Grace Tierney's Blog, page 23

We Know Vikings Weren’t Lawless, Thanks to the Dictionary

Hello,

I have my Viking hat on at the moment, as I prepare to launch “Words the Vikings Gave Us” on 14th September 2021, so I’ve chosen another Viking word to play with this week. I hope you enjoy it.

Law {extract from “Words the Vikings Gave Us”, copyright Grace Tierney 2021}

Law was spelled as lagu in Old English and was defined as a rule, regulation, or right. It came into the English language from the Old Norse word lagu (laws plural). Lagu wasn’t used much in Old English where the alternative word ae was more common, however over time it became the dominant word and we’re still using law instead of ae today.

Laws govern a wide variety of rules and rights in society and the sciences. For example you have the laws of physics since the 1660s, laying down the law (in this case biblical law pronounced from the pulpit) from the 1750s, and law and order have been linked from the late 1700s.

As the systems of politics and the courts grew there were laws to cover everything from the poor laws (to provide for paupers from the pockets of wealthy landowners), bylaws (another Viking donation to the English language), corn laws, traffic laws, tax laws, and many more but it all started with the Vikings, despite being rebuked by the native English as being lawless.

{end of extract}

Yes, Vikings gave us the word law. In fact, they gave us so many words in the area of power and politics that I dedicated a chapter to the topic. Writing the book provided many surprises like that. The Vikings are a misunderstood group.

If you’re interested in Viking history you may enjoy my new download “Nine Things You Never Knew About Vikings”. To access that just click on the Downloads tab on the menu or through this link.

Want a copy of the book? Pre-order on Kindle or Kobo and it will download automatically to your ebook reader on the 14th. Paperbacks will go live on the same date and signed copies will be available directly from me soon (I’ll post the link).

If you are a book blogger/reviewer/podcaster (or know one, please share!) then get in touch via Twitter or my About page for a digital ARC or interview requests etc. I’m always happy to talk about the history of words, and Vikings.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

Vikings Gave Us the Word for Hugging

Hello,

Today the pre-orders on Kindle and Kobo open for my latest Wordfoolery book – “Words the Vikings Gave Us” (launching in ebook and paperback editions on 14 September 2021) so I reckon it’s time to look at a Viking word here on the blog.

I could have gone with a fighting word (berserk or ransack), a political word (hustings or ombudsman), or a modern Viking word like kindle (yes, the reading device is named with Old Norse in mind), plogging, or bluetooth (there’s a Viking king behind that one) but when I was writing the book the thing (another Viking word) which most surprised me was how many romantic words (hug, kiss, honeymoon, handfast, and husband for example) have their roots in Viking culture and their language, Old Norse.

Hug {extract from “Words the Vikings Gave Us”, copyright Grace Tierney 2021}

The word hug is, sadly, a relatively late addition to the English dictionary. It arrived in the 1560s and was spelled as hugge, at least initially. It’s believed to have come from the Old Norse word hugga which translates beautifully as “to comfort”.

Hugga itself comes from hugr (courage, mood) and is from a Proto-Germanic root which also gives us hycgan (to think or consider) in Old English and the name Hugh. There may also be a link to the German verb hegen (to foster or cherish). Hegen originally meant “to enclose with a hedge” but while a hedge may enclose or cherish livestock, the Old Norse idea of comforting is closest to what a hug means today.

{end of extract}

In the run up to the book launch (14th of Septmber) I’ll be blogging about Viking words here but if you’re interested in Viking history you may enjoy my new download “Nine Things You Never Knew About Vikings”. To access that just click on the Downloads tab on the menu or through this link. In it I explain why we all think Vikings wore horned helmets (spoiler, they didn’t), how they beat Columbus to North America by a few centuries, and ruled parts of Britain for longer than the Romans. Oh yeah, and the current Danish royal family are descended from them too. I couldn’t overwhelm the word book with Viking history but some of the stories were simply too good to exclude so they ended up in the download, which is completely free, by the way.

