Etymology, with an “eagle” eye



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What is so “rupt” about “bankrupt”?

Toys “R” Us, the world’s largest toy store chain, filed for bankruptcy protections today. Debt and online shopping aren’t great for playtime, it turns out—but etymology certainly is. This post, let’s have a quick look at the origins of bankrupt.

“Bankrupt”: literally breaking the bank. (Pixabay)

Bankrupt: trading in metaphors

Borrowed into English from French, bankrupt comes from the Italian phrase banca rotta, or banco rotto in the masculine, literally a “broken bench.”

The bench here refers to a market stall where merchants would count and exchange money, and it’s said that, once upon a time, people would break up their stalls if they had become insolvent. The Italian phrase itself, though, may have actually just started out as a figurative expression.

The Italian banco goes back to a Germanic root, with some basic meaning of “table,” that also gives English the word bench and is connected to the geological bank in, say, sandbank. First used as a table for counting and exchanging money, bank was metaphorically extended to the financial institutions we call banks today.

Rotto, meanwhile, goes back to the Latin rumpere, “to break” or “burst.” The Latin verb’s past participial form is ruptus, which we can see in other derivatives like abrupt, corrupt, interrupt, erupt, and rupture. This form also helps explains English spelling of bankrupt, as well as its French intermediary, bancque roupte.

As for when bankrupt entered the language, the Oxford English Dictionary finds a bankrupt (insolvent person) in 1533, to bankrupt in 1552, and bankrupt as an adjective in 1565. Various figurative extensions of bankrupt (e.g., a person bankrupt of honor) are found shortly thereafter. Bankruptcy emerges just a little later in the 1630s—or some nearly 400 years if you’re Toys “R” Us.

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The “Bureau” of Etymological Investigation


Continue reading “The “Bureau” of Etymological Investigation”

Rowing, rivers, and rulers: 5 “Russian” roots




Why do we call it the president’s “Cabinet”?


Cabinet members












Inside the cabinet





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“Border crisis” may be the noun phrase of the American moment. Not too long ago, I looked at the origin of crisis in a different border battle. But the word border itself may be having something of its own etymological crisis.


Border, attested in the geographic sense in the 1500s, is first documented in the English of the 14th century, traced to the French bordure, referring to an “edge,” frequently of a shield. Indeed, bordure still refers to the edge of shield in heraldry. The French term is widespread in the Romance languages and may be from a Romanic root *bordus.

This is where the borders get blurred, because border may abut the same origin as board.

Board is from the Old English bord. This bord had two meanings: 1) a plank, or a material board; and 2) the side of a ship, an edge. These words and their origins get confusing and confused. They may ultimately be the same word; they may not. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology casts doubt on a common origin, while the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots grounds them in the same source.

From the first, we get things like cardboard and cupboardTables were made of boards, where food was eaten, hence room and board. Important people gather around tables for important meetings, and thus we have school board and the boardroom. Thus, board meaning table, food, or a certain collection of people functions as form of metonymy, which has graced us with its presence quite a bit lately (cf. gavel and sekw).  Seaboard retains the meaning of “edge,” and I couldn’t have typed this without my keyboard.

“Old Mother Hubbard / Went to the cupboard / To give the poor dog a bone”: from the Sarah Catherine Martin’s “The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog,” first published in England in 1805. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

This board may have built bordello, from the French bordel, a “small hut,” from borde, a kind of wooden “hovel.” The word, obviously, came to refer to a brothel.

The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology takes this board back to a Germanic base, *borðam, formed on *breð-. The root meaning is glossed as “board.”

From the second board, we get things like starboard and to board a planeStarboard has nothing to do with stars, as the first element is related to the word steerLarboard had to walk the plank for port; its first element may be connected to load. This board goes back to a Germanic base, *borðaz.

This Germanic *borðaz may have taken up as the Romanic *bordus we saw before. French developed bord (also, bort) for “side of a ship” but also as “plank,” confusing the already confused Old English bord, which could mean “side of a ship” and “plank.” Eesh. This is partly why it’s hard to sort the boards out.


One side of the border are those, like the Oxford scholars, who keep the boards separate. On the other, we have scholars of the American Heritage Dictionary who join them way back in the Proto-Indo-European *bherdh-, “to cut.”

Both board and border, as American Heritage surveys the territory, were descended from the root’s Germanic heir, *burdam, which is proposed to mean “plank,” “board,” and “table,” returning us right back to our drawing board.  Planks, boards, tables, ship sides–all cut from wood. Edges, borders–the cutting off point, so to speak.

Board may play its games, but bordersas well see all too often, whether in North American, Eastern Europe, or the Middle East, are certainly no board games.

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American political institutions love to sit.

Committees have chairs. Congressional chambers have seats. Courts have benches. Presidents have, well, desks.

They also love metonymy, that “figure of speech in which a thing is represented by something closely associated with it” (Drury, The Poetry Dictionary). Thus we refer to those chairs, seats, benches, and desks as stand-ins–sit-ins?–for the person, position, and power symbolically residing in them. (We saw metonymy at work in scarlet.)

One of the better known governmental metonyms–the gavel–has been making headlines, as the U.S. Supreme Court pounded the gavel on its term this year with some major decisions.  Technically, the nine Justices aren’t themselves pounding the gavel. According to the Supreme Court Historical Society, that’s left to the court’s Crier, who bangs it right at 10am so all rise for the black robes entering the courtroom on days when they hear oral arguments.

The gavel, of course, is used in many a official assembly, and in many a metaphor. Gavels get grabbed. Gavels get passed. Gavels get brought down, gavel-to-gavel.

Night Court’s gavel-wielder, Judge Harry Stone. Image courtesy

So, where does this gavel come from?


The etymology of this ceremonial, attention-getting wooden mallet is ultimately unknown.

Ernest Weekley makes a connection to a German dialectical use of gaffel in the Lower Rhine. He glosses it as “brotherhood” and “friendly society,” seeing a cognate to the English give. Indeed, a now obsolete meaning of the word gavel is “tribute” or “rent.” This gavel is given by the Old English gafol, a “tribute,” indeed related to give via its Anglo-Saxon ancestor, giefan. The usage lives on essentially in gavelkind, a concept Weekley nicely elucidates: a “system” primarily in the county of Kent in England, “by which property is divided equally instead of going to the eldest son” but originally a “form of tenure.”

The Oxford English Dictionary of English Etymology finds the word was first wielded in the 19th century (American dictionaries cite it in 1805) and primarily so in the United States, but otherwise offers no opinion.

Eric Partridge suggests gavel may be “akin to kevel, a hammer for stone-shaping or -breaking, itself [of obscure origin] but [probably] akin to [nautical] kevel, a strong cleat or timber for fasting a vessel’s heavy lines.” He goes on to root this nautical tool’s origin in the Latin clavis, or “key.” Clavicle is a descendant. Word historians give their assent to the gavel’s historical use among masons, so there may something to kevel’s case.  

Others have proposed a line to javelin (cf. Welsh gafl, “fork”) from the Old French for “spear.” French also had javelle, a sort of loose heap of grains, linked to a hypothetical Latin *gabella, possibly from capulus, a “hilt” or “handle,” though primarily “coffin.” This diminutive noun is rooted in capere, “to seize.” And folk etymologies have cited gabble. Indeed, there are some connections, but they extremely tenuous, as the semantic and sound changes are suspect.

It seems the jury is out on gavel.

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*sekw- (part ii)


…and the classic board game Clue.









Sign, Sealed, Delivered



Weaving It All Together


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