Etymology of Transport

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with Etymology of Transport. Not so much a history of transport in an engineering sense but a look at the terminology and how the names developed. See how the names of the 'car', 'bus', 'train', 'cycle', 'boat' and others. And it is not only the transport but learn how the distance between the rails for both the railways and the trams came about. Hear how quite familiar terms have the most surprising origins, and discover some quite extraordinary facts and figures for the modes of transport with which we are so familiar. There is a PowerPoint presentation to accompany this talk if required.

When associated with the transport of goods we use ‘cart’, today as a verb as well as the original noun. It comes from the same root as ‘chariot’ and also gave us ‘crate’. This last word is worthwhile examining further, for the original carts and chariots were made to contain goods and were produced with a body made of wickerwork, this can still be seen in the Dutch words crate ‘woven mat, hamper’ and krat ‘a basket’

Coach is named from the place where it was first produced, the village of Kocs in Hungary. Today the Hungarian word for ‘car’ is kosci

Truck shares an origin with ‘truckle’, although not used in the vehicle sense until 1610s. The term ‘truckle’ spoke of the ‘small wheel’, it derived Proto-Indo-European dhregh ‘to run’.

Glider is the name of the motorless aircraft seen from 1898, this agent noun from ‘glide’ itself changed little over several millennia until Proto-Germanic gave us a number of words from the same root but with different meanings such as ‘glide’, ‘shining’ and also ‘joyful’ – these are all based on the Proto-Indo-European ghel ‘to shine’ and the general idea is a smooth and reflective surface.

Thought it might be of interest to add a different mode of transport – and thus let’s look at the humble ski. Now the modern ski is misleading, for it smacks of MODERN in large and very loud letters. This is only some 150 years of history, while the history of the ski goes back at least 10,000 years and is one of the earliest man-made modes of transport. Today we skid along on skis, historically they were used mostly as a snow-shoe, to spread the weight of the wearer and prevent singing into the snow. This is why the Old Norse word of skith not only gave us ‘ski’ but also ‘skid’ but was originally coined to describe ‘a stick of wood’. Taking it further back we find Proto-Germanic skid meaning ‘to divide, split’ and also seen in Proto-Indo-European skei ‘also meaning ‘to cut, split’ and clearly how the original skis were produced, by driving pegs into a log along the grain and using that to splinter off a piece which would naturally be quite flat. It is thought the idea of may have developed twice – for some use of a ski in the eastern European regions required the user to have a bigger ski and would lie prone upon it and scoot up closer to seals and other prey on the ice and thus get a clearer shot with harpoon or bow and arrow. As an unrelated addition note this Proto-Indo-European skei ‘split’ is also the basis for the prefix of ‘schizophrenic’, which came to us through Greek; it is also the root of Old Church Slavonic cediti ‘to strain’; Old Irish sceid ‘to vomit’ or ‘spit’; and Old Norse skita ‘to shit’

If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.