November 29, 2025 • 39 mins
Have you ever wondered where certain words in the English language came from? Some were borrowed from other languages, others from people’s names, and some were even created to describe new inventions! Tonight, learn the origins of common idioms, time words, sports words, and more, as Bradley chats with Jess Zafarris, co-host of the podcast Words Unravelled.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on Wbsy's Costin's new Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Thanks Al, Welcome, Welcome to a Night's Side on Bradley
jay In for Dan. You know, when the pandemic started,
we all started watching a lot of TV. Who started
started burning out on our regular viewing habits. I did,
and I switched to a YouTube west. I watched a
lot of YouTube because you can learn a lot there,
(00:26):
super interesting. But then I burned through every biography. I
burned through so much history. Uh, and then I was
looking for something different, and then one day it happened
upon something called Words Unraveled. Actually, I happened upon another
podcast called Rob Words, and I liked the guy, Rob Watts,
(00:50):
who did that.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
He's great. And then I saw this other.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Podcast, this other yeah podcast, I guess you'd say, YouTube
channel called Words Unraveled. It featured Rob with a co
host named Jesse Faris. And happily we have just with
us tonight and we're going to have some fun with words.
Are you a word person? Well, some of you are.
(01:15):
I know that. And if you have any questions or
any if maybe you want to stump Jess. Jess is
really good at idioms idioms are these sayings that are used,
but you know, you use them, but you may not
know what the what they really mean, what the origin
is of them. I love that and maybe you like
that too. She knows a million of them and maybe
(01:38):
maybe though maybe you could stump her, or maybe you
have a genuine question like where does the phrase hangover
come from?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Et cetera.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Also, we're going to find out about the the origin
of words, the meaning of words we use all the
time and don't think about it.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Like sports, most of the words we use we have no.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Idea where they came from, and therefore no idea of
how they were originally used and how the original users
thought about the thing that we're talking about. So we're
going to get right into that right away with Jess.
So far as Hi, Jess, thank you for being with us.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Hi, how are you doing. It's nice to talk to you, Bradley, it's.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
To speak with you. It's great to hear your voice. Now.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Jess has is the co host of Words Unraveled, and
you're the author of Useless etymology. Can you talk a
little bit about about why would call it useless? And
that seems like a counterproductive title, but I bet there's
a reason that's true.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
But my newest book is called Useless Etymology.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
It's my third one, and obviously I don't actually think
etymology is useless, otherwise I wouldn't write books about it.
The title is a little jab at the notion that
learning about word origins is pointless fun. But learning about
etymology can advance literacy and reading, comprehension and vocabulary. It
can contact extrualized words and history. It can it can
(03:03):
help you be more creative and stand out from this
sea of robotic, AI generated sameness. And it helps you
learn about any discipline, like if you want to learn
about astronomy, then looking at the terms we use for
those disciplines tells us a lot about the way our
ancestors viewed the universe and helps us dip our toes
into the topic.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You have a local connection. You spend time in Boston
because you teach at Emerson.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
That is correct. I'm an adjunct professor in the Writing,
Literature and Publishing department at Emerson.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
That's fun. It's fun to talk to anyone with kind
of a local connection. Where do you when you come
to town, where do you hang out?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Oh, that's a good question. Mostly in the common I
love the park over there. I like to be outdoors.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Okay, So when did you, before we get into this completely,
when did you notice that you liked words more than
the rest, more than your friends? And talking about the
journey from that just first realization to where it became
a full blown passion.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
You know what. It actually started in high school. I
was in a French class and the French teacher, Madame Quinn,
was a bit of a tornado of a person, and
we were supposed to have done a reading the night before.
We got to this word that we that no one
in the class could translate. It hadn't been on our
vocab sheet, and none of us knew what it meant
because we hadn't bothered to look it up. And she exploded.
(04:35):
She she told us like, how could you? How could
you choose ignorance when you had the potential for learning
at your disposal? And it was traumatic and therefore curiosity
by trauma. But I also my course work in undergrad
was focused on the evolution of English through literature, especially
(04:55):
the evolution from Old English what you see in works
like bo to Middle English, which you see and works
by Taucer to early modern English by Shakespeare, and so
on and so forth. So I started this blog around
that time called Useless Etymology, and I've been writing about
it ever since, and it's been about fifteen years now,
(05:16):
and it's been a delight.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Did you ever think that you'd make your living doing
this thing that you love to do?
Speaker 5 (05:25):
I certainly did not.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I didn't even I didn't dream that it could make
any income at all until a publisher approached me about
writing my kid's book, Once upon a Word, and then
from there it came to life.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
My father.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
My father used to say that no matter what it is,
if you keep, if you do something well enough, sooner or.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Later someone will pay you to do it. And in
your case that happen.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
It's true, it's true. I'd say about half of my
income comes from word origins, which is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, you must have a handle on about how many
whereas there are in the end English language, and also
a handle on how few words we actually use.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
There are so.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Many wonderful words, and we use very a small percentage
of them, and it's getting worse. The number of words
used daily.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Is shrinking. That must be disturbing to you.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I would say there's a degree of creativity in the
way that we use words.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
Now there are about the estimates.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Range around a million for the estimated number of words
in English, but fourteen point seven new words are born
each day.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
That's like one.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Word every ninety eight minutes, or fifty four hundred per year,
and about a thousand are added to English dictionaries annually.
So to say that we use fewer words might be
a little less accurate than saying that we use different
words than we used to.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Well done. While we're on the new words, what are
a few two words that have made the cut?
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Well, we'll see if six seven six around. But for
what it's worth, skibbity has already been added to the
Cambridge Dictionary, and lol.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Was added in the nineteen eighties as well.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Wow, all right before and we will get into such
things as Christmas words, sports words, emotion words, woodland woodland words.
I like time words, and you mentioned astronomy. Maybe that's
on the table too. That would be fun.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Oh, certainly, I like that.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
And we'll talk about idioms. Can you explain what an
idiom is?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Absolutely, an idiom is a turn of phrase, So when
you ask there. When you wish someone who's going on
stage to break a leg, you are wishing misfortune upon
them in the hopes that it will give them some
sort of reverse good luck, but you don't actually want
them to break a leg. Similarly, we say by the
(07:55):
skin of your teeth, but of course there's not exactly
a skin on your teeth. Idiom comes from It comes
from the Bible, specifically the Book of Job nineteen twenty
in the King James version, Job, describing his suffering and
narrow survival, says, my bone cleaveth to my skin and
to my flesh, and I'm escaped with the skin of
my teeth. So the idea here is my skin and
(08:17):
flesh cling to my bones, and I'm left with only
my gums. The only flesh on his body are his gums.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Okay, we're all going to get wicked smart during this
next forty five minutes.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
It's going to be fun, especially if.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
You're a word person and there's nobody out there that's
not going to learn something fun that makes you say,
oh my god, I didn't know that it's worth it.
Trusts me, it's worth spending the next forty five minutes
with Jesse Firis and me here on WBZ News Radio
ten thirty.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
You're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZY, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
In the near future, you know, tomorrow maybe. If you're
floating around online looking for something different, little, something different,
not your go to stuff, why don't you just type
in words Unraveled and check that out. It's a really
cool YouTube channel. It's about words, and the two people
that run this are like the Michael Jordan's of words.
