#etymological doublets

[yvanspijk]

Pity and piety are doublets: they both stem from Latin pietātem, the accusative of pietās. Pity comes from Old French pité, a word inherited from spoken Latin. It underwent the sound changes that turned Latin into French. Piety was borrowed from Old French pieté, which itself was a borrowing from written Latin. Here's number 8 in my series: English doublets from Latin via French!

[garland-on-thy-brow]

The etymology of chair. I never thought it comes from cathedra!

[tanadrin]

“gender” is from the latin word “genus” meaning “kind.” it is a doublet (that is, shares an etymological origin) with the words “genre” //// gotta replace the gender binary of "men" and "women" with the trinary of "poetry" "prose" and "drama"

which one of you relies on the aesthetic qualities of language in the relationship and which one of you follows the natural flow of speech

[drlinguo]

Etymological doublets

Source

[linguisticdiscovery]

Etymological doublets

host and guest both derive from the same Indo-European root *ghosti- ‘stranger, guest, host’, one through Latin and one through Germanic.

This is an example of a doublet—a set of words in a language that have the same etymological root.

Usually this happens when the same word enters a language through different paths. For example, frail and fragile are a doublet that came to English through Old French vs. directly from Latin, respectively.

The same word can also be borrowed at different points in history. For example, street and strata were both borrowed from Latin strāta ‘laid down, spread out, paved’, but street was borrowed before the Anglo-Saxons had even come to England, while strata was borrowed during the Renaissance.

Here are a bunch of doublets in English!

[necarion]

"nefling" as gender-neutral "sibling-child"

There's been some discussion about a gender-neutral term for "niece or nephew" and I know there's been some settling on "nibling". And I really don't like that, as it is an obviously play on "nibble" which implies something tiny and inconsequential. Which maybe works if they're a baby, but is generally condescending.

Looking through the etymology of "nephew" and "niece", I think that "nefling" is probably the most sensible linguistic construction.

Nephew:

From Middle English nevew, neveu (“nephew, grandson”), from Old French neveu, from Latin nepos, nepōtem, from Proto-Italic *nepōts (also, from whence we get "nepotism") Displaced or absorbed the inherited English neve (“nephew, grandson, male cousin”), from Middle English neve, from Old English nefa, from Proto-West Germanic *nefō, from Proto-Germanic *nefôd

Niece:

From Middle English nece (“niece, granddaughter”), from Old French nece (“niece, granddaughter”) (Modern French nièce (“niece”)) from Late Latin neptia, representing Latin neptis (“granddaughter”), from Proto-Indo-European *néptih₂ (“granddaughter, niece”). Doublet of nift. (displaced form)

nift: From Middle English nyfte, nift, nifte, from Old English nift (“niece, granddaughter”), from Proto-Germanic *niftiz (“niece”), from Proto-Indo-European *néptih₂.

All the terms we have for niece and nephew, both in original OE and in French borrowings, derive from the PIE *nepōts (*néptih₂ itself comes from *nepōts + *-ih₂.

If you trace those four terms back to a common ancestor, we could have "nepper", "nepling" or even "nephling", but that's crossing etymological forms (something English would never (/s) do, I know). But honestly, I just don't like the sound of "nepper" (close to "nipper", a colloquial for "small child" and very similar to "nibbler").

But if you go from the Proto-Germanic *nefod and *niftiz, you can construct either "nifling" or "nefling". Since "niffling" is slang for "to pilfer" and a "niffler" is a term for "trifle", I'm strongly inclined to the latter. And because we're taking the Germanic linguistic root, we don't have to deal with a "-ph-" in there.

"Nefling" it is?

[eirian-houpe]

Dies Irae - Chapter 1

Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Mad Hatter | Jefferson, Evil Queen | Regina Mills, Wicked Witch of the West | Zelena, Red Riding Hood | Ruby, Grumpy | Leroy, Captain Hook | Killian Jones, Grace | Paige (Once Upon a Time) Additional Tags: AU, Angst, Violence, archeology, psychic questing, Religion, spirituality, Magic, Supernatural - Freeform, Romance, Smut Summary:

A strange man confronts Doctor Belle French after one of her lectures, and claims to need her help. He also claims to know that she is troubled, and can offer her protection. When events transpire that lead Belle to take up that offer, a desperate search begins to find a series of ancient artifacts, and Belle and her friends - both old and new - face increasing danger as they try to secure the artifacts for the powers of good before they can fall into very wrong hands, and possibly threaten every living thing in Storybrooke and beyond!

