Word Facts

If even proper nouns have cultural relevance, then they can become any type of other words. For instance, the town of Derby in England is home to an early horse race, started in 1780. Once this race became well-known enough, and because the city is small enough to not necessarily be confused with other activities, it began to be used not just as a denotation for other horse races—though this is also true such as in the famous Kentucky Derby—but for any other type of competitive sport, even though it now only has historical relation to the city most of the time. Check out the new video released today:  https://youtu.be/PKXEg15Etk0

A lot of places are named for their directions, but this only works when the direction are relative. For instance, the East Indies and the West Indies are named so for their relation relative to India as is fairly clear from the name, but a name like ' Austria ' which denotes the south, or its native German name ' Österreich ' meaning 'Eastern Empire' is all in relation to the other German states, though there is a (not particularly important) discrepancy here because it is indeed both south or east depending upon which German states are being selected. However, this gets even more thrown off considering The Philippines , which were named in Spanish first as Islas del Poniente (Islands of the West) not because much is very close in that direction except a very large ocean, but because it was sailed to from Spain first from the West, even though it is much closer to Spain from the East. Ultimately, because the Earth is round, directional names like this don't

Chances are, most people don't know the name for a louse-egg, even though this is part of a phrase many might use daily. 'Nitpicking' is the process of being scrupulous about unimportant details, but very few people would know that a 'nit' is a louse-egg, and ridding oneself of these very tiny things—historically by hand—is 'nit-picking'. This just goes to show the way in which compounds like these—even though they have a very sensible summative meaning unlike ' butter-fly '—exist on their own, and not necessarily by mentally combining the elements.

'The' in the names of countries does happen sometimes, but it is usually purposeful. In the case of 'The Netherlands', it is named so because of the flat area, especially compared to the German highlands, even though in German the name is simply 'Niederlande' without the article before. With Ukraine, often said as 'the Ukraine' in English, this is because the name derives from the meaning of 'borderland' and so while 'the Ukraine' has never been official, it caught on and stuck. In the case of the Philippines, there is less of a reason now, but originally the Spanish name was Las Islas Filipinas, and so while now no name for the nation includes overt reference to the islands, there is a sort of covert reference.

It's not such a bad thing to be humbled generally, but 'eating humble pie' used to actually refer to food. The 'humble' in question came from an earlier 'numbles' or sometimes 'umbles' which denoted the entrails of a deer. These would be given out to the lowest status people to eat, so while for a wealthy or noble person to eat numbles pie would be a humbling experience, this word was only used in the phrase as it is today because of similar sounds and later misunderstanding completely. There will be more on this tomorrow. Check out recent Patreon post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18918274

Though not always the case, it is common that English counties will just be named for their county towns' names. Often this is with adding the suffix '-shire', as with 'Oxford' to 'Oxfordshire', or 'Worcester' to 'Worcestershire'. There are exceptions, both to the suffixes and to the names totally, but in a few cases the county may still end in '-shire' but the county town is unrelated. Usually this is because of the historical county town no longer holding power, but in the case of 'Shropshire', there is not nor has there ever been a 'Shrop'. The demonym  is 'Salopian' and the county town is 'Shrewsbury', but initially in Old English the county was 'Scrobbesbyrigscīr'; note that 'sc' in Old English is [ʃk] (like SHk). While 'Salop' comes from the Norman interpretation of this name too, 'Scrobbe'—which was probably a personal name—only became 'Shrews(bury)' throug

In the US and Canada, many of the place names either come from native words, are named after places in the Old World , or were named as a description of the land; in at least one case however, it may be all of those. The name for the French colonies in North America (mostly modern-day Quebec and some surrounding areas) was called 'Acadia' ('Acadie'). It is not totally certain where this comes from though. Likely, this comes from the ancient Greek city Arkadía (Ἀρκαδία) described in pastoral poetry. However, it is also not unlikely that the word comes from the native Mi'kmaq word 'akadie' meaning 'fertile land'. In situations like this, one could have reinforced the other, depending upon the initial intentions, but no matter what, this is also where the word 'Cajun' comes from, as the Louisianan French mostly migrated from Canadian colonies, but kept the name.

