Monday, April 20, 2015

A-to-Z Challenge: Q

I chose quaint for today’s word because it’s just always seemed weird to me.



Quaint showed up in the early thirteenth century (how quaint), coming from the Old French cointe, meaning knowledgeable, elegant, or arrogant (-_-). That comes from the classical Latin cognitus, which you might recognize as the origin for cognizance. Cognoscere is a mix of two words, the prefix com- (together) and gnoscere, to know (and gave us words like notice and notify...but not note). Anyway, when it first showed up, quaint meant something similar to its Old French counterpart. But a century later, it started meaning elaborate or skillfully made, and then a century after that, strange and clever. It wasn’t until the end of the eighteenth century that it meant what we currently use it as. Not that we use it much.

And I was certainly right about it being weird.

Sources
Omniglot

11 comments:

  1. That is definitely a weird evolution - you can never account from where words come from or where they'll go, can you? :)
    Tasha
    Tasha's Thinkings | Wittegen Press | FB3X (AC)

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  2. So I can tell an arrogant jerk he's quaint and he won't have a clue?

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  3. That's an interesting history for one word. It meant so many different things.

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  4. It's earliest meaning seems rather pretentious. No wonder snobby people in movies tend to say this one. :)

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  5. It almost means the exact opposite. Calling something quaint isn't usually a compliment.

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  6. I like the word quaint; it just sounds kind of eloquent in a way :)

    betty

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  7. Just wait until the word "awesome" takes on negative connotations due to over use.

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  8. So, it was a good thing way back when. Kind of like what it means now.

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  9. We certainly don't use it much anymore!

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  10. These are different definitions from what I associate with the word. I always thought cozy or old-fashioned.

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  11. It's certainly gone through a few meanings. Never would have thought it had the same root as cognizance.

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Please validate me.