parchment

You know what parchment is – ye olde paper, usually made from some poor old animal’s skin. But did you know it’s named for a city? OOH.

The word ‘parchment’ comes from a Latin word, ‘pergamenum’. This is derived from ‘Pergamon’, the name of an ancient city in Asia Minor (now Turkey), which was renowned for producing top-notch parchment back in the day.

Parchment was big business. That’s because it lasted longer and was easier to make than papyrus – the papyrus plant was primarily grown in Egypt and other regions with similar climates, making it difficult to get anywhere else. That meant parchment would take over as the preferred writing material in Europe during the Middle Ages, and remain in use for centuries afterwards.

‘Reconstructed’ (which I assume means ‘made up’) view of the Pergamon Acropolis by Friedrich Thierch, 1882

Pergamon was the capital of the Kingdom of Pergamon, which was founded in the 3rd century BCE by the Attalid dynasty. The Attalid guys loved a bit of art and science, and Pergamon was a cosmopolitan city that attracted scholars, artists and intellectuals from all over the Mediterranean. It was also home to a famous library that rivalled the Library of Alexandria in Egypt (which was mahoosive), being home to at least 200,000 scrolls.

(In the interests of being a little bit historically accurate – although that’s not something the normally stops me – parchment had been used in Asia Minor long before Pergamon became a major city. Not sure what they called it though…?)

Sadly Pergamon didn’t survive, and by medieval times was no longer a major city. The good news is that it’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and you can even go and tourist there next time you’re in Turkey.

eclipse

On Monday (8th April), there was a total solar eclipse. Sadly you could only see this if you were in North America – here in the UK it was only a partial (described as a ‘small grazing’ on one website I saw). I didn’t manage to see any of it, but it did get me wondering – where does the word ‘eclipse’ come from?

These days, ‘eclipse’ refers to the partial or complete obscuring of one celestial body by another, or the shadow cast by one celestial body on to another. We also use it metaphorically to describe someone or something being overshadowed by something else.

‘Eclipse’ comes from ancient Greek, from ‘ekleipsis’, meaning ‘an abandonment’ or ‘a failing’, to reflect those poor old ancient Greekies being abandoned or failed by the sun or moon. Over time, the word was adopted into Latin as ‘eclipsis’, then into Old French as ‘eclipse’, before finally making it to Middle English as, you’ve guessed it, ‘eclipse’.

Eclipses have long been viewed with some superstition, and there have been various odd things that have happened during them. Here are just a few.

• The Battle of the Eclipse (585 BCE): One of the earliest recorded instances of an eclipse influencing human affairs happened during this battle between the Lydians and the Medes in what’s now Turkey. According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, there was a total solar eclipse in the middle of the fighting, which both sides took as a sign to stop battling and make peace. So that’s nice. On the flipside, during the Battle of Muye (c. 1046 BCE) in ancient China, a total solar eclipse terrified the soldiers, causing panic on both sides. It’s thought that one side (the Zhou) used this to their advantage to boost morale, claiming it was some sort of divine favour, and went on to defeat the Shang dynasty.

• The death of Henry I (1133): The OG Hazza died from eating a shitload of lampreys, a type of jawless fish (yum), during a feast. His death also coincided with a total solar eclipse which many people took as a portent of his impending demise, or as a sign of divine displeasure at all those poor fish he ate.

• The New Madrid Earthquakes (1811–1812): This was a series of powerful earthquakes – in fact, some of the most powerful ever recorded in the contiguous United States (I had to look up what that means – it’s all the states that are connected to each other, i.e. the 48 adjoining states on the North American continent – so it doesn’t include Alaska and Hawaii). The earthquakes happened during a time of heightened celestial activity, including multiple solar and lunar eclipses. There’s no scientific connection here but it must have brown trousers all round for anyone in the middle of them.

bellwether

A bellwether is ‘an indicator of trends’. Here’s a very egotistical (and patently untrue) example:

‘Emma’s family and friends often look to her as a bellwether of fashion.’

Bellwether can also mean ‘one that takes the lead or initiative’, which is also not true of my fashion sense.

Nowadays you’re most likely to see the word ‘bellwether’ in political or economic commentary. Here’s an actual example from the Washington Post:

‘Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain and considered a bellwether for the industry, is just the latest to shake up its print offerings.’

So what do trendsetters have to do with bells or, indeed, wethers? Well, to answer that, please come with me to… a sheep farm.

