2564: Ursula Dec 20, 2021
The name 'Ursula' is from the Latin 'ursa' (meaning 'bear'), with the feminine diminutive suffix '-ula', but that is not the main reason why people would chose to give that name perhaps. The popularity came from a 4th century saint, Saint Ursula. Many fantastic stories exist about her, though the exact historical record on her is not solid. Still, in addition to making famous an old Latin name—especially in non-Romance speaking areas especially in Slavic Eastern Europe—she also inspired the name for the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, among other places.
2563: Boustrophedon Dec 19, 2021
Boustrophedon is a style of writing, theoretically in any linear script, wherein the direction of the writing on each line alternates. This will mean in Greek for example the first line will be right-to-left and the next line will be left-to-write. It can be done with the letters rotating on the horizontal- or vertical axis. This practice was done relatively commonly in the ancient world and many clay tablets exist from Greece and the surrounding areas especially with those styles in place. 'Boustrophedon' anyway takes its name from Greek meaning 'turning bull'.
2562: cauliflower Dec 18, 2021
Many plants are related to cabbages biologically, but this is also reflected in the name of some foods. 'Cauliflower' for instance is from the dated French 'chou fleuri' meaning literally ‘flowered cabbage’. This on its own is pretty old, but the original English for this developed into 'colieflorie' with the first element influenced by 'cole' (related to 'kale') meaning 'cabbage'. This 'cole/kale' connection is also seen in borrowed from Dutch 'cole' for 'coleslaw'.
2561: aorist Dec 17, 2021
People will be familiar with past or present tense, but fewer will have heard of the aorist tense. This is really only applied to Ancient Greek verbs which were simple and undefined. Unlike the typical understanding of tense, this exists outside a description of time, but still exists alongside all verbal moods (e.g. indicative; subjunctive), persons, voices (e.g. active; passive), etc.. This is used for many purposes, one narrative use being for stating things as truthful, or generally consistent, not bound by time per se.
2560: Iotacism Dec 16, 2021
Iotacism, also referred to as 'itacism' describes the shift of diphthongs or groups of vowels converging into the [i] sound. This pattern is not named for a speech impediment like with sigmatism or lambdacism, but for communitywide sound-shifts as on the naming pattern of rhotacism or zetacism. Greek is notable for its iotacism, since in Modern Greek, the letters and letter pairs which used to represent all totally different sounds ι, η, υ, ει, οι, υι are all said now as [i].
2559: Sigmatism Dec 15, 2021
Although many conditions and linguistic phenomena are named with a Greek letter plus '-cism', they aren't always named for the same reasons. 'Sigmatism', like 'lambdacism' describes a speech impediment that regularly affects one sound, in this case [s], though that can denote either the over- or underproduction of it. This can be an appropriate term to describe the effect of a lisp, though not necessarily.
2558: paul Dec 14, 2021
The name 'Paul' is found around the New Testament, though it is not from Greek. Indeed, the apostle who bore the name was himself born 'Saul' (שאול) but in Latin 'Paulus', literally 'small', was used to distinguish people with the same name, not so unlike 'junior'. Later, the connotations to 'small' took on the sense of 'humble'. This in turn took on religious connotations, and 'Paul' gained popularity thereafter.
2557: Lunatics Dec 13, 2021
There is a misunderstanding that the word 'lunatic' relates to a medieval or otherwise Christian understanding of witches practicing paganism or sorcery around the moon and its cycles. The word is actually much older and the concept can be seen across the ancient world, even in pagan cultures, as reflected in the etymology. This word is from Latin 'lunaticus' (moon-struck), replacing the Old English 'monseoc' (literally 'moon-sick'). These sorts of concepts of staring at the moon to cause mental diminishment also exist in Jewish scriptural literature—though not with such specific terminology for the people—millenia before the accusations of medieval European opinions.
2556: Zetacism and Lambdacism Dec 12, 2021
Rhotacism, named from the Greek letter Ρ, ρ (rho), is the process of sounds shifting and becoming like /r/. Other terms with names taken from this pattern like zetacism or lambdacism do not always have the same implication. For instance, zetacism occurs when /z/, the most common sound to be effected to /r/ via rhotacism, remains not rhotacized even though it would be expected to. Lambdacism can refer, rather counterproductively, to either a difficulty pronouncing the /l/ sound, or an overproduction of the /l/ sound especially in place of /r/. This happens in some varieties of Carribean Spanish, such as saying 'Puelto Rico'.
2555: flee, fly, float Dec 11, 2021
The participial form of 'fly' is 'flight' while for 'flee' this would be 'fled'. This pair is, perhaps unsurprisingly, related, but they've long been each slightly different to the other. In Old English, these were 'flēogan' and 'flēon' respectively, but they shared a common root from the Proto-Germanic *fleuhaną. Originally this root meant 'flow', and naturally enough this is also related. From this it elucidates how this root also led to words like 'fleet' and 'float', or Old English 'flēot' (ship).
