Etymology 1 Flashcards
Hundred
The word ‘hundred’ comes from the Norse word ‘hundrath’ which actually means 120.
Fallopian tube
The Fallopian tubes are named after their discoverer, the 16th centuryItaliananatomistGabriele Falloppio. He thought they resembledtubas, the plural oftubain Italian beingtubewhich was misunderstood and became the English “tube”.
Why are carrots orange?
Carrots are orange because oranges are orange.
Almost all citrus fruit is derived from a common ancestor that first evolved in southern China about 20 million years ago. By the year zero, oranges in particular were known in India where they were known by the sanskrit wordnāranga, meaning orange tree. The prefix ‘nar’ I believe means aroma, and it should be known that back then oranges weren’t eaten as food. They were just used for their aromatic properties.”
The orange traveled west and was called thenârangin Persia and the nāranj in Arabic. When the fruit arrived in France, it may have been pronouncedun naranj, which doesn’t sound very different thanun aranj. Linguists actually believe the “n” from the front of the word was lost due to confusion with the preceding indefinite article, “at which point the French presumably misassociated that first syllable with their word for gold,or, leading to the modernorange.
A town in Southern France,Arausio, founded by the Romans in 35 BC, was classically pronounced “Aurenja.” Predictably, that became “orange” once the French conflatednaranjwithor. When a man namedWilliam the Silentfrom Nassau inherited the rule in Orange in 1544, he became William of Orange. He led the Dutch in Revolt against the Spanish in the late 1500s, and they eventually won their independence in the form of theDutch Republic.
Back then the Dutch were known as carrot farmers. You could get their carrots in white or yellow or purple. Then in the 17th century a breed of carrot was developed that had a lot of beta-Carotene and was orange. And the Dutch started growing this in great abundance in tribute to William of Orange to such a degree that almost all other forms of carrot had gone out of mass agricultural production…in this very roundabout way our carrots are orange because our oranges are orange, and they’ve been that way for political reasons.
Avocado / Guacamole
The word avocado comes from Spanishaguacate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatlahuacatl, meaning testicle.
Nahuatl is the language of the Aztecs, and is still spoken by approximately 1.5 million people native to Central America. Avocado isn’t the only Nahuatl word which has been borrowed by the English language; chili, chocolate, tomato and guacamole were also coined by speakers of Nahuatl. Indeed, the-moleof guacamole is derived from the Nahuatlmolli, which means sauce. It’s a good thing the origin of this word has been obfuscated on its way into the English language, otherwise guacamole (Nahuatl: ahuacamolli)probably wouldn’t be as popular as it is.
Cappuccino
Cappuccino is thediminutive fromof the wordcappuccio, which meanshoodin Italian. Wondering what the link is between a (little) hood and a cappuccino? One must look no further than the Capuchin Monks, whose hooded habits were a dark, oak brown similar to the color of a good cappuccino.
Capuchin monkeys also get their name for the same reason. According to the bookThe Complete Capuchin: The Biology of the Genus Cebus, in the 15th Century when explorers reached the Americas, they discovered the peculiar breed of monkeys (genus Cebus); their colored “caps of hair” resembled to the monks in their robes with the hoods down, so they named them Capuchins.
Disaster
The worddisasterhas been passed around Europe like a hot potato. The English version is most closely tied to the Frenchdésastre, which is derived from the Old Italiandisastro, itself derived from Greek. The pejorative prefixdis-andaster(star) can be interpreted asbad star, oran ill-starred event. The ancient Greeks were fascinated by astronomy and the cosmos, and believed wholly in the influence of celestial bodies on terrestrial life. For them, a disaster was a particular kind of calamity, the causes of which could be attributed to an unfavorable and uncontrollable alignment of planets. It’s therefore interesting to note that the strict, modern English definition ofdisasterexplicitly stipulates that a disaster is human-made, or the consequence of human failure.
Jeans / Denim
Although jeans are quintessentially American, and their invention is commonly attributed to Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss, the name of the popular garment is actually of European origin. The fabric which Strauss used for his patented, mass-produced trousers was first produced in Genoa, Italy and Nimes, France.
