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gravityeyelidsvia http://ift.tt/2avA6CD:
astynomi:
urulokid:
FUN ENGLISH FACTS!!!!
“mine uncle” somehow got turned into “my nuncle” in the 1600s this sounds so fake but i assure you “nuncle” was a real word people used, all thanks to MISDIVISION, also called REBRACKETING. It’s the same reason “a napron” (from mappa, then nappa) got turned into “an apron” and for some crazy fucking reason we decided to drop “nuncle” and go back to “uncle” but kept “apron” instead of “napron”
“indeed” used to be “in deed” as in “i will do this in word and in deed” meaning your ass was gonna go DO something FOR REAL, you can COUNT ON ME. It got turned into one word, which then wound up meaning almost the same thing. Kind of like “all right” vs “alright”.
“shamefaced” originally was the archaic “shamefast” as in you’re so ashamed you’re stuck there
“bridegroom” came from OE “bridgome”, “gome” being a word for “man”
eggs were called “eyren” (as in things from eyries) in England until the french derived term “eggs” became the standard term. there’s a story about some dudes in the middle ages who sailed from London down the Thames 20 miles and asked a lady to make them some eggs and she was like “i don’t speak french what the hell are you saying to me”
“explode” once meant “to force a performer off the stage”
the word “funk” dates from the Tudor era and was a word for the smell of tobacco smoke. that’s right, shit was funky with Henry VIII
“noon” comes from the latin “novem” meaning “nine”. the roman way of counting time meant that the ninth hour of the day was about 3 PM. (they started at dawn being hour one and moved on from there)
“slut” just meant “an untidy messy dirty person” up till actually fairly recently
“cumberground” is an archaic word meaning “a useless person who just takes up space”. i expect you all to make good use of this when referring to a certain british actor who looks like the middle stage of an animorph
“woman” is derived from “wifmann” (wif- meaning wife, a really old word for woman, and -mann meaning human being) meaning “female human”. so the next time you see anyone deciding they’re being A Super Radical Feminist and spelling “woman” like “womyn” because the word MAN is in there and THEREFORE it must be the WORST, gently remind them that “woman” and “man” don’t have the same god damn etymological root and they’re fucking up the part of the word that denotes the noun as being a human being. congrats radfems you done it u saved the city
that last one is why I get so miffed about the obsession with GREEK THEORY for everything and no Romans.
I have seen a trend that lifts its head once in a while, to advocate ‘herstory’. No, please don’t imply to a generation of little girls who are no longer taught etymology that ‘history = his story’.
‘story’ is short for history (Greek ἱστορία) means ‘enquiry’. The Romans had two words for the function of historians, one was ‘historia’ borrowed from Greek, while the Latin term was ‘memoria’, which meant ‘the act of creating something by remembrance’.
Don’t teach history/herstory, teach creation by remembrance.
astynomi:
urulokid:
FUN ENGLISH FACTS!!!!
“mine uncle” somehow got turned into “my nuncle” in the 1600s this sounds so fake but i assure you “nuncle” was a real word people used, all thanks to MISDIVISION, also called REBRACKETING. It’s the same reason “a napron” (from mappa, then nappa) got turned into “an apron” and for some crazy fucking reason we decided to drop “nuncle” and go back to “uncle” but kept “apron” instead of “napron”
“indeed” used to be “in deed” as in “i will do this in word and in deed” meaning your ass was gonna go DO something FOR REAL, you can COUNT ON ME. It got turned into one word, which then wound up meaning almost the same thing. Kind of like “all right” vs “alright”.
“shamefaced” originally was the archaic “shamefast” as in you’re so ashamed you’re stuck there
“bridegroom” came from OE “bridgome”, “gome” being a word for “man”
eggs were called “eyren” (as in things from eyries) in England until the french derived term “eggs” became the standard term. there’s a story about some dudes in the middle ages who sailed from London down the Thames 20 miles and asked a lady to make them some eggs and she was like “i don’t speak french what the hell are you saying to me”
“explode” once meant “to force a performer off the stage”
the word “funk” dates from the Tudor era and was a word for the smell of tobacco smoke. that’s right, shit was funky with Henry VIII
“noon” comes from the latin “novem” meaning “nine”. the roman way of counting time meant that the ninth hour of the day was about 3 PM. (they started at dawn being hour one and moved on from there)
“slut” just meant “an untidy messy dirty person” up till actually fairly recently
“cumberground” is an archaic word meaning “a useless person who just takes up space”. i expect you all to make good use of this when referring to a certain british actor who looks like the middle stage of an animorph
“woman” is derived from “wifmann” (wif- meaning wife, a really old word for woman, and -mann meaning human being) meaning “female human”. so the next time you see anyone deciding they’re being A Super Radical Feminist and spelling “woman” like “womyn” because the word MAN is in there and THEREFORE it must be the WORST, gently remind them that “woman” and “man” don’t have the same god damn etymological root and they’re fucking up the part of the word that denotes the noun as being a human being. congrats radfems you done it u saved the city
that last one is why I get so miffed about the obsession with GREEK THEORY for everything and no Romans.
I have seen a trend that lifts its head once in a while, to advocate ‘herstory’. No, please don’t imply to a generation of little girls who are no longer taught etymology that ‘history = his story’.
‘story’ is short for history (Greek ἱστορία) means ‘enquiry’. The Romans had two words for the function of historians, one was ‘historia’ borrowed from Greek, while the Latin term was ‘memoria’, which meant ‘the act of creating something by remembrance’.
Don’t teach history/herstory, teach creation by remembrance.
