2359: fellow Jun 3, 2021

The word 'fellow' has both casual and general connotations as would 'guy' but can also convey some level of union and equality, not to mention its use for academia and professional endeavors. It is from the original notion of a peer in a union that the other meanings arise. In fact, the original meaning was of a partnership but specifically one of joint properties from the Germanic word 'félag’ via Old Norse. This itself is from 'fé' (livestock) and 'lag' (cohabitation; guild) and these roots also led to 'fee' and 'law' eventually, the latter initially just the plural form of 'lag'.

2358: pollen Jun 2, 2021

The word 'pollen' is part of plant reproduction, but that's not exactly the original sense of the root. In Latin, this meant 'flour' to refer to its fine powdery quality. Even when modern taxonomic categories came into effect in the Modern Age, Linnaeus kept the term and used it to describe spores. From then on it the word stuck in an official capacity.

2357: Franco-Belgian Border Stones Jun 1, 2021

A story broke the news recently of a Belgian farmer moving a border-stone into France, thereby shrinking France by a few square meters. The stones were officialized by the 1820 Treaty of Kortrijk but on the stones is written a few things which don't seem to go along with that. First, the stones say 1819 not 1820, but this is just because the stones were set before the treaty was finalized in March of 1820. They also have written on one side 'F' and on the other 'N'. It isn't 'north' and anyway the 'F' is for 'France'. Instead, when this treaty was signed, even though the borders remained mostly the same afterwards, Belgium was not a country and the territory it now comprises was for the most part within the borders of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

2356: piastre May 31, 2021

A number of the names of currencies used around the Middle East originated in Italy, and in particular Venice. Along with 'dinar' and 'lira', it is the 'piastre' which is used for the ultimate subdivision for the currencies of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, both Sudans, Syria, Turkey, and until 2007 Cyprus. All of these have currencies with a local 'pound' except for Jordan (dinar) and Turkey (lira). It was also used as the main currency of French Indochina. The name for this though comes from Italian, literally "thin metal plate" and basically equated to a peso (i.e. 1/8 of a coin). Due to trading with the Venetians and its adoption by the Ottomans, it is now used all over the Levant region. Many of these only nominally use the piastre since the currency itself is so weak, such as Lebanon which rarely even uses its ل.ل.100 coin. Also, all of these are decimalized except for Cyprus which subdivided into 180.

2355: fascinate May 30, 2021

The fascinus was a device used in Roman pagan religious practices that led to the word 'fascinate'. The device was actually idol representative of the divine phallus. This was seen as seen as a medical instrument in some ways but particularly to ward off the evil eye (invidia). It is in this sense of magic and being under this spell to refocus attention that the sense in English of 'fascinate' was established, which had been used as such even in Ancient Rome.

2354: gamut May 29, 2021

'Gamut' referring to the whole range of something originates with music. In fact, this really began as a phrase, from the medieval Latin 'gamma ut' with that being the lowest note on a G scale. This is from the Greek Γ (gamma) originally denoting the last a medieval scale in a hexachord—gamma appears 6th in Greek's alphabet—which was associated with the sound 'ut' in solfège i.e. ut, re, mi, fa.... Eventually this was applied to other scales with more notes and then ranges of anything.

2353: Origin of Solfège Sounds May 28, 2021

Solfège, i.e. pairing notes of a scale to syllables did not draw these syllables entirely out of nowhere. It comes from the medieval hexachord scale associated with words from a Latin hymn for St. John the Baptist's Day:

(Ut) queant (la)xisresonare fibris

(Mi)ra gestorum (fa)muli tuorum,

(Sol)ve pollutis (la)biis reatum,

(S)ancte (I)ohannes.

Notably, the 'do' and 'ti' are missing, and 'ut' is included. Indeed, 'ut' was actually preferred in solfège later into the 17th century but was changed to make for the sake of the preferred sound. 'Ti' was added originally as 'si' from the name of the saint himself at the end, but in the anglophone word became 'ti' for ease of discernment.

