Saturday, April 2, 2016

A-to-Z Challenge: B

Word two! It’s blunderbuss, which someone had mentioned curiosity about ages ago (sorry! I don’t remember who!).


Blunderbuss has two meanings, one, an insensitive “blundering” person, and two, a musket that can fire at close range. Um, okay. It showed up in the mid seventeenth century from the Dutch donderbus, a mix of donder, thunder, and bus, gun. So a blunderbuss is a thunder gun, first literally and then figuratively. Apparently people started pronouncing donderbus wrong because donder sounded kind of like blunder, which has a totally separate etymology. But weirdly enough, donder survives in English as dunderhead. Well, probably. There are no better guesses as to where “dunder” comes from.

Etymology!

Sources

14 comments:

  1. Great word to hear and to say. I'll be sure to use it in my next story. It suits one of characters well. Have a lovely day.

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  2. So how did it go from gun to head in dunderhead?
    And where's the stick figure?

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  3. Really interesting! Rolls nicely on the tongue--blunderbuss..

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  4. I knew of the gun meaning, but I'd never heard it used to describe a person - shows what I know :). It always makes me think of a clumsy gun, because of the blunder part, so donder makes much more sense ::g::
    Tasha
    Tasha's Thinkings | Wittegen Press | FB3X (AC)

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  5. I've never heard the word before. But I seem to recall donder being part of a Dutch insult sort of word- donderstein or donderstain, however it's spelled.

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  6. I love that word. It's fun to say. Like Nicola, I want to use it in a story sometime.

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  7. I've called people blunderbuss and donderhead at one time or another. They're good words.

    Susan Says

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  8. It's so interesting, etymology! And how unsure we are, often, of the real roots of words. Great theme. ~Liz http://www.lizbrownleepoet.com

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  9. I want to say I've heard the word blunderbuss before, but I don't think I have. Maybe because it's such an interesting word I want to say I'm familiar.

    ~Patricia Lynne aka Patricia Josephine~
    Story Dam
    Patricia Lynne, Indie Author

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  10. Interesting word, although scary if both definitions are used together: an insensitive “blundering” person with a musket that can fire at close range . . .

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  11. Thunderhead! I'm totally going to use that!
    For... something.

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  12. I love the word blunderbuss. I almost want to write an historical just so I can use words like that.

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  13. Great words so far! I can't wait to see what you have in store for the rest of the month.

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