Word oddities

Before I place Barbara Ann Kipfer's Word Nerd back on the shelf, at least temporarily, I want to present some odd word trivia that I found especially interesting.

A Pensacola Beach business

Contractions are words like don't, can't and wouldn't, right? From Kipfer I learned that some common words are contractions that long ago lost their apostrophes. Remnant, for example, was originally remenant, but the middle syllable was lost somewhere along the way.  Scone is a contraction of a two-syllable word, she says. Yeoman is a contraction of "young man."

Pensacola is Choctaw for "hair people."

Why does an X on love letters signify a kiss? Kipfer says it's because in medieval times, illiterate people, which means most people at that time, signed their names with an X, then kissed it to prove their sincerity.

Why the quick in quicksand? It means alive, as in the phrase "the quick and the dead." Ground that seems alive in the sense that it moves when one steps on it was thus called quicksand.

O is the oldest letter in the alphabet, Kipfer says, which raises the question of how one can have an alphabet with just one letter.

The original meaning of geezer was "someone who goes around in disguise."

Dainty once meant the opposite of what it means now. It used to mean "substantial and able."

The word elope once referred to someone's wife running away with her lover.

The expression "in the pink" refers to English fox hunting. The scarlet jackets worn were called pinks.

Papier-mache is French for "chewed paper."