Category Archives: language

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10 Serious-Sounding Medical Conditions That Aren’t So Serious

blowingmynose

Your doctor just broke the news to you: you have a bad case of rhinorrhea. Not only that, you’ve a touch of oscitancy and a bit of sudation too.

Prognosis? You have a runny nose, you’re yawning, and you’re sweaty. All of which adds up to, while not exactly a pretty picture, nothing too serious.

Here are 10 more conditions that sound more serious than they actually are.

borborygmus

“Wind is like the human breath, rain like secretions, and thunder like borborygmus.”

Ch’ung Wang, Lun-hêng: Philosophical essays of Wang Chʻung, 1907

Borborygmus is the sound of a rumbling tummy caused by gas. The word comes from the Greek borboryzein, “to have a rumbling in the bowels,” and is imitative in origin.

freckles

ephelides

“Medically known as ephelides, freckles are usually an inherited trait in families with blond or red hair and fair skin.”

Joan Liebmann-Smith, PhD and Jacqueline Egan, “Using Your 5 Senses to Make Sense of Your Baby’s Body Signs,” The Huffington Post, July 5, 2010

The ominous-sounding ephelides, Greek in origin, are more commonly known as freckles. Lentigo is another word for freckle and comes from the Latin lens, lent-, or “lentil.”

eructation

“Mr. P. is sullen, and seems to mistake an eructation for the breaking of wind backwards.”

Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, 1751

Eructation is a fancy way of saying “an instance of belching.” It comes from the Latin eructare, which means — you guessed it — “to belch.”

A fancy way of saying “an instance of farting,” in case you were wondering, is flatus. Flatus comes from the Latin word for “wind,” which also gives us flatulent.

horripilation

“The clergyman prayed aloud, when in a few moments, piercing shrieks were heard issuing from the oven. The whole company were in a state of horripilation.”

John Roussel, The Silver Lining, 1894

Horripilation is “the bristling of the body hair, as from fear or cold,” more commonly known as goose bumps, goose pimples, or gooseflesh. Horripilation comes from the Latin horripilare, where horrere means “to tremble” and pilare means “to grow hair.”

Of all the goose terms, gooseflesh — named of course for its resemblance to that of a plucked goose — is the oldest, originating around 1834, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Goose pimples came about around 1889 and goose bumps in 1933.

Goosebumps is also the name of a popular children’s horror series of books by R.L. Stine.

lacrimation

“For those of you unfamiliar with the makeover episode of America’s Next Top Model, know that it typically brings out tears, and I’m talking Niagara-like lacrimation.”

Disgrasion, “The ‘Ethnically Ambiguous’ Are So Last Season,” The Huffington Post, October 27, 2008

Lacrimation is “the secretion of tears, especially in excess,” otherwise known as crying. The word comes from the Latin lacrimare, “to weep.”

onychophagy

“M. Bertillon now tells us that biting the nails is a sign of degeneracy and gives it the hard name of ‘onychophagy.’”

The American Homoeopathist, Volume 19, 1893

Onychophagy is the habit of biting one’s nails. The word ultimately from the Greek onux, “claw, nail,” and phagos, “eater.”  Onux also gives us onyx while phagos can be found in words like esophagus.

yawnstretch

pandiculation

“If you’ve observed th’ awakened cat
Or one just risen from meditation —
She’ll stretch tremendously — well that
Is what is called ‘pandiculation.’”

George W. E. Daniels, “Pandiculation,” Medical Pickwick, Volume 7, 1921

Pandiculation is the act of stretching accompanied by yawning. The word ultimately comes from the Latin pandere, “to stretch.”

singultus

“Hiccups, more officially referred to as singultus (from the Latin, ‘to catch your breath while sobbing’), are repeated, spasmodic contractions of the diaphragm causing a quick inhalation that is then cut short by an involuntary closing of the glottis.”

Lisa Sanders, “A Serious Case of the Hiccups,” The New York Times, September 25, 2011

There are many “cures” for singultus, including drinking a glass of water upside-down, being scared, and placing sugar under the tongue. The record for longest bout of hiccups belongs to Charles Osborne, who hiccuped from 1922 to 1990.

