Bad
As in the title of the modern pop song, the word bad now sometimes means ‘good’, the opposite of itself. Technically speaking, bad is the antonym of good, but also, in this special sense, a synonym of good. The new meaning shows a simple but important feature of language: it changes.
Bail out
Is it bail out or bale out? Most Americans would be pretty sure how to spell it, Britons much less so. The early evidence is from the US, and there the spelling was invariably bail out. If you bail out, you escape from a situation you do not want to be in any more, and the people who spelt bail probably had bail in mind, ‘remove water that has come into a boat’. On the other hand, bale out is at least as plausible, suggesting the image of an escaping airman being like a bale or bundle thrown through an aircraft door. Both spellings are found in England, although most dictionaries now seem to prefer bail out. (Quinion 2009: 8-9)
Baker’s Dozen
How much is a baker’s dozen? 6? 11? 13? 24? It is 13. Various explanation have been put forward for this, the most popular being this: bakers, who had a reputation for selling underweight loaves, used to add a thirteenth loaf for every order of 12 in order not to get into conflict with the law. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 12-3)
Balcony
The word is, of course, stressed on the first syllable, and for most of us it would sound very odd to stress it on the second syllable. But that was the norm until the early nineteenth century – not so long ago – when the stress began to move. Needless to say, this change caused controversy (another word whose stress shifted, some time later), and many people furiously complained about the change. They might even have argued that it is logical to stress it on the second syllable, because that is where it is stressed in Italian, where it comes from. The problem is that that is irrelevant. It is now an English word. Nowadays, nobody complains about the stress in balcony any more, but people make the same kind of complaint about other words whose stress is changing (or has changed), as the noun research, where the stress is also moving from the second to the first syllable. (cf. Crystal 2005: 473)
Bank
The first banks were set up in medieval Venice. They were no more than benches set up in the main squares by men who changed and lent money. From there, the word bank derived, the Italian word for bench being banco. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 15)
Bark up the wrong tree
This idiom, which means ‘have a wrong idea’, ‘pursue a wrong course of action’, comes from raccoon hunting in 19 th century America. Raccoons were hunted by night. Rather slyly, they would scramble stealthily from one tree to another when the hunting dogs were after them, leaving the poor dogs barking up the wrong tree. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 16)
Baron
Barons constitute the lowest orders of nobility. Today, the word is often not used to refer to noblemen, but to ‘influential business men’ or ‘magnates’. This modern use curiously arose in America in the nineteenth century. Today its use is even more extended, as in drug baron or robber baron. Incidentally, the word derives from a word which just means ‘man’. (Flavell & Flavell 2005: 20)
Bazaar
English has borrowed bazaar from Persian. Other examples include caravan and turban. (Jucker 2000: 51)
Beads
“At the back of the church knelt Mrs Duffy, the school caretaker, saying her beads.” This quotation from a contemporary English novel (David Lodge, The Picturegoers ) rather nicely shows the original meaning of the word bead. Today, it is generally used to refer to small pieces of glass or wood which you can put on a string and wear as jewellery. Originally, it was just that, but not the pieces that you used to wear as jewellery, but those of a rosary which you “count” while saying your prayers. Once this has been said, it is not so surprising to hear that the word is etymologically related to German beten.
Beat about the bush
In hunting, you have beaters and hunters. It is the beaters’ job to trash the bushes to frighten game from its cover. It is they who ‘beat about the bush’ and do not go straight for the prey, like the hunters. That is where the idiom beat about the bush comes from, ‘talk about something without coming to the point’, ‘express oneself in a roundabout way’. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 18)
Beyond the pale
If something is beyond the pale, it may today just be unacceptable or beyond repair. Your boiler may be beyond the pale, remarks or opinions may be beyond the pale. The meaning has widened to include these usages, but originally, more narrowly, it meant something which was beyond acceptable conduct, outside civilised society. And that makes sense given the curious origin of the idiom: the pale was a fence around a territory which was under a particular authority, such as a cathedral pale. There was also a pale in Ireland , around Dublin (and another around Calais ). After the English had conquered the whole of Ireland , things became rather troublesome and they retreated to a limited area around Dublin. This was the pale. Things inside the pale were civilised, outside barbaric. At least that was how the English saw it. And that is how the idiom has it. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 142)
Bible
There is a port in present-day Lebanon by the name of Jubayl. The ancient name of this port was first used only to refer to the town. The name of the town was then used to refer to the material that came from it. The name of the material was then used to refer to a product which was made form it. The name of the product was then used to refer to one particularly well-known specimen of this product. The ancient name of the port was Byblos, the material which was exported from it was papyrus, the product which was made from this material was scrolls or books, and the particularly well-known specimen of this product was the Bible. This is how the name of a town came to stand for a book. The Greek word biblia was actually plural, but this idea got lost when the word came into Latin, which treated it as singular, and the Greek word was also originally a diminutive, and again this idea got lost, probably because it was used so frequently that in the end nobody noticed it was a diminutive. (cf. Flavell & Flavell 2005: 109)
Bilious
The word bilious, ‘bad-tempered’ can be traced back to the old belief that four bodily humours control temperament: blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile. If these liquids were in even distribution, you were alright, but if one was dominant, this made you sanguine (too much blood), phlegmatic (too much phlegm), melancholy (too much black bile) or bilious (too much yellow bile). Ultimately, bilious derives from Latin bilis, ‘bile’, the fluid secreted by the liver. In the past, bile was also called choler, which gave the word choleric, a synonym of bilious.
