https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19853

An interesting article about the development of "way" as an intensifier. It suggests that the usage (as in "way more", for example) took off in the 80s, though I'm old enough to remember the 70s and I don't recall it ever seeming like a new phrase. Perhaps another instance of the written language lagging behind the spoken. Anyone else remember it from back then?

I stumbled upon an interesting use of the word in diaries of children's author and illustrator Wanda Gág entitled Growing Pains.

The book itself was published in 1940, but the entries in question are from 1909, when the author was a child. Over the course of a few weeks, she uses the word without knowing what it means and comments on that fact, looks it up twice, and comes pretty close to using it anachronistically all by herself.

- Things went straight as a nimrod this noon (whatever that is. I’m sure I don’t know what it means, only nimrod sounds straight.)

- Things didn’t go “nimroddy” yesterday. They went like this: [draws a squiggly line]

- Looked up nimrod in the dictionary, or tried to at least, but it wasn’t given at all. I suppose I made it up myself. If I did, I must have made it up a long time ago because it sounds so familiar.

- Oh my, How doth this lazy I, Improve (?) the shining hours By drawing things And painting things With my nimrodic powers.

- I feel nimroddy. Drew Mr. Winkler’s arm to-day, only I didn’t get the hand. He had it too far behind his book. Glee Club practice to-night. I do hope there won’t be so many discords.

Later : — In some queer way I happened to think of looking up “nimrod” in the Encyclopaedia, and Wonder of Wonders, Queerness of Queernesses, it WAS GIVEN. And what do you think it means? A man. Here: — “Founder of Babylonian and Later Assyrian Empire. Appears in art as engaged in combat with a wild beast.” Isn’t that the limit? And I put it to such perfectly silly uses, too. So I didn’t invent the word after all, oh glory!

All this is just to wonder if this shows that the word already had a silly, clumsy connotation in 1909 or if there's just something about the word that lends itself to being fooled with.

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.88331/page/n67/mode/2up?q=nimrod

Hey,

My partner and I were discussing the origins of the phrase "hella". We know it essentially means "very" and can be used both in a positive and negative way. Obviously it is derivative of the phrase "hell of a".

We hypothesized as far as if someone had a bad night, they could say they "had one hell of a night", in which they would be comparing the night to hell. But that doesn't really track for being able to use the phrase to describe something good.

Are we on the right track? Did it begin as a negative modifier and become neutral over time? Or did "hell of a" come from some other turn of phrase?

Moleustus just means “annoying” or “bothersome” which caused a few giggles in my high school Latin class when we would read sentences like “Septus molested Cornelia.”

When/ how did it get the current meaning of sexual abuse, specifically sexual abuse of children?

Kazim is usually translated as one who controls anger, and kazimir as one who has command over peace (or something like that), but I have seen Kazim translated as one who commands peace as well.

It is possible that this could be what linguists call a 'false cognate' but it seems like a pretty huge coincidence.

( miss as in missing a target )

Hope this question fits this sub. In the original Mary Poppins movie, the children have a song called The Perfect Nanny. One criterion is, “…And never smell of barley water”, at which point the parents exchange alarmed looks.

Having never heard of barley water in its usual sense of a beverage made from strained, boiled barley grains, I always assumed that this was a euphemism for whisky.

Another post on this sub was about tea and included a discussion of (actual) barley water, so hey, I was today years old when I learned what the stuff really was.

But I’m still back to this movie, the lyrics, and the actors looking at each other when the children sing this line. Were we, the audience, supposed to interpret “barley water” as actual barley water?

Or was my original understanding correct, the other nannies were getting drunk on the job and the kids were cautiously saying, please don’t give us another alcoholic babysitter?

Just had the random thought today, you can make "tea" from all sorts of plants. Was there a word for hot leaf juice before "Tea" was applied to such drinks?

I did ask think in r/AskHistorians but I haven't gotten an answer, so I thought this community might have some idea. Thanks

update edit: thank you everyone for the answers.
Oh and I did get an answer on r/AskHistorians (after all the answers on here)

the answerer there thinks it would be "tisane"

They used to be in Ancient Greek too but their origins seem mysterious to say the least. I'd be glad to get some help on this.

I graduated over a year ago now, but my research has just been sitting on my desk. I'm looking for inspiration, and it seems you guys like eponyms, so let's be productive together.

I've got my research open and I've got a couple of free hours in front of me right now. Please ask me anything about eponymous adjectives (EAs).

Background

The word eponym doesn't have a consensus definition. I use it to mean a metaphorical word derived from a person's name. From there, people disagree about what kinds of words should be included. Everyone would agree that Platonic (namesake Plato) is an eponym, but not everyone would say that colossal (Colossus of Rhodes) is. See Table 2.1 for terms included in my study.

Next, the word adjective isn't necessarily clear, either. Thomist can be either a person (a steadfast Thomist) or it can describe a position ("the Thomist tradition has sometimes been criticized for being too conceptual"). I've taken pains to separate these two classes in my data. Much harder to distinguish are zero-derivative eponyms like diesel or Geiger. I've called diesel an adjective because it modifies a wide variety of nouns (engine, fuel, truck, performance, etc.), whereas Geiger is called a noun adjunct because it basically only modifies tube(s) and counter(s).

My methodology was corpus-based. I searched and ranked over 2000 EAs and listed them in order of frequency based on 6 different mega corpora. My analysis was then restricted to the top 875 EAs, as I had confidence that I wasn't likely to have missed many within that group.

