CHARM: formerly a danger word

　　If a girl were called charming 14th-century England, you could be pretty sure that she was headed for the torture chamber or to a horrifying trial by ordeal. The charm that is now courted by every woman would be sure, at that timem to bring complete social ostracism.we inherited this word from the French charme which found its source in the Latin Carmen, “song,” usually a wicked chant or incantation of magic power lide that of the notorious Lorelei. And there was also the charm that was worn to ward off evil, the progenitor of the innocent charm bracelet that has been worn by women since the 1860’s.Even as late as the 16th century we uncover the quotation:”The serpent stoppeth his eares with hir taile, to the end that she may not heare the charmes and sorceries of the inchanter.”But by shakespeare’s time the word carried a good deal less weight and now it is a high compliment to tell a girl that she has charm.

　　COQUETTE: once applied to men

　　Men used to habe a share in this word, but the girls finally took over. Coquette comes from the French coq,”cock,” and first referred to someone who behaved like a barnyard cock with his strutting gait and amorous habits. Later the word went completely feminine and we discover the coquette defined in 17th century dictionary as “a frisking and fliperous minx” The nearest male counterpart for this word is “cocky.”

　　COURTESAN: formerly a perfect lady

　　In the beginning this lady ,as her name implies, was merely a perfectly proper member of the court circle, but since her morals were often no better than they should be ,she turned into a court mistress. The term courtesan is rarely used of a prostitute .There is a nice distinction here that was aptly pointed out by a 17th-century writer named sharpham. “Your whore”,he says,”is for euery rascall,but your curtizan is for your courtier.And it is entertaining to know in this connection that court plaster was sonamed because the xourtesans and other ladies of the court cut bits of plaster into fancy shapes and wore these black patches on the face or shoulders.

　　DAMASK: soft as a rose

　　This fine patterned fabric was named for the city of Damascus. and the damask cheeks of the English ladies to which the romantic poets paid such high tribute were so called because they resembled the fine pink rose,known as damask rose, which was also named for thsyrian city of Damascus.

　　ENCHANT:began as sorcery

　　An enchantress can be a bewitching and fascinating woman,or, in history, she could be a sorceress who practiced magic and the Eeil arts.In the earliest days of England enchant had only the sinister meaning of witchcraft, but by the 14th-century it had taken on the sense of “win over,” as illustrated by the phrase “enchant to charity.”This meaning was inherited from its ancestral grandparent,the Latin incantare,built upon in ,”over,”and cantare, “to sing”;that is, to “sing”someone “over”to your side.

　　FAINT:once meant pretend

　　When a fencer feints, he makes a false motion with intent to deceibe. This is just what the Victorian lady did when she would faint for these wesk sisters could always solve any dilemma by swooning away . The French words faint and feint both meant “pretended” or “feigned,” and they came from feindri, which meant “be cowardly,” “avoid one’s duty,” “pretend.” So when a girl faints, she may be feintging.

　　GLAMOUR:made by word magic

　　It’s strange to find that the glamour girl of today was named after the full Latin grammar that we thumbed our way through in school .Yor see, all through the ages there has been a mystery attached to words. The ancient Egyptian priests, for the sake of power , kept the art of reading and writing as a secret of the templem, and the people looked upon these skills with superstitious awe. Even in 16th-century Englang the ability to read and write was regarded with a fishy eye, and this special knowledge was associated with black magic.In that day latin was the language of the cultured few. Books were written in this dead speech, and the intellectuals conversed in Latin .A famous German professor was actually unfrocked because he dared to deliver a lecture in English.But the illiterate masses accredited occult and devilish powers to those who were fluent in Latinand in Latin grammar. As the years went by, the letter “r”in the mysterious word grammar changed to “I,” as “r” often does in the mutations of language. Other modifications ctept in ,and a new word glamour was born that first carried with it the same cabalistic overtones that had attached to Latin grammar, for the word glamour originally meant “magic,””a spell or charm.”Now the meaning has been modified, and the Hollywood starlet who has glamour casts a spell over men instead of over Latin grammar.