1448: nitpicking: What's a 'nit'? Nov 28, 2018

-
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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Important Announcement: Blogspot Access Will Close

-
There will be no additional new content hosted on this blogspot account, and in 4 weeks from now (30th of September 2020), the blogspot account will no longer be publically available. If you are subscribed via email, please visit WordFacts.Org and subscribe via email there; there is a link to do so on the bottom of every page, so you will only need to scroll all the way down on any page you are on (see video below if needed). Apologies for the inconvenience, but the blog, video, and commercial services are now being moved specifically to WordFacts.Org 
Continue »

2087: Functions of Diacritics in Hebrew Sep 1, 2020

-
  Hebrew uses an abjad rather than an alphabet, meaning the vowels are not written. There are diacritics (known as nikudos) written above (e.g פֿ / פ), below, or inside the letters (e.g. תּ / ת). Some of these will indicate vowels, but other functions exist as well, including for cantillation and changing the nature of consonants, as with the examples before, depending on tradition. Because they can be written in multiple places and have different functions—only included later in history—in certain texts multiple per letter will be used. In the special case of the 10 commandments , the word תִּֿרְצָֽח (“you will murder”) has 3 diacritics on the first letter in some versions, because the dot inside תִּֿ as well as the line above function the same but are used in different traditions; merely תִּ is more traditional here though because line known as 'rafe' is no longer used for Hebrew and so is just less practical. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts
Continue »

464: Pilliwinks Mar 16, 2016

-
Not just in English, but in every single other language, certain sounds and combinations thereof will almost certainly have some sort of connection to their meanings, the way that it is easy to guess which of these two teachers mean one in Jane Eyre: Miss Temple or Miss Scatchard. It may then come to a surprise to hear that ‘pilliwinks', a word that sounds childish, is a brutal torture devise found in Scotland, used for squeezing fingers between ever-compressing bars of metal.
Continue »