2807: AI Strawberries: How Many R’s? Aug 27, 2024
While AI language models have made leaps and bounds when it comes to analyzing language and being able to sound functionally like a person even in many tasks, it fundamentally does not process language like a person. One clear example is that many generative programs struggle with a task like defining how many R’s are in ‘strawberry’, often listing 2 instead of the correct 3.
This is so because they are designed to understand and generate language based on context rather than perform literal text analysis. These models are optimized for grasping nuances, syntax, and meaning rather than focusing on specific character-level operations. In particular, they lack explicit programming ability to handle such tasks unless prompted very directly. The reason for this inability is due to something called ‘tokenization’ (not related to of sociology).
AI models process language through tokens—for instance numbering every word in a dictionary as opposed to listing the component parts— breaking text into smaller units for understanding. Depending on the tokenization method, the word "strawberry" may not be parsed in a way that facilitates an accurate count of the letter "R." AI is designed to emulate human-like thought processes and may, in this emulation, overthink a simple question, but has to simply guess based off of what it might expect from any spelling rules programmed in about how many R’s are in ‘strawberry’.
2806: Pen Knife Aug 26, 2024
The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the knife is mightier than the quill.
The term "pen knife" originally referred to a small, thin knife used for sharpening and indeed crafting quills, which is made of the end of large feathers, typically from a goose. With modern tools, it is easier to use separate knives to 1) clean the outside 2) clear the interior 3) form the nib and 4) cut a slit in the nib from these feathers, but when materials were more precious and it wasn’t practical to sharpen them all individually, having one jack-of-all-trades knife was just easier.
Now, a pen knife is not only a small, handy knife, but also one that folds, sometimes giving the rough appearance of a pen, but this is not why it was named, and in fact ‘pen’ is from the Latin ‘penna’ meaning—and related to— ‘feather’. This is true in many other languages, like the French ‘plume’, related to ‘plumage’ in English, and of course shows up in “nome de plume” Over time, as quills became obsolete and the need for such knives diminished, "pen knife" came to describe any small folding knife, even though its connection to pen-making has faded from common knowledge.
2805: Pink and Pinkie Aug 25, 2024
Out of the names for the five fingers, the fact that two of them have multiple names is quite notable, and historically, there were probably even more variations. For instance, the now-ubiquitous middle finger was once called the long finger. The index finger is still regularly referred to as the pointer finger, forefinger, or occasionally, the first finger. While there are fewer alternatives overall, the little finger is also interchangeably known as the ‘pinkie’ (sometimes spelt ‘pinky’). In truth, these differences aren't so significant. ‘Pinkie’ comes from the Dutch word pinkje/pinkie, which hyper-literally means “little little-finger,” as it includes the diminutive suffix ‘-je’ attached to ‘pink,’ meaning ‘little finger.’
You might think that this Dutch ‘pink’ and ‘finger’ are related; after all, when comparing Romance languages to Germanic languages, [p] often becomes [f] (e.g., English ‘feather’ and Greek φτερόν (pteron)), and [k] is simply the unvoiced version of [g]. However, Dutch isn't a Romance language, and these words aren't related.
What is likely related, somewhat surprisingly based on phonetics despite their lack of semantic similarity, is the word ‘pink.’ It’s possible that the word, which is the name of a type of flower (which is pink in color), is also related to ‘pink’ as a term for a calf or a type of small sailboat. It may likewise be related to the words ‘wink’ and ‘blink.’ Exactly how these connections developed is somewhat unclear, but they probably originated from a broader sense of something small jutting out.
2804: Accolades Aug 24, 2024
The word "accolades" traces its roots back to the Latin word accollare, meaning "to embrace around the neck." This term evolved through Old French into accolade, which referred to the ceremonial act of knighthood, where a sword or an embrace was used to tap or encircle the neck of the newly appointed knight. The neck, being the focal point in this gesture, is directly tied to the word ‘collar’, which stems from the Latin ‘collum’, meaning ‘neck’. Thus, the concept of bestowing honors, or accolades, is etymologically linked to the word "collar."
