debunk

I watched the British horror film ‘Ghost Stories’ this weekend (not great – it all felt a bit like it was patting itself on the back at how clever it is – the stage show was better and more scary). It’s about a man who debunks (i.e. exposes as false) ghost stories. Which got me wondering – where does the word ‘debunk’ originate from? And it turns out it has a very interesting backstory (which is lucky – otherwise this really wouldn’t be worth reading).

So, the ‘de’ prefix refers to reversing or undoing something. But it’s the ‘bunk’ bit that’s interesting. You might have already guessed that it comes from ‘bunkum’ meaning ‘nonsense’ (which is really nice to say – go on, give it a go. Bunkum. The louder the better. Assuming you’re not sitting on a train or in a library or anything like that). Bunkum is a phonetic spelling of Buncombe, a county in North Carolina in the US of A. In 1841, one Felix Walker, who was something important which I don’t really understand in the US Congress, started a very long and boring speech. Despite everyone yelling at him to stop talking, he refused because he wanted to show the people of North Carolina that he was doing his job properly: ‘I shall not be speaking to the House,’ he said, ‘but to Buncombe.’ And from that moment on, ‘bunkum’ became slang for ‘a load of rubbish’.

Not the best thing to be remembered for, but still, better than nothing, right? Right?

thrawn

I saw this in the book I’m reading at the moment (‘Life After Life’ by Kate Atkinson – well worth a read). The author used it to describe the look on a violent husband’s face just before he got wife-beaty (that’s not cheery, sorry). It’s a mainly Scottish adjective which means misshapen or crooked, as well as obstinate or recalcitrant. It’s generally used in a negative way (as in the wife beater), but can also be used for someone who’s admirably determined to do something.

Etymology-wise, it comes from the Old English word ‘thrawen’ which means to twist or turn. This meaning survived in Scottish as the verb ‘thraw’. In 1881 Robert Louis Stephenson published a short story in Scots called ‘Thrawn Janet’ about a preacher who hires a local crone (funny how there’s no male equivalent of a crone) as a housekeeper. Suspected of being in league with the devil (probably just because she’s old and female), the preacher has her renounce Satan. The next day she appears with a ‘thrawn’ (for which read twisted) neck, as if she’s been hanged. Here’s our word in action:

‘For there was Janet … wi’ her neck thrawn, and her heid on ae side, like a body that has been hangit, and a girn on her face like an unstreakit corp.’

(If you want to find out what happens next, the whole story’s online here.)

‘Thrawn’ doesn’t turn up much these days, although (if you’ll just allow me to geek out for a moment), there is a Grand Admiral Thrawn in a series of novels in the Star Wars extended universe, before the latest films made them no longer canon. He’s got blue skin and is a bit of a bastard. This probably doesn’t have anything to do with the Scots word as it’s short for Mitth’raw’nuruodo (obvs), but it’s a nice coincidence nonetheless.

star-crossed

So, I was catching up on my newest guilty pleasure this week, ‘Bondi Rescue’, and one of the lifeguards was putting together an elaborate proposal for his girlfriend (there was a helicopter). Just as they were flying towards the words ‘Marry Me’ written in the sand of Bondi, the voiceover guy described them as ‘star-crossed lovers’. This immediately had me reaching for Google, as I’m sure that the last time I checked, being a star-crossed lover wasn’t a good thing. And I was right – ‘star-crossed’ means to be ‘thwarted by bad luck’.

Etymology wise, there don’t seem to be any references to the word before Mr Shakespeare used it in the prologue of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (spoiler alert!):

‘From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.’

The word comes from the idea that our fates are ruled by the positions of the stars, and that some people are thwarted by evil or malign stars. Hence being ‘star-crossed’, like the unfortunate teen suicides, R+J.

You’ll be pleased to hear that lifeguard Harries and his wife Em are still married, and now have themselves a bub, so it doesn’t seem like they’re at all star-crossed. Not that I’m obsessed with ‘Bondi Rescue’ or anything.

