What's in a word? (Part 1)

I’ve long been fascinated by etymology: the history of words. Where did they come from, and how have they changed over time and with their shifts from one language into another?

This fascination has been fed recently by an online word game that one of my work colleagues introduced me to, Rootl. It’s a game where you use meanings and etymological journeys to guess at a series of words of a variety of lengths and, as you might expect, I’ve been spending more time than usual thinking about the history of cool words. So as I discover more fascinating bits of etymology I’ll keep some of the best aside to share with all of you (with help from the indispensible Online Etymology Dictionary), starting with these ten.

Penguin

Source: Possibly Welsh | First recorded: 1570s

The origins of this word are slightly obscured, but we do know that it was used first to refer the now-extinct great auks of Newfoundland before it was applied to the flightless swimmers of the Antarctic. A likely source for “penguin” is the Welsh “pen” (meaning head) + “gwyn” (white), which would describe the great auk, as it had a white patch on its head.

Buccaneer

Source: Tupi > French | First recorded: 1680s

The term “boucanier” was first used to describe French settlers in the West Indies, and was based on their adoption of a “boucan”, a grill for cooking meat designed and used by the Tupi people, who called it a “mukem”. As the Spanish drove the French out of their settlements and into lawlessness and piracy, the term became associated with pirates by the time it was anglicised into “buccaneer”.

Additional fun fact: the “boucan” root also found its way to Haiti, where it became “barbacoa”, the precursor to our English word “barbecue”.

Butter

Source: Greek > Latin > West Germanic > Old English

The act of creating butter by churning cream has been around for a great many centuries, and so has the name for this delicious dairy product. However, the original Greek word “boutyron” seems to have been coined from the words for cow (“bous”) and cheese (“tyros”). The Greeks were not big eaters of butter themselves, though they would be familiar with the food as some foreign thing that the Romans and Scythians ate.

Trivia

Source: Latin | First recorded: 1902?

The origin of the word “trivia” is a great piece of trivia in itself. The word is closely related to “trivial”, and it is from the allusion to trivialities that we get its modern meaning. In Latin, however, “trivia” is the plural of “trivium”, which literally means “where three roads meet” and refers to open, public places. The implication, then, is that the trivium is where people would gather to discuss meaningless and commonplace matters, which then became described as “trivial”.

Discuss

Source: Latin > Medieval Latin | First recorded: late 14th century

Speaking of discussion, “discuss” is another word with some unexpected Latin roots! It comes from the word “discutere”, literally meaning to shake apart: “dis-” (apart) + “quatere” (to shake). This makes more sense in the context of higher learning (particularly in the medieval period), where discussion involves investigation, examination, debate, and dismantling of another person’s argument—a less literal example of shaking something apart.

Silhouette

Source: French | First recorded: 1798

The word “silhouette” is something called an eponym, which is a word derived from someone’s name. In this case, the person we get “silhouette” from was Étienne de Silhouette, who was the French minister of finance in 1759. How his name became became associated with black cut-outs of a person’s facial profile is somewhat hazy. The popular explanation is that it’s an allusion to de Silhouette’s criticised penny-pinching during his time as minister of finance—the connection being that people would have silhouette portraits made because they could not afford a painted one. It’s also possible that de Silhouette just liked the simple images and kept a lot of them, or that they took on his name purely because they came to prominence at the same time he did.

Scientist

Source: Proto-Indo-European > Latin > Old French | First recorded: 1834

The term “scientist” as a person who studies science was coined by an English polymath named Rev. William Whewell as a sort of portmanteau of “science” and “artist”. He also coined “physicist” in a similar way in the same paragraph.

The primary part of the word, i.e. “science”, was originally an Old French word from the 14th century referring to knowledge and learning. It was derived from the Latin word of the same meaning, “scientia”, which was in turn taken from “sciens”, a variation of “scire” (meaning “to know”). The interesting thing about “scire” is that it was sourced from the same root as “scindere” meaning “to cut”. Is this perhaps why we still refer to knowledgable people as being sharp?

Check

Source: Persian/Arabic > Vulgar Latin > Old French | First recorded: circa 1300

Despite all the many meanings of the word “check”, its etymological journey into English stems from one very specific (and surprising) usage: chess. The origin of “check” can be traced all the way back to the Persian and Arabic word “shah”, meaning “king”. Those of you familiar with chess will see the relevance, as the primary goal of chess is to protect your king piece. (The term “checkmate”, by the way, comes from the fuller term “shah mat”, which means “the king is dead/helpless”.) The term travelled to Europe along with the game, which proved to be very popular on an international level throughout the medieval period. It entered Latin as “scaccus”, then French as “eschec”, and from there into English as “check”.

The various other meanings of “check” came into being over subsequent centuries, from the early 16th century onwards, initially as developments on the idea of preventing such unfortunate and dangerous situations as checkmate, and then further developing until the connections with the classic board game were obscured.

Machine

Source: Proto-Indo-European? > Greek > Latin > Middle French | First recorded: 1540s

The word “machine” has referred to some sort of device or tool since the time of the ancient Greeks. The Greek precursor “mēkhanē” likely comes from the Proto-Indo-European root “magh-”, which means having ability and/or power.

If you’re familiar with literary devices, you might know the Latin term “deus ex machina”, which translates to “god in the machine”. This odd phrase is a reference to ancient Greek theatrical tradition, when the plot would be solved by the appearance of a god, who would be airlifted into the scene with a crane.

Gazette

Source: Italian > French | First recorded: circa 1600

The origin of the word “gazette” can be found in renaissance Venice, where the concept of the newspaper was born. The Italian “gazetta” (or “gazeta” in the Venetian dialect) was derived from the word for magpie, “gazza”. This may be because the price of a newspaper was a coin of the same name, or it may be a reference to the birds’ chattering ways. Perhaps it was both!