A Hairy History of Disheveled

Hello,

After the elegant history of vogue last week I’m taking a different angle with the hairy history of disheveled (or dishevelled if you prefer) this week.

Disheveled, having a messy personal appearance, appeared in English in the early 1400s but back then it was all about the hair. Manners may maketh the man according to Eton and other colleges, but the hairdressers in those days would disagree.

A disheveled Wordfoolery in 2018

Let’s hold up the mirror to disheveled’s roots first. Its original meaning in English was to be without dressed hair. There was also another adjective at the same time – dischevele – which meant bare-headed. Both came from Old French deschevele (bare headed or shaven headed). That came from the verb descheveler (to disarrange the hair). That formed from des (apart) and chevel (hair). Chevel originated in Latin capillus (hair), the same root that gives us capillary, but that’s a word for another day.

The meaning of disheveled was entirely about hair for quite some time. It described hair that was hanging loose, or having a neglected appearance. This was an era when letting your hair down only happened in the privacy of your own home, hence its association with relaxation. Women, after girlhood, wore their hair up and usually under a cap of some variety. Even the men paid attention to the dressing of their hair. Sailors were so keen to keep their hair tied back that they’d apply tar to their plaits, giving them the nickname of “tars”.

Disheveled gained the modern meaning of a messy or untidy appearance from around 1600 and now most of us wouldn’t even think of it being exclusive to hair. Plus some more recent hairstyles are deliberately disheveled. I doubt they would have liked the idea of “bed-head” back in the 1400s.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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The Icy Roots of the Word Debacle

Hello,

This week’s word, debacle, is with thanks to Irene from the Academy Bookshop in Drogheda, Ireland who likes to send me unusual words now and then. It’s a word I use regularly and I’m surprised I hadn’t already covered it here. As it turns out it’s the perfect word for the rather icy conditions we’re experiencing this week in Ireland.

Ice on my crab apple tree

Debacle is another word for a disaster. I might describe a cake which failed to rise as a debacle, or a grocery shopping trip where I omitted key ingredients for dinner, or a party where no guests arrived. I use it for disaster when the word disaster is a little too strong.

The word debacle joined the English dictionary in 1848 as a borrowing from French débâcle (collapse, disaster). Débâcler in French is a verb meaning to free which arose from an earlier verb desbacler (to unbar). That earlier verb was formed from des (off) and bacler (to bar) and came to French from Latin bacculare and baculum (stick). The same Latin roots also give us the origin of bacillus, a stick shaped bacteria.

What does un-sticking have to do with French disasters? This idea is to do with frozen rivers. The verb was used about the breaking up of ice on the river and the rise of water levels and violent floods of meltwater in spring thaws. The river un-sticks and then comes disaster as water and debris rushes down on towns and villages along its banks.

This idea of un-sticking being a disaster came with the word debacle as it joined English and was used there from the early 1800s in geological texts explaining the way landscapes were shaped in the aftermath of ice ages.

All this means that not having enough ice for cocktails at your party is a true debacle.

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. I’m starting work on the January edition this week.

Word History of Battery – from Bowls to Cannon and Ben Franklin

Hello,

The next time you change the battery in your kitchen clock, or a child’s toy, spare a thought for its long history.

In Middle English we had the noun bateri but it was for forged metal-ware. I’m thinking of metal mixing bowls in the kitchen but it could have covered a multitude.

Old French had the word baterie (a beating or thrashing) by the 1100s thanks to the verb batre (to beat) and ultimately from Latin battuere (to batter). That’s where English acquired battery in the 1530s as the idea of battering somebody. It arrived in a legal sense and we still have charge of battery on the statute books today.

The meaning evolved over time from one person hitting another, to one army hitting another. First, battery was to rain heavy blows on city walls or a fort, and then it became the name of the artillery doing the bombardment. A battery was an artillery unit by the 1550s in English. At this point the battery rested for a while. Recharging perhaps?

