words beyond measure

Just a small blog from your local language enthusiast! Devoted to etymology, vocabulary and the wonderfully weird history of words. I have a master's degree in linguistics, and I'm working on a second one in English language and literature. Please feel free to interact, ask questions or offer suggestions! <3 Much love to you all! 

[thinksandthings]

Elysium is a lovely sounding word which in English means "a place or state of ideal happiness," but its primary original definition comes lifted straight from Greek mythology, where Elysium was the name of the home of the blessed souls after death. This word in Ancient Greek was Hλύσιον, Ēlúsion. This same mythical location was also referred to as the Isles of the Blessed.

In older writings, it was specifically reserved for those singled out and favored by the gods. Heroes and other immortals would be rewarded with a place here to pass the rest of their eternity in bliss. As time went on, the concepts of punishment and reward in the afterlife became more widespread, which eventually merged Elysium more deeply into the concept of afterlife for all people. It became one of several possible levels of Hades which departed souls might find themselves in, depending on a favorable judgement passed on their conduct by the Underworld judges Minos, Rhadamanthys and Aeacus.

Importantly though, Ancient Greek religion was hugely varied and constantly evolving, so this wasn't the only theory or iteration.

There doesn't seem to be any agreement on the etymology of the word beyond the Ancient Greek, but one source I found suggested that it might have something to do with another Greek word, which is the verb meaning "to relieve or release." In that interpretation, Elysium might have been the paradise which promised relief from the pain and burdens of living.

[thinksandthings]

peryton

This isn't quite a real word, but since that has never stopped me before, I looked around to see what I could find about its usage. A peryton is a mythical beast, composed of the body of a stag and the wings of a bird. They're actually quite majestic in a lot of the artwork depicting them. Also fairly irrelevant, but I think it's interesting it is an anagram for entropy.

The term was coined in a very interesting book, the title of which is A Book of Imaginary Beings in English, by Jorge Luis Borges and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni. Its original Spanish title from the first 1957 printing is Manual de zoología fantástica. The book received a few updates over the next couple of decades before landing on the final Spanish title, El libro de los seres imaginarios, in 1969.

There is a fairly long, but very interesting passage on them in the book. Their most pertinent details are originating from Atlantis, having the shadow of a man until they manage to kill a human, at which point their shadow is restored to their own figure, and being very bloodthirsty, violent creatures.

I found fleeting mentions of similar beasts before Borges' book, but none especially substantial, suggesting there was either predecessor to his creation or some inspiration for it. Either way, this particular version of the concept came from Borges, who originally penned it as the Spanish peritio.

However, this word has gone on to accumulate more meaning, and after a publication by S. Burke Spolaor et al., the term was adopted into astronomy as meaning "a terrestrially originating burst of radio waves." (As someone who is very not an astronomer, I can't explain what this means, but apparently you can produce them by opening a microwave door prematurely).

[thinksandthings]

vellichor

So, I've come across a lot of posts on tumblr and other social media with interesting vocabulary words for random emotions, and a lot of them I couldn't actually find out where they came from. This one I tried to look into a little further and found many of them were coined in a book by John Koenig entitled, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. I really want to buy a copy, it looks fascinating.

So, vellichor. This is a blend of two different parts, the first being vellum which means "parchment;" this is originally of French origins from the same trace as veal.

The second part, ichor, is a term borrowed almost unchanged from the Ancient Greek ῑ̓χώρ īkhṓr, which referred to the watery component of blood. Usually though, it invoked a different sense of "blood of the gods."

Together, the word is supposed to convey the "the pensive nostalgia and temporality of used bookstores; the feeling evoked by the scent of old books or paper."

[thinksandthings]

banshee

The current Britannica article describes them as a “supernatural being in Irish and other Celtic folklore whose mournful “keening,” or wailing screaming or lamentation, at night was believed to foretell the death of a member of the family of the person who heard the spirit.” Although modern stories make them out to be twisted spirits or demons, the original Irish folklore painted them more as heralds of death, allowing the family to prepare. 

