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'.