Where words come from

85 English words and the stories behind them, one line each, written and checked by hand. Only the words whose story changes how you read them.

absquatulate

Mock Latin slang, made up in 1830s America to sound grand.

To leave abruptly; to make off.

aloof

It was a sailing order, meaning hold to windward and well clear of the shore.

Cool and distant in manner; not friendly or forthcoming.

antediluvian

Latin for before the flood, meaning the one in the story of Noah.

Ridiculously old-fashioned; ancient.

apocryphal

Greek for hidden, first used of books left out of the Bible.

Of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as true.

apricity

One dictionary wrote it down in 1623, and almost nobody has used it since.

The warmth of the sun in winter.

arduous

From the Latin for steep, so an arduous task is an uphill one.

Requiring great effort; tiring.

austere

It first described a taste: harsh wine, fruit that dried out your mouth.

Severely plain; strict.

bombastic

Bombast was cotton wadding, the stuff used to pad out a doublet.

High-sounding and inflated, with little substance.

borborygmus

Greek, and it was built to sound like the rumbling it names.

The rumbling sound of a stomach.

callow

It first described young birds that had no feathers yet.

Inexperienced and immature.

candid

From the Latin for white, the same root that gave us candidate.

Honest and direct, even when the truth is uncomfortable.

castigate

From the Latin for making something pure, by punishing it.

To criticize severely.

clumsy

From an old word for being numb with cold, which is roughly how it feels.

Awkward in movement or handling.

coax

It first meant to make a fool of someone, from an old word for a simpleton.

To persuade gently and patiently.

curtail

From curtal, an old word for a horse with its tail cut short.

To cut short or restrict.

cynical

From the Greek for doglike, which is what Athens called the Cynic philosophers.

Believing people act mainly from self-interest.

cynosure

Greek for dog’s tail, the old name for the stars sailors steered by.

The center of attention; a guiding focal point.

debacle

French, for the moment a frozen river breaks up and carries everything off.

A sudden, embarrassing failure.

debunk

From bunk, short for Buncombe, a county whose congressman made an empty speech in 1820.

To expose a belief or claim as false.

defenestration

Latin for out the window, and it exists because Prague kept doing it.

The act of throwing someone or something out of a window.

deipnosophist

From an ancient Greek book of dinner guests talking learnedly for fifteen volumes.

A masterful dinner-table conversationalist.

desultory

From the Latin for a circus rider who leapt from horse to horse.

Lacking plan or enthusiasm; aimless.

dismal

From the Latin for evil days, the unlucky ones marked on medieval calendars.

Gloomy and depressing; disgracefully bad.

eager

From the Old French for sharp or sour, the same root that gives vinegar its name.

Full of keen interest and enthusiasm.

ebullient

From the Latin for boiling over.

Overflowing with enthusiasm.

eclectic

Greek for picking out, first used of philosophers who took the best of every school.

Drawing from many diverse sources.

eerie

In Scots it described the person who was frightened, not the thing doing it.

Strange and frightening in a quiet way.

egregious

It used to be praise, from the Latin for standing out from the flock.

Outstandingly bad; shocking in its degree.

empirical

Named for ancient Greek doctors who trusted experience over theory.

Based on observation rather than theory.

ephemeral

Greek for lasting only a day, and mayflies are named after it.

Lasting for a very short time.

eremite

Greek for a person of the desert, the same root that gave us hermit.

A hermit, especially a religious recluse.

esoteric

Greek for inner, used of teachings kept for an inner circle of students.

Understood by only a small, specialized group.

farrago

Latin for a mixed feed of grains given to cattle.

A confused jumble or hodgepodge.

fond

It first meant foolish, and only later affectionate.

Having warm affection or liking for.

fulminate

From the Latin for lightning, so to fulminate is to hurl thunderbolts.

To protest loudly and bitterly.

futile

From the Latin for leaky, like a jar that will not hold what you pour into it.

Producing no useful result.

gallimaufry

An old French word for a stew thrown together from odds and ends.

A confused jumble; a hodgepodge.

galvanize

Named for Luigi Galvani, who made dead frogs’ legs twitch with electricity.

To shock or spur into sudden action.

gongoozler

Canal boatmen’s slang for the people who stand and watch them work.

An idle spectator, especially one who stares at length.

gregarious

From the Latin for flock, so a gregarious person is happiest in one.

Fond of company; sociable.

halcyon

A bird in Greek myth that nested on the sea and calmed it for two weeks.

Blissfully calm and prosperous, especially of a remembered past.

harbinger

It first meant the person sent ahead to find lodging for an army or a king.

A sign that foreshadows what is coming.

ineluctable

Latin for a thing you cannot wrestle your way out of.

Impossible to escape or resist.

jeremiad

Named for the prophet Jeremiah, who lamented the fall of Jerusalem.

