A-to-Z Challenge: G

Today’s etymology (and hey, we made it through a week!) is glare, and as usual, I was entirely too amused by it.

Glare showed up in the late thirteenth century meaning shine brightly. It’s related to or descended from the Middle Low German glaren, to gleam, and get this, it’s related to glass. I’m not making that up. There’s a thing in linguistics called rhotacization where people pronounce the s/z sound as r, so glaren actually came from the Proto Germanic glasem, the word for glass. You can go even further back to Proto Indo European, where it’s ghel, which also gave us gold and yellow.

TL;DR: Glass gleams which is why glass is glass and gleam is gleam.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Dictionary.com

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

Encyclopaedia Britannica

A-to-Z Challenge: F

Today’s word is float, and man, now I really want a root beer float.

Float comes from the Old English flotian, to rest on the surface of water. Before that, it was the Proto Germanic flotan (to float, of course) and Proto Indo European pleud, which means flow. Don’t think that letter change is weird. A lot of p words changed to f, like flea and foul.

                                                                                                         

Oh, and apparently there were a bunch of other related words in Old English, like flota, which meant fleet (for the record, yes, it did give us fleet) and flot, a body of water. They were consolidated into float, or just lost to the ages.

I seriously can’t stop thinking about root beer floats. Man, what am I going to do? Oh, wait! I’m an adult! I’m going to the grocery store to buy root beer and ice cream, suckers!

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

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

A-to-Z Challenge: E

Today’s word is my only friend, the end. Or any writer’s only friend, really.

End comes from the Old English ende, which bizarrely enough meant end. Before that, it was the Proto Germanic andja, which originally meant the opposite side, and even further back in Proto Indo European it’s antjo, which means end, but more in a boundary sense. In Proto Indo European, the word ant means before or opposite, and it’s where we get ante from. Originally, end just meant the limits of something, like the ends of the Earth (the only way it’s still used according to its original meaning).

So let this be a lesson to you: a person isn’t using a word wrong. They’re ahead of their time.

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

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

A-to-Z Challenge: D

This word is going to be discombobulate, which Dianne wondered about a while back and which I couldn’t think of a better place to put.

This word showed up in 1834—yes, a specific year, and relatively recent to boot. And unlike most words, it’s pure American English. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, which I’m going to quote verbatim because of how hilarious it is, it’s “fanciful coinage of a type popular then”. Basically, people liked making up crazy, meaningless, fun to say words in the nineteenth century. In fact, discombobulate was originally discombobricate, not making this up, check the etymology page yourself.

This might be the best origin I’ve come across. Not to mention the most succinct.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

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

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

Omniglot

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Orbis Latinus

University of Ottawa, Canada

A-to-Z Challenge: B

Day 2! Still excited?



Today’s word is brush. Am I choosing words to etymologize based on what I see around the house? Why would you think something like that?

Brush has a bunch of meanings. The kind of brush you use on the floor or your hair, to move quickly (brush past), or bushes and shrubs. So where do they all come from?

The first to appear was the word for greenery, and that’s basically where the other words come from. It showed up in the early fourteenth century, with the sweeping brush coming later on in the century (and the verb of that coming almost a century later), and the move quickly brush not showing up until the late seventeenth century.

It’s actually not a hundred percent that they are related. Green brush comes from the Anglo French bruce (same meaning), Old NorthFrench broche, and Old French broce, and all of those come from the Gallo Roman brocia. Before that, it might come from the Gallo Roman word brucus, which means heather, or the same place as the sweeper brush. That word comes from the Old French broisse. Before that…well, it was either the Vulgar Latin bruscia (a bunch of shoots used to sweep away dust) or the Proto Germanic bruskaz, underbrush. Hm, it could really be either one.

Last we have the quickly walking brush. Now, while it appeared in the late seventeenth century, but there was a version of the word (meaning to rush) in the early fourteenth century, too. It’s thought that it comes from the idea of a horse (seriously) passing through dense woods. It comes from the Old French brosser, travel through woods, and the Middle English brush, an onslaught. Not that it isn’t related to the other brushes at all, but it’s more like a third cousin or something.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Dictionary.com

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at Arlington

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Fordham University

The Origins of French

A-to-Z Challenge: A

Whee! A solid month of not having to think up new posts etymology! I couldn’t be more excited. Well, I could, like if I sold a book or something. But barring that, yeah, this is pretty tops.

Today’s word: aim.

Aim first showed up in the early fourteenth century, with the verb form coming just before the noun. It comes from the Old French aesmer, rate or estimate, and the classical Latin aestimare, appraise. And if you’re thinking, “Boy, that word sure looks like estimate”, that’s because it is the origin word for estimate (and esteem, for that matter).

One word down. And the adventure begins!

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

Omniglot