As Webb Weekly’s “World of Weird Words” nears its 20th installment, we’ve been on an etymology bender — examining odd and unusual word origins.
When I first gathered up my favorite etymologies for these columns, I couldn’t help noticing how many were related to animals. We looked at some of those beastly beauties last week.
Here are the rest:
Feisty – This is a weird one: It literally comes from a very old phrase that means “farting dog.” So in more ways than one: Excuse me for starting with this in what proudly bills itself as a “family-oriented publication”!
Feisty originates from the Middle English word-group fist, which has to do with breaking wind; eventually, it started getting used as a contemptuous term for a small dog: “fisting hound” or “fisting cur.” How that connects to passing gas remains a mystery — though I do have a friend whose dog would do this in its sleep, then wake up, sniff around in disgust — and leave the room!
Guppy – Though it sounds like a cute nickname coined for a wiggly little fish, these were actually named in honor of naturalist R.J.L. Guppy (1839-1916). British-born but living in Trinidad at the time, Guppy sent specimens to a London museum upon discovering the species in 1866.
Hippopotamus – Hippo is a somewhat uncommon Greek base meaning horse. We still have it in such words as hippodrome (a horse-related arena), hippocampus (brain-part shaped like a seahorse), the prehistoric eohippus and, believe it or not, the name Philip. In the latter, it combines with the common phil (“love,” as in Philadelphia); having somehow lost both its H and its O, Philip literally means horse-lover. I am not making this up.
As for the famed African beast: pota is a Greek base for river (still found in water-related words like potable). Very logically, hippopotamus = “river horse.”
Husky – When referring to a sled-dog, husky comes from the same Algonquin word that gave us Eskimo (note the vowel-SK-vowel combination).
The other English meanings — dry (as in “husky voice”) and stocky (as in the clothing size) — have an entirely different source; they refer to the outer layer of crops like corn, which can be dry and crackly — or make something seem larger.
Jumbo – This adjective was popularized from the name of a singularly gigantic African elephant which P. T. Barnum bought from a London zoo for his circus. Given its sound, the elephant’s name may originally have been an African word (as in the Kongo term nzamba); but no one knows for sure.
Newt – The name of a small but common salamander, newt was originally eft, which is still sometimes used for these creatures — as in North America’s red eft.
(Stick with me on this one.)
It isn’t tough for F to become W, as both sounds are made with the lip(s); but where on earth did that N come from?
Well, try saying “an ewt” four or five times. Pretty soon, you can’t tell whether the N is attached to the first or the second word; thus, in common speech and spelling, the consonant gradually moved over to the other word.
This weird re-division happened often in English: umpire, apron, adder and auger all used to start with N — but unlike newt, that eventually moved off of the noun (so “a napron” became “an apron,” etc.).
Similarly, eke is an old English word meaning also, or in addition. Someone’s extra name was once “an ekename”; say that repeatedly and you’ll hear the word this gave us.
Petrel – To end with something simpler and more elegant: A petrel is a seabird known for cruising at a very short height above the waves. Etymologists aren’t certain, but it’s generally felt this was named for the Apostle Peter, who famously walked on water.
Once again, this piece owes a huge debt to Merriam-Webster’s New Book of Word Histories (1991); the New American Webster Handy College Dictionary (3rd ed.); and the exhaustive website Online Etymology Dictionary.
Sticking with animals, that last source can be a real rabbit-hole….
