Source is The Conversation that seems to have a strangely-open republication approach licensing stuff via Creative Commons BY-ND. https://theconversation.com/five-common-english-words-we-don... includes a button that just gives you the HTML and some tracking code/image.
Only tangentially related, but I've been auditing "The History of English Podcast"[0] and if this sort of thing interests you, you'll probably like that too.
Fabulous podcast. Fascinating how we can use pronunciation shifts to
date the arrival of a word into English, and how some words have entered
the language multiple times by different routes. Also, I learned that
there really was a castle in a swamp, in Wessex, to which King Alfred
retreated during a particularly heavy Viking invasion.
To audit a course, say at university, means to attend and perhaps do assignments but not pay fees nor receive credit for a course. It is often observed as someone "sitting in" on lectures without writing the final exam.
Another usage is for supervising professors who attend a lecture to "audit" it in the sense that an IRS auditor would audit a tax return. They are examining the junior professor's performance or adherence to guidelines.
But it remains an open question under either definition, since this podcast series isn’t a college course. And, for all we know, the original poster is not a professor…
This is going to sound like damning with faint praise, but it's not meant that way -- this is absolutely my favorite thing to listen to while trying to fall asleep.
His voice is quite soothing, and it's interesting enough to constantly hold your attention, while not being _so_ interesting that it keeps you awake, and while it's loosely organized chronologically on an episode-by-episode basis, within each episode it's sort of arranged thematically, so you can dip in and out of consciousness and not be confused as to what he's talking about, and you can pick it up the next night at some random spot and not really feel like you missed much. It also has long stretches where he's just sort of listing off words and etymologies, which are the kinds of trivial facts I love, but I think my brain also takes as a signal to turn off.
Recorder doesn't just confuse him, it confused me as well the first time I heard the word. I'd always called the musical instrument a flute, which was apparently wrong, although I don't know why since tons of other instruments that look just like a recorder are called flutes.
A recorder is a flute, more specifically, a fipple flute. But there are other fipple flutes, such as tin whistles. (One distinguishing feature of a recorder is the use of the thumb hole to control octaves.) So calling a recorder a "flute" isn't exactly wrong, but is under-specific. Also, nowadays transverse flutes are often called just "flutes", inviting confusion if you call a recorder a flute.
The etymology you reference seems speculative, not really contradicting the article's claim that the etymology isn't clear.
What's called a flute that looks like a recorder? (Don't say 'flutes'..) I can think of oboes and clarinets, which are called that not flute. I'm no musician but to me a flute goes to the side; I assume per sibling comment that's what a 'transverse flute' is.
Flutes that have fipples, like penny whistles (or recorders), vessel flutes (some of which have fipples, like an ocarina), end-blown flutes without a fipple like the xiao (which also happens to have a side-blown varient).
There are many, but the word is somewhat amorphous. Personally, I would call almost anything that uses a Helmholtz resonator instigated with the mouth as the initial oscillator a "flute," but will also take it to mean "orchestral flute" based on guessed context in conversation.
The thing that makes clarinets and oboes not flutes is that they have one or more reeds rather than producing a direct Helmholtz resonator.
Although "Helmholtz resonator" is often used to describe a broader range of resonators than Helmholtz's original design, I think it's dubious to call fipple flutes "Helmholtz resonators". The fipple mechanism sets up an oscillating sheet of air going into and out of the pipe, which isn't present in traditional Helmholtz resonators. See:
These are uncontroversially flutes, so the definition would have to be "mouth-blown wind instruments that generate a tone without using vibrating parts".
Similarly, it bears striking resemblance to the Swedish 'pojke', which can be colloquially shortened to 'pojk' and also means boy. It's apparently been derived from Finnish within the last millenium, though, so could be a false cognate.
>I've always thought that 'boy' sounded suspiciously close to the Swiss German translation "bueb" (or sometimes "buebe"), almost pronounced "b-way-b"
According to Etymology Online[0]:
`boy (n.)
mid-13c., boie "servant, commoner, knave" (generally young and male); c. 1300, "rascal, ruffian, knave; urchin," mid-14c. as "male child before puberty" (possibly extended from the "urchin" sense). A word of unknown origin.