If you’re interested in pre-ordering a digital copy of “Words the Vikings Gave Us” you can do so via Kindle and Kobo worldwide. The Kindle US pre-order link is here. It’s around the $2.99/€2.99 price everywhere. It will download automatically to your ebook reader on the 14th. Paperbacks will go live on the same date and signed print copies will be available directly from me nearer the time. Don’t worry, I’ll post the links once I have them live.

If you are a book blogger/reviewer/podcaster (or know one, please share!) then get in touch via Twitter or my About page for a digital ARC or interview requests etc. I’m always happy to talk about the history of words.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

The History of Book Blurbs

Hello,

This week’s word is blurb as book covers are very much on my mind this week. A book’s blurb is the text provided on the back cover to tempt readers into purchasing. If you own any books from before the 1900s, you may have noticed they lack this text and wondered why.

Blurb is actually an eponym (a word added to the dictionary from somebody’s name) and as such appeared in my book “How to Get Your Name in the Dictionary”. To be more precise, it appeared as my blurb on the back cover of the paperback edition. I couldn’t resist. Here’s what it says –

Blurb

A blurb is the short publicity piece on the back cover of a book and, like everything else inside this book, it’s an eponym with an intriguing story attached. In the early 1900s American novels commonly had a picture of an attractive young woman on the cover, regardless of the book’s topic. In 1907 the humourist and illustrator Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) decided to satirise this practice by putting a sickly sweet fictional girl named Miss Belinda Blurb on the cover of his book “Are you Bromide?” Unfortunately his plan back-fired when his book sold so well that the term entered publishing history and all future books included a back cover blurb.

The wonderful reference site, Etymology Online, adds a little more historical background than I could fit in my own blurb. The term blurb appears to have been first used by an American scholar called Brander Matthews in 1906 or possibly by Frank A. Munsey who wrote, in red ink, across the front of his magazine that “this number of Munsey’s the hottest pie that ever came out of my bakery”. Undoubtedly the word was popularised by Gelett and his fictional Miss Blurb.

This morning the first paperback copy of “Words the Vikings Gave Us” with the final cover art arrived on my doorstep. This lovely event would usually trigger me into Book Launch Mode but tomorrow my mother is being discharged from hospital after 13 weeks so all things book are firmly pinned to my “Deal with Later” board while I go into Help Mum Mode instead. Top of the list is replacing her hearing aid which was lost on day one of her stay and annihilated her ability to communicate. Mind your hearing, everybody, it’s very important.

In the meantime, however, you might like to have a sneaky look at the Viking book’s blurb?

“Words the Vikings Gave Us” (2021)

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

Are Oblivion’s roots Smooth or Sticky?

Hello,

This week’s word is oblivion. According to the Cambridge Dictionary this is the state of being completely forgotten or completely destroyed. For example, a bad book of poetry would be consigned to oblivion with the passage of time, or a city could be bombed into oblivion.

Oblivion was also a legal concept after the restoration of the British monarchy with King Charles II. The Indemnity and Oblivion Act of 1660 promised a pardon, with some exceptions, for everybody who had committed crimes during the Civil War and the Interregnum (1649-1660, the time after Charles I lost his head and before his son Charles II resumed the throne – literally “between reigning monarchs”). No action was to be taken against them and the Interregnum was to be legally forgotten. Officially declaring 11 years to have never existed is an unusual concept but perhaps the best they could do to heal deep divisions?

Oblivion entered English in the late 1300s, spelled as oblivioun, to describe forgetfulness and memory loss. They borrowed it from the same word in Old French which had come directly from oblivionem (forgetfulness) and oblivisci (to forget) in Latin, so this is a word the Romans gave us.

A yawning Roman – tired and forgetful perhaps?

The origin of the word in Latin is obscure but some fun theories exist. It could have roots in smoothing over or effacing something (as a painter or carver smooths over mistakes) as ob means over and levis means smooth or grind down. Levis (nothing to do with a famous denim brand) has roots in lei (slime, sticky) so that leaves me wondering if we’re talking about smoothing over sticky paint or plaster. Honestly, we don’t know, and probably never will. It has been lost to oblivion. The English meaning of oblivion expanded from simple forgetfulness to the state of being forgotten entirely in the early 1400s.

