2719: Why You “Do Laundry” and Don’t “Make” It May 31, 2024

Inherently, there is no reason why English’s phrase is “to do laundry” when German’s is „Wäsche machen“ literally “making laundry”. In general, languages don’t have a distinct word like “do”, or at least they’re not used as productively, and will double up on “make” to mean both “create” and ‘perform’, as happens when French uses «faire son marché» for “to [do] shopping”, leading to some long-established Louisianans, in that former French colony, to say “[I’ll] make shopping”. 

This is nothing rare, and around the world not only will one language adopt a word from another, but grammar and lexicon etc. influence one another as well. This happens from both second language speakers incorrectly transferring the grammar from their native language, but even native speakers adopt foreign grammar and lexical use in border regions all the time.

2718: Hebrew’s Vowels: The "Mater Lectionis" in Semitic Languages May 30, 2024

There is a term, mater lectionis, which is a Latin calque of a Hebrew term אם קריאה (em kria) meaning “mother of reading”, used to describe consonants being used to represent vowels. This is not something that really happens outside of Semitic languages, due to their use of abjads, instead of alphabets, that never represent vowels in the letters. This is different to using those letters to transliterate from other languages.

In Hebrew, this happens with the letters aleph א‎, hei ה‎, vav ו‎ and yod י‎, where already ו and י more often represent a vowel than a consonant. This will most commonly happen at the end of a word, though there are exceptions in both ways. For instance, a yod י at the beginning of a word sounds like [j] as in ירושלים (yerushalayim) meaning ‘Jerusalem’, where both yods י still keep their consonantal properties, but in the word ירושלמי (yerushalmi) i.e. “Jerusalemite” the yod י at the end only acts like a vowel [i], not [ji] (i.e. “ee”, not “yee”). In fact, these letters are not randomly associated with vowels; when they lose their consonant-ness, vav ו‎ goes from [v] to either [o] or [u], yod י‎ becomes [i], and hei ה‎ becomes [a] or [e] usually, though in some names of people or places it remains as [o], like ‘Shiloh’ שלה. In the case of aleph א it is these days treated as a mater lectionis, but as a consonant it represents a glottal stop, like in שאל (sha’al), and is not actually silent as many people claim.

2717: Mercury’s Symbol is Hg: Less Obvious Than You’d Think May 29

There are occasionally discrepancies between the English names for the elements, and the symbols for the periodic table. Usually, this is because the common name is Germanic and the periodic symbol is from Latin, as with Tungsten (W), Iron (Fe), and Lead (Pb), but looking at Mercury, with its symbol Hg, it's hard to understand here. After all, you can’t get much more Latinate than the name of a member of the Roman pantheon. 

The discrepancy starts with the fact that the name for the element is named via Latin 'hydrargyrum’ from the Ancient Greek ὑδράργυρος (hydrargyros) meaning ‘water silver’, or liquid silver, related to ‘argentum’ (silver), hence why silver’s symbol too is Ag. This is related to the English expression ‘quicksilver’, the earlier name for the term, but due to alchemical and astrological associations between the metals of quicksilver, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin respectively associated with the seven (known) celestial bodies, the planet Mercury was linked to the metal and replaced the earlier name.

2716: Ferrari May 29, 2024

The name Ferrari connotes luxury and status named after the founder of the Ferrari brand, Enzo Ferrari. The brand and this surname may be eternally linked in the English speaking world, but the surname Ferrari is actually the 3rd most common in Italy, where the brand is from, and this amount increases when including Ferraro. The level of commonality is shared with the related Smith, insofar as Ferrari comes from ‘ferraio’ (smith), from the Italian ‘ferro’ meaning ‘iron’. It is from this Latin root, too, that the symbol for iron on the periodic table is Fe.

2715: freelance May 27, 2024

Anyone who has worked freelance before knows that it entails a lot of spearing people while riding on horseback. Of course, while “free lance” does actually refer to a hired mercenary, it is not a medieval term nor from a time in history where lances or mercenaries were such a dominant military component. Rather, it is coined from a play by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe to denote a soldier not beholden to any lord (i.e. free).

While this began as a noun and was in common use by the mid-19th century, by the start of the 20th century it had changed meanings as a verb and modifier, and the new noun “freelancer” took the spot of being “a freelance” thus removing the word’s original meaning.

