pia

My mum put this down in Words With Friends the other day, which prompted me to look it up as I’d only ever seen it as a woman’s name before and obviously proper nouns are NOT ALLOWED. Well, it turns out we all have a pia – it’s an anatomical term, the full version of which is ‘pia mater’. And it has quite an interesting backstory. (Disclaimer: I’m no biologist, so apologies if you are and I’ve got any of this wrong.)

The pia mater plays a vital role in keeping our central nervous systems healthy and functioning properly. It’s one of three meninges (sets of membranes that provide a protective covering) that surround and protect our brains and spinal cords. The other two are the dura mater and the arachnoid mater. The pia mater is the innermost layer that directly covers the surface of the brain and spinal cord. It’s a thin, transparent membrane that sticks closely to our brains’ contours, following the folds and grooves. It also surrounds the spinal cord.

The pia mater’s primary function is to support, protect and nourish the underlying neural tissues by carrying blood vessels that supply nutrients and oxygen to the brain and spinal cord. If you fall down a lot like I do, then you should be grateful to your pia mater, as it protects that brain and spinal cord from impacts.

We are of course here for the words, so why is it called a pia mater? If you did any Latin in school then you might be ahead of me here – it translates to ‘tender’ or ‘gentle’ ‘mother’ (the word ‘pia’ is the feminine form of the Latin adjective ‘pius’). The name ‘pia mater’ was introduced during the Renaissance period (14th to 17th centuries) when anatomical knowledge was expanding, and Latin was the universal language of science and academia, and has stuck around ever since. It was probably called that because of the way it encloses the surface of the brain and spinal cord, cradling them like a mother. Nice, right?

Oh, and you’ve probably guessed that ‘arachnoid mater’ translates as ‘spider-like mother’, because of its web-like appearance. And ‘dura mater’ means ‘tough mother’ due to this outermost meninge’s durable and robust nature. It’s one tough mother f*cker.

ambigram

An ambigram is a word, phrase or symbol that you can read from different orientations or perspectives, usually in at least two different ways. So the word or symbol is still legible when you rotate it or look at its reflection, and might reveal a different word or phrase.

If you’ve lost interest after this convoluted explanation, let’s look at a couple of examples:

SWIMS

This is a rotational ambigram, which means it reads the same when rotated 180 degrees (i.e. upside down).

NOON

This can be designed as a mirror-image ambigram – so if you look at it in a mirror, it reads MOON.

Image from https://www.johnlangdon.net/works/angels-demons, © John Langdon

To make them work, ambigrams are often done in fancy-dancy calligraphy, which means they’re popular as logos and tattoos. Dan Brown used this in his rubbish book ‘Angels and Demons’ where the Illuminati’s symbol is an ambigram (that was designed by John Langdon, who has loads of cool ambigrams on his website).

Ambigrams aren’t the same as palindromes, which are defined as words, verses or sentences that read the same backwards as they do forwards. So ‘deified’ is a palindrome. But ‘noon’ is both a palindrome and an ambigram (head explodes).

Ambigram is a portmanteau (a word made up of two other words), in this case a combination of ‘ambi-’ from the Latin word ‘ambidexter’ meaning ‘both’ or ‘on both sides’, and ‘-gram’ from the Greek word ‘gramma’, meaning ‘grandma’. Not really, it means ‘letter’ or ‘written character’.

The term ‘ambigram’ was coined by Douglas R. Hofstadter, an American scholar of cognitive science, physics and comparative literature, in the early 1970s. He’s known for his interest in puzzles and visual art, and exploring patterns in language. He introduced the concept of ambigrams in his book ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid’, which was published in 1979. Such was his influence that he even gets a mention in ‘2010: Odyssey Two’ by Arthur C. Clarke (the sequel to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’), when scary (especially now) AI HAL 9000 is described by the character Dr Chandra as being caught in a ‘Hofstadter–Möbius loop’ (I tried to find out what this actually means, but it was far too complicated for little ole me).

Hofstadter also created his own law (I want a law!), which is ‘It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law’. This basically means that any task or project will probably take longer than you thought, even if you take into account Hofstadter’s law that it’s likely to take longer than you thought (second head explosion).

