• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – adventure

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – querimonious

• DEFINITIONS QUIZ

• And more.

Prepare for danger and derring-do as we embark upon another quest through some word facts and language fun.

ADVENTURE

The advent of the word

For a long time, adventure was definitely something to avoid.

When the word first entered English, as a borrowing of Middle French aventure, it meant an accident – usually an unhappy one.

This meaning was current in English until just a couple of centuries ago. The excerpt below, from a 1701 glossary of legal terms, defines adventure as a fatal misfortune.

“Death by misadventure” is still a term used in the English legal system to describe when someone dies doing something risky – a definition that appears to cover both of the above tragic eventualities.

The past negative connotations of adventure are not implied by its etymology. It’s sourced from the Latin verb advenīre, which means nothing more specific than “to arrive”. The same verb gives us advent, used for a period prior to the arrival of something significant (like a holy baby).

Adventura represents a future-tense version of the verb, implying what “will come”. Hence, adventura and its descendants meant future occurrences, and thus “fate”, “fortune”, or more pessimistically, “accident” or “mishap”.

The modern usage of adventure stems from the idea that adventurous behaviour invites risk. The negative connotation has softened, leaving us with a word that instead implies actions inviting excitement.

QUERIMONIOUS

kwerry-MOAN-ee-uhs

Meaning: Prone to complaint

Here’s an adjective to apply to the misery guts, the hypochondriac, or the pedant in your life. Querimonious describes someone who simply won’t stop grumbling.

It appears in Robert Cawdrey’s influential Table Alphabeticall, one of the earliest modern-style dictionaries, nestled between queane (“a barren old cow”) and quondam (“in times past”).

This lost word has its roots in Latin, in which querimōnia meant “expression of grievance”. It’s related to the word quarrel, too.

USE IT TODAY

Which German terms are in the English zeitgeist?

In a fit of linguistic Wanderlust, author Jess Zafarris and I have been exploring the German words in English.

Ever wondered why we use Gesundheit, Kindergarten and Doppelgänger? Find out NOW by watching or listening below.

LISTEN HERE

Can you spot the correct definition of the word below?

GLEEBEAM

A maypole

A stringed musical instrument

A freshwater fish of northern Europe

The first ray of sunshine after a deluge

I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the newsletter.

More Cawdrey Terms

Here are some further definitions from Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall to illustrate how our vocabularies and attitudes have changed since the early 1600s.

• “abecedarie, the order of the Letters, or he that useth them.”
  A word for the alphabet reflecting the Latin pronunciation of ABCD.

• “alien, a stranger.”

• “calenes, the first day of every month.”

• “driblets, small debts.”

• “foison, great plenty.”
  Foison was borrowed from Provençal and also meant a bountiful harvest.

• “lenitive, that ceaseth or asswageth paine”
  From Latin lēnīre “to soften”, whence lenient.

• “micher, a sneaking fellow, a hedge creeper.”

• “peccavi, I have offended”
  Peccavi is Classical Latin for “I have sinned” and uttered in admission of guilt – a bit like mea culpa.

• “septentrionall, belonging to the north.”
  Ultimately a reference to seven stars of the Great Bear/Big Dipper/Plough constellation that points to the North Star.

• “tergiversation, going back.”
  From the Latin for “turn one’s back”.

• “zonet, circles in the heavens, dividing the world into five parts.”
  One of only three Z entries, alongside zenith and zodiacke.

GLEEBEAM

A stringed musical instrument

A gleebeam was a harp, lyre, or other stringed instrument made of wood. Played correctly, it’s a beam that brings much glee.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – anger

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – culaccino

• Emotional Etymology

• And more.

I shall not test your patience any longer: time for some word facts and language fun.

ANGER

[Etymology restricted]

Anger has relations in languages across Europe. However, few of them invoke the idea of rage. Instead, they concern themselves with constriction.

German and Dutch have the adjective eng, meaning “narrow” or “tight”. Meanwhile, ancient Greek had ánkhein for “squeeze” or “strangle”.

It’s thought these words – including anger – share a prehistoric ancestor in Proto-Indo-European: *angh- meaning “narrow”.

Another member of the club was in the Viking language Old Norse, in which angr represented “grief”. This is believed to be the source of our English anger, and its meaning is reflected in some early appearances of the word in print, such as William Caxton’s usage below. The emotion intended is closer to sadness than ire.

The meaning of anger soon shifted to refer to a strong sense of displeasure, annoyance or even hostility. Anyone who has loved and lost will know that grief often brings with it a furious sense of injustice.

We still use a related word to refer to emotional suffering: anguish. This represents a borrowing of the French anguisse, which is in turn from the Latin angustia: “distress”.

Angustia is derived from angustus, meaning “narrow”, whence our word angina, which earlier referred to a constriction of the throat, but now more commonly refers to a chest pain sometimes caused by narrow blood vessels. Angustus is related to the aforementioned Greek ánkhein, the constrictive ancient cousin of anger.

So, whether you’re angry, anguished, or suffering an attack of angina, you can take comfort in the fact that your ancestors – no matter how ancient – knew exactly how you felt.

CULACCINO

coo-la-CHEE-no

Meaning: the mark left by a glass on a table

This week, we’re expanding our vocabularies with some Italian. Culaccino literally means “little butt”, with culo being slang for your arse.

In this case, the butt in question is the bottom of a glass. Perhaps some of its content has spilled over, or maybe condensation has formed on the outside and trickled down to the surface below. When you remove the glass, what is left is a culaccino.

One Italian dictionary I checked dated the term to the late 18th century, and as the above entry from Treccani shows, it has a couple of other definitions too:

• 1. The end of a salami, sausage etc.; also the lower part of a cucumber, next to the stem.

• 2a. What remains at the bottom of a glass or other small container.

• 2b. A mark left by a wet container on the spot where it was placed.

Another one for the “I didn’t know there was a word for that” list.

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Almost 30% of English is Latin

And that doesn’t even include the French words.

Author Jess Zafarris and I have been discussing how the language of the Romans came to be so ubiquitous in English. Watch or listen to the latest episode of Words Unravelled below.

LISTEN HERE

Can you identify the correct definition of the word below?

COCOLOCH

A muddy lake

A foolish person

The crow of a rooster

A sweetened hot drink

I’ll put the solution at the end of the newsletter.

Emotional Etymology

We’ve already explored where our collective anger comes from. Now, let’s look into the linguistic origins of other emotions:

• HAPPINESS – The earliest sense of happy was “lucky”. The use of hap to mean good fortune is fossilised in perhaps, which means “by luck”, and hapless.

• SADNESS – Believe it or not, sad originally meant “satisfied”. Indeed, it is related to the words satisfied and sated. Its stark change in meaning was perhaps driven by the notion that one has had one’s fill [of whatever was bringing you down]. The negative side of satiation can also be found in some uses of saturated.

• REMORSE – From Latin remordēre, meaning “to bite again”. It’s a gnawing feeling that dogs you after you’ve done something wrong.

• NOSTALGIA – You can accurately describe this as “homesickness”. Greek nostos meant “return home” and -algia denotes an illness. The modern usage – for a yearning for times gone by – is therefore somewhat figurative.

• EMBARRASSMENT – From French embarrasser, which meant “to put [someone] in an awkward position”. This in turn probably comes from Portuguese ambaraçar, where baraço is a cord, and the implication is that you’ve been tied up like a restrained animal. The Spanish embarazada – which holds great embarrassment potential as a false friend for embarrassed – means “pregnant”, based upon the idea that one is restricted or encumbered.

• ENTHUSIASM – The Greek entheos, from which we get enthusiasm, meant “divinely inspired” or even “possessed by a god”. It’s made up of en- “in” and theos “god”.

COCOLOCH

A foolish person

This 17th-century insult is of obscure origin. It is perhaps related to the Italian cocolla, meaning “hood” or “monk’s cowl” (maybe invoking the idea of a hooded clown) or from French coqueluche, an infectious disease akin to whooping cough.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – slogan

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – dreich

• Weird Weather Words

• And more.

As I always say: Time for some “WORD FACTS AND LANGUAGE FUN!”

SLOGAN

A call to action

A slogan was originally a war cry. It represents a borrowing of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm, sluagh being “host” or “army”, and gairm being a shout.

As such, all slogans were at one time offensive. Or defensive.

For the Highlanders, the sluagh-ghairm (sometimes rendered slughorn) would usually consist of their clan’s name or that of a gathering place.

The 17th century historian and heraldry obsessive Sir George Mackenzie explained their use:

“The Mckenzies have for their Slughorn, Tulloch Ard, which is the place at which this Clan does meet; and the Name of Hume have for their Slughorn (or Slogan, as our Southern Shires terme it) a Hume, a Hume: For it is most ordinar to have either the Name of the Family who do meet, or the Name of the Place at which they do meet: And this Word or Cry was proclaimed everywhere, by a person who carried a Cross of wood burning, or a firie Cross, as we call it, by which and by the cry of War or Slogan, all the Cadets of the Family were advertised to meet at the ordinar place.”

– Sir George Mackenzie, The Science of Herauldry (1680)

The word slogan later took on a more general meaning, referring to any word or phrase that formed a rallying cry for a particular group or cause.

The 20th century brought the heyday of the advertising slogan, through which purveyors of all manner of products hoped to inspire their customers spend, spend, spend.

COME SEE ME IN EDINBURGH!

I am midway through my 11-night run of shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. Here are some of the nice things people are saying about RobWords Live:

• ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "Rob Watts has found a way to make etymology entertaining, education hilarious and the English language even more eccentric than it already is." – Fringe Radio

• "Slick visuals, fascinating facts and a gloriously silly singalong finale... A kind of Professor Brian Cox of the derivation universe." – The List

I’m still here until the 16th August.

