The surprising stories of how these 10 words came to be
<p>Ever hear or read a word and think, “where on earth did that come from?” Well, for the etymologists of the world, that’s exactly what they try to figure out. In a post on online forum <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4tqrix/etymologists_of_reddit_what_is_your_favorite/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Reddit</span></strong></a>, user russellbeard asked, “Etymologists of Reddit, what is your favourite story of how a word came to be?” The community delivered, and some of what we learnt was very interesting indeed. Here are 10 of our favourites.</p>
<ol>
<li>The Latin prefix “pen-” comes from the word “paene”, meaning “almost”. Therefore, a “peninsula” is almost an island and something that is “penultimate” is almost last.</li>
<li>“Muscle” is derived from the Latin word “musculus”, which means “little mouse”. Physicians used the term after noticing the muscles in the biceps and calves look like little mice running under the skin.</li>
<li>“Daisy” comes from the Old English term “day’s eye”, since the flower is open during the day and closes at night.</li>
<li>The words “traitor” and “tradition” have the same root as they both denote something being handed over.</li>
<li>“Eavesdropping” is named after people who used to spy on their enemies from rooves with wide eaves to listen to their conversations.</li>
<li>“An apron” actually used be “a napron”.</li>
<li>People often break “helicopter” into “heli-” and “-copter” to make new words like “helipad” and “newscopter”, but it really should be broken into “helico-”, which means “spiral” or “helix” and “-pter” which means “wing”. In fact, that’s why pterodactyl starts with a p.</li>
<li>“Sinister” is actually the Latin word meaning “left”. It was given the connotation of “evil” because left-handed people were historically blamed for being demonic and villainous.</li>
<li>The word “dunce” comes from the medieval philosopher Johannes Duns Scotus. His enemies disagreed so strongly with his theories that they turned his name into an insult 200 years after he had died. He was, in fact, an incredibly smart man and well known for his debating abilities.</li>
<li>“Uppercase” and “lowercase” are named as such because in the days of hand printing, capital letters and lowercase letters were literally kept in different cases.</li>
</ol>
<p><em>Images: Getty</em></p>
