2420: trifle Aug 6, 2021

The English cake 'trifle' comes from a French word meaning 'deception', but no one is entirely sure of where it came from. The French word ' truffe' (deception) can't be reliably traced back further, but after this point its meaning softened to merely that of 'mockery', and eventually just 'idle; unimportant'. This is likely where the cake's name comes in, as at that point the idea was only of something taken lightly. Eventually it came to mean something of insignificant value, or just small.

2419: Read: Unique Germanic Evolution Aug 5, 2021

English is thought of as being unusually different to its European relatives because of its borrowed (usually Romantic) words, but this is not always why. 'To read' for instance is a Germanic word meaning 'advise; counsel' that developed differently to any other. *rēdaną, also led to the German 'Rat' (council)—also borrowed in some Slavic areas for political divisions—and Dutch 'raden' (to advise; guess), and this root eventually came to mean 'to interpret' in English and then specifically 'to interpret a letter' hence 'reading'. This now exclusive meaning is unique, but it should be noted that the Scots word 'rede' can also mean both 'to advise' but also 'to decipher', also from Middle English.

2416: Particles Aug 2, 2021

In grammatical terms, a particle is a function word associated with word without any lexical meaning of its own. These would include terms like 'not', 'oh', and 'to' (as a marker for infinitives) since these are integral for overall meaning and syntactic structure, but cannot be defined independently. In this way they are considered to be in their own lexical class, though in older definitions a particle was just anything that could not be inflected and could be part of other lexical classes like articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and even adverbs. Since particles indicate grammatical relation between words, language with lots of inflection tend to have fewer, and languages with little to no inflection, like Mandarin, will use particles instead of things like affixes to indicate grammatical functions.

2413: room Jul 30, 2021

While some of the meanings of the word 'room' have stayed consistent since Old English, but the meaning has also narrowed down. 'Room' is from the Old English 'rum' (space) which like the modern 'space' related to either distance or time. As an adjective the word meant mostly the same as its descendant 'roomy' but as a verb—which is no longer viably found from 'room'—the Old English form meant 'to make room' or in other words 'clear space', as opposed to 'lodging' which is meant with 'to room'.

2407: Alternative Comparatives & Superlatives Jul 24, 2021

Comparative and superlative adjectives are in some languages are used for purposes outside of comparison. For instance, comparatives are used in English to convey tendency, such as "Bob is the more humorous type" which does not compare between people as might be assumed with this subject, but between his other characteristics. Likewise, superlatives are often used emphatically: "he's the dumbest"; "she's the prettiest" which has the effective meaning of "very dumb/pretty".

2406: palace & palatine Jul 23, 2021

The term 'palace' may connote certain specific architectural images, but technically it doesn't have to be any sort of building, so long as the head of state is established there. The term originates with the Latin 'Palatium', the name for the Palatine hill of Rome, which is here the emperor happened to live. This is also where the English name of the German Palatine region (today the state of Rhineland-Palatinate) arose, since this was the title of the ruling family during the days of the Holy Roman Empire. In German those this state is known as Rheinland-Pfalz.

2405: Chateau of Versailles... Jul 22, 2021

The Palace of Versailles is huge: 8.2 km². Still, the French name is 'Château de Versailles' (Chateau of Versailles), and not something like 'Palais de Versailles' (Palace...). The difference is fairly minute, but 'Chateau' in this case is not used how it was taken on to mean in English which is usually of a smaller estate especially for wine. Still, the word comes from the Old French 'chastel' which has the same root as 'castle'.

2406: "For To" Infinitives Jul 21, 2021

There is a non-standard infinitive construction—"for to" as opposed to merely "to"—originating in Northern Ireland, which is used interchangeably with a standard infinitive marker but is particularly used to indicate a purpose clause. This made its way over to North America and in particular the American South which was dominantly settled by Irishmen, Scottsmen, and Welshmen. For instance, in the song Oh! Susanna:

"I'm going to Louisiana / My true love for to see."