TICKETS HERE

Let’s just do a crossword together

Fancy spending a relaxing hour learning how to solve cryptic crossword clues?

Here you go:

DREICH

Meaning: dreary, bleak

I was interviewed by some students from Fife College last week, and we discussed Scottish words. They were particularly proud of dreich.

It’s pronounced DREECH, but with the -ch found in words like loch, and fans of the word say it describes a very Scottish type of weather: a wet, dreary greyness.

However, the word’s early usage was as a positive descriptor for a person.

Dreich is thought to derive from Old English gedrēog, which meant “calm” or “quiet”. Over the centuries, what began as a flattering term took on a negative connotation, implying the individual was boring or wearisome.

The word can still be used to describe a dull, demoralising person today – but you are much more likely to hear it used to bemoan a drizzly, uninviting day of showers and overcast skies.

Luckily, my time in Edinburgh has brought no such conditions.

Can you identify the correct definition of the word below?

THAUMATURGE

A day-dreamer

A miracle-worker

A maker of minute metal bearings

A gesture of approval made with the hands

I’ll reveal the answer at the bottom of the newsletter.

Weird Weather Words

• WILLIWAW – A 19th-century nautical term for a sudden squall or violent gust of cold wind. The willi- bit is perhaps a distortion of the word whirly. The rest is unclear.

• HABOOB – Another violent wind, the haboob carries a wall of desert dust across the Sudan during certain seasons. Its name is from the Arabic habūb, which means “blowing furiously”.

• VIRGA – Rain or snow that never makes it to the ground. It leaves the cloud only to evaporate or sublimate as it hits the dry air lower down.

• SUNSHOWER – A brief spell of rain that unexpectedly breaks out when it’s sunny.

• MIZZLE – I grew up using this word. Only after I left the English midlands did I discover that it was only used in some parts of the UK. It refers to a particularly fine rain: a misty-drizzle, if you will.

• GRAUPEL – Sometimes described as “soft hail”, you could also call it “hard snow”. It’s precipitation that’s hard enough to feel, but not solid enough to sting.

THAUMATURGE

A miracle-worker

From Greek thaumat- meaning “wonder” and ergon meaning “work” (whence ergonomics).

TRAVEL

It’s hard work.

I’ll admit that this choice wasn’t random. I’m sipping a pint of pilsner in departures at Berlin airport with a sign in front of me that says “TRAVEL VALUE: DUTY FREE”. This reminded me that travel has taken its own etymological journey.

Occasionally, in English, we’ve taken two spellings of the same word and apportioned different meanings to each of them. One example of such a pairing is grammar and glamour, which we discussed a few weeks ago (both are takes on gramaire). Another is travel and travail.

If you’ve ever attempted to learn French, you’ll perhaps already know that travailler means “to work” and le travail is “the work”. The English word travail represents a straight-up borrowing of this. When we talk of our travails, we speak of our efforts.

Back in the late medieval period, crossing continents wasn’t as simple as hopping on an Easyjet – it was hard work. Hence, to journey far was to travail. Here’s Shakespeare using it to mean precisely that.

Travail was spelt a variety of ways, including travaile, travayle, and travel. Over time, the latter became the preferred form for discussing the exertions of moving from A to B. Meanwhile, travail was retained to describe other forms of toil.

BONUS TRAVEL ETYMOLOGY

Our word journey is from the French journée, which simply means “day”. Originally a journey was how far you could go in a day.

In the Middle Ages it was generally assumed you could walk 20 miles between waking up and going to bed, so a 100-mile trip would have been five “journeys”.

IT’S OPENING NIGHT!

On Thursday I begin my 11-night run at this year’s EDINBURGH FRINGE.

If you’re in town, come see me at the Assembly George Square Studios (Studio 3). If you’re not in Edinburgh but know someone who is, send them my way for an hour of wordy nerdy fun.

I’ll be on at 8.10pm every night from from 6th to 16th August.

TICKETS HERE

Does ‘Abracadabra’ mean anything?

Take a pinch of witchcraft, add a touch of sorcery, and "Hey presto!" you have a wordy nerdy episode about magical terms.

🧙 Can only women be witches?
🔒 What did a warlock originally do?
🪄 What language is 'Alakazam'?

These questions answered – and many more – in another enchanting edition of Words Unravelled. Watch or listen below.

LISTEN HERE

Right – my flight is boarding. I’ll be back with a full newsletter next week. In the meantime, don’t travail too hard.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – wasp

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – erubescent

• Insect Words Dissected

• And more.

I hope these word facts and language fun give you a buzz.

WASP

Misery-weavers.

Not that we owe the wasp an ounce of respect, but we should probably be calling it a waps.

Wasp appears to be one of those words where we’ve switched some consonants around for convenience’s sake. The result is a wasp-waps swap.

The same process – called metathesis – also turned the brid into the bird. In the case of wasp, the change may also have been inspired by the Latin word for the same insect, vespa.

Old and Middle English names for the insufferable ruiner of picnics include waps, wæps and, most appropriately, weaps. Forms with -ps stuck around as dialect terms until at least the 1800s (there are perhaps people still using them today).

Some etymologists have traced these forms even further back to a common ancestor shared with web and weaver, suggesting the irritating little arseholes were dubbed “weavers” because their [horrible] nests look woven.

I got stung by one recently (not that you’d be able to tell from the professional objectivity I’ve maintained throughout this article). The stripy git crawled into my beer bottle, then pricked me on the bottom lip, causing it to swell. I had to watch the football with a face like Mick Jagger.

Unfortunately for the wasp, I then stood on it. Whoospy-daisy.

ERUBESCENT

eru-BESS-unt

Meaning: blushing

For those of us prone to a reddening of the face, here’s an alternative word to describe our involuntary reaction.

When someone is blushing, they are erubescent.

The -rub- bit is related to ruby, and denotes redness. The Latin ērūbēscĕre meant “to blush”, or more literally “to redden out”.

You could also use erubescent to describe the swollen ruddy halo around a sting from some winged jerk.

Don’t be shy…

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Sarcastic punctuation‽ Yeah, right¡

I’ve been investigating the punctuation marks that never caught on. Check out my video here:

EDINBURGH APPROACHES!

In a few days, I’m heading to Edinburgh to begin a 11-night run of my wordy nerdy live show.

Come see me at 8.10pm from the 6th to the 16th of August.

TICKETS HERE

Can you identify the correct definition of the word below?

JACULABLE

Amusing

Easily-fooled

Fit to be thrown

Pertaining to beanstalks

I’ll reveal the solution at the end of the newsletter.

Insect Words Dissected

Let’s pull apart some more words for creepy crawlies:

• LADYBIRD/LADYBUG – Neither a bird nor a bug – scientifically speaking, at least. They are Coleoptera [beetles], not Hemiptera [bugs]. The lady in question is the Virgin Mary; the black dots on the seven-spot variety were said to represent her “Seven Sorrows”.

• BUTTERFLY – It’s unclear why they are named after butter. Possibly because they hung out around butter churns, or because of the weird colour of their effluence. The common claim that butterfly was originally flutterby is false, although the serendipitous spoonerism is undeniably satisfying.

• CATERPILLAR – From the Old French chatepelose, which means “hairy cat”. Baffling.

• MOSQUITO – Spanish for “little fly”. Its Latin root is musca “fly”, which perhaps shares an ancient ancestor with the Germanic words midge, moth and maggot, too.

• PRAYING MANTIS – The praying (not “preying”) bit is because it looks like it’s praying. The Greek mantis means “prophet” or “diviner” and is ultimately related to the word mentor.

JACULABLE

Fit to be thrown

From Latin jaculābilis, in turn from jaculāri “to hurl”. Jaculate means “to throw” just as ejaculate means “to throw out”.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – wow

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – freck

• The mysterious language of Orkney

• And more.

Time to astonish you with some word facts and language fun.

WOW

An astounding etymology

Can I amaze you? The word wow is Scottish.

“Wow!” caught on as an English expression of astonishment a little over a century ago. However, Scots poets were wow-ing long before that. The examples below are from Allan Ramsay and Robert Burns, both writing in the 1700s.

The wow deployed by the likes of Ramsay and Burns was a multi-purpose interjection, equally appropriate for expressing sorrow and awe.

It is perhaps a variant of the emphatic “vow!” that also appears frequently in Scots poetry. This, in turn, is thought to be a contraction of “I vow”.

The verb wow (as in “Rob wowed me with his nerdy newsletter”) is an American innovation of the early 20th century.

FRECK

Meaning: someone who loves a cuddle

I’m writing from a bar at Edinburgh Airport, having just arrived on a tiny plane from Orkney.

The island group off mainland Scotland’s northernmost tip has its own distinct dialect (for reasons I will explain later in this newsletter). Among the terms the locals are proud of is freck.

Here’s how one Orcadian (that’s what Orkney folk call themselves) described it to me:

It’s someone who is always physically affectionate and cuddling people (not in a needy way, it’s a very positive thing). Often used to describe small children who are very cuddly.

– Craig Rendall

Adorable. My cat is a definite freck.

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Join me at the Edinburgh Fringe!

I’m taking my wordy nerdy live show to the world’s biggest fringe festival

If you fancy spending an hour revolutionising the English language with me, I’ll be on at 8.10pm at the Assembly George Square Studios from 6th to 16th August.

TICKETS HERE

Can you spot the correct definition of the word below?

FRANION

A close pal

A wooden gear

A reckless individual

A bulb cultivated in the Loire valley

I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the newsletter.

The Sixth Scandinavian Language

The lost tongue of the UK’s northern limits.

For centuries, Norn was the language of day-to-day life on the island groups of Orkney and Shetland. A descendant of the Old Norse brought to the region by 9th-century Norwegian explorers, it had developed its own characteristics, making it distinct from its closest relatives, Faroese and Icelandic.

Here’s The Lord’s Prayer in Orkney Norn, as recorded by the Scottish botanist James Wallace in 1700:

Despite Orcadians speaking Norn at home, it was never the administrative language of the islands and was rarely written down. The above is one of very few available fragments of Orkney Norn. Within a century of it being committed to paper, the language had died out.

Norn was able to cling on a little longer in the more remote Shetland Islands, where its extinction is usually said to have occurred around 1850 with the death of Walter Sutherland, a fisherman believed to be the last native speaker.

So what killed off Britain’s unique Scandinavian language?

After 600 years of Nordic rule, Shetland and Orkney were handed over to Scotland in the middle of the 15th century, having been pledged as security for a wedding dowry. This kick-started Norn’s gradual replacement by Scots.

Place names continue to testify to Orkney’s Norse past. Indeed, Orkney itself is from the word used by the Vikings to describe the archipelago: Orkneyjar or “seal islands”.

As for Norn’s legacy: its remnants can be found in the unique dialects of the two island groups. Not only does it endure in the words they use, but in the way they use them. One local expert told me they detect an almost-Norwegian lilt in the Orcadian accent: an intonation that echoes a Viking past.

Viking Words in English

You speak more Norse than you think.

Jess and I have been exploring the words left behind by Scandinavian invaders.

🪓 How much of English is Old Norse?
🗺️ Which place names are inherited from "the Danes"?
📝 How did the Norsemen change English grammar?

These questions answered – and many more – in another Words Unravelled. Watch or listen below.

LISTEN HERE

FRANION

A reckless individual

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a franion was “A dashing, reckless, or irresponsible man; (also) a male lover, a gallant. Also: (in Spenser) a woman regarded as sexually promiscuous.” Its etymology is unknown. Perhaps from French fraigneis, meaning “uproar”.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – barbecue

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – izzard

• You Speak Taíno

• And more.

Time to fire up the grill and cook up some smoky word facts and language fun.

BARBECUE

Food for buccaneers

Have you ever considered how odd the abbreviation BBQ is? The first syllable does not sound like “bee”, and the final one does not begin with a Q. Also: since when do we abbreviate single words in this way, anyway? Nevertheless… it just works.

The elements that make up the word – bar, be, and cue – taste so familiar on the tongue. However, barbecue is from a language entirely unrelated to our own. Its origins lie in the tongue of the Taíno people, who inhabited the West Indies before the Europeans turned up (and all but wiped them out).

It was the Spanish who first borrowed the word barbacòa, used on Hispaniola to refer to a “wooden framework”. Such a lattice was sometimes used for roasting meat.

The earliest known written use of barbecue in English, according to the folk at Oxford, is in the 1661 Jamaica viewed with all its ports[blah blah unreasonably long old-fashioned title] by one Captain Hickeringill. Unfortunately, it appears embedded in a thoroughly vile poem about the supposed behaviours of the native people of the region.

Honestly – the full stanza would ruin, if not your entire day, at the very least your breakfast. So here’s just enough of it to prove that the reference exists:

The clumsy-looking use of “Eat” instead of “eaten” is to allow for a rhyme with “Meat”.

It is a further delectable fact that barbecue has a smoky cousin in buccaneer. The 17th-century French boucanier meant a woodsman who prepared meat on a wooden frame called a boucan. This word is thought to have come from Tupi, also indigenous to the Americas.

These woodsmen were swashbuckling sorts, who would occasionally take to piracy for an income boost. In turn, boucanier – whence buccaneer – came to refer to a pirate, too.

IZZARD

Meaning: Z

Let’s put an end to the whole “Zed or Zee” debacle by bringing back this old name for the letter Z.

Need proof that our alphabet once ended in such charismatic fashion? Here it is, laid bare by dictionary boffin Samuel Johnson in A Grammar of the English Tongue:

Johnson even provides us with an etymology for the word, which may or may not be the true origin. Etymologists point to dialect variants such as izzet and uzzit, which seem unlikely to have come from “s hard”.

Whatever the origin of izzard, do share the word with every Eddie or Suzy you know. Perhaps we can build up enough momentum to reinstate it and close a transatlantic rift in the process.

USE IT TODAY

Some “untranslatable” words are fake.

I’ve been investigating the internet’s favourite foreign words.

Hygge, saudade, lagom, mbuki-mvuki, mamihlapinatapai... Do these “untranslatable” words really mean what the online listicles say they mean? Are they even real?

Some of them are not. To find out which ones, watch below.

TICKETS TO MY EDINBURGH SHOW!

I’m doing ten nights of my wordy nerdy live show at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

Come see me at 8.10pm from the 6th to the 16th of August.

TICKETS

Can you spot the correct definition of the word below?

MAGNALITY

Generosity

Attractiveness

A wonderful thing

Likelihood of eruption

I’ll put the solution at the end of the newsletter.

You Speak Taíno

They gave us more words than you think.

We have the Taíno people who inhabited the Caribbean to thank for barbecue. What’s more, their language gave us many more of the earliest words to make the trip from the Americas to Europe.

In a lot of cases, the original word has been lost. The Spanish declared the Taíno people “extinct” after a census in 1565, which showed none of them living on Hispaniola (now Haiti and Dominican Republic). This is often referred to as a “paper extinction” because the bureaucratic approach quite likely missed the Taíno who were still on the island.

Nevertheless, much of the culture – including the language – was lost by the 1800s. However, its legacy endures in the words we borrowed. Here are just a few of them:

• CANOE – The Spanish are thought to have picked up their word canoa from Taíno. The evidence lies in the existence of similar words in other Arawak languages.

• MAIZE – From Taíno mahiz or mahis.

• JAMAICA – The name for the island is believed to have been borrowed from the Taíno. Their word, in turn, is thought to have meant something like “large place with water”.

• SAVANNAH – For me, and probably other Europeans, this word evokes thoughts of Africa. However, its origins lie in the Caribbean with the Taíno zavana. In early English usage, it described an open plain of long grass, primarily in the Americas.

• BARRACUDA – This underwater hunter perhaps gets its name from the Taíno baracutey, used to describe a solitary person or animal.

• PAPAYA – Papaya, and therefore also pawpaw, is thought to come from the Taíno name for the tree that bears the fruit.

MAGNALITY

A wonderful thing

From the Latin magnalia, meaning “great things” or “miracles”. From the 17th century: “Fill thy Spirit […] with the mysteries of Faith, the magnalities of Religion.”

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – bunkum

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – ingurgitate

• Words of Nonsense

• And more.

Time to enjoy some more no-nonsense word facts and language fun.

BUNKUM

For Buncombe

In 1820, the United States Congress was discussing whether to admit Missouri into the Union, when representative Felix Walker rose to his feet. He proceeded to give a speech that was both irrelevant and long. So, so long.

Several members gathered around him, begging him to stop so that they could get to the ‘Missouri Question’. But he refused, saying he had a duty to the people of his North Carolina district. He insisted he was speaking “for Buncombe”.

As the clipping from 1828 below shows, the terms “talking to Bunkum” and “speaking for Bunkum” caught on for a certain kind of windbagging, with the county name now respelled.

A speech “for Bunkum” was delivered entirely to please the voters back home, or some other interest irrelevant to the actual issue at hand. By the late 1800s, bunkum had become a byword for any kind of waffling nonsense.

An abbreviated form of the word was later given a good airing when the American industrialist Henry Ford, while championing modernity, declared “History is more or less bunk.”*

We also now have the word debunk, which is to dispose of something that is bunk.

*His quote would end up being cut down to size too, and is now more frequently repeated as the more definite “History is bunk”.

INGURGITATE

MEANING: To gobble up in large quantities

This is a term for greedily gulping down food. The Latin ingurgitāre, from which it stems, means “to pour in”.

It can also be used for glugging down your tipple of choice.

Its counterpart regurgitate (literally “flow back”) has survived in a way that ingurgitate has not. Why not resurrect it to describe the actions of those who have a tendency to inhale their food?

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What is ‘Battle of the Nile” rhyming slang for?

Jess Zafarris and I have been exploring the origins of all manner of cant, argot, slang and lingo.

Did you know that "slang" is a slang word? Or that Aretha Franklin has been given props for giving us the word "props"?

There are plenty more slang facts where those came from. Watch or listen below:

LISTEN HERE

Can you identify the correct definition of the word below?

MOUNTANCE

Face

Duration

Installation

Unit of bumpiness

I’ll put the solution at the end of the newsletter.

Join me at the Edinburgh Fringe!

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If you fancy spending an hour revolutionising the English language with me, I’ll be on at 8.10pm at the Assembly George Square Studios from 6th to 16th August.

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Words of Nonsense

I realise I have already given you your fair share of bunkum, but here are some more words for waffle and nonsense.

• HOKUM – Probably a blend of hocus-pocus and the aforementioned bunkum. It originally referred to sentimental or melodramatic theatrics.

• BALDERDASH – Etymology unknown. It started off referring to a frothy liquid or “a jumbled mixture of liquids” (OED).

• POPPYCOCK – Likely from Dutch poppekak, which means “doll’s excrement”. This appeared in the Dutch idiom zo fijn als gemalen poppekak – “as fine as powdered doll’s excrement.”

• CLAPTRAP – In the 18th century, a “clap trap” was a theatre trick for eliciting applause from the audience. It later came to mean a showy display for approval, then something fatuous.

• GOBBLEDYGOOK – Apparently coined by Texas politician Maury Maverick, grandson of Samuel Maverick, the star of last week’s newsletter. In 1944, in his role as chair of the US Smaller War Plants Corporation, he wrote a memo warning against the use of jargon: “Stay off the gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For the Lord’s sake be short and say what you’re talking about.” He said the word was meant to imitate the sound of a turkey.

