We all feel very attached to and protective of our names. I hate it when someone misspells or mispronounces mine. It’s MY name! And I’ve been called by that name (and various nicknames) for 23 years exactly (it’s my birthday). In English we usually have 3 names – the first na[...]
Archive for the ‘word origins’ Category
Eponymous Words
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[...]
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 G[...]
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[...]