From The Spamfiles

Let’s see how people are trying to scam me this week.

Yes, because Sisters are always handing out “over Five million Eight hundred thousand dollars”.

The best solution to paying down your high interest credit cards is to take out a high interest loan. It’s just common sense.

Wait, isn’t that the hitman from the Godfather? Uh-oh. This might be bad.

Okay, I’m instantly suspicious of the name Jennifer only being spelled with one N.

Now this is a delicious piece of spam. Corrupt government officials have kept my fund to themselves for their selfish reason!!! But not to worry, they’ll send it to me via Visa ATM Card and I can get it from any ATM with a MasterCard logo.

As Usual

Are all moms like this? I’ve only ever had the one so I can’t be sure.

It would be a lot easier to not tell her I had an appointment if I didn’t need to use her car to get there…

Language Of Confusion: Sponsors

Wow, an actual new word etymology! It’s a miracle!
 
Sponsor showed up in the mid seventeenth century, making it relatively young in word terms. It comes from the Late Latin sponsor, which specifically meant a sponsor in a baptism, and in classical Latin, the word is from spondere, to guarantee. A sponsor is a guarantee, I guess. Anyway, it can be traced all the way back to the Proto Indo European spondeio-, to libate. I actually had to look that one up and it means to drink alcohol or to make an offering of alcohol. And for some reason that’s how we got sponsor.
 
Response and respond are much older than sponsor, having shown up in the fourteenth century, and while they’re closely related, they actually got to English through slightly different paths. Respond is from the Anglo French respundre, from the Old French respondere, while response is from the Old French respons and classical Latin responsum, reply. Both those words are from the Latin verb respondere, to reply, which is a combination of re-, back, and spondere. To respond is to guarantee back, apparently. Correspond of course is from the same place, though it showed up a bit later than respond (in the sixteenth century). In Medieval Latin, it is correspondere, which means to correspond, and adds the prefix com-, together or with. It kind of makes sense. To correspond is when both are acting at the same time—to respond together.
 
Next is despondent, which showed up in the late seventeenth century from despondence, which I don’t think is used much anymore. Despondence is only a few decades older, coming from the classical Latin despondentem, despondent, from the verb despondere, which meant to give up or resign, or… to pledge marriage. Yeah. There are a ton of jokes that could be made about this one. The de- means away, and with spondere, to guarantee, the word was to guarantee something away, as in marriage, and frigging hell, this is a standup comedy routine.
 
And that leads us to our final word for today: spouse. It showed up in the thirteenth century from the Old French spous, and that’s from the classical Latin sponsus, which means bridegroom and is derived from spondere. This doesn’t really dissuade the whole standup comedy routine thing.
 
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
Fordham University
Orbis Latinus

November Goals

I know I say this every month, but how did this happen??? It’s already November! That can’t be right…
 
October Goals
1. Beta reads for WIP 1. Any volunteers?
It’s getting done. Finding beta readers is hard!
 
2. Finish working on my notes for WIP 2. This one’s actually possible.
I actually did this, yay.
 
3. Update my etymology page. There are so many of them, I think it’s time to create a few separate pages up in the header there. It might make formatting them easier, too.
As you can see, there are now three pages with all the words I’ve etymologized. And a god damn mother$%*&@#$ space in between every paragraph that I can’t get rid of no matter what I try.
 
So mostly successful, which is pretty good considering how hard it was to trudge through the month. Now for this month…
 
November Goals
1. More beta reads, obviously. I need a lot of help figuring out how to improve this one.
 
2. Find something to work on to recharge my creativity. I’ve been feeling very blah about working on my WIPs lately.
 
3. Thanksgiving. Ugh. Remember when this holiday used to be fun? Because I don’t.
 
That’s what I want to do this month. What are you up to?

Still October

Fun fact, I actually know someone who works in a pharmacy, and I had to go in there last week.

It’s not even Halloween yet!!!
 

Language of Confusion: Crimes

Eh, these are kind of scary. At least, if you’re not the one committing them.
 
Crime
Crime showed up in the mid thirteenth century, although at first it meant a sin, like an offense to god, before it started to mean breaking the law in the late fourteenth century. It comes from the Old French crimne and classical Latin crimen, crime, but its origin before that is debated. One theory has it coming from cernere, to sift or to decide—yes, sift, from the Proto Indo European krei-, to sieve, and I have no idea how that works. The other theory is that it’s from cri-men, cry of distress, which makes slightly more sense. If you look at something like discriminate, the sift/sieve one makes more sense. Discriminate showed up in the early seventeenth century, from the Latin discriminare, to discriminate, which is actually from discernere, to distinguish, and yes that’s the origin for discern. Sift makes a lot more sense with that one.
 
Thief
Thief comes from the Old English þeof, thief, and that’s then from the Proto Germanic theuba-, and that has an unknown origin. Well, that was certainly a lot easier than crime. Couldn’t really find an explanation for the -f to -v thing that pops up in a lot of words. I guess F and V are just so close in pronunciation no one cares.
 
Robbery
Robbery showed up in the thirteenth century from the Old French roberie. To rob showed up a bit earlier, in the late twelfth century, from the Old French rober, West Germanic rauba, and Proto Germanic raubon, to rob. And that one’s thought to be from the Proto Indo European runp-, to break. To rob: strangely consistent over the centuries.
 
Assault
Assault showed up in the late fourteenth century in its current form, but it also appeared earlier as asaut. It comes from the Old French asaut/assaut, from the Vulgar Latin adsaltus, a mix of ad-, to, and the Latin saltus, leap. Assault is to leap to.
 
Arson
Arson is fairly recent, having shown up in the late seventeenth century—before that, it was the Old English baernet, which is related to burnt. Arson comes from the Old French arsion, from the Late Latin arsionem, a burning, and that’s from the classical Latin ardere, to burn. That’s from the Proto Indo European root as-, to burn or glow, the origin word for ash.
 
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
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Orbis Latinus

From The Spamfiles

What? This again?

A lot to enjoy about this one. The “Valentime” thing, first of all. Is the misspelling deliberate or are they just that stupid? With spammers, it’s impossible to tell. Especially since they say “No credit card requires”.

The “Director for International Banking Supervision Office of the Comptroller of the Currency”. The longer the title, the more legit they are.

Uh oh, the Federal Bureau of I. wants me. Because I’m a beneficiary. Also the UN is thrown in there for some reason.

They are no longer happy with my delay and silent over my fund! Whatever will I do???

Got these comments just last week—apparently one banal comment indicating they clearly didn’t read the post isn’t enough, they need two. The cherry on the cake was William informing me that said commenter has been making the rounds on blogs lately, leaving similar replies on a post talking about cancer. I’d say they have no conscience, but we already knew that.