*HAPPY NEW YEAR*

The word “sport” itself has been around in the English language since the mid-15th century, when it was derived from the Old French desporter, meaning “to amuse, please, or play.” As a noun denoting a physical game or activity, the word grew in popularity in the late-15th century, also acquiring, in the 18th century, the designation of a pleasant and interesting person – a “good sport” – from the glamorous lifestyle of gambling and betting.

There is a host of activity that poses no difficulty in parsing out its meaning and etymology: Basketball takes its name from its 1892 invention as an indoor game played on a rainy day in Springfield, Massachusetts. Similarly, baseball became a household name in the 1840s, although a similar game had been played earlier under the name of “rounders.” Football poses a bit more of problem, as it refers to a multitude of sports. While games in which a ball was kicked on a field date back to Roman times, if not earlier, the game known as soccer in the United States and football elsewhere first became a national pastime in England in the 17th century. In the 18th century, the rules of the game were codified and a number of football associations were formed. In fact, it is an abbreviation of the word “association” that gave rise to the term “soccer.” Originally, the sport was called socca, later transforming into socker, and finally soccer in 1895. The similar sport of rugby derives its name from the central-English city of Rugby, the site of the first match in 1864.

The etymology of other sports is not quite so easy to discern. Golf, for example, takes its name from the Scottish word gouf, meaning “stick, club, or bat.” The Proto-German origin of that word is kulth, and refers to the rod-shaped clapper of a bell. Similarly, hockey draws on the shape of the stick used in playing, from the Middle French word hoquet, meaning “shepherd’s staff.” The name of tennis is a gift of the French language, too, and most likely stems from the command tenez, meaning “take, hold, or receive.” One final French derivation is the game of lacrosse. Originally called jeu de la crosse (“game of the hooked sticks”) in French, a version of the game, called baaga-adowe, was also popular among the Algonquian tribe of North America

February is based in the Latin word februa which means “purification rites.” Its Roman name, Februarius Mensis, literally means “month of purification” and in Ancient Rome, purification rituals took place each year in February. The month was named for the festival of cleansing and sacrifices devoted to Februus, the god of purification. In English, February came to replace the Old English word salmonad or “mud month.”

The “month of purification” is an appropriate time for another February occurrence, the beginning of the Christian observance of Lent. A time of fasting, self-denial, prayer, and repentance, Lent is observed over the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Easter feast. The Gospels tell the story of the 40 days Jesus fasted in the desert, resisting temptations from Satan and preparing to begin his life of public ministry. In commemoration, Christians prepare themselves for the coming Easter by fasting or abstaining from certain luxuries or foods.

The Latin term for Lent (quadragesima) is based on the word for the number 40, or quadraginta. This root is still apparent in contemporary Romance languages such as Spanish (Cuaresma), French (Carême), and Italian (Quaresima). Interestingly, in Slavic languages the name is based in the Lenten tradition of fasting and abstinence. In the Czech Republic, Lent is Pust, which can be literally translated as either “fasting” or “Lent.”

When the Latin mass was translated into the English vernacular, Quadragesima became Lent, a name with etymological roots that emphasize the coming of spring. It’s based in the Germanic langa-tinez or “long days,” a reference to the increasing daylight that accompanies the coming of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. In fact, the current word for the season of spring is lenz in German and lente in Dutch.

Meaning

Something or someone that one finds pleasing.

Origin

An English website about the English language can’t of course be complete without some consideration of tea. Tea has been around for a long time, and so has the British slang term for it – ‘char’. In fact, it was known in the west by that version of the Mandarin ch’a before it was called ‘tea’. The Dutch adventurer Jan Huygen van Linschoten was one of the first to recount its use as a drink, in Discours of voyages into ye Easte & West Indies, 1598:

The aforesaid warme water is made with the powder of a certaine hearbe called Chaa.

‘My cup of tea’ is just one of the many tea-related phrases that are still in common use in the UK, such as ‘Not for all the tea in China’, ‘I could murder a cup of tea’, ‘More tea vicar?’, ‘Tea and sympathy’, ‘Rosie Lee’, ‘Storm in a teacup’ and so on.

