refurbish

If you refurbish something, you renovate, refresh or rejuvenate it to make it look new again, like furniture or phones. Although I could definitely do with some refurbishing…

My personal issues aside, where does the word come from? You undoubtedly already know that the prefix ‘re’ means ‘again’, so added to ‘furbish’ it means ‘to furbish again’. But what’s furbishing? Well, it appeared in Middle English in the 14th century from an Anglo-French word, ‘furbisshen’, a verb which originally meant ‘to polish’. Its lineage stretches even further back than that though, to ‘furben’, an Old High German word which also meant ‘polishing’. There was obviously a lot of stuff that needed a shine back in the day. (Oh, and in case you’re not up on your ancient languages, High German was spoken roughly between 500 AD and 1050, and was the earliest stage of the German language. And Anglo-French words are words that originated from the French language as it was used in medieval England after the Norman Conquest.)

Over time, ‘furbish’ developed an extended sense of ‘renovate’ just in time for English speakers to coin ‘refurbish’ in the 17th century with the same meaning. Its first appearance in print was in 1611, in Randall Cotgrave’s A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. Cotgrave was an English lexicographer (AKA ye olde Susie Dent), and his bilingual dictionary was seen as groundbreaking at the time – that’s because as well as basic translations and explanations of French words in English, it also included idiomatic expressions, phrases, technical terms and even recipes. Cotgrave’s work contributed to the development of bilingual dictionaries and language-learning resources, and influenced how dictionaries were compiled for centuries. Think of it as the 17th-century version of Duolingo, but without the passive-aggressive owl.

Back to ‘refurbish’. It’s an example of an unpaired word, i.e. one that looks like it should have an opposite, but doesn’t anymore. This usually happens because the antonym (a fancy way of saying ‘opposite word’) has fallen out of fashion. Or it might be that it never existed in the first place, for example if we nicked the unpaired word from another language. Other examples of unpaired words include disgruntled, unruly and impervious. If you’d like to know more about whether you can actually be gruntled, ruly or pervious, head to the blog. Spoiler alert – you totally can.

lampoon

If you lampoon someone or something, you take the piss out of them in a satirical way, often exposing their flaws or hypocrisy. As well as being a verb, lampoon can also be a noun – so you could publish a lampoon of someone, for example (even though that sounds weird).

Rabelais – Il était très drôle

‘Lampoon’ first appeared in print in English in 1645. Both the noun and the verb come from a French word, ‘lampons’, a form of the verb ‘lamper’, which means ‘to drink to the bottom’. So what does downing a pint (or downing un demi-litre as we’re in France) have to do with taking the mick out of someone? Well, apparently the word ‘Lampons!’, meaning ‘Let us guzzle!’ was a frequent refrain in 17th-century French satirical poems. For example, it appears in ‘Le Vin’ (which translates as ‘Wine’ – I knew all that Duolingo French would pay off eventually), a poem by François Rabelais, a 16th-century French writer known for being a bit rude. Rabelais also used it in ‘Gargantua et Pantagruel’, a series of satirical novels, as a drinking song:

‘Buvez toujours, ne cessez,
Lampons! Lampons!
C'est à ce coup que nous paierons!’

(‘Drink on, never stop,
Let us guzzle! Let us guzzle!
This time, we’ll pay!’)

Thanks to his literary legacy, Rabelais got his own adjective –‘Rabelaisian’. It means ‘marked by gross robust humour, extravagance of caricature or bold naturalism’. Not bad for a former monk, right?

monster

You know what a monster is – a large, frightening, usually imaginary (although there are plenty of real-life monsters, sadly) creature that’s generally trying to hurt or kill someone or something. But have you ever wondered where the word ‘monster’ came from?

‘Monster’ is a pretty old word, first appearing in the English language somewhere between 1000 and 1200 AD, when Willy the Conk invaded England and brought the French language with him (from which we borrowed lots of words, especially legal ones). The particular French word we’re interested in here is ‘monstre’. It comes from the Latin word ‘monstrum’, the past participle of ‘monere’, meaning ‘to warn’. So how did that turn into the gruesome noun we know today? Well, in ancient Rome ‘monstrum’ was used to describe anything strange or grotesque that could be seen as a warning from the gods or a bad omen – like a two-headed calf, for example. Over time the term evolved to cover anything a bit scary and/or weird.

