We often say “once in a blue moon” to describe an event that happens infrequently, like a Detroit Lions championship or the McRib returning to the menu at McDonald’s. This usage dates back to the 16th century, when “the moon is blue” was used to describe an event that seemed impossible. In 1821, Pierce Egan used the idiom in his work Real Life in London, to describe how long it had been since two people had seen each other. This denoted a shift in the meaning of the phrase from “impossible” to “unlikely.” But why does a blue moon specifically carry this connotation? Why not a green or gold moon?
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In reference to the actual celestial body, people reported seeing a blue-colored moon after the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. This hue was likely due to the sulfur dioxide and ash in the air changing the wavelengths of visible light, making the moon appear blue.
When it comes to the lunar cycles, there are usually 12 full moons in a year, but occasionally there are 13 — this is known as a “blue moon.” The concept of the 13th full moon was coined in the 1937 Maine Farmers’ Almanac. However, in 1946, amateur astronomer James Hugh Pruett misinterpreted that extant meaning. He wrote an article about “blue moons” as the second full moon in any given month. By this second definition, multiple blue moons can happen in a single year, though this occurs only once every 19 years. When it does happen, it usually takes place during January and March, as February’s unique 28-day (sometimes 29) length makes it more likely. Sometimes there will be no full moon in February at all, as the average duration between full moons is 29.5 days.
The two versions are similar lunar cycle concepts, but either way you track them, blue moons happen roughly once every 2.7 years. So while we may use “once in a blue moon” in an extremely vague sense, it actually refers to that specific period of time.
You’ve heard of acronyms, but are you familiar with backronyms? In this linguistic case of chicken-and-egg, the abbreviation is conceived before the phrase.
Government agencies love their acronyms — and backronyms, too. For instance, NASA once named a treadmill “COLBERT” after late-night television host Stephen Colbert. Before unveiling a new module for the International Space Station, the agency launched an online poll for the public to submit ideas for the module’s name. Instead of the expected space-y options, people went with their favorite comedian. While NASA ultimately named the module “Tranquility,” the agency still honored the public’s choice by naming the ISS treadmill the “COLBERT” — a backronym that stands for “Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.” A backronym is essentially a reverse-engineered acronym; it turns an existing word into an acronym by piecing together relevant words until their first letters correctly spell the desired abbreviation. The name “COLBERT” came before the treadmill’s full name, which was created with the final abbreviation in mind.
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The portmanteau of “backward” and “acronym” came about from a 1983 neologism (a newly coined word) contest in TheWashington Post. Nowadays, backronyms are found everywhere, especially in the entertainment industry. The title of the James Bond thriller Spectre is a backronym for “Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion.” The British English word “spectre” (or “specter” in American English) means “ghost” — an apt name for a covert organization tracking global supervillains.
One of the most enduring backronyms must be “SOS,” which, contrary to popular belief, is not an acronym for “Save Our Ship,” nor does it stand for “Save Our Souls.” In 1906, “SOS” (… — … in Morse code) was chosen as the standard distress signal in Morse code because of its simple and distinct set of dots and dashes. The popular backronyms were later invented as a creative way to explain the origin of the code.
Thanks to these backronym origin stories, it can be tricky to differentiate an imaginative creation from a genuine acronym. While no one will fault you for misidentifying backronyms, discovering their true identity can include some interesting stories.
My 4-year-old niece has a favorite blanket that she can’t sleep without. When I asked her if it had a name, she said something that sounded like “zhuzh.” Her parents helped translate: “It’s spelled with three ‘Zs.’”
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My niece has already learned enough of the English language to pick up on the relationship between sleep and the letter “Z,” but where did this link come from? We could chalk it up to simple onomatopoeia, but I know when I snore, it doesn’t sound nearly as sweet as it did when my niece tried to pronounce “zzz.”
