From The Spamfiles

Yay, it’s that time again!

I, on the other hand, do not.

Someone should tell Love Swans that Sexy Love is ripping them off.

Give her kisses and grab her butt!

All you need to give is your social security number, first pet, and mother’s maiden name.

…That’s a damned lie. No one has ever requested to be my buddy in my entire life.

What? It’s a perfectly normal email address.

Fandom

I’ve had... issues with my fan.

In real life, it was only a few hours. But what a quiet few hours.

Language of Confusion: Perfect Cell, Part I

Hey, I haven’t etymologized “cell” before! That’s the only criteria I need to do it! Also, this will be a multi-parter, but not a big multi-parter. I think we’ve had enough of that for now.

Cell showed up in the early twelfth century meaning a small monastery, before a small room for a religious figure inside the monastery. It comes from the classical Latin cella, which just means cell (and is an excellent brand of chocolate covered cherries), and is related to celare, to hide. That actually can be traced to the Proto Indo European kel-, to cover, conceal, or save. So because monks/nuns hide away in tiny rooms, that’s what a cell became known as.

Obviously, it’s morphed a lot since then. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that it was used in a prison sense. And yet amusingly, it was used in reference to brain in the fourteenth century, as people used it in reference to different “rooms” of the brain having different functions. In biology, it was actually used in the seventeenth century—so again, this predates the prison sense, although back then it was in refreence to different cavities in anything, like in honey combs, and it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that it specifically referred to first an electric battery, and then a few decades later an organism. As for the phone usage, cell there is short for cellular, which showed up in 1753 meaning “resembling cells”. That word is actually from the Latin cellularis, of cells. It was in 1977 that it was first used in relation to phones, because mobile phone systems were divided into “cells” served by transmitters. And then it was shortened again into cell phone.

Cell is related to a few other words by way of kel-, and of course that’s where things get amusing. Conceal is also descended from it, having shown up in the early fourteenth century as concelen. It’s from the Old French conceler, to hide, and the classical Latin concelare, to hide. Con- is probably intensive here, and we’ve already seen celare, so the word is “to really hide”. There’s also ceiling, which showed up in the mid fourteenth century as celynge. It comes from the Middle English ceil, to put a cover or ceiling over, and before that, the Old French celer, to conceal, and you see where this is going. It comes from celare, too. A ceiling covers/hides you, so…

Finally today, color. Yes, really. It showed up in the early thirteenth century meaning skin color, from the Anglo French culur/coulour and Old French color, color or complexion. It’s from the Old Latin colos, which means “a covering”, and is also from kel-. Fun fact, the Old English word for color was hiw, AKA hue.

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

University of Texas at Arlington

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary

Fordham University

Rice University

September Goals

Oh, right. This.

August Goals

1. Work on planning the sequel to the WIP. I didn’t expect to do this already, but everything’s been going so well on it, that I’m actually getting to the point where it’s ready to be written.

Well, I failed this goal. Mostly because instead of “planning”, I just went ahead and wrote it. I managed to get 50K down by the end of the month. Whoops.

2. Keep editing. Can’t get distracted by the shiny prospect of first draft writing.

Yeah, this is a major fail. It was too shiny! I couldn’t resist!

3. BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

At least I didn’t manage to screw this one up!

So, yeah. Things definitely didn’t go according to plan. I just enjoy writing about this world so much… I’m already two thirds of the way done. I should’ve known I wouldn’t be able to resist.

September Goals

1. Well,  now that I’ve started, I might as well finish WIP-2.

2. Maybe actually get around to editing those old stories this time.

3. I should also update my etymology page. I don’t even have the case words up yet.

Let’s hope it’s easier to get my goals done this month. What are you up to?

Complainer

My break from the world was not long enough.

I mean, yeah. Pretty accurate.

Secret Origins: 8

Wow, it’s been a very long time since I’ve done one of these. Since… holy crap, last December. Damn.

As a word, eight showed up in the late fourteenth century as eighte, and even earlier as ehte. It’s from the Old English eahta/aehta, which is from the Proto Germanic akhto, and before that the Proto Indo European okto.

As for the symbol… well, that’s where things get crazy. Medieval writing has it as an 8, but in Arabic (where the numerals came to us from) it’s more of a ^ (the opposite of 7, which was that symbol inverted). Earlier, in Hindu, it’s like if it was part of the 8, as was in Brahmi, just with a slightly different part of the symbol. No real explanation for why we switched that digit’s symbol, though. Maybe to distinguish it more? But that’s pure guesswork on my part.

Ah, these posts are so quick and easy. They certainly don’t last nine weeks, that’s for sure.

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

Archimedes Laboratory Project

MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

From The Spamfiles

What’s this? A spam post? Isn’t it supposed to be a goals post? Yes, but since my blogging break is in the last week of the month, it would mean doing said post a week early. So I’m just going to push it back to next week.

[Spam 1492]

Sure. This is a perfectly real follower and not at all a spambot. I should hook them up with a follower I got just today...

Yes, yet another Greg email. I’m just really amused by the name “Irmgard”, which I was shocked is even a real name. It seems to be Germanic in origin. In any case, definitely not one you’d see where I live.

Hmm… Are 16 messages from the Local Ladies equal to 10 messages from Sexy Becca? (This message is from a trusted sender.)

Occasionally, you can see something like trends in spam, where they stop using a phrase or misspell it because people are putting them into their spam filter. “un.ssubs.cribee” is a prime example.

Okay, I’m not sure if “singies” is a misspelling in the same vein as the above or if they’re just really bad at spelling.

Oh, well, as long as they’re seriously attractive.