appetite

ad+petere= to seek, in Latin
appetere is to seek, covet, desire, long for
and so an appetitus is "a desire toward" (still in Latin)

then Old French has apetit

and we get our appetite thus

an appetite is the "bent of the mind toward the attainment of an object or purpose; desire, inclination, disposition"

or

"Inclination, preference, liking, fancy" (i.e. "so as to suit one's tastes")

but, most importantly, as it is most fitting to me at this very moment,

"Craving for food, hunger"


(OED)

Trauma

The word trauma is from the Greek Τραύμα, meaning "wound".

The current definition of the word means a wound in two senses; one emotional and one physical.
The OED gives these meanings;
1. Path. A wound, or external bodily injury in general; also the condition caused by this; traumatism.
2. a. Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry. A psychic injury, esp. one caused by emotional shock the memory of which is repressed and remains unhealed; an internal injury, esp. to the brain, which may result in a behavioural disorder of organic origin. Also, the state or condition so caused.

So definition 1 is predominately physical, while the second is a mental shock.

*all etymology and definitions provided by the OED

Lunkhead

The other day I was trying to look up some ly- word in the AHD, and as my eyes were skimming over the pages I saw "lunkhead". Laughing to myself, I decided that I had to know what this word was. As it turns out, lunkhead is just another slang word for a "stupid person", or as they put it, "a dolt". The AHD doesn't give any etymology on this particular slang, but it does tell us that it is probably a mix of "lump" and "head".

Following this new lead, I found that lump comes from Middle English, lumpe, although that is derived from Low German (it doesn't tell us which word). And head, comes from Old English, heafod.

The only problem with this is the story. How does lump head come to be lunkhead, a dumb person? Oddly enough, I can't find the story anywhere online. The OED has virtually no information on it, other than that it first appeared in 1884 in Mark Twain's Huck Finn. And just because I love this quote so much, this is where we'll end our search for lunkhead...

"So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare."

All info taken from AHD or OED.

Deipnosophist

Deipnosophist is defined as "A master of the art of dining: taken from the title of the Greek work of Aethenæus, in which a number of learned men are represented as dining together and discussing subjects which range from the dishes before them to literary criticism and miscellaneous topics of every description." The word contains two Greek stems. The first is or "the chief meal, dinner." The second is or "a master of his craft, clever or wise man." The word itself comes from the title of a work by Aethanaeus, a Greek author writing in the 3rd century AD. His Deipnosophistai, a fifteen volume work, is a dialog between Greek men at the dinner table. Their conversation wanders from the food on the table to the cookware to literature. Another variation of the definition, according to World Wide Words.org, is "A person skilled in dinner-table conversation." This later definition comes from the practice of the Greek men in Aethanaeus' work to discuss literature, while dining.

Sources: OED.com and worldwidewords.org

Impugn

"Impugn" is defined by the AHD to "attack as false or questionable; challenge in argument." An example of how "impugn" might be used: The two candidates running for president tried to impugn each other's records during the debates.

The origin of "impugn" ultimately comes from Latin [impugnare - in (against) + pugnare (to fight)]. The word also passed through Old French (impugner) and Middle English (impugnen) before entering its Modern English form.

-from AHD

Brobdingnagian

A word of Jonathan Swift's coinage, Brobdingnagian is an adjective derived from the country of Brobdingnag in the literary work Gulliver's Travels. The inhabitants of the land are giants, and so the adjectival form used in everyday (perhaps) vocabulary describes phenomena which are "immense; enormous" (AHD).

The spelling of the country, however, is a matter of some discussion.  In the preface to the 1735 edition of the work, Swift published a "letter" from Gulliver to "his cousin Sympson." This letter serves as something of a preface, with its chief purpose being to correct some egregious errors made in earlier printings. One such error is the spelling of "Brogdingrag (for so the Word should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobdingnag)."

A critic, one John R. Clark, makes the claim that the rough translation of this word (whichever way one spells it, but at this time it seems Brobdingnag is more universally accepted) is "England." In the majority of the illustrations and maps invented for this country is the north western portion of the United States, even the entirety of the U.S.A. represented as Brobdingnag. It is thus interesting that England should be considered the non-fictional reality of the fictional country. (Not having Clark's book on hand I am unable to read his argument in its entirety.)

First Image Source: http://theverbistobe.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/bgiant.jpg

Second Image Source: http://www.lqart.org/illustfold/gulliver/gultrav.html

Information on the text: http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/dict/b.html

shangri-la

"Shangri-La" is a great song by the Kinks (part of the British Invasion) that ironically points to leisure and material gain as a "paradise" to be aimed for; it is a critique of suburban life before it was fashionable to do so. That said, the term "Shangri-La" is actually credited to James Hilton, British author of the 1933 book Lost Horizon. In the book, the term is the name of a mystical, harmonious valley.

