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I learned something today that amazed and delighted me. The term "shitfaced" originally came from Scotland in the 1800's. And it doesn't mean drunk, it means "Having a very small face, like a child".

I find that amusing as hell.

So what are your amusing or amazing word origins? And yes, you can post ones you'd heard that were incorrect, like the common rumor that "fuck" stands for "Fornication Under Charter of the King" or "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge".

I remember the small feeling of triumph I got when I realized that words like "often" and "another" probably originally derived from "of ten" and "an other."

--Patrick

Lunatic derives from the root Luna, for moon, as it was believed that the full moon played a part in insanity.

Also, the word berserk is named after the ancient norse "berserker" warriors, and not the other way around.

Robot derives from the old Czech word for slave - Robotnik.

mroosc1979 said:

Robot derives from the old Czech word for slave - Robotnik.

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Isn't that the villain from Sonic the Hedgehog?

Dave said:

Isn't that the villain from Sonic the Hedgehog?

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Only in the early American localizations... Eventually they started calling him Eggman just like in Japan

Ravenpoe said:

Lunatic derives from the root Luna, for moon, as it was believed that the full moon played a part in insanity.

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And "hysteria" does indeed share its root with "hysterectomy," since a long time ago the suspected cause of women's unusually fragile emotional state was that her womb would break loose and run around inside her body, causing havoc.

The Hippocratics thought that the womb moved upward in the woman's body [...] searching for cool and moist places in an effort to restore its equilibrium. As the womb tried to force its way toward the crowded places at the centre of a woman's trunk, it wreaked havoc with her physical and mental well being, causing her to faint or become speechless. [...] on the whole the womb is like an animal within an animal.

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source

Hah-haaa! Ancient "medicine," amrite? Good thing we don't still believe silly things like that these days.

--Patrick

I don't know, man. It would be nice to be a doctor with those beliefs. Good lookin' lady comes in all hysterical and I have to finger-bang her back to sanity, right?

Yes, they used to do that.

The word "arena" comes from the Latin word "harena", which means sand. Gladiatorial arenas in ancient Rome were always covered in sand, to soak up blood. As a result, the places were gladiators fought were literally called "the sand". You'd say stuff like "Let's go down to the sand to see Johnsicles fight Billticus."

bhamv3 said:

The word "arena" comes from the Latin word "harena", which means sand.

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That's interesting, because in Spanish, "arena" still means "sand," but "harina" means "flour." And "polvo" means "dust," which is what I might expect of something that gets "pulverized."

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

I remember the small feeling of triumph I got when I realized that words like "often" and "another" probably originally derived from "of ten" and "an other."

--Patrick

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Often apparently doesn't

PatrThom said:

That's interesting, because in Spanish, "arena" still means "sand," but "harina" means "flour." And "polvo" means "dust," which is what I might expect of something that gets "pulverized."

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About harina/arena*, funnily enough, and as much sense as the relationship makes (especially given the h in latin harena) it seems to be pure chance. Harina comes from latin Farina. Many words that start with an f in latin have lost it for an h in Spanish, but keep it in other romance languages: Flour is farina in Catalan and Italian, farine in French, farinha in Portuguese, something like faina in Romanian (had to look up the last ones).

*It's extra funny that harina in Spanish is pronounced more or less like arena in English

Yes, I love etymology and when I was younger I played with words trying to guess their relationships and origins all the time. Knowing well more than one language from the same origin and then some unrelated ones helps when doing that I recall one time in middle/high school when a teacher told us about the origin of some word from latin and I couldn't help but say 'DUH! of course!' out loud

EDIT: I looked it up, and in Italian, Romanian, French... arena or variations of it meant he same as in English, but NOT sand!

EDIT2: I'm sorry I'm not contributin fun word origins to the thread... most of the ones I know are in Spanish [DOUBLEPOST=1423220908,1423220615][/DOUBLEPOST]Solo (as in 'guitar solo') means 'alone' in Spanish and is also used for solos in music, I don't know how widely known that is.

tegid said:

Often apparently doesn't

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Aww...

I feel ya with the word origins, though. As someone who always wants to know why things work the way they do, etymology is a fascinating subject, and helps me understand the origin of a word's "color." It's not enough for me to know that a word is green, I also want to know that it came from blue+yellow.

--Patrick

tegid said:

Solo (as in 'guitar solo') means 'alone' in Spanish and is also used for solos in music, I don't know how widely known that is.

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So solo means the same thing in english as it does in spanish (since it also means 'alone' in english) so I guess they both borrow from the same source.

Ah, true... I think I've always assimilated the use of 'solo' in other contexts into the use for music. Like, I thought they were using a music specific word because it was cooler. (My excuse is that I first encountered as 'guitar solo' and immediately thought it was just borrowed from spanish)

Edit: maybe I'm wrong, but I'd say solo means doing something alone, be it in music or flying airplanes or whatever, right? Just to clarify, solo in spanish means almost exactly the same as alone ('only' can also be translated as solo, in another angle for the same concept)

Another one from Spanish:

Mosquito is the masculine+diminutive of mosca, fly in Spanish. It's not super interesting, but I find it kind of funny because flies and mosquitoes are nothing alike

stienman said:

English contains a lot of sorry French.

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Oh, it sure does.

--Patrick