How did certain words receive their name?
Wife and i were discussing how certain words came to be, like the word zipper. we all know what a zipper is, but how did it get its name? was the inventor name zip or zipper? how about the word “fly”? this word has several meanings, but only interested in the word fly as associated with a pair of pants. how did this word come to be? i have been told that the English language is the most difficult language to learn and understand. a single word can have several meanings and spelled differently. do you have a special word thats always puzzeled you?
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I presume a zipper is called a zipper because of the sound it makes when you open or close it. Zip.
As for fly… heck if I know.
I don’t think it’s not true that English is particularly difficult to learn, though. Every language has lots of words with several meanings and weird spelling.
‘Tis the mysterious evolution of the English language.
@john65pennington. Zipper: 1925, probably from zip (1). The trademark taken out on the name that year applied to a boot with zippers, not to the “lightning fastener” itself, which was at first called a zip.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=z
The study of word origins is one of my favorite things.
To quote my favorite source for this kind of thing:
“Zipper was registered in the U.S. as a trade mark in April 1925 (with use of the term claimed since June 1923), but in the sense ‘boots made of rubber and fabric’. It is no longer a proprietary term in any of its uses.”—Oxford English Dictionary, etymology of “zipper”
Although I can’t quote any serious etymological sources here, “fly” doesn’t seem to be too hard to derive.
The word “fly” has very many definitions, and one of them (which certainly predates the use of the trouser fitting in question) is that of “a tent with no walls”, or a flap to cover the opening of a tent. And that’s not so hard to figure, either, since “flying jibs” on sailing craft have been with us for centuries. When the wind rises, a “fly” on a tent will appear to attempt to “fly”, so that name isn’t out of place.
When the flap began to be sewn into trousers to cover the button front or zipper opening (which isn’t old at all, of course), then borrowing the “fly” appellation from its use in tent nomenclature isn’t so out of place. And I presume that like most men you have “pitched a tent” before, haven’t you?
I know that !#$$%^^&^%$@! means mother-in-law in my special language ;))
I love the origins of words. My favorite is ‘undermine’ as in ‘to undermine his authority’. It comes from siege warfare. The sieging army would mine under the walls of the castle thus undermining it’s authority.
Yes,that is true.Words can have multiple meanings ;)
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