rival

Ah yes, my favourite novel by Jilly Cooper (I’m not ashamed to admit I love her). A rival is, of course, someone you compete with for the same thing – like the last roast potato at a family dinner or the armrest on an aeroplane. ‘Rival’ comes from a Latin word, rivalis, which literally means ‘one who uses the same stream as another’ (rivus = brook or stream – but not ‘river’, weirdly, which is flumen). But where does the conflict and side-eye come in? Well, just as it is now (and rapidly becoming more so thanks to AI and its thirsty data centres), water was a precious commodity in ancient times. If you and your neighbour were using the same stream, you were naturally competing for that resource. That’s why, in Roman law, rivales were neighbours who had ‘river rights’ to the same water source. Which of course led to lots of argy-bargy about one person taking too much. So it wasn’t long before the word rivalis came to mean ‘competitor’ or ‘adversary’.

As Latin evolved into the Romance languages, rivalis entered Old French as ‘rival’. But the literal watery meaning fell away while the ‘competitor’ meaning took over, specifically in the context of love or honour.

While ‘rival’ existed in Latin and French for yonks, the word didn’t make its debut in English until the late 16th century, first appearing in print in 1577. This was in ‘Holinshed’s Chronicles’ (specifically ‘The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande’), an enormous history of Britain which was a major source of inspo for lots of Shakespeare’s plays (as well as works by Christopher Marlowe and Edmund Spenser). Here it was used in the context of political and military competition. (There’s also a separate, slightly earlier variation of the word – ‘rivality’, meaning the state of being rivals – which turned up in print as early as 1528, but that obviously didn’t make the cut.)

‘Rival’ initially arrived as a noun (i.e. a person, place or thing) in English, and we have Willy S (as per bloody usual) to thank for verbifying it (i.e. turning it into an action – to rival someone). He first did that in ‘King Lear’ (1605–1606) in a now rather suspect reference to Cordelia as a prize for two men to fight over:

My lord of Burgundy,
We first address toward you, who with this king
Hath rivaled for our daughter. 

Not bad for a word that started as a plumbing dispute, right?

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.

salary

Ah, salaries. Something we’re all a bit obsessed with as we navigate the cozzie livs*. But did you know that the word itself actually has a fairly surprising etymology?

‘Salary’ comes from the Latin word ‘salarium’, which itself comes from ‘sal’ in Latin, meaning ‘salt’. This is because, back in the ancient Roman day, salt was a really valuable commodity. This wasn’t just about making food taste good either – salt was vital for preserving it in a pre-fridge world. And that was crucial for those Romans centurions off conquering and building roads, installing sanitation, and all the other things mentioned in The Life of Brian.

Because of all this value, salt was actually used as a type of currency. And that meant the word ‘salarium’ was used to describe payments given to soldiers to cover their expenses, including to buy salt (presumably not with salt as currency though – that would be mental). Over time, the meaning of ‘salarium’ expanded to include any regular payment made to someone in exchange for their services, becoming ‘salary’ along the way.

The St Kinga Chapel (by Cezary p, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Salt mines have existed for thousands of years, and one of the most famous ones is the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland. It produced salt from the 13th century right up to 1996 (when it was closed due to falling salt prices and flooding). The mine is now a tourist attraction and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and reaches a depth of 1,073 feet (327 metres) while extending for over 178 miles (287 kilometres). It’s particularly famous for the St Kinga Chapel, which is entirely carved out of salt, including the floor, walls and even the chandeliers. The chapel is about 330 feet (101 meters) below the surface of the Earth, and is named after St Kinga, the patron saint of salt miners. Apparently the acoustics are fantastic, so lots of concerts are held there, as well as an annual music festival – you can even get married there.

*Irritating slang for the cost-of-living crisis.