stories behind words
Many words have interesting stories behind them.
The word ‘galvanise’, for example, meaning ‘to stimulate’ as in "the speech galvanised the workforce", is derived from one Luigi Galvani, an 18th century Italian physicist who discovered voltaic electricity by attaching the legs of dead frogs to pairs of different metals. The technique was originally employed to create muscular spasms through electric charges, but the term soon began to be used figuratively.
The word ‘lynch’, meaning ‘to execute without trial’, derives from a certain William Lynch, a 19th century American planter, who set up unofficial courts to try suspected criminals. The unfortunate victims of these courts were usually sentenced to death and summarily executed and "Lynch’s law" soon passed into the language as the verb ‘to lynch’.
In a similar vein, the word ‘derrick’, meaning a hoisting apparatus or crane, as in ‘oil derrick’ was originally used to describe a gallows and was named after a particularly brutal 17th century English hangman who is said to have carried out more than 3000 executions.
The word ‘guillotine’ is also an eponym, a word that derives from a person’s name. Joseph Guillot was an 18th century French physician, who advocated the use of the guillotine as opposed to other forms of execution on the grounds that it was more humanitarian. It is interesting to note that this word has also come to be used in British politics to mean to ‘cut short’ as in "The Bill was guillotined due to lack of time".
In a different area, Texas rancher Samuel Maverick has also given his name to the language. While it was standard practice for ranchers to brand their cattle for identification purposes, Maverick neglected to do so, and his cattle remained unbranded as they roamed the prairies. Thus, originally, a 'maverick' was different from the rest of the herd. Its meaning has now passed from cattle to people and is used to describe someone who is different from other people for some reason, particularly in the sense of a rebel or non-conformist.
An American Civil War general known as Joseph Hooker provides the origin of the word ‘hooker’, a colloquial term for prostitute. The exact reason for this connection has never been firmly established, although it is said that Hooker used to lure his enemies into ambushes by the strategic deployment of prostitutes. In any event, his name has been immortalised to describe members of "the oldest profession".
Perhaps the unfortunate soldiers trapped in this way were 'mesmerised' by what they saw. If so, the word used to describe their fascination derives from the 18th century Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who treated his patients by inducing in them a trance-like state through the use of magnets. Mesmer himself attributed his powers to the supernatural but it appears that he was little more than a very effective hypnotist.
The word ‘hooligan’ is widely used today, often to describe football fans and has passed from English into a number of other languages. Its origin lies in a regular visitor to the Lamb and Flag pub in South London at the end of the 19th century, a certain Patrick Hoolihan, an Irishman who had a reputation for excessively rowdy behaviour. Hoolihan and his family behaved in such an anti-social manner that anyone behaving in a similar way was compared to the Hoolihans and gradually the word has spread, encompassing a slight change of pronunciation and spelling on the way, and is now a very common term.
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These and over 100,000 other references can be found in the excellent Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners
Plus in www.macmillandictionary.com don't miss the Word of the Week. New words, phrases and meanings constantly come into being. Every week, we publish a short article about a new word or phrase. New words will sometimes be frivolous, ephemeral and quickly forgotten. Others will be so important or useful that they remain in the language indefinitely.
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Animals in English names
What is the connection between tabby cats and the city of Baghdad? Which creature is a “hairy cat”? What do dogs and fizzy drinks have in common? Which animal is literally a “pebble-worm”? Which animal is named after its tail? Which bird derives its name from the Welsh for “white head”? And which animal’s name is said to mean “I don’t understand”?
The Baghdad suburb of Al Attabiya was well-known in the Middle Ages for the production of cloth, particularly silk. This was exported throughout the Middle East and ultimately reached Europe, where it was highly valued. Its most striking characteristic was that it was striped and someone somewhere must have noticed the resemblance between the stripes of the Attabiya (or “attabi”) cloth and the black and brown stripes of a particular type of cat, hence the use of the word 'tabby' to describe such cats.
Bizarrely, the “hairy cat” is a 'caterpillar', deriving from late Latin words for “cat” and “hair” respectively (we get the word ‘depilatory’ or ‘hair-removing” from the same source). Presumably, caterpillars were thought to resemble small furry animals, hence the connection.
The connection between dogs and fizzy drinks is rather tortuous but the link is in the word 'feisty', meaning “spirited”, “quarrelsome” or “cantankerous” (usually in a positive sense and often attributed to old people or to people one would not expect to behave in such a way). The word “feisty” itself derives from and Old English word meaning a “farting dog”. This in turn is related to the verb “to fizzle”, meaning a weak hissing sound, and thence to the word 'fizzy' as in “fizzy drinks”, presumably as a result of the sound of a fizzy drink when the bottle or can is opened.
The “pebble-worm” is the literal translation of Greek words for the component parts of the word 'crocodile', which appears to get its name from the crocodile’s habit of lying on river-banks in the sun, although, apart from very young baby crocodiles, the connection between worms and crocodiles requires a certain amount of imagination!
As for tails, animals with particularly distinctive tails include foxes and squirrels, and both of these words derive ultimately from old words for “tail”, the fox being literally “tailed animal”, while the squirrel derives from “shadow-tail”.
As for the bird with the white head, the Welsh for “white head” is “pen gwyn”, which some etymologists have taken to explain the origin of the English word 'penguin'. This theory, while no doubt an attractive one, seems to overlook the fact that penguins have black heads and also fails to explain how the Welsh were the first to reach the wilds of Antarctica and discover penguins.
However, perhaps the most contentious of all the animal words discussed here, is 'kangaroo'. The story goes that when the English explorer Captain Cook and his men first came across this unusual creature in the 18th century, they asked a native aborigine what it was called, to which he replied “Kangaroo”, meaning, more or less, “I don’t understand what you are saying”. Cook and his men happily seized upon this attractive-sounding word and “kangaroo” came into the English language.