1831: vaccine Dec 20, 2019

In some sense, the first vaccine invented was to treat smallpox, but it was not made with strains of 'smallpox' itself. When it was discovered that once someone contracted cowpox virus, he would be immune to smallpox. The word 'vaccine' still reflects that, coming from the Latin 'vacca' meaning 'cow', though of course this is now applied to a vaccine for any illness.

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1830: impeach Dec 19, 2019

The term 'impeachment' has come up a fair amount in the last few weeks. This will not clarify the process itself, but it's interesting nevertheless to look into where it came from. The word 'impeach' has a 'im-' prefix, which is just how the negating prefix 'in-' changes before a b/p/m, however there is no 'peachment' (though there is an unrelated 'peach' fruit). The reason for this is the same as for 'impede', becasue they come from the same root: the Latin 'ped' meaning 'foot', basically resulting in 'to stop', or more literally in the Latin 'impedīre', 'to ensnare' (think of bear-traps). An earlier, though false, etymology assumed the word to originate from 'impetere' (attack), and was actually a specific kind of Roman punishment of throwing someone in the water while in a sacl, but this is not the root.

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1829: persia Dec 18, 2019

The name 'Persia' was given by the Greeks, and later the Romans, based off of one region of Cyrus the Great's empire, because all of the people whom the Greeks initially engaged diplomatically were from the region of Pars. This would have been outdated though, even for them, since these people had taken over other kingdoms, and the Iranians then called the area Iranishar. Before this still, the Greeks used words which would have meant 'median', as a reference to its location between Europe and East Asia.

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1828: Countries Named for Smaller Regions Dec 17, 2019

Many places are named for a smaller region, often administrative region, such as 'Holland' for 'the Netherlands', or less officially the "Bonn–", "Weimar–", and contemporary "Berlin Republic" for 'Germany'. This tradition is cultural, but not completely uncommon across the world, but this tradition in Europe it is often attributed to the Romans, who named other places for the capital region, including the name of the Roman Empire itself, centered in Rome of course. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts

1827: Pacific Ocean in German Dec 16, 2019

Although the Germans did eventually have Pacific colonies, because they arrived there so much later than the Spanish, they had several different names for the Pacific Ocean. The earliest name in the early 16th century was a calque of the Spanish "Mar Pacifico" resulting in "das friedliche Meer" (The Peaceful Sea). Later on, in the 19th century, the name was changed to "das Stilles Meer" based off the Latin "Mare Pacificum", again, a calque, but with the meaning of "Silent Sea" . Only later in the 19th century did the name even contain the word 'Ozean' (ocean), and later still the name "die Pazifischer Ozean" become adopted, based off of the English name. "Stiller Ozean" is also still sometimes used as well.

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1826: Confusing Cyrillic Cursive Dec 15, 2019

Cyrillic cursive, known in Russian as 'rukopísny shrift' (рукопи́сный шрифт) is simply the handwritten form of the Cyrillic alphabet, designed to make writing faster and more fluid, as with any handwritten writing system. However, a noted problem is that the letters и, л, м, ш, щ, ы can all be made entirely or partly using an element that looks the same as a Greek ι, in certain combinations. This means certain words are completely ambiguous without knowledge of the language, or other context. For instance, мщу (I avenge) лицу (face, in dative) are written completely the same way.

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1825: The Etymologies: Tolkien Dec 14, 2019

The father of fictional languages in some ways, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote "The Etymologies" in the 1930's, though they were only published posthumously. In this, it is fairly disorganized collection of words in his Proto-Elvish, and then how they would have changed over time into the Elvish languages of Quenya, Noldorin and Ilkorin, which he features in Lord of the Rings. Unlike his professional work in mapping English etymologies, his etymologies were often changed, though he would never change the Elvish words themselves. Indeed, he even created various steps, inventing Old Nordin, and other attributes which would make this all work reasonably. You can find this in "The Lost Road and Other Writings".

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1824: walrus Dec 13, 2019

Tolkien was a philologists, and didn't just invent languages, but studied older forms of language, Still, he could not find a definitive etymology for 'walrus'; in fact, he came up with six. It is almost certainly Germanic, but could be anything from the Dutch 'walvis' meaning 'whale' (literally 'whale-fish) to possibly coming a root for 'horse', like the Old Norse 'hrosshvalr' ('horse whale'). There are many more ideas as well, like a compound from Dutch 'wal' (shore) and 'reus' (giant).

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1823: cranberry Dec 12, 2019

Several berries have names which, while clearly containing the '-berry' combining form, cannot be parsed. 'Cran' from 'cranberry' or 'rasp' [unrelated to breath] from ‘raspberry’ are not words on their own. However, this wasn't always the case for 'cran', sort of. The word originally comes from Low German 'Kraanbeere' where '-beere' is just 'berry', but 'Kraan' means, and is a cognate with 'crane', like the bird, though no one is totally sure why. Before this, in England they were called 'marshwort' or 'fenberries'.

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1822: egret and heron Dec 11, 2019

The word 'egret', itself refers to a type of heron, and likewise, the word comes from a French word for 'heron', 'aigrette'. 'Aigrette' in English is also a type of headdress. Anyway, French also has the word 'héron' for the type of bird as a whole, but this is of Germanic origin.

