by Roseanna White | Nov 24, 2014 | Word of the Week
Okay, there’s a debate about this in my house. I made the observation a few weeks ago, when someone on TV mentioned their “bucket list,” that I was amazed at how quickly this term became a part of our daily vocabulary, when it was pretty much created by the movie.
My husband quickly said, “No it wasn’t. I’ve been hearing that term all my life.”
Naturally, I had to look it up. And what did I find in etymonline.com? Nothing. What did I find in the dictionary? Nothing. So I started doing basic Google searches for the origins of the phrase.
The first article I found on it was written by a journalist who had a similar observation to mine, and his determination was that it indeed hadn’t appeared in print until 2004 at the earliest (the movie is 2006).
I came back with a “Ha! See?” to my hubby, who said, “Yeah, not buying it. He’s just wrong.”
LOL. So I did some more digging. Here’s all I can find.
First of all, it’s pretty much accepted by all that it’s in reference to the term kick the bucket, which has been a phrase meaning “to die” since the 1780s. Moreover, bucket list has been a computer term since the 1960s, meaning a way to sort things (i.e. “that data belongs on the y-bucket list, whereas this data belongs on the x-bucket list). There’s some speculation as to whether a computer programmer was the first to snatch that phrase, decide it reminded them of kick the bucket, and make a leap in meaning. Who knows?
There are quite a few forums discussing this “is it really so recent??” question. Quite a few people who report having heard it growing up in the way in question. Which could very well be true. Historically speaking, words usually appear in spoken vernacular 20ish years before they appear in print. But we can only track things, obviously, by their appearances in print.
The OED (which my husband will say is the source for the English language) will have to be our final ruling on this. And they date the phrase at 2006, which is when it reached the number of appearances in print required to be deemed a sticking phrase in English.
So what do you think? Had you heard this phrase before the movie came out??
by Roseanna White | Nov 17, 2014 | Word of the Week
I found myself looking up the etymology of crime scene the other day. I had a feeling it was a bit modern…and I was right. The original phrase was actually scene of the crime (makes sense) and was coined by Agatha Christie in 1923.
But there were some other interesting facts to learn about scene while I was there. Not surprisingly, the word comes straight from Latin (via Old French), with the expected meaning of “a subdivision of a play.” What I didn’t realize was that is shares a root with shine–the original Latin and Greek words carried a notion of the physical stage or booth that actors used too, and hence were similar to shade and Shine.
The “part of a play” meaning existed in English from the 1530s…by the 1540s it could be used for the physical apparatus of a stage…and by the 1590s, it had taken on “the place in with a literary work occurs” and therefore also a general setting or place where anything occurs, not just literary work.
You could go “behind the scenes” of something by the 1660s. And by 1761, people could “make a scene” with their stormy outbursts.
Not that I would ever do such a thing… 😉
Have a lovely week!
by Roseanna White | Nov 10, 2014 | Word of the Week
When words are this close in spelling, I always find myself wondering if they’re related. And, yeah, occasionally get the spellings confused too. 😉 This morning I was rereading what I wrote over the weekend and saw a time where I was using the verb, demur, but put the E on the end. Which is what sent me to dictionary.com.
The verb demur dates from the 1200s and originally meant “to linger, to tarry.” Its roots came from the Latin demorari, through the Old French demorer, which meant the same thing. Okay…
Demure, on the other hand, is from the French meur, which means “fully grown, ripe” and hence “mature, grave.” Where, then, did the de- come from? Well now, that’s a good question, and etymologists aren’t quite sure. Though they suspect (another case of Isle and Island) that the de- may have been borrowed from demuré, which is the past participle of that Old French demorer. Another case of “they sound the same, so let’s spell them the same”?? Could be!
On a completely unrelated note, it’s release week for me!! Tomorrow I’ll post a blog with all my upcoming blog tour stops and a few highlights and requests. =)
photo credit: Alexander Rentsch via photopin cc
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!
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.