10 English Words With Shameful Past

by Rick Raule

Words. Some of us interact with them almost every day. They’re inexpensive, portable and let us communicate our feelings rather well (like, say, the feeling of wanting sex.) Sure, you could always come up to someone and repeatedly jam your finger through a circle made with your other hand (while furiously raising and lowering your eyebrows) but words are so much more efficient. Unfortunately, it turns out that some of the words that we thought we could trust were lying to us about who they really are. Just like finding out that the lovable elderly man from down the street used to be a Nazi, so will the origins of these 10 English words surprise the pants off of you:

10. Wife

There is something inherently wholesome about the word “wife,” isn’t it? It makes you think of love, weddings, and picket fences or perhaps “wife-swapping,” depending on your preferred life style. (You know, the good things in life.) There’s definitely nothing shameful about being a wife. Or is it?
The precise origin of the word is uncertain, though some linguists have suggested that it might come from the root *ghwibh-, which means “shame,” as in “Dear God, look at yourself, woman. You married ME of all people? You should be ashamed of yourself.” Pretty sure that’s exactly how we got the word.

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