877: Stool May 3, 2017
George II was said to have 'died at stool' which was the manner in which Elvis' death on the toilet may have been recounted had it also happened in 1760. This was not even the only way that nobility used the word 'stool' with to some association to "using the bathroom", but at this time, 'stool' would have referred not to the actual waste as it does today, but the toilet, much like the many other words used today including, 'John', 'can', and 'ivory throne'. The euphemism, 'stool', in this case was took on its meaning of 'toilet' in the 18th century, long after the word was used to mean a seat just as it is nowadays, and etymologically it is even related to the word 'stand'. After it was used as a synonym for toilet, even as part of the title of the man who wiped the King, Groom of the Stool, eventually took on the meaning of 'poo' rather than 'toilet', and is used still employed now.
876: Review of Writing-systems May 2, 2017
Alphabets and other writing-systems should have some way to write anything, theoretically. The issue is that some sounds are not present in all languages, and other phonological rules make certain languages either impossible or impractical to write in certain alphabets. While certain letters may represent different sounds in different languages, English, for example, has around only one sound produced at the back of the throat whereas Arabic can have up to seven, and some languages in the Caucasus can have more than twenty. This makes it very difficult to represent these sounds not present in English with the Latin alphabet that we use, and indeed there are separate Azerbaijani and Georgian scripts. Oppositely, languages like Greenlandic or Hawaiian necessitate that a vowel must follow a consonant, so the words become really long with lots of syllables. For Cree, which has this same problem when the Latin alphabet is applied, a new syllabary was a invented that makes writing a lot shorter. There are other factors that make languages difficult or impossible to accurately represent with writing-systems, but these are just a few.
875: Phobias May 1, 2017
'Phobia' in general refers to an extreme aversion or fear of something, but what makes someone phobic as opposed to merely afraid comes down to the cause of this feeling. If the fear is irrational, then it can be called a phobia, so while there's 'claustrophobia' meaning 'fear of cramped places', and 'hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' which is the fear of long words, there is no 'murderer-phobia', so to speak (it could otherwise perhaps be 'dolofoniaphobia') because murderers are reasonably feared. Some phobias, like 'arachnophobia' (fear of spiders) or 'cynophobia' (fear of dogs) have some logic to them, but someone truly phobic would not need logical or experiential reasoning. With that being said, 'homophobia', first appearing in the 1960's, and 'transphobia', first appearing in the 1990's, are, thought of this way, legitimate phobias in that they do describe an irrational and acute aversion to something.
874: york Apr 30, 2017
Plenty of place-names now adopted into English came about when the Romans would simply generalize an area with a name that did not match that of the locals, such as with 'Belgium', though other times this was reversed, such as with the Germanicized 'Switzerland'. The city of York in England was called 'Eboracum' in Latin when the Romans originally settled. The name did not come from out of nowhere, and it is thought that this comes from Common Brythonic, though no one knows the precise language that was spoken in that area at that exact time. The meaning is only reconstructed from similarities between other Celtic languages including the Irish 'iúr', Scottish Gaelic 'iubhar', and Welsh 'efwr' that the meaning in Latin 'land of the yew-tree' is understood. Celtic words for 'yew' also appear in France, such as with the city, 'Ivry le Temple' in the Northern part of the country.
873: Retronym Apr 29, 2017
It isn't uncommon to see '-onym' at the end of words that have a meaning associated with names or words. 'Synonym' and 'antonym' may be the most common, but there are others including 'demonym'. There is also the 'retronym' which is quite a new word—only invented in the 1980's—referring to a word that is created from an existing one for the purpose of distinguishing two different meanings that original word has newly acquired. This comes up usually for two reasons, either due to technological advancements or from social changes. With books for example, e-readers that allow people to download books necessitate the differentiation between traditional paper-books and e(lectronic)-books. Another example is when same-sex couples gained marriage-rights, what could have always just been called 'marriage' then was distinguished through other terms like 'straight-marriage' and 'gay-marriage' among other terms. If there are others you can think of, write them in the comments.
872: manchester Apr 28, 2017
For more on words that aren't obviously related to breasts but indeed are, click this.
