punto
29 May 2012 5 Comments
in language Tags: English language, etymology, French language, language, Latin language, linguistics, Spanish language, vocabulary, words
I couldn’t resist closing a post in my other blog yesterday with an etymological play on words: “I’d say more about punctuation, but you already get the point.” The meaning of point that the OED glosses as ‘the precise matter in discussion or to be discussed; the essential or important thing,’ goes back at least to 1381; presumably it plays up the notion of precision, given that the physical sort of point is very small and requires precision if someone is to put it in the right place. From the ‘matter in discussion’ sense arose expressions like make a point, carry a point, get the point.
Yes, a point was originally only a tiny and physical thing, the result of sticking a sharp—I was tempted to write pointy—object like a pin into some other object. English acquired point from Old French, where it had developed from Vulgar Latin *punctum, the past participle of pungere ‘to prick’ (and the American Heritage Dictionary notes that the Old French feminine pointe ‘sharp end’ contributed to the English form as well). In punctum, of course, we see the source of punctuation, which is ‘the putting of little “points” into written sentences to clarify them and make them easier to understand.’ Spanish, which usually simplifies consonant clusters, has punto and puntuación. While English doesn’t use point for the particular punctuation mark that closes a declarative sentence, Spanish does, so that one sense of punto is what English calls a ‘period.’ Taking the point further, Spanish punto y coma, literally ‘period and comma,’ is what English calls a ‘semicolon.’ I have no idea who decided that the period would be written above and the comma below, but that’s beside the point.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
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cereza
25 May 2012 2 Comments
in language Tags: English language, etymology, French language, Germanic languages, Latin language, linguistics, Spanish language, vocabulary, words
The last post talked about a few descendants of the Indo-European root *wed- ‘water,’ including water itself and the euphemistically named kinds of “water” called vodka, whiskey, and the German Kirschwasser, literally ‘cherry water.’ German Kirsch developed from the Vulgar Latin word for ‘cherry,’ *cerasia or *ceresia. We remember that in Latin c was pronounced k even before e and i; German has preserved that k sound. In k-less contrast, Spanish cereza evolved from the second of the Vulgar Latin forms.
Vulgar Latin *ceresia also developed to Old French cerise and Anglo-Norman cherise. That passed into Middle English, where, because people mistook it for a plural, the new singular cheri got created; English now spells it cherry. In addition to that normal word for the fruit, English has adopted modern French cerise ‘cherry’ as a color name. A few online dictionaries define it as ‘a moderate red; having a dark reddish-pink color; a deep to vivid purplish red; a bright red color; cherry red.’ I could have given more definitions but I cherry-picked the ones you’ve just read. The verb cherry-pick means ‘to pick selectively,’ ‘to pick the best,’ ‘to pick and choose to advantage,’ and especially, when supporting one side in an argument, ‘to pick out facts that support your side of the argument while conveniently not mentioning facts that bolster the other side.’ The online Merriam-Webster says that cherry-pick has been in use since at least as long ago as 1965. Why English speakers cheer on the cherry but don’t use the alliterative *plum-pick or *peach-pick remains a mystery. I guess English cherry-picks the fruits it uses in idioms.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
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Three sips of “water”
22 May 2012 3 Comments
in language Tags: English language, etymology, Germanic languages, Indo-European, Spanish language, vocabulary, words
Spanish and English haven’t taken many words from Russian, but both languages have borrowed vodka from it. The -ka is a diminutive ending like (but not etymologically related to) Spanish -ita, and the word to which that ending has been added is vodá, which means ‘water.’ The resulting vodka, or ‘a bit of water,’ is a euphemism for a liquid that may look like water but that carries a stronger punch.
The Indo-European root underlying Russian vodá is *wed-, which also gave rise to native English wet and water, both of which were meanings of the original root. A suffixed form of the Indo-European root produced Gaelic uisge, which has become another euphemistic name for an alcoholic beverage. English renders the word whiskey; Spanish in turn has borrowed the word from English.
