817: budget, bulge, and belly Mar 4, 2017

Some words have rather cut-and-dry explanations for their origins, especially onomatopoetic ones like 'belch'; for others, there may be more of a story. The word 'budget', for instance, comes from the 'bouge' meaning ‘leather bag’ with the same diminutive suffix that 'ballet' has. This word was Gaulish originally and through until the mid 18th century meant 'bag' or 'wallet' and the contents thereof. This then changed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer (i.e. the royal treasury) in the UK whom is said “to open the budget” when presenting an annual statement. Since, the meaning of the word was extended to finances. The relation to money, however, does not exist within other related words like 'bulge' which comes from the same root-word; its meaning is supposed to derive from the similarity between a filled bag. Moreover, the word 'belly' is distantly related, coming from the Old English 'belig' translating to ‘bag’ which itself comes from a base meaning 'to swell'.

Also, there is in fact more on 'belch' than previously stated, and you can see that here: 'belch' and 'blink'

816: nan, nanny, and grand Mar 3, 2017

There is no shortage for words meaning "mother of a parent" in English, including 'granny', 'grandmother' and 'nana'. The word 'nanny' comes from a nickname common in the early 18th century for the name Ann, which started to be applied to the occupation of a caretaker. Meanwhile, it is not certain whether, 'nan' and 'nana' derive from 'nanny' or the way a young child might pronounce 'gran'. This second option is not terribly unlikely, as babies have a far easier time pronouncing dental sounds like that made by N and also, D, which is why more often 'dad' is an infant's first word rather than 'mom'; you can see more about this below.

It might also be interesting to know that the prefix, 'grand-' as in 'grandmother' derives from the Latin 'grandis' meaning ‘full-grown, big, great’. While now the word is used to mean, 'pleasant', 'big', relative rank, and a gap in generation between family-relations, the usage of the word in Middle English began as a reference to family, and titles first. 'Great' has almost all of the same functions as an adjective and prefix (except as a title) but this instead meant 'large' first.

First Words and Babies' Pronunciation

815: kennings, whale-roads, and window Mar 2, 2017

While English speakers are relatively straightforward—opting for single words over compound phrases with commonly understood meanings—there are still some remnants of what was often practiced in Old English. In Beowulf, there are a plethora of different ways to say, for example, 'sea', including 'hron-rād' ('whale-road'), 'seġl-rād' ('sail-road'), 'hwæl-weġ' ('whale-way'), and 'swan-rād' ('swan-road'). Germanic languages, especially North Germanic ones, were filled with these, and often drew on their common mythology because the kennings—as they're called—needed to use words that everyone knew; the name for the word comes from 'ken' meaning 'know' for this reason, which you can see more about below. Words ranging from simple things like body-parts and plants to more complex ideas would be kennings, and while these are less popular today in English, there are some remnants of this. The word, 'window' comes from the Old English 'vindauga' meaning, 'wind-eye'.
Click if you want 'To Ken' more.

814: mongrel, mutt, mingle and among Mar 1, 2017

'Mutt', commonly used when denoting dogs, comes from the humorous and much more innocent-sounding 'mutton-head' abbreviated in the late 19th century. If you're confused that this word is quite new, remember that such distinct dog breads less important until the idea of eugenics became quite popular, especially among aristocracy during the Victorian age. Another, earlier term for 'mutt' is a 'mongrel', which refers to anything of mixed descent—dog or person—offensively. Other terms like 'mingle' are etymologically related to 'mongrel' but are less derogatory. That word comes from 'meng' which is no longer used, but meant 'mix'. This word also led to 'among' which was from the Old English 'ongemang' meaning from 'on ('in') and 'gemang' meaning ‘assemblage'. For more on 'among' and 'amongst' see this link: 'again' and 'against' As for 'mix', itself, it was adopted from the Old French adjective, 'mixte', and in Middle English, 'mixt' was mistaken for to be participle, leading to the verb 'mix'.

