December 27, 2005

Language | Where DO Words Really Come From?

by Professor Auberon Brinsley-Standish

The English language has developed from an Anglo-Saxon base of common words: household words, parts of the body, common animals, natural elements, most pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs. Other modern words in English have developed from five sources.

These are discussed below.

Words Created From Nothing

Examples of words that have just appeared in the language out of nothing are byte, dog (replacing the earlier hund), donkey, jam, kick, log, quasar, google, and yuppie.

Shakespeare coined over 1600 words including countless, critical, excellent, lonely, majestic, obscene.

From Ben Johnson we got damp, from Isaac Newton centrifugal and from Thomas More: explain and exact.

Words Created In Error

The vegetable pease was thought to be a plural so that the individual item in the pod was given the name pea. The verb laze was erroneously created from the adjective lazy. The word buttonhole was a mis-hearing of button-hold.

Borrowed and Adopted Words

English has borrowed words from a variety of sources and other languages. Three examples show this.

Orange
The name of the fruit was NARANJ in Sanskrit. This language was spoken in ancient India. Indians traded with Arabs, so the word passed into Arabic as NARANJAH. The Spaniards were ruled by north African Arabs who passed the fruit and word into Spanish as NARANJA (pronounced as NARANHA).

This came into English where the fruit was a NARANJ. Words ending in J are not common in English so the spelling quickly changed to a NARANGE.

The initial N moved to the a because of mis-hearing to give an ARANGE (this is called metanalysis).

Over time, the initial A became an O to give an ORANGE.

Chocolate
When the Spanish arrived in Mexico they came across the Aztecs. The Aztec language is called Nahuatl. The Aztecs had a drink which they made from a bean they called CHOCO (bitter). They would put this bean into water (ATL) to produce CHOCO-ATL (bitter water).

The TL sound is common in the Aztec language but not in Spanish. The Spaniards inserted an A between the T and L and pronounced the drink CHOCOLATO.

This drink was brought to Europe (with sugar added) where the pronunciation and spelling in English became CHOCOLATE.

Algebra
This is a mathematical term. It comes from Arabic.

Mohammad al-Khwarizmi was a mathematician who flourished in Baghdad around the year 800. He wrote a book about the solving of equations. It was called ilm al-jabr wa'l muqabalah (the science of transposition and cancellation).

The term al-jabr from this title gave the English word, ALGEBRA.

Checkmate
This is a term in chess. It is from the Farsi language spoken in Iran and Afghanistan. The original phrase is SHAH-K-MATE (every syllable pronounced) which means "The King is Dead".

The word SHAH means a "king" as in the last monarch (or SHAH) of Iran. MATE has the same root as the English "murder" and the Spanish "matador" (killer).

The word came via French (where the SH became a CH) and into English where the MA-TE (two syllables) became MATE (one syllable) to give CHECKMATE.

Changes In Words

Many words used in modern English have changed their meaning over the years. This is shown in the table below.

Word Original Meaning
awful deserving of awe
brave cowardice (as in bravado)
counterfeit legitimate copy
girl young person of either sex
guess take aim
knight boy
luxury sinful self indulgence
neck parcel of land
(as in neck of the woods)
notorious famous
nuisance injury, harm
quick alive (as in quicksilver)
sophisticated corrupted
tell to count (as in bank teller)
truant beggar

The word silly meant blessed or happy in the 11th century going through pious, innocent, harmless, pitiable, feeble, feeble minded before finally ending up as foolish or stupid.

Pretty began as crafty then changed via clever, skilfully made, fine to beautiful.

Buxom began with the meaning obedient and changed via compliant, lively, plump to large breasted.

The word nice meant stupid and foolish in the late 13th Century. It went through a number of changes including wanton, extravagant, elegant, strange, modest, thin, and shy. By the middle of the 18th Century it had gained its current meaning of pleasant and agreeable.

Words are still changing even today - consider how the words ‘bad’ and ‘gay’ have changed i

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December 08, 2005

Language | Where do words come from and why?

by Professor Auberon Brinsley-Standish

Even as a professor of English, it is not my place to reject new terms and vocabulary just because they do not suit my way of understanding things or of expressing myself in as erudite a fashion as possible.

Words emerge from the parallel worlds of slang linked to music, sport, the ghettos of the world and from the various walks of life - economic and technological for example- and often embed themselves in common and everyday speech through frequent useage or simply because it is fashionable to adopt ‘cool’ new words.

Here are a few 'new' words which may never make it to the language itself, but nevertheless form part of the constant stream of vocabulary pouring from the orifices of the world around us.

Enjoy!

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December 07, 2005

Cultural incompatibilities | Stating the bleeding obvious: or is it?

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