Over time, ‘accolade’ expanded beyond its medieval origins to denote any form of praise or honor, moving beyond anything related to necks or for that matter anything tangible.
2803: Famous Fractions
All numbers can be made fractional, so three becomes a fifth, twelve to a twelfth. Some numbers though are so apparently natural as to get their own words. Many languages have a distinct words for ‘half’ to the point that, in English, it would not be an option to say ½ as “a second”. Second to having a word for ‘half’ that doesn’t fit the normal pattern is having a word like in English, ‘quarter’, though here to say “a fourth” is perfectly acceptable too. ‘Third’, too, is distinct but this has to do mostly with metathesis from it earlier being a thrid’ from an even earlier thrith (or thrið). For a much longer list of other languages that do this, scroll to the end.
Elsewhere, English also has numbers for certain lump amounts, but these don’t line up. In units of years, there are the base-10 decade, century, and millennium, but in terms of objects there are dozen, score, and gross (12, 20, & 144 [a dozen dozens] respectively). Because these systems don’t line up neatly they can be combined for more colloquial ways of saying certain other frequently used amounts, like how a half-dozen is 6 and a quarter-century is 25 years.
Back to the phenomenon of half and quarter, and very occasionally third, getting words that don’t fit the normal paradigm, see how it pops up all over the world in languages and cultures that would have had little interaction to prove that it is apparently quite a natural progression.
French:
Half: Moitié (does not fit the "demi-" pattern used for other fractions)
Quarter: Quart (a distinct word, not a derivative of "fourth")
Other Fractions: Tiers (third), Cinquième (fifth), etc.
Spanish:
Half: Mitad (distinct from "medio")
Quarter: Cuarto (while derived from "cuatro," it is a specific term for one-fourth)
Other Fractions: Tercio (third), Quinto (fifth), etc.
Russian:
Half: Половина (Polovina; doesn't follow the usual ordinal fraction pattern)
Quarter: Четверть (Chetvert'; a special term, not the expected "четвёртая" for fourth)
Other Fractions: Треть (third), Пятая (fifth), etc.
Outside of European languages, this is still common, far and away with the word for ½ as with Japanese, Korean, Finnish and Mandarin, but it is even common to see a quarter have its own word, which appears in Thai, Wolof (in West Africa), Zulu.
2802: What’s the Matter with the Matterhorn? Aug 22, 2024
The famous Swiss mountain, known in English and German as the Matterhorn, is known by a very different looking name in French and Italian, that being Cervin and Cervino respectively. There are numerous reasons how it got to be as famous as it is, one of which being its distinctive shape with a very narrow base and sharp point.
You might think, especially given this shape, that the horn of Matterhorn and the cervo (‘deer’ in Italian) in Cervino would be relevant, but that’s not exactly true. What is true is that ‘Matterhorn’ is a combination of “matter + horn” meaning “meadow-peak”, but this is not specifically related to a horn like an animal—though this is where the English ‘horn’ came from many centuries prior to this. In the case of Cervin(o), it is even less related, having previously been from the French ‘servin’, from the Latin “(mōns) silvanus” or “wooded (mountain)”. This S was changed to a C by Horace Bénédict deSaussure—not to be confused with the linguist, father of semiotics, Ferdinand de Saussure— who mistook the name to be related to the French ‘cerf’ (deer), and by extension Italian ‘cervo’.
2801: Bro-Noun Aug 21, 2024
The term ‘bro’ has evolved from its traditional role as a vocative expression—typically used to address someone in a familiar or informal way—into basically a pronoun. Historically, ‘bro’ was primarily employed as an exclamation or a term of endearment among friends, akin to saying ‘dude’ or ‘buddy’. Yet, it is now common to hear phrases like, "if bro thinks he can do that, he’s in for a surprise", where ‘bro’ functions as a stand-in for an unspecified person, reflecting a more pronoun-like usage. This may have first began by simply dropping the determiner (e.g. instead of “my bro” or “this bro”) which can also be with ‘dude’ in some cases, so the distinction to look out for in coming years, assuming this persists, is how generally the term ‘bro’ can be applied especially mid sentence. After all, the only syntactic distinction between a noun and a proper noun, which includes pronouns, is whether it is able to take a determiner.
