English is famously a mongrel language, filled with words hoovered, borrowed, and plunder from many languages over nearly a millennium.
The result is an amazing mix of influences from all over the world.
It is Christmas when this sentiment rings truest to me, as our lives, plates and stockings spill over with words from faraway places that rival those of Santa.
We decorate the season with exotic vocabulary, such as sprouts from Brussels or the French baubles, German cranberries, and bread sauce.
The perfect display of all the adventures and journeys that English has undertaken since the beginning is Christmas.
Here is a sprinkling of some of my favourite festive words that we have borrowed from far and wide, and made our own — so much so that those distant origins are often long forgotten . . .
The perfect display of all the adventures and travels English has made since the beginning of English is Christmas
Confelicity
There cannot be a better word to kick us off than ‘confelicity’, a lesser-known word modelled on French and Latin which means, rather beautifully, ‘joy in another person’s happiness’. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
Chocolate
What’s Christmas without chocolate?
If fighting over the last purple Quality Street is a family tradition of yours, you might enjoy the fact that ‘chocolate’ is a gift of the Aztecs.
The word came to us via Spanish but is ultimately from Nahuatl, a native language of Mexico, in which xocolatl and cacahuatl meant ‘food made from cacao seeds’.
It was first used in English as a beverage, and it became popular in 17th- and 18th century. There were many spellings. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary in 1664: ‘To a Coffee-house, to drink jocolatte, very good.’
There is something very jolly about ‘jocolatte’, isn’t there?
Dutch celebration
Although technically not borrowed words, many insults directed at the Dutch by English speakers reflect the animosity that existed between them during the 17th-18th century.
However, you can go Dutch, which implies that someone is not wealthy enough to make the full payment, or speak Double Dutch, total rubbish, or depend on Dutch courage (that old vice of alcohol) in order to get something. The dictionary offers ample proof of historical hostility.
Oft-forgotten — but perhaps a useful festive phrase — is ‘Dutch feast’: defined simply as a dinner ‘at which the host gets drunk before the guests’. Cheers!
The idea behind the Anglo-Saxon’s word was that the nut was ‘foreign’, since Wales belonged to Celtic and Roman peoples whose language they could not understand (stock image)
Glogg
Talking of a pre-prandial glass, the wonderfully onomatopoeic ‘glogg’ is a type of Scandinavian mulled wine made with brandy, almonds, raisins, and spices.
It is a direct borrowing from Swedish, where it is a verb meaning to ‘burn’ or ‘mull’.
Nepenthe
. . . And what better way to enjoy Christmas quafftide (drinking time) than with a ‘nepenthe’?
Mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, this is a drink that promises to bring forgetfulness of all things sad or troubling and to fill us with serenity. You can count me in.
Marzipan
Sugary paste that we use on Christmas cakes is a product of a decadent past. This all began at Martaban (Southeast Burma) which used to be famous for the preserves-sweet glazed jars.
Martaban was then translated from Persian to Arabic and into European languages, including Italian. It became marzapane. The definition shifted from an ornate container to its contents, and ‘marzipan’ began to charm Britain in the 15th century.
Pudding
There is nothing more British than Christmas pudding. Only the word ‘pudding’ itself came to us via the French bodeyn, meaning intestines, and which seems to have begun with the Roman’s botellus, sausage, (which also gives us the dangerous disease botulism, but let’s not go there).
Savoury puddings, much like black pudding, were the first puddings. In the 1600s sweet plum puddings, and other Christmas treats began to appear.
Here is a sprinkling of some of my favourite festive words that we have borrowed from far and wide, and made our own — so much so that those distant origins are often long forgotten . . .
Chipolata
Before dessert there’s the main course . . . This was once the main ingredient in these deliciously slender Christmas classics: onions.
Quite simply, their name comes from the Italian cipollata, meaning ‘flavoured with onion’.
Anyone looking for an alternative name for their sausages might like the Victorian slang term ‘bags of mystery’, so called because you never quite know what’s in them.
Walnut
It might sound strange that the first part of the name of the English festive nut means ‘Welshman’. The idea behind the Anglo-Saxon’s word was that the nut was ‘foreign’, since Wales belonged to Celtic and Roman peoples whose language they could not understand.
The hazelnut, by contrast, was considered to be a native nut.
Incidentally, the most Christmassy nut, the chestnut, has nothing to do with chests, but comes ultimately from the Greek for ‘nut of Castanea’, a region in Greece.
Feefle
There are 50 Inuit terms for snow!It’s possible to hear about how Inuits use snow words in their language, but did you also know that Scots are the winners of the most comprehensive snowy dictionary?
The ancient Scottish word-hoard includes ‘feefle’, meaning to swirl, a ‘flindrikin’, a light snow shower, as well as the delightful ‘figgerin’, describing a single flake of snow.
These are all words that I find perfect to say as you crump (old English for crunching through snowy fresh) in a landscape of niveous (snowy) beauty.
The name of this decoration came from Old French and the verb estinceler, to sparkle, which in turn comes from the Latin scintilla, a spark (also at the heart of ‘scintillating’) (stock image)
Tinsel
The name of this decoration came from Old French and the verb estinceler, to sparkle, which in turn comes from the Latin scintilla, a spark (also at the heart of ‘scintillating’). In medieval times, the term tinsel was used for fabric that had metallic thread. The late 16th century saw the emergence of modern sparkle strips.
Scurryfunge
If I allow you to consider U.S. English another language, you may be able to enjoy words from one its regional dialects which seem perfect for this particular time of the year.
To scurryfunge is to run around the house tidying things up, such as putting items in cupboards or under the beds. It is a habit I’ve made of myself: a serial scurryfunger.
Zhush
But do we zhush up our house, zhoosh it up, or zhuzh it? Although it may not be something we can all spell, zhush is a great companion for Christmas.
Zhush is a word that Polari borrowed. It’s a secret language, which was once essential within the gay community. The sound of hands ruffling on velvet, or the sprinkle of stardust in a Christmas dress, conjures up the sounds of zhush. It’s quite amazing!
Yule
Yule crossed the oceans with the Vikings — it comes from their Old Norse word jól.
It was first used to mean a pagan festival at the winter solstice, and may also give us the word ‘jolly’. Yule is actually a lengthy and fittingly twinkly collection of words.
Yule-blinker, the pole star is Yule-brose. Yulerose was a seasonal porridge on which juices were made with boiled meat in the 19th-century. It was a tradition to place a ring in Yulebrose’s communal bowl. Whoever scooped it would be predicted to become the first to wed.
A Yule-shard is someone who does not finish work before Christmas, or New Year. This describes most of us.
Perhaps the best phrase of all is “Yule-hole”, which will be used by many this holiday season. It is the loosest hole on your belt, to which you resort after Christmas dinner — just short of undoing it altogether!
English is famously a mongrel language, with words that have been hoovered, borrowed, and plunder from many languages for almost a millennium.
Humbug
What to do after a trip around the world? In 1754, The Connoisseur newspaper reported on a new word it considered to be ‘absurd’, ‘disagreeable’ and ‘nonsensical’.
Another writer of the time decided that ‘this Humbug is neither an English word, nor a derivative of another language’.
In other words, ‘humbug’ seemed to arrive out of nowhere, and many wished it would swiftly return.
But eventually, it was decided that ‘humbug’ perfectly exemplified its own meaning — a hoax, a fraud, and a total sham.
When Charles Dickens’s Scrooge declared Christmas to be ‘humbug’, that is exactly what he meant. This is the anti-Christmas cheer definition.
Firkytoodle
And finally, I hope you’ll allow me to slip one English original in, for where would we be without firkytoodling? A word first recorded in 1896, this is a glorious euphemism for a bit of festive canoodling or ‘messing about’. The linguistic lovers of mistletoe are firktytoodling and mistletoe.
John Murray published n Word Perfect, by Susie Dent. © Susie Dent 2021.