To stand one’s ground is first recorded in 1707.
To ground in an electrical sense is first seen in 1870 and used in connection with telegraphy.
Grounds in the sense of ‘reason, motive’ is first seen around the end of the 11th century.
Grounds in the sense of ‘source, origin, cause’ is recorded since the end of the 14th century.
To run to ground is a fox hunting term first seen in print in 1719.
Nobody issued any ground rules before 1890, but then it referred specifically to rules laid down for a game or contest on a playing field. Not until 1953 had it been used in the more general sense.
To put on the ground in a figurative sense is first seen in the late 14th century when referring to such as a sermon or argument.
Nobody ran a ship to ground before the middle of the 15th century.
To ground, now most often something done to teenagers, first came to be used to refer to the denial of privileges in the Second World War and specifically to pilots.
Ground as in the past tense of the verb ‘to grind’ first appears in print in 1765.
Grounded, as in instruction through the basics, appears as early as 1540.
Grounds are found as a sediment in the bottom of a liquid, we often hear of coffee grounds, appears for the first time in the middle of the 14th century, well before coffee was drunk in Europe.
Grounds, as in an enclosed parcel of land, is recorded from the middle of the 15th century.
Groundhog, he who had a rather repetitive day in a film of that name, is also known as the American marmot and has been known as a groundhog since 1784.
Groundswell is an odd word, for it refers to a broad and/or deep swell of the sea and features no land at all. First seen in 1783, the figurative sense of ‘groundswell of opinion’ appears from 1817.
Ground floor will not have been popular until an upper floor became more common, hence unknown before 1600; while the figurative sense is not seen until 1864.
Ground breaking has had three distinctive phases beginning with the first sod being dug around 1650; next came the ceremonial planting or digging in 1884; and as an adjective in 1907.
Ground zero is first heard in 1946, a reference to the atomic blasts of that era.
Background appears in the 1750s to refer to that which is to the rear of the main focus of an image, earlier to that it was used, from the 1670s, in a more general sense; and in the figurative sense from 1854.
Groundless, as in ‘having no basis in fact’, is not recorded before the 1620s.
Groundling is first seen in 1620 when referring to a person attending a theatre in the pit where there was neither floor or benches (thus on the bare earth); and later came to refer to anything of bad or unsophisticated taste.
Underground originally meant ‘below the surface’; it came to mean ‘secretive’ by the 1630s; it acquired the meaning of ‘subculture’ in 1953, taken directly from those working against Nazi occupation; and the railway sense is first seen in 1887, although the mode of transport had been in use since 1834 when it was referred to as ‘underground railway’.
Groundwater, in the modern sense of a water source extracted from below ground, is only seen since 1890. Prior to that, and at least from the middle of the 15th century, groundwater was that found at the bottom of a stream.
Fairgrounds have been known since 1741.
Overground would be supposed to have appeared as the same time as ‘underground’, yet surprisingly the term does not appear in print until 1879. (I wonder where the Wombles wombled free before underground and underground were first coined?)
No vessel was to have run aground until around 1500.
Playgrounds were unknown until 1780 and initially only used to refer to the recreational area associated with a school.
Foreground is first seen in an artistic sense in the 1690s when Dryden wrote Art of Painting; the figurative sense is not seen until 1816.
Rather predictably ‘groundwork’ was first used to refer to building foundations, seen from the middle of the 15th century; the more general sense is first seen from the 1550s.
No comments:
Post a Comment