Word of the Week

Word history and etymology

Word of the Week – King
Since we just featured queen, it seemed appropriate to look next at king...even though the history of this word, which traces its roots back to prehistory (seriously!), is less straightforward because of that long history. What we know is that our current English...
Word of the Week – Queen
Last week we explored the word wife, but it's so closely linked to queen that I had to look into this word next! Queen traces its roots back to the original Indo-European word gwen, which means...you guessed it..."woman." Just like wife. In ancient Germanic languages,...
Word of the Week – Wife
Since last week we looked at the origins of husband, obviously this week we need to look at where the word wife comes from! Wife, originally spelled wif  or wyf, is from Old English and meant "woman." By late Old English it had carried the idea of "married woman," but...
Word of the Week – Husband
The word husband has been in English since, well, the days of Old English. That's not exactly surprising. But even in words this old and common, there's still something to be learned when we look at the roots! Our modern English word comes from the Old English...

Have you ever wondered when certain words started to be used in certain ways? Or how they even came about? If they’re related to other, similar-sounding words?

I wonder these things all the time. And so, for years I’ve been gathering interesting words together, looking at the etymology, and posting them in fun, bite-sized posts called Word of the Week. Here you’ll find everything from which definition of a word pre-dates another, to how certain holiday words came about, to what the original meaning was of something we use a lot today but in a very different way. And of course, the surprising words that we think are new but in fact are pretty ancient, like “wow”!

Word of the Week – Dearover and Dearovim

Word of the Week – Dearover and Dearovim

Whenever I write a book set in a region with a dialect (or even a language) all its own, I love to look up endearments and slang unique to them. I first looked up Cornish words when I wrote A Name Unknown, set near Land's End in Cornwall. Well, I got to dust off that...

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Word of the Week – Incomer

Word of the Week – Incomer

In the weeks surrounding the release of The Nature of a Lady, I thought it would be fun to take a look at some words that appear in the book. We're going to start by looking at a few of the Cornish slang words that make an appearance. =) And given that my heroine is a...

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Word of the Week – Gloomy

Word of the Week – Gloomy

Words that Shakespeare Coined Did you know that gloom was originally a verb? Yeah, neither did I. 😉 It's apparently a Scottish word that originally meant "to look sullen or displeased," dating from the 14th century. Well, in the late 1500s, Shakespeare got ahold of...

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Word of the Week – Elbow

Word of the Week – Elbow

Words that Shakespeare Coined Elbow. No, not the noun. 😉 That one has obviously been around for a while...from around 1200, as a matter of fact, in Old English. El is the length of the forearm, and bow comes from boga, which means "arch." Shakespeare, however, was...

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Word of the Week – Dauntless

Word of the Week – Dauntless

Words that Shakespeare Coined Dauntless. To understand the evolution of this word, we actually have to begin with daunt. This verb dates to the 14th century, taken from French (which is taken from Latin), meaning "to subdue or tame." It was a word generally used for...

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Word of the Week – Cold-hearted

Word of the Week – Cold-hearted

This week begins a fun series on words that Shakespeare coined! The words themselves may or may not have a lot of interesting etymology otherwise...but they're making this list simply because they were introduced to us by the Bard. 😉 Cold-hearted is one such word,...

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Word of the Week – Scavenge and Scavenger

Word of the Week – Scavenge and Scavenger

Scavenge and scavenger are another example of words whose progression surprised me. Back-formations do that to me a lot. 😉 I guess I always assumed the verb came first--first there was scavenging and then the one who did it became known as a scavenger. Nope. And in...

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Word of the Week – Zany

Word of the Week – Zany

Zany. We probably all think of it as "comic, acting like a buffoon to entertain others." But did you know that it was actually originally a person (so a noun) in a comedy? Yep! A zany has been a comic performer since the 1580s. But you may be wondering where the word...

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Word of the Week – Doldrums

Word of the Week – Doldrums

Doldrums. Interestingly, this is a plural word that has no singular...anymore. Once upon a time, there was indeed a singular version, and a doldrum was a "dull person." (Dol is a variation of dull.) Over time, however, that meaning disappeared, and was replaced...

