Today I’m writing a blog as a homage to some very special people I work with. Naseem, Yewande & Jon, this blog is for you guys ❤️

They’ve had shout-outs in my previous blogs, and our office bants inspired most of the topics. Although the bants has now had to go on line during the lockdown, it’s a life-line for keeping sane more than ever.

Naseem: the English spelling of a Persian or Arabic name (نسیم), gender masculine and feminine, but it is usually a boy’s name. Other versions include Nasim, Nacim, Nasseem, Nassim, Nesim or Nessim. It means “gentle breeze”.

Yewande: a West African name, gender feminine. A variant of Yetunde, which means “mother has returned” in Yorùbá, the language of the Yorùbá people. Yorùbá tradition believes in reincarnation of family members.

Jon: an alternate spelling of the English name John, gender masculine. It originated from the Hebrew name Yohanan, then Greek Ioannes and Latin Iohannes or Johannes. Yohanan comes from yo, referring to the Hebrew God, and hanan “he was gracious”, and is in the Old Testament, while John owes its popularity to the New Testament.

Sources
https://www.behindthename.com
https://www.thenamemeaning.com
https://babymigo.com/baby-names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasim#Naseem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yetunde
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/atlas/yoruba
https://www.etymonline.com/word/john

My first post of the lockdown… we are living through some pretty surreal times in our little bubbles, connected by the internet.

Surreal is an interesting word. It is a back-formation from surrealism, which comes from French surréalisme (sur- “beyond” + réalisme “realism”). And unlike many of the other words I’ve looked at, it has quite modern origins.

Surréalisme was first used in 1917 with the birth of the movement and philosophy we now know as ‘Surrealism’, which included artists such as Dalí and Magritte. According to its leader, André Breton, it was, above all, a revolutionary movement. It aimed to revolutionize human experience, to free people from restrictive customs and structures. Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s theories, Surrealists wanted to liberate the mind by highlighting the powers of the subconscious.

It began in Paris, and from the 1920s spread around the globe impacting visual arts, literature, film, and music, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.

The word surrealism became part of the English language in 1931. Surreal arrived in 1936.

Sources:
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=surreal
https://www.etymonline.com/word/surrealism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/surrealism

I was watching an episode of ‘Death in Paradise’ this week. One of the characters used ‘overstand’ as a play on words for ‘understand’, and I thought – why is it understand?

It seemed a bit counterintuitive to me – understand is a constructive word. It’s about interpreting information and perceiving meaning. But when the prefix ‘under’ is used, either in the sense of ‘beneath’ (as in undermine or underling), or in the sense of ‘not enough’ (like underdone or underwhelm), it tends to feel a bit negative. And you say you’re on top of things if they’re going as planned, but under the weather or under the cosh means things aren’t going so well…

The modern word understand, comes from Old English understandan. In Old English, standan meant ‘to stand’, but the prefix under- meant ‘between, inter-‘ or ‘among’. So understand could have literally meant ‘stand in the midst of’. Perhaps the sense of the word was ‘be close to’. I like that, it conjures up a visual representation.

It made me think a bit more about what understand means. It’s often used interchangeably with know, but knowing is not quite the same thing as understanding. You know discrete facts, but understanding is more dynamic, it involves forming relationships between facts by analysing them and placing them in context to form a big picture, giving them meaning.

So maybe the word understand represents being present in the middle of an idea, feeling a deeper connection with it. Or maybe it came from the sense of standing a thought in the midst of other thoughts in your mind, so they can be connected together.

BTW, there was also an Old English word oferstandan – ‘over-stand’ – but that seems to have meant ‘stand over’, as you would expect.


Sources:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/understand
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/understand
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/understand

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/qz.com/1123896/its-better-to-understand-something-than-to-know-it/amp/

Songs are a regular topic of conversation in the office. People tend to feel strongly about the songs they do and don’t like. Often there are complaints about what’s playing. At this time of year it’s the cheesy Christmas songs. We were having one of these conversations about the office playlist, and I thought: what does song mean and where does it come from?

The word song means words set to music. However, research suggests singing could have been a form of communication that predated words – possibly being linked to the establishment of monogamy and helping to provide the social glue needed for the first large early, pre-human societies to emerge. The full vocal range of the human voice may have developed at least 530,000 years ago, suggesting several species of extinct human – including Neanderthals – had the potential to sing. So it seems singing may have had a fundamental role in the development of the human race.

