Word Facts

Plenty of taxonomical words end in '-ine'; the reason why was explored in yesterday's post which you can see here:  Drug-names and Taxonomy . Some of these are quite well-known, such as 'canine' or 'feline', while some are less used such as 'colubrine', which meas 'snake-like'. You might also recognize this as being similar to 'cobra'. This observation would be correct, but while both of these come from the Latin, 'coluber', 'cobra' is not directly from Latin and was adopted from Portuguese. 'Colubrine' is not the only word for 'snakelike' either, and 'serpentine' from the Latin for 'slither', and 'ophidian' from Greek are also used, but not often.

Similar to '-en' there are many subtly different ways in which the '-ine' suffix is used, almost all of which date back to Latin's '-inus'. Many of the purposes of this ending are scientific, such as for the names of alkaloids, amines, amino acids, halogens, among other things giving English such words as 'cocaine'. This suffix is also used for other purposes like forming rare feminine forms of words, such as 'heroine' and therefore 'heroin'. Aside from drugs (which is purely coincidental), this suffix is used for diminutive purposes, as in 'figurine' from 'figure'. In science again, the suffix is used to mean 'resembling' and is used in words such as 'alpine' and 'crystalline' but also many taxonomical terms like 'canine' or 'piscine' and for plenty of plants like with, 'hyacinthine'. For more on 'heroin' click the  link . For more on '-en', see one o

Although it is quite common for participles to be mentioned in this blog, they have been little-explained. Quite simply, a participle is a form of a verb (such as 'running' from 'to run') that functions as an adjective (like "the running man"), or as a noun (like "I like running"), and in English is part of compound verb forms, as in "I have been running", with other verbs acting in different ways at the same time. A slew of English words can be identified as coming from Latin participles now because they retain the whole of the Latin participial ending—or the whole of the Latin participle as in the case of 'status'—or just various remnants thereof. Many words that now end with '-ate' come from the Latin ending '-atus' which was common for masculine singular participles, and can at times be quite visually confusing as participles including, 'associate', 'duplicate', and 'isolate' are all nouns

If you didn't see the post on words deriving and relating to 'east', you should see that here . The word, 'west' has far fewer related terms in English than 'east', but there are still a number of relations from other languages. It comes from an Old English word that is not only related to modern related to Dutch and German equivalents, but also it is related through a larger Indo-European root shared by the Greek 'hesperos', and the Latin 'vesper'. Both words for ‘evening’ were also the names of the gods associated with that. 'Evening' or even the goddess thereof might not seem conceptually related, but remember that the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, something that was far more important to Latins and English tribes then that it would be now.

What do being terrified, the smell after it rains, a chemical used in fertilizers, and the keeper of Heaven have in common? The answer is that they all relate etymologically to rocks. The word in Latin that meant, 'rock', 'petra' came from a Greek word first, and these together developed into a number of English words. If someone is unable to move and therefore acts in a rock-like manner out of fear or surprise, this is to be 'petrified', and also refers to when organic matter becomes stony after being gradually replaced by mineral deposits. 'Petrichor', meanwhile, is the smell after it rains, and it is thought that this is caused by water coming in contact with compounds in the ground. You can see more on that here . Likewise, 'saltpeter', and the names 'Peter' and 'Pierre' come from this same root. In fact, St. Peter was born, Simon, but was given his name by Jesus to signify the rock on top of which he would build a church; the

There are lots of ways in which new terms are created, one of which is from nicknames. For instance, what does the word 'doll make you think of? The word 'doll' actually came around in the mid 16th century as a term meaning, 'mistress' given from the nickname for the name 'Dorothy'. There are plenty more ways in which this word is used, even when it isn't referring to horse-racing (which has a different etymology). The meanings that this word took on, such as "kind or thoughtful person" or just a young woman are senses used almost exclusively in North America and are therefore less of an overarching, English-language standard. Nevertheless, even more popular ones like the verbal phrase "dolled up", which also diverged somewhat from this original meaning, retained some relation in terms of connotations of 'mistress'. Meanwhile, it took over a hundred years for the meaning of the doll as a toy or a small model to come about aft

The names of the English counties, 'Sussex', 'Essex', 'Wessex' and former 'Middlesex' all denote the relative geography of their locations across southern England. It isn't too difficult to spot the 'west' in 'Wessex', the 'east' in 'Essex' nor especially the 'middle' in 'Middlesex'. There is, in addition to 'Sussex', the county, 'Suffolk' and with that 'Norfolk' (though no 'Norsex') that also have this 'south' and 'north' in the names. With 'Suffolk', this just means, "south folk", and similarly to the way many other peoples name their lands, it is just named after the word for 'people'. You can see more about other place-names here: origins of place-names . The counties ending in '-sex' are not an exception to this rule, and that ending comes from the word for 'Saxon', 'Seaxe'. For more on 'Saxon'

