WORD HISTORIES I

Quarantine

The first quarantine was in Venice, Italy while the bubonic plague was ravaging the mainland. To help curb the spread of infection, visiting ships had to spend 40 days at anchor before entering the city. The word quarantine comes from the Italian phrase quaranta giorni: literally, 40 days.

 

Candidate

In ancient Rome, the color of someone's toga could indicate their social status. Politicians wore gleaming white robes, probably whitened with powdered chalk, to show the purity of their intentions. The white toga was called toga candida, from the Latin candidare (to whiten). From there we get the English word candidate (one seeking political office) and candid (truthful).

 

Barbarian

The ancient Greeks loved their language and looked down on those who spoke a "lesser" tongue.  To Greek ears, anyone speaking in another language sounded as if they were saying bar-bar, the ancient equivalent of blah-blah. This bar-bar babbling led to the word barbaros, meaning foreign and uncouth. Barbarian came to us from there.

 

Disaster  

Since ancient times, astrologers have been hunting for divine messages in the stars. Dis is Latin for asunder and astrum for star. A disaster means that the stars are against you and that ill fortune is close at hand.

 

Haagen-Dazs

Haagen-Dazs is short for ......... absolutely nothing. Reuben Mattus who moved to Brooklyn from Poland, created the ice cream company in 1959. Mattus was Jewish and wanted to give his company a Danish-sounding name in tribute to Denmark's heroic efforts to shelter and save Jews during WWII. He chose Haagen-Dazs - which is basically a nonsense phrase in Danish.

Lego

Lego is a contraction of the Danish phrase leg godt - meaning "play well."

 

WD-40

WD stands for Water Displacement, and the 40 stands the 40th formula tried by the chemist who invented it - after 39 failed attempts.