Word Facts

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  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

  Now used exclusively by the Church, the terms 'vicar' and and 'diocese' come from Roman administrative terms, used in the government of that empire. 'Vicar' was used to mean 'second in command' in Rome but it came to mean 'deputy' (i.e. a divine proxy) ecclesiastically. It actually comes from the root 'vicārius' meaning 'change' refers more to the idea of 'interchange' like 'vicarious' means today. In the case of the Vicar of Bray (1540) though, he famously was a Catholic vicar twice, and also a Protestant vicar in the span of 48 years in the same place, making the meaning more literal. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  People would probably not be terribly surprised to learn that the word ‘kilt’ comes from the same root as ‘skirt’; they are both from Old Norse and basically look the same. What people might not have guessed is that the root of kilt is a lot more feminine than that, as that root has been traced back to the Proto-IndoEuropean root ‘ gelt- ’ meaning ‘womb’. Indeed, the English word ‘child’ ultimately comes from that root, as do other child-rearing related words like the Swedish ‘kilta’ (to swathe/swaddle). Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The adjective 'novel' and the same word's use as noun have seemingly very different meanings. In German, French, and Dutch a novel is called 'Roman' from the French 'romanz' meaning 'common language'. In English, 'novel' in both senses (at least originally) meant 'new' with the book coming from the Italian 'novella storia' (new story) but the generic nominal form was eventually replaced by 'novelty'.   Check out the new video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3qWOEUXr3k Get Merch:  teespring.com/stores/word-facts Support on  Patreon.com/wordfacts

  There are certain instances when a contraction can’t be used, such as at the end of “that’s just the sort of nice man *he’s”. The reason for this is because there are multiple uses of certain types of verbs including ‘have’, ‘do’, and ‘be’. It is not for that same principle though in the reverse as to why it doesn’t work. The imperative verb ‘don’t’ in “don’t you dare!” cannot be parsed further into “do not you dare” because it is idiomatic, but in “do not/don’t go in there!” this makes no difference. The reason is actually because imperative verbs, verbs that give a direct command, don’t have a subject, and to include a subject one would need to add a different, modal verb “you must not dare”. Dare is actually somewhat of an exceptional verb, so check out more here . Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  English has more distinct words than just about any other language, depending upon the metrics, and that fact alongside more flexibility with consonant clusters means that compared to Hawai'ian —with a relatively short vocabulary, fewer letters , and an inability for two consonants to appear together —the words in English can more easily be shorter. For instance, the word for 'zoo' in Hawai'ian is 'kahua hōʻikeʻike holoholona laka ʻole' meaning something like "lockable animal display site". Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The '-ic' suffix is used for forming adjectives and certain nouns such as 'psychic'. That sound-combination exists in other places of course, but those will typically have a -k, making a word like 'frolic' look slightly exceptional. Indeed, 'frolic' was originally an adjective, from the Dutch 'vrolijk' meaning 'merry' or 'cheerful', though these days it is usually a verb, or the noun associated with that verb meaning "to move joyously". Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  Usually words will not have multiple capital letters outside of acronyms or certain surnames, but digraphs are not treated uniformly. English has plenty of digraphs like CH and TH and so on, treated as one letter for the sake of pronunciation, but two for everything else including capitalization. In Dutch however, digraphs like ij, often even written like ÿ, are both capitalized often, such as with 'IJsland' as opposed to 'Ijsland'. Each language will have its own rules, but usually only one is capitalized. In South Slavic languages which alternate between both Latin and Cyrillic scripts, a Latin digraph—written as only one letter in Cyrillic—will also only capitalize the first Latin letter. Check out the new video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3qWOEUXr3k Get Merch:  teespring.com/stores/word-facts Support on  Patreon.com/wordfacts

  The name for 'Guadalupe' in Mexico comes from Spanish, sort of. Any further than that, there is some debate, though most experts would say that is is from the Arabic وَادِي ال‎ 'wadi' (valley from a dried up river) and the Latin 'lupum' (wolf). This combination was then applied for the patron saint of Mexico. Some others may say however that it was originally from a Celtic hydronym , i.e. a name for a waterway. A disproportionate amount of European river names are from Celtic, and it was possibly borrowed from one of these. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Along with the name ' Madelyn ', the Biblical character of Mary Magdalene gave rise to the word 'maudlin'. These days, it cas come to mean tearful or sentimental, but in the past it meant 'weeping'. It is from that sense that the modern definition arose, and it comes from the understanding of Mary Magdalene as weeping in repentance, often depicted as such in art. At one point in time, 'maudlin' also meant 'drunk'. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Other names like 'Jocelyn' and 'Kaitlyn' have the '-lyn' ending as a sort of Germanic feminine suffix, but this is not the case with 'Madelyn', or indeed ‘ Madeline '. This name actually originates from 'Magdala'. In English, there is a Biblical figure Mary Magdalene, but in Latin this is Maria Magdalena, or literally 'Maria from Migdal' (a city in Israel). The given name 'Madelyn' as such originated as with many other modern ones as a surname. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  There are lots of systems for measurements, often with internal variations. For instance, there are long and short versions of both hundreds and hundredweights . There are also Troy weights, which are an alternative weight system alongside avoirdupois called Troy weight, started in Troyes, France, but used officially in England in the 15th century until 1824. All of the weights were based on the grain like the current Imperial system, and indeed, most of the terminology was the same, so it does mean that even though writing from the past may reference similar terms, there will be slight discrepancies. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  European alphabets in use today like the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets are all bicameral, meaning they have both upper and lower cases. However, there are some exceptions to this. For instance, the German ß representing SS (or technically SZ) did not have a capital form ẞ until 2017 because it only appears in the middle of words, and would only be used for all-caps use; this therefore is still pretty rare and not accepted everywhere. There will be more on capitals tomorrow. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  The Torah is written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, and the Quran in Arabic, but the Mormons actually invented a writing system for the Book for Mormon too. The Deseret alphabet was invented in 1847, but it was designed as a writing system for English. Over its development period however, it was believed that this more phonologically based system would help immigrants to learn the language, providing more symbols for distinct vowels, diphthongs, and consonants which are not distinguished specifically in the Latin-based script, such as 𐐟 representing ʃ (SH). In total there are 40 characters, but many are similar to the Latin script, though some visual similarities are not correspondent, such as 𐐛 which represents θ (TH as in 'thin'). Despite extensive promotion by the LDS Church, use in books and streetsigns, by the 1870s the Deseret alphabet was falling out of favor. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/w

