LET'S SPEAK ENGLISH:
Broadcast: Wednesday, March 09, 1938 at 21:30 PM

Twelfth Talk - Origin of Words

OUTLINE

On the origin of the following English words:

I. Clothes and Materials

a) DAMASK
b) MUSLIN
c) MILLINER
d) PANTALOONS
e) TARTAN
f) NAPKIN
g) APRON.

II. Food and Drink

a) SARDINES
b) CURRANTS
c) PEACHES
d) APRICOTS
e) ONION
f) SANDWICH
g) WHISKY.

III. Finance

a) MONEY
b) DOLLAR
c) SALARY
d) CALCULATE
e) BUDGET
f) CUSTOMS,

IV. Titles

a) ADMIRAL
b) PEDIGREE
c) SNOB

V. Crime and Punishment

a) CONSTABLE
b) ASSASSIN
c) ALIBI
d) COFFIN

TRANSCRIPT: TWELFTH TALK - ORIGIN OF WORDS

If you've heard any of his previous talks, will you write and tell us, what you think about them?

It would interest us to know, what you didn't like and why; what you did like; and how you think the talks could be made more valuable to you if another series were ever given.

Please address your letters to the Director of Programmes, the Palestine Broadcasting Service, Jerusalem.

And here is the President, in his last talk.

Good evening. This evening I'm going to talk about the origin of a few English words.

To please the ladies, I'll start with that ever fascinating subject, dress and materials. Many names of materials come from the places from which the stuffs themselves used to come. There's a material with a woven pattern, used very often for table-cloths, called DAMASK. The word DAMASK comes from our next-door neighbour, DAMASCUS, where this kind of woven material was ortginally made.

Muslin is another stuff, made of very delicate cotton and used for ladies' dresses. The word MUSLIN comes from MOSUL in Iraq.

After I sent you the outline of this talk, I found another material with a local place-name. There's a thin fabric called GAUZE. The word GAUZE comes from GAZA, the town in southern Palestine.

Even a MILLINER, who sells ladies' hats, derives her name from MILANO in Italy. MILANO was formerly a centre for the delicious trifles that a MILLINER sells.

A hundred years ago, men used to wear PANTALOONS. Nowadays the word PANTALOONS has been shortened to PANTS. PANTS mean trousers in America and under-trousers in England. I admit that underclothing isn't exactly a polite subject for conversation. But the word PANTS had a noble origin. PANTALOONS were Venetian stockings. And they were called PANTALOONS after a favourite saint in Venice, San PANTALEONE.

No doubt you've seen the fine Highland Scottish regiments in Palestine. They wear short skirts made of a coloured material with crossed stripes called TARTAN. You might have thought that TARTAN was a good old Scottish word. But is isn't. TARTAN comes, through French, from the TARTARS, a people in Central Asia. The wild Highlanders seemed to be very foreign to the early English who vaguely connected them with the East and the TARTARS. As the Scottish bag-pipes are also Asiatic in origin. I'm beginning to suspect that the Gordon Highlanders were once the Jordan Highlanders.

When you go to a dinner-party in England, you're given a NAPKIN on which to wipe your fingers. The maid who serves you with food wears an APRON. Although the word APRON nowadays begins with an N, it used to be called A NAPRON. Both NAPRON and NAPKIN come from the French word NAPPE, which itself comes from the earlier Latin word MAPPA, meaning a table-cloth. Perhaps the Hebrew word MAPA comes from the same source. But although an APRON and a NAPKIN have the same origin, you should wipe your fingers on a NAPKIN and not on the maid's APRON.

Talking of dinner-parties brings us quite naturally to food in general. Many, names of foods in English also come from place-names. For example, the word SARDINE comes from the Italian island in the Mediterranean, SARDINIA, where lots of SARDINES are caught.

In the same way the word CURRANT, the fruit, comes from CORINTH, in Greece, where CURRANTS were originally grown.

Another fruit, the PEACH, also owes its name. to a place-name. The word PEACH comes, through French, from the Latin word PERSICA, meaning Persian. The Hebrew name for. PEACH is APHARSEK and has the same origin.

The word APRICOT, on the other hand, doesn't come from a place-name.

Nevertheless, the word has travelled a great deal. It started in Italy as the Latin word PRAECOX; meaning early ripe. The Latin word PRAECOX crossed the Adriatic Sea into Mediaeval Greece and became the Greek word PRAEKOKION. The Greek word PRAEKOKION then travelled down through Asia Minor to North Africa and became AL BARQUQ in Arabic. It finally re-entered Europe through France as ABRICOT and crossed the Channel to England as APRICOT. So the word APRICOT has travelled about almost as much as a delegate of the Keren Kayemet.

I am very fond of ONIONS. Are you? Even if you are, I'll bet you don't know the origin of the word ONION. ONION comes from the Latin word ONIO, meaning 'union', Although the ONION has several juicy skins, one inside the other, they all form one UNION. So the words TRADE UNION and ONION have the same origin.

Now, if you're in. a hurry and haven't time for a whole . meal, you usually order a SANDWICH. As a matter of fact, the word SANDWICH is a man's name. He was the Earl of SANDWICH who died in the eighteenth century. He was a terrible gambler and invented the SANDWICH so that he could have a meal without leaving the gambling-table. But, of course, you're not expected to gamble every time you order a SANDWICH.

When you eat, you usually drink too. And what better drink is there than WHISKY? The word WHISKY is really Scotch. It comes from the Gaelic words UISGE-BEATHA, meaning the 'water of life'. WHISKY is the best kind of water for Scotchmen. You know the story of the man who was offered a , drink. of ordinary water. "Me drink water?'' he said. "Look what it does to your boots and just think what it does to your stomach!" So, WHISKY' s much safer if you want to preserve your interior.