If you’re interested in the role the Greeks had to play in forgetfulness, check out my earlier post about lethologica (the inability to recall a specific name or word) and its links to the Greek River Lethe (also known as the River of Oblivion) which runs through the Underworld.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. regular Wordfools will be glad to hear I received the final cover art for “Words the Vikings Gave Us” this week – it looks stunning. Never fear, you’ll be the first ones to hear about the cover reveal and book launch.

How a Greek Goddess Gave us the Word Iridescent

Hello,

I’ve been pondering the word history of colours recently. My previous posts about colours are still popular (Colour Rhymes, Mummy Brown, and Magenta). I enjoy painting with watercolours and it would be fun to work my way through my paintbox exploring the history of each name – burnt Sienna is named after the earth around that beautiful Tuscan town, for example. Words for another day, perhaps.

This week’s word, iridescent, is more of a swirl of various colours. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “showing many bright colours that change with movement”.

The best examples are found in the movement of nature – the glamorous sheen on the feathers of a starling or kingfisher, the shine of mother-of-pearl, the glint of the light caught on the wings of a dragonfly. Sadly I’m not a good enough photographer to have caught any of those glorious images with my camera lens so you’ll have to settle for the only iridescent items I could find in my home – my cuff-links.

iridescent (and a little blurry, sorry!)

Luckily the origin of the word is easier to capture than its visual image. Iridescent entered English in the 1700s to describe anything rainbow-coloured. It was coined from the Latin word iris (rainbow), although we don’t know who exactly came up with it.

Iris is also used in English for a family of gorgeous flowers which consistently fail to flourish in the heavy clay soils of my garden, and for the coloured part of the eye. It is always associated with bright colours.

That association doesn’t arise in Latin, it’s one the Greeks gave us and as regular wordfoolery readers know, where there’s a Greek origin, there’s nearly always a god or goddess hanging around looking for credit. Iris and iridescent is no exception.

Iris was the messenger of Hera, queen of the Greek gods. She was the personification of the rainbow and iris means rainbow in Greek (and in Latin as previously mentioned).

Iris traveled along her rainbow with the speed of the wind to bring messages to earth. She had golden wings to help her on her way. It’s not surprising that she traveled with the speed of the wind as she married Zephyrus, the god of the west wind. You may remember him from my post about the zephyr wind.

By the command of Zeus, Iris carried a jug of water from the River Styx, the river souls cross to enter the realm of Hades. She used this to put to sleep those who perjure themselves.

The element iridium is named for her. Sadly it is not iridescent. It’s silvery. It was discovered and named in 1803 by a British scientist called Smithson Tennant. He named it after Iris because many of the salts he obtained while working on the element were bright in colour.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling.

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. I finished July’s session of CampNaNoWriMo with 30,419 more words written of my ongoing serial “The Librarian’s Secret Diary” – the adventures of a new librarian in a small Irish town, working with her buzzword-spouting boss and her book-hating senior librarian. New episodes go live every Wednesday over on the subscription reading platform Channillo (you can try the first episode for free there).

Foible’s Roots Lie in Fencing

Hello,

With the Olympics all over our TV screens at the moment I reckon it’s time to explore a word sports gave to us – foible.

A foible, in case you don’t know, is defined as a minor weakness of eccentricity in somebody’s character. You might say that you tolerate somebody’s foibles because you love them, for example. I have several foibles, as do most of us I suspect – a weakness for etymological mutterings and a fondness for anything remotely related to swashbuckling, for example. I blame Sunday afternoons watching old Errol Flynn movies on TV when I was a child.

Imagine my excitement when, aged 16, it was announced in my school that for something different in Transition Year (a year between junior and senior school, optional in many schools here, but compulsory in mine where students are encouraged to try new subjects and activities) sports class, we would all be learning how to fence. I was pretty much on the fence (pun intended) about school sports as our school played hockey, basketball, and tennis and my hand-eye co-ordination wasn’t good enough for any of them, but fencing, now that I could handle.

My Viking sword (sadly only a letter opener)

When I discovered that the feet positions and posture were similar to ballet, which I’d attempted, and the terms were all in French, which I loved – my mind was made up – fencing was for me.