(09:16):
They know they know everything about words, and we have
one of them with us jes so far us z.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
A f F excuse me, z a f A r R.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I asked, if you want to find her podcast that way,
please do. We're so lucky to have you. Just let's
dig into some words. One of my favorite episodes you
did was on sports words, and we can start with
the meaning of the words sport itself.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Yeah, this one's interesting. It's from the term it's it's
short for this sport, which was a word for a diversion,
something that distracts your attention from whatever you're focusing on.
So the the first part of this is similar to
the prefix d I diss and the second part is
the word port is sort of an idiomatic phrase here
(10:05):
directing your attention away from a figurative port. And this
was first transported into English in the fourteen hundreds from
the old French deporte, meaning to divert or to amuse
or to seek amusement etymologically something that carries you away
(10:26):
from a port, which is kind of neat. Which also,
you know, it makes sense when we consider that sport
hunting or doing something for sport means doesn't necessarily mean
that you're playing an athletic sport, but that you're entertaining yourself.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
The sports are generally distractions.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
They football, yeah, you know, unless you're unless you're a
professional player.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
For the rest of us, it is a distraction. We
work hard all week.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
For the man or the woman, and we want to
be distracted. So this idea of distraction really if you
think of the way the Romans used sports directly as
a distraction, they kept their population pacified by distracting them
(11:15):
with sports.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
So that really makes sense, and.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Absolutely what about some of the actual sports in other words,
that our sport oriented.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Well, Soccer is a fun one because it's you know,
we think of that as being the American name.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
For the sport versus football in.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
The UK and many other countries, so soccer is short
for association Association football was distinguished from rugby football in
the eighteen hundreds in university slang, so you had rugger
for rugby football, and you had soccer for association football
(12:00):
or a SoC originally, which is a bit of a
neat one.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
And then this was transported over to.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
The US ivy leagues, who kept the term soccer but
did not use it. But as gridiron football became more popular,
it was distinguished.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
It distinguished what we now call.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Soccer in the United States from what we call football
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
But they all have a common denominator there, right, you're
it's a sport where you were you're on your feet
or does it have to do does it have to
do with moving the ball with your feet?
Speaker 3 (12:33):
What is the common denominator there?
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Good call, good question. It's on your feet.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
The notion of football in general was distinguished from horseback
sports originally, so any sport played on your feet, which
is why rugby, which also involves your hands, was still
called football.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Were they considered blue collar sports back then because rich
people had horses and they were playing I don't know,
jousting or polo or something a bit of both.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
The sport in general has long been at least organized.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Sport originally was a diversion.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Of wealthier classes, but of course people of all classes played,
just not necessarily in leagues.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Right, anything else? Any other cool words in the sport.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Department, Well, a bit of a neat one, you wouldn't think.
I mean, of course basketball makes perfect sense. But the
sport as it exists in the modern era was invented
by James Naismith, who is a Canadian American physical education
instructor at the International YMC Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts,
and he created the game to occupy students during winter,
(13:40):
using a soccer ball and two peach baskets nailed to
the Jim balcony, and basketball hadn't yet been coined. His
original rules just described throwing the ball into a basket.
And it was one of his players, Frank Mayhon, who
insisted that it has to have a name. And Frank says,
why not call it basketball, basket and a ball?
Speaker 5 (14:01):
And it seems to me that would be a good
name for it. That it was named in that capacity.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Another piece of this too, is that in eighteen ninety two,
Senda Barns and Abbott also adapted the game for women
at Smith College, publishing her own variation in eighteen ninety nine,
and they both used the term basketball, which helped cement
it into mainstream vocabulary, which though at the time they
(14:25):
described a women's basketball match as a game of basketball
played by ten overheated and disheveled ladies in bloomerths.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Where was that Smith, That's where women started playing basketball?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Did you say, yes?
Speaker 5 (14:41):
Indeed?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Smith? Okay, I need to remember.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
At least where the name was cemented.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Okay, anything else in sports before we moved to another category.
There must be in a couple more sports.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Oh plenty. Baseball is a bit fun. It dates back
to at least the word dates back to seventeen forty four.
The name, I think is fairly obvious. It had variations
like stool ball and rounders before that.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
I'd say the coolest thing about baseball.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Though, is the many idioms that have come from baseball,
like in the ballpark, big league heavy hitter off base,
right off the bat, throw a curveball.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Step up to the plate out of left field, three strikes,
cover your basis. I could keep.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Going, you can have it. You could talk a whole
day using nothing but baseball idioms.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Absolutely all right, before the break, let's move to One
of my favorites was the time and the words associated
with time, and for example, the word alarm. It might
not be what people expect, and those are my favorite ones,
the ones that are what you might not expect. So
talk about watch and alarm, et cetera, and time words.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Let's start with alarm, which is from the Italian alarm,
meaning two arms, literally to the arms. The idea that
it's a contraction of the Latin two, the word for
two and then and then but grub your weapons is
essentially what it means. It came to be used as
the word for a call or a warning to rouse
(16:16):
soldiers and worn of danger and get everyone on their feet.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
So when you're going, when you're alarm clock rings in
the morning, your clock is actually literally shouting at you
to arms.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Time is a bit of a neat one too. It
means a limited period or a span or an occasion.
It's from a root, originally meaning to divide that root
idea is is a bit of a conceptual thread in
the etymology of time. It's what we get when we
carve up our existence into knowable segments like days and
hours and minutes and seconds.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
It's not a thing that flows on its own, but
something we.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Create by noticing interruptions, you might say, which is a
bit of a need. It's also the same root as
the word tide, which originally meant a portion of the
day and likely other time related words in Germanic languages
to tide tide, Yes, I.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Did like, okay, So that's interesting to divide up.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
And of course you notice that the tides are such
a division. That's a way to divide time by what
the ocean.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Does, certainly. And then clock is a bit of a
neat one it comes.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
It's imitative in origin. It's think of like an automatopoeia.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
It is the clanging sound of sheet metal bells back
in the day, probably originally referring to a bell ringing
time piece.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Oh yes, and I remember from your podcast O Clock.
Where's the oak clock name come from?
Speaker 5 (17:55):
It's the time. Let's see, how did I phrase this?
It means of the clock basically, yeah, the use of
like the clock hands. So the idea is it's the
it's the two of the clock, the position the hands
are in on the clock to to indicate time the clock.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
All right, there any other time? What about minutes and seconds?
Speaker 4 (18:25):
Oh, that's a good one, Give me a moment. We
talked about this ages ago. So minute is kind of neat.
It's it's from it means small, essentially, right exactly. It
is the same notion as minute, and second is also
related to something like the same thing, the notion of something,
(18:49):
as in second comes after first as well.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
So the idea here is that it is the it's.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
From the medieval Latin phrase se kunda part tars minuta,
meaning second diminished part, meaning that the first diminished part
would be a minute, okay, and then the.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Second diminished part would be a second.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So really it's like second means a second, a secondary
division of.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Time, a secondary way of dividing our time, which is
a thing that is divided.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
All right.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
More, we've got to find out more about the English
language overall, primarily where does it derive from? Which previous
language does it derived from? And then we'll get into
more more specific words and of course some uh those
where do those words like hangover et cetera, Like idioms
come from.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
That's a whole lot of fun as well. Coming up
on WBZ.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
We continue it Jess Tofrus and we're talking about words.