Possibly from Old French embuie "one fettered," from Vulgar Latin imboiare, from Latin boia "leg iron, yoke, leather collar," from Greek boeiai dorai "ox hides." (Words for "boy" double as "servant, attendant" across the Indo-European map — compare Italian ragazzo, French garçon, Greek pais, Middle English knave, Old Church Slavonic otroku — and often it is difficult to say which meaning came first.)
But it also appears to be identical with East Frisian boi "young gentleman," and perhaps with Dutch boef "knave," from Middle Dutch boeve, perhaps from Middle Low German buobe. This suggests a gradational relationship to babe. Another conjecture:
In Old English, only the proper name Boia has been recorded. ME boi meant 'churl, servant' and (rarely) 'devil.' In texts, the meaning 'male child' does not antedate 1400. ModE boy looks like a semantic blend of an onomatopoeic word for an evil spirit ( *boi) and a baby word for 'brother' ( *bo). [Liberman]
Used slightingly of young men in Middle English, also in familiar or contemptuous use of criminal toughs or men in the armed services. In some local uses "a man," without reference to age (OED lists "in Cornwall, in Ireland, in the far West of the U.S."). The meaning "male negro slave or Asian personal servant of any age" attested from c. 1600.
Extended form boyo is attested from 1870. Emphatic exclamation oh, boy is attested by 1917. Boy-meets-girl "typical of a conventional romance" is from 1945; the phrase itself is from 1934 as a dramatic formula. Boy-crazy "eager to associate with males" is from 1923.
A noticable number of the modern words for 'boy', 'girl', and 'child' were originally colloquial nicknames, derogatory or whimsical, in part endearing, and finally commonplace. These, as is natural, are of the most diverse, and in part obscure, origin. [Buck]"
Purely linguistic question here. What is the word for having a sexual fantasy about someone? Since this must happen a lot, I'm wondering if all languages have a single (transitive?) verb for it. If not, then why not?
Thanks, but it doesn't come really close to the meaning I was looking for.
I find it difficult to believe that we don't have a good word for what 99+% of people are doing since puberty and allows also to express the object of the fantasy using a simple subject+verb+object type of sentence.
In my experience, modern English adopts idioms more often than new words. "Sexual fantasy" is a common term for what you're asking about. It may sound too dry and basic to be an idiom, but remember that English is packed, filled, stuffed, and choked with synonyms. That most people say "sexual fantasy" points to it being an idiom. "Dirty thoughts" would be a close contender.
If you really want a single verb, "lust."
For sexual fantasies about somebody one's looking at, "undressing with one's eyes."
Since sexual themes are heavily regulated or prohibited in most cultures, such a word may fail to exist, or to survive intact through the millennia. I suppose that local metaphoric and slang words, and contextually-altered expressions (like the generic "daydream" narrowed to that sense) replace it in many / most cases.
Same with words for copulation (highly restricted) and even for wooing / courting, which are also pretty universal activities since times immemorial.
Yes, it doesn't, but that's your answer because there is no single, exclusive English word for sexually desiring someone. So there can't really be one that exclusively refers to sexually fantasizing about them, at least, not until the age of extensive psychological and sociological taxonomies.
My response to your finding it difficult to believe is: you're asking for a word for an intensely private act! Think about how rarely people overtly and bluntly say they are sexually fantasizing about someone. When it's actually admitted to, it's done using a variety of metaphors, slang and indirect hints.
And in general, we don't have a commonly used prefix or second compounded word to turn a physical act into a fantasy. Even though "fuck" predates Early Modern there was nothing commonly attached to it to make it mental.
The two most common off my head: Colloquially, and somewhat innocently, "crushed [on]". Modern internet "Urban" colloquially, and certainly degeneratively, "fapped [to]".