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, Leonard Hofstadter in The Big Bang Theory wasn’t named after our Doug, but after Robert Hofstadter, an American physicist who won the 1961 Nobel Prize in physics. He was Douglas’s dad though (that’s one talented family).)

skinflint

Before I get into this one, I should probably warn you that the origins of this word might be apocryphal (AKA, bollocks). But since I’ve never let the truth get in the way of a good story before, let’s crack on…

A skinflint is a person who’s mean with their money. Think that friend who leaves before their round in the pub, or that person who never brings booze to the party (I’m not sure why all my examples are alcohol related, sorry). Turns out humans have been being cheap for a long time, and ‘skinflint’ goes all the way back to 1699. The possibly rubbish story goes that in those days, soldiers used flints to produce the spark they needed to fire their rifles. And apparently there were some commanders so tight that they gave their soldiers shavings they’d scraped or ‘skinned’ from a flint because they didn’t want to spend extra money giving them a whole flint each. And for that they earned the nickname of, you’ve guessed it, ‘Skinflint’.

Ebenezer Scrooge is probably the most famous fictional skinflint. But there are lots of real-life tight-arses that you might not have come across before.

• John Elwes (1714–1789) was a British MP and is often considered the inspiration for the character of Scrooge. He went to bed at sundown so he didn’t have to use candles, and dressed in rags instead of buying new clothes – including a beggar’s cast-off wig he found in a hedge, which he wore for two weeks.

• Daniel K. Ludwig (1897–1992), an American shipping businessman, almost fired one of his tanker captains for using a paper clip on a two-page report.

• Because I’m a feminist, I found one lady skinflint. Hetty Green (1834–1916), was an American businesswoman and financier known as ‘the queen/witch of Wall Street’ (depending on which journalist you read). She would apparently instruct her laundress (so she wasn’t tight enough to do her own washing) to only wash the dirty bits of her dresses and leave the rest to save on soap. There’s also a fairly vicious story that she refused to pay for a doctor to look at her son’s injured leg, which led to it being amputated. There’s loads of evidence which shows this isn’t true, and that she actually spent a lot of money getting him fixed up. But sadly the story was widely reported at the time, perhaps because the male-dominated financial industry just couldn’t cope with a woman who was better at investing than they were.

• Ingvar Kamprad (1926–2018) was the Swedish billionaire founder of IKEA. It seems he was as cheap as his furniture as he flew economy class, encouraged IKEA employees to use both sides of a page when writing or printing (I mean, that’s just good for the environment), recycled tea bags, and kept the salt and pepper packets from restaurants he went to (well, those meatballs could do with a bit of seasoning).

It’s worth pointing out that one thing all these tight-wads have in common is that they were very rich. So maybe there’s something to be said for not paying for your round…

retronym

A retronym is a word for something that’s been named or renamed to differentiate it from a newer or modified version. They’re usually created by adding an adjective or qualifier to the original term. If you’re currently saying ‘Huh?’ and losing the will to live, let’s have a look at some examples which should hopefully make it clear:

• ‘acoustic guitar’ is a retronym which appeared after electric guitars – before they were just called ‘guitars’

• ‘film camera’ turned up after digital cameras were invented – before they were just ‘cameras’

• ‘landline phone’ is a retronym that appeared after we all got mobiles – before they were just, well, I’m sure you get it now.

As you’ve probably realised from the above, retronyms usually appear when an advancement or change in technology or society means the original term becomes ambiguous.

‘Retronym’ is a relatively young term, and was coined by American linguist Frank Mankiewicz in a magazine article in the early 1980s. It’s made up of two parts:

• ‘retro’ – you know what retro means, and

• ‘nym’ which comes from the Greek word ‘onoma’, meaning ‘name’ or ‘word’.

So it basically means ‘a name or word that looks back’.

The word ‘retronym’ follows the same style as other linguistic terms which you may or may not remember from school – like ‘synonym’ (a word that means the same as another word, like ‘big’ and ‘large’ – ‘syn’ being a Greek word for ‘together’ or ‘with’), or antonym (the opposite of a synonym, with the ‘ant’ bit coming from ‘anti’, which is Greek for ‘opposite’ or ‘against’).

maven

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a legend.

evanescence

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

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

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

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

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

trivia

You know what trivia is – information that’s usually quite interesting and perhaps not that widely known, but probably not that important. Also a thing that you have to have ready when you’re female and you tell a man you’re interested in something, and he immediately asks you to prove it (actual conversations with male friends: ‘I’m a big Star Wars fan.’ ‘Really? How many forms of communication is C-3PO fluent in*?’ And: ‘I love watching tennis.’ ‘Yes? How many French Opens has Nadal won**?’)

