"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 08/11/17 (Greenland)

I have to thank fellow linguist Kory Stamper. She works for the American dictionary company, Merriam-Webster, and she tells a really good tale. So thic is one that she tells. And it's basically about why Greenland is called Greenland. Because it's not exactly a grassy plain, and it seems a bit of an odd choice. Start with Iceland. The name of Iceland is fairly self-explanatory - a land covered in glaciers. And that was colonised in the ninth century by the Vikings. But there was an ulterior motive there because the Norse settlers didn't want anyone else to come. So they wanted to make it sound as unappealing as possible, as cold and barren as the name suggests. Nonetheless, Norse people - they didn't mind Norse people going there - flocked to the island, daspite the fact it was small and it had very, very little arable land. But bacause it was smal and because there wasn't too much land to g oaround, it led many, many squables between these settlers. And many people were banished from the country for being too argumentative, essentially. And one of those was Eric Thorvaldsson, otherwise known as Eric the Red. He was banished from the country. He haeded west and he landed at a huge landmass which he decided to then go and explore. He spent several winters there and decided he quite liked it, and it would be a good place for him, being in exile, to set up shop, if you like. So he returned home, probably in secret, to Iceland, where everything began, and tried to lure his friends away because he wanted to make a small settlement there. But whereas Iceland was named in order to deter people, Greenland was named for the very opposite reason. He thought, they're never going to come if I tell them exactly whit it is like. It's pretty unappealing and it is pretty cold." So he called it Greenland, because, as a Norse saga goes, "Men will greatly desire to go there if the land has a good name". So nothing to do with the fact that there was anything green there. It was all a marketing exercise. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 06/11/17 (mardy, grouch, grumpy, fussbudget)

I was really privileged earlier this year to do a bit of work on an initiative between the Oxford English Dictionary and National Poetry Day and the experience was to find poets who would write about local words. And so a shortlist was made of some of our favourite local words and one of the words was one of my favourites which is mardy, and that's become quite national now as an adjective for meaning sulky or moody, but very much associated with the North ans the Midlands originally. And particullarly in Nottinghampshire, in fact, the first refference that we have of it is from 1882 and a glossary that says "a crosspatchy child in Nottinghapshire is called a mardy child". Ans so I thought I would look at the lexicon for curmudgeons today cos there are so many words in the English language to describe curmudgeons. Sadly we don't know where curmudgeons itself comes from, it's one of the big mysteries. But to go back to mardy, it is simply a spelling, a different spelling for marred, which, in term, if you mar something, you spoil it and we talk about spoilt child so it's as simple as that, really. But whot about grouch? That goes back to a variant of grudge, and in fact grouse as well, if you grouse about something, then you moan about it. That goes back to a Norman French word, so perhaps the Norman aristocrats after 1066 could be a little bit grouchy sometimes. Grumpy, you can first find grumpy in the expression "grumps and humps". You've got the grumps and humps on and both of them represent the sound of discontent. And, finally, two of my favourites, a fussbudget is a surly, sulky fusspot, basically, and an old word for a person filled like a bag with a sort of discintent, if you like. And, finally, if you are really melancholy and a little bit mardy, then you also have the mubblefubbles, which is just the most brilliant wors for somebody, as I say, who's just perhaps on a Monday morning not quite with it and a little bit irritable. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 01/11/17 (doggone, zounds, gadzooks, gorblimey, deuce and dickens, mince)

