The Greek Word History of Ultracrepidarian

Hello,

Regular readers of the Wordfoolery blog (and books) will know I love a good Greek etymology and that Greek gods and goddesses have a habit of sneaking into the back stories of various words. This week’s word, ultracrepidarian, a handily cryptic insult, which has Greek links but this time it’s not a deity who lies behind the story.

Do you know somebody who likes to waffle on about a subject that they know nothing about? Most of us do. Well the next time they’re bothering you, try muttering ultracrepidarian. Don’t explain, just feel smug and remember this story. If they bustle off to look it up they may not even find it, unless they have a large dictionary as it’s not commonly used these days, but if they’re a true ultracrepidarian they’re more likely to assume you’re admiring them, or that they already know the meaning.

Ultracrepidarian entered English in 1819, more on that in a moment. Let’s explore its Greek roots first, with thanks to “Natural History” by Pliny the Elder who tells us about the first use. There was once a skilled artist called Apelles. He displayed his finished painting in public and lingered nearby to overhear the reactions. Like most creatives he was hoping for encouragement for his skill, but like most eavesdroppers he heard nothing good about himself.

A shoe-maker viewed the painting and criticised it on technical grounds, pointing out that the shoe (crepida) had the wrong number of straps. This was a fair comment and Apelles had the humility to correct the mistake overnight and then re-display the artwork.

The next day, however, the cobbler walked past again, and emboldened by having taught the mystery artist a lesson, decided to expand on his critique. He observed that the painting of the leg wasn’t good enough either. At this point Apelles stepped out of the crowd and said “Ne sutor ultra crepidam” which translates as “Let the shoemaker not go beyond the sandal”. This advice to stick to his own area of expertise is one which is still needed at times, even today.

The expression became proverbial and via Latin was adopted into English as a noun, ultracrepidarian, in 1819 by the English essayist William Hazlitt. I studied some of his essays in school and I wish my teacher had told me this story back then. Hazlitt used it in an open letter to William Gifford, the editor of “The Quarterly Review” to criticise what he perceived to be over-reach.

The next time you are forced to listen to somebody talking confidently about a topic they really don’t know, hit them with ultracrepidarian. It might not stop them, but it should confuse them.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. There’s a new issue out this Friday (18th of September 2026). Alternatively – try my books – all the ways to get them are listed here.

The Noisy Word History of Cliché

Hello,

Last month I began writing “Words Stories Gave Us”, my book about the etymology of words from the worlds of stories, printing, newspapers, theatre, folktales, and books. I love this stage of a book when it’s all about searching out the stories, whittling out the boring ones, forming chapters. It will be a couple of years (aiming for 2028) before this one is on the shelves, but in the meantime I’ll share a word or two here as I work on them. Here’s the short story of the word cliché.

Typesetter’s Case

{Extract from “Words Stories Gave Us” by Grace Tierney, copyright 2026}

Cliché (this can also be spelled cliche)

The last thing any writer wants to hear is that their work contains clichés. We want to (as the joke goes) avoid them like the plague. The problem is that some expressions or ideas are popular because they are meaningful, widely understood, and hence tempting to use, but they lack originality and impact.

It’s the idea of common use that gives us the word itself. That, and the world of printing presses. Although it didn’t become a popular English word until the 1920s, it joined English in the 1800s from cliché in French. French printers used this term for a block of print which was used so often that you might as well keep it prepared and ready to go.

It’s believed that the word comes directly from the sound that print-block made as it clicked into place, because the French verb clicher means to click.

{End of Extract}

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. Alternatively, check out my books about word histories.

The Convoluted Word History of the Avocado

Hello,

Which word can link alligators, lawyers, 1970s bathroom suites, and male anatomy? Answer – the avocado.

The avocado is a popular ingredient in my salads. It’s an edible fruit from trees found in the American tropics and the word itself joined English in the late 1700s but the history of the word took a few strange turns along the way.

Let’s begin in Mexico with the Nahuatl language. It was the language most commonly used in the Aztec Empire and it has provided English with a few words (via Spanish) – chilli, tomato, and cocoa for example.

In Nahuatl, the avocado fruit was called a āhuacatl (testicle) thanks to a similarity of shape. Although you might want to cross it with a kiwi to be more accurate. When the Spanish arrived they loved the fruit but couldn’t pronounce the local name. To them it became aguacate and then avocado. The word avocado was already in Spanish however, it meant lawyer (thanks to advocate in Latin).

