“ad fontes!”
A humorous alteration of ‘au revoir’ after the noun ‘reservoir’, the exclamation ‘au reservoir’ is first recorded in Little Pedlington and the Pedlingtonians (London, 1839), by the English author John Poole (1786-1872).
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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 MoreGreek ‘skíouros’, ultimate origin of ‘squirrel’: folk-etymologically interpreted as meaning ‘shadow-tailed’ because when the animal sits erect, it raises its tail up against its back and over its head as if to shade itself
Read MoreFrench—from the noun use of the Latin adjective ‘natalis’ (from Christian-Latin ‘natalis dies’, ‘day of birth’), denoting the festival of the nativity of Christ
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Swiss-French ‘crestin’ (= ‘Christian’): in certain valleys of the Alps, a mentally deficient, deformed person suffering from a congenital thyroid deficiency
Read MoreThe ladybird was so named on account of its seven spots, which were popularly believed to symbolise the seven sorrows of the Virgin Mary.
Read MoreSince antiquity, European languages have variously named the butterfly, in particular by using sound reduplications expressive of its fluttering.
Read More‘every tiny detail’—from Matthew, 5:18—‘jot’, from ‘iōta’, the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet—‘tittle’, a small mark used in writing or printing
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In Latin, short words having complicated irregularities in their forms gave way to simpler words with regular patterns and longer phonetic individualities.
Read More‘to season’, from Old French ‘saisonner’: ‘to do something during the proper season’, hence ‘to make appropriate to the circumstances’, ‘to flavour (a dish)’
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word histories 