Fun English Facts

[iheartchaos]

“Ye Olde”… you’ve been pronouncing it wrong this whole time

A quick and informative discussion on where the word “ye” came from and why everyone pronounces it incorrectly. Also, that word in the preview is “thorn”, not “porn”. 

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To wit a witter

Did you know that "wit" used to be a verb? It meant "to know", e.g. "I wit that English is a strange language." 

Nowadays it lingers only in the verb "to outwit", which is likely more related to its noun meaning of "mind" or "wisdom". 

Goodbye, archaic meaning. We'll miss you now that we know you existed.

Source

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A Strange "Gift" Indeed

It's fairly common trivia that "gift" in German (and a number of other Germanic languages) means "poison". 

But why? English is a Germanic language too, so why is our meaning different?

"Gift" comes from the Old Norse "gift, gipt" around the 13th century, which meant "a present or good luck", and English basically kept this meaning, extending it to "gifted" meaning talented in the 16th century.

The other languages, it became a euphemism, possibly aided by the Greek "dosis" lit. "a giving", which was used by German physicians to mean an amount of medicine.  

Interestingly, English uses "present" much more euphemistically than "gift". One I always dread to hear is, "Your cat left a 'present' in the hallway for you!".

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Pronunciation Pet Peeve

Correcting pronunciation is kind of a losing battle, but gosh darnit, this one really bugs me.

Pro-nun-ci-a-tion

Yes, you do "pronounce" a "pronunciation", but that doesn't make it a "pronounciation".

No, they don't come from different word backgrounds, except that "pronounce" is roughly a century older than "pronunciation". (In fact, "pronounce" comes from the Old French pronuncier, where the nun has her wimple intact [bad pun alert], so where uh became ow is anyone's guess.)

However, the spellings are different, so please respect that and be nice to the pretty words?

Please?  

Also, I couldn't find an appropriate gif, so please accept this one in honor of a word that took me several years to say correctly:

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The Great Pronunciation Schism

Plenty of you have heard of the Great Schism in European History, right? (Right?) But how did your teacher or professor say that second word?

The dictionary lists two pronunciations, siz-uh'm and skiz-uh'm, but which one is most correct? 

Well, when the word first appeared in the late 14th century as scisme, it was the first one, because it was derived from the Old French cisme. However, that word was derived from the Latin schisma, which ultimately came from the Greek skhisma. 

Hey, Greek and Latin scholars, how is ch in Greek and Latin pronounced? (Hint, think about the word "school".)

Recognizing the word's proper Latin origin, the spelling was changed in the 16th century to reflect that. But the pronunciation was left unchanged until an 18th century lexicographer named John Walker published a book called Critical Pronunciation (1791), which stated that words of Greek origin should pronounce ch as k. 

English speakers decided that this made sense, and so the older pronunciation has been dying off ever since. 

(Source [of course])

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Mr. and Mrs. English

We don't think much of the proper spellings of our titles, do we? I know when I was younger, "mister" was spelled "Mr." and that was that.

And Mr. is pretty straight-forward. Mister.

But what's up with Mrs., pronounced "missus"? (Have you ever seen it spelled out? I know it looks like it's not even a word to me...) There's no R there, so why is it in the shortening?

Mrs. used to stand for "mistress" is why. Mistress. 

The pronunciation "missus" was considered vulgar until at least the 18th century.

And now "Mistress" is reserved for ladies sleeping with married men or ladies who know the best uses for whips and chains.

Go figure.

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A Miserable Miser

If you're anything like me, sometimes you wonder why two words sound similar, even if their meanings don't seem that related.

Today we're going to look into two such words.

miser: n. A person who hoards wealth and spends as little money as possible.

miserable: adj. 1. (of a person) Wretchedly unhappy or uncomfortable. 2. (of a situation or environment) Causing someone to feel wretchedly unhappy or uncomfortable: "horribly wet and miserable conditions"

Is this a case of false friends?

