The Unexpected Evolution of Language (24 page)

Thus, “silly” was a word used to describe people the bourgeoisie considered irresponsible. It still contains that sense, but more often refers to people just being foolish or immature.

siren

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
sea nymph who leads sailors to their doom thanks to her beautiful singing

NEW DEFINITION:
loud, piercing sound of warning

In
The Odyssey
, the “sirens” are a group of sea nymphs whose beautiful singing lures sailors to crash their ships onto rocks. The beauty of their voices leads directly to destruction. Odysseus, hero of the epic, decides he wants to hear the sirens’ song. He gets his men to tie him to his ship’s mast so that he will be unable to pilot the ship toward harm. The men stop up their ears. The image of a bound Odysseus, struggling to steer toward devastation, is one of
The Odyssey’s
most enduring.

The modern sense of a siren—as a piercing warning sound—didn’t emerge until the end of the nineteenth century. As steamboats crowded Mark Twain’s mighty Mississippi River, they occasionally needed to send out warning whistles to others. At some point, these warning whistles began to be called sirens. At least there’s a “watery” connection between the old and new sirens. Ultimately, the word was used to describe the sound ambulances made as they roared through town.

The irony, of course, is that the original sirens made noise that lured seafarers
to
destruction, while modern sirens make noises designed to keep civilians
safe from
destruction.

slave

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
alternate spelling of Slav

NEW DEFINITION:
person owned by another and forced to work for free

Several thousand years ago, in portions of present-day Poland and Russia, lived a group of people who called themselves “slovos.” For them, “slovo” meant “word,” so they were “the people who speak words.”

In Latin, “slovos” ultimately transformed to Slav (and was capitalized). The Slavs were agrarian for the most part, rather than warriors. Thus, they often were conquered by others. At one time or another, seemingly every nation of the medieval world conquered the Slavs, including the Celts, the Huns, and the Goths.

Some of these Slavs finally got wise and began to organize themselves into martial groups that tried their own hands at invasion and conquering. They invaded the Balkans, and they tried to take land away from the Germans.

The Germans, in modern parlance, kicked Slavic ass. The Germans repelled the Slavs from their turf and turned many of them into servants. For the Germans, “slave” was just an alternate spelling of Slav. Thus, “slave” became someone forced to work by another and, by extension, someone owned by another.

slur

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
thin mud

NEW DEFINITION:
slander; aspersion

The Middle English word from which “slur” originates meant “thin mud.” It came from an older word meaning “to track mud in.” If you left footprints in your hut after feeding the yaks, then your wife or mother may have yelled at you for “slurring” the … dirt floor? At least that dirt wasn’t wet and slimy before you messed it up!

As early as the 1600s, the word began to take on its modern meaning, “to cast aspersions.” The shift in meaning is straightforwardly metaphoric. “Slur” was mud. Mud stains, smudges, and dirties things. “Slur’s” contemporary meaning suggests people who use words to dirty, smudge, or stain the reputations of others.

The original sense of the word also is captured in the musical use of “slur.” In music, to slur is to slide over a series of notes without separating them distinctly, much the way someone might slide over a floor that’s covered in thin mud.

slut

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
a slovenly, untidy person; not exclusively a woman

NEW DEFINITION:
a prostitute; a promiscuous woman

This word did not always exclusively refer to females. In fact, it originally had no sexual implications at all.

The word derives from another that means “mud,” and “slut” originally was a slovenly, filthy (as in dirty, not as in sexy), dirty person. Usually the person in question was a woman, but Geoffrey Chaucer uses the word “sluttish” at times to describe an equally disheveled man.

Sometime in the fifteenth century, “slut” began to refer specifically to women, and it gained its current sexual denotation. One cause for the change was that maids sometimes were called “sluts” because they did a lot of (literally) dirty work, so they wound up looking dirty. These ladies also were poor and may have done more than laundry to earn their living.

For a time, the word softened in meaning and lost some of its sting because, in the seventeenth century, “slut” actually became a term of endearment for an impish little girl, not unlike the way scamp (see entry for “scamp”) became a term of endearment for an impish little boy.

Eventually, “slut” regained its harsh tone but lost its association with literal dirtiness. Instead, the word began to emphasize the metaphorical meaning of “dirty,” as in “up for anything, due, possibly, to loose morals.”

snack

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
to bite (by a dog)

NEW DEFINITION:
something to eat between meals; the act of eating between meals

Too many snacks can make you feel awful because they just add empty calories to your midsection. At one time, “snacks” were even more painful.

The word “snack” derives from an old Dutch word that meant “snatch.” When the word jumped to English, around the fourteenth century, it was used to describe a dog bite or an attempt by a dog to bite. It was the equivalent of a dog “snapping” at you.

