Why

I wasn’t even doing anything strenuous!

Seriously, I was bending over to move something and I felt something pull in my back. I suppose this isn’t as bad as the time a back spasm woke me in the middle of the night, BUT STILL.

Language of Confusion: Can I Get A Witness? Part III

This week, it’s getting a lot more what-the-hell. And yet not as what-the-hell as it’s going to get. Remember, all these words trace back to the Proto Indo European weid- (to see) in some way.

Visage showed up in the fourteenth century from the Anglo French and Old French visage, face or portrait. It comes from vis, face, which is from the classical Latin visus, a sight. That’s from the verb videre, to see, which you would know if you read my previous posts.

Provide first showed up in the early fifteenth century from the classical Latin providere, to provide. The pro- prefix means forward, while videre means to see. To provide is to see forward, to plan ahead. The word purvey actually comes from the same place, just a different route. It showed up in the late thirteenth century from the Anglo French porveire/purveire and Old French porveoir, to provide. Which is also from providere. Purveying is also seeing forward!

Guise showed up in the late thirteenth century meaning a style or fashion of clothes, which from there morphed into mask or disguise in the sixteenth century. It comes from the Old French guise, manner, fashion, and was thought to be traced from the Proto Germanic wison, appearance or manner. So hey. Not all the words French stole were Latin. And that’s from weid-. Disguise is also from the same place. It showed up in the fourteenth century from the Old French desguiser, with the des- being from dis-, meaning away or off. A disguise is away from a guise.

Next, guide. Yes, really. It showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French guider. Much like guise, it’s Germanic in origin, from the Proto Germanic witanan, to look after or guard. The G (and I assume the G in guise) was influenced by Old Provençal (the dialects of the Provençal regions of France) guidar or the Italian guidare. I guess they liked their G’s.

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

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Fordham University

From The Spamfiles

Let’s see what spam I have for you this week…

What should I pick on? The fact that is promises it’s “100-%” legal? The sprout and bouquet emojis? Or that it just says “congratulation” and that is suspicious as hell?

The dollar sign is after the number. It’s a scam.

Except for being slightly wordy, this one’s almost believable. You’d think Netflix would remember to capitalize their own name, though. Also that the account I use isn’t connected to that email address.

Not a negative item! They may have run a background check? Nooooooo! All my plans are ruined!

I can one hundred percent guarantee you that I don’t care.

The name “Love Swans” always weirds me out. I’ve never thought of swans as being particularly loving.

Litter

True story. 

I am never going to know the reason it was there and that bugs me so much.

Language of Confusion: Can I Get A Witness? Part II

This week, more words that are related to the Proto Indo European weid-, to see. Some of them almost make sense!

Visit showed up in the thirteenth century from the Old French visiter and classical Latin visitare, which just means to visit. It’s related to videre, to see, which I mentioned last week as being related to vision and is derived from the above mentioned weid-. To see becoming to visit makes sense, since when you’re visiting someone you’re going to see them, right?

Next, evident showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French evident and classical Latin evidentem, evident, so we’re not seeing any big changes here either. Break it down and you have ex-, out, and videntem, seeing or sighted and from videre.

Wise comes from the Old English wis, which just means wise so no big leaps here. Before that it was the Proto Germanic wissaz, which was taken from the Proto Indo European wittos, which is an adjective form of weid-. The other form of wise, that’s part of words like clockwise, is also from the same place, just with a slightly different origin, being from the Proto Germanic wison instead. There’s also wisdom, which comes from the Old English wisdom and means wisdom (stop me if I’m going too fast for you), and is just wis- plus a suffix that means a state of. And don’t forget wizard, which showed up in the early fifteenth century from the Middle English wys (basically the same as wis) and -ard, which is kind of a weird word forming element that can mean names or pejoratives.

Finally today, advice and advise both showed up in the late thirteenth century, but back then advise meant to view or to consider, not taking on the current definition until a century later, probably influenced by the fact that advice (auys, back then) meant opinion. The words come from the Old French aviser, consider, and avis, opinion, which instead of being a prefix and a root word is from a phrase, ço m’est á vis, “it seems to me”. The vis part is derived from the classical Latin word visum, which is once again from videre, but it’s funny what a journey it went through to get here. Oh, and for the record, no, vice and vise aren’t related. That would be ridiculous.

And that’s all for this week, but no worries. There’s plenty of more weirdness to come.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at Arlington

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

From The Spamfiles

Yeah, here we go again.

Uh-oh. Look at me. I’m ignoring this!

Heart eyes emoji, really? You don’t think that might be overstating your windows a bit?

Don’t trust them, Greg. “Your cash is arrived” isn’t grammatically correct!

I can say with one hundred percent certainty that no, I do not want it.

I believe that someone named Cheryle would spell truth incorrectly.

This was received on Tumblr. Yeah, their crackdown on all things sex related really did a good job getting rid of the porn bots.

Questions

Sometimes it’s just one of those days, and something occurs to you and you can’t stop thinking about it.

I know that there’s some linguistic explanation for it, but that’s just not good enough!