Nope! Miser comes from the same Latin word, and meant "unhappy, wretched". It was adopted into English in the 1540s and started to take on its modern meaning in the 1560s, until the original was lost. 

Miserable is derived from the same word, but it had a few mutations along the way. (There's good old French again!)

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Breath is life, and life is mind

Let's do word origins today. Have you ever heard someone's mind being referred to as their "psyche" (SY-kee)? 

This is an interesting word, because it comes from the name of Greek goddess of the mind, Psyche (sometimes spelled Psykhe to reflect the Greek spelling). 

In Greek and Roman mythology, Psyche was the wife of Eros/Cupid, the god of love. 

(No, not this guy:)

(This guy: [Psyche included])

The Abduction of Psyche by William Bouguereau (1895)

(Psyche is very happy about being "abducted".)

Her name comes from a verb meaning "to blow", so it's the idea of "breath" or the "breath of life" that's separate from the physical body.

(Psyche also has the distinction of being the only Greek/Roman female mortal to go to the Underworld and back. She's awesome.)

"Psyche" is also the root of words like "psychology" and "psychoanalysis", but I'm sure you all could guess that. :]

(Source)

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Is it too late to talk about Xmas?

Why do we shorten "Christmas" to "Xmas", anyway? There's no X in Christ, so it's not an acronym, and X doesn't sound like Christ, so it's not like replacing "you" with "u". So why?

Well, the answer is actually way older than texting. In fact, "X" for "Christ" comes from pre-printing press days, back when most religious writing was done in Greek.

So, let's have a quick lesson in Greek. Christ, in Greek, is Χριστός or Khristós. Hey, look at that first letter. Looks like X, doesn't it? That's the Greek letter Chi (pronounced kai), and it's the first letter of Christ.  

So, X was used as a shorthand by writers as a way of saving time and space in books that all had to be written by hand.

X started appearing in Christmas abbreviations around 1551, much for the same reason.

(Source)

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Everybody put their hands up

Singular they. There's a word to get a Grammar Nazi growling. "'They' is plural and so cannot be used to refer to a singular person! EVER."

Are they right? (Heh. Spot the joke.)

Well, let's take a look at the oldest English literature, Mr. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, published in 1395. "And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, / They wol come up and offre on goddes name." Translated from Middle English: "And whoever finds himself with such blame, / They will come up and offer in God's name." 

Well, lookit that. Singular they. And singular they has been with us a long time, and has been used by all sort of famous writers, like Shakespeare. 

But late 18th century grammarians had to spoil the party, decrying singular they as a crime against English. For uncertain or unnecessary gender (like referring to "someone"), they recommended "he" and "his" over "they" and "their".

(Cue feminists growling.)

However, writers kept right on using it. Byron, Shelley, Austen, Eliot, Dickens, etc. 

It's funny that grammarians make a stink about singular they, but not about singular you. Until the end of the 16th century, the modern "you" was about four words: "Thou": subject, singular, "Thee": object, singular, "Ye": subject, plural, and "You": object, plural. 

(And suddenly Shakespeare becomes so much easier to read.)

But English speakers eventually decided that "thou", "thee", and "ye" were out and "you" was king of second person. 

In modern English, dancing around using poor singular they is a hassle and just sounds stupid.

"Everyone should make up his or her mind," versus, "Everyone should make up their mind." 

Which one would you hear in conversation? Exactly. Singular they has already won the battle, but it needs your support! Use it and love it and remember:

Especially grammarians. 

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Two countries separated by a common language

So, why do we Yanks spell "humor" without its proper U, or "civilize" with that vulgar Z? You might think you know the answer, but let's take a look. 

Most of the spelling differences simply come down to two dictionaries, one written in Britain by Samuel Johnson and the other in the States by Noah Webster. Johnson wasn't a rock-the-boat kind of guy, and so his dictionary recorded what was popular at the time, and what was popular in the 18th century was French. 

