2132: The Evolution of 'Idiot' in Hebrew Oct 16, 2020
The Hebrew word אידיוט (idyót) is a loan word meaning 'idiot', probably coming as a loan word through Russian. This word however, in many languages, was adopted from the Greek, whose meaning there was more or less neutral, and changed into something explicitly negative, as happened in English. This is seen clearly through another Hebrew word הדיוט (hedyót) which come from the name Greek word ἰδιώτης (idiṓtēs) with both of them meaning 'layman' or 'regular', as in someone who is not educated on a particular subject. but not necessarily stupid as the modern sense implies.
2131: 'Dexter' in Heraldry Means on the Left... Oct 14, 2020
In heraldry, such as coats of arms, the term 'dexter' means refers to when an animal faces the left. In general, the word 'dexter' and all its derivatives like 'dexterity' in some sense or another have the meaning of 'on the right'. Indeed, across other languages as well as across the various meaning of 'right'—the actual direction, laws, morality—the word retains the meaning and connotation. In the case of heraldry, this is in reference to the bearers perspective rather than the depiction, similar to how people refer to 'stage right'.
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2130: The Relation between Gossip and Relations Oct 14, 2020
Gossip and siblings are connected...and also they have an etymological relation. Upon first glance, those two words might not look alike, and that's because both have second element connected to it. With the common element being 'sib', 'gossip' comes as a noun from 'god-' from the same pattern as 'godfather' or 'godmother': in this case god-sib(ling). Eventually its meaning moved to that of 'neighbor' and then women invited to attend birth, still mostly in keeping with the meaning of non-blood family. The association those people will have however to idle chatter is a consistent throughout time apparently, because within about 200 years or so the word went from meaning 'relation' to meaning what it does today, and this exact process happened in other languages too.
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2129: -ling Oct 13, 2020
The suffix '-ling' is used as a suffix to make nouns, often but not always diminutive. These range from things like occupations (e.g. 'underling' and 'hireling'), terms for relation like 'sibling', 'youngling' and 'darling' (sort of), and certainly the diminutive uses like 'duckling', 'gosling', or ‘sapling' and even some rarer ones like 'nestling' (bird chicks, or also baby rabbits). 'Fingerling' is the name for baby bony fish too, following this pattern, but the first half refers to the fact that young salmon among other types of these fish have stripes. There are plenty more, and while this suffix is somewhat productive, it is used generally for older words these days.
2128: dope vs. dopamine Oct 12, 2020
While dope (as in drugs, particularly heroine) causes someone to have a chemical reaction with a rush dopamine, these words are not related however. 'Dope' originally meant 'thick sauce' and as such refers to things that make one slow, or just a slow person or especially a horse. Dopamine on the other hand comes as a combination 'dopa' and 'amine' (a type of chemical compound), with 'dopa' originating as a abbreviation (from the German) for dihydroxyphenylalanine, which by the way has nothing to do with thick sauces.
2127: Empathetic vs. Empathic Oct 11, 2020
There are two variants, 'empathetic' and 'empathic' which people use for more or less the same purpose. There are some regional differences certainly, but the more commonly used and the more generally accepted is 'empathic'. Due to the relation with 'sympathetic' however, there has been a gradual rise also of the word 'empathetic', especially in less formal contexts, which would follow a similar pattern ostensibly.
2126: Chai vs. Tea Oct 10, 2020
Around the world, lots of languages use a world like 'tea' and many others use 'chai' to describe the same thing; English uses both words but to describe the different preparation of the same plant-leaves. The word 'chai' comes to English via Arabic or Russian, ultimately from Mandarin ch'a, which also led to the now rare 'cha' or 'char' used in the 16th century. The word 'tea' came in the 17th century as a later variant (pronounced [tei] like 'pay') and also comes from this Chinese root, but through the Malay 'teh' (via the Dutch who held colonies there). The words in language like German, French, Dutch and so on that have the T come from this root, and the others like Greek, Farsi, Russian, and Arabic take the more direct Chinese root.
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2125: What Gets Overlooked with the Term 'Pythagorean' Oct 9, 2020
The word 'pythagorean' for many might conjure up the phrase 'pythagorean theorem' from geometry. While it is true that Pythagoras was mathematical in nature, he was a cult leader. The he also gave his name to Pythagoreanism which involve worship of him, and believed in natural harmonies in the world expressed through numbers to the point that the followers at one point murdered a man who argued for the existence of √2, an irrational number unable to be written as a fraction. They also practiced vegetarianism, and not urinating towards the Sun. It is however, the formula for the perimeter of right triangles, a² + b² = c², for which the word 'pythagorean' is most often associated.
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2124: Order of Adjectives: Green New Deal Oct 8, 2020
Without getting into politics, one can say that the 'Green New Deal' sounds odd; indeed, it would violate the order of adjectives that all native English speakers will know, whereby qualities precede colors. Of course, this is supposed to reference the original "New Deal", and so the fact that that phrase as a whole is being modified only coincidentally has an adjective at the beginning of it. Indeed, the person who is sometimes attributed for at least aiding in popularizing the term, Thomas Friedman, wrote "[b]ut we will only green the world when we change the very nature of the electricity grid", using 'green' as a verb, so he clearly wasn't averse to using adjectives in strange ways there as well.
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2123: mosaic vs. Mosaic Oct 7, 2020
'Mosaic' (or to disambiguate, 'mosaic') and 'Mosaic' are two different words basically spelt the same, but from two very religious roots. The former, used to describe a mural of tiles, comes from the Greek Μοῦσαι (Moũsai) meaning 'Muse' whereas the latter is an adjective meaning 'of Moses'; the words became pronounced the same in French, 'mosaïque' for both, but the Latin roots reflected the difference.
