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This Online Thread Is Dedicated To The Coolest Origins Of Words And Here Are 45 Of The Most Interesting Ones
Etymology is the term that refers to the study of the origins of words, including how they got their meanings and how words develop throughout history. Some of these words have lasted over a mind-blowing 15,000 years, like “thou” (the singular form you “you”), ”I” and “mother” and have been dubbed “ultraconserved words” by scientists.
But the English language is not finite; on the contrary, it keeps growing at quite an impressive pace. According to Global Language Monitor, around 5,400 new words are created every year; it’s only the 1,000 or so deemed to be in sufficiently widespread use that make it into print.
And while we use words every day without thinking, it’s incredible how little we really know about them. So in order to dive deep into some of them that we take for granted, we look at this illuminating Ask Reddit thread which shares some of the most interesting and surprising word origin stories.
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#1
The word "bear" in many languages in europe (including English) just means "brown thing". There used to be a proper name for bear, but it was taboo because saying it was believed to summon a bear, who would then kill everyone. It was so taboo it was eventually forgotten and the euphamism (brown thing) became the name.
Ancient people were scared pissless by bears.
The Arctic draws its root from arctus, greek for bear. So its the "land of bears"
The Antarctic is thus, "the land without bears"
setsuriseikou 2 years ago
In Russian, the word for bear (медведь) literally means "the one who knows about honey" (мед = honey, ведь = to know).
Kate Haslam 2 years ago
Ah, but! Arctic and Antarctic don't even refer to the fact that there are bears or not! The names refer to whether the constellation Ursa Major can be seen.
Yeah, okay. 2 years ago
So... "Bear" and "No Bear". Still makes sense, and serendipitous that it still tracks.
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censorshipsucks 2 years ago
I'm skeptical on this one because "bera" was the old english (1000 years ago). Latin is Ursa, and as the OP says greek is Arktos, so "bera" can only potentially mean "bear" in Germanic (Ger: Beer etc.). All three languages (latin, OE, Greek) come from indo-european, an ancient language hypothesised to have arisen in the caucasus region. The reconstruction they give at https://sites.psu.edu/josephvadella/2017/09/15/the-animal-who-must-not-be-named/ which repeats this story is hrktos for bear. The hr/ part can plausibly become fr/br and the -os part is just the nominative. So I'd give proto-germanic *Frh / Prh / Brh. Which becomes Bear quite easily. Sanskrit has Shrktas (obviously close to Arktos). So the basic word in all languages seems to be Urs/Hrks/Brs. Compare Ulpo/Lupo - latin - for wolf (ulf/ulfur in old germanic). Ur/Br/Wr/Fr are common swaps in Grimm's law. So meh, I am skeptical.
Loki’s Lil Butter Knife 2 years ago
I’m a wee bit skeptical a well. The English bear comes from the Old English “bera” which came from the proto-Germanic “bero” (the brown one) and old Norse björn. The only thing I could find was that the Greek ursus retains the PIE (proto indo European) root for bear, however, there are some scholars (can’t seem to find more info on this) they believe that this root was replaced in northern regions due to the ritual taboo of hunters not naming wild animals.
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Marla 2 years ago
I never wanted anything more even though I know I'd forget it immediately after learning it
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Robert T 2 years ago
The name Bjorn, which means bear, is slightly less appealing now. Have you seen Brown Thing today? What's Brown Thing up to? Shall I ask Brown Thing on a date? LOL
Auntriarch 2 years ago
Please tell me the famous tennis player didn't translate to mountain of brown thing
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RELATED:
#2
The word "quintessential" has one of my favorite etymologies.
You can break it down into "quint" and "essential." Quint as in "five." "Essential" as in "essence," or "element." To be quintessential is to be the fifth element of something. To be the thing's *spirit*.
(Un)Inspired Aspiring Author 2 years ago
Do you hear that sound? That is the sound of a KOTLC fan's brain exploding when they realize why Shannon Messenger chose the name "Quintessence" for the light from the unmapped stars, as in the series, it's the fifth element. (I believe we've gotten up to 7 at this point, earth, fire, air, water, quintessence, shadowflux, and Stellarlune/elysian)
Linda Riebel 2 years ago
I thought it meant that if you boiled/reduced something five times, what was left was the "quintessence."
#3
Wow, good timing. I just learned this one today.
Etymology of the word **clue**: The word clue originates with the myth of Theseus, who used a ball of yarn to find his way back out of the minotaur's labyrinth. The middle English word for a ball of yarn was clew (or clewe); when the myth was popularized in England by Chaucer, people started using the word clew figuratively to mean a hint or guide to solving a problem.
brukernavn340 2 years ago
In Norwegian, we have the word "ledetråd", literally meaning "guiding/leading thread".
Mimi Downhouse 2 years ago
Same in Finnish. Clue is Johtolanka = leading thread
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Untethered Universe 2 years ago
Clew, clewe shares the same root as "Kluwen", which is Dutch for a ball of something.
Robert T 2 years ago
Love the picture with a latinised version of the Greek myth. Surely a minotaurus is only a little bull.
Nandros M 2 years ago
Minotaurus does not mean mini bull. Minos was the king of Crete.
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Fantastic Mr Fox 2 years ago
Those bones and the skull on the ground tho.
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Milf Memoires 2 years ago
In Dutch we still use the word 'kluwe' , pronounced like clewe. It means a whole bunch tangled up, like a ball of yarn. Usuallly less tidy.
In order to find out more about how etymologists study the origins of words, as well as how words are made, Bored Panda reached out to Dr. Andreea Calude, the associate dean postgraduate for ALPSS (Division of Arts, Law, Psychology and Social Sciences) and senior lecturer in linguistics at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Dr. Calude researches various aspects of language, especially language on social media.
Dr. Calude explained that “language historians study language change by looking meticulously across many language vocabularies to track regular sound changes and sound correspondences and identify cognate classes, that is words and concepts which are inherited with (small or negligible or at least traceable) sound changes.”
#4
English used to have a letter called “thorn” which kind of looked like the letter “y”. It made a buzzing “th” sound like in “the”. It’s why you see signs like “Ye Olde Shoppe”. It’s pronounced “The old shop”, not “Ye old shop”.
Delta Dawn 2 years ago
Yeah it doesn’t really look like a y. More like a |p
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Bunzilla 2 years ago
Þ or þ for anyone curious about what it looked like. Honestly, it looks more like the letter P or b than a Y to me.
censorshipsucks 2 years ago
if you see it written in old saxon miniscules it does indeed look like a Y. Screen-Sho...46688b.png 
Robert T 2 years ago (edited)
They had funny esses too. Spelling was somewhat optional too, especially with names. If you take a look at some of the old censuses, where people were often illiterate and the census taker had to write down what he thought, which was often wrong. My family appear with various spellings in different years, even for the same people.
Remi (He/Him) 2 years ago
We have the same thing in my mother's side. A dude got misspelled in early 19th century and now some of the family has an u in their surname and some have o
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𝖊𝖆 2 years ago
THANK YOU!! This is one of my biggest annoyances, films and tv etc. and people saying “yee” not “thee”. That and “I could care less” 😒
Roman Hans 2 years ago
I don't understand the hate! Think of it as saying the first half of this: "I could care less ... but it would be difficult."
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AndyR 2 years ago
It's also the plural for addressing a group of people. So it can mean "the" or "you" (y'all for the Americans).
LandAhoy 2 years ago
No it's the other way around- "you" was originally the plural/ formal form, it was "thee" that was originally the singular informal form of you, I guess "thee" just died out because everyone just became too polite!
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Anonymouse 2 years ago
YES!!! And also it might be where "You" came from ("thou"), but I'm not sure. But this bothers me SO MUCH, thank you!
Id row 2 years ago
"It made a buzzing “th” sound" - Wouldn't that be a 'zzz' sound? It should be Ze old shop, lol.
similarly 2 years ago
Close, but Z is an alveolar fricative (the unvoiced version of which is S), while TH is a dental voiced or unvoiced fricative.
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#5
Etymology: Dashboard
The dashboard is a board on the front of a horse carriage meant to keep mud from kicking up on the passengers when the horse dashes.
And over time it came to mean the front part of anything, even a computer interface is sometimes called a dashboard.
Robert T 2 years ago
Yes, and "trunk" literally came from the wooden box tied to the back of a coach. American car terminology hasn't moved on from this in hundreds of years!
Mary Rogers 2 years ago
Even the word "car" is just a shortened form of "carriage."
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Prashant Karnath 2 years ago
Skipped a few transitional stages here, I think. The initial dashboard transitioned to the dashboard of the car which eventually housed all the meters for reading. Then anything with a set of data to be read became a dashboard.
Christoph Lindemann 2 years ago
The german word for wing or fender on a car is "Kotflügel" which means "fecal wing", because it protected the passengers from ... Yes, exactly.
Mary Rogers 2 years ago
Oh gosh. I guess that makes perfect sense because when cars were first invented the roads were full of horse manure. Such a different world back then.
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Alan Christensen 2 years ago
"...even a computer interface is sometimes called a dashboard." Because of all the stuff that gets thrown at us.
2WheelTravlr 2 years ago
It is behind the horse, but still from the horses perspective, the front of the carriage.
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Etymology: melon- not particularly interesting in itself, it came from Ancient Greek, through Latin, to Old French, before finding its way to English. All along the way it referred to various gourds. However, and this is the interesting bit, melons was slang for boobs in Greek, and it retained this slang definition as well as its “real” definition all the way to English. Usually in etymology you keep one definition or the other, and never both, which makes it really interesting. Also boobies.
