I’ve been moaning too much recently. This week I will take a tour of the English language’s delights and will talk of words (and their roots) that I find interesting, even charming.
You will know that a daisy closes at night but opens again at dawn to reveal its round, yellow centre. The name is a contraction of “day’s eye”.
Posy, a small bunch of flowers, was originally a line or two of verse inscribed on a ring or used as a motto. The word comes from the old English poesy, meaning poetry.
Stymied is a golf term. It used to describe a situation on the green when it was a golfer’s turn to putt (furthest from the hole plays first) but the route was blocked by another ball. The rules changed in 1951, allowing a ball to be lifted and its place marked. The meaning of stymie remains “thwarted” or “blocked”, having outlived its place on the links.
In army slang describing Morse Code, umpty was a dash while the dot was iddy. Umpteen as an indefinite large number grew from there. The “bow” in rainbow is named for the bow that shoots arrows. It is, figuratively, a bow of rain in the sky.
To take a darker turn, “matador” has taken on elements of grace, bravery, and there is perhaps even a chivalrous nuance. Goodness knows why. The word means “killer”. It is from the Persian mat, meaning “dead”, with the same root as checkmate.
A custard was an open-topped meat or fruit pie with a sauce thickened with eggs. Over time the name was applied to the sauce rather than the pie. Ecology was originally oecology, based on the Greek oikos meaning house. The natural environment was described as the home of all plants and animals living within it.
The halcyon was a mythological bird, said to make a nest on the sea. It could charm wind and waves to calmness for 14 days during its breeding season. Halcyon days now recall a golden time.
I will end with a currently well-used word. Vaccine. It comes from the Latin vacca, meaning cow.
Physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823), acting on the lore that milkmaids never got smallpox, wondered if this was because they had contact with the cowpox virus which affects cows’ udders but causes only a mild (but smallpox-like) disease in humans.
To test his theory Jenner, who was educated at St Andrews University, infected the eight-year-old son of his gardener with cowpox. The medical profession didn’t initially believe in his success, so he experimented on other children – including his baby son. Ethics were different in those days.
The practice was eventually adopted around the world and led to the eradication of the once deadly smallpox virus.
Have you had your first and second cow injection?
Word of the week
Spiss (adjective)
Thick, compact, dense. EG: “One day soon spiss crowds will again fill our shopping centres.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