The word hiccup is imitative in origin. An earlier form is hickop, which seems to be an alteration of the older hicket or hyckock. The Online Etymology Dictionary says that an Old English word for hiccup was ælfsogoða, “elf hiccup,” which was “so called because hiccups were thought to be caused by elves.”

Hiccough, according to the OED, was a later spelling of hiccup, “apparently under the erroneous impression that the second syllable was cough.” This spelling, the OED suggests, “ought to be abandoned as a mere error.”

icecreamheadache

sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia

“No one really knows why, but scientists think that stabbed-in-the-forehead feeling (sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia) occurs when the temperature of your palate doesn’t have time to normalize between spoonfuls of flavored ice.”

“How To: Land a Plane, Cure Brain Freeze, Get on Reality TV,” WIRED Magazine, May 19, 2008

No, it’s not a tumor. Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, more commonly known as ice-cream headache or brain freeze, happens when you eat cold things, like ice cream, too quickly.

Sphenopalatine refers to “the sphenoid bone and the palate,” in other words the roof of your mouth, while ganglioneuralgiarefers means nerve pain, or neuralgia, of the ganglion, “a group of nerve cells forming a nerve center, especially one located outside the brain or spinal cord.”

Ice-cream headache, a temporary condition, may be remedied in a number of simple ways.

sternutation

“Prometheus was the that wisht well to the sneezer, when the man, which he had made of clay, fell a fit of sternutation, upon the of that celestial fire which he stole the sun.”

William Carew Hazlitt, Faiths and Folklore, 1905

While a sternutation may sound like a tough talking to, it actually refers to a sneeze. The word comes from the Latin sternuere, “to sneeze.”

Sneeze, in case you were wondering, comes from the Old English fneosan, “to snort, sneeze.” Fn-, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, might have been misread has sn-, or else fnese was reduced to nese, and sneeze was “a ‘strengthened form’ of this, ‘assisted by its phonetic appropriateness.’” In other words, the word sneeze kind of sounds like the act of sneezing.

For even more harmless yet serious-sounding conditions, check out this list.

[Photo: “Blowing my nose,” CC BY 2.0 by superhua]
[Photo: “Andy at the Getty,” CC BY 2.0 by Kevin Dooley]
[Photo: “DSC_4804,” CC BY 2.0 by yoppy]
[Photo: “Ice Cream Headache?” CC BY 2.0 by Jereme Rauckman]

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10 Unusual Nature Words We Should Use More Often

baskinginsun

Have you always wanted a word for the sound of rustling leaves? How about the fine spray of water swept from the tops of waves during a sea storm? You’re in luck: those words exist along with eight more unusual nature words we should use more often.

apricity

“But, you see, I’m a little too warm, for the road is opposite the apricity all the way, and the sun is rather hottish this morning.”

“The Husband-Love,” The Dublin University Magazine, Volume 20, July to December 1842

Most of us have experienced apricity: the warmth of the sun in winter. So why not use it every sunny winter day?

Apricity comes from the Latin apricus, “having lots of sunshine” or “warmed by the sun.” To apricate means to bask in the sun.

estivation

“In the evenings, while they force down obligatory eight-course gastronomies prepared by celebrity chefs at Relais & Chateaux resorts, we contentedly order the plat du jour at a little bistro not far from our humble two-star hotel — simple economies that help make our vacation savings last our four-week estivation.”

“Letter from France: Call Me in September,” Newsweek, August 8, 2004

Estivation is “the act of passing the summer.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word comes from the Latin aestivation-, aestivatio, which means “summer pasturing,” and in botany, the “folded arrangement of petals and sepals in a flower bud.”

Earlier this month estivate was Fritnancy’s word of the week.

autumnleaves

frondescence

“The foliage of the trees is nearly as late as last year. The oak and beech have as yet hardly any appearance of frondescence.”

Philosophical Magazine and Journal, 1817

While it’s true most of us won’t have the opportunity to use frondescence to refer to “the time at which each species of plants unfolds its leaves,” it also means foliage in general.

hyemation

“I hope however to get home within this fortnight and about the end of October to my hyemation in Dover street.”

Samuel Pepys, Memoirs of Samuel Pepys

While estivation refers to the passing of summer in a particular place, hyemation means the passing of winter. It comes from the Latin hiemāre, “to winter,” and ultimately hiems, “winter.”

