Tag: Indo-European
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Because there’s always a reason to talk about pets…and etymology
I could have written about Zuckerberg today, with the Facebook CEO in the congressional hot seat. His surname literally means “sugar mountain” in German—and I don’t think that’ll be the next Farmville or Candy Crush any time soon. I thought to write about raid, which the FBI did to Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen on Monday. Raid…
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From “to” to “too”
A trend has spread on social media following the many and disturbing allegations of sexual assault and rape against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein: me too, which tens of thousands women are posting to express that they, too, have been assaulted or harassed. The little word, too, so simply yet powerfully bringing attention to how pervasive,…
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Under the etymological “gun”
Gun. It’s such a cruelly simple word for a terrorizing technology that is senselessly and needlessly claiming too many American lives—59 alone, as we witnessed in the horrific massacre in Las Vegas this week. Where does this deadly word derive from?
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“Torrential”: a cruelly ironic etymology
There’s only one way to describe the rain deluging Houston, Texas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey this week: torrential. Nearly thirty inches have already fallen over parts of the city as of Monday night, and 20 more inches are still expected. The frequent co-occurrence of these two words, torrential and rain, is called collocation…
Mashed Radish 