Word origins

[lawrence]

I just had a bit of a laugh, was looking up Old Norse words, came across;

berserkr, lit. 'bear-shirt', (alt. berr-serkr, 'bare-shirt') frenzied warriors

Thought is said 'bear-s*** (as in what they do in the woods) ! That made me think of the phrase 'I am going ape-s***!' which means getting angry...which fits nicely with 'Berserker' !

Then I saw that I had mis-read the lit. of berserkr and all my fun was ended

Anyway, I like the imagery here (not my deranged idea, the proper one) that these berserker warriors would go into battle bare-chested, disdaining armour. I think perhaps they had no intention of surviving, and just went all out to break the lines of the other army. Unfortunately the great bravado of the young warriors didn't always help much, such as when the courageous Celts threw themselves at Caesars' lines only to be cut to bits.

Anyone else got any fascinating bits of etymology?

 

[Ireth]

My sister and I were wondering last night about the origin of the word pajamas (or pyjamas). According to Wiktionary, it's from a Persian word meaning "leg garment" which I have no idea how to render into English script; this in turn came from a Hindi word that I have the same issue with. I'll have to look it up elsewhere and see if I can actually find out the words it's derived from.