- Protect your avocados, flex your little mice, and enter into a death pledge to buy a house.
English can be one strange language. Then again, that’s not that surprising, considering its history as a mishmash between Anglo-Saxon, French, Germanic languages, and who knows what else.
Having been influenced by everything and the kitchen sink, it’s no wonder many English words have changed significantly over the years. In a lot of cases, the word’s original meaning is something completely different from how it’s currently used.
Here are 12 English words with original meanings that you definitely wouldn’t guess from their current use.
1. Avocado
Original meaning: Testicle
The English word avocado comes from the Spanish word aguacate, which in turn was lifted from the Nahuatl word ahuacatl. This word meant “avocado fruit” but also had another colloquial meaning.
Picture in your mind a pair of avocados hanging from a tree. Do they resemble something? That’s right — in Aztec slang, you could call testicles “avocados.”
2. Quarantine
Original meaning: Forty
We all became painfully familiar with the word “quarantine” during the pandemic. Its Italian origins refer to largely the same thing but with a bit of a twist.
Quarantine stems from the Italian word cuaranta, which means “forty.” During the Black Death epidemic, ships arriving at the port of Venice were required to wait 40 days before disembarking.
3. Alcohol
Original meaning: Kohl
The word alcohol comes from the Arabic word al-kuhl, meaning “the kohl.” Yes, that’s the same kohl that can be used as eyeliner.
Kohl was initially extracted from the mineral stibnite, and the Arabs considered kohl to be the “spirit” of the mineral. When they eventually started distilling “spirits,” they simply expanded the meaning of the old word to refer to the “essence” of all substances.
4. Sarcasm
Original meaning: To tear flesh off bones
Although the exact origins of the word sarcasm aren’t completely clear, it’s speculated to come from the Greek word sarkazein. Literally, this word means “to tear” or “to rip,” in the sense of “tearing meat off the bone.”
Over time, sarkazein started to refer to mocking another person. In a sense, a sarcastic person was considered to tear the recipient of their ire to shreds with their words.
Look, the ancient Greeks were a dramatic bunch.
5. Freelancer
Original meaning: Mercenary cavalryman
Here’s another word that exploded in popularity during the COVID shutdown. However, all the people who became freelancers would’ve had very different jobs in Medieval Europe.
Although the word freelancer was coined in the 19th century, it referred to mercenary cavalrymen of the Middle Ages. These lance-wielding warriors were on the free market to serve any lord — as long as they received a good price for their service.
6. Clue
Original meaning: A ball of yarn
Funnily enough, the origin of the word clue lies in the Ancient Grek story of the Minotaur. The creature lives in a labyrinth, but the story’s hero manages to navigate the maze by tracking his steps with a ball of yarn.
In Old English, a ball of yarn was called a clew. Over time, the spelling changed to clue and instead of a literal ball of yarn, it started referring to a figurative end of yarn leading to the correct solution to a problem.
7. Muscle
Original meaning: Little mouse
The word muscle traces its origin to the Latin word musculus. And although musculus was used to refer to muscles, its literal meaning is “little mice.”
In the Ancient Roman mind, muscle movement under the skin resembles the scurrying of little mice under a blanket. From this, we can deduce that Rome had a mouse problem.
8. Nightmare
Original meaning: A nightmare-inducing spirit
The etymology of nightmare is a bit weird since it kind of loops back in on itself. The modern word stems from mare, which was a horrible spirit, ghost, or creature in Germanic and Slavic mythologies.
A mare would creep up to a sleeping person and sit on their chest, causing nightmares and sleep paralysis to entertain itself. And since the mare shows up at night, it came to be called a “nightmare” in English — and the nightmare causes nightmares.
9. Nice
Original meaning: Stupid
Remember that time in the ‘80s when “bad” meant “super cool?” Well, that’s pretty much the origin story of the word nice.
The word originally comes from the Latin nicium, meaning “ignorant.” In old Anglo-French, it meant “stupid” or “silly,” but eventually its general meaning turned to a positive due to excessive slang use.
10. Sinister
Original meaning: On the left
Sinister is a… Well, sinister word but its origins are very dull. It comes from the Latin word sinister, which simply means “on the left.”
However, the Romans considered being left-handed a sign of untrustworthiness and poor character. This belief stuck around throughout most of European history, and thus the word for “left-handed” came to mean “evil.”
Sorry, lefties.
11. Mortgage
Original meaning: Death oath
When signing a mortgage, you might feel like you won’t pay it off in your lifetime. That feeling is actually very close to the word’s original meaning.
Mortgage comes from Old French, where mort gage means a “death oath” or “death pledge.” In other words, you promise to do something or die trying.
Know what, that’s pretty much what mortgage still means.
12. Jumbo
Original meaning: Jumbo the Elephant
The word jumbo means something very big. But have you ever wondered where it came from?
Well, it came from something very big. Namely, Jumbo the Elephant.
Jumbo was a male African bush elephant that was displayed in the London Zoo before being sold to none other than P.T. Barnum in 1882. Although Jumbo died in 1885, he was such a star that his name lives on to this day, describing anything huge — just like he was.