This week the girls take aim at English words...
Ever noticed that the English language is just utterly bizarre? We have. Join us on a journey in which we discuss a select choice of English words and ask the age-old question - "but why?"
But first, what were we drinking?
Sarah was still drinking Brown Brothers Moscato & Sav
Available from Dan Murphys
Amy was drinking the Mechanic Cabernet Sauvignon
Bianca was drinking Hendrick's Midsummer Solstice Gin
Available from BWS
Sarah has no idea why she was opening this topic as she doesn't do the words very well. However here she is introducing this week's topic and giving us some examples of why English words are confusing. She then goes into some word meanings that you may or may not have known about words like, Chad, winebibber, and petcock.
Bianca had two super fun words this episode
The first was Bathroom; According to folk etymology, We don't get the word bathroom from the word Bathtub.
Let me explain folk etymology first; The technical term "folk etymology" refers to a change in the form of a word caused by erroneous popular suppositions about its etymology. Until academic linguists developed comparative philology (now "comparative linguistics") and described the laws underlying sound changes, the derivation of a word was mostly guesswork. Speculation about the original form of words, in turn, feeds back into the development of the word and thus becomes a part of a new etymology.
Believing a word to have a certain origin, people begin to pronounce, spell, or otherwise use the word in a manner appropriate to that perceived origin. This popular etymologizing has had a powerful influence on the forms which words take. Examples in English include crayfish or crawfish, which are not historically related to fish but come from Middle English crevice, cognate with French écrevisse. Likewise, the chaise lounge, from the original French chaise longue ("long chair"), has come to be associated with the word lounge.
Anyway back to Bathroom; We get this word from a person named Elizabeth Bathory, who's the most prolific female Serial Killer in history. She's the origin of the stories of bathing in the blood of virgins to stay young. Anyway, before it was “bathroom”, it was originally called Bathory Room. There is a phenomenon in linguistics called elision where similar syllables get smushed together over time, so Bathory room becomes "bathroom" and it's named that because that is where she would kill and bathe in the blood.
The second was Fornication; In Roman times, there was a god named “Fornax.” Fornax was the god of baking and bread, and her name stemmed from the word “fornacis,” which described the furnace used to bake.
It turns out that prostitutes would often reside in bakeries during the days of the Roman empire, and they would frequently approach clients in a not-so-subtle way by offering them some penis-shaped bread, called “coliphia.”
After eating the bread, the clients would then go have sex with the prostitutes in the now-cooled-down furnaces. This led to an association between the word for Furnace, the goddess, and sex, and as a result, the word “fornication” emerged.
Amy started researching some words that have always confused her then stumbled across a group of words that puzzled her even more. Ever wondered why there are so many words in the English language that start with KN but we only say the N part?
Turns during the 1500s there was a major change to English spelling because printing presses were in the hands of common people and not just government scribes. When you couldn't work out how to spell something but you needed to print it you just made it up. By the time people worked out what was going on no one cared and had moved on with the new bastardized version of the word.
Amy decided since this is how she approaches spelling (and everything else) we should adopt this. Lady Mondegreen's message tonight was "say it loud, say it wrong, and spell it however you like!"
HELP KEEP US HYDRATED
AKA Karma Points
