Word Facts

This year, 2016, marked the 500th anniversary of the Sir Thomas More book, Utopia, originally published in Latin. This book was the first time word had been used, invented from the Greek 'ou' and 'topos' meaning, 'no place'. The word 'dystopia' was created a few centuries later from back formation, meaning, 'bad place'. Before this 'bad place' there had been a 'good place', nearly identical in form to 'utopia', making the title of this book a pun as well. May 2017 for you not be utopia, and leave 'ou topos' for dystopias.

There are lots of different types of verbs, and while kindergarten teachers do lot lie when saying, 'a verb is an action-word' they rarely explain the different types of actions. A performance-verb, for example, is one type that conveys the performed speech-act, or in other words, it explains what the action is as the action happens. 'Invite', 'congratulate', and 'forbid' are all performance-verbs, as should someone say, 'I invite you over' that sentence would itself be an invitation, while another sentence like, 'I will be a better person' does not make the speaker a better person. I thank you (performance-verb) for reading and hope you keep this in mind while you write your new year's resolutions.

On this blog, you'll have seen a fair amount about affixes, especially Latinate prefixation. One affix, among the prefixes, suffixes, and infixes, that is often less fixated upon by English-speakers is the circumfix. Other languages, especially Austronesian languages like Malay see a lot of these forms in which both a prefix and a suffix are added at the same time as a single unit. There are some disagreements on what would qualify, but the best and perhaps only examples in English is the 'en- -en' or 'em- -en' circumfix, in such words as 'embolden'. These have grown fairly unpopular and are starting to phase out of use. 

Are you feeling Hungary for some Turkey? Either way, while the former country has nothing to do with hunger, and is in its own language instead called, Magyar, Turkey the country and turkey the fowl are not so different. The word 'turkey', before the arrival of Europeans in North America, applied to a different bird: guinea fowl, so nicknamed because they were imported to Europe through Turkey. When the Europeans did come to North America and see the turkey (Melleagris gallopavo) as we know today, they mistakenly associated them with guinea fowl and the term stuck.

What do 'Austria', 'The Orient', and 'Easter' have in common? Well despite the fact that on the surface the meanings do not relate, and that the words do not sound terribly similar, they all descend etymologically from words meaning, 'East'. The Orient should not have a surprising etymology then, so long as you think of Asia as east of Europe, but 'orientation' comes from the same Latin root with 'oriri' meaning, 'to rise', and because of the semantic relation to the Sun, it eventually lead to words meaning, 'east'. 'Austria', itself may sound like the root for 'Australia' and other words meaning, 'south' (read more here ) but there is no connection. 'Austria' is a Latinization of what is now, 'Österreich' or then, 'Ostarrîchi' which meant, 'eastern realm' as it is (somewhat) east of Germany. Finally, 'Easter' comes from an Old English word, 'ēastre' a

The name 'Richard' might make you think of the many European royal or noble men, which is partly from it being a traditional name, but also it is believed that a predecessor of the name, perhaps 'Richardu' in Proto-Germanic meant, 'hard ruler'. There were many nicknames that came up later on, including 'Rich', 'Rick', and then, 'Dick' and 'Hick', the latter being currently unpopular. 'Dick' to mean 'vexing person' came around only in the 16th century, and then as 'penis' in the 18th or 19th, with the first recorded use found in the 1890's from an English solider. 'Hick' as well took on negative connotations from its and 'dick's' shared sense as 'man'. 'Dick,' and 'Hick' became nicknames for 'Richard' at a time when it was fairly common to have rhyme-based nicknames, in this case of 'Rick', much like with 'Rob' and 'Bob', 'Mo

Have you ever found that when something will seem to pop-up, occur, or otherwise make itself known frequently once it's been pointed out that you didn't notice at all before? There is a term for this in psychology called, the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, named after the former left-wing West German terrorist group. A researcher in the '80's noticed the name of the terrorist group in a newspaper, and then found that he kept seeing it after that, even though the presence of the word as used around him had not changed really. No one is quite sure why this happens, but it is not strange to all of a sudden notice something constantly that otherwise would slip you by unawares.

From a few decades old music to books and anything else from the past, it isn't too uncommon to find 'gay' as an adjective meaning, 'joyful', 'showy' or 'mirthful', as it did since the 12th century. In the 17th century, the word took on a second meaning of, 'drawn to pleasures' and sometimes, 'of loose or immoral lifestyle', but existed alongside the earlier sense. In the 19th century, 'gay' took on the meaning of 'prostitute' and a 'gay man' was one who slept with many prost itutes, giving rise to the phrase, 'gay it' to mean 'have sex'. Only in the 1920's or '30's did the word refer to what we think of today, and later on in the mid-50's gay men themselves felt that 'homosexual' was too clinical and cemented the definition which having so many senses up until then was sort of vague, so people stopped using 'gay' so mean 'jolly'. 'Gaiety' seems to

There are some disagreements about the true origins of this, so take the following not so much as a word-fact but as a word-theory. The phrases 'hocus-pocus' and 'hokey-pokey' which are often associated with witchcraft and silliness respectively are believed to originate, not from, but because of the Catholic Church. Most evidence shows that the jingle, Hokey Pokey, originated in Scotland from the Puritans who would mock the Catholics preaching in ecclesiastical Latin. More specifically the Puritans would poke fun at the Latin in, in this case, the chant used during The Eucharist. In England and Canada the song is called the Hokey Cokey, differing because at the time when the lyrics were being copyrighted, the lyricist opted for an existing Canadian slang word, 'cokey' that meant 'crazy' as a replacement for the original one. 

People litter, certainly, and cats have litters (of kittens), but bugs don't really have any relation; even a now-archaic form of the word meant to make a bed of litter for usually a horse, so why do people say, 'litterbug', in a teasing or pejorative manner? While both of the tmeses, or the individual elements of a compound, are quite old 'litterbug' has only been around for a few decades. Much like the term, 'jaywalking' (see here ), 'litterbug' was a word coined by corporations trying to put the blame on the public for problems that were not really the fault (entirely) of the people and avoid responsibility for, in this case, pollution.

To ask what the male counterpart for a ballerina would be goes further than simply the masculine an feminine forms for a single word. Colloquially, 'ballerina' is simply a female ballet-dancer, but more technically, she is the head- female dancer. As such, there isn't as much need to make a distinction based on gender; there is the ballerina and then everyone else would simply be termed a 'dancer'. Interestingly, however, the word, 'ballerina' is the feminine form of the Italian, 'ballerino', but since ballet uses French terminology, this word is not a title for any male dancer.

Two of the most commonly used words in English are 'I' and 'you'. Despite their commonality and seemingly fundamental necessity, while, 'I' is more or less universal, 'you' is incredibly difficult to translate. In languages unlike Standard American English, there will be different forms for the singular and the plural, and in some cases there is a separate word for specifically 2 addressees. English used to make the distinction between the informal, 'thou' formal, 'you' and plural, 'ye' but this was eventually largely dropped. Other languages also have different forms for levels of familiarity and necessary respect, sometimes just with informal and formal terms, but there could be many more. In fact, in the 18th century, a Chinese emperor had a scholar, and his entire family, executed for using a pronoun that was too familiar. The final distinguishing factor that many languages make is gender, but often there is also a lot of comb

hat does fracking have to do with fractals?––Generally very little in terms of their mechanics, but as you may now be guessing, they are etymologically related. 'Frack' is just an abbreviation started in the 1950's of 'fracture', but in addition to 'fractal', 'fraction is related. All of these words come from the Latin participle of 'frangere' which means, 'to break', 'fractura', but while 'frack' took the meaning of breaking into pieces, the two aforesaid mathematical terms use a meaning closer to reduction.

There is an area of linguistic study that has only existed fairly recently and only with a few other languages, including Arabic, Spanish, and French: World Englishes. Most languages are spoken only relatively few people in one region, but English is spoken all over the world by as many as 1 in 7 to 1 in 4 people, depending on how one measures levels of fluency. If enough people speak a language over a large enough area, there will be regional dialects no matter what, but now English is also influenced by other languages native to different places, accents, culture, and varying education. English is increasingly global also as the internet gives people access to everyone else online, and so it accounts for between 65%-80% of the content on the web. As more individuals speak this language, more dialects and variations emerge. 

As time goes on, words gain new meanings and these are often reinforced with derivatives, as it is more difficult conceptually to have a word with two potentially contrasting meanings than it would be to use two separately pronounced ones. It is not uncommon for this reason to have a single outlying derivative distinct from the general thematic connotation that the rest, as well as the original word, have. Every now and then, conflicting ideologies will effect a word's derivatives to fall into one of usually two groups. 'Animosity', 'animus' and in certain contexts, 'animalistic' and 'animality' all tend towards the connotation of hatred, or a lack of restraint. On the other hand, 'animism', 'animate', and 'anima' all relate more to the original sense of the word: a soul. All of these words come from the same Latin one, and ultimately from an Indo European root meaning, 'to breathe' but depend fundamentally on the way

It would certainly be insulting to refer to someone as 'it' instead of 'he', 'she' or some other preferred pronoun, so it should then seem strange that, 'that' is often used instead of 'who' when referring to a person, introducing a subordinate clause, e.g. "She's a woman that loves to read". That is also used for inanimate objects, and necessary when referencing the subject of the clause. There is more information on the difference between 'that' and 'which'  here . This confusion has existed since the 11th century, and would no longer be due to applying 'that' as it would have been used for inanimate objects: this is a manner of speech with history.

The onset 'fli' has in many words like 'flick' is used imitatively to demonstrate rapid motion (see more   here ). This is believed by psycho-linguists to be quick release of the speaker's curled tongue. The word 'fillip' is yet another example of this, first having the meaning of flicking one's finger, but it soon took on the meaning of acting as a stimulus or giving something energy, and moved slightly away from the theme of the other words that follow this same pattern.

Yesterday, the focus of Word Facts was misinterpretations of things people hear, and if you didn't see it, click  here . The opposite side of this problem is, logically, misspeaking. There are a number of ways that this happens, including saying an unintended word, or leaving information out, but an often funnier mistake that some people make might be to switch the sounds of words around, such as 'sons of toil' instead of 'tons of soil', or 'pobody's nerfect' for 'nobody's perfect'. The term for this phenomenon is 'spoonerism', named after William A. Spooner, a clergyman known for constantly making this mistake.

There are a great number of ways in which it is possible to misinterpret what someone has said. Of course, it is possible to hear nonsense, but common misconceptions about words and phrases like 'bated-breath, 'lip singing' or 'old-timer's disease' instead of 'baited-breath', 'lip-syncing' and 'Alzheimer's disease' respectively that still retain some sense of the original word in a fairly logical way have a specific name, egg corns, or more technically, oronyms. There are also, 'mondegreens' which involve the misunderstanding or lyrics or other text, and can usually also make sense within the context. Both of these words are examples of what they represent: 'egg corn' comes from a mishearing of 'acorn' and 'mondegreen' is coined based off of someone hearing the end of Percy's Reliques, "...They hae slain the Earl o' Moray, and Lady Mondegreen' instead of '...and laid him on the gree

The reason behind the name,  Saxon , was covered before so it seemed logical to go over the other tribes of England. The Angles were so named because of their region's shape. Angles come from present-day Schleswig in Denmark, but the region has always had a lot of German people and influences, so it would make sense that the name has a common root shared with Latin, Old English, and German. As for the Jutes, there is much debate, even as to whether these people were their own distinct group. Some people have claimed that this is just an alternative pronunciation of Geats or Goths, and even though their homeland, Jutland juts out into the ocean, there is little evidence that this would have caused the name for this Danish peninsula.

The nature of an orgy is, and has for a long time been, purely sexual. It wasn't always this way, and it only gained this stigma because of Christians. In Greek, 'orgia' meant ‘secret rites or revels’, and was used to denote plenty of religious congregations. The Christians did not care much for pagan rituals, and while killing people and tearing down or re-purposing religious sites works to stop those whom are already pagans from worshiping, spreading rumors that at these orgia, all people do is have immoral, hedonistic sex would (perhaps) prevent Christians from converting.

It is usually taken as fact that English is not just a Germanic language, but a West Germanic language in the same class as Afrikaans, Dutch, and German. While sometimes people, though not many, argue that due to the over 50% romantic vocabulary English should be considered a creole, this would still not change its language family because families are based on grammar and structure. A paper published from the University of Oslo, however, argues that English should be considered a North Germanic language, along with Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and others, citing certain structural similarities including objects being placed after second verbs, split infinitives, prepositions after the adjunct, and group-genitives, all of which are not possible in German or Dutch.

This is the last post for Curse Week II and the 2-year anniversary! Although many of the curse-words we have now have existed for a long time, and have embedded themselves so thoroughly in language that .7% of English speakers lexicon is made up of the mere 10 phrases: 'fuck', 'shit', 'hell', 'God damn it', 'ass', 'bitch', 'damn', 'oh my God', and 'suck', particularly the first 2, which is nearly as much as people use all 1st person plural pronouns. Linguists now, realizing that words change as societies change have come up with theories on the most prominent future-insults. One linguist has theorized that insults will be derived of class differences, so terms like 'salt of the earth', 'trash', 'chav', or 'urban' would become more offensive. Others have suggested that insults about mental illness will become more prominent, such as, 'schizo', 'mental', or 'aspy&#

It would in no way be uncommon to say, ' ouch ' when you, say, stub your toes. Alternatively, many if not most people will curse when in pain, and neurologically it aids in pain-relief. Cathartic swearing is perhaps the most basic and instinctive use of these words. In fact, many people who experience head-trauma which affects their ability to use language are still perfectly able to curse, as these words are stored in a different part of the brain. Unfortunately, this is the reason that certain conditions, such as turrets's syndrome may cause individuals to swear, but not yell any words randomly. Cursing, as has been said here before may be stored in the limbic system, which also stores emotions.

A euphemism is used to talk about something that is regarded as uncomfortable or unpleasant whilst acknowledging that it was unpleasant. Have you ever though wondered what the opposite of euphemism is? Even if you haven't had that thought as such , most people know the desire to emphasize when something is truly unpleasant, so unpleasant as to warrant the breaking of social rules. In these certain circumstances, 'dysphemisms' are used. In that way, rather than saying, "I stepped in dog-feces", to make it very clear that the situation is unfavorable, choose, "I stepped in dog-shit" or "dog-crap".

It would be uncommon perhaps for a student to say to his teacher, "what the fuck does that mean?". Almost certainly this would be very rude, even if this is a case of Emphatic Swearing ( see post C.W.3 ). The question from before would be a great deal more acceptable socially if someone were instead to ask it to her friend. Idiomatic Swearing, as it is named, gives the impression that a situation is casual, and allows for both interlocutors to see that some social standards would not have to be enforced in a more relaxed conversation.

At this point in Curse Week, you might say, "I fucking love Word Facts". Here is an example of a curse word that doesn't have the same negative connotations as an insult or other derogatory term, even if people might choose to opt for something else in formal settings. This is called Emphatic Swearing, and is used to convey that fact that social expectations matter less than the emotion which is being expressed. Due to that understood intention, most people agree that the exclamation above is even more emphatic than "I really love Word Facts" would be, as that does not suggest any disregard for social norms.

