Etymythology – Arnold Zwicky's Blog (original) (raw)
Archive for the ‘Etymythology’ Category
Singing about death
March 9, 2026
On 3/7 (on this blog) I posted “The travails of etymology”, about the sources of some phrasal verbs meaning ‘to die’. Which elicited from Troy Anderson friendly but anxious e-mail on 3/8:
dai s’la (hello friend/cousin, in Miluk),
Your last post on Facebook makes me think you’re thinking you’re about done? I’m sad we haven’t kept the conversation going.
Know I’m here rooting for you.
(The reference to the language Miluk will get clarified eventually, when I tell you more about TA.)
Posted in Death and dying, Etymology, Etymythology, Humor, Language and religion, Lexicography, Music, My life, Poetry | Leave a Comment »
The travails of etymology
March 7, 2026
Thoughts inspired by a comment by Robert Coren on my 3/6 posting “Checking out”, in which I responded darkly to the information from a grocery-delivery service that you can:
Add items until your shopper checks out
by understanding the intransitive phrasal verb check out in it not as the intended sense
To complete the procedure required in order to register one’s departure from a location or venue, esp. a hotel, at the end of a stay or visit. Also more generally: to leave, to depart. [_OED_‘s 1b for _check out_]
but as _OED_‘s 4a ‘to die’. RC offered a speculation on the etymology of the mortal sense of a different intransitive phrasal verb with out, peg out:
4a reminds me of a phrase that I encountered in Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors, where “peg out” is used as a colloquialism for “die”; I assume that (1) it comes from the process of being victorious in a cribbage game (which makes it a rather odd metaphor, actually), and (2) it was standard usage among some portion of the British population in the early 20th century.
Posted in Ambiguity, Etymology, Etymythology, Humor, Movies and tv, Toys and games | 7 Comments »
Apple mousse
April 5, 2023
From Kyle Wohlmut on Facebook today under the header “Rate this translation”:
(#1) They spell French pamplemousse ‘grapefruit’ wrong and then treat it as if it were parsed as pomme ‘apple’ + mousse (referring to one of several foamy substances; see especially senses 1 and 2 in English, below, which are directly borrowed from French)
Inventive, but absurd, and totally off the mark. Prime-grade etymythology.
Posted in Etymology, Etymythology, Gender and sexuality, Metaphor, Music, Translation | Leave a Comment »
Toadsuck catfish
November 16, 2019
Today’s Zippy, with a catfish buffet in the Toad Suck / Toadsuck AR area:
(#1) Buffet at the Toadsuck Catfish Inn (in Choctaw AR, on US 65 South), obviously of keen interest to Mr. (The) Toad
As is so often the case with establishments in Zippy strips, this one closed a few years ago — though alternatives, like Eat My Catfish in Conway, flourish in the area (which is prime catfish territory).
And, well, yes, there’s the name Toad Suck.
Posted in Etymology, Etymythology, Language and animals, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, My life, Names | Leave a Comment »
The Avocado Chronicles: 2 etymology and etymythology
July 13, 2019
The text for today, a piece from the NPR Kitchen Window site (“A weekly peek into the kitchen with tasty tales and recipes”), “What’s in a Name? The Avocado Story” by Howard Yoon, from 7/19/06: a monstrous tapestry of confusion, error, and fabrication, tracing the English food name avocado to a 1914 coinage by California farmers who became the California Avocado Association (an organization that was probably the source of most of the balled-up fantasy below).
Posted in Etymology, Etymythology, Language and food, Lexicography, Semantics, Subsectivity | 4 Comments »
Ruthie reanalyzes, and so do lots of others
September 2, 2018
The 8/5 One Big Happy has Ruthie doing her best to make sense of the idiom the spitting image (of) as, roughly, ‘the person someone looks like when they spit’.
Behind this lies a whole chain of reanalyses, none of them due to Ruthie. Ultimately, sex is probably involved. (Oh, isn’t that always the way?)