We're having fun with words and a reminder. Jess is
the co host of a YouTube channel called Words Unraveled.
And if you watch it and like it, it's important
to all YouTubers that you subscribe. It's free and it's
kind of a little payback. They put a lot of
work into these and all you got to do is
(20:14):
click subscribe. It's it's an easy way to say, you
know what, I like what you're doing. So if you
ever watch any YouTube thing you.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Like, subscribe.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
It's no, it's no skin off your back. Where does
that skin off your back come from?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Jess? Maybe maybe you don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
See you know what you have me something on that one.
I'd have to look into it.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I didn't. I did not plan on that skin. I'll
tell you what in the in the audience, why don't
you do us a favor and look up online? Uh?
Where does the phrase no skin off your back come from?
The number is six, one, seven, five, four, ten, thirty
A good way to get involved.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
By the way, we have Neil and Watertown, Massachusetts. Do you
know what Watertown is? Just Hi, Neil, you're on with
on WBZ with Jessepharis.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
Oh, I'm sorry, well, I'm sorry. I'm having little trouble
in my old age. What's what's the what's your guest's name?
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Oh, I'm sorry, I lost you there? We have six
one seven thirty is the number? Skin? No skin off
my back? Look that up. Can we go ahead and.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Talk about a little bit about English language and where
the bulk of its roots come from.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Some people, of course people think of it.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
It's kind of skewing towards Romance languages. But how much
of it's from the Vikings, and how much of it's
from Greece, and how much from the Latin, et cetera.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
Yeah, gladly so a little crash course here.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
English is a Germanic language, and Old English was an
almost wholly Germanic language, with some early Latin dabblings. Middle
English began in sixty six with the Norman invasion, when
William the Conqueror or William the Bastard, however you call him,
flooded England with French speaking prestige folk, and by that
virtue also flooded the language with Norman French words, many
(22:14):
of which were Latin derived, so this also introduced some
lingering power dynamics, and one of the more glaring examples
of this is the difference between, say, a house and
a mansion. House is the old English word for this structure,
and maison is the you know, the French word for that,
but it just means house, and mansion is from the
old French word maison. And the only reason it's considered
(22:37):
a more expensive structure in English is because French rich
people lived there in the time of the after the
Norman invasions, so Middle English evolved into Early Modern English
think like Shakespeare, and through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, academia,
arts and sciences, we get more modern Latin words, classical
Latin words, and some Greek words, which is why English
(22:58):
is still structurally and grammatically Germanic language, despite the fact
that about sixty percent of our vocabulary is Latin derived,
and many of those Latin derived words were introduced via French.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
So when you say Germanic, what what does that mean?
When we automatically think of Germany. But Germany didn't exist
as we know it then, so right, what comprised Germanic
at the time was was that nose the Norse who
was Old.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Norse is a Germanic language, so is Old English, so
is High German and Low German. Those described topography not
necessarily a status. So our languages like Danish, Dutch and
languages spoken at the languages derived from Old Norse, including
Scandinavian languages, things like that. We do have some Old
(23:47):
Norse words in English, introduced by the Vikings, but they're
a relatively small portion compared to those from Old English,
which is its own Germanic language, and then and then
compared to Latin, which comprises about half of our half
of our words. But we also get words from other
(24:08):
sources like algebra and algorithm were adopted into English from
Arabic mathematicians. We've got Native American words like raccoon and
chipmunk and squash, and we've got chocolate from the Essex.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So to the victor goes the spoilers. Also the victors
they get to rewrute, you know, they get to write history.
But also, if you're say William the conqueror. Does that
also apply to language? Do you kind of get to
have an effect on the language? And that was a
big event? Was that a big event linguistically too?
Speaker 5 (24:47):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (24:48):
That is the reason why English has so many Latin
terms in it. Certainly some may have been introduced later
had not the Norman invasion happened. But that's rewriting a
huge chunk of history itself.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Wow. So let's go to Neil and water down again.
Give another show, Neil.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
You're on with Jess Jess and we're talking about words
and the word origins and things like that.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
Okay, thank you, Bradley, and hello Jess. Then I heard
you mentioned the word astronomy. So what first came to
my mind? I do a little. I like the Shakespeare sonnets.
So in Sonnets fourteen and fifteen, they're kind of like
a fifteen is kind of like a sequel to fourteen.
(25:35):
Fourteen starts out not from the stars? Do I my
judgment plucked? But yet he thinks I have astronomy. And
so you look in the explanatory notes and they say astrology.
But from when I understand the early astrologers, although they
might they got it wrong in some ways but they did.
They were systematic in the way they plotted the heavens.
(25:57):
So astronomy was the word that Shakespeare used in the
couplet to fourteen. And this site prognosticate by end is
truth and beauty's doom and date. So you go to
fifteen and fifteen. The first the first quad train is
when I consider everything that grows bo it's in perfection,
(26:19):
but a little moment that this huge stage presented, not
but shows were on the stars in secret influenced commons.
So there are two I believe. If I'm not wrong,
I'm just an amateur.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
But that's cool.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
So you've taken us in the direction of astronomy. That's good, Neil,
thank you very much. That was on our list.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Why here's at let's here's some astronomy words from Neil.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
That's beautiful. To Neil's point, astrology and astronomy have flip
flapped in meaning a bit since.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
Their earliest days.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Astrology used to be the more mathematical variation of versus astronomy,
though they were both either scientific or more occult studies
of heavenly bodies and used to foretell the futures. So, uh,
one way or another, as far as like the prediction
(27:12):
of events. But some of my favorite terms in the
field of astronomy that have interesting word origins are the
word where it's For example, galaxy is originally from the
Greek phrase galaxious key close, meaning milky circle, and funny enough,
that means that lactose, the sugar present in milk, is
cognate with galaxy. And it also means that the milky
(27:33):
to If you say the milky way galaxy, you're repeating yourself,
the milky milky.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Way la right there, right, yes, lack ta lactase.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Wow, that's right.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
And then I love that one. That's a good one,
thank you.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
The word planet literally means wandering. It comes from the
Greek phrase a series planet time, meaning wandering stars because
you could observe them moving even in the age days.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Right, Those are both fantastic.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
And then one of my favorites, it's just that the
word astronaut quite literally means a star, sailor astro not.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Those are great, are you you? I love astronomy. I'm
with Neil. He likes Shakespeare and his references to astrona bit.
Astronomy was I think my favorite of course in college
that's of course not important here. It's Christmas time kind
of in some ways it's Christmas time. What about some
(28:33):
Christmas words?
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Oh? Good one? Okay, So one of my favorites is Mary,
as in Merry Christmas. It's ultimately from a proto Germanic route,
meaning short lasting, with the current sense arising from the
notion of something pleasant that makes time fly. And the
word merth is the noun form of Mary. It's made
in the same fashion as truth from true, depths from
(28:57):
deep strength, from strong mersed from Mary. Isn't that lovely?
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yes? It is. By the way, you, being a word person,
are you also perhaps a poet?
