Archive for the ‘words’ Tag
The English language is brutal. I don’t envy anyone coming to this country without any English speaking skills because I’ve lived here my whole life and I still don’t have a handle on everything. Virtually everything that we talk about or speak about originally came from our distant past going back thousands of years. I thought I was up-to-speed as far as the language goes but once again I was sadly mistaken. Today’s post will introduce you to some words that you’re familiar with and others not so much. When I can I will identify the original word. As always, answers are at the end and no peeking please.
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- What is the meaning of the Greek word “kosmetikos”, from which we get the word cosmetics?
- A milligram is a thousandth of a gram. What’s a “picogram”?
- What do “noologists” study?
- What kind of voice does someone have if he or she is “oxyphonic”?
- What does the word “climax” mean in Greek?
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- How did the “duffel” bag in its name?
- What’s the difference between a nook and a cranny?
- What word originated as the nickname for a English insane asylum?
- What flowers name means nose-twitching in Latin – a name bestowed upon it because of its pungent aroma?
- A bibliophile is a collector of rare books. What is a “bibliopole”?
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- What was the original meaning of the word “clue”?
- What is the origin of the expression “on the Q. T.”?
- What is the literal translation of the pasta “vermicelli”?
- What were the very first item is referred to as gadgets?
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Answers
Skilled in decorating, 1 trillionth of a gram, The mind, Unusually shrill, “Ladder”. In Greece is spelled klimax, From the Belgian town of Duffel, A nook is a corner; a cranny is a crack, Bedlam, The nasturtium, A seller of rare books, A ball of thread or yarn – which makes the concept of unraveling a clue all the more meaningful, The word quiet – from its first and last letters, Little worms, Miniatures of the Statue of Liberty sold in Europe in 1886, A tightrope walker.
I ‘ve always enjoyed writing this blog because along with the fun interaction with readers I’m forced to continue my education into the use and misuse of the English language. Needless to say, after reading many of the somewhat illiterate emails I receive it’s obvious that more English needs to be taught at all levels of our education system and those of nearby countries. I suppose it would probably help a lot if the English language was mandated as the official language of this country, but until then my advice for potential legal immigrants is to learn passable conversational English and then go through the legal processes put in place to make you a future citizen. Unfortunately, that’s a subject for another day because today’s post is about WORDS.
- Dr. Seuss is credited with the first use of the word “Nerd”.
- The word “Geek” comes from the German word “geck” which means fool.
- Another classier word for “stripper” is ecdysiast.
- The longest made-up word in the Oxford English Dictionary is “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis”
- In 1972 comedian George Carlin was arrested during a performance for publicly speaking seven unacceptable words: shit, piss, f*ck, c*nt, c**ksucker, motherf**ker, and tits. (I cleaned them up for all of you delicate types)
- Only oysters, shellfish, and clams can be “shucked”.
- There are 15 three letter words starting with the letter “Z”: zag, zap, zas, zax, zed, zee, zek, zep, zig, zin, zip, zit, zoa, zoo, and zuz. (That may help your Scrabble game)
- The toughest tongue twister in the English language is “The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep is sick.”
- The word “earthling” was first used in Science Fiction in Robert Heinlein’s 1949 novel Red Planet.
THANKS FOR THE GRAPHICS JOKO JOKES
I think today we should get a little more intellectual than the run-of-the-mill limericks and off-color jokes. After blogging for more than fifteen years I’ve become a true lover of words. Another plus about words is that they come together to form books, lots and lots of books. Every year when I make my New Year’s resolutions, I normally have one requiring that I read at least one hundred books for the year. I have never ever not accomplished that resolution. The only thing I enjoy more than writing words is reading those written by others, it’s just the coolest thing ever. So today this post will be a short trivia lesson about words, language, and books. I hope you find them interesting . . .
- One of the greatest orators of all time – Demosthenes was once a stutterer who stubbornly trained himself out of it, reportedly by putting pebbles in his mouth and practicing speaking aloud.