The word ‘trivia’ comes from Latin and is the plural form of ‘trivium’ (but don’t ever use the singular version because you’ll sound like a dick), which means ‘place where three roads meet’. In ancient Rome, ‘trivium’ was used to refer to the three subjects of the beginners’ liberal arts course at university, which were: grammar (my fave), rhetoric (the study and practice of persuasive public speaking) and logic (a branch of philosophy focusing on valid and sound reasoning). While these might not seem that trivial to us, the fact that ‘trivium’ was the name for the beginners’ class is probably why it’s since evolved to refer to less important information.

I asked my robot overlord, ChatGPT, to tell me some trivia, and here’s what it said:

• Honey never spoils. Archaeologists have found pots of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that are over 3,000 years old and still perfectly edible.

• The shortest war in history occurred between Britain and Zanzibar in 1896. It lasted only 38 minutes.

• The world’s oldest known recipe is for beer. It dates back to ancient Sumeria around 1800 BCE.

• The Eiffel Tower in Paris was originally intended to be a temporary structure, built for the 1889 World’s Fair. It was almost dismantled afterward but was saved because of its value as a radio transmission tower.

• The average person spends around six months of their lifetime waiting at red traffic lights.

• The national animal of Scotland is the unicorn.

• The world’s largest flower is the Rafflesia arnoldii, which can grow up to three feet in diameter and weigh up to 24 pounds. It’s also known for its distinctive smell, often likened to that of rotting flesh.

• Astronauts’ height can change in space. Without the force of gravity compressing their spines, they can grow up to 2 inches taller while spending extended periods in space.

*It’s six million. Which I did know.

** It’s 14. Which I didn’t know. But I do now, and I’m ready for you, men.

algebra

SHUDDER. I was terrible at maths at school, and even the thought of algebra still fills me with horror. But, I’m all for feeling the fear and doing it anyway (except when it comes to sharks, which I’m also very scared of), which is why algebra is my word of the week. Also, it has an interesting backstory which isn’t, as you might assume, anything to do with Greek.

Before we get into that though, let’s have a quick refresher for anyone who, like me, can only vaguely remember their school days. Algebra is a branch of maths that focuses on studying mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating those symbols to solve equations (that just sent another shiver down my spine), which apparently makes it easier to solve complex problems. Here’s a super-simple algebraic equation:

2x + 5 = 11

And here’s a really not simple explanation for how to solve it (thanks to my robot overlord, sorry ChatGPT, for doing the maths for me. Also, feel free to skip to the next paragraph if you just don’t care):

In this equation, ‘x’ is the variable, and the objective is to find the value of ‘x’. First, we isolate the variable ‘x’ by subtracting 5 from both sides of the equation:

2x + 5 - 5 = 11 - 5

This simplifies to:

2x = 6

Next, to isolate the variable ‘x’, we divide both sides of the equation by 2:

(2x)/2 = 6/2

This simplifies to:

x = 3

So, the solution to the equation is x = 3.

For anyone who’s still here, here’s why algebra is called algebra. The word comes from the Arabic phrase ‘al-jabr wa'l-muqabala’, which means ‘reunion of broken parts’ or ‘restoration and balancing’, referring to the process of restoring balance by transferring terms from one side of an equation to the other. Nice, right?

This rather romantic-sounding term was coined by the Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in the 9th century. I have mixed feelings about Al-Khwarizmi because he came up with this lovely phrase (like), but he also pretty much invented algebra in his book ‘Kitab al-Jabr wa'l-Muqabala’ (don’t like). Just to make things even more complicated, his book was translated into Latin in the 12th century, which is when the west adopted the term (and discipline) ‘algebra’ and ruined many school children’s lives for centuries to come.

(Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi also gets a prize for best job title ever: ‘astronomer and head of the library of the House of Wisdom’. Tough to fit on a business card though.)

upshot

You know what this one means – it’s the thing you want to know when you’re reading something really long and complicated (fundamental rule of good writing, people – say your main point first). But why is the thing we want to know a shot going up?

For the answer, we need to travel back to the 1500s, to the time of wife-beheading misogynist Henry VIII. Let’s go to an archery contest, yay! It’s the final, and it all comes down to one last shot. The best archer (picture Kevin Costner/Katniss Everdeen/Legolas, or whoever floats your boat) hits the bullseye and wins the contest. And that’s the upshot – the final shot that decided who was the winner. The term was later used figuratively to describe a final result or outcome, the way we do today.

Here’s ‘upshot’ in (literal) action in an extract from Henry’s accounts (ooh, exciting) for 1531 which included his sporting losses:

To the three Cotons for three sets which the King lost to them in Greenwich Park … and for one upshot won of the King … 6s. 8d.

In case you’re a bit confused by this, I’m reliably informed by the internet that it’s saying Henners had to pay three men (presumably related to each other) all called Coton, 6 shillings and 8 pence (a fairly big sum back then, roughly equivalent to a few days’ wages for a skilled labourer) for losing in an archery competition, which included an upshot.

(I did some archery once, which I really enjoyed. I was amused to learn that most archery injuries aren’t caused by people shooting arrows into each other, but by them walking into the arrows that they’ve shot into the target. Humans really are idiots, aren’t we?)

lullaby

You know what a lullaby is – a song you sing to a baby that won’t sleep (hello to my nephew). ‘Lullaby’ comes from the Middle English phrase ‘lullen’, which means ‘to lull’, and ‘by’ which means, well, ‘by’ or ‘near’. So it literally translates as ‘to lull near’. We’ve been using the word ‘lullaby’ in English since at least the 16th century.

So far, so straightforward. But, there’s another, more sinister explanation. Before I get into it, I should preface this by saying this is ‘folk etymology’ which is when we change or reinterpret the origin of a word over time, usually due to a popular or widely held (wrong) belief about its meaning (see ‘penthouse’ for an example). So everything after this point is probably bollocks. But let’s just go with it, because it’s much more interesting.

Lilith and snake pal (not the name of the painting) by John Collier

In this explanation, the word ‘lullaby’ comes from ‘Lilith abi’ which means ‘Lilith, begone’ in Hebrew. In some Jewish mythology, Lilith was the first wife of Adam, before Eve (PLOT TWIST). Unlike Eve, who was made from Adam’s rib, Lilith was created from the same clay as he was, which made them equal. Because of this she got a bit uppity – literally – and refused to lie underneath him when they were getting jiggy with it, or have his children. You go, girl.

Because of all this bloody feminism (I bet she wanted equal pay and dresses with pockets too), Lilith was either banished from the Garden of Eden or left of her own accord (I hope it was the second one). In the wilderness around the garden she became a demon who preyed on newborn infants and seduced men in their sleep (using reverse cowgirl, presumably – no missionary for our Lilith). She’s often shown as having wings, or as a snake.

Lilith appears in various Jewish texts, including the Talmud and the Zohar. And depending on who you talk to she’s either a symbol of female empowerment and resistance against the patriarchy, or a dangerous and evil woman who threatens the very order of creation. I think you can probably guess which side I come down on.

Anyway, back to lullabies. For whatever reason, Lilith has got a reputation for stealing babies. One belief is that this is because she was jealous of the attention Adam and Eve gave their children, while another says she could only have demon babies, so she stole human ones to make up for it. Either way, singing ‘Lilith abi’, or a lullaby, was a way to ward off Lilith and protect your babbie from her evil/feminist clutches.

I told you it was better than the real answer.

tchotchke

Tchotchke, which is pronounced chahch-ke, is a Yiddish word that refers to small decorative items, trinkets or knick-knacks. So that’s things that look pretty or are sentimental, but are basically useless (AKA things my flat is full of). Tchotchkes are also often quite cheap and perhaps a little bit tacky, like souvenir keyrings or fridge magnets (I also have loads of those), for example. The term can also be used to describe a collection of these types of items.

As I mentioned, tchotchke is from Yiddish, the Jewish language that developed in central and eastern Europe. It comes from the Slavic word ‘čačka’ or ‘čača’, which simply means a small object or toy (and I don’t think is anything to do with poop). It’s actually a fairly well-known word in the States (I came across it in an article about recruitment while doing some research for, well, an article about recruitment). It probably made its way there via Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century and has since become more widely used in American English over time.

