Vacation Photos #2

There are Peaches and Bluey, doing the only activity they enjoy doing together: sleeping on my bed. Well, Bluey likes doing lots of activities, but they mostly involve jumping on Peaches’s head, and she’s not so fond of that.

Spotted these guys outside, honking as loud as they possibly could as they headed north. It’s probably too hot for them here.

Vacation Photos #1

I keep finding these outside, and apparently they’re wild strawberries. They’re edible, but kind of bland and not sweet at all. Definitely go for real strawberries.

Look at this hunk of disgusting. A bunch of them were growing in the cedar tree outside—it’s called cedar apple fungus, named so because it jumps from cedars to apple trees. So nasty.

Language Of Confusion: Food!

I actually etymologized food already, so I’m just going to skim it a bit as there are many other words to look at.
 
Food comes from the Middle English foode/fode, Old English foda, and Proto Germanic fodon. Feed is from the Old English fedan, and both of those are from the Proto Indo European pa-, to feed, the origin of such words as pastor. And pester.
 
Similarly, there’s fodder, which is from the Old English fodder, Proto Germanic fodram, which is from pa- as well. Then there’s forage, which showed up in the early fourteenth century, from the Old French forrage, from fuerre, hay or straw, which is from the Frankish fodr, food, another word from fodram. Foray showed up in the late fourteenth century, and it’s actually Scottish in origin, and it’s thought to be from the Middle English forreyer, from the Old French forrier, another word from forage.
 
You know what else is related? Fur. Yeah. It showed up in the late fourteenth century, first meaning the lining of a garment, not meaning an animal pelt until a century later! It’s from the Old French forrer/fourer, from fuerre, except here it means sheath or scabbard instead of hay. But it’s still also from the Frankish fodr, which makes me think that it’s just another word that somehow has two completely different meanings. Also please note that foster is from pa-, too. It’s from the Old English fóstrian, from fostor, food or nourishment, from the Proto Germanic fostra-, from -a-. You foster something with food.
 
How about some words that actually start with pa-? Pantry showed up in the early fourteenth century, from the Anglo French panetrie (which literally meant bread room), Medieval Latin panataria, and classical Latin panis, bread, from pa-. Bread is the main food for pretty much everywhere. Funny enough, antipasto is from pa-, too. It didn’t show up in English until 1929, from the Italian word, where the anti- means before and pasto means meal or food. And pasto just happens to be from the Latin pascere. So you might be thinking pasta is from the same place. Ha ha, no. Not even a little. Pasta is from the same word as quash.
 
There’s one more word we’re going to look at, and like always, I save the best for last. That word? Company. Yes, it has pan in it, but can it really be related to pantry? It showed up in the mid twelfth century, from the Old French compagnie, Late Latin companio. That word is made up of com, with, and that panio is from panis. Company—or companion—is someone you have bread with.

I’m off for two weeks! I’ll probably have pictures posted, as usual. Later!
 
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
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Fordham University
Orbis Latinus

Language Of Confusion: Pest

Brought to you my cat Bluey, who just scratched me. Because she’s a pest.

 
Pest showed up in the mid sixteenth century, a little after pester, which it seems to not be related to. It’s from the French peste, which means plague or pestilence, and its origin before that is unknown—though I want to add that pesky is actually thought to be related to pest, too. Then there’s pester, which is not related to pest and actually originally meant to clog or entangle, not meaning to annoy until a few decades later, probably because of the word pest. It’s short for the French empestrer, to put in an embarrassing situation, from the Vulgar Latin impastoriare, to hobble an animal, and that’s a mix of the prefix im-, meaning in, and the Medieval Latin phrase pastoria chorda, to rope an animal. In classical Latin, pastoria means pastoral, so like a pastoral animal, with a rope around it. And that’s pester.

 
And of course that’s where pastor, pasture, and pastoral come from. Pastor showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning a shepherd, and figuratively a minister. Pastoral showed up in the early fifteenth century, and pasture also from the fourteenth century. Pasture is from the Old French pasture, from the Late Latin pastura, and that’s from the classical Latin pastus, grazing, from the verb pascere, the origin for all of these words that means feed. That’s from the Proto Indo European pa-, to protect or feed, the origin for a bunch of other words I’ll have to etymologize at some point. Maybe next week.
 
The TL;DR here is that pest is probably not related to pester, and pester is related to pastoral. Because etymology.
 
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
Encyclopaedia Britannica

Escape Artist

There’s a rip in the screen door.

Bluey, foiled once again by the fact that she doesn’t have a single thought in her head.

Language of Confusion: Numerous

Number showed up in the fourteenth century meaning a sum, and then a century later meaning an arithmetic figure. It comes from the Anglo French noumbre, Old French nombre, and classical Latin numerus (origin of numeral, by the way, while numerous is actually from the classical Latin numerosus). That’s from the Proto Indo European nem-, assign, allot, or take, and you know that has a bunch of unexpected descendants.
 
