727: Supernatural Swearing (C.W.2) Dec 4, 2016

The next category of cursing which Pinker identifies is Supernatural Swearing. This accounts for all the 'oh my G*d' and 'damn' curses that people still use regularly, even in increasingly secular societies. These words have lost gravity for that very reason, and are used in much more of a carefree manner than they were in Victorian England. GadZooks (G*d's hooks) refers to Jesus' nails because people were afraid to use God's name in vain. Similarly, 'zounds' is a euphemism for 'God's wounds', which is particularly appropriate.

726: Abusive Swearing (C.W.1) Dec 3, 2016

Steven Pinker, a neurolinguist, identified five types of cursing, all used for different effects. When words are used and created for the intent to insult people, or marginalize groups of people, his is called 'abusive swearing'. Not all of these words will be abusive for all time however, such as 'bad' /stonewordfacts/2016/05/365-good-bad-and-evil-dec-8-2015.html. Curse words—most believe—are stored in the limbic system, apart from most other words, which also stores emotions and could add to the interconnectivity of insulting terms and emotional responses. This idea will be explored more in posts later this week.

725: quid pro quo Dec 2, 2016

In addition to many adopted words from Latin, English has acquired some entire phrases, including 'pro bono', 'status quo', 'a priori', and 'quid pro quo', just to name a few. These all have literal meanings, but that doesn't prevent a phrase from being used in different ways. 'Quid pro quo' which in English is, 'something for something' first denoted an item one got from an apothecary, referring to the process of replacing one medicine for another, intentional or otherwise. A few decades later the meaning was extended to other exchanges, and now the initial sense from its early years of being an English term is rarely if ever the intended meaning.

724: tangent, secant, and sine Dec 1, 2016

Words from Latin are adopted quite a bit more easily than words from Middle Eastern languages, and trigonometry offers a wonderful example of this. The word 'tangent', from a Latin meaning ‘touching’; the story ends there. The word 'secant' comes from Latin meaning 'cut'; the story ends there. 'Sine', however, was 'ardha-jya', abbreviated 'jya' in Sanskrit in the 5th century which meant, 'half-chord'. Later in Arabic texts this appeared as 'jiba', which having no original Arabic meaning to tether it eventually morphed into 'jaib' meaning 'bosom of a dress'. in the 12th century, this was finally translated into Latin, literally, with the word 'sinus' which denoted many things with curved shapes, like sinuses, but really it means 'breasts'.

723: dodo and dotterel Nov 30, 2016

What is there to do when an animal is discovered on an island with no inhabitants, and therefore no names to adopt? There are at least 3 ways; first, use an imitative name based off of a sound the animal makes, such as with the name for 'cuckoo', second, make up a name out of thin air, and thirdly, use an already-existing word. For the bird, 'dodo', the third of these options was employed. The word for the bird discovered on Mauritius Island comes from the Portuguese 'doudo' meaning ‘simpleton’, denoting the ease with which the bird was killed due to its lack of innate fear of humans. 'Dotterel' was named from the related, 'dote', for a same purpose, except here there is an added diminutive suffix, '-rel', present in other words for the purpose of derogation, such as 'cockerel' or 'scoundrel'.

722: saxon Nov 29, 2016

Although words are ultimately arbitrary, considering the vast history of spoken languages, it would be a strange thing to come upon a word that has no story. 'Saxon', relevant to the name of several modern German states and much of Anglo-germanic history, wasn't just made up out of nowhere. Via a slew of other languages, this word dates back to an Old English root, 'Seaxan, Seaxe" (plural); looking back even further, this word come from the base, 'sax' meaning ‘small ax,’ or, 'seax' for ‘knife’. Many other Indo-european languages have related words relating to 'cut', and many believe that here, it is a reflection of the tribe's notable prowess in war.

