words wholly unrelated

female & male

hold up. is raynor going to tell me that the male part of female has nothing to do with the male part of male? i’m in a very fragile state right now—such a bone-rattling revelation is apt to put me over the edge.

indeed, i am going to tell you this, half-pint. and if you don’t wanna know the truth about males and females that your parents have been hiding from you since day 1, then slam shut your toshiba qosimo® laptop, toss it into your jacuzzi, and take a wrecking ball to your apartment building cuz things at the ragbag are about to get heavy.

have you been spelling women w-o-m-y-n and female f-e-m-a-y-l since undergrad as a repudiation of the traditions that define females by references to the male norm? if so, while your intentions were sound, your etymological understanding may not have been. while woman and women are related to man and men, they come from a time when man simply meant “person.” a woman (from wyf-man) was a female person and a man (simplified from wer-man) was a male person. male and female on the other hand are not even related. (there is still time to rent a wrecking ball crane, but just barely).

female actually comes from the old frisian femelle (woman) which came from the latin femella (girl). sometime in the late 1300s the word changed to female. its altered spelling was probably influenced (though not defined) by the mistaken parallel of male. 

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incidentally, the word male comes from the phrase male pattern baldness which was the phoenician name for the adam character of the coptic old testament.  

words wholly related

vanilla & vagina

guess what i just finished eating. a french crueller with vanilla frosting! it was average in every possible way BUT it did ignite a debate between my companion and i about the etymology of the word vanilla. said she, “it’s spanish like chinchilla and flotilla.” said i, “i’m not a betting man (actually i am; i just said this to appear wholesome) but if i were, i’d say vanilla has origins in ancient rome (this is usually a sound statement to make if one is unsure about most things in western culture).” Had either of us the tiniest inkling that the words vanilla and vagina both stem from the same source, our coffee break (i’m betting) would have been much more than average in every possible way.

for the official vagina record: vanilla is spanish and means “little pod.” however, the spanish tongue received it from the latin vagina (meaning “sheath.”) it doesn’t take a socket scientist to know that the english word vagina comes from the latin word vagina—however its definition “the membranous canal leading from the vulva to the uterus in women and female mammals,” is purely modern and was not used in classical times. therefore when a roman legionnaire announced that his vagina was grimy and in need of a good scrubbing, he was probably referring to his scabbard (fyi).

words wholly unrelated

ginger & gingerly

the two most frequent questions i receive while signing autographs are:

1. what is the highest-sided regular polygon you can picture mentally. and
2. where do you get your ideas for your award-evading words wholly unrelated posts?

the answers are enneadecagon and mills baker. 

in fact, in a twitter flame war last week, mr. baker clued me into the fact that ginger and gingerly were not related etymologically. my reaction was incredulity at first. but then i did a little investigating for myself and was able to verify the claim.

gingerly most likely stems from the old frisian gensor meaning “more daintily”. ginger on the other hand is one of the most ancient words i’ve ever researched. it comes from the sanskrit çṛŋgavēra ”horn-body” named for the shape of its root. evidence even suggests that it has its origins in the prehistoric proto-dravidian language. 

on a related note: if you have excess ginger in your root cellar, you may find this to be a suitable application. 

words wholly unrelated

cushy & cushion

on account of modern technology (u.s. robotics sportster 14400 fax modem) i’m typing this post from the comfort of a bed. the bed is not my own bed, indeed it’s not a bed in which i’m accustomed to waking up in. i know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking “there goes raynor being the international playboy that i know he is. he probably spent all night playing naked twister with the butt double of a famous movie star. again.” the truth of the matter is that naked twister is not nearly as fun to play as it sounds. plus, butt doubles are so 2004, in november 2011, it is the belly button models that get all the attention.

anywho, the point of opening with the bed thing is not to flaunt my latest escapades, but to let you know how cushy it is to access the internet from under silky sheets and how my laptop is currently resting on a down-filled cushion (what the cushion itself is resting upon is not something i should be noting in a morning post). anywho again, the point of all of this is that cushy and cushion, despite having to do with comfort, are not etymologically related to each other. cushy is from the hindi khush “pleasant, healthy, happy,” while cushion comes from the old french coissin, “seat cushion” and probably ultimately the latin word culcita “mattress.”

