Category: English

Word of the day – solstice

By Simon

As today is the shortest day of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere, I thought solstice would be a good word to choose. It comes, via French, from the Latin solstitium, the point at which the sun seems to stand still, from sol, sun, plus sistere, to come to a stop, make stand still.

Today is the winter solstice, or hibernal solstice in Latin, and the point where the earth tilts away from the sun the most. In some cultures, solstices are seen as marking the end and beginning of years or periods, while in other, they mark mid points. In English, for example, the winter solstice is also known as midwinter, while the summer solstice is know as midsummer.

Details of festivities connected with the winter solstice in many different cultures

Do you do anything to celebrate or mark the winter solstice?

Beowulf to Virginia Woolf

By Simon

The British Library website, which I came across today, has some interesting information about language and writing in the Language and the written word section. It tells the story of written English from the Beowulf, the earliest known narrative poem in English, to Virginia Woolf’s early 20th century novels, with samples of each.

The site also includes recordings of the accents and dialects of the UK, details of cook books through the ages, and a history of English language dictionaries, among other fascinating information.

Going to the ball

By Simon

This evening I’ll be going to the office Christmas party. This year it’s called “the Ice Ball”, which got me thinking about the names of such events.

A ball, as in a formal party involving dancing, comes from the Greek, ballizein, to dance, jump about, via the Latin ballare, to dance, and the Old French baller, to dance. The words ballet and ballad share the same root, as does bailar (to dance) in Spanish and Portuguese.

The word dance comes from the Old French dancier, which possibly came from Frankish.

Other dance names include:
waltz, from the German walzen, to roll, dance
polka, from the Czech polka, Polish woman, or from pulka, half, for the half-steps of Bohemian peasant dances
tango, from Argentine Spanish tango, which was originally the name of an African-American drum dance, and possibly came from a Niger-Congo language.
jig, from the Middle French giguer, to dance; or from the German Geige, violin, meaning a piece of sport or trick.

More information about the etymology of the names of dances

Word of the day – constable

By Simon

In the Roman and Byzantine Empires of the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the comes stabuli (count of the stable) was the person in charge of the stables at the imperial court.

The Franks borrowed the title but changed the position slightly to the head of the royal stud. During the 12th century in France, the comes stabuli became an important commander in the army and the title became conestable in Old French.

Eventually the word was borrowed into English as constable and referred to “an officer of the peace” – this meaning was first recorded in 1596. During the 19th century, a regular police force was established in England and the police officers were given the title constable under a chief constable.

Today constable is the lowest rank in the British police, followed by sargeant, while Chief Constable is the highest rank.

More details of the exciting adventures of this word

Word of the day – lullaby

By Simon

Lullabies, from the Middle English lullen, to lull, + bye, are soothing songs usually sung to babies to lull them to sleep. An alternative name is berceuse, from the French for lullaby or “cradle song”.

According to an article I found today, lullabies are not only a good way to get babies to sleep, but can also help with their language development.

A study at the University of Warwick has found that babies whose parents sing to them regularly tend to develop language and communication skills earlier than babies whose parents don’t sing to them. Lullabies help babies to relax and get them used to hearing vocalisations and verbal sounds. They can also help parents to bond with their babies and to relax.

English as a Lingua (ELF)

By Simon

There are about three times as many people who speak English as a second or foreign language as there are native speakers. Many people use English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) to communicate with others with whom they don’t share a common language. When they do so, the English they use isn’t necessarily the same as the English used by native speakers. ELF tends to have a more restricted vocabulary, a simplified grammar and pronunciation, and fewer idioms than native English.

According to an article in the Financial Times I came across today, via this blog, ELF users tend to find it easier to communicate with one another if no native speakers of English are present. Native speakers who don’t adjust their language for non-natives tend to be difficult to understand. The article mentions a student conference in Amsterdam where everyone spoke English and where the sole British participant was asked to be “less English” so that the others could understand her.

I first heard the term English as a Lingua Franca a few years ago on a radio programme in which the linguist Jean Atchinson discussed the phenomenon. She suggested that native speakers of English should become familiar with ELF in order to communicate effectively with non-native speakers. I sure this isn’t too much of a problem for those who communicate regularly with non-native speakers, but probably can cause difficulties for others.