871: yacht Apr 27, 2017
Words are only as meaningful as what people associate with them. With 'yacht', for example, it is largely thought of as a purely recreational ship, and likely also associated with the rich. That is, unless you spoke Dutch in the 16th century in which case the word might have a strong association with European pirates. The term, originally in Dutch as 'jaghte' or 'jaghtschip' was a fast boat which the Dutch navy used to chase, or indeed hunt pirates in the Low Countries. The word originates from a word meaning to hunt, spelt 'jagt', 'jaght' or 'jacht'. The German word 'Jäger' meaning 'hunter' is related to this and may be more familiar to English speakers from various aspects of pop-culture. If you're curious about the shift between '-gh-' and '-ch-' you can see more here, though as a loan-word, 'yacht' is something of an exception in English.
870: madeleine Apr 26, 2017
Plenty of words come from given names including 'doll(y)' as a toy (and a prostitute), 'john' as a man who hires a prostitute, and 'dick' as a penis. Generally, these words arise because of the commonality of the name and thence an association between whatever the word means the people. Some words derive from given names but come about not because of their frequencies, and instead because of one person in particular associated with it. 'Madeleine' is spelt a number of different ways including 'Madeline', 'Madelyn', however, only the first of these is the term for the little French pastry. The baked good is called such since it is named after the French pastry-cook, Madeleine Paulmier. The variation in spelling would have even existed with the common nickname too, which is usually Maddy or Maddie.
869: lion and leopard Apr 25, 2017
On certain coat of arms there will be lions which represented courage, among other things. Richard I of England, also known as Richard the Lion Heart had three lions on his crest, but if you were to take a time-machine and ask him what they were called, he might call them 'leopards'. The 'leo-' of that last word is the same as 'Leo' the constellation, with that and 'lion' both from the Latin for, you guessed it, 'lion' ultimately from Greek. What's perhaps more interesting is that the '-pard' in the second half of 'leopard' also comes from a Greek word, 'pardos', meaning 'leopard' as we think of them now, but really 'panthers' before the name was given to the American cat. In older writings in English 'pard' would have been normal in the same context as 'leopard' now. For a long period in history, 'lion' and 'leopard' were more or less interchangeable, as some people thought leopards were a sort of hybrid with lions; especially since neither animal lived in Europe, people in England didn't really have much of a concrete understanding of them.
For more on European perceptions of African beasts, see this on hyenas.
868: False Cognates and forlorn Apr 24, 2017
Learning another language can be difficult, but learning one that has similar vocabulary, grammar or another similarity would be easier, so languages like French or Dutch are easier for English speakers to pick up than Arabic or Mandarin. Nevertheless, a word that look similar to another in one language will not necessarily mean the same thing in the other. Generally, these are called "false cognates", and though this generally refers to similar pronunciation or spelling, two words could be cognates irrespective of their apparent relation so long as they derive from the same word. The English word 'forlorn' meaning 'sad, lonely, or abandoned' comes from the Old English 'forloren' when it meant ‘depraved’ as the past participle of 'forlēosan'. While 'forlorn' does not mean the same as the Dutch 'verliezen' or German 'verlieren' which both mean 'lose', they all come from a Germanic origin that in English became 'for-' and 'lorn' meaning 'lose'.
867: poke, pocket, and pouch Apr 23, 2017
There are plenty of groups of words that are all etymologically related though they do not have similar meanings, much in the same way as with 'budget', 'bulge', and 'belly'. The words 'pouch' and 'pocket' denote similar things and are relatively close in appearance, so it might not be too surprising that they are indeed related. The '-et' that exist in 'pocket' is typical of many other French diminutives that are found in English, though the stem is not 'pock' in this case, but 'poke'. It may be true that most English speakers would associate that word with the act of jabbing, 'poke' does also refer to a small purse in some dialects, you may recognize the word from the phrase "a pig in a poke". While they all come from Old French, the words come from different dialects so while 'poke' and 'pouch were 'poche' in Old Northern French (which would have been 'pouch' in Old French), 'pocket' comes from the Anglo-Norman 'poket'.
866: cavalry, chivalry, cavalier (& more) Apr 22, 2017
While a single word does not necessarily demonstrate the way people think, looking to the evolution of words over time can be quite indicative of the way people perceive things. The association between knights and horses, for example, is not exceptionally distant, especially with various modern perceptions about literal knights in armor, however shining. This is not only in stories, nor even chess pieces, but with plenty of words today despite the fact that there are no longer mounted knights. There is, however, cavalry, which is still along the same lines of a soldier riding a horse, the word for which comes ultimately from the Latin, 'caballus' meaning 'horse'. Aside from that, the English derivatives of that word rather shift from the definition of the soldiers, and more of the perceptions of them. 'Cavalier' now as an adjective has fairly negative connotations, but historically it meant the same as 'cavalryman', and especially a gentlemanly one, sort of like what 'chivalrous' means today. Both of those words come from 'caballus', but 'cavalier' once took on the meaning of a supporter of King Charles I during the English Civil War, and after that changed significantly. Considering however that 'caballero', and 'chevalier' both have the meaning of 'a gentleman' and 'horseman', it might be safe to say that at least historically there were mostly positive associations to the sort of person who rides off into battle on a trusty steed, perhaps even with shining armor.
865: golliwog, polliwog, and poll Apr 21, 2017
You might be surprised by the etymological similarities between a fictional doll, frogs, and voting. The word around which they all center is, 'poll'. In the case of the doll, 'golliwog' entered the English language denoting soft dolls, especially with bright clothes and dark faces in the late 1800's after the name of a character in a book by Bertha Upton which is thought to be inspired by 'polliwog' to some extent. The relation to 'poll' here in first half of 'polliwog' is also connected to the term 'tadpole'. Both of those words, and the earlier 'pollywiggle' have the 'poll' which is a dialectal way of saying, 'head'; the '-wiggle' and '-wog' denoted the way that they look like wiggling heads, and 'tad-' was a from the Old English for 'toad'. Finally, voting, or in this case political polling, was a sense of this word that only came about relatively recently in poll's history, but relates to heads just as much as any other derivative. In the political sense, the word came from the idea of counting heads, or individual people. If you don't think about it too hard, this really gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'ahead in the polls'.
864: sinister and ambidextrous etc. Apr 20, 2017
If someone is clumsy she could be described as having two left feet, though someone else nimble or graceful would not be said to have two right feet, at least not commonly and seriously. There are a number of other situations where left- or right-relating words pop up, such as with the adjective 'sinister' meaning 'evil' coming from the Latin for 'left'. For centuries Christians, and other groups, had sinful connotations towards left-handedness which thus giving English that last definition, but one can also see the difference in words like 'ambidextrous' meaning in Latin 'right-handed on both sides (of the body)'. Likewise, 'ambilevous' and 'ambisinistrous'—though fairly rare—mean 'left-handed on both sides', although in this case it denotes clumsiness rather than evil.
For more left- and right-words, click here.
863: Historical Names (bjørn & loðbrók) Apr 19, 2017
Historically names were more indicative of what someone did, or how or where he lived than they are today. Surnames aren't created too often anymore, and now many are dying out quite rapidly, but many people for a long period in history would have had far more personal names than now. Because of this practice, names were quite often just words, or were conventional in some way but were either once words that could have morphed or been abandoned in a modern lexicon, or were words from other languages, often from the Bible. The Scandinavian name 'Bjørn' is somewhat rare for historical forenames as it did and continues to mean 'bear'. The father of a famous Bjørn, legendary Ragnar Loðbrók (who may or may not have been real) did not inherit his surname from his father, but instead from his pants. There is some debate about where his name really comes, but many people have translated 'Loðbrók' as 'rough pants' since he supposedly wore pants of cow-hide dipped in tar. The element 'brók' still appears in words today, such as the Icelandic 'nábrók', which are pants made out of human skin after that person died. Coins would be placed in what is translated as 'death-pants' for good (financial) luck.
862: Rhymes for Purple & Silver Apr 18, 2017
Poets attend: despite the popular myths suggesting otherwise, and even the post to this blog 333 days ago claiming that there were no words in English to rhyme with 'purple' or 'silver' (and 'orange' and 'month'), there are a few. Though these would likely not be deemed common by anyone aside from perhaps a few old farmers in Scotland, 'curple' refers to the butt (or 'arse' if you're from that region) of anything though especially a horse, and 'chilver' is a ewe-lamb; it is also etymologically related to 'calf'. 'Hirple' as well rhymes with 'purple', and it means to limp. It was not simply a joke at the expense of farmers before, and these quite rare words are considered dialectal used more or less exclusively in Northern England and Scotland. Urban Dictionary lists 'chilver' as "a word used to prove that something rhymes with silver", but each word does have a long history, dating back to Old English.
861: Classifications of Yupik, Inuit, and Aleut Apr 17, 2017
Politically correct movements do not really have the power to change a language in any major way, but often individual words will be dropped for others that are felt to be less offensive. This is, according to Ben O'Neill's antidiscrimination-paradigm, useless in the long-run, but some words deemed more accurate, scientific, or simply less offensive have already replaced various dysphemisms. People tend to use the word 'Inuit' now instead of 'Eskimo', but the problem here is that this term is not completely accurate. There are many groups of people with far more subdivisions than this, but in the arctic there are the Inuit, the Yupik, and the Aleut, with distinct languages and cultures. Those in Canada, and Greenland are all Inuit, though of course this can be split up into groups including Kalaallisut, Inuktitut, and Inuvialuk. There are also those on the Aleutian Islands who speak Aleut, as well as those in Alaska and Russian who speak Yupik languages, neither of which are Inuit peoples. In fact, the broader language family is called Eskimo-Aleut, descended from Proto-Eskimo. While 'Eskimo' may not be what any group calls itself, the most inclusive word to use when talking about these arctic peoples would be 'Eskimo' as it does not exclude those in Alaska and Russia.
860: run (of Germanic Origin) Apr 16, 2017
Often dictionaries will simply list words as 'of Germanic origin', even when it says that the word comes from Old English. This is not simply redundant and there happen to be several editorial and etymological reasons. While English is classified as a West Germanic (WG) language, viking invaders who spoke North Germanic (NG) languages heavily influenced the vocabulary of Old, and thence Modern English. While it's a good rule of thumb that most simple, non-technical words one comes across in English will be Germanic, common words like the strong verb 'run' do not necessarily resemble their Modern German (which is WG) counterparts, in this case, 'laufen'. While 'run', deriving from the Old English 'rinnan, irnan' is one of those such words listed as "of Germanic origin", this is not to say that 'run' is separate to other WG words. It is true that 'run' was reinforced by the Old Norse (which is NG) 'rinna, renna', but it is also related to the Old High German (which is WG) 'rinnan', also meaning 'run'. It would be unfair to say that the word is specifically WG or NG, and indeed the word is far older than the split between different Germanic languages occurred with related words coming even from Sanskrit. In fact, the word 'laufen' is also Germanic, but is related to the English word, 'leap' and 'lope', with the typical English P where there is a German F.
859: Word-Order Apr 15, 2017
Of the many factors that play into sentence-structure, languages are often classified by how the subject, object, and verb are placed. In English the order is subject-verb-object (SVO) while in Latin it tended to be subject-object-verb (SOV). Given that there are three elements here, there are 6 ways to arrange them, with the two most common being SVO and SOV, and the two least common OSV and OVS in that order. Malagasy spoken on Madagascar is one of the only well-documented languages to have object-subject-verb which is one noticeable indication that it is not related to other languages on mainland Africa. Klingon, the invented language created for Star Trek by Marc Okrand is in OVS which is incredibly rare globally as Okrand wanted his language for aliens to sound as foreign for humans as possible, though of course to someone who doesn't know Klingon this feature would be entirely lost. If you wanted to learn a natural OVS language, you might have to learn Portuguese first because the only known ones are spoken in the jungles of Brazil.
For more like this, click here
858: glamour and American English's Dropped U Apr 14, 2017
American and British (and otherwise non-American spellings) are mostly similar with a few exceptions here and there. In general, when there is a difference it is the case that the American spelling is less similar to an Old French origin for words deriving from this language. The simple reason for this is that the United States gained its independence from Great Britain before universal standardized spelling, and lexicographers, especially Webster, had the chance to come up with new rules. Most of the efforts to change spelling was to make it more closely match the way that people spoke, and while Webster's push for 'tongue' to be spelt 'tung' failed, dropping the U in words like, 'color', 'honor', and 'behavior caught on eventually. One word that retains its U in American writings is 'glamour', but here, the word was neither from Old French, nor did it enter English much before American independence. The word was adopted in the early 18th century from Scots Gaelic originally meaning ‘enchantment’ ultimately as alteration of 'grammar'. That word, which is from Greek was never used to mean 'magic' or anything of the like but the Latin word 'grammatica' was used to mean ‘learning’ and this included the popular association with practicing sorcery.