Incidentally, a nickname is a metanalysis from an ekename meaning an extra name, in the same way that an apron was originally a napron.
Someday I shall do a long and extraordinarily dull post on every word that derives from chess (even cheque does).
A keen etymologist
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Dogberry, you are about to have that wonderful feeling of being more right than even you yourself have realized up until now:
ReplyDelete"King read his way through the prison library, absorbing ideas from history’s heavyweight thinkers...In a 1988 Playboy Interview, King recalled:
“On my first day in prison, a guy gave me a book, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and I lay there on my bed in a four-man cell, and I just went deep into this book. Reading about Rome gave me the appetite to read whatever I could get my hands on.”
Often when King quoted the great writers he mangled their names, calling them “Kneeis-itch” (Nietzsche) and “Jean- Paul Shar-tay”....
Needless to say I teach King as part of my Western Civ introductory course to freshmen.
Actually it's probably from the Persian for "the king is helpless".
ReplyDeletehttp://bradshawofthefuture.blogspot.com/2008/03/king-is-at-loss.html
I stand (odd construction) corrected. It actually makes the derivation more apposite as the article was about King's impotence in trying to arrange for Mr Meehan to hit a chap called David Haye.
ReplyDeleteIt also explains the hedging I found here http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=checkmate
metanalysis
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