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Wow, that's... Incredibly sexist!
EDIT: And hard to accurately source... Most places say it refers to women's hips. See samisbond's comment below.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=broad
But, it's nice that reddit is upvoting anti sexism comments.
Ketchup is usually labeled as "Tomato Ketchup" because ketchup was originally a fish-based sauce, likely from Chinese, that was transformed into a wide variety of sauces.
I learned this last night while on a date with a philologist.
The etymology of the word Earth itself can be found here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=earth&allowed_in_frame=0
As for why it (and the Sun and the Moon) is Germanic, not Latinate, it's because these are things that the common people spoke of in England while the Middle English was becoming Modern English. They had reason to talk about these things regularly, and so the old names stuck around. The [other] planets were only dealt with by scientists [and thinkers generally] who were much more likely to use French or Latin when writing about them.
It's a general rule (with exceptions) that the more formal a word is in English, the more likely it is to be derived from French, or Latin if it's extremely formal. One good example I've seen of this is Ask [Ger.] -> Question [Fr.] -> Interrogate [Lat.]. That's roughly what's going on here too.
Edit: I a word.
Great story, but, alas, the truth is much less interesting
A bit of etymology might be helpful here. Via Etymology Online.
Here's a timeline so you can see exactly how the word changes over time:
Back in the days of ancient Rome, the word 'columna' was used to refer to a pillar. Many years later, Rome fell, but the Latin language gave rise to many of what we call the Romance languages. As part of this, 'columna' morphs into one part of the term 'compagna colonella' (Italian) to refer to a column of soldiers. The leader of that column is called the 'colonnella'. When the French adopt the word, it becomes 'coronel', and later 'coronell'. When translated into English, the Italian form of the word is preserved (hence colonel), but the French pronunciation is used.
And that's why we write colonel, but say coronel. There was even a time when both forms of the word were being used simultaneously, during the 16 and 1700s, but ultimately the 'l' form of the word won out.
Simpler version: Words change over time. The word colonel is hundreds and hundreds of years old, and has changed a lot. Once upon a time, it was actually pronounced with an 'l', but as time went on, the word changed even more, kind of like a game of telephone. You know; one person mishears something, another might change it just because they can, even though they heard perfectly well the first time, and by the time it gets to the end of the line, the word you started with, and the word you wind up with are completely different and might not even make sense.
Your question made me curious, so I looked it up here. It seems that the answer is yes:
> Slang meaning "homosexual" (adj.) begins to appear in psychological writing late 1940s, evidently picked up from gay slang and not always easily distinguished from the older sense
edit: Fixed my homophones
Inflammable means "liable to inflammation," from Latin inflammare, which means "to set on fire." The "in" doesn't mean "not."
Orthography vs. Phonetics.
This is one of the reasons that some people, mostly pedants, have been pushing for spelling reform. While not an entirely bad idea, it's not possible.
Folk etymology explains why words like "hangnail" seem to make sense despite never having anything to do with hanging nails. Historical Linguistics can shed light on why so many irregularities exist in the language. But they exist in every language. English seems to have more than others mainly because it has no qualms about borrowing foreign words with completely different morphosyntactic rules. Some languages don't like to borrow words, and make up their own. In fact, one of the main reasons invented languages like Lojban exist is due to an effort to remove irregular morphemes. However, Esperanto, one of the only invented languages to have native speakers, has since developed irregular forms. Irregularities are simply a natural byproduct of language evolution.
And people seem to be saying that language evolved sarcastically. It absolutely evolved. Humans didn't invent language anymore than they invented sex.
It's not my theory but rather a fairly well understood aspect of the modern English language, which came about from the conquest by the Normans.
When two languages meet, one can end up taking on a more respectable position -- this is particularly true when it happens during conquest like the Norman invasion. So the conquered people must adapt the customs and language of a new ruling elite if they want to attain any powerful position.
French and the Latin words that have entered English from French are viewed as more "refined," and the language of the intelligentsia.
You can look up each of these words at www.etymonline.com (Online Etymology Dictionary) -- this is an awesome resource that I find myself using almost daily.
Haus and house are germanic cognates and are related. Katze and cat are too. The word baum for tree is related to English beam from Old English beam originally "living tree."
