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John Dierdorf, dierdorf@io.com


I like reading historical fiction, both mainstream and romance, and unfortunately this means I sometimes encounter a word which was completely unknown (or at minimum, unknown in the sense the writer uses it) at the date of the story. This is particularly bothersome if the period character actually says it.

I’m primarily talking about fiction set since 1750 — roughly the “Georgian”, “Regency”, “Victorian”, and “Modern” eras. When a novel is set in 1600, it would be tedious if the characters all talked like Shakespeare (Forsooth, sirrah!), and we certainly don’t want the inhabitants of a novel set in 1400 to sound like Chaucer. There seems to be an ill-defined “line of translation” around 1700 after which we expect modern English but not necessarily modern vocabulary in a historical novel. Before that, the author is implicitly translating for us, just as if we are reading a novel set in modern France or Germany, or on a starship in the 31st century. (Note this distinction doesn’t permit a novel set in Shakespearean times to mention telephones and antibiotics!)

For that post-1750 period, usually I simply blink and keep reading when I encounter an anachronism, but occasionally I’ve been tempted to follow the advice of Dorothy Parker’s famous review: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

Here is a partial list of words that have made me at least blink, showing when each of them entered the English language. I could give chapter and verse for many of them, but, as the saying goes, Names Have Been Withheld to Protect the Guilty.

Note that some of these are what I call “soft anachronisms” — terms which didn’t exist at the time, but which were well-formed from other words (particularly with Greek or Latin roots) which were known. As such, the neologism would have been perfectly understandable to educated readers or listeners of the period. For example, hallucinate and hallucination have been in use since the 1650’s. Nobody found a need for hallucinogen until 1954, but it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in 1654, since it is clearly “that which produces hallucinations”. Similarly, words like acrophobia, claustrophobia, and xenophobia could have been used hundreds of years before they are actually recorded without anyone blinking. At worst, the user might have been suspected of trying to show off his or her knowledge of Greek. Shakespeare could have used the word automobile, although he would have had points deducted for mixing Greek auto- and Latin -mobile. (The proper Greek for “self-moving” is automaton, which indeed dates from about 1620, although its adjective, automatic, didn’t appear until about 1750. The Latin version, locomotive, was used in English in 1612.) Insecticide was first used in 1865, but again, the obvious meaning of “insect killer” could have been applied to preparations like fleabane or to people who swatted flies in 1000 ce. (In fact, one of the first things to be called an insecticide was the starling.)

I mention below that the psycho- (mind) words like psychology (study of the mind or soul) go back to the 1650’s, which means at that time nobody with an education should have had a problem with psychosis (mind disease) or psychoanalysis (mind analysis), even though the words weren’t actually used until 1847 and 1906, respectively. The particular obsession of a pyromaniac, nymphomaniac, or kleptomaniac would have been obvious to anyone who knew Greek. Nymphomaniac actually was in use by 1775. (Nympha literally meant a semi-divine young maiden in classical Greek. In English it became a synonym for “whore” in such uses as a “nymph of Drury” or “nymph of the pavement”.) q

A soft anachronism could even be composed of common English words: As I mention below, “trouble-maker” isn’t recorded until 1923, but it is impossible to believe that Chaucer wouldn’t have understood the phrase in the 14th century. “Double chin” dates from 1832, and again, it certainly could have been used much earlier without confusion. To “shoot oneself in the foot”; didn’t appear in print until 1959!

Getting back to Latin, the meaning of extra-terrestrial (beyond the Earth) would have been clear a thousand years ago, let alone when it was actually first used in 1868 to describe planets as “extra-terrestrial bodies”. A medieval reference to an “extra-terrestrial being” probably would have meant an angel, but it’s hard to come up with a definition of “alien” or “ET” in the science fiction sense that doesn’t include angels — an intelligent non-human life form, not native to Earth, with abilities and lifestyle very different from those of humans. In fact, since angels as commonly depicted have six appendages — two arms, two legs, and two wings — they would seem to be more closely related to earthly insects than to the mammals and other vertebrates, all of which have or had four. The only common mammal with six appendages is of course the centaur, although at least one flying horse has been reported in the literature. Given the accelerating pace of genetic engineering, however, it won’t be that many years until some mad scientist creates a flying pig just to prove a point. (The newspaper headline announcing this will, of course, be “Swine Flew!”)

(Most depictions of “traditional” fairies — Disney’s version of Tinker Bell for example — have two sets of wings, so perhaps they evolved from spiders and other arachnids. Anyway, fairies no longer exist because nobody believes in them any more.)

I’ve also included a few apparently non-existent words which are often found in Georgian and Regency novels. These were usually perpetrated by Georgette Heyer, who loved esoteric words and constructions in her novels. Some of these may be from sources the dictionary-makers haven’t yet located, but allegedly she was not above making up a plausible-looking term now and then just to embarrass her plagiarists. Since the current generation of historical romance writers all cut their teeth on Heyer and recycle her vocabulary [and plots] quite shamelessly, many of her usages are now common.

When I mention a specific year in connection with a word, it is the earliest Oxford English Dictionary citation for that meaning. Since the oed quotations are from printed works, it is always possible that a much earlier example might yet be found. In addition, it’s certainly conceivable that a word was used in speech well before it appeared on paper, depending on its informality. Although this has to be whispered, I also mention a few cases where the oed is wrong!

Since many novels of the period 1750-1850 are set in England, it must be pointed out that the English did not and do not speak the same language as Americans. There are many words which were used in the colonies in that period which in England were unknown, would never be used in polite conversation, or had an entirely different meaning. See “dump”, “reliable”, “fix”, “wilt”, “shimmy”, “brash”, “calico”, “regardless”, and hundreds more I haven’t gotten around to adding yet. (Sometimes a word was quite old and had gone out of use centuries earlier in proper British English, but had been revived in American.)

Important Disclaimer

I hope writers will find this site helps them to avoid missteps, but I understand how difficult it would be to attempt to eliminate all errors without spending more time reading the Oxford English Dictionary than writing books. In theory I approve of accuracy, and I will admit I’m obsessive, but I will also admit that I like to read, and I really don’t want my favorite authors to starve — I want them to write more (possibly inaccurate) books, not fewer accurate ones.

Anachronisms and Other Sins

Abnormal
It began to replace “abnormous” in 1853.
allergy, allergic
1911.
anyway
In the sense of “in any event” or “regardless” (“I don’t care what you say, I’m going to ride to the village anyway!”) not until 1859. Prior use was in the literal usage of the two words — “Is there anyway I can help?” — and “I’m going to ride to the village anyway” would have meant either on horseback, using my carriage, the dogcart, or whatever. C.f. “regardless”.
Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador
These names were picked only after independence from Spain in the 1820-1830 era. Previously, Columbia was part of Nuevo Granada, Argentina was the province of Rio de la Plata, and Bolivia and Ecuador were Upper Peru. Some other South American names (Brazil, Peru, Chile, Paraguay) go back much further, though. Venezuela (little Venice, from the stilt-villages on Lake Maracaibo) was so-named by Vespucci in 1499, and Brazil was named by the Portuguese for the brazil trees which grew there. (Well before the discovery of America, brazil was a red dye obtained from an African tree.)
ass
Everybody knows this is how the Americans spell British “arse” (pronounced “ahss”). Surprisingly, this is not recorded even in American speech until 1930!
asset
1868, formed as a false singular from assets, a Law French term (asetz) indicating sufficiency. C.f. cherry, pea, the Heathen Chinee, and many more “if it ends in /S/, it must be plural” mistakes.
Bakery
1832.
barge [in]
1888 in the current sense. The only examples of the verb up to that time were concerned with water transportation — “They barged down the canal.”
baronet
Baronets were created in 1611 as a gimmick by James I to raise money for the occupation of Ireland. This is why the arms of a baronet feature the “bloody hand” of the O’Neills, the Lámh Dhearg Uladh, emblem of Ulster. (Ulstermen sometimes point out that the English typically got things backwards, since the baronial device is a left hand while the O’Neill emblem, as shown here, is the right.)

Going backwards, viscount was added to the peerage in 1440, marquis in 1399, and duke in 1351. Before that, the only ranks were baron and earl. This caution was made necessary by reading about William the Conqueror making somebody’s ancestor a baronet. (William was called the “Earl of Normandy” in contemporary chronicles. Duke was known only as a foreign title until Edward III created the first English dukes — the Duke of Cornwall in 1351 and Duke of Lancaster in 1361. Elizabeth I didn’t like the title, and there were no dukes at all in England during her reign.)

By the way, note that a baronet is not a member of the nobility (i.e., a peer); he is a commoner, and is addressed as “Sir Whatever” like a knight. A baronetcy is best described as an inheritable knighthood. Thus, none of the hereditary English nobles have necessarily done something worthwhile in their life. Only knights, the female equivalent, dames, and life peers — none of whose titles will be inherited — received their titles for merit.)

