Nicky Rossiter explains the origins of some everyday words and phrases

 

The world we know revolves around words – spoken and written. But all too often we pay little attention to the words we use. They all had to come from somewhere, but where?

For instance ‘bald’ seems to come from an old word that meant ‘having a white patch’ rather than the absence of hair. Some of the ways it is used may confirm this because the coot, as in ‘bald as a coot’, actually had a broad white area on its head.

A simple word like ‘ball’ brings us into a number of other words. Our common use being for the spherical object comes from Scandinavia but it then moves on to ‘ballon’ in French meaning a ‘large ball’ and from that to our balloon. Another ball is of course what we call that meeting of people to dance but this originated as the Latin ‘to dance’. It also gives us ballad and ballet.

Banana has its origin in the Mande language of West Africa and our use generally dates from the 16th century. Our use of band usually has a musical connotation but it was originally used in relation to groups of men, usually armed and dangerous. Our current use evolved through the band of musicians in army regiments.

Think of a bank and I bet you are thinking about that place to keep money. In fact the original bank was that of a river which was also related to the word bench. In the early financial sense this was the table where the practitioner carried out his trade. Bankrupt also comes through Italian and was originally ‘bankrout’ meaning a broken bench as in the business going bust.

Our word ‘barber’ comes from the French for beard as in barbe. I was surprised to find the origin of the barbershop music, so popular a few decades ago. Believe it or not, it is said that in the 17th century some barber shops had a person playing a lute or guitar – a bit different from the current out of date magazines – for those waiting their turn.

This sometimes led to the customers singing along and hence the later close harmony performers.

A ‘barricade’ comes to us via the word for a small cask in Latin’ barriclus’ that we then called a barrel. In many instances such barrels were used to block streets either in protest or for defence and thus we get a barricade.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own