2379: Variations in the 7 Deadly Sins Jun 23, 2021

The 7 deadly sins (a.k.a. capital vices) are an aspect fo Christian theology, are not found in the Bible and are thus subject to a certain amount of flexibility. For instance, nowadays these would usually be listed as pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, and gluttony but throughout history this had been slightly different. Originally it began with the Ancient Greeks anyway, but even into the Middle Ages this list included 'acedia' (spiritual neglect), vainglory (vanity; boasting, etc.) and tristitia (sorrow; despair). Different theologians from the 4th century onwards would be known to have their own lists with slight variations like this.

2378: Bill vs Beak Jun 22, 2021

Birds have beaks, but some beaks are bills, and while the term 'bill' is now the more restricted term of those two, historically it was the general term with 'beak' only referring to the sharpened bills of birds of prey. In part from that historical confusion, and simply the breadth of variety in which these of rostra are found, there is not much of a practical distinction, and while some are conventional such as ducks having bills and hawks having beaks, other birds may be found described with either nearly synonymously or as a subjective judgment on the shape of the rostrum.

2377: moustache, mandible, & kemp Jun 21, 2021

The word 'mustache' (or 'moustache') has been the word for the hair above the upper-lip since the 16th century, from French but ultimately the Ancient Greek μύσταξ (mústax) meaning 'upper lip'. This in turn is from the root *mendʰ- (to chew) thereby connecting this word to 'mandible': an animal's jaw bone, as well as the French 'manger' (to eat). Before this, English used the word 'kemp'—itself related to 'chin' and more surprisingly, 'camp'. In Middle English, 'kempe' referred to coarse hairs but is not related to other words like 'comb' or 'unkempt'.

2376: boot-camp Jun 20, 2021

The phrase 'boot-camp' can refer to any intense, introductory training course, especially in military contexts. This should come as no surprise therefore that this originated as military slang in the 1940's with the 'boot' in question itself being slang for a new recruit. In particular this was naval slang, and can be attested as far back as the Spanish-American War, with the naval uniform not consisting of boots per se, but of leggings.

2375: Some Country Domain Extensions Jun 19, 2021

Everyone knows .com or .org, but every nation and some territories will have their own domain extensions, some of which do not make sense at first glance. Often this is just from the native language as with Germany's .de (Deutschland), but in the case of South Africa's .za, this is from 'Zuid-Afrika' though now in Afrikaans it is 'Suid-Afrika'. Then there are even more anomalous seeming cases like Western Sahara's .eh. This is actually from Spanish 'Español Sahara' (Spanish Sahara) despite that political period ending in 1975. The H being taken of saHara since Spain itself already uses .es. Others are just from lack of priority, like the French Mayotte having .yt, also sometimes used by YouTube.

2374: nachos Jun 18, 2021

There's an old joke:

What do you call cheese that doesn't belong to you?

Nacho cheese. (This really only works if you say it out loud...)

For Ignacio Anaya however, this would be false. Nachos were actually named after a specific person, Ignacio Anaya, a Mexican restaurateur who owned Nacho's Restaurant and named the dish after himself too. Nacho happens to be a fairly common nicknamed form of the Spanish name Ignacio. This was originally the Latin 'Ignatius', famed for the saint Ignatius of Antioch, with Ignatius technically being a name in English but far less common than its Spanish equivalent.

2373: Biblical Loan Words Jun 17, 2021

Over the years, a number of collections have been arranged of word in Biblical Hebrew that are from other sources, including non-Semitic ones. Of course, some of these will be obvious, such as פרעה‎ ('pharaoh') from Ancient Egyptian probably or קוף (qof) meaning 'monkey' from either Tamil or Sanskrit, considering that these concepts would not be native. Considering also the timespan of Bible, some of these sources will be found later historically after centuries of contact with other civilizations in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. However, even in the Writings (כתובים‎) which has the greatest percentage, even a inclusive estimate would put total loan words from any language at less than 2% of all vocabulary.

2372: South Arabian Languages Jun 16, 2021

South Arabian languages, mainly confined to Oman, Yemen (including Soqotri) along with Kuwait. These were once thought to be descendents of Old South Arabian—a collection of four Yemenite languages—but were later reclassified as West Semitic along with Arabic, Hebrew, and Ethiopian Semitic languages: basically any living Semitic language. Still, these diverged from other Semitic languages early, and are closer related to Ethiopian Semitic languages rather than Arabic, though these are far from mutually intelligible. These languages (Bathari, Harsusi, Hobyót, Mehri–Soqotri, Shehri) are known for having certain archaic features, especially when it comes to phonology, lost in other Semitic languages.

2371: mortimer Jun 15, 2021

The surname and later first name 'Mortimer' (hence 'Morty') is originally French for 'dead sea'. This habitational surname however is subject to a folk etymology that this comes from the time when a French speaking class ruled over the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291) as one of the crusader states. The Dead Sea at the end of the Jordan River is certainly more famous, but not the dead sea in question, which is actually Mortemer, Seine-Maritime, Normandy, in France. This was the site of the Battle of Mortemer in 1054 fought in this area known for its stagnant water.

2370: Cakes & Biscuits: Legal Classification Jun 14, 2021

Cakes and biscuits might sound like sweet and easy-going treat, but there is a legal and effectively molecular distinction drawn between these in the UK which has led to actual court hearings. Particularly, the Jaffa Cake was subject to this dispute because the two classes of food are taxed differently, and Jaffa Cakes had to be proven to be cakes to avoid a tax specifically on chocolate-covered biscuits. The government tried to base its case on how it was produced like a biscuit, but as had been established in a previous case cakes harden when stale, and biscuits become limp when stale. Since Jaffa Cakes are tall, spongey, and will lose moisture when stale, these were legally proven to be cakes.

For more legal food classification click here.

2369: Abessive Case Jun 13, 2021

Finnish is known for its many grammatical cases: an amount that would put Latin to shame. Still, not all of these are as common as others, such as the abbessive case, a.k.a. caritive or privative case. This expresses a lack of something, and would be roughly comparable to the English '-less', for instance in:

raha (money)

rahatta (without money)

but this is increasingly being replaced with other words like 'ilman' meaning 'without' and is already fairly rare to find in normal speech, though still used to some extent in writing. Hungarian also has suffixes and postpositions for this purpose, but the postposition is not considered a suffix and won't have vowel harmony. Other languages, even related languages like Estonian and many Turkic languages use this case fairly productively, so it's not disappearing universally by any means.

2368: Sir Isaac Newton's Anti-Counterfeit Technique Jun 12, 2021

In the Middle Ages and even into the 17th century, coin clipping (also including shaving) wherein some amount of the money is removed. One way devised as an anti-counterfeit measure by Sir Isaac Newton in 1696 when he was Warden of the Royal Mint was to use grooves on the edge such that shaving and clipping would be easier spotted. One phrase inscribed on these coins after this was DECUS ET TUTAMEN meaning "an ornament and a safeguard". This is actually a phrase from Virgil's Aeneid and was printed on British coins for many hundreds of years.

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).