Mister Dave 2 years ago
I like and dislike the thought that the male brain, for quite a few years, kept the secondary meaning alive.
Rune Rosen (they/them) 2 years ago
Grecians, and even Romans were actually very open about homosexual relationships. Thus, it wasn’t just the men who kept that lingo going.
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Bored Retsuko 2 years ago
Different etymology ;-) it's derived from Greek "mélas", meaning "black".
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Samyan Elrod 2 years ago
OOh now i have to know ... come here, google dearest
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Chucky Cheezburger 2 years ago
Never underestimate the power of the human mind to come up with and use a tremendous number of slang words for anatomy.
AndyR 2 years ago
Is there any evidence that they were both in use in English from the beginning? It's not the most subtle piece of visual slang, so I could see how people started using it independently.
Eris Kallisti 2 years ago
This reminds me of how avocados grow in dangling pairs, and the word comes from the Nahuatl word for testicles, ahuacatl.
“They compile databases to document these findings, and often share the data with open access so that anyone can look up such histories. Here is one compiled by my colleagues on the Austronesian language family,” Dr. Calude explained. She added that these databases are rich sources which combine meticulous linguistic expertise and document our linguistic past.
#7
The word "panic" comes from the Greek god Pan who had a blood-curdling scream that induced panic in anyone who heard it.
Izzy Curer 2 years ago (edited)
Actually, the word comes from a psychological phenomenon that the ancient Greeks attributed to Pan. People would go into the forest and suddenly have a terrible feeling descend upon them for no discernible reason, which would often cause them to flee in terror. It's actually something that modern people still report today. It's been theorized that the feeling might actually be a result of the body picking up low frequency sounds that the person can't hear, like maybe the wind resonating through trees, but back in ancient times, they didn't know about such things, and so they believed Pan was guarding the forest by making people scared enough to run away.
pebs 2 years ago
An interesting thing is that Pan's scream came not at night, when it is normal to be alert outdoors, but during the day, precisely at noon, when there aren't even shadows and everything is perfectly clear.
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Steve Robert 2 years ago
I make the same sound everytime my zipper catches what shouldn't be caught, when zipping up my pants!
Elizabeth Molloy 2 years ago
And thus those who encounter him today have a huge rush of blind panic!
#8
The word oxymoron: the word oxymoron itself, appropriately enough, is an oxymoron. The oxy– part (the same as in words like oxygen, paroxysm and peroxide) comes from the Greek word for “sharp” or “acrid”, oxys. The –moron part (the same as in—well, moron) comes from the Greek word for “dull”, moros. So an oxymoron is literally a “sharp-dull” turn of phrase.
January Tempis 2 years ago
Interestingly enough when we say that people don't have common sense, we mean that not all knowledge is common to all people. What should be common sense is that all the people don't know all the things.
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Öz Deniz Boro 2 years ago
It will become my favorite word from now on. Thanks for the explanation.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 2 years ago
I always it had something to do with Oxford University. Like a dumb person in Oxford.
#9
Etymology: the word helicopter is a compound word derived from "**helico**" meaning roughly "spiral thing" and "**pter**" meaning roughly "flying thing". As in pterodactyl. The compound word is helico-pter, not heli-copter like everyone thinks.
gerard julien 2 years ago
" 1861, from French hélicoptère "device for enabling airplanes to rise perpendicularly," thus "flying machine propelled by screws." From a Latinized combining form of Greek helix (genitive helikos) "spiral" (see helix) + pteron "wing" (from PIE root *pet- "to rush, to fly")."
Luna Crow 2 years ago
Wait, so roughly, pterodactyls were named flying wing-fingers? The meme was right, we were naming them thicc scaley boys, only language has evolved..
Laugh or not 2 years ago
Look ar the etymology of most scientific names for animals : thing with big teeth, thing with small teeth, things with thick skull, leggety thing, thing that looks like a bear, etc.
Load More Replies... censorshipsucks 2 years ago
the word that is cognate with greek "pter" is english "Feather". Compare "pater" and "father".
RafCo (he/him) 2 years ago
P tended to become F in English. Pater to father, patra to feather. Patra was the Indo-European word for wing, which is the same root as the Greek words pteron and pterux. The letter P itself has an interesting history, when you consider how similar P and B sound.
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Leeza Martinez 2 years ago
that means the P should be silent and it should be pronounced helicoter
When asked how words are born/made, Dr. Calude said that “old" words are essentially forms which are passed down, in a modified form, from one parent-language (we call these proto-languages or ancestor languages) to another (daughter-language).
“Imagine a language keeps the original form from its ancestor language, then this form may be modified slightly and then it might be replaced by a new form or modified and passed on to the next daughter language. If the form is retained, then we end up with 'fossilized' word forms which we call cognates.”
#10
A little late to this thread but my favorite one isn't on here yet. **Mortgage** "Mort" - Death "Gage" - Pledge "Death Pledge", very fitting for a 30 year loan.
Riley Quinn 2 years ago
Because I knew this, I used the term 'death pledge' when signing my mortgage. Went over everyone's head.
gerard julien 2 years ago
late 14c., morgage, "a conveyance of property on condition as security for a loan or agreement," from Old French morgage (13c.), mort gaige, literally "dead pledge" (replaced in modern French by hypothèque), from mort "dead" (see mortal (adj.)) + gage "pledge" (see wage (n.)).
Marie Dahme 2 years ago
Wow. Glad I sold my house a few years ago so I was no longer under a death pledge.
#11
The phrase "hands down" comes from horseracing and refers to a jockey who is so far ahead that he can afford drop his hands and loosen the reins (usually kept tight to encourage a horse to run) and still easily win.
Luna Crow 2 years ago
Especially since the reins are usually pulled to slow the horse rather than speed it up, IIRC.. been years since I've been on one though. Maybe the commands are different for racehorses?
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RafCo (he/him) 2 years ago (edited)
Another fun phrase from horse racing is "dead ringer". A ringer was a horse that was fraudulently passed off as another racing horse. A "dead" ringer was based on the second use of dead, to mean perfect (eg dead center, dead on, etc). A perfect doppelganger was a dead ringer.
RedMarbles 2 years ago
This isn't quite right. The reins are kept short with some tension (keeping contact, or a "hold" or "feel") in the earlier part of the race to help the rider control speed and direction. If a horse is too eager to run too fast, the rider keeps a snugger hold of the reins. For the later part of the race, the reins are looser and the jockey will "throw" them (sometimes called "throwing a cross"), along with pushing high on the neck in rhthym with the horse. This is meant to ask the horse to run his fastest. When winning by a large margin, there's no need to further encourage or have the horse expend unnecessary energy, so the rider stops pushing on the neck and lowers their hands, signaling to the horse that he can continue to run, can even slow down, but is not being asked to either stop or run his fastest. The rider then absolutely pulls on the reins to bring the horse to a stop, which sometimes takes awhile if the horse still wants to run.
tullotoe underfoot 2 years ago
"not quite right" = just plain false in this case.
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#12
Etymology: The word “avocado” comes from the Aztec word for testicle. That’s literally the only one I can think of right now.
Nadine Bamberger 2 years ago
Well, there is a resemblance but if they really do look like that you should definitely get them checked lol.
Another Fool on the Hill 2 years ago
If one could actually see his testicles a 'check' would definitely not be enough... 😖
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Eris Kallisti 2 years ago
They do tend to grow in pairs. If BP had picked a photo of them growing on trees it would make sense
David H 2 years ago
It was originally Avoguado or Testical Fruit in Aztec, to distance itself from the testical name Guado (Testicle) was made Cado as in Avocado , though Cado means nothing.
Charlotte Sandoval 2 years ago
Avoguado is still very much the Spanish influence. If you go back to classic Nahuatl it's Ahuactl, the "tl" ending being a lot more typical of the language, and the Nahuatl word "Atla" meaning testicle
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Thomas Ewing 2 years ago
If you have 6.02 times 10/23 Avocados, then you have Avagadro's Avocados.
Dr. Calude gave an example: “in the Proto-Central-Pacific, the word for five is ‘lima’, which in many daughter languages has stayed the same or been slightly modified. In Hawaiian, Fijian and Tokelauan it is the same: ‘lima’, in Māori, Raratongan and Tahitian it is ‘rima’. The sound change from [l] to [r] is well-documented and historical linguists use regular sound changes like that to track language genealogies for hundreds and thousands of years of evolution.”
#13
The word “barbarian” comes from an Ancient Greek word referring to all non-Greek speakers (including Egyptians, Phoenicians, etc.) This was because to the Greeks, all other languages sounded like people saying “bar bar bar”. This became the root for the word βάρβαρος (bárbaros), which roughly means “babble” or “gibberish”.
It was later adopted by the Romans to refer to any culture that did not practice Greek or Roman traditions (even though Latin-speakers were technically classified as barbarians because they didn’t speak Greek). Due to good old xenophobia, it eventually came to mean “uncivilized”, and from there it made its way through the centuries into Middle English.
censorshipsucks 2 years ago
I had heard a folk etymology that it meant the bearded ones since mediterraneans shaved. It appears in "barber".
Lemaire 2 years ago
This is the etymology I learned. But after some "thorough" "research" (5 minutes of Googling), the gibberish/Onomatopoeia definition seems more legit. The greek root for beard is nothing like "barb-", it's γένι (pronounced Yeny). Also, the Greeks loved them some beards, so why would they consider the ""bearded ones" necessarily foreign...so I guess I have been wrong all of this time.
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Sarah Stalder 2 years ago
Interesting...especially since you mentioned Babel, which is, of course, where we get the word babble...
