The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

by Mark Forsyth

Our word sky comes from the Viking word for cloud, but in England there’s simply no difference between the two concepts, and so the word changed its meaning because of the awful weather.

Who would endure the expense and incontinence of babies, were it not for the fun of saddling another human with a moniker that you chose yourself?

Medieval Italians were terribly serious fellows. They would wander around solemnly declaring to each other ‘I am your slave’. However, being medieval Italians, what they actually said was Sono vostro schiavo. Then they got lazy and shortened it to schiavo. In the north, where they were lazier still, this got changed to ciao.

To this day, most of us happily go about believing that the Nazis called themselves Nazis, when in fact they would probably have beaten you up for saying the word.

You see, we put the wedding ring on that finger precisely because of that non-existent vein. If the finger and the heart are that closely connected, then you can trap your lover’s heart simply by encircling the finger in a gold ring. Hence ring finger.

Italy was overrun by tribesmen who had huge long beards which they never even trimmed. These tribesmen were known as the longa barba, or longbeards, which was eventually shortened to Lombard, which is why a large part of northern Italy is still known as Lombardy.

We could go to the island of Lesbos, but that wouldn’t make us very popular. The most famous resident of Lesbos was an ancient Greek poetess called Sappho. Sappho wrote ancient Greek poems about how much she liked other ancient Greek ladies, and the result was that in the late nineteenth century Lesbian became an English euphemism for ladies who like ladies.

Wikipedia means Fastchild.

Love is nothing because those who do something for the love of it do it for nothing. For example, people either marry for money or connections, or for love. Love therefore became a synonym for nothing, because if you do something purely for love, you get nothing.

Anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage will be unsurprised to learn that it is, literally, a death-pledge.