The Horror

You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain.

Well, I think it’s horrifying.

Language Of Confusion: Mortal Thoughts, Redux, Part I

Way back during the first Halloween I decided to etymologize words related to mortality because it felt vaguely Halloween related. And now I’m doing it again.
 
Mortal showed up in the late fourteenth century, meaning deadly or destructive to life, coming from the Old French mortel and classical Latin mortalis, which is just mortal. It’s from the Proto Indo European root mer-, to rub away or harm, the origin of a bunch of other words, some of which are related to death, some of which are not. That’s the reason this is going to be multiple parts. There are some weird ones in here we definitely need to look at.
 
Mortify showed up in the late fourteenth century as mortifien, to kill or destroy the life of. Yeah. In the fifteenth century, it took on a religious sense of “subdue the flesh by abstinence and discipline” (yikes), and then by the seventeenth century it started to mean humiliate. Which… I can kind of see that evolution. Anyway, it comes from the Late Latin mortificare, put to death, from the classical Latin mors, death, and that’s from mer-. Mortify—embarrassed to death!
 
Morbid showed up in the mid seventeenth century meaning the nature of a disease, then referring to mental states in the mid nineteenth century. It comes from the classical Latin morbus, disease, and that is thought to be from mori, to die, which is from mer-.
 
Murder is unsurprisingly old, having shown up in the fourteenth century. It comes from the Old English morþor, great sin or crime. That’s from the Proto Germanic murthran, which is from mer-, meaning murder came to English through its Germanic family instead of its Latin one. How appropriate.
 
Now we’re going to look at a word that I didn’t do last time, probably out of laziness. Mortuary showed up in the late fourteenth century, but back then it meant a gift to a minister on the death of a parishioner. It then meant a funeral service in the mid fifteenth century, and then by 1865 a place where the dead were kept, because that was fancier than what they used to call it: deadhouse. Mortuary comes to us from the Anglo French mortuarie, Medieval Latin mortuarium, from the Late Latin mortuaries, and classical Latin mortuus, dead, and that’s from mori, which is from mer-. Seriously, they paid the minister? I mean, I get it if it’s to pay for the funeral. They’re not just giving the priest money because someone died, right?
 
Finally today, the word I’m sure you’ll all be thrilled to see: mortgage. It showed up in the late fourteenth century, although back then it was just morgage because we never pronounce the T anyway. It’s from the Old French mortgage, which literally meant “dead pledge”. The mort- is from mori, while the -gage is from wage. Never has a word felt more accurate.
 
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
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Orbis Latinus

From The Spamfiles

Let’s see how people have tried to scam me this week…

Now, she doesn’t say she’s a widow, but she does have cancer and wants to give me her money. As well as her body to science “as an offering to humanity”. Yeah, sure, good idea.

My unread message from Contact says they’re waiting for my answer about their party. That’s how you know it’s not for me, because no one I know would ever think I’d want to go to a party, crazy or otherwise.

If this message is in your spam folder, it’s because of your ISP, not because this is an obvious scam, beneficiary.

I love it when I get messages for accounts I don’t have from email addresses that have nothing to do with the place supposedly contacting me. Bonus points for saying my account ends in all X’s. That’s super legit.
 

Another new follower. I’ve got to say, the staring at the wall away from the camera is vaguely creepy. Makes me think the Blair Witch is going to jump out at me or something.

Shouldn’t Have Asked

This is why people don’t ask me questions. You’d think my mom would have learned that by now. She’s lucky I didn’t go back further. Comics have story lines more ridiculous and complicated than soap operas.

What do you mean none of this is necessary for watching the movie? I don’t see how that could possibly be relevant.

Language Of Confusion: Grimy Words

I have no scary etymologies left. I guess grime is kind of scary, especially in a post-pandemic world.
 
Grime
Grime showed up in the late sixteenth century, but no one really knows where it came from. It might be from the Middle English grim, dirt or filth, which makes sense, although you know how these etymologies are. You might think it was related to grim in some way, but as far as I can tell, no, not at all. The Middle English grim comes from the Middle Low German greme and Proto Germanic grim-, to smear, which is from the Proto Indo European ghrei-, to rub, which is not where our grim comes from.
 
Scum
Scum showed up in the early fourteenth century, coming to us from the Middle Dutch schume, foam. Middle Dutch! Now that’s a language we don’t see here much. It’s another Germanic language, though, which is why schume comes from the Proto Germanic skuma-, which might be from the Proto Indo European skeu-, cover or conceal.
 
Grunge
Now this one is really recent, having only shown up in 1965 as slang, the music/fashion use of the word not coming until 1989. It’s definitely related to grungy and probably formed from it, though they came into existence in the same year. Grungy is thought to be a mashup of the words grubby and dingy, which makes sense, and also makes me wonder how many other words with uncertain origins may just be two other words smashed together.
 
Grubby
Since we already mentioned grubby, we might as well look at it. Itshowed up meaning stunted in the seventeenth century, infested with grubs in the eighteenth century, then dirty (specifically a dirty child) in 1845, and it is indeed related to the word grub. Now grub, as in the insect, showed up in the fifteenth century, but it was also a verb that meant to dig in the ground (probably where the insect definition came from), and that word showed up in the fourteenth century. It’s from the Old English grybban/grubbian, and before that the West Germanic grubbjan, and earlier the Proto Indo European ghrebh-, to dig, which happens to be the origin word for grave.
 
Dingy
And to finish things off, dingy. It showed up fairly recently, in 1736, in the Kentish dialect of English. It’s another word where the origin is uncertain, though it might be related to dung. And it used to be a derogatory word for people of color in the mid nineteenth century, because of course it was.
 
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
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
History Of The Dutch Language

October Goals

Oh wow, October already. This year is going by way too fast. Wasn’t it March yesterday? It feels like it was. I don’t even remember what I was supposed to be working on last month, so you can assume I probably didn’t do it.
 
September Goals
1. Get WIP 1 beta ready. I’m really trying to get this on in good shape. If anyone can take a look at it, let me know.
I didn’t do much work on it and honestly, there’s a lot more I could do on it (I’m terrible at descriptions). I suppose it’s beta ready because I don’t know what I need to work on next.
 
2. Get drafts done of the synopsis and query for WIP 1.
Wait, this was a goal? I actually did this, holy crap.
 
3. Get to the notes on WIP 2 if I have the time.
And somehow I did this, too. I still have about a third of the book left to go over, but it is getting done. It’s a miracle.
 
And now for this month.
 
October Goals
1. Beta reads for WIP 1. Any volunteers?
 
2. Finish working on my notes for WIP 2. This one’s actually possible.
 
3. Update my etymology page. There are so many of them, I think it’s time to create a few separate pages up in the header there. It might make formatting them easier, too.
 
That’s what I want to do this month. Will any of this actually happen? Who knows? What do you want to do this month?

The Only Way To Be Sure

Got to start off the Halloween season with a comic about the most terrifying creature in the universe: spiders.