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INTRODUCTION TO ETYMOLOGY: WORD HITORIES

The etymology of a word refers to its origin and historical development:

that is, its earliest known use, its transmission from one language to another, and
its changes in form and meaning. Etymology is also the term for the branch
of linguistics that studies word histories.

I. Etymology

1.1. What is Etymology?

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their
form and meaning have changed over time. By an extension, the term "the
etymology of [a word]" means the origin of the particular word.

For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in
these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how
words were used during earlier periods of their history and when they entered
the languages in question. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative
linguistics to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any
direct information to be available .

By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative

method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its
vocabulary. In this way, word roots have been found that can be traced all the
way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-European language family.

Even though etymological research originally grew from the philological

tradition, currently much etymological research is done on language
families where little or no early documentation is available, such
as Uralic and Austronesian.

The word etymology is derived from the Greek word “sxupoA.oyia”,

etymologia , itself from “sxupov”, etymon, meaning "true sense" and the suffix
logicC\ denoting "the study of '.

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 Etymon is also used in English to refer to the source word of a given word.
For example, Latin candidus , which means "white", is the etymon of English
candid.

1.2. What's the Difference Between a Definition and an Etymology?

A definition tells us what a word means and how it's used in our own time.

An etymology tells us where a word came from (often, but not always,
from another language) and what it used to mean.

For example, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the

English Language, the definition of the word disaster is "an occurrence causing
widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe" or "a grave misfortune." But
the etymology of the word disaster takes us back to a time when people
commonly blamed great misfortunes on the influence of the stars.

Disaster first appeared in English in the late 16th century, just in time for
Shakespeare to use the word in the play King Lear . It arrived by way of the Old
Italian word disastro , which meant "unfavorable to one's stars."

This older, astrological sense of disaster becomes easier to understand

when we study its Latin root word, astrum , which also appears in our modem
"star" word astronomy. With the negative Latin prefix dis- ("apart") added
to astrum ("star"), the word (in Latin, Old Italian, and Middle French) conveyed
the idea that a catastrophe could be traced to the "evil influence of a star or
planet" (a definition that the dictionary tells us is now "obsolete").

1.3. Is the Etymology of a Word Its True Definition?

Not at all, though people sometimes try to make this argument. The
word etymology is derived from the Greek word etymon , which means "the tme
sense of a word." But in fact, the original meaning of a word is often different
from its contemporary definition.

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 The meanings of many words have changed over time, and older senses of
a word may grow uncommon or disappear entirely from everyday use. Disaster,
for instance, no longer means the "evil influence of a star or planet," just
as consider no longer means "to observe the stars."

Let's look at another example. Our English word salary is defined by The
American Heritage Dictionary "fixed compensation for services, paid to a
person on a regular basis." Its etymology can be traced back 2,000 years to sal ,
the Latin word for salt. So what's the connection between salt and salary?

The Roman historian Pliny the Elder tells us that "in Rome, a soldier was
paid in salt," which back then was widely used as a food preservative.
Eventually, this solarium came to signify a stipend paid in any form, usually
money. Even today the expression "worth your salt" indicates that you're
working hard and earning your salary. However, this doesn't mean that salt is the
true definition of salary.

II. Methods to study the origins of words

Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words,

some of which are:

- Philological research: Changes in the form and meaning of the word can
be traced with the aid of older texts, if such are available .

- Making use of dialectological data : The form or meaning of the word

might show variations between dialects, which may yield clues about its earlier
history

- The comparative method: By a systematic comparison of related

languages, etymologists may often be able to detect which words derive from
their common ancestor language and which were instead later borrowed from
another language.

- The study of semantic change .- Etymologists must often make hypotheses

about changes in the meaning of particular words. Such hypotheses are tested
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against the general knowledge of semantic shifts. For example, the assumption
of a particular change of meaning may be substantiated by showing that the
same type of change has occurred in other languages as well.

in. Types of word origins

Etymological theory recognises that words originate through a limited

number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are borrowing (i.e.,
the adoption of "loanwords" from other languages); word formation such as
derivation and compounding; and onomatopoeia and sound symbolism, (i.e., the
creation of imitative words such as "click").

