Word Facts

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.