Word of the Week – Drapes

by Roseanna White | Jan 15, 2018 | Word of the Week

Yet another Word of the Week inspired by my weekend activities. 😉 I confess: I’m not a decorator. Most of the decorations in my house are books, LOL. (The best decorations, if I do say so myself.) Things like curtains…meh. I’ve put them up in most rooms, simply to block the light when necessary, but I’d never bothered in my kitchen. I don’t know. I just…didn’t.

But upon taking down the lovely garland I’d strung over my windows at Christmas, they looked so bare. So I decided, “It’s time to get curtains.” Or, upon looking up what I actually wanted, make them.

Of course, making curtains reminds me of one of the frequent goofs I’ve made in my British-set books: referring to those window-hangings as drapes. Apparently they don’t ever call them that in the UK. So it’s high time I look it up, right!

While etymonline.com doesn’t denote drapes as being an American usage, it is rather recent. Though the verb, “to hang with fabric,” is from the 1400s, it didn’t turn into a noun at all until  the 1660s, and it didn’t at that point have the particular meaning of “curtain.” That didn’t come about–pluralized, drapes, not just drape–until 1895. It’s a direct derivation–the draping of fabric over windows, and drapery is a similar derivation–so logical. But apparently not universal. 😉

I just finished sewing my cheerful calico curtains, now draped over my windows. How about you? What kind of drapery do you fancy as window treatments, or do you like bare panes of glass?

And since everyone keeps asking in the comments, I’m adding a photo of my newly-stitched curtains…

Word of the Week – Those Hats…

by Roseanna White | Jan 8, 2018 | Word of the Week

Last week, my friend Rachel McMillan (of Toronto) asked on Facebook what the different American regions called a certain type of hat. You know, that basic knit hat for the winter. There, she said, they universally called it a toque. Other answers included “winter hat, knit cap, ski hat, beanie, tam, stocking hat…” The list went on and on.

But given that I’m currently knitting one for my husband (the pattern is called, “A Very Plain Hat,” LOL), I was thinking of it again and thought it would be fun to feature.

In my area, I grew up hearing them called toboggans. Like the sled. Upon looking it up, I learned that the word dates from 1829, meaning a flat-bottomed sled. Around 100 years later, in the late 1920s, it began being applied (regionally in America) to the knit hats one wore when tobogganing. (I guess that region includes my own…)

Toque, coming from French, is not surprisingly common in Canada. As a word for “a round hat,” it dates to the 1500s. It comes from the Spanish word for “a woman’s headdress,” which may have in turn come from the Arabic word for “shawl.”

Beanie dates from the 1940s and might be the funniest of the words–it’s from the slang sense of bean, meaning “head.” (For some reason, I always think of a beanie as one of the bowl-shaped hats with a little propeller on top. I wonder what TV show I have to thank for that? LOL)

Tam is short for tam-o’-shanter, a type of hat from the 1840s used by Scottish plowmen. The name comes from the hero of Robert Burns poem (Tom of Shanter) of the same name, published in 1790. This type of woolen hat became fashionable for women in the 1880s as well.

So there we go. Whatever we call it, I know many of them have been worn during this awful arctic blast! If you’re anything like me, you’re pretty excited to see warmer temps in this week’s forecast!