Why’s that significant? Well, the French word for Genoa isGênes, and the namejeansis likely an anglicization of the material’s city of origin. Similarly, the worddenimmost probably comes fromde Nimes, meaningfrom Nimesin French. Although we often talk of denim jeans nowadays, the two materials actually differed. Denim was coarser, more durable and of higher quality than the toughened cotton corduroy manufactured in Genoa. Workers in Northern Italy were sporting jeans as early as the 17th Century, long before post-war American subcultures picked up on them as a fashion accessory.
Salary
The wordsalarycomes from the Latinsalarium; the payment for salt.
In ancient times, salt was used for many important things, and was often referred to aswhite gold. It could be used as an antiseptic to treat wounds (in Romance languages one can recognize a connection betweensal/sale, meaningsalt, andsalud/saude/salute, meaninghealth), to preserve food, and also as a method of payment in Greece and Rome.
As far back as the Egyptian Empire, laborers were paid with salt that they could use to preserve their food. The Roman Empire continued using this form of payment and it took on the namesalaryforthat which was given to workers at the end of the working month.
Whisky
Medieval monks called itaqua vitae, meaninglife water. The expression was transformed intouisce beathawhen it was transferred to Gaelic. As time passed and the word was anglicized,uisceevolved intouige,usque, and thenuisky, which bears an obvious and close resemblance to whisky.
Quarantine
The word “quarantine” has its origins in the devastating plague, the so-called Black Death, which swept across Europe in the 14th century, wiping out around 30% of Europe’s population.
It comes from the Venetian dialect form of the Italian words “quaranta giorni”, or “forty days”, in reference to the fact that, in an effort to halt the spread of the plague, ships were put into isolation on nearby islands for a forty-day period before those on board were allowed ashore. Originally – attested by a document from 1377 – this period was thirty days and was known as a “trentine”, but this was extended to forty days to allow more time for symptoms to develop. This practice was first implemented by the Venetians controlling the movement of ships into the city of Dubrovnik, which is now part of Croatia but was then under Venetian sovereignty.
We now use the word “quarantine” to refer to the practice of restricting the movements, for a period of time, of people or animals who seem healthy, but who might have been exposed to a harmful disease that could spread to others.
Clue
Who knew that the word “clue” derives from Greek mythology? It comes from the word “clew”, meaning a ball of yarn. In Greek mythology, Ariadne gives Theseus a ball of yarn to help him find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. Because of this, the word “clew” came to mean something that points the way.
Appropriately enough, Theseus unravelled the yarn behind him as he went into the maze, so that he could work his way back out in reverse. Thus the word “clew” can be understood in this context and in the context of a detective working his way backwards to solve a crime using “clues”.
The word gained its modern-day spelling in the 15th century, a time when spelling was rather more fluid than it is today.
Genuine
The word “genuine” comes from the Latin word “genuinus”, meaning “innate”, “native” or “natural”, itself derived, somewhat surprisingly, from the Latin word “genu”, meaning “knee”. This unlikely origin arises from a Roman custom in which a father would place a newborn child on his knee in order to acknowledge his paternity of the child. This practice also gave rise to an association with the word “genus”, meaning “race” or “birth”. In the 16th century the word “genuine” meant “natural” or “proper”, and these days we use it to mean “authentic”.
Tragedy
The word “tragedy” comes from the Greek wordtragodia,which literally translates to “goat song.”Many theorieshave been offered up to explain this strange origin, one such being that because goats would often be sacrificed to the Gods at the end of Athenian play competitions, the sound of their cries became associated with Greek tragedies.
Girl
The word “girl” isn’t historically tied to a specific gender. Rather, it was first usedin the 13th century to refer to a young person in general, whether they were male or female. Up until the 16th century, “gay girls” were young women and “knave girls” were young men.
Apron
The word that you now know to be “apron” first appeared in the 14th century as “napron,” a derivative of the medieval French wordnaperon(referring to a cloth placed over a tablecloth to avoid stains). As people used the word napron in speech, the boundaries of words were blurred, anda napronbecame replaced withan apronentirely by the 17th century.
