by Roseanna White | Mar 12, 2018 | Word of the Week
This week, something fun is happening, and I’m celebrating by making all the week’s blog posts go to the theme. This week, the book previously known as Love Finds You in Annapolis, Maryland will re-release from WhiteFire as A Heart’s Revolution. On Wednesday, I’ll be going behind the cover design process, and on Thursday–official re-release day–a cool contest will be launching!
Today, we’re taking a look at the word I chose for my new title…a word that’s very much a theme in the book.
Revolution
We’re all familiar with the word, of course. But when it first entered the English language in the 1300s, it had nothing to do with political unrest or change. Rather, it was a word used to describe the revolving of celestial bodies. It’s from Old French revolucion, literally “a course, a revolving.” Which in turn came from the Latin revolvere, “to turn, to roll back.”
This sense of turning and rolling let the word by the mid-1400s to take on a generalized meaning of “an instance of great change in affairs.” But around 1600, it had been applied specifically to great changes in political circles and the new meaning of “an overthrow of an established political system” came about–specifically, it was used for the expulsion of the Stuart dynasty under James II in 1688, when the power in England was transferred to William and Mary.
And of course, eventually we had the American Revolution. Which is the backdrop into which I put Lark Benton and Emerson Fielding, in A Heart’s Revolution. If you haven’t read this early novel of mine yet, I hope you seize the chance!
by Roseanna White | Mar 5, 2018 | Word of the Week
A couple weeks ago on the radio, I heard someone musing about the shift of the university experience from its origins. He was saying how university came from uni (one) + verity (truth), and how in recent years people have forgotten the one-truth bit and are instead treating it as place where they should question truth rather than learn it.
I found this intriguing, so of course went to look it up. And went, “Um…no, not really.” 😉
Uni does indeed mean “one.” Of course. But versity is not from veritas, the Latin word for “truth,” but rather from versus, the Latin word for “turn.” Universe is more the root–meaning “the whole, the aggregate, the collective.”
That is what university is from…the collective of the academic world. Which does still harken unto unity. There’s a reason it’s not called “the diversity.” The purpose of a university isn’t to highlight differences, but to form a community. A oneness.
If you went to college, did you experience this community at your institution? I went to a very small school, and St. John’s (though not a university by the modern definition because there aren’t different “colleges” of study within it) is really all about the community. All about the common experience we have while there, despite our different backgrounds or interests or beliefs. We were about the uni-, not the di-. And I love that about it.
by Roseanna White | Feb 26, 2018 | Word of the Week
Yet another word I just never bothered to look up…but once I did, I was a bit surprised!
Did you know that family didn’t mean “parents with their children” until 1660, though it was an English word since the early 1400s??? I sure didn’t!
So what did it mean before? “Servants of a household.” Well, huh! Interesting. From there, it shifted every so slightly into, “all the members of a household; the estate, the property; the household, including relatives and servants.” Keeping in mind this would have been during a time when relatives far and wide would often come to live under a single roof.
Family comes from the Latin famulus, which meant “a slave or servant.” We’re not sure where that word comes from in Latin, but we do know it was never used for our modern definition of “family.” That was reserved for domus. (Think: domestic.) This obviously shares a root with familiar, which comes about because those servants were party to one’s private affairs.
So then, from that broad sense of “one’s entire household, including servants,” the definition eventually narrowed again to be just “parents with their children.”
As an adjective,
family has been in use since about 1600. “In a family way” (pregnant) is from 1796. But one I found interesting is that
family man as we know it now is from 1856, but earlier it was used to mean a thief! (Because of the fraternity of thieves. Think mafia family type of thing).
This is really just a snapshot of the word’s evolution and current meanings, but an interesting one, for sure!
by Roseanna White | Feb 19, 2018 | Word of the Week
This special request comes from Bev Duell-Moore. =) And hilariously, as soon she asked me to feature it, I did a quick search…which came in mighty handy just a few days later, when I needed a scrapbook in the historical line of my current story! So thanks, Bev. LOL
There isn’t a whole lot of description on this word’s history. It’s quite simply scrap + book. But you might not realize how old this concept is! Originally written with a hyphen, scrap-book (as a noun) dates all the way back to the 1820s. But even then, it was just a new word for a very old concept.
As early as the 1400s, people were making scrapbooks…and calling them commonplace books. These were books where they compiled recipes, quotations, letters, patterns, poems…any little thing they wanted to keep in a safe place for easy reference.
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Vintage scrapbook (late 19th century) currently in
The Women’s Museum in Dallas, TX – photo via Wikipedia |
As the years wore on, this idea went in new directions. People would create scrapbooks to memorialize certain periods of their life, especially college. It became a popular alternative to journaling, because it included more than words, even in the age before photographs became easy to acquire and include.
So when did scrapbooking move from this centuries-old hobby to what it is today? That move is credited to Marielen Wadley Christensen who, in the 1980s, began creating family albums that were very stylized and put in protective sheets of plastic. In 1981 she published a how-to book on doing this, and the modern scrapbook was born. Today, of course, you can go into any craft or art store and find gorgeous supplies for this purpose.
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Student’s scrapbook, circa 1906, from Smith College.
Photo via Wikipedia |
Do you do much/any scrapbooking? I’ve never been bitten by that particular bug, but I do appreciate looking at the beautiful books my sister has created!
by Roseanna White | Feb 12, 2018 | Word of the Week
I didn’t give it too much thought when this request came in, but as soon as I sat down today and decided to feature it, I realized I knew where this word came from without even having to look it up. Though I still looked it up, just to be sure, LOL.
The word came to English in 1791 as “a person’s signature.” It was borrowed from the French, which was taken from the Latin, which was borrowed directly from the Greek. There are two parts of this word: auto, which means “self” in Greek, and graph, from the Greek grapho, which means “to write.” Originally it was used in Greek to mean “written by one’s own hand.” This was also the first meaning to come into English, in 1640–it meant a manuscript one wrote oneself.
As far as the verb form goes, by the early 1800s, it had evolved out the noun to mean that one wrote something in one’s own hand. “To sign one’s name” didn’t come about until 1837! Pretty late, eh? And yet the roots of the word are about as old as they can get.
And given that I’ve been making my kids learn Greek for the last several years and grapho was one of the first verbs we learned, I really should have known that one from the start, LOL.
by Roseanna White | Feb 5, 2018 | Word of the Week
This week’s Word is another special request from Lynne F.
~ Remember that any time you have one you’d like me to look up, just let me know! ~
Nun dates back to the very beginnings of English, all the way to the days of Old English, when it was spelled nunne. Its meanings were all within a similar refrain (a woman devoted to a religious life), but I was a bit surprised to realize that it was used both for those in the church and for pagan priestesses.
Interestingly, it derived from the Latin nonna, which is a word given by children to elderly people (and is still the Italian word for “grandmother”). Though the sources I found didn’t explain why this was also attached to someone of the religious order, I’m guessing it’s because of the respect one would give such a person, similar to what would give one’s elders/grandparents.
It’s also interesting to note that languages from around the globe have a word similar to
nonna for “grandmother” or “aunt” (a nurturing female other than one’s mother, basically) – there’s
nona in Sanskrit,
nana in Persian,
nanna in Greek,
nena in Serbo-Croatian
, the aforementioned Italian
nonna, and
nain in Welsh.
So to ask a question that diverges a bit from the word itself but echoes what it derives from…what do you call your grandmother?
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.