You're right that hound is Germanic, but dog is too. Dog is fairly unusual because it's not entirely clear where it came from or why it spread the way it did. The origin of dog "remains one of the great mysteries of English etymology." Nevertheless, dog does come from the germanic language Old English where we have the word docga, a late, rare word used of a powerful breed of canine. It forced out another germanic word -- the Old English hund.
And you have pointed out an error of mine. Chair is not germanic but also comes from French; the word, as you say, should have been stool from Old English stol "seat for one person."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=arbor&searchmode=none
I wish I had a book to point you toward, but I don't recall any one in particular.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
God this is awful. Anyways is the adverbial genitive of anyway. It is not wrong by any standard. No one is indicating that the word is plural with the morpheme -s.
God fucking damn folk etymologies and the OPs that continue them.
I don't find any reliable source for this claim. The Online Etymology Dictionary doesn't support this origin at all.
Randomhouse, one of the world's biggest publishers, also doesn't support this origin.
Literally, the only source is this slang dictionary, which is not reliable at all.
Unicorns have a single horn. Goats have two horns. There are other problems. If you listen to Pliny the unicorn was
> a creature with a horse's body, deer's head, elephant's feet, lion's tail, and one black horn two cubits long projecting from its forehead
You're not going to get that from selective breeding.
But, just concentrating on the horn. Some things are not possible with selective breeding -some people think it's not possible to create a pink budgie for example- and some things are possible.
I don't think it's easy to remove a horn, and to move the remaining horn to the centre, and then to grow it straight and long.
Don't forget that many selective breeding programmes have caused considerable genetic flaws in the target population. I guess this is easier to to see in "pedigree" dogs, which often have diseases and deformities linked to breeding.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=unicorn
CAUTION: The following newspaper article contains an image (at the top of the page) that many people will find distressing. It's a hairless cat being held up by its skin.
tl;dr No - you'll end up with ugly ill goats with a weird horn thing.
>...it began to be capitalized mid-13c. to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.
quaint (adj.)
A sense of "old-fashioned but charming" is first attested 1795, and could describe the word itself, which had become rare after c.1700 (though it soon recovered popularity in this secondary sense). Chaucer used quaint and queynte as spellings of cunt in "Canterbury Tales" (c.1386)
In case anyone is interested in the real answer: beaver was originally slang for a bearded man, based on the perceived similarity between the apperance of a beaver pelt and a beard. For reasons that hopefully are clear, this sense of the word drifted to refer to a woman's pubic region, especially one with a natural crop of hair (as one would expect to find in the early 20th century when this meaning became popular). Source.
Jackrabbit is a shortening of jackass rabbit, which they were called for having ears like a jackass. Jackass just means a male donkey, with Jack being a generic male name and used in Middle English to mean "any common fellow", which is also where the term "jack-of-all-trades" comes from.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=jackrabbit&searchmode=none
>c.1400, "a dirty, slovenly, or untidy woman," probably cognate with dialectal Ger. Schlutt "slovenly woman," dialectal Swed. slata "idle woman, slut," and Du. slodder "slut," but the ultimate origin is doubtful. Chaucer uses sluttish (late 14c.) in reference to the appearance of an untidy man. Also "a kitchen maid, a drudge" (mid-15c.; hard pieces in a bread loaf from imperfect kneading were called slut's pennies, 18c.). Meaning "woman of loose character, bold hussy" is attested from mid-15c.; playful use of the word, without implication of loose morals, is attested from 1660s. Our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut, and pleases us mightily. [Pepys, diary, Feb. 21, 1664] Sometimes used 19c. as a euphemism for bitch to describe a female dog. There is a group of North Sea Germanic words in sl- that mean "sloppy," and also "slovenly woman," and that tend to evolve toward "woman of loose morals" (cf. slattern, also English dial. slummock "a dirty, untidy, or slovenly person," 1861; M.Du. slore "a sluttish woman").
here's another angle, you can see it's the same piece by the cracks, and you can see that there's a rectangular hole in the kerb around the wood.
Edit: Yes. "kerb" is the British spelling of "curb".
Apparently "curb" is actually the original spelling, however.
It actually means "the King is dead."
Edit: mid-14c., from Old French eschec mat, from Arabic shah mat "the king died" (see check (n.)), which according to Barnhart is a misinterpretation of Persian mat "be astonished" as mata "to die," mat "he is dead." Hence Persian shah mat, the ultimate source of the word, would be literally "the king is left helpless, the king is stumped."
