Zany. We probably all think of it as “comic, acting like a buffoon to entertain others.” But did you know that it was actually originally a person (so a noun) in a comedy? Yep! A zany has been a comic performer since the 1580s. But you may be wondering where the word itself came from.

Interestingly, it’s just an anglicized spelling/pronunciation of the Venitian Gianni, a nickname for Giovanni–the Italian equivalent of “John.” Much like the English “Jack,” it was just a very common name that was given to a sort of “any man” character (think “Jack of all trades”).

So, in these comedic performances the name Gianni or Zanni/Zany was given to a comedic character meant to make the hero appear in a positive light.

Doldrums. Interestingly, this is a plural word that has no singular…anymore. Once upon a time, there was indeed a singular version, and a doldrum was a “dull person.” (Dol is a variation of dull.) Over time, however, that meaning disappeared, and was replaced entirely with a similar-but-different meaning: “low spirits; a depressed or lethargic state of mind.”

So here’s the part I find fascinating. That noun came into being around 1800. I first heard it, however, in a nautical sense–the doldrums being literally without wind in your sails, something which happens especially around the equator. I always assuming that the nautical phrase came first and then was applied metaphorically to the mental state. But nope. The nautical sense came about in the 1820s, because of the state of mind the sailors were in when their ships were becalmed.

And here’s the next funny step. Sailors were so frequently in the doldroms in that particular geographic location (around the equator) that people thought that they meant the doldrums were the place. And so by the 1840s, “the doldrums” are what the calm, windless areas around the equator also came to be called. Who knew?

This one comes to you courtesy of fellow author and friend Rhonda Ortiz, who happened to mention in an email that baguette is a relatively new word.

I’d never stopped to ponder when the famous French loaf may have come to be–in my mind, as long as there’s been Paris, there have been beret-wearing people cycling around with baguettes in their baskets. Right?? Uh…maybe not, LOL.

So the word itself just means “wand” or “stick.” This would also be why long gemstones are called baguettes, which in French dates from the 16th century and which even came over to English for that use and in architecture in the 1730s. But as for the bread itself…that’s actually quite new. A baguette has to be baked with steam, and the first steam ovens came from Vienna to France sometime around 1839. And the yeast that this loaf requires didn’t join the party in Paris until 1867. So those distinctive long loaves actually are more of an evolution than an invention. The predecessors of what we know as a baguette began to appear in the 1800s but weren’t fully identified as a baguette until…

1920!

So new! And though the baguette itself (which actually has rules it has to meet for length and diameter to rightly be called one) isn’t very old, French-style loaves have been long for centuries. They just used to be long and wide.

Do you have a favorite style of bread? Do you like baguettes? We’re big fans here in our family, and I’ve even made a decent imitation in our home oven–just requires adding a bowl of water to the oven and then baking at very high temps for that thick, hard, chewy crust. Yum! Add a bit of brie, and I’m in heaven. 😉

The history of the word cardinal in English is rather interesting. It comes from the Latin cardinalis, meaning “chief, principal.” But it first came over to English not as an adjective with that meaning, but as the noun–as in, the order in the Church. Since the 12th century, we’ve had the word cardinal as an “ecclesiastical prince who constitutes the sacred college.”

So when did the adjective join the fun? Not until the 14th century! I find it rather interesting that though taken from the Latin adjective, we didn’t adopt that adjective form for two hundred years. Because it means “principal, pivotal, something on which things hinge,” it has occasionally been applied to literal hinges. But what know it more for is its uses in things like cardinal numbers (whole numbers, the ones on which others rely) like one, two, three, twenty, etc (1590s); the cardinal points or directions–north, south, east, west (1540s); and cardinal sins (1600s). Did you know there are also cardinal virtues? They date from the 1300s and include justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude, and then adding in faith, hope, and charity.

The bird we’ve called the cardinal is so named because its bright red feathers are reminiscent of the bright red robes of the cardinals in the Church.

Did you know that the most-used definition of problematic–namely, “constituting or causing difficulty”–only dates from around the 1960s?? I didn’t! But as it turns out, that use is directly taken from a word coined for use in sociology. So what, you may ask, did the word mean before that?

Well, rather than insinuating “difficulty,” problematic used to mean something was in need of discussion. It has meant “doubtful, uncertain, unsettled” since the 1600s. It is in fact from the Greek word problema, which literally means “to put forward” [for discussion]. Hence math problems, which aren’t difficult necessarily (don’t argue with me, LOL– 2 + 2 is a problem), but are in need of solution.

So there we have it! We shouldn’t use problematic unless we could replace it with “uncertain.”

Unlike mercurial of last week, martial is a word I use plenty–I imagine we all do. And I even knew where this one came from, LOL.

Martial means “warlike; pertaining to war” and for good reason–it comes from the Roman god Mars, the god of war. What I didn’t realize was that much like jovial and mercurial, this word wasn’t developed as a general adjective for those like Mars, it was an astrological term, given to those born under the sign of Mars, who were thought to have spirits more prone to fighting and exhibiting qualities of a warrior.

Martial arts, as a term to describe the fighting techniques of Japan and the surrounding areas, was coined in 1909.