MOUNTANCE

Duration

Middle French montance meant the rate at which something rises. However, it was used in English to mean how long it takes to do something. For example, “the mountance of a mile” meant the length of time to travel a mile.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – maverick

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – shemomechama

• “UNTRANSLATABLE” WORDS

• And more.

Time to enjoy some word facts and language fun, collated by a man who refuses to play by the rules (me).

MAVERICK

Etymology for non-conformists

Samuel Maverick was a politician, a land owner – and apparently a bit of a rogue.

In mid-1800s Texas, where the cattle roamed free, it was the done thing for landowners to brand their weaned calves so that everyone could know whose animal was whose. But not Maverick.

Precisely why he failed to sear his mark onto his herd varies on the telling. Some accounts claim he didn’t like the idea of causing them pain. Others claim it was part of a scheme to lay claim to all unbranded cattle in on the surrounding ranches. However, my own research leads me to believe the most likely reason was indifference.

Maverick had taken ownership of some 450 cattle as part of a land deal, but appears to have had little interest in rearing them. However, rather than hand the work over to a seasoned (but expensive) cowboy, he left the job to an enslaved 19-year-old who could not cope. Thus the cattle went unbranded.

When other ranchers encountered an unmarked cow on their land, they would assume it belonged to the negligent landowner, now absent and living in San Antonio. As a result they called these wanderers “Maverick’s” – later mavericks.

An 1869 edition of the cultural magazine The Overland Monthly explained what was, at the time, a new coining:

By the 1880s, maverick had also been wrangled for use as a term for someone who figuratively strayed from the herd, refusing to do what was expected of them.

SHEMOMECHAMA

shemo-MECH-ama

Meaning: Accidental over-eating

We’re expanding our vocabularies with a word from Georgia (the country, not the US state) this week.

In Georgian, შემომეჭამა or shemomechama refers to accidentally continuing to eat when you’re already full.

It translates roughly as “it got eaten by me”, but is constructed in such a way as to almost imply that it’s the food’s fault. You couldn’t help yourself.

Here’s how one of my YouTube subscribers described it after I asked for “untranslatable” words from around the world:

Shemomechama is often cited as an apt reflection of Georgian culinary culture, which values a fully laden table.

The Georgian chef Tekuna Gachechiladze told the BBC a few years back: “It usually happens at a late-night dining experience, when, after a long day of working in the kitchen, I suddenly end up at a late supra, or traditional feast. And even though I may not be hungry at all, I eat and eat, and the experience is mixed in with Georgian singing, laughter, wine drinking and then voila! Shemomechama happens.”

I think it could provide us with a much less cringeworthy alternative to snaccident.

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False Friends

The words waiting to stab you in the back.

Fellow word nerd Jess Zafarris and I have been exploring linguistic “false friends”.

These words from other languages appear familiar to us English speakers, but in fact mean something other than we would expect. A risky example is the German Gift, which means poison.

Watch or listen to the latest episode of Words Unravelled to discover many more of them:

LISTEN HERE

Can you identify the correct definition of the word below?

NOVERCAL

A painkiller

Newly grown

Relating to stepmothers

Occurring every nine months

I’ll reveal the solution at the end of the newsletter.

TICKETS TO MY EDINBURGH SHOW!

I’m doing ten nights of my wordy nerdy live show at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

Come see me at 8.10pm from the 6th to the 16th of August.

TICKETS

“Untranslatable” Words

Words from around the world with no single-word English equivalent.

I’ve popped “untranslatable” in quotation marks because very few words are truly untranslatable into English. If you can explain what it means, you’ve translated it.

But nevertheless, it is fun to explore the concepts that some cultures have deemed worthy of their own words.

Here are some more suggestions from my subscribers over on YouTube.

• OTSUKARESAMA – Japanese
  A way to express appreciation for someone’s hard work, you could translate it as “you must be tired”. An English equivalent might be “good job”, but with less risk of sounding patronising.

• TORSCHLUSSPANIK – German
  The fear that time is running out. It’s sometimes claimed to have originated in walled towns, where there was a danger of being locked out of the city overnight, hence “gate-closure-panic”. Nowadays, it’s used to refer to the sense that the clock is ticking to achieve your life goals.

• KILIG – Tagalog
  A word for romantic excitement, akin to having butterflies in your stomach. It can also mean a “shudder” or a “thrill”.

• ZAODNO – Russian
  If you need a Russian-speaker to do two things at the same time, the word to use is zaodno. It means “while you’re at it”. Concurrently gives a similar idea, but you wouldn’t say “While you’re visiting grandma, can you concurrently stop by the supermarket?”

• ÉCHENILLER – French
  To rid of caterpillars. Literally “to un-caterpillar”, it means the clearing of garden pests, but can also be used figuratively for the removal of anything harmful or inconvenient.

There will be plenty more where those came from, because I’m working on a video debunking some false “untranslatables” and introducing a few new ones. Watch this space.

NOVERCAL

Relating to stepmothers

It’s from the Latin noverca for “stepmother”.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – landscape

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – euouae

• WORD WORLD RECORDS

• And more.

Now, allow me to lay before you a sweeping vista of word facts and language fun.

LANDSCAPE

The full picture

Landscape entered English via the Dutch art world. It represents an anglophone pronunciation of landschap, with -schap being the Dutch equivalent of our suffix -ship (as in kinship, relationship, premiership etc.).

If we were to fully anglicise the term, it would be landship, however, a hint of the Dutch form was retained, perhaps because of high esteem in which artists from the Netherlands were held at the turn of the 17th century.

A landschap was a type of painting: one that presented its subject in the context of its environs. Therefore, if you ever climb to a top of the hill to “admire the landscape”, know that your use of landscape implicitly compares your view to a drawing. A landscape is, by definition, picturesque.

One of the earliest known uses of the word in English is in this painter’s guide from 1607:

We call a photo orientation that favours width over height landscape because it’s the right ratio to, as Peacham puts it, “shewe a fair Horizon”. So what of its counterpart, portrait?

Again, every time we use the word portrait we are invoking a type of painting. This time the word comes from Old French. It’s the past participle of portraire, which means “to represent” and also gives us the word portray.

EUOUAE

yoo-WOO-wee (or something like that)

Meaning: a mnemonic for ending a chant

Euouae is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest English word consisting only of vowels.

You are unlikely to encounter it, unless you devote any of your time to reading through the notation for Gregorian chants like the one below.

The collection of vowels at the end represents those that appear in the final two words of the chant: “seculorum, amen”. It’s the “for ever and ever, amen” bit.

Though the term it represents is Latin, Collins includes euouae in its online English dictionary as the name for that abbreviation, calling it “a mnemonic used to recall the sequence of tones in a particular passage of the Gloria Patri.”

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Good luck with that.

Can you identify the correct definition of the word below?

ORBITY

Roundness

A bereavement

Behaving like a satellite

One who checks the purity of gold

I’ll put the answer at the end of the newsletter.

The secrets of your computer keyboard

Did you know that #, ¶, &, and @ all started off as specific words?

My latest video explores the origins of some familiar symbols. It is proving a hit over on YouTube, so why not give it a watch?

Join me at the Edinburgh Fringe!

I’m taking my wordy nerdy live show to the world’s biggest fringe festival

If you fancy spending an hour revolutionising the English language with me, I’ll be on at 8.10pm at the Assembly George Square Studios from 6th to 16th August.

TICKETS HERE

Word World Records

Here are some more extraordinary words, as recognised by the folk at Guinness.

• Longest word without any of the five main vowels: twyndyllyngs, an archaic spelling of another word for “twins”.

• Longest word with only one vowel: strengths.

• Longest place name: krung thep mahanakhon amon rattanakosin mahinthara ayuthaya mahadilok phop noppharat ratchathani burirom udomratchaniwet mahasathan amon piman awatan sathit sakkathattiya witsanukam prasit. This is the full ceremonial name of Bangkok. Here’s how it’s pronounced.

• Most ‘succinct’ word: Guinness gives it as mamihlapinatapai from the Yaghan language spoken in Tierra del Fuego. It’s commonly said to refer to the look two people give each other when both want the same thing but neither dares to make the first move (wink wink). However, I’ve been looking into it, and this seems to be an internet-age interpretation of a word from a language that now has no living speakers. The evidence points to it meaning something else, but precisely what is lost to time. (I’m planning to cover this in a video soon)

• Longest word with letters in alphabetical order: aegilops, a plant genus also known as goatgrasses.

• Longest word with letters in reverse alphabetical order: spoonfeed.

ORBITY

A bereavement

A bit of a sad one, sorry. Orbity refers to being bereaved, typically by the loss of a child. It’s from the Latin orbitās: “bereavement” or “childlessness”.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – marmalade

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – cacoethes

• Breakfast Word Origins

• And more.

Now allow me to spread a thick layer of word facts and language fun all over your day.

MARMALADE

A word that spread

Marmalade is believed to have been smuggled into the English language in the holds of Portuguese trade ships. England’s elite developed a taste for the Iberian spread during the Tudor period.

However, the marmalade enjoyed in 15th century England and Portugal was not like the breakfast staple consumed today. For a start, it was much more solid, often sliced into gelatinous cubes. What’s more, it wasn’t made with oranges.

Marmalade is from the Portuguese marmelada, which means “quince stuff” (the -ada acts like the -ade in lemonade). The Portuguese for “quince” is marmelo, and this distinctly non-citrus orchard fruit was the key ingredient.

However, the plot thickens like a cooling jam when you trace the word back further still. Marmelo comes from Latin malomellum, which in turn derives from two Greek elements: meli meaning “honey” and mēlon meaning "apple”. (Yes, etymologically speaking, melons are apples). So marmalade should arguably be sold as “honey apple spread”.

