447: avuncular and materteral Feb 28, 2016
What happens when there is an idea, but no word to support it?–Make up a new one. If someone is acting like an uncle, one might say that he is 'avuncular'. If someone is acting aunt-like, it would be difficult to describe, so 'materteral' was invented.
446: walloon and welsh Feb 27, 2016
The two peoples of Belguim, the Flemish and the Walloons consider themselves ethnically different. 'Walloon' comes from the Old English, 'Welisc, Wælisc', from a Germanic word meaning ‘foreigner’, and you will notice that this is the same etymology as for 'Welsh', and is similar to the Latin word 'Volcae', the name of a Celtic people in southern Gaul.
445: coarse and course Feb 26, 2016
'Coarse' and 'course' are similar in spelling, but used to be closer related. 'Coarse' in late Middle English 'meant' ‘ordinary or inferior’. Up until the 1800's, the word was spelled 'course'. The differentiation is possibly from a sense, ‘habitual or ordinary manner’, like we still say for 'day's course'. Both words derive from the Latin verb 'currere' meaning 'to run'.
444: heaven Feb 25, 2016
Heaven is a complicated subject, but in the Christian faith, it is often represented as being in the sky. Book 1 chapter 3 of Confessions by St. Augustine starts with "caelum" in a sentence ("Capiunt ergone te caelum et terra...?"), meaning 'sky' but with the meaning in English of 'heaven'. Heaven is not only represented as the sky, but it is the sky. 'Heaven' even comes from the Old English 'heofon', which is related to the modern German word, 'Himmel' which means 'sky'.
443: dublin Feb 24, 2016
Dublin comes from 'Dubh Linn' meaning "black pool" after the lake in which the Vikings moored their boots. Even the other name, Baile Átha Cliath (Irish name), meaning "town of the hurdle ford" has Viking influence. It is a description of the bank of wooden hurdles built up across the river Liffey by the Vikings. In fact, in 770 AD, a band of Bon Valley-raiders were drowned crossing the Liffey at the hurdle ford.
442: algebra Feb 23, 2016
Algebra: complicating and seemingly never-ending, not so different from its etymology. The word is from late Middle English via Italian, via Spanish, via medieval Latin, from the Arabic 'al-jabr' meaning ‘the reunion of broken parts,’ as in ‘bone setting’. The original sense was ‘the surgical treatment of fractures’. The mathematical sense comes from the title of a book, " ʿilm al-jabr wa'l-muḳābala" which means ‘the science of restoring what is missing and equating like with like,’ written by al-Ḵwārizmī. In summation, broken limbs are not so distinct from math.
441: buffalo Feb 22, 2016
Between books, graphic novels, and movies pertaining to the Wild West, it is hard not to come across the mention of buffalo. Funny enough, buffalo don't live in the North American plains; what is actually being referenced are American Bison. Buffalo is more a nickname that came from early French explorers in the Louisiana Territory who called the animals, "les bœufs", which is a 'bull'.
440: Dough and Blé Feb 21, 2016
Anyone who wants to becomes part of a french-speaking mafia-family, ought to learn at least one slang word. In English, since the 1960's or before, "the dough" was an expression meaning "the money", and it is still in use today. In French, the phrase "le blé" is used as one of many slang-words for money, and similar to English, it means, "the wheat", probably because bread is such a basic commodity.
439: berserk Feb 20, 2016
'Berserk' as an adjective comes from an early 19th century word from the noun 'berserker'. Ultimately, this word comes from the Old Norse, 'berserkr' (noun), but further roots are debated. Either–and more likely–the word comes from 'birn-', 'bjǫrn' meaning the animal, 'bear' and serkr ‘coat,’ but some people believe that the origins are from 'berr' meaning ‘bare’ as in 'without armor'.
438: Society in PIE Feb 19, 2016
Linguists can reconstruct Proto-Indo-European to by looking at the huge similarities between more modern languages (for perspective, Latin would be considered modern). This society existing over 5,000 years ago or more had a word for "son's wife" and "brother's wife" but not "sister's husband" nor "daughter's husband". Besides the basic family units, we also know that there was a word for "husband's brother", "husband's mother", "husband's father" but not the same for wife's anyone. There was even a word, 'vedmo' meaning, "bride-price".
This is useful anthropologically because it suggests that a wife left her family to join her husband's, but not the other way around.
This is useful anthropologically because it suggests that a wife left her family to join her husband's, but not the other way around.
