2281: Frequentative, Iterative, and Habitual Aspects Mar 15, 2021

There is a general decline in morphology and general grammatical features in English as time goes on. This is by no means universal, but across Indo-European languages this happens not only with words themselves becoming less morphologically complex, but as in the case of the frequentative, habitual and iterative (grammatical) aspects, syntactically simpler. In a nutshell, each of these expressed repeated action, but in different ways, with the frequentative expressing repetition and intensity of action—think 'chatter' [1] from 'chat'—and the iterative aspect signifying repeated action within one instance, such as 'he knocked on the door'. Those two now are generally more dependant on a word's meaning or historical carryover, while the habitual aspect—signalling continual action that may or may not be presently happening e.g. 'Bob runs' (i.e. 'Bob is a runner')—is somewhat productive, and in certain dialects like African American English is extremely productive, relying on the so-called habitual 'be'.

2280: wrong, wrangle, worry and wring Mar 14, 2021

The suffix -le can signal diminutives but also it is retained as a historic suffix to mark the frequentative form which once expressed repeated action over multiple instances. This is the case in 'wrangle' for instance which comes from Low German 'wrangeln' (to wrangle) but from the root 'wrangen' (to strangle). This led to the split in the English 'wrangle' and 'wring' which likewise lost the W in the German 'rangeln' (wrestle), and related to the Dutch 'vringle' (twist). The sense of twisting of truth also elucidates the connection there with 'wrong'—this being a common Germanic root each time eventually gaining the same moral connotations—and 'worry', which originally meant 'choke'.

2279: wrongness vs. wrength Mar 13, 2021

The traditional nominal form of 'wrong' is 'wrength' as opposed to today's 'wrongness'. It is not, however, entirely clear where that would have come from. Obviously it would not be irregular considering long-length, strong-strength, etc. but the probable Old English *wrengþu is unattested. It could therefore be that the Middle English 'wrength' is backformed from words like 'strength' with that pattern being applied later onto 'wrong' (historically, 'wrang'). Either way, it's all but lost these days.

2278: Mandatory Talmud in Korea Mar 12, 2021

The South Korean constitution guarantees that "religion and state shall be separated" but parts of the Talmud, a Jewish religious texts, is part of the national curriculum, even in primary schools. This isn't for any specific religious reason, but that in the latter half of the 20th century it was brought over and translated by rabbis in Japan where in both countries it was seen as a means of modelling Jews' high academic standards. Tae Zang publishing house originally printed its "5,000 Years of Jewish Wisdom" in 1974 followed by many others in Korean and China, with many Koreans using black-market talmudic translations.

2277: Optative Voice Mar 11, 2021

In certain languages, there is another mood along with indicative, subjunctive, imperative and the like known as the optative expressing a wish, as might be covered in English by 'if only...'. This was common verbal mood across Indo-European languages historically but these have usually been lost in a gradual process of morphological and syntactic simplification, reducing many distinct specific features for less precise periphrastic constructions. Some languages like Sanskrit and Ancient Greek are well known for this, but it is retained in Albanian, Armenian, and Kurdish, as well as non-Indo-European languages like Navajo, Yupik, Turkish and Georgian. English cannot neatly express this, but modal verbs like 'may' in "may you have good health" convey a similar intent, though this is also possible even with the present tense as in "G-d help us". In Albanian this is known as "mënyra dëshirore" or literally "wishing mood".

2276: nonce Mar 10, 2021

A number of modern words are the result of wrong division, i.e. splitting or affixing sounds across multiple words such as in 'napkin' or 'adder' which respectively gained and lost an [n] due to the indefinite article 'an'. This is not the only word for which it has happened though, as can be seen with 'nonce' meaning 'a single occasion' as in "it worked for the nonce". This is connected, unsurprisingly to 'once' but with wrong division from a Middle English word 'þan' (than) as in 'þan anes'. In fact, 'anes' in 'once' and 'nonce' is actually from the genitive form of 'one' (ān) as in "of one". Separately, 'nonce' is also British slang but it has nothing in relation to the other meaning. It couldn’t possibly have been from ‘an’ as with the other words mentioned above as is commonly expected in cases of wrong division, since that has the same root as the ‘one/once’ in ‘nonce’ itself.

