Questions

Sometimes it’s just one of those days, and something occurs to you and you can’t stop thinking about it.

I know that there’s some linguistic explanation for it, but that’s just not good enough!

Language of Confusion: Can I Get A Witness? Part I

These days, we really only know wit as a noun—someone has wit, but it’s not something they do. But it did used to be a verb meaning “to know”, too. The noun comes from the Old English witt, where it could mean understanding, sense, or sanity. That comes from the Proto Germanic wit-, from the Proto Indo European root weid-, to see (as in to understand or know, which makes sense for the evolution of the word). The verb has a pretty similar origin, coming from the Old English witan, to know (and it could also mean to have sex with, which I find way too amusing). In Proto Germanic the word is witanan, to have seen, and that comes from weid- as well. Witness happens to be a mix of wit + -ness, which is a word forming element that indicates action or a quality of something. It’s from the Old English witnes, witness. A witness is someone who knows something.

But there’s so much more than that. A lot of words come from weid-, many of them having to do with sight, appropriately enough. Visual showed up in the early fifteenth century from the Late Latin visus, the past participle of the verb videre. Vision is older, having shown up in the fourteenth century via the Anglo French visioun and Old French vision. In classical Latin, the word is visionem, vision, which is also from videre, to see. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that videre is from weid-. No explanation as to why they switched from a W sound to a V sound, though. And fun fact, video is one of the more recent words we’ve come across, having shown up in 1935. It was coined as the equivalent to audio (which itself only showed up in 1934) as people started using audio and visual transmission. It comes from the Latin video, I see, so we were still stealing words from the so-called dead language as recent as a hundred years ago.

Next, view showed up in the early fifteenth century as a formal inspection or survey before meaning seeing something in general. It’s from the Anglo French vewe, view, and Old French veue, light, look, or vision. The verb form, veoir, means to see, and comes from the Latin videre. So this one mostly makes sense. It’s weird how review kind of took over the original meaning of view in English. It actually meant an inspection of military forces when it showed up in the mid fifteenth century. It literally just means re- (again) view. To view again.

And there are so much more. We’ll get to those next week.

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

Fordham University

Orbis Latinus

From The Spamfiles

I always have more.

Damn it, Greg, you need to take care of this stuff.

Boy, Jenn really wants me to unsubscribe.

The emoji looks more like a sprig of parsley than pot. Much like the poison they’ll give you.

Is that even a name?

Uh-oh. Greg pissed off the impressionists. He’s in for it now.

Ohhhh…no. No no no. No.

Ooze

Cats be like that.

Peaches loves to sleep with her head hanging down off something. This is just the natural progression.

Language of Confusion: Wills

Will is a pretty common word. I know I use it all the time. So what are its origins?

It comes from the Old English willan, to wish or desire (the noun of course coming from the equivalent noun, willa). But there’s also a form of “to will” that comes from willian, that does mean to will. They’re all related and frankly I didn’t even know that there was a version of will that meant wish. In any case, all versions are descended from the Proto Germanic willjan, which is from the Proto Indo European wel-, to wish or to will. I guess that explains that. Although not the word won’t. I mean, why does the i change to an o? It was actually first recorded in the mid fifteenth century as wynnot (still makes more sense) and then in the late sixteenth century as wonnot. I guess that’s where the o is from, but it doesn’t explain why!

Of course there are a lot of other words that are (weirdly) related. Benevolence for example. Really. It showed up in the fifteenth century from the Old French benevolence and classical Latin benvolentia, goodwill. The bene- means good and the rest comes from volentem, wanting, and velle, to want, and that’s the part that’s also descended from wel-. Malevolence is pretty much the same, just with mal- (bad) in front instead of bene.

Voluntary actually comes from the same place. It showed up in the late fourteenth century from the classical Latin voluntarius, to volunteer, which is also from velle.

There are several other words that are related that I’ve actually already etymologized, like well and would, and although I’m not going to get back into them again, feel free to check out their own posts.

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

March Goals

It’s March, which means spring is almost here and hopefully we can say goodbye to the snow forever. Also I have goals to get to or something.

February Goals

1. Finish the first draft of my WIP! Yes, that is worthy of an exclamation point.

WOO! Draft one is done. I have no idea when I’ll ever have a chance to edit it, but one thing at a time.

2. Actually do something about a new spam blog.

I mean, kind of. I’m posting it here now. Only the finest spam for you guys.

3. Start planning the rewrites I want to do based on the beta reads I got.

I did plan out the rewrites! I even got started on them.

Not bad, right? A successful month in spite of how short it is. Now what should I do this month?

March Goals

1. Finish the rewrites.

2. Start working on all the other notes I was given by my beta readers. Hopefully I won’t be panicking too much to do this.

3. Update etymology page. It’s that time again.

I should be able to do all that. Maybe. Possibly. If anxiety doesn’t strangle me to death first.

So what are you up to this month? Are you looking forward to the change in seasons?

Run

The second someone starts ranting about the SJWs is the second you should start running in the other direction.

Keep in mind that I am definitely not following him at this point, but every time he posts a new fringe conspiracy theory about men being victimized by evil woman accusing them of sexual misconduct YouTube’s like WATCH THIS NEXT. I keep hitting “not interested in this channel” but it won’t stop.

Ugh.