"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 21/11/17 (crotchety, being cross)

A couple of questions from viewers, for which, thank you. The first comes from Dave Leonard who asked where the word crotchety come from. And the one that I'm going to follow up with is from Colin Curtis who asks, "Why do we talk about being cross?" So they  were obviously both writting on a particularly cantankerous day. But I'll start with the crotchety. And it seems strange, but crotchety has a link with both handicraft and also a ball game, and I'll explain. Crochet meant in French a hook of a shepherd's crook and you can still find it in French today to mean a hockey stick, but, of course, crochet, as it would be in English, is, for us, a handicraft in which yarn is made into fabric with a hooked needle. So, the lawn game that is called croquet is also linked to this because you drive a ball through hooks or hoops in order to play the game. That, two, originated in France and then became very popular with the English aristocracy. So, this is a slightly winding thread that I'm weaving here, but the French word, if you go back to that crochet, shepherd's hook, etc, it's also the source for the musical note the crotchet, simply because of its shape - it almost resembles a shepherd's crook of a hook. And that, in turn, gave us crotchety, because it was some sort og perverse, slightly hooked belief, if you like, a sort of twisted turn of mind and then of course, you're so twisted that you're actually positively angry. Onto cross, that is even more productive in English and we have the Vikings to thank for thst, and the Romans. The Vikings brought us kross, with a K, the Romans gave us a crux, of course, and that crux is behind crucial, crucible - which was the hight light originally that shown in front of crucafix... And excruciating which reffered to torture on the cross. But to come to Colin's question, cross, meaning annoyed, goes back to the 17th century and it's actually from the high seas, to do with a crosswind. It's a wind blowing across the bow of your ship, rather then from behind. So it's an adverse, contrary or opposite wind, bot one that you will particularly like, and might leave you annoyed or bad-tempered.