Category Archives: Words, phrases & expressions

Are you 21st-century awesome, or 17th-century awful?

“Are you awesome?” That’s the question that Crunch, the gym chain, is using in its New Year campaign to attract new customers. Presumably we’re in slang-land here, and Crunch is asking if you’re fabulous or fantastic — not whether you’re inspiring awe or terror. (The idea seems to be to invite everyone to join the “club of awesomeness” …)

What if Crunch were asking “are you awful?” That might seem awfully odd to 21st-century English-speakers, for whom awesome is super, outstanding or excellent, whereas awful means just the opposite: nasty, bad or monstrous. But these virtual antonyms didn’t start out that way, and if Crunch had been around at the end of the 16th century it could have used the adjectives interchangeably in its advertising campaign — and would probably have ended up filling its gyms with Gods rather than mortals. At the root of both words is the old English word awe, a noun defined by the OED as “reverential fear or wonder”, and the adjectives in question were formed by adding a suffix — “-some” and “-ful” respectively. These suffixes serve to form adjectives that are full of, characterized by, or able or tending to the noun that they follow: hence beautiful means full of beauty; helpful, tending to help; burdensome, characterized by burden. And so, as logic dictated, both awesome and awful started out meaning the same thing: inspiring awe ….

So how, when and why did these synonyms part company and go their separate ways? The answer lies largely in the evolution of their core word, awe, which in its old English infancy was anchored in the context of God and man’s perception of deity, ie. a feeling of reverence and respect mixed with fear and even terror. Awful emerged at the beginning of the 14th century as the first adjective born of this worshipful state. It wasn’t until the very end of the 16th century that its younger sibling, awesome, made its first appearance, entering the vernacular at around the time that awe was just beginning to move into more secular contexts, inspired by what the OED describes as “what is terribly sublime and majestic in nature, e.g. thunder, a storm at sea”. So awful and awesome were synonymous for a couple of centuries, both describing phenomena — religious, natural or man-made — that inspired a sense of wonder, amazement, or reverence. When Queen Anne visited St. Paul’s Cathedral after it had been destroyed by the great fire of London and rebuilt by its original architect, Sir Christopher Wren, she famously told him that she found the new cathedral “awful, artificial and amusing”. Wren was suitably flattered by the compliment … (Back then, like awful, artificial and amusing also had different meanings.)

As the 18th century wore on, the meanings of awful and awesome began to shift in their emphasis, coming to represent the “ying and yang” respectively of awe in all its nuance and historical complexity. Awful tended increasingly to emphasize the element of fear and dread that religious awe inspired, rather than the wonder more associated with human and natural forces, feats and accomplishments. Awesome began to hijack the good, positive, wondrous qualities that awful eventually shed from its meaning. The OED still defines awesome as “inspiring awe; dreaded”, and gives “marvellous” and “excellent” as its slang definition. The definition of “unpleasant”, “horrible”, or “of poor quality” now assigned to awful is deemed colloquial, and only when the adjective is used poetically does it revert to its original sense of “inspiring awe”.

Never mind the whys and wherefores

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

When Shakespeare’s Juliet utters her anguished words — in possibly one of the most quoted and most misunderstood lines in English literature — she is asking her beloved not where he is (as might be suggested by the word wherefore), but why he is who he is. It is because of the feud between the families into which they were respectively born that their love for each other is beyond the bounds of possibility; why, Juliet asks, did Romeo have to be a Montague? Wherefore is an archaic conjunctive adverb, dating back to Middle English, meaning “why”, “for what reason”, “because of what”. Percy Shelley seemed to like making use of the poetic interrogative, as evidenced in his revolutionary poem A Song to the Men of England, in which he asks repeatedly why the English workers don’t rise up and question their masters and oppressors. Here are the first three stanzas:

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

Wherefore was also used not just to start a question, but also as a synonym of and more formal alternative to the adverb therefore (meaning “as a result”, “on which account”, “for this reason”). “The rain was falling, and wherefore we sought shelter.”

It’s in its third incarnation, as a noun meaning reason or explanation, that wherefore has survived the longest and remains in current usage, in the expression “whys and wherefores”. Curiously, neither of the words in this tautologous phrase generally goes out in public except in the other’s company (either reasons or causes would normally step in for whys or wherefores on its own), and they really only work as nouns in their plural form (rarely would you hear about a single why or wherefore). But there is a notable exception: Gilbert & Sullivan, in their jaunty song from H.M.S. Pinafore, tell us not to question why love is blind to rank, class and station. Wherefore did they choose this singular version of the phrase? Never mind the whys and wherefores …

Never mind the why and wherefore,
Love can level ranks, and therefore,
Though his lordship’s station’s mighty,
Though stupendous be his brain,
Though your tastes are mean and flighty
And your fortune poor and plain.

— Gilbert & Sullivan, HMS Pinafore

Are you sat comfortably?

“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.” Many British readers will be sad to learn the news of the death of Daphne Oxenford, who uttered those famous words every afternoon for a couple of decades in the 50s and 60s as she introduced the BBC radio show Listen With Mother . The Telegraph‘s obituary is here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9781409/Daphne-Oxenford.html

Nowadays, are we sat comfortably?

Google the words “was sat”, and you’ll get a lot of information about the standardized test that American high school kids take to get into college. That’s what s, a, and t mean — in that order — to most Americans: the three-letter word (well, the acronym) just makes them feel a bit sick. (It’s a lot like what most middle-aged Brits now feel when they read or hear the words clunk and click …)

Anyway, back to “was sat”. As my schoolfriend Fleur recently asked me: “How do you and your Glossophilia chums feel about ‘was sat’ as against ‘was sitting’? I notice that it is now creeping past editors into published fiction. Personally – it grates, but is it now in common usage and allowable?”

Well, my gut reaction is the same as Fleur’s: it grates on me. But I’ve been living in America for 15 years, and this is not something you ever hear on these shores (unless you’re chatting with a Brit — especially one from up North — on his hols). Whether in the past, present or future, you are/were/will be sitting or you sit/sat/will sit. But you rarely, if ever, are, were or will be sat. Replacing the present or past progressive (sitting) incorrectly with the past simple or past participle (sat) seems to be a regionalism from the North and West of England whose use has become so frequent and widespread that it’s now a standard British colloquialism. “She was sat in front of the TV when her husband arrived home.” But I think this practice still grates on many English ears.

There is arguably one use of “was sat” that is legitimate: when the verb “to sit” (usually followed by “down”) is used transitively — ie. when someone is sitting something or someone else, and it’s used in the passive past tense. “She sat me down to tell me the bad news” can technically be phrased passively as “I was sat down to be given the bad news.” Even in this transitive, passive form the “was sat” sounds awkward; most writers would probably rephrase the sentence, perhaps reverting to the active use of the verb. And “seat/seated” is preferable to “sit/sat” when the transitive verb is needed: “The waiter seated us next to the window”, hence, “We were seated next to the window”.

In Christopher Edge’s book Twelve Minutes to Midnight, he writes: “She felt herself lowered gently down until she was sat slumped against the wall of the cell.” Is Edge using the transitive passive form of sit here, since the suggestion is that someone else is lowering her into a seated position? In that case, wouldn’t the gentle lowering be part of the seating process and therefore not precede her state of being sat, as suggested by the word until? Or is the colloquialism now passing muster — as Fleur suggests — and escaping the modern editor’s red pen?

Taking the mick, and slagging people off

I think it’s very telling that there’s no real American equivalent for the British saying “to take the piss out of someone”, or its slightly kinder version, “taking the mick (or mickey)”. (Yanks do have “mock” and “make fun of” at their disposal, but neither conveys the same sense of fun and frivolity at the heart of the British expressions.) It strikes me that this is more a reflection of a cultural difference than of any linguistic parting of ways. It’s widely acknowledged that Brits are generally blessed with a profound and developed sense of irony: it’s in their genes, and it pervades the British sense of humor — along with a wicked cynicism — in an almost Jungian way. And another important marker on the British DNA humor strand is that of laughing at someone else’s expense, or making fun of them. Americans are inclined to keep the target of funny self-deprecation strictly to themselves; even an affectionate prod at a near one or dear one is often considered too risque, or just downright mean, unless the obligatory “just kidding” sign flashes mercilessly throughout the joke. But taking the mickey out of others is a British sport. Actually, it’s a national pastime. Dame Edna Everage (of Australian rather than British extraction) has taken this ‘piss-taking’ to an extreme, but you don’t have to look far to find it in British living rooms, pubs and popular culture. A favorite segment of Graham Norton’s prime-time TV chat show is when he invites audience members to tell a story, and then having teased, mimicked and “taken the mickey” out of his willing victims during their toe-curling introductions, he tips them backwards while they’re still in the throes of recounting their tales. It’s British humor at its belly-aching best. And invariably, Norton’s special American guest, there from Hollywood to plug his or her latest flick, looks on with a mixture of confusion and disbelief while the Brits howl with laughter at the wretched storyteller, now upside down with their legs all asunder. So why is it that Americans don’t have an equivalent expression to describe their “taking the piss”? Because they generally don’t indulge in that sport — or if they do, it’s not regarded as funny.