Pronouns are considered a closed lexical class (i.e. part of speech), meaning it is exceedingly rare to see a new word with that type of syntactic function. When it does happen, it is usually from an external need, like the relatively new use of the pronoun “you guys”—and other second person plurals like y’all, yous, and yinz—so in this case perhaps the need in question was for an third person pronoun with an informal register, though it just as well might have been a random occurrence.
2800: ...and I Say Tomato Aug 20, 2024
Continuing the tomato talk from yesterday, perhaps second to ‘tomato’ and its number of cognates, the Polish ‘pomidor’ or Russian помидо́р (same, but in Cyrillic) is found across many languages. Most Slavic languages use a version of this, along with a number of Turkic languages, particularly in the former-Soviet sphere, like Uzbek, Yakut, and Azeri, along with Armenian and Yiddish too, but also a number of others which probably got it from the Persian پامادور (pâmâdor), including dialects of Arabic and Turkish, that would otherwise use a word related to ‘tomato’ where Arabi’s lack of [p] forced this to be بَنَدُورَة (banadūra), and the same in Turkish. One interesting case is that Georgian has two words for tomato, commonly პომიდორი (ṗomidori), but also ოქროვაშლა (okrovašla) which might look totally unrelated, but the latter is a calque. A calque of what?–you might ask.
Given this list, you might this this originated somewhere in the Central Asian world, either from Russian or Persian, but despite their immense levels of influence, this is from an Italian phrase “pomo d’oro” meaning “apple of gold”, mentioned yesterday. While it was unlikely that that phrase led to the phrase “love apple” through a French misinterpretation as “pomme d'amour” (apple of love), it did lead to ‘pomodor(o)’ in Italian. Back to Georgian, this word is made of the elements ოქრო (okro) for ‘gold’ + ვაშლი (vašli), for ‘apple’ + -ა (-a). The reason why the Italian word, ‘pomodoro’, is not as common in Western Europe or among other Romance languages, but is prevalent in this context, has to do in part with 18th-century missionaries and others who first introduced tomatoes to this part of the world. Since tomatoes were still commonly feared as poisonous in the 18th century, this was the only point of contact that introduced the East to them.
A few other notable mentions:
•Romanian uses the name for the color roșie (from roșu: “red”)
•Swahili uses nyanya which also means ‘grandma’
•Thai uses a word มะเขือเทศ (makhuthes) being a compound meaning “foreign eggplant”
•Hungarian’s word paradicsom from German Paradiesapfel (paradise apple)
2799: You Say Tomato… Aug 19, 2024
Some say tomáto, and some say tomāto, as it were, but there were several other important terms for it that have left their mark in small corners, here and there.
Given how newly introduced—relatively speaking—the tomato was introduced into Old World, it is unsurprising that most European languages have a similar word for it, but it's even more common than other words for new-world foods like potatoes, and maize (both Taino words originally) squashes, and beans.
On the other hand, while many languages, especially around coalesced around something like ‘tomato’ (from Nahuatl ‘tomatl’), there were many other terms that cropped up including “wolf peach”, which is actually where the scientific name comes from “Solanum lycopersicum” from “lyco-” (c.f. ‘Lycanthrope’; lupine) and ‘persicus’ (peach) literally meaning ‘of Persia’. This didn’t take off so much, but beyond being the source of the Latin name, it goes along with a long tradition of not eating tomatoes because they were deemed poisonous due to the botanical relation to nightshade (same genus).
Another name for them, on the opposite end of the spectrum, was “love apples” or variations thereof like German Liebesapfel, which is probably from a later association with the tomato as an aphrodisiac. This is why in Hebrew it is known as עגבניה (agvania) from the root ע-ג-ב also meaning ‘lust’ and ‘buttocks’, even though most other languages moved past this older term.
