I absolutely love getting notes from readers, especially when they’re about word usages…even if they tell me I’m using something incorrectly, LOL. I make mistakes just like anybody, of course, but when someone points something out to me, I immediately go and look it up, soaking up everything I can about it.

And I was pretty surprised to learn the history of the word option!

It’s been a noun in the English language since around 1600, but at that point in history, it meant “the action of choosing,” and then “the freedom of choosing.” The word came to us from the French with its roots in the Latin optio, meaning “free choice.” It wasn’t until 1885 that it came to meant “the THING that may be chosen” (emphasis mine), which is how we primarily use it today. Who knew that was so new??

The sense of the word that we get in phrases like stock option joined the fun as far back as 1755, and the verb in that sense is from 1880.

(For the record, the setting in which I was using option in the modern sense was 1906, so I was probably safe to do so…though I was worried for a moment, fearing I’d had it in my 1860s Dreams of Savannah! And wouldn’t be surprised if I had…sometimes I just don’t think to question things!)

This week and next, I’m going to be highlighting a couple words that readers brought up with me. This first one, kudos, led to a great conversation and a delightful new friendship (hi, Pat!). You just never know what may happen when two word-nerds meet! 😉

I actually posted about kudos waaaaay back in 2011, but I figure ten years is time enough to deserve a revisit, LOL. So here we go! Kudos.

I’ve studied Ancient Greek. As in, took 2 years of the language, in addition to reading a slew of the texts. So things Ancient Greek I like–and tend to use. And assume I know pretty well.

And so, I’ve never hesitated to use the word “kudos” in a historical manuscript because, well, I know it’s directly from the Greek. I know it’s old.

But apparently the English didn’t pick up on this fun word until 1799.

Kudos, taken directly from Greek (if altered slightly because of a non-meshing of the alphabets), means “fame, renown.” Though it may sound plural to an English speaker with that -s ending, it is in fact singular.

When kudos first entered our language, it was in academic circles only–among those who would have read the Greek, go figure. =) But by the early 20th century, journalists had picked up on it and began to use it in articles, which entered it into the mainstream. When I did a Google Books search for the word around the year 1900, I found it in all sorts of texts.

So there we have it!

Let me start by saying that gyroscopes are cool. Right? I’ve always been intrigued and impressed by the mechanics of them. Circles and spheres working with gravity…yep, very cool indeed.

Now let’s jump to the county fair last summer, which didn’t run entirely thanks to covid, but did have some of the food booths set up. We wanted to support it so went out to see what they had. We ended up at a truck we’ve never visited before, and as we stood in line forever, we got to watch them preparing the food. We were especially intrigued by the rotating spits of meat that the servers shaved, seasoned, and nestled into soft pita. Yeah, I’d never had a gyro before, but we tried them that day and fell in love.

In a conversation a few weeks ago about this lovely meal (and whether the Arby’s version would be as good), we were naturally fumbling over how to pronounce it–there are so many variations! My husband decided, “I’m going to pronounce it like ‘gyroscope.'” We looked at each other, that Word of the Week expression on both our faces, as a light bulb went on. They’re related! OF COURSE they are! They’re both all about that rotation, right?

Right! I looked them up just to be sure, and both the food and the device do both come from the Greek gyros, which means “a circle.” Gyroscopes were first invented and hence named in the 1850s. Gyre has been in the English language since the 1560s to describe “a rotating motion” and the sandwich, traditionally of roasted lamb, got its name in the 1970s. The word was first applied to the meat rather than the sandwich itself, because of the spinning roasting method.

I love it when we’re right. 😉 (And also, the Arby’s version is pretty tasty! We just tried them out yesterday, LOL.)

In The Nature of a Lady, my heroine, Lady Elizabeth “Libby” Sinclair, is a naturalist. She not only loves nature–as in, being out in it and enjoying it–she loves studying nature. Her most prized possession is a microscope, and she spends much of her holiday on St. Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly out collecting specimens to study under magnification, or sketching the flora and fauna she sees.

One thing that causes her no small amount of anxiety is the fact that the world she sees–orderly, following rules, and capable of adaptation–seems at odd with the world of faith as it’s been taught to her–that the world is “mysterious,” and that scientists who suggest that aspects are capable of changing and adapting on their own are sacrilegious. Of course, leading the debate in that day and age were the works of scientists like Charles Darwin. It’s interesting to note that he was awarded the highest scientific honor in England…and that immediately upon publication, his theories split the church. Some thought they didn’t contradict the Bible at all, others thought his theories were of the devil. By the point of my story, it was still a hot topic, but most of the Church had decided that Darwin and his theories were ungodly.

Today, I simply want to take a look at the word most closely associated with him: evolution.

Did you know that evolution literally means “to unroll”? It’s from the days when a book (or more accurately, a scroll) was literally unrolled or unfurled to reveal more of itself, and hence more information, dating from around 1620. By the 1660s, it was used in mathematics and medicine to mean “a growth to maturity in an individual.” The word was first applied to species in 1832, by Charles Lyell.

What’s really fascinating is that Darwin only ever used the word ONCE. That’s right, one time, in the closing paragraph of The Origin of Species. He preferred the much clunkier phrase, “descent with modification.” I find it so interesting that the word that in our modern minds equates with Charles Darwin was a word he didn’t even like, LOL. It was other biologists who followed Darwin who began to use the word to describe changes within or between species.

Have you ever read The Origin of Species? I did in college, and I was surprised to learn that the controversial theories Darwin is known for aren’t actually present in his most famous work–those came later in other works. The Origin of Species talks mostly about evolution within a species (micro-evolution), which most people have no problem with.

So here’s the nutshell version: dreckly is just the Cornish way of saying “directly.” The end. Shortest post in history. 😉

Okay, so a liiiiittle bit more. The word directly has of course been in the English language for a good long time. In the 1300s, it meant “completely.” In the 1400s, it meant “in a straight line” or, metaphorically, “clearly, unmistakably.” By around 1600, it means “immediately.”

But apparently in Cornwall (and no doubt elsewhere), when someone says they’ll get to something dreckly, it generally means, “Hold your horses, I’ll do it when I do it, don’t rush me.” 😉 Yet another fun example of how a word that means “immediately” is used to mean “whenever, eventually.” LOL

Whenever I write a book set in a region with a dialect (or even a language) all its own, I love to look up endearments and slang unique to them. I first looked up Cornish words when I wrote A Name Unknown, set near Land’s End in Cornwall. Well, I got to dust off that research again when I decided to write the Secrets of the Isles series, set in the Isles of Scilly, which is also part of Cornwall.

Two closely related words that I love using are dearover and dearovim (feminine and masculine, respectively). The words are just contractions of “dear of her” and “dear of him.” It’s thought that it was first a phrase used as an exclamation of affection when someone did something kind “Oh, isn’t that dear of her!” and eventually was elided together. “Isn’t that dearover!” And then eventually became a term for the person herself or himself. “Oh, dearover, come here for a cuddle!” 😉

It’s a term I’ve used in my books because that “dear” part makes it recognizable to our ears and eyes and doesn’t require much of an explanation.

Are there any terms of endearment unique to your region, or perhaps to your family?