While the origin of newly emerged words is often more or less transparent,
it tends to become obscured through time due to sound change or semantic
change. Due to sound change, it is not readily obvious that the English
word set is related to the word sit (the former is originally a causative formation
of the latter). It is even less obvious that bless is related to blood (the former was
originally a derivative with the meaning "to mark with blood").

Semantic change may also occur. For example, the English word “bead”
originally meant "prayer". It acquired its modem meaning through the practice
of counting the recitation of prayers by using beads.

IV. English language

English derives from Old English (sometimes referred to as Anglo-Saxon),

a West Germanic variety, although its current vocabulary includes words from
many languages. The Old English roots may be seen in the similarity of numbers
in English and German, particularly seven/sieben, eight/acht, nine/neun, and ten/
zehn. Pronouns are also cognate: I/mine/me ich/mein/mich; thou/thine/thee and
du/dein/dich; we/wir us/uns; she/sie.

However, language change has eroded many grammatical elements, such as

the noun case system, which is greatly simplified in modem English, and certain
elements of vocabulary, some of which are borrowed from French. Although
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 many of the words in the English lexicon come from Romance languages, most
of the common words used in English are of Germanic origin.

When the Normans conquered England in 1066, they brought their Norman
language with them. During the Anglo-Norman period, which united insular and
continental territories, the ruling class spoke Anglo-Norman, while the peasants
spoke the vernacular English of the time. Anglo-Norman was the conduit for the
introduction of French into England, aided by the circulation ofLangue
d'oil literature from France.
'

This led to many paired words of French and English origin. For example,
beef is related, through borrowing, to modem French bosuf, veal to veau, pork to
pore, and poultry to poulet. All these words, French and English, refer to the
meat rather than to the animal . Words that refer to farm animals, on the other
hand, tend to be cognates of words in other Germanic languages. For example,
swine/ Schwein, cow/Kuh, calf/ Kalb, and sheep/Schaf. The variant usage has
been explained by the proposition that it was the Norman rulers who mostly ate
meat (an expensive commodity) and the Anglo-Saxons who fanned the animals.
This explanation has passed into common folklore but has been disputed.

V. Assimilation of foreign words

English has proved accommodating to words from many languages.

Scientific terminology, for example, relies heavily on words
of Latin and Greek origin, but there are a great many non-scientific
examples. Spanish has contributed many words, particularly in the southwestern
United States. Examples include buckaroo, alligator, rodeo, savvy, and states'
names such as Colorado and Florida. Albino, palaver, lingo, verandah,
and coconut from Portuguese; diva and prima donna from Italian.

Smorgasbord, slalom, and ombudsman are from Swedish, Danish and

Norwegian; sauna from Finnish; adobe, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, apricot,
assassin, caliber, cotton hazard, jacket, jar, julep, mosque, Muslim, orange,

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safari, sofa, and zero from Arabic (often via other languages); behemoth,
hallelujah, Satan, jubilee, and rabb from Hebrew; taiga, steppe, bolshevik, and
sputnik from Russian; brahman, guru, karma , and pundit from Sanskrit; honcho,
sushi, and tsunami from Japanese; dim sum, gungho, kowtow, kumquat, ketchup,
and typhoon from Cantonese.

Kampong and amok are from Malay; and boondocks from the Tagalog
word, “bundok”. Surprisingly few loan words, however, come from other
languages native to the British Isles. Those that exist include coracle, cromlech,
Eisteddfod and (probably) flannel, gull and penguin from Welsh; galore and
whisky from Scottish; Gaelic; phoney, trousers, and Tory from Irish; and eerie
and canny from Scots (or related Northern English dialects).