In the early 20th century, a ‘cup of tea’ was such a synonym for acceptability that it became the name given to a favoured friend, especially one with a boisterous, life-enhancing nature. William de Morgan, the Edwardian artist and novelist, used the phrase in the novel Somehow Good, 1908, and went on to explain its meaning:

“He may be a bit hot-tempered and impulsive… otherwise, it’s simply impossible to help liking him.” To which Sally replied, borrowing an expression from Ann the housemaid, that Fenwick was a cup of tea. It was metaphorical and descriptive of invigoration.

People or things with which one felt an affinity began to be called ‘my cup of tea’ in the 1930s. Nancy Mitford appears to be the first to record that term in print, in the comic novel Christmas Pudding, 1932:

I’m not at all sure I wouldn’t rather marry Aunt Loudie. She’s even more my cup of tea in many ways.

In keeping with the high regard for tea, most of the early references to ‘a cup of tea’ as a description of an acquaintance are positive ones, i.e. ‘nice’, ‘good’, ‘strong’ etc. The expression is more often used in the ‘not my cup of tea’ form these days. This negative usage began in WWII. An early example of it is found in Hal Boyle’s Leaves From a War Correspondent’s Notebook column, which described English life and manners for an American audience. The column provided the American counterpart to Alister Cooke’s Letter from America and was syndicated in various US papers. In 1944, he wrote:

[In England] You don’t say someone gives you a pain in the neck. You just remark “He’s not my cup of tea.”

The change from the earlier positive ‘my cup of tea’ phrase, to the dismissive ‘not my cup of tea’ doesn’t reflect the national taste for the drink itself. Tea remains our cup of tea here in the UK. According to the United Kingdom Tea Council (of course, there had to be one) 60 million of us down 160 million cups of the stuff each day.

The term “in a nutshell” refers to a shortened description, or a story told in no more words than can physically fit in the shell of a nut. But the origin of the term tests those limits with the most longwinded of tales. The ancient Roman encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder claimed that a copy of Homer’s The Iliad existed that was small enough to fit inside a walnut shell. Almost 2000 years later in the early 1700s the Bishop of Avranches tested Pliny’s theory by writing out the epic in tiny handwriting on a walnut-sized piece of paper and lo and behold, he did it!

Beans

English speakers have been using the word “spill” to mean “divulge secret information” since 1547, but the spilling of beans in particular may predate the term by millennia. Many historians claim that secret societies in ancient Greece voted by dropping black or white beans into a clay urn. To spill those beans would be to reveal the results of a secret vote before the ballots had been counted. Kidney he lives, pinto he dies!

Pie

As many of us know from experience, it is not so easy to make a pie. A buttery crust can fall apart in the deftest of hands and around Thanksgiving many pumpkin “pies” might be more accurately deemed pumpkin “soups.” On the other hand (or for our purposes) anyone can become an expert at eating a pie. Popularized in the U.S. in the late 1800s, the most notable use of pie to mean “simple and pleasurable” appears in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Part of our next food idiom makes a home in many pies, especially in America.

Apples

Apples and oranges refers to two incommensurable items, i.e. a comparison of things that cannot be compared. Though they are both fruits, apples and oranges are separated by color, taste, juiciness and 89.2 million years of evolution. The idiom first appeared as apples and oysters in John Ray’s 1670 Proverb collection, and equivalent terms exist in many languages: “grandmothers and toads” in Serbian to “love and the eye of an axe” in Argentine Spanish. What other funny fruits turn unusual phrases?

Bananas

Not only does going bananas mean “to go crazy,” the term can point to things for which you’ve gone bananas, or obsessions. According to lexicographer E.J. Lighter, going bananas refers to the term going ape often used in American popular culture in the second half of the 1900s. Apes were seen as crazy by the mid-century media, and what do apes eat? Bananas! For example, here at Dictionary.com, we’re bananas for grammar but we go bananas when people end sentences with prepositions.

Tea

Though English is spoken all over the world, there are certain idioms that recall its, well, Englishness. Popularized in British Edwardian slang, cup of tea originally referred to something pleasant or agreeable. The negative usage as in not my cup of tea arose during World War II as a more polite way to say you didnt like something. “You dont say someone gives you a pain in the neck,” explained Alister Cooke in his 1944 Letter from America. You just remark, he’s not my cup of tea.’”