There is another, less likely, theory, that this term developed since in Spanish it was called “pomi dei mori” (apple of the Moors) based off a misunderstanding of the Italian “pomi d’oro” (golden apple) in reference to its color—not being so ubiquitously red like now—and that it was misunderstood in French as “pomme d’amour” (apple of love) but this would be far more unlikely.
2798: Dinosaur Suffixes Aug 18, 2024
The typical ending of dinosaur names is -saur(us) meaning ‘lizard’, and will be the default if there is no other intention behind the name, but this is not the only ending. Usually, these will be physical descriptions using some variation on Greek or else Latin. For instance:
•-mimus (e.g. Ornithomimus; Gallimimus) means “looks like”, related to ‘mime’. Here “looks like a bird” and “looks like a chicken” respectively.
•-onychus (e.g. Deinonychus) means ‘claw’. Here it has the same prefix as ‘dino’ for “terrible claw”.
•-raptor (e.g. Oviraptor) meaning ‘thief’, related to ‘rapture’, ‘raptor’ etc.. Here meaning “egg-taker”.
•-odon/anodon (e.g. Pteranodon) meaning “tooth/toothless” respectively, here meaning “winged toothless”.
There are exceptions where there is use of a common ending, but the first element is not from Greek or Latin, like Utahraptor which was discovered in Utah but of course does not mean “Utah thief”. This is pretty common in modern scientific names to throw out the real system and just name after modern things, from new animals to elements on the periodic table (e.g. Einsteinium) but one of the first ever fossils discovered in 1825 was that of ‘Iguanodon’ meaning ‘tooth of an Iguana’ due to the structural similarity. These names are also not particularly rigorously scientific, with Basilosaurus not being a lizard at all, but a mammalian whale-type creature, though the name hasn’t changed.
2797: Doublets of Spatha Aug 17, 2024
The terms "spade," "spatula," "epaulet," "spasm," and "espalier" all originate from the Latin root "spatha," which means "broad, flat tool or weapon." This Latin root itself is derived from the Greek "spathe," referring to a flat blade or paddle.
The word "spade" evolved from the Old English "spadu," which denoted a digging tool. "Spatula," derived from the Latin "spatula," is a diminutive form of "spatha," originally referring to a small flat instrument. The term "epaulet" comes from the French "épaulette," meaning "little shoulder," and initially described the flat ornamental shoulder piece on military uniforms. "Spasm," rooted in the Greek "spasmos," meaning a sudden, involuntary muscular contraction, is conceptually linked to the flat, blade-like appearance of contracting muscles. Finally, "espalier," from the Italian "spalliera" and Latin "spatula," refers to the flat, two-dimensional technique of training plants to grow against a support.
2796: Eye-Dialects Aug 16, 2024
English is notoriously internally inconsistent when it comes to what spelling corresponds to which sound, usually, though by no means exclusively, concerning the vowels. Even in languages with so-called phonetic writing, in practice this only means that there is internal consistency with the sounds as they match spelling, but not that it realistically matches how people speak, especially when it comes to minority dialects of a standard language.
An eye-dialect is the term for when people write in a (semi-)phonological way to match the dialect. This often takes the form of replacing only key words that would vary dialect-to-dialect, but not ones that are less indicative. For example, [see picture] this is a tweet in the “Scottish twitter” style where people commonly write to the way they sound, but the majority of the words will retain their standard spelling.
Eye-dialects, named as such because the dialect exists to the ear, as it were, but only through this modified spelling will appear the same to the eye, can be used for regional dialects or sociolects, like African-American English alike. Because these are not standard, but still rely on spelling standards in most cases, the degree to which the words are modified along with which words are modified in the first place, varies widely.
2795: Googol Aug 15, 2024
The term "googol" was coined in 1920 by Milton Sirotta, the nine-year-old nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner asked his nephew to come up with a name for the incredibly large number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. The playful term "googol" was chosen to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, which cannot be represented by any specific numeral. This imaginative exercise helped popularize the concept and the name, highlighting how human language can capture abstract mathematical ideas.