First of all, anything that ends in -nomy, such as astronomy. That word actually showed up way back in the thirteenth century (so yes, it’s older than number), from the Old French astrenomie, from the classical Latin astronomia, and that of course was taken from the Greek astronomia. That was taken from astronomos, where astron means star and the nomos means law or regulation. Astronomy is star law. And since nomos is from nem-,  star number isn’t entirely incorrect either.
 
How about a word that looks like number but can’t possibly be related? By that I mean numb, which showed up in the fifteenth century, meaning deprived of feeling or powerless, but also taken or seized—fun fact, the B at the end didn’t show up until the seventeenth century. It’s from the Old English niman, to seize, which, yes, is from nem-. So the take version of nem transformed into seize, which transformed into numb. Because I guess you’re “seized” if you’re without feeling.
 
But even crazier, nomad is from the same place. It showed up in the mid sixteenth century from the French nomade, which was taken from the classical Latin Nomas, which is what they called the nomads in Arabia. It’s taken from the Greek nomas, nomad, from nomos, which… yes, like astronomy. Except in this case, the nomos specifically refers to land allotted—like nem-.
 
Finally today, nemesis. Really. It showed up in the late sixteenth century from the Greek god, which is taken from the word for righteous anger, or the distribution of what is due. It’s related to nemein, distribute or allot, which is from nem-. So because the anger is distributed righteously, we have nemesis.
 
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

August Goals

Well, July was absolutely awful. It started with a bank error, proceeded to a presidential upset that I fear skews the election towards the party that wants to kill me, and now my doctor is leaving the practice I go to and now I have to get a new one and keep my fingers crossed that they’ll do their job property. Ha ha, everything is terrible. Needless to say, I haven’t been focusing much on my goals.
 
July Goals
1. Work on notes from beta readers. It looks promising so far.
Hey, at least I got this done before the world went to hell.
 
2. Find more beta readers and writer places. Please, just don’t make me have to go on Discord. Unfortunately it seems every other social media is dead now.
Did not even attempt this. Did not have the energy.
 
3. Sigh. Once again, update my etymology pages. I keep hoping they’ll update Blogger so it doesn’t suck any more, but fat chance of that happening when it took them a month to fix the problem with links.
Somehow the least odious portion of the month, and that’s saying something.
 
I never want July to come back. I can only hope August is better…
 
August Goals
1. Actually attempt to find more writer spaces and beta readers this month.
 
2. Find something that seems fun to work on.
 
3. Birthday. I’m looking forward to it with some trepidation. Did you know the bakery that makes my favorite cake had a fire and is now closed? And there’s no news as to when they’ll open again?
 
Ugh, I just want this year to be done.

Language Of Confusion: Meter, Part II

Time to once again look at the words related to meter, which are all from the Proto Indo European me-, to measure. Last week was the normal ones. Well, relatively.
 
Like I said last week, month is related to it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve etymologized this word before, not that I remember when. It comes from the Old English monaþ, which is just month with a letter for -th. That’s from the Proto Germanic menoth, which is from menon-, the origin word for moon. I think it’s common knowledge that a month is about equal to the cycle of the moon, so it makes sense it comes from there. Moon itself is from the Middle English mone and Old English mona, which is also from the Germanic menon-. And that’s from the PIE me-, to measure, because it is a measurement of the moon’s phases. That didn’t quite work out for calendars, but the name stuck.
 
And it shouldn’t be a surprise that measure is from the same place, too. It showed up in the early fourteenth century as a verb (spelled mesuren, actually) and earlier in the thirteenth century it was a noun, however back then, the words referred to moderation before it came to mean taking a measurement. The words are from the Old French mesurer/mesure, from the Late Latin mensurare and classical Latin mensura. That’s from the verb metiri, to measure, which is more obviously related to meter and is from me-. So Latin dropped the T and put in an N, then French dropped the N, too.
 
There’s also immense, which you can kind of see—immense means great beyond measure. It showed up in the early fifteenth century from the classical Latin immensus, same meaning. Mensus means measured, and is from metiri as well, while the prefix is from in and means not or opposite of. Immense is the opposite of measured.
 
Then we have dimension. It showed up in the late fourteenth century, from the classical Latin dimensionem. Like the previous word, the second half is from metiri, and here the prefix dis is probably intensive, because it usually means apart, away, or not, and that really doesn’t make sense. A dimension is a measurement of something finite, let’s leave it at that.
 
The last word we’re going to look at is meal, but in this case, it means the food occasion, not ground grain, which I have to inform you is not related at all. Meal showed up in the late twelfth century from the Old English mael, which means a meal, a measure, or a mark in measurement, so you can see how it’s related. It’s from the Proto Germanic mela, which is from me-. Apparently because a meal is a fixed (or measured) occasion, it is related to measure.
 
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
Orbis Latinus