All flocks of sheep have a leader. And shepherds and farmers have traditionally hung a, you’ve guessed it, bell around the top sheep’s neck. A ‘wether’ is a word for a male sheep (nowadays the term specifically means a castrated male sheep) – so the leading sheep is called a ‘bellwether’.

This term for the sheep prime minister has been around since the 15th century. And over time we started to use it to refer to anyone who’s the leader of the pack (or flock), who takes initiative or who establishes trends that are then taken up by others.

If you’re wondering how the sheep choose their leader, they either do that themselves, by letting the most dominant one take the lead, or the farmer does it for them. Why does the farmer want to rig the sheep election? Well, they might do this because one sheep is particularly good at navigating obstacles or familiar with the terrain, and can therefore keep the rest of the sheep on the straight and narrow. Who knew? (Well, all the sheep farmers, obviously.)

mundivagant

This is a lovely old word which has now sadly all but disappeared. It’s an adjective (AKA a describing word) which means ‘wandering through the world’. It has Latin roots and comes from ‘mundus’ meaning ‘world’, and ‘vagant’ meaning, you’ve guessed it, ‘wandering’ or ‘roaming’.

While you’re being mundivagant, you can also be a solivagant (this one’s a noun – and former word of the week – not an adjective, so it needs an indefinite article i.e. the ‘a’ before it). That means you like to wander on your own – ‘soli’ being Latin for ‘alone’ or ‘solitary’. And if you only want to do it at night, then you’re ‘noctivagant’ (this one’s an adjective again), ‘nox’ being ‘night’ in Latin. Although being a noctivagant solivagant might make you look a bit creepy…

Diogenes no-longer-of-Sinope-because-he-was-a-big-old-fraud (dunno who the dog was)

The ‘vagant’ bit of these words is also where we get the less-romantic word, ‘vagrant’. Nowadays ‘vagrant’ has quite negative connotations and we usually use it to describe people who’ve ended up on the streets. But it wasn’t always that way. Diogenes of Sinope was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived in the 4th century BCE, and was often referred to as a ‘vagrant philosopher’. He lived in a jar (yes, you did read that right – it was a very big jar, obviously) and survived by begging for food. He used this simple lifestyle and behaviour to criticise the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt, confused society.

This is all well and good until you find out that Diogenes’ dad, Hicesias, was a banker, and it was likely he followed in his father’s footsteps. At some point, Hicesias and Diogenes were involved in a scandal involving adulterating or debasing currency (that’s when you lower the value of coins by reducing the quantity of gold, silver or nickel in them, but continue to say they’re worth the same amount). Because of that Diogenes was exiled from Sinope, and lost his citizenship and all his possessions. Hmmm, that makes the mundivagant lifestyle a little bit less of a philosophical choice and more of a necessity, doesn’t it, Diogenes…?

marionette

It’s World Puppetry Day today, which is organised by the Union Internationale de la Marionnette (UNIMA). So that’s why I’ve chosen ‘marionette’ as this week’s WOTW (as no one calls it).

A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings (so other types of puppets like ventriloquists’ dummies or Sooty aren’t marionettes – except in France, where it refers to any type of puppet). As you can probably guess from the spelling, the word ‘marionette’ comes from French. For some reason we lost an ‘n’ when it came into English, as the OG French term was ‘marionnette’. That comes from an Old French word, ‘marion’, which means ‘little Mary’. This is likely because the earliest marionettes were used to depict biblical events, in which the Virgin Mary was a big star.

How much is that scary puppet in the window?

Puppetry has been around for bloody ages, and some historians claim they actually predate actors in the theatre. In fact, there’s evidence of string operated puppets as far back as 2000 BC in Egypt. But who cares about that when we can talk about HAUNTED PUPPETS?

In 2015 paranormal investigator Jayne Harris filmed a supposedly haunted puppet every night for three months using a timed night vision camera. She was called in after its previous owner, who inherited it from his late father, claimed it tried to CHOKE HIM TO DEATH in the middle of the night. You can read more and see the (slightly underwhelming) video footage in this article.

If that doesn’t convince you, what about Mr Fritz, a disembodied ventriloquist doll’s head, which was caught on camera BLINKING in the middle of the night. Mr Fritz was made by a prisoner at the World War II Stalag II-B concentration camp. His new owner noticed that the door to the case the head was stored in kept opening over night, so he set up a camera to see what was going on. You can see the footage of the blinks in this article (my apologies that it’s from the Daily Mail). HIS LIPS BLOODY MOVE TOO.

