2307: druid Apr 10, 2021
Before the word 'magician' there was 'druid'. More accurately, there was the Old English 'dry', which later became 'druid'. Oddly, while 'magician' is ultimately of a Germanic root, 'druid' comes from a Celtic root as a name for the priest of Gaul, the Brittons, and Ireland. Still, the word did not come to English via contact with Celtics, but rather first through Latin. The root is ultimately from '*dru-wid-' meaning effectively 'strong seeing', but actually the root of the first element, '*deru-' means 'tree' or partially 'oak' and *weid- meaning 'to see', probably relating to auguring with plants like mistletoe which grow on those trees. Moreover, the early Germanic settlers to the British Isles had the same word for 'tree' as 'truth': treow. This was eventually replaced in English and now has a mostly historical and cult meaning.
2306: magic & machine Apr 9, 2021
Although magic and science don't have much to do with each other, 'magic' and 'machine' are etymologically related. Indeed, the Proto-Indo-European root includes not only words directly adjacent to those before like 'mage', 'magi' and 'mechanism', but also 'may' and its derivatives, along with 'might' (both senses). The root '*magh-' is estimated to have had the meaning of 'ability' or 'power'. 'Main' is also among these with this common root. The sense of 'magic' in a purely sorcerous sense really comes from the 14th century, though in the sense of being an illusionist by trade without any actual spiritual component, the early 19th century.
2305: mumbo-jumbo Apr 8, 2021
It's not entirely clear how the phrase 'mumbo jumbo' originated, it's most likely from the Mandinka people of West Africa. According to that understanding, it is from the word 'maamajomboo', meaning 'masked dancer', a role used in many for supernatural activities of the native culture who would sing and chant in gibberish. Alternatively, it might just be from English, as a somewhat exaggerated and fanciful pronunciation of 'mumble' plus 'jumble'.
2301: galvanize Apr 4, 2021
When people talk about galvanizing, it is either in terms of inspiring action, or with covering one metal in a thin layer of another. Really though, the word originated from a name, Luigi Galvani. This French scientist experimented with electricity and is known for his experiment in which he caused frog-legs to twitch. This then got applied to the sense of energizing the spirit of a person.
2298: piker Apr 1, 2021
Seemingly unrelated to 'pike' would be the word 'piker', as in a miserly person, actually is related, but no one is quite sure how. Some hold that it goes by the sense of 'pike' as in a road, relating to the original sense of 'piker' as 'vagrant', though it has been written that in America at least it comes from the name of a county, Pike, Missouri. That said, the Middle English word 'piker' meant 'thief', in the sense of picking, which would be therefore at least not so directly related.
2297: turnpike Mar 31, 2021
The word 'pike' by itself refers to the point of a shaft, or often a whole spear, but it also led to 'turnpike'. The earlier, vaguer sense of the word was extended to any beam of wood, including those to make barricades for horses to keep them off certain roads. Eventually, this led to the sense of a toll on road, and the 'turnpike road' was just shortened to 'turnpike'.
2294: Disfix Mar 28, 2021
There are many types of affixes, including ones which are not only additive, whether in the middle or on the ends [1]. One more for instance is the so-called 'disfix' which is a type of affix (such as in French a suffix) which is subtractive, meaning is causes a loss to the stem. Usually, this happens to the final segment of the stem, just before the disfix. For instance, with this pluralization from French:
bœuf (cow) as [bœf] --> bœufs (cows/cattle) as [bø]
such that the [f] is deleted in the plural. This also happens with adjectives such as
fausse (wrong (fem.)) as [fos] --> faux (wrong (masc.)) as [fo].
This process is common in certain North American native languages like Alabama, Choctaw, or other Muskogee languages.
2293: Secondary Stress Mar 27, 2021
Much like with personal matters, words can have not only primary but also secondary stress, especially in certain environments. As the name implies, there is a level of stress that most languages have that introduces phonetic distinctions, but there can also be a secondary level which is less extreme in its change of volume/pitch, but still has a function. In some languages like Hawai'ian or Estonian, this is a part built into every word or at least sentences no matter what, and is therefore predictable. In English, this not predictable, but common in certain structures such as with compounds where the first syllable has primary stress as in:
laundry-cleaner, where the first syllable of 'cleaner' has secondary stress. This makes it easier to determine when listening that there is indeed a compound rather than two distinct words.
