Word Facts

Along with the actually redundant letters , Hebrew has a few—like in English—which become redundant in certain contexts. For instance, כ, which also appears as ך at the ends of word can be just a plain [k]. However, it appears a [x]—like the Scottish 'loch'—after any vowel. In this way, the sound is not entirely redundant, but there are two other letters that represent those sounds respectively and exclusively, namely ק and ח . This is not unlike the situation with C, which could be replaced by either S or K [1] in most situations, but also can be affected, sort of, morphologically, such as 'fanatiC' to 'fanatiCism'. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

As with ט and ת, there are some ways that Hebrew writing has become somewhat obsolete. In another case, though less extreme, the letter צ (pronounced 'ts', like the German 'z') used to be emphatic, such that it was aspirated differently (obstructed) before certain other sounds (more details here ), such that it would be pronounced like an S, sort of, namely [s^ʕ]. However, there are already two letters that represent [s] without such obstruance, that is, ס and ש. Unlike with ט and ת for [t] however, this differentiation still exists, just without any pharyngealization (think: vocal fry ) found in ancient Hebrew. More on the transformation of Hebrew letters tomorrow.

Hebrew orthography has 3 letters that represent silence , sort of, as well as two ways to represent [t], and two ways to represent [s]. However, this was not always so redundant. Of the two ways to represent the sound [t] in Modern Hebrew ט and ת , both have changed over time, but ט has changed more minimally. This letter used to be emphatic, meaning the air was immediately blocked after making the sound. This feature was lost to time however, due to influences from Indo-European languages, just like with Maltese. More on this tomorrow Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

In English, the existence of 'pork' reveals a bit about history and culture, and in its own way the same is true for the Chinese 肉 (ròu) meaning 'meat' or 'flesh'. In China, the most popular meat, by far, is pork, so much so that it is generally taken that when not specified 肉 simply means 'pork'. Other elements are necessary to express other words 牛肉 (niú ròu) is 'beef' and 桃肉 (Táo ròu) is something like 'peach pulp'. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

There is a myth that the phrase "rule of thumb" originates from a law concerning the width of stick one could beat his wife with. However, there is no evidence for any such law existing, and indeed, the first connection to a court—via unsubstantiated personal comments from a judge—follows the first recorded use of the phrase as we still use it today by about a century. In that quote, it is also contrasted with "square and rule", which is definitely just a term relating to precise measurements. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

The military has given English—just as in many other languages—a lot of terminology, but also a lot of colloquialisms. Both 'rough-and-tumble' and 'rough-and-ready' are originally from the military, though it may be more fair to say that the latter was a general term for a style of free-fighting. Read more about 'rough' here . Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

One of Nat King Cole’s most famous songs “Answer Me, Oh My Love”, was originally a German one, “Mütterlein”; still, this may not be the most significant way it changed. When the song was written again in English in 1953, it was called “Answer Me, Lord Above”. Originally aired in the UK—not covered by Nat King Cole until the next year—the song was banned from the BBC for containing lyrics considered too religious. You can still hear some traces of the religious language in Cole’s 1954 cover. For an example of the subtle change, see the end of this post at WordFacts.org . Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Most people would probably want to see a man look rugged as opposed to ragged, or otherwise rough, but almost indubitably those terms are all related somewhere down the line. Although these words, and others, including just 'rug' and 'rag' meaning 'unkempt' in some sense or another all have old Germanic roots, and cognates in languages like Norwegian and Scotts, they have also changed a great deal over time; they relate to one's character, visage, and even decor (rug originally meant anything woolen and shaggy) but none have totally strayed from the root. If there's another term that could belong here, write it in a comment. You can also support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

There is a myth among some that the word 'sheriff' either originates from or is somehow otherwise related to 'sharif', as in a Muslim ruler or magistrate. This is not true. Although the meanings are similar enough in some ways, especially including the Scottish use of the word as 'judge', it actually dates back to Old English. Indeed, the word 'scīrgerēfa' is also related to the modern 'shire', from the meaning of 'area of care, concern', and also 'reeve', as in a Medieval local official. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Made famous by 'Fiddler on the Roof", there is some confusion about the meaning of 'Yente'. Some people think this is matchmaker—this was only her job in the story—but what simply started as a surname has indeed morphed into a word in English, in some communities, meaning 'gossip'. However, the name itself actually originated as a variant of 'Yentl' (יענטל‎) from Italian meaning literally ' gentile '. To be clear, this is not to say it meant 'non-Jew', but instead 'noble'. Support Word Facts on Patreon.com/wordfacts

If you’ve ever dreaded your morning alarm, you probably didn’t dread it as much as those who created the word incidentally. The word comes originally as an exclamation, initially from Italian ‘allarme’ and then eventually brought to English from “all’ arme” meaning “to arms” used in the military (and not “all arm!“ though that is not so different). It is not related to ‘alert', from “à l’erte” though the two are connected insofar as they are both compounds, this one meaning “to the watchtower”. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordacts

In some sense, the first vaccine invented was to treat smallpox, but it was not made with strains of 'smallpox' itself. When it was discovered that once someone contracted cowpox virus, he would be immune to smallpox. The word 'vaccine' still reflects that, coming from the Latin 'vacca' meaning 'cow', though of course this is now applied to a vaccine for any illness. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

The term 'impeachment' has come up a fair amount in the last few weeks. This will not clarify the process itself, but it's interesting nevertheless to look into where it came from. The word 'impeach' has a 'im-' prefix, which is just how the negating prefix 'in-' changes before a b/p/m , however there is no 'peachment' (though there is an unrelated 'peach' fruit). The reason for this is the same as for 'impede', becasue they come from the same root: the Latin 'ped' meaning 'foot', basically resulting in 'to stop', or more literally in the Latin 'impedīre', 'to ensnare' (think of bear-traps). An earlier, though, false etymology assumed the word to originate from 'impetere' (attack), and was actually a specific kind of Roman punishment of throwing someone in the water while in a sacl, but this is not the root. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

The name 'Persia' was given by the Greeks, and later the Romans, based off of one region of Cyrus the Great's empire, because all of the people whom the Greeks initially engaged diplomatically were from the region of Pars. This would have been outdated though, even for them, since these people had taken over other kingdoms, and the Iranians then called the area Iranishar. Before this still, the Greeks used words which would have meant 'median', as a reference to its location between Europe and East Asia. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Many places are named for a smaller region, often administrative region, such as 'Holland' for 'the Netherlands', or less officially the "Bonn–", "Weimar–", and contemporary "Berlin Republic" for 'Germany'. This tradition is cultural, but not completely uncommon across the world, but this tradition in Europe it is often attributed to the Romans, who named other places for the capital region, including the name of the Roman Empire itself, centered in Rome of course. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Although the Germans did eventually have Pacific colonies, because they arrived there so much later than the Spanish, they had several different names for the Pacific Ocean . The earliest name in the early 16th century was a calque of the Spanish "Mar Pacifico" resulting in "das friedliche Meer" (The Peaceful Sea). Later on, in the 19th century, the name was changed to "das Stilles Meer" based off the Latin "Mare Pacificum", again, a calque, but with the meaning of "Silent Sea" . Only later in the 19th century did the name even contain the word 'Ozean' (ocean), and later still the name "die Pazifischer Ozean" become adopted, based off of the English name. "Stiller Ozean" is also still sometimes used as well. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Cyrillic cursive, known in Russian as 'rukopísny shrift' (рукопи́сный шрифт) is simply the handwritten form of the Cyrillic alphabet, designed to make writing faster and more fluid, as with any handwritten writing system. However, a noted problem is that the letters и, л, м, ш, щ, ы can all be made entirely or partly using an element that looks the same as a Greek ι, in certain combinations. This means certain words are completely ambiguous without knowledge of the language, or other context. For instance, мщу (I avenge) лицу (face, in dative) are written completely the same way. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

The father of fictional languages in some ways, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote "The Etymologies" in the 1930's, though they were only published posthumously. In this, it is fairly disorganized collection of words in his Proto-Elvish, and then how they would have changed over time into the Elvish languages of Quenya, Noldorin and Ilkorin, which he features in Lord of the Rings. Unlike his professional work in mapping English etymologies, his etymologies were often changed, though he would never change the Elvish words themselves. Indeed, he even created various steps, inventing Old Nordin, and other attributes which would make this all work reasonably. You can find this in "The Lost Road and Other Writings". Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Tolkien was a philologists, and didn't just invent languages, but studied older forms of language, Still, he could not find a definitive etymology for 'walrus'; in fact, he came up with six. It is almost certainly Germanic, but could be anything from the Dutch 'walvis' meaning 'whale' (literally 'whale-fish) to possibly coming a root for 'horse', like the Old Norse 'hrosshvalr' ('horse whale'). There are many more ideas as well, like a compound from Dutch 'wal' (shore) and 'reus' (giant). Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Several berries have names which, while clearly containing the '-berry' combining form, cannot be parsed. 'Cran' from 'cranberry'  or 'rasp' (unrelated to breath) from 'raspberry' are not words on their own. However, this wasn't always the case for 'cran', sort of. The word originally comes from Low German 'Kraanbeere' where '-beere' is just 'berry', but 'Kraan' means, and is a cognate with 'crane', like the bird, though no one is totally sure why. Before this, in England they were called 'marshwort' or 'fenberries'. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

The word 'egret', itself refers to a type of heron, and likewise, the word comes from a French word for 'heron', 'aigrette'. 'Aigrette' in English is also a type of headdress. Anyway, French also has the word 'héron' for the type of bird as a whole, but this is of Germanic origin. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Considering that 'Constantinople' was the name of the city under the Greeks, and that it was renamed 'Istanbul' under the Ottoman Turks, you'd be forgiven for thinking the name is Turkish, but this isn't so. Read the rest at https://www.wordfacts.org/blog/istanbul-and-the-byzantines

You can now visit WordFacts.org , launched for the 5th anniversary of this page! The greater region around Paris in France is called 'Île de France' or literally "Island of France". However, no one is totally sure where this name comes from, and it's definitely not an island. It may be a reference to being between the Oise, Marne, and Seine, though it may also have been a reference to 'Île de la Cité' where the royal palace and cathedral are located. It is not uncommon to name a region after a smaller part of it. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

WordFacts.org is now live! After 5 years, 1,820 posts, and more than 30 videos, the new website WordFacts.org is now online. This consolidation of WF content solves the problem of using 4 different websites before, and moreover, the website has never-before possible features, including categorized posts, a direct links for questions and sponsors, and new fora generally. There are also plans for features for the 2000th post in under 6 months. Word Facts will still operate on Facebook for now. Please go visit the new website WordFacts.org and share the new site.

Many holidays, such as 'Veterans Day' or 'Fathers Day' have what sounds like possessive forms of the word, but often that spelling is not reflected with an apostrophe. Indeed, the Department of Veterans Affairs (again, no apostrophe) lists the spelling of "Veterans' Day" as incorrect. In the case of "Father's Day", there is most often, but not necessarily going to be an apostrophe for the singular use, though it is a holiday meant to focus on all fathers. Tomorrow there will be a special announcement for the 5th anniversary, so stay tuned . Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

The word 'ghetto' is certainly a charged one to several groups of people, but it is not certain where the it came from. It is definitely Italian originally, perhaps from the word 'getto' meaning 'foundry' because of where the first ghetto was established in Venice in 1516 to segregate the Jewish population. The other accepted idea is that it comes from 'borghetto' which is simply a diminutive form of 'borgo' (borough) i.e. meaning 'little borough'. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

As discussed before, the linguist Pāṇini was one of the earliest and certainly very influential. To give an idea of some of the work he did, though still very general, he formalized and solved many problems concerning generative morphology i.e. generating new words with different affixes, vowel changes, etc.. He also used ideas now belonging to metaphysics, that is to say he invented many ideas about features of spoken language that are not verbal in order to explain syntax and grammar. His structures were so thorough that the logic of his work has been likened to that of Turing machine, but this was 2,500 years ago. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

While 'linguistics' as a term is fairly new, it's been going on since at least the 4th century BCE, if not earlier. The most famous linguist at the time would almost certainly be Pāṇini, not to be confused with the food, who was an Indian philologist and grammarian. Indeed, many of the ideas that he formalized, or at least codified, are still in use, or heavily influenced modern thinking. Some argue that his models for generative and morphology were more advanced than anything in the West until the 20th century. There will be more on this tomorrow. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