  Lyres are instruments and obviously can't sing, but they are the reason why sung words are called 'lyrics'. Lyres were essentially a national instrument in Greece originally Egyptian, but by the 18th century or so, it became emblematic of lyric poetry which also bears the name. It is from this association with music in a general sense that 'lyre' gave rise not only to 'lyrics' but also a constellation in the shape of the instrument, apparently. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  During the Spanish Inquisition, two words very came to the forefront: 'converso' and 'marrano'. These were both terms for Muslims and Jews who professed faith in Christianity, but while 'converso' describes a converted person, marranos practiced their faith in secret. This ultimately derives from the Arabic حَرَّمَ‎ (muḥarram) meaning 'forbidden', but the word had already been adopted into Spanish. This term is also related to 'haram' in Sharia, and also 'harem' originally meaning 'forbidden place', as in a room only designated for women, forbidden to men. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  The Iberian peninsula was under Muslim control to varying degrees for 7 centuries. The linguistic effects are less extreme than the French effect on English, with only about 8% of modern Spanish vocabulary from Arabic as opposed to about 30% of English's vocabulary from French, but it is still noticeable. In both however, disproportionately these are words for foods, legal terms , high culture, academia, and interjections. Examples from each in Spanish include 'arroz' (rice) and 'azeite' (olive oil in Portuguese), alcalde (mayor), 'cero' (zero), and ojalá ('let it be...') originally 'may Allah want...'. Many scientific and mathematical words eventually entered English . Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  The German city of Baden-Baden is famous for its double name (along with its many spas ), but that name has only been formal since 1931. The name has always referenced the natural springs, even in Roman times with the Latin 'Aquae' (Waters). In German, 'Baden' means 'bathing', but it is also an earlier form of 'Bäder' meaning 'baths' and it is this that the name derives. Like how there is a Bath in England, other areas with natural springs have this name in the German-speaking world, including a Baden near Vienna and one near Zürich, so not only is the duplication as a reference to a now-dissolved territory around the city (i.e. 'Baden in Baden'), but also as a distinguishing factor. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  Creole's in general, are marked by having elements of various languages mixed together, both in the vocabulary and in the grammar, but also a lot of morphological simplification. Both Seychelles creole and Haitian creole lack grammatical gender for instance despite the fact that they are based off of French primarily. In general, analytic languages are easier for adults to understand and so language invented mainly by adults, such as creoles, will likely end up as such. Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  The Montreal Canadiens hockey team logo is an H inside of a C. Many people falsely assume that the the H in the montreal hockey is for 'habs', one of the many nicknames for the team, itself short for 'habitants', who were early farmers in the Quebec area; the word today would be 'agriculteur' (farmer). Rather, the H in the name stands for 'hockey', with the official team name "le Club de hockey Canadien". Watch the newest video, about historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  When elevation is measured from sea level, this is a different use of the phrase than when for instance people describe sea levels rising. In essence they both refer to the average placement of the surface of the water, but since sea level as a reference for elevation would be an impractical measurement if one needed to also account for the changing daily tides and waves etc which are not even consistent around the world, the ordinance data of different places will not change, even if the actual levels of the ocean shift. That is to say, sea levels are basically as constant a variable as pounds or yards. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The Greek alphabet which inspired the Latin alphabet was ultimately of Semitic origins. Therefore, there is a general the Hebrew writings system corresponds to the Latin alphabet in many ways. The first 4 letters for instance, א,ב,ג,ד often correspond in terms of pronunciation roughly like ABGD ( G comes as a variant of C ), but the 5th letter in Hebrew is ה which corresponds in appearance and often pronunciation to H, but actually the Hebrew ה gave rise to the letter E, also the 5th letter. The relations between the placement of the letters does stop after the respective 6th letters though. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  Certain parts of whole phrases simply can't exist on their own, outside of the syntax in which they exist. These elements, such as 'jinks' of "high jinks", 'caboodle' of "kit and caboodle", or 'kith' in "kith and kin". There are plenty more, so leave it one in the comments if you know. Indeed, in some of these cases such as with 'caboodle', there is not even a totally clear meaning, whereas at least 'kith' means 'friends' or 'acquaintances', from the Old English for 'known' or in this sense 'familiar'. Other elements (in this case words) are meaningingful even if rarely parsed, like how "room and board" uses 'board' to mean food (or literally a table set with food) but outside of that phrase people would likely opt for another word. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

  As discussed before, the Austro-Hungarian Empire arranged its troops partly by linguistic background . This policy enacted in the 1860's proved to be difficult to maintain during the Great War however, for two reasons. The first and more obvious was that it made replacements very difficult to manage, or otherwise a troop would have different native linguistic backgrounds. The other issue is that in order for officers to be moved around they would have to learn a new language often; they were given up to 3 years in some cases but even that is often not sufficient, particularly in the case of Hungarian, but also it is a long time for an army to have to wait for proficiency. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