2290: Simulfix and Transfix Mar 24, 2021
While suprasegmental patterns exist in order to distinguish between certain English nouns and verbs—e.g.rébel (n) - rebél (v)—this is not the only sort of suprasegmental morphology. For instance, these same patterns exist of course with strong verbs and strong nouns, like 'ring-rang-rung' or 'tooth-teeth' wherein the change is internal and is not only additional, unlike for instance the '-ing' suffix which removes no part of the root-word. This affix is known as a simulfix. Something similar exists within Semitic languages known as a transfix wherein a series of regular, patterned vowels (and at times, other consonants) are effectively inserted into meaningful templates of 2-4 (usually 3) consonants. Unlike with simulfix, the transfix is is attached to roots which cannot be used on their own, whereas the roots in languages that take a simulfix rely on existing phonemes that are usually but not always vowels.
2289: Suprafix Mar 23, 2021
If one wanted to make 'like' past-tense, all that's needed is a suffix: a term for a concept which is fairly well understood. For other matters though, there are processes that are more complicated to observe and are certainly less well known. For instance, in structural linguistics, the idea of the so-called 'suprafix' developed, which is a suprasegmental element added from a pattern such as with tone or stress, such as in English with the difference between
ímport (noun) - impórt (verb)
2288: dean & 10 (Expanded)—Mar 22, 2021
There are a lot of words related to 'dom-' like 'don', 'domain', and relating to control, leadership, and in the case of 'don', 'education', and yet 'dean' is not related. Instead, 'dean' is from the Latin 'decanus' meaning 'leader of ten (soldiers)', unsurprisingly . Indeed, the Roman army's arrangements of tens led to multiple words in English including 'decimate'. Quickly however, the meaning took on other settings such as in the Church and eventually, in English, in education. There was actually a similar word in Old English, teoðingealdor, but at any rate 'dean', and the related 'decan' and 'doyan' are here to stay.
2287: brief & mirth Mar 21, 2021
Not terribly alike in sound nor in meaning, 'brief' and 'merry' are not only related, except of course if brevity effects happiness. These two words are considered doublets, i.e. they diverged from the same word, but they are quite old and show many traces of historical divergences, such as how 'mirth' is how to express 'merry' as a noun, despite appearing fairly different. That said, the relation between [m] and [b] shouldn't stick out too much between 'mirth' and 'brief' since the former is just the nasalized form of the latter (just try saying [m] with a really blocked up nose) and [f] is a common way the TH becomes alters. Semantically however, these two words only eventually diverged after the original meaning of "short; small; or (counterintuitively) slow" when 'merry' began to describe the passage of enjoyable moments passing quickly, without care, and eventually described the emotion behind that. Initially as well 'merry' had the sense of 'fine' or 'pleasant' in a more general sense than it has today.
2285: bias & cutting Mar 19, 2021
The word 'bias' is related to the word 'cut, though clearly none of those sounds are related. The original sense of 'bias' meant something like 'sideways', but the Vulgar Latin ebigassius, originally from Greek, is related via Proto Indo European root *krs-yo, taking from the root *sker-. As discussed earlier, this lead to both 'shear' and 'cut', along with dozens of other terms, some more similar today than others.
2280: wrong, wrangle, worry and wring Mar 14, 2021
The suffix -le can signal diminutives but also it is retained as a historic suffix to mark the frequentative form which once expressed repeated action over multiple instances. This is the case in 'wrangle' for instance which comes from Low German 'wrangeln' (to wrangle) but from the root 'wrangen' (to strangle). This led to the split in the English 'wrangle' and 'wring' which likewise lost the W in the German 'rangeln' (wrestle), and related to the Dutch 'vringle' (twist). The sense of twisting of truth also elucidates the connection there with 'wrong'—this being a common Germanic root each time eventually gaining the same moral connotations—and 'worry', which originally meant 'choke'.
2279: wrongness vs. wrength Mar 13, 2021
The traditional nominal form of 'wrong' is 'wrength' as opposed to today's 'wrongness'. It is not, however, entirely clear where that would have come from. Obviously it would not be irregular considering long-length, strong-strength, etc. but the probable Old English *wrengþu is unattested. It could therefore be that the Middle English 'wrength' is backformed from words like 'strength' with that pattern being applied later onto 'wrong' (historically, 'wrang'). Either way, it's all but lost these days.
