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Your Etymological Queries Answered
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From
Jonathan:
I have conflicting
sources for the word sterling. The Online Etymology Website gives us:
1297, "silver penny," probably from M.E. sterre (see star),
from the stars that appeared in the design of certain Norman coins, + dim.
suffix -ling. The other theory is that it derives from O.Fr.
estedre "stater" (see stater). Sense broadened by 1565 to "money
having the quality of the sterling," and in 1601 to "English money in
general." A pound sterling was originally "a pound weight of sterlings,"
equal to about 240 of them.
However, my Encyclopaedia Britannica tells me the word is from the
money of the Easterlings, North German merchants, who came to England
in the 12th and 13th centuries, and gives quotations from 1247 and 1180.
Are you able to settle this?
The
etymologists at the OED don't like the Easterlings explanation.
They say that the initial "ea" sound would not have been dropped (to form
sterling) because it is stressed. They prefer the "little star"
explanation. It follows the rules of English word development better
than any other explanations. There's no firm proof that this is THE
explanation, but it is the best one. Some of the early Norman pennies
had a small star on them, and Old English steorling "little star"
would have been quite a plausible name for this penny.
The earliest known European instance
of the word in the written record is Old French esterlin, which
appears in a Norman abbey charter of some time between 1084 and 1104.
From this one can see whence the Easterlings explanation arose.
However, the Old French form is thought to have derived from the late Old
English word steorling. The -ling suffix added to the
word star gives the meaning "something with the quality of stars" or
something that literally has stars on it. After the Old French example, the
word turns up in Medieval Latin documents in the form sterilensis
(1145) and in Anglo-Latin as sterlingus (1180). The first
surviving English example comes from 1297 in the form sterlynges and
later in the same document as sterlings.
We tried to find some
examples of Norman coins with stars. We did find a couple, and
they were coined before 1084 (the earliest date cited above). However,
this doesn't prove anything; it's simply interesting.
The town in Scotland named
Stirling is not related to sterling, but its name did get
confused with
sterling a bit in the 15th and 16th centuries. Stirling
is the rendering of the ancient name Strivelin, which some think may
originally have been the name of the river on which Stirling is situated,
now called the Forth. Melanie's maternal grandfather's family name is
Sterling and it is presumed to come from the place name Stirling
with the spelling altered to reflect that of the more commonly known
sterling.
What about starling, the name
of the bird? It is not related to star at all. Instead it
comes from the ancient name for birds of this genus, staroz in Old
Teutonic, or sturnus in Latin. Sturnus is the name of
the genus today. Click the image of the starling to learn more about
these birds from Ark Wildlife.
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From Geena:
I have been
searching, but cannot find anything about the word ponder. I
simply love the word, and I was wondering...where did it come from, and why
is deep-thinking pondering ?
Etymologically
to ponder is to weigh something. It comes ultimately from Latin
pondus "weight". English borrowed it from Old French ponderer.
The sense of today's meaning is "to weigh a matter mentally; to give due
weight and consider fully; to think over, meditate upon." One is
weighing issues in the mind.
The earliest
example of this word in the English written record is from 1330 with the
meaning "estimate the worth, value, or amount of". By 1380 we find the
"mentally weigh" meaning, and it is not until about 1470 that we find an
example with the meaning "to ascertain the weight of". It is unclear
if the word entered English already having developed the mental meaning, or
if earlier written examples of the "weigh" (physically) sense are simply
lost.
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From Lucy:
Where does the phrase
willy nilly come from? And, is it one word or two?
Naturally, I would not waste your time, willy nilly, with questions that are
not important. But, I am in no hurry for an answer.
First we should examine the term's
meaning. It is usually spelled as two words. Today it means,
according to Merriam-Webster, "by compulsion: without choice" and "in a
haphazard or spontaneous manner". The latter is actually the meaning
we at TOWFI most often find to be intended. It derives from the phrase
"will I, nill I" which means "be I willing, be I unwilling". So
willy nilly could be said to mean "whether one likes it or not."
The first occurrence in writing dates from 1608 in the form wille nille.
The meaning developed from there to "indecisive", and then the "haphazard"
sense developed.
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From David B.:
You may be
interested to know the word yahoo is Hebraic for Ya ( G-d) Hoo (
He) So Netanyahu, the
name of the Prime Minister, means : Netan (Gave) Yahu (He G-d)
or "G-d Gave You."
Or perhaps a better English
translation would be "God-given". Thanks, David. We love
surname origins. However, it's unlikely the Hebraic yahu is
related to English yahoo. The first instance of that word
in English comes from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
The Yahoos were a race of uncouth, brutish types, and so the term
yahoo came to mean anyone who lacked cultivation or sensibility, a
lout. Gulliver's Travels dates from 1726.
The other English word yahoo
is an interjection. It dates in writing from only 1976. It
is an exclamation of excitement or delight. This is the meaning we
assumed gave the web search engine Yahoo! its name, but we found
several instances of
this history which seems to negate that:
Yahoo started out as "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" but
eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The
name Yahoo is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious
Oracle," but David Filo and Jerry Yang [the founders] insist
they selected the name because they liked the general definition of
a yahoo, as in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude,
unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo itself first resided on Yang's
student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on
Filo's computer, "Konishiki"—both named after legendary sumo
wrestlers. The "yet another" phrasing goes back at least to the Unix
utility yacc, whose name is an acronym for "yet another compiler
compiler".
We found several other sources
that told the same story.
Here's one. It says the original name for Yahoo was "Jerry
and David's Guide to the World Wide Web".
Anyhoo, back to yahoo.
We mention it in our
discussion of
yeehaw in Issue 208. It's thought to derive from
interjections like yoo-hoo and yo-ho, perhaps with some
influence from Swift's yahoo. Today's more common woo
hoo was perhaps similarly formed. Interestingly,
Philip Resnik, writing
for the
Language Log back in 2004, felt that woo hoo originated in
The Simpsons. There are several other web sources that say the
same thing.
ADDENDUM, Jan 25, 2010: We were
unable to access one of our key databases while preparing the latest
issue, but access has been miraculously restored today, and we are able
to antedate the OED quite significantly on the interjection form of
yahoo. We have an example in print from the Logansport
[Indiana] Press of June 2, 1927. This is almost 50 years
earlier than the OED's earliest citation of 1976! This example does
support the OED's note that the word is "in some cases supposedly
characteristic of cowboys, esp. when executing daring feats on
horseback, etc." The example is an advertisement for the film
The Unknown Cavalier
staring Ken Maynard. |
From John:
English film
and T.V. productions often refer to the police as The Old Bill. Can you
please tell me the derivation of this expression.
We can! Interestingly, even
the Official
Encyclopedia of Scotland Yard claims thirteen possible
derivations of the term. These explanations include events dating
back as far as 1619! However, the term Old Bill doesn't turn up in the
written record until 1915. One of the thirteen suggestions, buried at
No. 10 in the list, does get at the correct origin.
In
fact, the term arose from the name of a cartoon character created during
World War I by Bruce Bairnsfather (1888-1959). Old Bill lived in
London and was a grumpy veteran soldier with a large, bushy moustache.
The cartoon was extremely popular, and so the term Old Bill came
to refer to any man with a bushy moustache. How that sense
developed to "London policeman" (the Metropolitan Police) is unclear.
We wager that you're supposing the police worse bushy moustaches, but
Michael Quinion
tells us that is not supported by the evidence (presumably someone went
through old photos of London policemen to check moustache trends over
the years...). Perhaps, instead, people had caricatures of
policemen in mind when they started calling their bobbies "Old Bill"? |
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