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Issue 68 |
January 10, 2000 |
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The name Jesus, referring to Jesus Christ, is not a very old word in English, considering the age of Christianity. In Old English God’s son was referred to as hæland “savior”, which comes from a Proto-Germanic root hailjan “to heal, to save”. He was even referred to as hælendes cristes. However, by the Middle English period, French Iesu made an appearance and was adopted by English speakers quite readily. There is a quotation from about 1175 in which both the Old English and the Middle English terms are used: “Ures hlafordes to-cyme Þes helendes iesu cristes.” Iesus is the Latin nominative form of Iesu, and it became common in the 16th century. Throughout that century both Iesus and Iesu were used, though the latter was usually restricted to translating Greek vocative and oblique cases. The following examples of each use are from Tyndale’s version of the New Testament, from 1526:
It was not until the 17th century that a J came to be used in place of the initial I: “Jesu is in my heart, his sacred name Is deeply carved there” (G. Herbert, Temple, Jesu, 1633). The form Jesus (with the final s) became common in the 18th century. Thereafter the form Jesu was usually restricted to hymnal or poetic use. As an aside, the letter I had two values in English from the 11th to the 17th centuries: both the vowel sound associated with I as well as the J sound. Therefore, Iesus was pronounced similarly to today’s Jesus; it was only the orthography which changed in the 17th century. It is interesting to note that Welsh today retains the Iesu form but pronounces it according to Welsh rules: “yessy”. The French form Iesu derived from Latin Iosus, which was adopted by the Romans from Greek Iesous. Greek obtained that word from late Hebrew or Aramaic Yoshua “Joshua”. The earlier Aramaic form had been Jehoshua (Y’hoshua) or Joshua. That word’s etymology is explained as meaning “Jah is salvation”, where Jah is short for Jahweh. Aramaic y’shuoh means “salvation, deliverance”. Note that Joshua and Jehoshua were common Hebrew names in Jesus’ time. It is interesting to note that, in Middle English manuscripts, Jesus was often written IHS, which was an abbreviation of Greek IHSOYS ("Iesous"). Today Jesus is a name that is known and used internationally. As the name Jesus is often associated with Christ, the etymology of Christ may be of interest. It was Crist in Old English, having derived from Latin Christus, which itself was adopted from Greek Christos “Christ”, the noun use of the verb meaning “anointed”. Incidentally, that was a direct translation of Hebrew mashiah “anointed” (English messiah), which was short for m’shiah yahweh “the Lord’s anointed”. The ch- spelling of Christ in English did not become prevalent until the 15th century (and that applies to related words like chrism, as well). The earliest recorded use of the word in English is found in the Lindisfarne Gospels (from about 950): “Arises forðon wiðer~wearde crist & lease witgo” which means “For false Messiahs and false prophets will appear” (Matt. 24:24). |
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From Peter Zoulas:
This place, if it exists at all, must be extremely small as we can find not a scrap of information about it. There is a Greek surname Maniatis, though. But even if there is no such place as Mania in Greece, our words maniac (which originally meant "affected with a mania") and mania do have their origins in the Greek word mania, "madness" which derives ultimately from the Indo-European root men- "mind". Men- has given English and other languages many mind-related words, for example mental. As early as 1400 mania was used to refer to madness involving great excitement and delusions. By the late 17th century it was used to refer to an enthusiasm that resembled madness: "So vaine a thing it is to set ones heart vpon any thing of this nature with that passion & mania, that unsatiable Earle..did, to the detriment of his estate and family" wrote John Evelyn in his "Brief Lives" (1689). As early as 1777 mania was used with another word to indicate the sort of mania: "The rage for building in England..is somewhat similar to the tulip mania in Holland." Now, hands up all those who thought Beatlemania the first such term. |
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From Lute Oas:
It did predate the 1970s. In fact, the OED reports its first appearance from 1962, in which John Glenn (the astronaut) defined the word as originally meaning "a spike or change in voltage in an electrical circuit which takes place when the circuit suddenly has a new load put on it...A glitch is such a minute change in voltage that no fuse could protect against it." Beyond that, however, the OED has nothing to say about the word's origin, claiming that its etymology is "unknown". Other authorities suggest that it comes from the German glitschen, "to slip, to slide" via the Yiddish word glitsh, "slippery area". |
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From CJ Miller:
Today one hears the term cab still used to refer to what are also known as taxis or taxi cabs. Of course, there is also the Cabriolet, which is a model of Volkswagen sold in America. Now you can see where Volkswagen got that name. The original cabriolet (late 18th century) was a light, two-wheeled buggy drawn by one horse, with a large leather hood or roof, and an apron to cover the legs and lap of the passengers, protecting them from weather and dust, respectively. The word is French and derives from the Old Provencal cabri, "kid" which in turn comes from the Latin caper "goat". This Latin word also gave us the verb to caper, caprice, capricious, Capricorn and the caper which means "a frolic" but not the caper which is a pickled flower bud (that one's Greek). Presumably, the vehicle got its name from its goat-like, leaping motion. A taxi, on the other hand, is not a kind of carriage. It is an abbreviation of taximeter which is the device which measures the distance traveled and indicates the fare due. Taximeter dates from the late 19th century, and it was borrowed from French taximètre, formed from taxe "tariff" and mètre "meter". It was shortened to taxi in the early 20th century. |
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From Janet Davidson:
You
are correct in surmising that the word comes from Guy Fawkes. That
unlucky fellow, whose first name was actually Guido, may have given Each Guy Fawkes Day, weird-looking effigies of Mr. Fawkes were created and burned. By the early 19th century, the term Guy was used to refer to anyone looking weird or strange, as those effigies did. From there, guy came to mean any poor or shabbily dressed person. By the mid-19th century, Americans apparently picked up the word but applied it to any man, such as this quotation from 1847: "I can’t tonight, for I am going to be seduced by a rich old Guy." That's the earliest American example, according to the OED. The capitalization of the first letter of Guy is of note there. Later quotations have the entire word in lower case. One might wonder if common use of the first name Guy might have had some influence on American usage of the more general term, but the name Guy has not been common at all in the U.S., so that notion holds no water. |
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From a reader:
This
word came to English from Old French autompne "autumn", and the
French got it from Latin You may not have known that, while autumn officially begins on September 21 and ends December 21, in Britain it is popularly thought of as extending from August to October, and in North America from September to November. |
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From David G. Helm:
We'd call that more than a bias - it sounds like revisionist history to us! A British physician by the name of James Lind performed experiments regarding scurvy in the 18th century, and he found that citrus fruits cured it. It was because of this discovery that lime-consumption was enforced in the British Navy. American sailors probably didn't even have to contend with much scurvy as they weren't maintaining a world-wide empire as the British were. Without an empire they didn't have to take long sea voyages. Without the long voyages they had little or no scurvy. Without the scurvy they had no urgent reason to find a cure. |
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