12 Words Whose History Will Surprise You

Definition: the disguising especially of military equipment or installations with paint, nets, or foliage; also : the disguise so applied

Camouflage, which entered English first as a noun, comes from the French verb camoufler, meaning “to disguise or make unrecognizable.” Camoufler was originally part of a lingo particular to the criminal underworld, and is thought to perhaps come from the word camouflet, which referred to a practical joke performed by igniting a paper cornet and blowing the smoke from it into the nose of a sleeping person. Hilarious, right? Criminals, always blowing smoke from their paper cornets …

“Connor’s been teaching me lots of stuff. Tactics, and camouflage—see my clothes?” I did. Jaz was wearing a shirt and pants of yellowy-brown that was hard to distinguish from the grass.
— Ambelin Kwaymullina, The Disappearance of Ember Crow: The Tribe, Book Two, 2016

Definition: : a woman’s dressing room, bedroom, or private sitting room

The French verb bouder means “to pout,” and it led to the French word boudoir, a noun that literally means “a place to pout in” but also refers to a dressing room, bedroom, or private sitting room. English borrowed boudoir in the late 1700s with that meaning. Boudoir (which today is somewhat old-fashioned) isn’t associated with pouting in English, but it does suggest privacy. Whatever form or function a boudoir takes, one only enters if invited. And while for most of its history boudoir has been used for a woman’s private room, it hasn’t always been thus; just ask John Adams, second president of the United States:

About thirty years, ago, Mr. Bridgen … purchased a complete collection of the portraits of all the orders of nuns, in small duodecimo prints. These he lately sent as a present to the Hyde; and Mr. Hollis has placed them in what he calls his boudoir,—a little room between his library and drawing-room.
— from the diary of John Adams, 7 July 1786

Definition: an acute, highly contagious, respiratory disease caused by any of three orthomyxoviruses

Flu is short for influenza, and influenza comes to English from Italian, where it derived from the Medieval Latin word influentia. Both words translate to “influence” in their respective languages, an allusion to how the disease was traditionally attributed to the influence of the stars. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the first known influenza pandemic struck in 1580. Another epidemic of the disease originated from Rome in 1743, spreading throughout much of Europe and bringing the word to the British Isles.

The Navy said that 40 percent of its members got the flu in 1918. The Army estimated that about 36 percent of its members were stricken. How many died worldwide? Estimates range from 20 million to more than 100 million, but the true number can never be known.
— Gina Kolata, Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It, 2011

Definition: a great disaster or fiasco

If you need an icebreaker in some social setting, why not recount the history of debacle? After all, when it was first used in English, debacle referred to the literal breaking up of ice (such as the kind that occurs in a river after a long, cold winter), as well as to the rush of ice or water that follows such an event. Eventually, it was also used to mean “a violent, destructive flood.” If that’s not enough to make some fast friends, you could let loose the fact that debacle comes from the French noun débâcle, which in turn comes from the verb débâcler, meaning “to clear, unbolt, or unbar.” You might then add, to your listeners’ grateful appreciation, that these uses led naturally to such meanings as “a breaking up,” “collapse,” and finally the familiar “disaster” and “fiasco.” We can feel the silence thawing already.

“I can’t believe you. You were probably so busy yelling at her that you missed the whole point of what she was telling you.” … Inhaling deeply, he realized his mother was right. He hadn’t stopped to think about how vehemently Hadley had denied having a part in this debacle.
— Kianna Alexander, A Love Like This, 2017

Definition: having or exhibiting strength or vigorous health

Hailing from the Latin word robur meaning “oak tree,” robust is rooted in strength and hardiness like the tree itself. But before being used in the early 17th century as an adjective relating to the sturdy physical composition of a tree (as in “a robust oak”), the word was used in English to describe the strong physical build and vigorous health of a person or animal.

The 1600s marked the beginning of a robust sense development of the word as it began being applied to things promoting health and well-being, as in “robust exercise” or “a robust diet.” By mid-century, loud and powerful “robust voices” were being heard and soon solidly made materials and structures, such as steel and furniture, were said to be “robust.”

It wasn’t until the late-19th century, however, that the strength associated with robust was applied to the taste or flavor of food and drink. In particular, the word came to refer to beverages imparting to the palate the general impression of weight and rich texture, such as wine or coffee, and to foods richly nutritious or flavorfully bold, like stew. About the same time, economists picked up the term to describe a thriving or resilient market, economy, etc.

In my heart I believe that writing is egalitarian: all it requires is pen, paper and inclination. Unlike other art forms, writing doesn’t require cumbersome instruments, or specialist materials, or expensive technology, or years of physical training. There are also increasing opportunities for publishing. Poetry, in particular, has robust and decentralized publishing models, many of which are becoming cheaper and easier to access.
— Juliana Spahr, LitHub.com, 23 Aug. 2018

Definition: to fool around : to behave in a way that is not very serious — often used with around

Futz is a word that has the sort of etymology that will make small children think that studying language is an enjoyable pursuit. It is thought to have come (no one is entirely certain) from a modification of the Yiddish phrase arumfartsn zikh, the literal translation of which is “to fart around.”

