Most people recognize Ancient Greek and Latin as the primary donors to the English language. However, some of the most ancient words in English actually trace back to Ancient Egypt. Distinct from the contemporary Egyptian Arabic spoken today, Ancient Egyptian is a unique Afro-Asiatic language that doesn’t really share similarities with other languages in the family (like Arabic, Hebrew, or Berber). Its 5,000 year-old …
A group of kids gets together to play a game of tag and nobody wants to be “it.” The children don’t suddenly slip into chaos trying to decide who “it” is going to be—they possess a rhythmic selection procedure, parts of which have probably been around in some form for centuries. It goes something like this: Eenie, meenie, miney, moe, Catch a tiger by the …
It’s hot again, up in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s that time of year when the sun shines its most unforgiving beams, baking the ground and, indeed, us. It’s the portion of summer known as the hottest time of the year. Or, more delightfully, the dog days. Contrary to common conjecture, the dog days do not take their peculiar name from weather that “isn’t fit for …
Yes, it’s true, there’s a wild story behind the god who lends his name to Tuesday: Tiu, also sometimes spelled Tiw. Tiu’s remarkable myth even involves women with beards (more on that in a bit). But, the past 1,000 years or so have not been kind to this Germanic divinity. Who is Tuesday named for? Tuesday comes from the Old English tīwesdæg, meaning “Tiu’s day.” Tiu …
In a 2013 column for The Atlantic, Stephen Fried apologized for coining the term fashionista. The word, which Fried first used in 1993, started appearing in dictionaries just six years later. But what is it about the word that Fried now finds problematic? What is a fashionista? First, let’s look at fashionista. This word originally appeared in Fried’s biography of supermodel Gia Carangi, Thing of Beauty: The …
Thirty-two years ago, Keith “Cowboy” Wiggins, who was a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, was teasing a friend. The friend had just signed up to serve in the U.S. Army. Cowboy was mimicking the rhythm of marching soldiers by scat singing “hip hop hip hop.” He later used the phrase in a performance. Then the name began to be used by disco …
As you may suspect, the term “ballroom dancing” originates with the word “ball.” But what you may not know is that “ball” comes from the Latin word ballare, which means “to dance.” So what about all those dances performed in the ballroom? How did they get their names? The waltz The waltz is now considered a harmless, traditional type of ballroom dancing. But in 1825, it …
