While fishing from a jetty, Maria in San Antonio, Texas, wondered about this name for a structure extending from the shore out into the water. The word jetty comes to us via the French word jeter, meaning “to throw” (the dance step called a tour jeté being a “thrown turn”), and is related to several other words involving the idea of throwing, including project, eject, interject, jettison, and jetsam. The word jetty may also apply to a part of a building that projects out from the main structure. Similarly, an adjective is a word “thrown against,” or added to, a noun. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Origin of the Word “Jetty””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, how’s it going?
This is Maria.
I’m here in San Antonio, Texas.
Well, excellent.
What can we do for you?
Me and my boyfriend go fishing quite often, and he mentioned the word jetty. Like, oh, we’re going to go over to the jetties. And I actually grew up in Denver, Colorado, so it was a word I never heard before. And I’m like, what’s a jetty? And when we went over, you know, it’s the, well, it was a lot of rocks that kind of go out like a pier. And the word just didn’t make sense to me. Like, you know, the root, the suffix. I’m like, jetty, why would that be called a jetty? And I looked it up and I really didn’t see a lot of information. So I was like, oh, I’ll call you guys.
You touched on the origin of the word jetty, which has to do with projecting out or something that’s sticking out. It goes all the way back to a Latin word that has to do with throwing. And that jetty comes from a Latin word that gave us a whole bunch of different words involving throwing, like eject, which is to throw something out. Interject, which is to throw something in between. Project, like a jetty is projecting out into the ocean. That’s something that is kind of thrown out. Even jettison, you know, or jetson when you’re throwing something overboard. They all go back. And tour jeté in ballet is a thrown term. And so it involves all these words that have to do with throwing. And so a jetty is something that’s sort of thrown out there into the ocean.
Jetty, yeah. I could see that. Yeah. And actually jetty is also an old word that is used for, like, part of a building that’s projecting out. Like over the sidewalk or something like that. It has to do with projecting.
Awesome. Well, you guys answered my question. Thank you. Take care.
It’s so satisfying to have a word that we can do the etymological history to and actually take it back. So often we can’t do that. We hit these breaks or these pauses or these holes, but we can do that.
Yeah, and then you start seeing all these connections going back to the Latin. So connected to, you said, ballet and architecture. Adjective. Adjective is a word that’s thrown up against a noun. How cool is that? The J-E-C-T in the middle of the word, right?
Yeah.
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