by Roseanna White | Jul 20, 2015 | Word of the Week
Not to be gruesome or anything. 😉 I was looking this one up to see when the phrase “skeleton in the closet” came about.
Skeleton itself first arrived in English in about 1570, meaning a mummy, dried-up body, or bone remains. The word came from Latin, but the Latin word had come in turn from Greek, so it’s an ooooollllddddd concept, closely tied to the verb form that meant “to dry up, parch, wither.”
The meaning of “bare outline” followed in about 1600, from which we get “skeleton crew” or “skeleton key.” The phrase that sent me in search of it to begin with was coined right around 1812.
by Roseanna White | Jul 6, 2015 | Word of the Week
My son is 7. Which means he’s obsessed with dinosaurs. Which means that he was in 7-year-old heaven when the new Jurassic World movie came out. Given that he has a really great grasp of “it’s just a movie using robots and special effect”–we watched behind the scenes on the original, because he wanted to know how they made the T-Rex–we took him to the theaters to see it.
Now, “every day is velociraptor day!” around here. Rowyn has “practiced a really long time” to perfect what he calls his “raptor run.” And his raptor hiss. And his raptor…everything. So naturally, he has made me look up all this stuff many, many times too. 😉
Most recently he was wondering which word came first–velociraptor or raptor as applied to eagles, hawks, falcons, etc.
As it turns out, raptor is straight from the Latin word of the same spelling, a noun form of the verb rapere–to steal. So it’s quite literally “a thief.” The word entered the English language round about 1600. It wasn’t, however, applied to the class of birds until 1873.
The first fossil of a velociraptor was discovered in 1923 and named in 1924; it was called “speed thief” (velocity + raptor) because scientists believed it was a very swift, if small, carnivore.
by Roseanna White | Jun 29, 2015 | Word of the Week
Scalawag is one of those words that we think of as being a very old-fashioned insult–and it is…but it’s not quite as old as some might think.
Meaning “disreputable fellow,” scalawag only dates from 1848. It originated in American union jargon, and though where it came from isn’t quite clear, it’s thought that it may have been borrowed from the Scotch scallag–a farm hand or rustic. Scallag, in turn, is derived from Scalloway, one of the islands with Shetland ponies, which were deemed undersized and worthless–so to call someone a scallag, and then a scalawag, was to insult their worth. During the Civil War, Southererns used the term as an insult against white, Southern-born men who were not Confederates.
by Roseanna White | Jun 22, 2015 | Word of the Week
One of my husband’s favorite shows is Top Gear–the British version. Being a car show, they have cause to say lots of things that are different than how we say it in America. Boot, bonnet…and aluminium instead of aluminum. On one particular show, the presenter is talking about an American car and quotes that it’s made from “aluminum–whatever that is.”
First, it made me laugh. Then it made me wonder why we say it differently. Looking up the answer made me laugh again. =)
Sir Humphry Davy coined the word aluminum in 1812, taken from the Latin alum. In 1809 he’d called this metal alumium, but he changed it for reasons unknown, and American kept this second incarnation of his word. Editors that same year, however, amended it still further:
Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in
preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound. [“Quarterly
Review,” 1812]
So there we have it. Aluminum didn’t sound classical enough. Love it. =)
by Roseanna White | Jun 8, 2015 | Word of the Week
It’s going to be a fun week around Writing Roseanna…so I thought I’d start us off with some fun, happy words. =)
I suppose I should start with the root word, cheer. The earliest English reference to word, from about 1200, was from the Anglo-French chere, and meant “face.” Within about 50 years, it had extended to mean “frame of mind or state of feeling.” Within another hundred years, it was more specifically the mood as could be determined by the expression on one’s face.
By about 1400, though, cheer was reserved for the positive of those expressions. And right about then, the verb came around–cheer, as in to cheer someone up. The act of shouting out encouragement is from about 1720 and is thought to have originated with sailors.
But what about cheers and cheerio?
First, cheers. As a salute or a toast, this British-ism dates back only to 1919–pretty new! It is quite simply a plural of cheer–the act of cheering.
Cheerio claims a date of 1910. Another Britishism, this departing salute was just a way of wishing someone good cheer with a bit of style. 😉
But before I say “Cheerio!” for the day . . . we have some fun waiting this week!! The awesome folks of Bethany House let me know that there are a couple extra ARCs of The Lost Heiress and asked if I would like to do a contest to give them away. YES, PLEASE!
So beginning on Thursday, the fun will be hosted right here. I’ll be running a contest, promoted by Bethany House, for these advance copies of The Lost Heiress… AND I’ll be sharing the first chapter here on my blog! AND, a week from today, I’ll be revealing the cover of the second book, The Reluctant Duchess, as part of the ongoing celebration! I’m so excited!!
Normal posting will be suspended during the contest, but this Wednesday I’ll be doing a Thoughtful post since I was under the weather last week and didn’t get one up. =)
See you back here soon! Cheerio!
by Roseanna White | Jun 1, 2015 | Word of the Week
We’ve all heard it through the grapevine (and some of us might break into song at the mere mention…), but do you know where the saying comes from?
I didn’t–but I learned recently so thought I’d share. =)
Grapevine, meaning “a rumor” or “information spread in an unconventional method,” comes from the Civil War era South. The “grapevine telegraph” was much like the “underground railroad.” Metaphorical and secretive. Just as the latter wasn’t a real railroad, but a term to refer to the secret movements of runaways, so the “grapevine telegraph” referred to spreading information on the down-low, rather than using the real telegraph. And so grapevine is a shortening of that–a way to spread information without using typical means that could be tapped or overheard.
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.