As I was debating what word to highlight today, I thought, “Well, let’s see what’s trending on Etymonline right now…” Then I thought, “Wait! What about trend?”
And here we are. 😉
Did you know that trend is actually a nautical word? It dates from 1590 but was used primarily for things like rivers and coasts, in discussion of the direction in which they ran. It’s from the Old English word trendan, which means “to roll, to turn.” The Old English, in turn, was taken from a proto-Germanic root. It shares this root with other “round” words in other languages today, like the Dutch trent, which means “circumference,” and the Danish trind, which means “round.”
It wasn’t until the 1860s that the very physical meaning began to be used metaphorically of things like opinions that “tend toward a particular direction.” I had no idea it was so new!
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