Inge Vavrovsky 2 years ago
In German, the movement of Germanic tribes southwards and across Europe between 400 and 800 a.C. Is called "Völkerwanderung" (= movement of the peoples") - a positive or at least neutral term, whereas in all languages with latin origin like Italian, French and Spanish it is the "Barbarian migration" - alluding to something negative coming from outside...! This is how language shows an attitude.
EvilNob 2 years ago
And the famous Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbier.
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Capo di tutti Capi 2 years ago
total nonsense. romans were always close shaved. Barba means "beard" so, barbari means "beardies"
Aria de Saint-Iuz 2 years ago
It's actually pronounced VarVaros in Greek, and the countries around Greece kept it with V in their languages. I don't know why the westerners decided to change the V to B...
Kathy Brooks 2 years ago
I heard it originated from the Barbars onthe north coast of Africa. Their primary source of oncome was piracy.
#14
Utopia. I think there is a fairly common misconception that this word means 'good place', possibly because the first part of the word sounds similar to happy words like euphoria / eudaemonia etc. The word was in fact coined by Thomas Moore, and etymologically comes from the Greek 'ou' and 'topos', which literally translates to 'no place', or 'nowhere'. I just like that the unattainability of utopia is built into the word itself.
censorshipsucks 2 years ago
The funny thing is Tho.s More's concept of utopia was a theocracy where people spent their time praying. Sounds like hell to me.
Zachary Judd 2 years ago
Moores utopia was a play on words because of the same sounding ou-topos and eu-topos. So it was supposed to be both.
Stannous Flouride 2 years ago
Like Erewhon, first published in 1872, "Erewhon" (an anagram for "nowhere") is perhaps the most brilliant example of Utopian novels, taking aim at the humbug, hypocrisy, and absurdities surrounding such hallowed institutions as family, church, mechanical progress, advances in scientific theory, and legal systems. Intelligent, inventive, and wickedly humorous, the classic novel protests the blind acceptance of ideas and attitudes, an aspect of Samuel Butler's work that made his fiction enduring, entertaining, and thought-provoking. His remarkable prescience in anticipating future sociological trends adds a special relevance for today's readers.
David Evans 2 years ago
Samuel Butler wrote “Erewhon” describing a Utopian country, it’s (almost) “Nowhere “ backwards.
#15
Sailing terminology is everywhere: "Taken aback" - This happens to a ship when the wind shifts and the sails are suddenly blown backward into the sailors' faces. The ship loses forward momentum. "Learning the ropes" - when a new sailor literally learns which rope is connected to which part of the ship. "Boarding" - Literally getting onto the boards of another ship. We still use this one to describe getting onto an airplane, when very few of them have any wooden parts. Keeping things on an "even keel" - The keel is the lowermost part of a ship's hull. It's the part that runs down the middle and cuts through the water. Sailors want an even keel so that the ship stays on a smooth and steady course. Nowadays the term is used for any situation where people want to keep things smooth and steady. "Limey" - Used as a semi-derogatory nickname for British sailors, who used limes and/or lime juice to prevent scurvy at sea. Nowadays it's a semi-derogatory nickname for all British people. "groggy" - Grog was a mixture of rum and water that sailors drank. If you were groggy, you were either drunk on grog or hung over from the grog the night before. Nowadays we use it to describe being tired and fuzzy-headed. "loose cannon" - Literally when a cannon wasn't secured in place and started crashing into things. Cannons were heavy pieces of solid iron with wheels, and if they weren't secured, they could roll/slide across a ship's deck whenever the ship leaned from side to side, and they could do some major damage to the ship and to the sailors. Nowadays this term describes a person who is unpredictable and likely to do damage wherever they go. Terminology from old horse carriages is everywhere too: "dashboard" - There was literally a board in front of the carriage driver to protect him from mud and gravel that "dashed" up against it from the horses' hooves. Now we use the word to describe any surface covered in controls, including on computer screens. "hold your horses" - Self-explanatory, you hold the reins of the horses to slow them down. Terminology from old machines: to be "keyed up" or "wound up" - Referring to old clocks and clockwork machines that you sometimes had to wind up with a key. "hanging up" a phone - Old phones, you had to hang up the earpiece when you were done. "fired up" - Referring to steam engines, now people use it to refer to people being full of energy or starting up a piece of technology (whether it uses fire or not). "upper case" and "lower case" - The individual metal letters used in a printing press were kept in cases - smaller letters in the lower case so they were in easy reach, larger letters in the upper case because they weren't used as much. "stereotype" - This was a word used for identical copies of the same document, from the same printing press. Now we use it when we describe characteristics that we think are identical across whole social groups.
JB 2 years ago
What about the sailing expression "(cold enough to) freeze the balls off a brass monkey?" The Brass Monkey was a trolley made if non-sparking brass to carry powder and ammunition (iron could spark and ignite the powder). Brass, however, contacts more in the cold, so if it was well below freezing the contraction of the cart would shift the cannon balls and they'd fall off. Thus, it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!
Henrik Schmidt 2 years ago
That explanation is probably false, though. According to Wikipedia, "During the 19th and 20th centuries, small monkeys cast from the alloy brass were very common tourist souvenirs from China and Japan. They usually, but not always, came in a set of three representing the Three Wise Monkeys carved in wood above the Shrine of Tōshō-gū in Nikkō, Tochigi, Japan. These monkeys were often cast with all three in a single piece. In other sets they were made singly. Old brass monkeys of this type are collectors' items.[1][2] Michael Quinion, advisor to The Oxford English Dictionary and author of the website World Wide Words, writes, "it's more than likely the term came from them".
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Luna Crow 2 years ago (edited)
No. NO. Just no.. I mean, the rest of this entry is on point and wonderful.. but I refuse to accept being old enough that "hanging up" needs to be described in a discussion about etymology. Corded phones were still widely used into the early 2000s, surely kids these days know about them.. oh dog, I said the words.. TIL I'm old 😭 Time to hang it up
Phillip Hart 2 years ago
But the phrase is from the older ones where you speak into the bit that looks sort of like a steampunk candlestick and the earpiece is kind of a cup attached to a cord. The base has a place to hold the cup when not in use, and the weight of the cup disconnected the call
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David Phillips 2 years ago
Three sheets to the wind. Learn the ropes. Shipshape. A different tack. Pissing into the wind. Any port in a storm. Safe haven....Britain is an island, so ships have always been important: politically, culturally, economically... and linguistically
KittyGotClaws 2 years ago
I'm an American living in Ireland now, but sometimes someone will call me a 'Yank'. I prefer to be called an American; however, sometimes I think that it might be interesting to hear someone call a southerner a 'Yank". Might be some interesting fireworks!
mayaexists 2 years ago
The hanging up one makes me feel old and I’m literally a teenager. We had those phones in our house
Delta Dawn 2 years ago
It doesn’t help that the word limey is usually followed by the word bastard
Dan Bexell 2 years ago
Gotta throw this one in: Stonehenge takes it's name from the way the rocks are set up, resembling an old gallows, which was called a hengen (the root word of hanging too) the old word for stone was stane, so putting them together, you got stanehengen, or stone gallows, which gradually became stonehenge.
RafCo (he/him) 2 years ago
"Graveyard shift" is also a sailing term. So called because the shift between midnight and sunrise was the most dangerous
However, it is impossible to know which are THE oldest words, but we have some ideas where to look for them, Dr. Calude argues. “We suspect they might be everyday words, what we call basic vocabulary which languages have because it is important to discuss such concepts and which languages resist borrowing from other languages (because it is indeed so basic), for example words like mother, sun, mountain, number words like one, two and three, and color words like green and red, but also more grammatical words like that and pronouns like I and you,” she concluded.
#16
The etymology of "tawdry" is a real ride.
There was a 7th century Anglo-Saxon saint named Æthelthryth. Now, nobody, not even 7th century Anglo-Saxons, wants to go around trying to pronounce that dense forest of th's, so she was commonly known as St. Etheldreda, and later, linguistically lazier people called her St. Audrey.
St. Audrey was the patron saint of a town called Ely, and the folks of Ely held a fair every year in her name. One of the primary products on offer at these fairs was lace. "St. Audrey's lace" was said a few too many times, and got slurred down to "tawdry lace."
Over time, the lace fell out of favor. It was mainly made by peasant women, and thus viewed as cheap, and the Puritans looked down on lace garments of any kind as ostentatious. "Tawdry" then began to be used to describe other things that were cheap and ostentatious, and the modern definition of the word was born.
tl;dr: "Tawdry" comes from the fact that Æthelthryth is really hard to pronounce.
Robert Trebor 2 years ago
Æthelred Redeless has been taken to mean Æthelred unready but it really means Æthelred no counsel.
Cherry Knobloch 2 years ago
The earliest patterns for making lace appeared in the 1560's. Until machines for making lace were invented in the mid-1800's, lace was incredibly expensive. Handmade lace still is.
Rob Chapman 2 years ago (edited)
Aethelthyrth isn't pronounced the way it appears. Old English had two letters representing different vocalizations of the "th" sound. The letter thorn represented the modern sound as in the word "the" or "they", while the letter eth represented a sound similar to modern "dh", as in Dhaka, but is usually transliterated to a modern "d as in dog" sound. Aethelthyrth is actually pronounced "ethel-dred". Note: Even though the vowel sound precedes the consonant "r", it is never pronounced "ethel-dirth" or "ethel-dird"
margaret carradus 1 year ago
Fave Ely quote- about dodgy clerical behaviour Non sunt in caeli quid fuccant waves in Ely
#17
Etymology: Nimrod was originally a compliment referring to one's hunting skills (Nimrod being a biblical figure known for his ability to hunt), but the definition changed because people didnt understand Bugs Bunny was calling Elmer Fudd a Nimrod *sarcastically*
Elwood Schwartz (it/that) 2 years ago
There are a lot of people on bored Panda that don't understand sarcasm, as well.
