When I was 5 years old my father brought home a Commodore 64 for my sister and me. Over time we accumulated hundreds of pirated games, one of them being the 1985 Datasoft classic Zorro. Of course, the Commodore was dead by about 1988 and Zorro, like all my other games, faded into memory...or did it? See, for some reason the Zorro theme still haunts me. Twenty years after last playing the game I can still hum the music. So, in some way, today's hump is my chance to excise the Zorro demon for good.

Zorro is the masculine form of the Spanish zorra "fox". It first made its appearance in English in 1838, but it wasn't until 1919 that Johnston McCulley created the Robin Hood-like character who went on to disrobe Catherine Zeta Jones to her skivvies in the 1998 movie The Mask of Zorro. Interestingly, Cathy Z appeared in 2001's America's Sweethearts with Hank Azaria, azaria being the original Basque root of zarra.

A question to the audience: Does anyone know if Hank Azaria voices the character of Zorro in "The Poke of Zorro" from The Simpsons episode "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)" (season 11, episode 5)? I haven't seen the show in awhile so I forget, but if there's any karmic balance of etymology in the universe then I know the answer is yes.

I can still hum that damn song.

zorro [Online Etymology Dictionary]
Zorro [Wikipedia]
Zorro [Lemon 64]
E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt) [The Simpsons Archive]

Labels: Basque, Spanish, The Daily Hump

I began today pondering whether jade, the gemstone, has any relation to the sensation of being jaded caused from over-indulgence. As I discovered the words are not only unrelated but one exists purely because of French gender confusion.

In the 17th c., when the gemstone was still rather unfamiliar, the feminine l'ejade became the masculine le jade via a simple error and hence our modern word jade is not ejade. L'ejade comes from the Spanish piedra de (la) ijada (stone of colic) because of the gem's supposed ability to cure this ailment. Ijada goes back to the Latin ilia meaning flanks or kidney areas (see ilium, one of the pelvic bones).

The blah kind of jade is a figurative sense coming from a noun meaning "a beaten down horse". This may be related to the Old Norse jalda, meaning "mare", which is itself from Finno-Ugric. The OED says there's no evidence to support any of this but it's as good a guess as any.

jade [Online Etymology Dictionary]
jade [OED]

Labels: Finno-Ugric, French, Latin, Old Norse, Spanish, The Daily Hump

My friend Bob Wexler and I were having an IM discussion this morning regarding another one of our kooky, get-rich-quick, harebrained business ideas (actually, I'm not going to discuss it here because it just may be viable...). His final declaration was our plan is "a cynch." Obvious spelling errors aside (and most likely the observation would ultimately prove patently false), it got me thinking: Why is something that's easy a "cinch"?

The idea comes from one of cinch's many definitions: "A firm or secure hold" (OED). Cinch's sense of facility is an American invention, and a relatively recent one at that, first making an appearance around 1898. The word cinch originally referred to the girth of a saddle and came from the Spanish cincha, also meaning "girdle." The Spanish came from the Latin cingulum ("girdle" again) which came from the Latin verb cingere, meaning "to surround, encircle." And this can be traced back even further to the Proto-Indo-European base *kenk- meaning "to gird, encircle." Related words include precinct, succinct and, interestingly, shingles ("The inflammation often extends around the middle of the body, like a girdle.").

cinch [AHD]
cinch [Online Etymology Dictionary]
cinch [OED]

Labels: Latin, PIE, Spanish, The Daily Hump

Today's hump is neither humorous nor perverse. You've been had. This morning we're looking at gallivant, which the OED describes as a "humorous perversion" (ah!) of gallant (noting that gallivant is generally used in its present participle form gallivanting). Gallant isn't just a ugly old-folks car. Back in the early 19th c., around the same time gallivant first appeared in print (1823), gallant was being used to mean "to gad about idly". Interestingly the OED defines gallivant as "To gad about in a showy fashion, esp. with persons of the other sex." What's with gad?

Gad (in verb form) is of obscure origin. Although it's possible the word comes from the same root as the noun form (i.e. gadfly, where the sense of gad refers to a goad used for prodding cattle), the OED notes that its usage quotes don't support this thesis. Rather, they theorize that gad is "a back-formation" of gadling, which during the 16th c. meant a wayfarer or vagabond. The original sense of gadling, as it was used in Beowulf ("His gædelinges guðgewædu"), meant "companion" or "fellow" and it comes from the Old English root gæd meaning "fellowship". Incidentally, this is the same root which gives us our modern verb to gather.

