Online Etymology Dictionary

history: 1390, "relation of incidents" (true or false), from O.Fr. historie, from L. historia "narrative, account, tale, story," from Gk. historia "a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative," from historein "inquire," from histor "wise man, judge," from PIE *wid-tor-, from base *weid- "to know," lit. "to see" (see vision). Related to Gk. idein "to see," and to eidenai "to know." In M.E., not differentiated from story; sense of "record of past events" probably first attested 1485. Sense of "systematic account (without reference to time) of a set of natural phenomena" (1567) is now obs. except in natural history. What is historic (1669) is noted or celebrated in history; what is historical (1561) deals with history. Historian "writer of history in the higher sense," distinguished from a mere annalist or chronicler, is from 1531. The O.E. word was þeod-wita.
histrionic: 1648, from L. histrionicus "pertaining to an actor," from histrio (gen. histrionis) "actor," said to be of Etruscan origin.
hit (v.): O.E. hyttan "come upon, meet with," from O.N. hitta "to light upon, meet with," from P.Gmc. *khitjanan. Meaning shifted in late O.E. period to "strike," via "to reach with a blow or missile," and replaced O.E. slean in this sense. Noun meaning "successful play, song, person," etc. first recorded 1811, from verb meaning "to hit the mark, succeed" (c.1400). Underworld slang meaning "to kill by plan" is 1955 (n. is from 1970). Meaning "dose of narcotic" is 1951, from phrases like hit the bottle "drink alcohol" (1889). Original sense survives in phrases such as hit it off (1780) and hit on (1970s). To hit the nail on the head (1574) is from archery. Hit the road "leave" is from 1873; to hit (someone) up "request something" is from 1917. Hit and run is 1899 as a baseball play, 1924 as a driver failing to stop at a crash he caused. To not know what hit (one) is from 1923.
hitch (v.): c.1440, probably from M.E. icchen "to move as with a jerk, to stir" (c.1200). It lacks cognates in other languages. Sense of "become fastened by a hook" first recorded 1578, originally nautical; the connection with icchen may be in notion of "hitching up" pants or boots with a jerking motion. The noun sense of "obstruction" is first recorded 1748. Military sense of "enlistment" is from 1835; verb meaning "to marry" is from 1844. Hitchhike is first attested 1923, from the notion of hitching a sled to a moving vehicle (a sense first recorded 1880) + hike.
hither: O.E. hider, from P.Gmc. *khideran (cf. O.N. heðra "here," Goth. hidre "hither"), from Gmc. demonstrative base *hi- (cf. he, here). Spelling change from -d- to -th- is the same evolution seen in father (q.v.). Relation to here is the same as that of thither to there.
hitherto: early 13c., from hither + to.
Hittite: 1608, "of or pertaining to an Indo-European people whose empire (c.1900-700 B.C.E.) covered much of modern Turkey and Syria," from Heb. Hitti "Hittite" (pl. Hittim), from Hitt. Hatti. The biblical use (cf. Gen. xv.20, etc.) refers to Canaanite or Syrian tribes that were probably genuine offshoots of the Hittites. They were called khita or kheta in Egyptian.
HIV: 1986, acronym from "human immunodeficiency virus," name for either of the two viruses that cause AIDS.
hive: O.E. hyf, from P.Gmc. *khufiz (cf. O.N. hufr "hull of a ship"), from PIE *keup- "round container, bowl" (cf. Skt. kupah "hollow, pit, cave," Gk. kypellon "cup," L. cupa "tub, cask, vat"). Figurative sense of "swarming, busy place" is from 1634.
hives: c.1500 hyvis "itchy condition of the skin," origin unknown. Some writers connect it with heave because hives erupt out from the skin, but the phonetics of that are difficult to explain.
ho: exclamation of surprise, etc., c.1300; as an exclamation calling attention, c.1430. Used after the name of a place to which attention is called (cf. Westward-Ho) it dates from 1593, originally a cry of boatmen, etc., announcing departures for a particular destination. Ho-ho-ho expressing laughter is recorded from c.1150.