So that -our ending? Norman. (i.e. French, think Normandy) -re? French. -ise? French. 

(And all the Brits recoil en horreur)

Webster, on the other hand, had a proper hate for the French and their silly spelling, and preferred the older, colonial spellings from the 17th century. So, the Latin -or, the English -er and the English -ize.  

So, nyah, all you French-spellers.

(I was gonna use a Doctor Who gif, but in context, it seemed inappropriate.)

(Source If you haven't noticed, I love this book and if you like these posts, you should buy it.)

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Doesn't mean nothin' no how

"Never use a double negative!" your English teachers said, wagging their finger.

Are they right? Well, not really. 

There are two instances in modern English where double negatives are okay.

"I couldn't not buy them!" you cry, clutching your [insert your favorite things here]. This statement is positive, but it's not exactly the same as "I could buy them," so they're not cancelling each other out. You mean both negatives, and need both to make the statement work.

Another is, "Well, he's not unattractive." In this instance, the speaker is being wishy-washy. "He's ugly!" is not something they want to say, nor do they want to lie and say, "Oh yeah, he's attractive." So, in this case, the double negative becomes a middle ground of sorts. 

However, a sentence like, "I didn't see nothing," is technically incorrect, mostly thanks to an 18th century Anglican bishop named Robert Lowth, who declared that "Two Negatives in English destroy one another or are equivalent to an Affirmative". Up until that point, most English speakers and writers were perfectly happy to use double negatives for emphasis.

Look at Chaucer describing the Friar in Canterbury Tales, "Ther nas no man no-wher so vertuous," or, translating from the Middle English, "There wasn't no man nowhere so virtuous."

But thanks to Lowth and fellows like him, English has lost that lovely emphatic negative except in cases of dialect and a perceived lack of education. 

And that is sad.

(Source)

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Disinterested judge? Or uninterested one?

"Disinterested" and "uninterested". At first glance, they look like they mean the same thing, but of course they don't, because that would be too easy.

In modern English, "disinterested" means "impartial" or "fair", and "uninterested" means what it looks like, "not interested".

However, this wasn't always the case. When "disinterested" first appeared in print around 1612, it meant "not interested". The modern meaning first popped up in the 1650s. Until the late nineteenth century, English speakers and dictionaries were perfectly happy to use both meanings, but American usage writers decided then that it's silly to have two such similar words meaning the same thing, so "disinterested" was stuck to its modern meaning, leaving "uninterested" to mean "not interested".

However, because this is English we're talking about, "uninterested" has its own messy history. It first popped up in the 1640s meaning "impartial", and only started to mean "not interested" around 1771. 

So, over the course of roughly 400 years, two words have appeared, shared meanings, swapped meanings, and been confused for one another.

English!

(Source, Source and Source)

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A group of eight-legged cephalopods is called...?

The plural of octopus is a debatable topic. "Octopuses" will invariably get someone correcting you with an annoyed air. "It's 'octopi'," they whine. 

When octopus was first introduced into English from Greek around 1758, it was given a standard English plural, -es. But at the time, a movement was going on that wanted to make English more Latinesque, so a bunch of -us words were given the standard Latin -i plural.

But wait, "octopus" is from Greek, not Latin. :O

The proper Greek plural is "octopodes" (okt-TOP-uh-deez).

Buuuut, the standard rule about bringing foreign words into English is to give them regular English plurals (hence, ninjas, personas, etc.), which means "octopuses" was right all along.

(Source)

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Till vs 'til

"Till" is commonly seen as a misspelling of "'til", a shortened form of "until". Poor thing, because "till" is actually the older word, coming all the way from Old English (c. 700-1000 CE).

Whereas "until", considered the "proper" term, is actually much newer (c. 1200 CE), and is itself derived from poor "till". 

(Source/Source)

What's sad though, is that I know this, but I still prefer 'til.