Most children won’t associate reading the dictionary with their idea of ‘fun’, but these words from Susie Dent might inspire something – if not a smile, at least a cringe or a grunt.
It will come as no surprise to hear that I have measured out my life with dictionaries. I was enthralled by them even as a child, when I would sit and read vocabulary books on long car journeys and never want the trip to end. But I get of course that not every child will feel the same, and that dictionaries don’t exactly sit at the sexy end of the scale. And yet within their pages are stories that are so squelchy, yucky, funny, or downright bizarre that you just might convince your children to read one.
Here are ten of my favourite weird and wonderful tales from the dictionary that might just inspire a smile over a grunt from the family at dinner (if that’s your chosen occasion, best leave number 10 till last).
1. Fizzle
Let’s start with windipops, because who wouldn’t? Farts happen to turn up in surprising places in English, including the word ‘fizzle’, the original meaning of which was ‘to break wind quietly’. When you think of, it makes total sense.
2. Thrill
English has gore aplenty, especially when you least expect it. This is the case with ‘thrill’, which first meant to ‘pierce with a sword’. It began with the Old English thirl, meaning a ‘hole’, because that was what you made when you thrilled someone. Over time, the word thankfully shifted to mean ‘pierce with excitement’ rather than anything sharper. As a side note. that ‘thirl’ also turned up in ‘nose-thirl’, a ‘nose-hole’. Eventually that became our modern ‘nostril’.
3. Toxic
Toxic these days is applied as much to people as it is to substances. In its original form, the Greek toxon, ‘arrow’, it was all about the poison applied to the tips of arrows to be used against the enemy. Toxon survives in ‘toxophily’, ‘archery’.
Read More: Susie Dent’s Top 10s: Ten words that have lost their oomph
4. Muscle
Surely one of the sweetest stories in English etymology involves the word ‘muscle’. In Roman times, athletes would exercise in the buff to best show off their physical prowess. The word ‘gym’, short for ‘gymnasium’, famously began with the Greek for ‘exercise naked’. To the Roman imagination, the flexing biceps of an athlete resembled a tiny rodent scuttling beneath the skin. They consequently chose to call each of them a musculus, ‘little mouse’.
5. Coconut
Look at the base of a coconut and you will always see three holes that form a startling image. These are the inspiration for its name, for coco in Spanish and Portuguese means ‘a grinning face’ or ‘bogeyman’.
6. Algebra
You might inspire more enthusiasm in a reluctant mathematician if you tell them the story of ‘algebra’, which began on the medical ward and comes from the Arabic al-jabr ‘the reunion of broken parts’. It was originally used for the surgical treatment of fractures and bone-setting. Algebra is after all about putting letters and symbols in their rightful place.
7. Geek
Thanks to their knowledge and passion, today’s geeks have a certain cachet. Not so much in the 19th century, when ‘gecks’ would regularly perform at freak shows and commit bizarre acts such as biting the heads of live snakes. That idea of extreme obsession eventually moved into the learning sphere, and distinctly bad turned to good.
8. Ventriloquist
Another performer with a curious name, for the original ventriloquists were thought to be possessed by a demon, whose voice would roar up from the depths of their stomach. That is at the heart of the word, in which ventri means ‘from the belly, and loqui meant to ‘speak’. Incidentally, the ancestors of football fans were thought to be equally possessed: ‘fanaticus’ means ‘from a temple’, i.e. inspired by a god.
9. Earwig
What has this humble insect to do with ears and wigs? The answer is that they were once believed to crawl into the human ear and, well, wiggle.
10. Lasagne
How to ruin a meal in one sentence? Tell your children that the steaming lasagne on their plate began with the Latin lasanum, a chamber pot. Evidently someone thought so little of a Roman chef’s meal that they likened it to the contents of a potty. The name was eventually transferred to the cooking pot a dish was served from, and eventually to the food cooked within it.
Good luck!
