News from JMS
Welcome to our blog, where we plan to feature news, views and translation clues. Things like: did you know that English cats say ‘meow’, German moggies ‘miau’, French felines ‘miaou’, and Spanish Siamese ‘miau’. Pause for thought…
Word of the week: geek
We are going to post a different word each week, whose origins and contemporary meaning are (we think) very interesting. Word of the week is ‘geek’, a loanword (there’s a leitmotif) from the Low German word ‘geck’, meaning a simpleton or one who is easily deceived. When borrowed by American slang, it came to mean a crazy person who charmed snakes or bit off live chicken heads in the circus, as one did in those days. Geek morphed in slang (new word ‘to slang-morph’?) and today refers to a highly tech-savvy person who knows more about bytes than biting and is king of the internet rather than jester at the carnival. A geek is no longer crazy or deceived but cool, chic and in charge.