Other languages have their own onomatopoetic ways to depict snoring, including “rrrrrr” in Spanish and “xppp” in Russian. But the three “Zs” are globally recognized, thanks to the popularity of American comics. The first instance of “zzz” being used as shorthand for sleep has been traced to the 1903 comic strip “Katzenjammer Kids,” which portrayed a man snoozing in a hammock. Figuring out how to depict sleep in comic strips and comic books is a tricky task. Sometimes sleep has been depicted as “grrk,” “honk-shoo,” “ZZRRGGHH,” or just “snore.” Or the illustrator has taken artistic license by adding a little drawing of a saw and a log to imply the rhythmic rumble of the idiom “sawing logs.” In time, that phrase evolved with technology into “snoring like a chainsaw.”
But the “Zs” won out. In the 1940s, the verb “zonk,” meaning “fall or cause to fall suddenly and heavily asleep or lose consciousness” entered the lexicon, and in the 1980s, cartoonist Jim Davis used one big “Z” to demonstrate sleep in the “Garfield” comics.
As for how to pronounce “zzz,” it’s usually not meant to be pronounced out loud, although in the 1960s, the phrase “get some Zs” became common slang, and now the British have adopted the word “zizz” to mean “nap.” Whether said as “zhuzh,” like my niece does, or written “zzz” in the funny pages, we could likely all use a few more hours of sleep.
Author Tom Wolfe coined the term “The ‘Me’ Decade” to define the 1970s, and these are some of the slang words and terms that came out of these wild, free-spirited, and tumultuous years.
The 1970s were a time of social activism, political upheaval, and a continuation of the counterculture revolution of the 1960s, and the slang that came out of this decade was a reflection of these changes. Author Tom Wolfe coined the term “The ‘Me’ Decade” to define the era. He described an “unprecedented post-World War II American development: the luxury, enjoyed by so many millions of middling folk, of dwelling upon the self.” Along with the self-development trends coming out of these wild, free-spirited, and tumultuous years came a set of slang words and terms to talk about the new ways of thinking. Let’s examine more of the language of the 1970s.
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Book (As a Verb)
While very commonly recognized as a noun for bound reading material, “book” can also be used as a verb, as in “book a reservation.” However, in the 1970s, using “book” as a verb meant you needed to “move quickly” or “leave abruptly.” The first usage of this definition was in Skateboarder magazine in 1977. The use of “book” in a legal context, to mean “apprehend or arrest,” dates to the 18th century, but the television show Hawaii Five-O (which aired from 1968 to 1980) popularized what would become one of the most memorable catchphrases of the decade: “Book ’em, Danno!”
“Oh man, it’s late. I gotta book!”
10-4
This radio code, meaning “message received,” was introduced into everyday conversation — no radio necessary — through a popular song and a string of trucker films, including Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Every Which Way but Loose (1978), and Convoy (1978). The last film, starring Kris Kristofferson, was inspired by the 1975 country song “Convoy” by C.W. McCall. This song, which included a simulated conversation using CB radio slang, went to No. 1 on both the country and pop charts and holds the 106th spot onRolling Stone magazine’s 200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time.
“Let’s meet up after work on Friday.”
“10-4, see you then.”
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Keep On Truckin’
“Keep on truckin’” — meaning “to persevere” — became a trendy hippie slogan in the 1970s. The encouraging idiom was borrowed from R. Crumb’s comic strip of the same name, which in turn borrowed the line from “Truckin’ My Blues Away,” a 1936 blues song by Blind Boy Fuller. While “keep on truckin’” isn’t as ubiquitous as it once was, another popular 1970s idiom with a similarly uplifting meaning still endures: “Hang in there!”
“He’s had a lot of setbacks in his career, but he keeps on truckin’.”
Go Bananas
The idiom “go bananas,” meaning “go crazy, mad, wild (with excitement, anger, frustration, etc.),” became popular on college campuses and entered mainstream pop culture at the beginning of the decade.
“I’m going to go bananas if I don’t get a break soon!”
