957: Whore and Ho Jul 23, 2017

The word 'whore' has been around for over a thousand years at least, while 'ho' is somewhat newer. 'Ho' was not commonly recognized in dictionaries until the 1960's, but people have been using it for centuries; it's estimated that people used 'ho' more than twice as often in the 1860's as they do now. Much like English has two distinct forms for 'curse' and 'cuss', as well as 'arse' and 'ass' which mean the same things but belong to different dialects, 'whore' and 'ho' originally differed based on the accent of the people saying the word, depending on whether the R's are rhotic or not. Now, as 'ho' is considered a slang term that's separate from 'whore', it is used by people who speak Standard American English who would otherwise ordinarily say 'whore; oppositely, speakers of Received Pronunciation in Southern England may say 'whore' with a rhotic R. In America, the term 'ho' is often associated with African American English, and this is because that dialects also uses a non-rhotic R.

956: Mistakes from Convention Jul 22, 2017

Even if people understand how to speak a language, like English, fluently, there is no guarantee that every rule or convention will be followed in certain circumstances. It is indeed quite common for people to misuse 'is' or 'are' depending on if a singular or plural noun or pronoun comes right before it when it the two don't agree, such as the example invented here, "the messages he sent is scandalous" even though 'messages' is plural. Generally these happen in longer, more complicated clauses. People also do this sort of thing quite often putting 'me' at the end of a sentence or clause when it is a subject, and therefore would be 'I'. Much of those two issues arise from people trying to follow convention, rather than simply the grammar; it is after all strange to hear a sentence end with 'I'. It is also due to convention that 'they' takes 'are' as the form of the verb 'to be' when used as a singular, and has done for as long as people have been using that pronoun as singular, instead of 'is' in Standard American English, and most other dialects.

955: Plural Words Treated as Singular Jul 21, 2017

English does not have much conjugation in the same way that some other languages do that add affixes to every verb to indicate the subject thereof. In the present tense, the only conjugation is that 3rd person singular verbs get an S at the end. This is fairly simple when using pronouns and most nouns, but there are a few words where the form of the noun does not agree with the verb, such as 'physics' which is plural in form, but treated as a singular, as in "physics is interesting" rather that "physics are interesting", though both would probably be understandable. In general, the singular form of a verb is used for when discussing exactly one of a countable item, or things that can't be counted, like "milk"; the latter variety can appear as plural when discussing types of something, such as "two fishes" i.e. species of fish. 'Physics' on the other hand is a field made up of different branches, but while the branches are countable, hypothetically at least, people tend to view it (notably not "them") as a single mass-noun in the way 'milk' may be, and treat it as a singular. Names for academic subjects are not the only sorts of words for which this occurs, but it is quite common for that to happen.

954: Pronunciations of C (cinematography) Jul 20, 2017

In English orthography, the letter C can represent the sound /k/ as in 'character' and 'car' but can also represent /s/ as in 'charade', 'Caesar', 'cemetery', or 'cinematograph'. The reason for this is that English spelling is just as much of a blend of conventions from other languages as is the make-up of its vocabulary. In the case of 'Caesar', which is taken directly from Latin as a family-name, the C was originally pronounced /k/ just like the German 'Kaiser'. There will be more on that later. In the case of 'cemetery' and 'cinematograph', the words are originally of Greek origin, a language for which people use a different alphabet. When transcribing Greek now for English-speakers, people will use the letter K, but in the orthography for Latin and French, the languages through which English obtained 'cemetery' and 'cinematograph' respectively, there is no K, so people used C, and over time began to pronounce the C as /s/. The origin of 'cinema' is from the Greek participle 'kinema' meaning 'movement', so the C it has now is not completely arbitrary, historically and etymologically speaking.

953: -aholic and -iversary (New Suffixes) Jul 19, 2017

English has a lot of suffixes, but most of those haven't changed much in centuries, and rarely are new ones used. Certain lexical classes like nouns, verbs, and adjectives etc. tend to gain the most new words while it is uncommon for new words to be added to others, like conjunctions and articles because they tend to relate to syntax but not the semantics of what someone is trying to communicate. Affixes, though not a part of speech, also are not created often because they tend to be used to communicate something more about syntax as well. The suffix '-(a)holic', however, is not only used to indicate that, for example, a part of speech in the way that '-ness' indicates that a word that was once an adjective is a noun; instead it also relates to the idea of addiction, as in 'workaholic' or 'chocoholic' (though not cat-holic, yet). The suffix was taken from 'alcoholic', even though the only suffix in that word is '-ic' added to 'alcohol', making it a new affix. This is not the only new suffix in English, such as '-iversary' drawn from 'anniversary', as in 'adoptiversary', a recent trend on Twitter which communicates the anniversary of something, in this case pet-adoption. It should be noted that these could perhaps be considered combining forms instead of suffixes because they add semantic meaning.