Lots of modern variations abound. "squished [on]" when more romantically/asexually. Couples (usually strictly monogamous) may allow each other a "hall pass", which is a noun for someone that is an (often unattainable) sexual fantasy. ("He is my hall pass.")
I think languages in general pick up a lot of nuanced terms for these kinds of things, far more than just a single transitive verb. Especially because things like sexual interest are often "forbidden" from discussion in "polite society", so a lot of it starts as euphemisms or analogies and maybe never leaves. "Hall pass" is a euphemism from childhood school days that seems to have stuck for a very specific niche.
You can find a lot of variation in places like Urban Dictionary. It can be fun to try to find old slang dictionaries from previous eras to see how much things have shifted over time. (Euphemisms tend to, especially as jobs or technologies shift out from whatever is being euphemized.)
Do you mean "have" as in to possess a thing or to experience a thing? If someone possesses a fantasy or desire for someone it is common to say that they "lust after" that person. A person may lust after a supermodel, but that is different than a reference to that person experiencing a specific daydream about that supermodel. So it might all depend on tense.
Metaphor is also common in this area where direct description many be impolite. A person can be smitten or enchanted by someone. Or they can carry a candle.
It is much rarer for a word to be created out of whole cloth. Most words come from modifying or combining existing words. Even when people try to create new words, they often use an existing word as the basis to give it some additional meaning.
New words are invented all the time, but girl, boy, dog you'd expect to be ancient concepts with ancient etymologies. 'noob' has an obvious etymology in new-neue-niwe. The idea that 'dog' doesn't blows my mind - especially since the guttural, monosyllabic utterances are often the oldest.
While not as recent, the Germanic "ship" / "Schiff" / etc. has no cognate in any other Indo-European language and no obvious origin in PIE, so it is conjectured it might be derived from a pre-IE indigenous European language.
They don't _have_ to, but it's an observed fact that they mostly _did_. There are vanishingly few examples of purely new coinages outside of scientific terms before the modern era.
The reason why is mostly a bootstrapping problem. The purpose of words is communication, and it's a lot easier to adapt an existing word to a new purpose that it is to just invent some new pattern of sounds and convince people to start using it. It's easier now with mass media, but prior to that, nearly impossible.
Another area where words are created is in product names. They can be created purely synthetically but even those often still use existing words as the basis for the creation.
For every "Zyrtec" (which still plays on "tech") you have "Claritin" ("clear/clarity") and others.
Sounds plausiblel. Don't know why you're downvoted, frequently used ones are more prone to it I'd say, just because the possibility that someone thinks of or stumbles upon a new name for it is higher. Maybe Dog was the name of someones Hound and his/her family started naming so, and then a village, county , dutchy , country because it was short and convenient
I think they have been downvoted because they’ve suggested a solution which is, while plausible, not very interesting, and done so in a tone that could be read as somewhat aggressive. Also, which we could not hope to have evidence for (except in an absence of evidence for any other theory).
Source is The Conversation that seems to have a strangely-open republication approach licensing stuff via Creative Commons BY-ND. https://theconversation.com/five-common-english-words-we-don... includes a button that just gives you the HTML and some tracking code/image.
Only tangentially related, but I've been auditing "The History of English Podcast"[0] and if this sort of thing interests you, you'll probably like that too.
[0] https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/episodes/
Fabulous podcast. Fascinating how we can use pronunciation shifts to date the arrival of a word into English, and how some words have entered the language multiple times by different routes. Also, I learned that there really was a castle in a swamp, in Wessex, to which King Alfred retreated during a particularly heavy Viking invasion.
What do you mean by auditing?
>What do you mean by auditing?
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12608-when-i-use-a-word-hum...
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.” ― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
To audit a course, say at university, means to attend and perhaps do assignments but not pay fees nor receive credit for a course. It is often observed as someone "sitting in" on lectures without writing the final exam.
Another usage is for supervising professors who attend a lecture to "audit" it in the sense that an IRS auditor would audit a tax return. They are examining the junior professor's performance or adherence to guidelines.
