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Thursday, August 23, 2012

RANDOM THOUGHTS #108

Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself about the curious origins of interesting words:

1. ETIQUETTE, the rules of polite social behavior, comes from the French word etiquette, which literally means "ticket." In the original usage, this was the piece of paper that told a soldier where he would be billeted (i.e., where he would sleep). In the Middle Ages (and up until 1850) it was fairly common for soldiers to be billeted in private homes. When the Army was pulled together from several widespread bases, there were not enough barracks on the base for them all, so some were sent to live in private homes. The homeowners were obliged to provide the soldiers a proper place to sleep, even if they were put out of their own beds! The British did this during the period before America became independent, something that American homeowners found so offensive that it was written into the US Constitution that the new government could not do that. Anyway, back to etiquette/ticket. The piece of paper assigning the soldier to a private home often had on it warnings that he was to behave properly, which is how the term came into its current use.

2. EUREKA, which means "I figured it out" is the old Greek word for "I have found it." The story goes that Archimedes, one of the greater minds of the ancient era, figured out how to tell if a goldsmith had substituted silver for some of the gold in the crown he made for the king by comparing the amount of water that the crown, and an equal weight of pure gold, displaced.

3. EXPLODE, usually associated with explosives, comes from the Latin worlds ex plaudio, or "to clap until the bad actor is forced to leave the stage." The meaning continued to be that through 1800 even in England. The connection to dynamite or gunpowder can be seen as "a large noise, and then the bad guy is gone." For what it's worth, applause is also Latin for "to clap" the meaning being to make one clap at the end of each line spoken by a well-regarded actor.

4. EXPUNGE, to remove from the record, comes from the Roman Army, which would ex pungo (prick out) the name of a retired or deceased soldier from the list of soldiers in the unit.

5. FAD, a passing fancy, comes from the English word faddle, which meant (from 1700 until a few decades ago) to pet a child or animal. The contraction apparently meant "to make a pet project of some hobby."

6. FAKE seems to have come from the English work faken (a fraud) but that word stopped being used in 1500. About 1620, English soldiers serving on the European mainland came into contact with the German fegen, to sweep clean, and may have mistaken it or used it as slang for steal.

7. FAN, a passionate devote or supporter of someone or something, has perhaps a mixed origin. It may have come from the words fancy (which originally meant a following or hobby) and comes from the older word fanatic. A few language historians insist that people who watched baseball games in the 1880s carried fans because of the heat and became known as "the fans." It is entirely possible both sources are true and the two origins just happened to produce the same word.

8. FANATIC, someone who is passionately in favor of something beyond any logic, actually has an ancient Roman origin. Sulla has his fortune saved by a vision from the goddess Belona and built a temple in her honor. The priests would perform their rituals in black robes, but some were so taken up by the spirit of the event that the ripped their robes apart and cut themselves with an axe and (in their whirling dance) splattered blood on the crowd. They were said to be "inspired by the fane" and in Latin that is fanatic.

9. FARCE, a form of comedy, comes from the old Latin word farcio, to stuff (as in cooking). At a particular point in religious services (between the Latin words for "Lord have mercy") the crowd would shout special requests and prayers, which were known as "farcios" because they were "stuffed" into the proper prayer. (The verb FORCE comes from this source.) Centuries later (the term still in use) comic actors in a play wold insert "farcios" into their lines (or the lines of other actors). It wasn't long before the term "turn it into a farce" was applied to anyone who inserted ridicule or satire into speeches by politicians and statesmen.

10. FARM, a plot of land used to grow crops, and FIRM, which means not just a hardline position in an argument but a business enterprise, comes through the French ferme from the Latin firmus, which meant "a fixed amount." In England, the term was used to refer to the annual rental that someone who worked the land had to pay to the overlord. (In France, it was a tax, not rent, and a farmer was not someone who worked the land but a tax collector and most of them were reputedly corrupt.) About 1550, the term evolved into referring not to the annual rent but to the land and work of the tenant, who then became a farmer in the sense we know it today.