The '-er' suffix has long made verbs and other nouns into nouns denoting occupation of location. A newer meaning has come about to mean 'believer in the conspiracy theory of", such as in 'anti-vaxxer', 'flat-earther', '911-truther' and plenty more. This has been discussed before here , but on another note, this is not going to be in dictionaries. Part of the reason may just be that it's relatively new, but also consider that these words don't have a very clear pattern necessarily, especially considering the example of 'anti-vaxxer', which doesn't use the whole word. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

The word 'breath' is a very old one, being related to basic biology. Indeed, it used to have another physiological meaning of 'smell' or 'scent'. It is pretty common for old words to have changed meaning, and in this case it is likely due to having connoted 'vapor' and 'exaltation from steam'. It shares some etymological history to ' brood ', and may also have a distant relation to 'broth', which possibly helps to illuminate the connection. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

In 2012, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee raised over $11,000 to create its own typeface. The typeface is called Chatype, and it is a serif-font. The move was done for publicity, but also to help to rebrand the city as an artist-friendly environment. This was the first time a US city had its own custom typeface. To see 3 profile pictures created for Word Facts that were never used, click here . The 5-year anniversary is one week away, so stay tuned for an announcement!

Plenty of adjectives exist based from the names of the people they're associated with, like 'Kantian', 'Nietzschean', or 'Aristotelian'. All of those basically mean "relating to the ideas and philosophy of..." but 'Platonic' most often means 'intimate but not sexual'. This meaning came to English in the 17th century, as a reference to his comments on love in the Symposium of Plato. Sometimes, if people with to reference his ideas, they lump them in with the adjective 'Socratic'. For the new post comparing 'Moriah' and 'Moria' in the Bible and Lord of the Rings respectively, check out this link:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/moria-h-bible-wt-31996367

The word 'hustings' may be regional, but it is one of the fewer words in English related to politics and law that is purely Germanic. Its original meaning was 'assembly', namely of a 'house' as in "house of commons". Indeed, the term comes from the Old Norse, 'hús + thing' or literally 'house-thing'. This was once the name of the highest court of the City of London, but now can denote any type of electoral precedings, such as a political debate. Support Word Facts at parteon.com/wordfacts

While 'baseball', 'basketball', 'football', and even 'golf' is named after a feature of the sport, 'rugby' is named for a school. The sport, technically called 'rugby football' came from the variation of association football (soccer) in 1845, developed in the Rugby school, in Warwickshire. Indeed, American football came as a variation of this game, and hence the continued usage of the term 'football', and the similar oblong ball-shape. Mark your calendars, only 10 days left until the 5th-year anniversary. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

There is ambiguity as to whether 'biweekly' or 'bimonthly' would mean "twice a week/month" or "once every two weeks/months". There is a distinction between 'biannually' (twice a year) and 'biennially'. Although there is the term ' fortnightly ', this is still not a very popular one, and people opt for the clunkier "once every two weeks". Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

A number of Japanese words are of Portuguese origin, including 'tempura'. The idea, though, that 'arigato' (ありがとう) comes from 'obrigado' is a myth, although they both mean 'thank you'. The history of Portuguese exploration before Japanese isolationism also led some to think this was when the word was adopted, but actually it can be attested for in Old Japanese. At that time 'arigatashi'  had the meaning of 'difficult to exist', which led to the meaning of 'rare; special', and then eventually 'nice to have; welcome'. For more on surprisingly similar words, read about 'dag' and 'dog', derived a world apart,  or read about Spanish influence on Tagalog here.

Somali grammar allows for great flexibility in its expression. For instance, it uses either tone or morphology—namely suffixes—to indicate case (though not in the absolutive), and plurals are indicated by changing gender, adding a plural marker, or reduplicating the word . Somali also has odd rules like that regarding focus-markers, which like those aforementioned features depend someone on the individual words, but also on the choice of the speaker. Support Word Facts by going to patreon.com/wordfacts

Though 'eating' may evoke mostly positive images, it is also the base for other words connoting absence or devouring. 'Fret' for instance, has a historical root derived from 'fra-' added to the root for 'to eat', i.e. "to eat away; eat up"; of course the phrase "eat away" also involves 'eat' and is generally negative too. Likewise, 'ort', which is a literary way to say 'food-scraps; garbage', is from a compound involving 'out'. The 'out-' prefix became 'or-' here, as it did in 'ordeal'. Even the word 'etch' comes from a Dutch word with a root meaning 'cause to eat away'. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Finnish grammar is known for having many different cases (about 15 for nouns) and moods for verbs. Some are fairly normal across languages, but the aggressive mood stands out in Finnish as it is little-studied and possibly unique. This is when the negative auxiliary is omitted in a construction that still has the negative form of the verb. This is used both colloquially and non-colloquially, and only really would be possible works in heavily inflected languages. Often, an obscenity is used to replace the negative auxiliary too, which is why it is deemed especially as slang, and understudied.