Thank you to Mtthew Barnes, who e-mailed in and said, "Couid you explain how we ended up with the expression "doggone""? You have to say that with a bad Anerican accent, really - doggone. Where does it come from? And so most of us would associate doggone, as I say, with America and perhaps slightly vexed cowboys in Hollywood westerns. And from its very earliest days, it goes back to the mid-1800s, it's been used to express annoyance, ecpecially in the phrase, "Well I'll be doggone". And dogs don't really come into it at all. I don't think Matthew will be surprised by that. The expression is simply what's known as a minced oath. In other words, it's a euphemism for a swear word or a profanity in some kind. Ans doggone is simply a politer way of saying goddammit, with "dog" operating here as back slang for God. Back slang is when a word is usually just simply spelt backwards, like yob for boy, etc. But in past centuries, there was a lot of oath mincing going on in English, because direct references to God were considered profane, and of course still are for some people too. So, the old-fashioned exclamation, zounds or zoonds, which you will find in comics quite often, is the euphemism for God's wounds, or by God's wounds, reffering to the stigmata of Christ. And gadzooks was a softening of  by God's hooks, which is an allusion to the nails of the cross. And there are so many more, and don't always involve Jesus or Christ. Many do, like jeepers creepers, Jiminy Cricket, beggora, etc, but for Peter's sake, that's another one that we think of, that was St. Peter who was being reffered to there. Gorblimey we know was God blind me. That was a euphemism for that. Deuce and dickens - what the deuse?, what the dickens? - both euphenism for the  Devil. But I mentioned that word minced oath, which is linguistic term for what these are, and they're called that because to mince your words means to cut them short. Mince goes back to the Latin minutus, which gave us minute obviously, but meaning small. And to mince one's words, we have Shakespeare to thank for exact expression. It goes back to Genry V, and Henry says to his French princess, "I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say I love you". And from that it was to speak candidly and fully, not mincing your words, not mincing youe oaths at all, but to give them in full without any cutting up at all. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 03/11/17 (rule of thumb)

I had a e-mail in from Dominic Wilson, who asked, where does the phrase "rule of thumb" originate? And there's a popular and really unpleasant story attached to this expression, which came about in around the 17th century, namely that it reffered to the law that allowed a husband to beat his wife, provided that the stick he used was no thicker that his thumb. And we do know around this time that men were allowed to punish his wives to a resonable degree. Women were seen as the weaker vessels, as being intellectually and phisically inferior, and in law, in fact, a married couple were seen as one entity in which the husband had all the rights and horrible punishments were arount at the time though, something called the scold's bridle, which was said to put on any wife who excessively nagged her husband and it was an incredibly barbarous thing which had a bit on it, sometimes the bit had spikes, that would pierce the tongue and the palate, so really pretty horrible. And I say "reasonable extent", as I say, that wasn't really explained in law, but thankfully there was a little bit of light in that one woman who was killed with a pestle, believe it or not, by her husband, was deemed finally to have been unlawfully killed and her husband was condemned for murder. So we do know that this was all around at the time, but thankfully, there was no such ruling allowing a husband to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. It's never been found in the law books, but the story did become urban myth, even at the time, so you can find lots of contemporary cartoons satirising the judge who was said to have been responsible, who was called Sir Francis Buller. He was quite draconian in his sentences, it has to be said, and he was much criticised by other judges at the time for being hasty and prejudiced. But, as I said, he didn't really , if you look at his history, pass this particular law, but in this case we should be grateful that the origin of the expression is much less colourful than that. It simply reffers to the use of the thumb for measuring things. It's a spit ans sawdust approximation of measurement, and in textile trade, we still have that, for example, so a thumb's breadthis the practiceof allowing a thumb in addition to each yard of cloth measured. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 02/11/17 (villa, village and villain)

Thank you to Christine Robinson, who e-mailed in Sothampton, who is wondering if words like villa, village and villain all have a common origin. And Christine is spot-on. There is a common root. Let's go back to a villa first. That comes frome the Latin for a small country seat, country being an operative word there. And it reflected the fact that for the ancient Romans and Greeks, a villa wasn't just a single residence, it was a country mansion with lots and lots of building attached, so farm building and lots of houses on its estates. As you can imagine, these were occupied by people of some noble birth, some nobility and wealth. But collectively, these buildings - it's a hamlet, if you like, it was pretty much a small hamlet - constituted what they called the villaticum. And over the centuries, this passed into Italian as  villaggio - a G had crept in somehow, we're not quite sure how - and a word that travelled across various countries and tongues until, of course, it arrived in English as  village, reflecting the fact, that it was all these buildings together. Now - to that last in the trio - that's villa and village - the villain. In medieval English, a villain was simply a feudal tenant who was attached to a nobleman's villa. It was a kind of tied serfdom, if you like. In medieval times, most ordinary citizens were villeins. You'll fing that sense retained today with the E-I-N instead of A-I-N. Historians would call them villeins in that sense. They had a fairly toughlife. They had to work incredibly hard. And if you look back to the Roman times, a decree was passed that they weren't actually allowed to leave the estate at any point, apart from to go to war or to deliver a very important message. Otherwise they were not allowed to leave the land. And this was because of a fear that food production would decline if peasants were alowed to travel freely, or if these villeins were allowed to travel freely. Because country dwellers - and these villas were in the country, as I say - were often regarded as bumpkins or yokels, et cetera, they were seen as being uneducated. And not just that, sometimes they were seen as having criminal intent. And that's how our modern sense of villain crept in. The idea was they didn't have much money, and so they had to steal or do other nefarious things in order to make a living. So, villa, village and villain - Christine is absolutely right - they all share a common ancestry. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 31/10/17 (barmy, balmy)