A long, mournful complaint or lament.

laconic

Laconia was Sparta’s region, and Spartans answered in as few words as possible.

Using very few words; terse to the point of seeming curt.

matutinal

From Matuta, the Roman goddess of the dawn.

Of or occurring in the early morning.

maudlin

It is Mary Magdalene’s name, worn down by centuries of paintings of her weeping.

Excessively sentimental.

mellifluous

From the Latin for flowing with honey.

Sweet or musical in sound; pleasant to hear.

mondegreen

A writer coined it in 1954 after mishearing one line of a ballad for years.

A misheard song lyric or phrase.

mumpsimus

From a priest who said the word wrong for decades and refused to be corrected.

A person who clings to an error even after correction.

mundane

From the Latin for the world, meaning earthly as opposed to heavenly.

Ordinary and unexciting; of everyday life.

nostalgia

A Swiss doctor coined it in 1688 for the homesickness of soldiers far from home.

Sentimental longing for the past.

numinous

From the Latin for a nod of the gods.

Having a strong spiritual or mysterious quality.

omphaloskepsis

Greek for navel gazing, and it began as a real technique for monks’ prayer.

Navel-gazing; idle self-absorbed reflection.

orotund

From Horace’s phrase for speaking with a round mouth.

Full and resonant in voice; pompously grand in style.

palimpsest

Greek for scraped again, from parchment reused because it cost too much.

Something reused that still bears traces of its earlier form.

panacea

Panacea was a Greek goddess of healing, and her name means cure for everything.

A cure-all for every problem.

peripatetic

From Aristotle, who was said to teach while walking up and down a covered walk.

Traveling from place to place, especially for work.

phlegmatic

Named for phlegm, the humor once thought to make a person calm and slow.

Calm and unemotional by temperament.

ponder

From the Latin for to weigh, which is what the mind is doing.

To think about something carefully and at length.

precocious

A gardening word first, for fruit that ripened before it was supposed to.

Developing abilities unusually early.

protean

Named for Proteus, a Greek sea god who could turn into any shape he liked.

Readily taking many forms; endlessly versatile.

quidnunc

Latin for what now, the question a gossip is always asking.

A busybody eager for the latest gossip.

quintessential

The fifth essence, which alchemists thought the stars were made of.

Representing the most perfect example of a quality or type.

quixotic

From Don Quixote, the knight who attacked windmills thinking they were giants.

Extremely idealistic to the point of being unrealistic or impractical.

rebarbative

From the French for facing up to someone beard to beard.

Repellent; irritating and unattractive.

recalcitrant

From the Latin for kicking back with the heels, like a stubborn mule.

Stubbornly resistant to authority, direction, or control.

rodomontade

Rodomonte was a boastful king in a sixteenth century Italian epic.

Boastful, arrogant talk.

sanguine

Medicine once held that blood was the humor that made a person cheerful.

Cheerfully optimistic, especially in difficulty.

sardonic

From a Sardinian plant said to make those who ate it grin horribly as they died.

Grimly mocking or cynical.

saturnine

Astrologers said people born under Saturn were gloomy, and the word stuck.

Gloomy and brooding in temperament.

savvy

Sailors’ pidgin, from the Portuguese and Spanish sabe, meaning he knows.

Having practical knowledge and sound judgment.

serendipity

Horace Walpole coined it in 1754, after a fairy tale set in old Sri Lanka.

The occurrence of happy or beneficial events by chance.

sesquipedalian

The Roman poet Horace mocked words a foot and a half long, and this is his phrase.

Given to using long words.

shrewd

It once meant wicked, and it comes from the same root as shrew.

Sharp-witted and practical in judgment.

sinecure

Latin for without care, first a church post with no souls to look after.

A paid position requiring little or no work.

stentorian

Stentor was a herald in the Iliad whose shout carried like fifty men.

Extremely loud and powerful in voice.

sturdy

For centuries it meant reckless or violent, which is not where it landed.

Strongly built; not easily broken.

sybarite

Sybaris was a Greek city in Italy with a reputation for ruinous comfort.

A person devoted to luxury and pleasure.

sycophant

Literally a fig revealer in Greek, and nobody has ever agreed on why.

A person who flatters the powerful to gain advantage.

tidy

It first meant timely, from tide in its old sense of time.

Neat and well arranged.

tintinnabulation

Edgar Allan Poe made it popular in a poem about bells, from the Latin for a little bell.

The ringing or jingling of bells.

ultracrepidarian

From a Roman story: a painter told a critical shoemaker to stick to judging sandals.

A person who opines confidently beyond their knowledge.

vivid

From the Latin for full of life, so a vivid color is a living one.

Producing strong, clear images in the mind.

widdershins

Scots, and going round a church in this direction was thought to bring bad luck.

In a direction contrary to the sun’s course; counterclockwise.

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