It is obviously not uncommon for words to have more than one established meaning in the language, as often nouns and verbs can be used interchangeably (as in ‘dance a dance’ or ‘dream a dream’) and frequently the meanings of words develop and evolve over time to such an extent that they end up encompassing entirely new senses and contexts. In some cases, however, words can end up adopting very unusual meanings that, although still connected to their original or most familiar definition, can be somewhat surprising.
The first recorded use of the word angel in English comes from a tenth-century edition of the Lindisfarne Gospels, the word being formed from a blend of the existing Old English word engel and the Norman French angele, both of which are ultimately derived from the Latin word angelus. Since this initial appearance in the language, angel has developed several other related meanings in English, including ‘spiritual guardian’ (dating from the fourteenth century), ‘messenger’ (mid-fifteenth century) and ‘beautiful or bright young person’ (late sixteenth century). However, the word has also gained a number of much less familiar uses, including the name of an old English gold coin first minted during the reign of Edward IV in the 1460s and, more recently, an American slang word for a financial backer. In the mid-1900s, however, angel slipped into use in British Air Force slang when it began to be used by RAF pilots to refer to a height of 1,000 ft, and later to any unexplained or transitory mark that appears on a radar screen.
Adopted from the equivalent French term enveloppe, the word envelope has been used in English since the early 1700s, and was first recorded in reference to the paper sheath into which a letter is placed in 1715. Besides this familiar use of the word, however, envelope also has a number of more obscure applications, most of which still bear some similar sense of an enclosure or containment: it can variously be the part of an airship or hot-air balloon that contains the air or gas; a set of limitations within which a machine or device can be operated safely; the coma or covering of the head of a comet; or the outer casing of a biological or anatomical structure, such as the head of a flower or the outer membrane of a virus. Perhaps the most unusual alternative use of the word, however, appears in reference to defensive architecture, wherein an envelope is a raised earthwork mound or rampart, typically built inside or in front of a ditch surrounding a fort, which is intended to protect a weak point in its defences and prevent it from being breached.
Predictably for such a familiar word, hand has a great many alternative meanings besides its most obvious one, amongst the least familiar of which is perhaps its use in reference to the authority a Roman husband had over his wife. In this sense, hand was first used in English in the late 1800s and is a direct translation of the Latin word manus, which was used in the same sense.
The word matador, the Spanish for ‘killer’, is all but entirely associated with bullfighting in English, and in this context was first recorded in the late 1600s. Of similar age, however, is the use of a matador in certain card games – and in particular trick-taking games like ombre, quadrille and skat – to designate the highest of the trump cards, often (but not always) including the ace of spades and the ace of clubs. More recently, in the nineteenth century, matador began to be used as a variation of the game of dominoes, in which players are permitted only to link tiles so as to form a total of seven; in this version of the game, tiles whose spots already total seven, like the 2-5 or 3-4, are all known as matadors and can be played at any point during the game.
As the name of a cross between a donkey and a mare, the word mule dates back to the Old English period and is ultimately derived from the equivalent Latin term, mulus. Characteristically strong and hard-working, these stereotypical features of the mule’s temperament have led to its name being applied in various other senses in the language, including as the name of a small, powerful tractor or similar vehicle used to tow heavy loads (early 1900s); an American slang term for strong alcoholic liquor (1920s); and the name of a type of high sail, able to provide considerable pull to a yacht or similar vessel (1930s). The word is also used in several senses referencing the creature’s hybrid nature, and can variously refer to a type of spinning wheel able to produce both thick and thin yarn (early 1700s); a coin with incorrectly mismatched obverse and reverse sides (early 1800s); and as a general term for a crossbred bird (mid-1800s) or sheep (late 1800s).
Referring either to the rate of walking or movement, or to the distance covered in a single footstep, the word pace dates back to the fourteenth century in English and is derived from the Latin word for ‘step’ or ‘stride’, passus. Although also used in a number of other contexts implying some sense of walking or moving – in the architecture of a church, for instance, a pace is a passage between rows of pews or chairs, whilst historically the word was used to refer to a route through difficult terrain – by far the most unusual use of the word is as the collective name for a group of asses or donkeys. As such pace is one of a number of everyday words used on rare occasions as a so-called collective noun. Besides familiar examples like a pride of lions or a troop of baboons, English speakers can also refer to a shrewdness of apes, a siege of heron, a labour of moles, a descent of woodpeckers, a parliament of owls, a knot of toads and a bask of crocodiles, besides many more.
The word rabbit was adopted into English from French in the fourteenth century and eventually all but replaced the earlier English term cony or coney, which today remains largely only in use in English dialects. Amongst the word’s many alternative meanings, in the early twentieth century the word began to be used in Australian English as a nautical slang term for anything that has been smuggled or stolen, and ultimately rabbit can also be used as a verb meaning ‘steal’ or ‘borrow’.
In 2011, run overtook set as the word with the most recorded definitions and senses in the Oxford English Dictionary – a record-breaking 645. Able to be used as a verb (dating from the early Old English period), a noun (from early fifteenth century) and an adjective (late fifteenth century), perhaps unsurprisingly for such a prolific word run has a great number of unfamiliar uses in the language. It can variously be used to refer to the rearmost part of a ship’s hull; a pair of twin millstones; a rapidly played series of musical notes; a 1,600-yard length of yarn; a set of wagons in a coalmine; a discordant sound created by air leaking from one organ pipe into another; a number of livestock or other animals born at the same time; and the quantity of oil obtained during one period of extraction.
The first mention of a ski in English – borrowed into the language from Norwegian and descended from the Old Norse word for a snowshoe, ski∂ – dates from the mid-1700s, with the verb ski and the practice of skiing first recorded in the late 1800s. During the Second World War, however, ski began to be applied to so-called ‘ski sites’, locations across Nazi Germany from where V-1 flying bombs and other long-range weaponry could be launched, which featured long, narrow, curved buildings and storehouses that from the air appeared to resemble skis. More than seventy of these sites were located by Allied reconnaissance during the course of the war, with many being destroyed by strategic bombing raids launched as part of Operation Crossbow in 1943–5.
As the name of a supernatural, blood-sucking monster, the word vampire has been used in English since the early eighteenth century, although stories of such creatures date back many hundreds of years more in the folklore of Eastern Europe; vampire bats, meanwhile, were first described in English in the 1770s. More recently, the word has gained a less familiar alternative meaning in the language of the theatre, wherein a vampire – or, more specifically, a vampire trap – is the name of a type of spring-loaded stage trapdoor with two covering doors, which allows a performer to make a sudden appearance or disappearance on to or off of the stage. This use of the word was first recorded in the 1880s, and is believed to have developed from the use of just such a device in an early nineteenth-century stage adaptation of the classic horror story The Vampyre by John Polidori.