765: Minor Jan 11, 2017

A minor is largely considered to be a person under 18 years old, grouping both children and most teenagers. Nevertheless, while 'minor' is often assumed to be understood as anyone ages 0 to 17, the word is circumstantial, and could refer to a person of an age either higher or lower than 18. In terms of buying and consuming alcohol in the United States, for example, a minor would be anyone under the age of 21, as legally a minor is anyone under the age of majority, which is whatever the governing body has seen fit to include in a law. For more on this, see:

señor, sir, and sire or etymology of minor

764: Ones Two Cents Jan 10 2017

Phrases tend to be a little harder to track down the history of, since they fade in and out of use more often, and while they have many connections to culture, they don't need to have as much history. Still, it is possible to make reasonable estimates for a great many of them based on when and where they started appearing. The phrase, "my two cents" when referring to input or advice most likely started from Poker. In the game, people have to pay a certain amount of money to enter the game, and while now no game would be as little as 2¢, in the 19th century this would have been reasonable for a lower-stakes game. 

763: In God We Trust Jan 9, 2017

The phrase 'in G*d we trust" has been featured on every piece of US currency, but only for about 60 years. This began first in the 1860'sduring the civil war when citizens were requesting more religious reassurance from the government, and so coins were featured with this phrase. Later, during the Red Scare, Americans wanted to distance themselves from (atheistic) communists in any way possible, and as such, this time saw government gravitating towards Christianity. The national motto was even changed from E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) to 'In G*d We Trust' in 1956. After that, all US coins and bills contained this phrase.

762: Stereotype Threat Jan 8, 2017

Speech does certainly affect a person's psychology. Studies have found that the act of reminding someone of relevant, existing stereotypes hinders that person's ability to perform a particular action, which has been termed, stereotype threat. Several experiments conducted on female undergraduate students who were told of that men are better at math showed “in working memory intensive tasks such as mathematical problem solving, stereotype threat harms the cognitive system by co-opting working memory resources” (Merritt, Anna C., Effron, Daniel A. and Moni, Benoît “Moral self-licensing: When being good frees us to be bad" Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4 2010). Relatively little is known about how this or other types of discriminatory language affects the mind, so there is a big push from linguists and psychologists for more of this type of research.

761: Antidiscrimination Paradigm Jan 7, 2017

Words are arbitrary and without any understood meaning they are nothing more than sounds. Insults therefore rely not on the word itself but the concept that it conveys and as such, no matter what the term is, it will eventually become offensive if it carries negative connotations. Linguist Ben O'Neill calls this the Antidiscrimination Paradigm, in which a neutral word becomes a dysphemism (negative term), and then a euphemism is created to replace it. This cycle explains why 'moron', 'idiot', 'mentally retarded', all began as clinical, medical descriptors but gained their rudeness from bullies. Later, these words were replaced with 'mentally disabled' which O'Neill argues will eventually also gain these connotations until public perception changes.

760: narcolepsy and narcotics Jan 6, 2017

If you enforce drug-laws, or are just a real bummer at parties, then you could be called a 'narc'. This word was formed from 'narcotics' which is derived from a Greek word, 'narkoun' meaning ‘make numb’. While no one would call someone with narcolepsy a narc justifiable, the condition is named similarly, from 'narkē' which means ‘numbness’. Still, much like how the suffix '-aholic' in 'workaholic' was invented from association to another word, 'alcoholic' and not from a historic suffix, the '-psy' suffix does not mean anything by historically. Instead, the ending was created on the pattern of 'epilepsy' which has the Greek tmesis, 'lambanein' meaning 'to take hold of', and 'epi-' as a prefix.

759: Desert versus Dessert Jan 5, 2017

A fairly common tip to remembering the difference between 'desert' and 'dessert' is that generally one would want more dessert so it has more S's. The tricky thing is, the phrase, "get one's just deserts' is seen almost as often as "get one's just desserts" according to the Oxford English Corpus. While few people then would question the meaning of either one, the word 'desert' or more often 'deserts', pronounced in this case like, 'dessert' has a less-commonly known meaning of a person's entitlement to punishment or reward, so while one may deserve dessert, that would not be applicable in the same way as it is meant in the phrase, "one's just deserts'.

758: pummel and pommel Jan 4, 2017

What would an apple, the top of a building, and the act of striking someone have in common?
An apple in French is 'pomme' which still does not hint much at answer, it may be interesting to know that an Old French diminutive of the Latin for 'apple', 'pommel' which in 'Middle English meant a ball on the top point of a tower, and,  importantly in this case, was often used to refer to the butt of a sword. Later on, 'to pommel' morphed into 'to pummel' based on the connotation to striking.

757: Sophisticate and Adulterate Jan 3, 2017

Just by luck, certain words get used less than others, lose definitions, or have more-used forms. 'Sophisticate' is the verb from which the participle, 'sophisticated' is create, but at its most frequently used, in 1968, it only accounted for around 0.00001% of all words used, meanwhile in 1987, 'sophisticated' accounted for more than 0.00212%. Likewise 'adulterate', compared to 'adultery', has existed in a similar shadow. Perhaps fittingly, both verbs have historically had quite similar senses, and until 'adultery' replaced the earlier, 'avoutrie', the verbs were more or less interchangeable. For more on 'sophisticated' and its change in meaning over time, click this link.

