fathom

Fathom has a few meanings, the most well-known of which is probably as a unit of measurement for the depth of water, one fathom being equal to six feet (1.83 metres for my metric friends). ‘Fathom’ also has a figurative meaning which is when you use it to describe understanding or comprehending something – ‘despite her best efforts, she couldn’t fathom what the hell was going on’.

Fathom comes from an Old English word, fæthm, which means ‘outstretched arms’ or ‘embracing arms’. In fact, ‘fathom’ was once used as a verb to mean ‘embrace’ – so you could say you were going to fathom someone if you were going to hug them (although that does sound vaguely threatening). In the 1600s, ‘fathom’ ran away to sea, and the verb came to mean ‘to measure with a sounding line’ – a sounding line being a bit of rope with a weight on the end used to measure the depth of water. The measurements then became known as fathoms, because sailors used their outstretched arms to measure the length of these ropes or cables (which makes much more sense that what I was imagining – lots of sailors trying to measure the depth of water by getting in the sea and stretching their arms out). Eventually this measure was standardised as six feet.

At the same time as all this was happening on the ocean waves, landlubbers started using ‘fathom’ to mean ‘probe’ or ‘investigate’. That’s because it was all about getting to the bottom of something – just like those sounding lines.

barmecide

Despite sounding quite murderous (‘Oh my god, he’s a barmecidal maniac!’), ‘barmecide’ actually has a slightly more mundane meaning. It’s an adjective (AKA a describing word*) for something that has the illusion of abundance but is ultimately disappointing. Here’s an example: ‘The company’s extravagant promises turned out to be barmecidal, leaving the investors with nothing.’ Apparently a ‘barmecidal feast’ is a well-known phrase, although not one that I’ve ever come across.

So why have I chosen ‘barmecide’ and its sad investors? Well, because it has quite an interesting backstory. ‘Barmecide’ is an eponym (AKA a word named after a person) and comes from ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ (also known as ‘The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment’ or ‘Arabian Nights’, which is what everyone actually calls it). The tale that introduces the term is ‘The Barber’s Tale of his Sixth Brother’ in which a prince called, you’ve guessed it, Barmecide, invites a beggar to a big old feast. Because Barmecide is an arsehole, the feast is an illusion and the beggar is given empty plates and glasses that only appear to have food and drink in them. And that’s where we get our word from. Thankfully our beggar is a wily chap and pretends to get drunk on the imaginary wine before punching the prick of a prince. Hooray.

*If you don’t know your adjectives from your elbow, head to my Instagram page for a video on parts of speech. More fun than it sounds, honest.

torpedo

I’m sure you know what a torpedo is – an underwater weapon with an explosive warhead that propels itself towards a target, often accompanied by Harrison Ford and some dramatic music in the background. But do you know why a torpedo is called a torpedo? Well, it comes from a Latin word, ‘torpere’, which means ‘to be stiff’ (behave) or ‘to be numb’.

I’m now going to take you on a mini tour of Europe. Ready?

In the 16th century, the Italians called an electric ray (the fish kind) a ‘torpedine’. This was based on the numbness bit of ‘torpere’ – because if you got electrocuted by the fish, you went numb. This word then moved to Spain (that fish obviously got about a bit), where it was changed to ‘torpedero’.

Robert Fulton – I would

Next we’re going to France, where the word ‘torpille’ appeared in the mid-19th century for a kind of explosive device used in naval warfare. This was probably because of the electric ray’s ability to immobilize underwater prey with electric shocks. This word was later borrowed into English as ‘torpedo’. An American inventor called Robert Fulton (1765–1815) popularised it as a term to describe explosive charges when he added them to the Nautilus, his submarine.

