Grace Tierney's Blog, page 2

The Evolving Meaning of Penthouse

Hello,

I love finding a word whose meaning has changed dramatically over its lifetime. Some even achieve the total opposite of their original meaning. Penthouse doesn’t quite fall into that category, but it’s close.

Monte Carlo – home to many penthouses

The word entered English as pentis around 1300 to describe a shed or sloping roof which jutted out from the main wall of side of a building. It came from the Anglo-French word pentiz which itself was a shortening of apentis in Old French. Before the French versions were the Latin versions – appendicium in Medieval Latin and the Latin verb appendere (to hang).

The spelling we would recognise, penthouse, arose in the 1500s by joining pente (slope), a French word, with house. Combining the two gave English speakers an easier way to say and understand pentis and the meaning was one of an attached building with a sloping roof. Nowadays you might refer to a lean-to building or extension, although it would usually be built at ground level rather than above, and the penthouse was always up high. In “The Merchant of Venice” for example, there’s a line – “This is the penthouse under which Lorenzo desir’d us to make a stand” – clearly the characters are underneath a jutting out penthouse overhead.

The penthouse was a humble structure to start, despite its elevation. Apparently there are sermons in Middle English which refer to where Jesus was born as a penthouse. This humble meaning was retained for centuries until the early 1900s when a small house or apartment built on the roof of a skyscraper was called a penthouse. This architectural innovation rapidly became larger and was associated with luxury. Shakespeare wouldn’t recognise the penthouses of today.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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The German Roots of Swindler

Hello,

I’m enjoying Lucy Worsley’s excellent “Lady Swindlers” podcast about female Victorian criminals from the BBC at the moment and it got me wondering about the word itself. Where does swindler come from?

We have the Germans to thank for this one. A swindler (somebody who cheats others and commits fraud) arrived into English fairly late, in the late 1700s, as a direct borrowing from Schwindler in German (a cheat or a giddy person). Yes, swindlers can also be subject to dizziness. This is because the noun comes from the verb schwindeln (to swindle, to be giddy) and originally from swintilon (to be giddy) in Old High German. The Oxford English Dictionary even claims that it was introduced to London by German Jews in 1762 which seems bizarrely precise to me, but I’m sure they have their reasons. I’m unsure why fraud and dizziness were connected in German, but the dizzy idea was definitely lost when it moved into English.

Although swindler came from a verb, the English verb to swindle (to cheat) is actually what is called a back-formation because the person came first and then the action, but the verb was in use by the early 1800s. By the early 1900s there was one charming off-shoot, the swindle-sheet, the term used by traveling salesmen to refer to their expense account. I’m guessing they did a little “creative accounting” on their expenses to bump up their income.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. There’s an issue out this Friday (18 July 2025), so sign up now to avoid missing out on more wordy fun.

The Perplexing History of Perplexed

Hello,

I have a fondness for the letter Z, as I’ve mentioned here before. The letter X isn’t as neglected, but it’s not far off, which got me thinking about perplexed. It doesn’t have an obvious word root from its spelling or pronunciation, so where did it come from?

It turns out that tracing the history of perplexed is like pulling an end of yarn from a jumble and making the knots worse thanks to the pressure.

A myriad of yarns

I’m currently reading Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary so I began my search with him. He tells me that the adjective perplex comes from French and the Latin verb perplexus and that it means intricate or difficult but I’ve never heard of perplex being an adjective.

The verb to perplex predates Johnson. It entered English in the late 1500s and it meant to puzzle or bewilder someone. However the verb was formed from the adjective perplex which arrived in the late 1300s, so we’ve had the word, and its variants, for a long time. The idea of my tangle of yarn being confused and intricate fits well.

The route back to Latin isn’t straightforward. The per (through) has Proto-Indo European roots and plexus means entangled. It’s the past tense of the Latin verb plectere (to twine, braid, or fold) from a root word about plaiting. Again this one seems like it would work well with yarn, or hair. The part that confuses the experts is that there was no exact root verb for perplexing and that the adjective came before the verb – not the normal route for words to enter language. It’s a case of a past-participle form attested generations before the verb itself – a little language mystery that still perplexes experts.

