Ambrose Everett Burnside (23 May 1824–13 September 1881) was a Union Army general in the American Civil War. His early campaigns were successful but his forces were heavily defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of the Crater, earning him the reputation as one of the most incompetent generals of the war. His military reputation was one of being obstinate, unimaginative, and unsuited for high command.

Despite these failings, Burnside was popular in the army and in the political career he pursued afterwards. He was personable, cheerful and remembered everyone’s name. He was modest (apparently unusual for the officers of the Union Army) and recognized his own shortcomings—only reluctantly taking the promotions thrust upon him.

He was known for “wearing what was probably the most artistic and awe-inspiring set of whiskers in all that bewhiskered Army”. And despite his military failures and unexceptional political achievements he gave his name to the particular way he wore his facial hair. The strips of hair grown down the sides of his face in front of his ears became known as burnsides. This distinctive style is now known as sideburns with the compound switched around. If sideburns meet at the chin they then, by definition, become a beard.

Burnside was not the first man to wear sideburns. They are known throughout history. Alexander the Great had them. The Torah, the Jewish holy book, includes a law on how you should wear them it says, “You shall not round off the peyos of your head” (Leviticus 19:27). Peyos are defined as the hair in front of the ears that extends down to beneath the cheekbone, level with the nose. This unusual law was aimed at helping Jewish men avoid vanity and to focus on being of good character.

Sideburns replaced whiskers, the previous word for sideburns, in English. The Mexican form, as worn by revolutionaries, were known as balcarrotas.

Sideburns are not the only eponyms (objects given the names of people) that got their names from association with soldiers. There are wellingtons, rubber boots named after another military leader, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852); and the cardigan, a knitted sweater that buttons in front named after James Thomas Brudnell, 7th Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868), a British cavalry officer.

The word drongo originates as a word for a type of bird. The Spangled Drongo (Dicrurus bracteatus) is the only species of the drongo family found in Australia. The name originally comes from Malagasy, the indigenous language of Madagascar (where there are quite a few drongo species).

It is commonly suggested that the slang use of drongo came about as a reference to the bird’s apparently manic and almost comical behaviour as it swoops and dives in flight chasing insects. The strange behaviour was then metaphorically applied to people who were behaving idiotically. Another suggestion is that it refers to the idea that some species of the bird migrate to colder regions in winter, which is contrary to commonsense. However, the birds’ behaviour or migratory habits are not things that most Australians would be familiar with and are considered incorrect derivations.

The true derivation is from the Australian racehorse named Drongo of the early 1920s (which had taken its name from the bird). Now, while every Australian reveres Phar Lap—the thoroughbred that became a national hero a few years later (during the Great Depression)—Drongo is little remembered except that his name has passed into Australian folklore.

Drongo was not a particularly bad horse, he ran several seconds and a third in major races and even came fifth in the 1924 Sydney Cup. Although he came very close to winning major races, in 37 starts he never won a race (Phar Lap on the other hand won 37 races from 51 starts including the Melbourne Cup in 1930).

Soon after Drongo retired, racegoers started to use his name to describe other horses that were having unlucky careers or that had failed to live up to expectations. The word drongo soon took on a more negative meaning and was applied to people who were hopeless cases, no-hopers or fools.

In the Royal Australian Air Force during the 1940s new recruits were known as drongos, which, in a nice little bit of word-use, recombined the bird meaning with the idiot meaning.

So if you get called a drongo this Australia Day remember poor old Drongo, who was neither a bird nor a flyer.

These were the pioneering days of wireless communication. Wireless telegraphy had only just started to be used on ships through the work of Guglielmo Marconi (who was waiting in New York to join the Titanic on the return journey). Telegraphers used morse code to send messages by tapping out letters using a series of dots (short signals) and dashes (long signals).

CQD

When Phillips first sent the Titanic’s distress signal he tapped out: CQD CQD CQD CQD CQD CQD. British wireless operators used CQ as a general broadcast to all stations, and since 1904, CQD as a distress signal. The letters meant calling all stations (CQ) we are in distress (D) and did not represent a message such as Come quick danger.

