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.
|
| 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!!
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.
by Roseanna White | Feb 2, 2015 | Word of the Week
We think of our conscience as part of our spirit or soul…something that operates apart from thought. Our consciences are the little cricket on our shoulder telling us right from wrong. Right? It’s something we feel in our gut and have to learn to listen to.
Well the word conscience is pretty telling–it’s no coincidence that the word science is in it. Science, you see, literally means “knowledge” in Latin. And con means “with.” So conscience literally means “with knowledge.” Common use applied it to that knowledge within oneself, a meaning that moved into Old French and from there to Old English.
So it’s not separate from our intellect–in fact, I would say it’s something that binds our intellect to our spirit, and to our will.
Although hey, if you need a cricket to help you out… 😉
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. 😉
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.