The German cognate of water is Wasser (German capitalizes its nouns, as English used to), which appears in the compound Kirschwasser ‘cherry water.’ Like vodka, Kirschwasser, often shortened to Kirsch, is yet another clear alcoholic drink, specifically a cherry-flavored brandy.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
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lagarto
18 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in language Tags: English language, etymology, French language, Latin language, Spanish language, vocabulary, words, zoology
On my other blog today I featured a green anole, which is a type of lizard found across the southeastern United States. Spanish lagarto and English lizard are indeed cognates, with both of them ultimately going back to Latin lacertus, which existed in the feminine form lacerta as well. Curiously, there was also a Latin lacertus that meant ‘the muscular part of the arm, from the shoulder to the elbow.’ Whether those two Latin nouns were the same word isn’t clear. Perhaps certain lizards reminded the Romans of the musculature of an arm—or vice versa—and so the word ended up with an extended meaning.
When the Latin word evolved to Old French, the c before e gradually came to represent the expected s sound, as we see in Old French lesarde. That consonant ultimately added the voicing of the surrounding vowels, resulting in modern French lézarde. English borrowed its version of the word from Old French, not modern French, but the English form likewise now shows the change from s to z.
The Spanish form lagarto is puzzling until we learn that it developed not from Latin lacertus but from Vulgar Latin *lacartus. That starting point explains why the k sound of the c didn’t become an s sound the way it did in Old French. Spanish retained the guttural quality of the consonant, which eventually picked up the voicing of the vowels that flanked it and became a g sound.
Although this blog focuses mostly on Spanish and English, I’ll add that French has formed a reflexive verb from its noun lézard: with reference to something like a painted wall, se lézarder means ‘to crack and peel so as to end up looking like the skin of a lizard.’ We can propose a Spanish verb lagartarse with that meaning, but will anyone use it? My Harper Collins Spanish Unabridged Dictionary does list an informal verb lagartear, which it says is used in the Cono Sur to mean ‘to pin down, to pinion,’ presumably from the way some lizards press their bodies down.’
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
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When is a spike not a spike?
15 May 2012 2 Comments
in language Tags: English language, etymology, Latin language, linguistics, Spanish language, vocabulary, words
English has two unrelated nouns that have coincidentally ended up with the form spike. Most people are more familiar with the one that means ‘a large nail’ and that goes back to Old Norse spik. The other spike is ‘an ear of grain’ and also, in botany, ‘a type of inflorescence in which sessile [stalkless] flowers grow on an unbranched, elongated axis.’ This plant-related spike came from the Latin spica ‘an ear of grain’ that has evolved to Spanish espiga. The Spanish noun means the same as the second English spike but has also developed extended meanings based on appearance, including: ‘the end of a piece of timber that fits into another piece; the fuse of a bomb; the upper part of a sword; the narrowest part of a spiral staircase; a graft, i.e. a shoot of one type of plant inserted into another.’
English joins Spanish in extending meanings, but of the spike that is ‘a large nail.’ One such extension, figurative but also literal, is ‘a tuft of hair made to stand up on a person’s head’ (see pictures). In olden times, and to a lesser extent today, people would hammer a spike into something, e.g. the barrel of a gun, as a way of disabling it, so as a verb spike has come to mean ‘to render ineffective, to thwart.’ To spike a drink is ‘to add alcohol or a drug to it,’ which can result in rendering the drinker ineffective. In volleyball, to spike the ball is ‘to hit it sharply downward into the opposing court,’ which makes the other team’s defense ineffective.
English has gone back to Latin spica and borrowed it to mean, based on the resemblance to an ear of grain, ‘a kind of bandage passing, by successive turns and crosses, from an extremity to the trunk.’ In capitalized form, Spica is the name of the brightest star in the constellation Virgo; but if the star is clear, the reason it was given that name isn’t. Searching for an answer, I found the following in a Wikipedia article: “The name Spica derives from Latin spīca virginis ‘Virgo’s ear of grain’ (usually wheat).” The picture included in the article puts Spica at the tip of a formation of stars that can be seen—as always when talking about constellations, with plenty of imagination—to resemble the pattern of an inverted ear of grain.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
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Dorotea y Teodora
12 May 2012 6 Comments
in language Tags: English language, etymology, Greek, names, Spanish language, vocabulary, words
That the Spanish name Dorotea can be rearranged to make Teodora is no coincidence: the names contain the same two elements, but in opposite order. Both of those elements are of Greek origin, with dor- (related to Spanish dar) meaning ‘gift’ and Theo- meaning ‘God,’ so that the sense of the names is ‘God’s gift.’ English similarly has Theodora (e.g. the dancer Theodora Duncan) and the much more familiar Dorothy*; English also allows Dorothea, as in the social reformer Dorothea Dix.
