The origin of some words which we use daily

I was going through the online dictionary, I got some very good information from the etymology of words. I realized that I was using some words without knowing their real meaning. Here are some of the words, which we use daily.

O.K.: The word OK has got many origins, but the best accepted theory is that during the World war, the British army started using code words for communication. Instead of using full words, they used abbreviation of words. It happened that “all correct” was one of the major words. The German army was spying over the messages and they adopted the same version, but since their pronunciation was different, the Germans spelt “all correct” as “Ole Korrect”. The word was further shortened as O.K. It is still not known how this word spread across all countries and found its name in the Oxford dictionary.

The next word is Catamaran. This word has its origin from the tamil word “Kattamaram”(It means a makeshift boat made up of logs of wood). Since the britishers could not pronounce the word properly, they called the word as “katamarm” and it virtually became Catamaran. (Three cheers to Tamil language).

We all use the word new, but how many of us know that it was a word which was named in honour of the great scientist,Sir Isaac Newton. It was decided in the early eighteenth century that the world “new” would be recognized as a word for something that has been just been created or discovered. (Well, what word did they use previously?)


Here comes the last word, but not least. This word is being used all over the world for answering telephone calls, but it actually means the exact opposite. The word “hello” gained a very dubious origin. We all know that sir Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but that version of telephone was very crude and could be used only for short distance calls. It was Sir Thomas Alva Edison , who improvised the telephone and made it more efficient. It happened that the day after releasing his improvised model of the telephone, Edison was getting a lot of calls from his friends, who kept on congratulating him, getting fed up of the calls , Edison picked the phone and yelled at the caller” Hell Oh!”.( What he meant was “go to hell, man). The caller was amused,but he thought it was a new word and so the word “Hello” came into existence.( Well, what did Edison think about this?)

These are some of the words , which I found interesting, I will blog more if I can get more info on etymology of words.

The that next time , you use a word, please be sure to get its origin. Who knows you might land up with a very good story, bye