2352: Virginia Named after Elizabeth May 27, 2021

The US state of Virginia (technically a commonwealth) is name for the British monarchy of its time, as with the colonial settlement of Jamestown within. The commonwealth however is named after Queen Elizabeth and isn’t ‘Elizabethia’. Rather this is because she was known as the Virgin Queen. Some have also suggested that this comes from native names like 'Wingandacoa' or the name 'Wingina' but the problem with this is that the name of the commonwealth originally applied to basically all of British America including as far north as Maine, as far south as parts of the Caribbean those these eventually came to have their own designations. Indeed, other queens have had monikers like Elizabeth, the Queen Mother: wife to George VI, though this is confusingly also used to refer to Queen Elizabeth II, her daughter.

2351: crane & grouse May 26, 2021

The word for a crane in Latin is ‘grus’. In fact, despite the apparent differences these names for the lanky bird are actually cognates, sharing an older root found in many indo-european languages. One might think that the bird known as ‘grouse’—a lot more similar in sound—would be related but it probably has no connection to the Latin ‘grus’. Before it went by its modern name, the grouse was called a 'moorhen', though now this term usually applies to a small, black water-fowl related to the coot.

2350: pedigree May 25, 2021

The word 'pedigree' these days refers to record of lineage of a purebred animal such as for dogs, but this word originated with birds' feet. The word is actually from a French phrase 'pé de grue' (today 'pied de gru') meaning 'crane-foot'. This had nothing to do with actually bird lineage per se, but instead with keeping paper records of animal ancestors with each generation splitting along forked paths resembling a crane's foot. The reason for referencing cranes in particular is probably just that these were quite common across England and France at the time.

2349: Aluminum vs. Aluminium May 24, 2021

It's well known that the North American spelling and pronunciation of 'aluminum' differs from that of Britain's 'aluminium', but whether to use -i- or not may not really be the most interesting part of this spelling: it was originally just 'alumium' with no -n-. This is because the word is from Latin 'alumen', a name not for the metal but for the chemical compound known in English as 'alum' (not directly etymologically related) and into the 19th century it was the English, not Latin, where the name was taken from for a resultant 'alumium'.

The difference between the North American and British spellings came after the name was changed to keep with the convention of using Latin roots. For some time the -um and -ium were used interchangeably even by the same individuals, but the British scientific opinion was that it didn't appear to sound as classical, but in America -ium was at first actually more popular anyway. Both of these terms had variant levels of popularities in the respective regions but the current situation was more or less established by the turn of the 20th century.

2348: wright and macIntyre May 23, 2021

Many surnames derive from occupations, even though those terms are not really in use anymore, such as with 'Baxter'. This is so with the name 'Wright', from the Old English 'wryhta' meaning 'worker' specifically regarding wood. Hence this is where names like Shipwright and Cartwright come from as these are just compounds using that. The Norman French 'carpentier' eventually replaced this, but in some parts of Scotland the word is still used for tradesmen and they have a surname 'MacIntyre', literally 'son of a wright' from 'saoir' (carpenter).

2347: philanthropy vs. philandery May 22, 2021

Both 'philanthropy' and 'philandery' are doublets, coming from the very same Greek root of φίλ- (phil-) for 'love (of)' and while the latter halves may differ, the Greek ἄνθρωπος (anthropos) and ἀνήρ (andros) are understood to be variants cases of the word meaning 'man'. These had fairly similar meanings—certainly compared to today—in the past, but starting in the 18th century the term (or really name) was used for a lover in drama, poetry etc. with the word eventually meaning basically 'a flirt'. In the 20th century, the word gained even more serious way denoting a man with more serious romantic involvement with women than just flirting, with ''philanthropy' retaining its sense of 'charity'.

2346: barcelona May 21, 2021

The name of the city 'Barcelona' originally was 'Baŕkeno', as has been attested on ancient coins and found in Ancient Greek and Latin. Where this name comes from however is slightly more contentious. One theory holds that this name comes from the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca who lived in Iberia when parts of it were under Carthaginian rule. That said, it's not clear that that area was itself a settlement of the Carthaginians. It is also not clear if its ancient name of Baŕkeno was really related to him, since there are also a number of other cities around the Mediterranean with similar names, like Barca in Libya related to 'Benghazi'.

