Friday, April 3, 2015

A-to-Z Challenge: C

Today’s word: card. Oh, what a card.



Ow. Ow, that physically hurt me.

Card can mean either like playing cards or the completely unrelated comb wool. The former actually showed up first in the early fourteenth century, coming from the Middle French carte and classical Latin charta. Like many Roman things, it was taken from the Greek, in this case the word khartes, which means maps and probably derived from Egyptian. Interesting fact, “to card” once used to mean to play cards, like they didn’t need the extra verb in there. Tell me that’s not hilarious?

Anyway, the other card, which showed up decades later in the late fourteenth century, comes from the Old French carder (verb) and carde (noun), which had pretty much the same meaning. Before that, it was the Old Occitan cardar, which can be traced to the Vulgar Latin caritare and classical Latin carrere, to comb with a card, meaning it’s not related to the other card at all.

Sources

15 comments:

  1. English is such fun - we takes words from all over the place and then end up with the same word for different things :). So when did we add in the extra 'playing' rather than just using 'to card'?
    Tasha
    Tasha's Thinkings | Wittegen Press | FB3X (AC)

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  2. Combing with a deck of cards would be difficult.

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  3. What about the phrase "the cards we're dealt"? Cards as in a situation or hardship we've faced. :)

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  4. What about the phrase "the cards we're dealt"? Cards as in a situation or hardship we've faced. :)

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  5. So interesting with how words can have several meanings. So frustrating for those trying to learn English.

    betty

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  6. I never heard of the comb wool. Interesting.

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  7. My friends and I get together about once a week for a card night. It's the best. I had no idea about the comb wool!

    Good luck with the 2015 A to Z Challenge!
    A to Z Co-Host S. L. Hennessy
    http://pensuasion.blogspot.com

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  8. I'd forgotten about the combing wool thing. I had a friend whose mother spun and we used to help her get ready to spin the wool by carding it for her.

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  9. That's not hilarious. That's not true, but you told me to tell you. :)

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  10. Yes, I'm familiar with the other carding. It's a knitting thing (although, I don't spin).

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  11. Now you've got me wondering what items beginning with D you have lying around your house. Drills? Duct tape? Dust bunnies? The anticipation is killing me...

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  12. We've turned it into a verb too...we get carded at bars.

    Elizabeth

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  13. Carding wool... that's ringing a faint bell for me although I've no idea what it means. I used to card an awful lot - with playing cards, that is.

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  14. It's been a long time since I've heard of comb wool.

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  15. It's interesting that card is related to map.

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