The Unusual Origins of Some Familiar Words – Curious Origins

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At one time it was widely believed that most events on earth were controlled by the stars. A disaster was thus an unfortunate occurrence attributed to the unfavorable aspect of a star (astrum in Latin); influenza, likewise, was a disease resulting from the influence (influenza in Italian) of the stars. That word’s first use in English was in 1973 in the London Magazine, which reported “news from Rome of a contagious Distemper raging there, called the Influenza.”

Dodo

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When Portuguese sailors first encountered a large flightless bird on the island of Mauritius, they were struck by its ludicrous clumsy appearance and the ease with which they were able to catch it. They christened it the doudo, the Portuguese word for stupid. Even the bird’s Latin name (Didus ineptus) emphasized its silliness. Since doudos, or dodos, tasted delicious, they were extinct – hence the origin of the expression “as dead as a dodo.”

Film

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The word film is derived from the Old English word filmen, “skin,” which in turn came from the Greek pelma, meaning “the sole of the foot.”

Halcyon

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According to ancient Greek Legend, Zeus saved Halcyone and her husband from death by turning the couple into kingfishers (halcyons). To give Halcyone quiet days for brooding her eggs, Zeus also ordered the winds not to blow for two weeks during the winter solstice. Thus, halcyon came to signify peace and calm, which led to halcyon days in contemporary.

Kamikaze

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During World War II, Japanese suicide pilots adopted the name kami kaze, or “divine wind,” after a storm that had destroyed an invading Mongol fleet in 1281.

Knickerbockers

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Washington Irving published A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to be End of the Dutch Dynasty in 1809 under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker. The English illustrator George Cruickshank produced a series of drawings for a later edition of Irving’s book. In them, the supposedly Dutch author, Knickerbocker, wore the loose-fitting knee breeches that subsequently acquired the name.

Mews

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The buildings known as mews are derived from the medieval hawk houses in London, stable like barns in which hawks molted. (The word mew means to molt.) Known as the royal mews, the later adaptation of the barns for human habitation started a fashion for converting stables into houses that were then called mews cottages.

Normal

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The Latin word normalis meant, that something had been checked against a carpenter’s square had been checked against a carpenter’s square, or norma. So anything that had its trueness verified was held to be normal.

Sabotage

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The use of sabotage in English dates from about 1910. Used in France around 1887 to mean industrial warfare, it is believed to come from the French word sabot, which has two meanings: a heavy wooden shoe, and a kind of metal peg that is used to secure a railway track.

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It is uncertain which really gave birth to sabotage. Did French workers smash machinery with their clogs, or did railway workers uproot the sabots to disrupt the trains? Since the first recorded use of sabotage in England related to a description of a rail strike that took place in France, the latter seems to be the more likely explanation.

Spoof 

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The Victorian era was the golden age of the parlor game, and spoof was one of them: a hoaxing game invented in the 1880’s by a British comedian, Arthur Roberts. The word soon came to mean any amusing prank or parody.

Tabloid

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The British drug company Burroughs, Welcome & Co. registered the trademark Tabloid on March 14, 1884. Derived from the world tablet, it was originally applied to various concentrated types of drugs marketed by the firm.

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By the end of the 19th century, the word had acquired a secondary meaning: almost anything small and compressed came to be called tabloid. The phrase “tabloid journalism,” which described small – format newspapers (as contrasted with large “broadsheet” papers), became so established that by 1903 Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. instigated legal proceedings in an attempt to protect the trademark. It was concluded that the independent use of tabloid had become so much a part of the language that no damaging infringement could be claimed. Since then, the media usage has superseded the first meaning of the word.