The OED defines it as a term used "to designate an earthly paradise, a place of retreat from the worries of modern civilization." "La" is the Tibetan term for "mountain pass" (OED), but "shangri" is undocumented in both the AHD and OED. The best hypothesis I have is that it is a British author's attempt to create a pseudo-Tibetan word. Wikipedia suggests that "shangri" comes from a Tibetan district called "shang," or that Hilton had heard the term "shambhala," the Tibetan equivalent of "shangri-la" in terms of definition, but could not remember the term.

Rutabaga

The rutabaga is "a European plant (Brassica napus var. napobrassica) having a thick edible bulbous root" or "the root of this plant" (AHD). This vegetable apparently got its English name from Old Norse through Swedish. The Swedish word "rotabagge" can be broken down into "rot," which means root, and "bagge," which means bag (AHD). Each of these components come from Old Norse words of the same meaning: "rot" comes from "rōt" and "bagge" comes from "baggi" (AHD). Etymologically speaking, then, rutabaga stands for root bag.

river

(a view of the Arkansas river, as seen from the pedestrian bridge at Murray Lock & Dam)

"The process of a living language is like the motion of a broad river which flows with a slow, silent, irresistible current." - Noah Webster

Our river comes from Old French rivere, also meaning "river." The Old French rivere can be traced back to Latin ripa, meaning "river-bank." I find it interesting that, etymologically speaking, the word emphasizes the banks of a river rather than the water flowing through the banks' channel. (The Latin word for "river" itself is flumen, and we can see the stem for "flow" in it.)

English has an adjective which can also be traced back to ripa: riparian, meaning "pertaining to river-banks." And the French Riviera is so called because the sea-shore can be referred to as one "bank" of the ocean.

sources: AHD and OED

Turkey

Turkey is a perplexing word; it means both "A large North American bird..." and "A country of SW Asia and SE Europe..." according to the AHD. Despite the turkey's undeniable connection to America (so great that Benjamin Franklin wished to make it the national bird), the bird does derive it's name from the same place as the country. It was confused with the somewhat similar guinea fowl, which was once believed to have originated in the Turkish lands. In reality the guinea fowl is native to Africa, meaning that not one, but two mistakes were involved in the naming of the bird: it was believed to be an entirely different bird, which was in turn believed to hail from an entirely locale!

The word Turkey has its root in the Old Turkik word "türk," meaning strong. The Turkik tribes who conquered modern-day Turkey (and many other areas) called themselves by this name.

butterfly

For a while I had myself convinced that butterfly had something to do with “flutter by,” as if the name came from a convenient twist of the descriptive phrase. The AHD states that the Middle English butterflye came from the Old English butorfleoge. The OED suggests comparing the Old English word (also spelled buttorfleoge, with two t’s) with the Dutch botervlieg, earlier botervlieghe. So what does the pretty bug have to do with butter? As the OED explains, “The reason of the name is unknown.” It references, however, a Dutch synonym boterschijte, “which suggests that the insect was so called from the appearance of its excrement.” This answer would be much less poetic and romantic than our idealized butterflies. To offer this word a saving grace, I turned back to the AHD definition: “any of various insdects of the order Lepidoptera.” I decided to look up Lepidoptera in the OED, and found that the name of the order is modern Latin, from the Greek λεπιδο- (lepido-, combining form of λεπις, “scale”) and pteron (πτέρον, “wing,” like in pterodactyl!). It seems as though the butterfly suffers from a less than flattering etymological history.

Prima Donna

Very few times in my life do I find myself so frustrated with a person that I label them a prima donna. (I also wonder if that word can be applied to men.) Also, I don't enjoy nor mean to use this word blog as a means to vent about life. Upon categorizing these people as such, I pondered upon the origins of prima donna.

The OED defines a prima donna as "the leading female singer in an opera company...of great skill and renown," "a person who has the highest standing or who takes a role in a particular community or field," and also as "a self-important or temperamental person." The AHD holds a similar definition, but adds "conceited" to the list of adjectives.

Etymologically, prima donna simply comes from the Italian prima (feminine of primo) , meaning "first", and donna, meaning "lady". Too simple of a history for my liking.

