2687: God-Bye & Other Religious Farewells Apr 29, 2024

Like the word ‘goodbye’, which is a contraction of “God be with you [/ye]”, the French ‘adiue’ is from the full line “a Dieu vos comant” (“I commend you to God”). This is why historically this  was used as a greeting, as well as a farewell, which in both cases is now the primary usage. Many other Romance languages have such a line from the Latin equivalent ‘ad Deum’, like the Spanish ‘adios’, but so does German with the common farewell ‘tschüß’ (also spelt ‘tscheuss’) from the French ‘adieu’ making the most common farewell term in several languages religious in nature, however unrecognizably.

2686: Letters vs. Digraphs: Which is More Authentic Apr 28, 2024

 English speakers should be pretty used to digraphs and trigraphs: using two or more letters to represent one sound. Think of <SH>, <TH>, <PH> and so on, which is not the same as silent letters, like ‘science’ having a silent C (or S, kind of). One interesting historical trend is that <S> usually represents the sound [s] as opposed [ʃ] (as in <SH>), written in English and French as a digraph (French: <CH>) or in German as a trigraph (i.e. <SCH>).This is not always the case though, as in Hungarian where the letter <S> represents [ʃ] and if you wanted to write [s] that would be spelt <SZ>. This just goes to show that the letters English considers to represent as the default of sorts is not universal, seen again in the difference between <C> and <CH>; the sounds those are generally thought of as representing in English are reversed in many contexts in Italian, e.g. ‘ciao’ (ˈt͡ʃa.o) vs. ‘chiodo’ (ˈkjɔ.do). In fact, in Old English the letter <C> also was [t͡ʃ] (as in <CH>), so really employing a digraph as opposed to one letter is more of a historical coincidence than anything else.

2685: Skeptic or Sceptic? Apr 27, 2024

If you’re skeptical about what’s in your septic tank, you wouldn’t be the only one. In fact, it is primarily for this reason of not associating the word ‘sceptic’ with ‘septic’ that the American spelling is with a K (i.e. ‘skeptic’) while in Britain etc. it is with a C. There is another problem, however, looking at the British spelling, which is that normally a word beginning SC- before I or E is not pronounced this way, as in ‘science’ or ‘scene’. Of course, in Latin it was pronounced, but that is certainly not what people expect looking at a word like that.

So why then do Commonwealth countries spell it with the C at the beginning? Because in French ‘sceptique’, where the word comes from, it was not pronounced, and would have joined the ranks of ‘science’ and ‘scene’, were it not for a change in pronunciation with the C pronounced /k/, through a basically random process. As a result, American English adopted a new spelling to reflect this change while elsewhere the pronunciation changed but that was not reflected in the spelling. 

2684: Feeling Lousy? Apr 26, 2024

 Feeling lousy? You ought to ask someone to comb through your hair. These days the dominant use of the word ‘lousy’ is “in poor condition”, often relating to ill-health or to something that is disappointing. The original sense of this word is “lice-infested”, but since the the singular form ‘louse’ is not as common, people will not as readily make that association as perhaps they might about describing someone as ‘mousy’, though also that word is more phonetically similar, with ‘louse’ being pronounced with an [s], and ‘lousy’ usually with a [z].

2683: Penguins Aren’t Who They Say They Are Apr 25, 2024

The word ‘penguin’ is most likely a word of Welsh origin, but given that penguins don’t live in the northern hemisphere, and Welsh presence did not tend to spread very far—though they were eventually in Patagonia—and that this term dates from the 16th century, it does raise an obvious question of why. Strengthening this question is that the Welsh “pen gwyn” means “white head” which penguins famously don’t have. This is because the term originally referred to another bird that was ecologically, but not taxonomically similar: the now-extinct great auk. The great auk also didn’t have a white head but a distinctive white patch on the forehead, and otherwise resembled penguins in appearance and ecological niche fairly closely, but in the northern hemisphere. With their nests on the ground and far more predators and habitat loss in the arctic region compared to the antarctic region, they became extinct in the mid-19th century, but there were a few centuries when the Welsh “pen gwyn” and “pengwin” were known about simultaneously.

2682: The Symbol for Penny was d Apr 24, 2024

For over 50 years in Britain, the symbol for a penny is simply ‘p’, written at the end of a price like 99p, but before decimalisation in 1971, Brits would write out pence as ‘d’, also at the end. This pre-decimal system, which saw 20 shillings to the pound and 12 pence to the shilling, is often referred to as £sd or Lsd as an abbreviation of these units of sterling. For instance, something costing 7 shillings, and 9 pence might be written 7/9d. This raises the question of why ‘d’? Even the ‘s’ for shillings, not as commonly seen as the other two letters, only coincidentally had the same initial letter. 

Rather, these abbreviations come from Latin, where ‘pounds’ is ‘librae’ (hence the L-based £ symbol), ‘shillings’ is ‘solidi’, and ‘pence’ is ‘denarii’ (all written in their plural form). These words are no longer used, but the word ‘denarius’ led to many other words for modern currencies, ranging from Serbia to Bahrain, or just money as in the Spanish ‘dinero’. 

2681: Dour’s Pronunciation Change was Inevitable Apr 23, 2024

While English is not written phonologically for a variety of factors including frequent borrowing from other languages and multiple significant sound shifts after spelling standardization, spelling how something is pronounced isn’t always a one-way street. Take the word ‘dour’, which traditionally rhymes with ‘moor’ i.e. [dʊɹ] in Standard American, but is increasingly being articulated as [daʊɹ] which would keep it in line with other similarly spelt words like ‘our’, ‘hour’ and ‘sour’. While there are certainly other ‘-ou-’ combinations that represent the vowel [ʊ] like in ‘would’, it is clear that ‘dour’ was influenced from the spelling, and other words spelt similarly. Notably however, all of these were originally pronounced with the single syllable [ʊɹ] ending since the time of Old English, with ‘hour’ being the latest to change, from [hʊɹ] still being used into the 17th century and onwards in some regional pockets to [haʊɹ] now being universal.

2680: The Mysterious Origins of Rice Apr 22, 2024

The word “rice” is a wanderwort meaning that is shared across many languages that aren’t related to each other, in this case many Semitic, Indo-European, Caucasian, and Turkic languages. Like a lot of old wanderworts, including ‘wine’ (LINK), it is not entirely clear where ‘rice’ comes from. Most likely, it is from a South Indian, non-Indo-European language, but words clearly from this root are seen from India to Persia, and the Middle East to Western Europe. One theory holds that it entered Sanskrit through some Dravidian source before entering languages to the west. Another holds that the word first entered Semitic languages like the Hebrew ⁧אורז⁩ (órez) ultimately from Old Tamil arici; Tamil is also a Dravidian language.

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.