And I’ve noticed another slang phenomenon that might also reflect the way we think rather than just our verbal resources. Take a look at the wide and often colorful vocabulary of pejorative slang used respectively on either side of the Atlantic to describe — or more accurately to “slag off” — our fellow human beings. The words are universally not very nice. And some are more vulgar, cruel, or descriptive than others. But looking more closely, and comparing derisive British slang words with those of Americans, I’ve noticed that Brits tend to voice their contempt for their compatriots more on the grounds of their stupidity, idiocy or social inadequacy (and even of their social standing) than of their behavior or attitude towards others, whereas the Americans are honing in on the mean, nasty or bloody-minded rather than on the intellectually-challenged. Naturally there are many exceptions, but there does seem to be a distinct pattern.

There’s a sub-category of terms used as variations on or synonyms of the universally understood word nerd: someone who is intelligent, knowledgeable or expert (sometimes obsessively) in a particular field (especially scientific or mathematical), socially inept, studious, and any or all of the above. Variously described as swots, dinks, dorks, dweebs, and geeks, these social unfortunates can, I think, be safely consigned to their own unfortunate linguistic ghetto, however mean or undeserved their monikers might be. So I’ve taken them out of this exercise in slang comparison, leaving these two colorful lists below illustrating how we respectively slag off our fellow men. Do you think they say something about the way we judge our compatriots on either side of the pond?

British slang:

berk (idiot)

chav (working- or low-class: pejorative)

div (stupid person; idiot)

git (fool; idiot)

numpty (stupid or ineffectual person)

oik (person from low social class: pejorative)

plonker (idiot; fool)

sod (annoying or unpleasant person)

tosser (unpleasant person, with loser tendencies)

wanker (unpleasant person, with loser tendencies)

twat (idiot)

twit (fool)

pillock (idiot; fool)

prat (idiot; fool)

prick (unpleasant person; jerk)

wally (idiot; fool)

American slang:

asshole (unpleasant person; jerk)

doofus (stupid, foolish person)

douche-bag (unpleasant person; jerk)

jackass (unpleasant person; jerk)

jerk (unpleasant person)

mother-f***er (unpleasant person)

schmuck (unpleasant person)

scumbag (unpleasant person)

sleazebag (unpleasant person)

son of a bitch (unpleasant person)

Divided by a common language

As George Bernard Shaw famously noted, “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.” Most of the time we know exactly what our friends across the sea (or ocean) mean, and our vocabulary, grammar and phraseology are sensibly in synch with each other. But every now and then, our innocent comments or statements can cause confusion or amusement — or at worst, offense — to those on the other side of the Atlantic, often because of a simple, tiny word. A Brit complaining that his roommate can be “a complete twat” will undoubtedly raise a Yankee’s eyebrows. (Br. Eng.: fool, idiot; Am. Eng.: vulgar slang for vulva). The British Prime Minister and I have both regretted joking publicly about the word being the past tense of “tweet”, little realizing how smutty we sounded at the time.

Here are some expressions and basic vocabulary that can seem a little weird, stilted, silly, or downright rude and smutty to the ears of our friends across the pond.

I live in that street. I live on that street.

I quite like it. I quite like it.

I’m having faggots for tea. I’m eating meatballs for dinner.

Tea or coffee? I don’t mind. I don’t care.

She has a new lease of life. She has a new lease on life.

