"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 04/09/17 (jejune)

I'm going to take you an adjective that mean dull of insipid and has also something to do with human anatomy and actually gave us a meal of the day, so it's very roundabout route I'm goung to take you on today. It's not a particularly familiar word,  but it's just one that I find quite interesting. And that word is jejune. As I say it means insipid or dull or bland. It's not something you particularly want to be. And it took, again, its history, as a part of the human anatomy. It's part of the small intestine. And it goes back to the Latin word, jejunes, which meant "fasting". And that seems quite odd, to go from fasting to a section of the small intestine, but there's a slightly morbid reason, for that which is that, when you die, the intestin is apparently empty, as though you'd been fasting, so thatbit of he intestine is always enpty at death. Not particularly nice. But the word then came into English arount the 17th century and it kept that the Latin meaning of fasting. It als omeant hungry, without food, so some riffs on the same theme. But it didn't take long before figurative language took over and jejune began to be applied to people who were just unsatisfying in some way,  so that idea, again, of emptiness. There is one more link in the chain, because the Latin also has the word "disjejunus", which literally meant, "to break one's fast". In French we have "le dejueuner", which today means "lunch" but when it first went into French, it meant breakfast. So "disjejunus" gave us "dejueuner" and evetually it ended up in English as "to dine". So, no breakinh your fast in the morning, but breaking your fast in the evening. So, section of the small intestine, fasting and dullness but somehow it was crept into English as mealtime of the day.