As with many languages, perhaps the most common Finnish swear-word is a religious one, 'Perkele' meaning 'Devil' effectively, but literally being a pagan god of thunder, and also hell by some accounts. Likewise, the Finnish sky god 'Jumala' is now used for the name of the Christian god. Actually, many Baltic and Slavic religions had these same characters in their pantheon—as far south as Bosnia—and may even be related to the Sanskrit 'Parjanya' but during the Christianization of Finland, they took on different meanings. Many more swear worse rely on pagan traditions, and part of the reason for this is that Finnish paganism only went extinct in the 20th century. Support Word Facts on  patreon.com/wordfacts

Following from yesterday, '-ard', like in 'sluggard', 'drunkard', 'niggard' and ' coward ', may seem to attach to words only pejoratively, but this is not exclusively so. Although English has more of these than positive ones, ' wizard ', and also 'bollard' exist. The former has already been discussed, but a 'bollard' is fairly neutral as far as a post to divert traffic. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Following yesterday's post , while some words with '-ard', like 'dullard' or 'drunkard' are easy to parse, 'coward' does not come from 'cow'. It ultimately derives from the Latin 'cauda' meaning 'tail', in reference to an animal with its tail between its hind legs. This term is even found in heraldry to refer to the actual animal when it is posed like that. Moreover, the '-ard' suffix in those other words comes from 'hardy', literally meaning 'bold', like in 'foolhardy'. For the parsing of 'bastard', click here .

'Wizard' and 'dullard' today mean very different things, one of which is magical and the other is simply pejorative, but they come from same template. Indeed, the '-ard' suffix is simply to nominalize an adjective. In the case of 'dullard', this is easily parsed meaning 'dull person', but 'wizard' parses as 'wiz' originating as 'wise'. The early meaning of this word was a sagely, non-magical person. There will be more on this tomorrow. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

As mentioned yesterday, 'wood' is not related to the Dutch 'would' (forest), but nor is it also related to the now obsolete adjective 'wood' meaning 'violently insane'. Actually, neither that nor 'nuts'—also meaning 'crazy'—actually related to trees. Instead, it is related to the Modern German 'Wut' meaning 'rage', and the Old Irish 'faith' meaning 'poet'. See yesterday's post here .

This is Word Facts post #1,800. Please consider sharing this page, or the youtube for another 1,800+ Following yesterday's post on the gender of ' widow ', it might be interesting to know that the word is also related to 'wood', with them both possibly coming from a meaning 'to separate'. However, 'wood' is still not related to the Dutch 'would', or German 'Wald' meaning 'forest', as you might expect. There will be more on 'wood' tomorrow. Etymologies can be counterintuitive sometimes, so check out the 7 Tips for Etymologists video too.

English, compared to many Indo-European languages, is fairly ungendered, but it does crop up in some places. Still, when it comes to gendered forms of words, it is usually the feminine which is seen—falsely or otherwise—to come from the masculine. This is not the case with 'widow' and 'widower' where the '-er' is clearly a masculine extension of the feminine. In any case, it follows the Germanic pattern of '-er' as a masculine suffix, but in that case, such as with modern German, the feminine ending would be '-erin', unlike here where it is absent. Support Word Facts at  patreon.com/wordfacts

Historically speaking 'bid' was a bit of a contronym, meaning both 'to ask' and 'to give'. Though that relation is actually fairly common , in this case it was just luck. 'Bid' as in 'an offer' comes from a different word than when it means 'to ask', but it is the latter to which the German 'bitte' meaning 'please' and 'you're welcome' is related. It is also this word which would have been the modern equivalent of 'good', thus making the paradigm good -> better -> best | German: gut -> besser -> besten into the far more understandable bid -> better -> best | German: bit(ten)-> besser -> besten See yesterday's post on this here .

