Word Facts

When you hear the word 'draconian' meaning, 'excessively harsh laws' this may remind you of all sorts of things, but it should not remind you of dragons. While the adjective comes the Greek name Drakōn, the root of which is 'draco', this is not the same as the word for 'serpent'. Instead, the word comes from the name of the first recorded Athenian legislator, Draco in Ancient Greece. He is know for replacing the existing code of law that only existed orally with written laws only that could only be in a law court. Before this, people took retributive action largely individually. The laws put in place were decided by the democratic rulings but his punishments were notably severe. For more on the other sense of Draco, see this .

It can be odd to wrap one's head around the idea of consonantal clicks for those whom never grew up with certain (mostly) African languages. Clicks are consonants, and as such are still measured by how different parts of the body including the tongue, glottis, and lips prevent the flow of air. Most clicks, and all those found in African languages are ingressive, meaning that they move the air inwards. There are multiple types of clicks, and in some languages like Xhosa, these can be the most prevalent consonants. In Damin, spoken in Australia, there is one egressive click, which means that the only language outside of Africa to have clicks also has the only one produced by exhaling. Outside of these click tongues which incorporate these sounds into their standard words, anyone can produce these sounds, such as in the English, 'tsk-tsk'.

English is constantly changing, and it has a number of factors that aid in this. English has few phonological rules which you can see more about here: Hawai'ian restrictions and here: kiSwahili restrictions , so it is very easy for words to enter the language. Still, the word 'banjo' could not be adopted into the language as it originally was. The African instrument's origins are not completely agreed upon, but considering other words like the Kimbundu's related 'mbanza', the word had to be modified as to not start with a nasal, M, and a plosive, B.

Words that come from imitative origins tend to be very simple, earthly concepts. It does not mean, however, that these were going to be the earliest existing words, even if some of them can be dated back thousands of year. The verb, 'squeak' is certainly imitative, but it only entered this language in late Middle English; it took even longer for the word to be used as a noun, and likewise, 'squeal' only started at the same period. The verb 'shriek' entered a little while later as well, along with its the no longer used 'screak'. To finish off the list, 'screech' was used beginning in mid 16th century, though earlier the word, 'scritch' was used, both imitative. For more on the history and perception of imitative words, see these links. http://stonewordfacts.blogspot.com/2016/09/636-black-blanc-and-blanco-sep-4-2016.html http://stonewordfacts.blogspot.com/2016/05/276-coo-coo-sep-10-2015.html http://stonewordfacts

Depending on what one's native language is and which language one would like to learn, it will either be easier or harder to do so based on how similar the grammar, vocabulary, syntax and other factors are. For more on the levels of difficulty a second language can be, click here . While as a general rule, languages within one family are easier to pick up, there are a few exceptions. Silbo Gomero is a Romance language, specifically it is a dialect of Spanish spoken in Gomero in the Canary Islands, but it is composed entirely whistling. Different notes replace the otherwise spoken sounds and is therefore able to be written the same as standard Spanish. The whistling can travel as much as five kilometers, and before cell-phones, this was the best way to communicate across a terrain filled with valleys and other natural obstacles. There was a decline in its use for a long time, but now thanks to local efforts, and its mandatory teaching in schools, it has made a comeback, and is quit

Spelling rules can be confusing and feel fairly arbitrary, but much like why any government has power, we are stuck with them so long as enough people agree to the status quo. In speech, the difference between 'suppose to' and 'supposed to' is, depending on accents, little to nonexistent; an omission of the D is generally made up for with the plosive sound of the T in 'to. Still, in formal settings, it is good to know that, 'suppose' is a verb, such as in, "You suppose that Word Facts is worth sharing" whereas "supposed" is a participle and functions like an adjective, usually as a predicate, as in "we are supposed to share these posts"; although there can be other, more nuanced functions, this is common, and often may be substituted with "should". Where this can be confusing is that, 'supposed' is also the perfect form of the verb, but this is the same form for most other English verbs in this tense, so most w

Children first learn to talk from mimicking the way that people, and parents in particular speak, evidenced with "hold you"—uttered sometimes as one single word—based off of phrases like, "do you want me to hold you". Later on, children learn to drop this and follow patterns, to a fault even; it would not be uncommon to hear one say, "I holded it"—not realizing that 'to hold' is a strong verb and conjugates to 'held'. As people grow older, a combination of both is adopted in order to understand more words. As such, rather than needing to learn every form of every word, people can gather what newer words—even invented words—mean, and terms like, 'Finlandization' which was only created fairly recently are still comprehensible without needing to be explained or formally broken down, as people assumedly know 'Finland', and that the suffix, '-ization' means 'quality of'. For more on how babies talk  click

