12th Jun 2008
Etymology Roundup
Here are some etymology posts from the past week:
Gringo/folk etymology - “I’m pretty sure the dictionary is right about the word’s etymology. But I had learned a more colorful story: that Mexican-American vaqueros came into contact with Irish-American cowboys after the United States acquired first Texas, and then New Mexico and California. The Irish cowboys were constantly singing the song, “Green Grow the Lilacs.” The first two words of the song were slurred into gringo.”
Crunk - “Traditionally, crunk meant a hoarse, harsh cry. The term is often used as slang to mean intoxicated. Folk etymology suggests the modern usage of crunk originated as a portmanteau of the words ‘crazy’ and ‘drunk’ or having been ‘cranked up’ to a level of excitability at which one becomes ‘crunk’. Rapper Lil Jon defined crunk as a “state of heightened excitement.”
Good/Bad - “Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary’s etymology for good, which turns out to derive historically from ‘fitting, suitable’, not from ‘noble, aristocratic’…
The American Heritage Dictionary joins in relating good to IE ghedh- ‘to unite, join, fit’, also at the root of together and gather….
And here is the OED’s etymology for bad, which turns out to come not from “lower class” but from ‘homosexual’…”
Hocus - “The two-word phrase ‘hocus pocus’ seems to have entered the language a century or so before the word HOCUS as a stand alone. In medieval times, the Latin words spoken by priests in the Eucharist included ‘hoc est corpus meum,’ meaning ‘this is my body.’”
And more politics, for those so inclined:
Counterinsurgency - “The term counterinsurgency gained currency under President John Kennedy in the 1960’s, and referred initially to countering “communist inspired, supported, or directed insurgency, defined as subversive insurgency” by Soviet-aligned guerillas against western colonial nations. (When the US aided indigent forces in the overthrow of unfriendly governments it was called paramilitary operations.) As in the above quote the US involvement in Vietnam was called a counterinsurgency.”
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