1551: hussey Mar 13, 2019

Several English words simply denoting women over time have changed to gain many negative connotations. This is true of 'hussy' which comes from a contraction of 'housewife' in Middle English. This by itself is not so strange given the number of other historical examples for which this similar process happens, but what is strange is that there are now two different words. 'Housewife' as the compound used in Modern English is a restoration of the original. The linguistic term for this sort of split is doublet.
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1550: judaism and islam Mar 12, 2019

Buddhism is named for the 'Buddha', Christianity is named for 'Christ', and Judaism is named for 'Judah', not because he was the favorite son of Isaac in the Bible, but because it was the last Jewish kingdom and 'Judea' was the name outsiders learned. However, 'Islam' did not gain its name from something like this. Instead, the word comes from the root S-L-M and means 'submission' or 'surrender'; it is also related to the Arabic 'salām' (سلام), and the Hebrew 'shalom' (שלום) which mean 'peace'.
Watch the new video that came out yesterday about the definition for a language: https://youtu.be/4CM7-BMO3vk

1549: elbow and ell Mar 11, 2019

Elbows could be associated with other sorts of bending bows, but what they shouldn't be associated with is ells—etymologically speaking—as in a 90º bend: L. While that is one meaning of 'ell', the 'el-' in 'elbow' comes from 'ell', the meaning in this case is different; it actually is an old unit of measurement, which, like the cubit, was the length of one's arm: about 45in/114cm, or more traditionally, 6 wide handbreadths. It should be noted that like 'longyards', 'longtons', 'longmiles', and 'long-hundreds' and their non-long counterparts, a handbreadth is not the same as a wide handbreadth, as otherwise an ell would only be 24in.

1548: Disproportionally Learned Languages Mar 10, 2019

English is by far the most learned second language (L2) of any language in the world, but because it still has quite a large amount of native speakers (L1), the ratio of L2 to L1 is not the greatest. It is difficult to measure that in particular, but the highest ratio in this category would probably go to Swahili, which has nearly 5 times as many second language speakers than native ones. For comparison, L2 English speakers only outnumber native speakers by about 1.6 times.
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1547: The Problem of No Proto-Sino-Tibetan Mar 9, 2019

While the Sino-Tibetan language family is the second-most widely spoken language family, it does not have an accepted proto-language created from it in the same way as has been done for the Indo-European language family. On the surface this might not sound like a problem, but the issue is that while lower branches of the family have been reconstructed, such as Lolo-Burmese, there is still not a conclusion as to which languages belong to certain families, or which are isolates. This means that many efforts to classify certain subgroups are really just estimates that might vary from study-to-study.

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1546: bald Mar 8, 2019

Unlike many other Germanic like the German and Yiddish 'bald' meaning 'soon', the English 'bald' is actually not related, and comes from a Celtic source. In Welsh, and indeed for a long time after the word was used in English, it did not mean 'bare' as it does today, but referred to a white streak, especially on a horses face. It was only much later that it related to a patch of hairlessness.

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1545: The Most Tonal Languages Mar 7, 2019

Languages native to every continent, except for mainland Australia, have some tonal systems or another, but some of these are simpler than others. While plenty of these only have one or two distinctions, the Hmong language has at least seven or eight tones. Some languages in Asia have six tones, so this isn't significantly higher than those necessarily, but with distinctions between words like pitch, length of vowels, or even case-endings, people tend to opt for simplicity, or are limited by the average person's ability to listen, remember, and reproduce all of the distinctions. Ultimately, even though it does allow for more short words, distinctions like tone are unnecessary enough to have somewhat of an upper limit.

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1544: Vittle vs Victual Mar 6, 2019

English spelling often is not clearly related to the pronunciation, and while this is an acknowledged nuisance, there have been times when this is done, if not intentionally, then incidentally counterproductively. In the past for instance, the word 'victual' was written as 'vittle', and given that 'vittle' does rhyme with 'little' and 'tittle', this pattern makes a lot of sense. However, 'victual' with the addition of the notable C especially mirrors the original Latin 'victualis'. In Latin however, the sounds represented by the spelling would have been more or less pronounced.

To see more about the history of writing, click here: https://youtu.be/dntJLHmkfhw

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1543: tantalize Mar 5, 2019

Even though it was never part of the culture of the English, there are a number of words which come from Greek mythology which have entered the English language. This is true of words like 'narcissism' and 'clue', but also 'tantalize'. Unlike the other words with the '-alize' suffix, such as 'nationalize', 'tantalize' is not completely connected to that ending. Instead, the word comes from 'Tantalus', who was cursed to be in a pool of water with fruit over his head that he could not consume.
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1542: Naming a Big Region for a Small One: africa and asia Mar 4, 2019

While in most cases, it is easier to have a general umbrella term for a collection of related topics, but sometimes this happens the other way around. Like in the case of the use of 'Holland', which can refer to the netherlands but is actually only a region of it, both 'Africa', and 'Asia' come from words that initially only described small regions. In the case of Asia, it is thought that the name comes from a Greek word relating to sunrise, and hence the East. However, this was only in relation to Anatolia, which coincidentally today is sometimes called Asia Minor. In the case of Africa, the origin is more disputed, but no matter what, the namesake was only a province in the Roman Empire around modern-day Tunisia.
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1541: Language and Diversity Mar 3, 2019

