samhainophobia

Samhainophobia is a morbid fear of Hallowe’en. But why isn’t it called halloweenophobia, I hear you ask? Well, the word comes from ‘Samhain’, the name of an ancient Gaelic festival, which means ‘summer’s end’. Like our modern-day Hallowe’en, it was held on 31 October, and observed in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. In fact, Samhain is first mentioned in Irish literature as far back as the ninth century. It’s what’s known as a liminal festival, which means it marks the end of one thing and the start of another (in this case summer and winter). It was also the one day a year when the boundaries between realms became thin, allowing the spirits of the Otherworld (a supernatural realm in Celtic mythology) to cross over to Earth. The dead were also said to return for one night to visit their living relatives. Samhain was celebrated with partying and feasting and all that good stuff, as well as some (non-human, thankfully) sacrifices to the pagan gods for a good year ahead.

So, when did Samhain mutate into Hallowe’en? In the ninth century the Catholic church brought in a new feast day to celebrate saints called, unimaginatively, All Saints’ Day. And the old English words for ‘All Saints’ are ‘All Hallows’. The Catholic church already had form for co-opting pagan festival dates and traditions (see Christmas and Easter), so quickly rebranded Samhain as All Hallows’ Even (AKA ‘Eve’), which became Hallowe’en (that’s what the apostrophe is there for – to show that a letter is missing).

You might think trick or treating (or ‘trickle treeting’ as I saw it referred to on social media last week) is a modern-day American invention, but it actually has its roots in Samhain too. Poor children in medieval Europe would go door to door begging for food and money during the feast day, offering to pray for the souls of their neighbours’ recently departed relatives. This later morphed into the more familiar kids-mugging-you-for-sweets we get today.

Carving pumpkins is another ancient tradition, going all the way back to the 1660s. You can blame an Irishman called Stingy Jack for this – to cut a very long story short, he was a pisshead who had a run in with the Devil, and ended up walking the earth for all eternity with only a candle in a carved turnip to light his way. People began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns from various root vegetables, and put them in their windows or doorways to frighten him or any other wandering evil spirits away. Immigrants to the US brought jack-o’-lanterns with them, soon switching to the presumably more-available native pumpkins.

(If you’ve got some leftover pumpkins from Hallowe’en and you’re happy that Stingy Jack isn’t coming to get you, chuck them in your garden or some local woods. Apparently squirrels and rabbits love ’em. Farms and zoos might like them as well, so whatever you do, don’t bin them. Alright, lecture over.)

bezoar

You know when you come across a word you didn’t know, and then you keep seeing it everywhere? This is what happened to me with ‘bezoar’ this week (well, in two places – QI, and an episode of Audible’s excellent dramatisation of Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Sandman’). A bezoar is a solid mass of indigestible material that forms in the digestive tract. So far, so gross. But, for years many people have believed bezoars to have medicinal properties, and even that they’re full-on magical.

A ring made out of a bezoar. Why, WHY?

The word itself comes from the Persian language – specifically pād-zahr, which means ‘antidote’. In fact, if you were born in 11th-century Europe and were unfortunate enough to get poisoned, it’s likely you’d be presented with a bezoar in a glass of water by your friendly neighbourhood medicine person. That’s because they were believed to be universal antidotes that would cure any type of poison. This was proved to be utter bullshit in 1567 by a French surgeon called Ambroise Paré. He found a cook in the King’s court who’d been sentenced to death and chosen to be poisoned. He gave the unlucky chef a bezoar stone. As you can probably guess, the man died in agony seven hours after taking the poison. Merde.

It’s actually not all complete bunkum though – modern experiments have shown that bezoars can actually remove arsenic (I guess our French cook was poisoned with something other than arsenic – quel dommage).

