by Roseanna White | Feb 26, 2018 | Word of the Week
Yet another word I just never bothered to look up…but once I did, I was a bit surprised!
Did you know that family didn’t mean “parents with their children” until 1660, though it was an English word since the early 1400s??? I sure didn’t!
So what did it mean before? “Servants of a household.” Well, huh! Interesting. From there, it shifted every so slightly into, “all the members of a household; the estate, the property; the household, including relatives and servants.” Keeping in mind this would have been during a time when relatives far and wide would often come to live under a single roof.
Family comes from the Latin famulus, which meant “a slave or servant.” We’re not sure where that word comes from in Latin, but we do know it was never used for our modern definition of “family.” That was reserved for domus. (Think: domestic.) This obviously shares a root with familiar, which comes about because those servants were party to one’s private affairs.
So then, from that broad sense of “one’s entire household, including servants,” the definition eventually narrowed again to be just “parents with their children.”
As an adjective,
family has been in use since about 1600. “In a family way” (pregnant) is from 1796. But one I found interesting is that
family man as we know it now is from 1856, but earlier it was used to mean a thief! (Because of the fraternity of thieves. Think mafia family type of thing).
This is really just a snapshot of the word’s evolution and current meanings, but an interesting one, for sure!
by Roseanna White | Feb 19, 2018 | Word of the Week
This special request comes from Bev Duell-Moore. =) And hilariously, as soon she asked me to feature it, I did a quick search…which came in mighty handy just a few days later, when I needed a scrapbook in the historical line of my current story! So thanks, Bev. LOL
There isn’t a whole lot of description on this word’s history. It’s quite simply scrap + book. But you might not realize how old this concept is! Originally written with a hyphen, scrap-book (as a noun) dates all the way back to the 1820s. But even then, it was just a new word for a very old concept.
As early as the 1400s, people were making scrapbooks…and calling them commonplace books. These were books where they compiled recipes, quotations, letters, patterns, poems…any little thing they wanted to keep in a safe place for easy reference.
 |
Vintage scrapbook (late 19th century) currently in
The Women’s Museum in Dallas, TX – photo via Wikipedia |
As the years wore on, this idea went in new directions. People would create scrapbooks to memorialize certain periods of their life, especially college. It became a popular alternative to journaling, because it included more than words, even in the age before photographs became easy to acquire and include.
So when did scrapbooking move from this centuries-old hobby to what it is today? That move is credited to Marielen Wadley Christensen who, in the 1980s, began creating family albums that were very stylized and put in protective sheets of plastic. In 1981 she published a how-to book on doing this, and the modern scrapbook was born. Today, of course, you can go into any craft or art store and find gorgeous supplies for this purpose.
 |
Student’s scrapbook, circa 1906, from Smith College.
Photo via Wikipedia |
Do you do much/any scrapbooking? I’ve never been bitten by that particular bug, but I do appreciate looking at the beautiful books my sister has created!
by Roseanna White | Feb 12, 2018 | Word of the Week
I didn’t give it too much thought when this request came in, but as soon as I sat down today and decided to feature it, I realized I knew where this word came from without even having to look it up. Though I still looked it up, just to be sure, LOL.
The word came to English in 1791 as “a person’s signature.” It was borrowed from the French, which was taken from the Latin, which was borrowed directly from the Greek. There are two parts of this word: auto, which means “self” in Greek, and graph, from the Greek grapho, which means “to write.” Originally it was used in Greek to mean “written by one’s own hand.” This was also the first meaning to come into English, in 1640–it meant a manuscript one wrote oneself.
As far as the verb form goes, by the early 1800s, it had evolved out the noun to mean that one wrote something in one’s own hand. “To sign one’s name” didn’t come about until 1837! Pretty late, eh? And yet the roots of the word are about as old as they can get.
And given that I’ve been making my kids learn Greek for the last several years and grapho was one of the first verbs we learned, I really should have known that one from the start, LOL.
by Roseanna White | Feb 5, 2018 | Word of the Week
This week’s Word is another special request from Lynne F.
~ Remember that any time you have one you’d like me to look up, just let me know! ~
Nun dates back to the very beginnings of English, all the way to the days of Old English, when it was spelled nunne. Its meanings were all within a similar refrain (a woman devoted to a religious life), but I was a bit surprised to realize that it was used both for those in the church and for pagan priestesses.
Interestingly, it derived from the Latin nonna, which is a word given by children to elderly people (and is still the Italian word for “grandmother”). Though the sources I found didn’t explain why this was also attached to someone of the religious order, I’m guessing it’s because of the respect one would give such a person, similar to what would give one’s elders/grandparents.
It’s also interesting to note that languages from around the globe have a word similar to
nonna for “grandmother” or “aunt” (a nurturing female other than one’s mother, basically) – there’s
nona in Sanskrit,
nana in Persian,
nanna in Greek,
nena in Serbo-Croatian
, the aforementioned Italian
nonna, and
nain in Welsh.
So to ask a question that diverges a bit from the word itself but echoes what it derives from…what do you call your grandmother?
by Roseanna White | Jan 29, 2018 | Word of the Week
Today’s Word of the Week is a special request from Lynne F. (and as a reminder, if ever you have a word you’d like me to look into, please feel free to let me know and I’ll add it to my list!).
Nurse is rather interesting, in that the noun and verb forms evolved a bit differently. The oldest form of this word is nurrice, which dates from the 1100s, meaning a “wet-nurse or foster mother to a young child.” This word was borrowed directly from the French, which came in turn from the Latin nutricia (wet nurse) which in turn is a variation of the Latin word for “suckle.” Look familiar? This is the same root from which we get nourish and nutrician.
The extended meaning of “one who cares for a sick person” evolved rather naturally from the idea of “one who cares for a child,” but it took quite a long while to do so! That noun didn’t enter English until 1580. And the verb form, “to care for the sick” is from 1736! (I had no idea that was so late!!)
As for the verb meaning “to suckle an infant,” that’s surprisingly late to the game as well, though not as much as the one mentioned above. This dates from the 1530s and is a Middle English alteration of a similar word, nurshen, which is taken from the same root but had previously been pronounced differently.
So there we have it. Our modern member of the medical community derives its name from women caring for children. =)
As an adjective, family has been in use since about 1600. “In a family way” (pregnant) is from 1796. But one I found interesting is that family man as we know it now is from 1856, but earlier it was used to mean a thief! (Because of the fraternity of thieves. Think mafia family type of thing). 
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.