It is fair to say that ancient epic is having a moment in the popular imagination, driven largely by Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey movie. If you are sick of hearing about it already, I have good news: I won’t be using Notes from a Writer’s Desk to opine on the film (which, I confess, I have yet to see). But I thought it might be fun in these lighter summer months to use Homer’s Odyssey as a jumping-off point for discussing one of the ancient world’s most pervasive legacies: the histories hidden inside our words. From there, believe it or not, we’ll make our way to omelets.
We call the study of the origin of words etymology, and it can change how you interact with language. Take the word “odyssey,” which means something like a long and difficult journey. As you might expect, this word does in fact come from the name of the hero Odysseus, whose feats you can see on the big screen this summer. But “odyssey” is not even the most common word that comes from a character’s name in Homer’s epic poem. That distinction probably belongs to Mentor, a friend of Odysseus who watches out for his son in his absence. You can likely guess what English word comes from this figure who provides guidance to a younger counterpart, though in Homer’s version, Mentor is often actually Athena in disguise.[1]
Study of the so-called classical languages (Greek and Latin) is particularly useful in English etymology. Just under a third of English derives from Latin roots, and another third comes from French, itself a Romance language (a language group named for its Roman and thus Latin roots). Despite its prominence this summer, ancient Greek provides the source for only about 5 percent of dictionary headings. A major layer of French-derived vocabulary entered English after the Norman Conquest of 1066, when the conquerors introduced their own language, Norman French, and thus displaced the use of Germanic Old English among much of the ruling elite, especially in domains like government and law.
Hence we have Germanic pig but French-derived pork coinciding in English; cow and beef show a similar distinction. The usual explanation is that the animals maintained their English names as they were raised by farmers, but were given French names when cooked and served to nobility. (The various roots of the English language appear in a George Orwell essay I have discussed here and in a book by Robert Graves I have covered here, both for this blog.)
An understanding of classical languages can get you a fair distance toward seeing the roots of many modern words. For writers, it can also sharpen our sense of what words imply, showing how their histories carry shades of meaning or make obvious what was hidden.
Suddenly, seemingly obscure words become transparent. To take a favorite, “defenestration” (the throwing of someone or something from a window) is just de + fenestra in Latin, “out of” + “window.” Easy.
Things get even more interesting when common words reveal a history of change over time, having undergone odysseys of their own. Take, for example, the humble omelet.
Contained within this common breakfast dish is a remarkable series of linguistic transformations. It seems ultimately to derive from the Latin lamella, which means a thin layer; lamella is itself a diminutive form of Latin lamina, “layer,” from which we get the English “laminate.” This makes perfect sense when you consider the shape of an omelet: a thin layer of egg folded in half.
But how do we get from lamella all the way to omelet? As far as we can tell, by a process that involves changing the word in French centuries ago, from la lemelle to alemelle.[2] Eventually alemelle became alemette. But we still have one more step to go: over time, variation crept in, and the l and m sounds switched places, producing something like “amelette.”[3] In short order (pun intended), this became omelette in French, and there we are: across centuries, languages, misunderstandings and borrowings, Latin lamina eventually gives us the American English omelet.
While ancient languages can help broaden our vocabularies and clarify unknown words, often they simply provide a starting point for tracing the remarkable journeys words make from their origins down to our times. These stories can be fascinating in their own right, and every word has one, whether it’s the Odyssey or an omelet. Some food for thought as you wait for your popcorn.
*Banner image: Winslow Homer, Schooner at Sunset, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, 1943.298.
[1] The modern use of “mentor” probably owes more to intervening texts, which emphasize the character Mentor as guide for young Telemachus, than to Homer and antiquity.
[2] The shift was probably from la lamelle to l’alamelle, a misunderstanding of the division between article and noun. This process of passing letters between words (reanalysis) is also how “a napron” became “an apron”—and “napkin” (the diminutive form) is an etymological cousin!
[3] The swapping of sounds within a word is known as metathesis.