I’m not sure who came up with the idea to teach fencing to 100 teenage girls, but it was pure genius. Self defense might have been more practical, I’ll admit, but if anybody comes at me with an epee they’re going to be in trouble.

In fencing the foible is the part of a sword blade from the middle to the point (that part of an epee bends to a remarkable degree) and it is this term which ultimately gave us the word foible in the English language. It joined in the mid 1600s, in the sword-related sense, directly from French foible, although these days the word has changed spelling to be faible in French. The idea of the blade being weaker at that point came from an Old French word feble (feeble).

By the 1670s the meaning of foible had extended to describe a weak point of character and it has been with us ever since, perhaps with an added implication of the weakness being somehow charming or excusable, like my fondness for swords and swashbuckling.

Until next time happy reading, writing, swashbuckling, and wordfooling.

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

What is the Etymology of Etymology?

Hello,

Perhaps the current heatwave in Ireland is melting my brain but this week I need to know the word history of etymology itself. The history of history, so to speak.

The Merriam Webster dictionary provides a long definition of etymology which I will summarise as – the history of word including its earliest recorded use, following its transmission from one language to another. They also warn sternly about mixing up etymology and entomology (the study of insects). Yes, I agree, that never ends well.

Did you know that the Greek philosopher Socrates was a fan of etymology? He saw the task as being decoding a word to find the message the ancient namegivers had placed inside it. I’m not entirely sure we had ancient namegivers, and it certainly wouldn’t work for the many words we’ve acquired since ancient Greek times, but I can understand why he held that belief as many of the Greek words I’ve explored have linked back to myths about Greek gods and goddesses – zephyr, for example.

In classical times, etymologists, both Christian and pagan, based their theories on allegory and guesswork thanks to a lack of records (what with dictionaries and the printing press yet to be invented). Etymology was mocked as a result with Gustave Flaubert writing in the 1870s claiming etymology was “the easiest thing in the world with the help of Latin and a little ingenuity.” After two years tracing the influence of Old Norse on modern English I would like to give old Flaubert a piece of my mind on that topic.

When did the word etymology enter the English language? Ethimolegia arrived in the late 1300s from Old French etimologie via Latin etymologia, and ultimately Greek etymologia (the study of the true sense of a word). This word was compounded in Greek from the suffix -logia (the study of) and etymon (true sense or meaning). Etymon is related to the word eteos (true). It is interesting that the inherent meaning at this point was about truth and meaning, as Socrates had claimed, rather than about history which is more the understanding we hold of etymology today. However, if you study the etymology of enough words you will come to accept that meanings often change over time.

By the mid 1400s etymology in English had become the story or history of a word and by the 1640s is was being described as part of linguistic science.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling. Let me know if you find the “ancient namegivers”, I’d love a chat with them.

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

The History of the Word Bogus

Hello,

I’m always intrigued to find words I consider slang have been in the language far longer than disapproving English teachers imagine. We have the Vikings to thank for the word kid, for example, so don’t tell me it’s American English slang. Today’s example is bogus, which did start as American slang but has moved on since then to mean anything sham, fake, or phony and as it has been used even in the US parliament I think we can conclude it isn’t slang anymore.

Any fan of Bill and Ted (you can count me in that group) will tell you that bogus also means something is bad or uncool. They even had an entire movie dedicated to that idea – “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey” (1991), but the word pre-dates those endearing movie teens/rock gods by 150 years.

Bogus arrived in English around 1830 to describe a counterfeiting machine used to create false coinage, with an early mention in a New Hampshire newspaper report (The Concord, Aug 24, 1833). It quickly came to denote the fake money itself and anything which wasn’t genuine.

It’s a great name for a machine and nobody really knows how it got its name but there are some fun theories. In the late 1700s there was a local Vermont word, tantrabobus (or tantrabogus), which was used to describe any strange object. That might make sense, although there aren’t many recorded instances of that Vermont word which makes me suspicious. Tantrabobus is sometimes traced back to a similar word, tantarabobs, which was used in Devon, England for the devil. Others think bogus must be linked to the idea of a bogey or bogeyman which is a word to explore here another day, along with boggart perhaps.

