Usually my interest in learning the etymology of a word or phrase occurs after I say something out loud and then stop and wonder why we say it. In this blog post I will discuss a different situation where the historical or literal meaning of a word was presented to me. This happened to me three separate times recently, and all three words also happened to be loosely related to geology. I thought it would be fun to write a themed entry that combines two of my interests – geology and etymology.

Plumber

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to browse the Hall of Gems and Minerals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. In the exhibit I read a small sign that explained that the word plumber comes from the Latin word for “lead”. I thought this was pretty neat.

The Latin word for lead is plumbum. (This is why the metal’s symbol on the periodic table is Pb.) The word plumber can be traced to the 12^th century as a surname for tradesmen who worked with any form of lead. By the 20^th century the word transitioned to specifically tradesmen who installed lead water pipes and fittings, hence the modern-day use of the word plumber and plumbing. Even if we do not use lead pipes today, the name of the trade preserves its historical context.

I have to ask, then, why do we call it lead and not plumbum? Lead comes from the West Germanic word *lauda-, possibly of Celtic origin (luaide). These words historically meant lead, leaden, or weight.

Undermine

I do not remember the exact context in which I recently read or heard the word undermine used in its literal sense, but I admit prior to that moment I never once made the connection that to undermine, meaning “to subvert or weaken insidiously or secretly,” comes from under + mine, literally “to render unstable by digging or eroding the earth underneath.” Undermine in the literal “dig beneath” sense can be dated back to the 1300s, but the figurative “weaken imperceptibly” sense began to be used in the 1500s.

The word under is derived from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *ndher-, meaning “under.” The verb to mine comes from the Old French noun mine. The current belief is the French word mine originates from the Old Celtic word *meini-, meaning “ore or mine.” Similar words, like mineral, are derived from Latin (minerale), but those too also come from Celtic via French.

To Pan Out

Last month I read an article in the Smithsonian magazine called “The Big Unknown” about the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska. One sentence from the article read, “The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 drew prospectors deep into the Wrangell-St. Elias region. But it would be copper, not gold, that panned out.”

Upon reading this, the dual meaning hit me like a crashing wave. The phrase to pan out comes from panning for gold?

We use the phrase to pan out all the time in some form or other. (“I wonder how the last season of Game of Thrones will pan out…”) To pan out in the “to wash sand or gravel from a pan in search of gold” sense can be traced back to 1839. The figurative meaning of “to turn out or to succeed” showed up about 20 years later. The jump from gold panning out to any other result panning out is logical, but as with undermine, I never associated the phrase with mining and so did not previously make the connection.

Am I The Only One?

Etymology, for me, is the journey of making previously unperceived connections. I can’t be the only one who has used undermine or to pan out in every day speech and never questioned where these words came from or how their historical context evolved into the figurative meanings we use today. I hope to continue to share when I make these realizations and I hope others find these stories interesting, too.

Sources

https://www.etymonline.com/word/plumber#etymonline_v_17491

https://www.etymonline.com/word/lead#etymonline_v_6616

https://www.etymonline.com/word/undermine#etymonline_v_24986

https://www.etymonline.com/word/under#etymonline_v_4477

https://www.etymonline.com/word/mine#etymonline_v_16187

https://www.etymonline.com/word/pan#etymonline_v_3050

It’s been a long time since I worked on this blog, so I decided to choose a fun word to get back into writing. This post is about the word goober. A funny word used to describe a funny person. I called my dog a goober and then wondered where the word came from. A quick Google search informed me that goober is another word for peanut. This immediately brought back childhood memories of the bright purple jar of Smucker’s Goober Grape that my parents always made sure was stocked in our pantry. If you are unfamiliar with this product, Goober is a jar with alternating stripes of peanut butter and jelly: the lazy man’s PBJ. I never made the connection between calling someone a goober and Goober the food (or should I say “food”?) because goober does not mean peanut in my vocabulary. The word is most commonly used in the southern United States and is derived from an African word for peanut.

Peanuts and Goober

Peanuts are native to South America and were domesticated across the continent long before European arrival. You would think, then, that our word for peanut would come from a Mesoamerican language. For example, many English food words are borrowed directly from the Aztec language, such as avocado, tomato, and chocolate. But the word goober comes from the African languages Kongo and Kimbundu, illustrating a roundabout introduction of peanuts to the United States.

Portuguese traders brought peanuts to Africa, Asian, and other parts of the world by the 1500s. It became incorporated into many cuisines and became a staple crop in West and Central Africa. When the people of this region were enslaved and taken to what is today the United States they brought the peanut crop with them. The word goober comes from the Kongo and Kimbundu words for peanut, nguba.

