by Roseanna White | Nov 3, 2014 | Word of the Week
This is one I’ve wondered about for years but never paused to look up. Behave. As a kid, I would often joke that I was “being have.” And I would always wonder what, exactly, “have” was, LOL. Well, I recently said something similar to my kids and decided to look it up.
As it happens, it isn’t some weird word spelled h-a-v-e but that rhymes with “knave.” It’s actually just plain ol’ have. Like, has, have, had type of have. So where in the world did this behave word come from??
Apparently be + have was created as a sort of word that means “to have oneself in control.” To bear yourself a certain way. It dates from the early 1400s and evolved from Old English behabban, with meant “to constrain.” That sense of controlling something carried through.
So there we have it. If you’re behaving, you aren’t being something called have that has some ancient meaning of goodness. 😉 You’re being in control of yourself.
by Roseanna White | Oct 27, 2014 | Word of the Week
Hard to believe I’ve never looked this one up before, eh? LOL
My daughter has asked me a few times where the word novel comes from. I had some inkling, knowing my roots and the fact that novel can mean both “something new” and the fiction stories I so adore. But this morning I thought I’d flesh it out a bit.
Novel is from the Old French which is turn from Latin novellus, meaning “new, young, recent.” It’s been in English since the 15th century as an adjective (“what a novel idea!”), but was seldom used until the 1600s.
As a noun meaning a “fictitious narrative,” it dates to the 1560s, and following the same root. A novella was originally “a new story” and from there shifted to exclude the “new” aspect. Originally, it was used for short stories included in a collection–like one of Chaucer’s tales, for instance. Then came to be used for longer works by about 1630. Prior to that, such works were called romances.
Novelist dates from 1728, and novelize, which originally meant “to make new,” first appeared as such in the 1640s, morphing into “to be made into a novel” round about 1828.
by Roseanna White | Oct 20, 2014 | Word of the Week
Today’s word comes to us by me literally clicking on a random letter at www.EtymOnline.com and then a random page within said letter and scrolling down until something caught my eye. 😉 The lucky word was perk.
The first meaning of perk in English came from Old North French and meant “to make oneself trim or sharp.” From the late 1300s, this word was inspired by preening birds–the French word it’s taken from means “perch.”
By the 1520s, it had expanded to mean “to raise oneself briskly.” Interestingly, the term perk up didn’t follow for another 140 years (language changed so much more slowly back then!)
The verb that we use for how we make our coffee is actually a shortened, altered form of percolate, which is completely unrelated, and came around in 1934.
The noun form, as in “a highlight or bonus” is from 1869, another shortened, altered form–this time of perquisite, a mid-15th century word from Latin that means “profit, thing gained.” Yeah, I had no clue about that one!
by Roseanna White | Oct 13, 2014 | Word of the Week
We’ve all heard of the stars of the Silver Screen…but last week I found myself wondering about the term. Where did it come from? When did it come from? Obviously after movies came about, but when?
A simple answer to find. =) Silver screen was originally in reference to the screens themselves in movie projection houses. They were painted silver to better reflect the light from the projectors. Makes sense, eh? The term is from 1921. And by 1924, it had broadened to mean movies in general.
Movie itself dates from 1912, a shortened form of moving picture, which in turn dates from 1896. Keeping in mind that those first moving pictures were silent, the advent of sound resulted in talkies in 1913 (from talking picture, 1908).
So…seen any good ones lately? 😉
by Roseanna White | Oct 7, 2014 | Word of the Week
Good grief, I’ve been forgetting to blog left and right! Let’s hope it’s just that my last few weeks have been crazy, and now my brain will settle back into normal patterns. 😉 We can hope…
In my last pass of the fantabulous Veiled at Midnight, I came across a character saying something about their gene pool. So naturally, I paused to look it up. This is a historical, but a post-WWII one, so I knew it was probably close.
And indeed, it was very close.
Gene is from the German
gen, a word coined in 1905 by Danish scientist Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen. He took it from the Greek
genea, meaning “generation; race.” They had earlier been called
pangenes. So the word
gene definitely would have been around by 1947.
Gene pool, however, didn’t make its debut until 1950. Pretty close, but I was gonna guess that the backwater of India wouldn’t have that one yet, so I made a quick substitution. 😉
Now back to work I go on getting Veiled at Midnight ready to go live! Some unforeseen events delayed this release, but we’re finally ready to get it up and out there! Yay!
by Roseanna White | Sep 29, 2014 | Word of the Week
As I’m sitting here blurry-eyed and sore-throated (sure, that’s a word) after my trip to the ACFW Conference, I seriously considered skipping my Word of the Week post and doing a recap of the conference.
Then, of course, my brain went, “Recap…hmm. I don’t think I’ve ever looked that up…” So I did.
Recap is a shortened form of recapitulate, dating from 1920. Recapitulate, in turn, is a back-formation of recapitulation from 1560. So, of course, I have to look up recapitulation. It comes from Old French and arrived in English in the 14th century so is o-l-d OLD! It has a very literal meaning of “go over the main points of a thing again; restate by heads or chapters.”
Then of course I had to wonder at why capitulation and recapitulation have rather different meanings, despite just adding that “re.” It’s because capitulation originally meant “an agreement.” As in, one drawn up in heads or chapters. It wasn’t until the mid-17th century that the meaning narrowed to “terms of surrender.”
As for my recap…I’ll do that my other blogging days this week. 😉 When, hopefully, my throat is no longer sore and my eyes no longer blurry. 😉
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.