Once in England, however, marmalade did not remain an exclusively quince product for long. The new wider availability of citrus fruits and sugar led creative cooks to experiment.

Not all fruits were suited to the recipe. They needed to have sufficient pectin to produce a firm jelly, and the right mix of tartness and sweetness. Seville oranges proved to have the perfect combination.

Here’s a “very good” recipe for orange marmalade from the early 18th century.

We can still make marmalade with a variety of fruits, but unless we specify which one, the assumption is that it’s been made with oranges.

It has occasionally been claimed marmalade comes from the French “Marie est malade” (“Mary is sick”), a cry that rang out when an unwell Mary Queen of Scots demanded a fruity fix. Though marmalade was used as a remedy during Tudor times, this tale is clearly apocryphal.

The pithy truth is marmalade is made with one fruit (orange) and named after another (quince), which is named after a third (apple).

CACOETHES

cacko-EE-theez

Meaning: a strong urge to do something naughty

Ultimately comprising the Greek elements kako- “bad” and ethos “disposition”, cacoethes describes a bad habit or an evil itch.

It originally referred to a powerful compulsion to commit ill deeds, but was often used in English to refer to an artistic hankering: a desperate need to paint or write.

“Cacoethes; which is a hard Word for a Disease called in plain English, the Itch of Writing. This Cacoethes is as Epidemical as the Small-Pox.”

– J. Addison in The Spectator (1714)

The word all but died out in the 19th century, but I think it’s worth resurrecting to describe those moments when we’re gripped by a mischievous impulse.

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Join me at the Edinburgh Fringe!

I’m taking my wordy nerdy live show to the world’s biggest fringe festival

If you fancy spending an hour revolutionising the English language with me, I’ll be on at 8.10pm at the Assembly George Square Studios from 6th to 16th August.

TICKETS HERE

Can you spot the correct definition of the word below?

MANYPLIES

A ballet routine

A cow’s stomach

An excessive show of gratitude

Dramatically increase in number

I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the newsletter.

Breakfast Table Treats

Not into marmalade? Here are some other morning meal etymologies.

• BREAKFAST – Despite the unintuitive way in which we pronounce it, breakfast really does just mean “the breaking of the fast”. We’re not the only ones to refer to the first meal of the day in this way. For example, Spanish desayuno and French petit-déjeuner* mean to break your fast, too.

• CEREAL – Named after the Roman god of agriculture, cereal means “relating to Ceres”.

• NUTELLA – The brand name is a portmanteau of English nut and the Italian feminine diminutive -ella. Pietro Ferrero originally called his choco-hazelnut spread SuperCrema.

• PORRIDGE – Porridge is just a variation on the word pottage, and originally referred to a thick soup of vegetables, pulses, meat, etc.

• EGGS BENEDICT – Apparently invented in New York City in the late 1800s. There are competing origin stories involving various people with the surname Benedict (or in one case LeGrand Benedict) and various eateries. The Wall Street broker Lemuel Benedict claimed to have devised the combination of poached egg, bacon and hollandaise (which just means “Dutch”, by the way) while suffering the business end of a hangover.

• MUFFIN – Probably from the regional German muffe meaning “little cake”. The so-called “English muffin” is said to have been introduced to the US by a British immigrant called Samuel Bath Thomas at the end of the 1800s, although he called them “toaster crumpets”.

• BUBBLE AND SQUEAK – I was served this potato and cabbage mash as part of a full English breakfast last time I was in the UK, so it makes the list. The name refers to the sounds of the ingredients as they sizzle in the pan.

*The French break it to a “small” extent at breakfast, then absolutely destroy it at lunch.

MANYPLIES

A cow’s stomach

The manyplies is the third stomach of a ruminant, also known as the omasum. It’s made up of two English elements: many and plies, so just means “many folds” or “many layers”.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – grammar

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – raphanidosis

• BIG NEWS!

• And more.

Time for some glamorous word facts and language fun.

GRAMMAR

A kind of magic

Grammar and glamour are variants of the same word.

The sounds usually associated with r and l are produced in similar ways in the mouth, so the letters often get swapped around. Inconsistent spelling conventions take care of the rest of the differences.

Both grammar and glamour come from Middle French gramaire, a word used to describe books about the rules of language, and the rules themselves. Whence our modern meaning of grammar.

However, gramaire could also mean the acquisition of knowledge in general. The grammar books were mostly guides to Latin, and that language was associated with the wisdom of the learned.

That wisdom also involved knowledge of subjects beyond the earthly, such as astrology and magic. In Scottish English in particular, the word therefore took on a mystical meaning.

In 18th-century Scotland, to “cast the glamour over” someone was to put them under a spell.

This is an excellent opportunity to point out that the two meanings of spell implied by casting a spell and spelling a word are distantly related. They share an ancient Germanic root meaning “to read out”.

Anyway, the magical meaning of glamour shifted to refer to that which was “enchanting” or “charming”. That is why we describe beguiling clothing as glamorous.

I’m taking my show to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe!

This is not something I ever expected to happen.

Following the success of my wordy nerdy live shows in London earlier this year, I will now be performing 10 nights at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

If you fancy spending an hour revolutionising the English language with me, I’ll be on at 8.10pm at the Assembly George Square Studios from 6th to 16th August.

Click below for tickets.

TICKETS HERE

RHAPHANIDOSIS

RAF-uh-nid-OH-sis

Meaning: An uncomfortable punishment involving a radish

If you ever find yourself in ancient Greece, DO NOT get caught cheating.

Rhaphanidosis (literally getting “radished”) was a punishment for adultery: a means for a man to exact revenge against whoever had slept with his wife.

The cuckolded husband was permitted to stuff a radish up his love rival’s bottom. Ouch.

It gets a mention in one of Aristophanes’ plays:

“But what if he should suffer rhaphanidosis through obeying you, and be depillated with hot ashes? What argument will he be able to state, to prove that he is not a blackguard?”

– Aristophanes, The Clouds (423 BCE)

“Depillated with hot ashes” refers to another humiliation ritual, involving plucking out an offender’s hairs. It’s best not to think too hard about which ones.

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Can you identify the correct definition from the options below?

LUCUBRATE

Fortunate

To work at night

To write part of the Bible

To treat in order to reduce friction

I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the newsletter.

How did The Beatles get their name?

Why is it called "Rock and Roll"? And which bands took their names from literature?

Jess Zafarris and I answer all manner of musical etymological questions in the latest episode of Words Unravelled. Watch or listen below.

LISTEN HERE

Grammatical Etymologies

Here are the literal meanings of some words from English class.

• NOUN – Nouns are simply the words we use to name the things around us, be they physical or abstract. From Latin nōmen via French nom/non “name”.

• PRONOUN – This does not mean “in favour of names”. Rather, the pro- implies substitution. A pronoun is a word that replaces a noun in a sentence.

• VERB – From Latin verbum, our word for “doing word” just means “word”. Indeed, it shares an ancient root with word.

• ADJECTIVE – The -ject is the same as we find in reject and eject, or the jet in jettison, all of which imply throwing. Adjective means “thrown on/at”, because an adjective is an attachment to a noun.

• ADVERB – A “to-the-word”. An adverb is added to a verb to describe how it is being performed.

• PREPOSITION – The way we pronounce preposition obscures its otherwise very intuitive meaning. If we pronounced it pre-position, it’d be clearer that we’re referring to those little words like in, on, at, under, and through, which are positioned before a noun (e.g. on the bed, in the newsletter).

• TENSE – Tense represents a borrowing of the Old French tens, which was just a variant of modern French temps, meaning “time”. It is not related to feeling tense, which is from Latin tendĕre “to stretch”.

• SYNTAX – Syntax refers to the order in which you place words, phrases and clauses. It’s from Greek syntaxis meaning “arrangement”.

LUCUBRATE

To work at night

From Latin lūcubrāre (and ultimately lux meaning “light”), it originally referred to working by candlelight. It has also come to mean “laborious study”, so a lucubration can be a learned piece of writing.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – punk

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – suppedaneous

• DEFINITIONS QUIZ

• And more.

In the mood for some word facts and language fun? Well then, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya…

PUNK

Lousy music

The musical genre was originally called punk rock, with punk serving as an adjective meaning “inferior” or “lousy”. It was a label imposed by people who didn’t like the music, and embraced by people who did.

Punk has had an array of colourful (to say the least) meanings down the centuries.

The earliest recorded sense was “a female sex worker” (or “prostitute” to use a less anachronistic term). This meaning was still current in Shakespeare’s day.

In fact, he used it in act 5, scene 1 of Measure for Measure. Here’s Lucio invoking punk in reference to poor Mariana (though, he doesn’t know it’s her):

The term continued on its sexual journey. By the end of the 17th century it had switched genders and come to mean a boy or man kept by an older man as a sexual partner. This usage later found a place in US prison slang, where a punk was essentially a male sex slave.

In parallel with these developments (and probably influenced by them) punk became a term for a contemptible person, a petty criminal, or a hoodlum.

When, in the 1960s and 70s, a style of music took hold that sounded amateurish, with its simple chord structures and basic strumming patterns, punk gained yet another new usage. Punk rock was the kind of rock played by society’s dregs: the punks.

SUPPEDANEOUS

sup-uh-DAY-nee-uss

Meaning: Placed under the foot

We’ve all been there: scrabbling around for an adjective to describe a footstool.

Don’t worry, I’ve found one. Suppedaneous is built from three Latin components:

• sup- “under” (as in suppress; equivalent to sub-)

• ped- “foot” (as in pedal, pedestrian, sesquipedalian)

• -aneous, an adjective ending.

It can therefore apply to anything positioned ‘neath the tootsies.

My flat has neither footstool nor pedestal, so I have to make do with a suppedaneous coffee table.