As well as building the world’s first ‘proper’ submarine, which he designed between 1793 and 1797, Fulton had a series of homosexual and polyamorous relationships during his life, including living with a couple in Paris for six years. He died from pneumonia after diving into an icy Hudson River to rescue a friend who’d fallen in. None of this is relevant to torpedoes, but I’ve included it because he sounds like a TOTAL LEGEND.

lemma

A lemma is a term or phrase that’s being defined or explained. Huh? Here it is in action – when you look up a word in a dictionary or, more likely these days, type a word into a dictionary search bar, the word you’re typing is called a lemma.

Lemma has its origins in ancient Greek. It’s derived from the Greek word ‘λῆμμα’ which means ‘something taken’, ‘an assumption’ or ‘a proposition’. It’s the noun (person, place or thing) form of the verb (doing word) ‘λαμβάνω’, or ‘lambanō’, which means ‘to take’.

The plural of lemma is either ‘lemmas’ or, if you’re feeling a bit arcane, ‘lemmata’. And it’s also where we get the word ‘dilemma’ from – which is ‘lemma’ in the sense of a proposition, with ‘di’ meaning ‘two’ at the start – two propositions.

All of this emma-based etymology caused me to ask ChatGPT what my name means. He told me it comes from the Germanic word ‘ermen’ or ‘irmin’, which means ‘whole’ or ‘universal’. He went on to say that Emma is ‘a classic name that carries a sense of timelessness and elegance’. Fingers crossed he wasn’t just buttering me up before he steals my job and brings about Judgement Day.

If you’re not a fan of ‘lemma’, another word for a term being defined is a ‘definiendum’. It’s fun to say, and will deffo make you sound like a smarty pants. You’re welcome.

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

maven

A maven is someone who’s exceptionally experienced or knowledgeable about something – basically it’s a fancy-dancy way of calling someone an expert. So you could say ‘Emma is an etymology expert’ (oh, thanks).

’Maven’ comes from the Yiddish (a West Germanic language spoken by Jews) word ‘meyvn’ which means ‘one who understands’. It’s related to the Hebrew verb ‘bin’, which means ‘to understand’.

‘Maven’ was made popular by a guy called William Safire who, to be frank, sounds like my perfect man (if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s dead). He wrote a feature in The New York Times called ‘The Maven’s Word of the Day’ where he explored ‘new words, vogue phrases and the intriguing roots of everyday discourse – with occasionally crotchety observations on everything from proper usage to impropaganda’. The column aimed to entertain and educate readers about the English language and its quirks (it’s like looking in a mirror – even if he may have had one or two more readers than me). It ran for more than 30 years under Safire, and he wrote an impressive 1,300 instalments.

Safire receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006 (White House photo by Shealah Craighead)

Much like me, William didn’t have any real credentials for his wordy expertise, saying after being hired to write his column, ‘So what if I hadn’t finished college [he dropped out after two years ar Syracuse University], or even studied Latin? In the language dodge, I figured, a cat could look at a king.’ That’s one of the reasons he chose the word ‘maven’ as his title, as he said it contained ‘a note of self-mockery’. Also much like me, he was happy to play fast and loose with language if it suited, saying ‘I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness’. Despite that, he was a staunch defender of correct English, and was instrumental in getting Safeway stores to change their express-lane signs from ‘Ten items or less’ to ‘Ten items or fewer’. SWOON.

Safire didn’t just wax lyrical about words. He was also a speechwriter for Richard Nixon where he coined several memorable phrases, including describing critics of the administration as ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ in a speech for Vice-President Spiro Agnew. He won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978, and was described by President George W Bush as ‘a voice of independence and principle’, adding ‘American journalism is better for the contributions of William Safire’.

