It doesn’t take more than looking at the words terrible and terrific to guess that they share a root. They both come to us from the Greek treëin, which means “to tremble, be afraid.” Terrible is another of those words with its roots in the oldest language, and it made its way English, via Old French, which in turn came from Latin, around the year 1400.

By the 1590s, terrible was used for anything that evoked feelings of dread, which led to the meaning of “violently severe.” By the 1700s, it had weakened a bit to anything “great or severe,” which is when people began to say someone was, for instance, a “terrible bore.” By 1913, it could just mean “very bad, extremely incompetent.”

So what about terrific? This one is newer, first used by Milton in the 1660s. It traces from those same roots, originally meaning “Frightening, causing terror.” It maintained its meaning until about 1809, when it softened to “very great, severe, excessive,” like if you had “a terrific headache.” But it is curious when that “very great” flips the whole meaning of the word and comes to mean something was “very great, excellent,” which happened around 1888.

I’m always so intrigued when a word completely reverses its meaning like that!

Word Nerds Merch!

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!