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Word of the Week – Baguette

Word of the Week – Baguette

This one comes to you courtesy of fellow author and friend Rhonda Ortiz, who happened to mention in an email that baguette is a relatively new word. I'd never stopped to ponder when the famous French loaf may have come to be--in my mind, as long as there's been Paris,...

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Word of the Week – Cardinal

Word of the Week – Cardinal

The history of the word cardinal in English is rather interesting. It comes from the Latin cardinalis, meaning "chief, principal." But it first came over to English not as an adjective with that meaning, but as the noun--as in, the order in the Church. Since the 12th...

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Word of the Week – Problematic

Word of the Week – Problematic

Did you know that the most-used definition of problematic--namely, "constituting or causing difficulty"--only dates from around the 1960s?? I didn't! But as it turns out, that use is directly taken from a word coined for use in sociology. So what, you may ask, did the...

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Word of the Week – Martial

Word of the Week – Martial

Unlike mercurial of last week, martial is a word I use plenty--I imagine we all do. And I even knew where this one came from, LOL. Martial means "warlike; pertaining to war" and for good reason--it comes from the Roman god Mars, the god of war. What I didn't realize...

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Word of the Week – Mercurial

Word of the Week – Mercurial

Ready for the next installment of our "adjectives from mythology" series? Today we're taking a look at a word I honestly don't use very often. In fact, if one of my kids were to ask, "What does mercurial mean?" I probably would have given them a look and said, "Why...

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Word of the Week – Jovial

Word of the Week – Jovial

For the next couple weeks, I'm going to do a little mini-series on some adjectives we have that are based on the names of ancient mythological gods. As I was reading through a list of some of these, I found it so fascinating! So we'll start off with Zeus. Now, I know...

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Word of the Year – Intentional

Word of the Year – Intentional

Looking for insight into how to choose an intentional Word of the Year?Check out that post here.As 2020 wound to a close, my best friend and I were talking about a Word for the year to come. I mentioned how I usually come to mine...namely, I pray about it and wait for...

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Holiday History ~ The Twelve Days of Christmas

Holiday History ~ The Twelve Days of Christmas

These days, all the hype is leading up to Christmas. So much so that on December 26, it feels kinda like a letdown, right? The all-Christmas-music-all-the-time radio stations are back to normal programming. Some people start taking down decorations. By the time New...

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Holiday History ~ Boxing Day

Holiday History ~ Boxing Day

So...what's Boxing Day? Though our friends across the pond don't even have to ask, we Americans may scratch our heads a bit at this one. We know that it is, just not necessarily what it is. From reading, I knew that Boxing Day was the day after Christmas, which,...

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Holiday History ~ Noel

Holiday History ~ Noel

When I was asking you all for suggestions of holiday words or traditions you'd like to learn more about, someone suggested "Noel." I knew this was the French word for Christmas, but I admit that's where my knowledge ended, so it was fun to learn more! Noel does indeed...

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Holiday History ~ Merry Vs. Happy

Holiday History ~ Merry Vs. Happy

Have you ever wondered why in America we say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Christmas," when "happy" is the wish of choice for other holidays? Experts don't completely agree on the why of this, but they have some good ideas. First of all, the history. We can date...

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Word of the Week – Cornucopia

Word of the Week – Cornucopia

We probably all know that cornucopia literally means "horn of plenty," from the Latin.  And it's been a traditional symbol of Thanksgiving and a fruitful harvest since...well...forever. But do you know the actual history of it? I didn't! The story of the cornucopia...

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Word of the Week – Monster

Word of the Week – Monster

A couple weeks ago as Halloween stuff was everywhere, my family was talking one night about the word monster and where it might have come from. We were musing that since it ends in -ster, and -ster usually indicates "someone who does a particular task" (like spinster...

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Word of the Week – Story

Word of the Week – Story

I'm sure we've all noticed that history and story look mighty similar. Well, for good reason--they're both taken directly from the same French word, estoire or estorie,which came in turn from Latin and Greek. The literal meaning is "a chronicle of events," and has...