I had a nice e-mail in from Tom Dixon. He said, "Why is BARMY and BALMY used interchangeably?" So balmy with the L, and barmy with the R. He said, "I always thought balmy reffered to weather". He's absolutely right. Balmy of weather with the L is a correct adjective, but for centuries, we've been using the two in parallel to mean also somebody who's a little bit foolish, a little bit mad, if you like, if they're a bit barmy. So I thought I would give you the origin of those two words cos they are very different, but they're quite informative, I think. If you take the balmy,the weather with the L, that goes back to balm in the 13th century, ehich is an aromatic substamce consisting of resins that are mixed with oil. Much prised for their medicinal properties as well as their fragrance. It was widly prised for treating wounds. It's been used in many military endeavours.  Used to soothe and to heal and also used to preserve the dead many centuries ago. Of course, we preserve, if you excuse the pun, the balm in embalming. We use the same resin to preserve the daed. On to the weather, though. If something is balmy, it's soothing or gentle, so you've got this idea of something that heals wounds, that calms things down. And mild, gentle weather, perhaps soothing weather, if you like, hence was called balmy quite early on. But that sense of mad or slightly crazy crept in about three centuries ago, so it was there quite early on, and perhaps people were thinking that old people, particularly, were a bit foppish, a bit mild-mannered, a little bit soft in the head, perhaps that was the link there. But barmy is the correct adjective to use if you do want to say somebody is a little bit foolish. It's used rather affectionately these days. That goes back to the froth in the head of beer.  That is called barm. It's part of fermentation process and, again, a couple of centuries ago, inmates in lunatic assylum were said to be frothing in the mouth so much, so exited and excitable that they were said to be barmy just like that froth in the head of beer. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 30/10/17 (Gotham and knickers)

I'm going to tell a story that draws an unlikely link between Gotham City, of the Batman movies, and ladies' underwear. It goes bach, believe it or not, to a sleepy little village in Nottinghamshire, which got by the name of Gotham. And in the medieval period, the people of Gotham, they got a bit of reputation for being very, very foolish. But it may all have been a slightly subtle ruse, because at the time, King John - who was a villain in all the Robin Hood stories - wanted to built a public highway through the village of Gotham, and thix didn't go down very well with the villagers. So they may have wanted to feign madness, because at this time madness  thought to be highly contagious.   So, clearly, if they were thought to be mad, then King John would not want to go anywhere near them. And the ruse worked, it didn't go through and it remained a slightly sleepy village. If you go forward a few centuries from that time, and you'll find somebody called Washington Irving. And Washington Irving was living in New York, and he worked on a satirical magazine, which was called Salmagundi. And in one of the issues, he reffered to New York as Gotham, and he spelt it in the same was as Gotham. And he knew - he knew his history clearly - because he was inplying that, actually, anyone who wanted to live in New York mast be just slightly foolish and a little bit mad. It was picked up, it seems, in the 1930s by the creators of Batman, who remembered the satirical magaxine ans thought it was the perfect name for New York City. Whether or not they knew the foolish connotation or not, who knows? Anyway to finish off with the ladies' underwear, Washington Irving was also, through his character Dietrich Knickerbocker, the one who gave us the knickerbockers. Because the characters, the Dutch settlers in New York, wore these particular trousers. Knickerbocker, many, many centuries later, was then shortened to knickers. So, Gotham in Batman has, yes, some very tenuous link with a pair of ladies' knickers. But I like the story.