What a legend.

evanescence

Today’s word of the week is brought to you by ‘I Capture the Castle’, a coming-of-age novel by Dodie Smith (who’s probably most famous for having written ‘The Hundred and One Dalmatians’). I’d never read it before, and if you haven’t either I thoroughly recommend it. It tells the story of Cassandra Mortmain, who lives with her bohemian but impoverished family in a crumbling castle in rural Suffolk in the 1930s. The family is made up of her beautiful but bored sister, Rose, her glamorous stepmother, Topaz (who enjoys dancing naked in the rain every now and again), her little brother Thomas, her eccentric novelist father who’s been suffering from crippling writer's block after publishing one successful book and Stephen, a sort of servant/adopted child who has an almighty crush on Cassandra. Honestly, it’s wonderful. And it’s also where I saw this word used in the following quote:

Perhaps he [Simon, Rose’s fiancé and Cassandra’s crush – yep, there’s a love triangle*] finds beauty saddening—I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked Father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty’s evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.

Now if you, like me, were a teenager in the 90s, you’re probably thinking of American goth rockers Evanescence who released bangers like ‘Bring me to life’ and… actually, that’s the only one I can think of. And really, it’s a perfect name for an angsty alternative band. The word ‘evanescence’ is an adjective (a describing word) for something that’s temporary, ephemeral (another good word), or likely to be forgotten over time. Like fleeting moments, fading memories or the passage of time itself…

Sorry, I got a bit carried away there. Let’s come straight back down to earth with some etymology. ‘Evanescence’ comes from the Latin verb ‘evanescere’. That’s a combo of the prefix ‘e-’, meaning ‘out’ or ‘away’ (see also ‘eject’, ‘evict’ and ‘emit’, among others) and the verb ‘vanescere’ which means ‘to vanish or disappear’. That’s formed from ‘vanus’, meaning ‘empty’ or ‘vain’, and the suffix ‘-escere’ which indicates the beginning of a process or state. This suffix also turns up in words like ‘convalesce’ (to start getting better), ‘effervesce’ (to start bubbling or frothing) and ‘adolesce’ (to start being a stroppy teenager). Sorry, I think I sucked all the beauty out of it, didn’t I?

*If you factor in Stephen as well, then maybe it’s a love square? There’s also Neil, Simon’s brother, who I suspect may also be involved, but I haven’t finished it yet so I can’t be sure. Also, that would make it a love pentagon which is ridiculous.

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.

botuliform

Shaped like a sausage. That’s what it means. Because the Latin word for ‘sausage’ is ‘botulus’. I can’t believe it’s not more popular. Now, you might be thinking that’s because it sounds like ‘botulism’, a rare but serious illness that attacks the body's nerves and causes difficulty breathing and muscle paralysis until your heart stops and you die. And you would be right.

SAUSAGE

Botulism was first identified in 1822 by someone called Justinus Kerner, a German poet and doctor. His doctoring was apparently better than his poetrying (the only one I can find is about a saw – yes, the things you chop wood with), and when lots of his patients started dying of a horrible illness that paralysed every part of their bodies, he realised they’d all been chowing down on cheap sausages. So he decided to call this new illness botulism, or ‘sausage disease’. He also rightly worked out that these sausages must contain a toxin which he called ‘botulinum’.

Fast forward to 1895 and a funeral in Belgium. Three of the guests at the wake drop dead from food poisioning (which cut out the middleman funeral-wise), and the culprit was found to be some ham they’d all eaten. The ham was sent to the University of Ghent where someone put it under a microscope and identified the bacteria whodunnit. And in a strange case of medical serendipity, it turns out the little bastards were sausage-shaped.

Turn that frown upside down with some biological warfare

Now called ‘clostridium botulinum’, this bacteria is so bloody lethal that it’s up there with anthrax as one hell of a biological weapon, causing almost instant death by paralysis. So surely it must be banned, right? Wrong. Because a little bit of instant paralysis can actually be a very good thing, at least if you’re a woman (or man – but mainly woman) of a certain age or a Kardashian. Because sausage poison has since been rebranded as, you’ve guessed it, botox. The world is a funny place, isn’t it?

