by Roseanna White | Dec 12, 2011 | Word of the Week
I was browsing through the entries for “get” over at www.etymonline.com, trying to discover when “get-go” came into being. Well, I didn’t find that (maybe it’s been around from the get-go. Ha . . . ha . . . ha . . .), but I did find some interesting info on “get back.”
Get back has been used since the 1600s in the sense of “return”–as in, “let’s get back to town.” That’s no big surprise, right? What surprised me was that the transitive sense of “recover”–as in, “Can you get back the money you lost?”–didn’t come about until 1808. Rather late for something so literal, in my opinion! And the meaning of “retaliate” didn’t enter English until 1888. Very late.
Pretty cool, huh? (Go ahead and say it–I’m a Word Nerd, LOL.)
Oh, and check out my post on RomCon Inc’s historical blog today!
And now, consider yourselves cordially invited to an online Colonial Christmas party! The Quillers over at Colonial Quill will all be there chatting, and I hope you can join us!
by Roseanna White | Dec 5, 2011 | Word of the Week
I can’t tell you how much time I spent chasing rabbits down trails (literarily speaking) for a one-line mention in my books. Like, did they have bells over the doors in 18th century New York? Hard to discover.
This last week, one of my random questions was, thankfully, easily answered. I wanted a character to mention a cameo necklace, which I was pretty darn sure were around and popular by the 1860s, but I’ve been wrong before. So I looked it up.
I was pleased to see that cameo, by which I mean a carved stone with two layers of color, has been around since the 16th century. Cameos maintained a steady popularity for centuries–Elizabeth I had a sizable collection, as did Catherine the Great. And since Queen Victoria favored them, they even stuck around during the fast-changing fashion of the 19th century.
In 1851 the word was attributed to “a short literary sketch or portrait.” Very much related to the pendant, which commonly depict a bust or figure (though not always). And so this sense was also transferred to the stage/film in 1928, when it came to mean “a brief role that stands out from other minor parts in a performance.”
I have a cameo necklace I inherited from my great-grandmother, and I love it. =) There’s something so very romantic about those treasures from times past . . .
by Roseanna White | Nov 28, 2011 | Word of the Week
I know, I know–what a strange, bizarre word of the week. And now y’all are probably wondering what I got into this weekend! 😉
Actually, it comes up because I’m a cruel author who just seriously injured her hero. I need him to be out of it for a while so said, “Hmm, they had some powerful drugs by then. Was morphine one of them?”
Yep.
And the name is just too interesting not to share. Did you know that morphine is named after one of the Greek gods as brought to us by Ovid in his Metamorphosis? (Not to be confused to Kafka’s book by the same name . . . and not to get into how much I despised said book-by-the-same-name each of the three times I was forced to read it . . .)
Anyway. Apparently Ovid gave the name Morpheus to the god of dreams. When the Germans named this lovely drug in 1816, they called it morphin in allusion to Morpheus, because of its sleep-inducing properties. The French, of course, changed it to Morphine. Which we borrowed in 1828 and have been using ever since.
Now to make sure my hero doesn’t develop a dependency–he has enough problems to deal with, I don’t wanna go there! LOL
And for those of you who are amassing those entries into the Great Annapolis Giveaway and/or interested in winning a free copy of Love Finds You in Annapolis, Maryland all by its lonesome, hop right back over to the Colonial Quills and leave a comment on my very first full-length blog review. =)
https://www.roseannamwhite.com/2011/11/review-of-love-finds-you-in-annapolis.html
by Roseanna White | Nov 21, 2011 | Word of the Week
The other day as I was writing in my work-in-progress, I hit a spot where my heroine’s mother is pushing an eligible man toward the heroine (metaphorically, or course, LOL), and my heroine reminds her that she is all but engaged–to which Mama says, “It never hurts to have a backup plan.”
But wait–a warning bell went of in my mind.
Backup plan. Was that too modern for 1861? A quick hop over to
www.etymonline.com and I knew that, yep, it was
way too modern.
Back up dates from 1767, but in the sense of “stand behind and support.” This is the verb use, what someone does for you or that you do to corroborate facts, perhaps. Evidence will back up a theory, that sort of thing.
The noun form meaning “standby, reserve” didn’t come to us until 1954.