VI. How new words are created

6.1. By Creating from Scratch

Many of the new words added to the ever-growing lexicon of the English
language are just created from scratch, and often have little or no etymological
pedigree.

A good example is the word Jog, etymologically unrelated to any other

known word, which, in the late Middle Ages, suddenly and mysteriously
displaced the Old English word hound (or hund ) which had served for centuries.

Some of the commonest words in the language arrived in a similarly

inexplicable way (e.g. jaw , askance , tantrum , conundrum , bad , big , donkey ,
kick , slum , log , dodge , fuss , prod , hunch , freak , bludgeon , slang , puzzle , slouch ,
suf bash , pour , etc).

Words like gadget , blimp , raunchy , scam , nifty , zit , clobber , boffin , googol,
gimmick , and jazz have all appeared in the last century or two with no apparent
etymology, and are more recent examples of this kind of novel creation of
words. Additionally, some words that have existed for centuries in regional

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dialects or as rarely used terms, suddenly enter into popular use for little or no
apparent reason (e.g. scrounge and seep, both old but obscure English words,
suddenly came into general use in the early 20th Century).

Sometimes, if infrequently, a "nonce word" (created "for the nonce", and

not expected to be re-used or generalized) does become incorporated into the
language. One example is James Joyce's invention quark, which was later
adopted by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann to name a new class of sub-atomic
particle, and another is blurb , which dates back to 1907.

6.2. By Adoption or Borrowing

Loanwords, or borrowings, are words which are adopted into a native

language from a different source language. Such borrowings have shaped the
English language almost from its beginnings, as words were adopted from the
classical languages as well as from successive wave of invasions (e.g. Vikings,
Normans). Even by the 16th Century, long before the British Empire extended
its capacious reach around the world, English had already adopted words from
an estimated 50 other languages, and the vast majority of English words today
are actually foreign borrowings of one sort or another.

Sometimes these adoptions have come by a circuitous route (e.g. the

word orange originated with the Sanskrit naranj or naranga or
narangaphalam or naragga , which became the Arabic naranjah and the Spanish
naranja , entered English as a naranj , changed to a narange , then to an
arange and finally an orange; the word garbage came to English originally from
Latin, but only arrived via Old Italian, an Italian dialect and then Norman
French). Sometimes the tortuous route and degrees of filtering through other
languages can modify words so much that their original derivations are all but
indiscernible (e.g. both coy and quiet come from the Latin word quietus', sordid
and swarthy both come from the Latin sordere ; entirety and integrity both derive
from the Latin integritas; salary and sausage both originate with the Latin word

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 sal ; grammar and glamour arc both descended from the same Greek word
gramma ; and gentle , gentile , genteel and jaunty all come from the Latin gentilis ;
etc).

Since the expansion of global trade, and particularly since British

colonialism opened up rich new sources, a huge number of words have been
adopted into English from a great diversity of different languages. In a reverse
process, many English words have also been adopted by other countries.

6.3. By Adding Prefixes and Suffixes

The ability to add affixes, whether prefixes (e.g. com- , con- , de-, ex-, inter -
, pre- , pro- , re~ , sub-, un~ , etc) and suffixes (e.g. -al , -ence , -er , -ment , -ness , -
ship , -tion , -ate , -ed, -ize , -able , -fill , -ous , -ive , -ly , -y , etc) makes English
extremely flexible. This process, referred to as agglutination, is a simple way to
completely alter or subtly revise the meanings of existing words, to create other
parts of speech out of words (e.g. verbs from nouns, adverbs form adjectives,
etc), or to create completely new words from new roots. There are very few
rules in the addition of affixes in English, and Anglo-Saxon affixes can be
attached to Latin or Greek roots, or vice versa. An extreme example is the
word incomprehensibility , which is based on the simple root -hen- (original from
Indo-European root word ghend- meaning to grasp or seize) with no less than 5
affixes: in- (not), com- (with), / -( before), -ible (capable) and -ity (being).
^
However, the sheer variety and number of possible affixes in English can
lead to some confusion. For instance, there is no single standard method for
something as basic as making a noun into an adjective { -able , -al , -ous and -y are
just some of the possibilities). There are at least nine different negation prefixes
( a- , anti- , dis-, il- , im- , in- , ir- , non- and un~ ), and it is almost impossible for a
non-native speaker to predict which is to be used with which root word. To
make matters worse, some apparently negative forms do not even negate the

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 meanings of their roots (e.g. flammable and inflammable , habitable and
inhabitable , ravel and unravel).

