geocache
The hobby geocaching got its name in 2000 from suggestions on the gpsstash email list. As that origin suggests, it was called gpsstashing for the month it existed before being renamed. Geocaching echoes the longstanding hobby of letterboxing, the practice of leaving a letter (later a notebook) inside a box along a hiking trail and publishing clues pointing to its location. Geocache is from ancient Greek γεω- (geō-), meaning “earth”, and English cache, borrowed from French Canadian fur trappers in 1797. French cache is the noun form of cacher, meaning “to hide”.
The hobby’s date of origin can be explained by Blue Switch Day. On May 2, 2000, the accuracy of civilian GPS receivers increased from within about 100m to within about 10m, close enough that it became practical to search the entire 10m area for a cache. The first geocache was hidden on May 3, 2000. Civilian GPS receivers had been available since 1988 as a separate device and had become common among outdoor hobbyists in the 1990s, but trying to find an object within a 100m area was not a fun prospect.
Civilian GPS receivers were first made available after a tragic 1983 plane crash where a Korean passenger jet veered so far off course that it entered Soviet airspace and was shot down by a missile. It’s wild to think that a multimillion-dollar jet airplane would have no way to accurately determine its location just 42 years ago. GPS is a US military project that began operation in 1978. The 100m error in civilian GPS receivers was deliberately inserted by the US military from their introduction in 1988 until Blue Switch Day in 2000, to deter adversaries from buying civilian receivers and using their own system against them. The generic term for a satellite navigation system is satnav. The second satnav system was the Soviet GLONASS, which launched in 1982. Additional satnavs are currently operated by the EU, China, India, and Japan.
exoskeleton
The full-body carapace exoskeleton was coined by UK zoologists to describe insect anatomy in the 1840s. It’s from ancient Greek ἔξω (exo), meaning “outer” + skeleton, which comes into English from scientific Latin in the early 1600s. Latin sceleton also has an ancient Greek origin, from σκελετός (skeletós), meaning “dried up, withered”.
Why are exoskeletons not more prevalent in nature? Besides the strict size limit imposed on internal structure, nature must also solve the problem of what should happen when the animal grows too large for its rigid exoskeleton. Insects periodically undergo a process called ecdysis, from ancient Greek ἔκδυσις (ékdusis), meaning “stripping”, where they molt off their exoskeleton, leaving it behind as exuviae (this time from Latin “castoff”).
The idea of artifical exoskeletons takes over 100 years to take shape, originating with Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 science fiction novel Starship Troopers. They were popularized in the 1986 film Aliens, for which director James Cameron explicitly drew inspiration from the book. Powered armor only became a staple science fiction technology in the decade after Aliens.
pants
The article of clothing pants is first found in print in 1835, a clipping of pantaloons. Pantaloons became the common term for trousers in the late 1600s. They are named for the comedia dell’arte stock character Pantalone, a ridiculous, overbearing miser with an equally ridiculous wardrobe. In the late 1600s, this wardrobe often included ridiculous trousers, which took on his name when they became fashionable.
Pantalone is partially a cariacature of rich Venetians, so he was given a stereotypically Venetian name. The name was common in Venice due to the influence of Saint Pantaleone, an early Christian who was martyred in what is now Turkey in 305. Saint Pantaleone had a common Greek name that comes from παν- (pan-), meaning “all” + λέων (léōn), meaning “lion”.
Going chronologically forward instead, in UK English the meaning of pants shifted to typically refer to underpants instead around 1880. The verb form meaning “to pull down someone’s pants” is from 1972. The UK meaning “rubbish, nonsense” originates with BBC Radio host Simon Mayo’s catchphrase “It’s a pile of pants!” getting clipped to just “pants” by 1996. And so we come full circle back to “ridiculous”.
An incredible glimpse at how influential comedia dell’arte was in Western Europe is that the Spanish word for pants is pantalones, the French word is pantalon, and the Italian word is pantaloni.
photoshop
The touch-up method photoshop, first used as a generic verb in 1992, is named after Adobe’s 1987 image editing software Photoshop. The software, in turn, is likely named for the offset lithography department photoshop, where people would touch up photographs before they went to print.
The word photograph was coined in 1839 by English chemist Sir John Herschel, combining Greek φῶς (phos), meaning “light,” and γραφή (graphê), meaning “drawing”. However, most early photographs were instead called daguerreotypes, after Louis Daguerre’s development of the first practical photography process. Daguerreotypes were ascendant from their invention in 1839 until the development of the less restrictive wet colloidon process in 1851, rarely appearing after 1860.
φῶς is actually a regional form of Ancient Greek φάος (phắos), which can be reconstructed back to PIE bʰéh₂os, also meaning “light”, by comparing it to its relatives like Sanskrit भास् (bhās), meaning “light”.
Photoshop was a popular enough topic that the clipping shopped can be found since the early 2000s. You can compare the trend to its genericized contemporary autotune, created in 1997 and popularized in Cher’s 1998 hit “Believe”.
juggernaut
The unstoppable juggernaut is first attested in English in a 1638 article, a transliteration of the name of the regional Hindu deity ଜଗନ୍ନାଥ (Jagannātha). For the next 200 years, it’s only seen as a proper noun referring to this specific deity, mostly centered around the annual Ratha Yatra festival in Puri, a city on the east coast of India. The festival includes a procession of massive (40’/15m) horse-drawn chariots, with the largest and grandest devoted to Jagannath.
Held annually since 1460, this festival left such an impression on English observers that the name Jagannath itself came to stand for the unstoppable momentum of its lead chariot. Beginning in 1854, “Jaggernaut” became a metaphor for inexorability, its ending now influenced by the English suffix -naut. It became a fully lowercase common noun used to describe any gigantic heavy vehicle by the mid-1900s, in addition to the unstoppable metaphorical use.
Its most familiar use today originates with the Marvel villain Juggernaut, introduced in a 1965 X-Men comic book and perhaps most well known for the “Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut!” storyline in 1982 Spider-Man comics.
Jagannath’s name originates from Sanskrit जगन्नाथ (jagannātha), meaning “lord of the universe”, from जगन् (jágan) “world” + नाथ (nāthá) “lord”.