The Unexpected Evolution of Language (14 page)

gentle

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
well-born

NEW DEFINITION:
mild-mannered; polite

Once upon a time, if you were “gentle,” you were rich. You were from a “good” family. The root of the word suggests “beget,” as in, springing forth from an established or “good” lineage.

If they were well-born, the rich were the “one-percenters” of their day, and thus, they were pretty much focused on themselves, what was good for themselves, and what was most expedient for themselves. Damn the peasants. Let them eat cake.

Nonetheless, to this day, many ascribe to the “well-born” a preoccupation with etiquette, which is really just egotistically excessive good manners used like a performance.

Over time, as lineages began to split, and peasants started to revolt, the word “gentle” became more egalitarian. It began to refer to people—well-born or not—who exhibited characteristics associated (rightly or wrongly) with the rich: good manners, refinement, politeness, amiability, etc. Nowadays, the main connection “gentle” has to its hoity-toity roots is the word “gentleman.”

gestation

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
riding on horseback

NEW DEFINITION:
the period of time, from conception until birth, during which a female person or animal carries her child; pregnancy

What’s with words related to horses? A bidet used to be a small horse, and the action of riding it gave rise to the current meaning of the word (see entry for “bidet”). And gestation? During the sixteenth century, it meant the act of riding on horseback for exercise. Now it has nothing at all to do with horses … except for mares carrying foals.

How did the modern meaning of “gestation” undergo such an unusual birth? The answer is in the root of the word. It comes from a Latin word meaning “to carry” or “to bear.” In addition, when you ride a horse, the horse is “bearing” you. Thus, the “seed” of the modern sense of the word exists in both its origin and its Middle–Ages meanings. By the seventeenth century, “gestation” referred only to maturation and to ideas. Horses had ridden off into the sunset.

girl

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
a young child of either gender

NEW DEFINITION:
a young female child

When “girl” first began to appear in writing, during the mid-
thirteenth century, it could refer to a youth of either gender. By the mid-sixteenth century, the word chose a gender and came to refer specifically to young females.

The reason for the shift is not entirely clear. The word “boy” meant specifically a male child as early as 1400, and that may be why the change was made. If there was one word that meant “young male,” then it stood to reason it would be convenient to have another word that meant “young female.” Since “girl” could mean either gender, it was likely just expedient to choose one in order to have a contrast for “boy.”

The word’s origin offers another possibility for why “girl” came to refer to females. One of “girl’s” origin words means “dress” or “article of clothing.” Since young ladies then, as now, tend to pay more attention to their clothing than young men do, the word gained a feminine connection.

gossip

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
godparent

NEW DEFINITION:
One who discusses other people’s business

Originally, “gossips” referred to one’s closest acquaintances or even family members. The Old English word that led to “gossip” meant “god-related.” In other words, if you choose, say, Bob down the street to be your child’s “gossip,” or godparent, then you became related to Bob through God.

By the Middle Ages, “gossips” weren’t just godparents. They were any close relatives or friends. Often, the word was used to describe women who came together for births. As they waited for the blessed moment to arrive, they engaged in idle chatter. Ultimately, “gossip” became associated with this idle chatter more than with being a godparent.

By Shakespeare’s time, a gossip was what he or she is today: a busybody putting his or her nose where it doesn’t belong.

gout

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
to drop

NEW DEFINITION:
painful inflammation of the joints, especially the joint of the big toe

The word “gout” comes from French via Latin and meant “drop” originally. The connection between the old and new meanings is rooted in outdated concepts of medicine; although, in truth, physicians of old weren’t too far off in their diagnoses. Gout is a disease that causes excruciating swelling in the joints, though 50 percent of its sufferers feel the red-hot, searing pain in the joint of their big toes. Doctors of old believed that gout was caused when waste products “dropped” from blood and settled in the joints. Doctors knew about gravity, so it made sense to them that most sufferers felt pain in one of the body’s lowest joints.

These doctors didn’t know why some people’s blood “dropped” and others didn’t. They did note, however, that many gout patients were wealthy and imbibed alcohol regularly. That’s why some called gout “the rich man’s disease.”

Medical science today knows that the culprit that leads to gout is an excess of uric acid. Too much alcohol—or fructose or meat—creates an excess of uric acid in the blood that the bloodstream deposits in various joints of the body. Until recently, only the rich would have been able to have a diet high in meat and spirits.

Gout Stool

Gout became rampant in the eighteenth century as the leisure class gained in size. Men of means spent their time eating rich foods and drinking too much stout, and as a result they contracted gout. In those days, no one was quite sure how the disease occurred. Yet folks with the disease realized they could alleviate suffering by elevating the gout-ridden foot.

