Wordorigins.org

The word geek is one that has had several meanings over the centuries, including meaning both a fool and a very smart person. How did we acquire the word geek and how did it come to mean such a variety of things?

The modern word geek is most likely a northern English variant of an older word, geck, meaning a simpleton or one who is deceived. It can also be verb, meaning to deceive, to cheat. It’s a borrowing into English from the Lower German geck and is related to the Middle Dutch gec. From Alexander Barclay’s Certayne Eglogues of 1515:

Aiijb, He is a foole, a sotte, and a geke also Which choseth...the worst [way] and most of ieoperdie.

This adjective, meaning joyful or light-hearted, is of uncertain origin. The English word comes from the French gai, but where this French word comes from is uncertain. There are cognates in other Romance languages, notably Provencal, Old Spanish, Portugeuse, and Italian, but no likely Latin candidate for a root exists. The word may ultimately be Germanic in origin, with the Old High German wâhi, meaning pretty, and gâhi, swift, being suggested as possible progenitors, but the transition from the medial h in those roots to the Romantic forms is problematic.

The word is first recorded in English c.1325 in a poem titled Ichot a burde in boure, one of the Harley Lyrics which appear in the manuscript BL Harley 2253:

Heo is…graciouse, stout, ant gay, gentil, iolyf so þe iay.
(He is…gracious, stout, and gay, gentle, jolly as the jay.)

You may notice a new category on the right-hand navigation bar, astronomy and astrophotography.

In addition to word origins and language, I am also an amateur astronomer and budding astrophotographer. Some friends have asked me to put some of my images on the web, so I am obliging.

When I post to this new category, the new photos and entries won’t appear on the main wordorigins.org page, but they will appear in the RSS feed if you subscribe to that.

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
--Mark Twain

Open up just about any guide book or web site about San Francisco and you’ll find this quote. The trouble is, Twain never said it, or at least it doesn’t appear in any of his published works or extant letters and papers. The quote is sometimes attributed to other writers, but the clear favorite is Twain.

But Twain did write about the San Francisco climate and his conclusions were completely at odds with this alleged quote. In chapter 56 of Roughing It:

The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. The thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. [...] It is as pleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and is doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world.

Although, Twain did once say something sort of like the alleged quote, although it wasn’t about San Francisco. In an 1880 letter he quoted a wit, who when asked if he had ever seen such a winter, replied, “Yes. Last summer.” Twain commented, “I judge he spent his summer in Paris.”

So this appears to be a case of popular misattribution of a witty saying, possibly based on a mangling of what he said in the 1880 letter. Twain is a frequent victim of false attributions, and I say “victim” because Twain’s actual writings tend to be wittier and more insightful than most of the quotes falsely attributed to him. A good rule of thumb is that unless the source of a Twain quote is given, one should be skeptical that he ever said it.

(Source: The Quote Verifier)

Generally, the word flea connotes low-rent or cheap, because such places were often infested with fleas (cf. fleabag). The term flea market is a translation of the French marché aux puces, literally market with fleas, an open-air market where second hand goods are sold. From the Belfast News-Letter of 28 July 1891

There is going on just now near the Barriere de Montreuil, at the extreme east end of Paris a sale of rubbish, familiarly known to its frequenters by the unattractive name of the “Flea Market.”

The term quickly jumped the pond to America. From the Janesville Gazette (Wisconsin) of 4 November 1891:

Near the Barriere de Montreuil, in Paris, they have sales of odds and ends known as the “flea market.” A woman recently bought a dilapidated old mattress and, cutting it open, found 14,000 francs in gold.

Some suggest that the term is also influenced by the fact that the locations of such markets are not fixed and jump around like fleas. While this may be a characteristic of the markets, it does not appear to be the origin.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Newspaperarchive.com; ADS-L)