The number of adjectival or nominal suffixes may sometimes feel gratuitous; in theory it would only be necessary to have one or two. However, unlike with ‘ depth’ and the newer ‘deepness’ , not all of these are so flexible or so random. For instance, ‘sulfurous’ and ‘sulfuric’ both mean, broadly speaking, ‘of sulfur’, yet these two are not totally interchangeable. In the names of chemicals, ‘-ic’ denotes a higher valence for the element; that is to say it denotes how easily it can combine with other particles. This is true of lots of other elements as well, where ‘-ous’ is used for both general use and for denoting lower valence, but ‘-ic’ is for a specific type.

Suffixes can have lots of different meanings, but due to English's history, sometimes they can seem quite random. For instance, '-ic' is a productive adjectival suffix that can be added to nouns like 'artist' and 'artistic', or 'sulfur' to 'sulfuric' (more on this tomorrow). In the case of 'rust' and 'rustic' however, there isn't a relation. 'Rust' comes from a word meaning 'red' and is shared with many other words that relate to clay-like dirt, including ' rubric ', but 'rustic' does not. However, while 'rust' was from a Germanic root, 'rustic' comes from the Latin meaning 'countryside', related to 'rural'. It is possibly that these words share a very old derivation, but either way, the appearance in English is only coincidental now.

People are very good at finding patterns and other relations such that any overlapping connotation an idea has can be tacked onto the relevant word. Like how 'point' can denote a specific position, ideologically or physically and geographically, but originally had the meaning of something that tapers sharply, 'pick' came from 'prick'. Indeed, both 'point' and 'pick' mean 'something being pointed to' or 'something being pricked' (i.e. gestured at by poking ). This sort of semantic transfer will naturally happen over time in any language. Check out recent Patreon post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18918274

There are many times when a commonly used word will lead to the creation of other words. For instance, ' alcoholic ' lead to the combining form '-aholic' which relates to any type of addiction, such as commonly 'workaholic', but this can also be done with any other noun. That is slightly informal, but that informality is not always the case. In linguistics, the combining form '-lect' from 'dialect' can be tacked onto other words in order to indicate that it relates to anything dialectal. For instance, 'basilect' is the academic term for the least prestigious (or at least little-prestigious) dialect for a given language.

Sometimes, a pop-culture reference will make its way into common parlance. With the word 'catch 22'—which grammatically is not two words when used as such—can refer to a paradoxical situation or logical fallacies depending upon the idea at hand. It comes from the title of a 1961 book in which the main character pretends to be insane to avoid combat, but his actions are taken to prove his sanity. However, it is possible that many of the people who would use this phrase have not read the book, as now the reference is no longer just a reference, and can exist in its own right.

Now, a pejorative for French people, though fairly harmless now, is 'froggie'. It is said to have come from the common trope of French peasants eating frogs, but this was not the first use of the pejorative 'froggie' in English's history. Earlier than this, it was used to refer to the Dutch , as they were caricatured as swamp-dwellers; this changed after the Anglo-Dutch Wars, after which point France became Britain's main enemy, rather than the Dutch. Check out recent Patreon post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18918274

Some countries end up with lots of different names across other languages, including Germany and Scotland. However, with the former case, this is only because the names of different historical tribes ended up being used to describe the whole country, but the situation with Scotland is more complicated. It can and has been called 'Scotland', 'Pictland', 'Caledonia' and 'Alba': all in English. Some of these names, particularly 'Pictland' and 'Scotland' were given based off of the inhabitants, but also the other two were exonyms given by the Romans. Even if this weren't the case alone, Scotland has had many waves of inhabitants, and so many names.

