885: Combining Forms May 11, 2017
There are a number of combining forms for the names of countries that function like prefixes, such as the 'Anglo-' in 'Anglo-Dutch', but English has a limited number of these. They almost always have '-o-' at the end that can replace other suffixes with the exception perhaps of 'Amer-' for American and a few others. For instance, the '-ian' in 'Indian' or '-ean' in 'European', which are quite common among the adjectival form for the names of places, are replaced with '-o-' in 'Indo-Australian plate'. At other times, such as with 'Hiberno-' for 'Irish', these forms are also historical, with this one originating from the Latin 'Hibernia'. Though there are some conventional limitations, like not having combining forms for countries beginning with 'The' nor countries with multiple-word names, there is really no set way that this is done. Luckily for people who don't want to have to memorize which combining form is which, these are becoming less and less popular, so what might have once been a Russo-American conflict would now be a Russian-American conflict, for most.
884: jerrycan May 10, 2017
For various reasons, especially concerning wars and other conflicts, people adopt an us-versus-them perspective that makes its way into language to some extent. Occasionally these situations result in adopting words from one language into another when these two groups are now in close contact who wouldn't be otherwise, as with 'gung-ho', but often a slew of derogatory terms arise in order to refer to a group of people mockingly and negatively. In WWI, the Germans were often called 'huns', or 'krauts' which also was used during WWII. While those would probably still be considered offensive, 'jerrycan' comes from a WWII-era slang-term for 'German', as originally the well-crafted fuel-cans were a German invention that was eventually reverse-engineered by the British and later used to replace their more flimsy, awkwardly shaped ones. The name, and with it a possible connotation to Germans stuck.
883: suffrage May 9, 2017
The idea of suffrage today would almost certainly bring up idea of one's right to vote. For a long time in the history of French and English however, this word denoted praying for another person, or "intercessory prayers", attributed to the Latin root, 'suffragium' meaning 'support', or a 'vote'. The second element to this is debated but either it meant 'to shout', or 'to break'. At first glance, the latter theory might not seem as reasonable, but keep in mind that voting in Greece was based on broken shell and pottery, giving English 'ostracize' , so it would be relevant in this case. Either way, the origins of this word go back millennia, but the sense of 'suffrage' as 'right to vote' was first found only in 1787, in the United States Constitution.
882: writhe, wreath, and More May 8, 2017
The Old English word for making something into a coil has given Modern English an array of different words, but none of them relate to cords or coils exactly. The Old English 'wrīthan' meant 'plait' or 'to tie something with cord' which lead to the verb 'writhe', and the related 'wrath' (noun) and 'wroth' (adjective). Not all the derivatives have meanings connoting hatred however. That is, unless you are filled with rage at certain floral arrangements, as 'wreath' is also related. The verb 'wreathe' also associated with these, but this was created much later, partially from back-formation of the no longer used, 'wrethen' which was a participle that meant, 'made into a wreath'. The letter E at the end after the TH of a noun is typical of many verbs formed this way, such as 'bath/bathe', 'breath/breathe', and you might have also noticed it with 'writhe'. If you know any other related words, put them in the comments.
881: On versus Onto May 7, 2017
There are some prescriptive grammatical rules, such as the idea that in English it is not right to end a sentence with a preposition, but following those does not make a language any more or less understandable. Other rules, which may be though of as conventions instead, are based only retrospectively on the way that people already speak, and tend to be told for the use of people learning a second language, as a native speaker would probably not need to think about it. A native English speaker, for example, would likely not need to be told the difference between 'on' and 'onto', and just use them without thinking twice. It is even less important to describe this convention because the words can be used interchangeably in many sentences. 'Onto', however, is chosen to show motion towards whereas 'on' describes a motion in the same spot, so in 'he jumped onto the box' we could assume that beforehand the subject was not on the box, whereas with 'he jumped on the box', that same sense is not necessarily conveyed.
880: More Obscure Derivational Suffixes May 6, 2017
There are many ways to change the part of speech of words in English using derivational suffixes, but this tends to depend on the individual word, and for it, there are standard endings. While there may be multiple ways that people say the nominal form of 'deep', either as 'depth' or sometimes 'deepness', this is largely from not knowing some of the more obscure suffixes. 'Candor' is another word that sometimes is found instead with the '-ness', as in 'candidness', though arguably those two nouns carry different connotations. This is also not the only example of an adjective with '-id' that has a nominal form with '-or', as there is also 'splendid' or 'horrid' but there are not too many of these, so not knowing this would be fairly understandable. This is especially true since there are some adjectives like 'torrid' and 'putrid' that do not become 'torror' and 'putror' as nouns respectively.
879: dumbfound and confound May 5, 2017
Though you may be found dumb when your dumbfounded, relationship between those words is not quite as simple as that. This word does come from the element, 'dumb' but the second part comes from a different 'found'. While the more common way to find 'found' is when it means 'to come upon' or 'discover', it also means 'to mix', and since it isn't just a participle, it can appear as 'she founds' in the present tense. This may be more familiar to people in other forms, such as 'foundry' where metal is cast. In that case, the metal is physically mixed, but this also has taken on the same meaning as 'mixed up', i.e. 'confused'. Unsurprisingly perhaps, both 'confound' and 'confuse' which each relate to mental states, come from the same root as 'dumbfound'. 'Confuse' was not always synonymous with 'confound though, and for a while had the sense of causing upheaval in a ruinous way, such as among a group of people. Not only that, but it entered English from a French participle, and retained only a passive meaning as 'confused', but eventually through back-formation, 'confuse' appeared and now is more common than 'confound'.
878: Anumberic languages May 4, 2017
People who are brought up in cultures that use numberless languages such as the Manduruku in Amazonia have a comparatively more difficult time observing and recalling quantities greater than even three. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which in its strong form tries to explain that one's native language determines the way one thinks and is able to interpret the world, these anumeric languages would merely be an example that not having numbers such as 'one' 'two' 'three', and instead using words equivalent to 'some' or 'many' results in that speaker's inability to comprehend these concepts. While it may seem reasonable on the surface, the issue is not simply linguistic in its nature. For anyone, regardless of one's first language, learning to count numbers requires a great deal of time and energy and aside from recognizing two quantities as different in size, almost nothing is innate about numbers which can take years to comprehend. Anyone has the ability to learn these same skills irrespective of mother-tongue. Historically too, the precise numbers in which people in industrialized cultures may often interpret the world were far less important, and were comparatively little-used.
For more on how aspects of Amazonian languages can seem completely different from more familiar ones, click here.
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.