The Unexpected Evolution of Language (22 page)

There is a certain “fussy” quality to the modern version of the word, which calls to mind “fastidiousness.” And there is a sense that today, something “quaint” is clever, distinctive, or unusual, harkening back to its original meaning.

Chaucer’s “Quaint”

The most unusual use of “quaint” is by Geoffrey Chaucer, author of
The Canterbury Tales
. In his bawdy “Miller’s Tale,” the word means “cunt.” Since one of “quaint’s” lesser meanings, then as now, is “unusual” or “different,” Chaucer seems to have used the word the way he did because a woman’s intimate anatomy is so different from that of a man’s.

One way or the other, the earthy miller who tells the story is inordinately fond of the word. The story is all about people cuckolding each other in artfully contrived ways, so the story demonstrates more than one meaning of quaint.

qualm

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
disaster; death; utter destruction

NEW DEFINITION:
slight pang of conscience

What a difference a few centuries make! In its earliest incarnation, a “qualm” was a terrible thing indeed. It meant, variously, kill, die, plague, and utter destruction. If a “qualm” visited your family, you’d be lucky if there were any survivors.

By the early sixteenth century, “qualm” relaxed its death grip to become “a feeling of faintness.” The most likely reason for the connection was that if you’re near death, you’ll feel faint. By the middle of that century, “qualm” meant “a feeling of uneasiness.” If you’re facing utter destruction, then you’ll certainly feel at least uneasy.

Finally, by the mid-seventeenth century, “qualm” began to take on its familiar, modern meaning of a prick in one’s conscience. Certainly, if you have qualms, you feel uneasy. You might even feel faint.

quarantine

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
a specific period of forty days

NEW DEFINITION:
act of placing sick people in isolation in order not to spread disease

If you are a Christian and a churchgoer (or were forced to go to Sunday school as a kid), then you probably remember the story of Christ’s temptation in the desert. Remember? Just before he began his active ministry, he isolated himself in the desert for a period of time, often designated as forty days. During that time, Satan tempted him to leave behind his ministry and give in to worldly temptations.

Historically, “quarantine” is the name of the desert in which Christ endured Satan’s temptations, although the word also, basically, means “forty” since it’s a variation of the more familiar “quad.” So it’s mighty convenient that the name of the desert also is the name of the period of time Jesus spent there.

Go forward 1,000 years or so, and “quarantine” became a period of forty days during which a widow could lay claim to her deceased husband’s property. Add another century or two, and you’ll find yourself in the era of exploration. During this period, if a ship was believed to be carrying disease, it was “quarantined” off the coast for—you guessed it—forty days. Eventually, the word dropped its association with the “forty” that actually is part of its root, but retained its meaning of keeping ill people isolated in order not to spread disease.

R

recalcitrant

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
to kick back (as a mule or horse)

NEW DEFINITION:
stubborn; resistant to authority

If you’re a word nerd, you may have pondered “recalcitrant.” It seems to have a root related to “calcite,” which is a family of rocks that includes limestone and marble. These are very heavy substances. They are resistant to movement. Thus, you may have thought “recalcitrant” is a word that, metaphorically, touches on the heaviness of calcite.

But you’d be wrong. The word is metaphorical, but its roots aren’t in the mineral kingdom. They’re in the animal kingdom.

The word’s Latin roots suggest a horse kicking back at its owner because it is injured or because it is simply being stubborn. When “recalcitrant” (literally “to kick back”) first entered English, it still suggested an animal kicking back toward its owner.

It’s not a metaphorical leap to take this image of a horse or mule kicking at its owner and transfer it to people who act stubborn. By the nineteenth century, mules and horses no longer played any part in “recalcitrant.” It had become simply a synonym for stubborn.

relay

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
hunting term meaning fresh pack of hounds

NEW DEFINITION:
race in which a series of runners carries a handed-off baton

Long before it was a word associated with track and field events, “relay” was associated with the upper-crust sport of fox hunting. During the fifteenth century, a “relay” worked something like the following: You and your hounds are chasing a fox through the woods in a certain direction. Eventually, your dogs tire and lose the scent of the fox. Thus, you keep a reserve pack of hounds at a certain distance from your starting point, and let the fresh pack take over when the original hounds have exhausted themselves.

