Word-Origin Wednesday: Recent Episodes
The Grammar Geek
Word-Origin Wednesday is the weekly podcast that walks you through a word origin in five minutes or less.
The names of "October" and a few other months make a lot more sense if we look at Latin and the Roman calendar.
The everyday meaning of "sympathy" has shifted over the years, but it's always had some connection to its Latin and Greek roots.
Do you say "autumn" or "fall" to describe the season between summer and winter? Get the lowdown on the history of both words.
"Dead" and "duck" go way back, but the term "dead duck" is only a couple of centuries old.
The Modern English "peruse" came from the Middle English "peruse" . . . or maybe it came from French.
With Labor Day approaching, let's look at "factory" and "manufacturing." They were both borrowed from Latin.
"Escalate" is fairly new word, and the current definition has been around since just the 1950s.
"Put up your dukes," which has been around since at least the 1800s, is one example of Cockney rhyming slang.
The transition from "ekename" to "nickname" is a fine demonstration of the transition from Middle English to Modern English.
"Posh," as it is used today, first appeared in print a little more than a century ago. But where did it come from?
"Honey" and "moon" are very old. "Honeymoon" is relatively new, meaning it's a mere 500 years old.
"Mascara" is linked to many words from many languages, many of which go back centuries before commercially available mascara hit store shelves.
The word "liar" goes way back. As it turns out, people have been lying for a long time.
Like a lot of food-related words, "omelet" comes from French. Its origin has nothing to do with eggs.
"Humble" came from French, which took it from Latin. It's always meant "lowly," although that's not how people use it today.
A lavaliere is a fancy pendant. It's also a type of microphone. To find the origin, we go back to 17th-century France.
"Memorial" comes from Latin and is related to a slew of other English words, including "remember" and "memorandum."
"Whiskey" has been through some changes in its journey to English from (no surprise) Gaelic.
May 1 is May Day (two words) in the United States. Don't confuse it with "mayday" (one word), the distress call for pilots.
The often misused "verbiage" has been around for a few centuries, and its corrupt offspring, "verbage," is older than you might think.
"Easter" goes back to Old English and then goes back further. Celebrations of spring are older than Jesus.
"Stay" and "home" and "parent" are old words, going back centuries. Words to describe someone who tends to the home and children are also very old. English speakers began using the term "stay-at-home parent" very recently.
"Leverage" has been in the English language since the 18th century, but its position in everyday corporate speak is fairly recent.
Tea has been around for thousands of years, but English speakers didn't need a word for it until they started trading it in the 1590s.
"Butt" and "cheek" have been around for centuries. It took a while for English speakers to put them together.
"Ambulance" has been an English word since the 18th century, before motor vehicles, and is related to the word "amble."
"Selfie" is a fairly new word, but its root word and suffix are centuries old. Some people don't like "selfie," but resistance is futile.
By tracing "hiatus," meaning a break, back to its ancient Proto-Indo European roots, we find it has some modern cousins with similar meanings but very different sounds.
"Penultimate" and its cousin, "ultimate," both come from Latin. As the meaning of "ultimate" shifts, poor "penultimate" is being left behind.
The current popular meaning of "carnival" goes back to the 1920s, but the original meaning, which involves meat, goes back centuries.
We've been using the word "buck" as slang for money since the 1850s. There are two theories to explain why.
The slang term "booze" goes back many years as a noun and many more years as a verb. And what's a boozeroo?
The proper noun "Lent" evolved from a series of longer words ultimately related to spring.
On Valentine's day, you might send a valentine to your valentine. All of those uses share the same origin.
"Complicit" is Dictionary.com's 2017 Word of the Year. It's less than a century old, but the original "complicity" is much older.
The American Dialect Society named "fake news" its 2017 Word of the Year. The term has been around for a while, but the past few years, it seems to be everywhere.
"Unkempt," which means "sloppy or disheveled," goes back centuries. It's not the same as "unkept."
Carbonara dishes typically contain bacon and a cream sauce, but the origin of the word probably involves coal. Let's explore the various theories.
