taboo tattoos
What language or origin not the words, "Tattoo & Taboo" comes?
I once knew the answer. It was Latin, Greek or Roman … I can not remmber
tattoo (1) "signal", 1688, "signal calling soldiers or sailors to quarters at night," before you take (1644, in order of Col. Hutchinson to garrison of Nottingham), Du. taptoe of touch "the tap of a barrel" (see tap (2)) + Finger "closed". So called because police used to visit taverns in the evening to close the taps of the barrels. Transf. meaning "drum" recorded since 1755. Therefore, the devil's tattoo "action of idly drumming fingers in irritation or impatience" (1803). Tattooing (2) "brand of skin pigment," 1769 (noun and see, at first written certification of Captain Cook), a Polynesian name (eg Tahiti and Samoa tatau, Marquesan tatu "puncture, mark made in the skin"). Taboo 1777 (in Cook's "A Trip to the Pacific Ocean"), "consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean or cursed," he said, in some Englishsources as from Tonga (Polynesian language of the island of Tonga) ta-bu "sacred" from ta "mark" + bu "especially." But this may be folk etymology, as linguists in the Pacific have reconstructed a prototype irreducible-Polynesian * Tapu, from Proto-Oceanic * tabu "sacred, forbidden" (cf. Hawaiian Kapu "taboo, prohibition, sacred, holy, consecrated," Tahitian tapu "restriction, sacred;" Maori tapu "be under ritual restriction, prohibited"). The noun and verb are Eng innovations recorded for the first time in the Cook book.
