The Adventure of Words IntroductionFirst of all, thanks to everyone of you for coming today. I would like to live up to your expectations and meet them. At least, I have prepared this talk with love. I am mad keen on etymology, a word lover. It is fascinating to know where words and phrases come from, because we learn more than simply words. Exploring their nature and origin should provide an interesting adventure.
We have to take into account that over 60 percent of all English words have Greek or Latin roots, and 90 percent in the vocabulary of the sciences and technology. If at first glance we don’t notice this fact is because, English words continued to develop naturally over the course of centuries, and changed in form, pronunciation and even, some of them, in meaning. These Latin origin words have been taken directly from Latin, or from French. As you know, in 1066, at the battle of Hastings, Harold, the Saxon king of England was defeated by William “the conqueror”, Duke of Normandy. He was soon able to conquer the whole country and lots of French words passed into the English language. Sometimes, we can find several synonyms for the same concept, as for example,
“royal” from French,
“kingly” from Old English, and
“regal” from Latin. The Latin ones usually sound more bookish or high-flown.
Another example, the Latin word
“spectare”, which means
“to see” contains the root
“spec”, and from this root have sprouted more than 240 English words, as
“respect” ( to see again),
“inspect” (see into),
“disrespect” (unwilling to see again),…
Spanish and English are related languages, as they come from the same mother language, the “Proto-Indo-European”, and both languages have “cognate words”, words with similar origins. In 1822, the philologist Grimm explained the correspondences between consonants in Germanic and other Indoeuropean languages. For example, “pater”, “padre”, and “father”, are cognate words, as the “t” in Italic language changed to “th” in Germanic language, and “p” to “f”.
We have also to take into account that about 5000 years ago people along the Dnepr River in what is now Ukraine, spoke a language from which virtually all the languages of present-day Europe and India developed. Linguists call it
“Proto-Indo-European” or simple “PIE”. As the original tribe expanded, and dispersed in different directions, various segments of it moved farther and farther away from the central mother language, developing their own accents or dialects. Those dialects changed so much that they became different languages, like “Proto-Slavic”, “Proto-Italic”, “Proto-Germanic”, “Classical Greek”, and “Proto-Iranian”, and the same process repeated itself over and over in these languages. For example, Latin, French, Italian and Spanish sprouted from “Italic”, and Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, German, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish from “Germanic”.
Well, after this introduction, I will go on to the core or heart of the talk:
“The origin of some words and phrases”, and the first one is precisely the word
“Etymology”, that is the study of the historical development of words. This word is made up of the Greek word
etymon meaning true, and
logia meaning knowledge, thus Etymology is the true knowledge of words.
DEMIJOHN (
Garrafa)
A very large bottle with a narrow opening at the top, for holding and transporting water, wine, etc.
It comes from French
“damejeanne”(1694) meaning “Lady Jane”; perhaps because its shape suggested a stout woman in the costume of the period. Origin from folk etymology.
HONEYMOON (
Luna de miel)
This is one of my favourite words. First, we have to know what “
mead”/mi:d/. It is a sweet alcoholic drink made from honey and water, drank especially in the past. It had ritual and spiritual significance for the Celts of the British Isles, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Vikings.
Popular folk-belief traces the origin of the word honeymoon back to the medieval custom of newlywed/’ni:uliwed/ couples drinking mead for the first month ( moon) of married life to ensure their fertility and to increase the chances that their first child would be a son.
Yeast /ji:st/ (levadura) and honey will do most of the work on their own.
O.KIt is the most successful of all Americanisms. It has invaded hundreds of other languages and been adopted by them as a word. Despite the term’s success, however, for years no one was really sure where the word came from. The origin of OK became the Holy Grail of etymology. Finally, in 1963 the Galahad/ ‘gala,had/ ( hero of Arthurian legend, the most virtuous and purest of the knights of the Round Table, who succeeded in the quest of the Holy Grail) of our story, Dr. Allen Walker Read of Columbia University uncovered the origin.
1)
The orl korrect theory( a jocular shortened version of all correct)
The Internet fashion for condensing phrases into abbreviation is certainly not new! The 1830s saw a rise of quirky (peculiar, curioso) abbreviations for common phrases which for some reason seems to have been particularly popular in Boston.