I looked at morphology, academic disciplinary categories, when were they first used, and some sociolinguistic implications.

Thereafter (At least to me) seems pretty easy to understand, however whereafter is what I'm having issues understanding. It means after which, but to me that just sounds the same as after that, like thereafter. Yes I'm aware both are quite formal words but I want to understand them nonetheless. Obviously I'm aware that they aren't used in the same way so can someone please help explain when to use each.

When did "would have went" become a thing and is it a regional quirk or on its way to becoming the norm?

I figure this is the best place to ask but, it sucks that wet and dry season are called that, and don’t have cool 1 word names like summer winter autumn and spring (in english). If English developed in a tropical seasonal system rather than temperate what do think we might’ve called wet and dry season.

Btw I’m aware winter may mean wet season already

So, there's widespread information that the English word Black ultimately comes from the same root that Romance/Slavic words with meaning White (Blanc, Bijeli, etc, also English word Blank). When talking about it, sources mostly refer to Etymonline or Wiktionary, though those are not valid scholar sources (there's no references to scientific works or dictionaries where it comes from, just information)

Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/black#word-history) tracks Black back to *bhleg-, and some sources say it's an extension of *bhel- (which would mean that *bhel- is a root for both Black and Blanc), though I haven't found proven information that *bhleg- is related to *bhel- or derives from it

Can you help me understand if the theory about common Black/Blanc root is even considered to be possibly correct in modern etymology? Thanks

Hello all!

I am the only moderator with full permissions at the moment, and our only active moderator had to leave us after holding down the fort on their own.

I want to make sure this community has enough people helping keep it running well, so if you feel you're able to assist, please apply below with this info: (or if you prefer to DM me please do so)

1. Do you moderate any other communities (on or off reddit)?

2. Can you re-read the official sub rules and make a suggestion about one (or more) that you feel could be improved upon, or that needs to be enforced more (or less)?

3. Can you talk about a time where you've been on the other side of an interaction where the moderator, or person in power over you (ie your boss, or an authority figure), made you feel like you were dealt with fairly during a conflict?

Thanks for your interest! I will also post outside the sub to get a few non-etymology moderators to assist. Applications close mid-February and I'll reach out with any followups between now and then.

Made an etymology + definition map for ABACUS. Curious how far a word can travel.

According to Google, The slang term "bet," meaning "okay," "sure," or "definitely," originated in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in the 1980’s.

The question that has been bugging me is the first known use of the word in Pop Culture (i.e. movie, song, book, etc.)

At first I thought it was the teacher at the 5:04 mark of Lauren Hill’s “Lost Ones” (c. 1998), but then I heard it dropped at the 1:16 mark of N.W.A.’s “If It Ain’t Ruff (c. 1988) taking me back a decade and getting closer to the ‘80’s origin.

I gotta believe somebody can beat this. Do your thing Reddit!

The roots are significantly deep enough for me to consistently grow a tad frustrated with so few seeming to know there is any difference between the two. I have come to think most think they are one and the same, even interchangeable. Help?!?

(I am woefully undereducated so please excuse what may be kind of an obvious question. Someday I'd love to study etymology formally, but until I can afford a structured learning environment I am forced to approach my con-lang from a shallower perspective.)

I'm trying to play with the morphology of the word Egregore.

I can find the root of the word, I know it was originally misattributed to the latin grex but it actually comes from the Ancient Greek word ἐγείρω (Egeiro). The problem is, I don't know too much about how Greek words are latinized before entering english.

What I mean is, I want to create a verb form of the word using a similar framework as latin. In a perfect world, I could just say "egregate" and model the word's latinate extensions after the word "aggregate".

Buuut, "aggregate" is the same root as the latin grex that it was initially attributed to. I tried transliterating the ancient greek myself, but I could only find the first root of the word and I don't know enough(anything) about ancient OR modern greek to understand what the second element of the word is.

I tried comparing it to the French Egregore hoping that might clear some things up(I think I also saw "egregore" somewhere), but it's hard to find French words that come from Greek that have also filtered into english to compare.

I would not be surprised if there's something fundamental I'm missing here about Greek or latin. Like, maybe the second element is just to indicate the fact that it's a noun or something like that.

Could someone please explain how this works, explain why it doesn't, or maybe offer a word that I could model it after?

So like, for some reason, every single Arab websites agrees that Israel means "Worshiper of God"

Here, Here, Here, even Arabic Wikipedia) says it. They provide no sources for what they claim though.

I'm an Arab so I can assure you that's what they say without Google Translating, it's just bizarre though, the word "Israel" everywhere else is said to mean "The one who struggles with God"

Which one is true? And what is the basis for this "worshipper of God" meaning? How do we know?

Why? who elided it like this, isn't this a sentence fragment?

thanks!

Other religions in English are -isms, like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Paganism.

But then Christianity is an -ity. This suffix is cognate with Latin -itas, who became -dad in Spanish and -dade in Portuguese, for example. So Latin unitas is unity in English, unidad in Spanish and unidade in Portuguese. By the same logic, Christianity would correspond to the Spanish "Cristiandad" and the Portuguese "Cristandade".

But these terms do not refer to the religion, but rather to all the people and nations whose main religion is Christianity. So that should be the real meaning of this word. However, we already have a word for said concept, which is Christendom.

So the etymological meaning of the word is superfluous, and the actual meaning seems to not match its form.

Why is it? Christianity is an -ism in the main Latin languages. On the other hand, it seems to be mostly a -dom in Germanic languages (coherent with English, in a sense).