Author Topic: The random etymology of the day (Read 238140 times)

Jonathon · « **Reply #1400 on:** July 27, 2011, 04:34:33 PM »

It's a reference to pipe organs. Pulling out all the stops increases the volume.

Marianne Dashwood · « **Reply #1401 on:** July 27, 2011, 04:37:28 PM »

Organs?

BlackBlade · « **Reply #1402 on:** July 27, 2011, 04:45:12 PM »

Quote from: Jonathon on July 27, 2011, 04:34:33 PM

It's a reference to pipe organs. Pulling out all the stops increases the volume.

Makes sense. As an aside, I'm a bit sad that pipe organs will not be a mainstay of LDS chapels in the future. I believe chapels that have them are given funds to maintain them to a point, but no new chapels have them.

Porter · « **Reply #1403 on:** July 28, 2011, 08:27:59 AM »

Precious few new chapels have had them since we were born.

pooka · « **Reply #1404 on:** August 03, 2011, 09:14:56 AM »

Good thing correlation is not causation.

Marianne Dashwood · « **Reply #1405 on:** August 03, 2011, 11:29:45 AM »

Marianne Dashwood · « **Reply #1406 on:** August 05, 2011, 11:32:29 PM »

Trek comes into English from Afrikaans, from the Boers who "trekked" north to get away from the English authorities at the cape. (and subsequently died of malaria. I love Guns, Germs and Steel.)

It's from the middle Dutch trekken, which originally meant "to pull," and later took on the meaning of journeying. The original trekken, though, is related to our English word trigger, in which the meaning of pulling is preserved.

I think that's all pretty cool. I also like how now every time I think of Star Trek I'll think of Boers catching malaria.

Marianne Dashwood · « **Reply #1407 on:** August 05, 2011, 11:35:51 PM »

And here's all the other English words I could find with Afrikaans origins. Most of them I've never heard, and the ones I have are mostly wacky African animals. I think trek is the best one they gave us:

dagga
veldt
quagga
rand
kop
commandeer
commando
steenbok
trek
aardvark
hartebeest
spoor
springbok
apartheid
wildebeest

pooka · « **Reply #1408 on:** August 06, 2011, 04:19:41 AM »

I have to wonder if the word trek was ever used by Utah Pioneers then, if the Boer Great Trek was 1835. Maybe it just infiltrated the language rapidly. Kind of like temblor. English abhors a morphological vacuum or even a morphological niche held by only one word.

P.S. I don't mean to rain on your parade, er, trek. Just have felt some tendency to deconstruct all things associated with the trek re-creations they take kids on these days. I was particularly disturbed to learn this week that on the east coast they justify the "women's pull" because so many of the men had died. In the west, they justify the women's pull by saying the men had been drafted into the Mormon Battalion, which if I had ever given 5 seconds of thought to, I would have realized was absurd since the Battalion happened during the events depicted in Legacy. Duh. But seriously... :goes to look it up: Mormon Battalion was was 1846-47 and the handcart movement was 1856-1860.

Marianne Dashwood · « **Reply #1409 on:** August 06, 2011, 09:15:58 AM »

Temblor has NOT infiltrated the language.

*cocks shotgun*

It will have to come through me first.

Porter · « **Reply #1410 on:** August 06, 2011, 11:25:48 AM »

It's tembloring in its boots.

Jonathon · « **Reply #1411 on:** August 06, 2011, 11:30:08 AM »

Shoot him, Annie! He's infected!

Porter · « **Reply #1412 on:** August 06, 2011, 08:54:24 PM »

I dunno if she can -- it's a rare shotgun these days that is cocked before firing.

Marianne Dashwood · « **Reply #1413 on:** August 06, 2011, 11:38:29 PM »

I don't know what the correct word is for when you slide that outer part of the barrel down and back, but what matters is that I can do it, and I'm also a pretty good shot.

The Genuine · « **Reply #1414 on:** August 07, 2011, 08:43:15 AM »

I think that's called racking.

BlackBlade · « **Reply #1415 on:** August 08, 2011, 07:58:50 AM »

So I was watching Voyager when Nelix said, "I am a coward." Coward sounds like an interesting word. I looked it up and all I could find is that it comes from the old French "coe" which means tail, and -ard which is an indicator of possessing a certain quality (value neutral quality). I must say I didn't find it all that fulfilling.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #1416 on:** August 22, 2011, 08:57:43 AM »

Semolians? How'd that come to mean bucks? And how did bucks come to mean moolah, anyway?

BlackBlade · « **Reply #1417 on:** August 22, 2011, 01:35:28 PM »

Quote from: Tante Shvester on August 22, 2011, 08:57:43 AM

Semolians? How'd that come to mean bucks? And how did bucks come to mean moolah, anyway?

IIRC, and this is hearsay, a buck skin was used in frontier country as currency as much if not more than what banks were printing. One skin was a standard unit of currency, so it eventually entered our lexicon.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #1418 on:** August 22, 2011, 01:43:00 PM »

You got change of a buck?

Sure, what do you want, rabbits and raccoons?

Funny that buck means money and dough means money, but doe doesn't mean money.

BlackBlade · « **Reply #1419 on:** August 22, 2011, 01:55:45 PM »

Quote from: Tante Shvester on August 22, 2011, 01:43:00 PM

You got change of a buck?

Sure, what do you want, rabbits and raccoons?

Funny that buck means money and dough means money, but doe doesn't mean money.

The first joke I ever invented as a kid was, "What do you do with a couple of bucks?" "Let them loose in yard and start racking in the doe."

Marianne Dashwood · « **Reply #1420 on:** August 22, 2011, 06:14:39 PM »

From etymonline:

Quote

Meaning "dollar" is 1856, Amer.Eng., perhaps an abbreviation of buckskin, a unit of trade among Indians and Europeans in frontier days, attested in this sense from 1748.

Marianne Dashwood · « **Reply #1421 on:** August 22, 2011, 06:16:12 PM »

As for semolians, the only place I can find it is Urban Dictionary.

Marianne Dashwood · « **Reply #1422 on:** August 22, 2011, 06:18:03 PM »

Aha! The dictionary likes it if I spell it simoleon. But it says "origin unknown."

I didn't even know that was a word until today.

Porter · « **Reply #1423 on:** August 22, 2011, 06:30:43 PM »

I don't think I've ever heard it outside of movies and cartoons with ridiculous NY accents.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #1424 on:** August 22, 2011, 08:54:34 PM »

It's not at all the same as Somalians. So don't make that ridiculous mistake.