I’m getting the lie of the land. I’m getting the lay of the land.

We’re visiting her in hospital in a fortnight. We’re visiting with her in the hospital in two weeks.

No fear! No way!

I’m meeting my husband tomorrow. I’m meeting with my husband tomorrow.

I borrowed my teacher’s rubber. I borrowed my teacher’s eraser.

I’m taking my bum-bag when I go on holiday. I’m taking my fanny-pack when I go on vacation.

He has his dog on a lead. He has his dog on a leash.

He went to public school. He went to public school.

I take it in my stride. I take it in stride.

The dog is definitely on heat. The dog is definitely in heat.

I’d like to talk to him. I’d like to talk with him.

The exception that doesn’t necessarily prove the rule

It’s an expression that F. G. Fowler mournfully decried as one of those “popularized technicalities”, about which he offers “two general warnings”: “first, that the popular use more often than not misrepresents, & sometimes very badly, the original meaning; & secondly, that free indulgence in this sort of term results in a tawdry style.”

“The exception (that) proves the rule” is meant to be a logical — and legal — statement in which a particular stated exception actually clarifies, defines or implies a general rule by its own logic. A sign warning that “the bank will be closed on Monday, Oct 14 to mark Columbus Day” is an exception proving the rule that the bank is generally open on Mondays. “For the calculus quiz next week, calculators are not permitted in the classroom.” This memo to high-school mathematicians proves that as a rule they are allowed to bring their calculators into the classroom, but in this case — for the test — an exception is being made.

This widely-used expression, stemming from a Latin legal principle exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis (“the exception confirms the rule in cases not excepted”), which was based in turn on a concept first proposed by the Roman philosopher and lawyer Cicero, has evolved through years of misunderstanding and misuse to mean the exact opposite of its original, logical and actually very useful premise. Falling into one of the murky categories of illogical beliefs, old wives’ tales, or simply expressions said in jest or irony (much like that of Sod’s Law for unlucky Brits or Murphy’s Law for unfortunate Americans), the once informative exception now serves as a rather silly assertion: that when something occurs that is not ‘by the book’ or that breaks our rules of understanding or expectation, it only goes to prove what we take for granted as a rule. Take this example: “We never take an umbrella with us on our annual summer trip to the Greek islands. When the heavens opened on Julia’s wedding in Corfu, only Aunt May stayed dry under her parasol. It was a big wet exception that proved the rule.” (The rule we can infer from this is that it never rains in Greece in the summer.) Fowler sums up the twisted logic of the expression’s misuser: “A truth is all the truer if it is sometimes false.”

Next time you’re focused on the exception, be mindful that it’s testing — or even reminding us of — the rule, but it’s not really the pudding in which the proof is to be found.

‘Vite, ‘trude and ‘herit: when ‘in’ is not not

Inhospitable, involuntary, invisible, incoherent, intolerable … It seems intuitive and it’s often inferred that “in-” words mean the inherent opposite — or inverse — of the word that “in-” precedes. Or maybe not. “In-” does not invariably indicate “not”; decapitate the “in-“, and you’re left with an invalid, incomprehensible word (see all the bold “in” words in this sentence). Inherit, incense, incumbent, invite and intrude are just a few further examples of the innumerable in-words that are unviable (yes, that is a word, but inviable is not) without their first two letters. And in a very few instances, when you take away the “in-“, you have a synonym — or something that comes in-terestingly close in meaning to the original intact word. Go figure.

Famous and infamous: mean almost the same thing. F = celebrated; well-known. I = notoriously bad (and notorious means well-known, especially unfavorably).

Habitable and inhabitable: mean the same thing. Both mean that can be inhabited.

Valuable and invaluable: mean very similar things. V = of great value, price or worth; I = valuable beyond estimation, priceless.

Fix and infix: can mean the same thing. F = mend, repair, make firm or stable; I = fix (a thing in another).

Dent and indent: can mean the same thing. D = mark with a dent. One definition of I = make a dent in.

Flammable and inflammable: mean exactly the same thing. As the OED notes: “Flammable is used because inflammable can be mistaken for a negative (the true negative being non-flammable). Inflammable, the original word that was in standard English usage from the 16th century, derives from the Latin inflammare meaning to kindle or set alight. Flammable was deliberately introduced and its use encouraged in the 1920s by the National Fire Protection Association, which was understandably concerned that the word inflammable was commonly being misunderstood to mean non-flammable or fire-proof.

