747: gay Dec 24, 2016

From a few decades old music to books and anything else from the past, it isn't too uncommon to find 'gay' as an adjective meaning, 'joyful', 'showy' or 'mirthful', as it did since the 12th century. In the 17th century, the word took on a second meaning of, 'drawn to pleasures' and sometimes, 'of loose or immoral lifestyle', but existed alongside the earlier sense. In the 19th century, 'gay' took on the meaning of 'prostitute' and a 'gay man' was one who slept with many prostitutes, giving rise to the phrase, 'gay it' to mean 'have sex'. Only in the 1920's or '30's did the word refer to what we think of today, and later on in the mid-50's gay men themselves felt that 'homosexual' was too clinical and cemented the definition which having so many senses up until then was sort of vague, so people stopped using 'gay' so mean 'jolly'. 'Gaiety' seems to have been unaffected and kept its original sense, however. See also "in the closet". 

746: hokey pokey and hocus pocus Dec 23, 2016

There are some disagreements about the true origins of this, so take the following not so much as a word-fact but as a word-theory.

The phrases 'hocus-pocus' and 'hokey-pokey' which are often associated with witchcraft and silliness respectively are believed to originate, not from, but because of the Catholic Church. Most evidence shows that the jingle, Hokey Pokey, originated in Scotland from the Puritans who would mock the Catholics preaching in ecclesiastical Latin. More specifically the Puritans would poke fun at the Latin in, in this case, the chant used during The Eucharist. In England and Canada the song is called the Hokey Cokey, differing because at the time when the lyrics were being copyrighted, the lyricist opted for an existing Canadian slang word, 'cokey' that meant 'crazy' as a replacement for the original one. 

745: Litterbug Dec 22, 2016

People litter, certainly, and cats have litters (of kittens), but bugs don't really have any relation; even a now-archaic form of the word meant to make a bed of litter for usually a horse, so why do people say, 'litterbug', in a teasing or pejorative manner? While both of the tmeses, or the individual elements of a compound, are quite old 'litterbug' has only been around for a few decades. Much like the term, 'jaywalking' (see here), 'litterbug' was a word coined by corporations trying to put the blame on the public for problems that were not really the fault (entirely) of the people and avoid responsibility for, in this case, pollution.

744: ballerina Dec 21, 2016

To ask what the male counterpart for a ballerina would be goes further than simply the masculine an feminine forms for a single word. Colloquially, 'ballerina' is simply a female ballet-dancer, but more technically, she is the head- female dancer. As such, there isn't as much need to make a distinction based on gender; there is the ballerina and then everyone else would simply be termed a 'dancer'. Interestingly, however, the word, 'ballerina' is the feminine form of the Italian, 'ballerino', but since ballet uses French terminology, this word is not a title for any male dancer.

743: 2nd Person Pronouns Dec 20, 2016

Two of the most commonly used words in English are 'I' and 'you'. Despite their commonality and seemingly fundamental necessity, while, 'I' is more or less universal, 'you' is incredibly difficult to translate. In languages unlike Standard American English, there will be different forms for the singular and the plural, and in some cases there is a separate word for specifically 2 addressees. English used to make the distinction between the informal, 'thou' formal, 'you' and plural, 'ye' but this was eventually largely dropped. Other languages also have different forms for levels of familiarity and necessary respect, sometimes just with informal and formal terms, but there could be many more. In fact, in the 18th century, a Chinese emperor had a scholar, and his entire family, executed for using a pronoun that was too familiar. The final distinguishing factor that many languages make is gender, but often there is also a lot of combining of the previously mentioned 3, as in Spanish plural, masculine or feminine, formal or informal pronouns. Some languages like Portuguese omit this pronoun as it is unnecessary from conjugation, but other ones like Japanese or Korean will omit them with absolutely no context and force the listener to guess.

742: fracture, fraction, and fractal Dec 19, 2016

hat does fracking have to do with fractals?––Generally very little in terms of their mechanics, but as you may now be guessing, they are etymologically related. 'Frack' is just an abbreviation started in the 1950's of 'fracture', but in addition to 'fractal', 'fraction is related. All of these words come from the Latin participle of 'frangere' which means, 'to break', 'fractura', but while 'frack' took the meaning of breaking into pieces, the two aforesaid mathematical terms use a meaning closer to reduction.

