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The History of English Podcast
Bonus Episode 7: Stuffed Animals
In this bonus episode we look at the etymology of certain words related to animals. We also examine words related to stuffing.
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Foreign. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this bonus episode of the History of English podcast. I prepared this short bonus episode because other commitments have kept me from completing the next regular episode. Those commitments basically being the fact that I'm moving. So, with very limited time available, I decided to put together a mini episode to fill in the gap until episode 63. As it turned out, I had a few bits and pieces of etymology that I left out of episode 61, where I discussed Anglo Saxon peasants and farming. So I'm going to discuss that material here now. Previously, when I was discussing Anglo Saxon peasants, I mentioned a few Old English words for farm animals, but there were a lot of other animal words which I didn't have time to get to. So let's take a look at those words. And let me begin by noting that most of our modern words for common animals can be traced back to Old English. And this confirms the idea that words within our core vocabulary, which we learn as small children, tend to hang on and survive over time, while other words are more likely to come and go. So the words which we use for common animals tend to be very old words, and many of them go back to the Anglo Saxons. So, as we've seen before, the word wolf goes back to Old English, and in fact, it was a very common name element. So we saw that the name Beowulf was the be, wolf, the bee hunter. It was a euphemism for bear. So based on that, we know that bee also goes back to Old English. It was beo, a swarm of bees, was a bao gong, a bee gang, literally a gang of bees. And the queen bee was the beomoder, the bee mother. A moth was a motha, and a gnat was a gnat, same as today, but the g was pronounced in Old English. Another Old English word for a gnat was a muge. It meant any kind of flying pest. And it comes from an Indo European root word which was mu. And if we trace that root back through Latin, we get the word musca, which also meant a fly. And Spanish took that Latin word musca and created mosquito, which meant a little fly or gnat. So Modern English mosquito and Old English muj are actually cognate if we trace both words back to their original Indo European root. So Spanish gave us mosquito, and French took that same Latin root musca, and gave us musquet, which was a type of bird. And since birds fly through the air, the French sometimes used bird names for early firearms which fired projectiles through the air. So musket became musket in English. So that means that musket and mosquito come from the same Latin root. And the connection is that they both have to do with things flying through the air. Speaking of pests, the words flea and tick also both go back to Old English. They were flea and tychia, respectively. Beaver was beaver, fox was fuchs, and cat was kat. And as we've seen before, dog was hund, which still exists as hound. Now, as I've noted before, the word dog wasn't regularly used until the 1200s, and its ultimate source is unknown. There's a passing reference to a dochina in one late Old English text, and it is clearly a reference to a hound. But after that, the word isn't found in any other English writings until the 1200s. So Hound is the Old English word, and dog is a later Middle English word. We see something similar with the word rabbit. Rabbit came from French during the Middle English period. The earlier Old English word was harrad or hare. And again, instinctively, hare just sounds like an older word for rabbit. And it is. Now, let's look at a few other animals. A caterpillar was a leofwyrm, literally a leaf worm. It was also called a cow worm, which was literally a coal worm. And to understand that meaning, we have to think of coleslaw. The cole part meant cabbage, and it's the same root as the word kale. So a colworm meant a worm that was often found on cabbage leaves. Now, as we know, compounds like that were common in Old English. Leafworm, colworm. The Anglo Saxons loved compounds like that, and some of them survived. So a word like butterfly has survived. And another example of that is grasshopper, which was gershoppe in Old English. And that's a good Old English compound. It tells you exactly what it is, a grasshopper. The Anglo Saxons also used a compound word for a dolphin. They called it a maerswien. Now, we know that maer was an Old English word for a lake or sea, and we still have it in the word mermaid. And sween was swine, an Old English word for pig. So a mere swine was literally a sea pig. Now, that may seem a little weird, but it's not so weird if you think about another name for a dolphin or an animal very similar to a dolphin. The word porpoise, porpoise comes from French, thanks to the Normans. It comes from a Latin compound which combined the word pork, meaning pig, and piscus, meaning fish, as in the word pisces. So Latin