Spam Bingo, The Final

Ha, remember this? It was almost exactly a year ago that I posted my Spam Bingo post. It was going pretty good for a few months, but as I’ve mentioned before my spam has been surprisingly sparse lately. Anyway, let’s see how it looks!

Yep, I did manage to get everything, even the last two holdouts (foreign person asking for money and someone you can easily google—which I’ve gotten several of in the past month, BTW). Frankly, it wasn’t a very hard challenge. Although I bet it would be in 2018. Where has all the spam gone?!

Happy New Year, guys! I’d say let it be better than 2017, but the bar is so low that it’s almost meaningless. 

Words That Make Me Irrationally Angry

Last word post of the year! So you’re going to hear me complain about words that bug me. In ascending order from “Meh” to “Sorry I keep stabbing you but you keep using that word.”

1. Pleaded

This isn’t one hundred percent of the time, and really it only bugs me that pled exists and no one uses it. I like pled. The person pled guilty to the crime. They pled for their life. Why do we need pleaded? Why does this bug me so much?

2. Numerals instead of spelling out numbers

I can’t remember what I was reading, just that it began a sentence with a 2 and I was like, no, that will not do. I tend to spell out numbers most of the time, but I usually don’t mind when people use numerals in their writing. Still, sometimes I see it and I just dislike the look of it, especially when it’s a smaller number. Like, just type out seven. It’s not that many more clicks.

3. Alright

While this one won’t send me into a rage, I just don’t like it. Every time I look at it I go “Ugh!” It’s literally displeasing to my eye, the same as seeing someone wearing socks with sandals or fanny packs. Yes, I know there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. I use already and altogether all the time. But alright…it’s one bridge too far.

4. Till as short for until

Til I can tolerate, and ‘til is perfectly acceptable. But damn it, till is what you do with soil and I won’t hear otherwise.

5. Guesstimate

The fact that this word isn’t showing up with a red jagged line under it in Word is sending me into a blinding rage. I may kill someone because of it and damn it, that won’t be on my conscious. Using it around me is taking your life in your hands. Guess and estimate are perfectly capable of doing the job!!!

Any words/usages that drive you crazy?

Reflections 2017

I think this year can be best summed up by one word: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH. On one hand none of my relatives died. On the other, republicans are damn sure trying to turn the world into an unending nightmare. So. You know. Things are still pretty bad.

Anyway, let’s see what I was supposed to do this year.

Resolutions 2017

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

Sigh, I really wish I did this. Maybe if I wasn’t so tired. And, you know, constantly terrified about losing my health care.

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

I actually have been toying with a new idea lately. I really like it, and also hope that I continue to really like it.

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

Of all the things I didn’t do, this is the one I regret the most. I wish I was anywhere but here.

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.

I never really found anything new that I wanted to work on. Not that I haven’t been too tired to write…

6. Try to eat better.

Probably not as much as I should.

7. Keep on blogging!

Why am I so excited for this. Stop being so enthusiastic. There is nothing warranting it. Stop it.

Yeah, this was a pretty depressing post. Sorry. I hope you have a happy new year and it’s nothing like 2017.

The Last To Know

No one ever tells me anything.

I suppose I should be glad I found out sometime before the day itself.

Language of Confusion: Seasonal Things

Just a quick one today since I’m sure you all have stuff to do now that the holiday is almost here. And speaking of holiday…

Holiday

Holiday showed up in the sixteenth century, although earlier it existed as haliday. It comes from the Old English haligdaeg, which is a mix of halig, holy and daeg, day. Fun fact of the day, holy (of course) comes from halig, which comes from the Proto Indo European kailo-, whole or uninjured…the origin word for health.

Eggnog

Eggnog obviously is egg + nog, although as just one word it showed up in 1775. Nog showed up about a century earlier meaning a strong type of beer brewed in Norfolk. Funny how they named the drink after it.

