Day 18 — Edifying, Erudite Etymologies for Everyone
In addition to being a software developer who works with coding languages, I’ve always had an interest in spoken/written languages as well. Perhaps it’s attributable to my nature as a “jack of all trades, but master of none” that I’ve studied many languages before — Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese — but I can only really speak two of them, and only fluently in one. But it must also be thanks to my nature as a programmer that I prefer to enjoy languages from the analytical point-of-view, through the study of linguistics. I love learning about the differences between languages in terms of grammar, sentence structure, word formation, and so on.
In fact, this is one of the reasons that eventually brought me to live in Japan in particular: I find Japanese as a language to be just the right Goldilocks mix of “not too hard, not too easy” for me to try and learn. It constantly is keeping me intrigued as I learn more kanji (Chinese-derived characters), vocabulary, and ways of speaking. And while there are a lot of difficulties in learning Japanese, I feel it is a beautiful language to the eye and ear, while still being a worthwhile personal investment. Truly any language is hard to master; I would prefer to spend my efforts constantly awed.
At HENNGE, the working language is English — which is a boon for a native speaker like me. But, as you might expect from an English-first company in central Tokyo, I’ve found that most of my coworkers and I share a strong common interest in learning new facts and fascinations of language — whether from English, Japanese, or many others. Thankfully HENNGE is a home for native speakers of dozens of different languages, so there’s always more we’re learning at work from each other.
Etymology: History Class for Linguists
In particular, one of the things that most piques my interest in languages is etymology — the study of the origins of words and how they’ve changed throughout history. (The etymology of “etymology,” itself, is from the Greek for “study of truth.”).
If someone asked you about a word in a language that you know, you could probably explain its meaning to them rather easily. But, could you explain why? Why is “butter” butter, and not something else? Who decided to call a kumquat a “kumquat?” Why do we have a single word “tomorrow” but insist on settling for “the day after tomorrow”? (Especially when there’s actually a great word for that already: overmorrow.)
I find it endlessly fascinating. In my days as a teacher of English as a foreign language in Japan, I was often humorously confronted with revelations about English as I tried to teach it. It was a humbling experience, and surprising to me how little I had thought critically about my own native language.
“It’s spelled ‘t-h-r-o-u-g-h’, but said like “threw”. Sorry…”
“It’s not ‘eated’, it’s ‘ate’. Oh, past tense of ‘read’? …it’s ‘read’…”
“…Huh. Why do we drive on a parkway, but park on a driveway?…”
“A-ha!” moments like these make me aware that many people take the languages we communicate in for granted, and so I often wish to share these exciting revelations with others. To that end, among my friend circles I’ve been known to cause many an eye roll as, mid-conversation, I might blurt out:
Me: “Did you know that the word ‘orchid’ actually comes from the Ancient Greek word for ‘testicle’?”
No one: “…”
But I think it’s important to constantly question the status quo (⬅️ a phrase from Latin). And the truth is, learning more about the history of one language can help you learn about other languages and other people, as many of our world’s 7,000+ languages evolved from common ancestors.
So in this article, I want to try to share my passion for etymology with you. Below are some common English words and their respective histories. See how many of their backstories you already know!
14 Wacky Word Origins
1. Alarm ⏰
Italian: all’ arme (to arms!)
This is a word you may see every day (or snooze away every morning), but have you ever thought about its origin? It comes from French and Italian and once described a more fraught arousal:
“a call to arms in the face of danger or an enemy”
Knowing this, it’s easy to imagine a scene of sleeping soldiers jolting awake and grabbing their weapons for a fight, thanks to a “call to arms” siren or other sounds. Tomorrow morning you can be thankful that you just have to wake up for work instead!
2. Muscle 💪
Latin: musculus (little mouse)
An unexpected connection here! The Latin word mus means mouse, and apparently, the movement of some muscles (like a bicep) appeared similar to the movement/size of a mouse, to at least some ancient peoples 🐭🤔.
3. Skosh 🤏
Japanese: 少し sukoshi (a little)
This one is for all the Japan-related readers out there. Even if this word is a little dated and slangy in English, native speakers will probably recognize it. What they might not know is that it’s a direct import from Japan circa the 1950’s. Purportedly, American soldiers brought it home with them after World War II or the Korean War, and it became part of American English vernacular since then.
4 & 5. Dexterity; Sinister 🙌
Latin: dexter (right)
Latin: sinister (left)
These two I’ll introduce as a pair because they go so well together.
Dexterity, meaning “being skilled with your hands,” comes from the Latin word for “right” (as in the direction), presumably because most people were (and are) right-handed. Contrastingly, the modern word sinister, meaning “evil” or “wicked,” is associated with “left.”
This may not mean that all Romans thought that left-handed people were evil, though. While it definitely wasn’t great to be in the minority in terms of handedness, the attribution of “right is good; left is bad” was more associated with auguring in Ancient Rome — divining the future by watching signs in the skies. For example, if a priest observed birds flying “to the right,” it would portend well for the prediction, and “to the left” was not so great.
6. Amethyst 🍷
Greek: a- (not), methustos (drunk)
Here’s a fun one for February birthstone babies. Ancient Greeks called this stone amethyst because they believed that wearing it or having contact with it would prevent drunkenness. It’s believed that its purple color was assumed to relate to its ability to absorb the alcohol from red wine.
7. Hippopotamus 🐴
Greek: hippo (horse), potamos (river)
Did you know that when you talk about the animal called a hippo, you’re actually saying “horse” in Ancient Greek?
