What a shambles of an etymology

This etymology was told to me a lifetime ago by my Shakespeare teacher in high school as an example of how words can change meaning over time, and I never forgot it.

The word shambles today primarily means a mess, a scene of disorder, something disorganized.

But it used to mean a meat market, or a butchery.  In fact, in York, there's an area called The Shambles, where historically butchers plied their trade.  It's a fascinating area, because of how the walls are close together to provide shade for the hanging meats, and how the street slopes down on both sides toward the middle, so as to sluice all the blood and offal more easily.

Anyway, the reason shambles became known as a butchery or slaughterhouse is because it refers to the bench on which the meats were laid out for customers to see.  The word itself actually descends from some Old English, Old Norse, and Old Germanic words, ultimately derived from Latin scamillus, meaning a low stool or bench.

So the word really made a few twists and turns over the centuries.  In English, the sense evolved from "footstool (1300s) to "place where meat is sold" to "slaughterhouse" (1540s), then figuratively "place of butchery" (1590s), and, generally, "confusion, mess" (1901, usually in plural).

Where'd you get the tuxedo

I was curious the other day as to the etymology of the word tuxedo.

Turns out, it's not derived from any words originally referring to parties or clothes.  It's derived from a toponym, Tuxedo Park, New York, developed as a private hunting and fishing resort in the late 1800s.  Apparently, it was brought there by James Brown Potter, who had been introduced to the garment by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII).

The name Tuxedo Park is possibly derived from a Native American word of the Lenape language, tucsedo or p'tuxseepu, which is said to mean "crooked water" or "crooked river."

So it seems to me that the garment itself, if the above is true (and here is, apparently, a first-person account), should really be called the Potter coat or the Edward VII suit.

Gamahouche

Gamahouche or gamahuche.   I came across this archaic term in, unlikely though it is, a modern urban murder mystery by highly lauded novelist Lawrence Block (in Burglars Can't Be Choosers, 1977).

It seems to be a Victorian term for cunniligus:

I was sliding the final drawer back in the desk when Ray asked, "What the hell does gamahouche mean?"

I made him spell it, then took the book away from him and looked for myself.  "I think it means to go down on a girl," I said.

I find it on the web at this Fark discussion, the Urban Dictionary of all things (it's usually a source for invented silliness or poorly written insults), the Wiktionary, and this rather steamy Victorian novel.

I shall endeavor to insert this word (heh heh) into modern parlance as often as mores allow.

Its etymology is unclear.

I could eat a horse

From the Inky Fool:

What with the news that almost every snack in Europe is actually my little pony, and the jokes about spaghetti bologneighs, I keep being asked about the origin of the phrase I could eat a horse. Specifically, does it mean:

1) I am so hungry that I could eat something as large as a horse, an elephant or a blue whale.

Or

2) I am so hungry that I would be prepared eat something unusual, like horse, squirrel or cockroach.

So I set off to trace the phrase back. It turned out to be popular all the way through the nineteenth century. But once you get far enough, the phrase changes to I could eat a horse behind the saddle. 

 So, it's not the largeness but the lack of appeal that is unusual in the phrase.

Also: "thirsty enough to drink barley-water."  Or, to use a modern equivalent, Cherry Pepsi.

Ciao, slave

Who knew?

ciao 

parting salutation, 1929, dialectal variant of Italian schiavo "(your obedient) servant," literally "slave," from Medieval Latin sclavus "slave" (see slave (n.)).

I love the Online Etymology Dictionary!

Git outta here, ya tinhorn

In comics and other pop culture, I have since a very young age heard the word tinhorn and kinda-sorts assumed it meant about the same as "greenhorn," an inexperienced or naive person.  But "tinhorn" actually means a cheap person, or a scoundrel, especially one who gambles for low stakes.

The Online Etymology dictionary says tinhorn comes from the tin cups the gamblers used to rattle dice.  Which of course gives rise to the question, what's the horn part?  Well, that's from the horn of an animal, but as a verb, as in to horn in on something.  So a tinhorn is a gambler, shaking a tin cup, horning in on game but not playing for big money, so kind of bothering everyone.  World Wide Words has an excellent summary of the derivation.

Oh, not Patient Zero?

"Patient Zero" is the common name for an individual supposed to have been the starting point of a viral outbreak or pandemic.

But, did you know that the original "patient zero," Gaetan Dugas of the HIV epidemic, was originally labelled "Patient O," that's the letter O as in outside of California?

And it turns out that Dugas was not responsible for bringing AIDS to New York, as some shrill fear-mongers said in the press.  The virus was already present there when he was spreading it.  But then, it's easier to point fingers at a boogeyman rather than understanding science or just accepting the vagaries of biology.

