Language of Confusion: Feeling Fruity, Part II

Now for citrus fruit. Except orange. Because it’s the color. Or really, the color is because of the fruit. Go look it up.

Lemon

Lemon showed up in the fifteenth century as…lymon. Wait, isn’t that the flavor of Sprite? No, wait. That’s limon. Which is the Old French word where lymon comes from. It came to us from the Arabic laimun and Persian limun via either Provençal (a Southern French language) or Italian. And before that, it might even be Malaysian! What a long way for a word to go!

Lime

Lime showed up in the seventeenth century, but that’s where things get murky. The Spanish lima or Portuguese limão probably gave us the word, and they probably got it from the Arabic lima, which meant citrus fruit and is from the Persian word limun, which I’m sure you find familiar. But it’s another one of those that we can’t be sure of. It’s obviously related in some way, but we can’t pin down the evolution of it.

Grapefruit

Grapefruit always bugged me, because come on. It has nothing to do with grapes. It showed up as a word in 1814, just over two hundred years ago. The fruit was known before that, but apparently it wasn’t eaten much until the nineteenth century, and I guess that’s why people didn’t give it a name before then. Although why grape and fruit I have no idea. It’s thought to have been called that either because of the taste or because it grows in bunches. It obviously doesn’t grow in clumps as numerous as grapes, but taste? In what world do grapes and grapefruit taste alike?

Tangerine

Tangerine showed up pretty recently, in 1842. It was originally tangerine orange, an orange from Tangier in Morocco. No big reveal here! It’s just named after a place that shipped it out.

Clementine

Clementine is the most recent of them all, having shown up in 1926, from the French clementine, which showed up in 1902. The reason it’s a clementine? It was named after a guy named Clement, who discovered it in his garden. He was actually a priest who ran an orphanage in Algeria and the fruit apparently appeared accidentally, so I guess he just happened to run across it.

That’s it for the citrus fruits. I mean, there’s a lot more in existence, but I’m not going into all of them. Maybe when I get really hard up for material.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Orbis Latinus

From The Spamfiles

Time for an easy post so I don’t have to do any actual work!

Well, the emojis are cute. Also I love how the sender is apparently named “congrat”. I am now signing every email I send with congrat. No one will know what I mean ever again. I will bask in their confusion.

Get your pills from Violent Cough! Sounds trustworthy.

I have to admit, confirming your email to unsubscribe is a new one. It probably automatically downloads every piece of malware ever to your computer. Also I think leaving the s off of congratulations is going on the Spam Bingo list because I get it all the time.

April 5. 2013. A bit late, aren’t we?

I googled this woman and she does exist and is the commander of all that. You’d think she’d have a better email address than “Japanjbkoy555” though.

I’m sure I will, but it won’t be about this.

Anyway, now I’m off to perform with my band Violent Cough. See you around!

Congrat.

Pronunciations

A lot of times these days, I’ve noticed that when you get a reminder for an appointment or something you get a robo-call. Some people don’t like it. But I really don’t mind.

It only took thirty years for something to finally know how to pronounce my name.

Language of Confusion: Feeling Fruity, Part I

I can’t believe I haven’t looked at the origins of the names of fruits before! Well, except for orange, which got covered with colors. There’s plenty more citrus to look at, though. But not this week. Next week. Probably.

Apple

Apple comes from the Old English aeppel, which could refer to apples, but also just mean fruit. And apple tree. And eyeball. Look, it’s a weird language. Anyway, it comes from the Proto Germanic apalaz and Proto Indo European abel-, apple. Fun fact, in MiddleEnglish apple used to mean any fruit that wasn’t a berry, and also included some nuts. And the tree of knowledge mentioned in the bible might not have had apples, but some other fruit that people were just calling apples.

Peach

Peach showed up in the fifteenth century, although weirdly enough it was a last name as early as the late twelfth century. It comes from the Old French pesche (peach or peach tree), which is from the Medieval Latin pesca and Late Latin pessica/persica. That word happens to be from the classical Latin phrase malum Persicum, which is what they called a peach and literally translates to Persian apple. Although they stole that phrase from Greek. Peaches are actually Chinese, but they did come to Europe via Persia and I guess that’s the name that stuck.

