Weird Words » latin

Pulchritudinous

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:09:46 +0000

Although it doesn’t seem to sound very pretty, this word means ‘beautiful’! The root of the word, pulcher, is Latin for “beautiful,” but the use as an adjective appears to be of an American origin, dating sometime between 1910-1915.

Abracadabra

admin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 03:03:58 +0000

Magic spells usually come to mind when this word is heard. It does, in fact have ancients roots, stemming back to the 2nd Century AD – it was in a poem written by Quintus Sammonicus Serenus entitled De Medicina Praecepta. As physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, he prescribed that a sufferer from disease wear it as an amulet, in the form of a triangle:

A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B-R-A

A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B-R

A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B

A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A

A-B-R-A-C-A-D

A-B-R-A-C-A

A-B-R-A-C

A-B-R-A

A-B-R

A-B

Supposedly, this would diminish the hold the disease has over the patient / sufferer. It may have a Semitic origin, but it is also similar to the Aramaic ‘Abrahadabra’ which roughly translates to “I will create as I speak.”

Other associations with this word: ‘Abracadabra’ was used as a magical formula by the Gnostics of the sect of Basilides to invoke the aid of beneficient spirits against disease (according to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica) .

Renegade

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:47:16 +0000

The English borrowed and modified this word from the Spanish ‘renegado,‘ who formed it from a Latin term meaning “to deny.”

When a Christian deserted and joined the Muslim army, Spanish churchmen labeled a man who denounced his faith a “renegado.” English took this and modified it to ‘renegade’ and was used to designate “the occasional turncoat who denied his religion for profit.”

Floccinaucinihilipilification

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:32:05 +0000

Several Latin stem words strung together as a joke by a student in Eton College in the 18th Century. The list came from a grammar book that listed a Latin word set in which all meant “little or no value.” These words were: flocci, nauci, nihili, and pili (with -fication at the end to make it a noun.)

flocci – floccus (a whisp or piece of wool)

nauci – naucum (a trifle)

nihili – nihilism (nothing)

pili – pilus (a hair)

In essence, they all mean little, nothing, or worthless. And quite obviously, this word is fun because it sets an example of a really long word.

Weird

dave — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:29 +0000

You may know today’s word as a generalized term for anything unusual, but ‘weird’ also has older meanings that are more specific. ‘Weird’ derives from the Old English noun ‘wyrd,’ essentially meaning ‘fate.’

By the late 8th century, the plural ‘wyrde’ had begun to appear in texts as a gloss for ‘Parcae,’ the Latin name for the Fates — three goddesses who spun, measured, and cut the thread of life. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Scots authors employed ‘werd’ or ‘weird’ in the phrase ‘weird sisters’ to refer to the Fates.

William Shakespeare adopted this usage in Macbeth, in which the ‘weird sisters’ are depicted as three witches. Subsequent adjectival use of ‘weird’ grew out of a reinterpretation of the ‘weird’ in Shakespeare.

Ventriloquist

dave — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:53:49 +0000

The word is a Latin derivation from two words ‘venter’ and ‘loqui’ meaning ‘speaking from the stomach’.
Ventriloquists were almost like shamens in the early days. They would produce voices of spirits and ghosts that would possess their body, and speak from inside their stomach.
They did not become entertainers until a few hundred years later.

Spunk

dave — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:47:37 +0000

In the 1500s, someone who fought bravely, especially against tough opponents, was thought of as being on fire. The flaring of the human spirit that happened when someone acted bravely was compared to tinder bursting into flames. In Scotland, tinder was often a dry, spongy wood that was called ‘spong’ because it looked like a sponge (‘spong,’ the Scottish Gaelic name for a sponge, developed from the Latin word ‘spongia,’ which also meant ‘sponge’). The image of that spongy wood bursting into flames inspired English speakers to turn ‘spong’ into ‘spunk.’

Posse

dave — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:45:29 +0000

‘Posse’ started out as a technical term in law, part of the term ‘posse comitatus,’ which in Medieval Latin meant ‘power of the county.’

As such, it referred to a group of citizens summoned by a sheriff to preserve the public peace as allowed for by law. ‘Preserving the public peace’ so often meant hunting down a supposed criminal that ‘posse’ eventually came to mean any group organized to make a search or embark on a mission.

In even broader use it can refer to any group, period. Sometimes nowadays that group is a gang or a rock band but it can as easily be any bunch of politicians, models, architects, tourists, children, or what have you, acting in concert.

Plaintiff

dave — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:22:23 +0000

We won’t complain about the origins of ‘plaintiff,’ although ‘complain’ and ‘plaintiff’ are probably distantly related. ‘Complain’ is thought to derive ultimately from ‘plangere,’ a Latin word meaning ‘to strike, beat one’s breast, or lament.’ ‘Plangere’ is an ancestor of ‘plaintiff’ too.

‘Plaintiff’ comes most immediately from the Middle English ‘plaintif,’ itself a Middle French borrowing; in Middle French, ‘plaintif’ functioned both as a noun and as an adjective meaning ‘lamenting, complaining.’ That ‘plaintif’ in turn comes from the Middle French ‘plaint,’ meaning ‘a lamentation.’ (The English words ‘plaintive’ and ‘plaint’ are also descendents of these Middle French terms.) And ‘plaint’ comes from the Latin ‘planctus,’ past participle of “plangere.” Logically enough, ‘plaintiff’ applies to the one who does the complaining in a legal case.

Histrionic

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:51:24 +0000

The term ‘histrionic’ developed from ‘histrion-, histrio,’ Latin for ‘actor.’ Something that is ‘histrionic’ tends to remind one of the high drama of stage and screen and is often ‘over the top’ and stagy. It especially calls to mind the theatrical form known as the ‘melodrama,’ where plot and physical action, not characterization, are emphasized. But something that is ‘histrionic’ isn’t always overdone; it might simply refer to an actor. In that sense, it becomes a synonym of ‘thespian.’

(Of course, it is also a personality disorder.)