history

Dog Days of Summer

/ Erin Servais / Leave a comment

 

Things sure are heating up. Even in my home state of Minnesota (where it just stopped snowing two months ago), I have all the fans running full blast. That’s because we’ve officially entered the dog days of summer.

The dog days of summer are known as being the hottest period of the year, running from July 3 to August 11. However, the name has nothing to do with our beloved Fidos.

The name actually comes from Sirius, the brightest star in our sky. Sirius is known as the Dog Star and is the chief star in the constellation Canis Major. Dog days traditionally began when Sirius rose at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), causing Romans to attribute the extra heat to the meeting up of the two stars. (Due to shifts in the equinoxes, this is no longer happens, at least if I correctly understood all of the astronomy articles I’ve been reading.)

Etymology
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term dog days comes from the 1530s, when it was known in Latin as dies caniculares, translated from the Greek hēmerai kynades.

 

Erin Servais is the founder of Dot and Dash, LLC, an author-services company focusing on women writers and offering a range of editing, coaching, and social media packages.

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Okay! OK! O.K.! Ok?

/ Erin Servais / 7 Comments

You are, no doubt, familiar with OK. These two strung-together letters have made one of the world’s most commonly used words. Today we’re going to learn the origin of this universal term for all right, sure, and fine and which of its various spellings are correct.

Etymology
OK started as a joke. In 1839, it was a trend for newspapers in Boston to use initialisms that represented misspelled phrases. For example, there was K.G., which stood for know go (instead of no go), and N.C., which stood for nuff ced (instead of enough said). This is how OK entered the language. Newspapers of the time used it to stand for oll korrect, a jokey version of all correct, funny because the spelling was the opposite of being all correct.

And then came this mutton-chopped fellow:

When President Martin Van Buren was running for reelection in 1840, his fundraising group in New York was named the O.K. Club. In this instance, OK also referenced his nickname Old Kinderhook (which came from his birthplace in the New York village of Kinderhook). Van Buren lost, but the word gained popularity.

Spellings of OK
OK was originally spelled with periods, looking like this: O.K. Today, it is more common to see it spelled as OK (without the periods) and okay. If you look it up in the dictionary, you will see either OK and okay listed as correct spellings of the word or all three versions: O.K., OK, and okay.

Style guidelines are largely fuzzy on the issue of one preferred spelling. For instance, The Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t even acknowledge the issue. However, The Associated Press Stylebook lists OK as the preferred spelling. The most important point is to pick one spelling and stick with it throughout your writing to maintain consistency.

However, note that spelling the word with lowercase letters (ok) is not, well, OK. I mean okay.

Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary online: http://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=OK&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

Chicago Manual of Style online: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/YouCouldLookItUp/faq0014.html

Online Etymology Dictionary: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=ok&searchmode=none

Teetotaler

/ Erin Servais / 2 Comments

“Veteran drudge” of The Baltimore Sun newspaper, John E. McIntyre, recently blogged a list of slang words for being drunk:

schnockered
shellacked
snozzled
soused

Lots of S words, apparently.

But what about slang for the opposite end of the imbibing spectrum?

teetotalism: the principal or practice of complete abstinence from alcoholic drinks
—Merriam-Webster

teetotaler: one who practices or advocates teetotalism
—Merriam-Webster

It’s a common mistake to think that teetotaler has to do with tea—as if one who does not consume alcohol hits up the teakettle instead. Actually, this term dates to the age of temperance societies (groups that pushed for mandatory abstinence from alcohol), with its first citation being in 1834.

As explained in the Online Etymology Dictionary, it is thought that teetotaler comes from the word totally. The tee in the front of the word is the sound of the letter T and was added for emphasis—as if to mean extra totally or totally totally.

Example: That teetotaler is extra totally BO-RING.

Severe weather etymology

/ Erin Servais / 2 Comments

I have previously written about the etymology of tsunami. Today we are delving into the history of words for other serious weather systems.

Note: I received all my information from the Online Etymology Dictionary—an amazing, exhaustive resource that I strongly encourage you to check out.

blizzard
The first citation of blizzard comes from 1859, though it gained popularity after a particularly hard winter in the United States during 1880. It is believed that the word is onomatopœic. In addition, in the 1770s, American English used the word blizz to mean a “violent rainstorm.” It came to be used to mean a winter storm thanks to people in the Upper Midwest of the United States.

hurricane
Hurricane entered the English language in the 1550s from the Spanish word huracan. However, it took time (as is usual) for the spelling to become standardized. In the late sixteenth century, there were 39 recorded spellings, including forcane, herrycano, harrycaine, and hurlecane.

tornado
Tornado began in the 1550s, when it meant a “violent, windy thunderstorm.” It probably came from the Spanish word for “thunderstorm,” tronada. Tornado came to mean an “extremely violent whirlwind” in the 1620s.

typhoon
In the 1550s, typhoon in English was spelled tiphon, coming from the Greek word typhon, which means “whirlwind.” During this time, it meant a “violent storm, whirlwind, tornado.” In the 1580s, it took on the meaning of a “cyclone, violent hurricane of India or the China Seas” after a translation of an Italian story of a voyage to the East Indies in which the author encountered a touffon.

The King James Bible gave English some awesome phrases

/ Erin Servais / 6 Comments

Courtesy of mattleese.blogspot.com.

Regardless of your faith, or lack thereof, it is simply astonishing to learn the number of common English phrases that come from the King James Bible. “A drop in the bucket,” “the root of the matter,” “fight the good fight,” these phrases all got their life from that version of the bible. Yeah. Really. C’est vrai, for our French readers.

The December 2011 issue of National Geographic discusses the history and influence of the King James Bible, and in an article titled “A Bible’s Gift to Language,” it lists several famous phrases the book originated. In the list below, I have included phrases from that article and also phrases I found at the website The Phrase Finder.

 

 

Common English phrases from the King James Bible:

A drop in the bucket – Isaiah 40:15

A house divided against itself cannot stand. – Matthew 12:25

A labor of love – Hebrews 6:10

A thorn in the flesh – 2 Corinthians 12:7

All things must pass. – Matthew 24:6

At their wits’ end – Psalms 107:27

Be horribly afraid – Jeremiah 2:12

Coat of many colors – Genesis 37:3

Eat, drink, and be merry. – Ecclesiastes 8:15

Fall from grace – Galatians 5:4

Fight the good fight. – Timothy 6.12

How are the mighty fallen – Samuel 1:19

Know for a certainty – Joshua 23:13

Many are called, but few are chosen. – Matthew 22:14

My cup runneth over. – Psalms 23:5

Out of the mouths of babes – Psalms 8:2

Set thine house in order – Isaiah 38:1

The ends of the earth – Zechariah 9:10

The love of money is the root of all evil. – Timothy 6:10

The root of the matter – Job 19:28

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. – Matthew 26:41

To everything there is a season. – Ecclesiastes 3:1

Turned the world upside down – Acts 17:6

Want to learn more?
There are even more common phrases that were popularized by (but did not originated from) the King James Bible and more phrases that came into the language from earlier versions of the bible. To learn more about those phrases, check out the site I mentioned earlier, The Phrase Finder.

Also, author David Crystal wrote an entire book about this subject, called Begat. Click here to read an interview he did with NPR about his book and to read an excerpt.