We all know the word automobile, though it mayn’t be the one we now use. But have you looked, really looked, at that word? Auto-mobile. Self-moving. Really? And I thought that was only in the futuristic worlds of the sci-fi writer.

Having time on my hands these past few days I decided to investigate other words of this ilk:

• In Antigua a fig isn’t a fig, but a banana.
• A strawberry isn’t a berry; the berry has its seeds on the inside.
• The English digestive biscuit does not aid digestion.
• The breakfast cereal All Bran isn’t ‘all bran’ but contains 13% other ingredients.
• A French trombone isn’t a musical instrument, but a paperclip.
• Gasoline doesn’t mean gas-anything; it comes from the name of the first person to sell it commercially, John Cassell, he of publishing fame.
• In Dutch wanklank has no connection with solitary pleasures;  it means a discordant noise.
• And to be cock-throppled doesn’t mean to be cock-throppled; it means to have an extremely prominent Adam’s apple. But of course, you knew that.
• For the first 100 years of its life the screwdriver wasn’t used to drive screws but to extract nails.
• The wader-bird, oyster-catcher doesn’t catch oysters.
• Chickens don’t have chickenpox (although cows do carry cowpox).
• In Denmark a boghandler doesn’t handle bogs, he sells books.
• In Slavic-speaking countries a bog isn’t a bog or a book; it’s a god.
• The Mute Swan isn’t mute.
• Cat originally meant dog; Latin catulus, a small dog or puppy.
• Seahorses aren’t horses; in fact they have no legs being no more than oddly shaped fish.
• The silkworm is not a worm but the larva or caterpillar of the silkmoth, Bombyx mori.
• And Bugs Bunny is a hare – but everyone knows that.
• To be pixilated doesn’t refer to those jagged digitalised images; it means to be led astray by the pixies.
• A crossword isn’t a cross word, but a word puzzle.
• And a mystery play isn’t a Medieval ‘Who Dunnit’ but a play performed by the craft guilds: Latin mysterium, ‘one who is initiated’ (into a secret craft).
• The Hundred Years War lasted 116 years.
• In the Roman Empire the Equestrians weren’t horse-riders, though they did own horses; they were a class of noblemen, one short of the senatorial class.
• A fetch isn’t a supernatural being who ‘fetches’ the newly dead; it is a family’s (female) guardian spirit. Of Scandinavian origin, in Ireland and Scotland she became the banshee, that wailing foreboder of death.
• In Icelandic, eight is a ‘quarter’ i.e. a place of residence; it’s also the distance the sun travels in 3 hours.
• Always doesn’t mean ‘all ways’ although that is the origin meaning; it now means ‘every time, repeatedly’.
• Fire-dogs aren’t dogs but are a pair of metal stands used to support a log in an open fire; also known as andiron, which word is in no way related to iron but to the Low Latin for ‘frame’, anderia.
• An anthology isn’t the study of flowers; though it comes from anther, the pollen-bearing part of the flower, it is a collection of poems.
• A Jerusalem artichoke isn’t from Jerusalem but is native to North America, and it isn’t an artichoke but the edible tuber of the sunflower Helianthus tuberosus.
• Just as an automobile isn’t a vehicle self-driven, so an autospy is neither self-seeing nor watching oneself.
• Bald doesn’t mean ‘without hair’, but white, as in the white-headed bald eagle.
• But bald as in ‘bald-faced lie’ means ‘bold’.
• The bandicoot isn’t related to the coot (a bird); it’s a rat.
• A belfry might sound like a ‘bell-tower’ but in fact is a watch-tower, the word being derived from the same word as gives us borough.
• Bilbo isn’t a Hobbit but a sword from Bilbao, Spain, renowned for its steel.
• And although blond now means ‘fair haired’ it originally meant ‘grey’.
• A booming noise might be thought of as loud but the word originally meant a ‘hum’, which tends to be quiet and soft.
• buxom was originally applied to a person obedient, obliging, good-humoured, literally ‘bow-some’. I suppose it might also mean bow-fronted.
• Brand-new has nothing to do with ‘brand-names’, but is ‘brands’ as in burns. Burnt- or branded-new.
• Today’s brocade is a cloth woven with raised design, often of silver or gold thread. But in its original form that gold and silver was applied as embroidery after the silken fabric was woven.
• A buccaneer means a pirate, yea? No. The word is Caribbean, and means a place where meat is smoke-dried. The reference is to cannibals using these ‘wooden grids’ to broil their human captives. See Pirates of the Caribbean-2.
• Blind-man’s buff isn’t from ‘buffet’ as in ‘to strike a blow’, nor is it from ‘buffer’ as in ‘to cushion’; it is from buffer, a foolish fellow, a stammerer – one who puffs out his cheeks. The word is allied to buffoon.
• To parboil originally meant to boil thoroughly.
• A bulrush has nothing to do with bulls; the word means ‘a fat-stemmed plant’, the same bul- gives us the ‘bole’ of a tree.
• A bunk isn’t a bed but a ‘heap’, as in Bunkers Hill (Old Norse)

And the list could stretch, as yet, for miles but at ‘bunk’ the phone rang. It was Derek the computer-repair-man. My machine was now working, I could come and collect. I eagerly put away the dictionaries and encyclopaedias with which I had occupied my pc-less days – and the first post since has been this.