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Saturday, April 28, 2012


Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself about the curious origins of common words.

1. CORNUCOPIA is simply the Latin terms for horn and plenty. The legend is that the nymph who raised and protected the baby Zeus broke the horn off a goat and filled it with fruit, and the horn thereafter replenished itself no matter how much the young boy Zeus ate. Any parent of a teenager could only wish for such a thing!

2. CORONER, the civic official who investigates those who die by violence or in an unexplained manner, comes from the Latin word for crown, since the original office was Guarding of the Pleas of the Crown. This official, second only to the sheriff in any county of 12th century England, had various duties (mostly with making sure the King got his just share of whatever was going on in the country). Being in charge of inheritance taxes, the Coroner was the logical person to hold an inquest should someone be murdered (or die an a way that was not immediately understood) since English law said you cannot profit from murder (or hurry up your inheritance by offing dear old mom and dad).

3. CREDENCE, that being confidence that the story presented was true, comes from credo, the Latin word for believe. But it comes to us by a peculiar route. Food quality in days before refrigeration was not certain, so all food taken from the kitchen to the dining room was first placed on a side table where someone was assigned to check it for quality and make sure that cooks were not sending spoiled food to the lord, his family, and his guests. That small side table became known as the credence (and via Italian became a piece of office furniture known as a credenza). After the need for such quality control passed, the unused side table was used to hold letters, petitions, reports, or other documents being submitted to the lord for his review. A similar table in the church was used to hold the sacramental wine and bread for holy communion and the priests believed that it was magically transformed into the body and blood of Jesus.

4. CRISS-CROSS or crossing lines comes to use from the textbooks used in the middle ages to educate the children of the nobility. As their teachers were almost always priests (who were the literate class) and the teachers wanted to instill not just education but respect for the faith and church, they would include Christian crosses anywhere they could, including at the start and end of the alphabet. Some books even organized information into the shape of a cross on the page. This Christ-cross was always pronounced criss-cross and eventually came to be spelled that way.

5. CULPRIT, or a criminal guilty of a crime, first appears in English court records in 1678. It is thought to be the abbreviation "cul. prit." which is short for the Latin phrase that means "He is guilty and I'm ready to prove it" which is what the prosecutor said after the defendant claimed otherwise.

6. CURFEW, or the time that all (particularly teenage daughters out on dates) must return home and go to bed, comes from the French curvre-feu or "cover the fire." Because houses in the dark ages were of wood and thatch and heat was provided by open fireplaces, city fathers all over Europe would ring a bell at a late hour to remind people to put the fire out before going to bed. In some towns, a fire marshal would impose a fine on any fire found burning in an unapproved fireplace after that bell had rung. When the French term came to England, the English thought it was spelled curfew.

7. CURMUDGEON, a cranky old person, may (no one is certain) come from "coeur merchant" which meant evil heart. Interesting how the word merchant means evil or greedy.

8. CURRANT, a type of berry, got its name due to a mistake. The word originally meant Corinth (an area of Greece) which produced a particular kind of grape. Dried into raisins, these were sold all over Europe and became known as currants. When someone introduced a bush with berries into England in the 1600s someone thought it was the source of currants, but it wasn't.
9. CYNIC, someone who sees evil intent behind many common occurrences, comes from Cynosarges, a building outside of Athens where the philosopher Antisthenes (a student of Socrates) taught a small number of students to seek pure virtues and motives and to hold those of lesser ideals in contempt. These students were insolent and self-righteous and nobody liked them much. During any discussion, someone who thought that the real reason behind events of the day was due to the evil motives of behind the scenes actions was known as a Cynic.
10. CYNOSURE, the center of attention, is the Greek word for a dog's tail. Zeus wanted to honor the nymph who raised him in hiding, so he gave her a constellation in the heavens and make one bright star (now called Polaris) the center of the sky around which all other stars rotated. Greek astronomers, seeing what we now think is the Little Bear, called it the Little Dog, and the star in question was the tip of the dog's tail.