PS: If you’ve ever wondered why sausages are sometimes called hotdogs, it’s because in 19th-century America many people believed sausages were made of, you’ve guessed it, dog meat. So they called them hotdogs. Simple, but gross. And hopefully not true today.

myrmecophilous

If you’re described as ‘myrmecophilous’, then you’re associated with, benefited by or fond of (hopefully not in a weird way) ants. It’s a scientific term that describes the positive relationships ants have with other species like butterflies, crickets, beetles and mites, all of which help them be good at staying alive (that’s the science). For example, butterflies belonging to the family Lycaenidae (which is almost 6,000 species worldwide), are myrmecophiles. In return for protection from predators, some caterpillars have developed dew patches, small button-like spots on their backs, that ooze a thick sugary fluid that the ants go nuts for, while others have a nectar gland that pumps out the same sweet goodness (sounds gross, I know). So the ants get their fix, and the caterpillars get bodyguards (even if they are all hopped up on sugar).

The word myrmecophilous has Greek roots. ‘Myrmec’ means ‘ant’, while the ‘phile’ ending comes from ‘philos’, which means to love. Like extremophile, galanthophile and lots of other nasty words we won’t mention here.

Okay, ant facts.

• There are over 12,000 ant species worldwide.

• The bullet ant is said to have the most painful sting in the world – it feels like being hit by a hammer. Just kidding, it feels like a bullet, obviously.

• A single ant can carry 50 times its own bodyweight. And they even work together to move stuff they can’t manage on their own.

• Ants can be found on every single continent except Antarctica, which is mental considering it’s the only continent that literally starts with ‘ant’.

• The biggest ants’ nest ever found is over 3,700 miles wide. Yep, you did read that right. Called the ‘Argentine Ant Supercolony’ (good name for a band), it goes from northern Italy through the south of France, and out to the western coast of Spain. Many ant experts think it’s actually much much bigger than this and stretches across the globe – that’s because Argentine ants from opposite sides of the world recognise each other (which I think basically means they don’t try to kill each other), leading them to think they all live in one utterly ginormous colony. Here’s hoping they don’t rise up and take over the world… actually maybe that would be better.

• I ate a stir-fry in a restaurant in Cambodia that had ants in it (as an ingredient – it wasn’t a really dirty restaurant) – although I didn’t realise until I was about halfway through. I thought they were saffron or something like that. It was very nice, but once I did realise, I couldn’t finish it.

quiddity

The most popular sport in the wizarding world, it’s played on broomsticks, and involves each team… I jest, of course. Quiddity is a philosophical concept that describes the thing that makes something what it is – its essence. So you could write: ‘Emma’s weekly posts capture the quiddity of complicated words in straightfoward prose.’ Oh really? How kind of you to say, thank you so much.

It’s nothing to do with HP. But there are no good pictures for ‘essence’.

Now, my two major word-of-the-week sources (which are Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster), disagree on the meaning of quiddity. The one above is Merriam-Webster’s definition, which is the one I’m going with because it’s easiest to understand. But according to Wikipedia, quiddity is a bit more complicated, and describes the properties that a particular thing shares with others of its kind. This makes it the opposite of something called ‘haecceity’ or ‘thisness’ (which apparently is an actual word) i.e. a positive characteristic of an individual that causes it to be this individual, and no other. See why I’m going with the first one?

Quiddity comes from a Latin word, ‘quidditas’. That’s a translation of a Greek phrase ‘to ti en einai’ , meaning ‘the what it was to be’, which sounds like something a drunk person would say.

Quiddity can also refer to a small and usually trivial criticism or complaint, or to a quirk or eccentricity in someone's behaviour or personality. Hamlet uses it in this way in, well, ‘Hamlet’ in his graveside speech, referring to a lawyer: ‘Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures.’

That’s not a very fun note to end on, so here’s a quidditch joke:

Why should you never have sex with a wizard?

Because you might catch Hogwarts, and they never stop quidditching.

