2350: pedigree May 25, 2021
The word 'pedigree' these days refers to record of lineage of a purebred animal such as for dogs, but this word originated with birds' feet. The word is actually from a French phrase 'pé de grue' (today 'pied de gru') meaning 'crane-foot'. This had nothing to do with actually bird lineage per se, but instead with keeping paper records of animal ancestors with each generation splitting along forked paths resembling a crane's foot. The reason for referencing cranes in particular is probably just that these were quite common across England and France at the time.
2343: carthage May 18, 2021
Carthage, the capital or the Carthaginian Empire and now the city of Tunis, is known in Arabic as قرطاج (Qarṭāj). The Carthaginians were a Phoenician people who spoke a Semitic language, so it might sound obvious that Arabic would use this, but actually it is a loan word from French replacing an earlier 'Cartagena' which was from Latin. That said, the ancient city was known as qrt-ḥdšt ('new city') in reference to the older 'Tyre'.
2334: Holy Grail May 9, 2021
There are lots of words for types of drinking vessels (cup; mug; glass; clalace; goblet; flute, etc.) but 'grail' really only appears in the context of the Holy Grail. The word 'grail' itself does not have any particular religiously significant etymology, coming from the Medieval Latin 'gradalis' meaning 'dish' and possible related to the word 'crater' though this is less certain. In Middle English the phrase 'Holy Grail' was 'seint gral' or 'sangreal' (same root as 'saint' which just means 'holy') and this is often contrasted with 'sang real' meaning 'royal blood'. This phrase definitely isn't the origin, but certainly could have influenced the word.
2329: Née & Né May 4, 2021
Often for biographical information, previous names, especially ones used before marriage, are listed after 'née'. This is a French participle meaning 'born' and as such takes grammatical gender (here, feminine) that it wouldn't if it were acting as a verb. Rarer, there is also therefore a masculine 'né' which can be used in used in cases where men replace their last-names after marriage such as for Jack White (né Gillis) or sometimes for professional reasons such Sting (né Gordon Sumner). The latter might be more common with legal name changes even when professional, like Teller's mononym those this was once his last name.
2320: mortar Apr 24, 2021
'Mortar' exists in the context of "mortar and pestle", "brick and mortar", and "mortar cannon" which all have fairly different meanings. This is because of the original French 'mortier' meaning both 'mixed cement/concrete' and 'a bowl to mix cement' which led fairly clearly to two of the senses of this word mentioned above, with a mortar meaning both a bowl for a mixture and then a mixture itself, both for spices and obviously cement. In the case of the explosives, this is from the meaning as a bowl, describing the shape of a cannon barrel, even those these are more cylindrical than some ways, but at least it was to describe shorter cannons and in that way offers some clarity.
2268: doubt and 2 Mar 2, 2021
Though it may not be too surprising that the word for ‘doubt’ is also related to words for ‘two’ including ‘duo’ and indeed ‘two, but keep in mind this replaced an earlier word with the same quality: Old English ‘twēo’ (doubt) from the same root as ‘two’. Likewise, the German word for doubt is ‘Zweifel’ which clearly has the root ‘zwei’ (two) in it. Moreover, the Latin root ‘dubitāre’, which led to the current English word is thought to come from habeō (I have), combined with the Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ “two” as in ‘holding two’ making the word seemingly even more literal, but actually the sense in Latin would be closer to ‘hesitate’.
Notably, the word ‘doubt’ in Middle English was not spelt with a B, but this was added later to correspond with the Latin root even though the Old French root, and the modern French derivative ‘douter’ (to doubt) aren’t spelt that way.
2266: cutler(y) Feb 28, 2021
The word 'cutler' and by extension 'cutlery' may come from the same root as 'cut', but only very distantly at best. These two terms originate with the Latin 'cultus'—not '*cutlus'—but eventually metathesized into the 'coutel'. The '-erie' suffix is is used in French to mean 'belonging to' such as 'bakery', or 'jewellery'.
2262: alchemy Feb 24, 2021
No one knows the precise origin of the word 'alchemy', but that doesn't mean we can't learn a lot from it. For one thing, although there is a principle in more modern words for Arabic loan words, this is a case wherein the Arabic (al-) meaning 'the' does not turn into 'au-' in French, even though it was borrowed into English from Old French from an earlier Arabic اَلْكِيمِيَاء (al-kīmiyā). Beyond that, it is not quite certain. An even earlier in Greek χημεία (khēmeía) refers to a liquid mixture extracted from gold, not creating it, from a root meaning 'to pour', but many think it it originally Egyptian. At that, people aren't sure which word it would be, but the leading candidate seems to be Χημία (Khēmía), a name for Egypt itself literally meaning, 'black earth'. Indeed, as happens in many cases, the answer is likely influence from both sources, especially considering that there was a lot of cross-cultural contact in the Ancient world.
2259: mush Feb 21, 2021
Mush as an exclamation to motivate sled-dogs is obviously associated with the Far North, but is not from any Inuit Yupik language, probably. Generally the word is understood to come from French in the mid-19th century likely from an alteration of either 'marchez' or 'marchons', both being imperative forms of 'marcher' (advance; march). That said, it has also been influenced by Michif, which is a dominantly French language but with great influence from a number of various languages native to North America.
2249: villain & villa Feb 10, 2021
The word 'villain' has been made popular especially in fiction, but as often happens with fiction, the truth—or in this case etymology—is made more exciting. The word in entered Middle English through the French 'vilein' from the same root as 'villa', the initial sense meaning 'rustic'. More specifically, the noun referred to a farmhand or peasant, but with that came negative connotations of being boorish, clownish, or even scoundrelly. Indeed, not only did this quite pejorative sense develop in English, but also in the Modern French 'vilain'.
2231: petticoat, cotillion, and cotte Jan 23, 2021
As mentioned, the word 'coat' comes from the French 'cotte', but this is not the only word derived from it in English. Now obsolete in French opting for 'manteau', it is really only found in the phrase cotte de mailles (chainmail). That said, it also gave rise, somewhat unsurprisingly, to 'petticoat' (though now this describes a type of skirt, it was once an undercoat, but also to 'cotillion', a type of dance. Cotillion, which once had the same meaning as 'petticoat' i.e. 'small coat', now has the sense of referring to any formal dance-event, but in the 17th century referred to a specific dance in which one would raise her dress enough to display the petticoat.
1222: Slang from French: It's not all Formal Apr 14, 2018
While generally words of French origin in English are seen as more formal, usually, there are a few exceptions to this. Many times, there are examples of a division between Northern and Southern English lexicon wherein the former will contain more Old English or Scandinavian-derived words, and the latter will contain more from Norman French, due to the history of invasions in Britain's history, but occasionally this is reversed by chance. For instance, 'poke' can be used to mean 'sack' in the North, which comes from French and is related to 'pocket', as well as 'rammel' ('garbage') for example. Notably, 'scallions', called 'spring onions' in the South, is considered merely dialectal in the UK but is standard and dominant in North America, because 'spring onions', while considered part of Standard British English, is quite new as a term. It should be clarified also that the Northern variations with French origin are often not part of even the standard for the regional dialects, and would not be used in formal settings as much if at all.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the Youtube too: https://youtu.be/Kgg5P7IIzvk