Hibernate, while related, comes from the Latin hīberna, “winter quarters,” and hībernus, “wintry.”

moonglade

moonglade

“Do you know what happened to the Youngest Twin Sailor once? He was sailing and he sailed right into a moonglade.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery, “A Soul That Was Not at Home,” Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922

The Turkish gumusservi, “moonlight shining on water,” is often included in lists of awesome words with no English equivalent. However, we’d argue there is one: moonglade, “the track of moonlight on water.”

A glade, in addition to meaning “an open space in a forest,” also once referred to “a clear or bright space in the sky; a flash (of light or lightning),” says the OED.

noctivagant

“The bat that can resist all these inducements must be little better than a brickbat, and yet who ever knew one of those wayward, noctivagant creatures to condescend even to such terms?”

James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton, Letters

While noctivagant, wandering in the night, mainly refers to animals, we see an easy application to all things night-wandering. A night owl on an evening stroll, post-party drunks, insomniac superheroes — all noctivagant in our book.

rain

ombrophobous

“With reference to their behavior toward precipitation, plants are ombrophilous, or rain-loving, or ombrophobous, or rain-fearing.”

Roscoe Pound, Frederic Edward Clements, “Physiography,” Phytogeography of Nebraska

Are you ombrophilous, rain-loving, or ombrophobous, rain-shunning? The ombro- part of both words comes from the Greek ombros, “rain shower,” while –philous comes from philos, “loving,” and –phobous from phobos “fear, panic, terror.”

Umbrella, in case you were wondering, has a different origin. It comes from the Latin umbella, “parasol,” and is influenced by umbra, “shade.”

petrichor

“The scientific name for the earthy smell after rain is petrichor from the Greek petra, stone + ichor, the liquid that flows in the veins of the Greek gods.”

“Quite Interesting Facts about Smell,” The Telegraph, October 6, 2011

Petrichor, “the distinctive scent which accompanies the first rain after a long warm dry spell,” is one of our all-time favorite words. It was coined in 1964 by Australian researchers I. J. Bear & R. G. Thomas in Nature magazine:

The diverse nature of the host materials has led us to propose the name ‘petrichor’ for this apparently unique odour which can be regarded as an ‘ichor’ or ‘tenuous essence’ derived from rock or stone.

Petro– comes from the Greek petros, “stone,” and –ichor, “an ethereal fluid believed to supply the place of blood in the veins of the gods,” from the Greek ikhor. Related to ichor is the Icarus, he of the fake wings and ill-conceived jaunt to the sun.

psithurism

“Another day the sweet south is blowing; do you not see how the larch and lime palpitate with pleasure?. . . do you not hear the musical psithurism of the feathered foliage?”

Mortimer Collins, The Secret of a Long Life

Psithurism, the sound of rustling leaves, is another word we can’t believe isn’t used more often. The word is imitative and ultimately comes from the Greek psithuros, “whispering, slanderous.”

Another cool whispering word is susurrous, which refers to whispering or rustling in general.

spoondrift

“A curtain of spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of those ashore the open sea and what swam on it.”

James A. Cooper, Cap’n Abe, Storekeeper

While spoondrift, “a showery sprinkling of sea-water or fine spray swept from the tops of the waves,” has a more common modern form, spindrift, we prefer the obscure form.

The spoon- part of spoondrift has nothing to do with the utensil (which comes from the Old English spōn, “chip of wood”) but comes from the obsolete Scots spoon, “to run before the wind,” while drift is either derived from drive or borrowed from the Old Norse drift, meaning “snow drift,” or the Middle Dutch drift, meaning “pasturage, drove, flock,”

For even more unusual nature words, check out this list.

[Photo: “Miss J Basking in the Sun,” CC BY 2.0 by Aiko, Thomas & Juliette+Isaac]
[Photo: “Autumn Leaf Color in Garden (Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan),” CC BY 2.0 by t-mizo]
[Photo: “Moonlight, Castelldefels, Spain,” CC BY 2.0 by Sarah]
[Photo: “Rain,” CC BY 2.0 by Thomas8047]

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10 Phrases That Come from Horse Racing

horserace

This weekend marks the 140th running of the Kentucky Derby. While last year we celebrated with hat words, this year we’re rounding up now-common phrases that you might not know come from horse racing. And we’re off!

across the board

Across the board, meaning “pertaining to all categories or things,” originated around 1903 as a betting term in horse racing. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, wagering across the board means betting that your horse will finish “in either first, second, or third place.”

charley horse

You know the feeling: that sudden tightening of your calf or thigh that just won’t stop. So what does a muscle cramp have to do with a horse named Charley?