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Word of the Week – Caffeine

Word of the Week – Caffeine

Last week, my son and I were (for some reason I can't recall) talking about caffeine, and how it occurs naturally in coffee. Which led him to ask, "Is that where the word caffeine comes from? From coffee?" Insert me going, "Huh. You know, I bet it does..." and pulling...

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Word of the Week – Disgruntled + Gruntle

Word of the Week – Disgruntled + Gruntle

I saw a Facebook post a couple weeks ago in which someone realized disgruntled was the opposite of gruntled--a word they'd never heard before, but which they were "very gruntled to learn about." I got a good laugh out of it...so naturally, had to look it up. Though in...

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Word of the Week – Greg (That’s Right, Greg)

Word of the Week – Greg (That’s Right, Greg)

Did you know that greg is Latin for "flock or herd"? Yeah, neither did I. 😉 But that then makes sense when we look at some of the words that have greg as their root: Congregate - to come together as a groupSegregate - to separate from a group And then the one that...

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Word of the Week – The Dickens

Word of the Week – The Dickens

A phrase from the archives today...Original post published 2/20/2017 Another special request today, though there isn't quite as much information on it as there was on last week's . . . The question was where the expression "the dickens" comes from. Well, the answer's...

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Word of the Week – Decimate

Word of the Week – Decimate

So let's look at the word decimate. We all know what it means--"to utterly destroy." Right? Well, as it turns out, yes--but. There's always a "but," right? LOL. Decimate actually has a much more precise meaning that I was completely unaware of. If we look at the root...

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Word of the Week – Myriad and Million

Word of the Week – Myriad and Million

When we think about  numbers, we don't often consider that once upon a time, they didn't go very high. But in fact, in ancient days, there weren't words for anything greater than "ten thousand." In the Ancient Greek and Roman eras, this was the largest number known,...

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Mock Latin Words 5

Mock Latin Words 5

I hope you've enjoyed the Mock Latin series! This is my final installment, and only one is mock Latin. The other two are just "mock" in general, but they were fun, so I thought I'd include them. 😉 Asquatulate - This is another word meant to poke fun at the person...

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Mock Latin Words 4

Mock Latin Words 4

Nearly through our Mock Latin series! I just have one more week of them after this one. 😉 Today we begin with a word I have used all the time, never realizing it was one of these "fake" constructions! Discombobulate - So obviously this is a fun word, which is why I...

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Mock Latin Words 3

Mock Latin Words 3

Time for the third installment of the Mock Latin series! Omnium gatherum ~ So technically, this one is only partly "mock." 😉 Omnium is indeed a Latin word for "of all things." Kind of like miscellaneous. In the 1520s (this one is OLD!), people came up with the...

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Mock Latin Words 2

Mock Latin Words 2

Today we're continuing our Mock Latin series with a few more totally fabricated, totally joke words that make me smile. =) Cruciverbalist - Our first word is actually quite new, dating from 1977. If you look at the parts of the word, we have the roots crux which means...

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Mock Latin Words 1

Mock Latin Words 1

After looking at circumbendibus last week, I decided it would be fun to do a series on Mock Latin words ~ words deliberately made up to sound like Latin even though they're not. Since they're completely fake, LOL, the etymology on these isn't very long, so I'm going...

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Word of the Week – Circumbendibus

Word of the Week – Circumbendibus

Circumbendibus. How fun is that word? You can almost guess the meaning just by listening to it, can't you? This is another selection from that Colonial-era word list I saw, and I absolutely LOVE this one. Circumbendibus simply means "a roundabout way or process." Like...

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Word of the Week – Jollification

Word of the Week – Jollification

It's my birthday week, so I thought it would a fun time to look at this old-fashioned word, popular in the Colonial American era. =) Jollification is literally "making merry," from jolly + -ication ("to make") and dates from the 1760s. Though the adjective "jolly" had...

