2452: New Latin Spellings: Things of the Past Aug 28, 2021
The words 'dinosaur' and 'deinonychus' both come from the same root, with the first element. The first part of 'dinosaur', coined in 1842, is from Ancient Greek δεινός (deinós) meaning 'terrible'. That said, it came to English through New Latin which has a standardized way of transliterating Greek into Latin letters, including going from Greek < ει > to Latin < ī >, and < ός > into < us >. Later, scientists stopped using (New) Latin as much—even though here it may technically be listed as being of New Latin—and even if they would, it was not with any real consistency: 'Utahraptor'. As a result, the word over 120 years later, 'deinonychus', uses <ei>.
2443: Georgian's Backward Familial Terms: დედა and მამა Aug 19, 2021
In Georgian, mother is დედა (dada) and 'father' is მამა (mama). These sounds are fairly standard for what parents are called, but swapped as it is usual to see a nasal consonant for mothers. This pretty exceptional case is not that all the rest have some particular etymology, but it is understood the nasal vowels are easier to produce while nursing hence the association with mothers, and for fathers, words with either [p] or [d] at the beginning are normal, as these will likely be the first non-nasal consonants an infant will utter in general. This is found around the world, but one of a handful of deviations to those rules happens in Georgian to deviate from both rules.
2423: Is 'Taurus' (Bull) Semitic? Aug 9, 2021
The Latin 'taurus', Greek ταύρος (tauros) and Lithuanian 'tauras' all could come from the Proto-Indo-European PIE *tau-ro- meaning 'bull', but this could actually be Semitic. The Aramaic for 'bull' is תור (tor), in Hebrew שור (shor), and Arabic ثور (thawr) and so on throughout the whole Semitic family. Meanwhile, many Indo-European languages do not have a word descended from this root, such as in many Indo-Iranian languages, or other related languages spoken further the East. Some notably may have exceptions to this, as in Persian or Avestan with a similar word for horses, or Sanskrit sthura- (thick; standing firm) related to the Old English 'steer'. It could be that those missing cases are simply lacking data, or that this is a wanderwort.
2418: Hallstatt Aug 4, 2021
Hallstatt, Austria was the location of Johann Georg Ramsauer's discovery of multiple Bronze Age and Iron Age, Celtic settlements which helped to understand the vast pre-Roman civilizations. Coincidentally, both now and historically, the area was known for its important salt-mines, and even the modern German name for the town 'Hallstatt' is derived from the Gaulish word for 'salt', related to the Welsh 'halen', Cornish 'haloin' and Breton 'halen', all P Celtic (Bretonic) languages. In Q Celtic (Goidelic) languages an [s] is retained instead of an [h] such as Irish and Scots Gaelic 'salann'.
2372: South Arabian Languages Jun 16, 2021
South Arabian languages, mainly confined to Oman, Yemen (including Soqotri) along with Kuwait. These were once thought to be descendents of Old South Arabian—a collection of four Yemenite languages—but were later reclassified as West Semitic along with Arabic, Hebrew, and Ethiopian Semitic languages: basically any living Semitic language. Still, these diverged from other Semitic languages early, and are closer related to Ethiopian Semitic languages rather than Arabic, though these are far from mutually intelligible. These languages (Bathari, Harsusi, Hobyót, Mehri–Soqotri, Shehri) are known for having certain archaic features, especially when it comes to phonology, lost in other Semitic languages.
2368: Sir Isaac Newton's Anti-Counterfeit Technique Jun 12, 2021
In the Middle Ages and even into the 17th century, coin clipping (also including shaving) wherein some amount of the money is removed. One way devised as an anti-counterfeit measure by Sir Isaac Newton in 1696 when he was Warden of the Royal Mint was to use grooves on the edge such that shaving and clipping would be easier spotted. One phrase inscribed on these coins after this was DECUS ET TUTAMEN meaning "an ornament and a safeguard". This is actually a phrase from Virgil's Aeneid and was printed on British coins for many hundreds of years.
2345: Digamma: Greek's Ghost Letter May 20, 2021
The letter G effectively replaced the letter Z in the Latin alphabet, but in the Greek alphabet the letter Ζ,ζ was also affected in its order in the alphabeta. The Hebrew and Phoenician letters, zayin, are both 7th and as numerals means (7) as is true in Greek numerals despite it being 6th in order. This is because the letter Ϛ,Ϝ known as Digamma which used to be 6th was used and eventually disfavored, merging with Sigma—namely the Lunate Sigma—creating the only Greek letter with 3 distinct forms (capital, lower case, and word-final). This had originally represented the sound /w/ which no longer exists in Greek.
2343: carthage May 18, 2021
Carthage, the capital or the Carthaginian Empire and now the city of Tunis, is known in Arabic as قرطاج (Qarṭāj). The Carthaginians were a Phoenician people who spoke a Semitic language, so it might sound obvious that Arabic would use this, but actually it is a loan word from French replacing an earlier 'Cartagena' which was from Latin. That said, the ancient city was known as qrt-ḥdšt ('new city') in reference to the older 'Tyre'.
2339: top-notch May 14, 2021
Origins of phrases are notoriously hard to gauge and are often subject to a number of rival folk-etymologies. The phrase 'top-notch' for instance has been used at least since the mid-19th century but where it comes from is not entirely clear. While the association between 'top' and 'best' is long-established, also seen in 'top-shelf' which may have influenced it, it is not clear what is the notch in question. Some have connected this to mountaineering both in the sense of the mountain itself (more likely) or in the notching to denote the difficulty of the trail (less likely). Others have pointed to phrases like "being knocked down a peg" and other sporting references with the idea that this comes from measuring sticks or even bow-strings, but these have their own problems, especially the archery idea which traced the origin back too far reasonably. While it may have been influenced by lots of factors (probably hiking mostly) phrases and slang is notoriously hard to trace and will be fraught with fiction.
