New answers tagged etymology
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What is the origin of the Australian slang “pommers” to refer to English people?
It's one of the many variants built off of the early-twentieth-century pommy.
From The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English:
Pommy; Pommie noun
an English person, or more ...
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What is the origin of the Australian slang “pommers” to refer to English people?
Wikipedia has a list of Australian slang words for people, and says:
pom or *pommie - an Australian nickname given to English people. Somewhat derogatory in nature the term can be used in both a ...
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Where did "humongous" first appear?
RE: Collegiate use in the 70s
“Humongous” was in common use among college debaters in 68/69.
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When did 'ut'/'uþ' from Old English and Middle English become 'out'?
OED out:
Out was formed by a merging of two distinct words, Old English ūt and ūte (apparently already confused in Old English).
(i) Old English ūt is cognate with Old Frisian ūt, and was originally ...
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When did 'ut'/'uþ' from Old English and Middle English become 'out'?
This transition was a regular consequence of the Great Vowel Shift:
ut → out, hus → house, tun → town, hlud → loud.
Wikipedia has an approximate timeline.
The transition went through several ...
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Why does Anglican refer to the religious sect rather than any other aspects of “Englishness”?
Because we already have the word "English" to refer to other general aspects of "Englishness".
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Is "contentual" a proper word?
Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg proposed 'contentual' as a translation of the German 'inhaltlich' (J. Symbol. Log., v. 31 (1966), p. 489), a word used by logicians and philosophers. B-M thought he was coining ...
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Why does Anglican refer to the religious sect rather than any other aspects of “Englishness”?
It is perhaps worth noting that the word "English" itself can be used in more or less the sense you describe it, according to the OED (adjective sense 4):
Characteristic of or marked by the ...
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What is the origin of the idiom "Put on a clinic"?
The earliest instance "of put on a clinic" that I've found in various database searches is from "Missouri-Kansas-Oklahoma Ass'n's Annual Meeting,"in The Hotel Monthly (December ...
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Why does Anglican refer to the religious sect rather than any other aspects of “Englishness”?
The term was used in the Magna Carta to refer to the English Church and the sense has retained its specificity ever since:
According to the site Oxford Languages:
Anglican:
early 17th century: from ...
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Why does Anglican refer to the religious sect rather than any other aspects of “Englishness”?
There is a word similar to Georgian or Edwardian to mean, of England, derived from Angles (the Latin for the the people of England, or more precisely the Germanic Anglii people who migrated to England ...
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Where did the word “quim” come from?
I wouldn't be surprised if the origin is connected with the surname Quimby, which is quite old and from what I can find means 'from the woman's estate.'
Ancentry.com says:
Quimby Name Meaning
English ...
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Origin of "Indent" as in inventory or request
My search engine threw up many citations telling us 'indenture' comes from medieval English "indenture of retainer" — a legal contract written in duplicate on the same sheet, with the copies ...
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What is the origin of the idiom "Put on a clinic"?
A "clinic" is a lesson, it is a master-class lesson for advanced practitioners of a sport or often a musical instrument. A master guitarist might tour around selling tickets to a "...
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How/why was the word "organic" chosen to represent natural foods or foods without chemicals?
In congress, in the 90s, when sustainable farmers wanted to label foods as being produced using pesticides (organic pesticide, meaning carbon compounds, as you have stated), the factory farming ...
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Words for the two "directions" of the meanings words gain or lose over time
Widening/generalization and narrowing/specialization of meaning appear to be the usual terms, for situations where the range extends (e.g. the verb tape or video going making a recording on magnetic ...
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Who coined the phrase "play the hand one is dealt"?
The following source cites an early 1919 usage exemple. Charles M Schulz was born in 1922. It is such a common and popular saying that’s probably impossible to track its first user:
Play The Hand One ...
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Who coined the phrase "play the hand one is dealt"?
Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Catch Phrases, Scarborough House, 1992 (1977), in the entry "you play the cards you're dealt", says it's c. 1910, from the USA, especially used in the West. ...
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Normans vs. Saxons: cow = beef, sheep = mutton, chicken =?
During the Middle English period, geline/gelyne was a word for cooked hen (per the MED):
Gelyne in brothe. Take rawe hennes, chop hem, caste hem into a potte.
It was from Old French.
P.S. That ...
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What does the "shed" in "watershed" mean?
Watershed is a geological term. It is a composite word. The individual meanings of its individual component words will not convey the full meaning of the geological term.
A watershed is a confluence ...
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Etymology and meaning of the word "stretch" in sentences like "We should eat before the final stretch"
English simplex words beginning with /str/ have a very specific phonosemantic sense, specifically an embodied image of a Walking Man. Stretch falls under the "Leg/Walk" subcategory (#2 on ...
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Etymology and meaning of the word "stretch" in sentences like "We should eat before the final stretch"
The meaning depends on context:
the home/final stretch:
a) the last part of a track before the end of a race
b) the last part of an activity, trip, or process
(Longman Dictionary)
According to the ...
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Etymology and meaning of the word "stretch" in sentences like "We should eat before the final stretch"
During the Middle English period, the verb strecchen had as one of its meanings, "to go, walk, proceed forward" (see the MED). Modern English noun stretch comes from Middle English noun ...
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Do etymologists refer to when a word was first written, rather than when it was first used (spoken)?
It comes down to what qualifies as an attestation. If someone with "street cred" writes an essay for the Sunday paper and says, "I can guarantee you we used [ some word ] when I was a ...
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Do etymologists refer to when a word was first written, rather than when it was first used (spoken)?
Dates like these generally refer to written usage since that is generally the only kind of evidence that we have. (Speech by itself doesn't leave documents behind.) So these can be viewed as providing ...
