Caterpillar

This week's word was suggested by my friend Sarah.



As I'm sure everyone knows, a caterpillar is "a wormlike larva of a butterfly or moth" (AHD). What's really interesting about this word, of course, is its etymology. The word caterpillar arrived in Middle English as catirpel, catirpeller. The AHD tells us that it's probably an alteration of the Old North French *catepelose which is made up of cate (meaning "cat", coming from the Latin cattus, meaning the same thing) and pelose (meaning "hairy", coming from Latin pilosus). So, by now, you're probably wondering why a little worm-like larvae would be called a "hairy cat". Well, the AHD is so nice as to give us a little word history story below the definition. It reads as follows:
"Larvae of moths and butterflies are popularly seen as resembling other, larger animals.
Our word caterpillar appears to have come from the Old French term chatepelose,
meaning 'hairy cat'. Caterpillar is first recorded in English in 1440 as catyrpel. Catyr,
the first part of catyrpel, may indicate the existence of an English word *cater, meaning
'tomcat', otherwise attested only in caterwaul. The latter part of catyrpel seems to
have become associated with the word piller, "plunderer". By giving the variant spelling
-ar, Johnson's Dictionary set the spelling caterpillar with which we are familiar today."
Interesting! I still don't quite understand why larvae of moths and butterflies should be associated with other, larger animals, but so is the craziness of culture sometimes

Image from: http://tomoki.tea-nifty.com/tomokilog/images/VERY_HUNGRY_CATERPILLAR.jpg