English is a Germanic language , but this doesn't mean that all words will have a cognates with other Germanic languages; even words of Germanic origin may not share the relation. For instance, 'walk' is a word with Germanic roots, but in any other Germanic language the translation doesn't even sound similar. In German and Yiddish the word is 'spazieren', in West Frisian 'rinne' (related to 'run') and in just about all of them, a word with the same root as 'go' can be used in relation to walking in a way that is uncommon in English. This is because 'wealcan'—the root word from Old English—originally meant 'to roll' and sometimes 'to wander'. Technically therefore it is of Germanic origin, but it this does not mean that there is a 1-1 correspondence with translations in Germanic languages. Check out recent Patreon post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18918274

Ever wonder why it can be so easy to memorize favorite song lyrics compared to straight speech? Some of this is probably from the frequency with which people listen to music, but as mentioned yesterday , abbreviations as mnemonics are not simply more to remember and can be helpful. Like with initialisms, it is easier to remember something in a pattern in part because it is easier to see when something is missing from the pattern. This is true of stories as well. Stories today only rhyme usually when they are written for children, but historically epic poems were dominant because oral histories were best, and very often, conveyed lyrically to help with memory, as a way to both break up text into small units and to create a metrical and or musical pattern. In school these methods may also be employed to differentiate important speech from other forms of talking. Check out the Patreon post, out today: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18918274

Mnemonics can take lots of forms, but these usually verbal cues—which help with memory—are also just another thing to remember. These can range from simple initialisms and acronyms [1] or be more complicated rhymes and even full lyrics, but these are all easier to memorize than straight speech, and this latter category will be looked at. What all of these do though, even if it may be more to remember, is to provide a sort of rhythm, and moreover provides a way to check if one of the elements of any given initialism is forgotten. After all, these are treated grammatically as distinct words, independent of their wholistic meaning . Indeed, the majority of these initialisms are three letters, even when they shouldn't be, like with DoE (Department of Education), as three is better than two for creating a distinct and memorable pattern.

English and West Frisian are in the same language family as t hey are the most similar languages to each other , but Old English would have been a lot more similar. Moreover, around 60% of English's vocabulary is Romantic in origin , and yet English is not considered to have descended from Romance languages. This is somewhat of a quirk of the definition for language families as languages are not considered to be part of the same language family if one is the origin but no longer is spoken. Moreover, the grammar and syntax is far more important for determining the language family than vocabulary.

It is because of Latin participles  that there is a 't' in 'commit' but an 's' in 'mission ', even though they come from the same word. In Latin, it was common that if the stem of a verb ended in a 't' that the participial for would have an 's' there instead. There is no particular reason that this happened, but it effects many languages now. For instance, in English, 'compromise' is a noun and also a verb, and stressed the same way too . In German though, 'Kompromiss' is only the noun, and the verbal form is 'kompromittieren', and indeed comes from this same Latin pattern Check out the newest Word Theory, only through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/21778966

Received Pronunciation, or RP, is considered a standard way of speaking in Britain, and yet it doesn’t have the same characteristics as many other standard dialects. Namely, it isn’t a dialect; RP only refers to the accent but has no actual relation to grammar or lexicon, so theoretically someone could speak RP but use the grammar and vocabulary or a totally different region or even country. Also, even though it has standard status, it is spoken by a small percentage—about 3-5%—of the population of the UK. This is not so surprising, but what is odder is that being a speaker of Standard British English or Southern British English doesn’t necessarily include speaking in RP, even though it is largely taken to be the case that RP would include being a speaker of Standard British English. Check out the newest Word Theory, only through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/21778966

There are words invented specifically to not have a real meaning, called ghost-words , but some natural words are hard to define. 'Oh', for instance, is an exclamation used to show just about any emotion, including anger, surprise, and joy. Moreover, it is a discourse marker , used to indicate meaning that may relate more to the context of the conversation than to the conversation itself. In this way, 'oh' doesn't really have any definable meaning, and relies solely on the context to imprint meaning onto it. Check out the newest Word Theory, only through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/21778966

Over the last century, the term 'Israel' has gained a new meaning, as it refers to the modern nationstate. Before this, it usually denoted 'the Jewish people' or would refer to the ancient kingdom. However, to clear up this newfound confusion, the term 'Jewry', which has existed for hundreds of years, can be and often is used. Indeed, after the land was set aside in the 1920's, the usage of the term 'Jewry' soared, and it clears up the confusion that the term 'Israel' can cause. This can be seen in the graph below. Check out the newest Word Theory, only through Patreon

There are languages with over a dozen genders, languages with 4 or more voices, with clicks, with lots of cases, or with tones, but in general these are rarer than the alternative. Of course, some languages are simpler than others and still complex, but it is usually the case that these features don't exist or indeed fall out of fashion because—by and large—people don't mind phrases that are just as meaningful yet slightly longer, or indeed may even lose some nuance. Even this is true of pronunciation; it is possible that a language could be tonal and have clicks and every other distinguishable sound possible, but while this language would be very quick to articulate, it would be very arduous to learn.

Looking at the history of spelling in English, there is a tendency for spelling to be less consistent in some ways over time. This happens especially when it is difficult to draw certain distinctions, either concerning affixes or other sounds that would otherwise follow a pattern. This is the case with 'embassy' but the related 'ambassador'. Historically the word was written 'ambassy' but as this word changed, 'ambassador' did not change with it. However, even if they do represent different sounds (and this is not necessarily the case) the two do sound very similar before an [m].

Today there are only two main branches of Germanic languages, West Germanic and North Germanic, but there used to also be East Germanic languages. Unfortunately for scholars, the only one of which written samples are found is Gothic. Certainly there were other Germanic languages known to be spoken in Estonia and parts of Russia, but these were all usually German or Yiddish speaking immigrants. There were theoretically dozens of identified tribed who could have used different East Germanic languages. In this way, while the concept of "write or die" exists now in academia, this same principle applies to languages.

Over time, the meaning of words often reverses. These contranyms like 'liberal' and 'peruse ' often goes unnoticed. 'Baron' is another of these terms. It originally referred to a type of lord in British nobility, but the term referred to the lowest order. Now, it doesn't refer to land-owning nobility, but instead a very important person in business. Not only has the connotation moved away from nobility, but a baron nowadays is by no means thought of as the lowest order in business, and is usually assigned to quite successful, influential people.

The values of numbers are absolute, but the scales and terminology are not always the same. Largely this is cultural, and is part of the reason that the day, or even geometric circles are divided the way they are. Even with larger numbers there are two scales: the long and short scales. These use a base a base-ten system, so are roughly similar, but the short scale—the more common of the two—uses powers of one thousand (i.e. a 'billion' is a thousand millions) whereas the long scale uses powers of a million. In this scale a 'milliard' is a thousand millions, and a 'billion' is a million millions, so it increases with 'million', 'milliard', 'billion', billiard' etc.  This is no longer popular in English, but some languages like German use this system.

Even though English adopts so many words as easily as it does, no language tends to adopt the morphology with it. For all the words with Latin plurals, like 'flagella' to 'flagella', there are many more words that have become anglicized. However, there are a few for which neither is quite true, such as 'candelabra'. The traditional singular is 'candelabrum' with 'candelabra' as the plural, but in practice it is often singular, with 'candelabras' as the plural. This is now the more common usage, with it now becoming standard. This is true of other words like 'bacterium' and 'datum' , but not necessarily to the same extent.

It is argued that there are no irreligious words that have come to English directly from Hebrew. This is because of geographic distance, but also because for most of Hebrew's history, nothing that could be called English today existed. These factors combined mean that any few words there are usually went through languages like Greek first. Interestingly, neither word for 'Hebrew' in Old French—the language from which the English word was directly loaned—or the original Hebrew '‘iḇrî' had the [h]; most French words don't allow this anyway, but 'Ebreu' wasn't even spelt with one. Nevertheless, both the late Greek and modern English words, relevantly, do. There isn't a specific reason for this—there never really would be—but it could just have been a switch from a glottal stop to an [h], which isn't historically uncommon.

It isn't uncommon for words to come from names like ' john ' or ' dolly ', but usually these have to be very general. A few specific words, however, come from very particular source, such as 'chauvinistic'. This word, describing an extreme, blind sort of patriotism, as characterized by Nicolas Chauvin, a Napoleonic veteran, in the play 'Cocarde Tricolore' (1831) by the Cogniard brothers.