The term began as a facetious (gracioso) misspelling for all correct (oll korrect) in Boston newspapers in the spring of 1839. OK was the result of 2 editorial fads (manías), common in newspapers of the era. One of the fads was the use of playful abbreviations in 1838, and the second fad was to adopt the voice of an uneducated bumpkin (cateto), representing this by deliberately misspelling words. It was in this tradition that the first recorded use of OK appeared on the 23 March 1839 by the Boston Morning Post.
2) It is commonly thought that the origin of OK is rooted in the 1840 presidential election. In that year New York Democrats formed an organization or campaign commitee called the “
Old Club” to promote the election of Martin Van Buren to the presidency. The name of the club stood for
Old Kinderhook, a nickname of Van Buren’s who was from the New York village of Kinderhook. The campaign slogan spread from then on, the expresión OK soon became the watchword (lema) of this club, and in the same year, a Democratic newspaper equated the initials with the strivings of the party to “
make all things OK”.Soon, the Ok Club became well known through the nation’s newspapers and reinforced by folk etymology, the term became quickly established. So, it seems that the activities of the OK Club contributed to the popularity of OK, allowing it to survive when the other such abbreviations faded away.
I would therefore argue that there is no single origin of the expression, but it was the OK club that was responsible for bringing the expression to a wide public arena and which could, in some ways, be said to have at least started the trend which has continued ever since.
My own view is that many words and phrases arise, not from single sources, but through my own theory of
“coincidental coinage”, where many disparate uses have ocurred but which are brought together by some single act.
There are many other quirky interpretations of the origin of OK, but the first one is the most credible for me, although there are terms from various languages that sound similar to okay in English. (Scots, Choctaw, Greek, Finnish, Mandigo,…).
Just to finish off, I would like to tell you another peculiar version of the origin of OK:
Some people think that during the North American War of Secession or Civil War, OK (0 killed) was written on a big board, when troops came back to their barracks without casualties, meaning that everything is all right, because there haven´t been any dead soldiers. Other people believe that was the report of the night’s death toll during the First World War.
SPA Popular belief has it that the origin of spa dates back to the Roman era, when soldiers of their legions fatigued by wars, would take to rejuvenation, relaxation and treatment of sore wounds through water. Hot, natural spring water was considered to the best cure for wounds and tired muscles. The legionnaires, hence, started building baths around naturally found hot water springs or hot water wells.
The term is derived from the name of the
town of spa, Belgium, whose name is known back to Roman times, when the location was called Aquae Spadanae, perhaps related to the Latin word “
spargere”, meaning to scatter, sprinkle or moisten.
The theory that spa is an acronym ( an abbreviationcomposed of the first letters of other words so that the abbreviation itself forms a word) for the Latin phrase, “salus per aquae”, or health through water” is unlikely. The derivation doesn’t appear before the early 21st century and is probably a “backronym” as there is no evidence of acronyms passing into the language before the 20th century; nor does it match the known Roman name for the location.
Others believe the origin of the word spa comes from the Belgian town of Spa, known since Roman times for its baths. Since medieval times, illnesses caused by iron deficiency were treated by drinking chalybeate (iron-bearing) spring water .In 1326, the ironmaster Collin Le Loup, from Liege, Belgium, claimed a cure, when the spring was called
Espa, a Walloon word for “fountain”.
In 16th century England, the old Roman ideas of medicinal bathing were revived at towns like Bath, and in 1571 William Slingsby who had been to the Belgian town (which he called Spaw) discovered a chalybeate spring in Yorkshire. He built an enclosed well at what became known as Harrogate, the first resort in England for drinking medicinal waters, then in 1596 Dr. Timothy Bright called the resort “The English Spaw”, beginning the use of the word spa as a generic description. This is because the Belgian town of Spa was so prominent that the very word spa became synonymous in the English language with a place to the restored and pampered.
CORONERThe post of coroner is ancient, dating from approximately the 11th century, shortly after the Norman conquest of England in 1066. the office of coroner was formally established in England in September 1194 to “keep or guard the pleas of the Crown” or in Latin “custos placitorum coronas”, from which the word coroner is derived. the French word was “corouner” coming from “coroune” (crown), both words come from the Latin “corona” “crown”, originally “wreath”, “garland”, related to Greek korone, anything curved, kind of crown”.
