Really? I thought its only meaning was to run away. Link.
I’m quite interested to know because my fantasy baseball team is called the Absquatulating Sockdolagers.
From Ravenmabn’s link:
???
I’ve heard of skedaddle and hornswoggle, but I’ve never come across sockdologer before Raven’s post. And i thought I was reasonably well-read.
Does it have a blacksmith?
My favorite is “Boogie”, which comes ultimately from Bulgaria, and now means “dancing”, basically.
Prodigal is a word that seems to be in the process of changing its meaning.
It means “recklessly extravagant” or “wasteful,” but it seems like most people are using it to mean “wayward” or “gone astray.”
People are familiar with the Biblical parable of the prodigal son, I suppose, and they mistakenly assume that the adjective prodigal refers to the fact that he wandered away from home, when in fact it refers to his spendthrift habits.
If a critical mass of people use it to mean “wayward,” though, the original meaning may go by the wayside.
Slightly off topic, and likely an urban legend, but the story goes that Charles Perrault’s version of Cinderella was mistranslated from ‘fur slipper’ (pantoufle de vair) into the version that survives today in popular (and Disney) retellings–‘glass slipper’ (pantoufle de verre).
And torpedo, in the military sense, is also named after a fish, the electric ray:
Snopes, among others says that the mis-translation theory is wrong. They cite the fact that in the original edition, the word is written “verre” and not “vair” and that by the time Perrault wrote the story, “vair” was not a word in common usage. Here’s a link to an early edition, where you can see the “verre” spelling.
However, the idea that Perrault did, indeed, mean “fur” and not “glass” is common and fairly well accepted in the French world. For instance, Émile Littré, in his famous dictionary notes:
The Trésor de la langue française has a similar entry:
The Trésor follows with a quote by Balzac:
From what I’ve read, it appears that this comment by Balzac is in great part responsible for setting the idea that the slipper was of fur and not glass in French literary circles.
Similarly, wonderful meant “filled with wonders”- more akin to mysterious/puzzling or even “horribly wrong” than it’s used now (delightful, excellent).
Regarding sockdolager, there’s actually a play called SOCKDOLOGY about the actors on stage the night Lincoln was killed. Not a great one, but one that I’ve seen professionally staged once and advertisements for at several colleges.
Mad-was “insane”, now means “angry”.
Vulgar-was simply the common language of a certain geographical region instead of the Latin of the intelligencia, now describes any crude and/or sexual speech or behavior.
Simple-was “retarded”, now “uncomplicated…un-complex…easy”.
Well I knew coney meant rabbit. As in Bunny Island. I’ve also heard it’s distantly related to cunt, as far as relating woman’s genitals to small furry animals.
Uptight orginally all put together, smooth as per the song" Everything is all right.
Uptight. Out of sight.", before it meant repressed, anxious, conventional.
People called sharks and shrimps are not being named for an animal. The animal was named for the lawyers and the short people.
Eh? The dictionary says Police came from:
Bit of a journey to get back to city, but not a complete fabrication, as far as I can see.
betenoir writes:
I think that relationship to female genitals is a happy coincidence. “cunt” is pretty much acknowledged to derive from Latin cuneus = “wedge” (from the shape), and not etymologically related to “coney”/“cunny” = rabbit at all. But the verbal similarity of the names must have appealed to people (men, I’ll bet), you saw “small, warm, furry animal” as an appropriate image. Sort of like “pussy”.
Still has the original meaning 95% of the time in Britain.
I read that although no one is sure of the origin of pussy, one theory is that it may be derived from the french word for pocket. The fact that cats are also called pussies may be completely cooincidental.
Interesting that furryman contributes this.
They made a point of using the term correctly in the last episode of Doctor Who. (Episode titled: Last of the Time Lords)
You would have been proud.
Well, sorta. “Decimate” is derived from “decimation,” which meant taxation of 10%, and so far predates (16th century) the verb in any written record (17th century). The primary meaning of the verb (long since fallen into desuetude) meant killing or exection of 10%. So, it’s actually evolved twice. Sorta. I think the similarity in sound to “devastate” might account for the more current usage.
I’ve never heard of any intermediate stage regarding taxation. Every derivation I’ve heard of “decimate” takes it directly from the ancient meaning of “killing 1 in 10”. Do you have a cite for the taxation stage?