Sleep well tonight…

anodyne

Someone said this to me on the phone the other day, and I realised I didn’t know what it meant (look, I don’t know ALL the words, guys). If you already know what it means, well done you. If not, we mainly use anodyne as an adjective (AKA a describing word) to refer to something that’s unlikely to offend or cause discomfort. So basically something that’s a bit meh. We also use anodyne as a noun (person, place or thing) for a medicine or substance that relieves pain.

Anodyne has been around in English since the 16th century. We nicked it from the Latin word ‘anodynos’ which is itself derived from the Greek word ‘anōdunos’. Both of these mean ‘painless’ or ‘free from pain’. So that’s where the literal meaning for painkiller comes from. And over time ‘anodyne’ has evolved a more figurative meaning for something that’s very middle of the road and doesn’t cause any upset.

A painkiller that certainly isn’t anodyne is general anaesthetic, which knocks you out for operations or if you’re trying to get BA Baracus on a plane*. But did you know that, even though we’ve been using them for hundreds of years, no one actually knows how general anaesthetics work? Scientists have worked out that they put you to sleep by reducing communication between your brain cells, but that’s pretty much all they know. That’s not at all scary. And my apologies if you have any kind of procedure coming up and didn’t know that.

*Dated reference.

haggard

Today we use the word ‘haggard’ to describe someone who looks like crap, usually because they’re sick, under some sort of emotional strain or incredibly hungover. But it didn’t always mean that.

‘Haggard’ has its roots in falconry. In case you’re not familiar with that, falconry, also known as hawking, is a traditional practice of hunting with trained birds of prey, usually falcons, hawks or eagles. It dates back over 4,000 years and has been practised by various cultures around the world, including ancient Mesopotamia, China, Egypt and medieval Europe.

While the relationship between the falconer and the bird is built on trust and respect, traditionally these birds weren’t bred in captivity – they were either taken from the nest when very young or trapped as adults. And that’s where our word comes in. A bird trapped as an adult was called a ‘haggard’, from the Middle French word ‘hagard’, meaning ‘wild’ or ‘untamed’. Over time, the meaning of ‘haggard’ has evolved to describe someone who looks exhausted, or wild and unkempt due to fatigue or stress.

In 2010, UNESCO recognised falconry as an ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’ which acknowledges its cultural significance. These days it’s still practiced as both a sport and a conservation tool, and also to control pest birds and animals in urban areas. It’s also very well regulated to make sure the birds are treated ethically and that wild populations aren’t affected.

(The return of the goshawk as a breeding bird to Britain is due in large part to these birds escaping from falconers – the previous population was wiped out by gamekeepers and egg collectors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.)

We get a few other words and phrases from falconry too:

• lure – from a device used to recall hawks

• rouse – this used to mean ‘to shake one’s feathers’, although we now use it for waking up

• pounce – previously this referred to a hawk’s claws, then to birds springing or swooping to catch prey

• to turn tail – AKA to fly away.

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.

myriad

I once got told off by a client for writing ‘a myriad of XXX’. She said that it should be simply ‘myriad’ whatever it was, because ‘myriad’ is only an adjective (a describing word), not a noun (a person, place or thing). Because I only remember the mean things people say to me, many years later I’ve finally googled this, and it turns out she was WRONG. And in this post I’m going to tell you why. (She’s not a client anymore. Not because of that. Honest.)

Before we get into that, let’s talk about what ‘myriad’ means (although I’m sure you know that already, clever reader). As an adjective – as in ‘he has myriad issues’ – it means ‘innumerable’ i.e. too many to be numbered AKA a buttload. As a noun – as in ‘he has a myriad of issues’ – it means either a buttload again or, specifically 10,000. Why 10,000? Well, in ancient Greek, the word for 10,000 was μυριάς, which was pronounced ‘myrias’. Over time this word evolved and was used more broadly to talk about the concept of a vast or countless number. We then started using it figuratively to describe an indefinitely large quantity or multitude. It was adopted into English as ‘myriad’ in the mid-1500s.

A myriad of bottles

So why was that client so insistent that it was only an adjective? Well, apparently lots of folks were taught this at school. But much like ‘you can’t start a sentence with “and” or “but”’, and ‘you can’t end a sentence with a conjunction’, this is another ‘rule’ that has absolutely no basis in fact. When ‘myriad’ appeared in the English language in the mid-1500s it was as a noun, not an adjective. And it went on to appear as such in works by writers including Milton, Thoreau and Twain – and they did alright with the words. ‘Myriad’ as an adjective didn’t actually appear until 200 years later. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it, client.

