Chrysti The Wordsmith: Luna - 2

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. Last time we looked at the history of the word lunatic and its association with the ancient belief that exposure to the full moon causes temporary insanity lunatic derives from the Latin word for Moon Luna and literally means that one struck by the moon or crazy person mad man. English speakers embrace the word lunatic in the 13th century and of kept it Current these eight hundred years a slang a variation on the word loony spelled l o n e y as if it were related to the name of the water bird arrived on the scene in the late 1800s in the writings of novelist Bret Hart close on the heels of looney came loony bin a crude nickname for a mental institution. One of the first writers to print the term loony bin in the early 20th century was a British humorist P.G. Woodhouse. Another linguistic variation on this theme is the expression lunatic fringe popularized by Theodore Roosevelt in a 1913 publication called history as

literature and other essays. Roosevelt wrote there is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the voter ease of any forward movement a lunatic fringe of course is a minority group of adherents to a political philosophical or religious set of beliefs who exist at the outer edge or the fringe of acceptable behavior. I'm Christi the wordsmith from KGO on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.