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I needed this. That was the day I lost my job. I was looking for some words from Sufjan today. Thank you Sufjan.

This was my day today. “You are performing an important and extraordinary public service with benefits that broaden the horizons of life.” —actual quote from the orientation video! Also: “All you need to be a good juror is an open mind!” I didn’t get picked for a case. Maybe next time. Stay positive. Thoughts and prayers today. Xoxox

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Piracy

In honor of stopping SOPA/PIPA, I looked up piracy today. Pretty interesting (as most words are!)

Piracy goes back to the Proto-Indo-European word per ("danger, fear"), so we'll start there.

1. Per turned into the Ancient Greek word πειρατής (peirates) which turned into Latin pirata and then into pirate and piracy. Most IE languages use a very similar word to pirate. Didn't change much.

2. Another branch of per goes like this: per to Latin periculum to peril. Also included are Spanish peligro, Romanian pericol, and Welsh perygl, all meaning "danger".

3. Per also turned into Proto-Germanic feran, which originally meant "danger", but in English became fear. Other Germanic languages have kept it meaning "danger": German Gefahr, Swedish fara, Dutch gevaar, Finnish vaara. (As I look up more and more words I see connections to Finnish and I wonder how it can claim to be a completely dissociated language - however, I suppose it could be that and have some that do have Germanic roots as well.)

4. Similar to #3 - per  turned into Proto-Germanic furhtin which turned into English fright/frighten, German Furcht/furchten, Swedish fruktan, etc. And now you know...the rest of the story.

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Freeze and Burn are the same word

Wow, I haven't done this in almost a year. To be honest, it's the diagrams that keep me away. Those are way too much work. I decided I might draw/scan them instead, so I got a scanner online and will try to do that when it gets here. Meanwhile, here's one that I thought was going to be way more interesting than it was.

The Proto-Indo-European word I chose was preus, because I noticed that the definition was "to burn, to freeze". That made me LOL. Sorry I  just said that, but it did. The "burning" definition seems to mean more of an itchy or tingly bodily burn (pleasant). I think the "freeze" part might initially have meant something similar, like how I imagine a body feels when it starts to freeze, or something like that.

Preus in the "freeze" sense turned into Proto-Germanic freusanan and then into all kinds of Germanic words for freeze (Dutch vriezen, German frieren, Icelandic frjósa, Danish fryse, and Swedish frysa) and frost (Dutch vorst, German Frost, and Icelandic, Danish, and Swedish frost).

In the "burn" sense it turned into Latin prurio which turned into a few terms that seem kind of medical and GRE-y, such as prurigo and prurient. That's about it for that. I went on a huge wild goose chase about this and it turned into a load of notes, but I guess now I have some other notes for some other stuff, some of which I already did on this blog.

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Friday, Free, Friend

I spent a good part of the day repeating "Friday" in my head, because this morning on the radio someone was reading the weather and I perceived that they said "Friday" differently. And here I am doing it again.

This is a little confusing since every word is also like 6 other words, but let me try to describe it. Also, I'm not even going to mention 95% of the stuff I read, so that should help clarify. For each entry in the OED it was like, "Cognate with or formed similarly to [45 different words in 16 languages]." Non-OE D's were not much better because they didn't tie some of the stuff together.

Free and friend came about from the Old English word freo. Freo also meant "woman" in Old English, as frau means woman in German. (I came up with that connection myself!) Those both trace their meaning back somehow to "to care about" or "to love". Kind of like "If you love someone, set them free" I guess. And maybe something about how women are nice.

The Icelandic word for free (adjective) is frjáls and from that comes the verb frelsa and from that came the Sigur Rós song "Flugufrelsarinn". [Some more stuff about how they use word play that I don't want to get into right now]

Finally there is an Old English common noun frig which means "love" and "affections" (they made a point to say affections was plural for some reason). Frig is also the name of the Germanic goddess of love. So, in Latin they had this thing where they called days "The day of [some god]". Germanic people adopted that format but substituted Germanic gods; thus "Frig" and "Thor", etc. The Roman one was Venere, which is where Spanish gets viernes. Interestingly, in Icelandic they completely abandoned that naming system. In my mind I'm thinking it was to prove that they really had converted to Christianity (in 1000 BCE), so much so that they took Norse gods out of their days of the week. They have Sunday and Monday the same, but then Third Day, Mid-Week Day, Fasting Day, and Washing Day.

Anyway, another funny thing I noticed was that in Old English they had evenings and nights for all the days, so there was "Frinight" and "Frieve". Frinight is supposedly still a thing, and so is Thurseven, as in "Holy Thurseven: the evening before Ascension Day." So happy Wednesnight!

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Giraffe

I decided to find a word that has a different origin than the ones I have been doing. Giraffe comes from the Arabic word زرافة (zarāfah). (I'll have to take the internet's word for that writing). An interesting thing is that giraffe is basically the same word in almost every language in the world. Good job, Arabic. Above is a photo and a link of a baby giraffe at ZooBorns.

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Candle, Candid, Candidate, Incandescent

I hope nobody is too terribly upset that I didn't do a word this weekend. I don't think anyone noticed.

The word candle comes from Old English candel which comes from Latin candere, which means "brilliant, white, bright, hot". I got through the whole diagram up there and realized I forgot candle altogether, but those things take so long that I didn't want to put it in. Sorry.

Incandescent and incendiary (and the Spanish word encender which means "to set on fire") come from the prefix in and candere. Incendiary is also a very good movie, which I just noticed has Matthew Macfadyen in it, who is one of my favorite actors. I may just watch it this week.

Accend, a word I've never heard, means "to set on fire", as does the Italian word accendere. Those both come from the addition of the prefix ad. I also just realized I spelled something wrong on that diagram. This was not my best day.

Candid and candor are both actually Latin words themselves and they derive meaning from candere as "pure" and "free from prejudice".

Candidate came about because candidates for office in Ancient Rome wore white togas. It's true. It's in the OED.

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Mountain

I'm too tired to write anything about this, so hopefully the picture explains it enough.

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Cure, Curious, Curator, Secure, Sure

Once upon a time, there was a Latin word that meant "care". That led to another word curator. It also led to secure, curious, care, and sure. The end.

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Good, Gather, Together

By request from Lisa. Good comes from Old English god (rhymes with load). That is from Germanic godaz which comes from IE ghedh ("to unite"). Godaz also led to Swedish god, Icelandic goður/goð/gott, Dutch goed, and Old English gæd, which was a word that meant "society" or "union" (it doesn't exist anymore).

Gaduronan means "to unite" and led to gaderian with the same meaning and then gather.

Slavically speaking (like that?), there was this word годъ (godu) which meant "a suitable time". It comes from a slightly different meaning of ghedh - "to be suitable". Eventually that became the word for "year", so that continued on into Russian год (god) Serbian година (godina), and Croation godina (all words for "year").

Lastly, gadar (which means "together") had a to added to it to become togædere. I think I might be confused, but if something already means "together", then why do you have to add another thing to also make it mean "together"? Anyway there was a similar word ætgædere that I thought was funny, and would've turned into atgether. It would've been a similar meaning, but slightly different. Sort of like how the word for "against" in OE could mean both "against" and "towards". 

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Penguin, Wit, Video

By request from Laura: penguin. Note: the actual origin of the word is not concretely known. The origin I'm giving here comes from one single primary source that explains what the word might mean. The book is called Some years travels into divers parts of Asia and Afrique (divers = diverse) from 1638.

In that book it says that pen-gwin is a combination of the Welsh words for "white" (gwyn) and "head" (pen). Why is it Welsh? Don't ask me. Why is it white head instead of black head? Again, who knows? Do penguins have white heads ever? Pen comes out of nowhere, as far as I'm concerned. Other Celtic languages have the same word for head though.

Gwyn is the word for "white". It comes from the Proto-Celtic word windo- which also means "white". Here's where it gets weird. Somehow, that word came out of the Indo-European word wid- which itself is a derivation of another IE word, weyd-. Those both mean "to know". How that turned into "white" I really can't fathom, but it did. The English word white is not related.

As you can see, video is related, and so are the German, Swedish, and Icelandic (and other) words for "to know". The Old English word for "to know" was witan. It was replaced at some point with know but still exists in the verb wit (as in "to wit"). The verbal and less common form is most closely related, but the noun wit (as well as the adjective wise) is related, a little farther off.

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Sky, Cuticle, House, Husk, Hose, Obscure, Shoe

None of this is related to ceiling or cielo, FYI. I wondered about that. Also, I have to scale back on the huge entries...they take so long.

Branch 1: IE (s)keu- means "cover", so all of these have something to do with covering. Latin cutis ("skin") (skin covering) emerged, leading to cuticle and cutaneous.

Branch 2: Germanic husan led to Old English hus (most or all other Germanic language have something like that for "house") and English house.

Branch 3: Germanic huson ("covering") led to OE husuc and English husk, as well as OE hosa and English hose.

Branch 4: Latin scurus ("covered") plus the prefix ob- led to obscure.

Branch 5: Germanic skiwo ("cloud cover") led to Old Norse sky and English sky. It also led to OE sceo ('shay-oh) meaning "cloud", which I guess died out. I can't think of a current word like that, anyway. 

Branch 6: Germanic skohaz (foot cover) led to OE scoh ('sho, rhymes with bro), which led to shoe.

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Pony, Poor, Foal, Few

Ok, this is the one I really used linguistic license on (a term I just made up). 

Branch 1: The IE word pau ("small") turned into Greek παῖς (pais), meaning "child" or "servant". That turned into English page (as in someone who does stuff for someone) and ped-, as in pedagogy and pediatrics.

Branch 2: Latin puer ("child") turned into puerile ("childlike")

Branch 3: Germanic fawaz turned into OE feawa ("few") which turned into few.

Branch 4: Germanic fulo ("small animal") turned into foal.

Branch 5: Latin pullus ("young animal") turned into pony and poultry.

Branch 6: Latin paucus ("small") turned into French peu and Spanish poco.

Branch 7: Latin pauper turned into English pauper and poor.

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Rare

Rare (as in meat doneness) comes from the Old English word for "to cook lightly/stir", which comes from Germanic hrōzijanan ("to stir"). The Germanic word led to various other words for "to stir" in other languages: German rühren, Icelandic hræra (part of one of my favorite words, hrærivél, which means "electric mixer"), Swedish röra, and Norwegian røra.

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Detect, Protect, Thatch, Toga, Tile, Stegosaurus

Here's a complicated one for a Friday. What does that mean? I don't know. Detect is the word I commonly refer to as my favorite word (along with emerge, which has a boring word origin). It's also possible that I took some liberties with this one. I think I also took liberties with yesterday's too, but to be honest I can't remember. I should really make better note of that...and by "liberties" I mean that sometimes words are listed as cognates or "akin to" and so I place them in the diagram even though they don't have a specific notation. For instance, above, I don't think þakan is directly noted to be a descendant of teg, but thatch is akin to tile, and they all have the same meanings down the line, so I filled it in like that.

Once again there's an Indo-European word teg meaning "cover". It's actually (s)teg but I didn't feel like putting that in the picture.

#1 branch: Latin tegula ("roof tile") --> Germanic tigulo --> Old English tigele (the g sounds like a y so it actually sounds like a really drawn-out tile as if you were a 5-year-old) --> English tile.

#2 branch: στέγω (stego). That means "cover/plate"  That directly turned into stegosaurus. It turned into Latin tego which encompasses more of the "cover" meaning (includes "clothe", for instance, which is where toga comes from). Then you have the Spanish and Italian words for "roof", tejado and tetto. If you add de- you get detect ("uncover") and if you add pro- you get protect ("extra cover").

#3 branch: þakan ("covering") --> þæc (the c is a ch sound, so it sounds exactly like thatch) --> thatch. Other descendants include German decken ("to cover") and Icelandic þak ("roof"). I should have used Dach for the German word, but we can't all be perfect all the time.

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Dinosaur, Dire, Bonus

I forget how I decided to use this word, but it was funny. I hope I can remember. There was an IE word dwei which meant "fear" or "awe". One branch went with the negative connotation and turned to Latin dirus and English dire. It also turned into Greek δεινός (deinos) which is the first part of dinosaur. The good connotation ("awe") turned into Greek δέος (deos) ("good") and then into Latin duonus ("good") and then went through a specific type of sound change and became bonus. That's why the French word for "good" is bon and the Spanish word is bueno. Oh, and σαῦρος (sauros) is just the word for lizard. I couldn't really find any other thing connected to that.

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Fever, Fervor, Favor, Day

I was looking up something else and came upon this and I thought it was pretty weird, so here it is.

There was an Indo-European word dhegh which meant "to burn" or "hot/warm". That turned into the Germanic word dagaz and then Old English dæg and Icelandic dagur. Dæg became day. As for when the meaning changed from "warm" to "day", I don't know.

Somehow, dhegh changed form to bher. It seems like a bit too much of a stretch there for me, but I'm probably just missing a couple of steps. That became fervere which also means "to burn", "hot", and the additional "to boil". That's where Spanish hervir ("to boil") came from as well as English fervor and fervent. Fervere made a noun febris which means "fever". That led to fever and, it's theorized, roundaboutly to February.

Bher created a slightly different Latin word fovere which means "warm". That's where favor comes from (being warm to someone). Foment has the same lineage. Its meaning comes from warming up more with anger, I guess. I don't totally know what that word means.

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Collect, Legend, -Logy, Lecture, Intelligent

This turned out to be quite the learning experience. It starts with the Indo-European word leg, which had several meanings. That word turned into the Latin word legere, which also had several meanings. The primary two were "to read aloud/speak" and "to gather".

The "to read aloud" meaning: Legere had a verbal noun (gerund) form of legende. That stayed basically the same all the way up through Anglo-French, Middle English, and Modern English to become the word legend. Legere also became the modern word for "to read" in many languages, such as Spanish (leer), French (lire), and Icelandic (lesa) as well as the English word lecture. I think lots of speaking words are related, like locution (not totally sure on that).

The "to gather" meaning: The prefix con- was added and eventually became collect, and the prefix inter- was added and eventually became intelligent.

The Greek word λέγω (legō) came separately but equally out of the IE word leg and turned into λόγος (logos) which turned into the suffix -logy. The Greek and Latin words have the same sounds, so it's kind of hard for me to tell which came from which. However, I do know that the Greek word is less prevalent and only has the "speak" meaning and not the "gather" meaning.