Petty, moi?

cretin

Before we get into this, it goes without saying that ‘cretin’ is a horrible word used to describe someone who’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic (which also isn’t a very nice phrase, sorry). So I’m definitely not encouraging you to say it to anyone. But it does have an interesting backstory, which is why it’s the word of the week. Which for this week, I’m renaming the problematic word of the week.

So, what’s that interesting backstory? Well, ‘cretin’ comes from ‘cretinism’, is a form of severe congenital hypothyroidism which means babies with the condition have a deficiency of thyroid hormones when they’re in the womb (thyroid hormones are crucial for proper physical and mental development), often caused by a lack of iodine – in fact, these days the condition is known as congenital iodine deficiency syndrome. Cretinism typically stunts these people’s physical and intellectual growth, as well giving them various other health issues. (That’s not the interesting bit, that’s just depressing.)

Cretinism was particularly prevalent in the French Alps due to several factors, one of which was a lack of iodine-rich foods – and that’s where the name came from. Its origins lie in the French word ‘chrétien’, which actually means ‘Christian’. They called it this as a reminder that, despite their mental and physical issues, people suffering from this condition were still humans, and should be treated with dignity and respect. Aw.

I should probably just end this here, but in reality, that’s only a theory as to the etymology of ‘cretin’. The other, not so kind, ones are:

• it describes these people’s ‘Christ-like’ inability to sin because they can’t recognise the difference between right and wrong

• it’s from ‘creta’, Latin for chalk, because people with the condition were pale

• it’s from ‘cretira’, the Romansh word for ‘creature’ (Romansh is a language spoken in the Swiss Canton of the Grisons (Graubünden))

• it’s from ‘cretine’ which is French for ‘alluvium’ (soil deposited by flowing water). This is a reference the condition's suspected origin in crappy soil.

Whatever the answer, don’t say ‘cretin’, kids. And if someone calls you one, please send them to this post.

barbarian

You know what a barbarian is – someone who pillages villages (and other places that don’t rhyme). The word has an origin that you might not know though. It comes from ancient Greece where the term ‘barboros’ was used to refer to any non-Greek-speaking bunch of people, or anyone those high-falutin’ Greeks thought inferior. ‘Barboros’ is literally based on the sound ‘bar-bar’ which is the Greeks taking the piss out of other languages by imitating what sounded like gibberish to them. I imagine it was probably accompanied by a ‘blah-blah-blah’ hand gesture as well.

Over time, the term ‘barbarian’ evolved to cover not only linguistic differences, but also cultural, social and perceived intellectual disparities between the Greeks and everyone else. It wasn’t long before the Romans picked up on the term, using it to describe non-Romans, particularly those outside the Roman Empire.

My favourite historical barbarians are the Vandals, a Germanic tribe who played a big part in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Believed to have originated from the area around modern-day Poland and Ukraine, in the early 5th century AD they established a powerful kingdom in North Africa. They also formed alliances with other groups, including the Alans, an Iranian nomadic tribe with the best name ever.

In 455AD, under the rule of King Genseric, the Vandals invaded Rome. There’s a story that they ended up in the imperial wine cellars. Instead of looting them as they were supposed to do, they decided to have themselves a little tipple. As anyone who’s gone to the pub after work for ‘just one drink’ has experienced, this ended up in a raucous party that including parading around the city streets wearing posh Roman clothes, and even crowning one of their own as the ‘Vandal King of Rome’. We’ve all been there.

Although the Vandals sacking of Rome wasn’t as devastating as earlier barbarian invasions (like the one by the Visigoths in 410AD), it did show the rest of the world that the Empire was in trouble. Combined with their conquest of North Africa (an important source of grain and revenue for the Romans), the Vandals were the beginning of the end for the Romans.

Despite this, the Vandal kingdom in North Africa didn’t last an awful lot longer. It fell in 534AD when the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I got the better of our tribe in the Vandalic War. Their most enduring legacy is probably (as I imagine you’ve guessed) the word ‘vandalism’, which is based on their reputation for looting and generally making a big old mess.

gaslight

When you gaslight someone (which hopefully you never do), you manipulate them psychologically. And not in a good way. Gaslighting is generally recognised as a dripfeeding of doubts that make someone question their memory, perception or sanity, and undermine their confidence. It’s often applied to men manipulating women, but it’s also used in lots of different contexts including work and politics.