The person holding the office of coroner was charged with keeping local records of legal proceedings in which the crown had jurisdiction, and protecting the property of the Royal Family. he helped raise money for the crown by funneling the property of executed criminals into the king’s treasury. The coroner maintained records of criminal justice and also investigated any suspicious deaths among the Normans, who as the ruling class wanted to be sure that their deaths were not taken lightly. Under the Norman and Angevin kings( referring to the Plantagenets, who descended from Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, hence the term Plantagenets.In 1154, Henry Duke of Normandy became king of England, as the first Angevin king in England) the pleas of the crown were noted by the sheriff and any fines due to the king from these offences were collected by him.
At one time in England all criminal proceedings were included in the coroner’s responsabilities. Over the years these responsabilities decreased markedly, but coroners have continued to display morbid curiosity.In England the coroner’s duty of taking custody of all royal property persists in his jurisdiction over treasure-trove.In the United States, where there is no longer the crown, a coroner’s main duty is the investigation of any sudden, violent, or unexpected death that may not have had a natural cause.. In several of the United States the coroner has been replaced by the medical examiner, who can only conduct post-mortem examinations, and who works in cooperation with the public prosecutor.
HOT DOG1. a hot sausage served in a long bread roll or bun (bollito de pan)
2.(NAm) a person who performs clever or dangerous tricks while skiing, snowboarding or surfing.
3. Hot dog! as an exclamation of approval was in use by 1906.
There are many stories about the origin of the term hot dog, most of them false. First, let’s start with what we know. The term for a sausage served on a bun got its start in college slang in the 1890s. sausage vendors would sell their wares outside the student dorms at major eastern universities, and their carts became known as “dog wagons”. The name was a sarcastic comment on the source and quality of the meat. This slang term came from the popular belief that
dog meat was used in making
sausage. Many university magazines, such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell, all show that the term “hot dog” was well known before 1900.
The idea that sausages were made using dog meat is an old one, going back to at least the mid-19th century. From Dennis Corcoran’s 1846 “Pickings from the Portfolio”:
“New Orleans is a very vile, vicious place: They kill men there with Bowie-knives and dogs with poisoned sausages . They bury the former wholesale in the swamp and retail the latter, tails and all, as sausage meat.”
The term dog has been used as a synonym for
sausage since at least 1891, when Farmer&Henley’s slang and its Analogues glosses it as university slang for sausage. And jokes about dog meat and sausages are many decades older than this.
The first known use of the term is in the Knoxville Journal (Tennessee) on 28 september 1893:
“It was so cool last night that the appearance of overcoats was common...Even the weinerwurst men began preparing to get the “hot dogs” ready for sale Saturday night”.
Wienerwurst:From 1900, a smoked pork or beef sausage similar to a frankfurter, from German Wiener of Vienna plus wurst sausage.
Frankfurter: from 1887. From German Frankfurt: a seasoned smoked sausage made of beef or pork. This word comes from Franconofourt during the Frank tribes, meaning ford or passage of the Franks ( vado o paso de los Francos).
“Hot dog” is also mentioned in the editions of the Yale Record of 5 and 19 October 1895.
The use of “hot dog” to mean skilled or proficient (with overtones of showing off) is unrelated to the sausage. In a bit of linguistic coincidence, this usage also appears in the 1890s. It first appears in 1894 in the sense of a well-dressed college student, a clothes horse (1.a person, especially a woman, who is too interested in fashionable clothes.2. a folding frame that you put clothes on to dry-tendedero plegable). From the university of Michigan’s Wrinkle of 18 October 1894:”...Two Greeks a hot dog freshman sought...” This usage is probably a variation on the older expression putting on the dog. From Lyman H. Bagg’s 1871 Four Years at Yale:
“Dog, style, splurge(derroche, ostentación). To put on dog, is to make a flashy (ostentoso, llamativo) display, to cut a swell”( Informal and dated word meaning fashionable, elegant, stylish, a man who is much concerned with his dress and appearance).
It quickly moved from this sense of suave(sofisticado y con encanto) sartorial( elegante en el vestir) splendor to proficient, accomplished and eventually to its modern association with extreme sports and risky action.
