Rubus, possibly a caesius, commonly known as Dewberry.
"Rubus" is Latin for bramble, which it is related to, presumably a reference to the thorns of many plants in this genus when derived from an Indo-European root *reub- (to tear), meaning a bush that can cause injury.
Planted around homes and gardens, it was thought to ward off malicious spirits – everyone who has had any form of Rubus growth can relate to that notion; those are impassable!
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)
When you take the lyrics "would he devote that Sacred Head for such a worm as I?" into your very core as a 5-year-old, it takes A LOT to get shut of that unsightly baggage as an adult.
Even "Amazing Grace": "...how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me...."
Really? I was a child. A baby.
A wretch?
Reprobate & miscreant are some of the synonyms. I was to learn those as well.
Wretch: from Old English "wreċċa," meaning "outcast."
Wreċċa itself from a Proto-Germanic word that meant "fugitive."
Sure, I didn't know any of the #etymology, and it's not like that etymology or even the word "wretch" itself come up in everyday conversation.
But even though the ancient roots of our #language never enter our actual day-to-day lives, I do believe the sense of them remains somewhere in our collective subconscious. And some of those roots are rotten. And they fester.
Probably one of my favorite collections of etymological maps is the one about colors. Today: color green, the color of nature, of spring, of #ecology https://mapologies.com/colors
This comic should amuse #writers. I did some research on the #etymology of the cited #homonyms and wrote this to my lit friend. My thoughts, anyway, which may amuse ewe:
It is obvious from an orthographic perspective that many sounds represented by groups of letters in English ought be pronounced differently and emphasized, putting aside that Germanic and French derivatives are also different. Problem is that human hearing and blurring of sounds due to regional accents mean we do a lot of error checking so accurate sounds don't always matter. As such, we have homonyms which shouldn't logically exist because we learn language by hearing not reading. But humans aren't logical (and are lazy speakers) and language is living. Scent = sss sen t. Sense = sen sss with a weak seh at the end. Scent without emphasis on the introductory s sound, sent, and cent are homonyms. Scent is from the French and cent from the German. Sent is the past tense of send so doesn't count.
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.
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.
I've just come across the Old English compound word "hord-wynn" (hoard-joy), which refers to treasure that delights.
That's how I'm going to be thinking of my library from now on 🥰 📚 #Life#Books#Words#Etymology
The phrase "#LoadedForBear" means to be prepared to deal with a difficult or challenging situation.
The origin of the phrase dates back to hunting with muskets, where hunters would load their guns with extra gunpowder to have enough firepower to take down a #bear, the most ferocious and hardest to kill predator in North America.
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!"
https://rootlgame.net/ continues to be good fun. Just remembered it today after discovering it (on here, natch. forget who offhand, a mutual probably?) and added it to my first-thing morning tab set.
Also! You can play the entire historical run of the game, so I'm probably going to have /a/ Rootl tab open like, near permanently, until I finish the backlog 😂
"A thing was a governing assembly in early Germanic society. Things took place at regular intervals, usually at prominent places that were accessible by travel. They provided legislative functions, as well as being social events and opportunities for trade. In modern usage, the meaning of this word has shifted to mean not just an assemblage but simply an object of any sort."