The term ‘gaslighting’ feels fairly modern which it sort of is, depending on your definition of ‘modern’. It comes from a 1938 thriller play called, unsurprisingly, ‘Gas Light’ (it’s known as ‘Angel Street’ in the United States) by British playwright Patrick Hamilton. Set in the 1880s in a fog-bound London, ‘Gas Light’ tells the story of Jack and Bella Manningham. It begins in late afternoon, a time described by Hamilton as ‘before the feeble dawn of gaslight and tea’. Bella is clearly anxious, made worse by her mean husband flirting with the servants in front of her, as well as disappearing from the house for long periods of time and refusing to say where he’s going. After a while it becomes clear that Jack is trying to convince Bella she’s going nuts. One of the many small things he does to convince her she’s losing it is by denying that the gaslights that illuminate their home are dimming and flickering (even though they clearly are). In 1961, 23 years after the play was written, a psychiatrist and author called Dr Theodore Sarbin verbed that noun (more on that later) and coined ‘gaslighting’ as a description of a form of psychological manipulation in which someone undermines another person’s perception of reality.

If you don’t want to know what happens in the rest of the play, stop reading now as spoilers follow…

As well as the gaslights dimming, Bella also hears footsteps from the supposedly empty apartment above theirs – another thing Jack convinces her is in her head. Bella then meets Rough, an unfortunately named police detective. He’s investigating the murder of a wealthy woman called Alice Barlow who lived in the now-empty apartment above them. The murderer was never found, and neither were Alice’s jewels. It turns out that Jack has been going to her flat each night to search for the missing jewels – so it’s his footsteps Bella has been hearing. As well as that, when he lights that apartment’s gas lights it causes them to dim in the rest of the building, which is what Bella has also seen. Rough convinces Bella to help him expose Jack as the murderer. Bella offers to help Jack escape. Damn. But then, at the last minute, she reminds him she’s insane, which means she’s not accountable for her actions. The play ends with Jack being led away by the police. Yay!

‘Gas Light’ was made into a few films, the most famous of which is probably the 1944 Hollywood MGM version starring Ingrid Bergman (renamed ‘The Murder in Thornton Square’ in the UK – it also starred prolific serial killer Angela Lansbury* in her film debut). There’s also a great British version from 1940. We’re lucky to have that version at all – when MGM bought the remake rights they put a clause in the contract insisting that all prints of it be destroyed, including the negative, so it couldn’t compete with their version. Fortunately they failed, which is great for us as Time Out described it as:

‘Nothing like as lavish as the later MGM version ... But in its own small-scale way a superior film by far. Lurking menace hangs in the air like a fog, the atmosphere is electric, and [lead actress] Wynyard suffers exquisitely as she struggles to keep dementia at bay.’

You can watch the fully restored version of this film for free on YouTube.

Changing a noun like ‘gaslight’ to a verb (i.e. by adding ‘ing’) is called, rather unimaginatively, ‘verbing’ or ‘verbification’. Lots of people get cross about verbification, as it means we end up with horrible things like ‘to podium’ in sport (YUCK YUCK YUCK). But verbification has been going on forever, and is in fact where we get lots of verbs we use all the time now, including ‘access’ (as in ‘access a file’), ‘chair’ (as in ‘chair a meeting’), ‘host’ (as in ‘host a party’) and loads of others – like ‘email’, ‘strike’, ‘salt’, ‘switch’, ‘sleep’, ‘ship’, ‘train’, ‘stop’, ‘drink’, ‘cup’, ‘lure’, ‘mutter’, ‘dress’, ‘divorce’, ‘fool’ and ‘merge’, to name just a few stolen from Wikipedia.

*This is a joke about ‘Murder She Wrote’. Angela Lansbury was not, at least as far as I know, a serial killer, prolific or otherwise.

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.

serendipity

Despite being the title of a frankly terrible film starring Kate Beckinsale (sorry Kate, I love you and your Instagram feed), serendipity is a lovely word. It’s a noun (i.e. a person, place or thing) used to describe unexpectedly finding something nice (or John Cusack) when you weren’t looking for it. Serendipity as a word hasn’t actually been around all that long – it was coined in the middle of the 18th century by English writer and politician Horace Walpole (1717–1797) – his most famous work is probably The Castle of Otranto, the OG Gothic novel. Walpole used ‘serendipity’ in a letter to another Horace (Mann) to describe an unexpected discovery he’d made of a lost painting. He took the word from a Persian fairy tale called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’ (Serendip is an ancient name for Sri Lanka). In the story, our three princes are sent on a journey by their father to get some wisdom and experience before they inherit his throne. Along the way they encounter various challenges, lots of which they overcome with a knack for making fortunate discoveries through chance occurrences – AKA serendipity.