There are lots of different types of bezoar. One of the most minging is a trichobezoar. That’s a bezoar made of undigested hair, often formed as a result of Rapunzel syndrome, a (thankfully) rare intestinal condition which comes about from eating too much of YOUR OWN HAIR. One of the largest trichobezoars I could find online was removed from the stomach of an 18-year-old woman in India and was a metre long, weighing in at 1.13kg (2.5lbs). If you’d like to feel a bit sick, you can check out the actual thing in this article. Wikipedia also lists a 4.5kg (9.9lbs) hairball which came out of a woman (ladies, what are you doing?!) in Chicago in 2006, but thankfully I couldn’t find a picture of that one (actually I didn’t look, as I didn’t think my stomach could handle it).

gird

You’ll no doubt have heard the phrase ‘to gird one’s loins’ which means to prepare yourself for something, usually stressful. It’s always given me a slightly minging image of hairy thighs rubbing together (sorry). But it’s also made me wonder where the word ‘gird’ comes from. And do we gird anything other than loins? Let’s find out…

‘To gird’ something means to encircle or bind it with a flexible band (like a belt – that’s also where we get ‘girdle’ from). Girding of loins goes all the way back to the Bible. The actual quote (from the King James version) is:

Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ…

So, what does it actually mean? Well, ye olde Biblical fashionistas would have been decked out in long flowing tunics. Yes, these were great in the desert-y heat, but they weren’t all that practical for anything other than standing around. So when they had to do running or crucifying or killing first borns, they’d take all that long flowy fabric and tie it up with their belt like a pair of shorts, AKA ‘gird’ it round their nethers.

Because you can literally find anything on the internet, someone with too much time on his hands has put together a guide on how to gird your loins. So if you ever find yourself wearing a floor-length tunic then needing to run away from someone or something, you’re all sorted. I know, I spoil you.

Turns out you can gird something other than loins, because ‘gird’ also has a secondary meaning, which is to be sneering or mocking. So presumably if someone mucks up their tunic-tying – think the fashion show testicle in The Inbetweeners – you can be girding about the way they’ve girded their loins.

steganography

Steganography is the practice of hiding a secret message inside another message or a physical object that isn’t secret. Think Tim Messenger, Adam Buxton’s character in the film ‘Hot Fuzz’ (one of my all-time favourites) who hides messages in misspelt newspaper headlines about what’s going on in the village of Sandford (‘He’s Judge Judy and executioner!’). Other examples of steganography include invisible ink or playing a record backwards to reveal a hidden message.

Steganography is action – if you look at the first image under white, blue, green and red lights you see different hidden numbers (not that well-hidden, but still).

Etymology time (my favourite time). ‘Steganography’ comes from the Greek word steganographia. That’s made up of steganós, meaning ‘covered or concealed’, and ‘-graphia’ meaning ‘writing’. The first recorded use of the term was in 1499 by one Johannes Trithemius (amazing name) who wrote a book called ‘Steganographia’. It was a treatise on cryptography and steganography disguised as a book on magic.

The advantage of steganography over cryptography – i.e. converting text into something unintelligible so only someone who has the key or cipher can convert it back – is that the secret message doesn’t attract attention because it’s hidden in something else. So while cryptography is just about protecting the contents of a secret message, steganography hides the fact that there’s a message at all.

The earliest recorded use of steganography was in 440 BC in Greece, which Herodotus (writer, philosopher and all-round clever dude) mentions in his book ‘Histories’ (an account of the Greco-Persian Wars). A ruler by the name of Histiaeus sent a message to a minion about an upcoming revolt by shaving the head of a servant, tattoing the message on to his scalp, then sending him to deliver it once his hair had regrown. Obviously there are a lot of issues here, not least that hair growth takes a long time. Oh, and you need a new servant for every message.

Today steganography has moved on a bit. The word is commonly used to descibe the ways hackers infect people’s computers i.e. by hiding nasty bits of code in common-or-garden documents like PDFs. Then when you open the doc it installs a horrible bit of malware or ransomware on your PC. Bastards.

Warning: contains a lot of blood and some swearing (just a ‘wanker’).

physiognotrace

A physiognotrace is a machine used to automate the production of silhouette portraits. Previously an artist would cut these out by hand. Although this was actually very quick to do, the demand for these types of portrait in the 1700s was so great that a Frenchman named Gilles-Louis Chrétien invented the physiognotrace (also spelled without the ‘g’) to speed things up even more.

