Word of the Week – Career V. Careen

by Roseanna White | Oct 16, 2017 | Word of the Week

The other day, my husband asked, “So what’s the difference between career–as in to career down a hill, the verb, and careen?”

To which I brilliantly said, “Uh . . . er . . . I don’t know.”

So naturally, I had to look it up. And it’s SO INTERESTING!

Let’s start with career. We all know it mainly today as the noun–our job path–right? But that’s a derivation of the original meaning dating from the 1530s, which was “a set course to run.” A horse would run down a career in a joust, for example. Or a runner might sprint through the career in a race. It’s from the French carriere, and before that the Latin cararia, and is the same root as words like “carriage” and “chariot.” (Who knew?!)

About 60 years after the noun entered English, the verb joined it–meaning “to charge at a tournament,” from that idea of the horse running the career. By the 1640s, it had taken on a broader meaning of “to move rapidly, run at full speed.”

So our notion of career-as-a-noun is actually directly from that original noun definition–it got broadened to mean “general course of action” by around 1600, and hence more specifically “course of one’s public or professional life” by 1803.

So what about careen? Dating from the 1590s it’s from the French cariner, which is in turn from Latin carina, which is literally the keel of a ship. So to careen was to turn the ship on its side and expose the keel–first in the sense of an inspection, but later came to be any time the ship tossed from side to side. By the 1880s it had taken a turn toward the general, and was applied to anything tossing from side to side, especially at high speeds. But apparently it wasn’t confused with career until the 1920s. Before that–perhaps because ships were still such a standard part of life (my musing, not the official one)–the two were never used interchangeably.

Word of the Week – J

by Roseanna White | Oct 9, 2017 | Word of the Week

Okay, so it’s more a letter of the week. 😉

My curiosity over the letter J began in part when I saw a Facebook rant, claiming that we’re all in big trouble spiritually because we’ve forgotten the true name of the Son of the God–that it was Yeshua, not Jesus.

The Greek scholar in me immediately took note…especially because there’s no “sh” sound in Greek, so I kinda laughed. The way Jesus is spelled in Greek is more like “Iesus.” (Pronounced “Yay-soos.”) Depending on the part of speech. Like all other words, names change in Greek depending on how you’re using them. But regardless, no “sh” sound. Now, I assume it would be present in the Hebrew…and given that the stories of His life were written in Greek, I’m also assuming He heard His name pronounced both in the Hebrew and Greek fashion–and so far as I know, He didn’t raise a fuss about it.

But I digress. How, I began to wonder, did we move from pronouncing it with a Y to pronouncing it with a J?

Well, that’s pretty fun. See, in both Greek and Latin, it’s actually spelled with an I (or the Greek equivalent). But I contained, in both languages, a y sound at the beginning of words many times, because it’s a natural slur of the tongue–say “ee-ay-soo” out loud. It sounds like “yay-soo,” right? So there we go.

J was actually the last letter added to the Latin alphabet (which English, or course, uses), and it was at first just a swash version of I, used when I came at the end of a sequence, especially a number. For instance, 13 would be “xiij” to let you know that was the end of the number. It had no sound of its own, it was interchangeable with the I.

It wasn’t until the Renaissance that a scribe named Gian Giorgio Trissino began differentiating the two and assigned J a sound of its own–the soft “j” sound like in “jam.” From there, it also took on other sounds, like in “Taj Mahal”–and still retained that “y” sound in words like “hallelujah.”

It’s worth noting, however, that in many languages, “J” still keeps that “Y” sound as its primary one–consider German, for instance. And then in Spanish, we get an “H” sound for it.

My conclusion? Jesus didn’t show any great issue with how His name was pronounced at the time, insisting on either a Hebrew or Greek pronunciation, so I really doubt He gets upset that Trissino developed a new sound for the letter J which subsequently changed how His name was said by certain people groups using the Latin alphabet. All the same, it’s quite interesting to realize where the J came from, how its sound has changed over the centuries, and how that took us from “Iesu” to “Jesus.”

