2679: How Cereal is Named for a Deity Apr 21, 2024

The word ‘cereal’ comes from the Roman deity Ceres, thought of as goddess of agriculture. Given the sense of cereal as a prepared breakfast dish is quite modern, it just referred to any sort of grain. Less obviously, the same etymological root also led to the word ‘sincere’ once meaning ‘pure’, wrongly described as coming from *sine cerae (without wax) but this is unattested. Rather, it, and also the word ‘crescent’ come from this same word that means ‘to grow’, and in the case of ‘sincere’ probably had the sense more of ‘raw; unadulterated’. In the case of ‘crescent’, the verb ‘crēscere’ meaning ‘to arise’, hence the association with a crescent moon.

2678: Strong Verbs Are Weakening–But Not Uniformly Apr 20, 2024

In English, there are strong verbs, those modified with internal vowel changes (e.g. “swim; swam; swum” or “rise; raise”) while weak verbs derive via an affix (e.g. “start; started”). Far and away, weak verbs are more common in English. Despite the occasional creation of a new strong form like “sneak; snuck”, with ‘snuck’ becoming more popular than ‘sneaked’ by the start of the 2010’s, strong verbs are increasingly weakening. For instance, the past tense of ‘knit’ has traditionally been ‘knit’ (no change), likewise with ‘put’, ‘wed’, and ‘whet’, but all of these aside from the most commonly used, ‘put’, are starting to take the ‘-ed’ suffix past tense. However, when this is taken into context, the waters are muddied, as some uses are changing faster than others.

Take “lawfully wedded [wife]”, which has been more popular than “lawfully wed [wife]”, at least in writing, since about the year 1800. Likewise, the phrase “wed to the idea” has never been in mainstream use, rather the phrase is with “wedded”. Compare that to the phrase “we wed” and “we wedded” where the weak form, ‘wedded’, actually peaked in the late 1820’s and is almost unheard of today, at least in writing. This verb is funny anyway insofar as it is almost never used in the present tense imperfect, and along with ‘whet’ is probably helped for that reason.

Things are different with “knit sweater” compared to “knitted sweater”, where the weak ‘knitted’ is actually now less popular since the late 1960’s, but “I knitted a sweater”, compared to “I knit a sweater” is more popular since the late 1990’s. It should be noted in the last example that it is also highly variable, and the relative popularity of ‘knit’ or ‘knitted’ as a verb switched several times throughout the 20th century.

2677: Who Is Steven, Even? Apr 19, 2024

There is a phrase, 'even-steven', usually not capitalized, that gets thrown around, but the question remains: who is, or was, Steven?

The answer for sure is no one person or really anything to do with the name, but it's not clear why. One theory is that this is just rhyming for emphasis, though that wouldn't explain the 'st-' in particular except that Steven is relatively common compared to other rhymes.

Another theory, however, places the steven from the Old English 'stefn' meaning 'voice' and likewise 'vote' or 'constitution; composure'. This is related to the German 'Stimmen' with the same range of meanings. It's possible that both theories are at play and that people opted for a somewhat relevant word that would carry more emphasis than saying 'even composition'.

2676: Goose”s Eyes: Humorous Scandinavian Quotation Marks Apr 19, 2024

British English and American English have different words for the same punctuation, like “period/full stop”, “parentheses/brackets” or “quotation marks/inverted commas”. Bearing in mind on the last example British English uses only one apostrophe for a quote, they’re all basically plain descriptions of function.

The Scandinavians, meanwhile, are equally as divided, but along different lines, namely, whether they are goose-eyes (gåseøjne in Danish / in Norwegian gåseauge), goose-feet (gæsalappir in Icelandic/ Gänsefüßchen in German). In Swedish it is bunny ears (kaninöron). These are not the only way of calling them (e.g Norwegian’s more formal “anførselstegn”), but they are all used regularly.

Aside from the division on which cute names to use, every single example above writes quotation marks differently to each other, and different from English. Some of these have secondary forms for quotes within quotes, but the primary versions are as follows:

Denmark: »...«

Iceland : „ “

Norway: «…»

Sweden: ” ” (Double right)

2675: Does French Have a Plural? Apr 17, 2024

Like English, if you look at French spelling, the usual way of pluralizing a word is to add the letter -s. Since the end letters in French spelling are regularly not pronounced—the complex guidelines of which are the story for another day—it begs the question of whether French, phonetically, has a plural form. That is, does French allow for any sound to be a plural, thus not having a typical way to distinguish singular from plural aside from say, context or simply memorizing lots of forms without clear patterns?

The answer is of course French does have a standard way to pluralize, but French pluralization relies heavily, though not solely, on articles, like many other languages with certain features at most vestigial in the morphology of nouns, adjectives etc., like the German case system.