"Cleave" can mean "to split" or "to stick to." How did that happen? We explore "cleave" and other contronyms in this week's Word-Origin Wednesday.
We sing it every year on New Year's Eve, but what does "Auld Lang Syne" mean and where did it come from?
"Xmas" is a common, but sometimes frowned-upon, shortening of "Christmas." Let's look at the history of both words.
"Surcharge" came to English from French in the 15th century, long before retailers and credit card companies were sticking it to us.
Not enough people use the word "scuttlebutt," which means gossip. It comes from the nautical world.
Two different birds have been called "turkey," but the name stuck for only one of those birds.
"Thanks" and "giving" are pretty old words. When did people start combining them into "thanksgiving," and when did "Thanksgiving" get capitalized?
"Slipshod," which means "sloppy" or "thrown together," comes from early Modern English.
"Transgender" and "cisgender" originated in the 20th century, but the individual parts—"trans," "cis" and "gender"—all come from centuries-old Latin.
"Biceps" and "triceps" both come from Latin. Think you know their proper singular form? Think again.
English speakers might have taken "ridicule" from Latin or might have taken it from French. A related English word definitely came from Latin. Listen to find out what that word is!
This episode features a centuries-old Greek word and a new American word. Which is which?!?!
"Kindergarten" came to English in the 19th century from Germany. Its literal meaning has been mostly forgotten, and its spelling often is too.
"Uber" came to us from German and existed for decades in English as a prefix before taking on its current meaning.
"Decimal" comes from the Latin word for "tenth." Its etymological cousins include "decade," "dime," "December" and..."decimate"?
"Tattoo" has two meanings: a skin marking and a military signal. Are they related? Not at all.
"Conservative" came to English in the 14th century and hung around for 400 years before becoming what it is today: a word almost exclusively applied to politics and religion.
"Liberal," which comes from Latin via French, has been part of the English language since the 14th century, but it didn't have its current political definition until the 19th century.
"Until" can be traced back more than 1,000 years, all the way to Old Norse. This episode also includes a discussion of the related preposition "till" and a definition of Middle English.
"Recuse" has been all over the news in 2017, but the word isn't new. In fact, it's more than 600 years old.
As baseball became America's pastime in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its lingo leaked into the rest of the English language. Be sure to cover all your bases and listen to this week's Word-Origin Wednesday.
"Irregardless," one of the most hated words out there, has been around since at least the 1870s.
The next time you attend a shindig, make sure to tell one of your fellow guests the history of the word "shindig." (It most likely comes from sports, but that's all I'm telling you for now. You'll have to listen.)
The word "gaslight" has been around for as long as, well, gaslights have been around. But the word took on a new meaning in the 1940s, and that meaning has experienced a recent resurgence.
Pumpernickel, a dark rye bread, came from Germany. The word "pumpernickel" also came from Germany, but it originally had nothing to do with bread.
"Myriad" comes from French via Latin via Greek. Curmudgeons today say it should be used as an adjective only ... are they right?
"They" has been in the English language for centuries as a plural pronoun—and, yes, as a singular pronoun too.
"Impeach," an often misunderstood word, came to Middle English from Latin via Old French.
In a 2011 interview, Rob Reiner claimed that his 2007 movie "The Bucket List" introduced the term "bucket list" into English. Is he right?
People have been putting meat between two slices of bread forever, but it didn't really catch on until the 18th century. Over the years, sandwiches themselves have evolved...can the word "sandwich" evolve too?
"Honky" has been part of African American Vernacular since the late 1950s, but its origins might go back to the 19th century.
People started saying "jeez" in the 1920s as an expression of surprise or annoyance. Learn about its origin and the origin of other minced oaths.
"Fun" has been part of the English language for centuries, but its use as an adjective is fairly recent. The comparative "funner" is widely criticized, but is that really fair?
There's a story floating around social media that attempts to explain the origin of "shot," as in a shot of whiskey. Is the story true, or is it a myth? Find out on this week's #WordOriginWednesday!
These days, "nimrod" is used as an insult, but for centuries it meant something very different. Is Bugs Bunny responsible for the modern-day meaning? Listen to find out.