Word Origins

 

*FANFARE

The word has nothing to do either with a fan or a fare, but when trying to bring a foreign word into English, a syllable or two might get lopped off the original word some three centuries ago, and the meaning was altered. That is, the original was the Spanish word fanfarria, meaning "bluster, presumption, haughtiness." And because persons of that sort demanded attention, their approach had to be announced by the blast of a trumpet or the like. So, in the progress of the Spanish term through French and into English, it came to mean the flourish of a trumpet or the call of a bugle or a noisy demonstration.

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)