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?

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Since we just featured queen, it seemed appropriate to look next at king…even though the history of this word, which traces its roots back to prehistory (seriously!), is less straightforward because of that long history.

What we know is that our current English formation, king, is a contraction of the Old English version, cyning. It meant “ruler” and is derived from the original Germanic language’s version, kuningaz. But where did that come from? That’s where things get murky, since it’s been around so long.

There are theories that the word is related to Old English cynn, meaning “family” or “race of people.” In which case king would be literally “leader of a people group.” Or it could be related to an old Germanic word that means “of noble birth,” which was originally linked to being descended from the gods, back in pagan days.

And have you ever noticed the similarity between king and kin (family)? Yeah, the experts are certain that’s no coincidence, but they can’t actually trace the connection there either.

But back in the early days of Britain, king was used to denote what we would now more call chieftans–leaders of small groups of peope that made up one or a few families. It wasn’t until the rise of Europeans nation-states as we know them now that the word in English took on the more formal, austere tones we associate with it today. And even when the notion of king grew a bit more high-faluting, the same word was still used for chiefs or tribal leaders for many years.

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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!

Word Nerds Merch!