Speaker 6 (29:07):
I am.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
I wish that I were.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
I tie lack rhythm, but I do try to be
at least a little clever with my pros.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Well, like the way you read that was, was it
approached poetry? The way that that unravels there, the way
it unraveled what you did there, which of course is
a reference to words Unraveled. Jess's YouTube along with Rob
rob Words Rob Watts channel, it's called words Unraveled. If
(29:35):
you want more of Jess later on, let's see it
was about a minute two three before the break you
mentioned that there were acronyms that are words, But there
are some words that people think are acronyms in there
not words.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Can you open busts some of those myths.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Absolutely, you'll often see it said that. For example, the
word posh is an acronym. It's usually said to mean
port outward starboard home, and most likely that's not true,
and we can tell because we have earlier records of
it than the supposed acronym. So the word posh is
most likely adopted from thieves can't or Romani slang word
(30:22):
for money or coin. But the suppose that it is
fun to talk about the theory here and the notion
that it meant port outward starboard home came though. It
comes from the idea that if you traveled to India
from Europe on a Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company
ship in the eighteen hundreds, the port side cabins remained
(30:42):
out of the sun and were therefore considered fancier and
vice versa on the way back. But the OED and
most other sources consider that theory to be incorrect due
to a lack of evidence. Another one is tag. Some
people say that it is short for touch and go, which,
unfortunately that does make a lot of sense. But the
(31:03):
tag is a very old word, and it became the
name of a children's game in the seventeen thirties, and
the word itself is thought to be a variation of
Scottish words like tig meaning touch or tap, or maybe
just the Middle English word tech or tick, which was
also the name of the same game and isn't spelled
the same, so it couldn't be an acronym.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
In your book, useless animosie, what's the format? How does
it you know?
Speaker 3 (31:28):
How does it roll? If you will?
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
I love this book. It's a collection of interesting It's
a collection of all my favorite things that I have
ever written about. So it takes you through the quirks
and patterns of English that you never noticed before. It
dives into. It has a section on astronomy words. It
has word myths, It has commonly mistaken words. It has
(31:53):
words that are older and younger than you think. It
has eponyms, words that are named after people. And it's
it's nice because I think, but because you can open
it to any page and find something to read about
in a bite sized format.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Okay, that's called useless etymology, and of course is not
useless and that's available great great Christmas gift and the
YouTube channel is Words Unravels. You mentioned the after the break,
how about a few words that are the stem from
a person's name. You mentioned there's a group of those.
(32:27):
What are those called apology eponyms? Okay, let's get a
few eponyms after this break on WBZ It's.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
One more short segment with just Sapharis. I wish we
had more time and before you get to the words
that are based on people's names, I think I remember
from your YouTube channel called Words Unraveled, and if you
do visit it, subscribe that fables, uh fables had a
(33:04):
bit of an impact on some of the words for us.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Is that? Did I hear that?
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Right?
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Certainly, it depends on what you mean by you mean
like like Aesop's fables.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
That's that's what how I interpreted. I guess.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
We've also had an episode on myths in particular, which
I suppose you could categorize fables as myths as well.
For example, let's see, one that comes to mind is
the uh The word mentor is inspired by the name
of Telemachus's mentor at his teacher in Homer's works in
(33:45):
the Odyssey, for example. Another one is that you know,
the the word like narcissism is from the character of narcissist,
who basically stared himself to death.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Well, of course that's yeah, now that you say that,
it all makes sense.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Of course, what a couple more.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Are there any Aesop fables that have generated any words
or more Greek type of myths?
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Huh, yeah. I would say Esop's fables have been more
focused more the source of morality tales and things like that,
because the characters within them are animals and they're a
little more simplistic in terms of the structure of the story.
But for example, tantalized comes from the name of the
(34:28):
character Tantalus, and Greek myths, there are a few versions
of this. But he does a terrible thing, feeds his
son to the gods, and the gods they're displeased and
contempted and condemn him to stand up to his neck
in water, and every time he tries to drink it,
it recedes, and there's fruit above his head, and every
time he reaches for it. He they the fruit rises.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Away pretty brutal m m.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
And then the word panic is from the Greek panicon,
which literally means pertaining to Pan, who is the god
of the wild, and all of the sources mysterious sounds
that caused people fear.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Wow, So how many of these are in your in
your book? Use just etymology? These are these kind of
things in there.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Yes, as a matter of fact, everything that I've mentioned
so far is in that book.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
You know what I got to I will even buy it.
You know I didn't get every new copy. I will
pay money for this. It sounds so good. Okay, Now
we have a little bit of time for words that
are the result of well, where's it come for people's names?
I guess it's the short way to say that.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
That's right, Give us a few, all right. So shrapnel
is named after Lieutenant General or Lieutenant General Henry Shrapnel,
a British Army officer and artillery specialist who invented a
special kind of exploding shehell which you guessed you guess
it produced shrapnel. And then side burns is a metathesis,
(35:55):
which is a fancy word for a flip flopping of
the name of General Ambrose burn Side, whose voluminous whiskers
inspired the hairstyle. Another fun one is Mesmerized, was eponymously
coined after friends Anton Mesmer, who was a German physician
responsible for the theory of animal magnetism, which involves the
(36:17):
notion that there's a universal magnetic fluid that can be
used for healing, and the practice of mesmerism and hypnosis
as a healing method came from his work.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Do you have a couple more? I can't get enough
of those?
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Oh, I sure do. Pants were named after a fictional
Italian fellow, so this one's both myth and eponym. The
word pants is a shortened version of the word pantaloons,
and pantaloons has referred to several types of leg wear
since the sixteenth century. It was as referred to it
was originally men's types or hoes, and then later pantaloons
(36:52):
would refer to men's knee breeches and women's baggy under trousers,
and this eventually gave us words like pants and panties
and things like that.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
And is that any pants?
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Yes? Getting around to it.
Speaker 5 (37:07):
The root of all these words, oh no, The root
of all these words.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
It's a little convoluted, but it comes from the name Pantalone,
who is a recurring comedic character in sixteenth century Italian
committee a de l'arte.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
So this character was known for his red hose. They
were very distinctive and everyone knew that character because he
appeared in many different plays as the recurring trope, and
all pants are named after his distinctive red hose.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
All I can say is that you must be very
good as scrabble.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Yeah, everybody says that, but scrabble involves as much mass
and strategy as it does knowledge of word origins, you know,
and knowledge of words. I would say I'm better at scattergories.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Okay, So thanks to you so much to you for
sharing this. There's a lot more in your book Useless Etymology,
and it's a fun YouTube channel called Words Unraveled. I
recommend them both and I'm actually going to get I
am definitely going to buy the book. Thank you so
much for your time, and I hope we'll hopefully we'll
(38:13):
have you on again. And also please say a warm
hello to your co host Rob on your YouTube channel.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
I certainly will thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Of course, Jess, take care. Well that was I love that.
I hope you some of you dug that next hour
while the time flies on nightside, doesn't it next hour?