This is actually even less standard than its normal use which might look more like, "I want for to meet them" since in that way this can be seen as a variant of other purpose clauses in Standard English which might appear like "I want for Bob to meet them". The difference is that the subject of the main clause (preceded by a small clause) takes the preposition 'for' to mark purpose, whereas in the "for to" example, the subject of the main clause and the small clause are the same.

2401: Russian Continents Jul 16, 2021

It's well known that the Spanish speaking world regard the landmasses of North and South America as one continent, simply the Americas. In this way those people regard the world with 6 continents, but it could go even fewer. The Russians and Japanese distinguish between two Americas, but regard Eurasia as one continent. This makes sense for Russia especially which straddles both with wide margins. That's still just 6, and while some academics discuss the idea of 5 or even only 4—Afro-Eurasia, Americas, Antarctica, Oceania—this is not a major movement.

2400: chattel & cattle Jul 15, 2021

While the word 'chattel' is fairly unremarkable in its etymology, its history is enlightening. Unsurprisingly, it is related to the word 'cattle' and 'capital' in the sense of 'head'. The sense of any property goods, as opposed to real estate, was well established by the Middle Ages, certainly with some association to the meaning of 'cattle'. It was in the mid-17th century took on specific associations with slavery, and many abolitionists took the word with a new political meaning in their writings to emotional impact.

2396: Countries without Long-Form Names Jul 11, 2021

Most countries have an official long-form name such as 'Venezuela' and 'The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela', 'Micronesia' to the 'Federated States of Micronesia', and 'Luxembourg' to 'Grand Duchy of Luxembourg'. Indeed, countries like Japan, Hungary, Tuvalu, and Ireland are some of the few countries with no distinctions between common names and official names, sort of. In the case of Japan, the official name is Nippon, even in English, but this is very rarely used and since it is simply the endonym rather than an expanded name this is not considered to be long-form. Conversely, Ireland is often referred to as the Republic of Ireland, especially to disambiguate this with Northern Ireland or the island as a whole, despite the fact that this is not officially used by the country itself. Some others like Hungary used to have official long-forms but removed them, as in that case in 2012.

2384: felon Jun 28, 2021

While no one should want to be called a felon, it used to have certain additional bad connotations in the past. In Old French 'felon' could mean any sort of 'evil-doer' both in a legal sense including treachery or oath-breaking, but also generally being a scoundrel in the traditional sense. One theory as to where it originates beyond that point is with the Frankish '*fillo' meaning 'scourge', or the Latin fel (poison) while others point to the Latin 'fellare' meaning 'to suck'. Beyond this, it is especially unclear if this was of Romantic or Germanic origins.

2382: Rivieras Jun 26, 2021

All around the world one can find Rivieras, although only two can be called 'the Riviera' without any qualification: the Italian and French Rivieras. That said, from Egypt, Massachusetts, Guangdong (China), and Mexico—the rest primarily found around Southern Europe—the definition is not particularly precise. In Italian this word just means 'coastline' but in practical use this word tends to relate to any stretch of long, sunny coastal areas that have come to be tourist hotspots. Even some of the areas listed above called 'rivieras' can stretch that loose definition a bit, and there is surely a bias of giving the title to European areas.

2380: Kempt: a Word Created from Itself Jun 24, 2021

The word 'kempt' meaning 'neat' it's own word, and while that sounds like a truism, it is special insofar as it was developed twice, in a sense. The more popular 'unkempt' is far more popular, so much so that even though it is just a derivative of the (by definition) older 'kempt', the affirmative form fell out of favor. This is not so rare exactly, with other words that only have a negative form through historical disuse such as 'nonsensical', but this was eventually it was brought back through a process known as 'backformation', when a word is created by the removal of an affix, such as 'butle' from 'butler'.