But it remains an open question under either definition, since this podcast series isn’t a college course. And, for all we know, the original poster is not a professor…
I highly recommend that podcast as well. The average native English speaker doesn't know much about it.
This is going to sound like damning with faint praise, but it's not meant that way -- this is absolutely my favorite thing to listen to while trying to fall asleep.
His voice is quite soothing, and it's interesting enough to constantly hold your attention, while not being _so_ interesting that it keeps you awake, and while it's loosely organized chronologically on an episode-by-episode basis, within each episode it's sort of arranged thematically, so you can dip in and out of consciousness and not be confused as to what he's talking about, and you can pick it up the next night at some random spot and not really feel like you missed much. It also has long stretches where he's just sort of listing off words and etymologies, which are the kinds of trivial facts I love, but I think my brain also takes as a signal to turn off.
Check out “Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme--And Other Oddities of the English Language”
Great book!
Recorder doesn't just confuse him, it confused me as well the first time I heard the word. I'd always called the musical instrument a flute, which was apparently wrong, although I don't know why since tons of other instruments that look just like a recorder are called flutes.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorder_(musical_instrument)#... has a full etymology, which contradicts the article.
A recorder is a flute, more specifically, a fipple flute. But there are other fipple flutes, such as tin whistles. (One distinguishing feature of a recorder is the use of the thumb hole to control octaves.) So calling a recorder a "flute" isn't exactly wrong, but is under-specific. Also, nowadays transverse flutes are often called just "flutes", inviting confusion if you call a recorder a flute.
The etymology you reference seems speculative, not really contradicting the article's claim that the etymology isn't clear.
What's called a flute that looks like a recorder? (Don't say 'flutes'..) I can think of oboes and clarinets, which are called that not flute. I'm no musician but to me a flute goes to the side; I assume per sibling comment that's what a 'transverse flute' is.
Flutes that have fipples, like penny whistles (or recorders), vessel flutes (some of which have fipples, like an ocarina), end-blown flutes without a fipple like the xiao (which also happens to have a side-blown varient).
There are many, but the word is somewhat amorphous. Personally, I would call almost anything that uses a Helmholtz resonator instigated with the mouth as the initial oscillator a "flute," but will also take it to mean "orchestral flute" based on guessed context in conversation.
The thing that makes clarinets and oboes not flutes is that they have one or more reeds rather than producing a direct Helmholtz resonator.
Although "Helmholtz resonator" is often used to describe a broader range of resonators than Helmholtz's original design, I think it's dubious to call fipple flutes "Helmholtz resonators". The fipple mechanism sets up an oscillating sheet of air going into and out of the pipe, which isn't present in traditional Helmholtz resonators. See:
http://www.colinpykett.org.uk/how_the_flue_pipe_speaks.htm
I think a better definition of a flute is a mouth-blown wind instrument with no vibrating parts.
I just remembered there are East Asian flutes that use vibrating membranes to modify the sound:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizi_(instrument)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegeum
These are uncontroversially flutes, so the definition would have to be "mouth-blown wind instruments that generate a tone without using vibrating parts".
Superb correction, thanks!
With absolutely no certainty or linguistic rigor behind this observation...
I've always thought that 'boy' sounded suspiciously close to the Swiss German translation "bueb" (or sometimes "buebe"), almost pronounced "b-way-b"
https://glosbe.com/en/gsw/boy
Similarly, it bears striking resemblance to the Swedish 'pojke', which can be colloquially shortened to 'pojk' and also means boy. It's apparently been derived from Finnish within the last millenium, though, so could be a false cognate.
Kinda like “horse” and “Ross”. Not obvious at all in writing, but you can imagine how it could transform like that given a purely verbal transmission.
>I've always thought that 'boy' sounded suspiciously close to the Swiss German translation "bueb" (or sometimes "buebe"), almost pronounced "b-way-b"
According to Etymology Online[0]:
`boy (n.)
mid-13c., boie "servant, commoner, knave" (generally young and male); c. 1300, "rascal, ruffian, knave; urchin," mid-14c. as "male child before puberty" (possibly extended from the "urchin" sense). A word of unknown origin.
