From The Spamfiles

I love these posts. Mostly because they’re really, really easy.

As opposed to all the 95% authentic Asian ladies online.

Will you leave me alone? Because that’s what I really want.

Okay, time for another rousing edition of Spot The Red Flag:

1. The (.)ru domain is just super shady.

2. They don’t use apostrophes, the monsters.

3. The delivery day was almost a year ago.

I don’t know. Do I or do not I like to contact via email or phone?

Because yeah, what do brain surgeons know? Anyway, I’m 100% sure that whatever they want you to eat will kill you, so I guess your tinnitus will be solved.

A spam comment on last week’s post about spam! The ouroboros is eating itself!

Sore

It’s a mystery.

Yeah, this comic is basically a combination of the previous two ideas.

Language of Confusion: Learning

Let’s get right into it, shall we?

Learn comes from the Old English leornian, which just means to learn so there weren’t any big jumps here. Although amusingly enough there was a word leorningcild, which means student, and is literally “learning child”. Anyway, leornian comes from the Proto Germanic lisnojanan, which actually had a sense of meaning that was “to follow or find the track”. I mean, you can see how learning is following a path? It’s actually from the Proto Indo European lois-, furrow or track. It makes sense (kind of), but still, wow.

Teach comes from the Old English taecan, which could mean teach or show, or even translate. The past tense of the word, much like our own version, switches from a c to a t. Which of course is because that’s where taught comes from. Taught came to us from the Old English tahte. No explanation why the letter switch, but let’s just chalk it up to Old English being Old English. Anyway, taecan comes from the Proto Germanic taikijan, to show, and the Proto Indo European root deik-, which has so many related words that it would take a long time to get through them. Maybe the next time I’m in the mood for doing a long series.

The origins of educate aren’t from Old English, so maybe it’ll actually make sense. It showed up in the mid fifteenth century from the classical Latin educatus, educated, and its verb form educare, which means teach or train. It’s actually related to another verb, educere, to lead, a mix of the prefix ex-, out, and ducere, also to lead. That word can be traced to the Proto Indo European deuk-, which means to lead and I’m sure has shown up in one of my etymology posts at some point.

Finally today, we’re looking at know. It comes from the Old English cnawan, which basically means know and yes, would have been pronounced with the hard C sound. It’s from the Proto Germanic knew and Proto Indo European gno-, to know, so this word stayed pretty steady through the years. Until we lost the K sound in front of it. Why’d we ever do that?

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

Yep, more of this.

Oh, great. Another one for Greg. Now they want his ideas. I guess he’s an inventor?

And he has a lot of unclaimed assets.

Yes, I really did get all of these in the space of maybe a week. Just when I thought the Greg mail was drying up.

Obviously the reward is inside the phone, because there’s no way in hell I’d consider an iPhone a reward.

I guess they’re telling me I have a $50 gift card for Amazon? I’m not really sure. Maybe they’re saying the fifty dollars is a withdrawal. Or Amazon is the withdrawal on my fifty dollars.

Wow, all I have to do to stop receiving these emails is click this link! Then I’ll never have to worry about spam again!

Cone

Orange and cone-shaped is usually associated with traffic cones.

She can’t help being conical. Well, she can, but it would require her to stop eating so much. And we all know she’s not going to agree to that.

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

This should be the last installment of this series about words descended from the Proto Indo European weid- (to see). And It. Gets. WEIRD.

First, idea showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning an archetype or a “concept of a thing in the mind of God”. It didn’t actually mean what we’d call an idea until the early seventeenth century. It comes from the classical Latin idea, which could mean idea or ideal, which makes sense since that’s where ideal comes from too. Latin (unsurprisingly) took the word from Greek, where it came from the ideal in Platonic philosophy, which is so complicated and I’m not getting into it. Basically it means an archetype from which imperfect copies come from. Anyway, the Greek idea comes from idein, to see, which is from the Proto Indo European wid-es-ya-, which is from weid-. I guess an ideal is something you see in your mind. There are a lot of other words related to idea. The prefix ideo-, of course, which came from the Greek version of the word.

And the word idol also comes from weid-, although down a very different path than its homophone there. It showed up in the mid thirteenth century from the Old French idole, idol, and classical Latin idolum, which could mean idol or image or even profit. It’s also from a Greek word, eidolon, also meaning idol, which could be either a mental image or a physical one. It’s from another Greek word, eidos, meaning kind or type or likeness. That’s actually where we get the suffix -oid from [https://www.etymonline.com/word/-oid]. So, like, in humanoid, the -oid there means like/think like a—it’s a thing like a human. And that’s from eidos, which is from the Proto Indo European weid-es, from weid-. To see. I guess you can see how something is like something else?

Here’s a word you won’t be expecting: envy. It showed up in the late thirteenth century from the Old French envie and classical Latin invidia, envy. Also a homophone for a tech company that makes pretty good graphics processors. Anyway, invidia is from the verb invidere, to envy, a mix of the prefix in- (upon and videre, which has been mentioned in previous installments as meaning to see and from weid-. You see something, you’re envious of it???

Making even less sense is the word prudent. Yes, it’s really one of these words. It showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French prudent, with knowledge or deliberate, and classical Latin prudentem, wise or knowing. It’s actually a contraction of providens, seeing, from the verb providere, to provide for or prepare or look ahead. The pro- means ahead [https://www.etymonline.com/word/pro-], and the videre, to see. To see ahead is to be prudent. And yes, that’s where prudence comes from, as well as providence. All that because Latin decided to contract a word that wasn’t even longer than the contraction.

I don’t even know what’s real anymore.

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

April Goals

It’s that time again. I’m not sure if March went by really fast or if I was just really, really slow.

March Goals

1. Finish the rewrites.

Hey, I did this. Now I have a bunch more stuff to edit. :/

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.

I only got about halfway through this. There were a lot of corrections to make. My friends probably now think I don’t know how to write. They’re not wrong.

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

At least I got this done. Not like it’s difficult!

Honestly, I did as much as I was able to. Mostly. There may have been one or two days where I blew everything off. So what about this month?

April Goals

1. Finish the notes from my beta readers.

2. Work on all the notes that I’ve made because of suggestions from my beta readers.

3. If I’m able to finish the first two notes, then I can start editing the short story I wrote last year.

That’s the plan, at any rate. Hopefully there won’t be anything huge that gets in my way.

Oh god, I jinxed myself, didn’t I?

What are you going to do this month?