1811: husting Nov 30, 2019

The word 'hustings' may be regional, but it is one of the fewer words in English related to politics and law that is purely Germanic. Its original meaning was 'assembly', namely of a 'house' as in "house of commons". Indeed, the term comes from the Old Norse, 'hús + thing' or literally 'house-thing'. This was once the name of the highest court of the City of London, but now can denote any type of electoral precedings, such as a political debate.

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1810: rugby (and american football) Nov 29, 2019

While 'baseball', 'basketball', 'football', and even 'golf' is named after a feature of the sport, 'rugby' is named for a school. The sport, technically called 'rugby football' came from the variation of association football (soccer) in 1845, developed in the Rugby school, in Warwickshire. Indeed, American football came as a variation of this game, and hence the continued usage of the term 'football', and the similar oblong ball-shape.

Mark your calendars, only 10 days left until the 5th-year anniversary.

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1810: Biweekly, Bimonthly, and Biannually Nov 28, 2019

There is ambiguity as to whether 'biweekly' or 'bimonthly' would mean "twice a week/month" or "once every two weeks/months". There is a distinction between 'biannually' (twice a year) and 'biennially'. Although there is the term 'fortnightly', this is still not a very popular one, and people opt for the clunkier "once every two weeks".

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1809: arigato and obrigado Nov 27, 2019

A number of Japanese words are of Portuguese origin, including 'tempura'. The idea, though, that 'arigato' (ありがとう) comes from 'obrigado' is a myth, although they both mean 'thank you'. The history of Portuguese exploration before Japanese isolationism also led some to think this was when the word was adopted, but actually it can be attested for in Old Japanese. At that time 'arigatashi' had the meaning of 'difficult to exist', which led to the meaning of 'rare; special', and then eventually 'nice to have; welcome'.
For more on surprisingly similar words, read about 'dag' and 'dog', derived a world apart, or read about Spanish influence on Tagalog here.

1808: Somali's Flexible Grammar Nov 26, 2019

Somali grammar allows for great flexibility in its expression. For instance, it uses either tone or morphology—namely suffixes—to indicate case (though not in the absolutive), and plurals are indicated by changing gender, adding a plural marker, or reduplicating the word. Somali also has odd rules like that regarding focus-markers, which like those aforementioned features depend someone on the individual words, but also on the choice of the speaker.

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1807: 'eating away': fret, ort, and etch Nov 25, 2019

Though 'eating' may evoke mostly positive images, it is also the base for other words connoting absence or devouring. 'Fret' for instance, has a historical root derived from 'fra-' added to the root for 'to eat', i.e. "to eat away; eat up"; of course the phrase "eat away" also involves 'eat' and is generally negative too. Likewise, 'ort', which is a literary way to say 'food-scraps; garbage', is from a compound involving 'out'. The 'out-' prefix became 'or-' here, as it did in 'ordeal'. Even the word 'etch' comes from a Dutch word with a root meaning 'cause to eat away'.
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1806: Aggressive Mood (Finnish Grammar) Nov 24, 2019

Finnish grammar is known for having many different cases (about 15 for nouns) and moods for verbs. Some are fairly normal across languages, but the aggressive mood stands out in Finnish as it is little-studied and possibly unique. This is when the negative auxiliary is omitted in a construction that still has the negative form of the verb. This is used both colloquially and non-colloquially, and only really would be possible works in heavily inflected languages. Often, an obscenity is used to replace the negative auxiliary too, which is why it is deemed especially as slang, and understudied.

1805: Paganism in Finnish Nov 23, 2019

As with many languages, perhaps the most common Finnish swear-word is a religious one, 'Perkele' meaning 'Devil' effectively, but literally being a pagan god of thunder, and also hell by some accounts. Likewise, the Finnish sky god 'Jumala' is now used for the name of the Christian god. Actually, many Baltic and Slavic religions had these same characters in their pantheon—as far south as Bosnia—and may even be related to the Sanskrit 'Parjanya' but during the Christianization of Finland, they took on different meanings. Many more swear worse rely on pagan traditions, and part of the reason for this is that Finnish paganism only went extinct in the 20th century.

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1804: -ard (positive) Nov 22, 2019

Following from yesterday, '-ard', like in 'sluggard', 'drunkard', 'niggard' and 'coward', may seem to attach to words only pejoratively, but this is not exclusively so. Although English has more of these than positive ones, 'wizard', and also 'bollard' exist. The former has already been discussed, but a 'bollard' is fairly neutral as far as a post to divert traffic.

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1803: coward and '-ard' Nov 21, 2019

Following yesterday's post, while some words with '-ard', like 'dullard' or 'drunkard' are easy to parse, 'coward' does not come from 'cow'. It ultimately derives from the Latin 'cauda' meaning 'tail', in reference to an animal with its tail between its hind legs. This term is even found in heraldry to refer to the actual animal when it is posed like that. Moreover, the '-ard' suffix in those other words comes from 'hardy', literally meaning 'bold', like in 'foolhardy'.

