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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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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?

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Hope

Etymology Lesson: hope

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Pandora, by J.W. Waterhouse.

From Old English, hopa meaning, “wish, expectation.”

There are theories that it is related to the word hop, as in, “leaping forward in expectation.”  In the myth of Pandora’s Box, the last evil to escape the box is Hope.  Some say hope is what saves the world, some say there is a reason it was locked inside the box with all the other evils.  Hope is a dangerous siren, luring us to believe in things that will never be.  Tempting us to betray our instincts and abandon our better intellect, blindly trusting that things will turn out the way we wish them to, instead of accepting the truth of what they are.

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Saeculum

Back at it!

Today’s Etymology Lesson comes from my friend Seth, with his selection of the word saeculum, recently featured in the Sandman graphic novel.

From proto-indo-european, sey, meaning “to bind or tie together,” the word can be found in the Latin phrase saecula saeculorum, meaning, “a lifetime of lifetimes,” or “eternity.”

The saeculum is a measure of time, generally springing from a singular event (a war, catastrophe, etc) which encapsulates the time that any human could have personally experienced the event.  For example, we are approaching a time in which anyone who personally experienced WWI would be deceased, the war began over 100 years ago in 1914, and ended in 1918.  There are likely babies who were born at that time who are over 100 years old, but the saeculum of WWI is nearly over. 

Pictured is Sergeant Stubby, decorated war hero of the 102nd Infantry, survivor of 17 battles on the Western Front, and member of the saeculum of WWI, who died peacefully in his sleep in 1926 at the age of 10.

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Solstice

Friday Etymology Lesson: solstice

This is the last one of the year!  Maybe I’ll start up again in the New Year with a blog or something (oh hey look, I did!). 

As the Winter Solstice is on Sunday, today’s word is solstice.  From Latin, sol meaning, “sun,” and sistere meaning, “to make stand still,” solstice literally means “the point at which the sun is made to stand still.”  The ancient Celts called it Yule, from the Norse word Jul, meaning, “wheel.”  They believed the goddess Frigga wove the fate of the world at her spinning wheel, and she labored long through the darkest night to birth the light. 

The Egyptians believed Isis labored and birthed Horus at the solstice.  In Persian myth, the warrior god Mithras was born at the winter solstice, as was Jesus of Nazareth, Saturn, Quetzalcoatl, and Sarasvati, the Hindu queen of heaven.  

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The light of the rising sun on the winter solstice inside the prehistoric monument Newgrange in County Meath Ireland.
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Betrothed

Thursday Etymology Lesson: betrothed

This one goes out to my cousin Andy and his new bride Elisa, who got surprise married yesterday!  Congrats!  Today’s word is betrothed, which literally means, “be truthful to each other.”  The word truth has roots (pun intended) way back to the Proto-Indo-European words drū, meaning, “tree”, and deru, meaning, “firm, solid.”  We are so happy to add you to our family tree, Elisa! 

The Tree of Life,1905 by Gustav Klimt