Right, I wonder if I can fit another episode in before I have to earn a living…

paraphernalia

So, you're probably used to using ‘paraphernalia’ to mean lots of bits and pieces. It’s generally seen as negative as we tend to use it to mean too much stuff (or drug stuff, weirdly). Unfortunately, the origins of the word are actually a bit sexist.

Etymology-wise, it comes from the Greek ‘para’ for ‘distinct from’ and ‘pherna’, from ‘phernē’ or ‘dower’. So it actually means ‘distinct from dowry’, and referred to the personal bits and bobs a bride brought with her to a marriage. So all the stuff that wasn’t part of the all-important dowry. These fluffy female extras were generally regarded as superfluous to requirements, which is why the word now tend to refer to extra things we don’t need. Oh, and in English law up until 1870 (when the first Married Women’s Property Act was passed), all of a woman’s paraphernalia would have become the property of her husband anyway once he got that ring on her finger. Bah.

skive

So we all know what skiving is, right? It’s bunking off work or school. Well yes, but this is actually an almost exclusively British use of the word. Skive has another meaning which it seems is more well known away from our shores – to cut thin layers or pieces off a material like leather or rubber. This probably comes from Scandinavia, from ‘skīfa’ which is Old Norse for slice.

Back to bunking off now (figuratively, not literally of course, for any clients who are reading). ‘Skive’ in this context first appeared in print in 1919 and was originally a British military expression. One theory is that it came from another earlier slang meaning of the same word which was ‘to move lightly and quickly, to dart,’ as someone who’s trying to get out of their duties might do. It likely comes from the French word ‘esquiver’ which means to dodge, sidestep or evade. From there we go on an etymological round trip of Europe – ‘esquiver’ probably came from the Spanish word ‘esquivar’ which means unsociable or shy, which itself came from a German word which came from an Italian word (I’ve stopped telling you the words now in case you stop reading/your head explodes), which finally takes us back to France and the Old French word ‘eschiver’.

Opinions differ as to whether you add an ‘off’ or not (as in ‘Emma never skives work’, or ‘Emma is definitely not skiving off work as we speak’).

causerie

Okay, so today I confess I’ve gone a bit poncy, and a bit meta. A causerie is an informal essay or talk, often on a literary subject. Which is what this is, y’see? META.

Causerie comes from ‘causer’, which is français for ‘to chat’. It was popularised by one Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (swoon – French names are so much better than English ones, n’est-ce pas?), a writer and critic who published a weekly column in a French newspaper about literary topics called ‘Causeries de lundi’, or ‘Monday chats’ in rubbish old English. As there was no English equivalent (‘funny literary column’ just doesn’t cut it), in the 19th century we went for the age-old solution of just nicking someone else’s.

Whether you choose to say it in an over-exaggerated French accent is entirely up to you.

defenestrate

I’ve picked this one purely because I like it and I don’t think it gets used enough. If you haven’t come across it before, it’s a weirdly grand word for a pretty simple concept; it means to throw something or someone out of a window. The etymology’s straightforward – it comes from the Latin ‘de-’ for ‘out’ and ‘fenestra’ for ‘window’. If you’re the person going out of the window you’re a ‘defenestratee’. And you can also autodefenestrate, which is when you chuck yourself out.

The most famous use of the word is probably the Defenestration of Prague. There are actually two of these (people in Prague seem to like lobbing each other out of windows). The most well-known was in 1618 when three Catholic officials were thrown from a top-floor window of Prague Castle by Bohemian (the kingdom, not the lifestyle choice) Protestant activists. Despite surviving the 70-foot fall, this event kicked off the Thirty Years’ War – one of the longest and bloodiest wars in European history.

The English poet RP Lister wrote a poem called ‘Defenestration’, which is all about how ridiculous it is that there’s a word for throwing someone out of a window (‘Why, then, of all the possible offences so distressing to humanitarians / Should this one alone have caught the attention of the verbarians?’) which is well worth a read if you have a spare couple of minutes. Oh, and it’s seems to be up for debate as to whether the window has to be open or not before you carry out a defenestration.

velleity

This week I’ve been reading poetry by T.S. Eliot. I’m not just saying that to be poncy – I really have. I realised I’d never read the whole of ‘The Waste Land’ which didn’t seem right, so I bought myself a collection and read it while sitting in the sunshine drinking beer (I find alcohol always helps me understand poetry. Possibly not correctly, but you can’t have everything).

