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Saturday, January 14, 2012

RANDOM THOUGHTS #73

Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself about the curious origins of common words.

1. Canopy, a covering, comes from the Greek word Konops, or mosquito. The Greeks covered their beds with mosquito nets called konopeion which the Romans copied and called canopeum.

2. Canter, a modest walking pace for a horse, came from Canterbury, the cathedral where Thomas Becket was buried. In the 1200s and 1300s, upper-class people took the annual pilgrimage to Canterbury, which became something of a vacation. (The roads to the cathedral had many comfortable inns, spas, and resorts.) Nobody was in any hurry on that trip, so farmers watching the annual travelers said they were going at "a Canterbury pace" which eventually shortened to a canter.

3. Canvas (a rough cotton cloth) and Canvass (to sift or survey) come from the Latin word Cannibis, or hemp. Originally, canvas was made from hemp, and the term eventually was applied to heavy cloth made from other plant fibers (such as cotton). Canvas was later used to sift flour and resulted in the second meaning.

4. Caper (to jump around), Caprice (whim), and Capricious (whimsical and erratic) all came from capra, the Latin word for goat. Young goats would jump around, and anything else that jumped around was said "to caper." Caprice then came to mean something erratic that jumped around from one idea or position to another, and capacious was someone who changed his mind without any real reason for doing so.

5. Cardigan, a knitted wool jacket, is only one of many things named for Thomas Brudenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan and the general who led the charge of the light brigade. While the charge is controversial and he may have misunderstood the target, it was certainly heroic and when new wool jackets arrived for the soldiers to wear during the winter, they were named in the honor of his heroic ride.

6. Carnival is a combination of two Latin words, one meaning meat (carnem) and eating (levare). Every year, Lent came around (meaning 40 days with no one allowed to eat meat). The day (or week) before Lent was the time for a great party or festival or feast in which meat was served. (This has also come down to us as Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday.) In time, any festival involving rollicking entertainment and feasting came to be called a Carnival. Carnage (a word often associated with battlefields or sometimes crime scenes) also comes from carnem (meat).

7. Carol, now meaning a song (particularly one about Christmas), comes from the old Greek word chorus, which does not actually mean singing, but dancing. A chorus was originally a circle of people dancing to a flute. Later, they started singing along, and there you have it.

8. Carousel, another term for merry-go-round, comes from the Italian word carosello. The old jousting contests of the Middle Ages were made obsolete by gunpowder, but Italians (always in the mood for a party) invented a kind of exhibition of horsemanship which brought back the older period (just without people being taken to the hospital with spear wounds). Lancers would try to spear targets or rings (not each other). The sport migrated to France and then to England. When it reached the United States a few centuries later, the horses were of wood but (in some rides) the young knights could still try to grab the brass ring for a free second ride.

9. Carpet, a floor covering, was originally a heavy cloth used as a religious garment in the 1100s. By the 1200s, this heavy cloth was used as a tablecloth, and the term "on the carpet" came to mean "a plan being discussed at the council table." By the 1400s, some noble lady figured out that the heavy tablecloth was the perfect thing to keep her feet away from the cold stone floor of the castle, and by the 1500s the term "on the carpet" meant someone called to answer to the king (or other noble) for his actions.

10. Cartridge, which now means a brass shell containing gunpowder, primer, and a bullet (for a breach-loading firearm) originally was the term (cornucopia) used by bakers for the flexible paper funnel used to contain flour, sugar, or frosting. Soldiers armed with old muzzle-loading weapons would have two of these hanging on their belt, one containing bullets and the other gunpowder. Long before someone figured out how to combine it all into one package, the term cornucopia (as applied to the military usage) had been corrupted into cartridge.