@JeremyMallin@Cassandra
I'm not a native speaker, but I assumed the "peel" is a metaphor for your eyelids. So keeping your eyes peeled is keeping them open. Does that make sense?
TIL the word 'admiral' derives from Arabic 'emir' ('amir' – أَمِير) meaning 'commander'
but it's unlike other Arabic words that entered English, like alchemy and algebra, which use the Arabic definite article 'al' (which you might recognise from terrorist group al-Qaeda ("The base"), media organisation Al Jazeera ("The Peninsula") or the illegally destroyed Gazan hospital al-Shifa ("the healer")
because of this, folk etymologies try to say 'admiral' comes from a whole Arabic phrase, e.g. 'amir al-baḥr' – أَمِير اَلْبَحْر "commander of the sea", which was the title for the leaders of the Fatimid navy from the 10th to 12th centuries
but that's maybe just a coincidence. Apparently it's an added Latin suffix '-alis', because (without wading over my head into Latin linguistics) Latin has very few words that end in 'ir'. The word 'vir' ("man") is thought to be a contraction or syncope of the Old Latin 'viros'
The Fatimid navy mainly fought the Byzantine navy in Sicily and southern Italy, though – so this may be how the 'amir' part entered Latin
George of Antioch, a Byzantine Christian military officer who served the Norman king Roger II of Sicily, had previously worked for the Emir of Ifriqiya, Tamim ibn al-Muizz; his title of "commander-in-chief' was Latinised in the 13th century as "ammiratus ammiratorum"
The 12th-century Latin word 'amiralis' evolved into 'admiralis' in 13th-century Norman and Middle French, under the influence of the Latin prefix 'ad-', which benefited from the semantic chime with 'admirari' (to admire, to respect)
Have you ever wondered why recovery sounds like you're covering something again? It's just coincidence!
Recover goes back to Latin "recuperare", and is ultimately related to English "receive". Moreso than receive, however, recover retains the repetition sense of the re- prefix: it's about taking something back again, whether that is an object, or your health, or whatever. Covering things has nothing to do with it.
@mapologies I cannot possibly Express in any words or any ancestors of any words how happy this chart makes me. This apiphile and hobby linguist is ending her day on a really good note. Thank you! 😄❤️🤘🖖🐝
Weird #etymology: 'weird' originally meant fate or fortune. It got its modern meaning from the weird sisters, goddesses of fate. Because they were portrayed as uncanny, the word weird shifted its meaning.
Further back, it comes from a root *wer-, which means to turn. The idea of turning is often used for processes of becoming and the future: something turns into something, or turns out well.
The original meaning is still present in the suffix -ward, like backward and inward.
@JeremyMallin True but close enough... Seems like nitpicking to me. Deutchland is Germany in English and Tyskland in Swedish. That's plenty of other nonsensical examples compared to missing one soft consonant.
In the Russian Empire, there were several political institutions called "Soviets", which were advisory councils to the ruling Emperors.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviets emerged as organs of revolutionary power, with Vladimir Lenin proposing the motto "All power to the Soviets!"
@paninid@darlingofinana "Russians have inherently authorian mindset" next thing you will start talking about freedom gene aren't you? I don't like orientalist myths very much.
@Loukas@Loukas ...all manner of choc eggs, and hot cross buns, sure; you can't swing a cat without hitting any of those at this time of the year in London, for decades. I've never even heard of 'Simnel' cakes let alone seen one; semolina, sure, but Simnel. They look interesting tho'. I'll keep my eye out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simnel_cake
Does your mind ever seize upon something ordinary and suddenly make it seem strange and beautiful?
I was just pondering the name 'Margaret', which has quite dowdy connotations these days. It's a name I associate with older and especially conservative women – fuck you Margaret Thatcher
a younger person with the name is more likely to go by a diminutive or derivation of it, such as Meg, Maggie, Molly, Peggy, Daisy, Maisie or Margot
Even the Latin name Margarita and the French name Marguerite seem more popular than the English derivative
The name means 'pearl' and came into the Romance languages from Greek 'margaritari' – μαργαριτάρι – which was a Persian loanword and ultimately came from the Sogdian language
Sogdian is a Middle Iranian language from the region whose capital is Samarqand – the famous Silk Road trading city that was also the hub of the Timurid Renaissance of Islamic scholarship. It was a Central Asian lingua franca of governance, trade and learning
Importantly, Sogdia is a landlocked region. So to me it seems they would have got the word for 'pearl' from someone else who traded pearls to them
But even despite all this #etymology, the actual English name Margaret looks cool and exotic to me now in an underrated way
like, the ending -aret with the single t really HITS for me
I wonder if these words that came into English with one t but into the Romance languages with two ts reflect the English custom of just lopping off a Latin suffix
I know I've seen other English words that do that, but of course none of them come to mind right now