The Great Vowel Shift AKA why English is a stupid, stupid language

If you’ve ever wondered why ‘though’ and ‘cough’ are spelled the same but pronounced completely differently, you’re not alone. Why does English spelling have so many quirks/really effing stupid things that are hard to remember? The answer lies in a dramatic event that happened a few hundred years ago: the Great Vowel Shift. Yes, that’s a thing. A vowel shift. Because English, at some point, decided it was too easy.

What even is a Great Vowel Shift?

A vowel

The Great Vowel Shift was a major linguistic event that took place in English between the 15th and 18th centuries. And it dramatically altered the way we pronounced long vowels. What the hell’s a long vowel, I hear you ask? The opposite of a short vowel, obvs. Sorry. A long vowel is one that’s pronounced the same way as the letter’s name in the alphabet, like ‘a’ in ‘cake’ or ‘i’ in ‘bike’. A short vowel has a more clipped sound, like the ‘a’ in ‘cat’ or the ‘e’ in ‘bed’.

It doesn’t seem like much of a distinction, I know. And that’s because of the Great Vowel Shift. Before it, in Middle English we held long vowels for longer when we spoke. For example, we pronounced the word ‘bite’ with a long ‘i’, like ‘beet’. But then some bright sparks started shifting vowels upwards in their mouths. This is called ‘raising’ in linguistics. It happens when the tongue is positioned higher in the mouth during the pronunciation of a vowel.

The problem is that no one bothered to tell our spelling about this. So the way many of our words are spelled today reflects how they used to sound before the Shift. That’s why words like ‘cough’ and ‘through’ look like they should rhyme but sound like they come from completely different universes.

If you think things are bad now, imagine what it was like for anyone trying to speak and spell English in the 1500s. One day ‘boot’ rhymes with ‘foot’, then the next it doesn’t any more. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

But why though?

The extremely informative answer is that no one really knows. Theories range from the influence of French after the Norman Conquest (thanks a lot, France) to social mobility and dialect mixing, particularly after the Black Death and the War of the Roses. Or it might just have been down to people wanting to sound fancier (like saying ‘myself’ when you mean ‘me’ today, GRRRR). Whatever happened, it’s like English made a bet with itself on how hard it could make things for future generations. Spoiler: it won.

The good news is that next time you hear someone complain about English spelling, you can smugly and knowledgably say ‘Well actually, that’s down to the Great Vowel Shift’. You’re welcome.

Pretending to be single

Now, I’m a fully paid-up member of the (sadly, still only theoretical) grammar pedantry brigade. But even though it’s technically correct, you’ll never catch me saying ‘the data are compelling’ – even though ‘data’ is (sorry, are) plural, not singular, making this a flagrant case of verb-subject disagreement. So why do I do this? Because (a) I don’t have any data (compelling or otherwise), and (b) I would sound like a weirdo.

Data isn’t alone in being treated as singular when it’s actually plural. Here are six other words that are technically plural, but that we treat as singular. I’ll leave it up to you as to whether you want to use them correctly, or risk sounding like a dickhead.

(Oh, and the singular version of ‘data’ is ‘datum’, just in case you didn’t know that.)

Agenda

If you find yourself in a meeting and someone you dislike suggests adding something to the next agenda, you can tell them that actually it should be added to the next agendum. Just make sure they don’t have the power to sack you.

Graffiti

Yum

That latest Banksy masterpiece that appeared overnight? It’s a graffito.

‘Graffito’ comes from an Italian verb ’graffiare’, which means ‘to scratch’. And that comes from a Latin word ‘graphium’, meaning ‘a stylus’ or ‘a writing tool’.

Panini

Yep, the sandwich, usually made from ciabatta, so posh it requires its own press. The singular version is actually ‘panino’. So you’re technically asking for multiple sandwiches if you request panini. Actually, that’s probably no bad thing.

‘Panino’ is a diminutive of ‘pane’ meaning ‘bread’. A diminutive is a word or form that conveys a smaller, shorter or more affectionate version of something. I definitely feel affectionate about ciabatta-based sandwiches.

Bacteria

This one’s not that obscure, but I think most of us tend to use ‘bacteria’ when we mean one of the buggers, rather than the correct ‘bacterium’. ‘Bacteria’ has (or rather, have) been around since the late 19th century. The word, not the things, I mean – some of the earliest evidence of life on Earth is bacteria. In fact, the earliest known bacteria are believed to date back to about 3.5 to 3.7 billion years ago. So quite a long time then.

A 100-sided Zocchihedron (plural: Zocchihedra) – picture from Wikipedia.

Dice

Like ‘bacteria’/’bacterium’, I think most of us know that die is the singular version of dice, but still choose not to use it. Because I can’t think of anything else to say about that, instead I’m going to tell you about the Zocchihedron, which is a 100-sided dice/die. That means it’s basically a sphere. It was created by a man called Lou Zocchi in 1985, who presumably has much too much time on his hands.

Scampi

If you have one piece of scampi, it’s a scampo. WHAT!

Okay, this one is a bit of a cheat, because scampi is something different in Italy, which is where this distinction comes from. In the UK, scampi is/are breaded or battered pieces of langoustine (also called Dublin Bay prawn or Norway lobster), which are small lobsters found in the waters around the British Isles. Our scampi are usually battered, come with chips and tartar sauce, and go lovely with a lager in the pub. In Italy and other Mediterranean countries, ‘scampi’ is a bit posher. The word refers to the Norway lobster or langoustine itself, which is usually prepared in a garlic butter sauce, and I imagine pairs beautifully with a chilled bottle of Pinot Grigio, rather than a pint of Stella.

Because of this, you probably shouldn’t correct any bar staff if you’re eating battered scampi in a pub somewhere. But feel free to do it if you’re having the posh version. Maybe wait til after you’ve got the food though.

Ice, ice baby

A very long time ago (2015, to be specific), I had a holiday in Iceland. And while I was there I learnt three things.

Iceland: it’s flippin’ cold

1. It’s very expensive.

2. There are hardly any trees (there’s a joke in Iceland that goes ‘What should you do if you get lost in a forest in Iceland? Stand up’).

3. When Icelanders want to add a new word to their language, for example, for a new technology, they don’t just adopt the English word as a lot of languages do (called ‘loanwords’). They create a new word (or neologism) by using or combining existing ones from Old Icelandic and Old Norse roots. And they do that in a super-organised way.

It’s of course number 3 that we’re going to be talking about today (as this is a blog about words, not trees or money).

Wait, why Don’t They just use the English version?

Today, only around 330,000 people speak Icelandic, a unique language derived from Old Norse (Old Norse is a Scandinavian language spoken during and before the Viking age, and until the 15th century). Iceland wants to keep their language pure and distinctive, while also making sure it evolves in line with the modern world. That’s why they create their own words, rather than just using our boring old versions.

Because of this, the Icelandic language has been relatively unchanged for centuries. That means Icelanders can still read the original sagas – a collection of medieval prose narratives written in Old Norse over 800 years ago – with very little difficulty. To put that into perspective, Chaucer wrote ‘The Canterbury Tales’ about 640 years ago. And I definitely couldn’t read that with very little difficulty (‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote/The droghte of March hath perced to the roote’. WTF, Geoff?).

How do ICELANDERS coin new words?

It all starts with the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. It’s their job to preserve and develop the Icelandic language, and come up with new words when needed. So when a new concept or technology appears that they need a term for, they’ll either:

• combine existing Icelandic words to create a new term (called ‘compounding’)

• translate parts of the foreign word directly into Icelandic (called ‘calques’)

• revive old archaic or obsolete words and give them a new meaning so they work in contemporary contexts.

The Institute also takes suggestions and feedback from specialists and from the public to make sure that any new words they come up with are both linguistically appropriate, and will work in real life.

Once the committee has approved a new term, they’ll use official channels, media, educational institutions, etc., to get it out to the public.

Icelandic neologisms in action

Here are some examples of new Icelandic words, along with a bit of explanation about how they were formed.

• Tölva for computer – a combination of ‘tala’ meaning ‘number, and ‘völva’ (stop it) meaning ‘prophetess’ or ‘seeress’. This combines the concept of numbers with a sense of mystical insight or prediction, showing the computational power of computers (also, how mystified I am when mine doesn’t do what I want it to).

• Sími for telephone – this is an old Icelandic word for ‘thread’ or ‘wire’ which was revived to describe phones. The word for mobile phone is ‘farsími’, which adds ‘far’ meaning ‘travel’ or ‘journey’ to ‘sími’.

• Geimfar for astronaut – from ‘geim’ meaning ‘space’ and ‘far’ for ‘traveller’. So it literally means ‘space traveller’.

• Þyrla for helicopter – derived from ‘þyrill’ which means ‘whirlwind’.

• Sjónvarp for television – from ‘sjón’ meaning ‘vision’ and ‘varp’ meaning ‘casting’ or ‘projection’. ‘I’m off to do some vision casting’ sounds SO much better than ‘I’m going to watch telly’, doesn’t it?

• Rafmagn for electricity – from ‘raf’ meaning ‘amber’ (this is because amber was historically associated with static electricity) and ‘magn’ meaning ‘power’ or ‘force’.

There you have it. Before I sign off though, here are a few more Iceland facts for you:

• over 90% of Icelandic homes are heated with geothermal energy, making it one of the most environmentally friendly countries in the world when it comes to producing energy

Drinking a Viking ale in Iceland (although it could be anywhere, frankly)

• Iceland is on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates meet. For that reason it’s home to about 130 volcanoes, several of which are still active. The most well known is probably Eyjafjallajökull, which became the bane of every newsreader’s career after it erupted and caused havoc in 2010 (it’s pronounced ‘EY-ya-fyat-la-YO-kuhtl’, apparently)

• Iceland is one of the few countries in the world without a standing army (or a sitting-down army BOOM BOOM)

• Icelandic horses are a unique breed known for their small size, their strength and their ability to perform five gaits, including the tölt, a smooth, four-beat lateral gait (I don’t know what any of that means or why it’s good, sorry). To stop disease, it’s illegal to import horses to Iceland. And, if a horse leaves the country, it can’t ever come back. Aw. Also, more importantly, I’m sure someone in Iceland told us that Icelandic horses have a great sense of direction and can carry their blind-drunk owners home from the pub without any human intervention (apart from getting on the horse, obvs) **immediately googles how to buy an Icelandic horse**

• the Althingi, Iceland’s national parliament, is one of the oldest in the world. It was established in 930 AD at Þingvellir (went there! It was bloody freezing)

• many Icelanders believe in the ‘huldufólk’ (‘hidden people’) AKA elves. So much so that some road-construction projects have been changed to avoid disturbing these mythical (or are they…?) creatures’ habitats. When my sister and I were in Reykjavik, we visited the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which boasts the world’s largest display of penises, including an elf’s. Sadly, like Icelandic elves and trolls themselves, it’s invisible.

Turning Japanese*

There are lots of lovely foreign words which don’t have an English equivalent (I already wrote a post about this – my favourite is baggerspion, which is the desire to peek into a boarded-up building site). But it turns out that Japanese is particularly prolific when it comes to creating words to describe very specific feelings or activities. One of the better known ones is ‘suzushii men’, which is used to describe the cool side of the pillow when you turn it over.

Here are seven more lovely Japanese words with no English equivalent.

1. Tsundoku (積ん読)

The act of buying books then letting them pile up without reading them.

I’m so guilty of this – there are eight on my bedside table alone.

2. Irusu (居留守)

When you pretend to be out when someone’s at the door or calling you on the phone.

I do this every single day.

3. Wasuremono (忘れ物)

This refers to things you’ve forgotten or left behind, like when you stand up on a train and your phone falls off your lap and you don’t notice. Obviously we just say ‘lost stuff’ of ‘FFS’ in English, but wasuremono adds an extra sense of carelessness or absent-mindedness.

This is also me. Maybe I actually am Japanese…?

4. Shinrinyoku (森林浴)

Taking in the forest atmosphere. This one’s all about when you walk through woods and use all five senses to immerse yourself in nature. It’s supposed to be very relaxing and good for the soul.

This is another one I do every day, although picking up my dog’s poo while screaming his name and sprinting after him as he runs off after yet another squirrel isn’t particularly relaxing…

5. Mono no aware (物の哀れ)

A term for a sensitivity to the transience and impermanence of life and the world around us. This one’s deeply rooted in Japanese culture and aesthetics, particularly in literature, art and philosophy. It’s all about embracing the fragility and beauty of life, and finding meaning and depth in the transient nature of existence.

I can’t think of a silly joke to make about that one, so I won’t.

6. Komorebi (木漏れ日)

We’re back in the woods again. This word describes the dappled sunlight that dances and flickers on the ground beneath a canopy of branches and leaves. Lovely, right?

‘Leave it, Gus, LEAVE IT!’

7. Kuidaore (食い倒れ)

To eat oneself into bankruptcy. The concept of kuidaore isn’t just about stuffing your face – it’s also about enjoying food with abandon, even if it means you won’t have any money left for rent or bills, or anything else. Just your average trip to Tescos at the moment, then.

*This song apparently has a very rude meaning, which I’ll leave to your imagination**.

**Okay, I won’t. It’s supposedly about wanking.

For the sake of Auld Lang what?

A (late, sorry) happy new year. I’m sure lots of us drunkenly sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to each other at some point on New Year’s Eve/Day – although I didn’t as I was on the sofa with a big old piece of cake. If you did, well done you. But did you understand what you were actually singing about? If not, read on.

Auld Lang Syne (not ‘Auld Lang’s Eyne’ which is what I’ve always sung) is a Scottish phrase that’s usually translated as ‘old long since’ or ‘days gone by’. It’s from a poem by Scottish poet Robert/Rabbie Burns, although it actually comes from a much older Scottish folk song. The song reflects on the passage of time, the importance of remembering old friends and experiences, and preserving connections, even though lots of things have changed as the year’s gone by.

The chorus (i.e. the ‘Auld Lang Syne bit) is a call to remember and honour the past, to cherish your friendships and a toast to the bonds that connect us all over time. Nice, right?

As I said, Auld Lang Syne is usually sung as we bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight on NYE. Because of that lovely meaning I talked about about it’s also often sung at funerals, graduations and other occasions which involve an ending or farewell. It was also famously sung by members of the European Parliament when the Brexit withdrawal agreement was passed, ending the UK’s membership of the UK.

What put the box into Boxing Day?

Despite the fact that I’ve had more Christmases on this planet than I care to admit (at least 29), I’ve never really thought about why Boxing Day is called Boxing Day. Christmas Eve – makes sense. Christmas Day – obvious. Boxing Day – say what?

I’ve done a bit of research, and it turns out there are a couple of theories as to where the box comes from. And I’m pleased to say that both are to do with the cardboard (or wood) kind of box, not the punching-people-in-the-face type. Theory 1 takes us back to the Victorian day (that’s the 1800s), when the rich used to give Christmas gifts to the poor. The day after Christmas Day (I’m not sure what they called it before it became Boxing Day – actually, probably just ‘26 December’) was traditionally a day off for servants, and also when they got those Christmas boxes from their masters. Hence, Boxing Day.

The Stoning of St Stephen. Not the fun kind of stoned either

Theory number 2 is a bit older, and takes us back to medieval times. This one relates to the collection box in churches. These were opened up on Christmas Day, and divvied out to the deserving the following day. Hence, again (I double-henced you, sorry), Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is called Boxing Day here (obviously) and in lots of other countries that were once part of the British Empire. But what does everyone else call it? Well, in some parts of Europe, including (deep breath) Spain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Norway and Ireland, the 26 December is called St Stephen’s Day.

St Stephen has the dubious honour of being the first martyr of Christianity, having been stoned to death in 36AD, poor bugger. And in Wales, his feast day used to be celebrated by bleeding livestock, and beating late risers and female (of course) servants with holly branches, all in the name of good luck. Happy Christmas!

C’est what?

I spend a lot of my time editing enormo legal books packed with esoteric jargon (lucky me!) and some of the longest sentences known to man (or woman). A lot of those terms are Latin (for example, habeas corpus, prima facie, ex parte, pro bono, etc). But it turns out lots of our legal terms have also been infiltrated by another language. And that language is French. Specifically, Old French, which was spoken from the 9th century to the 14th century (roughly – I mean the years are rough, not that the Old French was spoken roughly).

Old French developed from Latin and evolved into Middle French, which eventually led to the modern French language that I’ve been learning on Duolingo for years, yet still can’t say anything remotely useful in.

Let’s have a look at Old French in action.

Les mots

• ‘Attorney’ comes from the Old French word ‘atorne’, meaning ‘to assign’.

• ‘Court’ is from (say it in a French accent) ‘court’, meaning ‘enclosed yard’ or ‘sovereign’s residence’.

• ‘Plaintiff’ (now pretty much replaced by ‘claimant’) is from ‘plaintif’, meaning ‘complaining’ or ‘lamenting’.

• ‘Defendant’ is from (get the accent ready again) ‘defendant’, meaning ‘defender’.

• ‘Bailiff’ is from ‘baillif’, meaning ‘administrative official’ (dunno why we added another ‘f’ – maybe so it matched ‘plaintiff’?).

• ‘Jury’ is from ‘juré’, meaning ‘sworn’.

• ‘Larceny’ is from ‘larrecin’, meaning ‘theft’. 

• ‘Trespass’ is from ‘trespas’, meaning ‘wrongdoing’.

Pourquoi?

We have the Norman Conquest of 1066 to thank for all these French words sneaking in and stealing our English words’ jobs. That’s because the Normans, who were originally Vikings but settled in what’s now Northern France and adopted French as their own language, became the ruling class in England. And that meant French became the language of the English aristocracy and, therefore, the legal system, for several centuries.

English (well, the incomprehensible Chaucer-esque Middle kind, anyway) eventually came back into fashion around the time of the Plantagenets (from the 12th to the 15th centuries). And over time, it would go on to replace French as the dominant language in all parts of society. But our Gallic cousins’ influence still remains in the legal lexicon today. Sacre bleu.

I’ve included this video by Kid Creole & the Coconuts because it was the first time I ever heard the word ‘larceny’ (‘He caught the mug who did in the forgery / And the babe in charge of larceny’), and also because it is a CHOON.