ho-de-ho: 1941, defined in the "Oxford English Dictionary" as, "An exclamation, used as the appropriate response to HI-DE-HI."
ho-hum: "expression of boredom," first attested 1924.
hoagie: Amer.Eng. (originally Philadelphia) "hero, large sandwich made from a long, split roll," originally hoggie (c.1936), traditionally said to be named for Big Band songwriter Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael (1899-1981), but the use of the word pre-dates his celebrity and the original spelling seems to suggest another source. Modern spelling is c.1945, and may have been altered by influence of Carmichael's nickname.
hoar: O.E. har "gray, venerable, old," the connecting notion being gray hair, from P.Gmc. *khairaz, from PIE *koi- "to shine." German retains the word as a title of respect, in Herr. Of frost, it is recorded in O.E. (hoar-frost is late 13c.), expressing the resemblance of the white feathers of frost to an old man's beard. Used as an attribute of boundary stones in O.E. (probably in ref. to being gray with lichens), hence common in place names.
hoard (n.): O.E. hord "treasure, valuable stock or store," from P.Gmc. *khuzdan (cf. O.N. hodd, Ger. hort, Goth. huzd "treasure," lit. "hidden treasure"), from *kuzdho, probably from PIE base *(s)keu- "to cover, conceal" (see hide (n.1)). The verb is from O.E. hordian.
hoarse: O.E. has, from P.Gmc. *khaisa- (cf. O.S. hes, O.N. hass, Ger. heiser "hoarse"), probably originally meaning "dried out, rough." The -r- is difficult to explain; it is first attested c.1400, but it may indicate an unrecorded O.E. variant *hars.
hoary: 1520, "grey or white with age" (of hair), 1609 as "venerable, ancient." See hoar.
hoax: 1796 (v.), 1808 (n.), probably alt. of hocus "conjurer, juggler" (1640), or directly from hocus-pocus.
hob: "side of fireplace," 1674, alt. of hubbe (1511), of unknown origin, perhaps somehow related to the first element in hobnail (q.v.).
Hob: "clown, prankster," short for hobgoblin (q.v.). Hence, to play the hob "make mischief" (1838).
Hobbit: 1937, coined in the fantasy tales of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).
"Hobbit is an invention. In the Westron the word used, when the people was referred to at all, was banakil 'halfling.' But ... the folk of the Shire and of Bree used the word kuduk .... It seems likely that kuduk was a worn-down form of kûd-dûkan [='hole-dweller']. The latter I have translated ... by holbytla ['hole-builder']; and hobbit provides a word that might well be a worn-down form of holbytla, if the name had occurred in our ancient language." [Tolkien, "Return of the King," 1955, p.416]

"On a blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' I did not and do not know why." [Tolkien, letter to W.H. Auden, dated 1955]
The word also turns up in a very long list of folkloric supernatural creatures in the writings of Michael Aislabie Denham (d.1859), printed in volume 2 of "The Denham Tracts" [ed. James Hardy, London: Folklore Society, 1895], a compilation of Denham's scattered publications. Denham was an early folklorist who concentrated on Northumberland, Durham, Westmoreland, Cumberland, the Isle of Man, and Scotland.
"What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks necks, waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins Gyre-carling, pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its specter, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!"
[Emphasis added] It is curious that the name occurs nowhere else in folklore, and there is no evidence that Tolkien ever saw this.
hobble: c.1300, hoblen "to rock back and forth, toss up and down," probably related to its Du. cognate hobbelen. Transitive sense of "tie the legs of an animal" first recorded 1831, probably an alteration of 16c. hopple, cognate with Flem. hoppelen "to rock, jump," related to Du. hobbelen. Sense of "hamper, hinder" is c.1870.
hobbledehoy: "clumsy or awkward youth," 1540, first element is probably hob in its sense of "clown, prankster" (see hobgoblin), the second element seems to be M.Fr. de haye "worthless, untamed, wild," lit. "of the hedge."
