A Penguin by Any Other Name is Still a Penguin

Posting the First Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group, is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. YOU can sign up HERE to participate.

Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.

Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts:   Joylene Nowell Butler, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Meka James, Diane Burton, Victoria Marie Lees, and M Louise Barbour!

This month's question is: When you are working on a story, what inspires you?

Hmmm. When I'm working on a story, the story inspires me. The characters, the setting, the scene.

Origins: a recurring post in which I delve into the history of a word or phrase.

Today's word is: PENGUIN!

I bet you don't know the origin of this word. It certainly came as a surprise to me. It's... Welsh! 

Back in the 1570s it was the name given to the great auk of Newfoundland which became extinct in 1844. Birds that looked similar to the great auk were seen by Sir Francis Drake in Magellan's Straits in 1578 and he may have contributed to the Antarctic birds being called penguins as it was in use by the 1580s.

Penguin is believed to come from pen, meaning "head", (a word found in Penzance, pendragon and Pennsylvania) and the word gwyn (as in Gwendolyn) meaning "white, shining." As you can see from the preserved specimen at the right, it does look rather like the birds we now call penguins, like the Chinstrap, below.

 

Just to confuse things, there is also the possibility that the word penguin comes from the Latin word penguis, which means "fat, juicy" and figuratively refers to something "dull, gross, or heavy."

I like the Welsh origin story better.

LoanWord: A word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification. 

Today's loan words come to us from Irish, Scottish, and Gaelic. Bob (as in short hair), Cairn, Clan, Crag, Galore, Glen, Pet (as in a domesticated or tame animal), Paid, Whiskey (of course!) Hubbub, Shanty, and Smidgen. 

Such great words!

Dribble to a Still

There was a hubbub going on in the shanty. He opened the door, just a smidgen, and peeked inside. What a mess! The still was broken apart and most of the whiskey bottles, so carefully corked, were broken. In the middle of the carnage a giant penguin reeled.

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Being Thankful

Today I'm thankful for my sister, who is coming to visit this month for her first annual checkup since her heart valve replacement. Yes, it's been a year already!