Comment if you have any others that you have found yourself.

952: Derivatives of Facere Jul 18, 2017

There are a number of reasons why a pair of etymologically related words might not look similar. One common reason is that at one point a word entered English from another language like Old French, and then perhaps even centuries later another related word was borrowed into English, but by that point some word in either language changed, given that languages do not evolve in the same ways or at the same times. Another common reason might be that the two words are from similar languages, such as Latin or French, but sound and appear different from the same cause as before. Both of these can be used to describe certain derivatives of the Latin verb 'facere' meaning 'to make' or 'to do'. Many of the words we have now as derivatives, like 'effect' or 'counterfeit', came via Old French whereas 'efficient', a word closely related to 'effect', was taken straight from Latin, but was modified somewhat for use in English. 'Factotum', on the other hand, was taken directly from Latin but was left unchanged, though 'fact' and 'factory', while still visually and phonetically similar, entered English slightly earlier and were changed more.

951: big apple Jul 17, 2017

The nickname 'big apple' as a reference for New York City for a long time had no clear origin, but did have a great amount of folk-etymology surrounding it. More recently, etymologists agree on having found an answer. The first recorded use of the phrase was in 1909 from Edward Martin "Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city… It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap…". Here, and in other instances following this, the association of the city to big apples is thought to be from the idea that things were especially big, both in terms of grandeur but also that there was a lot of money in the area. Though the moniker faded out of use in the 1960's, it was brought back in a tourism-campaign in the 1970's, not to showcase wealth, but to give the impression of cleanliness and brightness to counter the popular image that the city was dirty.

950: octothorp Jul 16, 2017

The symbol # goes by a number of names including 'number-sign', and 'pound-sign' on account of its being used to indicate numbers and weights, and 'hash' which is related to 'hatch', the name for artistic shading by drawing a series of intersecting lines. The technical name for this is 'octothorpe' or 'octothorp', but the origins of the name are somewhat uncertain. The combining form 'octo-' means 'eight' in reference to the points around the symbol, but the '-thorpe' is less clear. It is thought to be from the surname 'Thorpe', though no one knows why definitively. Some have speculated that this is from the name of someone who worked at a telephone company, while others believe that there is some relation to the athlete Jim Thorpe. Some have claimed that the second element instead derives from the Old English 'thorp' used in the names of British villages, but this is unlikely the case.

949: jacket Jul 15, 2017

There are plenty of English words with historically French diminutive suffixes that don't necessarily convey things being small anymore, like 'pocket', though some, like 'cygnet', still do. Included on that list is also 'budget' and 'ballet, all of which posses '-et' at the end. It can be fun and enlightening to look into other words that have that '-et' as an ending, though technically not a suffix anymore. Another such word is 'jacket' which, like the other words above, does not have an obvious relation to what is left when the historical suffix is removed, in this case 'jack'. Here however, consider that the word is from French, where there is a name like 'Jack' but spelt instead, 'Jacque'. This was not only a name though, but also a nickname the nobility gave to poor people, which also gave English 'jacquerie'. 'Jacket' was a diminutive used to describe short tunics that peasants or sometimes foot-soldiers wore.

948: wink, wince, and vacillate Jul 14, 2017

Any time you are trying to learn a foreign language, false cognates, i.e. words that look as though they are related but are not, can be quite a nuisance. For English speakers, cognates can make it much easier to understand the words of languages like French or German because there is so much shared vocabulary and similar linguistic history, but some terms, like the German verb 'winken' meaning 'to wave' and not 'to wink' (which would be 'blinzeln') might be confusing. In this case however, 'wink' comes from the Old English 'wincian' which is related to 'winken', and also the English word 'wince'. That word that is not Germanic, and originates from the Old French 'guenchir' (turn aside') and in Middle English meant, 'kick restlessly'. This Romantic connection also extends to the word 'vacillate' which now means to change opinions often, but initially meant just to sway in a physical sense. It would be misleading perhaps then to call 'winken' a false cognate, as there are etymological relations, but that is not especially useful for someone who just wants to learn another language.