ON THE WAGON1.Teetotal, abstaining from alcohol. 2. you are giving up alcohol.
This expression is a shortening of
“on the water wagon”, referring to the horse-drawn water car once used to spray dirt roads to keep down the dust. Its present meaning dates from about 1900. The antonym “off the wagon”, used for a resumption of drinking, dates from the same period. B.J. Taylor
used it in Extra Dry (1906): “It is better to have been on and off the wagon than never to have been on at all”. If you fall off the wagon, you’ve slipped up and had a drink and started drinking again.
RAINING CATS AND DOGS1.To rain very heavily
The origin of this saying dates back to the 1600s. Poor drainage systems on building in the 17th century caused gutters to overflow, spewing out (arrojar, salir) with water, garbage and a few unexpected critters (creatures, animals). It is posible that animals such as rodents lived in the thatched roofs and when it rained heavily, the dead carcasses would fall- undoubtedly unpleasant! As far as large dogs falling from the sky...well...that one will have to remain a mystery.
KICK THE BUCKET1.Die
This is an expression meaning death. The phrase originates from slaughter houses. When a cow was to be killed, a bucket was placed under him, while he was being positioned on a hoist (grúa). sometimes, while adjusting the hoist, it made the animals legs jerk and he’d kick the bucket before he was killed.
HAT-TRICK1. Three goals scored by one footballer in a match.
Originally referring in cricket to the club presentation(present or prize) of a new hat (or some equivalent) to a bowler taking three wickets(a set of three vertical sticks-stumps- with two small pieces of wood-bails- balanced across the top of them, at which the ball is aimed. There are two wickets on a cricket field) successively. The bowler throws the ball, and it is defended by the batsman.
THE AVENTURE OF WORDS (2nd part) 1.A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do (A man has to do what a man has to do)
This statement is true by definition and can be described as a tautology. Things always are what they are. However, it is intended to convey the idea that some particular course of action has become necessary.
Meaning: a) certain things are unavoidable and have to be done, however difficult.
E.g.: “It's a dreadful job, but it's all I can get, and a man has to do what a man has to do”
b) Something men say when they are going to do something which may be unpleasant or which they are pretending will be unpleasant as joke. Cliché, often spoken by cowboy characters in westerns.
E.g.: “I hate catching spiders. Still, (pero bueno, pero aún así) a man's got to do what a man's got to do”. Note: usually jocular, humorous a sexist refrain (cantinela, estribillo) of the 1980s.
Origin: What is the original source of the line:
-John Wayne is reported to have said this line in “Hondo” (1954). Nope, his line there is: “A man ought'a do what he thinks is best”.
-Charlton Heston is also claimed by some to have uttered the famous line in the 1956
movie “Three violent People”. Close, but no cigar. What Heston says is: “A man must
do what he must do”.
Several websites say a variation of the line appeared that same year in the book (not the film version) of the “Grapes of Wrath”: chapter 18 of Steinbeck's novel reportedly has the line: “I know this man- a man got to do what he got to do”.
-Reportedly by 1962 the line was already a cliché ( an idea or a phrase that has been used so often that it no longer has much meaning and is not interesting) and was used mockingly in an episode of “ the Jetsons”. George Jetson says: “Ha, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. I should've won three space Oscar awards”.
2.Close, but no cigarMeaning: ( informal, especially NAme) used to tell somebody that their attempt or guest was almost but not quite successful. When you fall short of a successful outcome and get nothing for your efforts. You were close to achieving your goal, but you were not successful. This phrase is only reserved for those tasks that were very close to completion.
Origin; The origin of the phrase and its variant “nice try, but no cigar”, are of US origin and date from the early and mid part of the twentieth century. The origin of this phrase comes from the travelling circuses and carnivals or fairs that travelled around the United States. During carnivals of the current day, painted mirrors and oversized stuffed animals are given as prizes. At the early carnivals, cigars were often given out by fairgrounds stalls as prizes. The carnival hammer-blow strength test used to offer cigars as first prize. “close, but no cigar”, is what the carny ( barker: an employee who stands before the entrance to a show, and solicits customers with a loud sales spiel: discursito, perorata) would say if your stroke just missed ringing the bell. It was often yelled by game barkers to let everyone in the area know that if a little more, “oomph” (vigour, energy), was given, the cigar could have been won. The point of this phrase was to rile (annoy, anger or irritate) people in a way that they would spend their money to see if they could win the cigar that the last person failed to get.
Remember, at the time that the phrase came round, smoking was a regular habit of
many people. Cigars were looked at as a very masculine way to smoke. This is the most likely source, although there's no definitive evidence to prove that. It is first recorded in print in Sayre and Twist's publishing of the script of the 1935 film version of Annie Oakley:
“Close,Colonel but no cigar"
3.SirloinMeaning: an expensive prime cut of beef from the loin, especially the upper part, just in front of the round or rump ( cuarto trasero).
Origin: Once upon a time, some king came upon an inn and was served beef no quite
like he'd ever eaten before. He was also drinking a lot with this meal and after a while (being a bit drunk) he pulled out his sword and knighted the meat saying “Arise Sir loin”. And so in today's society a good sirloin steak is sold in the fine restaurants only fit for kings!
This is one of the oldest etymological chestnuts. If we needed proof that inventing silly stories to explain the origins of words with non-obvious etymologies is both an old and long-lived practice, that is one. Even the venerable Samuel Johnson included the anecdote or joke in his Dictionary of the English Language ,1755), noting under the definition of the word “sir” that it was “a title given to the loin of beef, which one of our kings knighted in a fit of good humour”. The true story is more pedestrian, although this is not to deny that a king may once have made a joke. While it is certainly possible that one or more kings of England has repeated this pun ( the monarch in question has been variously identified as Henry VIII, James I, and Charles II), the joke cannot be the source of the word “sirloin”, which appeared in English as far back as the mid-sixteenth century, antedating the ascension of any of the named kings (save Henry VIII) to the throne. More importantly, though, it was not until the eighteenth century that the word “sirloin” came to be commonly spelled with an “i”- until then it was generally written as “surloin”, indicating that it came from the Middle French surloigne ( sur meaning “over” and “loigne” meaning “loin”), just as the word “surname” came from the same French root (sur), indicating a family name that was used “over” (i.e., in addition to) one's Christian name. The change from “u” to “i” is a corruption of French.
4. Drawing roomMeaning: 1. A room in a house where visitors may be entertained. 2. A formal reception room, especially in an apartment or private house. 3. (British): A formal reception, especially at court. 4. In a railroad car (U.S. formerly) a private room for two or three passengers.
Origin: It dates from 1640s. The name is derived from withdrawing room in a large sixteenth, seventeenth or early eighteenth century English house, a withdrawing room was a room to which the owner of the house, his wife, or a distinguished guest who was occupying one of the main apartments in the house could “withdraw” for more privacy. It was fashionable until the mid-twentieth century for the ladies to withdraw to the “withdrawing room” after dinner, leaving the gentlemen to their port or brandy, cigars, and bawdy (dirty) jokes, talking of important things or bullshitting( decir chorradas or sandeces, nonsense) about their exploits. What the ladies got up to before the men joined them hasn’t been recorded. The ladies used to go to draw, play cards, play piano crochet doilies (panitos de ganchillo), embroidery (bordado), chat and a little gossip. After an interval of conversation, the gentlemen would rejoin the ladies in the drawing room.
During the American Civil War, in the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond,
Virginia, the drawing room was just off the parlor where C.S.A. President Jefferson
Davis would greet his guests. At the conclusion of these greetings, the men would
remain in the parlor to talk politics and the women would withdraw to the drawing room for their conversation.
This was common practice in the affluent circles of the southern United States.
In the eighteenth-century London, the royal morning receptions that the French called levées were called “drawing room”.
The term drawing room is not used as widely as it once was, and tends to be used in
Britain only by those who also have other reception rooms, such as a morning room, a
nineteenth-century designation for a sitting-room, often with east-facing exposure,
suited for daytime calls, or the middle-class lounge, a late nineteenth-century
designation for a room in which to relax; hence the drawing room is the smartest room in the house, usually used by adults of the family when entertaining. The American equivalent was the parlor. In French usage the social gathering and the room it contained are equally the salon.
This term is still widely used in India and Pakistan, probably since the colonial days, in the larger urban houses of the cities where there are many rooms.
5. Living roomThis origin could be a myth but: Up until 1918 in America, as in Europe, called the
front room of the house the Front Parlor ( or Parlour in British English). When the Great Influenza hit in 1918, there were so many dead in such a short period of time, most people had no other place to put the bodies, so they piled them up in their front parlors and began calling this room the Death room. When the Great Flu finally passed, and people began to get back to their normal lives, they were still referring to this room as the Death Room. The front parlor was no longer a room for the dead, but for the living: therefore, it should now be called the living room. The name stuck.
The notion that the term “living room” was a 20th century replacement phrase for
the word “parlor” doesn’t appear accurate. The term “living room” appears int
the book “Early Victorian House Designs” by architect William H. Ranlett (1847).
Floor plans contain living rooms. Based on this book, it’s easy to deduce that this term was a catch-all phrase (frase para todo) used for smaller homes that did not have a separate parlor and drawing room.
It would seem that since there were eventually more small homes with living rooms
than there were large homes with “parlors” the term living room won prominence and
relegated the word “parlor” to the dustbin of antiquated terms like chamber, dressing room, ante-room and vestibule.
While it is true that before the advent of the “funeral industry”, deceased family
members were often laid out in private homes, the term “living room” has nothing to do with wakes ( velatorios). It’s simply the more casual term that supplanted the stuffy-sounding “parlor” for the room where family life, including the entertaining of guests, normally takes place. In houses large enough, the combination of a formal parlor or sitting room for entertaining guests and a more intimate living room for family life has been superseded by a formal living room and a casual “family room”. The term “living room” has been common since the early 19th century.
6.Golf There is no universally accepted derivation for the word “golf”. One of the most
common misconceptions is that the word “golf” is an acronym for Gentlemen Only
Ladies Forbidden. This at least is definitely not true. Rare are the words that derive from acronyms, especially before the 20th century.
The first documented mention of the word “golf” is in Edinburg on 6th March 1457,
when King James II banned “ye golf”, in an attempt to encourage archery practice,
which was being neglected. Golf was first played in Scotland in the 15th century..
A theory holds the view that golf is a purely Scottish term, ascribing “golf” to the old Scottish goulf (also gowf ), a verb meaning “to strike or cuff”.Before the creation of dictionaries, there was no standardized spelling of any given word. People wrote words phonetically. Goff, gowf, golf, goif, gof, gowfe, gouff and glove have all been found in documents in Scotland. There is a modern dialectical Scottish word “gowf”, “ a blow with the open hand”. This theory would at least place the origin of the word with the people who invented the game. As for “striking or cuffing”, an integral part of the game is, after all, hitting the ball. Most people believe the old word Scottish “gowfe” was the most common term, pronounced “gouf”. The Loudoun Gowf Club( in Galston, Ayrshire), founded in 1909, maintains the tradition of this terminology.
Another theory says the word golf derives from the Dutch word kolf. The game of kolf
(meaning club) or kolven is a very old game played in Flandres and the Netherlands,
probably since the 13th century, using balls and a strong wooden shaft with a heavy
metal head. Some golf historians claim that the origin of golf as well as of the word golf itself originate from kolf. Van Hengels and J.A. Brongers, considered two of the most acknowledgeable Dutch golf historians, based their theory on the frequent trading exchanges between Holland and Scotland in medieval times and reinforced their theory claiming that there is “golf evidence” dating back to 1300, in documents, paintings, and sketches, even before the first record of golf in Scotland. However, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, claiming the Dutch word kolf as the origin of golf is problematic for a variety of reasons: -None of the Dutch games has been convincingly identified with golf, - it is not certain that the word kolf was ever used to denote the name of a game rather than the name of an implement, - Scottish lacks any forms of the word golf beginning with a “c” or a “k”.
Nonetheless, in 1636, David Wedderburn used the word Baculus, which is Latin for
“club” as the title for his “Vocabula”, listing Latin terms for golf, which supports this derivation. The Vocabula contains the first clear mention of the golf hole, the essential element of modern links to golf and is thus the first unambiguous proof of the existence of the game in Scotland. It is therefore likely that all these terms including golf have a common origin and the Scottish use flowed from there.
