Reading the phrase "Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness", in 'Death in Leamington', by John Betjeman, I was curious to know where the word came from. It was a gift to have a cheetah and a cheap and cheerful fabric linked by their etymology. Usually very structured in my working method, my plan with these prints is to work intuitively with whatever materials seem appropriate to each word, relying on the letterpress and typewritten definitions to hold the series together. Here I used stencils and a cut up floral plastic cloth to print from.

I wanted to illustrate the word ‘serendipity’ because it encloses a complete fairy tale. In 1302 Amir Kushrow, Sufi mystic, poet and musician wrote a poem about the Three Princes of Seredip, the old Persian name for Sri Lanka. Their father the king, satisfied with their fine education, offered the kingdom to each prince in turn. They refused it, claiming to be less fit to rule than their king who then sent them off to make their way in the world. In 1754 the English writer and statesman, Horace Walpole, was inspired by their story to coin the word ‘serendipity’ to describe the way the princes were ‘always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.’ (H. Walpole) In one story the princes help to search for a lost camel. They tell the owner that the camel is lame, blind in one eye and ridden buy a pregnant woman. It carries honey on one side, butter on the other. The description was so accurate that they were accused of theft until they explained how they knew so much. The grass was cropped short on the less fertile side of the road so the camel must be blind on the other side. Only the tracks of three feet were crisp, so the animal must be lame and missing a tooth because grass clumps, the size of a camel’s tooth, were lying on the road. They guessed the load was honey and butter by the flies and ants on opposite sides of the road, as honey attracts flies while ants like butter. The rider had to be a woman because they reacted with lust to her traces in the sand where the camel had knelt down. They knew she was pregnant by handprints showing she struggled to get up again. Their evidence so impressed the emperor that he made the princes his advisors. It also inspired the word ‘serendipity’ for discoveries ‘made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity and never indulgent with the apparently inexplainable.’ (H. Walpole)

I like this etymology because it is surprising but deeply appropriate - juggernauts, or lack of them, being so significant in our cosmos. And the metaphor, as in Ted Hughes’ The Machine, from Birthday Letters carries even more than the real thing. The text reads: Juggernaut is derived from the combination of Sanskrit words jagat ‘world’ and nātha ‘lord’. It is one of the titles given to Krishna, the eighth avatar of the god Vishṇu. The god is celebrated in the Ratha Yatra, ‘Festival of Chariots’, held annually at Pūrī in Orissa, India. During the festival thousands of worshippers pull effigies of the god on enormous carts, under which devotees are said to have willingly thrown themselves. Taken from accounts of the festival by early travellers, by the 19th century juggernaut was figuratively used in English to mean ‘an overwhelming concept or institution that demands unswerving devotion’. Today in British English a juggernaut can also be a very large truck.

As spring begins and the annual orchid festival opens at Kew Gardens, ‘orchid’ seems a good word for March. Named for the resemblance of the roots to testicles, ‘orchis’ in Greek, the word was introduced into English in 1845. ‘Ballockwort’ was the old English equivalent from ballocks, or testicles, which itself evolved from beallucas, the Old English word for balls, plus ‘wort’, meaning ‘plant’.

Up until now I have avoided speculative etymologies because they are so much harder to unravel, but I was intrigued by the idea that risk may be connected to a plant root, causing a hazard at sea. There is much written about this, tracing the word back to the Odyssey. And risk is also another very timely word. The text reads as follows: English borrowed risk in the 17th century from French risqué, ’danger’, ‘inconvenience’. This can be traced to 12th century post-classical Latin resicum, resicum ‘hazard’ often used in the context of ‘possible harm to goods transported by sea’. Earlier origins of risk remain uncertain. One theory is that resicum comes from resecare, ‘to cut’ hence ‘that which cuts’,‘rock’,‘reef’. Speculation also suggests that resicum is from rhizo ‘root’ in classical Greek, in medieval Greek, rhizikon ‘hazard at sea’. Maybe it is from Arabic risq, ‘that which man is allotted by God for his livelihood’, hence ‘luck, chance’, or maybe from Arabic rizk, ‘tax imposed on a people to maintain an occupying army’. All of these possible origins hold a threat and put one at risk.

‘Peculiar’ seems a fitting word to close this series of eleven words, each chosen for the oddity of its etymology, each unusual in its own particular way. It seems apt for the times we live in and gave me an excuse to print money, also an apt comment on today. The text reads: The Latin word ‘peculiaris’ ‘privately owned’ comes from ‘peculium’, ‘property’ and the word for cattle, ‘pecu’. Peculiar in English reflects the idea of private property, but describes a special quality possessed by an individual or group. It developed the sense ‘odd’, ‘unusual’ only around 1600. Related words are ‘pecuniary’, to do with money and impecunious, without money.