2548: melancholy Dec 4, 2021
Like 'gall' and its connection (supposedly) to the gallbladder 'melancholy' was also once a pseudo-medical term. The word Ancient Greek μελαγχολία (melankholía), from μέλας (mélas) meaning 'black; murky'—same root as 'melanin'—and χολή (kholḗ) meaning 'bile', which is the same root as 'cholera'. This black bile, known in Latin as atra bilis (dark bile) believed as a kidney secretion which in excess causes sadness.
2546: glass (material) Dec 2, 2021
Recent posts discussed how the root *ghel- led to words for many different colors [1] or that related to light and bile, but even just looking at how 'glass' has changed can reveal a great deal of variability alone. From the 13th century it was used with restricted meanings beyond that just the material, in this case meaning 'drinking glass'. In the 14th century it took on the meaning of 'mirror' as in 'looking glass', and by the 15th century it referred to the timekeeping 'hour glass'.
2545: glass, chlorine, & arsenic Dec 1, 2021
The word 'glass' in other languages shares a root with many color-words, but that is far from where the root *ghel- ends. Meaning 'shine', this word also led to many light-associated words like 'glaze', 'glow', 'gold', 'glimmer' 'glare' and more, but also many related to bile like 'chlorine', cholera, and 'gall'. Even 'arsenic' comes through this root, though it was adopted into English through many other languages, ultimately from Old Iranian *zarna- (golden).
2544: glass Nov 30, 2021
Although 'glass' refers to a material in English, throughout Indo-European languages the root of this word often led to other meanings for a variety of colors. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *ghel- meant 'shine' and as a result eventually came to mean 'glass' in Germanic languages, but also led to words for the colors yellow such as Old English 'glær' or Latin 'glaesum' (amber) or indeed Modern English 'yellow'. In Old Irish 'glass' meant 'green' and in Welsh 'glas' means 'blue'.
2535: Why 'Un-' Doesn't Assimilate Like 'In-' (Ir- Il- Im-) Nov 21, 2021
The prefix 'in-' assimilates to different sounds depending upon the context, becoming 'im-', 'il-', and 'ir-', but this is not true of 'un-', which is similar both semantically but more importantly, phonetically. For instance, 'in-' + 'responsible' is 'irresponsible', but 'un-' + 'responsive' is 'unresponsive'. This was true of the negating prefix 'in-' in Latin whence this use was borrowed, and while 'un-' is distantly related to this, it is really considered to be of a Germanic root where this does not happen.
2534: aquarium, terrarium, vivarium Nov 20, 2021
In Latin, the word 'aquārius' as either a noun or an adjective referred to anything water-related, including an aquarium (hence the English) but also aqueducts and workers thereon. Still, in its association with artificial animal-enclosures this led to 'terrarium' on the same pattern. Latin also had the word 'vīvārium' which does exist in English but is significantly less common, denoting any sort of enclosure for raising animals.
2532: spew & puke Nov 18, 2021
Many unpleasant bodily functions will take on multiple euphemisms, and with vomit, two are indeed related etymologically. While the word 'puke' is understood to be imitative to some extent, the exact reference is vague, and has been associated with the German 'pfauchen' (spit) and Dutch 'spugen' (spit), though other cognates here would mean 'blow' or 'puff'. Likewise, the Old English spīwan (vomit; spit) is a cognate, and the origin of 'spew', with also has other associations with spitting. Across languages the two ideas are commonly connected. In the case of 'puke' and 'spew' though, the latter is certainly older.
2528: Parataxis Nov 14, 2021
Parataxis describes the syntax for the phenomenon of placing two (seemingly) unrelated ideas next to each other with minimal to no conjunction and leaving the listener to interpret any connection. In writing this is often employed for poetic uses, but certainly in speech this is more common as a result of one's train of thought. Otherwise, this is just to abbreviate the language such that two utterances might be assumed to be connected when the full understanding of the relationship is not considered so important. Even in speech though this effect can be used less randomly and instead bring more focus to an utterance which might be otherwise subordinated with a conjunction rather than standing on its own.