Chapter One: Ēvincere

Etymology of the English word evince (v.) c. 1600, "disprove, confute," from French évincer "disprove, confute," from Latin evincere "conquer, overcome subdue, vanquish, prevail over; elicit by argument, prove," from assimilated form of ex "out" (see ex-) + vincere "to overcome" (from nasalized form of PIE root *weik- (3) "to fight, conquer"). Meaning "show clearly" is late 18c. Not clearly distinguished from its doublet, evict, until 18c. Related: Evinced; evinces; evincing; evincible.

"And I cannot stress hard enough…”

He didn’t move.  While all around him in the lecture hall, those gathered in unspoken conspiracy seemed to squirm and shift uncomfortably in their places on the long, hard wooden benches, he remained immobile.

“…that if you are coming into archeology with dreams of… fame and fortune; of glory even, then you have been sadly misinformed.”

He sighed - perhaps the first sign of life since he entered the hall - and moved his hands with slow, measured precision, to turn to collar of his black, woolen trench coat up as if to defend against a unwelcome draft. He’d heard this before, several times, and as she continued, almost syllable for syllable, matched her litany.

“Treasure comes in many forms,” he muttered as she spoke, “and it isn’t always - is rarely as a matter of fact - gold or precious artifacts.” He recitation was lifeless and without the passionate inflection with which she spoke.

“But is something more precious still…” She gave a pause then, and in his line of sight, the watcher could separate those that had been caught in her spell, and those that were merely along for the ride. The former leaned, slightly, toward the front of the lecture hall, where the diminutive Doctor Belle French held court, and finished with all the mysteriousness it seemed that she could muster, “Knowledge.”

If she might have continued, he would never know, as the bell signaling the end of the alloted time sounded, and the ever impatient students began stuffing backpacks and tote bags with notebooks and textbooks; wooden boxes full of sharpened pencils and depleted ink pens, and hurried to rise and leave.

Still, he sat immobile, one booted foot up on the desk-like shelf in front of him, the other splayed slight to the side, toward the aisle.  Others along his row shifted impatiently; pointedly waiting for him to take his foot down at least, so they could sidle, inconvenienced, past this apparent miscreant. He didn’t move. He didn’t even respond to the irritated murmuring; never once took his eyes off French as she too began packing away the lecture notes into folders, then the folders into piles on a table already replete with books and other papers.

“Are you gonna move y’foot, mate?”

Apparently, the patience of the nearby attendees had worn thin, or at least their courage had thickened, one or the other.

“Go around,” he said, his voice low and full of gravel, as well as gravitas. It was all he said, and neither did he make any attempt to remove his foot from blocking the way. 

After another moment of immobility, and with the press of other students behind him, the one that had spoken tried again, more threatening this time as he grumbled, “I said move yer foot.”

With the grace of a highly trained dancer, and turning as he did indeed move his foot to stand, he turned to face the student, towering over the younger man as he said quietly, and with patience that somehow held a deadly quality, “And I said, go. Around.”

The student opened his mouth to make a third protest, but as he shifted slightly, something seemed to change the younger man’s mind and, muttering something not quite audible, but he was certain was unlikely to be very complementary, did indeed turn, and pushing the other students ahead of him, moved and exited the row from the other side.

The students were already forgotten though, and he turned his attention back to Doctor French. She was slowly clearing the table in front of the podium of all the books and papers littered there, packing them away in her already overstuffed messenger bag, paying absolutely no heed to the room around her, nor - he guessed - the energies in it. 

When he felt the moment was right, just as the light descended enough to case a beam across the lecture hall and illuminate the dust that had yet to settle, he spoke.

“It isn’t true, you know?” he said. Though his voice was still soft he pitched it so that the acoustics of the hall carried it clearly to the professor. She started slightly, then looked up at him, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the light that concealed him.

“I beg your pardon?” she shot back, her voice terse, a challenge.

“Granted,” he said, and began to slowly descend the steps that flanked the tiers of seats.

“No, that’s not—” she began, slightly flustered, before annoyance got the better of her and she demanded, “I’m sorry - who are you?”

Once he reached the floor, he strode across to her, his trench coat almost billowing, cloak-like behind him, and once close enough held out a hand in her direction.