Possibly from Old French embuie "one fettered," from Vulgar Latin imboiare, from Latin boia "leg iron, yoke, leather collar," from Greek boeiai dorai "ox hides." (Words for "boy" double as "servant, attendant" across the Indo-European map — compare Italian ragazzo, French garçon, Greek pais, Middle English knave, Old Church Slavonic otroku — and often it is difficult to say which meaning came first.)
But it also appears to be identical with East Frisian boi "young gentleman," and perhaps with Dutch boef "knave," from Middle Dutch boeve, perhaps from Middle Low German buobe. This suggests a gradational relationship to babe. Another conjecture:
Used slightingly of young men in Middle English, also in familiar or contemptuous use of criminal toughs or men in the armed services. In some local uses "a man," without reference to age (OED lists "in Cornwall, in Ireland, in the far West of the U.S."). The meaning "male negro slave or Asian personal servant of any age" attested from c. 1600.Extended form boyo is attested from 1870. Emphatic exclamation oh, boy is attested by 1917. Boy-meets-girl "typical of a conventional romance" is from 1945; the phrase itself is from 1934 as a dramatic formula. Boy-crazy "eager to associate with males" is from 1923.
`[0] https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=boy
There's a conjecture about boy here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/8qdnpu/what_are_...
Purely linguistic question here. What is the word for having a sexual fantasy about someone? Since this must happen a lot, I'm wondering if all languages have a single (transitive?) verb for it. If not, then why not?
I think this https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/covet is what you're looking for. It's even in the ten commandments - as mentioned on the page.
I have always thought that covet means strongly desire ( which the link also mentions ). Nothing about sexual fantasy.
To fancy or to daydream about someone. If English has a term for intense or explicit sexual fantasies, it’s a modern or clinical word.
Thanks, but it doesn't come really close to the meaning I was looking for.
I find it difficult to believe that we don't have a good word for what 99+% of people are doing since puberty and allows also to express the object of the fantasy using a simple subject+verb+object type of sentence.
In my experience, modern English adopts idioms more often than new words. "Sexual fantasy" is a common term for what you're asking about. It may sound too dry and basic to be an idiom, but remember that English is packed, filled, stuffed, and choked with synonyms. That most people say "sexual fantasy" points to it being an idiom. "Dirty thoughts" would be a close contender.
If you really want a single verb, "lust."
For sexual fantasies about somebody one's looking at, "undressing with one's eyes."
Since sexual themes are heavily regulated or prohibited in most cultures, such a word may fail to exist, or to survive intact through the millennia. I suppose that local metaphoric and slang words, and contextually-altered expressions (like the generic "daydream" narrowed to that sense) replace it in many / most cases.
Same with words for copulation (highly restricted) and even for wooing / courting, which are also pretty universal activities since times immemorial.
Yes, it doesn't, but that's your answer because there is no single, exclusive English word for sexually desiring someone. So there can't really be one that exclusively refers to sexually fantasizing about them, at least, not until the age of extensive psychological and sociological taxonomies.
My response to your finding it difficult to believe is: you're asking for a word for an intensely private act! Think about how rarely people overtly and bluntly say they are sexually fantasizing about someone. When it's actually admitted to, it's done using a variety of metaphors, slang and indirect hints.
And in general, we don't have a commonly used prefix or second compounded word to turn a physical act into a fantasy. Even though "fuck" predates Early Modern there was nothing commonly attached to it to make it mental.
The two most common off my head: Colloquially, and somewhat innocently, "crushed [on]". Modern internet "Urban" colloquially, and certainly degeneratively, "fapped [to]".
Lots of modern variations abound. "squished [on]" when more romantically/asexually. Couples (usually strictly monogamous) may allow each other a "hall pass", which is a noun for someone that is an (often unattainable) sexual fantasy. ("He is my hall pass.")