Your subject would sit in profile and the physiognotrace used a pantograph (a metal arm made up of pivoted levers) to transmit the tracing to an engraving needle via an eyepiece. This made it easy to produce multiple copies, as well as aquatints, which are much more detailed portraits. The physiognotrace is considered a precursor to the camera, as it allowed artists to reproduce someone’s likeness in a fairly short space of time.

Physiognotrace is a portmanteau, i.e. two words smooshed together, of ‘physiognomy’ and ‘trace’ (you probably don’t need to be Susie Dent to figure that out).

Before photography, silhouette portraits were the cheapest way to record someone’s appearance. They’re named after Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who was forced to impose austerity measures on France during the Seven Years’ War. Obviously no one liked that, and therefore him, so it wasn’t long before his name became synonymous with anything done on the cheap, including these little portraits, where it stuck.

Here’s a physiognotrace in action (accompanied by some very calming music).

A portrait made by a physiognotrace

I’d know that silhouette anywhere

inimical

If something is inimical, it means it’s hostile or unfriendly. Here it is in a sentence: today I pulled a burr out of my dog’s tail, and he fixed me with an inimical stare. It’s not to be confused with inimitable, which is much more positive – it means that something is not able to be imitated or is uniquely extraordinary.

‘Inimical’s etymology is a bit Wayne’s World (#datedreference) – the ‘imicus’ bit comes from ‘amicus’ which means ‘friend’ in Latin. That’s also where we get ‘amicable’ from. So that’s nice. But the ‘in’ suffix means ‘not’.

AKA friendly. NOT.

Even though I’ve used inimical above to describe my dog, we actually don’t generally use it to describe people (wait, what do you mean my dog isn’t a person? Get away with you). It’s used to talk about forces, concepts or situations that are harmful or hostile. Like climate change, the Taliban, Texas law courts… pretty much everything that’s happening in the world right now.

That got dark quickly, sorry. Here’s some Bohemian Rhapsody to cheer you up.

‘Don’t touch my tail.’

majuscule

You already know what a majuscule is, even if you don’t know the name of it. In fact, I’ve used three majuscules in this post already. Go back and have a look, and see if you can find them (that’s four now).

OK, I’ll stop being a smart-arse now. A majuscule is just an upper-case (or large) letter, or script in which every letter is the same size. It was first used in 1722, and comes from the Latin word ‘majusculus’ which simply means ‘rather large’. So not ‘really large’ – just ‘rather’.

You can also use majuscule as an adjective to describe things that are rather large (stop it) e.g. ‘that’s a majuscular carrot’ or ‘I’ve made a majuscular mistake’. No one will know what you mean though (except me).

You’ve probably guessed that the opposite of ‘majuscule’ is ‘miniscule’. Originally ‘miniscule’ was only used to describe lower-case letters in printing. But while it’s since evolved to describe anything that’s ickle, poor old majuscule got left behind. Shame.

Majuscule scripts are actually harder for us humans to read. That’s because we use the up-and-downness (yes, that is the technical term) of upper and lower-case letters to help us recognise words. So when people capitalise things (like headings) because they want to make them look more IMPORTANT, they’re actually making them harder to read (and they look like they’re shouting). So only use majuscule letters where they belong – at the start of sentences, and for proper nouns.

avatar

Vishnu – also blue, like the na’vi.

Now, if you’re a young person, you might have only come across the word ‘avatar’ in the context of James Cameron’s big blue na’vi, or the icon you use to represent you on social media, internet forums, and so on. In fact, ‘avatar’ is much older than that. Like, super old. It first appeared in English in the late 18th century (1784 to be precise) and comes from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘descent’. It was generally used to describe a deity coming to earth – specifically Vishnu, one of the top bods in the Hindu religion. Vishnu is the protector of the universe and whenever the world is threatened, he comes to visit in the form of one of ten different avatars to sort it all out.