They are described in all different manners of apparition, from beautiful young women to old, ragged crones, but one of the most consistent features is painful eyes red from crying. 

The word is actually made up of two from Irish, which are ben, or “woman” and sid, or “fairy hill.” The Old Irish was bean sidhe, with the same breakdown, meaning more precisely, “woman of the fairy mounds.” The sidhe were the hills in Irish and other Scots folklore where fairies and other mythological creatures dwelt. That particular morpheme can be interestingly tied to the Proto-Indo-European root sed-, meaning “to sit.”  

[thinksandthings]

butterfly

There is a ton of variation in the word for butterfly between different languages, and they’re all actually really interesting. Butterfly, the modern English version, seems to be derived from the Old English buttorfleoge, which is essentially of the same morphological breakdown, being "butter" + "fly." However, more interesting than the words themselves is the story behind them. 

According to folk mythology (some credit the Brothers Grimm, but I couldn’t find it specifically referenced in their stories) butterflies were actually witches in disguise who feed on butter left out on windowsills. This theory shows up in some older German cognates, like milchdieb “milk - thief” and botterlicker “butter - licker.” 

Another version of the story says that they’re actually named after the yellowish color of their poo, which is supported by the now obsolete Dutch cognate boterschijte which is literally “butter - poo.” Although this was all over the internet, I had a hard time reliably verifying this one, but it’s kinda funny either way. 

I might write a few more of these for different languages, mostly because there are a lot of beautiful mythological associations with the soul and the psyche, but the one English ended up with makes them out to be vaguely spooky milk nibblers. 

[thinksandthings]

Heya! Your recent dino etymology was super fun to read (≧▽≦)

I'll be really interested to read more of it :))

Also purely out of curiosity, but is there any story behind your knowledge of dino etymology?

I'm so glad you liked it! x) Here's another one:

So there is currently a dinosaur referred to as the Edmontosaurus, which means the not-so interesting "dinosaur from Edmonton," however, one of its earlier classifications was anatotitan, which much more interestingly means "giant duck." If I am being entirely honest, duck is not the first thing I would have likened to the pictures I've seen, but I guess with a layer of feathers it might make a little more sense.

The word is a compound in two parts, the first being the Latin anas which means "duck," and I've seen it be credited to a few different Indo-European roots, but the clearest connection looks like anat- for "duck" or "water bird." This particular root was what gave rise to the original Old English term for duck, ened, which was eventually replaced by a different Old English term duce, meaning "diver, dipper or ducker."

The second half is actually the same as one of the components of a previous dinosaur post, being titan which means "large, grand" coming from the Ancient Greek Τιτάν titan, which refers to the race of mythical, pre-Olympian giants.

To be honest, I'm not sure how I've learned so many of these. On more than one occasion I've fallen down an internet rabbit-hole finding increasingly bizarre names for sometimes otherwise innocuous or sometimes utterly entirely absurd creatures. Scientists are much more creative people than they get credit for.

[thinksandthings]

Hello again! It's been a while! Quick blog update for anyone interested:

Hi everyone! I'm thinksandthings, and although I haven't been active on this blog at all in well over a year, I'd really like to try to get back to it and thought I would write a quick blurb about that for you all!

I just graduated with a master's in linguistics this spring, which for the past few years has been taking up a lot of my mental space, so I've had to put this project aside for a bit to try to finish school strong.

It's been honestly very sad to step away from this, I had really enjoyed reading the comments on my posts and seeing the wonderful contributions from people with specialties in subjects from history to literature to the sciences and everywhere in between! I've loved being able to share my little pieces of expertise and learning in turn from all of yours. I write about words because I love them, and one of my favorite aspects of language is how inextricably it is tied to everything else that makes us human: our pasts, cultures, relationships, our mythologies and our thoughts.

If you have ever sent me any messages or questions, please know I will try my best to get to them, even if I'm very late in doing so. I am very shy but seeing people who want to interact and are showing an interest in my nerdy hobbies truly warms my heart.