The above is from the awesome Online Etymology Dictionary.
I think the reference was to Holden's last name, Caulfield.
Also, because I'm on this account, here's the etymology for the word "caul":
>caul:early 14c., "close-fitting cap worn by women," from Fr. cale "cap," back formation from calotte, from It. callotta, from L. calautica "type of female headdress with pendent lappets," a foreign word of unknown origin. Medical use, in reference to various membranes, dates to late 14c. Especially of the amnion enclosing the fetus before birth from 1540s. This, if the child is born draped in it, was supersititously supposed to protect against drowning (cauls were advertised for sale in British newspapers through WWI).
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=caul&searchmode=none
A neat thought, but he was one of many populist smooth-talkers in that era (Cleon's the big name, I guess) who were so loathed by the aristocratic authors we study today. Hyperbole was one of numerous rhetorical tricks they would use in assemblies, and he almost certainly wouldn't have been the first to use it. The word doesn't come from his name - it literally means 'over-throwing' (hyper-ballein).
EDIT: I'm a classicist and spend my days thinking about shit like this. Also, here's the etymology.
Thoreau, 1852: "The dry z-ing of the locust is heard."
Singular of visa is not visum, it's visa. It's derived from the verb visa, meaning having seen, which itself is a conjugation of videre. That's ignoring the fact that it's not latin any more, it's English and so it's entirely legitimate to pluralise it in an English way (see also: bus, from omnibus, which is itself a plural. It just doesn't work to try and pluralise it in a latinate way)
I'm afraid I can't answer your question though, it's just visum annoyed me.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=disease
disease (n.) early 14c., "discomfort, inconvenience," from O.Fr. desaise "lack, want; discomfort, distress; trouble, misfortune; disease, sickness," from des- "without, away" (see dis-) + aise "ease" (see ease). Sense of "sickness, illness" in English first recorded late 14c.; the word still sometimes was used in its literal sense early 17c.
Your explanation is good, but it's even clearer when add in the fact that "apple" used to mean basically any fruit.
>In Middle English and as late as 17c., it was a generic term for all fruit other than berries but including nuts (e.g. O.E. fingeræppla "dates," lit. "finger-apples;" M.E. appel of paradis "banana," c.1400). Hence its grafting onto the unnamed "fruit of the forbidden tree" in Genesis. Cucumbers, in one Old English work, are eorþæppla, lit. "earth-apples" (cf. Fr. pomme de terre "potato," lit. "earth-apple;" see also melon). Fr. pomme is from L. pomum "fruit."
The worst part is, it isn't even sexist or gendered to begin with. "Man" in this context simply refers to humans, so by renaming it they've made a completely unoffensive word offensive by attaching their own sexist view to it.
It's especially stupid because, while the evening is an historically pagan holiday--the actually name 'Halloween' is of Christian origin commemorating the Hallowed evening before All Hallows or All Saints day.
<sigh>
According to etymonline:
>1917, especially in reference to the marché aux puces in Paris, so-called "because there are so many second-hand articles sold of all kinds that they are believed to gather fleas."
For those curious, suck as an insult originated in 1971 referring to fellatio, and cocksucker in around 1890 being an insulting term for male homosexuals.
The insult sucker, meaning a naive person, however, has completely different origins.
"Arse" was the original term. It seems "ass" came about from a dialectical dropping of the R by American speakers, and it seems the same process produced the words "cuss" and "bass" (the fish).
I'm glad you asked this question, as I've already learned something interesting today and it's only 8:30 in the morning.
[Edit: Engrish]
Reddit needs more people like you.
Edit: Assuming this is true and not made up on the spot. I'm googling it now since you didn't include any sources. ಠ_ಠ
Edit2:
>My prick was used 16c.-17c. as a term of endearment by "immodest maids" for their boyfriends
Direct quote from Online Etymology Dictionary. It's not plagiarism if you change the punctuation!
Regardless, this is the internet and you put effort into making a good post; that outweighs any of my academic qualms about non-citation and mild sentence thievery. Verdict: upvote.
This is why OP is wrong: Gargantuan comes from Gargantua, large-mouthed giant in Rabelais' novels.
The giant is the reference in Gargantuan making it a word meaning "giant like".
