Ordeal

"Well, it's been an ordeal,"I said to my good friend Oscar. 

"A deal?" he said.

"No, an ordeal--you know, a trial by fire.  A test of strength and courage.  Think Jesus--and the forty days in the desert...."

OK--that's what an ordeal is.

Then I remembered--centuries ago, people suspected of crimes were tried by being put through torture.  If they died, well, they were guilty.  If they survived, God had interceded, and they were innocent.  The whole process was called an ordeal.

The word comes from Early English through the German.  Hmmmm--no surprise there!  

Irk

"She was a little irked," I said to a friend, and he gave me a blank look.


"I mean, she was annoyed, a little angry," I said. "That's what irked means...."


Well, it's a word everyone knows, but where does it come from? I was betting the Scottish.


But as usual, I was wrong. It comes from old Norse--the forerunner of modern Norwegian. Not a surprise, really--the Norwegians tend to get annoyed easily!

Bounty

"Ive never heard of the Bounty," said my friend Moses.  We were talking about the ship--and that to me was incredible.  "I just thought bounty was a paper towel...."

"What!  Bounty is a perfectly wonderful word!  It means abundance, generosity.  It's also a reward--in Puerto Rico, there's talk of putting a bounty on iguanas, our local plague.  Kill one and you get ten bucks!"

OK--so what I didn't know is that it comes from Latin--though I suspected that--goes through old French, and is related--duh!--to another word.  Bonus!

Gumption

"Well, show a little gumption," my mother often said.  I knew what she meant--gumption means initiative, courage, common sense.  It's a word every American knows.  If she hadn't said "gumption" she could have said, "well, just get out there and do it!"

Right--but where does it come from?  I just looked it up--it's a Scottish word.  No surprise there--the Scots have plenty of gumption!

Batty

This is driving me batty, I thought, as I tried to program in VBA.  And then it struck me--"batty," the word for today!  Batty is another word for crazy....

Well, we know what a bat is--but where does this use come from?  I looked it up, and instantly remembered--it's from an expression "bats in the belfry."  Of course, the next question is "what's a belfry?"  Well, it's the place in the tower of a  church (called "steeple") where the church bell is--and where there are bats.

So saying a person has"bats in the belfry" means they have bats, not brain, up above.