Too Much Information

If everyone’s always complaining about my generation being on their phones all the time and oversharing, then why am I only getting crap like this from the older generations?

I don’t eat most seafood, so thankfully I was spared. But I still had to hear about it.

Language of Confusion: The Sun

Just a short one this week since these posts have been getting pretty long lately.

Sun

The word sun comes from the Old English sunne, which means sun. As you can see, it had more letters back then, as well as a slightly different pronunciation (it would have been more like sunny). Plus because of how Old English works it would have been a feminine word, which I just like. It comes from the Proto Germanic sunnon, which can be traced back to the Proto Indo European sawel-, the sun.

Solar

Solar showed up in the mid fifteenth century, which means it probably came after sun did. It’s from the classical Latin solaris (solar), from sol (sun), which happens to also be from sawel-. So solar and sun happen to be from the same place, just by completely different routes.

Helio-

Helio- is a prefix we use to things related to the sun, like heliocentric, or the astronomical words anthelion and aphelion. It’s also related to the plant heliotrope and the gas helium. Helio is from Helios, the Greek sun god and is yet another word descended from sawel-. No, I don’t know where the S went.

TL;DR: the old word for sun is everywhere because the sun is pretty important and it makes sense that the word for it wouldn’t change much.

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

Encyclopaedia Britannica

More Weird Searches

It’s been several months since I’ve done one of these and boy to I have some things to share.

I guess it makes sense that people would wonder what it’s like to live in other places. But seriously just ask your frigging spouse what it’s like to be married to you. WORDS EXIST.

More queries into what something is like. The riot one may have been from me. It was for research!

Do people seriously wonder what it looks like they do for a living? Is this a normal thing people ask themselves and my brain is just not able to comprehend it?

The abbreviations I can understand. There are a lot of them and sometimes it’s hard to keep track. But “why does mean”?

Apparently people are just grammatically wrong so often that Google knows how to predict it in advance.

And as a bonus, what popped up on my home screen a few months back:

I’ve never done anything online related to basketball in my life. For a company that steals our personal information to sell it for advertisers they really aren’t doing a good job.

That Would Be My Neck

It’s getting hot out, so this is what it feels like.

It was like sawing through a rope, but eventually I got it all shorn off. Not all that different from a sheep.

Language of Confusion: -Ment, Part VI

I tell myself that I’m not going to do any more long series, but then I realize that doing a long series means I don’t have to come up with new ideas for a while. So, you know. There are benefits.

Anyway, this is the last one!

Implement

Implement showed up as a noun in the mid fifteenth century, but not a verb until the early eighteenth century. Oh, and back in the fifteenth century it meant “amount needed to complete repayment”, and when the verb first showed up it was mostly used in Scottish English law, where it meant fulfillment. The noun did quickly become a synonym for tool, but it’s still quite a departure from its original meaning. It comes from the Late Latin implementem, filling up, from the classical Latin verb implere, to complete or fulfill, a mix of in- (in, unsurprisingly) and plere, to fill, from the Proto Indo European pele-, to fill. So I guess an implement is something that fulfills some purpose?

Sentiment

Sentiment showed up in the late fourteenth century as sentement, which apparently we just had to tweak from the Old French sentement. It can be traced to the Medieval Latin sentimentum and classical Latin sentire, to feel, the origin word for sense. Well, at least this one was straightforward.

Torment

Torment showed up in the fourteenth century from the Old French torment (torture) and classical Latin tormentum, which could mean conflict, torture, or anguish. It’s from the verb torquere, to twist, from the Proto Indo European terkw-, which also means twist and I can’t look at without thinking of twerking. Is twerking torture? Perhaps.

Lament

Lament showed up in the mid-fifteenth century as a verb and in the late sixteenth as a noun, from the Middle French lament and classical Latin lamentum, which means wailing. Lamentation actually showed up earlier, in the late fourteenth century, from the Latin lamentationem, which also means wailing. The la- part of it is Proto Indo European meaning shout or cry, and it’s thought to be imitative. You know how we say a cat meows because that’s what the noise they make sounds like? That’s what imitative means. So apparently wailing people sound like “la”.

Moment

Moment showed up in the mid fourteenth century from the Old French moment and classical Latin momentum. Which, yes, is also where we get momentum. Momentum is actually a contraction of the word movimentum, which is from movere, to move, and that’s where move comes from, along with a bunch of other words that I’m not going to get into. Movere can be traced back to the Proto Indo European meuǝ-, to push away, so the origin of all movement is apparently trying to get away from something.

Rudiment

Rudiment showed up in the mid sixteenth century from the Middle French rudiment and classical Latin rudimentum, which could mean beginning or raw materials and other rudimentary stuff like that. It’s from the word rudis which means raw or… rude.

TL;DR: Latin liked the suffix -ment so now it’s everywhere in English.

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

Dictionary of Medieval Latin

University of Ottawa, Canada

Orbis Latinus

Art

Do you like art? Do you like parodies? What about parodies of art? Will that work for you?

Over on Newgrounds there’s a guy named Munguia who makes games where you look at a caricature he drew of a well-known painting and try to guess which painting it’s from. Some of them are easy. I mean, you’re not going to have any trouble figuring out when it’s supposed to be the Mona Lisa. And if you really need help, there’s also a button so you can look at the real version of the painting. Or just, you know, google it.

Anyway, it’s a nice way to go look at some paintings for a few hours. And more importantly, I don’t have to think up a real post! Win-win. Here’s the links:

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Spotlight

My bedroom faces to the west, which is good for sleeping in the morning. But the door opens to an eastern facing hallway…

Because of the way everything is angled, this is really only a problem for a few weeks at this time of year. But man, is it annoying.