Language Of Confusion: Wait, Cline Is Actually A Word?

I started this etymology post intending to muse on the suffix -cline and how strange it is that decline is a word but cline isn’t. Then Word didn’t put the red squiggly line underneath cline when I typed it out. Apparently it’s really a word, meaning either the gradual change of certain characteristics in species or scale of continuous gradation in linguistics. What the hell…

To further the weirdness, cline didn’t even show up in English until 1938, coming from either the word incline or the Greek klinein, slope or lean. Despite not appearing until last century, there was actually a Middle English version of the word, clinen, bend or bow, coming from the Old French cliner and classical Latin clinare, decline. I guess this means that people stopped using the word in Middle English only to form a new version of the word centuries later. By the way, that clinare comes from the Proto Indo European klei, lean or incline. It’s also the origin word for lean because apparently we stopped using the K in front of it.

Incline showed up in the early fourteenth century with pretty much the same meaning. It comes from the Old French encliner, bend or lean, and classical Latin inclinare, which is just, you know, incline. The prefix in- means into or in, and we know clinare means bend, so it means to make something bend toward you. Well, at least this one makes sense.

Decline showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning turn aside or deviate—more figurative than incline when it started. It comes from the Old French decliner and classical Latin (bet you can’t guess this) declinare, decline. De- means from in this case. Combined with clinare, it’s bend/lean from, which…actually makes sense.

Finally, recline. It showed up in the early fifteenth century, coming from the Old French recliner, rest or bend over, and classical Latin reclinare, which…come on, you know it’s just recline. The re- prefix means back or against, so it’s lean/bend against, which is what reclining is.

So the only really confusing part of this one is that the word cline exists. Has anyone actually heard it used before?

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Dictionary.com

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

Hiatus (Hopefully Brief)

Hey guys just letting you know that I probably won't be around much this week. There's some stuff going on with my family and things are really tough right now.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to make any blog visits this week, maybe not next week either. I wrote Thursday and Saturday's post before all this happened, so at least that's there, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to write any posts for the upcoming weeks. Yeah, it's that bad.

Please bear with me until I can get going again. I hope it won't be long.

Directly

The trouble with Twitter (besides them, you know, canceling Tweetdeck) is that you never know if when you follow someone, they’re going to end up DMing you with an ad for their book. Or for you to follow them on Facebook.

I’m not even kidding. I tweeted that and ten seconds later I got a DM with that message. It’s like they’re taunting me.

Language of Confusion: Official

Liz mentioned a couple of weeks ago wondering where the word staple came from, so of course I wondered two and now here we go, looking at all the basic office supplies.

Pen

Pen—like for writing, not animals—showed up in the late thirteenth century from the Old French pene, a quill. It comes from the classical Latin penna, feather, and even further back the Proto Indo European pet-na-, which is related to pet-, or fly. Basically, since we used bird feathers as pens, the word for feather morphed into pen.

Pencil

Now, you might be thinking that pencil is related. They’re at least close, right? Ha ha, no. Not even a little. Pencil showed up in the early fourteenth century meaning an artist’s brush made of camel hair, coming from the Old French pincel, artist’s paintbrush and classical Latin penicillus, paint brush, or peniculus, brush. Oh, and apparently that peniculus comes from the Latin word penis, which means exactly what you think it means. It also means tail. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Paper

Paper showed up in the mid fourteenth century from the Anglo French paper and Old French papier. That word comes from the classical Latin papyrus, (from the Greek papyros) which you might recognize as a store or an annoying font. It’s also the plant that paper was originally made from way back in ancient Egypt, where it was first invented.

Staple

And now for the word that started this crazy journey. Staple showed up in the late thirteenth century, more than a century before the other definition of staple. However, staple originally just meant a piece of metal with pointed ends, and not the thing that you used on paper until 1895. The metal staple comes from the Old English stapol, a tree trunk or post, and before that the Proto Germanic stapulaz/stap- and Proto Indo European stebh, the origin word for staff. The other staple comes from the Anglo French estaple and Old French also estaple, a stall or market. That word is most definitely Germanic in origin as many old Germanic languages use a variant of staple to mean market, but the details are unknown. And it’s probably related to the other staple. Maybe. Possibly.

Yeah, sorry about that. It’s kind of a non-answer. This was really a weird week etymology wise.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

Old English-English Dictionary

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

Fordham University

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art

From The Spamfiles

It’s been something like two months since I’ve had one of these! To anybody who’s new to this whole thing, The Spamfiles is where I keep track of all the weird, stupid, and downright perplexing spam messages I get. Case in point…

So am I going to get any explanation as to how you’ve been probing around my stomach? Because I’m way more interested in that.

By a “similar” surname, they mean different in every possible way.

Your life is at stake! These bomb emojis are going to kill you!

And now for all you bear blinding enthusiasts, here’s the flashlight for you!

Justified ball moves currently in my brain cage!!!

And now for all you Twitter users out there, here’s a way to grow your followers naturally, without the use of pesticides or fertilizers.

Purses

My mom really loves getting new purses. Like, insanely so. Personally, I don’t see the appeal, but whatever.

It was not the small.

Language of Confusion: Gardens

We’re looking at the word garden today, although not just the word garden or it would be a short post. We’re also looking at regard and wondering why the hell the suffix -gard is so different from the prefix gard-. Because these are the kinds of things that bother me.

Garden showed up in the late thirteenth century as a noun and then in the late sixteenth century as a verb. It comes from the Old North French gardin, which is basically a garden, but also an orchard or “palace grounds”. That word comes from the Vulgar Latin phrase hortus gardinus, enclosed garden—and for the record, it’s hortus that means garden in classical Latin and no one’s sure about a lot of Vulgar Latin, so who the hell knows where gardinus came from. And it should also be noted that the word yard is actually related to it, too. It comes from the Old English geard, which just means yard. Before that it was the Proto Germanic gardaz, which happens to be another descendant of hortus gardinus.

Now for regard. I’m sure this won’t be stupid or confusing in any way. It showed up in the mid fourteenth century meaning consider, which is pretty close to the definition we have today, coming from the Middle French regarder, to look at, and Old French regarder (it’s a different language so it’s a different word!), take notice of. The re- prefix is just intensive here and garder is just look or heed. And oh yeah, it’s related to guard. And ward. But not garden.

TL;DR: We’re totally using the wrong word for garden. And yard.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

Dictionary.com

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

Encyclopaedia Britannica

University of Ottawa, Canada

Orbis Latinus

Old English-English Dictionary

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English