Well, these pampered pashas couldn’t just put their feet up on a chair or a stack of books. Oh no. How bourgeois! Thus, furniture makers of the time created gout stools, which were simply fabric-covered stools that allowed one to prop up one’s feet in style. Occasionally, these antiques pop up on eBay. They sell for anywhere from $25 to over $100.

grin

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
showing the teeth due to pain or anger

NEW DEFINITION:
show the teeth in a smile

Sometimes it can be painful to hold a grin for too long, which is why most people’s family photos are so unintentionally creepy. Those aren’t grins; they’re faces of discomfort. The pain that leads to cheesy yearbook and photo album smiles is appropriate to the word’s original meaning.

The words that originated “grin” mean such things as whine, howl, or cry. In other words, “grins” were more like what we now call grimaces. Your teeth are bared, yes, but not in joy or contentment or even to satisfy a photographer’s demand. Instead, your teeth are pulled back in pain or possibly in anger.

By the late fourteenth century, “grin” began to change in meaning. The modern sense of the word most likely came via the sense of a forced smile, which often masks pain or anger. By the early modern era, grins were awaiting the day they could become caught awkwardly in photo albums, yearbooks, and newspapers.

H

harlot

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
tramp; vagabond (male)

NEW DEFINITION:
prostitute (female)

In Chaucer’s day, there wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with being called a “harlot.” The word often was used for traveling street performers and poets, the men (NOTE: men) who provided entertainment in a world sadly devoid of reruns, moronic tweets, and viral videos of kittens doing cute things.

Even then, during the middle of the Middle Ages, the word could have a pejorative ring. If a man was merely a “tramp,” someone who walked from town to town begging, rather than performing, for his supper, then he, too, would be called a “harlot.”

By the dawn of the 1400s, the word began to shift genders, and it was as an alternative to “whore.” Some women, um, plied their trade among different communities, or (male) harlots got, um, lonely on the road and sought female companionship for a price. Thus, a connection was made between the “old” harlots and the “new” harlots.

The main culprit for transforming “harlots” from male street performers to female sheet performers was early Modern English translations of the Bible. “Harlot” often was used as a euphemism for the harsher-sounding (for the time) words like “whore” or “strumpet.”

haywire

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
wire used to bind hay

NEW DEFINITION:
crazy; erratic

As America tamed the West during the last years of the nineteenth century, people started making a lot of hay while the sun shone (literally). They used the hay to feed animals, to stuff cushions, to insulate, and for any number of other things.

One convenient way to keep hay stored was to form it into bales and then hold it together with wire made for that purpose. From the beginning, people began to use “haywire” for all sorts of purposes its manufacturers never intended.

People used haywire to repair nearly everything, and they used it to hold together more than just hay. Herein lies the seed for “haywire’s” transformation from “hay-binding wire” to something that is crazy or erratic.

Haywire wasn’t meant for heavy-duty repairs, so “projects” that used it often fell apart without warning. Haywire was never meant to, say, bind logs, so huge piles of logs might break their jury-rigged bonds and “go haywire.” Nowadays, the word is rarely, if ever, used to describe material that binds hay.

heartburn

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
lust

NEW DEFINITION:
chest pain caused by acid reflux

Some guys still give ladies heartburn, figuratively speaking. Eight hundred years ago, however, men would have loved to give damsels “heartburn.” After all, it meant “lust.”

During the Middle Ages, the heart already was associated with love. Hundreds of years before Christ, Aristotle suggested that the heart was the center of emotions. Thus, something that made your heart “burn” filled you with lust. But your heart doesn’t just burn for amatory reasons.

By the fourteenth century, “heartburn” suggested another emotion, namely, anger or hatred.

However, by the fifteenth century, “heartburn” began being used to describe that particular burning sensation that can follow the consumption of a spicy meal. Since the word “heartburn” already existed, it was a simple move to use it to describe a physical sensation that literally made you feel like your heart was on fire. Writers may still talk about how someone’s actions caused another’s heart to “burn with rage” and that sort of thing, but they aren’t likely to use the word “heartburn” to describe this feeling.

heckle

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
to comb with a heckle

NEW DEFINITION:
to tease or make fun of, especially a public figure or performer

A “heckle” was a type of brush used to clean certain crops, such as hemp or flax. Once the crop had been “heckled”—i.e., had a heckle used on it—it could be taken to market and sold or could be made into other products.

By the late 1700s, people began to use the verb “heckle” metaphorically. When one “heckled”—in the old-fashioned sense—he or she ruffled the flax or hemp in order to remove impurities. Thus, when people “ruffled” politicians or public speakers by asking harsh or insistent questions, people began to say these public figures were being “heckled.”

By the late nineteenth century, most “hecklers” didn’t ask tough, pointed questions. They attempted to make fools of public figures by teasing them and trying to throw them off message through rude attempts at humor.