Word Facts

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.