2737: Paper: How Papyrus has Changed Jun 18, 2024

Although papyrus writing is all but unheard of today, the legacy still lives on in the word ‘paper’. More accurately, it was not a later revival after the use of wood pulp in papermaking, but a continuously used term. In fact, the word ‘papyrus’ as it refers to the material as opposed to merely the plant was a later invention in English based off the original Greek, in the 18th century. While there have been other materials in use, notably parchment and linen, the generic use of paper can still be seen in ‘paper money’, which has never been made from wood pulp. This is an example of semantic narrowing, where a word’s meaning begins to exclude connotations it once had, where ‘paper’ has become a material, rather than any writing surface.

2688: Semantic Narrowing of Venom and Poison Apr 30, 2024

English has a lot of words. By many metrics, it has more words than any other language. That means that many terms that would have had lots of meanings have picked up highly niche connotations. For instance, there is a habit some people have of correcting the notion that snakes aren’t poisonous, but rather venomous, with the former denoting something that is toxic when ingested, and the latter referring to poison that is injected via bite or sting.

First of all, even in that definition, some snakes are poisonous, like the rhabdophis keelback snakes, though the snake’s poisonous quality is developed from its diet. More to the point, this distinction is really very new, and doesn’t really exist in other languages. ‘Venom’ comes from the Latin ‘venenum’ meaning ‘poison’. The original meaning of this word was also something like ‘charm’ and possibly ‘potion’, which would make sense especially given that ‘poison’, ‘potion’, and ‘potable’ all come from the same root meaning ‘to drink’. There will be more about the wide range of meanings related to ‘venenum’ tomorrow.