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Open lines? What the heck?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
I think in all of my career, I might have
done open lines three times. I never called it open lines,
but it occurred to me that that might encourage you
to give a shout. Now, remember it's the end of
the week. You have your your weekly one call. If
you haven't used it up, you know, it's use it
or lose it. The number is six one, seven, two, five, four,
(39:02):
ten thirty one. Night's Side, Bradlege. I in for Dan
tonight and I look forward to hearing from you. Now,
I gotta go get some junk food. I'm thinking I'm
thinking a KitKat bar. Yeah, I'll talk to you right
after this KitKat bar, right after these words.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
On WBZ, Yes it is news Radio ten thirty
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on Wbsy's Costin's new Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Thanks Al, Welcome, Welcome to a Night's Side on Bradley
jay In for Dan. You know, when the pandemic started,
we all started watching a lot of TV. Who started
started burning out on our regular viewing habits. I did,
and I switched to a YouTube west. I watched a
lot of YouTube because you can learn a lot there,
(00:26):
super interesting. But then I burned through every biography. I
burned through so much history. Uh, and then I was
looking for something different, and then one day it happened
upon something called Words Unraveled. Actually, I happened upon another
podcast called Rob Words, and I liked the guy, Rob Watts,
(00:50):
who did that.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
He's great. And then I saw this other.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Podcast, this other yeah podcast, I guess you'd say, YouTube
channel called Words Unraveled. It featured Rob with a co
host named Jesse Faris. And happily we have just with
us tonight and we're going to have some fun with words.
Are you a word person? Well, some of you are.
(01:15):
I know that. And if you have any questions or
any if maybe you want to stump Jess. Jess is
really good at idioms idioms are these sayings that are used,
but you know, you use them, but you may not
know what the what they really mean, what the origin
is of them. I love that and maybe you like
that too. She knows a million of them and maybe
(01:38):
maybe though maybe you could stump her, or maybe you
have a genuine question like where does the phrase hangover
come from?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Et cetera.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Also, we're going to find out about the the origin
of words, the meaning of words we use all the
time and don't think about it.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Like sports, most of the words we use we have no.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Idea where they came from, and therefore no idea of
how they were originally used and how the original users
thought about the thing that we're talking about. So we're
going to get right into that right away with Jess.
So far as Hi, Jess, thank you for being with us.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Hi, how are you doing. It's nice to talk to you, Bradley, it's.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
To speak with you. It's great to hear your voice. Now.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Jess has is the co host of Words Unraveled, and
you're the author of Useless etymology. Can you talk a
little bit about about why would call it useless? And
that seems like a counterproductive title, but I bet there's
a reason that's true.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
But my newest book is called Useless Etymology.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
It's my third one, and obviously I don't actually think
etymology is useless, otherwise I wouldn't write books about it.
The title is a little jab at the notion that
learning about word origins is pointless fun. But learning about
etymology can advance literacy and reading, comprehension and vocabulary. It
can contact extrualized words and history. It can it can
(03:03):
help you be more creative and stand out from this
sea of robotic, AI generated sameness. And it helps you
learn about any discipline, like if you want to learn
about astronomy, then looking at the terms we use for
those disciplines tells us a lot about the way our
ancestors viewed the universe and helps us dip our toes
into the topic.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You have a local connection. You spend time in Boston
because you teach at Emerson.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
That is correct. I'm an adjunct professor in the Writing,
Literature and Publishing department at Emerson.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
That's fun. It's fun to talk to anyone with kind
of a local connection. Where do you when you come
to town, where do you hang out?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Oh, that's a good question. Mostly in the common I
love the park over there. I like to be outdoors.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Okay, So when did you, before we get into this completely,
when did you notice that you liked words more than
the rest, more than your friends? And talking about the
journey from that just first realization to where it became
a full blown passion.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
You know what. It actually started in high school. I
was in a French class and the French teacher, Madame Quinn,
was a bit of a tornado of a person, and
we were supposed to have done a reading the night before.
We got to this word that we that no one
in the class could translate. It hadn't been on our
vocab sheet, and none of us knew what it meant
because we hadn't bothered to look it up. And she exploded.
(04:35):
She she told us like, how could you? How could
you choose ignorance when you had the potential for learning
at your disposal? And it was traumatic and therefore curiosity
by trauma. But I also my course work in undergrad
was focused on the evolution of English through literature, especially
(04:55):
the evolution from Old English what you see in works
like bo to Middle English, which you see and works
by Taucer to early modern English by Shakespeare, and so
on and so forth. So I started this blog around
that time called Useless Etymology, and I've been writing about
it ever since, and it's been about fifteen years now,
(05:16):
and it's been a delight.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Did you ever think that you'd make your living doing
this thing that you love to do?
Speaker 5 (05:25):
I certainly did not.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I didn't even I didn't dream that it could make
any income at all until a publisher approached me about
writing my kid's book, Once upon a Word, and then
from there it came to life.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
My father.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
My father used to say that no matter what it is,
if you keep, if you do something well enough, sooner or.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Later someone will pay you to do it. And in
your case that happen.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
It's true, it's true. I'd say about half of my
income comes from word origins, which is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, you must have a handle on about how many
whereas there are in the end English language, and also
a handle on how few words we actually use.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
There are so.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Many wonderful words, and we use very a small percentage
of them, and it's getting worse. The number of words
used daily.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Is shrinking. That must be disturbing to you.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I would say there's a degree of creativity in the
way that we use words.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
Now there are about the estimates.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Range around a million for the estimated number of words
in English, but fourteen point seven new words are born
each day.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
That's like one.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Word every ninety eight minutes, or fifty four hundred per year,
and about a thousand are added to English dictionaries annually.
So to say that we use fewer words might be
a little less accurate than saying that we use different
words than we used to.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Well done. While we're on the new words, what are
a few two words that have made the cut?
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Well, we'll see if six seven six around. But for
what it's worth, skibbity has already been added to the
Cambridge Dictionary, and lol.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Was added in the nineteen eighties as well.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Wow, all right before and we will get into such
things as Christmas words, sports words, emotion words, woodland woodland words.
I like time words, and you mentioned astronomy. Maybe that's
on the table too. That would be fun.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Oh, certainly, I like that.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
And we'll talk about idioms. Can you explain what an
idiom is?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Absolutely, an idiom is a turn of phrase, So when
you ask there. When you wish someone who's going on
stage to break a leg, you are wishing misfortune upon
them in the hopes that it will give them some
sort of reverse good luck, but you don't actually want
them to break a leg. Similarly, we say by the
(07:55):
skin of your teeth, but of course there's not exactly
a skin on your teeth. Idiom comes from It comes
from the Bible, specifically the Book of Job nineteen twenty
in the King James version, Job, describing his suffering and
narrow survival, says, my bone cleaveth to my skin and
to my flesh, and I'm escaped with the skin of
my teeth. So the idea here is my skin and
(08:17):
flesh cling to my bones, and I'm left with only
my gums. The only flesh on his body are his gums.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Okay, we're all going to get wicked smart during this
next forty five minutes.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
It's going to be fun, especially if.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
You're a word person and there's nobody out there that's
not going to learn something fun that makes you say,
oh my god, I didn't know that it's worth it.
Trusts me, it's worth spending the next forty five minutes
with Jesse Firis and me here on WBZ News Radio
ten thirty.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
You're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZY, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
In the near future, you know, tomorrow maybe. If you're
floating around online looking for something different, little, something different,
not your go to stuff, why don't you just type
in words Unraveled and check that out. It's a really
cool YouTube channel. It's about words, and the two people
that run this are like the Michael Jordan's of words.