For instance, the book-turned-play Les Misérables is pronounced [le mizeʁabl] while the singular form would be Le Miserable [lə mizeʁabl]. Comparing the two, the only difference in pronunciation is the vowel in the article, here le or les, which is the most reliable way to tell even when there is a difference in the singular or plural noun’s pronunciation. This is why articles are used in French in contexts omitted in English because it gives information on grammatical number, as well as gender.

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2674: Meadow and Mow: How Spring & Sweetness are Related

The word 'mead' as in fermented honey, and a 'meadow' are related. There is an older form of meadow as 'mead' too such as in the Middle English poem "Sumer is Icumen in" that has the line

Groweþ sed (grows seed)

and bloweþ med (and the meadow blooms)

As it happens, both of those words ultimately are from the same root, but there are other words too like the Russian word for 'bear', медведь (medved), the word 'mow' in English, as well as the German 'Matte' (pasture) and Latin 'metere' (to harvest). The root in Proto-Indo-European related to growth, blossoming, and eventually sweetness. Many languages, especially of the ancient world, had related words meaning 'sweet wine', and eventually that came to mean 'drunk'. Even the name 'Maeve' comes from the same root as 'mead', from the Middle Irish 'medb' from the root meaning 'sweet' but in this case it means literally 'intoxicating'.

2673: Foy–Breguet Telegraph System Apr 12, 2022

France was, of the developed nations in Europe, one of the last to see widespread use of a electric telegraph system. This was because there was already a large optical telegraph system, which was less susceptible to sabotage without external hardware, like the cable of electric telegraph systems. So, between the eras of the optical telegraph until the use of Morse code, the French used the Foy–Breguet system was in place, using two needles to visually indicate letters on a dial. The benefit was that it used the same orientations of the needles as were found on an optical telegraph, avoiding the need to retrain operators. It was electric though, not mechanical, so more efficient and easier to use than the previous system, now having the needles pulled into position by electromagnets. Still, the extent of the optical telegraph in France, not matched anywhere else, kept them more resistant to a newer, better system.

2672: Heliograph Apr 11, 2022

Morse code was used along with early technologies that transmitted data across great distances. A variety of media were used, but things like optical telegraphs or electric telegraphs required a certain amount of infrastructure and constant operators. Conversely, the heliograph was used, most often with Morse code, as a way to send a signal using the reflection of sunlight in a mirror often on a tripod, which could be shuttered at the correct intervals to create a visual signal. While this necessitated some amount of sunshine and a clear line of sight, they were useful for military use, surveying and forestry, and other remote, outdoor work. In Pakistan, these were standard issue in the military as late as 1975.

2671: Prosignals & Prowords Apr 10, 2022

Procedure words (prowords) are code words used for spoken radio telephone that developed from Morse code procedure signals (prosignals). One difference between a prosignal and a normal abbreviation is that prosignals often signal to the operators themselves, not to abbreviate the message they would send. The most famous prosign would likely be SOS, which officially does not stand for anything except signalling for help. Likewise, the most famous proword would probably be 'rodger', which signals that the message was received clearly. The history there is that it is from the once-encoded R meaning 'received' and during WWII the spelling alphabet for R was 'rodger', though now it would be 'romeo'. Other famous prowords would include 'over', 'out', 'mayday' & 'wilco' (will comply), though due to the greater efficiency of speech, there are not nearly as many prowords as Morse Code abbreviations or prosignals.

2670: Morse Code Codes Apr 9, 2022

Other than Q-codes, along with the less common Z-codes and X-codes, Morse code uses lots of standard abbreviations. Some of these will be linked to the words they abbreviate, like BN (all between); C (correct) or FWD (forward) to name a few, plenty of others are simply usefully short, like CQD (All stations distress) or K (invitation to transmit) but have no relation to the meaning. Others still use a combination, like WX (weather) or even just use numbers 73 (best regards). These sorts of official codes were accompanied by many more unofficial codes to speed up communication.

2669: Q-Codes Apr 8, 2022

Morse code can be send fairly quickly, but as with any system, it eventually developed its own abbreviations. There were hundreds of these, but some were more particular than others. Q-codes are particular in two ways: all begin with the letter Q, and they have been designed for use various branches of the military, beginning in 1912. Although scores exist, the first dozen were various naval codes, each with a certain meaning depending on whether a question or answer. For instance:

•QRA: (question) What ship or coast station is that? (answer) This is...

•QRC: (question) What is your true bearing? (answer) true bearing is … degrees

These were later expanded, but always with a question-answer format.

2668: International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Standard Apr 7, 2022

Morse code was changed a number of times, finally cemented in 1865 with the International Telecommunication Union standard. This was mostly based on Morse's original system, as well as Gerke's modified European version, but some letters were redesigned wholesale like those for <O> (once • • with a medial pause, to later – – –) and <P> (once • • • • •, later • – – •). It also distinguished <I> and <J> that Gerke's system had as the same (• • without the medial pause), though it does not use Morse's original <J> (– • – •) because this was instead used for <C>.

This left only 4 characters unchanged since the original system. Per letter this did actually make things longer to spell & therefore become on the surface less efficient, but it led to a greater ease of understanding that would cancel that out. It has little resemblance to the original Morse code, but many still call it as such, even though the technical name would be the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard.

2667: International Morse Code Apr 6, 2022

There were lots of innovations that helped to spread Morse code, such as moving from paper to sound which speeds up comprehension and the switch from cables to radio waves, which originally could not transmit voices. Beyond that however, the real driver for the system's success was its early, wide adoption, such as at the 1851 Vienna conference which made it standard for many Central European countries, and even earlier when it was adopted among American railroads—eventually adopted broadly in America—in the two decades preceding the Civil War. That said, International Morse code (made by Friedrich Gerke) is different to American Morse code, and was influenced by the system already in place with the Hamburg railways. This standardized the length of dashes, which were somewhat variable in American Morse code, as well as adding in special characters not used for English.

2666: Why 'Morse' Code Apr 5, 2022

Samuel Morse is known for inventing Morse code, but that was not particular to him. He and Alfred Vail developed the electrical telegraph system that would initially place the dots and dashes on a paper tape at the other end of the wire, though operators found listening to the clicks to be more efficient. That said, Morse's original idea for a system was to transmit the dots-&-dashes as numbers only, and to have a system for interpreting the numbers as words. Alfred Vail was the one who came up with the idea of encoding letters through those dots-&-dashes, and worked out the relative frequencies of each to make the system the most efficient with shorter codes for more common letters. Arguably, given the great mechanical and cypher-based contributions, it might have been more fittingly Vail code.

2665: Morse Code: The Basics Apr 4, 2022

Morse code, conceptually, does not sound particularly revolutionary, and realistically it was not. It encodes all 26 Latin letters and numerals as a combination of 1-4 dots and dashed, with the latter being three-times the length of the former so technically there is no specified time for each so long as the proportions are consistent. This makes it easy to encode and possible to signal using theoretically any perceptible medium, though usually on things like electric currents, or radio, sound or light waves. Samuel Morse designed his code such that the most common letters are the quickest to type. Before Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail developed their system, there were a few machines that were not used on such a global scale.

2664: ⌘ Command Key Symbol Apr 3, 2022

The command key symbol ⌘ for Macintosh, sometimes called the Apple key, was developed after Steve Jobs was concerned that using the Apple logo instead would be overused. The idea was inspired from similar symbols used to mark cultural heritage sites in some Nordic countries, hence why it is known as Fornminne (ancient monument) in Swedish, and Seværdighedstegn (landmark signs) in Danish. Since the command key is to allow the user to access certain shortcuts with the keyboard, but the precise history of the symbol in Scandinavia is somewhat mysterious.

2663: Ƶ & the Nazis Apr 2, 2022

The letter Z, and especially with a crossbar Ƶ, became a symbol closely associated with the Nazis, at least on first glance. Strictly speaking, the Ƶ iconography is not a letter, at least not originally, but a rendering of an old hunting tool known in German as a Wolfsangel, or wolf's hook in English. Basically, it was a metal, Z-shape set of hooked barbs, often with another spiked bar in the middle, which would be embedded in meat and left for wolves to eat and impale themselves on. This was associated with a rebellion after a 15th century peasant uprising used it symbolically, and it also looks like a Germanic rune eihwaz ᛇ. While the latter factor added extra Germanic symbolism, it is not why it became associated with the Nazis.

2662: 3 Names for Z Apr 1, 2022

The letter Z in America is called 'zee' and basically everywhere else in the anglophone world, 'zed'. There is a third version though, widely used nowhere, called 'izzard', though this was somewhat more popular in the 18th century. Unlike the other two which either follows the pattern of other letters 'cee; dee; tee' or following the Greek zeta. Instead, this form probably comes from the French 'ézed', though the word now is ‘zède‘.

2661: Japanese Semaphore Mar 31, 2022

Things like semaphore and morse code word for alphabetic systems like the Latin alphabet, but it might not be obvious how Japanese writing might be adapted for it. Japanese semaphore for instance had to rethink the concept since there are about twice the number of characters compared to the Latin alphabet, and it is a syllabary. Instead, with a red flag in the right hand and white in the left, they had the semaphore signals roughly match the trajectory of how the strokes look in the characters but this would usually take two or more different motions complete. Semaphore already rotated the flags like the hands of a clock to sign letters and numbers with the same displays, owing to its clock-like mechanical origins, but Japanese semaphore had a different system for numbers to its letters.