The word spam was originally coined in 1937 by the
Hormel Corporation as a trade name for its new canned meat product.
According to the OED, spam’s trademark name was created by
merging the words sp|iced and h|am. Before taking on it’s more
popular, current meaning, Spam even played a brief role in John
Steinbeck’s 1939 classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
With the advent of the internet what David Crystal refers to as
“Netspeak”, the word spam went through a process of
generalization and became the term for unsolicited commercial emails.
Spam is an example of generalization, rather than connotative shift
because it still retains food product as one of its meanings.
Originally
spam only referred to these messages posted on internet discussion
groups, but with email on the rise throughout the 1990’s the
word soon became familiar in relation to commercial emails sent to
individual email accounts. Etymologically, the concern is how the
word spam transferred so smoothly from referring to a meat product to
a specific kind of data. The answer comes in a 1970 episode of the
BBC comedy show “Monty Python's Flying Circus”. A sketch
aired that featured a restaurant who’s menu featured items like
"egg, bacon, and spam;" "egg, bacon, sausage, and
spam;" " spam, bacon, sausage, and spam;" "spam,
egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam;" and even "lobster
thermidor aux crevettes with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle
pate, brandy, and a fried egg on top and spam." To further silly
the skit, the cafe was filled with Vikings who periodically broke
into songs praising Spam: "Spam, spam, spam, spam ... lovely
spam, wonderful spam ..."
Computer users adopted the word because, like spam in
the skit’s restaurant, unsolicited commercial emails were
overrunning computer networks with unneeded and unwanted information.
Interestingly, although spam has been ubiquitously present on all
facets of the internet since the early to mid-nineteen nineties, this
definition of spam is not an entry in the 1999 edition of the OED.
Joual
Joual is, according to the American heritage dictionary
and the OED, a distinctively dialectical Canadian term referring to,
coincidentally, a dialect. Joul is to modern French what regional
dialects were to Middle English. Joul speakers are characterized by
speaking with a lack of standard grammar and spelling, wide variance
in regional pronunciation of words, and common insertion of English
words and syntax. According to a New York Times article of April 22,
1973, about sixe million Canadians speak (or, at the time, spoke)
Joual, and the dialect received it’s named from one of the most
distinctive mispronunciations: the way rural Quebecers pronounce
‘cheval’, the French word for horse.
Heathen
Interestingly, the English word for non-Christians or
pagans is shared in an identical or strikingly similar form by all
the Germanic languages. Obviously, it’s origin dates to after
the rise of Christianity but because it is present in all the
Germanic languages, scholars feel certain that it was coined very
early, possibly the 4th century or earlier, although the
OED’s earliest reference is 826ad. Old English has record of
the word spelled hâþen from 826ad.
The word Heathen is distinctive because it has a clear
etymology while most words of similar ages have unclear etymologies.
Scholars believe the word to originated among the Gothics and spread
to other Germanic tribes. In the 4th century a Gothic
bishop translated the bible into gothic and the word that appears
“Greek” in modern translations of Mark 7:26 (or
“gentiles” in the vulgate) was translated haiþnô
in Gothic. Haiþnô literally means dweller on the heath.
The original meaning and the modern meaning share much in common.
Both refer to someone living outside the bounds of civilization and
who hasn’t heard or understood the gospel.
Pakistan
The name of this country has an interesting etymology,
rather than being the product of evolved and fused foreign words,
Pakistan is actually an acronym. Until 1947, Pakistan was part of
India, a colony under the rule of Great Britain. In 1947 the United
Kingdom gave independence to this region under the new name of
“Pakistan”. Strangely enough, the word was created as an
acronym by a group of student activists at Cambridge University! In
a pamplet they created in 1933 called Now or Never, they
coined the name as "composed of letters taken from the names of
our homelands: that is, Punjab, Afghania [North-West
Frontier Province], Kashmir, Iran, Sindh,
Tukharistan, Afghanistan, and Balochistan. It means the
land of the Paks, the spiritually pure and clean."
Although
the suffix “stan” does mean country in Hindi and Persian,
the students were able to meld their acronym with a familiar
morphology to create an appropriate name.
Assassin
This word’s modern meaning is “Murderer,
generally somewhat professional; esp. one who murders a prominent
figure”. But it has undergone narrowing since it was coined in
Arabic.
