Word Facts

In 2016, 'democracy sausage' was chosen as the word of the year by the Australian National Dictionary Centre. A democracy sausage just is a hotdog served in a slice of bread as opposed to a bun. This term came about in the last decade as many schools or other community centers, acting as polling stations, would host barbecues outside as a fundraiser. The term rose to especial prominence in 2016 however due to the national election that year. Support this blog on patreon.com/wordfacts

Across languages, there is a strong correlation between words for 'straight' or 'right', and moral correctness . Lots of words, like 'strict', 'rule', 'upright', or conversely 'crooked' and idioms like "the straight and narrow" draw a clear comparison winding or bending as bad; even 'correct' and 'direction' also share this in their origins. Moreover, in law, 'right' has similar connotations. In many other languages these trends from law to slang are true as well, in French 'droit', Latin 'rectus', Greek 'dikaios' all can mean 'right' or 'just[ice]' as in law, in its direction, or with moral connotations. If you've know other cognates, leave it in a comment. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

The older and more fundamental the concept, the more likely that words to define it will have relations elsewhere; this is true obviously just as a matter of chronology, but also that certain connotations will influence lexical development. For instance, there is a shared Proto-Indo-European relation between 'war' and 'victory'. From those two alone in English, this isn't overtly obvious, but from the reconstructed *weik-, many Indo-European languages have words related to strength (consider also 'vigor'), fighting (e.g. Latin 'vincere', or 'to conquer'), or something similar. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

King Clovis' name comes from the Germanic root * hluda-wigaz ("famous in war") , but this is by no means the end of that story. Other first names from all parts of Europe including Ludwig and Lewis, or even the non-Germanic Luigi and Louis also derive from this root. Indeed, while it is originally Germanic, many Romance language have equivalents because of the Latinized form 'Ludovicus'. Many names are less obviously related however, including the Florentine 'Alvise' and the Swedish 'Love'. There are many more, so if you find one, leave it in the comments. Support this blog on patreon.com/wordfacts

It's pretty obvious that the idea of a spearhead would be related to war, but in one case these are etymologically related too, entirely accidentally. A clovis, or more specifically a 'clovis point' is a type of spearhead found from the retroactively named Clovis tribe, from where the archeological dig-site was in New Mexico. Moreover, the town itself was named for the Frankish king Chlodovech, or Clovis, in Latin. This is from the root *hluda-wigaz meaning "famous in war". More on that tomorrow. Support this blog on p atreon.com/wordfacts

We probably all think of both 'master' and 'minister' as authoritative roles, but this has not always been the case. Namely with the case of 'minister' this is true, as it originally meant 'servant', sharing a root with the word ' minus '. 'Master' is the opposite of that in some ways, being a doublet with ' magistrate ' meaning 'leader' from a Latin root meaning 'more'. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Across the Indo-European languages, there is often a relation between words meaning 'man' and words for the pronoun 'one'. This can be seen clearly in the German with 'man' ('one') and 'Mann' ('man'). However, the order of which form derived from the other is not universal across these languages. In German, as in French , the pronoun stemmed from the noun, but in English, 'man' was an indefinite pronoun centuries before it was a noun. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Pronouns are considered a closed lexical class, meaning it is particularly difficult to create new ones, and as a result, new meanings tend to come from other pronouns. This process is rare and slow, but in the case of the French 'on' in some informal settings it can be said to be replacing 'nous' as the 1st person plural pronoun. However, this didn't come out of thin air, as it also means 'one', as in the indefinite 3rd person pronoun. That sense didn't come out of nowhere either, and originated from the Latin 'homo' ('person') like the modern 'homme' ('man'). Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

The formation for 'hen-do/hen-party' and 'stag-do' may seem odd, but they did not come about in a vacuum. Ascribing animals to a gender, and in particular connoting birds as feminine and bulls or stags as masculine has happened in some ways or another for milenia in some ways. Much of this, however, is not semantic, but stems from the fact that 'stag' and its cognates used to refer to any male animal, and including foxes and even dragons, and the same is true of ' hen ' referring to any female bird. The use of these animals (including 'bulls') for same-gender gatherings has existed since that's 17th century for women, and at least the 19th century for me, though neither initially only related to prenuptial celebrations. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Since a surname indicates familial or even tribal affiliation, it is quite common for them to be patrilineal or regional, but would changing across generations therefore. However, some shifts throughout history changed this, namely with inheritable names. In 1808, Napoleon decreed that all people, including Jews who had never had inheritable names, adopt inheritable family surnames. This was applied across all the European areas he had dominion over, leading to the standardization of names in a fairly rapid period of time. Many people continued to use professional or geographically based names however. Support Word Facts on  patreon.com/wordfacts

Up to 40% of people in Vietnam have the last name Nguyen. This is actually originally Chinese, but its commonality is entrenched in Vietnamese history since the 13th century when the usurped Ly dynasty were forced to change their names to Nguyen. Over the next 2 or so centuries, another 2 collapsed dynasties changed their names to Nguyen. Aside from many other nobles who were given the name Nguyen, many criminals took it up to blend in. Other popular names in Vietnam mostly come from old dystic names as well. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Although the notions of hyena noises and watery diarrhea seem disparate, there is one word that can describe both: squitter. Although rare in both cases, and archaic in the latter, 'squitter'—also used in radio—refers to random pulses. This therefore described a certain type of radio frequency, bowel movements, and occasionally the method of hyena communication. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Certainly there are intensive forms for certain words like 'shatter' to 'break' , but these sorts of form exist well beyond just the lexicon or phrases, like 'bloody well' in "I bloody well will do that". In Hebrew, there is a distinction in which binyan—essentially which vowel templates get added into the verbs themselves—is used, meaning that all verbs etc. can have a distinction between intensive and causative forms in a way that is only possible, sometimes, through using totally different words in English.

There are lots of ways words can come in pairs, but when it comes to intensive forms, these pairs are entirely semantic. For instance, comparing 'shatter' to 'break', and the only similarity—as none exist in the grammar, etymology, phonology etc.—is that the latter is the intensive form of the former, that is 'break' is forceful whereas 'shatter' is not. In some languages, especially semitic languages, these pairs would be more obviously related, but that is not always necessary. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

Normally, when people talk about combining forms , they simply refer to endings which add meaning but don't change the classification of the word. This description can be made of '-monger' in words like 'fishmonger' or 'cheesemonger', since '-monger' cannot exist on its own, but in the case of 'costermonger', the root word also changes, albeit not grammatically. A costermonger is an apple-salesman (not the Steve Jobs kind) named for the type of apple 'costard', which itself comes from the ' -ard ' suffix on a meaningless stem 'cost-'.

Hungarian was identified as being similar to other Uralic languages like Finnish or Estonian back in the late 17th century, but many things are still mysterious. While much of the vocabulary, about 22% can be identified as Uralic, 30%, the plurality of Hungarian's total lexicon, is considered as being of unknown origin. This, and other influences, especially Turkic influence, is not the only difference between other modern Uralic languages and modern Hungarian, but it certainly is a noticeable one. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Latin was once spoken across Europe and North Africa; after the collapse of the Roman Empire, some nations clung onto it. However, the Kingdom of Hungary, established in AD 1001 used Latin as the sole official language for over 800 years until 1836. Bear in mind that this is nearly 6 centuries after the fall of Rome, and the Hungarians were never under Roman rule, as their ancestors came to Europe much later. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Names for currencies from East Asia, including Yen, Yuan, and Won are all etymologically similar. The Japanese 'yen' is derived from the original Chinese, but they have different meanings; here it's literally 'round'. This is because that, and 'yuan' (silver), come from the phrase 'yínyuán' or literally 'silver round', denoting coins. Both Korean wons also mean 'round' and are cognates. Send Word Facts any of these—or other—currencies at patreon.com/wordfacts

In the case of some currency names like ' dollars ', ' shekels ' or 'francs', the names are fairly abstract, but for many currencies this isn't the case. The Polish 'złoty' is also slightly odd insofar as it is an adjective meaning 'golden', not a noun, but the name is clearly reasonable. In Romania, the currency is 'leu', or literally 'lion'; these are however subdivided into 100 'bani', which translated directly as 'money'. Send over your own currency at patreon.com/wordfacts

It is generally understood that "blood is thicker than water" refers to the importance of family over others, but a handful of scholars have taken the nearly opposite view over the years. While it should be noted that earliest known records about this phrase take the more commonly understood stance, those are in German. Looking not only at English records, but also Greek and later Arabic sources (replacing 'water' for 'milk'), similar phrases exist approximating "blood of a covenant (or shed in battle) is stronger than water of the womb". Ultimately, this view is not widely accepted, but even among the traditional interpretations, there is some disagreement as to what 'water' refers to as well. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Kennings are defined by being metaphoric compounds, and while they are generally associated exclusively with Old English or Old Norse, the template for it is still in use in some ways. There are some limitations on how new kenning-like compounds are formed, because in some cases they relied on mythology, or other common metaphoric images, but modern words like 'skyscraper'—which is a metaphoric compound in its own right—are not so different to actual kennings like 'hron-rād' ('whale-road') for a river or 'vindauga' ('wind-eye') for a window.