barque of frailty
One of Heyer’s euphemisms for a female of no particular virtue. Not in the dictionary. C.f. “bit of muslin”.
bartender
An Americanism first recorded in 1836. Not used in England until the 1860’s.
beige
1858 as a fine soft woolen cloth, used for dresses. This was originally made from raw wool, hence the color name (first attested in 1879), but it was occasionally dyed, so it was theoretically possible for a lady to wear a bright blue beige dress. C.f. ecru (1869), another color word from French, which is literally “crude” or “raw”, used to describe unbleached linen.
bifocals
Benjamin Franklin may have invented them in 1784, but he called them “double spectacles”. They weren’t called bifocals until 1889.
Big Dipper
This is a purely American name, first recorded in 1856, for the constellation known in England as “the Plough” or “Charles’s Wain”.
binge
1854, from a dialect word that means “soak”.
binoculars
1871. The adjective “binocular” itself is much older, of course, in the sense of “having two eyes” — the optical instrument is short for binocular telescope or binocular glass.
bint
1919 in the disparaging sense of “girl”. It is Arabic for “daughter” and was brought back by English soldiers serving in the Near East in World War I. Sir Richard Burton used it as an Arabic word in his 1855 book about his disguised pilgrimage to Mecca. Apparently in Arabic it is used as slang for “woman” in general, much as Afro-Americans use “sister”.
biopsy
1895. Its cousin necropsy appears in 1842. Autopsy (q.v.) is much older, though.
birthday party
1852. Birth-day present is recorded in 1796, but this may refer to a present given to the mother on the occasion of a child’s birth. The first unambiguous use in the modern sense is 1854.
biscuit-colored
Even though every Regency drawing room is full of gentlemen wearing biscuit-colored breeches or pantaloons, the term was first recorded in 1884.
bit of muslin
I’ve seen this in fifty Regency novels as a disparaging euphemism for “woman” and particularly, “loose woman”, but it isn’t recorded until 1823, and then simply to mean “woman”. Georgian or Regency use is due to Heyer. C.f. “barque of frailty”, “muslin trade”, etc.
bite the bullet
According to the oed, this phrase was first used to mean “show courage” by Kipling in 1891, making it maybe 2,500 years younger than “bite the dust”, discussed below. However, this is a “gotcha” for the oed, because it is in the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue — see “bran-faced”. Perhaps I should suggest that the editors of the oed obtain a copy of that book.
blasé
1819 in the sense “exhausted by pleasure”, but 1930 in the current sense of “bored, unimpressed”.
bleeding
As a slightly more acceptable version of “bloody” (the bleeding fool had bleeding well better do it, etc.) it is not recorded until 1858.
blink
Amazingly, this didn’t mean “briefly close the eyes” until 1858. (To blink away tears is first recorded in 1905.) In Shakespeare’s time the word meant “twinkle”, and the original meaning seems to be the same word as “blench”, to flinch or turn away. C.f. “see who blinks first” to describe a tense confrontation.
blizzard
A purely American word. In midwestern slang, it had meant a stunning blow or overwhelming argument, beginning in 1829, but it wasn’t used until 1859 in the current sense of a violent snowstorm. The word was only known in rural America until it was popularized in the 1880’s, particularly by the historic “Blizzard of 1888”, when on March 13th the East Coast of the US received over four feet of snow. Since the wind was a steady 50 mph, snowdrifts 50 feet high were recorded in places, people were trapped in their houses for days, and there was no road or rail transportation anywhere from Chesapeake Bay to Canada for over a week. The Blizzard was responsible for several changes in urban infrastructure, particularly putting electric and telephone lines underground and building the first US subways in Boston and then New York.
bloke
1851. Possibly from Gypsy or Hindi, where loke means “a man”.
bloody
All too many historical novelists seem to think this is a mild expletive — I can’t think how many books I have read where Our Hero uses the word in front of Ye Gentle Heroine, and even a few where YGH says it herself when provoked. From about 1750 through the early 20th century this was not mild in Britain; it was a filthy obscenity, and a person would no more have said “bloody” in mixed company than he or she would have said “fucking”. As late as 1913, Shaw caused a minor riot when he had the semi-transformed Eliza Doolittle say “Walk! Not bloody likely!” in Pygmalion. Amusingly, when the play was made into the movie My Fair Lady fifty years later, the word had lost all its shock value, and Alan Jay Lerner had Eliza say “Move your bloomin’ arse!” to a horse at Ascot instead.
bootstraps
These are known in the literal sense only from 1891. The first citation for “by his bootstraps” to mean “unaided effort” is 1922, in Ulysses.
boredom
1852, in Dickens.
bottleneck
1907 as a narrow place in a roadway; 1928 in the general sense of “hindrance” or “constriction”, as a production bottleneck.
bounder
Not used to mean a cad or objectionable person until 1889. In the 1840’s, a bounder was a four-wheeled cab, from its motion on rough roads.
Boxing Day
This term for December 26th is first recorded in 1833. For centuries, it had been known as St. Stephen’s Day, and the custom of going from house to house begging for gifts was called “Stephening”. There was an old joke that Stephen must have been a wonderful saint because St. Stephen’s Eve did not require fasting.
bran-faced
It is used to mean “freckled”, but I could find no record of this in the oed, and decided it was another Heyerism. However, I must apologize to the lady -- it’s in the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
brash
American slang from 1824, but not used in British English until the 20th century.
bridge [of a ship]
1843. The “bridge” was a design feature of early steamships; it rapidly acquired the meaning “command point”. Sailing ships were commanded from the quarterdeck.
brougham
Designed by Baron Brougham & Vaux in 1838 — a very maneuverable one-horse closed carriage which made a good taxi. (Note the cutout under the driver so the front wheels could turn sharply.) The Lord and his carriage were pronounced “broom”, by the way. (In a related example of odd pronunciation in the Peerage, the former Viscountess of Norwich refused to use her title because she didn’t want to sound like breakfast cereal. Norwich rhymes with “porridge”.)
bubonic plague
1886. The disease was known as “the great pestilence” when it afflicted the known world in 1347-1348. Note that the responsible organism is known as Yersenia pestis. It began to be known as “the plague” in 1564, “the Black Death” in 1823, but “bubonic plague” only in the late 19th century. The word “bubonic” itself — having buboes, or swollen lymph glands — dates from 1871. (“Plague” itself originally meant a blow or wound, and then any infliction, as in “I wish he would stop plaguing me.” Note the biblical ten plagues of Egypt, most of which were not diseases.)
bun
1894 as a bundle of hair at the nape of the neck. The older term was “chignon”, which does mean “nape” in French. (The original meaning of “bun” seems to have been “rounded mass”, leading to the bakery sense, the tail of the bunny rabbit, etc.)
burke
The notorious murderer William Burke was captured and executed in 1829, and his name became a general verb for “stifle” or “smother” — to burke a bill in Parliament, e.g. — in about 1835.
burp
Somewhat surprisingly, given the appropriateness of the sound, both noun and verb are first recorded as American slang in 1932. The older term is “belch”, but as far as I know, that was never used like burp for an operation on babies — nobody ever belched a baby.
bust
1819 as a euphemism for a woman’s breasts. The sense of a sculpture consisting of head, shoulders, and chest is over a hundred years older in English. Bust line was not recorded until 1939, and busty until 1944.
cad
1832 as an ill-mannered or offensive person, a boor. The earlier meaning was errand-boy, making it the same word as “caddie” and “cadet”. The current usage seems to started as Oxford University slang for the residents of the city, as if they were good for nothing but to run and fetch for the scholars.
calico
In America, a colorful printed cotton fabric. In England, it was usually plain white, bleached or unbleached. The Brits would say “printed calico” for the colorful variety.
camisole
1866 in the current undergarment sense. 1816 as a sleeved jacket. It’s a diminutive of chemise (q.v.), a much older word.
Can of worms
1962. Can itself, in its current sense, goes back to Old English, though, usually as a drinking vessel.
cartoon
This is literally a “posterboard” or “heavy paper” in Italian. Its only meaning in English was “an artist’s full-size preliminary study” until the 1840’s. The first use in the current sense is from Punch.
catapult
In the sense of a forked stick with elastic, equivalent to the American slingshot, not until 1871. The military engine sense goes back to the Romans, though.
caveman
Primitive human, 1865. Crude lover (club, dragging by hair …), 1920’s.
celebrity, celebration
Celebrity was first used in 1849 in the modern sense of a famous person. Before that it was strictly an abstract noun meaning either fame or notoriety, as in “The evil assassin had a great deal of celebrity.” Meanwhile, celebration only had a religious sense prior to 1844 — performance of a rite, as in a celebration of marriage or celebration of the mass.
charisma
Used since the 1640’s in its original theological meaning of “gift of God’s grace”, but not secularized to “gift of leadership” until 1930. Early quotations in the modern sense all refer to Hitler. The current meaning has been generalized to “ability to inspire enthusiasm or devotion”. C.f. “aura”, another religious term used in a similar manner, and also note the original meaning of prestige, given below.
chauvinism
1870 as exaggerated patriotism. Not generalized from “extreme loyalty to ones own country” to “prejudice against all others” (male chauvinist, etc.) until 1955.
chef
Borrowed from French to mean a head cook in 1842. (It is the normal French word for “chief” — English usage is short for chef de cuisine.) Incidentally, French chef d’œuvre, a masterpiece, was used in English beginning in 1619.
chemise
An old word for a shirt or smock. The current sense of “undergarment” dates from about 1840; it was a euphemism for the suddenly-vulgar “shift”.
chic
1879 in the current sense of tastefully fashionable. 1856 in the general sense of “superior”.
chipper
Defined as “chirpy” in 1840.
chiropractor
1903. Chiropractic as a method of treatment is recorded for 1898.
chocolate milk
A twentieth century concoction.
cholera
The lethal epidemic disease now known by this name (aka Asiatic cholera) did not appear in England until 1831 and America in 1832. Before then, “cholera” was a different and much milder intestinal ailment (an E. coli infection) now called European cholera or summer diarrhea. This version, known for hundreds of years, was dangerous mainly to infants, who are very easily killed by dehydration even today. Asiatic cholera, on the other hand, can kill an adult in a few hours and wipe out an entire village in a week. (The name “cholera” is related to “colic” and “colon” as a general term for a bowel complaint.)
choppy
This didn’t mean “jerky” — “The Channel is quite choppy today,“ — until 1867. Before that it had the literal meaning of having been chopped into pieces.
chortle
Invented by Lewis Carroll in 1872 in Jabberwocky, along with all those slithy toves and the frumious Bandersnatch.
Christmas carols
Some anachronistic carols have a nasty tendency to sneak into books set in the Regency — I recently read a novel set in 1814 which described Silent Night as an “old familiar hymn”, and one featuring street carolers singing “God Rest Ye Merry” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” in 1808. These are impossible. Silent Night — or rather, Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht — was written and first performed in Austria in 1818, but the English translation was done in 1859. Many “traditional” Christmas carols are products of Victorian sentimentalism: God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen was written in 1833, Good King Wenceslaus in 1853, We Three Kings in 1857, O Little Town of Bethlehem in 1868, and It Came Upon The Midnight Clear in 1874. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing didn’t become known outside Methodist circles (the words are by Charles Wesley) until it was set to Mendelssohn’s music (originally a cantata about Gutenberg!) in the 1840’s. (There are some carols known well before the 19th century, though — The First Noel, Angels We Have Heard on High, and Adeste Fidelis, for example. ) I must admit I haven’t seen Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer in a Regency novel. Yet.
civilian
1829 in the current sense of a non-military person. Previously, it meant a judge or authority on civil law. Current usage is by way of “civilian” being used for a member of the Indian Civil Service of the East India Company.
claustrophobia
1879. Most of the psychiatric “-phobia” words date from the 1870’s and 1880’s, although hydrophobia as a symptom of rabies goes back to the Greeks. On the other hand, phobia itself — “I have a phobia about Almack’s,“ — was first used in the modern sense in this 1786 quotation: “I shall begin, by defining Phobia in the present instance, to be a fear of an imaginary evil, or an undue fear of a real one.”
cleavage
This was first used to mean the valley between the breasts in 1946 — it was a euphemism employed by the Hollywood censorship office when complaining about too much exposure in a movie. An older term was “slot”.
cliché
Stale phrase, 1892. 1832 in the original sense of a stereotype block used by printers. (It’s the French form of “click” — the sound allegedly made by the stereotype mechanism.)
climax
1918 as a noun meaning an orgasm. Not until 1975 as a verb “to achieve orgasm”.
clinical
1928 to mean coldly precise and unemotional speech. The adjective literally means “at the bedside” and had been used for 150 years to describe medical school lectures given at a patient’s sickbed.
coach
In the sense of tutor, noun and verb, 1848. It’s a metaphor for someone “carrying” a student along. C.f. to train, which literally means to drag. That one is a couple of hundred years older, though.
cobalt
The element name goes back to 1653 in English and even further in German, but it wasn’t used to mean a deep blue color (cobalt eyes, cobalt glass …) until 1849.
combination lock
Invented in 1845.
condone
1857, evidently as a back-formation from the obsolete Latin legal term “condonation”.
conker
The children’s game involving testing the durability of small items on strings is first recorded in 1847, using snail shells as the implements. The first mention of using horse chestnuts instead is in 1886, presumably because little boys had caused English snails to go extinct. Incidentally, a conker is not related to “conk”, to hit. That seems to be from “conch”, slang for nose, while the game sense is from “conquer”.
contact
As a verb meaning to communicate with — “Lord Redstart contacted his solicitor” — not until 1927. Before that, the sentence would have meant that the earl physically reached out and touched the person. “In contact” translates from Latin as “in touch with”, but that wouldn’t have worked as a substitute either; see below.
cordite
Patented and trademarked in 1889 as a smokeless replacement for black gunpowder.
corgi
No problem if the person is speaking Cymric (it’s Welsh for “small dog”), but the word is not recorded in English until 1926.
crabgrass
Found only in American lawns. In Britain, crabgrass once meant a certain reed growing in salt marshes, but that usage is long obsolete. It must be pointed out that in times of yore, various English weeds were referred to as “crap-grass”, but the American plant really does seem to be named for the crab, since it sprawls out from a center.
crap
1898 in the sense of excrement. Back to the Middle Ages in the original sense of “dregs” or “scraps”. C.f. feces for another word that originally meant dregs. (That “crap-grass” in the preceding item was so-named because the weed tended to get mixed with grain.)
crocodile
1870 as a double line of school girls.
croquet
The game was possibly played in Ireland in the 1840’s, but the first evidence of the word or the game in English is 1858.
crucial
This meant “✕-shaped” in phrases like “the surgeon made a crucial incision.” The word did not acquire the modern meaning of “decisive” or “critical” until 1830, although medieval philosophers had used Latin crux in the sense of “difficulty”. Sports fans are familiar with the all-too-vulnerable cruciate ligaments inside the knee; they used to be called the crucial ligaments, so both senses now apply.
curvaceous
Invented by a press agent in 1936 to describe Mae West.
curves
As applied to the female figure (“voluptuous curves”), 1862.
cut to the chase
Movie slang from the 1920’s. “Cut” is Hollywoodese for “change scene”, and the implication is to stop the talk and get down to action.
cut-throat razor
A moment’s thought would lead to the conclusion that this name for a straight razor must post-date the invention of the safety razor, and indeed the first citation in the oed is in 1932. The literal sense of “cut-throat” to mean a murderer goes back to the 1560’s, as does the figurative use (cut-throat competition, etc.)
cyanide
The chemical term was coined in 1825, denoting any chemical compound containing cyanogen (the CN radical). Kianos is the Greek word for blue-green, and cyanogen itself was coined in 1815 because it was a component of Prussian Blue dye. Potassium cyanide (used in rat poison) was called “black cyanide” (an oxymoron, please note) beginning in the 1860’s, with the simple term being adopted even later.
Czechoslovakia
No such country until 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up after World War I. And there never was and never will be such a thing as a person speaking Czechoslovakian — Czechs and Slovaks have always spoken different languages, and they are now separate countries again. C.f. Yugoslavia, which was formed at the same time as an artificial conglomeration of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Herzegovina. It has since disintegrated into its component parts, and the fragmentation even continued when the province of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia.
Dashed
1881 as a euphemism for “damned”, perhaps from the practice of printing the word as d----d to avoid the censors. The exclamation “Dash it!” is recorded for 1800, though.
deadline
1920 in the time limit sense. The literal meaning of a line which cannot be crossed without fatal results originated in 1864 as a military term in the US Civil War, when the infamous Andersonville prison camp had a light fence (in some places a chalked boundary) around the inside of the stockade, and any prisoner who crossed it into the “killing field” was shot on sight. (The prison superintendent, Henry Wirz, was the only Confederate to be executed for war crimes; he had the extreme misfortune to come to trial only a couple of weeks after the assassination of President Lincoln, and the Union public was not in a gentle mood.)
debacle
1848 in the current sense. Before that, the only meaning was a flash flood. (It is French for “unbar”, used for dams breaking and spring ice jams giving way.)
débutante
1817. The anglicized spelling (without the “é“) and with pronunciation “debyou-“ (instead of the French “dayboo-“) are 20th-century. The shortened form “deb” isn’t recorded until 1922, in James Joyce’s Ulysses, believe it or not. (Début was also spelled with an acute accent until the 20th century, and it still is pronounced that way.)
decadent
1834, although decadence was known earlier. The literal meaning is “falling down”, although I was tempted to claim it referred to an elderly person with only “ten teeth”.
déclassé
1887, while the Englished form “declassed” was used one year later. In any case, it is “removed from one’s [social] class, degraded”. Note that when used to describe females, technically the noun is déclassée. C.f. divorcée.
décolletage
Noun, 1894. The adjective décolleté was first used in 1831 to describe dresses of which the Queen disapproved.
décor
Used in 1897 for theatrical scenery; in 1926 as an interior decorating term. Decorate, decorative, and decoration go back to the Middle Ages, though.
delope
This word, to fire into the air at a duel, appears once in 1836, but its existence in Georgian and Regency novels is a Heyerism.
dong
This vulgar term for a penis first appeared in the USA in 1930, and for at least the next forty years was only cited from US and Canadian sources.
doorknob
The first known use of the word was in a US patent in 1847.
double chin
1832.
dower house
1862. This is somewhat surprising, given the large number of such structures found hovering around the edges of estates in Regency novels.
dumb
This didn’t really begin to mean “stupid” until perhaps 1850. Before that, it just meant “silent”. The more common epithet of one lacking in intelligence, going back to Old English, was “dull”. St. Thomas Aquinas was jokingly called the “Dumb Ox” because he was a big, lumbering man who spoke as little as possible, but not even his detractors ever thought he was unintelligent. C.f. “dumbbell”, an apparatus of weights for training bell-ringers without actually making any noise.
dump
The noun use was first recorded in 1865 as an American mining term and 1891 in the general sense of a place for depositing refuse (city dump). Application to a run-down house followed in 1895. The use as a verb (to dump something into the street, etc.) was unknown in England until about 1880, although it had been American slang for a hundred years.
dunk
1919, an American word borrowed from Pennsylvania Dutch dunken, to dip. German-American Baptists were often known as Dunkers.
Éclair
1861 in English.
ecru
1869. See beige.
edgy
1864 in the sense of “irritable” or “jumpy”. From 1775 it had been used in the literal sense — “This is a very edgy razor.”)
elaborate
As a verb meaning to expand upon a subject (He elaborated upon his dislike of oysters…), 1934. Previously it had the etymological meaning — to make “from labor”, particularly from raw materials, in phrases like “The physician elaborated a new cure for quinsy”. (What we now call a laboratory was once an elaboratory.)
elite
1823. (It’s the French form of “elect”.)
empathy
Psychology jargon from about 1900 — literally “in-feeling”.
entourage
1860 in the current sense; before that it meant “surroundings” in general, as the word still does in French.
erratic
1841 in the current sense of irregular or unstable. The literal meaning (wandering) goes back to Chaucer — an erratic knight and so on. C.f. errant.
ethnic
1851 in the sense of peculiar to a race or nation. Previously it only meant “heathen” as a Greek translation of Hebrew goyim.
euchre
First noted in 1846 as a “wild west” American game; I can find no references to it being played in England before about 1890. The generalized verb, to outwit or triumph over, was first used in the United States in the 1860’s.
exceptional
1846 to mean “unusual”, and 1868 to mean “special”.
excited
1855 in the current sense of “mentally agitated”. The verb “to excite” had the meaning “set in motion” going back to 1340.
expert
1825 as a noun. Much earlier as an adjective (expert witness, etc.)
expertise
1868.
Fanny
American authors have a tendency to use this word as a synonym for “backside” — I have read at least three novels where the heroine slipped and landed on her fanny. Unfortunately, that’s an Americanism dating only from 1928. In British English, the word is a coarse term for the female genitals — landing on one’s fanny is therefore anatomically unlikely. According to the oed, even that usage only dates from about 1880, but c.f. the heroine of the most famous erotic novel of the 18th century, Fanny Hill, which certainly seems to be a pun on mons veneris. (Her name might be a double pun, since the author would have known that clitoris is Greek for “small hill”.)
feisty
1896 as American slang with the meaning of aggressive or excitable. Before that, a feist was a “stinking hound”, from a Middle English word which meant to fart. Now you understand those Elizabethan puns about “making a fist”.
fiancée
1853. The masculine fiancé appeared in 1864.
fiasco
1855 as a theatrical flop; generalized to any dismal failure by 1862.
fiddle
To drive a carriage, this is Heyer again, and not in the dictionary.
field day
1827 in the current sense of a good or exciting time; previously only as a military or hunting phrase — a day spent in the field.
first stare
This phrase, meaning “the very best quality or fashion” seems to be another Heyerism (see town bronze). It isn’t in the dictionaries at all.
fix
As a verb, the common current meaning of repair, “fix up”, was purely American until the 20th century, and even in the States it was regarded as illiterate. On both sides of the Atlantic, the main proper meaning of “to fix” was to fasten or make permanent — “He fixed his eyes on Miss Smith” or “The stakes were fixed in place.” A secondary meaning of “to decide” was known in good company since 1788, so that both “fix on” (“He has fixed on Miss Smith as his bride”) and “fix to” (“I’m fixing to go to the village”) were in polite use in England, although the latter certainly sounds like an American vulgar expression. Noun use — “We’re in a hell of a fix!” — was definitly an Americanism until about 1900, however.
flamboyant
First in 1832 as a French architectural term to describe a Gothic style with flame-like curves. The sense of “flame-colored” was first used in 1851, and finally, “showy”, in 1879.
flaunt/flout
This is not an anachronism, but an amazing number of writers manage to use flaunt (to show off in an ostentatious manner) where they should have written flout (to disregard, insult, or express contempt), typically in phrases like “Lady Sarah, daughter of an earl, flaunted polite society by eloping with her coachman.”
flip
This is a variant of fillip, first recorded around 1600. However, it is not recorded between about 1700 and 1840, so nobody could flip a coin in Georgian or Regency times. In fact, the oed’s first example of flipping a coin was in 1879, although to “fillip the money” dates from 1584.
follow the drum
The oed only has citations with the meaning “be a soldier”, although it is commonly used in Historical fiction as if it meant “be a soldier’s wife and go with him on campaign.”
foreplay
Although the practice itself might be of greater antiquity, the word was invented in 1929. It replaced “forepleasure”, coined by Freud (vorlust) in 1910.
freak
1883. The word actually means “whim” or “joke”, and the current use is short for “freak of nature”, first recorded in 1847 as a translation of Latin lusus naturae.
Gangster
1896 (USA), 1923 (UK).
ghetto
In 1892 the word was generalized to mean, as the oed succinctly says, “a quarter in a city, esp. a thickly populated slum area, inhabited by a minority group or groups, usu. as a result of economic or social pressures; an area, etc., occupied by an isolated group; an isolated or segregated group, community, or area.” Before that, the only meaning was the original sense, the Jewish quarter of an Italian city, particularly Venice. In other words, one could not call St. Giles in London a ghetto during the Regency. The proper term at that time was a rookery, obligingly defined by the oed as “a cluster of mean tenements densely populated by people of the lowest class.” (Also see the note about “slum” — another word which didn’t have its current meaning in the early 19th century.)
gimp
1925 to mean “cripple”. There is no relation, of course, to gimp or gymp, a decorative cord with a wire running through it, known since the 1660’s.
gorilla
In 1847 it became the species name of a large ape, but the word is almost 2,500 years older in the sense of a hairy tribe of African humans. It first appeared in Greek about 500 bce in a description of a Carthaginian voyage down the east coast of Africa.
grandfather clock
This term for a floor-length pendulum clock is from a popular song written in 1876 by Henry Clay Work. Prior to that time, the timepiece was called a case clock or a long clock. (Accurate floor length clocks are easier to build, since in Earth’s gravity a 40-inch pendulum has a one-second “tick”.) 
My grandfather’s clock was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor.
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride;
But it stopped, short, never to go again,
When the old man died.
gremlin
These mischievous sprites were invented by the RAF in 1941 to account for otherwise inexplicable problems with their airplanes, and by the end of World War II they were responsible for just about anything going wrong anywhere. The explanations for the word all assume a strong connection with Fremlin’s Beer.
grid
1839, as a back-formation from gridiron. Note that a gridiron has nothing to do with grid or iron — it started life as “gredile”, i.e, “griddle”, and the first syllable is a perversion of grate.
gripe
It has meant to grasp or seize since the time of Beowulf (it is the same word as grope and grip), but it has meant “to complain” only since 1932. This came from a sense of “afflict” or “distress” that goes back to Shakespeare.
