Words derived from the names of parts of the human body are actually quite numerous in English and besides the ten listed here, those derived from ‘head’, ‘heart’, ‘hand’ and ‘foot’ are all discussed in their own chapters elsewhere. English contains a similarly large number of phrases and expressions that contain some kind of reference to the body, perhaps the oldest of which is to hold your tongue, which dates back as far as the ninth century. To put words in someone’s mouth, meanwhile, dates from the fourteenth century, whilst to keep something at arm’s length, to find your legs, to not have a leg to stand on, to fight tooth and nail, to have your back against the wall, to cut your own throat, to have your heart in your mouth, and to do something heart in hand all date from the sixteenth century. Many expressions like these, however, have long since dropped out of common use in the language – to put out someone’s eyes with gifts, for instance, was an Elizabethan expression meaning to ‘bribe’, whilst the old phrase to talk or fish out the bottom of your stomach, meaning to divulge your closest secrets or thoughts, dates from the 1530s.
The word accolade dates from the early seventeenth century, when it originally applied only to the bestowal of a knighthood – the word did not gain its more general use for a prize or an award of privilege until the mid-nineteenth century. The word is derived from the Old French accoler, meaning ‘to embrace around the neck’, referring to the action of embracing or resting a sword on the shoulders in order to confer a knighthood, which is in turn derived from the French col, meaning ‘neck’, and the Latin word collum, as in collar. The rare word accoll, meaning to ‘embrace’ or ‘throw your arms around someone’s neck’, is of similar origin.
In English, the use of the word date as the name of the fruit of the date palm dates from the early 1300s, and precedes the use of the word to mean a ‘period of time’ by almost a century. Although both words were adopted into the language from French, the edible date derives its name at length from the Latin dactylus and Greek daktylos, meaning ‘finger’, presumably hinting either at its shape or to the shape of the palm’s leaves. The word date in reference to time, alternatively, comes from the Latin word datum, meaning ‘given’, and developed from the Ancient Roman practice of marking official letters and documents with the precise place and time at which they were ‘given’ to messengers for delivery.
The word gargoyle was first recorded in English in the fourteenth century, describing the intentionally grotesque stone figures of animals or monsters that serve as waterspouts, channelling rainwater from the gutters and away from the walls below. It is thought that the word gargoyle is derived from an Old French term literally meaning ‘throat’, gargouille, as the water is typically channelled out of the gargoyles’ mouths. The word gargle is of similar origin, as is gargil, an old name for the gullet, and gargolette, a large pot or vessel used to cool water.
In its earliest sense, dating from the sixteenth century, the word genuine was used to describe anything natural or native, as opposed to foreign or acquired; its later generalized use, for anything real or non-counterfeit, dates from the mid-1600s. The word is presumed to have its origins in the Latin verb gignere, meaning ‘to give birth to’ or ‘to beget’, but it is likely that it was at some point also influenced by the Latin word for ‘knee’, genu, supposedly referring to an ancient custom wherein a father would acknowledge the paternity of a newborn baby by sitting it on his knee.
First recorded in English in the fourteenth century, the literal meaning of the word glossary is simply a ‘collection of glosses’, short explanatory comments or translations of obscure or foreign words that were historically written in the margin or between the lines of a text in order to clarify its content. These glosses in turn derive their name via Latin from the Ancient Greek word glossa or glotta (as in epiglottis and polyglot) meaning ‘language’ or, literally, ‘tongue’.
The word hysteria was coined for use in a medical journal in 1801, contrived from the earlier seventeenth-century medical adjective hysterical, which is in turn descended from the Greek word for the womb, hystera. Hysterical symptoms were once inaccurately only associated with women, and so were presumed to be brought on by some kind of condition of the uterus. This misconception began in Ancient Greece – Plato and his fellow scholars believed that the womb was a living being, capable of moving around a woman’s body – and lasted well into the nineteenth century until experiments by the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, and later Sigmund Freud, began to establish hysteria as a purely psychological condition.
Dating from the sixteenth century, the word hypochondria is primarily an anatomical term used to refer to the two regions of the upper abdomen, left and right, lying above the stomach and beneath the ribs. The word itself literally means ‘beneath the cartilage’, as each hypochondrium contains the organs that lie beneath the cartilage of the chest and breastbone. The connection between this region of the body and the more familiar use of the word, properly known as hypochondriasis, to describe a morbid obsession with ill health stems from the historical belief that maladies of these organs of the upper body were the cause of all feelings of melancholy and unease.
Meaning ‘obstinate and uncooperative’ or ‘disobedient’, the adjective recalcitrant originally entered into English as a French loanword in the late eighteenth century. The term is descended from the Latin verb recalcitrare, meaning literally ‘to kick back’ like a horse, which is itself based on the Latin word for ‘heel’, calx.
Describing someone haughty or pompously disdainful, the adjective supercilious entered the English language directly from Latin in the sixteenth century. It is a derivative of the Latin word supercilium, which, although also used to mean ‘haughtiness’ or ‘arrogance’, is in fact the Latin word for ‘eyebrow’. Comprised of the Latin prefix super-, meaning ‘above’, and cilium, meaning ‘eyelid’, the term implies that a supercilious person’s expressions of contempt would be made by simply raising an eyebrow.
Variously used to mean ‘desert’, ‘evade’, ‘dither’ or ‘retreat’, the somewhat obscure verb tergiversate was first recorded in English in the late seventeenth century, derived from the earlier and equally diverse noun tergiversation, meaning the ‘abandonment of a cause’, ‘act of changing sides’ or ‘deliberate evasion of a point’. The word is derived from the Latin verb tergiversare, literally meaning ‘to turn one’s back’, which is itself based on the Latin name for the back, tergum.