Category Archives: Etymology

Revenant

Mild spoilers ahead: proceed with caution if you haven’t seen the movie and you’ve been living under a rock (or a bear) over the last few weeks …

Most of us know by now that Leonardo DiCaprio does a very good job of being one (he’s already won a Golden Globe and might well take home an Oscar for it), but how many people still aren’t quite sure — or haven’t yet got around to Googling it — what exactly revenant means? Even Microsoft Word puts a squiggly red line under it, not quite recognizing the noun as part of our standard English usage. Let’s do a quick pop quiz: do you think it means a) someone waking up from a dream? b) someone coming back after a long absence? c) someone returning from the dead?, or d) someone seeking revenge?

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Some of the beautiful words and phrases of Islam

Young Palestinian Muslim woman shopping in the public Arab Market in the Old City of Jerusalem. Peter Hagyo-Kovacs/Wiki Commons

Much has been written recently (including posts on this blog) about the name ISIS, and how unfortunate it is that the girl’s name — that of the Egyptian goddess of children and motherhood — has been hijacked by the world’s newest and most frightening embodiment of organized terror. This linguistic tainting is a small reflection of how the reputation and understanding of a historical, peaceful global religion has been tarnished by the horrific deeds of a small extremist group of its believers. In this sad climate of deepening and shameful prejudice against Islam, Glossophilia is honoring its beauty by taking a glimpse at some of its poetic language. Continue reading →

Conkers

*”Aesculus hippocastanum fruit” by Solipsist / Wiki Commons

I recently spent my first fall back in Blighty after 18 years, and I’d forgotten how distinctive the English autumn feels. For me it will always be the season of conkers, with their shiny polished-wood skins glistening in the piles of fallen leaves and their smooth round forms nestling snugly in the palms of little hands. But why are they called conkers? Continue reading →

Were Stoics stoical?

“She endured cancer in ‘A Wedding invitation,’ as well as amnesia and a brain tumor in ‘The Stolen Years,’ with stoical ebullience.” So reported Variety in a recent film review, using a commonly used and well-understood word that the OED defines as ‘enduring pain and hardship without showing one’s feelings or complaining.” There’s little ambiguity in stoicism‘s sense of calm, grim endurance. But does this stiff-upper-lip adjective retain any of the meaning of its origins — in an Ancient Greek school of thought born in the shade of an Athens portico? Continue reading →

The definition and etymology of Trump

From the Oxford English Dictionary:
Trump: vt. slang break wind audibly

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
Trump (v.): “fabricate, devise,” 1690s, from trump “deceive, cheat” (1510s), from Middle English trumpen (late 14c.), from Old French tromper “to deceive,” of uncertain origin. Apparently from se tromper de “to mock,” from Old French tromper “to blow a trumpet.” Brachet explains this as “to play the horn, alluding to quacks and mountebanks, who attracted the public by blowing a horn, and then cheated them into buying ….” The Hindley Old French dictionary has baillier la trompe “blow the trumpet” as “act the fool,” and Donkin connects it rather to trombe “waterspout,” on the notion of turning (someone) around. … Trumped up “false, concocted” first recorded 1728.

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Mad props

Warning: mildly explicit content

“Ayo I got the mad skills that make you wanna flex
I dominate this track so it’s time to have sex
But just chill while I get all in it
Cause I’m about to rip it, who said I couldn’t kick it
Uh, I get shots off just like a shotgun
Stick a fork in your butt, you’re just about done
I pour you MCs just like a lobster
Cause this hip-hopper gets props just like a mobster”

So rapped Da Youngstas in his song “Who’s the Mic Wrecka” — and I guess he should get props for rhyming “just like a lobster” with “just like a mobster”. Mad props, in fact.

According to Oxford Dictionaries, props means “respect or credit due to a person”. But where does it come from? Is it related to theatrical props? Continue reading →

Forget Pharoah: what about the fascinating fascinator?

When American Pharoah won the Triple Crown, a lot of us reached for our dictionaries as well as our superlatives. Yes, yes, we know, we know: his name is spelt wrong (or wrongly?). But that’s another story, and not the only interest Glossophilia has in horse-racing. There’s something else that fascinates us about the races, and that’s what the spectators wear on their heads: the fascinator. Continue reading →

Meta is so meta

“A Film Critic Gets Meta (As Does Ours) In ‘The Film Critic (El Crítico),” ran the headline for a recent piece by NPR’s film critic Bob Mondello.

And he’s not talking about movie reviewers drinking Ethiopian beer on the job; this is all about an X about X … (i.e. a film critic writing about a film critic). As Mondello goes on to say: “A film critic doesn’t often have to review movies about film critics — probably a good thing — but sometimes, as with Hernán Guerschuny’s postmodern rom-com The Film Critic (El crítico), there’s nothing to be done.” Continue reading →

Madding

Far From the Madding Crowd was Thomas Hardy’s fourth novel (written in 1874), but it was his first literary success, and it has been adapted into two notable movies — starring Julie Christie and Carey Mulligan respectively as the farmer heroine Bathsheba Everdene who is being courted by three men in England’s rustic Wessex. But as well as giving us what some people think of as one of the greatest love stories in English literature, Hardy’s novel has left a slightly more esoteric legacy, with its title living on in our language and keeping an otherwise extinct word alive. “Far from the madding crowd” still crops up in colloquial, promotional and sometimes literary prose as a poetic expression that means — when describing a place — “secluded and removed from public notice”, as the Oxford English Dictionary acknowledges with a hat-tip to Hardy’s novel. Continue reading →

Placebo: from funeral-crasher and sycophant to inactive or sham therapy

Watching a TV review of the new off-Broadway musical comedy Placebo (in which “Louise is working on a placebo-controlled study of a new female arousal drug”*), I learned something interesting — not about myself or female arousal drugs, but about the word that gives the show its title. It didn’t always mean a therapy that provides a psychological benefit rather than a physiological effect or a dummy drug used in clinical trials. Apparently the word’s etymology is revealed and discussed in the early part of the new play, so we’ll do the same here (but without the arousal effect) … Continue reading →