2314: Cat=Dog, Lamb, and Goat?—Wanderwort Apr 17, 2021
The word for 'dog' in Latin is 'canis' (hence English's 'canine') but the word for 'puppy' is 'catulus'. This also led to its own derivative word in English: 'cat'. This gets stranger however, with more distant relation to the Russian око́т (okót) meaning 'lamb', and Old Irish 'cadla' for 'goat'. Others go on still to connect this to the Arabic قِطّ (qiṭṭ) (i.e. 'cat) and other Semitic words to classify this root as a wanderwort across Indo-European, Uralic, and Semitic languages without one clear origin. The original idea seems to involve however young, often small animals, or sometimes more generally animal fertility.
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'.
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.
2282: Length of a Mile: Past and Present Mar 16, 2021
Though most countries have officially switched to the metric system, there are some ways in which imperial terminology has crept back in. For instance, in Norway and Sweden people still use the word for 'mile' to refer to a distance of 10 kilometers. Historically, in those places a mile would have been between 10.688 kilometers in Sweden to 11.295 kilometers in Norway. Earlier still, in both Scandinavia and Germany it was equal to 4 minutes of arc or just over 7,421m (a Roman mile was about 1 minute arc on the Earth's surface). Similarly large, in Russia a mill unit was equal to seven versta, or about 7,468 meters, many times larger than a mile in the US. There is some debate about the length of Aramaic term מיל (mil), but most agree on 2,000 cubits (~3,000ft or close to a kilometer), but some say it is equivalent to the Roman mile since this is where the term comes from.
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'.
2277: Optative Voice Mar 11, 2021
In certain languages, there is another mood along with indicative, subjunctive, imperative and the like known as the optative expressing a wish, as might be covered in English by 'if only...'. This was common verbal mood across Indo-European languages historically but these have usually been lost in a gradual process of morphological and syntactic simplification, reducing many distinct specific features for less precise periphrastic constructions. Some languages like Sanskrit and Ancient Greek are well known for this, but it is retained in Albanian, Armenian, and Kurdish, as well as non-Indo-European languages like Navajo, Yupik, Turkish and Georgian. English cannot neatly express this, but modal verbs like 'may' in "may you have good health" convey a similar intent, though this is also possible even with the present tense as in "G-d help us". In Albanian this is known as "mënyra dëshirore" or literally "wishing mood".
2270: Elves in Old English Compounds Mar 4, 2021
Elves have not only had a lasting impression on given-names (conceptually speaking), but historically there was a much greater presence of elf-based compounds. For instance ælfadl (nightmare) literally 'elf-disease' and ælfsogoða (hiccough) or 'elf-heartburn'. Elves, seen as malicious creatures, were thought by many to cause many afflictions. Indeed, the phrase elf-lock is still used today to refer to tangled hair. In a distant sense, this may also be related to the 'Alps' mountain range.
2262: alchemy Feb 24, 2021
No one knows the precise origin of the word 'alchemy', but that doesn't mean we can't learn a lot from it. For one thing, although there is a principle in more modern words for Arabic loan words, this is a case wherein the Arabic (al-) meaning 'the' does not turn into 'au-' in French, even though it was borrowed into English from Old French from an earlier Arabic اَلْكِيمِيَاء (al-kīmiyā). Beyond that, it is not quite certain. An even earlier in Greek χημεία (khēmeía) refers to a liquid mixture extracted from gold, not creating it, from a root meaning 'to pour', but many think it it originally Egyptian. At that, people aren't sure which word it would be, but the leading candidate seems to be Χημία (Khēmía), a name for Egypt itself literally meaning, 'black earth'. Indeed, as happens in many cases, the answer is likely influence from both sources, especially considering that there was a lot of cross-cultural contact in the Ancient world.
2250: test Feb 11, 2021
While there are a number of words surprisingly related to 'testify' or 'testimony', 'test' is not one of them. This word actually for much of history both in English and the original Latin referred to a potsherd, or another small piece of pottery. The sense which it currently holds of an examination is relatively modern, deriving from the notion of checking molten metal in a mold, which eventually superseded the original sense of the word.
2246: ham & hambone Feb 7, 2021
Ham has been strongly associated with the theatre since the late 19th century. A couple of different phrases popular at the time such as 'ham-handed' (clumsy) and 'hamfatter' (low quality) were used generically, but these became connected with low-caliber actors and performances, especially with regard to minstrel shows. This led to the sense of 'ham' or 'hammy' today as 'overacting' or just generally exaggerated, also found in the phrase 'going ham (on...)'. While this would often connote anything done in an amateur way, the term 'hambone' meaning 'inferior actor' is a remnant of this, and is still associated as a description of often exaggerated aspects of black culture.
2240: The Transformation of 'Hide' pt. 2 Feb 1, 2021
Previously, it was discussed how 'hide' (verb) has a vast array of related words; many closer related than 'hide' as a noun. These may seem surprising on the surface, like 'sky' and 'shoe', but also consider that 'hide' has changed a lot over time too. Take for instance that the verb used to be weak, which is to say it would have conjugated like
hide-hided-hided rather than
hide-hid-hidden
In general, the tendency is to expect that as time goes on, the creation and productivity of these so-called strong verbs—verbs that indicate tense with changing the internal vowel—to decline.