The ten words listed here are all either derived from specific theatrical terms or were originally used in theatrical contexts before developing broader, more general uses elsewhere in the language. Besides these, English also contains a number of words that have been adopted into drama or acting, or that have gained a new meaning in the theatre or on the stage. The word apron, for instance, dates from the fourteenth century as the name of a protective garment, but came to be used to describe a kind of stage, first popular in the Elizabethan period, that projects outwards so as to be surrounded by the audience on all sides. To corpse has been theatrical slang (in the sense of ‘murdering’ a scene) since the mid-1800s and refers either to an actor forgetting their lines or laughing at an inopportune time during a performance. And a limelight was originally a specific device invented in the 1820s that comprised a stick of quicklime (calcium oxide) burnt in a flame of combined hydrogen and oxygen to produce a particularly intense light. In the mid-nineteenth century, the popular use of a limelight as a spotlight for the lead actors in theatre ultimately led to the term becoming a byword for fame or celebrity.
Although it is today used in a variety of different contexts and senses, the earliest meaning of the word background comes from the theatre, where it was originally used to refer to the rear part of a stage, lying furthest from the audience. Indeed, the first recorded use of the word in English comes from a stage direction in the Restoration comedy Love in a Wood (1671) by the Elizabethan writer William Wycherley. Over time, use of the word background broadened and it became a much less specialized term, referring first to the scenery or setting of a painting in the mid-1700s; then to any disconnected or inconspicuous position in the late 1700s; and lastly to a person’s upbringing or family history in the early 1900s. The first known reference to background music, meanwhile, dates from 1928.
In modern English, the word barnstorming tends to be used as an adjective, typically describing anything such as a speech or performance that is particularly boisterous or theatrical. The original barnstormers were nineteenth-century itinerant actors and performers in the United States, who would travel around the countryside stopping intermittently to put on stage shows, expositions and entertainments in barns and similar large buildings. Use of the word soon spread to politics, with barnstorming first used in reference to an electioneering tour in the late 1890s.
The earliest use of the word blackout in English was a purely theatrical one, used to refer to the darkening of the stage between the scenes or acts of a play. In this context, the word was first recorded in a letter written by George Bernard Shaw to his producer and director Granville Barker in 1913, in which he makes reference to a production of his play Androcles and the Lion. In the decades that followed, blackout gained several additional figurative meanings, all developed from this original sense of the word, including ‘temporary loss of vision, consciousness or memory’ (1920s–30s); ‘widespread power failure’ (1930s); ‘precautionary shielding or extinguishing of lights during air raids’ (1930s); ‘intentional suppression of the media, or news reporting’ (1940s); and ‘period during which a certain product or commodity is not available’ (1950s).
Used more loosely since the mid-1700s to describe any great disaster or calamity, the word catastrophe was originally a dramatic term used to refer to the point in a story or plot at which an event occurs – not necessarily a tragic or disastrous one – that will ultimately bring about the final conclusion of the piece. The word was first used in this sense in English in the late sixteenth century, but it has its origins in the theatre of Ancient Greece and is derived from a Greek term, katastrophe, literally meaning ‘a turn against’.
First recorded in the early seventeenth century, the word explode originally meant to ‘clap or jeer a performer off the stage’. The term derives from the equivalent Latin term explaudere, which is in turn a derivative of the same Latin verb – plaudere, meaning ‘to clap’ – from which the English words applaud and plaudit are both also derived. Over time, explode developed a number of other meanings, including to ‘reject’ (mid-1500s); to ‘mock’ or ‘deride’ (early 1600s); to ‘expel’ or ‘drive out noisily’ (late 1600s); and eventually to ‘burst’ or ‘combust with a loud noise’, a sense first recorded in the late 1700s.
Probably partly based on the earlier term bunkum, with perhaps some influence from hocus-pocus, hokum first appeared in the United States in early 1900s when it was used amongst actors and theatre practitioners to describe any overly melodramatic speech or dramatic device used to provoke a reaction amongst the audience. Over time, its meaning broadened to come to refer to anything seemingly impressive or meaningful but actually of little real worth, and ultimately to the more familiar sense of ‘nonsense’ or ‘garbage’ by which it is most often used today. Other words to have developed from actors’ slang include patsy, a term for a deceived party or scapegoat, dating from the late nineteenth century; mug, meaning ‘pull exaggerated faces’, first recorded in Dickens’s Little Dorrit in 1856; and swipe, in the sense of ‘steal’, thought to have originated amongst American entertainers in the nineteenth century who would ‘swipe’ jokes from other performers’ acts.
The word hypocrisy was first recorded in English as far back as the thirteenth century. Believed to have entered the language from French, it is derived from the Greek hypokrisis, a theatrical term which referred to the acting of a role on the stage, and is based on the Greek hypokrinesthai, variously meaning ‘to act’, ‘to decide’ or ‘to answer’.
The earliest use of the word machinery in English was in reference to the devices and apparatus used in a theatre to create various effects on stage; first recorded in the 1680s, it was not until the mid-1700s that use of the word became generalized to refer to any collection of machines or mechanisms. The original ‘god in the machine’ or deus ex machina, meanwhile, was the Greek theos ek mekhanes, a device used to suspend actors playing gods above the stage during a performance. Eventually, the phrase came to refer to the resolution of a plot through the last-minute introduction of a character or event, a sense first recorded in English in the late seventeenth century.
The root of the word protagonist is the Greek theatrical term protagonistes – a compound of protos, meaning ‘first’, and agonistes, meaning a ‘combatant’ or ‘competitor’ – which was used in Ancient Greek theatre to refer to the lead actor in a dramatic performance. On its first appearance in English in the late 1600s, protagonist was also used exclusively to describe the lead or central character in a story, but over time its use has been generalized to come to refer to any prominent person or figurehead, or else simply to a supporter or advocate of a particular cause. Of similar origin is antagonist, which originally applied to an opponent in a battle or game, whilst the related forms deuteragonist and tritagonist are used to describe the second and third most important actors in a performance.
First recorded in American English in 1869, a showboat was originally literally that – a riverboat or paddle steamer that staged theatrical shows and entertainments on board. Based on this original meaning, the word was adapted into a verb in twentieth-century American slang, meaning to ‘show-off’ or ‘grandstand’, and then back into a noun in the 1950s to refer to someone who courts public attention through conspicuous or exhibitionist behaviour.