526: Chocolate (Verb) May 17, 2016
What makes a word standard is nothing more than recognition from respectable institutions. In the Oxford English Dictionary there is a record of 'chocolate' as a verb. The word is rarely used at best with only a single recorded quotation catalogue in the OED. It means ‘to drink chocolate’ and the quotation is from an 1850 work called Eldorado which reads ‘We arose in the moonlight, chocolated in the comedor, or dining-hall.’ Even though it is found but once, it is still counted as acceptable.
527: mandarin May 18, 2016
We call it Mandarin because it is the official language, or more specifically, the official-language. The word came to English, not as a interpretation of the native word, but from a word meaning 'counselor, denoting the Chinese officials, who spoke this dialect. Even the name for the type of orange, comes from the connection to the yellow robes that the officials wore.
525: United States Is or Are May 16, 2016
A good rhetoricician knows how to bend words to his advantage, by definition. Before the Civil War, the general convention was to speak of the United States as a collective entity using the grammatical plural, such as in the 13th amendment's, slavery nor involuntary servitude, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction" (1865). Starting just after that, and in limbo for a few decades thence, people wanted to have an image of a single-body: United States, and so used the singular. This change in the sense of nationalism over regionalism is evidenced by the change in grammatical number.
524: hood May 15, 2016
Often, a single word will create several different derivatives (see the post from yesterday). Other times, what is now a single word would have started as many distinct ones with different morphological and phonological structures. The word 'hood' today takes 3 uses, and 1 as a suffix, but all came from different words. 'Hood' as in the clothing comes from the Old English 'hōd' and is also related to the modern word, 'hat'. The rather dated term for a criminal was abbreviated in the 1930's from 'hoodlum' and likewise the area, 'hood' is from 'neighborhood', which began in the 1970s. The suffix was initially its own word meaning 'person' or 'characteristic' from the Old English '-hād', but eventually took on different grammatical form.
523: maestro, master, and administrate May 14, 2016
'Maestro' is an Italian word, 'master' was a word in Old English, and 'administrate' comes from Old French, yet they're all related. How‽ The answer is not Proto-Indo-European exactly, but stems from the vast expanse of the Roman empire. All of these words come from 'magister' in Latin has various specific meanings, including 'ship-captain' and 'school-teacher', but none stray far from the idea of leadership.
522: argentina May 13, 2016
Argentina, "The Land of Silver", is rich in metals, the mining of which contributes largely to the economy of the country. The nickname, and the official name which comes from the Latin 'argentum' meaning 'silver' was attributed from the Spanish colonizers who believed that the land had rich silver-deposits. Surprisingly, it does not actually have much silver at all.
521: weather, wander, wend, and wind May 12, 2016
Often in single languages or whole language families, an individual concept leads to phonological similarities between many words. At first glance, 'weather', 'wander' 'wend' and the verb 'wind' may have vaguely similar sounds, but drastically different meanings. However, all of these words are linked to Old English, and sometimes other Germanic languages, etymologically, but also in that all of the words convey the meaning of something which moves arbitrarily. Over time the words separated but the meanings strayed little from the overarching concept.
520: Farther versus Further May 11, 2016
Ultimately, standardized spelling does not matter unless to proceed without it would alter the intended interpretation. That being said, it is good to know the difference between 'farther' and 'further'. The simplest but generally accurate tip is that “farther” is for physical, measurable distance and “further” is for figurative distance. Hopefully that is not just an abstract rule, since 'farther' has the word 'far' embedded within. Still, sometimes the distinctions are less clear, such as in 'Billy was further/farther along in his work than Bonny', depending on how the speaker wishes to measure 'work'. Scholars themselves argue about these uses, so really, it does not make much of a difference.
519: fu manchu May 10, 2016
The origin of mustaches is the from face, but the different styles and designations thereof were not that simple. First off, Chinese culture until the last few centuries was far more regional than national (more on that at a later time). As such, Chinese people would and often still do refer to themselves by the different areas, such as Han or Manchu. The style of facial hair, fu manchu is claimed to be originated from comes from Manchuria, based off of the Manchu people.
