by Roseanna White | Jun 18, 2018 | Word of the Week
Yesterday was my wedding anniversary–17 years since I first said “I do” to the love of my life. 😀 So naturally, today I thought I’d take a look at the words!
Wed is from Old English weddian, which means “to pledge oneself, vow; to betroth, to marry.” This is similar to other Germanic languages’ words, and while those other languages still reflect the original in their words today, English is a bit unique. While we retained wed in wedding, most often people today don’t say they hope to wed so-and-so–it sounds archaic.
English has instead adopted the French marier as well, giving us two options where other languages have stuck with one. Marry has pretty much the same meaning as wed, and it joined the English language in the 1300s, so it’s certainly been around a while.
Kind of interesting to think, though, of how the two have been assigned certain typical functions, right? Like we never ask for a piece of marriage cake. Nor do we look for our marriage gown. And yet we don’t exchange wedding vows on the day. We’ve come to view wedding as the specific event in which we bind ourselves, and marriage as the ongoing state (there’s the old-fashioned sounded wedlock for that too, but we don’t hear that much anymore, do we?). Which is rather interesting, since its early uses were also just for the ceremony, the initial pledging.
Regardless, I’m looking forward to another year with my husband. If you’re married, in what month is your anniversary? I’d never imagined I would be a June bride–I always wanted a December wedding, but the allure of a beach wedding instead drew me away from all my childhood plans, LOL, and I have no regrets! How about you?
by Roseanna White | Jun 11, 2018 | Word of the Week
This one is a special request from my daughter, who came across it in a book. 😃
So, tootles. Being a 90s tween/teen, I grew up hearing this word as “goodbye” (or maybe it was toodles? Hard to say, as apparently it never appeared in writing, and it has no entry in any dictionary I can find…And my kids, being children of the 2000-10s, think of Toodles as a character on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so…)
But in fact, tootles is from the 1820s as “a frequentative of toot.” Now, first of all, I’ve never noticed another word described as “a frequentative of.” Spellcheck doesn’t even think “frequentative” is a word, LOL. But it just means exactly what you’d think–“when it happens frequently.” So tootle is when you toot frequently upon a horn or flute, for example.
Interestingly, and the use that grabbed my daughter’s attention, is that it later came to mean “to drive or move along in a leisurely fashion.” I can’t find a particular date on when that came into use, but she had encountered a sentence where the characters were tootling along in their car, which apparently struck her as hilarious.
So there we have it! Happy Monday!
by Roseanna White | Jun 4, 2018 | Word of the Week
Sometimes it’s so interesting to look at the history of the words that are so very common to our language! God is certainly one of those.
I’d heard at some point over the years that god and good are related . . . and I imagine most of you have heard the same. But apparently this is most definitely not the case–and largely because the word for god existed in Old English before Christianity arrived, and lemme just tell you, pagan gods are not good, generally speaking. So the words had no reason to be associated in their creation.
In fact,
god has two possible sources. It could have come from the root Indo-European
ghut, which means “that which is invoked.” Or perhaps it’s from
ghu-to, “poured.” As in, the being to whom one would pour out libations.
Our English word is most likely derived most directly from the Nordic or German words of similar sound, and it’s interesting to note that in German, it was originally a neuter noun. But with the coming of Christianity, it became a masculine noun. (Goddess apparently dates from the 14th century.)
Good, quickly, is from Indo-European ghedh, “suitable.”
So there we have it. Though god and good do sound and look similar and have been tied together through Christian tradition, they, in fact, come from different words . . . and in the time when they both entered the language, they didn’t yet have any reason to be connected! 😉
by Roseanna White | May 28, 2018 | Word of the Week
Time for a sweet treat of a word!
Cookie. In American English, we all know what this means. Yummy…
Tasty…
Delicious sweet treats…
My favorites are soft and chewy. Some prefer crisp and buttery. But in my opinion, all cookies are awesome. What they aren’t, however, is called the same thing everywhere, or in all of history.
I noticed when finding Colonial-era recipes that cookies were at the time called “little cakes.” What I didn’t realize was that the word cookie, which infiltrated American English by 1808, is from the Dutch koekje, which literally means “little cake.” Interestingly, while the Dutch had koekje, the Scottish also had cookie, as early as 1730, meaning “small, flat, sweet cake.” It’s thought that the American came from the Dutch, but it must surely have been influenced by the Scottish word of the same sound and meaning.
In the 1920s, the word was occasionally applied to people, especially women. The phrase “that’s the way the cookie crumbles” is from around 1955.
I admit, cookies are one of my favorite desserts. I can pass up cake, but not a cookie. What’s your favorite sweet treat?
by Roseanna White | May 21, 2018 | Word of the Week
Nice. Such a simple word, so well known…and so surprising! I happened to click onto it on www.etymonline.com because it was a trending word, and I was so shocked to see its evolution!
Did you know that nice used to mean “foolish, stupid, senseless”? Apparently it’s from the Latin nescius, which is literally “not-knowing.” (Same root as science.)
Etymologists are struck by the development of this word. From that “foolish” use in the 1200s, the earliest days of English, it progressed to “timid” round about 1300, to “fussy, fastidious” by the end of the century, then to “dainty, delicate” around 1400. By 1500 it had moved into a meaning of “precise, careful” and stayed with that until the mid 1700s, when it came to mean “agreeable, delightful.” By the early-to-mid 1800s it could also be applied to people in a sense of “kind, thoughtful”–of course, those last two meanings are still in use today…but who knew that it started out meaning something so different?
The transformation is so big that many times when we read writings from the 1500s and 1600s, it’s impossible to tell which meaning the author intended!
by Roseanna White | May 14, 2018 | Word of the Week
If you’ve been hanging around my blog since 2011 (there are a few of you–you know who you are, LOL), then you may remember that I’ve featured this word before. And you may remember it solely because it was first ever Word of the Week.
But since so many of my readers have changed, I thought it would be fun to travel back in time 7.5 years and share again the word that started it all on my blog! I’d looked it up partly out of curiosity, to see which of the two meanings had come first, and was so surprised by what I’d learned that I shared it on Facebook. Where my friends were also so surprised that they suggested I start a blog with such things. Who knew it would still be going strong now?
So, pedestrian.
We all know its two meanings: “dull, prosaic,” and “someone who travels by foot.”
My patented Roseanna-logic insisted that the “walker” definition ought to have come first, given that it has ped (=foot) in the root.
But no! Its first recorded use is in 1716, where it meant “dull, prosaic,” in reference to literature. Why? Because if a piece of writing was “of the foot” then it was clearly as opposite as it could be of what it ought to have been–“of the mind.”
It wasn’t until the 1790s that it took on its more literal meaning of someone traveling by foot. Largely because by this time the primary adjective was already well in use and it just made sense. Also, because it did contrast nicely with equestrian.
So there you go, a look back for all you newcomers of where the blog series began. 😉
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.