This is why OP is right: There is an argument regarding Rabelais' motivation in naming his giant, either after after the Spanish word garganta or similar Middle French word gargouiller meaning, to gargle {or more directly, to rattle the throat}
This same question has been asked in /r/linguistics a few times. Here's one such post. You may find the discussion there helpful.
The top rated response linked to this entry on the Online Etymology Dictionary, which gives a short explanation.
I just picked one of the claims:
> the phrase "Amen" that Christians say after a prayer, originates from the God "Amen-Ra" from Egypt. When you finished saying a praise to the God Ra, or Horus in Egypt, you said Amen. It's another ancient custom lifted from Egypt.
no:
> Popular among some theosophists,[10] proponents of Afrocentric theories of history, and adherents of esoteric Christianity is the conjecture that amen is a derivative of the name of the Egyptian god Amun (which is sometimes also spelled Amen). Some adherents of Eastern religions believe that amen shares roots with the Hindu Sanskrit word, Aum. There is no academic support for either of these views. The Hebrew word, as noted above, starts with aleph, while the Egyptian name begins with a yodh.
(emphasis mine)
I suspect the other claims are also dubious. Afrocentrist hocus-pocus.
Edit:
the 12-hour-system comes from Babylonia, not Egypt. link
Edit 2: The Horus-Jesus-thing seems pseudoscientific. Debunking here, but I claim no knowledge of this myself. Our Christianity Experts might want to weigh in.
blush (v.) mid-14c., bluschen, blischen, probably from Old English blyscan "blush, become red, glow" (glossing Latin rutilare), akin to blyse "torch," from P.Gmc. *blisk- "to shine, burn," which also yielded words in Low German (e.g. Dutch blozen "to blush") and Scandinavian (e.g. Danish blusse "to blaze; to blush"); ultimately from PIE *bhel- (1) "to shine, flash, burn" (see bleach (v.)).
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=blush&searchmode=none
This question is not, as PunsAblazin says, a taboo subject.
However, I have removed a few answers here which are nothing more than vague references to "survival of the fittest"^* and other speculation based on half-remembered over-simplified genetic biology. This is r/AskHistorians: we ask that answers be "informed, comprehensive, serious, and courteous", and supported by valid historical sources as necessary.
^* By the way, "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean what most people think it does - in Darwin's day, "fit" meant "suited to the circumstances", not "healthy" or "strong". So, this simply meant that organisms which were suited to their environment were more likely to survive than organisms which were not suited to their environment. The healthiest fish in the world will still die if you make it live on land...
>mid-14c., bluschen, blischen, probably from Old English blyscan "blush, become red, glow" (glossing Latin rutilare), akin to blyse "torch," from P.Gmc. *blisk- "to shine, burn," which also yielded words in Low German (e.g. Dutch blozen "to blush") and Scandinavian (e.g. Danish blusse "to blaze; to blush"); ultimately from PIE *bhel- (1) "to shine, flash, burn" (see bleach (v.)).
From here.
It comes from the greek word apologia. It means, "to defend a position." The definition changed somewhere along the way.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=apology
A popular use of this term is the Christian Apologetics. They are not trying to get forgiveness for their position but rather trying to defend it.
Check this out. I'm just speculating, but you can see that the modern masculine pronoun (he, his, him) comes from the nominative, genitive, and dative respectively, with the accusative being lost/being subsumed into the dative. It seems that the identical thing happened with the feminine pronoun, with 'heo' turning into 'she' by being replaced by the demonstrative (source) and 'hire', in both genitive and dative, being modernized into 'her'. So to answer your question, it is very, very ancient.
I think you have that backwards. "Sophomoric" derives from "sophomore".
As for the latter, apparently <em>that</em> derives from "sophist", by way of Cambridge's "sophumer", adopted by Harvard and then the rest of American academia, eventually mutating to its current spelling, possibly under the influence of the folk etymology <em>sophos</em> + <em>moros</em> ("wise fool").
(So, like "soccer" in the 19th century, it was invented by the Oxbridge English but is now taken as a sign of vulgar Americanism.)
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it comes from a dialectal pronunciation of Italian guapo.
Words originating from initialisms are much rarer than folk etymologies tend to assume.
That's simply not true. The word "niggardly" has been in use since the 1500s. Centuries before the word "nigger".
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=niggardly http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nigger
Regardless of what it may have been earlier, surely it was, at some point, "the bee's knees". Please don't conflate the etymology of a word or phrase with the word or phrase itself.