There are lots of famous examples of serendipity throughout history, many of which have had a pretty major effect on us humans. Here are a few of them:

• in 1928, Scottish biologist and pharmacologist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin after noticing that a particular mould stopped the growth of bacteria in a petri dish – without that we wouldn’t have one of the world’s most widely used antibiotics

• 3M employee Spencer Silver tried to create a strong adhesive in 1968 but failed, ending up with a barely sticky one instead. A few years later, his colleague Arthur Fry used it to create Post-it Notes, now the bane of many an office worker’s life

• in the 1930s, a chef called Ruth Wakefield was making chocolate cookies and ran out of baker’s chocolate. She added broken pieces of Nestle chocolate instead, thinking it would melt and spread. Instead, she created the world’s first chocolate chip cookies. Well done, Ruth

• in 1945 an engineer called Percy Spencer was working on radar equipment when he noticed that the emissions from it melted a chocolate bar in his pocket. This discovery eventually led to the invention of the microwave oven

• in the 90s, Pfizer developed a new medication for angina. But researchers noticed it had an unexpected side effect… erections! Men (and women) all over the world rejoiced as this serendipitous event led to Viagra.

There have been a couple of attempts to come up with an antonym (i.e. an opposite) for serendipity. A Scottish novelist called William Boyd coined the term ‘zemblanity’ in the late 20th century to mean ‘making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries occurring by design’. No one’s entirely sure what the etymology was, but it’s possibly from Nova Zembla, a corruption of ‘Novaya Zemlya’, a barren archipelago that was once the site of Russian nuclear testing. So that’s cheery. I should’ve stopped at Viagra.

yule

‘Yule’ is a word that gets thrown around a lot at this time of year, mainly in terrible puns like ‘yule love our Christmas discounts!’. But how many of us know what it actually is?

Like a lot of stuff to do with Christianity, yule has its roots in paganism. It’s still with us thanks to a process called ‘Christianised reformulation’ (a fancy name for the way Christianity nicked certain traditions and symbols from pre- or non-Christian cultures as a way to ease conversion). In this case, yule comes from the word jól, a shortened version of Jólablot, the name of a Norse midwinter feast. This took place in the 12 days leading up to 25 December, and celebrated the change of the seasons. We added the word jól to Old English as ġéol, which morphed into ‘yule’ some time in the middle of the 1400s. It also made its way into Old French as ‘jolif’, which is where we get ‘jolly’ from.

You might well have heard of the yule log, which I totally thought was only a cake, but is in fact, an actual log (there is a cake version too – called a Bûche de Noël – but the woody version came first). Lighting the yule log was another pagan tradition, and a symbol of the sun’s return after the winter solstice. People believed that doing this would protect their homes from fire and lightning during the coming year. In some cultures, families kept the remaining burned log underneath the homeowner’s bed (which seems like a great way to start a fire in your home, but whatever). Once lit, the yule log had to burn for 12 days to get the luck. You also had to find your Yule log yourself – buying one from the log shop was considered bad luck.

Yule is also connected to the myth of the wild hunt, a spectral hunting party said to pass through forests at the coldest, stormiest time of the year (AKA Christmas time). Anyone unfortunate enough to be outdoors when the hunt passed by would be swept up into the hunting party then dropped miles from where they started. While the members of the wild hunt vary, it’s almost always led by Odin, the head of the Norse gods (Anthony Hopkins in the Thor films). He’s also known as Jólnir or Jauloherra, which translates as ‘Master of Yule’.

Here’s one last yule-based myth, which I think is my favourite. The Yule Lads are a group of mischievous beings from Icelandic folklore, similar to elves or dwarves, who visit children on the 13 nights leading up to Christmas. They’re the sons of Gryla, an ogress, and her husband Leppalúði. Gryla is said to kidnap and eat children who misbehave, so you don’t want to mess with her.