grocery
About 1830 in the current sense, and only in America. In England, it meant an establishment serving liquor — “He staggered home from the grocery.” This meaning also lasted in the United States well into the 20th century. Previously the word was an abstract noun, as the form implies, meaning the goods sold by a grocer. Phrases like “She went to the village and spent ten pounds on grocery” or “The cook carried the grocery into the kitchen” were common. (The collective sense has now been replaced by “groceries”.)
grog, groggy
1740, when Admiral Vernon, whose nickname was “Old Grog”, ordered that a sailor’s ration of alcohol, previously straight rum or whiskey, would henceforth be diluted 50-50 with water. The unhappy seamen immediately dubbed the mixture “grog”. The generalized sense of groggy, unsteady or tottering, didn’t appear until 1828 (applied to horses) and 1832 (people). (George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate was named for the admiral, by the way.)
Hair-trigger
1830 as a part of a gun. 1876 as a metaphor — a hair-trigger temper, etc.
hectare
A unit of area measure (equivalent to 2.3 acres) established as part of the metric system during the French Revolution and first mentioned in English in 1810. An are is a hundred square meters, and a hectare is a hundred ares, or 104m2. Put another way, it’s the area of a square 100 meters on a side.
hello
1883, suggested by the Bell Telephone Company as the proper way to answer their new-fangled telephone. (Telephones presented a difficult problem for 19th-century etiquette, since they often involved speaking to persons to whom one had not been properly introduced.)
hilarious
1823 with the meaning “cheerful”; the current meaning of “extremely funny” is not recorded until 1925.
hindsight
1883. Somewhat earlier, it had been used literally for the rear sight of a rifle. Foresight, however, dates from the fifteenth century. This antiquity could have been predicted from the fact that English has “foresee” but not “hindsee”.
hock
As a verb, to pawn, it’s American slang from 1878.
homosexual
1892, in Krafft-Ebing. See masochism, sadism, etc.
hooligan
1898 (USA).
humanitarian
Before the 20th century, this had two other meanings: It meant a hypocrite who overdid his or her “concern” for humanity in a showy manner, and it also meant a Unitarian, i.e., one who believes that Jesus was an ordinary human.
Impact
As a verb, this didn’t acquire its modern meaning of to run into until 1916. Before that, it meant to press against, as in an impacted wisdom tooth. (It’s the past participle of “impinge”.) The noun, used in constructions like “Her blue eyes made an immediate impact”, is unknown before 1946. Before that, it meant a collision. (C.f. the much earlier to impress, originally to mark with a stamp, with exactly the same change of meaning.)
improvise
1826, in a sardonic description: “He possessed also the singular faculty of being able to improvise quotations.” The word is in-pro-vid, to not see ahead.
in touch [with]
1884 in the sense of “in close association” or “in communication”. The phrase was used earlier in a literal sense by the military — “in touch” and “out of touch” referred to being within arm’s length of another soldier. C.f. “to contact”.
ingénue
Borrowed from French in 1848 to mean an artless young girl, although the adjective ingenuous (open, frank, or innocent) dates back to 1598 in English. The latter was borrowed straight from Latin, as seen in the pronunciation, compared to the French “ahnzhaynee” pronunciation of the former, now corrupted to “ahnzhenoo”. The main purpose of “ingenuous”, of course, is to cause confusion with ingenious — ultimately they are both from the Latin for “inborn quality”. C.f. naïve, which also means that with which one is born, i.e., that which is native, Latin natus, and compare the phrases “born yesterday” and “wet behind the ears”, the latter from the image of a mother animal licking its newborn.
intelligence agency
First used in the title of the CIA in 1951. “Intelligence office” goes back to the 17th century, though, in the same sense.
intransigent
About 1880, borrowed from the nickname of a Spanish political party of the time, Los Intransigentes, “The Uncompromising”.
irate
1838, although “ire” goes back to 1300.
ivory tower
As a symbol of seclusion from real life, 1837 in French (tour d’ivoire) and 1911 in English.
Jerusalem (hymn)
Although the poem “And did these feet in ancient time” was written by William Blake in 1804, it didn’t become an anthem until 1916 when it was set to music as an idealistic World War I rallying song. (Note it was sung at the funeral service in the movie Chariots of Fire, a phrase taken from the poem.)
jiffy
1785.
jiggle
Nobody jiggled until 1836. Both this and “jigsaw” are from the lively dance, extended to the idea of “rapidly bouncing up and down”.
jigsaw
The saw itself, 1873. Jigsaw puzzles (and the extended sense of anything in small irregular pieces), 1909. Before being motorized, jigsaws were operated by a foot treadle or even bicycle-style pedals, which probably helped the meaning take hold.
junk
1884 in the current sense of discarded materials of little or no use. Before that, it was strictly a nautical term for an old or inferior rope or cable. As late as 1900, a junk dealer handled marine stores. The drug use of junk and junkie date to the 1920’s, while junk food came along in 1972.
Kick up ones heels
In Georgian and Regency times, this meant to drop dead. It was the same image as “bite the dust”, q.v., but it implied falling backward instead of forward. The meaning of “enjoy oneself”, with an image of vigorous dancing, didn’t come about until almost 1900.
knee-jerk
A medical term for the patellar reflex in 1876. Not used metaphorically (knee-jerk reaction, knee-jerk emotion) until 1963 — “knee-jerk liberal”, in fact.
kneecap
1869. For the previous five hundred years, the body part in question had been a knee pan.
knickers
1881 as a feminine undergarment. This is a short form of knickerbockers, first recorded as an item of men’s clothing (i.e., baggy britches) in 1859. (Knickerbocker was used from 1831 to refer to a resident of New York, particularly one descended from the original Dutch settlers, from Washington Irving’s popular History of New York by “Deitrich Knickerbocker”. The clothing sense came from the book’s illustrations showing the Dutch in exaggerated baggy britches.)
Law Lords
This was the usual name for the “Lords of Appeal in Ordinary”, created by the Appellate Jurisdiction Act of 1876. They were appointed from the senior Judiciary, and are life peers with the rank of baron. They sat in Parliament and could vote on any issue not bearing on their official duties. Originally there were two, gradually increased to twelve. In October, 2009 the office ceased to exist, and the Law Lords became the judges of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. They are now excluded from Parliament unless they retire from the bench.
lawn tennis
The game was invented in 1874 as an outdoor adaptation of tennis, which was played on a special indoor court. Lawn tennis caught on instantly, and already by 1880 “tennis” meant the outdoor sport and the prior game had to be called “real tennis” to distinguish it.
leotard
1920. See “trapeze”.
leper
This wasn’t used as a synonym for “an untouchable person” until the mid-20th century. Before that (from 1387), it was a person suffering from the disease, and before that (from 1250), the disease itself. (This transfer of disease name to a patient is unique, presumably because the /-er/ ending was mistaken as an agent form, but this didn’t happen to “cancer”.)
lesbian
1890. Before then, female homosexuality was called tribadism, from an Indo-European root that meant to rub. (Sapphist is even newer — 1902.) The poet Sappho of Lesbos was awarded two different terms for her alleged preferences a couple of thousand years after her lifetime.
ley [line]
This term for an imaginary, prehistoric, and/or magical line connecting two geographical points originated in 1922, while the explanatory “ley line” wasn’t sighted until 1972. It’s an alternate spelling of “lea”, countryside.
liaise
This ugly back-formation from “liaison” was perpetrated by the military in 1928.
limelight
The intense lime light was invented in 1826. The word was not used figuratively to mean “center of attention” until 1877.
limerick
1896, unless you mean the city in Ireland.
line of fire [of a gun]
1859.
lingerie
1835 as “linen garment” in general; 1850 as women’s underclothing.
lipstick
First mentioned in an 1880 catalog of makeup necessities (along with burnt cork) for “Negro” Minstrels. Apparently not used by females until 1922 — before that, a “rouge pot” was a common beauty accessory.
’ll, ’d, and n’t contractions
I’ll and you’ll were known from the time of Shakespeare, but other contractions of that form were unknown in print before the 1880’s, when they’ll, that’ll, etc. began to appear. Ditto with hadn’t, didn’t, etc. Note a very common technique in historical novels is for the author to suggest archaic speech by not using contractions even in casual conversation — for example, “Did he not remove his coat?“ instead of “Didn’t he remove his coat?“ or “I shall get it,“ instead of “I’ll get it.”
loaf, loafer
Both 1838 in the sense of a person who wastes time or the inaction itself. The Loafer shoe was a originally a trademark, registered in 1939.
logistics
Coined in 1879. Speaking about the logistics of Waterloo is therefore contraindicated.
lovebirds
Applied to a human couple and not real birds, 1911.
love seat
Defined as a “double chair” in 1904. (That was a new meaning for “double chair” also, which before 1904 only meant a light pleasure carriage.)
lunch
First recorded as an abbreviation for “luncheon” in 1829. The earlier meaning was “bunch” or “lump”.
Madam, madame
As the CEO of a whorehouse, not until 1871. Before then, the lady in question was called a procuress or abbess.
magenta
Magenta red dye — the first synthetic dye — was invented in 1860 and named after the French victory over the Austrians at Magenta, Italy the previous year. C.f. mayonnaise, named in honor of a French victory at Port Mahon, Minorca, in 1756. (This engagement led to the court-martial and execution of the losing British admiral, Viscount Byng. This in turn led to Voltaire’s famous comment about England, Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres. — “In this country, it is thought a good idea to kill an admiral now and then to encourage the others.”)
marathon
The race was so-named at the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896. It was generalized to “endurance contest” — marathon dance, marathon swim, etc. — in the 1920’s.
marzipan
It was marchpane (French marcepain) from 1394, but English didn’t adopt the German version of the word until 1901. (The original meaning was a candy box, not the candy itself.)
masochism, masochistic
1892, in the translation of Baron von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novels featuring sexual pleasure through humiliation (Venus in Furs, etc.), were written in the 1870’s. Krafft-Ebing’s pioneering treatise is also responsible for the words sadism, necrophilia, homo-, bi-, and heterosexual, and exhibitionist, all of which would be anachronisms before 1892. (By the way, Krafft-Ebing ran afoul of the Catholic Church by claiming that the desire for martyrdom was a form of masochism.)
massage
As a noun, 1876, borrowed from French (which had borrowed it from Arabic or Hindi) along with masseur and masseuse. As a verb, 1887. (Massage is related to Messiah, from a Semitic root which meant to rub; “Messiah” literally means “Anointed”.)
master of ceremonies
It was “master of the ceremonies” until 1888.
mauve
Another 19th-century French color word — 1859 in this case. C.f. beige, ecru, and magenta.
Melba toast
First crunched in 1897, while peach Melba was first served in 1905. Both were named for the wildly popular operatic soprano Nellie Melba, depending if she was on or off her diet. Well, at least she was and has remained wildly popular with audiences and critics. (Her face is even on the Australian $100 note.) The term “prima donna” wasn’t invented for her (see below) but might as well have been; one biographical sketch says, “If a singer’s greatness can be gauged by how detested she was by colleagues, then Melba would undoubtedly be the greatest singer of all time.” (Her real name was Helen Mitchell; she took her stage name from her home town of Melbourne.)
mess
This didn’t mean untidiness or state of confusion until the 1830’s. Before then, it only meant a dish of food.
meticulous
1827 in the modern sense. See below for the earlier meaning.
midget
1865 to denote a small person. It had been Canadian slang in the 1840’s for a small fly — a midge-ette.
milquetoast
This term for a very timid person comes from Caspar Milquetoast, the “hero” of a 1930’s series of cartoons.
mincemeat
1845 for the modern sense of a pie filling made with spiced fruit, etc. Before that the word only had its literal meaning of “chopped meat”, and the pie was simply called a mince pie, i.e., one with finely chopped ingredients. Note that the threat “to make mincemeat of” somebody (with a sword) uses the older sense — to turn them into hamburger.
mistletoe
Kissing under a mistletoe branch at Christmas is not mentioned in print until 1820, although it’s probably a much older folk custom. (The name of the plant is ancient, and the first syllable is German mist, dung, from the belief that the plant grew from bird droppings.)
mockingbird
Like crabgrass, this is a purely American species. The London Times, in fact, reported in 1989 that a mockingbird had been seen (or heard) in Essex. It did not say if it approved.
moron
This was coined in 1910 by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded, who needed a term for a person with mild mental retardation. It was borrowed from Greek moros, foolish. C.f. “oxymoron”, pointedly foolish, and “sophomore”, wisely foolish.
mundane
The “dull, ordinary” sense is not recorded until 1850. Before that, it meant “belonging to the world” in the senses of “not heavenly” or “not a churchman”. It was a synonym of “secular”, which also means “of the world”.
muslin trade
Heyer again — not in the dictionary.
myth
1830, which seems totally ridiculous when mythical is recorded in 1678, mythological in 1614, and mythology in 1420, but before 1830, the noun was still the original Greek mythos.
Nag
As a verb, to irritate or complain, about 1830. As a broken-down horse, not until 1930! (Before that it could be any horse, good or bad.)
nancy
1905 as an insulting term for an effeminate man. The even more disparaging “nancy-boy” didn’t emerge until 1958. C.f. “pansy”, another 20th century insult.
necrophilia
1892, in Krafft-Ebing. C.f. masochism and sadism.
needle
As a verb (to annoy or irritate), 1881. Before that, only to literally prick someone or something.
noblesse oblige
It was coined in French in 1808, but the first use in an English-language document was in 1837. (“Noblesse” itself was commonly used in English to mean “nobility” from about 1200 to 1700.)
nosy
First used to mean inquisitive in 1882. Until then, it meant (as one might expect) having a prominent nose. C.f. Old Nosey, a common nickname of the Duke of Wellington. (This is another “soft anachronism”, since the verb to nose (nose around, nose out, etc.) is hundreds of years older, from the behavior of dogs.)
novels
Even though Jane Austen’s novels and Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly stories of the Scottish border were indeed published during the 1811-1818 period of the Regency, they were published anonymously, so nobody could go to their book seller looking for Miss Austen’s new novel. The authorship of Austen’s books was not known until after her death in 1818; Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published posthumously, in fact. Scott was a well-known “high-brow” poet who didn’t want the literary establishment to know he also wrote popular novels to make lots of money, and although some people suspected, he didn’t “come clean” until 1827. (“Sir Walter Scott” was an anachronism until 1820, when he received his baronetcy.)
nymphet
I hope no author of Regencies would think of calling a a girl a “lolita”, but in fact “nymphet” is exactly as incorrect. The latter term was coined by Nabokov in 1955 to describe the title character in his novel Lolita. Obviously English needed terms for a sexually precocious young girl, since both words are now common.
Off-key
First used in 1929 for a singer “who had great difficulty moving her vowels”. Not until 1943 to mean inappropriate or jarring.
orchestrate
1880 in the literal musical sense. 1883 as a metaphor — fit together harmoniously.
opera glass
1842.
orchid
1845. Until then, the flower was an orchis, with orchidae as the Latin plural.
orgasm
1936 in the modern sense. Before that it had to be qualified — sexual or venereal orgasm. See below for more on orgasmic behavior.
orientation
1868 in the general sense of bearings or direction. Until then, it only was a geographical term, “facing eastward” in a literal sense, used of aligning churches, graves, etc. Similarly, the verb to orient (get one’s bearings) dates from 1850.
orphanage
Surprisingly, 1865 as a home for orphans. Previously used only as an abstract noun — “He suffered orphanage at an early age,“ — and as an English legal term meaning guardianship of an orphan. This may hold the record for anachronistic citations, since no self-respecting Regency novel can be complete without a bricks-and-mortar orphanage somewhere within its pages. The correct terms at that time were “orphan asylum” or, if the children were young enough, “foundling hospital” or “foundling house”.
Pansy
Fifteenth century as a flower, but 1929 in the sense of an effeminate man. (It’s French pensee, thought, because the flower looks like a serious face.)
pawnshop
About 1850, even though, as mentioned below, pawnbroker and the verb to pawn are hundreds of years older.
Pekingese
Many now-familiar dog and cat breed names were only established in the late 19th century, when shows were first organized under the auspices of breeding societies. Pekingese, for instance, is first recorded (as “Pekingese Terrier”) in 1898, Doberman in 1917, Borzoi in 1887, Dachshund in 1881, Boxer in 1934. A few names are somewhat earlier — Fox Terrier in 1823, Dalmatian 1810, Foxhound 1763, and Pug, 1702, for instance — and some are ancient (Mastiff 1327, Bloodhound 1350, Bulldog 1500, Spaniel 1386.) Elsewhere I mention that Corgi is 20th century in English. Husky is a perversion of “Eskimo”; it was applied to people in 1743 but not to the dog until 1852. The name Alsatian was invented by the British during World War I to avoid the horror of calling the dog a “German Shepherd” or “German Sheepdog”. Among cats, Angora is recorded for 1819, Persian 1821, Siamese 1871, Manx 1854, Abyssinian 1876, and so on. Tabby began as an early 17th century term for watered silk, but was applied to the common striped cat by 1695.
persistent
1830 in the current sense of tenacious. The earliest record of the word at all is only from 1826 as a biological term, applied to plants with leaves that didn’t fall off. It was the opposite of deciduous, which is from de-cadere, to fall away.
pervert
This did not have the current sexual usage until the 1890’s. Before then, a pervert was a religious apostate, a convert seen from the rear. For example, in 1860 Thackeray called Henry of Navarre “a notorious pervert” for his “Paris is worth a mass” conversion. In 1879 a religious tract mentioned that Paul was regarded as a pervert by Jews for becoming a Christian. An extreme pervert was the semi-legendary Vicar of Bray, who was twice a Catholic and twice a Protestant in maintaining his position during the reigns of Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth. When accused of having no principles, he said he had one principle, to live and die as the vicar of Bray. The song about him, however, updates his career to the “glorious revolution” reigns of Charles II, James II, William of Orange, and George I a hundred and fifty years later.
pessimist
1836, while pessimistic was not used until 1868. Optimist, etc. are a century earlier, though. The word optimism was coined in French to describe Leibnitz’s philosophy of “the best of all possible worlds”, but it gained currency in English mainly from Voltaire’s thorough demolition of the doctrine with Candide ou l’optimisme in 1759.
phenomenal
1850 in its modern sense of unusual or extraordinary.
pill
The first use to mean a boring or foolish person was in 1868, in US slang. (A “bitter pill to swallow” is much earlier to describe an unpleasant necessity.)
playboy
In the 17th century, it meant a boy actor. The current meaning was recorded in 1829 in Ireland, but didn’t appear in general English until popularized by Synge’s Playboy of the Western World in 1907.
ploy
1950 in the current sense of a maneuver to gain advantage. For 250 years before that, it meant a hobby or pastime. (It definitely isn’t related to “plot”, but nobody knows whether it’s a clipped form of “employ” or not.)
poker
Card game, 1836 in the U.S., 1855 (“pocher”) in England. “Poker face” is recorded 1885. C.f. euchre.
polarize
Not until 1949 in the “accentuate a division” sense. The optical connotation, however, dates from 1811.
polka
1844. By the way, the dance is Czech pulka, half (presumably because of the short quick steps), not Polish. This does not mean, however, that a polka is the same as a minuet, also named for the short steps, or a polonaise, which does mean “Polish”.
pom, pommy
Australian slang for a resident of England, first recorded in 1913.
pornography
1864 in the modern sense. The word was used in 1857 in its literal Greek meaning, “description of prostitution”, in a medical report on the plight of London streetwalkers.
pose
About 1850 in the artistic sense, both as noun and verb. About 1840 in the sense of “pretend” — “The spy posed as an Albanian prince.” Incidentally, the word is not related to position. That’s a member of the large put/place family (component, composition, …) from Latin ponere/posit-. By the way, a poser meant a questioner (apposer) for hundreds of years; the related sense of a difficult question didn’t turn up until 1793.
practically
The current meaning of “almost” wasn’t recorded until 1869. Since the mid-17th century, it had the literal meaning — in a practical manner. (“She was practically dressed in a heavy cloak.”)
pragmatic
The current sense of practical or realistic dates only from 1853. Before that it meant interfering, conceited, or dictatorial.
presentable
The original usage of the word was “subject to criminal prosecution”. C.f. the presentation of a grand jury. The modern meaning is not found until 1827.
prestige
Until 1829, this was French and meant trickery or deception. It is Latin prae-stringere, to dazzle or blindfold, literally to “bind beforehand”. In the early 19th century it was used as a metaphor for the charismatic power of Napoleon. The current sense of prestigious isn’t recorded until 1913; before then it was only applied to jugglers and magicians. Also note the current meaning of spellbinding, and see charisma above.
prima donna
It was used in its literal Italian sense of “first lady” to refer to the leading soprano of an opera in 1768, but it wasn’t generalized to someone who is aggressively self-important or temperamental in other fields (male or female) until 1834. P.S. — the plural is “prime donne”, but this is not often encountered because if by chance two of them should meet, one will kill the other. Even so, there were enough of them that it became necessary to create a double superlative — prima donna assoluta — first used in English (not Italian!) in 1854.
Prince Charming
1850, as a character in a play called, logically enough, King Charming.
pub
This clipped version of “public house” for a tavern was recorded as underworld slang about 1860, but wasn’t fully acceptable until 1890.
pussyfooting
American slang from 1903.
Randy
This did not mean lustful or “horny” until 1847, and then only in northern England — Yorkshire, etc. It didn’t migrate south to London until the 1880’s. For the previous two hundred years, it (as one might expect) had been purely a Scottish word, and it meant boisterous or rude.
realistic
1856. Realist was first used in 1850.
regardless
Mark Twain first used it to mean “in any event” in 1872. Prior citations only have the literal sense — “He was regardless of his duty,“ or “I have very regardless children.” The current usage is elliptical for “regardless of expense” or “regardless of the consequences”, and was regarded as an Americanism.
reliable
Not used in “correct” English until 1850, and even then it was regarded as an illiterate Americanism. (The pedants said it should be “relyuponable”.)
renaissance
1840 as a proper noun (the Renaissance) to refer to the “rebirth” of European culture around 1500. 1872 in the generalized sense of a regeneration.
reservation
The sense of reserving something in advance (“He procured a reservation for a box at the Opera,“ or “You must get a reservation to ensure a seat on the coach,“) is not known before 1908.
revolver
I managed to encounter a specifically-described revolver — “He spun the chamber, which contained a single bullet...” — in a novel set in 1815. No, no, no. At least this pistol wasn’t called a revolver, which was a trademark of Colt when he patented the first practical revolving gun design in 1835. Another Regency featured a pistol which somehow fired at least four shots without reloading. (C.f. Hollywood westerns with six-shooters that somehow managed to plug twenty or thirty Injuns without the cowboy reloading.)
Rifles, The
This term was not used for “a rifle regiment” during the Napoleonic Wars. The celebrated 95th regiment was called the “95th of foot, rifles” until 1843, when “The Rifles” first appeared in print. They were often known as the “Green Jackets” — because their mission was as snipers, they wore inconspicuous uniforms with no ornamentation, and their insignia were black cloth on green. (When first formed during the American wars, they wore buckskin like the Indians.) Similarly, they had no colors or drums, and normally did not fight as a regiment. One company of the 95th was attached to each of Wellington’s seven brigades, and it took the French a surprisingly long time to realize that an officer in the front lines was in serious danger. (A musket had an effective range of 80-100 yards, while an expert rifleman could hit his target at 300 yards. An ordinary soldier did not fire his musket at a particular target, only in the general direction of the enemy, more or less like the use of modern assault weapons.)
risky
1827.
risqué
1867.
rocket
As a noun, used for fireworks since 1611. (It’s named for the shape; Italian rocca means “distaff” or “spindle”.) As a verb (to soar or speed), not until 1881.
rodent
1833 as a present participle — Rabbits are rodent [gnawing] in my garden. 1835 as a noun.
romance
This meant “imaginative adventure story” until 1916, when it was first used to mean “love affair”. King Solomon’s Mines was a romance novel when published, for instance, as were Sir Walter Scott’s stories. Roman is the normal French word for “novel”, as in roman à clef, literally a novel with a key [to the characters’ real-life equivalents].
rotate
1808, a back-formation from the much older “rotation”.
rugrat
1968 (small child). Never as a small dog, which I have found in at least two Regency novels. For that matter, rug itself only meant “blanket” until about 1810. (Like “blanket” itself, it originally meant a coarse woolen cloth; people wore blanket or rug coats in cold weather.)
Sabotage
1910 in English; somewhat earlier in French. The word really became established during World War I. Saboteur wasn’t recorded until 1921, though.
sadism, sadistic
Although the eponymous Comte (not Marquis) de Sade died in 1814, these terms were first used in 1892, in Krafft-Ebing. See masochism, also named in honor of a 19th-century author.
safe
The current sense of a place for storing money or other valuables is first recorded in 1820. For the previous 400 years, the only meaning (as a noun) was a meat locker which kept out insects and vermin. Safe-breaking and safe-cracking date from 1934.
sanitize
1836. Of the derivatives, sanitary is first recorded in 1842, and sanitarium in 1851. The British euphemism “sanitary towel” first saw print in 1881 and the US equivalent, sanitary napkin, in 1917.
sassy
This was purely American slang until the 20th century. The British used the original form — saucy.
scam
1963, both noun and verb.
scientist
1840. “Science” in the modern sense is mid-19th century; before that it was “natural science”. A phrase like “the conflict of science and religion” is an anachronism before then, because Theology was a science. Darwinian evolution and the geologists’ insistence on the multi-billion year age of the earth were mainly responsible for this split. Late-breaking news flash — in November, 2005, the state of Kansas, USA, voted to redefine “science” to include theology and astrology again, so that biblical “Creation Science” could be taught in Kansas schoolrooms. Further Update — in February, 2007, Kansas decreed that theology and astrology are not sciences any more. Stay tuned for the next election. (The 2007 definition of science is again “a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations”. The 2005 definition omitted the word “natural”.)