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Hardball
If someone wants to play hardball, they’re not talking about playing a game. “Playing hardball” is slang for behaving in a “ruthless, uncompromising manner.” It was coined in the mid-1970s and is most often heard in relation to business or politics.
“I told him I wanted a raise, but he decided to play hardball.”
Primo
If something is primo, it’s the very best. “Primo” comes from the Italian primo, meaning “first, principal,” and the Spanish primo, meaning “first-rate, fine.” Coined in 1970, “primo” was used as slang throughout the decade to refer to the high quality of a drug, especially marijuana. It then evolved into a way of describing anything that was first-rate or excellent.
“Her new Mustang is a primo ride.”
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Strengthen Your Vocabulary By Cutting These Redundant Terms
It’s time to cut redundant and overused phrases from your vocabulary. (See the redundancy?) You’ll be making cuts throughout after this quick explainer.
“Redundant,” “overused,” “clunky” — if any of these adjectives can be applied to your speech or writing, it’s time to clean up your vocabulary. We’re not talking about putting a dollar in the swear jar. Excising redundant, overused, and clichéd phrases from your speech will make you sound more polished, and save time and space in your writing. And while it may not be blatantly obvious (can you see why that two-word phrase is redundant?)that these terms need to go, you’ll be making cuts throughout your vocabulary after this quick explainer.
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Added Bonus
“Added” does not need to be used with the word “bonus,” as in, “As an added bonus, we’ll throw in airfare for free.” This phrase is redundant — by definition, a bonus is “something in addition to what is expected.” The correct usage would be, “As a bonus, we’ll throw in airfare for free.”
Blatantly Obvious
These paired words mean the same thing. “Blatant” means “in an open and unashamed manner,” and “obvious” means “easily perceived or understood; clear, self-evident, or apparent.” There is no need to use both at the same time — “obvious” is obvious enough.
Close Proximity
This faux pas likely stems from a misunderstanding of the word “proximity,” which means “nearness in space, time, or relationship.” A sentence such as, “The store was in close proximity to her apartment,” is therefore redundant and can be shortened to, “The store was in proximity to her apartment.”
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Each and Every
While commonly used in casual speech, this phrase is best kept out of formal writing because of its redundancy. “Each” means “every one of two or more people or things,” and “every” refers to “all individual members of a set without exception.” Using both words isn’t necessary.
Exact Same
“Exact same” means the exact same thing; there is no need to use both words. “Exact” means “not approximated in any way; precise,” and “same” means “identical; not different.”
Few in Number
Instead of saying, “The volunteers were few in number,” save yourself a few words and say, “The volunteers were few.” It means the same thing, because “few” means “a small number of.”
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Final Outcome
By definition, “outcome” is “the way a thing turns out” or a “consequence,” implying it is the end. This means that “final” is redundant and can be eliminated.
In Order To
“He began reading more in order to improve his vocabulary,” can be easily cleaned up. “In order” is usually unnecessary, so the sentence can be shortened to: “He began reading more to improve his vocabulary.” Now it’s straight to the point.
Just
A good rule of thumb for crutch words (also called “filler” words) is to take them out of the sentence and see if it still makes sense. If it does, you can remove them. For example, “She just didn’t listen to the instructions,” means the same thing as “She didn’t listen to the instructions.” Sometimes, “just” is needed for emphasis, but typically, it’s not.
Point in Time
Sometimes extra words are a cushion, or a way of hedging a statement if you’re not confident. “At this point in time, we believe our results are accurate.” This phrase can often be removed altogether, as in, “We believe our results are accurate,” or at the very least, replaced with “now,” as in, “We now believe our results are accurate.” Along with making a cut to the writing, you’ve also added a layer of confidence to the statement.
Protest Against
“Protest” means “to express an objection” to something, making the word “against” redundant. Instead of saying, “The group protested against animal testing,” you can say simply, “The group protested animal testing.”
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That
Sometimes, “that” is needed for clarification, but if a sentence still makes sense without it, you can omit it. For example, “This is the best book that I’ve ever read,” can be shortened to, “This is the best book I’ve ever read.”
