LOL

Yes, I know you think LOL means "laughing out loud," and you're correct; it does mean that. But it meant something else originally.

LOL was popularized by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen in the 1960s. Caen loved using his own shorthand, and LOL was his go-to for “little old lady.” 

 His 1960 book Only in San Francisco contained a description of an outfit that included a tricorn hat topped with an “evil-looking bird of prey” that he said was the “regalia of the authentic LOL.” That usage lasted for a few decades.

In 1964, Jan and Dean had a hit with “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena”:
"And everybody’s sayin’ that there’s nobody meaner
than the little old lady from Pasadena.
She drives real fast, and she drives real hard.
She’s the terror of Colorado Boulevard."

As we move into the early 1980s, if you logged into a pre-internet chat system called Viewline, you might have witnessed history. One of its regulars, Wayne Pearson of Calgary, was chatting when someone said something so funny he was embarrassed to be laughing alone in his house. As he told the Calgary Herald years later: “You used to just type ‘hahaha’ really fast so that you would let them know that was very funny in a timely manner, but whatever he had said, it had me bursting out laughing almost to the embarrassment of doing so in a house by myself sitting at a computer.” So he didn’t type hahaha. He typed LOL. Then he had to explain what he meant. 

Viewline is also reportedly where “ROFL” — rolling on the floor laughing — was coined, though there’s no digital archive to prove it. Online shorthand became a thing and continues today.

The first verified instance we have in print came in 1989, in the newsletter for FidoNet, the bulletin-board network that, amazingly, still exists. There it appeared alongside two other classics we still use today: BRB (be right back) and BTW (by the way). 

In 2011, "LOL” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Four years later, in 2015, the OED named 😂 — the Face With Tears of Joy emoji — its Word of the Year. We had officially moved from typing our laughter to just sending a face. 

Boycott

I thought "boycott" was an odd word to mean a collective refusal to buy, use, or deal with a person, organization, or country. When that kind of oddity occurs, the word is sometimes an eponym named for a person rather than a thing. Such is the case with boycott.

In the late 19th century, rural Ireland was simmering. Between 1879 and 1882, tenant farmers—already battered by years of economic hardship—found themselves locked in conflict with wealthy, often absentee English landlords. This struggle became known as the Land War, a mass movement demanding fair rents, security of tenure, and the right to own the land they worked.

Into this tense landscape stepped Charles Boycott, a former English army officer serving as a land agent in County Mayo. His job was to enforce rent collection and evict tenants who fell behind. In a region already on edge, this made him the perfect symbol of everything locals resented.

Rather than resort to violence, the local tenant community chose something passive but in the end more effective: total social and economic isolation.

They refused to speak to Boycott. They refused to sell to him. They refused to work for him. They pressured his employees to quit.

Parish priest John O’Malley described this strategy with a new term: “boycotting.” 

When Mr. Boycott’s plight reached London’s The Times, the news prompted about 50 volunteers from Ulster to travel south and help him harvest his crops. Their arrival required a full escort from the Royal Irish Constabulary, whose two‑week stay on Boycott’s property reportedly involved trampled grounds and poached livestock. The harvest succeeded, technically—but at a staggering cost: £10,000 spent to save £350 worth of crops. It was a logistical farce that only amplified the symbolic power of the tenants’ strategy.

By late November 1880, Boycott abandoned his farm entirely. The tenants had won—and the English language had gained a brand‑new verb and noun.

Within months, newspapers across Britain and America were using boycott to describe any organized refusal to engage. Within years, it became a standard political tool. Today, it’s a global term for collective pressure, economic protest, and moral refusal.

Cardigan

The "cardigan" of the cardigan sweater is not quite an eponym, though it is based on a name. The usage comes from James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan.

He was a British army officer who commanded the Light Brigade during the Crimean War — most famously at the Charge of the Light Brigade. 

That battle was a catastrophic assault brought on by muddled orders and poor communication. The charge, launched at the Battle of Balaklava in October 1854, sent British cavalry straight into heavy Russian artillery fire. The results (heavy losses, but also the destruction of a Russian battery) became a symbol of both extraordinary bravery and military blunder. The event was immortalized in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” 

Cardigan himself emerged physically unscathed and, somewhat improbably, became a national celebrity. That celebrity helped turn his preferred knitwear into a fashion trend. According to contemporary accounts, the earl was frequently seen wearing a collarless, button-front wool jacket, which was practical for the bitter Crimean cold. 

