#Tag · bonfire.cafe

Today’s fun English suffix is “-age”, a very flexible nounifier.

“-age” can be stuck on a verb to mean “the thing that is verbed”. Luggage, coverage, appendage, wreckage.

It can be stuck on a verb to mean “the place where verb happens”. Storage, carriage, anchorage.

It can be stuck on an adjective or even another noun to abstract the word’s core concept. Shortage, postage, percentage, roughage, leverage.

It can go on a concrete noun to refer to the noun’s quality collectively. Peerage, sewerage (all the pipes), footage (length of film), mileage.

Then there are words which look like they might have an “-age” suffix but it’s just a coincidence. Sausage, message, advantage.

#etymology #english #language

Deborah Pickett

@futzle@old.mermaid.town · last week

Today’s fun English suffix is “-age”, a very flexible nounifier.

“-age” can be stuck on a verb to mean “the thing that is verbed”. Luggage, coverage, appendage, wreckage.

It can be stuck on a verb to mean “the place where verb happens”. Storage, carriage, anchorage.

It can be stuck on an adjective or even another noun to abstract the word’s core concept. Shortage, postage, percentage, roughage, leverage.

It can go on a concrete noun to refer to the noun’s quality collectively. Peerage, sewerage (all the pipes), footage (length of film), mileage.

Then there are words which look like they might have an “-age” suffix but it’s just a coincidence. Sausage, message, advantage.

#etymology #english #language

Alex, the Hearth Fire boosted

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · last week

The surprisingly connected origins of "cow" and "beef".

#etymology #wordnerd #linguistics #HistoricalLinguistics #language #words #lingcomm #cow #beef #anglosaxons #normans

https://youtube.com/shorts/KssVgifkVak

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · last week

The surprisingly connected origins of "cow" and "beef".

#etymology #wordnerd #linguistics #HistoricalLinguistics #language #words #lingcomm #cow #beef #anglosaxons #normans

https://youtube.com/shorts/KssVgifkVak

Alex, the Hearth Fire boosted

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · 3 weeks ago

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is CURLING/GRAPE #wotd #curling #grape #grapes #Olympics #Olympics2026 🥌 🍇

What does curling have to do with grapes? Etymology! Curling gets its name from the way the stone curls on the ice, and can be traced back to the root *g(e)r- “curving, crooked”. This also produced Germanic *krappon “hook”, and from that Old French graper “catch with a hook, pick grapes”, so basically the word transferred from referring to the vine hook used for picking grapes to the grapes themselves, replacing the Old English word winberige, literally “wine berry”.

David B. :SetouchiExplorer:

@David@setouchi.social · 2 weeks ago

Fun fact: we don't know where the word "smell" comes from.

#English #Etymology

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · 3 weeks ago

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is CURLING/GRAPE #wotd #curling #grape #grapes #Olympics #Olympics2026 🥌 🍇

'(vidak) _(:3」∠)_ boosted

Wordorigins.org

@Wordorigins@mastodon.sdf.org · 3 weeks ago

take me to your leader

https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/take-me-to-your-leader

#etymology #wordorigins #language

Cartoon by Alex Graham of a flying saucer and two aliens addressing a horse, saying, “Kindly take us to your President!”

Wordorigins.org

take me to your leader — Wordorigins.org

6 February 2026 The phrase take me to your leader is a science fiction cliché, so much so that in the 2007 “Voyage of the Damned” Christmas episode of Doctor Who the time-traveling, title character said, “Take me to your leader! I’ve always wanted to say that

Wordorigins.org

@Wordorigins@mastodon.sdf.org · 3 weeks ago

take me to your leader

https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/take-me-to-your-leader

#etymology #wordorigins #language

Wordorigins.org

take me to your leader — Wordorigins.org

Alex, the Hearth Fire boosted

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · last month

I’m on strike at my university, so the #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is union/university! (For more info about the strike: linktr.ee/lufappul) #wotd #union #university #strike

Why do universities need unions? Etymology! It’s probably clear that both words come from Latin unus “one”. A union is a collection of workers. You might have thought that the word university reflects the idea of universal education or the universal coverage of subjects, but in fact it’s short for universitas magistrorum et scholarium, the union of teachers and students. The university started out as a kind of scholastic guild to protect their interests against outside, non-academic forces, reducing the financial barriers to education and protecting the livelihood of the teachers.

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · last month

I’m on strike at my university, so the #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is union/university! (For more info about the strike: linktr.ee/lufappul) #wotd #union #university #strike

Hacker News

@h4ckernews@mastodon.social · last month

The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello'

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260113-hello-hiya-aloha-what-our-greetings-reveal

#HackerNews #600YearOrigins #hello #LanguageHistory #Greetings #Etymology

'Hullo, hillo, holla': The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello'

It's 200 years since the word "hello" was first used in print - though its roots date back to the 15th Century. How has the language of greetings evolved - and what does it tell us?

Alex, the Hearth Fire boosted

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · 2 months ago

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is VIRUS/WOOZY #wotd #virus #woozy

If you’re feeling woozy, you might want to check to see if you’ve caught a virus, at least that’s what the etymology suggests. The word woozy, an American English colloquialism first recorded in 1897, seems to be an alternation of oozy “muddy”. There are in fact two separate words ooze, one meaning “mud, slime” and the other “to flow, leak out slowly”, the second from the Proto-Indo-European root *wes- meaning “wet”, and the first, from which woozy seems to come, from the root *weis- meaning “to flow”, and from this root probably comes the Latin word virus meaning “poison”, which was the original sense of the English word virus in the 14th century before it developed it’s modern sense related to infectious diseases over the 18th and 19th centuries.

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · 2 months ago

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is VIRUS/WOOZY #wotd #virus #woozy

Shaula Evans

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us · 2 months ago

It only just occurred to me that the English and French words garage come from the French verb garer which also gives us the French word "gare" for train station (as in La Gare du Nord).

I have been staring at these words all my life. I have no idea why this decided to click tonight. (Except that I was thinking about the Italian word parcheggio.)

#English #French #Language #Etymology

Alex, the Hearth Fire boosted

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · 3 months ago

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is RUDOLPH/WOLF #wotd #Rudolph #wolf #RudolphTheRedNosedReindeer
#Christmas #Christmas2025 #Xmas

As it turns out, all of the other reindeer probably should have been shunning Rudolph, as he seems to be a wolf in reindeer’s clothing. The name of that most famous reindeer of all, Rudolph, literally means “famous-wolf”, the -olph part related to the word wolf, a common Germanic name element found in the name of the hero Beowulf, and the first part from Germanic hruod “fame, glory”, also a Germanic name element also found in the name Roger, literally “famous spear”.

Anke boosted

Naomi P

@gannet@sunny.garden · 3 months ago

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.’

https://www.etymonline.com/word/plumb

#etymology #words

Alliterative/Endless Knot

@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community · 3 months ago

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is RUDOLPH/WOLF #wotd #Rudolph #wolf #RudolphTheRedNosedReindeer
#Christmas #Christmas2025 #Xmas

Naomi P

@gannet@sunny.garden · 3 months ago

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.’

https://www.etymonline.com/word/plumb

#etymology #words