SOS

After little response to the CQD message, Harold Bride, the Second Radio Officer suggested they also use SOS SOS SOS. SOS had been adopted in 1908 as the international distress signal (after much debate) because the three dots, three dashes and three dots were unmistakable and could not be misinterpreted. There is a popular but incorrect belief that SOS means Save Our Ship, Save Our Souls, or Send Out Succour.

The distress signals of the Titanic were recognised but the ships that responded were not close enough to get there before she sank.

Mayday

More than a decade later, with the development of voice transmission, a new international distress message was required. The Mayday callsign originated in 1923 when Frederick Mockford, a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London, was asked to think of a distress call easily understood by pilots and ground operators. Because most of the airport traffic at that time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the word Mayday from the French m’aider, a shortening of venez m’aider meaning come help me.

Pan-pan

The distress signal pan-pan is used for an urgent situation of a lower order than a Mayday (or SOS) such as a mechanical breakdown or a medical problem. It comes from the French, panne, meaning a breakdown. Similarly to other distress signals there are constructed meanings for the word: Possible Assistance Needed or Pay Attention Now.

These distress signals, CQD, SOS, Mayday and pan-pan, have all been derived from words or codes. The constructions of phrases around them are examples of “backronyms”, reverse or backward acronyms, phrases constructed around words rather than acronyms that are words constructed from phrases.

This year we will remember the lost souls of those passengers who, despite the signals of their radio operators, were not rescued from the waters of freezing Atlantic a century ago.

Christmas is the mid-winter celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Christmas means literally Christ’s mass. It is derived from the Middle English Cristemasse, from Old English Crīstesmæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038.

Sometimes Christmas is abbreviated to Xmas, the X representing Christ. Although this irritates some people, it is a very old tradition, with an early form, Xres mæsse, appearing in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of about 1100.

Christ is the main title given to Jesus, it comes from the Greek, khristos, for the anointed. This term replaced the Old English name, hæland, for “healer” as the preferred descriptive title for Jesus. Jesus has about 200 different titles or names in the New Testament.

Jesus the Saviour

The Hebrew name for Jesus is Yeshua, a name found 27 times in the Hebrew Bible. Yeshua is short for Yehoshua (Joshua), which means Yahweh (God) is salvation. It is derived from the Hebrew verb yasha which means saves or delivers and Yeho of the divine name of God, Yahweh. (Matthew 1:21—She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.)

Messiah

Messiah comes from the Aramaic meshiha and Hebrew mashiah meaning anointed (of the Lord), from mashah meaning anoint. Christ is the Greek translation of the Aramaic, messiah.

In the Old Testament prophesies, the Messiah was the term used for the awaited leader who was to deliver the Jewish nation from the oppression of the Romans. The modern English form represents this transferred sense of the liberator or saviour of a captive people.

Emmanuel

Emmanuel meaning meaning God is with us (Matthew 28:20—I am with you always, even unto the end of the world). It consists of two Hebrew words: El, meaning God, and Immanu, meaning with us. This is an example of theophany, using God’s name (El) as part of given name, which is common throughout the Old Testament (Daniel—God is my judge; Gabriel—strong man of God; Israel—struggles with God; Michael—who is like God; Nathaniel—gift of God; and Samuel—name of God).

Lord

Lord, is the English translation of the Greek word Kyrios (κύριος) for God, lord or master which appears over 700 times in the New Testament. Kyrios was the common translation of the Aramaic, Mari, which was a respectful form of address, meaning a superior teacher, a ranking similar to Rabbi.

Redeemer

The Redeemer (Job 19:25 But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth) comes from Latin redimere to redeem, buy back and, in this sense means that Christ will redeem the souls of mankind by his sacrifice upon the cross.

Supercilious is a word that shows that word-makers have always had a sense of humour. Supercilious came into English in the early sixteenth century from the Latin word, supercilium, meaning haughty demeanour and pride. However its literal meaning was eyebrow from super, meaning above and cilium meaning eyelid. It comes from a description of the raised eyebrow that is an expression of arrogant contempt or haughty superiority.

When I think of supercilious my mind always conjures up a character from Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, accustomed as they were to mingling with the haughty aristocracy of Regency England. A little search through their works yields quite a few passages—which follow, with a little abbreviating—that give a strong sense of superciliousness.

