Cold Idioms

Several words have become part of the language in being used in phrases. Last time we looked at ‘snow’ and now look at ‘cold’. Note nobody suffered from a ‘cold’ until the 1530s.

Left out in the cold is not used prior to 1861.

Cold has been used as in ‘unmoved by strong feeling’ since the late 11th century.

Cold as a synonym for ‘dead’ is first used in the 14th century.

Cold is used in the sense of a lost trail, as when hunting, is seen from the 1590s.

Cold is used when speaking of games as in hide and seek since 1864.

Cold fronts have been on the weather map since 1921.

Cold sweats have been around since the 1630s.

Cold calls have been made since 1964.

Cold comfort is first seen in the 1650s.

Nobody threw cold water on anything in the figurative sense until 1808.

Cold cream, as a cosmetic, has been around since 1709 – this a translation of the Latin ceratum refrigerans and a preparation of oil, wax, and water which was first used by the Greeks in the second century by the physician Galen.

People have been cold-blooded since the 1590s, but was not applied to creatures relying on the sun to heat their bodies until 1828.

Nobody was given the cold shoulder until 1816, this in the writings of Sir Walter Scott.

In the 19th century, cold pig was a term used to describe throwing cold water on one sleeping to wake them up.

Cold wars were first fought in 1945, when it appeared in the writing of George Orwell.

Cold turkey, as in withdrawal symptoms, appears in 1910.

Nobody had cold feet before 1893.

Cold-hearted is first seen in the early 17th century.

Jamaica Place Names Explained

Having blogged samples of my books on English place names and also examined the etymologies of the nations of the world and their respective capitals I thought it time I cast my net a little wider. As English place names share some links to other tongues it would be interesting to see if any of the elements contributing to our place names could be found elsewhere. Continuing an alphabetical tour of the world and a look at the largest Jamaican cities.

Kingston is a common enough English place name and refers to a tun or 'farmstead' held by the crown.

Montego Bay is of far more interesting origins. The explorer Christopher Columbus named the place in 1494 as Golfo de Buen Tiempo or 'fair weather gulf'. The modern name is suggested as being a corruption of the Spanish word manteca 'lard', so-named because this was where beef, leather and lard were exported from.

Spanish Town is simply named as it was founded as a home for Spaniards by Francisco de Garay in 1534, although it has been known by other names during its history.

Mandeville was named in 1816, taking the name of Viscount Mandeville, eldest son of the Duke of Manchester, the then governor of Jamaica.

Port Antonio was named in 1723 when officially created as a parish by the Duke of Portland, after whom it is named.

Ewarton is almost certainly named from a person named Ewart but there is no record of anyone with such a name.

Ocho Rios means 'eight rivers', but is probably a misnomer as there are not that many rivers in the area. It seems more likely to be a corruption of the Spanish name Las Chorreras 'the waterfalls'.

Falmouth took the name of the port in Cornwall. Falmouth stands, as the name suggests, at the mouth of the River Fal, itself of unknown origins.

Yallahs has two equally plausible suggestions for its origin. It may simply have come from Captain Yallahs, a privateer in the later 17th century, or from the Spanish yalos meaning 'frost', not that frost is seen here but the white cliffs visible from the sea do appear similar to having a coating of frost.

Runaway Bay was aptly named as an escape route for runaway slaves.

Spalding is named after the Lincolnshire town, itself derived from the name of the tribe who settled there, the Spaldingas.

Annotto Bay is named for the many annotto trees growing in the area. The tree has been introduced to much of the tropical regions of the Americas and is grown and used for products used in dyes, and it proves quite ornamental, too.

Porus is named after the porous soil found in the area, a very different origin to that of its earlier name of Vale Lionel, taken from the governor of Jamaica Sir Lionel Smith at its founding in 1840.

Lionel Town, founded in 1836, shares the name and origin of Sir Lionel Smith.

Negril is an abbreviation of the Spanish Negrillo or 'little black ones', named by the Spanish when they settled in 1494.

