# The origin of bizarre....



## cynicmystic

Another word that has the entry 'origin unknown' in most dictionaries. Any suggestions? I think it is Scandinavian in origin.


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## robbie_SWE

According to Dictionary.com, the English "*bizzare*" comes from French. 



> French, from Spanish bizarro, _brave_, probably from Basque bizar, _beard_.


 
But why the initial meaning has changed surpasses my comprehension. 

Hope this helped!

 robbie


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## domangelo

My Hachette French dictionary passes the word back to Italian, bizarro. The online etymological dictionary gives both the Basque and the Italian provenance as alternatives.


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## cynicmystic

I found those entries in the dictionary as well. 

I have always wondered whether bizarre could have somehow been derived from beserk. I know it is very far-fetched, and certainly not documented in any way. However, phonetically, they sound similar. Perhaps, the word beserk took an off-shoot and mutated into bizarre. The reason why I believe that is because the meaning of the word beserk must have had some connotation of unusual strangeness in the form of frantic Norse warriors dressed in bear pelts, and possibly on hallucinagenic shrooms.


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## kernowseb

In Richard Watson Todd's book "Much ado about English" he claims that:

Bearded Spanish soldiers fighting in France made a strange impression on the locals, who used the Basque word *bizar*, meaning beard, to show how odd these soldiers looked. *Bizarre* (cf. *bizarra* = the beard) was then borrowed from French into English, and a word which originally meant beard came to mean strange.​


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## Outsider

cynicmystic said:


> I have always wondered whether bizarre could have somehow been derived from be*r*serk.





kernowseb said:


> In Richard Watson Todd's book "Much ado about English" he claims that:
> 
> Bearded Spanish soldiers fighting in France made a strange impression on the locals, who used the Basque word *bizar*, meaning beard, to show how odd these soldiers looked. *Bizarre* (cf. *bizarra* = the beard) was then borrowed from French into English, and a word which originally meant beard came to mean strange.​


Sounds like a suspiciously "just-so" story to me.


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## domangelo

This would make more sense if someone could explain why the French suddenly decided to speak Basque in order to describe these Spanish soldiers.


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## Outsider

Or why the French weren't wearing beards too, in the same historical period.


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## kernowseb

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
c.1648, from Fr. bizarre "odd, fantastic," originally "handsome, brave," from Basque bizar "a beard" (th notion being of the strange impression made in France by bearded Sp. soldiers); alternative etymology traces it to It. bizarro "angry, fierce, irascible," from bizza "fit of anger."
​Who knows why words can change their meaning: cf. Nice, which is generally used in a positive sense these days, originally meant the opposite: 
c.1290, "foolish, stupid, senseless," from O.Fr. nice "silly, foolish," from L. nescius "ignorant," lit. "not-knowing,"​


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## DAH

cynicmystic said:


> Any suggestions?


 Etimologia d'italiano attributes it to Spanish or Portoguese and cites it coming from Basc (Basque)



> I think it is Scandinavian in origin.


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## roseruf

This issue has been discussed in the Spanish forum too. If you can read in Spanish you can see it mainly here and also here .




lazarus1907 said:


> Hay dos versiones sobre la etimología de la palabra: La más aceptada dice que viene del italiano (RAE), y que significaba originalmente "furioso", "irascundo". La otra dice que viene del vasco y que originalmente significaba "apuesto", "bravo", pero que a los franceses les daba una sensación más bien rara la visión de los soldados bizarros españoles con las barbas, y le cambiaron el significado, y luego el inglés lo adoptó.




In Short, as I understand, the Spanish Soldiers call themselves “Soldados Bizarros” as brave soldiers. The Cid was in those times called “el Caballero Bizarro”, it is, the brave Knight, from the Italian origin of the word. When those “caballeros bizarros” arrived to France, bearded and with strange uses, the word bizarre start to change from brave to strange or eccentric...  Even so it seems not to being completely clear and in Spanish many people misused the word (in Spanish it only means brave, but many people used it for strange, adopted from the English and French)!!


  Sorry about my English, any correction is welcomed!



Roser


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## J.F. de TROYES

Sorry, but this Basque stuff seems to me a kind of cock-and-bull story  Besides this etymological source is given as hypothetical in "Etimologia d'Italiano" quoted by Dah. The French "bizarre" undoubtedly comes from It."bizzarro" that was first used to mean irascible ( Dante 14th century ) , then turned to the meaning of extravagant at least from the 16th century ; it could not be borrowed from Spanish where it seems to appear only in the 16th with the meaning of "brave" :

From the reference French dictionary " Trésor de la Langue Française" :

Empr. à l'ital. _bizzarro_ « coléreux » (dep. 1300-1313, Dante dans BATT.), puis « extravagant » (début XVIe s., Berni, _ibid._), d'orig. discutée; il ne peut être empr. à l'esp. _bizarro_ (_FEW_ t. 1, _s.v. bizar,_ DAUZAT 1968, _REW_3, no 1141, TRACC., p. 114, ZACC., pp. 53-54), attesté beaucoup plus tard (dep. 1526 d'apr. AL.), qui lui est au contraire empr., et qui est à l'orig. du sens « brave » attesté dans le fr. du XVIe s. (v. HUG.). 

So Spanish and French would have borrowed the term from Italian  . But before where does it come from ? Anyhow not from Latin. If it is related to "bizza" ( = caprice, to-day ) as Kernowseb says, see the hypothessis of the same
 Italian dictionary    :  "bizzan" (old high German )  = to sting , to bite ( German : "beissen )


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## sound shift

domangelo said:


> This would make more sense if someone could explain why the French suddenly decided to speak Basque in order to describe these Spanish soldiers.


Ah, but there are Basque-speaking populations on either side of the Franco-Spanish border at its western end.


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## J.F. de TROYES

sound shift said:


> Ah, but there are Basque-speaking populations on either side of the Franco-Spanish border at its western end.


 
Right. They are more numerous in Spain due to a wider area and two opposite linguistic policies. The French centralism dates back to several centuries and cracked down on the "regional languages". I think very few French words come from Basque, but other foreros' opinion would be welcomed on this point.


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## Babakexorramdin

kernowseb said:


> In Richard Watson Todd's book "Much ado about English" he claims that:
> 
> Bearded Spanish soldiers fighting in France made a strange impression on the locals, who used the Basque word *bizar*, meaning beard, to show how odd these soldiers looked. *Bizarre* (cf. *bizarra* = the beard) was then borrowed from French into English, and a word which originally meant beard came to mean strange.​


 
Well I heared it before too that Bizarre comes from Basque Bizarra


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## cuchuflete

While their is some dispute, the modern RAE attributes the Spanish word to the Italian:



> (De it. _bizzarro_, iracundo).
> 
> 
> 
> _Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados_


My 1726 edition of the RAE (Autoridades) describes the etymology as "doubtful" and then offers both the Basque and Italian origins, together with one from Covarrubias suggesting an Arabic origin in Biziará.  By the 1770 edition, all mention of etymology had been deleted, as none seemed to have been thoroughly convincing.

Edit- the 1984 edition attributes the word to Basque, _bizarr_, but by the late 1990s the Italian origin had been selected.


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## JoLat

Could the word have come from Bazaar?  The perculiar variety of goods on offer in Bazaars could have led fasionable travellers in the 18-19th centuries to acquire peculiar clothes and from this the expression "that's very bizarre!" or "how Bizarre!"Seems more logical than this leap from short-tempered italians, brave bearded spaniards or crazy Norsemen.


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## aruniyan

It could be from the Indian word, "Vicithra", meaning strange.


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