(I didn’t say it was a good joke.)

proprioception

If I asked you how many senses we have, you’d probably say ‘five’, right? Taste, smell, sight, hearing and touch. But there’s actually another sixth sense, which has nothing to do with ghosts or Bruce Willis. It’s called proprioception.

(Before I get into this, I’m no scientist. So if I’ve got any details wrong in this article, please forgive me. And don’t shout at me.)

Proprioception, also known as kinaesthesia, is the sense that lets your brain know where your body is in space. Which basically means it’s how you know where and what your legs, arms and other extremities (stop it) are doing. You don’t need to look down at your feet to know where they are. That’s proprioception, right there.

So how does it work? Well, we all have cells called proprioceptors in our muscles and joints that process sensory information when our bodies move. And when we stretch our muscles and change the position of our joints, these cells send feedback to our brains, telling them where our arms, legs and body are at any given moment.

Without this sense, we wouldn’t be able to do anything much really. For example, if I have a gin and tonic, I don’t have to look at the glass as I move it to my mouth. That’s because my proprioceptors are sending information to my brain about where my hand is. I also don’t smash the glass into my own face (unless it’s the fourth or fifth gin and tonic), which is again thanks to my proprioceptive sense making sure my hand moves smoothly and at the right speed to get to my mouth.

Another good example is walking. You don’t need to look at your feet to lift them up, move them forward and put them back down again. That’s because proprioceptors send constant sensory information to your brain about where your hips, knees, ankles and toes are, and make sure you don’t fall over (most of the time). Proprioceptors are also constantly working in the background to make sure we use the right amount of force when we’re pulling or pushing something, and the right speed when we move our limbs. So we don’t end up breaking all the gin and tonics when we do a cheers, or punching people when we try to shake hands (unless we really don’t like them).

As a concept, proprioception has been around since 1557, where it was described by one Julius Caesar Scaliger (an Italian scholar and physician) as a ‘sense of locomotion’. In 1827, Charles Bell, a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist and philosophical theologian (and show-off, presumably), called it ‘muscle sense’. This was obviously deemed too easy to understand by the scientific community, and in 1906 the term ‘proprio-ception’ was coined by Charles Scott Sherrington, an English neurologist. This comes from the Latin word ‘proprius’, which means ‘one’s own’ or ‘individual’, and ‘capio’/‘capere’ meaning ‘to take’ or ‘grasp’. So it’s basically about grasping oneself in space. Which sounds like a sci-fi porn film, but you get the idea.

carceral

Carceral is an adjective meaning of, or relating to, jails or prisons. The sharp-eyed among you have probably already realised that it shares its roots with ‘incarcerate’ (i.e. put in prison). Both of these come from the Latin word for prison, ‘carcer’. And that comes from ‘karkros’, a Proto-Italic word for ‘enclosure’ or ‘barrier’. In case you’re wondering ‘Proto-Italic’ languages are the ancestors of the Italic languages, spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. So well old, then.

There are lots of other slang words for prison and going to jail. Here are just a few I found.

Slammer

This one didn’t appear until the 1950s in the US of A. It’s pretty straightfoward – it refers to doors being closed noisily behind you.

Clink

Possibly from the sound of the blacksmith’s hammer closing the irons around the wrists or ankles of prisoners. There was also a prison called the Clink in Southwark which goes all the way back to 1129 (and is now the site of The Clink prison museum, where my sister and I once spent a memorable afternoon – there are A LOT of awesome photo opportunities in there). It might also have been influenced by the Flemish word ‘klink’ meaning ‘latch’.

Doing bird

Cockney rhyming slang for ‘birdlime’ which translates to ‘doing time’. This is probably because birdlime is horrible sticky stuff spread on twigs to trap small birds by utter bastards (thankfully banned in most places now).

Pokey

This first appeared in the early 20th century, although no one knows its exact origins. It might come from ‘pogey’, a 19th-century English slang word for poorhouse.