(Ummm, are you there, Vishnu? I think we could definitely do with a little bit of help at the moment…)

‘Avatar’ later came to mean any incarnation in human form, and after that any concept or philosophy embodied in a different form (not necessarily human). We can thank the game Second Life for the popularity of the modern-day meaning as an icon representing someone online. Its creator, Philip Rosedale, defines a gaming avatar as ‘the representation of your chosen embodied appearance to other people in a virtual world’. It’d been used in a gaming sense for a while before that though – one Chip Morningstar (What. A. Name.) first used it in a game called Habitat (nothing to do with the furniture store), a forerunner of today’s MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games in case you’re not a gamer – probably the most famous of which is World of Warcraft). Even though Chip gets the credit for coining the term ‘avatar’ for people’s online personas, it wasn’t the first time it was used in gaming. That honour belongs to a 1979 game called, you’ve guessed it, Avatar.

Oh, and there’s also a vegan Swedish death metal band called Avatar.

agathokakological

That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? If something is agathokakological it means it’s made up of both good and evil. Think Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Darth Vader.

Photo by Jack Hamilton on Unsplash.

Agathokakological is a combo of the Greek roots agath- (which means good), kako- (which is a variant of cac-, and means, you’ve guessed it, bad) plus -logical (which is a suffix based on logos, meaning word). It was probably coined by Robert Southey, the least famous of the Lake Poets (Wordsworth and Coleridge being much more well known). Southey loved inventing words (the OED has him as the creator of almost 400) but, unlike other well-known word inventors, very few of his have survived to the modern day. This isn’t particularly surprising as several of them seem to be as hard to say/spell as agathokakological. Exhibit 1: batrachophagous which means ‘frog-eating’. What?

In 1813 Southey became poet laureate after being bigged up by his pal Sir Walter Scott (he of Ivanhoe and Rob Roy fame). Not because he was nice, but because Scott didn’t want to do it – he described it as a ‘poisoned chalice’ and said that previous holders had ‘churned out conventional and obsequious odes on royal occasions’. Ouch. In 1837, while being poet laureate and presumably churning out those crappy odes, Southey got a letter from a then-unknown young lady named Charlotte Brontë, asking for some advice on her poems. He praised Brontë’s writing but told her she shouldn’t give up the day job stating ‘Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life…’. What a dick. And thank goodness she didn’t listen.

pleonasm

As a copywriter, this is something I have to deal with Every. Single. Day. No, it’s not a nasty disease – a pleonasm is a redundant word or phrase. So it’s basically when people use more words than they need to. Here are some examples:

• future prospects (because prospects are always in the future)

• a true fact (facts are, by definition, true)

• free gift (because you never pay for a gift).

One of my pet hates is ‘in order to’ – you can just say ‘to’. Always. Go on, try it.

The word ‘pleonasm’ has been around for four centuries, and it comes from the Greek pleonazein, which means ‘to be excessive’ (from pleiōn or pleōn, meaning ‘more’).

Pleonasms are similar to tautologies, which is when you repeat the same thing in a slightly different way. Like ‘In my opinion, I think’ and ‘please RSVP’. In fact, it’s so similar that I’m not entirely sure what the difference is… From what I can work out by reading things on the internet, all tautologies are pleonasms but not all pleonasms are tautologies. But then my head exploded so I stopped looking.

Here are some other words for being overly wordy, almost all of which sound like they could also be medical conditions and/or STIs: garrulous, verbose, logorrhea, prolix and periphrasis.

cocktail

Summer is finally here (at least for the next day or so). And what better way to celebrate than with an ice-cold glass of something colourful and cold, maybe with an umbrella in it? But have you ever wondered why pina coladas, mojitos, bellinis et al are called cocktails? Well, the answer is… no one really knows.

Thankfully there are a few theories (which is good, cos otherwise this would be a really short post).

1. The horse theory

Back in the 17th century, the word ‘cock tail’ was used to describe a horse with a docked (i.e. cut short) tail. From there, ‘cock-tailed’ came to be used to describe non-thoroughbred racehorses. The theory goes that it was then applied to drinks made up of lots of mixed ingredients.