I'm the head honcho around here, comprende?

There is a common belief, probably because of the fact that it ends in o, that the word honcho is of Spanish origin.  Well actually!  It's derived from Japanese.  Han means corps or squad and cho means the head or chief.  This came to English through American GIs in Japan during WWII.  

A propos, "head honcho" is therefore a redundancy, since the honcho is already the leader of the squad.  (Although, I guess, there could reasonably be a series of leaders, as in the army, with one leader of the leaders, who is in charge.)  Anyway, remember, redundancies are repetitions of the same or similar words, and therefore you should endeavor to try to avoid them.  That said, now I'm off to the ATM machine.

These tacos will make you explode all right

Everyone knows that burrito is from the Spanish meaning "little donkey" (based on the food's resemblance to the animal's back, I assume), but I learned a fun etymology about another delicious Mexican food.

Taco comes from a Spanish word meaning plug or light wadding.  It's Germanic, not Romance, in origin, and related to the English word "tack."

So how does that come to mean the tacos we know today?  Well, actually it's uncertain.  But the best guess, as explained in this Smithsonian article, is:

It dates from the 18th century and the silver mines in Mexico, because in those mines the word "taco" referred to the little charges they would use to excavate the ore. These were pieces of paper that they would wrap around gunpowder and insert into the holes they carved in the rock face. When you think about it, a chicken taquito with a good hot sauce is really a lot like a stick of dynamite. The first references [to the taco] in any sort of archive or dictionary come from the end of the 19th century. And one of the first types of tacos described is called tacos de minero—miner’s tacos. So the taco is not necessarily this age-old cultural expression; it’s not a food that goes back to time immemorial.

However!  This is just a theory.

This site states that taco comes from the Nahuatl word tlahco which means "half or in the middle," referring to the way it is formed.

Wikipedia gives space to both ideas.  Maybe both are true, and they just converged linguistically by coincidence.  Either way, if a taco makes you blow up nowadays, it will be in the bathroom, not in a miner's cave.

Slang does NOT come from "shortened language," read an article for once

Yesterday I talked about snark and how it isn't a portmanteau of "snide remark."

Well, one of the dumbest things I've come across about false derivations is that slang derives from "shortened language."  No, of course it doesn't.  Not only is this not how sounds get elided and corrupted, slang itself isn't even necessarily shorter than other phrases.  It would surely only take a few seconds of thought to realize how silly this idea is.

In almost all cases, words derive from older words.

Slang may come from an Old Danish word meaning to throw, as in to throw around some words, tossing out your special language.  Or, it may come from a related word in Middle English meaning a delineated piece of land, as in the turf used by thieves and scoundrels who talk in their special argot, or slang.  Etymology Online as always has a good summary of this evolution of the word.

Snarky about false derivations

I was reading this book!  And in it a character said that the word snarky is derived from snark, which itself was formed as a portmanteau of snide remark.  sn + ark = snark.  What a cool story!  Unfortunately, totally untrue.

"Snark" actually comes from "snarky,"  Low German snarken meaning to snort or sneer.  It's derived ultimately from the PIE root nas for nose, and is related etymologically to the word "narc."  The modern meaning of contemptuous or mocking critique only dates back to about the 1990s.

It has nothing to do with the "Hunting of the Snark," one of my favorite poems.

I got shingles from a roof

Let's talk about shingles, or as I like to refer to them, spinal herpes.  

Shingles, the disease, is a viral infection also known as herpes zoster (more on that in a minute).  It's caused by the same virus that causes chicken pox.  I have had it, and it wasn't painful, but it itched like crazy.  Many people, especially older people, report that it hurts.  Most commonly, shingles presents as a rash that develops as a stripe of blisters that wraps around either the left or right side of your torso.

It's this wrap-around feature that gives us its name.  The word shingles comes from from Medieval Latin cingulus, a loan-translation of Greek zoster which means "girdle."  This ultimately derives from the Latin cingulum "girdle," due to how the disease wraps like a girdle around your midsection.

The rooftop shingle comes from the Latin scindula which derives from a root meaning splinter, or tear off, because shingles are just pieces that tear off from a roof.  The fact that the two meanings diverged into one English word is just an unfortunate coincidence.

Well I'll be buggered

TIL that the verb "bugger" as in buggery is derived from...  Take it away, Online Etymology Dictionary:

from Medieval Latin Bulgarus "a Bulgarian," so called from bigoted notions of the sex lives of Eastern Orthodox Christians or of the sect of heretics [the Bogomils] that was prominent there 11c. Compare Old French bougre "Bulgarian," also "heretic; sodomite."

