D-Lot Daily Spot

The English language consists of many words that were adopted and adapted from other languages; many of which are accompanied with bits of folklore that provide fun and interesting backstories. By learning the etymology of a language, you can gain further insight into the history of a culture and its correspondence with other cultures through time. The following common words possess surprising origins given some of their mostly mundane usages.

1. Addict: Roman soldiers were given slaves known as addicts as rewards for good battle performances. The English version of the word comes from the Latin addictus, meaning “to deliver,” or “to sacrifice.” Hence the phrase “slave to an addiction,” which is actually kind of redundant.
2. Assassin: The Arabic term hashishiyyin, or “hashish-users,” eventually led to the birth of the word assassin. These “hashish users” belonged to a Crusades-era Ismaili Muslim sect that murdered opposing leaders while under the influence of hashish in the name of religion.
3. Avocado: When the Aztecs got a hold of what we now refer to as an avocado, they opted to give it a name that more prudish cultures would frown upon, calling the fruit ahucatl, or testicle, due to their resemblance. The word’s evolution can be attributed to the Spaniards’ distortion of the pronunciation.
4. Bikini: Bikini lovers probably don’t know the revealing two-piece swimsuit was named after a nuclear weapons test. It took place at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1946 after the conclusion of World War II. A few days later, fashion designer Jacques Heim introduced the bikini in an effort to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the word.
5. Chocolate: Chocolate is a Spanish mispronunciation of a Nahuatl word. When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, they discovered the Aztecan drink that combined coco and water named xocolatl, meaning “bitter water.” The Spanish modified it to chocolato, which later became chocolate in Europe once it adopted the drink.
6. Dork: A dork usually isn’t considered a bad person, yet the word is a variant of dick, which people use these days to describe generally undesirable people. So know that when you’re calling someone a dork, you are in fact calling them a penis.
7. Enthusiasm: Many people forget that the true definition of enthusiasm has to do with extreme religious devotion. It comes from the Greek entheos, or “divinely inspired and possessed by a god.” The Puritans modified the meaning to indicate “excessive religious emotion” during the 17th century.
8. Fizzle: Fizle with one “Z” originally meant “to break wind without noise” during the 16th century, and it was possibly taken from fisten, which is to “break wind.” In the 19th century, an extra “Z” was added and the meaning became less putrid “to hiss or sputter.”
9. Galaxy: The galaktikos kyklos was the original name bestowed upon the galaxy by Greek astronomer Ptolemy. He observed that it looks like a “milky circle,” which is the literal Greek translation of the name. Gala means “milk”, and kyklos is the forerunner of the English word “cycle.”
10. Geek: In the 1980s, geek described socially awkward yet intelligent people, mostly teens, who typically exhibited an unhealthy interest in new technology. However, the word from which it’s modified, geck, means the opposite “a fool, dupe, simpleton.”
11. Hazard: Hazard is said to have been derived from az-zahr, which is Arabic for “the die,” though that claim has been disputed due to the absence of zahr in classical Arabic dictionaries. Western Europe adopted the word hazard, meaning “game of chance played with dice.” Games with dice were popular during the Crusades, eventually becoming associated with gambling and risk.
12. Jeans: Were you under the impression that blue jeans are 100 percent all-American? Think again. The word comes from the French phrase jean fustian, which is a type of twilled cotton cloth from Genoa, Italy. Jeans in the plural form was first commonly used in the middle of the 19th century.
13. Ketchup: There are multiple theories regarding the origin of ketchup. A European-Arabic theory has it as a modification of the French escaveche, which means “food in sauce.” A Malay theory asserts that it comes from one of these words from southern China: koe-chiap or ke-chiap, which mean brine of pickled fish.
14. Mall: The evolution of mall began in 17th century England with the game pall-mall. Kids would whack a ball with a mallet pall and mall were taken from the French and Italian words for “ball” and “mallet” with the intention of sending it through an iron ring that sat at the end of an alley. One of those alleys became known as The Mall. The term was later applied to public promenades, and now it refers to shopping malls.
15. Mortgage: Paying your mortgage can have a deathly effect on your bank account, so go figure that mort was taken from mori, meaning “to die” in Latin. That combined with gage, which is Latin for “pledge,” mortgage literally means “dead pledge.” The word surfaced in Old French during the 13th century, indicating that a pledge for property was dead to the borrower if the loan was repaid, or the property was dead to the borrower if the loan weren’t repaid.
16. Panic: Pan, the half-man and half-goat Greek God of woods and fields, was infamous for causing unbridled yet mindless fear in crowded places, inspiring the coining of panikon deima, or “panic fear.” Later, the term was adopted by the French as panique
17. Pedigree: Pedigree comes from pe de gru, or “crane’s foot” in French a crane’s foot resembles the shape of the genealogical tree. It has also been hypothesized that pedigree comes from par degres, or by “degrees” in French.
18. Phony: Code-speak was often utilized by British swindlers during the very beginning of the 20th century. Their term fawney, which referred to a gilt brass ring, eventually became phony. Of course, swindlers aren’t known for being the most trustworthy of people.
19. Tragedy: Tragedy is a disastrous event, referencing the dramatic compositions with unhappy endings composed in classical Greece. The word comes from the Greek tragoidia, meaning “goat song.” One theory explains the connection comes from satyric drama in which actors dress in goatskins.
20. Weird : The original English meaning of weird was “fate” or “destiny.” During the Middle English period, it was used in reference to the three fates of Greek and Roman myth. Later, Shakespeare included the three weird sisters in “Macbeth,” leading to its modern usage.

-http://www.bestcollegesonline.net/blog/2010/the-surprising-origins-of-20-common-words/