Cheese

Perhaps the savoriest idiom on this list, the word cheese can refer to a person or thing that is important or splendid as well as to the delicious dairy product. The usage is thought to have origins in Urdu, from the Persian chiz meaning “thing.” In common usage, “the big cheese” is a person of importance or authority, and cheese is often associated with smiling, based on the “say cheese” method of posing for pictures.

Eggshells

Our final idiom is also our most delicate: walking on eggshells or taking great care not to upset someone. The term is thought to have originated in politics when diplomats were described as having the remarkable ability to tread so lightly around difficult situations, it was as though they were walking on eggshells. In a nutshell, we hope you go bananas with these food idioms. Whether or not they’re your cup of tea, these terms are easy as pie to use and they’ll make you the big cheese of any conversation! So go ahead and spill the beans, it’s just like apples and oranges.

Yahoo

[yah-hoo, yey-, yah-hoo]

The origin of this word may add some unexpected irony to the well-known internet browser. Originally coined by Jonathan Swift in his 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels, Yahoo refers to the brutish race of homo sapiens ruled by the Houyhnhnm, a noble race of speaking horses. Swift’s Yahoo’s display all of the vices of humanity with none of the virtues, thus it makes sense that the word has come to mean ‘a course or brutish person.’ If you say ‘yahoo’ loud enough you might be moved to experience our next neologism.

Chortle

[chawr-tl]

Lewis Carroll coined this funny term for a gleeful chuckle in his 1872 novel, Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In the novel, the word appears in a verse poem titled “The Jabberwocky,” in which Alice finds a book that can only be read using a mirror. The old man in the poem “chortles in his joy” when his son beheads the terrible monster. Today the word is widely thought to be a combination of ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort.’

Quark

[kwawrk, kwahrk]

A quark can be any group of elementary particles that combine to become a subatomic particle such a neutron or proton. In other words, quarks are some of the smallest building blocks of an atom. In 1964 the U.S. physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the particle after a word he found in James Joyces novel, Finnegan’s Wake. Joyce’s quotation reads, “Three quarks for Muster Mark,” with ‘quark’ referring to the cry of the seagull.

Utopia

[yoo-toh-pee-uh]

Utopia is the title of Sir Thomas More’s whimsical and satirical book written in 1516. More envisions a perfect society situated on an island that he names Utopia. Developing the word from the Greek topos for ‘place,’ More choose the prefix ou- or u- meaning ‘not’ or ‘no.’ Thus the name Utopia quite literally means no place at all. Even though More might have his reservations about the achievability of a perfect world, our next neologism might be the closest thing to a perfect sound.

Tintinnab-
ulation

The American poet and author Edgar Allen Poe coined this onomatopoetic word in his 1849 poem “The Bells.” The poem was published shortly after Poe’s death, and though the four sections of the piece become progressively darker as Poe describes four different types of bells, ‘tintinnabulation’ characterizes the joyous sound of silver sleigh bells, foretelling “a world of merriment.” The word is derived from the Latin tinnire meaning ‘to ring’ combined with the instrumental suffix ‘bulum.’

Grok

[grok]

Do you feel like nobody groks you? Don’t worry, Robert A. Heinlein does. In his 1961 best-selling science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein coined the term to mean an understanding so thorough that “the observer becomes a part of the observed–to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience.” But in common usage the term means to communicate sympathetically or to ‘drink in’ understanding. If you’re reading this slideshow off a screen, you’ll definitely grok our next neologism.

Cyberspace

[sahy-ber-speys]

Though you might not want to build a house there, anyone with a computer has a stake in cyberspace. Coined by the science fiction writer William Gibson, ‘cyberspace’ first appeared in a 1982 short story. The word combines the terms ‘cybernetics’ (the use of mechanical and electronic systems to replace human function) and ‘space’ (an area or realm). Together they form ‘cyberspace,’ the realm of electronic communication or virtual reality. If you’ve ever thought ‘virtual reality’ was a bit of an oxymoron, you might be familiar with our final neologism.

Catch-22

[kach-twen-tee-too]

“The deal sounds great, but what’s the catch?” Have you heard something like this? Then you’d better hope the catch isn’t a Catch-22. The phrase represents a frustrating situation in which one is trapped by contradictory regulations or conditions. Catch-22 is the title and central problem of Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel, and in Heller’s context the catch represents a simultaneously dangerous and idiotic military regulation that maddens the poor characters tangled in his Catch-22.