Michael Kohl 🇦🇹🇹🇭
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Tim Chambers
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Merriam-Webster's human editors say that "slop" is their word of the year. Here are some others that stood out to them, from "gerrymander" to "Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg."
#Words #Language #Linguistics #Dictionary #WordOfTheYear #MerriamWebster
Merriam-Webster's human editors say that "slop" is their word of the year. Here are some others that stood out to them, from "gerrymander" to "Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg."
#Words #Language #Linguistics #Dictionary #WordOfTheYear #MerriamWebster
Anke
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Yesterday, I was talking with spouse about the various words in English that come from the Latin word for lead: plumbum.
There’s plumber, plumb-bob, and vertical things being plumb. Probably other things too.
But I suddenly said to him, “I wonder if plum as in ‘plum crazy’ is another such word?”
So I just looked it up, and the answer is yes:
‘The notion of "exact measurement" led to the extended adverbial sense of "completely, downright" (1748), sometimes spelled plump, plum, or plunk.’
My present brain worm aka words that I keep repeating subconsciously - “There’s nothing to do, there’s nowhere to go” #quotes #words #meditation
Yesterday, I was talking with spouse about the various words in English that come from the Latin word for lead: plumbum.
There’s plumber, plumb-bob, and vertical things being plumb. Probably other things too.
But I suddenly said to him, “I wonder if plum as in ‘plum crazy’ is another such word?”
So I just looked it up, and the answer is yes:
‘The notion of "exact measurement" led to the extended adverbial sense of "completely, downright" (1748), sometimes spelled plump, plum, or plunk.’
Almost without fail, when someone comments on https://minutecryptic.com that they've "never heard that word", they haven't watched enough Monty Python. https://youtu.be/Jn0UPXd7zlA?si=EftvrDlikL5xfhqd
#wordPuzzles #MontyPython #words
Alex, the Hearth Fire
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The surprisingly connected origins of "energy" and "work". #etymology #wordnerd #linguistics #HistoricalLinguistics #language #words #lingcomm #energy #work
The surprisingly connected origins of "energy" and "work". #etymology #wordnerd #linguistics #HistoricalLinguistics #language #words #lingcomm #energy #work
hypebot
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mark my #words
Alex, the Hearth Fire
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The surprisingly connected origins of "helicopter" and "wallet".
#etymology #wordnerd #linguistics#HistoricalLinguistics #language #words #lingcomm #helicopter #wallet #turning
The surprisingly connected origins of "helicopter" and "wallet".
#etymology #wordnerd #linguistics#HistoricalLinguistics #language #words #lingcomm #helicopter #wallet #turning
Alex, the Hearth Fire
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The surprisingly connected origins of "helicopter" and "wallet".
#etymology #wordnerd #linguistics#HistoricalLinguistics #language #words #lingcomm #helicopter #wallet #turning
The surprisingly connected origins of "helicopter" and "wallet".
#etymology #wordnerd #linguistics#HistoricalLinguistics #language #words #lingcomm #helicopter #wallet #turning
Jess Mahler
and 1 other
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Last night, right before going to bed:
Me, to spouse, who knows some basic German and who also took linguistics classes in college: So, German is a compound-happy language, and also has grammatical gender. What is the gender of a compound noun made up of nouns that have different genders?
He didn’t know, so we had a speculative and silly conversation about it that I mostly don’t recall, and then I tried looking it up. Apparently the compound noun gets its gender from the noun closest to the end of the word. (Germans, please feel free to correct me, as my research was brief and shallow.)
After more silliness, I remarked that I was feeling punchy, then stopped and speculated that punchy is derived from punch-drunk (answer: yes, which is sobering), after which spouse remarked that individual body parts can be described as being asleep in English, but what other things can they be? (I’ll put some things I thought were interesting about this in the next post in this thread.)
More silliness ensued, and then I said:
Where do compound words come from? Well, when two morphemes love each other very much…
(A linguistics professor from my college said that English is almost as compound-happy as German, which isn’t surprising as it’s also a Germanic language. We mostly don’t recognize it and don’t spell most of them that way.)
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