721: banal and ban Nov 28, 2016

What do movies lacking suspense, the draft, and censored books have in common? The answer to that question is that nobody really likes any of that stuff, and also the word, 'banal'. Until the mid 1700's, this referenced feudal service that was compulsory, originally from the French, 'ban' meaning, ‘a proclamation or call to arms’; it was this sense of common duty that eventually took on the meaning of, ‘common to all’. You might think that 'ban' also comes directly from this French word, but actually it's from an Old English word, 'bannan', which means ‘summon by a public proclamation’, which was reinforced by both the Old Norse 'banna' which translates to ‘curse, prohibit’, and later the French, 'ban'. Today, 'banal' has changed from meaning a call to arms to meaning anything without originality.

720: In- Nov 27, 2016

'Irrational', 'illegal', 'impossible' and 'inhumane', morphologically speaking, have the same prefix, even though the initial 2 letters each are different. They all take the Latinate, 'in-' prefix which negates a word. To be sure, this is not the same as the 'in-' in 'import' and some other words that come from the preposition, or otherwise 'illegal' and 'impossible' would refer to something within the restrictions of the law or the realm of possibility, and that's quite the opposite of the truth. Certain phonemes are difficult to pronounce together—which is why most of the time, for example, the in in 'con-' will become an M such as in 'computer'—but other time the will remain the same like the N in 'inhumane'.

719: noodle Nov 26, 2016

Noodles come from all over the world, from Italy to Japan, but where 'noodle' comes from, now one is quite sure. As far as anyone can tell though, it is related to the word 'noddle', meaning the top of one's head, and 'nod', although not 'noggin'. The word 'nod' is also related to an Old High German word for 'shake', though this would not have a relation to 'noodle' as much as it would Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street. 

718: Paperclip and trombone Nov 25, 2016

The French word for 'paperclip' is 'trombone' in reference to the similar loops that the Gem Manufacturing Company design for paperclips, still used today, has to the instrument. In fact, this is also why the Swedish word for 'paperclip' is 'gem'. Moreover, in English, 'trumpet', 'trombone', 'tuba', and 'tube' all come from the Latin 'tuba' meaning 'trumpet' which at the time was just a straight horn. Before they were called 'trombones' in English, the instrument went by the name of 'sackbut', which was originally a French word, 'saquebute' meaning, 'hook for pulling a man off a horse', but in the 1700's Italian music became popular in England, and so the Italian word was adopted. 

717: Left- and Right-wing Nov 24, 2016

The right- and left-wing, on days that aren't Thanksgiving, refer to stances on political and social issues. The terms have been used since 1789 during the French Revolution when different supporters in the National Assembly split themselves up without planning beforehand with revolutionists to the left of the president, and supporters of the kind on the right. This division continued into the seating of the Legislative Assembly, and in the mid 19th century, the ideas of the Democratic Socialists, and the Reactionaries were associated with the seating in the assembly. There was also room for a center-group, the Constitutionals, but most of the time people describe the nuances with center- right or left. These terms came into English in the former half of the 20th century, most commonly concerning the Spanish Civil War.

716: burg, borough, borrow, and bury Nov 23, 2016

It isn’t usually too surprising when words that connote similar ideas, such as 'borough' and 'burgh' turn out to be related. In this case, both of them date back to the Old English 'burg' meaning 'city' especially a walled fortress, but more surprisingly the verb 'borrow', though not 'burrow', is also related. The Old English derivative for that term originally meant 'to preserve' giving us the connection to burgs, but also the verb 'bury'. For more on this, see the post on 'burg'.

715: magpie Nov 22, 2016

Birds are pretty easy to hate, and even if a few individual ones might be tolerable like crows, others like pigeons and apparently magpies are not. The word 'magpie' comes dates all the way back to Latin from a word, 'pica' which is now related to 'picus' which is a green woodpecker. The former tmesis, 'mag', is from Middle English dialect 'maggot the pie' and 'maggoty-pie'. At first you might think that the 'maggot' would be the same as the larva on account of nobody liking either one much, but actually it comes from a nickname for the 'Marguerite'.

