the creation of the word ‘folklore’
The word ‘folklore’ was coined in 1846 by the British author William John Thoms, inspired by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s anthology of German fairy tales.
Read MoreTag: Germanic
the origin of the word ‘bully’?
noun (late 17th cent.), perhaps from ‘bull’ (= bovine)—possibly distinct from ‘bully’ (mid-16th cent.), ‘darling’, probably from Middle Dutch ‘boele’, ‘lover’
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘ado’
from ‘at do’ (meaning ‘to do’)—construction ‘to have’ + pronominal object (e.g. ‘much’) + ‘at do’ led to ‘ado’ reinterpreted as a noun qualified by an adjective
Read MoreWhy ‘ache’ ought to be written ‘ake’.
The spelling ‘ache’ (erroneously derived from Greek ‘ákhos’) instead of ‘ake’ is largely due to Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘spick and span’
mid-17th cent. in the sense ‘brand new’—from ‘spick and span new’, extension of ‘span new’, from Old Norse ‘spán-nýr’, ‘as new as a freshly cut wooden chip’
Read Morethe origin of ‘spud’ (potato)
The noun ‘spud’, originally the name for the digging implement used to dig up potatoes, was applied to the latter in the 19th century.
Read Moremeaning, origin and synonyms of ‘a snake in the grass’
1696—perhaps from ‘latet anguis in herba’ (a snake hides in the grass) in Virgil’s Eclogues—cf. ‘a pad [= toad] in the straw’ and French ‘il y a de l’oignon’
Read Morethe British use of ‘dole’
(British) benefit paid by the state to the unemployed (1919)—from Middle-English sense ‘food or money given in charity’—from primary sense ‘portion’, ‘share’
Read Morethe colonial origin of the word ‘kidnap’
original meaning of ‘kidnap’, late 17th century—to steal or carry off children or others in order to provide servants or labourers for the American plantations
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘geek’
19th century, northern England—apparently a variant of ‘geck’, of Germanic origin, meaning ‘a fool’, ‘a dupe’, ‘an oaf’
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word histories 