Anyway, back to ‘velleity’. A velleity is ‘a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action’ (from the OED). So basically it’s when you want to do something, but just can’t be arsed. Like pretty much everything in this hot weather. Here it is in plural action in Eliot’s poem ‘Portrait of a Lady’:

‘…And so the conversation slips / Among velleities and carefully caught regrets…’

Interesting fact alert: T.S. Eliot is widely credited with being the first person to use the word ‘bullshit’ in print. He wrote a poem called ‘The Triumph of Bullshit’ which is basically an up-yours to the literary critics of the time. It also contains the beautifully written refrain ‘For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass’. So, next time you use either of those, you can legit say you’re being intellectual. You’re welcome.

emoji

In honour of the fact that it was World Emoji Day yesterday (or 🌍😀📆 if you will), I thought I’d look into the etymology of the word itself. So, it was coined in Japan in the late 90s, and is made up of ‘e’ for ‘picture’ and ‘moji’ for character – nothing to do with the word ‘emotion’ then. Its counterpart ‘emoticon’ is however – that’s ‘emotion’ and ‘icon’ smooshed together.

Strictly speaking emojis are pictograms and emoticons are characters i.e. 😉 vs ;-). It seems like the similarity in the two words is just a nice semantic coincidence. ❤️

egregious

This is inspired by (for which read: stolen from) Simon Mayo on last week’s Wittertainment podcast. You know what egregious means, right? It’s something that’s shockingly bad. And you’d be bang on the money. But only in the last 500 years or so. The meaning of egregious has completely changed over time – and not just a little bit like lots of other words. It now means the total opposite of what it did originally.

So, according to the OED in 1534, ‘egregious’ was a positive word which meant ‘remarkably good’. Etymology-wise, it’s made up of the Latin prefix ‘e-‘ which means ‘out of’, ‘grex’ for ‘flock’ (see also ‘segregate ‘, ‘aggregate’ and ‘congregate’) and then the English adjective suffix ‘-ous’ which means ‘full of’. So it literally meant to stand out from the flock (or crowd). But less than 40 years later, people were using it in the negative way we’re familiar with now. Why? Well, it looks like it all comes down to the fact that English people like to take the piss. The only explanation I can find is that people started using it sarcastically, and eventually the second meaning stuck. Typical.

pamphlet

I’ve chosen this one for two reasons: (1) because it’s nice to say (paaammmppphhhlet) and (2) because it has an interesting backstory. Unfortunately it’s nothing to do with small pamphs (because these are not a thing) – the word comes from a 12-century Latin love poem called ‘Pamphilus, seu de amore’. This anonymous poem was so popular that it was copied and passed around from person to person. The Middle French title was ‘Pamphilet’ and from this we get the English word ‘pamphlet’. Because the poem wasn’t bound, eventually ‘pamphlet’ came to mean any unbound text that’s shorter than a book.

The poem’s about leading man Pamphilus trying to woo (I like the word woo) a lady by the name of Galatea through the mediation of a procuress. I don’t know what this means but it sounds dirty. Pamphilus’ name comes from the Greek for ‘beloved of all’. Aw.

prognathous

I can’t actually remember where I saw this, but I wrote it on my whiteboard some time ago as a potential WotW (as no one’s calling it), and who am I to disagree with the whiteboard?

So, prognathous is an adjective which describes someone or something with a protruding lower jaw or chin. You don’t see it so much in us homo sapiens these days, but it was common among Paleolithic humans. The etymology’s pretty straightforward – it comes from the Greek ‘pro’ for ‘forward’ and ‘gnáthos’ for jaw. ‘Normal’ people (by which I mean straight-jawed ones) are orthognathic, and people with overbites (i.e. me when I was at school) are retrognathic (or ‘goofy’ according to a particularly mean girl at St Mary’s Convent School).

