Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
This piece of etymology trivia truly delighted me: A cutthroat compound is when the verb comes first in a descriptive phrase, instead of the adjective that English usually uses. As Adam Aleksic tells us here, the cutthroat compounds are mostly insults and probably influenced by French grammar, which is just perfect. “How can I be really insulting?” the 16th century English thought. “I know! I’ll treat it like a French phrase.” Wonderful.
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Language Twitter is the best part of that hellsite so here are some tweets from which I’ve gained knowledge and joy lately:
AFFECT and EFFECT both come from the Latin verb ‘facere’, meaning to do—but AFFECT took the prefix ‘ad–’ (meaning to or towards) while EFFECT took ‘ex–’ (meaning out of or from). So to AFFECT something is essentially to do something to it, while an EFFECT is what results from it.
— Haggard Hawks 🦅 (@HaggardHawks) April 1, 2022
Seems like helicopter is a combo of heli and copter. Like it’s a copter that helis.
But it’s actually helico-pter. A pter that helicos. pic.twitter.com/2aVs1K3Lm5
— Tim Urban (@waitbutwhy) March 30, 2022
The Greek word for running, ‘dromos’, is the origin of HIPPODROME (literally a place for running horses), PALINDROME (a word that literally ‘runs’ back), and DROMEDARY camels (which are literally ‘running’ camels). pic.twitter.com/gVjqZ6v9M2
— Haggard Hawks 🦅 (@HaggardHawks) April 2, 2022
I’m on Twitter a little more these days because I cleaned up my feed with this tool and now I get much, much less angry politics and more delightful content like this:
As a word for a young pig, the word PIGLET only dates back to the mid 1800s. Before then, a young pig might be called a HOGLING (14thC), a PORKET (1550s), a HOG-BABE (1600s), or a GRUNTLING (1680s). pic.twitter.com/MjlaY8c8lN
— Haggard Hawks ???????? (@HaggardHawks) June 19, 2019
(That account is full of great word facts, such as why a type of paper is called “foolscap“, something I have wondered over a lifetime of reading British novels.)
Tysmake is pretty much the reason I make cookies. Also, I think America needs to adopt the practice of solarfi.
Sometimes I want to learn German, if only because there are words like this:
smultronställe: (n.) lit. “place of wild strawberries”; a special place discovered, treasured, returned to for solace and relaxation; a personal idyll free from stress or sadness.
(Via my old fav, even cleveland.)