I've known for a while that there's an anticoagulant named warfarin, but it never occurred to me to look up its etymology; I always just assumed it had something to do with warfare.
But etymology by spelling, as they say, is not spell etymology (or something like that). It turns out that the name derives from the initials of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (which Wikipedia says funded the key research to develop it), plus the ending of “coumarin” (a related chemical compound).
I always wondered vaguely about the origin of the term "fifth column," but never got around to looking it up 'til now.
Turns out (according to the abovelinked Wikipedia article) that it comes from the Spanish Civil War, when a general of an army outside Madrid said that his four military columns of soldiers would be supported by a fifth "column" of people inside the city.
It occurred to me recently to wonder about the derivation of the word "cutlass."
Turns out it's from Middle French "coutel," meaning knife, which ultimately derives from Latin "culter," meaning knife or plowshare. (! Had no idea that one word meant both things.)
And the "lass" part appears to be a Middle French augmentative suffix. So I gather that the Middle French "coutelas" basically meant "big knife."
Which made me wonder about another piratical term: "windlass." Which turns out to derive from Norse "vindāss," in which the "āss" part means "pole." So it's a winding-pole.
Kind of neat that the two lasses are etymologically distinct from each other as well as from the word "lass."
As well as, of course, from that third pirate-related lass, the spyglass.
Recently was reading some discussion or other of creationism and came across the word "baramin."
Creationists use the word to refer to the "created kinds" of animals referred to in a couple places in the Bible.
Wikipedia says:
The word "baramin", which is a compound of the Hebrew words for created and kind, is unintelligible in Hebrew.
My name is Shmuel, and I'll be your guest blogger. I'd like to thank Jed for inviting me to come and play. I'm flattered, and excited, and terribly uncertain of what I'll be writing about. But let's start with "salutations."
It occurred to me, as I was casting around for ideas, that the use of "salutations" as a salutation is a bit strange. "Hello" is a salutation. "Dear Sir or Madam" is a salutation. "Salutations" itself seems more like a placeholder, as if one were saying "[insert salutation here]." The same would seem to go for "greetings," for that matter.
(You may be thinking of E.B. White right now. In my experience, "Salutations!" is practically code for "I loved Charlotte's Web as a kid and I still love both language and whimsy." That's likely a skewed sample, however; the kind of people I hang out with tend to be those who love Charlotte's Web, language, and whimsy, no matter what greetings they choose.)
My first thought was that "salutations" might be functioning as a clipped form of a longer phrase, perhaps "I offer you salutations!" An initial check in the unabridged dictionaries I had onhand (notably Merriam-Webster's 2nd and 3rd ed., American Heritage 4th ed., Random House 2nd ed.) found no trace of "salutations" itself being used as a salutation. Furthermore, Random House was the only one to include "greetings" in anything like the sense at hand: "3. greetings, an expression of friendly or respectful regard: send my greetings to your family." This strikes me as not quite the same sense as "Greetings!" but it's in the right ballpark.
Ultimately, I pulled out the big guns: the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED confirmed my original thought, and showed that this construction goes back a long way. Definition 2 for "salutation" is "Elliptically for 'I offer salutation'," though this is flagged as being archaic. The earliest citation is from 1535: "Vnto Eszdras..peace and salutacion." The year 1600 brings a familiar form, almost: "Salutation and greeting to you all." In the singular form, found in these examples, the usage is indeed archaic. The plural form is not, but the OED doesn't mention that at all.
Two things strike me as interesting in all of this. The first is the elliptical form of "salutations" itself, which strikes me as unusual. After all, one doesn't say "Valedictions!" when leaving. Can you think of other examples of such a usage?
The second is that a usage as common as "Greetings!" or "Salutations!" can apparently be taken for granted to the extent that major dictionaries don't bother to note it at all. For that matter, even though the usage has changed from singular to plural—nobody these days would say "Greeting!" or "Salutation!"—only Random House includes the specifically plural form, and that only for "greetings." It's rare that I find a blind spot like this. And kind of cool.
I'm not sure all of this adds up to anything, but there you have it. Salutations!
Entertaining T-shirt from zazzle.com says:
Polyamory is wrong!
It is either Multiamory or Polyphilia
but mixing Greek and Latin roots? Wrong!
It struck me the other day that "foul play" is an odd sort of euphemism for murder. "Play"? What kind of play?
The Phrase Finder says Shakespeare probably coined the phrase and used it to mean "unfair behavior." (A search at RhymeZone Shakespeare seems to confirm that that was basically what he meant by it.) That seems plausible enough; I can imagine someone taking this common phrase and sort of jokingly and understatingly using it to refer to murder.
Except that MW11 defines it as "violence; especially: murder" and dates it to the 15th century, at least a hundred years before Shakespeare. Then again, MW3 (unabridged) says "unfair, dishonest, or treacherous conduct or dealing; specifically: violence."
Also, MW11 notes that "play" can mean "swordplay."
Anyway, I'm left without an answer to my question. I'm specifically wondering when and how "foul play" came to refer specifically to murder, as in "he met with foul play" or "there was no evidence of foul play." It's a phrase I associate with murder mysteries and detective stories; could it have entered popular use in this context via Arthur Conan Doyle? Agatha Christie? I don't know.
I suppose it could have started with the line from Pericles: "She died by foul play." But now I'm just guessing. Anyone know for sure?
Twig asked me about the origin of the phrase "cold turkey." I didn't know, so I looked it up.
No info at Quinion's World Wide Words, which is my most trusted source for etymology these days.
No etymology info in MW11 (abridged) or MW3 (unabridged). But MW3 does give a couple of interesting definitions from before its use regarding drugs; those definitions have to do with being blunt and/or something being a certainty or sure thing. I can imagine those definitions morphing into the modern sense. First cite of the modern sense (in MW11) is 1921.
The Online Etymology Dictionary says:
"without preparation," 1910; narrower sense of "withdrawal from an addictive substance" (originally heroin) first recorded 1921. Cold turkey is a food that requires little preparation, so "to quit like cold turkey" is to do so suddenly and without preparation.
Color me dubious.
Wikipedia says:
The etymology derives from the phrase talk turkey, in which someone deals matter-of-factly with a subject[1]. Some, however, believe the derivation is from the comparison of a cold turkey carcass and the state of a withdrawing addict--most notably, the cold sweats and goose bumps.[citation needed] [...] Yet another suggestion of origin is that cold turkey is a dish that needs little or no preparation. "To quit like cold turkey" would be to quit in the same way a cold turkey is served, instantly just as you are without preparation.
In other words, Wikipedia isn't sure.
Dictionary.com says:
1915-20, Americanism; prob. from the phrase to talk cold turkey to speak bluntly about something unpleasant, var. of to talk turkey; see turkey
I don't normally put much faith in dictionary.com, but it does seem to be more or less in accord with MW3 unabridged on this, and this answer seems much more plausible to me than the "little or no preparation" or "turkey carcass" versions.
Somehow it hadn't occurred to me 'til just now to wonder about the etymology of the word "solstice." The first part is obviously "sol," sun. Turns out the second part comes from a form of the Latin "status"/"sistere," having to do with standing (see also English words like "static" and "stasis"); basically, it's the moment when the sun "stands still." Nifty.
I recently read a submitted story in which someone who seemed to be from Africa used the word "sahib." "That's not right," I said to myself; "there's another word like that that's used for some of the same kinds of things pertaining to Africa. Now what is it?"
I did some web searches; no dice. I went back to the story, but I couldn't focus on it.
I did some more web searches. Fruitless. I tried again with the story, but the word I was missing was driving me crazy.
I picked up Mike Resnick's Kirinyaga and flipped through it. Nothing. I had a vague idea that there was a feminine form of the word, often used in reference to white girls in Africa in the colonial adventure-story tradition, so I picked up Beryl Markham's West With the Night and leafed through that; still nothing. Tried to read the story again. Couldn't.
Looked in Hemingway. Nothing.
Had a sudden brainstorm. "Aha! I know what the word is! It's 'sahib'! ...Oh, wait, no, that's the one I started with."
Finally decided to drop Mary Anne a note and see if she could tell me the word; she's done post-colonial studies. Surely she would know.
Halfway through the note, I remembered the word.
I'm gonna use the "Extended Entry" feature for once, to give you a chance to think of the word before I say it. Do you know which word I mean? Hint: turns out there isn't a feminine version; I was confused.
In a submission, I encountered the phrase "can of corn" as a baseball term; hadn't heard it before, so went and looked it up. Apparently it refers to a baseball hit in such a way that it's particularly easy to catch.
John Marshall, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's "Answer Guy," says that there are several possible origin stories for the phrase. The most accepted one, he says, is this: In olden times, "[...] a grocer would use a stick to tip a can of vegetables off a high shelf, then catch it in his hands or outstretched apron."
A British site, The Phrase Finder, gives a somewhat different explanation: it repeats a story to the effect that the phrase refers to a shopkeeper lightly tossing a can of food to a customer, and notes that it's a can of corn because the outfield is sometimes called "the cornfield."
But the P-I answer sounds better-researched.
Also, the Phrase Finder answer claims that the phrase was first used by announcer Red Barber, but the P-I answer says it was first used in 1896, which was twelve years before Barber was born.