Word of the Week – Pizza

by Roseanna White | Sep 25, 2017 | Word of the Week

Sometimes we have to examine those favorite words. Like pizza. Right? I don’t know about your house, but in mine, pizza is a staple. My children adore it. Almost as much as I do. (Hey, I’ve had more years to grow the love…)

So it’s no surprise that the other day, as I informed my boy-o that pizza has two Zs in it, he asked, “But why? I thought it was spelled like Piza. Like maybe that’s where it’s from.”

As it turns out…nope! The origin of the word pizza is a bit of a mystery, but I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.

First off, it can be a bit confusing to check the etymology and see that it’s listed as first recorded in 1934. Odd, considering I’ve seen scans of menus dating from the early 1900s that have pizza on them. What’s up with that??

Well, this is when it entered the English language–as in, was adopted as an English word, not just borrowed. Before that, it was just considered Italian. Kind of like how merci is a word everyone knows, but when we speak it, we know it’s French. The 1934 date isn’t when the deliciousness was created, but rather when English speakers decided it should be a permanent part of our vocabulary (hear, hear!).

But where did it come from? This is where the word-historians aren’t quite sure. Could be, they say, from the dialectal pinza, which is from the Latin “pound, stamp.” (That’s what a 1907 Italian dictionary claims.) Could be of Germanic influence and related to pittz–“cake, pie.” Or another German-borrowed option is pizzo, “morsel, bite.”

Who’s to say which one is right? Regardless, I maintain it’s a perfect food. 😉

Word of the Week – Bamboozle

by Roseanna White | Sep 18, 2017 | Word of the Week

My dearest daughter suggested this word of the week, because she thought it was such a fun word to say. 😉

So, bamboozle.

This will be rather quick, because etymologists aren’t entirely sure where it came from, LOL. What they can tell you for certain is that it’s been both a noun and a verb first recorded in 1703, bearing the same meaning that it does today.

But where did it come from? That’s a bit of a mystery. It could be from the Scottish bombaze, which means “confound or perplex.” But it could also be from the French embabouiner, which means “to make a fool of.” (Literally, “baboon.”)

Either way, this “cheat, swindle” word is a lot of fun to say. 😉

Word of the Week – Schedule

by Roseanna White | Sep 11, 2017 | Word of the Week

I’ve just returned from a week of vacation in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina . . . which means my schedule is bursting with things that need done.

Now, as it happens, I knew from some of my writing projects that schedule would not have been a word used in such a way until fairly recent history. So I thought I’d share some of that today, while I’m battling to get mine into order. 😉

Schedule comes to English via French (“strip of paper with writing on it”), Latin (“strip of paper”), and originally Greek (“splinter or strip”). So even in those moves from language to language we see a progression of the idea, right? When it joined the English tongue in the 14th century, it meant “a ticket, label, or slip of paper with writing on it.” This sense is still preserved in our tax system–the “schedule” being a piece of paper attached to the main document, an appendix.

So how did it come to mean “a plan of procedure”? Well we have the railroads to thank for that. They would employ schedules–slips of paper–with their timetables written on them. Hence, everyone soon called the timetable schedule rather than the paper it was on.

Interestingly, even the pronunciation has changed a lot over the centuries! For hundreds of years, everyone pronounced it “sed-yul.” But the British modified it to “shed-yul” in imitation of the French at some point, while Americans–at the insistence of Webster and his dictionary–reverted to the Greek pronunciation of “sked-yul.”

Now back I go to mine. 😉

Word of the Week – Amused

by Roseanna White | Sep 4, 2017 | Word of the Week

Short and sweet–and funny!–word today. =)

Amused. We all know what it means, right? “Entertained. Aroused to mirth.” And today, that’s true. But did you know that the word originally meant “distracted, diverted, cheated”??? Truth!

When amused entered the language around 1600, that was its meaning, and it continued as such until around 1727, when that sense of “distracting someone, playing a trick on them, cheating them,” took on a more positive connotation–that we were instead “pleasantly diverted.”

Amusing to see how words change over time, isn’t it. 😉