Phrases aren’t born as fossils to be unearthed in a dictionary. Like several species of plant or animal, they stay and evolve in a bid to outlive the eras and environments they encounter. Some change remarkably little, some die off fully, and a few adapt till they’re now not recognizable from their forebears.
Many of those lineages could be pretty simple — a Latin phrase evolves right into a French phrase evolves into an English one. However others can reveal uncommon tales of a time when the individuals utilizing them seen the world, one another, and even the cosmos very in a different way than we do as we speak.
Listed here are seven such phrases and the key histories they inform.*
1. Alcohol
Alcohol comes from al-kuhul, a loanword from Arabic that means “the kohl.” Kohl is a beauty used as an eyeliner and solar protectant. Whereas nonetheless worn in lots of cultures as we speak, it’s maybe best-known within the Western world for its affiliation with the traditional Egyptians, who had been famously depicted sporting it on tomb murals and sarcophagi lids.
So how did a fab beauty come to be related to an antiseptic and the world’s second-favorite drug? Historically, kohl was produced by pulverizing the mineral stibnite right into a fantastic powder, and generally Arabic alchemists would additional refine the powder by way of sublimation — that’s, heating the stable to the purpose that it turns into a vapor. In actual fact, these alchemists invented the stills later used to distill spirits.
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By the late 1600s, Europeans had been utilizing alcohol to discuss with any sublimated substance. It wouldn’t come to imply boozy spirits till the mid-1700s.
2. Whiskey
As soon as Europeans acquired a maintain of the distillation course of, they aimed for one thing a little bit extra grandiose than glam eyeliner: immortality.
To the medieval European thoughts, the world was in a continuous decline from its golden age. Folks had been much less vigorous, meals much less nutritious, and the land extra desolate and diseased. This pessimistic worldview led many to seek for a method to revive their vitality to match biblical figures just like the super-senescent Methuselah.
Explorers looked for legendary locations such because the Fountain of Youth, and medical doctors may need prescribed aged sufferers meals associated to childhood, resembling breast milk. In the identical vein, alchemists turned to distillation. They theorized the method may focus the meager dietary worth of on a regular basis meals into an elixir that may revitalize the human physique to its Edenic state. They known as this hypothetical superfood aqua vitae, or “the water of life.”
What does this must do with whiskey? When the idea traveled to the British Isles, aqua vitae translated into the Irish Gaelic uisce beatha. Whiskey is a shortened type of this translation. (Uisce is pronounced “ish-kah.” Say it aloud, and you may really feel how the windy “ish” and the thumping “kah” shifted into “whis-key” over time. The beatha — pronounced “bah-hah” — finally dropped off in English.)
As for the seek for immortality, it will definitely petered out, however the perception that liquors had therapeutic properties persevered for hundreds of years. Whilst late because the early twentieth century, pharmacists nonetheless stockpiled whiskey, brandy, and gin to satisfy medical prescriptions. In actual fact, throughout prohibition, it was a helpful authorized loophole for getting a drink within the U.S.
3. Scapegoat
Scapegoat means “one who shoulders the blame for others,” but it surely initially denoted a sacrificial goat despatched into the wilderness as a part of an historic atonement ritual on Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16). The phrase was coined by William Tyndale for his English translation of the Bible — an enterprise that noticed him change into a sacrifice of types when he was executed for heresy by the Roman Catholic Church.
Tyndale’s scapegoat is a devoted translation of the Vulgate Latin Bible’s caper emissarius. The Latin phrase for “goat” is caper, and it will probably nonetheless be discovered within the scientific names of many goat species as we speak. Nonetheless, the Vulgate Latin is a translation of the Hebrew azazel, and right here’s the place issues take a flip as a result of azazel might not imply “goat” in any respect.
It’s tough as a result of there are a number of attainable translations. In some readings, azazel could possibly be learn as ‘ez ozel (“goat that departs” or “that which is distributed away”). In others, it could possibly be the title of the hellish wilderness the goat was despatched to. The unique textual content says there are two goats, one “for Yahweh” (that’s, God) and the opposite destined “for Azazel.” Nonetheless different readings forged Azazel as a demon — the concept being that the goat would function a vessel, one which bore the individuals’s sins to their impure supply.
This demon additionally seems within the apocryphal E-book of Enoch, the place he performs the function of a sin-gifting Prometheus. He teaches people how you can forge swords and shields, discover valuable stones, and — in an attention-grabbing connection to our first phrase — make kohl eyeliner. When these items result in ungodly acts, Azazel is punished by being certain and forged into darkness.
In later apocalypses and demonologies, Azazel could be related to the demon Samael (himself a precursor to Devil). This makes scapegoat a part of a long-standing custom connecting demons with goats, one which has continued by way of the centuries in spiritual iconography, romantic artwork, and, in fact, horror motion pictures.
4. Murderer
Murderer is a typical phrase as we speak much less for rampant political slayings and extra for its overuse as a storytelling machine. However when the phrase was first devised, that relationship was reversed.
Its Arabic equal, hashīshīn, was initially a nickname for members of a religious-political Islamic motion. Identified correctly because the Nizārī Ismāʿīliyyah, the sect conflicted with neighboring caliphates all through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. When direct battle wasn’t an possibility, they might infiltrate the households of distinguished enemy figures and homicide them.
