Today in “Surprisingly Connected Etymologies”, we’re thinking about Christmas and taking
a look at some festive vocab.
Over the Yuletide season, you might sit down to dinner and pull one of those Christmas
crackers, which in addition to their bang will give you a tissue paper crown, a small
trinket, and a terrible joke.
And you know what, that joke may be etymologically the perfect thing for Yule.
Because you see, Yule, which originally referred not to Christmas but a pagan Germanic midwinter
fertility festival, from Old English geol (which is jol in Old Norse), may ultimately
descend from the Proto-Indo-European root *yek- “to speak”, from which we also get
words such as joke, juggle, and jewel (all through Latin iocus “joke, jest, sport,
pastime”), probably through the notion of “festivity”.
Unless of course Yule comes from the root *kwel- “to turn”, because of the turning
of the year that happens at that time.
Sticking with the festivities, you know that old Christmas carol Here We Come A-wassailing?
Well it’s all about drinking a toast to someone's health.
Wassail comes from the Old English expression wes hal “be hale”.
The same Germanic root that produced Old English hal also led to the word health.
This Old English expression came to be used as a sort of toast, and eventually transferred
over to the drink itself, the wassail cup, which was kind of like the hot punch you get
at Christmas parties, only it included more stuff in it, like cream, egg, and nuts, and
believe it or not toast, kind of like the way we put croutons in soup.
And, so the story goes, that’s where we get the expression “to give a toast” from,
when one saucy gentleman upon seeing a beautiful woman bathing in the public baths scooped
up a cup of the bath water and drank to her health, and his even saucier friend said,
“you can keep the drink, I’ll take the toast” in other words the woman floating
in the water.
Also in the realm of Christmas carols, next time you sing the carol The Twelve Days of
Christmas, don’t interrupt the line about the partridge to fart loudly.
Or perhaps you should!
Because the only English word related to partridge is the word fart.
These words descend from the Proto-Indo-European root *perd- “to fart loudly”.
Apparently the sound of the partridge’s wings beating was reminiscent of the farting
sound.
Moving quickly on: are you hoping Santa will leave you some cream-filled chocolates in
your Christmas stockings on Christmas eve?
Well etymologically he should.
Christmas obviously comes from Christ, which literally means “anointed”, coming from
the Proto-Indo-European root *ghrei- “to rub”, and that root also gives us such words
as grime, grisly, and, more appetizingly, cream.
Of course Santa will come by means of his reindeer-pulled sleigh, but as it turns out,
all of the other reindeer probably should have been shunning Rudolph, as he seems to
be a wolf in reindeer’s clothing.
The name of that most famous reindeer of all, Rudolph, literally means “famous-wolf”,
the -olph part related to the word wolf, a common Germanic name element found in the
name of the hero Beowulf, and the first part from Germanic hruod “fame, glory”, also
a Germanic name element also found in the name Roger, literally “famous spear”.
After Christmas, will you be making any New Years resolutions, like eating better and
exercising more to lose a few pounds?
Well that only makes sense, etymologically speaking.
Resolution comes from Latin re- “again” + solvere “loosen, untie” from the Proto-Indo-European
*se-lu- made up of the prefix *se- “apart” and *leu- “loosen, divide, cut apart”.
This root, through Proto-Germanic *lausa- and Old English losian “be lost, perish”,
gives us English lose.
And finally, January 6th is Twelfth Night, a day when many people take the ornaments
off their Christmas tree and store them in an orderly fashion for next year, and etymologically
this only makes sense.
Ornament comes from Latin ornare “adorn” which comes from the Proto-Italic root *ord-
“to arrange”, which also leads to Latin ordo “arrangement” and English order.
Thanks for watching!
This is one in a series of occasional short videos about connected etymologies; to see
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Happy holidays!