Sunday Trivia 9

Etymologies that have multiple steps are extremely interesting and opaque. Some go through several changes in meaning along the way. Colors, for some reason, can be especially tangled.

One of my favorites is cardinal (the bird), which is named after the color, which is named after the robes worn by the clergy rank, which comes from Latin cardo, which originally just meant "door hinge." Chartreuse is named after the liqueur, which is named for the monastery where the liqueur is made, which is named for the mountain range, whose etymology I wasn't able to uncover. Scarlet derives from cloth marked with symbols; purple originally comes from the shellfish used to make dye; blue comes from an Indo-European root which led to terms in various languages for white, yellow, and gray as well as blue. Other colors are interesting because of the number of languages they came through on their way to English, like lilac, which derives from French, from Spanish, from Arabic, from Persian.

Your trivia question today is about colors, and complicated etymologies, and animals, and places. Name a color that derives from an animal that derives from a place that derives from an animal.

(Thanks to my linguistics professor Larry Horn for many of these.)

Sunday Trivia 2

Spells and incantations are supposed to be potent, so the words they employ often have some zing. They can also have really funky origins because they've reached us through the magical backwater of etymology.

Abracadabra, for instance, is thought to either come from the Aramaic עַבְדָא כְּדַברָא or avda kedavra, "what was said has been done," or from the Greek Gnostic term Αβρασαξ or Abrasax, which carried mystical significance as the name of a supreme being or god, each letter representing one of the seven known planets. The first known use of Abracadabra was in the second century, when it was used in triangular inscriptions on Roman amulets to ward off malaria. The incantation Open Sesame from the story of Ali Baba is thought to refer to the fact that a ripe sesame seed pod bursts open, the same way, for example, a magical cave's entrance does.

J.K. Rowling's spells in the Harry Potter series are an interesting blend of pseudo-Greek, near-Latin, English, and the occasional odd language. Avada Kedavra, the Killing Curse, comes from the same Aramaic as Abracadabra, and also seems to play off the sound similarity between Kedavra and cadaver. Alohomora, the Unlocking Charm, comes from Malagasy, specifically in a system of geomancy called Sikidy, and means "friendly to thieves," among other things. Several other Harry Potter terms may come from the same source, including the plant Alihotsy, the Gryffindor passwords Caput Draconis and Fortuna Major, and the names Rubeus and Albus. (Although all these except Alihotsy are straightforward Latin, not Malagasy.)

So, your trivia question for today is about magic words.

1. Name a common magical term which derives from a Christian phrase.
2. Name a common noun that derives from the magical term, which describes trickery of a different sort.