The word debunk was prominently coined by author William Woodward in his 1923 satirical novel Bunk, wherein the main character went around trying to "take the bunk out of things". The bunk in that sentence is with the meaning of "nonsense" that we still sometimes use today. That's a 1900 shortening of bunkum, which is a misspelling of Buncombe, the name of a county in North Carolina. The area got associated with nonsense because of a particularly boring speech given by Democratic-Republican Congressman Felix Walker concerning the admission of Missouri to the Union. Despite being asked multiple times to stop his excruciating drivel, Walker kept on talking, saying it wasn't for the benefit of Congress but rather a "speech for Buncombe", irrevocably associating his town with political verbiage. This is completely unrelated to the "type of bed" definition for bunk, which is related to bunker​.

The word gobsmacked (a whimsical way to say "astonished") was first written down in a 1935 edition of a periodical called the Beekeeper's Record, in the following sentence:

When he landed back Martha wad be fare gob smacked at the yarns he wad tell 'er about Yorkshire clod-hoppers.

This near-incomprehensible quote is a great example of the very colloquial history of the word. It combines our familiar term smack with the Scottish Gaelic noun gob, which meant "mouth" (the idea was that if something was gobsmacking, it was akin to getting hit in the mouth). That percolated through various northern English dialects, becoming especially associated with Liverpool, and was then popularized through television programmes set in the area. The etymology of gob is uncertain; it could be related to the Middle English verb gobben, which meant "drink greedily", or another Gaelic word, which was also spelled gob and meant "beak". Smack​ is just imitative of the sound of a strike.

The Mamluk sultanate (also stylized Mameluk, Mamluq, Mamaluke, Mameluk, and Marmeluk because of how the Arabic was translated) was a medieval caliphate with a weird governmental system where they would import slaves to be soldiers and eventually leaders. Accordingly, the word meant "slave" in Arabic, with a literal translation of "possessed". That's the past participle of malaka ("to possess"), which comes from the Proto-Semitic root m-l-k, meaning "king" (through a connection of "rule"). This also yielded the Hebrew and Arabic words for king, melekh and malik, which is kind of a cool juxtaposition, and mamluk was borrowed by the Portuguese to become mameluco, their word for first generation children of Europeans and Native Americans.

The word caddy can describe either a type of small storage container or a golfing assistant; the definitions are unrelated. The former comes from catty, a unit of weight used by the British East India Company that came to be metonymically applied to the tea it measured (that originated from the kati unit used by Malay traders). The latter is an alternative spelling of caddie, which originally meant "person who runs errands" in general and was the Scottish spelling of French cadet (the source of English cadet, with the same meaning). Through a Gascon sense of "young member of a noble family", cadet traces to the Latin noun capitellam, or "little chief", and the root there is caput, meaning "head", because a chief is the head of a tribe. Finally, caput is from a Proto-Indo-European reconstruction also meaning "head", caput​.

In the rather excellent movie My Cousin Vinny, the prosecutor said that the word "verdict" means "truth" and implied that it comes from Old English. This is half-correct. The noun was first attested in 1297 as verdit - that's during a time when Middle English was spoken - and, that derives from the Old French word veirdit, which translates most directly to "true saying" (the latter part was conspicuously glossed over). The "true" part, veir, is from Latin veritas and Proto-Indo-European weh, with the same definition; the "saying" part, dit, is the past participle of the verb for "say", dire, and that traces to Latin dicere (also "say") and the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction deik, meaning "show". I used Google Trends to look up search frequency for the term verdict over the past 16 years, and it had large spikes in July 2011, July 2013; I'm guessing that was because of the Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman trials which resolved at those times.

Chicanery is a rather delightful word that refers to deceit or subterfuge, particularly in a political or corporate context. The term was first attested in English in 1589, when it was spelled chicanerie. Other forms around that time included chicannery, chiquanerey, chiquanery, and more; the modern spelling seems to have been standardized around the late seventeenth century, and it really peaked in usage in the 1760s. It was borrowed from French chicanerie, which meant "trickery" in general. That's from the verb chicaner, "to quibble", which has an unknown origin. The best theory we have is that it further traces to the Middle Low German word schicken, meaning "arrange". That would be from Proto-Germanic skikkijana and the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction skeg, which best translates to "jump".

