Word of the Week – Eccentric

by Roseanna White | Oct 17, 2016 | Word of the Week

I have long loved the word eccentric for an odd, unique person. Ever since I learned it back in . . . middle school? . . . it was my choice word for those like me. A little different (you know, like someone who has scads of people living in her head begging to have their stories told), a little unusual, and infinitely interesting (perhaps not part of the standard definition, but I maintain that it’s true, LOL.)

It was in college, studying Ptolemy and Apollonius, that I learned about the ancient mathematics, derived from studies of astronomy, and how an eccentric orbit was one where the earth was not precisely the center (as they assumed everything was, more or less).

It never once occurred to me that these two meanings of the word eccentric were related. But of course, they are!

Eccentric as a mathematical concept of an off-center, elliptical orbit dates back more or less forever, directly from the Greek word ekkentros, which means simply “off center.” (Compare that to concentric.)

Eccentric as an odd or whimsical person dates from 1817, and once you realize they’re the same word, it’s easy to see why, right? Because we eccentrics are a little off-center. A little different from the norm. Just a little odd.

And infinitely interesting. 😉

Word of the Week – Sappy

by Roseanna White | Oct 10, 2016 | Word of the Week

I honestly don’t remember why I was looking this up . . . but I’ll share the results with you anyway. 😉

Sappy in a figurative sense of “foolishly sentimental” has been around for quite a while! Dating from the 1660s, it comes from an intermediate meaning of “wet, sodden.” How we get, I guess, when we’re sappy. 😉 Interesting to note, for a while in earlier days, sappy could also mean “full of vitality” (that one’s from the 1550s) and, around 1620, “immature.”

Sap, as a figurative noun meaning “simpleton” is from around 1815. It was English and Scottish schoolboy slang, deriving from the idea that one had soft, sappy wood in their heads.

Have a great week!

Word of the Week – Fast

by Roseanna White | Sep 5, 2016 | Word of the Week

What primary school student hasn’t been correctly at some point for saying “fastly”? I know I was…and I know I’ve done the correcting too. But last week when my son said something about this, my husband and I decided to look it up (because really, why isn’t that a word??).

Pretty interesting discovery too!

So the original meaning of fast, dating back to the 12th century, was “firmly, securely.” We still use this occasionally, though it’s old-fashioned. “It stuck fast” etc. Early on, fastly was then indeed a word and used in relation to this sticking definition. It didn’t go completely out of use until the 19th century.

So where did the notion of “quickly” come from? Well, that meaning has been around nearly as long as the original, and came about rather organically. Etymologists believe it’s because “to run hard” and “to run quickly” mean the same thing–and also perhaps because if you’re running “fixedly,” you’re keeping up with anyone in front of you.

Regardless of how it evolved, it’s certainly worth noting that fast was used both as an adjective and an adverb since the get-go, with that “fastly” fading from use a couple hundred years ago solely because the root word had been treated as both adj and adv for so long.

So sorry, kiddo. No need for that -ly. 😉

Word of the Week – & (Ampersand)

by Roseanna White | Aug 22, 2016 | Word of the Week

At Dictionary.com last week, my attention was grabbed by one of their slideshows about punctuation. Because, yes, I’m a grammar nerd. This has been well established. 😉 But the very first slide was far and away the most interesting to me.

Both of these things have always been an enigma to me. Where in the world did we get that curly thingy-ma-bob, and why did it mean “and.” And why in the world was it called an “ampersand”? Questions I have long gone without knowing the answers to. But now it’s all clear. 😉

The original ampersand was the one that looked like the above, in the graphic–the others are just deviations. And the reason is quite simple. When writing in cursive, Latin scribes would combine and quicken the letters in “and”–et. That combined et made its way into other Latin-based languages like English as a symbol. But it wasn’t called an “ampersand” until the 1830s.

At that point in time, this symbol was being taught as a 27th letter of the alphabet. The schoolchildren’s recitation would say, “X, Y, Z, and per se and.” That “and per se and” got slurred–into ampersand!

And there we go. Your weekly dose of word . . . er, punctuation? . . . fun. 😉

Word of the Week – Cranky

by Roseanna White | Aug 8, 2016 | Word of the Week

We have one more week left of summer vacation. One more little week, then back to the homeschool grind we go. Needless to say, that has inspired a few sighs and a whimper or two (okay, perhaps that was more from me than the kids, LOL).

With the end of days of freedom and fun (or in my case, work-work-work), a little crankiness is to be expected. And so, today I thought I’d look at the history of the word. =)

Cranky has its roots, obviously, in crank–a word which is as old as English itself, taken from the Proto-Germanic krank: a handle for turning a revolving axis. We obviously still use this meaning of the word as well, though both German and Dutch have apparently leaned away from the literal ancient meaning and instead gone toward a figurative “sick, weakly” meaning.

This is where our cranky comes in. Around 1803, cranky appeared in English texts, meaning “sickly or ailing.” By 1825, crank itself was listed in dictionaries as having a secondary meaning of “hard, difficult.” (Like  a crank job.) Crank meaning “an irritable person” came along in 1833–a back-formation from cranky.

Though to give my kids credit where it’s due, they’re less cranky about school starting than I thought they’d be–in part at the promise of going to Staples and stocking up on pens and paper. (They are so my children, LOL. Fresh writing supplies make everything better.)

Happy Monday, everyone!

Word of the Week – Class

by Roseanna White | Aug 1, 2016 | Word of the Week

Class. It seems like a simple word. One that has surely been around forever, right? Well, I looked it up last week because I wanted to make sure that classy was in use for a story. And instead I learned that the whole word was rather surprising.

Class comes from the Latin classis, which is the word for how Servius Tullius divided the Roman people for purposes of taxation. This also had something to do with how the people were called to arms, which is the original meaning (and spelling) carried into English first. It wasn’t until around 1600 that it was shortened to class . . . at which point it meant a group of students.

In the 1650s, class was expanded from the group of students to mean a course or lecture students might take in school–based on the idea that it required reaching a certain academic level.

In 1705, the word became a verb–“to divide into classes.” In 1753, scientists began talking about classes of plants and animals.

But it wasn’t until 1772 that class began to mean “divisions of society according to status.” I was really surprised it was that late! And so, the notion of class being “high quality” was unheard of until the 1840s. My classy, therefore, didn’t come around until the 1890s.