2493: druthers Oct 9, 2021
The word 'druthers' is almost always used in the plural form, though the singular is technically possible, and more common in the past. This is a bit strange, because the word originated in the US as an amalgamation of the phrase "I'd rather". These days, it is usually a noun as well, but it does sometimes appear as it might from the original contraction such as "I druther not", though this verb is more farcical, while the noun can be used in more serious contexts, relatively speaking.
2492: Merism Oct 8, 2021
As a literary device, referring to a while by mentioning the two ends of the spectrum—such as "searching high and low" as opposed to "searching everywhere"—is known as 'merism', from the Greek μερισμός (merismos) meaning 'partitioning'. In that case, it is understood one is not only searching high and also low, but in between too. This can paint a more vivid image, and add emphasis, and so is used as a poetic description often, though of course not always. The opening line of the Bible contains
את השמים ואת הארץ (es hashamayim ve-es ha'arets) "the sky [or 'heavens'] and the earth", but from Shema (Deuteronomy 6) ובשכבך ובקומך (u'vshachbcho u'vkumecho) "(and) in your lying down and in your getting up" in both a merism but also literal, describing the relative time of day.
2491: republic Oct 7, 2021
There is a prefix 're-' used either for repetition ('reshape'), negation ('react'), or intensity ('resound'), and while 'public' is a word 'republic' fits none of those above categories. This is because it comes from a Latin phrase, effectively a compound from 'rēpūblicā', the ablative form of 'rēspūblica'—the nominative [subject] form—meaning 'matter/thing of the people'. The loss of -S- is because 'rēspūblica' is two words, which are both being declined separately, and the -S- of 'rēs' (thing) doesn't appear in the form borrowed into other languages.
2490: How נ Became Short Oct 6, 2021
Hebrew, effectively has 3 ways of scripts, hand writing, printed, and liturgical script. These are mostly the same, and the reasons for the evolution of each helps to elucidate the differences in each. For instance the letter נ—pronounced /nun/ and an ancestor to N—(except as it appears word-final) is the same length as other letters standardly in print and new liturgical writing, but at the end of the word it goes low (ן). In hand-written script though, it is long both times and is distinguished by being straight at the end of a word, and curved otherwise. However, before a few centuries ago both forms were long in formal holy writing; the reason being that in the beginning/middle of a word, its base juts out and causes the concern of interfering with the following letter.
2489: Referential Pronouns in Non-Standard Constructions Oct 5, 2021
"I love myself some coffee" while allowed in some dialects for emphasis, is not strictly grammatical. It could be formed as an omission of the words "to get", as in "I [would] love to get myself..." Indeed, this environment could also allow 'me' in place of 'myself' ("I love me some coffee") which is even less standard but insofar as it is used, shows that the version with 'myself' might not be formed with the underlying structure of "...to get...". It should also be noted that the use of 'some' before a mass noun (i.e. it is understood as a mass and not separate units) cannot exist without the referential pronoun, either 'myself' or 'me', as "I love some coffee" would instead indicate some specificity instead of mere emphasis, that is, not all coffee here.
2488: Mayan Directions & Maize Oct 4, 2021
The Mayans used a system where the four cardinal directions represented by the four colors of maize. This translated as white for north, black for west, yellow for south, and red for east. Inscriptions from around AD 600 use the names of the directions as they correspond to the colors, which in addition to the agricultural, culinary, and indeed major religious significance to the crop, a genericized symbolic blend of those as used for giving people directions.
2487: Cuneiform and Linear A Oct 3, 2021
Cuneiform, arguably the first writing system, was based in wedges pressed into clay from the corners of a stylus, hence the triangular formation, and was used for many languages, both Semitic and otherwise. These two factors help to explain why there is such a volume of known texts—hundreds of thousands of tablets—to survive. In the transition to other writing systems, such as Linear A, named because its lines were cut or pulled, like with a pen, as opposed to pressed that it would allow for more flexibility of writing overall. Cuneiform was not the only pressed form of writing, as this practice is also found from Ugaritic alphabet (technically an abjad), and despite how widespread this was, being used across the whole of the Middle East from Anatolia to Persia, it was not as easy, nor useful for non-clay media, and was eventually replaced having once been the replacement for drawn glyphs too.