I will be going back to school for further studies this fall, but I am hopeful that if I can get back into the swing of writing here this summer, I will be able to maintain that as we go into next year. Thank you for being excited about words with me, and I look forward to learning more about etymology with all of you! <3

[thinksandthings]

elf

Elves are fun because there are so many vastly different interpretations. Everything from Santa's toymakers to Elrond and his court qualify into our concept of elven forms.

Generally speaking, we might define elf as being a "spirit, sprite, fairy or goblin; some kind of usually mischievous supernatural creature." This same definition existed for the Middle English term elf, alternately recorded as alfe or elfe. In Old English, the word was ælf, still retaining its meaning of "sprite, incubus or fairy," but specifically with a masculine connotation. The feminine version of the word was ælfen, which interestingly is the predecessor to our modern adjectival form elven.

The word branches out of the Germanic family, and we can point to some other connected words in Old High German, like alp which meant "nightmare." There is actually an Old English cognate which is ælfádl, also meaning "nightmare," but more literally, "elf-disease." Another interesting elf-induced sickness was though to be hiccups, which is reflected in the OE translation ælfsogoða.

Beyond this era of the Old English and German there is some debate about where the words originally sprouted from. The trail may be related to albus or alphoús ἀλφούς, the Latin and Ancient Greek terms for "white" respectively. The cultural theory implies that elves were considered beings of light, brightness and beauty, and thus as this concept evolved from those ideas, so did the English form out of the adjectives.

[tuulikki]

I think Calvert Watkins maybe specifically theorised that it came down to the Germanic languages from Proto-Indo-European *albho- (white), rather than being borrowed from a sister language family.

Still not sure how well this light/brightness/beauty theory plays with svartálfar and all the hostile qualities of elves, though. That makes me a little hesitant, idk

[chiakiakito]

I'm actually soing my thesis on elves!

Re: origins, the most accepted theory is the one with *albho- for brightness. There's another hypothesis (actually the only theory cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, even though it's more of a stretch) that links them to Vedic deities through the word *rbhu (with a sonant r, but I'm typing from a phone). See Kazanas for a paper on the subject, I believe it was called Indo-european deities and the Rg Veda.

As for svartalfar and such: kee in mind that the main source of that classification is Snorri Sturluson, who was writing from a Christian perspective and trying to make elves more similar to angels and devils. There is no mention of dark elves in earlier Scandinavian sources.

Most early Scandinavian evidence points to elves being seen as minor deities, possibly linked to fertility and prosperity. They received some sort of sacrifice (not much detail on this in Skaldic poetry, but an "alfablót" is mentioned once and Kormaks saga talks about pouring bull's blood on a mound where elves live) AND were linked to the sun through the poetic metaphor alfrodhull (literally "elf's wheel" or "elf's glory", meaning sun. Again, missing accents here, sorry). Human warriors and kings were also described as metaphorical elves in poetry, most notably Norwegian king Olafr Geirstadhalfr "the Elf of Geirstadhir", named after his burial site, who was also sacrificed to in order to secure prosperity.

Also, the meaning of alfr (the Old Norse elf) is a lot less clear than it looks. It was probably not a "race" of beings as we might conceptualise today. More likely it had a range of meanings, possibly as wide as "any being capable of giving supernatural blessings" or at least "any semi-divine creature". Medievam folk did not have a concept of taxonomy and as such did not classify things the way we do.

In the elder Edda, elves are routinely paired with the Aesir in poetic formulae, possibly with the meaning of "all divine creatures, from gods to elves". In at least a few songs (esp. Lokasenna) they seem to be synonymous with the Vanir (Freya is said to have slept with "all Aesir and elves", which Loki says is incest, apparently because she's an elf and her brother is too?). Freyr especially is linked to the elves through Alfheimr, the elf-realm which he is said to have been gifted with. This association is however not present in other songs, where vanir and elves are mentioned side by side as though they were different groups (see for instance Skirnismal and Alvissmal).