That’s was until Ben Franklin used the term to name an electrical cell in 1748. This was possibly because of the idea of discharging electricity in the same way a cannon discharged a ball at the enemy. Either way, it stuck and nowadays we’re more likely to be speaking about small energy cells than cannon when we refer to a battery.

One odd use, which didn’t stick, was in baseball where a battery was the term in the late 1800s for a pitcher, or the pitcher and the catcher unit.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling with plenty of battery energy,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

The Fugger Family and the History of Pettifogging

Hello,

Despite writing this blog since 2009 I still find words I want to write about and am stunned to discover I haven’t already covered them. Such a one is pettifogging. Collins Dictionary tells me “You can describe an action or situation as pettifogging when you think that unnecessary attention is being paid to unimportant, boring details.”

Pettifogging is not a word I use everyday but sometimes it’s just perfect.

Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with fog.

Pettifogging pettifoggers have been with use since the dawn of time, I suspect, but the word for them arrived in the 1560s when it described an inferior lawyer (attorney). In the 1580s there was also a pettifactor who was a legal agent who undertook small cases. As both are so close in meaning and spelling their origins may be entangled.

The word is formed from two words (and in the past was sometimes hyphenated) – petty and fogger.

Petty had been in English since the late 1300s (original spelling peti) to mean small or minor. It had been borrowed from the Old French adjective petit (small) which is still used in Modern French. Petty wasn’t originally a negative adjective as we can see in petty cash (small sums of money) since the 1800s and petty officer (a minor military officer since the 1500s). However the use of petty evolved in the 1500s. By the 1520s petty could mean of small importance and by the 1580s it described somebody as being small-minded. Both of these extra meanings feed into pettifogging.

A fogger is a term used nowadays in specific trades – disinfection and pest control – but a fogger in the 1500s was a very different thing. A fogger was a cheat. It may have arrived in English from the now obsolete Dutch word focker (from the Flemish verb to cheat) or the Middle English word fugger.

Both the Dutch and the Middle English terms are believed to come from a famous merchant and banking family of the 1400 and 1500s in Augsburg, Germany. Books have been written about their family history and there’s a dedicated website if you want to dive deeper. For the purposes of language history it’s enough to know that in German, Flemish, and Dutch their name became a term for a money-lending monopolist.

To be a fogger then was to be a financial trader. To be a pettifogger was to be the small version of that – somebody who would try sharp moves on a smaller scale to turn a profit. The association with lawyers, well I wouldn’t want to cast shade on a noble profession. Presumably the more recent association with attention to tiny details was because lawyers do like to attend to details in their contracts and often turn a good profit along the way.

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

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

Rapscallions and Rascals – a Word History

Hello,

Wouldn’t Rapscallion be a great name for a rap artist? Or perhaps a variety of spring onion or scallion? Instead it’s one of my favourite words for a rogue and has some roots in the French fondness for revolution and protest.

Pirate Captain Grace – rapscallion of the High Seas!

Rapscallion joined English in the late 1600s to describe a “rascally, disorderly, or despicable person”. Earlier in the 1600s you would have found rascallion which was an elaboration of rascal, and there was even a rascabilian before that.

Related words are the rare 1800s collective word for them – a rapscallionary which I adore, and even rapscallionism for the art of being a rapscallion.

So if rapscallion is an elaboration of rascal, where do we get rascal from? It dates to the mid 1300s for rabble, foot-soldiers, and dishonest or tricky people and it comes from Old French rascaille (rabble or mob). The French know about mobs, as seen during the revolution and the storming of the Bastille. Before French the path is more obscure but it’s suggested that it is related to rasicare (to scrape) a Latin verb which is also related to the word rash in English, the idea possibly being that the mob of rascals were the lowest scrapings of society.

There’s also a female version of the rapscallion or rascal. This was the rampallion (sadly now a defunct word). It dates to the late 1500s and comes from the Middle English word ramp (an ill-behaved woman). A ramp or rampe was a frolicsome girl, a virago, or a shrew and perhaps comes from the early verb sense of ramp (to rear up on hind legs to attack) which also gives us the like of rampant. By 1755 Dr. Johnson even mentioned a romp in his dictionary as being a “rude, awkward, boisterous, untaught girl”.

