Month: January 2014
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bully
Bully Language is always political, but my interests here are linguistic, not partisan. (And my interests here are little late for our today’s news cycles.) Twenty years ago, if a governor and party figurehead uttered in a press conference, “I’m not a bully,” those words may have spoken in jest. Now, in 2014, they are…
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dream
Fast Mash Old English had a word, dream, meaning “joy,” “jubilation,” “music,” or “minstrelsy,” via Old Norse draumr and which may be related to the Greek thrulos (“noise,” “shouting”) This Old English dream has no certain relationship to the Middle English drem, which gives us our current word for dream, via Old Norse draugr and possibly rooted in West Germanic *draugmas (“deception,” “apparition,” phantasm”) or Proto-Indo-European *dhreugh– (“deceive,”…
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champion
Fast Mash Champion, through French, derives from Late Latin campio, “warrior” or “fighter,” in turn from campus, meaning “field” In Ancient Rome, such a campus staged military exercises as well as political and athletic events From this campus English also gets such words as campaign, Champagne, a university campus, camp, scamp, and possibly even gambol and jamb Its ultimate origin is unknown, but campus may go…
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the stand-up etymologist
Jerry Seinfeld: comedian, actor, writer, classic car collector and connoisseur, and…etymologist? Sure, he’s a master of language, as comedians are. From “This, that, and the other” and “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” to “mimbo” and “mulva,” his punchlines have proven their staying power. But word origins? Yep. And I encountered two from him.…
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young & old
Fast Mash Old, through Old English’s alda and the Proto-Germanic *althas, derives from the Proto-Indo-European *al-, “to nourish” or “grow” Some cognates include: alderman, alimentary, altitude, elder, haughty, oboe, proletarian, and prolific Young, through Old English’s geong, derives from the Proto-Indo-European *ieu-, which may mean “vital force” or “youthful vigor” Cognates span the Indo-European language family. from Sanskrit’s yava to…
Mashed Radish 