We all know that English is just mutant German with a crust of Latin and a little spice tossed in from other languages of the world.
In many cases, perfectly good old English words were eventually replaced by Latin ones for reasons known today only to etymologists. Winston Churchill famously hated this phenomenon.
I discovered an odd example of such a transfer tonight. In a staid old book of Roman fables -- you can't get much more academic than the Loeb Classical Library -- I had no expectation of such a discovery, but there it was, and a dictionary confirmed it.
It seems that the word "yard" once served as a standard, English male, umm, anatomical term, one which we have replaced today with a Latin word that began, most oddly, as the term for "tail."
Gives painful new meaning to the title of that recent movie, Stomp the Yard.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
The risque world of etymology
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4 comments:
Hi,
Thanks for the kind words about my blog. Regarding this post, I am now wondering the origin of "Scotland Yard" the British Police Elite.
Hilarious, LGS!
Oh, the evil puns and entendres this post could inspire. I must resist, I must resist.
Try deciphering the deep symbolic meaning of the Chinese alphabet where signs are combined. Try this site instead of reading my second hand explanation.
http://www.wbschool.org/Chinese.swf
Gets you thinking right? Old-fashioned wheels who need a little greasing, speaking of which.
Mara:
Chinese is on my list of languages to learn before I die.
I just discovered recently that American Sign Language does the same thing -- combines characters to make words.
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