With time the adjective perplex became obsolete but we retained perplexed and by the 1600s its meaning had expanded from puzzling to being intricate, involved, entangled, or difficult to understand. Which is why we would now say that a mystery novel had a perplexing plot or that a jigsaw puzzled had perplexed us.

I love the fact that the tangled history of perplexed is itself both tangled and perplexing. It’s always wise to pull with care on the ends of yarn, and on the histories of words.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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The Weak Origin of Flimsy

Hello,

Possibly the worst accusation to somebody trying to find the origins of words is that they’re making a flimsy argument but today that’s exactly what I’m doing and I’m walking in big footsteps along the way.

I’m continuing my reading of Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary and I couldn’t help nodding in recognition when I read this entry for the word flimsy – “Of this word I know not any original, and suspect it to have crept into our language from the cant of manufacturers”. Cant in this case means jargon. He then, correctly, defines flimsy as being weak, feeble, without strength, and spiritless. Perhaps those manufacturers were accusing products from their competitors of being flimsy?

The tiny bird skull pictured below is an example of a flimsy structure – light so the bird can fly, but you could almost break it by breathing on it.

More than two centuries have passed since Johnson failed in his quest to find flimsy’s roots so I hoped some more recent sources could help me and they did, a little.

The Oxford English Dictionary confirms that its origins are unknown but added that the first use of the word they could find was in 1702. Johnson was writing only 53 years later and couldn’t find the roots. Etymology Online repeats this and adds it could have been drawn from film (a gauzy covering) with the addition of a -y suffix. The -sy suffix is pretty common – think of tipsy for example. They also added that saying somebody’s argument is flimsy dates to the 1750s, so that was a very new usage when Johnson was writing his dictionary.

A film or gauze is thin, weak, and easily broken. I agree that this could be the origin of the word but sadly there’s no proof yet, even two centuries later.

I’ve also been thinking about the idea of flimflam. This dates to the 1530s and describes nonsense talk or even a swindle. The flam part is just an echo, but could flim have given us flimsy? The dictionaries tell me it had Scandinavian roots as in Old Norse a flim was a lampoon. Maybe not close enough in meaning to give us flimsy but a clue all the same. Apologies for such a flimsy argument!

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

The Eastern Origin of Disorientation

Hello,

I love when I discover the etymology of a word and then have an “aha moment” as it becomes ridiculously clear. Disorientation is one of those ones and I only worked it out this week despite learning how to orienteer when I was 15. Ah well, I got there in the end.

A sign in the pathless places

I was reading Samuel Johnson’s famous 1755 dictionary (part of my Summer research reading) this week and encountered the definition for disorientated [his spelling, not mine] – “turned from the East, turned from the right direction, thrown out of the proper place” – and suddenly it clicked – orient means east, that’s where disoriented comes from.

Samuel’s etymologies aren’t always totally correct (in fairness he was writing over two centuries ago) but this time he was on the nose.

A more recent source tells me that to be disoriented is to be confused as to direction. It entered English in the 1600s from désorienter in French, and means literally to turn from the east.

The prefix dis means “the opposite of”. Think about dislike, for example. But what about orient? It arrived in English as a word on its own in the 1700s when it meant rising in the east or to arrange something to face east. Again it came via French and before that from orientum in Latin. That word has its roots in the sun. Oriri means to rise in Latin and the sun rises in the east.

Now that’s all very well and yes orient gives us orienteering (the connection of orient to compasses and confusion in general dates to the mid 1800s). Orient even provides similar words in German but why east? When I learned about orienteering it was all about getting your bearings relative to north and if you lack a compass then surely people in the past could have found direction from where the sun set?

I wondered if this had something to do with praying towards Mecca, but of course that direction changes depending on the location of the faithful, it wouldn’t always be towards the east.

However I was on the right track, it comes back to religion, Christianity in this case. Christian churches are built with their “heads” towards the east. This is because in early Christian times the faithful prayed facing east. It was believed that the garden of Eden was in the east and the returning Christ would come from the east. I think burials are oriented in this way too. Although this is still observed by some, the vast majority of modern believers don’t worry about direction.

