by Roseanna White | Jan 29, 2018 | Word of the Week
Today’s Word of the Week is a special request from Lynne F. (and as a reminder, if ever you have a word you’d like me to look into, please feel free to let me know and I’ll add it to my list!).
Nurse is rather interesting, in that the noun and verb forms evolved a bit differently. The oldest form of this word is nurrice, which dates from the 1100s, meaning a “wet-nurse or foster mother to a young child.” This word was borrowed directly from the French, which came in turn from the Latin nutricia (wet nurse) which in turn is a variation of the Latin word for “suckle.” Look familiar? This is the same root from which we get nourish and nutrician.
The extended meaning of “one who cares for a sick person” evolved rather naturally from the idea of “one who cares for a child,” but it took quite a long while to do so! That noun didn’t enter English until 1580. And the verb form, “to care for the sick” is from 1736! (I had no idea that was so late!!)
As for the verb meaning “to suckle an infant,” that’s surprisingly late to the game as well, though not as much as the one mentioned above. This dates from the 1530s and is a Middle English alteration of a similar word, nurshen, which is taken from the same root but had previously been pronounced differently.
So there we have it. Our modern member of the medical community derives its name from women caring for children. =)
by Roseanna White | Jan 22, 2018 | Word of the Week
I’d noticed when reading historical work–either original or fiction–that recipe and receipt were often used in ways that we today would deem, well, flipped. But I’d never really paused to look it up.
I’m glad I just did, because I learned something!
We’ll start with recipe. Coming from the Latin word of the same spelling, which means “Take!” (a command), it came into English in 1580 as the word for “a medical prescription.” Literally, what the doctor was ordering you to take. (Who knew?!) This is (what I learned today) where the abbreviation Rx comes from. It took on a figurative sense (“recipe for disaster” etc) round about 1640. So when, you may be asking, did it come to mean “instructions for preparing food”? Not until 1743! I had no idea our primary meaning of the word is so relatively new!
So what did people call those instructions for food prep before they called it a recipe? Receipt. This word, borrowed from Old North French, has been in use in this way since the 1300s. It’s literally “a statement of ingredients in a potion or medicine.” As “a written acknowledgment of goods received,” it dates from 1600ish.
Any recipes you’ve been dying to try, or a favorite you’d like to share? I’m going to be hunting up the ingredients to make this chili con carne one of these days… And if you’re in the mood for some utterly scrumptious, light and fluffy and a-mazing homemade dinner rolls, this is the only recipe you’ll ever need…
by Roseanna White | Jan 15, 2018 | Word of the Week
Yet another Word of the Week inspired by my weekend activities. 😉 I confess: I’m not a decorator. Most of the decorations in my house are books, LOL. (The best decorations, if I do say so myself.) Things like curtains…meh. I’ve put them up in most rooms, simply to block the light when necessary, but I’d never bothered in my kitchen. I don’t know. I just…didn’t.
But upon taking down the lovely garland I’d strung over my windows at Christmas, they looked so bare. So I decided, “It’s time to get curtains.” Or, upon looking up what I actually wanted, make them.
Of course, making curtains reminds me of one of the frequent goofs I’ve made in my British-set books: referring to those window-hangings as drapes. Apparently they don’t ever call them that in the UK. So it’s high time I look it up, right!
While etymonline.com doesn’t denote drapes as being an American usage, it is rather recent. Though the verb, “to hang with fabric,” is from the 1400s, it didn’t turn into a noun at all until the 1660s, and it didn’t at that point have the particular meaning of “curtain.” That didn’t come about–pluralized, drapes, not just drape–until 1895. It’s a direct derivation–the draping of fabric over windows, and drapery is a similar derivation–so logical. But apparently not universal. 😉
I just finished sewing my cheerful calico curtains, now draped over my windows. How about you? What kind of drapery do you fancy as window treatments, or do you like bare panes of glass?
