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Spandex is a well-known elastic material, but where does the name for it come from? It certainly has an exotic-sounding ring to it. Well, that's because it's not a natural formation; it's actually an anagram of the word expands! The term was coined in 1959 by an unknown individual, which is too bad, as they really deserve credit for one of the few anagram etymologies out there. Now, onto the rest of it! The word expand comes from Anglo-Norman espaundre, which comes from Latin expandere, which literally meant "to spread out". This is because it is comprised of the root pandere, meaning "to spread", and the prefix ex-, meaning "out". We've already seen ex- on a plethora of occasions, and it comes from a Proto-Indo-European root sounding like hegs or egs and carrying a definition of "out" as well. Pandere, meanwhile, comes from PIE peth, also "spread". Very little semantic change there but still a fascinating origin overall!
2 Comments
8/19/2018 11:27:47 pm
Good point on anagrams. Do you think they’re more likely to be a recent phenomenon since companies are actively trying to develop new words that are relatable and popular, etc? It’s like a new dimension of wordmaking, where words are actively being created instead of out of necessity. 8/20/2018 06:44:04 pm
Definitely! The first acronyms originated in the days of telegraphic codes, and it stands to reason that the first anagram etymologies came around even later as people started goofing around with words more. Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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AUTHOR
Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history.
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