Butler — Household Words: Their Etymology. 369 



Passing: to apartments, the root of hall is cover ; hall is cog- 

 nate with hull and as the hull covers the grain of corn so the hall 

 is covered by rooms around it. Parlor is a room for parleys,, 

 from the same source with palaver and parliament. It is the 

 scene of domestic parliame-nts and was naturally borrowed by 

 taciturn English from talkative French whom they also call par- 

 ley-vous. Drawing-room^ contracted from with or within draw- 

 ing room, is the apartment within which ladies withdraw from 

 the dining-table when their lords begin to ^^put an enemy into 

 their mouths to steal avray their brains." The phrase, drawn- 

 game is plainer when we supply the obsolete vjith. It is one 

 from which the parties withdrav^. Boudoir, more private than 

 drawing room, is the retreat to which wise women when tempted 

 to scold betake themselves till their fit of sulks is over. Boudoir 

 is literally poutoir, a place for pouting, and is radically the self- 

 same word with pout. 



The word niche originally meant shell, niches being hollow 

 like shells, which, set up against a wall, may have led to mak- 

 ing the first niches. JSTiches when heading in shell-shaped re- 

 liefs or formed out of real shells point to their own origin. 



Cuspidor is from spue and was born into English in 1779. 

 Cigar, which means locust or gi'asshopper, got its name as being 

 shaped at i\\& end like the belly of such insects. It came from 

 Spanish so recently that its earliest American appearance in 

 print thus far discovered w^as in 1785, and its earliest use was 

 only thirty years before. 



Wall-paper was till recently called paper-hangings and the 

 word hangings carries us back to the tapestry which used to be 

 hung round rooms for checking drafts of air, another name for- 

 the arras (so called from the French town where it was largely 

 miade) behind which both Polonius and Falstaff were ensconced. 

 The first carpets were all of rags, for the Latin root of carpet, 

 carpere, means to tear, a word used to describe pulling ^vool 

 off the backs of sheep before shears were invented — a meaning 

 still figuratively alive in our saying to carp at. This rag-cloth, 

 meaning at first a monk's robe, next meant hangings of tapes- 

 try, and next a table-cloth. Hence arose the phrases on the 

 carpet and on the tapis (Greek for carpet). Then it came to 

 mean the rugs on which men kneeled to be dubbed knights and.. 

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