Other rumours about the origins of bogus (with thanks to The Better Editor’s article on the topic) include a tribe in central Asia, the bagasse pulp leftover from sugarcane production, and bogue (fake) in Louisiana French. He concludes all the stories about the origin of bogus are probably bogus. I can’t help but agree.

I found another bogus movie when I went searching for Bill and Ted. A film called “Bogus” (which might be available on American Netflix if you’re curious) was made in 1996 telling the story of an orphan who is sent to live with his mother’s foster sister (played by the wonderful Whoopi Goldberg). To help him adjust to his new reality he creates an imaginary friend, a French magician (played by Gérard Depardieu who scooped up all French roles in Hollywood at that time) called Bogus. The perfect name for a pretend friend, I think.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

Buccaneers and Barbecues

Hello,

With the fourth of July behind us and the sun shining in the sky here it seems like the right time to discuss two more words the sea gave us – buccaneers and barbecues – but first a quick side note on spelling. There is debate online about the correct spelling of barbecue. Does it end with cue or que? I’ve always used the que, because of the abbreviation BBQ.

Grammar.com says “Barbecue is the traditional and correct spelling, whereas barbeque is a confusion created by BBQ”. The dictionaries are not quite so adamant. Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary give barbecue as the primary spelling and add barbeque as a variant. This, to me at least, says that barbeque isn’t incorrect or a mistake, simply a variation which is also acceptable (although the spellcheck on my blog post doesn’t like it!). Perhaps the simplest solution is to borrow from our Australian friends and use barbie.

Ahoy there, buccaneers – got any barbecue?

But who was a buccaneer and how were they linked to barbecues? Caribbean buccaneers were privateers in the 1700s and 1800s. A privateer was a legal pirate. They carried letters of marque entitling them to attack and capture ships of enemy forces. They weren’t the official navy but their targets were, or were meant to be, the enemies of their patron country. Most major European nations employed privateers during the Age of Sail.

Employing privateers could be a risky business. The countries ran the risk of the privateers being bought by the highest bidder or simply doing as they wished once out of sight of the commissioning country. Did that happen? Yes, many times.

Equally, letters of marque weren’t always honoured by the issuing nation. Captain Kidd had letters of marque and they hanged him as a pirate anyway.

As for the word buccaneer, it has an unexpected link to barbecues and jerky. Caribbean locals on Tortuga and Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) dried meat on a frame called a bocan over a low fire. When the Spanish arrived in the area they loved the idea but called it a barbacoa, from which we get barbecue. The meat produced by this method they called charque, and we now call jerky.

Sailors who adopted the bocan method of preserving meat for their ships became known as buccaneers.

Love nautical words? Read all about them!

Note: Today’s blog is largely drawn from my book “Words The Sea Gave Us” and is copyright Grace Tierney (2020).

Until next time happy reading, writing, and barbecuing / barbequing,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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The Windy Word History of the Mistral

Hello,

I love that certain winds have special names. In various countries you will be blown about by a zephyr, sirocco, chinook, or mistral. Mistral was the first one I came across, in a TV series when I was young and I was very taken by the idea.

The mistral is a strong, cold north-westerly wind that blows through the Rhône valley and southern France into the Mediterranean, mainly in winter. It’s such a strong wind that church bell towers in the Provence region of France are built in an open fashion to allow the wind to pass through rather than potentially cause damage to the structures. Provence inhabitants love to name their winds. You’ll find a full list here, but the ones you’ll recognise are the mistral and the sirocco.

The mistral typically blows for a couple of days or up to a week, often when the seasons are changing. It can cause sea storms and with wind-speeds of up to 185kph or 115mph it is treated with respect in the region.

The mistral entered the English language around 1600s from French but the name itself really comes from the Provençal language where it translates as “the dominant wind” with thanks to a little Latin. In Latin the word magistralis means dominant and comes from magister (master). The mistral knows it is in charge and it’s not a wind to mess with if it’s blowing towards you.

Clear sky – is the mistral blowing?

The summer mistral can sometimes spread forest fires but usually is associated with clear skies and the type of light beloved by the many artists who flocked to Provence through the centuries.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)