I have accompanied the passages with some of our favourite supercilious Australians.

Alan Jones never less than totally supercilious	Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, … had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa … Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte Besides the old lady, there was another relative of the family, whose visits were a great annoyance to me – this was ‘Uncle Robson,’ … He seldom deigned to notice me; and, when he did, it was with a certain supercilious insolence of tone and manner that convinced me he was no gentleman: though it was intended to have a contrary effect.
Paul Keating known to be this supercilious	Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte What sort of a person is Miss Wilson?’ she asked. ‘She is elegant and accomplished above the generality of her birth and station; and some say she is ladylike and agreeable.’ ‘I thought her somewhat frigid, and rather supercilious in her manner today.’ The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte As for Richard Wilson’s sister … shortly after the death of her mother she … took lodgings in – the county town, where she … lives … in a kind of close-fisted, cold, uncomfortable gentility, doing no good to others, and but little to herself; … loving no one and beloved by none – a cold-hearted, supercilious, keenly, insidiously censorious old maid.
Kevin Rudd even super-supercilious	Shirley by Charlotte Bronte Young ladies,’ continued Joe, assuming a lordly air, ‘ye’d better go into th’ house.’ ‘I wonder what for?’ inquired Shirley, to whom the overlooker’s somewhat pragmatical manners were familiar, and who was often at war with him; for Joe, holding supercilious theories about women in general, resented greatly, in his secret soul, the fact of his master and his master’s mill being, in a manner, under petticoat government, and had felt as wormwood and gall certain business- visits of the heiress to the Hollow’s counting-house. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte Mr. Moore, left alone, rose from his desk. ‘I can be very cool and very supercilious with Henry,’ he said. ‘I can seem to make light of his apprehensions, and look down ‘du haut de ma grandeur’ on his youthful ardour.
Fred Nile not only supercilious but sanctimonious	Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Within a short walk of Longbourn lived a family with whom the Bennets were particularly intimate. Sir William Lucas had been formerly in trade in Meryton, where he had made a tolerable fortune, and risen to the honour of knighthood by an address to the king during his mayoralty. … For, though elated by his rank, it did not render him supercilious; on the contrary, he was all attention to everybody.

We love the word bogan. We use it to describe those uncouth people that live next door. No longer are we restricted by geography to call the uneducated, unrefined people, westies (if you live in Sydney, for instance)—our vulgar neighbours can now come from the east, the north or the south.

The word bogan has given us—the usually egalitarian Australians—a word to help us gain social superiority over other Australians without being accused of snobbery. It has also given marketers the cashed-up-bogan market segment to which they can sell beer, hair loss cures, new utes, holidays to Bali and silly sporting memorabilia.

Bogans have been described as “hyper-Australian” a concept that suggests they are the exaggerated versions of us all. There are two sub-species of bogan: the plain bogan, and the cashed-up-bogan.

Word origins

The origin of bogan is not known but its mainstream use really began with Kylie Mole in the late 1980s TV series the Comedy Club. It was used before that in parts of Australia.

Some suggest that bogan is related to the Irish/Dubliner phrase ‘bogger’ equivalent to the westie for someone from the bog areas west of Dublin.

Bogan has displaced many regional Australian words for the vulgar underclass. These words usually refer to places where members of the lowest socio-economic, cultural group are thought to breed.

In the ACT the preferred word was ‘booner’ or ‘boonie’ being a shortening of someone from the ‘boondocks’, the far-distant, uncivilized regions of the outer suburbs. Queensland had the bevan and the bev-chick; Western Australia has bogs; Tasmania has the chigger (someone from the suburb of Chigwell); the Riverina has the gullie; Victoria has the Scozzer and Melbourne the mocca.

Plain bogans

Plain male bogans wear singlets, flannelette shirts, thongs or Ugg boots and ill-fitting track-suit pants or shorts.

They have skinhead haircuts, mullets or “frullets” (front-mullets). The mullet, the hairstyle that is short at the front and long at the back, has its own regional names and varieties, “boon curls”, or “bogan rolls” (short all over except for a curling fringe at the back). Bogans are very vain about their hair and certain celebrity bogans supplement their income appearing in commercials to help prevent hair loss (or more correctly mullet loss).