2275: jovial & Jove Mar 9, 2021

Around the world, many cultures have associated certain times of year with heightened happiness. While likely few would still have any association between the two, the word 'jovial' meant born under the influence of the planet Jupiter, also called 'Jove' in English. Indeed, the Latin '-ālis' ending was used to express relationship, in this case with the head of their pantheon, Iovis. This astrological relation and an idea that those people born in that zodiac period were cheerier people led to the modern definition.

2274: gem Mar 8, 2021

In the past many thought that crystals really grew from being alive, and considering the etymology of 'gem', this might not have really seemed such a crazy idea. 'Gem', in its original sense meant 'bud', from the Latin 'gemma', which comes from a root *gen- meaning 'produce'. The root itself is somewhat mysterious, and so cognates are not exactly clear with it, but the root may also have had to do with the growth of other things including nails, with the current sense of 'gem' coming later in relation to the shape of seeds and buds, or their other qualities.

2273: jewel Mar 7, 2021

The word 'jewel' being associated exclusively with precious stones and other gems only began in the 14th century. The word's origins are not certain, but it is generally associated either with the same root as 'joy', or as 'joke'; either way originally having the meaning of something to cause happiness. Along the first line, the Latin gaudium (joy) is the root of the French 'joie' which these days has a rather carefree and innocent sense, but historically related to physical pleasures and sometimes materialism. Alternatively, this word might be related to the word 'joke', from the Latin 'iocus' which also had a more general sense historically. Either way, the word has surely diverged in its meaning over time.

2272: Intro to Hunsurik: Brazil's Own German Mar 6, 2021

The language of Hunsurik, a German language spoken in Brazil, in many ways mirrored the historical process seen in the development of German in the 18th and 19th centuries. In those times, there was no standard German, neither in spelling nor in dialect. Eventually in the early 19th century this started to take place in Germany along with the unification of the country around what is now the standard, but with mass immigration to the Americas, German use in Brazil instead involved the Hunsrück dialect in part due to numerical superiority among the German immigrants. The spelling as well does not resemble that of Standard German, resembling certain aspects of Dutch and Portuguese orthography, but despite having around 3 million speakers and a number of school its writing is not standardized or even completely codified.

2271: Zwei...Zwene, & Zwo? Mar 5, 2021

The German word for 2, 'zwei' is not declined like a regular adjective in German. Historically, all three grammatical genders were used, including 'zwene' or 'zween' for the masculine which has entirely dropped out, and the feminine 'zwo' which is a variant sometimes used for clarity with 'drei' (three), such as in military radio transmissions. This loss of gender in cardinal numbers is not universal in German with 'eins' (one) declined normally; moreover, Luxembourgish and certain Swiss German dialects still feature variants like 'zwou' and 'zwéin' [Luxembourgish]. It does elucidate the connection to the English 'twain'—also historically the masculine form of 'twā' [feminine]—but in the case of 'twain' this was later used more broadly before certain types of words such as nouns as to disambiguate between it and 'to' or 'too', thus outlasting the general breakdown of English's grammatical gender.

2270: Elves in Old English Compounds Mar 4, 2021

Elves have not only had a lasting impression on given-names (conceptually speaking), but historically there was a much greater presence of elf-based compounds. For instance ælfadl (nightmare) literally 'elf-disease' and ælfsogoða (hiccough) or 'elf-heartburn'. Elves, seen as malicious creatures, were thought by many to cause many afflictions. Indeed, the phrase elf-lock is still used today to refer to tangled hair. In a distant sense, this may also be related to the 'Alps' mountain range.

2269: Elves in Given Names Mar 3, 2021

Although elves these days are not so culturally important these days as these used to be in ancient Germanic cultures, there still are remnants, especially in names. Alfred, Alvin Aubrey, Eldridge, and Oliver to name a few all come from the word 'ælf' (elf) with some other compound. In those names before, they are respectively Ælfræd (Elf-counsel), Ælfwine (Elf-friend) Alb(e)rada (elf-counsel), Ælfric (Elf-ruler) and Alfihar, (elf-army). Notably this makes Oliver unrelated to the French Olivier (olive-tree), though the French name did influence the spelling. Elves in Germanic mythology were small and malicious, hence why so many of those names have somewhat tough or even militaristic connotations. Share your friends named after elves.

More on elf-influence in English tomorrow.

