testify

At first glance, ‘testify’ seems very serious and upright. It’s something you do in court with your hand on your heart as you swear to only tell the truth, and nothing but the truth. But like so many English words, ‘testify’ has a surprisingly cheeky backstory. And just in case you’ve got there before me, yes, it involves testicles.

Strap yourselves in.

The theory goes that in ancient Rome, men would swear oaths with their hands on their testicles to prove they were telling the truth. And from there, we get ‘testify’. (I also read one article that said two men taking an oath of allegiance would hold each other’s knackers. Don’t remember seeing that in Gladiator.)

It’s a great story. But is there any truth in it? Well, both ‘testify’ and ‘testicle’ do come from the same Latin root, ‘testis’. Although that probably doesn’t mean what you think it means – it actually translates as ‘witness’. Some etymologists think the anatomical sense came about because testicles were seen, metaphorically, as ‘witnesses’ to a man’s virility. Others say that the two words just sound similar. But frankly, the image of a Roman swearing on his love spuds was just too good for me to pass up.

So ‘testify’ and ‘testicle’ are genuinely related, although perhaps not in a holding-your-family-jewels-to-show-you’re-serious way. Same root, VERY different destinies. Either way, it’s probably not something to start doing if you ever find yourself in the witness box.

urchin

When you hear the word ‘urchin’, you probably picture a scruffy Victorian street kid saying ‘Please sir, can I have some more?’. But, did you know that the OG urchin had prickles rather than pickpocketing skills? Yep, in Middle English, ‘urchin’ meant ‘hedgehog’. It appears in writing as ‘yrchoun’ or ‘irchoun’, which we borrowed from an Old French word, ‘herichon’. That came from the Latin word for hedgehog, ‘ericius’. That Latin root is also linked to the Proto-Indo-European word ‘ghers-’, which means ‘to bristle’. That’s also where we get ‘horror’ from, which literally means ‘a bristling of the hair’.

From ‘hedgehog’, ‘urchin’ did what words (and Victorian pickpockets, probably) love to do – it wandered. In the 1500s, people started using it figuratively for anyone or anything small, mischievous or misshapen, including hunchbacks, women of bad reputation (rolls eyes), and even goblins and elves. Shakespeare mentions ‘urchin-shows’ in ‘The Tempest’, which refers to the ghostly or spirit-like apparitions that Prospero sends to haunt Caliban:

‘His spirits hear me,
And yet I needs must curse. But they’ll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i’ th’ mire,
Nor lead me like a firebrand in the dark
Out of my way, unless he bid ’em.’

It wasn’t long before those meanings of small, ragged, impish and half-wild started to blur together, and the word ‘urchin’ began being applied to children who fit the same image. By the 18th to 19th centuries ‘street urchin’ had become a familiar phrase, especially in urban contexts. Here it is in Dickens’ ‘The Pickwick Papers’:

‘Gabriel had been looking forward to reaching the dark lane, because it was, generally speaking, a nice, gloomy, mournful place … he was not a little indignant to hear a young urchin roaring out some jolly song about a merry Christmas, in this very sanctuary …’

Another urchin also appeared in the 1500s, this time in the sea. This is when the phrase ‘sea urchin’ cropped up, when English speakers spotted those spiky little sea creatures and thought, essentially, ‘there’s an underwater hedgehog’. The link’s completely visual: same shape and same spines, just wetter. Well, kinda.

I trod on a sea urchin on holiday when I was younger, and got a few of its spines lodged in my foot. The locals told me to pee on it, and I still don’t know if that was good advice or just them taking the piss out of the tourists. I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to whether I did or not, but let’s just say I flew home without any sea urchin spines in my foot.

rankle

If something rankles, it irritates you in a way that really gets under your skin. Like neighbours who leave their bins out for a week, people who eat loudly or drivers who don’t park at the back of the box on a street with very limited parking (that last one might just be me). It’s an annoyance that lingers, festers and keeps you muttering to yourself. And maybe sneaking out in the middle of the night to leave a rude note on someone’s windscreen.

‘Rankle’s etymology is quite literal – it came into English from an Old French word, ‘draoncle’, which meant ‘boil’ or ‘festering sore’. Lovely. That comes from a Latin word, dracunculus, which is less gross – it means ‘little serpent’ or ‘little dragon’ (and would have been an ace name for one of the Game of Thrones dragons).

So how did we get from serpents to sores? Well, in the ancient world, apparently people thought some ulcers looked like wriggling little snakes under the skin. I’m not googling this to check though.

