Author Topic: What’s in a place name? (Read 1613 times)

G@RRy S@NDHU · « **on:** January 25, 2013, 11:41:20 AM »

*Laconic: ‘using very few words’ (OED). Laconia was the homeland of the Spartans in Ancient Greece, who were famous for the brevity of their communications. The Dictionary of Word Origins gives a great example of their laconic sensibility in a reply to Philip of Macedon, who boasted: ‘If I enter Laconia, I will level Lacedaemon to the ground.’ The Spartans’ reply was ‘If ‘.

*Ghetto: ‘a part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group’ (OED). Ghetto originated in Venice. Ghetto is a part of the city where the Jewish population was forced to live.

*Shanghaied: ’1. force to join a ship’s crew by underhand means. 2. coerce or trick into a place or action’ (OED). Shanghaied originates in the shortage of crews in the 19th century for ships (including those bound for China) on the west coast of the USA. During the latter half of the 19th century many able bodied men sought their fortune in the gold fields of California, making it necessary for boarding masters to Shanghai those who remained.

*Coventry: ‘refuse to associate with or speak to someone’ (OED). Being ‘sent to Coventry‘ is an expression believed to originate in the 17th century during the English Civil War when Coventry had a prison for Royalist troops.

*Doolally: ‘temporarily insane’ (OED). This term is derived from the British Army transit camp of Deolali, which was famous for driving troops to madness from boredom.

*Jeans/Denim/Dungarees: ‘Denim: hard-wearing cotton twill fabric, typically blue’ (OED). The cloth that jeans are made from originated in Nîmes (de Nîmes means ‘from Nîmes’) and Dongari Killa in Mumbai. The blue colouring of denim was referred to as bleu de Gênes - that is, it came from Genoa.

*Stockholm syndrome: ‘The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken in Stockholm, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage. The victims became emotionally attached to their captors, and even defended them after they were freed from their six-day ordeal’ (see Wikipedia).

*Solecism: ‘grammatical mistake’ (OED). The citizens of the ancient city of Soli spoke differently from the Athenians of the day. The more influential Athenians viewed ‘different’ as ‘ungrammatical’, so the term solecism came into being to describe such ‘mistakes’.

*Neanderthal: ‘an extinct human that was widely distributed in ice age Europe between c.120,000-35,000 years ago’ (OED). The close relative of humans (Homo sapiens) was discovered in Neandertal (then Neanderthal) in Germany, near Düsseldorf.

Author Topic: What’s in a place name? (Read 1613 times)

G@RRy S@NDHU

What’s in a place name?

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