831: Pig Latin and 'ixnay' Mar 18, 2017

Pig Latin is fun way to transform English words by taking any initial consonant or consonant cluster in a word, putting it at the end, and adding 'ay' such that 'Pig Latin' would be "igpay atinlay". The exclamation 'ixnay' with a preposition means stop, such as 'ixnay on the yelling'. 'Ixnay' became popular slang in the 1930's from Pig Latinizing 'nix', which was used for about 200 years prior to that. 'Nix' itself comes from the German noun, 'nichts' meaning, 'nothing', and could be thought of as the informal synonym for 'naught'. This is perhaps the only instance of a term in Pig Latin becoming part of an English vernacular, and can sometimes signal that there will be other words in Pig Latin that would not be otherwise. As such, and to keep with the example from before, nobody would say, 'stop ellingyay' for 'stop yelling' but could say, 'ixnay on the ellingyay'.

For more on fun ways to rearrange words, see this on anagrams.