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| William Hemsley's Baking Day |
BAXTER
Noun. Long dial. (esp. Scot.)
[Old English bæcestre fem. of bæcere baker]
A baker.
If you like surnames that mean something (like I do), and you especially like surnames that mean something that's not too obvious (like I do), then you'll probably like the word (and name) BAXTER, which means baker. Hmm. It also means I'm battologizing (and so soon after writing a post about it). Oh dear.
One thing that might save this post is that some reference works say that the surname went from to bake to bakester to baxter. That's a jolly interesting journey, isn't it? Does that redeem my battological post? Well I think it does. So there.
I feel out of my depth commenting on most of your posts. I learn so many things here. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Ed!
Mortification is burning my cheeks. Oh I'm so off my game these past few weeks. (hahaha)
DeleteI love it when you comment, Evi, and it makes me so happy that you enjoy the blog : o )
DeleteAre you not doing ALL the words then? I was looking forward to 'bald' and 'baritone.'
ReplyDelete-c in s
I'm so sorry to disappoint you C, especially as you're one of my most loyal and comment-active readers. The thing is, depending on how you count, there are about 200,000 words in the English language. That means, if I were to do them all, it would take me over 500 years! To be truthful, I nearly fainted when I realised that this project was going to take me about 7 years to complete : o /
DeleteHowever, if there are words you particularly would like to see covered, I do take requests (quite a number of words in A were by special request). If you ever want to try your hand at writing a post yourself, you're welcome to write a guest post on any word you want covered.
Lastly, I *nearly* did bald, but decided against it at the last minute. However, I did cover 'ALOPECIA' which has a jolly interesting etymology. Will that suffice?
Sorry again : o / I would cover them all if I could! I shall be expecting future request aplenty from you now : o )
Hello! I find a lot of these quite fascinating. I might just have to use them with my students and our "word of the day" segment in class. On another note, I heard some rather ridiculous words have been finding their ways into the dictionary... I wouldn't mind seeing an entry on "blamestorming," "screenager," "frankenfood," or "lookism" to name a few haha.
ReplyDeleteBlamestorming? I love it! I might do a special entry for that one : o )
DeleteA similarly-derived surname is Brewster, referring to those who put S. cerevisiae to a more intoxicating use.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that the -ster suffix originally had a female connotation, but it's generally neutral these days.
Oh course! It's so obvious when you think about it, isn't it? And ...
Delete*checks in the OED*
Yes indeed! A female brewer. A couple of references I looked up said that a baxter was specifically a female brewer too.