Some of the countries with the least racial or cultural diversity have the most ethnic diversity, depending upon how one chooses to look at it. In terms of languages, Pew Research released a figure of the most diverse countries based upon combinations of ethnicity and languages, and the some of the most diverse countries, without a dominant languages or single set of cultural values were found in Africa, like Chad, Nigeria, Togo and the DRC, but also Papua New Guinea and other places with high concentrations of linguistic diversity instead of a mostly dominant language. Argentina and Rwanda (because of the genocide) were some of the least diverse. Ultimately, identity, and group identity, hinges on lots of factors, but no doubt language is a big one.
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1540: hazard Mar 2, 2019

Gambling is certainly risky business, and while this isn’t reflected in the word ‘gambling’ itself—which is thought to come from ‘game’—the word ‘hazad’ does hint at this. Ultimately, the English word ‘hazard’ comes from the Persian ‘zār’ meaning ‘dice’. However, the reason why the English word is so different looking today, is that, like many words that are derived from this region, it travel via Arabic in the form of ‘az-zahr’, and then Spanish in the period of Moorish rule, next to Old French in the time that the Normans controlled English. 
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1539: disaster Mar 1, 2019

Whether or not you believe in astrology, it is probably safe to say that earlier civilizations put more stock into it than people do today. Taking the example of ‘disaster’ for instance, the word came to English in the 16th century from ‘disastro’, literally meaning ‘bad star’. 
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1538: lemur Feb 28, 2019

European colonial powers at the time encountered many unique places, peoples, and animals, all of which needed a name. Some of these animals bore native names, others were named from relation to other things, but others were names more descriptively. With the lemur for instance, found only in Madagascar, the name comes from the Latin 'lemures' meaning ‘spirits of the dead’, due to the association made with its apparently specter-like facial features.
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1537: Sandwiches Feb 27, 2019

There are lots of different names for sandwiches, including in the United States 'hoagies', 'submarines', 'po'boys', 'heros' and 'grinders'. All of those have distinct origins, relating to shape, ingredients, and in more than one case, pejoratives for Italians. In the United Kingdom however, it is generally more common to nickname something by abbreviation, which shows itself to be true here with 'butty' (from 'buttered sandwich) and 'sarnie'. In the latter case, there is noticeably the insertion of [r], however, this probably—at least at first—had less to do with the pronunciation, and just represented a lengthened vowel, as is often the case in non-rhotic dialects, such as British English.

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1536: Peking and Beijing Feb 26, 2019

For various reasons throughout history many cities and even countries change their names. Sometimes this is for colonial reasons, as was the case recently with the switch from 'Swaziland' to 'Eswatini' or 'Rhodesia' to 'Zimbabwe', and at other times it is just to reflect demographics or other things like with 'Burma' to 'Myanmar', which wanted to reflect that not all of its citizens were ethnically Burmese. However, when people started calling 'Peking' 'Beijing', this was not for some colonial issue, but just that both were attempts to transliterate the name of the Chinese capital. The only curious part is that many Chinese officials are upset when English speakers say 'Peking', but when Germans, French, or the Spanish say 'Peking' or 'Pekín, or 'Pékin' respectively, this doesn't seem to be an issue.
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1535: pamphlet Feb 25, 2019

While it is today associated with short, often news-related literature, the word 'pamphlet' actually comes from a familiar form of the name Pamphilet. This comes from the Latin poem 'Pamphilus, seu de Amore' (Pamphilus, or of Love), which doesn't have anything itself to do with pamphlets, but the poem was circulated widely and wasn't very long, so in essence connoted the same things how it is today.
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1534: Biblical Languages Feb 24, 2019

The Christian Bible was written in 3 different languages, and each shows a different history of the people within it. The first 5 books were in Hebrew originally, and then later as the prophetic writings were often in Aramaic. Later on, the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, but while none of these were completely separate, such as marginal notes and other commentaries of the first 5 books being written in Aramaic. This is relevant to keep in mind when reading translations, but it also helps to explain, for instance, why later languages often have so much influence from Aramaic, as this was still actively used by some groups until the ninth century, and many words were extracted from the religious texts after then.

For more on this, watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTKKSf35LSE&t=32s

1533: earth-apple and chamomile Feb 23, 2019

As has been covered a few times here before, 'apple' has given its name to many different varieties of fruits and vegetables in many different languages around the world, from 'apelsin' meaning 'orange' in Swedish literally translating to 'china-apple', as well as both 'pomme de terre' in French and תפוח אדמה in Hebrew translating literally as 'apple of the earth' but meaning 'potato'. However, this is also true historically of things that don't even have the same shape or size of an apple at all. The word 'chamomile' comes to English via French and Latin from the Greek 'khamaimēlon' (χαμαίμηλον) which also means ‘earth-apple’. In this case however, it is not from a visual resemblance, but because the flowers apparently spelt like apple. For more about the difficultly in describing smells, watch this video: https://youtu.be/3zz9Hf2KUbg

1532: Singular and Plural Agreement for Collective Nouns Feb 22, 2019

In American English, collective nouns (i.e. nouns that refer to groups of things like 'family' or 'committee') are almost always treated as a singular, but this is not always the case in British English. In British English, collective nouns do usually have singular agreement (e.g. 'family is' not 'family are') but this is only when the group is being referred to as a whole. At other times, if one wanted to emphasize the individual parts of said group, one using British English conventions would opt for plural agreement, such as 'the family is convening' but perhaps 'the family are quarreling'.
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