The word relegate (meaning "exile" or "demote") was borrowed in the fifteenth century from Latin relegatus, which is the past participle of the verb relegare, which had the same definition. More literally, it translates to "send again", as it was composed of the prefix re- ("again", from Proto-Indo-European wre) and the root legare, which could mean "send", "choose", or "gather", often particularly for use in diplomatic contexts. This is also the source of the words delegate, legation, colleague, and legacy. Finally, legare comes from the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction leg, meaning "gather" (the etymon of legal, apology, elect, lesson, logic, and many, many more words). According to Google NGrams, literary usage of relegate peaked in the 1890s and has been fairly constant since.

When the word egregious was borrowed into English in the late 1500s, it meant "splendid" or "distinguished"! However, over time, the definition shifted to the modern meaning of "outstandingly bad" because it was frequently used in a sarcastic context, and the other sense was relegated to the annals of history. It seems that the adjective was taken directly from Latin egregius, which also meant "excellent" but more literally translates to "out of the flock": that's composed of the prefix e-, meaning "out of" (from Proto-Indo-European eghs, also "out") and the root grex, meaning "flock" (from Proto-Indo-European ger, "to gather"). After peaking in the year 1590, literary usage of the word egregious has generally declined, although there's been a slight resurgence since the late twentieth century.

The word deadline in the sense that we know it today first emerged in early twentieth century newspaper slang. It's thought to have originated from a Civil War term (frequently stylized with a hyphen) referring to an actual physical boundary in prisoner-of-war camps that inmates were not allowed to cross, on penalty of death. The term was popularized by its use in the highly-publicized trial of Confederate general Henry Wirz, who infamously established such a line at his squalid camp in Andersonville, Georgia. Later on, apparently people metaphorically extended the word to time limits on the sense that submitting something late is like getting shot. One piece of evidence that would challenge this theory, however, is that there are attestations of the noun deadline being used in the 1920s to refer to a marking on the bed of a printing press. Maybe that's also related, though - it's uncertain.

Today I'd like to briefly talk about the Latin verb rapere,  which meant "seize" or "carry off". Its past participle, raptus, has been extremely influential in our language. In later Latin, it developed into the noun raptor, meaning  "thief", which eventually became a term for "bird of prey" in English. In Old French, it evolved into the verbs rapir and ravir, meaning "take by force"; in the fifteenth century, these turned into English rape and ravish​, respectively. In church contexts, rapture came to refer to a "state of mental transport", like being carried off by God. Things that were seized were often taken quickly, so rapidus and eventually rapid emerged from that sense. Ravine, usurp, ravenous, rapacious, rapt, surreptitious, and many other words can also all be traced back to raptus - I'll have to go more in depth on several of those later.

When the word monkey was borrowed into English in the 1530s, there was no standard way of writing it. Spellings included monkaie, munckey, munkai, menkeie, munkkey, moncky, munkie, and many others. The reason for all the confusion is that it was borrowed from an unrecorded Dutch word, so scholars had to figure out how to spell it on their own. In the language, it probably sounded something like monnekjin, and that's thought to be from Spanish mono, meaning "monkey". Mono is thought to be a shortening of Old Spanish maimon, which was borrowed from Arabic maymun, still "monkey" (as a Serbian speaker, it's cool to see the connection to their word, majmun). Finally, that's thought to be related to the Proto-Semitic root y-m-n, "right", but the etymology is uncertain.

The word flamingo was first used in a 1589 account of discoveries by the English nation, where it was spelled flemengo. This is similar to the source word, Spanish flamengo, which literally meant "flame-colored". The reasons for the spelling changes were influences from Germanic languages and confusion with the ethnonym Fleming (which, as flamenco in Spanish, could be taken to mean "flamingo" as well). The root of flamengo is the noun flama, meaning "flame", which traces to Latin flamma and eventually Proto-Indo-European bhel, "to shine". The association of flamingoes with fire is not exclusive to Spanish: the Greek genus name phoenicopterus means "blood red-feathered", and in Serbo-Croatian, the bird is called a plamenac, from plamen, "flame".