Pen

This is short for ‘penitentiary’, which has been around since the early fifteenth century. Then it meant a ‘place of punishment for offenses against the church’, from the Medieval Latin ‘peniteniaria’ meaning ‘of penance’. The slang term ‘pen’ first appeared in 1884.

In other prison news, England and Wales have the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe, locking up 149 people for every 100,000 of the population. Yay us. And apparently old people are getting naughtier – between 2002 and 2015, the number of prisoners aged 60 and over rose by 164%.

If all that’s left you feeling a bit depressed, here’s Johnny Depp in a parody of Jailhouse Rock in John Water’s stone-cold classic ‘Cry Baby’. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you watch it immediately – alongside JD, it also has Iggy Pop and Ricki Lake in it, for crying out loud.

juggernaut

A juggernaut is something huge and powerful, usually destructive, that can’t be stopped, either literally or metaphorically. Like a steam roller, or Donald Trump’s ego. In British English we also use it for a big old lorry. But it is a bit of a weird word. So what is a jugger, and why is it nauting?

A slightly unimpressive photo of the temple

Well, the good news is that ‘juggernaut’ has some epic etymology. The bad news is that it’s a bit grim. It comes from Jagannāth, the Hindi word for ‘Lord of the World’. Jagannath is an incarnation of the god Vishnu, and has an important temple in Puri, on the eastern coast of India. That’s not the grim bit, obviously. Each year the temple holds the Ratha Yatra, or chariot festival, when images of Jagannath and his brother (Balabhadra) and sister (Subhadra) are pulled on huge and elaborately decorated (you’ve guessed it) chariots. According to hopefully apocryphal (i.e. bullshit) reports going back to the 14th century, hardcore Vishnu fans would throw themselves in front of these to show their devotion by being crushed beneath the wheels of carriages. That. Is. Commitment. Colonial Brits supposedly saw this, then anglicised Jagannath as ‘juggernaut’ giving it the meaning of unstoppable force that we have today.

Jagannath and his siblings’ temple at Puri is freaking massive – it covers an area of over 400,000 square feet (37,000 square metres in new money). It was built in the 11th or 12th century (depending on which page of Wikipedia you look at) by king Anantavarman Chodaganga, a ruler of the Eastern Ganga dynasty who were in charge of the southern part of Kalinga in India. There’s a flag on the top of it which apparently defies science, and always flies in the opposite direction to the way the wind’s blowing. (Boringly, there is actually some science that explains this involving fluid dynamics and something called a Kármán vortex street, but that isn’t half as fun so let’s ignore it.) Every day since it was built, a priest has scrambled up the walls of the temple – the height of a 45-storey building – without any protective gear, to change this flag. Bagsie not me.

capricious

If you’re feeling capricious, it means you’re full of caprice, AKA a sudden and seemingly unmotivated notion or action. So it basically means you’re feeling impulsive or unpredictable, or you’re a bit fickle (we use it to describe weather quite a lot). I decided to look into the backstory of ‘capricious’ because I heard somewhere that it comes from the Italian word ‘capro’ for ‘goat’, and referred to the way goats are all frisky and unpredictable (and eat just about anything). But a little bit of research revealed that it actually has nothing to do with goats at all. It does involve another, much smaller animal though…

Try to contain your excitement.

Caprice came to us via French from an Italian word, capriccio. This originally referred to someone suddenly shuddering with fear rather than being all unpredictable. It’s a smooshing together of two other Italian words: capo, which means ‘head’, and riccio, which is their word for ‘hedgehog’. That’s because when you shudder in fear your hair stands on end, making you a ‘hedgehog head’. Nice, right? But absolutely nowt to do with goats, sorry.

Hedgehog facts:

• The average adult hedgehog has between 5,000 and 7,000 spines.

• Hedgehogs are nocturnal, and one of only three animals that hibernate in the United Kingdom (the other two are bats, and the hazel dormouse which I suggest you google immediately because it’s SOOOOOOO cute).