Building on the concept of a googol, Kasner later introduced "googolplex," a number even more mind-bogglingly vast: 1 followed by a googol zeros. The name "googolplex" was designed to express the sheer size of the number, suggesting an endless stretch of zeros. These terms have since transcended their mathematical origins, inspiring names in the tech industry, most notably the search engine giant "Google." The playful etymology of googol and googolplex underscores the power of language to make complex mathematical concepts accessible and memorable.
2794: Learned Borrowing Aug 14, 2024
There are many borrowed words in English, as in just about every other language, but not all borrowings are created equal. Regular semantic loans occur for various reasons, including cross-cultural contact, new technology, and more. However, “learned borrowing” refers to the deliberate incorporation of words from one language into another, often with minimal adaptation, typically through scholarly, scientific, or literary contexts. This can include legal terms, scientific nomenclature, and other specialized vocabulary.
Unlike regular semantic borrowing, where words are adapted and integrated into the vernacular language over time, learned borrowings are often introduced directly by educated speakers or writers to convey precise meanings, usually retaining their original form and pronunciation. For this reason, they tend to be less affected by the borrowing language’s phonology and grammar (e.g., “surgeon general”). These words and phrases can also take on a dimension where they are commonly used but not always understood in literal terms. For instance, in legal contexts, people may know the content of habeas corpus without knowing its literal meaning, “you will have the body” (i.e., a person can be brought before a court). Similarly, et cetera literally means “and others,” but most people know it only contextually. Sometimes, learned borrowings also become part of everyday language, as in the case of the suffix-turned-word, -phobia, which is now commonly used well beyond its original medical scope.
In European languages, Latin—and to a lesser extent, Greek—occupies a significant role in these more formal registers, leading to many instances of doublets and reborrowings, where older words have evolved over time only to be borrowed again later.
2793: Internet Troll Aug 13, 2024
Internet trolls may be frustrating to deal with to the point that they come across like the beasts of Scandinavian fantasy or elsewhere around European folklore, but the terms are actually unrelated.
There are several older, Germanic roots that have all converged on the modern spelling and pronunciation, including the folklore beast, and troll as in ‘wander’ (pretty rare), related to ‘trull’, and also ‘troll’ as in a fishing lure. It is the latter sense where the Internet trolls’ name comes from insofar as they set bait for people to react angrily. It was almost certainly influenced from the monster—large, brutish being that lives in isolated areas such as caves or mountains—but this was not the origin per se.
2792: Coding Tone in Text Aug 12, 2024
The means of writing have only ever gotten more complex, graphically speaking, as writers try to make words on a page more like speech. Ancient writing lacked punctuation and didn’t even have spaces; the form of writing did not take on a significance unto itself. This continued for a long time, including when italics were invented (in Italy, hence the name) simply to be able to fit more rows of text onto a page, and to mimic cursive style writing. This was not a version of roman letters, but its own font, until it was eventually merged. Historically, even in pieces with both italics and roman typeface, such as when the former is used the introduction to a book, this is not for emphasis but still meant to make a visual break from the main text.
Any dichotomy in writing choices have typically led to meaningful subtextual changes, as happened when italics were applied for emphasis or stress on individual words, seen as early as the 16th century. This is also different to, say, bold lettering too, which is designed to draw the eye to it without needing to read, whereas italics more subtly gives visual emphasis as the eye scans over it in the course of reading.
While italics have been in use for a long time now, even with this later utility being accepted in formal writing, the Internet has accelerated other binary style choices for subtextual uses. All-uppercase not only offers visual emphasis, but conveys excitability, like a feeling of anger or surprise, originally born of technical limitations. Of course, this is all in addition to punctuation, but that does not inherently carry the same emotional weight, so the following are all different in practice:
What?
What?
WHAT?
2791: Marzipan Aug 11, 2024
The confectionary treat, marzipan, in French is known as massepain, clearly influenced by the French word ‘pain’, meaning ‘bread’. Of course, this isn’t bready or even glutenous. Indeed, the fact that lots of European languages words for it has a [p] is due to this association, but it probably came via Arabic which doesn’t even have the [p] sound, and the word was Arabic مَرْطَبَان (martaban), though here it meant ‘spice box’. This in turn comes from the name of a Burmese port of the same name, Martaban, now known as မုတ္ထမ (muthta'ma) which was a famous port for spices.
