by Roseanna White | Sep 5, 2011 | Word of the Week
My word of the week is “holiday,” not only because today is Labor Day, but because this week all my posts are going to be gearing up toward 9/11. Which isn’t an official holiday, I know, but I think for all of us it’s a day of remembrance.
“Holiday” is a fairly literal word, coming from the mashing together of “holy day,” in its original meaning of a sabbath (day of rest), a celebration, or a remembrance. In the 14th century, it took on the meaning not only of a religious holiday, but any day of recreation. By 1869, it had also become a verb meaning “to pass the holidays,” hence to holiday in the Riviera. (If only, LOL.)
I hope everybody today is enjoying their Labor Day and taking a much-needed day of rest. In our house, Xoe was too impatient to want to start school tomorrow, so we dove in today–at 6:30 a.m. no less. =)
But I hope this week we also pause to think about how our nation and world changed ten years ago. Because of the close proximity of Labor Day to 9/11, I’m going to be spending much of it not only resting but remembering. And as I remember, I’ll be sharing with you here on my blog, culminating with an article I post annually that I wrote the day following 9/11 and which appeared in my hometown newspaper.
I hope that this day and week reminds us all of the original meaning of “holiday” too, and that we not only rest and remember, but reflect on that which is holy and sacred. I pray that this week be filled with the breath of the Spirit upon our lives, and that He open our eyes to His might in new ways over the next days. Amen.
by Roseanna White | Aug 29, 2011 | Word of the Week
I know, I know–you probably see my word of the week and wonder, “Why in the world is she talking about shacks?” Well see . . . um . . . LOL. Mostly because I needed to describe some ramshackle dwellings in my book a few weeks ago and was surprised to learn how very new the word shack is. And upon looking a little further, the newness gets even more interesting.
What
www.etymonline.com knows is that the word “shack” appeared in American and Canadian English in 1878. But its origins are mysterious. One quoted possibility is that it’s an Americanization of the Mexican-Spanish
jacal, from Nahuatl
xacall. But that’s pretty much just a guess. Another possibility is that it’s one of those fun back-formations, either of “shackly” (shaky, rickety-1843) or of “ramshackle,” which is from 1830.
I’m always intrigued by words that are back-formations. So often language starts with the words for things, with nouns, and then adjectives come of them. I love finding words that began as adjectives and then got turned into nouns.
And for reference, the only word accurate to 1780 I could find for the idea of “shack” is hovel. Which got a little redundant when describing a whole village of them, LOL. So if anyone knows of any words of similar meaning, let me know! 😉
by Roseanna White | Aug 8, 2011 | Word of the Week
My hubby and I get a kick out of watching the History Channel’s Pawn Stars. They have some truly awesome stuff come in there that does a history-lover’s heart good. =) So as I was browsing through interesting words today, I thought we’d talk about pawning and hocking as we look forward to watching Rick and Chumlee tonight. 😉
Pawn is an old word, first used a noun (something left as security) in the late 15th century. It came from the Old French pan, pant, which meant “pledge, security” or “booty, plunder.” Interestingly, the same word also means “cloth” in Old French, raising the question of whether cloth was used in exchange. The word became a verb round about 1560, and pawnbroker sprang up in 1680.
American English added hock into the mix in 1859, and it meant both “in debt” and “in prison,” interestingly enough. It was specific toward gamblers being in debt to one another in its early days. Again, the word began its life as a noun and didn’t become a verb until about 20 years later.
So if anyone else likes to watch the guys in Vegas wheel and deal on interesting pieces of history, tonight you can watch it knowing they’re in a profession whose words date back as far as modern English goes . . . which means they’ve probably been around pretty much forever. =)
by Roseanna White | Aug 1, 2011 | Word of the Week
I grew up in West Virginia. My house was on a hill above a farm, the Potomac River surrounding it on three sides–which means Maryland on three sides, for all you folks who aren’t intimately acquainted with mid-Atlantic geography. 😉 For the most part, people from my school, my town, had a pretty standard American accent and sound grammar. But we had our share of country accents around, too.
So I heard a lot of ain’t over the years. And because I was apparently born with the grammar gene, acutely aware of what I did not want to sound like, and because my teachers taught me ain’t was incorrect, I never used it. Well, except when making a point. Or trying to sound a certain way. But then it was a purposeful use of what I deemed something incorrect, so . . . 😉
But ain’t was used a lot back in ye olden days, so in my current work in progress, I had a few characters use it. Then I thought I’d better look it up to make sure it was in fact a contraction in use at the time. And I was pretty surprised with what I found.
Namely, that ain’t began as a correct contraction for “am not” back in 1706. So it was perfectly fine to say “I ain’t going.” Use of it abounded, and all was well for a century or so.
Then people started using it for “are not” and “is not” . . . which was wrong. “You ain’t what you seem” just didn’t fly. This mis-use apparently started in London as part of the cockney accent, which Charles Dickens picked up on and immortalized. All of a sudden it’s a mistake the English-speaking world over. One used so very mistakenly, and in ways that it’s pretty hard to say “No, no, that one’s wrong but this one’s right,” that it was banned from correct grammar altogether.
A rather funny life of a word, isn’t it? I still ain’t likely to use it much, even knowing its etymology and correct usage now–but you can bet if I do, I ain’t going to use it the wrong way. 😉
by Roseanna White | Jul 25, 2011 | Word of the Week
I’m in the process of putting a book proposal together . . . which naturally gets me to thinking about the word. As a kid, I had no idea the family of “propose” words could mean anything other than asking someone to marry them–until, of course, I read or watched something where their was a comedy of errors around this very thing.
But in fact, marriage didn’t get attached to the word until the mid 1700s. Propose, however, dates from the 14th century with pretty clear etymology: pro (forth) + poser (put, place) = propose (to put forth).
Proposal itself didn’t get tacked on until the 1650s, but at that point it still had that more general meaning of something put forth. Like, say, a book idea sent out to publishers. 😉
But in 1749 this idea-put-forth came to mean “an offer of marriage.” And in 1764 the verb caught up with the noun, and propose became the act of offering a proposal of marriage. (Funny that it took 15 years for that, isn’t it? LOL)
So there you have it–unlike with some words that completely surprise me with their order, in this case the more general idea came about well before the specific one that has become most popular. And now off I go to get my proposal of literary genius (ahem) finished up!
by Roseanna White | Jul 18, 2011 | Word of the Week
There I was, tippity-tapping away on my story, eyes (surely) intense as I put my poor heroine into a terrible situation. Knife at her throat, blade glinting in the lantern light. But that isn’t the villainy–the villainy is in the news he imparts. News that sets her reeling, that makes her spinning world grind to a halt. When the hero rushes up and sees her empty eyes and non-responsiveness, he thinks, “Oh no, she’s in sho—” Wait a minute.
Could she be in shock in 1779? Growl, grumble, away from the story I go to the awesome
www.etymonline.com. Where I discover that no, she could not have been (in so many words). BUT–
Shock. This word entered English round about 1560 and was a military term for a violent attack. In the 1690s the word was used to mean “offend, displease.” So you could shock someone then–but it wasn’t until 1705 that it took on the noun side of that and broadened to mean “a sudden, disturbing impression upon the mind.”
So things could shock us mentally in 1690, and we’d feel the shock of it in 1705, bwhich is what I needed for my particular story–my heroine could be shocked, just not in shock. That didn’t come about until 1804. Though interestingly, an electric shock dates from almost exactly the same time as the mental shock.
Shocking!
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.