At the G7 summit in Canada this week, Donald Trump’s recent tariffs are sparking unprecedented trade disputes with some of the US’s closest allies.
We considered the origins of tariff not long back on the blog (and embargo well before it). But how about the word trade itself?
It takes a path into English you might not have guessed.
The recent arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks while waiting for a business associate has sparked outrage, protests, a national conversation on racism, and efforts from Starbucks to address implicit bias among its employees.
It has also sparked, from me, an etymological consideration of two words that have frequently come up in discussion of the troubling incident: trespass and loiter.
In 1942, Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller created one of the iconic images of World War II, of feminism, of America itself.
On a bright yellow background with bold white letters proclaiming “We Can Do It!”, his poster boasts a woman flexing her bicep in a blue uniform and red polka-bot bandana. She was inspired by a 1942 photograph of Naomi Parker Fraley working at the US Naval Air Station in Alameda, California, as Seton Hall University professor James Kimble painstakingly determined.
Parker Fraley passed away at age 96 last Saturday, but she will always be remembered as Rosie the Riveter. But she wasn’t the firstRosie the Riveter, however.
As the federal government faces a partial shutdown, employees will be placed on furlough. Etymology, though, never stops working, so let’s have a brief look at the origin of these terminating terms.
At a White House event yesterday honoring Navajo code talkers, President Trump called Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” as he has on many past occasions. Native American leaders, among so many others, are rightly decrying the disparaging remarks as a racial slur, as it drags native peoples into the mud—and literally so, if we look to the etymology of slur.
Sexual assault scandals, mass shootings, military coups, tax cuts for the rich, trophy elephants, the impending devastation of climate change, the looming threat of nuclear war—there are reams and reams of heavy news right now.
So, I think we could use something that brings us all together. Sorry, I don’t have any puppy videos, but I do have the next best thing: etymology. Let’s allow ourselves a nice, distracting break from the news with the globe-trotting roots of ream.
What are all those letters we don’t say doing in the word knight? Why is talked the past tense of talk but sang is the past tense of sing? What’s up with m in whom and how come we eat beef but raise cow?
While ultimately obscure, some think gopher, first attested in the early 1800s, comes from the Louisiana French gaufre, “honeycomb” or “waffle,” describing the structure of their burrows. Gaufre may in turn be from a Frankish word related to the Dutch wafel, source of waffle.
From German hangovers to Iraqi silks, the English language loves its cats.
It’s International Cat Day, founded, apparently, in 2002 by the International Fund for Animal Welfare. So, take a break from cat pics and vids online today and enjoy some cat-themed etymologies. Catymologies? Yeah, no, yeah…I think I have to.
Continue reading “10 Catty Etymologies for International Cat Day”
Yes, getting sacked does originally involve bags.
Just ten days into his new role as White House Communications Director, Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci was sacked, as a number of British headlines having been putting his firing while General John Kelly takes over as Trump’s Chief of Staff.
Where does this expression, getting sacked, come from?
Mashed Radish 