Today, the word arena refers to any venue surrounded by seating for spectators, but when it was first brought into English, it was exclusively used in the context of the central parts of Roman amphitheatres. That definition comes from Latin harena, which originally meant "sand" or "sandy space", since the centers of ancient arenas were commonly filled with sand. That's also the etymon of arenaceous, an adjective used in mostly scientific contexts to refer to things pertaining to sand. Harena of uncertain origin, but has been spelled as hasena, and cognates suggest that it's possibly that it's ultimately from an Etruscan root. It occurred to me that we still use arena as a figurative term for battlefields, such as in the expression arena of war. This most closely relates to the original meaning, which is cool.

The word ottoman can refer to a type of footstool, a style of silk, or (with capitalization) to the former Turkish empire. Both items are, as you may expect, named after the caliphate: the stool became popular in European salons in the 1700s and was first recorded in French as ottomane due to an association with eastern European customs. The "silk" definition followed a similar route and was first used in the late nineteenth century. Ottoman eventually comes from the Arabic masculine proper name Uthman, for which I can't find a further etymology. You'll occasionally notice poets using Othman to refer to the people-group; this was both to be accurate in regard to the original Arabic form and for rhyming/metrical purposes. Surprisingly, usages of both capital- and lowercase-o Ottoman​ have been increasing lately.

The first turquoise was mined by the Egyptians in the Sinai peninsula and the Persians in the Nishapur region of modern-day Iran. Both civilizations traded it with the Turks, who then brought it to Europe. Subsequently, the French named it pierre turqueise, meaning "Turkish stone". That was borrowed into English in the 1560s and it began to be metonymically applied to the color of the mineral in the mid-nineteenth century. Turqueise is from Turk, the Turkish self-appellation, which has an unknown etymology. It may ultimately be from Proto-Turkic turi ("ancestry"), from the Tu-Kin people group (that's a Chinese name, interestingly), or related to words for "strength" or "barbarian". In 2019, turquoise​ made up 0.000153% of all words used in English-language books.

Punani, an often-vulgar slang word for "vagina", originated from the 1980s Jamaican patois term punanny and was popularized through reggae and use on Da Ali G Show. Some think that the term comes from Hawaiian puanani, meaning "beautiful flower" (from pua, "blossom", and nani, "lovely"), but geographically speaking that's hard to buy. It's also been proposed is that it's from poon, another nickname for "vagina" and a shortening of poontang, which is a Haitian Creole corruption of French putain, "prostitute". Putain, through Old French pute, traces to Latin putus, meaning "pure" (this may have been influenced by putidus, "stinking"; also the source of Spanish puta). Finally, that would be from Proto-Indo-European pewh, which meant "to purify". It's often hard to find etymologies for such colloquial words, but both options are fascinating!

The word nasty first showed up in English in 1390 as nasti, which translates to "filthy", and that eventually evolved to have a broader meaning of "disgusting" in general. Before that, it's a bit of an etymological mystery. It's commonly thought to be related to Dutch nestig and Swedish neskog, which had the same definition. This would suggest an Old Norse origin, but other theories suggest that it's a shortening of Old French villenastre, meaning "bad" (this would make it a relative of villain), that it's from a Middle Dutch word for "nest", or that it traces to Old High German naz, "wet". In short, we have no consensus. A popular urban legend that we can definitely debunk, however, is that it's named after editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast, who was five centuries too late for that to be a thing.

The word marble was first used in a twelfth-century religious text, where it was spelled marbra. Subsequent forms included Marbre, marbyr, and maber, until more recognizable spellings like marbell and marbel were adopted in the 1500s. The r changing to an l is pretty weird here because English has distinct liquid consonants that don't get confused much; the most likely explanation is that the word was influenced by a Germanic term that was lost to the ages. Marbra, through Old French, comes from Latin marmor, which further is from Ancient Greek marmaros, meaning "shining" or "sparkling" (this possibly has something to do with marble deposit being on the coast of the sea). Marmoreal, a literary word meaning "made of marble", is a cool remnant of this past form.

The deep red color burgundy was named in the late nineteenth century after the eponymous type of pinot noir, which in turn was named in the 1670s after the region of France that it's produced in. That comes from Medieval Latin Burgundia and French Bourgogne, which also described the general geographic area. Eventually, it all traces to Proto-Germanic Burgundi, which literally meant "highlander" and developed from Proto-Indo-European bhergh, "high". Other words that come from this root include borough, bourgeoisie, burglar, burgher, and the suffix in iceberg. In the eighteenth century, burgundy could also refer to a type of swanky headdress for women, but that definition has mostly died out. According to Google Ngrams, literary usage of capital-B Burgundy has been declining since the 1700s, while usage of lower-case burgundy has been on the increase lately.

The nouns kielbasa and pastrami are distantly related! Kielbasa was borrowed in the 1950s from Polish kiełbasa, which meant "sausage". That's thought to derive from Turkish kulbasti, meaning "grilled cutlet" or more literally translating to "pressed on the ashes". Pastrami took a different path, coming at the turn of the twentieth century from Yiddish pastrame. Through Romanian, that traces to Turkish basdirma, meaning "dried meat" and literally translating to "press down". The connection between these words is Turkish bas, "to press"; apparently pressing was involved in the production of both types of meats (beyond that, it's reconstructed to Proto-Turkic bas, with the same definition). As a Serbian speaker, it was cool to find the cognates kobasica and pastrami - the language has a lot of Turkish influence because of the Ottoman Empire.

When the word cinch was borrowed into English in 1859, it described a type of Mexican saddle girth. The girths were typically considered to be pretty tight, so by the 1880s, cinch was used to describe anything that was firm or secure. That figuratively developed further into the "easy thing" definition that we know from the word's usage today, since it's easy to do something when it's secure. Cinch comes from Spanish cincha, which traces to Latin cingulum, meaning "girdle" or "swordbelt". That traces to the verb cingere, "to encircle" and the Proto-Indo-European root kenk (with the same translation). The verb form of cinch (meaning "to make certain") is from the 1890s, the name of the card game might actually be from Spanish cinco​, and literary usage of the term peaked in 1919.

An inselberg is a mountain or hill that abruptly protrudes from its otherwise flat surroundings. It's a weird geographical formation that looks almost like an island rising out of the land, and the name reflects that: it comes from German insel, meaning "island", and berg, "mountain". Insel, just like the English word island (but not isle, as I discussed last October) comes from the Latin noun insula, also "island". That's of uncertain origin, but due to similar words in Greek and Celtic it's thought to ultimately be Indo-European. Berg, through Proto-Germanic bergaz, is reconstructed as coming from Proto-Indo-European berg, meaning "high" (this is also the root of the -burg suffix in city names like Hamburg). The word inselberg has been in use since 1898 and reached peak usage in 1975.

When I think of the noun anthrax, I associate it with the white powder infamously mailed to politicians after 9/11. However, when it was borrowed into the English language in 1398, it specifically referred to inflamed lesions of the skin (which are the primary symptom of the disease associated with the poison). Through Latin, the term comes from Ancient Greek anthrax, which had a secondary definition of "boil" but literally meant "coal" because anthrax lesions are characterized by dark coal-like tissues in their centers (this is also the etymon of the rock name anthracite). Ultimately, that has an unknown origin, possibly tracing to some pre-Greek language. Literary usage of anthrax peaked in 1926 and has trended downward since, although the twenty-first century has seen a resurgence in attestations of the word.

The word caltrop describes a type of spiked metal object that, when planted on the ground, is useful in defending against enemy cavalry or puncturing automobile tires. When it was first used in English in 1300, it was spelled calketrap; subsequent forms included calcatrippe, caltroppe, calltrop, calthrap, galtroppe, and many others. Even today, there's no single standard spelling, with caltrap, galtrop, galthrap, galtrap, and calthrop all accepted by different authors. It all comes from the Medieval Latin word calcatrippa, meaning "thistle". That's composed of calx, or "heel" (also the etymon of calcium, calculation, and causeway), and trappa, "trap". Calx, which was likely influenced by the verb calcare ("to tread"), comes from Ancient Greek khalix, meaning "pebble", and trappa traces to the Proto-Indo-European root dremb, meaning "to run".