“ad fontes!”
‘Magazine’ (= ‘storehouse’) came to denote a book providing information on a specified subject (17th c.). This gave rise to the sense ‘periodical magazine (= ‘repository’) of the most interesting pieces of information published in the newspapers’ (18th c.).
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The noun ‘easel’ was borrowed from Dutch ‘ezel’; this sense of ‘ezel’ is a metaphorical extension of its literal meaning, ‘ass’, from the fact that, like a beast of burden, an easel is used to carry things. Likewise, the literal meaning of the synonymous French word ‘chevalet’ is ‘little horse’.
Read More‘Atlantic’ originally referred to Mount Atlas in North Africa, on which the heavens were fabled to rest; it was hence applied to the sea near the western shore of Africa, and afterwards extended to the whole ocean lying between Europe and Africa on the east and America on the west.
Read More‘Glamour’ was originally a Scottish alteration of ‘grammar’: this article explains how it came to denote an attractive or exciting quality that makes certain people or things seem appealing. Classical Greek γραμματική (= grammatikḗ) and classical Latin grammătĭca denoted the methodical study of literature, that is to say, philology in the widest modern sense, including textual […]
Read MoreTwelfth Day denotes the twelfth day after Christmas, i.e. 6th January, on which the festival of the Epiphany is celebrated, and which was formerly observed as the closing day of the Christmas festivities. (Epiphany denotes the festival commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles in the persons of the Magi; via Old-French and Anglo-Norman forms such as epyphane (Modern […]
Read Morefrom army use on the Western Front during World War One: ‘cootie’, ‘body louse’, ‘cooty’, ‘infested with lice’, ‘coot’, ‘louse’, probably ultimately refer to the aquatic bird called ‘coot’, reputed to be lice-infested
Read More18th century—origin unknown—perhaps originally imitative and comparable to, or derived from, ‘tantara’, denoting the sound of a trumpet, hence an uproar—or from obsolete French ‘trantran’, synonym of ‘tantara’
Read MoreEtymologically, a jewel is a little game, a little plaything: ‘jewel’ is from a French diminutive of ‘jeu’, meaning ‘a game’, ‘a play’. The word ‘bijou’ is from Breton ‘bizou’, meaning ‘a finger-ring’, from ‘biz’, ‘finger’.
Read MoreThe English noun ‘pound’ is from Latin ‘pondō’, short for ‘lībra pondō’, literally ‘a pound’ (= ‘lībra’) ‘by weight’ (= ‘pondō’)—Latin ‘lībra’ meant ‘the Roman pound of twelve ounces’, and ‘pondō’ was a form of ‘pondus’, meaning ‘weight’.
Read MoreThe various phrases containing the word ‘mustard’ are based on the image of something which adds heat or pungency.
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