'Lent'—when it isn't used as the perfect tense form of 'lend'—is a Christian holiday that happens every spring. This word was adopted by the Church and was used starting in Middle English as an abbreviation of the Old English word for 'spring', 'lencten'. The Old English verb, 'lǣnan'—which turned into 'lend' and therefore, 'lent'—gained the 'd' from association to other verbs like, 'send' and 'bend' (though the related word, 'loan' did not get this alteration). Meanwhile, the holiday, Lent's earlier form, 'lencten' is now considered to be formed from adding the verbal suffix, '-en'. In this way, 'Lent', which is related to the word 'long', gained an ending that signifies amplification and intensification, so like how 'lengthen' means to increase in length, 'lencten' would have referred to the increased length of days as Spring progresses. See

Simply because a suffix belongs to the broader category of "adjectival suffix" does not mean that all of those suffixes will function the same; though of course this is also the case with any type of suffix, not just for adjectival ones. The word, 'silken' therefore does not mean the same thing as, 'silky', the former referring to something made of silk, and the latter referring to reminiscence of the quality of silk, and might as well be 'silkesque' or 'silkish', which you can see more on here: the '-esque' suffix .  There are a great many of these adjectival '-en' suffixes that are used to denote the idea of: "composed of", which sometimes appears as just an '-n' such as in 'silvern' or 'lethern'. Due to the relative importance of being able to differentiate between the meanings of, say, 'ashen' and 'ashy', 'woolen' and 'wooly', or 'earthen' and 'ear

Frustratingly, the plural of 'kid' is 'kids', while the plural of 'child' is 'children', and the plural of 'man' is 'men' which you can see more about here:  'man' and remnants of English gender . The '-en' suffix is used to form the plural of certain nouns such as 'children', and 'oxen', but even in Old English when this was more prevalent, there were other ways that people created plural forms, such as changing the vowel used in some strong nouns like 'man', or by using an '-as' suffix which eventually turned into the modern, '-s' suffix (more on that below). The '-en' pluralizing suffix came about in Middle English from an earlier version, '-an'. Functions of S

The derivatives of the word 'wide', by chance, take on forms that are systematic but quite rare in in English, such as the nominal '-th' suffix in 'width', which you can see more of in the link below. Not only that, but it also takes an '-(e)n' suffix, as in 'widen' which turns this term into a verb. More specifically, the '-en' suffix is used to transform adjectives into verbs that demonstrate development or amplification. This ending is also employed in order to make a verb from a noun, such as 'strengthen' that derives from 'strength' and not the adjectival form 'strong', though also not the etymologically related noun, 'string' which referred to loading a bow with an arrow. Unlike the other '-en' suffixes, this comes from the Old English '-nian' that developed over time; in fact, the verb 'to man' in Old English was 'mannian' from 'mann', but it no longer uses

While it is true that there are many ways in which '-en' is used, often the examples are few, and ever dwindling. Meanwhile, perhaps the most common occasion to see the suffix '-en' in English is when it forms the past participle of strong verbs, which you can learn more about here: Strong Verbs . Most of the English's surviving strong verbs, which is to say: verbs that change tense by altering the middle instead of adding common suffixes like, '-ed'—which attaches to weak verbs—come from Old English. Some strong verbs, such as 'take', with the participial form 'taken', or adjectives like 'spoken', derive from this ending. This is not the case for all strong verbs though, as many have a separate participial form, such as 'sing' and 'sung'. Interestingly, the '-ed' attached to weak verbs also comes from Old English, but is now by far the most popular. Check out the yesterday's post on this versatile suffix:

Following yesterday's post, to which there is a link down below, there are even more ways that '-en' functions as an inflectional suffix for nouns, meaning that with the addition of this suffix, a noun—in this case—remains a noun. In this way, '-en' works to form feminine nouns; as English doesn't have gender and such terms are dated or optional, these only exist for a few terms such as 'vixen', which is a female fox in addition to the later sense for the word as "a spiteful woman". Moreover, '-en' is used to create abstract nouns like 'burden'. There is no word, 'burd' now, but 'burden' does come from the word, 'bear', which you can see more about here:  Born and Borne . Yesterday's post

This is the first in a series on the -en suffix to celebrate the 800th post. Make sure to keep up over the next week for the rest. The majority of suffixes only have one meaning when attached to words, although there are certainly exceptions, such as '-s' ( Functions of -s ). '-en' is another case which can be added for a number of different effects, though some are only for certain words. One of these uses is to create diminutives of nouns such as 'chicken', and 'maiden', dating back to Old English. In the case of 'chicken', this is not to say the word is a diminutive of 'chick', as this may appear linguistically at first, though of course not logically. Instead, this term comes from the Old English 'cīcen, cȳcen', and is related to the Dutch, 'kieken', and the German, 'Küchlein' which both have diminutive suffixes of their own, and probably comes from the Old English, 'cocc', meaning 'cock, rooster&

