Ghost are invisible dead people all around us. “Ghosting” is also our word for when someone stops replying to you. Now, suppose we told you that ghosting isn’t named after ghosts, but instead that ghosts are named after the concept of people ignoring your texts. “That’s clearly untrue,” you’d say, “and it makes no sense.”
And you’d be right. But we do have a bunch of other pairs of words that really did get their names in the exact reverse of how you’d think.
Escalators Aren’t Named for Escalation
An escalator brings you from one floor of a building to the next. It escalates you to a higher level, in the same way that you might escalate an issue or a situation, and you’d assume that’s why it got the name it did. But we never had the word “escalate” before escalators. The earliest appearance we can find of the word was in 1944, and it came from the escalator, which had been trademarked by the Otis company decades earlier.
In fact, if escalate already meant “to raise” back when the escalator was invented at the start of the 20th century, “escalator” would have been a terrible name for the device. We already had an invention that raised you from one floor to another — the elevator. The unique selling point of the new escalator was that it was a moving staircase, not that it raised stuff. And so, that’s what the word “escalator” actually meant. Inventor Charles Seeberger coined the word from scala, the Latin word for “steps.”
Now that you know that, the word “escalate” should really mean “move using steps,” without specifically saying whether you’re moving something up or moving it down.
Red Pandas Aren’t Named After Pandas
The red panda, Ailurus fulgens, is a cute little critter, something like a raccoon. It’s presumably named after the better-known panda bear, because its name means “panda, but a specific kind.” But people were calling red pandas “pandas” since early in the 19th century, some 40 years before anyone called the bears “pandas.” The name appears to come from a Nepali word about claws or feet.
The bears that we now call pandas were then named “giant pandas,” to call them big versions of Ailurus fulgens. Over time, as the giant pandas became increasingly famous, Ailurus fulgens became known as “lesser pandas,” then red pandas. Finally, giant pandas became commonly known simply as “pandas.” This is one more way panda bears are parasites and a burden on us all.
Oranges Aren’t Named for the Color Orange
Oranges seem quite obviously named after what color they are, much like how we saw a blue fruit and called it a “blueberry” and a black fruit and called it a “blackberry.” But the name “orange” really came from the Sanskrit word for the fruit, naranj. In the 14th century, the French and the English called this fruit “pomme d’orenge,” referring to it as a kind of apple, much like a potato was an “apple of the ground” and a pineapple was an “apple like a pine cone.”
At the time, the color orange wasn’t called “orange.” In fact, it didn’t have a name, period. If someone wanted to describe that color, they might call it “red-yellow,” but mostly, they felt no need to describe it at all. No color has a name or identity until we see it a lot and decide it’s time to acknowledge it, and with orange, that came when we started seeing these fruits called oranges.
Rubbers Aren’t Named Because They’re Made of Rubber
A rubber is made of rubber, but that’s not why it’s called that. Rubber (the material) had no name in English until the rubber (the object) was created. Mesoamericans used latex thousands of years ago, but we don’t know what they called it. Then, in 1770, a British chemist named Joseph Priestly turned latex into a new solid invention. “Rubbing is so easy with this,” he said. “I’ll call it a rubber.” And the material, too, became known as rubber after that, even if you don’t use it for rubbing.
That last paragraph will be very confusing to all of you who think the word “rubbers” refers to condoms. Condoms are called “rubbers” because they’re made of rubber. But we were referring to the other meaning of rubbers — erasers. Pencil erasers were called rubbers because they rub out pencil marks. As a result, “rubber” now applies to all forms of latex. Even your tires, which are a lot better at leaving marks than at rubbing marks out.
Ducking Isn’t Named After Ducks
We don’t know if you ever stopped to wonder which came first — the word “duck” referring a bird or the word “duck” meaning crouching down. Frankly, you probably have more important things to debate. But our money would have been on the bird coming first.
Here’s why: Naming a bird a “duck” because it keeps ducking would have been silly. Ducks don’t appear to duck more than any other animal. They dive down sometimes, but so do most similar birds. If someone was so struck by a duck ducking that they named the animal a “duck” as a result, that can only be because they shot at the bird and missed.
That appears to be exactly what happened, some 500 years after “duck” already existed as a verb. In naming the bird, someone immortalized just how bad a hunter they were, and that’s ducking hilarious.
Soy Sauce Isn’t Named After Soy
Clearly, soy sauce is named for soy. It’s the word “soy” followed by “sauce.” There’s no way the reverse is true, and soy beans are named for soy sauce, no more that Worcestershire is named for Worcestershire sauce.
But no — the bean really is named for the sauce, rather than the other way around. The sauce was originally Chinese, and “soy” was the Japanese word for it. People had various unrelated names for the beans before naming them after the sauce. In 18th-century America, for instance, they called the beans “Chinese vetches.”
As for Worcestershire, no, it wasn’t named after Worcestershire sauce. But the man who invented Worcestershire sauce went on to be elected mayor of Worcester, which is the next best thing.
A Metaphorical Tug-of-War Isn’t Named for the Game Tug-of-War
If you say two rival companies are locked in a tug-of-war, you’re of course referencing the game in which two sides pull on a rope. Those companies (or countries, or spouses) are struggling against each other, each pulling at some goal just like that playground game. Incidentally, that rope game used to be an Olympic sport and was also played thousands of years before that, which should cement it as a point-of-reference for all conflict metaphors.
But in reality, that phrase was floating around long before it referred to the game. People would speak of some “tug of war” to call a dispute the ultimate struggle. The phrase drew from actual wars, not from the game. Only in the 19th century did they apply this existing phrase to the rope game.
Like we said, that game existed long before that, but it had different names. The Greeks called it “I Draw, I Pull.” The Chinese called it “hook pulling.” In English, people used to call it “French and English.” That name was another reference to war, referring to how the French and English kept fighting each other, back-and-forth.
Yeah, those French and English couldn’t agree on anything, other than that oranges are a type of apple.
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