Billion
How much is a billion? Not an easy question to answer. For most of us, it just means ‘very, very much’. The word million had been around since the Middle Ages, but there came a time when scientists felt the need for a larger unit, and that new unit was the billion. But how much exactly is a billion? There were two ways of looking at it. If we think of the six zeros of a million (1,000,000) a billion could either contain twice as many zeros, i.e. twelve zeros altogether (1,000,000,000,000) or it could contain another batch of three zeros, i.e. nine zeros altogether (1,000,000,000). In France, this latter system was adopted, in Britain the former system was adopted. The USA followed France. This led to severe problems in international communication. Though in general the meaning of words is determined by context, here this was often not the case: “The disaster has lost the company a billion pounds” could be interpreted in either way. Therefore, at long last, Britain gave in. It took the decision to adopt the American system. It was actually the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who made a speech in the House of Commons to that effect. Since then, 1974, a billion has meant 1,000,000,000 in Britain. In popular parlance, however, billion has long been supplanted by other words when it comes to saying ‘very, very much’: zillion, bazillion, gazillion. (Crystal 2012: 129-130)
Binary
The word binary goes back to Latin bini, which means ‘two by two’. Although binary can be used for anything with two parts, it is now especially used in relation with computers and information processing, with only 0 and 1 being used to process even complex data but also simple ones. Thus, 1001000 1000101 1001100 1001100 1001111 is the binary version of a simple word: Hello.
Birmingham
There is a city called Birmingham in both England and America. But the pronunciation differs. The vowel of ham is like the last vowel of comma in England but like the vowel of trap in America, and the is pronounced in America, but not in England. (cf. Bauer 2002: 81)
Bit
A rather neat solution found by the computer scientist John Tukey and his friends over lunch. They were trying to find an alternative to the rather unwieldy term binary digit. They came up with binit and bigit but finally came up with the best option, bit, which is short and neat and was already in use in English. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 290)
Black
Black seems to have largely negative connotations: you can be the black sheep of the family, you can be in someone’s black books, you can be blackmailed, things are sold illegally on the black market, you can paint things in black colours, etc. Why that exactly is the case, nobody seems to know for sure.
Blackboard
The meaning of compounds does not follow from its constituent members, at least not always. Adding the senses of two (or more) individual morphemes does not result in the meaning of the compound. Common textbook cases include blackboard (which may be neither black nor a board), blackberry (which is neither a berry nor necessarily black when the smartphone is meant, sweetbreads (which are neither sweet nor bread but offal), dogleg (which is neither a dog nor a leg) and so on. (Aarons 2012: 68 + 91)
Blank
A word with an intricate history. It first came into English in the 16th century from French, meaning ‘white’, like modern Spanish blanco, Italian bianco, Portuguese branco. Although the word is present in all these Romance languages, it was not a word of classical Latin, where the word for ‘white’ was albus. Then how did it get into the modern Romance languages? Apparently Roman soldiers or merchants travelling around Europe picked it up from Germanic peoples and borrowed it, and thus it entered Vulgar Latin, the parent Latin of the modern Romance languages. Why the word appealed to the Romans is not quite clear. Perhaps the white shields of the Germanic soldiers impressed them ( Crystal 2005: 58). Or perhaps there were more words for colours in the Germanic languages than in Latin, and thus the word helped to differentiate more.
