From The Spamfiles

Ah, how I love it when there’s a bonus Tuesday and I don’t have to do any introspection for another week.

Spam, yo.

I didn’t bother looking at the rest of this, so I’m not sure if it’s a “I need your help getting my money from my wicked stepmother!” thing or a come on. But given the lack of disturbing emojis, I’m assuming it’s the former.

See, this one is obviously a come on.

I’m assuming this one is too. I’m really kind of afraid of what “Those” are that she’s referring to.

What happens if I don’t confirm my subscription? Do I not get the spam you want to send me? Because I got to say. That’s seeming like a good thing.

They… they abbreviated “in”. WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU???

I love how random and contradictory everything is. First, am I from “Old School”? Like, what even is that? Then at the end, they’re going “I have absolutely no idea who you are.” Not even sure what they’re trying for there. And finally the fact that the message begins with an offer to stop receiving these messages/opt out, because that’s something people have in perfectly normal emails.

Tantalus

Where did they go?

I don’t know what happened to them. How could something so good be taken off the market???

Language of Confusion: Do-, Part I

Yes, another multi-parter! I love not having to come up with new ideas.

Now, I did do a while ago. But there’s also a prefix do-, coming from the Proto Indo European do-, meaning to give, that shows up in a ton of things. And that’s what we’re looking at. First, some words that actually have do- in them.

First, donor showed up in the mid fifteenth century, coming from the Anglo French donour and Old French donour. Those are from the classical Latin donatorem, which just means donor, from the verb donare, which is just donate or endow, and that is from the abovementioned do-. Donation’s origin is pretty similar, also showing up in the mid fifteenth century, although back then it was spelled donacioun because apparently people back then thought the T making a “sh” sound was stupid. It comes from the Old French donacion and classical Latin donationem, also from donare. But amusingly enough, donate actually didn’t show up until 1819, where it was formed from donation. I guess people didn’t donate back then, only endow.

And speaking of endow, it’s also from do-. Which makes sense, since do- means give. Endow showed up in the late fourteenth century as indowen, from the Anglo French endover, a mix of en- (in) and the Old French douer, endow. So it’s en-endow, I guess. Anyway, it’s from the classical Latin dotare, which like donare also just means endow. Yes, the Romans had two words for it. Dotare is also related to dos, which means dowry, and yes, that’s where dowry comes from. That word actually showed up in the fifteenth century in English, from the Anglo French dowarie and Old French doaire, then before that the Medieval Latin dotarium and then dotare.

Next, dose. It showed up in the early fifteenth century from the Old French dose and Medieval Latin dosis. That’s from the Greek dosis, a dose of medicine, from the verb didonai, to give, and that’s the one descended from do-. Wow, these words are making sense!

Speaking of medicine, antidote is also from do-. It showed up in the early fifteenth century, from the Middle French antidote and classical Latin antidote, which meant a remedy for poison. That’s also from Greek, from antidoton, antidote, and that one is from the verb antididonai, to give an antidote. And as you’ll notice, didonai is in there, too. The anti- means against, and since we already learned that didonai means to give, the word is to give against. In this case, against poison.

One more today, and this one is probably going to seem strange at first. Anecdote showed up in the late seventeenth century, from the French anecdote, meaning… anecdote. It’s from the Medieval Latin anecdota, from the Greek anekdotos, anecdote. The an- means not here, and the rest is ekdotos, which basically means published, so an anecdote is unpublished. The ek- in ekdotos means ex, out, and the dotos is from didonai. An anecdote is literally “to not give out”. I mean… I kind of get it, but not really.

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

University of Ottawa, Canada

Fordham University

From The Spamfiles

Frankly, they could have gone with “majestits” and I’m disappointed they didn’t. It was right there. Low hanging fruit.

Literally everything here is easily confirmed by a google search. There’s also one tiny little detail they got wrong: he’s a Major. He was a Captain when he received the Medal of Honor, but has since been promoted and moved to a different station. You’d think the spammers would read beyond the second paragraph on his Wikipedia page.

I’m… not really sure what this one is trying to say. Presenting the metal insets to Little Bee???

My compensational settlement! From Director UBA Bank!

Not just new, new new.

The hearts and—what are those? Sirens?—in a message about HD TV is rather concerning in a way I can’t quantify.

You wouldn’t think spaces would be that difficult to use, but then here we are.

Roofed

This is my life.

Do you think his tiny brain learned that lesson after the second incident (where he had to be coaxed into jumping down himself from a low spot on the roof)?

Well, look at this picture that was sent to me yesterday and see for yourself:

Language of Confusion: Jointed

Hey, more body parts. It’s been quite a long time since I looked at any of these.

Knee

Knee comes from the Old English cneo, which was indeed pronounced with a hard K. All the words with the silent K used to have it pronounced, but basically, people got lazy and didn’t want to say it. It’s from the Proto Germanic knewa-, which is from the Proto Indo European genu-, which means knee or angle—it’s actually the origin of the -gon prefix you see at the end of shapes like hexagon! Because knees are at angles! It actually makes sense! More so than the pronunciation going from G to K to N. Although I suppose I kind of see it.

Knuckle

Continuing with the kn- trend, knuckle showed up in the mid fourteenth century as knokel as the noun referring to the body part, while the verb of it didn’t show up until the mid eighteenth century. Knokel did refer to the finger joint, but it also referred to any joint in the body, or even a lump or swelling. As for where it came from… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There is no Old English version of it, although some Germanic languages have similar words, like German having knöchel, meaning ankle. Apparently it literally means “little bone” and comes from the Proto Germanic knuk-, bone. It seems Modern English took it straight from the German without it going through Old or Middle English. How weird.

Ankle

And speaking of ankle, it showed up in the fourteenth century, sometimes spelled with a C instead of a K, coming from the Old English ancleow, which also is just ankle. Remember how knee comes from the word for angle? Yeah, ankle does too, kind of. It’s from the Proto Indo European ang-/ank-, which means to bend, and is the origin word for angle. An ankle is also an angle!

Elbow

Elbow showed up in the thirteenth century as a contraction of the Old English word elnboga, which meant elbow, and is such a funny sounding word that I’m disappointed we don’t use it anymore. It’s from the Proto Germanic elino-bugon, a mix of the Proto Indo European word el-, the word for elbow or forearm, and bheug-, to bend. That’s actually the origin word for bow as well. Um, both bows, like you do with your body and like you shoot arrows with. Anyway, elbow literally means arm bend.

Hip

Finally today, hip. And the part of your body is not related to hip as in cool or the exclamation (hip-hip-hooray!), which are from apparently different versions of the word hep. It’s also not related to the word for seed pods. The joint is from the Old English hype, which means hip, although I’m not sure on the pronunciation. That’s from the Proto Germanic hupiz, and no one’s sure where that word comes from. But it’s definitely not the other hips.

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

University of Texas at Arlington

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary

From The Spamfiles

Okay, as someone who doesn’t own a car… Do you have to check to see if a vehicle is taxed at any point? I know people have to pay taxes on their cars, I’m just not sure why you’d have to check to see if it was taxed, because obviously it would be. I’m just wondering if I’m misunderstanding something here. Also I am definitely thinking way too hard about this. It’s a frigging spam message. Get it together. You have more important things to worry about.

I can say with 100% certainty that I have never signed up for “Adult SexMeet” as “terrysmurphy02”. Nor do I know anyone named “Terry” or “Murphy” (or “Smurphy” for that matter).

It’s actually pretty easy to find out who’s emailing you. You just look at who sent it.

Do you… not know how spaces work?

Getting a random email from an “Assistance General Manager” at an airport I’ve never been to. Totally nothing suspicious about that.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Your Urgent Response Is Needed! Located in United State CA. I have several friends in United State CA.

I Tried To Warn You

Pretty much a sequel to this comic.

You can only keep up the willful ignorance for so long, and then the horribleness hits you. And that’s why you have the protective blanket cocoon.

Language Of Confusion: Talking

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to look at this word.

Talk showed up in the thirteenth century as a verb, and then in the fifteenth century as a noun. It’s actually thought to be from the Middle English tale, which… yeah. It’s just tale. The K at the end is actually a rare word forming element, though it has shown up in words like hark, which is from hear. I just thought that was a neat factoid.

As for tale, it comes from the Old English talu, which just means tale. It’s from the Proto Germanic talo, and can be traced to the Proto Indo European del-, to recount or count. That’s actually the origin word for tell as well, which comes from the Old English tellan, which could mean to tell but also to count. That word is from the Proto Germanic taljan, which is also from del-. And that whole count business is actually why a bank teller is a teller. Teller showed up in the late fifteenth century meaning a person who keeps accounts, and it’s almost the only way tell is used in the count meaning. But there is another. Have you ever wondered why you “tell” time? Well, it’s because you’re counting time.

That’s really it for this week. I guess it’s was a short one. Talk/tell was surprisingly self-contained.

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

University of Texas at Arlington

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary

From The Spamfiles

Honestly, I’m so looking forward to these posts because of how quick and mindless they are.

I feel… vaguely uneasy about this.

I love the spam about getting rid of spam. It’s so meta! And full of computer viruses that will steal your financial information!

Yes that’s definitely Emily’s perfectly legitimate email address and not a string of random letters at all.

Oh, hey, the Love Swans are back. Someone should tell them to spring for color emojis. The black and white looks cheap.

See? Julia has color emojis. She obviously put some effort into this.

When society eventually collapses I don’t think gold and silver are going to be worth much. You should be investing in water filters and freeze dried food.

Spaced Out

Did you Blogger users notice it had a new interface to use?

Seriously, it was bad enough that it replaces all the words—stuff like “New Post”—with symbols—a giant +, like it’s so obvious that means the same thing. Heaven forbid we use words to name things, like they were invented for!

But the giant spaces it adds between lines are intolerable! The gaps are HUGE! Like, borderline unreadable. And there was no way to fix it (these huge gaps were there when you used single spacing, go to double space and it was even more insane). I had to switch back to even write my posts. Ugh. What the hell were they thinking?

Language of Confusion: The Happening

Happen showed up in the late fourteenth century as happenen, from hap, a word that was much more common then and way less common now. Hap showed up in the thirteenth century, meaning chance, or someone’s fortune or fate—happen originally meant something like “to have the fortune to occur”, and then it morphed into just meaning something that occurs, with no good or bad fortune required. Fun fact, before people used happen, Old English used the word gelimpan and Middle English just used befall. As for hap’s origin, it comes from the Old Norse happ and Proto Germanic hap-, from the Proto Indo European kob-, to fit or to succeed. Yeah, there used to be a K there. I guess good luck can help you succeed.

Now, there are several other words with hap in them, some more WTF than others. Mishap, which showed up in the mid thirteenth century, for example. It means bad luck, so with hap meaning good luck (and mis- literally meaning bad). There’s also hapless, which kind of means the same thing. It showed up a bit later than mishap, in the fifteenth century, and the -less means that it’s without good luck. Not sure why they felt they had to distinguish the two, but I guess it was important.

Perhaps showed up in the late fifteenth century as perhappes, though perhap, no S, showed up in the mid fourteenth century. The per means through, and with hap meaning chance, it was saying perchance. But, you know, instead of actually saying perchance. There’s also haphazard, which is a fairly late word, having shown up in the late seventeenth century. It’s just hap (chance) and hazard (danger). There’s a chance of danger. Wow. This makes way too much sense.

And there’s one more word we’re going to look at today. One I’ve actually looked at before, about four years ago. I actually mentioned it being related to happen back then, but never followed up on that. Until now! And that word, of course, is happy. It showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning lucky, and I guess it’s because lucky people are happy? I don’t know, but apparently words that mean happy once having meant lucky is common in several other languages. In any case, the -y means “full of or characterized by”, so with chance (as in, good luck), happy is lucky.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Omniglot

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

June Goals

Well, May felt shorter than April, but not by much. Still felt a few years long. I know I was supposed to do something last month but I can’t remember what…

May Goals

1. Get to 50K on the new WIP. Since I’m already at 10K and I just started a week ago, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Yeah, this was easy. I’m almost at 60K. So yeah. Pretty successful.

2. If I have the time, keep working on my old projects that I really shouldn’t abandon.

Was not successful here. I know I should, I just had no energy to work on anything else.

3. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. This really isn’t a goal. Just something I needed to get out.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Honestly, it was a pretty good month. In spite of, you know, everything.

June Goals

1. Finish new WIP. Not thinking this will be any problem.

2. Actually work on one of my old projects this month! The exclamation point means I’m serious!

3. Update the etymology page. I keep forgetting to do this!

It’s June, and summer is due to start here (and feels like it already has). What are you doing this month?