756: beleaguer Jan 2, 2017

Though often used to refer to every-day matters, 'beleaguer' or more often its participle, 'beleaguered' was once solely a military-term, originally from the Dutch, 'belegeren'. In the late 16th century, Sir John Smyth wrote of English soldiers, "they will not vouchsafe in their speeches or writings to use our ancient terms belonging to matters of war, but do call a camp by the Dutch name". The camp in question is the Dutch term, 'leaguer' ultimately originating from 'leger' meaning 'to build'. Despite Smyth's vexation, 'beleaguer' is not as un-English as he thought, with an Old English, 'leger' giving us 'lair'. The only different is the Dutch prefix, 'be-' meaning 'around', though it is also seen in Old English-derived words like 'besiege', and 'beset'.

755: manikin and mannequin Jan 1, 2017

Mannequins resemble people for art and fashion-related purposes, so it would make sense that English adopted this word from the language of France, a place known well for those two things. The word, however, is originally Dutch from, 'manekijn' which means, 'little man', with the spelling only changed to fit French orthography. English did also gain another word, 'manikin' (or sometimes 'mannikin') directly from Dutch, but with the spelling altered to fit English orthography. Not only does this other spelling denote the models, but also physically small people, especially men.

754: utopia Dec 31, 2016

This year, 2016, marked the 500th anniversary of the Sir Thomas More book, Utopia, originally published in Latin. This book was the first time word had been used, invented from the Greek 'ou' and 'topos' meaning, 'no place'. The word 'dystopia' was created a few centuries later from back formation, meaning, 'bad place'. Before this 'bad place' there had been a 'good place', nearly identical in form to 'utopia', making the title of this book a pun as well.
May 2017 for you not be utopia, and leave 'ou topos' for dystopias.

753: Performance-verbs Dec 30, 2016

There are lots of different types of verbs, and while kindergarten teachers do lot lie when saying, 'a verb is an action-word' they rarely explain the different types of actions. A performance-verb, for example, is one type that conveys the performed speech-act, or in other words, it explains what the action is as the action happens. 'Invite', 'congratulate', and 'forbid' are all performance-verbs, as should someone say, 'I invite you over' that sentence would itself be an invitation, while another sentence like, 'I will be a better person' does not make the speaker a better person.

I thank you (performance-verb) for reading and hope you keep this in mind while you write your new year's resolutions.

752: Circumfix Dec 29, 2016

On this blog, you'll have seen a fair amount about affixes, especially Latinate prefixation. One affix, among the prefixes, suffixes, and infixes, that is often less fixated upon by English-speakers is the circumfix. Other languages, especially Austronesian languages like Malay see a lot of these forms in which both a prefix and a suffix are added at the same time as a single unit. There are some disagreements on what would qualify, but the best and perhaps only examples in English is the 'en- -en' or 'em- -en' circumfix, in such words as 'embolden'. These have grown fairly unpopular and are starting to phase out of use. 

751: Turkey and turkey Dec 28, 2016

Are you feeling Hungary for some Turkey? Either way, while the former country has nothing to do with hunger, and is in its own language instead called, Magyar, Turkey the country and turkey the fowl are not so different. The word 'turkey', before the arrival of Europeans in North America, applied to a different bird: guinea fowl, so nicknamed because they were imported to Europe through Turkey. When the Europeans did come to North America and see the turkey (Melleagris gallopavo) as we know today, they mistakenly associated them with guinea fowl and the term stuck.

750: austria, the orient, and easter Dec 27, 2016

What do 'Austria', 'The Orient', and 'Easter' have in common? Well despite the fact that on the surface the meanings do not relate, and that the words do not sound terribly similar, they all descend etymologically from words meaning, 'East'. The Orient should not have a surprising etymology then, so long as you think of Asia as east of Europe, but 'orientation' comes from the same Latin root with 'oriri' meaning, 'to rise', and because of the semantic relation to the Sun, it eventually lead to words meaning, 'east'. 'Austria', itself may sound like the root for 'Australia' and other words meaning, 'south' (read more here) but there is no connection. 'Austria' is a Latinization of what is now, 'Österreich' or then, 'Ostarrîchi' which meant, 'eastern realm' as it is (somewhat) east of Germany. Finally, 'Easter' comes from an Old English word, 'ēastre' and according to St. Bede, is the name of a goddess associated with spring.

749: richard, hick, and dick Dec 26, 2016

The name 'Richard' might make you think of the many European royal or noble men, which is partly from it being a traditional name, but also it is believed that a predecessor of the name, perhaps 'Richardu' in Proto-Germanic meant, 'hard ruler'. There were many nicknames that came up later on, including 'Rich', 'Rick', and then, 'Dick' and 'Hick', the latter being currently unpopular. 'Dick' to mean 'vexing person' came around only in the 16th century, and then as 'penis' in the 18th or 19th, with the first recorded use found in the 1890's from an English solider. 'Hick' as well took on negative connotations from its and 'dick's' shared sense as 'man'. 'Dick,' and 'Hick' became nicknames for 'Richard' at a time when it was fairly common to have rhyme-based nicknames, in this case of 'Rick', much like with 'Rob' and 'Bob', 'Molly' and 'Polly', and 'Will' and 'Bill'.

748: baader-meinhof phenomenon Dec 25, 2016

Have you ever found that when something will seem to pop-up, occur, or otherwise make itself known frequently once it's been pointed out that you didn't notice at all before? There is a term for this in psychology called, the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, named after the former left-wing West German terrorist group. A researcher in the '80's noticed the name of the terrorist group in a newspaper, and then found that he kept seeing it after that, even though the presence of the word as used around him had not changed really. No one is quite sure why this happens, but it is not strange to all of a sudden notice something constantly that otherwise would slip you by unawares.

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.