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Kid

Etymology Lesson: kid

This morning I had to ask my friend Adam which he meant, a human kid, or a goat kid and that got me thinking about which came first.  Did we start calling human children kid because they reminded us of goat children?  Or was it the other way ’round?

Turns out it was goats first.  From Proto-Germanic, kidjom, to Old Norse kið, meaning “young goat,” and was pronounced either as kith or kih.  It has no as yet discovered PIE root.  The first recorded use of kid as slang for “child” was made in the 1590s.  The word’s use as a verb, as in kidding, wasn’t recorded until the early 1800s, and meant “to coax, wheedle or hoax.”  

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Somewhat related, the word kidnap, is the only surviving form of the word nap in its verb form, meaning not, “a short sleep” but, “to catch or seize.”  We now know this word as nab, but it was originally nap.  The word is likely from a Scandinavian source since there are the words nappe and nappa meaning the same thing in Norwegian and Swedish respectively.

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Creature

Etymology Lesson: creature

The other day I was thinking about the word creature and that got me thinking about the word creator, so here is an etymology lesson for those.

Both words have the same PIE root, in Shipley’s it’s ker-(VI), which itself means “to grow,” and informs words like, crescent, increase, procreate, recruit, and accrue, and the name of the Roman goddess of agriculture, Ceres. (pictured)

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Side note: my dear friend Sarah named one of her feline companions Ceres, only to find out later that Ceres was a boy, (R.I.P. Ceres! You were a big fluffy dummy and we miss you!)

For creator, ker-(VI) combines with the latin suffix -ator, which is basically the noun form of a verb that ends in -ate, in this case, create. (I think?  Latin suffixes perplex me, so maybe someone who has studied Latin can school me?) So, creator means “one who causes things to grow,” and creature means, “a thing that has been grown.”

The PIE ker- root variations are pretty vast, Shipley’s has seven distinct ones, with meanings like, “to turn,” “to burn,” “to scratch or cut,” “of or related to having horns,” “to cry out,” “to grow,” and “to destroy.”  It reminds me that PIE is at best a well-researched theory, but I suppose everything is.

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Hoarfrost

Etymology Lesson: hoarfrost

The other day, a client of mine mentioned seeing some spectacular hoarfrost on a trip to Canada, which got me thinking about the word hoarfrost.  If you’ve not seen this phenomenon, its a form of frost caused by dew that rapidly freezes when it collects on vegetation or objects that are colder than the air. It forms feathery crystals that are stunningly beautiful and transform forests into icy winter fairy tale worlds.

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So why is it called hoarfrost?  The hoar in this word comes from hoary which means “venerable, grey haired, ancient.”  You may recognize a similar sounding word Herr, which in German is a title of respect given to men.  It has roots in an Old Norse word harr, meaning, “grey-haired, old.”  And, according to Shipley, this word is related to the PIE root keiro, or koiro, which meant “grey, old, worthy.”  So hoarfrost references the resemblance of this phenomenon to everything being covered in soft, feathery hair.

Frost comes from a Proto-Germanic word frustaz, and is pretty much the same word in all Germanic languages.  The verb form of frustaz is freusanan, which meant “to freeze,” and can find its origin in the PIE root word preus-, which meant both “to freeze” and “to burn,” referring to the power cold has to both freeze and burn.

Here in New England, we have, thusfar, had a rather mild winter with not much snow or frost, which surely means we are about to get nailed with a huge storm any moment now!

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Window

Etymology Lesson: window

This morning I was doing my Duolingo Norwegian course and it gave me a new word, as it sometimes does, as sort of an invitation to see if I can guess what the word is.  Today’s word was vindu, which means, “window.”  As I discussed in my post on the etymology of defenestrate, many other languages use some form of fenestra as their word for window.  But this Norwegian word, vindu, sounds enough like window, that it inspired me to look up the etymology to confirm that the word is indeed of Old Norse origin.

It is indeed, and the etymology is pretty cool. It comes from two words vindr, meaning “wind,” and auga, meaning, “eye,” combined into the Old Norse word vindauga, or “wind eye.”  The word auga can be traced back to the PIE root, oku-, which means, “to see,” and the root can be found in lots of words that relate to seeing, like monocle, oculus, optic, and cyclops.  Wind also has a PIE root, we-, which means “to blow,” and can be found in words like weather, wing, vent, and Nirvana, which, by the way, does not literally mean “transcendence,” it means “disappearance,” like a fire blowing out.

