Origin and Etymology of the word FUN
English dialect fun to hoax, perhaps alteration of Middle English fonnen, from fonne dupe, First Known Use: 1727
English dialect fun to hoax, perhaps alteration of Middle English fonnen, from fonne dupe, First Known Use: 1727
The holidays are over and our family had so much fun I may need a transfusion of sensible rubber garden shoes and straight-laced body shapers. There was fun food, fun games, fun conversations, fun traditions, fun gift giving, fun movie going, fun birthday-candle-blowing, and just for good measure fun wolf howling.
It was a jolly good time and a ton of fun. Thank God it’s over.
Fun is groovy, but I find it overrated at times. Fun starts out like a turn on that teacup ride at Disney. At first, it’s just a swirly good time, but by the end your neck is snapped back at a weird angle, and you’re praying for death. Swirly fun becomes a sucking whirlpool, dragging everyone down to the River Styx. And I know why.
Fun used to mean, in the old un-fun days, hoax. “Okay, all you silly peasants wrapping a dead tree trunk with maypole ribbons, ain’t we having some fun now?”
Sure, the peasants thought, beats digging through the muck all day. Their masters muttered, under their breath, “Fonne [meaning dupe].”
And that’s how fun became the heart and soul of our modern world. Must have fun. Work equals muck. Anything muck related equals not fun. Dancing in circles around a dead tree trunk is better than muck lugging. Let’s dance. Or spin in a giant teacup until there’s vomit.
Note: Fun is often circular in nature.
The flaw in this thinking is that all that muck lugging kept the peasants in gruel and giant turkey legs. We’ve forgotten that. We’ve forgotten that growing gruel and giant turkeys is work, and it’s kind of important work because if there is anything in this world that should be considered without fun, it’s starving.
It’s possible that fun has gotten a bit out of hand in our modern first world. Possible.
More than peace, more than mercy, more than health, the young people that I know of pray to have fun. “Please [Lord] bless us to have fun.” No matter where they’re going, who they’re helping, or what they’re trying to accomplish.
I wonder if our prayers aren’t better expressed, “Please, Lord, help us to learn, grow, develop, endure, empathize, understand, or move a lot of muck out of our lives.”
Now don’t get me wrong. The holidays were a ton of fun. And I wouldn’t trade a single minute of fun for anything in the world. But let’s face it; it’s time to get back the muck lugging that keeps us all in giant turkey legs.
Linda (Muck Witch) Zern
