Imagine its summer time.

It’s warm, you are dressed for the weather—meaning you are uncovered in a lot of places—and you are in ancient Greece.

SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days

One of the first things you might notice is the fact that you are being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Now the ancient Greek word for mosquito wasn’t mosquito, but konops.

So at bedtime it was more pleasant to sleep under a bug net called a konopion.

It’s pretty easy to see how a bugnet’s name could pan out to become what we call any number of kinds of awnings and overhanging tents.  But there’s more.

Both in French and in English it was for a time fashionable to use such a bug net hanging over a couch not only to sleep on, but to just sit on.  And so the word canopy was transferred from the overhanging netting to the couch as well.

Let’s jump back to that warm summer day for a moment.

Imagine yourself at a party.

You have a drink in one hand while you stand elegantly balancing a napkin in the other hand scarfing down little things called canapés.

The name of these little munchies comes from the same source.

Not because the recipes for canapés call for mosquitoes as an ingredient.

Rather the idea is that the eaties are composed of a goodie riding on top of a little piece of toast.  Just as if it were sitting on a teeny tiny sofa.