When ‘rankle’ first slithered into English in the 14th century as ‘ranclen’, it was all about wounds festering away. Then, over the next couple of centuries, writers started using it in the figurative sense for feelings that behave like sores that refuse to heal. Shakespeare was of course leading the pack, using it as a metaphor for an emotional condition in Richard II:

‘Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more

Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.’

Thanks to our Will, and others like him, when something rankles today, there’s no pus involved. And ‘no pus involved’ is always a good thing, right?

gargoyle

I’m sure you know what a gargoyle is – an ugly little devil-like figure, often winged, that sits high up on the outside walls of churches, cathedrals and other Christian buildings to ward off evil. Well, you’re half right. A gargoyle is one of those things, but only if it has a hole where its mouth is for water to flow out of. That’s because gargoyles actually have a very practical purpose – to channel rainwater through their mouths and away from church walls, so the stonework didn’t crumble. If it doesn’t have any water flowing through it, it’s a grotesque. So all gargoyles are grotesques, but not all grotesques are gargoyles.

‘Gargoyle’ goes back to an Old French word, ‘gargouille’, which means ‘throat’ or ‘gullet’. That comes via Medieval Latin from ‘gargola’/‘gargulio’. It’s the same root as ‘gargle’ – both words echo the sound of liquid gurgling down the throat.

So far, so good. But who decided to gussy up gutters as gargoyles in the first place? Well, we have a French legend to thank for that. The story goes that in 7th-century Rouen, a dragon-like creature called La Gargouille was terrorising the town, breathing fire and flooding it with water (I’m not entirely sure how the fires turned into floods, but let’s gloss over that). When the townspeople finally defeated it, they mounted its head and neck on the town’s church. And that’s apparently the reason why gargoyles came to be carved onto churches as both water spouts and protectors.

(In truth, it was probably just the whimsy of medieval architects and designers – but that doesn’t make for nearly as good a story.)

Gargoyles and grotesques might feel like an olde worlde thing, but they’re still being added to buildings today. Paisley Abbey in Scotland was built in the 12th century and restored in the 1990s. A stonemason hired to replace 12 crumbling stone gargoyles added a grotesque that looks exactly like the xenomorph from the 1979 film ‘Alien’ – great to see a modern movie monster keeping company with its medieval cousins.

Image credit: Colin, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

scurrilous

It sounds posh, doesn’t it? But ‘scurrilous’ is actually the linguistic equivalent of getting slapped round the head with a rolled-up newspaper. It means ‘grossly or obscenely abusive’ or ‘slanderous’. So if you’re accused of making scurrilous claims, your pants are almost certainly in need of a visit from the fire brigade.

But how did such a fancy-sounding word end up doing such dirty work? Like lots of refined-but-rude words, ‘scurrilous’ comes to us from Latin. It traces back to ‘scurrilis’, which means ‘buffoon-like’ or ‘coarse’. And that comes from ‘scurra’, meaning ‘jester’ or ‘clown’ AKA someone who made a living making rude jokes (like previous star of the word of the week – and best job title evs – Roland the Farter).

Over time, ‘scurra’s association with low humour, insults and botty burps (sorry) stuck. So it wasn’t long before ‘scurrilous’ came to describe anything vulgar, mocking or abusive – especially in speech or writing.

Us English speakers got hold of ‘scurrilous’ in the 16th century. The earliest known printed use is in 1570 in the ‘Thesaurus Linguæ Romanæ & Britannicæ*’ by Thomas Cooper (theologian, Bishop of Winchester and master of Magdalen College at Oxford University): ‘Scurrilous iesting and vnshamefast rayling.’

Translation: rude jokes and shameless ranting – or in modern terms, social media.

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*The full title of this is, deep breath, ‘Thesaurus Linguæ Romanæ & Britannicæ: tam Accurate Congestus, vt Nihil Penè in Eo Desyderari Possit, Quod Vel Latinè Complectatur Amplissimus Stephani Thesaurus, Vel Anglicè, Toties Aucta EliotæBibliotheca’. Phew. You can also read it online, if you have a spare six months or so, and a magnifying glass.

pontificate

These days, to pontificate is to talk about something in a self-important way. To hold forth. To bang on. If someone’s pontificating, it usually means they think they’re making an important point, but everyone else is just waiting for them to stop (cough Donald Trump cough).

Originally, ‘pontificating’ didn’t have anything to do with pompous speakers. It comes from the Latin ‘pontificatus’, which means the office or duties of a pontifex – a high-ranking priest in ancient Rome. Later, the term was used for popes and bishops in the Catholic church. So to pontificate once simply meant to act as a pontiff i.e. to carry out religious ceremonies.

