1804: -ard (positive) Nov 22, 2019

Following from yesterday, '-ard', like in 'sluggard', 'drunkard', 'niggard' and 'coward', may seem to attach to words only pejoratively, but this is not exclusively so. Although English has more of these than positive ones, 'wizard', and also 'bollard' exist. The former has already been discussed, but a 'bollard' is fairly neutral as far as a post to divert traffic.

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1803: coward and '-ard' Nov 21, 2019

Following yesterday's post, while some words with '-ard', like 'dullard' or 'drunkard' are easy to parse, 'coward' does not come from 'cow'. It ultimately derives from the Latin 'cauda' meaning 'tail', in reference to an animal with its tail between its hind legs. This term is even found in heraldry to refer to the actual animal when it is posed like that. Moreover, the '-ard' suffix in those other words comes from 'hardy', literally meaning 'bold', like in 'foolhardy'.

For the parsing of 'bastard', click here.

1802: wizard vs. dullard Nov 20, 2019

'Wizard' and 'dullard' today mean very different things, one of which is magical and the other is simply pejorative, but they come from same template. Indeed, the '-ard' suffix is simply to nominalize an adjective. In the case of 'dullard', this is easily parsed meaning 'dull person', but 'wizard' parses as 'wiz' originating as 'wise'. The early meaning of this word was a sagely, non-magical person. There will be more on this tomorrow.

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1801: wood (adj) Nov 19, 2019

As mentioned yesterday, 'wood' is not related to the Dutch 'would' (forest), but nor is it also related to the now obsolete adjective 'wood' meaning 'violently insane'. Actually, neither that nor 'nuts'—also meaning 'crazy'—actually related to trees. Instead, it is related to the Modern German 'Wut' meaning 'rage', and the Old Irish 'faith' meaning 'poet'.

See yesterday's post here.

1800: widow and wood Nov 18, 2019

This is Word Facts post #1,800. Please consider sharing this page, or the youtube for another 1,800+

Following yesterday's post on the gender of 'widow', it might be interesting to know that the word is also related to 'wood', with them both possibly coming from a meaning 'to separate'. However, 'wood' is still not related to the Dutch 'would', or German 'Wald' meaning 'forest', as you might expect. There will be more on 'wood' tomorrow.

Etymologies can be counterintuitive sometimes, so check out the 7 Tips for Etymologists video too.

1799: Widow(er) Nov 17, 2019

English, compared to many Indo-European languages, is fairly ungendered, but it does crop up in some places. Still, when it comes to gendered forms of words, it is usually the feminine which is seen—falsely or otherwise—to come from the masculine. This is not the case with 'widow' and 'widower' where the '-er' is clearly a masculine extension of the feminine. In any case, it follows the Germanic pattern of '-er' as a masculine suffix, but in that case, such as with modern German, the feminine ending would be '-erin', unlike here where it is absent.
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1798: Bid and Bitte Nov 16, 2019

Historically speaking 'bid' was a bit of a contronym, meaning both 'to ask' and 'to give'. Though that relation is actually fairly common, in this case it was just luck. 'Bid' as in 'an offer' comes from a different word than when it means 'to ask', but it is the latter to which the German 'bitte' meaning 'please' and 'you're welcome' is related. It is also this word which would have been the modern equivalent of 'good', thus making the paradigm

good -> better -> best | German: gut -> besser -> besten

into the far more understandable

bid -> better -> best | German: bit(ten)-> besser -> besten

See yesterday's post on this here.

1797: Word Family: Better Nov 15, 2019

English has far fewer current word families than some languages, but there are far more looking across germanic languages. For instance, 'better', though not related to the semantically similar 'good' is related to 'boot' (verb), 'batten', and 'battle', among many others. In the case of both 'boot' and 'battle', this is because they used to mean 'exercise; improve', the former connoting pushing oneself to improve often through punishment, and the latter simply meant to practice for a battle. 'Batten' means literally 'to get better', but unlike 'boot' has no relation to the meaning of 'beat' as in 'batten down the hatches', which comes from a different verb. There will be more on 'bid' tomorrow.

1796: Old Japanese with Chinese Word Order

Japanese orthography may be the hardest in the world to learn. Partly since it uses 3 different writing systems today, but, Old Japanese was even harder, because it used only Chinese characters and also word order. However, Chinese is written subject-verb-object and Japanese is subject-object-verb, so while keeping the Chinese word order, Japanese writers would have to note the way in which the words were ordered with other special symbols.

For more on diglossia, click here.