437: Religion in PIE Feb 18, 2016
There are no written records from the Proto-Indo-European people. Still, linguists can take the enormous similarity between languages, dead or living, and piece together the long-extinct language. This is both a linguistic achievement, as well as an anthropological one. For example, there is a Sanskrit word, 'dyáus-píter' denoting a powerful god, in Greek, there was 'zéu-páter" which was the original name for 'Zeus', and the Romans had a head-god, 'Iu-piter" (Jupiter). All of this suggests that there was a supreme god who's name meant "Sky Father" to the Proto-Indo-European people.
More on PIE tomorrow, and don't forget to submit for this month's challenge.
436: squire Feb 17, 2016
People may know the word 'squire' from books or film pertaining to the European Middle Ages. 'Squire' is simply a shortened for of the of Old French word, 'esquier', or 'esquire' which is now commonly associated with lawyers, seeing as it is their title. The Old French word comes from the Latin, 'scutarius' which means ‘shield-bearer,’ itself deriving from scutum which means, ‘shield’, as esquires are supposed to protect.
435: sire and señor Feb 16, 2016
Señor is, in Spanish, the title equivalent to Sir. or Mr. in English used for address or respect. 'Sir' is a Middle English reduction of the word, 'Sire'. 'Sire' derives from Old French as an alteration of the Latin word, 'senior', from which the word , 'Señor' also finds its origins.
434: Saturday (Lördag) Feb 15, 2016
Vikings were actually quite clean, despite the misconceptions. Although in English and some other Germanic languages, Saturday is named after Saturn, but in Swedish, and similar in other Scandinavian language, the word is Lördag, which means, "day to wash". While their European neighbors to the south washed once a year, Vikings washed once a week.
433: checkmate and check Feb 14, 2016
'Checkmate' comes from Old French "eschec mat", via Arabic šāh māta, originally deriving from the Persian, 'šāh manad' which means, ‘the king is helpless’. The word 'check' or 'chess' itself is from the Middle English which originally was used only to denote the game of chess. The word gave rise to many definitions, such as 'carefully look something over', like one would in the game, or 'check' like a money order, denoting the system of filling out a grid, or the sense ‘stop, restrain, or control’ arose from the use in chess, and led to ‘examine the accuracy of, verify’. That list is by no means exhaustive. Even the coloring of a chessboard is called, 'checkering'.
432: Ventriloquist Feb 13, 2016
'Ventral', like the fin of a fish, comes from the Latin 'venter' meaning ‘belly’. That Latin word did not only give English, 'ventral', but becuase of the patter of that word, 'distal', which is from 'distant', but used for anatomical situations, such as 'distal fin'. More directly, 'ventriloquist' comes from the modern Latin 'ventriloquium' which broken down means, 'venter' or ‘belly’ and 'loqui' which means to 'talk'.
431: Patron and Patronize Feb 12, 2016
A patron is someone who provides money or other support to a person or cause, from Latin patronus meaning ‘protector of clients, defender,’ and is related to' pater‘ meaning father’. 'patronize' is a word from the 1580's, meaning "to act as a patron towards," and only around the early 18th century could it mean sense of "give regular business to" like the fatherly connotation. The reason for this is that Roman patrons, for example, were known to treat people horribly, as Juvenal says, "while he has mullet and lamprey, you have eel and pike fed on sewage"(Juvenal 5.92-106).
430: burg Feb 11, 2016
Old English burgs were established by Albert the Great to defend, especially Wessex, against the Vikings. In Old English, the word 'burg' first meant 'fortress', but later meant a 'walled town', from Latin 'burgus' which means 'castle'. Nowadays, we don't need walled-cities anymore, and in North American informal language, the word simply means "a town or city", such as the suffix in 'Harrisburg'.
429: Untranslatable (challenge) Feb 10, 2016
Challenge revealed:
'Tartle', a Scottish word for hesitating when introducing someone because you forgot that person's name.
'Trappenwitz' which is literally from the French,'l'esprit d'escalier', for 'staircase-wisdom' which is coming up with something to say after an argument.
'Uhtceare', in Old English meaning, ‘lying awake before dawn and worrying’. There is only one recorded instance of its use.
'Tartle', a Scottish word for hesitating when introducing someone because you forgot that person's name.
'Trappenwitz' which is literally from the French,'l'esprit d'escalier', for 'staircase-wisdom' which is coming up with something to say after an argument.
'Uhtceare', in Old English meaning, ‘lying awake before dawn and worrying’. There is only one recorded instance of its use.
428: parameter Feb 9, 2016
'Parameter' until recently was simply a technical term, reserved for math and computer-science. In the mid 20th century, the term expanded into the nontechnical meaning of ‘limit’, albeit often used in formal situations.Some people believe that this adoption is due to influence by ‘perimeter’, which is different. Some people feel as though the non-technical term weakens the use. It is seen by mathematicians and linguists to blur more than elucidate the idea of ‘limit, framework’ in actual math and computer science.