Word Facts

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 .

It has been discussed here before how words "on the tip of one's tongue" may still be remembered to have a certain onset, for instance. The Tip of the Tongue (ToT) effect doesn't only include memory of the first letter; it also can include the number of syllables or prosodic accent pattern, as well as internal vowels. Vowels especially, as well as consonants in unaccented syllables, do not figure importantly into the ToT pattern though.

Pleonasm , even in translations, is a notable fixture of the Bible. This is not the same as clunky writing, which you can see more about in the linked Word Facts video , but often appears as using many separate expressions to indicate the same thing. This is particularly notable in Psalms, and one explanation could be that because there wasn't much literary tradition before it that it mirrors speech, as the level of pleonasm found in speech is similar. However, pleonasm is also common in poetry or lyrics, it may well be a poetic styling.

Pleonasm —essentially linguistic redundancy—can exist for many reasons. Sometimes it is just idiomatic, like French "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" meaning 'what's that?" but literally meaning "what is it that it is?", but in some languages it has an a grammatical function. In German, "die alten Männer sprechen" (the old men are talking) features a plural marker in every word of this sentence even though only using a plural noun would suffice; anything else would be ungrammatical in German. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Although English is known to be amalgamated from different languages' lexicons, other languages take this to a redundant extreme. For instance, many languages have pleonasm—basically redundancy—like 'tuna fish' in English or 'Yo te amo' in Spanish, where the '-o' indicates the first person without the need for a pronoun 'Yo'. Some languages, and in particular Yiddish , have this feature bilingually. These are sometimes called bilingual tautological expressions, and in this case it usually relies on having a Yiddish and Hebrew word or phrase back-to-back. For instance, the phrase 'חמור-אייזל' (khamer-eyzl) is used to denote a womanizer, but literally means 'donkey-donkey' in Hebrew and then in Yiddish respectively. Expect more on this tomorrow. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

'Clout' today has many meanings, including "a heavy blow" and an "influence or power", but a more traditional meaning would have been "to mend a cloth". The origin of this discrepancy is still not totally understood, however the sense of a "heavy blow" does date back to the Middle English. Some may suggest that the sense comes from a connection of 'putting a patch on' to 'hitting hard', but this relation is fairly loose. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Continuing on about Grassman's Law , this principle that an aspirated consonant will become unaspirated when it precedes another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, only applies to Greek and Sanskrit, and not other Indo-European [IE] languages. This suggests it occured after many other major sound changes in IE languages. Also this shift may have occurred when the Middle East was a large Graeco-Aryan speaking area, explaining why these two languages in particular would be affected. The two are similar in other ways though; both Greek and Sanskrit use reduplication to form the perfect, such as φύω --> πέφυκα (pʰu-ɔː --> pe-pʰuː-ka). This means 'I grow' --> 'I have grown', but notice that π would normally be aspirated—represented with the superscript: ʰ—but isn't here.

Grimm's Law —a set of principles for Germanic consonantal development—was significant and gained deserved recognition, but it is not the only one of its kind. Grassmann's Law, devised for Ancient Greek and Sanskrit, posits, basically, that an aspirated consonant will become unaspirated if there is another aspirated consonant in the following syllable. Unlike Grimm's Law, this is less focused on roots and includes more morphemes in various linguistic contexts. It still helps to explain transitions from Ancient to Modern Greek, such as with the copulative prefix 'ha-' that has become in 'a-', like in the word ' adelphos ' looked at yesterday. There will be more on this tomorrow.

Dogs may today be "man's best friend", but some think dolphins should take that title in the classical world. There is a half-myth that 'dolphin' comes from a word 'meaning 'brother' because of how human-like they are; these facts are mostly true separately but the narrative is false. Indeed, 'adelphos' (ἀδελφός) also found in 'Philadelphia'—"the city of brotherly love"—means 'brothers', but a better translation here would be 'womb'; dolphins got the name here because they are mammals so the females have wombs, and it means 'brother' too, but only because of the idea that brothers would share a womb. Support Word Facts on  patreon.com/wordfacts

Yesterday, the Latin precursor for BC, ACN , was discussed, but this is far from the only notation for years out there. In addition to the secular BCE and CE (Before Common Era; Common Era)—replacements to AD and BC/ACN respectively—there is also AM or 'Anno Mundi'. This is not so widely used anymore, but meaning 'in the year of the world', this was used in tandem with AD to refer to modern dates based off of the year of creation as described in Genesis. To be clear, it actually starts just under 1 year before creation, yielding this current year as AM 5780. Other than this, a few minor systems for notation exist, like Anno Graecum (AG), with the years starting with the reconquest of Babylon.

Most people will be familiar with AD and BC use for writing years, but it may strike you as strange that one is Latin, Anno Domini (in the year of our lord), and one is English, Before Christ. Indeed, while this notation is fairly old—from the 5th century but not popular until the 9th—the earlier version of BC was 'ante Christum natum' (before Christ's birth). This is sometimes abbreviated 'a.Ch.n' or 'ACN', but this is not as popular now, or even always historically; St. Bede used a different phrase for instance. More on this tomorrow. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

There are plenty of times when a words—based off spelling and or pronunciation—may have two or more separate meanings. Sometimes this can happen with doublets—two words with the same origin but different developments—but in the case of 'decollate', there were two origins for two words that happen to look the same and mean similar things. 'Decollate' meaning 'behead' is related to ' collar ' (i.e. 'neck'), or also meaning 'to tear pieces of paper'. However, the first meaning comes from the Latin 'collum' meaning 'neck' whereas the second meaning comes ultimately from a participle of the the Latin 'confer', 'collat-', meaning 'bring together'. The negative prefix for both is the same though. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Following up on the term 'midriff' from yesterday , not only did the word 'riff' as 'stomach' not survive on its own, but even 'midriff' is something of a revived word. From the 18th century onwards, it fell into disuse, but was brought back in the 1940's as a way to avoid saying 'belly' in fashion. In those days though, it was supposed to mean 'the part of a garment which covers the midriff'; crop-tops weren't so popular back then. In fact, that word might sound innocent now, but in that time 'belly' was censored in films as well, so euphemisms were necessary.

There are plenty of examples of how a language may change and the individual words don't always catch up. For instance, in Old English, the word 'hrif' meant ' belly '; this is where the term 'midriff'—as in the space between the waist and chest—comes from. However, neither the words 'low-riff', 'upper-riff' or any other sort of 'riff' exist' because the word fell out of favor except in this one context. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts NB: 'Belly' is also from Old English, but back then it meant 'bag'.

In Barcelona, the mountain Montjuïc means 'Jewish mountain', but this was disputed historically. There was an idea that circulated for a while that the name comes from 'Mons Iovicus' (Mount Jupiter), but in documents dating from at least the 9th century this place has been referred to with 'Mons Judaicus' or 'Monte Judaico' and 11th century records show that the area was a Jewish cemetery. Suffice it to say that the other etymology holds little clout. See the next 4 video-topics on Patreon.com/wordfacts

There are three main reasons why a country would have an article in the name. For many, it is a translation, like 'the Netherlands' (the lowlands), 'the Ukraine' (the borderlands), and in the case of other countries it refers to an island chain, like 'the Maldives' or 'the Philippines', or if the country was named after something else, e.g. 'the Lebanon mountains', 'the Sudan desert'. There are some exceptions, like 'the Gambia', which changed its disambiguate from 'Zambia', or 'the UK' which is part of a phrase. Many of these uses are unofficial, but it should be noted that there isn't a reason that some other countries don't have an article, or why English speakers have mostly abandoned them.

Some countries have an article, like 'the Bahamas', but some are not official. According to the US State Department, only 2 countries are listed with an article, The Gambia and The Bahamas. This would make other places like 'the Philippines' , 'the Maldives', and ' the Netherlands ' technically incorrect, even though this is how they are commonly referred to. Other cases such as 'the Ukraine' are less clear; 'the Ukraine' (translated to 'the borderland') has more of a historical and linguistic precedent, but the popular usage has change over the last 2 decades or so due to Ukrainian, and particularly anti-Russian nationalism. More on articles before countries tomorrow.

In the below 1883 map of world religions shows the word "fetishists" and—though problematic in some ways—this is not entirely pejorative or even always reductive. 'Fetish' originally denoted idols, in particular from West African magic, and for a long time in a variety of languages such as English, French and Portuguese the word simply connoted general sorcerous, animistic, or idolatrous practices. The word is also related to 'factitious'. NB: the term 'Mohammedan' (also 'Mohammedanism') refers to Islam . For more Linguistics in the Wild, click here .

