It's only words...?

English is a very exciting and intriguing language, especially because it is constantly evolving by absorbing new words and phrases from varied sources. Many of the words and phrases are so ingrained in our day-to-day life that we do not even think twice before using them, but probe a bit and you will find that some of them have very interesting origins.

Take the word 'tawdry' for instance, which means 'flashy but cheap and of poor quality.' The word tawdry is a corruption of Saint Audrey, the patron saint of Ely, an isle in England. In the Middle Ages, a festival, 'St. Audrey's Fair', was held at Ely on her feast day. The flashy but poor quality of the goods sold, especially the neckerchiefs resulted in the word tawdry.

The story of Saint Audrey is equally interesting. A princess, she married and was widowed after three years. It is said that she was never in wedlock during her marriage as she had taken a life-long vow of virginity. For political reasons, her father got her re-married to a young prince. Her husband, who at the time of marriage was only fourteen years of age, began to make advances on her. After many a failed attempts, he eventually tried to convince the local bishop, Saint Wilfrid of York, to release Audrey from her vows. Saint Wilfrid not only refused but also helped Audrey escape. She fled south, her husband in hot pursuit and eventually reached her own estate in Ely but not without some divine intervention; her husband finally gave up. Audrey then founded the great abbey of Ely. She died of an enormous and very ugly throat tumor, which she considered punishment for her vanity in her youth, when she enjoyed wearing fancy necklaces.

Or take the word 'boycott', which means 'to refuse to have formal and even informal dealings with a person, organization, or country as a punishment or protest'. Boycott was originally a proper noun, the family name of Charles C. Boycott (1832-1897), who was an English land agent in Ireland.

What made the word 'boycott' famous or rather infamous was Charles Boycott's extreme unpopularity due to his harsh, almost military style treatment of his tenants. A former British Captain, Boycott was the estate agent of an absentee landlord, the Earl of Erne. In September 1880, protesting tenants demanded from Captain Boycott a substantial reduction in their rents. He not only refused but also ejected them from the land. The President of the Irish Land League, Charles Parnell, suggested that rather than use violent measures, everyone in the locality refuse to deal with him. Boycott soon found himself isolated - his workers stopped work in the fields, stables as well as the house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him and the local postman refused to deliver post. Workers from other parts of the country finally harvested crops on the farms and soldiers had to be brought in to protect them.

The soldiers themselves were treated very badly by Boycott, they had to survive on army rations during the harsh winter; eventually the army joined forces with the tenants. In the end Boycott gave way and one evening disappeared from the country, never to return.

Within weeks the word 'Boycott' was everywhere and was used by the Times of London in November 1880 as a term of organized isolation. Soon it was adopted all over Europe and in various languages including French, German, Dutch and Russian. By the time he died, the word Boycott had firmly been ingrained in the English language.

And did you know that you could get drunk on 'coffee', at least figuratively. Etymologically, coffee means 'wine'. The word originates from the Arabic 'qahwah', a poetic word for wine. Qahwah literally means 'to put one off', as in 'to put one off sleep'. Coffee cherries were used to make wine long before the coffee bean was used to make coffee. But the drink was then considered a medicinal beverage because of its energizing effects. It is said that around AD 1400, Sufis in Southern Arabia drank huge quantities of qahwah before their ecstatic exercises and before each draught they would shout, 'Ya qawi!' (Ya qawi means 'the most strong' and is one of the names of Allah. It is said that anyone who recites this name with the intention of not being harmed, will be safe from his enemies.) The word coffee most probably arrived in the west via the Turkish word 'Kahweh'.

However, it is also thought that the word might be based upon Kaffa, the name of an area in Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia) where the coffee tree supposedly originated.

So the next time you come across a word, known or unknown, spare a thought for it, it might have as colorful a history as any of us.