937: widdershins Jul 3, 2017

The adverb 'widdershins' mostly is used now as a synonym for 'counterclockwise'; this term has had that meaning for a few centuries, but earlier definitions included "in the opposite direction" (not just of a clock or circle) and plainly 'wrong' or 'bad'. Unlike with many other derivatives, the modern sense is in some ways closer to the original meaning, in this case from the Middle High German 'widersinnes', meaning 'against' ('wider') and 'direction ('sin') or 'travel' when the element appeared as 'sinnen'. The Middle High German 'sin' is also related to the Scots 'sin' meaning 'sun', and as it happens, 'widdershins' was often used to denote, among those other things, movement in the opposite direction as the Sun goes across the sky. The word 'sinister' also relates to the direction left historically, as well as things that are morally bad: a fairly common Western view for a long time.

936: Real Estate Jul 2, 2017

In English, there are the terms 'estate' and 'real estate' that both relate to property, though we don't necessarily think of the two as needing to be distinguished from each other now since the contexts in which they are used tend to be different. Moreover, the 'real' would seem an unlikely retronym in this case as the other 'estate' is not fake nor abstract. Nevertheless, 'real estate' was used for the purposes of differentiation: immovable property as opposed to personal. Other uses of 'real' in this way also include the slang phrase 'get real', and 'real time' referring to the period of time when an action takes place, not when it had been recorded.

935: Long Words, and Compounding Jul 1, 2017

When most or all of a languages' syntax is derived from affixation, individual words tend to get longer, which is why Mandarin words, which structurally posses little built-in syntactic meaning individually tend to be shorter than others like in Hungarian. Not all word-length can be attributed to grammar though, as compounding affects this too. While in English we say 'bus-stop', this is more typical of Germanic languages than Romance ones, so in French people say 'arrêt de bus' (stop of [the] bus). Likewise in Estonian—a language related to Finnish and Hungarian—not only is it agglutinative such that syntactic meaning is built-in with many affixes, but is is common to form words from compounds rather than creating a new word, making them even longer. For example, 'ebajumalakummardamine' is the Estonian word for 'idol-worshiping'—which is also a compound in English, to be fair—literally meaning 'non-God-worshiping'.

934: Sapir's hypothesis on Eskimo Jun 30, 2017

Observations related to or based off of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have led to some interesting conclusions, including why there would be so many Inuit words for 'snow'. Nevertheless, the hypothesis which states that the language one speaks is directly linked to the way someone thinks is sometimes used hypothetically. Sapir himself stated that “it may be suspected that the highly synthetic and periodic structure of Eskimo would more easily bear weight of Kant's terminology than his native German”. The concept that different aspects of language ranging from vocabulary to syntax determine cognition and perception can be interpreted in such a way that anything from colors to Kant relate to language would relate to language, and should not always be trusted.

933: noon Jun 29, 2017

If asked to meet someone at noon, it would be understood that that means twelve o'clock. Nevertheless, 'noon' comes from the Old English word 'nōn' denoting "the ninth hour from sunrise", though this didn't mean nine o'clock in the morning either. Instead measuring from six in the morning when the sun rose, 'noon' referred to three in the afternoon, as we would say now. The Old English word came from Latin, and is related to the ecclesiastical noun 'none' (or nones), not to be confused with the pronoun and adverb which is Germanic in origin, denoting a time of prayers and customary meal. Up through the 12th century this is all the word would have meant, but then while the customary time for these became earlier around the 14th century, the word did not. This same shift occurred in Dutch with the word 'noen'.

932: What Makes a Phrase Jun 28, 2017

After three days of discussing what makes a word a word, the question arose of what makes a phrase a phrase. While a phrase and a hyphenated word are similar in that they convey a single concept through a combination of other elements, a phrase is made up of syntactically distinct elements. In the same way that a word can not be split apart while still being intelligible, a phrase must be delivered as one unit in order to convey the intended meaning. "Needle in a haystack" is an idiomatic phrase, and in the sentence "it was like finding a needle in a haystack" the phrase communicates one, metaphorical concept which furthermore could not really be split up, such as "it was like finding a needle shiny in a haystack" as that would mean something else more literal, describing the quality of the needle. Not all phrases need to be idiomatic though, such as a prepositional phrase like "in the house", though everything mentioned before still holds.

