A Collection of Interesting Etymologies

Jan Hacin, November 2012

Content

Origin behind the following words:AlcoholBarbarianBerserkBroke (in the sense of 'having no money')CandidateChocolateHumorKetchupNiceSalarySlave

Alcohol

• al-kuhl (Arabic); a very fine powder of antimony used as eye makeup

• Used for any impalpable (cannot be sensed by touching) powder obtained by sublimation– thus: all compounds, obtained through

distillation

Barbarian

• barbaroi (Greek); "babblers", people who did not speak Greek

• From the sound they were making: "bar bar bar..."

Berserk• berserkr (Old Icelandic); a "bear shirt", a

Scandinavian warrior wearing an actual bear shirt

• bjorn sherkr (Scandinavian) -- possibly the origin of berserkr

Broke (in the sense of having no money)

• Banks in post-Renaissance Europe issued porcelain "borrower's tiles", imprinted with the owner's name etc.

• If the borrower was past the limit, the teller "broke" the tile on the spot

Candidate

• candidus (Latin); bright, shining, glistening white

• Ancient Roman candidates for office wore bright white togas

• Gave rise to the word "candid" (frank, outspoken, open and sincere)

Chocolate

• From the same Spanish word– from: tchocoatl (Nahuatl - Aztecs)

• Encountered by Hernan Cortes at the Court of Moctezuma in the city of Tenochtitlan, 1519

• He praised the chocolate-based drink and inquired how it was made– cacahuaquchtl: origin of the word "cocoa"– the "cocoa powder" was boiled in water and combined with

chilli, musk and honey

Humor

• humor (Latin); liquid• The ancient philosophers believed that four liquids

entered into the makeup of our bodies, and influenced our temperament

• overplus of blood: optimistic, hopeful, confident temperament• overplus of phlegm: "phlegmatic", or slow and unexcitable• overplus of yellow bile: choleric and short tempered• overplus of black bile: melancholic

• Any imbalance of humors made a person unwell, perhaps eccentric

• Later on, the word took on the meaning of "oddness"• Finally, it was applied to those who could provoke laughter at

the oddities and paradoxes of life

Ketchup

• ke-tsiap (Chinese); a concoction of pickled fish and spices, invented in the 1690s

• Spread to Malaysia, where it was encountered by British explorers

• By 1740 the sauce -- renamed ketchup -- was an English staple

• Tomato ketchup was invented in the 1790s• Before that, people assumed tomatoes

were poisonous (because they are a close relative of the toxic belladona and nightshade plants).

Nice

• nescius (Latin); ignorant• Definitions throughout time:

1. foolish2. foolishly precise3. pedantically precise 4. precise in a good way5. our current definition

Robot

• robot (Czech); worker• In 1923, Karl Captek wrote a futuristic

thriller about a takeover of the machines (The Terminator?), which implanted circuitry in humans to make them into mindless workers or "robots".

Salary• In early Rome, soldiers were given salt as payment• Later, it was replaced by a sum of money referred to as

"salt money" -- salarium (Latin)• The term made its way into medieval France (solde, sol)

• It came to refer to the soldier himself:– soldat (medieval French)

• soudier (Old French) – soldier (English)

• souder (Middle English)– derived from soudier

Slave

• After the Holy Roman Empire subjugated large parts of Slavonia, a Slav became synonymous with someone who lived in servitude

• Eventually, Slav = slave