Favourite things are beer (VB, veebs, or XXXX because they are easy to spell), bourbon (Jack Daniels or Jim Beam because they have people names), rugby league or Aussie rules football (the simpler the rules the better) and particular types of motor vehicle, or “wheels”, the Holden Commodore, Holden Kingswood or the Ford Falcon. Utes are de rigour.

Plain female bogans shop at Target and Best and Less. They have tramp stamps, use cheap cosmetics and fragrances, wear short, tight skirts that show too much of their physique, particularly their muffin tops. They have children (sprogs) with unique, unconventional names with eccentric spellings, such as, Anakin, Deezel, Harlee, Brock, or Sharaz.

Cashed-up-bogans

The cashed up bogan or CUB, first appeared as a marketing term for a consumer segment. It is characterized as blue-collar nouveaux riche with well paid jobs and high disposable incomes that they spend on flash items to fulfil their aspirations of higher social status. Many work hard making their money in Western Australia mines and they want to spend their income on new utes, boats and motorbikes, luxury clothing, booze, food, holidays to Bali, investment properties, sports memorabilia and flat screen televisions.

Some CUBs are giving up their utes and muscle cars for prestige cars. BMW, Audi and Lexus are advertising in the tabloid press to appeal to this market. However many CUBs don’t want to attract the attention of the tax office by driving too flash a car.

CUBs are less popular than plain bogans because they go against the idea that some people deserve to be poor and instead are buying things that the rest of us can’t afford.

Living in Boganville

Australian Prime Ministers always try to connect with the battlers and workers. Julia Gillard succeeded better than them all when she was voted Biggest Bogan of the Year last year (pushing Russell Crowe into second). A lot of people find her exaggerated, or hyper-Australian accent irritating and some think it is deliberately put on to appeal to the bogan masses.

It is understood in Canberra that Bogan-ville is Kevin Rudd’s name for The Lodge since Julia Gillard, and her boyfriend, Tim Mathieson, moved in, after his replacement as Prime Minister.

Rudd’s insult is typical of our use of bogan. The more bogan-ness we see in someone else the better we feel about ourselves. When I drive my children to school in the 4WD unshaven and wearing my tracksuit pants and ugg boots, listening to the Best of Cold Chisel, I think of myself as a relaxed and casual suburbanite a long way from being a bogan. But really, most of us live only a little to the east of Boganville.

… It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of … now do you understand serendipity?

The Three Princes of Serendip was published in Venice in 1557 as a translation of the Italian Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo which was itself a translation of part of a Persian poem, the Hasht Bihisht (The Eight Paradises) of 1302, which is the first mention of the three princes.

The story of the three princes involves a piece of deduction about a missing, lame, blind, toothless, camel carrying a pregnant woman, honey and butter. By identifying the particular camel the princes are rewarded by a king and set off on adventures in which they make accidental discoveries due to their undoubted cleverness.

The three princes were from Serendip, the old name for Ceylon or Sri Lanka. Serendipity, meaning the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident, comes directly from this tale. Serendipity has been incorporated into other languages: French sérendipicité or sérendipité, and Italian serendipità.

Some argue that the definition should also include the preconditions of intelligence and wisdom for serendipity to truly occur—as in the story of the three princes—or the discovery is merely luck. John Barth wrote in The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991):

You don’t reach Serendip by plotting a course for it.
You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings serendipitously.

]]> http://www.madrigal.com.au/2011/10/05/how-do-you-get-to-serendipity/feed/ 0 http://www.madrigal.com.au/2011/09/22/hoist-with-your-own-petard/ http://www.madrigal.com.au/2011/09/22/hoist-with-your-own-petard/#comments Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:39:29 +0000 admin http://www.madrigal.com.au/?p=990 Petard is a word that survives in the modern world entirely in the expression hoist with his own petard, which means someone fails because of their own plans or because of their own deviousness. It is usually understood that its literal meaning is to be blown up with your own bomb. But there is a far more comical interpretation.

The expression is one of Shakespeare’s most descriptive—he used it in Hamlet III.iv.207 in 1605.

For tis the sport to haue the enginer Hoist with his owne petard.