The term charley horse began as baseball slang around the late 1800s, says the OED. The origin is unknown, but there are a few different theories.

Phrase Finder and Wiktionary both say the phrase might be named for pitcher Charlie “Old Hoss” Radbourn, who suffered from such an ailment. The Online Etymology Dictionary says it may be from “from somebody’s long-forgotten lame racehorse,” perhaps specifically, as Word Origins proposes, a workhorse with a hobbled, stiffened gait as a result of pulling heavy loads, as witnessed by baseball player Joe Quest.

According to Quest, “the ball players troubled with the ailment hobbled exactly as did the old horse,” and so “Quest dubbed it ‘Charley horse.’”

dark horse

Dark, in addition to meaning “lacking light” or having a complexion that “isn’t fair,” also means concealed, secret, or mysterious. By that token, a dark horse is “a horse about whose racing powers little is known,” says the OED. The term was first used by Benjamin Disraeli in his 1831 novel, The Young Duke:

The first favourite was never heard of, the second favourite was never seen after the distance post, all the ten-to-oners were in the rear, and a dark horse, which had never been thought of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grand stand in sweeping triumph.

Dark horse now often refers to any unexpected success, while in politics, a dark horse candidate is one who unexpectedly comes up from behind.

front runner

A front runner is the leading candidate in a contest, competition, or election and comes from the horse racing term referring to “a horse that runs best while in the lead.”

give-and-take

Give-and-take, the art of compromise or “a lively exchange of ideas or conversation,” originally referred to, in horse racing, the give and take plate, says the OED, “a prize for a race in which the horses which exceed a standard height carry more, and those which fall short of it less, than the standard weight.”

By 1769, give-and-take also referred to races in general “in which bigger horses were given more weight to carry, lighter ones less.” It was around 1778 that the phrase gained the meaning, “the practice of mutual yielding,”  of which the earliest recorded citation is from one of our favorite writers, Fanny Burney, in her novel Evelina: “Give and take is fair in all nations.”

hands down

To win something hands down means to win it easily. It comes from the practice of horse racing jockeys loosening the reins when it seemed certain that they would win.

home stretch

When you’re in the home stretch, also known as the home straight, you’re almost done with whatever you’re trying to accomplish. That meaning came about around 1860, according to the OED, while the horse racing term is from about 1841 and refers to the final length, or stretch, of the racetrack.

The word stretch refers to “a continuous or unbroken length, area, or expanse,” as in “an empty stretch of highway,” and by extension, “a straight section of a racecourse or track, especially the section leading to the finish line.”

in (or out) of the running

In horse racing, those horses in the running are the lead competitors. This term came about in the mid-1800s, according to the OED, while the figurative meaning referring to viable, and not so viable, political candidates originated a couple of years later.

a run for one’s money

To give someone a run for their money means to give them a challenge. The term originated in horse racing around 1839, says the OED, with the meaning “to have (or get, want, etc.) a successful race from a horse one has backed, (in early use) esp. when that horse appeared likely to be scratched.” (Scratched here, by the way, means “withdrawn.”)

Around 1874, the term gained the extended sense of getting “value or satisfaction in return for one’s expenditure or exertions.” The challenge sense came about shortly after that, around 1886.

running mate

Running mate is yet another political term that we get from horse racing. It refers to a “candidate or nominee for the lesser of two closely associated political offices.” In other words, a vice-presidential candidate is the running mate of a potential POTUS.

In horse racing, a running mate is “a horse used to set the pace in a race for another horse,” and also, according to the OED, “a horse that runs alongside a trotting or pacing horse in double harness, relieving that horse of some of the effort of pulling a load.”

[Photo via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 by John Athayde]

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The Selfie Variations

shadowselfie

It was the Oxford Dictionaries’ 2013 Word of the Year and has shown no signs of slowing down: the selfie.