had essentially the same construction, porpoise. Is literally a pig fish. And it was apparently based on the fact that the porpoise's snout resembled that of a pig. So what's going on here is that Latin had this particular construction first, and then the early Germanic tribes borrowed that Latin construction meaning pig fish, and they made their own version of it, which was sea pig or meeresween. And that Old English construction was found in almost identical form throughout the Germanic languages in the early Middle Ages, including Old Norse and Old High German. So it was obviously an older Germanic term at one time. And again, it appears to have been picked up from the Romans. So let's consider the name of birds. A chicken was a chicken, pretty much the same as today. A cock was a cook. A hen was a hen. An owl was an ullah. Duck was dukka or ducha. Goose was gonna stork was stork. So pretty much the same as today. And crane was cron. So again, all were very similar to today. And one thing that all birds have in common with each other is feathers. And feather is also an Old English word. Now, the Anglo Saxons used feathers to stuff pillows and mattresses. They actually had the word featherbed, which was pronounced almost exactly the same way in Old English. Now, even though feather is an Old English word, the Vikings brought another word which also meant feather, and that was the word dune. And that word became down over time, and it still survives today. Have you ever wondered why a down comforter is called a down comforter where a down pillow is called a down pillow? Well, it's because down comes from the Viking word for feather. By the way, this version of the word down is unrelated to the other English word down, as in the opposite of up. So where did the Vikings get the word dun or down, meaning feather? Well, for that answer, we can go back to the last couple of episodes about sickness and disease. In those episodes, I noted that words like dust, dizzy, dull, and dumb all come from an Indo European root word which meant smoke or haze. So it meant something floating in the air. And that same root word is what produced the Old Norse word dune, since small, soft feathers float in the air like dust. So dune became down, still meaning feather. And today it can mean any kind of soft padding. But this particular version of the word down is cognate with words like dust and dizzy and dull. Another substance used for stuffing pillows or beds was wool. Of course, wool comes from sheep. The Old English word was wool, pretty much the same as today. Today, instead of wool or feathers, we might use cotton to stuff pillows and mattresses. But cotton or cotton, I say cotton, it wasn't actually used by the Anglo Saxons. In fact, there's no evidence of cotton in Britain during the Anglo Saxon period. And that was in part because it was much too cold and wet to grow cotton in Britain. The Anglo Saxons didn't even have a word for it. The word cotton is actually an Arabic word, which reflects the fact that it was originally popular in places like the near east in India. And that word came into English via French. A more common Latin word for cotton was bombax, and that also created an English word. The word was used to mean raw cotton or cotton used for stuffing or padding. It produced the verb bombas, meaning to stuff with cotton. So something that was stuffed or inflated was bombastic. And that was the original meaning of the word bombastic. It meant something stuffed or inflated. Later it came to mean inflated or pompous language, the type of language used by people who are full of themselves. So you might be full of yourself or full of hot air, or you might be full of food. And Latin gave us several words to describe that condition. You might say that you are satisfied or satiated. Both come from the same root. And if you are drenched or soaked with something, especially water, you might be saturated from the same Latin root word. All of those Latin derived words entered English during Middle English after the Norman Conquest. But the ultimate Indo European root of satisfy and satiate and saturate is the word sa. And sa meant to satisfy. And that root also made its way into Old English where it produced the word sad, which also meant full, satisfied or satiated. But over time, the sense of the word changed. It came to refer to the tired and weary feeling you experience when you're full. So you might mope around after a big meal, you might not feel like doing anything fun or exciting. And that led to the modern sense of the word sad as something gloomy or melancholy. So sad is an Old English word, but its meaning has changed over time. So I hope you found all of that interesting. I hope to have the next regular episode of the podcast ready in about a week or so. So stay tuned for that. We'll look at the evolution of the feudal system in Europe and the rise of Normandy. And we'll also see how the Norman view of the events leading up to 1066 was quite different from that of the Anglo Saxons. So until then, thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the history of English.