Days of our lives – how the days got their names

The names of the days of the week are a motley crew – they come from lots of different religions and mythologies. Here’s a whistlestop tour of where they got their names. Except for the ‘day’ bit, obviously.

Sunday

It’ll probably come as no surprise to you to learn that Sunday is named after the Sun. This comes from the Old English word ‘Sunndæg’ which means, you’ve guessed it, ‘Sun’s day’. Why the Sun? Well, lots of cultures associated it with gods and deities, and as the first day of the week, Sunday was traditionally a day of worship.

This was all started by the Babylonians who played a key role in developing the seven-day week. They were skilled astronomers and carefully observed how celestial bodies moved. The Sun was particularly important to them, so they named the first day of the week after it.

The Romans would later nick lots of bits of Babylonian culture, and one of these was the tradition of naming days of the week after celestial bodies and gods. They referred to the first day of the week as ‘dies Solis’, meaning ‘day of the Sun’, which later made its way into various Romance languages, as well as our own Germanic one.

Monday

Probably the most hated of all the days, Monday comes from the Old English word ‘Monandæg’, which means ‘Moon's day’. It’s also associated with the Moon in lots of Romance languages too: Lunes in Spanish, Lundi in French and Lunedì in Italian all have ‘lunar’ origins.

This is also thanks to the Babylonians, and their love of the celestial bodies, which was again stolen by the Romans – their Monday was called ‘dies Lunae’ or ‘day of the moon’.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

I’ve lumped these ones together because they take us away from the Babylonians and Romans, and over to what we now call Scandinavia. You might want to put a coat on.

• Tuesday is named after the Norse god Tyr, coming from the Old English word ‘Tiwesdæg’, which means' ‘Tiw’s (or Tyr’s) day’. Tyr was the god of law and justice in Norse mythology.

• Wednesday is named after the Norse god Odin, from the Old English word ‘Wodnesdæg’, meaning ‘Woden’s (or Odin’s) day’. Odin was the top dog/god in Norse mythology, and was associated with knowledge and wisdom. Much like his Greek counterpart, Zeus, he also put it about a bit (see Thursday).

• Thursday is named after Chris Hemsworth, AKA the Norse god Thor, and comes from the Old English word ‘Þūnresdæg’ (a prize to anyone who can tell me how to pronounce that), meaning, of course, ‘Thor's day’. Thor was the god of thunder, and son of Odin and a giantess named Jörð – that conception must have been interesting. Odin obviously had a bit of a thing for ladies of the larger persuasion as he had two other children with two other giantesses too.

• Friday is named after the Norse goddess Frigg or Freyja, and comes from the Old English word ‘Frigedæg’, meaning (you’ve probably worked out the pattern by now) ‘Frigg’s (or Freyja’s) day’. Frigg was married to Odin, which must have been tough when he was shagging all those giants.

Saturday

For Saturday, we’re heading back over the Mediterranean to the Romans. It’s named after the planet Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and time (via the Old English word ‘Sæternesdæg’, meaning… well, you can probably guess that one). Saturday was traditionally a day for farming and shopping-type stuff, which is why it was named after this particular god.

So there you have it – seven days of the week, done. Not as fun as Craig David’s, but you can’t have everything.

Horsing around with animal adjectives

You’re almost certainly familiar with the word ‘canine’ which describes things dogs are and do (kinda). And you’ve probably also come across ‘bovine’ for cows, ‘equine’ for horses and maybe even ‘leonine’ for lions. But did you know there are loads of other words ending in ‘ine’ which you can use to describe animal-like characteristics? Luckily I’ve done the research so you don’t have to, and can go outside and actually have fun and stuff. So here are some of my favourite animal ‘ine’ words, along with where they come from.

A word about ‘ine’

Before we get into the super-exciting adjectives, let’s have a quick chat about why they all end in ‘ine’. ‘ine’ is a really common suffix (AKA something that’s tacked on to the end of a word) in English. It means ‘similar to’, ‘resembling’, ‘like’, ‘characterised by’, or ‘of the nature of’ (or ‘things dogs are and do’ as I said above). Technically these words are called ‘adjectival forms’, because they’re made by adding a suffix to a root noun. But that’s very boring, so let’s get to the words.

Anserine

If someone describes you as anserine, you should probably be a bit cross, because it means you look like (or act like) a goose (‘anser’ being the Latin word for goose). I’m really scared of geese – they seem like utter bastards to me.

Aquiline

If something or someone is ‘aquiline’, it has the characteristics of an eagle. It’s often used to describe noses, meaning someone’s nose is curved or hooked like an eagle’s beak (handy for opening tins, maybe?). The Latin word for eagle is ‘aquila’, which is where this comes from.

Caprine

Goats. We get a few other words from ‘capra’, the Latin word for goat, including ‘capricious’ (AKA moody) and ‘caper’ (skipping about). Goats actually get two adjectival forms, the second one being ‘hirsine’, which is related to ‘hircus’ meaning ‘he-goat’ #everydaysexism

Cervine

If you get called ‘cervine’, then you’re on to a winner. It means you resemble a deer, which hopefully means you’re graceful and elegant, and haven’t just been shot in a forest.

Like goats, deer also get more than one adjectival forms – ‘elaphine’ (not to be confused with ‘elapine’ which is for snakes) and ‘rusine’ which comes from the Latin word ‘rusina’, which is related to ‘rus’, meaning ‘countryside’ or ‘fields’.

Corvine

‘Corvine’ refers to crows or ravens. Crows are super clever, and can remember faces. Treat them well and they’ll bring you presents (even cash) – treat them badly and they’ll make your life a misery.

Leporine

This one relates to rabbits or hares, and is from the Latin word ‘lepus’ meaning, you’ve guessed it, ‘rabbit’ or ‘hare’. Hares are incredibly fast runners and can reach speeds of up to 45mph in short bursts. They’ve also learned to zigzag to avoid predators, unlike that dude in Game of Thrones.

Murine

Murine can be used for both mice and rats, although being described as mouse-like seems a bit less insulting than rat-like (although there’s not much in it, to be fair). Tehran had (possibly still has) a problem with giant rats and employed snipers to take them out (thankfully with air rifles, not AK-47s). There’s also a rare phenomenon called a rat-king, which is when a load of rats get their tails knotted together by crap to form one enormo super-rat. I advise you not to Google this.

Pavonine

Pavonine means ‘peacock-like’. Peacocks are pretty long-lived for birds, and can get to the grand old age of 20 in the wild, and even longer in captivity. Despite this, having peacock feathers in the house is traditionally associated with bad luck (although only really in the West), possibly because of their resemblance to the evil eye.

Ursine

If you know anything about astronomy then you might be able to guess this one – ‘ursine’ means ‘bear-like’. If you’re more Brian Cox from Succession than Brian Cox from spacey-stuff, I’m referring to Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, one of the most well-known and recognisable constellations in the night sky (although I couldn’t pick it out of a line-up). Ursa Major is known as the Big Dipper in North America because of its resemblance to a dipper or ladle. There’s also an Ursa Minor, which is where you’ll find the North Star.

Vulpine

This one’s all about the foxes, and comes from the Latin word for frog (just kidding). It’s of course from the Latin word for fox, which is ‘vulpes’. Let’s finish off with a picture of an endangered (isn’t everything?) fennec fox, a small fox native to the deserts of North Africa, because it has the most gorgeous ears in the world ever.

The crowd say bo corrector*

Phwoarr

Possibly surprisingly for a blog about words, this post is actually about a person. And when I say person, I mean massive pedant. Let me introduce you to Alexander Cruden or, as he was more usually known, Alexander the Corrector. Yes, he was so pedantic about spelling and grammar, that he had a full-on nickname. I could only dream of such an honour.

So why have I decided to devote a blog post to Alexander? Because he saw it as his personal mission to safeguard Britain’s spelling and grammar. He even carried a sponge around with him which he used to rub out signs with grammatical or spelling errors. As someone who once parked her car illegally to add an apostrophe to a road sign outside Colchester (it’s Britain’s oldest recorded town (now city), not Britains). Alexander also spent a lot of time in madhouses, which I can relate to as well – it’s tough being a pedant.

Who the fuck is Alex?

Alexander Cruden was born in Aberdeen in Scotland in May 1699. After the usual education stuff, according to Wikipedia he ‘began to show signs of insanity owing to a disappointment in love’ (we’ve all been there, Al). After he recovered he dyed his hair (kidding) and moved to London (not kidding). There he became a private tutor, eventually getting a job with the 10th Earl of Derby. Unfortunately that didn’t last very long, as he was sacked for being really bad at pronouncing French words (in my head he’s like Joey in that episode of Friends). Determined to better himself, he went and lodged with a load of Frenchmen in Soho (I bet there were a lot of baguettes there) in the hope of getting back in with the Earl. Sadly the Earl refused to see him when he returned to his house in Lancashire, marking the end of his career saying French words. Quel dommage.