There are lots of other, thankfully easier to spell, words in English that we also get from Yiddish. Like:

• chutzpah: an adjective (describing word) for someone who’s got lots of confidence (possibly too much) – ‘she’s got a lot of chutzpah considering how many tchotchkes she has in her flat’

• klutz – a noun (person, place or thing) for a clumsy or awkward person – ‘she’s such a klutz, she fell over all her tchotchkes’

• schlep – a verb (doing word) meaning to carry or haul something (or yourself) with difficulty – ‘she schlepped those tchotchkes all the way from London’

• schmooze – a verb meaning to suck up to someone: ‘she was schmoozing the tchotchke sellers to try to get some freebies’

• schmutz – dirt or filth: ‘her tchotchkes are covered in schmutz’

• shmaltz – an adjective for something that’s excessively sentimental or metaphorically cheesy (also, rendered chicken or goose fat): ‘her tchotchkes are so shmaltzy’.

grist

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘to add grist to the mill’, meaning to use something to your advantage e.g. ‘his utter stupidity really added grist to the mill’. But what exactly is grist? And why are you adding it to your mill? Well, it turns out that it’s a pretty literal metaphor – grist is simply grain that’s ground into flour and a mill is, well, you know what a mill is.

A mill, obviously

The earliest known use of the phrase in the metaphorical sense is in a work by an English theologian and reformer called John Foxe, who wrote in 1570: ‘All these are as grist to the mill to the papists.’ You might be able to guess from this that Foxe was a protestant, having converted from Catholicism. If I were a cynic, I might think that some of the reason for this was because he was due to take Catholic holy orders after his academic career ended, which of course meant giving up all action in the trouser department. He went on to have six kids, so it was lucky for them he did convert. Although Wikipedia describes him as ‘so bookish that he ruined his health by his persistent study’, so I’m very impressed he found the time. He also wrote an enormous (1,800 pages no less) history of Christian martyrs and their persecution and suffering, which became a popular and influential work during the Protestant Reformation, so maybe it wasn’t all about the winkie.

Anyway, back to ‘grist’. It comes from the Old English word, ahem, ‘grīst’, which also means ‘ground grain’. Not much of an etymological leap there then. That comes from the Old High German word ‘grist’ (again), the Middle Low German word ‘grêst’ (we’re mixing it up now) and the Old Norse word ‘grysta’ (woop woop), all of which mean, you’ve guessed it, ‘ground grain’. ‘Grist’ is also where we get ‘grind’ from. (Are you still awake?)

We’ve been using the word ‘grist’ in English since at least the 9th century to refer to both the grain brought to a mill for grinding, and the ground flour itself (which seems confusing to me, so lucky I’m not a miller).

cakewalk

I was watching an American show the other day (‘Alaska Daily’, if you’re interested – well worth a watch) and someone described something as ‘a cakewalk’. Which got me thinking – where does the term come from?

Just in case you’re not sure what a cakewalk is (as I think it’s a fairly American term), it’s used to refer to something that’s easy to do, like ‘that exam was a cakewalk’ (a statement I’ve never said, ever). The more British alternative is probably ‘a walk in the park’.

After a bit of research, it turns out ‘cakewalk’ has some murky origins, which may well make it a problematic term today. In the 19th century, African-American slaves used to perform a dance on Southern plantations which mocked the stiff waltz-style dance moves of their white enslavers. Slave owners saw this and, apparently missing the point entirely, went on to hold dance competitions at so-called ‘plantation parties’. Slaves would wear their smartest clothes and perform these dances with the best being rewarded with cakes as prizes. Yuck. Over time, the dance itself became known as the ‘cakewalk’.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the cakewalk moves – linked arms and high kicks – were adopted by a wider audience in the US and Europe, where they were often performed in vaudeville shows. It was also in the early 20th century that the term came to be used as a metaphor for any task or situation seen as easy or effortless. That wasn’t because winning a cakewalk was easy – it was because the dance steps were fluid and graceful, and the dancers’ hard work made it look like it was simple to do. This use was popularised by soldiers in World War I who used the term to describe battles or campaigns they won relatively easily.

condolence

You’ve probably offered someone your condolences at some point in your life. It’s a common enough word that we use when someone’s suffered a bereavement. But have you ever wondered what your condolences actually are, and why you’re offering them? (I’ll try to keep it light.)

‘Condolences’ comes from the Latin word ‘condolere’, which means ‘to suffer with’. It’s made up of the prefix ‘con-’ which means ‘with’ or ‘together’ (as in ‘connect’ and ‘congregate’) and ‘dolere’, meaning ‘to grieve’ or ‘to feel pain’. So when you offer someone your condolences you’re actually saying that you share their grief or pain. Nice, right?