Some affix additions are surprisingly recent. Officialdom and boredom

joined the ancient word kingdom as recently as the 20th Century, and apolitical
as the negation of political did not appear until 1952. Adding affixes remains the
simplest and perhaps the commonest method of creating new words.

6.4. By Truncation or Clipping

Some words arise simply as shortened forms of longer words ( exam ,

gym , lab, bus , van , vet , fridge , bra , wig , curio , pram , taxi , rifle , canter , phone
-
and burger are some obvious and well used examples). Perhaps less obvious is
the derivation of words like mob (from the Latin phrase mobile vulgus , meaning
a fickle crowd), goodbye (a shortening of God-be-with-you ) and hello (a
shortened form of the Old English for “whole be thou” ).

Leaving aside the common English practice of contracting multiple words

like do not, you are , there will and that would into the single
words don’t , you’re , there ’ll and that’d, there are many other examples where
multiple words or phrases have been contracted into single words (e.g. daisy was
once a flower called day’s eye’, shepherd was sheep herd’, lord was
originally loaf-ward’, fortnight was fourteen-night', etc).

Acronyms are another example of this technique. While most acronyms

(e.g. USA , IMF , OPEC , etc) remain as just a series of initial letters, some have
been formed into words (e.g. laser from light amplification by stimulated
emission of radiation , radar from radio detection and ranging )’, quasar from
quasi-stellar radio source’, scuba from self-contained underwater breathing
apparatus’, etc).

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 6.5. By Fusing or Compounding Existing Words

Like many languages, English allows the formation of compound words

by
fusing together shorter words (e.g. airport , seashore , fireplace , footwe
ar ,
wristwatch , landmark , flowerpot, etc), although it is not taken to the extrem
es of
German or Dutch where extremely long and unwieldy word chain
s are
commonplace. The concatenation of words in English may even
allow for
different meanings depending on the order of combination
(e.g. houseboat/ boathouse , basketwork / workbasket , casebook!bookc
- ase , etc).
The root words may be run together with no separation (as in the examp
les
above), or they may be hyphenated (e.g. self discipline , part-
time , mother-in-
law ) or even left as separate words ( e .g . fire hydrant , commander
in chief ),
although the rules for such constructions are unclear at best.

During the English Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution

,
compounding classical elements of Greek and Latin (e.g. photograph ,
telephone ,
etc) was a very common method of English word formation, and the
process
continues even today. A large part of the scientific and technical lexico
n of
English consists of such classical compounds.

Sometimes words or phonemes are blended rather than combined whole,

forming a "portmanteau word" with two meanings packed into one word, or
with
a meaning intermediate between the two constituent words (e.g. brunch
, which
blends brealtfast and lunch; motel , which blends motor and hotel,
electrocute ,
-
which blends electric and execute , smog , which blends smoke and
fog\
-
guesstimate , which blends guess and estimate , telethon, which blends
telephone
-
and marathon , chocoholic , which blends chocolate and alcoholic; etc).
Lewis
Carroll was perhaps the first to deliberately use this technique for literary
effect,
when he introduced new words like slithy , frumious , galumph , etc, in his
poetry
in the 19th Century.

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 6.6. By Changing the Meaning of Existing Words

The drift of word meanings over time often arises, often but not always due
to catachresis (the misuse, either deliberate or accidental, of words). By some
estimates, over half of all words adopted into English from Latin have changed
their meaning in some way over time, often drastically. For
example, smart originally meant sharp, cutting or painful; handsome merely
meant easily-handled (and was generally derogatory); bully originally meant
darling or sweetheart; sad meant full, satiated or satisfied; and insult meant to
boast, brag or triumph in an insolent way. A more modern example is the
changing meaning of gay from merry to homosexual (and, in some circles in
more recent years, to stupid or bad).

Some words have changed their meanings many times. Nice originally
meant stupid or foolish; then, for a time, it came to mean lascivious or wanton; it
then went through a whole host of alternative meanings (including extravagant,
elegant, strange, slothful, unmanly, luxurious, modest, slight, precise, thin, shy,
discriminating and dainty), before settling down into its modem meaning of
pleasant and agreeable in the late 18th Century. Conversely, silly originally
meant blessed or happy, and then passed through intermediate meanings of
pious, innocent, hannless, pitiable, feeble and feeble-minded, before finally
ending up as foolish or stupid . Buxom originally meant obedient to God in
Middle English, but it passed through phases of meaning humble and
submissive, obliging and courteous, ready and willing, bright and lively, and
healthy and vigorous, before settling on its current very specific meaning
relating to a plump and well-endowed woman.

Some words have become much more specific than their original meanings.
For instance, starve originally just mean to die, but is now much more specific;
a forest was originally any land used for hunting, regardless of whether it was
covered in trees; deer once referred to any animal, not just the specific animal

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 we now associate with the word; girl was once a young person of
either sex;
and meat originally covered all kinds of food (as in the phras
e “meat and
drink”).

Some words came to mean almost the complete opposite of their

original
meanings. For instance, counterfeit used to mean a legitimate copy
; brave once
implied cowardice; crafty was originally a term of praise; cute
used to mean
bow-legged; enthusiasm and zeal were both once disparaging
words;
manufacture originally meant to make by hand; awful meant deserv
ing of awe;
egregious originally connoted eminent or admirable; artificial was
a positive
description meaning full of skillful artifice; etc.

A related category is where an existing word comes to be used with anoth

er
grammatical function, often a different part of speech, a
process known as
functional shift. Examples include: the creation of the nouns a
commute , a
bore and a swim from the original verbs to commute , to bore and
to swim; the
creation of the verbs to bottle , to catalogue and to text from
the original
nouns bottle , catalogue and text, the creation of the verbs to dirty , to
empty
and to dry from the original adjectives dirty , empty and dry ,
etc. Modem
language purists often condemn such developments, although they
have
occurred throughout the history of English, and in some cases may even
reclaim
the original sense of a word (e.g. impact was originally introduced
as a verb,
then established itself predominantly as a noun, and has only recently begun
to
be used a verb once more).

6.7. By Errors

According to the “OxfordEnglish Dictionary” , there are at least 350

words
in English dictionaries (most of them thankfully quite obscure) that
owe their
existence purely to typographical errors or other misrenderings.

There are many more words, often in quite common use, that have arisen
over time due to mishearings (e.g. shamefaced from the original shame
fast ,
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penthouse from pentice , sweetheart from sweetard , buttonhole from button-
hold , etc).

Mrs. Mapalprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play "The

Rivals" , was famous for her "malapropisms" like illiterate , reprehend , etc, but
these never gained common currency. Likewise, it seems unlikely that
"Bushisms" (named for US President Bush's unfortunate tendency to mangle the
language) like misunderestimate , or Sarah Palin's repudiate will ever become
part of the everyday language, although there are many who would argue that
they deserve to.

Many misused words (as opposed to newly-coined words) have, for better
or worse, become so widely used in their new context that they may be
considered to be generally accepted, particularly in the USA, although many
strict grammarians insist on their distinctness (e.g. alternate to mean alternative ,
momentarily to mean presently , disinterested to mean uninterested , i.e. to mean
e.g. , flaunt to mean flout , historic to mean historical , imply to mean infer , etc).

6.8. By Back-Formation

Some words are “back-formed”, where a new word is formed by removing

an actual, or often just a supposed or incorrectly identified, affix. A good
example of back-formation is the old word pease , which was mistakenly
assumed to be a plural, and thus led to the creation of a new “singular”
word, pea. Similarly, asset was back-formed from the singular
noun assets (originally from the Anglo-Norman asetz).

More often, though, a new word for a different part of speech is derived
form an older form (e.g. laze from lazy , beg from beggar , greed from greedy ,
rove from rover , burgle from burglar , edit from editor , difficult from difficulty ,
resurrect from resurrection , insert from insertion , project from projection ,
grovel from groveling , sidle from sideling or sidelong , etc).

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 6.9. By Imitation of Sounds

Words may be formed by the deliberate imitation of sounds they describe

(onomatopoeia). Often this kind of onomatopoeic formation is surprisingly
ancient, and Old English literature is usually described as highly onomatopoeic,
alliterative and percussive. Sometimes, the imitation may have originally
occurred in a source language, and only later borrowed into English, and by its
very nature sound imitation tends to result in similar cognates in several
languages. Some philologists have suggested that the first human languages
developed as imitations of natural sounds (so-called "bow-wow theories"), and
imitative abilities certainly seem to have played some role in the evolution of
language.

Examples include boo , bow-wow , tweet , boom , tinkle , rattle , buzz ,

click , hiss , bang , plop , cuckoo , quack , beep , etc, but there are many many more.
Some words, like squirm for example, are not strictly onomatopoeic but are
nevertheless imitative to some extent (e.g like a worm)

6.10. By Transfer of Proper Nouns

A surprising number of words have been created by the transfer of the

proper names of people, places and things into words which then become part of
the generalized vocabulary of the language, also known as eponyms. Examples
include maverick (after the American cattleman, Samuel Augustus Maverick);
saxophone (after the Belgian musical-instrument maker, Adolphe Sax); quisling
(after the pro-Nazi Norwegian leader, Vidkun Quisling); sandwich (after the
fourth Earl of Sandwich); silhouette (after the French finance minister, Etienne
de Silhouette); kafkaesque (after the Czech novelist, Franz Kafka);

quixotic (after the romantic, impractical hero of a Cervantes novel);

boycott (after Charles Boycott, the shunned Irish land agent for an absentee
landlord); etc. Other common eponyms include biro , bloomers , boffin , diesel ,

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chauvinism, galvanize , guillotine , leotard, lesbian , lynch, marathon, mesmerize ,
svengali , mentor , odyssey , atlas , sadism , shrapnel , spartan , teddy , Wellington ,
etc, as well as some less obvious ones like panic , maudlin , dunce , bugger ,
currant , tawdry , doily and hooligan .

Many terms for political, philosophical or religious doctrines are based on

the names of their founders or chief exponents (e.g. Marxism , Aristotelianism ,
stoic , Platonic , Christianity , etc). Similarly, many scientific terms and units of
measurement are named after their inventors (e.g. ampere , angstrom , joule , watt ,
etc). Increasingly, in the 20 th Century, specific brand names have become
generalized descriptions (e.g. hoover , kleenex , xerox , aspirin, google , etc).

Sometimes, portmanteau words (see Fusing and Compounding

Words above) may be produced by joining together proper nouns with common
nouns, such as in the case of gerrymandering , a word combining the politically-
contrived re-districting practices of Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry
with the salamanderoutline one of the districts he created.

VII. Why Should We Care About Word Histories?

If a word's etymology is not the same as its definition, why should we care
at all about word histories? Well, for one thing, understanding how words have
developed can teach us a great deal about our cultural history. In addition,
studying the histories of familiar words can help us deduce the meanings of
unfamiliar words, thereby enriching our vocabularies. Finally, word stories are
often both entertaining and thought provoking . In short, words are fun.

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 1

i - j