813: cobra and Words for 'Snake-like' Feb 28, 2017

Plenty of taxonomical words end in '-ine'; the reason why was explored in yesterday's post which you can see here: Drug-names and Taxonomy. Some of these are quite well-known, such as 'canine' or 'feline', while some are less used such as 'colubrine', which meas 'snake-like'. You might also recognize this as being similar to 'cobra'. This observation would be correct, but while both of these come from the Latin, 'coluber', 'cobra' is not directly from Latin and was adopted from Portuguese. 'Colubrine' is not the only word for 'snakelike' either, and 'serpentine' from the Latin for 'slither', and 'ophidian' from Greek are also used, but not often.

812: -ine Drug-names and Taxonomy Feb 27, 2017

Similar to '-en' there are many subtly different ways in which the '-ine' suffix is used, almost all of which date back to Latin's '-inus'. Many of the purposes of this ending are scientific, such as for the names of alkaloids, amines, amino acids, halogens, among other things giving English such words as 'cocaine'. This suffix is also used for other purposes like forming rare feminine forms of words, such as 'heroine' and therefore 'heroin'. Aside from drugs (which is purely coincidental), this suffix is used for diminutive purposes, as in 'figurine' from 'figure'. In science again, the suffix is used to mean 'resembling' and is used in words such as 'alpine' and 'crystalline' but also many taxonomical terms like 'canine' or 'piscine' and for plenty of plants like with, 'hyacinthine'.

For more on 'heroin' click the link.

For more on '-en', see one of the 7 in the series here.

811: Participles Feb 26, 2017

Although it is quite common for participles to be mentioned in this blog, they have been little-explained. Quite simply, a participle is a form of a verb (such as 'running' from 'to run') that functions as an adjective (like "the running man"), or as a noun (like "I like running"), and in English is part of compound verb forms, as in "I have been running", with other verbs acting in different ways at the same time. A slew of English words can be identified as coming from Latin participles now because they retain the whole of the Latin participial ending—or the whole of the Latin participle as in the case of 'status'—or just various remnants thereof. Many words that now end with '-ate' come from the Latin ending '-atus' which was common for masculine singular participles, and can at times be quite visually confusing as participles including, 'associate', 'duplicate', and 'isolate' are all nouns, but pronounced differently as verbs.

For a deeper, and funnier evaluation of other participles see this link: French Participles

810: west, and vesper Feb 25, 2017

If you didn't see the post on words deriving and relating to 'east', you should see that here. The word, 'west' has far fewer related terms in English than 'east', but there are still a number of relations from other languages. It comes from an Old English word that is not only related to modern related to Dutch and German equivalents, but also it is related through a larger Indo-European root shared by the Greek 'hesperos', and the Latin 'vesper'. Both words for ‘evening’ were also the names of the gods associated with that. 'Evening' or even the goddess thereof might not seem conceptually related, but remember that the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, something that was far more important to Latins and English tribes then that it would be now.

809: Derivations of 'Petra' Feb 24, 2017

What do being terrified, the smell after it rains, a chemical used in fertilizers, and the keeper of Heaven have in common? The answer is that they all relate etymologically to rocks. The word in Latin that meant, 'rock', 'petra' came from a Greek word first, and these together developed into a number of English words. If someone is unable to move and therefore acts in a rock-like manner out of fear or surprise, this is to be 'petrified', and also refers to when organic matter becomes stony after being gradually replaced by mineral deposits. 'Petrichor', meanwhile, is the smell after it rains, and it is thought that this is caused by water coming in contact with compounds in the ground. You can see more on that here. Likewise, 'saltpeter', and the names 'Peter' and 'Pierre' come from this same root. In fact, St. Peter was born, Simon, but was given his name by Jesus to signify the rock on top of which he would build a church; the name is still quite common today. Don't be fooled by other words like 'petri dish', because some relationships are coincidental, however.

808: doll Feb 23, 2017

There are lots of ways in which new terms are created, one of which is from nicknames. For instance, what does the word 'doll make you think of?
The word 'doll' actually came around in the mid 16th century as a term meaning, 'mistress' given from the nickname for the name 'Dorothy'. There are plenty more ways in which this word is used, even when it isn't referring to horse-racing (which has a different etymology). The meanings that this word took on, such as "kind or thoughtful person" or just a young woman are senses used almost exclusively in North America and are therefore less of an overarching, English-language standard. Nevertheless, even more popular ones like the verbal phrase "dolled up", which also diverged somewhat from this original meaning, retained some relation in terms of connotations of 'mistress'. Meanwhile, it took over a hundred years for the meaning of the doll as a toy or a small model to come about after the initial sense of 'mistress'; this keeps less of the initial sense of the word, but it is now the most common way it is used.

