2052: max factor Jul 28, 2020
Max Factor is a makeup company, but it actually comes from another name. Although the company name makes a certain amount of sense, it is actually from Polish originally. The founder was named Maksymilian Faktorowicz, who was a Polish beautician.
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2051: sabiro Jul 27, 2020
The word for 'suit jacket' in Japanese is 'sabiro', which may not sound like a loan word from English, but it is. It isn't a direct transfer for 'suit' however. The word comes from the association with the fashions of London at the time, specifically around the street Saville Row, known even today for its tailors and generally men's fashion.
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2050: Making the Omelette without Breaking Eggs: Walter Duranty Jul 26, 2020
A New York Times correspondent for the USSR and Pulitzer Prize winner in 1931, Walter Duranty, helped to cover up the Holodomor, a man-made famine in Ukraine. It is within this context of dismissing and suppressing this story while also glorifying the USSR that many accounts claim he helped to popularize the expression "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs". Of course, most people who use it are unaware of this, and it has a generally neutral connotation.
For further information, read the New York Times discretization of his work here, including other examples.
2049: French in North America Jul 25, 2020
French is spoken in parts of North America, particularly around Quebec and possibly Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, but those aren't the only places. Louisiana still has some native French speakers descended from the original settlers, but far smaller communities like that also exist in places like Missouri and even Minnesota. The sizes of those communities those are very small—some estimates placing in the low double-digits.
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2048: Ye and The Jul 24, 2020
The word 'the' has had a number of spellings, in part because of how simple and common it is. Like other symbols including & for 'and', 'the' used to be typed as 'ye' to make use of what was available on German printing presses, but actually this was just an approximation of another, older Germanic letter. In fact, it was often spelled in exotic ways to save space, as exhibited in the document shown below.
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2047: The Assimilation of Gender Jul 23, 2020
English spelling and pronunciation don't always match neatly, but in the case of 'fiancé' and 'fiancée', or 'blond' and 'blonde', the words (essentially) mean the same thing and are pronounced the same; the only difference is that the first ones, without the final -e are masculine, and the others feminine. This is changing in English, however. Since the mid-1970's uses of the phrase "blond woman" have actually been used even more than "blonde woman", though it is next to impossible to find instances of 'blonde man'; this period in time saw similar trends with 'fiancé'. In general, and as has been discussed here before, gendered words—especially when the only variation is in the spelling—are disappearing from English, but almost universally trending towards the masculine as a universal.
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2046: Real Inspirations for Star Trek Jul 22, 2020
Star Trek was in small part inspired by the actual exploration of Cpt. James Cook. Indeed, the name of the captain in the original 1960's show named James Kirk is named similarly in accordance. Moreover, the name for the spaceship, the Star Trek Enterprise was inspired after Cook's ship, the HMS Endeavour.
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2045: SPQR, and Conjunctions in Initialisms Jul 21, 2020
The standards for what make something a word that can be used for acronyms is variable, and this is even true of the words themselves. The Roman initialism SPQR stands for 'Senātus Populusque Rōmānus' (The Roman Senate and People) looks to only be made up of 3 words, but the suffix '-que' in Latin is one of the ways of expressing 'and'. Indeed, other languages with affixed conjunctions like Hebrew include these sometimes as well. Usually, conjunctions or prepositions etc. won't be included in English acronyms/initialisms however, but there are exceptions like DoJ (Department of Justice).
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2044: dinar Jul 20, 2020
Lots of Arab countries use the Lira as currency because of Italian use in trade, and this is mostly true of the dinar. In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as Serbia and North Macedonia the dinar is used, but in the case of all former Yugoslav states динар and the rest this comes from Arabic دِينَار. 'Dinar' itself though stems back further to the Latin 'dēnārius' meaning 'ten each' once used in the Roman Empire. Other Muslim-majority states have used over the years as well.
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2043: mughal Jul 19, 2020
The term for the Mughal Empire in the native language was Gurkani (Persian: گورکانیان Gūrkāniyān) meaning 'son-in-law'. The word 'mughal' instead comes from the Persian form of 'mongol', because it is from this line who separated from the Mongol Empire of Chenkis Khan and went on to conquer the Indian subcontinent. The noun 'mogul' as in a powerful person also comes from connotations to this empire as well.
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2042: Language of Rambam and Aristotle Jul 18, 2020
The Jewish philosopher Maimonides, also known as the Rambam wrote in Arabic, but people would be forgiven for thinking he wrote in Hebrew. For instance, his work 'The Guide for the Perplexed' was originally titled דלאלת אלחאירין (Dalālat al-ḥā’irīn) and while this uses Hebrew letters is actually Arabic. Indeed, especially considering that the greatest center of knowledge at the time was probably Bagdad, even though he lived in Europe when he often quoted Aristotle, he would do so in Arabic. As such, here and elsewhere, many translations translate Aristotle from Arabic rather than going back to the Greek.
