Posts filed under 'homonyms'
October 7th, 2008
There was no activity on this blog last week, because I was dealing with clogging instead of blogging.
I went to the Rockford Memorial emergency room Monday, had a stent put into a major artery Tuesday and went home Wednesday, where I spent the rest of the week recuperating. So I had a lot of time to read — and find a wealth of material for this week.
One of the things I came across was “in a gentlemanly manor.” Homonyms again, although this one is most often encountered in the phrase “to the manor born.” In both cases, the correct word is “manner.”
A “manor” is a dwelling. It comes from the Latin “manere,” “to remain,” so a manor is a place to stay. Two other kinds of residence from the same source are “mansion” and “manse,” a parsonage.
“Manner,” on the other hand, comes from “hand” — that is, “manus,” Latin for “hand.” “Manner” is all about behavior, attitude, method and style, as in “table manners,” “ill-mannered” and “What manner of man is this?” As you might expect, lots of hands-on words are derived from the same root: “manual,” “manage,” “manufacture,” “manifest” and “mandate.”
Interestingly, neither is where “man” comes from, but there’s no way I’m going to get into the origins of man here.
September 27th, 2008
When you’re describing scenes of destruction, it’s tough to top “wrack and ruin.” However, use of the word “wrack” should be confined to this phrase. “Wrack” is “wreckage,” from its Middle Dutch ancestor “wrak,” meaning “a wreck, wrecked ship.”
For all other uses, “rack” is preferred: on the rack (from the old torture device), off-the-rack clothing, a spice rack, a rack of lamb, rack-and-opinion, rack ‘em up, nerve-racking, racked with pain, rack your brain and so on.
It doesn’t seem right for one version to have most of the fun, but that’s English.
July 31st, 2008
That goo that some people put on their hair is called “gel.” The homonym “jell” is the one used informally as a verb to mean “to take or cause to take definite form; crystallize,” as in “The team hasn’t jelled yet.”
Those two, as well as “jelly” and “gelatin” and related words, come from the Latin verb “gelare,” which means “to freeze.” The only two somewhat common words that retain the freezing connection are “gelato,” a type of Italian sherbet, and “gelid,” an adjective meaning “extremely cold; frozen.”
“Jam,” another bread spread made by boiling fruit mixed with sugar, is a word of unknown origin. The homonym “jamb,” which is “a sidepost or piece of a framed opening,” as for a door or window, has the same origin as “gamb.”
That one is “an animal’s leg or shank, especially on a coat of arms.” We don’t encounter that much these days, although you may have heard “gam” in reference to “a woman’s shapely leg.” That’s where it comes from.
Our other toast treat is “preserves.” It occurred to me that if you use a hyphen, it becomes “pre-serves,” which could be another word for “leftovers,” but it certainly wouldn’t make them more appealing.