In another article about ELF, the author mentions research from Sweden and the Netherlands on the widespread use of English as a medium of instruction in higher education. The research found that “Test results were about ten percent lower on average in English taught courses than in courses taught in the mother tongue.”

podictionary

By Simon

podictionary – the podcast for word lovers, is a blog I came across today which provides “a word, dictionary etymology & story daily”.

The site covers one word a day and provides details of its meaning, etymology and tells a story related to the word. There is also a podcast of each post. Today’s word, for example, is vicious, and the story is about Sid Vicious and The Sex Pistols.

There are links to some other interesting word-related sites on the links page.

Word of the day – typography

By Simon

Typography is:
1. the art or process of printing from type;
2. the art or process of setting and arranging type for printing;
3. the arrangement, style, or general appearance of printed matter
(from yourdictionary).

It comes via French and Latin from the Greek τύπος (typos), to strike + γραφία (graphia), to write.

I chose this word today because I found an interesting blog about typhography called I Love Typography. As well as discussing typography, the author also gives advice on creating your own fonts, something that quite a few people ask me about. There are also some slightly less-than-serious posts, such as this one about Typoholism, “A disorder characterized by the excessive consumption of and dependence on type…”.

I think I ‘suffer’ from typoholism, and a related condition for which I can’t think of a word at the moment. Can you think of a word for my love of languages and writing systems? Perhaps ‘panglotophilia’.

Learn vocabulary in your own language

By Simon

Today we have a guest post from James in Chile:

I came across this website which helps the hungry as you build your word power and have been playing on it. It’s quite fun (I am at the level 45/46 out of 50 levels) and is the sort of thing I would LOVE to see in Spanish (English has all the best resources). But it made me reflect on the idea of learning words. I have had to do this as I try to get my Spanish up to the level of a PhD in an arts subject (which is who I am linguistically in English), but the idea of learning words in your own language is something that as a Brit I find very weird, though my American friends seem not to. I learn words by reading and reading and looking up sometimes, which means you learn the word and it’s use rather than a list with definitions. Any thoughts on learning words in your own language?

The other thing that the freerice website made me think about was guessing words. If you read a lot you tend to do this as looking everything up is slow and boring, and if you are learning a second language then you do it even more. I am a comfortable 45 on their scale of difficulty and frequently go up to 46, though many of these words I don’t “know” but rather intuit their meaning. Often I use my Greek, Latin, etc to help me, but equally there are words I have no recollection of having seen before but have a gut feeling about: this must be a geographical term or an item of clothing. Do you guess what words mean, or do you always turn to the dictionary?

I got up to level 50 today on the freerice site, but the process is really strange. I have never seen most of these words before and after a few minutes I stopped trying to work out what the words mean (I tend to know or be able to work it out about up to level 46, and I would use in speech many of the words at level 44 and 45). Instead I just looked at the word and the options and went with what felt right. Given that I tend not to know about half the words at level 46 it means I have to intuit 10-15 words in a row to get to level 50, which is no mean feat. It set me thinking about the whole idea of passive and active vocabulary. I’m a native English speaker who lives and works in Spanish, and have studied to a fairly high level Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and German. I wonder whether the identity of my other languages help with my English vocab. I can read English as far back as Chaucer and my Germanic vocab is increased by my knowledge of German and Dutch, I studied Latin for 6 years and many Spanish words are strongly Latinate and I had reasonably good French (the third main source of English vocabulary).

Has anyone thought about how “passive” vocabulary works?

Word of the day – holistic

By Simon

I’ve just been listening to a very good radio adaptation of Douglas Adam’s novel, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and that got me wondering about the word holistic. In the novel, Dirk Gently explains that holistic refers to his belief in “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things”, a belief he applies in his work. He endeavours “to solve the whole crime, and find the whole person” or cat.

The word holistic was coined in 1926 by Gen. J.C. Smuts (1870-1950) and is based on the Greek root holos, which means ‘whole’. The theory of holism refers to the theory that regards nature as consisting of wholes.

Source: Online Etymology Dictionary

I’ve found equivalents of holistic in a couple of other languages: Welsh – cyfannol and German – ganzheitlich. Do you know of any others?