The only elf character in the Edda may be Volundr, who is said to be alfa ljodhi (ambiguous, possibly "of the elf-people") and visi alfa (leader of the elves)in Volundarkvida. This is weird because Volundr is a very popular character with equivalents in Anglo-Saxon Weyland and German Wieland, but this is the only source calling him an elf. Here the term may have been a way to classify him as an ethnic Other (being a Sami prince) and carries implications of dangerous beauty. There's a very good paper on him, called The extreme emotional life of Volundr the Elf.

The earliest of these sources date back to the Ninth century. Note that nowhere are elves described as being specifically diminutive in size, invisible or whatever. That is likely the product of later shifts in meaning or belief, possibly linked to Christianization and merging with other supernatural beings, such as dwarves (as in the aforementioned svartalfar, which are described as being black as coal and are also apparently dwarves, at least according to Snorri), and landvaettir (nature spirits). Terry Gunnell has done a lot of work on this, check out How Elvish were the Alfar? (2007).

Anoyher good source is the work of Alaric Hall, esp. Elves in Anglo-Saxon England (2007). The book focuses on old english but also goes over Scandinavian evidence.

Might share more sources later once I get to my computer if anyone is interested.

[tuulikki]

Oh my gosh, please please please share sources! I got so excited over this that it literally raised my heart rate. Thank you for sharing all this knowledge!

[chiakiakito]

The tags warm my heart. Thank you for giving me an excuse to write up my bibliography for this chapter, which I was neglecting to do. So! Be warned, these are all academic studies so they can be a bit dry to sift through if you’re not familiar with the topics discussed. Books to check out:

R. Simek, 1993. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. (pages 73-74 are about Elves but this is generally a great source to look things up and get a broad overview).

T.A. Shippey et al. The Shadow-Walkers. Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous. (a collection of essays about re-examining Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, which was a foundational work for modern mythography. The introduction is great to understand why early philological efforts relied on biased assumptions, and the essay about elves, also by Shippey, looks at English and Scandinavian folklore as seen through a Christian light).

A. Hall. 2007. Elves in Anglo-Saxon England. (As I mentioned above, a very in-depth look at the meaning shift of the Elf-word in English. The book is an update and expansion of Hall’s PhD dissertation, which is free online if you can’t find the published version.)

Papers and articles (links are all open access, except maybe the one to JSTOR, but I can access it with a student account ay my uni):

On the alternate etymology of “elf”, ṛbhu: N.D. Kazanas. 2001. Indo-European deities and the Rgveda. Journal of IndoEuropean Studies. (x) 

On the shifts in meaning of “alfar” in Norse folklore: T. Gunnell, 2007. How Elvish were the Álfar? in A. Wawn et al., Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth. Essays in Honour of T.A. Shippey. (No link, but I mailed Dr. Gunnell and he was very happy to share the material with me. Here’s his website with all his articles)

On Volundr and elves in the Edda in general: Á. Jakobsson. 2006. The Extreme Emotional Life of Vǫlundr the Elf. Scandinavian Studies. (x)

On why it’s a bad idea to categorise medieval supernatural creatures with modern taxonomy: Á. Jakobsson. 2013. The Taxonomy of the Non-existent: Some Medieval Icelandic Concepts of the Paranormal (x)

Go forth and read about elves!

[tuulikki]

This is incredible, thank you so much!

[thinksandthings]

Oh my goodness, I love you all so so incredibly much, this is so amazing and absolutely fascinating!!!!

[thinksandthings]

elf

Elves are fun because there are so many vastly different interpretations. Everything from Santa's toymakers to Elrond and his court qualify into our concept of elven forms.

Generally speaking, we might define elf as being a "spirit, sprite, fairy or goblin; some kind of usually mischievous supernatural creature." This same definition existed for the Middle English term elf, alternately recorded as alfe or elfe. In Old English, the word was ælf, still retaining its meaning of "sprite, incubus or fairy," but specifically with a masculine connotation. The feminine version of the word was ælfen, which interestingly is the predecessor to our modern adjectival form elven.