2345: Digamma: Greek's Ghost Letter May 20, 2021

The letter G effectively replaced the letter Z in the Latin alphabet, but in the Greek alphabet the letter Ζ,ζ was also affected in its order in the alphabeta. The Hebrew and Phoenician letters, zayin, are both 7th and as numerals means (7) as is true in Greek numerals despite it being 6th in order. This is because the letter Ϛ,Ϝ known as Digamma which used to be 6th was used and eventually disfavored, merging with Sigma—namely the Lunate Sigma—creating the only Greek letter with 3 distinct forms (capital, lower case, and word-final). This had originally represented the sound /w/ which no longer exists in Greek.

2344: A History of G and Z May 19, 2021

The letter Z is pretty uncommon in English and at the very end of the alphabet, but this was not always the case. Much like in the Hebrew or Greek writing systems, this letter (or its equivalent) both are numerically 7th though now in Greek it is 6th in order. The elimination of Z was done deliberately by the Roman censor Appius Claudius who saw Z as a foreign letter even though this is only true insofar as Latin doesn't really use it; it was very much present through the creation of the alphabet. This was then replaced with the Roman-invented G now occupying the 7th position, with G being based off of C in form to represent that it is just the vocalized form. The use of the letter G to represent [d͡ʒ] (as in 'giraffe') is from French orthography.

2343: carthage May 18, 2021

Carthage, the capital or the Carthaginian Empire and now the city of Tunis, is known in Arabic as قرطاج (Qarṭāj). The Carthaginians were a Phoenician people who spoke a Semitic language, so it might sound obvious that Arabic would use this, but actually it is a loan word from French replacing an earlier 'Cartagena' which was from Latin. That said, the ancient city was known as qrt-ḥdšt ('new city') in reference to the older 'Tyre'.

2342: guy & gai May 17, 2021

There is a Hebrew name גיא‎ (gai) but this is unrelated to the English name 'Guy'. For one thing, the Hebrew name is not Biblical as one might expect with English names originating in Hebrew, but also they mean totally different things, with גיא‎ meaning 'raven'. 'Guy' is actually from the same root as 'Guido' or the Old German 'Wido' which means 'wood' though others trace this back further to a root meaning 'guide' related to the English 'wit' and 'witness' as it relates to seeing. It is also through this that the saint Saint Vitus is also known as Saint Guy. He was from Sicily, and while Guido is associated with Italians in America, the name and its variations are found throughout Europe.

2341: shavuous May 16, 2021

The holiday of Shavuos (associated in Christian theology as 'Pentecost'), one of the major Jewish holidays, goes by many names in the Bible is first mentioned as חג הקציר (Chag haKatzir) literally 'holiday of the reaping' as it is based around a grain harvest festival followed shortly after with the name used today חג השבועות (Chag haShavuos) meaning "holiday of the weeks" since it is measured by 7 weeks after the second day of Pesach. This term is also used more often in the Bible. Later after that though there is יום הבכורים (Yom haBikkurim) which is often translated as 'First Fruits' but this word is used for any first-born offspring including for sons and doesn't relate to 'fruit' per se. Outside of the 5 Books also, it is referred to as עצרת‎ (Atzeres) meaning 'conclusion' as it is a conclusion of a 50-day counting process and זמן מתן תורתנו (Zman Matan Toraseinu) or 'Time of Giving of Our Torah' as this is the date for the revelation on Mount Sinai.

2340: Nicknames for Queen Elizabeth II May 15, 2021

Queen Elizabeth II goes by many names but within her own family she is known as 'Gary' and 'Cabbage'. Both are variations on other affectionate terms, with the former coming from a childish mispronunciation when a young Prince William had a hard time saying 'granny'. It stuck and now her grandchildren call her Gary affectionately. Her late husband Prince Philip called her Cabbage as a joking overly literal translation of the French phrase 'petit chou' which effectively means 'little darling' but literally means 'little cabbage'.