Word Origins

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 7:00 am

viburnum
genus of shrubs, the arrowwood, 1731, from L. viburnum, which is probably an Etruscan loan-word.

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:22 pm

welt (n.)
c.1425, a shoemaker's term, perhaps related to M.E. welten "to overturn, roll over" (c.1300), from O.N. velta "to roll" (related to welter (v.)). Meaning "ridge on the skin from a wound" is first recorded 1800

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 8:17 am

xyster
"surgical instrument for scraping bones," 1684, from Gk. xyster, from xyein "to scrape," from PIE base *kes- "to scrape."

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 7:27 am

yup
1906, variant of yes.

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:39 am

zing (n.)
1911, "high pitched sound," 1918, of echoic origin. Slang meaning "energy, zest" is attested from 1918. Zinger "cruel quip" first attested 1970

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 9:26 am

adipose
1743, from Mod.L. adiposus "fatty," from L. adipem (nom. adeps, gen. adipis) "fat of animals," from Gk. aleipha "unguent, fat," related to lipos "grease, fat" (see leave (v.)).

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 6:05 am

beech
O.E. bece, from P.Gmc. *bokjon (cf. O.N. bok, Ger. buche, M.Du. boeke "beech"), from PIE base *bhagos (cf. Gk. phegos "oak," L. fagus "beech," Rus. buzina "elder"), perhaps with a ground sense of "edible" (and connected with the root of Gk. phagein "to eat;" see -phagous). Beech mast was an ancient food source for agricultural animals across a wide stretch of Europe. See book.

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 5:54 am

casement
1430, probably aphetic of O.Fr. dial. enchassement "window frame," from en- "in," prefix forming verbs, + casse "case, frame" (see case (2)) + -ment. Or possibly from Anglo-L. cassementum, from casse. The Irish surname is originally Mc Casmonde (attested from 1429), from Mac Asmundr, from Ir. mac "son of" + O.N. Asmundr "god protector."

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Fri Aug 24, 2007 1:33 am

demesne
1292, from O.Fr. demeine, from L. dominicus "belonging to a master," from dominus "lord." Re-spelled by Anglo-Fr. legal scribes under infl. of O.Fr. mesnie "household" (and the concept of a demesne as "land attached to a mansion") and their fondness for inserting -s- before -n-. Essentially the same word as domain.

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:30 am

envisage
1820, from Fr. envisager "look in the face of," from en- "cause to" + visage "face."

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 8:43 am

Baker's Dozen

The popular tale behind this phrase's origin is that a medieval law specified the weight of loaves of bread and any baker who shorted a customer was in for dire punishment. So, baker's would include a thirteenth loaf with each dozen just to be safe. The story is partly true. There was such a law, but the practice of adding an extra loaf to the dozen had nothing to do with fear of punishment.

The law in question was the Assize of Bread and Ale, first promulgated in England in 1266. There are various versions of the law promulgated over the years, but they all regulated the size and price of loaves of bread that were sold on the market. During years of good harvests, bakers could make more bread than they could sell locally, so they would sell the excess loaves to hucksters, or middlemen. But since the size and price was strictly regulated, the only way for these distributors to make money would be for the baker to give them extra loaves. The baker would give the huckster a thirteenth, or vantage, loaf for each dozen. This extra loaf provided the profit for the middleman.

The practice of adding the thirteenth loaf is older than the phrase. The phrase only dates to 1599

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 9:16 am

G.I.

Most people nowadays know that a G.I. is an American soldier and that the term is popularly associated with the Second World War, but few know what the abbreviation G.I. originally stood for or that the term predates WWII by some decades.

G.I. was originally a semi-official U.S. Army abbreviation for galvanized iron, used in inventories and supply records. It dates to at least 1907 and is commonly found in records from the First World War. From Col. Frank P. Lahm's Diary of 1917:

[Lympe, England] is a large depot where machines are delivered for forwarding to France. 12 large hangers [sic], brick, G.I., about 75 ft wide by 150 ft long.
It was also used during WWI in the phrase G.I. can, meaning a German artillery shell. From Casey's Cannoneers, 24 September 1918:

At 11 o'clock he started to drop G.I. cans into our woods.
This was often clipped to just G.I. From Bliss's 805 Pioneer Infantry of 1918:

There's about two million fellows, and there's some of them who lie
Where eighty-eights and G.I.'s gently drop.
Also during that war, G.I. started to be interpreted to mean government issue and it came to be applied as an adjective to denote anything having to do with the army. From a caption to a cartoon in the December 1918 issue of La Trine Rumor:

A G.I. Christmas
By the next war, G.I. had acquired the meaning of an enlisted soldier. It was so glossed in a 1939 issue of Bugle Notes:

G.I., n., An enlisted man.
The term G.I. Joe got its start as the title of a comic strip by David Breger that appeared in Yank magazine in 1942.

Some have interpreted G.I. as an abbreviation for general infantry. This is incorrect. General infantry has never been a term of art, officially or unofficially, in the U.S. Army.

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 5:15 pm

zebu
Asiatic ox, 1774, from Fr. zebu, ult. of Tibetan origin. First shown in Europe at the Paris fair of 1752.

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:10 pm

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 7:33 am

Tabloid

This journalistic term has two distinct meanings, a newspaper that specializes in sleazy, sensational stories and a newspaper printed on smaller paper that folds like a book (as opposed to a broadsheet, the traditional newspaper format).

Tabloid appears about 1840 in the world of medicine in reference to drugs in a concentrated form. Around 1900, the term transferred to journalism in reference to news that was presented in an abbreviated and easily read (and often sensational) format.

The introduction of the smaller page in lieu of the traditional broadsheet happened about the same time--the smaller format being easier to read on public transport, which appealed to a different reader demographic, one who wanted more sensational stories--and the name stuck to the page size as well.

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 3:04 pm

daisy
O.E. dÃ¦gesege, from dÃ¦ges eage "day's eye," because the petals open at dawn and close at dusk. In M.L. it was solis oculus "sun's eye." Daisy-cutter first attested 1791, originally of horses that trotted with low steps; later of cricket (1889) and baseball hits that skim along the ground. Daisy-chain in the "group sex" sense is attested from 1941. Pushing up daisies "dead" is attested from 1918, but variant with the same meaning go back to 1842.

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:25 am

vandal
1663, "willful destroyer of what is beautiful or venerable," from Vandals, name of Gmc. tribe that sacked Rome, 455, under Genseric, from L. Vandalus (pl. Vandali), from the tribe's name for itself (O.E. Wendlas), from P.Gmc. *Wandal- "Wanderer."

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 9:56 pm

taciturn
"habitually silent," 1771, back-formation from taciturnity (1450), from M.Fr. taciturnitÃ©, from L. taciturnitatem (nom. taciturnitas) "a being or keeping silent," from taciturnus "disposed to be silent," from tacitus "silent" (see tacit).

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:20 pm

unction
1387, "act of anointing as a religious rite," from L. unctionem (nom. unctio) "anointing," from unctus, pp. of ungere "to anoint" (see unguent).

BubbleGumTiger · Post by **BubbleGumTiger** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 8:35 am

CATAPULT...As a noun for a war machine that throws objects, it was taken directly from the Latin catapulta, which has the same meaning. It was first written as a verb, 'to hurl' in 1848.