I think languages in general pick up a lot of nuanced terms for these kinds of things, far more than just a single transitive verb. Especially because things like sexual interest are often "forbidden" from discussion in "polite society", so a lot of it starts as euphemisms or analogies and maybe never leaves. "Hall pass" is a euphemism from childhood school days that seems to have stuck for a very specific niche.
You can find a lot of variation in places like Urban Dictionary. It can be fun to try to find old slang dictionaries from previous eras to see how much things have shifted over time. (Euphemisms tend to, especially as jobs or technologies shift out from whatever is being euphemized.)
[dead]
Fantasize?
Probably about a hundred different words for that in urbandictionary
Do you mean "have" as in to possess a thing or to experience a thing? If someone possesses a fantasy or desire for someone it is common to say that they "lust after" that person. A person may lust after a supermodel, but that is different than a reference to that person experiencing a specific daydream about that supermodel. So it might all depend on tense.
Metaphor is also common in this area where direct description many be impolite. A person can be smitten or enchanted by someone. Or they can carry a candle.
It isn't socially useful for this evident fact to be easily discussed.
In humor, everything can be discussed ;)
"Boy" comes from Japanese ボーイ(bōi).
Or more generally from uralic languages, example Finnish: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poika
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%83%9C%E3%83%BC%E3%82%A4
ボーイ: Borrowed from English boy
They seem to admit that Swedish and Norwegian Pojke comes from Finnish. So it came with Normen to Ængland.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pojke
boy sounds somewhat like Turkic bala/bola ("a boy").
Also "kill", apparently.
Seems true [0] -- as does dog. But the etymology of "boy" didn't come across as fully uncertain [1].
0: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kill
1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boy
Why does every word in English have to come from somewhere else. New words are invented all the time, duh, noob.
It is much rarer for a word to be created out of whole cloth. Most words come from modifying or combining existing words. Even when people try to create new words, they often use an existing word as the basis to give it some additional meaning.
New words are invented all the time, but girl, boy, dog you'd expect to be ancient concepts with ancient etymologies. 'noob' has an obvious etymology in new-neue-niwe. The idea that 'dog' doesn't blows my mind - especially since the guttural, monosyllabic utterances are often the oldest.
While not as recent, the Germanic "ship" / "Schiff" / etc. has no cognate in any other Indo-European language and no obvious origin in PIE, so it is conjectured it might be derived from a pre-IE indigenous European language.
They don't have to - but a large portion of them are ~%80.
https://www.dictionary.com/e/borrowed-words/
Noob < newbie < newborn < Germanic new + Germanic born.
It's hard to find a word that is a truly original coinage not based on any existing words.
Sometimes a word is used for a new purpose unrelated to its origin.
I’m thinking of things like “a parliament of owls” or “a murder of crows”.
Words are generally used for communication, and, as opposed to technical inventions, it takes multiple people to evangelize a word.
They don't _have_ to, but it's an observed fact that they mostly _did_. There are vanishingly few examples of purely new coinages outside of scientific terms before the modern era.
The reason why is mostly a bootstrapping problem. The purpose of words is communication, and it's a lot easier to adapt an existing word to a new purpose that it is to just invent some new pattern of sounds and convince people to start using it. It's easier now with mass media, but prior to that, nearly impossible.
Another area where words are created is in product names. They can be created purely synthetically but even those often still use existing words as the basis for the creation.
For every "Zyrtec" (which still plays on "tech") you have "Claritin" ("clear/clarity") and others.
Yeah that's why I qualified it as before the modern era. There's all kinds of brand names that are just nonsense words.
Sounds plausiblel. Don't know why you're downvoted, frequently used ones are more prone to it I'd say, just because the possibility that someone thinks of or stumbles upon a new name for it is higher. Maybe Dog was the name of someones Hound and his/her family started naming so, and then a village, county , dutchy , country because it was short and convenient
I think they have been downvoted because they’ve suggested a solution which is, while plausible, not very interesting, and done so in a tone that could be read as somewhat aggressive. Also, which we could not hope to have evidence for (except in an absence of evidence for any other theory).