The Astonishing Origins of 6 Common Compound Words

The “Cob” in “Cobweb,” the “Hodge” in “Hodgepodge,” and more lovely old oddities that still cling to life in compounds.

I’m working on a crossword puzzle for you but it won’t be quite ready until next week. In the meantime, here’s a nice gentle one from Henri on MyCrossword. If you’re new to cryptics or want to brush up, my quick cryptic crosswords crash course begins here.

Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing, via Public Domain Review

Most compound words work just fine separately or together: Friends of both Hay and Stack might enjoy watching the football game with Hay one day, attending Stack’s book club meeting the next, and going to the joint Haystack karaoke gathering the following night. Just as acquaintances of Shoe and Lace are used to seeing them out and about on their own, or chatting with the pair of them at the Shoelace key party in Santa Cruz. Ugh, why the hell did I make them swingers?! That was an insane choice! I knew this metaphor was a bad idea. 

Anyway, the point is that, like the most annoying couple you know, some compound words are so codependent that it kind of breaks your brain when you experience them in their separated form. This is a tribute to six of these beautiful weirdos. 

“That’s a really nice web,” you might be heard to say, upon observing a particularly well-constructed cobweb. “Who made this web …” you might continue, encouraged by the attentive expressions of your rapt audience (I’m imagining that you’re at a popular cobweb convention) “... some kind of Cob?” 

Weirdly, you’d be right, because a “Cob” is (or was) a spider. Tolkien knew this (it’s absolutely the sort of thing that Tolkien would have known), and “Cob” shows up in The Hobbit (along with “Lob,” which is also a spider for entirely different reasons) when a newly invisible Bilbo is haranguing the giant spiders who can no longer see him: 

“Lazy Lob and crazy Cob are weaving webs to wind me. 

I am far more sweet than other meat, but still they cannot find me! 

Here am I, naughty little fly; you are fat and lazy. 

You cannot trap me, though you try, in your cobwebs crazy.”

Cobwebs were originally coppe-webs, after the Old English -coppe, meaning “head,” as a shortened form of attercop, meaning Poison-Head (spiders went really hard in the Middle Ages, I guess). Bilbo also uses this term as part of his arachnophobic intimidation campaign (in fairness, they’re in the process of trying to eat his friends): 

“Old Tomnoddy, all big body,

Old Tomnoddy can’t spy me!

Attercop! Attercop!

Down you drop!

You’ll never catch me up your tree!

Not very good perhaps, but then you must remember that he had to make it up himself, on the spur of a very awkward moment. … Quite apart from the stones no spider has ever liked being called Attercop, and Tomnoddy of course is insulting to anybody.”

“Tomnoddy,” for what it’s worth, is an Atlantic puffin. But we don’t have time for that. 

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Daisy’s been a compound for so long that it’s a bit rich even calling attention to the happy couple who’ve been cohabiting inside there since the Dark Ages. But it’s fun—not to mention rather beautiful—to know that “Daisy” is actually “Day’s Eye” (Old English dæges éage) because its petals open in the dawn light.

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“Piecemeal” makes its dramatic written debut as an open compound (pece mele) in Robert of Gloucester’s early 14th century vernacular history of England. Gloucester seems to have been particularly fond of the expression because of all the hacking and slashing of corpses he felt called upon to describe (like the spiders of the time, historians went pretty hard in the Middle Ages) as in the following, extremely metal passage about the last stand of Arthur’s pal Sir Bedivere:

To grounde he smot he & ẏs, & aslowe þen kẏng,

And þer, as ẏs vncle ded laẏ, ẏs foule caroẏne he broȝte,

And rẏȝt þer bẏ pece mele hakked ẏt al to noȝte.

He slammed his whole entourage to the ground, then slew the king. And there, where his uncle lay dead, he brought his foul corpse, and right there hacked it, piecemeal, all to nothing.

But that’s not the weird part. What’s funny about “Piecemeal” is the “meal,” which, before it meant “supper,”  meant “time” (thus, “Piecemeal” is “one at a time” or “bit by bit”). Which is all a very long-winded way of pointing out that next time someone says “mealtime,” you can smugly tell them it’s redundant.¹

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Originally, a hodgepodge was a hotchpotch, or more specifically a hotched potch, which is to say that it was a potch that had been hotched until it was a tasty stew. The relevant context here is that hotch (via the French hocher) meant “to shake,” and potch was just a deliberately silly way of saying “pot.” So, as I believe I’ve already mentioned, a hodgepodge is a potch that’s been hotched. Yum!

(If that’s still confusing, just know that “Hodgepodge” works exactly the same way as “Hopscotch,” which is a scotch that’s been hopped. Helpful!)

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There’s no polite way to say this, but “Gossip” is a dangerously unwell word. It’s completely out of its mind. Like, it fully lost the plot some time in the 16th century. Deep breath: 

Originally formed as a compound of “God” and “Sib” (as in “Sibling”), “Gossip” started out life meaning something like “Godparent.” From there, it slowly came to mean “the sort of person you might invite to be a Godparent to your child,” i.e., a buddy, a pal, or a chill bro of some sort. Eventually (probably because of the patriarchy), it came to be used only for gal pals (no dudes allowed), and then finally (certainly because of the patriarchy), it came to mean “gal pals who gab.” Gossips. (Nowadays it’s not gendered, but it was for most of its run with this meaning.) Truly wild origin story.  

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“Halibut” is, objectively speaking, the funniest word on this list because it’s a compound formed from “Holy” and “Butt.” The Holy Butt fish (see? Funny!) got its name because it was, on the one hand, close to God (unfortunately for the halibut, this just meant that it tended to get eaten on Holy Days) and because it was, on the other hand, a “Butt.” “Butt” was a 13th century word for a flatfish that, like the butts most of us haul around on our legtops, comes from the same Germanic root that means something like “short, thick end,” which is a pretty rude way to refer to a perfectly nice fish, but not quite as rude as eating them on Holy Days. 

I’d be really falling down on the job here if I didn’t also mention that the fishwives who sold flatfish in the Middle Ages were therefore known as “Butt Women,” which is also, technically speaking, quite funny. 

1. Don’t do this.