English adopts new words regularly, and it also adopts new meanings for existing words. Sometimes these new meanings are metaphorical applications of the original definitions, and sometimes…well, not. Have a look:
If you’re “on tenterhooks” (it’s not “tenderhooks”), you’re anxiously waiting for something. But a “tenterhook” was an actual hook — they were spaced along the edges of a wooden frame called a “tenter” used for stretching newly woven cloth. The original meaning dates back to the 1400s; the “new” one arose around the 1700s.
A “bellwether” (it’s not “bellweather”) is an early signal of future trends. You see this a lot among stock market analysts. But the original “bellwether” was a sheep — a “wether” was a kind of sheep, and the one that led the flock wore a bell.
Almost everybody knows what a deadline is nowadays. But when the term appeared it had nothing to do with time; it was an actual line. In a prisoner-of-war camp. If prisoners crossed the line they would be killed. The prison was the Andersonville Prison, a prisoner of war camp during the US Civil War. Not only does “deadline” have a very specific origin, its use in the sense of “time limit” is very specific too; it first appeared in the title of a 1920 play: “Deadline at Eleven.” The word must have been in use in the newspaper business around that time, but the play is the first written citation anybody’s ever found.
A “linchpin” (sometimes “lynchpin”) is a person or (sometimes) thing that’s vital to some operation. “She was the linchpin of the company’s expansion into Canada,” for example. But originally a “linchpin” was an actual pin — a metal one inserted into an axle shaft to make sure the wheel didn’t fall off. It dates back well before automobiles, and applies to any kind of axle, not just carriages and cars.
“On the distaff side” is getting to be fairly obscure, but has been a go-to phrase for speechmakers in settings like Elks Clubs and chambers of commerce for years. It’s used by men to mean the activities undertaken by women (usually the wives of the men) as an analog to the “main” activities the men are doing (which they consider more important, of course). Zoom back to the 11th century, though, and you might find an actual distaff (probably “distaef” at the time) — a wooden rod used to wind unspun fiber like flax or wool. Twisting the fibers around the distaff was often done by women, and although both the job and the tool are obsolete, the word has stuck around.
“Transfixed” means to be fascinated or held in rapt attention — a good description of everybody reading this, I’m sure. Even if that’s not true, it’s far better than the original meaning of “transfixed,” which mean being run through by an arrow or sword. In “The Faerie Queene,” Edmund Spenser’s (ridiculously long) 1590 poem, the queen of Assyria (Semiramis, if you must know) was “transfixt” by a sword. Her own son’s sword, too, which says something about the general tenor and tone of Spenser’s epic. It probably passed for a action thriller at the time.
To end on another term with a slightly unpleasant origin, when you “earmark” something nowadays it usually refers to setting aside money for a particular purpose. Go back to the early 1500s and it meant the way you identified which cows, pigs, goats, etc. belonged to you. That way if you caught somebody swiping your animals you could transfix the rustlers. “Earmark” was simply marking an ear, often by cutting a notch. Ranchers apparently still do so today, but since the mid 1800s the term has become more associated with government budgets and politicians. Maybe we should bring back the original meaning, at least when it comes to politicians.
