Eponymous means named after a particular person. For example, the Harry Potter series and Reaganomics are both eponyms. This is another way that words are added to a language. Eponyms are actually all over our language. Did you know the Pavlova (a meringue dessert) was named after the Russian baller[...]
Archive for the ‘etymology’ Category
Words of the Day (9/11)
Check out all my Words of the Day posts HERE. Etymologies (thanks to Clare’s questions): lexicon – Lexicon comes from the Greek word lexis, which means… word. Lexus – Lexus (like the car) is the short form of Alexus, which is a variant of the name Alexis. Alexis comes from [...]
Basic Color Terms – Germanic & Old English
Today’s topic: color terms. But first, a brief lesson… The Indo-European languages are a family of languages spoken in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The languages can be broken down into branches, such as: Anatolian, Indo-Iranian (like Iranian), Greek, Italic (Italian, French, etc&#[...]
September 7th, 2009 - 1:15 pm § in etymology, word origins
Happy Labo(u)r Day!
Labour. The British spelling of labor. Labor. This word is traced back as far as ~1300AD. It comes from Old French labour (now French labeur), which was from Latin laborem. In today’s French, Spanish, and Portuguese, the verb actually means “to plow”, not “hard, physical work[...]
Words of the Day (9/4)
Check out all my Words of the Day posts HERE. Note: OE = Old English; ME = Middle English; MnE = Modern English. Here are two etymologies that I find interesting. They come from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. silly – This comes from the OE word sælig – ‘happy[...]