2554: taut, tie, tough Dec 10, 2021
The word 'taut' (once 'taught') is now only an adjective, but originally it was a participle from Old English 'toen' meaning 'drag; pull'. This would connect it with the word 'tow' which has retained the earlier meaning more than 'taut' has. Furthermore, not only would this give another English connection to 'tie' but also 'tough'. This is from the Proto-Indo-European *dewk-, also the source of the Latin 'dux' meaning 'lead', and this Italian 'duce' (leader).
2553: Calzones and Underpants Dec 9, 2021
The pizza-dish known as 'calzone' in Italian means 'stocking; trouser' certainly does not mean the same thing as it does in Italian, but across other romance languages there is another level of semantic distinction. In Italian 'calzoni' these days means 'trousers', but in Spanish 'calzón' means 'underpants'. Even in languages developed later from these Romance languages don't always retain the meanings, with this distinction seen in the Papiamento word for trousers 'kalzon', taken from the Spanish 'calzón' (underpants).
2552: arsenic Dec 8, 2021
'Arsenic' shares the same root as 'glass' and 'glow', even though they don't sound similar. This is because of how the word for 'arsenic' was borrowed through Persian. There was a folk etymology for a while that it was from the Greek αρσέν (arsen) meaning 'masculine; virile', which some people associated because of the overall powerful nature of the material. This is not true.
2551: When was the 1st British Prime Minister Dec 7, 2021
What is now thought of with the title of 'prime minister' was only called First Lord of the Treasury, officially, before 1905 in Great Britain. This was used for Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who was also First Lord of the Treasury. This is still true today with prime ministers also carrying the less well known title of First Lord of the Treasury. The man usually credited as being the first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole was only de facto the first, but in 1721 was technically named First Lord of the Treasury.
2550: Attorney Dec 6, 2021
These days, an 'attorney' refers to someone who acts on another's behalf in a legal or business setting. Though the word can stand on its own, outside of legal contexts, it only realistically exists in fixed phrases like 'attorney-in-fact'. Neither of those words on their own have the generic sense of 'agent' or 'deed' respectively, except as a holdover in this phrase. Even the word 'attorney' is a bit strange, with double T's which didn't exist in Latin or Old French 'atorné', and was added later as a misunderstanding.
2549: Timor-Leste Dec 5, 2021
Plenty of regions, and even countries, are named with cardinal directions in their name, like South Sudan or Republic of Northern Macedonia. This is also true in the name of the country, Timor-Leste, though in English this is sometimes 'East Timor'. 'Leste' is 'east' in Portuguese, owing to its Portuguese colonial history, but anglicizing to 'East Timor' only does half the job, because 'timor' means 'east' in the native language of Tetum. Literally therefore its name means 'East-East'. On the other half of the island, now shared with Indonesia, used to be Dutch Timor, now known as 'West Timor', or translated as 'West East'.
2548: melancholy Dec 4, 2021
Like 'gall' and its connection (supposedly) to the gallbladder 'melancholy' was also once a pseudo-medical term. The word Ancient Greek μελαγχολία (melankholía), from μέλας (mélas) meaning 'black; murky'—same root as 'melanin'—and χολή (kholḗ) meaning 'bile', which is the same root as 'cholera'. This black bile, known in Latin as atra bilis (dark bile) believed as a kidney secretion which in excess causes sadness.
2547: gall & gallbladder Dec 3, 2021
To have gall, as in spirited gumption, and to have a gallbladder where the liver's bile is stored might not seem related at first glance, but to doctors of less enlightened times, these would. Linguistically, these are from the same root, and the organ is so named because of Medieval idea of the humors, which is to say it was where one of the four humors (fluids) was stored, believed to be the source of physical and mental characteristics depending on their quantity. In this case, the yellow bile was associated with gumption.
2546: glass (material) Dec 2, 2021
Recent posts discussed how the root *ghel- led to words for many different colors [1] or that related to light and bile, but even just looking at how 'glass' has changed can reveal a great deal of variability alone. From the 13th century it was used with restricted meanings beyond that just the material, in this case meaning 'drinking glass'. In the 14th century it took on the meaning of 'mirror' as in 'looking glass', and by the 15th century it referred to the timekeeping 'hour glass'.
2545: glass, chlorine, & arsenic Dec 1, 2021
The word 'glass' in other languages shares a root with many color-words, but that is far from where the root *ghel- ends. Meaning 'shine', this word also led to many light-associated words like 'glaze', 'glow', 'gold', 'glimmer' 'glare' and more, but also many related to bile like 'chlorine', cholera, and 'gall'. Even 'arsenic' comes through this root, though it was adopted into English through many other languages, ultimately from Old Iranian *zarna- (golden).