1772: dolphin Oct 21, 2019

Dogs may today be "man's best friend", but some think dolphins should take that title in the classical world. There is a half-myth that 'dolphin' comes from a word 'meaning 'brother' because of how human-like they are; these facts are mostly true separately but the narrative is false. Indeed, 'adelphos' (ἀδελφός) also found in 'Philadelphia'—"the city of brotherly love"—means 'brothers', but a better translation here would be 'womb'; dolphins got the name here because they are mammals so the females have wombs, and it means 'brother' too, but only because of the idea that brothers would share a womb.
Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

1771: AM and AG Oct 20, 2019

Yesterday, the Latin precursor for BC, ACN, was discussed, but this is far from the only notation for years out there. In addition to the secular BCE and CE (Before Common Era; Common Era)—replacements to AD and BC/ACN respectively—there is also AM or 'Anno Mundi'. This is not so widely used anymore, but meaning 'in the year of the world', this was used in tandem with AD to refer to modern dates based off of the year of creation as described in Genesis. To be clear, it actually starts just under 1 year before creation, yielding this current year as AM 5780. Other than this, a few minor systems for notation exist, like Anno Graecum (AG), with the years starting with the reconquest of Babylon.

1770: AD, BC, and ACN Oct 19, 2019

Most people will be familiar with AD and BC use for writing years, but it may strike you as strange that one is Latin, Anno Domini (in the year of our lord), and one is English, Before Christ. Indeed, while this notation is fairly old—from the 5th century but not popular until the 9th—the earlier version of BC was 'ante Christum natum' (before Christ's birth). This is sometimes abbreviated 'a.Ch.n' or 'ACN', but this is not as popular now, or even always historically; St. Bede used a different phrase for instance.

More on this tomorrow.

Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

1769: decollate Oct 18, 2019

There are plenty of times when a words—based off spelling and or pronunciation—may have two or more separate meanings. Sometimes this can happen with doublets—two words with the same origin but different developments—but in the case of 'decollate', there were two origins for two words that happen to look the same and mean similar things. 'Decollate' meaning 'behead' is related to 'collar' (i.e. 'neck'), or also meaning 'to tear pieces of paper'. However, the first meaning comes from the Latin 'collum' meaning 'neck' whereas the second meaning comes ultimately from a participle of the the Latin 'confer', 'collat-', meaning 'bring together'. The negative prefix for both is the same though.

Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

1768: Censoring 'Belly' Oct 17, 2019

Following up on the term 'midriff' from yesterday, not only did the word 'riff' as 'stomach' not survive on its own, but even 'midriff' is something of a revived word. From the 18th century onwards, it fell into disuse, but was brought back in the 1940's as a way to avoid saying 'belly' in fashion. In those days though, it was supposed to mean 'the part of a garment which covers the midriff'; crop-tops weren't so popular back then. In fact, that word might sound innocent now, but in that time 'belly' was censored in films as well, so euphemisms were necessary.

1767: midriff Oct 16, 2019

There are plenty of examples of how a language may change and the individual words don't always catch up. For instance, in Old English, the word 'hrif' meant 'belly'; this is where the term 'midriff'—as in the space between the waist and chest—comes from. However, neither the words 'low-riff', 'upper-riff' or any other sort of 'riff' exist' because the word fell out of favor except in this one context.

Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

NB: 'Belly' is also from Old English, but back then it meant 'bag'.

1766: montjuïc Oct 15, 2019

In Barcelona, the mountain Montjuïc means 'Jewish mountain', but this was disputed historically. There was an idea that circulated for a while that the name comes from 'Mons Iovicus' (Mount Jupiter), but in documents dating from at least the 9th century this place has been referred to with 'Mons Judaicus' or 'Monte Judaico' and 11th century records show that the area was a Jewish cemetery. Suffice it to say that the other etymology holds little clout.

See the next 4 video-topics on Patreon.com/wordfacts

1765: Articles in Countries' Names

There are three main reasons why a country would have an article in the name. For many, it is a translation, like 'the Netherlands' (the lowlands), 'the Ukraine' (the borderlands), and in the case of other countries it refers to an island chain, like 'the Maldives' or 'the Philippines', or if the country was named after something else, e.g. 'the Lebanon mountains', 'the Sudan desert'. There are some exceptions, like 'the Gambia', which changed its disambiguate from 'Zambia', or 'the UK' which is part of a phrase. Many of these uses are unofficial, but it should be noted that there isn't a reason that some other countries don't have an article, or why English speakers have mostly abandoned them.

1764: Articles in Country-Names Oct 13, 2019

Some countries have an article, like 'the Bahamas', but some are not official. According to the US State Department, only 2 countries are listed with an article, The Gambia and The Bahamas. This would make other places like 'the Philippines', 'the Maldives', and 'the Netherlands' technically incorrect, even though this is how they are commonly referred to. Other cases such as 'the Ukraine' are less clear; 'the Ukraine' (translated to 'the borderland') has more of a historical and linguistic precedent, but the popular usage has change over the last 2 decades or so due to Ukrainian, and particularly anti-Russian nationalism. More on articles before countries tomorrow.

1763: fetishism (LITW 11) Oct 12, 2019

In the below 1883 map of world religions shows the word "fetishists" and—though problematic in some ways—this is not entirely pejorative or even always reductive. 'Fetish' originally denoted idols, in particular from West African magic, and for a long time in a variety of languages such as English, French and Portuguese the word simply connoted general sorcerous, animistic, or idolatrous practices. The word is also related to 'factitious'.