The word branches out of the Germanic family, and we can point to some other connected words in Old High German, like alp which meant "nightmare." There is actually an Old English cognate which is ælfádl, also meaning "nightmare," but more literally, "elf-disease." Another interesting elf-induced sickness was though to be hiccups, which is reflected in the OE translation ælfsogoða.

Beyond this era of the Old English and German there is some debate about where the words originally sprouted from. The trail may be related to albus or alphoús ἀλφούς, the Latin and Ancient Greek terms for "white" respectively. The cultural theory implies that elves were considered beings of light, brightness and beauty, and thus as this concept evolved from those ideas, so did the English form out of the adjectives.

[thinksandthings]

romantic

Something romantic is "marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized," noted "by expressions of love or affection," or else is possibly "impractical in conception and plan." I still somehow find even the less "charming" definitions to be oddly "adventurous;" it reminds me of Bilbo setting off on a grand, romantic adventure with little preparation or readiness for what he was about to find out across the mountains.

The English is a cognate to the French romantique, and although there is some debate about which of the modern variants came first, the Middle English rommant definitely came from the Old French romaunt.

Interestingly, a less evolved linguistic descendent is still present in English as romaunt, which is an archaic term meaning "a romantic story told in verse," or more simply, "a romance." The Old French romanz is at the root of these words, referring to "stories, songs" and the Old French language itself, which at that time was an emerging variety of the Latin spoken in the region. This makes it even easier to tie the French to the Latin romanus, meaning "Roman" more broadly.

[thinksandthings]

mizzle

This word is actually very funny to me, because it did not remotely go where I expected.

The word this week is mizzle, which is a rather lovely way of describing a light, drizzly rainfall. This comes from the Middle English misellen, of the same meaning, "to rain gently." The question of borrowing is a little fuzzy, but it likely was adopted from either an Old Dutch or Low German variation, both meaning something more akin to "mist." At this point, though, any inquiry further back relates to words meaning "urine, or to urinate." This root exists in a lot of Germanic languages, and they are likely additionally connected to the Latin mēiō, which means, quoted from the 1890 Charlton T Lewis, An Elementary Latin Dictionary entry: "to make water."  

[thinksandthings]

titanophoneus

Part two of random dinosaur names I’m not sure why I know, but I do? Titanophoneus is a mouthful, but it very specifically means “giant murderer...”

So, in the first half of this compound we have titan, which in our modern English means “large, grand,” but with the connotation of “something or someone gigantic in power or size, greatness of achievement.” This is from the Ancient Greek Τιτάν titan, which refers to the race of mythical, pre-Olympian giants. There is no real consensus I could find on pre-Greek roots for the word, but some possible origins include Ancient Greek τίτο tito, meaning “sun, day,” τίσις tisis “retribution,” or the Ionic Greek τίτης títēs, “avenger, punisher.”

In the second half we have phoneus, from the Greek φονεύς phoneus which is literally just “murderer.” This is a derivative of the term θείνω theínō, “to strike or wound,” itself from the PIE root gʷhen, “to hit.” 

What makes this whole thing funny is that apparently when the fossils of titanophoneus are compared with other dinosaurs, they were not exactly the biggest or fiercest which have been discovered. Tyrannasaurus Rex fossils are supposedly much more intimidating, though admittedly these and other competitors for scariest dino lived at different periods. Still, I like the fact that an archaeologist felt the need to spice up their findings by describing some bones as belonging to a “giant murderer,” like they’d uncovered an ancient crime scene, but it was just a fairly average dinosaur trying to make its way in the world. 

[thinksandthings]

ferret

Ferrets are very cute. This is a scientific fact. They are a long, furry, domesticated subtype of the European polecat. They have a look on their face like they are ever so slightly irritated at having been recently woke up, and I love them very dearly. 

Anyways, the Middle English feret (also documented as fyrette), was borrowed from the Old French firet, which is a derivative of the Latin fūr, meaning “thief.” This is also a cognate to the Ancient Greek φώρ phṓr, also “thief.” 