Words like 'extra', 'extraordinary', and 'extradition' may look etymologically similar to each other based on the 'ex-', but this is not exactly so. 'Extra', to be clear, is the most related any word could be to 'extraordinary' in that it is supposed that it was created as shortening, with similar forms existing in French and German. 'Extraordinary' itself comes from the Latin phrase 'extra ordinem' meaning ‘outside the normal daily events’. Meanwhile however, 'extradition' just means 'out of tradition', with 'ex-' meaning, 'from'; 'tradition' in this case means, 'delivery' which was historically common but now is extraordinary. For more on 'tradition', click this link ,  or for more on the prefix, 'ex-' click this link 

While some extreme grammarians could see thinking that a 'color' is someone who 'cols', following the pattern of words like 'aviator', as a sin, this would not be as wrong as it first appears. One thing to know is that the word, 'hell' comes from the Old English 'hel, hell', which is of Germanic origin but comes from an Indo-European root meaning ‘to cover or hide’ which includes the Latin, 'celare' meaning, 'to conceal' and the Greek, 'kalyptein'. It is not uncommon for Germanic words beginning with H to start with a C in Romance languages, and for more of that, click here . Not only is the word, 'hell' related for words meaning, 'to conceal' (with those words also giving English the word, 'conceal') but the word, 'color', originates from a Romantic verb deriving from a word related to the aforementioned, 'celare'.

You may have noticed that terms relating to circles often have 'circ' somewhere in the word, which unsurprisingly comes from the Latin for 'circum' or 'circulus' ultimately meaning 'carry around'. There is, however, a Germanic equivalent to this, which still has some presence in Modern English. 'Gird', meaning 'encircle' but also 'strike' (though no one knows why for sure) comes from Old English 'gyrdan', and is related to Dutch other and German words, not to mention 'girdle' and 'girth'. It should be noted, however unsurprisingly, that the words that come from a Germanic root tend to be more bodily, and even feature in phrases like, 'gird one's loins', while those from Latin tend to be more formal.

When looking for keyboards to type in English, it would be difficult—though not impossible—to find anything other than the QWERTY model. This setup not that of the first typewriters, however; those were arranged in alphabetical order. Later on, as people became too quick at typing, QWERTY was introduced in order to separate some common letter pairings in order to slow people down from typing, and even shifted more of the common letters to the left side so as to disadvantage right-handed people. Other models that supposedly are better for typists have been introduced, most well know of which is Dvorak's keyboard which moves the more common letters and groups to easier-to-access locations. Many of the the tests that showed its superiority, however, were conducted by Dr. Dvorak himself, and many claim that these were biased, referring to more modern tests that show experienced QWERTY and Dvorak-keyboard user's speed to be about the same.

Words, and by extension names are rarely made up out of thin air. Generally, names come from words that meant something historically, or in another language. Names like 'Miranda' and 'Amanda' come from Latin participles, and in this case turned the verbs for 'to admire' and 'to love' into nominal forms that meant 'she being admired' and 'she being loved' respectively. Meanwhile, other names project a hoped for characteristic, such as 'Sophia' which in Greek means 'wisdom'. For more on names, see how Richard became  'Dick' or see more about common last names .

Jitneys are buses or other automobiles that don't coast very much to ride, and while now no one who knows the word would mistake it for meaning anything else, 'jitney' did not start out referring to any vehicle at all. In the early 20th century, 'jitney' was slang for a nickel, and from here, the term was applied to cheap transportation. At that time, this could denote any inexpensive bus, but today people almost always mean smaller-sized buses or sometimes shuttles. Later on, the word 'jeepney' was coined as a portmanteau of 'jeep' and 'jitney' meaning 'a jeep that was made into a jitney', which is quite common in Southeast Asia.

For nearly 200 years, the mascot for the Democratic party in the United States has been the donkey. While both this and other political mascots were cemented into American culture largely by political cartoons, the image of the Democratic donkey started as a nickname. When Andrew Jackson ran for president in 1828, he may have been known as Old Hickory, but his followers were called Jack-asses, as a pejorative pun from his name. Jackson, rather than complaining about it or ignoring it, adopted it into his campaign, referencing how donkeys are steadfast and hardworking. The symbol has stuck around ever since.

In perhaps confusing times like these, not everything may be as it seems. For example, grapefruits are in no way taxonomically related to grapes, in fact, they don't even grow on vines. This hybrid of a sweet orange and a pomelo does, however, grow on trees in clusters and it's name was given because of what was seen as similar clusters to grapes.

Just because two or more languages belong to the same language family does not mean that they necessarily have entirely related vocabulary, just as how two languages of different families can have shared vocabulary. The English word 'forest' is related to the French, 'forêt' which is from Latin, but not the Latin word for forest, 'silva'. Instead, the word comes from the phrase, 'forestis (silva)' which meant, ‘(wood) outside’ and is related to 'foreign'. The German word for 'forest', 'Wald' is similar to that of a few other Germanic languages like West Frisian—which is generally more similar to English—and Faroese, which is generally more similar to Old Norse. This word is perhaps related to other Indo-European words for 'hair', but also 'wood' and 'field'. Moreover, the Swedish word, 'skog' is related to the that Icelandic version, and Old Norse. Lastly, another Germanic language, Dutch (and Afrik

While often people and the places where they live are named for the indigenous (or historically indigenous) language's word for the people, such as England or other places discussed  here , this is not the only way places gain their native names. The Faroe Islands, for example were named from the Old Norse word for 'sheep', even though the animal was only brought to the island a while after it was settled by humans. Also, the Shetland Islands were not named after the inhabitants, but the Norse name, Hjaltland comes either from the word for 'hilt' as a reference to its shape, or from a Pictish word for 'cat' as they were believed to exist on the islands before people. Interestingly, the postal code, ZE for the Shetlands came from an earlier spelling of ʒaltland with the letter, yogh pronounced the same as the HJ. Printing presses didn't feature this character and it was often written with a Z. 

The idea of sailing the Seven Seas has existed for thousands of years. Since the 19th century, it was generally agreed that what constituted the seven seas were the oceans: the Arctic Ocean, the North Atlantic Ocean, the South Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the North Pacific Ocean, the South Pacific Ocean, and the Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean. These distinctions of sections of the World Ocean are fairly arbitrary however, so people only say that to keep it withing the tradition of having seven. The first known instance of "the seven seas" dates back over 4,000 years when the Mesopotamians equated the observed celestial bodies to the number of seas. Later on references to the passage to China from the Middle East mentioned their take on the Seven Seas, which included seas, gulfs, straights, and a bay, all termed, 'sea'. Many other groups had different concepts of the Seven Seas, and it is likely that this will continue to change so long as people still use the idio

The words 'secretion' and 'secret' may look similar, but do not necessarily convey similar ideas (unless you've got a very specific secret). Both of these words ultimately derive from the Latin, 'se-' meaning ‘apart’ and 'cernere' meaning ‘sift’. The idea of sifting apart is perhaps rather vague, and has led to a a number of other derivatives. Still, notably while other words like 'certain', and secede, and have some commonalities, and under 'secret' you may be referred to in some dictionaries, they are not especially closely related.

The words 'fall' and 'soccer' instead of 'autumn' and 'football' respectively may seem particularly North American, as the former two terms have far less favored in England, and vice-verse in America and Canada. Oddly enough, 'fall' and 'soccer' originated in England (and not just in the sense that that's where the language as a whole was born). For some time, several centuries ago, 'autumn' and 'football' were the less popular of the options, but after those terms were brought across the pond and used in North America where they stuck, they were eventually replaced in Europe.

A minor is largely considered to be a person under 18 years old, grouping both children and most teenagers. Nevertheless, while 'minor' is often assumed to be understood as anyone ages 0 to 17, the word is circumstantial, and could refer to a person of an age either higher or lower than 18. In terms of buying and consuming alcohol in the United States, for example, a minor would be anyone under the age of 21, as legally a minor is anyone under the age of majority, which is whatever the governing body has seen fit to include in a law. For more on this, see: señor, sir, and sire  or  etymology of minor

Phrases tend to be a little harder to track down the history of, since they fade in and out of use more often, and while they have many connections to culture, they don't need to have as much history. Still, it is possible to make reasonable estimates for a great many of them based on when and where they started appearing. The phrase, "my two cents" when referring to input or advice most likely started from Poker. In the game, people have to pay a certain amount of money to enter the game, and while now no game would be as little as 2¢, in the 19th century this would have been reasonable for a lower-stakes game. 

The phrase 'in G*d we trust" has been featured on every piece of US currency, but only for about 60 years. This began first in the 1860'sduring the civil war when citizens were requesting more religious reassurance from the government, and so coins were featured with this phrase. Later, during the Red Scare, Americans wanted to distance themselves from (atheistic) communists in any way possible, and as such, this time saw government gravitating towards Christianity. The national motto was even changed from E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) to 'In G*d We Trust' in 1956. After that, all US coins and bills contained this phrase.