Emerald

So, I chose this word tonight/morning because in few days the newest edition to my family will be dubbed Emerald. To match her sister Diamond, of course. Although my sister did not ask my opinion on these unusual name choices I am secretly thrilled with them. I mean, I am their Aunt Crystal. :) So, to honor this little one I've decided to dissect her name. Strange way of honoring her I guess, but eh, such is life.
As most of you already know the word emerald is usually in reference to the stone. The OED defines it as:
" 1. A precious stone of bright green colour; in mod. use exclusively applied to a variety of the Beryl species (see BERYL n. 2), found chiefly in S. America, Siberia, and India."
Or:
"3. transf. as name of its colour; = emerald-green."
And, to my surprise, it can also be defined as:
" 4. Printing. The name of the size of type larger than nonpareil and smaller than minion."

This last one is definitely new to me. To keep things neat and simple I am going to use the AHD's etymological history of emerald. According to the AHD emerald originated in the Greek word smaragdos, then preceded to Latin in the form smaragdus (not much change there). It then progressed to Med. Lat. in esmeralda, esmeralus (which looks much closer to our word). From Med Lat it went on through OFr then to ME as emeraude. That's a bit complicated but I like that the word is founded in Greek. :) (The word diamond is rooted in Latin and crystal is from Greek, too. Just in case you were wondering.)

Coralline

The American Heritage Dictionary defines coralline as an adjective as "of, consisting of, or producing coral; resembling coral, esp. in color." The word can also be used as a noun meaning "any of various red algae of the family Corallinaceae whose fronds are covered with calcareous deposits; any of various organisms that resemble coral."

Coralline came to the English language from Latin as corallium, meaning coral. Late Latin changed the spelling to corallinus. From there it went through French as corallin before entering English as coralline.

The word coralline is most notable today with a different spelling, Coraline, from the Neil Gaiman story of the same name. Coraline is used as a name for the main character.

Source: AHD 4th Edition

Vanquish

As I vanquished the dark forces of Sauron tonight on the MUD I was playing (because text is the way to go, forget WoW), I noticed how much I love the word vanquish. To me it sounds very medieval, like it should be accompanied be thees and thous and all sorts of wonderful old language that we don't use anymore. A righteous word used for the thorough crushing of ones evil enemies. All hail the mighty conqueror! Ahem, anyways...

The AHD defines vanquish as a verb meaning:

1a. To defeat or conquer in battle; subjugate. b. To defeat in a contest, conflict, or competition.
2. To overcome or subdue (an emotion, for example); supress.

It comes through Middle English, vaynquisshen, and Old French, vainquir, vainquiss-, from the Latin verb vincere meaning to defeat or win. It's pretty much kept its meaning intact in its travels through the languages to our current English usage of the word.

Deluge (and a little bit of antediluvian)

I'm going to take a small vacation away from old sounding words to discuss a word that had a significant impact on my life recently. Last Friday, I went on a camping trip to help support my friends' Odyssey project. It was quite entertaining, and informative, as intended. Then, we were supposed to spend the night in tents or in makeshift shelters made from ropes and tarps.
I have no idea if it reached as far as Conway, but if you were in the Petit Jean area, you'll know that we chose the absolute worst time to attempt such a thing. As night fell, it was as though the skies themselves were rent asunder, and we found ourselves caught within a deluge of ice-cold water hammering upon our flimsy shelter with a force the likes of which could scour the Earth clean of its sins as the air above was burst and torn apart with volleys of unforgiving lightning and thunder, agents of nature sent to purge this world of the human taint once and for all. As we laid helpless, mewling like babes within our woefully inadequate protection, we were shown the true folly of our decision as our canvas failed against the depredations of wind and rain, and we were all caught in an azure wave the likes of which had not been seen since times antediluvian.

In summation, yeah, it rained a lot.

So, to pick one of the words from this list at random, all of which are appropriate, lets go with "deluge."

By the AHD, as a noun, deluge means a number of similar things: One meaning, appropriately for my tale, is "A great flood," or "Something that overwhelms as if by a great flood". It can also mean "A heavy downpour," which is also appropriate. It has one very specific meaning, however, from the Bible, meaning "the great flood that occurred in the time of Noah". This, too, is appropriate.

It's etymology is not overly complex. It comes from a Middle english word of the same spelling, which meant "flood." This word came from Old French, which in turn got it from the Latin word diluvium, a form of the word diluere, which means "to wash away." We also get dilute from this word. Diluere comes from dis-, meaning away or apart, and -luere, meaning "to wash". It is theorised that luere could come from leu()-, an Indo-European root meaning "wash".(AHD)

Also, as a side note, the word Antediluvian, the use of which will fufill my old word quota for this, comes from Ante-, before, and diluvian, which has the same stem as what has been discussed here. Literally, it means "Before the flood", and refers to something so old that it must have been around before the Biblical Flood of Noah.