One of the most famous monsters in my neck of the woods is probably Black Shuck, a ghostly black dog said to silently prowl the dark country lanes and coastal footpaths of East Anglia (and one of several black dog myths found all over the UK). Black Shuck is sometimes seen as an omen of death, but is also described as being quite friendly. Its size varies from that of a large dog to a horse. Black Shuck was first described in print by one Reverend ES Taylor in an 1850 edition of a journal called ‘Notes and Queries’ as ‘Shuck the Dog-fiend’. He said:

‘This phantom I have heard many persons in East Norfolk, and even Cambridgeshire, describe as having seen as a black shaggy dog, with fiery eyes and of immense size, and who visits churchyards at midnight.’

According to the OED, the name Shuck comes from the Old English word ‘scucca’, meaning 'devil’ or ‘fiend’.

One of the most famous reports of Black Shuck is of its appearance at the churches of Bungay and Blythburgh in Suffolk. On 4 August 1577, Black Shuck is said to have burst through the doors of the Blythburgh Holy Trinity Church accompanied by a clap of thunder. It ran up the nave, killed a man and boy in the congregation and somehow caused the church steeple to collapse through the roof. It left via the north door leaving scorch marks, which you can still see to this day. It also later appeared in St Mary’s Church in Bungay on the same day, which was recorded in ‘A Straunge and Terrible Wunder’ by Abraham Fleming:

Suffolk’s finest rockers The Darkness wrote a pretty awesome song about Black Shuck (which also mentions Blythburgh) on their 2003 album ‘Permission to Land’, which you can listen to below.

mascot

When you hear the word ‘mascot’, you probably think of someone dressed in an oversized costume running about at a sports event posing for pictures and hugging people. But in fact, the word ‘mascot’ has quite a sinister history, rooted in black magic and witches. OOOH.

Okay, I might have overegged the pudding ever so slightly. The word ‘mascot’ dates back to the 19th century, and comes from the French word ‘mascotte’, which was used to describe a lucky charm, talisman or magical object. This in turn came from ‘masco’, a Provençal (a dialect of southern France) term for a sorceress or witch. That probably comes from the Old Provençal word ‘masca’, meaning ‘mask’ or ‘spectre’. In the late 19th century, we started using the term to refer to a person, animal or object that brought luck or represents a group, like a sports team.

Sports team mascots are often chosen based on symbolism, characteristics or qualities that are supposed to bring positive energy or success. But sometimes they’re just downright scary. Take Kingsley, who represents Partick Thistle, a professional football club from Glasgow, and looks like a squashed sun with the cold dead eyes of a killer. He was designed by Turner Prize-nominated artist David Shrigley and was unveiled in 2015 to coincide with Thistle’s new sponsorship from investment firm Kingsford Capital Management. Reactions to Kingsley varied from ‘Lisa Simpson on meth’ to ‘the haggard face of the Teletubbies’ sun baby’. Kingsley also has the dubious honour of being the only mascot ever to earn a review from the Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones, who compared him to the monsters painted and sculpted by the surrealist Joan Miró. It obviously hit home as well, with Kingsley’s web page on the Partick Thistle site reading as follows:

‘There were a lot of mean things said about me when I first appeared, but I’m not too concerned because I know it’s what’s on the inside that counts. I’m a nice guy really – just a bit misunderstood … I might look a bit angry but I’m really very approachable and I love Partick Thistle. So don’t be scared to come and say hello if you see me out and about.’

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

WT actual F

ennui

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash.

We’re probably all feeling some ennui at the moment. It’s a French word for being a bit bored and listless. Because it’s French, in my head it involves lots of languid fanning of one’s own face while sighing and lolling about on a chaise longue. And turns out that’s not far wrong.

Ennui comes from an Old French word, enui, meaning ‘annoyance’. That comes from the Latin ‘in odio’ which means ‘hatred’. At some point ‘enui’ gained an extra ‘n’, and became popular in the 18th century to describe the boredom felt by French youth, who were disappointed that the French Revolution hadn’t been as revolutionary as they’d hoped. This left them full of existential angst, AKA ennui. The meaning morphed again a century or so later, becoming a word expressing a dissatisfaction with the modern age and industrialisation. Lots of arty-farty types suffered from ennui at this time, poor lambs, and because of this it was seen as a mark of how clever you were – because the bourgeoisie were far too stupid to worry about important things like the futility of human existence.

The German version of ennui is ‘Weltschmerz’, which literally translates as ‘world pain’. The difference between the German and French versions is the whole listlessness thing – the Germans are just sad, without all the lying around. I guess they’re just too efficient for that #nationalstereotypes