Word Origins

Hello!

I am Yuliia ShevchenkoI am here because I love my job. I’d like to share my

lesson plan with anybody who is interested in teaching English.

More lesson plans you can find in my blog:

http://lovelifeasateacher.blogspot.com/

Instructions for use1. Discuss with your students if they know the meaning of the following

words: cup, snob, posh, UFO, pros and cons. Elicit any ideas on the origin of the words from your students.

2. Students work in pairs. They look at the notes the student has taken while studying word origins and try to guess the history of the word origin with the help of the notes.

3. Ask your students to search the dictionary for some information about the word origin and complete the chart as in the example.

Nota Bene! Each group of students receive one word and the text with information taken from Oxford dictionary.

4. Students present their findings to the class in the form of a short report using the chart they’ve completed.

5. Ask students to search the internet for some other words and expressions. Students study the origin and share the survey with the classmates.More info on the word origin you may find here : http://

www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/word-origins

Quotations are commonly printed as a means of

inspiration and to invoke philosophical thoughts from

the reader.

cup✣ An Old English word, from Latin cuppa. As early as 1640 cup could

mean ‘a sports trophy in the form of a cup’, originally for horse-racing. To be in your cups is to be drunk. In the past you could also use the phrase to mean ‘during a drinking bout’. It is unclear which meaning is intended in this passage in the biblical Apocrypha on the strength of wine: ‘And when they are in their cups, they forget their love both to friends and brethren, and a little after draw out swords.

Quotations are commonly printed as a means of

inspiration and to invoke philosophical thoughts from

the reader.

ufo✣ According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term ‘unidentified

flying object’ goes back at least to the 1950s: it is recorded in 1953, in a book by the US aviator and writer Donald Keyhoe. The OED also gives a citation in 1956 by Edward Ruppelt, an officer in the USAF, stating that he’d invented the term as a more general one to replace the earlier description for such objects, flying saucer.

✣ Strange objects in the sky were first named flying saucers in the 1940s: the first OED citation is from The Times, in 1947. They were so called because of an account by a US pilot, Kenneth Arnold, who stated in various newspaper and radio interviews of that year that he’d seen ‘saucer-like’ objects in the sky while he was flying past Mount Rainier. By the time Ruppelt and his USAF colleagues were investigating reports of these sightings in the 1950s, it was clear that ‘saucer’ was too limited a description, since the objects in question were said to be of many different shapes: hence Ruppelt’s invention of ‘UFO’.

1.Transition headline

Pros and cons✣ The phrase ‘pros and cons’ is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase

pro et contra, ‘for and against’, and has been in use in the abbreviated form since the 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

✣ ‘Pros and cons’ is a well-established standard usage; Oxford’s larger dictionaries do not mark it as ‘informal’ or in any way restricted in use. The much longer alternative is the phrase ‘arguments for and against’.

Quotations are commonly printed as a means of

inspiration and to invoke philosophical thoughts from

the reader.

SNOB✣ There is a long-standing belief that snob has some connection with

Latin sine nobilitate ‘without nobility’, abbreviated to s-nob, which then became snob. It is an ingenious theory but highly unlikely, as a snob was first recorded in the late 18th century as a shoemaker or cobbler. The word soon came to be used for any person of humble status or rank—Cambridge undergraduates used the term to mean ‘someone from the town, not a member of the university’, and this in turn led to the broader sense ‘a lower-class person, or a person lacking in good breeding, or good taste’. In time the word came to describe someone who seeks to imitate or give exaggerated respect to people they perceive as superior in social standing or wealth.

Quotations are commonly printed as a means of

inspiration and to invoke philosophical thoughts from

the reader.

posh

One of the more frequently repeated explanations of the origin of a word is the story that posh, comes from the initials of ‘port out, starboard home’. This is supposed to refer to the location of the more desirable cabins—on the port side on the outward trip and on the starboard side on the return—on passenger ships between Britain and India in the 19th century. Such cabins would be sheltered from the heat of the sun or benefit from cooling breezes, and so were reserved by wealthy passengers. Sadly, there is no evidence to support this neat and ingenious explanation. The P&O steamship company is supposed to have stamped tickets with the letters P.O.S.H., but no tickets like this have ever been found. A more likely explanation is that the word comes from a 19th-century slang term for a dandy, from thieves' slang for ‘money’. The first recorded example of posh is from a 1915 issue of Blackwood's Magazine.

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Short history

word

Example-how I can use the word?

Definition of the word – what is the current meaning of the word?

Penguins are found almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, where they catch their food underwater and raise their young on land.

The sailors

In 1577-80

where I want the test

penguin

A large, black and white sea bird that swims and cannot fly.

Welsh pen gwyn, meaning 'white head'

The sailors on the expedition may have mistaken penguins for great auks, or simply applied a term they knew to an unfamiliar bird.

Example

Thanks!Any questions?

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