by Roseanna White | Mar 23, 2015 | Word of the Week
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| My not-so-fabulous shot of the earth as seen at FSU’s planetarium |
Last week, we were super excited to get to visit a local university and see the planetarium with our homeschool group. And of course, this being my family, the night before we were talking about the word.
Rowyn (7) said, “Hey, I know why it’s called it called planetarium. Because we see planets!”
“But what about the arium part?” Xoe (9) asked.
“Hmm,” I said. “What do we think it could mean?”
Yes, I’m raising nerds, and I’m proud of it. 😉 They reasoned that –arium must mean something about an area. And we came up with some other words that have it, like aquarium (see, an area that holds water!), terrarium (an area that holds…terra? [Me: that means earth]), solarium (an area for solar? Oh wait, solar power means the sun–how can a place hold the sun? Ohhhhhh…I get it).
But just to be sure, we looked it up when we got home–that conversation had taken place in the car on the way home from ballet. Sure enough –arium is Latin for “a place for.” And planterium has been around since 1734!
Yep, we felt pretty darn smart. And thoroughly enjoyed our time at the area for planets. 😉
by Roseanna White | Mar 16, 2015 | Word of the Week
Yesterday, my parents were describing a relative, and they said she was “feisty.” Naturally, I had to pipe in with where that word came from (click here for that Word of the Week), and how I just haven’t been able to use it ever since discovering its origins.
So my mom asked, “Well then, what about spunky? What are its origins?” I didn’t know. So of course, I had to look it up. 😉
Spunky is a word from 1786 meaning “courageous, spirited,” coming directly from spunk, which dates from 1773 with the meaning of “courage, pluck, mettle.” But the word itself is from the 1500s, its original meaning being that of “a spark.” It’s a Scottish word that has its roots in tinder, and I rather like that origin–that courage comes from a word used for what starts a fire. Muuuuuuch better than feisty. 😉
by Roseanna White | Mar 9, 2015 | Word of the Week
This one made me go, “Ha! Take that, everyone who uses the word I don’t like!” 😉
See, I was always a
normality girl. But more and more often I’d begun hearing
normalcy. And it drove me batty. Here, my friends, is why.
Normality itself is a relatively new word, entering the written world of English in only 1849. It most likely came from the French normalité, which became a borrowed word in 1834. Meaning exactly what you’d expect.
Normalcy, however, dates from 1857. And what, you ask, did it mean? “Being at right angles.” It’s a mathematical term! In the 1920s President Harding used it in place of normality in a speech describing the political situation and was liberally made fun of for his incompetency with speaking. Since then it has edged its way in more and more, but “the word prefered by purists [read: Roseanna, LOL] for “a normal situation” is normality.”
So there. 😉
by Roseanna White | Mar 2, 2015 | Word of the Week
I say it a lot, just to be cute. Aw, shucks. Every time I type it, I add an imaginary foot shuffle. No doubt inspired from some cartoon.
But it never occurred to me to wonder where it came from. When I looked it up, it was kinda a “duh” moment.
Appearing in writing in 1847 in two different sources, shucks comes directly from shuck. I’m familiar with shuck as a verb–shucking corn, shucking oysters. Said verb is from 1819. The noun actually predates it by several hundred years, tracing its appearance back to the 1670s and meaning “a pod, a shell.” Something discarded.
The interjection Shucks! then comes from this idea of it being a toss-away. It’s kind of like saying, “Nonsense.” or “It’s nothing.” One of those first appearances in 1847 was actually “not worth shucks.”
So there we have it. =) Hope everyone has a great first week of March…though as usual, the end of February took me totally by surprise.
by Roseanna White | Feb 23, 2015 | Word of the Week
Last time I blogged at Colonial Quills, I was talking about George Washington took advantage of the new rifled barrels to scare the wits out of the English, who thought every American to be an expert marksman. And indeed, we changed the rules of warfare by “sniping” British officers.
But of course, that wasn’t a word yet.
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| Photo by JJ Harrison |
Sniper dates from 1824, and it comes from snipe hunting. These birds were considered a quite challenging target for even expert shooters, and so snipe hunting was a sport that was a way to prove your skill. The hunter would hide himself and rarely employed dogs, which was the norm in other bird-shooting. So the hunter himself became known as a sniper.
Before this, sharpshooter was used…but not for long before. It dates only from 1800 and is a translation of the German Scharfschütze.
Before that…well, it wasn’t really needed all that much, because there just weren’t any until rifling came on the scene. 😉 So in the 30ish years when guns were suddenly more accurate but before these words were created for it, they just called them “expert marksmen.” =)
by Roseanna White | Feb 16, 2015 | Word of the Week
I was critiquing a few chapters for a friend of mine last week, and it led me to do some quick research–in which I learned something new, yay! =) Namely, about Sunday school.
The phrase Sunday school dates from 1783. However, it wasn’t religious instruction. On the contrary, it was regular school, offered on the one day a week poor children who worked in factories were free–Sunday. It began as a philanthropic movement, meant to educate England’s poorest to give them a hope at a better life.
So this school on Sunday would be teaching them reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Though granted, the Bible was their primer, so there was still some spiritual lessons involved. =) The idea of Sunday School traveled across the pond during the Industrial Revolution and took up work in America too. But it wasn’t until the 1870s that it became a school time attached to church, whose sole objective was to teach Biblical principles. That was a change that happened first in America and then worked its way back to England.
Interesting, eh?
Hope everyone has a great week! On my blog this week you have the following to look forward to:
Tuesday – Book Review of The Red Tent
Wednesday – Cover Design post on I Always Cry at Weddings
Hope to see you all back here over the next few days! Stay warm!!
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.