Word of the Week - Roseanna M. White

Word of the Week – Mannequin

by Roseanna White | Apr 9, 2018 | Word of the Week

I looked this one up, wanting to use it in a book set in 1917…only to find a history I knew nothing about!

So mannequin has been around since 1902, but it wasn’t a form used to display clothes. Or rather, not a non-living one. When mannequin first appeared, it was the term used for a fashion model! So those well-formed young ladies who modelled clothes were the mannequins, not the dress-forms used in display windows. That meaning didn’t come along until 1939!

That said, the word did sometimes mean “artificial man” before 1902, apparently especially in the translation of Hugo. This because it’s directly from French.

Interesting to note that we also have the word manikin, from the Dutch for “little man,” which was specifically a jointed figure used by artists. So the little 4-inch tall artist’s model I got my daughter for Christmas is a manikin. The meanings have blended over the years, but they were once two distinct things from two different languages. Who knew?

Word of the Week – Easter

by Roseanna White | Mar 26, 2018 | Holidays, Word of the Week

I’ve done this Word of the Week before, but it was six years ago, so I figured a revisit wouldn’t be begrudged by anyone. 😉

When Anglo-Saxon Christians first started celebrating the Mass of
Christ’s Resurrection, they gave it the name Easter, after Eastre, the
goddess of fertility and spring, whose holiday was likely the vernal
equinox. Have you ever looked up Eastre? She was a magician-goddess, and one of her tricks was to turn a chicken into a rabbit…but it still laid eggs. This, friends, is where we get the Easter Bunny bringing eggs for our baskets. Not exactly something that has to do with why we’re celebrating the day as Christians…

Now, all neighboring languages use a word derived from Latin pasche, or passover, for the holiday. (Which makes a whole lot more sense. I really wish English did this too!)

Easter eggs are attested from 1824 (though let it be noted that eggs are part of the Passover feast too, so there’s legitimate reason to include them in Resurrection celebrations). The Easter Bunny is from 1909. And as a
matter of fact, Easter Island is so named because the discoverer did so
on Easter Monday.

The voice of the empty tomb - Rev. Alan Rudnick

The Empty Tomb – Pinterest

Although Christianity has a long history of “taking over” pagan
holidays and traditions and using them to get new converts to observe
Christianity instead, I have to say I don’t like the English word. I’d
never paused to consider it until my piano teacher back in the day
refused to use the word “Easter” and instead called it “Resurrection
Day.” (Of which I fully approve!) She would even re-title songs for our
recitals when necessary. One year I was playing “Easter Song” on the
organ, and it became “Resurrection Song.”

This is something I try to do in my speech, though I do frequently slip and old habits take over. But I’ve at least trained my kids to correct me. ? So around here, we’ll be celebrating Resurrection Day this Sunday–with a sunrise service, a breakfast at church, and then visiting a local nursing home before the family gathers for a scavenger hunt and dinner.

How do you celebrate the resurrection of our Lord?

Word of the Week – Sabbath and Saturday

by Roseanna White | Mar 19, 2018 | Word of the Week

Today’s Word of the Week is actually just inspired by www.etymonline.com‘s trending word list, LOL. Which is funny, because those who know me well know that my church has actually opted to keep Saturday as the Sabbath rather than Sunday, so you might think I have an agenda with this word…but in fact, it just has an interesting history!

Our word for sabbath does come directly from the Hebrew shabbath (that ‘th’ is pronounced like a ‘t’), which is from the verb shabath, literally meaning “he rested.” In English it was spelled sabbat until the 16th century. Interesting to note that it didn’t just mean “a day of rest” but specifically “Saturday as a day of rest” until the 15th century. Up until then, though the Christian Church had adopted Sunday as their official day of worship long before, they never called it the Sabbath, only the Lord’s Day.

But the part that I actually found interesting here is that the very word for Saturday in many languages comes from sabbath–pretty much all Latin or Greek derived languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, German, Romanian, Hungarian, and many more.

English’s Saturday is of course from Saturn–and was preserved in English and other Norse languages largely because they had no god that would compete with the Roman Saturn, so they felt no objection to it when the Romans brought that name for the day of the week to their regions, LOL. But as Christianity spread in other regions, it was changed in the languages mentioned above away from the name of a Roman god and to something in keeping with biblical principles.

Word of the Week – Revolution

by Roseanna White | Mar 12, 2018 | Word of the Week

This week, something fun is happening, and I’m celebrating by making all the week’s blog posts go to the theme. This week, the book previously known as Love Finds You in Annapolis, Maryland will re-release from WhiteFire as A Heart’s Revolution. On Wednesday, I’ll be going behind the cover design process, and on Thursday–official re-release day–a cool contest will be launching!

Today, we’re taking a look at the word I chose for my new title…a word that’s very much a theme in the book.

Revolution

We’re all familiar with the word, of course. But when it first entered the English language in the 1300s, it had nothing to do with political unrest or change. Rather, it was a word used to describe the revolving of celestial bodies. It’s from Old French revolucion, literally “a course, a revolving.” Which in turn came from the Latin revolvere, “to turn, to roll back.”

William III and Queen Mary II were married for 17 years.

William III & Queen Mary IIPinterest

This sense of turning and rolling let the word by the mid-1400s to take on a generalized meaning of “an instance of great change in affairs.” But around 1600, it had been applied specifically to great changes in political circles and the new meaning of “an overthrow of an established political system” came about–specifically, it was used for the expulsion of the Stuart dynasty under James II in 1688, when the power in England was transferred to William and Mary.

Betsy Ross became famous for sewing together the first American flag in Philadelphia

And of course, eventually we had the American Revolution. Which is the backdrop into which I put Lark Benton and Emerson Fielding, in A Heart’s Revolution. If you haven’t read this early novel of mine yet, I hope you seize the chance!

AMAZON | GOODREADS

Word of the Week – University

by Roseanna White | Mar 5, 2018 | Word of the Week

A couple weeks ago on the radio, I heard someone musing about the shift of the university experience from its origins. He was saying how university came from uni (one) + verity (truth), and how in recent years people have forgotten the one-truth bit and are instead treating it as place where they should question truth rather than learn it.

I found this intriguing, so of course went to look it up. And went, “Um…no, not really.” ?

Uni does indeed mean “one.” Of course. But versity is not from veritas, the Latin word for “truth,” but rather from versus, the Latin word for “turn.” Universe is more the root–meaning “the whole, the aggregate, the collective.”

That is what university is from…the collective of the academic world. Which does still harken unto unity. There’s a reason it’s not called “the diversity.” The purpose of a university isn’t to highlight differences, but to form a community. A oneness.

If you went to college, did you experience this community at your institution? I went to a very small school, and St. John’s (though not a university by the modern definition because there aren’t different “colleges” of study within it) is really all about the community. All about the common experience we have while there, despite our different backgrounds or interests or beliefs. We were about the uni-, not the di-. And I love that about it.

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