While this all would give a reason for the name and sound changes along the way, it’s actually not really clear. The meaning change from Arabic into European languages, first introduced into Venetian by their merchants, is surprising, especially as it is made almost entirely of almonds, not spices. However that is not the only place the sense of 'box' comes in with this etymology.
Another theory focuses more on the Italian 'marzapane', meaning "candy box" (probably), from Medieval Latin 'matapanus', which referred to a coin with various religious iconography, including a depiction of St. Mark. The exact origin of the Latin word is uncertain, though it was altered in Italian through folk etymology to resemble "Marci panis," meaning "bread of Mark". There is also a theory, or really an extension to this same theory, suggesting a link to the Arabic مَثْبَن (mawthaban), meaning "king who sits still", but between the two theories covered here, that step is the least widely accepted.
2790: Plimsoll Aug 10, 2024
The term ‘plimsoll’, referring to a type of lightweight, rubber-soled shoe popular in the UK, has its origins in maritime history. It is named after the Plimsoll line, a safety mark on ships introduced by British politician Samuel Plimsoll in the 1870s to prevent overloading, when a common practice was to deliberately overload ships to get more cargo, backed by often inflated insurance claims in the event they sank. This line marked the maximum safe loading level, ensuring that ships remained stable and buoyant. The design of early plimsoll shoes featured a horizontal band between the canvas upper and the rubber sole, resembling the Plimsoll line. This similarity in appearance and function, as both aimed to keep water out, led to the shoes being colloquially known as ‘plimsolls’.
Plimsolls gained popularity in the early 20th century, particularly in British schools and sports, due to their simplicity, comfort, and especially affordability, cementing the name as now predominantly related to footwear.
2789: Austronesian Language History Aug 9, 2024
After Indo-European languages, which originally spanned from Europe’s Atlantic coast to northern India and now cover all continents, Austronesian languages form the second-largest language family in the world. While it might seem that the vast distances between Pacific islands contributed to this diversity, the true story is more complex.
For example, the many languages spoken from Papua New Guinea to New Zealand to Hawaii, and all other islands within this triangle, belong to a single branch of the Austronesian languages—the Oceanic family. The greatest diversity within this branch is found in Eastern Papua. In contrast, Taiwan alone hosts 9 of the total 14 Austronesian subfamilies. This island was the homeland of the seafaring Polynesian people before Chinese colonization. As a result, the hundreds of languages spoken in eastern and central Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Malaysia (i.e., the Western Malayo-Polynesian languages) are more closely related to each other than the fewer native languages of Taiwan are to one another.
While it might be tempting to attribute this linguistic diversity to mountainous topography, mountains are not more of a barrier to contact than thousands of miles of open ocean. Instead, time is a more relevant factor.
Although many factors contribute to language change—and there is no single formula—it is often the case that greater distance from the origin results in less linguistic diversity. For example, American English is broadly more conservative (i.e., it has changed less) than British English since the early colonial period, similar to the story of Austronesian languages. Likewise, Icelandic is much closer to Old Norse and Old English than modern Norwegian or English are. On the other hand, language change accelerates when there is contact between different peoples, as seen in the transition from Dutch to Afrikaans, which is far less conservative.
2788: Deadline [updated] Aug 8, 2024
Some phrases don’t have any connection to their original meanings because the words change, or lose meaning, but sometimes it is just a language shift based off of nothing in particular. The phrase ‘deadline’ does indeed come from the words “dead + line”, and was popularized after the American Civil War, especially from the unimaginably bad conditions of Andersonville prison where—critically undersupplied—it was easier to make a crude fence beyond which anyone attempting even to place a hand would be shot on site rather than to construct a proper wall. This was not the origin of the phrase, but, even scarcely used, was the dominant source of the phrase in the 19th century.
It was revived in the early 20th century in the printing industry for newspapers, denoting the space past which text would not be printed in the margins. Although it is not clear how, this translated into the sense of “due-date / time-limit” probably referring to filling the page up to the margins.