2367: Anomalous: The Rare Dagesh in Guttural Letters Jun 11, 2021

Hebrew uses a system of diacritics to represent vowels, but also to represent other phonetic changes. Still, there are some anomalous cases in the Torah. The dagesh—appearing as a dot in the middle of a letter—distinguishes basically 2 features; either it will distinguish between plosive or fricative forms in six letters: בג"ד כת"פ (note that not all of these are still productive) but more often the dagesh is used as a דגש חזק ('strong dot') indicating gemination. This latter use is found in all other letters to effectively double that particular sound but those mentioned above and the 'guttural letters': א‎, ה‎, ח‎, ע‎, and in many ways ways ר. This last case, ‎ר (reish), representing [ʁ] or [ʀ] is found in at least 17 cases, which is still very few, that are throughout the Prophets and Writings. Even fewer exceptional cases—about four—are found with א (aleph) even though this is often taken as a 'silent letter', such as in Genesis 43:26, Leviticus 23:17, and neither of these have other vowels added.

2366: Names with 'St.' not Named for Saints. Jun 10, 2021

There are places around the UK place names with 'St.' included in it which are not named after any saints. For instance, in Cornwall 'St Dennis' is not actually named after the martyr Denis of Paris but as a misinterpretation of the Cornish 'dinas' (hill-fort). The 'St.' was added later. Likewise, the Cornish village of St Agnes was not named for Agnes of Rome but in this case this is not from Cornish but from Old Norse, namely as a compound from 'hagi' (pasture) and 'nes' (headland). This is particularly notable because Cornwall is about as far from the Danelaw as one can get in England, but there are certain names influenced from Old Norse.

2365: Abnormal Syllabic Consonants Jun 9, 2021

There are syllabic consonants, which are syllables without vowels, but there are certain constraints on how most languages use them, such as how most are sonorants and especially nasal ([m] and [n]) and liquids ([l] and [ɹ]). English does have others, which is pretty rare across most languages, but in syllabic fricatives such as in 'shh'. These paralinguistic elements are not really words nor are these found as parts of other words as with syllabic consonants normally. For instance, the longest Czech sentence without vowels and only syllabic consonants is 25 words:

Škrt plch z mlh Brd pln skvrn z mrv prv hrd scvrnkl z brzd skrz trs chrp v krs vrb mls mrch srn čtvrthrst zrn.

(Stingy dormouse from Brdy mountains fogs full of manure spots firstly proudly shrank a quarter of handful seeds, a delicacy for mean does, from brakes through bunch of Centaurea flowers into scrub of willows)

2364: Czech's Vowelless Tongue-Twister Jun 8, 2021

The Czech language has a nasty tongue-twister without any vowels:

Strč prst skrz krk

This is notably as well because it is totally grammatically sound, meaning 'stick your finger through your throat': quite fitting too. Indeed, those words are all fairly normal, and are among many without vowels. The way this is possible from a syllabic point is that each word has [r] which is acting as a so-called syllabic-R. English also has syllabic consonants such as the [m] in 'column' wherein a consonant is a whole syllable. This is very common in Slavic languages too, especially around [r], [l] and sometimes [m] hence the word čtvrtsmršť (a type of measurement).

2363: Albatross: Spanish & Arabic Borrowing from Themselves Jun 7, 2021

As seen in the name of 'Alcatraz', the word has been associated with both pelicans and gannets due to related sounding Arabic and Spanish words, but that doesn't end there. The word 'albatross' (in Spanish 'albatros') is 'alcatraz' in Portuguese. Certainly the association of different sea-birds under one name isn't unique and probably from the same Arabic word which led to the archaic Spanish name for a pelican. It also could be from another Arabic word الْقَادُوس‎ (al-qādūs), itself from the Ancient Greek κάδος (kádos) meaning 'jar'. In any case, it's thought to be influenced by the Latin 'albus' (white). As if all this back-and-forth lending wasn't complicated enough, the Modern Arabic for 'albatross' قَطْرَس‎ (qaṭras) is not only not the origin here but may have been borrowed from the Modern Spanish.

2362: Alcatraz: Named after which Bird? Jun 6, 2021

The island of Alcatraz is known for many things including as a prison, the site of a major Native American protest, and a museum, it was also known for its pelicans, sort of. Many people mistakenly believe this is where the name comes from, but the Spanish "La Isla de los Alcatraces" does not mean as many think "The Island of the Pelicans" but instead "The Island of the Gannets". Anyway, the Spanish for 'pelicans' is 'pelícanos' but there is an archaic Spanish word 'alcatraz' (pelican) from the Arabic: غطاس‎ (al-ġaţţās) meaning 'the diver; the submerger'. It is from these gannets that the island took its name in 1775. More on this in a separate post.

2361: Pringles & Its Linguistic Dilema Jun 5, 2021

While it's true that usually in the US flat, cooked, hard discs of potato are called '(potato) chips', and that in the UK these same things are called 'crisps', it is in a certain sense challenged. There is in the US a legal definition, and therefore limitation on what is a 'chip' and Pringles® do not meet these criteria and so in the US are actually mandatorily avoided as 'crisps'. This is because rather than drying, baking, or frying whole potatoes, Pringles use "dehydrated processed potato" along with corn, rice, wheat and other ingredients. This was ruled legally not a potato chip in 1975 and while the alternative 'crisp' is used in the US, this might have posed a problem in the UK. They had a separate legal decision there where it was decided that they could use the culturally dominant word 'crisp' for the particular snack.

2360: gander (v), gannet, & goose Jun 4, 2021

The verbal form of 'gander' is probably used more often than the nominal form, but it is newer and originates as slang. Specifically inmate slang, since a gander is a male goose and in this case was noted for the long, bending neck. The word 'gannet', another type of waterfowl comes from the exact same Proto-Indo-European root. This helps to support the argument that the earlier sense of this word was simply seabird as in other languages this root led to the names for other types of birds like the Lithuanian 'gandras' (stork).

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).