by amdin | Jul 13, 2020 | Word of the Week
(A revisit from 2012)
Is summer hot dog season in your family? This year we’ve started grilling out on our campfire ring every Sunday with my mother-in-law, and hot dogs are pretty much always on the menu. But have you ever wondered where they got their name?
Well, a hot dog is defined as a particular type of sausage, usually served on a split bun. Check. And in the 1890s, sausages were sometimes referred to as “dogs.” Why? Well, ahem, there was apparently a suspicion that some sausages contained dog meat. And while I didn’t see any documentation on it, the articles said this suspicion was “occasionally justified.” Ewww. =(
Anyway. So earning the name “dog” was just because it was in the sausage family. The fact that they were served on buns made them a quick and easy meal when on the go, and apparently a little boy in the 1890s rushed up to a vendor and said, “Give me a hot dog! Quick!” and it stuck. (Yeah, sounds like lure, doesn’t it? LOL)
It was popularized by a cartoon that really got the name stuck. What’s even more interesting is that it only took 6 years from “hot dog” to go from the accepted name of that particular sausage to a verb used when someone’s showing off. By 1906, “Hot dog!” as an expression of approval had gained its place too. So now that we’re moving toward the season of picnics and cookouts, you’ll know why you’re tossing hot dogs on the grill and not frankfurters or weiners or plain ol’ sausages. 😉
by amdin | Jul 6, 2020 | Word of the Week
I’m currently reading Siri Mitchell’s State of Lies for my book club (SO GOOD!!!!), in which the heroine is a quantum physicist. (Which her 6-yr-old son calls a fizziest, which made me giggle.) I’ve been thoroughly enjoying all the science jokes on her T-shirts, and her musings about things like black holes.
And I also thought it would fun to take a quick peek at the history of the word. Quantum is directly from Latin, meaning “as much as,” which them in turn came to be “one’s portion.” This word has always been there in Latin, but it wasn’t borrowed for scientific purposes until Max Planck decided to use it in 1900 for these small portions of energy. It was Einstein who then took up the word and made it part of our vernacular, beginning in 1905 when he used the word in his Theory of Relativity; and then in 1912 actually coined the phrase “quantum theory” and, in 1922, “quantum mechanics.”
I do find it rather entertaining that if you look up the word in Merriam-Webster, the noun version means “small increments or parcels,” but the adjective means “large, significant.” Hmm…not sure how that one happened!
by amdin | Jun 29, 2020 | Word of the Week
Originally posted in May 2015
So, duh moment. Did you know that the noun fence–like, you know, the thing around your yard–is from defense?
Yeah. Duh. I’d never paused to consider that, perhaps because the
spelling has ended up different, but there you go! It has been a
shortening of defense with the same meaning since the 14th century. Then sense of that enclosure followed in the 15th century.
It had a similar verb meaning at the same times too, with the “to sword-fight” way of defending oneself arising in the 1590s.
But the reason I looked it up was for the meaning that has a fence being someone who buys and sells stolen goods…and to fence
being to sell those stolen goods. I expected it to be a pretty modern
use, but no! As the verb, it’s been around since 1610, and it was then
applied to the person doing it right around 1700–all from the idea that
it’s accomplished under “the defense of secrecy.”
by amdin | Jun 22, 2020 | Word of the Week
This is another revisit…and since we were all sheltering at home for the last months of the school year, one that we’re probably all thinking about with longing. 😉 Coming at you originally from May of 2015, when Rowyn was only 7 and Xoe was 9, which of course gave me all the “awwww”s when I saw the picture I had in this one, from the year before that. 😉 (Still not sure how my babies are now going into 7th and 10th!)
~*~
Since someone asked me about this over the weekend, I figured,
hey–already looked it up, might as well share! 😉 Especially
appropriate since this is our last week of school. Oh yeah. Right about
now the kids are mighty glad we didn’t take a bunch of snow days! 😉
Field trip comes from the idea of field…not as in “an open piece of land, often cultivated” (which dates from time immemorial) but from the idea of field being a place where things happen. This is a slightly newer meaning that began evolving in the 1300s. (I said slightly
newer, not new, LOL.) By then it could mean a battleground. And by
mid-century, a “sphere or place of related things.” By the mid-1700s
people would refer to field-work as anything that took one out of the office or laboratory and into the world, where things take place.
Field trip, then, is a natural extension of this meaning. It’s a
trip into the field, going out of the classroom and into the world where
the things you’ve been learning about can be found. Though an
actually-new phrase (from the 1950s), it has its foundation on a nicely
aged idea. =)
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My kiddos on a field trip to a one room school house in 2014. Rowyn would be the lonely boy in the boys line, LOL, and Xoe is the one in teal and purple. (No, shockingly, not the one dressed in period attire, LOL.) They had a blast that day, and Xoe even won the little spelling bee!
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by amdin | Jun 15, 2020 | Word of the Week
Originally published June 2015
We’ve all heard it through the grapevine (and some of us might break
into song at the mere mention…), but do you know where the saying
comes from?
I didn’t–but I learned recently so thought I’d share. =)
Grapevine, meaning “a rumor” or “information spread in an
unconventional method,” comes from the Civil War era South. The
“grapevine telegraph” was much like the “underground railroad.”
Metaphorical and secretive. Just as the latter wasn’t a real railroad,
but a term to refer to the secret movements of runaways, so the
“grapevine telegraph” referred to spreading information on the down-low,
rather than using the real telegraph. And so grapevine is a shortening of that–a way to spread information without using typical means that could be tapped or overheard.
by amdin | Jun 8, 2020 | Word of the Week
Leave it to my daughter to lean over in the middle of church and whisper, “Word of the week!” during the sermon–which is exactly what happened when my dad shared this fun little tidbit. 😉
Did you know that salary is from the same root as salt? Salary has meant “wages, compensation” since the 13th century, and the word comes from the Latin salarium (same meaning), which is closely linked to salarius, “of or pertaining to salt.” Some sources say it’s because a soldier’s salary was considered to be spent on salt, and others say that sometimes wages were even paid in salt. Either way, salt is such a necessary and, historically, valuable item that it’s no wonder it’s linked so closely to money in our words!
And I’ll admit it . . . I’ve spent a fair bit on salt over the years. I have a cabinet full of different varieties, which I occasionally find very amusing. Especially when I find a recipe that calls for one I don’t yet have. Gasp! My favorite: a variety of Cornish seasoned sea salts.
Do you have a favorite or rare kind of salt in your kitchen?
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award nominated 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.