One might wonder how the Austro-Hungarian Empire ran its military in such a multilingual society. This is especially true since the military was one of the few institutions that was not run separately between Austria and Hungary. First of all, every division would be arranged by language, though this was not always true of the officers; this will be the topic for the post tomorrow. That said, because this was run centrally, there was a list of 80 or so commands all in German which every soldier needed to memorize. Indeed, while the recruitment of soldiers roughty mirrored the wider demographic makeup including about a quarter of native German speakers, a majority of the officers were native German speakers and this was the language of command more generally. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Many different standard, poetic meters have names. Many people may be familiar with the phrase 'iambic pentameter', kept in the many people's minds still today because of Shakespeare. Another popular meter is that of a limerick, but the name for the exact series of stressed and unstressed syllables is called an anapest Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The 1900 book "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" has a lot of silly made up names in it, like slaves of the Wicked Witch known as 'winkies', a kingdom called ‘Oogaboo’, and a robot named ‘Tik-Tok’ to name a few. However, the author stated that the name 'Oz' was inspired by a far more dull source: filing drawer labeled O-Z. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Many former colonial states have governors general, which was a figurehead appointed by the ruler of the colonial empire in order to act as a representative to that head of state. However, there were other titles notable for having the adjective follow, including governor regional, who oversaw different provinces within the colony, and of course surgeon general and attorney general who also confer information to the leader and keep certain duties in check. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Basically, a hurricane and a typhoon are the same thing insofar as they are tropical storms. The main difference really is where they originate, with hurricanes coming from the Atlantic and particularly the Caribbean, and typhoons originating in the Indian or Pacific Ocean; based on the respective colonial history, the former is more American (and Spanish) and the latter is more British. That said, if such a tropical storm hit Guam and then Hong Kong, it would not be referred to locally as a hurricane first, but a typhoon for both because it is in the Pacific. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Turkey made the news for supposedly going to make a coat of arms, but it still has not; many claim it is the only country in the world not to do so, but this is technically false. it is false in the sense that while all other countries have a sort of national symbol in use, not all of these are coats of arms. Many countries in the Americas and also France have a 'republican seal' which was designed by the Americans in revolutionary times so as to not associate this emblem with monarchy and other republican uprisings followed suit. Furthermore, some countries like Thailand, India, and Japan use individual, religious symbols—though in the former two cases it is not of the majority religion—that act as a national symbol but are neither crests nor seals. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Wine is something that has been shared around the Mediterranean and beyond, both literally and also linguistically. Old, basic concepts tend to have lots of related cognated across related languages, but in the case of 'wine' it is actually shared across unrelated languages as well. 'Wine' in English comes from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root '*uoin-a-', and there are plenty of other PIE-descended words too, like the Latin 'vinum'. Likewise, there are many related non-PIE words like the Georgian ღვინო (gvino), the Armenian գինի (gini), the Hebrew יין (yáyin), the Amharic ወይን (wäyn), and the Swahili 'mvinyo'. Of course, many of these words, including those of Africa and Northern Europe especially will be borrowed, but there is no consensus as to whether this original root is from a Semitic, Indo-European, or even Kartvelian language; some theories will be more convincing than others though. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical lan

The NFL team formerly known as the 'Washington Redskins' has officially announced an interim name of the 'Washington Football Team' until another permanent name is selected. The move was done after years of calls to remove the title given its offensive and pejorative meaning. This is not the first time that a team has changed its name though without moving to a different location, such as the New York Titans to the New York Jets in 1963, or how the Pittsburgh Pirates, who shared the same name as the baseball team, became the Pittsburgh Steelers. Watch the newest video, about classifying historical languages . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

In France, there are two main words for a chocolate croissant, neither of which are 'croissant' despite the fact that English took that word from French. In most of France, this is known as a 'pain au chocolat' (chocolate bread) whereas in the Southwest region it is called 'chocolatine' as shown in the map below. The fact that is is called a 'croissant' at all in English is a bit odd anyway considering that it does not retain the shape of a true croissant (or 'cresent'), but in any case, the pastry actually originated in Austria using the name 'Kipfel' which may themselves been an old pagan tradition, so really what does it matter‽ Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Max Factor is a makeup company, but it actually comes from another name. Although the company name makes a certain amount of sense, it is actually from Polish originally. The founder was named Maksymilian Faktorowicz, who was a Polish beautician. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The word for 'suit jacket' in Japanese is 'sabiro', which may not sound like a loan word from English, but it is. It isn't a direct transfer for 'suit' however. The word comes from the association with the fashions of London at the time, specifically around the street Saville Row, known even today for its tailors and generally men's fashion. For the newest in Word Facts fashion, check out the new shirts .