1795: bastard Nov 13, 2019

'Bastard' has meant 'illegitimate' child' for a long time, about 800 years, but it's origins are—as many words in this realm are—based in euphemism. Like with 'grass-widow', the word for 'bastard' originated from casual bedding, namely with "fils de bast" or 'packsaddle son', as saddles were often used as bedding while travelling. The '-ard' suffix is a just pejorative one, found in 'coward', 'drunkard', and 'dullard'.
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1794: 'Insofar' not 'Insofaras' Nov 12, 2019

The word 'insofar' is a combination of three other words. This isn't so uncommon, looking at others like 'nevertheless', but what's odder perhaps is that it isn't composed of four words, since it is almost always followed by 'as'. There are a couple things to note, though. First, as with any orthographic development in English, it was planned, but also it's fairly new, only becoming more popular than writing 'in so far' in the 1970's. Also, it can also be followed by 'that', but this is already rare at the time of the compounds rise to popularity, and its rarity is increasing.

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1793: 4th Estate vs. 4th Power Nov 11, 2019

People often use the term '4th estate' to refer to the press, but none of the other 3 estates exist really. It comes from the pre-republican European estates of realm, which is another way of saying the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners together, with those making up the 3 estates. Later, '4th estate' merged conceptually with '4th power'—also denoting the press—but with the other 3 powers this time referring to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, which may be why people still use '4th estate'.
For more bonus content on the latest video, click here.

1792: black gate (Newcastle) Nov 10, 2019

The Black Gate at the Newcastle Castle was indeed the site of 19th century slums, but the gate was not named to describe its appearance. Indeed, no one actually knows what the façade looked like exactly in the Middle Ages, but that still doesn't matter. The name comes from Patrick Black, who was a merchant who lived in the building in the 17th century.

To access bonus content from yesterday's video, click here.

To watch the original video, click here.

1791: 7 in Hebrew and Indo-European

The Hebrew word for 7 is 'sheva' (שבע), which is very close to other Indo-European words, including, 'seven', 'septem', (Latin) 'hepta' (Greek), or 'sextan' (Gaulish), and no one really knows why. It could be that it is just random, but there is also similarity between words for 6 two, even though Hebrew is not related to Indo-European languages. It could be borrowed, for instance, from Hittite, in this case 'šipta-', or those languages could have borrowed from Hebrew, but either way the similarity has been the topic of discussion for a good long while.

For more on 7 in the Bible, check out: https://youtu.be/4TkSQGGPvOI

1790: jessica Nov 8, 2019

Jessica commonly ranks in the top 10 most popular girls' names in the US and the UK, but the form of the name is actually fairly modern. The first known use was by Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice. It is assumed that this is from the Hebrew יִסְכָּה‎ (yiskah), meaning "one who looks forth", though it is only used as a given name and not a regular word.

The next Word Facts video will be out tomorrow, so make sure to subscribe to the YouTube page for a notification: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNofHfYEoM2l7fu2340gsDQ

1789: Grass-Widow Nov 7, 2019

'Widow' now refers to a woman whose husband has died, but in older compounds, it meant anything but. Indeed, the word originally referred to any lonely person, but eventually extended to loneliness or separation from marriage. In compounds like 'grass-widow' or 'straw-widow', however, the resulting meaning was 'mistress', with grass and straw here referring to basic bedding, but these words too eventually connoted a woman who had children out of marriage. Moreover, 'grass-gown' in the phrase "give a woman a grass-gown' was a euphemism for the loss of virginity.
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1788: hysteria, delphi, and delphyne Nov 6, 2019

Not only do 'dolphin' and 'Philadelphia' come from a Greek word meaning 'womb', but so do 'hysteria', 'and Delphi' (the island), and the mythical dragon 'Delphyne' whom Apollo killed there. In the latter cases, this is because there, the people worshiped Gaia, the Greek goddess of the earth. In the former case, this hysteria was believed to only happen to women due to the movement of the womb until relatively recently.

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1787: Unternehmen and Undertaking Nov 5, 2019

English and German are very similar in some ways, but some words develop extra connotations over time. 'Unternehmen' and 'undertaking' come from the same two elements looking at the words parsed, but they aren't always used in the same contexts. 'Unternehmen' most often means 'business', but can also mean '[military] operation', as in 'Unternehmen Barbarossa'. In English, 'undertaking' can relate to more general tasks, or alternatively a promise. Of course, these can be quite related, but not entirely the same.

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1786: Pet Sematary Nov 4, 2019

Stephen King's 'Pet Sematary' purposefully uses a misspelling of 'cemetery' for the title. This was supposed to imitate how a child might think to spell 'cemetery'. How this relates to the nature of the horror is up to you, but many people instead assumed that this is either the American or British—whichever he or she was unfamiliar with—and the Internet searches back this up.

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1785: Appropriated Girl's Names Nov 3, 2019

So-called gender neutral given-names may be becoming more popular, but insofar as most were still initially from one or another sex, this is nothing new. In the US for instance, 'Robin' is now more common as a girl's name, but comes from 'Robert'. That demographic change only happened in the 1990's (and only in the US) but other names have been appropriated by women, including 'Ariel'—Hebrew for 'Lion of G-d'—in the Ango-sphere despite the traditional feminine form 'Arielle', and even 'Clair'. 'Clair', particularly without the '-e' is the modern form of the given name 'Clara' associated with the Irish County Clare. There are many others apart from this, so leave a comment if you know one.