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Can you pick out the correct definition of the word below?

TOGED

In unison

Fastened shut

Wearing a robe

Having partaken of marijuana

I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the newsletter.

Where are your “fives”, “lights” and “belly eggs”?

Our body parts have weird names.

For my latest YouTube video, I set about translating our anatomy into normal English.

Ever wondered how your naughty bits got their names, or why your insides appear to speak Latin? Wonder no more:

TOGED

Wearing a robe

It’s an obsolete word meaning “clad in a toga”. It’s from the French toge rather than directly from its Latin ancestor, toga. The Latin-based alternative was togated. Again, our pal Shakespeare used it (this time in Othello).

Thanks for reading! It’s a slightly shorter edition than usual because I’m on my hols. Hopefully, you barely noticed.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – serendipity

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – horrisonous

• DEFINITIONS QUIZ

• And more.

Fancy a hefty dose of word facts and language fun? You’re in luck…

SERENDIPITY

Invented by happy accident

We have the good fortune to know precisely who coined serendipity.

Horace Walpole, the fourth Earl of Orford, described coining it in a letter dated 28th of January, 1754. He had just made a breakthrough while staring at a painting (the breakthrough is too dull to outline here) and wrote, “This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity.”

He then goes on to detail that his coining of the word was inspired by a Persian folk story.

“I once read a silly fairy tale, called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’; as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.”

– Horace Walpole, letter to Sir Horace Mann (1754)

Serendip is an old name for Sri Lanka.

In the story, the princes make a series of clever deductions about a missing mule by using clues they happen to have picked up while looking for something else. For example, they correctly predict that it is blind in one eye because they’d previously noticed the superior grass on one side of the road had gone unchewed.

The three boys make their discoveries by combining happy coincidence with their own wit. A key aspect of Walpole’s serendipity – one often overlooked in modern usage – is that the stroke of luck should be partly earned through smart thinking, or “sagacity” as Horace calls it.

Serendipity is more than just a happy accident. It’s deserved.

HORRISONOUS

huh-RISS-uh-nuss

Meaning: sounding awful

Did you happen to watch the Eurovision Song Contest at the weekend? The poor old United Kingdom came last, garnering a single point. For scale: the winner, Bulgaria, got 516 points.

I rather enjoyed the bilingual British entry, even if the performance was a bit rough around the edges.

However, the rest of Europe appears to have found it horrisonous.

Next time you need to describe your partner’s snoring or instruct a teenager to turn down their cacophonous music, why not deploy horrisonous?

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The Origins of Our Alphabet

The brainy and brilliant Danny Bate joined me and Jess on the latest Words Unravelled to discuss the origins and oddities of the English alphabet.

🅰️ How was A originally an ox?
𝑄 Why does Q always appear with U?
🦓 Is it ZEE or ZED?

For the answers to these questions, and many more, watch or listen below.

LISTEN HERE

Danny’s book Why Q Needs U is essential reading for any word nerd. I felt like he wrote it just for me. You can get hold of it here.

Can you identify the correct definition of the word below?

ELEPHANTA

A monsoon storm

A Spanish princess

A gargantuan ghost

A professional player of memory games

I’ll reveal the solution at the end of the newsletter.

Places Hiding in Words

Serendipity is from an old name for Sri Lanka. Here are some more words that quietly refer to specific locations.

• SPANIEL – Spain – This one seems obvious once you know it. The spaniel was known as an espaignol or “Spanish” dog in Old French, from which we get the word.

• MEANDER – Menderes River, Turkey – The river used to be called the Maeander, and is notable for its winding course.

• CURRANT – Corinth, Greece – The dried grapes were known as raisins de Corinthe, or “raisins of Corinth”. After a few hundred years in English-speaking mouths, they turned into currants, although they were still being called corinths as recently as the 19th century.

• PARCHMENT – Bergama, Turkey – The word is ultimately from the Greek pergamenon, meaning “from Pergamon”, invoking the historical name of Bergama. This became pergamena in Latin and parchemin in French. Before I knew this, I presumed the material was called parchment because it was parched. I expect the same misunderstanding helped the English spelling to take root.

• MAGENTA – Magenta, Italy – In 1859, Napoleon III led the French and Sardinians to victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Magenta. The triumph was instrumental in securing Italian liberation from Austria, and inspired the renaming of a recently patented dye from fuchsine to magenta.

• CANARY – Canary Islands, Spain – We’ve named a bird after a place named after a dog. Islas Canarias means “islands of dogs”. Pliny claimed the largest of the islands, Gran Canaria, was named Canaria insula by the Romans because of the large number of pooches there. It might, however, just be a corruption of a local name.

ELEPHANTA

A monsoon storm

The term was coined by the Portuguese in India to describe the violent tempests that herald the end of the monsoon season. They presumably named the storms for their scale and the way they rumbled along like a herd of elephants.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – mammoth

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – quondam

• PREHISTORIC WORD ORIGINS

• And more.

Now for a ginormous dose of word facts and language fun.

We named the mammoth before we knew what it was.

The word was borrowed from Russian in the 17th century, as thinkers attempted to make sense of the massive bones, teeth and tusks being yanked out of the ground in Siberia.

The Dutch explorer, diplomat and 12-times Amsterdam mayor Nicolaas Witsen is credited with delivering the word to Western Europe.

“By the Inlanders these teeth are called Mammouttekoos, while the animal itself is called Mammout.”

– Nicolaas Witsen, Noord en Oost Tartarye (1694)

The word Witsen interpreted as mammout was likely the Russian mamant (modern Russian mamont). This, in turn, is thought to have come from another Siberian language such as Yakut, where it meant something like “earth-horn”.

The name may simply have referred to where the remains of this mystery animal were being found. However, there was also a theory at the time that this was some sort of burrowing elephant that humankind was yet to encounter.

This is just one of countless outlandish hypotheses from the two millennia before we worked out that these oversized bones belonged to a prehistoric relative of the elephant.

Other explanations included:

• They belonged to the Titans of Ancient Greek myth.

• They were from African elephants displaced by the biblical Flood.

• They belonged to the equally biblical Behemoth, the glorious – but undefined – creature from the Book of Job. This theory may have influenced the -moth in the English spelling of mammoth.

• They were the remains of elephants belonging to Alexander the Great/Genghis Khan/Hannibal [take your pick].

• The ivory tusks simply grew underground.

In the end, good old science put these hypotheses to bed. In the early 1790s, Frenchman Georges Cuvier compared the mammoth teeth with those of African and Indian elephants, and concluded they had to be from a different species. Then in 1799 a near-complete skeleton was found, with flesh and skin to boot, frozen in Arctic ice.

Finally we could put a face to the name. The “earth-horn” was an extinct relative of modern elephants.

Quondam is Latin for “formerly”, however it has been used in English as a noun, adjective and adverb.

For example, to oust someone from their position was to make them a quondam.

It could also be used before a title where we might nowadays use former or ex-, as in “my quondam rivals wear ‘em” and “I see thy quondam friend” (both from the 17th century).

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What is a ‘slapstick’?

Jess Zafarris and I have been guffawing our way through a world of comedic word origins.

🎭 What does 'comedy' literally mean?
🛡️ What dirty jokes did the Tudors enjoy?
🤡 Who should you hit with a ‘slapstick’?
🥄 What was a spoof? (It's not a type of spoon)

These questions answered – and many more – in a hilarious edition of Words Unravelled. Watch or listen below.

LISTEN HERE

Can you pick out the correct definition of the word below?

I will reveal the solution at the end of this newsletter.

Prehistoric Word Origins

You’ve met the mammoth, now here are some other creatures from eons past.

• MASTODON – These North American relatives of the mammoth and elephant were named “breast tooth” after the pairs of nipple-like bumps on their molars.

• MEGALODON – The extinct giant mackerel shark has a name meaning “great tooth”. Its teeth were massive.

• AUROCHS – The name of this gargantuan ancestor of the modern domesticated cow means “original ox” or “ancient ox”.

• NEANDERTHAL – The Paleolithic hominid is named after “Neander valley” (Neanderthal in German) in western Germany, where its bones were first found in 1856.

• MOA – The extinct giant bird is known by the name given to it by the Māori of New Zealand. In Proto-Polynesian, the word may have simply meant “fowl”.

• THYLACINE – Also known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf, the thylacine’s name means “pouched dog” (it was a marsupial). The -cine bit shares a root with canine.

Word Nerd Merch

The RobWords Shop is filled with snazzy products to suit any logophile.

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From the Latin fumāre “to dung”, via French. The word could also mean the general scent of game, and later a stock made from game or fish.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – smorgasbord

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – kankedort

• DEFINITIONS QUIZ

• SCANDY WORDS

• And more.

Enjoy this feast of word facts and language fun.

Would a smorgasbord be quite so delectable if we called it by its literal translation: “butter-goose-table”?

The Swedish original, smörgåsbord, breaks down into:

• smör – “butter” – related to English smear.

• gås – “goose” – refers to a dollop of butter, so called because of the way they floated atop the milk during churning.

• bord – “table” – a relative of English board.

The compound smörgås is the Swedish word for a sandwich – usually one of those topless (“open-faced”) ones the Scandinavians enjoy. So a smörgåsbord is most cleanly interpreted as a “sandwich table” or “bread and butter table”.

The culinary tradition is thought to date back to the 16th century, when the Swedish upper classes began treating their guests to an appetiser of bread, meats, cheese and butter, washed down with Sweden’s national spirit: brännvin. This finger food was called a brännvinsbord.

In the 1800s the name started to change as the booze was sidelined and the bread became the star of the show. The term smörgåsbord began to be used.

