early 15c., "native of Italy," from Italian Italiano, from Italia "Italy" (see Italy). Meaning "the Italian language" is late 14c. As an adjective from 1510s. Earlier the Italians were the Italies (late 14c.).
1873 (n.), "native or inhabitant of Puerto Rico;" 1874 (adj.), "of or pertaining to Puerto Rico or its inhabitants and culture," from Puerto Rico + -an. Earlier was Porto Rican (1842).
town in Wales, so called from its situation where the River Monnow flows into the larger Wye. The Welsh name, Trefynwy, "homestead on the Mynwy," preserves the native form of the name.
early 15c., smogen "to soil, smear or stain with dirt or filth, blacken," a word of obscure origin. Compare smutch and its variant smouch, Middle English smod "filth, obscene behavior" (mid-13c., also a surname); Middle Dutch besmodden, smoddich, Middle Low German smudden.
The meaning "to rub out or in" is by 1865. Related: Smudged; smudging. The noun meaning "a dirty mark or stain, spot, smear" is attested by 1768, from the verb.
The smudge meaning "make a smoky fire" is by 1860, also of unknown origin, but perhaps related. According to OED now dialectal and North American. OED also gives it in an earlier, obsolete sense of "cure (herring, etc.) by smoking" (1590s).
The related noun smudge is attested by 1767 as "a suffocating smoke" (to repel mosquitoes, etc.); from 1806 as "heap of combustibles ignited and emitting dense smoke." Hence smudge-pot (1903). Smudge-stick as a Native American (Crow tribe) artifact is by 1908
1622, originally in reference to the native people, later to the place in Rhode Island, from southern New England Algonquian Naiaganset "(people) of the small point of land," containing nai- "a point or angle."
"a growing or making worse," 1650s, possibly a native formation, or else from French détérioration (15c.), noun of action from détériorer, from Late Latin deteriorare "get worse; make worse" (see deteriorate).
name for a group of related native people in the Columbia River region of Washington and Oregon, from Salishan /činuk/, name of a village site [Bright]. The name was extended to a type of salmon (1851) and a warm spring wind in that region (1860). Chinook jargon was a mishmash of native (Chinook and Nootka), French, and English words; it once was the lingua franca in the Pacific Northwest, and this sense is the earliest attested use of the word (1840).
acronym for not in my back yard, 1980, American English, supposedly coined by Walter Rodgers of the American Nuclear Society. Related" Nimbyism.
also prerevolutionary, "happening before a revolution," originally especially the American or French revolutions, by 1837 (American Monthly Magazine, October), from pre- "before" + revolution.