*****

Below are a few further examples of words that look as though they might or should have different meanings:

Disassociate and dissociate: mean the same thing: Both mean disconnect or become disconnected; separate.

Iterate and reiterate: mean the same thing. I = repeat; state repeatedly. R = say or do again or repeatedly.

Cogitate and excogitate: mean almost the same thing. C = ponder; meditate. E = think out; contrive.

Appertain and pertain: mean the same thing. Both mean to relate or be appropriate (to).

The Name Game, Part 2: Name change

Would you like to be called Them? If you’re British, you can be, as long as you give yourself a last name too. Care to introduce yourself as Bond — James Bond? Go right ahead. Want to be named after the year of your birth (“Hi, my name is Nineteen Fifty-Two”)? Yes, that’s allowed too. Would you like to travel abroad with a passport bearing your new name, Mickey Mouse? Yup: the Brits are cool with that. As would be most American states. Here in the land of the free, you can go legally by almost any name you wish — as long as it’s not a racial slur, a threat or an obscenity, and as long as it’s not intentionally confusing, it doesn’t incite violence, and it’s not intended to mislead (ie. a celebrity’s name). (However, in the UK you can become known as David Beckham or Pippa Middleton, as long as you’re not deliberately trying to pass yourself off as them — assuming you have the respective abs and butt to even try …) But sadly you won’t get away with calling yourself Princess Diana, Lord Byron, or Captain Von Trapp. Nice try, but it won’t fly.

In recent years, the UK Deed Poll Service has officially bestowed the following new names on British citizens — by sober and deliberate request: Jellyfish McSaveloy, Toasted T Cake, Nineteen Sixty-Eight, Hong Kong Phooey, Daddy Fantastic, One-One-Eight Taxi, Ting A Ling, Huggy Bear, Donald Duck, Jojo Magicspacemonkey and James Bond. According to this service, the country’s largest and most trusted issuer of new names, there are only a few restrictions you have to bear in mind when choosing your new moniker. You are forbidden from choosing a new name that (in the words of the DPS):

does not include at least one forename and one surname;
is impossible to pronounce;
includes numbers or symbols; however, we can print modified Latin characters that include the following accents and marks: acute, grave, circumflex, tilde, diaeresis (umlaut), cedilla, macron, ogonek, caron and a dot;
includes punctuation marks – although you can have a hyphen to link forenames or surnames (eg. if you want a double-barrelled name) and an apostrophe in the case of surnames like O’Brien;
is vulgar, offensive or blasphemous;
promotes criminal activities;
promotes racial or religious hatred;
promotes the use of controlled drugs or includes the generic or slang name for them;
ridicules people, groups, government departments, companies or organisations;
may result in others believing you have a conferred or inherited honour, title, rank or academic award, for example, a change of first name to Sir, Lord, Laird, Lady, Prince, Princess, Viscount, Baron, Baroness, General, Captain, Professor or Doctor etc.
exceeds the maximum number of characters allowed in a name. There is a limit of 250 characters, including spaces, for forenames (i.e. first name and middle names) and 30 characters, including spaces, for a surname.
Please note, if you choose a forename or surname that consists of a single letter or includes modified Latin characters, you may find the computer systems of some record holders will be unable to show your name correctly. Many computer systems are programmed to only accept standard Latin characters and require at least two characters for the forename and surname.

If you think you might be looking to assume a new identity — at least in name — then don’t go and live in Belgium or Switzerland. In both those countries, your name is pretty much yours for life, unless you can prove that it’s giving you a lot of grief. In Belgium, this involves applying to the Ministry of Justice for a name change — and if it’s your last name you’d like to shed, you’ll need a royal decree. You might succeed if you sport a ridiculous last name that causes you untold embarrassment or emotional distress; people bearing the surnames Salami, Naaktgeboren (“born naked”), and Clooten (“sods of earth” in Middle Dutch, “testicles” in modern Dutch) have managed to secure the much-desired decree from on high. In Switzerland, if you’re having to blush and explain your way through passport control with the name of a notorious criminal stamped all over you, that’s probably enough of a reason for you to ask your Cantonal government to trade it in for a more innocent model.

Marion Morrison, Allen Konigsberg, David Hayward-Jones, Curtis Jackson, Issur Demsky, Robert Zimmerman, Farouk Bulsara, Roberta Anderson, Margaret Hyra, Jonathan Leibowitz, Anna Bullock, and Steveland Judkins were all born mere mortals and went on to find fame and fortune — and spanking new names to go along with (or aid in) their celebrity. Some of them might surprise you.

In 1971 Reginald Kenneth Dwight paid 50p to become Elton Hercules John.

Kate Winslet’s brand-new husband (and Richard Branson’s nephew) used to be Ned Abel Smith. But she didn’t marry a Smith; she married a rock-star, called Ned Rocknroll. Yeah, really.

Olympics fanatic Thomas Manly changed his middle name to the names of 12 Olympic gold medallists.

Sunday Times journalist Matthew Rudd changed his name to Bradley Pitt.

In 2009, Eileen De Bont from St. Asaph, Denbighshire changed her name to Pudsey Bear. Despite getting all her documents and records changed to Pudsey Bear, the passport office refused to issue Pudsey with a passport.

In 2004, a Missouri man changed his name to They.

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that a name change to 1069 could be denied, but that Ten Sixty-Nine was acceptable.

The Name Game, Part I: What’s in a (brand) name?

From amazon to Ziploc, Google to Yahoo!, there’s a host of memorable and marketable brand names that both color our daily language and lord over our common nouns like rock-stars with snappy stage-names. Designed specifically to be ‘sticky’, alluring, unique, easily pronounced and remembered, and especially suited to the product or brand they represent, the names themselves tend ironically to be fairly homogenous in their etymologies, usually falling into one of five basic brand-naming-formula categories: 1) the name (usually surname) of the brand founder(s), 2) an acronym, 3) a portmanteau, 4) one or more meaningful existing proper names (or even common nouns) symbolic of the product in question, and 5) a nickname or invented word symbolic of or peculiar to the brand or those that created it. (To read more about portmanteaux, see an earlier Glossophilia post: https://glossophilia.org/?p=1355; and here is Glossophilia’s exploration of acronyms: https://glossophilia.org/?p=1342.)

Setting aside those brand names — such as McDonald’s, Levi’s, and FAO Schwarz — whose namesakes are simply founders’ names and therefore which need no further explanation, let’s look at some famous examples of brands with crafty or creative monikers whose origins aren’t so obvious. Once the codes are cracked, it’s easy to see in which of the categories above the brand names evolved — and succeeded. Thanks to Wikipedia for many of these entries — some verbatim and some parsed.

Aflac (insurance company):

Acronym: the initial letters of the company’s original (and long-winded) name: American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus

Aldi (grocery store):

Portmanteau: Albrecht (name of the founders) and discount

amazon.com (online general retailer):

Named after the South American river, which is the world’s second-longest and the largest in terms of waterflow

Amoco (oil company):

Portmanteau: American Oil Company

Amstrad (audio equipment):

Portmanteau: its founder’s name: Alan Michael Sugar Trading

AOL (online service provider):

Quasi-acronym: America OnLine

Apple (computers):

Named after the fruit: because it was the favorite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs, and/or because he had worked at an apple orchard

Coca-Cola (carbonated drink):

Named in 1885 for its two supposedly medicinal ingredients: extract of coca leaves (from which was derived the cocaine in the original recipe) and caffeine, from the kola nut. (The “k” of kola was replaced by a “c” to make the name more memorable and marketable). See also Pepsi-Cola below.

Duane Reade (pharmacy – and more recently grocery – retail chain):

Named after Duane and Reade Streets in lower Manhattan, where the chain’s first warehouse was located

eBay (online auction house):

Invented word. Ebay started life as AuctionWeb. Its founder, Pierre Omidyar, had already formed a web consulting firm called Echo Bay Technology Group. “It just sounded cool”, according to Omidyar. However, a gold-mining company called Echo Bay Mines Ltd had already taken the URL EchoBay.com, so Omidyar registered his second choice for a name, eBay.com: thus AuctionWeb became eBay.

Esso (oil company):

Quasi-acronym: The pronunciation of the initials of Standard Oil of New Jersey (SO = Esso)

FedEx (express courier):

Portmanteau: Federal Express Corporation, the company’s original name

Fiat (automobiles):

Acronym: Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Italian Automobile Factory of Turin)

Finnair (airline):

Portmanteau: Finland and air

Google (search engine):

Invented word: An accidental misspelling of the word googol (the name of the number that has a one followed by 100 zeros); chosen to signify the vast quantity of results/information to be provided by the search engine

IKEA (home and furniture retailer):

Acronym: the first letters of the Swedish founder Ingvar Kamprad’s name plus the first letters of the names of the property and village in which he grew up: Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd

Kinko’s (print and reproduction service):

From a nickname. At college, the company’s founder, Paul Orfalea, was called Kinko because of his curly red hair

Kleenex (facial tissues):

An invented word. In the early 1920s, Kimberly-Clark, a paper manufacturer, developed its first consumer product, Kotex, a feminine hygiene product made of creped wadding; unfortunately it didn’t fare well in the marketplace when first introduced. Seeking to find other ways to use its large supply of creped wadding, the company’s scientists developed a softer crepe and from this the idea of Kleenex facial tissue was born. The Kleenex tissue was envisioned as a disposable cleansing tissue to clean away cosmetics, and was marketed by the same team that developed the Kotex pad. The name Kleenex was probably a combination of the word “cleansing” (or “clean”) with the capital “K” and the “ex” taken from Kotex.

Kodak (camera and photographic goods):

An invented word. Coined by founder George Eastman, who favored the letter ‘k’ (thinking it strong and incisive), he tried out various new words starting and ending with ‘k’. He saw three advantages in Kodak: It had the merits of a trademark word, it would not be mis-pronounced, and it did not resemble anything in the art. A common misconception that the name is onomatopoeic, sounding like the shutter of a camera.

Lego (toy bricks and construction tools):

Portmanteau (from Danish words): Ole Kirk Christiansen, a Danish carpenter, began making wooden toys in 1932. Two years later, his burgeoning company was named “Lego”, from the Danish phrase leg godt, meaning “play well”

Mattel (toy company):

Portmanteau: founders’ names Harold “Matt” Matson and Elliot Handler

Mitsubishi (automobiles):

Portmanteau: Japanese words mitsu, meaning three, and hishi (with the ‘h’ changed to a ‘b’) meaning diamond (as in the shape, not the gem). Hence the three-diamond logo.

Nabisco (biscuits/cookies):

Portmanteau: its original name, the National Biscuit Company

Nike (sports shoes and apparel):

Named after the Greek goddess of victory

Pepsi (carbonated drink):

(Originally Pepsi Cola): Named after two of its ingredients: the digestive enzyme pepsin and kola nuts.

PG Tips (tea):

Invented name. Originally Pre-Gest-Tee, the tea’s name implied that it could be drunk prior to eating food, as a digestive aid. Grocers and salesmen abbreviated it to PG. Once labeling tea as a digestive aid was outlawed in the ’40s, the PG name was officially adopted. The company later added “Tips”, referring to the fact that only the tips (the top two leaves and bud) of the tea plant are used in the blend

Pixar (animation studio):

Portmanteau: pixel and the co-founder’s name, Alvy Ray Smith

Qantas (airline):

Acronym: its original name, Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services

Reebok (sports shoes and apparel):

Named after an African antelope (an alternative spelling is “rehbok”)

Samsonite (luggage):

Named after the Biblical character Samson, who was renowned for his strength

Skype (online communication provider):

Quasi-portmanteau: the original idea for the name was Sky–Peer-to-Peer, which became Skyper, then Skype

Sony (record label and audio equipment):

From the Latin word ‘sonus’ meaning sound

Starbucks (coffee retailer/house chain):

Named after Starbuck, a character in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick; also derived from Starbo, which was a mining camp north of Seattle when the coffee shop/chain was founded in that city

Tesco (retailer):

Acronym/portmanteau: founder Jack Cohen, a London market green-grocer, received a large shipment of tea from T. E. Stockwell. He named his new company using the first three letters of the supplier’s name and the first two letters of his surname

Verizon (phone provider):

Portmanteau: veritas (Latin for truth) and horizon

Virgin (record retailer/label, airline, travel company):

Named after the existing word. Founder Richard Branson, while still at school, started a magazine out of which grew an off-shoot business selling records by mail order; according to Branson, “one of the girls suggested: ‘What about Virgin? We’re complete virgins at business.'”

