meant ‘water’ and ‘wet’. A descendantof that in Latin was unda, meaning ‘wave’, which has given English such non-watery wordsas ‘abound’ and ‘surround’. A cognate is Greek hudōr ‘water’, from which English gets,among others, hydrant and the prefix hydro-. And various Germanic cognates have evolvedinto English wash, water, wet, winter and otter. Also related are Old Irish uisce ‘water’, fromwhich we get whisky, and Russian voda ‘water’, which is the (linguistic) basis of vodka.

groatDUTCHgrit*greut‘sand, gravel’great*grauta‘coarse, thick’Margaretmargarinemargarítēs‘pearl’khrōma‘skin, colour’chrome,chromaticGREEKgroats*grut‘ground grain’GERMANICINDO-EUROPEAN*ghrēu-‘rub, grind’grout FRENCH*grūt‘ground grain’gruesome*grūw-‘recoil from’*graw-‘gravel’FRENCHCELTICgruelgravel

lucidlightlightningilluminateluminouslumen‘light, opening’lucere‘shine’*leuhtam‘light’lunar lunaticillustrate lustreluna‘moon’lustrare‘purify, illuminate’Luciferlux‘light’LATINGERMANICINDO-EUROPEAN*leuk-‘light, brightness’GREEK leukaemialeukos‘clear, white’leukocyte

pedal quadrupedpedestrian pioneerpawn trivetmillipede vamppēs‘foot’expediteimpeachpedica‘fetter’expedire‘free from a snare’impedire‘put in fetters’pewoctopusplatypusLATINimpedeantipodesteapoypilotpēdon‘rudder’pyjamapāi‘footPERSIANpodagrapous‘foot’GREEKINDO-EUROPEAN*ped-, *pōd-‘foot’podiatrypodiumpolyptripodpeza‘foot’foot*fōtfetlock‘foot’fetterfetel-‘foot’*feterō‘fetter’GERMANICtrapezepie (unit ofIndian currency)pādas‘foot’SANSKRIT¯

sedge*sagjaz‘sword’*segithō‘sickle’scythe*sagō‘cutting tool’sawSaxon?*sahsam‘knife’OLD NORSE*skinth-‘peel off’GERMANICINDO-EUROPEAN*sek-‘cut’skinintersect secateursinsect sectiondissect sectorbisectsegmentsecare‘cut’LATINsēcula‘sickle’sickle

tuberprotuberancethumbthimblethousandthightruffletuber‘lump’*thūmōn‘thick finger’*thūs-hundi‘swollen hundred’*theuham‘swollen part of leg’tumescentGERMANICtumourtumere‘swell’LATININDO-EUROPEAN*tu-‘swell’GREEKSLAVICtumulttumulus‘mound’turos‘cheese’OLD CHURCHSLAVONICtumulusbuttertvarogu‘curds, cottage cheese’quark

washwater*watskan‘wash’*watar‘water’*otraz‘otter’otterwhiskyuisce‘water’*wēta-‘wet’GERMANICOLD IRISHwetwinter*wintruz‘winter’redundantdropsyinundate surroundhydrohydrantabound undulateunda‘wave’hudōr‘water’GREEKLATINCELTICSLAVIC vodkaINDO-EUROPEAN*wed-‘water, wet’RUSSIANvoda‘water’

OLD NORSE*kannjan‘make known’can, cunningknow,knowledgekenuncouth*kuntha-‘known’*kunnan‘know’*knē(w)-‘know’acquaint,cognition, connoisseur, incognito,notice, notify, notion, notorious,quaint, recognize,reconnaissancekith(g)noscere,cognoscere‘get to know’*kunthithō‘knowledge, acquaintance’GERMANICLATININDO-EUROPEAN*gnō-‘know’ignorare‘not know’nobilis‘famous, noble’narrare‘tell’GREEKignore,ignorantnoblenarrategnōsis‘knowledge’,gnōmōn‘judge’agnostic,diagnosis, gnome

wort‘plant’mangelwurzelGERMAN*wurtiz‘plant, root’rootOLD NORSE*wrōt-‘root’GERMANICINDO-EUROPEAN*wrd-‘branch, root’deracinate,eradicate, radical,radishrādix‘root’LATINGREEKrāmus‘branch’rhiza‘root’ramifylicorice,rhizome