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Debauchery

Tuesday Morning Etymology Lesson: debauchery

Today’s word comes from my pal Bree.  What a fun word!  Debauch is, obviously, a French word from the 1590s meaning “to lead one astray from work.”  The word is made up of two other words de and bauch, meaning “make less” and “beam or plank” respectively.  Thus, debauch literally translates to “make less the beam, or plank.” 

So how did it come to mean “entice from work or duty?”  There are several theories.  One is that a literal use of the word, “to shave wood from the beam,” [clears throat] was bastardized into urban slang. 

I’m sure if we put our thinking caps on we could find some, let’s say, less than wholesome ways “shave wood from the beam” could be used as a euphemism. 

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Moist

Moist Monday Etymology Lesson: moist

Today’s word is much despised by many, and aptly describes today’s soggy state, yes my friends, it is time to learn all about the etymology of MOIST.

For those who hate the word, you have the French to blame for moiste, a word derived from Old French, meaning “damp, wet, or soaked.”  Some linguists think its Latin root is musteum, meaning “fresh, green, or new.” While others think it stems from the Latin mucidus, which means “slimy, moldy, or musty.”

Enjoy your Moist Monday, friends!

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Holy

Friday Morning Etymology Lesson: holy

I’ll spare you the long and twisty history of how we got the word holy in modern English, involving things like proto-indo-european linguistics, but it begins waaaaay back in prehistory with a root word: sol- which means, “whole”.  You will recognize this root word from many modern words, like solar and solitary, which might sound different from each other, but they have one thing in common and that thing is ONE, a whole, a single entity.  The root sol- informed many words related to wholeness, health, soundness, etc.  So in its most basic form, holy relates to health. It makes sense that holy came to mean something sacred, since in ancient times, health was generally thought to be a gift from the divine, and healers were believed to be connected to the divine.

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Karaoke

Thursday Morning Etymology Lesson: karaoke

Relevant to last night’s activities (I sing karaoke most weeks on Wednesday nights), today’s word is karaoke!  Obviously the word is Japanese, but not entirely!  It translates as kara, meaning “empty”, oke, which is a shortened version of okesutora.  Okesutora is an example of the linguistic practice of Japanization of an English word, in this case, orchestra.  So karaoke means “empty orchestra”.

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Dream

Wednesday Morning Etymology Lesson: Dream

dream 11:12:14
Matteo Scalera’s Morpheus/Dream of The Endless, from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Graphic Novel Series

Because I had some vivid ones last night, today’s word is dream, which has a somewhat dissatisfying etymology for traditional linguists, in that the Old English word dream meant “joy, mirth, noisy merriment” and no one can really figure out why in the mid 13th century it came to mean “sleeping vision” instead.  Theories include a borrowing from the Old Norse word draumr which comes from a Proto-Germanic word draugmaz, meaning “festivity, dream, ghost, hallucination, delusion, deception.”  My own personal theory has to do with olde-timey festivals being closely tied with substance imbibing which would likely lead to “sleeping visions,” should one be feeling festive enough.

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Pineapple

Tuesday Morning Etymology Lesson: Pineapple!

In most other languages, pineapples are referred to by their scientific name: ananas, which means, aptly, “really good fruit,” and comes from the Tupi languages spoken in South America.  However, because Europeans liked to pretend they discovered everything, when they “discovered” the fruit in the Americas in the 1500s, they dubbed them pine apples because of their resemblance to those things that grow on pine trees back home in Blighty.  (Note: They hadn’t named those “pine cones” just yet. That word doesn’t come up until the mid-late 1600s.)

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Autumnus!

Monday Etymology Lesson: autumn

autumn 11:10:14

The word autumn comes from the ancient Etruscan root: autu- which was borrowed into Latin to become autumnus and means “the ending of the year.”  Prior to the 16th century, harvest was the most commonly used word for this season, but as people moved from farms to cities, we needed a less agriculturally relevant term, so autumn was borrowed from the French, who had since evolved the word from the Latin autumnus to autompne or automne.  Fall is really only used in North America in modern times, and is a Germanic word, likely borrowed from Old Norse. 

Enjoy the day! Autumnus!