2534: aquarium, terrarium, vivarium Nov 20, 2021
In Latin, the word 'aquārius' as either a noun or an adjective referred to anything water-related, including an aquarium (hence the English) but also aqueducts and workers thereon. Still, in its association with artificial animal-enclosures this led to 'terrarium' on the same pattern. Latin also had the word 'vīvārium' which does exist in English but is significantly less common, denoting any sort of enclosure for raising animals.
2533: brian Nov 19, 2021
The name 'Brian' is of somewhat disputed origin but generally thought to come from a Celtic root 'bre' meaning 'hill'. The word took on the sense of 'nobility' or just 'exalted' from the sense of physical height. Another connection is to Celtic mythology supposedly, but the mythical figure of Brian actually had his name changed from Uar. 'Brian' started out exclusively as a title, but eventually became one of the most popular names in the anglosphere, especially in Britain and Ireland in the 20th century.
2532: spew & puke Nov 18, 2021
Many unpleasant bodily functions will take on multiple euphemisms, and with vomit, two are indeed related etymologically. While the word 'puke' is understood to be imitative to some extent, the exact reference is vague, and has been associated with the German 'pfauchen' (spit) and Dutch 'spugen' (spit), though other cognates here would mean 'blow' or 'puff'. Likewise, the Old English spīwan (vomit; spit) is a cognate, and the origin of 'spew', with also has other associations with spitting. Across languages the two ideas are commonly connected. In the case of 'puke' and 'spew' though, the latter is certainly older.
2531: Order in Welsh Numbers Nov 17, 2021
Welsh numbers are already very complex with two different systems, but part of the complexity is the variation. Celtic languages have many sounds which mutate and different adjectival forms for these numbers, but on top of that the order of the words is not necessarily set. The numbers are stated with prepositions, such as "un ar ddeg ar hugain" (one on ten on twenty) to say '31'. When this is used as a modifier, the noun can be put in the middle of the phrase as well such as "un ar ddeg ar hugain o gŵn" (31 dogs) literally "one on ten on twenty of dogs" which can be reordered as "Un ci ddeg ar hugain", literally "one dog ten on twenty".
2530: Welsh Numbers Nov 16, 2021
People may be aware that French numbers use somewhat mathematical descriptions, like soixante-dix for 70 meaning sixty-ten, and 'quatre-vingts' for 80 meaning 'four-twenties' but Welsh numbers are even more extreme. Indeed, there are actually two different systems, one decimal and one vigesimal. The decimal system operates similarly to English's decimal system, but the vigesimal is base-20 for all numbers so to say '30' it is 'deg ar hugain' (ten on twenty), '40' is 'deugain' (two twenty) and likewise for 60 and 80. To say ‘70’ is 'deg a thrigain' (ten and three twenty) and likewise for 90, but 50 is 'hanner cant’ (half a hundred) which also does not exist in the decimal system. The vigesimal system is more common when talking about dates and ages etc. and people may switch back-and-forth. There are many internal variations as well, including dropping the prepositions, or adjectival forms.
2529: sinai Nov 15, 2021
Sinai is certainly a famous place due to its significance in the Bible, but the etymology of it is unclear. The area was known in Ancient Egypt as a place for mining turquoise as was called 'Biau' (mining). It is therefore thought that the Hebrew סיני (sinei) is from the name of the moon-deity of the Mesopotamian pantheon (and its ancient Egyptian equivalent Thoth), who was associated with the area by locals, given that the desert on the peninsula around the mountain in Hebrew is known as מדבר סין (midbar sin) and nearby is the desert מדבר סיני (midbar sinei).
2528: Parataxis Nov 14, 2021
Parataxis describes the syntax for the phenomenon of placing two (seemingly) unrelated ideas next to each other with minimal to no conjunction and leaving the listener to interpret any connection. In writing this is often employed for poetic uses, but certainly in speech this is more common as a result of one's train of thought. Otherwise, this is just to abbreviate the language such that two utterances might be assumed to be connected when the full understanding of the relationship is not considered so important. Even in speech though this effect can be used less randomly and instead bring more focus to an utterance which might be otherwise subordinated with a conjunction rather than standing on its own.