Over time, the link between pontiffs and authority became more important than the religious context. By the early 1800s, ‘pontificate’ had taken on a more figurative meaning – to speak like someone with unchallengeable authority. Over a bit more time, it came to mean someone talking at length with way more confidence than they should actually have.

The papacy has been around for nearly 2,000 years. That means there’s been plenty of time for drama, scandal and the occasional orgy. Here are some weird pope facts:

• In 897, Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, dug up, dressed in papal robes, propped up on a throne and put on trial for perjury and abuse of power. The verdict? Guilty. His body was thrown in the river.

• Pope John XII (955–964) was allegedly killed by a jealous husband who caught him in bed with his wife – though some accounts say he died of a stroke (heehee) during sex. Either way, it’s not exactly holy.

• Pope Benedict IX first became pope around the age of 20 (or possibly younger), in 1032. His reign was so corrupt and chaotic that he sold the papacy to his godfather. Yep – sold it. Benedict was pope three separate times and is considered one of the most scandalous popes in history. So much so that he was eventually excommunicated.

• Legend says there was once a female pope – Pope Joan – who disguised herself as a man and gave birth during a procession. Most historians agree it’s just a myth, but it was taken so seriously in the past that popes reportedly had to sit on a chair with a hole in it to prove they were male. Nice to see men’s bodies being subjected to humiliating checks for once…

descry

To descry something is to spot it – to catch sight of something faint, distant or difficult to see. You might descry land on the horizon, for example, or a face in the crowd. It’s easy to confuse ‘descry’ with ‘decry’ (although I doubt either of them are coming up that regularly in your daily life), which is understandable – they look and sound similar, but mean very different things. If you decry something then you condemn it, usually loudly and with lots of disapproval.

‘Descry’ and ‘describe’ come from the same Latin root – dēscrībere, meaning ‘to write down’ or ‘to represent’. That Latin word gave rise to an Old French verb, ‘descrier’, which meant ‘to proclaim’ or ‘cry out’ (often in the sense of calling something out that you’ve just seen). That’s where we borrowed it from.

‘Descry’ has been around for a long time, having first appeared in print in 1330, in the Middle English romance Reinbrun. Nope, me neither – it sounds pretty awesome though. Apparently Reinbrun is abducted by some merchants as a child and shipped off to Africa, where he’s presented to King Argus. During his captivity, he gets all buff and turns into a kickass knight. He goes on to rescue Amis, a friend of his father’s, from an enchanted castle controlled by a fairy knight. Sounds good, right? Oh, and just FYI, medieval ‘romances’ don’t actually involve much in the way of snogging – they’re more about heroic adventures, quests, battles and chivalric deeds, often with a bit of the supernatural thrown in. Sadly they’re also in Middle English which means they’re unpossible to comprehenden.

benignant

EF Benson, who looks like he was pretty benignant

If you’re thinking that ‘benignant’ sounds like it’s just stepped off the set of a Victorian drama wearing a waistcoat and holding a pocket watch, then you’d be right. I read it in a ghost story by one EF Benson, who was born in 1867. You might have already guessed that it’s the opposite of ‘malignant’ – it means kind, gentle or benevolent.

Benignant comes from the Latin word ‘benignus’, which is a mash-up (or compound) of ‘bene’ meaning ‘well’ or ‘good’, and ‘gignere’ meaning ‘to beget’ or ‘to produce’. So it’s basically about creating goodness, generating kindness or radiating a beneficent glow. Which makes a change in today’s shitty world, doesn’t it?

Interestingly (to me, at least), ‘benignus’ didn’t just mean ‘nice’ in Latin. It also carried a sense of generosity and nobility, so it was often applied to rulers, gods or generally all-round nice guys. It arrived in English via Old French in the early 17th century, alongside its more popular sibling, ‘benign’.

So why did ‘benign’ stick around while ‘benignant’ got assigned to obscure Victorian ghost stories? Well, ‘benignant’ generally leaned towards describing people, actions or attitudes, while ‘benign’ became the go-to for describing things that aren’t out to kill you (think moles and weather). Not to be cynical, but maybe there just aren’t enough nice people around to make ‘benignant’ more popular…?

Margaret – all that Egyptology sadly didn’t raise a smile

I referred to EF Benson as an obscure writer above, which is a little unfair. Well a lot unfair, actually – he was a prolific English author whose literary output included over 90 works, ranging from sharp social comedies to chilling ghost stories (the one I read was called ‘The Room in the Tower and Other Stories’). Benson was born into a pretty well-to-do family (his dad was the fricking Archbishop of Canterbury), and studied archaeology at Cambridge before turning to writing. He was a keen sportsman and also gay (a combination which sadly still isn’t accepted today), and his books are famed for their dry wit and camp humour. He was also the mayor of Rye in Sussex, which inspired the fictional town of Tilling in his most famous novels. His siblings were pretty cool too – Robert Hugh was another prolific author and Arthur Christopher wrote the words to ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. Let’s take a moment to appreciate his sister, Margaret (who apparently only got one name, unlike her brothers #patriarchy) though. She was one of the first women to be admitted to Oxford University and went on to become a keen amateur Egyptologist, excavating lots of super-cool stuff, and later writing about it. In fact, her writing and lectures are credited with making Egyptology much more accessible to the general public.

marcescence

Have you ever noticed a leaf clinging stubbornly to a tree, when all its other leaf friends have long fallen off? There’s a word for that. Marcescence is where something, usually plant matter like leaves or flowers, withers but doesn’t fall off. I can relate.

Oaks and beeches are classic examples of trees with marcescent leaves, which often stay in place for the whole of winter. It’s most common in juvenile plants too. Stroppy teenagers, eh?

Marcescence has its roots (HAHAHAHA) in Latin. Marcēscere means ‘to wither’ or ‘begin to decay’. This comes from marcēre, meaning ‘to be weak or withered’.

Marcescence first made its way into English in the mid-18th century when the study of botany was flourishing (I can’t help myself, sorry), and scientists were coming up with lots of neologisms to describe the natural world. That’s just a fancy way of saying that they were inventing lots of new words.

So how does marcescence happen? Let’s do some science for a sec. In most deciduous trees, a process called ‘abscission’ causes leaves to fall off in autumn. A specialised layer of cells forms at the base of the leaf stem to make this happen. But in marcescent trees, this process doesn’t fully complete, leaving them partially attached. Why? Well, it seems that no one’s entirely sure. There are a few theories though…

1. It’s for protection: the hanger-on leaves might protect new buds from weather or things trying to eat them. Marcescence is more common in younger trees and on lower branches, which adds credence to this defence theory.

2. They provide food for the soil: fallen leaves are great for promoting new growth as they rot. The theory here is that by falling off later, marcescent leaves will carry on providing this goodness to their tree long after their pals have gone to the big forest in the sky

3. To send water to the base of the tree: these leaves could act as a sort of snow fence, slowing down the white stuff and sending moisture to the bottom of the tree where it’s needed most.

There you go. Now you can casually say something like ‘there are so many marcescent leaves around this season’ on your next wintry walk and look well clevs. You’re welcome.

(Oh, and I saw this lovely word in the excellent Tone Knob newsletter, written by my equally excellent ex-colleague Nick Parker. If you’re even a bit interested in writing and tone of voice, it’s well worth signing up. You can do that here.)

enervate

I love the wonderful English language. But sometimes it’s stupid. This is one of those times.

Much like lots of us think ‘inflammable’ means something won’t catch fire (it means it totally will catch fire*), ‘enervate’ isn’t a synonym (AKA a word that means the same) for ‘energise’. It actually means completely the opposite – as a verb (a doing word), to enervate is to sap something or someone’s strength, to weaken or exhaust them.

You can also use ‘enervate’ as an adjective, AKA a describing word. So you can be enervated by someone or something. Hopefully not this post.

‘Enervate’ comes from a Latin word, ‘enervare’. The ‘e’ at the start means ‘out of’, and ‘nervus’ means ‘sinew’ or ‘nerve’. Together, the term originally meant ‘to remove the sinews’. Why? Well, in ancient Roman and Classical contexts, sinews (or tendons) were seen as essential to physical strength and vitality. So cutting or removing them was a way to render someone literally powerless. Over time, this vivid and somewhat minging image of losing strength evolved into the metaphorical sense of being drained of energy or vitality. And that’s where we get ‘enervate’ from.

You might also have heard of the word ‘innervate’, which comes from the same Latin root. If you innervate someone or something, it means you supply it or them with nerves. Chaotic parking situations do this to me.

* Yes, the prefix in- almost always means ‘not’ in English. But not in this case – ‘inflammable’ comes from the word ‘enflame’. And that’s why inflammable means flammable, not not flammable.

crotchety

If you’re crotchety, you’re a bit cross and fed-up. Not full on angry, but definitely somewhere in the middle of the pissed-off scale.

