Gl- Words and *ghel-

By lisala on 7/15/10 11:55pm
Add Comment

There's an odd thing in English, that many others have noted but that I've never really seen an explanation of. That is this:

There is an entire class of English words that begin with gl- and have to do with light effects.

We have in English:

Gleam, glitter, gloss, glow, glister, glare, glad, glade, glacial, glass . . .

All these words, and a lot more including gold and yellow, descend from the Proto Indo-European root ghel- 2.

Read more >

New York Times Standards Guru Bans the word Tweet

By lisala on 6/15/10 1:41pm
Add Comment

There are times when those who are prescriptive (and pompous) about language end up looking really stupid. Here's a case in point: Phil Corbett, the New York Times Standards Editor, the guy charged with establishing acceptable linguistic and journalist ethics at The Gray Lady, sent out a memo to Times staffers last week in which he rendered the word Tweet, in the context of referring to the 140 character posts sent to the Twitter micro blogging service, as verbotten. The memo was leaked to the blog The Awl, so we have it to parse, in all its glory. In the memo, Corbett instructs:

Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, "tweet" has not yet achieved the status of standard English. And standard English is what we should use in news articles.

Read more >

Sixteen-ounce Beer in Cans

By lisala on 6/8/10 12:29pm
2 Comments

I've recently discovered that there are a variety of slang terms for the sixteen ounce beer can, like the one pictured here. What have you heard them called? Keep in mind, I'm looking for alternate names for the can, not the beer inside the can, which where I live, can be either mass produced beer, or a local microbrew bottled specifically for hikers. A lot of microbrewers and craftbrewers are using the sixteen ounce cans. I notice one of my all time favorite breweries, Seattle's Pyramid Brewery is releasing on of my all time favorite beers, Pyramid's Haywire Hefeweizen in a limited summer release 16 ounce can.

Read more >

About Morpheme Addict

By lisala on 5/9/10 12:40pm
Add Comment

A morpheme is the smallest "meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word, such as man, or a word element, such as -ed in walked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts" (American Heritage Dictionary). And yes, there's a pun embedded in the title of this blog. Morpheme Addict is a blog about language, and etymology, and the ways that words carry their history and their stories, with them.

Read more >

Pony Keg

By lisala on 5/4/10 9:08pm
Add Comment

I was listening to the song "Jackson" written by Jerry Leiber and Billy Edd Wheeler, and sung by Johnny Cash and June Carter. Near the end there's a stanza that refers to a "pony keg":

But they'll laugh at you in Jackson, and I'll be dancin' on a pony keg. They'll lead you 'round town like a scalded hound,
With your tail tucked between your legs,
Yeah, go to Jackson, you big-talkin' man.
And I'll be waitin' in Jackson, behind my Japan fan.

I confess that before this song, I'd never even heard of a pony keg. It is in fact a beer keg, one that's half the size of a regular keg, and holds 1/4 of a barrel, or about 29 liters, or 7.75 gallons of beer. That's enough for 62 pint glasses of beer. I note that this is not the same as the "refrigerator kegs" made by Heineken and others.

Read more >

Oil: A Story of Human Civilization

By lisala on 4/15/10 9:27pm
Add Comment

Olives, deliberately planted and tended for thousands of years, are intimately tied to the early diets of ancient humans, who carefully cultivated them wherever they roamed, so much so that a plant with Afro-Asiatic ancestry is now grown even in Washington state. It's no small thing, that, and it marks the importance of the olive tree in human history, given that the plant is used not only for the fruit (the olive), but for the oil, pressed from the fruit, the leaves, and even the wood. English, etymologically speaking, obtained the word olive via Old French, olive, from Latin oliva, "olive, olive tree," from Greek elaia "olive tree, olive." Elaia is most likely derived from one of the Aegean languages, possibly Cretan, or Minoan, since we also see ewi "oil" in Armenian.

Read more >

Sorbet and Sherbet

By lisala on 3/20/10 5:42pm
Add Comment

In the United States, Sorbet is a frozen dessert made of sweetened fruit juice; sherbetSorbetSorbet (sometimes spelled sherbert) includes other ingredients, typically gelatin and milk. Etymologically, both sherbet and sorbet go back to the same Turkish word, sherbet. English first borrowed sherbet, indirectly, for sorbet. Sorbet first appears in English around 1585; it was borrowed from the French, who probably borrowed from the Italian form sorbetto; the Italians appear to have been directly inspired by Turkish sherbet. I note that in France, you will notice packages of frozen desserts made with fruit labeled sorbet, and sorbet laitier ; the latter is "dairy sorbet," or sherbet, in Yank terminology.

Read more >

Ritual vs Ceremony

By lisala on 3/18/10 5:05pm
2 Comments

I thought I'd respond to this post in a separate post. Anonymous asked:

Ritual or ceremony? Is there a difference? I know what the dictionary definitions are, but a friend and I are having a dispute about whether those two words can be used interchangeably. Where do you draw the line? And do the origins of the words actually clarify their true intended meanings? Does anyone have any input?

They do not mean the same thing, at all, nor are they interchangeable, though you can make a case for them being closely associated. Both words are borrowed from Latin,

Read more >

Ritual or ceremony?

By Anonymous on 3/18/10 12:30pm
5 Comments

Ritual or ceremony? Is there a difference? I know what the dictionary definitions are, but a friend and I are having a dispute about whether those two words can be used interchangeably. Where do you draw the line? And do the origins of the words actually clarify their true intended meanings? Does anyone have any input?

Gender

By lisala on 2/7/10 6:59pm
Add Comment

Gender, according to the American Heritage Dictionary refers to:

Read more >

  1. Grammar
    1. A grammatical category used in the classification of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and, in some languages, verbs that may be arbitrary or based on characteristics such as sex or animacy and that determines agreement with or selection of modifiers, referents, or grammatical forms.
    2. One category of such