“My name is Jefferson,” he told her, “And I need your help to do something that I can’t.”

-------------

Belle blinked, then with a slight scoff, and ignoring his still outstretched hand said, “Well you have a very strange way of showing it!” Then she returned to packing her bag.

“In return,” he continued, apparently unmoved by her response, “I may be able to assist you.”

“I don’t need your help,” she snapped. The tone in his voice made the small hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end. Had he been watching her?

“There are powers in this world, Doctor French, who have no regard for the living, nor respect for the dead. I suspect you know the type, if not the very ones of whom I speak.”

She looked up at that, fixing her eyes first on his face, undeniably handsome, but clearly more than a little haunted behind the seriousness of his expression, and then traveling the length of the sombre-clad figure that stood before her, seeming to know more about her than a stranger should.

She couldn’t help but notice the small pin that graced his otherwise unadorned lapel: an equal armed, red cross, their width narrower at the center than they were at the ends, set against a white background that was stark against the black of his coat.

“Now you listen, Mister Je—.”

“Just Jefferson,” he corrected.

“I don’t know who you are, or where you came from,” she tried for indignation, but even to her own ears, the tone spoke more of fear, “or even why you’re here, but—”

“I told you,” he said, his voice soft, “I need your help.”

She frowned, and couldn’t muster an answer, just stood and shook her head.

He raised his long forgotten, outstretched hand to her again, and as if by magic, though she was certain it was slight of hand, he produced a velum business card and held it out to her, clasped between his index and middle finger.

“There’s a man, his name is Mister Gold,” he said. “If you have cause to change your mind, all you have to do is go to him. It’s very important you tell him what’s been going on. He can protect you, but you must tell him exactly what’s been happening. He’ll know what to do.”

He nodded then, just once, to the business card he still held, and hesitantly, she reached for it, and glancing down at it, saw the words that graced the center of the otherwise unadorned card.

“Gold - Antiquarian,” it said, and then in relief around the edges, words that she had to turn the card one way and then the other in order to read. Latin words.

Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

When she looked up, Jefferson was already gone.

[archaeology-findings]

Etymological Doublets: Part 2

Beef and cow

You have probably noticed that most livestock have one word to refer to the animal when it is alive, and one word to refer to it when it is eaten. This is because after the Norman conquest in 1066, French was the standard language spoken by the noble families and of course the royal family. This meant that the farmers raising the livestock referred to their animals by their Old English names, while the rich folks eating the meat referred to the animal in French. Eventually in the 1400s English was reintroduced into court, but it was too late - these French words, and many others, had stuck.

Beef comes from the Anglo-Norman beof, from the Old French buef or beof, meaning cow or ox. Buef was derived from the Latin bos, meaning ox, which ultimately came from the PIE root *gʷōs, meaning cow.

Cow comes from the Old English cū, from the Proto-Germanic *kūz, of the same meaning. *Kūs was derived from the PIE root *gʷōs.

* Indicates a reconstructed word

[ranahan]

*ver- (‘earn’)

Not entirely my own analysis, but rather something I’ve picked up from various Fando’a dictionaries and expanded upon.

Let’s look at canon instances of verd and its derivations first, then *ver- without the d, then some non-canon derivations, and lastly a bit of Mandalorian history for those who care to read that far.

Canon: verd & derivations

verd (n): soldier

I think this is a contracted form of ver-ad, ‘one who earns’ (see this post about agent nouns or this post about ad for more), making this construction equivalent to English soldier. Soldier comes (via French) from Latin soldarius, lit. ‘having pay’, ultimately from solidus, the name of a Roman gold coin. So this word refers to the traditional Mandalorian trade of working as mercenaries, which is probably the original meaning of this word.

And then we have many derivations and compound words with verd:

neverd (n): civilian

“Not a soldier”

verd’yc (adj): aggressive

Not a bad quality in Mandalorian culture! You could also translate this as spirited, decisive, bold, audacious, daring, or go-getter.

al’verde (n): commander

“Leader of soldiers”

ver’verd (n): mercenary

This is etymologically funnily enough “mercenary-mercenary”. Such doublets happen all the time in natural languages though, as the original word changes meaning.

Canon: *ver- in other words

*ver- also occurs in:

ver’alor (n): lieutenant

“Paid leader” or “hired leader”. Comparable to Commissioned Officers, I think, hence the translation as lieutenant (mando ranks probably aren’t exactly the same as ones in any particular country on Earth). Possibly represents e.g. the permanent command staff of a mercenary company, rather than the rank and file who might contract for a season or for a specific campaign. Traviss describes mando military organisation as “a flat pyramid”, e.g. lots of people at the bottom, few on top; so this probably refers to fewer people than English CO does.

veriduur (n): courtesan, sex worker

“Paid spouse”

ver’mircit (n): hostage

“Prisoner for money”

beroya (n): bounty hunter

This could be either be-roya, “of hunt”—or it could be ver-oya, “pay hunter”. The v and b sounds are very close to each other, especially if you pronounce v as a bilabial fricative /β/, and the sound change v > b is very plausible. So it’s possible that *ber- is an alternative form of this root, or that beroya was loaned into “standard Mando’a” (no such thing, I know) from another dialect of Mando’a where that sound change has happened.

Non-canon derivations

vere (n.): wages, payment (from Tuuri)

Lit. “earnings”.

berir (v): to pay, to buy (from Oyu’baat)

By analogy to beroya.

berii (n): buyer

From ber + ii.

verar (v): to earn, deserve

Two verbs from the same root, diverged meanings. Happens all the time in natural languages. Gave it a different vowel so it wouldn’t get mixed up as easily.

verdin (n): merit, reward; share

From ver-din, sort of “earnings given” or “give what’s earned”. From here you also get verdinyc ‘meritorious, rewarding’ and verdinir ‘to reward, merit’.

verdir (v): to work as a mercenary

Lit. “to soldier”, but keeping the original sense of verd here.

vergam (n): uniform

Whatever monkey suit you’re paid to wear that’s not beskar’gam.

A history lesson

When thinking of these derivations, I went back to the time of the Mandalorian wars. (And my theory of Modern Mando’a being a creole language that developed in their aftermath.)

So consider the Taung: these are the ancient Mandalorians, who have come to worship war in itself (or in other words, have come to see waging war as an expression of the divine). They’ve conquered large swathes of the galaxy and slaughtered entire peoples in this pursuit. But war is a hungry beast that gobbles up both men and machines, so this warfare must have taken a toll on the Taung even if the plunder fills their coffins.

So the revelation that Mandalore the Ultimate receives on planet Shogun is probably honestly less about other races being worthy of being Mandalorians*, and more about the strategic insight that if instead of total slaughter they assimilate the conquered peoples and draw from them to fill up their ranks, they can go on to conquer indefinitely.

*At this point there’s already a precedent for adopting other races as Mandalorians (e.g. the Mandallian giants), but I think that before the Neo-Crusaders, it was probably rather marginal. It didn’t cause significant changes in the culture, and they were probably assimilated slowly and in small numbers, and so learned the language more or less perfectly. It isn’t until the Neo-Crusaders that assimilating other races becomes widespread (otherwise it wouldn’t be a revelation). And the more the Taung conquer, the more peoples they assimilate and the less they have the time and resources to teach them the language and their ways as they themselves become diluted among the ranks.

Also, let’s be real: while Mandalore the Ultimate is said to have decreed that the recruits be treated equally among the clans, many of those recruits were probably not there voluntarily, but rather given the choice of being conquered/slaughtered or joining up. I’m sure many people saw joining as an opportunity to move up in life (better to be a Mandalorian warrior than a poor Rimmer), but many we’re probably shanghaied into service and some were little better than slaves.

And so the Mandalorian armies swell, and conquer, and conquer, reaching as far as Coruscant itself. They seem unstoppable until the Republic employs the desperate doomsday weapon on Malachor VI, which cripples the Mandalorian army and leadership. In the aftermath, the Mandalorians probably can’t hold on to their entire newly conquered Empire, so many areas are retaken by the Republic or otherwise secede. Without those resources and the continuous conquest they can’t pay their armies, so now there are lots of disaffected and unemployed soldiers, who turn mercenaries.

And these aren’t your honourable mercenaries ala Jaster Mereel yet. Rather, they are displaced and disaffected people who have no other trades or possibilities to ply them in the war-torn galaxy. So they take any jobs and if there are no jobs, do a bit of plundering on the side. This diaspora and disarray lasts for the next 300 years or so. It takes several centuries and galactic wars of cultural change, before Mandalorians have grappled with the after-effects of the Mandalorian wars, turned from worshiping the old gods into believing primarily in the Manda, turned their focus from conquest into thriving in adversity, and developed the philosophical tradition of military ethics that eventually produces Jaster Mereel and his likes.

All of this to say: when we’re thinking about the etymologies of Modern Mando’a words, we should be thinking of these first few generations of non-Taung Mandalorians. But when we’re thinking of the definitions of the words as they’re used today, we should think of the cultural change that came afterwards. So for example: verd was probably originally a mercenary, but over time came to mean a soldier. Verdin was originally “loot, plunder” or one’s share of it that whoever was in charge of the payroll doled out after a campaign (based on one’s role, performance, etc). In time, it became to mean other kinds of rewards and fruits of one’s labour.

[noosphe-re]

Etymology of 'praise (v.)'

c. 1300, preisen, "to express admiration of, commend, adulate, flatter" (someone or something), from Old French preisier, variant of prisier "to praise, value," from Late Latin preciare, earlier pretiare "to price, value, prize," from Latin pretium "reward, prize, value, worth," from PIE *pret-yo-, suffixed form of *pret-, extended form of root *per- (5) "to traffic in, to sell."

Specifically with God as an object from late 14c. Related: Praised; praising. It replaced Old English lof, hreþ.

The earliest sense in English was the classical one, "to assess, set a price or value on" (mid-13c.); also "to prize, hold in high esteem" (late 13c.). Now a verb in most Germanic languages (German preis, Danish pris, etc.), but only in English is it differentiated in form from its doublets price (q.v.) and prize, which represent variants of the French word with the vowel leveled but are closer in sense to the Latin originals.

Etymonline

[natequarter]

There are few ghosts in the sub- section. That is, relatively few words in sub- ever faded out of English after being well established. Most that fell away seem to have been transients and redundant doublets (sublunar / sublunary). What's in a dictionary now under sub- is about all of it there ever was to English.

But buried in the flat loam of sw- are mighty words of the old language. By the end of Middle English or shortly thereafter, they had shriveled into specialization or sunk in provincialism or faded into thin air.

There's swere, a once-common word for "heavy, oppressive; inactive, indolent; loath, reluctant, unwilling." German schwer "difficult" is a living cognate. There's sweve; sweven, the usual words for "a dream/to dream" until dream made an odd shift.

There's swike "deceit, treachery;" swiker "a traitor." There's swink, the old word for "to toil, engage in physical labor;" as a noun "work, effort." Middle English had swinkless for "effortless, free from toil," swinkful "toilsome," handiswink "manual labor, physical work;" Chaucer's plowman was A trewe swynkere, "a true swinker." All gone and forgotten now, but to Chaucer their absences would be holes in the word-hoard.

if you are bored and have a penchant for language or etymology or history or mere poetry, may i suggest the posts on etymonline? they are both informative and poetical, in the purest sense of the word; enlightened meanderings, if you will. they are loosely connected and sometimes scathing, but always valuable and clever with words.

enjoy.

[yvanspijk]

Shirt and skirt are doublets: they both stem from Proto-Germanic *skurtijōn. Shirt was inherited. It underwent the sound changes that turned Proto-Germanic into English. Skirt was borrowed from another Germanic language: Old Norse. Here's the finale of my doublets series: Germanic doublets in English.

[jackhkeynes]

zar "serious"

zar /zar/ [zɑː]

serious, committed, for keeps, risky, undertaken with something staked on the outcome;

purposeful, deliberate, (of an act) not done lightly but instead with full regard of the possible consequences;

meaningful, high-stakes, dramatic, tense, (of a narrative situation) there being a lot on the line that might be lost or not achieved;

competitive, heated, rivalrous, antagonistic, (of a game) characterised by a strong desire to win on both sides or even of outright hostility;

cutthroat, dog-eat-dog, with a ruthless focus on personal gain

also cair zar "to matter, be important, have consequences"

Etymology: from sixteenth-century zar "risky, high-stakes", transferred from the name of a gambling dice game. This comes via Napolitan zara from Arabic زَهْر (zahr) "dice". Doublet of hasart "peril, danger", which comes via French. Used exclusively of games and competitions until the nineteenth century, when the idiom with cair is first attested.

"Cay zar!" dis jo cant corroim nos. /ke zar | dɪz ʒo kant kɔˈrɔim nɔz/ [ke zɑː | dɪˈʝo kan kʊˈʀɔim nɔz] fall serious | say.pst 1s when run-pst-1p 1p "It's not a game!" I said as we ran.

[tanadrin]

Hey... sorry if this is too much, but im a baby trans and ive been struggling to grasp the concept what gender is, everytime i try to look for a definition i only find the vague basics like "its what you identify as!" Or i find bigoted shit from trasphobes. If you have any recommendations of essays about gender from trans people who dive deeper unto the concept it would really help. Sorry if im bothering you i just dont really know who else to ask 😅

i don't know how helpful i can be. i have a very instrumental view of transition--i.e., if you think it might make you happier than you are now, you should give it a try and see. i think a lot of pointless verbiage is spilled on trying to nail down difficult-to-elucidate questions about purely internal experiences, about the distinction between gender and sex, and about what all this gender stuff means anyway. i think that stuff can be interesting to discuss, if you like that sort of thing (and i do!) but that loading yourself up with a lot of gender theory isn't actually useful for figuring out what you should do vis a vis your gender presentation and how you identify.

for those latter questions, i think the answer is simple: what makes you happier? when you imagine a given gender presentation, or your body being different in certain ways, or people calling you by a certain name, does that sound appealing? doesn't matter why. if so, go for it! and frankly this advice is quite agnostic of whether or not you're cis or trans. people should adopt the identities that feel most conducive to their happiness. you do not need elaborate theoretical justifications for any of it. anyone who demands an elaborate theoretical justification for how you dress or what name you choose to use or anything like that is an asshole whose opinion you can safely ignore. i guarantee you they are selective in this demand, and are only using it to try to find an excuse to be a dick.

that said, you want a definition of gender, and i guess i can try.

"gender" has no definition. that's not meant to be a smart aleck answer. what i mean is: "gender" is a conceptual category. conceptual categories do not exist outside of our discourse about them. there is nowhere in the world you can go to lay your hands on A Gender. there is no Gender Particle. and while in most philosophical traditions we think of categories as having necessary and sufficient conditions for membership ("a human is an animal descended from the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees" might be such a taxonomic definition), conceptual categories aren't actually constructed that way. because that's not how the human brain actually works: when you're a kid learning what words mean, you don't learn "a chair is a thing with four legs you sit on." that wouldn't be accurate anyway (a horse is not a chair). you see lots of chairs and pictures of chairs and you form an image in your mind of what a chair is and when you see a thing your brain compares it to other things like it you've seen before, and if it looks like your mental model of a chair, you think, "chair."

(this is in fact how almost all definitions work in practice. even for formal scientific categories for which it seems like a traditional definition might be workable, because our terms are so specific, there are problems and corner-cases. is a HeLa cell a human? it's certainly an autonomous organism. it's certainly descended from the last common ancestor of a chimpanzee and a human being. but it's a single-celled organism that exists only in laboratory cultures, and lacks everything else we expect a human to have.)

so, uh, gender. "gender" is from the latin word "genus" meaning "kind." it is a doublet (that is, shares an etymological origin) with the words "genre" and (more distantly) "kin." obviously, a word's etymology is not its meaning. confusing the two is called the etymological fallacy. but originally when we talked about "gender" we were pretty explicitly talking about categories in general, and i think that's useful to keep in mind. incidentally, "sex" (also from Latin) has a similar etymology--it's related to "section," i.e., the creation of a category by dividing a group. though "sex" acquired something like its current meaning much earlier.

most human cultures group humans into two broad conceptual categories. this is based on a variety of traits, of which physical traits like genitals are seen as frequently foundational. some cultures explicitly create additional ancillary categories, or provide a means to move (often only partially) from one category to another. contemporarily, there has been an effort to distinguish "biological sex" (seen as what chromosomes you have, reflected by what genitals and other physical characteristics you have) from "gender" (seen as a question of social presentation).

i think this is a mistake. you might be able to spot why--biological sex is a conceptual category! most humans are xx or xy, but there is in fact a wide variety of sex-chromosomal arrangements that are possible. xx and xy are only the most common. biology is messy, and it's hard to tell how messy, because we don't routinely karyotype people. the existence of rare-but-noteworthy conditions like complete androgen insensitivity (frequently reuslting in a chromosomal "male" that is "mis"identified as and lives their whole life as a female) highlight that even within the purely biological realm, sex emerges only as two broad clusters, not as two clearly divided bins. moreover, a trans person who has been taking cross-sex hormones for many years is in a sort of willingly-imposed intersex state. so saying a trans woman is a "biological male" or a trans man is a "biological female" (especially if they have had an orchiectomy or hysterectomy and can no longer produce gametes of their respective assigned sex at birth) is sort of funny--we're privileging an (assumed) chromosomal arrangement over the biological facts on the ground. and while DNA does control a lot about how our bodies grow and develop, it can in fact be overridden! otherwise, cosmetic surgery, or hair dye, or LASIK surgery would all be exercises in futility.

"gender" is sometimes also talked about as a set of internal experiences. you "feel like" or "identify as" a particular gender. and while it's certainly plainly true for some people (both cis and trans), it seems not to be true of everybody (cis or trans), and for other people it's hard to say. not everybody has perfect access to their own feelings all the time. people get told they're lying about what they feel when that's socially inconvenient for other people. and internal states are impossible to measure or verify. they're also often pretty hard to put into words, and we mostly can access them only indirectly, by sidling up to them, or by trying to find other people whose experiences/thoughts/feelings seem to resonate with our own.

so i don't have a definition of gender for you, or an etiology, or even a very robust account. sorry! but i also think that anybody trying to tell you they do is operating from an understanding so narrow that they don't even begin to understand its limits.

[randomtangle]

Monster Monday: Ogres

Ogres are large, humanoid monsters that appear in folklore from around the world.

Art by me

Etymology

In English, the word ogre is said to have first appeared in the 18th century, being borrowed from French ogre, from Latin Orcus, Roman god of the underworld and punisher of oath breakers, from Ancient Greek Ὄρκος (Órkos or Horkos), personification of the curse inflicted upon those who break their oaths and avenger of perjury. The work orc is a doublet of ogre.

Description

Ogres are often described as hideous and inhuman in their appearance, with first their large size as well as their abundant hair, disproportionately large heads, and often simply being ugly, just like their personalities. They are man-eaters sometimes particularly enjoying eating infants, and are often linked with giants in folklore. To describe them in one word would be “brutish”. They often have odd skin coloration. They are often compared to the oni of Japanese folklore, as well as Polyphemus from Homer’s Odyssey, the ghouls of pre-Islamic Arabic folklore, Grendel from Beowulf, and Humbaba from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Narrative Roles

Ogres are a form of boogeymen, scaring children into not straying too far. They are also ideal stand-ins for evil rulers, many ogres have castles in folklore, their subjects controlled by fear of being eaten. They are warped reflections of humanity, emphasizing its worst traits, mostly gluttony and greed, the ever-consuming appetite of the ogre is never satiated.

Conclusion

Ogres are varied and useful in stories, able to fit many antagonistic roles. A truly classic folkloric monster synonymous with brutish behaviors and voracious appetites, ogres are easy to fit into any setting.

[linguisticdiscovery]

First Impressions: Words from hell

Look what just arrived! So excited to read Jess Zafarris' new book!

Here’s a little preview of what’s inside:

I’m two chapters in so far, but here are my first impressions:

I love the range of topics covered, from obscenities to ableism to the violence of war—a reflection of the fact that “Humans can be … messy. […] We can be petty, violent, cruel, exclusionary, selfish, malicious, destructive, and power-hungry. […] As a result, an absolutely gobsmacking number of words we use reflect just how truly depraved we are—even many of the ones that seem perfectly harmless at first glance.” Jess fearlessly illuminates all aspects of the dark underbelly of the English language.

Words from hell includes a number of fun asides, where Jess delves more extensively into certain topics or pulls together words on a similar theme—such as a digression on the connection between shit and science, or the origins of words for farting.

Also extremely useful for casual lovers of language is a glossary of etymology terms at the end of the book, explaining that a doublet is when two different words in the same language derive ultimately from the same root, or that Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed language from which all the Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch, Swedish, etc.) developed.

Right from the outset, I love the lighthearted, curious, and unabashed style with which Jess unearths the dirtiest words of English. You can tell she has as much fun using the messy treasure trove of English words as she does researching them, and it makes the book a joy to read. I’m excited to finish it!

Preorder your copy here!