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2041: Where's the '-hu' in Elijah (or Eliyahu) Jul 17, 2020
There are some biblical names 'Elijah' or 'Isaiah' that end with -ah in English but look totally different in Hebrew. Eliyahu (אליהו) or Yeshayahu (ישעיהו) both have an final syllable that's totally different from the English but are similar to each other. The reason for the discrepancy is because of the Greek; they both got a Greek nominative ending -s as in Elias and Ēsaias respectively, which was dropped off when the named were Latinized and Anglicized later on. Also, in the case of 'Isaiah' Greek doesn't have a sound which approximated SH, hence the discrepancy there.
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2040: lira Jul 16, 2020
The Lira was the old currency of Italy before the Euro, along with Malta, San Marino and the Vatican. The fact then that it would come from Latin 'libra' for 'pound (of gold)' shouldn't be too surprising, but what's more surprising is that is is still used in Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, and was used in Egypt, Israel, and Cyprus to name a few. Actually, this is because of the Venetian Lira which was once widely circulated around the Mediterranean and eventually the Ottoman Empire, but also other translations like the French Livre used for 1013 years or the still-used British pounds are actually quite common.
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2039: An Examination of Proof Jul 15, 2020
'Proof' has a lot of meanings these days, but it all goes back to the same source. 'Proof' can relate to the experimentation as in "proof of the pudding..." [1] or also conclusive evidence [2], but it also means "able to withstand" as in 'waterproof', alcohol-content, or early tests of prints or coins. This is also etymologically related to 'probe' which also relates to examination, but in the case of 'prove/proof' there was a clear shift in the Middle Ages away from the meaning of 'to test' and towards ideas of security and established fact.
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2038: Full Stops across Languages Jun 14, 2020
The symbols meant to punctuate the end of a sentence are fairly consistent, but there are some exceptions. The full stop as it is called is often represented with ⟨.⟩ was introduced by the Byzantine Greeks; before this, there would just be strings of words, and not necessarily even spaces. This is not the only use of that symbol, as it appears in math, after initials, and other uses, but also other cultures have developed other symbols in some way or another, including the Chinese ⟨。⟩, the Sinhalan (of Sri Lanka) ⟨෴⟩ though now they use the period, the Armenian ⟨:⟩, the Hindu ⟨।⟩, and the Amharic ⟨።⟩.
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2037: Welsh in North America Jul 13, 2020
Some people may know that there is a Welsh-speaking community established in Patagonia, but fewer people probably know that there was also 40,000 acres in North America once designated to be for the Welsh colonials. This area known as the Welsh Tract was established in 1684 in Pennsylvania, and a Second Welsh Tract in Maryland and Delaware in 1701, were supposed to set up a government that would use Welsh, but this was not as successful. Much like Pennsylvania Dutch too, Welsh eventually faded, but in many of the place names, like Bala Cynwyd or Lower Gwynedd names were borrowed from existing Welsh places, and in the case of Uwchlan or Berwyn, created independently.
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2036: hiccup versus hiccough Jul 12, 2020
As mentioned before, there are lots of sounds, 7 specifically, that -ough- represent in English. However, in the least used as in 'hiccough' also spelt 'hiccup', there are two forms. The term itself is alliterative, but unlike other onomatopoeias, the form 'hiccough' was based off of the other word 'cough' for semantic continuity. Indeed, while this now might seem old fashioned, it was not always the most popular as seen in the graph below. Since then, the popularity of 'hiccup' has superseded that of 'hiccough'.
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Image from Google Ngram
2035: di-, tri-, and quadgraphs Jul 11, 2020
English has a lot of sounds, ~40 depending on the dialect, but only 26 letters, some of which tend to represent the same things. As a result, we end up with di-, tri-, and quadgraphs, which are combinations of 2, 3, or 4 letters that make one sound. Lots of languages do this as with the German CH, SCH, and TSCH which even build off of each other, but these are not so consistent in English. English has some, like SH, TH, CH, PH, etc. but these do not always make the same sounds, in particular TH (as in 'that' and 'thin') or CH in 'chauvinist'. This is true (several times over) with the English quadgraph OUGH, which can represent 7 different sounds. See if you can find an example for each.
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2034: Various Meanings of 'Cob' Jul 10, 2020
'Cob' in Old English meant 'spider', hence 'cobwebs', but that is not the same one as in 'corn-on-the-cob'. Indeed, the word has many unrelated meanings, including 'a mound of clay or coal', 'a head', 'a male swan', and 'a short-legged horse' and a 'bread roll'. Some others have been argued to be from different though unknown etymologies, but the oldest sense of 'cob' meant 'strong man; leader'. From this it is believed that the rest came about, basically in the sense that each are sturdy or at least round. That said, with these old monosyllabic words, it is often difficult to discern if the common thread is coincidental or not.
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2033: Beavers in the River Otter Jul 9, 2020
There is only one river in England where beavers live, and that is in the River Otter. Indeed, while there are many names for rivers in Britain derived from Celtic, far more than would be expected for any other name for natural features or settlements, this river was actually named for the otters who inhabit it, and it is only by a modern coincidence that it is arguably now more famous for the beaver population.
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