The next category of cursing which Pinker identifies is Supernatural Swearing. This accounts for all the 'oh my G*d' and 'damn' curses that people still use regularly, even in increasingly secular societies. These words have lost gravity for that very reason, and are used in much more of a carefree manner than they were in Victorian England. GadZooks (G*d's hooks) refers to Jesus' nails because people were afraid to use God's name in vain. Similarly, 'zounds' is a euphemism for 'God's wounds', which is particularly appropriate, as some especially religious folks truly believed that uttering G*d's name vainly would hurt Him.

Steven Pinker, a neurolinguist, identified five types of cursing, all used for different effects. When words are used and created for the intent to insult people, or marginalize groups of people, his is called 'abusive swearing'. Not all of these words will be abusive for all time however, such as 'bad' http://stonewordfacts.blogspot.com/2016/05/365-good-bad-and-evil-dec-8-2015.html . Curse words—most believe—are stored in the limbic system, apart from most other words, which also stores emotions and could add to the interconnectivity of insulting terms and emotional responses. This idea will be explored more in posts later this week.

In addition to many adopted words from Latin, English has acquired some entire phrases, including 'pro bono', 'status quo', 'a priori', and 'quid pro quo', just to name a few. These all have literal meanings, but that doesn't prevent a phrase from being used in different ways. 'Quid pro quo' which in English is, 'something for something' first denoted an item one got from an apothecary, referring to the process of replacing one medicine for another, intentional or otherwise. A few decades later the meaning was extended to other exchanges, and now the initial sense from its early years of being an English term is rarely if ever the intended meaning.

Words from Latin are adopted quite a bit more easily than words from Middle Eastern languages, and trigonometry offers a wonderful example of this. The word 'tangent', from a Latin meaning ‘touching’; the story ends there. The word 'secant' comes from Latin meaning 'cut'; the story ends there. 'Sine', however, was 'ardha-jya', abbreviated 'jya' in Sanskrit in the 5th century which meant, 'half-chord'. Later in Arabic texts this appeared as 'jiba', which having no original Arabic meaning to tether it eventually morphed into 'jaib' meaning 'bosom of a dress'. in the 12th century, this was finally translated into Latin, literally, with the word 'sinus' which denoted many things with curved shapes, like sinuses, but really it means 'breasts'.

What is there to do when an animal is discovered on an island with no inhabitants, and therefore no names to adopt? There are at least 3 ways; first, use an imitative name based off of a sound the animal makes, such as with the name for ' cuckoo ', second, make up a name out of thin air, and thirdly, use an already-existing word. For the bird, 'dodo', the third of these options was employed. The word for the bird discovered on Mauritius Island comes from the Portuguese 'doudo' meaning ‘simpleton’, denoting the ease with which the bird was killed due to its lack of innate fear of humans. 'Dotterel' was named from the related, 'dote', for a same purpose, except here there is an added diminutive suffix, '-rel', present in other words for the purpose of derogation, such as 'cockerel' or 'scoundrel'.

Although words are ultimately arbitrary, considering the vast history of spoken languages, it would be a strange thing to come upon a word that has no story. 'Saxon', relevant to the name of several modern German states and much of Anglo-germanic history, wasn't just made up out of nowhere. Via a slew of other languages, this word dates back to an Old English root, 'Seaxan, Seaxe" (plural); looking back even further, this word come from the base, 'sax' meaning ‘small ax,’ or, 'seax' for ‘knife’. Many other Indo-european languages have related words relating to 'cut', and many believe that here, it is a reflection of the tribe's notable prowess in war.

What do movies lacking suspense, the draft, and censored books have in common? The answer to that question is that nobody really likes any of that stuff, and also the word, 'banal'. Until the mid 1700's, this referenced feudal service that was compulsory, originally from the French, 'ban' meaning, ‘a proclamation or call to arms’; it was this sense of common duty that eventually took on the meaning of, ‘common to all’. You might think that 'ban' also comes directly from this French word, but actually it's from an Old English word, 'bannan', which means ‘summon by a public proclamation’, which was reinforced by both the Old Norse 'banna' which translates to ‘curse, prohibit’, and later the French, 'ban'. Today, 'banal' has changed from meaning a call to arms to meaning anything without originality.

'Irrational', 'illegal', 'impossible' and 'inhumane', morphologically speaking, have the same prefix, even though the initial 2 letters each are different. They all take the Latinate, 'in-' prefix which negates a word. To be sure, this is not the same as the 'in-' in 'import' and some other words that come from the preposition, or otherwise 'illegal' and 'impossible' would refer to something within the restrictions of the law or the realm of possibility, and that's quite the opposite of the truth. Certain phonemes are difficult to pronounce together—which is why most of the time, for example, the in in 'con-' will become an M such as in 'computer'—but other time the will remain the same like the N in 'inhumane'.

Noodles come from all over the world, from Italy to Japan, but where 'noodle' comes from, now one is quite sure. As far as anyone can tell though, it is related to the word 'noddle', meaning the top of one's head, and 'nod', although not 'noggin'. The word 'nod' is also related to an Old High German word for 'shake', though this would not have a relation to 'noodle' as much as it would Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street. 

The French word for 'paperclip' is 'trombone' in reference to the similar loops that the Gem Manufacturing Company design for paperclips, still used today, has to the instrument. In fact, this is also why the Swedish word for 'paperclip' is 'gem'. Moreover, in English, 'trumpet', 'trombone', 'tuba', and 'tube' all come from the Latin 'tuba' meaning 'trumpet' which at the time was just a straight horn. Before they were called 'trombones' in English, the instrument went by the name of 'sackbut', which was originally a French word, 'saquebute' meaning, 'hook for pulling a man off a horse', but in the 1700's Italian music became popular in England, and so the Italian word was adopted. 

The right- and left-wing, on days that aren't Thanksgiving, refer to stances on political and social issues. The terms have been used since 1789 during the French Revolution when different supporters in the National Assembly split themselves up without planning beforehand with revolutionists to the left of the president, and supporters of the kind on the right. This division continued into the seating of the Legislative Assembly, and in the mid 19th century, the ideas of the Democratic Socialists, and the Reactionaries were associated with the seating in the assembly. There was also room for a center-group, the Constitutionals, but most of the time people describe the nuances with center- right or left. These terms came into English in the former half of the 20th century, most commonly concerning the Spanish Civil War.

It isnt usually too surprising when words that connote similar ideas, such as 'borough' and 'burgh' turn out to be related. In this case, both of them date back to the Old English 'burg' meaning 'city' especially a walled fortress, but more surprisingly the verb 'borrow', though not 'burrow', is also related. The Old English derivative for that term originally meant 'to preserve' giving us the connection to burgs, but also the verb 'bury'. For more on this, see the post on 'burg' .

Birds are pretty easy to hate, and even if a few individual ones might be tolerable like crows, others like pigeons and apparently magpies are not. The word 'magpie' comes dates all the way back to Latin from a word, 'pica' which is now related to 'picus' which is a green woodpecker. The former tmesis, 'mag', is from Middle English dialect 'maggot the pie' and 'maggoty-pie'. At first you might think that the 'maggot' would be the same as the larva on account of nobody liking either one much, but actually it comes from a nickname for the 'Marguerite'.

This post is modified from an answer I gave to a fan a few days ago asking what 'dude' means. What makes this slightly tricky is that words used in more informal contexts often are not defined well by dictionaries, either because they do not feature as heavily in texts, and or that they are situationally dependent. In the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the word is defined as "a fastidiously dressed man" and "city dweller", which is not how most people use the word now. These senses go back to the way it was used in the late 1800's, as around 130 years ago, this was used pejoratively to describe overdressed men. Words have changed as society changes, but often dictionaries aren't edited at the same rate. If you ever have your own questions, please feel free to submit them in a message. 

