Category: Uncategorized
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bus
Each day, millions of people hop on and off a Latin dative plural as they carry out their lives. They take the bus. Let’s ride its etymology to see where it stops. Bus As the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records, bus is first attested as buss in 1832. The word is shortened from the Latin omnibus, literally meaning “for all.” Concerning its origin, the OED offers: the…
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ciao, slave!
After a blogging break, I figured there’d be no better way to say “hello” than to say “goodbye.” Linguistically, the phenomenon is not uncommon, actually. Hawaiian has aloha and Hebrew has shalom, for instance. And Italian of course, has ciao, which has been widely taken up across different tongues as an informal and familiar greeting for “hi” and “bye.” This…
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Everyday Quechua: Coke, jerky, & DNA
The Mashed Radish will be off for the next week or so, as my wife and I will be in South America. One of the best parts of travel, of course, is encountering a culture so far from your own. But for the obsessive etymologist in me, travel is all about encountering words that turn out to…
Mashed Radish 