Why are floors of buildings called stories (or storeys)? One theory suggests that an Latin architectural term historia once referred to the stained-glass windows or the ornate statues around the edifice. But the etymology is unclear. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Building Storeys”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Gina calling from Dallas, Texas.
Hi, Gina. Welcome to the program.
Oh, thanks. Well, I have a question about floors on a building, why they’re called stories.
Stories, like fifth story, fourth story, first story.
Yeah, exactly.
Grant and I have talked about this because it’s a little bit problematic.
Some dictionaries will tell you that there may have been an architectural term, historia, from the Latin word historia, meaning a story, and that it may refer to decorations around buildings in the Middle Ages.
Like, you know, like if you see a cathedral and it has all those stained glass windows, that a series of stained glass windows, it tells a story.
Literally, panel to panel, just like a big comic book, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or that maybe there are sculptures going around a building like that and that there are different stories at different levels.
So you’d have this transference, this idea of this level of the building, which literally is telling a tale.
That name then transferred to refer just to the level of the building and no longer to the story itself.
However, there’s a big however.
In the Oxford English Dictionary, it says, we don’t buy it.
The OED people, and there’s some of the best lexicographers that we know, they’re like, we don’t buy it because we’ve got some evidence that this probably comes from a French term that more or less refers to actual the word history.
So you’ve got this confusion of these words with similar spellings and possibly related meanings.
And there’s all kinds of collisions there in the past.
And we’re not quite sure how to tease that out.
Yeah.
And as far as I know, the ancient Romans didn’t use the word historia like that to mean a story in a building.
And, you know, if you look at European languages, they have nothing to do with story in their terms for different floors in a building.
So it’s a mess.
It’s a mess.
Oh.
Well, it’s very interesting because I still call them stories, and you don’t hear it quite as often anymore as you used to.
What do you hear instead?
Floors.
Fifth floor.
Sixth floor.
And I say, what story are you on?
Yeah, yeah.
Sounds a little old-fashioned.
Well, at the very least, we learned a new word today.
We learned his story.
It refers to these panels of scenes around the certain levels of old buildings, right?
Exactly.
Cool.
Well, thank you.
Sure.
Take care.
It was a pleasure talking to you.
Bye-bye, Gina.
Thanks, Gina.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
That’s a difficult story, isn’t it, to unravel?
Difficult story to unravel.
We should point out, yes, there are two different spellings of this.
The British spells story with an E, E-Y at the end, and the Americans don’t.
And let’s not even get started on different levels in different buildings in different countries.
Yeah, the planta baja in Spanish is different.
The first floor is different from the…
Never mind.
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