When the fruit, and the word, arrived in England it had changed again, to an avigato pear. The addition of pear makes sense again due to the shape and also to indicate that it was a fruit with a stone inside.

Its story didn’t end there. Somehow the word was mangled to be an alligator pear (perhaps because of the gnarled skin?) and that term is still used in California apparently (can any American readers confirm this for me?). Thankfully with time avocado was the term English settled with and the pear part is optional. by the 1940s avocado’s distinctive green flesh was being used as a colour name and from there it was a short hop to somebody thinking it would be fabulous in bathroom interior design.

As for the bathroom suites, if you know somebody who was around in the 1970s, ask them about avocado bathroom fittings. They truly were a sight to behold, perhaps from a distance, with sunglasses, or a blindfold.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. Alternatively, check out my books about word histories.

Escalator – A Tale of a Brand Name Becoming Generic

Hello,

This week’s word is escalator and it’s with thanks to “The Story of English in 100 Words” by David Crystal. You’re probably already aware of the issues around product names edging their way into the dictionary and how that can lead to court-cases as companies strive to retain their uniqueness.

The example I always think of here in Ireland is hoover. We use it as a verb, but of course it was originally a product name for the Hoover company. Technically we’re vacuuming the carpet, but because Hoover dominated the market here for so long nearly everybody says hoovering.

Other examples Crystal lists are aspirin, butterscotch, heroin, thermos, yo-yo, zipper, lego, kleenex, portakabin, and rollerblade. For some of those products I’m struggling to think of a non-brand name for them. Seriously – what else would you call a yo-yo? Butterscotch dates to 1817 apparently. As for heroin it was created by C. R. Alder Wright in 1874 from morphine and marketed by Bayer in 1898 under that name because it made users feel heroic. We know how that turned out.

I had no idea that escalator was a brand name originally. Various moving staircases were designed in the 1800s but the Otis Elevator Company purchased the rights to the name escalator. It was formed by inserted scala (Latin for ladder) into the word elevator and its first use was around 1900. As for elevator, that’s an older word, joining English in the 1600s for particular muscles that raise parts of the body thanks to elevare – the Latin verb for raising up and the source of elevate too. By the late 1700s an elevator was a mechanical lift for grain and from there it was a short hop to lifts in buildings for human use.

Escalator took off and acquired figurative usage swiftly. Escalator clauses entered contracts about planned price increases. Ambitious politicians were said to be on a political escalator. By the 1920s you could escalate something and escalation followed soon after. Otis tried to retain their original meaning but a court case in the 1950s ruled escalator had become generic and they lost control of the word.

I wondered about the source of Otis too. It’s from the founder of the company back in 1853, the American inventor Elisha Otis, who invented the elevator safety brake – the important gadget that makes lifts safe.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

The Obscure Word History of Eclipse

Hello,

In the wake of last week’s partial solar eclipse here in Ireland I’m taking a look at the history of the word itself. Thankfully for this particular “look” I don’t need to source a pair of eclipse glasses, as a I reckon they’re sold out everywhere. We were unable to find a pair ourselves and had to resort to using a colander (surprisingly effective). The dappled shade under our apple tree created a wonderful pattern too, pictured below.

Partial solar eclipse, August 2026, seen through dappled shade

First, what is an eclipse? It’s the obscuring of the light of the sun, moon, or other heavenly body by the intervention of another. The one we experienced last week was when the moon passed in front of the sun. Although the moon is far smaller (400 times I believe) than the sun, it can obscure the sun from our earth-bound perspective because it is so much closer to our position in the universe. The eclipse was partial here, because of Ireland’s location on the planet. Whereas my friend Noelle, went to Spain and was able to see the totality of the eclipse there.

Now, what about the word eclipse? Where does it come from?

Eclipse was borrowed directly into English around the year 1300 from Old French. Old French had taken it from eclipsis in Latin, and before that it was ekleipsis in Greek. The meaning in Greek was slightly different, however. It was an eclipse but also an abandonment, a literal forsaking. It came from ekleipen which meant eclipse but also meant to fail to appear or to forsake a place. It was formed from ek (out) and leipein (to leave). That same verb leipein is behind the ellipsis (…) in punctuation because the omitted words it indicates leave the sentence, but that’s a word for another day.

Those roots tell me that when an eclipse happened in Greece, the people felt that the light of the sun, so bright there most of the time, had gone away and left them, abandoned them.