Really/Very
While they are called “intensifiers,” these words often make your sentences sound weaker. “She was very/really excited to work at the new firm,” can easily be shortened to, “She was excited to work at the new firm.” Even better, replace both the intensifier and the verb (“excited”) with a stronger verb: “She was delighted to work at the new firm.”
Featured image credit: Leigh Prather/ Shutterstock
Perhaps you’re not fluent in Spanish or Japanese, but even if English is the only language you speak, you’re using influences from all over the globe. The everyday words that English speakers use in daily conversation often have origin stories that cross borders and cultures. Here, we explore the etymology of some common words and reveal connections to different languages and traditions.
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Alcohol
The most common English association for “alcohol” is with intoxicating drinks, but its Arabic origin is in a cosmetic substance. The Arabic word al-kuhul originally described a fine metallic powder used to darken the eyelids (later known as “kohl”). In Arabic, kahala means “to stain, paint,” and al is “the.” By the 16th century, alcohol was in Medieval Latin, still referring to a powdered metallic substance. In alchemical experiments, the term evolved to describe a volatile liquid, then a pure spirit. By the mid-17th century, the word alcool made its way into French, and this is what turned into “alcohol” to refer to a beverage. The word retains several variations of chemical definitions from the medieval alchemical experiments, but people outside of a chemistry lab most commonly think of it as an intoxicating beverage.
Avatar
Originating from Sanskrit, “avatar” means “an embodiment or manifestation of a person or idea.” In Hinduism, it refers to the descent of a Hindu deity to Earth in incarnate or tangible form. “Avatar” combines the Sanskrit ava (“off, down”) and tarati (“crosses over”). The most modern usage of “avatar” is in video games and online forums, where an avatar is the icon or figure a person uses to represent themself online.
Ballet
In English, ballet is an elegant dance form performed with specific graceful movements and steps. However, the origins of “ballet dancer” show that term is a bit redundant. The Latin word ballare means “to dance,” and while the dance form of ballet originated in France, the word came from the Italian balletto, a diminutive of ballo, which simply means “a dance.” The specific form of dance we call “ballet” got its start in 17th-century France, but at that time, the word could have meant any kind of dance.
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Broccoli
This healthy green vegetable gets its name from Italian, originating from broccolo, meaning “cabbage sprout.” Many similar vegetables are in the Brassica oleracea family (cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi), but broccoli is the Italica varietal of the family.
Chocolate
Most people love a sweet chocolate treat, but the word “chocolate” has had a complex journey. There are different legends about how Mesoamerican societies were given the cacao tree, but the words “chocolate” and “cacao” come from the Nahuatl language wordsxocoatl and cacahoatl, respectively. Xocoatl was a bitter and spicy drink mixture made from cacao beans. The Aztec, Olmec, and Maya civilizations are believed to have enjoyed this beverage long before Spaniards took it to Europe around 1520. Modern chocolate, tempered and sweetened with milk and sugar, is far from the original forms of xocoatl and cacahoatl, but the name preserves a tie to the Mesoamerican roots.
Coffee
It’s a beverage enjoyed globally, but “coffee” has roots in the Arabic qahwah, which etymologists have linked to a word meaning “wine.” Alternatively, it might be from the Kaffa region of Ethiopia, the home of the coffee plant. However, this would still come back to Arabic, as coffee in Kaffa is called būno, which was pulled into Arabic as the word bunn, meaning “raw coffee.”
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Hamburger
Hamburgers are almost as American as apple pie, but the term “Hamburger” originally referred to a native of Hamburg, Germany. The food’s connection to the German city is uncertain, but it may be linked to Hamburg’s role as a significant port for German immigrants to the United States.
Kindergarten
Widely used in the American education system for the introduction to school before first grade, “kindergarten” traces its roots to the German term Kinder-Garten, which means “children’s garden.” It was coined by German educator Friedrich Fröbel as a symbol of nurturing children’s growth in the way a gardener might care for their beloved flowers.
