What's Gonna Happen To English??

I heard the following segment on Michigan Radio this morning. It gives a couple of new examples of the elasticity of the American English language and how popular work usage, not grammatical rules or language origins, tend to shape the meanings of words.

To hear the original podcast: Click Here.

This time on "That's What They Say," host Rina Miller and University of Michigan Professor Anne Curzan discuss the colloquial "gonna" and "wanna," and how these words are not just mispronunciations of their original verbs, but are developing their own distinct meanings.

"If you think about the verb 'go' as a main verb, it has directionality to it. So I could say 'I'm going to swim,' which would imply some kind of direction," explains Curzan. "But if I say 'I'm gonna swim,' that means at some point in the future, I'm gonna swim."

Curzan says that this evolution of the meaning of the verbs is due to the lack of definitive future-tense construction in the English language.

"Interestingly in English, some people would say that we don't have future-tense because we only have one tense marker, which is 'ed' for the past-tense. To talk about the future, we use these little auxiliary verbs like 'will,' which also used to be a main verb. Now 'go' is becoming an auxiliary verb. So this is now one of the ways we talk about the future," Curzan says.

"Wanna," says Curzan, is also developing a new auxiliary verb meaning.

"If you say something like, 'You're gonna wanna take a left up there,' it doesn't probably mean that you actually want to take a left; it's a piece of advice. I'm advising you to take a left. It's developed into an auxiliary that has an advice meaning component to it," says Curzan.

This "grammaticalization" of content words into grammatical constructions is fairly common in today's English.

"We hear this happening with 'hafta,' which is replacing 'must.' Some people say 'suposta,' as in 'I'm suposta do that,' Curzan says.

Guess if you wanna change the language, all you hafta do is popularize new phrases or slang. Maybe one day there won't be any more rules left!

Why Is A Marathon 26 Miles?

From the "Word Power" section of the April issue of Reader's Digest:

A marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards. The word and that oddly specific distance date back to the 490 BC battle of Marathon, Greece, in which the Greeks defeated the Persians. A messenger carried news of the victory to Athens across some 26 miles. Centuries later, in the 1896 Olympics, the footrace debuted and adopted the name marathon in honor of the runner.

Is anyone else wondering how long it took that messenger to carry the message? :)

Where Robots Come From

... or where the word "robot" comes from at least!

From Reader's Digest:

Some robots (Robbie, Wall-E) we adore. But many others (the terminators, Alien's Ash, those cylons from Battlestar Galactica) are downright evil -- with good reason: The term robot comes from the Czech robota for "compulsory labor" and the Latin orbus for "orphan". Now, if you were a motherless machine forced to work against your will, wouldn't you be belligerent too?

:)  I knew there was a good reason to not like robots!

You may look cute, but you still scare me!

Red Panda Name Origin

I actually learned this facts from The Detroit Zoo!

My family went recently and became obsessed with the Red Panda. Let me show you why:

So cute. Since they are small and more raccoon-like than bear-like, I wondered how they was related to a Panda Bear. Turns out, they aren't!

"Panda" in Japanese means "bamboo eater". Since that's the main source of food for the Red Panda, that's how it got it's name, in the same way the Panda Bear got it's name.

Maybe since they aren't "bears", we can get one as a pet? These people did (click here)!

Man, I want one so badly. :)

Cooties!

I don't know about all of you, but I always assumed that a "cootie" was just a vague imaginary disease that kids use to alienate each other. Not so!

Cooties are actual things, defined as "body louses", which are small insects that are usually parasitic.

It was a general term that began in World War I (circa 1917) to describe any number of vermin (lice, fleas, etc) that a soldier could pick up living in the trenches. The word is thought to have come from the Austronesian word "kutu", which means "lice". Soldiers who traveled to Polynesia, the Philippines, or Malaya could have brought the word back west.

Kids picked up the term later for fun.

That information certainly makes this game from my childhood more logical. :)

Aw, they look so happy!

Bonus fun fact: One early 20th Century treatment for cooties was a pickle-juice-solution bath! Maybe it would also work for this bedbug outbreak? Anyone want to try it?

[source]

What Does STAT Stand For?

Actually, it doesn't "stand for" anything. Believe it or not, it's not an acronym!

According to Merriam-Webster.com:

Stat, adverb: without delay : IMMEDIATELY

from stat, an abbreviation for the Latin statim, meaning "at once"

Despite most people capitalizing "stat", which makes it look like an acronym (maybe someone started capitalizing it for emphasis?), it's just a regular old lower-case word.

Tell all your friends STAT! ;)

What Does "Karaoke" Mean?

