Random Research Day: Bummer Etymology

My daughter is one of those crazy-overscheduled teenagers you hear about, and since she doesn’t have a driver’s license yet (too busy), I drive her places a lot. Mostly, we talk about words, or come up with word games, or talk about how we sure spend a lot of time talking about words. It’s pretty metalinguistic—occasionally meta-metalinguistic.

She was entranced one day by the words “imagine” and “magic”—it seemed logical to both of us that those ought to be related. But when we got home and looked it up, we found that:

• “Magic” comes, via French, Latin, and Greek, from magus, an ancient Zoroastrian philosopher (think “three Magi”).

• “Imagine,” on the other hand, comes via Latin from imago, or image.

• While we’re here, “magnificent,” “magnanimous,” “magnate,” etc. all come from Latin magnus, meaning “great.”

• And “maggot” comes from the Old Norse word mathkr, which means maggot.

So, if for some reason you say

“The magician imagined magnificent maggots,”

you have spanned four different source words from French, Latin, Greek, Persian, and Norse.

Impressive, but still disappointing.

They might not be etymologically related, but I still believe that imagination is magic.

Random Research: Hair and Fur

All fur is hair, but all hair isn't fur.

Hair may be related to reptile scales and bird feathers, which all represent different expressions of the same protein.

Hair takes even longer to decay than bones do.

Theories abound as to why people are hairless when our ape ancestors aren't. Temperature regulation? Pest control? Sexual selection? Or some combination: perhaps having less hair kept us cooler by day and kept the lice down, and we had clothing and shelter to keep us warm at night...thus allowing us to choose less hairy mates without our children freezing to death. Or something.

If you google "hair evolution", you get a lot of funky hairstyles, and a lot of beauty products with the word "evolution" in their names.

An icky word for Halloween

Random Research led us this week into the realm of sleepy sand—that grainy stuff in your eyes when you wake up in the morning, whatever your family calls it. Its real name is

Gound (pronounced "gowned")

We also learned another of its nicknames: optiboogers. And we agreed that Optiboogers would be an excellent name for a rock band. Also Gingerbread Godzilla. And Giant Pez Dispenser. Stay tuned for gingerbread Godzilla, whom we all decided should make an appearance this Christmas.

Anyway, gound is composed of mucus, tears, and/or dust, and it forms because you're not blinking those things away when you're asleep.

What is your family's word for gound?

He can fly!

We went to Washington, D.C. for the last few days, and saw all we could before our legs, feet, and brains gave out. Interesting study in gratitude: there is so very, very much to see and do there that even the concept of prioritization isn't much help. We could narrow our choices down to ten or so huge possibilities, but after that, we just had to do something, usually enjoy some but not all of it, and let the rest go, enjoying the memory of what we did manage to do and see. Buffy and I completely missed the "Mammals" exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, but we had a fabulous time designing and launching meteors on an interactive computer exhibit, and tossing paper clips at a huge lodestone.

Random Research day centers on the theme What We Learned in Washington, D.C.:

A good parking spot is not a constitutional right.

The pilot of an aircraft carrier is called the "flight boss." It had never quite occurred to me that someone pilots an aircraft carrier.

Lodestones are awesome. We missed the Hope Diamond, but they don't let you throw paper clips at that.

And, most importantly, the ostrich has a tiny South American relative called the tinamous, who can FLY short distances! His skeleton looks like a 6"-tall ostrich. I want one.

Random Recipe: BOB

Actually, we do have a Random Research tidbit for today:
If exposed to hard vacuum (outer space, not malfunctioning Electrolux), do NOT hold your breath! You have about 14 seconds until you pass out; use them well.

I don't make up recipes very often, but the other day Buffy and I came up with Chocolate-Peanut Butter Banana Bread. It's fabulous, but it needed a shorter name. We settled on "Bob," though "Ed" was a close contender. Here it is, with optional *decadence upgrades.

    Bob
4 cups flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
4 bananas, mashed
1 cup peanut butter
6 tbsp. butter, melted, divided use
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
3 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup milk
*1 cup chocolate chips, optional
1/4 cup cocoa


Pre-heat oven to 350. Grease two 9" loaf pans. Mix flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. In another bowl, beat bananas, peanut butter, 4 tablespoons butter, and sugars until creamy—about 2 minutes; beat in eggs and vanilla. On low speed, beat in flour mixture and milk. *Decadence upgrade #1: stir in chocolate chips. Pour half the batter into the 2 pans. Stir cocoa into remaining batter. Pour over batter in pans. Swirl chocolate batter into plain batter. Bake 40 minutes, brush with remaining butter. Bake 5 more minutes. Bread is done when a toothpick inserted in the center (try to avoid the optional choc. chips) comes out clean.
Decadence upgrade #2: Serve with Nutella. Be careful here. I'm not responsible if you die of bliss and/or sugar overload.

Random research: gossip

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Now, the Random Research Word of the Day:

The word "gossip" comes the late Old English godsibb, from god 'God' + sibb 'a relative', or "a person related to one in God."* 

When a woman had a baby, her husband fetched the midwife ("with the woman"), who helped deliver the baby,  and the gossips—female neighbors who cooked, cleaned, took care of the other children...and sat around knitting, waiting, and talking. And old usage of the word "gossip" is a friend or confidant.

Seems like there ought to be a moral to this etymology beyond, wow, words sure change over time.

Possibly even beyond, careful about what you speak about, who you speak about, and how you speak about them, even with your close friends.

OK, how about this:
The word "gossip" originally referred to women as sisters, related to us in God. The word as presently constituted implies conversations that draw boundaries between "us" and "them," often in a malicious way. But, who isn't a brother or sister, from God's point of view? If we relate to each person as a brother or sister in God, we won't ever feel inclined to indulge in conversations that hurt others or that cast anyone as an outsider.

Or something! Happy Random Research day!

* Dictionary v. 2.1.3, Apple, Inc.

New! Random Research Day

I'm forever running into little oddments of information during writing research, usually on the way to something else. The opportunity to share them in conversation just never comes up, so I've decided to make Wednesday on this blog Random Research Day (you may not want to set your clock by that).

Words that mean "green"*:
    viridescent
    virescent
    glaucous

Through the Middle Ages, men wrote books about childbirth (or inscribed them on papyri), but it was considered improper for them to watch babies be born. "In 1522, Dr. Wert, a  German doctor, was sentenced to death when he was caught dressing like a woman and sneaking into a delivery room."**



* Dictionary v. 2.1.3, Apple Inc.
** Randi Hutter Epstein, Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth (2010), p. 5.
    A lively and interesting, if not always fastidiously documented, account of birth through the ages. Makes one very glad to be bearing children in the 20th-21st century!