1823: cranberry Dec 12, 2019

Several berries have names which, while clearly containing the '-berry' combining form, cannot be parsed. 'Cran' from 'cranberry' or 'rasp' [unrelated to breath] from ‘raspberry’ are not words on their own. However, this wasn't always the case for 'cran', sort of. The word originally comes from Low German 'Kraanbeere' where '-beere' is just 'berry', but 'Kraan' means, and is a cognate with 'crane', like the bird, though no one is totally sure why. Before this, in England they were called 'marshwort' or 'fenberries'.

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1822: egret and heron Dec 11, 2019

The word 'egret', itself refers to a type of heron, and likewise, the word comes from a French word for 'heron', 'aigrette'. 'Aigrette' in English is also a type of headdress. Anyway, French also has the word 'héron' for the type of bird as a whole, but this is of Germanic origin.

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1821: 'Istanbul' and the Byzantines Dec 10, 2019

Considering that 'Constantinople' was the name of the city under the Greeks, and that it was renamed 'Istanbul' under the Ottoman Turks, you'd be forgiven for thinking the name is Turkish, but this isn't so. The city's name has changed considerably throughout history, including 'Byzantium', 'Byzantion', 'New Rome' (Nea Roma), ‘Constantinople’ and now ‘Istanbul’. 'Istanbul' actually comes from Byzantine Greek 'eis tēn Pólin' (εἰς τὴν Πόλιν) meaning 'to the City', which was simply a colloquialism for Constantinople by the locals in the Byzantine Empire. 'Byzantion' is also Greek, originally from the personal name 'Byzas', who founded the city.

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1820: Île-de-France Dec 9, 2019

The greater region around Paris in France is called 'Île-de-France' or literally "Island of France". However, no one is totally sure where this name comes from, and it's definitely not an island. It may be a reference to being between the Oise, Marne, and Seine, though it may also have been a reference to 'Île de la Cité' where the royal palace and cathedral are located. It is not uncommon to name a region after a smaller part of it.

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1819: Possessive 'S in Veterans Day Dec 8, 2019

Many holidays, such as 'Veterans Day' or 'Fathers Day' have what sounds like possessive forms of the word, but often that spelling is not reflected with an apostrophe. Indeed, the Department of Veterans Affairs (again, no apostrophe) lists the spelling of "Veterans' Day" as incorrect. In the case of "Father's Day", there is most often, but not necessarily going to be an apostrophe for the singular use, though it is a holiday meant to focus on all fathers.

Tomorrow there will be a special announcement for the 5th anniversary, so stay tuned.

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1818: ghetto Dec 7, 2019

The word 'ghetto' is certainly a charged one to several groups of people, but it is not certain where the it came from. It is definitely Italian originally, perhaps from the word 'getto' meaning 'foundry' because of where the first ghetto was established in Venice in 1516 to segregate the Jewish population. The other accepted idea is that it comes from 'borghetto' which is simply a diminutive form of 'borgo' (borough) i.e. meaning 'little borough'.

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1817: Pāṇini's Ideas (General Overview) Dec 6, 2019

As discussed before, the linguist Pāṇini was one of the earliest and certainly very influential. To give an idea of some of the work he did, though still very general, he formalized and solved many problems concerning generative morphology i.e. generating new words with different affixes, vowel changes, etc.. He also used ideas now belonging to metaphysics, that is to say he invented many ideas about features of spoken language that are not verbal in order to explain syntax and grammar. His structures were so thorough that the logic of his work has been likened to that of Turing machine, but this was 2,500 years ago.

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1816: Pāṇini Dec 5, 2019

While 'linguistics' as a term is fairly new, it's been going on since at least the 4th century BCE, if not earlier. The most famous linguist at the time would almost certainly be Pāṇini, not to be confused with the food, who was an Indian philologist and grammarian. Indeed, many of the ideas that he formalized, or at least codified, are still in use, or heavily influenced modern thinking. Some argue that his models for generative and morphology were more advanced than anything in the West until the 20th century. There will be more on this tomorrow.

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1815: -er for Conspiracies Dec 4, 2019

The '-er' suffix has long made verbs and other nouns into nouns denoting occupation of location. A newer meaning has come about to mean 'believer in the conspiracy theory of", such as in 'anti-vaxxer', 'flat-earther', '911-truther' and plenty more. This has been discussed before here, but on another note, this is not going to be in dictionaries. Part of the reason may just be that it's relatively new, but also consider that these words don't have a very clear pattern necessarily, especially considering the example of 'anti-vaxxer', which doesn't use the whole word.

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1814: breath, broth, and brood Dec 3, 2019

The word 'breath' is a very old one, being related to basic biology. Indeed, it used to have another physiological meaning of 'smell' or 'scent'. It is pretty common for old words to have changed meaning, and in this case it is likely due to having connoted 'vapor' and 'exaltation from steam'. It shares some etymological history to 'brood', and may also have a distant relation to 'broth', which possibly helps to illuminate the connection.

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1813: Chatype Dec 2, 2019

In 2012, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee raised over $11,000 to create its own typeface. The typeface is called Chatype, and it is a serif-font. The move was done for publicity, but also to help to rebrand the city as an artist-friendly environment. This was the first time a US city had its own custom typeface.

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The 5-year anniversary is one week away, so stay tuned for an announcement!

1812: Platonic: Not Philosophical Dec 1, 2019

Plenty of adjectives exist based from the names of the people they're associated with, like 'Kantian', 'Nietzschean', or 'Aristotelian'. All of those basically mean "relating to the ideas and philosophy of..." but 'Platonic' most often means 'intimate but not sexual'. This meaning came to English in the 17th century, as a reference to his comments on love in the Symposium of Plato. Sometimes, if people with to reference his ideas, they lump them in with the adjective 'Socratic'.
For the new post comparing 'Moriah' and 'Moria' in the Bible and Lord of the Rings respectively, check out this link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/moria-h-bible-wt-31996367

1811: husting Nov 30, 2019

The word 'hustings' may be regional, but it is one of the fewer words in English related to politics and law that is purely Germanic. Its original meaning was 'assembly', namely of a 'house' as in "house of commons". Indeed, the term comes from the Old Norse, 'hús + thing' or literally 'house-thing'. This was once the name of the highest court of the City of London, but now can denote any type of electoral precedings, such as a political debate.

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1810: rugby (and american football) Nov 29, 2019

While 'baseball', 'basketball', 'football', and even 'golf' is named after a feature of the sport, 'rugby' is named for a school. The sport, technically called 'rugby football' came from the variation of association football (soccer) in 1845, developed in the Rugby school, in Warwickshire. Indeed, American football came as a variation of this game, and hence the continued usage of the term 'football', and the similar oblong ball-shape.

Mark your calendars, only 10 days left until the 5th-year anniversary.

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1810: Biweekly, Bimonthly, and Biannually Nov 28, 2019

There is ambiguity as to whether 'biweekly' or 'bimonthly' would mean "twice a week/month" or "once every two weeks/months". There is a distinction between 'biannually' (twice a year) and 'biennially'. Although there is the term 'fortnightly', this is still not a very popular one, and people opt for the clunkier "once every two weeks".

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1809: arigato and obrigado Nov 27, 2019

A number of Japanese words are of Portuguese origin, including 'tempura'. The idea, though, that 'arigato' (ありがとう) comes from 'obrigado' is a myth, although they both mean 'thank you'. The history of Portuguese exploration before Japanese isolationism also led some to think this was when the word was adopted, but actually it can be attested for in Old Japanese. At that time 'arigatashi' had the meaning of 'difficult to exist', which led to the meaning of 'rare; special', and then eventually 'nice to have; welcome'.
For more on surprisingly similar words, read about 'dag' and 'dog', derived a world apart, or read about Spanish influence on Tagalog here.

1808: Somali's Flexible Grammar Nov 26, 2019

Somali grammar allows for great flexibility in its expression. For instance, it uses either tone or morphology—namely suffixes—to indicate case (though not in the absolutive), and plurals are indicated by changing gender, adding a plural marker, or reduplicating the word. Somali also has odd rules like that regarding focus-markers, which like those aforementioned features depend someone on the individual words, but also on the choice of the speaker.

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1807: 'eating away': fret, ort, and etch Nov 25, 2019

Though 'eating' may evoke mostly positive images, it is also the base for other words connoting absence or devouring. 'Fret' for instance, has a historical root derived from 'fra-' added to the root for 'to eat', i.e. "to eat away; eat up"; of course the phrase "eat away" also involves 'eat' and is generally negative too. Likewise, 'ort', which is a literary way to say 'food-scraps; garbage', is from a compound involving 'out'. The 'out-' prefix became 'or-' here, as it did in 'ordeal'. Even the word 'etch' comes from a Dutch word with a root meaning 'cause to eat away'.
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1806: Aggressive Mood (Finnish Grammar) Nov 24, 2019

Finnish grammar is known for having many different cases (about 15 for nouns) and moods for verbs. Some are fairly normal across languages, but the aggressive mood stands out in Finnish as it is little-studied and possibly unique. This is when the negative auxiliary is omitted in a construction that still has the negative form of the verb. This is used both colloquially and non-colloquially, and only really would be possible works in heavily inflected languages. Often, an obscenity is used to replace the negative auxiliary too, which is why it is deemed especially as slang, and understudied.

1805: Paganism in Finnish Nov 23, 2019

As with many languages, perhaps the most common Finnish swear-word is a religious one, 'Perkele' meaning 'Devil' effectively, but literally being a pagan god of thunder, and also hell by some accounts. Likewise, the Finnish sky god 'Jumala' is now used for the name of the Christian god. Actually, many Baltic and Slavic religions had these same characters in their pantheon—as far south as Bosnia—and may even be related to the Sanskrit 'Parjanya' but during the Christianization of Finland, they took on different meanings. Many more swear worse rely on pagan traditions, and part of the reason for this is that Finnish paganism only went extinct in the 20th century.

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