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Article: MAVENS, MAVERICKS, AND MALAPROPS.(origins of words)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Saturday Evening Post
- Article date:
- May 1, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Saturday Evening Post Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Exploring the quaint origins of today's commonplace words.
As speakers of English, we take our language for granted most of the time, without inquiring into its origin or its history. Consider the word dicker, for example.
"The Romans who traded with the German tribes for skins or hides would take them in a decuria, or bundle of ten, decem, ten. The word was borrowed into the West Germanic tongues as dicker, and for about 1,500 years it meant a unit of ten articles. Then a similiar situation arose on the American frontier in the 18th century when the English Colonists traded for skins with the Indians. `Dicker? Dwker?' they would say. In this way, ...