And since everyone keeps asking in the comments, I’m adding a photo of my newly-stitched curtains…
by Roseanna White | Jan 8, 2018 | Word of the Week
Last week, my friend Rachel McMillan (of Toronto) asked on Facebook what the different American regions called a certain type of hat. You know, that basic knit hat for the winter. There, she said, they universally called it a toque. Other answers included “winter hat, knit cap, ski hat, beanie, tam, stocking hat…” The list went on and on.
But given that I’m currently knitting one for my husband (the pattern is called, “A Very Plain Hat,” LOL), I was thinking of it again and thought it would be fun to feature.
In my area, I grew up hearing them called toboggans. Like the sled. Upon looking it up, I learned that the word dates from 1829, meaning a flat-bottomed sled. Around 100 years later, in the late 1920s, it began being applied (regionally in America) to the knit hats one wore when tobogganing. (I guess that region includes my own…)
Toque, coming from French, is not surprisingly common in Canada. As a word for “a round hat,” it dates to the 1500s. It comes from the Spanish word for “a woman’s headdress,” which may have in turn come from the Arabic word for “shawl.”
Beanie dates from the 1940s and might be the funniest of the words–it’s from the slang sense of bean, meaning “head.” (For some reason, I always think of a beanie as one of the bowl-shaped hats with a little propeller on top. I wonder what TV show I have to thank for that? LOL)
Tam is short for tam-o’-shanter, a type of hat from the 1840s used by Scottish plowmen. The name comes from the hero of Robert Burns poem (Tom of Shanter) of the same name, published in 1790. This type of woolen hat became fashionable for women in the 1880s as well.
So there we go. Whatever we call it, I know many of them have been worn during this awful arctic blast! If you’re anything like me, you’re pretty excited to see warmer temps in this week’s forecast!
by Roseanna White | Dec 18, 2017 | Word of the Week
Did you know that yule and jolly are from the same root? According to some sources, both come from the Old Norse jol (that J would be pronounced like a Y–see my word of the week on the letter J), which was borrowed into Old French as well, as jolif, which originally meant “festive.” Modern French now has joli, which means “pretty, nice.” And English, of course, has jolly.
But what about this whole “yuletide” idea, meaning Christmas? The yule log? Well, way back in the days of Old English, that Old Norse jol was a heathen feast. As Christianity came in and took over, they applied the English cognate geol to the coordinating Christian festival–Christmas. Old English, you see, already had the word giuli (which sounded very similar)–the Anglo-Saxon name for the winter season (December and January). It wasn’t a specific festival, but rather a two-month stretch in which many feasts occurred. But upon conversion to Christianity, the meaning of giuli narrowed to the twelve day feast of the Nativity (beginning Dec 25). By the 11th century, Christmas became the more popular word in most of England, except the northeast.
How did it come back, then? Well, there had always been a few holdouts–evidenced by yule log being recorded in the 1600s. But we’re mostly familiar with it today because in the 19th century, writers began using it as a nostalgic way to refer to “the Christmas of ‘Merrie England.'”
Today we’re exactly a week from the start of the official Yuletide season. I hope you and yours are having a jolly time!
by Roseanna White | Dec 11, 2017 | Holidays, Word of the Week
Last weekend, my church went to a nursing home (where we visit once a month) and sang carols with the residents. At which point, I realized that I’d never paused to look up the origin of the word!
Carol dates from around 1300, meaning, “a joyful song.” It came into being as a noun and a verb at around the same time, the verb meaning “to dance in a ring.” Etymologists aren’t entirely sure where the word comes from–the English is undoubtedly from the Old French carole, but before that, their best guess is that it’s from the Medieval Latin charaula (a dance to the flute), which is in turn from the Greek khoraules (flute player).
By the end of the 1300s, it was being used to mean “to sing with Joy or festivity” and was used particularly of joyful Christmas hymns by about 1500 onward.
It took a while, however, for the word to take on the meaning of “go around from place to place and sing Christmas carols.” That first appeared in 1879, though it was said at the time to be a revival of an old English custom.
Do you like to go caroling? Is it a traditional in your family or church?
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.