RANDOM THOUGHTS #60
Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself about the curious origins of certain words.
1. Braille, the raised dot alphabet used by the blind, was invented by Louis Braille, who was himself blind.
2. Bribe is an old French word for money or food one gave to a beggar. By the time it reached England, the word mean extortion. By our time, of course, it means a voluntary payment to induce someone to do you a favor.
3. Broker, someone who buys or sells as an agent for someone else, comes from the French broacher, a man who bought a barrel of wine and then sold it off in smaller quantities in a retail store or tavern.
4. Buccaneer, a sea-roving adventurer (or pirate), is the French form of the Spanish term barbacoa, a grill used in Haiti to cook meat. Caribbean explorers, traders, and pirates in the 1600s had adopted the Haitian means of cooking (it was more efficient than using a spit), and this same word came to English as both barbecue and buccaneer.
5. Budget, the money available for certain uses over a certain period of time, comes from the French word bouget, which is the diminutive version of bouge, the French word for purse. (Thus, bouget means "little purse.") How it got from there to here seems obvious. The money in your purse was how much you had to live on until you got some more.
6. Bug, used today for many things (an insect, a verb meaning to annoy, or a flaw in a system), was originally the Welsh word bwg, which meant ghost. From there, the word was used in Cornwall (as bug) to refer to a particular beetle (which sort of looked like a hideous ghost). The word was sometimes expanded or modified into bugbear (a big bug, now a worrying problem), bugaboo (a scary creature, now some big dramatic mess), or bogey (a ghost, now an unknown target). Once bug became used for any insect, the use as a verb (to bug someone) was obvious.
7. Bugle (a musical instrument often used by the military) was invented by the Roman army, which made its bugles from the horns of bullocks, which (in Latin) were buculus. Thus, to blow on a buculus was to blow on a musical instrument made from the horn of a bullock. Much later the instruments were made of metal but the name stuck.
8. Bulldozer, a construction vehicle that scrapes the ground and pushes around piles of dirt, is the end of a curious path. Texas cattle ranchers used a bullwhip to control herds of cattle. In post-Civil War New Orleans, local whites (most of whom were Democrats) used bullwhips (bought from Texas) to scare Negroes away from voting places, lest they vote Republican. Carpetbaggers and Republican Negroes used the same bullwhips to scare other blacks whom were suspected of voting for Democrats. To strike someone with a bullwhip (which could open a cut in the skin) was said to be "giving him the bull dose" of punishment. Quickly, someone who used a bullwhip on humans (a bully of the worst sort) became known as a bulldoser. The word bulldoser remained in use for decades as a term for bully. Eventually, someone needed a name for a construction machine that shoved things around, and bulldozer was selected, first as slang, then as the product name.
9. Bunk, speech that comprises nonsense or lies often of a political nature, derives from Buncombe County, North Carolina. In 1820, as Congress debated the Missouri Compromise, Congressman Felix Walker (from that county) rose and gave a long speech that had nothing to do with the Missouri Compromise. His colleagues asked him about it, and he said that his constituents expected him to give the speech and it seemed as good a time as any. He said he was "speaking to Buncombe, not to the House." The term stuck (as funny stories often do) as bunkum, which was shortened a century later to just plain old bunk.
10. Bus, a vehicle carrying lots of passengers on a fixed schedule (for long or short routes) comes from omnibus, the Latin and French term meaning "for all". Bus service was invented in Paris in 1662 (special wagons carrying passengers on fixed routes and schedules for 1/30th of the cost of a carriage ride) but the business failed after two years. (Rich people had been the primary uses, but quit using the service to avoid associating with riffraff. Poor people rejected the "rich people's ride." Bus service was resumed in Paris in 1827. Mindful of the marketing problems of the earlier venture, the new business wrote "omnibus" ("for all") on their wagons, and the English (who copied the idea two years later) shortened it to simply "bus."
1. Braille, the raised dot alphabet used by the blind, was invented by Louis Braille, who was himself blind.
2. Bribe is an old French word for money or food one gave to a beggar. By the time it reached England, the word mean extortion. By our time, of course, it means a voluntary payment to induce someone to do you a favor.
3. Broker, someone who buys or sells as an agent for someone else, comes from the French broacher, a man who bought a barrel of wine and then sold it off in smaller quantities in a retail store or tavern.
4. Buccaneer, a sea-roving adventurer (or pirate), is the French form of the Spanish term barbacoa, a grill used in Haiti to cook meat. Caribbean explorers, traders, and pirates in the 1600s had adopted the Haitian means of cooking (it was more efficient than using a spit), and this same word came to English as both barbecue and buccaneer.
5. Budget, the money available for certain uses over a certain period of time, comes from the French word bouget, which is the diminutive version of bouge, the French word for purse. (Thus, bouget means "little purse.") How it got from there to here seems obvious. The money in your purse was how much you had to live on until you got some more.
6. Bug, used today for many things (an insect, a verb meaning to annoy, or a flaw in a system), was originally the Welsh word bwg, which meant ghost. From there, the word was used in Cornwall (as bug) to refer to a particular beetle (which sort of looked like a hideous ghost). The word was sometimes expanded or modified into bugbear (a big bug, now a worrying problem), bugaboo (a scary creature, now some big dramatic mess), or bogey (a ghost, now an unknown target). Once bug became used for any insect, the use as a verb (to bug someone) was obvious.
7. Bugle (a musical instrument often used by the military) was invented by the Roman army, which made its bugles from the horns of bullocks, which (in Latin) were buculus. Thus, to blow on a buculus was to blow on a musical instrument made from the horn of a bullock. Much later the instruments were made of metal but the name stuck.
8. Bulldozer, a construction vehicle that scrapes the ground and pushes around piles of dirt, is the end of a curious path. Texas cattle ranchers used a bullwhip to control herds of cattle. In post-Civil War New Orleans, local whites (most of whom were Democrats) used bullwhips (bought from Texas) to scare Negroes away from voting places, lest they vote Republican. Carpetbaggers and Republican Negroes used the same bullwhips to scare other blacks whom were suspected of voting for Democrats. To strike someone with a bullwhip (which could open a cut in the skin) was said to be "giving him the bull dose" of punishment. Quickly, someone who used a bullwhip on humans (a bully of the worst sort) became known as a bulldoser. The word bulldoser remained in use for decades as a term for bully. Eventually, someone needed a name for a construction machine that shoved things around, and bulldozer was selected, first as slang, then as the product name.
9. Bunk, speech that comprises nonsense or lies often of a political nature, derives from Buncombe County, North Carolina. In 1820, as Congress debated the Missouri Compromise, Congressman Felix Walker (from that county) rose and gave a long speech that had nothing to do with the Missouri Compromise. His colleagues asked him about it, and he said that his constituents expected him to give the speech and it seemed as good a time as any. He said he was "speaking to Buncombe, not to the House." The term stuck (as funny stories often do) as bunkum, which was shortened a century later to just plain old bunk.
10. Bus, a vehicle carrying lots of passengers on a fixed schedule (for long or short routes) comes from omnibus, the Latin and French term meaning "for all". Bus service was invented in Paris in 1662 (special wagons carrying passengers on fixed routes and schedules for 1/30th of the cost of a carriage ride) but the business failed after two years. (Rich people had been the primary uses, but quit using the service to avoid associating with riffraff. Poor people rejected the "rich people's ride." Bus service was resumed in Paris in 1827. Mindful of the marketing problems of the earlier venture, the new business wrote "omnibus" ("for all") on their wagons, and the English (who copied the idea two years later) shortened it to simply "bus."
posted by Federation Commander at 6:51 AM
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