467: shindig Mar 19, 2016

'Shindig' is a relatively recent word which has undergone almost as many changes as the format for Facebook in any given month. It came to English in the mid 19th century with influence later from 'shindy', a word that itself is considered to be an alteration of 'shinty', a Scottish game similar to modern field hockey. The name of the game is from an even earlier word, 'shinny' supposedly deriving from from the chant "shin ye, shin you, shin t' ye" which was used in the game.

466: Book Mar 18, 2016

It is easy to point out from where words derive, especially with caches of data available in books and online. Still, far more important is the reason or context behind any given word being used, instead of any other collection of sounds. 'Book' comes from Old English, 'bōc' which meant ‘a document or charter’, related to the word 'bōcian' which meant ‘to grant by charter'. Arguably more interesting is that it is related to the modern word, 'beech', the material onto which Germanic tribes carved runes.

465: Thursday and Thunder Mar 17, 2017

It's Thursday, or in German, 'Donnerstag': a word made from the combination of 'Donner' which means 'thunder' and the word for 'day'. 'Thursday' itself comes from the Old English 'Thu(n)resdæg' meaning ‘day of thunder,’ named after Thunor; the word for thunder itself and a god who was the Saxon equivalent of the Norse, Thor. This all comes from the Roman tradition of naming weekdays after planets, which were in turn were named after gods. The late Latin, "Jovis dies" meaning "day of Jupiter" equates Thor (Thunor) with Jupiter, and is where Romantic days of the week, like French's 'Jeudi', originate.

464: Pilliwinks Mar 16, 2016

Not just in English, but in every single other language, certain sounds and combinations thereof will almost certainly have some sort of connection to their meanings, the way that it is easy to guess which of these two teachers mean one in Jane Eyre: Miss Temple or Miss Scatchard. It may then come to a surprise to hear that ‘pilliwinks', a word that sounds childish, is a brutal torture devise found in Scotland, used for squeezing fingers between ever-compressing bars of metal.

463: spider Mar 15, 2016

Spiders are known for many things, such as the need to use a flamethrower around any general vicinity where there is even a small chance of finding a spider, but the Anglo-Saxons seemed to notice something else. 'Spider' comes from the late Old English 'spīthra' , from 'spinnan' an Old English word meaning, ‘draw out and twist fiber’, based on the way in which spiders spin webs.

462: cobweb Mar 14, 2016

A cobweb is spider's web which is old or uninhabited. This word, however was not always so specific in meaning. Back in Middle English the word, "coppeweb" or, "copweb", was a contraction of the words 'coppe' which is simply an obsolete word for ‘spider’, and 'web'.

461: Caxton Printing Mar 13, 2016

Caxton was merchant, diplomat, and writer, but is most famous for printing. He introduced a printing press into England in 1476, and in 1477, printed the first book in English, later becoming a bookseller. Most of the books which he printed were in English, and he translated and edited work himself, such as Aesop's Fables. Though he was focused on translating in the most linguistically exact way possible, demand combined with his poor translating-skills led to adoption of lots of French words into English and many misunderstandings. Nevertheless, the works that Caxton was charged to print were in many dialects, and as a result, his efforts to standardize English–if only regionally–led to a regularization of syntax and inflection, as well as an increase of written history.

For more on this, see yesterday's post.

460: ghost Mar 12, 2016

Nietzsche's famous work "die Geburt der Tragödie: aus dem Geiste der Musik", is often translated as "The Birth of Tragedy: out of the Spirit of Music". In this instance, 'Geist(e)' would mean "spirit". In the word 'Poltergeist', 'poltern' means "to cause a disturbance", and 'Geist', would mean 'ghost', as to express the sense of evil which 'spirit' just can't in English. This kind of German-ambiguity existed back in Old English, when the word 'gāst' meant 'spirit' or 'ghost' or even 'soul'. People think that the silent 'h' was adopted by Caxton from Flemish spelling style. 
More on Caxton tomorrow.

459: narcissist Mar 11, 2016

The word 'narcissistic' comes from the word Narkissos or Narcissus, from Greek mythology (although the name for the flower comes from 'narkissos, which some say is derived from 'narkē' meaning ‘numbness,’after its narcotic effects). Narcissus, for those whom don't know, was a man who was so overcome with his own beauty that he looked at his reflection and fell in love with himself. Echo, a nymph, met Narcissus and fell in love with him, but due to a curse, was only able to repeat what others said. This gave us the word 'echo' which ultimately comes from the Greek for, 'sound'. English owes much to this myth.

458: Anagram Mar 10, 2016

Anagrams are words out of which the rearranged letters make a new word, or set of words. For instance all of the letters in, "twelve plus one" are the same as in "eleven plus two" is an anagram. These words are entirely random, so when coincidences such as the fact that Japan's former capital city, Kyoto, and present capital, Tokyo, are anagrams of each other, or the Kingdom of Java's former capital, Kartasura and then later Surakarta (now moved to Surabaya) are anagrams, it is nothing more than luck. Less coincidental is the way that people often like to seek them out for fun, such as Louis XIII, who appointed a Royal Anagrammatist for entertainment.

457: Ambigram Mar 9, 2016

An ambigram is a word written such that when it's turned upside-down, reads the same word. However cool that idea is, it's not a linguistic feature of words in any language, because it relies on fonts. Depending on the font, 'swims' could be an ambigram, or it could not be; ambigrams are largely if not entirely dependent on the script, and shape of the letters.

456: Pangram Mar 8, 2016

A 'pangram' is a sentence or a short piece of writing which contains every letter in the alphabet. For an example in English, “the quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is a pangram. Pangrams are loosely defined however, and as such, other languages, like Arabic which uses a script in which letters change shape depending on their position, and like Hebrew, uses diacritical marks to represent what would be in English, vowels, make pangrams rather up to interpretation.

Make sure to read about 'ambigram' tomorrow, and 'anagram' Thursday.

455: I Am Mar 7, 2016

“I am” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language, since it contains the shortest subject, and the shortest verb (as conjugated). Although "I'm" as a contraction would be shorter, forms of 'to be' don't get contracted at the end of English sentences, and would therefore not count. Some people argue that 'go' would be the shortest so long as it is considered to be imperative, but since it would be circumstantial, it would be a hard case to argue.

454: Teach and Dicere Mar 6, 2016

'Teach' is related to the Greek 'deiknunai', and Latin 'dicere'. Similarly, 'heart' is related to the Latin, 'cord' and Greek 'kardia', of the same meaning. The fact that these two words of Germanic origin are related to Latin or Greek ought to not be too surprising. While the Greek and Latin sound the same, English's word is more different, and the reason is: sound-shifts. Words from romance languages that have a 'c' beginning tended to keep it, while in Germanic languages it turned into an 'h', such as 'heart' or also 'house' (Eng) 'Haus' (German) and 'casa' (Spanish). Like in both 'heart' and 'teach' romantic "d's" tended to turn into "t's". 

453: Girl Mar 5, 2016

'Girl' used to mean just mean, small child, whether boy or girl, from the time of Old English through Modern English. This is not like the way that Romance languages lump the sense of "girls and boys" or also just "boys" into the masculine forms, but simply the meaning of one word, similar to the way that 'man' meant–in Old English–'human', separate from the other words for 'man' and 'woman', which you can see more about here.

452: Dord (Ghosts Word) Mar 4, 2016

Humans make mistakes, and, believe it or not, linguists are humans.
There are some words in certain dictionaries which appeared on account of printing-errors but mean nothing. The word “dord” appeared in some dictionaries for eight years in the mid-20th century. This sort of word is called a “ghost word”.

451: Language of the Air Mar 3, 2016

Not only is English the lingua franca, but English is the language of the air. With planes whizzing through the air, over national borders and language, there needs to be some consistency with language for clarity and emergency. To communicate all pilots have to identify themselves in, and speak in English, regardless of their native languages.

450: Crutch-Words Mar 2, 2016

Words that people say though they contribute nothing of meaning or value to the sentence are called "crutch words". These words come in all shapes and sizes, such as, 'but', 'um', 'well', 'basically', 'actually' and the much hated, 'like'. My least favorite, is when people preface their opinions with, 'personally'.

449: Non-Rhotic-R Mar 1, 2016

It's Super Tuesday! You probably noticed that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump speak with different accents, even though they are both from NYC, born in the 1940's only around 5 years apart. At this point in history, accents were changing to try to distinguish ourselves from the English. Before WWII, the Americans employed the non-rhotic 'r', which is when the 'r' is dropped following a vowel, preceding a consonant (such as in 'hard'), like the way the English still pronounce words. This persisted in rural areas and working class areas, explaining why Sanders uses it (having grown up in working class Brooklyn) while Trump, having been born into money, uses the rhotic 'r'.

448: Long Words Feb 29, 2016

"Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" is a type of lung disease caused by inhaling ash and dust, and is considered the longest word in English. In German, the longest word is:
"siebenhundertsiebenundsiebzigtausendsiebenhundertsiebenundsiebzig" which is the number 777,777, because German numbers under a million can be compounded. 
Other, polysynthetic languages like Algonquin or Greenlandic can make even longer words easily; the words in those languages can express whole clauses.