2526: mediterranean Nov 12, 2021
The name for the Mediterranean is from Latin, but it isn't what the Romans called it. They called it Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) or occasionally Mare Internum (Interior Sea) but never Mediterraneum Mare, which is from Late Latin, after the collapse of the empire. 'Mediterraneus' anyway doesn't specifically refer to water and literally means 'middle of the earth', so if the term was used by the Romans, it could have had a broader understanding. This was adopted into English via French, and beforehand the Old English 'Wendelsæ' was used, named for the Germanic Vandals who occupied the area of the former Western Roman Empire.
2525: Hendiadys Nov 11, 2021
Hendiadys is a literary term used to describe a sort of periphrasis wherein two words in which one could modify the other are instead connected with a conjunction like "this pie is good and hot", rather than "this is good, hot pie" which ostensibly means the same thing. Hendiadys does not indicate actually different clauses either, such as with the example before it would not mean to say the pie would be just as good cold, necessarily. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, "[o]h what a rogue and peasant slave am I?" the adjectives are certainly not to be considered separately. This exist very prevalently in Latin poetry such as "vinclis et carcere" (with chains and with prison) which effectively means "in prison chains" from the Aeneid, or in Biblical Hebrew with גר ותושב עמך (ger v'soshav imcha) literally 'a stranger and a resident with you' but meaning 'alien resident (i.e. convert) with you'.
2524: gum Nov 10, 2021
Although the term for the product of the resin is 'rubber' in English, the resin itself is known as 'gum'. This is from Ancient Egyptian qmyt (resin; gum), also related to qmy (oil). This was the source of many related European words thanks to its adoption into Ancient Greek and Latin which begot many terms, but also Semitic terms like Hebrew גומי (gumi) and Aramaic גמי (gami), and via Greek קומא (quma), with the later being specific to acacia. On the other hand, 'rubber' is just from the material's association to erasers, and another term, 'caoutchouc' is from Nahuatl, but only refers to unvulcanized rubber.
2521: abacus Nov 7, 2021
The word 'abacus' came to English from Latin hence the plural 'abaci', but this word might really have a semitic origin. While now the term is used exclusively to refer to the mathematical instrument, it used to be more generic, denoting many types of boards including board-game boards and sand tables, as with the Ancient Greek ἄβαξ (ábax). This has been likened to the Hebrew אבק (āvāq) meaning 'dust' which would explain the senses of the Catalan 'àbac' meaning both 'mathematical table' and 'board covered in sand'.
2511: Common Words with Etruscan Origins Oct 27, 2021
Just because words are basic and have cognates in other, related languages, does not make the word indigenous, though it would suggest that the term is very old. For instance, 'person', 'populous' and 'military' all came to English, and many other European languages, via Latin, but these are not native Latin words. Instead, these are generally seen as having an Etruscan root, making them pre-Indo-European. 'Persona' in Latin was an actors mask, and likewise that would be in Etruscan 𐌘𐌄𐌓𐌔𐌖 (φersu), eventually replacing the native English 'wight'. 'Populus' in Latin, was thought to relate to 'plēbs' (commoner; plebeian) but the root here means 'to fill' and an Etruscan root might make more sense. 'Milēs' has a normal construction for Latin grammar, but the perceived connection to 'mīlia' (thousand) is not a given.
2501: -eroo/-eroonie Oct 17, 2021
We usually think of suffixes as being grammatical in function— like how'-ed' makes something past tense or participial; '-(e)s' makes something plural or signals 3rd person present etc.—but this is not necessary. For example, '-eroo' (or its variants including '-eroonie') as in "the old switcheroo" or "We're going on a tripperoonie". This does not add anything grammatically and arguably doesn't even add anything semantically for the individual word, but it does make the overall sentence more colloquial, jovial, or familiar. In this sense, this is like a diminutive which makes things sound affectionate, or literally small, but is not exactly the same.
2500: Bears: How Fear Developed Terminology Oct 16, 2021
The word 'bear' and its many similar Germanic counterparts, along with other very different sounding words of Northern European regions diverge from the Proto-Indo-European '*rtko' as seen in the Latin 'ursus' and Greek αρκτικός (arktikos). The Proto-Germanic '*berô' is related to the word 'brown' (and as a matter of course, 'beaver') meaning 'brown one'. Many people have claimed this is as a euphemistic reference from fear of bears who more prevalently inhabited Northern Europe than around the Mediterranean where they were fewer and smaller. Not only Germanic languages have this phenomenon, as the Russian медведь (medved) means 'honey-eater' and some Celtic references once had similar euphemistic qualities.
2498: antarctic Oct 14, 2021
The terms 'arctic' and 'antarctic', while obviously geographic references just references quantity of bears, etymologically speaking. Named for the Ancient Greek ἀνταρκτικός (antarktikós)—the Ancient Greeks not having travelled anywhere near there themselves—literally means 'no bears', from the prefix ἀντ- (ant-) meaning 'against' as in the Latinate 'anti-'. This is not specifically referencing bears as animals, even though this would actually be a true description of both regions, but of the constellation Ursa Major a.k.a. The Great Bear, and the terms originally just referenced the North and South of the world generally, as opposed to the poles specifically. Notably also, the first -c- in 'arctic' stopped being pronounced in French and English until the 15th century when it was brought back, but it wasn't until the 17th century that the first -c- of 'antarctic' was restored.
2494: sehr & sore Oct 10, 2021
The German 'sehr' (very) sounds somewhat like 'very', and considering they mean the same thing they aren't related; it is related to the English 'sore'. The Old English sār as a noun meant 'ache; wound' or 'grievous' as an adjective, which is not so far from the English today, but so did the Old High German 'sēr'. Indeed, much like 'awful' or 'terrify' are bad and 'awfully' and 'terrific' are merely emphatic, so too is 'sore' negative while 'sorely' is emphatic. Many other languages have related words, but most have stuck with the meaning regarding pain.
2493: druthers Oct 9, 2021
The word 'druthers' is almost always used in the plural form, though the singular is technically possible, and more common in the past. This is a bit strange, because the word originated in the US as an amalgamation of the phrase "I'd rather". These days, it is usually a noun as well, but it does sometimes appear as it might from the original contraction such as "I druther not", though this verb is more farcical, while the noun can be used in more serious contexts, relatively speaking.
2489: Referential Pronouns in Non-Standard Constructions Oct 5, 2021
"I love myself some coffee" while allowed in some dialects for emphasis, is not strictly grammatical. It could be formed as an omission of the words "to get", as in "I [would] love to get myself..." Indeed, this environment could also allow 'me' in place of 'myself' ("I love me some coffee") which is even less standard but insofar as it is used, shows that the version with 'myself' might not be formed with the underlying structure of "...to get...". It should also be noted that the use of 'some' before a mass noun (i.e. it is understood as a mass and not separate units) cannot exist without the referential pronoun, either 'myself' or 'me', as "I love some coffee" would instead indicate some specificity instead of mere emphasis, that is, not all coffee here.
2485: Legal Doublets Oct 1, 2021
Legal doublets are phrases, used in legal and common uses, which uses two or more nearly synonymous words, such as "cease and desist", "clear and present danger" or indeed "will and testament". Like other binomials, these are often connected with 'and', and often cannot be said out of order. These are not totally random however, nor purposeless (at least historically), since many started as Latin or French words followed by an English translation, though others originated as near-redundancy. Eventually both parts became English translations, and this phenomenon, which is already especially particular to law, does not exist across languages as much.