Wordorigins.org Discussion Forums

The Unsuccessful Quest For A Universal Language

2013-05-19T17:42:17Z

The Unsuccessful Quest For A Universal Language

NPR decides to ask a linguist how language works… refreshing.

Diegogarcity Usurper

2013-05-13T23:44:34Z

While strumming on my keyboard I serendipitously landed on this URL: http://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/

I think it’s time that Aldi and/or the Forum formally registers diegogarcity and informs the OED and Co., of the presence of usurpers. Has any Forum member come across this so-called B-M-P before?

jazz or music jargon: “hit” synonymous with “gig”?

2013-05-13T12:22:43Z

I am a devoted reader of Do the Math, Ethan Iverson’s blog. (He’s the pianist in The Bad Plus, and an absolutely remarkable writer on various aspects of jazz and other topics.)
On a couple of posts he’s used the word “hit” as a synonym of “gig.” Example (rough paraphrases): “We had a good hit last night in Philly” or “...the last tour involved a few hits with Joe Blow on guitar.” Is this a newer slang expression? An older term I’ve somehow overlooked? I’ve done a fair amount of reading about jazz (books by or about Miles, Coltrane, Mingus, interviews and oral histories, etc) and have some experience as a (very) amateur musician, and yet this usage is completely new to me. And I’ve combed through several standard online dictionaries/thesauruses and lists of jazz slang, and nowhere do I see “hit” defined in this way.

Anyone?

I’m also going to post this to a jazz discussion forum.

Some are up in “G,”

2013-05-09T02:46:25Z

The song, Sidewalks of New York has the line Some are up in “G,” meaning, apparently, successful. What might be the origin of this phrase?

Place-names of Shetland and Orkney

2013-05-14T03:57:02Z

http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/608-dull-flag-and-tongue-of-gangsta-the-laugh-out-loud-place-names-of-shetland-and-orkney

Place-names of Shetland and Orkney

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They are amusing.

frit

2013-05-10T23:26:27Z

Rather than hijack the cunt thread, I’ve started this one after hearing “glid”. Don’t know if anyone else here watched it, but there was a fascinating and very revealing TV documentary called “The Young Margaret” (Thatcher) which showed what the woman, warts and all, was like - not someone I’d particularly invite round for a natter. (She couldn’t natter, by the sound of it). Mrs T in Prime Minister’s Question Time once used the word “frit” which is dialectal midlands - not just Lincolnshire - for “frightened”. Here‘s an OED blog on her linguistic influence.

Another protolanguage?

2013-05-07T04:21:44Z

Any comments on this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/06/european-asian-language-tongue-superfamily

Try - the sifting

2013-05-08T16:05:21Z

Was trawling through my Dutch etymological dictionary in the bog the other night (too much detail - ed; too much RPondian slang - LPondians) and something led me to the word ‘trial’.

There were two lemmas, one of which was pretty obscure (’comical tenor’, named for the eponymous French singer Antoine 1736-95, that’s the last interesting bit of this post), the other a loan version of the English term for ‘ordeal’, ‘test’.

According to Van Dale:

Trial < Eng < ME trien [select] < Fr trier [sort, sift], late Lat *tritare [rub, thresh], iterative of Lat terere (pp tritum) [rub, crush, thresh] (tritum also means ‘refined’). The shift in meaning from ‘thresh’ (ie, ‘separate the chaff from the corn’) to ‘sort’ is not so far.

I was aware of the related Eng. word ‘triage’, also from the French. Not sure if ‘trier’ is still used in mod. Fr. (I don’t remember ever hearing it in speech, and I have studied French and lived in the country) but I never quite made the ‘French connection’ (sorry!) so was interested enough to check out what the Etymonline.com site made of ‘try’, spurred on by the apparent difference in the underlined bits above and below.

Their entry:

Try (v.)
c.1300, “examine judiciously, sit in judgment of,” from Anglo-French trier (late 13c.), from Old French trier “to pick out, cull” (12c.), from Gallo-Romance *triare, of unknown origin. The ground sense is “separate out (the good) by examination.” Meaning “to test” is first recorded mid-14c.; that of “attempt to do” is from early 14c. Sense of “to subject to some strain” (of patience, endurance, etc.) is recorded from 1530s. Trying “distressing” is first attested 1718. To try (something) on for size in the figurative sense is recorded from 1956.

Is the Van Dale’s hypothetical Late-Latin verb *tritare also mentioned by the OED? If not, what does it say?

Thanks in advance, one day I will be able to afford the real deal giant OED… :-)

The C-word wasn’t always so offensive

2013-02-27T07:59:41Z

Slate’s Explainer explains with the help of Anatoly Liberman of the University of Minnesota, Jesse Sheidlower of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Ben Zimmer

Nice word history.

edit: Thanks Jheem!

HD: Trademarking Día de los Muertos

2013-05-08T13:47:36Z

A bad idea, but not for the reason most people think.