It’s easier in more modern times to understand that the sunlight will come back, but imagine an age when this was less well understood, the birds go quiet, the cold builds, and total darkness covers your world. Yes, you would feel abandoned.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

The Crafty Word History of Bodger

Hello,

Regular readers of Wordfoolery will know that I never met a craft I didn’t like (except for felting…definitely not for me) so when I came across the word bodger recently I couldn’t resist trying to find its history.

The reference was in Amy Licence’s “Woodsmoke and Sage” an excellent reference book about how Tudors experienced the world through the five senses, which I was reading to gather ideas for a Tudor-era fiction I’m revising. She was discussing the vibrant second-hand clothes trade in Tudor London at Birchin Lane, St Bartholomew’s, and Houndsditch. She mentioned the snobbery about such purchases adding that “tailors who specialised in reworking second-hand clothing were known as bodgers and the women who made a living selling such items on were derided.”

Some of my fabric stash – much of it recycled

Nowadays upcycling and recycling clothes has a slightly better reputation (although my in-laws still look a little shocked when faced with the thrifted, re-created items chosen by my daughter and myself). It’s wonderful to realise this has been a practice since the 1600s, but more importantly, what a great word!

The Oxdord English Dictionary believed bodge was a variant of the verb to botch. Botch comes from the late 1300s verb bocchen (to repair) and in the 1500s to repair badly. By the 1600s you could call something a botch, meaning it was ill-made.

They add that to bodge was to repair clumsily and that a bodger in the 1550s was one who mended old garments.

Less formal sources directed me to a different craft – green wood furniture making. This is where the craftsman uses fresh unseasoned word to create pieces, often chairs, and the results are stunning in my opinion. Some chair makers have taken the term bodger to mean chair maker, possibly because that craft involves a certain amount of working with quirks of the wood and adapting designs on the fly, which takes great skill, I might add. No implication of bad work from me on this one.

Apparently bodger is also a surname in the UK where it is common to have family surnames given for the work their ancestor did – Butcher, Baker, Smith, and Fletcher are all surnames, for example. Well apparently there were 300 people called Bodger in 1999. I can’t help wondering if any of them enjoy mending and adapting clothes?

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. There’s a new issue out this Friday (14th of August 2026). Alternatively – try my books – all the ways to get them are listed here.

The Ever Shortening History of the Word Mob

Hello,

This week’s word is mob and comes with thanks to “The Story of English in 100 Words” by David Crystal which brought it to my attention. This one is thanks to the Romans which might not be what you’d expect for a word that ends with organised crime groups in the 1900s.

Mob entered the English language in the late 1600s, much earlier than you might expect, and it was used for a gathering of riotous people, the rabble basically. It was a shortening of the earlier words mobile or mobility which again were used for the rabble. In the case of mobility it was probably a play on the term nobility for a group of the upper class. Both mobile and mobility have very different meanings in modern English so what was going on?

This is where the Romans come in. Latin had an expression mobile vulgus which was used to describe the common folk as being fickle or movable in their opinions. It was used in English too from about 1600s and was the source of mobile, and ultimately mob. The idea of a crowd of rioters being easily moved in their emotions and opinions is pretty accurate so it does make sense. Latin was widely understood in certain sectors of British society in the 1600s, exactly the sort of folk (the nobility) who would look down upon the common people.

The shortening of mobile vulgus to mobile and then to mob is what’s know as clipping. In the late 1600s and 1700s it was hugely popular to shorten words in this way. You might say pos instead of positive or incog instead of incognito, for example. It seems like a thoroughly modern thing to do with a word, but no, the English speakers of the 1600s beat us to it.

After the 1600s the word mob continued to be used but it evolved, as so often happens. By 1806 the term mob-rule was being used. If you want to be fancy you can use ocholcracy instead. By the 1830s a mob might be a gang of criminals working together – typically pick-pockets or thieves. In Australia and New Zealand it should be noted that mob is just a term for a crowd, it doesn’t have negative connotations there. I guess we have flash-mobs now too, and they’re usually peaceful, if noisy.

Where do we get the word mob for a mafia gang? That one has a story attached. It goes back to the prohibition of alcohol in America and it wasn’t even particularly attached to Italian-American families. It was a loose alliance of bootleggers (Italian, Irish, and Jewish) who produced, supplied, and distributed illegal booze during prohibition. Apparently they were also called The Combination, but never the Mafia. It was the 1930s before The Mob achieved its association with Italian-American crime families in particular.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

The Foolish Word History of Fopdoodle

Hello,

As you might expect, given the name of this blog, I have a particular fondness for foolish words and this week’s word is doubly foolish so it has earned its place here. Fopdoodle is one I picked up thanks to David Crystal’s excellent book “The Story of English in 100 Words” where he uses it to illustrate how words leave dictionaries as their usage declines.