It is worth mentioning that a game called Bandy has its oldest record in a 13th century painted glass window in the Canterbury cathedral where a boy is holding a curved stick in one hand and a ball in the other. Shakespeare also mentioned Bandy in “Romeo and Juliet”: “The Prince expressly hath forbidden Bandying in the Verona streets”.The name of the game is derived from the Teutonic word “bandja” meaning a “curved stick”. The Irish equivalent of Bandy is called Hurley.
Robert Browning in his “History of Golf” of 1955, suggest that golf is possibly an
offshoot of the Celtic/Gaelic hurley and may have originated in a form of practice
indulged in by hurley players journeying across country to play an “away” match- a
theory of considerable merit.
It is generally agreed that the term golf was borrowed from Middle Dutch colf or colve ( a stick or bat used in a ball game called kolven), and that it were the Scots who added the unique element to the game that differentiates it from all other club-and-ball sports, namely the hole. But where and when exactly golf originated is still a mystery and the problem of the missing link has not been solved yet, unless one admits the plausible asian origin of the game. We have to take into account the following facts:
- One of the most ancient mentions of such a sport dates from Middle Egypt (2600 BC). There is an image that stems from the tomb of Kheti In Beni Hasan ( a governor during the 11th dynasty. It represents two persons playing a game with clubs and a round object-it is unclear whether the round object is a ball or a ring, but the shape of the sticks is very familiar. Most probably, the game was “exported” by the Egytians to the Mediterranean area, at that time, a flourishing marketplace.
-The ancient Greeks also had a stick-and-ball type of sport, probably adopted from the Egytians. There is a picture showing Greek athletes playing a game between field
hockey and golf, in the Athen’s National Museum- 1300 b.c.
-Later, the Roman developed a sport called Paganica or “Paganicus”, that was quite
popular. The play was played with a bent wooden stick and a ball made of leather.
However, it seems that Paganica balls were bigger. The objective was to hit a pre-
selected target ( a tree, a rock or something similar). According to other sources, there were two teams playing in opposite directions like in hockey. The Roman scribe
Catullas, for example, refers to a similar game called Pangea. The Romans expanded
towards the North of Italy and Northern Europe, and Paganica was also introduced to
these Northern countries. It probably became the ancient root of several other sports played with sticks (or clubs) and balls being described above.
-We may say that a comparative analysis or research of the origin of golf ( or any other sport), which has failed to consult Chinese sport history, lacks validity. According to the Chinese professor Ling Hongling, the earliest historical record of this Chinese precursor of golf, called Chuiwan (chui means hitting and wan means small ball in Chinese), dates back to 943 AD, in records written by Wei Tai of the Song Dynasty. The game consisted of driving a ball with a stick into holes on the ground in very much the same way as the modern game of golf. Ling Hongling claims that the existence of Chuiwan in China pre-dates the advent of golf in both Holland and Scotland and that it was brought to Europe by the Mongolians in the 12th and 13th centuries. The game was first known as Buda during the Tang Dynasty (618-907, and was almost as popular as Polo.
Later called “Chuiwan” (ball-hitting) in the Liao and Jin dynasties (916-1234), it
became the favourite pastime among the ordinary people and with palace maids, who
liked to play it on the Hanshi Festival. The striking fact regarding Chuiwan is, as we said, that the rules of this game are extremely similar to golf while, on the contrary, the rules of Paganica or similar European games of that age are much more similar to hockey or polo.
I think the bottom line is that “golf” remains a mystery.
7. OmeletteIt is spelt in two ways, depending on how much more effort you want to put into your
writing: omelette with “te” at the end, and sometimes anglicized as omelet without “te” ( North American spelling). It is a French word of which the history is an example of the various changes a word may undergo.
According to Alan Davidson’s Oxford Companion to Food (OUP,1999), the word
“omelette” is of French origin and came into use during the mid-16th century.
Omelette is presumed to have been named from its thin flat shape. It arose from lemelle ( second half of the 12th century in Old French): thin metal strip, plate or blade of a sword or knife. But as almost always Latin has to say something, and ultimate origin is Latin lamella “thin sheet of metal”, a diminutive form of lamina “plate”, “layer” ( from which English gets laminate (17th c.).