A New York Times correspondent for the USSR and Pulitzer Prize winner in 1931, Walter Duranty, helped to cover up the Holodomor, a man-made famine in Ukraine. It is within this context of dismissing and suppressing this story while also glorifying the USSR that many accounts claim he helped to popularize the expression "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs". Of course, most people who use it are unaware of this, and it has a generally neutral connotation. For further information, read the New York Times discretization of his work here, including other examples.

French is spoken in parts of North America, particularly around Quebec and possibly Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, but those aren't the only places. Louisiana still has some native French speakers descended from the original settlers, but far smaller communities like that also exist in places like Missouri and even Minnesota. The sizes of those communities those are very small—some estimates placing in the low double-digits. New Merch is available here

The word 'the' has had a number of spellings, in part because of how simple and common it is. Like other symbols including & for 'and' , 'the' used to be typed as 'ye' to make use of what was available on German printing presses , but actually this was just an approximation of another, older Germanic letter. In fact, it was often spelled in exotic ways to save space, as exhibited in the document shown below. New merch available from the store

English spelling and pronunciation don't always match neatly, but in the case of 'fiancé' and 'fiancée', or ' blond' and 'blonde' , the words (essentially) mean the same thing and are pronounced the same; the only difference is that the first ones, without the final -e are masculine, and the others feminine. This is changing in English, however. Since the mid-1970's uses of the phrase "blond woman" have actually been used even more than "blonde woman", though it is next to impossible to find instances of 'blonde man'; this period in time saw similar trends with 'fiancé'. In general, and as has been discussed here before, gendered words—especially when the only variation is in the spelling—are disappearing from English, but almost universally trending towards the masculine as a universal . Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Star Trek was in small part inspired by the actual exploration of Cpt. James Cook . Indeed, the name of the captain in the original 1960's show named James Kirk is named similarly in accordance. Moreover, the name for the spaceship, the Star Trek Enterprise was inspired after Cook's ship, the HMS Endeavour. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The standards for what make something a word that can be used for acronyms is variable, and this is even true of the words themselves. The Roman initialism SPQR stands for 'Senātus Populusque Rōmānus' (The Roman Senate and People) looks to only be made up of 3 words, but the suffix '-que' in Latin is one of the ways of expressing 'and'. Indeed, other languages with affixed conjunctions like Hebrew include these sometimes as well. Usually, conjunctions or prepositions etc. won't be included in English acronyms/initialisms however, but there are exceptions like DoJ (Department of Justice) . Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Lots of Arab countries use the Lira as currency because of Italian use in trade, and this is mostly true of the dinar. In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as , Serbia and North Macedonia the dinar is used, but in the case of all former Yugoslav states динар and the rest this comes from Arabic دِينَار‎. 'Dinar' itself though stems back further to the Latin 'dēnārius' meaning 'ten each' once used in the Roman Empire. Other Muslim-majority states have used over the years as well. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The term for the Mughal Empire in the native language was Gurkani (Persian: گورکانیان‎ Gūrkāniyān) meaning 'son-in-law'. The word 'mughal' instead comes from the Persian form of 'mongol', because it is from this line who separated from the Mongol Empire of Chenkis Khan and went on to conquer the Indian subcontinent. The noun 'mogul' as in a powerful person also comes from connotations to this empire as well. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The Jewish philosopher Maimonides, also known as the Rambam wrote in Arabic, but people would be forgiven for thinking he wrote in Hebrew. For instance, his work 'The Guide for the Perplexed' was originally titled דלאלת אלחאירין‎ (Dalālat al-ḥā’irīn) and while this uses Hebrew letters is actually Arabic. Indeed, especially considering that the greatest center of knowledge at the time was probably Bagdad, even though he lived in Europe when he often quoted Aristotle, he would do so in Arabic. As such, here and elsewhere, many translations translate Aristotle from Arabic rather than going back to the Greek. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