The 1912 Stockholm Olympics are often cited as a key moment for the smörgåsbord, with restaurants apparently boosting it from a starter to a main course. For the English-speaking world, however, the watershed moment came at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.

In the Swedish building, visitors were presented with a buffet of over a hundred items, tastefully laid out upon a revolving round table.

For many Americans, this was their introduction to the true Swedish smörgåsbord, a word further spread by the rave reviews.

The English spelling of smorgasbord skips the dots and circle above the ö and the å. The Swedes I know aren’t given to correcting people, but if they were, they’d perhaps point out that these aren’t dispensable accent marks. The letters Ö and Å occupy their own spots at the end of the Swedish alphabet.

A kankedort is a sticky situation, a moment of suspense, a point of great uncertainty.

Any and all of these meanings can be gleaned from only confirmed use of the word, in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus & Creseyde.

Nobody has a clue where this word came from. Perhaps Chaucer willed it into existence because he needed a rhyme for “sort” and “comfort”.

Nevertheless, I think it’d be an impressive word to wheel out next time you’re on the horns of a dilemma.

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The words that contradict themselves

Left can mean “gone” or “remaining”. Fast can mean “speedy” or “fixed”. Cleave can mean “chop” or “stick”.

English has lots of words that somehow ended up being their own opposites. They’re called contronyms, and in my latest video, I explain why they exist.

…And a complete stranger feeds me a blueberry.

Can you spot the correct definition of the word below?

I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the newsletter.

Scandy Words

Words we’ve taken from Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

Regular readers will know that English is full of words borrowed from Old Norse, the language of the Vikings who occupied parts of England for centuries.

This time, inspired by smorgasbord, let’s look at some of the more recent imports from the Scandinavian languages.

• SKI – A word borrowed from Norwegian. Its ancestor, the Old Norse skið, meant a split piece of wood.

• SLALOM – You’ve got the skis, now what do you do with them? Slalom is also a word from Norwegian, although we’ve made a bit of a mess of it. It’s from slalåm meaning “sloping track”. The word only started to be used in English in the 1920s, when slalom racing rules for winter sports were codified.

• TUNGSTEN – Tungsten is “heavy stone” in Swedish. The periodic table is filled with elements inspired by the Swedes. The small village of Ytterby near Stockholm has no fewer than four named after it: yttrium, ytterbium, terbium and erbium.

• QUISLING – Vidkun Quisling was the puppet leader of Norway during the Nazi occupation of WWII. Ahead of the German invasion, he had travelled to Berlin to urge Adolf Hitler to occupy his homeland before the British could do the same. When the Germans began their invasion and the legitimate government in Oslo fled, Quisling announced a coup d’état and declared himself and his unpopular fascist party the new leadership. Overnight, his name became a byword for treachery and collaboration with the enemy. A quisling is still a traitor to this day.

• OMBUDSMAN – In Swedish, an ombudsman is a legal representative or adviser. Literally, it is a “commission man”.

• LEMMING – This is a Norwegian word, but may represent a borrowing of luomek from the Sami language.

• LEGO – I was struggling to find Danish words, so allow me this one: the brand name Lego comes from the phrase leg godt, meaning “play well”.

Speaking of playing well…

…did you successfully guess the correct definition?

The word mainly enjoyed usage in the 16th and 17th centuries. It may be an unintentional portmanteau of two other terms. Perhaps brawl and wrangle.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – reggae

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – blatherskite

• DEFINITIONS QUIZ

• And more!

Time for some off-beat word facts and language fun.

Toots Hibbert and his band The Maytals are usually credited with giving us the word reggae. Its first recorded mention is in their 1968 song Do the Reggay.

This is the new dance

That’s going around the town

We can move to baby.

We do the reggay.

– Do the Reggay (1968), The Maytals

Toots (who died in 2020) claimed the word reggay was inspired by the Jamaican slang streggae, which meant a woman who “looked raggedy”, as he put it. He didn’t want to use the derogatory term in a song, so changed it to reggay. “It was just something that came out of my mouth”, he told the British newspaper The Independent in 2018.

Two things, however, separate Hibbert’s reggae from the one we know today: the spelling and the fact that it appears to refer to a dance, not a style of music.

These discrepancies have recently been cited by another roots reggae artist who is staking a claim to having invented the word. Little Roy tells the same story about it coming from streggae, but insists he made it up for his song Reggae Soul. He spelt it the way we know it, and it referenced a “great, great sound” suggesting reggae was a musical style.

The Maytals released their song in 1968, and Little Roy says he recorded his track in 1967. However, the only references I could find said Reggae Soul also came out in 1968.

Both things can be true, of course, but either way, it isn’t enough information to pinpoint which song was written first, and therefore who coined reggae.

Do the Reggay was a bigger hit than Reggae Soul, so maybe one created the word and the other popularised it outside of Jamaica.

As for whether reggae comes from streggae: there are other theories. The most plausible alternative, I think, is that it comes from the Jamaican English rege-rege, meaning “ragged clothes”. This could reasonably have been applied to a variety of ska developed in one of the poorer districts of Kingston.

This term for a windbag has its roots in Scotland. Its first known appearance in print is in the lyrics of a Scottish folk song called Maggie Lauder.

Wha wadnae be in love with bonnie Maggie Lauder

A piper met her gaun tae Fife he asked what they called her

Right scornfully she answered him, Begone ye hallanshaker

Jog on your gate you blether skyte - my name is Maggie Lauder

– Maggie Lauder (c1642) by Francis Semple

A couple of hundred years after the lyrics of the song were penned, it became a popular ditty among the Americans during the War of Independence.

As a result, bletherskate – and its more common variant, blatherskite – passed into the slang of the United States. It was used to describe nonsense, or the person who was spouting it.

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Can you identify the correct definition of the word below?

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What was so complex about Oedipus?

The latest episode of Words Unravelled is all in the mind, as we explore the origins of psychological terms.

🛋️ What did Sigmund Freud call the “id” and the “ego”?
😳 What is "catagelaphobia"?
🥼 Why has "therapy speak" become such a problem?

These questions answered, and many more, in this psychoanalytical edition. Watch or listen below.

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Musical Etymology

We’ve explored the reggae roots rivalry. Now let’s check out the origins of the names of some other musical genres.

• JAZZ – No one is totally sure, but the leading theory is that jazz comes from jasm. This was a variant on the word jism, which meant “vim”, “energy” or “strength” (whence the other meaning of seminal fluid). The term appears to have been first applied to the musical style in Chicago in the 1910s, but the genre’s origins are most associated with New Orleans.

• RAGTIME – This might share a root with reggae in so far as being “ragged” is potentially involved. In the case of ragtime, the adjective likely referred to the choppy, syncopated rhythm.

• BLUES – As early as the 1700s, depression was being described as “the blue devils”. From that, we likely get the concept of sadness being “the blues”. This term later cropped up in the names of melancholy songs. Memphis Blues and Dallas Blues are the earliest known examples of songs from the blues genre to have the word in the title.

• DISCO – From the French discothèque, which was originally a library for music records (disques in French) where you could listen to the music. The first written mention of a discotheque in English is back in the 1920s. Later, in the 1950s, a disco became a nightclub where recorded music replaced live bands.

• HIP-HOP – For centuries, to hip-hop has meant to move in a jaunty fashion. It’s a juicy example of ablaut reduplication, others being tick-tock, mish-mash, ding-dong. The chanting of “hip hop” was a characteristic of some early hip-hop gigs, and the influence of the 20th-century slang hip, meaning “aware” or “cool”, likely helped it catch on.

Cafard represents a borrowing of the French cafard, which, as well as meaning an impostor, was slang for a kind of madness brought on by interminable ennui.

Well done if you got it correct!

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – boycott

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – dizzard

• Words inspired by people

• And much more.

I hope you enjoy this serving of word facts and language fun. If you don’t, feel free to embark upon a campaign of social ostracisation against me.

Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott was a land agent in County Mayo, Ireland. His job was to collect rents on the estate on which he also lived, on behalf of the landlord Lord Erne.

A former officer of the British Army, Captain Boycott brought military levels of discipline to his job. If a tenant wasn’t toeing the line, he’d evict them. However, when he attempted to kick out 18 tenants in 1880, he got more than he bargained for.

The Captain became the most high-profile target of the newest tactic of the Irish Land League, an organisation dedicated to tenants’ rights. They called their new non-violent approach “social excommunication” or “social ostracisation”.

A supporter of the cause, American journalist James Redpath, urged tenants to shun greedy landlords and agents.

“Encircle him with scorn and silence. Let no man or woman talk to him, or to his wife or children. If his children appear in the streets, don’t let your children speak to them. If they go to school, take your children away. If the man goes to buy in a shop, tell the shopkeeper that if he deals with him you will not trade there any longer.”

– James Redpath in Connaught Telegraph, Aug 21, 1880

Captain Boycott wasn’t like other victims of the practice. When almost all of his labourers left his employ, instead of relenting, he simply farmed his 500 acres himself, rising early to tend the cows, feed the horses and bring in the harvest.

However, even after drafting in his entire family to help, the task was too big and he appealed for help via London’s The Times newspaper.

Aid came in the form of volunteer workers from the pro-British northern counties of Ulster. They too were shunned by the locals.

Together, Boycott and the volunteers successfully brought in the harvest. However, the cost of the operation greatly outweighed the value of the crops saved. Not prepared to face the same ordeal the following year, Boycott moved his family back to England.

However, before he’d even left Ireland, “social excommunication” had acquired a snappier name. Newspapers around the world were calling it boycotting.

Next time you fancy a laugh, try using this word on the unsuspecting fool in your life.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, dizzard simply meant a jester or a court entertainer. However, in much the same way as the word fool developed, dizzard later came to mean a moron or blockhead.

