From The Spamfiles

It’s the day before Halloween, you’d think I’d have something spooky up, but I couldn’t think of anything good so here you go. If you really want something scary, just read a newspaper. I’ve been finding those pretty terrifying lately.

Dirty, filthy things like using a 0 in place of an O.

Charlina Mcdona… great name or greatest name?

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten an email from a cancer widow (or a ‘long time illness’ widow). I love how she misspells her own name.

Apparently general managers are taking care of unsubscribe requests personally.

Certified mail by email! Yes that’s a thing! Shut up.

Got to say, I’m nervous about hang being in quotes. I mean, hang is more commonly used in its figurative sense these days, which is usually what something being in quotes implies. I fear that in this case, the quotes indicate that it is being used in the literal sense, and I’m going to end up hanging from a belt if I reply.

Scary Movie

It’s Halloween season, so that means I’m watching scary movies with my mom. She gets a bit jumpy.

I think I know why she needs me around when she watches movies.

Language of Confusion: Evil

How about we etymologize some evil things, because why not?

Evil itself showed up in Old English as yfel, which was actually pronounced pretty much like evil and was also spelled evel in the Kentish dialect of Old English. It comes from the Proto Germanic ubilaz and Proto Indo European upelo-, which is from the root wap-, bad or evil.

If you want another example of that f-v thing, then you can also look at devil, which was deofol/deoful in Old English. Except that word came to English via a completely different route. It was diabolus in Late Latin and diabolos in Greek, from the word diaballein, which actually meant to slander, attack, or throw across. Seriously, the ballein meant to throw and dia means across. Wow, some words sure do change.

Malevolent showed up in the sixteenth century from the Middle French malivolent and classical Latin malevolentem, which, yeah, is just malevolent. The male part means ill, poorly, or badly (no comment) and the volentem comes from velle, to wish or want. To wish or want bad stuff is pretty malevolent. Similarly, malice showed up in the fourteenth century from the Old French malice. In Latin, it’s malitia, malice, from malus, bad. It just lacks the wishing part.

Wicked showed up in the thirteenth century, although in the twelfth century they had wick, which meant the same thing. It’s thought to be from the Old English wicca, witch, and interestingly enough was a past participle without a verb (that means that wick was also always past tense, too).

You can be wicked but you can’t wick!

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

University of Ottawa, Canada

Orbis Latinus

Mushrooms

Mushrooms often pop up around where I live, but this is kind of ridiculous.

I had to point them out because they look like fallen acorns. But nope, they're mushrooms and they’re growing out of the sidewalk. I have a better picture of another set here:

I’m sure what really happened is that the crack was already there and the mushrooms just grew. Although the way the pavement is pushed out… almost as if it’s coming from underneath…

Stalked

I swear to god, Peaches has what looks like a long, thin skin tag in her ear.

It looks like an eyestalk, except thankfully I’ve never actually seen an eyeball in there.

Yet.

Language of Confusion: Treats

We did the tricks, now it’s time for the treats.

Treat itself showed up in the fourteenth century, as a verb before it was a noun. It actually didn’t even mean treat in the sense we know it as but as negotiate, or bargain—you know, like would be related to treaty. It wasn’t until the seventeenth century that it was something special that you gave someone, and who knows why that was. But the word comes from the Old French traitier, deal with or act towards, which is thought to be related to tract. But not like a tract of land, which is something completely different. Instead it was related to a tract that meant treatise, and is thought to be related to the classical Latin tractatus, treatment, and tractare, to treat. Man, this was a weird journey.

Candy first showed up in the late thirteenth century specifically meaning crystallized sugar. It comes from the Old French çucre candi, sugar candy. So where does candy come from? It’s one of the rare words English stole from Arabic, where it’s qandi, from the Persian qand, meaning cane sugar. And that one’s thought to be from the Sanskrit khanda, piece of sugar. So the word for candy comes from somewhere in the Middle East/Africa and we should thank them for that.

Sweet comes from the Old English swete, which means, well, sweet. It comes from the Proto Germanic swotja, which is traced all the way back to the Proto Indo European swad-, sweet or pleasant. I’m not even a little surprised that we can trace this word so far back.

And now for my personal favorite, chocolate. It showed up in the seventeenth century from the Mexican Spanish chocolate, which I’m assuming just means chocolate. Why am I specifying that it’s Mexican in origin? Well, because chocolate is American (like, the continent). It comes from the Nahuatl chocola-tl/cacahua-tl, which refers to chocolate and cocoa beans, with the a-tl part meaning water. It’s origins beyond there are murky, although it might be related to the word xocalia, which means “to make something bitter”, and chocolate in its natural state is supposed to be very bitter. But then you add sugar and it becomes just the best thing ever.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

Dictionary.com

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

Scary Games

I love the Halloween season! Everything’s spooky. It just feels so on brand for me. Now, I don’t have as many games to share with you this year, but I do have a few I thought were unsettling in very different ways.

The first one is called Escape from the Haunted Room and… yeah, that’s what you’re supposed to do. There are a few puzzles, but I didn’t have any trouble figuring them out. Mostly it was just creepy. There are some jump scares, especially at the end, but the real scare is the atmosphere. It always feels like there’s something in the corner of your eye and then when you look, it’s gone.

Next is 33, which is very different, and someone even described it more as “interactive art” than a game, something I agree with. You’re in a room, and in order to get money to buy things, you have to kill others. In this case, the horror is in what you’re doing.

In that vein is also Presentable Liberty, where you play someone who is locked in a room during a plague and only receives occasional correspondence from a few people, including one who really, really doesn’t want to let you out. You can play some mini-games to pass the time between letters, which slowly reveal the plot to you. Again, it’s less of a game and more along the lines of a visual novel, but it’s very creepy. Especially when the opportunity to escape comes up… Now, this one actually costs money, but you can pay whatever you choose and it is worth kicking a few bucks to them.

So I guess that’s all for this year. Anything spooky come your way?