English orthography—and worse yet: Massachusetts' cities—is spelt in a way that is neither logical, consistent, nor in line even with pronunciation. The district now absorbed into London, 'Greenwich' is certainly no exception to this, but there is something to be said for the continuation of English's rich spelling-history. The area, once written as 'Gronewic' and 'Grenewic' in the 10th century, is named for it being a green 'vicus' which in Latin was a villa. What this provides people that would not be gotten through /gɹεnɪtʃ/ or 'grenich' approximately is that the area was notably green, old, and borrows from a Latin word. If you have your own thoughts on English spelling, comment below. See more on English spelling . 

Great Britain is called 'great' not because of its wonderfulness, but because of its size. Being only 1/2,093 the area of the earth, it might seem odd to say this. In fact, Great Britain is only great in comparison to Brittany, a small region in the northwest of France whose inhabitants still speak a Celtic language spoken since Celts fled invading Anglo-Saxons, and was once part of the Angevin empire along with parts of the modern United Kingdom. There are other areas as well, like Ireland, not included in the label, Great Britain, and so the term often used to mean either England or the UK means neither. See more on Celtic languages

Someone who bakes is a 'baker' and someone who runs is 'runner'. There are a class of words, however, for which the '-er' suffix appears as '-ster', as in someone who is in a gang is not a 'ganger' but a 'gangster', and someone who writes songs is a 'songster'. For this reason, someone can at the same time be a 'whippersnapper' and a 'youngster'. This suffix is only added to words due to convention at this point in time, but it was systematic in Middle, and Old English; '-estre' was the feminine form of the suffix demonstrating agency. As such, and as mentioned before, one who bakes is a 'baker' but the fairly common surname, 'Baxter' or 'Backster' comes from this feminine form, 'backster', and would indicate that there was likely a female baker in that person's family. For more on the '-er' suffix, see the post on  comparative adjectives . 

In English, a few words beginning with 'al-' notably come from Arabic, in which this is the definite article. 'Alcohol', for example means literally 'the kohl'. Spanish has far more Arabic-influence dating back to Moorish occupation. There are hundreds of Spanish words which are easily identifiable as having come from Arabic, usually through the 'al-', though not always as in the case of the pretty informal, 'fulano' meaning 'so-and-so'. Many other Arabic words found in Spanish are formal and also used for governmental positions and laws, similar to many French loan-words in English, which you can see more about below. Funnily enough, a Spanish word for 'gibberish', 'algarabía' comes from the Arabic, "al-'arabiya" which means 'Arabic'. Those of you familiar with Spanish might think from this information that the singular masculine definite article, 'el' comes from the Arabic article, but in

For someone speaking about American English vowels being either long or short, while most people can understand this what is intended, it is not accurate. Some languages like Old English, Latin, or Finnish do have comparatively short and long vowels, allowing for poetic meter to be measured in the total the amount of time it takes to say a line, with long vowels taking twice as long to utter. Some, but very few, languages have three phonemically separate lengths, such as Mixe spoken in Mexico. What have American English does have that's often confused with length is stress, which is used in a similar manner to length in terms of poetry, but does not relate to comparative amounts of time to say each syllable; this is almost always what someone will mean talking about long and short sounds in American English, though in some other dialects of English length does factor in phonetically. Sometimes the position of certain allophones such as the t in /kæt/ 'cat' will make the vow

To be called "as cute as a button" would be certainly a compliment for most, regardless if either interlocutor does not indeed liken the listener to a button. There are a number of explanations one could find about why buttons of all things were selected: they're little and non-threatening; the word refers instead to flowers buddin'; but irrespective of the truth these all miss the underlying, and slightly dated insult within the phrase, which is also sometimes found as "as cute as a bug's ear". The word 'cute' may refer to someone's attractiveness, or to the feeling evoked by babies, animals, or things of that sort, but it started off meaning 'cleverness', and only later on from this the term was applied to general qualities besides being witty that someone might find attractive. This word comes from 'acute', which in the Latin, 'acutus' meant 'sharp' in the same way that 'sharp' means 'smart'

Often in the etymologies found in English dictionaries or anywhere else, the roots may end with Latin, or "of Germanic origins" which often accompanies words from Old English. In other languages whose vocabularies are composed more uniformly from one linguistic predecessor, with some relatively few loan-words compared to English, this is tends not to be especially specific. In German, which has a far more Germanic vocabulary than English does, for words like 'Adler' meaning 'eagle' people need to delve a little deeper to learn anything. The word itself, which is also a fairly common last-name, is from Middle High German. 'Aar' which is a more poetic word for 'eagle' was used before this but soon it took on a meaning of "bird of prey" especially used in falconry. The word 'Adler' comes from 'edel' meaning, 'noble' combined with 'Aar'. This phrase was used to distinguish eagles from other hawks. Not al

