One Etymology A Day

For my 2025 New Year's Resolution, I decided to make this blog, where I will post one etymology every day of 2025.

Asks are open, so if you have an etymology you'd like to know, please drop me a line and I will include your requests in the lineup!

I will also be keeping a masterpost of all my etymologies, organized in several different ways for ease of use.

Most of my etymologies will be sourced from etymonline.com, my absolute favorite website for etymologies. However, I will always include my sources on individual posts.

Native to English. In Old English the word was genog, from Proto-Germanic *ganog, which means "sufficient". The Proto-Germanic is a compound of two elements:

The first is Proto-Germanic *ga-, "with, together", which is derived from Proto-Indo-European *kom-, "with, beside, near".

Used as an adjective from ca. 1300 to mean "delightful or pleasing", this word was originally borrowed from Old French deintie, "price, value; pleasure, delicacy", in the mid 13th century as a noun meaning "regard or affection", later "excellence, elegance; a luxury, a fine or precious thing". The adjective gained the sense of "choice, excellent" in the late 14th century, and that of "delicate, exquisite" by ca. 1400. The connotation of "weak or effeminate" is from the 1570s.

Entered English ca. 1300 from Old French partie, "part, portion, or division", from Latin pars (genitive partis), "part, piece, or share", which in turn is from Proto-Indo-European *pere-, "to allot, to grant".

This word originally had the same meaning as its Old French counterpart, which is preserved now in the legal sense as "one side or entity in a contract or legal proceeding", in the political sense as "a faction united by similar views and values, as opposed to other factions", and in the military sense as "a detachment of soldiers from a larger company". The two former senses are attested from the word's inception, but the military sense is not attested until the 1640s.

This word is a very late addition to English, originating in the American and Canadian dialects in the mid to late 1800s, with the first recorded instance appearing in 1878 to mean "a very roughly built house or cabin". The word is uncertain in origin; several theories have been put forward.

Entered English ca. 1200 from Old French medecine and directly from Latin medicina (from which the Old French is also derived), both meaning "cure or treatment; the art of healing". The Latin was originally the adjective portion of the phrasal noun ars medicina, "the art of medicine", which over time was reduced to simply medicina.

Latin medicina is formed from the Latin adjectivizing suffix -inus (from Proto-Indo-European *-iHnos of the same usage), and the Latin noun medicus, meaning "a physician". Latin medicus is a combination of the PIE root *med-, "to take appropriate measures", and the Latin agentive suffix -icus (ultimately from PIE *-ko-, "characteristic of"), meaning "one who [does something]".

Native to English and originally meaning specifically "the color of soot or coal", this word is from Proto-Germanic *blakaz, an adjective meaning "burned". The Proto-Germanic is from Proto-Indo-European *bhleg-, "to burn, gleam, shine, or glow", which itself is from the PIE root *bhel-, "to flash or shine; to burn".

In Old English, this word was written as blæc, and it had a twin with the exact same etymology and the opposite meaning, written blac (which meant "pale, bright, glittering, shining"). The descendent of the latter is Middle English blake, from which the surname Blake (meaning either "pale or whitish" or "of dark complexion") is drawn. Because of the lack of standardized spelling in the Middle English period, it is difficult to know which meaning an author intended in any given instance.

Entered English in the 1530s as a direct borrowing from Latin morosus, "peevish, melancholy, sullen". The Latin is an adjectival formation from the noun mos (moris in the genitive, from which we get Modern English moral), meaning "habit, custom, manner".

Entered English in the mid 13th century as a borrowing of Old French crier, "to yell, to wail". The French is from Latin quiritare, "to wail or shriek", which is uncertain in origin, but is possibly from the Latin onomatopoeia quis, which was their word for the sound a pig makes.

First attested in the 1880s as the present participle of the verb blither, this word is now a fossil word, attested in Modern English usage only in the phrase blithering idiot, in which it has been consistently attested since its earliest documentation.

The verb blither from which it comes is first attested in 1868 and is a variant of the Scottish and Northern English dialects' word blether (first attested in the 1520s), both variants meaning "to talk nonsense". In other dialects of English, this same word was blather (also first attested in the 1520s), a form of the word which has survived into Modern English usage, even if somewhat rarely in the present time.

First attested in 1706, from the noun rake, "a debauched person, a scoundrel", and the adjectivizing suffix -ish, which is native to English from Proto-Germanic *-iska of the same usage, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-iskos, also an adjectivizing suffix.

The noun rake specifically in reference to a person (and not the gardening tool) is first attested in the 1650s as a shortening of the noun rakehell, of the same meaning. Originally an adjective first attested in the 1540s, and used as a noun by the 1550s, rakehell is a word of uncertain origin, specifically of two possible origins.

The first possibility is that the word is an alteration of the Middle English adjective rakel, meaning "rash, hasty, headstrong", by influence of the phrase rake Hell (attested by the 1540s). The word rakel is most likely from the Middle English verb raken, "to proceed," which is from Old English racian (see Note 1 below), "to hasten, to go forward", which is of unknown origin.

The second possibility is that the word is actually just a conjoining of the phrase rake Hell, which means "to go over Hell thoroughly, to search through Hell (for something or someone)". In this case, a rakehell would be "a person who can be found by raking through Hell for them", or more succinctly, "an evil person, a villain".

Etymologically, the verb rake is from Old English raca, "to scrape things up into a pile", which is from Proto-Germanic *rak-, "to gather; to heap up", which in turn is from the Proto-Indo-European root *reg- (see Note 2 below), "to move in a straight line". The word Hell is also native to English and Germanic in origin, from Proto-Germanic *haljō, "the underworld", literally "concealed place", from the Proto-Indo-European root *kel-, "to cover up, to conceal".

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Notes:

1) Old English racian may or may not be the source of the Modern English verb race, "to move swiftly, to hasten". Most etymologies give the source for race as a Scandinavian borrowing from a word or words relating to a rush of water. This may also be the as-yet unknown source of Old English racian, but no solid connection has been made to date.

2) PIE *reg- is also the ultimate source of a plethora of other Modern English words, including regular, rule, regent, right, erect, and many more.

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Sources:

https://www.etymonline.com/word/rakish

https://www.etymonline.com/word/rake

https://www.etymonline.com/word/rakehell

https://www.etymonline.com/word/hell

https://www.etymonline.com/word/-ish