By the eighteenth century, this verb had become a noun that meant “a small bit of food.” The leap most likely was made because, if a dog got a piece of you, it wouldn’t be a whole lot because you’d be running away. Or, maybe the new meaning of “snack” suggested the rapid snapping of a dog at your heels or fingers. A snack, after all, is usually consumed quickly.

By the nineteenth century, the word regained its definition as a verb but with a new meaning. Nowadays, this word can be either a noun or verb, depending on context.

sneer

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
to snort, as a horse or dog

NEW DEFINITION:
curl one’s lip to show disdain

“Sneer” is an example of both onomatopoeia and reverse personification. “Onomatopoeia” is that fancy and hard-to-spell term to describe words that imitate sounds. Personification occurs when you give nonhuman things or animals human characteristics. In this case, human beings actually got “sneer” from the animals.

Originally, “sneer” was used to describe the snorting of a horse or dog. When a horse snorts, it does sound reminiscent of a person puffing out her lips in scorn. Some of the words that are the origins of “sneer” most likely were coined due their imitative, or onomatopoeic, nature.

Another of “sneer’s” origin words means “grin like a dog,” which probably explains how curling one’s lip became necessary for demonstrating scorn. Thus, when Elvis Presley showed off his famous sneer, he wasn’t acting like nothin’ but a hound dog.

soap box

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
box holding soap

NEW DEFINITION:
improvised platform—sometimes real, sometimes metaphorical—on which one pontificates

When “soap box” first began to appear in writing during the seventeenth century, it referred to a box in which one carried soap. Since soap existed as much as 3,000 years before Christ, “soap box” or some variation was probably used even longer ago in conversation. “Hey, Ramses, where do you want these soap boxes?”

Leave the pharaohs behind and move forward some 5,000 years to the days just before World War I. Many people were out of work. Popular entertainment options were limited. Many new political movements were in the air. And cardboard hadn’t been invented yet.

Prior to the familiar cardboard box, manufacturers used sturdy, wooden crates for shipping. As a result, “soap boxes” were easily available. People with time on their hands, no TV to watch, and a desire to spread the word about the offbeat political movement “du jour,” grabbed a box, set it up on the corner of a public street, and started orating their guts out.

Presumably, soup box or cantaloupe box could have caught on instead of soap box. Perhaps “soap” became the favored box because people stood on these platforms and “cleared the air.”

Soap Box Derby

Since the 1930s, people have made cars out of various household objects—without motors, engines, etc.—and let gravity carry them down a hill until one of the cars crosses the finish line first.

Ironically, no one—even the All-American Soap Box Derby (AASBD), which governs the annual All-American Race—knows why “soap box” became the type of box associated with the derby. The organization’s website notes that plenty of orange crates were used in the early days and suggests that someone probably just randomly used a soap box, but it’s seemingly no more aware of the event’s etymological origins than the average derby competitor.

sophisticated

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
one characterized by sophistry, i.e., a deceitful person

NEW DEFINITION:
worldly wise and refined

Some Brits may still describe a cheeky ne’er-do-well as “sophisticated” because that’s in keeping with the word’s original definition. “Sophistication” suggested the use of sophistry, which was once a synonym for “wisdom.” It comes from a Latin word meaning teacher or wise man. By medieval times, a “sophist” was what he or she is today: someone who talks a good game but uses pretty words to cheat others out of money, sex, or goods, or to get others to do their bidding. Think, for example, of Charles Manson. His rhetoric was laced with all the 1960s-era platitudes, but underneath, his words were weapons. Thus, from the fourteenth century until the nineteenth century, you would not have wanted to be called “sophisticated.”

By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, “sophisticated” gained a new lease on life. It went back to its roots and suggested wisdom … but with a modern twist. As people became more aware of cultures beyond their own and grew more literate, that old chestnut, “sophisticated,” was brushed off and used to describe people who have attained a degree of worldly wisdom and a patina of refinement.

spinster

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
a woman who spins thread

NEW DEFINITION:
a woman who remains single beyond the typical age for marrying

It’s no surprise that sexism plays a big part in this largely discarded word, which is still occasionally used to describe women who remain single into menopause.

In the 1300s and well into the 1600s, a “spinster” was simply a woman who spun or worked with thread for a living. Spinning was one of the few careers available for women. Of course, in those days, most women only worked until they were “rescued” from labor by a husband.

Some women were still spinning at the “old age” of twenty-five, and some (probably male) wags began to refer to them as “spinsters,” meaning, basically, “old maids.” Some of these men were aghast at women working in the first place. Legal documents began to use the term “spinster” as a generic term for an unmarried woman. The word has fallen out of favor almost entirely today.

stadium

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
measure of length or a footrace

NEW DEFINITION:
large, oval structure in which sporting events take place