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my gratitude to my grandmother’s cabana boy, rich cheng for bringing this unrelationship to my attention.

words wholly unrelated

[what the] dickens & [charles] dickens

“what the dickens” has long been the catchphrase of my parole officer. i always assumed it had something to do with charles dickens and was some whacky victorian euphemism—the way saying jiminy christmas is a way of not saying jesus christ. it turns out that “what the dickens” predates charles dickens and the victorian era by several centuries. if i had actually read shakespeare’s the merry wives of windsor instead of pretending to read it, i would have come across the phrase in act iii, scene ii.

most people in the know agree that “what the dickens” is a minced oath for “what the devil.” though the relation between dickens and the devil is obscure, some etymologists say it derives from devilkins.

in an effort to ensure that the surname dickens doesn’t come from devilkins, i conducted some research on the last name itself. dickens means “the grandson of richard” (literally “the son of dick’s kin).” and is an example of a double patronymic surname. interestingly, the surname dickinson is rare case of a triple patronymic surname and means “richard’s great-grandson.”

dick
dicken (dick + kin)
dickens (dick + kin + s(on))
dickinson (dick + kin + s(on) + (s)on)!

know your car____ movement verbs

• to careen is fall to one side
• to career is to rush at full speed
• to carom is to glance and rebound

this is also a secret words wholly unrelated post because none of the car____ verbs are related etymologically and each comes from different sports.

• careening, a nautical term, is from the latin carina meaning the keel of a ship (or “nutshell”).
• careering, a horse racing term, comes from the latin carrus “a wheeled device” —car and carriage are its first cousins. when career first infiltrated english it meant something like “racetrack” though it didn’t take long for this definition to expand metaphorically to something like “the course of one’s profession.”
• caroming, a billiards term, is from the italian carambola “the red billiard ball,” which itself may be from the indian karambal, a fruit said to resemble such a ball.

words wholly unrelated

faker & fakir

i’ve been in indi(an)a for the last week on “business”. every morning, on my way from my five star hotel to the convention center where i conduct my shadowy dealings, i wade through a throng of peddlers, beggars, and hustlers. this morning, as i gazed upon these busy souls, i got to wondering about the relationship between fakir and faker. properly speaking, fakir refers to religious muslims who live on alms but it now more broadly refers to all beggars, especially those that practice deception (ie. fakery) to get what they want. so do fakir and faker have any relation or are they just another example of a language coincidence?

as you probably guessed, there is no etymological tie between these f-words. fakir comes from the arabic faqir “poor man” and faker probably comes from feaguer which is london criminal slang for a person who tampers with an object in order to deceive others.

tokyo language drift

the word place comes from the latin word platea and originally meant “broad street.” over the ages, its meaning has drifted to “any particular position or point in space.” this natural process of language is called generalization and is slowly happening all the time.

as stewards of our language, is it our duty to stamp out generalization and other language shifting whenever we encounter it? the answer is a personal decision and not one that i will be making for you. HOWEVER when the word is snarf or twerp, i am willing to admit that generalization can be a bad thing. let’s listen in as kurt vonnegut, jr. is interviewed (by himself) in the paris review.

VONNEGUT: Yeah. And one time, while I was writing, I happened to sniff my armpits absentmindedly. Several people saw me do it, and thought it was funny—and ever after that I was given the name “Snarf.” …Technically, I wasn’t really a snarf. A snarf was a person who went around sniffing girls’ bicycle saddles. I didn’t do that. “Twerp” also had a very specific meaning, which few people know now. Through careless usage, “twerp” is a pretty formless insult now.

INTERVIEWER: What is a twerp in the strictest sense, in the original sense?

VONNEGUT: It’s a person who inserts a set of false teeth between the cheeks of his ass.

INTERVIEWER: I see.

