dunce

You know what a dunce is – a stupid person (e.g. someone who stockpiles toilet rolls). But did you know that it’s actually named after someone? Well, if you do, then you’re deffo not a dunce, and you can go back to your self-isolating. But if you don’t, read on…*

The man himself

John Duns Scotus was born in 1266ish (no one’s entirely sure) in Scotland near the village of Duns, hence the name. He was a Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, as well as a university professor, philosopher and theologian (#overachiever). According to the internet he’s actually one of the three most important philosopher-theologians of Western Europe (the other two being Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham – but I’m sure you knew that already, dear reader). He’s credited with coming up with several different doctrines including the idea of ‘haecceity’ (future word of the week), which is about there being some stuff in each thing that makes it an individual, or something – it’s very complicated. Duns’ nickname was Doctor Subtilis, which makes him sound like a Marvel villain, but was actually a scholastic accolade (a fancy-dancy name given to people to show that they was well clever), due to his ‘penetrating and subtle manner of thought’ (according to Wikipedia).

So, where did it all go wrong? Well, up until the English Reformation in the 16th century (when the Church of England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church), Duns’ ideas and work were still widely taught and respected. But, the Protestants started using some of his more out-there theories to discredit Catholicism, and called his followers ‘duns’. Over time, this morphed into ‘dunce’, and was soon being used to describe anyone who was a bit of a dumbo.

It’s not all bad news – Duns spawned a whole school of philosophy called Scotism. Even better, he was beatified (AKA saintified) by Pope John Paul II in 1996. Peaks and troughs.

A dunce cap – nothing to do with the KKK, honest.

Bonus fact: dunce caps (conical hats with a ‘D’ on them – badly behaved school kids back in the day were made to put these on while standing in the corner) might also come from our John, although no one’s entirely sure. Some sources claim it comes from a theory of his that wearing a conical hat made you cleverer (hmmm). But the OED says that ‘dunce cap’ didn’t enter the English language until 1833, which was well after ‘dunce’ had become a derogatory term – so chances are we can’t blame this one on him.

* You’re not a dunce either BTW.

shampoo

Obviously you know what shampoo is. But have you ever wondered where the word comes from? Luckily you have me to do that for you. So, let’s start with the most important question – does it have anything to do with poo? No, is the slightly disappointing answer (or is it just me who’s disappointed by that…?).

Photo by Dan Smedley on Unsplash.

Shampoo is an Indian word which goes all the way back to 1762. It comes from the Hindi word chāmpo, which is derived from the Sanskrit root chapati (yes, as in the flatbread), which means to press, knead or soothe. The word came over to us dirty Europeans from India by way of one Sake Dean Mahomed, an Indian traveller, surgeon and entrepreneur, who used it to describe a form of massage. In 1814 he and his Irish wife Jane opened the first commercial ‘shampooing’ vapour masseur bath in Brighton (I don’t know what a ‘vapour masseur bath’ is, but it sounds like the sort of thing that would cost several hundred pounds to use in a health spa). He described shampoo in a local paper as ‘…a cure to many diseases and giving full relief when everything fails; particularly Rheumatic and paralytic, gout, stiff joints, old sprains, lame legs, aches and pains in the joints’. At some point after this ‘shampoo’ was used to refer to a scalp massage and then, in the 19th century to the soap used during that massage.

metonymy

Metonymy is a figure of speech (i.e. a thing we do to make language more fancy or poetic) that replaces the name of something with the name of something else it’s closely associated with, but isn’t a part of. Got it? Nope, me neither. Let’s look at a famous example of metonymy: ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ (from Edward Bulwer Lytton’s play Richelieu, BTdubz – good to know in case it ever comes up in a pub quiz). The ‘pen’ refers to the written word, and the ‘sword’ is military power – so both ‘pen’ and ‘sword’ are representations of something else that they’re associated with. (Personally I’d rather have a sword than a pen in most situations, for example a zombie apocalypse, but that might just be because I watch too many horror films.)

Some other more modern examples of metonymy are:

• ‘Hollywood’ to refer to all celebs, film directors and producers and so on

• ‘top brass’ for management types

• ‘new blood’ for new people or ideas

• ‘the big house’ for prison.

It’s probably fairly unlikely that you’ll find yourself in a situation where it might be an issue, but try not to confuse metonymy with synedoche (pronounced si-nek-duh-keen – although I’ve never heard anyone say it out loud). Synecdoche is when you talk about a thing using the name of one of its parts. So it’s a bit more literal than metonymy – like calling business people ‘suits’, or your car your ‘wheels’ (although if you do either of those I’m afraid you might be a prick).