947: Whom Jul 13, 2017

To whom will it matter if the word 'whom' stops being used?

In Old English and, to a far lesser extent, Middle English, grammatical cases that indicate the syntax of a word with suffixes were used consistently for pretty much all nouns and pronouns, but this eventually disappeared with the exception of some pronouns like 'I' and 'me', or 'he' and 'him'. Native speakers of English can tell the different ways the word 'she' as opposed to 'her' would be used for the most part, even if they could not articulate the precise reasoning as for why; as a sidetone, third-person pronouns are also the only real remnant of grammatical gender as well. In the case of 'whom' however, though it is used to indicate that it is an object of a verb in the same way as 'him' would be, it is not used with the same concern or frequency, and people would be just as likely to understand "who were you talking to" as "whom were you talking to". This issue however is not likely to result in the disappearance of 'whom' in any immediate way, as it has been noted that the usage of whom is not significantly different than it was in the late 16th century. On the other hand, prescriptive grammarians in the 19th century who gave rules such to not end a clause with a preposition, while having little success in general at managing the manner in which people speak, might have done 'whom' a disservice when they said had to be used as an object instead of 'who'. By making the word seem overly formal, and perhaps making people worried about embarrassing themselves using it in the wrong situations, it tends to be used only formally or literarily.

946: Myneralls, and Inconsistent Spelling Jul 12, 2017

In many ways, Middle English spelling was a better indicator of the way in which people actually spoke than Modern English spelling, now standardized. Standards for spelling were only beginning to matter the way they do today, but even by a single author, there was not necessarily consistent spelling-habits. In The Charter of Massachusetts Bay: 1629 (link to the full text here), what would now be 'minerals' is spelt four different ways: in order of most common to least common 'Myneralls' (5 times), 'Mynerals' (2 times), 'Mineralls' (1 time), and 'Mvneralls' (1 time). Indeed, "and Myneralls...ind Mvneralls" which conceptually the same pair of two words is written two different ways in the same sentence. At this period in English, there had been some significant sound-shifts that had eventually resulted in Early Modern English, but the form of the language was still fairly new and fairly inconsistent for many people. The spelling, however, does give some insight into the manner people pronounced things, something not so easy determined with English currently. It should be noted that all of the nouns are capitalized, as is still the practice in Modern German.

945: Multiple Pronunciations of -s and -ed Jul 11, 2017

Standard English spelling is strange and at times confusing. For every rule such as "I before E except after C unless it says A (/ei/)" there are exceptions, including in this case, 'foreign'. Nevertheless, there are some ways in which English spelling is more simple than English speech. The suffixes '-(e)s' and '-(e)d' are used to represent the majority of plurals for nouns or past tense form of verbs respectively, however it is not pronounced the same always. Indeed, for both, there are three ways in which the same affix will be pronounced for different words. With pluralizing suffix, in 'churches', 'birds', and 'cats', though they all use the same letter, the pronunciation of that ending becomes /ɪz/, /z/, and /s/ respectively. Likewise, with the past tense ending '-ed', in 'biked', 'braved', and 'beloved', it appears as /t/, /d/, and /ɪd/ in speech. Therefore, even though the pronunciation varies somewhat, the spelling is more simple. There is not necessarily consistency concerning the pronunciation of all words, but the examples used before should be true for people speaking with the Standard American English accent, and most others.

944: Spelling Conventions (with IPA) Jul 10, 2017

It shouldn't come as any surprise that English orography is not only inconsistent but arbitrary. Many people complain about certain things including the amount of silent letters, and the fact that the same combinations of letters will not necessarily represent identical sounds, but the issue is far bigger than that. This problem of arbitrary, or at least somewhat arbitrary spelling exists to some degree within the international phonetic alphabet (IPA). For example, the sound /k/ like in /skɪp/ (skip') is indistinguishable in terms of pronunciation from a /g/ in that word. This is not the case for every instance when a /k/ would appear, such as /kɪʔən/ ('kitten'), but in general, when preceded by an /s/, there is no reason except for convention that the word could not be spelt with a /g/ as in 'sgip'. This is also true of the /t/ in 'stop' which could just as well be a /d/, and the /p/ in 'spring' which could be a /b/.

