From The Spamfiles

Yay! This month has a bonus Tuesday so I don’t have to do any self-reflection! What a reprieve.

Could… It… WHAT????

…I need an adult.

No, I only get involved with malevolent projects.

I’m not religious or spiritual or anything so I don’t know, but are angels readable? Is it like a book or more like getting a PDF and needing a reader for it?
 
[Spam Comment 14] [Spam Commenter]

That Rajani has been spamming my blog again, so I decided to take a look at their profile. They’re a “freelance writter” whose favorite movie is “The Loin King”. That’s eyerolling enough, but their only interest is Blockchain, which is why you should block and report them NOW. Even for spammers, that’s scummy.

Being Right

I love it when crap lines up like this.

If my mom kept her phone with her, it would also be a lot easier to track her down when she disappears on me, which she does frequently when we’re out shopping together.

Language Of Confusion: Extreme Junction, Part IV

The last one! As usual for the finales of multi-parters, I’ve saved the weirdest for last. These words might not seem like they’re descended from the Proto Indo European yeug-, to join. But they are.
 
First today, adjust. Yes, adjust is from join, but no, just is not, the two words aren’t related at all. Adjust showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning to correct or remedy, while meaning to adjust something to conform didn’t show up until the mid seventeenth century, and a person becoming adjusted to something wasn’t until 1924! Adjust comes from the Old French adjuster/ajoster, from the Late Latin adiuxtare, to bring near. The ad- is from ad, to, and the rest is from the classical Latin iuxta, which could mean near, or according to, and is from yeug-. Just on the other hand comes from iustus, from the Proto Indo European root yewes-, law. In other words, they’re totally not related. What a difference an X makes. It’s easier to see in the word juxtapose, which showed up in 1826, with juxtaposition actually showing up in the mid seventeenth century. The word is basically juxta- + position, so to be in a position near to something.
 
Next, another word that’s not related to just (but is to adjust): joust. It showed up in the fourteenth century meaning what you’d expect, to fight on horseback. It’s from the Old French joster/joste, which is from the Latin iuxtare, to be next to, which is unsurprisingly from iuxta. As to how being next to got to mean hitting someone with a lance, well, let’s look at the word jostle. It showed up in the mid sixteenth century meaning to knock against (like you would during a joust!), and it’s really just joust with an -el at the end. Being near someone to bumping into them, to hitting them in the face with a lance. Makes perfect sense!
 
Now, almost all English words are Proto Indo European, with emphasis on the European part. The word yoga on the other hand is obviously Indian—Hindi, specifically. It showed up in English in 1820, while yogi actually showed up earlier in the early seventeenth century. Those just copy the Hindi words, which are from the Sanskrit yoga-s, which means union or yoking—with the Supreme Spirit—and from yeug-. Basically, yoga is yoking your spirit to a higher power. And now it’s something white yuppies do to pretend they’re spiritual.
 
The final word we’re going to look at is zygote, which, yes, is somehow related to yeug-. It showed up in 1878 from a German scientist, for no reason I can figure. The word—though not the definition—is related to the zygomatic bone in your face, the name of which showed up almost two hundred years earlier in 1709, from the word zygoma, which showed up in the late seventeenth century, called that because it joins the bones of your face together. Back to zygote, that word is from the Greek zygotos, zygote, and also things like yoke and weighing scales. And zygotos just happens to come from yeug-. No I can’t figure out how they got a clump of cells from that either.
 
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
Orbis Latinus

From The Spamfiles

This week is for the questions spam makes me ask myself.

I… don’t really know what I’m looking at here. Stealth attraction definitely doesn’t seem like a thing, and in fact seems creepy, and also, why are they sending it to ME?

Where do you find people to invest your money with if not by random emails?

Really, the email address is ninety percent random letters and numbers, and the person is named Helga for crying out loud. Does this actually work on people???

It wouldn’t be a spam post without a cancer stricken person trying to get me to give their money to charity. Have they never heard of lawyers?

Another person wanting to write a guest post for my blog despite me not knowing them. Frankly, I’m suspicious of anyone who calls me a “thought-leader”. What even is that?

Dial

I swear this is how it works.

No, I don’t know who switches the dial. I just know this is how it happens every year.

Language Of Confusion: Extreme Junction, Part III

Lots more words related to the Proto Indo European yeug-, to join. These ones… get a little more abstract.