2714: Comparing Asleep and On Fleek May 26

There is a prefix a-, found in many verbs, that carries meanings related to away, up, on, or out, as in ‘arise’, ‘awake’ or not as a verb in ‘afoot’ or ‘aside’, but is probably more typically used for conditions of something ongoing, like ‘aglow’, ‘asleep’, and ‘asunder’. This originates from the word ‘on’ and functions similarly as verbs with the on-prefix. It can be used in some other ways too, but the prefix is generally considered non-productive, which is to say that it is not applied onto words aside from a set list now. 

On still does carry the meaning of condition as seen in phrases like ‘on fire’ (compare ablaze) but while it is rare, the prefix a- might still be understood as generative if usually humorous and informal, like “I’m busy a-working”. In the perhaps now outdated slang term of the last decade “on fleek”, or more common “on point” or to have something “on lock”, on has taken on some renewed vigor again in the sense of condition (of). This is not enough to make it productive, it does show that there is some mileage in a conditional-on.

2713: Mythical Whale Names in Hebrew and Arabic May 25, 2024

Like several other modern words, the word for ‘whale’ in Modern Hebrew is from a mythical beast, here לויתן (Levitan) which in English is rendered “Leviathan”, a sea-monster. While there is a history of turning biblical monsters into normal animals has happened elsewhere, this case is distinct in that there are some translations in the Book of Jonah that feature a whale, but this is from the Hebrew דג גדול (dag gadol) literally “big fish”, and whether or not that refers to a whale, it would not make for a suitable term.

Many of Modern Hebrew’s words were also created to draw upon Arabic, whose word for a whale is حوت (ḥout) which is not related to any in Hebrew, but also almost certain was from an earlier word for some kind of sea-monster, either from a variation of حَيَّة (ḥaya) meaning ’snake’ with an ending more meaning “sea-snake” or from a typical Semitic root ح ي و (ḥ-y-w) meaning ‘live’ having once referred to some kind of ancient beast. This is different to the Islamic Whale, a whale believed to be holding up the Earth in a supposed cosmic ocean.

2712: Does Persian Have a Native Script? May 24, 2024

Farsi, also commonly referred to as Persian, is written in a variation of the Arabic script, and has been for centuries. Of course, writing systems change, and other languages related to Persian like Kurdish and Tajik are written in the Roman alphabet and Cyrillic respectively, but before all of this, another writing system was used. Pahlavi writing was used in the region for early Persian writing, such as for the once dominant Zoroastrian religion's text, the Avesta. While there were 3 main variants, the system is not really native for Persian either, coming as a modification from Aramaic writing of the Babylonian Empire that the Persians eventually conquered. Regarding the Avesta though, written in what is known as Avestan (script), this has more than double the amount of letters as Pahlava, where each of Aramaic's 22 letters had to each represent multiple sounds, so it is possible that Avestan emerged as the only independently derived Persian writing system, and one of few globally that were not ultimately based off of Phoenician letters anywhere outside of East Asia.

2711: (More) Hebrew Words That Have Shifted Meaning May 23, 2024

Modern Hebrew has lots of names for plants and animals taken from either Biblical- or Mishnaic Hebrew that no longer map onto the animals they once did. In some tamer cases, this would include the modern word for ‘watermelon’ אבטיח (evtiach) which in Biblical Hebrew just meant ‘melon’, or the word ‘cucumber’ קישוא (kishua) now used for zucchini/courgette.  

In more surprising cases, the word for a ‘hippopotamus’ is, at least formally בהמות (behemot) which people may note from the English word ‘behemoth’ colloquially used to refer to a big thing, but which is a Biblical river-dwelling monster, and literally means “animals”: plural in form but singular in nature. That said, many people now say “ סוס היאור” a translation of ‘hippopotamus’ from Greek meaning “river/water horse”, with היאור meaning “river” but more typically “the Nile”. This occurs in other other animal names like קרנף (karnaf), a calque of the Greek “rhinoceros” for “horn-nose”.

2710: What Tannins Have to Do with Oak May 22, 2024

We don’t get many scientific words from Celtic, and in a particular way ‘tannin’ exists as a modern word because of Latin, but the origin goes much further. The English word ‘tan’, as in the color, comes from a Celtic root meaning ‘oak’, and since acorns and oak bark are used in the production of leather, the verb ‘to tan’ also comes from this. Likewise, the bitter quality of acorns comes from their tannic acid, named for the same reason. So the word ‘tannin’ is used in science now because it is derived from Latin according to the guidelines of scientific nomenclature, but Latin ‘tannum’ got it from a Celtic source.

2709: Why HW- flipped to WH- May 21, 2024

While it is still found in a few dialects of English, the pronunciation of “wh-” [ʍ] as separate from “w-” [w], in most cases “whale” and “wail” have merged to be indistinguishable. Like many other modern features of English and even Middle English, the source of the change was at least heavily influenced by the Norman conquerors. Beyond simply the pronunciation, however, is the fact that the spelling used to be HW-, as in hwæl (“whale”), as seen in the very first line of Beowulf:

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

(So! We, in the glory of days past of the Spear-Danes, kingly men, how these warriors performed acts of courage.)

Yet now, there is no H+consonant combination in English anymore. This is due to the Norman scribes, who chose to write it WH-, likely in keeping with other spelling norms wherein H signifies a separate sound, like TH, SH, CH, PH or historically GH. While it may be more intuitive to have the H first in some ways to represent this sound, keep in mind the means to aspirate the air to pronounce[ʍ] is not actually two separate consonants, but one unique one, just as with TH or SH and the rest really.

2708: Lesson from Ramen and Lo Mein May 19, 2024

While there are some differences, the Chinese lo mein and Japanese ramen are based off the same thing, originating in China, but the words reflect this as well, along with other dishes like lamian and Korean ramyeon all meaning ‘pulled noodles’. In both Chinese and Japanese, the  /r/ sound varies widely depending on the linguistic environment, and dialect, generally leaning towards a tap [ɾ] (as in Standard American pronunciation of butter) or [l], or one of many other liquid consonants. This poses an obvious problem in transliterating into English, with more R’s from Japanese and more L’s from Chinese as seen in food- and place names etc..

2707: Singular Words People Thought Were Plural May 19, 2024

Plenty of singular words ends in -s (e.g. ‘lens’), and even more end in -se (e.g. ‘house’), but in a few cases, this was assured to be plural. For instance, the word ‘pea’ used to be written out as ‘pease’ the plural of which was ‘peasen’, from Old English ‘pisa’, ultimately from Ancient Greek πίσον (píson). This changed in Modern English, joined by ‘cherry’, the root of which is “cherise”, though this had changed earlier, already “cherry” in Middle English. Of course, the opposite happens too wherein a plural word is assumed to be singular. This is typical especially of foreign words with plural forms other than -s, like ‘cannoli’ (singular ‘cannolo’) or ‘bacteria’ (singular ‘bacterium’), or ‘caper’ losing its perceived plural ‘-S’ from the French ‘câpres’.

2706: Biblical Monsters Used for Crocodiles May 18, 2024

The Hebrew word for ‘crocodile’ is based off of a semitic root, but not from the one used in Arabic تمساح (timsaḥ) which is also what spread around many crocodile non-inhabiting areas that had Arabic influence, appearing in this form in several Turkic languages. Another Semitic word for a crocodile exists in the Amharic አዞ (azo). While Arabic’s form is from Coptic, originally from an Ancient Egyptian root m-z-ḥ, Modern Hebrew uses a completely different (for the most part) yet also ancient word: תנין (tanin). This is from Biblical Hebrew, frequently mentioned as early as Genesis 1:21, which clearly depicts the תנין as a sea monster, not as a regular animal. This was not a mixed-use word either; Modern Hebrew uses it, as it does for many monster-to-animal word decisions when the language was revitalized as a common, native language in the late 19th/ early 20th centuries. A Hebrew word תמסח (timsaḥ) is also used, but it is highly dated compared to תנין (tanin). One notable inclusion is the translation of the plague of צפרדע (tzfarda(im)) as ‘crocodiles’ instead of the far more common ‘frogs’, which is now also the Hebrew for ‘frogs’.

2705: Chinese Fractions May 17, 2024

While nowadays, the Chinese write fractions in the same Arabic numerals as everyone else, traditionally they had their own system for writing out fractions. While some of the writing of numbers in Chinese may look like numerals, such as 一 (1),  二 (2), and  三  (3), each having the corresponding number of lines, zero is 零 supposedly related to the character for rain. 

Since these aren’t numerals or words exactly, but pictographs. Decimals are fairly straightforward: 三点二 for 3.2, with the 点 (dian) acting as a decimal point, but fractions are written differently. ⅔ would be written as 三分之二  which might look like “three parts of two” but in Chinese the numerator is written after the denominator. The 分之 basically mean “divides”, but not divided by in the order normally used in the West, because 3÷2 is not the same as 2÷3 aka ⅔. This works the same in percentages, also written in the reverse order it would be in English, 百分之二十 is simply “‘hundred’ divides 20”.

