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Amy is derived from the Old French "aimée," meaning "beloved." (Just to clear up a common misconception, Amy is not short for Amelia, which derives from the Teutonic root amal, meaning "work." Neither name is related to Emily, the feminine form of Emil, which is derived from the Roman family name Aemilius [Latin aemulus = "rival."] Now you know).
Beloved. OK, sentiment aside, etymologically it’s a bit dull. This baby-name site calls Amy "conventional but not plain, popular but not trendy." Is that a ringing endorsement, or what? I always used to hate my boring, childlike name (few names ending in -y sound suitable for non-toddlers). But I look at the kinds of spelling- and sense-challenged atrocities people foist on their helpless children these days and thank the great benevolent forces of the universe that my mother was a sensible woman not inclined to make up names like Ashlynn or Brayden.
The name Amy first appeared in English in the late 13th Century. The English used the name so rarely that it had nearly vanished by the 18th Century. It enjoyed a resurgence during the late-1800s.
For American girls in the 1970s, the name Amy paled in popularity only to the inescapable powerhouse moniker that is Jennifer (ruler from 1970 through 1984). In third grade, I made a list on the back of my school yearbook of all the Jennifers I knew. There were 26. I always had at least one constant companion named Jennifer, from the birth in 1971 of the Jennifer who lived across the street through the three Jennifers I roomed with at various times in college. All the Amys I knew had Jennifers, and vice versa. It seems fitting that the popular book on GenX feminism, Manifesta, was written by an Amy/Jennifer team. How could it not be?
Jennifer has a little more etymological meat behind it. The standard spelling is the Cornish adaptation of the Welsh name Gwenhwyvar (from gwen meaning "white" and hwyvar meaning "smooth." Jennifer means, basically, "white lady." Doesn’t it just?). The Normans Frenchified the name into Guinevere, because that’s what Normans do.
Hard as it may be to believe, the name Jennifer was practically unheard of outside Cornwall until the beginning of the last century. Then, blammo! It was everywhere. It's quest for world domination was complete within a century.
It took years for me to learn to like (or at least not hate) my name. One last craw-sitcker, however: Despite the prevalence of the name, there are no cool songs about Amys. I mean, come on! Pure fucking Prairie League?!? (Note: My mother almost named me Bernadette, a travesty that would have at least been mitigated by the kick-ass Four Tops tune.) My only solace: No one will ever serenade me in my dotage with "Jenny from the Block."
As an example, the paper's ombudsman noted that the Globe uses "boom box" for giant personal stereo systems instead of considerably less delicate "ghetto blaster."
"Wifebeater" as slang for a tank-style cotton undershirt entered the language in 1996 and was readily adopted, "raising the concerns of many victims' rights groups that naming a popular article of clothing after an incident of domestic violence desensitizes young people to violence against women. However, many slang experts argue that, far from glamorizing domestic violence, this tongue-in-cheek name mocks the self-conscious machismo of the upper-class teen as he struggles to evoke the blue-collar image of another time and place."
The discussion at the Globe, like so much else in our culture, was sparked by Avril Lavigne.
It makes sense, really. The word dog (or rather, the Old English word dogca) itself just magically appeared in English in the 13th Century. No one knows where it came from. But it was used very rarely and only to refer to a specific breed of dog until the 16th Century when, for more reasons unknown, it supplanted hund (still the German, Swedish and Danish word for "dog"), as the English word for the loyal and fuzzy quadruped. Hund lives on in hound, but that word has lost its general meaning and now refers almost exclusively to hunting dogs. (Oddly, the word hunt, despite the similarities, is not related to hund at all -- it comes from the Old English hentan, "to seize.")
Hund started out as the Indo-European word kuntos, which indicates that dogs were a part of human life in some fashion even back in the earliest days of language. Kuntos became the Greek kyon, which interestingly, and unexpectedly, is also the root for cynic (from kynikos, "dog-like"). Legend has it those ancient Greek philosophers the Cynics were so named for their "dog-like sneering" at the weakness of their fellow humans, but more likely the name came from the Kynosarge (meaning "grey dog"), the school where the group's founder Antisthenes taught.
The Latin word for dog, canis, is the root of (obviously) the adjective canine, but also the words kennel and canary. The little birds, which were introduced as caged pets in England in the 16th Century, were so named because they came from Spain's Canary Islands, which gained fame during Roman times for the large breed of dog found there. See, it all comes back to dogs.
Although the stone is mostly associated with Asia, especially China and Japan, the word jade is derived from Latin. Jade stones were thought to have healing properties, particularly for afflictions of the kidneys. The Latin word ilia -- referring to the sides of the lower torso, or the flanks -- became the Vulgar Latin iliata, which then became ijada in Spanish some time in the 16th century.
The word "jade" actually covers stones from two different but similar-looking minerals -- jadeite and nephrite (also meaning "kidney," from the Greek nephrós). We often use "jade" to describe a particular shade of dark green, but jade stones can range from yellow and brown tones to purple or black. It's the presence of other minerals that lends the color -- pure jade itself is white.