The verb gallant is from the adjective form and is of French origin. The OED notes

The early senses of the adj. in Fr. are: ‘dashing, spirited, bold’ (obsolete in Fr., but the source of the prevailing sense in mod.Eng.); ‘gay in appearance, handsome, gaily attired’; and ‘fitted for the pleasures of society, attractive in manners, courteous, polished’. The last of these gave rise in mod.Fr. to the specialized senses ‘politely attentive to women’, and ‘amorous, amatory’, which were adopted into Eng. in the 17th c., and are usually distinguished by the accentuation ga'llant.

The Old French root, galant, is from the past participle form of the Old French verb galer, meaning "to make merry". Via a Spanish lineage this is where Modern English gets its word gala.

WordHumper returns on Monday. Gobble gobble.

Labels: French, Old English, Old French, Spanish, The Daily Hump

About 6 weeks ago I began taking Persian. It's an amazingly beautiful and logically constructed language that shares numerous ancient Indo-European roots with our modern English. Like when learning any language, one of the first things you do is count to 10:

yêk, do, sé, chahâr, panj, shesh, haft, hasht, no, dah

This leads us to the first of today's words. Thanks to the early works of George Harrison, the sitar, originally of northern Indian origin, has become a fairly recognizable instrument in the West. The word sitar is, however, purely Persian and comes from the words sé (three) and tar (string). Per Wikipedia:

A similar instrument is used to this day in Afghanistan, and the original Persian name is still used. Both instruments are most likely derived from the Kurdish tembûr, which is a long, lute-like instrument with no gourd resonating chamber. Both the tembûr and sehtar were used in pre-Islamic Persia and are used in Iran today.

For whatever reason the instrument gained strings when adopted into Indian culture.

Upon learning the etymology of sitar in class last night I immediately drew a connection to guitar. Guitar seems to share the tar (string) root, which would make sense, but what is the gui- portion? Again, Wikipedia:

The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra, derived from earlier Greek word kithara. Prospective sources for various names of musical instruments that guitar could be derived from appear to be a combination of two Indo-European roots: guit-, similar to Sanskrit sangeet meaning "music", and -tar a widely attested root meaning "chord" or "string".

The word guitar may be a Persian loanword to Iberian Arabic. The word qitara is an Arabic name for various members of the lute family that preceded the Western guitar. The name guitarra was introduced into Spanish when such instruments were brought into Iberia by the Moors after the 10th century.

Per the OED, guitar first made it into the English language in the 14th century, in the form of gittern. You may also be interested to note that the Greek kithara (cithara) is responsible for our English word zither.

Labels: Arabic, Greek, Kurdish, Persian, Spanish, The Daily Hump

I was waiting in line at the salad bar yesterday when a very conservatively dressed woman in front of me ordered the "mescaline greens." It was obvious what she meant as she was pointing to the mesclun. That got me thinking; do mescaline and mesclun share a common etymology? Upon returning to the office I began my research. Mesclun is related to the Provençal mesclom, mesclumo meaning mixture. These words harken back to the Latin verb misculāre, to mix thoroughly. Interestingly, the word meddle also stems from the Latin misculāre. Thus, meddle and mesclun are sort of linguistic cousins.

But I'm getting off topic; what about mescaline? Mescaline has been used for centuries in Native American religious ceremonies, most notably by the Huichols of Mexico and The Doors of LA. The actual chemical that causes the notorious hallucinations was first extracted in 1897 by a German, Arthur Heffter. Thus, not surprisingly, the word mescaline has both American Spanish (mescal) and German (-in) roots. The root, mescal, made it into English on its own as an accepted name for the peyote button that contains the chemical mescaline. It is also a synonym for maguey, which is any of various American plants of the genus Agave, especially the century plant. Finally, mescal can also be the liquor or food created by preparing certain agaves. And, we find, mescal's etymology is rooted in this liquor and food sense: American Spanish, from Nahuatl mexcalli, mescal liquor : metl, maguey plant + perhaps ixca, xca, to bake.

So, there you have it: mesclun and mescaline do not share a common etymology, and although you're unlikely to find mescaline at your salad bar there's nothing that says mescal may not be a tasty addition to your mesclun.

Mescaline [Wikipedia]
Mesclun [The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition]

Labels: German, Latin, Nahuatl, Spanish, The Daily Hump