Language Of Confusion: Cussed Out

This week, something easy: words that have cuss in them.
 
Percussion showed up in the early fifteenth century, followed by percuss in the sixteenth century, while percussionist didn’t show up until 1921. Initially, percussion only meant a blow or a contusion, with it not meaning strike an instrument until 1776. It comes from the classical Latin percussionem, which meant percussion but also a beat of time, which probably isn’t why it was used for music but does kind of fit. It’s from the verb percutere, to beat, a mix of per, meaning through (and from the Proto Indo European per-) and quatere, to shake. And quatere somehow happens to be the origin of quash.

 
Yes, quash. But not the one used in legalese. Um, kind of. See, there used to be two different quashes, one that meant void or nullify, and another meaning to beat or crush, and they were so similar sounding that Middle English combined them into one word. The nullify quash showed up in the mid thirteenth century from the Old French quasser/casser, from the Medieval Latin quassare and Late Latin cassare, from the Latin cassus, empty, and Proto Indo European kes-, to cut. The other quash showed up in the early fourteenth century from the Old French quasser/casser, and yes, they’re spelled the same, but different definitions. It comes from the classical Latin quassare, to shake violently, and that’s from quatere, which is from the Proto Indo European kwet-, to shake. So yeah, different words. The beat/crush quash lives on more in the word squash, which showed up at the same time as quash, from the Old French esquasser/escasser, a mix of the prefix ex-, out, and quash, obviously. To squash is to beat something out!
 
Back to percussion, we’re also going to look at repercussion, which is pretty much the same word, but with a re- on it that makes a world of difference. It showed up in the early fifteenth century from the Old French repercussion and classical Latin repercussionem, to strike back. Which makes sense since re- means back and percussionem is to strike. It’s just these days the word is a lot less literal.
 
Finally today, concussion. It showed up in the fifteenth century, coming from the classical Latin concussionem, a shaking. The con- means with or together, and the rest is from quatere, so the word is “to shake together”. Except now it’s only used to describe a head injury. It actually makes sense!
 
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
University of Texas at Arlington
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Orbis Latinus

Language Of Confusion: Gourd-geous

Shut up, I’m proud of that name.

Since it’s Halloween (!!!), why not look at the origin of the word pumpkin, and other gourds that pop up this time of year?

First of all, gourd itself showed up in the fourteenth century from the Anglo French gourde and Old French coorde, which can then be traced to the classical Latin cucurbita, which just means gourd or pumpkin. It’s origin before there is unknown, although some people think it might be related to the word for cucumber: cucumis. Spelling-wise that makes sense, but the first lesson you should learn about etymology is that it never makes sense.

Pumpkin itself showed up in the mid seventeenth century, although it did appear in English before that as pompone/pumpion. No K though. It comes from the Middle French pompon and classical Latin pepon, watermelon. They of course took that from the Greek pepon, which means melon, and is thought to be related to peptein, to cook, descended from the Proto Indo European pekw-, cook or ripen. This one makes even less sense than usual.

Now, squash. Like the food, not what you do to something. Because those aren’t related at all. Remember what I said about etymology making no sense? See, the gourd showed up in the mid seventeenth century, coming from the Narraganset askutasquash, “the things that may be eaten raw”. It’s just a coincidence that it happens to be the same as squashing something, although I’m sure the fact that it was already a word in English helped people decide to just call that type of gourd a “squash”.

Finally today, zucchini showed up fairly recently, in the early twentieth century. It’s from the Italian zucchino, zucchini, from zucca, which means… pumpkin. We’ve come full circle.

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

University of Ottawa, Canada

Fordham University