Essay:Surprising Dates of Origin for Terms

One can learn history simply by skimming a dictionary that has the date of origin for terms. There are many surprises. Add to our growing list:

New Term	Origin date	Comments
Advent	1100s	The English language itself did not begin until after Christmas Day, 1066, when William the Conqueror became the first Norman King of England in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey.
android	1727	Before being picked up by science fiction writers, the word was simply an adjective meaning "humanlike".
aftermath	late 1400s	according to Merriam-Webster, "aftermath" originated as an agricultural term for a second crop grown on the same soil, following the "math" or gathering of the first crop
Biblical	1780-1790	It's hard to imagine such a late date of origin. Perhaps the word became necessary as an increasing number of people turned away from the authority of the Bible?
boycott	1880	named after an actual person, Charles C. Boycott, who ruthlessly refused to lower rents as a landord in England!
busybody	1526	This problem predates Facebook by nearly 500 years!
complex	1652	a surprisingly late date of origin for such a widely used adjective
continental drift	1926	that's surprisingly recent for such a simple concept; wonder what held it up?
bill of rights	1798	Wow: that's many years after it was added to the Constitution!
common sense	1535	older than one might think
corvette	1636	Perhaps you thought a car company in Detroit invented this name for a sports car? Not by a long shot: it was a type of warship ranked just below a frigate
crocodile tears	1563	insincere compassion with fake tears; were there liberals back in 1563?
crucifix	early 1200s	wow, that's an early date of origin for an English word!
dead hand	1300s	an oppressive, unjustified influence of the past; this problem is not new, and led to the Rule Against Perpetuities in property law
dinosaur	1841	surprisingly late date of origin, the term means "terrifying lizard," which raises the question of why its real name of lizard is not used today
diploma	1702	The term "diploma" seems to be an invention of atheistic sentiments in the Enlightenment, and unrelated to scholarly achievement or even the development of the universities hundreds of years earlier
estoppel	1531	This is an early date of origin for a relatively sophisticated legal concept.
exclamation point	1824	never used, not even once, by the King James Version?
father time	1559	the effect of time in aging people inexorably towards feebleness
fellowship (verb)	1300s	to gather together in honor of Christ, often in a new church ... yet it predates Protestantism by two centuries?!
fire and brimstone	1200s	this concept is not new to describe the torment inflicted upon sinners
fission	1617	Looks like nuclear fission is not a new idea after all!
flagpole	1884	What did flags hang on for centuries before that? Flagstaffs.
foul play	1400s	Predates baseball by 400 years; Merriam-Webster defines it to mean violence and especially murder.
free will	1200s	That's surprisingly early for this terrific insight.
has-been	1606	It's surprising that this descriptive term predates modern media by several centuries!
hello	1889	What was the prior greeting? Is this surprisingly late date of origin due to the invention of the telephone?
honeymoon	1546	An amazingly ancient date of origin for this term!
incorrigible	1300s	This term means incapable or unwilling to be corrected. Liberals have been around since the 1300s?!
infinity	1374	a fuller understanding of this term did not begin until the 1600s, and liberal denial about its existence persists to this day.
John Hancock	1903	Why did it take more than a century for the famous signatory's name to become a colloquialism for "signature"?
landmark	before 1100s	Land was much more important in culture and the economy before the Information Age.
landlord	before 1100s	Think landlord problems are new? This is one of the very oldest words in the English language. That revelation then opens one's eyes to what the word really is: Lord of the land, in the feudal system.
monopolist	1601	someone who monopolizes - a concept that predates the Sherman Act by nearly three centuries!
Mother Nature	1551	that is more than 450 years ago! Today liberals avoid the term due to feminists.\
motivation	1873	can you believe the word did not exist before 1873?!
Palm Sunday	before 1100s	the Sunday before Easter, this is one of the oldest terms in the entire English language!
pole vault	1890	Apparently this was not a recognized athletic field event much earlier than the revival of the Olympics in 1896.
separation of church and state	1802	More than ten years after the adoption of the First Amendment, the least Christian of the early presidents (Thomas Jefferson) used the phrase for the first time in an appeasing letter to Baptists. (It's also important to note that he used the term to assure them that their religious rights took precedence over the government--not the other way around.) The Supreme Court did not endorse this phrase until the liberal Justice Hugo Black used the term in 1947 (Everson v. Board of Education). (The Court also quoted from the Jefferson without endorsing the phrase in the 1879 polygamy case of Reynolds v. United States).
theism	1678	Nearly a hundred years after "atheism" (1587). Perhaps such an obvious position that no word was required until atheism became more widespread?
theorem	1551	a surprisingly early date of origin for this important mathematical concept
triple play	1869	a term in baseball, but look how early it originated! That is only four years after the end of the Civil War, which confirms that baseball games were played among troops, even between the North and the South, during the War.
utopia	1516	coined by Saint Thomas More from the Greek roots for "no" and "place", he made it the title of his book in demonstrating that a utopia can never exist.
warmonger	1580	it has been a problem that long with a pejorative term to describe it?
weird	1400s	originally referred to witchcraft, and Shakespeare used it for that meaning in Macbeth.
worldwide	1632	Did people really think in terms of the entire world nearly 400 years ago? Apparently so.
zero	1604	Not a word in English until after Shakespeare wrote most of his plays! Shakespeare never used the term "zero" in any of his surviving works.

See also

• Essay:Best New Conservative Words