Kongo and Kimbundu are both Bantu languages, a group of languages spoken by the Bantu people throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Bantu languages are the largest group of languages in the Niger-Congo language family. Many slaves in the southern United States and Central and South America were speakers of Bantu languages. Some creolized forms of these languages are still used today. The influence of Bantu languages on American English is found in words such as banjo (from mbanza, a banjo-like instrument) and gumbo (from ngombo, the Bantu word for okra). The word zombie is believed to originate from zumbi, the Kikongo word for “fetish”, and nzambi, the Kimbundu word for “god.” However, it is also believed to come from the Spanish word sombra, meaning “shade or ghost”. With so much mixing of Indigenous, European, and African cultures, I imagine it is difficult to pinpoint exact origins of such words.

Pea + Nut

It is difficult to talk about goober without using the word peanut. You may be wondering where this word comes from too. Peanut is a combination of pea and nut, so I will explain these words independently. Nut comes from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *kneu- meaning “nut.”  Simple enough. As you may know, peanuts are not true nuts but are actually legumes, related to beans, lentils, and peas. The word pea has a peculiar history. Pea is what is called a false singular, meaning that a singular word that sounded like a plural was mistaken for a plural and so a singular version began to be used incorrectly. Pea is derived from the Middle English word pease. Pease is both plural (the dish) and singular (one individual). But pease sounds like a plural because of the “s” sound at the end, and people in the early- to mid-17^th century started calling an individual pease pea. And, well, if pea is singular, then the plural must be peas. And it’s been that way ever since. Oh, and pease comes from Greek pison, in case you were wondering.

You may have heard peanuts referred to as goober peas. There is even a folk song about them. Other names for peanuts are ground nuts and ground peas. This is because unlike other culinary nuts that typically grow on trees, peanuts grow underground. I admit I never wondered what a peanut plant looked like, so I found this piece of trivia interesting.

Final Note

When I say that goober comes from the African word nguba, the etymological history doesn’t end there. There may be a whole story about how the Kongo and Kimbundu languages arrived as nguba to mean “peanut”. Unfortunately, this information is not readily available online.

Sources

https://www.etymonline.com/word/peanut#etymonline_v_10217

https://www.etymonline.com/word/goober#etymonline_v_9042

https://www.etymonline.com/word/pea#etymonline_v_10207

https://www.etymonline.com/word/nut#etymonline_v_9888

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Niger-Congo_origin

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/04/20/304585019/a-legume-with-many-names-the-story-of-goober

Convergent evolution is a term used in biology to describe the process by which similar traits evolved independently, such as the evolution of wings in insects, birds, and bats. I personally like to use the phrase to describe more than just biology. For example, I think about how thin, round bread is prevalent in different cultures across the globe. Were these foods invented independently, or is there a “common ancestor” of tortillas, crepes, injera, and the like? (I’m sure the information is out there; I just haven’t researched it yet.)

In a lot of ways, the evolution of words is analogous to the evolution of life. As I mentioned in my previous post, similar words, like hack, hachet, and hash, can be traced back to a “common ancestor,” hache. Sometimes words appear similar but actually converged from independent paths, such as hash and hashish. I like to use the phrase convergent evolution to describe these instances. Today I will explore another example: lime.

The English word lime has two common meanings: the citrus fruit and the mineral. Why do I use the same word to describe what I squeeze on my tacos and what clogs up the little holes of my showerhead? Are these meanings related, and if not, how did they both arrive at the same word we use today?

The Citrus Fruit

Let’s start with the tastier of the two. The English word lime can be traced back to the 1630s, but the origin of the word is much older and has gone through many iterations. Wild limes originate from Indonesia and Malaysia and were brought to the Mediterranean region around 1000 CE. The believed etymological evolution of the citrus lime is as follows:

Malay limaw -> Persian limun -> Arabic lima -> Spanish lima / Portuguese limão -> English lime

The Mineral

I love researching etymology because there are always little “a-ha” moments. This time it was the discovery that lime is related to slime. Now, the connection may seem obvious because lime and slime look and sound very similar, but in my personal experience they reside in completely separate realms. When I think of lime I think of limestone or hard water, both of which connote something hard or rigid. Definitely not something slimy. However, the origin of both lime and slime is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root (s)lei- meaning “slimy, sticky, slippery.” This was a surprise to me, until I understood the historical uses of limestone.

Limestone is a rock made of the shells of tiny sea creatures. These shells are composed primarily of calcium carbonate. In fact, lime is used in the industrial sphere to refer to a wide range of inorganic materials containing calcium. Calcium carbonate is also responsible for hard water stains and the limescale that clogs up plumbing.

When limestone is heated, such as in a limekiln, a powder is formed that, when mixed with water, creates a sticky substance. This sticky substance historically formed the base of mortar before cheaper cement was invented. This explains lime’s sticky origin.

From the PIE root (s)lei- came the Proto-Germanic word leimaz, meaning “birdlime.” Birdlime is a sticky substance applied to twigs to catch small birds. The subsequent Old English word lim incorporated both the meanings of “birdlime” and “mortar or cement.” Lim eventually evolved into modern English lime.

In case you were wondering, slime came from Old English slim from Proto-Germanic slimaz, meaning “slime.” So, slime has always meant slime.