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My cat, Dr. Nelson Tangles, in the window.
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Apology

Etymology Lesson: apology

Recently I made a few mistakes and hurt someone dear to me, so I needed to make an apology, and it got me thinking about the origins of the word.  Let’s break it down a bit.

There are two PIE roots, ap- and apo- which both mean, “reach, extend, put hence, put off, put away.”  You’ll recognize these roots from words like apostate, apotheosis, apogee, apocalypse etc., all of which have a sense of something set apart or distant that has reached its finality.

Next is the PIE root leg- 1, (there are two leg roots) which is interesting because it means, “to gather, consider, and choose” but in the distinct context of there being an intent to pick things out, in this case, words, from that collection of information.  So from leg – 1, we get the Greek word, logos, which means, “word, speech, discourse” and also “reasoning.”  So an extended definition of the word means “to gather, consider, choose, reason, and then speak about in discourse.”

So when you combine apo and logos together, you get an extended definition that means “an extension to finality of the gathering, consideration, choosing, and reasoning of a personal account, which will be spoken about in discourse.”  The word itself is an invitation to really consider what has occurred, gather what information you can about it, and then figure out the best way to reach forward for some discourse to some finality on the topic.

Can’t think of a better way to put it really.  Apologizing isn’t easy, and, not that I’m an expert on it, but a lot of people are REALLY bad at it.  Right there in the word though are instructions for how to make a good apology.  If you haven’t carefully considered what has occurred and aren’t able to even articulate what you did wrong, how can you ever really offer an apology?

On a lighter note, I will always take any excuse to post this video, because even though Justin Bieber is kind of a tool, Parris Goebel and ReQuest Dance Crew are awesome and I’m not sorry about it:

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PIE: eis

From time to time, I will dive into certain PIE (Proto Indo European) roots.  PIE is fascinating because it is essentially a reconstructed language that linguists uncovered within the languages spoken by Indo-Europeans today.  Since it was likely to have been spoken in Neolithic times, no one has ever heard anyone speaking PIE, yet its roots can be heard every day.  I have most certainly used a very large amount of PIE root words in writing this paragraph.  Count them if you have an hour or two to spare and let me know what you find!

Today I’d like to talk about the PIE root eis, from which we get words like pediatrics, ire, hierophant, and so on.  Shipley defines eis thusly, “set in quick motion ; wrath ; divine power.”  In a way, this root imbues a word with a kick of that divine power.  Take, for example, the word iron, from the German, eisen, meaning “holy metal.” Iron certainly changed our world, to the extent that an entire age of mankind is named after it, so it is no wonder that the ancient germanic people gave this substance a name that recalled for them the passion of wrath and divine power.

Or consider the way we name specialized medical fields, pediatrics, geriatrics.  In these words you can find the Greek word iatros, which meant, “healer.”  And where did the Greeks get iatros from?  That’s right, the PIE root eis.  It makes sense why, when you consider that in ancient times, the healing arts and spirituality were inseparably intertwined.

There are also those who think this root can be found in words like estrogen and estrus. Two words which represent the divine power possessed by the females of species to create life itself.

Pictured is an image from the Thoth Tarot deck of the trump card The Hierophant, from the Greek words hieros, meaning, “sacred,” and phainein, meaning, “to bring to light.”  Thus, literally, “one who brings to light the sacred.”

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Dialects, Accents and Linguistic Profiling

Dialects and accents have always been fascinating to me, particularly since I grew up in a family where no one really spoke the same dialect as anyone else.  My grandparents were both from somewhat posh areas on the outskirts of Boston, and spoke with what I can best describe as an old school Yankee accent.  It was a bit more high brow sounding than the much-imitated accent of President Kennedy, for example, but had similar tones in it. My grandfather also adopted different accents for different ways of speaking.  His reciting-something-from-a-book accent was very different from his every day speaking accent. My grandmother is from Winchester, and she’s always had a somewhat posh sounding Brahmin accent.  More like the man on the right than the left in this video, but really a combo of the two:

 

My mother and her brothers all speak with a Massachusetts South Shore accent (some more than others).  They all speak like the man in this video.

 

My aunts Mabel and Meg have different accents from their other siblings.  This is due to Mabel having lived abroad in England for a time, and Meg having lived in the city for the vast majority of her life.  It is hard for me to describe Meg’s accent because it has a lot of different sounds in it.  Meg’s husband Jimmy, however, grew up in Somerville and he speaks exactly like Whitey Bulger does in the video below.  My uncle Jimmy is a character and a half.  (CW: Whitey is talking about some violent behavior in this video so consider yourselves warned.)

 

My father is from Kentucky, and his grandmother, Ida, spoke with a strong Appalachian accent, like the people in the video below (please watch this video, it is AMAZING).  She passed when I was 14, but before that she would call me every year on my birthday and sing me Happy Birthday and at the end she would say “Jesus loves you, Emily.” in her sweet accent.  I miss that.  My father’s mother Ruth lived in southern Ohio longer than in Kentucky so she spoke with a stronger Midwestern accent than Appalachian. She said the word wash as worsh, for example.  It makes me sad that I can barely remember her voice.  She died when I was 7.  My father speaks with a blend of those two accents, with hints of a Boston accent and a South Shore accent. It’s very unique and very endearing.

 

My sister, Abby, and I had so many different accents in our world as kids that we ended up having a bit of trouble saying L and R sounds correctly.  I can still recall our family poking fun of us for how we said the word owl as owah, for example.  Eventually we sort of gave up and unconsciously decided to speak like all the people on TV and in old movies.  People are often surprised when they hear that I’m from the South Shore of MA since I don’t have a South Shore accent.  On a recent trip abroad, everyone in Scandinavia thought that I was British, though I would not describe my accent as British at all. It’s also not a typical American accent either though. My sister and I actually speak differently from each other at this point in our lives.  For a few years, Abby has been working with and around people who are 10-15 years younger than her and their accent has rubbed off on her (though this may be news to her).  Millennials have developed their own dialect and accent.  I’m sure you’re familiar with it, it’s not just vocal fry and up-speak.  It sounds casual, flirty, fun, and completely lacks any trace of the regional dialect from where the speaker grew up.  The R sounds are hard, the vowels sort of whine their way out, and I have noticed that with Millennials, particularly the younger ones, there is less of a gender binary separation between how people of different genders speak this dialect.  Everyone tends to speak the same no matter their gender identity.  Check out this video of Jonathan Van Ness (I love him and also kittens!) for a good example of this accent, though keep in mind that his is VERY pronounced.

 

What got me thinking about dialects and accents today is this video that my friend Patty posted by Voices of Color by Insider about linguistic profiling. We all unconsciously profile people when we hear them speak, and it can have some dramatic consequences.  Do you change your voice when you speak on the phone?

 

What dialect do you speak?  What accents did you grow up hearing?  How did they influence how you speak today?  Have you ever consciously worked to change your own accent?  Does your accent change when you feel certain emotions?

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Midwife

Since I’m doing some reading for my doula training, here is some etymology of the word, midwife.

You may assume that the mid in midwife just means, “middle,” but it actually has roots in an Old Norse word that means, “together with,” or “in the company of.”  Modern day Nordic languages still use a version of this word to mean “with,” usually the word med, and you’ll see it on food packaging a lot.  “Med smak av jordbær,” means “with flavor of strawberries” in Swedish, for example.

Wife is one of those super old words that used to just mean “woman.” In fact the word woman is just the words wife and man put together and then loosened by lazy tongues. Man used to just mean, “mankind” and wasn’t as gendered as it has come to be in modern English.  Thus, midwife literally means, “with woman,” and midwifery literally means, “the art of being with woman,” which I think is a really nice, though quite gendered, way of describing the role of a person helping out another person who is giving birth.

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Great

The etymology of the word great is that it comes from an old Germanic word, grautaz, which meant ,”coarse.”  In Old English, the word great meant, “big, tall, stout, thick, or massive” and didn’t come to mean, “excellent or wonderful” until 1848 in America.

So if we take the original meaning of the word, I think we can all agree that Trump is indeed making America great again, in that it is definitely becoming more coarse and thick.

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Atonement

The etymology of atonement comes from the Latin adunare.  Ad, meaning, “to or at,” and unum, meaning, “one,” or in other words, the roots of the word atone mean, “united.”  With adunare is -ment, from the Latin mentum which was added to verbs to represent the product of the action of that verb.

Thus, the literal translation of the word atonement is, “the result of unity.”

Does that make it easier for you?