TexasDesign

This month, I offer you a few more words I love (most with interesting histories) and one word I can do without sometimes. Hope you enjoy.
–Chuck Lustig
First, more favorite words:

Hodgepodge: A mixture of different ingredients, a jumble. It comes from the word hotchpotch which describes a practice in France during the Early Middle Ages. Nobles would throw various pieces of property in a pot before dividing them among sons. (By the way, hotchpotch was one of several causes of the Crusades. After generations of dividing land by hotchpotch, many noblemen did not have sufficient land to support them financially, so they turned their sights on conquering the Holy Land.)

Potpourri: This synonym with hodgepodge is also French in origin, but it comes from much later time. One source said 1605-15; another, 1749. It started out being a mixture of dried petals of flowers mixed with spices, and eventually became any collection of unrelated items. The word came from the transliteration from the Spanish words for “rotten pot,” which in Spanish are olla podrida. Do you remember the retail mall of that name that used to be in Dallas? I bet you never knew you were shopping at “The Rotten Pot,” or more nicely translated, “The Potpourri.”

Chortle: A snorting laugh or chuckle. According to Dictionary.com, the word is a combination of chuckle and snort, coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, published in 1872.

Hopscotch: This is a children’s game, of course. And we know the word then came to describe traveling around in an erratic pattern. But where did the name of the children’s game come from? Is it Scotch in origin? No, we have it on good report that the game began in England, probably in the 1500s and by 1667 had spread across Europe. “Scotch” refers to a score or to the lines scratched in the dirt, not to the country or the drink!

Flabbergasted: To be dumbfounded or overwhelmed with shock. It first showed up in the 1770s in England. Some dictionaries will tell you, “Origin unknown,” but the Oxford English Dictionary suggests it came about as a trendy, faddish, made-up word, perhaps a combination of “flab” and “aghast,” meaning something akin to “slapped with wonder,” much like its modern meaning.

Posh: Elegant, fashionable, luxurious. This word got its start between 1915 and 1920. Its origin is unknown, and it is rarely used today.

Conundrum: A puzzle or a particularly difficult riddle whose answer includes a pun on words. I love the rhythm of the sounds of this word as with hodgepodge and most of the others. One source reported the word came into usage in 1596; another, 1645. Apparently, this word was coined on the Oxford University campus. Everyone thought the pseudo-Latin word was quite the cat’s meow.

Note: Flabbergasted and conundrum were suggested by D’ Forman. Thank you, D’!

Second, another word we can live without (sometimes): different

When used in the sentence: “He got an A in the course for a number of different reasons,” the word “different” is unnecessary and should be edited out of the sentence. Of course the reasons are different! If they were the same, he would have gotten an A for one reason! (Watch me rant!) The word “different” has legitimate uses, for example, “He is different from most people I meet.” Be careful when using it as an adjective. Obviously, a sentence like “Those were different times,” is perfectly fine, but when used in a phrase like “two different reasons,’ it is redundant.

Note: This was suggested by Wilma Mathews. Thank you, Wilma!