Two Etymologies

In the past few days, I've found out about the etymology of two words that surprised me. The first I learned yesterday from a question on Trivia Mafia: myriad doesn't just mean "a lot": its original meaning was a specific number.

Here's what etymonline has to say about it, which is a bit more complicated than the simple statement on Trivia Mafia:

1550s, "the number of 10,000," also "an indefinitely great number," from French myriade and directly from Late Latin myrias (genitive myriadis) "ten thousand," from Greek myrias (genitive myriados) "a number of ten thousand; countless numbers," from myrios (plural myrioi) "innumerable, countless, infinite; boundless," as a definite number, "ten thousand" ("the greatest number in Greek expressed by one word," Liddell & Scott say), of unknown origin; perhaps from PIE *meue- "abundant" (source also of Hittite muri- "cluster of grapes," Latin muto "penis," Middle Irish moth "penis"). Beekes offers "no etymology." The numerically specific use is usually in translations from Greek or Latin.

I'm so happy to see the penis references in there. They seem to come from nowhere, but who knows how other cultures saw penises related to multitudinousness.

The other term was deadline, which came up in last month's Twitter highlights. I never thought a lot about where such a dire bit of vocabulary could have come from. The tweet I saw made a definitive statement about its origin.

Again, etymonline is a bit more circumspect about its origins:

"time limit," 1920, American English newspaper jargon, from dead (adj.) + line (n.). Perhaps influenced by earlier use (1864) to mean the "do-not-cross" line in Civil War prisons, which figured in the trial of Henry Wirz, commander of the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia:

And he, the said Wirz, still wickedly pursuing his evil purpose, did establish and cause to be designated within the prison enclosure containing said prisoners a "dead line," being a line around the inner face of the stockade or wall enclosing said prison and about twenty feet distant from and within said stockade; and so established said dead line, which was in many places an imaginary line, in many other places marked by insecure and shifting strips of [boards nailed] upon the tops of small and insecure stakes or posts, he, the said Wirz, instructed the prison guard stationed around the top of said stockade to fire upon and kill any of the prisoners aforesaid who might touch, fall upon, pass over or under [or] across the said "dead line" .... ["Trial of Henry Wirz," Report of the Secretary of War, Oct. 31, 1865]

So it's clear that there was such a thing as a dead line at the Andersonville prison camp, but it's less clear that the modern term deadline comes directly from that usage, which is what was claimed in the tweet I saw.

If you've ever felt like you faced myriad deadlines, you can feel a little bit better that there weren't 10,000 of them and that they weren't actually going to kill you if you crossed them.