중학교 영어 3 (동아출판 윤정미) 연계 글

Some common English words began as parts of much longer words. When a long name is used often, people sometimes keep one piece of it and drop the rest. The piece that survives can come from the front, the end, or even the middle of the old word. Bus, flu, zoo, and photo show how this cutting works.

In the 1820s, long coaches pulled by horses began to carry passengers along the main streets of Paris. This new vehicle was called an omnibus, which came from a Latin word meaning "for all." The name fit well because anyone could climb aboard along the route. The coaches soon reached New York, and the long name traveled with them. By the 1830s, English speakers had cut off the front of the word and kept only the end, bus. It is surprising that the piece people chose to keep was just the final syllable.

Flu was cut in a different way. The word influenza, which came into English from Italian in the 1700s, named a disease that spreads easily. In Italian, the word meant "influence." Long ago, many people believed that sickness of this kind came from the influence of the stars. Nearly a hundred years after it entered English, speakers removed both the beginning and the end of the long word. Only the middle piece, flu, stayed in everyday use.

In the 1800s, a park where wild animals were kept for people to see was often called a zoological garden. With seven syllables, this name was a mouthful, so it is no wonder that zoo became the everyday word. This time, speakers kept only the front of the first word. They dropped everything after it, even the whole word garden.

Photo followed the same pattern as zoo. The word photograph, which first appeared in 1839, lost its end and became photo. It is remarkable that the short form was already in use by 1860, only about twenty years later.

These four words were cut in different places, but their stories share a pattern. In each case, a long name was trimmed to a piece that is quicker to say. The next time you ride a bus or visit a zoo, you will be using only part of an older word.