Which came first, the unwanted mail, spam, or the unwanted ham, Spam? Unlike many other words explored on Word Facts, 'spam' does not date back to Latin, Old English, or even Middle English; the earliest 'spam' was in 1937, when the meat-product was first produced. The use of the word as a reference to unwanted mail originated with a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch in which the cast chants 'Spam' so much as to interrupt the other speech. 

A word like the Latin, 'genus' explored more in the link below has given English an array of words relating to the human race and biology, but with so many of these words, it would have been unlikely for some of them not to have divergent meanings. 'Gentry' and 'gentleman' both related to rank, with the former referring to those born into nobility, and the latter denoting a man of good standing but not a nobleman. As time went on, other derivatives had less and less to do with the original meaning of 'genus'. The sense of 'well-born' or 'clan', also seen in 'gentile', later gave rise to the connotation with 'fashionable', and from the French, 'gentil', we got 'genteel' eventually becoming derogatory in the 1800's. For more on this topic click here .

The finger next to one's thumb goes by many names, including 'first finger', 'forefinger', 'index finger', and 'pointer finger', which is names than any other digit. The word 'index' comes directly from the Latin for ‘forefinger' derived from the verb, 'dicere' meaning ‘say’ and or 'dicare' meaning ‘make known’, which is also the root for 'indicate'. The sense of the word as a part of a book came much later but what it connotes is true to the sense of the word. Around the same time, the 'pointer' of 'pointer finger' began to be used starting in the early 17th century. 

If you are a reader of Word Facts, you may at this point start to believe that words which sound similar are likely to be related, after all, 21 of all of the past posts contain the phrase "sound similar". Nevertheless, there are some sets of words which are misleading. It would make sense if 'elicit,' 'solicit', and 'illicit' shared a common root, but it is not the case that these words differ only from historical prefixes. While 'elicit' derives from the verb 'lacere' meaning 'attract or charm' (not to be confused with 'lacerare' which gives English, 'lacerate'), 'illicit' is derived from negating 'licere', meaning 'to be permitted'. 'Solicit', unlike the other two, does not come from affixation but instead, compounding, as the first syllable is from 'sollus' which means, 'whole', and the verb for 'to move', 'cicēre', in the sense of 'disturb&#

When speakers of a language don't have a word for something and need one, or have a word but for whatever reason need a better one, the easiest way is to either create a word from existing elements, or to adopt a word from another language, assuming one exists. This happened a great deal when means for travel became simpler and faster some centuries ago, and people began to see objects and events never before witnessed by that group. When the Europeans ventured further and more often into Africa and Asia, they found the mongoose, a word adopted from the Marathi, 'maṅgūs'; we see here an example of word adoption. 'Meerkat', however, a type of mongoose, is derived from a Dutch word meaning, 'sea cat' as meerkats are no mere cats (nor cats at all).

It might be hard to imagine all of the words that have been created, arguably from people's imaginations, over the years. Quite appropriately, the Greek word for ‘imagination’ has given Modern English a plethora of words. The latinized form of that word, 'phantasia', comes from, ‘phantom,’ and earlier, 'phantazein' meaning ‘make visible’. You could probably guess that we get 'phantom' from this, but also 'fantasy' including all of its derivatives like 'fantastic' and 'fantastical', all originally spelt with a PH. Through a simple contraction of 'fantasy', we got the word 'fancy'.

If there is Turkistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan Pakistan, and all of those other place-names ending with the -stan suffix in South Central Asia, should there be a Hindustan for the nearby India?—This is a trick -question, as there already is one: a term used to denote the entire Indian subcontinent, but specifically the northern region thereof. Culturally perhaps, the Middle East and India are quite distinct, but this is less of the case linguistically. Starting with the Mughals who once ruled over parts of India without changing the language too greatly aside from the adoption of a few loan words, a new script was introduced which is still used for Urdu and Persian. Over time, different scholars in this region, which is now Pakistan and India, preferred either the native Devanagari or the Persian script. The Urdu writers chose to include more Arabic and Persian words in their work, rejecting Sanskrit-derived words while Hindi writers would do the opp

What English-speaker—nonnative or otherwise—wouldn't have cause to complain about it's illogical and inconsistent spelling rules? It's fair to say that the writing system is confusing and has many exceptions for every rule and generalization, but other languages have or have had some writing systems which make far less sense. The East Slavic languages, Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian, are all spoken, and as one would assume, therefore written differently. Nonetheless, at one point, all of the Slavic languages had a common literary-language, Old Church Slavonic, which gave the world the Cyrillic script. As modern Slavic languages diverged from each other, there was a period of time up until the 14th century in which the ancestors of modern day Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians all spoke their own dialects of Old East Slavic, which was a different language than the one used for the writing system. This situation, called "diglossia" meaning 'bilingual'

We didn't always have writing, and even when we did, it wasn't always the same. English only gained the apostrophe which it got from French in the 1500's, and it didn't really catch on for another hundred years. Even then, there was no real consensus on its usage; sometimes it would be used to mark an omitted letter, and sometimes it was used for plural endings, especially for loan-words and words that end with a vowel: "there are 2 apostrophe's". Around 200 years ago was when people began to use it as a genitive marker to show that there was an E removed (see more here ). When in the 19th century professionals attempted to standardize these rules, the ways in which apostrophes were being used were so varied and abundant that this became difficult. The rules were also arbitrary, such as having genitive endings for nouns like "boy's" but not pronouns like 'hers', except for "one's". To make this more confusing, British co

There few things as integral to culture as language, and as such, it has the ability to offer great insights into the mindset of a people. An 'arbiter' is someone who settles arguments, or you may go as far as to say, 'arbitrates' fights, and ought to therefore have very good judgement. It may be expected, then that those words come from another meaning ‘judge, supreme ruler’, in Latin. Even in newer words like business jargon which contains the word, 'arbitrage', something that involves a great understanding of different markets in which to sell the same products, comes from this Latin, 'arbitrer'. Consider then that 'arbitrary', also comes from the same Latin word which once had the same connotations as the other, but in late Middle English, the sense changes from its original, 'judgement' to 'dependent on one's will or pleasure' to its modern day meaning of 'random, without reason'. A lack of trusting in the decisio

Those familiar with the Western canon, or otherwise familiar with any one of the three Abrahamic religions would likely be familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. First, from the story in Genesis, the cities were associated with impenitence and sin, but then over time, people began to associate the homosexual tendencies as written in Genesis 19:1-11. Thence, 'sodomy' as we know it today was adopted into English through Latin. This is not the only derogatory term, however, for gay-sex to derive from a place-name. 'Buggery', which people mostly know from the exclamation, 'bugger', has been used as both an insult and in legal contexts in England. This word comes from the Latin, 'Bulgarus' meaning 'Bulgarian', due to association with the Bogomils accused of sodomy.

In hard times, it is important to try to have fun. Humans—and probably animals too but let's not go there—have a wonderful way of turning stresses into comedy, since otherwise issues would be looming and frightening all of the time. It might not then come as a shock that the root for 'fun', which used to be a verb meaning ‘to cheat or hoax,’ and as a noun, ‘make a fool of’. English also gained the word, 'fond' from this, though both it and 'fun' have changed meanings through the centuries. Closer to the original sense, however, the word, 'dupe' is also related, except here, the word is said to come from the bird, hoopoe, named based off of the sound they make. For more on bird-related terms, click here .

Do you have to be devoted to a candidate to vote for a candidate? Morally no, but I vow to answer as a linguist. 'Vote' comes from the Latin participle, 'vote' meaning 'a vow' or 'a wish', and the verbal form of 'votum', 'vovere' gave English, 'vow'. 'Devote', etymologically speaking, is only a more formal form of the same word. Generally, those words have changed little over time, but still, American politics are based off of Ancient Athens not Rome, supposedly. The Greek for 'vote' is 'psephos' which means 'pebble'. In Ancient Greece, there were a few different ways that votes were cast, including by hand, shouting, or using discs to be more secretive, but early elections were based off of pebbles being used as ballots.

