Question

1. Trace the history of a word (its etymology) like we did with calculate earlier in the chapter. Discuss how the meaning of the word (the symbol) has changed as it has gotten further from its original meaning. Two interesting words to trace are hazard and phony.

Answer 1

Answer is as follow

Firstly ,Etymology is the study of history of words and how their meaning got changed over time .

HAZARD

Etymologically,The word is taken from the old french .This French word was probably borrowed from Arabic az-zahr, meaning “the dice” or “one of the dice.”.In medieval French this game was called "Hasard" .Hazard is a term that refers to a type of danger or something that may be harmful to us in some way.In western Europe ,number of games were played by using dice,.espeacially during the crusades.This term took from the connotations of danger because the dice that was used at that time were associated with danger or risk in the games like gamblling and the corrupted dice used by the con artists.

PHONY

Etymologically,In 1895-1900; perhaps by alteration and respelling of fawney (slang) finger ring (< Irish fsptáinne) ,a word phony was derived..British  thieves and swindlers of old used many secret code words. One such word they used was the word "fawney", which referred to a gilt ring.Actually it is ,taken to mean “false” in the phrase fawney rig a confidence game in which a brass ring is sold as a gold one.So that is why the word Phony is taken to mean as something that is fake, or imitation, not the real thing.