Before And After #3

Yeah I’m not sharing a damn thing.

Back to normal next week. See you then!

Before And After #2

It’s Thanksgiving! I probably won’t be around! But not because I’m doing anything. I just don’t feel like it.

Yes, things are so very different around here.

Before And After #1

It’s the week of Thanksgiving here in the US! As per usual, I’m doing something slightly different this week. This year I decided to look at the vast differences between 2019 and 2020.

Although in real life, all parties were then cancelled because of the pandemic. It’s just funnier this way.

Pomegranate

Occasionally my mom wants me to try new things with her. I wouldn’t call it a waste of time, but… Well, maybe I would.

I’m not an adventurous eater at all, and fruit is probably the only food type I would try an unusual variety of. And I probably wouldn’t because this is usually the result.

Language of Confusion: Tear

Another redo this week. I am totally out of original ideas. This one is almost exactly ten years old, so maybe it could use another looking at.
 
Tear has two different meanings, to rip something apart and what happens when you cry. The crying one showed up as a verb in the early fifteenth century and a noun sometime before that, coming from the Old English tear, which is just tear, so nothing shocking here. It’s from the Proto Germanic tahr-/tagr-, and yes, that’s a g in there. That can be traced to the Proto Indo European dakru-, which means… I don’t know. Weirdly, the etymology dictionary doesn’t say. Well, when a language is more than six thousand years old, you’re bound to lose a few definitions.
 
The other tear showed up as a noun in the mid seventeenth century and a verb before that, coming from the Old English teran, to rip apart. It’s from the Proto Germanic teran, from the Proto Indo European root der-, to split, flay, or peel. Unlike dakru-, der- shows up in a lot more places. Derm—as in skin—is actually from the same place, and I can only assume it’s because skin peels. Kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?
 
Tart is actually also from der-. But not the pastry, which is actually from the PIE root terkw-, to twist. Or the derogatory word for a woman, which is from the pastry (well, maybe). No, I mean tart as in how something might taste. Which is not related to the other definitions at all. That tart showed up in the mid sixteenth century, and one theory is it’s from the Old English teart, painful, sharp, or severe, and I can see tart coming from that. Anyway, teart is from the Germanic ter-t-, which is from der-, and no, I don’t get how it went from peel to sharp. Who knows? Maybe it’s not even related at all.
 
But there is another word that’s most definitely from sharp and I’m way too amused to share it with you: turd. Yes, that turd. It comes from the Old English tord, from the Proto Germanic turdam. That word is from the past participle of der-, drtom, and it’s thought that because turds are split off from people (XD at that image), and split is one of the definitions of der-, we have turd.
 
Yes, this was an appropriate note to leave off on before Thanksgiving break. I think we can all agree it was clearly a mistake not to go into more depth on tear the first time.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
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

From The Spamfiles

Spam! Whoo!

The thing that always bothers me about these is that it says RE:, like it’s a response. Are people actually going, “Hm, yes, this is definitely continuing a conversation I was deeply engrossed in.”?

We have a new salutation! Warmth greetings, everyone!
 

That is the most ridiculous account number I have ever seen. That’s a grand total of (yes, I counted) fifty four numerals, because apparently they have over one septendecillion customers.

They need my confirmation, because that will stop the constant emails.

Guys! Linda Gilbert is giving me my ATM master debit gold card! It’s for the present arrangement to pay me, obviously.

Okay, when you abbreviate a word by putting a period after the second to last letter, it kind of renders it meaningless.

If Only I Could Hate It To Death

I can’t believe how early it snowed this year.

It didn’t stick on the pavement and it was gone in a few days, but still. Ugh.