Camouflage Before it was a military term, camouflage was French street-slang popular among pickpockets and other shadowy figures in 1870s Paris. A combination of the Italian word camuffare (to disguise) and the French word camouflet (puff of smoke), this word described a common practice among thieves:
Echelon Echelon comes from the French échelon, a word whose literal meaning is “rung of a ladder.” Today the term applies generally to a level or rank of accomplishment or authority, but initially it was confined to military use in reference to a step-like formation of troops. While echelon entered English in a military context, it was the first and second World Wars that extended …
Hypochondriac Hypochondriac comes ultimately from the Greek word hypokhondria, which literally means “under the cartilage (of the breastbone).” In the late 16th century, when hypochondriac first entered the English language, it referred to the upper abdomen. The upper abdomen, it turns out, was thought to be the seat of melancholy at a time when the now-outdated medical theory of the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow …
In a 2013 column for The Atlantic, Stephen Fried apologized for coining the term fashionista. The word, which Fried first used in 1993, started appearing in dictionaries just six years later. But what is it about the word that Fried now finds problematic? What is a fashionista? First, let’s look at fashionista. This word originally appeared in Fried’s biography of supermodel Gia Carangi, Thing of Beauty: The …
Etymology For a word that originates from the Greek term etymon, which literally translates to “true sense,” etymology certainly has a lot of untruth surrounding its existence since it entered English in the late fourteenth century.
We’ve already discussed that hackers use dictionaries to help hack your passwords, but what if your passwords were controlled by your mind, not by words? Researchers at UC Berkeley’s School of Information announced that they are working on technology that reads your mind to open your email account, buy an app on iTunes, and check your bank balance.
Karma entered English as a religious concept in the nineteenth century, but as it gained popularity, it took on additional meanings, that while still spiritual, are not loaded with the same religious connotations as the original sense. English speaker’s first introduction to karma was in the context of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Originally coming from the Sanskrit term for “action” or “fate,” karma is …
For almost 2000 years—from the time of Aristotle until the early 17th century—popular theory posited that the earth was the center of the universe, and that everything in space rotated around it in concentric spheres filled with a heavenly fifth element called quintessence.
Sentimental, a word intrinsically tied to Romanticism, entered English in the mid-eighteenth century, about 50 years before the Romantic era was in full swing. Scholars officially date the Romantic period from around 1800 to 1850, with the publication of William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads in 1798 marking the palpable beginning of the era. In 1800, Wordsworth published a new edition of Lyrical Ballads, this time including …
Desiderata is a plural noun, with the singular form desideratum, meaning “things wanted or needed.” For many, the word desiderata most often evokes a famous poem by Max Ehrmann, written in 1927 and often referred to simply as Desiderata, without attribution or quotation marks. The poem begins with the oft-quoted lines, “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, / and remember what peace there …
A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same thing.)
A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same thing.)
