Word Salad

By Kevin Cox, STC Member

Word salad: (n.) An informal term for incoherent speech and sometimes writing made up of real and concocted words, lacking overall sense, and often occurring in schizophrenia.

This column presents adventures in etymology, or the study of the origins of words and phrases ¾ to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.

Welcome to a new year and a new column! This issue, with Valentine's Day approaching, we'll look at the language of love:

Darling
Darling is one of the most popular terms of endearment in the English language, and also one of the oldest. Darling is derived from the Old English word deor or deore, meaning "beloved or dear." It earliest known form, deorling, appeared around the year 888. The "-ling" ending in this case means "one who is," so "deorling" and today's "darling" simply means "one who is dear" (the same as we might use earthling). Darling is used both as a noun meaning "a person who is loved," an adjective meaning "loved," and an affectionate form of address ("Darling, fetch me another bonbon, please"). Darling can also be used in a figurative (and often slightly sarcastic) sense to mean one who is favored or preferred by a person or entity not usually considered affectionate ("The President is the darling of the oil companies").

French Kiss
We all know what a French kiss is, but why do we call it French? This term has been in use since at least the 1920s, and it probably came from the idea that the French are sexually liberated; thus the act of "French" kissing came to mean kissing in the "French" manner.

Honeymoon
The original sense of honeymoon was "the period of pleasure immediately following a marriage" ¾ that is, before the couple settle into a routine. The word intimates a connotation of this period as being "as sweet as honey;" sweet has been used as a word for pleasurable in English for over a thousand years. "Moon" may either refer to the period between full moons (a month), or directly to the phases of the moon itself. This may infer that the honeymoon is a period of great pleasure, and that this period wanes with the waning of the moon. Of course, the moon always waxes full again, so hope springs eternal.

The sense "a vacation taken by a newly married couple" is an extension of the honeymoon period. The word first appeared in the 16th century; the "vacation" sense arose by the 18th century.

SOURCES:
Word Origins, http://www.wordorigins.org;
Evan Morris' Word Detective, http://www.word-detective.com.

Kevin Cox is Assistant Editor for The Willamette Galley. He can be reached
knccomm@yahoo.com.