2. The eggcup theory

In late 18th century New Orleans, an apothecary (which seems to be synonymous with ‘barman’ in this context) by the name of Antoine Amédée Peychaud used to serve brandy in eggcups alongside bitters (I’ve learnt that ‘bitters’ refers to ‘alcohol infused with plant matter’ which sounds pretty gross to be honest. I also read it described as ‘spirits infused with fruit, spices, leaves, bark, roots and herbs – collectively known as botanicals’ which sounds all organic and artisanal, and also yum. Just goes to show the power of words… Also, you can still buy Peychaud’s bitters today). The theory is that ‘cocktail’ is a mispronounciation of the word ‘coquetier’ i.e. the French for eggcup.

3. The dregs theory

Ye olde tavern owners used to combine the dregs from the end of barrels and sell them off at a discount. These were called ‘cock tailings’, ‘tailings’ being another word for dregs, and ‘cock’ (no sniggering at the back) another name for the spigot or tap of a barrel.

So what’s the real story?

Well, according to spirits historian David Wondrich (I so wish this was my job), who’s done extensive research into this, the closest one to the truth is number 1 – the horse theory. But it’s actually a much more shady tale (or tail). Let’s head back to the 18th century again. Imagine you were in the market for a new horse. Apparently one of the things you would look for was a cocked (or raised up) tail. To fake this, unscrupulous horse dealers would shove a mixture of ginger and/or pepper up horses’ arses, the utter bastards. Ginger and pepper were also common ingredients used to liven up alcoholic drinks – hence, cocktail.

It certainly gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘bottoms up’…

hocus-pocus

Hocus-pocus is a noun used to describe magic or sleight of hand, often in a derogatory sense (as in ‘the saleperson did some kind of hocus-pocus and now I own a cow’). But did you know that actually, using it might get you struck by lightning/sent straight to hell (if you believe in that type of thing, of course)? That’s because some people believe it’s a corruption (or a perversion if you’re feeling particulary angry) of the phrase ‘Hoc est enim corpus meum’ or ‘This is my body’ which is used in Catholic masses for the Eucharist. GASP. This connection was first made in 1694 (which shows how old the word is) by John Tillotson, who was only the bloody Archbishop of Canterbury. He said this is one of his sermons:

“In all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation.”

Despite this, there isn’t any real evidence to prove that 17th-century conjurers were actively trying to commit blasphemy or sentence themselves to eternal damnation. It’s more likely that hocus-pocus is just a couple of rhyming nonsense words put together that magicians incorporated into their patter to help them misdirect their audiences.

There’s also a theory that we get the word ‘hoax’ from the ‘hocus’ of ‘hocus pocus’, which was itself used on its own to mean ‘to play a trick on, to trick (someone)’ or, randomly, ‘to stupefy (someone) with drugged liquor ( … to steal from them)’ (from Wiktionary).

illeist

If you’re an illeist, it means you’re speaking about yourself in the third person, instead of the first. So if I said ‘Emma has a wet bum, because she just spilled a full cup of coffee in her lap’ (true story folks), then I’d be using illeism. And also sounding like a bit of an idiot.

Etymology-wise this one’s pretty straightforward, with ‘ille’ being Latin for ‘that man’ or ‘he’, plus the suffix ‘-ist’ which we add to things to show that someone’s doing them (if that makes sense) – like ‘pianist’ or ‘capitalist’. The term was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (he of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which I genuinely love, and also the opium-induced, unfinished Kubla Khan) in 1809.

One of the most famous historical illeists is Julius Caesar, who used it in Commentarii de Bello Gallico, his non-fictional account of the Gallic Wars. This was to make it sound like it was impartial, when obviously it wasn’t at all. And it might also be better filed in the ‘Fiction’ section at Waterstones, as several of Caesar's claims seem to have been outright lies. For example, he said that the Romans fought Gallic forces of up to 430,000, which was an impossible army size for the time, and also that not one Roman died during this battle. I call bullshit…

Other more modern illeists, both fictional and non-fictional, include:

• Gollum from Lord of the Rings – although he does it because he doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, which is sad

• Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson who used illeism in his wrestling catchphrases – ‘Do you smell what The Rock is cooking?’ (um, no thanks)

• Hercule Poirot, who almost always talked about himself and his little grey cells in the third person

• Dobby the house elf in the Harry Potter series (god rest his soul) – ‘Dobby has no master. Dobby is a free elf!’