What I find fun about the Ancient Greek, is that it also can be used to refer to a bee, specifically a “robber bee.” I absolutely love the fact that both the Latin and Greek chose to refer to tiny animals as being the perpetrators of some thievery, namely that they “carry things away,” from the Proto-Indo-European bher- meaning “carry.” 

I also particularly enjoy the fact that this Latin also gave us furtive, “done in a sneaking, secretive way,” more specifically from fūrtīvus, “stolen.”  

[thinksandthings]

copse

I found this word in a YA fantasy book I was reading recently (because... yeah), and it took me a bit by surprise; it sounded a little out of place. So, I thought I’d find out what place it occupies exactly and tell you all about it. 

Copse is actually a contraction of an older word coppice, meaning “a thicket of small trees or shrubs,” which emerged probably in the late 1500s. The English is a borrowing from the French copeiz, which has the same definition, but an additional connotation of “an overcut forest,” relating to a commercial, farming idea. This is present in some readings of the English. 

Admittedly I had some trouble tracking down the Old French version, and there were hints of it existing as possibly copeiz, coupiz in the 1770s, and either couppeiz or copeis in some other places. 

Nevertheless, the French was the bridge between the modern English and it’s Latin predecessor, colaphus, a noun meaning a “blow or cuff, perhaps a smack on the ear.” Although the “forest” meaning is lost here, this is where we can pick up the submeaning of “cutting down trees” which died out as the word evolved. This particular Latin word is also related to others in the language meaning “cutting,” or “being cut,” a nod to the Ancient Greek cognate κόλαφος kolaphos, which is “a blow or buffet.” 

[thinksandthings]

syzygy

Syzygy is a funky looking word for sure, but I quite like it. There are a lot of definitions for it depending on what sort of academic interests you have, ranging from mathematics and science to philosophy and psychology, but the thing they typically have in common is a pairing of opposites of some kind. The traditional definition comes from astronomy, where it refers to three celestial bodies aligning into a straight line. In our solar system, we might observe this during either a solar or lunar eclipse, where the three bodies in question are the earth, sun and moon. 

The word is likely an English adoption from about 1847, coming through Latin from the Greek term συζυγία suzugia, or "paired, yoked together, union." This is a form of the noun σύζυγος suzugos which is defined with "yokefellow" (an interesting word by itself) and "spouse, couple (as in married pair as a couple)." 

The credited Proto-Indo-European root is yewg or i̯eu alternately, both meaning "to tie together or yoke." One source I looked at remarked upon this being similar to a few other roots including "to keep separate" and "right or justice," both of which are interesting to think about. 

[thinksandthings]

sonrisa

This has always been one of my favorite words in Spanish; sonrisa, meaning "smile." I particularly liked it because it reminded me of the English word sunrise, purely I think due to the phonetic similarities but the analogy was still very nice: a smile like a sunrise, which lights up a face in the way the sun lends light to the horizon.

The Spanish is actually a derivation of the Latin term subrisa, a conjugation of the word subrideo. This comes from two parts, the first being sub, or "under," and the second being rideo, which is "to laugh." The verb encompasses both the nicer meanings of "a happy chuckle," and the more perjorative "ridicule or mock."

Interestingly, the Latin rideo is also the root for another Spanish word, reír, meaning "to laugh." Thus, although risa and reír are not quite the same words in Spanish, they come from the same place in Latin.

[thinksandthings]

plobaireacht

I find myself running into interesting Irish words very frequently, and one I found recently I quite liked was plobaireacht, meaning “blubbering, spluttering or babbling, particularly trying to speak, but being unable to while crying.” 

I couldn’t come up with much of an etymology, but this looks a lot like another word piobaireachd, (which is a Scottish Gaelic term that has also been adopted into English), meaning “bagpipe music.” I don’t think the two are related in the slightest, but I suppose bagpipes might also make you difficult to understand whilst trying to speak.