piano
The musical instrument piano was borrowed into English from French piano around 1790. The French word piano is a clipped form of French pianoforte, borrowed from the Italian short name of the instrument. The Italian word pianoforte is short for “un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte”, meaning “a keyboard of cypress with soft and loud”. It was invented and given its unwieldy name by Paduan instrument maker Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700. The key innovation made by the piano over its harpsichord predecessors was that pianists could control how loud a note was by how hard they pressed the keys.
Piano design changed drastically during their first 200 years of existence. Modern pianos, featuring 88 keys spanning seven octaves, typically differ only incrementally from their codified 1890 designs. Earlier pianos now go by the retronym fortepiano and had ranges that steadily increased from their initial four octaves to the contemporary seven. Any classical music that includes a piano was probably composed after its popularization in the 1740s. Piano wire has been so called since 1806.
The Italian word piano meaning “soft”, but also “flat” or “level”, descends from Latin plānus, meaning “level”. Plānus is also the ancestor of English plan and plain, both borrowings from the same French word (plain) in different centuries and circumstances. Looking at sibling languages, the English word that would have been used before it borrowed plain was probably flats.
The Italian word forte (superlative form fortissimo) meaning “loud”, but also “strong”, descends from Latin fortis, meaning “strong” or “steadfast”. Fortis is also the ancestor of English fort and forte, both borrowings from the same French word (fort) in different centuries and circumstances. Looking at sibling languages, the English word that would have been used before it borrowed fort was probably fastness. Notably, the English word forte was originally two different words, one borrowed from French fort, meaning “strength” and originally pronounced as a single syllable, and the other borrowed from Italian forte, meaning “loud” and originally pronounced as two syllables.
Planned disruption of service
I’m delighted to be invited to Inkhaven, a writer’s retreat for bloggers. I’ll be writing onsite in Berkeley, CA for the month of April. They take an iron blogger approach to improving as a writer, so I’ve made a new blog category for Inkhaven posts. As such, I will either be posting daily, or be the first person ever kicked out of the retreat for not posting daily.
To borrow a phrase from the Recurse Center, my goal for the month is to become a dramatically better writer. I know I will necessarily struggle and flail on the way, and I hope you find the end result to be worth the temporary disruption.
yolo
The interjection yolo was popularized by its use in Canadian rapper Drake’s 2011 single The Motto. The titular motto was YOLO, pronounced as a word. The acronym YOLO standing for “you only live once” can be sporadically found as early as 1993, as the longhand phrase “you only live once” has been in the language for over 100 years.
Yolo’s popularity peaked in 2012, when it was beaten out at word of the year awards by words like gif and hashtag. The OED began including yolo as an English word worthy of documentation in 2016.
jetlag
The condition jetlag is first attested in a 1965 newspaper article. Before that, people called it time zone syndrome. The first regular jetliner service began in 1958, the airplane type named for the turbojet engines that made them possible. Boeing inaugurated the jetliner naming scheme they still use today with the 707. Planes powered by turbojet engines first flew in 1944, marking a 14-year timespan from first deployment to consumer availability.
A jet engine is an engine that generates thrust by expelling a jet of fast moving fluid opposite the direction of movement, propelling the craft forward. This definition technically includes both hydrojet/pumpjet watercraft engines and rocket engines, but “jet engine” typically only refers to aircraft engines. Many marine animals are also jet-propelled, including all jellyfish and octopuses. Before jet engines, powered aircraft flew by using propellers to generate thrust.
Emitted jets of water or air were named in the 1660s through a borrowing from French jet, meaning “a throw”. French jet can be traced back to Old French get, then Vulgar Latin jectus and Classical Latin iactus, all meaning “a throw”. Iactus is a form of iacere, which just means “to throw”. Meanwhile, lag first appears in English in the 1530s with the same meaning as today, and has an uncertain origin. Wisdom teeth were called lag-teeth in the 1610s.
battery
The electric storage medium battery was coined by American polymath Benjamin Franklin in a 1749 letter describing his apparatus of a bunch of Leyden jars all connected together, by analogy with a battery of guns. Artillery batteries have been called that since the 1550s because they inflict battery on a targeted fortress or castle. That violent battery, the latter half of assault and battery, was borrowed from French as legal vocabulary in the 1530s, not much earlier.
Middle French batterie was derived from the verb batre, meaning “beat”. Old French batre descends from Latin battuō, also meaning “beat”. Latin battuō is likely a borrowing from Gaulish, the Celtic language spoken in France before its Roman conquest.