The word, petard, in English, comes from the late 16th century and was used for a small cannon-like bomb used to blow in doors and breach walls. The English borrowed the word directly from the French who had coined the word  pétard for this type of bomb. The bomb was made by filling a thick metal cannister with gunpowder, setting it against the wall or door to be breached  and then exploding it by lighting a wick. Petards were quite unreliable and often exploded prematurely “hoisting” the engineer setting it alight high into the air.

Petard has a rather humorous ancestry having been derived from the Middle French word péter, which meant to break wind, from Old French pet for a fart, which originally came from Latin, pedere to break wind. The bomb got its name because its sound was fart-like.

When I first came across the expression—learning Shakespeare in my English lessons—I was very much impressed with the metaphor. However, I still cannot forgive that English teacher for not explaining that Shakespeare, who loved his puns and his double entendres, was probably also suggesting that the engineer was blown up by his own fart. This would have given the schoolboy me a much greater love and appreciation of Shakespeare than I had at the time.

The world game

Harpustum

Football is a sport as old as history. There are forms of football in many cultures around the world that involve carrying the ball. The Māori in New Zealand played a ball game called Ki-o-rahi on a circular field throwing and kicking a ball called a ki. The Australian Aboriginals had a kicking and catching game, Marn grook, which in some places used a ball made from possum skins.

In Manipur, India, they play Yubi lakpi (meaning literally coconut snatching), a football game using a coconut, very similar to rugby.

In Europe the Romans played a ball game called Harpustum (from the Greek, harpazein, meaning to snatch) described as involving many wrestling holds. They took it all over their empire. The Georgians have Lelo burti (meaning literally field ball), a full contact ball game.

A game played on foot

A large misconception about football is that the word originated as a ball game that involved exclusively kicking the ball with your foot. Football got its name because it was a game played on foot as opposed to on horseback (there was a game called horseball that originated in 1700). This had an important class distinction in that the aristocratic sports were equestrian and the peasants played on foot. It may also have been a name used to differentiate forms of football from handball in medieval times.

Shrovetide footballs

Early English football games were played between neighbouring villages and involved an unlimited number of players on opposing teams (men, women and children), who would compete to carry a ball made from anything including inflated pig bladders to the objective (hence the goal).

These games are referred to as folk football, mob football or Shrovetide football (Shrovetide being the week before Lent). In the many royal proclamations that came out to ban them they were referred to as Fute Ball despite some of these games strictly forbidding kicking the ball.

There were many forms: the Irish had Caid (meaning scrotum of the bull, lets hope this was not a literal name); the Welsh had Knapan (Cnapan, Knappan); the Cornish had hurling to goal; the West Country of England (Devon, Gloucestershire, etc) had hurling over country; the East Anglians had Camp Ball; and the Scots the Ba Game.

The Shrovetide football game at Ashbourne in Derbyshire between the people from each side of Henmore Brook (the Up’Ards and the Down’Ards) is the origin of the term “local derby” for an intense sporting match between neighbouring teams.

The French had a similar version called la Soule or la Chole also played mainly on Shrovetide. Florence, in Italy, had a version they played in a piazza that they called giuoco del calcio fiorentino (the Florentine kick game) or simply calcio (kick). All these games involved throwing and kicking as well as a lot of body contact.

Killing the ball

The Vikings played a game called Knattleikr. In Iceland it was played on frozen lakes. According to Icelandic sagas the ball was hard enough that when thrown in anger at another player it could cause bloodshed.

Some of the English games were referred to as kicking the Dane’s head. While not suggesting a bloody ritual it might link the game to the Vikings and be a bit of folk revenge. In some forms of folk football once the ball got to the goal it was symbolically killed and the game was over—hence the modern sporting expressions dead ball and killing the ball.

Running rugby

An early game of rugby

Another misconception about the origins of football comes from the myth of William Webb Ellis. During a football game at Rugby School, he picked up the ball and ran with it to produce the game of rugby. But the revolution was not so much picking up the ball but running with it. They were not playing soccer because it had not been “invented” at that time in the 1820s. They were playing a school form of football that involved catching and throwing.

