2758: The World’s Biggest Number Jul 9, 2024
Lots of cultures use what is referred to as an indefinitely large number to express something enormous and uncountable. In English this would be “a million” used in lots of phrases like “thanks a million” or “I did X a million times”, and while it may make sense to use this number in such a context, especially as it is relatively concise as a base unit, many other languages use different ones. For instance, Celtic languages like Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish use 100,000, French uses 36, Hungarian 26, and some languages make up numbers altogether such as Swedish’s femtioelva literally “fifty-eleven” (not actually 61).
One number used conspicuously often for this purpose is 10,000, but not simply as a construction. Many languages, especially ancient languages, had a separate word for ten-thousand; compare Hebrew’s
תשעת אלפים (tishat elfim) = 9,000
רבבה (rivava) = 10,000
עשרים אלף (esrim elef) 20,000
This has the sense of ‘many’ and doesn’t resemble the rest of the words for multiples of a thousand, though in the plural form it can also mean the somewhat uncounted “tens of thousands”. This exact same phenomenon around 10,000-words occurs in Greek μυριάδες (myriades), hence English’s ‘myriad’, Sanskrit’s अयुत (ayuta), and Chinese 萬 (wan) used in many East Asian cultures.
There are too many examples to count, not even including made up numbers like ‘umpteen’ or ‘bazillion’, so please write back any others you know.
2677: Who Is Steven, Even? Apr 19, 2024
There is a phrase, 'even-steven', usually not capitalized, that gets thrown around, but the question remains: who is, or was, Steven?
The answer for sure is no one person or really anything to do with the name, but it's not clear why. One theory is that this is just rhyming for emphasis, though that wouldn't explain the 'st-' in particular except that Steven is relatively common compared to other rhymes.
Another theory, however, places the steven from the Old English 'stefn' meaning 'voice' and likewise 'vote' or 'constitution; composure'. This is related to the German 'Stimmen' with the same range of meanings. It's possible that both theories are at play and that people opted for a somewhat relevant word that would carry more emphasis than saying 'even composition'.
2542: Roll Tide Nov 28, 2021
Lots of chants don't mean anything, such as the University of Minnesota's "ski u mah" which many believe to be from Lakota but is total gibberish. University of Alabama's 'roll tide' though probably is meaningful, though no one is quite sure what for. The nickname 'Crimson Tide' was used towards the start of the 20th century for the team, though this again is not entirely clear as to why. Whatever the case, the phrase is not trademarked.
2484: Irreversible Binomials Sep 30, 2021
A so-called irreversible binomial is a phrase which exists with separable words that occur in a fixed order, like 'fish and chips', 'fight or flight, 'or 'short and sweet'. These can exists for all types of words, including for those which are no longer productive, like 'kit and caboodle' or 'vim and vigor'. This leads to come pairs like 'time and time again' abbreviated as 'time and again' which would make 'again' sound like a noun and is ungrammatical, but here there is no loss in meaning. Many of these near-idiomatic phrases are also somewhat poetic in their structure, relying on rhymes or alliteration frequently. These nearly always use a conjunction either 'and' or 'or', but in some cases exceptional like 'hoity toity' this is not necessary.
2387: son of a gun Jul 1, 2021
The phrase 'son of a gun' is often thought to be a euphemistic replacement for another worse insult, but this is not so true. While its precise origins are certainly a matter of some dispute, it seems to have originated somewhere around the mid- to late-18th century as military slang. The earliest uses of this phrase was in reference to a military brat, though other, less reliable theories have emerged about its use for those infants born on the ships of the Royal Navy, or even earlier.