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1821: 'Istanbul' and the Byzantines Dec 10, 2019

Considering that 'Constantinople' was the name of the city under the Greeks, and that it was renamed 'Istanbul' under the Ottoman Turks, you'd be forgiven for thinking the name is Turkish, but this isn't so. The city's name has changed considerably throughout history, including 'Byzantium', 'Byzantion', 'New Rome' (Nea Roma), ‘Constantinople’ and now ‘Istanbul’. 'Istanbul' actually comes from Byzantine Greek 'eis tēn Pólin' (εἰς τὴν Πόλιν) meaning 'to the City', which was simply a colloquialism for Constantinople by the locals in the Byzantine Empire. 'Byzantion' is also Greek, originally from the personal name 'Byzas', who founded the city.

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1820: Île-de-France Dec 9, 2019

The greater region around Paris in France is called 'Île-de-France' or literally "Island of France". However, no one is totally sure where this name comes from, and it's definitely not an island. It may be a reference to being between the Oise, Marne, and Seine, though it may also have been a reference to 'Île de la Cité' where the royal palace and cathedral are located. It is not uncommon to name a region after a smaller part of it.

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1819: Possessive 'S in Veterans Day Dec 8, 2019

Many holidays, such as 'Veterans Day' or 'Fathers Day' have what sounds like possessive forms of the word, but often that spelling is not reflected with an apostrophe. Indeed, the Department of Veterans Affairs (again, no apostrophe) lists the spelling of "Veterans' Day" as incorrect. In the case of "Father's Day", there is most often, but not necessarily going to be an apostrophe for the singular use, though it is a holiday meant to focus on all fathers.

Tomorrow there will be a special announcement for the 5th anniversary, so stay tuned.

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1818: ghetto Dec 7, 2019

The word 'ghetto' is certainly a charged one to several groups of people, but it is not certain where the it came from. It is definitely Italian originally, perhaps from the word 'getto' meaning 'foundry' because of where the first ghetto was established in Venice in 1516 to segregate the Jewish population. The other accepted idea is that it comes from 'borghetto' which is simply a diminutive form of 'borgo' (borough) i.e. meaning 'little borough'.

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1817: Pāṇini's Ideas (General Overview) Dec 6, 2019

As discussed before, the linguist Pāṇini was one of the earliest and certainly very influential. To give an idea of some of the work he did, though still very general, he formalized and solved many problems concerning generative morphology i.e. generating new words with different affixes, vowel changes, etc.. He also used ideas now belonging to metaphysics, that is to say he invented many ideas about features of spoken language that are not verbal in order to explain syntax and grammar. His structures were so thorough that the logic of his work has been likened to that of Turing machine, but this was 2,500 years ago.

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1816: Pāṇini Dec 5, 2019

While 'linguistics' as a term is fairly new, it's been going on since at least the 4th century BCE, if not earlier. The most famous linguist at the time would almost certainly be Pāṇini, not to be confused with the food, who was an Indian philologist and grammarian. Indeed, many of the ideas that he formalized, or at least codified, are still in use, or heavily influenced modern thinking. Some argue that his models for generative and morphology were more advanced than anything in the West until the 20th century. There will be more on this tomorrow.

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1815: -er for Conspiracies Dec 4, 2019

The '-er' suffix has long made verbs and other nouns into nouns denoting occupation of location. A newer meaning has come about to mean 'believer in the conspiracy theory of", such as in 'anti-vaxxer', 'flat-earther', '911-truther' and plenty more. This has been discussed before here, but on another note, this is not going to be in dictionaries. Part of the reason may just be that it's relatively new, but also consider that these words don't have a very clear pattern necessarily, especially considering the example of 'anti-vaxxer', which doesn't use the whole word.

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1814: breath, broth, and brood Dec 3, 2019

The word 'breath' is a very old one, being related to basic biology. Indeed, it used to have another physiological meaning of 'smell' or 'scent'. It is pretty common for old words to have changed meaning, and in this case it is likely due to having connoted 'vapor' and 'exaltation from steam'. It shares some etymological history to 'brood', and may also have a distant relation to 'broth', which possibly helps to illuminate the connection.

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1813: Chatype Dec 2, 2019

In 2012, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee raised over $11,000 to create its own typeface. The typeface is called Chatype, and it is a serif-font. The move was done for publicity, but also to help to rebrand the city as an artist-friendly environment. This was the first time a US city had its own custom typeface.

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The 5-year anniversary is one week away, so stay tuned for an announcement!

1812: Platonic: Not Philosophical Dec 1, 2019

Plenty of adjectives exist based from the names of the people they're associated with, like 'Kantian', 'Nietzschean', or 'Aristotelian'. All of those basically mean "relating to the ideas and philosophy of..." but 'Platonic' most often means 'intimate but not sexual'. This meaning came to English in the 17th century, as a reference to his comments on love in the Symposium of Plato. Sometimes, if people with to reference his ideas, they lump them in with the adjective 'Socratic'.
For the new post comparing 'Moriah' and 'Moria' in the Bible and Lord of the Rings respectively, check out this link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/moria-h-bible-wt-31996367