Author: Simon

I am a linguist, web developer and musician. I live in Bangor in Wales and run Omniglot - the online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages, as well as making the Radio Omniglot Podcast.

Titles

By Simon

Titles like Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr, etc are commonly and widely used, but have you heard of Mx?

Saturday

I hadn’t heard of it until yesterday when I listened to an episode of the Subtitle podcast all about it.

Mx [mɪks/məks] is a gender-neutral alternative to Mr, Mrs and Ms. The x was chosen as a “wildcard” character, and it was first used in print in 1977 in Single Parent, and American magazine. It is usually written Mx. in the USA and Mx in the UK. It was added to the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary in 2016, although is not widely used in the USA. [source].

The first major organisation to acccept its use in documents was the UK Post Office in 2009. Since then many other companies and organisations have accepted it, at least in the UK [source].

More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mx_(title)

An alternative gender-neutral title is apparently M. [ɛm], although it is rarely used [source]. Several other alternative gender-neutral titles are discussed on https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Gender_neutral_titles – apparently Mx is the most widely used.

The title Ms(.) has been around since the 17th century as an abbreviation of mistress, which does not indicate marital status. It was revived in 1901, based on Southern dialects of English in the USA which pronounced both Mrs and Miss as [mɪz]. Ms started to become popular in the 1970s after Ms. magazine was founded [source].

More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms.

I generally avoid using titles or even names when talking to people, unless they ask me to do so, and prefer to be addressed simply as Simon. If I had a fancy title like Dr, Professor or Sir, I might ask people to use them, at least sometimes. Sir Simon has a nice ring to it. I also rather like Japanese titles like san and chan.

How about you?

Saturn’s Bathing Day

By Simon

The English word Saturday comes ultimately from the Proto-West Germanic *Sāturnas dag (Saturn’s day), which is a calque (translation) of the Latin diēs Saturnī (day of Saturn).

Saturday

There are similar words in other West Germanic languages, such as West Frisian (saterdei), Low German (Saterdag), and Dutch (zaterdag), all of which mean Saturday [source].

There German word for Saturday, Samstag, comes from Middle High German sam(e)ztac, from Old High German sambaztag (Sabbath day), from Gothic *𐍃𐌰𐌼𐌱𐌰𐍄𐍉 (*sambatō), a version 𐍃𐌰𐌱𐌱𐌰𐍄𐍉 (sabbatō – Saturday, the Sabbath day), from Koine Greek σάββατον (sábbaton – Sabbath), from Hebrew שַׁבָּת‎ (šabbāṯ – Sabbath), possibly from Akkadian 𒊭𒉺𒀜𒌈 (šapattum – the middle day of the lunar month).

Words from the same roots include samedi (Saturday) in French, sâmbătă (Saturday) in Romanian, and szombat (Saturday, Sabbath) in Hungarian [source].

In northern and eastern Germany, another word for Saturday is Sonnabend (“Sunday eve”), as apparently in Germanic recking, the day begins at sunset. It a calque of the Old English sunnanǣfen (Saturday evening) [source].

Words for Saturday in the North Germanic languages have a different root, however. These include lördag in Swedish, lørdag in Danish and Norwegian, leygardagur in Faroese and laugardagur in Icelandic. They all come from the Old Norse laugardagr, from laug (pool) and dagr (day), so literally “bathing day” [source].

These words have also been borrowed into Finnic languages: Saturday is lauantai in Finnish, laupäev in Estonian and lavvantaki in Ingrian.

Are there any other languages in which Saturday means something like “bathing day”, or something else interesting?

See also: Days of the week in many languages on Omniglot.

Catty-cornered

By Simon

If you’re sitting catty-corner from someone, what does that mean?

kitty corner

This is an expression that has come up a number of times recently in books I’m reading and which puzzles me a bit. So I thought I’d find out what it means and where it comes from.

Catty-corner means “diagonally across from (one another)” or “located diagonally in relation to something, especially across an intersection.”, and is used in the USA and Canada. It is also written cattycorner, catty-cornered or kitty-corner. It makes me think of a cat in a corner.

It’s apparently a corruption of cater-corner(ed) with influence from catty (cat-like). Cater-corner(ed) means “something at a diagonal to another; of four corners, those diagonal to another.” in the USA and is an old dialect word in the UK meaning “uneven, not square, as mislaid stones or people with a limping gait.” It comes from cater, and old word for four, particularly in card and dice games, from the French quatre (four), and cornered (possessing corners or angles) [source].

According to the Grammarist, the cater in cater-cornered originally referred to the four spots on a die, or the four legs of a beast, and came to refer to the corners of four city blocks meeting. Over time it came to mean something positioned diagonally from something else. Another version of it is caddy-corner.

Are there words or phrases in other languages that have similar meanings?

Tarragon Dragons

By Simon

What links the word tarragon to words like dragon and drake?

tarragon-seed

Tarragon is a perennial herb of the wormwood species Artemisia dracunculus native to Europe and Asia. It’s also known as estragon, dragon’s wort or silky wormwood. Other names are available.

The word tarragon comes from Middle French targon (tarragon), from Medieval Latin tragonia (tarragon), from Arabic طَرْخُون‎ (ṭarḵūn – tarragon), from Ancient Greek δρακόντιον (drakóntion – dragonwort, Dracunculus vulgaris), from δράκων (drákōn – dragon, serpent) [source].