‘Crotchety’ comes from an Old French word, ‘crochet’, which dates back to around the 12th century, and meant ‘a little hook’. That in turn comes from the Latin word ‘cruciculus’, which is a diminutive (i.e. a word that conveys a smaller or lesser version of something) of ‘crux’, meaning ‘cross’. (I don’t know why the smaller version is much longer and more complicated than the short version, sorry.)

My whole life, I’ve had an irrational fear of getting a fish-hook caught in my cheek.

Around the 16th century, we stuck a ‘t’ in ‘crochet’ to create ‘crotchet’ in English, which still meant ‘small hook’. And that’s where we get ‘crotchety’ from – probably due to the idea that crotchety people’s minds get ‘hooked’ on small, trivial annoyances. This association didn’t become common until the early 19th century (maybe people were just super-chilled before then) which is when we get the first recorded use of ‘crotchety’ in print. According to the OED, the earliest known use was in 1847, in some writing by Benjamin Disraeli, UK PM and novelist.

The musical crotchet (i.e. a quarter note in British English) also shares the same linguistic root – this is due to the hook-like symbols used in early musical notation. And of course, the name of the craft of ‘crochet’ comes from the same place as it involves a little hook (one which I cannot master, despite trying really hard. The last time I tried, I ended up throwing it across the room, where it landed in the dog’s water bowl.).

I got extremely crotchety with ChatGPT while writing this article, as it contradicted itself four times while I was trying to get the facts straight on this etymology. So the moral of this crotchety story is, don’t rely on ChatGPT to write factually accurate articles – hire me to do that instead.

(It did then help me with a particularly complicated knitting pattern though, so we’re friends again now. Not a crochet pattern though, sadly, because I CAN’T DO THAT.)

filipendulous

If something is filipendulous, it means it’s hanging by a thread or a filament. It’s most often used to describe things that appear suspended by delicate or slender attachments, and look like they could drop at any moment. Like a spider suspended by a single thread. Or my sanity.

Like many of our words (especially the complicated ones), filipendulous comes from Latin. It’s a combination of the Latin word ‘filum’ meaning ‘thread’, and ‘pendere’ which means ‘to hang’.

You’re most likely to come across the word filipendulous in botany, where it’s used to describe plants with structures on fine stalks or threads. There’s actually a genus of plants called Filipendula containing 12 species of perennial herbaceous plants. That includes meadowsweet and dropwort, and the excellently named queen-of-the-forest (Filipendula occidentalis) and queen-of-the-prairie (Filipendula rubra), both of which are native to North America.

Filipendula species are food plants for the larvae of some Lepidoptera (AKA butterflies and moths) species, including the emperor moth, one of the biggest in the world. The largest emperor moth has a wingspan of between 15 and 20cm (6 to 8 inches). Yeesh. (I’ve literally just finished reading ‘The Travelling Bag’ by Susan Hill which makes this fact particularly freaky. If you know, you know.) These moths live in Europe, but haven’t made it across the Channel to us (YET). Having said that, our largest moth is the privet hawk moth, which can get up to a not-too-shabby 12cm (4.7in) wingspan.

You wouldn’t want either of those flapping round your bedroom light, would you?

prestigious

If something or someone’s prestigious, they’re generally highly respected and renowned. But ‘prestigious’ is one of those words which has completely reinvented itself over the years. When it first appeared in English in the 16th century, it referred to someone or something that was deceptive or fraudulent, or that involved trickery. It wasn’t until the 19th century that ‘prestigious’ tricked us all and morphed into the positive meaning it has today.

Before we get into the ‘why’ of that, let’s take a look at the etymology. Like lots of other words of the week, prestigious has its roots in Latin. It comes from the word ‘praestigiosus’, which meant ‘full of tricks’ or ‘deceitful’. That’s derived from ‘praestigiae’, meaning ‘delusions’ or ‘illusions’, and was often used to refer to conjuring tricks or sleight of hand. (You might also have heard the word ‘prestidigitation’, which also comes from ‘praestigiae’, and refers specifically to the skill of performing magic tricks or illusions, often using quick hand movements). The root word ‘prae-’ means ‘before’ or ‘in front of,’ while ‘stringere’ means ‘to bind’ or ‘to tighten’, suggesting something that deceives or confounds the senses.

So how did ‘prestigious’ fool us all into turning it into something positive? It’s probably down to the fact that we’re all impressed by someone who has the power to dazzle and deceive. And over time, we started using ‘prestigious’ to describe someone or something that does that as having earned our admiration and respect. By the mid-19th century, the association with trickery had pretty much completely disappeared, and we were only using it in the positive sense we do today.

