Word Etymologies

[Joy]

Here are a couple of words that have a realtion to The Hobbit and to LotR. This is interesting to see how these words have progressed to what we have today.

Berserk
The Old Norse berserkr is a compound of ber-, the root of bjorn, 'bear', plus serkr, 'shirt' (related to the English dialect word sark). Thus a Norse berserkr was a warrior who wore a bearskin shirt. In battle these warriors would work themselves into a frenzy and, according to popular belief, at such times they even became invulnerable to the effects of steel and fire. The word was borrowed into English in the early nineteenth century when literary interest in Scandinavian history and myth was high, and from the sense of a Scandinavian warrior frenzied in battle the word became a general term for someone whose actions are marked by reckless defiance.


Eavesdrop
The verb eavesdrop first appeared in the seventeenth century and is probably a back-formation by subtraction of its agent ending from the noun eavesdropper, which in turn is derived from the Middle English noun evesdrop, now spelled eavesdrop. Dating from the ninth century, eavesdrop and its variant eavesdrip referred to the water that falls in drops from the eaves of a house. Later the term was also applied to the ground on which water falls from the eaves. In English law the term came to denote a special permit that was formerly required before one could build so that water from one's eaves could fall directly on the land of another.
The original meaning of eavesdropper, as it was used in the fifteenth century, was 'one who stood within the eavesdrop of a house to overhear what is going on inside', as is evident in the following passage from Termes de la Ley, first compiled by John Rastell in 1527: "Evesdroppers are such as stand under walls or windows by night or day to hear news, and to carry them to others, to make strife and debate amongst their neighbours: those are evil members in the commonwealth, and therefore . . . are to be punished." From such beginnings sprang the word which has come to be applied to the sophisticated electronic eavesdropping carried on by governmental agencies today.