Apparently to those ancients, a hippopotamus was nothing more than a river horse, with the “hippo” part meaning horse. Just don’t try to ride one.
By the way, a place name you might’ve heard of shares one of these roots: Mesopotamia, which means “between two rivers.”
8. Curfew 🕔
Old French: cuvrir (to cover), feu (fire)
To you, a curfew might just be a time by which your parents told you to return home at night as a teenager. But the origin of curfew is not too dissimilar: it described a bygone regulation where medieval people had to cover (put out) their fires at a certain time each night. Often a bell would be rung at that time too. In the Middle Ages, of course, it was quite important not to fall asleep with the fire lit — or you could burn down your whole neighborhood of wooden houses 🔥 🏚.
9. Biscuit 🍪
Latin through French: bis (twice), coctus (cooked)
Biscuits (whether sweet 🇬🇧 or savory 🇺🇸) in the old days were cooked twice to help them to last for a long time without preservatives — hence their name!
10. Sushi 🍣
Japanese: 酸い sui (sour, vinegared)
With many words in Japanese, you can often glean a sense of their etymology by looking at their kanji. Not so with the word “sushi.” It’s written as「寿司」 in modern Japanese. This is called an ateji spelling, meaning that those characters were intentionally assigned to the word later on and have nothing to do with the original etymology (sadly).
So you might be surprised to learn that the original word had nothing to do with fish! It was derived from a character「酸」meaning “sour” or “vinegar,” and the word was originally only concerned with the vinegared preparation of sushi rice, fishy or not. Another etymology based on food preservation.
11. Salary 💴
Latin: sal (salt)
All Japanese know of the word salaryman (a white-collar worker), which is maybe one of the most famous examples of wasei-ego (Japanese-fabricated English). But they might not realize that it shares a root with words like “salami” and “salad!”
In fact, the origin is the Latin word for salt 🧂. Why? Because Ancient Roman officials and soldiers were paid in salt rations.
12. Pen 🖋
Latin: penna (feather)
Maybe not such a surprising answer, as some of the first writing implements were quills (feathers) dipped in ink! ✍️
13. Helicopter 🚁
Greek: helix (spiral), pteros (wing)
This is an instance of the linguistic phenomenon called rebracketing, sometimes also known as false splitting, where the original combination of words is misinterpreted. In this case, the original [helico][pter] was misdivided as [heli][copter], so now we have words like “quadcopter” and “gyrocopter.” In fact, the -pter suffix in the word means “wing”, and shares the same origin as “pterodactyl,” which means winged fingers in Greek.
Similarly, “hamburger” has suffered a similar fate. The word was once derived from the city of Hamburg in Germany (but otherwise has no other meaningful connection to that place.) Arguably the presence of the meaty word “ham” within “hamburger” misled people into thinking it should be interpreted as [ham][burger]. Thus some other spinoffs like “cheeseburger” and “veggie burger” were born.
See some more examples below:
14. Apron 👨🍳
Latin: nappe (cloth)
Last on the list. Did you know “apron” and “napkin” share an origin? In a similar phenomenon to hamburger and helicopter, this word started off as “a napron” and became “an apron.” Because of the ambiguity of English, people couldn’t audibly tell the difference between the two. Thus the “n” moved from the noun to the preceding article via false splitting. You can maybe see more similarity now between “nap-ron” and “nap-kin”.
See some more examples of moving “n”s below:
How About Some New Vocab?
In addition to studying the histories of words, I also love discovering new words and their meanings, even if I may rarely reencounter them. It’s especially pleasing when you find out there’s a word for a concept you knew about but never knew how to describe in just one word 😍.
Here are a few of my English favorites. Feel free to throw out one of these words in your next conversation and enjoy the look on your listeners’ faces:
- Blepharospasm —an eye twitch
- Omphalos —a bellybutton
- Pareidolia — the phenomenon of seeing a face in something inanimate
- Ambisinister — opposite of “ambidextrous”, meaning “clumsy with both hands”
- Cryptomnesia — the phenomenon of believing you created an idea by yourself, but in actuality, you previously encountered it and then forgot it
And just for fun, here are some fancy words for characters/symbols in English:
- Interrobang —a “!” and “?” combined into one character: ‽
- Octothorp — the “#” character (also known as a pound or hash sign)
- Ampersand — the “&” (“and”) symbol. From “and & per se and”, meaning “this symbol by itself is the word ‘and’.”
- Pilcrow — the “¶” paragraph symbol
- Manicule — this opinionated character: “☞”
Evoke Your Inner Etymology Expert
If you’re interested in diving further into the field of linguistics, there are many ways to do so. Sparking up interest in a new language, or learning some new vocab for one you’re already trying to master, are two good ways to start.
As referenced above, I’m a big fan of Starkey Comics’ blog and infographics on etymologies and linguistics.
If you’re interested specifically in Japanese like me, Tofugu’s language blog or the language column of The Japan Times should be added to your roster!
And if you’re interested in English etymologies, the articles on The Online Etymology Dictionary provide intriguing reads — and the online dictionary itself is of course an essential resource.
You could also try picking up a word-a-day or etymology-a-day calendar. It can be a good way to ease into the linguistic study with just one new fact a day, without getting bored or falling down a research rabbit hole. And unlike a traditional calendar, it doesn’t necessarily go defunct by December 31st; you can keep old ones around, like I have, to remind yourself of some of the fascinating revelations you might’ve forgotten. An old calendar like that might not be able to tell you what day it is today, but it can still give you 365 new insights into the hidden histories of words you see every day!
Happy word sleuthing!
