#false etymology

the french name of the hurdy gurdy is dumb and i hate it. "vielle à roue" you dumb fuck. no folklore. no whimsy. litteraly just means 'string instrument with a wheel'. should've been called "ourdi gourdi". that rocks. other than sounding way more fun, parts of it sound like other words that have somewhat related meaning but also somehow zero etymological relationship ('hurdy gurdy' apparently originating from imitation of the instrument's sound)

"ourdir" means to prepare carefuly, often said about political plots or sometimes, cloth or strings; "être dégourdi" means to be resourceful, to know how to use one's skills and knowledge, and "gourde" originally describes a gourd, squash or calabash shaped container

you could then invent a false etymology combining these three words mixed together, saying that it comes from jesters and court musicians, often somewhat involved in court drama and described as sly, smart and skillfull in popular tales, and the gourd shaped instrument they would often play at receptions. of course it's wrong - it's nowhere close to the actual etymology, and the hurdy gurdy, which only relatively recently became more compact and stopped being a two-men's job, was really more a church instrument, while the court enternainers' iconic instrument is the lute, or other guitar-adjacent instruments like the mandolin

but it's just so much more fun. it feels right. it feels interesting and insightful. it for sure is not. but the simple thought exercise of making all this up made me really happy actually this is so fun

One nitpick on an earlier reblog, which I just saw on my dash again. Didn’t even comment before, because it wasn’t even relevant to the main point, but fake backronyms really bug me.

“Wop,” which originated in the United States, has been a derogatory term for an Italian since 1908. But it’s not an acronym and it has nothing to do with immigration documents.

As we point out in Origins of the Specious, our book about language myths, immigration documents weren’t even required of newcomers until 1918.

I’d seen a photo shared a lot with words like “human” and “female” used to emphasize the focus on maleness in our language and culture. I’m all for equality, but (a) using language like that is an example of the etymological fallacy, and (b) most of the words listed were false etymologies anyway. So I’m here to debunk this one.

Photo credits to Reddit user Soldier_Scott68 (can’t find his real name) and Mike Goldwater.

Loosing my mind #LooseWomen #corsets #etymology #NineteenthCentury

This is the third of three posts on loose women and corsetry.

This obsession of mine has been at once deeply frustrating and very educational – like a lot of research.

For one thing, I see a lot of people saying that ‘loose women’ originated from women who didn’t wear corsets, but usually without any kind of reference. For example, Colleen Ruby Gau’s Historic medical perspectives of corseting and…