For the parsing of 'bastard', click here.

1802: wizard vs. dullard Nov 20, 2019

'Wizard' and 'dullard' today mean very different things, one of which is magical and the other is simply pejorative, but they come from same template. Indeed, the '-ard' suffix is simply to nominalize an adjective. In the case of 'dullard', this is easily parsed meaning 'dull person', but 'wizard' parses as 'wiz' originating as 'wise'. The early meaning of this word was a sagely, non-magical person. There will be more on this tomorrow.

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1801: wood (adj) Nov 19, 2019

As mentioned yesterday, 'wood' is not related to the Dutch 'would' (forest), but nor is it also related to the now obsolete adjective 'wood' meaning 'violently insane'. Actually, neither that nor 'nuts'—also meaning 'crazy'—actually related to trees. Instead, it is related to the Modern German 'Wut' meaning 'rage', and the Old Irish 'faith' meaning 'poet'.

See yesterday's post here.

1800: widow and wood Nov 18, 2019

This is Word Facts post #1,800. Please consider sharing this page, or the youtube for another 1,800+

Following yesterday's post on the gender of 'widow', it might be interesting to know that the word is also related to 'wood', with them both possibly coming from a meaning 'to separate'. However, 'wood' is still not related to the Dutch 'would', or German 'Wald' meaning 'forest', as you might expect. There will be more on 'wood' tomorrow.

Etymologies can be counterintuitive sometimes, so check out the 7 Tips for Etymologists video too.

1799: Widow(er) Nov 17, 2019

English, compared to many Indo-European languages, is fairly ungendered, but it does crop up in some places. Still, when it comes to gendered forms of words, it is usually the feminine which is seen—falsely or otherwise—to come from the masculine. This is not the case with 'widow' and 'widower' where the '-er' is clearly a masculine extension of the feminine. In any case, it follows the Germanic pattern of '-er' as a masculine suffix, but in that case, such as with modern German, the feminine ending would be '-erin', unlike here where it is absent.
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1798: Bid and Bitte Nov 16, 2019

Historically speaking 'bid' was a bit of a contronym, meaning both 'to ask' and 'to give'. Though that relation is actually fairly common, in this case it was just luck. 'Bid' as in 'an offer' comes from a different word than when it means 'to ask', but it is the latter to which the German 'bitte' meaning 'please' and 'you're welcome' is related. It is also this word which would have been the modern equivalent of 'good', thus making the paradigm

good -> better -> best | German: gut -> besser -> besten

into the far more understandable

bid -> better -> best | German: bit(ten)-> besser -> besten

See yesterday's post on this here.

1797: Word Family: Better Nov 15, 2019

English has far fewer current word families than some languages, but there are far more looking across germanic languages. For instance, 'better', though not related to the semantically similar 'good' is related to 'boot' (verb), 'batten', and 'battle', among many others. In the case of both 'boot' and 'battle', this is because they used to mean 'exercise; improve', the former connoting pushing oneself to improve often through punishment, and the latter simply meant to practice for a battle. 'Batten' means literally 'to get better', but unlike 'boot' has no relation to the meaning of 'beat' as in 'batten down the hatches', which comes from a different verb. There will be more on 'bid' tomorrow.

1796: Old Japanese with Chinese Word Order

Japanese orthography may be the hardest in the world to learn. Partly since it uses 3 different writing systems today, but, Old Japanese was even harder, because it used only Chinese characters and also word order. However, Chinese is written subject-verb-object and Japanese is subject-object-verb, so while keeping the Chinese word order, Japanese writers would have to note the way in which the words were ordered with other special symbols.

For more on diglossia, click here.

1795: bastard Nov 13, 2019

'Bastard' has meant 'illegitimate' child' for a long time, about 800 years, but it's origins are—as many words in this realm are—based in euphemism. Like with 'grass-widow', the word for 'bastard' originated from casual bedding, namely with "fils de bast" or 'packsaddle son', as saddles were often used as bedding while travelling. The '-ard' suffix is a just pejorative one, found in 'coward', 'drunkard', and 'dullard'.
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1794: 'Insofar' not 'Insofaras' Nov 12, 2019

The word 'insofar' is a combination of three other words. This isn't so uncommon, looking at others like 'nevertheless', but what's odder perhaps is that it isn't composed of four words, since it is almost always followed by 'as'. There are a couple things to note, though. First, as with any orthographic development in English, it was planned, but also it's fairly new, only becoming more popular than writing 'in so far' in the 1970's. Also, it can also be followed by 'that', but this is already rare at the time of the compounds rise to popularity, and its rarity is increasing.

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1793: 4th Estate vs. 4th Power Nov 11, 2019

People often use the term '4th estate' to refer to the press, but none of the other 3 estates exist really. It comes from the pre-republican European estates of realm, which is another way of saying the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners together, with those making up the 3 estates. Later, '4th estate' merged conceptually with '4th power'—also denoting the press—but with the other 3 powers this time referring to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, which may be why people still use '4th estate'.
For more bonus content on the latest video, click here.