714: Dude Nov 21, 2016

This post is modified from an answer I gave to a fan a few days ago asking what 'dude' means. What makes this slightly tricky is that words used in more informal contexts often are not defined well by dictionaries, either because they do not feature as heavily in texts, and or that they are situationally dependent. In the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the word is defined as "a fastidiously dressed man" and "city dweller", which is not how most people use the word now. These senses go back to the way it was used in the late 1800's, as around 130 years ago, this was used pejoratively to describe overdressed men. Words have changed as society changes, but often dictionaries aren't edited at the same rate. If you ever have your own questions, please feel free to submit them in a message. 

713: spam Nov 20, 2016

Which came first, the unwanted mail, spam, or the unwanted ham, Spam? Unlike many other words explored on Word Facts, 'spam' does not date back to Latin, Old English, or even Middle English; the earliest 'spam' was in 1937, when the meat-product was first produced. The use of the word as a reference to unwanted mail originated with a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch in which the cast chants 'Spam' so much as to interrupt the other speech. 

712: gentry, gentleman, genteel, and gentile, Nov 19, 2017

A word like the Latin, 'genus' explored more in the link below has given English an array of words relating to the human race and biology, but with so many of these words, it would have been unlikely for some of them not to have divergent meanings. 'Gentry' and 'gentleman' both related to rank, with the former referring to those born into nobility, and the latter denoting a man of good standing but not a nobleman. As time went on, other derivatives had less and less to do with the original meaning of 'genus'. The sense of 'well-born' or 'clan', also seen in 'gentile', later gave rise to the connotation with 'fashionable', and from the French, 'gentil', we got 'genteel' eventually becoming derogatory in the 1800's. For more on this topic click here.

711: index (finger) Nov 18, 2016

The finger next to one's thumb goes by many names, including 'first finger', 'forefinger', 'index finger', and 'pointer finger', which is names than any other digit. The word 'index' comes directly from the Latin for ‘forefinger' derived from the verb, 'dicere' meaning ‘say’ and or 'dicare' meaning ‘make known’, which is also the root for 'indicate'. The sense of the word as a part of a book came much later but what it connotes is true to the sense of the word. Around the same time, the 'pointer' of 'pointer finger' began to be used starting in the early 17th century. 

710: elicit, illicit, and solicit Nov 17, 2016

If you are a reader of Word Facts, you may at this point start to believe that words which sound similar are likely to be related, after all, 21 of all of the past posts contain the phrase "sound similar". Nevertheless, there are some sets of words which are misleading. It would make sense if 'elicit,' 'solicit', and 'illicit' shared a common root, but it is not the case that these words differ only from historical prefixes. While 'elicit' derives from the verb 'lacere' meaning 'attract or charm' (not to be confused with 'lacerare' which gives English, 'lacerate'), 'illicit' is derived from negating 'licere', meaning 'to be permitted'. 'Solicit', unlike the other two, does not come from affixation but instead, compounding, as the first syllable is from 'sollus' which means, 'whole', and the verb for 'to move', 'cicēre', in the sense of 'disturb'.

709: meerkat and mongoose Nov 16, 2016

When speakers of a language don't have a word for something and need one, or have a word but for whatever reason need a better one, the easiest way is to either create a word from existing elements, or to adopt a word from another language, assuming one exists. This happened a great deal when means for travel became simpler and faster some centuries ago, and people began to see objects and events never before witnessed by that group. When the Europeans ventured further and more often into Africa and Asia, they found the mongoose, a word adopted from the Marathi, 'maṅgūs'; we see here an example of word adoption. 'Meerkat', however, a type of mongoose, is derived from a Dutch word meaning, 'sea cat' as meerkats are no mere cats (nor cats at all).

708: fantasy, fancy, and phantom Nov 15, 2016

It might be hard to imagine all of the words that have been created, arguably from people's imaginations, over the years. Quite appropriately, the Greek word for ‘imagination’ has given Modern English a plethora of words. The latinized form of that word, 'phantasia', comes from, ‘phantom,’ and earlier, 'phantazein' meaning ‘make visible’. You could probably guess that we get 'phantom' from this, but also 'fantasy' including all of its derivatives like 'fantastic' and 'fantastical', all originally spelt with a PH. Through a simple contraction of 'fantasy', we got the word 'fancy'.