A Modest Construct

alcohol

n. (organic chemistry, countable) Any of a class of organic compounds (such as ethanol) containing a hydroxyl functional group (-OH).

n. (uncountable) An intoxicating beverage made by the fermentation of sugar or sugar-containing material.

One would generally expect such a popular item to have more interesting—potentially dirty or morbid—roots, but the clinical term by which we refer to that which we imbibe to get silly is nothing more than an organic chemistry term which applies to many different compounds, most of which we don’t (and shouldn’t) drink. The word alcohol itself is unchanged from the Middle English, which absorbed it as a chemical term from the Arabic al-kuħl. It, too, refer to a whole family of compounds, but popular usage tends to refer specifically to ethanol, which is the tasty sort that we drink at bars.

The word ethanol is a combination of the aforementioned alcohol and the prefix ethyl-, which is from the Greek αἰθήρ (“ether”), but very likely our current use of the prefix is more directly from the German äthyl, since Germany was kicking American butts in chemistry before we finally got our act together.

But what about the common man’s terms for alcohol? What about booze, liquor, hootch, and swill? What about all the various kinds of libations: wine, vodka, beer, rum, bourbon, whiskey, scotch, tequila, brandy, and moonshine? Turns out, the world of alcohol is as wide and elaborate as we initially thought.

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transparent

adj.. clear; having the property that light passes through it almost undisturbed

Transparent is a common word; I’ve known it since I was a child. Slightly less well known is “translucent,” which has largely the same meaning, although the latter usually indicates a lesser degree of transparency.

With a bit of familiarity with Latin roots, its easy to see what these two words have in common: trans indicates “across” or “over,” which leads to such modern English words as “transmit”, “transport”, “transaction”, “transcontinental” and others. But what about the second part of each word: could that tell us how they are different?

The suffix “lucent” comes from the Latin lucere (“to shine”); literally, then “translucent” effectively means “to allow light to shine through/across”. The various forms of the Latin luceo can be seen in words such as “lantern” (weakly), as the modern “light” (→ L. lux → PIE *leuk-).

The parens suffix of “transparent” comes from another Latin root, appareo, which means “to become visible” or “to appear”. We can see its influence in such words as “appear” (a direct lineage of appareo) as well as “apparition”. Also, if you’re wondering, our modern English “parent” does come from this same root. The pareo root can also mean “I submit” or “I am obedient to”, which led to the verb parere (to breed or bring forth), and you can probably guess the rest from there. In fact, the PIE root *per-, which means “to bring forth”, is really applicable in all the words here. In the context of your progenitors, they brought you forth from their loins; in the context of transparent materials, they allow light to come forth in a manner of speaking.

wont

n. a habitual way of doing things

adj. accustomed or habituated (usually to something

v. to accustom (tr.); to be accustomed (intr.)

I am wont to using this word a lot, in part because it’s a neat word and in part because it’s so useful: three forms, all the same. The only downfall is that people who don’t know any better tend to think I’m saying “want” (even when you open the throat and do the short ‘o’ like ‘pot’), which is often close enough to get the meaning across, but a far cry from correct.

Wont comes from the Old English wunian—”to dwell, be accustomed”—which itself from the Proto-Germanic *wun- (“to be content, to rejoice”); in other words, the rallying call of homebodies and armchair tourists everywhere. You can still see it in the Germanic languages: the Germans have wohnen and the Dutch have wonen. For a while (the late 19th century is the last period from which I can find examples—e.g. Sir Richard Burton), the word was also in American English as “won” and “wone.”

Want, by contrast comes to us from the Nordic vant (“wanting, deficient”) in a fairly straightforward transformation. Interestingly, this word is related to our verb “to wane” via the Old English wanian (“to diminish”) and Middle English wanen. The prefix wan- in Germanic language tends to act as a pejorative. The Dutch waan, for instance, which is similar to the Middle Dutch and Old English wan-, and all of which were ultimately from the Proto-German *wan[o]- and Proto-Indo-European *we-no-, both of which indicating a lacking, absence, or deficit.

These two words, therefore, mean very different (and in some cases opposite) things. The first indicates habit or contentment, and the second indicates a dearth or desire. I suppose one could technically be wont to want—that is, accustomed to being without—but that’s not a phrase I hear very often.

tremendous

adj. Notable for its size, power, or excellence.

adj. Extremely large (in amount, extent, degree, etc.) or great

Tremendous comes to us from the Latin tremendus, meaning “fearful, terrible.” Literally, it means that the described object is “to be trembled at”; the PIE base *tre[s|m], meaning “tremble,” has given rise not only to our modern “to tremble” through the Latin tremere (and hence the origin of “tremendous”), but also “terrible” as well, from terrere (“to inspire fear”). Tremendous and terrible are, therefore, more or less the same words, even though we probably wouldn’t realise it as speakers of Modern English.

Tremendous in the sense of “awful, dreadful, terrible” is a 17th-century construction. It began to take on other meanings—size, for instance, as well as superlatively good—in the early 18th century. In doing so, it lost most of its qualifying characteristics in favor of quantifying ones.

Oddly enough, one of tremendous’s synonyms, enormous, experienced something like this phenomenon as well. The manner in which most of us use it—to denote a massive size—is an old form, dating from the mid-16th century, from the Latin enormis (read: not normal); in that respect the word has been fairly stable. Prior to that, however, the word referred to outrageousness or wickedness, and that sense is still retained in the word “enormity,” which I don’t hesitate to note has fallen into disuse. As often as not, when someone uses the word “enormity” they are yet referring to size.

There was a notable shift in the early-to-mid-19th century in the usage of these words; they lost much of their connotations and became mere intensifiers. Consider “awful,” which is literally that which inspires “awe,” the aforementioned “tremendous,” and “terribly” in its adjective form. Even “terrific,” which is another Latinate word which originally meant “to inspire terror,” has become either a positive phrase like tremendous, or a general purpose intensifier.

Our other “size” words are often more recent constructions or have less interesting histories.. Gigantic is a straightforward derivation of “giant,” though it looks more again to the Latin gagantem (gagas is “giant”). Humongous is nonsense word from the 1960s which mixes “huge” and “monstrous.” “Ginormous” (from “gigantic” and “enormous”), a very recently-popular construction, attests to this same phenomenon.

Ironically enough, our simplest words for size are the most mysterious. “Huge” is from Old French ahuge, whose origins are lost to us; “big” is a 13/14th-century word from Northern England, with potentially Scandanavian but otherwise unknown etymology. “Large,” which is a straightfoward Latinate word originally meaning “bountiful” gained its alternate sense of size around this same point.