(09:16):
They know they know everything about words, and we have
one of them with us jes so far us z.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
A f F excuse me, z a f A r R.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I asked, if you want to find her podcast that way,
please do. We're so lucky to have you. Just let's
dig into some words. One of my favorite episodes you
did was on sports words, and we can start with
the meaning of the words sport itself.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Yeah, this one's interesting. It's from the term it's it's
short for this sport, which was a word for a diversion,
something that distracts your attention from whatever you're focusing on.
So the the first part of this is similar to
the prefix d I diss and the second part is
the word port is sort of an idiomatic phrase here
(10:05):
directing your attention away from a figurative port. And this
was first transported into English in the fourteen hundreds from
the old French deporte, meaning to divert or to amuse
or to seek amusement etymologically something that carries you away
(10:26):
from a port, which is kind of neat. Which also,
you know, it makes sense when we consider that sport
hunting or doing something for sport means doesn't necessarily mean
that you're playing an athletic sport, but that you're entertaining yourself.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
The sports are generally distractions.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
They football, yeah, you know, unless you're unless you're a
professional player.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
For the rest of us, it is a distraction. We
work hard all week.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
For the man or the woman, and we want to
be distracted. So this idea of distraction really if you
think of the way the Romans used sports directly as
a distraction, they kept their population pacified by distracting them
(11:15):
with sports.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
So that really makes sense, and.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Absolutely what about some of the actual sports in other words,
that our sport oriented.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Well, Soccer is a fun one because it's you know,
we think of that as being the American name.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
For the sport versus football in.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
The UK and many other countries, so soccer is short
for association Association football was distinguished from rugby football in
the eighteen hundreds in university slang, so you had rugger
for rugby football, and you had soccer for association football
(12:00):
or a SoC originally, which is a bit of a
neat one.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
And then this was transported over to.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
The US ivy leagues, who kept the term soccer but
did not use it. But as gridiron football became more popular,
it was distinguished.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
It distinguished what we now call.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Soccer in the United States from what we call football
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
But they all have a common denominator there, right, you're
it's a sport where you were you're on your feet
or does it have to do does it have to
do with moving the ball with your feet?
Speaker 3 (12:33):
What is the common denominator there?
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Good call, good question. It's on your feet.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
The notion of football in general was distinguished from horseback
sports originally, so any sport played on your feet, which
is why rugby, which also involves your hands, was still
called football.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Were they considered blue collar sports back then because rich
people had horses and they were playing I don't know,
jousting or polo or something a bit of both.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
The sport in general has long been at least organized.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Sport originally was a diversion.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Of wealthier classes, but of course people of all classes played,
just not necessarily in leagues.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Right, anything else? Any other cool words in the sport.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Department, Well, a bit of a neat one, you wouldn't think.
I mean, of course basketball makes perfect sense. But the
sport as it exists in the modern era was invented
by James Naismith, who is a Canadian American physical education
instructor at the International YMC Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts,
and he created the game to occupy students during winter,
(13:40):
using a soccer ball and two peach baskets nailed to
the Jim balcony, and basketball hadn't yet been coined. His
original rules just described throwing the ball into a basket.
And it was one of his players, Frank Mayhon, who
insisted that it has to have a name. And Frank says,
why not call it basketball, basket and a ball?
Speaker 5 (14:01):
And it seems to me that would be a good
name for it. That it was named in that capacity.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Another piece of this too, is that in eighteen ninety two,
Senda Barns and Abbott also adapted the game for women
at Smith College, publishing her own variation in eighteen ninety nine,
and they both used the term basketball, which helped cement
it into mainstream vocabulary, which though at the time they
(14:25):
described a women's basketball match as a game of basketball
played by ten overheated and disheveled ladies in bloomerths.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Where was that Smith, That's where women started playing basketball?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Did you say, yes?
Speaker 5 (14:41):
Indeed?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Smith? Okay, I need to remember.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
At least where the name was cemented.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Okay, anything else in sports before we moved to another category.
There must be in a couple more sports.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Oh plenty. Baseball is a bit fun. It dates back
to at least the word dates back to seventeen forty four.
The name, I think is fairly obvious. It had variations
like stool ball and rounders before that.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
I'd say the coolest thing about baseball.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Though, is the many idioms that have come from baseball,
like in the ballpark, big league heavy hitter off base,
right off the bat, throw a curveball.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Step up to the plate out of left field, three strikes,
cover your basis. I could keep.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Going, you can have it. You could talk a whole
day using nothing but baseball idioms.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Absolutely all right, before the break, let's move to One
of my favorites was the time and the words associated
with time, and for example, the word alarm. It might
not be what people expect, and those are my favorite ones,
the ones that are what you might not expect. So
talk about watch and alarm, et cetera, and time words.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Let's start with alarm, which is from the Italian alarm,
meaning two arms, literally to the arms. The idea that
it's a contraction of the Latin two, the word for
two and then and then but grub your weapons is
essentially what it means. It came to be used as
the word for a call or a warning to rouse
(16:16):
soldiers and worn of danger and get everyone on their feet.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
So when you're going, when you're alarm clock rings in
the morning, your clock is actually literally shouting at you
to arms.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Time is a bit of a neat one too. It
means a limited period or a span or an occasion.
It's from a root, originally meaning to divide that root
idea is is a bit of a conceptual thread in
the etymology of time. It's what we get when we
carve up our existence into knowable segments like days and
hours and minutes and seconds.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
It's not a thing that flows on its own, but
something we.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Create by noticing interruptions, you might say, which is a
bit of a need. It's also the same root as
the word tide, which originally meant a portion of the
day and likely other time related words in Germanic languages
to tide tide, Yes, I.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Did like, okay, So that's interesting to divide up.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
And of course you notice that the tides are such
a division. That's a way to divide time by what
the ocean.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Does, certainly. And then clock is a bit of a
neat one it comes.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
It's imitative in origin. It's think of like an automatopoeia.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
It is the clanging sound of sheet metal bells back
in the day, probably originally referring to a bell ringing
time piece.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Oh yes, and I remember from your podcast O Clock.
Where's the oak clock name come from?
Speaker 5 (17:55):
It's the time. Let's see, how did I phrase this?
It means of the clock basically, yeah, the use of
like the clock hands. So the idea is it's the
it's the two of the clock, the position the hands
are in on the clock to to indicate time the clock.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
All right, there any other time? What about minutes and seconds?
Speaker 4 (18:25):
Oh, that's a good one, Give me a moment. We
talked about this ages ago. So minute is kind of neat.
It's it's from it means small, essentially, right exactly. It
is the same notion as minute, and second is also
related to something like the same thing, the notion of something,
(18:49):
as in second comes after first as well.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
So the idea here is that it is the it's.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
From the medieval Latin phrase se kunda part tars minuta,
meaning second diminished part, meaning that the first diminished part
would be a minute, okay, and then the.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Second diminished part would be a second.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So really it's like second means a second, a secondary
division of.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Time, a secondary way of dividing our time, which is
a thing that is divided.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
All right.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
More, we've got to find out more about the English
language overall, primarily where does it derive from? Which previous
language does it derived from? And then we'll get into
more more specific words and of course some uh those
where do those words like hangover et cetera, Like idioms
come from.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
That's a whole lot of fun as well. Coming up
on WBZ.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
We continue it Jess Tofrus and we're talking about words.
We're having fun with words and a reminder. Jess is
the co host of a YouTube channel called Words Unraveled.
