Cute once meant “shrewd.” Mall owes its name to a game played with a ball and a mallet. Etymology is the study of word histories, and these six examples show how meanings and forms change.
Jump to a word or expression
Each link opens the original radio discussion and its written description.
Cute
Cute began as a shortened form of acute, meaning shrewd or perceptive. The attractive or adorable sense developed later. The older meaning survives in “don’t get cute with me” and in regional usage. A caller remembered his mother, who came from the English Midlands, using it to mean sly.
Emoji
Japanese e, “picture,” combines with moji, “written character,” to give emoji, or “pictogram.” Its resemblance to the English word emotion is a coincidence. In English, both emoji and emojis are used as plurals.
Mall
The Italian game pallamaglio was played with a ball and a mallet. Its name became French pallemaille and English pall mall. London’s Pall Mall takes its name from the game, and The Mall, now a promenade, was another place it was played. In the 1950s, mall was applied to streets closed to traffic for shopping. The word later came to mean a shopping complex.
Turnpike
A turnpike was a barrier that turned to admit someone after they paid a toll. The projecting arms resembled pikes, the long, pointed weapons carried by soldiers. The name was then applied to toll roads.
Ragamuffin
A ragamuffin wears ragged or untidy clothes. Hundreds of years ago, ragamuffin and ragman were names for the Devil. The connection between those uses and the modern meaning isn’t fully established. In Jamaican English, ragamuffin has also been reclaimed as a term for a streetwise young person and a style of music.
Kerfuffle
This word for a disturbance or bother comes from Scotland. It’s also used in the United States, sometimes in the form kerfluffle. A listener who grew up in Liverpool noticed American journalists adopting it for political disputes.
Listen to A Way with Words
Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett answer listeners’ language questions on A Way with Words, a public radio show and podcast. The linked discussions include the caller’s question and the fuller account of each word’s history.