741: World Englishes Dec 18, 2016

There is an area of linguistic study that has only existed fairly recently and only with a few other languages, including Arabic, Spanish, and French: World Englishes. Most languages are spoken only relatively few people in one region, but English is spoken all over the world by as many as 1 in 7 to 1 in 4 people, depending on how one measures levels of fluency. If enough people speak a language over a large enough area, there will be regional dialects no matter what, but now English is also influenced by other languages native to different places, accents, culture, and varying education. English is increasingly global also as the internet gives people access to everyone else online, and so it accounts for between 65%-80% of the content on the web. As more individuals speak this language, more dialects and variations emerge. 

740: animus Dec 17, 2016

As time goes on, words gain new meanings and these are often reinforced with derivatives, as it is more difficult conceptually to have a word with two potentially contrasting meanings than it would be to use two separately pronounced ones. It is not uncommon for this reason to have a single outlying derivative distinct from the general thematic connotation that the rest, as well as the original word, have. Every now and then, conflicting ideologies will effect a word's derivatives to fall into one of usually two groups. 'Animosity', 'animus' and in certain contexts, 'animalistic' and 'animality' all tend towards the connotation of hatred, or a lack of restraint. On the other hand, 'animism', 'animate', and 'anima' all relate more to the original sense of the word: a soul. All of these words come from the same Latin one, and ultimately from an Indo European root meaning, 'to breathe' but depend fundamentally on the way that people perceive them.

739: That Dec 16, 2016

It would certainly be insulting to refer to someone as 'it' instead of 'he', 'she' or some other preferred pronoun, so it should then seem strange that, 'that' is often used instead of 'who' when referring to a person, introducing a subordinate clause, e.g. "She's a woman that loves to read". That is also used for inanimate objects, and necessary when referencing the subject of the clause. There is more information on the difference between 'that' and 'which' here. This confusion has existed since the 11th century, and would no longer be due to applying 'that' as it would have been used for inanimate objects: this is a manner of speech with history.

738: Fillip Dec 15, 2016

The onset 'fli' has in many words like 'flick' is used imitatively to demonstrate rapid motion (see more  here). This is believed by psycho-linguists to be quick release of the speaker's curled tongue. The word 'fillip' is yet another example of this, first having the meaning of flicking one's finger, but it soon took on the meaning of acting as a stimulus or giving something energy, and moved slightly away from the theme of the other words that follow this same pattern.

737: spoonerisms Dec 14, 2016

Yesterday, the focus of Word Facts was misinterpretations of things people hear, and if you didn't see it, click here. The opposite side of this problem is, logically, misspeaking. There are a number of ways that this happens, including saying an unintended word, or leaving information out, but an often funnier mistake that some people make might be to switch the sounds of words around, such as 'sons of toil' instead of 'tons of soil', or 'pobody's nerfect' for 'nobody's perfect'. The term for this phenomenon is 'spoonerism', named after William A. Spooner, a clergyman known for constantly making this mistake.

736: egg corns and mondegreens Dec 13, 2016

There are a great number of ways in which it is possible to misinterpret what someone has said. Of course, it is possible to hear nonsense, but common misconceptions about words and phrases like 'bated-breath, 'lip singing' or 'old-timer's disease' instead of 'baited-breath', 'lip-syncing' and 'Alzheimer's disease' respectively that still retain some sense of the original word in a fairly logical way have a specific name, egg corns, or more technically, oronyms. There are also, 'mondegreens' which involve the misunderstanding or lyrics or other text, and can usually also make sense within the context. Both of these words are examples of what they represent: 'egg corn' comes from a mishearing of 'acorn' and 'mondegreen' is coined based off of someone hearing the end of Percy's Reliques, "...They hae slain the Earl o' Moray, and Lady Mondegreen' instead of '...and laid him on the green'.

735: angles and jutes Dec 12, 2016

The reason behind the name, Saxon, was covered before so it seemed logical to go over the other tribes of England. The Angles were so named because of their region's shape. Angles come from present-day Schleswig in Denmark, but the region has always had a lot of German people and influences, so it would make sense that the name has a common root shared with Latin, Old English, and German.
As for the Jutes, there is much debate, even as to whether these people were their own distinct group. Some people have claimed that this is just an alternative pronunciation of Geats or Goths, and even though their homeland, Jutland juts out into the ocean, there is little evidence that this would have caused the name for this Danish peninsula.