• They’re surprisingly fast – a hedgehog can run over six feet per second and walk over two miles in a night.

• Baby hedgehogs are called ‘hoglets’ while a group of hedgehogs is called an ‘array’.

(You probably shouldn’t actually put a hedgehog in a cup.)

roorback

It’s a bit of an obscure – some might say obsolete – one this week (although I’ve never let that stop me before). A roorback is a false story published to damage someone politically, usually a candidate trying to get elected – AKA dirty dirty tricks. (It’s also the ninth studio album by Brazilian heavy metal band Sepultura, but that’s not what we’re interested in here.) Roorbacks are a form of black propaganda, which is propaganda intended to create the impression it was written by those it’s discrediting (as opposed to grey propaganda which doesn’t identify its source, and white propaganda which doesn’t care who knows where it came from). But how did political lies get the name ‘roorback’? 

In 1844, James K Polk, the 11th president of the United States, was trying to get elected. By all accounts it was a pretty nasty campaign, with both major party candidates throwing a lot of metaphorical mud at each other. One of these is known as the Roorback forgery. In late August an article appeared in an abolitionist newspaper quoting part of a book about the fictional travels through the deep south of one Baron von Roorback, a made-up German nobleman. A newspaper in Ithaca, New York printed this without mentioning it was fiction, and also added a sentence saying that the Baron had seen 40 slaves who’d been branded by Polk with his initials before selling them. (Polk was actually a prolific slave owner – he even replaced White House staff with his own enslaved people because it was cheaper – but there’s no evidence that he branded them. So that’s alright then.) The item was withdrawn by the newspaper when the Democrats challenged it, but not before it’d been widely reprinted elsewhere. Ironically Polk actually benefited from the lie – despite his questionable attitude to people ownership – as it reflected badly on his opponents when it was found out.

Because of this, many later political falsehoods were branded (see what I did there) as ‘roorbacks’. In today’s era of fake news and clickbait, maybe there’s still a place in modern English for this one?

geek

Unless you’ve seen Ryan’s Murphy’s TV show American Horror Story or Guillermo Del Toro’s film Nightmare Alley (both of which I highly recommend, as long as you have a strong stomach), you might think a geek is just a slightly derogatory word for a socially inept someone who spends a lot of time on a computer in their parents’ basement. A little sad, maybe (but also likely to make millions later in life with a tech start-up). But in fact, the word ‘geek’ actually has a pretty nasty backstory. Brace yourself…

The first OED citation of geek comes from 1876 in a glossary of words from northern England where it’s defined as ‘a fool, a person uncultivated; a dupe’. This is because it comes from a German word ‘geck’, which means ‘fool’ or ‘simpleton’. In early 19th-century America however, ‘geek’ took on a much darker meaning. Carnivals and freak shows were big business. Many of these featured a ‘geek show’, usually a man whose humiliating act consisted of chasing some live animals (generally chickens but sometimes snakes or rats), then (sorry) biting their heads off and swallowing them. Unlike many of the other members of the freak shows (like conjoined twins or bearded ladies), the geek looked just like the members of the audience. This meant they were easy to replace, so didn’t need to be paid much. They were considered the lowest of low in carnival circles, and were often drug addicts or alcoholics who were paid in booze or narcotics. Many broke their teeth and jaws during their gruesome acts, and suffered from animal-related illnesses. Definitely a tough gig.

Chang and Eng, conjoined twins who were widely exhibited in the 19th century. They married sisters and fathered 21 children. I’ll just leave that one with you.

So when did ‘geek’ change from exploited carnival worker to nerdy but clever computer person? As per usual, I can’t find a definitive answer for this. Jack Kerouac seems to get some of the credit for it in a 1957 letter where he wrote:

‘… unbelievable number of events almost impossible to remember, including … Brooklyn College wanted me to lecture to eager students and big geek questions to answer.’