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2122: prosaic Oct 6, 2020
The word 'prosaic' is now an adjective meaning 'in the style of prose', but it used to be a noun. This is may sound odd because the '-ic' suffix is often associated with the creation of adjective, though of course this is not true all of the time as with 'lyric' for instance. The meaning changed into its form as an adjective in the 18th century, and now the meaning it once had is held by 'proser'.
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2121: Pressburg and Bratislava Oct 5, 2020
The capital of Slovakia is Bratislava, but this name only came about in the 20th century. Before 1919, it was known in Slovak as Prešporok, in German as Pressburg, and in Hungarian as Pozson; keep in mind this was all part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but most modern languages still use a variant of one of these 3 versions, except Greek which has Istropolis. Indeed, in 1918 and 1919, there was talk that the city might be known as 'Wilsonov' or 'Wilsonstadt' after American President Woodrow Wilson who campaigned for national sovereignty in the region. In the end, the name came from Pavol Jozef Šafárik's misunderstanding of the medieval 'Brezalauspurc' (Breslav castle), from which he designed 'Bratislava', though it's unclear whether the castle was actually there, and at any rate the adoption was made largely to make the name clearly Slavic. Other names which share a common root were discussed yesterday.
2120: Legacy of Duke Vratislav I of Bohemia Oct 4, 2020
There are a number of cities in Eastern Europe that all share a common basic name, including Bratislava, Slovakia, Bratslav, Ukraine (giving rise to the Breslov Chasidic dynasty), Braslaw, Belarus, and Wrocław, Poland, known in German as ‘Breslau’. These are only a sample of the names, but they are generally associated with the Duke Vratislav I of Bohemia who ruled in the 10th century. The name for the Slovakian capital only came about in the 20th century and indeed with Bratislava there is some confusion in older documents, caused by the Latin 'Wratislavia' which refers to Wrocław, Poland, and not Bratislava. There will be more on this tomorrow.
2119: leopard and panther Oct 3, 2020
Leopards and panthers are the same species, even if people usually use 'panther' to describe the black ones. These two terms have existed alongside each other for milenia, and in Latin 'pardus' and 'leopardus' was apparently the source of some confusion, but they both are from the same word: 'pard', as found in 'camelopard' (i.e. ’camel’+’pard’ = giraffe). The 'leo-' of 'leopard' means 'lion'.
2118: Correction on "Well Good god!" Oct 2, 2020
Correction: It was stated in a post 5 years ago that "'[g]ood', however, comes from the Old English 'gōd', which meant "god, deity"" but this is not true. This is a popular folk etymology, but a look at the terms historically shows this to be clearly off. First off, in the Germanic pantheon, and hence the Old English root, pagan deities were not considered to be clearly and consistently good; that notion came later and from a separate religion. Likewise, 'good' did not have the ethic nor moralistic sense it has not until later, and just meant more along the lines of 'pleasant'.
2117: sooth Oct 1, 2020
The word 'etymology' comes from the Greek adjective 'etumos' meaning 'true', but this root may also be connected to the English 'sooth'. At first glance these may not seem to look the same at all but the Greek stem is actually 'et(a)-', and -(u)m- is apparently derivational morphology. This Greek root also appears in other words, and is connected to a derived Indo-European root *set- (true). Some also connected to ‘sin’, the original meaning of which was guilt in a legal sense, and if this is true, then this would too be related to the German ‘sind’ ([plural/formal] ‘are’) and the Latin ‘sunt’, from where the ‘-sent’ of ‘absent’ and ‘present’ derive'.
2116: Fluids vs. Liquids Sep 30, 2020
When people say during the summer to take a lot of fluids, there's a good chance this relates to hydration. This isn't a problem per se, because liquids are fluids, but the two are not directly synonymous. Fluids can denote anything which doesn't hold its shape and does not resist external pressure, which also includes gasses but not some pastes or really thick syrups for instance. In general use, it will most likely be understood to mean just the thinner liquids.
2115: Wallonia and the Celts Sep 29, 2020
Wallachia is a historical territory in Romania, a Romance language speaking area, named by the Germans after the Celts. This region, in which resides the modern capital Bucharest, is among other places including Wallonia in Belgium, Wales in the U.K., and the German 'Welschtirol' (Latin Tyrol) which have Germanic exonyms for once (or in the case of Wales, currently) Celtic populations. Most of Europe, from Britain and Spain over to Turkey was dominantly Celtic before the Romans who in extreme cases displaced or genocided them, or otherwise assimilated them to Roman culture; indeed that is why they are now Romanian.
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2114: dreadnought(s) Sep 28, 2020
There are lots of types of boats have been used by navies around the world like aircraft carriers, battlecruisers, or dreadnoughts, but while others might be named for function, at least dreadnoughts were named for one ship in particular, the HMS Dreadnought. When it was deployed in 1906, it so totally eclipsed other naval vessels of the time in due to having a single, large main battery and steampowered turbines that the class of ship was named after it—its own name coming from 'dread nought' i.e. 'fear nothing'—and the earlier generation of battleships began then became known officially as pre-dreadnoughts. That said, the ship itself never engaged in a major naval battle, and is notable only for ramming into and sinking a submarine. Its fame and size also inspired the name for a genus of dinosaur, Dreadnoughtus.
2113: podunk Sep 27, 2020
The word 'podunk' these days refers to a hypothetical sort of small uninteresting town in America but its origins were not from an imagine place. The word actually comes from Algonquin people who lived around the Podunk River in what is now Connecticut, probably from a native word meaning 'a boggy place'. The name was popularized in writing from New York or New England in books or news paper series as a generic name for an imaginary, boring place.