It’s often said he either popularized or helped develop the garment for his troops, and when Cardigan returned to Britain, the public’s fascination with the “hero” of Balaklava extended to his clothing.  The snug sweater became known as a “cardigan,” cementing the earl’s name in everyday language — even as his reputation as a commander remained deeply controversial.  

Interestingly, the word “cardigan” has military (but not clothing) connections that go even farther back. “Cardigan” is a place name in Wales, an Anglicization of the Welsh “Ceredigion,” which literally means “Ceredig’s land.” Ceredig was a legendary chieftain of North Britain who is said to have pushed back an Irish invasion of Wales in the fifth century CE and received the aforementioned land as a reward. 

Keep Your Fingers Crossed

Crossing your fingers for luck is a familiar gesture in the English-speaking world and in emojis.But why did looping our middle finger over our index finger become a symbol of good luck and hopefulness?

Historically, it was a social ritual. One widely cited origin theory traces the custom to pre-Christian Europe, where the shape of a cross was believed to possess special power. According to this interpretation, the point where two lines intersected was seen as a place where beneficial spirits gathered. A wish made upon a cross could become anchored at that intersection until it came true.

That meant that originally making the gesture of a cross required two people. One person would make a wish while another crossed their index finger over the wish-maker’s finger, forming a small cross. The second participant effectively lent support to the wish, helping guide it toward fulfillment.

The modern solitary gesture may be the descendant of this much older cooperative custom.

Another version connects it to the rise of Christianity. For early Christians, the cross carried obvious religious significance, but the cross symbol had existed in various forms long before Christianity. Making the sign of the cross was believed to offer protection, ward off evil, and invoke divine favor and some folklorists have suggested that crossing one’s fingers may have developed as a smaller, more discreet version of this protective gesture. It may have even been a way for persecuted Christians to identify fellow believers using this as a subtle hand signal.

Whatever its exact origins, finger-crossing gradually moved from the realm of ritual into everyday life. Many customs that began as serious religious or supernatural practices eventually became casual habits. Few people who knock on wood today are consciously invoking ancient beliefs about spirits dwelling in trees, and most people who cross their fingers are not thinking about pagan wishes or Christian symbols of protection.

This post first appeared on my Substack Weekends site

Wanderworts and Other Borrowed Words

Wanderwort is a new word for me. Wanderwort (German for "wandering word" is a word that has spread as a loanword among numerous languages and cultures—often across completely different language families—typically because of trade, travel, or the exchange of new technologies and goods.

Many loanwords come from prepared food, drink, fruits, vegetables, and more from languages around the world. In particular, many come from French cuisine (crêpe, crème brûlée), Italian (pasta, linguine, pizza, espresso), and Chinese (dim sum, chow mein, wonton).

Most of the technical vocabulary of classical music (such as concerto, allegro, tempo, aria, opera, and soprano) is borrowed from Italian.

The vocabulary of ballet comes from French, as does the terminology of the sport of fencing.

Unlike regular loanwords that travel directly from one language to another (like the English "garage" coming from French), a wanderwort "wanders" so extensively along ancient trade routes that its exact point of origin is often incredibly difficult, or even impossible, for linguists to pinpoint. They are linguistic footprints of global commerce.

Virtually every language in the world gets its word for "tea" from one of two variants originating in different Chinese dialects, perfectly mapping out how the beverage was historically traded. From the sea route, the Min Nan dialect spoken in coastal Fujian used the word tê. Coastal traders (like the Dutch) brought this version by sea to Europe, giving us the English tea, French thé, German tee, and Spanish té. Via the land route, the Mandarin dialect used chá. This variant traveled overland across the Silk Road, turning into chay or chai in Persian, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili. In America, chai is used to mean a type of tea preparation - though saying "chai tea" is like saying "tea tea."

Similarly, sugar traveled a path across thousands of years alongside the physical cultivation and refining of sugarcane. It began in ancient India as the Sanskrit word śarkarā, which meant "ground or candied sugar" (originally "grit/gravel"). As trade expanded westward, it became śakkar in Persian, which the Arabs adopted as as-sukkar. Medieval European traders interacting with the Arab world brought it into European languages: it morphed into the Italian zucchero, Spanish azúcar, Old French çucre, and eventually the English sugar.