While you might think talking about yourself in the third person makes you sound like a dick, in fact psychologists suggest that there are real benefits to doing just that – but only in your head, not out loud. The idea is that it can help you change your perspective to get past biases and improve decision-making. Emma will definitely be trying this from now on (once her bum dries off).

(With thanks to the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast, which is where I heard this word.)

deadline

To quote Douglas Adams:

‘I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.’

As a freelance writer, deadlines are a thing that I know a lot about and I also spend a lot of time worrying about. But what I didn’t know is that the word itself has a surprisingly bloody history…

‘Deadline’ as we know it today, i.e. a date or time by which you have to do something, has only been around since the 20th century. But the word itself is much older, and dates back to the 1860s. At this time it referred to a line drawn in or around a prison. If a prisoner went over the line, they’d be shot. Hence, ‘deadline’.

The word was made famous by a Confederate prison for prisoners of war called Andersonville in Georgia in America. Andersonville was known for having comfy cushions in each cell, fresh fruit for breakfast and massages for well-behaved inmates. Only kidding, obviously – it was notorious for its terrible conditions and, you’ve guessed it, use of deadlines. This is from a report on conditions in the prison from one Confederate Captain Walter Bowie (he knows Major Tom’s a junkie):

‘On the inside of the stockade and twenty feet from it there is a dead-line established, over which no prisoner is allowed to go, day or night, under penalty of being shot.’

Just to show you how awful Andersonville was, it was only open for just over a year, yet nearly 13,000 of the 45,000 prisoners of war died from lovely things like scurvy, diarrhoea and dysentery. This was probably due to the fact that it was overcrowded by four times its capacity. After the war ended in 1865, Captain Henry Wirtz, the camp’s commandant, was hanged for war crimes.

(By John L. Ransom – this image is available from the United States Library of Congress’ prints and photographs division under the digital ID pga.02585.)

So how did the meaning change to the less-shooty version we have today? Well, no one knows for sure, but it may well have been influenced by its use to describe a guideline on the bed of a printing press, after which the text wouldn’t print properly. Whatever the route, by the early 1900s people started using the word ‘deadline’ to describe any line that shouldn’t be crossed, and from there it wasn’t long before it became a synonym (i.e. another word for) a time limit.

(With thanks to my dad for telling me about the origins of this word.)

A mug my parents bought me. Just for any potential clients reading this – I’ve actually never missed a deadline. HONEST.

avant-garde

This is ‘Fountain’ (1917) by Marcel Duchamp. Yup, it’s a urinal. With a signature on it.

If you’re avant-garde you’re usually an artist, intellectual or writer who experiments with work or ideas that challenges cultural norms (so it’s those pieces you see in galleries that make you say ‘I could knock that up at home’, which then go on to win the Turner Prize). But you knew all that already, right? The reason I’ve chosen it as the word of the week is because I found out its origins on this week’s Wittertainment podcast (which, considering it’s supposed to be about films, actually contains a surprising amount of etymology – see, for example, curfew, sabotage and egregious). And I had no idea how literal it is.

So, ‘avant-garde’ is French (naturellement), and translates literally as ‘advance guard’ (AKA ‘vanguard’). It was originally used by the French military to refer to a small group of soldiers that reconnoi… reconoi… reccono… scouted ahead of the main force. In the 19th century it became associated with left-wing French radicals campaigning for political reform. And from there it was then linked with the idea of art as a force for social change, eventually losing the association with left-wing social causes to become the term we know today.

One of the first artworks to be described as avant-garde was The Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer by Edgar Degas. Despite looking pretty inoffensive to us today, she caused an outcry when she was first exhibited in 1881. The public didn’t like how realistic she looked, or that she was a dancer – then considered a profession on a similar level to prostitution. Critics of the time described her as both ‘repulsive’ and ‘a threat to society’. I’d love to know what they would have made of Duchamp’s urinal.