I love going to random dive-bars and singing to pre-recorded music in front of a bunch of strangers in the middle of the night. Even though I spend a lot of time at karaoke, I have never really thought of what the word itself means.

But it has for-real origins: it's a blending of Japanese kara "empty" and ōkesutora "orchestra".

Here is also a brief history of karaoke, while we're on the subject:

It's said that karaoke was invented by a musician named Daisuke Inoue in 1971. At parties in Japan around that time, the hosts usually provided some sort of live entertainment for their guests. After he was asked to play music at a bunch of parties so the guests could sing along, he realized there was a market for a machine that could do what he was doing. He loaned his machine ("karaoke box") to people, and they would pay 100-yen per song (the equivalent of a nice dinner). It caught on in Asia.

Since Inoue never patented his invention, a Filipino man named Roberto del Rosario got the patent to the karaoke machine in 1983. He called his machine the "Minus-One" and it used cassette tapes. Filipinos had been immigrating to Japan to become entertainers since the 1960s, and the karaoke machine helped them save a ton of money when they traveled to perform. Plus it was fun for non-entertainers alike.

When the karaoke machines didn't catch on in the United States and Canada in the 1980s, developers turned them into home entertainment stereo systems, with karaoke as a small side feature.

In the 1990s, karaoke became something that American bars offered its patrons. With that, the affordability of small karaoke machines, and the explosion of karaoke home video games (Karaoke Revolution, Rock Band, etc), karaoke has continued to grow in popularity.

Karaoke's come a long way!

Karaoke Studio for Nintendo, 1987

1990's Karaoke Machine

Karaoke Revolution for PlayStation 2, 2003

Thank goodness for karaoke. Seriously.

[source]

Where Did "Diddly Squat" Come From?

My mom has introduced me to a great etymology website called Dr. Goodword's Office on alphaDictionary.com. For those interested in stuff like this, you can get word-of-the-day emails!

Last month they looked at the word "Diddly Squat" and here's what they had to say:

Pronunciation: did-li-skwaht 

Part of Speech: Noun, mass (no plural) 

Meaning: (US Slang) Next to nothing, something worthless, or even nothing at all. 

Notes: This odd bit of US slang contain two words that are nearly synonyms of each other and the compound they appear in. "He didn't do diddly," "He didn't do squat," and "He didn't do diddly-squat," all mean pretty much the same, except that the compound is a bit more emphatic.

Word History: Today's Good Word is a US variation of the original doodly-squat, which first began appearing in print in the 1930s. This compound arose from the image of someone squatting and doodling on the ground beneath them -- as pretty a picture of time-wasting nonaccomplishment as anyone can imagine. The confusion of doodle with diddle "to fool around, dawdle" that led to diddly-squat is easily understood. But in the 1960s, this word took a turn for the worse: the association of squatting with defecation led to the unspeakable variation, diddly-s-t, containing a word US radio and TV networks are fined $300,000 for if it slips by their censors. This called for a euphemism which was simple enough: we just dropped the offensive word and, voilà: diddly.

In Play: Another interesting aspect of today's word is that, since it refers to something worthless or nothing at all, negating it has very little impact on its meaning: "Lionel Trane did diddly-squat while he was president of the Erie Railroad," means very nearly the same as, "Lionel Trane didn't do diddly-squat while he was president of the Erie Railroad." Nothing and next to nothing are not very far apart.

This stuff fascinates me. And the fact that it can mean basically the same thing as its negative makes me feel like doing or not doing diddly squat about it!

Chaise Longue

Not going to lie: this kind of rocked my world!

Here's a common misconception cleared up by Reader's Digest:

You never mean: Chaise lounge

You always mean: Chaise longue

Why: People have been getting this wrong for at least a century. The proper phrase is French and translates as "long chair".

- From "How to Sound Smarter", 2/2010

For anyone who has ever used a chaise longue, you know it's almost impossible to resist the urge to lounge in it. So I can see how the confusion started!

Oh, comfy half chair/half couch, I am not even sure how to pronounce your name anymore!

A Salty History!

This awesome paragraph about salt comes to us straight from February 2010's issue of Reader's Digest:

In the days before the Stop & Shop spice aisle, food was pretty lackluster, and SALT was so prized that people bartered with it. Roman soldiers were even paid their wages in salt -- hence the word salary and the phrase worth one's salt. Salt, of course, makes it easier to swallow food, so that's why suspicious-sounding stories must be taken with a grain of it.

Reader's Digest is great about packing in the facts! Many thanks!

Where Did "Ostracize" Originate?

When the ancient Greeks wanted to banish someone, they would vote by writing the potentially banished person's name on pieces of pottery called "ostrakons".

And that's how we get the word:

Ostracize: verb, to exclude from a group by common consent.

:)

[from Merriam-Webster.com]

Why Is Christmas Called "Xmas"?

How did "Xmas" become a nickname for "Christmas"?

Well, it all goes back to Greek. The Greek word for "Christ" is Χριστος, so as early as 1,000 years ago, it was abbreviated as Xp. You may recognize this symbol, the labarum, from Catholic or Orthodox churches, which came from this Xp abbreviation:

So use "Xmas" as much as you want! Think of it as a more "historical" (and time-saving) way to say "Christmas"!

Merry Xmas Eve, all!

Where Did "Computer Bugs" Come From?

From Bill Bryson's book, Made In America:

"In 1945, an early US Navy vacuum tube computer crashed. Its operators searched in mystification for a cause until they found a moth crushed between the contact points of an electrical relay switch. After that, whenever a computer was down, it was said to need debugging."

Therefore the moth was the first known computer bug. I never expected those terms to be so literal! Ha!

Jumbo The Elephant

Another fun fact from one of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson:

You may know that the largest elephant ever kept in captivity was a circus elephant named Jumbo. However, many think that he was named Jumbo because of his size. Actually, the word "Jumbo" got its meaning of "oversize" from the elephant!

Jumbo was named when he was born in 1861, when no one could predict his adult size. He got the name from "mumbo jumbo", which was a West African term for "witch doctor" and later an English term for "gibberish". It was probably just meant to be a silly name for the baby elephant. Little did his namers know that Jumbo would eventually grow to be over 11'7" tall, and PT Barnum would promote him so much that "jumbo" would become synonymous with "huge"!

want!

bonus: In the Disney film Dumbo, Dumbo's mom's name was "Mrs. Jumbo" and she named him "Jumbo, Jr". Due to his huge ears, he got the nickname "Dumbo". I can only assume that these names all were inspired by the original Jumbo himself. That elephant ended up being pretty influential!

Stage Directions

When an actor is standing on a theatrical stage, the director can tell him or her where to move to using quick four terms: upstage, downstage, stage right, or stage left.

Stage right or left are easy to explain:

- Stage Left: towards the actors left, when standing on stage facing the audience.

- Stage Right: towards the actor's right, when standing on stage facing the audience.

It only gets a little confusing sometimes since it's the opposite of the left and right.

I just learned from my coworker, however, how upstage and downstage got their names (even though I have been working professionally and amateurishly in theater for 15 years!).

First the meanings:

- Upstage: towards the back of the stage, or away from the audience.

- Downstage: towards the front of the stage/audience.

Now the reason:

Stages used to be built with a slight rake (on a ramp) with the front of the stage being lower in height than the back of the stage. This was to help the audience see the actors better, especially when the stage was crowded, because the actors in the back would be on higher ground.

So when the director would tell an actor to go "downstage" on these raked stages, the actor would literally walk down the ramp towards the audience. Even though many stages now are built flat (unfortunately, really), the terms stuck.

Thanks Laura!

You May Officially "Unfriend" Now

As you may have heard, the New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen "unfriend" as its 2009 Word of the Year*.

unfriend (ən-ˈfrend), verb: To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

It may seem odd that "unfriend" is a verb while "friend" is typically used as a noun (outside of networking sites!). Actually, in the 13th century, people did use "friend" as a verb instead of "befriend". That's a truly random fact for you all!

What makes a word worthy of "Word of the Year"? Erin McKean, editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary 2e, answers with: “We are always looking for a word that is both reflective of the events and concerns of the past year and also forward-looking: a word that we think will only become more used and more useful as time goes on.”

Wonder what past Words of the Year were?

2008: Hypermiling, verb

- attempting to maximize gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to one’s car and one’s driving techniques

2007: Locavore, noun

- one who uses locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.

2006: Carbon Neutral, adjective

- describes one who calculates one's total climate-damaging carbon emissions, reduces them where possible, and then balances his/her remaining emissions, often by purchasing a carbon offset: paying to plant new trees or investing in “green” technologies such as solar and wind power.

2005: Podcast, noun

- a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player.

Although I don't think all of those words gained popularity after they won WOY, they were officially added to the online version of the New Oxford American Dictionary anyway! Feel free to use any of these or "unfriend" in your next term paper kids: it's now legit!

*to see a list of other words that were in the running this year, check out the Oxford University Press's blog here.

Old-Timey Diseases Defined

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book that mentioned a vague disease and you had no idea what it was? When it happens to me, I typically just make up the symptoms and causes in my head... and I frequently learn later that I am very wrong!

So if you're like I am, hopefully these definitions will help you!