- The Polish actress Helena Modjeska was popular with audiences for her realistic and emotional style of acting. She once gave a dramatic reading in her native tongue at a dinner party of people who did know the Polish language, and her listeners were in tears when she finished. It turned out she had merely recited the Polish alphabet.
- The French philosopher Rene Descartes sarcastically speculated that monkeys and apes actually have the ability to speak but choose not to.
- The inhabitants of a slum called Trastevere, near Rome, speak a dialect all their own. They claim to have more than 2000 vulgar words to describe human genitalia.
- The phrase “What a guy!” is a cry of derision in Great Britain and a cry of adoration in the United States.
- The average daily issue of the Congressional Record carries more than 4 million words – the approximate equivalent of 20 long novels. It is printed and published overnight.
- A forty-five-letter word connoting a lung disease, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, is the longest word in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. The longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary means the act of estimating something as worthless- floccipaucinihilipilification, which has twenty-nine letters.
- The Scottish writer Robert Bontine Conningshame Graham, who had won a seat as a Liberal member of Parliament in 1886, was suspended from the House of Commons for having the audacity to use the word “damn” in a public speech.
- The word “ozone” got its name from the Greek ozo, which means “I smell.” It was first officially used in 1840.
- All of the world’s main alphabets have developed from an alphabet invented 3600 years ago in the Middle East and known as the North Semitic Alphabet.
EVERYTHING YOU ALWAY WANTED TO KNOW
(But were afraid to ask)
I’ve been blogging for almost 15 years and have written thousands of words. Also, I’ve been addicted to crossword puzzles for my whole life and know thousands of other words. That being said, I recently stumbled across some trivia concerning words and languages and I like to pass them along. I know a lot of words, but I found out I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.
- Egyptians, Indians, and Turk’s search for “sex” on Google more than any other nationality. “Hitler” is the most popular in Germany, Austria, and Mexico. The word Nazi is a favorite in Chile, Australia, and Britain. “David Beckham” gets the most hits in Venezuela.
- In the Eskimo language Inuktitut, there is a single word meaning “I should try not to become an alcoholic”: Iminngernaveersaartunngortussaavunga.
- The words “tomato”, “coyote”, “avocado”, and “chocolate” all come from the Aztec language Nahuatl.
- The word “boredom” did not exist in the English language until after 1750.
- The “zip” in “zip code” stands for “zone improvement plan”.
- An 18-year-old knows approximately 60,000 words, which represents a learning rate of one word per 90 walking minutes from the age of one.
- By the age of five, children will have acquired 85% of the language they will have as adults.
- The Finnish language has no future tense.
- Over just six days in the month of August 1998, The Washington Post devoted 80,289 words to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
- The condition of being unable to release a dart from one’s hand when throwing is known as dartitus.
WORDS CAN BE FUN
Languages are interesting. Many books have been written about the use of words, but it seems they appeal to only a small portion of the population. I love learning new words and their odd uses, it’s fun! Let’s get started on some fun for you on this fine Monday morning.
- Check out these three sentences:
A mad boxer shot a quick, gloved jab to the jaw of his dizzy opponent.
Five or six big jet planes zoomed quickly by the tower.
Now is the time for all quick brown dogs to jump over the lazy lynx.
They each use every letter in the alphabet.
- The 1939 novel, Gadsby, doesn’t contain a single word with the letter “e”. That quite some accomplishment in a fifty-thousand-word book.
- The longest palindrome in the Oxford English Dictionary is “tattarrattat”. Coined by James Joyce in his book, Ulysses, as a knock at the door.
- The word “honorificabilitudinitatibus” at 27 letters is the longest word to appear in a work by Shakespeare from Love’s Labor Lost.
- The longest palindrome in any language is “saippuakivikakuppias”. It’s 19 letters long and means “soap seller” in Finnish.
- Poets love to rhyme words but in some cases it’s very difficult or just plain impossible. No words rhyme with orange., silver, elbow, galaxy, and rhythm. The words wasp, purple, and month are also very hard to rhyme.
- Here are a few more very cool palindromes:
A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal. Panama
Madam, in Eden I’m Adam
Was it a bar or a bat I saw.
