Black Friday

Today is Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year in the US. The day after American Thanksgiving (as we Canadians call it) has been called this since the early 1960s, so dubbed by Philadelphia police officers dismayed at the congestion in downtown Philadelphia brought about by shoppers rushing to get the deals. The name, and the custom of deep discounting and early opening hours, gradually spread to other cities, and has also recently established itself in Canada.
But the word "black" itself is intriguing. As you might expect, the early Anglo-Saxon word for this colour (or absence of colour" is similar to the modern German word, which is schwarz. For the Anglo-Saxons, black things were "swart", a word that still survives in "swarthy". But fairly early on, another word started to compete with "swart". The Anglo-Saxon word blac seems to be related to the word for "ink" or a black metallic alloy in other Germanic languages.
Obviously "black" won out.  Somehow, "Swarthy Friday", doesn't sound quite right!

The dismal days

If by some bizarre circumstance you were thinking of going in for some bloodletting tomorrow, you might want to hold off, because November 17^th was, according to some medieval writers, one of the “dies mali” (“bad days” in Latin), two days every month particularly unsuited for this medical intervention. In English, these 24 unlucky days were called collectively “the dismal”, but by the 1400s, people started to call them, with unwitting redundancy, “the dismal days”, and thus “dismal” became an adjective meaning first “unlucky”, but eventually “gloomy and depressing”, a good description for most November days.

Pundit

We've been subjected to more than our fair share of punditry in the last few weeks as the professionally opinionated weigh in on the US election. But why do we call these talking heads "pundits"?
The word comes from India, where a pandita was (and still is) a very learned or wise person well versed in Sanskrit and Indian philosophy, religion, and law. It is one of quite a few Indian words that the British adopted during their time in the subcontinent. In the mid-19th century, at the height of the Raj, the British used the word to designate an officer in the Indian judiciary with the responsibility of advising British judges on questions of Hindu law, or an Indian person trained and employed to survey regions beyond the British frontier.

But the word took on a life of its own beyond India's borders, being used to mean "expert" by the beginning of the 19th century, oddly enough predating the noun "expert"  itself by about 50 years, though the adjective "expert"  (derived from the Latin experire "to experience") had been around since Chaucer's time. 

By the early 20th century it had acquired its derivative "punditry", to which has been added more recently "punditocracy". 

To me "pundit" has a slightly disparaging tone to it. While acknowledging that the pundits are specialists in their field, the word does suggest to me an opinion for hire willing to spout off in the media. I doubt that news anchors or moderators would refer to their experts as pundits to their faces. What do you think about the connotations of this word?

Friday the ...Twoth?

Today is the second of November. How on earth did we get the ordinal "second" from the cardinal number "two"? This is still a challenge for some non-native speakers of English, as I quite frequently see French and German speakers writing "April 22th", for instance, and who can blame them? The fact is, the Anglo-Saxons didn't have an ordinal number corresponding to "two": they used the word "other". But as this could be ambiguous, once the French invaded with their handy "second" from the Latin secundus ("following", from the verb sequi to follow), the English were more than happy to borrow it.
For an explanation of how we got "third" from "three", click here.
For an explanation of why the ordinal of "one" is "first", click here.

Umpire

The World Series has just started, so let's look at the word "umpire".

In medieval France, a nonper (literally “not a pair”) was an impartial third party. We borrowed this as noumpere, but after about a century, people started to think that “a noumpere” (an arbitrator in a dispute) was “an oumpere”. The same n-migration phenomenon happened with “apron” (originally “napron”). Oumpere gradually morphed into “umpire” and started being used in sports in the 1700s.

Fobbed off

I recently saw a memo alerting employees at the National Ballet of Canada to the fact that a new security door had been installed, and henceforth they would need a FOB [sic] to activate the door. Throughout the memo, FOB was written in all caps, as if it were an acronym, and in fact I was puzzling what it might stand for. Friends Of Ballet? Then I realized that it was simply the word "fob", which the writer of the memo had not realized was an ordinary word.
"Fob" started out as thieves' slang in the 17th century for a small waistband pocket, especially used for holding a watch or money (you can see why thieves would need their own special word for that!). Although it's uncertain where English thieves got this word from, there is a similar word for "pocket" in a German dialect: fuppe. Gradually the word migrated from the pocket itself to the watch that was in it, then to the chain connected to the watch, and finally to the ornament attached to the end of the chain. In recent times, this has been extended to the much less attractive but oh-so-practical devices that we attach to our bunches of keys to let us in to electronically controlled doors. No word on whether the National Ballet wardrobe department will now be sewing special pockets into the waistbands of tutus to accommodate them.
The verb "to fob off" is older, dating to the Renaissance, and of equally obscure origin, though it may be related to the German foppen (to deceive).

If you live in the Niagara region and would like to hear Wordlady live, eat great food and drink great wine, you have the opportunity at this year's Grimsby Museum fundraiser. More info here.

Wordlady live (and wine)

20th ANNUAL GRIMSBY MUSEUM DINNER AND AUCTION

Bachelor for Rent: Things you never suspected about Canadian English
A hilarious look at what is distinctive about Canadians and their language.

Guest Speaker: Katherine Barber ~ Canada’s Word Lady

Casablanca Winery Inn, 4 Windward Drive, Grimsby ON
Saturday November 17, 2012
6:00 Cocktails
6:45 Keynote Speaker
7:30 Dinner
The four course gourmet dinner is paired
with a selection of Niagara wines.
A vegetarian alternative is available
 
$90.00 per person
RSVP: by November 6th, 2012
905-945-5292
museum@town.grimsby.on.ca