Hey, A-to-Z-ers! You still hanging in there?
Odd first showed up in the early fourteenth century, but only
as a word for an uneven number. Because an uneven number is unpaired and thus,
“left out”, odd grew to mean peculiar, because obviously there’s something
wrong with it if it’s unpaired. Anyway, odd comes from the Old Norse oddi, which figuratively means
something like third or a tie-breaker (as in a vote), but literally means an
angle or point of land (apparently, the notion of a triangle morphed it into
that third definition, which is, shall we say, an odd transformation). Oddi
comes from the Proto Germanic word uzdaz, pointed upward, and
further back, the Proto Indo European uzdho-.
Sources
University of Texas at Austin
Linguistic Research Center
So a third wheel is the odd man out?
ReplyDeleteI favor odd numbers. :)
ReplyDeleteThat makes sense to me.
ReplyDeleteMaths, hmm :)
ReplyDeleteCool post :)
Being interested in etymology is odd. :P
ReplyDeleteI've always liked the word "odd." Don't know why exactly. Does that make me odd? :)
ReplyDeleteMadeline @ The Shellshank Redemption
Minion, Capt. Alex's Ninja Minion Army
The 2014 Blogging from A-Z Challenge
And yet another thing that math has given us...
ReplyDeleteI am followed by a preponderance of odd numbers. Driver's licence. Soc. Sec. Number. Student ID. Licence plate. Birthdate. It's kind of scary, really.
Adding math to etymology is odd. (Yes I know, I'm being obnoxious.) I never thought that odd would mean something like this.
ReplyDeleteThaws pretty cool history behind odd.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, of course oddi comes from uzdaz. Naturally ;)
ReplyDeleteInteresting how it also came to mean peculiar.
ReplyDelete