THERE’S YOUR ENGLISH LESSON FOR THE WEEK
I would hate to even try to come up with the number of words I’ve written in my life. Even talking about it boggles my mind. Language and words are everything. Without them both chaos would ensue. I know, I know, there’s plenty of chaos anyway but without communication chaos becomes something visceral and sometimes dangerous. Today I’ll be talking about words that I will write and you will read. Ta! Da!, communication without chaos.
- Did you know that the word stewardesses is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
- William Shakespeare invented more than 1700 words including assassination and bump.
- The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
- If you mouth the word colorful to someone, it looks like you are saying, “I love you.”
- Dreamt is the only English word that ends in the letters mt.
- The name Jeep came from the abbreviation GP, used in the U.S. Army for general-purpose vehicle.
- The word bigwig takes its name from King Louis IV of France, who used to wear really big wigs.
- No word in the English language rhymes with orange, silver or month.
- The word chunder comes from convict ships bound for Australia: when people were going to vomit, they used to shout, “watch under”.
- The expression rule of thumb derives from the old English law that said you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
IT’S MORE FUN COMMUNICATING WITHOUT CHAOS
I was standing in a line at a nearby Subway Shop yesterday and listened to three young ladies chitchatting about this and that almost nonstop. They discussed a few friends, made a derogatory comment or two about a certain person they disliked, and then complained about starting school in a week or two. As I stood in line behind them I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation intermixed with the receiving and sending of text messages from other friends.
I had to smile thinking how different things are these days for our younger generations. The one thing that held my interest today was their use or misuse of the language. Almost every child learns early on how to have a little fun at the expense of the adults in their life. These newer generations have adopted the never-ending use of the word "Like". As I stood in that long line behind these young girls I was able to count no less than twenty-five uses of the word "Like". It actually made me grin a little.
I could make fun of them or quote some of their silly comments but that isn’t at all what I was thinking at the time. I agree that their use of the word was cute and possibly funny but it seemed to bother the older women standing to my left a great deal more than it did me. She was shuffling her feet and rolling her eyes the entire time which I’m sure was the effect they were shooting for. Growing up these days still requires those developing children to irritate the older generations just enough to show them their newly found desire for independence. It’s where they begin to carve out their own niche as soon-to-be adults and push and shove to take their place with the rest of us. They were giggling and chatting like kids do and it was fun to watch.
Every generation has certain words and phrases they over-use and I have no idea how that happens with almost every generation. When I was growing up the word "Okay" was overused constantly and later “Cool” was the word of choice. After a little research I discovered the following information on the word "Okay" since that was my generation’s word choice.
As tends to be the case with the origins of sayings or words, the starting point of OK is a matter of contention. Many explanations have been offered and here are three samples of which none are believable.
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The wood out of which British ships were built, oak, which is a durable wood gave rise to the saying that such wood was “oak-a”.
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US military records stating that there were no casualties – that is, zero killed (OK).
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The ancient Greek schooling practice of marking the letters on exceptional papers, indicating that they were ola kala (literally “it is good”).
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The most favored derivation, however, probably because it is supported by documentary evidence, is that the word OK stems from a phrase used in the 19th century. It was a fad during the 1830’s in Boston for newspapers to use comical expressions such as KY for “know yuse”, OW for “oll wright”, NS for “nuff said”, and notably, OK for “oll korrect”. OK became more popular in 1840 when the supporters of the Democratic politician, Martin Van Buren formed the OK Club. In this case, the letters stood for “Old Kinderhook” (Kinderhook, New York being Van Buren’s place of birth), and it’s thought that it was through this use of the letters that brought OK into mainstream usage.
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I’m sure that in the day I was able to make my parents cringe every time I used the term “OK” sarcastically just as “Like and Whatever” are accomplishing these days. Rule #1 for kids: As always, find an adult’s annoyance button and then push it over and over again. I wonder what the next generation will come up in a few years to irritate these three young ladies. That’s makes me grin too!
everyuselessthing.com 