Question: I suffer from migraine headaches. Can you tell me why they are called by that name?
Answer: The "migraine" story starts with the Greek noun "kranion," meaning "skull," which gave rise straightforwardly, via Latin transmission, to our English word "cranium." "Kranion" also entered English in phonetic disguise by a more roundabout route. Using the prefix "hemi-, meaning "half," (familiar to us from such borrowings as "hemisphere"), Greek formed "hemikrania" to denote a pain on one side of the head, and this entered Late Latin as "hemicrania." Old French dropped the "he-" and took up the word as "migraigne" or "migraine," using it sometimes in the original "headache" sense and sometimes in an extended sense of "spite" or "foul mood." English borrowed the word (in a variety of spellings) around 1400.
In modern English, "migraine" is still used, mostly literally, for a severe, often unilateral (one-sided) headache. An old variant spelling, "megrim" (pronounced "mee-grum"), has become established as a distinct word, occurring both as an uncommon synonym of "migraine" and, in its plural form "megrims," as an old-fashioned word for "low spirits." "Megrims" is not a word you'll often see, but our files do contain a recent magazine article in which a country kitchen's larder is said to include "jars full of fruits, pickles, jams and jellies to stave off the megrims of those 20 below zero nights."
Question: With tax season rolling around, I've been taking a look at the household budget, and it has me wondering about how the word "budget" originated. Can you explain?
Answer: The Romans formed the Latin noun "bulga," denoting "a leather bag or knapsack," from a word in an ancient Gallic language. This noun became "bouge" when it was taken into 12th-century French. By the end of that century, the diminutive form "bougette" was being used for "a small bag." The English borrowed the word as "bowgette," and by 1611 had settled on the spelling "budget." It meant "a leather pouch or wallet" or "a leather or skin bottle."
Near the end of the 16th century we find the earliest evidence of the use of "budget" for "the contents of a pouch or wallet" or "a package or bundle." The financial sense of "budget" is first attested in 1733, when it was used for "a statement of the financial position of a government for the ensuing year based on estimates of expenditures and revenues." Such a budget was prepared by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the approval of the House of Commons. By the 1850s, "budget" had begun to be used outside of government and more generally for a financial account of a family or individual. From this developed the sense of "the money available, required or assigned to a particular purpose."
Question: Please tell me when, where and how the term "kid" came to mean a child.
Answer: We can be pretty sure that the use of "kid" to refer to a child is an extended use of "kid" to mean the young of some animals. "Kid" is most familiar as the word for a young goat, but in fact it was formerly used and in some cases can still be used for the young of various other related animals. The word is ultimately of Scandinavian origin.
The use of "kid" to mean "a child" is not at all a recent development. Its first known appearance in writing was in a 16th century comedy called The Old Law. The Oxford English Dictionary states that "kid" in this sense was originally "low slang," but that it became established in more general use during the 19th century.
The "child" sense of "kid" first became common among the British, and the British have fully accepted it. No British usage commentator that we know of has criticized it. American commentators have been a bit more dubious about it, though the early resistance to it by Americans has now also largely subsided in the face of many years of widespread use.