1984: despots, dictators, and tyrants May 21, 2020

Changes in words' meaning through history can show how people considered powerful leaders. The original roots for 'despot', 'dictator', and 'tyrant'—δεσπότης (despótēs), dictator, and τύραννος (tyrannos)—were essentially all neutral, like 'king' would be in English. However, each of these gained negative associations, connoting unfairness and cruelty. Each of these is from a different culture or time, Byzantine, Roman, or Ancient Greek respectively, but the same process has been noted for the word 'autocrat' in some ways. It is important to consider also who specifically gave them negative connotations, as at least in the case of 'despot', this was not even a official title and was only used negatively towards the very end of the empire.

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1983: How 'Karl' Came to Mean 'King' in Slavic May 20, 2020

The name Karl (also found as Charles or Carlos etc.) is a pretty popular one, but it has been historically significant as well. One of the relatively few Germanic names not to be a compound, the name nevertheless comes from an element meaning '(free) man', and in Old English it has been contrasted with the etymological root for 'Earl': Ċeorl and eorl respectively. This meaning of 'free man' survives too in the English 'churl' (hence 'churlish'). However, its meaning is in some ways less significant than the fact that it became the standard word for 'king' in many Slavic languages and Hungarian, such as the Polish 'król', Latvian 'karalis', or Hungarian 'király. This pattern is due largely to Charlemagne and the other Carolingians, also known as 'Karol(us)'.

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1982: charlemagne May 19, 2020

Charlemagne is a name and an honorific all wrapped into one. This perhaps clearest in the German version, 'Große Karl', i.e. 'Karl [Charles] the Great'. His name was actually 'Charles le Magne', from the Latin 'magnus' (great) making the French '-gn-', also with 'champagne' or 'vigne' (20), or even the English version as with 'sign' a little less odd seeming. There will be more about this in the next post.

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1981: Hand: Give and Take in PIE May 18, 2020

The word 'prehensile', which usually refers to animal limbs that can grasp, and can tell us a lot about words in general. It comes from Latin participle 'hendō' (though never attested without a prefix) meaning 'I take', and is taken to come from the Proto-Indo-European *gʰed-, which gave English 'get'. It also gave (handed, even) Modern English 'hand' but also the Old English 'mund', which, despite sharing spelling with the German word for 'mouth', means 'hand', like the Latin 'manus' (hand). There are literally dozens more words that could go along this list for Modern English alone, including 'hedera' (another name for ivy), but what might be the most interesting point is that while, as exhibited before, 'hand' as a verb usually means 'to give', it originally, along with these other meanings, meant 'to take, which has been written about here before, and for lots of different cases.

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1980: Germans Calling Italians 'Welsh' Derogatorily May 17, 2020

Although its country is significantly smaller even than the state surrounding the German capital, German has two words for the Welsh language. The one that one could expect to hear is 'walisisch', but there is another, more archaic one 'welsch'. This one not only has derogatory undertones, but also is used to describe speakers of Romance languages, particularly Italian and French, so it's less precise. This is even used in the German name for the Italian province Trentino, 'Welschtirol' (Latin Tyrol), particularly because there is already another region Südtirol (South Tyrol), which have both historically been German-speaking areas, lost in WWI.

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1978: Devil's Water and Eden River: Not Religious May 15, 2020

Generally, when people come across the words 'Devil' or 'Eden', this is expected to have some religious context, but in the case of both Devil's Water and Eden River in both close to the Scottish-English border, they have nothing to do with religion. Both words actually come from Celtic. The Devil's Water is actually related to the name 'Douglas', which is a surname from the area. This is understood to come from the Brittonic dūβ- ('black')—same as in ‘Dublin’—and glẹ:ss (stream). In the former case, as documented by the Romans this comes from the Celtic 'ituna' meaning 'rushing [water]'. In both cases, these modern names come from topographical descriptions, and not Biblical imagery.