The word is likely an English take on the French disour, which literally meant a “speaker”. It was initially borrowed into English to refer to a court storyteller or joke-teller.

It’s quite possible the spellings of dizzard and dizzy influenced one another. Dizzy has been in English a lot longer, but began to be spelt with Zs rather than Ss at around the time dizzard emerged.

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The first RobWords live shows in London were spectacularly good fun.

Thank you so much if you made it along. If you didn’t… watch this space.

Why is the $ sign an S?

What does 'dollar' even mean?

In my latest YouTube video, I answer both of those questions, while also explaining what the British pound is a pound of, and what the Euro was originally called. Watch, and I promise you will get your money's worth.

Can you identify the correct definition of the word below?

I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the newsletter.

Words inspired by people

Poor old Captain Boycott has been immortalised in our dictionaries. Here are some more people whose names have passed into our language.

• SANDWICH – John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich – He’s said to have popularised the snack because he fuelled his all-night gambling with meals of meat between slices of toasted bread.

• LYNCHING – Charles Lynch – During the Revolutionary War, the Virginia judge held unofficial trials and handed down extrajudicial punishments to suspected Loyalists.

• SILHOUETTE – Étienne de Silhouette – The 18th-century Controller-General of Finances imposed harsh austerity measures in France. His tight hold on the public purse led to cheap portraits made from black paper cutouts to be named after him.

• QUISLING – Vidkun Quisling – The Norwegian fascist leader collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War. In 1940, he launched a failed coup with the aim of ending Norway’s resistance to the invading Germans. His name immediately became synonymous with betrayal.

• MAUDLIN – Mary Magdalene – Maudlin reflects an archaic spelling of Mary’s name (in turn from Magdala on the Sea of Galilee). In Christian tradition, she’s often represented weeping at the crucified Christ’s feet. As a result, her name became associated with tearfulness or excessive sentimentality.

Historically, also used for a lighthouse. From the Greek phanos meaning “lantern”.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – tiramisu

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – vilayati

• Know Your Pasta

• And much more.

Now, who’s hungry for some word facts and language fun?

Tiramisu is less a word, more a sentence. The Italian tira mi su means “pull me up” but is better translated as “pick-me-up”.

The prospect of any dessert is enough to lift my spirits, but in this case it seems likely the name refers to the caffeine kick provided by the layers of coffee-soaked sponge fingers.

The origins of the tiramisu are caked in mystery. It doesn’t appear in recipe books until the 1980s, getting its first known mention in English in a 1982 Good Housekeeping guide to Italian cuisine.

The Accademia del Tiramisù (which exists) claims the dessert was invented in the 1800s at a brothel in Treviso.

“The “Siora” who ran the premises developed this aphrodisiac dessert to offer to customers at the end of the evening in order to reinvigorate them and solve the problems they may have had with their conjugal duties on their return to their wives.”

– Accademia del Tiramisù website

The complete absence of tiramisu from the written record until the second half of the 20th century makes this hypothesis difficult to believe. However, the Accademia blames the lack of evidence on “a veil of popular prudery”.

Thank goodness the silence has been broken and we can now all enjoy this rousing and/or arousing sweet.

This is an Urdu word, but you will nevertheless find it in English dictionaries. It entered our language during the colonial period, when it was used by Indians to refer to the British.

Why am I bringing it to your attention? Because this word spawned another one that you are more likely to have come across.

A regional variant of vilayati was bilayati, which the colonists adopted as a folksy name for their homeland. From bilayati we get Blighty.

Up top, I have given the Indian English pronunciation. In Blighty, it’s pronounced vil-uh-YAT-ee.

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British English vs. American English

Etymology author Jess Zafarris and I have been waging another transatlantic war of words, pitting our British and American accents against one another.

🍽️ Why do Brits eat their entrees first?
👰🏽 Why do Americans pronounce "merry", "marry" and "Mary" the same?
🚿 Why can't we agree on whether to "have" or "take" a shower?

These questions answered – and many more – in another Words Unravelled. Watch or listen below.

LISTEN HERE

Choose the correct definition of the word below.

I’ll reveal the solution at the end of the newsletter.

Know Your Pasta

A tiramisu is excellent for fending off a food coma after a carbohydrate-crammed Italian meal. Here’s a healthy serving of literal translations of pasta names.

• Campanelle – “little bells” – Twisted little bites that look like bellflowers.

• Conchiglie – “seashells” – Shell-shaped pasta. I have been pronouncing this word incorrectly my entire life. It’s “con-KEE-lee-yay”

• Farfalle – “butterflies” – Those adorable little pasta bowties.

• Fusilli – “little spindles” – The common spiral pasta. The word is related to fuselage, which is French for “spindle”.

• Gnocchi – “knuckles” or “knots of wood” – Pronounced “NYOCK-ee”, these little dumplings are made with potatoes, semolina and wheat flour.

• Linguine – “little tongues” – Apparently because they look like snake tongues rather than human tongues.

• Pappardelle – “gobble up” – A rare pasta name derived from a verb rather than a noun. The verb is pappare (“to eat” or “to scoff”)

• Penne – “quills” – Related to the English word pen, which also ultimately means a feather. You can get penne lisce (“smooth quills”) and ridged penne rigate (“striped quills”).

• Ravioli – unknown – Sometimes said to be “little turnips”, rava being a variant of rapa, but that could well be wrong because ravioli doesn’t appear to have ever been a particularly turnipy dish. The original ravioli were meatballs either with or without pastry.

• Spaghetti – “little strings” – A spaghetto is a thin twine. If you leave your spaghetti in the hot water too long, it becomes spaghettacci or “bad spaghetti”. You can add that same -acci suffix to any of the pasta names if you’ve done a bad job of preparing them.

• Tagliatelle – “little clippings” - More literally, it is “little cut things” and related to our word tailor, which is from French tailleur “cutter”. Don’t pronounce the G!

Buon appetito.

It’s from the Classical Latin verb abigere meaning “to drive away”, often used to specifically refer to leading cattle astray.

• ETYMOLOGY ROULETTE – cakewalk

• VOCABULARY EXPANDER – angariate

• Biblical sayings

• And much more.

Time for a nice easy stroll through some word facts and language fun.

Cakewalk is a byword for a task completed with ease, however its origins lie with a group whose lives could not have been any harder. The first cakewalk was a dance performed by enslaved people in the southern states of the US.

Participants would put on their finest clothes for what was initially called a “prize walk”. It involved strutting to syncopated rhythms in an extravagant yet elegant fashion that intentionally parodied the stuffy musical grand promenades enjoyed by their white oppressors. However, the walk would be peppered with twists, kicks and moves borrowed from African dances.

As the name “prize walk” suggests, the dance was part of a competition. The prize in question: a cake. Often the plantation owners themselves would serve as judges and prize-givers, apparently unaware that they were being mocked.

In the early 20th century, the cakewalk gained wider popularity through the minstrel shows that saw white dancers in black make-up perform exaggerated pastiches of the genre. The trend took hold in Europe too, peaking with French film-maker Georges Méliès’ Le Cake-Walk Infernal (1903) and a 1908 composition by Debussy whose name I can’t bring myself to type (but includes the word Cakewalk).

The legacy of the plantation tradition endures in numerous forms. The music that accompanied the cakewalks inspired the later jolting rhythms of ragtime. And the original prize walks also give us the phrase “take the cake”.

As for the modern figurative meaning of cakewalk, it most likely results from the smooth, apparently effortless way in which the performers move: a reflection of the dancer’s skill rather than the simplicity of the dance itself.

I came across this word while researching the origin of the phrase “go the extra mile”.

The idiom is usually attributed to the same section of the Bible in which Jesus encourages his followers to “turn the other cheek”. In the “Sermon on the Mount”, he goes on to say “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”

That’s a very modern phrasing. However, the online Oxford English Dictionary features this 17th century rendering of the same bit:

“Forces you to go” has been condensed into a single word: angariate.

From the Latin angariāre meaning “press into service”, angariate refers to a legal right that allowed a Roman soldier or official to compel a civilian to perform a task. Among the possible chores was helping said official or legionnaire to carry their stuff. Some sources claim the maximum distance anyone could be compelled to haul something was a mile (to the Romans, 1,000 paces), hence the specific distance given by Jesus.

Angariate has also had currency in English in non-Biblical contexts in the past, usually to describe delegating work to an underling. I hereby command you to aid in the term’s resurrection.

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Can you pick out the correct definition of the word below?

I’ll reveal the solution at the end of the newsletter.

Biblical Idioms

“Go the extra mile” and “turn the other cheek” appear within a couple of verses of each other in the New Testament.

Here are some more common sayings that have their origins in the Bible.

• An eye for an eye – Exodus 21:24 – The full verse is “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” Jesus later tells followers to ignore this advice.

• By the skin of my teeth – Job 19:20 – Popularised by the 1611 King James Bible, which says “My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth". Note that it’s “with” not “by”.

• Pride cometh before a fall – Proverbs 16:18 – We’ve distorted this one somewhat: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall”.

• Nothing new under the sun – Ecclesiastes 1:9 – King Solomon says “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” The phrase “under the sun” crops up 29 times in Ecclesiastes. It refers to an earth-bound existence without God.

• The writing on the wall – Daniel 5 – The phrase references the disembodied hand that scrawls a prophesy of the death of King Belshazzar on the wall. The message read “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin” – a piece of wordplay often translated as “numbered, weighed, divided”.

• Salt of the earth – Matthew 5:13 – Another from the “Sermon on the Mount”. Jesus says “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”

Savour[y] that last one. I could go on all day with these, but I’ll save some up for another instalment in the future.

From the French sommelier, although it predates the modern meaning of a wine steward. It derives from the older use of the word in French to describe a court official responsible for the transportation of supplies. Somme refers to the “packs” worn by pack animals.