Each Yule Lad has his own weird personality and behaviour (some might say fetish). Here are a few of the best – or worst, depending on how you feel about sheep harassment and crockery/cutlery licking:

• Stekkjastaur: harasses sheep but is hampered by stiff legs, dammit

• Þvörusleikir: his name literally means ‘spoon licker’ and he steals wooden spoons to lick – there’s also Askasleikir which translates as ‘bowl licker’. You can probably guess what he does

• Hurdaskellir: slams doors in the night

• Bjúgnakrækir: steals sausages

• Gáttaþefur: means ‘door sniffer’.

Icelandic children leave their shoes on windowsills during the 13 nights of Christmas for the Yule Lads to give them small gifts or treats – but only if they’re well behaved. Get on the Yule Lads’ naughty list and you might end up with a potato in that shoe. Although we are in a cost-of-living crisis, so a few potatoes might come in handy just before Crimbo…

monster

You know what a monster is – a large, frightening, usually imaginary (although there are plenty of real-life monsters, sadly) creature that’s generally trying to hurt or kill someone or something. But have you ever wondered where the word ‘monster’ came from?

‘Monster’ is a pretty old word, first appearing in the English language somewhere between 1000 and 1200 AD, when Willy the Conk invaded England and brought the French language with him (from which we borrowed lots of words, especially legal ones). The particular French word we’re interested in here is ‘monstre’. It comes from the Latin word ‘monstrum’, the past participle of ‘monere’, meaning ‘to warn’. So how did that turn into the gruesome noun we know today? Well, in ancient Rome ‘monstrum’ was used to describe anything strange or grotesque that could be seen as a warning from the gods or a bad omen – like a two-headed calf, for example. Over time the term evolved to cover anything a bit scary and/or weird.

One of the most famous monsters in my neck of the woods is probably Black Shuck, a ghostly black dog said to silently prowl the dark country lanes and coastal footpaths of East Anglia (and one of several black dog myths found all over the UK). Black Shuck is sometimes seen as an omen of death, but is also described as being quite friendly. Its size varies from that of a large dog to a horse. Black Shuck was first described in print by one Reverend ES Taylor in an 1850 edition of a journal called ‘Notes and Queries’ as ‘Shuck the Dog-fiend’. He said:

‘This phantom I have heard many persons in East Norfolk, and even Cambridgeshire, describe as having seen as a black shaggy dog, with fiery eyes and of immense size, and who visits churchyards at midnight.’

According to the OED, the name Shuck comes from the Old English word ‘scucca’, meaning 'devil’ or ‘fiend’.

One of the most famous reports of Black Shuck is of its appearance at the churches of Bungay and Blythburgh in Suffolk. On 4 August 1577, Black Shuck is said to have burst through the doors of the Blythburgh Holy Trinity Church accompanied by a clap of thunder. It ran up the nave, killed a man and boy in the congregation and somehow caused the church steeple to collapse through the roof. It left via the north door leaving scorch marks, which you can still see to this day. It also later appeared in St Mary’s Church in Bungay on the same day, which was recorded in ‘A Straunge and Terrible Wunder’ by Abraham Fleming:

Suffolk’s finest rockers The Darkness wrote a pretty awesome song about Black Shuck (which also mentions Blythburgh) on their 2003 album ‘Permission to Land’, which you can listen to below.

rebarbative

‘Rebarbative’ is an adjective (AKA a describing word) you can use for someone (or something) that’s repellent, irritating or unattractive. And as they probably won’t know what it means, they won’t realise you’re insulting them. Winner winner chicken dinner.

‘rebarbative’ is a word of two halves, It comes from the Latin word ‘rebarbare’, which is made up of ‘re-’ meaning ‘against’, and ‘barba’ which means ‘beard’ or ‘hair’. Why is it hairy? Well, rebarbative was originally used to refer to something that was so horrible it caused your hair to stand on end. Like spiders. Or Donald Trump.

The record for the world’s longest beard is currently held by one Hans Langseth, even though Hans is no longer with us. He was a Norwegian-American who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his beard was a whopping 17.5 feet (approximately 5.33 meters) long. I realised when I googled Hans that I’d already written about him for former word of the week pognophile, so head to that post if you’d like to know more about him.

