1943: Newspapers Named for Gods Apr 10, 2020
As mentioned yesterday, time is very relevant for forming the names of newspapers old and new, but this is not the only way. One common was also with the names of the places they were printed, especially as more and more newspapers came about, but also some, along with other still recognizable names like '—magazine', or '—examiner' we were names from Denmark, Hungary, and England including 'Mercurius' (or 'Mercury', as one might say in English) who was the messenger-god in Roman mythology.
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1942: Newspapers and Time Apr 9, 2020
Lots of words relating to, and even names of newspapers derive from things relating to time. Everything from '—Times', '—Chronicle', or '—Journal', or indeed, even the word 'news' all relate the fact that people expect the news, regularly updated. This is reflected in other languages as well, such as the world's second-oldest daily newspaper called "Avisa Relation oder Zeitung" (Avisa Relation or News) with 'Zeitung' meaning 'news' but coming from the word 'Zeit', or in English, 'time'. Having two names, broken up by 'or' was more common back then too.
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1941: Bird Skulls and Vocalizations Apr 8, 2020
Birds have very different ways of producing vocal noises, such as with the syrinx, but that is far from where the differences stop. The aptly named 'hornbill' uses not merely the shape of its bill but the whole structure of its skull (as visible below on the left) to produce its vocalizations, making them louder and deeper. It is less certain, but some have speculated that this is what the large crown atop the head of a cassowary (as seen below on the right) is for as well, though the evidence is less conclusive, and its purposes may be promaily visual.
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1940: menagerie and ménage Apr 7, 2020
A 'menagerie' another term for a zoo where animals are displayed, but the clearly related 'ménage' doesn't mean anything of the sort; that refers to the member of a household. Both of these come from the French 'menage' meaning ‘to stay’, related to 'manage' , but is also influenced by the older 'mesnie' meaning 'household'. The zoological version is slightly divergent therefore, though the word is mostly used figuratively to mean 'a strange collection'.
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1939: ahasuerus and xerxes Apr 6, 2020
A lot of names in the Bible are changed when being Anglicized or even Hellenized (linguistically speaking), but perhaps none so much as Achashverosh, or sometimes spelt Ahasuerus (אחשורוש), who is Xerxes (Ξέρξης) in Greek. This is because these were rendered independently, rather than going off the Hebrew as is common for other names. The Hebrew version used in the Bible comes from the Babylonian Aḥšiyaršu, originally from the Persian personal name Xšaya.āršan meaning 'king of men'; the Greek version comes from the related, Old Iranian Xšaya-ṛšā meaning 'ruler of heroes', and he was known to the Greeks as an imperial threat anyway.
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1938: Orthography Differences: Hebrew and Yiddish Apr 5, 2020
Every language, assuming it has a writing system at all, will have different ways of dealing with sounds not neatly represented by one letter. English uses 'h' often in combinations like CH, SH, TH, PH and GH for what are actually single sounds (monophthongs), but Hebrew uses an apostrophe in order represent that the sound is a variant of another letter in the alphabet, such as ג usually representing /g/ is rendered 'ג for the /dʒ/ sound as in 'ginger' or simply /ʒ/ as in the French 'je'. Likewise the /t͡ʃ/ sound, usually written CH in English, is represented as a variant of צ (like TS), 'צ. In Yiddish however, written in the same alphabet, those two sounds are rendered as דזש (like DZSH in 'jungle), זש (like ZSH, as in the French 'je') and טש (TSH in 'chirp') respectively. Many of those same patterns for Yiddish are similar to those used in German, even though German uses the Latin alphabet.
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1937: fido Apr 4, 2020
Today, the name 'Fido' is so associated with being a dog's name that it can be used as a synonym for dog. It is, however, debated as to how this started. The name comes from the Latin literally meaning "I trust", so for man's best friend, this is a suitable name generally perhaps, but many attribute its fame to the fact that President Abraham Lincoln had a dog named Fido, who had a little more press than his others after unfortunately being 'assassinated' by a drunk a few months after the president was. There was also the famous Italian dog Fido who was made famous in many news stories and even a commemorative statue is placed for him, as he was found to make the same daily trip to the bus stop to wait for his master for 14 years in vain, as he had died in a factory bombing. Of course, it could be that the fame of both dogs combined helped to make the name as popular as it is.
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1936: backgammon Apr 3, 2020
Despite the game having its origins in the Middle East, the name 'backgammon' does actually come from English. 'Gammon', which is both one of the elements and a move in the game, comes from the Old English 'gamen', an earlier form of the modern 'game'. The retention of the -n, nowadays makes it distinct, as it has survived only through this name. The other part of the compound, 'back', is fairly consistent, and apparently referring to the fact that the pieces are forced to move back in order to backgammon someone. Before the 17th century, the game was called 'Tables', which you can read more about here.
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1935: The L of Almond Apr 2, 2020
Like the first R in 'February', people don't always pronounce the L in 'almond', but it is important historically. Italian, Greek, and Portuguese's words for it—'mandorla', ἀμυγδάλη (amygdálē) and 'amêndoa' respectively—don't have the L, but the Spanish word 'almendra' does. It is believed for both the A- but especially the AL- prefix, this comes from the Arabic article 'al', i.e. 'the'. However, in many varieties, even where the L is still present, this is disappearing if it hasn't already.
