Weekly Wonderful Words

English is a truly impressive language, with a vast array of words that are interesting and quirky. Or, as I like to say, wonderful.

Words have fascinated me for a long time. They are the natural tools of the most magical occupation ever created – writing. I find it a huge privilege to spend all of my time creating artwork that both informs and entertains people.

Here are some of my favourites. Unlike most other articles, I’ve gone into more than the basic definitions of the words, including what I have been able to find out about the history of the word and how it has developed over time. Language is never static while it is living, and I would argue that there has seldom been a language quite as ‘alive’ as English.

Spooky

I’m getting in the mood for Hallowe’en, so this one needed to be included. I promise I haven’t taken over the whole list with similar words, though!

The dictionary definition for spooky is unusually unhelpful. It means either ‘relating to, resembling, or suggesting spooks’, or ‘nervous, skittish’. So I found spook, which means ‘spectre, apparition, ghost’.

Spook comes from the Middle Dutch spooc, and it entered Dutch from the Germanic spuk. Both of those meant ghost. There is a suggestion that it could have come from the Old Prussian spanksti, ‘spark’.

To my surprise while I was researching this word, I came across a couple of other meanings. That of ‘undercover agent’ didn’t surprise me. What did was that in the 1940s, spook was a racial slur, and that this meaning has continued to be used in some places.

Friend

Friend, for those who need it, means ‘a person whose company one enjoys and towards whom one feels affection’.

This one could be found in Old English as freond, and comes from the Proto-Germanic frijojands, where it spread out into the Old Danish frynt, Old Norse fraendi, and Old Frisian friund.

Quagmire

Quagmire means ‘a swampy, soggy area of ground’, or sometimes ‘a perilous, mixed up and troubled situation; a hopeless tangle’. It is one of those lovely words that are fun to say, and saying it has the sense of losing your shoe to soggy ground.

The original sense of the word comes into English in the 1570s from two Old English words – quag ‘bog, marsh’ and mire ‘deep mud, bog, marsh, swampland’. It has changed spelling over the years, the earliest I’ve found being quamyre, which comes from the 1550s.

The sense of it meaning a difficult situation seems to have started in the 19th century, presumably from the feeling of being stuck in a bog.

Halter

A halter is headgear that is used to tie up livestock, fitting behind the ears and around the muzzle.

It comes from the Proto-Germanic halfra ‘that by which something is held’, where it became the Old Saxon haliftra. It has been a very stable word in terms of its meaning.

The addition of halter-top for an item of women’s clothing arrived around 1935.

Surreptitious

Surreptitious means ‘stealthy, furtive, well hidden, covert’.

It comes from the Latin surrepticius, which meant ‘stolen, furtive, clandestine’, and that came from surripere, ‘to seize secretly, take away, steal, plagarize’. That in turn is formed from sub ‘from under’ and rapere ‘to snatch’.

Cadre

Cadre means ‘a nucleus or core group, especially of trained personnel able to assume control and to train others’, or ‘a cell of indoctrinated leaders active in promoting the interests of a revolutionary party’.

It comes into English fairly late, around the 1830s, from the French cadre, ‘a frame of a picture’, and from the Italian quadro, which itself comes from the Latin quadrum ‘a square’.

Melancholy

Melancholy means ‘affected with great sadness or depression’.

It comes from the Old French melancholie, ‘black bile, ill disposition’, which itself comes from the Late Latin melancholia, which came without a change in meaning from the Greek melancholia ‘sadness, excess of black bile’. The Greek came from melas ‘black’ and khole ‘bile’.

Black bile was one of the four humours that medieval medicine said needed to be kept in balance in order to prevent sickness. Too much black bile caused sadness and depression, hence the modern use of the word.