A-to-Z Challenge: Zenith

This is it! The end of the line!

What word did I pick? Well, didn’t you read the title?

Zenith showed up in the late fourteenth century, coming from the Old French cenith and Medieval Latin cenit/senit. It’s believed that cenit/senit is an error in the transliteration (translating a word by its letters rather than its definition) of the Arabic word samt, which means road or path. No word as to why it means peak, though.

Sooooo. We end on a mystery. I guess that’s okay. Thanks for reading all these!

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

Dictionary of Medieval Latin

A-to-Z Challenge: Yes

The end is nigh!

Our second to last word: yes.

Yes comes from the Old English gise/gese, which meant “so be it”. The first syllable, whether ge or gi, comes from the Old English word ge, which means so or yes and comes from the Proto Germanic ja/jai (another way of saying yes) and the Proto Indo European yam. The -se part of the word is from si, the third person form of to be that’s used in commands. So we just shortened a way of saying “so be it” and now it’s the most common way for agreeing to something.

And for the record, a lot of words beginning with Y began with G in Old English. It must have something to do with the pronunciation of G back then.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

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

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

A-to-Z Challenge: Xeno

Did everyone think up something for X? Not easy, is it?

Look, words beginning with X are hard to find.

Xeno is a prefix that means strange or foreign. It comes directly from the Greek xenos, a guest, stranger, or foreigner. Hm, nothing really interesting about this one. Maybe we should get rid of the letter X. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about the twenty fourth day of the challenge so much.

Sources

Dictionary.com

Google Translate

A-to-Z Challenge: Weak

Four left to go!

I remember how me and my friends used to use weak as an insult.

Look, we’re on the last letters. I’m out of material.

Weak showed up in the early fourteenth century, coming from the Old Norse work veikr. That word stems from the Proto Germanic waikwaz (yield) and wikanan (bend), so something that is pliable and easy to move is weak. It can further be traced back to the Proto Indo European weik, bend or wind, and the ancestor of several words, including vicarious and weak homophone week.

Week and weak are related. I’m not even sure how to react to that. 

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

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

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

Omniglot

A-to-Z Challenge: Value

The end is getting close!

Value. Looks like we’re back down to two syllables.

Value first showed up in the early fourteenth century, coming from the Old French value, which has the same meaning. That value is a noun version of another word, valoir, which comes from the classical Latin valere, a word for one who is strong and of value. That word can be traced back to the Proto Indo European wal-, which means “be strong”.

Okay, I may have oversold it when I said that these would all be interesting. But you probably figured that out already.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

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

Omniglot

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

A-to-Z Challenge: Ubiquitous

Time for U! No outrageous pun this time!

Yeah, a four syllable word when almost every word I’ve done here has been one. Do you know how hard it is to find a word beginning with U that isn’t an un- word?

Ubiquitous, which basically means something that’s everywhere, showed up fairly recently, in the early nineteenth century (in etymological terms, that’s like last week). The reason it’s so recent is because another word, ubiquity, was used then (and I just found out that ubiquity is a real word! Wow!). Ubiquity showed up in the late sixteenth century, coming from the Middle French ubiquité and the classical Latin ubique. In Latin, ubi means where, and que…well, it has tons of meanings, including giving “universal meaning” when used as a suffix. So it’s like saying “all across the universe”, but in three letters and in suffix form.

I don’t pretend to understand Latin. Or any languages for that matter. They’re weird.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Omniglot

University of Ottawa, Canada

Dictionary.com

Google Translate

A-to-Z Challenge: Teach

T time!

Wait! Don’t leave!

A word that I’m sure has meaning for many of you: teach.

Teach comes from the Old English taecan, to demonstrate or point out, or to train or persuade. Yes, it was certainly a flexible word. It comes from the Proto Germanic taikijan, to show, and the Proto Indo European deik, also to show (as well as the origin word for diction). I know I throw the word interesting around a lot (I swear, I mean it!), but I’m going to do it again: interestingly, in Old English, taecan was not used to indicate teaching like a teacher would. It was used in that “show” way I mentioned above, rather than specifically for instruction. The word they used for that was laeran (before you ask, yes, that’s where learn comes from).

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

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

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center