You may remember, back in February my friend Ron sent a series of questions about Valentine’s Day, including “Why does Valentine’s Day Suck?” He sent a new set of questions for April. I saw him in between his submission of Valentine’s Day questions and now, and he seemed to be in much better spirits. The questions I got this time were:
1. Why can people be fools only on April 1?
2. What is the origin of the word etymology?
3. Is there a synonym for thesaurus?
There was also a rhetorical question about the delights of retirement, but I won’t tease you with that since most of us aren’t there yet. So, let’s get to the questions!
1. Why can people be fools only on April 1?
Ron, you know that’s a lie. People can be fools every day, all day, forever. I found some interesting things about April 1, and there’s enough out there for a full article, so that will come closer to the day. Until then, you must wait and wonder.
2. What is the origin of the word etymology?
From Etymology Online (with a few edits for space)
late 14c., ethimolegia "facts of the origin and development of a word," from Old French etimologie, ethimologie (14c., Modern French étymologie), from Latin etymologia, from Greek etymologia "analysis of a word to find its true origin.”
In classical times, with reference to meanings; later, to histories. Classical etymologists, Christian and pagan, based their explanations on allegory and guesswork, lacking historical records as well as the scientific method to analyze them, and the discipline fell into disrepute that lasted a millennium. Flaubert ["Dictionary of Received Ideas"] wrote that the general view was that etymology was "the easiest thing in the world with the help of Latin and a little ingenuity."
As practiced by Socrates in the Cratylus, etymology involves a claim about the underlying semantic content of the name, what it really means or indicates. This content is taken to have been put there by the ancient namegivers: giving an etymology is thus a matter of unwrapping or decoding a name to find the message the namegivers have placed inside….
By late-14c. a sense had developed of "conjugation and categorization of words," apparently from a misunderstanding of etymology as dealing in tenses, and it is listed with prosody, orthography and syntax as an element of grammar:
…for the beginners of any language whatsoever, [etymologie] is so necessarie, that without it, they could not understand or learne it: The which by the Latin Grammarians hath beene, and is called Declension and Coniugation. [John Minsheu, "A Spanish Grammar," 1599.]
OED considers this sense to be "now historical."
3. Is there a synonym for thesaurus?
Why yes, there are several offerings for you. They don’t really seem to be synonyms, but the first three were provided by Merriam-Webster as the top rated, and the remainder are from M-W’s lesser-rated suggestions and Microsoft® Word’s Shift+F7 search.
- dictionary
- glossary
- vocabulary
- lexicon
- gloss
- wordbook
- nomenclator
- phrasebook
- wordlist
As I said, I’ll return to question 1 later.
Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications
Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com
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