There are some biblical names 'Elijah' or 'Isaiah' that end with -ah in English but look totally different in Hebrew. Eliyahu (אליהו) or Yeshayahu (ישעיהו‎) both have an final syllable that's totally different from the English but are similar to each other. The reason for the discrepancy is because of the Greek; they both got a Greek nominative ending -s as in Elias and Ēsaias respectively, which was dropped off when the named were Latinized and Anglicized later on. Also, in the case of 'Isaiah' Greek doesn't have a sound which approximated SH, hence the discrepancy there. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The Lira was the old currency of Italy before the Euro, along with Malta, San Marino and the Vatican. The fact then that it would come from Latin 'libra' for 'pound (of gold)' shouldn't be too surprising, but what's more surprising is that is is still used in Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, and was used in Egypt, Israel, and Cyprus to name a few. Actually, this is because of the Venetian Lira which was once widely circulated around the Mediterranean and eventually the Ottoman Empire, but also other translations like the French Livre used for 1013 years or the still-used British pounds are actually quite common. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

'Proof' has a lot of meanings these days, but it all goes back to the same source. 'Proof' can relate to the experimentation as in " proof of the pudding.. ." [1] or also conclusive evidence [2], but it also means "able to withstand" as in 'waterproof', alcohol-content, or early tests of prints or coins. This is also etymologically related to 'probe' which also relates to examination, but in the case of 'prove/proof' there was a clear shift in the Middle Ages away from the meaning of 'to test' and towards ideas of security and established fact. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

The symbols meant to punctuate the end of a sentence are fairly consistent, but there are some exceptions. The full stop as it is called is often represented with ⟨.⟩ was introduced by the Byzantine Greeks; before this, there would just be strings of words, and not necessarily even spaces. This is not the only use of that symbol, as it appears in math, after initials, and other uses, but also other cultures have developed other symbols in some way or another, including the Chinese ⟨。⟩, the Sinhalan (of Sri Lanka) ⟨෴⟩ though now they use the period, the Armenian ⟨:⟩, the Hindu ⟨।⟩, and the Amharic ⟨።⟩. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Some people may know that there is a Welsh-speaking community established in Patagonia , but fewer people probably know that there was also 40,000 acres in North America once designated to be for the Welsh colonials. This area known as the Welsh Tract was established in 1684 in Pennsylvania, and a Second Welsh Tract in Maryland and Delaware in 1701, were supposed to set up a government that would use Welsh, but this was not as successful. Much like Pennsylvania Dutch too, Welsh eventually faded, but in many of the place names, like Bala Cynwyd or Lower Gwynedd names were borrowed from existing Welsh places, and in the case of Uwchlan or Berwyn, created independently. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

As mentioned before, there are lots of sounds, 7 specifically, that -ough- represent in English. However, in the least used as in 'hiccough' also spelt ' hiccup ', there are two forms. The term itself is alliterative, but unlike other onomatopoeias, the form 'hiccough' was based off of the other word 'cough' for semantic continuity. Indeed, while this now might seem old fashioned, it was not always the most popular as seen in the graph below. Since then, the popularity of 'hiccup' has superseded that of 'hiccough'. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

English has a lot of sounds, ~40 depending on the dialect, but only 26 letters, some of which tend to represent the same things. As a result, we end up with di-, tri-, and quadgraphs, which are combinations of 2, 3, or 4 letters that make one sound. Lots of languages do this as with the German CH, SCH, and TSCH which even build off of each other, but these are not so consistent in English. English has some, like SH, TH, CH, PH, etc. but these do not always make the same sounds, in particular TH (as in 'that' and 'thin') or CH in 'chauvinist'. This is true (several times over) with the English quadgraph OUGH, which can represent 7 different sounds. See if you can find an example for each. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

'Cob' in Old English meant 'spider' , hence ' cobwebs ', but that is not the same one as in 'corn-on-the-cob'. Indeed, the word has many unrelated meanings, including 'a mound of clay or coal', 'a head', 'a male swan', and 'a short-legged horse' and a 'bread roll'. Some others have been argued to be from different though unknown etymologies, but the oldest sense of 'cob' meant 'strong man; leader'. From this it is believed that the rest came about, basically in the sense that each are sturdy or at least round. That said, with these old monosyllabic words, it is often difficult to discern if the common thread is coincidental or not. Watch the latest video . Get Word Facts Merch . Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts