1633: gauntlet Jun 4, 2019

It is not uncommon in English words that end in -et to find they come from French, and this is especially true of older words, because it is a French diminutive suffix, like in 'ballet' or 'pocket'. 'Gauntlet', for instance, is a long glove, particularly in armor. Indeed, the word for 'glove' in French, then and now, is 'gant', but this comes from Germanic origin. The word in German for a 'glove' is 'Handshuh' (literally 'hand-shoe’), but it wasn't always so literal. In Frankish the word was 'want', and this is still true in other Germanic languages like Dutch, Danish, and Swedish more or less. It is less common that a Germanic word would enter a Romance language than the reverse, but even Medieval Latin got the word for 'glove', 'wantus', from this.

1632: The Alphabet's Pronunciation: U and Y Jun 3, 2019

The names for the letters in many alphabets like in German or Estonian etc. more or less mirror the sounds being represented: not so in English. Though the story is complicated for each letter, most shifted away from the simpler pronunciations in the 15th century, but in a few cases it happened later. It wasn't until the 17th century that U was pronounced [iu] like in 'few' (or simply 'ew'!) rather than just [u] as in 'too'. The only one that isn't known for sure is the pronunciation of Y; in German it's 'upsilon', like the Greek ɛ 'epsilon' and in French it's 'igrec' meaning 'Greek I', but the English name for the letter is more removed and less certain. There will be more on the whole alphabet's pronunciation soon.

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1631: dreidl Jun 2, 2019

Following yesterday's post about the folk-etymology surrounding dreidls, if someone needed further evidence that they're not of Semitic origin, it would be as easy as going to ask a child. 'Dreidl' (דרײדל‎) comes from 'dreien' meaning 'to turn', like the German 'drehen', but in Hebrew the word is 'sevivon' (סביבון), and this was invented by the 5 year-old son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who had invented Modern Hebrew. It is based from the Semitic root meaning 'to turn', but at the time, another word from Hayyim Nahman Bialik, "kirkar", was in use, based on the root for "to spin" but this did not catch on in spoken Hebrew. Many other words were used in Yiddish dialects too, based on Germanic or Slavic words.

1630: Dreidl Markings Jun 1, 2019

A dreidl, spelt in a variety of different ways, is a kind of top found traditionally in many different European cultures. In Jewish traditions however, they are 4-sided with each side having a different letter: נ (Nun), ג (Gimel), ה (Hei), ש (Shin). These stand in for Yiddish words, here transliterated; the Nun for 'nisht' ("nothing"), Hei for 'halb' ("half"), Gimel for 'gants' ("all"), and Shin for 'shtel ayn' ("put in"). These are more or less translations of the German equivalents, but these days many think of them as coming from the Hebrew phrase, transliterated, 'nes gadol hayah sham' ("a great miracle happened there"), and even in some parts of the word the Shin is swapped for a פ (Peh) to mean 'here' instead, but this is not true. More will be discussed about this in tomorrow's post.

1629: humongous May 31, 2019

Most people will probably have experienced jumbling together two words by mistake while trying to articulate one. In the case of 'humongous', the process through which it came about isn't exactly like that, but it isn't totally like a normal compound either. The word originated in the 1970's, and is thought to be a blend of 'huge' and 'monstrous', but as should be evident, the term did not emerge just from those two words, as it the stress and syllable structures are not totally the same. It is believed that 'humongous' was influenced from the same stress-pattern as 'stupendous'. Though there are plenty of compounds and portmanteaus in English, not all of them maintain each element as it originally was.

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1627: R: a Dog's Letter May 29, 2019

Much of the way that people know how languages sounded in the past is simple analogous descriptions. For example, writers in both Latin and Middle English would liken the pronunciation of R to the growling of dogs, indicating that the sound was trilled, unlike in Modern Standard English. In fact, a name for the letter R in Latin was 'littera canīna' which is literally 'the dog's letter'. This might sound silly, but these sorts of things have helped to further linguistics.
For more about R, read this.

