I could really go for some Extreme Fajitas right about now.
No shrimp poppers?
February 8, 2010
December 17, 2009
Walking paper? That’s a real engineering feat. With feet.
November 23, 2009
Etymology: Daft
My British friends are always rambling on about being “daft.” I thought the word has the same origins as “daffy” but in fact it does not.
- daft
- O.E. gedæfte “gentle, becoming,” from P.Gmc. *gadaftjaz. Sense progression from “mildness” to “dullness” (14c.) to “foolish” (15c.) to “crazy” (1530s), probably influenced by analogy with daffe “halfwit.”
So while “daft” does not have the same origins as “daffy,” it ended up borrowing daffy’s meaning. That’s so daft!
November 19, 2009
Etymology: Gulag
Huh, who knew that ‘gulag’ was a Russian acronym? It’s Slavic sounding enough as it is….
- gulag
- system of prisons and labor camps, especially for political detainees, in the former Soviet Union; rough acronym from Rus. Glavnoe upravlenie ispravitel’no-trudovykh lagerei “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps,” set up in 1931.
November 18, 2009
This video is so Ozay!
November 17, 2009
Etymology: Antics and Grotesque
These two words come literally from beneath the ruins of Rome…
- grotesque
- 1561, originally a noun, from M.Fr. crotesque, from It. grottesco, lit. “of a cave,” from grotta (see grotto). Used first of paintings found on the walls of basements of Roman ruins (It. pittura grottesca). Originally “fanciful, fantastic,” sense became pejorative after mid-18c. Grotty, slang shortening, had a brief vogue 1964 as part of Liverpool argot popularized by The Beatles in “A Hard Day’s Night.”
- antic
- 1520s, from It. antico “antique,” from L. antiquus “old” (see antique). Originally (like grotesque) referring to the strange and fantastic representations on ancient murals unearthed around Rome, later extended to any bizarre thing or behavior, in which sense it first arrived in English.
So I guess when you hear about some politician’s “grotesque antics,” you can think of their old fancifulness.
November 16, 2009
Etymology: Coney
Wondering where the Coney came from in Coney Island, I got a little surprise,
- coney
- c.1200, from Anglo-Norm. conis, pl. of conil “long-eared rabbit” (Lepus cunicula) from L. cuniculus (cf. Sp. conejo, Port. coelho, It. coneglio), the small, Spanish variant of the It. hare (L. lepus), the word perhaps from Iberian Celtic (classical writers say it is Spanish). Rabbit arose 14c. to mean the young of the species, but gradually pushed out the older word 19c., after British slang picked up coney as a synonym for “cunt” (cf. connyfogle “to deceive in order to win a woman’s sexual favors”). The word was in the King James Bible [Prov. xxx.26, etc.], however, so it couldn’t be entirely dropped, and the solution was to change the pronunciation of the original short vowel (rhyming with honey, money) to rhyme with boney. In the O.T., the word translates Heb. shaphan “rock-badger.” Rabbits not being native to northern Europe, there was no Gmc. or Celtic word for them. Brooklyn’s Coney Island so called for the rabbits once found there and was known to the Du. as Konijn Eiland, from which the Eng. name probably derives.
So it’s Rabbit Island! But the pronunciation migration from rhymes-like-honey was a nice cherry on top, errr, so to speak.
The On-line Etymological Dictionary is wonderful!
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