NB: the term 'Mohammedan' (also 'Mohammedanism') refers to Islam.

For more Linguistics in the Wild, click here.

1762: tripoli's Oct 11, 2019

Tripoli may be the capital of Libya, but it is also the name of one of the largest Lebanese cities, a Greek City, a Turkish city, sort of. As it happens, the place in Turkey baring the name, with two more historically, were named by the Greeks, and the only modern Greek city with the name (though many more existed in Ancient Greece) was named during Ottoman rule. In the other two, likely more famous cities, were both named thousands of years ago when they were respectively under Greek rule; still they both have the same name in English, and also Arabic, طرابلس‎ (Ṭarābulus).

Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

1761: Spacing between Words Oct 10, 2019

Although a listener is able to break up words while listening, there are usually no spaces in the actual speech. There are two ways that this can be proven. The first is in the photo below which represents sound in speech, and as the arrows show, the sounds keep going one word to the next without pause. The sentence below reads "lexical segmentation i[s] sometimes really easy". The other way that this can be shown is through the fact that words are not the same in certain contexts. Consider how the [n] before a [p] in "in Paris" assimilates to an [m], just as it does in 'impossible' from the negating suffix 'in-'.

Find Word Facts at Patreon.com/wordfacts

1760: morris and mauritius Oct 9, 2019

The names 'Morris', 'Maurice', 'Moritz' and the dodo bird all have one thing in common. St. Maurice—Anglicized as 'Morris', Germanized as 'Moritz', and most importantly Latinized as 'Mauritius'—was a 3rd century martyr venerated by several different churches. He is also the namesake of the island-nation of Mauritius, from where the dodo hailed.

1759: Syllables Per Second Oct 8, 2019

Have you ever noticed that some languages seem to be spoken faster than others? There is evidence for this, measuring the syllables-per-second, but also keep in mind that not knowing where words are parsed may also make language sound faster. There are a few explanations for speed-differences, including simply cultural factors, but it is not fair to say that it is due to longer sentences compared to slower-spoken languages. Evidence suggests languages convey information at roughly the same rates, so that faster speech in languages like Spanish or Japanese—known for being spoken faster—is not because the utterances themselves are longer but is instead a choice by the speaker.

1758: ROY-G-BIV and Newton Oct 7, 2019

The reason that the rainbow has 7 colors is because of Isaac Newton. While other color-schemes had been devised since antiquity, the mnemonic ROY-G-BIV—invented by Newton—was made to describe the spectrum of light. It originally only included 5 colors: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. In addition to RYGBV making for a worse mnemonic, Newton added 'orange' and 'indigo' to make the number 7—though he could have chosen any number—in order to correspond with the number of notes in a musical scale. This is also why purple was divided into indigo and violet. Today we call Newton's blue 'cyan' and would likely call his 'indigo' 'blue', but the terms are kept due to his mnemonic.

1757: Mishearings and Language Change: "Folk Law" (LITW 10) Oct 6, 2019

Mishearings, such as that featured below, have the ability to affect spelling. Sometimes this is called an 'egg-corn' (from 'acorn') when one person misunderstands a word and replaces it with another existing one. However, this has also happened through history in a way that eventually became permanent, such as with "Elephant and Castle" in London. This is also particularly prone to happen with foreign loan words. In this case, the writer presumably meant to say 'folklore". For more Linguistics in the Wild, click here.

1756: mint (money or spice?) Oct 5, 2019

There is a myth that the word 'mint' related to money comes from the fact that the spice mint was so expensive, after all, the spice trade fueled global travels like few other commodities. This is false however. 'Mint' as the currency comes from Latin and was named after a specific place, whereas the spice, while also originally mediterranean—both etymologically and geographically—is not, with the oldest known language to have a clear word for it being Ancient Greek.

1755: Chester (Given Name) Oct 4, 2019

Discussed yesterday was how '-chester' in place-names like 'Manchester' historically meant 'castle'. Moreover though, the given name 'Chester' and likewise its nickname 'Chet' comes from the same root. However, it should be noted that this started as a surname, essentially meaning "of a town" before it became a given name. It would be practically like having the first name 'Borough' or 'Burg', which have similarly also featured in or as peoples' surnames and mean 'town'.

1754: -cester, -chester, and -ceter Oct 3, 2019

Without English spelling, we would lose a lot of obvious history. Famously the spellings of 'Worcester' and Leicester' look nothing like how they're pronounced, but they come from 'castre' meaning 'castle; fort' like in 'Lancaster' etc.. In fact, almost all of the British '-cester' are reduced to '-ster' in pronunciation. Still, there are also other ways this has developed in spelling, like '-chester' in 'Manchester', '-cetter' like 'Mancetter', or also '-xeter' in 'Exeter'.

See more on language change and English spelling: https://youtu.be/kA7mMfX3Bh0

1753: Infants Can Discern any Phoneme Oct 2, 2019

Adults can often seem to struggle more with developing new language skills than very young children, especially when it comes to pronunciation. There are lots of little reasons for adults having difficulty with grammars etc., and certainly one or two myths around it, but one thing that's easily noticeable is that adults tend to struggle with accents, while children don't, not only because they have more adaptable larynxes from not speaking in (usually) one way most of the time, but also they can actually discriminate between sounds better. Infants can hear the difference in every phoneme more or less, and lose that ability after a short time. They continue to use the ones they hear and get positive feedback for pronouncing, and drop the rest. However, babies do not necessarily discriminate between illegal syllables in the given language, but knowledge of sound constraints must logically follow from gaining knowledge of the sounds first.

Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts