1763: fetishism (LITW 11) Oct 12, 2019
In the below 1883 map of world religions shows the word "fetishists" and—though problematic in some ways—this is not entirely pejorative or even always reductive. 'Fetish' originally denoted idols, in particular from West African magic, and for a long time in a variety of languages such as English, French and Portuguese the word simply connoted general sorcerous, animistic, or idolatrous practices. The word is also related to 'factitious'.
NB: the term 'Mohammedan' (also 'Mohammedanism') refers to Islam.
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1715: Diminutive Suffixes in German Dialect Aug 25, 2019
About 80% of Yiddish vocabulary is from German, more or less depending on dialect, but when it comes to grammar the number is harder to discern. For instance, it is common for Yiddish to have the diminutive suffix -l (ל-), even using this in place of the word for small 'kleyn' (קליין) as is the case in German. For instance, 'city' in German is 'Stadt' (pronounced like SH-t [ʃt]), and in Yiddish it's 'shtot' (שטאָט), but a town—when not a village—is sometimes 'Kleinstadt' or just 'kleine Stadt' in German but 'shtetl' (שטעטל) in Yiddish. However, this Yiddish feature is Germanic, not Slavic or Hebraic, and does appear infrequently in some dialects. For instance, the Austrian town Neustadtl an der Donau (literally: New Little Town on the Danube) uses this convention, which is not really standard for German.
1276: The Vowels of 'Rhythm' (LITW 3) Jun 8, 2018
There is a rumour " 'rhythm' is the longest English word without a vowel" and disregarding the 'y', it does show the way that English-spellers view vowels. 'Rhythm' is two syllables not one, so assuming the 'y' represents the sound [ɪ], there would seem to still need to be another vowel somewhere in pronunciation to make the middle of the second vowel. This comes down to what is called 'syllabic consonants', and this can be thought of like the [ə] in words like 'the' or 'gum' (sort of). However, in words like 'rhythm' and 'column' the vowel is even shorter and less prominent, such that it it thought of as only being a byproduct of moving from one consonant to the next while still breathing out. So, while the number of syllables doesn't change, there is some truth in saying there are fewer-than-expected vowels, though certainly not zero.
1257: How to Verb a Noun: Phrases (LITW 2) May 19, 2018
The question for today: how do you verb a noun?
Well as any native English speaker should realize, that is merely a rhetorical question, but it is still an interesting and perhaps entertaining notion. Unlike in Salish, because English syntax relies almost exclusively upon word-order, placing any word, including a noun, adjective, or even preposition in the position of a verb, it will become a verb. What this leads to is a sort of test to see if something is one word or multiple. As you can see in the attached photo, "social justice warrior" (so long as you can overlook the hyphen-misuse) is used as one verb, even though it appears as three words. However, because of the social and linguistic connotations, it has now developed meaning as one word (usually a noun, though here a verb).
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