Growing your beard super long can be a hazardous business. In 1567, another man called Hans died when he tripped over his own beard. Hans Steininger, or Staininger depending on which page of the internet you look at, was the burgomaster (i.e. head honcho, or mayor) of Branau, a town then in Bavaria but now in Austria. He usually kept his beard, which was 4.5 feet (1.4 metres) long at the time, rolled up and tied with a leather strap to keep it out of the way. But on that fateful day in 1567, he was responding to an emergency (possibly a fire) and forgot to roll it up and out of the way. When rushing down some stairs he fell over it and broke his neck. Poor old Hans.

aegis

I was watching an American medical drama called ‘New Amsterdam’ the other day (I love me an American medical drama – ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is my absolute fave). During a courtroom scene with a patient with some mental-health struggles, a judge said ‘I’m not willing to to release you into your own aegis’. My first thought was of course, ‘why not use a word that everyone can understand, silly legal person?’. And my second was, ‘I wonder where “aegis” comes from?’ Well, it turns out it has quite an interesting backstory.

In the context of the silly legal person, ‘aegis’ simply means ‘protection, sponsorship or support of a person, group or organisation’. Its other, much more fun, definition is ‘a shield or breastplate associated with Zeus and Athena’. And that’s where our etymology comes from.

In Greek mythology, aegises also included cloaks, and were often described as powerful and protective. Some of them featured the head of the Gorgon, she of the bad snake-hair day. The word itself comes from a noun, ‘aigis’, which means ‘goatskin’. This is probably just because cloaks were often made of goatskin, but it might (it probably isn’t TBH, but I wanted to tell this story) be something to do with the mythical goat Amalthea. Rhea, Zeus’ Ma, hid him in a cave to protect him from his father Cronus, who was a bit of a nutter known for eating his own children (someone call social services). Amalthea nursed (yep, fed) and cared for the infant Zeus in the cave. Hence, goats = protection.

Aegis made its way into English in the 18th century in the sense of those protective shields or cloaks. It later evolved into the idea of protection, sponsorship or support, and a silly legal term.

To say thanks for looking after him in that cave, Zeus later transformed one of Amalthea’s horns into the Cornucopia, or Horn of Plenty, which could provide an endless supply of food and drink. I’m not sure how this worked logistically – surely it would need to be detached from Amalthea’s head to provide all that chow? That doesn’t seem like much of a thank you.

Zeus – DTF

Zeus was also a bit of a dirty old (and young) man. One of his favourite things to do was to transform himself into something else to have sex with both mortals and immortals. This included transforming into a swan, a bull and a shower of gold. I’m definitely not going to try to work out the logistics of that…

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.

scion

I’ve recently been watching the show ‘A Discovery of Witches’ (based on the ‘All Souls Trilogy’ by Deborah Harkness) and in the third series the word ‘scion’ is used to describe a magical being born from unions (by which I mean sexy sex, tee hee) between witches, vampires, daemons and humans.

Scion also has a couple of rather more mundane definitions in the real world. The first one is a figurative one – it’s used to refer to a descendant, heir or offspring, especially in the context of a family or lineage. Usually a posh family or lineage. If you move in those types of circles then you might have heard the phrase ‘scion of a wealthy family’. Lucky you.

How do you like them apples?

The second explanation is a botanical one. In this context a scion refers to a shoot or twig that’s cut off and then grafted onto another plant. This all sounds a bit Frankenstein to me as a non-gardener (although I did grow two whole lettuces this summer), and allows horticulturists to combine the nice bits of two different plants into one. For example, they might graft a scion from a tree with yummers fruit onto a rootstock which has good disease resistance, or likes a certain type of soil (more on that in a minute).

‘Scion’ has its roots (geddit?) in Middle English and was borrowed from Anglo-French, which itself originated from continental Old French. The French term ‘cion’ meant ‘offspring’ or ‘new growth of a plant’, and came from a combination of a West Germanic root (again, sorry) meaning ‘sprout’ or ‘bud’. The horticultural meaning came first (in the 14th century), and the posh family meaning probably followed due to the metaphorical idea of a new growth or offshoot representing the continuation of a family or lineage.

Grafting scions is used for most commercially successful apples, because it’s basically impossible to grow a particular type of apple tree from a seed. So if you’re eating a Granny Smith and plant one of the seeds, you won’t get a Granny Smith tree. That’s because apple seeds are a result of sexual reproduction (tee hee again), meaning they inherit genetic material from both the mother tree (the apple variety you’ve just eaten) and a pollen source (which has to be a different apple tree). Apple trees also take bloody ages to grow. That makes grafting a scion from a mature, known tree onto a rootstock much quicker and more reliable, as it means the new tree will be genetically identical to the parent and have the same characteristics. So basically all the apples we eat are CLONES. Mind blown.