So here’s the nutshell. Obey literally means “listen to.” Makes sense, right? Because to obey someone is, well, to listen to what they tell you to do. As in, to do it.

Simple. Except, just looking at the word, you probably don’t actually see the root words in there, right? I know I didn’t.

Ob- is a Latin prefix that means “to, toward.” But -ey? Yeah, that’s where I was scratching my head. Until I read that it’s actually from the same audire root that brings us words like auditory and audio. What’s with the complete change in spelling though?

Well, in Latin when they combined the two roots, it became obedire or oboedire…just how that ellision worked. So in French, it became obeir. And when the word traveled from French to English around 1300, Anglicizing it resulted in obeien, which eventually became obey.

Interestingly, the noun form, obedience, actually traces its English uses back another hundred years before the verb form! It’s been in use, from the same roots, since 1200.

Word Nerds Merch!

Book.

It’s one of those words so integral to my very life that I’ve never really paused to look it up. Oh, I’ve looked up the history of the things we call books, don’t get me wrong. I’ve learned about how they evolved from scrolls to codexes to the bound paper we call by the word today. But the word itself? 

Somehow I hadn’t ever delved into that history. Gasp!

And you might (or might not) be surprised to learn that book is actually from the same root as beech. As in, the tree. Whose bark was used (you guessed it) for paper AND whose wood was also used as early tablets for inscribing runes. Our English word traces its roots back to the proto-Germanic boko, which is in turn from bokiz.

Interestingly, Germanic languages aren’t the only ones whose words for book are directly related to a tree! Latin’s word is related to birch and Sanskrit to the ash tree! (Given last week’s word of the week, library, the Latin won’t be a surprise to you.)

Now, it’s worth noting that early uses of book did NOT mean the bound paper matter we associate with it today, but ANY written document. But by the Middle Ages, the meaning had narrowed to be applied to “writing that covers many bound pages.” It was also used to refer to a multi-volume set of writings. From there it could refer to the bound pages, whether written on or blank (think notebook). In the 1800s it was also used to refer to a magazine.

Ironically, not only was book used to refer to a multi-volume set, it could also be used to refer to a main section of a single volume–like a book of the Bible (itself a book). The Book of Life, as referencing the Lamb’s book with the names of those who are saved, is from the mid-1300s.

The phrase by the book (to do something according to the rules) is from the 1590s. In the 20th century, book was used to refer to the “sum of criminal charges” brought to court, hence the 1930s phrase throw the book at.

Word Nerds Merch!

The Collector of Burned Books releases tomorrow!! I’m super stoked…and thought in honor of this book all about the historic Library of Burned Books in Paris, we’d take a look at the history of the word library.

I’ve long known that library has liber (book) as its root, so I didn’t expect any surprises here. But…there are some lurking in the history! For starters, liber actually originally meant “the inner bark of a tree” or “the rind” of something, so the fact that we still have “leaves” associated with pages is totally appropriate. From there, Latin gave us librarium, which meant “a chest of books.”

By the medieval period, that Latin word had come to mean “a collection of books” and then “a bookseller’s shop.” In French and other Latinate languages, words that look like library are indeed still used for places were books are sold, while words like biblioteque (biblio- also meaning “book”) are used for places where books are borrowed. Library arrived in English around the year 1400.

When English-speakers begin to use it for a place from which books could be borrowed? The first appearance of a “lending library” appears in the 1500s, but it didn’t really catch on until the 1700s. Librarian dates from 1713.

But here’s one of my favorite associated factoids. Before the Latin word came into English via French, Old English had another word for collections of books–bochord. Literally “book hoard.” LOVE IT!

Word Nerds Merch!