Etymology of the Day: Galoshes

If it’s raining outside, you might want to put on your “log-feet”—er, galoshes. Good thing we don’t look to etymology for fashion tips.

The patten, ancestor of the galosh? At least you wouldn’t get dog poo on your shoes. (My Learning)


English put on the word galosh—which we usually use as galoshes, because footwear comes in pairs—in the late 14th century. Back then, galoshes named a variety of boots and shoes, though especially a kind of wooden shoe strapped onto the foot with leather thongs or the like. By the mid-1800s, the word was slipping into its modern sense, a waterproof overshoe, usually made of rubber. Today in the US, galoshes tend to refer rubber to rain boots. 

How’d we go from wood to rubber? Let’s just we’ve come a long way in our shoe technology. Over the centuries, galoshes could refer to pattens. These were a kind of outdoor footwear, worn over one’s regular shoes, with a wooden platform (clog) or metal ring that elevated the stepper over mud—and dung. Also worn over shoes and protecting the shoe from the elements, galoshes provide a similar, though less ridiculous looking, function. 

The English galosh is from the French galoche, whose origin has two main theories. The first traces galosh to the Late Latin galliculua, short for gallicula solea, “Gallic shoe,” a type of footwear associated with the Gauls and perceived as rustic.

The other theory roots galosh in the Vulgar Latin *galopia, borrowed from the Greek kalopous (κᾱλόπους), literally “log-foot.” The word joins kalon (κᾶλον, a word used of logs or firewood) and pous (πούς, meaning and related to our word “foot”).

Etymologyever the trendsetter.

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“Revamp”: A vamped up etymology

There’s been a lot of revamping of late. Twitter has revamped its timeline. Next month, students will take on a revamped SAT. And after New Hampshire, many of the presidential candidates are revamping their campaigns.

We’re familiar with re-, a Latin prefix meaning “again” or “new.” But what the heck is a vamp?

The vamp, also known as the upper, can refer to other top and front parts of a shoe. Image from Podiatry Today.


In short, a vamp is the front and upper part of boot or shoe. So, to revamp literally means “to patch up (some old footwear) with a new vamp.” Doesn’t sound so sexy, huh? But it’s pragmatic, cost-effective, resourceful.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites vamp in the early 1200s when the word referred to a “sock” or “stocking,” specifically the part which covered the foot and ankle. By the end of the 1500s, the verbal vamp appears: “to provide with a new vamp,” hence, “to patch up, mend, refurbish.” Before revamp appears in the early 1800s much in the modern sense we use it today, figurative cobblers would new-vamp in the mid 1600s.

Piano players and other musicians have been vamping since the end of the 1700s. The OED cites this musical term for improvisation in 1789. If you’re improvising an accompaniment, prelude, or the like, you’re sort of patching something together as you go, as the metaphor suggests.

Now, vamp, it turns out, is itself quite vamped. Via Anglo-Norman French, English ultimately fashioned vamp from the Old French avanpié, pieced together from avant (“before”) and pié (“foot”), both derived from Latin. (French uses pied today; English’s own foot is actually related.) So, an avanpié isthe front part of the foot,” fitted later for the footwear it donned. Stitch avant and pié together (compounding), cut off an a (aphesis), snip off a t (elision), form np into mp (assimilation), and voilà: it’s like a a whole new word.

Back in the Middle Ages, knights armored themselves with vambraces or vantbraces, which covered the forearm. These words join avant and bras, the French for “arm.”

Forget reinventing the wheel, er, buying a whole new pair of boots: language really knows how to vamp things up.

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Laces and lashes: the origin of “scourge”

In the wake of the Paris attacks, world leaders have been condemning the scourge of terrorism. It is a powerful and forceful word, one we reserve for the most extraordinary of calamities and afflictions. But it might just have a very ordinary origin. Let’s have a look at the etymology of scourge.

Shoelaces that just won’t stay tied can be a real scourge, etymologically speaking. “Scourge.” Doodle by me.


Scourge has been lashing the English language since the early 1200s. Back then, it meant “whip,” particularly one used for punishment. By the late 1300s, a scourge was “a thing or person that is an instrument of divine chastisement,” as the OED explains. (And you thought a spanking was rough.)

Today, a scourge is not necessarily religious in its connotation, though it can feel biblical in its proportions, such is the sense of “great suffering” it inflicts.

In 1066, after the Normans scourged the English in battle, they also scourged English in language, so to speak. Scourge develops from the Anglo-French escorge, related to or derived from the Old French escorgiee, also “whip.”

For the origin of this French escorgiee, there are two arguments, both taking us back to Latin.

The first argues for the Vulgar Latin *excoriāta, “whip,” from the Latin verb, excoriāre, “to strip off the hide.” This verb joins ex- (“off”) and corium (“skin, hide”). An excoriation, so derived from this verb, is one (tongue) lashing you definitely want to avoid. And Ernest Weekley doesn’t ease our pain here: “It is uncertain whether the hide was [originally] that of the implement (cowhide) or the sufferer.”

The second argues for the Vulgar Latin *excorrigia, “whip,” in this case fusing the same Latin ex- with corrigia, a “shoelace.” Now, the Ancient Romans did wear some wicked kicks, involving substantial thongs of leather that strapped the shoe to the foot. So, the connecting sense here is of a “leather strip,” which we can crack as a “whip.” For this corrigia, philologists point to Celtic cognates, citing the Old Irish cuimrech, a “fetter.” This suggests a possible Gaulish origin for the Latin word and the Proto-Indo-European root *reig-, “to bind,” which may also have produced English’s nautical rig.   

If scourge’s possible origin in “shoelace” is any measure, even the most mundane of objects – and words – can be come truly extraordinary in human hands – and on human lips.

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