bellwether

A bellwether is ‘an indicator of trends’. Here’s a very egotistical (and patently untrue) example:

‘Emma’s family and friends often look to her as a bellwether of fashion.’

Bellwether can also mean ‘one that takes the lead or initiative’, which is also not true of my fashion sense.

Nowadays you’re most likely to see the word ‘bellwether’ in political or economic commentary. Here’s an actual example from the Washington Post:

‘Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain and considered a bellwether for the industry, is just the latest to shake up its print offerings.’

So what do trendsetters have to do with bells or, indeed, wethers? Well, to answer that, please come with me to… a sheep farm.

All flocks of sheep have a leader. And shepherds and farmers have traditionally hung a, you’ve guessed it, bell around the top sheep’s neck. A ‘wether’ is a word for a male sheep (nowadays the term specifically means a castrated male sheep) – so the leading sheep is called a ‘bellwether’.

This term for the sheep prime minister has been around since the 15th century. And over time we started to use it to refer to anyone who’s the leader of the pack (or flock), who takes initiative or who establishes trends that are then taken up by others.

If you’re wondering how the sheep choose their leader, they either do that themselves, by letting the most dominant one take the lead, or the farmer does it for them. Why does the farmer want to rig the sheep election? Well, they might do this because one sheep is particularly good at navigating obstacles or familiar with the terrain, and can therefore keep the rest of the sheep on the straight and narrow. Who knew? (Well, all the sheep farmers, obviously.)

hobby

I’ve recently taken up needle-felting, which resulted in this utter monstrosity (pictured next to what it was supposed to look like – I’ve got better since, honestly). And this new hobby got me thinking, why is it called a hobby? Also, don’t give up the day job.

How it started vs how it’s going

In the 14th century the word ‘hobby’ referred to a small horse or pony, specifically one used for riding or racing. This probably comes from the Old English word ‘hobyn’, meaning small horse or pony (well, durr). In the 16th century the term ‘hobby horse’ appeared (in a payment confirmation, which I assume means ‘receipt’), which, if the etymology is correct, is actually a tautology i.e. it says the same thing twice. Like Sahara desert, Gobi desert and Kalahari desert, all of which mean ‘desert desert’ – ‘sahara’ is Arabic for ‘desert’, ‘gobi’ is Mongolian for desert’ and ‘kalahari’ is Tswana (one of the 11 official languages recognised by the South African constitution) for, you’ve guessed it, ‘desert’. Anyway, I digress. If you’re a young person, you might not know what a hobby horse is – a toy which was basically a horse head stuck on a stick that you’d straddle (sounds horrific – no wonder kids today prefer iPads) and run about with pretending to be on an actual horse.

Fast forward three hundred-ish years, and the term ‘hobby’ evolved to refer to any activity that people do for pleasure (except rude ones, obviously) or relaxation in their leisure time.

In the 17th century, people used ‘hobby’ as a bit of an insult, as these pasttimes were seen as something children did. But in the 18th century, with the advent of the industrial revolution and more leisure time for people, hobbies suddenly got cool. Although this might not have happened if anyone then had seen my zombie-alpaca needle-felting disaster.

tartle

‘This is…’

Picture the scene. You’re at a party (not that I ever go to parties anymore. But I do remember them. Vaguely). You’re making small talk with someone you’ve met a few times, but whose name currently escapes you. Then disaster strikes. Your partner/friend/someone else you know comes over to join the conversation. They both look expectantly at you, waiting for introductions. You hesitate just a bit too long. Panic… PANIC…!

Congratulations, you’ve just tartled.

This lovely Scottish verb is the act of hesitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name. It’s important to note that it’s the hesitation that ‘tartle’ is referring to here – not the act of bad memory itself. If you do this type of thing a lot, then you can be described as ‘tartlesome’.

Sadly ‘tartle’ hasn’t taken off as much as it should, so there’s not much info on its origins. It’s possible that it comes from an Old English word, ‘tealtrian’, which means to totter, shake, stagger or generally be uncertain.

So there you have it. Next time you find yourself trying to introduce someone whose name you’ve forgotten, just fill that awkward silence with ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve just tartled.’ And hope no one thinks that means you’ve broken wind.

nickname

You know what a nickname is, of course – a substitute for someone or something’s proper name. But have you ever wondered who Nick is?

As it’s Christmas, it would be great if the ‘nick’ was St Nick. But, sadly, it turns out there’s no Nick in nickname. It’s a very old word, going all the way back to the early 1300s. And it looked a bit different then, as it was spelled ‘ekename’. This literally means ‘additional name’ from the Old English word ‘eac’, which comes from ‘eacian’ – to increase. So how did it become ‘nickname’? This is down to a process called rebracketing (also resegmentation or metanalysis if you want to get really technical), which is a fancy-dancy way of saying that the ‘n’ of the ‘an’ got moved to the beginning of the noun. So it went from [an][ekename] to [a][nekename], which eventually morphed into ‘nickname’.

This specific type of rebracketing is called ‘false splitting’. Other words that have lost an ‘n’ because of false splitting include:

• a napron ⇾ an apron (the thing you wear when you’re cooking)

• a naddere ⇾ an adder (snake)

• a noumpere ⇾ an umpire (the tennis people).

Another type of rebracketing is when words become split in a way that’s different from how they were built. If you just said ‘huh’, here are some examples which will hopefully help:

• hamburger – hamburgers are called hamburgers because they come from Hamburg i.e. [Hamburg][er]. But because ham is a food, at some point we decided they were made from ham (even though they’re not), and created a new word, ‘burger’. Then we attached that to lots of other foodstuffs (cheeseburger, veggieburger, etc). Ooh, I’m hungry now

• helicopter – this is made up of ‘helico’, from the Greek word ‘helix’ meaning ‘spiral’, and ‘pter’ from ‘pterón’ which means ‘wing’. So it’s actually [helico][pter]. Presumably because ‘pter’ is quite hard to pronouce, we’ve rebracketed it as [heli][copter] and use both of these as parts of other words (helipad and gyrocopter being the only two I can think of at the moment)

• alcoholic – this is actually made up of [alcohol] and [ic], with alcohol being, well, alcohol, and the suffix ‘ic’ meaning ‘relating to’. We’ve rebracketed this as [alco][holic] and added the [holic] bit to anything vaguely addictive (shopaholic, workaholic, etc.).

Well, that was a lot of technical gubbins, wasn’t it? Let’s finish up with some awesome historical nicknames.

Henry the Impotent doing a medieval finger gun

• Viscount Goderich, AKA The Blubberer: Goderich (1782–1859) holds the dubious honour of being the briefest-serving British prime minister ever (who didn’t die in office) at only 144 days. He got his nickname from crying in the House of Commons about people who died in riots against the Corn Laws (which I think makes him sound like quite a nice bloke).

• Ragnar Hairy Pants: This one’s slightly cheeky as Ragnar might not have been a real person, although he does turn up in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which is apparently pretty reliable. I think his nickname’s fairly self-explanatory (he had hairy trousers). His son also had an awesome nickname – Ivar the Boneless – although no-one knows for sure where that came from.

• Charles XIV of Sweden, AKA Sergeant Pretty Legs: He was king of Sweden and Norway from 1818 until he died in 1844, and he had good legs. Nuff said.

• Honourable mentions to: Constantine the Dung-Named (Byzantine emperor from 741 to 775); John The Babymaker (born in 1458 and ruled Cleves – where ‘Anne of’ came from presumably, apparently fathering 63, yep, 63 illegitimate children); and Henry the Impotent (King of Castile from 1454 to 1474, who failed to consummate his 13-year marriage to his cousin, although didn’t have trouble doing it with anyone else apparently).

samhainophobia

Samhainophobia is a morbid fear of Hallowe’en. But why isn’t it called halloweenophobia, I hear you ask? Well, the word comes from ‘Samhain’, the name of an ancient Gaelic festival, which means ‘summer’s end’. Like our modern-day Hallowe’en, it was held on 31 October, and observed in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. In fact, Samhain is first mentioned in Irish literature as far back as the ninth century. It’s what’s known as a liminal festival, which means it marks the end of one thing and the start of another (in this case summer and winter). It was also the one day a year when the boundaries between realms became thin, allowing the spirits of the Otherworld (a supernatural realm in Celtic mythology) to cross over to Earth. The dead were also said to return for one night to visit their living relatives. Samhain was celebrated with partying and feasting and all that good stuff, as well as some (non-human, thankfully) sacrifices to the pagan gods for a good year ahead.

So, when did Samhain mutate into Hallowe’en? In the ninth century the Catholic church brought in a new feast day to celebrate saints called, unimaginatively, All Saints’ Day. And the old English words for ‘All Saints’ are ‘All Hallows’. The Catholic church already had form for co-opting pagan festival dates and traditions (see Christmas and Easter), so quickly rebranded Samhain as All Hallows’ Even (AKA ‘Eve’), which became Hallowe’en (that’s what the apostrophe is there for – to show that a letter is missing).

You might think trick or treating (or ‘trickle treeting’ as I saw it referred to on social media last week) is a modern-day American invention, but it actually has its roots in Samhain too. Poor children in medieval Europe would go door to door begging for food and money during the feast day, offering to pray for the souls of their neighbours’ recently departed relatives. This later morphed into the more familiar kids-mugging-you-for-sweets we get today.

Carving pumpkins is another ancient tradition, going all the way back to the 1660s. You can blame an Irishman called Stingy Jack for this – to cut a very long story short, he was a pisshead who had a run in with the Devil, and ended up walking the earth for all eternity with only a candle in a carved turnip to light his way. People began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns from various root vegetables, and put them in their windows or doorways to frighten him or any other wandering evil spirits away. Immigrants to the US brought jack-o’-lanterns with them, soon switching to the presumably more-available native pumpkins.

(If you’ve got some leftover pumpkins from Hallowe’en and you’re happy that Stingy Jack isn’t coming to get you, chuck them in your garden or some local woods. Apparently squirrels and rabbits love ’em. Farms and zoos might like them as well, so whatever you do, don’t bin them. Alright, lecture over.)

eavesdrop

As you’ll no doubt already know, to eavesdrop is to listen in to someone else’s convo without them knowing. But have you ever wondered what it has to do with ‘eaves’ and/or dropping stuff? Well, luckily I’m here to tell you, whether you want me to or not.

So, back in the day, ‘eavesdrop’ didn’t actually have anything to do with listening. It was actually much more literal, and referred to the water that fell from the eaves of a building (i.e. the edges of a roof which overhang the walls). The meaning then changed to refer to the ground where that water fell. In fact, there was an ancient law that meant when you were building your house you had to leave at least two feet between the edge of your eaves and your neighbour’s boundary. This was to make sure that any water dripping from your eaves stayed on your own land, thank you very much. There was even a legal term called ‘right of drip’ which entitled someone’s eaves to drip on their neighbour’s land (which sounds like a euphemism but isn’t). Eventually ‘eavesdrop’ morphed into a word describing people hanging around in that space under the eaves, listening in to conversations they shouldn’t be.

The original word ‘eavesdrop’ comes from an Old English word which goes all the way back to the ninth century. It has the fantastic spelling of ‘yfesdrype’ (and if you know how to pronounce that, will you marry me?).

Eavesdropping is a central plot point in a lot of well-known novels and stories. Here are some examples (SPOILER ALERTS):

A painting of some cardinals eavesdropping in the Vatican, by Henri Adolphe Laissement (that one in purple by the door is definitely telling the others to shut the fuck up).

• the entire plot of What Maisie Knew by Henry James (which I wrote an essay on at university but never actually read) revolves around a child, the eponymous Maisie, overhearing various salacious details of her divorced parents’ love lives (I think – like I said, I never actually finished it)

• Polonius gets stabbed in the arras while eavesdropping on Hamlet in, you’ve guessed it, Hamlet

• the unending misery that is Atonement by Ian McEwan is all kicked off by a child overhearing what she thinks is a rape

• all of Pride and Prejudice, and also Bridget Jones’ Diary, is centred on Lizzy Bennet/Bridget overhearing Colin Firth slagging her off.

cobweb

Obviously you know what a cobweb is (AKA things I constantly have on my car’s wing mirrors – how do the spiders stay in there?) But have you ever wondered where the ‘cob’ bit came from? Somewhat disappointingly, ‘cob’ is just an olde-worlde (Middle-English if you want actual facts) word for ‘spider’. It comes from the Old English word for spider which was atorcoppe – ‘ator’ meaning ‘poison’ and ‘coppe’ meaning ‘head’ – apparently those Old English types thought spiders were poisonous which, as far as I can work out, they never have been in the UK.

From ‘atorcoppe’ we got ‘coppeweb’ and then ‘cobweb’. While we’ve stopped calling spiders themselves ‘cobs’ (although J.R.R. Tolkien used it and ‘attorcoppe’ in The Hobbit in 1937), we’ve kept it when talking about their homes – although it might be something that dies out soon as the more pedestrian ‘spider’s web’ becomes more common.

Oh, and an old (from the 1670s) Norfolk term for a misty morning was a ‘cobweb-morning’. Nice, right?

Okay, spider facts. The biggest species of spider in the world is the Goliath birdeater. Despite its name, it very rarely preys on birds (thank god), preferring insects, worms and amphibians. It’s part of the tarantula family and can have a legspan up to 30 cm, a body length of up to 13 cm and weigh up to 175g. Yikes. The good news is that unless you’re in northern South America, you’re unlikely to come across a Goliath birdeater in your day-to-day doings. If you are there, you might also find one on a menu – they’re edible spiders and apparently taste like ‘shrimp’. Think I’ll pass, thanks.

(If you’re feeling brave, do a Google image search for ‘largest spider crab’. If the results don’t give you a little shiver then you’re a better person than me.)