Furthermore this seems highly unlikely -- this falls into the general category of "claiming words or phrases are actually acronyms". For an older word (or in this case phrase), these are almost always wrong -- the common use of acronyms is a pretty recent phenomenon. Now in this case the phrase is not very old, being from the 1920's, but[0] in fact acronyms as we know them didn't really take off until WWII and generally initially came from the military. (WWI produced a bunch but those were generally pronounced with phonetic alphabets rather than the modern way. So you'd have "The beers and Edwards" or "The butters and Edwards", not "The Bs and Es".) Now there was an acronym fad around 1839 or so (which gives us "n.g."), but that can't be relevant unless you're going to claim that this acronym was formed back then, and then went into a sleeper phase until somehow mutating into "The bee's knees" in the 1920s. Which is ridiculous.
Finally, etymonline disagrees with you. :) They're pretty reliable, though I couldn't say which of their many sources they're getting this from...
[0]I'm just citing etymonline for this; context suggests they're citing Fowler, 1965?
FALSE.
hangar 1852, "shed for carriages," from Fr. hangar "shed," probably from M.Fr. hanghart (14c.), perhaps an alteration of M.Du. *ham-gaerd "enclosure near a house" [Barnhart], or from M.L. angarium "shed in which horses are shod" [Gamillscheg, Klein]. Sense of "covered shed for airplanes" first recorded in English 1902, from French use in that sense.
dun (adj.) O.E. dunn "dingy brown, dark-colored," perhaps from Celt. (cf. O.Ir. donn "dark;" Gael. donn "brown, dark;" Welsh dwnn "brownish"), from PIE *donnos, *dusnos "dark."
bos n (plural bossen, diminutive bosje, diminutive plural bosjes) wood, forest Zij ging wandelen in de bossen. She went walking in the woods.
I have used this website so many times in mid-conversation, or while in the middle of writing a sentence, in order to better understand the history and meaning of a particular word.
Really? "Innovate" has seen enough use to stick around since the 1540s.
Regardless, criticizing "innovation" is silly. Invention is only a beginning - innovation is what makes things useful. Edison invented the light bulb, but you wouldn't want to use the one he invented; you want one of the ones produced by the innovators of the last century. Unless your invention is perfect from the start, innovation is both welcome and necessary. There's nothing inherently valuable about "newness".
sucker (n.) "young mammal before it is weaned," late 14c., agent noun from suck. Slang meaning "person who is easily deceived" is first attested 1836, American English, on notion of naivete; the verb in this sense is from 1939. But another theory traces the slang meaning to the fish called a sucker (1753), on the notion of being easy to catch in their annual migrations. Meaning "lollipop" is from 1823.
In Old English, the word "man" actually used to be gender-neutral, which is why we now have words like mankind and hu_man_.
It's a flying fuck!
(Relevant section of link: Flying fuck originally meant "have sex on horseback" and is first attested c.1800 in broadside ballad "New Feats of Horsemanship.")
>pot (2) "marijuana," 1938, probably a shortened form of Mexican Sp. potiguaya "marijuana leaves."
Via: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=pot&searchmode=none
Defenestration : A word invented for one incident: the "Defenestration of Prague," May 21, 1618, when two Catholic deputies to the Bohemian national assembly and a secretary were tossed out the window (into a moat) of the castle of Hradshin by Protestant radicals.
Like most connections made this way, the intuition is right, but it didn't happen in English, it happened in Latin. Attention comes from the Latin attentio meaning 'attention' or 'mental heeding', while attend comes from ad meaning 'to' and tendo meaning 'stretch'. (Essentially 'stretching' ones mind to something). attentio, of course, came from ad and tendo, while at came from ad and tension comes from tendo. So your interpretation's spot-on, it just pre-dates English.
You should know that almost anytime the origin of some figure of speech depends on some old forgotten custom, it's almost certainly false.
The simpler answer is just that ice is made in hard chunks, so "rocks" was used a slang word for ice. Still just conjecture on my part, but far more likely.
Here's a link from the online etymology dictionary:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=rocks&allowed_in_frame=0
So, the origin is in 1946, well after refrigerators and freezers were invented, not the "olden days".
>The verb is first attested 1710. The expression meaning "worthy, jolly, admirable" (esp. in 1864 U.S. slang bully for you!) is first attested 1680s, and preserves an earlier, positive sense of the word.