English has far fewer current word families [1] than some languages, but there are far more looking across germanic languages. For instance, 'better', though not related to the semantically similar ' good ' is related to 'boot' (verb), 'batten', and 'battle', among many others. In the case of both 'boot' and 'battle', this is because they used to mean 'exercise; improve', the former connoting pushing oneself to improve often through punishment, and the latter simply meant to practice for a battle. 'Batten' means literally 'to get better', but unlike 'boot' has no relation to the meaning of 'beat' as in 'batten down the hatches', which comes from a different verb. There will be more on 'bid' tomorrow.

Japanese orthography may be the hardest in the world to learn. Partly since it uses 3 different writing systems today, but, Old Japanese was even harder, because it used only Chinese characters and also word order. However, Chinese is written subject-verb-object and Japanese is subject-object-verb, so while keeping the Chinese word order, Japanese writers would have to note the way in which the words were ordered with other special symbols. For more on diglossia, click here .

'Bastard' has meant 'illegitimate' child' for a long time, about 800 years, but it's origins are—as many words in this realm are—based in euphemism. Like with ' grass-widow ', the word for 'bastard' originated from casual bedding, namely with "fils de bast" or 'packsaddle son', as saddles were often used as bedding while travelling. The '-ard' suffix is a just pejorative one, found in 'coward', 'drunkard', and 'dullard'. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

The word 'insofar' is a combination of three other words. This isn't so uncommon, looking at others like 'nevertheless', but what's odder perhaps is that it isn't composed of four words, since it is almost always followed by 'as'. There are a couple things to note, though. First, as with any orthographic development in English, it was planned, but also it's fairly new, only becoming more popular than writing 'in so far' in the 1970's. Also, it can also be followed by 'that', but this is already rare at the time of the compounds rise to popularity, and its rarity is increasing. For more, visit: patreon.com/wordfact

People often use the term '4th estate' to refer to the press, but none of the other 3 estates exist really. It comes from the pre-republican European estates of realm, which is another way of saying the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners together, with those making up the 3 estates. Later, '4th estate' merged conceptually with '4th power'—also denoting the press—but with the other 3 powers this time referring to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, which may be why people still use '4th estate'. For more bonus content on the latest video, click here .

The Black Gate at the Newcastle Castle was indeed the site of 19th century slums, but the gate was not named to describe its appearance. Indeed, no one actually knows what the façade looked like exactly in the Middle Ages, but that still doesn't matter. The name comes from Patrick Black, who was a merchant who lived in the building in the 17th century. To access bonus content from yesterday's video, click here . To watch the original video, click here .

The Hebrew word for 7 is 'sheva' (שבע), which is very close to other Indo-European words, including, 'seven', 'septem', (Latin) 'hepta' (Greek), or 'sextan' (Gaulish), and no one really knows why. It could be that it is just random, but there is also similarity between words for 6 two, even though Hebrew is not related to Indo-European languages. It could be borrowed, for instance, from Hittite, in this case 'šipta-', or those languages could have borrowed from Hebrew, but either way the similarity has been the topic of discussion for a good long while. For more on 7 in the Bible, check out:  https://youtu.be/4TkSQGGPvOI

Jessica commonly ranks in the top 10 most popular girls' names in the US and the UK, but the form of the name is actually fairly modern. The first known use was by Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice. It is assumed that this is from the Hebrew יִסְכָּה‎ (yiskah), meaning "one who looks forth", though it is only used as a given name and not a regular word. The next Word Facts video will be out tomorrow, so make sure to subscribe to the YouTube page for a notification: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNofHfYEoM2l7fu2340gsDQ

'Widow' now refers to a woman whose husband has died, but in older compounds, it meant anything but. Indeed, the word originally referred to any lonely person, but eventually extended to loneliness or separation from marriage. In compounds like 'grass-widow' or 'straw-widow', however, the resulting meaning was 'mistress', with grass and straw here referring to basic bedding, but these words too eventually connoted a woman who had children out of marriage. Moreover, 'grass-gown' in the phrase "give a woman a grass-gown' was a euphemism for the loss of virginity. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Not only do ' dolphin' and 'Philadelphia' come from a Greek word meaning 'womb', but so do 'hysteria', 'and Delphi' (the island), and the mythical dragon 'Delphyne' whom Apollo killed there. In the latter cases, this is because there, the people worshiped Gaia, the Greek goddess of the earth. In the former case, this hysteria was believed to only happen to women due to the movement of the womb until relatively recently. For more, visit patreon.com/wordfacts

