Dont know if this is the right place for this. I'm Irish so I speak and use Hiberno English. The verb "to mind" is a regular verb and follows those rules. I don't know it's origin but it is an extremely useful word. I use it every day.

"Mind yourself" can be both a threat or a felicitation. "I am minding the dog/kids/house" means to look after a thing. Past tense "minded" is tongue twisty. "I minded the car while you were away."

I reckon it's use implies a level of fluency.

"After" is a similar word, when not used as a preposition, that fascinates me. Particularly since to "look after" and to "mind" are synonymous with "care for". After can function as an adjective or verb in my dialect, "I'm after you" can mean pursuit, romantic attraction or position in a queue. Similarly "what's it you're after?" What are you seeking?

Anyway, I don't know if this is the right place. Is it common in other English speaking places, or are these and similar idiomatic words taught as part of ESL courses?

Per Wiktionary.

Well, I suppose both of them look a bit like coconuts, being largish and relatively spherical, and a cabbage looks a bit like a tender coconut, being round and green. But it's still of an odd thing to call cabbage and cauliflower. A folk etymology, perhaps?

(On that note, if I had a nickel for every post I've made asking why a plant that doesn't really resemble coconuts is seemingly named after them in an East Asian language, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice!)

PS. 椰菜 is a better name for heart of palm (I know it doesn't just come from coconut palms) than it is for either cabbage or cauliflower, just as "prairie dog" is a better name for a coyote than it is for prairie dogs.

This phrase seems to have popped up in the past half year or so and seems to be accepted as a common phrase, yet I have never heard it used until recently. I assume it comes from AAVE as most common slang does, but does anyone know the origin of it? I looked into it and was surprised to find basically nothing, I can't find anyone discussing how this phrase just kind of popped up out of nowhere or where it comes from specifically, which shocked me given its pervasiveness in common slang (at least here in the US)

Just off the top of my head you have seek, think, buy, and fight. All vastly different words but in the past tense they all become "first sound"-ought, what's up with that? A simple google search yielded no results, so hoping someone here can point me towards an etymological rabbit hole I can fall down.

It’s kind of a weird question, I know, but I was rewatching a show I used to love and in one scene, character A asks character B: ‘How’s your custard?’, referring to B’s head. The context is that B went sort of crazy for a little while, hallucinating and stuff. It just got me thinking, where does that come from? Is it a reference to something popculture or is there an actual etymological reason?

Edit: I realise some context might be useful, sorry! The show is Supernatural, season 7 episode 18, around 6 minutes into the episode (the characters are in a car) the word is used. So, it’s definitely used in an American setting.

I’m honestly surprised this isn’t a word. I personally think we need it. Hopefully, it can find its way into common use someday.

Here’s the difference between tabooing and taboohizing:

Tabooing: Simply marking something as forbidden or off-limits.

Taboohizing: The process of making something taboo, often through societal or cultural pressure.

Let me know what you guys think.

What would a phobia of everything being 3D printed be called?

In 2022, I published a paper called "Etimologija Karašica" in which I claimed that some well-accepted etymologies of the names of the rivers in Croatia are, in fact, folk-etymologies (if I am using the right term here). You can read about it on my website.

In that paper, I claim that the river name Karašica (name of two rivers relatively close to each other) doesn't come from Croatian "karas" (crucian carp), but instead comes from Illyrian *Kurr-urr-issia. That *kurr- meant "to flow", perhaps from Indo-European *kjers ("to run", with the loss of 's' unexplained), -urr- meant "water", perhaps from *weh1r ("water", though the short 'u' and the gemination of 'r' is left unexplained), and -issia being a common suffix in Illyrian (found, for example, in "Certissia", the ancient name for Đakovo). That it was borrowed directly from Illyrian (so, not via Vulgar Latin, as most ancient toponyms were borrowed into Croatian) into Proto-Slavic as *Kъrъrьsьja, which would give *Karrasja after the Havlik's Law, and would give *Karaša after the yotation and the loss of geminates. And that the Croatian suffix -ica was added to *Karaša, making it appear as if it's Croatian in origin. And I also claim in that paper that the river name Krapina doesn't come from Croatian "krap" (carp), but instead comes from Illyrian *Karpona, kar- from *kjers, -p- from *h2ep (water), and -ona was a common suffix in Illyrian (ancient name for Labin was Albona, ancient name for Solin was Salona, ancient name for Plomin was Flanona...). That *Karpona was borrowed into Proto-Slavic as *Korpyna, which would give "Krapina" after the merger of *y and *i and the metathesis of the liquids.

Now, many people on various Internet forums have objected to me that I shouldn't claim such things because the etymologies from the languages we know a lot about are more probable than the etymologies from languages we know little about. Can somebody here please present me that argument better? What is the mathematical basis for that principle?

I can see how that principle runs against mathematics, more specifically, against the information theory. Namely, mainstream methodology gave the result that this k-r pattern in the Croatian river names (two rivers named Karašica, Krapina, Krka, Korana, Kravarščica, Krbavica) is a coincidence, but the basic information theory (Birthday Paradox and Collision Entropy) strongly suggests that the probability of such a pattern occurring by chance is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17. That pattern is statistically significant.

