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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Word origins



Scavenge is a derivative of scavenger, which appeared in English in the early 16th century. Scavenger is an alteration of the earlier scavager, itself from Anglo-French scawageour, meaning "collector of scavage." In medieval times, scavage was a tax levied by towns and cities on goods put up for sale by nonresidents in order to provide resident merchants with a competitive advantage. The officers in charge of collecting this tax were later made responsible for keeping streets clean, and that's how scavenger came to refer to a public sanitation employee in Great Britain before acquiring its current sense referring to a person who salvages discarded items.

The first meaning of the word yen was an intense craving for opium theEnglish term evolved from the Cantonese yīn-yáhn, which itself combines yīn, meaning "opium," and yáhn, meaning "craving." In English, the Chinese syllables were transformed to yen-yen and ultimately abbreviated to simply yen. Eventually, yen was generalized to the more innocuous meaning of "a strong desire," and the link to drug cravings was lost.

In Middle English, to "disparage" someone meant causing that person to marry someone of inferior rank. Disparage derives from the Anglo-French word desparager, meaning "to marry below one's class."

Sabotage comes from the French word saboter  which means to walk noisily, to botch, from sabot (wooden shoe).