Useless Etymology

Offbeat word origins for curious minds by Jess Zafarris

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Feisty literally means "farty"

Feisty, which today can mean “lively, determined and courageous” or “touchy and aggressive” (especially when referring to a smallish animal or person), arose in American English around 1896. Prior to that, the word feist was an early 19th-century term for “small dog.” While this definition of feist is apt and logical given the belligerent ballsiness of most small dogs, at this point the etymology ventures into more humorous territory.

See, feist first came to refer to a small dog as a shortened version of the English phrase fysting curre (i.e., “stinking cur”), in which context fyst was a mid-15th-century word for… fart. Seriously.

In Middle English, fysten or fisten meant “break wind,” from the Proto-Germanic noun fistiz (“fart”), which probably came from the PIE pezd- (also the root of “fart” itself).

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue suggests that “feist” and “dog” overlapped due to the fact that ladies would blame their farts on their little pet dogs. It defined the word fice or fise as “a small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs.” (Related: fise is a Danish cognate meaning “to blow” or “to fart,” while the Middle English askefise was another word for a bellows, literally “ash-blower.”)

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The horrifying history of the word "TASER"

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

• Cover probably wouldn't have chosen TASER if not for the earlier acronym LASER "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation," c. 1960.

• I also don't know whether Cover had actually read the book or whether he was a fan of the later, less problemaatic books.

• The book in question is in the public domain.

• Correction to the Fortune quote: "As oil had its Rockefeller, *literature had its Stratemeyer."

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TIL the reason we say "buckaroo" is it's a phonetic English way of saying cowboy in Spanish, "vaquero."

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The unexpected horror of "gadzooks"

"Gadzooks" is first recorded in the 1690s. It's thought to be a minced/contracted form of "God's hooks" (the nails on the cross) or "God's hocks." Other similar oaths from the 17th century included godsookers, gadsbobs, gadslid, gadsbudlikins, gadsnouns, and of course egad.

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Unexpected cannibalism in etymology: Precocious children are "pre-cooked."

"Precocious," meaning "developing before the usual time," is from the Latin praecox, literally "to ripen before," which was originally applied to plants. Praecox is made up of prae- "before" + coquere, which means "to ripen" in this context but more commonly meant "to cook."

Incidentally this is also why witches prefer clever children—the recipe comes together in half the time.

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"Quiz" originally meant something like "nerd" or "odd person"

Pop quiz! What do you think the original meaning of the word “quiz” was? If you know the answer, someone from the 1700s might call you a "quiz."

The word “quiz” as in the thing you take at school most likely comes from the Latin qui es? meaning “who are you?”

In the 1800s, qui es? was the first question you would be asked in an oral Latin exam. Latin was far more of a cornerstone at every level of education at the time. Over time, qui es? was shortened to one word and then transformed into “quiz.”

But this isn’t the first recorded of the sense of the word “quiz”: Several decades before that, it’s recorded as university slang for an “odd person.”

In a 1783 edition of The London Magazine there’s a humorous article poking fun at university culture, and it says that a quiz is anyone who “thinks, speaks or acts differently from the rest of the world in general.” It suggests that the term is derived from the Latin question Vir bonus est quis? (“Who is a good man?”). So it could have originally meant “a good person who gets teased. But this might be in the sense of like calling someone a “goody two-shoes,” because the article also says it was particularly applied to studious people who are also pedantic and pretentious about it.

You may have also encountered the folk etymology tale of theater manager James Daly (or Daley) who, based on a bet with a friend, declared he could introduce and popularize a new word in a single day. He reportedly chalked the word “quiz” on the walls of the the city and won the bet as the term caught on. Needless to say, this is a highly unlikely origin and has little evidentiary basis. Despite supposedly happening in 1782, a year prior to the London Magazine article, the article suggests that it had been in use in universities for some time before the publication.

Read more.

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The word "hodgepodge" was originally the name of a stew

The word “hodgepodge” has been around since the 14th century. At the time, it was a word for “a kind of stew,” especially “one made with goose, spices, wine, and other miscellaneous ingredients.”

At the time it was spelled in all sorts of different ways: hotchpotch, hoggepot, hochepot and more.

The French influence gives the original version of the word hodgepodge the literal meaning “to shake in a pot.”

This is a recipe for a goose-based hodgepodge stew from the 1390s:

Source

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Extremely interested to see if this turns into crabs

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The Etymology of "Jeopardy"

Jeopardy ("danger, risk") is from the Old French jeu parti, "a divided game."

Jeopardy! creator Merv Griffin, whose wife Julann Griffin developed the concept, titled it "What's the Question?" but changed it after network exec Ed Vane said, "It doesn't have enough jeopardies."

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A Word for Your Lexical Treasure Box: Incarnadine

The word “incarnadine” refers to a red or pinkish-red color.

It's originally from the Latin carneus “of flesh” (root caro “flesh”) and is related to words like “carnivore.”

Lady Macbeth uses it to mean “blood red” in the phrase “the multitudinous seas incarnadine.”

It’s also related to the name of the carnation flower, which is named for its pink and red shades, the colors of flesh.

In the 16th century, “incarnadine” is also recorded as a word for the color light pink, or Caucasian (external) flesh tone.

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The Grossness of Grocers

A "grocer" is literally someone who buys and sells "in gross," or in large quantities, and originally referred to wholesale dealers. Indeed, it was first spelled "grosser" in Anglo-French.

In Middle English, one who sold food items was called a "spicer," a sense that comes from the Latin species, a word for both spices specifically and goods or wares in general. (It is indeed related to the word "species" in the scientific sense of a living thing.)

"Grocer(y)" was extended to food items in the 16th c. because food items were commonly dealt in gross—or perhaps based on the idea that "gross" could also mean "simple" or "coarse" in the sense of buying simple meal components.

This also gave us the "ew" sense of "gross."

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The word "escalate" didn't exist before the invention of the escalator

That's right. One of my favorite etymological mindfucks is that:

A) the word "escalate" didn't exist before the invention of the escalator

B) the word "escalade," which is not originally a brand name, did exist as early as the 1500s as a word for scaling fortifications with ladders

The earliest working escalator was patented in 1892 by Jesse W. Reno and introduced as a novelty ride at Coney Island a few years later. He called it the “Endless Conveyor Elevator.” 

In the meantime, George H. Wheeler also patented a moving stairway. 

Charles D. Seeberger, who bought Wheeler’s patent, was the one to coin the term “escalator” when he trademarked it in 1898—which, by the way, means that the word “escalator” is a genericized trademark, also known proprietary eponym, much like “bubble wrap,” “xerox,” “jacuzzi,” and “ping pong.”

Meanwhile, "escalade" is a 16th-century French adoption, from Italian scalata "climb with a ladder," from Italian scala "ladder." (Related to "scale," a verb meaning "climb," which in Middle English was a noun meaning "siege ladder.")

Read more.