But it isn’t only girls who can be gifts from God, so on the male side we have Teodoro/Theodore, along with the English nicknames Ted and Teddy. Due to the popularity of Theodore Roosevelt, who hunted big game, that second one took on a life of its own with the meaning ‘a stuffed toy bear.’ (Decades later, and with apparently no connection to the president—or anything else that etymologists have been able to figure out—a teddy became ‘a type of all-in-one female undergarment.’
Spanish allows the reversal of the elements in the male name, so paralleling Dorotea there is Doroteo. For example, the birth name of the Mexican revolutionary later known as Pancho Villa was Doroteo Arango. English has no male equivalent to Doroteo as a given name, but an Internet search shows Dorotheo as a family name. While we’re on the male side of this name, we might add that Russian, which has no th sound and regularly converts that sound in foreign words to an f, uses Fyodor (Фёдор) as its version of Theodore. The most familiar bearer of that name was Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
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* In response to a comment last time, I mentioned that Dolly originated as a nickname for Dorothy but is becoming more common as a nickname for Dolores. In addition to Dolly as a nickname for Dorothy, English also has Dottie or Dotty.
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Dolores
09 May 2012 10 Comments
in language Tags: English language, etymology, Latin language, linguistics, Spanish language, vocabulary, words
The past three posts have dealt with words descended from the root of the Latin verb dolere ‘to feel pain.’ We’ve already noted that the associated Latin noun dolor ‘pain, suffering’ has passed with those meanings into Spanish, but English speakers will probably be surprised to find dolor in many English dictionaries as well, where the word is defined as ‘sorrow, grief, mental suffering or anguish.’ The online Collins English Dictionary marks the word as poetic, and I might add literary: an everyday English word it certainly isn’t. English acquired it, by the way, from Old French dolour, the cognate of Spanish dolor.
In addition to the dolorosa that we recently discussed, which as a noun took on the religious sense of an ‘Imagen de la Virgen María en la acción de dolerse por la muerte de Cristo,’ the phrase María de los dolores ‘Mary of Sorrows’ led to the use in Spanish of Dolores as a female name, and English has followed suit. Not many English-speaking parents are likely to name a daughter Sorrows, so we have to wonder how many of them who pick Dolores know what it means in Spanish. A Dictionary of First Names notes that most English-speaking parents who choose that name are Roman Catholic. In any case, anticipating a trend that has accelerated in recent decades, English speakers have long used the variant spellings Delores and Deloris.
A Dictionary of First Names also notes that Spanish Dolores gave rise to the nursery form Lola, which eventually took on a life of its own apart from its continuing use as a nickname for Dolores. From Lola, of course, came the diminutive Lolita, which Vladimir Nabokov chose as the eponymous title of his 1955 novel. According to the Wikipedia article about the book, its anti-hero Humbert Humbert used Lolita as his private nickname for the 12-year-old Dolores Haze. Those familiar with the book or the movie made from it know that it led to muchos dolores, and not only for the character of Dolores.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
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duelo
06 May 2012 8 Comments
in language Tags: English language, etymology, French language, language, Latin language, linguistics, Spanish language, vocabulary, words
Happily continuing on our sorrowful theme, we note that while dolor was the Classical Latin noun for ‘pain, sorrow,’ Late Latin created the alternate form dolus. That evolved to Spanish duelo, which can mean, in the definition of the DRAE, ‘Dolor, lástima, aflicción o sentimiento.’ A second sense corresponds to what English calls ‘mourning.’ When someone is in mourning, we offer our condolencia/condolence, a word based on the Latin verb condolere ‘to suffer with another person, to feel someone else’s pain.’ We’ve carried that verb over as condoler/condole.
The Late Latin dolus that became Spanish duelo also developed to Old French dol, which passed into Middle English as dol and is now dole ‘grief, sorrow’—or let’s say it’s barely still dole*, because the word is archaic. More common is the adjective based on it, doleful, for which Noah Webster gave three definitions in his dictionary of 1828:
1. Sorrowful; expressing grief; as a doleful whine; a doleful cry.
2. Melancholy; sad; afflicted; as a doleful sire.
3. Dismal; impressing sorrow; gloomy; as doleful shades.
Nowadays, of course, doleful shades may just be a pair of dark sunglasses.
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* The dole that means ‘to give out a portion of something’ is an unrelated word related to native English deal.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
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dolor
03 May 2012 2 Comments
in language Tags: English language, etymology, Latin language, linguistics, Spanish language, vocabulary, words
The previous post dealt with indolente/indolente, which traces back to the Latin verb dolere ‘to feel pain’ that has become Spanish doler. Corresponding to that verb Latin had the noun dolor, whose first and literal meaning was ‘a pain in a physical body.’ By extension the noun came to designate ‘mental anguish, suffering, sorrow’ and then even more abstractly ‘a cause of grief.’ (We see that last sense in English when one person says to another “Quit being such a pain.”) Spanish dolor likewise refers to physical as well as emotional pain.
The adjective derived from Spanish dolor is doloroso, which has the basic meaning, as defined in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, ‘Que causa o implica dolor físico o moral.’ Because Spain developed as a Catholic country, the noun dolorosa took on the religious sense of an ‘Imagen de la Virgen María en la acción de dolerse por la muerte de Cristo.’ The DRAE goes on to give a colloquial (and irreverent) sense as well: ‘Factura, cuenta que hay que pagar.’
From the Old French cognate doloros English has the equivalent dolorous, though it’s not a common word. The 1913 Webster’s defined it as ‘Full of grief; sad; sorrowful; doleful; dismal; as, a dolorous object; dolorous discourses.’ A second definition there was ‘Occasioning pain or grief; painful,’ and the example given from a certain Dr. H. More was “Their dispatch is quick, and less dolorous than the paw of the bear or teeth of the lion.” No, we definitely wouldn’t want any dolorous encounters with a bear’s paws or a lion’s teeth.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
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indolente
30 Apr 2012 5 Comments
in language Tags: English language, etymology, Latin language, linguistics, Spanish language, vocabulary, words
In a comment following the recent post about India, Shoreacres wrote:
I made the effort to check before posting, and as far as I can tell there’s no connection at all between “indolent” and the various “Indo-” forms you’ve posted here and in your previous post.
Still, it’s intriguing that for so many centuries, peoples of India, certain island-dwellers and the Indians of North America all have been described as “indolent”.
I would be indolent indeed if I didn’t follow up on the word indolente/indolent, in which the in- is not part of the root, as it is in India, but is the familiar negative prefix used in Latin and in so many words that Spanish and English have acquired from Latin. The Latin source was indolens, with stem indolent-, from the verb dolere ‘to feel pain’ that has become Spanish doler. It’s clear, then, that the original meaning of indolent- was ‘not causing pain, painless,’ and that’s the sense the word first had in English as well. As a medical term, indolent retains that sense and can also mean ‘slow to develop’ and ‘slow to heal,’ presumably because a tumor that develops slowly doesn’t usually cause pain.
From the idea of not causing pain came the notion of avoiding pain or suffering by taking things easy, and so indolent developed the sense ‘avoiding labor and exertion’ and then ‘inactive,’ ‘habitually idle,’ and finally ‘lazy.’ Spanish indolente has undergone the same development and shares the set of meanings present in its English counterpart.
English once used dolent to mean ‘sorrowful,’ but that’s obsolete. In contrast, the Spanish adjective doliente is alive, and its meanings include ‘feeling pain, suffering, ill.’
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
