Look Up

One night, after Peaches got out, I kept hearing her meowing but when I looked out the door I couldn’t find her anywhere.

She got off the neighbor’s roof all right, so I wasn’t worried.

Language of Confusion: Working Words

And now, synonyms for work. Because…I don’t know. Pretend I had a reason.

Work

As a noun, work comes from the Old English weorc/worc, which basically just means work. It’s from the Proto Germanic werkan, also work, and before that the Proto Indo European werg-o, to do. The verb of the word has a slightly different origin. It’s actually a mix of two Old English words, wyrcan (cause, achieve, or make) and wircan, which is from a different dialect and can mean operate, function, or set in motion. Both words are from the Proto Germanic werkan, but it’s amusing to see how the words divided and joined back together like that.

Toil

Toil showed up in the early fourteenth century as both a noun and a verb, which was actually spelled toilen. The slight difference follows the word back in history, as in Anglo French the verb is toiller, meaning pull or drag, and the noun is toil, from toiler, to agitate. What a difference an L can make. But both words are from the Old French toeillier, drag around or make dirty. Before that they’re thought to be from the classical Latin tudiculare, crush with a hammer. That doesn’t make much sense, but neither does toil now meaning work hard these days.

Labor

Labor showed up in the fourteenth century, coming from the Old French laborer and classical Latin laborare, work. Nothing super interesting about this one, although labor did used to mean to plow back in the French. Weird how some uses of the word don’t get passed along.

Job

Job is a relatively late word, not having shown up until the mid seventeenth century. It actually comes from a sixteenth century phrase, “jobbe of worke”, meaning a single task. Before that, no one’s really sure where it came from, although one theory is that it’s from gob. It’s hard to believe that such a common word these days just kind of popped into existence.

Employ

As a noun, Employ didn’t show up until the mid seventeenth century, but the verb showed up two centuries earlier meaning to expend or to apply something for some purpose. It comes from the Old French emploiier and classical Latin implicare, which sounds like implicate because it means implicate. It’s actually a mix of the prefix en-, in, and plicare, to fold. To employ is to fold in. And guess what, imply is from the exact same word. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

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

Totally Legit Comments

Last week (Monday, in fact, right before my last spam post was due to go up) I got a spate of comments on my last month of blog posts. There were about fifteen, all from someone named “Koi” with a bunch of Thai letters at the bottom. So yeah. Spam.

I’ve gotten tons of fake comments before, usually in barely comprehensible English. But these were perfectly readable. In fact, they seemed familiar.

Kate might recognize this, as she’s the one who said it first. They were all cribbed from other comments. From the same post even! How lazy is that? A lot of them were generic enough that I would not have recognized them right away. But then there are ones like this:

Podcasts while knitting…sounds an awful lot like Liz. Sure enough, she’s the one who actually said this.

Alex would certainly agree with you, considering he said the exact same thing.

Andrew added a few more words when he made this post. Several of them were like this, just taking pieces of the original. As if I’m not going to notice. Maybe it would have been less suspicious if they didn’t upload all their comments on the exact same day, most on posts that were weeks old.

This isn’t an isolated incident since William mentioned that the same thing happened to him. Any of you had any crazy comments lately? Do you think the spammers really believe we’re not going to notice?

Not A Clue

If you follow me on Twitter, then you may have seen me remark on how my glasses broke. Like, right down the bridge. I don’t have glasses now, I have two half glasses.

Thankfully I now have my new glasses. That I will be keeping far away from fat cats.

Language of Confusion: More Tops

And now more words for top, this time focusing on peaks.

Peak

Peak didn’t specifically mean the top of a mountain until the seventeenth century, although it actually a century earlier meaning a pointed top. When it showed up then it was a variant of pike, a long pointy stick, which in turn is from pick, which somehow leads us back to pike again. They’re all related is what I’m getting at. Peak has no further origins, but pick and pike have further histories that I’m sure I’ll get to someday. I know this is a bit of a cop out but oh well :P.

Apex

Maybe this one won’t trail off to nowhere. Apex first showed up in the seventeenth century from the classical Latin apex, which means point. Or, you know, apex. It’s thought to be related to the verb apere, to fasten or fix, from the Proto Indo European word ap-, to take or reach. The reason that an apex is the tip of something is because in Latin it was also a word for “the small rod at the top of the flamen’s cap”. It was…fastened onto the tip.

Acme

Acme showed up in the mid sixteenth century from the Greek akme, which of course means acme. It can be traced all the way back to the Proto Indo European ak-ma-, where the prefix ak- means be sharp or rise out. No great mysteries here! But it is a fun word to say.

Summit

Summit is the earliest of these wrods, having showed up in the fifteenth century. It comes from the Middle French somete and Old French somete. Which, yeah, just means summit, but it’s actually the diminutive of som/sum, the top of a hill. Before that, it was the classical Latin summum, summit, from summus, high, which is related to super, on or over, and yes that’s where super comes from. It’s actually from the Proto Indo European root *uper, which means over, which gave us words like hyper and over, as well as super, summit, and even sum. Man, I should do a post on all the uper words.

Whew. That was quite a wild ride, wasn’t it?

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

Dictionary of Medieval Latin

University of Ottawa, Canada

From The Spamfiles

It’s been a while. I think. Maybe. Anyway, here it is again!

If Veronica could send email, this is exactly what she would send. Only more desperate.

"We here by today receive this payment". So close to sounding like a real person! Seriously, the first AI to pass the Turing test is going to be a spambot. Just you watch.

There was a period where I was getting at least one of these a day, all with the same message, all with different email addresses. I’m really kind of confused as to what they’re trying to do here. Also, we all know who the real evil bitch is, and it’s the person who ends “You know what” with an exclamation point instead of a question mark.

Ignoring the fact that it says “responde” and the two differing prices…who the hell spends more than eight hundred dollars on a lamp?!?!

How about he take responsibility for his own happiness and not expect a woman to do it for him, hmmm?

Also, I’ve gotten like five spams in the past month all from someone named Melissa. Or Mellissa. Why is every spammer named Melissa all of a sudden?

I Think She Does It On Purpose

This is a lot of what my birthday is like.

Seriously. Just let me pick out my own clothes.