RANDOM THOUGHTS #119
Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to
himself about the curious origins of interesting words:
1. HALCYON days are a period of calm. Halcyon was a Greek demigoddess, who loved and married a human. When he was drowned in a storm, she threw herself into the sea. The gods turned them into kingfisher birds, which the Greeks thought build floating nests. The two-week period around the winter solstice were the Halcyon days when the sea was calm because of the nesting kingfishers.
2. HALIBUT is the largest of the flounders, often reaching eight feet long and weighing 300 pounds. Halibut is an expensive and excellent fish. In old English, all of the flounders were "but" and the best of them was reserved for eating only on holy days, thereby becoming the holy flounder or halibut.
3. HALLOWEEN was the Celtic new year's eve, a night when ghosts walked the Earth and witches held their annual meetings. Almost all of our traditions date from that pagan period. When the Christian Church decided to turn all pagan holidays into Christian ones (with as few real changes as possible so as to keep the people on board) the last day of October became All Saints Evening, and since the old English world for saint was hallow, we got Halloween.
4. HANDICAP, a word meaning both a physical challenge an individual must endure and a bonus given to a weaker player in order to create an equal contest, comes from an old European contest of the 1300s known as "new faire" or "hand in the cap" in various locals. Three people would put some money into a cap. One of them was the umpire. One of the others would offer a trade, some item he owned by some item owned by the other. The umpire then decided which was the lesser item and how much money had to be offered "to boot" to produce an equal trade. The two protagonists then stuck a hand in their pocket and on an agreed signal pulled it back out. If both held money, the deal was made and the umpire kept the money in the cap. If neither pulled out a coin the deal was off but the umpire still kept the cap money. If only one pulled out a coin, the deal was off but that player got the money in the cap.
5. HANGNAIL, a painful broken nail on the hand or foot, derives from the old English word angnael, which was any sore on the foot, such as a wart or corn. The "nael" referred to a carpenter's metal nail, since a sore somewhat resembled such a nail driven into a block of wood. Over time, the current meaning appeared.
6. HARVEST, to gather crops, derives from the German word herbst, which means the third quarter of the year when most crops were ripe. As it moved into old English, the "vest" part was associated with a festival, a celebration that the years work was done and the time when everyone stayed home and warm was at hand (so one last party prepared everyone for the boredom of the winter). The later word autumn and still later fall replaced harvest as the name for the calendar quarter, and harvest became the term to gather crops at any time of the year.
7. HAZARD comes from the Arabic word al zahr, meaning the die or half of a pair of dice. Gambling was rampant in Europe and England after the Norman Conquest (1066) and most of it involved dice. Because great sums could be wagered and lost, the term "to hazard" came to mean any risky venture, be it physical or financial.
8. HEARSE, a vehicle for carrying the dead to the cemetery, comes from herse, the French word for a type of plow consisting of a wooden framework with spikes projecting down into the earth, allowing it to plow several furrows at once. When turned upside down, it sometimes resembled the framework used to hold the 13 candles used in holy week celebrations in church. Such a framework was later added to the funeral celebrations of great men, and then of lesser men as well. Eventually, a wheeled version of the framework (resembling the original plow) was used to carry the dead to the church and thence to the cemetery, and that meaning continues to this day.
9. HECTIC, meaning nervous excitability, comes from heklios, the Greek work for "habitual." The Greek doctor Galen identified a particular disease (now known as tuberculosis and earlier known as consumption) by the habitually flushed cheeks of the patients, and named it hectic fever. Patients of this disease are noted for their nervous excitability.
10. HECTOR, which means to harass or annoy someone, comes from Hector, the prince and greatest warrior of the Trojans. The Romans (who thought they were descended from the Trojan refugee Aeneas) considered Hector to be the epitome of selfless courage, and the term had that meaning until it fell out of use in the 1300s. In the 1600s someone resurrected the term and applied it to a group (or class) of street thugs in London, and the actions of these swashbuckling ruffians give us the present meaning.
1. HALCYON days are a period of calm. Halcyon was a Greek demigoddess, who loved and married a human. When he was drowned in a storm, she threw herself into the sea. The gods turned them into kingfisher birds, which the Greeks thought build floating nests. The two-week period around the winter solstice were the Halcyon days when the sea was calm because of the nesting kingfishers.
2. HALIBUT is the largest of the flounders, often reaching eight feet long and weighing 300 pounds. Halibut is an expensive and excellent fish. In old English, all of the flounders were "but" and the best of them was reserved for eating only on holy days, thereby becoming the holy flounder or halibut.
3. HALLOWEEN was the Celtic new year's eve, a night when ghosts walked the Earth and witches held their annual meetings. Almost all of our traditions date from that pagan period. When the Christian Church decided to turn all pagan holidays into Christian ones (with as few real changes as possible so as to keep the people on board) the last day of October became All Saints Evening, and since the old English world for saint was hallow, we got Halloween.
4. HANDICAP, a word meaning both a physical challenge an individual must endure and a bonus given to a weaker player in order to create an equal contest, comes from an old European contest of the 1300s known as "new faire" or "hand in the cap" in various locals. Three people would put some money into a cap. One of them was the umpire. One of the others would offer a trade, some item he owned by some item owned by the other. The umpire then decided which was the lesser item and how much money had to be offered "to boot" to produce an equal trade. The two protagonists then stuck a hand in their pocket and on an agreed signal pulled it back out. If both held money, the deal was made and the umpire kept the money in the cap. If neither pulled out a coin the deal was off but the umpire still kept the cap money. If only one pulled out a coin, the deal was off but that player got the money in the cap.
5. HANGNAIL, a painful broken nail on the hand or foot, derives from the old English word angnael, which was any sore on the foot, such as a wart or corn. The "nael" referred to a carpenter's metal nail, since a sore somewhat resembled such a nail driven into a block of wood. Over time, the current meaning appeared.
6. HARVEST, to gather crops, derives from the German word herbst, which means the third quarter of the year when most crops were ripe. As it moved into old English, the "vest" part was associated with a festival, a celebration that the years work was done and the time when everyone stayed home and warm was at hand (so one last party prepared everyone for the boredom of the winter). The later word autumn and still later fall replaced harvest as the name for the calendar quarter, and harvest became the term to gather crops at any time of the year.
7. HAZARD comes from the Arabic word al zahr, meaning the die or half of a pair of dice. Gambling was rampant in Europe and England after the Norman Conquest (1066) and most of it involved dice. Because great sums could be wagered and lost, the term "to hazard" came to mean any risky venture, be it physical or financial.
8. HEARSE, a vehicle for carrying the dead to the cemetery, comes from herse, the French word for a type of plow consisting of a wooden framework with spikes projecting down into the earth, allowing it to plow several furrows at once. When turned upside down, it sometimes resembled the framework used to hold the 13 candles used in holy week celebrations in church. Such a framework was later added to the funeral celebrations of great men, and then of lesser men as well. Eventually, a wheeled version of the framework (resembling the original plow) was used to carry the dead to the church and thence to the cemetery, and that meaning continues to this day.
9. HECTIC, meaning nervous excitability, comes from heklios, the Greek work for "habitual." The Greek doctor Galen identified a particular disease (now known as tuberculosis and earlier known as consumption) by the habitually flushed cheeks of the patients, and named it hectic fever. Patients of this disease are noted for their nervous excitability.
10. HECTOR, which means to harass or annoy someone, comes from Hector, the prince and greatest warrior of the Trojans. The Romans (who thought they were descended from the Trojan refugee Aeneas) considered Hector to be the epitome of selfless courage, and the term had that meaning until it fell out of use in the 1300s. In the 1600s someone resurrected the term and applied it to a group (or class) of street thugs in London, and the actions of these swashbuckling ruffians give us the present meaning.
posted by Federation Commander at 9:45 AM
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