Convergent Evolution of Lime

To answer my original question, no, lime the fruit and lime the mineral do not share a common ancestor. Lime the fruit can be traced back to the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) language, and even further back to the Proto-Austronesian (PAN) language, which is a separate language family than the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language from which lime the mineral originates. Language families are used in historical linguistics to describe the evolution of languages over time, just as taxonomy is used to classify the evolutionary relationships of living things. Two disparate concepts – a sour, green fruit and a sticky calcium containing substance – converged onto one English word: lime.

Sources

https://www.etymonline.com/word/lime#etymonline_v_9529

https://www.etymonline.com/word/slime#etymonline_v_23676

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(fruit)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limestone

In an email to a coworker I wrote, “Let me know if you would like to meet to hash out some of these ideas.” When I reread the email before sending it, my mind connected hash out to hash, short for hashish, and in a brief moment of panic I wondered, “Does the phrase hash out come from the word hashish? Is it even appropriate to use hash out in a work email?” What started as a quick Google search led me down an unexpected journey involving breakfast foods, assassins, and Twitter.

Hash

To hash comes from the French word hacher, “to chop up,” which in turn comes from the Old French word hache, or “axe.” Upon reading this my mind immediately thinks hatchet.

Hash means “to hack” or “to chop into small pieces.” This is where words like hashed browns and corned beef hash come from. Delicious.

From to hash came the phase to make hash out of, meaning “to ruin something,” as you would if you hacked something into little pieces. Eventually came the word rehash, or “go over something again.” Finally, this became to hash over, similar to “to talk over”.

Got it? Okay, good. Now set all that aside for a moment.

Thrash

Unrelated to hash is the word thrash, which has a modern meaning of “to knock, beat, or toss.” Thrash comes from the word thresh, which is the process of beating cereal crops to separate the grain. Thrash out eventually came to mean “working through the details of something.”

So, you have to hash over, meaning to discuss something again, and you have to thrash out, meaning to work out the details of something. It is natural, then, that to hash over and to thrash out would become conflated into one phrase, to hash out, meaning “to engage in vigorous discussion to resolve differences or to create a plan.”

So, that is where the phrase to hash out comes from. Perfectly safe to use in a work email. But wait, what about my original concern that hash out was related to hashish? To find out I did some further investigating.

Hashish

Hashish is the Arabic word for “powdered hemp,” from the word hashsha, or “it became dry.” Okay, so not related to hache. But the Etymonline webpage for hashish did have assassin as a Related Entry, which was very intriguing. As it turns out, assassin comes from the word hashishiyyin, or “hashish user.” According to Etymonline, “A fanatical Ismaili Muslim sect of the mountains of Lebanon in the time of the Crusades, under leadership of the ‘Old Man of the Mountains’… they had a reputation for murdering opposing leaders after intoxicating themselves by eating hashish.” Well, now you know.

Hashtag

Thinking about the word hash made me think about the word hashtag. I mean, the # symbol gets around. It is used to mean “number”, it’s called the “pound” sign, and it is used on the internet to mean “hashtag.” Why all the different names for the same symbol?

Let’s start with pound. The word pound, to mean a unit of weight, comes from the Latin libra pondo, literally meaning “a pound by weight.” Libra pondo was abbreviated with the symbol ℔ (Ever wonder why we abbreviate pound as lb.?). The ℔ symbol was later simplified to #.

Okay, but what about “number”? In the 1850s, the # symbol was used by bookkeepers to mean “number,” but only in the United States. Outside the U.S., the word pound refers only to the currency (£) or weight (lb.) and “number” is abbreviated as “No.” Instead, outside the U.S., # is called the “hash” symbol. This is most likely from the shared origin of hash and hatch mark or cross-hatch. Look, it has come full circle!

Starting in 1988, the # symbol was used in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to denote topics of interest (i.e., tags) through which users communicated. In 2007, Chris Messina suggested using the hashtag on the Twitter social media platform as a way to easily group and find content on the site. The idea caught on and in 2009 Twitter began to hyperlink hashtags, increasing their popularity. Ten years later, hashtags are used by all sorts of social media websites, organizations, celebrities, and politicians. But note: while #assassins is read as “hashtag assassins,” the # symbol is not called a “hashtag.” It is still called a “pound” or “hash” symbol.

Bonus: Flail

Researching trash/thresh brought forward the concept of the flail. Now, I admit, I only knew flail as the weapon (probably from too many movies and video games). Regardless, I did not know that flail was an agricultural tool, specifically one used for separating grains from their husks (you know, threshing). I never connected flail the weapon with to flail the action, as in to move like a whip or a flail. Sometimes the connections between words are obvious. Other times you get #hashbrownassassins.

 

Sources

https://www.etymonline.com/word/hash#etymonline_v_6193

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/40434/origin-of-hashing-out-plans

https://www.etymonline.com/word/thrash#etymonline_v_13256

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign#Usage_in_the_United_Kingdom_and_Ireland

https://www.etymonline.com/word/assassin

https://www.etymonline.com/word/hashish?ref=etymonline_crossreference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flail