Word of the Day

Manavelins, “miscellaneous pieces of gear and material; odds and ends; leftovers or scraps (of food),” is originally sailors’ slang. Like many slang terms, manavelins has no reliable etymology, which helps explain the many variant spellings, such as manavalins, manarvelins, malhavelins. There is a likely connection between manavelins and the verb manarvel, manavel “to pilfer from a ship’s stores,” another item of nautical slang of unknown origin. Herman Melville was by far the most distinguished author to use manavalins (White-jacket, 1850): “Various sea-rolls, made dishes, and Mediterranean pies...all of which come under the general denomination of Manavalins.” Melville had served as a common sailor on the frigate USS United States in 1843; his publishers, Harper & Bros., sent copies of White-jacket to every member of Congress in order to show the brutality and arbitrariness of flogging. Congress outlawed flogging in 1850. Manavelins entered English in the first half of the 19th century.

The adjective terpsichorean “pertaining to dancing” is a derivative of the proper name Terpsichore, the muse of dancing and song, especially of dramatic choruses. Terpsichore comes from Greek Terpsichórē, a noun use of the feminine adjective terpsíchoros “delighting in dancing.” The element terpsi- comes from the verb térpein (also térpesthai) “to delight, gladden, cheer”; the second element, -choros, is a combining form of the noun chorós “a round dance, dancing floor, band of dancers, choir.” The etymology of chorós is uncertain: it may come from a Proto-Indo-European root gher-, ghor- “to enclose”; if so, the original meaning of chorós would be “an enclosed space (for dancing).” The root gher-, ghor- is also the source of Greek chórtos “enclosure, court,” Latin hortus “garden” (English horticulture), Sanskrit gṛhá- “house, dwelling place,” Proto-Slavic gordŭ “castle, fortress, town,” source of Russian górod “city, town” (cf. Nóvgorod “New Town”), Old Church Slavonic and South Slavic grad, as in Russian Stalingrad, Serbo-Croatian Beograd “Belgrade, White City.” Terpsichorean entered English in the first half of the 19th century.

The noun billow, “a great wave or surge of the sea,” appears nearly 45 years before its derivative verb billow “to swell out, puff up, as by wind.” Billow appears in print pretty late in English, just after the middle of the 16th century, but it most likely comes from Old Norse bylgja “a billow,” from the Proto-Germanic root balg-, bulg- “to swell.” The root variant bulg- is the source of the Proto-Germanic noun bulgjan, the source of Old Norse bylgja. The root variant balg- forms the Proto-Germanic noun balgiz, source of Old English belg “bag.” Belg becomes beli in Middle English, and belly in modern English. Belgas, the plural of Old English belg, becomes belowes in Middle English, and bellows in modern English.

Fiddlesticks originally was the plural of fiddlestick, “the bow used to play a violin or fiddle,” which dates to the first half of the 15th century. By the second half of the 18th century, the phrase fiddlestick’s end meant “nothing” (a fiddlestick ends in a point); fiddlestick’s end, reduced also to fiddlestick and fiddlesticks, was used as an expression of mild annoyance or dismissal.

Dissilient, “bursting apart or open,” is primarily a botanical term referring to ripe pods or capsules of some plants bursting apart. Dissilient comes from Latin dissiliēns (inflectional stem dissilient-), the present participle of dissilīre, “to leap apart,” a compound of the prefix dis- “apart, asunder, away” and -silīre, a derivative of the simple verb salīre “to leap, jump, spurt.” Dissilient entered English in the second half of the 17th century.