It wasn’t until the 1970s and 80s that ‘geek’ took on the meaning we know today. Since then it’s been reclaimed as a positive (see ‘geek chic’ for example) which makes it a contronym – a word that started out as one thing and now means the opposite.

(If you’re wondered whether ‘nerd’ has similarly dark origins, you’ll be pleased to hear that it doesn’t – it was coined by Dr Seuss in 1950 in a book called If I Ran the Zoo. Phew.)

nidification

Spring be sprunging. And that means animals and birds be having babies. And it’s birds we’re looking at here – nidification is the act, process or technique of building a nest.

Nidification has its origins in Latin – nidificare means ‘to build a nest’. This comes from nidus, meaning (somewhat unsurprisingly) ‘nest’. A couple of related words are ‘nidifugous’, which means ‘to leave a nest soon after hatching’, and nidicolous, which means ‘reared for a time in a nest’, and also just ‘living in a nest’.

The Guinness world record for the largest birds’ nest is currently held by a pair of bald eagles and was found in Florida in 1963. It measured 2.9m (9ft 6in) wide and was 6m (20ft) deep. It was estimated to weigh more than two tonnes (4,409 lb). Another massive nest builder is the Australian mallee fowl whose creations can measure up to 4.57m (15ft) in height and 10.6m (35ft) across. We also have some big birds over here as well – in 1954 a golden eagle nest was found in Scotland that was an impressive 15 feet deep.

Phwoar, look at the nest on that – a sociable weaver nest in Namibia (photo by Harald Süpfle).

Little birds are also getting in on the big-nidification game as well. The sociable weaver (who sounds like it’d be a laugh in the pub) is only around 15cm long (so it’ll struggle to carry the drinks). But it builds massive nests which house hundreds of its mates. These are made up of several different ‘rooms’ – they use the inner ones for sleeping at night (as they’re warmer) and the outside ones for hanging out in during the day. They even place sharp sticks at the entrances to stop any predators from getting in.

Birds don’t have the monopoly on nidification. Lots of other animals build nests, including insects (termites and ants, for example), frogs and fish. Gorillas also build nests which they sleep in at night – they make a fresh one every day, which is the equivalent to changing the sheets, I guess.

wheelhouse

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘that’s in my wheelhouse’ – it means that something is your area of expertise. But why wheel? And why is it in a house?

The word ‘wheelhouse’ has been around since the mid-19th century. Back then it meant exactly what it said on the tin – a building with a wheel in it, most usually on a boat or ship. In the nautical sense it referred to the place where the steering wheel was, i.e. where the captain was most likely to be found. It first appeared in writing in an 1835 travel memoir by an American writer called Joseph Holt Ingraham. He wrote: ‘The pilot (as the helms-man is here termed) stands in his lonely wheel-house.’ (Ingraham, who later became a clergyman, died by accidentally shooting himself at the age of 51 in the vestibule of his own church. That’s got to put a dent in your faith in the almighty.) Shortly after this, ‘wheelhouse’ appeared in an 1840 letter to Daniel Webster, then the American secretary of state, from a traveller who was on a ship that burned and then sunk (double whammy). He wrote that the ship’s captain ‘went into the wheel house, and that was the last I saw of him’. (You’ll be pleased to hear that the captain did manage to escape the on fire/sinking ship, along with three other people. The 136 passengers on the ship all drowned though. Wow, that’s really good captaining, mate.)

So how did ‘wheelhouse’ become a word for an area of expertise? Well, at some point in the 1950s (the internet wasn’t any clearer than that, sorry), baseball commentators and reporters picked up on the term and started using it to describe the area of the strike zone (I think this means where the batter swings the bat) that’s the prime spot for them to hit a home run. Which is a good thing, apparently. In the 1980s the term moved from sports writing into everyday language, when we started using it to figuratively describe an area in which someone excels.