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Lemon ,by 古塔つみ

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#1930s #interior decorating #vintage illustration #illustration #gewgaw

Word of the Day

December 20/2018―December 23/2018

#Word of the Day #dictionary.com #dictionary.com's Word of the Day #gewgaw #hibernal #turtledove #stodge

The Excitable Etymologist: Geegaw

Geegaw is one of those words you completely forget about until your sixty-five year-old Southern neighbor uses it in a sentence, after which point you cannot seem to get it out of your head. What even is a geegaw? Why is it sometimes spelled “gewgaw”? And most importantly, of course, where does this word come from?

Well, my friend, wonder no longer.

Geegaws (or gewgaws) are shiny, sparkly bits with no discernible purpose, much like every Christmas present my great aunts have ever bought me. So, now that you know what geegaw means, where does it come from?

Would you believe that it comes from French baby-talk? Geegaw began as jou-jou, a French baby-talk word for “toy,” from jouer, “to play.” This, through possible merger with Old French gogue “prank, game” developed into giuegaue in the 13th century. But how did we go from a very French spelling to a very phonetic English spelling?

The Online Etymology Dictionary doesn’t say, but my guess is that the word became a colloquialism and dropped out of the written language for a few centuries. During these years, it went from meaning “toy” to meaning “useless fancy trinket”, and eventually re-entered the English language through an attempt to imitate the speech of lower-class people. Because the word was unknown to the novelist attempting to add some “local color” to their work, they spelled it phonetically.

Thanks for reading this week’s Excitable Etymologist! Next week: Birds.

#linguistics #the linguistics bunker #the excitable etymologist #geegaw #gewgaw #shiny sparkly bits with no discernible purpose #christmas presents from your great aunts