You can see how this is related to the modern-day relay race, in which lead runners hold a baton, sprint at top speed for a certain distance, and hand the baton to another runner, who runs a predetermined distance before handing off the baton, and so on. “Fresh” runners take the place of “exhausted” runners. Yet, the expression “relay race” didn’t become common until the turn of the twentieth century.

rigmarole

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
list; catalogue

NEW DEFINITION:
nonsense; busywork

One popular game in the Middle Ages was called Ragman roll, Ragman’s roll, Rageman, or Ragman. Basically, the game required people to pull one of several strings attached to a line of verses about a different character. Then, the player would read the humorous and insulting verse about that character, which also was supposed to describe the player himself.

The game’s name got garbled into “rigmarole,” which at first meant list or catalogue. This meaning was related to the list of verses one could choose from during the game. Eventually, the word gained a negative connotation and suggested rambling, nonsensical speech or writing.

The word gained another meaning during the twentieth century. It began to be used to describe school-related or job-related tasks that seemed designed simply to make people do more work than necessary in order to keep them busy. Enough with the rigmarole! It takes time away from students’ and employees’ busy texting-while-on-the-clock schedule!

Nonsense ’R’ Us

For some reason, English has many fun and interesting synonyms for “nonsense.” Of course, life often is filled with nonsense, so maybe that’s why so many words are needed for it.

Synonyms of “rigmarole” include: babble, balderdash (see entry for “balderdash”), baloney, blather, bull, bunk, drivel, foolishness, gibberish, gobbledygook, hogwash, palaver, poppycock, prattle, rubbish, and trash.

But consider for a moment one of the newer words on the list: “gobbledygook.” The word was coined in 1944 by a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Maury Maverick (D-TX) coined “gobbledygook” in response to government’s already common use of euphemisms for starting war, such as “activation” or “implementation.”

Maverick said the word was supposed to mimic the sound a turkey makes. By the way, he was descended from the “Maverick” who didn’t brand his cattle and thus gave rise to the word maverick, which means “one who doesn’t follow the rules.”

rosary

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
rose garden

NEW DEFINITION:
formal Catholic prayer cycle; beaded necklace used to help recite the prayer cycle

During medieval times, a “rosary” was a rose garden. While most who lived during this time endured abject misery—malnutrition, disease, stillbirths, early deaths—some must have had the leisure time necessary to walk about in formal gardens.

When they weren’t in gardens, they were in church. And in those days, that meant the Roman Catholic Church. As people died, lords and ladies recited formal prayer cycles focusing on five sacred mysteries, i.e., sacred miracles. As an aid to remembering the cycle, worshipers used a circle of prayer beads.

Over time, the faithful began to compare the cycle of prayers to a “rosary” because, metaphorically, the cycle was a “garden of prayers” out of which grew spiritual comfort and the promise of heaven. By the seventeenth century, “rosary” came to denote the chain of prayer beads as well.

rubber

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
thing that rubs

NEW DEFINITION:
elastic material

For centuries, a “rubber” was just what it sounds like. It was something (or someone?) that “rubbed.” Thread in your pantaloons irritating your legs? That was a rubber.

When pencils came along (in the mid-sixteenth century; see entry for “pencil”), erasers were called rubbers. That’s what erasers did. They rubbed out stray marks and unwanted words.

It took a French explorer and geographer to make “rubber” the substance the world finds in everything from tires to, well, rubbers (as in prophylactics). Charles Marie de la Condamine of France lived during the eighteenth century. He spent a lot of time in Ecuador studying the equator (seriously). While there, he also became the first Westerner to encounter what is now known as rubber.

Condamine brought the substance back home to France. Since it initially was used as an eraser, people took to calling the substance “rubber.” The name stuck. Calling a condom a rubber, by the way, began in the 1920s or 1930s.

S

sad

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
satisfied; satiated