Memory Monday: Origin of Words

My Great-Grandfather's School Picture

ORIGIN OF POPULAR WORDS

As some of you may know, I put together and publish a “reprinted” historical magazine each month. I have been doing this for almost two years. The first edition was dated May 1865—just weeks after President Lincoln was assassinated. I “create” a new edition each month 150 years after the date listed on the monthly magazine—in May 2015, I did May 1865, June 2015, I did June 1865, and so forth.

Other than the front page, along with Letters to the Editor and Manners Matter columns, all the tidbits, articles and book chapters come right out of books and magazines published before the date of the magazine. It’s a lot of research, but I love it—and I learn a lot from it. Doing this also helps me connect with family members that lived during that time. These were the books and magazines that were available to my great-great-great grandparents as well as their children and grandchildren. My great-grandfather is in the picture above, although I’m not sure exactly which one he was. I do know that it was taken in Illinois because that where he lived at the time. Maybe, his mother read from some of the magazines I used. Maybe she read some of the children’s stories to my great-grandfather and my great-great uncles and aunts.

Anyway, one of the things I came across this last month in the bound book of The Ladies Repository, from 1865, was an interesting article. I will show part of it below:

BANKRUPT. Few words have so remarkable a history as this. The money-changers of Italy had, it is said, benches or stalls in the boruse or exchange in former times. At these, they conducted their ordinary business. When any of them fell back in the world and became insolvent, his bench was broken, and the name of broken bench, or banko rouo, was given to him. When the word was first adopted into English, it was nearer the Italian than it now is, being bankerout instead of bankrupt.

BIGOT. This word is not, as generally, supposed, of religious but of secular and political origin. Rollo, Duke of Normandy, receiving Gissa, daughter of King Charles, in marriage, and with her the investiture of the Dukedom, refused to perform the usual ceremony of kiss ing the king's foot in token of subjection unless the king would hold it out for that purpose, and when he urged it, answered hastily, "No, by God," whereupon the king gave him the nickname of by God or bigot, and the name has passed to all stubborn and peevish insisters on their own notions.

CANTEEN. This is, perhaps, the only word in our language which, originally English, passed into a foreign tongue and was afterward taken back in a modified form. As originally spoken by the Saxon it was simply a tin can; but the Gaul, as is his wont, placing the noun before the adjective, and pronouncing the letter i as e, brought it out as cantin, pronounced canteen. Adopting a thousand other French terms, the dull Englishman took back his own original word in a new shape without any inquiries on the subject, and hence we now say canteen instead of tin-can.

GROG. Admiral Vernon—the same after whom Mount Vernon was named—was the first to require his men to drink their spirits mixed with water. In bad weather he was in the habit of walking the deck in a rough grogram cloak, and hence had obtained the name of "Old Grog" in the service. Such was the origin of the name applied to rum and water.

HURRAH. Thousands of people have shouted "hurrah!" "many a time and oft," but comparatively few know its derivation and primary meaning. It originated among the Eastern nations, where it, was used as a war cry from the belief that every man who died in battle for his country went to heaven. It is derived from the Sclavonic word Hurraj, which means "to Paradise."

LADY. In an old work of the date of 1762 is the following account of the origin of the term lady: "As I have studied more that appertains to ladies than to gentlemen, I will satisfy you how it came to pass that women of fortune were called ladies even before their husbands had any title to convey the mark of distinction to them. It was generally the fashion for a lady of affluence once a week, or oftener, to distribute a certain quantity of bread to her poor neighbors with her own bands, and she was called by them hlaf-day; that is, loaf-giver, or as it is sometimes explained, the bread-giver. These two words were in time corrupted, and the meaning of the term is now as little known as the practice which gave rise to it."

WINDFALL. Some of the English nobility, by the tenure of their estates, were forbidden felling any of the trees upon them, the timber being reserved for the use of the royal navy. Such trees as fell without cutting were the property of the occupant. A tornado, therefore, was a perfect Godsend in every sense of the term to those who had occupancy of extensive forests, and the windfall was some times of great value.

If you wish to read all of the article, or if you wish to see the magazine archives for my magazine—Worbly’s Family Monthly Magazine, go to http://worblysmagazine.com/ It is a lot of fun to explore the world of the mid-19^th Century.