Now if you want to buy WHISKY, you need MONEY. The word MONEY has a curious history. In Roman times the mint, where money was coined, was attached to one of the temples of the goddess Juno. Her full title was Juno MONETA, Juno the admonisher, from the Latin word MONERE, to warn. Some people just worship MONEY, But perhaps they're only praying to the goddess Juno MONETA, after all.

In America every one's said to worship the Almighty DOLLAR, Do you know where the word DOLLAR comes from? It comes from the German word TALER, originally called a JOACHIMSTALER. JOACHIMSTAL is a valley in Bohemia. There were silver mines there from which money used to be made. That's the origin of the word DOLLAR.

Now most of us get MONEY from our work. And at the end of each month we get a SALARY. The word SALARY originally meant an allowance for SALT and comes from the Latin word SAL. If a man isn't very good at his job you can say, in idiomatic English, that he isn't worth his SALT.

I am sure· that you spend some of your SALARY on amusements -- the cinema, dances, holidays. But you have to be careful not to spend too much. So you CALCULATE carefully how much you can afford. The word CALCULATE sounds very imposing. But it really comes from the Latin word for a little stone - CALCULUS. In those days people used to use little stones for counting. I don't need to use little stones. I count on my fingers.

Now Governments also have to CALCULATE their expenditure. So each year they draw up a BUDGET, sometimes running into hundreds of millions of pounds. But the word BUDGET originally meant a little BAG in which the king's treasurer used to keep his master's money.

In these days, much of the Government's money comes from taxes on goods entering the country. In Palestine, those taxes are collected at the CUSTOMS, called in Palestine by the Turkish word GUMRUK. In France it's called the DOUANE, in Italy, the DOGANA. Now it's a funny thing, but the Turkish word GUMRUK really comes from Europe. It's a corruption of the Latin word COMMERCIUM, meaning 'trade'. On the other hand, the French word DOUANE is really the oriental word DIWAN, meaning the seat of Government. This interchange is easy to understand. In the Middle Ages the Turkish and Arab sailors landing at Venice asked for the place they called DIWAN. So the local people adopted the same word. The Venetian sailors who came to Constantinople asked for the COMMERCIUM, which became the GUMRUK.

The East has given Europe many words - ALGEBRA, ALCHEMIST, and also ADMIRAL, the man who commands a fleet of ships. The word ADMIRAL comes from the Arabic words AMIR AL BAHR - the ruler of the Sea. The BAHIR has dropped out and only AMIR AL, or ADMIRAL, is left.

Now ADMIRALS. often come from old sea-faring families. If they do, they have long PEDIGREES. A PEDIGREE is a chart shewing a man's ancestors. With all its lines, it looks rather like the marks made by a bird's foot. So it used to be called in French a PIED DE GRUE, the "foot of a crane', which is a kind of bird.

A PEDIGREE, with its spreading. branches, also looks like a free. In fact, it's often called a family tree. Monkeys sometimes live in trees. So when someone was boasting about his ancestry and said that he had been looking up his family tree, his friend asked, 'Did they throw any nuts'?

A man who worries about his PEDIGREE is sometimes called a SNOB. If you only like being seen with kings and princes, and the President of the Brighter English League, then you're a SNOB. The word SNOB has a curious origin. Centuries ago, when English schoolmasters used to write down the names of their pupils, they used to show which were the sons of nobles and which were not. Opposite the names of those who were not, the schoolmaster used to write in Latin. SINE NOBILIATE, 'without ennoblement'. As this was rather a lot' to write, he used to put down S. NOB, for short. So that SNOB became the title for anyone who wasn't of noble birth but wished he were.

Now many English titles still retain their original meaning. But the meaning of other titles and names has changed considerably during the last two thousand years. A CONSTABLE in the Police has an important and majestic title - a CONSTABLE. But in Roman times a CONSTABLE was only a COMES STABULI, or 'stable fellow'. That doesn't sound nearly so grand.

In Palestine, the CONSTABLE has to try to catch ASSASSINS. They seem to be very prevalent in this part of the world at present. The name ASSASSIN is really an Arabic plural - HASHASHIN, meaning the hashish smokers. The HASHASIIlN were Moslems of the sect of the Ismailiyeh who lived in the Lebanon many centuries ago. They were under the absolute orders of their chief, called the Sheikh al Jabal - the Old Man of the Mountains. They used ASSASSINATION to remove their enemies. And ASSASSINS were even hired by European princes who wanted to hump off their friends.

Now even ASSASSlNS are sometimes caught. When they're caught they're brought up for trial. The first thing an ASSASSIN does, when he's on trial, is to try to establish an ALIBI. That means he tries to show that he was somewhere else when the crime was committed. The word ALIBI is pure medieval Latin and means ELSEWHERE. It has come down unchanged through the centuries in the fossilised legal phraseology of the law-courts.

Sometimes, however, an ALIBI doesn't work. Then the ASSASSIN is sentenced to death and ends up, like his victim, in a COFFIN. The sinister word COFFIN also, comes from a Latin word, COPHINUS. But COPHINUS wasn't originally sinster at all and meant any kind of basket or case; even a crust over an apple pie.

So that's the end of the ASSASSJN, And this is the end of my talk.

Also, incidentally, of the Brighter English League and its five hundred and fifty members : at any rate, for the moment.

Thank you so much for listening to all my foolishness. The person who really enjoyed it most of all was your President and obedient servant.

(Announcer:) Well, I hope this is au revoir and not good-bye. Thank you, Mr. President. We wish you a good journey and a most happy return.

(President:) Thank you : good night.