Tripoli may be the capital of Libya, but it is also the name of one of the largest Lebanese cities, a Greek City, a Turkish city, sort of. As it happens, the place in Turkey baring the name, with two more historically, were named by the Greeks, and the only modern Greek city with the name (though many more existed in Ancient Greece) was named during Ottoman rule. In the other two, likely more famous cities, were both named thousands of years ago when they were respectively under Greek rule; still they both have the same name in English, and also Arabic, طرابلس‎ (Ṭarābulus). Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Although a listener is able to break up words while listening, there are usually no spaces in the actual speech. There are two ways that this can be proven. The first is in the photo below which represents sound in speech, and as the arrows show, the sounds keep going one word to the next without pause. The sentence below reads "lexical segmentation i[s] sometimes really easy". The other way that this can be shown is through the fact that words are not the same in certain contexts. Consider how the [n] before a [p] in "in Paris" assimilates to an [m], just as it does in 'impossible' from the negating suffix 'in-'. Find Word Facts at Patreon.com/wordfacts

The names 'Morris', 'Maurice', 'Moritz' and the dodo bird all have one thing in common. St. Maurice—Anglicized as 'Morris', Germanized as 'Moritz', and most importantly Latinized as 'Mauritius'—was a 3rd century martyr venerated by several different churches. He is also the namesake of the island-nation of Mauritius, from where the dodo hailed.

Have you ever noticed that some languages seem to be spoken faster than others? There is evidence for this, measuring the syllables-per-second, but also keep in mind that not knowing where words are parsed may also make language sound faster . There are a few explanations for speed-differences, including simply cultural factors, but it is not fair to say that it is due to longer sentences compared to slower-spoken languages. Evidence suggests languages convey information at roughly the same rates, so that faster speech in languages like Spanish or Japanese—known for being spoken faster—is not because the utterances themselves are longer but is instead a choice by the speaker.

The reason that the rainbow has 7 colors is because of Isaac Newton. While other color-schemes had been devised since antiquity, the mnemonic ROY-G-BIV—invented by Newton—was made to describe the spectrum of light. It originally only included 5 colors: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. In addition to RYGBV making for a worse mnemonic, Newton added 'orange' and 'indigo' to make the number 7—though he could have chosen any number—in order to correspond with the number of notes in a musical scale . This is also why purple was divided into indigo and violet. Today we call Newton's blue 'cyan' and would likely call his 'indigo' 'blue', but the terms are kept due to his mnemonic.

Mishearings, such as that featured below, have the ability to affect spelling. Sometimes this is called an ' egg-corn ' (from 'acorn') when one person misunderstands a word and replaces it with another existing one. However, this has also happened through history in a way that eventually became permanent, such as with " Elephant and Castle " in London. This is also particularly prone to happen with foreign loan words. In this case, the writer presumably meant to say 'folklore". For more Linguistics in the Wild, click here .

There is a myth that the word ' mint ' related to money comes from the fact that the spice mint was so expensive, after all, the spice trade fueled global travels like few other commodities. This is false however. 'Mint' as the currency comes from Latin and was named after a specific place, whereas the spice, while also originally mediterranean—both etymologically and geographically—is not, with the oldest known language to have a clear word for it being Ancient Greek.

Discussed yesterday was how ' -chester ' in place-names like 'Manchester' historically meant 'castle'. Moreover though, the given name 'Chester' and likewise its nickname 'Chet' comes from the same root. However, it should be noted that this started as a surname, essentially meaning "of a town" before it became a given name. It would be practically like having the first name ' Borough' or 'Burg ', which have similarly also featured in or as peoples' surnames and mean 'town'.

Without English spelling, we would lose a lot of obvious history. Famously the spellings of 'Worcester' and Leicester' look nothing like how they're pronounced, but they come from 'castre' meaning 'castle; fort' like in 'Lancaster' etc. . In fact, almost all of the British '-cester' are reduced to '-ster' in pronunciation. Still, there are also other ways this has developed in spelling, like '-chester' in ' Manchester ' [2], '-cetter' like 'Mancetter', or also '-xeter' in 'Exeter'. See more on language change and English spelling: https://youtu.be/kA7mMfX3Bh0

Adults can often seem to struggle more with developing new language skills than very young children, especially when it comes to pronunciation. There are lots of little reasons for adults having difficulty with grammars etc., and certainly one or two myths around it, but one thing that's easily noticeable is that adults tend to struggle with accents, while children don't, not only because they have more adaptable larynxes from not speaking in (usually) one way most of the time, but also they can actually discriminate between sounds better. Infants can hear the difference in every phoneme more or less, and lose that ability after a short time. They continue to use the ones they hear and get positive feedback for pronouncing, and drop the rest. However, babies do not necessarily discriminate between illegal syllables in the given language, but knowledge of sound constraints must logically follow from gaining knowledge of the sounds first. Support Word Facts on patreon.com

Given that 'heirloom' is simply a contraction of 'heir + loom' it would seem reasonable to assume that the notion of inheritance would have always been part of it, but that's not entirely true. Indeed, while today we would think of a loom as only a tool for weaving, in Old English 'gelōma' referred to any type of tool, and so did 'heirloom' for a while. Technically, it referred was an article passed down in someone's will, but records show that its usage was more general. However, since the 17th century 'heirloom' has had the meaning it carries today. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts