Interesting Etymologies, P. 2

by Tiffany

Previous Lesson | Next Lesson

Here’s Part Two of Interesting Etymologies (word origins)!

January

January has its beginnings in Roman mythology, named for Janus (Ianuarius), the god of the doorway. The Latin word for door is ianua. January is the door to the year. January in Czech called leden, meaning “ice month”. In Finnish, the month is called tammikuu, meaning “month of the oak”.

Quarantine

Comes from quarantena, the 17th-century Venetian-Italian word for forty day period. When a ship was thought to be infected with disease the crew were not permitted to make contact with the shore for 40 days. Today, to quarantine also means to isolate, usually to contain the spread of something considered dangerous (but not always disease).

Bikini

The bikini comes from the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It made its debut in 1946. is Marshallese, a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands. An engineer named Louis Reard named his two-piece women’s bathing suit after the Bikini Atoll, where four days earlier the United States had begun a series of atomic and hydrogen bomb tests, with the hopes that his bikini would “explode” upon the world. That series of tests became was the first peacetime explosion of a nuclear weapon. There were twenty-three American nuclear tests that would extend more than a decade, including a fifteen-megaton H-bomb explosion on March 1, 1954.

Paparazzi

Paparazzi are photographers who take candid photographs of celebrities. The word paparazzi was actually introduced by the 1960 film La dolce vita directed by Federico Fellini. One of the characters in the film is a news photographer named Paparazzo. Its onomatopoeic resemblance to the Sicilian word for an oversized mosquito, papataceo, made Fellini state this: "Paparazzo suggests to me a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging.

Bootleg

Bootlegging usually refers to making, transporting and/or selling illegal alcohol or copyrighted material. The term originates from America, referring to the long leather boots worn by cowboys in the Old West. They were used to store illicit goods, including an extra gun, a bowie knife, or a flask of moonshine. The phrase surged in popularity during the Prohibition Era. There are also many phrases which use the term, including “bootleg recording”, “bootleg play” (in American football), “bootleg mining”, and “bootleg turn” (a driving maneuver).

Hazard

This word originates from the Arabic word al zahr, which means “the dice”. In Western Europe hazard was associated games using dice, learned during the Crusades while in the Holy Land. The term eventually took on the definition of exposure to danger because games using dice were associated with the risks of gambling and con artists using corrupted dic

Malaria

Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a misquito bite. The word comes from the medieval Italian words mal (“bad”) and aria (“air”). This “bad air” described the swamps around Rome. This ‘bad air’ was believed to be the cause of the fever that often developed in those who spent time around the swamps. This belief is partially true: the illness known today as malaria, is due to certain protozoans present in the mosquitos that bred around these swamps, which then caused recurring feverish symptoms.