2378: Bill vs Beak Jun 22, 2021

Birds have beaks, but some beaks are bills, and while the term 'bill' is now the more restricted term of those two, historically it was the general term with 'beak' only referring to the sharpened bills of birds of prey. In part from that historical confusion, and simply the breadth of variety in which these of rostra are found, there is not much of a practical distinction, and while some are conventional such as ducks having bills and hawks having beaks, other birds may be found described with either nearly synonymously or as a subjective judgment on the shape of the rostrum.

2377: moustache, mandible, & kemp Jun 21, 2021

The word 'mustache' (or 'moustache') has been the word for the hair above the upper-lip since the 16th century, from French but ultimately the Ancient Greek μύσταξ (mústax) meaning 'upper lip'. This in turn is from the root *mendʰ- (to chew) thereby connecting this word to 'mandible': an animal's jaw bone, as well as the French 'manger' (to eat). Before this, English used the word 'kemp'—itself related to 'chin' and more surprisingly, 'camp'. In Middle English, 'kempe' referred to coarse hairs but is not related to other words like 'comb' or 'unkempt'.

2370: Cakes & Biscuits: Legal Classification Jun 14, 2021

Cakes and biscuits might sound like sweet and easy-going treat, but there is a legal and effectively molecular distinction drawn between these in the UK which has led to actual court hearings. Particularly, the Jaffa Cake was subject to this dispute because the two classes of food are taxed differently, and Jaffa Cakes had to be proven to be cakes to avoid a tax specifically on chocolate-covered biscuits. The government tried to base its case on how it was produced like a biscuit, but as had been established in a previous case cakes harden when stale, and biscuits become limp when stale. Since Jaffa Cakes are tall, spongey, and will lose moisture when stale, these were legally proven to be cakes.

For more legal food classification click here.

2365: Abnormal Syllabic Consonants Jun 9, 2021

There are syllabic consonants, which are syllables without vowels, but there are certain constraints on how most languages use them, such as how most are sonorants and especially nasal ([m] and [n]) and liquids ([l] and [ɹ]). English does have others, which is pretty rare across most languages, but in syllabic fricatives such as in 'shh'. These paralinguistic elements are not really words nor are these found as parts of other words as with syllabic consonants normally. For instance, the longest Czech sentence without vowels and only syllabic consonants is 25 words:

Škrt plch z mlh Brd pln skvrn z mrv prv hrd scvrnkl z brzd skrz trs chrp v krs vrb mls mrch srn čtvrthrst zrn.

(Stingy dormouse from Brdy mountains fogs full of manure spots firstly proudly shrank a quarter of handful seeds, a delicacy for mean does, from brakes through bunch of Centaurea flowers into scrub of willows)

2361: Pringles & Its Linguistic Dilema Jun 5, 2021

While it's true that usually in the US flat, cooked, hard discs of potato are called '(potato) chips', and that in the UK these same things are called 'crisps', it is in a certain sense challenged. There is in the US a legal definition, and therefore limitation on what is a 'chip' and Pringles® do not meet these criteria and so in the US are actually mandatorily avoided as 'crisps'. This is because rather than drying, baking, or frying whole potatoes, Pringles use "dehydrated processed potato" along with corn, rice, wheat and other ingredients. This was ruled legally not a potato chip in 1975 and while the alternative 'crisp' is used in the US, this might have posed a problem in the UK. They had a separate legal decision there where it was decided that they could use the culturally dominant word 'crisp' for the particular snack.

2360: gander (v), gannet, & goose Jun 4, 2021

The verbal form of 'gander' is probably used more often than the nominal form, but it is newer and originates as slang. Specifically inmate slang, since a gander is a male goose and in this case was noted for the long, bending neck. The word 'gannet', another type of waterfowl comes from the exact same Proto-Indo-European root. This helps to support the argument that the earlier sense of this word was simply seabird as in other languages this root led to the names for other types of birds like the Lithuanian 'gandras' (stork).