Blood Bank
Here, bank is used metaphorically. It has retained its meaning of collection point, but has lost its meaning of financial institution. This shift of meaning happens more frequently than we think: theme park, beauty farm, computer muse, office mafia are just a few selected examples. It also affects verbs: you can launder your money or park your children. (cf. Gramley/Pätzold 1992: 32)
Blood, sweat and tears
The phrase is, of course, associated with Churchill, who used it in his famous 1940 speech after becoming Prime Minister. However, Churchill’s wording was “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, sweat and tears.” The toil is now often dropped when quoting him. The phrase was, though many believe it is, not original with Churchill. Amongst those who used it before are Byron, Browning and Gladstone. Even earlier, John Donne wrote: “‘Tis in vain to dew, or mollifie it [this world] with thy teares, or sweat, or blood.” (Ammer 2006: 38)
Bloody
When Shaw first used the word bloody – as an intensifier, as in not bloody likely – on stage (in his Pygmalion), the word caused a national sensation which totally eclipsed Shaw’s point about language and class. It alarmed the ears of the polite. They were probably little aware that the word had been used in this sense by honourable writers such as Dryden (“bloody drunk”), Richardson (“bloody passionate”), Fielding (“bloody old fellow”) and Swift (“bloody sick”). It had taken the word 1000 years to cause such a stir. Shakespeare would have used it in its original sense when he has Macbeth tell us that his bloody cousins have fled from Scotland. Swift would use it in its figurative sense, as an intensifier, when he talks about the day being bloody hot. The phrase would have quite a different ring if it were used by a BBC weather forecaster today. It wouldn’t. Though it is not a strong swearword any more, it is still avoided in polite language. In Britain, at least. It is quite different in Australia. Unsurprisingly, as a strong swearword it was a favourite word amongst the convicts who were sent to Australia. One traveller noted that he had heard an Australian use “the disgusting word” 27 times in a quarter of an hour and calculated that it would add up to 19,200,000 uses in 50 years. A far cry from Shaw’s audacious inclusion of the word in his play. (Bragg 2004: 207, 281, Crystal 2012: 120-122)
Blurb
One cannot often assist, so to speak, at the birth of a word. In the case of blurb we can, at least in retrospect, and the people present at a dinner party given by a publishing association in New York in 1907 could quite literally. The story is this: a publisher had just published a book by the American humorist Burgess, and free copies of the book, printed, as was the association’s custom, in a special jacket, were given to the guests. The new jacket did not satisfy Burgess. It was too conventional. So he spontaneously decided to draw one. He sketched out a buxom blonde on one of the jackets and called her Miss Belinda Blurb. The name caught on. Any excessive advertisement for a book, on front or back covers, was soon called a blurb (Crystal 2007: 137).
Bodega
A cute little word to remember for students of linguistics. Rather practically, all the consonants it contains are of the same type. They are all plosives, and they are all voiced. The word contains all the three voiced plosives of English. In addition, they appear in the ‘right’ order, from front to back: a bilabial plosive, an alveolar plosive and a velar plosive. And here’s the word which is (almost) as good for the voiceless plosives: petticoat.
Boring
“Captain Thomas English invented a boring machine.” Sentences like this might just puzzle the reader for a second. What makes a machine boring? Why would anyone want to invent a machine which is boring? What is meant is, of course, a boring maching, read as a compoung, i.e. a machine which drills hole. And not a a noun phrase consisting of an adjective and a noun. The difference is not noticeable in written language but it is noticeable in spoken language, with the compound having two stresses, the main stress being on boring, with the noun phrase having only one main stress, the one on machine.
Bowl
In Cricket, the ball is not bowled but thrown, but still you speak of bowling. Originally, the ball was actually bowled, i.e. was rolled along the ground, just as in modern bowling, but then, as cricket became more competitive, the ball began to be thrown – amidst cries of protests from the crowd. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 216)
Brandnew
The word brandnew is related to the German word Brand. It derives from the habit of burning, of branding a mark on a property or commodity. At the moment when the mark was applied, the thing which carried the mark was brandnew. This is why the word brand still refers to a make, a label, a product manufactured by a particular company.
