When you can’t understand something, whether it’s an unfamiliar subject in your own language, or something a foreign language, you might say “it’s all Greek to me”. At least you would in English. According to World Wide Words, this phrase comes a Medieval Latin proverb Graecum est; non potest legi (It is Greek; it cannot be read). I understand that Medieval scribes, who weren’t familiar with Greek, wrote this phrase next to any text they came across in that language.

The equivalent phrase in French is C’est du chinois (It’s Chinese). In German the phrase is Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof (I understand only railway station). In Czech incomprehsion is compared to a Spanish village – Je to pro mne španělská vesnice (It’s a Spanish village to me). Does anybody know why?

What about in other languages – are there any similiar idioms indicating incomprehension?

Today’s word-tastic topic is cran-morphing, the practice of dismantling words and glueing parts of them on to other words. Word-tastic is an example of this that I just made up – it combines the word word with -tastic from fantastic. Another popular cran-moph is -gate, as in Irangate, Dianagate and Whitewatergate. This comes from the Watergate Scandal, named after a hotel in Washington D.C.

Cran-morphs or cranberry morphs usually only mean something in relation to the words from which they have been detached. All those whatever-gates usually have nothing to do with gates, though you could construct a folk etymology along these lines – this cran-morph is associated with scandals and cover-ups which involve the revealing of secrets. The opening of a gate could be linked to the discovery of those secrets.

Other cran-morphs include:

• -tabulous, from fantastic and fabulous, as in fantabulous and blog-tabulous
• -holic, from alcoholic, as in shopaholic, chocoholic and biblioholic
• -thon, from marathon, as in telethon, shopathon and eatathon
• -licious, from delicious, as in magalicious
• -nomics, from economics, as in ergonomics, Clintonomics, cybernomics and Enronomics

Details of the origin of the term cran-morphing can be found on Language log.

For more whatever-gates, see Wikipedia.

According to the Double-Tongued Word Wrester, the collective noun for unicyclists is a wobble. This makes sense as unicyclists do tend to wobble quite a lot, at least at first – I certainly wobble a bit when riding my unicycle. The collective noun for jugglers is a neverthriving – any ideas where this comes from? So is a group of juggling uncyclists a neverthriving wobble?!

There are many other collective nouns in English, some of which are rarely used or have been coined for fun. Most such words are for groups of animals or people. Relatively few are for inanimate objects. Some collective nouns come from the habitat of a particular creature, e.g. a cete of badgers, a nest of mice; others are based on a physical characteristics, behavioural traits or sounds made by animals, e.g. a prickle of hedgehogs, a sneak of weasals, a murmuration of starlings.

Here are a few more examples:

an aarmory or aardvarks
an absence of waiters
an army of frogs
a babel of words/languages
a business of ferrets
a clutter of cats
a chattering of choughs
a crash of rhinoceroses
a descent of woodpeckers
an embarrassment of parents
a fluther of jellyfish
a murder of crows
a parliament of owls
a shuffle of bureaucrats
a warren of wombats

Source: http://www.ojohaven.com/collectives/

At the online sales conference I attended today, we were bombared with a bewildering multitude of acronyms and abbreviations. There was much talk of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – even knowing what these abbreviations stand for doesn’t necessarily help you to understand them, in some cases.

An acronym is a pronounceable name made up of a series of initial letters or parts of words, such as NATO (North Altantic Treaty Organisation). Acro- is a combining form meaning something at a height, summit, top, tip, beginning or end. It comes from the Greek ακρος (akros) – extreme, topmost.

An abbreviation is a shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase used in place of the whole. Abbreviate comes from the Latin Latin abbreviāre from the Latin brevis – brief.