With the benefit of hindsight I suspect those judging women and girls to be romps, ramps, or rampallions were all men who didn’t like the females getting above their station so perhaps it’s just as well that these words have fallen from use.

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

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Due to an ongoing family emergency since January of this year (involving an elderly parent, hospitals, nursing homes, and a great many appointments and forms) I’m cutting back my work hours further from this week. For the first time in 14 years I’m halting my NaNoWriMo challenge early, amongst other writing projects. There aren’t enough hours in the day. However I will be continuing my blog, my newspaper column, and my serialised story on Channillo.com.

Gargantuan and the Pilgrim Salad

Hello,

This week’s word, gargantuan, is with thanks to the excellent copy of “Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable” which I found second-hand in Charlie Byrne’s bookshop in Galway city. It’s a wonderful maze of a shop and I struggle to leave without buying many books. You have been warned.

I’m reading slowly through the book and am currently on page 497 of 1213 because I’m making notes as I go – wordy inspiration for future books and of course for the Wordfoolery blog.

The word gargantuan is an eponym as Gargantua was a character created in 1534 by the French author, physician, and priest François Rabelais (1494-1553) for his four novel masterpiece “Gargantua and Pantagruel”. The books, written for an educated court audience, were satires which drew on legends, romances, and classical works. His life was varied in the extreme and his work was accused of heresy and obscenity. You can read more about him here.

The gargantuan head of the Cailleach Beara at Slieve Gullion park

It’s believed that Gargantua’s name came from the Spanish and Portuguese word garganta (gullet or throat). It’s worth noting that Old French had the word gargole (throat) whose roots lie in Latin’s gula (throat) and lead us to the verb gargle.

Gargantuan is nowadays used to describe something as large or nearly impossible (a gargantuan task, for example). Gargantua was a giant, but he was best known as a voracious giant so perhaps gargantuan should refer to a giant appetite rather than a large task. Either way the use of gargantuan as a word for enormous dates to the late 1500s in English.

Brewer adds some extra information to this giant tale. Gargantua was borrowed by Rabelais from either Celtic or Medieval legends where he was famous for his large appetite. In Rabelais’ story Gargantua once swallowed five pilgrims and their staves, in a salad. Somehow I hadn’t imagined pilgrim salad being standard giant fare, but I’m not an expert on the eating habits of giants. The giant later became proverbial as a big guzzler – he was referenced for this in “As You Like It” by William Shakespeare c. 1598, for example.

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

Grace

p.s. some subscribers to the blog have reported not getting the blog emails – please let me know in the comments if this is happening to you. I’m following up.

The History of Jargon

Hello,

Today I’m taking a look at jargon, inspired by my reading this week – “This is Going to Hurt” by Adam Kay. It’s the very witty, and thought-provoking diary of a junior doctor during the first six years of his work on the maternity wards of Britain’s NHS (publicly funded medical care). You may have read it yourself, or seen the excellent BBC adaptation starring Ben Whislaw (who will always be Paddington Bear to me but is a super actor in human form too).

Medical staff, by necessity, use precise terms (often from Latin) to ensure clarity in treatment of their patients, but we all know they have secret terms for tricky patients and incidents too. His revelations on that topic got me thinking about jargon in general. I used plenty of it in my former career in computing. Most jobs come with a scattering of jargon. Sometimes this is to exclude the customers and hide your irritation (yes users is spelled with an L if you’re on a tech support desk), other times it’s the quickest way to convey important information, and often it is simply the work terms which only insiders need to know.

If you’re frustrated with obscure jargon associated with somebody’s work, consider for a moment – do you have specialist terms in your own occupation? Susie Dent even got an entire book out of the topic – “Modern Tribes” which I read earlier this year.

Where does the word jargon itself spring from?

