Learn English – “newfangled”, “fandangle” and “fandango”

The following extract from Grammarphobia traces the origin and earliest usages of "newfangled" and its components: "fang" and "fangled". There is really no hint at a possible Spanish origin:

Question 2):

• This adjective is probably a lot older than you think. “Newfangled” has been around since the late 1400s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

• It developed from an even earlier adjective, “newfangle,” which may have been recorded as early as 1250. Originally, both “newfangle” and “newfangled” referred to people who were eager for novelty, though later both could refer to new and novel things.

• The OED says “newfangled” originally meant “very (esp. excessively or immoderately) fond of novelty or new things; keen to take up new fashions or ideas; easily carried away by whatever is new.” It was first recorded in about 1496 in a book of sermons by Bishop John Alcock: “Boyes of fyfty yere of age are as newe fangled as ony yonge men be.”

• The OED says this use of “newfangled” to describe novelty-loving people is “now rare.” The dictionary’s most recent citation is from Dorothy L. Sayers’s novel Clouds of Witness (1926):

  • “All these new-fangled doctors went out of their way to invent subconsciousness and kleptomania, and complexes and other fancy descriptions to explain away when people had done naughty things.”

• In the mid- to late 1500s, the OED says, people began using “newfangled” to describe things, not people: something “newly or recently invented or existent,” as well as something “gratuitously or objectionably modern or different from what one is used to.” It’s still used in those senses today.

Where did “newfangle” and the later “newfangled” come from?

• The source, according to Oxford, is an archaic Old English verb, “fang,” which was recorded as long ago as the year 855 and is still alive in some dialects of English.

• Originally, to “fang” meant to grasp, seize, take, catch, attack, embrace, or simply to commence. But over the centuries it has had many associated meanings: to obtain, collect, get at, receive, earn, welcome, and others.

• So etymologically, “newfangled” might be described as newly seized, newly begun, and so forth.

So where do the sharp teeth come in?

• The verb “fang” gave rise to a noun, first recorded in 1016, meaning the thing caught or taken—the prey or the plunder. And it soon came to mean a capture or a catch, the OED says, and “also a tight grasp, a grip.”

• The noun “fang” acquired another meaning in the mid-1500s: “a canine tooth; a tusk.” And the plural “fangs” was used generally to mean “the teeth of dogs, wolves, or other animals remarkable for strength of jaw.”

• The connection is easy to imagine—from the verb that means to seize to the noun for prey and finally to the “fang” that means the predator’s tooth. “Although the broad semantic connection between ‘seizing’ and ‘sharp canine teeth’ is clear,” John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins, “the precise mechanism behind the development is not known.”

• At any rate, “newfangled” was in use well before “fang” meant an animal’s tooth, so there’s no direct line of descent though there is a connection.

But wait a minute. We haven’t discussed the word “fangled,” which you suspect must be in there somewhere.

• Well, there was such an adjective. It was first recorded in 1587 and meant “characterized by crotchets or fopperies” (a “crotchet” is a whimsical notion).

• But “fangled” came about in error, the OED says, through “a mistaken analysis of newfangled.” Writers in the 16th century erroneously assumed the existence of “fangle” as a noun and a verb, and consequently as an adjective, “fangled.”'

• The assumption was wrong of course because “newfangled” is derived from the ancient verb “fang,” not from “fangle” and “fangled.” The OED says “fangled” is obsolete now. It’s immortal, though, thanks to Shakespeare, one of those confused writers we mentioned.

• We know he was familiar with “newfangled” because he used it three times in his plays and sonnets. And in Cymbeline, first produced in 1611, he too assumed there was a shorter adjective: “Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment / Nobler than that it covers.” So if Shakespeare and his contemporaries could make that mistaken leap, perhaps it’s not surprising that you did too.

Also according to The Phrase Finder there is no hint at a possible Spanish origin:

• The Oxford English Dictionary reports the etymology of newfangle (adj.) as: new + "an otherwise unattested adjective (prob. with the sense 'inclined to take')". Newfangle has been used as an adjective from the 12th century on, first with the sense "caught up with a new experience" or inclined to be so caught up. Later it came to mean keen on new things or novelty, carried away by whatever is new. From about the 15th century on it alternates with newfangled, meaning the same thing.

• Nowadays it is often used humorously to mean "Newly or recently invented or existent, novel; gratuitously or objectionably modern or different from what one is used to" (OED).

Question 1):

The origin of Fandango is still unclear, but there is no evidence of a possible derivation from the earlier term "newfangled":

• The earliest fandango melody is found in the anonymous "Libro de diferentes cifras de guitarra" from 1705, and the earliest description of the dance itself is found in a 1712 letter by Martín Martí, a Spanish priest. The fandango's first sighting in a theatrical work was in Francisco de Leefadeal's entremés "El novio de la aldeana" staged in Seville, ca. 1720. By the late 18th century it had become fashionable among the aristocracy and was often included in tonadillas, zarzuelas, ballets and operas, not only in Spain, but also elsewhere in Europe.

• Widely varying claims have been made about the origin of fandango: its relation to the soleá, jabera and petenera; to the Andalusian malagueña, granadina, murciana and rondeña; to the canario and gitano; to the jota aragonesa.

(Wikipedia)

Question 3):

Fandangle appears to be the only term whose origin is derived from the the Spanish Fandango:

• a) fandangle - An ornamental object; gewgaw (1835+)

• b) fandangle - A confused profusion; generous lively miscellany : cranes, firebirds, foxes, flamingos, a fauna fandangle hard to believe

• [mid-1800s+; fr eastern US dialect fandango, ''a boisterous assembly,'' fr the Spanish dance]

(The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D.)