Q. I think "fanatic" is an overused word these days. Everyone it seems is a "fanatic" just because they happen to like something. My husband calls me a "golf fanatic." Where does the word "fanatic" come from? Did it originally have a different meaning?
A. In Latin the adjective "fanaticus" was originally used to mean "of or relating to a temple," having been derived from the noun "fanum," meaning "temple." It was later used in reference to those pious individuals who were thought to have been inspired by a deity. In time the sense "frantic, frenzied, mad" arose because it was thought that people behaving in a frenzied manner were possessed by a deity.
This last sense, now obsolete, was the first meaning of the adjective "fanatic" as it was used in English in the 16th century, and it led to the development in the 17th century of the sense "excessively enthusiastic, especially about religious matters."
The adjective then became less specific in its application and came to mean simply "excessively enthusiastic or unreasonable." The same sense development occurred for the noun "fanatic," which likewise dates to the 16th century. The noun "fan," meaning "enthusiast," is probably a shortening of the noun "fanatic."
Q. I wrote a paper for my English class, and my teacher marked me down for using "could've" and "would've." Aren't those the contractions for "could have" and "would have"?
A. You're right that "could've" is a shortened form of "could have," and "would've" is a shortened form of "would have." Likewise, we have "should've," "must've" and "might've" for "should have," "must have" and "might have." These are all legitimate contractions, but they tend to occur only in informal writing or in representations of speech. No doubt your English teacher feels that they are too informal for use in a paper.
Another problem associated with contractions like "could've" and "would've" is rooted in pronunciation. "Have" in a sentence like "I could have gone" rarely receives full stress and is consequently rarely pronounced "hav."
In ordinary circumstances the stress is placed on the first word, "could," and the unstressed "have" is pronounced very much like "of." Although in writing this is usually rendered "could've," the pronunciation of such combinations also leads to the misspellings like "could of" and "would of." Usage commentators - and English teachers - have been warning against this kind of error for many decades.
Q. We have in our part of the country a tree called the loblolly pine. No one I asked seems to know what the name means or where it came from. Can you help?
A. "Loblolly" originated in English dialect in the 16th century and came across the Atlantic as a term for a thick gruel or stew, often something unappetizing. The word itself seems to be a combination of dialect "lob," meaning "to bubble while boiling" (in the manner of a thick porridge), and "lolly" for broth or soup.
The name "loblolly pine" (Pinus taeda) goes back to Colonial days. The tree was mentioned in the Acts of the Georgia Colony General Assembly of 1760 as an important source of lumber. In that document it is also referred to as the "Swamp Pine," a name recorded earlier by the traveling English naturalist Mark Catesby in his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. The loblolly pine does indeed like swamps, although it grows in other habitats as well.
At some point, "loblolly" came to be used for a mudhole or mire in the southern United States, apparently reflecting the similarity of gruel to mud. While actual evidence of "loblolly" in this sense dates from no earlier than the mid-1800s, it seems logical to suppose that it is much older than that, and that the name "loblolly pine" originated as a reflection of this evergreen's favored habitat.