Noodle
This word was most likely borrowed from the German noun Nudel (meaning “noodle”), but some linguists believe it may be linked to the Latin minutulus, meaning “tiny” or “very small.” Another theory suggests a connection to the German word Knödel, meaning “dumpling.”
Pajamas
In the 1800s, Muslims in India wore loose trousers tied at the waist, and Europeans adopted these pah jamahs for their sleepwear. The word likely comes from the Persian word paejamah, which translated literally as “leg clothing.” Europeans brought the style back to their continent and it spread across the world. Americans spell the word “pajamas,” but the British are more likely to spell it “pyjamas.”
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Tornado
“Tornado,” which refers to a destructive force of nature in the form of a cyclone-shaped windstorm, comes from the Spanish word for “thunderstorm,” tronada. In the mid-16th century, a tornado was a thunderstorm, specifically a violent storm on the tropical Atlantic Ocean. English-speaking sailors likely created “tornado” from Spanish-speaking sailors referring to tronar, or “thunder.”
Vanilla
The sweet taste that flavors baked goods and ice cream comes from vanilla pods, which are the fruit of a particular orchid plant. In Spanish, vainilla is “pod,” the diminutive of vaina, or “sheath.” Around the mid-17th century, when new spices and flavorings were being introduced to Europe from the Asian continent and the Americas, the word “vanilla” and the phrase “vanilla pod” (somewhat redundant considering the origin) was adopted into English from Spanish.
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“I’ll see you soon.” “We’ll be there in a few.” “Be right there!” All of these are vague promises that you’ll be arriving at a particular place in a short period of time, but one similar phrase, “be there in a jiffy,” isn’t quite so vague. It’s been adopted as an idiomatic phrase that implies you’ll be there shortly, but “jiffy” actually refers to a defined period of time.
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A jiffy is a concrete, measurable unit (that still varies, depending on the context). Some scientists use “jiffy” to denote a very, very tiny amount of time. To physicists, a jiffy is how long it takes for light to travel one femtometer (a millionth of a millionth of a millimeter). Femtometers are used to measure things smaller than an atom, so you can imagine how short a jiffy is. In electrical contexts, “jiffy” is used to measure the length of a single cycle of alternating current, where one jiffy equals 17 milliseconds. In computer science, “jiffy” is a variable term, equaling anywhere from one to 10 milliseconds.
There are many such terms that are far more specific than common usage indicates. Promising you’ll be back in a “few shakes,” for instance, is pretty impossible. In the world of physics, a shake is a unit used to measure one step of a nuclear chain reaction that equals 10 nanoseconds (10 billionths of a second). While these words have specific meanings in a scientific or technical context, they’ve been adopted as idioms. While you may not be traveling at the speed of light in a jiffy, folks will still understand your intent.
The English of 200 years ago would sound remarkably familiar to modern speakers. Let’s explore how the American accent evolved and how things were different in the 1820s.
A lot has changed since 1824; back then, there were only 24 stars on the American flag, Beethoven had just debuted his Symphony No. 9, and people often spent their free time reading and gardening instead of watching “Love Island” and scrolling social media. But for all the differences, one thing has remained pretty stable over the past 200 years: how the English language sounds.
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If you hopped in your hypothetical time machine, you might be shocked at how similar 200-year-old English sounds compared to now. By the 1820s, many English-speaking Americans had begun to drop the British accent that was more common in Colonial America during the 18th century, and American English was developing as distinct from the Queen’s English. (If you went back 400 years, Shakespearean English would be much more difficult to understand.) An 1824 person would likely have no difficulty communicating with someone today, and vice versa. There are a few minor differences, of course, but overall it would be simple to parse the meaning of a sentence.
Let’s look at a written passage from 1820, specifically the description of Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:
He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew.