Speech does certainly affect a person's psychology. Studies have found that the act of reminding someone of relevant, existing stereotypes hinders that person's ability to perform a particular action, which has been termed, stereotype threat. Several experiments conducted on female undergraduate students who were told of that men are better at math showed “in working memory intensive tasks such as mathematical problem solving, stereotype threat harms the cognitive system by co-opting working memory resources” (Merritt, Anna C., Effron, Daniel A. and Moni, Benoît “Moral self-licensing: When being good frees us to be bad" Social and Personality Psychology Compass , 4 2010). Relatively little is known about how this or other types of discriminatory language affects the mind, so there is a big push from linguists and psychologists for more of this type of research.

Words are arbitrary and without any understood meaning they are nothing more than sounds. Insults therefore rely not on the word itself but the concept that it conveys and as such, no matter what the term is, it will eventually become offensive if it carries negative connotations. Linguist Ben O'Neill calls this the Antidiscrimination Paradigm, in which a neutral word becomes a dysphemism (negative term), and then a euphemism is created to replace it. This cycle explains why 'moron', 'idiot', 'mentally retarded', all began as clinical, medical descriptors but gained their rudeness from bullies. Later, these words were replaced with 'mentally disabled' which O'Neill argues will eventually also gain these connotations until public perception changes.

If you enforce drug-laws, or are just a real bummer at parties, then you could be called a 'narc'. This word was formed from 'narcotics' which is derived from a Greek word, 'narkoun' meaning ‘make numb’. While no one would call someone with narcolepsy a narc justifiable, the condition is named similarly, from 'narkē' which means ‘numbness’. Still, much like how the suffix '-aholic' in 'workaholic' was invented from association to another word, 'alcoholic' and not from a historic suffix, the '-psy' suffix does not mean anything by historically. Instead, the ending was created on the pattern of 'epilepsy' which has the Greek tmesis, 'lambanein' meaning 'to take hold of', and 'epi-' as a prefix.

A fairly common tip to remembering the difference between 'desert' and 'dessert' is that generally one would want more dessert so it has more S's. The tricky thing is, the phrase, "get one's just deserts' is seen almost as often as "get one's just desserts" according to the Oxford English Corpus. While few people then would question the meaning of either one, the word 'desert' or more often 'deserts', pronounced in this case like, 'dessert' has a less-commonly known meaning of a person's entitlement to punishment or reward, so while one may deserve dessert, that would not be applicable in the same way as it is meant in the phrase, "one's just deserts'.

What would an apple, the top of a building, and the act of striking someone have in common? An apple in French is 'pomme' which still does not hint much at answer, it may be interesting to know that an Old French diminutive of the Latin for 'apple', 'pommel' which in 'Middle English meant a ball on the top point of a tower, and,  importantly in this case, was often used to refer to the butt of a sword. Later on, 'to pommel' morphed into 'to pummel' based on the connotation to striking.

Just by luck, certain words get used less than others, lose definitions, or have more-used forms. 'Sophisticate' is the verb from which the participle, 'sophisticated' is create, but at its most frequently used, in 1968, it only accounted for around 0.00001% of all words used, meanwhile in 1987, 'sophisticated' accounted for more than 0.00212%. Likewise 'adulterate', compared to 'adultery', has existed in a similar shadow. Perhaps fittingly, both verbs have historically had quite similar senses, and until 'adultery' replaced the earlier, 'avoutrie', the verbs were more or less interchangeable. For more on 'sophisticated' and its change in meaning over time, click this link .

Though often used to refer to every-day matters, 'beleaguer' or more often its participle, 'beleaguered' was once solely a military-term, originally from the Dutch, 'belegeren'. In the late 16th century, Sir John Smyth wrote of English soldiers, "they will not vouchsafe in their speeches or writings to use our ancient terms belonging to matters of war, but do call a camp by the Dutch name". The camp in question is the Dutch term, 'leaguer' ultimately originating from 'leger' meaning 'to build'. Despite Smyth's vexation, 'beleaguer' is not as un-English as he thought, with an Old English, 'leger' giving us 'lair'. The only different is the Dutch prefix, 'be-' meaning 'around', though it is also seen in Old English-derived words like 'besiege', and 'beset'.

Mannequins resemble people for art and fashion-related purposes, so it would make sense that English adopted this word from the language of France, a place known well for those two things. The word, however, is originally Dutch from, 'manekijn' which means, 'little man', with the spelling only changed to fit French orthography. English did also gain another word, 'manikin' (or sometimes 'mannikin') directly from Dutch, but with the spelling altered to fit English orthography. Not only does this other spelling denote the models, but also physically small people, especially men.