So the next time you find yourself to be disoriented, simply turn east and you’ll be fine.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

The Portuguese Equine Roots of Embarrassment

Hello,

Having recently dipped into the Portuguese word roots of marmalade with help from Paddington Bear, I thought it might be time to explore embarrassment thanks to Susie Dent’s book ” An Emotional Dictionary”.

We’ve all been there, that toe-curling moment when the whole world looks at us and points or laughs. As a shy child I had many such moments, when perhaps a more confident being might have laughed along or shrugged it off and let’s be honest, embarrassment continues into adulthood. Thankfully my most dramatic one took place when I was unaware, but it entered school legend so I heard about it for years – the day I fainted and fell out of my desk onto the floor prompting a class mate to stand up and yell “Grace is dead!” in truly dramatic tones.

As an adult now I pity the teacher. It must have been mayhem to calm the class of eleven year olds and give me first aid at the same time.

You can share your own most embarrassing moments in the comments if you’re feeling brave.

The verb to embarrass entered the English dictionary in the late 1600s but back then it was more physical than mental and covered meanings about being held back or perplexed. The word arrived from French, on this much all the dictionaries agree, thanks to the verb embarrasser (to block). But earlier its etymology is somewhat contested. Some sources say it came from Italian imbarrazzo (to bar) and before that from Latin barra (bar). Susie Dent’s book, however (based no doubt on her work with the Oxford English Dictionary), explains that French had it from a Portuguese word baraço (harness) and the meaning was about an object which pulls you back and blocks you. This led directly to the idea of being embarrassed financially (restrained) and which is akin to the more modern idea of being strapped for cash. There’s even the associated idea, which sadly I’ve yet to experience, of having an embarrassment of riches – having more money than you know what to do with, which joined English from a similar French expression in the early 1700s. It might be tough, but I think I could handle it.

Regardless of the exact route to English, by the late 1700s embarrassment had adjusted to gain the meaning of somebody feeling awkward, or being made to feel so, like me when I recovered from my scholastic faint.

Wishing you a week free of embarrassments – emotional, physical, and financial,

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. Next issue is due out on Friday 20 June 2025.

Trek – The African Roots of a Long Distance Word

Hello,

I’ve not covered many words with African roots here on Wordfoolery, but of course English has borrowed words from that continent, the language loves to acquire words from all around the globe. Hence, this week’s word is trek, a loanword with roots in South Africa and Dutch.

Muddy boots after an Irish trek

Trek joined the English dictionary in the mid 1800s to describe a stage of journey made by a wagon pulled by oxen. It came from the same term in Afrikaans which had Dutch roots – the verb trekken meaning a march or a journey. Trekken had evolved from the earlier Middle Dutch word trecken. The word trek was particularly associated with the Groot Trek (between 1835 and 1846) when more than 10,000 Boers (Dutch speaking colonists) migrated from the British controlled Cape Colony to the interior of South Africa to settle land and find independence from British rule. Groot in this case translates as great, rather than being a reference to a charming character in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies.

Over time the word trek has come to be used for any long or strenuous journey. With the creation of “Star Trek” in 1966 that trek could even be into outer space and by 1973 the fans of the show popularised the term trekkie for their devoted group. Trekkie had been used since the 1880s to describe a group of people on a trek in South Africa.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

Foutering and Foostering – A Hard to Spell Word History

Hello,

When your friends and family know you as a word enthusiast you sometimes get odd questions fired in your direction. The latest came from a friend in Canada to our group chat online one evening. She wanted to know how to spell a word that means to tinker with something but had realised that while she says it aloud fairly often, she had no idea how to spell it – was it foother or futher?

I was nowhere near my mobile phone at the time so the conversation dragged in the whole gang before I reached for my dictionaries. Somebody suggested foostering and all agreed they weren’t certain of the spelling but used the word in conversation to mean fiddling around with something in an aimless way.

In some ways, all their suggestions were correct as I discovered when I hit the books the next day. Better late than never, as they say.

My Scots dictionary listed footer or fouter for somebody who potters with a fiddly task. The task itself can even be called a footery or fouterie (a touch of French spelling on that last one). The key here is that it’s foot being pronounced as fout, not like a foot on the end of your leg which is more like fut if you think about it.

It also appeared in my Hiberno-English dictionary with four different spellings but all rooted in the same Irish Gaelic verb fústar (fussy behaviour). The accent (called a fada, meaning long) on the letter u means you lengthen the sound of the vowel – hence it being written with a double oo or ou in English. Fooster, foosther, footer, and foother. It was becoming clear that because the word comes as a borrowing from Irish Gaelic and/or Scots Gaelic there’s no agreed spelling for the word in English. I should mention that it doesn’t really turn up in the British English dictionaries.

Sadly I don’t have a dictionary for Ulster Scots (yet) but my mother was reared in that community and she used the word regularly. Given the Ulster Scots links to Scots Gaelic I’d be surprised if foutering isn’t there in some form.

I suspected, from the spelling, that fooster might appear in American English dictionaries and sure enough, it does. Its roots are listed there as being from the same Irish Gaelic verb fústar. Interesting that the letter s is only in the American English spelling of the word, despite being in the original Irish verb, while in Ireland it’s more likely to be said without an s sound in it.

Personally I’ve settled upon foutering as the spelling I will use, as footering is too confusing as it’s so close to words like foot and football, and foostering is American English. However, any of the variations are acceptable. It amused me to spend time foutering with the word fouter. It seemed appropriate given its meaning.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

The Murky and Murderous History of Festive Mistletoe

Hello,

This week (19-25 May 2025) my Christmas book “Words Christmas Gave Us” is available at a reduced price for Kindle ebook readers (click here for UK/Ireland and here for USA). To celebrate my first ever bargain book week I thought I’d share the story behind the word mistletoe and its a murky history – with Norse traditions and myths, as well as the counting of kisses and romance.

Mistletoe

{extract from “Words Christmas Gave Us” copyright Grace Tierney 2024}

Mistletoe, traditionally hung for kissing under during the twelve days of Christmas, comes to the dictionary from mistle (the name of the shrub) and an Old English word for twig.

The origin of mistle isn’t very romantic. It was German originally and either comes from mist (dung) or mash (and malt and water mix using in brewing). The dung connection is because the plant spreads its seeds via bird droppings and the mash connection is because the berries are so sticky.

Add in a little murder and all the remaining romantic mistletoe magic vanishes.

Odin, father of the Norse gods, had a wife called Frigg. She was the Norse goddess of wisdom, and is the source of the word Friday. As queen of the gods she could see the future but tragically despite this gift she couldn’t prevent the death of her son.

Her son Baldur, Thor’s brother, was known as Baldur the brave and the beautiful. He was beloved by all but as a result his half-sibling Loki, yes the trickster god from Avengers, was jealous. When Baldur began having vivid nightmares about his own death, his doting mother made every animal, vegetable, and mineral in the universe swear never to hurt him. If nothing could hurt him, then nothing could kill him. She put her motherly fears to rest.

The only thing she didn’t bother to make swear was the humble mistletoe plant which in those days grew close to the ground and looked weak. When the other gods heard about the oaths they began a game of throwing spears, arrows, rocks, and other items at Baldur and watching them fall away at the last moment thanks to their vow.

Loki sensed an opportunity to get back at Baldur. He was never as popular as Baldur and his jealousy inspired him. He disguised himself as an old woman and approached Frigg for a chat about the vow. Unaware of the true identity of the old woman, Frigg revealed the omission of the little mistletoe plant.

Armed with this vital information Loki made a short javelin from mistletoe and tricked one of the other gods into throwing it at Baldur. It drove through his heart and killed him.

Frigg was devastated and sought Loki to no avail as he had slipped away. She banished mistletoe to always grow high on other trees. This is why we hang mistletoe above our heads at Christmas. It must be kept aloft, away from causing harm.

If you’re still keen on kissing under the mistletoe after tales of murder and bird droppings, you should be aware of the most important rule. With each kiss one of its white berries must be removed from the bunch. When they are all gone, no more kisses may be stolen beneath it.

Perhaps thanks to the Baldur story, Vikings believed the best way to prevent nightmares was to hang mistletoe under your roof, so you should be dreaming sweetly throughout the twelve days of Christmas.

Why do we kiss under the mistletoe after that rather grim story?

According to a happier version of the story of Baldur, the gods were able to resurrect Baldur from the dead. His mother was utterly delighted and she declared mistletoe to be an enduring symbol of love and vowed to plant a kiss on all those who passed beneath it.

Thanks to this updating of the old Norse story and the plant’s use in early herbal medicine its association with love and fertility continued through the Middle Ages. By the 1700s, mistletoe was a regular fixture in Christmas celebrations. It was around that time that the kissing beneath it became popular among servants in England, before spreading to the middle classes. In a world long before the #metoo movement, men stole kisses from any woman standing under the mistletoe, and refusing was viewed as bad luck, although kissing somebody you don’t want to sounds like the true definition of bad luck to me.

{end of extract}

Don’t forget, if you enjoy the stories of Christmas thanks to the Vikings, Romans, Tudors, and Charles Dickens or would love to know which decoration once contained false teeth, why Jean Paul Sartre wrote a nativity play, or how a newspaper typo kicked off Santa tracking apps then there’s only one book to answer your questions – “Words Christmas Gave Us” is out now in hardback, paperback, and ebook and it’s at a reduced Kindle price until the end of 25th of May 2025.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

The Runic History of Sunshine

Hello,

I finished the first draft of my next book “Words the Weather Gave Us” last Friday and no, before you ask, I don’t have a release date yet. Plenty more editing to do before I inflict it on my readers sometime in 2026, I hope.

To celebrate I thought I’d share an extract from the “Here Comes the Sun” chapter, particularly as it’s been sunny in these parts recently. Sunshine is a basic word in comparison with others in the book but it has plenty of history. Enjoy!

Sunshine

{extract from “Words the Weather Gave Us” copyright Grace Tierney}

From the earliest of times the people on this planet have noticed a great big light in the sky. Opinions on the sun have evolved with time from it being something we should worship (more on that below) to more scientific analysis of how it influences our days, our crops, and our very existence. None of us would be here without the energy we draw from that big ole ball of gas in the sky and yes, it has a role to play in the weather for sure.

Sunshine has been a word in English since the mid 1200s. It’s a compound of sun and shine. There was an even earlier word sunnanscima for it in Old English. Calling somebody sunshine dates to 1942 for a happy person who brightens the lives of others. We need more of those. There’s also the concept of sunshine law in the USA since the 1970s – this is the idea that deliberations formerly held behind closed doors should be open to public access.

Sun comes to us from Old English sunne. It came from a Proto-Germanic root word sunno which contributes cousin words to Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old High German, Dutch, and Gothic. Nowadays we don’t use genders for words in English, unlike German and French, for example, but sunne in Old English was feminine and the sun was called a she until the 1500s in English.

Old English had another word for the sun, sigel. It’s also the name for the lightning bolt shaped s-rune. There were also kennings (compound phrases to replace common nouns in old Germanic, Norse, and English poetry) for the sun in early texts such as heaven candle and sky candle. The sun was the peace candle because the people believed the work of evil demons and spirits ceased in the light of day, a bit like vampires dreading sunrise.

Interestingly for scholars of history – the original empire on which the sun never set was Spanish, before it was the former British Empire. Sun-bathing wasn’t invented by Coco Chanel, although she definitely contributed to the craze. The word was in English from around 1600.

Shine also dates back to Old English where they had the word scinan (to give out light, illuminate). By Middle English it had evolved into shinen. Again this appears to have links to a Proto-Germanic root word skeinanan which may in turn come from a Proto-Indo-European root word skai (to shine, to gleam).

The use of shine for a gleaming polished surface dates to late Old English and you could say somebody’s face had a shine around 1200 to indicate they were beautiful or fair-skinned. Shining boots, not as beautiful but defined as polished, date to the early 1600s.

The importance of the sun was recognised in many early cultures and countries. the worship of sun gods was widespread. A selection includes – Ra in Egypt, Tamanui-te-ra in New Zealand, Shamash in Mesopotamia, Gnowee in Australia, Helios in the Greek pantheon, Surya in India, Huitzilopochtli in Mexico, Malina in Greenland, Amaterasu in Japan, and the SunBirds in China.

{end of extract}

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. There’s a new issue out this Friday (16 May 2025).