Words for a modern age from Latin Greek sources

Portmanteau Words

Many new (and older) English words that come from Latin and Greek sources and even a few from non-Latin and non-Greek elements will be presented on these Words for a Modern Age pages.

Portmanteau words will be coming soon.

Weird Words: Dumbledore ------------------------------------------------------------------- A type of bee. Not the Headmaster of Hogwarts, though J K Rowling must surely have borrowed his name from the insect. And a nicely echoic word it is, which evokes the drowsy hum of bees on summer afternoons. Its first part is one of a set of rhyming words from English of some centuries ago, the others being "bumble" (from a root meaning to drone or buzz) and "humble" (from an old Germanic word meaning to hum). All three have been used to form names for those furry, blundering, slow-moving bees that are so large you wonder how they get off the ground ("bumblebee" is now the usual term almost everywhere, "humblebee" was once common in Britain but is now much less so; "dumbledore" is the rarest). To some extent all imitate the insect's buzz; the final "dore" of "dumbledore" is an Old English word for any insect that flies with a loud humming noise. Charlotte M Young used our word in The Daisy Chain, published in 1875: "Those slopes of fresh turf, embroidered with every minute blossom of the moor - thyme, birdsfoot, eyebright, and dwarf purple thistle, buzzed and hummed over by busy, black-tailed, yellow- banded dumbledores". The image of Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore takes a knock when you discover that our word is linked with the archaic or dialect "dummel", for someone who is stupid and slow (our "dumb" and the German "dumm" are cousins) and "dumbledore" has also appeared in dialect as a name for a blundering person (Thomas Hardy put it into the mouths of a couple of rustics in Under the Greenwood Tree). Moreover, it has sometimes been applied in English dialect to a far less pleasant insect, the pestiferous cockchafer.

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