The term selfie was apparently invented by an Australian man who took a drunk self-portrait (a drelfie, if you will). There’s no lack of other selfie types: the funeral selfie; the plane crash selfie; the (borderline-inappropriate) survived-a-knife-attack selfie; and the always amusing animal selfie.

Here we take a closer look at nine more selfie variations.

belfie

“Dubbed the Queen of the Belfie (also known as butt-selfie), Selter (and her behind) have become huge.”

“#Belfie Queen Goes High-Fashion,” The Daily Beast, March 13, 2014

We tried to avoid the belfie (a butt selfie, natch) for as long as possible, but now we know entirely too much about it.

According to The Daily Dot, the first ever belfie was taken on July 18, 2012. Jen Selter, a “fitness guru” (whose belfies make our backs hurt) is apparently the Queen of the Belfie, giving another celebrity belfie-enthusiast a run for her money.

dronie

“[Drones] go where we want them to go, so of course they should be taking short videos of where we are and what we’re up to. It’s not a selfie. It’s a dronie (not to be confused with ‘drony’).”

Lily Hay Newman, “If You Thought Selfies Were Bad You’re Gonna Really Hate Dronies,” Slate, April 25, 2014

Vimeo employee Alex Dao coined the term dronie in response to a video posted Amit Gupta, co-founder of Photojojo.

Photojojo, a photo newsletter, has instructions for making your own dronie, says Nancy Friedman, and “in mid-May will offer in-person dronie lessons and rental drone cameras.”

Photo via Modern Farmer

felfie

“[William Wilson, a farmer’s son] started farmerselfies.com, which helped create the hashtag ‘felfie’ to corral agricultural self-portraits from around the world.”

Sam Brasch, “Express Your #Felf: Farmer Selfies Go Viral,” Modern Farmer, January 15, 2014

The felfie began as way to put a face to farming, says Modern Farmer, and to sell to the “locavore crowd” without costly ad campaigns. No surprise that they’re still be going strong — who doesn’t love pictures of affectionate farm animals?

[Photo via Modern Farmer]

helfie

“Comedian Jamie Lee recently told Cosmo that a ‘helfie’ is a selfie, but focused more prominently on your hair.”

Carly Cardellino, “Helfies: An Important New Subgenre of Selfie,” Cosmopolitan, August 27, 2013

A variation of the helfie is the beardie, a beard selfie. Better take one before beards go extinct.

selfeye

“In 2014, the selfie is going to the next level, especially if Max Factor has anything to say about it. Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to introduce you to the ‘selfeye.’”

Kristin Booker, “2014’s Newest Selfie Craze: The Selfeye,” Refinery29, January 2, 2014

We first heard about the selfeye from our own Erin McKean, who described it as “a selfie showing off one’s eye makeup.”

Selfeye is an eye rhyme (fittingly) for selfie, that is a rhyme by sight rather sound, and coined by cosmetics line Max Factor.

shelfie

“Given that the objects are often arrayed on a shelf or the equivalent (a windowsill, a desk), you might even call the images ‘#shelfies.’ Some Instagrammers already do, though more typically when they’ve snapped bookcases.”

Dale Hrabi, “The Rise of the ‘Shelfie’: Instagram’s Next Craze,” Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2014

Not surprisingly, the shelfie is our favorite type of selfie. Back in December, The Guardian asked its readers to submit their own, and we were so delighted by the photos of beautiful bookshelves, we had to share our own:

Wordnik shelfie :)

ussie

Selena: “Oh you wanna do a selfie?” [Poses with photographer.] “I call that an ussie.”

“Clovis,” Veep, April 27, 2014

The first we heard of this term was on the most recent (and very funny) episode of Veep, but apparently it’s been around since at least last April.

Perhaps the most famous ussie is the one that broke Twitter during the Oscars.

welfie

“As if to prove the notion that what it means to be body beautiful today is a question of strength, the likes of Miranda Kerr, Doutzen Kroes and Gisele, have taken to Instagram to expose their own strenuous workout regimes via a series of selfies, which we have christened – naturally – #welfies.”

