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Virus

Etymology: virus

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First recorded in English in the late 14th century, this word comes to us from the Latin, virus, meaning, “poison, sap of plants, slimy liquid, a potent juice,” from Proto-Italic weis-o-(s-) meaning, “poison,” itself likely from the PIE root ueis-, meaning “slime, rot, strong smell, poison.”  You can find the root ueis- in words like viscous and viscosity.

Its use as a noun to describe something that causes infectious disease was first used in 1728.  Louis Pasteur, famous for his breakthroughs in the creation of the rabies vaccine, speculated that viruses existed, but the observation of a virus by microscope wouldn’t happen until 36 years after his death, when the electron microscope was invented in 1931.

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Corona

Etymology: corona

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First recorded in the 1650s, from Latin, corona, meaning, “crown,” from Ancient Greek, korōnè, meaning, “garland, wreath.”  In ancient Rome this word specifically referred to a type of garland or crown given to people who performed admirably in military service. The word comes from a PIE root sker- (2) or ker-, which means “to turn, or bend.”  You’ll recognize this root in words like circle, circumference, and also in words like range, ridge, and ring.

In many European and Scandinavian countries, currency is often referred to as crowns, or kroner due to the habit of imprinting the current monarch on the coins.

The circle of light seen around the sun during a total solar eclipse is also called the corona, and was named in 1890 by Spanish Basque astronomer José Joaquín de Ferrer.

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Pandemic

Etymology: pandemic

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First recorded in the 1660s, this word comes from the Latin word pandemus, which itself comes from the Greek pandemos, pan- meaning “all, every, whole,” derived from PIE pant- meaning “all,” and dēmos, meaning “people.”  You’ll recognize dēmos, in words like demotic, which refers to the language of the common people.  The word dēmos actually comes from the PIE roots da- and mo- which together mean “division.”  Thus this word implies a division between the common people and the elite.

The -ic part of pandemic is a word-forming element from Middle English -ick, –ike, or -ique, that’s used for making adjectives.  It means, “being, made of, caused by, similar to, having to do with, having the nature of.”  It comes from French -ique, from Latin -icus, and Greek -ikos, all of which come from the PIE suffix -(i)ko.  This suffix is thought to be the origin of the Slavic suffix -sky, Polish -ski, and Russian -skii and means “pertaining to.” You’ll recognize this suffix in many Slavic names, like for example my dear sweet friend Jenn Sutkowski’s name.

The word epidemic is older than pandemic and it is thought that the word pandemic was modeled after epidemic.

Pandemic is a pretty fun and challenging board game as well, and might be worth checking out for something to do during your quarantine.

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Quarantine

Etymology: quarantine

For the next few days I’m going to be doing Word Nerd posts on words related to the current global pandemic, because learning about words helps me process and stay calm.  Our first word, and a suggestion from my friend Keith, is quarantine.

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During the Black Plague of mid 1300s, Venice established a 30 day isolation, or in Italian, trenta giorni or, trentino on all ships attempting to make port in order to assure that no one on board was infected.  This was eventually extended to 40 days, quaranta giorni, or quarantino.  From Latin quadraginta, meaning, “forty” and quattuor, meaning, “four,” and further back from the PIE root kwetwer- also meaning, “four.”

Its use as a period of isolation not necessarily related to disease was first recorded in the 1520s and stood for the length of time which a widow had the right to stay in her husband’s house after his death, which was forty days.

Its use as a verb is first recorded in 1804.

 

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Delegate

Etymology: delegate

Yesterday was Super Tuesday in many U.S. states including my own.  I’m having lots of feelings about the results, and it’s helpful for me to channel feelings into education, so here we go.  Here in the U.S., we use a system that involves delegates, and it’s… complicated.  If you want to learn more about how that system works, here’s a helpful breakdown on CNN.   If you want to learn more about the word delegate, pay attention below.

As a verb, delegate means “to send with power to transact business as a representative.”  It was first recorded around 1520, and comes from the Latin, delegare, from de, meaning, “from” or, “away,” and legare, meaning, “to send with a contract or commission.”  It’s thought that the Latin word legare stems from the PIE root leg- meaning, “to gather, set in order, consider, choose.”  This root can be found in words like analogy, biology, apology, paralogical, logistics, legion, legislator, privilege, sacrilege, and many more words, none of which can properly explain the depths of my despair over the results of the Democratic Presidential Primary Election.

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As a noun, it means “a person appointed and sent by another or others with power to transact business as a representative,” and came to use about a hundred years before the verb form.  It’s from Old French, delegat or directly from the Latin delegatus, the past participle of delegare, seen above.

The noun didn’t come to mean a person elected or appointed to represent a territory in the U.S. Congress until 1825 or so and in my opinion the whole antiquated process could do with an overhaul.

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Word Nerd, For Pimsleur

I work for Pimsleur, a language learning company, and I write courses as well as blog posts and articles for them about languages, etymology, and culture.  Here are some recent posts I’ve made for them, which I’ll try to update when new ones are published.  Just click on the image to open the article:

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Cavalry

Etymology: cavalry

This morning I typed the word cavalry, and decided it was a weird word and needed to be looked up so here we are, the etymology of cavalry.

This is one of those words that comes to English from romance languages.  Middle French, cavalerie, and Italian, cavalleria and cavalliere, meaning “mounted soldier.”  It comes from the Vulgar Latin word for “horse,” caballus.

Side note 1: Old Latin called horses equus, which comes from an old PIE root ekwo-.  You’ll recognize this root in words like equestrian, hippopotamus, hippocratic, and even the word alfalfa.

Side note 2: alfalfa has a very interesting history as a word.  It comes to us from Spanish, but it came to Spanish from Arabic, and to Arabic from two Old Iranian root words, aspa- meaning “horse,” and -sti- meaning “food.”

