5 False Etymologies That Are Widely Believed to Be True

The English language has been evolving for hundreds of years, which can make tracing the etymology of certain words a little bit tricky. Words come into use in a variety of ways—from being created by authors to being borrowed from other languages.

Some words even remain complete etymological mysteries. Figuring out the history of words is sometimes complicated by the spread of false etymologies, many of which have gained traction over the years simply because they make a good story. Here are five such widely believed word origins that are actually totally false.

1. News
2. Crap
3. Caesarean
4. 420
5. SOS

News

There are a few of false etymologies for news floating around the internet. The two most popular are both acronyms: “notable events, weather, sports” (the main segments covered in the news) and “north, east, west, south” (signifying information gathered from all four points of the compass). The compass acronym dates back to at least 1640, but only as a joke. The false origin cropped up in joke books and magazines over the next few hundred years and eventually the fact that it was fake got lost along the way.

The real etymology of news is that it’s simply the plural version of new. It’s actually impossible for the word to have been an acronym because in Middle English it was spelled a variety of different ways, including newys and newes. News dates back to the late 14th century, having been borrowed from the French word nouvelles, which itself can be traced back to the Latin term nova, meaning “new things.”

Crap

There are two pervasive myths about plumbing engineer Thomas Crapper: that he was the inventor of the flushing toilet and that, as a result, the word crap is derived from his surname. Both of these falsehoods got their start in Wallace Reyburn’s factually inaccurate book Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper (1969).

Although Crapper did make a few notable improvements to the design of the toilet—including the U-bend drainage pipe and the floating ballcock—he wasn’t even alive when the first flushing toilet was invented. That accolade goes to Sir John Harington (an ancestor of Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington), who created a flushing toilet in 1596—240 years before Crapper was born.

Crap being used as slang for poop also predates Crapper’s tinkering with toilets (which, unfortunately for him, means that people probably thought his name was funny at the time). The word dates back to at least 1846—when Crapper was just 10 years old—and has its roots in the Medieval Latin word crappa, which means “chaff.” Given that chaff refers to waste objects, it’s easy to see why crap eventually became slang for human waste.

Caesarean

In the United States, around 30% of babies are born via Caesarean section each year. It’s often thought that the name for this medical procedure comes from Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, who is said to have been cut from his mother’s womb on July 12 or 13, 100 BCE. This etymology can be traced back to The Suda, a 10th century historical encyclopedia, which reports, “when his mother died in the ninth month, they cut her open, took him out, and named him thus; for in the Roman tongue dissection is called ‘Caesar.’”

But there’s a problem with this story: Julius Caesar wasn’t born via C-section. In ancient Rome, this surgery was only performed on dead or dying women because it was so dangerous, but Caesar’s mother, Aurelia Cotta, lived for many years after giving birth to her son. It’s possible that the name for the surgery was inspired by an earlier Roman emperor called Caesar who was born that way, but there are also a variety of other suggestions for why that Caesar might have been given that name.

Although not as good of a story, Caesarean might just come from the Latin word caesus, the past participle of caedere, which means “to cut.”

420

Although not an official holiday, potheads around the world celebrate all things cannabis on April 20. The date has grown ever-more popular over the years, but why exactly 420 (pronounced four-twenty) signifies weed isn’t all that well-known.

The most commonly recited etymologies have it that 420 comes from either the penal code or the police radio code for the possession of marijuana. But no state’s 420 penal code has anything to do with weed and there is no 420 police code.

The number actually originated in 1971 with five students from San Rafael High School in California. The teenagers used to meet up at 4:20 p.m. to get stoned because that was when extracurricular clubs had finished for the day. The time eventually become the group’s code word for cannabis.

One of the students, Dave Reddix, then went on to work as a roadie for the Grateful Dead and use of the number spread throughout the band’s fandom, known as Deadheads. In 1991, a group of Deadheads promoted getting high at 4:20 p.m. on April 20 to celebrate the drug. High Times editor Steve Bloom then printed one of the flyers in the magazine—along with the false police code etymology—which spread 420 even further.

SOS

The well-known distress signal SOS is sometimes said to stand for “save our souls” or “save our ship,” but the three letters weren’t originally an acronym. In 1906, it was decided that an internationally recognized Morse code distress signal was needed. Different countries and organizations were using different signals and the lack of consistency had the potential to lead to a maritime disaster. Germany had recently started using SOS (“…---…” in Morse code)—a deliberately meaningless combination of letters that were fast and easy to send and hard to miss or misinterpret—and it was chosen as the international distress signal. 

Although Morse code was phased out at the end of the 20th century in favor of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, SOS didn’t die along with it. The three letters are incredibly useful for rescue crews in the air looking out for survivors on the ground. SOS is easily readable from any angle, being both a palindrome (it reads the same forwards and backwards) and an ambigram (it’s the same upside down and right side up).

More Language Reads: