2976: Nodding for No: Not Understood Feb 13, 2025
Almost all of the world nods their heads for yes and shakes for no. A handful of other cultures have the opposite version, including in Bulgaria. As unclear as the near universality of yes-nodding is, this is even less understood.
In Bulgaria, there is an obvious myth that some 500 years ago, when being forced to convert to Islam by the Ottoman Turks, the Bulgarians nodded but intended for no. This needs little debunking, but of course logically most of the Balkans aside from Albanians and Bosniaks did not see high rates of conversion under Ottoman control, nor would this trick allowing them to still practice Christianity would not have lasted very long even if every Bulgarian were informed of it effectively and secretly etc.
Indeed in general the citizens of a few countries in the region, Greece, Cyprus, Iran, even the modern successors of the Ottomans, Turkey, tend to nod for no and shake for yes. Albanians also use this method, and did convert to Islam under the Ottomans.
2975: Nodding for Yes: Near Universal Feb 12, 2025
In basically all of the world, nodding for yes and shaking for no developed is the standard, and seems to have developed independently across Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. There are only a handful of cultures that also maintain such a system in the reverse, which will be discussed more in tomorrow’s post.
It is not known why this is, but it’s been theorized that its universality comes from associating head shaking with avoiding unwanted food, or other contact with the head. It is less clear why nodding for yes is as widespread, but this may be related to jumping excitedly.
2974: Caper and Caprice—or Unrelated?? Feb 11, 2025
As discussed yesterday, chevron/chevon come from ‘goat’, in Old French as ‘chevron’ and Modern French chèvre for ‘goat’. Many other words come from its origin too, the Latin ‘caper’, including the English ‘caper’ (jumping around, goatly) and ‘capriole’ (jumping around, horsely), and others like ‘caprine’ ‘capricorn’, and probably ‘caprice’ meaning ‘a sudden start; a freight’, and then later also ‘a whim’ and eventually ‘a brief romance’.
Probably is the operative word, because it, along with of course ‘capricious’ and the musical ‘capriccio’ have been linked to the Italian ‘caporiccio’, from capo + riccio, meaning “curly head” with an idea that curly haired people act capriciously. Although goats also have curly heads of sorts, ‘caput’ (head) and ‘caper’ (goat) in Latin aren’t related. This is still overall less likely.
2973: Chevron and Goats Feb 10, 2025
Have you ever looked at this symbol ^ or a pair of these < > and thought, “wow, that sure looks like a goat!”? Probably not, but the name of that shape is a chevron, from the Latin ‘caper’ meaning ‘goat’, and among other things related to ‘chevon’ (goat-meat). Admittedly, this punctuation wasn’t named for goats directly, but the Old French ‘chevron’ denoted the rafters of a sloped roof which were said to look like goat horns. The chevron is not only in punctuation, but refers to anything of that shape, such as frequently in heraldry.
These < >, or more specifically these « » were the original quotation marks before the printing press, and still are in many places. They are not known in French as a ‘chevron’ though, despite it being a French word, but rather as a Guillemet, named after the man Guillaume Le Bé who invented them for use in printing presses.
2972: Misguided Etymologies in English Feb 9, 2025
During the 15th and 16th centuries, Renaissance scholars in Britain sought to elevate English by aligning its spelling with Latin and Greek, often leading to "etymological respelling." This effort resulted in the insertion of in words pronounced with a /k/ sound, based on mistaken classical associations. For example, ache comes from Old English āce, rooted in Proto-Germanic akan (to suffer pain), but was respelled to mirror the Greek achos (ἀχος) despite no real connection. Even words like anchor and monarch reflect inconsistent applications of this trend, with anchor overcorrected from Latin anchora and monarch more accurately reflecting its Greek origin.This trend left a lasting impact on English orthography, embedding anomalies that persist today. While words like school genuinely reflect Greek roots, their spelling influenced the tendency to apply elsewhere, creating inconsistencies. The in words such as ache and sepulcher is not a testament to Greek origins but rather a relic of Renaissance scholars’ attempts to imbue English with classical prestige, often prioritising status over linguistic accuracy.
2971: Religious Split in German's Words for 'Goat' Feb 8, 2025
The German terms Geiß and Ziege both mean "goat," but the latter is now far more popular. Geiß is cognate with the English ‘goat’—words ending in [t] in English often have German equivalents with [s]. By the 15th century, Ziege, originally from Western German Franconian dialects, related to the now obsolete English ‘tick’, began to be used more in Central and Eastern dialects. This change for such a basic word was able to take place in the Middle Low German sēge in part due to limited domestic goat populations, and especially helped by its use in Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible Geiß persists in dialects of Southern and especially historically Catholic parts of Germany like Bavarian, Swabian, and Austrian.
2970: Comma from Slash Feb 7, 2025
In French, a comma is known as a ‘virgule’, a word that exists in English too, but it means ‘slash’, as in ‹ / ›, which in French is now known as “une barre oblique”. This is not from the English being confused about the meaning, but that the comma symbol evolved from a slash and ended up as ‹ , › through gradual simplification. The original comma, as it were, was not curled either, and the practice of curling around the previous letter developed later, probably not for any specific reason. The slash was still kept, but for less specific types of divisions of, usually, elements as opposed to clauses.
2969: When the USSR Tried to Latinize Writing Feb 6, 2025
The USSR, and indeed the Russian Federation, was a ruthless regime that sought to Russify the many peoples under its control. This is why many languages that were originally written in a variant of the Arabic script were transitioned to the Cyrillic alphabet, including the respectively unrelated Uzbek and Tajik. It may be surprising to know then that there were official Latinization efforts in the Soviet Union in the 1930’s, not only in these regions but in all parts of the Soviet Union. Many places under Soviet control already had practiced this, such as in parts of central Europe and in the Baltic states, but the reason to Latinize was for these stated reasons:
• To reduce illiteracy rates (which was effective, though not strictly because of the alphabet)
• To modernize, culturally
• To more easily communicate socialism globally
• To secularize the Muslim population and distance them from the Persian/Arab world
The efforts were later dropped by the 1940’s in favor of Cyrillic, though most scripts already in use, like Georgian, Armenian, and Latin (in places like Poland and Czechoslovakia), were maintained, except for Arabic-based scripts and Mongolian which were Cyrillicized. Languages like Kazakh and Uzbek only began to be officially switched to the Latin alphabet after the fall of the Soviet Union.
2968: Ginger—Not Zinger Feb 5, 2025
In Latin, the letter <Z> was moved to the end of the alphabet because it was seen as foreign, despite being inherited from the Greek equivalent like all the rest of the letters, and where <ζ> came seventh. This means when you do see it in Latin, like in the word ‘zingiberi’ (i.e. ‘ginger’), you can make a sure bet that it is not native.
In this case, it comes from Greek zingíberis (ζιγγίβερις). These forms ultimately derive from Sanskrit śṛṅgavēra (शृङ्गवेर), meaning "horn-shaped," a reference to the root's knobby appearance, likely formed from śṛṅga (horn) and vēra (body, root). It was changed to a <g> in Old French, ironically where <z> was more common, and this is what English inherited.
2967: Dot Your I’s Feb 4, 2025
Dot your i’s and cross your t’s, except that in the uppercase, <I> doesn’t have the dot (known as a tittle) like it does in lower case. Everything said here about <I> will also hold true for <J>, which emerged as a variant.
In lower case, some letters have completely different forms <A> and <a> or <R> and <r>, but for the most part the letters are either simply smaller versions of their capital forms, perhaps with minor variations or reductions, and no other letter besides <I>/<i> becomes non-contiguous. This is not a diacritic, though it should be noted that in almost all cases where there is one, the tittle is replaced, rather than written above.
It’s not found in Greek, even in the lower case now <Ι> <ι>, nor was it used for Latin, but did develop separately in Cyrillic <І> <і>. It is not entirely clear why this developed, but it was likely for clarity, as it is a small letter, and especially later in cursive forms could be easily confused with parts of other letters. Capital <I> never developed this, except in the 20th century as a variant in Turkish ⟨İ⟩, because by and large it was prominent enough, especially with bars running below, and sometimes above, on capital <ɪ> which not only helps with visual clarity, but also spacing before digital fonts.
2966: Ñ Ü Å → Letters on Top Feb 3, 2025
The letter Ç [cedille] originates as a C with a Z written underneath, but rather than being anomalous, this is how lots of variants and diacritics are born. The forms are <Ñ> <Ü> <Å> are all formed from writing one letter above another to represent a unique sound. In the case of the Nordic <å>, this is , unsurprisingly, an O written over the A; in the case of the others it is less immediately obvious.
The German <ü><ö> and <ä> can all also be written with an <e> afterwards (minus the umlaut) for the most part. The umlaut diacritic was formed from historically writing the letter <e> above, such as <uͤ>, and over time this was simplified into the two dots today. This is not to be confused with <œ> or <æ>.
Similarly, <ñ> was formed as a result of writing <N> over an <n>, or in Portuguese, nasalized vowels like in Lisbão (Lisbon) which eventually became the tilde. Other languages that use a macron to represent doubled letters went through a different process. In Spanish, double-letter digraphs like <ñ> are considered a separate letter in the alphabet, as is <rr> and <ll>.
2965: Pipedream and Pipedream: Completely Different Feb 2, 2025
The modern sense of ‘pipedream’, as in a far-fetched scheme, is from the 19th century in reference to the experience of smoking opium from a pipe, and having hallucinations or other dreamlike undergoings. This was further reinforced by a more modern understanding of ‘dream’ as ‘aspiration’ too, which was only attested from the early 20th century.
An Old English word, pīpdrēam existed, but with a completely different meaning: pipe music. ‘Pipe’ originally meant ‘chirp’ before it referred to the tool to make such a noise, and hence any other sort of tube, but that’s not even the greatest divergence here. ‘Dream’ (drēam) had the meaning of ‘music’ but also ‘joy’, and, rather similar to the formation of ‘hallucinate’, came from an earlier root meaning ‘deceive’ or ‘damage’. Indeed, the older root of deception would be a clearer root for the modern sense, but that sense is not attested in the Old English ‘drēam’.
It is not entirely certain that ‘drēam’ is the source of ‘dream’ from direct available evidence, but ‘dream’ is cognate with all other Germanic words for such slumber-visions like German ‘Traum’ or Danish and Norwegian ‘drøm’. Given that there is clearly an old, shared root among Germanic languages, and yet no evidence as such, the only tenable options are:
The word was used for ‘music / joy’ in several historical varieties of languages that all later took on a meaning of ‘dream’, each dropping the older meaning.
The second meaning was used at the time, but not recorded, and the sense of ‘music’ was simply dropped over time.
There are two completely different etymologies.
Given the lack of recording of it having the modern sense, option 1 is more likely than option 3, but each explanation has its problems.
2964: Ottoman: Should be Osman Feb 1, 2025
In Turkish, the term Ottoman is ‘Osman’ (ignoring morphology), so it would be reasonable to ask why the English term , and in general throughout Europe, uses a /t/ and not an /s/. Really, the question should be the other way around. The English term comes from French, but the Turkish “native” word comes from Arabic, specifically the Arabic personal name عُثْمَان (ʕuṯmān). Osman is the Turkish spelling of the male Arabic given name Uthman, adopted via Persian. It is unclear why it changed in Persian, but it is the version with the /s/ that is most common in other regions as a personal name throughout Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent over the aspirated /t/ sound.
2963: Why Thames has an H Jan 31, 2025
The famous River Thames in London is famously not pronounced how it looks, but unlike a great many place names throughout Britain that do not look at all how they are actually pronounced, this was somewhat one purpose.
Normally, TH- represents the sounds /θ/ as in ‘thin’ or /ð/ as in ‘than’, but here is it /t/, except in the Thames of Connecticut where it is in fact /θeɪmz/, as it appears. In words that English takes from Greek, there is usually the /θ/ sound where indeed the letter θ appears, but that didn’t stop Middle English writers assuming that the then-‘Temese’ (or also Tames) was of Greek origin, and thus added an <H>.
What makes this case particularly unusual is that normally when an <H> was added, it did change how people spoke. For instance, ‘herb’ had its <H> added later to connect it with Latin and ‘author’ never had an H, even in Latin, but was assumed to have had. This did not happen with ‘Thames’ of course, except perhaps if you live in New London, Connecticut.
2962: What’s Behind Question Intonation? Jan 30, 2025
While a rising intonation for questions is not universal (as seen yesterday), it is the default and common in most languages. This seems to have occurred naturally too, not inherited from other languages and spreading over time. It is not entirely clear why this is, but there are some theories:
In very few languages is this intonation a grammatical necessity; most will rely on other features like interrogative pronouns, word order changes, or in some languages like Latin and Mandarin there are question markers that serve no other grammatical function. The intonation may not be grammatically required, but rising pitch in general may be a social indicator of uncertainty and is often used in statements to indicate, subconsciously, a lack of assertiveness. In this way, the matter may be only inadvertently linguistic, and otherwise be more anthropological.
It may also be from physiology. Given that an indicative or imperative utterance will naturally decline in pitch, given decreasing airflow from the lungs over that time, a question is simply an inversion of that.