For the history of 'mistress, click here.

For more on dolls (the toy), click here.

807: English Counties (sussex, suffolk, and others) Feb 22, 2017

The names of the English counties, 'Sussex', 'Essex', 'Wessex' and former 'Middlesex' all denote the relative geography of their locations across southern England. It isn't too difficult to spot the 'west' in 'Wessex', the 'east' in 'Essex' nor especially the 'middle' in 'Middlesex'. There is, in addition to 'Sussex', the county, 'Suffolk' and with that 'Norfolk' (though no 'Norsex') that also have this 'south' and 'north' in the names. With 'Suffolk', this just means, "south folk", and similarly to the way many other peoples name their lands, it is just named after the word for 'people'. You can see more about other place-names here: origins of place-names. The counties ending in '-sex' are not an exception to this rule, and that ending comes from the word for 'Saxon', 'Seaxe'. For more on 'Saxon', see this link: Etymology of 'Saxon'.

806: Lent, Long, and Length (-en Day 7) Feb 21, 2017

'Lent'—when it isn't used as the perfect tense form of 'lend'—is a Christian holiday that happens every spring. This word was adopted by the Church and was used starting in Middle English as an abbreviation of the Old English word for 'spring', 'lencten'. The Old English verb, 'lǣnan'—which turned into 'lend' and therefore, 'lent'—gained the 'd' from association to other verbs like, 'send' and 'bend' (though the related word, 'loan' did not get this alteration). Meanwhile, the holiday, Lent's earlier form, 'lencten' is now considered to be formed from adding the verbal suffix, '-en'. In this way, 'Lent', which is related to the word 'long', gained an ending that signifies amplification and intensification, so like how 'lengthen' means to increase in length, 'lencten' would have referred to the increased length of days as Spring progresses. See more about this verbal suffix here: verbal suffix: '-en'.

805: Adjectival -en Suffixes (-en Day 6) Feb 20, 2017

Simply because a suffix belongs to the broader category of "adjectival suffix" does not mean that all of those suffixes will function the same; though of course this is also the case with any type of suffix, not just for adjectival ones. The word, 'silken' therefore does not mean the same thing as, 'silky', the former referring to something made of silk, and the latter referring to reminiscence of the quality of silk, and might as well be 'silkesque' or 'silkish', which you can see more on here: the '-esque' suffix. There are a great many of these adjectival '-en' suffixes that are used to denote the idea of: "composed of", which sometimes appears as just an '-n' such as in 'silvern' or 'lethern'. Due to the relative importance of being able to differentiate between the meanings of, say, 'ashen' and 'ashy', 'woolen' and 'wooly', or 'earthen' and 'earthy', this Old English suffix is not used in just a few exceptional cases—like some of the other functions of this ending—but could probably be understood when applied to words that don't conventionally take this ending.

804: English Pluralization: Kid, Child and Man (-en Day 5) Feb 19, 2017

Frustratingly, the plural of 'kid' is 'kids', while the plural of 'child' is 'children', and the plural of 'man' is 'men' which you can see more about here: 'man' and remnants of English gender. The '-en' suffix is used to form the plural of certain nouns such as 'children', and 'oxen', but even in Old English when this was more prevalent, there were other ways that people created plural forms, such as changing the vowel used in some strong nouns like 'man', orFunctions of S by using an '-as' suffix which eventually turned into the modern, '-s' suffix (more on that below). The '-en' pluralizing suffix came about in Middle English from an earlier version, '-an'.

Functions of S

803: Verbal Suffixes in Widen and Strengthen (-en day 4) Feb 18, 2017

The derivatives of the word 'wide', by chance, take on forms that are systematic but quite rare in in English, such as the nominal '-th' suffix in 'width', which you can see more of in the link below. Not only that, but it also takes an '-(e)n' suffix, as in 'widen' which turns this term into a verb. More specifically, the '-en' suffix is used to transform adjectives into verbs that demonstrate development or amplification. This ending is also employed in order to make a verb from a noun, such as 'strengthen' that derives from 'strength' and not the adjectival form 'strong', though also not the etymologically related noun, 'string' which referred to loading a bow with an arrow. Unlike the other '-en' suffixes, this comes from the Old English '-nian' that developed over time; in fact, the verb 'to man' in Old English was 'mannian' from 'mann', but it no longer uses a verbal suffix.

