Question: I am told that the Russian word "vodka" came from Russians mispronouncing the western European term "aqua vitae." I find it hard to believe that Russians couldn't pronounce "aqua vitae" and am inclined to utterly discountenance that theory. Where exactly did the word "vodka" come from?Answer: When the alchemists of the Middle Ages discovered how to distill alcohol from wine, they named this new liquid "aqua vitae," Latin for "water of life." French "eau-de-vie" (for a clear brandy distilled from fermented fruit juice) is a direct translation of the Latin word, as is "aquavit" (or "akvavit"), the name of a Scandinavian liquor often flavored with caraway seeds, and Irish "uisce beathadh," now better known as "whiskey."
The Russians concocted their version of aqua vitae sometime in the 14th century and opted to call their drink not "water of life" but simply something on the order of "dear little water" - "vodka" being a diminutive form of "voda" (pronounced vah-DAH), the Russian word for "water." Though vodka wasn't really popularized in the West until after World War II, 19th century reports of Russian drinking habits first saw the word introduced into English.
Incidentally, the Dutch also named their distilled liquor something besides "water of life"; it was more prosaically termed "burnt (distilled) wine" (since distilling entails the application of heat) or, in Dutch, "brandewijn" - thus in English "brandywine," shortened to "brandy" in the mid-17th century.
Question: I am a piano teacher, and as I worked with my students, the word "fiddle" came up. Could you explain how the word "fiddle" came to be used for "violin"? We usually think of violins with classical music and fiddles with country. I would like to be able to explain the difference.
Answer: "Fiddle" is actually an older word in English than "violin." There is evidence from as early as the 9th century of the Christian era that certain types of stringed instruments were played with bows. The instrument we know today, however, was not developed until the late 16th century. Earlier instruments such as the rebec and the vielle were often designated as "fiddles," and the somewhat later precursors of the violin family were known as "viols." Of the terms "fiddle" and "violin," the first to be used in English was "fiddle," a form of which appeared as early as the year 1205. The word may actually be considerably older, for an Old English form of "fiddler" appears in a manuscript dated around 1100. The word "violin," from the Italian "violino," did not make its way into English until the 16th century.
Today "violin" and "fiddle" are used as terms for the same instrument, though, as you note, "fiddle" has less formal connotations than "violin." You'll be surprised to learn that both words have been traced back to the same probable source, Medieval Latin "vitula." Their differences in form are due to the fact that they entered the language at such widely separated times, "violin" having undergone centuries of change in two Romance tongues before taking its place beside "fiddle" in the English word-stock.
Question: Whenever my aunt gets a cold, she says that she is feeling "under the weather." I'm curious about the origin of this phrase. Is it English?
Answer: The phrase "under the weather" is an American expression dating all the way back to 1850. Though it was once considered slang, the phrase now appears often in ordinary or even fairly formal contexts with the meaning "somewhat ill." Why the word "weather" is used this way is not entirely clear. The expression may derive from the sense of the adjective "under" meaning "lower than usual, proper, or desired" (as in "under par") and the sense of "weather" meaning "state of life or fortune."
We usually use the expression to convey the idea that someone is not seriously ill but simply recovering from a minor ailment. Over time the expression has also come to be used as a euphemism for drunkenness. George Orwell wrote in his novel "Coming Up for Air," "By closing time they were both so boozed that I had to take them home in a taxi, and I was a bit under the weather myself, and the next morning I woke up with a worse head than ever."