All right, ya’ll. It’s time to open up a can of etymology on the barbecue can of worms. I know some regions get VERY serious about this. 😉 So what is it? And where does it come from?

The word barbecue dates from the 1690s and is borrowed from the Haitian barbakoa, which came to us via the American Spanish barbacoa, literally meaning “framework of sticks set upon posts.” In Haitian culture, these frameworks were used for two things: to sleep on…or to cure meat.

Around 1690, English borrowed the word as the “framework for grilling meat, fish, etc.” So it first referred solely to the physical device used. However, by the 1730s, it had been adopted to refer to an “outdoor feast of roasted meat as a social entertainment.”

So first we have the grill…then we have the event. When did it come to refer to the meat made at such events? Not until 1894. Now, the real question…what kind of meat?

Well, until the 1930s, it would be large cuts of meat too big to cook indoors. But around 1931, the word began to be used for any outdoor cooking of meat, especially over an open fire; then when hamburgers gained popularity, the word began to be used for events serving those around 1935.

Barbecue sauce dates from around 1900.

And okay, dish. Where do you fall in the barbecue camp? Are you a purist, or do you use the word for any outdoor cooking?

Word Nerds Merch!

I totally should have done this one during “mer-May,” but alas. I’m behind. 😉 Even so, this week we’ll be looking at the history of the word (and hence the myths) of mermaids, which were often equated with sirens. 

Mermaid dates as an English word from around the mid-1300s, when it was spelled meremayde, literally “maid of the sea.” These fabled creatures with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish have been around since the way-ancient days…and they weren’t exactly Ariel. Most mythology portrays mermaids as creatures who work harm against mortals, sometimes intentionally. They were malignant, generally speaking.

Old English had a word for the creatures too, but called them merewif, “water witch.” Interestingly, tales of the creatures from northern Europe have them without the fishy tale.

I readily admit I’ve always loved mermaid stories (what can I say–The Little Mermaid came out when I was 7, so…), hence the mer in Awakened. I have definitely noted that mermaids in many fantasy books are horrific creatures, which is certainly in keeping with that original lore…and mine certainly start out with a violent streak too.

Are you a fan of mermaid stories?

Word Nerds Merch!

Did you know that one of the oldest words we have is…bee?

Yep. Bee.

Our English word traces all the way back to Old English, but it doesn’t stop there. The Old English traced it to Proto-Germanic (remember that “proto” means “first”) and that Proto-Germanic traced to Proto-Indo-European. Which is to say, the oldest language we have records of. According to a recent feature on NPR, bee is in fact a prehistoric word.

The amazing thing here is that the word hasn’t changed in all those many years. The spelling was originally beo, but it was still pronounced “bee.”

And with a word this old, it’s no surprise that the metaphorical senses have quite a history too. Bee has been used to denote any “busy worker” since the 1530s. And predating that by about twenty years is a Scottish saying of someone having a “head full of bees” when they were a bit mad, which is probably where the later (1825) “to have a bee in one’s bonnet” comes from.

So what about things like quilting bee and spelling bee? These communal, collective activities date from the 1820s and 1880s, respectively, but bee being used to describe other such activities is actually from 1769. Some of the earliest uses were of raising-bee for building construction, logging-bee for log-rolling, paring-bee for paring apples during harvest, and husking bee for corn.

Bees are certainly fascinating creatures! And humans have been keeping them–and using that same word to name them–pretty much since the dawn of time. 

Word Nerds Merch!

Did you know that trope and tropical share a root?

This certainly never occurred to me, until I was reading a quote from St. Augustine a few weeks ago that said this:

“Though God is said to change his determinations (so that in a tropical sense the Holy Scripture says even that God repented), this is said with reference to man’s expectations, or the order of natural causes, and not with reference to that which the Almighty had foreknown that he would do.”

Did you scratch your head at that use of tropical? Because I sure did! Clearly, Augustine was not talking about palm trees and the scent of coconut and lovely, sunshine-filled days. I stared at it for a moment, looked at the word, and finally went, “Oh! Like, ‘trope’-ical.”

Those of us in the bookish community are likely familiar with the word trope. A bookish trope is “a common theme or motif.” Like “marriage of convenience” or “love triangle,” for example.

Well, that use of trope follows because the primary definition is “a word or expression used figuratively,” which also came to mean “cliche.” But where did that come from? The original definition was actually “a turn of phrase.”

That’s important–because that’s how it links to tropical as we know the word today. Both share the Greek root trop-, which means “turn.”

So what does a turn have to do with the tropics? The word was used in astronomy to mean “either of the two circles in the celestial sphere which describe the northernmost and southernmost points of the elliptic.” Which is to say, the northern-most or southern-most points after which the sun appears to “turn back” from the equator. These regions on earth happen to be a steady, warm climate, so tropical has of course been applied to things pertaining to those regions, especially having to do with weather and the flora that grows in the regions, and even the colors associated with them.

So Augustine definitely wasn’t talking about palm trees…but he was talking about “a figure of speech which consists in the use of a word or phrase in a sense other than that which is proper to it.” 

Word Nerds Merch!

A few weeks ago when we looked at the word mathematics, a reader asked for the history of arithmetic too, since that’s included in the “Three Rs” of education–Reading, wRiting, and ‘Rithmetic. (And don’t we just love that of those “Three Rs,” only one actually starts with an R? LOL)

Arithmetic entered the English language waaaaay back in the mid-1200s, meaning exactly what it does today: “the art of computation, the most elementary branch of mathematics.”

The English word came from French, which came from Latin, which came from the Greek arithmetikē , which means, quite simply, “counting.”

Yep. Arithmetic just means counting.

A small, interesting note is that the spelling was originally arsmetike, which mirrors the French spelling but does not reflect the Latin or Greek spellings. This was “corrected” in the early 1500s to better reflect the root words.

Word Nerds Merch!

These days when we talk about glamour, we tend to mean that something has an attractiveness associated with high fashion, Hollywood, or celebrity. But until 1939 when that meaning gained popularity, glamour meant something entirely different.

Glamour actually shares roots with grammar, which we looked at last week, and when the Scottish variation was first recorded in 1715, it had nothing to do with the “rules of language” meaning of grammar and instead focused on the “magic, enchantment” sense of the original word. To cast the glamour was to cast a spell on someone. (For any fantasy readers out there, you’re probably familiar with this use of glamour; it’s used frequently in the genre when someone has magic that enables them to change their appearance.)

The word was popularized by the late 1700s and early 1800s by Sir Walter Scott, who used glamour in his writing. By around 1840, the word had evolved to mean “magical beauty, alluring charm.” And from there, we get that version we have today, which specific high-fashion or glitz associated with celebrity.

Also around 1840, we get the verb form, which meant “to enchant, to bewitch.”

Word Nerds Merch!