We’ve been offering our condolences in English since the late 16th century. And you can also use it as a verb. So you can ‘condole’ with someone – but they might think you’re a bit weird if you say you’re going to do that.

Time to put the fun in to funeral (sorry), with some facts. Alexander the Great’s funeral, which was held in Babylon in 323 BCE, is up there as one of the most elaborate ever held. According to historical accounts, the funeral procession included over 20,000 soldiers and a 100-foot-high funeral pyre, covered in gold and surrounded by treasures and offerings.

The prize for the most bizarre (and also, most awesome) funeral goes to the American author and journalist Hunter S Thompson, who died in 2005. Called (by himself) his ‘blast-off ceremony’, it featured a 153-foot-tall cannon shaped like a double-thumbed fist, a symbol that Thompson often used in his writing, clutching a peyote button (a small cactus containing psychoactive alkaloids, including mescaline). The cannon was emblazoned with the words ‘Faster, Higher’ and blasted Thompson’s ashes into the air during the funeral, accompanied by a 10-minute fireworks display. It was watched by celebs including Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Bill Murray and Jack Nicholson. That’s one helluva way to go.

flingee

If you’re a flingee, it means you’ve just had something thrown at you. I’m sorry.

Words like this, i.e with the suffix ‘ee’ (the bit at the end), generally indicate that someone’s got something from someone or something else – or has received the action of a verb, if we want to be smartarses about it. So that’s words like:

If that hits me, I’m going to punch you in the face

• interviewee – you’re getting the interview

• employee – you’re getting the employment (you must have aced that interview)

• trainee – you’re getting the training

• payee – you’re getting the payment, lucky you (must be all that employment and training).

(Other non-employment ‘ee’ words are available.)

Back to ‘flingee’. The word ‘fling’ probably comes from an Old Norse word, ‘flengja’, meaning ‘to whip or flog’. Over time it came to be associated with sudden, impulsive movements or actions, which is how we got ‘fling’ in English.

No one’s quite sure how ‘fling’ came to describe brief romantic liaisons, although that didn’t come about until the late 19th or early 20th century (the meaning, not the flings – those have been going since time immemorial). Maybe it’s something to do with throwing stuff being impulsive and fun? (There’s a tossing-off joke here, but I am of course far too mature to make it, so I’ll just leave that with you.)

fizgig

If you’re of a similar age to me, i.e. very young (stop laughing), then you’re probably thinking of the small, but actually quite scary (he’s got two rows of teeth, for chrissakes), dog-like friend of Kira, one of the lead characters in ‘The Dark Crystal’, a film that traumatised an entire generation of children in the 80s (I’m still scared of the Skeksis). Sadly he has a double ‘z’ in his name, so forget him. A single-z fizgig actually has several meanings.

1. A frivolous woman

Ah, a nice bit of everyday sexism (because as per usual there’s no male equivalent). A fizgig can be used to refer to a woman who’s silly, flighty or likes a bit of flirting. No one knows quite where this came from, but it’s possible it originated in 16th or 17th century England. One theory is that it comes from the Middle English word ‘fiche’, which means a small object or trifle. Another theory is that it’s related to ‘fizzle’, as in the hissing or sputtering sound. Either way, it eventually came to be associated with something small, frivolous or trivial, which was then applied to women. SIGH.

BOOOOOORING

2. A firework

A fizgig can also be a type of firework that produces a hissing or sizzling sound. Again, the etymology isn’t clear, but it’s probably onamatopoeic. I find fireworks incredibly boring. That’s not relevant.

3. A type of fishing tool

This type of fizgig has a long pole or handle with a sharp, pointed metal tip at the end, and is used for spearfishing. Fizgigs have been used in this way for centuries and still are in some parts of the world today. Apparently they work particularly well in murky or shallow waters that other types of fishing gear aren’t suitable for.

4. A type of hand-held spinning toy

A fizgig is also a term used to describe a small, hand-held toy made out of wood, metal or bone (ew). It typically consists of a small rod or handle with a pointed end, with a cord or string wound around it. You pull the string to make it spin. Again, no one really knows why this is called a fizgig, although it might relate to that word ‘fiche’ again, or simply be onamatopoeia (again).

