Word Facts

Plenty of taxonomical words end in '-ine'; the reason why was explored in yesterday's post which you can see here:  Drug-names and Taxonomy . Some of these are quite well-known, such as 'canine' or 'feline', while some are less used such as 'colubrine', which meas 'snake-like'. You might also recognize this as being similar to 'cobra'. This observation would be correct, but while both of these come from the Latin, 'coluber', 'cobra' is not directly from Latin and was adopted from Portuguese. 'Colubrine' is not the only word for 'snakelike' either, and 'serpentine' from the Latin for 'slither', and 'ophidian' from Greek are also used, but not often.

Similar to '-en' there are many subtly different ways in which the '-ine' suffix is used, almost all of which date back to Latin's '-inus'. Many of the purposes of this ending are scientific, such as for the names of alkaloids, amines, amino acids, halogens, among other things giving English such words as 'cocaine'. This suffix is also used for other purposes like forming rare feminine forms of words, such as 'heroine' and therefore 'heroin'. Aside from drugs (which is purely coincidental), this suffix is used for diminutive purposes, as in 'figurine' from 'figure'. In science again, the suffix is used to mean 'resembling' and is used in words such as 'alpine' and 'crystalline' but also many taxonomical terms like 'canine' or 'piscine' and for plenty of plants like with, 'hyacinthine'. For more on 'heroin' click the  link . For more on '-en', see one o...

Although it is quite common for participles to be mentioned in this blog, they have been little-explained. Quite simply, a participle is a form of a verb (such as 'running' from 'to run') that functions as an adjective (like "the running man"), or as a noun (like "I like running"), and in English is part of compound verb forms, as in "I have been running", with other verbs acting in different ways at the same time. A slew of English words can be identified as coming from Latin participles now because they retain the whole of the Latin participial ending—or the whole of the Latin participle as in the case of 'status'—or just various remnants thereof. Many words that now end with '-ate' come from the Latin ending '-atus' which was common for masculine singular participles, and can at times be quite visually confusing as participles including, 'associate', 'duplicate', and 'isolate' are all nouns...

If you didn't see the post on words deriving and relating to 'east', you should see that here . The word, 'west' has far fewer related terms in English than 'east', but there are still a number of relations from other languages. It comes from an Old English word that is not only related to modern related to Dutch and German equivalents, but also it is related through a larger Indo-European root shared by the Greek 'hesperos', and the Latin 'vesper'. Both words for ‘evening’ were also the names of the gods associated with that. 'Evening' or even the goddess thereof might not seem conceptually related, but remember that the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, something that was far more important to Latins and English tribes then that it would be now.

What do being terrified, the smell after it rains, a chemical used in fertilizers, and the keeper of Heaven have in common? The answer is that they all relate etymologically to rocks. The word in Latin that meant, 'rock', 'petra' came from a Greek word first, and these together developed into a number of English words. If someone is unable to move and therefore acts in a rock-like manner out of fear or surprise, this is to be 'petrified', and also refers to when organic matter becomes stony after being gradually replaced by mineral deposits. 'Petrichor', meanwhile, is the smell after it rains, and it is thought that this is caused by water coming in contact with compounds in the ground. You can see more on that here . Likewise, 'saltpeter', and the names 'Peter' and 'Pierre' come from this same root. In fact, St. Peter was born, Simon, but was given his name by Jesus to signify the rock on top of which he would build a church; the...

There are lots of ways in which new terms are created, one of which is from nicknames. For instance, what does the word 'doll make you think of? The word 'doll' actually came around in the mid 16th century as a term meaning, 'mistress' given from the nickname for the name 'Dorothy'. There are plenty more ways in which this word is used, even when it isn't referring to horse-racing (which has a different etymology). The meanings that this word took on, such as "kind or thoughtful person" or just a young woman are senses used almost exclusively in North America and are therefore less of an overarching, English-language standard. Nevertheless, even more popular ones like the verbal phrase "dolled up", which also diverged somewhat from this original meaning, retained some relation in terms of connotations of 'mistress'. Meanwhile, it took over a hundred years for the meaning of the doll as a toy or a small model to come about aft...

The names of the English counties, 'Sussex', 'Essex', 'Wessex' and former 'Middlesex' all denote the relative geography of their locations across southern England. It isn't too difficult to spot the 'west' in 'Wessex', the 'east' in 'Essex' nor especially the 'middle' in 'Middlesex'. There is, in addition to 'Sussex', the county, 'Suffolk' and with that 'Norfolk' (though no 'Norsex') that also have this 'south' and 'north' in the names. With 'Suffolk', this just means, "south folk", and similarly to the way many other peoples name their lands, it is just named after the word for 'people'. You can see more about other place-names here: origins of place-names . The counties ending in '-sex' are not an exception to this rule, and that ending comes from the word for 'Saxon', 'Seaxe'. For more on 'Saxon'...

'Lent'—when it isn't used as the perfect tense form of 'lend'—is a Christian holiday that happens every spring. This word was adopted by the Church and was used starting in Middle English as an abbreviation of the Old English word for 'spring', 'lencten'. The Old English verb, 'lǣnan'—which turned into 'lend' and therefore, 'lent'—gained the 'd' from association to other verbs like, 'send' and 'bend' (though the related word, 'loan' did not get this alteration). Meanwhile, the holiday, Lent's earlier form, 'lencten' is now considered to be formed from adding the verbal suffix, '-en'. In this way, 'Lent', which is related to the word 'long', gained an ending that signifies amplification and intensification, so like how 'lengthen' means to increase in length, 'lencten' would have referred to the increased length of days as Spring progresses. See ...