Arabic — Words of the week

SHUDDER. I was terrible at maths at school, and even the thought of algebra still fills me with horror. But, I’m all for feeling the fear and doing it anyway (except when it comes to sharks, which I’m also very scared of), which is why algebra is my word of the week. Also, it has an interesting backstory which isn’t, as you might assume, anything to do with Greek.

Before we get into that though, let’s have a quick refresher for anyone who, like me, can only vaguely remember their school days. Algebra is a branch of maths that focuses on studying mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating those symbols to solve equations (that just sent another shiver down my spine), which apparently makes it easier to solve complex problems. Here’s a super-simple algebraic equation:

2x + 5 = 11

And here’s a really not simple explanation for how to solve it (thanks to my robot overlord, sorry ChatGPT, for doing the maths for me. Also, feel free to skip to the next paragraph if you just don’t care):

In this equation, ‘x’ is the variable, and the objective is to find the value of ‘x’. First, we isolate the variable ‘x’ by subtracting 5 from both sides of the equation:

2x + 5 - 5 = 11 - 5

This simplifies to:

2x = 6

Next, to isolate the variable ‘x’, we divide both sides of the equation by 2:

(2x)/2 = 6/2

This simplifies to:

x = 3

So, the solution to the equation is x = 3.

For anyone who’s still here, here’s why algebra is called algebra. The word comes from the Arabic phrase ‘al-jabr wa'l-muqabala’, which means ‘reunion of broken parts’ or ‘restoration and balancing’, referring to the process of restoring balance by transferring terms from one side of an equation to the other. Nice, right?

This rather romantic-sounding term was coined by the Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in the 9th century. I have mixed feelings about Al-Khwarizmi because he came up with this lovely phrase (like), but he also pretty much invented algebra in his book ‘Kitab al-Jabr wa'l-Muqabala’ (don’t like). Just to make things even more complicated, his book was translated into Latin in the 12th century, which is when the west adopted the term (and discipline) ‘algebra’ and ruined many school children’s lives for centuries to come.

(Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi also gets a prize for best job title ever: ‘astronomer and head of the library of the House of Wisdom’. Tough to fit on a business card though.)

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.

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.