Cherry

Cherry first showed up in the fourteenth century, although it did appear earlier in the last name Chyrimuth, which is literally cherry mouth and why is that not still a name? It comes from the Anglo French cherise, Old North French also cherise, and Vulgar Latin ceresia. That was also taken from Greek, in this case the word kerasian, cherry, and kerasos, cherry tree. The fun fact for this one is that there was another word for cherry in Old English, ciris, which apparently also comes from ceresia, just via West Germanic. Weird.

Grape

Grape showed up in the mid thirteenth century from the Old French grape, which meant…grape. Or a bunch of grapes. It’s thought to be from another Old French word, graper, which could mean pick grapes as well as steal or catch with a hook. If that is where it’s from, then it’s from the Proto Germanic krappon (love that word), which means hook. And might be where cramp comes from. And the fun fact for this one: it used to be winberige in Old English, which translates to wine berry. Because come on. That’s all anyone cared about.

Plum

Plum comes from the Old English plume (plum, big shock), via a Germanic use of the Vulgar Latin pruna and classical Latin prunum, plum. And yeah, that’s where prune comes from, too, Well, the dried plum prune. Not what you do to overgrown plants. Before that, prunum is from the Greek prounon/proumnon. And, well, if you ever need an anagram for pronoun, now you have one.

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

University of Texas at Arlington

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary

Dictionary of Medieval Latin

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Fordham University

Orbis Latinus

Checking In

Remember how I do resolutions at the beginning of every year? Because I sure didn’t. I meant to check in on them last week but totally forgot about it. So I might as well do it now!

Resolutions 2017

1. Finish the first draft of my new WIP and hopefully start editing it.

2. Come up with an idea for a new story that I probably won’t have time to write but still want anyway.

4. Build a rocket ship and move to Mars because I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

5. Find a new project to work on in my spare time. You know, something easy that I can work on when I’m too tired to write.

6. Try to eat better.

7. Keep on blogging!

I seem to be on track. Holy crap, I’m even eating better. I can’t believe my goals are actually almost being met. This is insanity. If things keep going this good for me, maybe people won’t be racist, sexist jerkholes anymore! (That would be the replacement for number 3, BTW)

I like how things are going. Well, kind of. Goal-wise. What about you? Now that we’re more than halfway through, how’s 2017 treating you?

Loads And Loads Of Loading

Why does yelling at it never work?

If you ever hear a faint “Load!”, perhaps it’s me yelling at the wi-fi in a universe that no longer exists.

Language of Confusion: Gone and Done

Now for some basic words that we all use all the time, go and do.

Do comes from the Middle English do, the first person of the Old English don, which just means do. It comes from the West Germanic don and earlier, the Proto Indo European dhe-, set or put in place. As for the other tenses, did comes from the Old English dyde, which is a reduplicated syllable (that means a part of the word was doubled)—which was how West Germanic used to make words past tense.

There’s also does, which comes from doth, which became an S because of the Northumbrian dialect of Old English. Done comes from the Old English gedon, which has a bunch of different meanings, including do. Not sure why they dropped the ge- from it. Maybe so it would fit better? 

Go comes from the Old English gan, which just means go. Before that it was the West Germanic gaian and Proto Indo European gh­e-, release or let go. Funnily enough, go is what’s called a defective verb, which is actually kind of what it sounds like. In grammar terms, defective means that it’s missing some of its forms. You know, like how I can go, but I can’t have goed. Since it was missing a tense, back in Old English used eode, which we lost at some point and replaced with went.

Went used to be a variant past tense/past participle of wend. Somehow it got taken from wend and given to go, and wended became the past tense of wend. For no real reason. What the hell. We could be using eode.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Dictionary.com

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

University of Texas at Arlington

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary

Encyclopaedia Britannica