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Do etymologists refer to when a word was first written, rather than when it was first used (spoken)?
Dates like this refer to the first known instance of a word being used in writing. They are not intended as an indication of when that word (or another word from which it is descended) might have been ...
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What is the etymology of the legal term "squatting" as in occupying unowned property?
Oxford reference.com explains how the term evolved and came to be used to mean, by extension, illegally occupy a property.
In the USA, from the late 18th century, a squatter was a settler having no ...
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What is the origin of the phrase "grease the skids"?
Searches of various book and newspaper databases turn up several matches for "grease the skids" from before 1885. Here they are, in chronological order.
From "Not So Dumb as He Looked,&...
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What does "Sandbagging" (or sometimes sandboxing) mean as an expression in startup or sales and where is it coming from?
Sandbagging in sales is the act of pushing deals from one commission period to another. This might be monthly or quarterly.
Comission being the money paid out as a reward for closing that deal, ...
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What is the origin of the phrase "grease the skids"?
I wonder if this has something to do with commercial lumber and whaling. When I was visiting Seattle, a friend showed me the original "skid row," where cut trees were slid down the slope ...
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Is there an etymological reason some "question words" mirror the spelling of "answer words" (When/then, where/there, ...)?
Not really etymological reasons, but historical ones. These words come from old paradigms that have been broken up for the most part but still provide some order.
The English wh-words all come from ...
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Where does the phrase of "boredom punctuated by moments of terror" come from?
Early instances of the expression from World War I
The snippet from The New York Times Current History of the European War (1915) cited in Hugo's answer is actually taken from a letter dated October ...
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Why is “all . . . not” apparently more common than “not all ”?
As Ngram shows,, it appears that "not all of X are" has been more common than "all of X are not" since the 1880s. "All that glitters is not gold" is a somewhat archaic ...
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Where does the word 'booting' comes from when referring to electronic devices?
I worked on a mainframe (tube technology) computer that was built on-site in 1956 by IBM. There was a metal panel about 18 inches square that had holes to hold metal pins. The pins corresponded to ...
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Where does the phrase of "boredom punctuated by moments of terror" come from?
My husband attributed this is sailing a boat..."hours and hours of boredom interspersed by moments of sheer terror". I found this to be true!
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Origin of "around the bend", meaning insane
Although it may be a false local etymology, the story I heard is this:
The first mental asylum founded in Melbourne, Australia, was in 1848 and called the Yarra Bend Asylum. Situated along the Yarra ...
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Is the "blue" in "blue moon" a reference to betrayal?
Blue moon is first recorded in the very early 18th century, and was quite literal and, unsurprisingly, it continues in the present:
1702–A moon (real, depicted, or imagined) that appears blue. On ...
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Is the "blue" in "blue moon" a reference to betrayal?
To me the numbers eleven and twelve are the key after all, with the core "leven" meaning left(over) in counting on one's fingers after ten: one left, two left.
https://taalaandewandel.com/...
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Origin of the word "blackbirding" for a type of slave trade
An Elephind newspaper database search reports that an early instance of blackbirding used in this slang sense appears in an unidentified item in the Philadelphia [Pennsylvania] Press (April 17, 1861) [...
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Does "morning sickness" only relate to pregnancy? Did it always?
I've heard a rumor that the trimesters of pregnancy used to be named after times of day -- so that "morning sickness" didn't necessarily mean that you're only nauseous in the mornings, but ...
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Origin of the word "blackbirding" for a type of slave trade
GDoS has early quotations from 1864:
blackbirding n.
from [blackbird (also bird)]: a forced labourer from the Pacific islands, e.g. a Melanesian or Polynesian; thus blackbird-catching, blackbird-...
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Origin of the word "blackbirding" for a type of slave trade
The word "black" is self-explanatory. "Bird" seems to have been used in the sense of
OED III.11.
colloquial. A person, typically a man; a chap, a guy. Frequently with modifying ...
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Origin of the word "blackbirding" for a type of slave trade
Wiktionary suggests that it comes from blackbird as a slang term for indigenous Pacific Islanders:
From blackbird + -ing, suggestedly from the putative slang blackbird (“indigenous Pacific islander”)...
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Origin of the word "blackbirding" for a type of slave trade
The Sailor's Word-book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms by W.H. Smyth (London, 1867)
gives the definition:
BLACK - BIRD CATCHING . The slave - trade . BLACK - BIRDS . A slang term on the ...
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In which dialects is "knowed" the past tense of know?
John Lawler commented:
It's the regular past tense of know, which is usually irregular. But these choices vary, like the past tense of dive, which is regular some places and irregular others. There ...
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What are the historic definitions of the word dragon?
The description of Leviathan God inspires in Job 41 (including v21:
Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth
[NIV; Bible Gateway]) indicates to fundamentalists that fire-...
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What are the historic definitions of the word dragon?
The Webster’s Dictionary of 1828 has some interesting definitions that vary quite drastically.
DRAGON, noun [Latin , Gr., G.]
A kind of winged serpent, much celebrated in the romances of the middle ...
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What does "Sandbagging" (or sometimes sandboxing) mean as an expression in startup or sales and where is it coming from?
I found this answer helpful about sandbagging. According to comments by Phil Sweet in the question, Sandboxing is a completely different concept though.
“Sandbagging” term originates from the late ...
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What is the etymology of the phrase "see what one had for breakfast"?
It means the person is making a rude comment. I can see what u had for breakfast means I can see all the way up u, if they get a look up your skirt. It's just a common rude thing to say.
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What is the origin of 'common or garden'?
The early botany books referred to "common or garden" species. A species might be common, but not right in a garden. One which is common or garden would be something like a primrose, and the ...
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