It's from Old North French "carre," from Latin "carrum," "carrus" (pl. "carra"), originally two-wheeled Celtic war chariot, from Gaulish "karros"
No. The word mall has been around much longer than enclosed shopping centers. It used to refer to to any large open area ("The Mall" in Washington, DC, for example, is an open yard between the major government buildings and the Smithsonian).
Edit: Apparently, the term originated as an area used to play croquet. Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mall
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison
"For most of history, imprisonment has not been a punishment in itself, but rather a way to confine prisoners until punishment could be administered."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=penitentiary&searchmode=none
"Penitentiary - noun- place of punishment. ..."
I think the prison as place of reform movement started later, like 19th century England. I could be wrong though.
The "egg" in this phrase is from the Old Norse eggja, "to incite." It's a different word from the kind of egg you scramble (though spelled and pronounced the same).
According to a quick search, the English word "Earth" is derived from the Old English eorþe, and the proto-Indo-European root er-. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=earth
I'm not a linguist, but I'd suggest that the reason that both Earth - both as mud and as planet - and Sun and Moon have Germanic roots in English is that they were readily at hand, and were named by OE-speaking lower classes. The planets, requiring more scholarly attention, and expensive telescopes, were observed and named by the Latin- and Norman French-speaking clergy and aristocracy.
It, like many other naming dichotomies in English (e.g. the name of animals vs. the name of the meat that comes from them), reflects an early history of linguistic class contrast.
>Reduced to i by mid-12c. in northern England, it began to be capitalized mid-13c. to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.
Interesting, but not that surprising as a lot of the religious words come from earlier rituals. The word god has its roots in pagan religious ritual too: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=god
I know for many this is obvious, but I've lost count of the number of people telling me that the very word god is evidence that a god exists when actually the word comes from a a system of beliefs far removed from monotheism.
[](/twiright "I'm going to do what I do best---lecture her!") I'm gonna pull a Twilight Sparkle here and point out that lunacy was originally thought to be caused by the moon, just like werewolves. For centuries, Europeans thought that phases of the moon controlled many people's sanity and psychopathic impulses. Your pun is very apt.
Is this correct? I mean, according to etymonline, neither sex nor vagina (in the English meaning) come into this. As etymonline confirms, I always assumed vanilla came from the fact that it's a normal/standard ice cream flavour (though the 'whiteness' factor is new to me).
Beavers were the source of beaver pelts. They live in rivers, wetlands, and lakes.
Edit: Okay, okay. Here's one source. Here's another. Here's another with a slightly more circuitous etymology: "beaver" in the gynecological sense refers to the appearance of a bearded man, also referred to as a "beaver" because of the appearance of a beaver pelt.
>bee (n.):stinging insect, O.E. beo "bee," from P.Gmc. *bion (cf. O.N. by, O.H.G. bia, M.Du. bie), possibly from PIE root *bhi- "quiver." Used metaphorically for "busy worker" since 1530s. Sense of "meeting of neighbors to unite their labor for the benefit of one of their number," 1769, American English, probably is from comparison to the social activity of the insect; this was extended to other senses (e.g. spelling bee, first attested 1809; also hanging bee "a lynching"). To have a bee in (one's) bonnet (1825), said of one who is harebrained or has an intense new notion or fancy, is said in Jamieson to be Scottish, perhaps from earlier expressions such as head full of bees (1510s), denoting mad mental activity.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=bee&searchmode=none
It's an evolution of language, not a "dumbing down".
At some point in the past the words thorough and through were not clearly differentiated. The latter was likely pronounced more like "throw", which explains the -ough spelling. "Thru" is a more descriptive spelling, though "through" is widely accepted as correct.
Note in my final sentence the juxtaposition of "though" and "through"
"Christopher - masc. proper name, Church Latin Christophoros, from Ecclesiastical Greek khristophoros, literally 'Christ-bearing;' from phoros 'bearer,' from pherein 'to carry'"
EDIT: formatting
"Football" refers to any ball game that's played on foot, to distinguish it from polo. Most of these games were originally developed in British schools.
"Soccer" is short for "association football," named after the association formed to agree on a common rule system.
"Ruggers football" is more commonly known as "Rugby," which was the name of the originating school.
"Gridiron football" is the full name of the version played in the U.S.