According to the OED, In early Arab culture, it was
customary chew hashish in religious preparation before murdering
someone of a higher rank. During the Crusades, the members of a
Muslim sect a sect of warriors who controlled many towns in Persia
led people to terrorize and murder Christians as a Islamic religious
duty. The “religious acts” were carried out under the
influence of Hashish, and the killers subsequently became known as
hashashin, which meant, literally, “eaters or smokers of
hashish.” Hashshashin evolved into the word assassin.
pansy
The word “Pansy” is an example of
perjoration. The connotation of the word pansy has slowly shifted
from one of flowers and springtime to a term for effeminate men. The
flower Pansy, known for being colorful with velvety blossoms, derived
its name in the 15th century from the Old French word
pensée, (from the Latin, pensare) which means "thought."
The Pansy got its name because the French believed the blossoms of
some varieties resemble a little face crinkled up in thought. (Never
mind the fact that the German name for this flower is
Stiefmutterchen. While speakers of French see a thoughtful
frown in this blossom, Germans see the unforgiving scowl of a "little
stepmother.")
Pansy was a moderately popular name in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. In early drafts of Gone With
the Wind, Pansy was the name of the heroine who later became
Scarlett O’Hara.
Pansy’s modern meaning is a recent shift in
connotation. It was only in 1929 that pansy began to take on the
meaning of "effeminate homosexual man."
sardonic
This word, which means “Scornfully derisive;
characterized by bitter mocking,” has ancient roots. Ancient
Greeks and Carthaginians believed that on the island of Sardinia,
near the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea, there grew a
uniquely poisonous herb. Whoever ate this plant would, before death,
experience terrible facial convulsions that resembled grotesque
laughter. The Greeks called these convulsions Sardonios gelos
or "Sardinian laughter."
The modern English word is indirectly descended from
this usage. Our word sardonic is derived from the French word
sardonique, which is from the original Sardonios gelo.
Although our idea of sardonic laughter is very different from the
Greek idea of Sardinian laughter, both meaning retain the meaning of
laughter that is of an evil or hurtful sort. Sardonic makes its first
appearance with its modern meaning in the 1638 writings of Sir T.
Herbert.
Salisbury
steak
Salisbury Steak refers to a patty of finely chopped beef
mixed with eggs, milk, and other seasonings, which is either baked,
broiled, or fried. The word, or rather, the beef patty, was created
by James Henry Salisbury (1823-1905), an American physician
capitalizing on the health conscious American populous of the late
19th century.
Dr Salisbury advised his patients to shred all of their
food before they ate it, in order to make it easier to digest. His
specific prescription diet was to eat shredded beef three times a day
followed by one cup of hot water.
During the Civil War, Dr Salisbury worked with soldiers
and created a “meat cure” for the frequent cases of “camp
diarrhea.” His meat cure involved the previously mentioned diet
with seasonings. This “cure” evolved into the modern dish
which bears the good doctor’s name.
asterisk
This word, which refers to a typographical symbol (*)
indicating omission of words or letters, reference to footnote, or
other technical purposes, has a literal name in descriptive of its
appearance: “little star”. Asterisk first entered the
English language during the Middle English period. The OED records
the first use of the word by John Wycliffe in the prologue of his
translation of 2 Chronicles. This Middle English use was, we can
reason, derived from the Late Latin word asteriscus, meaning “little
star.” The current form is taken from the Greek word
asteriskos, a diminuitive form of the word for star, astr. The OED
also added that this word descends from an Indo European root ster-3,
which means star.
Interesting to note, is that it is a common (nearly to
the point of being acceptable even in academic fields) and
distinctively American practice to misspell asterisk as asterick.
Etiquette
Etiquette is a modern term that describes the
appropriate rules for behavior in polite society. This word descends
originally from French and Spanish words ('etiquette' and
'etiqueta'). When people entered into a court in the eighteenth
century (either a law court or any court of the ruling power) each
person was given a card that contained directions and rules for
behavior in that court; these cares were called the 'etiquette'. From
this point, the denotative shift is obvious: the specific cards of
etiquette, which contained similar standards, eventually came to
denote those standards, rather than the specific card. Interestingly,
it is these cards that also inspired the common phrase: “that's
the ticket.”
