2143: Productivity of 'fruit' Oct 27, 2020
The idea of fruit having a more generic sense of 'productivity' is fairly obvious considering phrases like "fruit of the womb" (children) and its tongue-in-cheek offshoot "fruit of the loom" (clothing) or just 'fruitful' all having meanings not relating to tree-fruit. Indeed, etymologically this is true many times over considering words like the Latin 'frui' (enjoy), German 'brauchen' (to need), and so forth all originate from the Proto-IndoEuropean root *bʰruHg- (to benefit from). This pattern of success, enjoyment, and physical productive creation exists across many other languages. The sense in English for many centuries was anything that came from the ground, including vegetables, which, like with apples, gained more specific meaning over time. NB the English 'blade'—for both swords and leaves, as in grass—originated with the botanical meaning, and shares an etymological root with this very productive 'fruit'.
2139: excruciate and crucifiction Oct 23, 2020
Christianity historically has had a large influence on languages around the world, and many phrases like "one's cross to bear" have entered mainstream lexicon. One example people may not even realize though comes from 'excruciate' which can refer to anything being exceptionally bad or unpleasant. The Latin Latin 'excruciat-' however means 'tormented' and comes from 'crux' meaning 'cross' i.e. as if being crucified. Some have contested the idea that the was so literal and point also to the use of "crux interpretum" or "point of interpretation" such as a decision that is impossible to make, and thus stress-inducing but certainly the connotations will always be strong either way.
2137: ciao Oct 21, 2020
Especially in Italy but also around Europe more broadly thanks in part to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ‘ciao’ is a common greeting. As might be discerned from the fact that it is used for both farewells and meeting, it has a generic meaning along the likes of ‘aloha’ (love) or ‘shalom’ [שלום] (‘peace’), but in this case it comes as a variation to a dialectal form of Italian ‘schiavo’ meaning ‘I am your slave’, shortened from the Latin phrase ‘servus humillimus, domine spectabilis’ (I am your humble servant, admirable lord). In that sense, it is a gesture of humility. However, in the Italian, like ‘slave’ itself, the word also comes from the same root as ‘Slav’, but in Greek Σκλάβος (sklábos) and Latin ‘sclāvus’ the word has a [k] that is not seen in either English or Italian but is still seen in German ‘Sklave’. This is also connected with the Greek κλάβος (klábos) meaning ‘fame; renown’, which was also itself used as a greeting, but in any case in Italian [skl] becomes [sch] as with ‘ciao’ (or ‘schiavo’) . The [s] at the beginning just got dropped off.
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2134: Lifting and Stealing Oct 18, 2020
A number of languages have a connection between words meaning 'to lift' and theft. In the case literally of 'lift' it has been suggested it might actually be related to the Gothic 𐌷𐌻𐌹𐍆𐍄𐌿𐍃 (hliftus) meaning 'theif'. If so, it would have a connection to the Latin 'cleptus' (Greek κλέπτω (kléptō)), or in other words the same root as 'cleptomaniac'. Indeed the Greek has a far more general meaning including not only theft per se but also cheating and disguising.
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2119: leopard and panther Oct 3, 2020
Leopards and panthers are the same species, even if people usually use 'panther' to describe the black ones. These two terms have existed alongside each other for milenia, and in Latin 'pardus' and 'leopardus' was apparently the source of some confusion, but they both are from the same word: 'pard', as found in 'camelopard' (i.e. ’camel’+’pard’ = giraffe). The 'leo-' of 'leopard' means 'lion'.
2112: augur Sep 26, 2020
Today, the word 'augury' refers to anything which is a sign for the future, or in particular a sort of omen, whether seen to be good or bad. 'Augur' is now used as a verb but it started as a noun as the '-y' suffix suggests, denoting a specific Roman official who observed signs in nature to predict the future. Most especially this would depend on birds, and though it is uncertain some suggest that 'augur' comes from the Latin 'avis' (bird) and 'garrire' (to talk). Otherwise, it could be related to 'Augustus' meaning 'growing (in might)'.
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2055: Words for Wine across Linguistic Boundaries Jul 31, 2020
Wine is something that has been shared around the Mediterranean and beyond, both literally and also linguistically. Old, basic concepts tend to have lots of related cognated across related languages, but in the case of 'wine' it is actually shared across unrelated languages as well. 'Wine' in English comes from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root '*uoin-a-', and there are plenty of other PIE-descended words too, like the Latin 'vinum'. Likewise, there are many related non-PIE words like the Georgian ღვინო (gvino), the Armenian գինի (gini), the Hebrew יין (yáyin), the Amharic ወይን (wäyn), and the Swahili 'mvinyo'. Of course, many of these words, including those of Africa and Northern Europe especially will be borrowed, but there is no consensus as to whether this original root is from a Semitic, Indo-European, or even Kartvelian language; some theories will be more convincing than others though.
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1930: virtual vs. virtuous Mar 28, 2020
Computers and the Internet have created a new sort of necessity for the word 'virtual', but its definition as "like something in essence but not actually" has been around since the 15th century or so. However, the word is a doublet with 'virtuous' which clearly has a very different meaning. Both of these come from the Latin 'virtus' meaning 'excellency; efficacy' or literally 'manliness' (i.e. also like a person) which lead to the split for 'virtue'.
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1368: Living vs. Merely Revived Sep 9, 2018
One thing that separates Modern Hebrew from Cornish is that it changed. Like any second language learner will know, sometimes the textbook-version of a language will be technically correct but sound odd to native language speakers. This is because languages are constantly evolving, and the writers of language learning tools can both only work so fast, and want to try to follow patterns more closely than otherwise. When efforts to revive a language take place, one thing everyone involved must keep in mind is that the original form of the language should not be identical to what's being taught. This, in large part, is why even when languages like Cornish or Latin are taught to people—including children—they are still considered dead, but Hebrew is living; only a living language can evolve.
1167: Writing Systems: An Overview Feb 18, 2018
There are many different writing systems from all over the world, used with varying frequency, but not all of these are alphabets. The most obvious example of this may be with pictographic and logographic writing systems (symbols that represent words but aren't images thereof), which aren't alphabets because little to no attempt needs to be made to convey the way that the word sounds. This is why Cantonese and Mandarin (are not mutually intelligible when spoken always, but are written in much the same way. However the list goes on, for instance with abjads, such as for Arabic, Hebrew, and also Tifinagh, Syriac, and ancient Phoenician for which consonants are represented, but not necessarily vowels; Greek and by extension Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are essentially Phoenician but written left-to-right and with the addition of vowels. There are also syllabaries—where a syllable is represented but not the individual sounds—such as for Cherokee or Katakana Japanese. Finally, there are abugidas, which represent consonant-vowel segments; this gives the vowel more prevalence than in an abjad, but not equal status to consonants, such as in an alphabet. Of course, some languages are more suited for certain writing-systems than others, which is why Inuit words look so long written in the Latin script, and but why the Cree abugida (used for some Inuit-Yupik languages) could not be used for Georgian, with its long consonant-clusters.
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156: Lorem Ipsum May 13, 2015
Any of you who do publishing or graphic design, or even made a powerpoint have seen, 'lorem ipsum'. Interestingly, there is no Latin word 'lorem', but neither was Cicero just making up words. This is originally from a passage which seeming to start with, "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet", but there was a piece missing of this fragment: it starts with "neque porro quisquam est qui do-". 'Lorem ipsum' requires 'do-' (i.e.’ dolorum’) and because it requires text, it now is used to show that (or where) the input of text is necessary.