hobby: 1298, "small horse, pony," later "mock horse used in the morris dance," and c.1550 "child's toy riding horse," which led to a transferred sense of "favorite pastime or avocation," first recorded 1676. The connecting notion being "activity that doesn't go anywhere." Probably originally a proper name for a horse (cf. dobbin), a dim. of Robert or Robin. The original hobbyhorse was a "Tourney Horse," a wooden or basketwork frame worn around the waist and held on with shoulder straps, with a fake tail and horse head attached, so the wearer appears to be riding a horse. These were part of church and civic celebrations at Midsummer and New Year's throughout England.
hobgoblin: 1530, from hob "elf," from Hobbe, a variant of Rob (cf. Hick for Richard, Hodge for Rodger, etc.), short for Robin Goodfellow, elf character in Ger. folklore, + goblin.
hobnail: 1594, the first element probably identical with hob "rounded peg or pin used as a mark or target in games" (1589), of unknown origin. See hob.
hobnob: 1756, hob and nob "to toast each other by turns, to buy alternate rounds of drinks," from c.1550 hab nab "to have or have not, hit or miss," probably ult. from O.E. habban, nabban "have, not have," with the negative particle ne- attached, as was customary. Modern sense of "socialize" is 1866.
hobo: 1889, Western Amer.Eng., of unknown origin, perhaps related to early 19c. Eng. dial. hawbuck "lout, clumsy fellow, country bumpkin." Or from ho, boy, a workers' call on late 19c. western U.S. railroads. Hence facetious formation hobohemia "community or life of hobos," 1923 (see bohemian).
Hobson's choice: Eng. university slang, supposedly from Thomas Hobson (c.1544-1631), Cambridge stable manager who let horses and gave customers a choice of the horse next in line or none at all. Phrase popularized by Milton, c.1660.
Hobson-Jobson: 1634, British soldiers' mangled Anglicization of the Ar. cry they heard at Muharram processions in India, Ya Hasan! Ya Husayn! ("O Hassan! O Husain!"), mourning two grandsons of the Prophet who died fighting for the faith. This led to the linguists' law of Hobson-Jobson, describing the effort to bring a new and strange word into harmony with the language.
hock (n.1): "joint in the hind leg of a horse," 1540, earlier hockshin, from O.E. hoh-sinu "Achilles' tendon," lit. "heel sinew," from hoh "heel," from P.Gmc. *khankha- (cf. Ger. Hachse "hock," O.E. hæla "heel").
hock (n.2): "Rhenish wine," 1625, shortening of Hockamore, from Ger. Hochheimer, from Hochheim, town on the Main where wine was made, sense extended to Ger. white wines in general.
hock (n.3): "pawn, debt," first recorded 1859 in Amer.Eng. as in hock, which meant both "in debt" and "in prison," from Du. hok "jail, pen, doghouse." The verb is 1878, from the noun.
"When one gambler is caught by another, smarter than himself, and is beat, then he is in hock. Men are only caught, or put in hock, on the race-tracks, or on the steamboats down South. ... Among thieves a man is in hock when he is in prison." [G.W. Matsell, "Vocabulum," 1859]
hockey: after an isolated reference from Ireland dated 1527 ("The horlinge of the litill balle with hockie stickes or staves ..."), the word is next recorded 1838 from W. Sussex; of unknown origin, perhaps related to M.Fr. hoquet "shepherd's staff, crook," dim. of O.Fr. hoc "hook." The hooked clubs with which the game is played resemble shepherds' staves. In N.Amer., ice hockey is distinguished from field hockey.
hocus-pocus: 1624, Hocas Pocas, common name of a magician or juggler, a sham-Latin invocation used in tricks, probably based on a perversion of the sacramental blessing from the Mass, Hoc est corpus meum "This is my body." The first to make this speculation on its origin apparently was Eng. prelate John Tillotson (1630-1694).
"I will speak of one man ... that went about in King James his time ... who called himself, the Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so was called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus tabantus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currantly without discovery." [Thomas Ady, "A Candle in the Dark," 1655]
hod: 1573, alteration of M.E. hott (c.1300), from O.Fr. hotte "basket to carry on the back," apparently from Frank. *hotta (cf. M.H.G. hotze "cradle"), alt. by M.Du. hodde "basket."
hodgepodge: 1426 (hogpoch), alteration of hotchpotch (late 14c.), from a legal term in Anglo-Fr. (attested from 1292) for collecting of property in a common pot before dividing it, from O.Fr. hochepot "stew, soup," first element from hocher "to shake," from a Gmc. source (cf. M.H.G. hotzen "shake").
