Imprecise amounts
This week I discovered something about words that refer to
immeasurable amounts. Most are of questionable origin.
The noun heap came to Old English from the
West Germanic word haupaz, meaning a great
multitude or pile. Its earlier source is not clear. One school of
etymologists argues that heap may have come from a Latin word
meaning lie down, while another
argues it may be related to another Old English word meaning high.
The noun lump came to English in the 1300s as
a surname (a shame Mr. Dickens never made use of it). Though etymologists
quibble over lump’s origins, no definitive source has been found.
The noun jumble, meaning a confused mixture, showed up in the 1660s. Its source was the verb
jumble,
which appeared forty years earlier, meaning to
move confusedly. Though its origin is uncertain, it seems jumble
may have been modeled on the sounds of the words stumble & tumble.
The noun wad originally meant a fibrous mass. Wad appeared in the
1400s. Though nobody’s sure about wad’s origin, it may have come from
Medieval Latin (wadda), Dutch (watten), French (ouate),
Italian, (ovate) or Medieval English (wadmal).
In the early 1300s bunch came to English, meaning a protuberance on the body. Though some
etymologists posit that bunch may have been born through
combining the word bump with the sound of being hit, nobody’s really sure about
the source of bunch (and being hit sounds like –ch? Ouch, I guess?)
Meaning a thick block,
chunk
came to English in the 1690s. Again, we’re not sure of its source, though it
may be a nasalized version of the cut of
meat called a chuck.
And finally we reach the noun slew. It showed up in
1839 meaning large number. Unlike its
brethren, slew has an identified source. It came through Irish (sluagh)
from a Celtic & Balto-Slavic word spelled sloug, meaning help or service.
I’m hoping you have some reaction to this heap,
bunch, wad, jumble, chunk, lump, or slew of words. If so, please enter
your thoughts in the comments section.
I guess when people lie down when they're high they look sort of like a heap? Haha. Interesting that so many of these words are mysterious in their origins.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Anne. It's just strange that so many of them are mysteries.
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