Hmmm, this isn’t terribly interesting is it (it’s certainly no ‘avocado’)? I’m rather disappointed in my whiteboard.

avocado

But Emma, I hear you cry, everyone knows what an avocado is! They do indeed. But I’ve chosen it because it has really interesting etymology (not an oxymoron if you’re a word geek like me).

The word avocado comes from the Aztec (technically Nahuatl Indian) word ‘ahuácatl’ which means, wait for it... testicle. Whether that’s because of its shape or the fact that the Aztecs thought it was an aphrodisiac is up for debate. In 1915 a group of American avocado farmers met up to talk about the fact that they weren’t selling very well. They decided it was because ‘ahuácatl’ was too hard for people to say (and, presumably, they didn’t appreciate the whole testicle thing). So they just changed the name. They also decided that the plural would be ‘avocados’, not ‘avocadoes’ which was very conscientious of them (I appreciate that). They then wrote to dictionary publishers to let them know that they’d renamed the ahuácatl. And, somehow, everyone just got on board with it.

Avocados have also been rebranded much more recently. When M&S started stocking them in the 60s, they were sold as ‘avocado pears’ (even though botanically they’re actually large berries). They immediately got lots of complaints from customers who’d stewed them and served them with custard, which was obviously disgusting. So M&S stores then started giving out leaflets with each avocado explaining that they were for salads, not for dessert. (Thanks to the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast for the avocado info.)

Last year, M&S started selling stoneless avocados to try to reduce the amount of injuries that they cause. Yep, you did read that right. A&E departments now see regular cases of ‘avocado hand’ which can have serious surgical ramifications (even greatest-actress-of-her-generation Meryl Streep had to have hand surgery in 2012 after cutting herself while preparing an avocado – NO ONE’S SAFE). As someone who regularly injures herself in the kitchen (and elsewhere in the house – the other day I cut my thumb while I was in the bath), it’s probably quite lucky that I don’t like avocados.

whiffler

I chose this purely because it’s fun to say. Go on, give it a go. Nice, right?

A whiffler is someone who constantly changes their mind or opinion – one who whiffles. Etymology-wise, it’s onomatopoeic, which might be why it’s so nice to say. It’s named for the sound the wind makes. Aw.

There are actually loads of definitions of the verb ‘to whiffle’ – so many in fact that I’m amazed it’s not still in general use. If you’ve got some time on your hands you can find out what they are on Wikipedia (and also more about the game Whiffleball. That’s really a thing). Oh, and there’s also a Wetherspoon’s pub in Norwich called The Whiffler. When I googled it I found this gem in the Q&A section, apparently from former Bond actor Roger Moore:

clodpole

The word of the week was going to be something I heard at the choir I sing in last night (‘chromatic’). But I had a couple of beers last night and now it seems way too complicated to work out what it actually means. So instead I stuck my finger in the nearest book, which happened to be the ‘Norton Anthology of English Literature’ (I definitely didn’t have to move loads of Jilly Coopers and Stephen Kings out of the way before I got to that). And the word of the week, clodpole, comes courtesy of ‘Volpone’ by Ben Jonson.

A clodpole is a foolish, clumsy or awkward person. ‘Clod’ is middle English for a lump of earth and ‘pole’ means ‘head’. So it’s ye olde worlde version of ‘blockhead’.

Interesting fact alert: Ben Jonson was buried standing up in Westminster Abbey (he’s the only one – everyone else is in the more traditional lying-down position). Apparently this was because he could only afford a plot that was two feet by two feet. And just to add insult to injury, they then spelled his name wrong on his tombstone (‘Ben Johnson’). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – everybody needs a proofreader. (If you fancy some insults from days of yore, have a look at my blog, featuring gems like ‘scobberlotcher’, ‘beardsplitter’ and ‘gillie-wet-foot’.)

tweener

Inspired by the French Open tennis tournament which is on at the moment, a tweener is a between-the-legs shot, when a player runs to return a lob and doesn’t have time to turn round, so hits the ball backward between their legs. It’s generally a last reserve in competition, although it turns up a lot when people are showing off in exhibition matches.