Often on Word Facts words will be tracked over time, but the changes, either from language to language, or within the same one, are not explained. There are a slew of reasons why English takes has so many words that are different from their original Old English, Latin, or whichever language it may be, including accent-differences, and people's unwillingness to speak consistently with the native pronunciation or grammar rules. When words change within a single language, howeve r, it is easier to spot why. "Wrong division" is a term applied to words which have sounds split, most commonly from the indefinite article 'a'. The snake, 'adder', and the drill, 'auger' are both of Germanic origins and both used to have an initial N; in fact 'nave' and 'auger' come from the same word even though they sound nothing alike. This is true also of adopted words, such as 'umpire' which comes from the French, 'nonper' mea

What does higher education have to do with anatomy? It's an odd question but answerable nonetheless, and even without saying "medical school". While college in the United States can refer to any undergraduate program, elsewhere it refers to schools for specific subject training associated with other colleges in a system. The non-American sense is the same as the original Latin, 'collegium' meaning ‘partnership, association,’ ultimately from 'legare' meaning ‘to depute’. This word also gave English 'collegiate', and 'colleague'. This shouldn't be too alarming since the words sound similar and have similar meanings, but 'legare' also gave us 'legate'. 'Legare' is also related to the Latin 'ligare' meaning 'to bind', and gave English 'ligature' and 'ligament'.

When one is buck-naked, it is not to say exactly that he is naked as a deer or a dollar bill. 'Buck' started in Old English as 'buc' to mean 'male deer' and over time, this applied to certain other male animals, first from association from other words like 'bucca' for a male goat, and then later on just from convention, as was the case for kangaroos, which has no Old English equivalent. In the last few centuries, the word took on some racist tones with the term being applied to Native Americans and those of African descent in the U.S. No one is entirely sure why people say, 'buck-naked' but while the word has been in use for just a little over a hundred years, 'butt-naked' is even younger, and tends to be preferred.

Someone who studies physics is a physicist, but someone who studies metaphysics is a metaphysician, not a metaphysicist. Even though Aristotle was a terrible physicist, believing that the reason objects move is due to what are essentially spirits he called 'movers', both of those words are based on his studies. 'Metaphysics' means 'after physics' referring to the work that came after the his book which was interpreted concerning ‘the science of things transcending what is physical or natural’. 'Physics' also denotes the work of Aristotle, but in this case, what was written in his actual books. These words, as well as 'physic' which is specific to medicine and has the adjectival form 'physician' all come from 'phusika' meaning ‘natural things’ in Greek. The different adjectival forms would not have always carried specific meanings, but over time the conventional ways became standard.

When you want to change fonts on a word document, you just melt down metal alloys and shape them into letters, right? Almost certainly wrong, but only because of the era in which this audience lives. For printing presses, all of the keys and fonts had to be created physically out of metal. The word 'font' comes from the French word, 'fondre' meaning 'to melt', as do related the words, 'founder' and 'found' as in molding metal.

A person who's good at using paints or words can paint a picture, and with a camera, someone can take a picture, and though one can picture an image of a picture, no one can picture something in order to create a material object. It is a bit of syntax that English doesn't have, though historically it makes sense; both 'picture' and 'paint' come from the French past participle of 'peindre', ultimately from the Latin, 'pingere' meaning 'to paint', although the creation of 'picture' was also affected by the Latin, 'pictura'. Even though the words derive from verbs, their origins as participles, which are not verbs but verbal-adjectives have influenced the way we speak.

Suppose that you're a native English-speaker and you have exactly 575-600 hours on your hands, which would be the best choice of languages to start to learn? The Foreign Service Institute has ranked languages by how difficult it would be to learn from an English-speaking background into 5 levels, level 5 being the hardest. If you continue supposing from before, you'd likely want to learn a Romance language, or a few select North Germanic (e.g. Swedish or Danish) and West Germanic (e.g. Dutch or Afrikaans) because they all have fairly similar grammar and vocabulary, though not German nor Icelandic as even since they're related in many ways, they have complex grammar. This categorization does not take into account certain things like phonetics, but even if it did, the categories are rough estimations, and could not apply to all people with their different brains and experiences.

Happy Halloween everyone; with all of the costumes people wear, it can be tricky to remember which witch is which. The word 'witch' comes from the Old English, 'wicche', which gives Modern English, 'witch' and the religion, 'Wicca', but not 'wizard'; that word comes from another word, 'wysard' which is derived from the word for 'wise'. It would probably not be surprising to learn that, 'wicken' in Middle High German, meaning 'bewitch', is related to the root for 'witch', but 'wīh', the Old High German word for 'holy' is thought to be too, counter to the way we might think of witches today. Surprising as well, but the Latin for 'victim' is believed to be related to 'wīh' as well.

A fairly straightforward, albeit superficial, question one might get asked would be, "what's your favorite flavor of ice cream?", though certainly far fewer people would ask, "what is your favorite flavor of flower?". This would not always have been the case; back in Middle English, the word, 'flavor' meant, 'fragrance', or 'aroma', which comes from the Old French 'flaor'. Some have suggested that 'flavor was created as a an alteration of the Latin, 'flatus' meaning ‘blowing’ or as a combination with 'foetor' meaning ‘stench’. Either way, 'flatus' not only gave English, 'flavor' denoting strong scents, but also the word 'flatulent'. Where, I hear you asking, did the V comes from then? It seems to have entered the word by association with the word 'savor' around the time when the word changed, connoting taste instead of olfactory.

If you wanted to describe something, in a word, as a pale yellow, you could of course just say, 'yellowish', but the more pretentious way is with the word, 'glaucous'. The word comes from the Latin, 'glaucous', which means both 'gleaming' but also 'gray', which is why this word, now predominantly used to denote a yellowy color has also sometimes been used to describe any pale color, especially those of leaves in autumn. Yet, perhaps less pretty is that the root, 'glauc-' has given English the word 'glaucoma', as the condition makes the scope of what one sees, over time, become gray. There are plenty more words, though all fairly obscure that have this root as well, including 'glaucope': someone with blond hair and blue eyes.

If someone were to make a confession, that person would have confessed; if there is a recession, then say, the economy, would recess; but if someone had a profession, what does that person profess? This is not some fluke of English: a few centuries ago 'profession' would have made a lot more sense. Back when the word was used in Middle English, a professional could only be a clergyman, in that 'profession' denoted the oath that one would take to enter a religious order. At the time, these professions would be, quite literally, professed, as not only was this an oath, but also may have been fairly public. Later on, people would be thought of professing that which the were skilled at doing, thus relating to jobs.

As has been illustrated on this blog a number of times, words don't need to have similar meanings, or altogether similar appearances to be related. A protocol may not seem similar a glue, and it wouldn't really have either at any point as an English work, first denoting a record of legal agreement. The word comes ultimately from the Greek, 'prōtokollon' meaning, ‘first page’ from the parts, 'prōtos' which means ‘first’ and can be found in a great many other words such as 'prototype', and 'kolla' which means ‘glue’. The other sense of 'protocol' derives from French, 'protocole', which was etiquette intended for the French head of state, which was later adopted into English in the 19th century. A colloid, though it does not have any politico-legal meaning, is a substance that has qualities of both liquids or solids, originally coming from the Greek—you guessed it—'kolla' and, '-oid' which as a suffix means 'resem

Though the word has certainly changed, 'revamp', quite intuitively, comes from 'vamp' which for cobblers is the upper from part of a shoe, and as a verb means 'to fix a vamp', but in Jazz is a simplistic short passage which is often repeated. Both of these senses come from the Latin, 'avant pie'. You may recognize 'avant' from 'avant garde', which means 'advanced guard' which has come to denote the way that troop under Napoleon dressed: very lavishly and impractically. The whole phrase together, means "before the foot (pie)", which is reasonable for shoemakers, but for musicians, and later in the word, 'revamp', it took on the meaning of improvisation.

