Morpheme Addict

Gender, according to the American Heritage Dictionary refers to: Read more

And yet, while he behaved thus toward his friends and acquaintances, he did not show himself cruel or inexorable even to his enemies, but let off scot-free many of those who had come into collision with him personally and released many who had actually made war against him, even giving some of them honors and offices (Dio Cassius. Dio's Roman History: with an English Translation. Volume 32 of Loeb classical library. Edited and translated by Earnest Cary, and Herbert Baldwin Foster. Book XLIV. 377, 379).

There's an interesting phenomena known as folk etymology. That's when we have what seem like perfectly reasonable, even common sense, assumptions about the ancestry of words that, however reasonable on the surface, are in fact wrong. Read more

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

Here's the same passage from the Latin Vulgate: Read more

I noticed an online acquaintance the other day becoming extremely agitated that someone had referred to Christmas using the colloquialism Xmas. She felt that this was insulting, and offensive in the extreme. What she didn't realize was that Xmas as a shortened form for Christmas has a venerable, and solidly Christian, history.

The word Christmas is a compound of Christ + mass; we see it first in Old English in the form Cristes mæsse in 1038, according to the OED. The Old English form eventually evolved to the Middle English Christemasse. The word Christ is derived from the Greek word Christos, meaning "anointed," a literal translation of the Hebrew cognate of messiah. Read more

There is a long Christian tradition of using the Greek letters that spell Christ in various abbreviated forms. Christ in Greek is written with a Chi (X), a Rho (rather like a P) and an Iota (an I or i to you and me). Often the letters were combined to form both the letters, and a design; the graphic to the left of this paragraph is fairly typical of such graphic designs. Sometimes, the I was seen as the stem of the Rho; sometimes it was a separate letter. In the middle ages the name of Christ, or even the first three letters, was specifically seen as something for scribes and artists to illuminate with their very best work. Read more

The name of this Eastern European spirit probably comes from "voda," or water, in Russian. Similarly, the same word in Polish is "woda." This is a common pattern in completely unrelated languages; Whiskey/Whisky in English is derived from Gaelic uisge beatha, which quite literally means "water of life," from Old Irish uisce "water" + bethu "life." The Gaelic is itself probably a literal translation of the Medieval Latin aqua vita, which also gives us Akevitt, or Aquavit or Akvavit, in various Scandinavian languages. Read more

Trolls are, unfortunately, ubiquitous on the Internet. Trolls go back to the days of UseNet, but they are still alive and well today in discussion forums and blog post comment threads. The troll is someone who engages in misbehavior online in order elicit reactions, often, in hopes of angering/hurting/upsetting the unwary or naive user. Typically trolls will deliberately insult other posters and community members, post inflammatory text, appear obtuse in order to elicit annoyed responses, all in hopes of gaining attention. Trolls engage in trolling. To an Internet troll, any attention is rewarding. Read more

It's that time of year when we see words like "witch," and "hag" a lot more. Hag is an interesting word, in a number of respects. First, it's always applied to women; second, it's almost always pejorative.

The primary meanings are (according to the AHD):

1. An old woman considered ugly or frightful.
2. 1. A witch; a sorceress.
   2. Obsolete A female demon.

The underlying connotations of hag are typically both female, and old, with, often, an implication of hideousness, wickeness, and supernatural qualities. Read more

If you mention to anyone, at all, that you're going to visit Scotland, you're bound to be warned about Scotland's national dish; haggis. Haggis is, according to the AHD "A Scottish dish consisting of a mixture of the minced heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep or calf mixed with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings and boiled in the stomach of the slaughtered animal." The closest thing I can compare with haggis to in terms of standard American dishes is stuffing, made with giblets. My introduction to haggis consisted of my Scottish host handing my a glass of single malt, and telling me to down it, and then telling me that it was invented as compensation for haggis . . . Read more

Technically, the word anabasis is a noun, and means (according to the AHD):

1. An advance; an expedition.
2. A large-scale military advance, specifically the Greek mercenary expedition across Asia Minor in 401 B.C. led by Cyrus the Younger of Persia, as described by Xenophon (who was there) and later wrote a book about it, and the the "ten thousand" who followed Cyrus. It was unsuccessful, and the Greeks, led by Xenophon, retreated to the Black Sea.

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