N Miller 2 years ago
I would have to find the cartoon to verify, but Bored Panda has the excuse that sarcasm is damn near impossible to accurately convey through text alone. It is a communication method that relies on tonality. Hence /S.
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Christof Irran 2 years ago
Kinda like calling somebody an "Einstein" - it's not to be understood as an endorsement of that person's intellect. As in "Hey, listen Einstein. That's not how you ..."
David H 2 years ago
False. Nimrod is actually ancient Aramean for "He will rebel", this was first written down in Babylon 1800 years ago about the name Nimrod
Atreïdes 2 years ago
That’s what it means, but the Bible lists the hunter having Nimrod as his name, as seen in Genesis 10:8.
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Marion Banks-wilkinson 2 years ago
Nimrod is the name given to one of Elgar's enigma variations. It’s probably the most famous because it’s stately and solemn sounding and is used at Remembrance Sunday and funerals.
Spooky Scary Skeletons 2 years ago
Imagine being an RAF pilot and you tell people that the plane you fly is a Nimrod.
#18
Etymology: Nightmare. The “mare” part of the word “nightmare” comes from Germanic folklore, in which a “mare” is an evil female spirit or goblin that sits upon a sleeper’s chest, suffocating them and/or giving them bad dreams. So basically the word comes from a description of sleep paralysis.
JB 2 years ago
I thought it was from the belief that spirits, demons, or witches would use the sleeper as a horse/ride, giving the sleeper bad dreams - thus night (time of day) mare (female horse). Also the origin of hagrid/hagridden (ridden by a hag), but not haggard.
3 Owls In A Coat 2 years ago
“The word nightmare is derived from the Old English mare, a mythological demon or goblin who torments others with frightening dreams. The term has no connection with the Modern English word for a female horse.”
Load More Replies... Bored Retsuko 2 years ago (edited)
Fun fact: the painting in the picture is "Der Nachtmahr" by Swiss painter Füssli. "Nachtmahr" is the German equivalent to English "nightmare", but it refers only to the demon itself, not to a bad dream as such.
Nitka Tsar 2 years ago
To add to that: a nightmare is Albtraum in German. Traum means dream and Alb is another word for Nachtmahr.
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Nele H 2 years ago
That's so interesting that this is the reason. I get nightmares when I get too warm. Bet our bodies want to "save" us somehow.
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Dorthe Schou-Nielsen 2 years ago
In Danish it's 'mareridt' which roughly translates to 'being ridden by a mare'.
Annett Nyrud 2 years ago
In Norwegian too, of course. "Mareritt" = "mare ride" (where "mare" Is the female demon who is/was performing the "ride")
Load More Replies... Amanda Rose 2 years ago
Similar origin for the Morrigan of Celtic lore. It's believed to be a cognate with the mare portion of the word.
Mary Rogers 2 years ago
I've never had sleep paralysis, but from the descriptions I have heard it sounds terrifying. Imagine how much more terrifying it must have been to people before modern science came along to explain it. They really thought that they were being tormented by demons.
#19
In French the phrase “lion teeth” is “dent de lion”. A long time ago someone saw a flower and thought its petals looked like lion’s teeth, so they called it the dent de lion. Dent de lion = Dandelion.
Bonnie Buttons 2 years ago
Funny. In French it's called "pissenlit" or "p**s in the bed". Dandelions are supposed to have a diuretic effect which is why many "weight loss" herbal teas has dandelion in them. It helps lose retained water.
Nadine Debard 2 years ago
Yup. And when you're dead you eat the dandelions from their root (manger les pissenlits par la racine).
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Melody Johnson 2 years ago
In Spanish, dandelion is called "diente de león," which translates to "lion's tooth."
gerard julien 2 years ago
late 14c., a contraction of dent-de-lioun, from Old French dent de lion, literally "lion's tooth" (from its toothed leaves), a translation of Medieval Latin dens leonis.
Nitka Tsar 2 years ago
The name comes neither only from the flower, nor from the leaves. It‘s the whole picture. Lion for the lions mane which is the flower and the teeth are the leaves.
AZ SheltonSaladin 2 years ago
I believe the name is in regard to the jaggedly sharp leaves of the dandelion
#20
Etymology: Why do we raise chickens (animal) to eat chicken (meat) but raise cows (animal) to eat... beef (meat)? Because in England, French used to be the preferred language of the court, whereas Welsh was commonly used by the, well, commoners. The Welsh word for cow, cwe, was pronounced "coo", and the French word for the meat from said animal was boeuf, pronounced "buf". Poor people raised "coos" so rich people could eat "buf". (Chickens weren't widely eaten by the upper classes until much later.)
AndyR 2 years ago
It was coo or cu in Old English, so the pronunciation was broadly the same.
Load More Replies... RafCo (he/him) 2 years ago
This is kinda right but gets the details wrong. Not Welsh, but Old English. Not French, but Norman Frankish. It was the Norman noble class over the Saxon peasants, following the conquest of William the Conqueror.
Alan Christensen 2 years ago
And thanks to the French speaking nobility, various four letter words which were perfectly proper among the Anglo-Saxon non-nobility were classified as low-class or, as they say in Latin, vulgar.
Russell Tilling 2 years ago
I believe the Latin "vulgare" means the generally-occurring or wild variety. It has changed its meaning in recent history to mean "vulgar" or derogatorily common.
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Phil Green 2 years ago
The Welsh spoke Celt, the English spoke a variety of languages, mostly Germanic or Norse.
Russell Tilling 2 years ago
I don't believe the word Celt existed before the 18th century. It was coined to describe Cornwallians, Welsh, etc but is a made-up word.
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Abner_Mality 2 years ago
Actually you raise a hen (Huhn - Anglo-Saxon) but eat poultry (Poulet - Norman French)
#21
Malaria
Malaria is an infectious disease characterized by chills and fever and caused by the bite of an infected anopheles mosquito.
This word comes from the medieval Italian *mal* (bad) and *aria* (air), describing the miasma from the swamps around Rome.
This "bad air" was believed to be the cause of the fever that often developed in those who spent time around the swamps. In fact the illness, now known as malaria, was due to certain protozoans present in the mosquitos that bred around these swamps, and which caused recurring feverish symptoms in those they bit.
Riley Quinn 2 years ago
My family learned that 'mal' meant bad in Italian after the fact. We adopted a rescue dog named Maly who had some serious behavioral issues. Took us a while, but that 'bad' dog ended up being a very good boy. Just needed some loving.
Agnes Jekyll 2 years ago
Malady is from Middle English maladie, from Anglo-French, from malade (sick), from Latin male habitus in bad condition.
#22
In my language that is Bengali, the word for honey is "*Madhu*" and wine is "*Madh*". They both sound the same, because they came from the Sanskrit word *Madhu* which means honey or alcoholic drinks. And that comes from Proto-Indo-Iranian word *Madu* which means the same thing. From that, the Persian word *May* comes, meaning wine. If we trace even further, the Proto-Indo-Iranian *Madu* comes frm the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word *medu* or *medhu*, which means honey, intoxicating drink or sweet drink. From that PIE word *medu*, comes: - Greek: *methi* (drunkenness) - Germanic: *meduz*, from where the English word "*mead*": an alcoholic beverage that comes from fermentation of.....you guessed it....honey. In Dutch, it's still *medu*. In German its *met* meaning mead. - Celtic: in Cornish its *medh*, in Irish its mid, and Gaulish its *medu*, all meaning mead. - Balto-Slavic: *medus*, from where *medus* (Latvian) and *medus* (Lithuanian) in the Baltic branch, and miod (Polish), med (Czech, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian), and Mjod (Russian) in Slavic branch, all meaning Honey. now here's the most interesting part: - Tocharian: *mit*, from where it got burrowed into Chinese. Thus in Chinese, *mit* means honey, since it got from the Tocharians.
the Return of Bruno 2 years ago
Weird that methanol is the deadly alcohol, and ethanol is the good one.
Marek Čtrnáct 2 years ago
That's not related. Those words are derived from "methane" and "ethane", the simplest hydrocarbons. "-ol" means that one hydrogen atom was replaced by the -OH group. So methanol is chemically very similar to ethanol, which allows it to fool your body into trying to metabolize it... but it's also different enough that it won't quite work.
Load More Replies... Ami Tokuda 2 years ago
And "mitsu" is honey in Japanese, came from Chinese. Never knew the origin, thanks OP!
Sruthika Karalmarx 2 years ago
One more interesting fact the word 'Madhu' in Tamil ( one of languages spoken by people in state Tamil Nadu located in southern India) means alcohol
Timmy Pillinger 2 years ago
Especially since Tamil is not a relative of the languages mentioned, but of Finnish and Hungarian
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Blueplanet 2 years ago (edited)
Hi chinese here. honey is pronounced the same way as "me". i never knew its origin so this is rlly cool
margaret carradus 1 year ago
I love PIE. Comes from Kurgan people who spread it around like butter
Timo Mesimäki 2 years ago
And in Finnish it's 'mesi' and in Hungary it's 'mez' one of the oldest loans from Indo-Europian languages to Fenno-Ugric family. I should know, my surname is Mesimäki, meaning Honey Hill.
