Word of the Week - Roseanna M. White

Word of the Week – Odyssey

by Roseanna | Jul 27, 2026 | Word of the Week

With the new The Odyssey movie out, it’s no big surprise that odyssey is trending on EtymOnline.com. And while I’m well familiar with the classic epic poem by Homer, and I knew that odyssey came from the title character’s name, Odysseus, I’d never actually looked it up.

My first surprise was seeing that odyssey didn’t make its way into English until around 1600, which was far later than I expected. The English came from the Latin Odyssea, which in turn came from the Greek Odysseia.

Also fascinating to me is that the metaphorical sense of “any long and adventurous journey” didn’t join the show until 1889! Much later than I thought.

So what of the hero’s name? That is shrouded in mystery because it’s so old, considered to be “pre-Greek.” Homer’s epic is written in Attic Greek, the oldest form we have, but the stories were handed down verbally long before they were written. Some historians considered that Odysseus’s name might have come from odyssasthai, which means “to be angry, to be grieved, to grumble,” but most etymologists now consider that to be mistaken so consider it what they call “folk etymology.”

One of the reasons we know that it’s pre-Greek is the number of variants, some of which begin with ol- instead of od-, which is how we got Ulysses along with Odysseus.

Have you read the epic poem? (It was one of our first reads for seminar at St. John’s College, after The Iliad.) Have you seen or do you plan to see the movie?

Word of the Week – Pickle

by Roseanna | Jul 20, 2026 | Word of the Week

I admit it–I don’t like pickles. In fact, it goes beyond “don’t like.” I genuinely hate pickles. And so, I naturally assume I’ll dislike anything with the word “pickled” attached.

But what we today call pickles–cucumbers that have been brined–are not what the word originally meant. Pickle has been around as an English word since about 1400, but our definition, specifically pickled cucumbers, is only from 1707. Because, you see, pickle originally meant that brine that something was soaked in for preservation. The origins of the process are a bit murky, but one historian suggests that it was a process developed by a Dutch fisherman after whom the process was named.

When the word appeared in English, it was used not only for brine but also meant “a spiced sauce served with meat.” So the phrase in a pickle, meaning to be in a difficult or sorry situation, actually comes from that meaning, believe it or not! It dates from 1560, referring to that sauce about to be eaten–certainly a difficult spot to find oneself in. 😉

And here’s a new one for me–round about 1788, it was also used to refer to a troublesome boy. Have you heard that one? The idea is that they were imbued with trouble like something soaked in a pickle (brine). I’m going to have to find an excuse to call someone that! LOL

Word of the Week – Pinpoint

by Roseanna | Jul 13, 2026 | Word of the Week

The word pinpoint was trending recently on EtymOnline.com, so naturally, I had to click in and see what was so interesting. And what I learned was that the way we use it most often–“to locate precisely”–is actually an aeronautic term dating from 1917.

Before that, pinpoint was a noun only, dating from around 1849, and it meant (gasp) “the head of a pin.” I know, I know. You never would have expected that! 😉 But as the field of aeronautics developed, they borrowed the word to mean “place identified from the air,” presumably because they could put a pin in a map, and it was used to ascertain where the aircraft was positioned. Hence, that verb we know so well today, which was aviator slang back a century ago. Phrases like pinpoint accuracy are from WW2 and was still aviator slang, used for precision bombing.

Word of the Week – Spy

by Roseanna | Jul 6, 2026 | Word of the Week

Tomorrow, I’ll be celebrating the release of The Spy Keeper of Marseille. This is the second book of mine with the word spy in the title (along with Circle of Spies), but would you believe I’ve never featured the word here before?? Gasp! This must be rectified immediately! 😉

Spy has quite a long history in the English language! Both the noun and verb forms date from the mid-1200s, and though we likely got our version as a loan-word from French, most European languages share a very similar word for this, and they all trace back to the oldest Germanic language, from the root word spehan. The German, in turn, traced back to that first indo-european language we appreciate as PIE, and its root of spek-, which meant “to observe.”

Which is, of course, what the word means–to observe, or one who observes, often through concealment. To investigate, to watch carefully. By the mid-1400s, the verb had developed the sense of “to play the spy, conduct surveillance.”

In the noun side of things, the term spymaster dates from 1943 and was the inspiration for “spy keeper” in my novel…we loved that word but decided that my female spymaster wouldn’t want the masculine “master”…but “spymistress” just didn’t do the job, LOL. So we went with “keeper” instead. Unique, and I love it!

The game “I spy” also dates from the 1940s.

Word of the Week – Patriot

by Roseanna White | Jun 29, 2026 | Word of the Week

Original post published July 4, 2011.

I love being an American. I’m proud of my country, I admire our roots, and I truly believe in the ideals on which we were founded. I will sing “God Bless America” from the top of my lungs! I don’t think my country’s perfect by any means–but it’s mine. I’m a patriot.

But patriot wasn’t always a good thing! It’s an old word, tracing its roots back to the Greek “patriotes,” which means “fellow-countryman,” which of course comes from “patrios”–of one’s father, and “patris”–fatherland. In the early 1600s, patriot had gained the meaning of “one who is a loyal supporter of one’s country.” But in the mid-18th century, it became a term of derision–it had come to be applied to those whose passion led to divisiveness and disturbance of the government.

So when Americans were branded as Patriots, it sure wasn’t a compliment. But in true Yankee fashion, we took what was meant as an insult and turned it into a badge of honor. Though the word still retains negative connotations in other parts of the English-speaking world, Americans wave the flag of patriotism with truly old-fashioned delight.

Word of the Week – Terrible & Terrific

by Roseanna | Jun 22, 2026 | Word of the Week

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!