WordsWordsWords

As you’ve been shopping online for Christmas presents, I know you’ve always been happy to see that magic phrase: “free shipping.” You really have to watch for that; especially on less expensive items, shipping & handling costs can add a substantial percentage of the original cost to your order.

A family on our block has a commercial transport company–limousines, a party van, and a few other vehicles are sometimes seen parked by their home. As The Professor and I drove down the block last night, I mistook a white van for a service vehicle, probably from the gas company. But when we drove by, I realized my mistake. “Oh, it’s the just the livery,” I said. (A use of metonymy on my part.)

One of the meanings for “livery” given on dictionary.com, and the sense in which I was using it, is “a company that rents out automobiles, boats, etc.” But this got me to wondering. Is the word “delivery” related to “livery”? And what about “liver”? (That seems far less likely!)

It turns out the answer is yes, at least in the case of delivery and livery. And they are both related to freedom! Livery ultimately comes from the Old French livree which means to hand over, or to free. It’s from the Latin liberare–think liberate. I bet you know that feeling–we experience that every time we land and the livery that is the airline lets us out of the cramped plane!

Delivery is a similar form, coming from the Old French delivree. The use of the word to indicate childbirth is documented from the early 16th century. And I can’t help but notice that the imagery of a child emerging from the birth canal is not so different from a passenger leaving the tube-shaped fuselage and emerging into the light of the terminal.

Liver is not related. It comes either from something akin to “live,” or possibly from the Greek liparos, meaning “fat.” (Your doctor checks your lipid levels, for example.) But in any case. If someone delivered me liver, even for free, I still wouldn’t eat it. Especially for Christmas.

I read mostly novels with a smattering of magazines, but I’m fortunate to get vicarious pleasure from the constant string of non-fiction that passes through The Professor’s hands. She’s currently reading I’m a Stranger Here Myself, by Bill Bryson, an American who lived in England for over 20 years. The book is a very entertaining read, each chapter highlighting some small piece of the culture shock he experienced upon return to his native country.

On p. 156, he discusses the origin of “wassailing,” a custom that I suspect most Americans know of from the Christmas carol. I remember learning during one of the times that I sang this song in high school or college choir that the term referred both to a spiced wine, and to the act of going out and singing “wassail” to folks–i.e., caroling. But Mr. Bryson shed new light on this for me.

He learned from the 1923 T.G. Crippen book Christmas and Christmas Lore that “[i]n Anglo-Saxon times…it was customary for someone offering a drink to say ‘Wassail!’ and for the recipient to respond ‘Drinkhail!'” The word was originally a salutation, coming from the Old Norse ves heil, meaning “in good health.” (And by-the-by, “salutation” comes from a root meaning health as well.)

You can picture only a short jump to the expression becoming a toast. Think of Italian salute. In English, probably the most used toast is “cheers,” but the less common “to your health” also sounds appropriate.

“Hail” as a salutation is also related to “hale,” meaning healthy, and to “whole.” (The Oxford Dictionary of English tells me that the wh- sound was a 15th century dialectal variation.) While we equate “whole” more with “entire” now, we can still see the relationship in “wholesome,” which means healthy. “Holistic” is related, but is a 1926 intentional introduction by J.C. Smuts, who wrote the founding work of this philosophy, Holism and Evolution. Ironically and sadly, the most iconic use of this prolific root in recent times was seen in Germany in the ’30s and ’40s. How obscene is it to wish heil to one of the most abominable mass murderers ever seen?

Given short life spans and a lack of central heating in the pre-antibiotic world, one can see how wishing health on those you meet would become a common practice. I wish the same to you.

This morning early, I walked into the kitchen and said to my wife The Professor, “Did you ever notice that the hose you wear are about the same shape as the hose that water goes through? They come from the same Dutch word that meant both stocking and water hose.”

She just laughed at me. I was barely awake–hadn’t even had my tea yet, which is typically a major indicator of whether I’m coherent or not. Yet I had managed to start the day with this random and esoteric etymological tidbit.

After 12 years, The Prof is accustomed to my nearly constant musings about words: I wonder what the origin of this one is, I’ll ask. Did you know that one was an archaic plural that survived with a special meaning?, I mention offhandedly. Oddly, the Slovak word for such-and-such is almost the same as the Spanish, I share. And so forth. Honestly, it never stops.

In my mind, my comment about hose wasn’t random at all. I had been putting on my shoes, and remembered the word “leather” is the “leder” in “lederhosen.” Then I thought about the “hosen” part. “Does it just mean pants?”, I wondered. “And..hmm..I wonder how it’s related to our English word hose?” As usual, my smartphone (with dictionary app installed) was at hand, and lickety split, I had an etymology for hose–and there I discovered the Dutch word that I mentioned in the kitchen.

The Professor has been telling me for awhile that I should write a word about blogs. I mean, a blog about words. Off I go.