Carol

You know, like a song. Which I’ve always wondered why it’s called carol and if it’s related to the name. Ha ha, no. Not at all. It showed up in the fourteenth century meaning either a joyful song or to dance in a ring. It’s from the Old French carole/caroler, but before that is unknown. It might be from the Medieval Latin choraula, a dance to the flute, from the classical Latin choraules, flute player or piper, which in turn is from the Greek khoraules, from khoros, or chorus.

Noel

Noel showed up in the late fourteenth century as nowel, which I think makes way more sense spelling-wise. It’s a variant of nael, from the classical Latin natalis dies, birthday. Which…yeah, that’s what it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?

Yule

Yule comes from the Old English geol/geola, which are other words for Christmas (although geola could refer to a period of time including December and January). It might be related to joy and jolly, but probably not.

That’s it for etymology this year! I’m still posting next week and I’m sure it will be word-related, but it’s probably going to be something different. We’ll see!

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

Tis The Season (To Be Impossible)

It’s almost the end of the year! That means it’s time to slack off even more than usual!

There’s a game/torture device called the Impossible Quiz (as well as two sequels) and this year, just in time for the holiday, the creator put out a new Quiz, and this one is Christmas themed.

Now, being called impossible, it’s not supposed to be easy. Or even make sense. There are time limits on some questions that straight up end the game if you fail, oh, and others you’re not supposed to answer by clicking one of the four answers given but do something else entirely.

It’s extremely frustrating. Which is good preparation for having to spend time with your family. Go enjoy it and try not to break your computer.

Happy Nondescript Winter Holiday!

Stupid Ideas

It looked so easy. Just sign into another Google account with the click of the button instead of going through the trouble of signing out. My excitement over this lasted about five seconds.

I use my google account for pretty much just email and blogging, so I really can’t see how this is useful. Is there something I’m missing?

Language of Confusion: Other Lows

Now for other things kind of related to things going down.

Phrasing.

Trip

Trip showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning skip, dance, caper (how often do you hear that word) or basically step lightly. So pretty different from what we know it as. It didn’t mean to fall over something until a century later and there’s nothing about how it managed to go from one to almost the complete opposite, but it’s from the Old French triper, jump/dance around or to strike with the feet. I guess it must have just gone back to the other Old French definition (although to strike something with your foot isn’t necessarily to trip over it).

Fall

Fall showed up in the thirteenth century, coming from the Old English feallan, which is just fall. It’s from the Proto Germanic fallan and the Proto Indo European pol-, to fall. And of course the reason that autumn is also called fall is because in the mid sixteenth century people used to say “fall of leaves”. Then, as always, they got lazy.

Slip

Slip showed up in the early fourteenth century in the sense that one would “slip away” from something, while the slip and fall sense didn’t come until the mid fourteenth century. It’s believed to be related to the Middle Low German slippen, glide or slide, from the Proto Germanic slipan and Proto Indo European sleib and its root word (s)lei-, which means…slimy, sticky, or slippery. And is where slime comes from. Oh and because things weren’t weird enough, while a woman’s slip is probably related (because it’s something that’s easy to slip in and out of it’s related to slip away), the slip that’s in pink slip is not.

Drop

Drop comes from the Old English dropian (the verb to drop) and dropa (the noun drop). Originally, they had to do with liquid, like dropa was a drop of liquid, not a fall, and dropian was to fall in drops like rain. It wasn’t until later that it took on the meaning of anything dropping down. At least I can at least see the logic in that progression. The words come from the Proto Germanic drupon and Proto Indo European dhreu and…that’s it, it looks like.

Sink
Sink showed up in the early fifteenth century as a noun meaning a cesspool (or place where sewage collected) and as a verb sometime before that. It comes from the Old English sincan, to sink, Proto Germanic senkwan, and Proto Indo European sengw-, also to sink. Now as for the reason that we clean dishes in a sink and it is no longer a cesspool, it’s because in the late fifteenth century it came to mean a drain for carrying water, and then it became a “shallow basin” with a pipe to drain dirty water, and then calling it a sink in general just stuck I guess.

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

Oxford Living Dictionary

From The Spamfiles

Yeah, another spam post. What can I say, it’s the end of the year and I’m running out of steam. Also spam. I used to get scads of spam every day and now it’s usually only once a week. I appreciate the effort of spam blocking but man, it makes it difficult to come up with amusing posts.

Nothing really special about this, just the usual cancer widow needs help with her millions of dollars. But at the end it says “PLZ REPLLY TO MY PRIVATE EMAILBOX BACK” and frankly that’s just hilarious, like she suddenly morphed into a fourteen year old texting on their phone.

About time someone gave me two million dollars for no reason.

Welcome to arnazon!

It’s only been four years. I’m sure the email is still relevant.

When your neighbor emails you, it’s always as “your neighbor”. Otherwise how would you know who it was? Also I love that ASAP is in quotes, and that they put periods after every letter except the P. Maybe it stands for something besides as soon as possible.

Now I’m going to be up all night wondering what A.S.A.P stands for. As soon as P? As serious as P? Artistic Soul Always P?

Sides

A true story.

My mom seems to create entertaining situations. Of course I usually end up getting yelled at.

Language of Confusion: Lows

First we did highs and middles, and now it’s time for the lows.

Bottom

Bottom comes from the Old English botm (or bodan), ground (and also ground). I guess that makes sense since the ground is usually the bottom of things. Anyway, before that it was the Proto Germanic buthm, which might be from the Proto Indo European bhudhno-, which means bottom. The ground was the bottom, and then the bottom was the ground.

Low

Low showed up in the late thirteenth century, although earlier it appeared as just lah. Weirdly enough, this word isn’t found in Old English, so it’s thought to be from the Old Norse lagr, and before that the Proto Indo European legh-, lie down or lay. That does make sense, although it’s strange that it skipped right over Old English like that. Fun fact, the low that’s a synonym for moo is not related at all, and it actually does have an Old English equivalent.

Down

Down is actually the shortened form of the Old English ofdune, which is a combination of the words of (just of, big surprise) and dune (down). Dune (which is where dune comes from, by the way) comes from dun, which is a hill or mountain. So because things roll down a hill, we have down. Also down as in feathers is totally unrelated because of course it is.

Under

Under is from the Old English under, which means…under. No big surprises here. Before that it was the Proto Germanic under- and Proto Indo European ndher, also under. So I guess we have a winner for least changed word.

Beneath

Finally today, beneath. It comes from the Old English bineoþan, which looks fancy but is just beneath. It’s a combination of be- (which means by here) and neoþan, which is related to niþera, lowest or under, and the origin word for nether. Niþera can actually be traced to the Proto Germanic nitheraz and Proto Indo European ni-, below or down. Funny how we don’t use nether anymore when we can trace it further back.

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

December Goals

Holy crap it’s December already. Oh god, that means I have to get my mother a Christmas present. This is not going to be a fun month.

Anyway, goals.

November Goals

1. Sigh. Write in the book. Let’s see how badly I’ll fail it this month.

Well, I did write in it. I finished the outline (kind of). I just haven’t figured out how to get to the final confrontation.

2. Thanksgiving. Ugh, did anyone feel a foreboding chill just now?

It was weirdly not bad, mostly because it was very small so I didn’t have to deal with most of my relatives. Quite a relief.

3. Go through some old projects and notes and see if anything’s worth salvaging.

Didn’t do this, but I’m just pleased that I managed to write SOMETHING last month.

So, this month.

December Goals

1. Update etymology page. I think it’s been a few months and those words add up.

2. Hopefully write something.

3. Christmas. Yeesh.

It’s the last month of the year! What are you going to do?

Comfy

I usually write my blog posts for the upcoming week on Thursday, so this is what happened on Thanksgiving…

I mean. It’s not like Friday doesn’t exist for a reason.