ETYMOLOGY
101
The origin of: piano
The piano is one of the most widely played instruments in
the world, but few who do not study music know why it is so
named. The first piano was built around 1709 by a Florentine
named Bartolommeo Cristofori, who wanted to improve on the
design of the harpsichord so that a musician could add dynamics
to his playing—that is, control how loud or soft the
notes sounded.
The fundamental
difference between a harpsichord and a piano is that a harpsichord
plucks the strings, while a piano strikes them with felt-covered
hammers. The plucking mechanism in a harpsichord prevents
a musician from adding changes in volume to his playing. Bart
thus set about designing an instrument that would produce
different volumes based on how much pressure was applied to
the keys. He named his invention the gravicembalo
col piano e forte, which, aside from being a
mouthful, is Italian for “harpsichord with soft and
loud.” Piano means “soft”
in musical lingo, and forte means
“loud,” so the device was so named because it
could produce both soft and loud tones.
Over what was probably
a very short time, the name for this new instrument was shortened
to piano e forte, then by contraction
to pianoforte, and finally to its
present form.
Source: The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories.
WELL
I'LL BE!
THE
ANSWER TO A QUESTION YOU NEVER ASKED
TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE
Why do people give each other the finger?
Where do we get the word “fuck”?
Speaking of “sleight of hand,” where do we get
that offensive middle finger gesture, and is that story about
Agincourt and English archers and “plucking yew”
just a bunch of, well, yew know what?
For the past several
years, a story posing as fact has been circulating around
the Internet. I’ve read this story about a dozen times,
and it has always seemed highly dubious. For those unfamiliar
with the “story,” it asserts that the reason we
all give each other the bird is because the French, prior
to being decimated by the English at Agincourt in 1415, threatened
to cut off the middle fingers of all captured English archers
(who proved so devastating in the ensuing conflict). At the
conclusion of the battle, the triumphant English waved their
middle fingers and shouted “We can still pluck yew!”
It is from this victory cry that we supposedly get the phrase
“fuck you.” If it were all true, this would have
been one of the more productive days in history.
The short of it
is that this myth is horrendously false for three big reasons.
For starters, battles
were chronicled by heralds, people who stood off to the side
and took notes on what was happening, much like a modern reporter
would. There were never any accounts—by anyone—of
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French having cut off the fingers of captured
English bowmen at Agincourt. The source of this myth may come
from Jean Froissart (d. ~1404), a French chronicler who wrote
a good deal about the first half of the Hundred Years’
War. Froissart described an incident in which the English
waved their fingers at the French, but this took place at
a different battle. Froissart’s Chronicles
are not exactly a paragon of historical accuracy, however,
so even this story must be taken with a grain of salt.
Secondly, there
was no reason for the French to take the time to mutilate
someone as low on the chivalric totem pole as an archer. In
medieval battles, prisoners were taken with the hope they
could be ransomed, and for no other reason. There was no ransom
to be given for an archer, nor was there any glory in killing
one in battle, so there was hardly any reason for the French
to go to the trouble of capturing them and then removing their
fingers.
Lastly, the origin
of the word fuck has nothing to
do with a gradual transformation from the word “pluck.”
Rather, the f-bomb (whose origins are admittedly
a bit shady) is likely of Scandinavian origin, from the word
fukka, “to copulate”
or the Swedish focka, “copulate,
strike, push.” There is little written evidence of the
word since it has long been considered taboo, and hence little
for modern etymologists to go on. It was outlawed in print
in England in 1857 by the Obscene Publications Act, and in
the U.S. in 1873 by the Comstock Act. It did not appear in
a single English language dictionary
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