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1977: Shewed or Shown May 14, 2020

Generally, standard but less common forms for verbs, including 'shown' instead of 'showed', is thought of being more historical, but this is not necessarily true. 'Shewed' is documented as a form of 'showed', as in the 1471 order from Edward IV that the "bodies of the dead Lords [Warwick and Montagu be]...openly shewed" as to prove they were actually dead. Indeed, this form was used even into the 19th century commonly enough, though now shown is undoubtedly the most popularly used. It is a mistake to believe that the progression of language is universally and exclusively towards uniformity. For another example of this, see: sneaked and snuck.

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1976: 'Buffalo' East of the Mississippi May 13, 2020

Place names in America often come from totally foreign sources, like Cairo, Illinois, Manchester, New Hampshire, and St. Petersburg, Florida. Lots of other cities too took their names from local things, with those no longer existing. Bisons (or Buffalo, as they're often misnomered to be) are all but gone from the American East, but gave rise to town names in at least 8 states east of the Mississippi River. Perhaps most famously Buffalo, New York, but this list also includes another dozen or two with rivers, creeks, or mountains named "Buffalo", and more yet including names related to them, like Stamping Ground, Kentucky.

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1975: Town with an Exclamation Mark: Westward Ho! and Hamilton! May 12, 2020

The town of Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! may have the most exclamation points in its name [1], but it's not the only one to have any. England's Westward Ho! is the official name for the Devonshire town named in 1855 for Charles Kingsley's novel of the same name, set in a nearby town, Bideford. Other places have tried, such as Hamilton!, Ohio which was made official as a publicity stunt in the 1980's (named before the hit musical), but it is not recognized by the US Federal Government. Looking past settlement names, Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! is located along the Ha! Ha! River, and many other sites in the area take their names accordingly.

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1974: The Town with 2 Exclamation Points May 11, 2020

Most places in the world don't have punctuation in their names; punctuation is for grammar after all. However, even though many places have multiple words, the Quebec town of "Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!" has a record for the most exclamation points in an official name: 2. This might sound like a joke, literally, but actually this is from the word 'ha ha' which is the term in both French and English for a ditch with the wall inside below ground-level. These are easy to fall into, and hence: ha ha. The term was originally French, and since French can't have [h] at the beginning of words, this is pronounced in French like more of an alarmed shout: ah! ah!.

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1973: Karta and Mappa: Cards and Napkins May 10, 2020

There is not a clear pattern always with Germanic, Slavic and Romance language when it comes to words for maps. French and Romanian, but also German, Swedish, Dutch, and Russian use a word along the lines of <karta>, and the English 'cartography', 'chart', and 'card' would fit in this camp. Meanwhile, English and Yiddish, Spanish and Portuguese, and also Polish use words along the lines of <map(a)>. As it happens, the forms around <karta> come ultimately from Greek where χάρτης means 'map' but also 'card'; indeed, it originally just means 'papyrus leaf'. Meanwhile, the <map(a)> forms come not just from Latin, but from the phrase 'Mappa Mundī' (world map), with 'mappa' on its own meaning 'cloth' or even 'napkin'.

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1972: Cultural Continents: English & Spanish May 9, 2020

Continents are real, but their divisions are cultural. For instance, the Spanish term for North and South America—perceived as 2 continents in English—is simply 'America', as in "the Americas". This is clarified from the English 'American' as in from the USA with the term 'estadounidense' literally 'of the United States' as 'Americano' often refers to those from any part of the Americas, though technically the rare term 'Usonian' can be used in English here as well. This means that between Spanish and English language speakers, they will likely differ on the answer to how many continents there are.

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1971: Misunderstood Biblical Quotes May 8, 2020

There are a lot of biblical phrases that have made it into the modern English lexicon, including "there is nothing new beneath the Sun", "eye for an eye" and "salt of the earth", though these are often used in totally different ways. "Salt of the earth", mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew (5:13) is today often used to describe people who are base or simplistic, and as mentioned one, it is often and perhaps increasingly used as an insult, but biblically and up until recently it refers to people who are moral.

Moreover, people often attribute the quote "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" to Gandhi, but given the full quote from (שמות) Exodus 22:23-26:

"But if other damage ensues the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye...when the man strikes the eye of his servant...and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye". This is therefore not literally one eye as punishment for one eye, but an metaphor for punishment that is equivalent to the crime.

