English is a Foreign Language: English Words Borrowed from Other Languages (2)

1. vampire: Forget the romanticized image of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart sharing their love throughout eternity. The original concept of the vampire was less attractive and quite scary. Where does this word originate from? Well, the word vampire first appeared in 1734; but there are no conclusive source for the word and concept of the word. The most widely accepted theory is that vampire has its origins from the Serbian word вампир (transliterated into vampire), which is plausible, as it was in Serbia that the first government documented cases of vampires were recorded between 1728 and 1732.

2. werewolf: The shapeshifter who has the ability to turn from man into a wolf is the common understanding of this word; werewolf comes from the Old English werwulf (wer means ‘man’, wulf means wolf). Another word to describe this monster is lycanthrope, which comes from the Greek language (lykos for ‘wolf’, anthropos for ‘man’); the earliest written documentation of the werewolf was written by Herodotus in 440 BC where he describes a tribe of people in Scythia who annually transformed into wolves. Ovid’s ‘The Metamorphoses’ tells of King Lycaon of Acadia, who was turned into a wolf by the god Jupiter.

3. ghost: Every culture has some idea of these apparitional beings; the original spelling is gast from Middle English, but the word ‘ghost’ comes from the German word geist, which means spirit, which comes from the earlier Proto-Germanic gaistaz. Some of the earliest ‘ghost stories’ can be traced back to Ancient Mesopotamia, but it’s believed even our prehistoric ancestors believed in an afterlife.​