The Earl’s loss is pedantry’s gain

Alexander’s most famous work is ‘Cruden’s Bible Concordance’ which was first published in 1737, and hasn’t been out of print since. A concordance is basically an index – so it lists Biblical words alphabetically, then tells you where to find them. Let’s just think about the work involved in putting that together. Because he’s a bloody legend, by working alone from 7am to 1am every day, Alexander finished most of the work in less than a year (I’ve been working on this blog post for longer than that. That’s not even a joke). Here’s a picture of the first page:

It’s not your eyes – it’s a blurry picture

Alexander spent so much time on his concordance that the bookshop he ran ran out of stock and, presumably, customers. Luckily he was able to present his book to Queen Caroline (wife of George II). Unluckily she died a few days later (hopefully not of boredom), which meant he didn’t get any rewards. In fact, he’d had to go into debt to get the thing printed in the first place. He did manage to present the second edition to George III (yes, the mad one – coincidence…?), and got £100 for his trouble. Don’t feel bad though – that’s £10,246.23 in today’s money, and he could have bought 14 horses with it, if he wanted (how do I know that? There’s a website, obviously).

Safeguarding the nation’s grammar

At some point after 1754, Alexander decided to add ‘the Correcter’ to his name. This was because he saw a decline in spelling and grammar as a sign of a decline in moral standards. So he went on a one-man crusade to fix it, armed only with that sponge (imagine what he could have done with a Sharpie). He was particularly concerned with misspelt signs, graffiti and swearing. So he would have hated this blog post, for fuck’s sake. He also deleted the number 45 wherever he found it. That’s because 45 was the symbol of John Wilkes, a radical journalist and politican he didn’t approve of. (I just ended a sentence with a preposition, which he also probably wouldn’t have approved of. Oops, did it again.) It must have been quite irritating for anyone who lived between numbers 44 and 46 (I checked and apparently house numbering started in the early 16th-century, so this admittedly-not-that-good joke does work).

Not content with doing all the sponging himself, Alexander appointed deputy correctors at Cambridge University, as well as Eton, Windsor, Tonbridge and Westminster schools. And all of this pedantry culminated in the longest book title I’ve ever seen (take a deep breath): ‘The Corrector’s Earnest Address to the Inhabitants of Great-Britain. Shewing That the Late Earthquakes, ... are Loud Calls From Divine Providence for ... Corrector’s Honest Designs for That Purpose’, which was published in 1756. Ironically, where this is listed on Wikipedia, it’s missing an apostrophe in ‘Correctors’.

Correcting the madness

The Oxford University Press style manual says that ‘If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad’. And it looks like this happened to Alexander quite a lot. He was institutionalised several times during his life. A writer called Julia Keay has argued that he wasn’t actually mad, but was put away to stop him criticising all the incestuous marriages among the nobility, and later by women who rejected his unwanted affections (hmmm). He seemed to have a few run-ins with women who weren’t interested in him, and he was also confined in an asylum in Chelsea after getting into a street brawl in 1755. Maybe he sponged the wrong person’s sign (or wife).

No more correcting

Alexander died in his lodgings in Camden Passage on 1 November 1770, while praying (which seems like a big old kick in the religious teeth). He left his property to various relatives and to the City of Aberdeen, instructing that they use it to buy religious books for the poor. There are now two plaques – one in Camden and in Cruden’s Court in Aberdeen, where he was born (which I assume is named after him – otherwise it’s one helluva coincidence) – commemorating this sadly misunderstood (though possibly a bit rapey), ultimate pedant.

*Did I write this whole post just so I could use this pun? Maybe.

R U OK hun?

The word ‘OK’, or ‘okay’ which is my usual spelling, might feel fairly modern. And while it certainly isn’t as old as some, it’s no spring chicken either – it’s around 180 years old. It’s understood in most languages, and even has its own (possibly racist) hand gesture. But where did it come from?

To find out, we’re going to travel back to 1839.

Time for some LOLs

You might think that txt-spk abbreviations like YOLO and FOMO are a modern invention. But cool cats in the 19th century were all over that shizzle – with a twist. These crazy kids deliberately misspelled words before they abbreviated them. Like ‘KG’, which stood for ‘know go’, a misspelling of ‘no go’. Hilarious, right? Well, no, but they didn’t have Netflix, so let’s forgive them.

Anyhoo, on 23 March 1839, the abbreviation ‘o.k.’ appeared in an article in the American newspaper, the Boston Morning Post. It was a shortening of ‘oll korrect’ a ‘humorous’ misspelling of ‘all correct’ as part of a piss-take of another newspaper by the Post’s editor Charles Gordon Greene. OK appeared again in the Boston Post a few days later, and it wasn’t long before it began to slip into the vernacular.

But it really took off a few months later thanks to a presidential campaign.

Making America OK again

This might be a white supremacist’s hand, sorry

The then-current US president was Martin Van Buren who was running against William Henry Harrison (seems everyone had three names in 1800s Murica). Harrison had some apparently kick-ass campaign slogans, although I confess they mean nothing to me – ‘Tippecanoe and Tyler Too’ and ‘Log Cabin and Hard Cider’, for example (WHAT). Van Buren’s supporters decided to use ‘OK’ as theirs. This was based on the fact that Van Buren was from the upstate New York town of Kinderhook, and so was nicknamed ‘Old Kinderhook’. And thanks to that article in the Boston Post it now had the double-meaning of oll korrect too. I can imagine them all slapping themselves on the backs at the campaign headquarters after coming up with that.

Despite their cleverness, OK didn’t prove a good enough campaign slogan and Harrison’s hard cider was the winner. Sadly he didn’t have long to celebrate though. He has the dubious honour of the shortest presidency in United States history – even less than Liz Truss – at 31 days. He did die though, which is a much better excuse than Truss. The same wasn’t true of OK which refused to go away, becoming firmly ensconced in everyday speech.

I should probably say that the above is the most widely accepted theory for the origin of OK. There are several others, including that it’s:

• a derivative of the German ‘ohne Korrektur’ (‘without correction’)

• from the Scots ‘och aye’

• from the Wolof (a national language of Senegal) ‘waw-kay’

• from an army biscuit called ‘Orrin Kendall’

• from a native American Choctaw chief called Old Keokuk.

And what about the spelling? Well, it’s really up to you. ‘OK’ in all caps with no full stops is the most common, followed by my favourite ‘okay’ which developed some time later. The all-lower-case ‘ok’ is also acceptable, although it’s not as popular as the other two. But considering the word itself comes from a misspelling, maybe it’s not worth getting too het up over.

Eponyms AKA words you didn’t know were named after people

If you’re a regular reader (AKA my mum), then you might remember words of the week maverick, bowdlerise and dunce, all of which are eponyms, or named after people. Well, I thought I’d look into other words which you may or may not already know were named after people. So here are seven of the most interesting. Sadly, they’re all (with one notable exception) named for men, something which perhaps might change in the future (but probably won’t). Sigh.

Bloomers

Let’s start this list with that notable exception.

Blooming marvellous Amelia

When we think of bloomers today, we think of pants. But back in the 19th century, bloomers were women’s garments for the lower body developed as a comfortable alternative to the heavy, constricting dresses they normally wore. And they’re named after a lady called Amelia Jenks Bloomer. Unlike pretty much everyone else on this list she didn’t actually have anything to do with inventing bloomers – in fact she was an American woman’s rights advocate. They’re named after her because they were seen as revolutionary outfits – presumably because they freed up women to do things like wave their arms around or breathe comfortably – and she was one of their strongest advocates.

Amelia was also the first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper for women. So all in all she was pretty freaking awesome.

Chauvinism

This one’s a bit dodgy, because there’s no proof that the man it’s named after – Nicolas Chauvin – actually existed (he was definitely a character in a play called Cocarde Tricolore (1831), but it’s not clear if that character was based on a real person or not). But I’ve put it in anyway because it’s quite interesting to see how the word has evolved. The story goes that Chauvin, a soldier, was – despite being badly wounded and having no money – still blindly loyal to his leader, Napoleon. And he continued to be, even after Nappers (as no one has ever called him) abdicated. So ‘chauvinism’ came to mean fanatical patriotism, even in the face of overwhelming opposition.

It was first used after ‘male’ in a 1935 play called ‘Till the Day I Die’ by someone called Clifford Odets (nope, me neither).

Mausoleum

A mausoleum is a large burial chamber, usually above ground and reserved for poshos. It’s named after Mausolus, who was a ruler of part of the Greek Empire in the 4th century BCE. When he died he was interred in a spectacular chamber in Halicarnassus, which his wife AND SISTER (ewwwwww), Artemisia II of Caria, called the ‘mausoleum’.

Back in the day Mausolus’ mausoleum (try saying that after a couple of shandies) was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, which is presumably how the word ‘mausoleum’ came into everyday use. It also outlasted all the other wonders, only to be toppled by a load of earthquakes between the 12th and 15th centuries.

Diesel

No relation to Vin Diesel

Diesel is named after the inventor of the diesel engine, Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel. Despite having the most German name ever, he was actually born in Paris in 1858, the son of Bavarian immigrants. He invented and ran the first successful diesel engine in 1897, and gave his name to the fuel that powered it.