-th Suffixes (in 'Sloth' and 'month')

802: Strong Verb Participles (-en day 3) Feb 17, 2017

While it is true that there are many ways in which '-en' is used, often the examples are few, and ever dwindling. Meanwhile, perhaps the most common occasion to see the suffix '-en' in English is when it forms the past participle of strong verbs, which you can learn more about here: Strong Verbs. Most of the English's surviving strong verbs, which is to say: verbs that change tense by altering the middle instead of adding common suffixes like, '-ed'—which attaches to weak verbs—come from Old English. Some strong verbs, such as 'take', with the participial form 'taken', or adjectives like 'spoken', derive from this ending. This is not the case for all strong verbs though, as many have a separate participial form, such as 'sing' and 'sung'. Interestingly, the '-ed' attached to weak verbs also comes from Old English, but is now by far the most popular.
Check out the yesterday's post on this versatile suffix: 'Vixen', 'Burden' and Inflectional Suffixes.

801: vixen, burden, and Inflectional Suffixes (-en day 2) Feb 16, 2017

Following yesterday's post, to which there is a link down below, there are even more ways that '-en' functions as an inflectional suffix for nouns, meaning that with the addition of this suffix, a noun—in this case—remains a noun. In this way, '-en' works to form feminine nouns; as English doesn't have gender and such terms are dated or optional, these only exist for a few terms such as 'vixen', which is a female fox in addition to the later sense for the word as "a spiteful woman". Moreover, '-en' is used to create abstract nouns like 'burden'. There is no word, 'burd' now, but 'burden' does come from the word, 'bear', which you can see more about here: Born and Borne.

Yesterday's post

800: chicken, cock and Diminutive Suffixes (-en day 1) Feb 15, 2017

This is the first in a series on the -en suffix to celebrate the 800th post. Make sure to keep up over the next week for the rest.

The majority of suffixes only have one meaning when attached to words, although there are certainly exceptions, such as '-s' (Functions of -s). '-en' is another case which can be added for a number of different effects, though some are only for certain words. One of these uses is to create diminutives of nouns such as 'chicken', and 'maiden', dating back to Old English. In the case of 'chicken', this is not to say the word is a diminutive of 'chick', as this may appear linguistically at first, though of course not logically. Instead, this term comes from the Old English 'cīcen, cȳcen', and is related to the Dutch, 'kieken', and the German, 'Küchlein' which both have diminutive suffixes of their own, and probably comes from the Old English, 'cocc', meaning 'cock, rooster'. This was later reinforced in Middle English by the Old French 'coq', which you can see more about here: The origins of 'coquette'.

799: greenwich (in defense of English spelling) Feb 14, 2017

English orthography—and worse yet: Massachusetts' cities—is spelt in a way that is neither logical, consistent, nor in line even with pronunciation. The district now absorbed into London, 'Greenwich' is certainly no exception to this, but there is something to be said for the continuation of English's rich spelling-history. The area, once written as 'Gronewic' and 'Grenewic' in the 10th century, is named for it being a green 'vicus' which in Latin was a villa. What this provides people that would not be gotten through /gɹεnɪtʃ/ or 'grenich' approximately is that the area was notably green, old, and borrows from a Latin word. If you have your own thoughts on English spelling, comment below.

See more on English spelling. 

798: Great Britain Feb 13, 2017

Great Britain is called 'great' not because of its wonderfulness, but because of its size. Being only 1/2,093 the area of the earth, it might seem odd to say this. In fact, Great Britain is only great in comparison to Brittany, a small region in the northwest of France whose inhabitants still speak a Celtic language spoken since Celts fled invading Anglo-Saxons, and was once part of the Angevin empire along with parts of the modern United Kingdom. There are other areas as well, like Ireland, not included in the label, Great Britain, and so the term often used to mean either England or the UK means neither.
See more on Celtic languages