Oracabessa is from the Spanish Oracabeza or 'golden head', a reference to the natural light seen here in the afternoons.

Note the spellings of the places are English as the piece is written in English.

Gabon Place Names Explained

Having blogged samples of my books on English place names and also examined the etymologies of the nations of the world and their respective capitals I thought it time I cast my net a little wider. As English place names share some links to other tongues it would be interesting to see if any of the elements contributing to our place names could be found elsewhere. Continuing an alphabetical tour of the world and a look at the largest Gabon cities.

Libreville was founded on land long inhabited by the Mpongwe tribe in 1849. Those settling here were fifty-two slaves rescued by the French navy from the slave ship Elizia, hence the name meaning 'free town'.

Port Gentil was named in 1900 to remember French colonial administrator Emile Gentil (4 April 1866 to 30 March 1914).

Franceville grew from a village named Masuku, settled by former slaves it was originally known as Francheville meaning 'city of the freed' and, with this being a French colony, almost inevitably this became Franceville.

Gamba is the Vili word for 'fog', this perfectly describing the weather during the dry season.

Lastoursville was named after Francois Rigall de Lastours in 1886, the year after the death of the civil engineer turned explorer.

Note the spellings of the places are English as the piece is written in English.

The Weather

Always a topic close to the heart of any Brit, the weather. For such a temperate climate we spend a quite ludicrous amount of time talking about something which is never right. It's too hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or humid. Yet this cannot be anything new. If we find the weather such an important topic when we spend so much of our time in today's artificial environments, logically it must have been as important to our ancestors who were forced to spend a much greater proportion of their lives out of doors. Thus it stands to reason the Proto-Indo-European tongue, the ancestor of just about every European language, will have given us many of the words we use today.

Whilst it is impossible to know the Proto-Indo-European tongue, for no written form existed, we can trace something of the etymology by comparing the many branches known through written histories.

Sky - speak of the weather and our first instinct is to look up, no surprise as the weather hardly ever occurs in the atmosphere below shoulder height. One would think this would be a really early word and yet it does not appear in English until the thirteenth century when it meant 'a cloud'. This meaning can be traced to a Proto-Indo-European skeu but that meant 'cover, conceal'. Hence while we refer to the sky as that bit which is blue during the day and dotted with stars at night, to the ancients the sky was the cloud and the rest was nothing at all which I suppose is almost correct.

Cloud - is the next obvious thing to look at and, once again, has a really odd history. This comes from Old English clud meaning 'mass of rock', there is still a summit known as 'The Cloud', and first used in the modern sense in the thirteenth century. We have no notion of what the Saxons called those white (fluffy) /grey (foreboding) / black (ominous) big things which have a tendency to move across the sky. Yet this is not to say the term had never been used prior to this. Indeed there is a reference dating from 414 BC in The Birds by Aristophanes, here he speaks of Nephelokokkygia, an imaginary city in the air which translates as a phrase everyone has heard of: 'cloud cuckoo land'.

Rain - surely the most talked about aspect of the weather. Commuters insist it rains more often to and from their place of employment than when they are in the dry at either end. In the days before the washing machine and dryer it was the bane of housewives everywhere on 'wash day'. On the school run you will never fail to hear how it "Always waits for the kids to come out of school" - which is utter drivel, the weather gods actually hate the educators and target the teachers, it is mere coincidence the pupils go home at roughly the same time. As a word it can be traced to Latin rigare 'to wet, moisten' which has also given us 'irrigate', and perhaps represents a Proto-Indo-European reg 'moisten, wet'. Of course 'rain' is not the only word describing liquid water from water vapour.

Drizzle - a fine rain, which is from a fourteenth century drysning meaning 'falling of dew'. We also find Old English dreosan 'to fall', likely from a base of Proto-Indo-European dhreu 'to drip'.

Muggy - what I considered a very British term is related to the above. From Middle English mugen and Old Norse mugga it originally described 'drizzle'.

