Language Of Confusion: Feeling Strapped

There are so many weird words related to this one. You’re in for a time.
 
First of all, strap, a band of leather, showed up in the early seventeenth century from Scottish, of all languages. It’s thought to be from the Old French estrop, strap, and before that the classical Latin stroppus, which means strap like part of a slingshot. That’s actually from the Greek strophos, rope, from the verb strephein, to turn, from the Proto Indo European strebh-, to wind or turn. So because rope is twisted/turned, we have strap.
 
And that little word gives us so much weirdness. You know what’s from there? Catastrophe. Seriously! It showed up in the mid sixteenth century meaning a reversal of what’s expected, not meaning a disaster until 1748. It comes from the classical Latin catastropha (a reversal or catastrophe), and Greek katastrophe, disaster or undoing. The kata means down or against, and the rest is from strephein, so a catastrophe is turning against. Somehow that makes sense.
 
And from the same place is of course apostrophe. It showed up in the mid sixteenth century, a bit after catastrophe, from the French apostrophe, (same meaning, obvs), from the Late Latin apostrophus and Greek apostrophos prosoidia, which means apostrophe and literally translates to “the accent of turning away”. Yeah, somehow that meant a mark to show that a letter is missing—like it is being shortened to it’s, the apostrophe shows the missing i. Apo- means off or away from, and the rest is to turn, so an apostrophe is a mark that takes a letter away.
 
All right, how about strobe? It didn’t show up until 1942, but it was short for stroboscope, which showed up in 1896. That’s scope with the Greek strobos, twisting or whirling, which is obviously from strebh-. A strobe is a constantly whirling light! And there’s one more we’re going to look at: streptococcus. Yes, it’s from the same place. It showed up in 1877 as the bacteria genus, with the strepto- used by scientists when they wanted to say “twisted” but wanted to use Latin so they sound academic. It’s from the Greek streptos, twisted, which is from strephein. Fun fact, the cocco- part of the word means berry or seed, which is from kokkos, agranule or seed in Greek. Streptococcus is a twisted granule. And it sucks to come down with it.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Orbis Latinus

Language of Confusion: Punctual II

We dealt with “.”. We dealt with “?” and “!”. We even talked about “:”, “/” and “,”. But what about all the other crazy symbols that have popped up in our language over the years?

The quotation mark, for example. “ or ” or " or whatever you write them as. I doubt the etymology stumps anyone (they’re markswe use for quotes…GET IT?), but where did the double-comma-hanging-in-the-air come from? Not to mention the rules on usage. I’ve seen a single mark for dialogue in some books and none at all in others.

Quotation marks can be spotted as early as 1516 in “De Vitis Sophistarum” by Flavius Philostratus. Unlike now, they weren’t part of the type, but rather appeared as two commas in the left margin every time dialogue appeared. No closing quotes, either. The comma-like shape might not be from the comma, either (or at least, not directly from it). It’s thought to have evolved from “>”, the diple sign in Greek, which more than two thousand years ago was not used as a quotation mark but just an indication of something significant, kind of like how you might underline something important. Its usage spread across languages and cultures, and eventually formed the little curves we have today.

Next we’ll look at brackets “[ ]” and parentheses “( )”. The word bracket showed up in the 1570s, nearly two centuries before the symbols appeared in printing. They were so named because of the “resemblance” to architectural supports. Yeah, let that sink in. Meanwhile, the word parenthesis showed up in the 1540sand meant words or clauses inserted into a sentence, a meaning we can still attest to it today, if not as often. It came from the Middle Frenchparenthèse, Late Latinparenthesis (addition of letter to a word) and Greek parenthesis (putting in beside). As for the symbols, the parentheses showed up in the fourteenth century, although it took two more centuries for them to become what we know them as (interruptions in a thought for a different piece of information). Square brackets are, of course, variations on those. And now a days we use them for emoticons [: { )

Finally, we’ll look at the apostrophe, like I have in the word “we’ll” there. And there. The word apostrophe comes from the Middle French apostrophe and Late Latin apostrophus. Latin, as usual, borrowed the word from Greek apostrophos, meaning “the accent of turning away”. It makes more sense when you look at where it came from, another Greek word apostrephein, or “avert or turn away”. You avert from the letter, omitting it. As for why it’s used as a possessive, well, back in Old English there was an e there, and as it evolved to Modern English, we stopped using it. As for why it’s that particular symbol, I haven’t been able to find a satisfactory answer on that besides it being used as a mark of omission for centuries. For information on usage, check this handy guide by The Oatmeal. I also found out that there’s a ridiculous amount of friction between people who are diehard apostrophe fans and people who want it banished from printing forever. Seriously, it’s Star Trek fans who the better captain is. Prepare for a violent explosion.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Orbis Latinus

About.com

APHELIS

Ruth Finnegan’s “Why do we quote? The culture and history of quotation”.

Tony Jebson’s page on The Origins of Old English

The Oatmeal