#23
I love the origin of the word "Company." It's roots are latin--"cum" (with) and "panis" (bread), because your company are those **with** whom you break **bread.**
JB 2 years ago
Better is comfort: com (with) fort (strength). So someone can offer you withstrength
crowspectre (he/they) 2 years ago
Someone can offer you [coffee] withstrength you mean
Load More Replies... gerard julien 2 years ago
mid-12c., "large group of people," from Old French compagnie "society, friendship, intimacy; body of soldiers" (12c.), from Late Latin companio, literally "bread fellow, messmate," from Latin com "with, together" (see com-) + panis "bread," from PIE root *pa- "to feed."
Debby Keir 2 years ago
Cum is pronounce 'coom' from the latin. Used often in medico speak and written in the notes a '/c - eg this prescription is'take this '/c water'. Absolutely nothing rude - it's all in your mind.
gerard julien 2 years ago
mid-12c., "large group of people," from Old French compagnie "society, friendship, intimacy; body of soldiers" (12c.), from Late Latin companio
#24
The word *apron* was originally *napron*.
But when people said "a napron" it got gradually transformed into "an apron".
Sara Nobre 2 years ago
In portuguese we use the french napperon, but only for really small tablecloths, to place under a jar on the table, for instance. Old ladies put them under old TVs, as well :)
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Yeah, okay. 2 years ago
Related to napkin, a smaller version of the napron, which didn't change to "apkin". Go figure.
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Shyla Bouche 2 years ago
I've heard an orange used to be a norange, but I don't know if it's true.
gerard julien 2 years ago
""apparel for covering the front of a person" (especially while at work, to keep clothes clean), mid-15c., faulty separation (as also in adder, auger, umpire) of a napron (c. 1300), from Old French naperon "small table-cloth," diminutive of nappe "cloth," from Latin mappa "napkin."
Henrik Schmidt 2 years ago
"An adder" (a type of snake) was originally "a nadder". It's still "natter" in German.
#25
Roger is just the modern English equivalent of the Old English and Old Norse name Hrothgar.
Additionally, Hrothgar means "famous spear", and is the name of the Danish King in the medieval epic poem Beowulf.
Gabriel Proulx-Jalbert 2 years ago
So in Skyrim, High Hrothgar is actualy High Roger or High Famous Spear.
Atreïdes 2 years ago
Imagine climbing all the way up the mountain to find a single cracked-out Greybeard named Roger praising a spear
Load More Replies... gerard julien 2 years ago
masc. proper name, from Old French Rogier, from Old High German Hrotger, literally "famous with the spear," from hruod- "fame, glory" + ger "spear" (see gar (n.)). "The name was introduced from Norman where OG Rodger was reinforced by the cognate ON Hroðgeirr"
Delta Dawn 2 years ago
I can’t remember the last time I met a Roger. I know a Magnus, which is unusual in the US.
Marc Booker 2 years ago
This explains the common British slang term "rogering" as a synonym for having s**. The man is using his "spear."
Empresslockness 2 years ago
Don't forget variations of the name i.e., Roderick, Rodrigo and Rodriguez.
#26
The word ‘vaccine’ comes from the Latin word ‘vaccinus’, which means “of the cow”. This is because the guy that first popularized the treatment and term prevented smallpox in children by exposing them to material from a cowpox blister, a milder form of smallpox.
Karen Weiss 2 years ago
Jenner first used matter from cowpox, a complaint of cows which transferred to milkmaids. Previously Turkish women would use matter from smallpox sores to innoculate their children with Geraldton positive results. This form of innoculation was introduced to England , called variolation (variola-smallpox) was introduced to England by Lady Mary Wortley Montague , the wife of a diplomat posted in Constantinople , now Istanbul. Previous to the use in Turkey, it was used in China and Africa.
rodger coghlan 2 years ago
Milkmaids and many others used cowpox to prevent small pox (there is a large pox) long before Jenner did
gerard julien 2 years ago
"matter used in vaccination," 1846, from French vaccin, noun use of adjective, from Latin vaccina, fem. of vaccinus "pertaining to a cow" (see vaccination). Related: Vaccinal; vaccinic.
Christian Lainesse 2 years ago
Actually, vaccine is the French name of cowpox. The French "vaccine' is the word derived from the latin and the treatment is derived from the French.
#27
So the origin of the seemingly mundane word "thing" makes for a surprisingly interesting story! It dates back to 930 AD with the founding of the *Alþingi* (anglicized as *Althing*), which is the national parliament of Iceland. In Icelandic/Old Norse, it's *al-* (“universal, general”) + *thing* (“assembly, meeting”). Fun fact: The Althing is the oldest active parliament in the world! Icelandic being a fairly literal language, the Althing met at *Lögberg* ("Law Rock") in the middle of *Þingvellir* (anglicized as *Thingvellir* and meaning "Thing Field" or "assembly field"). Then, in Old English (Middle Ages), *althing* was borrowed as the word for parliament but was shortened to just *thing*. Over time, the meaning of *thing* was broadened to any place where people got together and decided on laws. Then, *thing* became the issue you brought to the parliament. For example, "my neighbor is stealing my goats." Finally, *thing* simply came to mean any object, hence the meaning we have for it today!
Marek Čtrnáct 2 years ago
I have visited Thingvellir -- a nice place, not just for the historical meaning but also because two continental plates meet there. There's literally a plain, then a tall rock face, and when you get on it, there's another plain.
Trond Hermansen 2 years ago
There were "thing" before the Icelandic "All-thing". The settlers in Iceland just brought the old ways of the laws with them from their homelands; mainly Norway.
Dorthe Schou-Nielsen 2 years ago
The Danish parliament is called 'Folketinget' translating to 'the people's thing'.
David Paterson 2 years ago (edited)
Yep. We also get the days of the week from old Norse. Each day is named after a Norse god.
#28
While making stone sculptures, it was highly likely that the carver will make a mistake which cannot be undone. Especially if he was not very skilled. To hide their mistakes, they used to apply wax and shape it accordingly. The sculpture with wax was seen as impure and with flaws representing dishonesty of the carver. The Spanish for wax is cera, hence the sculptures without wax were called "sin cera" in Spanish. From there came the word sincere i.e. without any flaw or pure as archaic meaning and now meanimg honest.
kathoco 2 years ago
In linguistics, we call this a folk etymology. It sounds plausible but it’s really just made up. Another one is that asparagus comes from « sparrow grass » because sparrows liked to eat it.
Load More Replies... RafCo (he/him) 2 years ago
This is not accurate. Sincere comes from the Latin sincerus, meaning clean or pure. This may itself comes from the Latin sin (one) and crescere (growth), having one root. But the last part is debatable. "Sin cera" (without wax) and "sincera" (sincere) are often used as examples of homophones in Spanish, but they do not share a common origin.
Mary Rogers 2 years ago
And detailed, apparently. I was just admiring the anatomical detail in the hand.
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Apatheist Account2 2 years ago
My favourite sculpting advice: How does one sculpt an elephant? Take a very large piece of marble, and chip away anything that doesn't look like an elephant.
Mary Rogers 2 years ago
And that advice would still do nothing for those of us that don't have the artistic talent, unfortunately.
Load More Replies... Elizabeth Elliot 2 years ago
Wax was added to cheap pottery, not statues in ancient times; the potters used the phrase sine cera not sculptors.
Fernando Álvarez 2 years ago
I made some research, and it seems that the Latin adjective sincerus existed long before Spanish was born. Sincerus meant simple, not mixed, and was said about milk, for example. Later, it was also used to describe someone who is honest, sincere.
Trophy Husband 2 years ago
The Oxford English Dictionary and most scholars state that sincerity from sincere is derived from the Latin sincerus meaning clean, pure, sound (1525–35). Sincerus may have once meant "one growth" (not mixed), from sin- (one) and crescere (to grow).
#29
The Egyptians had a really big temple in Memphis, which they called _Chawitkurpitach_. When Egypt got big, the Akkadians assumed the word was the name of the country, but they gave up on trying to say it, so they just called the country _Khiku'upta'akh_. When the ancient Greeks started learning about Egypt, they found the Akkadian word. They _also_ gave up on trying to say the name so they started calling the country _Aikupitio_. A few centuries later the Greeks decided _again_ that this was too hard to pronounce so they changed it to _Eguptos_. A few hundred years later the Romans decided _Eguptos_ was too hard to pronounce so they started calling the country _Ægyptus_. This continued for centuries until the French decided it too was too complicated and just called the place _Egypte_, which the English then borrowed without the second 'e' to form _Egypt_. So basically "Egypt" came from "Egypte" which came from "Ægyptus" which came from "Eguptos" which came from "Aikuptio" which came from "Khiku'upta'akh" which came from "Chawitkurpitach" _which was never the name of the country in the first place_
censorshipsucks 2 years ago
also; coptic. The script and christian egyptian group, comes from eguptos.
NakNakNak 2 years ago
One step further, the (now offensive) "getting gypped" to describe getting ripped off or tricked.
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Ricardo Ferreira 2 years ago
So, how the Egyptians called their country before we begin calling it Egypt?
LizzieBoredom 2 years ago
Allegedly, there is graffiti in the Great Pyramid (put there by the workman while building it) such as "Pharoh Sux" and "Tut On This".
#30
The first computer "bug" was an actual bug, and that's where the computer-program sense of the word comes from. A moth got into the electro-mechanical Mark I computer at Harvard (built in the 1940s, and considered in some sense to be the first real computer) and gummed up the works. So there's a twofer.