This sect, which appears to be basically one that believes in dualism (Satan as creator and possibly God's little brother), is named after the Bulgarian priest that founded it, Bogomil. Wikipedia provides further information:

"Buggery" first appears in English in 1330 with the sense "abominable heresy," though "bugger" in a sexual sense is not recorded until 1555.  The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology quotes a similar form—"bowgard" (and "bouguer"), but claims that the Bulgarians were heretics "as belonging to the Greek Church, sp. Albigensian." Webster's Third New International Dictionary gives the only meaning of the word "bugger" as sodomite, "from the adherence of the Bulgarians to the Eastern Church considered heretical."

The name of Bulgaria itself, of course, comes from the river Volga.  They are the people of the Volg, or Bolg.  So "buggery" is not derived from Bulgaria itself, but ultimately from a tenth-century heretical priest.

Those Bulgarians sure are cute little buggers!

Let me take you to... Acacia Avenue

I came across this word today, Acacia Avenue.  I guess it's actually two words, but taken together they make up one word meaning.  It's a common street name in the UK, so by extension is a British euphemism for the middle class or hoi polloi, much as some commentators use "Main Street" to refer to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average, the salt of the earth, regular folk, the common clay of the Midwest.  You know... morons.

Whoops, got off track there. 

Here are some usages I found on the web:

• Acacia Avenue is a cliche of British culture, a metaphor for a middle-class suburban street and a middle-class suburban life. (This from a piece Auntie Beeb did on "Lives of Acacia Avenue Revealed")
• The householders of Acacia Avenue, the nesting box of Middle England, have taken time off from dusting the garden gnomes to respond to a survey about their lives - which could be summarised as "mustn't grumble".
• Acacia Avenue has been a byword for contented suburban dullness at least since the 1940s, when Henry Cass made the film 29 Acacia Avenue (although the play dates from earlier).
  

Pico de gallo!

Have you been eating a tomato-onion-and-cilatro-based Mexican salsa all your life and never bothered to wonder why it has the name it does?  Well then you are in for a treat!  Translated in Spanish, pico de gallo literally means "beak of rooster."  What's that got to do with the salsa?  Well, its etymology is uncertain.  Some believe this is because it was originally eaten by pinching between the thumb and finger, making the shape of a rooster's beak. 

Citation needed: Here are some other theories that Wikipedia has to offer:

• In their book Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico, Rick Bayless and Deann Groen speculate that the name might allude to the bird feed-ike texture and appearance of the mince.  (That doesn't sound very likely to me, and anyhoo, where would the beak come in?)
  
• Many native residents of the Sonoran Mexico region explain that the salsa is thus named because the serrano pepper resembles a rooster's beak in shape.
• According to natives of California's central valley, it is believed that the term originated from the rooster’s beak. Roosters, who are known to peck noodles off of unsuspecting children's faces, have a fierce temperament. The fiery "bite" of the rooster is supposedly akin to the spiciness of the pico de gallo.  (Hmm, then why wouldn't it be called "peck of the rooster"?)
  

Because the colors of the red tomato, white onion, and green chili and cilantro are reminiscent of the colors of the Mexican flag, it is also called salsa bandera ('flag sauce'). 

I'll take my salary in salt

The word "salary" comes from the Latin root sal-, indicating salt.  It derives from Anglo-French salarie, Old French salaire "wages, pay, reward," from Latin salarium "an allowance, a stipend, a pension," said to be originally "salt-money, soldier's allowance for the purchase of salt."  

Now, that probably makes a lot of sense, since salt was so valuable in olden times.  But also!  The word "salad" comes from the same root, because the Romans liked to dress their vegetables and leafy greens in a salty dressing for flavor.  

Bringing the whole thing full circle, "lettuce" is slang for money (because they're both green), which is your salary.  So there's really a great reason to get salty over how little lettuce you're getting in your pay.

That's a nice pair of avocados

Word fact time!  The delicious fruit the avocado does not derive from the Romance language word for lawyer but from a Nahuatl word ahuakatl which meant both the fruit and "testicle."  Now you know!

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2016 EDIT TO THIS POST: According to this guy, the above appears to be only a later meaning, with the Nahuatl word originally only indicating the fruit and Spanish speakers in the 16th century adopting it for the old huevos based on appearance.  So while it's true that the word ahuakatl or some later derivation was indeed used for both the food and the ol' nuts, that's just the way people use words, like saying nuts or balls or weiner.  Those words aren't etymologically attached to body parts; they're just appropriated due to their physical similarity.

What's totally false is that guacamole means testicle sauce.  I mean, come on.