Jaded, our word for those world-weary and cynical folk, has nothing to do with stones or kidneys. Or kidney stones. A "jade" in 14th-Century England was a worn-out horse, possibly derived from the Old Norse jalda ("mare"). The adjective form came to mean "tired" or "sated" in the 16th Century, while the noun -- after a brief second wind as a metaphor for a slatternly woman -- died out.
The word chosen "most likely to succeed": blog.
PROJECT GOALS:
- To watch woods fill up with snow.
- To do so without being observed.
- To steal some time from other projects.
- To stay mindful of other projects, however.
RISKS OF PROJECT:
- Could get caught by owner of woods.
- Could cause disorientation in horse.
PROBABILITY OF DISCOVERY:
- Identity of owner not 100 percent sure.
- Likeliest candidate lives in village.
- Cannot rule out other owner or owners, or recent real estate sale.
- Would be wise to be ready to start up sleigh.
STATUS OF HORSE:
- Likely disoriented by unplanned stoppage.
- Additional reasons for disorientation:
-- No farmhouse near
-- Only woods and frozen lake nearby
-- Darkest evening of the year
- Horse shows uneasiness by shaking bells.
STATUS OF WOODS:
- Lovely; dark; deep
- Largely silent, though wind and snow flurries are slightly audible
LIMITATIONS ON PROJECT:
- Strictly short-term
- Other commitments have priority
- Also need to sleep
- Commitments involve miles of travel.
- Travel has precedence over sleep.
Tea (Latin: Camellia sinensis) originated in the Yunnan region of China in 2737 BCE, when some leaves blew into the water an emperor was boiling and he exclaimed, "Dang, that's tasty!"
So here's the thing about Chinese, if Bill Bryson is to be believed (and who am I to say he is not?) -- written Chinese is exactly the same everywhere, although pronunciations vary widely from dialect to dialect. Two Chinese speakers from opposite ends of the country would not be able to understand each other at all, but if they were to pass each other notes in gym, they'd get along just fine. Anyway, the Cantonese pronunciation ch'a became, among other things, the Japanese word cha (as in the Japanese tea blends sencha, bancha and genmaicha), the Greek tsai and the Hindi chai (if you order a "chai tea latte" in Bombay, people will look askance at you. So don't. It's just chai, OK?). The Amoy dialect's pronunciation t'e, helped along by seafaring Dutch traders, became our word tea (as well as the German Tee, the French thé, etc.).
Also, there really was an Earl Grey.
Wordnerd.net evolved from several conflicting ideas, a handful of half-realized hobbies and an amorphous self-improvement project considered near the end of 2002, mostly with this goal in mind: Write more, write better.
To that end, I’m reading the dictionary (the one on hand is Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, tenth edition) cover to cover this year, just for kicks. I used to know so many words! As I get older (and spend more time shortening my attention span through excessive Internet use), I can actually feel chunks of vocabulary slipping out from between the folds of my brain. With luck, they’re still sluicing around in my skull and need only to be wedged back into place for future use. I hope this helps.
I’ve always been interested in the history of words, especially names, but after a brief affair with the works of Bill Bryson, I went on to other pursuits. This year, I want to rediscover and revel in the dorky things I love about language.
I’ll be using this space to record what I learn and how certain words have affected me throughout my life. Perhaps it will be interesting to others. Perhaps not. Perhaps people who know more about this sort of thing than I do will berate me in my comments section. I will try not to let such people bring me down. I’m no hard-core etymologist or linguistics professional. I’m just an amateur word enthusiast fascinated by what we say and how and why. I’m a word nerd.
Which brings me to my first real entry: nerd
The first use of nerd appeared in 1950’s If I Ran the Zoo, by Dr. Seuss: "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo/And bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo/A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!"
The good Dr.’s Nerd looked like this.
There is some debate over whether the Seussian neologism is directly related to the current definition of the word – the socially inept, the computer-proficient, the thick-spectacled. The Online Etymology Dictionary traces its origin to nert, an alteration of nut, meaning "stupid or crazy." I prefer Seuss myself.
Mr. Word Man reminds us that nerd may not be used interchangeably with spazz, dweeb, or geek, a lesson delightfully nerdy in itself.
And while the pejorative nerd is of American origin, the concept is not uniquely American, despite our culture’s deeply ingrained disdain for -- and suspicion of -- the smarty-pantsed (see also: Al Gore). The British, for example, have swots, who perform basically the same function.
Despite years of revulsion at the word, I've grown to embrace my nerdiness. And now here I am, putting it on display for millions! Enjoy!
Etymology:
Online Etymology Dictionary
The Word Spy
OED Word of the Day
Worthless Word of the Day
Language:
The Vocabula Review
linguablogs
Naming:
Behind the Name
Edgar's Name Pages
more links soon...
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Technical stuff done by Mister Jimmie, a cunning linguist in his own right.