So there you have it – four meanings for a word you probably didn’t even know existed in the first place. Don’t say I never give you anything.

cenobite

I’m a big fan of horror films – the schlockier the better. And I’ve recently been trying to catch up with 80s video-nasty classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Evil Dead and, most recently, Hellraiser (although I gave up after Hellraiser 2, as the internet tells me the nine (yep) sequels get progressively worse). Hellraiser is based on ‘The Hellbound Heart’, a novella by Clive Barker, who also wrote and directed the first film.

Pinhead. He got pins in his head

Even if you’ve never seen Hellraiser, you’re probably familiar with Pinhead, the primary antagonist. Pinhead and his pals are called the cenobites, and are part of ‘The Order of the Gash’. They’re demonic beings who were once human but have been transformed by their experiences in the afterlife, and now look pretty damn gross (in fact, Pinhead’s probably the least minging). The cenobites live in an alternate reality called the Labyrinth or the Leviathan’s Domain, and their favourite thing is inflicting pain on humans who summon them (some accidentally, some on purpose). They do that using a puzzle box called the Lemarchand Configuration, which opens a dimensional fissure.

The Hellraiser cenobites all look a bit BDSM as they wear various combinations of leather and chains, often with bits of their own skin thrown in, ewww. The original novella and first two films have them as morally ambiguous (‘demons to some, angels to others’) but later films and comics make them more straightforwardly sadistic.

After all that, it turns out that Barker didn’t invent the term ‘cenobite’, and it originally had a much more benign and less BDSM-ey meaning. It started out as a word for the followers of Pythagoras (he of the theorem), who founded a commune in Italy for philosophical study and also for the ‘amicable sharing of worldly goods’ (sounds like a cult to me – call your dad). ‘Cenobite’ first appeared in English in the 17th century where it referred to a member of a monastic community who lived in a common house under a common rule (i.e religion). It can also refer to any person in a communal or shared living situation (like a commune). The word itself comes from the Greek ‘koinos’ meaning ‘common’, and ‘bios’ meaning ‘life’.

A group of monks living in this type of community is often referred to as a cenobium. And cenobitic (or coenobitic if you want to make it really hard to spell) monasticism is the opposite of eremitic monasticism, which is when you’re a hermit (like me).

Back to Hellraiser. Pinhead’s nickname was created by the Hellraiser production crew and then picked up by fans, although Barker hated it. In ‘The Scarlet Gospels’ he’s simply known as ‘The Hell Priest’, which is much less fun. In the first eight films, he’s played by an actor called Doug Bradley. But for the (not-very-good) 2022 remake, the character’s played by Jamie Clayton, a female actor and model. This is actually truer to the original novella, where he’s described as having a voice that’s ‘light and breathy – the voice of an excited girl’. Other cenobites that regularly appear in the Hellraiser franchise include Chatterer, whose name comes from the constant clicking of his teeth, The Female, whose only attribute seems to be ‘woman’, and Butterball, who’s really fat (but wears cool shades).

‘We have such sights to show you…’

hobby

I’ve recently taken up needle-felting, which resulted in this utter monstrosity (pictured next to what it was supposed to look like – I’ve got better since, honestly). And this new hobby got me thinking, why is it called a hobby? Also, don’t give up the day job.

How it started vs how it’s going

In the 14th century the word ‘hobby’ referred to a small horse or pony, specifically one used for riding or racing. This probably comes from the Old English word ‘hobyn’, meaning small horse or pony (well, durr). In the 16th century the term ‘hobby horse’ appeared (in a payment confirmation, which I assume means ‘receipt’), which, if the etymology is correct, is actually a tautology i.e. it says the same thing twice. Like Sahara desert, Gobi desert and Kalahari desert, all of which mean ‘desert desert’ – ‘sahara’ is Arabic for ‘desert’, ‘gobi’ is Mongolian for desert’ and ‘kalahari’ is Tswana (one of the 11 official languages recognised by the South African constitution) for, you’ve guessed it, ‘desert’. Anyway, I digress. If you’re a young person, you might not know what a hobby horse is – a toy which was basically a horse head stuck on a stick that you’d straddle (sounds horrific – no wonder kids today prefer iPads) and run about with pretending to be on an actual horse.

Fast forward three hundred-ish years, and the term ‘hobby’ evolved to refer to any activity that people do for pleasure (except rude ones, obviously) or relaxation in their leisure time.