Diesel came to a rather sorry end, disappearing from a steamer boat in 1913. He was on his way to London to meet some British Royal Navy bods to talk about powering British submarines with his engines. After having dinner and retiring to his cabin, he was never seen alive again. Ten days later a Dutch boat came across a corpse floating in the North Sea. They didn’t bring it on board because it was gross, but they did retrieve the personal items, which Diesel’s son later identified as belonging to his dad.

Some people think Diesel killed himself because he was having financial woes – he’d left a bag with his wife shortly after he disappeared, alongside instructions not to open it til the following week. When she did, she found 200,000 German marks in cash (around £875,000 in today’s money) and financial statements showing that their bank accounts were pretty much empty. There’s another theory that he was murdered, as apparently he’d refused to grant German forces the exclusive rights to his invention – and don’t forget he was on his way to Blighty to talk to the British Navy. Sadly, it looks like we’ll never know what happened to poor old Diesel.

Leotard 

Jules Léotard – try not to look at his crotch

Jules Léotard (born some time between 1839 and 1870) was a French acrobatic performer. He created a new type of one-piece streamlined garment which made it easier for him to do his trapeze schizz. It also showed off his physique which both the ladies and men enjoyed, so much so that someone by the name of George Leybourne wrote a song about him in 1867.

Jules didn’t actually call his costume a leotard. This came about much later in 1886 (I’m not sure who did call it that, sorry), after he’d died. He didn’t perish from anything trapeze-related BTW – he probably died from smallpox. So that sucks.

Silhouette

Étienne de Silhouette was a French finance minister for Louis XV. In 1759 there was a credit crunch in France (or a crunch de credit – I’m well good at languages) as a result of the Seven Years’ War. Silhouette imposed severe auterity measures on the French people, and his name soon came to be used to descibe anything done on the cheap. And because Silhouette’s favourite hobby was, you’ve guessed it, making shadow portraits out of paper – a much cheaper technique than painting someone – these soon took his name. Well, it could have been worse.

Things you didn’t know have names*

Nouns. There are bloody loads of them. Lots of them you know, and lots of them you don’t (probably). I’ve been trawling the interweb for those obscure naming words that you might not have come across before. You’re welcome.

In no particular order…

Apthong

An apthong is the name for a silent letter, like the ‘k’ in ‘knight, ‘the ‘p’ in ‘pneumonia’ and the ‘w’ in ‘wrinkle’. Y’know, those pointless letters that make it really hard to spell loads of English words. (Oh, and if you’d like to find out how the ‘h’ got into ‘ghost’ – and why wouldn’t you – go here.)

Silent letters aren’t always pointless BTdubz. They actually tell us how to pronounce certain words. Someone much cleverer than me has already written an article about this, which you can find here.

Ferrule

The metal bit at the end of a pencil that holds the rubber in. A ferrule is actually any metal band that strengthens the end of a stick-type thing (I can’t think of anything else that isn’t a pencil that fits that description though, sorry).

The name came from a Middle French word ‘virelle’ from the Latin ‘viriola’, which means ‘small bracelet’. The ‘f’ probably replaced the ‘v’ because of the Latin word ‘ferrum’ for ‘iron’.

Aglets

The bits of plastic at the end of your shoelaces that stop them coming unravelled (I guess?). Oh, and easier to get through the holes. Aglets are believed to have been around since ancient Roman times, although they weren’t plastic then (obvs). They were probably made of metal, glass or stone. The word comes from an Old French word ‘aguillete’ which means needle or pin, which itself comes from the Latin word ‘acucula’ meaning ornamental pin (and also pine needle).

Agraffe

The little wire cage that covers a cork in a bottle of champagne. It’s also called a muselet (so disappointing that this isn’t a teeny-tiny muse). An agraffe is also the name of a part in a grand piano, and a very complicated-sounding and old-fashioned fastening used on military uniforms, women’s gowns, ceremonial costumes, and so on (because apparently sometimes a button just isn’t good enough).

Chad

Not just a country in Africa, a chad is also the name for that little bit of paper that’s left after your punch a hole in a piece of paper (assuming anyone still does that…?).

Punt

The indent in the bottom of a wine bottle, which means you get less wine. Apparently no one really knows why wine bottles have this: here are some possible explanations. The word itself is likely a shortening of ‘punt mark’ which is the name for the mark left on a piece of glass where the pontil (AKA the stick thing glass blowers do their blowing through) is broken off.

I wonder if a pontil has a ferrule on the end…?

Grawlix

When someone swears in a comic or graphic novel, the artist will sometimes use a string of symbols instead of the swear itself (as in @#$%&!). And this is called a grawlix. Think of it like bleeping, but in written form.

The word was coined by a cartoonist called Mort Walker who wrote a book called The Lexicon of Comicana, which was published in 1980. A couple of other nice things he included in that are ‘plewds’ for the drops of sweat that are shown when someone’s having a stressful time, and ‘briffit’ which he called the cloud of dust left behind when a character makes a quick getaway.

Grawlixes (grawlixs? I’m not sure which is the right plural, sorry) are also sometimes called obsenicons, which is IMO a much better word, and could also be the name of a sweary superhero.

*Not a very imaginative title, sorry.

A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman

Nope, this isn’t a Tinder profile (if only the quality of available man was that good). It’s the start of a sentence containing some of the different ways you can say the letters ‘ough’. The full phrase is this:

A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.

This is one of the many reasons I salute anyone who manages to learn English as a foreign language. Because there are at least eight, possibly nine, ways you can pronounce ‘ough’ (sources differ as to exactly how many – it also depends if you count place names or not).

The most common pronunciations are:

• ‘oh’ as in though (rhymes with toe)

• ‘uff’ as in rough (like ruffle)

• ‘off’ as in cough (or coffee)

• ‘ooh’ as in through (rhymes with boo)

• ‘ort’ as in thought (as in torture, which hopefully this blog post won’t be)

• ‘ow’ as in bough (or wow, who knew the English language was so ridiculous?).

Why, oh why are there so many?

The short answer is that English words come from all over the bloody place – Latin, Greek, German, Old Norse… you name it, we’ve probably nicked a word from it. So even though two words might be spelt similarly, chances are they’ve come from two completely different roots. Add to that the fact that some of them will have originally been pronounced the same way but changed over time, plus the fact that English is stupid, and you soon realise that all bets are off pronunciation-wise.

Adding insult to injury

Let’s take the word ‘slough’. It has three pronunciations, depending on what you mean:

Photo by Alfonso Castro on Unsplash.

• sl-uff (pronounced like ‘stuff’): to shed something (usually skin, ew)

• sl-ew (rhymes with ‘stew’): a load of mud AKA a swamp

• sl-ow (rhymes with ‘cow’, not ‘low’): the place in England where ‘The Office’ was set.

So you could say the snake sloughed off its skin in the slough near Slough. But why would you?

Speaking of places, ‘ough’ turns up in the names of lots of British towns and villages as well. And they’re all pronounced differently, of course – sometimes even in the same word. For example, there are three parishes in Milton Keynes called (1) Woughton, (2) Loughton and (3) Broughton. And the ‘ough’ is pronounced differently in each one: (1) ‘uff’, (2) ‘ow’ and (3) ‘ort’. And let’s not forget the ridiculousness that is Loughborough. There are two ‘ough’s in that, and the first is pronounced ‘uff’ while the second is ‘oh’. Anyone who’s never heard these spoken out loud doesn’t stand a chance.

Give us a clue

Nope, sorry, I’ve got nothing. Unlike lots of grammar-type things, there aren’t any cutesy mnemonics or shortcuts to this one. Or, god forbid, any actual logic. You just have to know the answer.

---

Well, that’s all clear as slough, sorry mud. After all that confusion, let’s end with a poem (because it’s always nice to end anything with a poem). This one’s called ‘O-U-G-H’ and is by a guy called Charles Battell Loomis, an American author who was born in 1861. Bonus points if you read it out loud in a comedy French accent.

I’m taught p-l-o-u-g-h
Shall be pronouncé “plow.”
“Zat’s easy w’en you know,” I say,
“Mon Anglais, I’ll get through!”

My teacher say zat in zat case,
O-u-g-h is “oo.”
And zen I laugh and say to him,
“Zees Anglais make me cough.”

He say, “Not ‘coo,’ but in zat word,
O-u-g-h is ‘off.’”
Oh, Sacre bleu! Such varied sounds
Of words makes me hiccough!

He say, “Again mon frien’ ees wrong;
O-u-g-h is ‘up’
In hiccough.” Zen I cry, “No more,
You make my t’roat feel rough.”

“Non, non!” he cry, “you are not right;
O-u-g-h is ‘uff.’”
I say, “I try to spik your words,
I cannot spik zem though.”

“In time you’ll learn, but now you’re wrong!
O-u-g-h is ‘owe.’”
“I’ll try no more, I s’all go mad,
I’ll drown me in ze lough!”

“But ere you drown yourself,” said he,
“O-u-g-h is ‘ock.’”
He taught no more, I held him fast,
And killed him wiz a rough!

Xplaining Xmas

It’s that time of year again. Yay! I bloody love Christmas. But I never call it Xmas (unless it’s on a really small gift tag and I can’t fit the whole thing in) because of an innate wordy snobbery against modern, lazy abbreviations (IMO). I’m not the only one – ‘Xmas’ has long been vilified by writing style guides including the BBC, The Times and The Guardian. In fact, the latter says this: ‘Christmas is preferable unless you are writing a headline, up against a deadline, and desperate (or quoting Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody)’. Ouch. And one Millicent Fenwick (who I’d never heard of, but I’ve since realised is pretty darn awesome) said that it ‘should never be used’ in greeting cards in Vogue’s Book of Etiquette (published in 1948).

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

Another reason people don’t like the word ‘Xmas’ is because it’s seen as an evil secular attempt to take the religious stuff out of Christmas (as it removes the ‘Christ’ bit) and commercialise it even more than we do already. Those secular bastards.

But, after doing my usual not-at-all in-depth research, it turns out this is all a load of Christmas balls – ‘Xmas’ does have a religious backstory, and it isn’t a modern abbreviation, as it dates all the way back to the 16th century.

Unwrapping Christmas

Before we get into the ‘x’, let’s start with the word ‘Christmas’. It’s a pretty straightforward one – it’s a concatenation (which is a fancy-dancy way of saying that it’s two words smooshed together) of Christ (as in the big JC) and mass (I don’t know what happened to the second ‘s’). Simple. So when did the ‘x’ sneak in? The answer to this is, a frickin’ long time ago.

My big fat Greek Christmas

In the Greek alphabet, X is the symbol for the letter ‘chi’. ‘Chi’ is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ which is Χριστός (or Christós, which is a bit easier on the eye). So Xmas still means Christ’s mass. It’s basically the same as when Christina Aguilera started calling herself ‘Xtina’, but with less assless chaps.

Early Christians used an ‘X’ to identify each other when they were being persecuted (vague, I know), and it also appears on several Orthodox Christian religious icons. And it’s used as an abbreviation for Christ in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a collection of annals – stop it – in Old English which tell the history of the Anglo-Saxons) way back in 1021. So it’s deffo not new.

(Oh, and apparently people also used to use the abbreviations ‘Xtemass’ and ‘X’temmas’ for Christmas. But it looks like those ones never caught on, thank god.)

Still not convinced?

19th century pin-up Lord Byron (swoon) used the term ‘xmas’ in 1811, as did Samuel Coleridge (in 1801) and Lewis Carroll (1864). And even if it is Christmas, the traditional time for drunken fights, who am I to argue with them?

A very happy Xmas (dammit, I still don’t like it) to you and yours. See you in 2020.

Ch, ch, ch, ch, changes

Words aren’t set in stone (well, except for the ten commandments, BOOM BOOM). Their meanings change over time, depending on how people use them. And there’s nothing wrong with that. So here are five everyday words which started out meaning one thing, but have now morphed into something completely different.

1. Silly

Silly used to mean ‘pious’. It comes from an old English word, seely (which makes you sound like you’re saying ‘silly’ in a comedy/slightly offensive Italian accent if you say it out loud) which meant happy. Here’s how it evolved over time:

Happy

↓

Blessed

↓

Pious

↓

Innocent (we’re up to around the year 1200 now)

↓

Harmless

↓

Pitiable (we’re at the end of the 1300s at this point)

↓

Weak

↓

Foolish (around the 1570s).

This final use was cemented by Sir Billy of Shakespeare. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hippolyta says: ‘This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.’

2. Nice

I had a teacher at primary school who used to say ‘nice is not a nice word’. I think she probably didn’t like it because we tend to overuse it. But turns out it literally wasn’t a nice word – it comes from the Latin word nescius, which means ignorant, and was previously used to describe stupid people.  

‘Nice’ has actually had loads of different meaning over the years. From about 1300 to the end of the 1600s it mainly meant silly or foolish. But it was also used to describe someone who was ‘very particular’ or ‘finickety’, as well as people who were flash dressers. At some point in the 16th century it took on a more positive meaning, and was used to describe things that were considered ‘refined’.

My primary school teacher was in good company when it came to thinking that ‘nice’ was used too much – Jane Austen evidently thought the same, as shown in this exchange from Northanger Abbey when Henry Tilney says:

‘…and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh, it is a very nice word, indeed! It does for everything.’

3. Naughty

Back in the 14th century, ‘naughty’ meant ‘having nothing’. As in I have naught so I’m naughty. Because adding a ‘y’ to a word generally changes the meaning to ‘characterised by’ – think ‘juicy’, which means that something ‘has juice’ (that sounds a bit gross, sorry). And if you have naught, then you might have to do questionable things, like stealing or prostituting, to try not to have naught anymore. And that, it seems, is how ‘naughty’ took on the meaning it has today.

4. Pretty

Nowadays ‘pretty’ as an adjective means ‘attractive’ and is usually only applied to us ladies. And, as is so often the way (damn you patriarchy!) if it is used for a man it’s often derogatory, as in ‘pretty boy’. ‘Pretty’ first appeared around a millennium ago as ‘praettig’, which means ‘crafty’ (as in foxes, not sewing or origami) or ‘cunning’. This came from the word ‘praett’, which means ‘trick’.  Because being crafty or cunning isn’t always bad, it began to take on more positive connotations of skilful or clever, until we get where we are today. The skilful bit is also where we get the adverb from i.e. ‘pretty cool’ or ‘pretty rubbish’. (In case you fell asleep in English class the day they covered adverbs, they’re words that describe or give more information about verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. Even I nearly fell asleep then.)

5. Bully

Bully = bad, right? Well, yes, it does now. But back in the 1530s it meant ‘sweetheart’. It was used for both boys and girls, and is thought to originate from a Dutch word ‘boel’, which means ‘lover’ (and also ‘brother’ which I’m going to gloss over, because ew). During the 17th century the meaning morphed into ‘fine fellow’. Still nice. But at some point people decided that a ‘fine fellow’ could also be a bit of a dick, which then developed into the idea of a bully (the fact that it has ‘bull’ in it might also have had something to do with this). The old meaning is still just about hanging around in the phrase ‘bully for you’ when someone does something good (although I’ve only ever used that sarcastically).

PS Don’t do bullying kids!

(See also word of the week ‘egregious’ which used to mean really good.)

I’m surrounded by idioms

Ah, English. It’s an illogical, nonsensical beast, which is one of the reasons why I love it. And one of the things that makes it so colourful is the idioms we use. So in this post I’m looking at the origins of some of my favourites.

Huh?

I’m sure you already know what an idiom is. But just in case you need a reminder, I googled it to see if there’s an easy way to explain it. And I got this: ‘a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words’. So it turns out there isn’t an easy way to explain it then. It makes more sense when you look at examples though. One famous idiom is ‘she flew off the handle’. If you’re a native English speaker then you know this doesn’t have anything to do with handles, or aeronautics. It means that she went freaking mental. So that’s an idiom – a phrase that means more than the sum of its wordy parts.

With that (hopefully) understood, here we go…

That really gets my goat

Translation: That really pisses me off

So this comes from a rather sweet tradition in horse racing. Racehorse owners used to put goats in stables to relax them (the horse, not the owner). In the dead of night nasty rivals would sneak in and remove the goats (BOOOOOO). The horse would miss its goaty pal, have a terrible night’s sleep and lose the race the next day. Awww.

Despite muchos googling, I can’t work out if goats still live in sin with racehorses. I hope they do though. I did find this article about an anxious horse being calmed down by a goat friend though, which I guarantee will make you day 77.3% better.

Here’s a picture of a rather coquettish goat I met recently.

He turned a blind eye

Translation: He knows what’s happening but he’s choosing to ignore it

Picture the scene. It’s 1801. The naval Battle of Copenhagen is raging. Admiral Horatio Nelson stands on the deck of his ship. He’s watching for orders by signal flag from his superiors. They come, and he’s told to retreat. But he’s Nelson. He’s a badass. He doesn’t want to retreat. So he turns to the flag captain and says ‘…I only have one eye – I have the right to be blind sometimes.’ Then he holds his telescope to his blind eye and says: ‘I really do not see the signal,’ and continues to advance. Hence, ‘turn a blind eye’.

(The British fleet won the battle BTW.)

They’re buttering HER up

Translation: To kiss someone’s arse, usually because you want a favour

From what I can work out, the origin of this one is just an imagery thing – because spreading butter on a piece of bread is like spreading nice words on someone (which is a bit weird, but whatever floats your boat). There’s another more interesting theory though. In India, people used to throw little balls of ghee butter at statues of gods when they were asking them for a favour. Which is much nicer, right? So let’s go with that.

he let the cat out of the bag

Translation: he told someone SOMETHING he shouldn’t have

I found two origins for this one, neither of which are particularly cheery, sorry. The first one is about the infamous cat o’ nine tails, a super-nasty whip used by the Royal Navy to punish naughty sailors. So called because its nine knotted cords scratched (although ‘scratched’ seems like a bit of an understatement) unfortunate seamen’s backs, the whip was kept in a leather bag to protect it from the salty sea air. So when this particular cat came out of the bag something bad would happen, which in time came to be equated with letting something slip when you shouldn’t. (If you’d like to find out more about the cat o’ nine tails, you weirdo, go here.)