943: -er (Agentive) Jul 9, 2017

In English, for the most part, different parts of speech are fairly distinct. It is possible to have one word that belongs to multiple lexical classes, e.g. 'water' in "one waters plants with water" is a verb and noun respectively, but alternatively various derivational suffixes can work to modify a word in a way that changes the part of speech to which it belongs. The suffix '-er', among its many other uses, can be added to most transitive verbs, i.e. ones that take direct objects, to become a noun indicating that someone performs said action. In this way, "she walks (dogs)" can become "the walker (of dogs)". There are a few exceptions however, such as "he knows many facts" would likely not become "the knower (of many facts)". It is not impossible to have that sentence, and it would probably be understandable to most people, but this would sound odd.

942: knickerbocker Jul 8, 2017

Places in New York, all over the state and especially in New York City, gained a lot of names the Dutch. Sometimes this was from originally Dutch words like 'Staten (Island)' coming from the word for 'States', while others came from people's names, such as the origin of the Bronx. The word 'knickerbockers' is quite prominent, and has been applied to all New Yorkers, exclusively Dutch settlers of New York and their descendants, the underwear more commonly called 'knickers', a New York sports team, and is the name of several buildings and streets. You might think that this was from some Dutch family perhaps, but actually it was from the pen name, Diedrich Knickerbocker, (actually W. Irving) who wrote "A History of New York". The only connection to the Dutch is that 'knickers' is thought to have originated from an association with the Dutchmen's breeches in the illustration in the book.

941: a- Jul 7, 2017

In terms of its vocabulary, English is something of a hodgepodge with large percentages coming from different languages, notably Latin, French, and Greek. It is for that reason that the prefix 'a-', which is used in four different ways, can come from four different languages. First, it can be added to words, usually adjectives, to mean 'not', such as 'atypical'; this comes from Greek. In other words such as 'asleep' or 'afoot' the prefix can be replaced fairly seamlessly with the preposition 'in' or 'on', and indeed this form of 'a-' derives from the Old English 'on'. The word 'aloft' has a similar prefix, but it is ultimately Old Norse, and only found as part of a few words specifically. Third, it can mean 'utterly'  such as with 'abash', deriving from the Old French 'es-' with the same meaning. Finally, 'a-' is sometimes found as a form of the Latin 'ad' meaning 'toward' such as in words like 'aspire'.

940: Espresso Jul 6, 2017

For all grammar Nazi's, or any other grammatically far-right leaning prescriptivists, it may be quite vexatious to hear people say 'espresso' as /εkspɹ‎εso/ (like 'express-o'), which likely started from some phonological association with 'express'. This happens often enough to the point that to almost any native speaker of English it should be understandable, especially in context. All languages change in this way; variants arise, and after enough time and with general understandability, they become normal and acceptable. Indeed, even with this variation of 'espresso', people often will even spell it as 'expresso', though in formal contexts this should be avoided. As a bonus for those who dislike the way in which 'espresso' is used, the term 'espresso-bean' doesn't mean anything different from 'coffee-bean'; 'espresso' only refers to the preparation of coffee, literally 'pressed' in Italian.

939: aloft, aloof, and alow Jul 5, 2017

Plenty of words from various trades end up making their way into day-to-day speech. 'Aloft', which now can refer to anything raised up, was originally a sailing-term denoting the top have a ship. That and the word 'loft' both come from an Old Norse word 'lopt' meaning 'air'; derivatives appear in other places, in fact in German the airfare is called the 'luftwaffe' and 'balloon' is 'luftballoon'. 'Aloof' as well was once a nautical terms that originally meant "the direction of the wind" but now used almost exclusively relates to people, and probably cats. 'Alow', however, is one nautical term that did not enter casual speech, but it still refers to the lower half of a ship, and is also related to the word 'lie'.

938: peregine and pilgrim Jul 4, 2017

The word 'peregrinate' meaning 'to wander' as well as the word 'peregrine (falcon)' both come from the same root; unsurprising perhaps since they look and sound so similar. The two terms entered Middle English directly from the Latin 'peregrinus' meaning foreign, traveling', ultimately from the elements 'per-' ('through') and 'ager' (field). For 'peregrine' this name was not given to the free wanderings of the bird, or else a lot more might have had this name, but instead because unlike many other birds captured in the nest when very young, peregrine falcons were captured while flying. Nevertheless, for a very long time this word tended to denote foreignness just as much as traveling, which led to the word 'pilgrim' in English as well, though via Provençal first.