By the way, the game of rugby gets its name from Rugby, a large town in Warwickshire, in the west of England. The town got its name from the Anglo-Saxon Hrōca burh, or later Norman French, Rocheberie, meaning Rook Fort, from the bird’s name. Later the burh, for fort, was replaced, perhaps under the influence of Danish settlers, with -by, meaning village, to become Rugby.

Rugby Football rules

Organised games developed in English private boys schools during the 19th century when cheap rail travel meant inter-school matches became feasible. The schools all played football games with diverse and always changing rules but needed to agree on sets of rules when they played each other. Rugby School created the first set of such football rules in 1845.

Soccer

It took another 18 years before Association Football codified their rules, in 1863. This form of the game was called soccer, an abbreviation of Association Football (ie …ssoca…), and was a parallel formation to rugger, a common name of rugby at the time. Association Football did not allow all the players to pick up the ball, the lucky exception being the goalkeeper.

Aussie Rules

In Melbourne, in the 1860s, the Australians developed their own set of rules, Aussie Rules which was designed as a game to keep cricketers fit during the winter and hence is played on the oval field equivalent to a cricket oval.

All football rules

The first official Rugby Football Union rules were adopted in 1871 for the adult game. American Football developed its distinct rules in 1880; Gaelic Football published their rules in 1887; Rugby League broke away from Rugby Union in 1895 and developed a few rule changes. Before the distinction between amateurs and professionals it was common for football teams from different places to play under different rules as agreed with their opposition.

Using the word football

In Australia where there is great competition between football codes, we talk about football when we know who we are talking to: whether it be rugby league, rugby union or Aussie rules supporters. Soccer is still soccer.

Association Football is claiming to call itself football as a distinction from the other forms of football that use their hands. Don’t be fooled as history tells another story.

First I Googled “words ending with oo”. There were too many invented words in the list. To narrow the list down I used an old Little Oxford Dictionary to select mainstream words and to filter out obscure and newly adopted words. I ended up with 31 words ending with oo: Ballyhoo, Bamboo, Boo, Buckaroo, Cockatoo, Coo, Cuckoo, Didgeridoo, Goo, Halloo, Hoodoo, Hullabaloo, Igloo, Jackaroo, Kangaroo, Loo, Moo, Peekaboo, Shampoo, Shoo, Taboo, Tattoo, Tattoo, Too, Vindaloo, Voodoo, Wallaroo, Waterloo, Woo, Yahoo, and Zoo. There is probably a bit of cultural bias in this so forgive me for that.

Some -oo words

I then did a short analysis of their origins and meanings. Words ending in -oo seem to come from all over the world. There are representatives from small language such as Innuit (igloo), Malay (bamboo), Pacific Islands (tattoo and taboo) and Australian Aboriginal (kangaroo) as well as the large languages as Hindi (shampoo), Greek (zoo), French (loo) as well as many words from US and UK English.

There is a certain quirkiness about -oo words with their origins coming from slang words from English circuses, the Western Front, the Wild West and Outback Australia; from the imitation of natural sounds such as the call of the cuckoo and the coo of doves; from literature (yahoo from the writings of Jonathan Swift); and to describe the flora and fauna of exotic places such as Australia and Malaya.

Ballyhoo

Publicity or hype (1908) from English circus slang for a short sample of a sideshow (1901). It is of unknown origin—there is a village of Ballyhooly in County Cork, Ireland; in nautical lingo, ballahou or ballahoo (1867, perhaps 1836) meant an ungainly vessel, from Spanish balahu for schooner.

Bamboo

The tall strong plant from the grass family (1590s). It came via Dutch bamboe and Portugeuse, bambu and earlier mambu (16c.), from the Malay word samambu.

Boo

To startle, boh, a word used to produce a loud and startling sound. It may be related to Greek, boaein, to cry aloud, roar or shout (early 15c).

Buckaroo

In the western U.S. a cowboy, especially a broncobuster or horsebreaker (1820–30). Evolved via bakhara, baccaro, bucharo from the Spanish vaquero, vac for cow and ero for person.

Cockatoo

Species of large and noisy parrots from Dutch kaketoe, originally from Malay, kakatua, possibly echoic, or from kakak meaning elder brother or sister and tua, old (1610s).

Coo

The sound of doves (1660s) from England.