Brandy
English has borrowed this word from Dutch. Other examples include cruise, easel, knapsack, landscape, yacht. (Jucker 2000: 51)
Brunch
Perhaps the example of a blend, i.e. of a word made from two shortened forms (breakfast+lunch ). The other one is possibly smog . Other examples include infotaiment, Oxbridge, motel, Muppet and numeracy (Crystal 2005: 457)
Buck
America offered happy hunting grounds for brave adventurous men, and the fur trade was a promising commercial undertaking. In parts of New England, a man’s worth might be reckoned in beaver skins or in buck skins, and that is the origin of the American colloquial word for a dollar, buck. (McCrum 1986: 272)
Budget
Budget is a word which English borrowed from French and then returned. It was originally imported as bowgette from French bougette, a diminutive of bouge, ‘leather bag’. The English word originally referred to a pouch or a wallet, and a century later came to be used for the contents of a wallet. The modern meaning of financial revenue arose in the 18th century and was so handy that the French took it over, spelling and all. (O’Conner 2010: 117-118)
Buff
You have film buffs and music buffs and other experts known as buffs. The origin of the word is not at all obvious. Actually, it comes from buffalo. How does an animal become an expert? Any ox in Europe could once be called a buffalo, but the word was often shortened to buff. Erroneously, buffalo was also applied to the American bison, which looks similar, though it is not related to the European buffalo. The leather which was made from these animals’ hide, buff leather, was good, strong material. It was used, amongst others, by the New York firefighters, and the word came eventually to be used not for the uniform but for the firefighters themselves. They were known as buffs. The New York firefighters were highly esteemed on account of their special techniques at putting out fires. Thus the word started to assume the meaning of ‘expert’. (Forsyth 2016: 66-68)
Bulldozer
Why the heck is a bulldozer called a bulldozer? Is it anything to do with a bull, or with a bull which dozes? But that does not make any sense given the nature of the bulldozer. The story is this: the word goes back to the Ku-Klux-Klan, the American right-wing group who had an inclination to flog people they did not like. When they beat them up, they gave them a dose which was enough to numb a bull. Thus they bulldosed people. For some reason, the was changed to , hiding the word’s true etymology. The people who meted out this treatment were known as bulldozers, and this word was gradually spread to other people outside the Ku-Klux Klan, and then to the massive, earth-moving machine, when it made its appearance in America in the 1930s. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 253)
Bunkum
An American Congressman, Felix Walker, made a speech in the American Congress in the debate over slavery. The result of the debate was what came to be known as the Missouri Compromise. Walker talked and talked and talked. He talked until his audience became fidgety, then angry, then desperate. At last he was surrounded by people who wanted to know why he was going on and on. He replied that he was not speaking to Congress but to Buncombe, his constituency. He was not interested in the Missouri Compromise, he was interested in the news couverage. The episode became famous and speaking to Buncombe (and later on simply buncombe) came to be used to refer to pointless, empty speech. Thus Walker and a place in North Carolina have contributed to give us the modern word bunkum, ‘nonsense’, ‘rubbish’, ‘hogwash’. (Forsyth 2016: 151-153)
Bury one’s head in the sand
If you bury your head in the sand, you avoid an unpleasant or dangerous situation by avoiding to look at it. The image comes from the practice of ostriches of burrowing headfirst in the sand. However, they do not hide their head in the sand, as people believed, in the erroneous belief that they then cannot be seen. When they bury their heads in the sand, they eat! Ostriches actually eat gravel and sand and use them in their gizzards to help digest food! (Ammer 2006: 51)
Bus
The first bus line had no stops. The bus went straight from the centre of Nantes to one of the suburbs of Nantes, where a certain Monsieur Baudry ran a bath-house. Monsieur Baudry decided to run a regular stage-coach service for the convenience of his clients. He then realised that many passengers used the stage coach although they were not bath-house customers at all. They were just in need of transport. And that gave Monsieur Baudry an idea. This need could be commercialised. And that is what he did, first in Nantes, then in Paris. He made the stage coaches stop on their way and also redesigned them so that passengers could get on and off more easily. Needless to say, the first buses were not machine-driven but horse-driven. The original word, omnibus, is said to have arisen on account of a shop at the end of the original bus route in Nantes. This shop belonged to a certain Monsieur Omnes, and he had the slogan Omnes omnibus displayed in his shop window. And Monsieur Baudry called his conveyance, which was for everybody, voiture omnibus. This was finally shortened to omnibus and then to bus, although many sticklers insisted only omnibus was ‘correct’. It is indeed a bit odd for a word to consists only of the inflectional ending, but the form caught on and is still there, alive and kicking. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 240-1)
Business
When business was formed in Middle English, it referred to ‘the state of being busy’. It then took off in different directions. It was only in the 18th century that it developed its meaning of ‘trade’ or ‘commerce’, its central meaning in contemporary English. The changes in meaning resulted in a loss of analyzability, i.e. English speakers were no longer aware that it consisted of an adjective and a suffix, busy and –ness. In the process, one syllable got lost. It now consists of two syllables rather than three. Curiously, a new word was introduced to refer to what the original meaning of business was: busyness. (Bybee 2015: 190)