The biggest solar storms can certainly futz with radio reception and GPS, and they’ve caused local damage—including knocking out all the power in Quebec in 1989. But since the Earth is shielded by a magnetic field, and a lovely thick atmosphere, solar storms simply aren’t strong enough to knock out our Internet infrastructure (although someday we’ll move more of our telecommunications infrastructure into space, and when we do, solar weather will become much more of a life-and-death concern).
— Mike Pearl, The Day It Finally Happens: Alien Contact, Dinosaur Parks, Immortal Humans—And Other Impossible Phenomena, 2019

Definition: viscid mucus secreted in abnormal quantity in the respiratory passages

The oldest use of phlegm in English referred to the one of the four humors of ancient and medieval physiology that was supposed to be cold and moist and thought to cause sluggishness. That use dates to the 13th century, and while the word didn’t refer in a narrower sense simply to mucus (or, as it does now, particularly to cough-produced mucus) until the end of the 14th century, the humor-phlegm was often identified with mucus. Phlegm’s Middle English predecessor was the word fleume which was borrowed from Anglo-French, and traces back through Late Latin to the Greek word phlégma, which could refer not only to white or colorless body secretions (such as mucus or saliva), but also inflammation, as well as flame and fire. Phlégma in turn formed in part from phleg-, stem of the verb phlégein, meaning “to burn up, consume, kindle, fire up, blaze, gleam.” Now that etymology is (cough) nothing to sneeze at.

“It’s Dr. Reisman again. Did you miss me?” I joked. She mumbled something incomprehensible, which I could barely hear over the hissing flow of oxygen and the rattling of phlegm caught in her throat. … I listened to her lungs with my stethoscope and heard the sound of bubbles blown through thick porridge.
— Jonathan Reisman, The Unseen Body: A Doctor’s Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy, 2021

Definition: a clear purple or bluish-violet variety of crystallized quartz that is often used as a jeweler’s stone

Gems were once believed to have magical qualities. An amethyst, for example, was supposed to have the power to prevent or cure drunkenness in its wearer. For this reason the Greeks gave it the name amethystos, which comes from the prefix a-, meaning “not,” and methyein, “to be drunk.” Methyein, in turn, comes from methy, meaning “wine.” Theophrastus, a student of Plato, opined that the stone was assigned these qualities on the sound scientific basis that both amethyst and wine are purple, and so should cancel each other out.

The message was: God’s a bigwig, you’re a weevil. Because we were such pipsqueaks compared with the galaxies, we were to sit there simpering, sniveling, embarrassed to have been noticed by someone as enormous as God. However, as this fellow strenuously hyped the size of the universe, I felt embarrassed not for me but for him because he had so totally forgotten about amethysts and onyxes and tiny golden frogs and Jacob. Jacob might have been a lightweight compared with God, but in their wrestling match Jacob won.
— Amy Leach, The Salt of the Universe: Praise, Songs, and Improvisations, 2024

Definition: a dessert made with ladyfingers, mascarpone, and espresso

If you pull up our entry for tiramisu, you’ll learn that both the word and the food it refers to are gifts from the Italians that didn’t make it into the English lexicon (or onto English menus) until the 1980s. The word’s Italian ancestor, tiramisù, comes from an evocative phrase: tirami su! means literally “pull me up!”

I can still taste the tiramisu we had for dessert at Di Romagna, the place for Italian cuisine. The variety of gourmet offerings at the eateries and the quality of the bar libations made forgetting all about my diet well worth it.
— Grace White, Essence, 24 Feb. 2024

Definition: one having power and authority over others

The amount of uses lord has in English could fill several bread boxes. Your friend who’s the hereditary peer of the rank of marquess, earl, or viscount? Lord. Your next-door neighbor who’s a bishop of the Church of England? Also a lord. Your bestie from the gym to whom a fee or estate is held in feudal tenure? You guessed it… a lord. In all of these cases and more lord refers to someone who has power or authority over others, or who holds a rank or high position. Impressive stuff, but the roots of the word lord have to do with that humblest of foods, bread. Lord traces back to the Old English word hlāford, itself a combination of the words hlāf, meaning “loaf” and weard, meaning “keeper.”

It was called the Tree of the Dead, and its provenance was the source of great speculation. Some said it had taken root in the heart of a woman who had died while dreaming of a lover she had known in her youth on a distant tropical island. … Others believed it to have grown from the tomb of an Arab man who was known in local lore as the Sultan of New Orleans. He had fled Turkey in shame, having feuded with a ruling lord there.
— Nathaniel Rich, “Bodies,” Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, 2013

Definition: one who murders a politically important person either for money or from fanatical adherence to a cause

The word assassin comes from the Medieval Latin word assassinus, which in turn traces back to the Arabic word ḥashshāshīn, plural of ḥashshāsh, which means “worthless person,” or, literally, “hashish user,” since the ultimate root of this word was hashīsh.

Assassin originally referred to a member of a Shia Muslim sect at the time of the Crusades who was sent out on a suicidal mission to murder prominent enemies. The Oxford English Dictionary notes that this term, perhaps unsurprisingly, was initially a derogatory one that implied that the members of this group exhibited erratic behavior, as if intoxicated by hashish—or because they actually were.

Its current use, “a person who commits murder” and especially one who murders a politically important person for money or ideology, was first used in English in the 1500s. This modern meaning represents a subtle change in the idea behind the word’s use: if it initially referred to a particular quality of the killer, it now refers as much to a particular quality—prominence of some kind—of the killer’s target.

In Kill Bill: Volume 1, the revenge-driven assassin Beatrix Kiddo has to awaken her atrophied legs after being in a coma for four years. She sits in the back seat of a small truck and while looking at her feet calmly recites over and over, “Wiggle your big toe.” In a story about taking revenge against everyone who wronged her, this is a rare instance where Beatrix can’t use her physical strength and has to instead consult her mental and spiritual abilities in order to go on.
— Nnedi Okorafor, Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected, 2019