First today, yoke, a word that actually kept the Y all these J words are supposed to have. It comes from the Old English geoc, yoke, which in spite of having a G, was pronounced something like yoke. It’s from the Proto Germanic yukam, which is from yeug-, so I guess it kept the Y sound because it’s Germanic instead of Latin.
 
Next, a word that gets weirder the more you think about it: jugular. It showed up in the late sixteenth century, referring to the veins in the neck before being specifically used as the name of one. It comes from the Latin jugularis, from the classical Latin iugulum, throat. That’s actually from iugum, yoke (though not related to the English yoke, of course). But it does make sense since the neck is the place where the head joins the body…
 
Another word with “jug” in it, subjugate, showed up in the early fifteenth century—subjugation actually showed up earlier, in the late fourteenth century. In any case, both words can be traced to the classical Latin subiugare, to subjugate, with sub- meaning under and the rest being from iugum. Well, you’re definitely subjugated if someone has your neck in a yoke.
 
But what about conjugate, which has to do with grammar and not necks? It showed up in the early sixteenth century, coming from the classical Latin coniugatus, which means—and I’m not making this up—a married man. The verb it’s from, coniugare, means to mate/marry or more literally, to yoke together. Guess we know what these people thought about marriage. See, the com- means together, and the rest is from iugum, and because verbs are “conjugated” by “joining together” parts of the verb with different roots (for example, the past tense of conjugate is the verb + -ed), it became a grammatical term. Conjugal is actually a much more literal use of the verb, though it actually showed up decades after conjugate.
 
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

From The Spamfiles

It’s the best part of the week! I know you’re excited!

“We’ve never met before. How about a business deal involving lots of money?”

Oh no! Anamul tried to sign into the Facebook account I don’t have!!! Whatever will I do?

First I miss out on that business deal, then my account gets hacked, now my delivery I didn’t order failed! This just isn’t my week.

Wait a minute, someone dying of cancer is emailing me… and they’re a man??? Something about this just doesn’t add up.

I really don’t think a traveling notary service is going to get a lot of customers by spamming comments on a random blog post. A random blog post about spam, I might add.

Jackhammer

They’re replacing some of the water pipes around where I live. Directly around.

It’s a busy road so I get not wanting to do it during high traffic times, but ten thirty on a Sunday night? Come on! The worst part? They were back three days later!!!

Language Of Confusion: Extreme Junction, Part II

This week we’re looking at more words that come from the Proto Indo European  yeug-, to join, which shows up in so many words having to do with a joining, especially if they have a J in them.
 
First, join, the root of this mess, which I probably should have done last week but there were a ton of junction words. It showed up in the fourteenth century, from the Old French joign- and its root joindre. That’s from the classical Latin iungere, to join, which we talked about last week since it’s the origin of juncture, too. And that word is of course from yeug-.
 
Now for all the prefixed forms. Adjoin showed up in the fourteenth century, the same time as join, and it also pretty much meant the same thing before also taking on the meaning to be adjacent to. It comes from the Old French ajoin and its root ajoindre, from the classical Latin adiungere, which means… well, join, but also to add to or to fasten to. The ad- comes from ad, to, so to adjoin is to add to. Its evolution and usage through the years is surprisingly sensible. How shocking.
 
Conjoin showed up in the late fourteenth century, and there’s nothing imaginative about this one. It comes from the Old French conjoindre, from the classical Latin coniungere, to connect or join together, with the prefix con- means together. Now this is just banal.
 
Enjoin at least has a definition that’s out there, since it means to direct something with authority. It’s the oldest word here, having shown up in the thirteenth century from the Old French enjoindre and classical Latin iniungere, which means literally to join or fasten but figuratively to impose. The prefix is just from en, which means in, so “to join together in” somehow means to impose. Now this is more like I expect from etymology.
 
Finally today we’ll look at rejoinder, which is different from rejoin, which is just re- + join. Rejoinder, like enjoin, is mostly used in legal terms, and it actually showed up in the mid fifteenth century in law usage. It’s from the Old French rejoindre, which meant to answer in legal terms and is their word joindre with the prefix re- meaning again. As to why joindre somehow means to say but only in legal terms, that mystery can only be revealed by French.
 
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

From The Spamfiles

Got to love spam. Well, electronic spam. I think the canned stuff is nasty.

Yes, replying to them will definitely make the messages stop, because that’s how it works. I know I’ve made this joke before, but the shear audacity gets to me.

