Thursday, October 20, 2022

Language Of Confusion: Bugged Out, Part II

More bugs, this time ones that crawl on the ground.
 
Bug
How have I not done this before? Anyway, bug showed up in the early seventeenth century, first referring to bedbugs before it was insects in general. Its origins are kind of murky, but it might be related to the Middle English bugge, which is something frightening or a scarecrow in particular. It could also be related to the Scottish bogill, a goblin or bugbear (the latter of which actually has the original, something frightening definition of bug). As for all the other definitions of bug that arose over the years, like a machine defect (from 1889), to annoy someone (not until 1949!), and to secretly record (1946). There’s also bug-eyed, like someone with large eyes, and you’d think that would be related to insects, but it’s not. It’s thought to be from bulge instead!
 
Maggot
Maggot, the larva stage of flies, is supposed to be a corruption of the word magat, which is also thought to be from the Middle English maddok, which could mean a maggot but also a worm—so things that squirm. That’s from the Old English maþa, which is pronounced “matha” and means maggot or worm. It’s from the Proto Germanic mathon, and that’s as far back as we can trace. So it hasn’t changed much except for the th inexplicably turning into gg.
 
Worm
Speaking of worm, it comes from the Old English wurm/wyrm, which meant a legless reptile like a snake. It comes from the Proto Germanic wurmiz, from the Proto Indo European wrmi-, which means worm, which is from wer-, to turn or bend. And man, the shear number of words that’s related to! We’ll have to get into it sometime.
 
Caterpillar
Another larva, this word showed up in the mid fifteenth century as catyrpel, and the Y makes it look soo much cooler. It’s from the Old North French caterpilose, which literally means “shaggy cat”, from the Late Latin catta pilosa, where catta is cat and the rest is from pilosus, hairy or shaggy. A caterpillar is… a hairy cat?!
 
Earwig
Now this one is really interesting since it can’t just be ear + wig… can it? It comes from the Old English earwicga, just earwig. The first part is from eare, which is just ear, while wicga was just another word for earwig or beetle. It’s origin is unknown, but it’s thought to be from wiggle, which does make more sense than wig. I mean, they do wiggle a lot. Though hopefully not in your ear.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
University of Texas at Arlington
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary

4 comments:

  1. Unless the cat is legless, it looks nothing like a caterpillar.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I once read a book (well, it was more like a series) where the author had "translated" a word from Welsh (I think, it was a fantasy novel, so there was a bit of hand waving here) and she represented thorn with dd. So, gg isn't out of the question, really. I mean, both are kind of a stretch.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Not all caterpillars are hairy, so that's just weird....

    ReplyDelete

Please validate me.