Foreign Word Origins

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Mark. I’m from Panama City, Florida.

Hey, Mark.

Home of the world’s most beautiful beaches.

Oh, really? You mean after San Diego?

That’s right.

Well, Mark, what’s on your mind linguistically?

You know, there’s so much on my mind linguistically, but I know I only have a little bit of time with you guys. I’m going to try to throw two out for you.

My boss hits us with these a lot. One day he was told that someone shouldn’t have to kowtow to him. And then his question was, what does kowtow mean? And none of us could tell him.

So I don’t know if we kowtowed to him in the process of not being able to tell him, but that was one that we have literally no idea. I couldn’t even come up with anywhere to go on it.

And then one day I told him I was waiting with bated breath, and he asked me what, you know, we all know kind of what that means, but where in the world did it come from? And it just got uglier from there.

All I could think of was fish. And I don’t know. It was just really, really. The conversation dwindled, and we went on to other things. So those are my two.

That’s totally what I think of. When I think of bated breath, I think somebody’s been into the fishing worms.

Yeah, I mean, I’m waiting with bated breath.

Yeah, I always think of that coming out of a sushi restaurant.

We can help you with both of these. We’ll knock them down one right after the other.

Kowtow is interesting. It came into English in the early 1800s, and it relates to some Chinese words from a Beijing dialect that mean to knock your head.

Because when you bend over to show respect for somebody, your head may actually touch the floor. You’re literally knocking your head on the floor. So that is kowtowing.

And so when the Europeans started showing up in China, they learned the word, brought it back, and it was kind of reduced in its potency, but now it just kind of means to defer to somebody or show them deference or show them respect.

I see. Wonderful.

Well, next time I see him, I will literally kowtow to him.

That’s a good idea. Don’t hurt yourself.

And baited breath is one that is really interesting because a lot of things are happening to this. One of them in the written form, baited is spelled not with an I. It’s not like fishing bait. It’s B-A-T-E-D, baited.

And it’s related to a French word, abattre, A-B-A-T-T-R-E, which means to diminish or to knock down or to beat down.

And we only find a few words in English that come from this French word, like to abate or abatement. Like you might have a rent abatement, which means a reduction in the rent.

And abattoir, actually, is a French word that still maintains its Frenchness to refer to a butchery or a place where animals are slaughtered for food.

Or debate.

Debate. That was originally a quarrel.

There we go.

So what happened with the word A-B-A-T-T-R-E when it showed up in English, that first syllable, the A, is unstressed.

And unstressed syllables at the beginning of the words tend to drop away and stop being pronounced, and that’s exactly what happened. We only have baited breath to mean stopped breath now.

That’s the only form that we really have of that, again, outside of bait or abatement. So it literally means you’re stopping your breath. You’re like, huh.

I see. I’m holding my breath.

Yeah, you’re holding your breath. Waiting for the answer. In fear or anticipation or something like that.

Wow. Well, I certainly was waiting for these answers with baited breath.

That’s just a wonderful show. Go ahead and breathe. You’ll get a headache.

And I was glad to get answers to my questions. Mark, thank you for calling, and go to the beach for us, will you?

Oh, I sure will. Absolutely, for both of you.

All right, take care now.

Thanks, Mark.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

You do have this happen all day long, right? A word pops up. You’re like, why is that word in English? That doesn’t sound like a kowtow.

It doesn’t sound like an English word. You know there’s something not quite right about it. There’s a story behind it, right?

We have those stories.

Right. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, language is fossil poetry. There’s a little poem in there, you know, a little image of somebody bowing down to the earth.

So let us write a fossil poem for you, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.