A race to document the mysterious history of 1000 English words

At the University of Minnesota, a linguistics professor is racing against his own mortality to finish a dictionary that will explain the origins and history of some of the most mysterious words in the English language. If he completes it, it will be the second time any language has had its linguistic history documented in this way. The trouble is, Anatoly Liberman is 74, and he thinks he needs at least another decade to finish his dictionary.

As he dug further, Liberman discovered that about 1,000 common English words -- mooch, nudge, man, girl, boy, frog, oat, witch and skedaddle among them -- seemed to be highly confused or all but untraceable, as if they magically appeared in English, pouf!

"It was like finding all these waifs of English who run around with dirty T-shirts and no shoes and no one takes care of them," says Liberman. "And suddenly I wanted to build a nice, warm orphanage for the parentless words, for the boys and girls and heifers too."

It would be a new kind of word-origin dictionary, one focusing on the most problematic, misunderstood words in English. Liberman knew right away it was a magnificent, massive project that could take 30 years or longer to complete.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Getting In the Last Word

Image: Some rights reserved by Muffet

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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Anonymous

Onomatopia doesn’t always mean there isn’t an origin story. Words still come from somewhere, someone decides they sound like something else, and… mooch? How is that onomatopoetic, anyway?

The word I’ve always been curious about, which seems apropos here, is boing. OED just gives it as 1950s, onomatopoetic.

I put the question to the internets years ago, and the best explanation I heard was that large vehicle mechanics would often ride along to troubleshoot problems, and created a vocabulary to describe the sounds they heard (much the way doctors have lub dub, lub dub) to other mechanics, so they could solve the problem.

I’d love a real citation of first usage in print, though, or some more work into the etymology of what is to me an amazing word. BOING. BOING. BOINGBOING.
Michael Smith

My favorite word is diem which somehow got into Cantonese (where it refers to time) from Latin, or possibly the other way around.
Lobster

I don’t trust a man who uses the word “pouf.”
- bleier
  
  Maggie said it. Not a quote. I would use poof. LOL
Jonathan Badger

I was going to say wtf in regard to “cat”, which is obviously a version of German “Katze” (and “man” “Mann”), but as Liberman is a professor of German, presumably the real issue is where these German roots themselves came from, not that the history of the English words themselves is easily traceable to German.
- Marja
  
  Where does the article mention “cat?”
  - Jonathan Badger
    
    @Maria
    It doesn’t — it mentions “oat”, which I misread as “cat” — but the issue still applies to “man”, among others.
    
    @bardfinn,
    Yes, I think the linked article wasn’t clear that the issue is a deeper ancestry than that.
- Lobster
  
  You say “obviously,” but does that make it correct? Sometimes an obvious etymology is a common mistake.
  
  Did you know that the name “Naomi” evolved independently in two different languages and cultures which had absolutely no contact, thousands of miles apart (it’s a Biblical name and a Japanese name)?
  - Jonathan Badger
    
    Well, there are surprising etymological coincidences across distant languages, but as all words in Japanese have to be made up out of a small set of syllables, which “Naomi” happens to consist of, it’s not terribly surprising that it means something, and only slightly more surprising that it is also a name. You could probably do something similar with Hawaiian, which is even more limited as to valid syllables.
- GlenBlank
  
  I was about to offer up the OED’s rather extensive etymological notes on ‘cat’ (which detail cognate forms in an impressive list of languages, but conclude that the ultimate origin is still unknown), but then, like @Marja, I noticed that the article doesn’t seem to mention ‘cat.’
  
  Is it possible you misread ‘oat’ as ‘cat’?
- Stooge
  
  As you say, it’s a deeper issue than simply finding out from which language English acquired the words. In the case of ‘man’, for example, there are (or were, last time I checked), two schools of thought: some say it’s derived from the Latin mens, and so means sentient being, whereas others (i.e. Liberman) suggest it may be derived from the mythical king Mannus, from whom all Germanic tribes claimed descent, and by extension from the mythical Hindu king Manu, from whom all humans are purportedly descended.
- Anonymous
  
  Roots to German, more likely Frisian, Franks and Saxons. Although these where Germanic tribes, so are the Franks etc. Nothing to do with German of today.
  
  I have always read that if the Normans and Vikings did not raid and lived in England, English would sound like Dutch or Frisian (or low German) Not the High German as spoken in the majority of Germany today.
zuludaddy

This is a Wonderful Thing.

However, as was once stated by Prof. Morris Halle [to be read in best John Houseman stentorian voice:] “not every word is entitled to an etymology.”

I suspect it may be impossible to track down anything more that first usage in print for many of these.
bardfinn

English is a Germanic language.

I’d be surprised if nudge does not come from notch, and if mooch is not onomatopoetic.
- Anonymous
  
  Neat, just a few more comments like that and we can have this guy’s job finished for him in an afternoon! Go Internet!
Anonymous

yes but where can we see a list of the parentless words? I think it would be fascinating.
weatherman

Is “turnip” on that list of 1000 words?
moyrad

Is there any way for us to help him?
People find this fascinating, how can we get involved?
nate_freewheel

Maybe someone with coding skills could help him distribute the research among linguists and finish it collaboratively?
tyger11

I hope he checks up on ‘inconceivable’. There’s this guy I heard about who keeps using it, but I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.
- Anonymous
  
  Haha would that guy happen to have a role in “The Princess Bride”?
FaroCastiglo

“If he completes it, it will be the second time any language has had its linguistic history documented in this way.”

And the first is…? Seriously, the suspense is killing me!
victorvodka

the word “bad” is the same in english and farsi — it doesn’t mean they come from the same origins. keep that in mind, nerdfaces!
- Jake0748
  
  Sure… start a whole nother argument about nerd and face. Keep THAT in mind dillweed.
Jake0748

The mooch nudged aside the man, girl and frog to get to the last oat. Then the witch came along and told him to skedaddle.
Boy!
jphilby

Oh skznyx, who cars.