Rosalie Baker - In a Word: 750 Words and their Fascinating Stories and Origins

Ever since my first week in 9th-grade Latin class, I have enjoyed dissecting words. I enjoyed learning just what words really mean and how these meanings had evolved. I already spoke English and Portuguese, so Latin seemed to fill a gap of understanding. It allowed me to see the relationships between words and the people who speak them today, and the people who used them in the past. My love of languages continued through high school and into college and graduate school. As I studied French, German, and Greek, each again broadened my perception of language and how words reflect a peoples beliefs and customs.

In 1981, when my husband, Charles Baker, and I started the monthly magazine now called CALLIOPE , we decided to include in each issue a column on words and their origins. That column, Fun With Words, still appears in each issue of CALLIOPE today. Fun With Words became a mini-education for me as I researched words in languages that I did not speak or read. I had long known that fossil traced its roots to the Latin noun fossa, which translates ditch and symbolized something that had been dug up from the ground. But I had no idea that bandanna and bungalow each traced its roots to Hindi, a language spoken in India, or that typhoon was an adaptation of the Chinese phrase taifeng, meaning great wind. Another surprise was discovering that the cloth named mohair was an adaptation of the Arabic word mukhayyar, meaning fine cloth.

It is a treat for me to research new words for each issue of CALLIOPE , but, as the years passed, I wanted to find a way to gather together all Id learned and pass it on to new readers. We decided to create this book, which features not only a lively discussion of word origins, but also new information that is related in some way to the word derivations on a particular page. We call these tidbits PS, as in postscript (you can see its origin ).

Lou Waryncia, the editorial director at Cobblestone Publishing; Marc Aronson, the publisher of Cricket Books; Ann Dillon, the art designer at Cobblestone Publishing; and Carol Saller, editor at Cricket Books, encouraged me. I wish to thank all four for their support and input.

Just as the Fun With Words column cannot include all words related to the theme of a CALLIOPE issue, so this book cannot include the origins of all English words and phrases. I have included my favorites and encourage all of you to use them as a starting point for investigating the fascinating history contained within every word we read and write. You will soon find that an awareness of what word or phrase is appropriate and effective in a particular situation gives you a distinct advantage in school, on the job, and with your friends.

This book is a result of my lifetime of journeying through the words we use into the lives and history of people all around the world. I hope it is also the beginning of your quest to look inside words to the stories they tell.

Rosalie Baker

Ever wonder how the word orchestra evolved to mean both the location of the best seats in a theater and a large group of musicians who play together? You may consider yourself a maestro of arts and literature information after you have read this chapter.

A cappella

This musical term, meaning without accompaniment, comes from the Frenchman Martin of Tours. Around the year 326, 10-year-old Martin rejected the gods of ancient Rome to follow the beliefs of the growing Christian church. Martin later became a missionary in Gaul and, in 360, founded the first monastery there. Regarded as a holy man and a miracle worker, Martin was honored as a saint after his death. The chief officials of Gaul placed his cloak, considered a holy relic, in a small room in his church. The room became known as the capella, which is Latin for little cloak. The guardian of the cloak became the capellanus. Religious services were held in the capella. While there was singing, no musical instruments were used in the capella. For this type of music, the Italians coined the phrase a capella, meaning in chapel style. Other languages quickly borrowed the phrase to mean singing without musical accompaniment. The French later adapted capella and capellanus to chapelle and chapelain. In English, the words became chapel and chaplain .