Bats

Do the words (1) bat as in a baseball bat, (2) bat as in the rodent, and (3) bat as in batting one's eyelashes have anything to do with each other?

(1) bat, n. This word comes from the Old English word batt, so that would date from somewhere between the 5th and the 12th centuries.

(2) bat, n. The word for the animal bat is an alteration of backe (North Germanic word) from the late 16th century.

(3) bat, v. The word for batting one's eyelashes comes from an early 19th century variation of the word bate. Bate dates from the 13th century as from an Old French word, batre, which comes from the Latin root battuere ("to beat"), which, incidentally is the root word for the verb batter, "to beat something repeatedly with heavy blows".

So backes batteure their wings, and battuere backe balls with batts, but theoretically the three bats all have completely different roots... And then you have the German word for the animal bat:

fledermaus - "flying mouse"

Not even related to the Germanic root for our word for the animal.

I love linguistics.

"Cotton-Pickin'"

"Cotton-pickin'" is one of the first phrases that I ever wondered about the origin of. Growing up, to my ears it sounded like "cotinpikin", and I never really stopped to figure it out. Till I was in my teens, and then one day I realized: "cotton-picking" is what the African-American slaves did.

"Cotton-picking": a derogatory term derived from one of the least-commendable times in American history...and therefore, definitely not a phrase I want to use.

Thinking About It

Thinking about it...

About what?

One of the things that intrigues me most about the world is where things have come from:

• Which came first? The noun bat referring to a baseball bat, the noun bat referring to the animal bat, or the verb bat referring to batting one's eyelashes?
• Who organized how to do math?
• How did people discover a drink out of coffee beans?

This blog will be a place for me to write what I'm thinking about the phrases, habits, cultural tendencies, and otherwise virtually unquestioned details in the world. Feel free to post some of your own thoughts as well!

Thinking,

Rosebud