Stephanie Forrester, “You’ve Heard of the Selfie. Now Meet the Welfie,” Never Underdressed, October 22, 2013

“Workout selfie” is just one definition of welfie. Urban Dictionary says it also refers to someone “wealthy in selfies” while this conversation on Stack Exchange suggests welfie is a pejorative term for someone on welfare.

youie

Tom: “Mind if I snap a youie? It’s what I call selfies of other people.”

“Moving Up,” Parks and Recreation, April 24, 2014

A youie, or a “selfie of another person,” could be classified as a retronym, a word created because “an existing term that was once used alone needs to be distinguished from a term referring to a new development.” Another example of a retronym is a 2D film versus 3D. For even more retronyms, check out this list.

And if you want even more on selfies, here’s this Selfie collection at Reverb.

[Photo: “Selfie with Smiley,” via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 by “Light Painting,” CC BY 2.0]

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New Baby Buggy: When a Thing Isn’t “A Thing”

In case you missed it, a contestant on Wheel of Fortune had the most incredible — and luckiest — solve in “30+ years,” says host Pat Sajak. Here’s the video:

Now, what’s incredible isn’t his solving the puzzle with just two letters, but that he came up with, of all things, NEW BABY BUGGY.

New baby buggy? What the heck is that?

This question was posed on my Facebook wall after I posted the video, which made me realize I had no idea. I mean, I know what it is literally — an unused stroller as a (not so) helpful friend pointed out — but what was it? An idiom? A saying? A song lyric?

“It’s a thing,” the same pragmatic friend commented.

Yes, I know, technically it’s a thing, an object, a noun that is neither a place nor a person, but, and John Teti at AV Club would agree, it’s not a thing. It’s a thing but not a thing. Know what I mean?

Search Twitter for the phrase “it’s a thing” and you’ll find a variety of things referenced:

Hugs for hire? Yes, it’s a thing.
We rap country songs now, it’s a thing.
Torture by muffins I don’t have — is this a thing? I think it’s a thing.

These are things that don’t just exist, but as Urban Dictionary says, are phenomena “of some modern cultural significance,” even if ironically. New baby buggies certainly exist. You’ll find them on Diaper.com and Amazon, but are they a cultural phenomena? Unless Wheel of Fortune knows something we don’t know (which I highly doubt), I don’t think so.

While a new baby buggy isn’t a cultural phenomenon, the phrase it’s a thing certainly is. It’s a thing (see what I did there?) — people say it often to describe an unfamiliar occurrence that is familiar to others. For instance:

“I had noodles for my birthday yesterday.”
“Is that a thing?”
“Yes, it’s a Chinese tradition.”

(It was not my birthday yesterday by the way.)

According to this thread on Stack Exchange, the phrase has been in use since as early as the 1990s, specifically on Seinfeld, although no one can find any evidence of this. Linguist Ben Yagoda has an actual citation — a 2001 occurrence on That ‘70s Show:

DONNA: Oh! That’s 16 for me and Hyde and four for the losers! You guys ought to get a mascot … a big, green, furry loser!
ERIC: That’s … That’s not even a thing.

Like new baby buggy, a “big, green furry loser” is not a thing. It’s not a phenomenon nor does it have any cultural significance. It’s random.

So yes, new baby buggy is a thing by grammatical (and Wheel of Fortune) standards, but it’s definitely not a thing. However, one might argue that it’s gaining cultural significance right now, and if it does, my vote would be for it to mean “something presented as though it were thing but is not.” That’s a thing, right?

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Our Most Popular Posts of 2013

We had lot of of fun this year writing about words and language. We wrote about thief words and sailor sayings. We discussed coupon lingo, weird taxes, and hacker slang. We examined words coined in the 1920s beyond the bees’ knees. We confessed to liking big back-formations and hit the shizzle with some Snoop Dog Lion inspired -izzle words.

Today we’re bringing you our 10 most popular posts of the year. Enjoy!

10. A Brief History of Yippee-Ki-Yay

July saw the 25th anniversary of the opening of Die Hard, and of course we had to delve into the etymology of that famous phrase. Or at least the first half (Slate took care of the second).

9. Eight Surprising Words from Portuguese

Tempura, who knew?

8. Cullions, Fustilarians, and Pizzles: A Short Dictionary of Shakespearean Insults

What better way to insult than to insult like the Bard?

7. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Words We Found There

It’s fitting that the king of the portmanteau invented the word portmanteau, as well as chortle, mimsy, and snark.

6. Mad Men Soup: 15 Groovy Words From Season 6

After a long wait, Mad Men finally returned to TV this year, and we learned about the origins of words like catsup, grok, and the elusive Yankee wrinkle.

5. A Brief History of Newspaper Lingo

Ever wonder where yellow journalism, lede, and tabloid come from? We found out in this historical look at newspaper terminology and slang.

4. Dickensian Soup: 11 Words from Charles Dickens

Among the surprises were that Dickens coined the modern-sounding the creeps, and the possible connection between the Firefly expletive, gorram, and Dickens’s gorm, a corruption of goddamn.

3. Have an A1 day!: Our Favorite Words from Breaking Bad

While the first half of the season was rife with thief, drug, and fast food terminology, this final half season of one our favorite shows was all about euphemisms, from change in management, to rat patrol, to sending someone to Belize.

2.  Downton Soup: The Words of Downton Abbey, Season 3

We’re not sure what we love more about the show: the drama and romance, or the British idioms, anachronisms or not.

1. Spelling Confessions: Words We Still Can’t Spell

We Reverbers, along with some kind followers on Twitter, admitted to still not being able to spell seemingly simple words such as restaurant, surprise, and weather. Perhaps we’re not alone in this as this was our most popular post of 2013.

We’re looking forward to 2014! What would you like to see us write about in the new year?

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Mary-Frances Main]

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Sailor Sayings: 12 Common Words with Nautical Origins

Torpedoes Away!

While we’re all for talking like pirates, today we’ll be speaking sailor and taking a look at some words that you may not know have nautical origins.

aloof

“The President thus remained aloof, not personally involved in the U.N. debate.”

Ted Lewis, “LBJ’s Aloof Pose Was Calculated,” The Spokesman-Review, June 21, 1967

Aloof, meaning distant physically or emotionally, was originally a nautical word. When a captain wanted to “keep the ship’s head to the wind,” therefore staying “clear of a lee-shore or some other quarter,” he’d order the ship to keep aloof. Aloof comes partially from luff, “the sailing of a ship close to the wind.”

bucko

“It was the doctrine of his officers that he could not be ruled by anything short of violence, and the man to tame and hammer him was the ‘bucko’ second mate, the test of whose fitness was that he could whip his weight in wild cats.”

Ralph D. Paine, The Old Merchant Marine, 1920

Bucko, “a blustering or bossy person” (and Richie Cunningham’s insult of choice), may play off the word buck meaning a “fashionable man; a fop; a blood; a dandy.” Such a type of sailor was often referred to as a bucko mate.

Chopsticks

chopsticks

“Mustering up much skill, one attempts getting the food on chopsticks from the tables to one’s mouth. The first few times most of it falls on the floor or one’s lap.”

“Dinner a la Japanese,” Baltimore American, June 12, 1900

British sailors first encountered chopsticks in China in the 17th century. The word is a partial transliteration of the Chinese term, kuai zi or “nimble ones.” This is also where we get chop chop, “right away, quick.”

cootie

“After a fellow has served eight days in the front line trenches he may be lonesome for a while after losing his ‘cooties,’ but he must be ‘de-loused.'”

“‘Cootie Cars’ Bring Relief to Sammies,” The Toledo News-Bee, May 9, 1918

The word cootie, otherwise known as the body louse, gained popularity as British slang during World War I but also had earlier nautical use. The word may come from the Malay kutu, “dog tick.”

galoot

“To our astonishment the heroine said as she looked with tenderness into the eyes of the hero, ‘You clumsy galoot, you stepped on my foot just now.'”

Mary Pickford, “Daily Talks,” The Day, December 7, 1915

A galoot is a clumsy or uncouth person. The Online Etymology Dictionary says the word was “originally a sailor’s contemptuous word for soldiers or marines.”

The origin of galoot is uncertain. Anatoly Liberman of the Oxford University Press’s blog proposes that it may come from the Middle Dutch galioot, which seems to refer to a sailor, pirate, galley slave, convict, or pimp.

hail from

“There will be no dearth of baseball in Ambridge this summer, judging from the number of teams that will hail from that town.”