Bleau 2 years ago
The first computer (not todays version )was 2,000 years old and found in Greece on a Roman era ship and they still don't understand how it works
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Henrik Schmidt 2 years ago (edited)
Not quite true. The word "bug" for "error" was in use before this. From Hacker's Dictionary: "The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads "1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being found". This wording establishes that the term was already in use at the time in its current specific sense -- and Hopper herself reports that the term `bug' was regularly applied to problems in radar electronics during WWII."
angied4liberty 2 years ago
The world's first electronic digital computer was built on the Iowa State campus from 1939 through 1942 by John V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics, and Clifford Berry, an engineering graduate student
margaret carradus 1 year ago
Edison is quoted as writing he had a bug in his phonograph system that he had to work out, apparently
Evelyn Haskins 2 years ago
WEL!! Moths aren't bugs!! Bugs are sucking insects. So in ENGLISH one must say a moth got into the works!
Catherine Spencer-Mills 2 years ago
Coined by Grace Hopper who removed the bug and thereby fixed the computer.
Nitka Tsar 2 years ago
Funny they say „build in the 1940s“ , because it was build between 1943 and 1944, while the Z3 by Conrad Zuse was build in 1941.
#31
Bingo comes pretty directly from the "I counquered" part of "veno vidi vici". Vici is "I conquered", but vinco is "I conquer". Going from Latin on to other languages, v often turned to b and c often turned to g, so Bingo literally means "I conquer" (or "I win", the more relevant translation) Colonel is pronounced like kernel because we use the Italian spelling (colonello) and French pronunciation (coronel) The Latin word for giraffe was cameloparus, literally "camel leopard" Roman men could add nicknames onto their legal names. Caesar means "curly" and Caligula means "little boots". I don't know that it was anything to do with a nickname, but Cicero means chickpea, and he would draw a chickpea next to his name Sinister is literally "left handed". Dexter is "right handed". A peninsula is an "almost island" (paene insula) Circumference means "carry around" Lesbian comes from the Greek island Lesbos, home of Sappho, but Lesbia was an actual name in ancient times. Ridiculous comes from ridere, "smile, laugh", so ridiculous means laughable Ululate means to howl or wail, but it comes from ululu, meaning "owl" Best of all: Latin didn't have any real words for yes or no. One of the most common ways to say yes was "sic" which basically meant "it is so" or "thusly". This is the origin of the Spanish word si.
David 2 years ago
If you have every heard an owl screech at night that is closer to the mark than you might think. Cartoons only give you the pleasant "who-who" noise. But some of their other calls can sound like a portal to hell opened up and something crawled out and is pissed.
jimmy pop 2 years ago
The genus "screech owl" (megascops) bears its name for a reason.
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Sara Nobre 2 years ago
"Colonel is pronounced like kernel because we use the Italian spelling (colonello) and French pronunciation (coronel)" Thank you! Since English is not my 1st language, I didn't know if I was spelling wrong, listening wrong, or something else wrong. Now I understand why.
Mary Rogers 2 years ago (edited)
There are so many foreign words incorporated into the English language that the rules don't always apply. It must be very confusing to learn our language.
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gerard julien 2 years ago
1680s, "make ridiculous" (a sense now obsolete); c. 1700, "treat with contemptuous merriment, make sport of, deride," from ridicule (n.) or else from French ridiculer, from ridicule.
Jrog 2 years ago
Well, the french word came from the latin though, so this definition is not wrong.
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Senjo Krane 2 years ago
'Sic' : I see this where something is quoted incorrectly or someone states something as fact when it isn't so I'm a bit confused here.
Luna Crow 2 years ago
'Sic' is used when the text is quoted verbatim. The purpose is to tell the reader that it was the writer of the quoted piece of writing who made the error, not the writer of the current article. So basically the current writer is saying that 'it is so' of the person being quoted, and not their bad.
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Jrog 2 years ago
The "bingo" one is wrong (as many others, according to comments here). Bingo is an american word, first attested in the 1920s, stemming from the onomatopoeia of the ring of the bell that marked the win in a game of luck. The bell sound was commonly referred as "bing", thus "Bing-o!". Traditionally to win the game one would have to call "House!" or "Tombola" (in the original Neapolitan game). Later on the term "Bingo" took hold in America and became used interchangeably, until it became eponymous for the game itself.
Rob Dietrich 2 years ago
Sorry to say it, the Caesar name is wrong though. It's way cooler: It's a Cognomen (by-name) passed down in the Julian family. It was thought to stem from caesus=(being) cut, alluding to Caesar being born via caesarian section, giving him superhuman abilities by not being "born" the traditional way. Today it is believed to stem from an ancient carthagian word meaning war elephant, making "Caesar"= slayer of a war elephant, an honorific that was then passed down the family line
Nevid 2 years ago
Colonel is not an Italian spelling with a French pronounciation, it's a French spelling with the pronounciation of an other version of the same word. The spelling comes from the French word "colonel" which is pronounced "colonel" in French. The pronounciation kernel comes from an alternative form of the word in middle French, which was couronnel (most likely a misinterpretation of "colonna" (column) into "corona" (crown)).
#32
My favorite has to do with the similarities between Portuguese “obrigado” (thanks) and Japanese “arigatō” (thanks). While it's true that Japan had a lot of Portugese influence, arigatō has been found in written records dating well before Portugese contact. In other words, it’s a coincidence!
NakNakNak 2 years ago
Oo oo I know a fun one about this! Portuguese and Japanese naval vessels had a lot of contact with one another way back when, to a point where the Portuguese "Não, e?" or "Isn't it?"--not a question, more like the Canadian English "Eh?"-- was adopted to the Japanese "Ne?" which is used in much the same way today. "Sou desu ka?" is a question: "Isn't it (like that)?" "Sou desu ne?" is more like a British "It's like that, innit?"
Nitka Tsar 2 years ago
And these coincidences are called „homophones“. Don‘t tell that to homophobes though.
RafCo (he/him) 2 years ago
Arigato comes from two other Japanese phrases. Arigatashi "to be" and Katai "difficult". It derives from the idea that "living is difficult".
#33
Shenanigans! It is derived from the Irish expression, “I play the fox” or “sionnachuighim”. Eventually, the word became anglicized to become shenanigans, but had carried the same connotation in Ireland previous to its propagation in the English-speaking world.
Stannous Flouride 2 years ago
Another is "Hooligans" -The Oxford English Dictionary states that the word may have originated from the surname of a rowdy Irish family in a music hall song of the 1890s. Clarence Rook, in his 1899 book, Hooligan Nights, wrote that the word came from Patrick Hoolihan (or Hooligan), an Irish bouncer and thief who lived in London.
Riley Quinn 2 years ago
This word aptly describes US politics, so we need to bring it back into regular usage.
#34
"Disaster" Comes from 'dis' meaning bad, and "aster" or "astron" meaning star. It comes from the days of astrology and such where scientists believes events were foretold in the sky and stars.
gerard julien 2 years ago
"anything that befalls of ruinous or distressing nature; any unfortunate event," especially a sudden or great misfortune, 1590s, from French désastre (1560s), from Italian disastro, literally "ill-starred
Mary Rogers 2 years ago
To be fair, that belief pre-dates modern science by thousands of years. But it was astrologers who first took a huge interest in the heavenly bodies, and so that's where astronomy eventually branched off from.
#35
The word *cue* (meaning a long stick used in billiards) comes from the French word *queue*, meaning 'tail'. The English word *queue* also comes from the French word. The Latin word *cauda*, from which *queue* ultimately derives, also brought us English *coda*, but that comes via Italian instead of French. The word *cue* (meaning an indication that it's time for something to happen, or as a verb, to give such an indication) comes from the letter Q. It was written as an abbreviation for *quando* (Latin, 'when') on actors' partial copies of play scripts. To save on paper, your copy of the script wouldn't include every line—just the ones right before your lines, marked with Q. So you'd have to learn your *cues* to know when your line was coming.
Hey! 2 years ago
When I started primary grade 1-2, we had to say "Q" as the "unmentionable letter" because it sounded like "cul" "butt in English. A nun was teaching us. My father started an upraising with the school board and won after 2 years. I was too young to know what he actually did but my older brothers talked about it once in a while.
Kris92 2 years ago
Those four letters are way more polite than people when it comes to waiting in a line.
Load More Replies... censorshipsucks 2 years ago (edited)
Also interesting. The letter Q comes from an egpytian hieroglyph which was a picture of a monkey with a tail. Pronounced qof. The arabic letter Q still looks the same (lowercase q).
#36
I love the origin of "Berzerk." It comes from old Norse for "bear-shirt", where vikings would put on shirts made of the hide of skinned bears and I guess get possessed by the spirit of the bear and just go absolutely apes**t on whatever
Hugh Cookson 2 years ago
Sort of the same as Amok - as in 'run amok' - In Malay or Tagalog. Basically going nuts and going on a killing spree, although Berserkers would, according to myth, wind themselves up with a concoction of psychadellic mushrooms, beer and strong spirits before launching into battle - scary s**t.
Jane Alexander 2 years ago
I've heard that 'assassin' comes from hashish, same idea.
Load More Replies... Dan Bexell 2 years ago
The Norse used what they called "kennings" in their sagas. For example, rocks in the ocean were called "sea bones, a sword might be called "wand of wounds", a shield might be called a "net of spears". My personal favorite is the hero in Beowulf. Beo means bee, wulf meant Wolf, which itself what a thief was called, thus Beowulf meant Bee thief, which is a bear, so Beowulf's name really means Bear.
Trond Hermansen 2 years ago
Another explanation of the word "Berzerk" is that it could mean "bare" and "serk"—the latter being the undershirt (worn under a tunic). Thus the Vikings would fight in the "bare shirt"; i.e without chainmail or armour.