2527: birching Nov 13, 2021
Birching is a practice of corporal punishment, commonly sentenced legally in the past, wherein one is beaten with branches, usually at one's backside. This, despite the name, did not always involve birchwood. In the Isle of Man, the last place to use this as legal punishment in Europe, used hazelwood into the 1970's which was supposedly more painful than birch, despite the technical term 'birch rod'.
2526: mediterranean Nov 12, 2021
The name for the Mediterranean is from Latin, but it isn't what the Romans called it. They called it Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) or occasionally Mare Internum (Interior Sea) but never Mediterraneum Mare, which is from Late Latin, after the collapse of the empire. 'Mediterraneus' anyway doesn't specifically refer to water and literally means 'middle of the earth', so if the term was used by the Romans, it could have had a broader understanding. This was adopted into English via French, and beforehand the Old English 'Wendelsæ' was used, named for the Germanic Vandals who occupied the area of the former Western Roman Empire.
2525: Hendiadys Nov 11, 2021
Hendiadys is a literary term used to describe a sort of periphrasis wherein two words in which one could modify the other are instead connected with a conjunction like "this pie is good and hot", rather than "this is good, hot pie" which ostensibly means the same thing. Hendiadys does not indicate actually different clauses either, such as with the example before it would not mean to say the pie would be just as good cold, necessarily. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, "[o]h what a rogue and peasant slave am I?" the adjectives are certainly not to be considered separately. This exist very prevalently in Latin poetry such as "vinclis et carcere" (with chains and with prison) which effectively means "in prison chains" from the Aeneid, or in Biblical Hebrew with גר ותושב עמך (ger v'soshav imcha) literally 'a stranger and a resident with you' but meaning 'alien resident (i.e. convert) with you'.
2524: gum Nov 10, 2021
Although the term for the product of the resin is 'rubber' in English, the resin itself is known as 'gum'. This is from Ancient Egyptian qmyt (resin; gum), also related to qmy (oil). This was the source of many related European words thanks to its adoption into Ancient Greek and Latin which begot many terms, but also Semitic terms like Hebrew גומי (gumi) and Aramaic גמי (gami), and via Greek קומא (quma), with the later being specific to acacia. On the other hand, 'rubber' is just from the material's association to erasers, and another term, 'caoutchouc' is from Nahuatl, but only refers to unvulcanized rubber.
2523: Mysterious Origins of Diego Nov 9, 2021
The Spanish name Santiago is from an earlier Sant Yago, but in English this is the name of Saint James. The discrepancy in the name goes even further, since in Hebrew the name is יעקב (Yaaqov). That said, it is not certain by any means that what was once thought to be the successor to 'Yago', namely 'Diego' is in fact descended from יעקב (Yaaqov) even though this would definitely not be the most radical shift over the years. Instead, the current theory is that this is from 'Didacus', itself from the Greek Διάδοχος (Diadochos) meaning 'heir; successor', though the shift in vowels from that to 'Diego' is not explained. What is certain is that 'Díaz' and its variations are just the patronymic form of 'Diego'.
2522: mesmerism Nov 8, 2021
The word 'mesmerize' now just generally refers to something that's dazzling and captivating, but 'mesmerism' was once a description of a medical procedure and (erroneous) scientific theory. Franz Anton Mesmer believed in something called 'animal magnetism'—an invisible force with physical effects—using magnets along with psychological tricks to supposedly cure people of ailments. This did actually work, but rather than being from magnetism, it was hypnosis. The salvageable procedures influenced many fields including modern talk-therapy, but the colloquial term 'mesmerize' is named from someone who may not have really known what he was doing.
2521: abacus Nov 7, 2021
The word 'abacus' came to English from Latin hence the plural 'abaci', but this word might really have a semitic origin. While now the term is used exclusively to refer to the mathematical instrument, it used to be more generic, denoting many types of boards including board-game boards and sand tables, as with the Ancient Greek ἄβαξ (ábax). This has been likened to the Hebrew אבק (āvāq) meaning 'dust' which would explain the senses of the Catalan 'àbac' meaning both 'mathematical table' and 'board covered in sand'.
2520: Koppa Ϙ/ϙ Nov 6, 2021
The Phoenician abjad, which is the origin of the Greek alphabet, contained certain letters for sounds that in Greek didn't exist. The Phoenician qoph (pronounced [q]) didn't exist in Greek, and since Greek could already use Κ (kappa) the Greek letter koppa (Ϙ, ϙ) was used before back-vowels. This practice was retained in Etruscan and Italic languages for a while, but unlike Q, which also came from this same Phoenician letter, Ϙ in Greek didn't survive, except sometimes for numerical purposes to represent 90. It is a similar story with the Cyrillic koppa (Ҁ ҁ) which is also now archaic.
2519: Germanic Stress Rule: Morae & Dreimorengesetz Nov 5, 2021
While the penultimate stress rule describes the stress accent for Latin, a similar rule for Germanic languages was proposed, called Dreimorengesetz (three-mora rule), wherein the stress is placed 3 morae before the end of each word; a mora is a unit for which a light syllable (generally a short one) is one mora and a heavy syllable (generally a long one) is two morae. This has its own problems, especially in the way it necessitates categorizing the final syllable as always light, but it does provide somewhat of a sense of Germanic languages' stress.
2518: Penultimate Stress Rule Nov 4, 2021
Languages often have inbuilt rules for how each word will take stress, such as Finnish or Proto-Italic were stress is indefinitely on the first syllable, but other times it is dependant on other factors in the environment. Even in Classical Latin, which is slightly more standard, the penultimate stress rule states that if the penultimate syllable is naturally long or if it ends with a consonant it will have the stress accent, and otherwise the stress accent falls on the third-to-last syllable. There are some exceptions, especially around sounds that have been elided or historically syncopated (or of course, doesn't have enough syllables), but this will cover the vast majority of Latin words, and words of other languages.
2517: mentor Nov 3, 2021
Although the word 'mentor' is from Ancient Greek, it only started to be used as a word in the 18th century. Instead, this word comes from the name of a character Μέντωρ (Mentor) in Homer's Odyssey, namely the adviser of Telemachus. That said, the root of this word is connected to the idea itself, and related to the English 'mind', Latin 'monitor', and Sanskrit मन्तृ (mantṛ). So, while it is technically from a name, the name was given presumably due to who the character was.
2516: Rhotacism & Dissimilation Nov 2, 2021
The word 'meridian' in English, or more directly even 'ante/post meridiem' (a.m./p.m.) is from the Latin word 'merīdiēs' meaning 'midday; noon'. This is from a corrupted phrase 'medīdiēs' which is just an contraction of 'medius' (middle) and 'diēs' (day). The R in the middle of 'merīdiēs' therefore is a bit odd at first glance. In fact, this is a fairly normal occurrence of rhotacism in the transition into Classical Latin. This normally happens to the sounds [s] or [z]—not [d]—that they should turn into [r] and really this is a process of dissimilation because it is followed by another [d].
2515: A Shift in Latin 3rd Person Endings Nov 1, 2021
In Latin, the present tense, 3rd person endings are singular '-t' and plural '-unt'. In Proto-Italic however, these were featured an [i] at the end, i.e. '-ti' and '-unti' respectively, though not always spelt that way specifically. This was probably related to the way that Greek constructed its verbs, though it did eventually drop off. There are inscriptions in Pompeii however that show 'estē' for what would be the Classical Latin 'est'. Indeed, Pompeii is a great source for popular writing as opposed to more formal, high-register, and perhaps most importantly edited writing. This alternate form might have been the source for Romanian's verb endings which look like that today somewhat.