While the vocabulary used by Irving sounds rather formal, the meaning of the overall passage should be clear to anyone with a basic understanding of the English language. Things may get a little murky in regard to 1820s slang, though. Just like any other time period, the decade had its unique phrases, such as “a boodle of people” (“a crowd”) and “making a Virginia fence” (“drunkenly stumbling about”). You may have a hard time deciphering these turns of phrase, much as someone back then would be confused by “sus” or “rizz.”
People have long debated which came first: the chicken or the egg? But in the world of language, there’s a similar debate raging on: Did orange the fruit or orange the color come first?
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The simple answer is that people have been enjoying the fruit since long before it was ever called an “orange,” but it was indeed the fruit name that ended up inspiring the color name. The etymology can be traced back to a first-century CE Indian medical text, which makes reference to a naranga tree. This Sanskrit word once meant “fruit like elephants” — possibly in reference to how the tough and dimpled skin of the fruit felt similar to that of the giant mammal. The word later showed up as orange in French and arancia in Italian around the 12th century, solely referring to the fruit.
As language developed, people used a variety of words to describe colors that didn’t have their own names. Geoluhred — “yellow-red” in Old English — was the 14th-century word for what we know today as “orange.” In the 1390s, Chaucer described the color of a fox in a Nun’s Priest’s Tale as “betwixe yellow and reed.” Later, in the 16th century, people started using the word “orange,” and in 1605, Shakespeare described an “orange tawny beard” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Sir Isaac Newton left orange and indigo out of the first color wheel, but added them in the 1660s to reach seven colors to mirror an octave, as he saw colors and music intrinsically connected. This endorsement proved to be the orange-flavored icing on the cake, as the color orange lives on in ROY G BIV.
Grandparents hold a unique place in our families and are fondly referred to with a wide variety of special nicknames. Few other family titles have so many variations in English — “Granny,” “Gramps,” “Mimi,” “PopPop,” “MawMaw,” and “PawPaw” are just a few of the terms families might use to distinguish between sets of grandparents. (With today’s blended families and chosen families, folks might be lucky enough to have many people in the role of a grandparent.) The choices of names for these cherished people often reflect a family’s ancestral ties. The most popular nicknames for grandparents in the U.S. are “Nana” and “Papa,” but if your family isn’t using a standard American English title, you’re likely using a name from a different language.
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With Spanish as the second-most-spoken language in the U.S., the Spanish translations of “grandmother” and “grandfather” also are popular: abuela and abuelo and abuelita and abuelito (equivalent to “grandma” and “grandpa”).
The French terms grand-mère and grand-père require no translation, but other languages aren’t so obvious. Some cultures have different words for maternal and paternal grandparents. In Swedish, the maternal grandma and grandpa are called mormor and morfar, respectively, while the paternal grandparents are called farmor and farfar. Hindi follows a similar structure: Nani is the maternal grandma and nana is the maternal grandpa, while dadi and dada are the paternal grandparents. It might sound a bit strange to native English speakers, but dadi means “grandma.”
This term might sound more familiar to English speakers: “Babushka” is an English word for a headscarf, but it was borrowed for its association with older women, because it’s the Russian word for “grandmother.” The similar-sounding dedushka means “grandfather,” and the informal versions of these Russian names are baba and dedu. Another word pair frequently used in American English is yia yia and pappoús, Greek for “grandma” and “grandpa.” In Japanese, the words for “grandmother” and “grandfather” are sobo and sofu, but within families, the informal terms of obaachan (“grandmother”) and ojiichan (“grandfather”) are more commonly used. In Filipino, lola and lolo are “grandmother” and “grandfather,” and in Swahili, Africa’s most widely spoken language, the titles are bibi and babu (these terms are also used as a generic, but respectful form of address to an elderly woman or man).
The affection attached to all of these terms from around the world is universal. If you’re pondering what to call yourself when a new grandchild enters the family, “Grandpa” and “Grandma” are always classic, but you might want to look abroad for some inspiration.
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