Jargon is one the French gave us. It entered English in the mid 1300s from Old French jargoun. At that time in French jargoun described the chattering, particularly of birds – much as we might use chirping today. It may have sneaked into English as a term for idle talk or thieves’ slang slightly earlier but the first use usually quoted is in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” where he links jargon to the birds.

Some sources believe jargon in French was derived from the Latin verb gaggire (to chatter) which described speech the listener didn’t understand, but not all the dictionaries agree on that one. Either way, jargon is a surprisingly old word and has changed its use with time, as words often do.

During the British colonial period, even as early as the 1640s, jargon was a synonym of pidgin – used to bridge the gap between two people without a shared language using a few key phrases and words. This gave it an association with being an incomplete, or confusing subset of English and led to the idea of it being gibberish. From the late 1600s but definitely by the 1980s, jargon’s definition became more restricted when it was firmly associated with technical or specialised subsets of language such as the medical terminology I was reading this week, although I suspect even in Chaucer’s time certain jobs had their own jargon.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. This blog is an affiliate associate to Amazon US. I’m paid a small fee for any purchase you make through the Amazon links provided which helps support the running costs of the blog. Thank you.

Chaperon – How a Hat Word Saves Modesty

Hello,

This week’s word is chaperon and, as I sometimes discover, one I’ve been misspelling for a considerable number of years. Spelling it as chaperone is incorrect. Don’t argue with me, I have it from the Oxford English Dictionary “English writers often erroneously spell it chaperone, app. under the supposition that it requires a fem. termination”. No wriggling out of that one!

What exactly is a chaperon? A chaperon is a woman who accompanies a younger, unmarried lady in public. This could be her mother, aunt, even her maid servant, and the definition dates back to the 1700s. Clearly this rule didn’t apply to lower-class or working women who were too busy earning a crust, but a chaperon was vital for preserving the reputation and modesty of an upper-class lady, as without it she wouldn’t be able to marry well.

This requirement is no longer an issue in contemporary western society, thank goodness. Evolving social attitudes to male/female mixing, relationships, and morals have moved on from this restriction.

The word itself has older roots and is one the French gave us. English borrowed the word from French where a chaperon was a protector, especially a female protector of a young woman. In French it had an earlier meaning (around 1400) of a hood or head covering. It had been used in that way since at least Old French in the 1100s when it was a diminutive form of chape (which is related to capes and caps). It was also used in Middle English as a hooded cloak so it looks like both languages had that evolution of the idea of a head/body covering protecting you, to a person who protects you.

Head coverings were an important part of showing a woman’s modesty in English and French society at that time. You really wouldn’t appear in public without a head-wrap, turban, bonnet, kerchief etc. I’m not an expert on such things but it’s easy to see parallels with Catholic mantillas (now rarely worn except at the Vatican) and the hijab headscarves sometimes worn by Muslim women.

A jester’s chaperon

The chaperon head covering, like the word’s meaning, changed significantly over time. The original one in the early 1200s was a simple hood but over time extra layers and folds of fabric were added until a turban style head wrapping was achieved in the 1400s. Think of the sort of elaborate headgear a courtier might wear in Tudor times. They were worn as a sign of wealth and importance and were often made from large amounts of rich embroidered fabrics. Luckily the chaperon went out of style. I love hats but a chaperon would be a step too far for me.

Sometimes chaperons are used in ceremonial regalia at royal events or re-enactments. I’m sure I spotted some in Siena when hundreds of locals were preparing for their famous palio horse race by parading in medieval costume. 

Happy New Year and until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

How an Old Shoe gives us the word Sabotage

Hello,

This week’s word is sabotage, with thanks to the final episode of BBC’s submarine drama “Vigil”. The episode featured several characters discovering sabotage on the boat and it reminded me how much l like the sound of this word.

Where do we get sabotage from? Well, it’s the story of an old French shoe.

Old boots on a mountain summit (not sabots!)

