From The Spamfiles

Last day of February! And it’s a spam day!

Are they trying to warn me or start a game of tic-tac-toe?

Good news! I want neither of those things!

Yes, that’s pretty much the definition of sex work.

Ah, yes, that well known bank Technical Glass & A. They have branches all over the world!

 

Okay, you might not be too aware of how Tumblr works, but there are a lot of things normal for other social media that are simply not done there, the most egregious being having a profile pic of an actual person. Like, ninety five percent of blogs there do NOT have people for a profile, but literally anything else, including animals, drawings, and random pictures. Just definitely not a person and certainly not one with big, round globes on her chest. You’ll also notice the name she chose is “Gruellub31”, which would be totally bizarre on any other site, but is actually the most Tumblr thing about this follower.

Movies

The takeaway here should be that my mom just doesn’t listen to me when I talk.

And no, there’s nothing wrong with her hearing. Her listening, however…

Language Of Confusion: Verse, Part VIII

Yet another part in our look at words descended from the Proto Indo European wer-, to turn or bend. These ones all start with “wr”.
 
First, a word that I believe I mentioned before: wrist. It comes from the Old English wrist, so no big changes in recent history, and before that the Proto Germanic wristiz. That’s from the Proto Indo European wreik-, to turn, from wer-, because wrists turn and bend.
 
Next is wrinkle, which… I guess I can see it. It showed up in the early fifteenth century and is thought to be from the Old English word gewrinclod, wrinkled, crooked, or winding, and it would be so stupid if it isn’t related to wrinkle, and so typical of etymology. Anyway, that’s from wrinclian, to wind, from the Proto Germanic wrankjan, from wergh-, another word I’ve mentioned in previous weeks as being related to wer-. I mean, wrinkles are kind of turns, when something gets all bunched up, the surface is turning.
 
Then there’s wreath, from the Old English wriða, a bandage or band, or a fillet. Um, yeah, it didn’t mean wreath at first, but then in the mid sixteenth century, it started to be used to mean a garland, which makes sense, a wreath “turns” in a circle. It’s from the Proto Germanic writh-, from the Proto Indo European wreit-, to turn or bend, another offshoot of wer-. But seriously, fillet???
 
Because things can always get weirder, there’s wrath. It comes from the Old English wraeþþu, wrath, from wroð, anger or wroth. Wroth is actually the earlier word, from the Proto Germanic wraith- (which is NOT related to wraith), while wrath is actually wraith- plus the Proto Germanic suffix -itho, which is actually the ending for words like strength and depth. So wrath is wroth-th. Anyway, wraith- is from wreit-, which is from wer-, and there’s no real explanation as to how turning changed into anger. Maybe because anger is turned against someone?
 
Finally today is wrong of all words. It actually meant twisted or crooked in Old English, and then in the fourteenth century became what we know it as because it was used to mean the opposite of right, which also meant straight. Wrong is actually from the Old Norse rangr/vrangr, from the Proto Germanic wrang-. That’s from wrengh-, a variant of wergh-, from wer-. Wrong is wrong because it is twisted, and right means straight.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
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

From The Spamfiles

Spam day! Yay!

…I can hear your excitement from here.

Ooh, the very well known Surgecard. Or maybe it’s The Surge card, with The capitalized but not card.

If she chose to contact me? Well did she or didn’t she???

Is it a site to search for crazy people or a site that’s crazy for searching people?

That is a concerning amount of corn emojis.

Rick Springfield, a singer I’ve heard of but only marginally aware of, is allegedly following me with his “official private account”, that he just made this month. Sure, Jan.

Middle Of Winter

Seriously, what the hell.

It’s even weirder that they started appearing a few days after the coldest day we’ve had in years, with sub-zero temperatures (Fahrenheit or Celsius), when all ants should be dead. I say it again: what the hell.

Language Of Confusion: Verse, Part VII

It’s seven, right? It’s been so long I can’t remember. There are a LOT of words that come from the Proto Indo European wer-, to turn or bend. The ones this week all have a bit of a theme to them.
 
First, wrest—and of course wrestle, which spawned from it, though back then they only meant to twist or wrench, then meaning to pull or detach in the fourteenth century and then take by force in the fifteenth. Wrest comes from the Old English wraestan, and wrestle from wraestlian, both with the same meanings we use for them. Before that, they’re from the Proto Germanic wraistjan, from wreik-, to turn, which is from wer-. Wrestling does involve a lot of bending and twisting. The word wriggle is actually surprisingly close. It has an actual time period it showed up in, the late fifteenth century, from the Middle Low German wrigglen, from the Proto Germanic wrig-. That’s from wreik-, just like wrestle.
 
And speaking of wrench, it comes from the Old English wrencan, to twist. The tool of course came after the verb, all the way in 1794, and hey, it makes sense, wrenches are for twisting things open and closed. The word is from the Proto Germanic wrankjan, from the Proto Indo European wrengh-/wergh, to turn, a spawn of wer-. There’s also wring, which comes from the Old English wringan, which is again from wreng/werg. Funny how different (well, kind of) they turned out.
 
Then there’s writhe, which comes from the Old English wriþan, same definition. It’s from the Proto Germanic writhanan, which is wreit- in PIE, from wer-. Finally, there’s wrangle, which showed up in the late fourteenth century related to wrestle, but then in 1897 started being used in American English in reference to horses. It comes from the Low German wrangeln and Middle Low German wringen, and before that the Proto Germanic wrang-, which is from wrengh-/wergh-. You know, again.
 
TL;DR: all the verse words related to twisting have very little variance in their origins.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
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
In Depth Germanic Language Studies

From The Spamfiles

Happy Spamintines Day!

Shut up. It might be a thing.

Life insurance spam has always intrigued me. It’s not much different from the casino spam, really. It wants money from you, promises a payout, and will absolutely not deliver should the time come.

I didn’t actually look at the message, but it’s safe to assume it’s a cancer widow. And it’s VERY VERY URGENT!!!

And the real root cause is hearing loss, obviously. Now make it go away! I’m sick of the constant beeping in my ears!

It’s kind of insulting when they don’t bother to make it look like a real email address. They’re not even trying!

This is… one of the weirder spambot followers I’ve had lately. Is that seriously a pregnant woman????? This raises all kinds of questions as to why, and I don’t want to know any of the answers.