WORDS WORDS WORDS by Jack Pillemer

"The kids are finally asleep. The house is quiet but their room is still a mess. I pick up my daughter's teddy bear and place it in her cot. I notice a whole group of plastic soldiers dressed in khaki uniforms lying in ambush under my son's bed. I scoop those up and fling them into the box. I miss. This tidying up can wait.

The time has come to change into a pair of pajamas. With a sandwich and a cup of coffee in hand I sit down to relax in front of the TV.

Channel 11 is reporting on some assassination attempt in Bolivia. CNN has an interview with a potential presidential candidate. On channel 14 a male chauvinist is arguing with a radical feminist about the institution of marriage. I desperately surf -channel trying to find a mindless, soap opera but in vein. I finally settle for a detective series that is set in Hawaii. Beautiful girls in revealing bikinis sail on yachts drinking champagne while a killer watches them secretly from his bungalow window on the beach.

I wake up at 2am. on the couch with a stiff neck. I take the cold coffee back to the kitchen and flop into bed."

We tend to take words for granted. Language, however, which seems to be so fixed and stable is really a continually evolving system. In time, words appear, disappear or change their meanings. Many of the words used in the above passage have interesting histories.

Latin influenced the development of the language and many words in English have Latin roots. The word "candidate", for example, comes from the Latin word "candidus" which means white. You may wonder what the connection between "white" and "candidate" is. Well, those people who wanted to be chosen for public office in Rome, would parade through the streets in their white togas. Another word with a Latin root is "soldier". It comes from the word "solidus" which was the name of a gold coin. It seems that the first fighting men called soldiers did not fight out of belief but rather because they were paid to do so.

Many other languages have left their mark on modern-day English. The word bungalow comes from the Indian (Hindi) word "bangla" which means house. Other Hindi derivations are "khaki" and "pajamas". Arabic too has helped shape the language. The word "assassin" (a person who commits murder for political reasons) comes from the Arabic word "hashshashin" meaning users of the drug "hashish". A fanatical Muslim sect of the 11th and 12th century used the drug when they carried out bloody deeds.

Personal names have also become part of the English vocabulary. John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, liked to gamble so much that he didn't have time to go and eat. He had his food - beef between two pieces of bread- brought to the gambling table. It wasn't long before "sandwiches" entered the language.

Nicholas Chauvin, a French soldier during the time of Napoleon is responsible for the word "chauvinist". He was a excessive patriot. He believed that neither his country nor his emperor, Napoleon, could do anything wrong. Today it has taken on the meaning of one who claims that his group or beliefs are superior to others.

Did you know that teddy bears got their name from an American president? Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt, 1858-1919, enjoyed hunting bears. One time he found a young bear cub but decided not to shoot it. The press published the story and teddy bears were born.

Place names have also crept into the language. Champagne, the sparkling white wine we use in times of celebration is merely the wine that came from the French province where it was developed. The small two-piece bathing suit - a bikini- also derives its name from a place. Bikini is a very small island in the Pacific ocean where the atomic bomb was tested in 1946. The bathing suit was called a bikini as a marketing gimmick. It suggested that anyone who wore a bikini would have an effect on others that would be as powerful as an atom bomb.

This article is based on information that can be found in the Penguin Wordmaster Dictionary.

Photo 2: "A bear" by Dr Stephen Dann is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Photo1: "French Sandwich" by allisonmeier is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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