Language of Confusion: Feelings of Joy

Happy words! Because…well, joy is mentioned a lot this time of year, I guess. So here we go.

Happy

Happy first showed up in the late fourteenth century, where it meant lucky—maybe it changed because if you’re lucky, you’re probably happy. It’s actually a mix of the word hap (more on that in a second) and the suffix -y, which actually means “full of or characterized by” like hearty or funny. So this means that happy means full of hap. But what’s hap? I didn’t even know it was a word! But it is, having shown up in the early thirteenth century meaning chance, fortune, or fate. It comes from the Old Norse happ, good luck, Proto Germanic hap, and Proto Indo European kob-, to suit/fit or succeed. Hap basically means luck (generally good), but it also has a verb version that means to come to pass. Which is what gave us happen. And happenstance. And perhaps.

Joy

Joy showed up in the early thirteenth century, coming from the Old French joie, pleasure, and classical Latin gaudia and its singular gaudium, which both just mean joy or pleasure. They come from the verb guadere, rejoice, which can be traced even further back to the Proto Indo European gau, also rejoice. That also might be where gaudy comes from, by the way.

Glad

Glad comes from the Old English glaed, which could mean happy, bright,or brilliant (those last two definitions are going seem a lot more significant in a few seconds). Glaed comes from the Proto Germanic glada-, which is from the Proto Indo European ghel-, shine. The origin word for glass, gold, and yellow. So because things are figuratively bright when you’re glad, it comes from the word for shine.

Cheer

Cheer first showed up in the early thirteenth century meaning, get this, the face, as in expressing emotion. It comes from the Anglo French chere, the face, and Old French chiere, face or expression. Before that it was cara in Late Latin (also face), which probably comes from the Greek kara, which means head or skull. That’s actually from the Proto Indo European root ker-, head or horn—it’s literally the origin word for horn. So because your face is on your head and your expressions are on your face…you get cheer? Is that how it works?

tl;dr: Happy words are weird.

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

Fordham University

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Orbis Latinus

Vocab Test

Several months ago I came across a vocabulary test that I thought was fun but then I saw it on two other blogs before I could post it so I decided to wait a while. And now that it’s almost the end of the year and I can’t think of anything else, here it is!

The rules are pretty basic. You pick a language and then it shows you a word, and you pick from a set of four either the synonym or antonym of the word. It’s easy at first, but as it goes on, it starts throwing more and more obscure words at you. I tried to break them down and piece them together from the roots I’ve learned over years of etymology posts. Of course, considering how weird some of those etymologies are, I could have gotten them completely backwards.

Still, I did pretty well, getting in the 0.01th percentile, with a vocabulary of 30325. Big surprise, right? The reader/writer did super well! Shocking! I’m not actually sure how it was ranked. I guess that’s supposed to be 30325 words. It’s not exactly a scientific test :P.

How’s your vocabulary? Did you do well on the test? Any words that you had never heard of before?

I Maintain That It Wasn’t My Fault

Another almost true story.

I’m all for reusing containers, but for the love of god, mark them because mashed potatoes really look like cookie dough ice cream and then you’re in for a world of disappointment. Ugh.

Lost In Translation: June

Time for another month! At the rate I’m going, I’ll probably get to July sometime around next July.

June showed up as a word in the early fourteenth century—before that, the mont still existed, but in Old English it was liðe se ærra, which means something like “earlier mildness”. Which honestly makes more sense as a name, but maybe they just wanted something that was faster to spell. When people renamed the month, it could appear as June, Juin, or Iun, because J was originally the Y sound and the symbol came from I, and people were actually still using Iune up until the seventeenth century.

The word June comes from the classical Latin Iunius or Iunius mensis, which is just the month of June. Iunius is probably short for Iunonius, sacred to Juno, the Roman queen of the gods (kind of equivalent to the Greek Hera). So yeah, she got her own month. However there’s also a theory that May and June actually come from “majors” and “juniors”, referring to old and young men, respectively. Because of course they would need entire months dedicated to themselves.

Yeah, I prefer them being named after goddesses. Or the number of times a day you can milk a cow, like May used to be.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Omniglot

Encyclopedia Mythica

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

December Goals

Well, it’s December. Just one month left of 2016 and then it’s gone and most importantly, it can’t come back.

So let’s see how I did on my November goals.

November Goals

1. Write 10,000 words for new story idea. I don’t know if I’ll get there, but I want to aim high. So when I inevitably fail I can wallow in that much more misery.

I…actually did this. I got ten thousand words. Even though I missed more than a week of writing.

2. Do a bunch of boring adult crap like raking the pine needles and stuff. I hate being an adult.

I did this too. Damn pine needles.

3. Oh god. Thanksgiving is this month. Please, no. Not that. Anything but that.

Hey, it wasn’t terrible! Considering how bad 2016 was, this is the most surprising thing of all.

Wow, successful month. You’d almost not believe the world was going to end.

Anyway, now for this month:

December Goals

1. Do 10,000 more words in the WIP. If I was able to do it last month, I better be able to do it now.

2. Maybe update my blog design. It’s been YEARS.

3. Christmas. AAAAAAAAAAGH.

Okay, so that’s the plan. Let’s see how much it can go awry! So what are you up to this month?

The Last Place You Want To Look

Veronica, in her insistence on being with me at all times, will often lie on things that she’s not supposed to. Usually it’s my glasses.

Turns out that really loud purring drowns out the sound of a text coming in. Of course, it’s loud enough to drown out most things…

Language of Confusion: Ports, Part IV

Fourth week now. Let’s hope we can actually finish it this time.

First, deport showed up in the late fifteenth century meaning…to behave. I can’t even wrap my head around that. The other deport, like you would a person, didn’t show up until the mid seventeenth century! And they actually have slightly different origins. That weird deport comes from the Old French deporter, which could mean behave or things like be patient, amuse, delay, treat kindly, and take sexual pleasure with. Seriously, what the hell. Like the other -port words it comes from the classical Latin portare, carry, and the de- prefix means from or off. No, that makes no sense. It makes less than no sense. The other deport—the one we still use—came to us from Modern French, where it was déporter, carry off (or, you know, deport), and before that the classical Latin deportare, transport. Now I want to take the other deport and yell at it, “See?! This is how an etymology is supposed to go!!”

Ahem. Speaking of transport, it showed up in the late fourteenth century coming from the Old French transporter and classical Latin transportare, which is just transport. The trans- part means across, so it’s carry across. It’s nice to read something that doesn’t make me want to scramble my brains with an ice pick. Deport. PS., teleport didn’t show up until 1940 and is actually tele- (far off) plus transport. I’m assuming sci-fi has something to do with that.

Support showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French supporter and classical Latin (I’m sure you can guess it) supportare, or support. Support’s original definition was things like hold up or sustain, and it’s a mix of the prefix sub-, up from under, and portare, carry. So it’s to carry up from under, which makes sense. I think.

Finally today, we’re going to do some quick etymologies of the final port words. Passport is from the sixteenth century, coming from the Middle French passeport, authorization to pass through a port. It’s literally pass + the ship port. Next, purport showed up in the early fifteenth century from the Anglo French purport and Old French porport/purporter, contents, or convey. That’s a combination of pur-, which is basically por- or pro- and means forth, and porter, which of course comes from portare. Purport is to carry forth. Lastly there’s comport, which showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French comporter, endure or behave. It’s from the Latin comportare, which could mean things like transport or bring together. That last one makes sense since com- means together, so it’s carry together. Not that we use comport much these days…

TL;DR: If you ever want to etymologize the word port for your blog, it’s going to take way longer than you think.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Ottawa, Canada

Fordham University