The random etymology of the day

[Jonathon]

I don't know if you saw this thread, Jake, but I think it and some of the replies support the idea that it started as a mishearing of heraldic. So far nobody's been able to date it to earlier than 2005, and there's evidence of the phrase pose héraldique in French, so it certainly sounds like a mishearing to me. I have no idea why such a thing would spread, but people are weird that way.

Maybe someone saw it and thought, "Oh, that's cool—I didn't know there was a word for that specific behavior" and started repeating it. People like knowing obscure words for random things, like the fact that the plastic tip on a shoelace is called an aglet, and they like sharing those words even if they don't really use them.

And by the way, I did get a notification of your tweet yesterday but hadn't had time to respond to it before you posted here. Just so you know that your tweets aren't disappearing into the void or something.

[rivka]

People like knowing obscure words for random things, like the fact that the plastic tip on a shoelace is called an aglet, and they like sharing those words even if they don't really use them.

Very true.

[Tante Shvester]

Batter. It can mean to attack and beat or the stuff you bake into a cake. And battery. It can mean a beating or the thing you need to make your flashlight work.

[pooka]

Aggravated battery is when you get caught licking the brownie spoon. 

[Jonathon]

Batter comes from an Old French word meaning 'to beat'. The stuff you bake into a cake is a mixture that is beaten together.

Battery started out with the meaning of 'beating' or 'bombardment' and then shifted to the thing that does the bombardment, or artillery. The shift to 'thing that stores electrical charge' is a little less clear. Apparently Benjamin Franklin was the first to use the word in this sense, and it may come from the idea that a battery discharges electricity in the same way that a piece of artillery discharges a shot.

[Ela]

Interesting, Jonathon.

[rivka]

Is butter (made by churning (i.e. beating)) related too?

[Jonathon]

Butter has a completely unrelated origin: it's apparently from the Ancient Greek boutyron, from bous 'cow' plus tyros 'cheese'. But the Online Etymology Dictionary says that this may be a folk etymology for a Scythian word. That is, the Greeks and Romans didn't use butter, but the Indians and Iranians did. The Greeks may have borrowed the word for 'butter' from the Scythians, a group of nomadic Iranian tribes in central Asia, and then folk etymologized it to something in Greek.

[rivka]

Huh. Interesting.

[Jonathon]

This morning Ruth pointed out an obvious etymology that I'd somehow never noticed before: difficult is essentially dis- + facile (though it's slightly more complicated than that). It's a little more obvious in Spanish or French, where the words are fácil/facile and difícil/difficile. (She made the connection while doing a Duolingo lesson in Spanish.)

The word facile isn't as common in English as easy, and it usually means something that was not just easy but shallow or simplistic in some way. Facile comes from the root of the Latin verb facere "to do" plus the suffix -ilis, which forms what Wiktionary calls "an adjective noun of relation, frequently passive, to the verb or root." In simpler terms, facilis meant "doable" or "easy to do".

Difficult has a slight more convoluted history. Wiktionary says that it was backformed from difficulty, which was borrowed from the Old French difficulté, which came from the Latin difficultas. Difficultas is essentially difficilis plus the sufffix -tas, which forms abstract nouns (like the English suffixes -hood or -ness). And difficilis is just dis- plus facilis. So difficulty is basically the state of being not easy or not doable.

[pooka]

TIL the "ser" in assert is the same as in serial.  It means to put in a row.

[Tante Shvester]

"Brandish" comes from "burning," which is why I guess people like to do it with firearms.

[pooka]

mendicant and mendacious apparently share the rood of mend- meaning fault, cf. amend.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/mendacious#etymonline_v_12576
I guess I got there from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendiant
which is a confection honoring 4 monastic orders that is recalled by the Cadbury fruit and nut bar.

[Tante Shvester]

Hippocampus apparently has nothing to do with a college for pachyderms.  I rather enjoyed the image of all those hippopotamuses throwing Frisbees around on the quad between classes.

[Jonathon]

Hippocampus comes from the Greek hippos 'horse' + kampos 'sea monster'. It was a half-horse half-fish (or half-dolphin) creature that supposedly pulled Neptune's chariot. In the late 1500s it became a name for seahorses, and the part of the brain was named after it because it supposedly looks like a seahorse.

[rivka]

I knew that, but now I am vastly entertained by the image of Esther's quad. I see the inhabitants as being in the style of Sandra Boynton.

[Tante Shvester]

Can is shortened from canister, which is why canning things in jars makes sense.

[Tante Shvester]

What is the etymology of "yeet"?  I hear it everywhere now.

[Jonathon]

It's not in the Online Etymology Dictionary, and Wiktionary just describes how it was popularized. I don't think anyone knows how the word was actually formed. I'd guess that etymologists would say that the word is of "imitative origin" or something like that.

[pooka]

Orcas Island is not the same as orca the sea mammal. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcas_Island

https://www.etymonline.com/word/orca#:~:text=%22killer%20whale%2C%22%20introduced%20as,sea%20monsters%20(see%20orc).

[rivka]

Huh. I had no idea that orca was derived from orc.

[rivka]

Whose Ears Look Like That?! Why We Call Corn Cobs “Ears”

[Tante Shvester]

Cool.  I'd wondered about it, but never thought to look it up.

I was thinking about what a weird word "cantaloupe" is, and thinking about the etymology, which seems like it would mean "wolf song", so I looked it up, and it kind of does.

[rivka]

Cool.  I'd wondered about it, but never thought to look it up.

Neither did I. It showed up in my newsfeed.

I was thinking about what a weird word "cantaloupe" is, and thinking about the etymology, which seems like it would mean "wolf song", so I looked it up, and it kind of does.

[Jonathon]

also cantaloup, small, round type of melon, 1739, from French, from Italian, from Cantalupo, name of a former Papal summer estate near Rome, where the melons first were grown in Europe after their introduction (supposedly from Armenia). The place name seems to be "singing wolf" and might refer to a spot where wolves gathered, but the name or the story might be folk etymology.]also cantaloup, small, round type of melon, 1739, from French, from Italian, from Cantalupo, name of a former Papal summer estate near Rome, where the melons first were grown in Europe after their introduction (supposedly from Armenia). The place name seems to be "singing wolf" and might refer to a spot where wolves gathered, but the name or the story might be folk etymology.

link

huh