1. Fancy lettering. 2. RE: in the subject line when I didn’t send the message. 3. Completely inappropriate emoji. 4. Congratulations! 5. “Something extraordinary is about to happen!” And that’s it, Spam Bingo!

From what I’ve heard about HSBC, it would actually be more scammy if it was legit.

It kind of got cut off at the end but she’s writing to me with the help of a nurse. Peeps, I believe we have a cancer widow here.

The Vietnamese is actually way less suspicious than the “This is very interesting news” on one of my blog posts.

Skylight

Spying!

He goes up on the roof. Is he now expecting to be let in via the skylight???

Language Of Confusion: Extreme Junction, Part I

This was inspired by Pradeep, who mentioned the word junction in one of his posts and got me going down a rabbit hole. And it’s another long multi-part series, because I never learn.
 
Junction showed up in 1711, a specific year, that’s how recent it was. Of course, back then it meant “act of joining”, and it wasn’t until 1836 that it came to mean two things coming together—in fact, it was first used that way in American English to refer to railroad tracks, and it spread from there. The word comes from the classical Latin iunctionem, connection or joining, from the verb iungere, to join. The reason for the iu at the beginning is because it refers to the Y sound, which used to be symbolized by the letter J before Italian used it to mean the soft J sound. Then the pronunciation of the word changed to fit the spelling, because that makes total sense.
 
Iungere there comes from the Proto Indo European root yeug-, to join, which is the origin for so many words that have something to do with joining. Injunction is pretty obvious, though interestingly it showed up in the early fifteenth century, so before junction. It comes from the Late Latin iniunctionem, a command, from the classical Latin iniungere, to impose. The in- means on- and comes from the Proto Indo European root en, and with iungere, to join, making injunction “to join on” or more figuratively to join together. Somehow that makes less sense than I expected, and I promise, my expectations were not high.
 
Also obviously related is juncture, which showed up in the late fourteenth century and first meant a place where two things are joined, before also meaning the act of joining together and then a point in time (as in, “at this juncture”, which is really confusing if you think about it). It comes from the classical Latin iunctura, combination or joining, which is of course from iungere. Makes more sense than the last ones.
 
Next, joint, both the part of a body and the adjective version. It showed up in the fourteenth century as the place where two bones meet, from the Old French joint, which is from the classical Latin iunctus, connected. The adjuctive showed up a bit later, in the early fifteenth century meaning united or sharing (and possibly where the slang term for pot came from). It comes from the Old French jointiz, which is from joint, so no huge leaps here. Disjointed showed up in the late sixteenth century, first metaphorically as a synonym for incoherent and then literally separating joints. It comes from the Old French desjoint, from the classical Latin disiungere, to disengage, a mix of dis-, lack of or not, and iungere. Disjointed is NOT joined together. How sensible.
 
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
Orbis Latinus

May Goals

Ugh, April was just wildly unsuccessful. Just another one of those months I’ve been having for the last fifteen years or so.
 
Ugh.
 
April Goals
1. Keep searching for beta readers for my book. It’s almost like people have lives outside of me or something.
Still working on this. Like I said, wildly unsuccessful.
 
2. Work on writing the new WIP I’ve decided I have to write right now this very moment.
I did this. I’m sure it’s not any good, but I got around 40K.
 
3. Update my etymology page, even though after a year I still can’t get the damn formatting right. Seriously, I HATE new Blogger.
Did you see they’ve screwed with commenting? Now I’ve got that to deal with, and heaven forbid they just fix post formatting! I WANT TO ADJUST PARAGRAPH SPACING DAMMIT! Without that stupid "Normal-Paragraph-Heading-Subheading" crap. And Also without it crashing on me!!! I used to be able to just paste my etymology list in from Excel and it was perfect, but nope, they had to wreck that. I have to copy it in from a Word file and because it’s a Word file, it screws up the formatting, but what else am I supposed to do when I have well over a thousand words that I’m not typing in and spacing one by one???
 
Kind of devolved into a rant on that last one. I think I have some stuff to work out. Which I wouldn’t if I could just use Old Blogger!
 
Okay, enough of that before I unleash another rant…
 
May Goals
1. More beta reads. Still need more people.
 
2. Finish new WIP. This one will hopefully be easy.
 
3. Work on an new draft of my query letter. And watch it become obsolete almost immediately. 
 
So that’s what I want to do for May. Though I’m tempering my expectations.