2124: Order of Adjectives: Green New Deal Oct 8, 2020
Without getting into politics, one can say that the 'Green New Deal' sounds odd; indeed, it would violate the order of adjectives that all native English speakers will know, whereby qualities precede colors. Of course, this is supposed to reference the original "New Deal", and so the fact that that phrase as a whole is being modified only coincidentally has an adjective at the beginning of it. Indeed, the person who is sometimes attributed for at least aiding in popularizing the term, Thomas Friedman, wrote "[b]ut we will only green the world when we change the very nature of the electricity grid", using 'green' as a verb, so he clearly wasn't averse to using adjectives in strange ways there as well.
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2123: mosaic vs. Mosaic Oct 7, 2020
'Mosaic' (or to disambiguate, 'mosaic') and 'Mosaic' are two different words basically spelt the same, but from two very religious roots. The former, used to describe a mural of tiles, comes from the Greek Μοῦσαι (Moũsai) meaning 'Muse' whereas the latter is an adjective meaning 'of Moses'; the words became pronounced the same in French, 'mosaïque' for both, but the Latin roots reflected the difference.
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2122: prosaic Oct 6, 2020
The word 'prosaic' is now an adjective meaning 'in the style of prose', but it used to be a noun. This is may sound odd because the '-ic' suffix is often associated with the creation of adjective, though of course this is not true all of the time as with 'lyric' for instance. The meaning changed into its form as an adjective in the 18th century, and now the meaning it once had is held by 'proser'.
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2121: Pressburg and Bratislava Oct 5, 2020
The capital of Slovakia is Bratislava, but this name only came about in the 20th century. Before 1919, it was known in Slovak as Prešporok, in German as Pressburg, and in Hungarian as Pozson; keep in mind this was all part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but most modern languages still use a variant of one of these 3 versions, except Greek which has Istropolis. Indeed, in 1918 and 1919, there was talk that the city might be known as 'Wilsonov' or 'Wilsonstadt' after American President Woodrow Wilson who campaigned for national sovereignty in the region. In the end, the name came from Pavol Jozef Šafárik's misunderstanding of the medieval 'Brezalauspurc' (Breslav castle), from which he designed 'Bratislava', though it's unclear whether the castle was actually there, and at any rate the adoption was made largely to make the name clearly Slavic. Other names which share a common root were discussed yesterday.
2120: Legacy of Duke Vratislav I of Bohemia Oct 4, 2020
There are a number of cities in Eastern Europe that all share a common basic name, including Bratislava, Slovakia, Bratslav, Ukraine (giving rise to the Breslov Chasidic dynasty), Braslaw, Belarus, and Wrocław, Poland, known in German as ‘Breslau’. These are only a sample of the names, but they are generally associated with the Duke Vratislav I of Bohemia who ruled in the 10th century. The name for the Slovakian capital only came about in the 20th century and indeed with Bratislava there is some confusion in older documents, caused by the Latin 'Wratislavia' which refers to Wrocław, Poland, and not Bratislava. There will be more on this tomorrow.
2119: leopard and panther Oct 3, 2020
Leopards and panthers are the same species, even if people usually use 'panther' to describe the black ones. These two terms have existed alongside each other for milenia, and in Latin 'pardus' and 'leopardus' was apparently the source of some confusion, but they both are from the same word: 'pard', as found in 'camelopard' (i.e. ’camel’+’pard’ = giraffe). The 'leo-' of 'leopard' means 'lion'.
2118: Correction on "Well Good god!" Oct 2, 2020
Correction: It was stated in a post 5 years ago that "'[g]ood', however, comes from the Old English 'gōd', which meant "god, deity"" but this is not true. This is a popular folk etymology, but a look at the terms historically shows this to be clearly off. First off, in the Germanic pantheon, and hence the Old English root, pagan deities were not considered to be clearly and consistently good; that notion came later and from a separate religion. Likewise, 'good' did not have the ethic nor moralistic sense it has not until later, and just meant more along the lines of 'pleasant'.
2117: sooth Oct 1, 2020
The word 'etymology' comes from the Greek adjective 'etumos' meaning 'true', but this root may also be connected to the English 'sooth'. At first glance these may not seem to look the same at all but the Greek stem is actually 'et(a)-', and -(u)m- is apparently derivational morphology. This Greek root also appears in other words, and is connected to a derived Indo-European root *set- (true). Some also connected to ‘sin’, the original meaning of which was guilt in a legal sense, and if this is true, then this would too be related to the German ‘sind’ ([plural/formal] ‘are’) and the Latin ‘sunt’, from where the ‘-sent’ of ‘absent’ and ‘present’ derive'.
2116: Fluids vs. Liquids Sep 30, 2020
When people say during the summer to take a lot of fluids, there's a good chance this relates to hydration. This isn't a problem per se, because liquids are fluids, but the two are not directly synonymous. Fluids can denote anything which doesn't hold its shape and does not resist external pressure, which also includes gasses but not some pastes or really thick syrups for instance. In general use, it will most likely be understood to mean just the thinner liquids.
2115: Wallonia and the Celts Sep 29, 2020
Wallachia is a historical territory in Romania, a Romance language speaking area, named by the Germans after the Celts. This region, in which resides the modern capital Bucharest, is among other places including Wallonia in Belgium, Wales in the U.K., and the German 'Welschtirol' (Latin Tyrol) which have Germanic exonyms for once (or in the case of Wales, currently) Celtic populations. Most of Europe, from Britain and Spain over to Turkey was dominantly Celtic before the Romans who in extreme cases displaced or genocided them, or otherwise assimilated them to Roman culture; indeed that is why they are now Romanian.
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2114: dreadnought(s) Sep 28, 2020
There are lots of types of boats have been used by navies around the world like aircraft carriers, battlecruisers, or dreadnoughts, but while others might be named for function, at least dreadnoughts were named for one ship in particular, the HMS Dreadnought. When it was deployed in 1906, it so totally eclipsed other naval vessels of the time in due to having a single, large main battery and steampowered turbines that the class of ship was named after it—its own name coming from 'dread nought' i.e. 'fear nothing'—and the earlier generation of battleships began then became known officially as pre-dreadnoughts. That said, the ship itself never engaged in a major naval battle, and is notable only for ramming into and sinking a submarine. Its fame and size also inspired the name for a genus of dinosaur, Dreadnoughtus.
2113: podunk Sep 27, 2020
The word 'podunk' these days refers to a hypothetical sort of small uninteresting town in America but its origins were not from an imagine place. The word actually comes from Algonquin people who lived around the Podunk River in what is now Connecticut, probably from a native word meaning 'a boggy place'. The name was popularized in writing from New York or New England in books or news paper series as a generic name for an imaginary, boring place.
2112: augur Sep 26, 2020
Today, the word 'augury' refers to anything which is a sign for the future, or in particular a sort of omen, whether seen to be good or bad. 'Augur' is now used as a verb but it started as a noun as the '-y' suffix suggests, denoting a specific Roman official who observed signs in nature to predict the future. Most especially this would depend on birds, and though it is uncertain some suggest that 'augur' comes from the Latin 'avis' (bird) and 'garrire' (to talk). Otherwise, it could be related to 'Augustus' meaning 'growing (in might)'.
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2111: Inconsistency of Prepositions Sep 25, 2020
Prepositions are considered to be in a closed lexical class, which essentially means it's very difficult to create new ones, unlike with nouns and verbs for which new words are created daily. This is because they indicate grammar more than meaning. Indeed, even though some prepositions like 'up', 'down', or 'on' and 'off' which seemingly have a consistent meaning aren't so consistent, such as how different dialects will say either "in line" or "on line" to refer to cueing. Another humorous example can be seen with
"The alarm went off, so I turned it off"*
This is also not to mention that translating prepositions is particularly difficult, because each holds so many varied meanings that the relations are not always one-to-one.
*(technically this is post-positive but they are classes as prepositions)
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2110: No Word for ‘Yes’ in Ancient Hebrew Sep 24, 2020
Latin doesn't have one word for 'yes', which is why so many Romance languages' words for it are different to each others. Another ancient language not to have a word for 'yes' is Hebrew, which today uses the word כן (ken). In older forms of Hebrew, this word, also spelt כאן meant 'thus' or 'so', and it is not difficult to see how people took the meaning of 'it is so' and turned it into a more generic exclamation for agreement.
2109: echidna Sep 23, 2020
'Echidna' today refers usually to an Australian egg-laying and hedgehog-like mammal, but this was also the name of a sea monster from Greek mythology: half woman and half snake who was the mother to many other Greek mythological monsters. Many people believe that the animal was named for the mythological figure i.e. like a woman who also lays eggs. Others would point to the Greek word 'ekhinos' meaning 'sea-urchin' but originally meaning 'hedgehog', though it is possible this came from or is at least connected to 'ekhis' meaning 'snake (eater)', and if so then the two etymologies are linked.
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2108: Mixed Origins for Yiddish Gender Terminology Sep 22, 2020
Yiddish vocabulary is at least 80% Germanic but the more technical or academic terms tend to come from Hebrew. The words for gender come from Hebrew, but Hebrew only has 2 grammatical genders whereas Yiddish has 3. In Yiddish, the word for 'masculine' is זכר (zokher); 'feminine' is נקבה (nekeyve), both of which are Semitic, whereas the term for the neuter gender is נײטראַל (neytral). Someone familiar with this alphabet could tell this without even needing to know Yiddish or Hebrew because Yiddish adopts the spelling for Hebrew loanwords, whereas for any other word, such as with נײטראַל, the vowels are included.
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2107: midwife Sep 21, 2020
The word 'midwife' looks to be made up of the word 'wife' and the prefix 'mid-' as in 'middle', and while it is a compound, it is not exactly what one might think from Modern English. It actually comes from 'wife' (wīf) which was the Old English word for 'woman', and 'mid' meaning 'with' as in the German 'mit'. That comes together to meaning another woman who stays with the mother, i.e. during birth. Modern German too has the term 'Beifrau' (by-woman) with a similar history.
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2106: morale Sep 20, 2020
English spelling is known for being inconsistent. Some of this has to do with standardizing before a major sound-shift but also that much of the vocabulary was borrowed. That said, in at least a few cases, the words were respelled, such as with 'morale'; it actually originated in French with 'moral' and so was modified as to disambiguate the meanings, but that being said, it was only adopted into English by way of misunderstanding. French now too distinguished between 'le moral' as in the temperment of courage (in the masculine) and 'la morale' as in 'morality' (in the feminine).
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2105: Brahmic Abugidas Sep 19, 2020
Any writing system that takes certain shortcuts so to speak such as not including vowels, or including an inherent vowel (as with an abugida) will run into certain problems. Brahmic abugidas such as those used to write Hindi or Bengali use letters which represent a consonant with an attached vowel (usually /a/). A problem then arises when either there is a different vowel or no vowel (both solved with a diacritic), or when there is a cluster of consonants, as this is not treated uniformly; for instance there is a special mark in these systems to indicate the inclusion of /r/. This is further complicated given that all of these systems can combine at least 2 and up to 4 letters into more complex ligatures (i.e. joined together). These systems are used from over India and across much of Southeast Asia, and have even had a significant presence in Japan.
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