A young woman who works as a nanny wants to know why the term charge is used to refer to the youngsters she cares for. Charge goes back to a Latin root meaning, “to carry,” and it essentially has to do with being responsible for something difficult. That same sense of “to carry” informs the word charger, as in a type of decorative dinnerware that “carries” a plate. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Etymology of Nanny Charges”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Emerson from San Diego, California.
Hi, Emerson. Welcome.
I had a question about the word charge. I work as a nanny and a lot of nannies spend, you know, full-time days with their kids. And it just seems like a very impersonal word. It doesn’t really describe, you know, the love and the care that we have for the kids. And so I was just wondering kind of where it came from and why we use that term today.
Do you use the word charge then, or you’re looking for a different one?
Sometimes I’ll say charge because other people are saying it, and then sometimes I’ll say, like, my nanny kid.
My nanny kid.
So people don’t think that you’re the mother.
This sounds like a lot of goats. How many kids do you have?
I have 16-month-old twins.
Twins.
Oh, my goodness. As a twin, let me say that twins are awesome.
Yes, they are.
And they’re your charges. That strikes me as a little old-fashioned. I’m surprised that people still say it.
Yes, they do. So you’re, what, on the playground or cafe or something with the kids?
Well, when we’re all in person and people ask us, you know, they normally assume that these are our children. So we’ll say, no, these are our nanny kids. But a lot of times on online forms, they will say my charges rather than my nanny kids.
Okay.
Oh, okay. Yeah, it’s connected to hundreds of years of history where charge has had a variety of meanings related to loads or burdens and then eventually responsibility. And all of these meanings are, even they go back to Latin roots meaning to carry. So they’re all connected to having certain kinds of responsibility for something that is not easy to do and maybe is important. If that makes sense.
Yeah, so it has to do with loading, literally. It’s related to the word cargo.
Yeah, exactly. And the word carry.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I don’t know if you’ve ever had experience with chargers, that kind of dinnerware that’s a larger plate that goes under a plate. It’s like a decorative plate. That’s a charger, same family of words. Because it’s carrying the version of the other plates.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s carrying the load of the other plates.
That’s really interesting.
Yeah, an electrical charge is the same thing. There is actually a load. That’s the jargon in the electrical business. There is an electrical load on the line. That is its charge.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Cool. Hundreds of years comes to us from French, from Latin before that, related to many, many other words in every romance and Germanic language.
Well, Emerson, that’s what we know about charge. Thanks so much for your call.
Thank you.
All right. Take care now.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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