2276: nonce Mar 10, 2021
A number of modern words are the result of wrong division, i.e. splitting or affixing sounds across multiple words such as in 'napkin' or 'adder' which respectively gained and lost an [n] due to the indefinite article 'an'. This is not the only word for which it has happened though, as can be seen with 'nonce' meaning 'a single occasion' as in "it worked for the nonce". This is connected, unsurprisingly to 'once' but with wrong division from a Middle English word 'þan' (than) as in 'þan anes'. In fact, 'anes' in 'once' and 'nonce' is actually from the genitive form of 'one' (ān) as in "of one". Separately, 'nonce' is also British slang but it has nothing in relation to the other meaning. It couldn’t possibly have been from ‘an’ as with the other words mentioned above as is commonly expected in cases of wrong division, since that has the same root as the ‘one/once’ in ‘nonce’ itself.
2268: doubt and 2 Mar 2, 2021
Though it may not be too surprising that the word for ‘doubt’ is also related to words for ‘two’ including ‘duo’ and indeed ‘two, but keep in mind this replaced an earlier word with the same quality: Old English ‘twēo’ (doubt) from the same root as ‘two’. Likewise, the German word for doubt is ‘Zweifel’ which clearly has the root ‘zwei’ (two) in it. Moreover, the Latin root ‘dubitāre’, which led to the current English word is thought to come from habeō (I have), combined with the Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ “two” as in ‘holding two’ making the word seemingly even more literal, but actually the sense in Latin would be closer to ‘hesitate’.
Notably, the word ‘doubt’ in Middle English was not spelt with a B, but this was added later to correspond with the Latin root even though the Old French root, and the modern French derivative ‘douter’ (to doubt) aren’t spelt that way.
2263: alchemy & chemistry Feb 25, 2021
Alchemy is to chemistry as astrology is to astronomy.
For much of history each pair was basically considered the same, as both had mystical and occult elements associated with them, and indeed even the more so-to-speak scientific aspects of these disciplines were in service of the spiritual ones until fairly recently. This is actually where the sense of chemistry relating to romantic attraction comes in. The connection between 'astrology' and 'astronomy' is fairly obvious, but the etymological connection between 'alchemy' and 'chemistry' is obscured somewhat by Arabic, with the al- just being the Arabic definite article i.e. 'the'. Otherwise the words have the same roots—even though the exact root is the cause of some disagreement—and really just means 'science'. Indeed, in the 17th century both words had a reduction in meaning, having both related to the occult, natural philosophical, as well as what might be thought as chemistry today or even metallurgy. Now, 'alchemy' only kept the sense of the pursuit of transforming base metals into gold and similar processes.
2257: ...Doe, ...Roe & Other Official Pseudonyms Feb 19, 2021
A recent post discussed the way in which generic aliases are used for legal protection or for uncertainty in identity, such as John Doe in many English speaking countries. Along with this are other variants like Jane Doe for women, Johnny Doe and Janie Doe for children, and Baby Doe for infants. Indeed, there are many variations to the -oe family, like Richard Roe and Jane Roe, though only the feminine version is common these days. In investigations with lots of press attention, other first names have been used, like Cali Doe (1979), Princess Doe (1982), and Precious Doe (2001). Likewise, these have been used in the titles for US legal cases, such as the infamous Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, for Norma McCorvey and Sandra Cano respectively. This pattern of using Doe and Roe has been in place since the Middle Ages in England to varying official capacities.
2256: Pro-, Far, Portable, and Porous Feb 18, 2021
'Fare', 'far', and 'ferry' are all related to each other and are obviously connected semantically (the sense of 'fare' also as money initially in reference to paying for travel) but the connection spans across many Indo-European languages. For instance, all the words related to 'pro-' and 'fore-' as a prefix, as well as other words like the Latin 'per' (through). Moreover, words like the Latin 'portare' (to carry) and Greek (peran) meaning 'pass through. Indeed, that root would as well connect this to the English 'pour' and by extension 'porous'. There are many more words in this family, but even here it goes to show that there is the possibility for far-reaching roots to develop into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and even prefixes at once.