"There is nothing new beneath the Sun" is basically used as pessimistically as it it used in Ecclesiastes (קהלת), which paints a fairly bleak picture of life anyway.

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1970: polite and politics May 7, 2020

Because English lexicon is such a hodgepodge of other languages', it can be easy to assume that certain etymologies might be related, but one should be careful. For instance 'politics', and 'polite' have a lot in common phonetically, but not only are they not related they are from different languages. 'Politics' is from Greek meaning "of the state", related to '(metro)politan, while 'polite' is from Latin meaning 'smooth', related to 'polish'.

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1969: Tolkien Using Real Languages in Lord of the Rings pt 2 May 6, 2020

J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of Germanic philology, and his knowledge of Old English, Middle English, and other ancient Germanic languages like Gothic and Old Icelandic. These featured heavily in the world-building of the Lord of the Rings, including with regards to Rohirric (of Rohan) and Westeron (of the Shire), with both personal names and other words that were based off of Old and Modern English respectively. Moreover, Dwarvish was based off of Old Norse, and so on, as mentioned in yesterday's post.

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1968: Tolkien Using Real Etymology in Lord of the Rings pt 1 May 5, 2020

Tolkien may be popularly known writing Lord of the Rings, but he was also an Oxford professor of philology. In 1932 and 1934 he wrote papers detailing how the word Sigelwara (or 'Sigelhearwan') was the Old English word for Ethiopia, such as used in the Junius Manuscript, a codex of Old English biblical poetry. As he outlines it, it literally means 'sun' (sigel) 'burnt' (hearwan, related to 'hearth'). His focus on the word does not end there though, since in the Lord of the Rings he named one of the peoples from Far Harad, a continent to the South, the 'Haradwaith' from the same 'hearwan' as in Old English.
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1967: Transitivity in Verb Pairs May 4, 2020

People talk about irregular verbs usually with regards to tense, but this isn't the whole story by any means. English is not known for its inflectional morphology, i.e English words don’t change much; we add –s for 3rd person singular and –ed for past tense, but that’s about it for verbs. However, in the case of verb paradigms like with rise–raise, the difference is not tense at all, but of transitivity. What this means basically is that 'raise' can take a direct object such as 'dumbbell' in "I will raise this dumbbell over my head" but this is not possible with 'rise', which is considered intransitive, meaning someone cannot be said to rise something. Other examples include lay–lie and sit–set.
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1966: Drawbacks to Looking for Cultural Connection with Multiple Definitions May 3, 2020

It's sometimes possible to get cultural information just by looking at connotations or multiple definitions a word can have. For instance, the Hebrew זקן‎ (zaken) as a noun means 'beard' but also 'sage' (as in a person, not the spice), and as an adjective means 'elderly'. However, one should be careful not to put too much stock into them, as the Hebrew root כבש (K-B-Sh) leads to 'pickle' and 'highway', respectively כבוש (kbosh) and כביש (kvish). If you can discern a connection between the two, leave your best guess in the comments.

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1965: Swiss Endonym: eidgenosse May 2, 2020

German is spoken commonly in Switzerland, but the in name for what would go on to become the country 'Eidgenossenschaft' only exists in the political context of Swiss political history. This is often translated as 'federation' or 'confederacy' [confederation], but German has other words for those: Bundesrepublik/Verband and (Kon)Föderation. Instead, this actually means "oath fellowship", and because this term is basically exclusive to Switzerland, one old term for a Swiss citizen was Eidgenosse, or literally 'oath-fellow'.

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1964: A Modern Phrase for an Ancient Language May 1, 2020

How does one create slang or greetings for a language which for centuries was only used liturgically? Indeed, many students of ancient languages may note that while they may be able to read about battles and epic poems, they can't make small talk in them. Modern Hebrew, which was revitalized in the 19th century, faced this problem to some extent, and while the grammar for any new words was to be based off of Semitic roots, the phrase "ma nishma" (מה נשמע) uses Hebrew words but is based semantically off the Yiddish "vos hert zikh" (װאָס הערט זיך). These both have the same effect of 'how are you?" but literally mean "what are you hearing?".

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