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Word of the Week – Savvy

Word of the Week – Savvy

I recently saw a list of fun Colonial-era words that we should totally bring back into use.  One of them was savvy, which anyone who watched Pirates of the Caribbean can hear in Jack Sparrow's voice. Well, just for the record, Jack was totally using it appropriately....

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Word of the Week – Grand

Word of the Week – Grand

A couple weeks ago, my husband said something about something costing "Ten Gs" and my mother-in-law said, "Where does that come from, anyway?" Cue the chime of "Word of the week!" from my kids, LOL. So obviously we knew that "G" was just short for grand. But why and...

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Word of the Week – Cushy

Word of the Week – Cushy

A couple weeks ago a friend sent me a list of "18 English Words That Are Actually Hindi," and while quite a few of them I knew that about, others really surprised me. One of those was cushy. I knew that cushy meant "soft" and so I think I always imagined it came from...

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Word of the Week – Hot Dog

Word of the Week – Hot Dog

(A revisit from 2012) Is summer hot dog season in your family? This year we've started grilling out on our campfire ring every Sunday with my mother-in-law, and hot dogs are pretty much always on the menu. But have you ever wondered where they got their name? Well, a...

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Word of the Week – Quantum

Word of the Week – Quantum

I'm currently reading Siri Mitchell's State of Lies for my book club (SO GOOD!!!!), in which the heroine is a quantum physicist. (Which her 6-yr-old son calls a fizziest, which made me giggle.) I've been thoroughly enjoying all the science jokes on her T-shirts, and...

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Word of the Week – Fence

Word of the Week – Fence

Originally posted in May 2015 So, duh moment. Did you know that the noun fence--like, you know, the thing around your yard--is from defense? Yeah. Duh. I'd never paused to consider that, perhaps because the spelling has ended up different, but there you go! It has...

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Word of the Week – Field Trip

Word of the Week – Field Trip

This is another revisit...and since we were all sheltering at home for the last months of the school year, one that we're probably all thinking about with longing. 😉 Coming at you originally from May of 2015, when Rowyn was only 7 and Xoe was 9, which of course gave...

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Word of the Week – Grapevine

Word of the Week – Grapevine

Originally published June 2015 We've all heard it through the grapevine (and some of us might break into song at the mere mention...), but do you know where the saying comes from? I didn't--but I learned recently so thought I'd share. =) Grapevine, meaning "a rumor"...

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Word of the Week – Salary and Salt

Word of the Week – Salary and Salt

Leave it to my daughter to lean over in the middle of church and whisper, "Word of the week!" during the sermon--which is exactly what happened when my dad shared this fun little tidbit. ;-)Did you know that salary is from the same root as salt? Salary has meant...

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Word of the Week – Sit, Twiddle, and Twirl

Word of the Week – Sit, Twiddle, and Twirl

Originally published on 9/3/2012 Today I'm going to examine the origin of a particular phrase rather than a particular word. 😉 Back in the day when I originally examined this, as I was working on Whispers from the Shadows, my hero was exclaiming something about how it...

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Word of the Week – Nauseous

Word of the Week – Nauseous

Originally published 10/15/2012 Okay, y'all, I originally posted this seven and a half years ago, and my call for actual evidence to support the claim below netted me nothing but others who were curious, LOL. So I'm trying again--because this claim has since even...

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Word of the Week – Mean

Word of the Week – Mean

Originally posted 8/20/12   Mean is one of those words that I knew well would have been around forever, but I looked it up to see about some of the particular uses. And as usual, found a few surprises. =) As a verb, mean has meant "intend, have in mind" even back...

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Word of the Week – Zone

Word of the Week – Zone

Originally posted on 8/13/12 Once upon a time, I was looking up "war zone," and in so doing came across some interesting tidbits on zone. =) The noun dates to the late fourteenth century, coming directly from the Latin zona, which means "a geographical belt, celestial...

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Word of the Week – Mayday

Word of the Week – Mayday

This is a very appropriate revisit from 2012, I thought since we're only a few days away from May 1. As in, May Day. Ha...ha...ha...😉 Anyway! Mayday, according to "The Wireless Age" from June 1923, is an aviator distress call. It was agreed that just saying the...

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