That's a fun one, actually! the answer is probably going to be pretty unsatisfying, but in this case, nobody actually knows why. The word 'lieutenant' dates back to 14th century France as an amalgamation of 'lieu' (place) and 'tenant', the present participle form of 'tenir' (to hold). So a lieutenant is literally a placeholder. It wasn't used in a military sense until the 1570s.
As for the British pronunciation, there are sources that show it was in usage as far back as the 14th century, when the word was first seen, but nobody has any idea who first started using 'leftenant', or why. So as far as we know, it was all started as a joke by the British, and nobody else has caught on yet.
(via Etymology Online)
Actually, "copper" comes from "cop" which was northern British dialect meaning "to seize, to catch," perhaps ultimately from caper "seize, take".
Horribly paraphrased from source.
Edit: A better explanation.
I'm calling bullshit on at least a few of these. These sound like 'folk etymologies', aka. made up by some hawk enthusiast because they sounded right. A cursory search of the Online Etymological Dictionary revealed these alternative origins:
hawk (v.3) "to clear one's throat," 1580s, imitative.
bate (v.1) "to reduce, to lessen in intensity," c.1300, aphetic of abate (q.v.). Now only in phrase bated breath, which was used by Shakespeare in "The Merchant of Venice" (1596).
fed (adj.) pp. adjective from feed (v.). Fed up "surfeited, disgusted, bored," is British slang first recorded 1900, extended to U.S. by World War I; probably from earlier phrases like fed up to the back teeth.
Haggard checks out, but "under my thumb" and "wrapped around my finger" just sound made up.
It comes from jury-mast, meaning 'A temporary mast, in place of one that has been carried away, or broken.' (i.e. jury-rig meant a temporary rig), which may come from the Old French word 'ajurie', meaning 'help' or 'relief'.
It was originally connexion, which is basically the French word for connection. Alongside "connexion", "connect" was used. Gradually connection replaced connexion.
1894 is still a late usage of connexion though. By that stage it was already an anachronism. This may have been a spelling error, or maybe the old spelling persisted here in Australia longer than in England.
[update] according to this http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=connection the change to "connection" occurred in American-English first, so maybe the UK-English world held onto the French term a bit longer?
[update] consider the word "complexion"
>The meaning "penis" is attested from 1891 in British army slang.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dick
The person who made this button knew exactly what he was saying and did it on purpose.
>robot (n.)
>1923, from English translation of 1920 play "R.U.R." ("Rossum's Universal Robots"), by Karel Capek (1890-1938), from Czech robotnik "slave," from robota "forced labor, drudgery," from robotiti "to work, drudge," from an Old Czech source akin to Old Church Slavonic rabota "servitude," from rabu "slave" (see orphan), from a Slavic stem related to German Arbeit "work" (Old High German arabeit). According to Rawson the word was popularized by Karel Capek's play, "but was coined by his brother Josef (the two often collaborated), who used it initially in a short story."
"Herstory" is also a bastardization of the English language.
YOU FAIL IT (it was understanding etymology)
This might help: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=th
Thames, Thomas, and thyme are all specifically mentioned, BTW—so you had a good list.
TL;DR: sometimes "th" means "t^h ", and sometimes the h got added for no good reason.
Etymology time!
You is originally the second person plural. Via French influence, you (plural) started to be used since 12th c. to show respect. To superiors, then to strangers, to equals, and ultimately it replaced thou(singular) as a general form of address (1575) and replaced it in the 2nd person singular position.
So naturally, when it replaced thou, the word you brought its plural form of to be with it.
I'll just note that pussy has 2 differing etymologies, in addition calling an "effeminate man" a pussy has been in english since around the late 1500's. It was also in the 18th century common as a term of endearment to women.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=pussy&searchmode=none
And dick's genital component is also fairly recent, and ironically comes from british army slang.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dick
I personally think people get a bit too much in arms over words. Take both dick and pussy as examples, they may be one word but contextually they have different meanings. There are LOTS of nouns in English that people aren't complaining about. I find it curious we're so focused on these two since they also describe body parts. Ceci n'est pas une pipe and all that.
/word etymology nerd out
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=king
My formatting functions seem to be non-functiional, so here the full link.
Evidently the etymology of the word king is rather fiercely debated. Implications of kinship or noble birth (/transcending it) seem to be paramount.