Sabotage entered English in 1907 as a borrowed word from French. The French word derived from the verb saboter (to sabotage or bungle) whose origins lie in footwear. The sabot was a wooden shoe (from around 1200s) worn often by lower class workers as they toiled through muddy streets. They were clunky things but their thick soles got you above the level of the dirt and they were cheap to make, albeit wobbly. The wealthier might wear them too, but they would change into fancier leather or silk shoes when they reached their destination.

The sabots were pretty noisy objects, everybody would hear you coming and saboter translated literally as to walk noisily in sabots. Sabot arose from the Old French word bot (boot) and savate (old shoe). Savate may even come from the Persian word ciabat which gives us related words in Provençal, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Basque, and Italian (ciabatta, yes that loaf is named for a shoe, a story for another day).

You might assume that the source of sabotage’s modern meaning is that the disgruntled would destroy property by throwing shoes at it (we know it’s way to express disrespect in Iraq, for example). I suspect a shoe in a factory machine would bung up the works pretty well. Sadly there’s no evidence on the whole shoe-chucking notion. Sabotage was used in French for all types of clumsiness – from wobbling along on wooden shoes to playing music badly. It’s reported in 1907 as being a workman’s way of protesting – instead of striking they would work badly, annoy customers, and cause a loss to their employer.

Grammar Phobia debunked the sabot throwing theory beautifully in this piece and adds the information that rural workers wearing sabots were sometimes mocked for being as clumsy and slow as their footwear. This led to sabotage being a type of “go slow” work protest in the late 1800s in France.

This was not the method in last night’s drama – no shoes were thrown, the saboteur preferred murder, causing a leak on a submarine, and releasing nerve gas in an enclosed space. I think I prefer the wobbly wooden shoe method of protest.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. As I’ve mentioned before, my next Wordfoolery book will explore the origins of words associated with the Christmas season (and other mid-winter festivals too, of course). I’m at the “gathering candidate words” phase now and I’d love to get some suggestions from Wordfoolery readers. If you have a favourite Christmas word or one whose history intrigues you, drop it in a the comments below. As always, any “word donors” get their names in the acknowledgements section of the book. I have been asked if this book will be out in time for Christmas 2021. Sadly, not even Wordfoolery is that productive but I hope to launch in 2022.

Foible’s Roots Lie in Fencing

Hello,

With the Olympics all over our TV screens at the moment I reckon it’s time to explore a word sports gave to us – foible.

A foible, in case you don’t know, is defined as a minor weakness of eccentricity in somebody’s character. You might say that you tolerate somebody’s foibles because you love them, for example. I have several foibles, as do most of us I suspect – a weakness for etymological mutterings and a fondness for anything remotely related to swashbuckling, for example. I blame Sunday afternoons watching old Errol Flynn movies on TV when I was a child.

Imagine my excitement when, aged 16, it was announced in my school that for something different in Transition Year (a year between junior and senior school, optional in many schools here, but compulsory in mine where students are encouraged to try new subjects and activities) sports class, we would all be learning how to fence. I was pretty much on the fence (pun intended) about school sports as our school played hockey, basketball, and tennis and my hand-eye co-ordination wasn’t good enough for any of them, but fencing, now that I could handle.

My Viking sword (sadly only a letter opener)

When I discovered that the feet positions and posture were similar to ballet, which I’d attempted, and the terms were all in French, which I loved – my mind was made up – fencing was for me.

I’m not sure who came up with the idea to teach fencing to 100 teenage girls, but it was pure genius. Self defense might have been more practical, I’ll admit, but if anybody comes at me with an epee they’re going to be in trouble.

In fencing the foible is the part of a sword blade from the middle to the point (that part of an epee bends to a remarkable degree) and it is this term which ultimately gave us the word foible in the English language. It joined in the mid 1600s, in the sword-related sense, directly from French foible, although these days the word has changed spelling to be faible in French. The idea of the blade being weaker at that point came from an Old French word feble (feeble).

By the 1670s the meaning of foible had extended to describe a weak point of character and it has been with us ever since, perhaps with an added implication of the weakness being somehow charming or excusable, like my fondness for swords and swashbuckling.

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

Grace (@Wordfoolery)