1685: graz Jul 26, 2019

The Slavic suffix '-grad' meaning 'city' is all over place-names of Eastern Europe, such as 'Belgrade' ('Beograd') in Serbia. However, this does extend elsewhere, sort of. The Austrian city of 'Graz' also comes from this root, but you wouldn't know it looking at the German. Nevertheless, there is a Slavic name for, 'Gradec', in which this can still be seen, in a slightly clearer way.

1684: french toast Jul 25, 2019

In Cantonese, bread coated in egg to be fried is called 'sāidōsí' (西多士) meaning 'western toast'; in the US it is called 'French toast', yet in France it is called 'pain pardu' ('lost bread'). Indeed, it has gone under other names such as 'German bread' or even 'Spanish bread', but the French term may be more accurate, because no one is totally sure where it is from. There are even more names in other languages each pointing to different places or cultures, but in truth the idea of soaking stale bread and frying it until it's edible is goes back so many hundreds of years that it doesn't really matter. What may matter is that even though 'French toast' won out over 'German toast', for a time many in the US wanted to call it 'freedom toast' to distance themselves after the lack of French combatance in the second Gulf War.

If you're interesting in going further with etymologies, watch the video below: https://youtu.be/AviuxNIvdPM

1683: knock up Jul 24, 2019

Although the phrase 'knock up' has been used since the 17th century to mean 'knock on a door', this is not related to the other meaning of 'get pregnant', which originated in American in the 19th century. It's not to say that the words themselves are different, but that 'knock' already had a connotation to copulation (think 'knocking boots') such as in 'knock-shop' meaning 'brothel'. In fact, that phrase is much older than the more literal meaning 'knock up'. In this way, the phrase has gained meanings in cycles. For more about etymologies, and how to discern things for yourselves, see the latest video: https://youtu.be/AviuxNIvdPM

1682: Hymen and hymen Jul 23, 2019

The Greek deity of marriage is referred to as Ὑμήν ('hymen') but this is not the express origin the homophone denoting female anatomy. For one thing, the deity was conceptualized as a man, but more importantly the physiological term comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *syu-men- with *syu- meaning 'sew' or 'bring together ('sew' coming from the same root). To be clear, the name of the Greek mythical is estimated to generally come from the same derivation but in the sense of bringing two people together through a wedding itself.

1681: Macaroni in Yankee Doodle Jul 22, 2019

No one thinks that 'macaroni' in Yankee Doodle line "he put a feather in his hat/and called it macaroni" is about pasta, but it's still quite odd sounding. As it turns out, it was British slang for a dandy, because it was common for well-to-do English gentlemen to take jaunts to continental Europe and come back with new French, or in this case particularly Italian fashions to show off. In reference to these Italian clothes, these people were called 'macaroni'.

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1680: fawn and fetus Jul 21, 2019

Although ‘deer’ for a long time through history could just denote any animal (like the German ‘Tier’ ('animal')), 'fauna' is not related to 'fawn'. 'Fauna' comes from the name of a rural Roman goddess, while 'fawn', which also comes from Latin, shares a root with the word 'fetus'. The only reason why they are different is because 'fetus' is directly from Latin, and 'fawn' came from Old French.

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1679: hickory and pecan Jul 20, 2019

While 'oak' and 'acorn' don't sound terribly similar, they are related etymologically. 'Hickory' and its corresponding nut 'pecan' are not however. This is because 'hickory' is a type of American wood, and the name comes from the Algonquin word 'pawcohiccora'; it was originally called 'pohickery' by the settlers in Virginia. However, the word 'pecan', comes from the Illinois language via French 'pacane'. They are similar words originally, but changed over time when they entered European languages.

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1678: Berkley Censorship Jul 19, 2019

The city of Berkley voted recently to change 40 gendered words from official use. This included some that relate to words for people—who have gender—like 'firemen' to 'fire-fighters' but what garnered the most public outrage was probably 'manhole' to 'maintenance hole' which is clunkier and not as common to find, and 'brother' to 'sibling', which is less specific. One difficulty is, however, is that language does not naturally change in this way, so getting people on board is not easy, nor necessarily beneficial for understanding. You can hear more about the pros and cons of this sort of thing in the Word Facts video on Censorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFwACamZhmM

1677: gandhi Jul 18, 2019

As discussed in the previous post, sometimes names of historical figures are changed, but not always by them. This is true of Genghis Khan, and also of Gandhi. His name changed less, since he was really born Gandhi, but his honorific changed. Mohandas Gandhi is often known as 'Mahatma' Gandhi, but this is an honorific given to him later, and even though it is from Sanskrit (meaning 'venerable'), it was not given to him in India, but in South Africa. In India, the honorific he received and reportedly prefered was 'Bapu' ('father').

1676: gengis khan Jul 17, 2019

There are a number of figures through history whose names are not the same as what they are remembered by. One such example is Genghis (or Chenkis) Khan, whose name was Temüjin. No one knows for sure why this is, but some have suggested that the first part of his name comes from the Mongolian for 'strength' ('ching') or from 'tenggis' meaning 'ocean' (i.e. widespread'), along with a few other explanations. What is more certain is that no one would have said 'Genghis' in the way it's pronounced now. As for a Khan, though it happens to share the same title as a priestly title in Judaism and Islam, the Mongolic 'Khan' meant 'ruler' but does not relate to the other cultures. To add more confusion to the mix, even his real name 'Temüjin' comes from a word meaning 'iron' and would imply that he was a smith, but no evidence of this has come out.
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1675: Where 'Saxon' survived in Britain Jul 16, 2019

England is named for the Anglo-Saxons, but it's not called Engl-Saxland. The Saxon name was displaced by natural evolution of language, but there is another place where the name lives on. The inhabitants of Britain before the Anglo-Saxons were Brittons, a broad collection of Celtic speaking peoples, and many of them would have referred to the Germanic peoples as Saxons. This is maintained in the Modern Welsh word 'Saeson' meaning 'English people', and shares commonalities with similar words in Scots Gaelic and Irish.
Watch the latest Word Facts Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-6K99Jz9hY

1674: Early Anglo-Saxon Naming Trends Jul 15, 2019

Before the Norman colonization of England, most kings' names had begun with either 'Æthel' or 'Ed-'. This is because in this naming culture, compounds were extremely common, but also semantically significant. 'Æthel-' for instance means 'noble' in Old English, so it should not be surprising that so many of the nobility had such an element in their names, though the latter half varied quite a bit, such as the kings 'Æthelbald', 'Æthelbert', 'Æthelstan', and Æthelwolf'. As for 'Ed-' (or 'Ead-') this means 'wealth' so in names like 'Eadweard' (Edward meaning 'wealth guard') this was common, and featured the names of the Anglo-Saxon kings 'Edmund', 'Edred', 'Eadwig' 'Edgar' and 'Edward'. The vast majority of Ango-Saxons kings of England had one of these two elements.
See more on this here: about too many King Edwards

1673: Too Many King Edward I Jul 14, 2019

In the history of England, there are two kings both called Edward I. The first Edward I ruled from AD 939-946, and in fact follows the line of an earlier Edward: Edward the Elder. He was an Anglo-Saxon king, after him, there were two more Anglo-Saxon Edwards, but in 1271, when the next Edward became an English king, he chose to base his lineage off of William the Conqueror, and not the Saxons. Therefore, there are at least four extra "King Edward's" before Edward I, and two of those considered themselves also the first with the name.

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1672: Linking R Jul 13, 2019

It is easy to see that one sound can affect another in a single word—just listen to the difference in T between 'tail' and 'trail'—but this happens between different words as well. One example from English in the British sphere of influence is the linking-R. While an R at the end of a word like 'car' in London English is not pronounced (though the [a] is lengthened), but if the next element begins with a vowel, either a suffix like '-ing' or another word like 'alarm' for instance, then the R is pronounced clearly. There will be a video that gets further into this later this week, so make sure to subscribe here: Word Facts on Youtube

1671: Lack of Universality for Cree Syllabics Jul 12, 2019

The Cree Syllabary is a writing system developed to efficiently write North American languages without the Latin alphabet. Not only was this system more suitable, making words much shorter because the symbols represent whole syllables and not each sound, but for many Cree it was emotionally preferable because it did not relate to the languages of colonizing peoples. However, this did not catch on everywhere in the rest of the region; notably, Inuktitut of Northern Canada uses a variant of this system, but the very similar Kalaallisut of Greenland does not. Part of this has to do with geography, but also because the syllabaries required whole new machines for typing but little real demand, it proved easier for some to use the Latin writing system.

1670: How L Changes Vowels Jul 11, 2019

Although it is commonly known about the difference between the American R and the English R in terms of pronunciation before a consonant—otherwise known as rhoticity—what may be less known is the way in which L before a vowel affects pronunciation in certain dialects. For instance, in New Zealand English there is what's called the "salary-celery merger", meaning that those sounds before the L—[æ] and [e] respectively—become the same, and those two words for instance are not distinguished in terms of pronunciation. This can also happen to different vowels and other such sounds in other dialects in every English-speaking region of the word, but the differences are more subtle than the total absence of R in certain English dialects.
There will be more on rhoticity in a Word Facts Video, to be released next week.

1669: -o in Australian English Jul 10, 2019

English varieties differ all over the world, within small regions and across oceans. While not a major grammatical change, there are in some ways countless options in Australian English for abbreviating a word and adding -o, such as in 'arvo' for 'afternoon' or 'garbo' for 'garbage collector'. There could theoretically be thousands of these, and while a few have carried over into British English for instance, it is in Australian English in which this feature is so productive.

Check out the new video on grammars here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-6K99Jz9hY&t=1s

1668: 2 and ב Jul 9, 2019

While the numerals used in Western society, are from India , there are some links to closer cultures. For instance, many systems use letters, such as Roman numerals or Hebrew numerals. For instance, the second letter in the Hebrew is ב. This historically was used to represent 2, and many believe it also had an influence on the development of the numeral. Although they are called Arabic numerals by some, the Arabic version for 2 is much different: ٢.

Check out the new video that's out today on grammaticality: https://youtu.be/g-6K99Jz9hY

1667: customs and customers Jul 8, 2019

A people can have their own customs, stores want customers, and boarders have custom-officers, but those things are not really related at first glance. This is because in the 14th century, the word that became 'customer' meant a 'tax collector', but then got applied to people who did business in guilds generally. This lead to the sense of that word as someone who is an official inspector, and someone who buys things, but it was later in the word's history later that came to refer to someone doing something habitually, and the idea of a 'custom' followed, but eventually stopped describing the act of regular business transactions.

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1666: Sea of Galilee and Other Names Jul 7, 2019

The Sea of Galilee, though known to many people worldwide is not actually a sea. It is, however, a lake known today as both 'Lake Tiberias' and 'Lake Kinneret', and the name has been different through history, depending upon who controlled the area. The first of those names comes from a nearby town named after the Roman emperor Tiberius, but it has existed alongside 'Galilee' since that time, even in the Bible: "the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias" ("θαλάσσης τῆς Γαλιλαίας τῆς Τιβεριάδος"). 'Kinneret', the modern name, shares a name with an ancient city mentioned in the Bible, but no one knows which was named after the other one.

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