734: orgy Dec 11, 2016

The nature of an orgy is, and has for a long time been, purely sexual. It wasn't always this way, and it only gained this stigma because of Christians. In Greek, 'orgia' meant ‘secret rites or revels’, and was used to denote plenty of religious congregations. The Christians did not care much for pagan rituals, and while killing people and tearing down or re-purposing religious sites works to stop those whom are already pagans from worshiping, spreading rumors that at these orgia, all people do is have immoral, hedonistic sex would (perhaps) prevent Christians from converting.

733: English as a North Germanic Language Dec 10, 2016

It is usually taken as fact that English is not just a Germanic language, but a West Germanic language in the same class as Afrikaans, Dutch, and German. While sometimes people, though not many, argue that due to the over 50% romantic vocabulary English should be considered a creole, this would still not change its language family because families are based on grammar and structure. A paper published from the University of Oslo, however, argues that English should be considered a North Germanic language, along with Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and others, citing certain structural similarities including objects being placed after second verbs, split infinitives, prepositions after the adjunct, and group-genitives, all of which are not possible in German or Dutch.

732: Current and Future Swears (C.W.7) Dec 9, 2016

This is the last post for Curse Week II and the 2-year anniversary!
Although many of the curse-words we have now have existed for a long time, and have embedded themselves so thoroughly in language that .7% of English speakers lexicon is made up of the mere 10 phrases: 'f*ck', 'sh*t', 'hell', 'G-d damn it', 'ass', 'b*tch', 'damn', 'oh my G-d', and 'suck', particularly the first 2, which is nearly as much as people use all 1st person plural pronouns. Linguists now, realizing that words change as societies change have come up with theories on the most prominent future-insults. One linguist has theorized that insults will be derived of class differences, so terms like 'salt of the earth', 'trash', 'chav', or 'urban' would become more offensive. Others have suggested that insults about mental illness will become more prominent, such as, 'schizo', 'mental', or 'aspy'. This, however is no quick process, and likely we won't really know.

/stonewordfacts/2016/05/44-fuck-jan-20-2015.html

731: Cathartic Swearing (C.W.6) Dec 8, 2016

It would in no way be uncommon to say, 'ouch' when you, say, stub your toes. Alternatively, many if not most people will curse when in pain, and neurologically it aids in pain-relief. Cathartic swearing is perhaps the most basic and instinctive use of these words. In fact, many people who experience head-trauma which affects their ability to use language are still perfectly able to curse, as these words are stored in a different part of the brain. Unfortunately, this is the reason that certain conditions, such as turrets's syndrome may cause individuals to swear, but not yell any words randomly. Cursing, as has been said here before may be stored in the limbic system, which also stores emotions.

730: Dysphemistic Swearing (C.W.5) Dec 6, 2016

A euphemism is used to talk about something that is regarded as uncomfortable or unpleasant whilst acknowledging that it was unpleasant. Have you ever though wondered what the opposite of euphemism is? Even if you haven't had that thought as such , most people know the desire to emphasize when something is truly unpleasant, so unpleasant as to warrant the breaking of social rules. In these certain circumstances, 'dysphemisms' are used. In that way, rather than saying, "I stepped in dog-feces", to make it very clear that the situation is unfavorable, choose, "I stepped in dog-shit" or "dog-crap".

729: Idiomatic Swearing (C.W.4) Dec 6, 2016

It would be uncommon perhaps for a student to say to his teacher, "what the fuck does that mean?". Almost certainly this would be very rude, even if this is a case of Emphatic Swearing (see post C.W.3). The question from before would be a great deal more acceptable socially if someone were instead to ask it to her friend. Idiomatic Swearing, as it is named, gives the impression that a situation is casual, and allows for both interlocutors to see that some social standards would not have to be enforced in a more relaxed conversation.

728: Emphatic Swearing (C.W.3) Dec 5, 2016

At this point in Curse Week, you might say, "I fucking love Word Facts". Here is an example of a curse word that doesn't have the same negative connotations as an insult or other derogatory term, even if people might choose to opt for something else in formal settings. This is called Emphatic Swearing, and is used to convey that fact that social expectations matter less than the emotion which is being expressed. Due to that understood intention, most people agree that the exclamation above is even more emphatic than "I really love Word Facts" would be, as that does not suggest any disregard for social norms.