Curiosities of the English language

Level: Upper-Intermediate and Advanced

We see unfamiliar words and wonder what they mean, wonder how to pronounce words, how to spell them, wonder how they relate to one another, how they originated.

Vemos palabras que no nos son familiares y nos preguntamos qué significan, cómo se pronuncian, cómo se deletrean, y nos preguntamos cómo se relacionan unas con otras, cómo se originaron.

For a different class, we can introduce some words and their origins in order to make the language more interesting.

Para una clase diferente, podemos introducir algunas palabras con sus orígenes, para hacer que el idioma resulte más interesante.

D E V I L

Devil: (chief spirit of evil)

Perhaps because they are not too keen to investigate further, some people apparently feel that the devil is so called because he "does evil", and that "devil" and "evil" are associated words just as "God" and "good" are also supposed to be.
But the devil derives his name ultimately from Greek "diabolos", meaning "enemy", "accuser" (literally "one who throws across" or slanders), whereas "evil" is a word of Germanic origin!

                                                                     H I P P I E

                   

Hippie:  (unconventional young person, especially a "social rebel"   of the 1960's).

The word does not refer to the person's habit of lying about on his/her hip, or of wearing hipsters, but simply indicates that he is (or she is) or was "hip" or "hep", that is aware of current developments and styles and thus... "trendy"! 

(in what was regarded  as a new and radical manner, in order to to reject conventional attitudes and established morality). 

"Hipsters" (trendy trousers that hang from the hip rather than the waist) have a clever name that refers to the hips and to their "hip" style.                                                 

                                                                     

                                                H U S B A N D

Husband: (married man) 

Whether jockingly or not, there are those who like to say that the word is a form of "housebound", either in the sense "one who owns the house and is commited  to it", or in some more lighthearted concept (as if "saddled" with a house).

In fact, the first of these explanations is something like the truth, since "husband" literally meant "one who has a house bonded to him", i.e. "householder".

It is interesting that the English word lacks the expected reference to the householder's sex or marital status, unlike the equivalent in other languages (French: mari. German: Mann. Italian: marito. Spanish: marido).

H U R R I C A N E

Hurricane (tropical cyclone)

This word has exercised the minds of etymologysts wonderfully, with one of the most popular explanations maintaining that the severe wind is so called as it destroyed the sugar plantations, i.e. "hurried" the "canes"! So popular was this derivation, that it was taken up by several writers.

In fact, the real origin, as we now know, is in a native word, and in the Caribbean language Taino, the cyclone is called hurakán, based on "hura": wind.
(Compare Tornado)

J U N E

June (Sixth month of the year)

Some classical scholars have liked to derive the name from Latin "juniores": Young people, pointing to some connection with the popularity of the months for weddings. But the name is probably from the Roman gens or clan of Junius, to whom it was dedicated.

Compare July below...

J U L Y

July (seventh month of the year) 

There has long been a small but steady fancy that the name is somehow connected with Julia or Julie, if only because down to about the seventeenth century the month was actually pronounced as "Julie" today.

Even, Wordsworth rhymed it thus: 

In March, December, and in July,

'Tis all the same with Harry Gill;

the neighbours tell, and tell you truly,

His teeth they chatter, chatter still.

This was as late as 1798. But the month was actually named after Julius Caesar (by Mark Anthony), who was born in it in the year 100 B.C., when it was called Quintilis, as it was the fifth month of the Roman calendar. And in any case... Who could the Julie or Julia have been? (it is certainly true that some girls have been named May and June, and even April, as they were born in those months, and some may well have been called Julia or Julie because they were born in July).

But no  Julia gave her name to a month!

M I N I A T U R E

Miniature (very small)

Such a clear association here with "mini-" or "minute". Yet the true origin is nothing to do with this.

The word, through Italian, goes back to Medieval Latin miniatura, which itself ultimately comes from Latin minium (red lead).

This produced a verb: miniare: "to paint in a red colour", and was the word used for illuminating manuscripts. These, of course, had to be done on a very small scale, hence "miniature".

V E R O N I C A

Veronica (kind of plant with small flowers)

The flower of this name, better known as the speedwell, is not so called since it came originally from Verona, just as japonica is connected with Japan (rightly since it is of Japanese origin).

The name instead derives from the identical Christian name, presumably that of Saint Veronica, although the ultimate reference here is uncertain (I'm sorry).

The flower or herb name is first recorded in English in the sixteenth century:

"A dragma of pouder of ye same herbe Veronica".

Even the saint and her name have a cloudy and rather mysterious background, both historically and linguistically, since although the original Veronica is said to have been the name of the pious woman who wiped the face of Christ as he fell when carrying his cross to calvary, the word itself is somehow linked with the Latin words for "true icon" (vera icon).

Whether this links up with the biblical story or the other way round is hard to say. Whatever the origin of the personal name, the modern girl's name almost certainly derives from that of the saint, not the flower, which runs contrary to the general principle, so that most girls called Pansy, Poppy, Heather, Holly, Rose and the like, are named after these plants.

But whether word or name, flower or saint, Veronica has inspired artistic and poetic compositions in both sublime painters and vernacular versesmiths!

V I C I O U S   C I R C L E

Vicious circle (a process by which an evil is aggravated by its own consequences)

The term does not relate to the modern popular sense of "vicious circle" meaning "fierce", as if the circle, whatever it is, is one that will retaliate and "strike back".

Both words have their origin in a formal sense as applied to logic, with "circle" meaning "instance of circular reasoning" (that is, a false one, where a preposition is made to lead to a conclusion, and is afterwards proved by means of the very same conclusion that it had been posed to establish), and "vicious" added to this term to emphasize how faulty such reasoning is, since it goes round and ends up where it began, like a circle.

Interesting! The English term arose as a translation of the French Cercle vicieux , used by Descartes in the seventeenth century.



The expression also has a formal medical use, meaning that one disease or disorder leads to a second, which in turn aggravates the first.

Suggestions for the class: prepare cards with the words and a picture related to the meaning and...

1) Ask the students to write and say the meanings in English, using their own words and expressions.

2) Once the first task is finished, you tell them the origin of the words and discuss them.

Hope you liked it!