If that all sounds a bit tenuous, try this one on for size. A second origin story is that when a livestock merchant sold a piglet, they’d put it in a sack for the customer to take home. Then, when the customer wasn’t looking, unscrupulous vendors would swap it for a less-valuable cat, and still have a piglet to sell to someone else. This all sounds a bit made up to me. For a start, cats aren’t known for being passive animals, so I find it hard to believe that one would lie quietly in a sack and wait until someone got it home before making a sound. I also can’t find anything much online which says this type of fraud was common (although pigs were definitely sold in bags – that’s where we get the idiom ‘pig in a poke’ from). The Spanish equivalent of this phrase is dar gato por liebre which means ‘giving a cat instead of a hare’ which makes a bit more sense. Maybe.

They pulled out all the stops

TRANSLATION: They did absolutely everything they could to succeed

Photo by Rachael Cox on Unsplash

This is about big organs. No, not those kind of organs, you dirty so-and-so. The pipe ones. Ready for some in-depth pipe organ info? Of course you are! So, pipe organs are made up of pipes (obvs), keyboards, pedals and stops. You play the keyboards with your fingers and pedals with your feet (again, obvs). You also pull out or push in the stops, knobs which control the pipes (newer organs have electronic stops). Closing a stop mutes a particular pipe, while opening it makes the sound of the pipe really loud. So pulling out all the stops will mean your organ (stop it) is particularly loud and amazing-sounding.

Got a favourite idiom?

Tell me about it in the comments. (I hate saying things like this, because no one ever comments and I look sad and desperate. So go on, throw me a bone.)

Take my word for it – Part 2

In my last blog post (which was quite a long time ago, sorry), I gave you six everyday words that were originally coined by authors. As promised, and definitely not because I’ve run out of ideas, here are five more.

Nerd: Dr Seuss

Originally an insult, but now generally rebranded as something to wear with pride (I’m a total word nerd), ‘nerd’ first appeared in print in 1950 in If I Ran the Zoo by Dr Seuss. The main character is a boy called Gerald who decides that normal zoos are boring, and if he owned a zoo he’d: ‘…sail to Ka-Troo, And bring back an IT-KUTCH, a PREEP, and a PROO, A NERKLE, a NERD, and SEERSUCKER, too!’ I don’t know what any of those things are, but I’d definitely go to that zoo.

Two alternative spellings, ‘nurd’ and, my personal favourite, ‘gnurd’ (who doesn’t love an entirely pointless silent ‘g’?) appeared in the mid-60s. Some people say these are derived from ‘knurd’ which American college students used to describe those weirdos who went to university to study stuff, instead of partying. Because it’s ‘drunk’ spelled backwards, see? Sadly both ‘nurd’ and ‘gnurd’ seem to have died a death since then though.

Dr Seuss’ real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel and he wasn’t actually a doctor (shock horror). Interesting fact alert: Geisel worked for the US Air Force producing various propaganda and training films, including one about a rubbish solider with the excellent name of Private Snafu (army slang for ‘situation normal: all fucked up’).

Pandemonium: John Milton

In his epic poem Paradise Lost, Milton named a palace in the middle of Hell ‘Pandæmonium’. We’ve switched the ligature (i.e. the æ – see my previous post on other letters of the alphabet that we don’t use anymore – more interesting than it sounds, honest) for an ‘e’ in the modern version, and it’s come to mean general non-Hell related chaos. ‘Pandæmonium’ is a portmanteau (a fancy term for when we squidge two words together) of ‘pan’, as in ‘all’ (like pansexual – literally the only example I could think of), and (you’ve guessed it) ‘dæmonium’ which is Latin for ‘evil spirit’. Here it is in action: 

‘A solemn Councel forthwith to be held At Pandæmonium, the high Capital of Satan and his Peers.’

Milton gets the gold medal for inventing words (or neology if we’re being fancy). He’s actually credited with more new words, sorry neologisms, than Shakespeare or Dickens. Some of the others he came up with include ‘lovelorn’, ‘enjoyable’ and ‘fragrance’.

Photo by Rock'n Roll Monkey

Robot: Karel Čapek

Czech writer Karel Čapek (nope, me neither) gets the credit for this in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in the early 1920s. The play tells the tale of a factory which makes artificial people designed to work for humans. It was actually his brother Josef who suggested the term – Karel said he was originally going to call them ‘labori’ (for obvious reasons). Eventually the robots turn on their masters and wipe out the human race. So it’s basically Ye Olde Terminator.

Neither of the Čapek bros actually invented the word ‘robot’ though. It’s derived from a Czech term, ‘robota’ which basically means ‘forced labour’.

The BBC adapted Čapek’s play in 1938, making it the first piece of television sci-fi ever broadcast. Take that Doctor Who.

Oh, and prolific sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov later added a whole three letters to ‘robot’ to come up with ‘robotics’, which doesn’t seem that impressive to me, but whatevs.

Serendipity: Horace Walpole

Serendipity means an unplanned, fortunate discovery. It’s a lovely word which has been forever ruined for me by a terrible film starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale (although I can forgive Becks for anything as she’s so hilarious on Instagram). Serendipity (the word, not the bad film) was invented by writer and politician Horace Walpole in a letter he wrote to another man also called Horace in 1754. In it he explains how he came across a lost painting. He refers to this as ‘serendipity’ after a fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip (Serendip is an old name for Sri Lanka). In the story the three princes were on the hunt for a lost camel (we’ve all been there) and ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’. Sounds awesome.

Scientist: The Reverend William Whewell

The word ‘scientist’ didn’t exist before 1840, which is nuts, because science definitely did. (I actually looked at more than one internet site to make sure this is really true, and it really is. Promise.) Before this, people what did science were called ‘philosophers’.

The Reverend William Whewell first used the term in his book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (sounds riveting) where he said (and I’m trying really hard not to be cross about the male pronoun because olden times):

‘We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a scientist.’

MIND. BLOWN.

Take my word for it – Part 1

If you’re a regular reader (hello Dad!) then you’ll know that every week (mostly) I post a word of the week, where I write about a word’s backstory. This has led me down many an etymological rabbit hole on the internet. Sometimes a word will have its roots in ancient languages like Latin, Greek or Middle something-or-rather. Sometimes it’s come to us via someone’s name – like boycott or bowdlerise. And sometimes it’s just fallen out of some random writer’s brain onto a page, and somehow caught on.

So, this time around I thought I’d look into everyday (ish) words that authors created in their own writing, and that have since stuck around.

Butterfingers: Charles Dickens

Dickens first used the term ‘butterfingers’ in The Pickwick Papers.

‘At every bad attempt at a catch, and every failure to stop the ball, he launched his personal displeasure at the head of the devoted individual in such denunciations as “Ah, ah!”—“Stupid”—“Now, butter-fingers”—“Muff”— “Humbug”—and so forth.’

It’s no secret that Dickens came up with a lot of words. A couple of his other creations include ‘flummox’ and ‘to clap eyes on [something]’. He didn’t always hit the mark though – some of the terms that didn’t make the judges’ houses include ‘lummy’ (meaning ‘first rate’), ‘spoffish’ (used to describe someone who’s fussy) and ‘gonoph’ (another word for a pickpocket, which possibly didn’t catch on because it sounds like an STD).

Chortle: Lewis Carroll

‘Chortle’ is a portmanteau word, which means it’s two words smooshed together – in this case, ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’. Carroll came up with it in Alice Through the Looking-Glass:

‘“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy.’

Lots of the new words we get today are portmanteaus – think ‘bromance’, ‘hangry’ and ‘mansplaining’.

In a nice bit of head-fuckery, Carroll coined the term ‘portmanteau’ for these types of words, also in Alice Through the Looking Glass. Humpty Dumpty says:

‘“Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy’ and ‘mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable’. You see it’s like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed up into one word.”’

‘Portmanteau’ itself is a portmanteau of two French words: porter (to carry) and manteau (a cloak).

*HEAD EXPLODES*

Feminist: Alexandre Dumas Jr

Ironically (maybe? Much like Alanis Morissette, I’m never sure I understand irony), it was a man who came up with the word ‘feminist’. A French man in fact – Alexandre Dumas fils (not the one who wrote The Count of Monte Cristo and The Musketeers – this is his less famous son, hence the ‘fils’). That’s all I’ve got I’m afraid – the internet is very vague about where he actually used it. And some of the articles say it was his dad who came up with it, which I imagine is the Dumas family’s fault for being so unimaginative with their naming conventions.

(Cards on the table, I also found an article which said ‘feminism’ was coined by a radical French philosopher called Charles Fourier. But as this blog post is about authors coining words, not radical French philosophers, I’m attributing it to Dumas. Because it’s my blog, m’kay?)

Gremlin: Roald Dahl

This one’s a slight cheat, as it wasn’t actually coined by Dahl – that honour belongs to the Royal Naval Air Service. But it was Dahl who popularised it in his first book, a children’s story called The Gremlins: A Royal Air Force Story, which was published in 1943. (And I refer you to my point above about this being my blog.)

In the story, gremlins are small creatures that cause mechanical problems in aeroplanes. RAF pilots had been using this as slang since the 1920s, and its earliest print appearance was in a poem published in 1929. There’s a theory that the term itself might come from an Old English word ‘gremian’ which means ‘to vex’.

In Dahl’s story (spoiler alert!), Gus, a fighter pilot and the main character, has his plane destroyed by gremlins. Eventually he convinces the gremlins to join forces with the Brits against the Nazis, and they end up repairing rather than sabotaging aircraft. And after they kick Hitler’s ass, they all live happily ever after.

Blatant: Edmund Spenser

Poet Edmund Spenser coined the word ‘blatant’ in his epic poem The Faerie Queene, which he wrote in 1596. He refers to a ‘blatant beast’ a few times (he obviously didn’t have access to a thesaurus – although even if he had it wouldn’t have been in there as he invented it, durr). The Faerie Queene is an allegorical poem where all the characters represent a quality, and in this case the blatant beast is a thousand-tongued monster, which represents slander.

Lots of authors copied Spenser and used the word ‘blatant’, although to mean different things – mainly to describe noisy people and things. It didn’t settle on its modern meaning (i.e. obvious or conspicuous) until the late 1880s.

No one’s quite clear where Spenser got it from – it might be he took it from the Scottish word ‘blatand’ for bleating, or the Latin word ‘blatīre’ which means ‘to babble’, both of which would fit with a super-chatty beast. Or praps it was just a typo (quill-o?) of one of these and we’re all making a big deal of nothing.

Bedazzled: William Shakespeare

Some sources say that Shakespeare came up with around 10,000 neologisms (which is just a poncy way of saying new words). Which would have made this blog post way too long. And scholars now think that most of these probably already existed – he was just the first person to write them down (obviously this assumes that you believe Shakespeare wrote the plays #conspiracy). He still gets the credit for around 1,700 though which is, y’know, pretty good going. Some of these include: assassination, belongings, eyesore, bandit and lonely.

I’ve gone for bedazzled here, purely because it’s where we get ‘vajazzled’ from. And I just wanted to make a connection between the bard and The Only Way is Essex. I bet somewhere in Stratford a literary skeleton is spinning in his grave…

Having said that, we actually owe our thanks (?) to the American actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, not the TOWIE crew, for coining the word ‘vajazzle’ on a US talk show in 2010.

Oh, I nearly forgot (I was distracted by genital decorations – two words which should never be put together, or Googled) – Shakespeare first used ‘bedazzle’ in The Taming of the Shrew. Katherine says:

‘Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes / That have been so bedazzled with the sun / That everything I look on seemeth green.’

---

The End

PS The keen eyed among you will have noticed that this is subtitled ‘Part 1’. That’s because there are loads more words like this, and I didn’t want to bore spoil you with too many. Read Part 2.

My big fat Greek blog post

Last weekend I was doing a general knowledge crossword with my parents (because I know how to party), and they were both very impressed when I knew the name of the blacksmith of the Greek gods (Hephaestus). They were not so impressed when it turned out the reason I knew it was because I’ve been playing too much ‘Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey’ on the PS4, rather than through any reading I’ve done (although I do have a book on Greek mythology by my loo).

My horse in ‘Odyssey’ is called Phobos, which I’ve learnt from my toilet-reading (sorry), is where we get the word ‘phobia’ from – Phobos being the Greek personification of fear. And this got me thinking (thankfully not on the loo this time) about other words we get from Greek myth. So here are my top 10 Greek-y words, along with the myths behind them. (I’ve skipped some of the more well-known mythological Greeks/words like Atlas, Narcissus and Nemesis. Because otherwise this would be a top 13 and that’s just silly.)

Panic

The word ‘panic’ is derived from the Greek god Pan, who you’ve probably heard of because he has a bit of a reputation for debauchery and general naughtiness. So it seems odd that we get a word about uncontrollable fear or anxiety from him. It turns out that cloven-hoofed Pan wasn’t just about cavorting around forests with nymphs – he was said to have the power to send people fleeing from him in fear, which is where we get ‘panic’ from.

Interestingly (kinda), ‘panic’ in English started out as an adjective. So you’d use it to describe other nouns about being scared. Plutarch, for example, wrote about ‘Panique fear’. (You can find out more about this here – if you really want to.)

When he wasn’t scaring/boning people, Pan is also said to have invented panpipes. That must have been a short brainstorming session in the naming department.

Hygiene

This comes from Hygeia, one of the daughters of Asclepius, the god of medicine, and Epione, the goddess of healing. Hygeia’s associated with cleanliness and sanitation, lucky her. One of her four sisters is called Panacea, a word we still use today for a cure-all medicine.

Museum

This one seems obvious now I know it. The word ‘museum’ comes from ‘mouseion’ which is the name for a place or temple dedicated to the Muses. The nine Muses were goddesses of literature, science and the arts. I used to be able to name them all (because I’m really cool). Okay, I’m going to have a go. There’s Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Polyhymnia (religious music or something), Erato (porn, maybe?)… nope, that’s all I got. Hang on a second.

*Googles muses*

Right, so the ones I missed are Euterpe (flutes and lyric poetry), Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Terpsichore (dance – I’m annoyed I forgot that one, ’cos it’s nice to say) and Urania (astronomy). Oh, and Polyhymnia is actually the muse of ‘sacred poetry’ while Erato looks after ‘love poetry’. Which is probably porn.

Echo

Poor old Echo. She was an oread (a mountain nymph – a divine nature spirit-type thing, usually depicted as a nubile, naked young woman, obvs). Zeus, the horny old bastard, loved cavorting with the nymphs. Echo wasn’t even part of the cavorting – she had a lovely voice, and just used to chat (commentate?) while everyone else was doing the nasty. Hera, Zeus’ long-suffering wife, was understandably annoyed and came down from Mount Olympus to open a can of whupass. Zeus ordered Echo to protect him, which she did. Hera punished her for this by taking away her ability to speak, leaving her only able to repeat the last thing someone said to her. Then Echo died, leaving only her voice behind. I’m not sure why Hera punished Echo when all she was doing was talking and Zeus got away scot-free, but there it is.

Erotic

Bet you’ve got that Madonna song in your head now, right? ‘Erotic’ comes from ‘Eros’, the Greek god of love and sexy time (the Roman equivalent is Cupid, he of chubby man-baby bow and arrow fame). The myths can’t decide whether Eros was one of the ‘primordial gods’ (i.e. one of the first four gods along with Chaos, Gaia and Tarturus), or if he came along a bit later. Some say he was the son of Ares, the god of war, and Aphrodite (even though she was married to crossword clue Hephaestus).

Which brings us on to…

Psychology

As I’m sure you know, the word ‘psychology’ means the study of the psyche, or the human mind. In Greek myth, Psyche was a beautiful woman, so hot that people stopped worshipping Aphrodite and starting worshipping her instead. This pissed off Aphrodite, so she sent her son Eros down with the mission to make Psyche fall in love with someone hideous. Long story short, Eros fell in love with her himself. Unlike most of the other Greek myths, this one has a happy ending – after making her do various tasks, Aphrodite got over her jealousy and granted Psyche immortality.

Hypnosis

Look into my eyes… ‘Hypnosis’ is named for Hypnos, the personification of sleep. He was the son of Nyx (goddess of night) and Erebus (god of darkness). Hypnos and his brother Thanatos (AKA Death – cheery) lived in a cave in the underworld which the sun couldn’t reach. He did get to marry one of the Charites, or Graces, though (minor goddesses of charm, beauty and other nice stuff) so it’s not all bad.

The Roman equivalent of Hypnos is Somnos, which is where we get the word ‘insomnia’ from.

Morphine

The name of the drug morphine comes from Morpheus. Nope, not the bloke from The Matrix – Morpheus is the son of Hypnos and his wife Pasithea, and the god of dreams.

Morphine is a naturally occurring opiate, most famously extracted from poppies. It was first isolated from opium in the early 1800s by one Friedrich Sertürner. He called it ‘morpheum’ in honour of the god of dreams because it made people fall asleep. Poor old Fred experimented on himself, and ended up addicted to morphium and suffering from chronic depression.

Chronology

Chronology comes from the god Chronos, the personification of time. Over time, Chronos has been confused with the Titan Cronus/Kronus who was Zeus’ dad. One of his claims to fame is that he ate his children and castrated his father (can you tell that it’s much easier to find info on Cronus and not so much on Chronos?).

Other words we get from Chronos include chronic, anachronism and chronicle.

Tantalising

So this word comes from Tantalus, a half god, half nymph (apparently there were male nymphs, but I don’t know if they were scantily clad or nubile). Tantalus got an invite to dinner with the gods up Mount Olympus, the lucky bastard. He said thanks by nicking a bunch of stuff, including ambrosia and nectar, which he gave to us mortals. He then, for reasons which I can’t quite fathom but possibly by way of an apology for all the stealing, decided to cook and serve up his son at a banquet for the gods. They found out about it and refused to eat it (and you’ll be pleased to hear they then brought the son back to life, minus a bit of shoulder that a goddess accidentally ate). Tantalus’ punishment for this was to be made to stand in a pool of water under a fruit tree for all eternity. Whenever he tried to take a fruit, the branches raised up so he couldn’t get it. And when he bent down to drink from the pool, the water receded before he could have any. Hence, tantalising. Blimey, that took a long time, didn’t it?

So, there you have it. Right, I’m off to learn some more about Greek mythology. Where’s my controller?