931: Number-Arrangement Jun 27, 2017

Above the number twelve, all numbers in English are a combination of different numbers raised to multiples of ten, e.g. four-hundred-thirty is four times ten raised to the power of two, plus three times ten raised to the power of one. Almost all numbers in English are said with the highest place first, and then all smaller values next. The exception to this is with the -teens: thirteen through nineteen. While those terms no longer contain the word 'ten', the ending '-teen' used to be just that, so fourteen would be, in essence, like 'four-ten'; notably however 'forty' would as well. This style of forming cardinal numbers, by putting the number in the ones place first, is increasingly rare in Modern English, but in Old English and Middle English it was quite common, or even standard to form number like this, such as the line in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: "Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye" ("Some nine and twenty in a company") meaning 'twenty-nine' as we would say now. In German, and plenty of other languages, this is still the way that numbers are formed, such as "ninety-nine balloons" which is "neunundneunzig luftballons" (a famous song released in 1983), literally "nine and ninety".

930: What Makes a Word (pt. 3/3) Jun 26, 2017

This is the third and final post on what makes a word a word for now,  though you should make sure to look at the posts from yesterday and the day before. It was stated then how words are distinct from other morphemes, such as affixes, because they can be moved around somewhat freely in a clause. It is for that reason that long words in certain other languages, especially in polysynthetic ones, are not simply a collection of little words said together. In Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) the meaning of a word is built into it in such a way that it can be its own whole clause theoretically. For example, 'tikilluarit' means 'welcome' and 'tikilluaritsi' means 'you are welcome' or 'tikilluaqquavusi' means 'you have just been welcomed'. It should be noted that some affixes are subtractive and will reduce parts of the stem or other affixes. In the case of 'tikilluaritsi', the ending that indicated second-person cannot be moved around to different places in the clause and is a suffix, not a word, even though in English 'you' is a word.

929: What Makes a Word (pt. 2/3) Jun 25, 2017

This is the second part to the post yesterday about what makes a word a word. As alluded to then, an affix is not a word for the reason that it does not carry its own meaning; but additionally this is so because it is bound to the word it modifies. In spelling this is quite clear as there is no space between an affix and the stem, also called a 'free morpheme'. Nevertheless, there are words like 'will' or 'may' that modify the meaning of a word in a similar fashion to the past-tense suffix '-ed', so it might seem that those should not be considered words, but they are. There are two reasons for this. First, English does not technically have a future-tense, so 'will' does not change the tense per se, but the mood and is therefore not comparable to other tense-changing suffixes necessarily; second—and more importantly—it can be moved around in a clause and does not need to be put with the verb. One could say, for example, "I will pay" or "I will, in a while, pay" but while one could also say "I payed", "I pay soon -ed" is not grammatical". Some constructions like 'un-fucking-believable" allow for this sort of separation, but in this case 'fucking' is a rare kind of infix.

Tomorrow these ideas will be compared with other languages.

928: What Makes a Word (pt. 1/3) Jun 24, 2017

Except by linguists, the questions of 'why is a word a word?' or 'what even is a word?' may be seldom asked. The answer to this is debated occasionally, but in a general sense the word 'word' is used to describe any discrete "meaningful element" (i.e. it conveys meaning unlike an affix which only affects syntax) but this is vague. It may seem easier to determine to understand what a word is because it is separated by spaces when printed, but this is misleading. The term 'passive-aggressive' is a compound of two words, but is only one; while it usually spelt with a hyphen, though not always, this is not the reason it is not two words: it's because when modified into being a noun, only the latter half is morphed. If this were not the case, it would become 'passivity-agression' or 'passiveness-aggression'. There is much more to this topic, and that will be explored tomorrow.