Dan Flo 2 years ago (edited)
Most of the stories about beserkers are probably myths, but they are mentioned in very old writings and were most likely a real thing. I find the Úlfhéðnar more interesting though. Not sure if it was like this: Berserk= bear men, Úlfhéðnar = wolf men, or if the Úlfhéðnar was the OG beserkers. Might been like The School of the Bear and The School of the Wolf in The Witcher lol. But no matter what, they did seem bat-sh#t crazy enough to cause myths about werewolves in Europe long after they were gone.
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Duncan Rogers 2 years ago
Well, they ate certain ground fungi and hallucinated. And then went apes**t on anything near by with a pulse.
#37
Soccer! Started off as "Association Football" then became "Assoc Football" or "assoc" for short. "Then it got the nickname "assoccer" (they called rugby "rugger") and eventually just "soccer."
Rahul Pawa 2 years ago (edited)
Not sure if this is right, but when I read this before it was claimed that this (meaning "association football", and thus "soccer") was the British term for the sport.
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Mihai Mara 2 years ago
This is some "Hold the door! -> Hodor!" attempt of explaining the origin of soccer.
David H 2 years ago
Not according to the official MLS definition, where in the 1800's there were two sports called Football in the UK. Rugby Football and Soccer Football/Association Football (Association had no connection tot he word Soccer), the US used both terms as well, but over times dropped Rugby from Rugby Football as the game took a different trajectory than its British origins, and dropped football from Soccer Football. In the UK they went the other way. I will trust the official MLS explainition which is accepted by FIFA
Huddo's sister 2 years ago (edited)
Similar to the use of AFL in Australia. The game is officially called Aussie Rules Football and AFL is the Australian Football League, but AFL has now become the accepted name of the sport as well. The VFL, which was the largest state Aussie Rules league remains the name of the league, but also can be used synonymously with the 'reserves' as most reserve teams for the AFL are linked with a VFL team. Also, Aussie Rules was the only football we really had in Australia for much of our history, therefore we of course use soccer as it became popular later.
Sheena Leversedge Wood 2 years ago
instead of just continuing to call it football, like everywhere else. and then saying we're wrong for continuing to call it football, even though they're the ones that decided to call it something else, not the other way around
Marion Banks-wilkinson 2 years ago
So while the word soccer began in the UK we say football more, because the USA insists that their strange version of rugby (when almost no one kicks a ball )is football.
Evelyn Haskins 2 years ago
Soccer is (according to my English Father) just slang for Football. And all the wretched rugbies and "footballs" are really just "handovids".
#38
Etymology : Cliche, is derived from the sound of dapping ink on typeface - anyone who has used an ink roller will undertsand the sound of sticky ink - so its the repeated sound of regularly and therefore overused piece of type ...
#39
Etymology: calcium, calculator, calculate, calculus, abacus all share an origin in the word 'calx', Latin for stone.
JB 2 years ago
If you're learning French, a "calque" is a stubborn bit of your first language that holds over in French, like how I'm always mixing up the genders of objects despite being otherwise bilingual. The best translation for "calque" is "a pebble in your shoe you can't get rid of."
Nevid 2 years ago
More generally "un calque" is a traced reproduction (when you copy an image through transparent paper). The resulting image is identical to the original, but on a new support.
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Bill Swallow 2 years ago
Just had treatment for kidney stones. The doctor's report said they found a 12 mm calculus in my left kidney. There was also a 6 mm calculus and a 4 mm calculus in there.
#40
'bad' in English apparently comes from an old word for 'hermaphrodite', but what is also interesting is that Persian has the word 'بد' (bad) which means the exact same thing but developed independently, despite the fact that the languages are related. And funnily enough, 'بهتر' (behter) looks a lot like 'better', and it means 'better' too.
RafCo (he/him) 2 years ago
English "bad" comes from a different root than the Persian word, in spite of similar sounds and meaning. English "bad" derives from like words meaning weak and ugly. The reference hear baeddel meant effeminate. The Persian word likely derives from "vat" which I think related to stinkiness. I did a whole bunch of research on the roots of the words "evil" and "mal", and this came up, but now I don't remember it exactly. But the OP is correct, in that they evolved independently to mean the same thing.
Load More Replies... Mario Strada 2 years ago
I had a Iranian girlfriend once. She answered the phone and said, clearly "Chi e?". That means "Who's this?" in Italian and while not many people would answer the phone like that, one could. We answer with "Pronto" (ready). I asked her what she said and while the spelling is wildly different, what I heard did mean "Who's This" in Persian and she confirmed it. Identical to the Italian.
Leigh Jones 2 years ago
Wars are to blame here - anyone who wasn't a soldier got saddled with a misnomer.
#41
**Orange**
The word for the fruit came long before the word for the colour. We just called things which were the colour *orange*, yellow-red.
Additionally, William of Orange (William III of England) has nothing to do with either the colour or the fruit.
gerard julien 2 years ago
late 14c., in reference to the fruit of the orange tree (late 13c. as a surname), from Old French orange, orenge (12c., Modern French orange), from Medieval Latin pomum de orenge, from Italian arancia, originally narancia (Venetian naranza), an alteration of Arabic naranj, from Persian narang, from Sanskrit naranga-s "orange tree," a word of uncertain origin.
Auntriarch 2 years ago
Yellow red? I have just been reading a book with a quotation from Dumas where he describes mandarin oranges as "yellow, verging on red, in colour". I wondered why he didn't just say orange.
Marla Miller 2 years ago
The Spanish word naranja is both the color and the fruit and comes from the Arabic naranj.
Lizz 2 years ago
I always find it funny that the rulers of the Netherlands originated from France ( van Oranje -> de Orange in French ) whilst the English and Belgian rulers originated from "Von Saxen-Coburg". ( Germany )
Marion Banks-wilkinson 2 years ago
The Hanovers inherited the Crown because they were descended from James VI of Scotland who was also James I of England and Wales. He in turn was descended from Henry VII the first Tudor monarch. He had a distant claim to the Lancastrian branch of the descendants of Edward III
Load More Replies... Kat 2 years ago
Yes. And through trade with the Orange, oranges were imported in the northern areas of Europe.... The Dutch royals originated from there. Carrots were bred (correct word?) In an orange colour, because they wanted everything orange to honour the royals ...
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Michael Largey 2 years ago (edited)
So, is William of Orange significant because he's the only British monarch you can't rhyme with? Well, at least that may be more dignified than having a name people can rhyme with - like Victoria Regina.
#42
Here are some of my favorite recent ones, summed up very basically. I can expand on any of these as well! First of all, etymology facts: **"Scuttlebutt"** was first a nautical term for a cask (butt) of drinking water with a hole (scuttle) for drawing it out. The term came to mean "rumor" or "gossip" because sailors would gather to idly chat around the cask. It is the predecessor of the term "watercooler talk" for workplace gossip. Before 1860, the word **"pollution"** commonly meant "semen," specifically semen released somewhere other than during conjugal activities, or "defilement" or "desecration." Also, the words "seminal," "disseminate," and "seminary" derive from the Latin "semen." **"Meteor"** comes from the Greek metéōron, literally meaning "thing high up." In 15th c. English, "meteor" could refer to any atmospheric phenomena, which were differentiated by various classifications of meteors. Hence "meteorology" as the study of atmospheric conditions, rather than just meteors. Classifications included: - aerial meteors – notable winds and tornadoes and such - aqueous meteors – water-based atmospheric phenomena such as rain, snow, hail, dew, frost, and clouds - luminous meteors – auroras, rainbows, and other light-based phenomena - igneous meteors – fiery-looking phenomena such as lightning and shooting stars Around 1590, the English word began to take on the more specific, fiery extraterrestrial meaning we use today. **"Ambivalence"** was first a psychological term, literally meaning "strength on both sides." Paul Eugen Bleuler, the psychologist who coined it in 1910, also coined the terms schizophrenia ("a splitting of the mind") and autism (from Greek autos, "self"). **"Feisty"** ("spirited, lively") arose in 1896. Before, feist meant "small dog," a shortening of "fysting curre" ("stinking cur"), wherein fyst meant "to break wind," supposedly conflated because ladies would blame their gas on their lapdogs. In sum, "feisty" = "farty dog." **"Alchemy"** is from the Greek khemeioa, which was either from Khemia, a name for Egypt meaning "land of black earth," or the Greek khymatos "that which is poured out." It was often used as a scientific term until the 1600s when "chemistry" arose from it, leaving "alchemy" with its more mystical sense. The word **"tabby"** came to refer to cats in the 1690s due to their fur pattern, which resembles a striped silk taffeta also called tabby, originally (via French) from the name of the Baghdad neighborhood Attabiy, where rich silks were made. The area was named after the Umayyad prince Attab. **"Clone"** as a term for the production of genetically identical individuals was coined in 1963 by J.B.S. Haldane. It was predated by the horticultural sense of "clon" or "clone," the process whereby a new plant is created using cuttings from another. Both are from the Ancient Greek klōn, "twig." **"Jargon,"** adopted from French in the 14th century, originally meant "unintelligible talk, gibberish; chattering, jabbering." It wryly took on its current meaning, "phraseology peculiar to a sect or profession," in the 1650s due to the fact that such speech was unintelligible to outsiders. **"Moxie,"** (general use from the 1930s) comes from the brand name of a bitter syrup first marketed as the medicine "Moxie Nerve Food" in 1876, then sold as a soft drink starting in 1884. The brand may be from a Native American Abenaki word for "dark water," from Maine lake and river names.
