1963: linchpin, not linch Apr 30, 2020
There is a no word 'linch' despite the existence of the compound 'linchpin'. Indeed, the fact that it is around in the way it is comes from that there is no 'linch'. In Old English, the origin 'lynis' meant 'axle', hence a linchpin holds the wheel to the axle, but it could also mean the whole axletree. It is not to say that 'linchpin' is therefore not etymologically redundant, but with the introduction of 'axle' from Old Norse 'ǫxultré' it only survived from the compound.
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1962: margarine: People Could Probably Believe it's not Butter Apr 29, 2020
Margarine can contain lots of things, from vegetable to animal fats, but almost certainly not real pearls. Nevertheless, the name comes from the Greek μαργαρίτης (margarítēs), meaning ‘pearl’. This was in reference to the color of the crystals of various esters which is how it was made originally. This is especially clear in older uses, which would use 'margarine' to refer to any solid form of any fat, including human or animal fat, which is much more believable that it isn't butter.
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1961: heyday Apr 28, 2020
When one refers to something, or someone's heyday, this is used to denote the height of success in some way or another, but this only even became a noun recently. Indeed, this used to be an exclamation—not much unlike 'hooray'—as is still kept with the interjection 'hey', though the two are probably not related except for syllabic simplicity. It is generally held that 'heyday comes as a variation of 'high day', and other similar phrases from Dutch and German support this.
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1960: doctor (Noun and Verb) Apr 27, 2020
In these trying times, it is important to trust medical professionals. That said, there has always been a distrust of doctors, hence where the verb 'to doctor', as in 'to alter' comes from. 'Doctor' comes from Latin, but the verbal form is attested at least from 1509 meaning "to give someone a doctoral degree". This was originally not a negative idea at all, but by the 18th century it eventually took on the meaning of "change; disguise; forge".
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1959: Cognate Connotations Apr 26, 2020
English and German differ in many key ways, but share many lexical and cultural traits. For instance, the word 'heiß' in German is 'hot' in English—German [s] often is realized as [t] in English—but is doesn't share every connotation. 'Heiß', like 'hot' relates to physical temperature, and to physical attraction, but not to spice as it does in English. For that, Germans use 'scharf', which is related to 'sharp'.
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1958: Ñ in the USA Apr 25, 2020
English is by no means the only language lacking diacritic marks on its letters regularly, but for known for having plenty of loan words, or words that have different meaning depending upon the stress, it is strange. However, there are some exceptions, and especially with proper nouns. For instance, there are only 5 places in the USA which have an Ñ in their names, those being Cañon City, Colorado, La Cañada Flintridge, California; Española, New Mexico; Peñasco, New Mexico; and Cañones, New Mexico.
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1957: Cultural Differences in Alphabets Apr 24, 2020
Alphabets, and what is or isn't included therein, are just as if not more cultural than linguistic in many cases. For instance, English speakers do not consider any combinations of letters separate, even if they regularly make a distinct sound like SH for ʃ, but Spanish speakers do, considering LL, RR, and CH as distinct in the alphabet. Moreover, the Spanish Ñ was created as a sort of shorthand for a double-n, and as such it too is given its own spot in the alphabet. This shouldn't be too strange for even English speakers, since W was originally just a double-V (which was the same as U in Latin for a long time, hence the name), and it has its own place. However, this is not true in the Spanish alphabet for any vowels, and likewise the French Ç is not given its own spot in the French alphabet; it really comes down to history and culture.
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1956: pasta, paste, and pastry Apr 23, 2020
When we think of 'paste', most people probably associate that with a thick liquid made as a blend of ingredients, so the fact that the word is also related to the more solid 'pastry' and 'pasta' might come as a surprise. However, consider that both pastas and pastries must first begin as a dough and the connection becomes clearer. Its original meaning from the Latin 'pasta' was something closer to 'glue-mixture', and so thick liquid, doughs, pastes, or even 'pâte' (also from this root) were lumped in together.
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1955: John Hancock Apr 22, 2020
John Hancock's name is synonymous with signatures because his is the largest and most prominent on the US Constitution. This is no accident or act of impropriety, because in 1776, when the Constitution was signed, he was the president of Congress, though to be clear this job was not a precursor to the role of President of the USA, and is more comparable to the position of Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader in Congress today.
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1954: loot Apr 21, 2020
Lots of words relate to theft, stealing, robbery, burglary, and even one which already a few that meant "rob a place violently, especially in wartime": 'pillage', 'ransack', 'plunder'. Given this concept clearly a persistent one then, the fact that in the 18th century, at least by 1788 to be specific, English adopted another might then come as a surprise. However, the term 'loot' coming from the verb 'lūt', was adopted from a Hindustani language when the East India Company was conquering India. This verb was common enough, but gained more popularity from its use associated with other 19th century wars in China, Crimea, and India.
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1953: switzerland and portugal Apr 20, 2020
Many times, countries are named after the majority of the people who inhabit it like Slovakia, Kazakhstan, or Israel, but not always. In the case, of Switzerland or Portugal, both of these countries got their respective names from smaller cities within them, neither of which happen to be the national capital. 'Switzerland' comes from the town 'Schwyz', after a union between it and two other areas, Uri and Unterwalden, to form the Eidgenossenschaft (Confederacy), but the demonym 'Eidgenosse' did not catch on elsewhere as much as the older 'Schwytzer', and that stuck around into the formation of 'Switzerland'. Portugal's etymology is less clear, though it was certainly named for one of the seaports ('portus' in Latin), it is unclear which; at any rate, it isn't Lisbon, and one leading theory suggests it was the Roman Portus Cale named after the Gauls, which is nowadays Porto.