2486: Linear A & B Oct 2, 2021
The Greek alphabet was ultimately derived from Phoenician (a.k.a. Punic; a.k.a. Canaanite), but considering the shapes of the letters, the inclusion of vowels, and changing direction of the writing itself, this was not an immediate process. Two writing systems, known as Linear A and Linear B, emerged in the eastern Mediterranean. Linear A was used from about 1800–1450 BC with no decipherable texts to date, but was used by the Mycenaeans (Minoans): early Greeks based in the Aegean and especially Crete. Already Linear A switched to a left-to-right script, and in addition to containing symbols for old letters, there are new letters, grammatical symbols, whole syllables and a number system including fractions. In Linear B, also used by the Mycenaeans from about 1450 BC until the Bronze Age Collapse, seemingly for primarily official purposes. Like Linear A, some symbols were letters and others whole syllables—not unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs in that way—with about 200 overall signs. Ultimately, these, and other scripts used for early Greek language writing can help to show the transition of a once glyph-based system of representing words and sounds into a recognizable form of the alphabets it led to.
2485: Legal Doublets Oct 1, 2021
Legal doublets are phrases, used in legal and common uses, which uses two or more nearly synonymous words, such as "cease and desist", "clear and present danger" or indeed "will and testament". Like other binomials, these are often connected with 'and', and often cannot be said out of order. These are not totally random however, nor purposeless (at least historically), since many started as Latin or French words followed by an English translation, though others originated as near-redundancy. Eventually both parts became English translations, and this phenomenon, which is already especially particular to law, does not exist across languages as much.
2484: Irreversible Binomials Sep 30, 2021
A so-called irreversible binomial is a phrase which exists with separable words that occur in a fixed order, like 'fish and chips', 'fight or flight, 'or 'short and sweet'. These can exists for all types of words, including for those which are no longer productive, like 'kit and caboodle' or 'vim and vigor'. This leads to come pairs like 'time and time again' abbreviated as 'time and again' which would make 'again' sound like a noun and is ungrammatical, but here there is no loss in meaning. Many of these near-idiomatic phrases are also somewhat poetic in their structure, relying on rhymes or alliteration frequently. These nearly always use a conjunction either 'and' or 'or', but in some cases exceptional like 'hoity toity' this is not necessary.
2483: siamese twins Sep 29, 2021
The term 'siamese twins' is becoming less popular compared to 'conjoined twins', because of perceived racial connotations. Indeed, Thailand isn't even called Siam anymore. The term was originally coined after Chang and Eng Bunker, two famous conjoined twins from Thailand living in the former half of the 19th century. They toured the world for many years, especially the USA, becoming quite famous both in the medical community and wider culture. This term 'siamese twins' is even used in astrophysics to describe two galaxies that appear to be close to conjoined, though these days many do not like to use this term
2482: Cleopatra: Not Exactly a Name Sep 28, 2021
Although the name Cleopatra is famous, most of her female relatives and ancestors were Cleopatra, her own full name being Cleopatra VII Philopator (Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ). Later she took on the title Theā́ Philopátōra (Θεᾱ́ Φιλοπάτωρα). Likewise, all her male relatives and ancestors were Ptolemy (Πτολεμαῖος) such as her brother and husband Ptolemy XIII Theos Philopator. Many of them therefore had other, secondary names with Cleopatra or Ptolemy acting as family names or even titles, though for women Arsinoe (Ἀρσινόη) or Berenice (Βερενίκη) also were options.
2481: nicotine Sep 27, 2021
Tobacco is native to Central America, hence the word coming to English from Spanish, and likewise there was a Portuguese connection—albeit more convoluted—for 'nicotine'. It is named from the New Latin 'nicotiana', which is the scientific name of the plant, 'nicotiana herba', and that word comes from the name of the French ambassador to Portugal, who brought tobacco back to France in 1560: Jean Nicot. It is unclear where that name originates.
2480: Latin Vowel Length: Different Vowels? Sep 26, 2021
Latin, like many languages but unlike English, distinguished between long- and short-vowels. In some languages, these are merely the same vowels but said for roughly double the amount of time, which affects things like meter and syllable length. In Latin, even with Classical pronunciations, these vowels were qualitatively different. For instance, the letter I would be realized as [iː] (the symbol ː just indicates lengthening) when long like the vowel in 'seat' but long, whereas when short it was realized as [ɪ], like the vowel in 'sit'. Indeed, for all the basic letters vowel AEIOU, only A was qualitatively the same vowel, just lengthened [aː] and [a].
2479: Swedish Tones Sep 25, 2021
While people tend to associate tonal languages which use pitch to distinguish between words otherwise pronounced the same with East Asia, there are languages around the world, such as Swedish (with Norwegian included), which also have some form of this. Swedish has two tones, the acute and grave tones, which are often distinguished by stress, as in English 'a rebel' and 'to rebel' but in Swedish there are genuine, noticeable pitch changes in terms of the individual vowels outside of mere stress. As a result, there are pairs of words differing only by these tones that have totally unrelated meanings, like 'boken' (the book) with acute tone, and 'boken' (spoilt) with a grave tone. In Swedish dialects spoken in Finland, these pitches are virtually nonexistent.
2478: Hebrew Jussive: Not Just the Future Sep 24, 2021
There is a myth that Hebrew has no jussive subjunctive (such as English "let's" or "let there be"), as in most cases this looks to be the imperfect , signifying uncompleted action. For instance, the line in the opening of the Bible:
יהי אור ויהי־אור (yahi ohr vayahi ohr) can be translated as "let there be light, and there was light" or "there will be light, and there was light". In some instances this has led to obvious mistranslations, because the truth is in most contexts, there is no difference in the form of the word between the two. There are some instances where the two would differ however—proving that there is a difference in form—such as: ישם in
ישא יי פניו אליך וְיָשֵׂם לך שלום
pronounced (yasem) for the subjective meaning "may he place" as opposed to יָשִׂים (yasim) "he will place".
2477: Scotch Bonnet Sep 23, 2021
The Scotts are not known particularly for their spicy foods, and yet there is a hot, caribbean pepper named the Scotch bonnet. This is not because it has any particular relation to Scotland, but because of its supposedly similar resemblance to the tam o'shanter hat (also known as toorie bunnet): a round, woolen cap with a pom-pom. This name itself comes from the name of the hero in a poem by Robert Burns, perhaps the most famous writer in Scottish history.
2476: Literacy and the Historical Record Sep 22, 2021
It would be a mistake to assume that in history is always better understood the further ahead in time one looks. For instance, in post-Roman Europe, and most extremely in Britain, literacy rates plummeted within a generation of the collapse of the empire. As a result, while archeological information is just as viable, written records which had provided detail on more particular aspects of life at that time. This was one of many ways in which the society of the Britons in many ways reverted to its pre-Roman state, but it leaves much of the history of the 5th century and onwards shrouded. In general, collapses society that lead to declines in literacy cause blank spots in an otherwise rich historical records as happened same happened with the arrival of the sea peoples at the collapse of bronze age societies around the Mediterranean.
2475: Asyndeton Sep 21, 2021
Asyndeton is a literary device of removing conjunctions between related clauses, such as the famous Latin line 'veni; vidi; vici' (I came; I saw; I conquered). These can be on the level of whole phrases and clauses, as in the example before, or merely a series of adjuncts "softly, carefully, she walked down the stairs" or other sorts of features just so long as the conjuncts have no conjunction. This literary device helps to add emphasis, memorability and a certain smoothness to the language.
2474: Hebrew's (Potential) Accusative Case Sep 20, 2021
Biblical Hebrew uses the suffix -ה (a-) to indicate motion-towards: a common feature of the accusative case, which otherwise is used to mark direct objects. Hebrew already has a direct object marker for definite nouns—את (es)—but no way to mark indefinite nouns. Historically however, it would seem that this suffix -ה (a-) would have, whether or not the noun was definite. This accusative form was mostly lost with this one lingering use and a few potential vestigial forms in vocabulary, but some have even suggested that on top of that an early variety of Hebrew had a nominative */-u/ ending for subjects, and genitive */-i/ ending for possessives, but there is less evidence here.