But this was one of those that left me staring at the computer with lips pursed and thoughts racing. How in the world could Mama phrase this, then? I ended up using “secondary.” But it’s obvious I need a better backup plan for when I can’t use “backup plan.” 😉
by Roseanna White | Nov 7, 2011 | Word of the Week
I like the word “kid.” I use it with my children (do you know how hard it was for me to write that sentence without using the word “kid”? LOL), I use it for jests. It’s a standard part of my vocabulary. But I’ll never forget the substitute teacher in high school who said something about how his children were not young goats, so thank you not to use that word. And one of my critique partners recently caught me using it in the joking sense well before it would have been.
It seemed time to look it up. =)
“Kid” entered English with the meaning of “a young goat” round about 1200. It began being applied to children in 1590, though it was still slang at that point. It was accepted usage, however, by 1840 . . . and had in fact been a word used to describe skillful young thieves for 30 years before that. (One I didn’t know!)
The meaning of “playful tease” is from 1839 (which proves that it was a well accepted slang by then) and comes from the idea of “making a kid of, treating as a child.” Though those thieving youngsters used it to mean “coax, wheedle, hoax.”
So there you have it–a brief explanation of why we now kid our kids. 😉
On a side note, many of you know about the amazing author Sandi Rog and her battle with cancer this past year. If you haven’t heard yet about the fundraiser put together for her, please check it out at
www.FundraiserForSandiRog.blogspot.com. It’s a really fun raffle with lots of prize “baskets” you can bid on with your donations, and you’ll find two that I helped put together, one of which is featured on the blog now,
here. (The other isn’t up on the site yet, but keep tuned in for updates!)
Please check this out and tell all your friends about it–it’s not only a fun chance to win some great prizes, but most of all it’s a way to help a wonderful woman who needs your prayers and support.
by Roseanna White | Oct 31, 2011 | Word of the Week
I’ve given Halloween a lot of thought since having kids, have debated it and pondered, have looked up its history and tried to decide where I come down on it. Inevitably, I come to the conclusion that, like a Christmas tree or the face of Jesus most often used (stolen from Zeus, if you didn’t know, LOL), it has its roots in paganism, yes. But like a Christmas tree or how I envision my Savior, it’s about my heart, not any outward appearances.
That said, I still find the history fascinating. This is me, after all. 😉 And since this is me, chances are good that all the times I’ve looked this up and read about it have turned into a bit of a story in my mind, so if I get something wrong, don’t hold it against me, LOL. I’m going on memory here, along with the history of the word itself given by
www.etymonline.com. =)
Halloween is a Scottish shortening of “Allhallow-Even.” Literally, the Eve of All Hallow’s Day. We don’t use the word “hallow” much these days, but it means “holy, consecrated.” More, it means to make something holy or consecrated. So when we pray “hallowed be thy name,” we are saying WE will make it, keep it holy.
Now, in the Celtic calendar, this was the last night of the old year, a witch’s night. When the Christians came in, they “hallowed” the day–they deemed that that was the day when they would pay respect to all the saints not otherwise honored on a given day.
Needless to say, this wasn’t a seamless transition. Christianity obviously was not embraced overnight, and whether one observed the old Celtic rituals or the new Christian ones was a cause of great strife. Fear. Panic. And sometimes death.
Halloween was serious business. People honestly believed ghosts and ghouls and witches would be on the prowl, hunting their souls–and they may have been right. So they prayed, and they called on the traditions that hadn’t quite gotten washed away yet–they tried to scare the evil off by carving faces in gourds, and by dressing up in costumes meant to trick and scare the tricksters. (Or so I’ve gleaned from various sites . . . don’t quote me on this, LOL.) It’s a time when we reflect on those who have gone on before us (the actual meaning of these “saints”) and so remember the dead.
There are Christians aplenty who refuse to acknowledge Halloween, and I understand why. It is indeed a night when tradition says evil comes out–but it’s also a night whose traditions that are still in effect come to us because people want to fight, want to escape that evil. Like any holiday, it’s about finding the sacred, the holy, and washing the darkness with light. Making it hallowed.
Whether or not your family goes trick-or-treating, I wish you all a safe day and eve, and pray that the Lord’s light will illumine your path.
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.