I must be one of the last people in the western world to have diapered my children in reusable cloth diapers. Certainly the word deserves more respect that to be used once in a rather disgusting way and then discarded.

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In the UK they call diapers nappies. In North America the things we put on little children are called diapers.

The word diaper has been in English since the 1300s but it referred to a kind of fabric as opposed to a kind of undergarment. As near as I can tell that fabric was a sort of waffle-weave.

Before getting into English the word came from Old French and in moving to English it seems to taken a step down in the world. Instead of meaning a cheap cotton fabric as it did in English, further back in history the fabric known as diaper was a shiny silk embroidered with gold.

It was the white shining nature of the cloth that gave it the name because in Greek it had meant “white.”

So there are etymological reasons as well as sanitary reasons for adding bleach to the load of laundry that cleans the baby’s diapers.

I see in John Ayto’s Word Origins that the Greek word itself has a history.

If we break the word diaper in two we get dia and aspros.

Aspros itself meant “white” so dia-aspros meant “really white.”

Before the word aspros came to Greek it had actually been Latin asper meaning “rough” and was applied to the uneven surfaces of carvings and the faces stamped on coins.

Evidently Byzantine Greek borrowed the word specifically as it applied to those faces on coins. They then extended the meaning from the image on the coin to the coin itself and then to the bright shine of the silver of the coin.

So it was the brightness of silver that then came to mean pure white.

To recap:

• a word meaning “uneven” was applied to carvings;
• the image in carvings lead the word to be applied to the faces on coins;
• the shininess of coins led the word to be applied meaning “white”;
• pure white fabric then got the name;
• this was fine fabric and so was embroidered with beautiful designs;
• the designs then took on the word diaper;
• as the word approached English the design on the fabric moved from fine embroidery to a pattern woven into a cheaper cloth.

When choosing a cloth to wrap a baby’s bum in wouldn’t you choose an inexpensive one?