Shower - refers to the duration not the amount of rain to fall. Both Old English scur and Old Norse skur have a Germanic base skuro and a Proto-Indio-European origin in kew-ero 'north wind'.

Deluge - unsurprisingly from Old French deluge and ultimately from Latin diluvium 'flood, inundation'. It is related to dis 'away' and luere 'to wash'.

Snow - is a comapartively late English word, in Old English it was sniwan. While it is often said the Inuit have fifty words for snow, nobody bothers to mention the English also used snew until at least the seventeenth century. Interestingly the other use, as in 'snowed under' or 'overwhelm', is also the original meaning of the white fluffy stuff much loved by those who enjoy making snowmen and snowballs (or perhaps than should be overwhelmed-men and overwhelmed-balls).

Slush - shares an origin with the Danish slus for 'sleet', an accurate description.

Sleet - is unknown in Old English, most likely because it went unrecorded for the Germanic group have enough examples including Middle High German sloz, Middle Low German sloten, Norwegian slutr, Danish slud, Swedish sloud, and all from Proto-Germanic slautjan and Proto-Indo-European slaut. This is related to 'hail' in its development and together probably described something which was not quite snow. Much as a weather forecast in February of this year which promised the snow would turn first to sleet and then icy rain, as if we would be aware there was a difference between the latter two.

Hail - in Old English was hagol, in Old Frisian heil, Old Norse hagl, and several others. All traced to Greek kakhlex and Proto-Indo-European kaghlo meaning 'round pebble' and 'pebble' respectively.

Wind - the Old English wind is from Proto-Germanic wendas 'winds', ultimately from Proto-Indo-European went 'blowing' from the verb we 'to blow'. Other early releated tongues include Sanskrit va, Hittite huwantis, Breton gwent, and many others. Those who read lots of early poetry may be aware this was pronounced to rhyme with 'kind' or 'rind' until the eighteenth century, the present short vowel is due to the influence from 'windy' which is not easy to vocalise with the longer vowel sound.

Gale - to a meteorologist any wind between 32mph and 63mph. Historically it applied only to an ocean wind, perhaps connected to Old Norse gol 'breeze' or Old Danish gal 'furious'.

Hurricane - as many will be aware this is from Spanish huracan, itself from a word in the Arawakan language spoken by the Caribbean peoples. Seen in English from the late sixteenth century there were at least 39 different spellings of this word, Shakespeare speaks of a 'hurricano'.

Tempest - and on the subject of Shakespeare clearly this was in use before the Bard of Avon penned the play of this name. It is seen in Old French tempeste and Latin tempestas 'storm, commotion, disturbance'.

Tornado - is from Spanish tronada and Latin tonare both meaning 'thunder'.

Thunder - is from the Germanic group, Old English thunor, Old Norse thorr, Swedish tordon all from Proto-Indo-European stene meaning 'to resound'. This can be seen to be related to Sanskrit tanayitnuh and Persian tundar.

Lightning - is seen in Old English as lihting and is, rather predictably, from the same origin as 'light' and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European leuk 'brightness'.

Storm - can be traced to Proto-Germanic sturmaz 'onset, tumult'.

Fog - is a late addition to the English language. Danish fog 'spray, shower' is less likely than Old Norse fok 'snow flurry', thus used in the sense of difficult to see through.

Mist - is earlier than the above, found in Proto-Germanic mikhstaz, Sanskrit mih, and Proto-Indo-European migh or meigh it describes 'dimness' and, as with fog, difficult to see through.

With all these words decribing inclement weather, very few can be found for good and the main one includes an adjective from the noun which must have existed since well before it was worshipped as a god. This is really odd for, ignoring the cloudy bits, statistically there are more hours of sunshine than of rain. Which is even more amazing when considering it can only rain for 24 hours in any day, while 12 hours is the most sunshine we expect to average in a day over a year.

Sunny - clearly an adjective from that very early word. As we would expect for words which have their roots in the dawn of humanity this is a short, monosyllabic word. Proto-Germanic sunnon, Proto-Indo-European suwen, and the possibly earlier saewel all describe the great yellow orb but are also used to mean 'shine'.

