Word-Origin Wednesday

"Ghost" is a pretty old word. "Ghoul," as an English word, not so much.

The names of "October" and a few other months make a lot more sense if we look at Latin and the Roman calendar.

The everyday meaning of "sympathy" has shifted over the years, but it's always had some connection to its Latin and Greek roots.

Before it entered everyday English, "hysterical" was medical Latin.

Do you say "autumn" or "fall" to describe the season between summer and winter? Get the lowdown on the history of both words.

"Dead" and "duck" go way back, but the term "dead duck" is only a couple of centuries old.

The often miswritten and mispronounced "landlubber" goes back a few centuries.

"Nice" has had at least a dozen definitions over the last few centuries.

The Modern English "peruse" came from the Middle English "peruse" . . . or maybe it came from French.

With Labor Day approaching, let's look at "factory" and "manufacturing." They were both borrowed from Latin.

"Escalate" is fairly new word, and the current definition has been around since just the 1950s.

"Put up your dukes," which has been around since at least the 1800s, is one example of Cockney rhyming slang.

The transition from "ekename" to "nickname" is a fine demonstration of the transition from Middle English to Modern English.

"Posh," as it is used today, first appeared in print a little more than a century ago. But where did it come from?

It took several languages to bring "karaoke" to English in the 1970s.

"Honey" and "moon" are very old. "Honeymoon" is relatively new, meaning it's a mere 500 years old.

"Aioli" comes from French, as do the words for many prepared foods.

"Mascara" is linked to many words from many languages, many of which go back centuries before commercially available mascara hit store shelves.

The word "liar" goes way back. As it turns out, people have been lying for a long time.

"Salary" is related to something in your kitchen, and it's not celery.

Like a lot of food-related words, "omelet" comes from French. Its origin has nothing to do with eggs.

"Humble" came from French, which took it from Latin. It's always meant "lowly," although that's not how people use it today.

A lavaliere is a fancy pendant. It's also a type of microphone. To find the origin, we go back to 17th-century France.

"Memorial" comes from Latin and is related to a slew of other English words, including "remember" and "memorandum."

"Waxing," "waning," "crescent" and "gibbous" go back a long, long time.

"Whiskey" has been through some changes in its journey to English from (no surprise) Gaelic.

May 1 is May Day (two words) in the United States. Don't confuse it with "mayday" (one word), the distress call for pilots.

The often misused "verbiage" has been around for a few centuries, and its corrupt offspring, "verbage," is older than you might think.

"Easter" goes back to Old English and then goes back further. Celebrations of spring are older than Jesus.

"Rhythm" and "rhyme" are related words, both in meaning and etymology.

"Stay" and "home" and "parent" are old words, going back centuries. Words to describe someone who tends to the home and children are also very old. English speakers began using the term "stay-at-home parent" very recently.

"Leverage" has been in the English language since the 18th century, but its position in everyday corporate speak is fairly recent.

Tea has been around for thousands of years, but English speakers didn't need a word for it until they started trading it in the 1590s.

"Butt" and "cheek" have been around for centuries. It took a while for English speakers to put them together.

"Ambulance" has been an English word since the 18th century, before motor vehicles, and is related to the word "amble."

"Selfie" is a fairly new word, but its root word and suffix are centuries old. Some people don't like "selfie," but resistance is futile.

By tracing "hiatus," meaning a break, back to its ancient Proto-Indo European roots, we find it has some modern cousins with similar meanings but very different sounds.

"Penultimate" and its cousin, "ultimate," both come from Latin. As the meaning of "ultimate" shifts, poor "penultimate" is being left behind.

The current popular meaning of "carnival" goes back to the 1920s, but the original meaning, which involves meat, goes back centuries.

We've been using the word "buck" as slang for money since the 1850s. There are two theories to explain why.

The slang term "booze" goes back many years as a noun and many more years as a verb. And what's a boozeroo?

The proper noun "Lent" evolved from a series of longer words ultimately related to spring.

On Valentine's day, you might send a valentine to your valentine. All of those uses share the same origin.

"Complicit" is Dictionary.com's 2017 Word of the Year. It's less than a century old, but the original "complicity" is much older.

Which came first, "OK" or "okay"? And what does Martin Van Buren have to do with it?

The American Dialect Society named "fake news" its 2017 Word of the Year. The term has been around for a while, but the past few years, it seems to be everywhere.

"Unkempt," which means "sloppy or disheveled," goes back centuries. It's not the same as "unkept."

Carbonara dishes typically contain bacon and a cream sauce, but the origin of the word probably involves coal. Let's explore the various theories.

"Cleave" can mean "to split" or "to stick to." How did that happen? We explore "cleave" and other contronyms in this week's Word-Origin Wednesday.

We sing it every year on New Year's Eve, but what does "Auld Lang Syne" mean and where did it come from?

"Xmas" is a common, but sometimes frowned-upon, shortening of "Christmas." Let's look at the history of both words.