Word of the Week – Yankee

by Roseanna White | Feb 9, 2015 | Word of the Week

Another one whose credit goes to my kiddos, who this week asked, “Where did the word Yankee come from?” (We’ve been reading about the early days of America, you see…)

I didn’t have the answer to that one off the top of my head, so I popped over to my beloved www.EtymOnline.com.

According to them, the word was first applied disparagingly to the Dutch. There are a couple guesses as to which Dutch words it imitates, though “John” (Jan, pronounced Yan) is obviously a part of it. It’s the “kees” part that we’re not entirely sure of. It might be from “Janke,” which means “Little John” or it might be “John Cornelius” or “John Cheese.” (Naming people John + Food being a typical way to refer to a common bloke at the time.)

Yankee started appearing in the late 1600s, and the New Amsterdam Dutch were quick to turn around and slap the word on their neighboring English colonists in Connecticut. It was a disparaging word for them, and one the British adopted to apply to Americans in general during the time of the Revolution.

Of course, Americans being what we’ve always been, those Yankees decided they’d take the word and embrace it. They were proud to be Yankees, thank you very much. And was shortened to “Yank” by 1778. The Northern/Southern distinction didn’t come about until about 1828.

Word of the Week – Willy-nilly

by Roseanna White | Jan 26, 2015 | Word of the Week

Willy-nilly. It’s a phrase I’ve heard most of my life, and I knew how to use it. But it wasn’t until a few years ago, when I was reading an old book and saw it written a different way, that I had a clue where in the world this word came from. In this book, it was written will he, nill he.

Suddenly it made more sense! It wasn’t just a silly sounding word meant to portray a crazy method of doing things by its very sound (although…). It was a contraction! (Go ahead–say “duh” if you must, LOL.)

This phrase has been around since about 1600 and appeals to the verb will not in the “being” sense, but in the “purpose or intent” sense. So will he, nill he (or I or ye) meant “whether he means to or not.” If something was done willy-nilly, it was without obvious purpose, haphazardly.

Now to begin my week in a way not willy-nilly. 😉

Word of the Week – Raise V. Raze

by Roseanna White | Jan 19, 2015 | Word of the Week

A week or two ago, my best friend sent me one of those hilarious “someecards” photos on Pinterest that totally sums up my outlook on housework.

I love this. But I’m also enough of a grammarian that I had to point out the typo, LOL.

I was in college, reading all the ancient Greeks with their love of flattening opposing cities, when I came upon the word raze. While raise means “lift up,” the homophone raze means “tear down.” Don’t you just love English?? LOL

Apparently raze, which dates to about 1540, is an alteration of rasen, a 14th century word coming from Old French that meant “to scratch, slash, erase.” We see that meaning preserved in erase, which is quite closely related (who knew?).

Raise, on the other hand, comes from a Scandinavian source, likely Old Norse. It dates from about 1200 and has always meant what it means now, in the physical sense. The meaning like “raise from the dead” comes from a literal “make higher” that is taken from that physical sense, and is from about 1300. “Increase the amount” joined the fray in 1500s, usually speaking of money or price. “Bring up a question” dates from the 1640s. In the 1660s it was also applied to growing crops. It was applied to rearing children in about 1744 (though not everywhere–apparently American Southerners used it to speak of breeding slaves, and Northerners wouldn’t use it of children at all, only of crops.) And finally, in the 1820s, it became a phrase used in playing cards.

Word of the Week – Biscuit

by Roseanna White | Jan 12, 2015 | Word of the Week

Last week, I made some truly beautiful southern-style biscuits (click the photo for the recipe). And oh, how delicious they were!! Of course, this being my family, the mere bread itself wasn’t the only thing we worked on. My awesome children also had to ask, “So if they call cookies biscuits in England…then what do they call biscuits?”

I know I have some English followers, so perhaps Elisabeth will chime in (hi, Elisabeth! LOL), but from my research, here’s what I found. As I stood there with flour on my shirt, the table still a mess, and my lovely white rounds rising in the oven. 😉

The current spelling of biscuit is from the 19th century–earlier it was bisket (16th century) or besquite (14th century). It comes from the Old French besquit, a word from the 12th century that literally meant “twice cooked.” The idea of a baked good actually came about in the French because it was so close a cognate with the Italian biscotto, which meant “(bread) twice baked.”

The American biscuit is first recorded in about 1818. Our idea of calling the baked sweet cookie was taken from the Dutch koekje, which means “little cake.” (You will in fact find many colonial recipes for things like “little sugar cakes”…which are just sugar cookies.)

But to answer my kids’ original question, I had to keep looking. What do they call our biscuits?? Well, there are scones…but scones are generally sweet, not the type of thing to dip in soup. Rolls are yeasty, as are buns.

So we eventually found this answer: the American biscuit just exist elsewhere, LOL, so there’s no name for it. There we go. 😉 And now I’m hungry!

Be sure to stop by tomorrow for links to a cover reveal for another of my designs!!

Word of the Week – Brat

by Roseanna White | Jan 5, 2015 | Word of the Week

Here we are! A new year, and back on schedule for blogging. =) I had a lovely holiday, and I hope you all did too!

So today, back to a word I’d looked up for the last section of The Outcast Duchess. I use it because it rhymes with a character’s name, but I had to make sure it would have been used like that, after all. 😉

Brat. The word dates back to about 1500 as slang for a beggar child. It’s taken directly from the word for a cloak or ragged garment–Old English taken from the Celtic. The etymology sites tell me that the modern meaning came from a notion of the word being applied to a child’s apron, but I don’t think I quite get that leap, LOL. But the evolution from “beggar’s child” to “spoiled, contemptuous child” doesn’t seem as long as it may at first glance. Insults often stretch over the years, after all.

I hope everyone’s off to a wonderful (non bratty) 2015! On the blog, I’ll have some cover design posts coming up this month and should have the first peek at the cover for The Lost Heiress soon too (not that I’m designing that one)! I’ll also be sharing a bit about my St. Nicholas story, entitled Giver of Wonders, as I write it in the next month or two and get it ready for a late-fall release. It’s the Visibullis family again, just a few generations down and set in a town in what is present-day Turkey, though was Greek at the time.

In the meantime, back to the homeschool grind today (speaking of the possibility of bratty behavior…LOL). Have a great week!