Going back to French lemelle, it changed to alemelle or alumelle, which arose through the mistaking or wrong division of the definite article la lemelle, “the blade”, as l’alemelle, still preserved in French alumelle, sheathing of a ship ( casco, funda, recubrimiento). It seems that at some point through change of suffix, the ending –elle was substituted by the common suffix –ette, thence alemette that took on the added meaning of beaten eggs fried until set without stirring, probably because of the thin flat shape. Then Alemette, by
metathesis( linguistic concept, a change in the order of sounds), had its first two consonants transposed to give amelette and aumelette, the form in which the word appears in the 15th and 16th centuries. The original meaning seems to be a pancake of a thin flat shape. Finally, the change in the initial vowel from a to o probably occurred in Southern French under the influence of forms of oeuf, Middle French omelette (1561), oeufmellette (1576), also aumelete ( obsolete 1603), French oeufmelete (1607), oeufmeslete (1615). In the 17th century the word was taken into English both as omelette and in the shorter form omelet. The precursor to the omelette in Britain was known as a herbolace and in the late fourteenth century was a mixture of eggs and shredded herbs, baked in a buttered dish. A contemporary French recipe under the same name is much more detailed and gives instructions for heating oil, butter of fat thoroughly in a frying pan before pouring in eight well-beaten eggs mixed with brayed herbs and ginger. The French version was finished off with grated cheese on top, and appears to have been quite close to the modern concept of an omelette.
Mr. Davidson traces the origins of the omelette to ancient Persia. Beaten eggs were
mixed with chopped herbs, fried until firm, then sliced into wedges in a dish known as “kookoo”. In Iran omelettes are called “kookoo” in the Persian language.
Some authorities claim that the Romans, supposedly made the first omelette and
because it was sweetened with honey, they called it ovemele or ova mellita (eggs and
honey cooked in an earthenware ( barro) dish.
8. GolfoIt has two meanings in Spanish: 1.- Gulf: a large area of sea that is partly surrounded by land.2.- rogue, street urchin, a dishonest man.
Gulf and golfo in the first Spanish meaning come from the Greek kólpos through the
Latin colphus. In French is golfe, golfo in Italian and Portuguese, and golf in German.
Delfín and dolphin come from Greek delphis or delphus and then Latin delphinis. The
etymology of dolphin (delfín) is closely linked to gulf (golfo: a large bay).
How is a “golfo”( Spanish word for rogue, urchin, a dishonest man) like a delfín
(Spanish word for dolphin)?Golfín and golfo in the sense of rogue or urchin is an alteration or variant of delfín (dolphin, the sea animal) by influence of golfo, meaning “large bay”. Dolphins (delfines) were feared by fishermen and sailors, as it is a carnivore that usually jump out of the water in an attitude that was considered threating. The former dolphin equated with thieves and called golfins, probably due to contamination with gulf (golfo). This confusion of the name of the whale with the landform occurred in Iberian dialects, to the point that in Portuguese the word for dolphin is, even today, golfinho.
Golfín (diminutive of golfo in the sense of rogue or urchin) is present in Middle age Literature in the book “Conde Lucanor”by prince Don Juan Manuel.
On the other hand, according to Menéndez Pidal, a prestigious Spanish philologist and historian, golfín comes from folguin by metathesis, which, in turn, is a derivation of folgare meaning holgar (be at leisure), vagar (wander), from holgar, holgazán(lazy, a layabout) is derived.
8. Bigwig (informal: an important person; “pez gordo” in Spanish )
Picture a big puffy (hinchado) white haired gentleman and then you will be picturing a “a big wig”. This term is derived from powered wigs worn by men in the 18th century. The bigger the wig, the more wealthy the individual. Who knows, perhaps someday wigs for men will go back in style!
9. Sidekick ( informal: a person who helps another more important or more intelligent
person: compinche, colega in Spanish).
The term comes from the days of notorious pickpocket activities in London. They had their own language for different pockets that were the style of the day. For example:
Jerve as a vest pocket, Kick was a pocket on the side in a pair of trousers, and the Pratt was the back pocket. Of all the pockets, the most difficult to pick was the
kick, because it was close to the victim’s leg and was always moving. After a while, smart people discovered that the safest spot to keep your money was in his “sidekick” or side pocket of his trousers. Today the term now means a faithful partner or pet that is by ones side, often even helpful and protective.