And if you watch it and like it, it's important
to all YouTubers that you subscribe. It's free and it's
kind of a little payback. They put a lot of
work into these and all you got to do is
(20:14):
click subscribe. It's it's an easy way to say, you
know what, I like what you're doing. So if you
ever watch any YouTube thing you.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Like, subscribe.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
It's no, it's no skin off your back. Where does
that skin off your back come from?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Jess? Maybe maybe you don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
See you know what you have me something on that one.
I'd have to look into it.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I didn't. I did not plan on that skin. I'll
tell you what in the in the audience, why don't
you do us a favor and look up online? Uh?
Where does the phrase no skin off your back come from?
The number is six, one, seven, five, four, ten, thirty
A good way to get involved.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
By the way, we have Neil and Watertown, Massachusetts. Do you
know what Watertown is? Just Hi, Neil, you're on with
on WBZ with Jessepharis.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
Oh, I'm sorry, well, I'm sorry. I'm having little trouble
in my old age. What's what's the what's your guest's name?
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Oh, I'm sorry, I lost you there? We have six
one seven thirty is the number? Skin? No skin off
my back? Look that up. Can we go ahead and.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Talk about a little bit about English language and where
the bulk of its roots come from.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Some people, of course people think of it.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
It's kind of skewing towards Romance languages. But how much
of it's from the Vikings, and how much of it's
from Greece, and how much from the Latin, et cetera.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
Yeah, gladly so a little crash course here.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
English is a Germanic language, and Old English was an
almost wholly Germanic language, with some early Latin dabblings. Middle
English began in sixty six with the Norman invasion, when
William the Conqueror or William the Bastard, however you call him,
flooded England with French speaking prestige folk, and by that
virtue also flooded the language with Norman French words, many
(22:14):
of which were Latin derived, so this also introduced some
lingering power dynamics, and one of the more glaring examples
of this is the difference between, say, a house and
a mansion. House is the old English word for this structure,
and maison is the you know, the French word for that,
but it just means house, and mansion is from the
old French word maison. And the only reason it's considered
(22:37):
a more expensive structure in English is because French rich
people lived there in the time of the after the
Norman invasions, so Middle English evolved into Early Modern English
think like Shakespeare, and through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, academia,
arts and sciences, we get more modern Latin words, classical
Latin words, and some Greek words, which is why English
(22:58):
is still structurally and grammatically Germanic language, despite the fact
that about sixty percent of our vocabulary is Latin derived,
and many of those Latin derived words were introduced via French.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
So when you say Germanic, what what does that mean?
When we automatically think of Germany. But Germany didn't exist
as we know it then, so right, what comprised Germanic
at the time was was that nose the Norse who
was Old.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Norse is a Germanic language, so is Old English, so
is High German and Low German. Those described topography not
necessarily a status. So our languages like Danish, Dutch and
languages spoken at the languages derived from Old Norse, including
Scandinavian languages, things like that. We do have some Old
(23:47):
Norse words in English, introduced by the Vikings, but they're
a relatively small portion compared to those from Old English,
which is its own Germanic language, and then and then
compared to Latin, which comprises about half of our half
of our words. But we also get words from other
(24:08):
sources like algebra and algorithm were adopted into English from
Arabic mathematicians. We've got Native American words like raccoon and
chipmunk and squash, and we've got chocolate from the Essex.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So to the victor goes the spoilers. Also the victors
they get to rewrute, you know, they get to write history.
But also, if you're say William the conqueror. Does that
also apply to language? Do you kind of get to
have an effect on the language? And that was a
big event? Was that a big event linguistically too?
Speaker 5 (24:47):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (24:48):
That is the reason why English has so many Latin
terms in it. Certainly some may have been introduced later
had not the Norman invasion happened. But that's rewriting a
huge chunk of history itself.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Wow. So let's go to Neil and water down again.
Give another show, Neil.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
You're on with Jess Jess and we're talking about words
and the word origins and things like that.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
Okay, thank you, Bradley, and hello Jess. Then I heard
you mentioned the word astronomy. So what first came to
my mind? I do a little. I like the Shakespeare sonnets.
So in Sonnets fourteen and fifteen, they're kind of like
a fifteen is kind of like a sequel to fourteen.
(25:35):
Fourteen starts out not from the stars? Do I my
judgment plucked? But yet he thinks I have astronomy. And
so you look in the explanatory notes and they say astrology.
But from when I understand the early astrologers, although they
might they got it wrong in some ways but they did.
They were systematic in the way they plotted the heavens.
(25:57):
So astronomy was the word that Shakespeare used in the
couplet to fourteen. And this site prognosticate by end is
truth and beauty's doom and date. So you go to
fifteen and fifteen. The first the first quad train is
when I consider everything that grows bo it's in perfection,
(26:19):
but a little moment that this huge stage presented, not
but shows were on the stars in secret influenced commons.
So there are two I believe. If I'm not wrong,
I'm just an amateur.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
But that's cool.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
So you've taken us in the direction of astronomy. That's good, Neil,
thank you very much. That was on our list.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Why here's at let's here's some astronomy words from Neil.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
That's beautiful. To Neil's point, astrology and astronomy have flip
flapped in meaning a bit since.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
Their earliest days.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Astrology used to be the more mathematical variation of versus astronomy,
though they were both either scientific or more occult studies
of heavenly bodies and used to foretell the futures. So, uh,
one way or another, as far as like the prediction
(27:12):
of events. But some of my favorite terms in the
field of astronomy that have interesting word origins are the
word where it's For example, galaxy is originally from the
Greek phrase galaxious key close, meaning milky circle, and funny enough,
that means that lactose, the sugar present in milk, is
cognate with galaxy. And it also means that the milky
(27:33):
to If you say the milky way galaxy, you're repeating yourself,
the milky milky.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Way la right there, right, yes, lack ta lactase.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Wow, that's right.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
And then I love that one. That's a good one,
thank you.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
The word planet literally means wandering. It comes from the
Greek phrase a series planet time, meaning wandering stars because
you could observe them moving even in the age days.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Right, Those are both fantastic.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
And then one of my favorites, it's just that the
word astronaut quite literally means a star, sailor astro not.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Those are great, are you you? I love astronomy. I'm
with Neil. He likes Shakespeare and his references to astrona bit.
Astronomy was I think my favorite of course in college
that's of course not important here. It's Christmas time kind
of in some ways it's Christmas time. What about some
(28:33):
Christmas words?
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Oh? Good one? Okay, So one of my favorites is Mary,
as in Merry Christmas. It's ultimately from a proto Germanic route,
meaning short lasting, with the current sense arising from the
notion of something pleasant that makes time fly. And the
word merth is the noun form of Mary. It's made
in the same fashion as truth from true, depths from
(28:57):
deep strength, from strong mersed from Mary. Isn't that lovely?
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yes? It is. By the way, you, being a word person,
are you also perhaps a poet?
