A good example is the word dog, etymologically unrelated to any other known word, which, in the late Middle Ages, suddenly and mysteriously displaced the Old English word hound (or hund) which had served for centuries. Some of the commonest words in the language arrived in a similarly inexplicable way (e.g. jaw, askance, tantrum, conundrum, bad, big, donkey, kick, slum, log, dodge, fuss, prod, hunch, freak, bludgeon, slang, puzzle, surf, pour, slouch, bash, etc).English language enthusiasts will want to browse further down the page at the link to learn about words created by adoption, truncation, fusion, imitation, back-formation, and errors ("refudiate.")
Words like gadget, blimp, raunchy, scam, nifty, zit, clobber, gimmick, jazz and googol have all appeared in the last century or two with no apparent etymology, and are more recent examples of this kind of novel creation of words. Additionally, some words that have existed for centuries in regional dialects or as rarely used terms, suddenly enter into popular use for little or no apparent reason (e.g. scrounge and seep, both old but obscure English words, suddenly came into general use in the early 20th Century).
Sometimes, if infrequently, a "nonce word" (created "for the nonce", and not expected to be re-used or generalized) does become incorporated into the language. One example is James Joyce's invention quark, which was later adopted by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann to name a new class of sub-atomic particle, and another is blurb, which dates back to 1907.
*Etymology comes from the Greek etymo(s) = "true" + logos = "word/reason."
In the German language, there's the word Quark, which is a dairy product similar to yogurt. I'm fairly sure it has been around longer than James Joyce. Any information on that?
ReplyDeleteThis article is very interesting, by the way! I had never heard of words such as these.
Chatterley, re "quark" as German cheese, I found this in Wikipedia -
ReplyDeleteThe name comes from the Late Middle High German Quark, which in turn is derived through twarc, quarc, zwarg from the Lower Sorbian Slavic tvarog, (Polish twaróg, Belarusian тварог, Russian творог, and Czech and Slovak tvaroh, which means "curd". In Austria, the name Topfen (pot cheese) is used, and in Hungarian, túró is used. In Flanders, it is called platte kaas (flat cheese), while the Dutch use the name kwark. In Norway, ((Denmark)) and Sweden, it is called kvarg. However, in Sweden it is more commonly known under the product name "Kesella".
The word "blimp" comes from the expression (type) "B - limp" which describes the balloon type airship, as distinct from (type) "A - rigid" Zeppelin type of airship. One down, several to go!
ReplyDeleteThe English word dog comes from Middle English dogge, from Old English docga, a "powerful dog breed
ReplyDeleteIn 14th-century England, hound (from Old English: hund) was the general word for all domestic canines, and dog referred to a subtype of hound, a group including the mastiff. It is believed this "dog" type of "hound" was so common it eventually became the prototype of the category “hound”.[15] By the 16th century, dog had become the general word, and hound had begun to refer only to types used for hunting.[16] Hound, cognate to German Hund, Dutch hond, common Scandinavian hund, and Icelandic hundur, is ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European *kwon- "dog", found in Welsh ci (plural cwn), Latin canis, Greek kýōn, Lithuanian šuõ.[17]
ReplyDeleteDogue de Bordeau is a good example of the origin of the word dog or dogge.
ReplyDeleteAnother possible origin given for 'blimp' comes from an apocryphal story of an officer who thumped one with his forefinger. the sound he heard? "blimp!"
ReplyDeleteI've heard a story about "quiz." One Victorian gentleman dared another to find a way to "put the [invented] word on the lips of London." So the man painted it across the sides of buildings everywhere, and soon everyone was talking about it.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea whether this is apocryphal or not.
"Googol" was supposedly created by the daughter of an astronomer who wanted a word for one with a hundred zeroes after it. My dad's an astronomer, and claims this one as true. Incidentally, this is presumably where "Google" got its name.
Freake is an English surname of ancient origin. I would surmise that someone of that name probably exhibited odd-enough behaviour to become well known for it. It's but a short step from there to becoming commonplace (viz. Gusset or Awning - both surnames). The 'E' was undoubtedly dropped somewhere along the way as spelling conventions changed.
ReplyDeleteWe only have evidence of the usage of a word if it appears in print, but writers in centuries past made efforts to use proper English and avoid slang. So there were certainly many words in common usage at a particular point in time that were considered slang, not proper, and therefore didn't appear in print. Eventually slang words become accepted and then are more likely to appear in print. So a word can "suddenly" appear, but it may have been in use for centuries.
ReplyDeleteAnother word of unknown origin is 'wee' (which means urine).
ReplyDeleteIs there any possibility that some words that have unknown (or even ancient) roots are Neanderthal in origin?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.sapiens.org/column/field-trips/did-neanderthals-speak/
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