1754: -cester, -chester, and -ceter Oct 3, 2019

Without English spelling, we would lose a lot of obvious history. Famously the spellings of 'Worcester' and Leicester' look nothing like how they're pronounced, but they come from 'castre' meaning 'castle; fort' like in 'Lancaster' etc.. In fact, almost all of the British '-cester' are reduced to '-ster' in pronunciation. Still, there are also other ways this has developed in spelling, like '-chester' in 'Manchester', '-cetter' like 'Mancetter', or also '-xeter' in 'Exeter'.

See more on language change and English spelling: https://youtu.be/kA7mMfX3Bh0

1753: Infants Can Discern any Phoneme Oct 2, 2019

Adults can often seem to struggle more with developing new language skills than very young children, especially when it comes to pronunciation. There are lots of little reasons for adults having difficulty with grammars etc., and certainly one or two myths around it, but one thing that's easily noticeable is that adults tend to struggle with accents, while children don't, not only because they have more adaptable larynxes from not speaking in (usually) one way most of the time, but also they can actually discriminate between sounds better. Infants can hear the difference in every phoneme more or less, and lose that ability after a short time. They continue to use the ones they hear and get positive feedback for pronouncing, and drop the rest. However, babies do not necessarily discriminate between illegal syllables in the given language, but knowledge of sound constraints must logically follow from gaining knowledge of the sounds first.

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1752: heirloom Oct 1, 2019

Given that 'heirloom' is simply a contraction of 'heir + loom' it would seem reasonable to assume that the notion of inheritance would have always been part of it, but that's not entirely true. Indeed, while today we would think of a loom as only a tool for weaving, in Old English 'gelōma' referred to any type of tool, and so did 'heirloom' for a while. Technically, it referred was an article passed down in someone's will, but records show that its usage was more general. However, since the 17th century 'heirloom' has had the meaning it carries today.

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1751: frump Sep 30, 2019

Although 'frump' and its adjectival counterpart 'frumpy' now generally relate to fashion, this is a newer development. In the 16th, the word referred to bad humor or a bad temperment, believed to be from the Dutch 'verrompelen' ('to wrinkle'). Eventually the word connoted not just a bad attitude, but someone who has a such a personality, and thus the idea of a dowdy woman came after to be associated with the word.

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1750: elephant and castle Sep 29, 2019

There is a rumor that 'Elephant and Castle"—the junction in London—was named for "La Infanta de Castilla". The trouble is that no one knows which, assuming this is true. Eleanor of Castile and Infanta Maria are often mentioned, but the word 'infanta' wasn't used in English at this time. Another idea is that it refers to Catherine of Aragon, which would be more sensible chronologically, especially since she is known to have lived in the area at one time, and since it is certain that the whole area is named for a pub and inn, this is likely to be true.

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1749: -caster (doncaster and tadcaster) Sep 28, 2019

Britain has a number of cities with '-caster' in the names. Like how 'Lancaster' comes from 'Loncastre' (long castle), 'Doncaster' and 'Tadcaster' etc. come from the Roman 'castre' meaning 'fort'. In the case of 'Tadcaster', mentioned as 'tatecastre' in the Doomsday Book, it was just from the name of a person, i.e. Tate's (Táda in Old English) castle. The origin of 'Doncaster' comes from the Don River, but after that the origin is a bit less certain. If there is another '-caster', leave a comment and it may be the subject for another post.

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1748: plummet (and plumb) Sep 27, 2019

Of course, a pound of feathers weighs as much as a pound of lead—from the classic riddle—but lead is famous for being heavy. Indeed, the word 'plummet' comes from the word 'plommet' (diminutive of 'plomb') meaning 'small lead'.  Initially, the noun meant a steep drop, like it does now, but also was the nominal form of 'plumb', meaning 'to measure depth' i.e. 'plummet' was a measurement of depth. The word has only been used as a verb since the '30's, though this is now quite popular.
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1747: eleven (and twelve) Sep 26, 2019

The word 'eleven' comes from a root meaning 'one left', or 'one after'. This is not a reference to numerals—that wouldn't make sense anyway—or subtraction, but rather just from an old way of speaking. Most of the numbers follow a base-ten pattern, but 'eleven' from the Old English 'enleofan' (literally "one leaving") follows a more colloquial pattern. Old English kennings were euphemistic idioms made from compounding nouns, so like how "darotha laf" (lit. "spear leavings") connoted 'retreating warriors', the roots for 'eleven' and 'twelve' both just meant "one/two after ten". This is the same for most Germanic languages. There will be more on this tomorrow.

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1746: Dominical Letters and Music Sep 25, 2019

Musical notes are written in a scale denoted with letters A-G, but this could have been with numbers, or tonic sol-fa (do, re, mi...). Indeed, many other systems have been used through history. Given that other terms like 'octave', 'third' and 'fifth', now for music originated for calendars, it may not be surprising that the most popular, now-ubiquitous system was one from the calendar. Letters used to denote with which day of an 8-day week a year or month started was already in use, called dominical letters, so the pattern would have already been familiar to many.

1745: Dominica and Dominical Letters Sep 24, 2019

'Sunday', in Romance languages like French and Spanish is 'Dimanche' and 'Domingo' respectively, which compared to English is the most different etymologically, and moreover it is the only day in French not to end in '-di'. This comes from 'dominus' meaning 'Lord' (i.e. Christ's day), but it was also very significant to the Romans. Dominical letters were a way of relating the date to the day of the week. The Roman denoted the days A-H (there were 8 days in a Roman week). In an A year, the 1st of January would be a Sunday, and so on, so knowing the dominical letter would make it easy to know what day of the week any date was. This is still used to calculate the date of Easter, but to learn how it influenced music, make sure to stay up to date tomorrow.

1744: 'Blitzkrieg' wasn't used by the Germans Sep 23, 2019

There are lots of new German words that entered English, like 'wanderlust', 'zeitgeist' or 'blitzkrieg', sort of. 'Blitzkrieg' (lightning warfare) comes from the German language, but the word was not used by German military, and it was only used in German propaganda after the Western Allies started using the term. Perhaps the most important reason why this is come down to the fact that it isn't military doctrine, because it is not precise, and many historians today debate whether it should be applied at all. Also, the term that was used as a sort of catchall for a rapid combined arms doctrine was 'Bewegungskrieg', meaning 'mobile warfare'.

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1743: Europa and Frangistan Sep 22, 2019

Most major world languages, as well as those which did not have contact with Europe until fairly recently have a word for 'Europe' derive the name from 'Europa'. Even in Chinese 'Ōuzhōu' (歐洲/欧洲) comes from an abbreviation of 'Ōuluóbā', the L and the B coming from the R and the P respectively. One exception came from Turkic languages that used to have a name along the lines of 'Frangistan', still occasionally in use informally today, meaning 'land of the Franks' particularly after the crusades. Indeed, in Hindi the word for Europeans is 'Firang' of the same root.

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1742: Franks and frankincense Sep 21, 2019

'Frank' has meant many things over the years, from 'honest and direct' today to 'free' in the past relating to the political stature of the historical Franks. However, it is also present, from the same etymology, in 'frankincense': a plant from Somalia. 'Frankincense' is mentioned a fair amount in the Bible. This is because 'frank' also meant 'high-quality; superior' in the past, again relating to the Franks. Literally the name would just mean 'high-quality incense' therefore. In the Bible, the name is לבונה (levona/lebonah), from a root meaning 'white'.

1741: Nahuatl in Tagalog Sep 20, 2019

Tagalog has a lot of loanwords, discussed yesterday; around 49% of their vocabulary is of non-native origins. Some sources seem obvious, like Spanish (13%) and American English (7%) as they were recently colonial powers for The Philippines, as well as Chinese (7%) as there has long been a Chinese presence in the islands. However, Nahuatl, spoken by the Aztecs makes up a larger 10% of the lexical makeup of modern Tagalog. This may seem surprising, especially considering that they are the total length of the Pacific Ocean apart, but this happened two ways. First, Aztecs were brought over from New Spain before Mexican independence, but also some words were pick up by Spaniards themselves. In any other Asian or Pacific language, even one Indigenous American word can be rare that it has led aided research about trans-Pacific migration patterns.

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1740: Bad Loan Words Sep 19, 2019

Just because something is a loan word doesn't mean that it will mean the same thing in both languages. This happens in many languages, but take for the example 'delikado' in Tagalog meaning dangerous compared to the original Spanish 'delicado' (delicate) or 'tsika' (gossip) from 'chica' (girl). There are lots of examples of this possibly because Spanish is so different linguistically from Tagalog, and that there was always a majority indigenous population during the colonial period.

1739: pawling: not pauling Sep 18, 2019

Although the United States is pretty young compared to some countries, there are examples of how place names change seemingly randomly. The 'Bronx' is one, but also the lesser-known Pawling, also in New York, was originally written 'Pauling', named for Catherine Pauling, whose father owned the area. The name only changed due to a misprint from U to a W, but since then the name stuck.

1738: liaison and ligation Sep 17, 2019

'Liaison' was originally a cooking term, as discussed yesterday, but there is more than one way how that word changed. 'Ligation' is a doublet of 'liaison', meaning that they both came from the same word but diverged phonetically over time. I this case, 'ligate' came directly from Latin for 'to tie' (ligare), whereas 'liaison' evolved within French first. Many words in medicine, in this case specifically surgery come directly from Latin, and, more importantly, have not existed as long, such that they are more similar to the original.

1737: liaison Sep 16, 2019

A liaison now means a close meeting of two people, sometimes secretly, but it was originally a cooking term. Still today it can be used to refer to a binding or thickening agent in cooking or baking, often based on eggs, but over time the idea of bringing two ingredients together started to refer more often to people, as is the case today.

As it happens, in linguistics the term refers to when a normally 'silent' letter, such as in French, is pronounced when the following word begins in a vowel, such as the S in 'mes amis' (my friends).

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1736: crikey Sep 16, 2019

The Victorians came up with lots of euphemisms for religiously inspired cursing. Some lasted, but like 'Crikey', now often associated with Australia, many were just exported. 'Crikey' was derived in mid-19th century off of the word 'Christ'. The term has since moved away from its religious connotations—perhaps the sign of a successful euphemism—and while it is used in many English-speaking regions, it also shows how slang can so easily change.

Watch more in our video here.

1735: White, Black, and Red Russia Sep 14, 2019

While Belarus means, and is often referred to simply as 'White Russia', the 'white' may not have anything to do with that color. There was also a Black Ruthenia and Red Ruthenia also referred to as a 'Rus', now the former is mostly in western Belarus and the latter was mostly in western Ukraine. A leading theory suggests that this system had been used in Western Europe, apparently inherited by the Mongols who used it just to denote direction. Though the colored Rus regions were not used in Russia, since 'Black Russia' was also linked geographically to the pagan Balts, the term 'White Russia gained additional Christian connotations in Western Europe. By the time of the country's independence, the color in the name distinguished them from the Soviets. One way or another, through hundreds of years, the color in the name stuck.

For commentary on the photos cut from the recent videos, click here.