Articulate

Two different meanings of this word in the OED caught my eye:

1) To formulate in an article or articles; to set out in articles; to particularize, specify.

2) To attach or unite (esp. a bone) by a joint; freq. with to, less commonly with. Usu. in pass.

The OED gives two different but similar explanations for the etymology of this word. It says that the "division into separate parts" comes from the Latin verb articula(-)t and the "unite" comes from the French verb articuler. As I understood, it brings it says the first meaning can be attributed to the verb form of our word, while the other meaning can be attributed to our adjective. I thought it interesting that one word could have seemingly opposite meanings. I also like the idea of something that breaks other things in to parts, in a way, also brings them together. I think I'm definately reading too much into it, but the word is more attractive that way.

Wax (v.) and Wane

This post is devoted to wax, the verb, not wax, the noun (the stuff that crayons and candles are made of). I've always wondered where we got the verb 'wax' from, so I decided to look it up.

The OED defines 'to wax' as "To grow, increase (as opposed to wane)" and gives us the following important information:

Originally a more frequent synonym of GROW v., which has now superseded it in general colloquial use, except with reference to the moon (see 6, which defines wax as "of the moon: to undergo the periodical increase in the extent of its visible illuminated portion, characteristic of the first half of the lunation"). With this exception, the senses below which are not marked as obsolete are confined to literary use, and have, in varying degrees, a somewhat archaic flavour; some of those under branch I survive only in the traditional antithesis with WANE v. The verb is said still to be current in certain dialects: see Eng. Dial. Dict.

It also tells us that wax v. was a common Teutonic strong verb, and that the Old English verb weaxan had numerous similar Germanic siblings.

Because we have noted the importance of wax v. in contrast to wane v., it should not be surprising,then, that wane means "to grow less, decrease (opposed to wax)" and is likewise a verb native to English, having numerous Germanic siblings which are quite similar to it in form.

Don't you find it rather interesting that people still will say the phrase "wax poetical" and yet we don't really say that someone "wanes poetical"? It's just interesting how certain words become petrified into sayings to the point that we still use them, though not as frequently as we used to.

All quotes and information are from the OED and the image is used from www.astronomycast.com.

Opposition

Opposition comes from the classical Latin opposit- meaning to set against and then is seen in Greek in the context of opposition of two celestial objects, but it actually came in from French, according to the OED. Today it has the definition of, "Senses relating to physical position." 

I thought that the word opposition with the meaning that is has, had to have had an interesting journey into English as it relates not only with physical position, but also conflict, which is why I chose this word. 

caterwaul

Words just like the ones you used –they mean nothing at all to you, but they caterwaul…
caterwaul… caterwaul… through my lonely hall.
I really like this word. I’ve wanted to post an entry on it ever since Amy’s Caterpillar entry reminded me of caterwaul’s curious and bewitching sonority.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of our use of the word’s verb form is:

To utter a similar cry [to cats in heat]; to make a discordant, hideous noise; to quarrel like cats.¹

Today we use the word primarily as a synonym for howl, but in the 17th and 18th centuries, the sexual connotations of comparing a person to a mating cat were also utilized, as this in this example from the OED article:

“She catter~wauls, and must have a stallion..she must and will marry again.”²

--even that questionable mental image couldn’t diminish my affinity for the word’s odd semi-onomatopoeia.

I say “semi-” because the -waul portion of the word is actually onomatopoetic; from Middle English wawlen or wrawlen, meaning “howl.”³ The root of wawlen is Old English wāwan, which refers to the sound of the blowing of the wind.⁴

And as Amy’s entry explains, “cater-” comes simply from the supposed Middle English root cater derived from Low German kater, meaning “tomcat.” It is also possible, however, that the word cater never existed in Middle English, and the -er- infix is just an arbitrary conjoining syllable.⁵

Whatever the case, I still think it’s a beautiful word.

---

¹“caterwaul”. Oxford English Dictionary. 2007. Oxford University Press. 29 March 2009. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50034602.
² Burton, Robert. The anatomy of melancholy. 1621.
³“caterwaul”. American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 4th Ed. Houghton Mifflin. 2000.
⁴”Caterwaul”. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. 2nd Ed. Random House Inc. 2006.
⁵Liberman, Anatoly and Mitchell, J. Lawrence. An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology. Pg. 183. University of Minnesota Press. 2008.
*Photograph by Graeme Mitchell. "Dark Hall". http://www.dammasch.com/photo/graeme/large/dark_hall_large.jpg