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. 😉
by Roseanna White | Sep 22, 2014 | Word of the Week
So, my husband made what I deem an incredible etymology discovery this weekend. That isle and island are completely unrelated words, from different roots.
Color me baffled.
The world island was originally spelled yland, and appeared in 1590…to replace the Old English igland. This spelling is taken from ieg, a word influenced by Proto-Germanic, which means “thing on the water” LOL.
The spelling changed from yland to island in 1590, however, because of the word isle.
Isle is from the French isle, which in turn traces its roots to the Latin insula. So, the same meaning, but one Latin root and one German, and they sounded the same…hence, I suppose, why ye Older English folk decided to spell them the same too. Thereby confusing the following generations into thinking them indelibly related. 😉
by Roseanna White | Sep 15, 2014 | Word of the Week
We all know what level means, right? It’s to be even, going neither up nor down. It’s the state of being so, like the levels of a house. It’s the tool that guarantees it. And all the idioms containing it arise from those. Sure.
But I was quite surprised to learn that the tool is the chronologically first meaning! The English word for such a tool dates from the mid-1300s, taken from the French livel, which comes in turn from the Latin libella — “scale, balance, unit of weight.” The meaning of “horizontally” followed in about 1400, and the line indicated by such a measure in 1530. The phrase on the level originally didn’t mean “honest and fair”–it meant “moderate, without great ambition.” I had no clue about that one!
The adjective, which I would have assumed to be the oldest definition, didn’t in face come along until the early 15th century. Which, granted, is still stinkin’ old, LOL. But it’s still at least 50 years after the noun, possibly as many as a hundred. The verb followed within another half-century.
Most of the familiar idioms still in use today (level off, level with me…) date from the 1920s. Level off is, not surprisingly, from aviation.
by Roseanna White | Sep 8, 2014 | Word of the Week
In case you haven’t heard yet, Love Finds You in Annapolis, Maryland is on sale until September 15! All digital versions are only $0.99, which is a waaaaaaaay lower price than it’s usual $8+. If you were waiting for the right time to get this one, it’s here. =)
Amazon |
Barnes and Noble |
ChristianBook.com |
iTunes
But as I was promoting the start of the sale while on vacation last week, I realized that I honestly couldn’t even remember parts of this book, LOL. I hadn’t read it since a few months before its release in fall of 2011, so I though, “Hey, I’m on vacation–I’m not working on anything else. Why not?” So I sat down and became reacquainted with Lark and Emerson and Wiley, with Edwinn and Sena and Kate and Alice.
And I also remembered one of my fun word finds. I mentioned it in a Remember When Wednesday post way back in January 2011, but I thought it deserved its own Word of the Week.
It started from wanting to describe a passel of boys on Christmas as rambunctious. The problem being that rambunctious wasn’t created until 1859–and this book is set in 1783. But etymonline.com helpfully pointed out that rambunctious was a later form of rumbunctious… though even that was from 1830. Still no help for me!
But!
Rumbunctious is in turn a variation on a word from 1778–
rumbustious. Etymologists don’t seem entirely certain of the origins on this word, but they suggest that it’s a combination of “rum +
boisterous,
robustious,
bumptious.” And it worked for me! I figured it was close enough to rambunctious that no one would wonder at its meaning, but it also gave a certain something to the tone. =)
Of course, vacation is now over, and it’s back to the grind of school and editing for me and mine. But no fears–I’ve got some beach-inspired musings planned for later this week. 😉
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.