Speaker 6 (29:07):
I am.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
I wish that I were.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
I tie lack rhythm, but I do try to be
at least a little clever with my pros.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Well, like the way you read that was, was it
approached poetry? The way that that unravels there, the way
it unraveled what you did there, which of course is
a reference to words Unraveled. Jess's YouTube along with Rob
rob Words Rob Watts channel, it's called words Unraveled. If
(29:35):
you want more of Jess later on, let's see it
was about a minute two three before the break you
mentioned that there were acronyms that are words, But there
are some words that people think are acronyms in there
not words.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Can you open busts some of those myths.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Absolutely, you'll often see it said that. For example, the
word posh is an acronym. It's usually said to mean
port outward starboard home, and most likely that's not true,
and we can tell because we have earlier records of
it than the supposed acronym. So the word posh is
most likely adopted from thieves can't or Romani slang word
(30:22):
for money or coin. But the suppose that it is
fun to talk about the theory here and the notion
that it meant port outward starboard home came though. It
comes from the idea that if you traveled to India
from Europe on a Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company
ship in the eighteen hundreds, the port side cabins remained
(30:42):
out of the sun and were therefore considered fancier and
vice versa on the way back. But the OED and
most other sources consider that theory to be incorrect due
to a lack of evidence. Another one is tag. Some
people say that it is short for touch and go, which,
unfortunately that does make a lot of sense. But the
(31:03):
tag is a very old word, and it became the
name of a children's game in the seventeen thirties, and
the word itself is thought to be a variation of
Scottish words like tig meaning touch or tap, or maybe
just the Middle English word tech or tick, which was
also the name of the same game and isn't spelled
the same, so it couldn't be an acronym.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
In your book, useless animosie, what's the format? How does
it you know?
Speaker 3 (31:28):
How does it roll? If you will?
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
I love this book. It's a collection of interesting It's
a collection of all my favorite things that I have
ever written about. So it takes you through the quirks
and patterns of English that you never noticed before. It
dives into. It has a section on astronomy words. It
has word myths, It has commonly mistaken words. It has
(31:53):
words that are older and younger than you think. It
has eponyms, words that are named after people. And it's
it's nice because I think, but because you can open
it to any page and find something to read about
in a bite sized format.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Okay, that's called useless etymology, and of course is not
useless and that's available great great Christmas gift and the
YouTube channel is Words Unravels. You mentioned the after the break,
how about a few words that are the stem from
a person's name. You mentioned there's a group of those.
(32:27):
What are those called apology eponyms? Okay, let's get a
few eponyms after this break on WBZ It's.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
One more short segment with just Sapharis. I wish we
had more time and before you get to the words
that are based on people's names, I think I remember
from your YouTube channel called Words Unraveled, and if you
do visit it, subscribe that fables, uh fables had a
(33:04):
bit of an impact on some of the words for us.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Is that? Did I hear that?
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Right?
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Certainly, it depends on what you mean by you mean
like like Aesop's fables.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
That's that's what how I interpreted. I guess.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
We've also had an episode on myths in particular, which
I suppose you could categorize fables as myths as well.
For example, let's see, one that comes to mind is
the uh The word mentor is inspired by the name
of Telemachus's mentor at his teacher in Homer's works in
(33:45):
the Odyssey, for example. Another one is that you know,
the the word like narcissism is from the character of narcissist,
who basically stared himself to death.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Well, of course that's yeah, now that you say that,
it all makes sense.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Of course, what a couple more.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Are there any Aesop fables that have generated any words
or more Greek type of myths?
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Huh, yeah. I would say Esop's fables have been more
focused more the source of morality tales and things like that,
because the characters within them are animals and they're a
little more simplistic in terms of the structure of the story.
But for example, tantalized comes from the name of the
(34:28):
character Tantalus, and Greek myths, there are a few versions
of this. But he does a terrible thing, feeds his
son to the gods, and the gods they're displeased and
contempted and condemn him to stand up to his neck
in water, and every time he tries to drink it,
it recedes, and there's fruit above his head, and every
time he reaches for it. He they the fruit rises.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Away pretty brutal m m.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
And then the word panic is from the Greek panicon,
which literally means pertaining to Pan, who is the god
of the wild, and all of the sources mysterious sounds
that caused people fear.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Wow, So how many of these are in your in
your book? Use just etymology? These are these kind of
things in there.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Yes, as a matter of fact, everything that I've mentioned
so far is in that book.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
You know what I got to I will even buy it.
You know I didn't get every new copy. I will
pay money for this. It sounds so good. Okay, Now
we have a little bit of time for words that
are the result of well, where's it come for people's names?
I guess it's the short way to say that.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
That's right, Give us a few, all right. So shrapnel
is named after Lieutenant General or Lieutenant General Henry Shrapnel,
a British Army officer and artillery specialist who invented a
special kind of exploding shehell which you guessed you guess
it produced shrapnel. And then side burns is a metathesis,
(35:55):
which is a fancy word for a flip flopping of
the name of General Ambrose burn Side, whose voluminous whiskers
inspired the hairstyle. Another fun one is Mesmerized, was eponymously
coined after friends Anton Mesmer, who was a German physician
responsible for the theory of animal magnetism, which involves the
(36:17):
notion that there's a universal magnetic fluid that can be
used for healing, and the practice of mesmerism and hypnosis
as a healing method came from his work.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Do you have a couple more? I can't get enough
of those?
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Oh, I sure do. Pants were named after a fictional
Italian fellow, so this one's both myth and eponym. The
word pants is a shortened version of the word pantaloons,
and pantaloons has referred to several types of leg wear
since the sixteenth century. It was as referred to it
was originally men's types or hoes, and then later pantaloons
(36:52):
would refer to men's knee breeches and women's baggy under trousers,
and this eventually gave us words like pants and panties
and things like that.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
And is that any pants?
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Yes? Getting around to it.
Speaker 5 (37:07):
The root of all these words, oh no, The root
of all these words.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
It's a little convoluted, but it comes from the name Pantalone,
who is a recurring comedic character in sixteenth century Italian
committee a de l'arte.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
So this character was known for his red hose. They
were very distinctive and everyone knew that character because he
appeared in many different plays as the recurring trope, and
all pants are named after his distinctive red hose.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
All I can say is that you must be very
good as scrabble.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Yeah, everybody says that, but scrabble involves as much mass
and strategy as it does knowledge of word origins, you know,
and knowledge of words. I would say I'm better at scattergories.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Okay, So thanks to you so much to you for
sharing this. There's a lot more in your book Useless Etymology,
and it's a fun YouTube channel called Words Unraveled. I
recommend them both and I'm actually going to get I
am definitely going to buy the book. Thank you so
much for your time, and I hope we'll hopefully we'll
(38:13):
have you on again. And also please say a warm
hello to your co host Rob on your YouTube channel.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
I certainly will thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Of course, Jess, take care. Well that was I love that.
I hope you some of you dug that next hour
while the time flies on nightside, doesn't it next hour?
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Open lines? What the heck?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
I think in all of my career, I might have
done open lines three times. I never called it open lines,
but it occurred to me that that might encourage you
to give a shout. Now, remember it's the end of
the week. You have your your weekly one call. If
you haven't used it up, you know, it's use it
or lose it. The number is six one, seven, two, five, four,
(39:02):
ten thirty one. Night's Side, Bradlege. I in for Dan
tonight and I look forward to hearing from you. Now,
I gotta go get some junk food. I'm thinking I'm
thinking a KitKat bar. Yeah, I'll talk to you right
after this KitKat bar, right after these words.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
On WBZ, Yes it is news Radio ten thirty
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