English and German are very similar in some ways, but some words develop extra connotations over time. 'Unternehmen' and 'undertaking' come from the same two elements looking at the words parsed, but they aren't always used in the same contexts. 'Unternehmen' most often means 'business', but can also mean '[military] operation', as in 'Unternehmen Barbarossa'. In English, 'undertaking' can relate to more general tasks, or alternatively a promise. Of course, these can be quite related, but not entirely the same. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Stephen King's 'Pet Sematary' purposefully uses a misspelling of 'cemetery' for the title. This was supposed to imitate how a child might think to spell 'cemetery'. How this relates to the nature of the horror is up to you, but many people instead assumed that this is either the American or British—whichever he or she was unfamiliar with—and the Internet searches back this up. Get more from Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

So-called gender neutral given-names may be becoming more popular, but insofar as most were still initially from one or another sex, this is nothing new. In the US for instance, ' Robin ' is now more common as a girl's name, but comes from 'Robert'. That demographic change only happened in the 1990's (and only in the US) but other names have been appropriated by women, including 'Ariel'—Hebrew for 'Lion of G-d'—in the Ango-sphere despite the traditional feminine form 'Arielle', and even 'Clair'. 'Clair', particularly without the '-e' is the modern form of the given name 'Clara' associated with the Irish County Clare. There are many others apart from this, so leave a comment if you know one.

Although "Robinson Crusoe" may have popularized the phrase "Island of Despair" it was also used about 50 years before to refer to Tobago. The novel may have been based a story of another man from on Robinson Crusoe Island (formerly 'Más a Tierra') but the name was due to the difficulty in colonizing Tobago; from the Spanish to the Dutch even Latvians each attempted multiple times with limited success to colonize the island due not only to political, but also natural factors of the island. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts/

Following from yesterday , there are plenty of English nouns which cannot be verbalized, including 'fact' and 'truth'. It would even be ungrammatical to add the agentive suffix '-er'. Even though this would be conceptually fine, it just doesn't really occur. However, informal usages have emerged for 'truther' (not 'facter' though) to mean 'believer in a conspiracy theory', such as '9/11 truther', in a similar pattern to 'flat-earther'. Indeed, you can see in this comedic exchange from "Drake and Josh" that 'truther' on the pattern of 'liar' is possible. Be a Word Facter at patreon.com/wordfacts where this idea is explored further.

As a rule, nouns can be verbalized by no more than putting the word in the environment of a verb and conjugation it where needed, such as for instance after a pronoun: "water" to "I water" However, this is not universally true. 'Fact' cannot be verbalized, but other semantically related words like 'evidence', 'rumor', or indeed 'lie' can be. And even so-called 'factive verbs' like 'know' exist too. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Not only does the Italian national anthem mention Poles, but the original name of the Polish national anthem too translates as "Song of the Polish Legions in Italy" ("Pieśń Legionów Polskich we Włoszech"). The latter case has a more obvious relation to Italy as it was written to boost the morale of Polish soldiers fighting in Italy during the French Revolutionary wars, when at that point, no Polish state existed at all. In the Italian anthem, Poles are mentioned alongside other groups who suffered against the Austrians: "Already the Eagle of Austria (già l'Aquila d'Austria) "Has lost its plumes. (le penne ha perdute) "The blood of Italy, (Il sangue d'Italia) "the Polish blood..." (il sangue Polacco) Support Word Facts on  patreon.com/wordfacts

Lots of words stem from 'cot', including 'cottage', 'coterie', 'cote', and 'cot' (as in a barn or hut) which all relate to dwelling, but 'cot' (as in a camp-bed) is not among these. In fact, all of those have other related terms in Indo-European languages like Old Norse and Latin, but 'cot' comes from a Hindu word  खाट (khāṭ) meaning 'bedframe'. See more on word families here .