Well, It Does

Don’t act like you haven’t done it.

I never did figure out what she was doing.

Language of Confusion: Get -Rect, Part II

We’re back! As you’ll recall from last week, the -rect words come from the Proto Indo European root reg-, which means move in a straight line. It has a lot of word-descendants, and this week we’re going to look at words that still have reg- in them.

Regular showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French reguler, although that meant ecclesiastical—relating to the church. That word comes from the Late Latin regularis, containing rules for guidance (does seem like a church thing), from the classical Latin regula, rule. In English it had the church-y meaning, too, basically meaning the opposite of secular, but then in the late sixteenth century it meant things that followed patterns, which is more similar to how it was used in Latin, really.

Region showed up in the fourteenth century meaning “tract of land of a considerable but indefinite extent”, which I guess is pretty much how we use it today. It comes from the Anglo French regioun, Old French region, and classical Latin regionem, which, yeah, just region. It’s from the verb regere, to rule, set straight, or guide.

That rule part of regere is about to become significant. See, regime showed up in 1792 (yes, a specific year!) from the French régime, which came from the Old French regimen and classical Latin regimen, which could mean regime or government. That’s also where we get regimen from, although it showed up in the fifteenth century, also from Old French’s regimen. And regiment is from there, too. It’s even older in fact, having shown up in the late fourteenth century, although back then it referred only to a government, not becoming an army unit until the sixteenth century. It’s from the Old French regiment and classical Latin regimentum, administration or rule, so the government thing kind of makes sense. If anything, the fact that it’s a part of the armed forces is the weird part.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

Dictionary.com

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

Fordham University

Orbis Latinus

First Blood

Well, it’s started. I’m only surprised it took this long. Tumblr has flagged one of my old posts. In particular, this one:

Yeah. A baby. It must be a girl with female presenting nipples that are simply TOO SCANDALOUS for people to handle.

Yes, there is that “appeal” process where supposedly they’ll have an actual person look at the post instead of a bot that scans for any form of skin (seriously, I’m not the only one who’s had things flagged because they have flesh tones in them). But it’s still a stupid, crappy process that flags way more than it should. People can’t post sfw selfies without them getting flagged, and I feel like all these so called appeals take away time that should be maintaining their stupid crappy website.

Also, good news. The porn bots are all still there. As are the white supremacists. Wouldn’t want to ban those assholes or anything.

Less Than

This is far from the first time this has happened.

One time, more than a decade ago by now, I found a ketchup bottle in her pantry. It had turned brown.

Language of Confusion: Get Rect, Part I

This week we’re going to start looking at words with rect in them, either as a prefix or a suffix. And boy, are there a lot of them.

The origin for all these rect- words is the Proto Indo European root reg-, which means “move in a straight line”. That’s going to make a lot of sense for some of these words. And a lot less sense in others.

Rectangle showed up in the mid-late sixteenth century from the Middle French rectangle and Late Latin rectangulum. The rect- comes from the classical Latin rectus, which could mean things like correct, upright, straight, and righteous and the rest of course is the origin of angle. In Medieval Latin rectangulum meant a triangle that had a right angle, so as you can see things have changed a bit.

Now let’s look at something less literal. Rectify showed up in the fifteenth century from the Old French rectifier, to make straight. It comes from the Late Latin rectificare, to make right, and rectus, The -ficare part from rectificare comes from facere, to make, so rectify, to make straight. How sensible.

Correct first showed up in the mid fourteenth century meaning to set someone right by punishing them for an error, and then later in the century meaning to bring a text “into accordance with a standard or original”. It comes from the classical Latin correctus, reformed or a reformed person, which is from the verb corrigere, tocorrect, put straight, set right. The prefix is from com- and is thought to be intensive here, and the rest is from regere, to rule, set straight, guide. To really set something straight is to correct it.

Direct showed up in the late fourteenth century as directen, meaning to write a letter to someone or to point out a course. Its history is similar to correct, and it’s from the classical Latin directus, which could mean direct, success, or straight. The di- is from dis-, apart, which means this word, combined with regere is to set straight apart? I’m really lost on this one.

Now it’s time for the words that will make everyone giggle. Erect also showed up in the late fourteenth century, from the Latin erectus, upright, from the verb erigere, to lift up or set up, and it’s the e- that gives the up part, although it’s I don’t think a common prefix. Then there’s rectum. It didn’t show up until the early fifteenth century, coming from the Latin phrase intestinum rectum, which means straight intestine. Seriously, rectum just means straight or right. It was taken from a Greek phrase, apeuthysmeon enteron, rectal intestine. It was so called by Galen of Pergamum, a Greek physician, for the lowest part of the large intestine in animals. Because apparently some animals had intestines which were straight when compared to humans.

Seriously.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

Dictionary of Medieval Latin

Encyclopaedia Britannica

University of Ottawa, Canada

Orbis Latinus

January Goals

Well, 2019 is here. I’d say it couldn’t get any worse than 2018, but I keep getting proven wrong when I say that so I’m going to keep my mouth shut.

December Goals

1. Hopefully get beyond 50K in the WIP.

I did! Yay!

2. Update my etymology page before it gets out of hand.

Yep, did it.

3. Ugh, now we have Christmas.

Thankfully, it’s over and done with.

Pretty successful. I wish I had gotten more written though.

January Goals

1. Get to 70K in my WIP.

2. Figure out if I can start up a new spam blog.

3. Do all the crappy adult stuff I have to do.

So that’s the plan. Now let’s just hope I can wake up enough to do it. I’m just so tired.

A Bit Late

Wow, I forgot about this one. While not the very first stick figure comic I did, this was the first one I think was actually funny, from September 6, 2014. Enjoy!

This is an honest to god actual account of something that happened over my vacation, when my mom asked me to help her get the music she downloaded onto her iPad.

I'm not even kidding, two frigging hours.