Tag: Arabic
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“Soda”: An etymological “headache”?
This week, Philadelphia became the first major American city to tax soda and other sugar-added beverages. Supporters tout the levy as a remedy for health problems and school funding. Opponents see it as an illegal overreach of the nanny state and a real headache for the beverage industry. This split will surely play out in…
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Gerbils (and etymology) will bring us all together
For this post, I thought about writing on the etymology of demagogue or bigotry, which have been much in the ether lately, thanks especially to Donald Trump. But I thought twice, important as these words are right now. I thought twice because I wanted to write on something a bit more positive and, well, fun than many of…
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The secret of *nem-
Last post, we saw that the math in aftermath has nothing to do with numbers. But two other words I’ve recently covered, numb and nimble, may indeed be all about them, if we do some etymological accounting of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root, *nem-. *Nem- To review, both numb and nimble derive from an Old English verb, nim, functioning much like today’s take, which supplanted…
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cotton
Last week, Donald Trump’s hot air inspired our look into bombast, where, for all of his bluster and braggadocio, we ultimately discovered the soft padding of cotton. They say all politics is local, but the etymology of cotton is global. Cotton Cotton cropped up in Middle English (coton) during the late 14th century, taking the word from the French coton. The Oxford English…
Mashed Radish 