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People Who Made The English Language

(1) bloomers

“loose trousers, commonly buttoned below the knee,” 1851, named for U.S. feminist reformer Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894), who promoted them as part of an attempt to make women’s dress more practical. The original Bloomer costume was a short skirt, loose trousers buttoned round the ankle, and a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat.

(2) boycott

1880, noun and verb, “to combine in refusing to have dealings with, and preventing or discouraging others from doing so, as punishment for political or other differences.” From Irish Land League ostracism of Capt. Charles C. Boycott (1832-1897), land agent of Lough-Mask in County Mayo, who refused to lower rents for his tenant farmers.

(3) silhouette

“portrait in black showing the profile,” 1798, from French silhouette, in reference to Étienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), French minister of finance in 1759. The usual reason given is that it was an inexpensive way to make a likeness of someone, and thus the name was a derisive reference to Silhouette’s petty economies, unpopular among the nobility, to finance France during the Seven Years’ War. But other theories refer it to Silhouette’s brief tenure in office or a story that he decorated his chateau with such portraits.

(4) derrick

c. 1600, “a hangman,” also “a gallows,” from the surname of a hangman at London’s Tyburn gallows, c. 1606-1608, who is often referred to in contemporary plays.

As “a hoisting apparatus for lifting and moving heavy weights,” 1727. “It is similar to the crane, but differs from it in having the boom, which corresponds to the jib of the crane, pivoted at the lower end so that it may take different inclinations from the perpendicular” [Century Dictionary]. As the word for a structure over an oil well to support the drilling apparatus, 1861, American English.

(5) sadism

“love of cruelty,” especially as evidence of a subconscious lust that the cruelty satisfies, 1888, from French sadisme, from the name of Count Donatien A.F. de Sade (1740-1815). Not a marquis, though usually now called one, he was notorious for the cruel sexual practices described in his novels.

(6) galvanism

“electricity produced by chemical action,” 1797, from French galvanisme or Italian galvanismo, from Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) , professor of anatomy at Bologna, who discovered it c. 1792 while running currents through the legs of dead frogs. He found by accident that an electrically charged scalpel could send a frog’s corpse into muscular convulsions. Experimenting further, he eventually discovered the principles of chemically produced electricity. His name is responsible for the techincal expressions galvanism, galvanized iron, and galvanometer, as well as the highly graphic phrase “galvanized into action.”

(7) guppy

1918, so called about the time they became popular as aquarium fish, from the scientific name (Girardinus guppii), which honored R.J.L. Guppy, the British-born Trinidad clergyman who supplied the first specimen (1866) to the British Museum. The family name is from a place in Dorset. Other early popular names for it were rainbow fish and million fish. The class of streamlined U.S. submarines (1948) is an acronym from greater underwater propulsion power + -y.

(8) nicotine

also nicotin, poisonous volatile alkaloid base found in tobacco leaves, 1819, from French nicotine, earlier nicotiane, from Modern Latin Nicotiana, the formal botanical name for the tobacco plant, named for Jean Nicot (c. 1530-1600), French ambassador to Portugal, who sent tobacco seeds and powdered leaves from Lisbon to France 1561. Nicot’s successful efforts to popularize the plant in Europe brought him linguistic immortality.

(9) tawdry

“no longer fresh or elegant but displayed as if it were so; in cheap and ostentatious imitation of what is rich or costly,” 1670s, an adjectival use of the noun tawdry “silk necktie for women” (1610s). This was shortened from tawdry lace (1540s), a misdivision (with adhesion of the -t- from Saint) of St. Audrey’s lace, “necktie or ribbon sold at the annual fair at Ely on Oct. 17 commemorating St. Audrey.”

The necklaces came to represent rustic or cheap finery, especially as worn by country girls. The saint was a queen of Northumbria, obit 679; her association with lace necklaces is that she supposedly died of a throat tumor, which, according to Bede, she considered God’s punishment for her youthful stylishness.

Places That Made The English Language

(1) bayonet

1610s, originally a type of flat dagger; as a soldiers’ steel stabbing weapon fitted to the muzzle of a firearm, from 1670s, from French baionnette (16c.), said to be from Bayonne, city in Gascony where supposedly they first were made.

(2) cantaloupe

also cantaloup, small, round type of melon, 1739, from French, from Italian, from Cantalupo, name of a former Papal summer estate near Rome, where the melons first were grown in Europe after their introduction (supposedly from Armenia).

(3) calico

1530s, kalyko cloth, “white cotton cloth,” from an alternative form of Calicut (modern Kozhikode), name of the seaport on the Malabar coast of India where Europeans first obtained it.

(4) tuxedo

man’s evening dress for semiformal occasions, 1889, named for Tuxedo Park, N.Y., a rural resort development for wealthy New Yorkers and site of a country club where it first was worn, supposedly in 1886.

(5) damask

mid-13c., “Damascus;” late 14c., Damaske, “costly textile fabric woven in elaborate patterns,” literally “cloth from Damascus,” the Syrian city noted for fabric.

(6) satin

“smooth, lustrous silken cloth; silk fabric with a very glossy surface and the back less so,” mid-14c., from Old French satin (14c.), perhaps from Arabic (atlas) zaytuni, literally “(satin) from Zaitun,” name of a place in China, perhaps modern Quanzhou in Fukien province, a major port in the Middle Ages with a resident community of European traders.

(7) frankfurter

“hot dog,” 1894, American English, from German Frankfurter (wurst) “(sausage) of Frankfurt,” so called because the U.S. product resembled a type of smoked-beef-and-pork sausage originally made in Germany, where it was associated with the city of Frankfurt am Main (literally “ford of the Franks” on the River Main). Attested from 1877 as Frankfort sausage.