In the 17th century, people used ‘hobby’ as a bit of an insult, as these pasttimes were seen as something children did. But in the 18th century, with the advent of the industrial revolution and more leisure time for people, hobbies suddenly got cool. Although this might not have happened if anyone then had seen my zombie-alpaca needle-felting disaster.

slapstick

Personally, I’m not a fan of slapstick comedy. That whole brand of wackiness just doesn’t really do it for me. But, I have always wondered why it’s called that. Thank god for the internet.

Harlequin – that’s a natty outfit

To find the answer, we have to travel to 16th-century Italy, and the commedia dell’arte (which literally translates as ‘comedy of the profession’ – sounds hilarious, right?), an early form of improvised bawdy theatre performed by a troupe of professional actors, often in marketplaces and town squares. Commedia dell’arte uses stock characters, or ‘masks’, each of which always wear the same costumes and make-up, and use the same physical gestures. The most recognisable of these to you and me is probably Harlequin (also known as the scheming servant Arlecchino), who was accompanied by Scaramouche (still don’t know if he can do the fandango), Pierrot (a sad clown), and star-crossed lovers Isabella and Flavio (who I think are on Strictly Come Dancing), among others. The plays themselves were largely improvised, with the actors using their knowledge of these stock characters and their relationships with each another to create comedic situations and dialogue.

There was often lots of physical comedy in the commedia dell’arte, which is where our slapstick comes in. Actors used a club-like object made of two pieces of wood to produce a loud smacking noise. Originally called a ‘batacchio’ or ‘bataccio’, the Italian word for a knocker on a door, the English gave it the rather more obvious name of ‘slapstick’. Due to the fact that you could hit people with it very gently and still make a loud comedy noise that sounds like you’ve proper walloped them, it was actually one of the earliest theatrical special effects. It wasn’t long before the slapstick became a symbol of any type of highly physical comedy, and the word was then used to refer to that type of comedy itself.

The OG slapstick (still looks quite painful to me)

While you aren’t likely to see anyone perfoming commedia dell’arte in your local market square these days, it’s had a significant influence on the development of modern theatre. Lots of the stock characters and comedic situations continue to be adapted and reused in TV, film and literature. Most recently Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith used it in the Inside No. 9 episode ‘Wuthering Heist’ (with added Tarantino).

Slapsticks themselves aren’t all that common anymore either, except in (super-sinister) Punch and Judy shows – the thing Punch uses to hit everyone (including some casual wife-beating) is a slapstick. And percussionists use them to imitate the sound of slaps, whip cracks, gunshots and so on, too.

berserk

If you go berserk, you go absolutely flipping mental, which I’m currently trying not to do while dealing with a 2,790-page PDF which crashes every two seconds.

‘Berserk’ actually has very old roots – turns out people have been getting furiously angry with PDFs (or the equivalent) for a very long time. It comes from ‘berserker’, the name of a type of Norse warrior who fought with superhuman, savage strength while in a sort of frenzied trance. They dressed in animal skins, usually bear. And that’s where the name comes from – in Old Norse, ber- meant ‘bear’ and serkr- meant ‘shirt’ or ‘skin’. The excellently named Snorri Sturluson, a 13th-century historian, interpreted the meaning as ‘bare-shirt’, speculating that berserkers went into battle in the nuddy (or at least topless). But sadly this has been largely discredited. (Snorri obviously had the same problem as lots of other English speakers who ask others to ‘bare with me’ which has made me angry many, many times.)

The earliest surviving reference to the word ‘berserker’ is in Haraldskvæði, a skaldic poem (one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry, the other being Eddic poetry) composed by another excellently named individual, Thórbiörn Hornklofi, in the late ninth century. Here’s a little snippet for you:

I'll ask of the berserks, you tasters of blood,
Those intrepid heroes, how are they treated,
Those who wade out into battle?
Wolf-skinned they are called. In battle
They bear bloody shields.
Red with blood are their spears when they come to fight.

No mention of them being topless, sorry Snorri.

When I googled ‘famous berserkers’, one of the ones who came up was Ivar the Boneless. Sadly no one’s completely sure where the name comes from. It’s been suggested that he might have had a condition like osteogenesis imperfecta (also known as brittle bone disease), which makes the fact that he invaded both England and Ireland extra impressive. Another source says it refers to the fact that he couldn’t get it up, which is less so.

Also, he had a brother called Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye who sounds super fun.

This one’s for you, Snorri