Author Topic: The random etymology of the day (Read 334080 times)

Ela · « **Reply #2025 on:** July 25, 2018, 11:52:22 AM »

Interesting.

rivka · « **Reply #2026 on:** July 25, 2018, 08:11:23 PM »

Indeed.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #2027 on:** July 31, 2018, 10:22:01 AM »

What is the etymology of "on fleek"? It's a homonym of "en flique", but it's not apparent to me that they are related.

Because of tendonitis, I have to wear running shoes to work with my otherwise Orthodox Jewish-inflected professional attire. When people asked me about it, I said it was because I'm on fleek.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2028 on:** July 31, 2018, 10:28:50 AM »

It apparently arose as a variant of on flick. At least that's how the creator of the original viral video wrote it in the caption, but it sounded like she said fleek in the video, and it took off from there.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2029 on:** August 20, 2018, 02:05:26 PM »

I learned from this news story (which involves someone biting someone else's finger off) that mayhem in the legal sense is the mutilation or disfiguring of someone's face or limbs, which got me wondering about the etymology. Apparently it's a doublet of maim, which was borrowed from the French maihem. Eventually the two became differentiated in meaning, spelling, and pronunciation, though the original sense has hung around in some legal definitions of mayhem.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #2030 on:** August 20, 2018, 03:12:08 PM »

"Mayhem" is the nickname I gave my baby.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2031 on:** August 20, 2018, 03:41:09 PM »

I hope he's not actually mutilating anyone.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #2032 on:** August 20, 2018, 09:36:39 PM »

I have a baby fingernail scratch mark on my face, and am sporting some bruises from times when he needed to be reminded about gentle touching.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2033 on:** August 21, 2018, 08:30:49 AM »

I guess that's about as much maiming as a baby is capable of.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #2034 on:** August 21, 2018, 09:35:36 AM »

He is a strictly law-abiding baby. I am referring to the law of entropy.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #2035 on:** August 24, 2018, 09:20:17 AM »

Where does "hard-of-hearing" come from? We don't have any other analogue "hard-of" to mean "impaired".

Yesterday my son did the grocery run, and when we were unpacking the bags, I asked him why he bought zipper freezer bags instead of the zipper gallon food bags on the list. He said, "Those were the freezer bags? I thought those were the regular food bags." The bags had a huge label that said "Freezer Bags", so I said, "What's wrong with you, are you hard-of-reading?" But "hard-of-reading" is not a thing, just like my husband's impaired sense of smell isn't "hard-of-smelling". There is no word for smelling-impaired.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2036 on:** August 24, 2018, 09:59:46 AM »

The OED records several other "hard of verbing" and "hard to verb" constructions in that sense, like "hard of understanding" and "hard to believe" or "hard of belief". And, of course, there was Elaine's "What am I, hard of smelling?" on Seinfeld.

I'm not sure why only "hard of hearing" seems to have stuck around.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #2037 on:** August 24, 2018, 10:49:01 AM »

I'm hard of dancing, I guess.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2038 on:** August 24, 2018, 11:12:21 AM »

Same.

Ela · « **Reply #2039 on:** August 28, 2018, 09:16:15 AM »

Not me. I dance good.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #2040 on:** September 09, 2018, 08:54:18 AM »

Apricots are precocious.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2041 on:** September 09, 2018, 09:07:40 AM »

Beat you to it.

rivka · « **Reply #2042 on:** October 09, 2018, 12:01:30 AM »

In the I-never-thought-about-it-before-but-OF-COURSE-that's-what-it-means category:

adieu

Jonathon · « **Reply #2043 on:** October 09, 2018, 08:25:19 AM »

I figured that one out years ago from French classes.

rivka · « **Reply #2044 on:** October 09, 2018, 09:24:53 AM »

And I know barely enough French that I should have done so -- if I ever thought about it.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2045 on:** October 09, 2018, 09:30:27 AM »

You already know about adiós, right?

rivka · « **Reply #2046 on:** October 09, 2018, 11:08:27 AM »

Uh . . . .

Let's just say I did, right?

(I do know about goodbye.)

Ela · « **Reply #2047 on:** October 09, 2018, 06:12:24 PM »

I figured both those out years ago.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #2048 on:** October 16, 2018, 04:10:38 AM »

I don't know if this is an etymology thing or a funny English thing, but the "barb" in "rhubarb" comes from the Greek "barbaros", meaning "foreign", because it used to be imported. Imagine, of all the things that were imported, you know, with the Silk Road and all, rhubarb got the name.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2049 on:** October 16, 2018, 08:29:51 AM »

History times were weird.