A couple weeks ago, my husband asked, “Are gorgeous and gorge related?” I had no idea. But of course, this being us, we both immediately said, “Word of the Week!” and I vowed to look it up. 😉 

And it turns out…YES! Gorgeous and gorge are indeed from the same root, meaning “throat.” Which immediately makes sense for gorge, right? It’s from the idea of cramming food down your throat. But gorgeous? How does that track?

The history is a bit iffy, but etymologists think it’s linked to necklaces that adorn the throat. Jewelry would have been the first things to be called gorgeous, meaning “elegant,” and from there, “splendid, showy, sumptuously adorned”…like jewelry. The word dates from around 1500 in English, coming to us from French, which in turn came from Latin, which is thought to come from the Greek gorgias…Gorgias being a man famous for his rhetoric (hence his voice and things that come from his throat–anyone who’s read the Socratic dialogues will be familiar with him!)

Word Nerds Merch!

Is it getting hot where you live? Maybe so hot you’d call it a scorcher?

At first glance, you might not think that scorcher really needs a closer look. It obviously comes from the word scorch, meaning “to burn.” Which is true. But did you know that it’s been used to describe hot days since 1874? Or that it was used to describe harsh comebacks or rebukes in conversation since 1842? Or pretty girls since 1881? Or a line drive in baseball since 1900?

Even more fascinating is the history of that root word, scorch. Its technical meaning isn’t just “to burn” but “to burn superficially so as to change the color or texture.” Um…that seems pretty specific, am I right?

Turns out, that’s for a good reason. Scorch traces its roots to the Old French escorchier, which means “to strip the skin off; to flay.” So this type of burning is specific to a change in skin or the surface of something.

Suddenly makes sunburns on a scorcher of a day make sense, doesn’t it?

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I live in the Appalachians–a place with so many shades of green that a friend who moved here from Colorado reported she’d never seen so many in her life, LOL.

But all those trees and plant life means something else, too. It means we have a lot of humidity in the air, and in summer, that means things get INTENSE. A favorite word around here is muggy.

Muggy has been used to describe conditions that are “damp, close, warm and humid” since around 1746…but why? Where in the world did this word come from?

Turns out it’s from a now-obsolete word, mug, which meant “fog or mist,” which comes from Middle English mugen, “to drizzle.” This Middle English word is from the Old Norse mugga of the same meaning…but them there? Etymologists aren’t entirely sure but suspect it’s related to the root word meug- which means “slippery or slimy.” Which is where mucus comes from.

What do you think? Are muggy and mucus related? (My husband frequently describes a muggy day as “feels like the inside of a mouth out there,” so…not so far off! LOL)

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SPF might not seem terribly mysterious. Anyone who wears sunblock is accustomed to seeing the abbreviation, and it’s no mystery what it stands for “Sun Protection Factor.”

But did you know that the first sunblock was not, in fact, created for sunny summer days? Nope! It was invented by a Swiss chemist with a love of mountain climbing, named Franz Greiter. He was tired of getting sunburned during his treks up and down the mountains, so in 1946 he invented the first sunblock…which he called “glacier cream.”

I just love irony like that.

It didn’t take long for those who loved the sun to pick up on his invention and start to use it for other outdoor activities. By 1954, people were using the term sunscreen (already in existence for physical items that blocked the sun) for the lotion. In the 1960s, Greiter came up with the SPF rating for his lotions, and that rating system is still what we use today!

Well…sort of. The idea behind it is that however long a person can usually be in the sun without getting burned is your base number–so, say, 15 minutes or so. Then you factor in the lotion, and however long you can now go without being burned is your end number. So you divide to get the SPF. So if you can now go 30 minutes without a burn, then the SPF is 2 (which is fact what that original “glacier cream” was rated). Modern lotions with high SPFs still recommend you reapply more frequently than the rating would indicate. 😉

As for that original inventor? His company is still making sunscreen, and they specialize in high SPFs!

Word Nerds Merch!

Ever wonder why we don’t cruit, but we cruit again (recruit)? Maybe you don’t, LOL. But as I was driving along the road a few weeks ago and saw text on the back of a tractor trailer that was wearing off, it got me to wondering. What’s the root of this word, where we use the “re-” prefix but not the word itself? Is that “re-” the one I expect or something different?

Turns out, it is indeed the usual “re-” meaning “again.” So where does –cruit come from?

The roots are Latin, from crescere, meaning “to grow.” So it’s literally “to regrow” or “to grow again.” Old French began to use a form of this to represent new growth, which is where our current meaning comes from. By the 1630s-1640s, it had worked its way into English as both a noun and a verb to mean “new supplies or military reinforcement.” It did get its start strictly in military things–soldiers or supplies for said soldiers–but it didn’t take long for it to expand to any new supplies (by 1660).

Although the idea of recruiting student athletes is pretty new, dating only from 1913.

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Tomorrow, my first romantasy releases!! My copies have already arrived, and I am SO excited to welcome Awakened into the world. So of course, how better to celebrate than to look up the history of the word fantasy? (I mean, ice cream works too…)

Fantasy came to English via French around 1400, meaning “illusory appearance,” from the French fantasie/phantasie, which means “vision, imagination.” French, in turn, got the word from the Latin phantasia, which itself came from the Ancient Greek word of the same pronunciation, both of which meant “power of imagination.” The Greek word shares roots with other words having to do with vision and light.

The idea of a “whimsical notion” actually pre-dates the main 1400 definition, and “fantastic imagination” followed by the 1530s.

What about the notion of “a daydream based on desires”? That’s pretty new, going back only to the 1920s. And the genre of fiction (obviously what we’re concerned with today, LOL) was established by 1939.

Are you a fan of the genre?

Word Nerds Merch!