There are a great many things to which someone could be addicted, whether it be a substance like a drug or an action like gambling. Nevertheless, probably there are not many people addicted to speech (though perhaps a few radical linguists). 'Addiction' has taken on a slightly different meaning from the root, a Latin verb 'addicere' meaning 'to favor', and comes from the root word 'dicere' meaning 'to say', giving English both, 'addiction' but also 'diction'. Interestingly, even though this word dates back centuries or even millennia, the word 'addict' to refer to someone who is addicted to something was first recorded in only 1909.

What's something that everyone needs and loves, children and adults alike: scotch...tape that is. 'Scotch' means a great many things, including, whiskey a brand of tape, a people, and as a verb it means to cut, and to wedge or end. As a verb, no one is quite sure where the word came from, though some believe it is related to 'skate' which can be also a sort of cutting wedge. Though the verbal sense is found in Shakespeare's Macbeth, and may be historically interesting, it is the noun that is more often used more often. This instead does not come from the meaning of 'wedge' but instead relates to the Scottish people. Today, the word is considered somewhat offensive when referring to the people, but for the whiskey, nobody pays much mind.

If you trust yourself you'd be confident, and if you trust someone else, you might confide information. 'Confide' comes from the Latin word, ''fidere' meaning 'to trust'—with the prefix 'con-' used as an intensifier—which gave English the words, 'fidelity' 'faith' and 'fealty' (and all the derivatives thereof). For the word 'confide', however, even though there is the nominal form, 'confidence', this does not reflect the meaning of trusting something or someone else, as much as general trust, so after a couple of centuries using 'confidence', 'English got the word, 'confidant(e)'.

A good way of dismissing some person or idea is to trivialize it. There have been, in the whole of France's history, a number of revolts, revolutions, and uprisings, but not all of them were as significant as the others. The first jacquerie, however, to be called such was in in the 1350's when the peasants revolted against the nobility who had mockingly nicknamed peasants, 'Jacques' or 'Jacques Bonhomme'. For about a century and a half, this word was not used to describe other revolts, but eventually superseded the other usage, which is still employed on occasion, such as in Dicken's Tale of Two Cities.

History is told by those whom have power. While it is very fun to compare languages, and see how words change over time, it ought to be remembered that we do not have all of the words that there are or have been. Currently, around of 90% of languages do not have written forms, and this is despite modern efforts to create standardized writing systems, so it is not difficult to imagine that older languages are often forgotten. Some languages, like the now-extinct relatives of Basque can't even be recreated very much in the way that Proto-Indo-European was, because there aren't enough non-Indo-European languages related to it that still exists.

One can tell a lot about a place from its coat of arms, which is good because otherwise there would not be much use for the coat of arms. The coat of arms for Bavarian capital, Munich, for example is of a monk holding a book and pointing, and ones have also depicted a monk for many centuries. The German name for the city helps to interpret this symbol, as 'München' means, 'of monks', and shows off Christian history. The better known coat of arms for Berlin is a bear, but this is misleading. While the symbol was based off of the similarity to the name, 'Berlin' does not come from the German 'Bär' (bear) but is of Slavic origin, as most German cities with '-in' endings do, and may derive from a word for 'swamp'.

It might be easy, even for those with mighty brain-power, to assume that 'termites' are a type of mite. There are ordinarily plenty of words which can't act as their own words, but still attach to other words, e.g. a 'cran' is not a type of berry even though we have 'cranberry'. This would be an example of what is called a "bound morpheme", and the sure only way to know that 'ter-' is not one is to look it up. In fact, while 'mite' comes from Old English, 'termite' comes from Latin, or you could also look and see that their scientific names are completely different. Termites are also sometimes called, 'white ants', but this is equally misleading.

It is easy to confuse the words 'awake' and 'awaken', especially in their present forms. What makes this especially tricky is that even though there are some definitions that attempt to match the conventional uses, the two uses are not very different. Both have transitive and intransitive meanings, so whether the word takes a direct object isn't generally too helpful, but generally 'awake' has less extreme meanings, and also tends to be used only relating to sleep rather than existence as a whole, so while one might awake on a quiet Sunday morning, some mystical powers can be awaken. Other related words, 'wake' and 'waken' are a bit easier to distinguish, most notably because 'waken' is transitive.

It isn't uncommon, especially from an English-speaking perspective, to come across words borrowed from other languages for a multitude of reasons. Less common, perhaps, is to find affixes that are borrowed from other languages directly, though it does still happen. The suffix '-nik' was used quite commonly in the 1950's for different nicknames for satellites and other crafts shot off into space. Also from the same word, it became applied to other words which meant someone who was associated with a particular thing, giving us 'beatnik' and other words as well.

For most words, there is a reason that people use them, especially if the word can mean more than one idea. A second is called such because it is the third division of periods of time within a day...sort of. The first is a division of the day into two sets of twelve hours, which was devised at least a few thousand years ago. The Greeks took this originally Egyptian model, defined the hours more precisely, and then divided that further into minutes and seconds, more or less as we know them today. The term 'second' comes in because it is the second sexagesimal division: a sixtieth of a sixtieth of an hour. 'Minute' also comes from the concept of division, as it comes from the Latin for 'lessen'. For more on 'minute', see this post .

Sticklers, pedants, and prescriptivists don't care much for language-change, but it happens even for them. There are a few folk etymologies for the word, 'snob', including the idea that it comes from the Latin phrase, 'sine nobilitate' (without nobility), which does not connect with the dates and senses of the earliest uses, and also the idea that the word comes from the connection with noses (for more on Indo-European roots for sn- words, click here ), but that doesn't match up either. The earliest usages for this word meant 'cobbler' and then was used to mean 'lower class'. The meaning we have today is fairly recent from when the word was applied to those who had low status but looked to imitate those more well-to-do.

The liberal arts are important for allowing people to study all manners of subjects, and in turn, people more adept in certain academic fields might notice something new things. Generally, biological terms are fairly straight-forward, linguistically speaking, but biology itself influences the way that words (and culture and just about everything else) are created. A 'saccade' is the movement of the eye from one point-of-focus to another from a French word meaning literally ‘violent pull. Eye movements are easier for people to see on other individuals, and especially easy for humans in general whom have white around their cornea, and is a social advantage that we have over other animals, because we can see where others are looking. Generally, very important evolutionary or just bodily features (for people) have single, simple words since they are so common and influential.

Irony is a surprisingly good motivator for language progression, which is why many words mean what they do now, though not what they did centuries or even decades ago (for more on this, see: ' nice '). While sometimes it can be confusing when one use, such as the academic sense of 'epithet' as simply 'adjective', means something other than the popular usage of that word, this problem may also be disarming in contrast with other related words. 'Artifact' is a word with which everyone is familiar, and quite reasonably it comes from the Latin 'arte factum' meaning 'made by art'. 'Artifice' on the other hand 5 or 6 centuries ago meant 'workmanship' but later took on the meaning of cunningly deceiving someone––even though it shares the same root as 'artifact'––due to people using the word exaggeratedly and ironically.

It is not uncommon for very basic words, especially those for body-parts, to take on many different meanings. A neck is what supports the head over someone's shoulders, and it always has even in its older Germanic roots. Later on, it took on the meaning of anything resembling the shape of a neck, which could be on bottles, or also as another word for the cervix and a few other different parts of bodily organs, teeth, rock-formations, and bits of land as well. It is not usually too difficult to think of words that carry so many meanings, although in some cases, like with 'foot' many of the other meanings, e.g. 'to foot a bill' don't make so much sense, even when there are plenty of others that relate to, with this word, traveling, distance, or things low to the ground, that are all denotable with the same word.

Anyone who didn't recognize that this isn't one, it is good to know that 'invective' has the appearance of an adjective, due the '-ive' suffix, but is a noun. This is perhaps confusing, but not an foolish thing to think, especially as 'invective' once was an adjective, back in Middle English. The definition switched meanings from 'abusive' to 'abusive language', but the transferred meaning wouldn't have been too confusing for any listeners, because even in the word's Old French and Latin roots, the term was most often applied to insulting things, but specifically lexicon and rhetoric.

If someone were to talk about a 'bum' it would be unclear as to whether it is a butt or a lazy person. Words with more than one meaning usually gain those other senses over time from an original, which can be indicative of the way people think, or at least have thought. In this case, the meaning of 'bum' as 'butt' came first, so even though the origins are unknown, the usage of the word as a characterization of people was applied from the concept of a butt, and not the other way around. Similarly, the verb 'to fudge' is derived from 'fadge' meaning 'to fit', based upon alteration. Later on, its sense as 'fitting together' gave rise to the its use as a confection. Later on still, it took the meaning, 'to fit together sloppily' which also then gave rise to the exclamation.

Even when two or even three words sound and look similar, and may even have similar meanings, there is no way to be sure of a relationship without doing some research. It would seem logical that 'grim' and 'grimace' have, if not the same origins, then at least ones that are alike. Nevertheless, they are not even from the same language families; 'grimace' comes from the Spanish word, 'grimazo' which means ‘caricature’, and comes from the root grima meaning ‘fright’, while 'grim' is from Old English. The German for 'grim' is 'grimm', but that has no connection to the famous linguists and storytellers, the brothers Grimm, since they didn't happen to choose their family name. 'Grim' is, however, related to 'grin' which in Old English meant "to bare teeth in pain or anger" and probably is also related to 'groan' as well.

It is easy to think that words and language were simply made up arbitrarily, which in terms of phonetics is for the most part true, even though in terms of meaning it rarely is; usually things are drawn in from other sources. A flick, for example, such as in 'chick flick' or the company, 'Netflix' comes from 'flick', has no real-world association, but that word used to be closer to the experience of viewing films. Early movies were recorded at a mere 16 frames per second, and to avoid blurriness as the frames pass by on a reel, there is a shutter, which at the time was so slow that movies actually appeared to flicker. Even 'flick' is not arbitrary; the 'fl-' in the beginnings of words such as 'flash', 'flame', flare', 'flip, and many others is indicative of rapid motion. For more on 'fl-' words in Indoeuropean languages, see: http://stonewordfacts.blogspot.com/2016/09/636-black-blanc-and-blanco-sep-4-2016.html

Whether it be through the use of compounding or affixation, finding relationships can give valuable insight into the history of word-creation. The word, 'monster' comes from the Latin, 'monstrum' meaning ‘portent' or also 'monster’ like it does today, but was formed from the verb 'monere' meaning ‘to warn’. Other related words, 'demonstrate' and its derivatives 'demonstrative' and 'demonstration' also come from a variation on 'monere' and has stayed true to the original word, 'demostrat-' used to mean ‘point out’. Here, the syntactic theme of informing others has remained the same over many centuries.

There are plenty of words that people use which would have made sense for people speaking Old English, but not for people nowadays, such as 'egg on' which you can see here . In this same way, 'woebegone' is not wishing someone's woe will be gone, and quite contrary to logic means 'sorrowful'. While the aspect of 'woe' has not changed over the years, the '-begone' suffix does not have the meaning that 'begone' has today. Instead, this was a past participle of 'began' meaning 'beset', i.e. someone beset with woe.

Ever since there were humans there were moms, but 'mom' which is a fairly new word, dates back only to the 19th century. As etymologies go, this one is rather simple, as it was derived via 'momma' from 'mama'—both of which are still used—onomatopoetically created based off of a baby's first sound. It may seem logical that the British equivalent, 'mum', would have the same roots, but this is not the case as one might expect considering also as there are plenty of words that between American and British spellings only differ by the letter, U, but have the same meaning. 'Mum' is much older and is instead derived via 'mummy' and via the earlier 'mammy' ultimately from "ma'am". 'Ma'am' or also 'madam' itself comes from the Old French, 'ma dame' or 'my lady'. It may seem odd now, but titles were used instead of 'mom' or 'dad' commonly well into the 20th century, so ce

Capitalists can be merciless, but at least products are nice. The word 'mercy' as well as the French for 'thanks', 'merci', perhaps unsurprisingly come from the same Latin word. The Latin, 'merx' however does not mean 'gratitude' or 'kindness' but instead, 'wages'. Even though some connection could be made between giving wages and giving mercy, those derivatives are less similar to the original than some of the others now used in English. More logically in terms of the original meaning, 'merchandise', 'merchant' and 'mercantile' come from 'merx' and have meanings related to finance, though even here, over time the word changed from "money received for goods" to simply, 'goods'.

Some estimates which look at English's vocabulary estimate that it is made up of 29% French, 29% Latin, 26% Germanic words, 6% Greek, 4% other languages, and 6% from proper names. In terms of frequency, the majority of words are Germanic and not of Romantic origin, but there are a few exceptional words. 'Coach', in the sense of horse-carriges, busses, and airplane sections, comes from the name of the small Hungarian village, Kocs, not too far from Budapest. Since horses had to be led by someone, the sense of the word as an instructor also comes from 'kocsi (szekér)' (wagon) from Kocs), but this meaning came much later in the word's history.

Root words are sometimes easy to pick out, but other times may be the source of confusion. Many words, such as 'transmit' and 'commit' are fairly simple words which both come from 'mittere' which is Latin for 'to send'. It may seem odd then that  'transmission' and 'commission' are the nounal forms. This isn't due to irregularities at all, in fact, it is just an extension of the original Latin base. 'Mittere' may be the form of the infinitive verb, but 'missus' is its participial form. It would have been the case that English writers would replace the '-ssion' with a '-tion' to make the spelling more logical by retaining the T's, but Latin was seen at the pinnacle of all languages, and scholars tended to gravitate towards it, generally.

Someone who is sagacious has keen judgement, but despite the similarity in form and meaning, it is not derived from the word 'sage'; really, the two words have very little in common. 'Sagacious' comes from the Latin, 'sagire' meaning 'to perceive keenly', and is related to a word which eventually gave English, 'seek'. 'Sage' on the other hand, comes from a Latin verb 'sapere', which is sometimes translated as 'to be wise', but closer to its literal sense would be 'to taste' implying that someone with good taste would sagaciously be wise.

Whatever the philosophical or otherwise academic thought may be, there is a chance that it will simply met with, 'whatever'. Nothing is certain about attitudes of societies in the past, but a fair guess is that a similar the same response would be given, regardless of the era. The Latin, 'quodlibet', or 'any whatever' was a name designated for various academic arguements. No one is quite sure of how that meaning was then also transferred to musical mélanges, but more sensibly, 'quibbling' is also related to a quodlibet. 

There are generally two ideas associated with the word, 'iota': first, something that ninth in a set. Much like how 'alpha' 'beta' or 'omega' mean 'first', 'second' and 'last' respectively, based upon their positions in the Greek alphabet, in astronomy, Iota refers to the ninth star in a constellation. Far more commonly, second, it is used to connote small things. This meaning refers to the size of iota, which is the smallest letter in that alphabet. Interestingly, scholars writing the name could either use a (consonantal) I or a J, and so much like how the Latin, 'Iupiter' became 'Jupiter', 'jota' gave us the word 'jot', as in to write something short or quickly, or just the noun meaning "a tiny amount"

Language can be a wonderful tool for answering mysteries and other confusion. Certainly, knowing French or German, or better yet, Latin and Old English, would help to break down words and understand their meanings, but that skill comes in handy outside of just vocabulary. Hyenas look odd, with some cat-like features and some dog-like ones as well. The first place that might help to determine how it is classified would be to look at its scientific name, Hyaena: a genus comprised of 3 species. Since that is neither Canis nor Felis, this is not useful. The etymology would be another place to look, as sometimes, such as with 'ocelot' meaning 'field tiger' in Nahuatl, that can be indicative of classification. Unfortunately in this case, 'hyena' comes from the Greek 'huaina' (from 'hus') meaning 'pig' in reference to its bristly hair, only complicating the matter. In truth, hyenas are neither canines nor felines, although they are closer relate

Generally, things that are concrete and physical are easier to understand than things that are abstract. This is notifiable in grammar, for something that is 'palpable' is not something able to be palped (whatever that would mean) but it is able to be felt. Alongside 'palpitation', 'palpable' comes from a Latin verb meaning 'stroke'. A few centuries after adopting that word, English took on the word 'tangible', which comes from Latin's 'tangere' meaning 'to touch'. Both of those words are used to refer to abstract concepts, so long as those concepts are simple enough to seem physically perceived.

Adding or removing prefixes from a word can be a fun and enlightening way of studying. 'Distinguish' for example, was formed irregularly from the French 'distinguer', but is from the Latin morphemes, 'dis-' meaning ‘apart’ and 'stinguere' meaning ‘put out’ ultimately from a word meaning ‘prick’. Even though that is an irregular formation, 'extinguish' was formed from the same word, except that the 'ex-', meaning 'out', emphasizes the meaning that we have today. Also from 'exstinguere' comes 'extinct', fairly logically. Here, however, prefixes do not help, since 'intinction' is not the opposite of 'extinction', or even related to it, as the prefix might suggest. In fact, this word comes from the Latin, 'tingere' meaning ‘dip’.

Homophones can be tricky things, and not all of them were always so different. While the verbs 'steel' and 'steal' have nothing to do with each other besides some similarity in pronunciation nowadays, 'metal' and 'mettle' were originally the same, both spelt 'metal'. Over time, the meanings of the two words, which initially were the same, diverged and mettle was used figuratively so often that it took on a meaning of its own to discuss someone's character. Now, 'mettle' is only used for its meaning as a personality trait, and metal is only physical metallic substances.

Apples are wonderful and have versatile purposes in cooking. Moreover, the word apple has had wonderfully versatile uses in language. 'Æppel' in Old English meant 'apple' but also any general 'fruit'. For example, 'dates' were 'fingeræppla' (finger-apple) and 'cucumbers' were 'eorþæppla' (earth-apple). Even more recently than Old English, this happened with the European discovery of 'pineapple' in the Age of Enlightenment. The French word for 'apple', 'pomme' has a similar uses, except 'pomme de terre' (apple of the earth) is a potato. In the Middle Ages, 'oranges' were 'pomme de l'orenge' (apple of the orange tree), and still in Swedish oranges are 'apelsin' (China-apple). This modern misunderstanding of what an apple is won't ever be too serious, but anyone who reads Genesis will see that the fruit which Eve and Adam eat is not a red-delicious or granny smith or any

Everyone at some point or another has forgotten the best, most suitable word. This can be caused by anything from confusion to distraction or perhaps there simply is not a single word that would be effective to communicate one idea. While some languages may have some entertaining words that don't translate, like German's 'Kummerspeck' meaning 'grief-bacon' (for the weight one puts on while grieving), all people has 'negativity bias'. What this means is that people focus on negative thoughts and emotions more than positive ones for a flew of evolutionary reasons, and in turn, it influences language. There are more words, for example, categorized as negative than positive, words for unfortunate emotions like 'angst' or 'anxiety' are created fairly often, and it makes discussing negative thoughts easier than positive ones.

The words 'hark' and 'hearken' may now seem old and outdated, which is only reinforced by where they may appear most often. In Shakespeare's, The Taming of the Shrew, Lucentio in Act 1, scene 1 says, "Hark, Tranio! Thou may’st hear Minerva speak" and later on, one of the five occasions here in which Gremio says 'hark' is in the line, "Hark, hark! I hear the minstrels play". Not all the lines that contain 'hark' also contain 'hear', but these two do, and that isn't really an a ccident. The verb 'hearken', sometimes spelt, 'harken' comes from the Old English 'heorcnian' and is likely related to 'hark'. Although 'hear' comes fro, the Old English 'hīeran', and is therefore not related etymologically, the EA in 'hearken' was added in the 16th century to make clearer association. Despite any differences in spelling or pronunciation the connotation has always meant '

Sometimes in series of words, there may be an existing overarching historical theme that is now lost from its meaning. Europeans learned, for example, early on that the Americas were not India, yet the word stuck around for a long time, and in comparison to 'Indians', 'Native American' or 'First Nation' are much newer. For certain peoples though, this concept didn't go away, and 'Indio' is the term for any indigenous American those of eastern Asia in once under the rule of Spain or Portugal, still used today, and it means nothing more than ‘Indian’ in the languages of those two aforesaid countries. Moving on from ethic groups, the color 'indigo' comes via Portuguese, and Latin from Greek meaning 'Indian', as India is home to many plants from which blue dyes are extracted exclusively, even today.

Learning words from other languages can be useful to understand one's own in terms of comparison. Although the word, 'king' comes from Old English, we have Latinate words like 'regal' which come from words in Latin meaning 'to rule' or 'king'. It may not be a surprise to know that the Sanskrit, 'rajan' like 'raja' are related, but so is the word 'royal'. Sometimes the loss of G is what happens when words are adopted from one language to another, but this happens naturally over time as well. 'Rain' comes from the Old English, 'regn'; even the other, 'reign' has a G from its Latin roots but is pronounced like a diphthong Y. See more on GH from the post on December 20, 2015 .

All is fair in love and war, so they say. Everyone knows what kamikaze is, either in the historical sense or just to mean something that requires self-destructive in order to realize the goal. That is what the Americans brought back certainly, though not true to the Japanese origins. The word comes from the parts, 'kami' meaning 'divinity' and is even the name for a divine being in the Shinto religion, while 'kaze' means 'wind'. Originally, and for a long time, this word referred to a storm than the fleet of Mongol invaders in the early 13th century. Of course, it is now a war crime to use the weather as a weapon, as happened during the Vietnam War, so there would be little use for the word's original sense anyway.

The past tense is perhaps the easiest to define of the 3 (or 2) tenses in English. Most denote activity, or quality that happened and ended in the past. Still, there are multiple ways that this can be interpreted. Events, as well as habitual actions can be expressed like this quite simply. Nevertheless, the past tense has other uses. For example, the past tense can be used to indicate present or future time. The attitudinal past, as it's called, is used to reflect a lack of definitiveness, such as in, "did you want to have ice-cream?" because it is less blunt than the present tense in some cases. With indirect speech, certain verbs like 'say' allow the speaker to use the past tense to report the present, such as, "did you say you had ice-cream", which pragmatically asks whether the listener currently has ice-cream.

Usually when people use the word 'guttural', it is an imprecise way of to discuss any sound that is unpleasant to those listeners. The word used to have more precise meanings, signifying a sound that was produced in the throat. In fact, 'guttur' in Latin simply meant that very thing. Because so many people don't happen to like those sounds very much, any sound formed by the throat, lips, tongue, or a combination may be considered guttural. For the purposes of distinction, 'guttural' is not closely related to 'gutter' or 'gut' even though they are all tracks for things to move along. 'Gutter' comes from the Anglo-French meaning, 'drop', and 'gut' comes from Old English.