Perfect beer for a wordfool

First, what is a fopdoodle? It’s a fool, twice over in fact. Dr. Johnson defines them in his famous dictionary as “a fool, an insignificant wretch”. The word arrived in English in the 1600s and was formed by compounding two words fop (a fool) and doodle (a simpleton). You might call a naive dweller in the countryside a fopdoodle but it could be used for a city dweller too as fop also meant a vain dandy.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites the work of the poet Samuel Butler in 1664 as the first use in print of the word fopdoodle. The word fopdoodle is largely obsolete these days, but feel free to use it, that’s how words survive in this world.

Fop caught my eye along the way. It arrived in English in the mid 1400s, long before fopdoodle. Its exact origins are unknown but it may come from fop as a verb (to make a fool of) or from foppen in German (to jeer at, to make a fool of). By the late 1600s a fop had the additional meaning I already mentioned – a dandy, a man too concerned with his appearance. The dandies, and fops, had their major moment in the sun during the 1700s and I love that there was even a term for younger members of their ranks – a fopling.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

The Egyptian Roots of Dismal

Hello,

Hopefully you’re having a wonderful summer (or winter for readers south of the equator) but if not, have you considered that you’re under a dismal influence?

“Grumpy Tiki” – a wood carving by my DH whose cantankerous face adorns our garden

The word dismal entered English around 1400 to describe something as inauspicious or unlucky and the reason why brings us back to Egyptian astrologers, so stay with me here. Dismal came from the same word in Anglo-French and before that from Medieval Latin dies mali (evil days) which were also called dies AEgyptiaci. Dies meanings day and mali means bad (from a Proto Indo European root word mel meaning false or bad).

But why were the days bad and what did the Egyptians have to do with it?

Apparently Egyptian astrologers had calculated that certain days were unlucky. These were days when you shouldn’t do anything important – don’t start a journey, don’t have a medical procedure etc. The days were marked on medieval calendars with a letter D so you could avoid such mistakes. Naturally that caused me to look up the dates!

January 1, 25

February 4, 26

March 1, 28

April 10, 20

May 3, 25

June 10, 16

July 13, 22

August 1, 30

September 3, 21

October 3, 22

November 5, 28

December 7, 22

With time dies mal ended up as dismal and the meaning evolved too. It might describe the Devil, a bad event (presumably held in error on one of the evil days), or having the blues. By the late 1500s you could use dismal to describe something or somebody as gloomy or dreary. In North Carolina in the 1700s the term was used for a an area of swampy land.

I’ve never lived my life by the position of the stars and there are far too many dismal days on that list for my liking, but if you want to listen to ancient astrologers, then feel free.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

The Greek History of Enigma

Hello,

I’d love to believe I project an enigmatic persona, although that’s pretty unlikely. But where do we get enigma and enigmatic from? For this one we need to visit the Greeks again. They really did exert a tremendous influence on the English language down through the centuries.

Engima entered English in the early 1500s to describe a statement with a hidden meaning. It came to the language from aenigma in Latin where it meant a riddle. Before Latin it had been in Greek as ainigma. The plural was ainigmata, if you’re curious, and these were riddles or “dark sayings”. I quite like the idea of a dark saying. It sounds pretty sinister, doesn’t it? They also had ainissesthai – to speak in riddles and the origin of all these words was ainos – a tale, story, saying, or proverb.

This means that the idea of an enigma begins in stories, but then goes cryptic and dark somewhere along the way until it lands in English. Saying and proverbs can hide extra meanings below the surface, and that’s true of stories and tales too. We look for themes, the words not spoken, the inner story of characters, subplots. Perhaps that’s just a human way of dealing with stories, and life, so enigmas are a natural expression of those hidden meanings.

So, an enigma is a Greek story, a Latin riddle, and something of a dark saying. By 1600, in English an enigma is something inexplicable, and that’s a meaning we’ve retained. By the mid 1600s we also had enigmatic from the same roots. We now use that mostly as a synonym of mysterious.

As a former computer geek, enigma has another meaning for me – a WWII German encryption device, broken at Bletchley Park by Alan Turning and others. The Germans called it Enigma or Schlüsselmaschine (literally key machine).

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. There’s a new issue out this Friday (17th of July 2026)