927: randy Jun 23, 2017

English has a myriad of words that denote to sex itself—either for actual description or sometimes for swearing and other purposes—but there is another group of words that only relate to sex, and these two groups are often not so dissimilar. With words like 'sodomy' or 'orgy' that denote sexual acts, for example, the original meaning of these terms etymologically did not relate to sex at all, but eventually took on the meaning because of—in this case—the Catholic Church. Other words as well also often first connoted something bad or immoral in a general way, but then were later applied to things relating to sex because of popular opinions. Likewise, with the word 'randy', which does not denote sex itself but does relate to it tangentially is thought to have come from a word meaning 'to rant' but eventually gained its modern connotation from another association to someone who would 'rand' as it were. Moreover, in Scots, the word 'randy' used to describe a rude person, but eventually took on the sole the sense of 'aroused'.

926: Tank Jun 22, 2017

Modern tanks were first used during WWI by the British. When they were employed the goal was to surprise the Germans and break through the front line, but they didn't want the Central Powers to know what they were. For that reason, some people have claimed that if the Americans invented the tanks first that they could have been called 'barrels', but not because of gun-barrels or anything like that. Instead, this is due to the fact that 'tank' in 1915 and 1916 was the code-word used to denote the war-machine, as it was hoped that the British might fool the Germans into thinking that they were simply vehicles for transporting water at first. At the time, the term 'tank' and 'barrel' were synonymous, much like today, but 'barrel' was more common in the United States to describe what would be called a 'tank' in Britain.

925: pussy Jun 21, 2017

If your mind is dirty enough, there are plenty of words that look like they should be related to a swear or something sexual, but this isn't always the case. To answer a fan-question, 'pusillanimous' meaning "lacking courage" doesn't have an apparent connection to the word 'pussy', even though that too can also be an insult for someone timid. The former term is from Latin via Greek meaning 'small mind', related to 'animus', whereas the latter term is Germanic, among other reasons. That does not mean however that there aren't other modern words that have some sort of etymological connection. 'Pussy', which is used in many senses including 'cat' and 'vagina' comes from an Old English word 'pusa' meaning 'bag', related to the Old Norse for 'pocket' though not the English word 'purse'. The word is also related to the Low German for 'vulva', though early uses in English did not gain the sense of 'pudenda' for a while, because even before that, the word referred to cats. In a fairly general sense, the word went from meaning a small purse to then simply a small soft thing; then it went to mean 'cat' and eventually also 'vagina'. Coincidentally, the French word 'chat' foremost refers to the animal, but as slang also does denote a woman's genitals.

If you have any of your own questions that you'd like answered, please feel free to write a direct message or simply put it in the comments.

924: Hyphens Jun 20, 2017

Those writing in English use very few hyphens even if it could make things a great deal clearer. Even though they may not be included in writing, there is a difference in speech where they could be present. For example, a native speaker of English would use a different intonation for "I'm in a car" versus "I'm in a car-park", though the change is subtle. Hyphens, just like any other type of punctuation, aren't technically pronounced, so the only reason to use them instead of combining the words together, as happens for German words, is convention, though there some exceptions like 'busstop'. The effect of hyphenated pairs becomes more appararent in German as well, and there's no better example than with the word 'eierstock'. That term meaning 'ovaries' but is masculine in gender, because while 'ei' is neuter, it is only the last element that dictates the syntax. While English doesn't have grammatical gender, but for pluralization, for example, 'car' in 'car-parks' is not declined, since just like an adjective in English, there is no modification regardless of syntax.

923: cootie Jun 19, 2017

In the U.S., it's common for young children to get lice-checks in school periodically, or when one student gets head-lice. Those same kids, however, would not get cootie-checks, partly because children already know that half the population have them anyway, so the thought is: "why bother?" but also—and more importantly—because they are a fictional germ. The term 'cootie' however can be used in more serious circumstances to mean 'body-lice', though people tend to opt for that term rather than 'cooties'. The word itself derives from the Malay 'kutu' which was the name for a parasitic insect, and was adopted into English during the first world war.