How did they get the nickname hashīshīns? The basis of the phrase, cannabis, technically interprets as “dry herb” however can also be the earliest recognized avenue title for hashish. A well-liked perception was that the sect’s leaders used the drug to induce visions of paradise in converts. This made them extra pliable earlier than being despatched on their nightmarish assignments.
It’s value noting that there’s no historic proof that the Nizārīs had a specific fondness for hashish or used it for brainwashing functions. It’s doubtless a type of propaganda cooked up by their enemies. However contemplating their enemies had been on the sharp finish of that murderous relationship, it’s little shock the angle wasn’t honest and balanced.
Tales of the Nizārīs would be a magnet for European Crusaders, who retold them at residence, the place they grew in reputation. By the 1500s, the phrase had morphed into the medieval French and Italian assissini and assassini, respectively.
5. Sycophant
Sycophant comes from the Greek sykophantes. It means “slanderer,” however a literal translation of the phrase’s roots (sykon and phainein) is “the one who reveals the figs.”
In Sixth-century Athens, it was unlawful to export meals aside from olives from the territory. This made items like figs contraband that smugglers would sneak out of the territory for further revenue. Typically, snitches would promote out these smugglers to the authorities, and they might be reputed as “one who confirmed the figs.” Mainly, they had been often called a narc on these historic Greek streets.
“If it was a part of his objective to ingratiate himself with the authorities, he was near being a sycophant within the trendy sense of the phrase,” Robin Waterfield writes in his guide Why Socrates Died.
However this account just isn’t thought of substantiated by the Oxford English Dictionary. It gives an alternate historical past through which “exhibiting the figs” was a vulgar gesture made by sticking the thumb between two fingers. In historic Greece, the fig was symbolic of a vagina, and once you stick the thumb between — nicely, you see the place that is going.
In keeping with Oxford, politicians would publicly scorn this uncouth gesture whereas privately encouraging their followers to taunt their opponents with it. The toadies who did so to endear themselves to those two-faced politicians had been belittled as one who reveals the figs — successfully, a brown noser.
Whichever historical past is true, it’s attention-grabbing — and a little bit disheartening — to see that whereas the phrases might have modified, the political realities stay steadfast.
6. Glamour
Learn the phrase glamour, and your thoughts most likely conjures photographs of journal covers, the luxurious rockin’ of David Bowie, or starlets ascending stairways in glowing attire. You most likely don’t take into consideration sentence construction, subject-verb settlement, and pedants loudly decrying that actually now not means “actually.”
However each glamour and grammar share an affiliation with the magical. Grammar got here to English from the Previous French gramaire, that means “studying.” Within the Center Ages, when a lot of the inhabitants was illiterate, books and studying had been unique to the higher lessons. And since such learnings included astrology and alchemy, grammar took on a secondary that means of occult data.
It’s this second that means that discovered its method to Scotland as gramarye, or “magic, enchantment, or spell.” That Scottish phrase finally advanced into glamour, whereas grammar settled into the examine of language, as studying and studying unfold extra broadly by way of English tradition.
7. Gadzooks
Gadzooks isn’t a typical phrase anymore. Truthful sufficient. However this one is simply too good to go up, as a result of there was a time once you didn’t desire a mom, schoolteacher, or priest inside earshot when these foul phonemes crossed your lips.
Returning to the medieval mindset, obscene language was a really completely different breed. A map may direct you to a glade known as “Fuckinggrove,” and nobody would look twice. If something, the title was a promoting level. However take the Lord’s title in useless, swear by him flippantly, or request He rattling somebody to hell, and also you’ll end up exterior the bounds of well mannered society.
In actual fact, it’s this Center Age hyperlink between faith and vulgarity that gave us a lot of our up to date euphemisms: swearing, profanity, and curse phrases.
What does this must do with gadzooks? As linguist John McWhorter factors out in 9 Nasty Phrases, a curious behavior of medieval profanity was to swear on Jesus’ or God’s physique elements, such because the “archaic-sounding eruptions” of By God’s nails and By God’s arms. Gadzooks is one such expression, coming from the equally archaic By God’s hooks (that’s, the nails of Christ’s crucifixion). One other is zounds, which is derived from By God’s wounds (once more referencing the crucifixion).
And for those who’re questioning how gadzooks got here from God’s hooks, know that the “gad” comes from egad, a workaround for exclaiming “God!” It’s half of an entire historical past of phrases designed to take the Lord’s title in useless with out taking the title. Others embrace cripes (Christ), jeez (Jesus), and jeepers creepers (Jesus Christ). How medieval individuals thought they had been fooling an omniscient being with this coded language is anybody’s guess.
Look and also you shall discover
A lot as a whale’s physiology divulges telltale indicators of its terrestrial lineage to a biologist, as soon as you start on the lookout for these hidden histories, you’ll discover them all over the place. On this article alone, I needed to go over bless and its origins in pagan blood rituals; how sarcophagus got here from a perception that tombs dissolved flesh; and, in fact, the numerous mysteries of the F-word.
What are your favourite etymologies, and what do they educate you about historical past?
*Hat tip to On-line Etymology Dictionary, which proved an indispensable useful resource.
