"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 15/09/17 (taking umbrage, umbrella, squirell)

I had an e-mail form Laura O'Connor, who said, "I hope you won't take umbrage, Susie, if you tell me of the origins of tell my of the origin of taking umbrage?" And I'm going to start with umbrella, because you'll notice there's probably some relationship between umbrella and umbrage, and there is. It goes back to the Latin umbra, which meant shadow. And in the case of umbrella, it was the diminutive,  so the little form, of the Italian ombrella. And that meant little shadow or shade. And that was reflect to the umbrella's original use, because it was meant to peotect the user not from rain but from sun. An ombrela was a sunshade, in other words. It was only when umbrellas were imported into Britain - this was probably about the 17th century - where, obviously, rain outweighs the sun by a very long margin, that umbrellas became popular as protection from cloud bursts, or thunder-plumps, as dialect likes to call them. So that's the umbrella. But umbrage has a very similar story, really. That entered English, not from Italian this time, but from Old French, in the 15th century. And that was in the literal sense of shadow or shade. So you might find unbrage under a nice tree, for example. But then, slowly but surely, umbrage took on the meaning of suspicion or doubt. In other word, someone had thrown shade over you, as we might say these days, and had given you a grounds for suspicion. And while we're on shade, I just want to finish with the squirell, because it's one of my favourite little origins, really. Because squirrel goes back to a Greek word that simply meant shadowy tail, because its tail is so big that it cast the whole of the little sqirrel in shadow. And I quite like that one.