Word of the Day

Awning “a rooflike shelter of canvas extending from a building to provide protection” is a relatively common word with a relatively uncommon history. Of obscure origin, several theories persist regarding its source. One is a derivation from Middle French auvans “sloping roof” (compare modern French auvent), also of obscure origin but sometimes connected to a Celtic source, which would have been reduced to the form awn and compounded with the suffix -ing. Another theory connects awning, because of its earliest use strictly in nautical contexts, to a Low German source cognate to English haven, with the sense of “shelter.” Awning was first recorded in English in the mid-1620s in the writings of Captain John Smith, whose name you may recognize for its association with the Jamestown colony in what is now Virginia.

The origin of conundrum “anything that puzzles” is itself a conundrum! Though it resembles Latin, conundrum likely belongs to the same family of pseudo-Latin terms as hocus-pocus. The earliest clue to conundrum’s origins is a 1645 text that connects the term to Oxford University and appears to define it as “pun, wordplay.” However, conundrum predates this instance by several decades, appearing in 1596 as a derogatory term for another person and later, in the 1620s, with the sense of “whimsical notion.” One suggestion, that conundrum is connected to the Latin verb cōnārī “to try, attempt,” with an intended meaning of “thing to be tried,” does not reflect conundrum’s earliest attested senses. As stated above, conundrum was first recorded in English in the 1590s.

Erlking “a spirit that works mischief” is an adaptation of German Erlkönig “alder king.” However, the word erlking is not of ultimate German origin; Erlkönig is in fact a mistranslation, courtesy of 18th-century poet Johann Gottfried von Herder, of Danish ellerkonge, a variant of elverkonge “elf king.” Elf has an interesting history, one full of semantic shifts over time. In Middle English, elf could denote one of a multitude of supernatural entities, including fairies, goblins, incubi, succubi, and spirits in general. Cognates in other Germanic languages include German Alb “elf, nightmare” and Old Norse alfr “elf,” the latter of which was borrowed into English as oaf, and names derived from this “elf” root include Alfred, Alvin, Aubrey, Gandalf, Oberon, and even Oliver. Though the Indo-European origin of all these words is uncertain, the most promising hypothesis—based on a potential definition of “white apparition” or “white ghost”—is a connection to the Proto-Indo-European root albhos “white”; compare Latin albus “white” (as in albedo, albino, and Albus Dumbledore). Erlking was first recorded in English in the 1790s.

Eggcorn “a seemingly logical alteration of a misheard word or phrase” is a coinage by linguistics professor Geoffrey K. Pullum based on the word acorn. The logic here is that people unfamiliar with the term acorn (from Old English æcern) may mistake the word as a compound of egg and corn because of acorns’ size and shape. An eggcorn is a type of folk etymology based on an honest mistake, as we saw in the etymology for the recent Word of the Day armscye, which is often incorrectly believed to come from “arm’s eye,” after the location and shape of an armscye. What makes something an eggcorn is that, unlike folk etymology proper, which results in a change to a word or phrase based on a nearly universal misconception, eggcorns tend to reflect common mistakes at the individual level—no matter how widespread these mistakes may be—that do not change the spelling of the mistaken word or phrase. Also important is that eggcorns are based on logical misunderstandings, so not every gross misspelling on the average social media feed qualifies as an eggcorn. While eggcorn is attested as early as the early 19th century, its present sense dates from 2003.

Laisser-aller “unchecked freedom or ease” is a direct borrowing from French, in which the phrase means “to allow to go.” Laisser “to let, allow” ultimately comes from Latin laxus “loose,” which is the source of English relax, release, and relish and is a distant cognate of English slack “not tight.” The story of aller “to go” is a bit more complicated. Aller is a suppletive verb, which means that several of its inflected forms originated as borrowings from other words; while the infinitive form aller may derive either from a Celtic source or from Latin ambulāre “to walk,” the present and future forms vais “I go” and irai “I will go” come from Latin vādere and īre, respectively, both of which mean “to go.” In English, one common suppletive verb is go (with its past tense form, went, borrowed from wend “to proceed”), and suppletion is found as well with the adjectives good and bad (with comparative forms better and worse and superlative forms best and worst derived from different roots). Laisser-aller was first recorded in English in the early 19th century.