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1952: Bolivarian, and Other Republics Apr 19, 2020
There are lots of names for republics, such as Islamic Republics, (e.g. Afghanistan; Iran), Democratic Republics (e.g. Congo), so-called Democratic Republics (e.g. China; Bangladesh), People's Democratic Republics (e.g Laos) and many more qualifications, though these don't really have any specific meaning. Some countries will also officially use their own names, such as Argentine Republic or Portuguese Republic, but there is one country which uses neither description nor name: that of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. This name for Venezuela was only adopted in place of Republic of Venezuela in 1999 to reflect the "Bolivarian Revolution", a socialist uprising, named after Simón Bolívar whose own liberal revolutions occurred some 190 years earlier.
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1951: (Non-Imperial) Regionally Official German Apr 18, 2020
If one were to be asked to think of a European ethnic group who settled in Soviet Kazakhstan, it would be reasonable to think of Russians, but also nearly a million Germans lived there by 1989. Cases like this with Kasachstandeutsche as they are called, along with similar situations Eastern Europe, Siberia, and in South America (especially in the states of Espírito Santo and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil)—all of which Germans fled to during or after the Second World War—have led to certain regions which were never formally part of the German Empire adopting German as an official, regional language. In the last two or three decades especially however, the German speech and overall populations have declined.
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1950: Split Western Pomerania Apr 17, 2020
With all of the land- and population-transfers that have happened in Central and Eastern Europe, many places have several totally different names, a common meaning is sometimes retained throughout. Germany and Poland both have regions which translate to 'West Pomerania' ('Vorpommern' and 'Zachodniopomorskie' respectively). These were once one area, and while the German side contains more of the historical region and until 1945 made up the significant majority of the population, the rest of Pomerania is still in Poland.
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1949: ozarks Apr 16, 2020
It is from the anglicization of French that 'Arkansas' and 'Kansas' have the discrepancy in the pronunciation, but this is not the only area in the region for which this holds true. The Ozarks, a mountain range nestled mostly between Missouri, Arkansas, and a bit of Oklahoma in the United States gets its name from the French 'aux Arc' which either means 'land of the arches', or is possibly short for 'aux Arkansas' (of Arkansas). Notably, despite certain phonetic similarities, the river that feeds the Lake of the Ozarks in that area, Osage River, is not related etymologically, as it is named for the Osage tribe.
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1948: Irregulars that Don't Change Apr 15, 2020
English verb tenses have lots of different patterns, often without discernible rules. Some, like 'ring' change internally for tense ('rang') and aspect ('rung'). Others, however, like 'put', 'shut', 'wed' and many more don't change at all, whether by interval vowel change or by a suffix, like '-ed'. This means "they put the book on the table" is ambiguous. These are irregular, and in many syntactic models to map English grammar, these ('put' and 'put', that is) are treated as grammatically different.
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1947: Wanderwort: Silver Apr 14, 2020
A wanderwort is a word which has been adopted into many languages, accounting for specific language variation too, but which are not necessarily linguistically connected. For instance, the Indo-European root meaning 'silver' is actually more in line with the Latin 'argentum' (see 'Argentina') but many Germanic and Balto-Slavic words, including the German 'Silber', Russian 'serebro', or Lithuanian 'sidabras' come from this other root. It has been debated where this comes from, but it is possibly from a language native to the Iberian peninsula, predating the Romantic presence there, which was written about yesterday.
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1946: Basque Loan-Word Apr 13, 2020
Basque, spoken mostly in Spain, is not related to any other known language, but being once surrounded by Celtic languages, and for the last 2,000 years or so, Romantic ones, it has picked up a few loan words. For instance, the word for silver is 'zilharr' which was thought to come from a West Germanic root—the same as with English—but some have claimed that in fact the Germanic version cane from an older Iberian loan instead. There will be more on this tomorrow. For more on languages with no relatives, check out the new post on patreon.
1945: colene and colin Apr 12, 2020
According to the Irish folk song, "Star of the County Down", the belle of the local town is named Rosie, but also called 'Colleen', or 'Colene' in the more English spelling. This apparent discrepancy is not an error at all in fact though, but comes from the fact that a 'colleen' (or 'cailin') is a diminutive of 'caile', an Irish word for 'countrywoman', i.e. "young woman". Indeed, 'Colene', and the masculine 'Colin' both come from this root which basically means 'person', but not 'Kayla', despite the phonetic resemblance.
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1944: Latin Newspaper Apr 11, 2020
The first newspapers in the world were all in German, followed (not all that closely) by Dutch, French and Italian respectively. Unsurprisingly, this mirrored the rise and spread of the printing press, because handwriting news is impractical. However, the first Hungarian newspaper, from 1705, was not in Hungarian or even German but Latin. The Mercurius Hungaricus, named for the Roman messenger-god. Remember that Latin was the official language of Hungary until 1836, an this was a semi-official newspaper.
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