Recently I found an interesting bit of thanksgiving history. The only firsthand account of it comes from a 1621 Letter from pilgrim Edward Winslow:

“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”

I was curious, he never used the word “Turkey”, but he talks quite a bit about “fowl”. Was the word “fowl” in 17th century English used to denote any kind of bird you would go hunting for? Or did it denote a specific kind of bird?

Other languages spell the river’s name with a vowel digraph, not two monographs.

German: der Rhein

French: Rhin

Dutch: Rijn

Limburgish: Rien

English: Rhine

The word has always been monosyllabic. Why?

Deriving the word for "ceiling" from a word meaning "sky" is clearly possible, that happened in Chinese "天花板".

The more you know, the less you don't!

I found the more you know the higher you go on Wiktionary but not well-sourced. I know it's a famous American TV children's spot. I always wonder if it's like a cut-off phrase. It feels like it's set up as a cue for the listener to finish the sentence, but they don't actually have to.

Whilst I'm at it, is there a word for a synecdoche phrase, such as "great minds!", "desperate times..."? Ellipsis? A different word?

Edit: ANSWER! I'll take "The smarter you grow" as its original implication. See here 🌠

It's interesting that the phrase's invocation is now quite entirely divorced from this.

I understand the meaning of fine print, but want to believe the fine-ness refers to the quality of the printer / printing press. Is there any interesting story here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardigan_(sweater)

From what I discovered on wiktionary and wikipedia, I found this to be a fascinating etymology.

Sumerian 𒁾 'dub' led to Akkadian 'tuppum' extending the meaning to 'document, letter'. In Old Persian it was combined to '*dipi-vahanam' to mean 'document house', resulting in دیوان ('divân, dêvân') in Persian. This holds various meanings such as 'council of state, court house, collection of poems and couch'. From what I gather the last meaning has entered European languages through Turkish because of the traditional sofas found in official buildings there.

The meaning of customs (house/duty) has entered Romance languages (and Dutch) by the way of Arabic from what I can only suppose the idea of a building with documents where official business is conducted.

So this is something I've gotten very curious about. Looking back at all the commonly practiced religions, I wanted to know if there's a method of how they and their followers were named.

I think I recall reading that Christianity came from an old word meaning "anointed one" and a common suffix from I think Latin. But I'm completely unsure on why the followers are called Christians.

I wonder similarly for other religions and faiths like Catholicism, Judaism, etc.

How were religions named, and how were their followers named?

Why does english uses the preposition "to" to form the infinitive? How old it dates?

I just noticed this similarity and found no sources hinting at it. Most sources say the word Triumph in Latin was borrowed from the greek 'thriambus' from a hymn to dyonisis with no older accounts hinting at its origin.

However I find it an oddity that the word triumph seems so similair to the roman word triumvirar (tres viris)

especially rhat the word contains the prefix 'tri'.

I'd imagine some correlation, but without evidence it remains just a theory.

This may be a little weird for this sub because it's not exactly a word, but why is the "woo" noise the default cheering sound for encouragement or excitement? Is there any record of when this started! Is it different in different langues? Is it just an American thing?

Why is "woo" over other prolonged vowel sounds?

I've been reading some older science fiction, Robert Heinlein specifically. I'd apparently become accustomed to the term "shape" to mean "set off on a course for" like "shape for Earth" in the context of a space faring vessel leaving port for its destination.

I'm curious if that use of the word has roots in naval terminology or was made up just for SciFi. The dictionary definitions I've found don't give any indication and it's such a common word is hard to Google.

Any insight?

Why is the word drug drug. It literally sounds bad like UGHHH drUGGGG

It makes sense as to why it means something is super easy, I guess, but I’ve always wondered where the term originated from. Was walking with cake a fairly common practice back in the day? Anybody got any info?

I really don’t know where else to post this, I’m not sure this is the right sub as it’s more about letters than a word but I’ve tried looking it up and I can’t seem to find anything on this. Even ai has been unhelpful and it doesn’t seem to see that they are the same shape

𐩯 samekh in old south Arabian

ᛝ ing in futhorc or Anglo-Saxon

Is this just an example of two different cultures coming up with almost exactly the same letter shape at different times in history or is there a connection between the two? Maybe words that contain them or meanings associated with the symbol?

And please if possible if anyone knows any other languages or words that use a similar shape or have the same meaning as either of them let me know

Thanks for taking the time to read, I’m sorry if this is the wrong sub to post this to, if it is, point me in the right direction

I was redoing grammar since I am learning new langauges and when someone says Oh it's in it's petetrite, 3rd declension, imprefect, gentative, auxiliary form so it has -ism at the end and you change the second vowel if the resulting diphthong is too soft and it would help if I knew what those words mean. And suddenly occured to me, I ain't seen words like that in decades.

And then realized perfect and imperfect have nothing to do with perfectionnbecause perfect doesn't mean perfect. It means perfect. The loose line is latin (perficere), old french (parfit), Middle english(also parfit), and in the the Queen's english has perfect(spelling correction I guess to match latin)?

And i cannot find the jump between To be complete and to be without flaw. Afterall I can make a burnt, half smushed, wrong colour cake and if I said I perfected the cake everyone would remarked, I guess it's finished but it's far from perfect. But in like 1300's I would get a reply of, sure it's perfect but make another that's good.

where does this come from? i use it pretty frequently as i am very forgetful haha and i only just questioned where the origin came from

I say this all the time when cats are purring really loudly but have no idea why. Did car engines used to fall out when they were overworked? What's the origin there?

ETA: not sure where I first heard it (maybe from a relative from the southern US), but I've heard others say it, and no one who hasn't heard it before I say it has thought twice about it.

I think I found usage of the word from the 1800's or so using Google scholar but not many. The reason I ask is routinely I keep saying "The discoverance" instead of "The discovery" like discoverance is more normal/the right way to say it but I can't for the life of me figure out where I picked it up or why I keep saying it or if it's a word that ever found any common usage.

Title.

after reading the recent post about "the mob", it got me thinking about the German word for bullying: mobbing

is this just a (pseudo?)-anglicism coming from the mob as an organized group basically bullying honest people with extortion etc.?

does "to mob" also exist in English as a verb? if yes, what does it mean?

I was listening to the song, “Run, Run, Rudolph” by Chuck Berry and there’s the line that says “he can take the freeway down” and I thought, hey, this song came out in the 50s, and the interstate freeway plan only started in the 50s (thank you, President Eisenhower), and it took decades to be completed. Was the term “freeway” part of common usage before the interstate system? If yes, what were they referring to?

PLEASE READ THE BODY, THANK YOU :)

I was doing a brief search into the origins of the phrase and I found on Wiktionary, that it comes from the black panther party. I noticed there wasn't a citation, and since I don't have access to academic resources, or the necessary research skills yet, if people could help with direction on this search, or if they could find it themselves?

Thanks all, this sub is super neat and I love it :)