by Roseanna White | Aug 31, 2015 | Word of the Week
It’s release week for The Lost Heiress! So in honor of Brook, this week’s Word of the Week is one of Brook’s favorite things: espresso.
Now, according to etymonline.com, espresso didn’t come into the English vernacular until 1945. But the Italians had created caffe espresso in 1906, literally meaning “coffee that is pressed out” under steam. The first espresso machines reportedly produced a strong coffee that critics said tasted burnt, but that didn’t stop it from being a hit and soon gaining die-hard fans. Over the next decades smaller and more economical machines were invented, the “burnt” taste was managed, and now espresso is often the only coffee to be had in many parts of Europe.
Brook got a taste for it in Monaco–she loves espresso, or coffee in general if the specialty variety can’t be found (so long as it’s strong! Must be strong, she says)…but detests tea. Much to the horror of her newly-discovered English relatives. 😉
by Roseanna White | Aug 24, 2015 | Word of the Week
Yes, hat. Not that there’s any surprise in the fact that hat itself has been in the English language since the dawn of the English language. But I was interested in some of the idioms containing it. =)
Specifically, today I said something about our right as women to change our opinions at “the drop of a hat.” I pretty much knew where the saying came from–dropping a hat as a signal for a race or a fight–but I didn’t know when it came about. As it turns out, the first written reference the site I was on could find was from 1837, but it was already being used metaphorically in that context, so one can be certain it had been around for a while already.
“To eat one’s hat”–what one will do if the unlikely happens–dates from 1770. “To throw one’s hat in the ring” is from 1847, and “hat trick”–3 goals in one game–was originally of cricket in 1879 but was extended to other sports, especially hockey, by 1909. This usage actually comes from literal tricks (sleight of hand/magic tricks) involving hats in the late 1800s, but pulling off the feat supposedly used to entitle the player to a hat from his club too.
by Roseanna White | Aug 17, 2015 | Word of the Week
Today begins our first day of the 2015-16 school year! Xoe is somehow in 5th grade. I don’t know how this happened. Isn’t she still 5??? And Rowyn, who I swear was 3 just yesterday, is going into 2nd grade. I made the boy-o groan and the girl-o jump up and down with excitement by announcing that we’ll be adding French to our curriculum this year. 😉
So today seemed an appropriate time to look at school as a word!
It comes from the Latin schola, which interestingly enough originally meant “leisure.” (Kids today might disagree with “school” and “leisure” being related, LOL.) But in Roman days, only those who didn’t have to work had leisure time for learning. In those ancient days, the favorite pastime when one had leisure was discussion. Conversation. Philosophy. This is where the idea of leisurely discussions came from, and where it got extended to the place for such conversations. You can see this root reflected in many different languages, and English is no exception.
By the 1300s, the English word was applied not only to this learning and the place where it happens, but also to the students engaged in it. By the 1610s it had been extended to the idea of “people united by similar principles or methods.” Hence, school of thought by the 1860s.
by Roseanna White | Aug 10, 2015 | Word of the Week
Arrr!
I occasionally have a pirate in my house–this is to be expected when one has a 7-year-old boy. I never quite know when a rather adorable little figure is going to appear with his sword in hand and demand all my booty. But last time he did, his sister–being so very much my daughter–asked, laughing, “Where does that come from, anyway? Did they put treasure in a boot or something?”
As it happens…no. 😉 Booty is from the Old French butin, which is turn from the Germanic bute, which means “exchange.” So booty is quite literally something gotten in exchange for something else (in the pirate’s case, they got it in exchange for a fight, I suppose…) But in Old English we also had the word bot that meant “an improvement,” which had, by the time butin came into our vernacular, become boot. So we combined the two into booty, making it something profitable.
The noun that means “a woman’s posterior” is from the 1920.
by Roseanna White | Aug 3, 2015 | Word of the Week
No, not in honor of Donald Trump. 😉 The question arose this past week with my hubby and son, as to where “fired” and “sacked” come from. So naturally, I ran out to my computer to answer it.
Fire, as in to terminate employment, is an Americanism from about 1885 that’s right up my alley, since it’s a total play on words. Before then, “discharge” had been the word used in this context. But “discharge” is also what a weapon does when it…fires. Which, yes, was another word for that early on. So people thought, “Ha! Since discharge has two meanings, and one of those meanings is ‘to fire,’ let’s apply ‘fire’ to its other meaning too!” So they did. I love it. =) (Not that I love getting fired…well, not that I’ve ever been fired per se, but…you know.)
Another word that means the same thing is sack. This one dates from about 1825. It was originally a noun–“to give someone the sack.” This appealed to the visual idea of handing them their sack full of tools when they were done a job. It then just became used as a verb as things are wont to do in English. =)
by Roseanna White | Jul 27, 2015 | Word of the Week
Yesterday my hubby called our daughter “The apple of my eye,” and she looked at us like we were off our rocker. “The apple? How does an eye have an apple?”
Good question, my girl. Good question. =)
The word apple has been in English as long as there was English to be in…but in a much broader sense than you might think. It applied to all fruit, even including nuts and berries. This was true as late as the 1600s. (So translating Genesis with the forbidden fruit being an apple was being rather vague, really…)
As for “apple of the eye”–it was literally the pupil, which people thought was a solid thing; but by calling it the apple, they were saying it represented that which was most treasured or cherished. It’s a phrase that comes from Old English too, in which case, it shouldn’t be too surprising, since all fruit in an area belonged to the lord in the days of serfdom, and commoners seldom tasted it.
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.