The only other words I could think of to describe good weather were scorcher, clearly from scorch and first used in 1874 to describe a heatwave although oddly heatwave is not seen until 1890 when describing a spell of very warm weather, prior to that it was used to refer to the solar cycle. Such terms as 'fine', 'hot', 'sultry', 'swelter', etc all appear to be loan words. Indeed in the case of 'swelter' in the fourteenth century it meant 'to faint' and ultimately from Proto-Germanic sweltan 'to die'.

We can be certain discussions about the elements were among the earliest conversations. Sadly we shall never know any of the first words spoken by humanity (and possibly their ancestors and related anthropoids) which must have involved references to rain, wind, heat, cold, etc.

A Case of the Wind

Found the notes from another old piece this week which not only had I forgotten existed but failed to recall anything of the content. Hence reading it seemed a totally new experience for me. The piece was on the etymology of the various winds, commissioned to accompany an article looking at the upcoming Cowes Week and seemed somewhat topical. The winds of the world sort themselves into three groups: the classical, the regional, and those referring to speed and strength.

Of the classic winds, Aquilon is taken from the Roman god of the north wind, while Boreas is the Greek equivalent. Auster is the poetic south wind, it comes from Latin auster and is literally 'the southern wind'. Similarly Natus is from Notus the Greek god who was bringer of the autumnal storms, thus associated with the southern wind. Libeccio is the south or southwesterly wind which may bring a good swell and even quite violent squalls, the name comes from libeccio an Italian word derived from Latin and ultimately Greek meaning 'Libyan'. Zephyr is derived from Zephyrus, as we would expect the light breezes of spring and associated with the west wind. Favonius was the Roman equivalent. To complete the set Eurus is the Greek god of the east wind.

There are also the regional winds, mostly seasonal and having a profound influence on the climate of the region. The Mistral comes off the Mediterranean and heads northeasterly to hit the coasts and France and Spain, although it is felt anywhere from Corsica to the Balearic Islands. Mistral is from the Languedoc dialect and means 'masterly', adirect reference to this cold dry wind's dominance of the climate when it blows.
Monsoon is probably the best known of the regional winds. First used to describe the change in wind direction across the Indian subcontinent which brought very heavy rains from the south, it is now used to describe any seasonal reversal of the normal wind direction anywhere in the world. It was first recorded in English during the British rule in India, however the word is derived from Portuguese moncao, itself from Arabic mawsim, and meaning 'season'. However there may be influences from Dutch monsun and also mausam which is common to several languages in meaning simply 'weather'.
Sirocco is that which is born in the Sahara and can reach hurricane force as it hits North Africa and Europe. The modern Itlaian name is derived from the Greek sirokos and refers to this as 'easterly'. Interestingly in former Yugoslavian states, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic it is described as jugo, from an old Slavic word jug meaning 'southerly' and showing the same point of origin but from different aspects.

Lastly the everyday words used to describe the most violent of winds. Cyclone is an atmospheric disturbance which circulates clockwise in the southern hemisphere but anticlockwise north of the equator. The name is derived from the Greek kuklos meaning simply 'circle'. The most violent tropical cyclones, where winds exceeding force 12 on the Beaufort scale are known as hurricanes. With hurricanes being synonymous with the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, it is no surprise to find the name has come from huracan, from the Carib people who also gave their name to the sea. Across in the Pacific Ocean and China Sea such storms are referred to as typhoons. This is derived from the Cantonese daai fung, seen in Mandarin as da feng, and meaning 'great wind'.
When the storm spins in excess of three hundred miles per hour, particularly in North America, they are referred to as tornadoes. The name comes from two Spanish words, tronada meaning 'thunderstorm' being influenced by tornado 'turned'. Over water it produces a waterspout, an English word which is self-explanatory, while the influence of the sun's heat produces small whirling disturbances known as dustdevils, the dust is often the only sign of such although why 'devils' is unclear.