Sigh… Hope springs eternal. The state of Louisiana has now (2008) decreed that forcing a science teacher to admit that evolution, cloning, stem cells, global warming, or birth control exist would be a violation of his or her free speech rights. Again, stay tuned. (Under the law, Louisiana math teachers have the right to teach that two plus two equals five, history teachers can say that Louisiana still belongs to France, and the law presumably upholds the right for said teachers to tell the students that the state legislature is composed of idiots.)

Scotch
As a drink (elliptical for Scotch whisky), 1895. Before that, the stand-alone noun Scotch meant a variety of snuff.
scram
1928, probably a back-formation from “scramble”. (There is a much older unrelated “scram” which means shrivel or paralyze, as in “His hands were scrammed from the cold.”)
séance
The word is French for “sitting” and was used as a synonym of “session” (legislative séance, etc.) until the spiritualism craze of the 1850’s. C.f. “spiritualism” below.
sensational
1898 in the current meaning of “causing great excitement”. The current noun usage — “Her red gown caused a sensation,“ — is first recorded in 1864. The literal implication of “sensation” (the operation of the senses) is hundreds of years older, though.
sewage
1834, even though “sewer” goes back almost to 1400.
Sex
1929 as a synonym for “sexual intercourse”, as in “have sex”, “sex before marriage”, “great sex”, etc. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first known author to use the word in this sense was D.H. Lawrence.
sexy
1925.
shamus
I found this nickname for a detective used by a duchess in a Regency novel! It is Yiddish slang (shames, synagogue watchman) first recorded in 1925 in American detective novels. (To compound the crime, her grace said the individual in question was pussyfooting — see above.)
shimmy
The American slang for “chemise” was first recorded in 1837. The other “shimmy”, to shake, dates from 1919, and is the same word. It is actually a back-formation from a popular dance of the time — “I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate” — which apparently was first known as the vulgar “shaking the shimmy”.
shoddy
1862 in the modern sense. In 1832 it was used as the name of an inferior kind of cloth.
shotgun
1828. The earlier term was “fowling piece‘. Nobody seems to have required a shotgun wedding until 1927.
show off
1793 in the current sense. “Show away” is recorded almost fifty years earlier, with the same meaning.
shrapnel
A Shrapnel’s Shell (named for the inventor) was an explosive shell packed with bullets, invented in the Napoleonic wars. It was also known as “case shot”. The extended meaning of “shell fragment”, in phrases like “He received some shrapnel in his leg,“ did not come into use until 1940. To quote Winston Churchill: “…great numbers of shell splinters usually described most erroneously as shrapnel, will be falling in the streets.”
shut up
As an order to stop talking, 1840.
sibling
In Old English this meant any blood relative, but it dropped out of use in the Middle Ages. The term was re-invented by early 20th-century anthropologists with a new specific meaning of “one of the children of the same parents”. The simple sib stayed in English with the meaning of “relative” in general — c.f. gossip, which is god-sib, i.e., godparent.
skid
As a verb meaning to slide along (the coach skidded off the road) not until 1838. The original meaning was a strip of wood placed underneath something, related to a ski. (In the late 19th century, a skid road was a pathway for sliding logs downhill. The current sense of a rundown area full of alcoholics, etc. seems to be from the term being used in Seattle for the area where the loggers congregated while in town, complete with the bars, whorehouses, and cheap rooms necessary for their comfort.)
skivvy
1902 as a maid of all work. 1932 as slang for underwear.
slingshot
1849. Also see catapult above.
slum
1845 in the current sense of a lower-class district. 1825 as a single dwelling, a rear tenement, often in the phrase “back-slum”. Not until 1860 as a verb (“go slumming”, etc.)
snide
The modern sense of slyly insinuating or derogatory dates from 1933. The word first appeared in 1859 with the meaning of “worthless” or “counterfeit”. An intermediate usage was slippery or cunning.
snob
1911 in the current sense of one who considers himself superior and sneers at the “lower classes”. This was a complete reversal of meaning, because originally the word meant a member of the lower classes — it was the opposite of “nob”, a wealthy person. The change began with Thackeray using it in the sense of “vulgar social climber” in the 1840’s, and of course those who are clawing their way up a ladder tend to spend a good deal of time stomping on the fingers of those on the next rung below them. (“Nob” might be a clipped form of “noble”; if not, the origin is unknown. C.f. “nib” (“his nibs”) in the same sense.)
snoop
1832 as a verb, 1891 as a noun.
socialize
1895 in the sense “participate in social activities”. Before that, it meant to make fit for society — “You should socialize that little brat before allowing him to appear in public; a few beatings should do the trick.”
society
The sense of “polite society” or “good society” in phrases like “he was often seen in society”) didn’t appear until 1823.
sod
As applied to a person, this is recorded in 1855 with the meaning of “sodomite”. It didn’t develop into a term of general abuse (more or less equivalent to “bastard”) until the 1930’s, in such constructions as “poor auld sod” or “lucky sod”.
sovereign (coin)
This one-pound (20 shilling) gold coin was first minted in 1817, replacing the earlier guinea, whose value originally varied with the price of gold but which became standardized as 21 shillings. Giving somebody a sovereign on the day of Waterloo is therefore contraindicated. Actually, I recently read a historical novel which featured a bag of sovereigns in 1748, a seventy-year anachronism. On the other hand, silver dollars (q.v.) or crowns had been common since about 1560. (The Royal Mint still produces sovereigns even today.)

Note that guineas were quite rare during the Napoleonic Wars, too. The war had caused the price of gold to rise above the face value of the coin, so that many of them had been melted down to bullion or used to pay for smuggled goods. The wartime English economy ran on paper money. Unlike the French, Wellington’s army in the Peninsula insisted on paying for supplies. The British government minted an issue of guineas during the war specifically for army use, because the Spanish and Basques would only take gold and silver — British banknotes would be worthless if the French won — and the mint lost its shirt on the deal because it had to buy the gold on the open market for more than the coins’ face value.

spill
1821 in the sense of a thin piece of wood or twisted paper used to light a candle or pipe.
spiritualism
The modern sense of both this word and spiritualist date from the early 1850’s, when the idea of communicating with the dead via a medium became a large fad. Before that, the words only had a philosophical and religious sense, describing a belief in the importance of the soul compared to the body. C.f. seance.
spotlight
1904. C.f. “limelight”.
sprig muslin
Yet another Heyerism, at least as applied to the Regency. The first recorded use of the phrase was by Hardy in 1922, and the second as the title of one of Heyer’s novels. “Sprigged muslin” was the 19th-century name of the cloth.
stein
1855 for an earthenware beer mug. C.f. stoneware.
stub [a toe]
1848 as an Americanism; not adopted in Britain until the 20th century.
stunning
David Copperfield, in 1849, has the first recorded use with the meaning of first-rate or outstanding. Before then, it only had the literal meaning of causing unconsciousness. C.f. astound and astonish; all three are the same metaphor, from Latin ex-tonare, to strike with a thunderbolt.
switch
This is another very common word I can find in almost every story. Unfortunately, it didn’t exist until about 1830 in any noun sense except the original one of a flexible tree branch. The verb sense of “to change” appeared about 1850 — before that its only use was to hit with a switch. (The modern usages came by way of railroad slang for a “branch” track. C.f. “asleep at the switch”, etc.)
Tangerine
1842 (fruit), 1899 (color). Previously only with a capital letter as a resident or product of Tangier. The fruit was a Tangerine orange, but even that is only recorded for 1841.
tart
1887 to mean “prostitute”, from an earlier sense (1864) of “attractive woman” or “sweetheart”.
teenage/teenager
Both are 20th-century coinages, although “teen” or “teens” as a noun (“once into their teens, girls think they will never get married,“) goes back at least to 1673.
tennis
See lawn tennis.
thick on the ground
1893.
thug
1839 in its current meaning. Before that, the term was only used in India (thuggee), and referred to a religious sect who believed in strangling strangers as an offering to the god.
thundermug
This slang term for a chamber pot was first recorded as an Americanism in 1890. C.f. “thunderbox” for a portable commode, first noted in 1939.
ticker
In the sense of “heart”, US slang from 1930.
tiens!
As an expression of surprise (borrowed from French), once again a Georgette Heyer usage.
tiger
1825 in the sense of a young groom riding on the back of a carriage. Georgian and Regency use is from Heyer.
toasty
The first recorded use to mean “warm” was only in 1961. Before that, it meant food or drink which had a slightly burnt flavor. “Warm [or hot] as a toast” goes back to the Middle Ages, though.
town bronze
It allegedly means the sophistication gained through spending a season in London, but I can find no record at all of this phrase before its use by Georgette Heyer — I have a nasty suspicion she made it up.
trade
As a verb, the sense of “to exchange” is first recorded in 1863. Before that it meant buy or sell (still the stock market meaning), and before that it was a synonym of “tread”.
trapeze
1861, in a description of the performance of Jules Leotard, the daring young man who invented the flying trapeze act, had a song written about him, and joined Amelia Bloomer, Dietrich Knickerbocker, Mae West, Lords Cardigan, Spencer, and Wellington, and of course Daisy Dukes in being known for a characteristic garment.
trauma
This goes back to ancient Greek with the literal sense of “bloody wound”, but it wasn’t applied to mental shock or distress until 1894 — “psychic traumata”.
treasure hunt
1913 as a game. Quite a bit older in the literal sense, of course.
troll
Borrowed from Scandinavian mythology in 1851. A different word than the much older troll, to drag.
trouble-maker
1923, in Time magazine. This a perfect “soft anachronism”, since “trouble” itself goes back to the Middle Ages, as do usages like “in trouble” and “troublesome”. On the other hand, “in trouble” to mean inconveniently pregnant was first used in 1891 by Hardy in Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
turf
1953 in the sense of “territory”, as a gang’s turf. “On the turf” had been used from the 1860’s for a prostitute walking the streets, and “The Turf” as metonymy for “the horse racing world” goes back to 1750.
tweed
1831. It was originally a trademark, and it seems to be a mistake for tweel, the Scottish form of twill, modified under the influence of the Scottish river. (Twill is from Latin twi-licium, two threads.
twerp
First recorded in print in 1925, but it was Oxford slang from about 1911, evidently formed from the name of a certain objectionable student named T.W. Earp. (The authority for this is J.R.R. Tolkien, one of Earp’s classmates.)
tyke
The word meant “bitch” or “mongrel” from the 1300’s. It wasn’t transferred from canines to small children until 1902.
type, typical
The current meaning of a general class isn’t recorded until 1843. For the preceding 400 years, it meant an emblem or symbol, from a root that meant to strike or stamp. This meaning is in printing type and the typewriter, as well as tympani. “Typical” in the modern sense dates from 1850. C.f. character, from the “carve” root, also first used to mean “identifying mark”.
Ugly duckling
Hans Christian Anderson’s tales (Ugly Duckling, Little Match Girl, Little Mermaid, Emperor’s New Clothes, etc.) were written in the 1830’s and 1840’s and translated into English even later.
Valentine
1824 for the paper variety. They are thus earlier than Christmas cards, which didn’t come into fashion until the 1860’s.
velour
The proper form is velours, the French word for velvet. English didn’t lop off the /S/ to form a false singular until well into the 20th century. C.f. Velcro®, which is French velours croché, hooked velvet.
vet
As a verb meaning “to carefully examine, verify”, this was first recorded in 1904. (It is racing slang, from the idea of having a veterinarian check the soundness of a horse.)
vibrant
The meaning of “lively” arose about 1867. Before that, the adjective only had its literal meaning of “vibrating” or “shaking”.
Viking
1840 as a Scandinavian marauder. The correct “vikingr” was recorded in 1807. In Old Norse and Icelandic, “viking” meant marauding or piracy, while a “vikingr” was an individual. (In other words, a vikingr would get in his boat and go viking.)
voluptuous
This was not applied to the female form (a voluptous figure) until 1839. Before that, it strictly meant “pleasure-loving”.
vowel[s]
Although Regency gamblers regularly hand out vowels — that is, IOU notes — that sense is not in the dictionary. This seems to be Heyer again; she used the term regularly.
Wallflower
1820 to describe a woman who is not dancing. Much earlier as a literal flower.
War of the Roses
This term was originated by Sir Walter Scott about 1815, 350 years after the conflict itself.
widgeon
A widgeon is a kind of wild duck, but it was also used for a silly or clueless person, from the alleged behavior of the bird. C.f. “goose”,“gull”, and maybe “booby”, applied to a person. (Spanish bobo meant both “fool” and “gannet”, and it isn’t known which sense is earlier.) Unfortunately, the last recorded use of calling someone a widgeon was in 1741. Heyer used it frequently in her Regency novels, though, and of course everybody else has followed suit. (There is a separate old word “pigwiggen” a fairy or dwarf, generalized to something small or insignificant, which was occasionally modified to “pigwidgeon”. That word has survived to modern times, in phrases like a “pigwidgeon lawyer”.)
wilt
During the Georgian and Regency period, this was purely an American word. Examples in British speech don’t appear until almost 1860. It is probably from the much earlier welk, to wither or fade.
Yen
This is Chinese “yan”, used both of the craving for opium and for the drug itself. It first made it into English in 1876 as “yin” or “ying” before everyone settled on “yen” about 1910. Western addicts adopted several Chinese terms in connection with the practice — “yen hop” for an opium pipe, “yen pok”, a pill ready to be smoked or eaten, “yen shi” the ashes, and so on. No relation to the Japanese coin, of course.
Yiddish
1875 as a phonetic shortening of German jüdisch deutsch, Jewish-German, the language of the Ashkenazi Jews. Yid, an offensive term for a Jew, is a back-formation, by analogy with Jewish, Polish, Kurdish, Danish, etc. C.f. the casual “Brit” from British. I suppose we should be grateful that English is not yet blessed with “horserad”, a pungent plant, and “varn”, a shiny coating.
Zip
About 1875 as either a sound or a quick movement (e.g., zipping right along). The clothing Zipper was a trademark of 1923. Zap doesn’t appear until 1940, with a meaning of shoot or kill.

Just to balance the above list of anachronisms, here are several modern-looking words which were in use at an earlier date than one might suspect. All these citations are for the current use of the word; sometimes a different meaning existed even earlier.

Acupuncture
Mentioned as a treatment for gout in a medical text of 1684.
anorexia
1598, in the same sentence as the first recorded use of “bulimia”.
anthropology
1593. (See psychology for another early word with which it was often associated.)
antiseptic
1751 for both the noun and the adjective. Antibiotic is 20th century, however. Septic itself (septic throat, septic wound) was borrowed from Greek about 1600.
autopsy
1678 in the modern sense of the dissection of a corpse for medical investigation, and 1651 in the original Greek sense of “see for oneself” — auto (self) + ops (eye).
Back yard
(of a house) 1659.
ballistic missile
Both words were well-known in English by 1750.
bamboozle
1703. Also seen as the clipped “bam” or “bamb” in the 18th and 19th centuries.
barbecue
About 1730 for an outdoor feast where a whole animal was roasted. Also applied to the guest of honor — i.e., the animal so roasted. Thus both “Let us have a barbecue in the back yard for our friends,“ and “This barbecue tastes wonderful,“ are legitimate 18th century usages.
baseball
1744. Also mentioned by Jane Austen. (The rules have changed over time, so the original game of baseball was probably similar to modern rounders.)
bite the dust
In ancient Greek, this was a favorite cliché of Homer. The phrases “bite the ground”, “bite the sand”, and/or “bite the dust” have been used in almost every English translation of the Iliad since 1697.
bulimia
1598, along with anorexia.
Carcinoma
This goes back before 1600. It’s a Greek form of the same word that’s in English canker and Latin cancer. Its tumorous cousins sarcoma (fleshy growth) and melanoma (black growth) date to the early 19th century, though.
Chock-full
About 1400! (It’s in a version of Morte Arthur — “Charottez [chariots] chokkefulle charegyde with golde.”) “Chock” is an alternative spelling of “choke”.
Christmas tree
Most people think these are Victorian, but the first mention of a Christmas tree being set up in England was in 1789. They remained a curiosity and didn’t become fashionable in imitation of the German custom until mid-19th century, though.
[the] coast is clear
This metaphor for “it is safe to proceed” goes back to at least 1530. It’s also in Shakespeare.
come
In the sense “achieve sexual orgasm” or “ejaculate”, this looks like modern vulgar slang, but it was first used with that meaning about 1650.
commissar
This word is strongly associated with the Soviet Union, but it is first recorded in English about 1400, from Latin commissarius. It’s the same word as a commissary or commissioner, namely a delegate or one entrusted (commissioned) with a certain task. C.f. commit, committee, etc.
corned beef hash
1621 for corned (i.e., salted) beef, and 1662 for hash as a dish of cut-up meat.
Detergent
1626 as an adjective meaning “cleansing”, and 1676 as a noun, a cleansing agent or soap.
dollar
This is the English pronunciation, going back to 1553, of the German silver Thaler (aka the Spanish peso or piece of eight). As early as 1560 it was pointed out that a dollar was worth five shillings, and the English 5-shilling piece (the crown) was therefore so-called. (Crowns had been minted starting in 1542.)
doughnut
1809.
Easy chair
1707.
Football
1424 for the game itself, and 1486 for the inflated ball. The very first citation is in a legal proclamation against the sport: “Þhe king forbiddes þt na man play at þe fut ball vnder þe payne of iiijd.” The second citation in the oed is in 1531: “Foote balle, wherin is nothinge but beastly furie and exstreme violence.” One gets the impression that the gentler elements of society were not too fond of the sport. In 1650, someone described a person in distress as being “like a football in the midst of a crowd of boys”.
fountain pen
1710 in English; even earlier in French.
Gag
Recorded in 1805 as a bad joke or ridiculous story, and in 1777 as a verb, to deceive. These are both from the much older “choke” sense — the oed has a quotation from 1819: “Gagging…signifies, as its name may lead you to suspect, nothing more than the thrusting of absurdities, wholesale and retail, down the throat of some too credulous gaper.”
galoshes
In 1377, Piers Plowman recorded that a new knight required galoshes and spurs. The original meaning evidently was “boots”. The sense of overshoe goes back to at least 1600.
germ
Disease-producing agent, 1803, in this very modern-sounding quotation from a medical journal: “The vaccine virus must act in one or other of these two ways: either it must destroy the germ of the small-pox...or it must neutralize this germ.”
goodies
Used to describe tasty snacks in 1745.
goody two-shoes
The History of Goody Two-Shoes was published in 1766.
Hop
As an informal term for a dance or ball, this looks like it belongs to the 1920’s, but it was first used in that sense in 1731.
howitzer
1703. “Howitz”, without the German ending, is recorded in 1700. The source, German haufnice, a catapult, goes clear back to the 1400’s. In the mid-1700’s, the English called the gun a hobbit.
hubby
As a pet form of “husband”, 1688.
Intellectual
As a noun — a studious person — this is recorded in 1652.
Jig is up
Jig has many meanings; the sense of “game” or “trick” dates back to 1592, and “the jig is up”, i.e., ended, was recorded in 1777. (C.f. “the game is up”, not used until 1808.)
Kaiser
In English, this was used as a general term for emperor (Roman or otherwise) from at least 1200. The Holy Roman Emperor was often called the Kaiser.
kerfuffle
This looks like relatively modern slang for an agitated disturbance, but it goes back to 1583. The simple fuffle, to disorder, is even earlier.
kid
1599 in the noun sense of “small child”. The verb, to hoax or joke with, as in “kidding around”, goes back to 1811. C.f. chit, which is a variation of “kitten”, also applied to children (particularly girls) since the 17th century.
kidnap
The first use was to steal a child to be sold to the American plantations, recorded in a legal document of 1682. It is “kid” (see previous item) plus “nab”, to seize. Within a few years this was generalized to taking any person, child or adult, and selling them into slavery or servitude. The current sense of kidnapping — stealing a person (of any age) to be held for ransom — is a 20th century industry.
Lite beer
About 1000 ce. The Miller brewery people undoubtedly believe this is a cutesy spelling of “light”, but in fact the word has meant “few”, “meager”, or “of poor quality” since Old English. “Lite” is not even related to “light”. The latter strictly means “low in weight” — light is the opposite of heavy — while lite is a form of “little” and is the opposite of fine or luxurious. The difference between the words was much more obvious in Ye Olde Days when the /GH/ of “light” was pronounced.

I love it when I see products where an advertising agency obviously does not know the meaning of a word — my grocery features not only Lite Beer but also a snack food called Poppycock, which is straight Dutch poppe-kak, doll shit, implying something tiny and worthless. At the cosmetic counter I can find Porcelana brand skin cream, which etymologically implies it will make one’s face look like the hind end of a pig. The version of Linux I was using until recently was code-named “Feisty”, literally “stinking”.

locomotive
As an adjective describing something which could “move to a place” by itself, this is first recorded in 1612. It also was applied to people who liked to travel — a historian said that Hadrian was “the most locomotive emperor Rome ever had”. The current usage is for “locomotive engine”, one that is self-propelled, and dates from the early 1820’s. (Early steamboats were also called locomotives.)
lollipop
1784 as a piece of candy for children, although the stick seems to have come later.
loop-hole
First used to mean “technicality for evading the intent of a law” in 1663. It originally was a porthole, either to shoot from or to admit light and air, but loopholes could also be used as an escape route if a person was sufficiently slippery.
lousy
The literal “full of lice” sense goes back to the time of Chaucer, and surprisingly, so does the figurative use to mean worthless or inferior. C.f. this quote from 1568: “His base birth and lowsy lynage,“ or this newspaper pop music critic in 1707: “Wicked Rhimes...sung to lowsey Tunes”. In a 1567 work on vagabonds, the author rails against “the leud, lousey language of these lewtering luskes and lazy lorrels.” (Lewtering = loitering, lusk = sluggard, and lorrel = rogue or blackguard.)
Mad at
1702. “Mad with” dates from 1577 and “mad upon” is in the 1539 Bible (Psalm 102), all in the sense of angry with.
Mardi gras
1699 for both Shrove Tuesday and the masquerade ball on that day.
megillah
This is Hebrew for “scroll”, and was used in English as early as 1650 to refer to certain books of Jewish scripture — particularly the book of Esther, which is read in its entirety at the festival of Purim. Hence, “The Rabbi read the whole Megillah.” Ironic usage to mean an interminable and boring affair is 20th century Yiddish slang, though.
meteorology
About 1570. Meteorologist, one who studies the weather, was recorded in 1621.
motor
Since the late Middle Ages, it has been a synonym of “mover”. There are frequent references to God as “prime motor” of the universe, so-and-so being the “motor of the plot”, “love is the motor of the soul”, and so on. It was even used for mechanical devices — in 1656 the mainspring of a clock was so described. It didn’t become a synonym for “mechanical engine” until 1849. C.f. engine itself, which has meant any mechanical device since 1300 — battering rams, catapults, siege towers, and other military machinery being the most obvious. (The word is the concrete noun form of “ingenuity”.)
mug
The first use of “to mug” to mean “assault” was in 1818. Mugger (an assailant) didn’t come along until 1865. Before that, a mugger was a blow to the face, as in “Gentleman Jackson delivered a powerful mugger.”
mule
As a soft shoe or slipper, often made of velvet, 1565. (Both sexes could originally wear mules around the house, by the way — they were particularly recommended for men suffering from gout.)
Neurosis
1776.
nicotine
The chemical was isolated in 1819. Nicotiana is the genus of the tobacco plant, named for Jacques Nicot, who introduced tobacco into France in 1560.
nymphomania
1775.
Open sesame
Introduced to English in the 1797 translation of the Arabian Nights, and quickly generalized to a bribe, etc. to “magically” gain entrance.
oxygen
1790. ditto for hydrogen.
Pal
1681, borrowed from the Gypsies, where it means “brother”. (Until at least 1850 it was always used in a criminal context — a synonym of “accomplice”.)
pathology
1597. (Pathologist is recorded for 1650.)
pea-shooter
1803; quickly generalized to any ineffective weapon.
penny post
1680 as long as the sender and recipient were within a ten-mile radius of London. It was not extended to the rest of Great Britain until 1840.
pharmacist
1721.
phobia
1786 in the modern sense — see the discussion of “claustrophobia” above.
plastic surgery
1839.
posse
This clipped form of the Latin phrase posse comitatus (a sheriff’s “power of the county” to commandeer citizens to pursue criminals, put down civil unrest, etc.) has been used since 1690.
practical joke
1804.
pronto
A musical direction borrowed from Italian in 1744, meaning “quickly”. (It is the same word as “prompt”.) C.f. presto, largo, allegro, adagio, etc. It was re-borrowed from Spanish in the American Southwest about 1850.
psychology
1653. Psychologist dates to 1727, etc. Psychology and anthropology (q.v.) were often opposed — study of the soul and the body of man.
puff paste/pastry
1598 as “puff paste”, the usual term until the late 18th century in England; the first citation for “puff pastry” is 1788. In the USA, “puff paste” was still the normal form well into the 20th century — Fanny Farmer’s cookbook in 1911 used this form, for example.
Ravioli
1399, when a “rafyol” was defined as a small meatball baked in a crust.
real thing
“He’s the real thing”, meaning genuine, was first used in 1818.
refrigerator
1611. Even earlier, a cooling mechanism was called a refrigeratory.
Saccharine
This has meant “sugary” since 1674. Note it is a different word than “saccharin”, a sweet-tasting chemical discovered in 1880.
sandwich
As a noun, 1762. As a verb (“sandwiched together”) not recorded until 1861.
savvy
1785, both noun and verb. It’s either from French savez[-vous] or Spanish sabe [usted], take your choice.
shiv
This term for a knife or razor certainly looks like it comes from 20th-century gangster movies, but was first recorded (spelled “chiv”) in 1673.
shoplifter
1680. Shoplifting follows in 1698. Both would seem to be derived from the verb “to shoplift”, but that doesn’t occur in the record until 1810!
shorthand
1636. The use of “hand” to mean “style of writing” is first recorded in 1390. The unrelated “short-handed”, not having enough hands, is from 1794.
shuffleboard
Played since 1532. (The first element means “shove repeatedly”, which is a pretty good description of the game.)
skim milk
In Shakespeare.
sleazy
1645, first used to mean a thin or weak fabric. It was very quickly generalized to describe anything insubstantial or worthless. The oed has a quotation from 1648 about someone’s “vain and sleasy opinions about Religion”. The further degeneration to sordid or depraved (a sleazy night club) is 20th century, though.
snug as a bug in a rug
Believe it or not, 1769. “Safe as a bug in a rug”, only 2/3 as good a rhyme, is recorded for 1798, As mentioned, “rug” meant blanket at the time, and to the British, “bug” strictly means a bedbug.
sourdough
Despite the modern association with San Francisco, the word goes back to 1303. It meant the lump of “starter” used to leaven a new batch of dough.
squiggle
1816, defined as “move like an eel”. It’s evidently a cross between “squirm” and “wriggle”. Before that, it meant to do fancy embroidery.
stockbroker
1706. Pawnbroker is even earlier — 1687. The verb to pawn goes back to 1566.
subconscious
1834.
swell
As an adjective meaning excellent (a swell party), 1812. This is from the noun use to mean a distinguished or stylish person (the swell strolled down Bond Street), first attested in 1786. This in turn was from an earlier meaning of arrogant, i.e., “puffed up” or pompous. C.f. a “swelled head”.)
Technology
1615.
telegraph
1794 as a mechanical signaling device, 1797 for an electrical version. The word was quite common in connection with the Napoleonic wars, with semaphore stations on hilltops to quickly relay messages. In England, the best-known was the line connecting the Admiralty in London to the fleet bases at Portsmouth and Plymouth, in use until 1847.
tin foil
1467. It was originally used mainly for backing precious stones and mirrors; it didn’t get cheap enough for casual wrapping and sealing until the early 19th century. Lead foil was more common in that role; c.f. the lead seals on wine bottles.
trampoline
1797 in the current bouncing and tumbling sense, 16th century in the sense “walking on stilts”.
traumatic
1656. Interestingly, that’s almost 40 years earlier than the first recorded use of trauma itself. As mentioned earlier, it only meant “bloody wound” until almost 1900.
Undertaker
Professional organizer of funerals, 1698. On the other hand, “mortician” didn’t emerge until 1895. This is one of the few examples of a new word being less euphemistic than what it wished to replace. Hundreds of years older in the literal sense of one who takes on a task or provides a service of some kind. The oed has a quotation about “The Lord is my Undertaker.”
Virus
1728 as a cause of contagion. (Virus is the Latin word for poison. C.f. virulent, i.e., poisonous.) Phrases like “smallpox virus” were common in the 18th and 19th centuries — see the comment on “germ” above. A virus [particle] was restricted to its current sense in the early 20th century.
Waffle
The verb to waffle (to make a noise like a politician) is recorded for 1803. (It had meant to yelp like a dog since 1698 — it’s a form of “woof”.) The edible waffle didn’t come along until 1809, although “waffle iron” was earlier.
washing machine
1754.
Xanadu
Most people probably think Coleridge made up the name for his 1816 poem Kubla Khan, but note this quotation from 1625: “Xandu, which the great Chan Cublay..built; erecting..a maruellous..palace of marble.”

How to Make a Reader Jump

Many words have changed meaning enough that, when used appropriately in the context of an earlier century, they give quite the wrong impression to a modern reader. Consider the following hypothetical quotations from a historical novel:

The Earl of Redstart’s valet observed his master’s choice of a waistcoat and said, deferentially, “If I may say so, my lord, I think you are quite cute.” Cute is a short form of acute and meant mentally sharp or discriminating.
The Duke of Wellington is a very dainty human being, but he has a Martian mind. Dainty is a form of “dignity”, and in this context meant “worthy” or “excellent”. As early as Chaucer, Martian was used in its literal “related to Mars” sense to mean warlike — now we say “martial” instead. Both martial and martian were also once used to refer to the month of March.
“No offense, Redstart, but how did you manage to acquire such a crummy wife?“ Crummy used to mean “soft and delicious”, and was applied to a well-rounded sexy woman. The current term is zaftig, Yiddish for “juicy”.
“I would be pleased to mount you, Miss Hampton,“ said Lord Redstart politely. It meant to provide with a horse to ride. Georgette Heyer loved this double-entente.
After his father’s funeral, Lord Redstart took a mortuary out of his pocket and handed it to the priest. From about 1380, a mortuary was a gift conventionally given to the officiating priest or rector from the estate of the deceased. The current sense of a building to hold corpses only dates from 1865.
As was customary and proper, Lord Redstart had been his father’s executioner. Executor and executioner were used indifferently until the middle of the 19th century. It was common to call the hangman somebody’s executor. Either way, the etymological meaning is to “follow out” or as we would now say, “carry out” an assigned task. C.f. to execute a left turn in traffic.
The new vicar was responsible for the immediate decimation of his parish. Well into the 19th century, decimation meant to collect tithes, from Latin decimationem, to take a tenth. The sense of punishing a military unit by executing every tenth soldier came later, and the extended sense of “thoroughly destroy” came even later.
The Earl of Redstart gave a dime to his parish, which made the vicar very happy. Since the 14th century, a dime had been used to mean a tenth of anything. Shakespeare used the word to mean “decimation” in the military sense — see above. In the present case, the vicar was happy because the wealthy lord had tithed to the parish. (Tithing was the normal meaning until the new United States chose it for the name of a coin in 1786.)
The vicar painfully administered to his flock. Painful was used to mean dutiful or conscientious. C.f. “painstaking”.
Florence Nightingale was widely regarded as a pitiful example of a human being. Right up until the 20th century, “pitiful” still occasionally had its etymological meaning — full of pity, merciful, or charitable. So did “pitiable” — able to show pity.
In the parlor, Miss Hampton performed a Christmas carol which consisted mainly of expletives. An expletive was a word added only for rhyme or rhythm, without adding to the sense. “Hey, nonny” and “tra, la, la” passages are expletives. In this case, Miss Hampton was singing “Deck the Halls”, where the four repetitions of “fa la la la la, la la la la” produce 36 expletives per verse.
The vicar preached his sermon on one of the most improper passages of the Bible. Improper used to mean metaphorical; in this case the preacher’s text was the 23rd Psalm. His listeners also thought the parables of Jesus were improper and that Pilgrim’s Progress was an exceedingly improper novel.
”Be careful of that jellyfish,“ he warned. ”It has very sharp teeth.” It was originally the name of a real fish, about a foot long, with lots of teeth. The current meaning of a floating blob with tentacles wasn’t used until 1841.
Although Lord C------ was in his 80’s, he was still regarded as quite voluptuous. As meantioned earlier, voluptuous simply meant “pleasure-loving” until 1839, with no connotation of the female form attached.
Benjamin Franklin was a famous typewriter. It meant printer or compositor before the first mechanical typewriters came along in the 1860’s.
The Navy Board placed an order for a thousand tampons, each six inches in diameter. Tampon, tampion, and tompion are alternate spellings of the same word, from the French for a plug. In addition to feminine sanitary use, tampons were used for stopping bloody wounds, and the term was also used for the wooden cylinders used to ram down the charge in a muzzle-loading cannon. Presumably it was the last that interested the Navy. (If you know any soldiers, ask them if they carried tampons (the sanitary variety) with them on active duty. They will probably say ‘of course’, since there is still nothing better for quickly stopping heavy bleeding.)
The monks of St. Joseph’s Monastery were known to be extremely devious. As late as 1856, “devious” still could be used in its etymological sense — “out of the way”. The pious monks led a remote and sequestered life.
W------ C------ was arrested on Tuesday on charges of being empirical. From the 16th to the early 19th century, it meant a medical quack, charlatan, or mountebank.
The governess reported to Lady Redstart that her four-year-old daughter had a spectacular orgasm that morning. Orgasm actually means “extreme emotion” or “fit of passion”, and the restriction to a sexual climax is fairly recent. In modern terms, the little girl threw a tantrum.
Unlike many monarchs, King Henry VIII preferred to make prime time speeches. Long, long before radio and television, “prime time” meant “early in the morning” -- the canonical hours of prayer were prime (6 AM), tierce, nones, and so on. The first citation in the oed is from Morte Arthure in about 1400: “They pype vpe at pryme tyme”, possibly talking about frogs or birds.
“Your country seat is an awful pile, Lord Redstart. I have seldom seen a more artificial building.” A pile was once any large or imposing building, and there is a famous line where someone praised St. Paul’s cathedral as “awful, amusing, and artificial.” Awful meant inspiring awe (c.f. awesome), amusing meant causing one to muse, and artificial meant made with artifice.
Because of his amusement during the attack, General A------ was relieved of command. In addition to the above meaning, “amusement” also meant delay or time-wasting.
The sergeant reported to Colonel Thompson that the regiment’s new recruits were all plastic. Plastic is from the Latin word for “moldable” — c.f. “plaster”.
Mary Queen of Scots had a gown made of fine French puke, lined with satin. From about 1400 to 1600, puke was used for a fine woolen fabric. The oed also has references to “puke-colored”, which seems to have been a dark brown. There is no relation to puce-colored, let alone the word for vomiting, which comes from spuke, a Dutch or German version of spew. (Puce, a purplish brown, is French for “flea-colored”.)
The brave soldier was thrilled by the enemy and died instantly. To thrill was to pierce, as with an arrow or lance. The current usage is metaphorical.
Lord and Lady Redstart were upset when the governess informed them they had measly children. You got it — the kids had the measles. The modern-day meaning of inferior is a slang term from about 1860. C.f. lousy (infested with lice), scruffy (scurvy), shabby (scabby), mangy, flea-bitten, etc. for similar applications of skin conditions, and a rascal is someone who has a rash.
Sir C------- was amazed when the thief patted him on the head. To pat originally meant to strike. The oed has a citation about David patting Goliath with a rock. No relation to “petting” — a pet is Gaelic for a hand-raised lamb. The first meaning of “amaze” was to knock out or stupefy — c.f. the figurative use of “stun”, “astound”, and “astonish”, all of which also mean to render unconscious.
The physician told Lady Redstart that she shouldn’t be worried; her children merely had cholera. As mentioned above, cholera was a mild diarhhea until 1831.
Lord S------- and Lady Y------ were married yesterday at St. George’s after a complete capitulation. Nobody surrendered; a capitulation was a legal agreement neatly arranged under separate headings, or chapters, with no sense of “surrender”. Such legal paperwork was a normal precursor to an aristocratic wedding at the time, of course. The current sense is from diplomatic use to describe a peace treaty.
Lord Redstart’s mother was somewhat deaf, and so the dowager countess used a rare electrical microphone. From 1683 until the early 20th century, a microphone was an ear trumpet. C.f. the much bigger megaphone. Electrical was a description of an object made out of amber, Greek elektron. (The scientific use came from rubbing amber to produce static electricity.)
Everyone knows that Prime Minister Disraeli and Cardinal Newman are perverts. See above for the meaning of pervert. Benjamin D’Israeli was born a Jew, but his father Isaac had a disagreement with his synagogue and converted his entire family to Christianity when the future statesman was thirteen. Newman made an extremely public conversion from Anglican to Roman Catholic. (He had founded the “High Church” or “Oxford” movement to bring the Church of England closer to Catholic practices, but decided he might as well go all the way.)
Lord Redstart was so fastidious that he only would drink wine that had been defecated by his butler. Latin feces meant “dregs”, and defecate meant to purify or refine — literally to remove sediment. There’s a fairly well-known line where a historian described how Martin Luther suddenly began to defecate the Roman church. The meaning “void excrement” is a euphemism that only dates from 1864, but as late as 1890 hosts were still being advised to defecate the wine before dinner.
Yesterday, his majesty’s urinator, Mr. Curtis, gave a demonstration of his special urination techniques. Once, to urinate meant to swim underwater. Mr. Curtis really existed; he was the royal navy’s professional salvage diver in the late 17th century, and this passage is a direct quote from a newspaper article.
The Countess of Redstart was quite impressed that her host had provided her with a solid gold pelvis. The Latin meaning of “pelvis” was “wash basin”; the anatomy sense is much more modern.
Lord and Lady Redstart sat in their pew at the cathedral watching the priest use the lavatory. This was another “basin” word (from Latin lavabo, to wash) and was the normal ecclesiastical word for the basin used by a priest to ceremonially wash his hands during mass. C.f. “washroom”, “bathroom”, “rest room”, “powder room”, and many other euphemisms for the smallest room in the house. Also see the next two items.
Lady Redstart’s dressing room featured a blue velvet toilet with a gold and silver fringe. The original meaning was “small cloth”, particularly a decorative cloth laid on a dressing table. It is somewhat more recognizable if spelled “towelette”. The word also could mean “protective towel” in general, so this passage could have said that Lady Redstart’s head protruded from a toilet while her maid was dressing her hair. From the covering sense it also came to mean the dressing table itself, as in phrases like “the lady was at her toilet”, while the current euphemistic use is 20th century. (I also could have brought up the image of a picnic where all the ladies were sitting on toilets.)
Lady Redstart wore a very fetching commode on her head while walking in the park. The literal sense of “commode” is “convenience” (still seen in “accommodate” and “discommode”), but in the 17th and 18th centuries it had two other meanings — a chest of drawers and a tall headdress for women. The word didn’t become a euphemism for a chamber pot until the middle of the 19th century — c.f. “the necessary” and “the convenience” in the same sense.
Lady Redstart wore a large tire decorated with flowers and ribbons while walking in the park. Until the late 19th century, one meaning of a tire was a woman’s headdress. Like the tire of a wheel, it is a shortening of “attire”. (Wheel tires date from 1485 — they were iron hoops protecting wooden wheels until rubber tires were developed for the bicycle in the 19th century.)
The little girl walked into the parlor wearing a dainty white tire, and curtsied to the guests. This tire is a completely different word, unrelated to “attire”! As an article of girls’ clothing, a tire was a pinafore or apron. It really should have been spelled “tier” — that is, a tie-er — but then people would have mistaken it for the “layer” meaning of tier. Again, this meaning lasted until the late 19th century.
Miss Hampton may have looked delicate, but she could tackle a horse. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, to tackle meant to equip, particularly to saddle or harness a horse. (C.f. “tack” for the horse’s equipment, and also “fishing tackle”.) The word progressed to “grab hold of” about 1840.
The navy launched a new locomotive which immediately sank. As mentioned above, “locomotive” was applied to anything that could move by its own power, including steamboats.
Miss S------ was cut by the tabbies at Almack’s because of a whispering campaign that she was a mechanic. The literal meaning of mechanical is “having power” (it’s related to magic, may, and might), but it came to mean “working with the hands” and then acquired the general sense of “common”, by way of “member of the laboring classes”. As late as the 1960’s, the oed cites someone disapproving of a “mechanical dress”, and to call someone a mechanic was simply saying they were vulgar.
Miss Hampton’s father was a noted civilian. As mentioned above, a civilian formerly was a magistrate; specifically, an authority on civil law.
There was a pause in the battle while Napoleon recharged his batteries. This one is easy — “recharge” has had its literal meaning of “reload” for a thousand years, and a battery, of course, is a group of guns.
At the garden party, Miss T------ was discovered lying beneath a marquis. Until the 20th century, marquis, marquise, and marquess were used interchangeably. In fact, the missing young lady had been overcome by the heat and was resting under a large tent. To avoid this sort of confusion, the tent is now usually spelled phonetically as “marquee” and the peer is pronounced “markwess” (or “mahkwess” in England, of course), leaving “marquise” (pronounced “markee”) as a type of gemstone cut.
Lady J------- was quite promiscuous at the dining table. “Promiscuous” simply means “indiscriminate”; the restriction to the current sexual sense didn’t occur until the 20th century. In the Lady’s case, it meant she liked all kinds of foods and would eat whatever was put in front of her — the opposite of being picky or finicky.
Miss B----- was quite careless and extremely meticulous. That sounds like a contradiction, but “meticulous” was first used for “careful about small details” in 1827; before that the meaning was “fearful”. (Latin had two words for fear — metus was a justified fear, and timor was an unreasonable fear or panic, so a young lady might be meticulous about being cornered by an amorous gentleman, but timid when confronted with a mouse.)
King Edward was well-known for upsetting churches. No, he didn’t offend anybody. “Upset” once had its literal meaning — to set up or erect. Therefore, good King Edward built churches. In the early 19th century, the sense changed to “overturn”, its former opposite. In other words, the meaning of upset was upset.
The cruel pirates heckled their prisoner until he bled. A heckle or hackle (related to “hook”) was a steel comb used to process flax or hemp; if applied to a human it would take off the skin quite nicely. The current sense of a hostile audience heckling a speaker is metaphor — to irritate or flay. Until almost 1900 it was mainly applied to shouting at a political candidate.
Miss Hampton was found squiggling in a lady-like manner in the parlor. As mentioned above, in addition to the “squirm + wriggle” sense, it once meant to do fancy embroidery.
The evidence showed the thief had been justified, so they buried him. Well into the 19th century, to justify someone meant to summarily hang or lynch them -- literally, to “make justice”.
Lord Redstart threatened the highwayman with his dick. In the 19th century it meant “riding whip”; the first slang use for “penis” isn’t until 1890. (Both the latter sense and its synonym “dork” are probably from “dirk”, dagger.)
The Earl of Redstart strolled into the House of Lords in his birthday suit. Originally, one’s best clothes, worn on special occasions like one’s own or the King’s birthday. The sense of “bare skin” is a play on this.
According to Wellington’s dispatches, Colonel Thompson heroically kicked up his heels at Waterloo. As mentioned in the Anachronism section earlier, the unfortunate colonel was killed.
The Ton was shocked when Sir William was found to be presentable. As mentioned above, it meant he was subject to criminal prosecution.
The Hampton children are almost female. Almost used to mean “mostly all”. This looks odd in phrases like “the residents of Tokyo are almost Japanese”, but it is handy to be able to say things like “lawyers are almost honest” or “Congressmen are almost intelligent” without fear of libel. There were six Hampton children, one boy and five girls.
Miss Hampton mentioned that she loved her horrid little dog. The etymological meaning is “shaggy”, and it was still used in that sense into the 19th century.
Miss Hampton was quite upset that she would be dancing barefoot. This was an old slang term for a woman whose younger sister married first. Shakespeare used it in The Taming of the Shrew — “She must have a husband; I must dance bare-foot on her wedding day, And for your love to her lead apes in hell.” (To lead apes in Hell was the proverbial fate of a woman who died a virgin.)
Sir Walter Scott wrote many stirring adventures about the brave Albanians. Originally, and well into the 19th century, this referred to the Scots — Alba was the Gaelic name of the country. After about 1600, it was also used to describe a country in the Balkans, although the Roman province of Albania had been on the Caspian, not the Adriatic.
Mrs. Lincoln was so upset by the assassination of her husband that she consulted a notorious psychopath. The original meaning (1864) was a doctor specializing in mental illnesses. C.f. osteopath, a “bone doctor”. The first instance of the modern meaning of psychopath — a person with serious mental illness, particularly with violence or delusions — was in 1885. “Notorious” simply means “well-known”. It has always had the meanings of both famous and infamous, so a notorious psychopath would today be called a famous psychiatrist. (Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, published in 1886, could punningly have referred to the good doctor himself, leaving out niggling details like the Latin gender of “psychopathia”. The book was written in German, by the way. He chose the Latin title to scare away lay readers but it didn’t do any good.)
Everyone was shocked when Lord Redstart avoided his roadster. Avoid is “ex-void”, to empty out. It was once used in the literal sense — “We had extra guests for dinner and avoided the cupboard.” It also meant to expel — “Ferdinand and Isabella avoided Spanish Jews,“ — and then to leave. The current usage is from phrases like “Young ladies are advised to avoid the vicinity of a rake,“ i.e., to leave the area, not the person. In Regency times, a roadster was a horse for long-distance traveling, so the earl fell off his horse. (Later in the 19th century, a roadster was a light carriage; this is the meaning which was transformed into an open two-seater automobile in the early 1900’s.)
Wellington had two soldiers hanged for eloping during the battle of Waterloo. The literal meaning of elope, in use until about 1840, is simply “ex-lope”, to run away, escape, or abscond. Dickens mentioned a valet eloping with all the valuables. In law, it meant a wife running away from her husband; the Gretna Green sense of fleeing lovers came last.
Lord Redstart read an interesting article on the erratic Huns and their emotions. The literal meaning of erratic is “wandering”, as in “knight errant”. (It was once common to see constructions like “St. Thomas was well-known for his errors.”) Emotion is “ex-motion”, to move out, and once was a synonym of “migration”.
King Edward’s strategy for controlling Wales consisted mainly of building castles in the clouds. Until about 1350, the main meaning of cloud was “hill”, with a secondary meaning of “lump”. It is the same word as clot and clod, with a fundamental sense of “accumulated mass”. C.f. a cumulus or “hilly” cloud. My lead sentence for this section could have been, The Round Table was shocked to learn that Sir Lancelot was injured when his horse tripped over a cloud.
Lady Redstart was unhappy with her chef, and told him the dinner needed to have a better liaison. Liaison is a relative of Latin ligare, to bind together — c.f ligament and legato. Until the early 19th century, the only meaning of liason was as a cooking term, namely the thickening of a sauce.
The general proposed that troops be trained to use skates for military operations in the deep snow of the mountain slopes. Skates in deep snow? Skating down a mountain? Well, the word “skate” once meant a ski as well as the item for sliding around on ice.
At Penzance, the shore is completely covered with beach. The proper meaning of “beach” is pebbles or shingle; the current meaning is from phrases like “walking along the beach” being misinterpreted by those not living near the sea. C.f. Beachy Head, where presumably the shore is quite rocky. (Shore seems to be a “shear” word — the division between land and water.)
He walked into the low tavern and was not surprised to see that almost every man had a blackjack on his table. It meant a large jug of beer or ale, usually made of leather. The current sense of a weighted bludgeon is a US contribution to culture first noted in 1889. The use to describe the card game more usually called vingt-et-un or twenty-one is even newer — 1910 — and is also American.
The far-fetched creatures wrapped tightly around the neck of the Countess of Redstart caused much comment at the Opera. Until the late 19th century, creature was a synonym of “creation” and could be used for anything created, animate or artificial, so it was a perfectly reasonable term for a lady’s necklace. Similarly, far-fetched retained its literal meaning — brought from afar — until at least 1870. Perhaps Lady Redstart’s necklaces came from India. From the time of Shakespeare, “far-fetched and dear-bought” was a cliché for a gift sure to impress a lady.
Those who have studied the amazing creature called Stonehenge are certain that it is an organism. “Organism” meant anything carefully laid out or organized; it was not used to mean something which was alive until about 1830. See above for “creature”.
At the ball, Lady Redstart’s only jewelry was a large ultramarine ruby in her slot. The lady’s pendent was undoubtedly rare and costly, but not to the extent of being the only blue ruby in creation. Ultramarine once had its literal meaning — beyond the sea — and so the far-fetched ruby probably came from Burma. The sense of “bright blue” came from the term being applied to a pigment made from powdered lapis lazuli. (A blue ruby would be a contradiction, since “ruby” is a member of the “red” family.) As mentioned above, “slot” was an older word for cleavage.
In addition to her ultramarine ruby, Lady Redstart had another necklace made entirely of bright green plasma. Since the late 16th century, “plasma” has been the jewelers’ name for green chalcedony; it was short for “plasma of emerald”. The plasma of Biology (blood plasma, cell plasm, protoplasm) and Physics (an ionized gas) is a different word meaning form or mould, related to plastic and plaster.
Lady Redstart enjoyed growing flowers in her stove. The original meaning of “stove” was a heated room, and as late as 1870 one finds references to “stove-flowers”, indicating they had been grown in a stove, or hothouse. C.f. “stew”, whose literal sense is “Turkish bath”, leading both to “food cooked by steaming” and to “whorehouse”.
The terrific pirate captain brandished a naked brown sable he had withdrawn from his vagina, while the rest of his bloodthirsty and impressively garnished tangerines took guesses with their deadly trombones. This sounds like the opening of a Monty Python skit, but…
While working on the Gettysburg Address one night, President Lincoln walked over to adjust the carburettor. The original meaning was a device for squirting a carbon compound into a gas light to make the flame brighter. The automotive sense came thirty years later, keeping the sense of “inject”.
The Times reported that the noted sportsman Sir S------ was thrilled by an enraged bugle and died instantly. Witnesses stated that his attention had been distracted by a musket flying overhead. Bugle meant “wild ox”; the musical instrument was originally a bugle-horn. As mentioned previously, to thrill is to poke a hole through something, to pierce, so the ox gored the unfortunate man. (C.f. nostril, a “nose-thrill”.) A musket was a small hawk before the name was applied to a kind of gun. It’s the same word as mosquito — a “small fly”, Latin musca. (The flying muskets were also called tercels, because the male hawks were a third smaller than the females.)
Lady Redstart was appalled to find a midget sitting in her drawing room, and she ordered a footman to kill it. As mentioned above, a midget was originally a “midge-ette”, a small fly.
Everyone laughed when Sir James claimed he had acquired his black eye by running into a valve. Right up to present times, “valve” has retained its original Latin sense of a swinging door. Here’s a quote from 1834: “Throwing open the valves, we entered the chapel.” The mechanical sense didn’t develop until the 17th century. Notice that a bivalve is an oyster or clam with “two doors”.
General T------- was relieved because his magazine had been circulated. Circulated once meant encircled. The incompetent general was removed from his command for having gotten his ammunition storage area surrounded by the enemy.
Everyone in the village agreed that the hideously ugly old crone was glamorous, so they drowned her. As late as the early 19th century, “glamour” meant magic, and a glamorous woman was a witch. For the current use, c.f. “bewitching” and “spellbinding”.
Queen Mary loved to go walking on the first day of the new year to see the Spring flowers and listen to the birds. Gotcha! Until 1752, in England the year began on March 25th — Lady Day. It switched to January 1 when the Gregorian calendar was finally adopted. (The four Quarter Days, when rents were due, employment fairs were held, etc. were Lady Day, Midsummer Day (June 24), Michaelmas (September 29), and Christmas. Lady Day, or the Feast of the Annunciation, was of course exactly nine months before Christmas.)
Mr. Brummel was very handsome, and although he was exquisitely polite, he was quite repulsive. It meant aloof. The book could have said, Lady Redstart made a repulsive hand gesture. Presumably she made a motion for someone to keep their distance.
Many people considered Mr. Brummel’s morgue to be unpleasant. Since 1600 it has had its original French meaning, which is a haughty, arrogant manner. Morgue, where the dead are kept, is the same word, but it didn’t make it into English until 1795. It was originally the Paris prison’s receiving room, where prisoners were examined by the guards with their morgue.
Lord Redstart told his wife to take an extra footman as an escort so she would be less obnoxious. In addition to the current sense of offensive, obnoxious once meant “exposed to harm, in danger”.
At court, Lord Redstart approached the throne and told the queen that he was “Her Majesty’s humble and devoted prostitute.” Prostitute could once be used in a non-offensive sense to mean “servant”, “slave”, one showing abject devotion.
At Christmas the family was greatly reduced, and they joyfully impaled each other. The literal meaning of reduce is “bring back”; c.f. to reduce a fracture. Therefore, the Yule festivities in question featured a family reunion. One of the meanings of impale was “enclose, fence in” behind a pale or paling (God impaled Adam and Eve), and it was generalized to mean “embrace” or “hug”.
Miss C------ was quite vibrant before her first waltz at Almacks. The young lady was so nervous she was shaking. As mentioned earlier, the current sense of “lively” dates only from 1867.
The earl and his friends enjoyed shooting for pheasant in the remote jungles and deserts of Scotland. A desert was any uninhabited area, with no sand dunes implied. C.f. “deserted”, Robinson Crusoe-style desert islands, and 19th-century maps showing “The Great American Desert” — the grassland between the Mississippi and the Rockies. Jungle was a word picked up from Hindi, where it did mean a sand-dune desert — Sanskrit jangala meant “dry”. It was applied in Anglo-Indian to any uncultivated area, particularly one with scrub trees, high grass, etc., and it is still used to mean “wild, untamed” in phrases like a blackboard or asphalt jungle. Presumably, Dartmoor could be described as a jungle.
Lord Redstart shivered and said, “Please light the fire; this room is so humorous it is like a frigidaire.” Although most people probably think the refrigerator brand is a blend of “frigid” and “air”, the word is the French version of Latin frigidarium, the cold room in a public bath. Presumably the earl spent some time in a frigidaire while in Paris on his grand tour, or maybe his favorite Turkish bath in London featured one. (The other two Roman bath chambers were the hot calidarium and the warm tepidarium. Some baths also featured a dry heat chamber, the laconicum, so-called because supposedly invented by the Spartans.)

