26th Jun 2008
Etymology Roundup
Word - “Ever since people have been able to communicate verbally with one another we’ve had to have had words, and what we call these little pieces of audible communication has had a common name for a very long time.”
Condom - [Editor's note: definitively NSFW, and comes with musical accompaniment, but quite a thorough history of the condom, if you're interested -- and if you can make it past the no minors warning.]
“A variety of Latin etymologies have been proposed, including condon (receptacle),[55] condamina (house), and cumdum (scabbard or case). It has also been speculated to be from the Italian word guantone, derived from guanto, meaning glove. William E. Kruck wrote an article in 1981 concluding that, ‘As for the word ‘condom’, I need state only that its origin remains completely unknown, and there ends this search for an etymology.’ Modern dictionaries may also list the etymology as ‘unknown’.”
Bee - “Old English beo (before 900, in Alfred’s translation of Bpethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae) earlier bio-wyrt, bee wort, a plant (about 700) and Beo-wulf a personal name (about 725, in Beowulf).”
Dagenham - “In this context dagenham is apparently to be taken as a synonym for ‘insane’, by a rather devious etymological route. Dagenham is a town in Essex, England. On the District Line of the London Underground, Dagenham is three stops beyond the town of Barking (after Barking are Upney, Becontree, Dagenham Heathway, and Dagenham East). To be barking mad is to be crazy; and being dagenham is therefore being three steps beyond barking.”
And finally, in honor of the summer, which has returned to Seattle like a deadbeat dad — everyone’s so happy to see him, we’ve forgotten how mad we were:
Swelter - “Latvian is somewhat close to the original etymology with gurt no swelmes (I took a linguistics class once in college where I learned that Latvian is probably the closest to the original tongue from which all the Indo-European family of languages evolved). However, perhaps the closest to the etymological source of swelter in the list above is the Norwegian smelte, (I think of smelting iron) and just one letter difference from svelte.”
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