Actually, the one taking claims at the
Bureau of Unemployment wasn’t much fun either.
Dear Word Detective: I’ve looked through your site (very thorough, by the way) and I didn’t see the word “morning” anywhere. Where did this word come from? I am a receptionist, so answering the phones all day I say the word a lot. “Afternoon” is obvious but “morning” is a little harder. — Sherron.
No “morning” on my website? Not true! According to Google, the word “morning” occurs a full sixty times on my site. It’s true that I have never exactly explained the word, but that’s because I find the entire concept of “morning” so appalling that I’ve never been able to write about it. I think my aversion dates back to a job I had back in 1973 that required me to appear every day at 6:00 am to sort and file indigent death benefit request forms in a dank, windowless basement room at the state Welfare Department. I challenge anyone to come up with a more depressing job. I lasted less than two weeks and I haven’t gotten up before noon ever since.
OK, that last part isn’t true, but “morning” is an interesting word. Meaning originally “dawn” or “the beginning of the day” but eventually expanded in usage to include all the hours before noon, “morning” comes from the Old English word “morgen” (still the word for “morning” in German, Dutch and Danish). The Old English word appears to be related to Indo-European roots meaning “to twinkle” or “to blink,” probably carrying the sense of the first gleaming rays of dawn. In Middle English, “morgen” became “morn,” still a favorite of bad poets, which then begat “morning,” the “ing” being added by analogy to “evening.”
Since we’re on the subject, let’s see what the old padding drawer has to offer. “Dawn” is another interesting word, derived from the Old English word “daeg” meaning “day” (also the source of our modern “day”). The derivative form “dagian” meant “becoming day,” and eventually produced “dagung,” meaning “dawn.” In Middle English, “dagung” became “dawing” and “dawning,” the latter of which eventually lost its “ing” and became simply “dawn.”
Elsewhere in the course of what is beginning to seem like a very long day, the meaning of “afternoon” is, as you say, obvious, but what, after all, is “noon”? A very strange word, it appears. “Noon” is derived from the Latin “nona hora,” the “ninth hour” after dawn (reckoned by the Romans as 6 am). Math mavens will immediately notice that by Roman logic that made “noon” roll around at 3 pm, and it did indeed until the 12th century, when both the midday meal and the religious services held at that time of day (known then as “nones”) were gradually shifted, for unknown reasons, to the sixth hour (12 pm), which became our modern “noon.”