It is not uncommon that when a word loses meaning over time—or especially is adopted into another language—that meaning will then be added again. 'Chickpea' for instance, is not a variety of pea in the way snow peas or field peas are, and the name comes from the Latin 'cicer' which itself meant 'chickpea', but both the French, "pois chiche", and the English added the otherwise redundant 'pea' (or 'pois'). Moreover, when the Spanish word 'garbanzo' was adopted into English, it was renamed as 'garbanzo bean', again adding a modifier which was neither needed nor wholly accurate. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Re: the preposition re, it is one which is changing meaning in a way that's generally not so common. Traditionally, it is just a preposition used to mean "concerning the issue of", and is often confused with the word 'regarding' but used at the beginning of a sentence—or even sentence fragment—almost always. This view is changing somewhat, because enough people started using it in the middle of sentence. The difference—practically speaking—between using 're' in the middle of the sentence, compared to 'about' or 'concerning' is that those don't sound as much like unnecessary jargon, and many would still find 're' offputting in this place. Suport Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

There are lots of dichotomies that English only has semantically, which other languages have lexically. One is 'no' for an exclamation and a determiner, while German has 'nein' and 'kein' respectively . Another is in Spanish with the distinction between 'ser' and 'estar', both translating as 'to be' but with the former relating to permanent, or little-changing descriptions including names and nationalities, and the latter used for more transient things, like actions or personal locations. In some languages or dialects, there is a lack of any verb where 'estar' is used . Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Following from actual '-ster' words which relate to professions, there are also some which are objects, in this case 'dumpster', that seem to as well, but this is not so simple. 'Dumpster' is a portmanteau for a brand name, from 'dump' and the occupational name 'Dempster', which itself from 'deemster', referring to a judge (i.e. someone who deems). Considering 'deem' is also related to ' doom ', it worth noting that this relation to the justice system is still very far removed. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

The agentive '-ster' suffix , as in 'spinster' is no longer as productive as '-er', but that doesn't mean people have stopped generating new words with it. Other terms like 'hipster', 'bankster', and the proper nouns 'Napster' and 'Blockster' all feature a different, new use of '-ster', clearly separate from the origins as a feminine form of '-er'. This is thought to convey an particularly informal tone, and is increasingly popular for such causal registers. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

The suffix '-ster' is traditionally the feminine equivalent for -er/-or, and many pairs still exist such as 'webster' from 'webber' (i.e. 'weaver') or 'brewster' and 'brewer'; if you have others, leave a comment. The problem with this view is, while it is certainly true for some, this wouldn't really make sense if you look at the rest of the list. Not only ' gangster ', but also 'barrister' and others, which up until recently were only men—are often considered to have the '-ster' ending, so it is important to remember that even by the time of Middle English, this was less meaningful. A few are just red herrings too, like 'minister', which has a '-ter' suffix with a similar meaning attached to the same root as 'minus' i.e. lesser leader to a master, which has the same '-ter' suffix. There will be more on this tomorrow. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

'Melon' comes from the 'Greek for 'apple' , but so does 'pumpkin'. However, while 'mēlon' in Greek could refer to generic fruit—just as apple used to for English— 'mēlopepon' meant 'gourd-apple', and connoted gourds more than fruits. Hence, the Greek 'pepon' ('gourd') led to the English 'pumpkin'. There is an etymological root as well between 'pepon' and 'peptein', meaning 'to cook' but also 'to ripen', with the idea being that the fruit is cooked, or otherwise prepared by the Sun. Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts .

As mentioned the other day 'melon' comes from words meaning 'apple' , though obviously not natively. Like with the English 'apple', the Greek 'mēlopepon' (apple-gourd) effectively uses 'apple' to mean 'fruit' ; strictly speaking, 'mēlon' means 'apples' on its own, hence 'malic' (e.g. malic acid). For the rest of this topic, and how it relates to early agriculture and lewd slang, visit the patreon .