2704: Ethiopia and Abyssinia May 16

There are a number of countries and regions that have historical names, like Persia for Iran, Mesopotamia for Iraq, or Dalmatia for Croatia. While some of these have been used relatively recently, usually it is a matter of one replacing the other, but in the case of ‘Abyssinia’ and ‘Ethiopia’, the difference is that the now old-fashioned word came to English later, partly because there was no native word exactly. In fact, both words come from Latin, replacing the Old English Siġelhearwena land or Sigelwaraland, meaning “land of the Sun Worshippers” or “Land of the Sunburnt”. The difference is that ‘Abyssinia’ comes to [admittedly New] Latin from Arabic, as opposed to ‘Ethiopia’ from Ancient Greek. Though now this is also the modern word for Ethiopia in native Amharic ኢትዮጵያ (ʾĪtyōṗṗyā), that itself is adopted from Greek where it meant ‘burnt face’ and denoted all of Sub-Saharan Africa, as opposed to ‘Libya’ which denoted North Africa.

2703: Gelatin and Gelato May 15, 2024

Words like gluten, gelatin, glutamate, and even gelato are all related, beyond just having a vague food relation, but it may not be obvious why. In the case of ‘gluten’ and ‘gelatin’, which do not look so alike, this from the Latin ‘gluten’ meaning ‘glue’, though ‘gelatin’ is older in English, passing through many other languages along the way, but both become very sticky and springy in water and then harden into a shape, likely coming from the same source as ‘clay’ etymologically. This quality of sticking did not only extend to things that are sticky to the touch, but that come to stick together in some other way when they harden. ‘Gelato’ is called such since ‘gelata’ in Latin means ‘frost’, when water begins to bind, or even ‘glass’, made from sand coming together.

2702: 'Bus' comes from ¾ of a Latin Ending May 14, 2024

When it comes to motor vehicles, lots of words have been abbreviated to form used today, but not in the same ways. The word 'auto' common in many languages is shorted from automobile, but the prefix 'auto-' is common enough and stands on its own as a morpheme at least. In the case of 'bus' however, this is from omnibus which is a Latin word meaning “for all”, as the dative plural form of omnis (“every; all”). In shortening it, not only was the word abbreviated, but it implies the root is made of “omni-” plus “-bus” but the suffix in Latin is “-ibus”, and unlike say “auto + mobile”, “omn(i)-” would anyway not stand on its own, at least not with the same meaning. 

Later, words like “autobus” emerged to refer to mechanical omnibusses (no sensible plural would exist using just Latin morphology), but by this point it had lost any originally intended meaning it might have had. 

2701: Gardens, Orchards, and Paradise May 13, 2024

It’s lovely to sit in an orchard, though far less lovely sounding to sit in a wort-yard, yet this is what it would have been called in Old English ortgeard. 'Wort' in this case simply means ‘plant’, still seen at the end of many plant names, like butterwort, woundwort, and spearwort. However, etymologically speaking, there is an even better sounding orchard-word: paradise. 

Paradise comes to English ultimately from the Avestan (Persian) word pairidaēza, meaning “enclosed garden” but in Ancient Greek παράδεισος (parádeisos) meant “palace gardens”. Because of this lofty definition, this word became associated with the Garden of Eden and by extension heaven (e.g. Dante’s Paradiso), displacing the enigmatic Old English word ‘neorxnawang’. These biblical connotations to ‘paradise’ do not exist in the doublet ‘parvis’ (i.e. “cathedral gardens”) but coincidentally came in the Hebrew פרדס (pardes) took on extra, spiritualism, while in Modern Hebrew still denotes an orchard.

2700: The Non-Roman Origins of Roman Numerals | May 12, 2024

Unlike other letter-based numerals that use the letters in ascending order of the alphabet, like Greek or Hebrew, Roman numerals are more abstracted, and somewhat systematic. For instance, X is 10, and take ½ of that for V (5), which is the top half of X. The X is probably derived from adding on an extra line at the end of a set in an early tally marks system. This works the same in M (1,000) and D (500), but not in the way that you might think. 

These letters are not tied to words, though M was reinforced by Latin ‘mille’ for ‘thousand’, and the original form of M in numerals was ↀ, half of which is D. This originated in pre-Roman Etruscan numerals, that used C (100), IↃ (500), and CIↃ (1,000) and these bracketed-I forms then were written as similar looking letters, and C reinforced by ‘centum’. In fact, though not as typically used, other forms ↁ (10,000) and ↂ (50,000) exist from this system of adding brackets. The shapes of the letters, and some Latin words may have slightly influenced the form of Roman numerals as in the case of ↀ→M, but in almost all other cases (I,V,X,L,D) these symbols only coincidentally looked like letters and have nothing to do with the words they represented.