1. The Vapors

origin: Victorian times, mid to late 1800's

ailment: Nervous disorder such as hysteria, typically in women

symptoms: anxiety, depression, bloating, fainting, loss of appetite, tremors, digestive issues, gas, and behavioral problems

causes: sometimes psychosomatic, sometimes a result of cancers, depression, underlying infections, and lacing corsets too tightly

2. Scurvy

origin: 4th Century BC

ailment: Malnutrition, a lack of plasma in the blood

symptoms: Fatigue, nausea, muscle pain, bloody and swollen gums, loose teeth, anemia, bruising, dry skin, and rashes

causes: Vitamin C deficiency

3. Consumption

origin: Defined in 460 BC; though cases were reported much earlier

ailment: Tuberculosis

symptoms: Weight loss, low energy, poor appetite, fever, cough, and night sweats

causes: Passed from person to person by saliva or mucus

4. Gout

origin: First written description by Egyptians in 2600 BC

ailment: Severe arthritis

symptoms: Excruciating, sudden, and burning pain, and swelling, redness, warmth, and stiffness in the affected joint or tissue, and fever

causes: Too much uric acid in one's blood (either naturally or in foods such as liver, sweetbreads, anchovies, beef, lentils, cauliflower, etc)

5. Rickets

origin: Reported in ancient times, but defined around the Industrial Revolution

ailment: Malnutrition, the softening of bones

symptoms: Bone pain or tenderness, dental problems, muscle spasms or weakness, bone fractures, deformities, and growth disturbances

causes: Vitamin D deficiency, possibly also a calcium deficiency

Wow, I feel more knowledgeable, but I don't know if I feel better after looking up all of those diseases up! Thank goodness for modern diets and medicine!

Bombs & Bikinis

Who would have thought that the "bikini" could have been named so because of the atomic bomb?

The modern two-piece swimsuit, invented by Louis Réard in 1947, was named after Bikini Atoll, an island in the Pacific that was being used to test an atomic bomb in 1946.

Réard wanted to make the connection: he compared the "burst" of excitement that would come from the new swimwear option to that of the bomb. (He clearly left the devastating after-effects of the nuclear weapon out of the advertisements!)

Also, conveniently for the metaphor, another French designer, Jacques Heim (a competitor of Réard's), had invented a small women's bathing suit called the "Atome" (since it was "so tiny"). Since Réard's bikini was basically a two-piece version of Heim's design, he said that he "split the Atome", much like the atomic bomb splits atoms.

Wow. Part clever and part crazy!

Buffalo Wings

No teasing me for the first factoid, I really did just learn it. :)

I have always wondered how "buffalo wings" got their name. Don't worry, I didn't have any Jessica-Simpson-esque reasoning for it ("I don't want buffalo wings because I don't eat buffalo"), but I figured that the sauces and spices may have originally been used on buffalo meat or something.

Nope, buffalo wings got their name because they were first prepared like that in Buffalo, NY. Sometimes questions have the simplest answers!

Understandably, residents of Buffalo typically just call them "wings" or "chicken wings". Most food phenomena that is created in a particular place is referred by that place afterwards. For example, someone from Detroit invented what Michiganders now call a "coney island style hot dog" (it's a hot dog on a bun, topped with chili, onions, and mustard). The East Coast calls them "Michigans" instead. :)

While we're on the topic of chicken dishes, ever wonder how "chicken a la king" got its name? I can't find a definitive answer, actually, but what I can tell you is that it likely originated in some restaurant on the East Coast around the turn of the 20th century. It's rumored to be named after someone with the last name King or Keene, who possibly was the inventor, a harsh food critic, or a beloved family member of the chef.

So I suppose we'll all still have to wonder about that one for how!

A Little Toilet History

Believe it or not, the basic mechanisms of the modern "flushing toilet" were invented in 1596 by Sir John Harington, and was called the Ajax. Sir John installed one in the palace of Elizabeth I of England, but it's rumored that she did not like using it because it was too loud.

A variety of designers and inventors tweaked the design for the next 300ish years before plumbing companies like Thomas Crapper's really popularized the technology and flushing toilets started appearing more in private homes.

It makes one wonder why took so long for flushing toilets to become a household staple. I mean, I know it was probably due to some cost or mass production issue, but I feel like I would have made it a priority! :)

Onto the obvious questions:

1. Did the nickname "john" for a toilet come from Sir John Harington?

Not that I can see. Toilets (flushing or non) began being called "johns" in the mid-1800s, probably because, at that time, some people referred to outhouses as "johnny houses". I don't imagine these people had access to the full history of the toilet to know who Sir John even was!

2. Well, did the nickname "crapper" for a toilet come from Thomas Crapper?

No, says snopes.com. The word "crap" actually originated around 1845, which was about 35 years before TC went into the toilet industry. Maybe his name inspired his profession?