The modern word song dates back to Old English (brought to England, possibly in the mid-400s, by Germanic speaking Anglo-Saxons). Song or sang meant “noise, song, singing, chanting; poetry; a poem to be sung or recited, psalm, lay”. Sing, meaning “to make musical sounds with the voice, especially words with a set tune”, also comes from Old English: singan, “to chant, sing, celebrate, or tell in song”.

Singing is universal across human cultures. It has many purposes, as the etymology suggests – from soothing babies to sleep, wooing a lover, expression of our inner emotions, storytelling in folk songs and ballads, for dancing to, celebration, religious worship and rituals, to uniting groups of people, protesting against oppression, and these days entertainment and making money, to name a few. Songs are still such a fundamental part of being human, I guess it’s not surprising they can provoke such a strong emotional response in us.

Sources
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/song
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/song
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sing
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/sing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20140907-does-music-pre-date-modern-man

It’s nearly Christmas already, and Secret Santa has been a topic of conversation at work – we were discussing what would be the perfect present? Christian said he always asks for socks for Christmas but nobody gets them for him. LOL! When you’re a kid socks are the most disappointing present ever, but when you grow up a nice new, warm pair of socks (matching, sans toe holes!) can be just the ticket – a simple pleasure and practical. Apparently, socks are among the the most needed but the least donated items to homeless shelters. So take Jay’s lead and get donating socks to Sock Mob (www.meetup.com/thesockmob/).

Where did we get the humble word socks from, I wondered. It comes from the Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) word socc, which meant “light slipper”. Old English was brought to England, possibly in the mid-400s, by Germanic speaking Anglo-Saxons. Interestingly, they borrowed socc from Latin soccus, which was a “light, low-heeled shoe” worn by Roman comic actors, and came from the Ancient Greek word sykchos, “a kind of shoe”.

Another hosiery-related Christmas word is stocking (woollen, not the nylon variety). Being longer than socks, covering the leg up to the knee or higher, they can, importantly, hold more presents.

Although the words sock and stocking look similar they have different roots. Stocking comes from stocken, the plural of stock, meaning “leg covering” or “cover with material”, which was used back in the 400s. Stock also referred to the bottom lower trunk and limbs of the body. Stock as in “leg covering” came from from Old English stocu “sleeve,” related to Old English stocc “trunk, log”.

Sources:
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/sock
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sock
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sock
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sock
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English
https://www.etymonline.com/word/stocking
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/stocking
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/stocking
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocking

Today we were making a client amend at work – the client had added the word NOISE, in caps. We changed it to noise, in lower case, and it started to look a bit odd, you know how words do when you look at them too hard.

I thought, noise is a bit of a strange word. It crops up in marketing speak quite a lot, but we don’t usually include it in the copy. It seemed a bit out of place.

Noise means sound – the wiktionary definition says “various sounds, usually unwanted or unpleasant”. I hadn’t really thought about a noise being an annoying sound, though on the other hand ‘noisy’ is definitely not good – as in noisy neighbours, or those noisy kids, causing a disturbance, grrr.

And in marketing, noise is something that distracts from your message, like when there are a lot of competitors ‘shouting’ in the same space, so your customer can’t ‘hear’ what you’re trying to say. I guess this has been borrowed from the technological use of the word noise, meaning the unwanted fluctuations that can occur with and obscure transmitted electrical signals, like crackly radio.

The disruptive aspect of noise is reflected in the origin of the word. It comes from Middle English (1066 to the late 1400s) noise, from Old French (700-1300s) noise meaning “a dispute, wrangle, strife, noise” or “din, disturbance, uproar, brawl”.

Sound is a more neutral word, it doesn’t have the bad overtones. It comes from Latin sonus (sound, a noise) via Middle English sownde, from Anglo-Norman soun, from Old French son meaning “sound, musical note, voice”.

Sources
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/noise
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noise
https://www.etymonline.com/word/noise
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sound
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sound

I was watching Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen at the weekend (yes, he is still going). He briefly mentioned the origin of the word sofa, and my ears pricked up. At the time I was lounging on a sofa, as no doubt were a significant number of people around the globe. Although they might call it a couch (thanks Yewande!) or even a settee.

Like the word sugar in my previous blog, sofa is so familiar it feels like it’s been part of the English language forever. But, also like the word sugar, it was borrowed from French (sofa), arriving in English in the early 1600s, and originally came from an Arabic word, ṣuffa – a long seat made of stone or brick. It may have become part of language in Europe via Turkish or as a result of the Moorish occupation of Iberia.

In the Middle East, sofa used to have a more architectural meaning, referring to a raised area of floor, usually covered with carpet, for sitting on.

The word couch goes back to Middle English (spoken after the Norman conquest in 1066 until the late 1400s), and again came from French, couche, from the verb for “to lie down”. The word couch is preferred to sofa in the US, as well as in Ireland, South Africa and Australia.

The word settee possibly comes from the word settle – a long bench with high backs and arms, from setl (“seat”) in Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), spoken in Britain from around 400 to 1100.

Does that make settee a more authentic English word for our much loved piece of furniture than sofa?

Sources
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/sofa
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sofa
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couch
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/settee
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/setl#Old_English
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Middle_English
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Old_English

Today was hallowe’en, a day that now seems to be about eating sweets, or should I say candy. These days, sugar is a bit of a villain – but the word sugar itself is a well-used, unremarkable word, not much to write about. That made me realise I don’t actually know much about it, and I started wondering what its story is, and where it’s come from.

I was surprised to learn that the earliest origins of sugar are in India, starting from Sanskrit śarkarā (sharkara) meaning “ground or candied sugar,” originally “grit, gravel” (as opposed to sugarcane juice). Local Indian for sugar crystals was khanda, which is where the word candy comes from.

Sugar has been produced from sugarcane in India since ancient times. However, before the word reached us it went on quite a journey.

From Sanskrit sharkara came Persian shakar, then Arabic sukkar, Medieval Latin succarum, French sucre, before reaching England in the late 1200s as sugre.

Sugar was spread around the world by Indian sailors and travelling Buddhist monks took it to China. Crusaders brought it back from their campaigns in the Holy Land to Europe, where it was a luxury until it became more widely available in the 1700s.

Sadly, during its journey, sugar has gone from being a precious luxury seen as a valuable medicine, to an addictive, over-consumed ingredient that’s driving a global health crisis.

Sources
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sugar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar

Also, bantz, banta, from banter.

I feel I have come to the bants party a bit late. Not banter – I’ve been well aware of that and participating for over 30 years. Who doesn’t love a bit of office banter… and it’s an essential skill for self defence and social interaction at school.

But I wasn’t aware that bants had become a ‘thing’ in current popular culture, and not only has the heady status of appearing in the Urban Dictionary, but is also now in mainstream dictionaries (Origin: Early 21st century from banter).

These days it means exchange of playfully teasing or mocking remarks, or generally fun times, although the word has been, and probably still is, abused to justify apparently hilarious yet completely inappropriate and unacceptably abusive behaviour, and drive teachers to their “wits’ end” – as in “Siiiir, it’s just bantaaaa!”.

The word banter was around in the 1670s as a verb, and 1680s as a noun. The origin is unknown, possibly coming from London street slang. It used to have a less good natured intention than today, exchanges were more aggressive and vicious, and aimed to ridicule.

Sources
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bants
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/bants
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/hangry-bants-fatberg-new-words-in-oxforddictionaries
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-30234121
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/banter
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/banter
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ban1.htm

The other day at work the leotard came up during some office bants (bants: may be the subject of a future blog).

It feels a bit 80s now, nobody wears shiny leotards with leg warmers when they work out any more (or do they?).

It struck me what a strange word it is. Not very descriptive, like bodysuit or all-in-one. So where did it come from? Was the leotard invented by Mr Leo Tard? (Thanks Jon for that contribution).

As it turned out Jon wasn’t that far off. The garment was first made famous by a French acrobatic performer called Jules Léotard. It was a one-piece, skin-tight, knitted affair.

But the first known use of the word leotard to describe the garment wasn’t until 1886, after he died.

Léotard developed the art of trapeze, and is the inspiration for the song, The daring young man on the flying trapeze.

Another related word, bikini, also has french origins. It was introduced by french clothing designer Louis Rénard in 1946. He named it after the atoll Bikini, where the US tested nuclear weapons in 1946 – he hoped the skimpy bikini would cause as much of an explosive reaction as a nuclear bomb (!)

Sources
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leotard
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini