Origin and history of pitter

late 14c., "arithmetical symbol for zero," from Old French cifre "nought, zero," Medieval Latin cifra, which, with Spanish and Italian cifra, ultimately is from Arabic sifr "zero," literally "empty, nothing," from safara "to be empty;" a loan-translation of Sanskrit sunya-s "empt

"nonsense; deceit, humbug," 1855, American English slang, of uncertain origin. Earliest records of it are in California (San Francisco and Sacramento). Suggestions include Spanish chanada, a shortened form of charranada "trick, deceit;" or, less likely, German Schenigelei, peddle

"an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture," 1976, introduced by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene," coined by him from Greek sources, such as mimeisthai "to imitate" (see mime (n.)), and intended to echo gene. We n

late 14c., plungen, "to put, throw, or thrust violently into; immerse, submerge," also intransitive, from Old French plongier "plunge, sink into; plunge into, dive in" (mid-12c., Modern French plonger), from Vulgar Latin *plumbicare "to heave the lead," from Latin plumbum "lead"

1530s, "one's proper work or purpose; power of acting in a specific proper way," from French fonction (16c.) and directly from Latin functionem (nominative functio) "a performance, an execution," noun of action from funct-, past-participle stem of fungi "perform, execute, dischar

"nerdy intellectual," by 1986, U.S. teenager slang, from the character Poindexter, introduced 1959 in the made-for-TV cartoon version of "Felix the Cat." The name originally was a surname, said to be Norman. There is a rare name Poindexter, appearing in French as Poingdestre, "r

mid-15c., "the proving or finding of guilt of an offense charged," from Late Latin convictionem (nominative convictio) "proof, refutation," noun of action from past-participle stem of convincere "to overcome decisively," from com-, here perhaps an intensive prefix (see com-), + v

late 14c., from Latin zona "geographical belt, celestial zone," from Greek zōnē "a belt, the girdle worn by women at the hips," from zōnnynai "to gird," from PIE root *yos- "to gird" (source also of Avestan yasta- "girt," Lithuanian juosiu, juosti "to gird," Old Church Slavonic p

1507, "the western hemisphere, North and South America," in Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller's treatise "Cosmographiae Introductio," from Modern Latin Americanus, traditionally after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to h

Late Old English ræfen, refen, earlier hræfn (Mercian), hrefn, hræfn (Northumbrian, West Saxon), from Proto-Germanic *khrabanaz (source also of Old Norse hrafn, Danish ravn, Dutch raaf, Old High German hraban, German Rabe "raven," Old English hroc "rook"), from a PIE root imitati