Wordorigins.org Discussion Forums

origin of “America”

2009-10-12T14:23:03-08:00

Dave’s explanation of the name’s origin is very well researched, but it has one anomolous feature. Locations derived from personal names were as a rule taken only from royalty (cf. your entries on Maryland, Carolina, Georgia, etc.) - and, for example, Pennsylvania is not Williamsylvania nor is Columbia/Colombia Christopheria or Cristobalia. Mount Everest, Tasmania, Washington (both city and state) and very many more locations named at that time are taken from surnames, not personal names. America appears to be the only exception to the foregoing. Now, there certainly was a Richard a-Mer(ri/yc)k - the spelling could vary. He was a Collector of Customs in Bristol, England at the right time, and (as such persons were then) a rich man, and he did finance at least one if not more of the Cabots’ voyages. Ever since I saw his name on the list of Collectors in Bristol Custom House years ago I have thought that it would be quite normal for settlers to call the country where they settled “Merricka” or “A-merricka” after their sponsor, and because “America” is so euphonious it could easily be expanded to the joined continents

Why would anyone accord to a comparatively obscure navigator who did not discover the continent nor even set foot on it till some years after its discovery the honour usually reserved for royalty - and which they did not give to Columbus/Colon? I still feel a lingering doubt; if named for Vespucci why would they not call it “Vespuccia”? Waldseemuller must surely have known of the practice of restricting the usage of personal names to royalty, and I wonder why he chose to support the idea that people in this case - and as far as I can discover only in this case - ignored what could almost be called a rule. Pity that we can’t ask him about it!

Big List: mercury / quicksilver

2009-11-06T13:44:58-08:00

Number 80.

Big List: thallium

2009-11-07T08:16:48-08:00

Number 81.

-ght.

2009-11-02T14:47:12-08:00

What is the history of the -ght found in so many words? I hope it is not a discussion long before I joined. If so please just refer me.
I am thinking of the -ght in words such as fight, sought, might, height, wrought, plight, etc. Is it a contraction of some set of words early in our language history?
The words that have it seem to have nothing in common with each other, besides these -ght’s.

Why “-dge”?

2009-11-05T08:11:06-08:00

When I was working with a student to explain that -dge is the correct spelling after a short vowel, and that the “d” was silent, he asked the question-----Why “d”?
Does anyone know the origin of that “dge spelling? Or why we use “d” rather than another letter?

red herring

2009-11-05T09:09:38-08:00

Quinion has a discussion of the phrase that pretty definitively clears it up; nobody ever actually dragged a fish across a trail to confuse hounds. (Dave, you’ll want to amend your Big List entry accordingly.)

Robert Scott Ross and the OED now trace the figurative sense to the radical journalist William Cobbett, whose Weekly Political Register thundered in the years 1803-35 against the English political system he denigrated as the Old Corruption. He wrote a story, presumably fictional, in the issue of 14 February 1807 about how as a boy he had used a red herring as a decoy to deflect hounds chasing after a hare. He used the story as a metaphor to decry the press, which had allowed itself to be misled by false information about a supposed defeat of Napoleon; this caused them to take their attention off important domestic matters: “It was a mere transitory effect of the political red-herring; for, on the Saturday, the scent became as cold as a stone.”

This story, and his extended repetition of it in 1833, was enough to get the figurative sense of red herring into the minds of his readers, unfortunately also with the false idea that it came from some real practice of huntsmen.

Harmless Drudge: Scalia and “choate”

2009-11-06T08:36:12-08:00

Another Supreme Court linguistic story.

Harmless Drudge: South Park and “Fag”

2009-11-06T08:13:51-08:00

It’s Video Friday, and this week it’s a clip from the latest episode of South Park on the changing definition of fag.

Harmless Drudge: More Passive Voice Confusion

2009-11-04T07:54:15-08:00

This time at the US Supreme Court.

Big List: gold

2009-11-05T10:15:30-08:00

Everyone’s favorite.