518: fink May 9, 2016
Slang, phrases and expressions are often difficult to pin down, considering how fickle the words are and from how many sources they may come. Much of the time, only theories–not certainty–prevail. In terms of the word, 'fink', which developed in the late 19th century is hypothesized to come from German, literally meaning, ‘finch,’ but also a pejorative term. Frat-guys at their various houses began to refer to those who weren't members as finks, probably on account of the similarity to the freedom of wild birds, distinct from caged ones. The term was later generalized to denote those not belonging to organizations such as trade unions when the term extended to strikebreakers.
517: Linguistics and Colonialism May 8, 2016
Continuing from yesterday's post, the sound shift occurred between the 5th and 8th centuries that separated Low and High German was not the first major consonant shift, nor was it the only one at the time. What we now know as Germany now was fragmented linguistically and politically into small states up until after the Renaissance. It was partly for this reason that Germany did not colonize the Americas, and tried to later catch up to its rivals which had had more centralized governments by colonizing Africa and attempting to conquer Europe in the World Wars. Only when Martin Luther translated the bible and sold printed versions all over Germany that the language became standardized.
516: High-German and Low-German May 7, 2016
There are a few dialects of German spoken in Germany, but the most commonly known distinction with the most linguistically significant features is the split between High-German (Hochdeutsch) in the south, and Low-German (Plattdeutsch) in the north. The name has nothing to do with geographical positions, or the difference between high-society and low-society (as a Bavarian might want to say), but that High-German is spoken in the mountainous region of Germany, which has a higher elevation that that of Low (flat) German. To give you an idea of the difference, the word for 'day in High-German is 'Tag' but in Low-German which is closer to Scandinavian languages it is 'Dag'.
515: stat May 6, 2016
Many medical terms come from Latin and Greek, which tend to spearate lay-speech from the technical. People here may know 'stat; from perhaps medical procedural show.This word is used in real life as well comes from the Latin 'statim' meaning 'at once'.
514: a cappella May 5, 2016
A cappella showdown, the competition, ended not so long ago, yet this word is still famously misspelled. The word comes from the Italian, with the literal meaning of ‘in chapel-style.’ This is a reference to the choral style of music, more religiously oriented, without instrumental accompaniment that was the predecessor to a cappella.
513: fault May 4, 2016
'Fault' comes from the Middle English word 'faut(e)' which meant ‘lack, failing’, and was based on the Latin, 'fallere' meaning ‘deceive’. The letter L was added in English and also French in the 15th century in order to create a stronger association with the Latin word, but that did not become standard in English's standardized spelling until the 17th century, though it was not pronounced until the mid-to-late 18th century.
512: hello (continued) May 3, 2016
Following the post from yesterday on 'hello', here is a closer look at the word itself. Originally a verb as well, 'hello', which along with 'holler' is a variant of the rare verb, 'hollo', and is related to the word 'holla' which comes from the French holà, meaning 'ho there', as an order to stop. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the words which are related etymologically to the greeting, 'hello', but of them, this does consider most with related means.
511: Hey, Hi, and Hello May 2, 2016
There are a plethora of ways in which one could greet another with a single word, among them, 'hey, 'hi' and 'hello'. Although 'hello' may be considered the most formal, it is not the most established, first appearing only in the late 19th century. 'Hi', on the other hand, was first recorded in late Middle English, and even earlier recordings are found of 'hey'.
510: fold and -fold May 1, 2016
To fold a piece of paper makes it twice as thick as it was originally, a fact which ought not to come as a surprise to anyone. Although the word has taken on other uses, in geology, and poker every one of them dates back to the Old English word, 'falden, fealden', in the sense of bending. Even though, the suffix '-fold' as in 'twofold' comes from a different Old English suffx '-fald, -feald', it was always related to the sense of bending something as a means to increase size.
509: ouch Apr 30, 2016
It seems natural to say or yell 'ouch' as a reaction to pain, but it is less simple than that. Though it is true that making noise is a natural way to deal with physical pain, that are all learned over time beginning during childhood, and separate cultures tend to have different exclamations. 'Ouch' became the convention after the vast migrations of Germans influenced the language with their 'autch' of the same pronunciation.
508: wee Apr 29, 2016
It might seem a peculiar thought for small, non-viking children to be screaming war-cries while playing games but that practice is not so uncommon as we may think. The exclamation 'wee' may seem like something entirely natural for people to say, but the word comes from the Old English 'wīg' meaning 'battle', as troops might have yelled before charging enemy lines.