The word #tyrant is from #Latin tyrannus, meaning “lord, master, monarch, despot,” and ultimately from the Greek τύραννος (tyrannos), which meant “monarch, ruler of a polis” or “absolute ruler unlimited by law or #constitution”.
The Greek term possibly has origins from the Lydian tûran, meaning “lord”, referred to someone who seized power without #legal right, not necessarily ruling cruelly.
Common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) in my yard yesterday. I spent a good chunk of my childhood thinking the name was *garden* snake, likely because plenty of seemingly trustworthy adults in my orbit called them that. #GarterSnake #GardenSnake #garden #snake #reptile #etymology #herps #nature
Can you identify the gizmo in the picture without looking at the caption?
"How did smut get so dirty? Simple: It was never clean." But did you know that its filth was originally botanical?
New on the Strong Language blog, @Fritinancy pays tribute to smut and the Tom Lehrer song of that title, now 60 years old: https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2025/04/09/smut/
Oh my word! My book, The Etymology of Etymology and Other Etymologies, is coming out in August. Topic: etymology. Publisher: SKS Kirjat. Cover: Emmi Kyytsönen. Language: Finnish. The actual Finnish title: Etymologian etymologia ja muita etymologioita. #etymology #nonfiction #books #language #suomenkieli @bookstodon @linguistics
Not quite sure if this is fully aligned to my corner of #mastodon, but it's so delightfully nerdy that I had to share.
These two dive into many terms for printing and #typography that are still with us today.
If you're into #etymology, #words, #graphicdesign, or #webdesign, then you may enjoy.
The word emolument originates from the Latin term emolumentum, which initially referred to a payment made to a miller for grinding grain.
It derives from the root molere, meaning “to grind,” combined with ex- (“out”) to form emolere (“to grind out”).
Over time, the meaning broadened to signify profit, gain, or advantage, particularly in the context of compensation for services or employment.
Spannende Geschichte, nur die kolportierte Herleitung der Wörter Kretin und Kretinismus entspricht nicht dem Stand der Etymologieforschung. Das Wort Kretin ist sicher älter als der Begriff Kreatinin und wird aus dem französischen Dialekt des Wallis hergeleitet von crestien "christlich". (Siehe hierzu Duden https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Kretin )
The word “evolve” originates from the Latin ēvolvere, meaning “to unroll” or “unfold.”
It is derived from ē- (a variant of ex-, meaning “out of”) and volvere (“to roll”).
Initially, it referred to the literal act of unrolling, such as a scroll or book.
Nancy Friedman has an enlightening and safe-for-work discussion of "smut" over on the Strong Language blog
Word of the day: Scuttlebutt, nautical, a butt (=cask) that has been scuttled(=pierced) to serve as a water tap on a ship.
Hence: rumor, gossip. Compare to: water cooler.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttlebutt
#motdujour #wordoftheday #etymology
I had always assumed the word "Panzer" was the German word for "panther". I was wrong! It comes from the Old French "panciere", meaning armor for the belly, deriving from Latin "pantex", which gave rise to English "paunch". Who knew!
On the 60th anniversary of Tom Lehrer’s song "Smut", @Fritinancy offers a salute to Lehrer and to "a four-letter word that wasn't quite one of *those* four-letter words".
On the Strong Language blog:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2025/04/09/smut/
People who self-identify as Maga will be pleased to learn that the English word tariff is a loan from French, and was loaned into French by this route: Italian < Medieval Latin < Turkish < Persian < Arabic.
"Heuristic" and "eureka" both come form the Greek word "heuriskein", meaning "to find, or find out".
Out of curiosity, I went to see when in fact "heed" dropped off in usage, and as I suspected, it was during The Enlightenment, just before the Revolutionary War. It tried to pull up again in the mid-19th century, then the 20th century put the nail in it. Again, probably because of its connections to the concept of obedience. To understand someone meant you would obey them, and after awhile that didn't seem so fun. (I just picture some angry old father screaming at his children to heed him or else.) Our society is FAR less authoritarian than it once was.
(I saw a YouTube video on outsider artist Henry Darger last night, and jesus we have it good. I'd like to keep it that way and make things even better.)
English conflates the concepts of "hear" and "understand." Many conflicts get nowhere because we use the common phrasing, "You're not listening to me!" or "You didn't hear me!" when what we really mean is, "You didn't get me, I want you to make sense of what I'm saying."
The process of comprehending what someone has said is different than hearing their words. How many times have you said, "You're not listening!" and they were in fact "listening" but not getting it? How many times have you said, "No I HEARD you?" when you did not, in fact, understand?
English used to have a snappy word for this: heed. To heed was to both hear AND to understand. And it also meant "obey" which might be why it fell out of favor (which itself reflects an interesting point of cultural values shift). We DO in fact conflate "listen" to obedience, sometimes, especially towards children. But not as much as once was.
The fact that all words mean multiple things, and that English has some issues with which things are conflated, can really influence how we think and interact. It's worth trying to unpack that. Then I start thinking towards how we can change English to be better.