Cuckoo

The bird that heralds the spring, from Old French, cocu, echoic of the male bird’s mating cry. Greek kokkyx (mid-13c). Used to mean stupid person in 1580s.

Didgeridoo

Musical instrument of Australian Aborigines made from a long wooden tube that when blown into creates a low drone (1924).

Goo

First used in US English in 1903 of obscure origin, but probably related to burgoo (1787) for a thick porridge served to English sailors and then in the US a thick meat and vegetable stew.

Halloo

Version of hallo, holla, or hollo a shout to attract attention, which seems to go back to at least c.1400 English. Perhaps from holla to stop, cease.

Hoodoo

One who practices voodoo (1870) in US English. It is most likely an alteration of voodoo. First used to mean something that causes or brings bad luck in 1880.

Hullabaloo

From hollo-ballo meaning an uproar, chiefly used in northern England and Scottish, perhaps a rhyming reduplication of hollo (see halloo) (1762).

Igloo

Canadian English, from an Innuit word for house or dwelling (1824).

Jackaroo

An abbreviation of Jack( the kang)aroo used to describe inexperienced colonists in Australia (1880). Also Jillaroo.

Kangaroo

The large Australian macropod. The word probably is from the Guugu Yimidhirr (Endeavour River-area Aborigine language) word, gangurru, for large black kangaroo (1770).

Loo

Lavatory perhaps from 1922 from French, lieux d’aisances, meaning lavatory but the literal translation is place of ease. Thought to be adopted by British servicemen in France during World War I.

Moo

To make the characteristic sound of a cow (1540s) of imitative origin, English.

Peekaboo

Peek-a-boo, as a children’s game from 1590s in England. Used to mean see-through, dates from 1895.

Shampoo

Meaning wash the hair first recorded in 1860. It originated in 1762, meaning to massage in Anglo-Indian from Hindi champo, meaning to press, or knead the muscles.

Shoo

A call used for driving away people or animals (1620s) from the exclamation (late 15c.). A shoo-in as an easy winner was originally a horse that wins a race by pre-arrangement (1928). English.

Taboo

Something that is consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean or cursed. First used in 1777 by Captain James Cook in his book A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes said to be Tongan, ta-bu meaning sacred, from ta, mark, and bu, especially but used in many Pacific languages, eg, Hawaiian kapu, Tahitian tapu and Maori tapu with similar meanings.

Tattoo

Originally a signal calling soldiers or sailors to quarters at night from Dutch taptoe, from tap faucet of a cask and toe shut. So called because police used to visit taverns in the evening to shut off the taps of casks (1680s). Not related to skin tattoo (see below).

Tattoo

To mark the skin with pigment (1769) first attested in writing by Captain James Cook from a Polynesian noun, Tahitian and Samoan tatau, and Marquesan tatu.

Too

Preposition meaning furthermore. The spelling with -oo is first recorded 1590 in English.

Vindaloo

A hot sauce used in Indian food. Thought to come from Portuguese vin d’alho for wine and garlic sauce in the early 20c.

Voodoo

Religious witchcraft of Haiti and Southern U.S, from Louisiana French voudou, but originally from West Africa, perhaps Dahomey (1850).

Wallaroo

Native Australian word for a species of black kangaroo.

Waterloo

After the battle that took place June 18, 1815, at the village near Brussels where Napolean was finally defeated. Used metaphorically to mean a final, crushing defeat first in a letter by Lord Byron in 1816. Flemish loo means sacred wood.

Woo

To seek the favor, affection, or love of someone, especially with a view to marriage. It is an old English word, wogian, of uncertain origin perhaps related to woh, wog, for bent or inclined, as with affection.

Yahoo

A brute in human form (1726) from the race of brutish human creatures in the English writer’s Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The Internet search engine named in 1994.

Zoo

Short for Zoological Gardens of the London Zoological Society, established 1828 in Regent’s Park (1847) from Greek zoion for an animal, but literally a living being.

International origins of -oo words

The family of words ending in -oo must be the most multicultural group of words in the English language—they come from all over the world and from many different languages.

]]> http://www.madrigal.com.au/2011/08/14/worldly-words-ending-in-oo/feed/ 0