Harrison Ford’s reaction to this is PRICELESS.

vaccine

‘Vaccine’s history begins in 1796 with Edward Jenner, a country doctor in Gloucestershire. Smallpox was a leading cause of death at the time, with a mortality rate of about 20% to 30%. Survivors were often left with severe scarring and sometimes blindness too. Jenner noticed a pattern among the local milkmaids. Lots of them caught cowpox, a mild disease that caused sores similar to smallpox but was far less dangerous. But they rarely caught the much deadlier smallpox. He decided to investigate why.

On 14 May 1796, Jenner took material from a cowpox sore on the hand of a local milkmaid (called Sarah Nelmes). He then made small incisions on the arm of an eight-year-old boy called James Phipps (whose parents must have been very trusting), and inserted the cowpox stuff. The boy developed a mild fever but recovered quickly.

A few weeks later, Jenner exposed James to smallpox to see if the cowpox had protected him (seriously, that poor child). Thankfully for everyone concerned, he didn’t develop smallpox, proving the theory that cowpox had made the boy immune to it.

Jenner performing his first vaccination on poor old James Phipps

The concept of deliberately introducing a bit of a disease (not the technical term) to bring about immunity wasn’t new. Called ‘variolation’, people had been doing it with smallpox for centuries (it was used in China as early as the 10th century). But it didn’t always work, and sometimes led to severe cases of the disease. Jenner’s innovation was much safer because it used cowpox, which was less dangerous than smallpox. That’s why it got a new name – ‘vaccine’ – which comes from the Latin word ‘vacca’, meaning ‘cow’ (we got there eventually).

Jenner’s method spread across Europe and eventually the world, laying the groundwork for modern immunology and the development of vaccines for many other diseases, including covid. In 1802, he got a grant from the British government to continue his research, which would eventually lead to the global eradication of smallpox by the World Health Organization in 1980. Well done, Edward.

If you’re wondering what happened to James, he died of smallpox a few years later. KIDDING. There’s not actually much known about his later life, although he did get a free house from Jenner. Which seems like the least he could do, frankly. Phipps died in 1853, making him 65. And in a nice twist, that cottage went on to house the Edward Jenner Museum between 1968 and 1982.

(I don’t want to be Debbie Downer, but in the interests of balance I should probably point out that Phipps wasn’t the first child to be experimented on, I mean, vaccinated against smallpox with cowpox. In 1791, a man called Peter Plett picked a pickled pepper, sorry, inoculated three children in Germany, and in 1774 a guy called Benjamin Jesty also did it on three of his family members (!). But Jenner was the first person to publish details of the vaccination, which is why he gets the credit.)

coiffeur

My lovely hairdresser asked me if I could so a hairdressing-related word for her. So this one’s for you, Alexia.

A coiffeur is a fancy word for a professional hairdresser, particularly one who specialises in styling hair. It’s a French word that specifically refers to a male hairdresser (obviously). The female version, ‘coiffeuse’, appeared later, although that distinction has pretty much gone these days and we use ‘coiffeur’ for everyone. (Just once I’d love it if we started using the female version of something for everyone, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.)

Coiffeur’s roots (pardon the pun) go back to the French verb ‘coiffer’, which meant ‘to cover or dress the hair’. This verb comes from the Old French word ‘coife’ which referred to a headdress or cap worn in the Middle Ages (that comes from the Late Latin – AKA, Latin used roughly between the 3rd and 6th centuries – ‘cofia’, meaning a helmet or a head covering). A coife was a close-fitting hat that covered the top, sides and back of the head, and was often made from linen or another soft fabric. It was tied under the chin, keeping it secure. But definitely not very cool, judging by that description.

Over time, the meaning of ‘coiffer’ evolved and by the 17th century, it had come to describe the act of styling or arranging hair. And that’s where we got ‘coiffeur’ from.

During the reign of Louis XIV (the Sun King) in France, coiffeurs were highly regarded as artists, and were often employed by the aristocracy to craft elaborate wigs and hairstyles. A coiffeur’s work wasn’t just about cutting hair – it was about creating a statement. One of the most famous was Claude de Rambouillet, known professionally as ‘Monsieur Champagne’ (best name ever), who was known for creating elaborate baroque hairstyles at the French court, incorporating ribbons, jewels and feathers.

Bonus hairdressing word: tonsorial. In Holt in Norfolk, there’s a barbershop called ‘The Tonsorial Artist’. (it has an excellent sign) That comes from comes from the Latin word ‘tonsor’, meaning ‘a clipper’ or ‘a shearer’, and ‘tondere’, meaning ‘to shear’ or ‘to clip’. Head to their website to find out the origin of the barbers’ pole, which, as it turns out, is gross.

font

Ah, fonts. Most of us have our favourites. In fact, I once had a wonderful evening with a guy in a bar in New York after we got chatting because he had my then-favourite font (Trebuchet) tattooed on his leg. But that’s a story for another time. Back to business – do you know where the word ‘font’ comes from? Well, it actually goes all the way back to the Middle Ages and the early days of printing.

‘Font’ comes from the Middle French word, ‘fonte’, which means ‘something that’s been melted’. That in turn comes from the Latin verb ‘fundere’, meaning ‘to melt’ or ‘to cast’. So what’s with all the melting? Well, it refers to the traditional process of creating typefaces, where individual letters were cast in metal. A printer would use these metal letters to create a page of text, which they’d then cover in ink and press on paper. Each typeface needed a full set of these metal pieces, which were collectively referred to as, you’ve guessed it, a font.

Bonus word of the week – leading. I’m referring to the one pronounced ‘ledding’, which these days refers to the distance between lines of text. It’s called that because traditionally printers would insert strips of lead between lines of type to increase the spacing. Interesting, right?

(Oh, and if you’ve ever wondered how some of the fonts we use every day got their names, have a read of this blog post. It also explains the difference between ‘font’ and ‘typeface’, if you care about such things.)

spondulicks

‘Spondulicks’ (also spelled ‘spondoolicks’ or ‘spondulix’) is a slang term for money, which I’m almost certain Delboy Trotter used more than once. It first emerged in the United States in the mid-19th century, where it quickly gained popularity, even appearing in a New York Times article in 1857. Its exact origins are unknown, but there are a couple of theories about its etymology.

The first one, and the most widely accepted, is that it comes from the Greek word ‘spondylos’, meaning vertebra or a type of shell. What do shells have to do with money? Well, they were often used as currency in ancient times, and even as late as the early 20th century in some regions. (I read this in a fab book called ‘Spirals in Time: The Secret and Curious Afterlife of Seashells’ by marine biologist Helen Scales – nice bit of nominative determinism there.)

Cowrie shells were among the most widely used shells for currency across various cultures and regions, including West and Central Africa, India, Sri Lanka, China, Thailand and The Maldives. There’s even a cowrie shell called cypraea moneta or money cowrie. Why cowries? They’re hard and durable which makes them good for lots of handling, and they also come in relatively uniform sizes and shapes, so they’re easy to count and use as a standardised form of money. They’re also really pretty.

The second theory for ‘spondulicks’ is that it comes from the Latin word ‘spondere’, which means ‘to promise’ or ‘pledge’. This one’s less popular though.

When I asked ChatGPT for a list of slang words for money it gave me the usual suspects including ‘bucks’, ‘cash’, ‘dough’, ‘quid’ and ‘moolah’, but also some others I’ve never heard of. These included ‘cheddar’, ‘cabbage’, ‘simoleons’ and ‘bones’. Who knew?

Makes me laugh every single time.

amateur

You know what an amateur is. Someone who’s not a professional, or who isn’t very good at something. These days ‘amateur’ has a bit of a negative association, and we even use it as an insult for something or someone that’s a bit crap – ‘the writing was rather amateurish’ or ‘what a bunch of amateurs’, for example. But, it actually has a sweet little backstory.

‘Amateur’ originates from the French word, ‘amateur’ (bet you couldn’t have guessed that), which itself comes from a Latin word, ‘amator’. ‘Amator’ means ‘lover’ or ‘one who loves’. That comes from the verb ‘amare’, which means ‘to love’, and is where we get words like ‘amorous’, ‘enamoured’ and ‘amiable’ from.

So why does ‘amateur’ relate to love? Because historically, an amateur was someone who took part in something just for the love of it, not for any money or kudos. Of course, we do still use ‘amateur’ in this way, but it’s been rather overtaken by the more negative meaning. Shame.

There are lots of famous amateurs throughout history who’ve done amazing things without any formal or professional training. Here are just a few of them.

Hedy Lamarr – she got all the good genes, didn’t she?

Hedy Lamarr

Known for her acting skillz in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s (she was promoted as the ‘world’s most beautiful woman’ by Louis B Mayer), Lamarr co-invented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication. Before you say ‘so what’, know that without this technology we wouldn’t have many modern wireless communications including wi-fi, Bluetooth and GPS. Which means I, for one, would be constantly lost. This was despite Hedy having no training in engineering.