2268: doubt and 2 Mar 2, 2021

Though it may not be too surprising that the word for ‘doubt’ is also related to words for ‘two’ including ‘duo’ and indeed ‘two, but keep in mind this replaced an earlier word with the same quality: Old English ‘twēo’ (doubt) from the same root as ‘two’. Likewise, the German word for doubt is ‘Zweifel’ which clearly has the root ‘zwei’ (two) in it. Moreover, the Latin root ‘dubitāre’, which led to the current English word is thought to come from habeō (I have), combined with the Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ “two” as in ‘holding two’ making the word seemingly even more literal, but actually the sense in Latin would be closer to ‘hesitate’.

Notably, the word ‘doubt’ in Middle English was not spelt with a B, but this was added later to correspond with the Latin root even though the Old French root, and the modern French derivative ‘douter’ (to doubt) aren’t spelt that way.

2267: How לחם‎ (Lechem) is Related to नान (Naan)

There is a Proto-Semitic reconstructed root *laḥm- which broadly would have meant food, but in many of its descendents like the Hebrew לחם‎ (lechem) and Aramaic לחמא (lachma) it came to mean bread. That said, the Arabic لَحْم‎ (laḥm) also comes from this root, but here it means 'meat'. It is clear it hasn't always though, because a derivative of this Arabic word is the somewhat distant sounding Middle Persian LHMA which becomes نان‎ (nân) in Persian. This did have closer form in other languages like the Old Armenian loanword նկան (nkan); in turn this root lead to the Hindi नान (nān) and Urdu نان‎ (nān): bread which came to English as 'naan'.

2266: cutler(y) Feb 28, 2021

The word 'cutler' and by extension 'cutlery' may come from the same root as 'cut', but only very distantly at best. These two terms originate with the Latin 'cultus'—not '*cutlus'—but eventually metathesized into the 'coutel'. The '-erie' suffix is is used in French to mean 'belonging to' such as 'bakery', or 'jewellery'.

2265: Disparity in Yiddish Use between Men and Women Feb 27, 2021

These days, more men speak Yiddish than women. In certain communities of course, everyone speaks Yiddish often monolingually (or along with being able to read Hebrew). Still, for those for whom it is a second language, because much of modern Yeshiva study—exclusively for men—is still taught in Yiddish while women's seminaries generally use Modern Hebrew, there is a notable disparity.

אַ פֿרײליכן פורים

2264: (Old) Blighty Feb 26, 2021

The nickname for England or Britain as 'Blighty' came as military slang, especially as used by the soldiers of the World Wars. In particular, it was used by those in the Indian army as an alteration of the Urdu bilāyatī meaning 'foreign' or often broadly just 'European', though the original Arabic meaning was not so specific and could be used to refer to any region or district. Today it is often used in England affectionately, but obviously stripped of its original meaning.

2263: alchemy & chemistry Feb 25, 2021

Alchemy is to chemistry as astrology is to astronomy.

For much of history each pair was basically considered the same, as both had mystical and occult elements associated with them, and indeed even the more so-to-speak scientific aspects of these disciplines were in service of the spiritual ones until fairly recently. This is actually where the sense of chemistry relating to romantic attraction comes in. The connection between 'astrology' and 'astronomy' is fairly obvious, but the etymological connection between 'alchemy' and 'chemistry' is obscured somewhat by Arabic, with the al- just being the Arabic definite article i.e. 'the'. Otherwise the words have the same roots—even though the exact root is the cause of some disagreement—and really just means 'science'. Indeed, in the 17th century both words had a reduction in meaning, having both related to the occult, natural philosophical, as well as what might be thought as chemistry today or even metallurgy. Now, 'alchemy' only kept the sense of the pursuit of transforming base metals into gold and similar processes.

2262: alchemy Feb 24, 2021

No one knows the precise origin of the word 'alchemy', but that doesn't mean we can't learn a lot from it. For one thing, although there is a principle in more modern words for Arabic loan words, this is a case wherein the Arabic (al-) meaning 'the' does not turn into 'au-' in French, even though it was borrowed into English from Old French from an earlier Arabic اَلْكِيمِيَاء‎ (al-kīmiyā). Beyond that, it is not quite certain. An even earlier in Greek χημεία (khēmeía) refers to a liquid mixture extracted from gold, not creating it, from a root meaning 'to pour', but many think it it originally Egyptian. At that, people aren't sure which word it would be, but the leading candidate seems to be Χημία (Khēmía), a name for Egypt itself literally meaning, 'black earth'. Indeed, as happens in many cases, the answer is likely influence from both sources, especially considering that there was a lot of cross-cultural contact in the Ancient world.