I know, you know, we all know that English steals words from other languages when it thinks no one is looking, then pretends they have been our words all along.
Shampoo, kayak, anorak, and buffet have all sneaked past immigration control (without being sent to Rwanda) this way.
I enjoy this word assimilation. It adds depth to our vocabulary and many of the back-stories are fascinating.
Robot is from the Czech robota, meaning forced labour, and has only existed in English since the 1920s. Avocado comes from the Aztec ahuacatl, which means testicle. Phoney is from an old English word fawney, meaning a “fake gold ring”.
Ketchup is Chinese and originally meant a mix of pickled fish and spices. Sounds lovely.
And dunce isn’t an insult (despite what my teachers used to say). It comes from the teachings of Scottish philosopher John Duns Scotus, who died in 1308.
His ideas were popular for centuries but fell out of favour at the time of the Renaissance. Adherents to the old ways were labelled dunsmen or dunsters, which became dunsers then dunces.
Ever wondered why a bad dream is a nightmare? It’s nothing to do with female horses. A mare is a goblin that sits leadenly on your chest at night. The earliest root is the Proto-Indo-European “mer”, meaning to compress.
The mare could also tangle long hair in the dark. Even trees, those with twisted branches, were feared to suffer the attentions of mares.
And “capricious” owes something to hedgehogs. The root is the Italian capriccio, a sudden whim or change of mind, which is itself a combination of capo (head) and riccio (hedgehog).
There is a new(ish) term I’m not quite so keen on: Black Friday. It’s the overuse that gets me.
Black Friday as a distinct day was yesterday, the day after Thanksgiving, the holiday Americans observe on the last Thursday of November. After indulging in improbably large portions of turkey and, presumably, being thankful, the next day they traditionally start their Christmas shopping.
Even if retailers have had a bad year the balance sheet goes “into the black”. It’s a reference to the days when clerks entered losses as red in ledgers, and gains in black ink.
I’m puzzled by this phrase being so enthusiastically taken up by a society which doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
Worse, I am tired of every TV advert mentioning it.
Worst of all, Black Friday appears to now last a full month!
Send it back across the pond, with “not known at this address” stamped on the box.
Word of the week
Abstruse (adj)
Difficult to understand, obscure. EG: “The reasons the UK embraced Black Friday are abstruse to a dunce like me.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