Roger Bannister

Roger Bannister was a medical student and an amateur middle-distance runner. On 6 May 1954, he became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, something most people thought was impossible at the time. He did all of that while studying to become a doctor and without a professional training regimen. Bannister went on to become a neurologist and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford.

Philo Farnsworth

At the age of 21, while labouring on the family farm, the excellently named Philo Farnsworth developed the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device (AKA a video camera tube) and the first fully functional and complete all-electronic TV system. His innovations laid the groundwork for modern TV (thank god – otherwise what would we all point our living-room furniture at?). And, you’ve guessed it, he didn’t have any training in this field (only in actual fields, hahaha). Oh, and if you didn’t know that but his name sounds a bit familiar, it might be because the ‘Futurama’ character Professor Farnsworth was named after him.

Well, now I feel like quite the underachiever.

nostalgia

I’ve always thought this sounds a bit like a medical condition (oh dear, I’ve got a nasty case of nostalgia) and it turns out, I’m right – although it isn’t anything contagious. As you of course know, nostalgia is a noun (person, place or thing) that describes a sentimental longing or affection for the past.

The word itself hasn’t actually been around for all that long. It was coined by a Swiss physician named Johannes Hofer in the late 17th century (1688, to be specific). He used it to describe a medical condition observed in Swiss mercenaries. These mercenaries were a powerful infantry force made up of professional soldiers who served in foreign armies from the late Middle Ages into the Renaissance. Their proven battlefield capabilities made them sought-after troops-for-hire, especially among the military forces of the kings of France. The Swiss Constitution of 1874 banned the recruitment of Swiss citizens by foreign states, and these days there’s only one Swiss mercenary unit left – the nattily-dressed Swiss Guard at the Vatican.

Despite all this military success, when they were fighting away from home, Swiss mercenaries all got terribly homesick (bless them), pining for their beautiful Swiss landscapes. This was the medical condition that Hofer observed – symptoms were thought to include fainting, high fever and even death. Cases were so serious, and led to so many desertions, illnesses and deaths, that the mercenaries were banned from singing the ‘Kuhreihen’, a melody traditionally played by Swiss alpine herdsman as they drove their cattle to or from pasture, in case it pushed the mercenaries over the figurative edge.

After seeing all this extreme homesickness, Hofer combined two Greek words to describe it: ‘nostos’, meaning ‘homecoming’ (the word ‘nostos’ also refers to a theme used in Ancient Greek literature when an epic hero returns home, usually by sea) and ‘álgos’ meaning ‘pain’.

For many centuries, nostalgia was considered a debilitating and potentially fatal medical condition. But by the 1850s, it began to lose its status as a disease, and this meaning had almost completely vanished by the 1870s (although it was still recognised as such in both the First and Second World Wars, mainly by the American armed forces). Nowadays nostalgia is seen as an emotion rather than a condition – a yearning for the ‘good old days’, even if they actually often weren’t that great.

magniloquent

I specialise in making businesses’ words easier to read and understand. It’s not about dumbing down – it’s about using the same words we’d say in conversation, and eliminating formal business-speak that people think makes them sound smart, but in fact just makes their words harder to understand. Here’s an example from a well-known supermarket’s* website Ts&Cs:

Before Emma: ‘We may update these Terms from time to time and any changes will be notified to you via the e-mail address provided by you on registration or via a suitable announcement on the Site.’

After Emma: ‘We might update these terms. If we do, we’ll email you to tell you about the changes using the address you gave us when you signed up. Or, we’ll tell you about them on our website.’

This guy looks like he’d use five words when one would do

Same content, but written in a much more straightforward and easy-to-understand way (also, in three short easy-to-digest sentences instead of one incredibly long one).

So what does this blatant plug have to do with ‘magniloquent’? Well, this week’s word is an adjective (a describing word’), used for language that’s intended to sound very impressive and important. So basically the ‘Before Emma’ example above. You can also use it to describe a person who uses that type of language.

The origin of ‘magniloquent’ is Latin – ‘magnus’ means ‘great’ and ‘loqui’ is a verb meaning ‘to speak’ (we also get ‘eloquent’ from ‘loqui’). Smush the two together and you get ‘magniloquus’, which is the Latin predecessor to ‘magniloquent’.

We started using ‘magniloquent’ in English in the 1600s, although its synonym (a magniloquent way of saying ‘word which means the same’) ‘grandiloquent’ had already been kicking around for a hundred years or so. Both these words are still used today, although ‘grandiloquent’ is probably the more common of the two. Unless I’m around of course…

*It’s Tesco’s general terms and conditions. Hey Tesco, I’m available for work if you want your words to be more readable?