Generally when people say, 'Latin' referring to the language, the variety spoken in the Classical period is being alluded to. Nevertheless, there are many forms of Latin, including Archaic Latin, Classical Latin, Ecclesiastical Latin, and Medieval Latin, which was used largely either by those in the Roman Empire, or educated people often in the clergy during the European Dark Ages. Still, this is not when Latin ended. New Latin, used from the 14th to the end of the 19th century was used for scholarly and especially scientific purposes as a European lingua franca for the educated. Writers such as Newton used this, and we get a number of English words today from this form of Latin, such as 'bronchus' referring to the divisions of the trachea.   For more on language-variations, see these links Linguistics and colonialism High and Low German

Through the first millennium BCE, Celtic languages were some of the most widely spoken throughout Europe from the Iberian Peninsula to Asia Minor. As time went on, with the movement of the Romans, Germanic tribes, and groups from the east, Celtic languages faded out of use. Now, there are only six Celtic languages, two of which were dead and only brought back after various revitalization efforts: Manx and Cornish, the others being Scots and Irish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton. The only modernly spoken Celtic language spoken natively outside of the British Isles is Breton spoken in Brittany. Unfortunately, this is not an official language of France, and most of the speakers who use it are over sixty-five. In fact, Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered. See more on lost languages here.

It is not uncommon to have one word have multiple meanings, however semantically unrelated they may seem. The word 'pupil' in English means both a student, and is also the name for a part of the eye. In Latin, the term for a student came from a word meaning 'child' ('boy' or 'girl' depending on the gender'), 'pupus' which evolved into the Old French and Middle English 'pupille' meaning 'orphan'. The feminine form of this word, 'pupa' meant 'girl but it also meant 'little doll'. This gave rise to the meaning of the part of an eye so called for miniature reflection that is faintly visible. For another word with separate two distinct meanings, see this.

It may seem odd to drive on a parkway and park on a driveway, but there is some reason to this. 'Parkways' were called such because long highways were and still are built with greenery along the side. In the 18th century, 'parking' meant planting trees and other such things, so the notion of a park being as different from the act of 'parking', now referring to making a car or any other moving object stationery, would only come around a while later, leading to the confusion of not parking in a parkway. The idea of parking on a driveway, on the other hand, made would also not have been sensible to the early drivers either. The first people to buy cars were usually wealthy and had sizable estates and had long driveways, the likes of which still exist in more rural areas. These led up to houses or barns where the cars could be parked, but without needing to park in the driveway. When more cars were affordable and the suburbs sprang up, driveways got shorter and shor

If you were to describe (naturally) immobile paper, would it be 'stationary  stationery' or 'stationary stationery'? The answer is the latter option, but those two spellings are often confused due to the similar spelling and nearly identical pronunciation. In fact both words are derivatives of the word 'station' which is from the Latin 'stare' meaning ‘to stand’. As a point of fact this is not where the English, 'stare' is derived from though. 'Station' in Middle English denoted physical position, but also especially social position and in religious contexts ‘a holy place of pilgrimage (visited as one of a succession)’. 'Stationary' refers to the physical location, but so does 'stationery'. A 'stationer' was the owner of a store that did move around on a cart or a tent or some other kind of booth, especially denoting the seller of books which led to the meaning of 'stationery' as papers.

In a quite similar manner to the history of 'pagan' which you can see more about here , 'heathen' did not always have pejorative connotations. While now the word is only used to discuss certain religious groups, especially those other than Abrahamic religions and in particular Christianity, its origins with the Old English, 'hǣthen' meant someone who inhabited the rural country. The word 'heath' used to describe a bush or open, uncultivated land, comes from this same root. Likewise, the plant,'heather' appears in Old English place-names as 'hadre' but was mostly used in Scots. In the 18th century the spelling and pronunciation were changed to associate with 'heath'. For more on religion-based swearing, see the link.

Many countries are known by other drastically different names in other languages for a number of reasons, usually due to colonialism. For more examples see the links below. Switzerland is no exception. For official purposes, the country is often referred to as Helvetia, and is abbreviated CH, which is seen on such items as license-plates. This stands for Confoederatio Helvetica, which is not only where the name for the font, helvetica, comes from, but also derives from the name given to the region by the Romans. Opposite to this, the French, German, and Italian names are all, 'Suisse', 'Schweiz', and 'Svizzera' respectively, much like the English. Therefore, unlike other place-names with imposed historically Latin-versions, Switzerland holds on to a great amount of influence from the Romans millennia ago, including some languages spoken in certain cantons that are quite similar to Latin spoken at the time. Name for Germany Name for Walloon, and W