Hodgkin's disease: 1877, named for Dr. Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866) who first described it.
hoe: 1363, from O.Fr. houe (12c.), from Frank. *hauwa (cf. O.H.G. houwa "hoe, mattock, pick-axe"), related to O.E. heawan "to cut" (see hew). The verb is first recorded c.1430. Hoe-cake, 1745, Amer.Eng., was said originally to have been baked on the broad thin blade of a cotton-field hoe. Hoedown "noisy dance" first recorded 1841, probably from perceived parallel of dance motions to those of farm chores.
"As to dancing, no Long-Island negro could shuffle you 'double trouble,' or 'hoe corn and dig potatoes' more scientifically." [Washington Irving, "Salmagundi," March 7, 1807]
hog: c.1175 (implied in hogaster), "swine reared for slaughter" (usually about a year old), also used by stockmen for "young sheep" (c.1350) and for "horse older than one year," suggesting the original sense had something to do with an age, not a type of animal. Not evidenced in O.E., but it may have existed. Possibility of Celtic origin is regarded by OED as "improbable." Fig. sense of "gluttonous person" is first recorded 1436. Meaning "Harley-Davidson motorcycle" is attested from 1967. The verb meaning "to appropriate greedily" is U.S. slang from 1884 (first attested in "Huck Finn"). The verb hog-tie "bind hands and feet" is first recorded 1894. Hog in armor "awkward or clumsy person in ill-fitting attire" is from 1660. Phrase to go the whole hog (1828) is sometimes said to be from the butcher shop option of buying the whole slaughtered animal (at a discount) rather than just the choice bits. But it is perhaps rather from the story (recorded in Eng. from 1779) of Muslim sophists, forbidden by the Quran from eating a certain unnamed part of the hog, who debated which part was intended and managed to exempt the whole of it from the prohibition.
hogan: "Navaho Indian dwelling," 1871, Amer.Eng. from Athapaskan (Navaho) hoghan "dwelling, house."
hogshead: 1390, presumably on some perceived resemblance. The original liquid measure was 63 old wine gallons (by a statute of 1423); later anywhere from 100 to 140 gallons. Borrowed into other Gmc. languages, oddly, as ox-head (cf. Du. okshoofd, Ger. oxhoft, Swed. oxhufvud).
hogwash: c.1440, from hog + wash; originally "slops fed to pigs;" extended to "cheap liquor" (1712) then to "inferior writing" (1773).
hogweed: 1707, from hog + weed, used in different places of various plants eaten by hogs or deemed fit only for them.
hoi polloi: 1837, from Gk. hoi polloi (pl.) "the people," lit. "the many" (pl. of polys). Used in Gk. by Dryden (1668) and Byron (1822), in both cases preceded by the, even though Gk. hoi means "the," a mistake repeated often by subsequent writers, who at least have the excuse of ignorance of Gk.
hoist: 1548, probably originally past tense of M.E. hysse (1490), which is probably from M.Du. hyssen "to hoist," related to Low Ger. hissen and O.N. hissa upp "raise." A nautical word found in most European languages, but it is uncertain which had it first. In phrase hoist with one's own petard (see petard) it is originally the past tense.
hoity-toity: 1668, "riotous behavior," from earlier highty tighty "frolicsome, flighty," perhaps an alteration and reduplication of dial. hoyting "acting the hoyden, romping" (1594), see hoyden. Sense of "haughty" first recorded late 1800s, probably on similarity of sound.
hokey-pokey: 1847, "false cheap material," alteration of hocus-pocus. Applied especially to cheap ice cream sold by street vendors (1884).
hokum: 1917, theater slang, "melodramatic, exaggerated acting," probably formed on model of bunkum (see bunk (2)), and perhaps influenced by hocus-pocus. The derived adj. hokey first recorded 1927.