A Collection of Interesting Etymologies
Jan Hacin, November 2012
Content
Origin behind the following words:AlcoholBarbarianBerserkBroke (in the sense of 'having no money')CandidateChocolateHumorKetchupNiceSalarySlave
Alcohol
• al-kuhl (Arabic); a very fine powder of antimony used as eye makeup
• Used for any impalpable (cannot be sensed by touching) powder obtained by sublimation– thus: all compounds, obtained through
distillation
Barbarian
• barbaroi (Greek); "babblers", people who did not speak Greek
• From the sound they were making: "bar bar bar..."
Berserk• berserkr (Old Icelandic); a "bear shirt", a
Scandinavian warrior wearing an actual bear shirt
• bjorn sherkr (Scandinavian) -- possibly the origin of berserkr
Broke (in the sense of having no money)
• Banks in post-Renaissance Europe issued porcelain "borrower's tiles", imprinted with the owner's name etc.
• If the borrower was past the limit, the teller "broke" the tile on the spot
Candidate
• candidus (Latin); bright, shining, glistening white
• Ancient Roman candidates for office wore bright white togas
• Gave rise to the word "candid" (frank, outspoken, open and sincere)
Chocolate
• From the same Spanish word– from: tchocoatl (Nahuatl - Aztecs)
• Encountered by Hernan Cortes at the Court of Moctezuma in the city of Tenochtitlan, 1519
• He praised the chocolate-based drink and inquired how it was made– cacahuaquchtl: origin of the word "cocoa"– the "cocoa powder" was boiled in water and combined with
chilli, musk and honey
Humor
• humor (Latin); liquid• The ancient philosophers believed that four liquids
entered into the makeup of our bodies, and influenced our temperament
• overplus of blood: optimistic, hopeful, confident temperament• overplus of phlegm: "phlegmatic", or slow and unexcitable• overplus of yellow bile: choleric and short tempered• overplus of black bile: melancholic
• Any imbalance of humors made a person unwell, perhaps eccentric
• Later on, the word took on the meaning of "oddness"• Finally, it was applied to those who could provoke laughter at
the oddities and paradoxes of life
Ketchup
• ke-tsiap (Chinese); a concoction of pickled fish and spices, invented in the 1690s
• Spread to Malaysia, where it was encountered by British explorers
• By 1740 the sauce -- renamed ketchup -- was an English staple
• Tomato ketchup was invented in the 1790s• Before that, people assumed tomatoes
were poisonous (because they are a close relative of the toxic belladona and nightshade plants).
Nice
• nescius (Latin); ignorant• Definitions throughout time:
1. foolish2. foolishly precise3. pedantically precise 4. precise in a good way5. our current definition
Robot
• robot (Czech); worker• In 1923, Karl Captek wrote a futuristic
thriller about a takeover of the machines (The Terminator?), which implanted circuitry in humans to make them into mindless workers or "robots".
Salary• In early Rome, soldiers were given salt as payment• Later, it was replaced by a sum of money referred to as
"salt money" -- salarium (Latin)• The term made its way into medieval France (solde, sol)
• It came to refer to the soldier himself:– soldat (medieval French)
• soudier (Old French) – soldier (English)
• souder (Middle English)– derived from soudier
Slave
• After the Holy Roman Empire subjugated large parts of Slavonia, a Slav became synonymous with someone who lived in servitude
• Eventually, Slav = slave