by Roseanna White | Aug 13, 2012 | Word of the Week
The other day I was looking up “war zone,” and in so doing came across some interesting tidbits on zone. =)
The noun dates to the late fourteenth century, coming directly from the Latin zona, which means “a geographical belt, celestial zone.” The Latin in turn comes from the Greek zone, which was the word for “belt.” Originally this was used solely to talk of the five great divisions on the surface of the earth–the torrid, temperate, and frigid areas, separated by the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and the Arctic and Antarctic circles.
It wasn’t until 1822 that zone was applied to any set region–so I could be pretty sure “war zone” wasn’t around yet in 1814, LOL. It was applied to sports in 1927.
Then we have the verb sense coming into play. “Zoning” land for a purpose dates from 1912.
Not to be confused with the oh-so-modern sense of “zone out.” This verb is from the 1980s, a back-formation of the adjective “zoned” that’s related to drug use, taken from the word ozone. I guess it implies that someone’s really high, which I’d never paused to consider. That use is from the 1960s. (Surprise, surprise, LOL.)
So there you go. Some really ancient uses, and some incredibly modern ones. =)
by Roseanna White | Aug 6, 2012 | Word of the Week
From time immemorial–or at least since the rise of pencil and pen and paper–people have been scribbling nonsensical pictures onto the page when they’re thinking. We call it doodling. But apparently we’ve only been calling it that since 1935. I had no idea it was that new a word! I figured it wasn’t old, but I would have guessed a bit older than that!
There’s a fun quote here from a play of the era:
LONGFELLOW: That’s a name we made up back home for people who make
foolish designs on paper when they’re thinking. It’s called doodling.
Almost everybody’s a doodler. Did you ever see a scratch pad in a
telephone booth? People draw the most idiotic pictures when they’re
thinking. Dr. Von Holler, here, could probably think up a long name for
it, because he doodles all the time. [“Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,”
screenplay by Robert Riskin, 1936; based on “Opera Hat,” serialized in
“American Magazine” beginning May 1935, by Clarence Aldington Kelland]
And yet we see the word (not with the “draw aimlessly” meaning) way before that, right? It’s derived from dawdle, it seems, and has a meaning of “fritter away time.”
But in the 1600s it meant “a simple fellow.” It was, in fact, a derogatory term thought to have a, um, rather crude connection. Let’s just say it was extracted from “cock-a-doodle-do” as a euphemism for one of the other words in that sound effect… Yeah, see? Crude. So the British really weren’t being nice when they came up with “Yankee Doodle.”
At any rate, when my 1814 heroine has drawn absentmindedly upon paper, “doodle” is not a word I can use to describe it. 😉
by Roseanna White | Jul 30, 2012 | Word of the Week
Well, we just got back from a trip to Texas, and I’m still in get-situated-back-at-home mode, so this will be a short one. =) But last week I had to look up when grandfather clocks came to be called grandfather clocks (can’t believe I even thought to question that one), and was surprised by the answer, so . . . 😉
Grandfather itself is from the 15th century, a compound word of pretty obvious origins. It replaced “grandsire” and the Old English ealdefaeder.
There aren’t many phrases that use it–there’s “grandfather clause,” which referred to exemptions from post-Reconstruction voting and restrictions in the South for men whose family members had voted before the Civil War. That came about near the turn of the century.
And then, ta da, grandfather clock. This is from the 1880s and apparently refers to a song–don’t ask me which one, LOL. Before that–which is to say, for in my story, which is a far sight earlier–they were just called “tall case clocks” or “eight day clocks.”
So there you have it. A few little tick-tocks to learn about the grandfather clock. =) Now I need to go unpack some bags . . .
by Roseanna White | Jul 23, 2012 | Word of the Week
Last week while in the car, we were trying to figure out why “appropriate” (adj) and “appropriate” (v) are spelled exactly the same, pronounced differently, with what we deemed very different meanings. (Yes, my whole family is apparently word-nerdish, LOL.)
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| A Favor by Edmond Blair |
So I just looked it up and kinda scratched my head to see that, in fact, they both come from exactly the same Latin word and both appeared in English in the 15th century.
Both start with proprius, the Latin word from which we get “proper.” It’s the best place the start in this case. Proper means “adapted to some purpose, fit, apt.” The Latin means “one’s own, particular to oneself.” Easy to say how those are related, right? If something is its own, it has a very particular purpose. But it also carries an idea of possession. (Interestingly, it didn’t carry a connotation of social correctness until 1704! Who knew?)
The prefix is a variation of ad- which means “to.” Pretty simple. “To make one’s own” is a very literal definition of the Latin approprius, which is where appropriate comes from. So the verb is pretty easy to see. But it also still has that meaning of “one’s own, particular to itself.” In which case the adjective suddenly makes sense too, because if something is appropriate, it is proper, fit, apt to a purpose.
Yeah, I really never thought that appropriate as “proper” and appropriate as “take for yourself, by force if necessary” were in fact the same. But apparently they are. Pretty interesting, eh?
by Roseanna White | Jul 16, 2012 | Word of the Week
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| Obviously a sober-minded young lady 😉 |
One of the words my editor said was distracting in Ring of Secrets was “sober.” I used it a couple times instead of “serious,” which is, of course, valid. Which she knew. But the modern definition… 😉
I decided to look it up and found that the dual definitions of “temperate” and “not drunk” go back to the original Latin sobrius. The prefix, from se- means “without”, and ebrius is “drunk.” This is a pretty logical correlation, since temperance and drunkenness are rather exclusive. So the opposites have also been drawn together pretty much forever.
In English, sober has meant “grave, serious, solemn” since the 1300s. By the mid-14th century it had edged toward “moderate, temperate,” and “abstaining from strong drink.” Now, that “abstaining” makes me think that it didn’t speak to one’s state at a particular moment, but rather to one’s habit. It wasn’t until the late 14th century that it narrowed to “not drunk at the moment.” Still, of course, carrying that meaning of “grave, serious, solemn, moderate.” 😉
Interestingly, the verb form (usually paired with “up”) didn’t come about until 1820.
Oo, and I learned a new name to call somebody who’s a little too sedate or serious! Sobersides. Yep. My newest go-to for name calling, LOL. 😉
by Roseanna White | Jul 9, 2012 | Word of the Week
Last week I had the pleasure of going over edits of Ring of Secrets with my awesome editor, and she proved her awesomeness by discovering some words I hadn’t thought to look up but which were way too new for my 1780-set book.
One of the most surprising is lowlife. It feels like an old-fashioned word to call somebody, doesn’t it? Like it should be from the age when base-born was one of the meanest things you could say about someone. But . . . it’s not.
The adjective form, low-life, did indeed enter the English language in 1794, meaning “vulgar, disreputable.” (Still too late for my story, mind you…), but it didn’t make the transition from adjective to noun until–get this–1911! Aaaagggghhhhhh!
Thanks heavens for an editor who thought to look this one up. She knows this sort of thing is important to me and got to laugh while I went “Aaaaaggghhhhh, really? Really? What in the world can I call him then?” LOL. (Enter “miscreant” and “criminal” for the two places in the book I’d used “lowlife.”)
I hope everyone was a great week!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning 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.