“Ambridge Will Have Plenty of Baseball,” The Daily Times, March 26, 1913

To hail from, or “to be a native of,” was originally “said of a vessel in reference to the port from which she has sailed,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

hunky-dory

“‘I’m all hunky-dory, Gen’ral,’ answered the youth, resuming his temporarily interrupted apple.”

Robert Henry Newell, The Walking Doll: Or, The Asters and Disasters of Society, 1872

There are a few theories behind the origin of this term meaning “perfectly satisfactory; fine.” The Online Etymology Dictionary says it may be a reduplication of hunky, meaning “all right; in good condition.”  However, a 1876 theory traces hunky-dory “to Honcho dori, said to be a street in Yokohama, Japan, where sailors went for diversions of the sort sailors enjoy.”

Hunky meaning “having a well-developed physique; sexually attractive” comes from hunk, which may come from the Flemish hunke, “a piece of food.” Bohunk is a disparaging term for a person from east-central Europe, especially a laborer,” and may be a combination of Bohemian and Hungarian.

lopsided

“Standing anyhow and all wrong, upon this open space like something meteoric that has fallen down from the moon, is an odd, lop-sided one-eyed kind of wooden building, that looks like a church, with a flag-staff as long as itself sticking out of a steeple something larger than a tea-chest.”

Charles Dickens, “American Notes,” Charles Dickens’ Complete Works, 1881

The word lopsided, originally lapsided, was first used of ships that were disproportionately heavy on one side, says the OED.

Lop in this case refers to “a short, ‘loppy’ sea,” or “to break in short, ‘loppy’ waves.” Loppy means short and lumpy as well as “hanging limp.” To be lop-eared means to have droopy ears.

skivvies

“I’ve lived in New York City long enough to expect the unexpected and keep cool in the presence of insanity, but an Orthodox Jew cold busting his human beatbox, dressed only in his skivvies and swilling Jack Daniels, still feels to me worthy of the term ‘spectacle.’”

Patrick Egan, “Family Feud: Teeth of the Sons,” The Huffington Post, May 9, 2011

The origin of skivvies, a North American term for underwear, is unclear. The OED puts the earliest citation at 1932. However, World Wide Words puts it much earlier, 1918. Another meaning of skivvy is London slang for a “female domestic servant.” However, this seems unrelated.

According to World Wide Words, the word might come from a term meaning “Japanese prostitute,” which was used by American servicemen in the Philippines in the early 1900s, possibly as an alteration of the “Japanese sukebei, randy or lecherous.” Sukebei “was later generalised to mean any Japanese, though it remained derogatory and was deeply resented by those so described.”

spin a yarn

“He was fond of society, was a good story teller, having traveled much, and was always willing to spin a yarn, but when asked about himself he immediately became taciturn.”

“Perhaps Jack the Ripper,” The New York Times, March 17, 1892

While the phrase spin a yarn may seem like it comes from the telling of tales in a knitting circle, it’s actually a sailors’ expression from the early 1800s. The saying is based on the “notion of telling stories while engaged in sedentary work such as yarn-twisting.” A yarn is not just a story but one “often implying the marvelous or untrue.”

squeegee

“The rule dates to a time when so-called squeegee men, who roamed the roadways demanding tips in return for washing windshields, were common.”

Michael M. Grynbaum, “Under Rule, Hailing a Cab for a Stranger Can Be Illegal,” The New York Times, November 25, 2011

Squeegee is another word that we know little about except that it has nautical origins. It could come from squeege, “a dialectal form of squeeze.” A squeegee band, another nautical term, is an improvised band, according to the OED, and is also known as a washboard band.

taken aback

“Admiral Davis was taken aback and considerably shocked at the tone and contents of this letter.”

“Admiral at Government House,” The Age, January 22, 1907

Like aloof, taken aback, meaning surprised, originally referred to the positioning of a ship, in this case “in reference to a vessel’s square sails when a sudden change of wind flattens them back against the masts and stops the forward motion of the ship.”

Finally, if you’re missing some pirate-speak, enjoy our classic post on pirate words.

[Photo: “Torpedoes Away!” Public domain by National Library of Ireland on the Commons]
[Photo: “Chopsticks,” CC BY 2.0 by Clare Bell]