by Roseanna White | Mar 21, 2011 | Word of the Week
Can’t say as I’ve ever looked up the etymology of “giddy” before, but since I’ve been using it to describe my emotional state all week, I decided it would be an appropriate Word today. =) (For any who haven’t yet heard why I’m giddy, check out my “Woo Hoo!” post.)
In Old English, the word that’s very close to giddy meant “insane, mad, stupid, possessed by a spirit.” But for whatever reason, that questionable madness, by the 1540s, had come to describe the happy, elated feeling we associate with the word today. I suppose those who are insane can demonstrate it, which would account for the move of meaning, but I sure hope my behavior this past week didn’t make anyone think “Is she possessed?” LOL.
Honestly, I find it pretty surprising that a bunch of other meanings haven’t sprung up in that amount of time, but I consider this one of those words that gets to keep its nearly-original meaning because it sounds like it means. Giddy–doesn’t it just perfectly convey the happy, bubbling euphoria of its meaning with those quick syllables? (Contrast with “quagmire,” which is so long and sluggish in sound, much like the marshy mire of its meaning . . .)
Here’s to continued giddiness all week!
by Roseanna White | Mar 14, 2011 | Word of the Week
I don’t often pause to examine the etymology of words like “handsome,” which have meant what they mean for centuries, and so I can use freely in all my manuscripts.
But once in a while, it’s fun to see how it came to mean what we know all those hundreds of years ago. =) “Handsome” is a good example. When we break it down, it’s “hand” and “some.” Now how in the world did that come to mean “good looking”??
Well, first it meant “ready at hand or easy to handle” in the 1400s. Literally hand + some. By the mid/late 1500s the meaning had been extended to mean “considerable, of fair size.” And then within ten years, that became “of fine form,” which easily becomes “good-looking.” Then it extended further to mean “generous” (i.e. a handsome reward) a hundred years after that, in 1680.
Fun, eh? Who knew?
by Roseanna White | Mar 7, 2011 | Word of the Week
First of all, I’d like to say I think about this phrase for my books ONLY. 😉 It recently came up in a manuscript I’d read, where a character says, “He cheated on me.” Obviously, we all know what she meant. “Cheat,” is in fact the most common way these days to say someone was unfaithful to a spouse or significant other.
But you know what? That phrase wasn’t recorded until 1934. So all those historicals that have a character accusing another of cheating . . . well, they must mean at cards, right? 😉
There have been a few occasions in my own books where I had this situation too, and my gut told me to look up the usage of the word. When I discovered it was so very modern, that obviously forced me to find the alternate ways of saying this. “Be unfaithful to” was a little wordy, but “betray” always worked well.
I know, I know, what a note to start the week on! LOL. But it’s one of those surprisingly-modern things, so I thought I’d share. Hope everyone had a great weekend!
by Roseanna White | Feb 28, 2011 | Word of the Week
Perhaps I ought to start with a pronunciation guide of this one, eh? 😉
Schadenfreude (SHAHD-en-FROY-de) is something we’ve all probably felt, and felt the sting of. Loosely defined, it’s a noun meaning ‘malicious satisfaction taken at the misfortune of others.’
When I discovered this word, I got quite a kick out of it, because a joke between David (then fiance) and my family was “It’s funny when it happens to somebody else.” Though schadenfreude is on the negative side of that, it was nevertheless a perfect one-word way to say the same thing. =)
There, see, you learned a fun new word today. (Unless you already knew it, but . . .)
Happy Monday, everyone!
by Roseanna White | Feb 21, 2011 | Word of the Week
Okay, so this week’s word isn’t so much a simple word as the explanation of a name. And maybe I’m the only nerd in the world to get excited about realizing the reason for this one, but just in case . . .
Remember in Disney’s Cinderella, when the alert her that a new mouse has been caught, and she picks out some clothes and goes to free him from the trap? She says something like, “Now for a name. I know! Octavius. But for short, we’ll call you Gus.”
I watched Cinderella so often as a child that I had it memorized. This name never made sense to me but . . . well, whatever.
Then as a Freshman in high school, we were studying ancient history and got to the unit about Ancient Rome. When my teacher, Mr. Harvey, said, “Then there was Octavius, who was called Augustus when he became emperor,” I actually went, “Oh!”
The whole class looked at me, probably wondering what the silly smart girl was thinking now. Mr. Harvey was the indulgent sort, so he asked me what got me so excited. I explained, “In Cinderella! She names the mouse Octavius, but then calls him Gus. I always wondered how Gus was short for Octavius–but it’s not! It’s short for Augustus!”
My classmates all got quite a kick out of that, and Mr. Harvey expressed his appreciation for Disney’s joke that no kid would ever get–and said he was impressed I remembered that, LOL.
Is this earth-shattering? No. But if you’re like me, you like to find the explanation behind those little details that never made sense, and just in case you haven’t watched Cinderella since studying Roman history . . . 😉
by Roseanna White | Feb 7, 2011 | Word of the Week
I maintain that “cleave” is one of the most bizarre words in the English language. Why? Because it means two exactly opposite things.
Cleave, definition 1 – to stick, cling, adhere to something closely.
Cleave, definition 2 – to divide, to split, to cut
Um . . . riiiiiiight. Isn’t that just bizarre? Yes, they’re listed as separate entries. But still. When I realized that “to cleave to someone” and “to cleave something” were so very, well, opposite, I sat and stared at these words for a good long while and laughed.
See, my hubby had a game back in school. He would open a digital thesaurus and click on synonyms for words until they led him to an antonym for the original word. (Oh yes, he’s a nerd after my own heart!) Sometimes he could manage it with one or two transition words. But this one . . . sheesh, no clicking is even required to find its antonym!
This dichotomy brought to you by the glories of Monday morning, and a writer who needs to get seriously into revision mode on her Annapolis story, which has just been officially moved from the Work in Progress folder to the Completes Manuscripts folder. =)
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.