Dragon

The word dragon comes ultimately from the same Ancient Greek roots, via Middle English dragoun (dragon, drake, wyrm), Old French dragon (dragon), and Latin dracō/dracōnem (dragon) [source].

The word drake (a mayfly used as fishing bait, dragon [poetic], fiery meteor), also comes from the same Ancient Greek roots, via Middle English drake (dragon, Satan), Old English draca (dragon, sea monster, huge serpent), Proto-West-Germanic *drakō (dragon), and Latin dracō (dragon) [source].

drake

Incidentally, the word drake, as in a male duck, comes from Middle English drake (male duck, drake), from Old English *draca, an abbreviated form of *andraca (male duck, drake, lit. “duck-king”), from Proto-West Germanic *anadrekō (duck leader), from *anad (duck) and‎ *rekō (king, ruler, leader) [source].

What is Writing?

By Simon

What is writing?

Yesterday I finished reading Tim Brookes’ new book, Writing Beyond Writing – Lessons from Endangered Alphabets, which I found very interesting and would throughly recommend to anybody who is interesting in writing systems and language.

One of the questions asked in the book is ‘What is writing?’

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, writing is

‘letters or characters that serve as visible signs of ideas, words, or symbols’.

According to the The Free Dictionary, writing is:

‘a group of letters or symbols written or marked on a surface as a means of communicating ideas by making each symbol stand for an idea, concept, or thing, by using each symbol to represent a set of sounds grouped into syllables (syllabic writing), or by regarding each symbol as corresponding roughly or exactly to each of the sounds in the language (alphabetic writing).’

Other definitions are available.

Writing systems are generally thought to be ways to represent the sounds and words of language in various ways. However, there are forms of graphic communication that don’t represent sounds or words, but rather ideas, emotions, music, mathematics, time, etc.

In his book, Tim Brookes suggests that these graphical forms could be thought of as forms of writing, and that letters and other symbols from writing systems can be used in decorative, ritualistic and other ways where representing a particular sound or word is not their main purpose.

For example, there is a collection of symbols known as Adinkra which originated with the Gyaman people of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, and which were originally printed onto clothes worn by royalty at important ceremonies. They now appear on clothes, furniture, sculptures and in various other places, and are used as logos.

Each symbol may have a variety of meanings. Here are some examples:

Some Adinkra symbols and their meanings

Source: Adinkra Symbols & Meanings

See also: https://www.adinkraalphabet.com/adinkra-symbols/

An alphabet based on these symbols, called Adinkra, was recently created by Charles M. Korankye.

See also: https://www.adinkraalphabet.com/

One writing system mentioned in the book is the Silabario Amazónico, which was created in 2016 by Juan Casco, a graphic designer, typographer and visual artist from Ecuador. It is based on graphic symbols used in South America and can be used to write indigenous Amazonian and Andean languages, such as Kichwa, Waorani, and Aymara.

It looks like this:

Sample text in Silabario Amazónico

Source: https://www.behance.net/gallery/79435301/Silabario-Amazonico

I’ve put together a page about it on Omniglot, and have contacted Juan Casco to check if he’s okay with me doing so. It’s not public yet, but you can see it at: https://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/silam.htm.

By the way, Tim Brookes’ Endangered Alphabets Project was inspired by Omniglot. See also the Atlas of Endangered Alphabets.

Snudging & Snuggling

By Simon

Do you like to snudge?

Snuggling

To snudge is an old word that means to lie snug or quiet, to save in a miserly manner, or to hoard, and a snudge is a miser or sneaking fellow.

You might also snudge along, which means to walk looking down, with an abstracted appearance. Many people do this while staring at their phones. Or on a cold day, you might snudge over the fire, that is, keep close to the fire.

Snudge is related to snug, which apparently means tight or handsome in some English dialects, and possibly comes from Old Norse snoggr (short-haired), from Proto-Germanic *snawwuz (short, quick, fast).

Related words in other languages include snöggur (short, swift, fast) in Icelandic, snög (neat) in Danish, and snygg (handsome, good-looking, proper, nice) in Swedish.

Snug originally meant compact or trim (of a ship), and especially protected from the weather. Later it came to mean in a state of ease or comfort, then to fit closely, as in snug as a bug in a rug or as in snug as a bee in a box. It also means warm and comfortable, cosy, safisfactory, and can be a small, comfortable back room in a pub (in the UK).

Then there’s snuggle, which means an affectionate hug, or the final remnant left in a liquor bottle, and as a verb, it means to lie close to another person or thing, hugging or being cozy/cosy, or to move or arrange oneself in a comfortable and cosy position.

Instead of snuggling, you might prefer snerdling, croozling, snoodling, snuzzling or even neezling, which all mean more or less the same thing – being cozy and snug.

Do you know any other interesting words for snudging or snuggling?

How about versions of the phrase as in snug as a bug in a rug in other languages?

In Scottish Gaelic there’s cho seasgair ri luchag ann an cruach (“as snug as a mouse in a haystack”), and cho blàth ‘s cofhurtail ri ugh ann an tòn na circe (“as warm and comfortable as an egg in the backside of a hen”),

Sources:
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/scots-has-more-than-400-words-for-snow-and-we-may-need-them-if-snowmageddon-descends-susie-dent-3959696
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/snudge#English
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/snug#English
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=snug
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/snuggle#English
https://westcountryvoices.co.uk/weird-and-wonderful-words-week-3/