David Bowie doing avant-garde like only David Bowie could

sanguine

This is one of those words that (to misquote The Princess Bride) doesn’t mean what I think it means. If you’re sanguine then you’re confidentally optimistic about something, or eagerly hopeful (I thought it meant you were resigned to something, which is entirely wrong). It also means ‘of or relating to blood’, and you can use it as an adjective to describe something that’s blood red. This second meaning makes sense when you know that the Latin word for blood is ‘sanguis’.

But how did a word that means ‘bloody’ also come to mean ‘optimistic’? Well, during the Middle Ages people believed that the human body contained four different liquids. These were called humours, and they were:

(Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash.)

• phlegm

• black bile (also called ‘melancholy’)

• yellow bile

• blood.

The key to perfect health was to have all these humours balanced. But, everyone had one that dominated. So people who were solid, calm and unemotional were thought to have too much phlegm going on – which is where we get the word ‘phlegmatic’. Too much black or yellow bile meant you were bilious i.e. bad tempered. Blood was the best of the humours to be dominated by – these people were strong, confident and courageous. In short, sanguine.

As medical science advanced and germ theory came to the fore, the idea of humours slowly disappeared. But the words attached to them have stayed with us.

We get a few other bloody words from the same roots as ‘sanguine’ which you may or may not have heard of. These include:

• ‘sanguineous’ meaning ‘bloodthirsty’

• ‘consanguineous’ which means ‘descended from the same ancestor’

• exsanguination, which is what vampires do i.e. drain your blood

• sanguinary which means ‘murderous’ or ‘bloody’

• sanguinolent which is an adjective meaning something is ‘tinged with blood’.

(Thanks to my friend Rob Frankson for giving me the idea for this.)

The four humours in action – which one are you?

(Image from Wikipedia)

eavesdrop

As you’ll no doubt already know, to eavesdrop is to listen in to someone else’s convo without them knowing. But have you ever wondered what it has to do with ‘eaves’ and/or dropping stuff? Well, luckily I’m here to tell you, whether you want me to or not.

So, back in the day, ‘eavesdrop’ didn’t actually have anything to do with listening. It was actually much more literal, and referred to the water that fell from the eaves of a building (i.e. the edges of a roof which overhang the walls). The meaning then changed to refer to the ground where that water fell. In fact, there was an ancient law that meant when you were building your house you had to leave at least two feet between the edge of your eaves and your neighbour’s boundary. This was to make sure that any water dripping from your eaves stayed on your own land, thank you very much. There was even a legal term called ‘right of drip’ which entitled someone’s eaves to drip on their neighbour’s land (which sounds like a euphemism but isn’t). Eventually ‘eavesdrop’ morphed into a word describing people hanging around in that space under the eaves, listening in to conversations they shouldn’t be.

The original word ‘eavesdrop’ comes from an Old English word which goes all the way back to the ninth century. It has the fantastic spelling of ‘yfesdrype’ (and if you know how to pronounce that, will you marry me?).

Eavesdropping is a central plot point in a lot of well-known novels and stories. Here are some examples (SPOILER ALERTS):

A painting of some cardinals eavesdropping in the Vatican, by Henri Adolphe Laissement (that one in purple by the door is definitely telling the others to shut the fuck up).

• the entire plot of What Maisie Knew by Henry James (which I wrote an essay on at university but never actually read) revolves around a child, the eponymous Maisie, overhearing various salacious details of her divorced parents’ love lives (I think – like I said, I never actually finished it)

• Polonius gets stabbed in the arras while eavesdropping on Hamlet in, you’ve guessed it, Hamlet

• the unending misery that is Atonement by Ian McEwan is all kicked off by a child overhearing what she thinks is a rape

• all of Pride and Prejudice, and also Bridget Jones’ Diary, is centred on Lizzy Bennet/Bridget overhearing Colin Firth slagging her off.

cobweb

Obviously you know what a cobweb is (AKA things I constantly have on my car’s wing mirrors – how do the spiders stay in there?) But have you ever wondered where the ‘cob’ bit came from? Somewhat disappointingly, ‘cob’ is just an olde-worlde (Middle-English if you want actual facts) word for ‘spider’. It comes from the Old English word for spider which was atorcoppe – ‘ator’ meaning ‘poison’ and ‘coppe’ meaning ‘head’ – apparently those Old English types thought spiders were poisonous which, as far as I can work out, they never have been in the UK.

From ‘atorcoppe’ we got ‘coppeweb’ and then ‘cobweb’. While we’ve stopped calling spiders themselves ‘cobs’ (although J.R.R. Tolkien used it and ‘attorcoppe’ in The Hobbit in 1937), we’ve kept it when talking about their homes – although it might be something that dies out soon as the more pedestrian ‘spider’s web’ becomes more common.

Oh, and an old (from the 1670s) Norfolk term for a misty morning was a ‘cobweb-morning’. Nice, right?

Okay, spider facts. The biggest species of spider in the world is the Goliath birdeater. Despite its name, it very rarely preys on birds (thank god), preferring insects, worms and amphibians. It’s part of the tarantula family and can have a legspan up to 30 cm, a body length of up to 13 cm and weigh up to 175g. Yikes. The good news is that unless you’re in northern South America, you’re unlikely to come across a Goliath birdeater in your day-to-day doings. If you are there, you might also find one on a menu – they’re edible spiders and apparently taste like ‘shrimp’. Think I’ll pass, thanks.

(If you’re feeling brave, do a Google image search for ‘largest spider crab’. If the results don’t give you a little shiver then you’re a better person than me.)

cupidity

Photo by Christopher Beloch on Unsplash.

The ‘cupid’ bit of this has probably given you a clue as to the meaning. And while it does relate to the chubby Roman god of sexy times, it’s a bit darker than that. If you’re suffering from cupidity then you have a very strong desire for something, usually wealth or possessions. The word’s been around in English since the 15th century, and comes from the Latin ‘cupere’ which means ‘to desire’.

Cupid facts: The Roman god of love started out in classical myth as a slender youth, but for reasons best known to themselves (maybe because when you’re in a new relationship you always get a bit fat?) painters during the Hellenistic period (323 BC to 31 BC – but I’m sure you already know that, clever reader) made him increasingly chubbier until he became the lard-arse with a bow and arrow we see today. He’s the son of Venus (goddess of love – yay!) and Mars (god of war – boo!). According to the usual in-depth research I did (which just means I read the Wikipedia page on Cupid), Isidore of Seville (a Spanish scholar and cleric born in the year 560), Cupid is depicted with wings because lovers are ‘flighty and likely to change their minds’, he’s a young boy because love is ‘irrational’, and he has a bow, arrows and a torch (I assume not the battery-powered kind) because love ‘wounds and inflames the heart’. Sounds to me like Isidore hadn’t been having much luck with the ladies (or the gents – no heteronormativity here) when he wrote that.

borborygmus

Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash.

Now unless you’re a medical professional, or a big old know-it-all, then chances are you haven’t come across this word before. But I can almost certainly guarantee that it’s happened to you before. Because borborygmus is the technical term for when your stomach rumbles.

Etymologically speaking, the term ‘borborygmus’ has been around a long time – since 1724 to be very specific. It comes from the Greek word borboryzein which means, unsurprisingly, ‘to rumble’. The nice thing about it is that people think that it’s probably onomatopoeic. Go on, say it out loud. Sounds a bit like a stomach gurgle, right?

Borborygmus isn’t entirely confined to medical circles. It sometimes turns up as an adjective – borborygmic – generally used to describe noisy plumbing. Vladimir Nabokov (yes, he of pervy ‘Lolita’ fame) used it in his lesser-known (to me at least) novel ‘Ada’ (which, it turns out, is also pervy, this time in an incest-y way):

“All the toilets and waterpipes in the house had been suddenly seized with borborygmic convulsions.”

Borborygmus facts: The sound your stomach makes when it rumbles actually comes from your small intestine – the noise is produced by muscle contractions (or peristalsis), as food moves through it.