Language Of Confusion: Bodies Of Water, Part II

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Bay

Bay showed up in the fifteenth century from the Old French baie and Late Latin baia, which might be from the Celtic Iberian (Celtic people who settled in what’s now Spain) bahia. And it’s not related to any other usage of the word bay, because why would it be?

Pond

Pond showed up in the thirteenth century, but back then it only meant a fake body of water. Uh, fake in the man-made sense as opposed to naturally occurring (which it did pick up the meaning of later on). It’s actually a variation of the word pound, but not the pound that means weight or money or hit repeatedly. Instead it’s from the one that refers to the place where stray animals go, because that means enclosure and I guess somehow a pond is an enclosure? It’s of “unknown origin” before that, but… yeah. Animal pound and pond are two words I did not expect to be related.

Creek

Creek showed up in the mid fifteenth century as creke, which is an altered form of kryk, which showed up in the thirteenth century. It might be from the Old Norse kriki, corner or nook, with some influence from the Anglo French crique, or hell, it might be related to the word crook (in the sense of being crooked or twisted literally as opposed to figuratively). Well, these words are turning out to be more interesting than expected.

Strait

Strait showed up in the mid fourteenth century, but it didn’t refer to bodies of water until the late fourteenth century. It comes from the Old French estreit/estrait, narrow pass, which is where we get the non-water related strait (as in strait-laced or straitjacket) and is absolutely not related to straight in anyway. Somehow. And strait comes from the classical Latin strictus, narrows, past participle of stringere, bind. And before you ask, strictus is where we get strict but stringere is somehow not where we get string. No, that would make too much sense.

Gulf

Gulf showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French golf (gulf) and Italian golfo, (also gulf). It’s from the Late Latin colfos, which was taken from the Greek kolpos, bay or curved shape (also one of its definitions is sinus). That word can be traced to the Proto Indo European kwelp, arch, curve, or vault. Fun fact: whelm (as in over or underwhelm) is from the same word!

This one was way weirder than last week’s. I think it broke my brain. How are words even real?

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

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Fordham University [http://www.fordham.edu/]

Orbis Latinus

Standing Idly By

Time for another game recommendation, because I’m sure I’m a huge influencer in this regard.

Have you heard of idle games? AKA incremental/clickers games? They’re games that you play for a bit to set things up, then leave idle to rack up points or whatever that you then spend to… earn more efficiently. Look, it’s more fun than it sounds.

A month or so ago I found a game called Idle Evolution, which is actually less about evolution and more about collecting atoms, which you can use for a variety of purposes, one of which is making compounds that somehow advance evolution on a planet. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense scientifically. But still, I had fun with it. I haven’t played anything like it before and it appeals to the chemistry nerd in me.

There are actually two versions of the game, one on Newgrounds, which is basically a beta/scaled down version of the paid (four dollars) Steam version. The Steam one is obviously better as it has added mini-games to make the waiting less boring, and also it’s much, much faster in terms of getting through the game. It takes like fifteen hours of gameplay to get through it in Steam; I haven’t actually finished the browser version because as you progress further it gets sooooo sloooooow. Basically it’s what you want to play if you want to see if you’ll like the full version.

It has some flaws, like things taking forever sometimes and the translation—the creator doesn’t speak English and it shows in places. But it’s worth the four bucks it costs and I love that you’re unlocking a periodic table piece by piece. I hear there’s a sequel as well, but it’s not on Steam unfortunately so I can’t check it out. Oh well.

You played any fun games lately? What do you do when you want to waste time?

Seriously Shut Up

Three things I hate:

1. Advice I didn’t ask for.

2. Explanations I didn’t ask for.

3. Explanations I didn’t ask for that I already know.

“Why don’t we hang out more?”

“Because you’re always explaining things I didn’t ask about to me in a condescending manner.”

“What? I don’t do that. And really, condescending refers more to—”

“Bye.”

Language of Confusion: Bodies of Water, Part I

Inspired by run being related to the flow of water last week.

Ocean

Ocean showed up in the late thirteenth century from the Old French ocean and classical Latin  oceanus, ocean. It’s not really surprising to learn that the Romans ripped off the Greeks, as oceanus is from the Greek okeanos, which also just means ocean. Where that word is from no one knows but there is the Greek Titan Oceanus. Who knows how they came up the name for that?

Sea

Sea comes from the Old English sae, which means sea, big shocker. It’s from the Proto Germanic  saiwaz, but there isn’t anything before that. Well, that was a quick one.

Lake

Lake showed up in the early twelfth century from the Old French lack and classical Latin lacus, which meant lake, pond, cistern and other similar words. That can be traced back to the Proto Indo European laku, body of water, and the origin for a lot of other languages’ lake equivalent. Fun fact, there are two other definitions for lake I hadn’t heard of, one meaning “to play” and the other “Deep  red coloring matter”. Neither of them is related to the other lake.

River

River showed up in the early thirteenth century from the Anglo French rivere and Old French riviere. Those words are from the Vulgar Latin riparia, riverbank, from the classical Latin riparia, embankment. Also related to this word are riparian, rift, and riven, which… I’ve heard of riparian, but riven???

That’s it for this week, but there’s plenty more water words to look at. Well, enough for another post anyway. This isn’t going to be another -leg saga. Thankfully.

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

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Fordham University

Unnecessary Roughness

The first draft of my latest WIP is done! I can’t even believe it! It’s been years since I’ve actually made it this far. And I still really like the story, which is even more impressive. I don’t mean just that I enjoy it or think it’s a good idea, but that I still find it interesting to write about. I’m still bummed that I never felt like finishing my previous book, but it never held my interest as much as this one has. I’m not sure what that says about it, but it’s something.

So the first draft is done, which means that it’s time to start editing. Usually I find editing to be such a bore, but I’m not dreading it this time, possibly because it’s been so long since I’ve actually done it. Actually, scratch “possibly”.

Anyway, I’m off to edit. Have an amazing day!

via GIPHY

Future Tense

She’s always doing this to me.

I’ll get her. Someday.

Language of Confusion: Run

This week’s word is brought to you by Liz. Because she read something that said that run was the most complicated word in the English language and I wanted to see if that was so.

Run first showed up as a verb and then later (in the fifteenth century) as a noun. The verb is actually a combination of two Old English words that are kind of alike, rinnan, to run and irnan/aernan, to ride. Both are from the Proto Germanic rannjanan and its root word ren-, to run, which is from the Proto Indo European rei-, to run or flow.

Rei- is the origin of a lot of words, like derive and rival, both of which I’ve already covered before (though almost three years ago now). And you might be thinking river is related. After all, flowing is what they do. But it’s not. Although river is from a Proto Indo European word “rei-”, it’s a different Proto Indo European rei- that means scratch or tear apart.

Okay, as weird as that is and as diverse in meaning as run may be, I definitely don’t think it’s complicated. But maybe I spent too much time pouring over information on leg-.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

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

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary