Tidy
Fellow word nerds will
understand the following introduction. I apologize to those who can’t possibly
imagine using one’s time & effort in such a manner.
For as long as I can
remember, I’ve “known” that the wonderful word fastidious had to be
closely related to the word tidy.
Wrong.
To my complete
astonishment, these two words aren’t even kissing cousins.
Fastidious came into English in the 1500s from the Latin word, fastidiosus,
which meant disdainful, squeamish &
exacting. This appears to have come from the Latin term, fastu-taidiom,
which is constructed of fastus, contempt or arrogance, and taedium, aversion or disgust. By
the 1600s, the squeamish part of the
word’s meaning took over & the word shifted to mean squeamish, overly nice, & difficult to please when it comes to
matters of taste. From there, it morphed to its modern meaning, concerned about matters of cleanliness,
accuracy & detail. Who knew?
Tidy, on the other hand, is constructed of tide
+ y. It entered English in the 1300s, meaning timely, opportune, in-season, or excellent (&
isn’t the tide exactly those things?).
By the 1700s tidy’s meaning had become more focused, meaning neat & in order. By the early 1800s,
tidy
earned a sibling verb, to titivate, which we modern speakers
supplant with terms like tidy up.
Other tidy-like words include natty,
which entered English in 1785, meaning neat,
smart & tidy, from the Middle English word, net, meaning pure, fine or elegant. Then there’s neatnik,
which showed up around 1959, based on the word neat, which came to
English in the 1540s, meaning clean or
free from dirt, & came through French from the Latin word, nitidus,
meaning well-favored, elegant, trim,
& gleaming.
Are you a neatnik,
a tidy
person, or possibly fastidious (in its modern sense, of course)? Or are you a
complete non-neatnik? And how many of you word nerds out there also mistakenly
assumed a relationship between tidy & fastidious? Come on,
I’ve ‘fessed up. You can, too.