Side note 3: the word horse, is a very old word and it’s unclear what its origin story is.  Some people think it’s a loan-word from the Sarmatian language spoken by the Sarmatians of ancient Iran.  They migrated northwest, eventually settling in the areas now known as Ukraine, Southern Russia and Poland.  It’s one of those words that sounds the same in many languages, regardless of their roots, even in the Uralic languages like Finnish which are super weird and not really like anything else.  The Finnish word for “horse or stallion” is varsa, which if you say it out loud, sounds a lot like “horse” spoken with a weird accent.

Ok back to cavalry.  So the Vulgar Latin word was caballus, which is thought to have been a loan-word from some long dead Anatolian language, and originally it meant specificially, “work horse,” but it somehow caught on and became just the general word for “horse.”  B sounds often morph into V sounds over time, so from caba you get cava and then cavalier, and then cavalry.  Cavalier used to mean, “gallant, knightly, brave,” but then came to mean “easy, offhand and disdainful.”  Funny how words do that.  The surname Chevalier, and the word chivalry, come from this word.

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Autonomy

Etymology: autonomy

From the Greek autonomia, meaning “independence,” and autonomos, meaning “living by one’s own laws.”  From the very ancient Greek word, auto- meaning “self, one’s own, by oneself, of oneself.”  You will recognize this word-forming element at the front of words like automobile, autonomic, and autopsy, which literally means “self sees,” and means, “to see with one’s own eyes.”

The second part is nomos, meaning “law or custom.”  Nomos comes from a very old PIE root, *nem- meaning “assign, allot, or take.”

Here is an example of the word autonomy as used in a sentence:

The right to bodily autonomy is protected by the United States Constitution under the 14th Amendment, which states that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Just something to think about.

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Lovable Norwegian Words

I work part time as a course writer for Pimsleur, and the first big project I worked on for them was training as an editor on their Norwegian II course. At Pimsleur, we work with native informants to make sure the translations and grammar are correct, so as writers and editors we don’t need to be fluent in the languages of the courses we’re working on. Still, you end up picking up a lot of each language you work with, and Norwegian stuck with me because it’s particularly fun to speak. Norwegian and English have similar sentence structures and both have words that come from Old Norse, so it isn’t one of the more challenging languages to learn to read. The hardest thing about Norwegian is probably the unfamiliar vowel sounds, which are difficult to master for a non native speaker. Those unfamiliar vowel sounds are exactly what makes Norwegian so fun to speak because it sounds so cute!

I really like this person named Karin who offers a bunch of Norwegian tutorial videos on her Youtube channel.  Here is one where she pronounces the å, æ, and ø vowel sounds: https://youtu.be/l23CjariO0A

Here are a list of some of my favorite Norwegian words and phrases. I will update this list as I discover more words and I may add a video of me pronouncing them at some point, just for fun.

blåbær [bloh – bah – rh]: It means, “blueberry.” This is a great word for practicing your Norwegian vowel sounds.

skilpadde [shill – pah – deh]: In Norwegian, sk is pronounced “sh.” This word means, “turtle.”  Not only is this word fun to say, but to me, the word sounds like “shell paddler,” which I think is a nice way of describing a turtle.

hyggelig å hilse på deg [heeg – alee – oh – hill – sah – poh – die]: This phrase literally means “nice to greet of you” and it’s what you say when you’ve met someone. It’s a fun, melodic phrase to say, plus it has the word hygge in it, which is everyone’s favorite Danish winter coping strategy. Norway’s version of hygge is kos, which is sort for koselig, and means “cozy.”

besteforeldre [best – eh – for – eld – reh]: This word means, “grandparents,” and I just think it’s so sweet. There are lots of words related to grandparents in Norwegian. Your mother’s mother is your mormor, your mother’s father is your morfor. Your paternal grandparents are your formor and forfor. Your great grandparents are your oldemor and oldefor.  If you didn’t want to specify maternal or paternal grandparent, you’d just say bestemor or bestefor. And if you wanted to refer to your all of your grandparents you’d say besteforeldre.

ikke [eek – eh]: This word basically means, “not.” It’s hard to describe why I like this word so much. I think it’s because it sounds like “icky” and you can just toss it into a sentence to change its meaning. Hun liker ham / “she likes him” changes to hun liker ikke ham / “she does not like him.”

kjæreste [shi – ah – rest – eh]: I love this word so much. It means “beloved” and it’s a fabulous, gender neutral term of endearment for a person who is super important in your life. It’s very often used to refer to a romantic partner. It’s so much better than our words girlfriend and boyfriend because it’s gender neutral and isn’t diminutive. It’s also better than partner, since partner could be a business partner, a life-partner, a romantic partner, etc. It’s just a perfect word to describe a person you’re romantically involved with, without being super specific about the terms of the relationship.

 

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Sublime

Etymology Lesson: sublime

In an email, my wonderful pal Ashley used the word sublime. It was the best word she could think of to describe the feeling she felt when they put her son on her chest after she gave birth to him. I think it’s the perfect word for that experience and here’s why.

Let us start by separating the word into its two parts, the prefix sub-, from the Latin preposition of the same name, meaning “under, beneath, at the foot of,” and also “up to, towards, within, and during.”

Next, -lime, from Latin, limen, meaning “threshold, edge, limit, boundary.” Also the source of the word liminal. So the word sublime literally means, “at the foot of the threshold,” or “beneath the edge.”

I can’t think of a better word to describe those precious and rare moments in life where you are in a space of perfect presence with something hugely important. Before that moment was struggle, pain, and effort, and you know that on the other side of that moment is responsibility, the mundane, and everything else, so you stay with it as long as you can. The sublime.