Humorous once meant damp, from the etymological sense — Latin humor meant moisture.

“I do not wish to have anything to do with Viscount M------; he is so humorous he beats his wife and children.” The nasty man was neither funny nor wet (see above), he was moody. This goes back to the idea that body humours (the fluids bile, blood, phlegm, choler, black choler, etc.) governed behavior. C.f. bilious, sanguine (Latin sanguineus = bloody), phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholy (Greek melos = black) temperaments. The current “funny” usage of humorous is due to phrases like “in good humor” to mean happy.
Wellington reported that although a British commando had been cut into three pieces by the French, the parts continued to fight valiantly until they eventually reunited. Until about 1870, a commando was a military expedition, not a single fighter.
Captain Hampton was very proud of his second-rate ship. In British Navy terminology, a 1st-rate ship had at least a hundred guns, while a 2nd-rate had between 90 and 98. They were huge, with a complement of up to a thousand men. Here’s a sketch by Turner of one of these monsters, showing the scale. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Navy had only 7 or 8 1st-rate and 15 or 20 2nd-rate ships at any one time, out of nearly a thousand, so commanding a 2nd-rater was a very important position. For comparison, the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides), pride of the US Navy, was a 5th-rate heavy frigate.
Lord B----- challenged Sir J------ to a duel for saying that he was a very prestigious and pragmatic humanitarian. As mentioned above, until the 20th century, prestige meant trickery or deception, pragmatic meant dictatorial, and a humanitarian was a sanctimonious hypocrite. Another passage said The bishop was removed from his position because of his humanitarian tendencies. In this case it would have meant “Unitarian”.
Whenever Lord Redstart told his wife how much he loved her, she resented his words and retaliated. This was actually a happy marriage. Once upon a time, to resent was to feel any emotion strongly, and to retaliate was to reply in kind, good or bad.
The Earl looked quite fashionable in his pale blue frock and fine lingerie as he walked through the park. In the 18th and 19th century, frock was used for a gentleman’s coat with long tails — still called a “frock coat”. The word originally meant a monk’s habit and then a child’s dress; the first use for adult female fashion is about 1820. Once upon a time, lingerie simply meant “linen garment” and could be outerwear for either sex. The restriction to feminine undergarments is a euphemism from about 1850.
Lord Redstart’s tailor delivered five pair of linen panties for his lordship to wear. Until about 1850, panties were men’s underclothing — what would now be called underpants or shorts.
“That may be the fattest hog I have ever seen, but it is unbelievably slim.” Well into the 19th century, slim retained its original meaning of “sneaky” or “hard to catch”. It is possibly a member of the “slip/slide/slime” family. The current sense came from its common use to describe a fox or a pickpocket.
Astley’s circus had a Husky who could speak perfect English and French. No, they didn’t have a talking dog. The word is a perversion of “Eskimo”, which itself is a phonetic rendition of French “Esquimaux”. It was applied to people long before the “husky dog”.
Lady Redstart is well-known for her extremely enormous eyes. Enormous started out as a synonym of “unusual” — literally, “out of the norm”, ex-norma. In fact, the countess was famous for her mismatched eyes — one emerald green and one brown. Note that “un-usual”, “e-normous”, “un-common”, “ab-normal”, “a-typical”, “un-conventional”, “un-natural”, “ir-regular”, and “extra-ordinary” are all of exactly the same formation, and “eccentric” is “ex-center”, out of the center. Another quotation from the same book could have noted that “Caroline Herschel’s stature is enormous — she is only four foot three,“ or “Once upon a time, enormous dwarfs were common at European courts.”

Enormous also could mean “outrageous”, as in “He wore an enormous pink waistcoat.” C.f. “enormity”. PS — outrage has nothing to do with rage; it’s from outré, the French version of ultra.

John Wesley was not a religious man. “Religious” is a member of the “rule” family and once specifically referred to persons who had taken the vows of a religious order — monks, nuns, etc. The founder of Methodism definitely did not qualify.
Lord W---- is no longer admitted to polite society because he demoralized a girl he met at Almack’s. It is even whispered that he might be an amphibian. Before about 1850, demoralize didn’t mean “lower the morale of”, it meant “lower the morals of”, i.e., debauch or corrupt. Amphibian, meanwhile, is from Greek amphi-bios, both-life. In addition to animals who can live both on land and in water, it once meant a person who lived a double life, and in particular, one who was bisexual. (C.f. “ambidextrous”, which has also been used in slang to describe someone who has twice the chance of getting a Saturday night date.)
Lord Redstart was funky when he finished sparring with Gentleman Jackson. The literal meaning is “sweaty” or “strong-smelling”. The jazz sense only dates from the 1950’s to describe music which was earthy and raw, as opposed to performances which had been polished or watered-down for public consumption.
By the end of his European tour, the earl was thoroughly ionized. In the 19th century, the word Ionize meant “take on the speech or fashion of the Greek province of Ionia”. This is a completely different word than the electrical ion, coined by Faraday from Greek ionai, to go.
While driving his high-perch phaeton, Lord Redstart astounded his neighbor by concurring with him, and broke the man’s arm. Lord Redstart suffered crucial injuries, but they were only scratches. The original meaning of “concur” was straight from the Latin con-currere, to “run together”, i.e., violently collide. The “agree” sense is much later. Once upon a time, astonish, astound, and stun were synonyms — to knock unconscious. See “stunning” above. Also as mentioned previously, “crucial” once meant ✕-shaped.
Lord Redstart won the race because his curricle had a more powerful motor than that of his opponent. As mentioned previously, motor was simply a synonym of mover, so the earl had a better horse.
The Archbishop of Canterbury organized a lusty orgy at St. Paul’s cathedral last evening. Orgy retained its original Greek meaning of “ritual” or “ceremony” right up to 1900, in addition to the sense of “revelry” derived from the drunken Dionysian Orgies of antiquity. An 1899 newspaper reported that the city of Bristol had a public orgy for some worthy citizen. Similarly, lusty still meant “merry” or “cheerful” as late as the 1890’s. A hymn of 1744 contains the lines, 
 
Pious orgies, pious airs, 
Decent sorrow, decent prayers, 
Will to the Lord ascend.

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This page is a tiny subset of my “Words, Words, Words” document. I can emphatically express without exaggeration it embodies an extremely educational, entertaining, exuberant, and extravagantly encyclopedic exploration of enormously edifying esoteric etymological examples, expertly, exactly, excellently, and exhaustively enumerated and enjoyably explained by an elozable editor. Etc, etc, etc.

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