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1934: What's a Nut Apr 1, 2020
Peanuts are legumes; brazil nuts are seeds, and almonds are drupes. This begs the question: what is a nut?—and does it really matter? The variety in uses really arises from the fact that a nut can refer to either a type of fruit, or to a hard-shelled seed; in the case of almonds, it is both, since the seed comes from the pit of a stone-fruit (like a peach) which itself is inside fruit. This is mostly ex post facto by the botanists however, because across many languages, and throughout human history, this has been a general, and ambiguous term, much like 'apple' or 'berry have been.
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1933: amygdaloid and amygdala Mar 31, 2020
People who aren't right in the head are nutty, but that isn't why the amygdala [part of the brain] is named after almonds. The term 'amygdala' comes directly from the Greek ἀμυγδαλή (amygdalē), meaning both 'almond' but also 'tonsil', in reference to the shape. Indeed, the term in English 'amygdaloid' meaning 'almond-like' can be used to describe something with a shape somewhere on the spectrum between triangular and elliptic.
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1932: Colonial Name Changes Mar 30, 2020
Lots of former colonies changed their names after independence, like 'Zaire' to 'DRC, or 'Burma' to 'Myanmar' or 'Ceylon' to 'Sri Lanka' to something more traditional, though in the latter case 'Ceylon' wasn't a new name, but a transliteration of the Portuguese's own transliteration of the native name. However, many other countries make up totally new names, such as 'Tanzania', which is a portmanteau. It is derived from 'Tanganyika' and 'Zanzibar' which merged to form the new country in 1964.
1931: Discovering 'serendipity' Mar 29, 2020
Ironically 'serendipity', or at least with its current definition, is an invented word, coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole. However, the word did exist in English in some form or another for a long time beforehand, and Walpole used the word to describe the feeling of finding a lost painting by referring to the Persian fairy-tale "The Three Princes of Serendip". 'Serendip' is just an older name of what is now Sri Lanka, though many other languages adopted this Persian name to mean exclusively "a chance discovery".
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1930: virtual vs. virtuous Mar 28, 2020
Computers and the Internet have created a new sort of necessity for the word 'virtual', but its definition as "like something in essence but not actually" has been around since the 15th century or so. However, the word is a doublet with 'virtuous' which clearly has a very different meaning. Both of these come from the Latin 'virtus' meaning 'excellency; efficacy' or literally 'manliness' (i.e. also like a person) which lead to the split for 'virtue'.
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1929: First Telephone and Telegraphed Messages Mar 27, 2020
The first words uttered through Bell's telephone were "Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you", according to the Library of Congress. However, this is a bit less grandiose than the telegraphed message sent by Morse to open first long-distance line, Baltimore-to-DC, reading "what hath God wrought" or:
.-- .... .- - / .... .- - .... / --. --- -.. / .-- .-. --- ..- --. .... -
which comes from the Book of Numbers (Numbers 23:23), suggested by the daughter of the federal patents commissioner.
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1928: Determiners for Places Mar 26, 2020
One of the defining features of pronouns and other determiner phrases is that they don't take a determiner, meaning there isn't possible to have "the you". However, there are some idiomatic phrases which break this rule, as it were. Place-names or personal names, for instance, can take some determiners, even though they are definite (i.e. specific), such that one could possible say “that London is a busy place” or "that Bill is a clever man". There are a few exceptions to this, but for a variety of reasons—generally for emphasis—these do occur. For another area where this occurs despite general understandings of proper nouns, read the rest “Determiners for Natural Features”.
1927: curry: English vs. Indian Mar 25, 2020
While people might think of curries today as being Indian, the oldest England language cookery book is titled "The Forme of Cury" (1390). These two things have nothing to do with each other culinarily. It was written by the the master-cook to king Richard II, and it takes the word 'curry' from the French 'cuire' meaning 'to cook'. Other cookery books had been written at this time and before, but always in Latin or French in that part of the world. Indian 'curry' comes from the Tamil 'kāri' meaning 'sauce' or also 'morsel'.
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1926: Tyburn (slang) Mar 24, 2020
Tyburn is now a part of central London, but its name was once synonymous with execution. From at least 1186 until the 18th century, public executions of those processed from Newgate prison all took place there, but what made it stand out was the 'Tyburn Tree', an early form of the gallows allowing large-scale, and so often political executions to take place with such notoriety that it became essentially like slang.
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1925: philately Mar 23, 2020
No one really likes taxes, especially philatelists. Stamp-collections, or philately may be a hobby, but it comes ultimately from the Greek 'philo-' (loving) and 'ateleia' which means 'not taxed'; 'a-' is Greek is a negating prefix on 'telos' ('tax'). It did not refer to a collection of stamps until recently, but to a postage mark which exempt the payment from taxation. The change in name was not a natural one however, but was coined in the 18th century as a sort of revitalization of the French 'philatélie'.
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1924: oyer and terminer Mar 22, 2020
Many legal terms come from French or Latin, and may cause somewhat of a diglossic barrier even for English speakers. However, there are some terms which come from English, and would still fit into that category. The Anglo-French derived "oyer and terminer" or the Old English-based 'sac and soc' both refer to courts set up to hear and determine, as it would translate, in temporary courts of assizes. In the former case, while neither 'oyer' nor 'terminer' can exist in their own rights, the phrase was partially translated from "oyer et terminer", and neither is likely to change since these are both obsolete.
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