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source: kurt vonnegut, the art of fiction no. 64 in the paris review (spring 1977)

words wholly unrelated

villain & vilify

i’m commuting to work on my ducati superbike 1198 (bloodbath red) and between weaving in and out of minivans and doing endos for kids riding the school bus, it will probably get pretty difficult to say everything that i want to say about villain (“an evil dude”) and villify (“to deprecate or disparage”) and why neither word is related to the other. BUT i will give it my best shot.

it should be no real surprise that vilify is closely related to vile (from the latin villis). what is more surprising than the sweet air that i got from ramping off a deer carcass just now, is that villain is not likewise related to vile. ultimately villain comes from the latin word villa and meant “low-born rustic.”

dr. ernest klein (an authority) says:

The most important phases of the sense development of this word may be summed up as follows: ‘inhabitant of a farm; peasant; churl, boor; clown; miser; knave, scoundrel.’

the path from “farm hand” to “scoundrel”, like my 320 kph dash through 6 lanes of opposing traffic has been hazardous and unlikely, but all the more amusing when you consider the end result: a word whose meaning evolved in unexpected ways, and yours truly dismounting his ducati superbike wearing nothing but jodhpurs and fist-bumping any bro within fist-bumping range.

words wholly unrelated

hellion & hell

because i’m breaking my day long fast of the internet in observance of bloomsday, you know that what i am about to tell you has got to be as important as when abc news interrupted the view to inform me that they heard from the new york times who heard from “a friend close to the source” that a democratic exhibitionist from new york has probably decided to resign because embarrassing cameraphone images of his weirdly brozilian-waxed body have been leaked to the public by his internet girlfriends and his new wife is pregnant and his name is wiener.

anyway, hellion (a devilish person or mischievous child) comes from the scottish dialectical hallion (a worthless fellow). hell is a very old proto-germanic word meaning “the concealed place.” the spelling of the former may have been influenced by the latter, though both ultimately derive from separate sources.

now back to pretending to read ulysses…

words wholly unrelated

mystic & mystic, (connecticut)

i’ve been at submarine school for the last week in mystic, connecticut. while i can’t disclose the confidential information that i’ve been learning, i did happen upon a rather unexpected bit of disinformation: the town of mystic has nothing to do with mysticism.

as towns go, the per capita mysteriousness of mystic lies somewhere between its rival new england seaport towns: newport, rhode island (not mysterious) and amity, massachusetts (somewhat mysterious). so why the misleading name? was it to attract tourists? was it to help launch a pizza empire and subsequently invite julia roberts to its town hall? was it to discourage soviet submarine spies? was it (like providence, rhode island) to lure the faithful?

the answer is none of the above. in this case, mystic comes from the pequot word “missi-tuk”, meaning “a large river whose waters are driven into waves by tides or wind.” early settlers stole it from the native americans? sounds a lot like the rest of american history.

words wholly related

robinson (crusoe) & (the swiss family) robinson

back when i was just a small fry named “raynor the small fry” i was obsessed with the desert island genre*. my wet nurse (after performing her other duties) would read to me every night from the adventures of robinson crusoe. when i turned six and was able to pour my own milk, i began reading the swiss family robinson, and was like: “what’s with all these robinsons getting shipwrecked on fabulous islands?”

it turns out that robinson wasn’t just an oddly appropriate name for a stranded character. dafoe’s work was so popular, that it defined the genre which became known as the robinsonade.

about 100 years later, a swiss pastor wrote der schweizerische robinson which really just translates into the swiss [version of the] robinson [genre]. the family in the book is not named robinson, nor is robinson a swiss name.

but before you get all high and mighty that some swiss pastor from 200 years ago was trying to cash in on the robinson name, consider first how “the establishment” has coöopted dracula and the character now appears in everything from sesame street to the twilight franchise.

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*this obsession continues to manifest itself in my fondness for prison fiction. in both genres, the protagonist must survive in an unfamiliar world with forced constraints, where the ultimate goal is some sort of creative escape and a return to familiarity and freedom.