So, can somebody explain to me so that I can understand it? I am neither a mathematician nor a linguist, I am a computer engineer.

I grew up with this usage (NZ), and it's noted in the OED (explicitly in the definition, not just in the usage example below), but the only instance they have is from 1992 (from a UK source), which I think is quite late. It might be a clipping of "plug socket" or another compound, a confusion of "plug" with "socket," or something else -- or a combination of various factors. My main interest is in when this meaning first appears. 1992 seems very late (though I'm guessing it was widely avoided in formal and semi-formal texts, and may still be; the register of the OED example is obviously colloquial).

https://preview.redd.it/qfgyzei6wyxd1.png?width=919&format=png&auto=webp&s=de251a2c9e64ae074587775ec17cc7d1321ffea2

For example, the Italian for “of Italy” is “d’Italia”, and in French it’s “d’Italie” - on the other hand, the Spanish equivalent is the non-contracted “de Italia”. Is there any particular reason for that difference?

Hello, I am in need of interesting suggestions. I am a high school history teacher and tomorrow I would like to do a warmup activity where students research where the name of a place comes from.

Part of this is to highlight power dynamics at play. For example: Mesopotamia being a Greek Name Japan/Nippon meaning sunrise land and being given to Japan by China at their request.

I would like to highlight that some places come to be known by a name given by the people who lived there but some names are given by outsiders and end up sticking because of politics.

Do you guys have any suggestions? So far my list includes: Africa, America, Japan, Mesopotamia, Mexico, Philippines and some others I can’t remember on the top of my head.

I need this urgently so sorry for the late request and thanks in advance for suggestions!

As in ascorbic acid, vitamin C. I never realized the name came from it's anti-scurvy properties.

From etymonline:

1933 (in ascorbic acid), from a- (2) "off, away from" + scorbic, scorbutic "of scurvy," from Medieval Latin scorbuticus "scurvy," which is perhaps of German or Dutch origin. Originally in reference to Vitamin C, which is an anti-scorbutic

I’m thinking more along the lines of what remains of the cases in middle/early modern english with words like thou/thy/thee or who/whose/whom. These words seem to have one “object form” which combine the more common uses of the dative and accusative, mainly serving as a direct and indirect object. Older english isn’t really my specialty so I apologize if it’s kind of a redundant question, but let me know !!

I work in the medical field and have often encountered quinsies, which is a pocket of pus that forms as a severe complication of tonsillitis. Anyone know why we call this a quinsy? Google is very vague and each result has a different etymology!

Thank you 🙏🏽

Are anaesthetic and aesthetic related? They must be right?

So how did one come to be a noun for drugs that eliminate sensation and the other an adjective/noun to describe beauty or artistry?

Why? Was this to save money?

I know the name has a significant brand name, but I’m stuck on the concept of it. Has it always been dairy?

Edit: Half and half… where did it come from

why do we keep the ‘grand’ part when referring to the parents of our grandparents, seems odd that it would develop this way

The term 'merger' (as in, "...the merger of two businesses...") sounds pretty natural to my ear because it's been in the lexicon for a while. But I've recently heard people use the term 'ouster', seemingly in place of 'ousting', e.g. "the recent ouster of the CEO of [company]" and it made me realise how odd and rare that use of '-er' actually is.

It's interesting to hear the '-er' suffix used to mean 'something that happened to the object of the sentence' rather than the usual sense of 'a thing that an object or person does' (e.g a duster or a plumber).

It seems specifically to be part of business language, but I'm curious if that's the extent of it. Are 'merger' and 'ouster' just corporate neologisms, or are they part of a class of word that used to be more common but now just remain in a few cases? Are there any other examples of using the '-er' suffix in this way?

(On a personal note, I kind of hope there aren't! 'Ouster' is super grating to me and I don't want to live in some future world where I have to talk about my watcher of Lord of the Rings over the weekend) 😅

For a number of years I’ve heard people (and websites) claim that ‘Eye of Newt was mustardseed’ and ascribe other plants to the rest of the ingredients, and ‘Agatha All Along’ on Disney+ reopened the can of worms. The suggestion always felt off to me, but across the internet I see websites and university blogs repeating it without attempting to source the claim. I’ve also seen people refuting it (including a deleted post on this subreddit) and saying the new definition is essentially modern folklore.

Where did this false definition originate? I’ve seen many people talk about how it was first claimed in the 19th or 20th century, but I can’t find any reference to an origin. Any ideas?

Edit: This might be the answer

Does anyone have anything earlier than 1985?

I’ve developed a love for language after reading some Stephen Jenkinson who uses etymology to explain a lot of mythopoetic concepts about life, death, grief and love etc.

Are there any good rudimentary or pop-esque books about etymology that can get me started and into the deeper stuff?

I was doing my AP World history DBQs when I noticed this in a passage… I looked it up and there’s not much information about this online. Anyone know when/why this happened?

Sometimes in TV shows from around the 90s - early 2010s there will be a joke about someone not understanding the use of the word Google as a verb and thinking it’s some sort of inappropriate joke, but I could never figure out what that inappropriate meaning was nor can I find any information about it online.

By way of "separation from beauty" or something similarly poetic.

There's Romania, Russia, Serbia, Croatia, Georgia… and then Belgium.