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Archive for the ‘word origins’ Category

October 29th, 2012 - 1:50 pm § in alphabet, etymology, foreign language, japanese, language evolution, mysteries of english, spelling, vocabulary, word origins

Linguistics Link Love – Americanisms and Japanese Kanji

It’s been a while since I last wrote here! Over three years to be precise… I’m now 2900+ miles away from where I last posted from and in a very different place in my life. Fortunately, I still love words, and I want to share a few links I have found lately that might be […][...]

October 2nd, 2009 - 8:01 pm § in etymology, vocabulary, word origins, words of the day

Words of the Day (10/02)

Here’s the next installment of Friday words. For all my Words of the Day posts, click HERE. Etymologies: Fall. (Noun. Synonym for autumn – fall is actually only used in the U.S.). This is from 1664, and it’s short for “fall of the leaf” (1545). Halloween. (Noun. October 31[...]

September 25th, 2009 - 11:10 am § in etymology, vocabulary, word origins, words of the day

Words of the Day (9/25)

Here’s the next installment of my Friday words. For all my Words of the Day posts, click HERE. Etymologies: Assassin. (Noun. A murderer of an important person, generally for political or religious reasons.) This word comes from the Arabic word hashishiyyin (hashish-users). A slightly nutty Ism[...]

September 24th, 2009 - 5:56 pm § in mysteries of english, old english, plurals, spelling, word origins

How many nouns?

Nearly all nouns have different singular and plural forms. I have one cat; he has two cats. I ate five apples; he had one apple. Nouns with a plural and a singular form are called variable nouns. Most variable nouns form the plural by taking an -s at the end. The added -s is called […][...]

September 21st, 2009 - 11:20 am § in etymology, vocabulary, word origins

Them’s Fighting Words

We have to thank wars and conflict for many of the popular words in our language today. During occupations our soldiers pick up slang; while fighting with another culture, we learn more about it and assimilate its words (quite the opposite of politicians’ intentions, I think). World War II boo[...]