Soccer Dad: Maybe he should have been called harry pot

June 16, 2008

Maybe he should have been called harry pot

Interesting etymology of the word "muggle"

Before J.K. Rowling made "muggle" a household word, it has had nearly as many lives as a black cat. The Oxford English Dictionary shows the first citation for this word is from the 13th century, and defines it as "a tail resembling that of a fish." Since then it has been used to describe a young woman, a sweetheart and later marijuana.

(emphasis mine)

But what got me to look at the article, was the origin of the word "e-mail." It is not a few decades old, rather it is a century and a half old or so:

What was e-mail doing at the time when there were no computers, telephones or even promises of large sums of Nigerian loot? Well, the answer is that it was a different type of e-mail. That e-mail meant enamel, as in the glossy paint applied to metal, pottery, etc. In French, the word émailler still means "to enamel," not to send out a message using electronic mail. The word mail in electronic mail is of Germanic origin, meaning a bag.

Posted by SoccerDad at June 16, 2008 5:14 AM

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