Rising pitch is often used in question-like utterances as well, that are not strictly questions. For instance:
“I wonder how tall this building is.”
“Will you clean your room?”
“Would you mind doing the dishes?”
All may be typically used with standard question intonations ([one indicative with a small-clause and two subjunctives]. This would also support the first explanation where the intonation was grammaticalized to fit a question from natural behavior, as opposed to being a linguistic feature per se.
2961: Rising Intonation for Question: Not Universal Jan 29, 2025
In English, even when a question is marked by interrogative pronouns etc. or a change in word-order (moving the verb to the first position), the tendency is to raise the intonation as the question is uttered. This is especially common in yes-no questions, though in either case the question is still indicated by the grammar, and it wouldn’t be necessary to change tone. Compare:
Where are you going?
Are you going?
We are going.
However, echo questions do keep indicative word order, for instance
“I am going” → “You are going!?”
(These pitches can also be meaningfully changed by stressing over different words, but that will be ignored for now.)
Though this is not strictly necessary in English, this is frequently necessary in languages like Hebrew where there is no grammatical difference in word order:
Do you have a dog?* : ?יש לך כלב
You have a dog: .יש לך כלב
This is not universal however. Many African languages in the Sahel instead use a falling intonation or a lengthened final vowel. Only a handful of languages globally do not seem to natively have some form of question-intonation at all, and most languages, including already tonal languages do use it.
*One can clarify this as a question by adding האם יש לך כלב, but this is not necessary.
2960: Meager and Macro Jan 28, 2025
The words ‘meager’ and ‘emaciated’ are etymologically related, which might not be too surprising given their meaning of ‘thin’ or even ‘deprived’. The former is a native Germanic word while ‘emaciated’ comes from French, from the Latin ‘macer’ meaning ‘thin’. Less obviously, these are more distantly related to ‘macro-’ and other big-words, like ‘major’ (and likewise ‘mayor’) and ‘macron’, which refers to long vowels. The fact that the Latin and Germanic words each separately made the transition from (in essence):
big→long→slender→thin→deprived
is remarkable, but as seen in the other cognates, the original sense is clearer, and these are just two instances of deviation.
2959: Progressive and Regressive Assimilation Jan 27, 2025
In Hebrew, the forms מנין (m'naian) and מאין (m'ain) both derive from the root מן (min, meaning "from") and the combining form אן- ('where'), yet they exhibit different phonological processes due to regressive and progressive assimilation. Progressive assimilation occurs when a sound influences the one before it, and in מנין (m'naian), the nasal consonant of the suffix -אן affects the root מן, resulting in a smooth, nasalized n sound in both parts of the word. This creates a cohesive and fluid pronunciation. On the other hand, מאין (m'ain) demonstrates regressive assimilation, where a sound is influenced by the following one. In this case, the -אן suffix triggers a change in the root vowel, altering the vowel sound and giving the form a different phonetic structure. The difference between the two forms highlights how phonological assimilation reshapes words depending on whether the influence comes from preceding or following sounds.
2958: Tapping the Admiral Jan 26, 2025
The phrase "tapping the admiral" comes from naval slang, referring to boring a hole in a barrel and sucking out the contents through a straw, supposedly stemming from a peculiar story surrounding the death of Admiral Horatio Nelson, one of Britain's most revered naval heroes. In 1805, after leading the Royal Navy to victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson was fatally wounded by a sniper's shot. As the story goes, his sailors, hoping to later give him a state funeral, decided to preserve his body in fine spirits. They filled his casket with a barrel of rum (or possibly brandy), which also became known as "Nelson's blood," but found it dry by the time of returning to Britain.
Though the story itself may well be real, and very likely Nelson's death popularized the phrase, the term "tapping the admiral" had already been in use at least by the 18th century and possibly earlier. This is a common problem with phrase etymology, where people assume it must have a particular story tied to it, but it often just evolves in less interesting ways.
2957: [Monty] Python Programming Language Jan 25, 2025
The name 'Python' for the popular programming language was inspired by the British comedy troupe Monty Python. When Guido van Rossum, the creator of the coding language, began developing it in the late 1980s, he wanted a name that was short, unique, and slightly humorous. As a fan of Monty Python, he chose the name 'Python' as a playful nod to the group's absurd and unconventional humor.
The comedy group itself chose the name "Monty Python" partly because they wanted something that sounded funny and absurd; they stated specifically it was named to sound like a bad agent who might have hired them. This means for a group not involved at all in tech, they have this and spam emails named because of them.