So today I have 5 interesting word origins for you.   

Do you ever wonder where we get the term sniper from? Well, snipe is the name of a really fast bird that lives in England that people used to try to shoot with bow and arrows. But it was too quick and they could never catch it. When the guns came around, they would shoot the birds with the gun because they found it a more difficult and fun target. But since the birds were so fast, they would have to hide in the bushes to shoot them. If you hunted a snipe, you were called a sniper. And that is how we got the term today. 

Do you ever wonder why we call tennis shoes “sneakers?” Well sneakers were invented in 1863, but they weren’t called that back then. They were an athlete’s shoe that was made out of rubber and fabric. Two theories on how it got the name are: 1. Baseball players would try to steal bases, or sneak to bases. And 2. Thieves would wear them so they could sneak around without being heard. Because of the rubber soles, they wouldn’t make any noise. “Sneakers” is an Americanism, meaning only Americans use that term, but in Great Britain, sneakers are known as plimsolls. 

Do you ever wonder where we get the term agony from? In Greek, agony means athletic contest. If you’ve ever watched athletes, they exert themselves really hard. So the term went from being athletic contest, to some type of struggle, and from there, the term went from being some type of struggle, to the emotion or effort that was felt during the struggle. And from there it became suffering. 

So why do we call hotdogs, hotdogs? They were originally called franks or frankfurters and they were sold on the streets of New York around the year 1900. But there was rumors going around that the hotdogs actually had dog meat in them so a cartoonist, T.A. Dorgan, had drawn up a wiener dog wrapped in a hotdog bun and they decided to call it hotdog. Now on the Coney Island, they call hotdogs Coney’s and they actually had a law passed saying that you couldn’t call them hotdogs because of the rumor that was going around about the hotdogs having dog meat in them. So now they call them Coney’s. 

Have you ever heard the term sadomasochism? Well where does masochism come from? It comes from the author; Leopold Van Sacher-Masoch and he wrote books about enjoying pain while having sex. Now if you take his last name, Masoch, and you add ism to is you have masochism. By the way, his wife had him put in a mental institute at the age of 50 because he went insane. 

So how about the word urchin? Urchin can either mean a small poor child, or a sea urchin. And it comes from the French word, meaning hedgehog. Now there’s a legend going around that little mischievous elves would turn into hedgehogs and would go around playing little mischievous tricks on people. So it went from being mischievous little elves to mischievous little kids. And sea urchins are called sea urchins because they are prickly like the hedgehog. So a sea urchin is a sea hedgehog. 

Coming up in another video, more cool origin word facts. So if you have any words that you want to know the origin of, please leave me a comment. 

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