1626: podcast May 28, 2019

Historically, the influence of rhyming has led to the creation or modification of many words along the way.  While as a trend this is less common today than at other times in history, this still happens plenty. For instance, the word 'podcast' was created deliberately to sound like 'broadcast'. It is true that it is a contraction of 'iPod' and '-cast', but it could have just as well have been called something more general or fitting like 'webcast' was, but it wouldn't have sounded as catchy.

1625: worry May 27, 2019

Since emotions naturally have physiological responses to them, many words have some relation across both. Just like, 'clam (up)', 'choke (up)', and 'verklempt' the pressure and muscular tension that one feel when emotional translates into the language too. In the case of 'worry', the approach is a bit more historical, but the effect is the same, as in Old English, 'wyrgan', meant 'to strangle'. A worried person might feel strangled, but actually the word only started applying to emotions in the Middle English period when the word came to mean 'tear at the throat' and then less harshly 'harass'. In fact, 'worry' could only be used as a verb, and therefore in the context of 'worrying someone' until the 19th century, and the word is still used to describe dogs and other animals gnawing and chewing.

1624: cuckold and cuckquean May 26, 2019

A number of birds are considered to be brooding parasites, because they lay their eggs in other birds' nests. One such bird is the cuckoo bird, and while its name is imitative, it has lead to more words later on. The term 'cuckold' comes from the relation to the birds laying eggs in another bird's nest, and moreover, cuckoos were common in folklore of the Middle Ages, which helped to popularize the idea. While the term 'cuckold' has around since at least the 13th century, by the 16th century, the term 'cuckquean' was coined as the feminine form.

1623: bridge (for boats) May 25, 2019

In older ships, the captain would stand in in the middle to give orders. However, as ships developed, new platforms needed to be made on the main deck. This all changed with the advent of steam ships and paddle ships, because these interfered with the pilot and the captains field of vision. As such, the bridge over the paddles was built. Today, this is no longer the case, but the term ‘bridge’ is still in use.

1622: pristine and primate May 24, 2019

The Latin 'primus' meaning 'first', has lead to many English words, such as 'prime', which mean 'first' but also 'best'. In the case of 'primate', this is still true, and has to do with the zoological order being considered of the first, highest order. However, this is where 'primitive' comes from because it also meant 'undeveloped'. Moreover, the word 'pristine', which today means 'spotless' or 'unspoilt' also meant 'primitive; undeveloped' or less judgmentally at least 'original' in the past. This was the case since the 16th century, and only changed to what it is now in the 1920s. As a side-note, at the time when 'primate' was coined for animals, bats were considered primates too.

1621: jerk May 23, 2019

While 'to jerk' and 'to pull' are sometimes synonymous, their usage in 'jerk chicken' and 'pulled pork' are not. The reason for this is in the etymology. The verb 'to jerk' can be used to describe an array of sudden, sharp movements, and fittingly it thought to come from the sound of a whip, though over the years it has certainly changed. However, the dish is one of Latin American origins, and has its roots in the South American language Quechua's 'echarqui' meaning ‘dried flesh’, and it entered English via the Spanish Spanish 'charquear'.

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1620: Convergent Evolutions: Corona and Kalilah May 22, 2019

Although it is not always possible to translate the extra connotations a word carries in one language into another, sometimes they developed similarly enough that it isn't a problem. The Latin word 'corona', for instance, meant 'garland', but that then gained other connotations of anything arranged in a circle, including metal crowns (a word also derived from 'corona'). However, it also denoted an assembly of people, usually related to academics. In Aramaic too, the word 'כלילא' ('kalilah') refers to a garland of flowers, and an assembly of teachers. This happens sometimes by accident when there is a natural or in this case a cultural connection between the two ideas is strong; Aramaic and Latin are not related.

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1619: lampoon May 21, 2019

The word 'lampoon' used to describe satirical work comes from French, but no one knows why for sure. The word is believed to have had the meaning in French of 'let us drink'; in the 17th century 'lampons' was a common refrain in drinking-songs. The word itself comes from 'lamper' ('to gulp') which is a form of 'laper' ('liquid') related to the English verb 'lap'. While this is not controversial information, no on is quite sure why this came to denote satire.
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1618: Learn: to Learn and to Teach May 20, 2019

In many ways, English is the odd one out in the Germanic family, but this has also given many lexical differences not present elsewhere. For instance, in English, 'learn' and 'teach' are not interchangeable, though until the 19th century, 'learn' carried both meanings. This is true in German still, where 'lernen' is 'to learn' and 'to teach', though a 'Lerner' is only a learner; 'teacher' is the quite-similar 'Lehrer' though. The word 'teach' is of Germanic origin, but did not catch on the same way in other Germanic languages. It comes from a root meaning 'show' related to 'token' and its German synonym 'Zeichen'.

For a recent Word Theory relating to German's history, click here.

1617: wheelhouse May 19, 2019

For something to be "in your wheelhouse", it is something in which you have knowledge, control, or ease in doing. Going off the obviously compounded name, and it is easy to see how this term could have originated as a nautical term. On a boat, a wheelhouse is the control center, though not the command center, as that's the bridge. Indeed, the term began to denote a simple wooden box used to cover the steering wheel whoever manned it from the elements. Thus, something in the wheelhouse was something easily controlled.
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1615: cockpit May 17, 2019

The word 'cockpit' today is most often used in aviation, but—as with many of those terms—the origins are nautical. The cockpit originated as the term for the seat of the coxswain, who commands the rowing and steering. However, more literally, the term has also been used to describe a pit used for cockfighting in middle English. The term, however has been transferred to all sorts of things, including the lower part of the ships too, so there is not as much consistency as one might expect. It was only in the 1930's that first cars (usually in racing) and then planes also had sections referred to as the cockpit. 
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1614: joe, Cup of | May 16, 2019

The origin of 'joe' as 'coffee' is unclear, but there are a number of quite wide-ranging theories. On one end, some believe it comes from the name of an American coffee merchant at the turn of the last century, Joseph Martinson, and on the other end, some believe it is an alteration of the Indonesian island 'Java'. Neither make total sense chronologically and otherwise, and the former was no doubt influenced by advertising, but there is an explanation to bridge the gap. 'Joe' used to be the term for a Portuguese coin from the name of the king of Portugal in the 1770's, so given Portuguese control of what is now Indonesia, Brazil, and other coffee-growing areas, this could be a source on its own or in conjunction with another.
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1613: The Great Vowel Shift: canaan May 15, 2019

The English pronunciation of 'Canaan' is relatively closer to the Hebrew form כנען (knʿn) where it is derived compared to the later Greek synonym 'Phoenicia', but it is still quite different. First, Semitic languages have their stress later in the word than in Germanic languages usually, but earlier English pronunciations of Canaan used to be closer to the original. During the Great Vowel Shift, which moved English from Middle English to Modern English the [aː] sound—which is the same as in 'hat' in Standard British English became [eɪ] as in the first syllable of 'Canaan', but this is further from the physiologically central [ə] in Hebrew. So, when it was a just loanword from Latin and earlier Greek, the name was closer to how it originally was, as Hebrew and other Semitic languages can replace any unstressed vowel with a [ə] or something close.

1612: canaan and phoenician May 14, 2019

In the Bible, far and away the most used ethnic term to be found is 'Canaan(ite)'. The term 'Canaanite' is from the name given by its own peoples, but some people may be more familiar with the Greek derivative 'Phoenician' or the Latin-based 'Punics' as in the Punic Wars. Even though the names look different, they are are understood to come from words for 'purple', as this seafaring traders were best to some for their dies, such as Tyrian or "Royal" Purple from shell-based inks. Indeed, the Greeks and Romans did have a word for these people resembling the native one 'Χαναάν' (Khanaan) and 'Canaan' respectively, but the calques were more popular.
There will be more on this tomorrow, but you can read more on this people here.