922: Words for Meats Jun 18, 2017

There are a number of words in English that denote the meat of an animal separate to the word for the animal itself, including 'pork' and 'beef' as opposed to 'pig' and 'cow' respectively. This is because the names for the food came from Old French whereas the names for the animals are Germanic. To a native English speaker this might seem typical, but compared to most other languages this is quite rare; most of the time, the word for a food and the word for an animal are the same. This happens in English with 'chicken' and kinds of fish however, so the idea should be understandable. In those cases where the two words are the same, the meaning may be discerned not only from context but from grammar, which all native speakers will know subconsciously. In the sentence, "I like chicken", food doesn't even need to be mentioned at all, but because it has no article and is singular people would know this 'chicken' is for food. This also holds in cases where the animals aren't commonly eaten, so "I like dog" is understood to mean 'dog-meat'. Luckily with 'sheep' where the singular form is the same as the plural, we don't have this confusion since there is the word 'mutton'.

921: Hypothesis versus Hypothetical (Lexical Classes) Jun 17, 2017

In general, a word's derivatives make it very easy for a speaker to apply one sort of concept throughout different parts of speech, also called 'lexical classes'. Some words, though theoretically all words, can be used in different contexts in English to change the part of speech to which it belongs without affixes or anything else e.g. 'water' in 'I drink water' and 'I water the plants is acting as a noun and verb respectively. Much of the time, either for clarity or tradition, speakers will modify a word to convey the same sort of concept but within lexical classes, such as with 'analysis', a noun, 'analyze', a verb, and 'analytical', an adjective. In a few instances, the derivatives have changed meanings however, so while 'hypothesis' and 'hypothesize' both relate to the explanation of something based on minimal evidence usually in regard to research, 'hypothetical' and 'hypothetically' are used in a less formal way to mean anything possibly true but not necessarily, and would not relate to some kind of proposed analysis. To be especially clear in this case, one could opt to say 'by hypothesis', because in this case the derivative has gained an additional and slightly conflicting sense. 

920: Non-standard Word Order Jun 16, 2017

Word order in any language tends to be presented just as a three-letter code denoting where the grammatical subject, object, and main verb are placed. This makes sense for English, classified as SVO, as, for the most part, the position of a word in a sentence determines its function almost entirely. In other languages like Latin, the grammatical meaning is identified by endings on words, so there could theoretically be any order to the sentence, but it is nevertheless classified as SOV. It is not a rule, in any way that word may be regarded, that a sentence in a given language must be in a particular word order, so this based off of convention. For that reason, a sentence like "that I know well" is in OSV, one of the least common standard word orders for any language and may possibly be rarer than "I know that well" but is still understandable and used in regular speech largely thanks to the pronoun 'I' which is only used for the subject. Non-standard word order can also sometimes be attributed to other languages a user may speak.

919: Misused Plurals Jun 15, 2017

The post yesterday was concerned with the different sorts of plurals that people use in English, but there are still a number of plurals that people don't use (at least not often). There are plenty of originally Italian terms ending in '-i' that have made their way into English, such as 'spaghetti', 'graffiti', 'paparazzi', and 'cannoli' which people almost always use as singulars. It doesn't help that some of those may be thought of as a collective in the same way that people talk about hair in the singular, though certainly 'cannoli' does not belong to that group. Other words that are more common as plurals like 'lice' are sometimes also confused as singulars (instead of in this case 'louse'), so it isn't only with loan-words either. You could say that ordering one cannoli is a faux pas, but be careful, as doing that a second time would result in plural 'faux pas' being pronounced the same, and not that you made two /fō ˈpäz/.

918: Uncommon Pluralizations Jun 14, 2017

As far as pluralization goes, English makes the process far easier than some other languages. Since there is no gender, the plural of a word only needs to have one form, and unlike in German where words are commonly pluralized with '-en', '-er', '-e', or by some internal-modification, even without any need for more differentiation, English tends to use just '-s'. There are a few regular exceptions to this. First, there are words that are pluralized by modifying the ending in a more complicated way that with merely a suffix, for example those ending in '-um' or '-on' that are pluralized by dropping that ending and adding an '-a' such as with 'flagellum' to 'flagella' or 'criterion' to 'criteria'. These, however, are all borrowed from from other languages and aren't very common; moreover, it could probably be understandable if someone said 'flagellums'. There are also a few historical methods of pluralizing that are not borrowed, such as adding '-en' to 'ox to make 'oxen', but also there are some nouns that are pluralized by internal modification, as with 'man' to 'men', but these are rare.