Twitter (social media channel):

Named after an existing word: twitter. Co-founder Jack Dorsey explained: “We were trying to name it, and mobile was a big aspect of the product early on … We liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere. We wanted to capture that in the name — we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word “twitch,” because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But “twitch” is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word “twitter,” and it was just perfect. The definition was “a short burst of inconsequential information,” and “chirps from birds.” And that’s exactly what the product was.”

Yahoo! (service provider):

Named after a made-up word, yahoo, invented by Jonathan Swift, which he used in his book Gulliver’s Travels; it describes someone who is repulsive in appearance and barely human, which Yahoo!’s founders, David Filo and Jerry Yang, jokingly considered themselves to be.

Ziploc (storage bags):

Presumably a form of portmanteau or compound word combining the first part of the word zipper and lock without the “k” (with the zippered bag locking in flavor and freshness)

Boxing Day

What exactly do Brits get up to on Boxing Day — the day after Christmas? Apart from sheer regret, what is the sentiment of this day post repast?

It isn’t one of pugilistic sport amongst warring family members with hangovers, as some would like to believe. Neither is it the first business day after Christmas when everyone boxes up their unwanted gifts and returns them to stores for exchanges or refunds. No, far from being a symbol of animosity or commercial pragmatism, Boxing Day, dating back to England in the Middle Ages, is historically a day of charity and giving to those less fortunate than ourselves. But although historians agree on its charitable nature, even with its array of legends and traditions, the etymology of the day’s curious name is unclear.

Some argue that Boxing Day is so named because as servants prepared to leave to visit their families on the morning after Christmas — commonly a day off for those in service — their employers would present them with “Christmas boxes” containing gifts. In a variation on that idea, servants were thought to take wooden boxes to work on the day after Christmas for the folks ‘upstairs’ to fill with money or food in return for the faithful service they had received throughout the year. Another theory is that alms boxes placed in churches for parishioners to deposit coins for the poor were opened and the contents distributed on December 26. In the late 18th century, lords and ladies of the manor would “box up” the food left over from their Christmas feasts — or gifts — and distribute them the day after Christmas to tenants who lived and worked on their land. During the Age of Exploration, when great sailing ships were setting off to discover new lands, a Christmas Box was carried for good luck on the treacherous sea voyages. Priests would place small containers on ships before their departure, and crewmen wishing for a safe return would drop money into the box, which was then sealed and kept on board for the voyage. If the ship returned safely, the box was handed back to the priest, still sealed, and kept until Christmas when it would be opened and its contents shared with the poor. Any one of these noble traditions might have given rise to the moniker of the giving day.

Over the years and centuries, Boxing Day gift-giving expanded to include any and all who had rendered a service during the year. The tradition survives today as employers present gifts or bonuses to their workers, and people give presents to tradesmen, postmen, doormen, dustmen, milkmen, porters, and others on whose services our daily lives often depend. In the US, the tradition of tipping at Christmas is generous and widespread.

Boxing Day is marked and celebrated as a bank holiday in the UK, New Zealand, Canada and Australia and other Commonwealth countries. In South Africa, Boxing Day was renamed the Day of Goodwill in 1994. In Ireland it is called St. Stephen’s Day (Lá Fhéile Stiofáin) or the Day of the Wren (Lá an Dreoilín). In several European countries, including the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Poland, December 26 is celebrated as the Second Christmas Day, and is generally simply a continuation of the previous day’s festivities.

Boxing Day is also known as the Feast of St. Stephen. (The day that Good King Wenceslas Looked Out and ventured out into the cold winter’s night to give alms to a poor man…) St. Stephen was one of the seven original deacons of the Christian church and was specially ordained by the Apostles to care for the poor and displaced, especially the widows amongst those needy souls. St. Stephen was also the patron saint of horses, so Boxing Day is traditionally marked by sporting events, especially horse races and hunts.