NakNakNak 2 years ago
You'd appreciate this one: Cerberus' name in the original Greek was "Kerberos", from their word for "spotted". Hades, lord of the dark underworld and king of the dead, named his gate dog Spot lol
Load More Replies... gerard julien 2 years ago
1630s, "striped silk taffeta," from French tabis "a rich, watered silk" (originally striped), earlier atabis (14c.), from Arabic 'attabi, from 'Attabiyah, a neighborhood of Baghdad where such cloth was made, said to be named for prince 'Attab of the Omayyad dynasty. As an adjective from 1630s.
Richard Henderson 2 years ago
I now choose the word “metéōron“ to describe my freinds who’ve smoked too much weed and start doing dumb sh¡t.
#43
Ampersand (&) used to be a letter in the English alphabet. It came after Z in the in alphabet. In the alphabet song, after you finished with Z, kids would sing: “and per se and” which is where the name ampersand comes from. “And per se and” basically means “also and as itself”.
RafCo (he/him) 2 years ago
This is awesomely not true. Ampersand was never a letter. It was a stylized versión of the Latin "Et", and in some Roman documents it was sometimes reduced to a single symbol. But it was never formalized into the English alphabet, or any other alphabet.
Richard Henderson 2 years ago
Now if we can just sort W out into a nice, concise sound too. I mean, wth is one letter named after another letter? Let’s just call it “wu”.
#44
Etymology: Shibboleth was a Hebrew word for a part of a plant. But at one point it was used to determine whether someone belonged to one cultural group or another because the groups pronounced the word differently. Now, it refers to words and phrases like those that "out" someone as part of a particular group whether it's by pronunciation or understanding. For example, get a native German speaker to say "squirrel" and they almost definitely won't be able to.
zububonsai 2 years ago (edited)
An Ucrainian tried to teach me (German, speaking basic Russian and a little bit of Polish) the Ucrainian word for bread, "pal'yanitza". We ended up laughing on the floor. It's the one word no Russian is able to articulate correctly, she said, and by this some Russian invaders trying to mimick Ucrainians (to avoid POW) were captured.
Pizzagirl 91 2 years ago
Well, it's much more fun to get Russians, Brits or French people to say "Eichhörnchen"!
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k sand 2 years ago
What does it sound like if a native German speaker tries to say 'squirrel'? What's an equivalent type of word a native English speaker can't say?
Laura Mende (Human) 2 years ago
I'm German and I can tell you the "s", directly followed by "q" is impossible to do for us. Also the double "rr", this is a combination we can't do. It sounds like "swirrel", "skriwwel" or something like that...
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Kathleen M 2 years ago
Like the Irish trying to say "purple burglar alarm." There are YouTube videos of some amusing attempts.
zububonsai 2 years ago
Or a Spanish person to say the German "Straße" ("street"). Made my Spanish roommate almost cry.... 🥹
#45
Sophomore! It means "wise fool" in Ancient Greek I also like: • "hazard", which meant "the die" in Arabic, because gambling was considered risky • "trivia", which meant "three roads" in Latin, because patricians looked down upon such intersections with disdain, as being insignificant and full of commoners • "candidate", which means "white robed" • "avocado", which in Nahuatl shared a definition with "testicle" • "orchid", which in Greek meant "testicle" • "testify", which is a cognate of "testicle" • "porcelain", which means "pig's vagina" • "vanilla", which means "vagina" • "girl", which could once refer to either gender • "toilet", which used to mean "closet" in French, and many, many more!
Joshua Russell 2 years ago
Have fun with it! Pretty sure "wise fool" strikes anyone who has ever known or been a sophomore of anything as being very accurate. :)
Load More Replies... zububonsai 2 years ago
"testify"and "testicle": both from "testes" ="witness". ---- "testiculus" literally "little witness (of copulation)". Source: I'm a Latin teacher and learnt that fact from my Latin teacher ☺️.
Nevid 2 years ago (edited)
Toilet does not mean closet. It comes from toilette which is a small cloth (from toile + the diminutive suffix ette). It was then used to designate the cloth you use to clean yourself and by extension the act of cleaning yourself. This is actually what "toilette" in the singular mean in French, "grooming" or "cleaning". "Un cabinet de toilette" is a grooming/cleaning closet (the closet part being "cabinet" and not "toilette"), which became an euphemism for the place you poop, similar to how you say the bathroom in English. In modern French, the act of cleaning/grooming is called "la toilette" in the singular, and the toilet is "les toilettes" in the plural. That's why "eau de toilette" is called like that. It's grooming water.
Huddo's sister 2 years ago
At one stage the term Water Closet (or just WC) was used in English to mean toilet, which maybe where OP got confused?
Load More Replies... Analyn Lahr 2 years ago
So instead of call a group of mixed gendered people "guys" like a lot of folk do, we should call them "girls".
Henry Russell 2 years ago
so im going have some vagina in a pig's vagina bowl. maybe with a side of testicles. one testicle on the top for extra measure. but first i got to poop in the closet
Senjo Krane 2 years ago
How does testify come from testicle? Maybe the interrogator would squeeze them until you spoke the truth...
Bonnie Buttons 2 years ago
The word "porcelain" seems to come from an Italian word for a type of shell ("porcellana"); the "c" is pronounced as "ch" as in "China". The porcelain was shiny and smooth and reminded people of the shell etc etc boom "china".
gerard julien 2 years ago
toilet (n.) 1530s, earliest in English in an obsolete sense "cover or bag for clothes," from French toilette "a cloth; a bag for clothes," diminutive of toile "cloth, net"
What do you think ?
ChipiChipi 2 years ago
As someone who grew up in Mexico, I've never laughed harder than the day I realized when Americans say "buckaroo" (cowboy) it was just the very gringo pronunciation of the Spanish word "vaquero."
JoyfulZebra 2 years ago
I originally read the title as "entomologists" and was expecting a much different post.
Tim 2 years ago
BUT... one of them was about the ten bug in computer parlance. So... you got bugs anyway.
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Pablo Ramos 2 years ago
Bored Panda, you have beaten your own record of repetitions in this segment. It was interesting, but not so much to read everything twice!
Sweet_Dee 2 years ago
I didn't see it on here, but the etymology of the term Jay Walking (walking outside of a cross walk or when not allowed, technically a crime in the US) is fascinating. Back in the late 1910's when cars were starting to become really popular in the US, the roads were shared equally between pedestrians, horse & buggies, and automobiles. Henry Ford saw this as a real detriment to the market share of the car, so he paid newspapers at the time to write fake news stories about pedestrians causing accidents with cars. Even though the cars were at fault. In the articles, reporters were told to use the term Jay walker to refer to the pedestrian, because calling someone a "Jay" back then was really insulting (akin to calling them an a$$hole). Henry Ford literally made up an insulting name, paid for fake news stories, and eventually paid his way into having roads designated for automobiles only and making walking on them a crime. And that is why roads are dominated by cars today.
Margaret H 2 years ago
My favourite is the origins of the word individual. It originally meant a member of a group, someone who couldn't be divided from the rest of the group. And then it became the smallest part of the group and therefore a single, undivided entity, one person among many.
AnAntiqueGeek 2 years ago
Brian: "You are all individuals!" Member of crowd: "I'm not!"
Load More Replies... Stannous Flouride 2 years ago
I'm 70 and used to read the dictionary when I was a kid for fun and only only this year learned that "aloud" is a contraction of the Arabic 'al-oud' or "of the oud" a traditional musical instrument know for its voluminous sound. oud-mirfak...b7affe.jpg 
ChipiChipi 2 years ago
As someone who grew up in Mexico, I've never laughed harder than the day I realized when Americans say "buckaroo" (cowboy) it was just the very gringo pronunciation of the Spanish word "vaquero."
JoyfulZebra 2 years ago
I originally read the title as "entomologists" and was expecting a much different post.
Tim 2 years ago
BUT... one of them was about the ten bug in computer parlance. So... you got bugs anyway.
Load More Replies... Pablo Ramos 2 years ago
Bored Panda, you have beaten your own record of repetitions in this segment. It was interesting, but not so much to read everything twice!
Sweet_Dee 2 years ago
I didn't see it on here, but the etymology of the term Jay Walking (walking outside of a cross walk or when not allowed, technically a crime in the US) is fascinating. Back in the late 1910's when cars were starting to become really popular in the US, the roads were shared equally between pedestrians, horse & buggies, and automobiles. Henry Ford saw this as a real detriment to the market share of the car, so he paid newspapers at the time to write fake news stories about pedestrians causing accidents with cars. Even though the cars were at fault. In the articles, reporters were told to use the term Jay walker to refer to the pedestrian, because calling someone a "Jay" back then was really insulting (akin to calling them an a$$hole). Henry Ford literally made up an insulting name, paid for fake news stories, and eventually paid his way into having roads designated for automobiles only and making walking on them a crime. And that is why roads are dominated by cars today.
Margaret H 2 years ago
My favourite is the origins of the word individual. It originally meant a member of a group, someone who couldn't be divided from the rest of the group. And then it became the smallest part of the group and therefore a single, undivided entity, one person among many.
AnAntiqueGeek 2 years ago
Brian: "You are all individuals!" Member of crowd: "I'm not!"
Load More Replies... Stannous Flouride 2 years ago
I'm 70 and used to read the dictionary when I was a kid for fun and only only this year learned that "aloud" is a contraction of the Arabic 'al-oud' or "of the oud" a traditional musical instrument know for its voluminous sound. oud-mirfak...b7affe.jpg
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