Last week we explored the word wife, but it’s so closely linked to queen that I had to look into this word next!

Queen traces its roots back to the original Indo-European word gwen, which means…you guessed it…”woman.” Just like wife. In ancient Germanic languages, that’s how it was used. But by the time Old English began to evolve, we’d begun using it specifically for what one might call “THE wife”–the wife of the king. And by Middle English, quene (spelled like that rather than our current spelling) had become fully differentiated from “wife” and meant “the pre-eminent female noble; wife of a king; female ruling in her own right.”

I find it fascinating to realize that English, with queen, is one of the few languages whose word for the title is not just the female version of a our male word, king.

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Since last week we looked at the origins of husband, obviously this week we need to look at where the word wife comes from!

Wife, originally spelled wif  or wyf, is from Old English and meant “woman.” By late Old English it had carried the idea of “married woman,” but that was mostly a shortening of the term “wedded wife.” And this particular sense didn’t displace the original sense. We can see that influence still in words like “fishwife” or “midwife,” which do not require the woman in question be married.

By the late 1300s, the idea of “mistress of a household” had begun to be attached to the word, which is in turn where words like “housewife” came from.

It’s interesting to note that our modern woman actually came around because wif didn’t feel “definitive” enough, so people began to say wifman–basically, “female-man.”

While there are plenty of Germanic languages that follow this same root and have similar-sounding or looking words to wife, other European languages instead favor a different root…which we’ll explore next week. 😉

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The word husband has been in English since, well, the days of Old English. That’s not exactly surprising. But even in words this old and common, there’s still something to be learned when we look at the roots!

Our modern English word comes from the Old English husbonda, and it meant “male head of a household.” Okay, no surprises there. The Old English is taken from Old Norse husbondi, which was literally “house-dweller.” When we break the word down, we see that hus and house are rather similar–from the same word, as a matter of fact.

So what about that -bund part? That’s from bondi, which has come to mean “dweller” from the verb bua, which is “to dwell”…but that word in turn comes from the ancient bheue…which means “to exist; to grow.” So in a way, husband actually means “house grower” or, as some have put it “house farmer.” Which is amusing enough that I wanted to share. 😉

The shortening to hubby might sound modern, but in fact it dates to the 1680s!

Now, another fun fact. Before husband gained in popularity in Old English, there was another word used for it: wer. This word, rather than having to do with being head of a household (which could apply even to an unmarried man), had evolved from being a general word for “a male person” to specifically mean “a married man.” Poets especially loved being able to pair wer and wife. But alas, wer has mostly vanished from the language…with a few rare exceptions, like werewolf (man-wolf).

Next week, we’ll take a look at wife!

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We talk a lot at Word of the Week about words that are shockingly new or have interesting roots. Well, moon is neither of those things. 😉 But it’s still a fascinating word to study, because of its ancient, ANCIENT history.

It’s no great surprise that the biggest constant in our night sky received a name on day one. Okay, day four, if we’re going by the Genesis narrative. 😉 Which means that the oldest languages we have record of and which led to the languages we know today, which etymologists refer to as the “proto-Indo-European” language or PIE, have the very root word from which moon is derived: me(n)ses. Not all variations preserve that n in the middle, but some do. And historically, the word for the heavenly body and the word for the cycle of that heavenly body, have been interchangeable (moon has meant “month” even in English forever, as an example). Which is where we get:

Mona – Old English and Old Frisian
Mone – Middle English
Moon – Modern English
Mano – Old Saxon and Old High German
Mani – Old Norse
Maane – Danish
Maan – Dutch
Mond – German
Masah – Sanskrit
Mah – Persian
Mis – Armenian
Mene – Greek
Mensis – Latin
Meseci – Old Church Slavonic
Menesis – Lithuanian
Mi – Old Irish
Mis – Welsh
Miz – Breton

By the 1500s, the moon was used metaphorically to refer to anything out of reach. It wasn’t until 1665 that moon was used to refer to the satellite of any planet.

As for the verb that is, ahem, usually used in reference to pulling one’s clothing down, that particular prank, let’s call it, didn’t earn the name moon until the 1960s–it’s probably from a sense of moon being slang for the buttocks from the 1760s but is likely also influenced by a sense dating to the early 1600s meaning “to expose to the moonlight.” The verb sense of “idle about or gaze moodily” is from the 1830s.

So what about Luna? In Latin, Luna was the goddess of the moon, and the word came to mean “the moon” as well, as a differentiation from mensis, which also meant month. Both words could refer to the heavenly body, but Luna carried the sense of a deity and mensis of the physical body whose movements help us tell time.

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Did you know that resurrect didn’t exist as a word until the 1770s?!

I know, go ahead. Shake your head and said, “Nuh uh!” I know I did. But it’s true!

Resurrect is what etymologists refer to as a “back-formation.” Which is to say, we’ve had the noun, resurrection, in the English language pretty much forever (since about 1300), so eventually people just assumed it came from a verb (correct, it did) and began using that verb, resurrect. But it’s technically (or was technically) incorrect–that’s not the verb form of the word.

The noun resurrection came to us from Latin, via French. The Latin verb is resurgere, meaning “to rise again, to appear again.” Most Biblical translations will say that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and that Christ himself was raised from the dead. We could also say the proper verb…resurge. That’s what would have been used until the 1770s.

When resurrection made its way into English around 1300, it was specifically talking about the resurrection of Christ. And by extension, “the resurrection of the dead in the last days” that He promised. In the 1500s, people began to use it metaphorically or in less-sacred senses.

Whatever the correct verb form, I pray everyone enjoys this season where we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord…to commemorate when He resurged. 😉

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Since yesterday was Palm Sunday, I thought it would be fun to look at the etymology of the word palm.

Not shockingly, it’s been in English a long time–since the 1300s. And it comes from a root that means “flat.” So in reference to the palm of the hand, it’s describing the flat part of the hand.

From there, the palm trees got their names because of the flat leaves and branches with “fingers” on them. Of course, these trees aren’t native to England, so that early knowledge of the trees mostly came thanks to the story of Palm Sunday.

Why palms, though? Because in the ancient world, palm fronds were word on carried as a symbol of victory (much like a laurel leaf crown).

Did you attend a Palm Sunday service yesterday?

Word Nerds Merch!