Posted in Etymythology, Idioms, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics | 1 Comment »
An idiom comes to life
March 27, 2018
Today’s re-play of Calvin and Hobbes has Calvin in bed:
(#1)
From Gary Martin’s Phrase Finder site:
What’s the meaning of the phrase ‘A frog in the throat’? Temporary hoarseness caused by phlegm in the back of the throat.
Posted in Etymythology, Idioms, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »
From Tex-Mex to naked rugby
July 25, 2017
Yesterday’s morning name was the Mexican Spanish nickname Chuy (for Jesus). I’m pretty sure it got into my head from a friend who recently ate at a Chuy’s restaurant in Texas, so I’ll start with that.
But the real topic is Mexican Spanish nicknames: Chuy or Chucho for Jesus, Pepe for José, Che for Ernesto, and Pancho or Paco for Francisco, in particular (with a note on the linguist Viola Waterhouse, who was a student of such things). That will take me to Pepe Romero, Che Guevara, Pancho Villa, the linguist Paco Ordóñez, Paco Rabanne (the man and the fragrances), and from there to Nick Youngquest in the buff, which will supply a moment of gay interest.
Posted in Abbreviation, Etymythology, Gender and sexuality, Language and food, Linguists, Names, Nicknames, Shirtlessness, Sociolinguistics, Spanish | 5 Comments »
Bring out your lukewarm etymythologies
October 26, 2016
The instructions said to use lukewarm water, and Kim, being a linguist, wondered about the luke of lukewarm; we don’t, after all, have luke + anything else, even lukecool, lukecold, or lukehot. I said that she wasn’t going to be satisfied with the standard story, and she wasn’t. A brief version, from _NOAD_2:
(of liquid or food that should be hot) only moderately warm; tepid. ORIGIN late Middle English: from dialect luke (probably from dialect lew ‘lukewarm’ and related to lee [‘shelter from wind or weather’]) + warm
This account is suppositious, and unclear on many points (what dialects, how, and why? and is lukewarm really etymologically ‘lukewarm’ + warm?). So it occurred to us to just invent more satisfying etymologies — or, better, to invite others to invent them, to devise etymythologies. This is that invitation: to suggest better stories than the truth (as far as we know the truth), IN A COMMENT ON THIS BLOG (I will disregard e-mail to me or Kim and comments on Facebook or Google+ or ADS-L or wherever else; I cannot possibly spend time amalgamating suggestions from half a dozen sources). But before you jump in, read the rest of what I have to say about lukewarm and about etymythology. And, eventually, some suggestions as to what you might use to play with for ideas about lukewarm etymythologies.
Posted in Etymology, Etymythology, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics | 10 Comments »
More Black Friday etymythology
November 28, 2014
On the 26th I posted an etymythology for the expression to pass for/as, as in a black person passing for white. And from Bonnie Taylor-Blake on ADS-L the same day:
I see that a recently offered explanation for where the “Black” in “Black Friday” comes from has become quite popular, at least on Twitter and Facebook.
This version holds that “Black Friday” stems from the selling of (black) slaves the day after Thanksgiving.
David Mikkelson, of snopes.com, addressed this last year when it first arrived to his inbox.
This piece of etymythology seems to have gained considerable traction this year (at least on Twitter and Facebook), its credibility perhaps aided by outrage toward recent grand-jury findings in Ferguson, Missouri.
It’s been interesting to read conversations on Twitter where someone repeats this particular explanation and is corrected, so to speak, by someone offering the (also false) “red ink to black ink” accounting origin story.
Bonnie is the go-to person on the formula Black Friday; she did the meticulous research discounting the “red ink to black ink” story — retold in detail by Ben Zimmer in his Word Routes column on 11/25/11. I’m going to reproduce Ben’s column in full here, because so many readers have found Bonnie’s story unconvincing: people love stories — this is narratophilia — but they like etymological stories (like the black-ink story) that give a sense of deep explanation, while Bonnie’s account, despite the considerable, detailed evidence for it, seems too pedestrian and, well, fortuitous, having its roots in a local phrasing (in Philadelphia) used by a small number of people (police officers) at one moment in time (the early 1960s).
Posted in Etymythology, Formulaic expressions, Holidays, Narratophilia | Leave a Comment »