Beloved of modern players like del Potro, Kyrgios and Radwańska, the tweener pioneer is retired Argentine player Guillermo Vilas. He used it a lot throughout his career in the 70s, and his version was called the ‘Gran Willy’ (literally ‘the great willy’, snigger – I don’t know why). In fact, he claims to have invented it (as does a French player by the name of Yannick Noah), but it’s a bit hard to prove this. Gabriela Sabatini was also a fan, and her version was called the ‘Sabatweenie’. Famously, Federer used a front-facing tweener to get himself a match point in the 2009 US Open semi-final, and called it ‘the greatest shot I ever hit in my life’. Here’s a video of some awesome tweeners.

prebendary

PREBENDARY

This week’s word of the week is in honour of a little event which took place last Saturday – Harry and Meghan’s wedding. Despite swearing that I wasn’t going to watch it, I accidentally switched over to the coverage and then couldn’t drag myself away. For three hours. Yes, there were tears. But there were also two exclamations when Rose Hudson-Wilkin did her reading at the ceremony:

1. Yay, there’s a Wilkin at the royal wedding! and

2. What the heck’s a prebendary?

Luckily, the internet knows everything. So, a prebendary is a senior member of the clergy, who used to be supported by money from an estate or parish, called a prebend. Nowadays only Wells Cathedral (been there – it’s lovely) and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin (haven’t been there) still call their canons (the religious kind, not the ones you shoot people with/out of – that’s cannons) ‘prebendaries’. For everyone else it’s an honorary title given to senior parish priests to recognise long service.

Oh, and if you’re a prebendary, you get a special seat in cathedrals, usually at the back of the choir stalls. It’s called, unimaginatively, the prebendal stall.

femtometre

According to Rachel Riley on BBC News this morning, it’s National Numeracy Day today. So I thought I’d find an interesting word to do with maths. I failed at this (not to say there aren’t any interesting maths words – just none of them interested me this morning. I have a very short attention span).

Obviously my next port of call for an idea was the box set I’m watching at the moment – a Danish drama on Netflix called ‘The Rain’. That took me to English words we get from Danish. And one of these is femto, a prefix in the metric system from the Danish word for 15, ‘femten’. A femtometre is equal to one quadrillionth of a meter (we got there eventually). Which is really freaking small. To put that into some kind of context, a proton has a diameter of roughly 1.6 femtometers. Like I said, they’re really freaking small.

shibboleth

According to the internet, it was World Password Day on 3 May (although their definition of ‘World’ seems to mean ‘American’). So, this got me thinking – when did the word ‘password’ come in to being? And is its etymology as simple as it looks? Well, it turns out it is, so I decided to not make that the word of the week. Instead, I went with a word I found while doing my (very short) research on ‘password’.

A shibboleth is a word, phrase, custom, etc, that’s only known to a certain group of people, so you can use it to prove you’re a real member of that group. Think Michael Fassbender in ‘Inglourious Basterds’ when he blows his cover as a German after using the wrong hand gesture.

You’ve probably guessed from the spelling, but shibboleth is a Hebrew word. It comes from the story of the Gileadites in the Hebrew Bible. They used the word to identify Ephraimites who couldn’t pronounce the ‘sh’ sound – so if they tried to say ‘shibboleth’ it came out wrong. I’m not sure what happened to them once they were identified, but I think it’s safe to say it wasn’t good.

anthropoglot

I worked out what last week’s word of the week was supposed to be! As mentioned last week, an anthropoglot is an animal with a tongue like a human, meaning it can mimic human speech (one dictionary I looked at said it was an ‘animal with a tongue like that of man’ which sounds gross, and a bit sexist). So, that’s parrots and that dog off the telly who can say ‘sausages’.

There’s more about anthropoglots, including an ELEPHANT THAT CAN SPEAK KOREAN, here.