I was browsing through the entries for “get” over at www.etymonline.com, trying to discover when “get-go” came into being. Well, I didn’t find that (maybe it’s been around from the get-go. Ha . . . ha . . . ha . . .), but I did find some interesting info on “get back.”

Get back has been used since the 1600s in the sense of “return”–as in, “let’s get back to town.” That’s no big surprise, right? What surprised me was that the transitive sense of “recover”–as in, “Can you get back the money you lost?”–didn’t come about until 1808. Rather late for something so literal, in my opinion! And the meaning of “retaliate” didn’t enter English until 1888. Very late.

Pretty cool, huh? (Go ahead and say it–I’m a Word Nerd, LOL.)

Oh, and check out my post on RomCon Inc’s historical blog today!

And now, consider yourselves cordially invited to an online Colonial Christmas party! The Quillers over at Colonial Quill will all be there chatting, and I hope you can join us!