On the curious origins of English words and phrases

I discovered a YouTube channel recently on the origin of English words. It features a beautiful and attractive Russian girl, called Marina Orlova, who takes a word each time and describes its origin and how it has evolved. (For example to know more about the the word ‘pampered’ you can check out this video. You can also check out Orlova’s site here).

When I was looking at some of Orlova’s explanations, I also remembered that I had got a book sometime back on word origins, which had unfortunately gone into the bottom of one of my book piles. So I searched for it in my book piles and fished it out. It is called ‘Kick the Bucket and Swing the Cat : English Words and Phrases, and their Curious Origins’ by Alex Games and Victoria Coren. It seems to be based on a BBC TV series called ‘Balderdash & Piffle’. I read a bit of the foreword and browsed through the book here and there. The foreword was quite interesting and so I am giving part of it here.

When I was a child, I made a list of my favourite words. Ferret. Tinsel. Quagmire. They were my top three.
      I made the more traditional lists too : boys I liked, Barbie outfits, revenges to be exacted on horrible schoolteachers. But, while teachers and Barbies dominate our lives for a limited period of time, and boys become far less enigmatic with exposure, words remain mysteriously fascinating for ever. I still think I picked a good three. Ferret, tinsel, quagmire, all of them strange and perfect in their various ways. ‘Ferret’ squirms slightly as you say it : a mischievous, wriggly little word. ‘Tinsel’ is sharp and silvery against the teeth. You can get bogged down in ‘quagmire’, with its juicy start and claggy centre.
      This is why there is no such thing as a perfect translation. The precise relationship between a word or phrase and its meaning is peculiar to every language.
      You might say to a friend, ‘I’ll see you at teatime’, meaning only an approximation of four o’clock. But tucked away inside the word ‘teatime’, to a British ear, is a chill winter afternoon : darkness outside, a little orange glow around the streetlamps, and a pile of hot buttered crumpets on a table by the hearth. (And tucked away inside the word ‘crumpets’ is a little parade of Victorian prostitutes, from the time when the word came to mean an attractive woman, for reasons which I can’t possibly spell out here.)
      Your plan, when you meet this friend at teatime, may involve neither chill winds nor tea, and I certainly hope it doesn’t involve prostitutes. But every time you use an English word, it whispers a little story. Words are like the best sort of grandparents : still engaged and busy in the modern world, but full of colourful tales about the place they were born, the years of their youth, and the job they used to do. The question is, are we always listening?

Hope you enjoyed reading the above extract. Will write more about the book, when I get around to reading it.