The word seems to be Germanic in origin which is of course also indo-european. I would assume a difference in function maybe. Ie. a focus on different parts of the meaning between the two synonyms.
Disclaimer: I like the online Etymology Dictionary, but I cannot vouch for its accuracy and English is only my second langauge.
Fun fact of the day:
Frederic (according the same source) and Friedrich (it's German counterpart) also carry the rex/ regis root.
The first part means peace, ie. Fred/ Fried. Friede is still the German word for peace today. Ric or rich than mean ruler or king. Peace-king would be the more literal meaning and is a common denomiation for Jesus or God in Christianity.
This differs from Friedhelm (another German name). Here Helm, the German word for helmet, means guard or guardian. Thus we get Peace-keeper/ guard, another name for Jesus/ God from Christianity.
Here's what the OED says:
>1706, originally a contraction of am not, and in proper use with that sense until it began to be used as a generic contraction for are not, is not, etc., in early 19c. Cockney dialect of London; popularized by representations of this in Dickens, etc., which led to the word being banished from correct English.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=ain't&searchmode=none
The word was invented in 1840 by a German educator named Friedrich Fröbel. It comes from the German words <em>Kinder</em> ("children") and <em>Garten</em> ("garden"). He had this idea of a teacher being a gardener, and education being the soil and nutrients that would help the children "grow."
Did you know that the suffix "-le" is called a "repetitive." It is used to indicated the the same action is performed a multitude of times in close succession... So. "Sparkle" is repeated, quick sparking. "Sprinkle" (from Middle German sprenge: to spot, to speck) is to scatter repetitively. Fondle is related to the word "fond" (as in, affectionate).
Check out other repetitive words or frequentatives at the Online Etymology Dictionary http://www.etymonline.com (where I found some of these).
Thanks, this is what I came to say. Arabic is even where we get the word hashish, for chrissakes.
And, interestingly, hashish is actually the root of the word assassin; it came from a Muslim sect that would get fucked up on hash and murder their enemies during the crusades.
The two words implied by the letters 'JZZ' on the license plate are actually quite closely related. See etymology here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=jazz
There was a time, not long ago, that the first 10 comments would have already made this connection. What's happened to you reddit?
No, it replaced thou.
From what I understand, thou became informal and ye or you was the formal, plural form. Then thou became really informal. Then it became rude. Then people just stopped using it.
You does come from another Proto-Indo-European word, *ju accord to Etymonline.
Good news everyone. It's both!
Originally described by Norman Mailer as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority", factoid has garnered the addition meaning of a trivial and insignificant fact.
Yes. Furthermore fall comes from 'fall of the leaf' and dates from the 1500s, but I presume it probably comes from somewhere earlier as do most Germanic words in the English lexicon.
The Online Etymology Dictionary says otherwise. It says the first recorded usage was in 1934 in "Black English". I don't think it's likely that black folks got much exposure to Gaelic at the time.
What? The term Roma or Romani/Romany has nothing to do with Romania or the Romanian people. It is the correct name for the Gypsy people. They don't even originate from Romania. It's just two similar sounding names, get over it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_Gypsies
That's a pretty cool interpretation. But it's also called research when you're creating new knowledge. For example, the physicists using the LHC, trying to create the Higgs Boson, are doing research.
In the actual etymology, "re-" is an intensifier, and it doesn't mean "again" as in other English words.
It probably actually comes from being able to see the fair-skinned ruling classess' veins more easily, since veins show up as blue. But your comment was ^a ^joke ^^that ^^I ^^killed ^^^haha ^^^^ha ^^^^sorry
News flash: old people know about sex jokes. Shakespeare made them, for pity's sake. My late grandmother used to tell us dirty limericks in her 80's.
By the way, "dick" has meant penis since the 1800's. My grandma and her sisters, who were all jokesters, used to tell a joke the punchline of which was "Diddy Dicker" (did he dick her?). I don't remember the rest of the joke, but they all thought it was hilarious.
I usually get really annoyed by censorship in covers, but it really didn't bother me too much in this case. I thought it worked well.
As a complete aside, while trying to learn when the word 'fuck' started to be used in it's modern meaning I came across this wonderful little gem of etymology:
>Flying fuck originally meant "have sex on horseback" and is first attested c.1800 in broadside ballad "New Feats of Horsemanship."