"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean," said Humpty Dumpty to Alice. But outside of Wonderland, words usually evolve from other words, often by a rather torturous path. See if you can untangle our modern words from their historical derivations.
--Compiled by Lollie Rogers, USC Trojan Family Magazine, Summer 1997.
This three-letter noun, which refers to a mischievous child or minor prankster, derives from the Latin imputare, "to trim, prune, graft into or on." In Old English, it came to mean "a young shoot of a plant" by the 14th century, "offspring, child" and later "small demon or wicked spirit." It has now lost this harshness.
Hand-lettered books used a pigment made from red lead to contrast titles from the black ink of the text. Our nine-letter noun derives from the Latin miniare, meaning to color with this red lead; in Italian, it became "to illuminate a manuscript." From this reference to small book illustrations, today's word encompasses a variety of small works of art.
This six-letter noun refers to a popular type of fictional character. It was borrowed from the Old Norse sloth and meant "the track of an animal or person" in Middle English. It also named a Scottish hound symbolizing intense pursuit, and eventually took on the connotation of a person.
This six-letter noun used in advertising originally described Celts shouting their clan names as a war cry, a combination of the Celtic sluagh ("host") and the Gaelic gairm ("to shout"). Losing its war connotation, the word came to symbolize an "attitude, position or goal: a motto"--the meaning it still retains.
This eight-letter adjective is from the Latin gurges, or "whirlpool," which later added the meaning of "throat." In Middle French it became gorgias, or wimple, a garment covering the throat and shoulders that was associated with beautifully dressed, fashionable woman. The word has lost its relation to the wimple, but kept its association with elegant beauty.
Today a popular breakfast dish, this six- (or eight-) letter noun originates from the Latin lamella, a "small metal plate." La lemelle in Old French, mispronounced as "l'alemelle," became alumette with the -ette ending. By modern French, the word acquired the meaning of a prepared food resembling this "small metal plate."
This seven-letter noun derives from Latin through the French of feudal society, meaning a serf attached to a villa or a common villager. Since these classes were seen as inferior, the word took on a negative sense, as "a person of uncouth mind and manners." As the concept of manners and morals became intertwined, the word took on the meaning of a person with poor morals, a scoundrel--or, today, one who thwarts the plans of the heroic protagonist.
Although Arnold Schwarzenegger might be shocked, the diminutive of the Latin word meaning "mouse" has today become a six-letter noun describing a bundle of cells or fibers that can be contracted and expanded to produce bodily movements (and that was thought to resemble the movements of a mouse).
This four-letter adjective has its earliest roots in the Latin rapere, "to seize." By the time it reached 15th-century England, it had come to describe either a physical or spiritual carrying away. Contemporary usage of the word has lost its sense of a physical carrying away, but has retained its more spiritual reference to one who is "deeply absorbed."